DECK APE

BLUES
MEMOIRS FROM THE “HIGH” SEAS
& BEYOND
 ISBN:978-1-387-53880-5

© 2017 by SCOTT L. ANDERSON

&
SMOKEY DaFINO

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS

BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT THE
EXPRESS WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE
AUTHOR.

THIS IS A WORK OF CREATIVE

NON-FICTION. ALL OF THESE LONG AGO
SCENARIOS COULD BE MERELY FUZZY
RECOLLECTIONS, DREAMS, OR
FLASHBACKS WRITTEN IN THE FORM OF A
MEMOIR.
SCOTT L. ANDERSON

SMOKEY DaFINO
Sick of my future and sick of my life
I packed up my car and I got some gas
And told everybody they could kiss
my ass
- Glenn Frey
When you're in the Navy, shitbird, and
you're in transit, nobody knows where the
fuck ya are. Now go tell that MAA to fuck
himself; I ain't goin’ on no shit detail!
- Mule Mulhall
THE LAST DETAIL
To realize that all your life - you know,
all your love, all your hate, all your
memories, all your pain - it was all the
same thing. It was all the same dream, a
dream that you had inside a locked room,
a dream about being a person. And like a
lot of dreams, there's a monster at the
end of it.
- Rust Cohle
True Detective
 1

You’re a ghost driving a meat coated

skeleton made from stardust, riding a
rock, hurtling through space. Fear
nothing. - Unknown Author

...if I had realized that earlier in my

life it would have saved me a shit ton of
grief...but no fucks given - let’s get on
with it...pull up a chair with your
favorite beverage - possibly a jug of Olde
English 800...the drink of the USS Dixie
when I was stationed on it. I once drank
a 40oz of it and smoked two joints in a
San Pedro park while on lunch
break...walked off the ship and went home,
passed out and woke up in the middle of
the night in my apartment pissing on a heat
register (I reported for work the next day
and no one was the wiser). Or maybe a fine
bottle of MD 20/20...a classic high
octane bum wine - that I once consumed two
bottles of along with a tab of Orange
Sunshine - causing an insanity-like
chemical reaction and I wound up throwing
and destroying all the patio furniture
off the suntanning deck at the barracks
in Pearl Harbor. These are just
suggestions, of course, and this author
 2

can not be held responsible for any of your

own fucked up drunken escapades.

Before Dr. Hunter S. Thompson blew his

brains all over his kitchen at Owl Creek,
one of the things he said in his suicide
note was “67. That is 17 years past 50.
17 more than I needed or wanted.”

I turned 60 this year and I feel the same

way. 50 was all I needed for the good and
bad times I’ve had in my life. 10 more than
I needed...or really wanted.

In what many people would consider a weird

fucking life, I’ve done tours in both the
Navy and the Coast Guard. Offloaded
bananas as a longshoreman in Long Beach.
Herded around strong as a horse, child
raping, town terrorizing, dangerous
retards (excuse me, mentally challenged
or sweet developmentally disabled angels
for you politically correct readers) in
3 different mental institutions.
Wrestled and fought criminally insane
convicted inmates at a maximum security
asylum. And was a prison guard at two
different facilities. With numerous shit
jobs in between that are not worth the time
to mention. Hopefully my last job is
 3

trimming marijuana five days a week to

supplement my military pension. During
all that time I’ve partied like Slash from
Guns N’ Roses. Shot at and missed, shit
on and hit! As the old saying goes, could
be a description of my life.

And now at 60, I’m literally a fucking

basement dweller. Just without the
Cheetos, porn on the computer, and the
obese mother living upstairs screaming
down the steps that it’s supper time and
I’m screaming back “In a minute, Mom!”
while I finish up spanking my monkey to
some retro porn from the 70s. Truthfully,
I’d have the porn on the computer but I
just can’t stand all the viruses, pop-ups,
and malware that come with it. If
computers and the Internet had been
around when I was 15 - Shit! - I would have
never left the goddamn house.

I’m currently living (with plans to leave

in the very near future) in Colorado - just
like the good Doctor Gonzo - only I’m
neither rich or famous or a great writer
(I’ve written five poorly selling books).
I’m also an ex-drunk (4 years of sobriety
and counting and Jesus H. Christ - I would
kill to drink a IPA ) with a broken down
 4

body and a mind that’s as fried as a Nancy

Reagan egg.

My favorite musician, Steve Earle, was

recently quoted as saying that his
therapist told him that he picks a certain
kind of women even though he knows the
relationship won’t work because he in
reality wants to be alone. I think I share
the same affliction even though Steve has
four more marriages on me.

I believe that we have two personalities

living inside of us. One good or at least
semi-good and one bad or semi-bad. Yin and
Yang. White or black. My two have seemed
to rotate between The Dude from The Big
Lebowski and Heisenberg from Breaking
Bad.

I really don’t know when I lost my way and

got off the path in life but I suspect it
was sometime back in the 70s. I’ve always
felt that time, for some reason, froze for
me back then. Leaving me in a perpetual
state - emotionally - that will haunt me
forever.

Actually, the basement has all that I feel

I should ever need. A bed, bathroom,
 5

kitchenette, easy chair, and a smart TV

with cable and wireless internet...I
don’t feel the need in my life for the
house with the white picket fence and the
station wagon in the driveway...It’s also
got a back door entrance where I can stand
and smoke hashish - the legal marijuana
industry calls it “wax” or “shatter” - and
blow the smoke through the screen door so
no one can’t smell it. The landlords bitch
enough about the smell of my work clothes
when I venture upstairs to use the washer
and dryer which I’m allowed to use once
a week so I don’t like to push my luck.

I’m shithoused on a combination of hash

and a homemade reefer cookie baked by one
of my criminal minded co-workers and I’m
mindlessly surfing the cable until I stop
on ESPN. 30 for 30 is playing. The No Mas
episode about the second Roberto “Hands
of Stone” Duran - Sugar Ray Leonard fight.
I’ve seen it several times before -
Leonard always seems to be pissed to me
because Duran won’t come out and admit why
he really quit in that fight which I take
great joy in since I’ve always thought
Sugar Ray was an arrogant and conceited
asshole - but I watch it again anyway.
 6

It always brings me back to the time I went

to the close circuit telecast of their
first fight (where Duran beat the piss out
of Leonard much to my drunken delight) at
this dingy and dank arena - where I think
we were the only two white people in
attendance - in shithole Cleveland with
Dennis, an old shipmate and party buddy
I was stationed with on the USS Dixie AD-14
back in the late 70s.

With a homeport of San Diego, the Dixie

had cruised up north to Todd Shipyard in
Long Beach for an extensive yard period
when I reported to it. The oldest ship in
the Navy that still had wooden decks also
had a crew of fucking pirates who were
involved in drugs, mugging illegal aliens
when they crossed the border, loan
sharking, black marketing, and even had
some sailors who were doing some “acting”
in the porn industry. A buddy of mine, Kurt,
actually went AWOL with a porn star for
29 days for a cocaine fueled fuck-a-thon,
reporting back just before the 30 day
limit in which he would have been declared
a deserter - a court martial offense. Then
again, about a week before I got out of
the Navy, he disappeared once more and I
never saw him again. Booze and biker crank
 7

had gotten to him and I often wonder if

he wound up in a shallow grave far out in
the desert.

The Dixie’s main mission was ships would

tie up to it if they needed any sort of
minor repairs. It was basically a
floating ship repair shop hence the term
“destroyer tender.” It rarely got
underway and the Navy lifers always got
a big fucking chuckle saying that it
couldn’t because it was “moored on coffee
grounds.” Fucking hilarious! Because it
hardly ever went to sea a good share of
the crew lived off the ship.

It was also a dangerous ship for lifers

who made their mission in life to be pricks
24/7, and especially for Master-At-Arms
- the shipboard wannabe cops. When we’d
get underway for short cruises...a day or
three, a week at the most... they would
walk the decks in pairs during the night
so someone wouldn’t jump them, bust them
over the head, and throw their narc asses
overboard. One MAA pulled his car out onto
the road and had a front tire come off his
ride on the Vincent Thomas bridge because
someone had loosened all the lug nuts on
of the tire.
 8

Dennis was from North Hollywood and had

gotten a job with a major studio through
his old man. He was in Cleveland filming
a movie and coincidentally I was living
in Sandusky, Ohio, at the time. The
hometown of a bimbo I had insanely married
while stationed in Pearl Harbor. She had
also been in the Navy (we had moved there
when we both had taken breaks to try out
the civilian life between enlistments).

She would eventually go back to the Navy

while I go into the Coast Guard after a
extremely nasty and life threatening
(mine) divorce. She had a tremendous
taste for sailor cock...an affliction
that I didn’t discover until after we were
married. And just my schlong couldn’t
handle the load. I have to plead temporary
insanity for ever marrying her much less
staying with her for almost four years.
I place the blame on the high quality
Hawaiian marijuana I smoked practically
on the hour in those days, acid, speed,
MDA, downers, and lots and lots of booze.

Our stormy romance ended when we were in

the sack one evening while I was blasted
on cocaine and a close to a case of beer.
 9

I had called her the name of a chick I had

been seeing on the side and my soon to be
ex-spouse jumped out of the sack in a fury
and pulled out and aimed a .25 caliber
Saturday night special on me and
threatened to kill me if I didn’t admit
to what I had just said.

She probably would have too, if the dumb

bitch could have figured out how to jack
one into the chamber and get the safety
off before I stumbled out of the
bed...which is no easy feat when you’re
shithoused on coke and beer...and pulled
it out of her hand. While I was taking the
clip out of the pistol she had grabbed a
jewelry box and smashed it across the back
of my head! I collapsed across the side
of the bed and she took the opportunity
to grab me by the hair and bash my head
repeatedly on the sideboard of the
waterbed.

If I hadn’t been such a retard, I would

have previously dumped her years before
when we were both on active duty, after
the night I came home unannounced to our
Navy housing tinderbox shack (located at
the intersection of Santa Fe and PCH in
Long Beach and considered one of the worst
 10

neighborhoods in the city) and caught her

with four Navy divers who were smoking MY
fucking weed and drinking MY beer and
probably (probably - SHIT! - without a
doubt) getting ready to pull a train on
her. I pulled out the same Raven Arms .25
that she would later pull on me and ushered
them out the door. Luckily for me I had
the piece because divers tend to run big
and are in much better shape than the
average sailor so I’m sure they would have
beaten me to a fucking pulp!

A furious argument ensued, with me

eventually breaking my hand when I
punched the wall and hit the stud. I don’t
know if I was more pissed about her getting
ready to pull a train or the fact they were
drinking my beer and smoking my dope!
Either way, it was definitely a definite
breach of protocol in the fashion a
married couple should behave.

With typical Navy shit compliance to

standard medical issues, when they put a
cast on my broken paw at the Long Beach
Naval Hospital, they somehow forgot to
have the doctor set the break after they
slapped the plaster on, and sent me on my
merry fucking way back to the ship. Two
 11

weeks down the road I get a call on the

ship from this dipshit corpsman who asked
me “Where in the hell did you go? We never
set the break!” This was from the same
corpsman that put the cast on. In other
words, it was my fucking fault! The fine
physician was probably snorting up
pharmaceutical cocaine and laying the
wood to one of the nurses and couldn’t be
bothered at the time.

The next day while I’m sitting in the

hospital lobby waiting for them to call
my name, I bump into an shipmate who had
fallen down the ladderwell of the ship and
fucked up his knee. Since after surgery
he couldn’t hobble around the ship on
crutches, they had given him some
meaningless tasks to do at the hospital
along with a room even though he had an
apartment off the ship.

Since I was early for my appointment he

kindly invited me up to his room to smoke
a joint, and offer which I quickly
accepted. I’m totally shitfaced on the
joint and the two beers I had drank at
eight in the morning - he had a mini-fridge
in his room and it was stocked with a case
of Lucky Lager - when I walk into the
 12

doctor’s office, not knowing that he was

about to RE-BREAK my hand. Grabbing two
of my fingers, he pulls them straight out
without any warning. I not only could
could feel the bones breaking but could
hear them snap. I fell off the table - out
like a light - I couldn’t have hit the
floor harder if George Foreman had just
nailed me.

After all of that commotion, any sane

person would have kicked that bitch to the
corner. But not me. I came back from the
hospital and washed a few of the
painkillers (Darvon - the Navy was big on
prescribing Darvon in those days) down
with a couple of beers and a shot of Jack
and slept the day away.

And the reason I didn’t dump her then is

that I would have had to move back on to
the ship. Train pulling whore or not, I
still would rather have put up with her
hooker-like lifestyle than live down in
the bowels of a destroyer tender that was
in a shipyard, smelling the farts and body
stench of the degenerates that made up the
crew of deck division. There’s a reason
they’re called deck apes.
 13

But how I then ever agreed to wind up

living in Sandusky, Ohio (Sandusky in no
way shape or form could be described like
living in Los Angeles) with that
certified nut job after all I had been
through with her I’ll never know. Chalk
it up to me being a lazy son of a bitch,
doper and a drunk, and having shit for
brains. It’s the only way to explain it.

But anyway, while I was living there in

the fucking Buckeye state, I had given
Dennis a call out in Hollywood to talk
about drugs, women, old Navy pals, and the
upcoming and much ballyhooed first
Duran-Leonard fight. Many a night, zipped
up tight on Black Beauties and both avid
boxing nuts, Dennis and I had made
frequent trips to the Olympic Auditorium
or L. A. Forum to watch the top-notch Latin
fighters - Bazooka Limon, Carlos Zarate,
Lupe Pintor, Bobby Chacon - Pipino Cuevas
- go at it. At the Limon-Chacon fight you
couldn’t even buy a program in English
since the crowd was so heavily primarily
Mexican. The Chicano folk are great fight
fans!

Much to my excitement, his current

girlfriend told me he was working on a film
 14

in Cleveland so I gave him a shout out at

his hotel. I immediately could tell that
he was obviously fucked up on something
when he picked up.

“Don’t buy tickets for the closed circuit

telecast. I met a guy here who’s in the
Irish Mafia and he can get us in for free!”
He slurred into the phone. The fact that
Dennis was hanging out with a made member
of organized crime didn’t surprise me in
the least.

I had been stationed at Pearl Harbor the

two previous years prior to my transfer
to the Dixie. When I first reported to
Pearl I had just graduated from Navy “A”
school as a Communications Technician.
The position required a Top Secret
special intelligence clearance that I
lost almost immediately in Hawaii after
I was busted for possession of weed with
intent to sell.

