I get wistful whenever I think of Rio de Janeiro . The most beautiful women in the world live in Brazil , many of them what polite society would call working girls.  

But I get ahead of myself.  

Now most parents haven’t the slightest clue what happens when their little Johnny gets his gun and finishes his training for war. They think the US military might make a man out of him—if it doesn’t kill him in the process.  

But something else happens to a huge segment of these testosterone-laden males. Speaking from my own experience, we are suddenly free, suddenly freed of parental restraint. A lot of us become like frisky pups in perpetual heat.  

Most of those who served in the US Air Force trained at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas . Five military bases surrounded San Antonio at the height of the Vietnam War, when I was stationed there. Tens of thousands of men, hundreds of thousands even, most of them recent high school graduates, guarded the Lone Star State from Vietcong terrorists determined to sweep across the Rio Grande river.  

Four hours south of San Antonio lay Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and a legendary place called Boys Town . It was a walled compound on the outskirts of town also known as La Zona Rosa (the red zone).  

A veritable village of Mexican working girls, whom impolite society might call whores, worked there. They met and pleasured the mostly shy yet exuberant servicemen from the dozens of  military bases within driving distance. Literally tens of thousands of men spent some evenings there, some paying for the first sexual experience they ever had. Good kids, church-going kids, army draftees or air force enlistees, tasting the bittersweet pleasures of something bought and paid for but not necessarily earned.  

The best place in Boys Town , the place with the prettiest girls, a place that’s been around forever, was the Papagayo (parrot) bar. But any bar in the red zone offered the wide-eyed patriotic warrior, a smorgasbord of sex for very little money.  

“Boy's Town is about five blocks of brothels,” said one recent visitor. “There are hundreds of women available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Alcohol is cheap and is also sold 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Walk around, check the place out.  Don't stop at the first place you see - go in, the girls will come to you and will try their damnedest to convince you to go to "Mi quatros" (My quarters).  

“Most of the young, pretty girls ask for twenty five dollars, plus five for the room. I don't know if that price is negotiable or not; almost everything in Mexico is, but what the hell? A beautiful, disease-free woman for thirty bucks? Where you gonna beat a price like that? (Remember - the government runs the place, and each girl is checked for STD's at regular intervals).”  

The last time I visited Boys Town was 35 years ago. I imagine a whole lot of the God-fearing, red state folks might wince if they ever realized their precious boys were bird-dogging whores at hundreds of places like Boys Town , around the hundreds of US military bases we occupy around the world. But then most American parents would die if they ever discovered what most of their soldier boys have done in the name of duty. Things a whole lot worse than fucking, I can guarantee you that.  

I survived the military with most of my faculties intact. Never had to personally hurt anyone and never felt remorse for fucking foreign girls. Funny how polite society wants to scare teenagers about the dangers of illicit sex (the best kind) but is perfectly willing to send teenage soldiers off to fight various, fabricated wars built on carefully constructed lies. Seems illicit sex is a whole lot more worrisome than illicit killing done in the guise of patriotism.  

About 20 years later I found myself in Rio de Janeiro . At the time, Rio was considered the “Most dangerous city in the world.” I might have been the only US gringo there, in 1989-90. The working girls there considered me a non-renewal resource, like a rich coal seam suitable for strip mining.  

Beautiful girls of every shade of skin flocked to the beaches of Rio . Many of them were born to poverty or were single mothers with little else to sell besides their bodies. Indeed they were everywhere, looking for tourists. On the beaches, in the nightclubs, even in the malls.  

One mall near my apartment in Copacabana had an establishment called a “termas.” The word meant "steam bath," but the steamiest thing I saw there were the scantily dressed young women. Yup, you guessed it—a whorehouse.  

You see, Rio de Janeiro—and all of Brazil---at that time suffered from a corrupt government of elites (much like our own), that wrecked the economy, enriched themselves and their cronies, squeezed the middle class, kept the lower classes impoverished,