The Real Steve Harlow

Now in Lala land, living in the shade.

You, in the Navy #NaNoWriMo, Day 14 - 12019 words written, 11319 words behind the pace.

Arms high, wrists together, pointy, red tipped fingers out she dances with her head down. The song over, she hugs you.

She leads you to the bar, instead of back to your table where your ship mates and their girls are laughing and talking.

She talks in Japanese to the bartender, they go back and forth, several times. She's asking for information, he doesn't have what she wants, he's sympathetic, but can't tell her what she wants to know. He makes drinks for you both instead.

"No don't drink that one, it is not good," she says taking the glass from your hand. Some sharp words to the bartender and she says to you, "This is my favorite, you should drink this, Singapore Sling," sliding the fresh drink into your hand. You sip. It's sweet.

"Do you like your friends?" she asks. "You are so young. Is one of them your father?" she laughs. You sputter. "No! One them is my boss, though."

She presses against you, her breasts against your stomach. You feel her back, you can barely reach her waist, you caress her shoulders.

She raises on her toes, pulls your head down to her, you kiss her upturned mouth, looking at her heavy eye lashes. They open, she sees you looking, breaks off the kiss and pushes away from you.

"You should close your eyes when you kiss," she sulks.

"OK," you say, holding her her by her arms and bringing yourself close to her, "I promise."

You kiss again, you kiss long. She breaks it off, giggling and turning to the bar, her drink and she lights a cigarette. You do the same and drink.

At the table, sitting beside you in the booth, she looks at you full in the face. The right side of her smile has a cool Elvis-like curl, she tends to lower her eye-lid on that side, too. Her lashes are augmented and painted with black, looking as thick as bamboo mats when lowered.

You drink, the table conversation is loud, laughing, Kaseko nestles into you, she's cold in her sleeveless dress. You warm her with your arm, with your hands.  You smoke, you drink.

She whispers in your ear.
"Do me a favor, tell your friends you're going in the back room with me."

You cut across Miller and Funke's conversation, "I'm going in the back room with her." Churbuck  smiles, "OK, buddy! Don't get lost."

She leads you out the back door, it's night now. You follow her across an rainy alley, into a room with a bed, a side table and a telephone.

You lay on the bed, she sits beside you and takes the phone. "I'm going to call my Mother," she explains, quickly dialing and connecting.

Listening to her talking rapidly, you revel in the foreignness of the language and the familiarity of the act of phone talking.

You begin to light a cigarette, she motions for you to not light it. Hand over mouthpiece, "not in here, please," she smiles pleadingly maintaining her conversation. You lie on your back on the bed. She finishes, hangs up the phone, pulls you up to your feet, "come on, we go back inside."

Churbuck and Miller are gone, Funke and his girl are in the booth.

"They said we should stay here, he says to you, "they're going down the street, they'll be back and we should should wait for him, here."

You and Kaseko sit close across from Funke and his girl. Another round of drinks arrives. You're feeling loaded, Funke's looking red faced and heavy lidded. Kaseko is talking about French movies, "they're the best, very sexy," she says.

You are leaning on the table, holding you head up with your hands, she presses her face against the side of yours. You feel gratefull for Kaseko, you feel that she cares about you. And she is so cute, big bracelets on her thin arms, her animated, hair shaking gestures when she talks.

With a start, she jumps up. "Come with me," she says pulling you to the side bar where the bartender set down a bowl of hot noodle soup.
"I have to eat," she explains, you should eat, too." She picks up a noodle with her chop sticks, sucks it into her mouth, she picks one for you and you slurp it in.
"That's right," she encourages, noisely taking another noodle, raising the bowl to her lips and sipping the liquid.

She continues to serve you noodles and sips of soup. The two of you finish the bowl with your heads close together.

She wants a toilet break, you realize you have to go, too, she leads you to one door and goes to in another.

Although you're sure you've been in this bar for hours, you  haven't been in this toilet before. Two narrow porcelain trays side by side embedded in a raised part of the floor and a small sink are the only fixtures in here. You stand and pee ferociously towards the closest of the trays. Feeling sloppy and a little out of control, you almost forget to put yourself back in your pants before you leave the toilet,  but you get every one of the thirteen buttons buttoned and head out.

