At nine o'clock on a Saturday morning in May, Herman climbed off the turnip truck in San Francisco. Actually, it wasn't a turnip truck, it was a Greyhound Bus and Herman climbed off at the Seventh Street Terminal. Calling it a turnip truck is another way of pointing out that Herman was a yokel, a rube, a hick, a jay, or whatever word is used nowadays for a totally naïve person from rural America who is suddenly thrust into a big, bad, sinful city like San Francisco. Besides being a hick from the sticks, Herman was another cliché, a young man whose fancy had turned, in the springtime, to thoughts of love. That was why he was in The City; he was looking for love, and he had heard this was the place to find it.
Monica was part of the big, bad, sinful city of San Francisco, especially the sinful part because she was a hooker working Seventh Street, in front of the bus station. Her given name wasn't actually Monica but she had adopted her current profession about the time Bill Clinton was impeached and it seemed like a good name to use, since she specialized in giving head.
Sometimes she was able to do allright at this location but on that day she had a serious problem. Monica had awoken an hour earlier with a throbbing head and a churning stomach, one of her worst hangovers ever. The wine she drank for breakfast had gotten her well, but only temporarily. Her problem was that she had finished her only bottle and needed money to buy more; therefore she needed to find a john, and quickly. Monica had hopes of getting drunk before the morning was over but first she needed to find some guy who would pay her for a blowjob or whatever else he wanted. No money meant no wine, which would mean comparative sobriety and a world class hangover, and that would start as soon as the therapeutic effects of her breakfast wore off.
Most men, even if they would have patronized hookers, were completely repelled by Monica's bleary eyes and her disgusting odor of rotgut wine, and they gave her smiling offers as wide a berth as possible. If she got too close, they cursed her and even pushed her away. She was getting more and more desperate when she spotted the young man emerging from the bus terminal.
San Francisco is known for its hospitality to all kinds of people, even yokels like Herman. Where some cities might have rejected him as an ignorant rube, The City by the Bay was not one of them. San Franciscans, in this case, Monica, welcome strangers into their midst. In her case, when she saw him leaving the bus station, she perceived that he was new in town, probably had some money in his pocket, might be horny and was, therefore, an excellent prospect.
"Hey, Buddy, ya wanna date," she asked.
Herman was elated. The city was living up to its reputation as a city of love. He had barely arrived and already a woman was throwing herself at him, suggesting an amorous rendezvous. "Yes, my dear sweet thing," he replied.
Monica was a bit taken aback because it had been many years since anybody had called her anything like that, but she was not so surprised that she couldn't start the business negotiations. "Ya wanna go upstairs to my room for a date?"
Herman's elation was boundless, that this sophisticated woman of the world should be so smitten with him, so infatuated that she was inviting him to her boudoir. As he gazed on her, he became enraptured and fell in love on that spring morning in San Francisco. Herman had worked for the last several years on a hog farm and his olfactory nerve had gone into suspended animation after the first day so the unwashed wine-sweat smell of Monica didn't bother him. She was rather lumpy and soiled in appearance but less so than the sows who had lately started looking good to him.
"Of course, My Precious Sweetheart. I want to go anywhere with you, anywhere that your heart desires."