It was a miracle I had even made through

the school. Located in Pensacola, Florida,
which in those days was a pure, out of
fucking control, post-Vietnam sailor
town. Bars, whores, strip clubs, go-kart
tracks, and drugs. Everything an 18 year
 15

degenerate needed. The Navy classes were

conducted on a go at your own pace system
and the base had an award winning chow hall.
It was paradise! You didn’t really want
to graduate and move on. I dragged my feet
there in school as long as I could

But after the bust, I was looking at hard

time in the Pearl Harbor brig or possibly
even in Leavenworth. My roommate and I and
been buying Hawaiian bud from some - also
Communication Technicians - sailors that
were living up on the North Shore of the
island and had connections with surfer
crowd up there. We were their on-base
connections. The operation ran smoothly
until NIS moved a snitch into our barracks
room. It must have been his first crack
at it because within a few days we
discovered that there was a fucking snake
in the woodpile. But the damage had been
done.

Within days we had been rousted by NIS but

our room came up squeaky clean. We then
were taken to the NIS headquarters where
we ran over the coals for hours but
admitted to nothing other than the fact
that we had smoked reefer in the barracks.
It was hard to avoid doing that. The narc,
 16

had a small tape recorder in his pocket

that was running one evening when we were
smoking a few joints and talking about the
quality of weed - which if I recall, was
outstanding!

The son of a bitches even offered us a

chance to make the whole thing disappear
if we would turn snitch and inform on our
supplier, our customers, and what other
illegal activities were going on in the
barracks. It was an offer we refused.

But luckily the intention to sell charge

was eventually dropped after I agreed to
plead guilty to the possession charge. It
was really idiotic - the Navy never actual
found ANY dope but said the intent could
be dropped if I said I HAD possessed
marijuana.

In retrospect, if I had just kept my shout

shut and denied everything and gotten an
attorney I probably would have had a
chance to keep my Top Secret security
clearance - they played the tape for me
and the sound quality wasn’t like an Eric
Clapton album - and maybe even found
innocent on the possession beef. But by
admitting that I had possessed
 17

marijuana...that’s all they needed to

pull my clearance.

Their confidential informant was a

fucking idiot and it showed at the hearing.
My partner had taken to screaming out “I’m
going to get you, motherfucker!” Every
time he saw the snitch on the base which
freaked the fuck out of me. Talk about
throwing gasoline on the fire. But for
some reason the CI never mentioned that
at the hearing.

But like I said, the real reason we were

allowed to plead out and I wasn’t put on
the list to get my rectum re-sized in
Leavenworth (we had moved some serious
weight through the barracks) was that
they had no actual evidence! They had
jackshit besides that tape. Prior to NIS
raiding our barracks room - we had a phone
installed in our room which was actually
stupid (but lucky in our scenario) since
we should have been doing all of our
business on pay phones - we received an
anonymous phone call that we were about
to be hit. To this day I have no idea who
that saint was on the other end of the
phone. But my roommate and partner in
crime had been screwing at one time, a Navy
 18

chick who worked in the NIS office. They

had gone through a bad breakup when he
tried to go anal on her and he had gotten
pissed when she turned down his request.
But maybe she for some reason took it upon
herself to save our sorry asses - which
she did if it was her - since we had a pound
of smoke in our room at the time. Already
weighed and bagged and ready for sale.

It was tragic watching a pound of sweet

Kona bud getting flushed down a Navy
toilet! Fucking heartbreaking!

Most likely I was going to be transferred

to one of the ships in Pearl Harbor to
finish out my enlistment as a “deck ape.”
The next 3 years of my enlistment would
be spent cleaning shitters, swabbing
decks, and painting. Fucking good times!
But then again it beat getting cornered
in the shower room at the Leavenworth
prison or the Pearl Harbor brig.

But then the gracious God of marijuana

dealers smiled down upon me once more. I
had been banging an extremely hot blonde
- who was married to a hotheaded Hispanic
badass who had boxed in the Texas Golden
Gloves state tournament and was the
 19

member of a Houston Chicano street gang.

She had told me that he had been acting
suspicious lately - he had seen us talking
on the base a couple of times and had asked
about who I was - but she was hotter than
this unbelievably smoking hooker I had
done in the red light district in
Amsterdam so I just couldn’t resist those
wild bouts of sex in the back of her
Plymouth Valiant.

Displaying death wish behavior I accepted

an invitation to a party that she and her
husband were throwing. The air was so
thick from the smoke of Hawaiian weed it
was like being in London. Sailors, local
martial artists, drugs dealers, and surly
looking Samoans covered in Polynesian and
gang tattoos were snorting long lines of
coke off giant bathroom size mirrors.

I saw a Yeoman Second Class off in the

corner named Rose. She was this smoking
mixed race chick with eyes like a deer that
was also a high dollar hooker in her spare
time. She was talking to a skinny black
guy with a shiny shaved head who was
dressed all in black and was even wearing
a tie, which was weird by Hawaiian
standards. Within several months, Rose
 20

would show up at work, beat to a pulp! She

had been holding out on her pimp who had
severely beaten the shit out of her. I
assumed the guy dressed like Johnny Cash
at the party was her pimp. Rose looked like
she had gone a couple of tough rounds with
Ken Norton.

The Navy shipped Rose off the island

almost immediately - for both her
personal safety and most likely to
process her for discharge. I heard
through the grapevine that her pimp was
found dead with two in the head not too
long after that in a Honolulu alley off
of Hotel Street.

A couple of sailors that were stationed

on the USS Badger that dealt weed out of
their room at the YMCA in downtown
Honolulu had invited us down to party
after their return from a six month cruise.
They had smuggled back a kilo of White
China smack and some unbelievable Thai
stick. The connection that they were
unloading the heroin to was there at the
time to pick up the product. He was a
civilian, bulked up from weights, with
his bulky arms covered in tattoo sleeves,
some prison related. After a few stout
 21

cocktails had been consumed and bowls of

Thai passed around, the subject of Rose
and the pimp came up. I could feel the hair
rise up on the back of my neck when said
he knew all about Rose, and that her pimp
had been taken out by a government
contracted hitman!

Hearing that about knocked the wind out

me! He said it with such a matter of fact
that I knew goddamn well he was telling
the truth.

After snorting two long bumps I about shit

out a kidney out when I looked up and saw
just across from me the Master Chief who
was in charge of the administration
office on the base looking at me. A black
dude with a Eldridge Cleaver Afro, I could
see the white powder stuck in his mustache.
He was cool (obviously) for a high ranking
enlisted man. I had met him at our initial
marijuana bust investigation hearing
which I had screwed the date and time up
on and had arrived at stoned as Bob Marley
- once I realized my dumbfuck error - with
only minutes to spare! But I sure as shit
didn’t think that he was THAT cool!
 22

Coincidentally, I would actually meet

Eldridge Cleaver about a year later when
he came to the boathouse where I was
stationed. Life can lead you to strange
places...who would ever thought that a
stupid, stoner white boy from a a southern
redneck town in Minnesota would ever get
to shake the hand of a former
revolutionary Black Panther and the
famous author of Soul on Ice.

The Master Chief looked at me as he lit

a joint and with a slight...and very cool
and sly...tilt of his head, he motioned
me over to the sliding glass door which
led out to the lanai.

Stepping out into the darkness he passed

me the joint. I took a long hit and my lungs
felt like a hot water bottle expanding.
I immediately recognized the sweet taste
of Mango weed, a speciality weed grown a
eccentric botanist over on Maui. The
Master Chief obviously had good taste in
weed. I also suspected that he may have
laid pipe with my married lover at one time
or another.

“It appears that you’ve gotten yourself

into a world of shit, boy. The assholes
 23

at NIS are super pissed that you walked

on the possession to sell charges. That
their snitch was an absolute fucking
retard was the only thing that saved your
lily white ass. Plus, for some goddamn
reason when they rousted you, you two
didn’t have as much as a Zig Zag rolling
paper on you or a stray seed in the corner.
They figure someone tipped you off and
they’re going to want some payback.”

“Yeah, Master Chief. I think I’m fucked

with a capital F. Fucking headquarters is
going to send me to a fucking ship. And
probably the first one steaming out to sea
for a year long cruise.” I handed him the
joint back.

“Now you listen to me. Stay cool and out

of trouble. If you can that is! Come Monday,
let me see what I can do. Make a few phone
calls. See if I can work something out.
I know some people at HQ and there are some
openings at the boathouse. And be careful
who you’re dipping your wick in. She’s
crazy pussy! People talk around here.
That Chicano motherfucker will kill you
if he finds out what you two have been up
to. And I’m not talking kicking your ass!
I’m saying he’d fucking kill you! He’s an
 24

insane son of a bitch. You must have lost

your mind, boy, to even think about
tapping that pussy. I don’t give a shit
how hot she is. Her and that shaved into
a heart beaver trim.”

That last statement solved the mystery

that I had been getting sloppy seconds.
At least she wasn’t’ racist in her sex life.
A Chicano, a Brother, and a Honky. For all
I know she had been humping one of those
Samoan gangsters that were currently
inside hoovering up that blow.

Without another word he handed me the

joint and stepped back into the house
where the party was raging from wild into
anarchy. I finished the joint,flicked the
roach out into the lawn, walked around the
side of the house, got into my old VW bug
and got the fuck out of there.

In two weeks I received orders sending me

to the boathouse which was just across
from Aloha Stadium. I was shitting in tall
cotton. But first the Master Chief had
give me a little “Scared Straight” lesson.
Gary, a tall,black, laid back, and jovial
sailor I had worked with while awaiting
charges, had been sent to the brig for a
 25

year with a Bad Chicken Dinner (Bad

Conduct discharge) for possessing some
grass and just under a gram of smack. Gary
had actually lucked out since I knew that
he had been dealing horse and coke and if
he had gotten busted for that it would have
been years of hard time. Gary wasn’t cut
out for that. I think he might have either
gone on the run before the court martial
or stuck a gun in his mouth.

The Master Chief was going to the brig to

deliver some stamps, soap, and a few other
sundries to Gary and had me tag along. The
brig at the time was run by jarheads and
was one rough fucking joint. When they
brought Gary out in cuffs and leg irons
I about shit! His hair had been cropped
short and his eyes were yellow and clouded
over. He was obviously kicking junk the
hard way.

“Holy fuck, Gary!” Was all I could stammer

out when I saw the condition he was in.
I learned my lesson that day. Which lasted
about a week.

But I took the Master Chief’s advice about

the hot blonde, she and I were finished.
 26

I should have followed his advice years

later when I was in the Coast Guard. I had
started up a fling with a married Senior
Petty Officer who had little tiny sharp
teeth like a weasel but was just pretty
as hell. She had a tight, tanned, body with
cupcake sized tits. We’d get to work early
and she’d give me blowjobs or we’d fuck
standing up in a deserted stairwell.

Our affair lasted until she told me that

at her prior duty station she had been
fucking the Captain of the base. The base
laid in a basin surrounded by rolling
hills and they’d drive up to a wooded area
where she and the CO would fuck with wild
abandon. He had a truck with a camper shell
and when it was hot they’d leave the
tailgate open to cool them down and to air
out the scent of their illicit sexual
encounters.

Some Coast Guard investigators caught

wind of their nefarious activities and
hid in the weeds and took some long range
photos of the sweaty fucking couple.
Rather than soil the Captain’s good name
they sent the photos anonymously to her
husband instead. Slipped a brown envelope
under their door so it was sitting there
 27

waiting for him to get home from work. He

predictably went totally mental patient
crazy and took a shotgun and randomly shot
up the inside of their apartment,
surprisingly not killing or even hurting
anyone. The SWAT team arrived and
negotiated with him for hours to give it
up, finally disarmed him of his .12 gauge,
wrestled him down, and shot his ass full
of Thorazine and promptly locked him down
for several weeks in the local VA bughouse
- he was prior Navy - for observation.

The Captain walked. No harm no foul. My

squeeze was transferred to my current
duty station with her hubby in tow.
Believe it or not, her husband was
actually a postal employee (so the term
“going postal” is somewhat accurate), and
he understandably began to suspect that
I was maybe poking his wife after he
stopped by the base unexpectedly and
caught us coming back from this seedy bar
we’d sometimes have a beer or two at during
lunch.

Fearing a shotgun blast blowing a hole

through me, I quickly called off our
affair. She must have not been too
heartbroken because without skipping a
 28

beat, she began seeing another sailor.

When her husband suspected that THEY were
up to no good, he once more pulled out his
trusty shotgun out of the closet. This
would be for the last time. He put the
barrel under his chin and pulled the
trigger - instead of shooting up their
apartment or his wife’s lover - and blew
his brains all over the ceiling. Being
married to him had to be hell on getting
your security and damage deposits back
from your apartment or rental house.

I had transferred out before this messy

affair had occurred and received the news
in a phone call from the Admiral’s driver,
a good friend and fellow hell raiser I had
met while in a Coast Guard school. He
himself being the biggest pussy hound I
had ever met in the military or civilian
world, for that matter. He screwed them
all: ugly, cute, beautiful, fat, married,
old, thin, it made no difference to him.
He did shit I could only dream of. He once
talked a Coast Guard chick - who was in
uniform! - into going into a porn shop and
blowing him in one of those movie booths
you pump quarters into (I was in one of
those booths on Bourbon Street one time
and a perverted tiny little man had snuck
 29

in on me and offered to do the same to me

- I declined) while he watched a lesbian
flick. He had even talked his hot as hell
girlfriend who worked for UPS into having
sex with a beautiful dyke while he laid
on the couch and spanked his monkey.

Speaking of Bourbon Street, while

stationed in Pensacola, my “A” school
roommate and I had journeyed to NOLA via
Greyhound to party it up on a long weekend.
After a long Saturday night of boozing,
hitting strip clubs, and snorting amyl
nitrate poppers, we had set up a tryst with
two hookers back at our room (mine was this
hot ebony babe, my roommate’s was a
scrawny West Virginia speed freak skank
who was white with teeth like a mule). We
jumped in a cab and the cabby had
immediately pulled into a crosswalk and
some asshole had kicked the side of his
cab. The cabby had pulled a piece, the
asshole pulled his piece...turns out he
was a NOLA police officer trying to
impress his woman...and we almost became
part of the morning news - “Two sailors
killed in Bourbon Street shootout.” After
much macho chest thumping and cursing
though, we eventually were driven to our
room to get our tubes reamed, steamed, and
 30

dry cleaned. My roommate furious that I

scored with the hot one even though I
pointed out that I was the one that sealed
the deal while he had wandered off to get
a fucking hot dog.

