My Cross to Bear by Gregg Allman Page B

pulled me aside and said, “Man, I heard that they’ve been bugging you about being a virgin?”
    “Maybe so—what the fuck is it to you?” I said.
    “Wait a minute, don’t get huffy,” he said. “Dig it, man, I got divorced recently, and I know what it’s like. They would bug me about her owning my dick, and the first hundred times it was funny, but then it got unfunny. Look, I got to sign some papers with her, and if you want, I’ll set you up with her, and I’ll tell her what’s happening.”
    See, he was still friends with his ex, and he was going to tell her that I’d never had my hambone boiled. So he set it up with her and told me we were all set, and she said I should come over for dinner. She lived in one of those one-bedroom studio apartments, with one of those Murphy beds, and it was already down, so I’m thinking that everything is cool. Of course, he ain’t said nothing to her and ain’t said shit about my “situation.”
    We had dinner, and she turned the lights down low, and we were sitting there watching TV, got a candle burning. I sort of put my hand on her tummy, then slid it up around her boob, and she said, “Oh, you came for that!”
    “Nope—no, no!” was about all I could get out before I jumped up ready to bolt for the door.
    “Wait just a minute, honey. Did Jimmy Matherly put you up to this? He did, didn’t he?”
    And with that, she proceeded to show me what it was all about. I’m telling ya, it pretty much took a stretcher to get my ass out of there. I thought that was the finest thing I’d had since black-eyed peas. I think she later told Jimmy that I got the lay of my life—like he never did!

Courtesy SATV

    The Allman Joys, 1966
    Courtesy SATV

CHAPTER THREE
The Foot-Shootin’ Party
    I T WAS ONE OF THOSE DISMAL, COLD, RAINY J ACKSONVILLE DAYS in 1965 when I took Duane down to the induction center. He’d been up all night, drunk as shit, and his plan was to try and convince them he was a sissy. He had the swish going, and he had on these panties that ran up his ass. There were all these red-necks there, with that “I wanna get me a gun and kill a Commie for mommy” attitude.
    A lot of guys we knew were getting drafted and sent to Vietnam—seemed like more were getting their draft cards every day. The way it worked was, you’d go to this old, terrible three-story army building in Jacksonville, right down the street from the WAPE radio station. You reported in the morning, and then around noon they gave you a break and you got a box lunch. I had taken Duane up there in my mother’s car, and he came back out to the car at the break, and he was crying—that was something the average person never saw my brother do. He hardly ever cried, and if he did, he went off somewhere alone to do it.
    This day, though, he was really crying, and he told me, “Baybrah, I can’t pull it off, man. They ain’t buying this shit at all.”
    “Man, just be as brave as you can,” I told him, “and fuck those motherfuckers. No matter what, do not get on that fucking bus.”
    “I know, I know,” he said, adding, “Shut up, you little know-it-all prick.”
    “Well, I’m just trying to give you some kind of help here,” I said. “Just tell them to take their war and stick it in their ass, and we’ll deal with tomorrow tomorrow.”
    He went back in there, and the officer in charge said to Duane, “What’s this panties shit?” The guy took them off of him, threw them over in the corner, and told my brother, “Put your fucking pants back on. You’re fine,” and he stamped my brother 1-A. Then he said, “Now go into the room over there. We’re gonna take an oath.”
    This asshole in a little fucking Smokey the Bear hat tells my brother, “Hey, blondie—raise your right hand,” and Duane put his hand in his pocket. That guy started going off on my brother, telling him that he was going to spend the rest of his natural life in Leavenworth, busting rocks. They told him to go