plain-clothes men stole on board. And because we lived in the
shadow of the police, we opened oysters and fed them to them with
squirts of pepper sauce, and rushed the growler or got stronger
stuff in bottles.

Drink as I would, I couldn't come to like John Barleycorn. I
valued him extremely well for his associations, but not for the
taste of him. All the time I was striving to be a man amongst
men, and all the time I nursed secret and shameful desires for
candy. But I would have died before I'd let anybody guess it. I
used to indulge in lonely debauches, on nights when I knew my crew
was going to sleep ashore. I would go up to the Free Library,
exchange my books, buy a quarter's worth of all sorts of candy
that chewed and lasted, sneak aboard the Razzle Dazzle, lock
myself in the cabin, go to bed, and lie there long hours of bliss,
reading and chewing candy. And those were the only times I felt
that I got my real money's worth. Dollars and dollars, across the
bar, couldn't buy the satisfaction that twenty-five cents did in a
candy store.

As my drinking grew heavier, I began to note more and more that it
was in the drinking bouts the purple passages occurred. Drunks
were always memorable. At such times things happened. Men like
Joe Goose dated existence from drunk to drunk. The longshoremen
all looked forward to their Saturday night drunk. We of the
oyster boats waited until we had disposed of our cargoes before we
got really started, though a scattering of drinks and a meeting of
a chance friend sometimes precipitated an accidental drunk.

In ways, the accidental drunks were the best. Stranger and more