The news of the untimely demise of the

husband of my Coast Guard lover sent a icy
shiver up and down my spine.

“Hey! It’s me. Let me tell you. You are

one lucky motherfucker. Your old
squeeze’s husband blew the top of his
skull off when he found out she was
screwing that geeky fucking red headed
Chief up in Operations!”

He whispered to me in the exact same manner

he always used when he talked on the
government phone - we were always worried
that the phone lines were tapped and he
seemed to think that by whispering they
wouldn’t be able to hear him. Once when
he was off doing some training at another
base he called to tell me about how he was
making out with this drunk Indian chick
and she passed out on him, so he simply
whipped it out and jerked off on her feet!
He was whispering so low when called to
 31

brag about that exploit that I could

hardly hear him.

“That could have been you! He used

buckshot and it actually blew a hole in
the living room floor of this old bitch
that lived up above them. He goddamn near
killed the old biddy. Wouldn’t that have
been a hoot?”

On a side note: My ex-lover would

eventually retire from the CG, move to
back home to Oklahoma City and get heavy
into the swinging scene. Threesomes - two
guys and one gal or two gals and one guy
- orgies, bondage, you fucking name it.
She’d die of AIDS after taking on the wrong
cowboy(s) about five years after she
retired.

Suicide in the Coast Guard seemed to be

strangely common, both for sailors and
their dependents.

Sure, in the Navy you’d have the

occasional sailor that got a Dear John
letter from his wife or girlfriend back
home and he’d jump overboard. A lot of
times once they hit that icy water they’d
change their minds and be shrieking for
 32

help. Even though in most cases, the

sailor himself had probably been screwing
every Filipino bar girl he could afford
when he was off on a West-Pac cruise.

And there had been that sailor found

hanging in his locker in Pearl Harbor,
pants down to his ankles, and skin
magazines at his feet. But that had either
been an accident or NIS had decided to take
him out since he had been a known high
volume weed and speed dealer that they
couldn’t seem to get pinned down for a
bust.

A sailor had jumped off the Dixie when we

were on a five day cruise to Mexico and
all I remember is when we shined the
spotlights down onto the water all you
could see were these big green or yellow
eyes looking back up at you. I had almost
drowned twice in Hawaii. Once when I was
running up to throw a mooring line to a
boat and had slipped, hit my head, and the
boat ran me over. And I had been caught
in a rip tide that pulled me way out to
fucking sea when I was body surfing at
Sandy Beach and had barely been able to
swim back to shore.
 33

But that was different. Hundreds of miles

out to sea in that cold water with those
eyes looking up at you. I knew that fucking
sailor was gone!

But the Coast Guard was small. Smaller

than the NYPD and sailors seemed to go for
the Big Sleep more often than normal.
Maybe it was because the bases and ships
were small and shitty or the food normally
sucked or the work load was too much or
maybe the Coast Guard just tended to
recruit fragile individuals - Who know?
- maybe they should do a study on it. But
it seemed liked every time I turned around
someone was slashing their wrists,
hanging themselves, or jumping overboard
or threatening to jump so the ship would
have to drop him off at some base so the
shrinks go have a go at him.

I knew a guy that climbed into the bathtub

one night and blew his brains out with his
9MM after he found out that his stripper
wife (go figure) had been cheating on him.
What was eerie about that was I had talked
him to that very day and he was chipper
as a chipmunk.
 34

The weirdest one that I knew of had gotten

me personally involved. On a Friday night
I was relaxing on the couch watching some
NHL hockey while smoking a bowl and
drinking about a dozen cold beers when my
phone rang.

“Hey man! What are you up to tonight?”

Fuck! It was my immediate supervisor,

Frank, and I thought he was calling to have
me come in on a Friday night for some shit
detail - there had been some major
flooding on the Mississippi and I was on
a boat recovery crew - and here I was
stoned to the fucking gills.

“Uh, I stammered,“just watching some of

the Blues game. What’s up?”

“Well, - long pause - “to tell you the

truth, I just slashed my wrists and I need
you to come over.” As casual as that. He
could have easily just of said that he
called to say that he was jerking off to
the Monkey Wards catalog and wanted to
tell me about the chick on page 241 in the
girdle section.
 35

The next thing I knew I was driving through

the streets of St. Louis like a bat out
of hell with a high alcohol content and
stoned on Colombian Gold. Hoping to fuck
that I didn’t get pulled over and have to
spend the night in the St. Louis County
slammer and wind up getting shanked by a
gangbanger who hated white boys.

The door to his house was wide open and

the only lights on were in the kitchen.
“Frank! It’s me!” I called out
hesitantly.

“I’m back in the kitchen,” He answered as

cheerfully as if he was in there baking
a goddamn pumpkin pie.

When I stepped into the kitchen it was a

scene out of a slasher film. His bare arms
were resting on the kitchen table and had
been jaggedly slashed. The top of the
Formica table was covered with pools of
blood.

“I need you to take me to the hospital,”

he said with a weird grin.

“Fuck that! I have to get some medical help

here.” I answered, selfishly thinking
 36

about what a pain in the ass it would be

to get all that blood and goo off the
upholstery of the passenger seat of my new
car. It had light gray upholstery and that
would have been a bitch, let me tell you.

I grabbed the phone and dialed 911 and

glanced into the kitchen sink. There was
a Busch beer bottle broken in half that
he had used to cut himself with. Jesus
Fucking Christ! He tried to off himself
with an Anheuser Busch product. Pathetic!
If I was going to slash my wrists I’d use
an imported beer. A Heineken at least.

The EMTs showed up, wrapped up Frank like

a half a mummy, and hustled his ass off
to the hospital. After that the Coast
Guard had him locked down in a VA psych
ward. I visited him one time there and it
was a scene straight out of One Flew Over
the Cuckoo’s Nest. Years later when I was
losing my mind with PTSD I was offered
(luckily it was just an offer) admittance
to a VA hospital to “work” things out which
I politely turned down...remembering my
experience with Frank.

The last thing I ever heard about Frank

was that the Coast Guard kicked his ass
 37

to the curb - without a pension since they

took the normal Coast Guard easy way out
of the situation and booted him for
body-weight standard issues - and he was
driving a book-mobile for some library in
St. Louis.

I didn’t even get a medal for my heroic

actions and the fucking Coast Guard
handed those goddamn things out like
candy. Which shows what my reputation was
like at that duty station.

The CG also seemed to attract people with

psychotic and perverse behavior. I don’t
how many sailors I heard of who got kicked
out for surfing porn on government
computers, even though you knew if you
were moronic enough to do it that your
chances were practically 100% that you
would certainly be caught.

Casey, an overweight, pungent, zit faced

hog who was so despised by everyone on the
base in Galveston, that he was constantly
being transferred from department to
department every several months because
of how quickly the supervisors figured
out what a total shitbird he was, was
finally busted when the IT department
 38

discovered the porn sites he was visiting.

He then gave them even more rope to hang
himself by providing even more
incriminating evidence on a silver plate
when CGI shut the lights off in the room
where the computer was and turned on a
black light (a Woods lamp that they got
from medical which is used to check
sailors for head lice) and found the
computer, desk, chair, and surrounding
area stained and covered with his demon
seed.

To make matters even worse, while

awaiting court martial, young Casey was
busted by the Galveston cops for sticking
his finger up a young boy’s ass who lived
in Casey’s apartment complex which saved
the Coast Guard a ton of time and paperwork.
Just like Frank, they kicked Casey out for
being over the weight standards and let
the civilian legal system do the dirty
work. A year or so later I did an Internet
check on Casey for shits and giggles and
found he had violated parole and was doing
time in a Texas prison. I’ll bet he got
turned out and squealed like a pig just
like Ned Beatty did in Deliverance.
 39

I was stationed at Coast Guard

headquarters after 9/11 and lived on a
Navy base in Indian Head, Maryland. There
was a Coast Guard Second Class
Storekeeper who was a single parent - what
military lowlife shithead got her knocked
up is beyond rational thought - and
certified babbling fucking lunatic who
lived above me. She’d let her toddler
bounce a basketball on the floor and chase
the little fucker around the apartment at
all hours. It drove me to the point of
where I was contemplating beating her to
death with a baseball bat and dumping her
body in the Potomac. I was counseled by
my superiors after she reported me using
obscene language to her when I confronted
her one Sunday morning. I think I called
her a cunt and threatened to throw her down
the stairs. Luckily, for both her and me,
a maintenance man discovered that she and
her bastard child had been living on
canned cat food and the Guard showed her
the door with a freshly printed psych
discharge.

But years earlier, when I first walked

up the gangway to the brow of the Dixie,
other than the before mentioned ship
jumpers, you just didn’t hear much about
 40

that kind of shit. Because, Baby, it was

the post-Vietnam Navy back then and the
inmates were practically running the
asylum!

I wouldn’t say that back then the Navy was

fun, but you could get away with a shitpot
more than you can today, so at times things
could really get out of control. They had
a hell of a time recruiting people after
Vietnam had left a bad taste in the
country’s mouth and would offer you
practically anything to enlist and
especially to stay in so you could
practically get away with murder. Piss
tests were a joke. You could test positive
for speed and all they’d do was re-test
you in another month. Marijuana didn’t
show up in piss tests at all back then and
neither did a lot of narcotics. I knew guys
on the Dixie that had been busted at least
five times for simple small amount
possession of grass and were still in.
Although at a lower pay grade than they
had prior to getting busted.

Even though I had already done three years

in the Navy and had never been assigned
to a ship, my fellow deck apes considered
me “salty”. I was a qualified boat
 41

coxswain, had been busted for drugs, lost

my job rating after I lost my clearance
(almost all deck apes had either lost
clearances or had been kicked out of their
“A” school and sent to the Dixie), and
didn’t bow down and take shit from the
lifers. Plus, I was a short-timer, just
shy of a year left on my enlistment. You
could say that I had ship (street) cred.

And I was very experienced in how to deal

with Navy badasses and other assorted
asshole lifers!

The Chief who ran the boathouse that I got

assigned to after the admin Master Chief
had pulled some strings, was the meanest
motherfucker that I ever knew in the
military. He had two river patrol boats
(PBR) shot out from underneath him in
Vietnam where the entire crew except for
him were killed, two purples hearts, one
lung, smoked cigars and inhaled, and
would on occasion beat the shit out of one
of us if we got out of line.

But it was worth the occasional thumping

to be stationed there. I went from almost
becoming an inmate to driving a tour boat
around Pearl Harbor and meeting
 42

celebrities like Jack Lord...Mr. Hawaii

5-0 himself, Don Rickles, Don Ho, and many
of the top politicians in the country.

The Chief hated officers and actually let

me skate after I had gotten into a high
speed chase with a Navy Captain while I
was driving a government truck. I had been
smoking a number and had done a rolling
stop at a four way intersection on Pearl
Harbor. The dickweed and I had a French
Connection chase all over the submarine
base - it was a holiday weekend and the
base was practically deserted - with the
Captain in the role of Popeye Doyle until
he finally cornered me at a dead end behind
some warehouses on the submarine base.

I had pled ignorance to the base cops.

Something along the lines of “I was just
heading to the chow hall and he races up
behind me honking his horn and telling me
to pull over. Which I immediately did of
course.” The Captain was practically
having a fucking heart attack (that would
have been sweet) and every time I had tried
to get a word in he would scream out “Shut
your mouth, sailor!” It practically blew
your eardrums out! I actually saw the MAA
wincing from the high pitched screams.
 43

The Master at Arms knew that I was full

of total bullshit but had let me go for
some unknown reason...maybe he thought
the Captain was going senile by his
behavior...although he did place a call
to the boathouse, but it was a weekend and
we just had a skeleton duty crew working.
By the time Monday rolled around, things
had cooled off a tad and I was able to give
my line of crap to my Chief and when the
Captain fired off a letter, the Chief had
laughed it off and had thrown the letter
in the trash. I’m sure that he believed
me about as much as the MAA had.

The second in charge, a First Class

Boatswain’s Mate, drank like Jim Morrison
(who’s Dad was a Navy Admiral), did any
drug he could get his hands on and would
eventually do hard time for selling
heroin, methamphetamine, and weed out of
his place in Naval housing . One evening,
after working late, another sailor and I
had given him a ride home (the fucker’s
car was always broke down) in the
boathouse truck. We had gotten pulled
over by a fresh out of the Academy NIS
agent who was on the lookout for a stolen
government vehicle and had pulled a piece
 44

on me when I was moving around stashing

a bag full of weed under the backseat.

The rookie cop kept screaming while he was

hyperventilating, “Move again,
motherfucker and I’ll blow your goddamn
brains out!” The First Class threw out the
Admiral’s name - who’s boathouse we
worked at - a dozen times in his
explanation and the rookie had let us
slide after probably giving some quick
thought about hassling the Admiral’s boat
crew and what that could to do to his
future career.

Other than my own bust, I had been summoned

to NIS HQ two other times. Once, when a
buddy of mine had been stopped at the base
gate and they found a flare gun he had
ripped off from the boathouse. The
shitheel - What a pal! - had used me for
his alibi, telling them he had found it
in a dumpster and I had been with him when
he found it.

A year or so later I would visit this same

“buddy” at a Seabee base in California on
a long holiday weekend. We dropped two
hits of Mr. Natural blotter acid and I got
so loaded that while I was laughing
 45

hysterically at some idiot on the Dr.

Demento radio show singing a fucking song
about black eyed peas, I looked up at a
Duane Allman poster and hallucinated that
the dead guitar legend came off the poster
in 3D and was jamming on the tune!

My other unpleasant visit to NIS was when

a sailor (who I knew) on Ford Island had
dropped trou and mooned our boat with
sixty tourists onboard and spread his
cheeks, giving them a birds eye view of
his bunghole. Several of the tourists
reported it to the Admiral’s office which
resulted in me again heading over to the
NIS offices to give a statement. Both
instances I had sat there like a retard
giving short “yes” or “no” or vague
answers, infuriating the interrogating
agent.

Another sailor on one of the ships had once

mooned the tour boat when I wasn’t the
coxswain (Thank Christ!), and as soon as
the boat moored up back at the boathouse,
some officer who had his mortified
in-laws onboard had notified the Chief.
The Chief had called the ship and told the
Captain of the vessel about the prankster.
The Captain pulled up the brow of the ship
 46

and announced total restriction until the

unlucky swabbie turned himself in. That
took about five minutes since he had
bragged about his little joke to all of
his buddies who would have beaten the piss
out him unless he went and confessed. 45
days restriction, 45 days extra duty, and
reduction in rank got handed down to the
hapless turd by that afternoon. The
wheels of military justice can turn
quickly if needed. On a side note: the
officer’s in-laws actually reported that
the sailor had acne on his ass!

