I’ll answer to PN3, or Graham or Bob. I’m a Personnelman. The man who is there for personnel. The military rank is “PO3” i.e., Petty Officer, Third Class. It’s a rating classification and paygrade where they accentuate the petty or officer contingent upon superior attitudes. I advise other fools who’ve enlisted, with information and counseling regarding the remote possibilities of a job, education and training, promotion requirements, benefits, and above all, rights. I can get Navy families legal aid, or even reassignments in rare, but completely fucked up situations. I mainly keep records updated and prepare reports. I can type around 80wpm on a PC. I maintain files, including the squadron’s database -- which I sometimes use to print names and social security numbers of men selected at random for what we call a unit sweep, a urinalysis, a whiz quiz, or drug test. A Personnelman is basically a pencil pusher -- but it is not a petty job.

Here I’m a petty by god officer. I supervise food fights with a team of 19-year old serfs who run the carrier’s 24-hour fast-food outfit, a cross between McDonald’s and Denney’s. Shift is Monday to Sunday inclusive, oh-eight to twenty-hundred. If I’d remained in the shop doing the job the Navy sent me to a special school to learn, I’d be working oh-seven to nineteen-thirty Monday-Sunday.

Now I lay me down in my rack in the 39-Man coop six feet under cat one. I hear the whines of turbo-props, on the flightdeck of this razor-blade fodder of a ship, and boot clomps of a Blue Shirt chock-&-chain gang parking a bird as flight ops wind down. Several shipmates sit around a poker table in our lounge, under a TV bolted to a wall. They’re bitching about being unable to touch a toilet seat, ‘cause of the nastiness of this formidable vessel. The walls are pale yellow from an ignorant tradition of sailors smoking their cigarettes.

Occasionally other sailors filter in and across our dim, red-lit coop to slide into racks like mine. In this coop, each sleeping area is decked out with two stacks of three sheet-metal racks with 2” thick mattresses, and six stand-up lockers that hold, say three shirts, bolted together with an aisle between.

I’m better off with a top rack ‘cause I can sit up. But there’s a nasty girder about five inches overhead. I learned not to heave out and trice up carelessly at reveille. A rack light’s mounted on it, right between my eyes. Unless I tuck my chin to my chest, I catch my forehead on the light’s knife-edge housing. Sure you’d only do that once? Well like knee-knockers, soon as you get complacent you’ll get nailed. My knee jutts several centimeters out the aisle through a break between my two Navy issue, blue cotton curtains. I slide ‘em together unless I feel horny. The guy who used to sleep in the middle rack below across from me masturbated nightly perusing Penthouse, giving me such a steamy view through the two-inch gap above his curtains, I joined in, and came at the same time with him. We never discussed it. He transferred a few months back. The cute new dude works in the Line shack during the hours I’m in my rack.

I stow my boots atop the locker (beside my head against the wall at the end of our aisle) and stare at my neon light. Other knee rubs sheet-metal, separating me from a rack to my right, where that dude jacks every time he lays down. He isn’t sexy enough to watch. Besides, I got a wonderful view of electric cables bundled overhead feeding power throughout the entire forward area of the 03 level.

There’s worse places to sleep than six foot under a cat -- like beneath the arresting cables stretched across the ass end of the flightdeck. An incoming jet’s tailhook hangs down and tries to snag a wire as it slides down the deck. If it misses all three cables they go around again. Last thing they do before landing is throttle up (i.e., put the peddle to the metal). They repeat it ‘til they either catch the wire, run low on gas and divert, or have sailors rig the barricade.

Now I hear that dull, two-tone, British cop-like klaxon, aft. That means get away from the middle of the aft deck, or you’ll get run over by a landing jet. The “recovery” cycle’s called a trap. They must be doing night qual’s. That’s a cat-trap-cat dance, for JOs (Junior Officers). Last time out we had a rag squadron onboard (all trainees) and some JO hit the deck so hard it knocked a vent off the ceiling in 81-Man (Wolfpack’s largest berthing, under the arresting wires). Squids fresh out of bootcamp have been known to bounce out of the rack, first time they hear a jet hit the flightdeck. But you soon wonder if you’d sleep through some major conflagration, like USS Forrestal had during the Vietnam war. Bombs cooked off on deck, squids died in underwear.

I hear yellow gear spotting a bird on cat one, so they won’t fire it again tonight. Once I hear chocks drop I’ll nod off. The Blue Shirts know I sleep down here so they drop chocks (yellow metal wheel stoppers) extra hard as if to yell HEY BOB! YOU ASLEEP?

