After we were done at the processing center late in the day, they gave us our papers and our instructions. We were to board a bus for Chicago the next morning. They also gave us some vouchers for rooms at a local hotel as well as others for dinner that night and breakfast the next morning. I was appointed the group leader and was told that I had to make sure everyone got on the bus the next morning and stayed on it all the way to our destination.
Later that evening after we used our vouchers for what we jokingly referred to as "our last supper". Although none of us was old enough to buy liquor, one of the guys, Jim, looked as if he might be able to pass for twenty-one. So, we pooled some of the cash we had between us and sent Jim off to try to score some alcohol for us. Sure enough, after about twenty minutes Jim returned with some beer and whiskey. We spent the next hour or two talking, drinking the beer and passing the whiskey bottle around. As the alcohol did its job, the subject inevitably turned to girls and sex. Some of the guys began to talk about how it was going to be a long time before they would get laid again since boot camp would figure fairly prominently in our plans for the next several months. One of the guys who was from the Butte area suggested that we go visit a local establishment that specialized in meeting the types of needs under discussion in our group, mainly that of getting men together with women - for a price. He knew a place not too far from our hotel that he called "Dumas". Some of the group immediately thought this would be a great way to spend some of the last cash they had and began to talk up the possibility. Now, for me, this was uncharted territory and I began to get a bit nervous. Not only had I never visited a place such as the one under discussion; I had never been with a girl, sexually that is. Not that I had never thought of it; it just had never happened. And, as I recall, the idea of starting my sex life in the arms of a professional woman didn't really seem to do it for me. Of course, the testosterone level in our bunch was high that night and the liquor helped break down barriers for some of the guys, too. So, before I knew it, I, as well as the entire group of us, were trooping out of our hotel behind the local kid who said he knew the way to this place of some repute.
As our small band of the newest sailors in Uncle Sam's great U.S. Navy walked along the streets, I asked myself what in the Sam Hill was I getting myself into. Or, at least, I think my foggy young mind must have been thinking something like that. Truthfully, my memory is mercifully unclear of much that transpired after about six beers and my share of the whiskey bottle. I do recall our arriving at the house in question. We were granted admittance, and I recall there was a fair amount of oooh-ing and aaah-ing from all those gathered there when they learned that the group of young men that had stumbled up the steps and into the place were, in fact, headed out for military service the very next morning. My merciful lack of recall from that evening's activities is not merciful enough to keep me from recalling some of the memories. I do remember following one of the ladies up the stairs and into her room, and I do remember that all of her very likely prodigious experience and talent could not coax my body to deliver what was required for a successful "meeting". Of course, that was just between her and me. The price was the same whatever she and I did or did not do. So, after tyding up, my lady of the evening led me back downstairs where I awaited the rest of my new buddies. I do remember that, somehow, we all did get on the bus the next morning. I also recall that there was conversation about who had done what with whom the previous evening. I also learned two more things over the ensuing years. One thing was that I was not the only guy who had not been able to perform that evening. The other was that the establishment we visited was a place of some fame, being the well known Dumas Brothel on Butte's Mercury Street (that is it in the photograph above). Although it is no longer is in business, I have learned that it was one of the longest standing businesses of its type in the West and served its male patrons from 1890 until 1982.
So now I may have misled you. My list was shorter following this event. But, the item I crossed off my list was "Military service", not "have sex for the first time". That item remained on my list for a short time longer.