She's dancing, waves to you. You walk unsteady her way, you feel nauseous, you rush back to the toilet and heave into the sink. You  gag, heave again, you're holding yourself up with stiff arms on the sink. You spit, run water, cup some up to your face, look for paper towels, none. You try to rinse the vomit down the sink, but it's not draining, the water's diluting it, the sink is filling. You bring some water to your face, you need some air.

You stumble out of toilet, to the street door. Kaseko calls you, "don't leave!" adding your name with "san" at the end, a sign of endearment.

You're out in the air, leaning against the front of the building, beginning to breath  better. The Shore Patrol Patty Wagon pulls up, two Navy cops approach.

"Do you know you're out of uniform, sailor?" he's a Marine and is twisting your arm behind your back.

"No. This is my uniform," you say, cheekily, knowing what the problem is, you have no hat and your sleeves are rolled up. The cop has both your arms behind your back and is putting handcuffs on your wrists. The other one is shining a flashlight in your eyes.

Churbuck and Miller return looking sheepish. They question the Shore Patrol, telling them that they will take you back to the ship, they'll be responsible for you.

"Too late for that, you should've taken him back a long ago. He's disrespecting the uniform, we're taking him."

You're in the back of the Patty Wagon, looking out the back wire gate. Kaseko comes running out, "No!" She cries your name adding the enduring, "san" and as they drive you away, she runs into the rain soaked streets after you for a short ways, then stops and calls, "I love you. Come back!" She stands in streaks of neon light reflections, her arms outstretched as you are driven around a corner.

At the Shore Patrol Station, they complete the paper work, while you sit wearily on the bench. They take you to your ship, they give some papers to the Officer of the Deck. You go below to your rack.

The next day the ship leaves Yokosuka. In the afternoon you are formally charged and given punishment for your offense - five days restriction to the ship and extra duty. Three of those days you will be at sea, restriction is a given, but two days you'll be stopping in Okinawa. You will not be able to see what the American Military dominated southern island of Japan is like. You are not upset.

You think of Kaseko, her crooked smile, her thick eye lashes, her bangs over her eyebrows, the way she dances with her thin arms in the air, those arms reaching out to you in the rainy street, her calling out, "I love you."

Junior tells you that he thinks it's rotten of Churbuck to have left you in the bar. He's upset, thinks the disregard for your well being is typical of Operations Division, "blowing smoke, that's all they do." He concludes.

While the ship's underway, you take as many hours on the helm as the Boatswains will let you. At times, now, in open sea, you keep the ship to within one degree of variance from the heading. You work up a sweat to do it, spinning the big wheel one way, then quickly back the other, feeling the drag on the rudder, anticipating the movements of the ship, blocking the drift. It's a game, you're good at it. Some of the Boatswains try to do what you do, but can't. They get tired, they don't care, they settle for returning to only keeping it within six degrees of the course, allowing the bow to drift three degrees on each side of the heading. You always do better.

However, you don't do well with reporting the observed weather which involves a code for recording the temperature, the barometric pressure, wind direction and speed. You often make mistakes and the Weather Service rejects your ship's radio reports when you send them in.

You miss going over at Okinawa and Churbuck stays on the helm in and out of the harbor.

Two days out steaming for Hong Kong, you are approaching Taiwan and your Bridge is full of  discussion about a named Typhoon coming North out of the South China Sea several thousand miles south of your position.

#nanowrimo Day 12: goal is 20004 words, I've written 10349 = 9655 words behind the pace.

You're been watching the sun rise and set in the sea for six days since you left Midway. This particular sunset, all golden and flaming red baroque clouds, you pause on the forward deck at the rail to soak it in. The dark sleek swells, the tufts of wind waves, the earth turning away from the sun. How would you paint this? You ask yourself. Would it be enough, just water and sky? You wonder how to express the lightening fast color effects as red rays bounce through the blues, the greens that flash on the surface of the gloomy ocean, the gold that glows from within each cloud. How your painter brush keep up with the speed of color changes? You would mix a lot of the colors before hand, a fresh brush in each, you would start with a big canvas lashed to the rail, put the paint where ever you see color, let it dance.

A short chubby Chief  Boatswain's Mate leans into your face, "Hey! Mister." He's saying. "Why are you standing on deck out of uniform?"