Now as a jet strains against tie-down chains in the heave-ho of high winds and heavy seas, and the chock-and-chain gang drops chocks further down amidships, I lay out my spark-deflecting flash hood and gloves with my new Mark V gas mask. I’m ready for GQ.

16 JUL 90. Missed my rack light, getting up this morning -- then I hit the fuckin’ girder. Stole my first long look at the sky since pulling out, six days ago. Here you need a calendar watch because you check dates, not hours. Provided you have some idea it’s night or day, you tell time by bells on the 1MC. One bell per half hour, accumulates to eight bells every four hours, then starts over. If you know it’s mid-morning or mid-afternoon you’re in the ballpark: one bell is oh eight-thirty, five bells is eighteen-thirty, respectively. If ya wanna know the day of the week, pal, buy a watch.

I took a break at the starboard fantail between flight ops and watched a helo from HS-14 practice SAR, about a thousand yards abeam. Made it to breakfast on the forward mess deck, 0730. GQ went down exactly oh-eight hundred. The next two hours daycheck sat at aluminum mess tables tryin’ to stay awake in their flash hoods and flash gloves, dungarees rolled up in their boots. Dungarees are late sixties, bell-bottom blue jeans, like I used to wear hitchhiking, until both fads faded in 1977. Since we have to buy them ourselves, I wonder who got a billion dollar government contract 30 years ago to keep seamen seeming eccentric.

An MS (Mess Specialist) spilled his guts to me this evening. Been married a while. For some reason I had to ask, and he had to tell -- yep, to a guy. He blushed, and he’s black. He’ll get no BAQ. No VHA. And God forbid if the Navy ever finds out he likes it up the butt, he’ll get discharged within five working days. They didn’t use a minister. “It’d be too embarrassing.” He woulda showed me a photo of his -- husband I guess. He’s a skinny little effeminate type, so I figure he’s the bitch. Too many mates hung around. “I’ll show you later,” he whispered.

Everybody signs the enlistment contract DD Form 4. It has the rudeness to ask (1) are you homosexual or bisexual, and (2) do you intend to engage in any homosexual or bisexual activities. They define such activities: touching or other physical activity including anal intercourse engaged for the purpose of sexual gratification. If I engage for other purposes -- say rape or S&M -- that seems to be okay. In fact, they endorse it when you cross the equator. The Navy endorses cross dressing, simulated butthumping, flogging, and just about anything for that one, longest day. Of course as usual, should you or any of your trusty shellback team be caught or killed, the US Secretary of Defense will disavow any knowledge of such activities.

In three years as Personnel Clerk, I’ve processed a generous number of official records of enlisted men who grew up during the so-called sexual revolution. That began with “Flower Power” in San Francisco in the late sixties, evolved into “Women’s Lib,” then “Gay Lib” in the 1970’s, and died a slow death in the “Me” decade, as that plague-creating Neutron Bomb got re-classified and AIDS appeared. Funny, I’ve never seen a “YES” initialed on either of the questions. The contract used to ask if you had ever engaged in such activities. They X’d that Q years ago. Guess nobody qualified. I can tell the closet cases: initials swish over the “NO” box, kind of like a hurdling swerve over the middle -- like Jack jumpin’ a candlestick. These teens come in with drug waivers and speeding tickets but not one experimented with bisexuality, ever. Not one. Like my recruiter said, if you never got arrested for it, you never did it. Unfortunately for me, I did get arrested -- although I got dismissed. It started out as kind of a joke, a technicality, until they found out the charge was first-degree murder. But dismissed is supposed to mean dismissed.

I have a stocky Puerto Rican working for me down on the forward mess decks. Today he looked at his teenage butt buddy and raved: “Your lips man. I gotta feel them locked around my big hard cock.”

“I eat butt,” that teen bragged back. Shipmates overheard. Nobody suggested telling Ranger’s captain, or oir labeled them as fags. Talk got around to Black’s Beach, the famous nude beach minutes from Miramar where Wolfpack’s homeported. We enlightened each other, five feet apart. “You know that’s also a famous gay beach?”

“I’d kill any faggot who got within five feet of me.”

Ever wonder what could happen when sailors play too much grab ass without relief, during extended cruises like we’re about to go on? Effeminate, boyish, cute dudes can take an emotional taxing, if not a physical beating, from hornier brutes onboard. And if a pair really likes each other, just the brush of a wrist or a back pat could make your dick stand. At 32nd Street Naval Station enlisted club, for instance, I heard one dude return after a month at sea and casually introduce his buddy with a hug about the neck and a redfaced giggle, “This is my sea bitch.” I met a real cute Marine there who asked me if I was ticklish. He was five foot five and weighed a buck oh five. I walked him back to his ship and we hugged in a parking lot, but ran up against midnight, his curfew. Bet he’s on his way to Saudi sand.