When that wet behind the ears asswipe NIS

agent pulled us over, that wasn’t the
first time a pistol had been pulled on me
in Hawaii. While making a marijuana buy
in the barracks, the dealer had tried to
play SuperFly badass and had flashed his
piece. It was a derringer or a .25 and I
had drunkenly asked him if it was a fucking
toy. He had responded by pointing it at
my head and asking me if I wanted to ask
that question again. I had wisely
remained silent.

The problem was that my reputation had

proceeded me when I reported to the Dixie.
The Warrant Officer in charge of deck
 47

division, a Wally Cox looking

motherfucker, perused my service record
like it was the Watergate files. No matter
that I had ferried 60 tourists, twice a
day, on a 1 hour of Pearl Harbor and the
Arizona Memorial without any incidents
(for almost two years) and had been
awarded with a honorary flag that had been
flown over the Arizona for my exceptional
service...the fuckwit had to concentrate
on the multiple behavioral incidences in
my file. I really didn’t give a shit since
I had less than a year to go in the Navy
and I could see the light at the end of
the tunnel. What I didn’t know at the time
was that light was the fucking Devil with
a flashlight!

I was actually very lucky to be standing

in front of him at all. Several days before
I flew out of Honolulu, my roommate and
I had popped a couple of Quaaludes and gone
to a Korean bar called the Latin Villa of
all things. It was your typical Korean bar
where Asian ladies would come sit with you
and want you to buy them watered down
drinks giving you the hope that they may
blow or bang you or at least give you a
handjob. I had been seeing a Vietnamese
chick there named Mi-Mi but had cut that
 48

off after she gave me a nasty case of the

clap.

On the way back to our apartment, cruising

down Kam Highway, I came up to a red light.
My roommate said, “Just blow through the
fucking thing.” Easy for him to say since
he wasn’t driving, but I did, not knowing
that there was a motorcycle cop parked off
in the shadows. When I saw those lights
flashing I didn’t know whether to shit
or wind my wristwatch! There I sat, stoned
on ‘Ludes and about 8 beers with a giant
Samoan cop walking up to my car. The last
place a white boy sailor wanted to be late
on a Saturday night was in the drunk tank
in Honolulu. I’d of been passed around
like a stale pack of Winston cigarettes.

A giant paw came through my open window.

“License and registration.” I watched him
in my rear view mirror and thought about
the anal and oral horrors that awaited me
in that crowded cell. He started walking
back to my VW. The son of a bitch, I swear,
was as big as Andre the Giant!

I heard my roommate mutter, “Goddamn!

You’re in trouble!”
 49

He’s lucky I didn’t have a pistol on me!

“Here’s your ticket. You ran that red

light back there.” He turned and lumbered
back to his bike, swung a massive leg over
the seat, and took off leaving us sitting
there in stunned silence!

Miracles can happen! Even to atheists.

“And to think that you’re going to be

promoted to Third Class on the next
promotion cycle.” The WO shook his sadly
like I was Charlie Manson in Navy
dungarees. Glaring at me through Coke
bottle thick glasses, he grimaced and
said “I tell you what, Mister. There will
be no more these kind of shenanigans while
you are assigned to my division or you’ll
be assigned to every shit detail I can
dream up. You will toe the line and fly
straight or I’ll be taking a giant shit
on you.”

I would get some great payback on this

fuckwit when I spied him down in the bottom
of the drydock inspecting the hull with
a couple of other lifer officers and I
poured a dirty bucket of mop water on them
that has been used to swab out the heads!
 50

“Get fucked, four eyes!” Was what I wanted

to say but instead I merely gave a loud
“Yes, Sir” and a snappy salute, having
already been drawn like a moth to a light
to the hell raisers and criminals in the
department during my first few days on the
ship.

He then shocked me by saying, “Make sure

you read your Bible. You’ll find a lot of
answers to life in there.”

I wouldn’t see the ship’s Captain for

another couple of weeks. The pompous
bastard waited until about two dozen new
sailors reported and had us muster all
together in a compartment where they
showed movies (I would actually see the
John Water’s filth classic Pink Flamingos
for the first time one duty weekend in
there).

His opening act was the ship’s Chaplain.

Of course, he was a fucking lush as most
Chaplains seemed to be. He had a W.C.
Fields like nose and when he walked by you
he crop dusted you with a strong whiff of
Johnny Walker. He had the same schtick
that they all did. Which was two things:
 51

“My door is always open so come see me if

you have any problems at all,” which
translated to “I’ll snitch you off to the
Captain if the problems are against Navy
regulations.” And what hours he held his
magic show. Usually about 1000 Sundays
morning - depending on how blitzed he got
on Mr. Walker the previous night - and he’d
have an audience of about six sailors out
of a crew of around six hundred.

The remainder of the crew too hungover to

get out of the rack, in a coma from a night
of heavy narcotics use, or scoring with
some Navy wife who’s husband was out to
sea...going to church on the fucking ship
was the last thing that crew of pirates
and cutthroats had on their minds.

A seaman from Deck Division had taken a

position as the Chaplain’s assistant to
get away from the mundane tasks of
painting, chipping, swabbing, and
scrubbing the jizz off the toilets.
Eventually, the sailor had accepted an
offer by the Man of God to rent out a room
in his house which he jumped at because
the rent was dirt cheap and the house was
real nice in a very good neighborhood. We
thought that the Chaplain maybe was a
 52

closet queen and wanted to lay the bone

to the nineteen year old but we were all
were dead wrong. The Holy Roller had
wanted a live in drinking partner! After
about two months the sailor had moved back
onboard because he just couldn’t handle
the amount of alcohol the Chaplain could
put away. An amount that he expected his
young tenant to pour down his own gullet
every night the Chaplain did. Which
turned out to be nightly.

The Captain (I’m sure he we have preferred

to be addressed as “Your Excellency”)
swaggered in and thanked “Chaps” and then
strutted around in front of us, acting
like a combination of George Patton, a
Gestapo officer, and James Cagney in
Mister Roberts. The only things missing
were two silver pistols, an SS uniform,
and a palm tree in a pot outside his
stateroom. Rumor was that he had failed
in a tryout with the Green Bay Packers and
that it continued to haunt him. You could
tell that he had played some ball by his
large physique, but obviously had given
up the weight training and working out and
had picked up the knife and fork because
he now looked in critical need of the
Herbalife® diet.
 53

He was practically frothing at the mouth

as he ranted and raved about our country
getting its ass kicked in Vietnam and a
ton of other horseshit that no one in the
room could figure out just what in the fuck
he was going on and on and on about. The
guy had obviously run off the rails and
was need of a suit jacket with arms that
wrapped around the back and a rubber room.

After that meeting, I realized that he HAD

to be a sports fanatic due to his failings
with the Packers, and that he lived in his
stateroom since his house was down in San
Diego. He also got the Los Angeles Times
delivered to his stateroom door. Every
chance I got I would sneak up to Officers
Country and steal the sports section
sending the son of a bitch into a rage.
You could always tell when he discovered
it missing because suddenly a group of
lowly Ensigns would pop up into your work
space, take a look around - the more
ambitious ones would open cabinets and
peer into cubbyholes with flashlights -
and then leave without saying a word.

The ship was up out of the water in drydock

and the crew couldn’t stay onboard except
 54

for the duty section. We lived in old

National Guard barracks way the hell out
in Los Alamitos and they drove us back and
forth every day in school buses. In the
mornings, the bus would smell like a
Tijuana bar toilet, with most of the crew
horribly hungover from the previous night,
and it wasn’t uncommon for sailors to be
puking or even pissing out the windows
while we were stuck in traffic on the busy
Long Beach freeways. One sailor in my
division, an irritating little
shitweasel named Jimmy, passed out one
morning in the very back seat of the bus
and woke up in downtown Los Angeles in a
gigantic dark and deserted bus parking
warehouse.

Within a couple of months, my Navy wife,

transferred to Long Beach Naval Station
from Hawaii and we moved into the ghetto
of Navy Housing. I didn’t give a shit how
rough a neighborhood it was because it got
me out from under the thumb of the Navy
for at least ten hours out of the day.

Almost every night there was a get

together at some sailor’s dump in housing.
Since we were in the immediate Los Angeles
area and many of the sailors were from the
 55

area, we had immediate drug connections

and could score virtually anything we
wanted.

The weed wasn’t as good as what we got in

Hawaii...but it was usually more than
passable, unless it was Mexican brick
weed...but there was hash and hash oil,
coke, LSD, MDA, horse, speed, you name
it..in LA you could find it.

One sweet Navy wife who lived about a block

from me, would often encourage her
husband to invite several swabbies over
for a evening of cocktails, and then get
her husband so shitfaced - she may have
even been spiking his drinks for all I know
with some downers - that he would
eventually stagger into the bathroom,
vomit, and then pass out. She’d then strip
down and take on his “buddies” in the
living room.

Usually when a ship goes into the yards,

the CO would let the shipyard staff do most
of the work and the crew would go through
some training or be assigned temporary
duties on the local Navy base. But due to
the size of the ship and the amount of work
that needed to be done on a major overhaul
 56

on a ship of that size, our jackass Captain

had us chip in full time.

We retaliated what we considered this

outrageous breach of protocol by getting
high, hiding out and working as little as
possible, and avoiding boredom by pulling
numerous and very immature (and sometimes
vandalizing) pranks, especially once we
got out of drydock and were floating again
and tied up to the pier.

Prank calls to the Captain’s stateroom

informing him what a “cocksucker” or
“turd burglar” he was. Calling up junior
officers and impersonating the Captain
and telling them to “get their worthless
fucking asses up to his stateroom fucking
immediately if they knew what was good for
them.”

A crew assigned to cleaning out the

Chief’s quarters threw their personal
possessions out the portholes including
several bowling balls, radios, framed
family photos, and sacred coffee mugs
that the lifers had cherished their
entire careers.
 57

At night, chucking battle lanterns -

these huge square yellow flashlights -
over the side just to see how long you
could see the light before it sank to the
bottom was great fun, especially when you
were buzzed. Stealing any kind of
government property of value that wasn’t
tied down was as common as taking a crap
in the morning.

I ripped off the knife of a world class

horse’s ass First Class Boatswain’s Mate,
which he claimed that he had used when he
slit the throats of numerous gooks when
he was stationed in the Nam and wore their
ears around his neck on necklace. That was
total bullshit since I knew he never got
any closer to Vietnam than Okinawa (a fact
that a Yeoman pal of mine verified when
I had him check Mad Dog’s service record),
although he had at one volunteered for
SEAL training but had broken a leg which
had forced him out - he said anyway. When
it came to sailors claiming they had tried
out for the SEALs, 99% of them were either
full of shit or delusional!

He was a burly son of a bitch that wore

an Amish style beard because his wife said
that if he grew out the mustache he looked
 58

like a Mexican. He called himself “Mad

Dog” and he went literally fucking insane
when his knife went missing. I mean
foaming at the mouth like a rabid Doberman
insane. He and his crew of non-rated
ass-kissing seaman searched every nick
and cranny of the ship for it, but by the
time he found it missing it I had days
earlier smuggled it off the ship. He
openly stated that he would “Kill the
cocksucker with my bare hands if I catch
him!” A threat that I took very seriously
and I didn’t tell even my closest friends.

His wife matched him in weight and

belligerence and they both lived in
housing. Down at the intersection of
Santa Fe and some freeway there was a
weekend flea market held at a drive-in
movie theater. They had gone there one
Saturday and wound up fighting over
whether to buy some piece of garbage for
sale at one of the booths...probably a
used mattress. He stormed off and left
here there and drove home and she had to
walk back (I don’t know why she didn’t call
a cab!). And the walk was a stretch of over
five miles! Which was about four and a half
more than she built for. To top it off,
on her way back...all pissed, hot, and
 59

sweating like a whore in church... she got

hassled into front of a taco joint by some
Mexican gangbangers that were sitting on
the hood of one of their lowriders, who
openly laughed at her and referred to her
as a “heifer” or some other form of
livestock. From what I heard, when she
finally made it home she threw all sorts
of household appliances at Mad Dog and
then demanded that he go down to the taco
stand and defend her honor. Badass that
he was, he didn’t do it.

My all time highlight in these hijinks was

one late night - probably two AM - on duty,
after a eating a gram of black Afghan
hashish, I had...barely...dragged a yard
worker’s toolbox which must have weighed
way over two hundred pounds, over to the
side and pushed it over. It sounded like
a fucking car bomb had gone off! I couldn’t
believe that someone working on the night
shift hadn’t reported an explosion. It
was priceless the next morning standing
up on the main deck and watching him stare
at the empty space where he had locked and
left his toolbox the previous day before
heading home. I’ll bet he stood there and
stared at that empty space for three
minutes.
 60

Access to new and exciting bars, strip

clubs, and other forms of nightclubs in
the Long Beach and Los Angeles area
doubled up on the number of alcohol
incidences. Sailors were being sent to
dry out at the local Betty Ford clinic it
seemed almost weekly and then some
members of the crew began to try to get
admitted on purpose just to get a break
from the ship and all the bullshit. I
myself tried this scam but dropped it when
they threatened my upcoming promotion and
suggested I attend AA meetings instead.
Bill W. and AA could go suck it for all
I cared! The last thing I wanted to do was
sit around in a smoked filled VFW hall and
drink coffee and eat stale cookies, and
listen to a reformed drunk talk about
throwing up on a car windshield...which
I’ve actually done twice!

A Third Class in my division, a big Cajun

who looked like he might be able to wrestle
alligators got stabbed in the back when
he tried to intervene after he drunkenly
observed a couple having an argument at
a Long Beach bar. When he recovered he
confessed to me that the only reason he
did it was because the chick was smoking
 61

hot and he thought he might somehow get

into her pants after he rescued her from
her abusive boyfriend or spouse.

The stabber got away, but several weeks

later a sailor nicknamed “Gato”
recognized him in the same bar. Gato
ordered a beer in one of those big thick
beer bugs like they serve beer in Germany
in and busted the guy across the back of
the head with it. Knocked his ass out cold!
Gato got arrested but the dude never
pressed charges - most likely because he
had warrants out himself - and the Dixie
sent Gato promptly off to detox his ass
at Betty Ford, which made him happy as a
clam.