I guess I’ll let my hand-washed tee-shirt and briefs dry on the curtain rail. The punks are dropping chocks on my head, up on that flightdeck. We got UNREP startin’. Maybe tomorrow we’ll have real milk. We’re using non-refrigerated cartons now. They taste like formaldehyde, and they’re usually reserved for the Indian Ocean. I ain’t thinking about that. I promised a dude I’d dream a him tonight.

2200 17 JUL 90. A female Chaplain (Chaplainette) says an evening prayer. I always wonder what went on to influence these nightly prayers, offered at 2155 before “TAPS TAPS. LIGHTS OUT” gets announced on the 1MC. She pontificates about CURRENTS AND TEMPTATIONS PULLING US IN ALL DIRECTIONS. And she asks WHATEVER IT TAKES to make THE RIGHT DECISIONS.

Guys in the lounge play Dominoes and chafe at the bit for the return of early outs. They contemplate marijuana, fat joints in cozy rooms, while a CD plays “Money-Money-Money-Money” and “Back Stabbers.” Upstairs they’re firing no loads on cats three and four, test firing for an 0300 strike exercise. Hopefully they won’t use cat one, and I can sleep ‘til reveille.

The Navy Federal Credit Union sent me a notice. NFCU’s a fine Navy tradition, like a bank but with simpler regulations and much lower operating budget. They say you gotta present your shellback certificate to join. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’d never heard about it before Westpac ‘89 -- on the island Diego Garcia, when my last CMC said I could open an account for five bucks, which I had.

Now my rent check bounced, 200 miles out to sea. My bank account’s fucked up due to car payments I’d never had ‘til a fateful night at Mission Beach: I had strolled down to Roberto’s to buy a burrito with Louie, a homeless pal still tripping off the Vietnam war. This was at the corner of Mission Boulevard, across from the Giant Dipper -- a roller coaster that killed someone so they closed it a few years ago. Since I moved there they’re fixing to reopen it. Louie and I walked back up the sidewalk and I glanced at the car port. “Didn’t I park my Toyota there?”

I felt plum stupid searching for a car I parked in the car port. Evidently San Diego’s border-town smugglers, El Coyote and his cronies needed my plain white Toyota. Its military decal allows it to roll through Navy bases and avoid Border Patrol checkpoints, like at San Clemente.

Man, those assholes violate Navy policy, playing Dominoes after taps. Violations of policy will continue long after this ship gets melted into razorblades. Anyway, fun in another room makes it feel like family, to the extent anyone can belong. Especially one like me.

2130 18 JUL 90. Climbing to a top rack’s an art. Came from a cold Ranger shower in a bath towel and flip-flops. (Never shower without shower shoes on a Navy installation.) I reached up from our aisle and grabbed and clenched the two top racks’ heavy metal curtain rails in each hand, swung a foot up off that funky torn-seat chair to the top of the two tobacco stained stand-up lockers, and swung buttcheeks over the mattress -- still in a towel. Slid the blue curtains together, now I’m home alone. “Nakedness,” as Allen Ginsberg said. Turned on the rack light. It began its ritual vibration, emitting a soft murmur that increased ‘til I smacked it, and remembered why I didn’t teach.

My bounced NFCU $375 rent check: since I had $60 cash I made out a blank check for $315 then hiked down to the post office which sells money orders -- and promptly found out they don’t take personal checks, “Gotta get it cashed at Disbursing.” So I extended my lunch break (without permission) and walked from the post office amidships on 02 level down two more decks to Disbursing. At the cashier I extended my break a bit longer, stealing time off old Uncle Sam -- then found out the “daily check writing limit for Petty Officers E4 and below” is $250. Didn’t have my checkbook on me (I didn’t wanna work all day with it in my back pocket). Climbed back up five decks, past the Post Office and half a ship forward, wrote a new check for $250. Climbed back down five decks to Disbursing and cashed that check. Gotta cash another $65 tomorrow, in time to go by the Post Office and buy the money order with $375 cash, and get that letter off with a cod, aka Miss Piggy, assuming we have a mail run tomorrow.

Ah, tonight we had pizza down on the forward mess decks. Swabbies jammed the place. Broomstick, one mess crank, detailed the art of anal sex with his girlfriend. “She kept begging, ‘Get me in the ass! Get me in the ass!’ I call it my doggy style surprise.”

“I prefer to go about it gently.”

Should I have argued? “Well since you’re the expert, why’s a woman enjoy a penis in her ass, when a man shouldn’t? Why’s it so different?”