The Brass started to get sick of this

ongoing and seemingly never ending hell
raising, and retaliated by holding
numerous surprise inspections and
shakedowns which produced all sorts of
pilfered government items, weapons of all
sorts, liquor, and of course, dope. They
pumped up their efforts on busting
sailors for smoking weed and other
various infractions, and restricting
them to the ship, lengthening work hours,
hassling dudes for hair and beard lengths,
 62

uniform infractions, and generally

taking on the persona of Drill Gunnery SGT
Hartman from the movie Full Metal Jacket.

In this time period, I was finally

promoted to Boatswain’s Mate Third Class,
which really “drove a weed up the
Command’s ass” (I borrowed that quote
from Apocalypse Now because it really
fits the scenario) since it had
previously been pointed out that I wasn’t
exactly “Sailor of the Year” material.

I slightly backed off on the bullshit and

horseplay and kept my drug usage to a
minimum - on the ship - which meant that
I smoked dope, drank, and took
psychedelics only at home or while out
partying. My breakfast of champions still
consisted of cigarettes, some sort of
amphetamine washed down with several cups
of coffee, and a breakfast burrito at the
roach coach that was parked at the pier.
It was hard as hell showing up for work
on only three or four hours of sleep
without some form of pick me up and just
coffee wouldn’t cut it.

It was around that time that I started to

hang more with two sailors that were born
 63

and bred in Los Angeles. Jay, a former

child actor star from a show back in the
60s who had gotten really fucked over by
his Navy recruiter. And Dennis, a fun
loving, drinking and drug user of
Kennedy-like proportions, and who had a
build like a silverback mountain gorilla.

They began to show me the nightlife of Los

Angeles which I loved. We went to L.A.
Kings hockey games, fights at the Forum
and the Olympic Auditorium, movie
theaters showing offbeat films, roller
derby matches, and seedy downtown L.A.
bars.

Jay and I were always pretty mellow and

so was Dennis unless you were stupid
enough to cross him or he mixed the wrong
chemicals. Then he could be outright
dangerous! One evening Jay and I were
waiting in the car while he went in to buy
a twelve pack. On his way out the door some
dickwad stupidly shoulder bumped Dennis.
Words were exchanged and the bumper
quickly realized he was in deep shit and
had bit off way, way, more than he could
chew. He turned and ran for his car in
terror and jumped in. But by the time he
had started it, Dennis had leaped like a
 64

gazelle onto the hood and was smashing the

twelve pack down onto the windshield,
over and over. Jay and I between laughing
jags were yelling at him to stop before
the LAPD showed up. Glass and foam were
flying everywhere! The guy threw it in
reverse and did a hard turn which threw
Dennis off and onto the pavement but not
until he had ripped both windshield
wipers off and busted the windshield.

Another evening, Dennis and I had gone bar

hopping and I was really loaded on downers.
We wound up in some bar called the Feed
Bag...I think it used to be an old barn
or something hence the weird name...it
was packed with all these hot California
chicks but I was too loaded to do anything
but sit at the table and sip my beer and
drool on the table like some Hollywood
Blvd vagrant while Dennis was hitting on
all the fine trim he could.

I was in the state of a walking blackout

- I could have been a character in Night
of the Living Dead - and when I came
somewhat halfassed to my senses and
became partially aware of my surroundings,
I found we were sitting in a Denny’s
restaurant in Hollywood with these two
 65

gorgeous babes...who thought my

inebriated condition was “just
adorable”... and a couple of guys that I
seem to recall to be firefighters or some
kind of ambulance crew or something. I was
eating buttermilk pancakes and drinking
coffee by the quart and trying not to let
my face fall down into my plate like Greg
Allman did when he was at some awards
dinner with Cher during their two day
marriage.

I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention

to the conversation...I couldn’t if I had
wanted to I was so fucked up... but from
what I could gather, was that Dennis had
set up a late breakfast meeting with one
of the chicks, but she and her friend had
shown up with these two dudes and that most
definitely wasn’t suppose to be part of
the plan.

And Dennis was pissed as a motherfucker!

He was red hot and ready to rock!

The babes and the firefighters stood up

to leave and as they made their way out,
Dennis jumped to his feet, slammed some
cash down in front of me and screamed out
“Pay my goddamn bill” and then swept all
 66

the dishes, glasses, and silverware onto

the floor in one sweep with one of his huge
arms. Except for mine! He was like a
magician pulling out the tablecloth and
all the dishes stayed in place. He then
stormed out the door after the foursome.

Waitresses suddenly surrounded the table

picking up the mess and I seem to recall
that the other customers acted like this
was no big fucking deal at all. But then
again it was Hollywood. I calmly finished
my pancakes and coffee, wiped the syrup
and pancake residue off my face with about
a dozen napkins, mumbled my apologies to
the waitresses, paid the bill and walked
out to the parking lot. I don’t remember
if I even left a tip but I do remember for
some reason that the cashier was real
friendly even though she had to have
witnessed the entire incident. “You have
a nice night, honey,” she said as she
handed me my change, something along
those lines.

I made it out into the parking lot lot just

in time to see Dennis chasing a vehicle
out of the parking lot on foot. And let
me tell you, that car was fucking moving!
Both of those goddamn firemen were afraid
 67

to take him on! Denny and I had climbed

into his car and I listened to him through
the thick fog in my head about “How I would
have torn that fucking pussy in half! Beat
him until he shit his pants and pissed
blood! Ripped his head off and skull
fucked him!”...two minutes later he acted
like he didn’t have a care in the world.
Thankfully, we hadn’t wound up in some
high speed chase throughout the streets
of downtown L.A. The next thing I knew I
was waking up on his parent’s couch in
North Hollywood and it was one in the
afternoon.

On another wild evening, Rick...a fellow

sailor also from Minnesota...and I were
waiting on a street corner by the L.A.
Sports Arena. We were going to a Los
Angeles Blades minor league hockey game,
and waiting for Jay to show up. Rick and
I were already shitfaced on white cross
and malt liquor (probably Olde English
again but possibly Schlitz malt liquor -
The Bull) and I had to piss like it was
nobody’s business!

“I’m gonna go take a leak behind that

closed gas station across the street. You
wait for Jay. He’ll be here any minute.”
 68

Rick was obviously had the same thing on

his mind. “Fuck that noise. My goddamn
bladder is about to burst. Jay can fucking
wait. That son of a bitch is always late!”

We tore off across the street and went

around the back of the gas station. The
streetlights behind it cast off an eerie
green glow and I could see that both
bathroom doors were wide open but inside
it was pitch black. For some dumbass
reason we thought it would be better to
go inside the latrine than just to piss
in the parking lot by the dumpster. And
I never could figure out afterwards, why
in the hell in that super bad and dangerous
as hell neighborhood they didn’t lock the
bathroom doors! Unless they just got
tired of fixing the locks every time they
got broken into.

When we walked in I flicked the light

switch but no lights came on. The green
streetlights were glowing through the one
window and gave the room a weird aura like
a black light and I could see two black
gentleman sitting on the sink, shooting
up! It had to have been smack. They were
both on the nod because if they had been
 69

shooting coke or speed they would have

been bouncing off the walls and most
likely ready to attack.

Rather than just back out and piss

somewhere else (like in the arena), I said
“Hey dudes! We’re not gonna cause any
trouble we just have to take a leak.”

They both looked up at us and nodded and

smiled. I pulled out my Buck knife, opened
it, and held it in my mouth like Tarzan,
and took the stall and pissed while
looking over my shoulder - not giving a
shit that I was pissing mostly on the floor
- at the two junkies while Rick took the
urinal. He finished up first and when I
zipped up and stepped out, Rick was
chatting away like a a fucking retard to
his two new best friends. I held my Buck
at my side and hooked his arm and pulled
him out of the crapper as I walked by him.

He turned and looked at me, “Good guys.

I wonder what they were shooting?”

“Jesus Herbert Christ,” I muttered. “This

is the last time that you should mix white
cross with malt liquor. We’re goddamn
 70

lucky those fucking junkies didn’t slit

our throats for our pocket change!”

Jay finally showed up and later that

evening after the game, we hit some L.A.
bars and strip clubs and for some reason
wound up knocking on the door of an
apartment in a swanky fucking apartment
building somewhere in Hollywood. Jay said
it was the home of the producer or
director...I can’t remember which...of
Breakfast at Tiffany’s...a movie that
I’ve yet to ever see or ever care to see,
and he wanted to introduce us to him.

Why Jay thought some Hollywood bigwig

would like to meet two shithoused sailors
who reeked of alcohol and grass was way
over my head. On top of it all, Rick had
barfed in the parking lot before we went
in the building and had smelled like a
vomit factory.

The door cracked open and a little troll

like dude with a bad toupee peered out
through the chained opening. “Jay,” he
whispered, “Call before you show up here
next time.” He closed the door silently
and I could hear a couple of deadbolts
being thrown.
 71

Jay told me later that week that there was

an honest to god, Hollywood orgy going on
in there. And that little son of a bitch
didn’t invite us in!

But then came the day that changed all the

fun I was having boozing, doping, general
overall hell raising, and almost getting
to participate in orgies where I might
have gotten to have banged a movie starlet
(Fuck! What if Loni Anderson or Barbara
Eden had been in there?...One can only
fantasize) to something very fucking
serious.

So serious it would change the life I was

leading at the time drastically and all
parties that were involved. And not in a
good way.

Dennis and I were up by the Captain’s

stateroom and he was supposed to be
scraping paint off the bulkhead (wall) in
preparation for painting but since I was
Denny’s supervisor he was just going
through the motions as we bullshitted.

It was loud as a motherfucker. Being in

a shipyard onboard a ship going through
 72

a major overhaul is like walking around

a airliner with its engines running.
Which is why I’m partially deaf now. We
were practically screaming at each other
to be heard - I was leaning against the
bulkhead smoking a cigarette and having
a Coke and Dennis had his head tipped back
drinking a can of Hawaiian Punch...facing
towards me... when I saw the Captain and
a group of his henchman suddenly come
around the corner!

It had been announced over the ship

speakers that Captain’s Mast
(non-judicial punishment - non-court
martial offenses..pot possession, late
for work, mouthing off to a supervisor,
refusing orders..typical military shit)
was about to get underway and Captain Ahab
was making way towards the proceedings
where he was already I’m sure gleefully
thinking about all the fire and brimstone
he was about to hand down to some hapless
fucking sailors. No one was EVER found
innocent on the Dixie. Just the thought
of it was probably giving him a diamond
cutter woody! They were probably really
up shit creek if the Packers had gotten
their ass stomped that weekend.
 73

The problem was that it was so goddamn loud

that we hadn’t heard the pipe
(announcement). I immediately popped to
attention when I saw the prick but before
I could warn Dennis, the fucking Captain
saw him not standing at attention and went
batshit. Psycho batshit! Dennis was still
draining his can of Hawaiian punch when
the Captain dropped his shoulder and
charged like a Texas steer! He hit Dennis
probably harder than anyone he hit in his
failed Packers tryout in training camp
and blasted him into the bulkhead!
Denny’s feet actually left the deck! No
easy task since Dennis wasn’t exactly a
small dude himself.

Dennis bounced off the bulkhead somehow

without loosing his feet and going down,
and instinctively raised his fists but
then dropped them immediately when he saw
the stupid fuck who had just attacked him.
He then jumped to attention.

“Did you raise your goddamn fists to me?

Don’t you know how to come to attention,
sailor? What the hell is wrong with you?
I’m the Captain of this goddamn vessel and
you will show me the proper fucking
respect! Do you understand me?”
 74

And...Yada Yada Yada... he kept screaming

while shaking his arms and head around
like he was having an epileptic fit, his
face was a bright beet red! His cover (cap)
had actually flown off and one of his
lackeys quickly retrieved it, brushed it
off, and held it like it was the Shroud
of Turin while watching his Captain
meltdown in front of him! He was screaming
so loud you could hear him word for word
over the noise in the yard.

My jaw had dropped open in stunned

amazement at what I was witnessing and I
noticed that his cronies were going
through about the same reaction as I was.
In their eyes I could read “Holy shit! What
in the fuck has gotten into the Old Man?
Has he lost his fucking marbles?”

The Captain then suddenly turned, grabbed

his cover from the Ensign, and raced off
past me, ignoring my salute, to conduct
Captain’s Mast. I still to this day pity
the poor bastards that were waiting to
stand in judgement before that crazy
dickhead! If they had seen what had just
transpired they would have bolted, jumped
overboard, and gone AWOL!
 75

I watched the shipboard Mafia turn the

corner and get out of earshot and then
turned to look at an obviously stunned
Dennis.

“I’m heading down to legal. That

motherfucker is done!,” He said as he
turned and walked down the ladderwell.

I didn’t say a word about - I knew better

- it to anyone but within an hour the word
was out! I must have been approached by
over a hundred different sailors asking
me just what in the hell had happened? Had
the CO really attacked Dennis? Was he off
his rocker? What the fuck do you think is
going to happen to the Captain? What’s
going to happen to Dennis? What’s going
to happen to YOU? Shit! I hadn’t even
thought about that! Well, I had thought
a bit about it but I think I was still
mostly in a state of shock.

I heard through the ship’s grapevine that

once Dennis had gone down to legal and told
his story, the legal officers had whisked
his ass straight away in a Navy sedan over
the Vincent Thomas bridge to the Long
Beach Naval Station where the main local
JAG office was located.
 76

And now that the dust had fucking finally

settled - I knew that this was a big
fucking deal! Dennis had just been
assaulted by a Navy Captain who was in
command of a Navy ship, and this same
fuckwit Captain was next in line for
promotion to Rear Admiral. Someone was
going to get fucked right in the ass!

And I was the only witness! The fucking

star witness! Those geeky shitbird
officers that had been with the Captain
when it all went down sure as there’s shit
in a goat weren’t going to say a goddamn
thing. I knew that they had gone
spontaneously blind and deaf during the
incident. Their careers would be on the
line. Me and my lonesome were going to be
the shark bait! If anything disciplinary
happened to the CO, I was the fall guy.

I didn’t see Dennis for a day or two. I

don’t know if they kept him over at JAG
in that time period to convince him to drop
his story, to question him repeatedly in
hopes they could find loopholes in his
account, or if some young lawyer was just
itching to make a name for himself by
burning the Captain and wanted to make
 77

sure he had all of his shit in one sock

before he submitted his findings to NIS
and HQ.

But the ship continued to buzz with the

news. The crazy as a tin shithouse rat
Captain of our ship was in deep
turd-floating waters and I was currently
the most famous...or infamous depending
on whose side you were on... person on that
ship. I noticed an immediate change in the
attitude of the officers and higher
ranking enlisted towards me. Friendlier
and more cordial. That didn’t make me feel
all warm and fuzzy. In fact most of the
time, I felt more like a dog trying to shit
out a tennis ball.

When Dennis came finally came back, he

told me that, even though it was me, he
still wasn’t allowed to talk about what
was going on...so I knew then that it was
gonna get hot...except that I could
expect a visit from a high ranking NIS
investigating officer.

He didn’t have to ask me but he knew I that

I had his six (his back in military jargon).
There wasn’t a shadow of a doubt in his
 78

mind that I wasn’t going to tell the truth

and back him 100%.

The very next day I was summoned to a

stateroom up in officers country. The NIS
agent wasn’t a civilian - the sons of
bitches they used for undercover narcs
on drug busts or government property
theft investigations. He was a Navy
Captain who had to be close to the military
maximum mandatory retirement age he
looked so fucking old. And he was sporting
dentures that looked like they didn’t
fit.

He had to have been a bigwig in the agency

who may have even taken a red-eye in from
headquarters in D.C. to do the
investigation. He brought along with him
a Chief Yeoman who never said a
word...never even introduced himself,
like I gave a hot shit... but typed down
everything I said as I was talking. He was
a hell of a typist, not once did I hear
him back it up to make a correction
(Remember that these were the days before
laptops).

The elderly Captain talked to me like I

was his grandson, as gentle as a kitten,
 79

sweet as your Mommy’s apple pie, even

calling me by my first name.

He told me right off the bat that the

Captain would not be made aware of my
signed testimony (I knew that was a big
load of horseshit) until the
investigation was complete and then sat
there with a pleasant smile as I told him
EXACTLY what I had witnessed and heard
verbatim.

The pleasant smile remained plastered on

the old bastard’s face but his eyes told
the whole story. His eyes were cold, man!
What he was hearing was jiving in every
detail that Dennis had worn to and this
old fucker didn’t like what he was hearing.
Not one fucking bit. I realized that what
he was expecting that since I was a Petty
Officer and Dennis was just a deckhand
that I would be siding with the Captain’s
side of the story. Even just to keep my
ass out of the fire. He was dead fucking
wrong! And I knew right then and there as
I was talking that my ass was in as deep
of hot water as the Captain’s was.

Because even though as the Chief had typed

everything down, the NIS Captain never
 80

took his eyes off of me. Not once. Like

a cat who just sat there and stared at his
prey! I felt like the mouse that the cat
had cornered that was soon to be tortured
and gutted slowly and leisurely.

He then launched into this long soliloquy

about how the good Captain had a spotless
and impeccable military record. That he
was very high up on the selection board
and would soon most definitely be
promoted to Rear Admiral. And how he was
thought of so very highly at Washington
Naval Headquarters and would assuredly be
taking a high ranking civilian government
position upon his retirement. In other
words, fat boy was being groomed for the
big time.

But then he dropped the bombshell that I

knew was coming! All of the Captain’s hard
work to reach this point in his career
could come crashing down because of what
happened. “And wouldn’t that be a tragedy
if this one lapse in judgement destroyed
all of this great work that this fine man
has done for our country? This one ‘tiny’
incident? Why it could ruin everything
that he had put his heart and soul into.
His whole life! Just think of it. Are you
 81

really positive that this is what you saw

that day?”

We sat and stared at each other. He was

still smiling and I definitely was not.
I was trying my best not to projectile
vomit across the desk that separated us.
The Chief had quit typing and I could see
him glaring at me out of the corner of my
eye. All I remember about that Chief was
that he had his hair cut like a Marine and
wore a David Niven-style mustache. It was
so quiet you could of heard a sailor fart
down in the engine room. My heart was
racing like I had downed a couple of Black
Beauties and snorted a line of top-notch
Bolivian cocaine. I actually had only
done a couple of White Cross washed down
with a can of Coke that morning but I still
felt like they could see my heart beating
through my shirt. Or hear it!

I took a deep breath. “Yes, sir. But I

don’t know else to say. That’s exactly how
it all happened.”

He never answered me. He just looked over

to the Chief and asked to see the service
record and to my horror I realized he was
talking about MY service record. I hadn’t
 82

given any thought at all that they’d look

into MY background.

“I see you’ve been in some trouble

yourself in your four years in the Navy.”
He pursed his lips as he slowly paged
through it like it was a Penthouse
magazine and he was reading the fake
letters to the editor section. “This
isn’t the first time that you’ve been
interviewed by NIS. Possession of
marijuana. Charges dropped on an intent
to sell marijuana beef. Lost a Top Secret
security clearance, yet you somehow
secured a rather cushy position as a boat
coxswain ferrying passengers to the
Arizona memorial. You were involved in a
high speed automobile chase with a
commissioned officer that miraculously
JAG never got involved in. Several
letters where you were counseled for your
insubordination and open disdain and
disrespect towards both commissioned and
non-commissioned officers. And that’s
just what’s filed in your military
service jacket. I have some NIS reports
that you were often seen associating with
known drug dealers on Pearl Harbor while
you were stationed there.” He ran his
fingers down a page and as he read his lips
 83

moved. I suddenly had a tremendous urge

to point that out but wisely kept my mouth
shut. “And you were a well known substance
abuser yourself.”

He looked up at me with that goofy fucking

smile still plastered at his smug ass face.
“It seems you’ve led a bit of a charmed
life that you made it this far into your
enlistment without a court martial, some
brig time, or been discharged for your
behavior. It couldn’t be just pure dumb
luck. Someone has pulled some strings for
you along they way. Even now your eyes look
like two pissholes in the snow. I wonder
what the results would be if I sent you
down to sickbay for a urinalysis?”

I just sat there and didn’t say a word.

He closed my service record. The smile had

never left his face. The whistledick was
like Howdy Doody! He stood up and I popped
up to attention. He shook my hand and
said , “What a pleasure it has been to meet
you. I’m sure we’ll see each other again
someday.”

He then told the Chief that he was going

down to the mess hall to get a cup of coffee
 84

and I was to wait in the stateroom with

him until the Chief finished up the report.
I would then review it and if I agreed that
it was accurate, I would sign it and then
be free to leave.

I was thinking that there was somebody

probably already waiting outside the door
to jam an ice pick into my brain.

The old fart opened the door and suddenly

turned around as if another thought had
popped into his head, “If you ever
remember anything more about this
incident, please feel free to contact me
at anytime. The Chief can give you my card.
Or...you may decide to come around once
you’ve had time to think things over.”

From where I was sitting I could see him

head straight down the passageway and
walk right into the Captain’s stateroom
without even knocking. I could have
passed out I felt so light headed! But what
did I expect? That the Old Man wasn’t
really going to hear about this until the
investigation was over? Duh!

That was only time I told the actual truth

to any military cop, government
 85

investigator, or NIS agent and go figure.

My ass was swinging out there in the
breeze!

The Chief handed me the statement. It was

perfectly typed word for word. That
fucker could really type! I read it about
three times and then signed it. The Chief
wordlessly handed me the NIS Captain’s
card.

“Do I get a copy of that statement, Chief?”

He looked at me as if I had gone insane.

He didn’t answer. He just shook his head.

When I stepped outside onto the outer deck

I tore the NIS Captain’s card up and tossed
the shreds over the side.

For weeks afterwards it was dead silence

about the assault. Dennis came back to
work and several times would be summoned
down to legal on the ship or over at the
JAG HQ in Long Beach. He still couldn’t
talk about it but he started to walk around
with a shit eating grin.

Then once again, out of the blue, the news

hit the wire!
 86

Dennis had cut a deal with the Navy. In

exchange for him NOT pressing assault
charges against Captain Old Yellow-Stain
(shout out to The Caine Mutiny), Dennis
would get an early out of the Navy with
an honorable discharge.

But much to the surprise of everybody, the

Captain got screwed! And royally by Navy
standards. Not that he didn’t totally
deserve it. He would not be promoted to
Rear Admiral...he was going to be
relieved of his duties onboard the
Dixie...and worst of all for him...he was
forced to retire.

Dennis got to take all the remaining days

of his leave that he had on the books
leading up to his discharge date. And just
like that he was gone and working his new
gig at a movie studio in Hollywood that
his Dad had already gotten set up for him.
I’ll bet it didn’t take two days to process
his paperwork and discharge.

Jay still saw him all the time since they

both lived in Hollywood and I would see
him on occasion when we’d go to the fights
or to a hockey game.
 87

Dennis lucked out, but myself...not so

much.

Due to my telling the truth and dropping

a dime on the Captain, my life on the ship
changed drastically. The higher ups in my
division began to turn the thumbscrews on
me and nit picked my every fucking move.
It was so obvious that someone had ordered
them to make my life as miserable as
fucking possible for the three or four
months that I had left on my enlistment.

Every shit detail that needed to be done

came my way and since I was a Petty Officer
I passed these horseshit duties on down
to the deck apes who worked for me, which
in turn caused any morale that a deckhand
can have anyway, to drop down to a rock
bottom level. In turn, the higher ups
would question/blame me for the deck apes
poor behavior and workmanship which had
predictably gotten worse.

I pulled into the shipyard parking lot one

morning only to have NIS, shipyard
security, and the Shore Patrol waiting
for me in their vehicles at the gate with
 88

red lights a flashing. An SP pointed to

a space for me to pull over at.

“What the hell is this all about?” I asked

angrily.

“We’re searching every third car,

military or civilian. The shipyard boss
is worried about weapons or drugs being
brought on to his facility.” Which was a
line of crap! Yardbirds were notorious
drunks and dopers from the highest
positions on down. Ever yard worker you
talked to in the morning smelled like a
distillery. I had never seen this happen
before.

They found nothing but the message being

sent was received loud and fucking clear!
I noticed that about two hundred other
cars came into the parking lot while I was
being jammed up and not one was flagged
down to be inspected.

I was so goddamned paranoid I was looking

out the curtains at night in my shack in
Navy housing and constantly looking in my
rearview mirror when I was driving on and
even off the base. The single floor
duplexes in housing had a common hallway
 89

with both doors locked. I worked for an

hour to pick the lock with a paperclip on
my side to get into the short hallway.
There was an electrical plug in there and
I disconnected it and pulled the socket
out and stored my weed, papers, pipe, and
any other illegal items in my homemade
stash hole.

Shit hit the fan in magnificent fashion

when Dennis who had to have been (but again
maybe not) either blasted on his ass on
booze, dope or most likely a combination
of, began to make phone calls to the
quarterdeck of the ship and requested to
be connected to the Captain up in his
stateroom.

The first couple of times he called, the

dumb fuck messenger of the Watch on Duty
patched him through. When the Captain
answered, Dennis actually identified
himself and asked the Captain to meet
Dennis down on the docks or some other
location where Dennis had told him “We can
settle this once and for all,” and “I’m
going to kick the every loving shit out
you, you spineless, fat motherfucker!”
Those were almost his exact words because
 90

I was unfortunate enough to get to read

the statement written about the threats.

After that, there was a memo typed in all

capital letters and highlighted font TO
NOT patch any calls from Dennis to the
Captain’s stateroom. It was taped to the
inside of the ship’s log. It went without
saying that anyone who was so goddamn dumb
to do it after reading that memo,
well...their ass would be grass!

And the reason I got to read the

statement(s) was because the FBI was
suddenly involved in this goat fuck!

THE FUCKING FBI! I’m talking cross

dressing J. Edgar and Efrem Zimbalist,
Jr., goddam G-Men! Not some punk Navy
lawyers or jack-off NIS agents. This was
the big time!

I was called down to the legal office on

the ship. Holy shit, would there be no end
to this? There was the ship’s lawyer, the
XO of the ship, a uniformed (USMC) NIS
agent, and two young looking civilians in
suits...black jackets, pants, shoes, tie,
and a white shirt... that looked like they
had cockroaches that had crawled up their
 91

asses that morning. They both had little

boy haircuts and with the grim looks on
their mugs, looked like teenagers playing
hitmen.

The XO pointed to a chair in front of a

desk. “Sit there, Petty Officer DaFino.”
I sat like the disobedient dog they
thought I was. I wish I could have taken
a dump on the floor! “These two gentleman
would like to have a quick word with you.”

On cue, both of the “gentlemen” flashed

their badges and muttered their names. I
wasn’t listening because my mind was
locked on those shiny badges that said FBI!
The time release formula in the
amphetamines in my system were
spontaneously releasing and the inside of
my head felt like a popcorn popper.

I knew that the FBI had already talked to

Dennis because he had told me that when
we had recently gone to a L.A. Kings game.
It seems that it’s a federal offense to
call and threaten a Naval officer on a
government phone line on a military
vessel or installation. These were the
days before caller ID and Dennis had
called from a pay phone anyway so there
 92

was no proof and he had told the agents

that their charges were “a load of shit”
and there was no way they could prove
that he had made the calls. It could have
been another sailor making a prank call
or maybe even a set-up by the Feds for all
they knew.

One of the agents slid a document across

the document with such a look of disdain
it was as if a bum had taken the piece of
paper and wiped his ass with it. .

“Read this please.” The statement

detailed the two times that Dennis had
gotten through to the Captain and his
threats to kick the piss out of the Old
Man. It also mentioned that Dennis had
called five more times but that his calls
had not gotten through.

I read the statement several times,

trying to get my shit together mentally
before I spoke. When I looked up, one of
the agents simply said, “Are you involved
in this?”

Like if I was I would have admitted it!

Stupid fuckwit!
 93

“No. I’ve heard all the scuttlebutt and

read the memo when I was Petty Officer of
the Watch on duty but that’s all I know
about it.”

“You do admit though that you associate

with former Seaman (Blank) on a personal
level?”

“We go to ball games and the fights on

occasion but what’s that got to do with
anything? That’s nothing that I know of
that’s against Navy regs.”

The other agent piped in, “We’ll ask the

questions here, sailor!”

Motherfuck! This was some serious shit.

An idea suddenly popped up in my head and
I decided to throw it out there.

“I’m starting to feel like I might need

a lawyer here. I feel like I’m being set
up to take the fall for something I have
nothing to do with.” I responded. My guts
were rumbling and I began to wish that I
had worn an adult diaper to this meeting.
Holy Christ! I noticed that the NIS agent
had my service record in his hand and was
idly paging through it. Who in the hell
 94

in the fucking Navy hadn’t looked through

my record? The damn thing was like a porno
magazine that made its rounds about the
ship.