“Because that’s sick! I can’t imagine a penis poking into my butt! It’d hurt to have a dick up your rectum -- wouldn’t it?”

I hesitated and he sprang back, on guard. This was a joke of course, in which I learned men have a physical barrier to prevent an otherwise identical penetration.

Couple minutes ago I killed my rack light to drift off and let old Clint Eastwood and his all Americans invade Grenada on TV. An ugly whiff of secondhand tobacco smoke hovered over my nose. In January, the US Navy implemented the Smoke Free Navy. The rule says, if I complain about lit cigarettess bugging me, there will be NO SMOKING allowed, regardless who smoked in the shop. In the coops, so many sailors have complained, they now include during taps: THE SMOKING LAMP IS OUT IN ALL BERTHING AREAS.

I pulled on my sweat pants, climbed out a my rack, avoided cold grimy deck tiles ‘til I found my flip-flops, and went to see who was breaking the regs. Our coop cleaner was smokin’, watching TV. I like Beave -- which is far more important than the fact I respect him, or even that he has rank over me. It’s amazing how men get around rank and respect when they don’t like someone. Beave’s responsible for handing out laundry. Normally, I’d never fuck with the coop cleaner, no matter who he was. He guards my rack while I wander back and forth to Disbursing. But I felt stupid standing there, so I spoke up. “Your cigarette smoke is hovering right over my rack an’ going right up my nose.”

“I’ll put it out because it’s after taps, Graham.” He sighed, tampping the remains into his ashtray. “But you’re asking too much. If that’s your problem, you need to get off this boat.”

I don’t think anybody loves to be here. Maybe Snapshot, the photo-nut lifer dog who lives to snap a jet. Guys in his shop hate him. He comes off too patriotic. He’s doing with a Nikon what I did last cruise with my 8mm Minolta camcorder. My shots of Ranger’s 1989 rescue of 39 Vietnamese refugees got on global TV. And I got top billing on a Navy documentary about it. And I made my own documentary, but they didn’t allow me to sell it because of the simulated obscene acts, guys forcing guys to dry-hump each other on their knees while getting whipped and having hot coffee poured down their necks. Maybe after I get out, if I can still find a market.

2200 19 JUL 90. At least one husband has begun to worry openly. I heard Ruff bullshit to Beave, “Tell a mo’ fo’ I’m going out to sea for a month, a’ight? Two days later he comes by the crib: ‘Oh he ain’t home? Guess I missed him. Can I have a glass of water?’ Man, that’s why I let nobody know the way t’ my house. Got to keep my wife off duh prowlah list.”

Jets hurl off cat one. I cover my ears when that iron rod hits the water brake. Dominoes end at taps -- a residual awareness of our pointed scene last night. TV’s low for one bleary-eyed sailor transiting work and sleep. Occasionally flip-flops flipflop across our cozy coop. A distant roar as a jet bolters over the flightdeck, hook missing a wire, bird flying back around. Tie-down chains twist between pad-eyes and main-mounts overhead, holding jets down as we steam into the wind. Makes a soothing sound, like taut ropes on a small sailboat.

Finally got off a fucking m/o. If my landlady Delilah by the beach resubmitted the July check and it clears, she can use this for August. We won’t pull in by the first. I left an August check with That Guy, just in case.

Broomstick straightened me out about his sexual preferences today. “I did let a finger slip once, wiping.”

“Yeah? How’d it feel?”

“Wonderful. But I prefer a broomstick!” He pranced across the deck to wipe a table.

Still getting papers outa San Dog. Read about the Baguio quake wiping out a Hyatt, in the Philippines. Gotta dig up the old addresses after we get back, write Jong in Olongapo and ask if Wads survived. He was going there sometimes, doing tricks I guess. Damn, already feeling like Westpac.

1400 20 JUL 90. Been getting one hour off, afternoons, away from those decks. Usually hit the rack and doze. 0400, rumbling anchor chains woke me. At 0700 they upped anchor, and we left a spot off Coronado Island. That big tease pissed everyone off.

Rumors buzz ‘bout our date of return: (1) Radar equipment is down. We’ll hit pierside six hours and pull out again without liberty. That’d be a tease. (2) New flightdeck non-skid is so rough it’s fraying the arresting cables. They unravel as jets land, and it’s screwing up the hydraulic mechanism. Therefore we pull in early from A-T-A, 26th instead of August 3rd. We’d all be happy to pull in, so that’s the one we believe. Everybody’s getting the Westpac itch.