“Why would YOU need a lawyer? You’re a bit

of a sea lawyer yourself, aren’t you,
Petty Officer DaFino? You lost a security
clearance due to possession of illegal
substances, you were suspected of being
involved in the sale of said substances,
you have a number of letters where you were
counseled for insubordination, a high
speed chase on Pearl Harbor where you
refused to stop when pursued by a Navy
Captain, and you don’t exactly associate
yourself with sailors onboard this ship
or at your prior duty stations who have
the highest moral character. I wouldn’t
exactly say that you’ll ever be
considered for an appointment to
Annapolis.” He tossed my record on the
desk like it was a used tampon from a
Tijuana prostitute. “Amazing! You should
be sitting in a jail cell in Leavenworth.”
He sarcastically muttered.

It seemed these days that everybody had

the same idea about me after they perused
my service jacket. This was the third or
 95

fourth time I had heard this analysis

about my character. That I was an absolute
shitbird seemed to be the ultimate
conclusion. I agreed that I wasn’t
exactly JFK on PT-109 but come on, I didn’t
think I should be on the FBI’s top ten.
After all, I had told the truth?

I sat there like a mute looking straight

ahead until the XO spoke up. “Petty
Officer DaFino, do you have anything more
you’d like to say?”

Without thinking...it had to have been

the speed talking...I suddenly blurted
out, “I’m going to write a letter to my
Congressman!” Now I was thinking!

The NIS prick laughed. “And what are you

going to tell your Congressman in this
letter?”

I turned at looked at the him - the

sarcastic, smug, fuckstick. “That ever
since I witnessed the Captain of this ship
assault Dennis that I’ve been the victim
of ongoing harassment even though I told
the absolute truth. AND that I feel I have
been personally threatened by this Ship’s
Command, NIS, and now the FBI.”
 96

One of the FBI agents scoffed out a long

hissing noise that sounded like a
Chihuahua letting out whistling fart.
“What have you been threatened with?”

“The brig or prison, and a bad discharge

for starters,” I responded.

“You have to put in a request to the

Command to submit a Congressional
letter,” said the XO quietly.

“Then I’ll put in a request chit. And I’ll

want it to be run up the entire chain of
command and then submitted to the JAG
office.” I thought my heart was going to
explode but they didn’t know if I was
bluffing or not. But I suddenly had
realized that they might not want this to
go public and I had to pull out all the
stops to save my own ass.

The XO said looked around the room and said

“Do you gentleman have any further
questions?”
They all looked at me like I was something
disgusting that they had stepped in but
shook their heads negatively.
 97

“You’re free to go, Petty Officer DaFino.

But if you don’t mind, would you wait for
me out on deck. I need to have a quick word
with you.”

I waited out on the deck long enough to

chain smoke two cigarettes before the XO
stepped out of the passageway. I had a USS
Dixie Zippo in my hand and had been turning
it over and over looking at the logo and
thinking about the world of shit that I
was in before I opened my hand and let it
drop down into the bay. It looked like a
little silver fish swirling to the bottom.
I had just bought it that morning at the
ship’s store thinking that it would be the
only memento of my time in the Navy.

I caught a what I thought might be a look

of slight sympathy in his eyes. “You may
be telling the truth but let me give you
a little bit of advice. I’d be very careful
from now on out who you associate with and
what you do in your off time. Now that
being said if you want to turn in a request
chit to write your Congressman I’ll
personally make sure it makes it all the
way to JAG. And you have my word on that.”
He turned and walked away.
 98

I was as paranoid as a lifelong

methamphetamine junkie! I went and bought
the Raven Arms .25 that my first wife would
threaten to kill me with down the road.
Thinking that my phone line might be
tapped I told everyone I knew that called
me not to mention anything about drugs,
Dennis, partying, basically what time of
day it was. In fact, I rarely answered the
phone at all.

When the yard period was about over and

we went out on a five day shakedown cruise,
just like a Master of Arms, I wouldn’t walk
the decks at night without a close friend
or two with me for fear of being tossed
overboard and disappearing into the deep
blue sea forever.

There was a Filipino Second Class

Boatswain’s Mate that my division I
suspected had assigned to fuck with me
at every opportunity on the ship, for even
the most insignificant details. One
evening, after a night of hardcore
boozing, Rick and I, on a foggy night, took
tire irons and busted all the windows out
of his car. It was one of those cars that
Filipinos loved to drive - a purple metal
flake Barracuda with tassels and fuzzy
 99

dice hanging from the rearview mirror and

his name on the driver’s side and his
wife’s on the passenger side. Not my
proudest moment but my mind had cracked
like the side mirrors of his car. At that
point, with his non-stop fucking with me,
the little bastard was extremely lucky I
hadn’t put a round in his brain pan!

I woke up with a hangover the next day that

would have killed a bull. I went to the
fridge and chugged down a beer and thought
about what a fucking idiot I was. For sure
the Command was going to think I was behind
this.

But a seaman who the Filipino had written

up and had done 15 days restriction
because of him, unfortunately caught the
brunt of my childish alcohol fueled
actions. He got released from restriction
- a day early because he came down with
a bad case of the flu and Medical wanted
him off the ship - that very same evening.
He, of course, became the number one
suspect on their shitlist. To put the
icing on the cake, when he arrived at home
unexpectedly, he caught his wife in the
sack with not just one, but two sailors.
 100

I later bought him a twelve pack of

imported beer in the guise of celebrating
his release from restriction. I thought
it was the least I could do for him.

The Captain was relieved of his command

quietly. No change of command ceremony.
Usually they have a big personnel
inspection, speeches, a few awards, and
maybe even a few tears shed. But this
time...nothing. It was like he just slunk
away in the middle of the night with his
tail between his legs. Much like, I
imagine he did when the Packers cut his
sorry fucking ass. One day he was there,
the next day we had a new Captain.

The ship was cleared to leave the yards

and we steamed back down to San Diego.
Since my wife was still stationed in Long
Beach, she stayed in the Naval housing
duplex (where I’m sure many a sailor or
even Marine or two was pleasured in my
absence) and I was forced to live on the
ship where I knew that I was going to be
fucked with 24/7.

But I was wrong! Although I still was

fucked with more than the average Third
Class, it was like they had called off the
 101

dogs, slightly. Maybe it was the threat

of the writing my Congressman or we had
a new Captain - I’ll never know.

We never left the port of San Diego for

the next two months. I tried to keep my
mouth shut and just go about my duties
without attracting any attention but I
still slept with a Buck knife under my
pillow at night. I was like a “shell
shocked” Audie Murphy who slept with a
pistol under his pillow for the rest of
his life after his WWII experiences. In
my paranoia ravaged brain I didn’t think
it was beyond them to take me out while
I slept.

In San Diego, it was basically an 7 to 4

job with most weekends off. At night, I’d
go downtown to National City (known as
Nasty City) and hang out at the strip clubs
and a shitbox bar called the Westerner
where the wives of sailors at sea hung out
and searched for either a shore duty
sailor or one who’s ship was inport to
screw around with.

On occasion, I’d go to a dangerous biker

bar called The Hitching Post because they
had the hottest strippers that I would
 102

ever see in my life. I’m talking

California beach girls. Blonde, tanned,
and totally naked! God bless ‘em!

There were even times when a group of us

- when we tired of the bar scene or cash
was running low - would go down this alley
where there was this weird alcove hidden
from sight that had old couches, a few
battered easy chairs, and a huge wood
family dining table. Local homeless guys
crashed there and we’d bring cases of
cheap beer and we’d hang out there with
them... smoking dope, drinking, and just
bullshitting. It was quite fun!

On weekends I’d jump in the car with Jay

and we’d load the car with beer, Swisher
Sweet cigars, and weed and head up to LA.
I really didn’t want to see my wife but
it was better than staying on the ship for
the weekend. On one trip heading back to
San Diego, I climbed into Jay’s car and
the entire passenger floorboard was
covered with White Cross.

“What the fuck, Jay?” I laughed, “There

must be over a hundred hits of speed here!”
 103

“Uh, Denny and I did a little partying last

weekend and things kind of got out of
hand.”

“And you didn’t clean out your car the

whole week? Ever think what may happen if
the cops pulled you over.”

He just shrugged and laughed.

I had a short timers calendar that I

started once I became a “two digit midget”
and every morning I’d mark another day off
with a red marker.

Every day a couple of deck apes would ask

me. “How many days?”

“66.” I’d answer.

Then “50.”

“38.”

“27.”

“16.”

“11.”
 104

“I’m a fucking single digit midget!”

And then (finally) came the day that I had

yearned for...for four long years...the
end of my enlistment.

I remember my last night in San Diego. I

went to The Westerner, and met a older but
cute Navy wife, we drank enough where I
just had a pleasant buzz, and we danced
and just sat and talked. I didn’t have the
urge to try to get her to take me home.
Not saying I wouldn’t have if she’d thrown
out an offer. I just enjoyed her company
until closing time.

The next morning I packed my seabag, went

up to personnel and got my DD-214, walked
down the gangway, and just like that, it
was fucking over!

After all the bullshit I had been through

it was really quite anti-climatic! No
parades! No drama! The FBI wasn’t waiting
for me on the pier with handcuffs. Just
me getting into a cab and telling the cabby,
“Take me to the Greyhound station. I’m
fucking out of here!”
 105

I took a bus to LA and moved back into Navy

housing ...purely for the fact that I
didn’t want to leave California yet and
rent was free...since my wife was still
in the Navy and had about a year left. My
plan was to call it quits with her once
she got out. I grew my hair long, pierced
my ear and wore a silver skull earring,
and my beard went from Navy standards to
ZZ Top length.

I worked as a casual longshoreman...every

morning I went down to a hiring hall and
if they needed help on the docks the union
would hire you as day labor and you got
paid union scale wages. If I could have
gotten on with their union, I’d have never
left Los Angeles.

Once in a while, Jay, Dennis, and I would

hit the bars or cause drunken scenes at
hockey games, fights, wrestling matches,
strip clubs, and even roller derby
matches. I was free from all the bullshit
that had been tying me down and was having
a hard time controlling it. It felt like
I had been released from Terminal Island
prison which was just down the road from
the docks where I worked.
 106

My wife got out of the Navy and wanted to

try to patch up our marriage. I knew that
it was a mistake (like so many in my life)
and the marriage would never
last...mainly because I didn’t want it to
and I’m pretty sure she really deep down
didn’t either. But I had become lazy and
agreed to move to her hometown of Sandusky,
Ohio. A town I had never heard of prior
to meeting her and a state I never cared
to go to much live in other than the Pro
Football Hall of Fame was located in
Canton and I always wanted to go there.
I also told myself that Pittsburgh wasn’t
a far drive and I was a huge Steelers fan.

Which brings us back to the Duran-Leonard

fight and Dennis being in Cleveland with
free tickets to the close circuit
telecast.

I drove to Cleveland and Dennis had left

a key to his room for me at the Holiday
Inn. When I walked in the door it looked
like a room where Caligula resided. Booze
bottles on every available counter space,
ashtrays filled with roaches, hardcore
fuck books laying everywhere, white
powder residue on coffee tables and
mirrors...typical Dennis digs.
 107

When he got back from work, he cleaned up

and we headed down to the hotel bar. There
we met his ticket connection, and true to
Denny’s word, the dude was stone-cold
Mafia. Gold necklaces, hair that looked
like it got cut every other day, a very
cool leather jacket, jeans and alligator
boots that would cost a normal person a
couple months salary, diamond rings on
both hands, and pistol stuck down the back
of his pants. He was one hell of a nice
guy!

As we walked out to his Cadillac, Dennis

whispered to me that he was the son of a
Irish mobster and had just been given the
title of a “Made Man.”

We pulled up to the auditorium on the side

of the building and as we did a door opened
automatically by what looked like to be
the manager of the arena. We shook hands
with the gangster, thanked him profusely,
and walked straight into the sold out
arena. I felt like goddamn Sonny
Corleone!

And after that historic night - other than

a few late night phones calls made by
 108

Dennis when he was blotto - I never saw

or heard from Dennis again.

My wife and I finally had gotten

divorced...her sister and I had gotten
bombed at the local neighborhood bar and
had gotten it on in the middle of a
playground on the walk home... and I went
back home to Minnesota. My ex never found
out about that tryst in the park but I
thought enough was enough. When you start
humping the sister of your wife it pretty
much signifies that your marriage has
gone to total shit.

But I found that you really can never go

home. Especially after all the crap I had
done and had been through. I was
bored...totally shitless!...in a town of
less than 19,000 people.

I tried going to school. Veterans in

Minnesota could go to school then for free
so you could live on your monthly VA
educational check. I sold weed and bought
fake speed and Quaaludes from ads in the
back of High Times magazine, steamed off
the labels and sold the bottles for ten
times the price I had paid for them to
goober truckers at the truck stop just
 109

across the street from my apartment which

was over a waterbed warehouse. It helped
supplement my income but I knew that scam
couldn’t last forever and when someone
got wise to it, it would probably wind up
with me getting a tire thumper across the
back of my noggin.

But drinking in Minnesota is a bigger and

more popular sport than hockey and I was
soon found myself back into that nasty
habit of drinking myself to death. The
evidence being that I had gotten married
again. To a total fucking lush. It was Days
of Wine and Roses all over. Someone who
liked to drink as much as I did - what a
fucking idiot I was! From the minute I said
“I do,” I knew it wasn’t going to work.
Another huge mistake in my poorly planned
life. Molly Hatchet could have written
Flirtin’ With Disaster with me in mind.

My life was in total disarray and somehow

in my mind I could see through the haze
of alcohol and weed that something had to
be done. And fast! Or I’d be working at
the local meat packing plant or pumping
gas for the same morons I was peddling fake
speed to for the rest of my life. The exact
 110

things that I had joined the Navy in the

first place to avoid.

I had become that Terminal Island inmate

that couldn’t make it on the outside.

But I craved the lifestyle of a sailor,

I missed the water, the docks and the ships
moored up to them, the waterfront bars,
the longshoreman breakfast joints where
the waitresses served you breakfast in
their lingerie and where you could drink
a beer with your pancakes. Nothing like
a Pabst and a doughnut getting served to
you by a forty year old woman in a see
though nightie where you can see her
nipples and thick tarantula like bush.

So I applied and got a Merchant Marine

license and filled out dozens of
applications but found it was practically
impossible to get hired on. The money is
too good and people will hold on to those
jobs until they are literally forced to
retire.

So unbelievably, I decided to re-enlist.

I was still too gun shy and paranoid about

the Navy and the assholes who still may
 111

have been thinking about payback but I

thought the Coast Guard might take me if
their background check didn’t delve too
far back into my prior military life.

Even though I the missed the waterfront

life, I gave a fleeting thought to the
other branches for just a split second.

The Marines - WAY too hardcore, militant,

and bizarre with all their weird
militaristic rituals! I wouldn’t have
lasted a month.

Then the Army - too many retards, shitting

in your helmet, sleeping on the ground,
and eating meals out of cans. That sure
sounded like a lot of fucking fun. A
definite NO!

The Air Force - they weren’t taking any

prior service which was too bad. The Air
Force was well known for being the most
laid back and easy going of the branches
- civilian life where you wore a uniform.
Most likely though I would have pushed it
to the limit and eventually gotten myself
into hot water with all that freedom
 112

So the Coast Guard it was. They snapped

me right up once they had an opening.

I made a vow to change my evil ways and

conform to both society and the military
and become up an upstanding member of the
community at large.

It didn’t take long for that vow to shit

the bed and I regretted the decision to
re-enlist almost immediately. The Coast
Guard was totally unlike the Navy. Their
ships were castoffs from the Navy, the
bases were tiny and didn’t have amenities
of a larger base, the food was shit, and
the overall branch was small which meant
tons more work and more standing
overnight duty on a more frequent basis.
Plus,it was rife with Bible thumpers, and
worst of all, you couldn’t trust anyone.
There were asskissers, snitches, and
informants everywhere.

I was assigned to a river tender on the

Missouri River, a tugboat that pushes a
huge barge up and down major rivers,
setting buoys and aids to navigation
markers. I was soon singled out for my
rebellious and anti-authoritarian nature
and showing up for work with massive
 113

hangovers. The river runs were short,

usually only a week or two. In the evenings
we’d either tie up alongside of some
cornfield or if we were lucky in some small
river town.

If you didn’t have duty that night, you

could go into town but those one horse
shitholes weren’t always real inviting to
the crew, especially if you were hitting
on the local women. One town was known for
having a local KKK chapter and since we
had a black guy on our crew some of the
racists had opened up one of the lighted
river aid battery boxes and put a huge
water moccasin inside. Luckily, it was
pretty dehydrated when we opened the box
and was easily taken out with a machete
in about five separate pieces.

There were some guys onboard that liked

to get high and party down when we hit
those dumps but the majority of the crew
couldn’t wait to get back to port and tell
their wives about what had gone on but how
THEY, of course, hadn’t been involved in
any of it.

Not to mention, my loudmouth drunk wife

who was always bumping her gums about what
 114

we did in our personal lives to the other

Coast Guard wives - who were gossip
mongers and anxious to get the dirt on
other sailors - and who actually tried to
sell some bootleg speed to some of them
at their fucking Tupperware and lingerie
parties. She said they were just “diet”
pills. Yea, diet pills that looked like
Black Beauties, Pink Ladies, and White
Cross! A Rhodes scholar she was not!

Setting buoys is long hours and brutal

fucking work and within less than a couple
of years I quickly became sick of it. I
decided to change job ratings from
Boatswain’s Mate to Yeoman - basically a
clerk position where you handle service
records and other administrative shit and
is almost always done in climate
controlled spaces. Like heat and air
conditioning, not on a hot as the devil’s
nutsack buoy deck. It’s mainly a shore
duty position where you can go home every
night and have much more freedom...which
is exactly what I needed.

Yeoman school was in Petaluma, California,

and I met a fellow sailor there who was
prior Marine Corps and had the same fun
loving attitude as I did, maybe even worse.
 115

He was also an avid weightlifter and

steroid-head and soon he was tutoring me
on the joys of getting big.

I hooked up with an Amazon redhead who was

wild in bed and crazy in the head. She
actually raised laboratory rats in her
apartment and cages full of rats lined the
walls! Still, it was a good place to party
and crash at on the weekends. She was a
weird one but fun to hang out with. She
didn’t smoke weed but she loved
amphetamines and drank only champagne
which resulted in some interesting
hangovers.

The school was short, about six weeks and

Todd, the weightlifter, and I both
received orders to the Second District
headquarters in St. Louis.

The weights soon added about forty pounds

to my frame and combined with the wild
partying that I had resumed now that I was
back in a major city, I began to drive my
supervisors fucking nuts. I did my work
but didn’t take shit from any co-workers
or even some supervisors.
 116

Unlike the Navy, supervisors in the Coast

Guard Yeoman field I quickly found out
were spineless and easy to trample on -
a trait I used to my advantage of on an
almost daily basis. I was counseled many
times about my behavior and about the few
instances where I actually had threatened
bodily harm to a few co-workers who
crossed me but never came close to having
any military charges pressed.

Todd, due to his large physique and Marine

Corps appearance had immediately nabbed
the gig of being the Admiral’s driver so
his ass was pretty much covered. No one
fucked with the Admiral’s driver!

But in the few years that I had been out

of the Navy, chemistry had made drastic
advances in the administering of piss
tests. Urinalysis could now find damn
near any drug in your system including THC
which became a source of concern with the
Command’s drug enthusiasts. And it was
now one strike and your ass is out the
door.

I did have a close call with the piss tests

one time...luckily for me the Coast Guard
was dirt fucking poor and when they did
 117

a random urinalysis they went by the last

digit of your SSN, so it just was bad luck
of the draw when it did happen and I rarely
had gotten tested.

This time, Todd and I had been to a Neil

Young concert the night before and had
smoked two fat joints. The next morning
at work my number popped up. You didn’t
have to give your sample immediately, you
had until the end of the day so I started
drinking water non-stop. At lunch I went
to the YMCA and did a hour of intense
cardio - running and using a stationary
bike - and then sat in the sauna for a half
an hour. The rest of the day I pounded down
the water. When I gave my sample it is was
as clear as the water they brew Coors beer
with.

It came back negative! Not a single trace

of anything.

My second marriage began to fall apart.

Her love of pulling a cork and the fact
she was putting on a ton of weight because
of her alcohol and food intake wasn’t
making things any easier... nor was my
access to young Coast Guard girls who
liked guys who lifted weights and my
 118

affair with the chick with the shotgun

toting husband. She told me that she ate
because I made her unhappy. One time I came
home and found she had eaten an entire
Domino’s pizza by herself along with a six
of beer. She threw a half filled beer
bottle at me and ran off to bed crying when
I said “Shit! I must really make you
fucking unhappy!”

It was around that time that I finally

admitted to myself...it only took about
ten years...that I wasn’t cut out for
marriage or the military. I needed to be
free of both the restraints of marriage
and the authority that comes along with
being in the service. And the ones who ran
the show would always think that I had been
born on the dark side of the moon and would
always consider someone with a
personality like mine to be nothing short
of being the offspring of Che Guevara.

We soon divorced and I let my enlistment

expire but decided since I had already
racked up eight years in the military I
should join the reserves...figuring that
even I could gut out two days a month and
two weeks a summer...and that by gutting
it out I would have a pension and benefits
 119

waiting for me after another twelve

years...if I lived that long.

Before I got out of the CG, I tried twice

to join the Navy Reserves - I figured by
now that the dogs HAD to have been called
off - and I quickly found out how long your
bad reputation can stick around to haunt
you in this life.

It was pretty much standard that you could

join the Navy Reserves after active duty
in the Coast Guard as long as you had a
honorable discharge with a good
re-enlistment code. I actually had an
honorable discharge from both the Navy
and the Coast Guard with good
re-enlistments codes. For me it was a no-
brainer that the Navy would let me in.

But when I applied - both times - I was

turned down. After the second time, I
requested a reason in writing why I was
my request had been turned down.

I never heard a word from the Navy again.

Not a letter. Not a phone call - even after
I had called and left several messages.
Not jackshit! Message received - loud and
clear. We remember YOUR ass!
 120

So I went into the Coast Guard Reserves

and began to work in the civilian world
in prisons and hardcore mental hospitals,
mainly because the pay was decent and and
for the adrenaline rush, and I figured I
might as well put all the military law
enforcement and self defense training to
use. In the prisons and mental
institutions I actually found a good
share of the staff shared the same
attitudes and habits that I did and
usually got along fairly well.

Once a month for two days I played Coast

Guard. The reserves was a cakewalk, a good
share of the sailors were just like me.
Beer drinkers and hell raisers looking
for a way to suck off the government tit
in the easiest way possible to grab a
retirement check...

...and then that dirty motherfucker Bin

Laden flew those goddamn airliners into
the Twin Towers!

I got a phone call from the Coast Guard

that very afternoon and I was pulled back
onto active duty a month after 9/11. First,
I pulled a year stint at Coast Guard
Headquarters in D.C. The Coast Guard had
 121

kept horseshit records on where the

location of its Inactive Ready Reserve
sailors whereabouts after they were
discharged. If you do four years in the
military you have another two years you
owe the government in which they could
call you back if needed in time of a
national emergency. That’s the purpose of
the IRR and it’s rarely used - it would
generally take damn near WWIII to be
reactivated and that’s what 9/11 was
being considered at time.

If you remember, the government and the

entire country was going apeshit with
paranoia at the time. Every Middle
Eastern guy working behind the counter
selling you cigarettes and truckers speed
at a 7/11 was a goddamn terrorist in
hiding.

I worked in a department where we had to

gather all the current IRR service
records into one main facility and then
try locate these people to let them know
that Uncle Sam may be coming for their
asses - so get your fucking affairs in
order. I made phone calls and did Internet
searches for months, tracking people down
and listened to many a frantic mother
 122

break down and weep on the phone that her

precious baby may be called by the Coast
Guard to forget about college...you’re
going to war, motherfucker!

It was the only thing fun about that job!

After that, due to my extensive training

in military law enforcement and from when
I worked in corrections and at the
security hospital, I was transferred to
Galveston, Texas, to work in Homeland
Security on the Special Operations
Response Team (SORT). The Port of Houston
is one of the biggest in the world and
security was a real problem there with the
enormous amount of ship traffic.

Not only did I work on the SORT team, but

I issued military ID cards, base access
stickers, and was in charge of the mail
room.

Top that off with standing solitary 12

hours (6PM to 6AM) shifts at the guard
shack in full body Kevlar in that Texas
humidity, life was the shits! I was
working my ass to the bone and hating my
life again.
 123

To amuse myself on those late nights I

would lock the front gates around two or
three in the morning to supposedly make
a security round of the base, but instead
I would go into the mail room and log onto
the computer and surf the web.

I had joined a chat site for USS Dixie

sailors (the Dixie had long ago been
decommissioned and either sold to India
for scrap or sank to be used as a natural
reef - depending on what website you
checked) using a fake name and would read
the posts of how much everyone loved or
hated it when they were stationed there.
On occasion, if I recognized the name of
someone I had really despised when I was
stationed there I would tell them what a
“prick” or “asshole” I thought they were.
If I really hated them I’d tell them to
“Watch their back!” Then I’d just delete
my user name and create another one.

A day or so before I had recognized the

name of a guy - Bruce, who lived in North
Hollywood - that I knew and had been casual
friends with. He hadn’t remembered me at
the time but I described myself and told
him that I had hung out with Jay and
Dennis.
 124

When I logged on I saw a return message

waiting for me from Bruce.

“Smokey! Sure I remember you! You’re the

one that got his ass in a jam when you saw
that asshole Captain of ours knock
Denny’s ass into the bulkhead. Fuck, that
was a wild scene! Man, I hate to tell you
this but Dennis is dead. He had a bad back
injury and was taking painkillers on top
of wearing too many morphine patches on
his spine. He overdosed a couple of months
ago. I’m sorry, dude!”

There was an obituary he had attached to

the message. I read it two or three times
and shut off the computer and sat in the
dark room, mindlessly, for a second, a
minute, an hour, I really don’t remember
how long it was.

My radio crackled and brought me back.

“Petty Officer DaFino, Master Control,
you got a car at the gate. You know who
it is. Mr. Punctual. Sounds pissed as
always.”

I gave a double click to let Control know

I copied. I stood up, put on my Kevlar vest,
 125

and walked up to the gate, taking my sweet

time.

I recognized the vehicle and the dickwad

behind the wheel. This asshole First
Class Storekeeper that had no life so he
showed up for work between 0400 or 0430
to get “A jump on his day.” Fucking loser!

I reached in the guard shack and hit the

gate button. As the gate opened, he pulled
up and stopped.

“Where have you been? I’ve been sitting

here for twenty minutes.”

I had to swallow down the lump in my throat

before I could speak. “Doing my rounds.”

“Bullshit! It doesn’t take that long to

do a round on this base. You’ve been
probably catching a catnap.”

“Let me see your ID!”

He looked at me in amazement. “What? You

know who I am. I come through this gate
at the same time every goddamn morning.
I’m not going to get my out ID out just
 126

because you’re pissed off that I

questioned you.”

“Captain’s orders. Everyone regardless

of rank must show a valid military ID card
upon entrance to this facility.”

“My first order of business this morning

is going to be having a talk with your
Chief about your smartass attitude!”

I looked to my right,down the long dark

road he just driven up, and then to my left,
towards the equally dark base. I realized
then how deathly quiet it was out there.
I had never really realized that before.
So quiet...and alone. All I could hear was
some coyote pups crying off in the
distance and the sound of his engine
running. I looked down at him and laughed.

“You know what, asshole? It’s just me and

you out here right now. Just me and my
lonesome and you. Think about that.
There’s no witnesses to what we’re saying
or what could happen. And I’m the one who’s
got the fucking gun. I’m the motherfucker
in charge!”
 127

His jaw dropped open in stunned

amazement.

“Now let’s see some fucking ID!”

“A guy told me one time, "Don't let
yourself get attached to anything
you are not willing to walk out on
in 30 seconds flat if you feel the
heat around the corner”

― Neil McCauley
HEAT
 THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOU’RE DEAD

DROWNING IN A SEA OF MARIJUANA

BOOTLEG MEXICAN QUAALUDES & THE BLOW DEALER THAT

KILLED SUPERMAN

SAILORS SHOOT HORSE! DON’T THEY?

SNORTING THE DEVIL’S DANDRUFF

SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES

A DEAD ROSE IN A PINEAPPLE GRAVEYARD

(CHAPBOOK)

***
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