We must be doing 20 knots. Feel my rack vibratin’. First night aboard, I figured that was somebody masturbating. Then I heard the distinctive squishy sound, someone definitely doing it when the rack wasn’t rockin’. I looked at the shippie in my line of sight, through the slight gap between his rack frame and the top of his blue curtains. He was reading Penthouse, pumping one hand fast up and down a hard fat long slick dick. I figure the boat has her own way with a sailor. The trick is, rocking against her. Who needs the CMC’s pornos or Penthouse? It’s the best, turning hard against the wind, listing and churning and ploughing waves, ah, shaking and shaking a throbbing vibration. In heavy seas wave upon wave slap her frame. Slap slap slap slap. Ahh.

1045 21 JUL 90. Last night, half past 12 as I lay in bed, a sudden DING DING DING DING then a DING indicated an emergency in the forward area. A bos’n yelled on the 1MC during the last ding was ringin’: FIRE FIRE! FIRE ON THE FLIGHTDECK! CAT ONE! Coulda been an armed F-14 aflame six feet above me, well worth investigating. So I climbed down as the bos’n mate hollered, R-DIVISION MAN YOUR HIGH CAPS! R-Division team makes routine checks for watertight closures. High Caps are emergency wash-down controls, reserved for major fires (or chemical attacks) on the flightdeck.

Two guys from the back-up hose team stood by in our lounge. They’d already switched to channel nine on TV, watching the live show on the roof in black and white via the infrared camera mounted on the bridge. Steam billowed from cat one. A crowd of sailors in floatcoats (inflatable life vests) and crash suits surrounded the scene. I stood thinking of the famous Navy safety film, “Fire On the Flightdeck,” about USS Forrestal, off Vietnam in the ‘60’s. A show just like this including exploding bombs, and hose teams flying in bits and pieces. Ten tense minutes later the mate whistled again. FIRE ON CAT ONE IS OUT!

Now, about the other kind of fire: I was up in 81-Man, where they give away jerseys, getting an extra to complete my GQ outfit. I don’t sleep back there and don’t hang out with those guys. Well, VF-1 has a number of dudes who look, if not effeminate, at least very sexy in their beauty of youth. One of these types was playing Spades in nothing but Bermuda shorts. His slender back faced the corner where, strangely, PN1 sat inconspicuously, eyes trained through his dark glasses over a smoldering cigarette -- like studying porno in a sleazy lounge. His cigarette ash bent heavily and I thought wryly: how he jokes at Miramar, how he rubs guys at the customer service counter whenever they come and go, how he razzes me always, for some ability he thinks I have to attract young, sexy dudes. I wonder. Is he a fag in a contract marriage?

1430 21 JUL 90. Last night next door in the Radioman lounge, I flirted with a skinny dude who finally went to the head and to bed, and left me in sweats on their couch, then another dude erupted, enraged about being called a customer in the mess. Since he didn’t pay for food, he insisted, how was he a customer? Once, I treaded those mess decks as a customer. Soon as we deploy, I’ll hopefully be a customer again. But right now, I manage the place.

I explained, I’d consider him a customer simply because that’s a useful term to distinguish him from an fsa during training and briefing. If I hadn’t been there, how long would he have carried his resentment, being identified as a customer? See, it reminded him of a life ashore, then of being stuck on this rust bucket a tantalizing few miles off the coast doing donuts. He might’ve found a machine gun eventually, gone berserk and shot us all. I saved numerous lives with my simple explanation in the midst of his rage by allowing, as a manager, I was his target, and I had his answer. The truth came out then -- his shop supervisor had scheduled him for T-A-D to the mess decks. Poor bastard.

2215 21 JUL 90. Some sailors look so young, they must have lied about their age to join your Navy. For a select few, even that seems remote. No recruiter would believe ‘em. They could be considered stowaways or, in some wilder guess, maybe the Captain’s sons. Out of some five thousand men aboard USS Ranger, I have found two who fit this fond description, and made it my business to fondle them! Since I believe in monogomy, I’ve chosen the most beautiful among them to endure my affections. “I’m nineteen,” swears Sweet Pea. I have yet to see this kid meet a sailor who didn’t first ask his age, then refuse to believe it.

“Going on fourteen,” was my bright-eyed response.

“Feed him a Coke and a candy bar an’ he’ll spin like a top for the rest of the night.” His partner Gumby filled me in. Skinny like Sweet Pea, Gumby has a tidbit of chest hair and one eye cocks off. “He’ll bounce off the hangar bay, man. Ang if you was to take him out to the beach an’ play Metallica he’ll puff out his chest like a god damn peacock! If he gets too damn wild? Just give him three beers. That knocks him on his ass.”

“I like Doctor Pepper ‘cause it has the most sugar.”

“I wish you were 21. I’d turn ya on to Brave Bulls and get ya shit faced.”

“What for?”

“I don’t know,” I lied. To quote Harvey Berman, my junior college Drama prof, lifelong friend of Carol Burnett: “Because the human body was made to be licked and sucked, and that’s what you need.” But this is the Navy. We don’t talk like that. We may not.

Louie the vet turned me onto Brave Bulls at Mission Beach. One shot tequila, one kalúa. On the rocks. You swish it around in your mouth and climb over, teeth first.

Tonight on KRAN “Robocop” is the big movie. He shoots a crook in the nuts through the crotch of a gal. Turn down the fires on this boat.

There are several women onboard now. A cute blonde always comes to the mess deck with Jim the crypto-tech, who knows I’d blow him in a heartbeat (which scares him but a bodybuilder’s guarding the hen house). This cute stud’s number five on my list of hot bods aboard -- jet black hair, teen-age zits mask his outlook from arrogant women. So I give those looks of longing he’s longing for. His voice just started to crack. I asked if he got lucky yet, and he blushed and grinned, swallowed and turned. His secret’s safe with me.

Another fine blonde showed up at the bug bar. Why we call it bug bar and bug juice I can only guess. She had PT gear on. She stood there for a minute drinking water with her studly work-out partner. He was showing her the ropes, like breaking our rule against hanging out in Physical Training gear in a dining room. It’d displease the 4,998 other shipmates who, too, would prefer grabbing drinks of water when they’re done working out but don’t ‘cause they obey rules, so for the good of all, to be fairn, avoid a riot, and do my disgusting job, I played the jerk. I walked up, whiffing sweat. “Ya can’t stop on mess decks in PT gear.”

“Hey let it slide, bro,” big Puerto Rico advised me. What a cheap shot, offering me advice, focusing attention on himself. As they sat at a SECURED, DO NOT USE table, the mess chief arrived. It took about a second for him to get my attention. “What’s the policy?”

“No PT gear on the mess decks.”

“That’s right.”

“Well Chief, would you mind explaining it to them?” He loved that opportunity, and will thank me forever.

Sweet Pea came for chow at 1920, minutes before V-3 had to muster in the hangar bay. They maintain that part of the ship, moving jets to and from the flightdeck via big elevators. One nice thing about being a mess manager aka Red Shirt, is hooking up a friend for chow. Like a theater manager hands out an occasional comp. I pointed to a table. He got a glass of milk. I walked his tray through a line and got him a chicken sandwich and fries and lots of ketchup. I sat by him as Broomstick watched my deck (maybe he’ll make Red Shirt someday). I let Sweet Pea leave his tray when he had to split.

I got a concession from my Second Class supervisor (a fat pig anyway) and didn’t give a fuck if it raised eyebrows. “The one thing I ask is that whenever my pal in the blue jersey comes for chow, lemme take a break and eat with him.”

I hit the gym for the first time since we sailed. Er, steamed. I rode the exercise bike ten minutes, did sit-ups and leg-lifts. Big brown trash bags piled up at the fantail and backed into the hangar bay by gym equipment, trapping several officers in a compartment. I suggested to MSC, who soon appeared, the Fantail Watch should call the bridge when the fantail fills, and advise ‘em to announce over the 1MC, HOLD ALL TRASH ON STATION.

“Good suggestion. I’ll pass it up the chain.”

As I walked through the hangar, after working out up in its mezzanine gym, Sweet Pea was driving a tractor, shoving a jet to Aircraft Elevator 4, aka El-4. The Yellow Shirt (hangar traffic director) blew a whistle just as I passed, ordering stop so they could chock and tie down the bird. So I stopped and stared at his face and made small talk. After twenty minutes, I couldn’t say what we talked about. I had only one thing on my mind. I absorbed his curly hair, expressive lips, ruby eyes....

I hope Red has my radio. He was in jail as I left Mission Beach. He’s another homeless bum, self-described “The most honest hippie you ever met.” I could write a book on those guys, “How I Met The Hippies At Mission Beach,” subtitled “Never Let Go Of Your Radio.” For example one evening I strolled up Ventura Place and arrived at Ocean Front Walk, heart of the beach. I stopped by the break in the sea wall where teen-aged skateboarders ollie off the planter boxes, while good cops look the other way. Red, a redheaded hippie in tie-dyed beachcombers, wound up with a Dead tape in my deck: that played well against the Dylan I spouted for the masses up there, “My Back Pages” and other classics. So when I gave Louie a ride to his motel (to buy a balloon of heroin), I let Red watch my box and play power to the people. “They need to hear it,” he pleaded. I agreed. When we got back the deck and Red were gone. I hung out and met AWOL soldiers from the Canadian special forces. They gave me a hat and tent. They had arranged to surrender the next day. Red appeared on his beach bomber bike, holding my box. What a relief! Until he rode up the boardwalk, and the music faded to a long, empty silence. We went on a recon mission to beat his butt, but failed. Next day, I came back to the sea wall. I saw tunes and heard Red. “Have you been sweating all day?”

“Nah. I knew you’d be here.” Where else did he have to go? I finally convinced myself giving him the box was worth $85 to see my values extended. Even if he threw in a little Slayer, and speed metal for the cranksters. I had my back-up box at home if I really needed it. So I asked Red to take care of it while I went on this pre-deployment exercise. Now and then there’s a fool such as I.

2100 22 JUL 90. I chased a Marine off the deck at dinner. I watched him at a table with other jar heads until I decided he had settled in with his PT gear on. After chasing that woman off, it was unpardonable to let him slide.

“Ya have to get off the mess decks in PT gear, or you’ll get an MOR.”

“Only sailors get MOR’s.” He pouted but got up.

“What do Marines get? Extra PT?” He didn’t answer, just disappeared into that caged space in the middle of the main forward mess deck, between us and extra special weapons. An MOR is a Minor Offense Report. One copy goes to the service member who committed the crime, other to the Master-At-Arms.

We had a flood on the bug bar and scullery (i.e. dishwasher) decks when water backed up in the drains. Some idiot screwed ‘em down at GQ then forgot to screw ‘em back open. Water filled up the passageway, ‘til guys in a berthing below called Damage Control Central. Flying Squad showed up in a heartbeat. The Flying Squad is real good at responding to emergencies. Stationed all over, they’re called by the 1MC like: “AWAY THE FLYING SQUAD! AWAY! ALL HANDS STAND CLEAR ALL DECKS, LADDERS, and PASSAGEWAYS!” You better get out of the way or they’ll knock you flat, just like the Marines love to do during Operation Gold Leaf drills -- when they pretend an intruder’s onboard. They terrorize sailors from deck to deck, waving shotguns, and just love to swing gun butts at dumb defenseless blackshoes who give them MORs.

Smiles rolled across the mess deck when I showed my crew an article about Mrs. Bush christening USS George Washington. It said USS Midway would be retired in ‘91.

That means we’ll get dogged on Westpac: no new gear for Maintenance, no new photocopier for Personnel, no new pipes for clogged drains. Supplies will run out, and we’ll end up like USS Iowa did, with dangerously unstable gunpowder enroute to the Moth Ball Fleet. Of course, the Navy made it clear that ship blew up because of a suicidal fag. I just hope we don’t get caught in a pissing contest between President Bush and the Persian Gulf. We’re “the ready carrier” (aka expendable) on Ranger’s last ride. Scuttlebutt says too many High Value Units are onboard for us to be expendable. But do they mean F-14’s, individuals, classified material? Or the extra specials.

2245 22 JUL 90. AOs (Aviation Ordnancemen) hang around the lounge with the lights on 45 minutes after taps, arguing Sparrows, Sidewinders, guidance systems and other classified items they should not discuss outside their shop. And they all know it.

I dream of Sweet Pea in the hangar bay, and Beanpole, another dude who always smiles, grins, and winks on the night shift at the forward mess. At 2015, as Beanpole was talking with another Red Shirt and me, another guy strode by and grabbed Beanpole’s left tit with a twist and made a kissing mouth squeak. They flashed eyes, and the dude was gone. Beanpole kept talking to me without missing a beat. The supervisor didn’t engage in homosexual or bisexual activity -- grab that sweet tit and squeeze -- for sexual gratification. It was just his way of saying howdy, among macho heterosexuals.

2330 22 JUL 90. Can’t sleep. “Aliens” plays at a low volume on the lounge TV. The cat launched her last bird. My thoughts drift to Mission Beach and fond images of Budweiser talls, in brown bags at the sea wall, watching for cops. At 9:55 p.m. a beer’s legal. At 10:00 p.m. you can get arrested for leaning back, smelling surf, and letting the clocks possess a natural rhythm. Mission Beach is “poised to explode in violence,” because it is the only remaining refuge for the bum at the end of the rainbow, homeless. “As an experiment only,” Southern California beaches are closed to alcohol after certain hours. Reminds me of the night I met Louie on the sea wall. Everybody was filtering off except Louie and me.

“What are you doing?”

“Waiting for six.”

“What happens at six?”

“The bars open!” Bars here, notably Johnny’s Surf Club and the Coaster Saloon, close at 0200 only to re-open at six. They ban booze at Mission Beach, 2200 to 0600. So, for fun, an Afro-American pulled out his bottle as an SDPD unit cruised along the boardwalk toward the park.

“Excuse me, Officer.” My roommate, That Guy, happened to be with me. We were drinking our first Buds of the evening, totally sober, not easily intimidated. “I live here. I pay rent as a resident, and I’m not gonna move.”

I figured they’d haul him to Detox for spite, the usual response short of shooting to questioning authority. But this cop treated him with respect and charm. “Well it’s not illegal to loiter at a public beach. But this is a problem area and we like to come by once in a while, to move folks along so a problem doesn’t arise.”

“I’m pretty offended,” I chimed in, one beer brave. “You cops show up and harass the homeless. This is the end of their road. They’re just sleeping in the open to avoid getting murdered!”

Meanwhile the cop’s partner rousted Pappy and cuffed him. A perfectly good patrol unit went out of action to haul one sleeping wino across San Diego, from the beach to the city, to sit overnight in a drunk tank and dry out. Next day Pappy came back, undaunted among the un-rich of Mission Beach. Once they get rousted, it usually has the opposite of the desired effect. Instead of moving on, bums huddle closer to business and housing structures, in shadows, under windows, alcoves and ladderwells for protection, hiding from cops -- like a killer.

2230 23 JUL 90. Rumors jet like an F-14. The best is still the nonskid cutting the arresting cables. Two actually got replaced this month, compared to one the entire deployment of 1989. Rumor One has us pulling in 31 July. A-T-A starts 31 July, so you tell me. Also, Rumor One has it Rumor Two, about radar, was supposedly bogus: it would be too expensive to pull in for just six hours, even to replace such a major piece of gear.

We’re serving milk in Philippine Island packs -- long shelf-life cartons I first encountered on Westpac ‘89. We only serve them at breakfast and midrats. At daycheck lunch and dinner, there’s no milk at either galley, forward or aft -- good training for a budget crunch.

Sometimes a question boils out the salt of a sailor, like what boiled the blood of a group that exited my squadron and the Navy recently. They formed it blunt for the CO, and repeated it for emphasis: “Who runs this squadron? Who runs this squadron?”

“I run this squadron!” It was funny to hear him yelling in self-defense. But it’s been clear for some time, a Maintenance Master Chief runs VF-1. This guy repeatedly fails his PRT (Physical Readiness Test) for being obese. But the Navy looks the other way and kicks out sailors of less omnipotence and influence. Wolfpack won the Battle Efficiency “E” two years in a row (‘88, ‘89) and now won the Clifton. All attributed to one master chief who should technically be booted out. I had to type his eval recently. They called him “a tenacious problem solver.” Meanwhile, I needed him to notify one of his men we were getting underway, so he wouldn’t miss ship’s movement, which is a hell of an offense. He snarled, so tenaciously, “I DON’T SOLVE YOUR FUCKING PROBLEMS!”

1445 24 JUL 90. Another rumor broke this afternoon. Two men from Weapons Dept. got caught having sex during this at-sea period -- onboard. The ship XO and CO (both Captains, as opposed to a squadron CO and XO, who are Commanders) know about it but haven’t acted. It will probably die quietly. “Ya can’t tell by looking anymore,” a Weapons guy told me. “Some of the toughest looking guys.”

2150 24 JUL 90. I got off an hour early -- exception to the shipboard life of haze gray and underway. Not only that, I also got this morning off ‘til 1030. We’re having another GQ drill tomorrow, from zero eight to ten hundred. I’ll have to be on station cowering with the kids, on those forward mess decks. I guess if it were the real thing I’d be glad to be there, caring for the babies with my ancient age -- most are 18, I’m 33. I’d hold ‘em if they cry.

This tall lean baby faced crewcut kid I call Beanpole, who works the Deep Sink in the forward galley, kept fooling with me all day, throwing pulled punches to make me flinch, boxing the bill of my ballcap and knocking it onto the deck. Finally as a dude I call Cowpoke described a bar fight, Beanpole walked out a the deep pan room to listen. While Cowpoke spun his yarn, Beanpole kept rubbing his firm hot belly against my wrist. I moved away subtly. Then he stood up a second, repositioned and leaned back again, discreetly closing, brushing me again, making me fucking horny! He had just got mail from a female, and acted so very hetero. He hasn’t needed a shave since we went to sea, and still doesn’t. He probably wants affection and thinks I’m just the man to give it. And I am.

Sample Chapter 2