"What uniform?" you look incredulous.

"Yeah that's just it, with your sleeves rolled up and your hat on the back of your head, you're not in uniform!" The Chief is putting you on report, writing down your name and how many hours of extra duty you'll have to do to make up for the terrible harm to the Navy's honor you've caused by being wrapped up in the glories of the sea, thinking of art rather than minding your unbuttoned sleeves and the angle of your hat - here, a thousand miles from from the closest land.

Churbuck says, "You've got to watch out for those buzzards." His nose looking more like a bird beak than ever.

You think the Navy better not hold its breath waiting for you to give a shit.

"Fuck the Navy!" you say with venom.

You're carrying out your extra duty, swabbing the mess deck when the ship makes land fall and the available crew is out on deck looking. You're excited to be on the other side of the great Pacific. You want to look, "Next time," you say to yourself and pledge to return to Japan the right way, without the Navy.

As you're finishing up, cleaning out the swab, through an open hatch, you see your old boss, Junior, the Second Class Boatswain's Mate, scanning the hills of Tokyo Bay.

"Come out here," Junior calls, "you should see this."

You leave the swab in the sink, step out on deck with him and watch the land pass by. It's a looming, steep-sided mountain, right down to the water. Here, it's not very populated, a few indications of roads, a few buildings, you thrill when you see something clearly Japanese - the curling roof line barely visible at this distance. You know, you've studied the charts, it's a big bay and you're not going all the way in to Tokyo itself, you're going to Yukosuka, this side of Yokohama. You think of the fabulous population density of Tokyo, of Japan as a whole, ten times the population of California living on the same amount of land. The hills, the trees look disappointingly familiar, to you, like those in California. Is this place going to be wonderfully foreign or not.

"You don't see Japan for the first time twice." Junior smiles.

Your Third Class, Churbuck, the Quartermaster and Funke's Third Class, Miller, Signalman, are taking their two strikers, Funke and you ashore. They'll introduce you to Navy life overseas. You've already been talked to by Murphy, the First Class, who paternalistically told you what to expect from Japanese woman you'd meet in Yokosuka bars.

"There will be one you're going to want to go home with," the tall Petty Officer said with the horizon behind him, "and she'll even say that she wants to, but she's never going to take you home. You are not going to bed with her. The bartender is not going to let you leave with her. They know when you have to get back to the ship. They want you there at the bar drinking and buying her drinks that have no alcohol in them and cost more then what you're drinking. That girl is there to keep you drinking and buying. You can get another girl to fuck or to suck you off, but not the girls who work the bar. Those pretty little things who talk sweet to you and promise to leave with you after their shift, aren't going with you, they're not leaving the bar, their shift doesn't end until you're back on board. They're going to keep you there until your money's gone or you've gotta get back to the ship, which ever comes first."

Miller and Funke,  Churbuck and you walk through the base on a rainy afternoon head into town on a local bus. Much of what you see disappoints you because it doesn't look very Japanese, it looks much like California. You expected the buildings to be upside down or the roads in the air, you expected it to be completely different over here on the other side of the ocean.

The four of you, in your wool dress blue uniforms walk through streets full of US sailors and lined with bars with big lighted signs, in English. You enter a bar Miller knows and all sit at a round table, a girl sits beside each of you.

"Kaseko, " your girl says when you ask her name. She looks down, her black hair cut in bangs over her eyebrows, a crooked half smile as your drinks are delivered. She takes a quick sip of her pink drink, then casually rest her hand on your thigh.

"To a great cruise, to these great girls, to us! " Miller's toast gets you all to click glasses and beer bottles.

"Oh! This is my favorite song!" Kaseko seems genuinely excited. "Do you dance?" She looks up at you hopefully. You say, "ok" getting up. She pulls you over to the very small dance floor in front of the jukebox and you two are the only ones dancing to the syrupy pop song. She shakes her hair and sings the Japanese lyrics making a pouty face, her bare arms high above her head, her legs carrying her through an unfamiliar dance pattern. You take one of her hands and lead her through some basic jitterbug dance moves you learned from your mother and practiced on the girls at high school dances.

"Hully Gully!" Kaseko calls out, slipping out of your grip, shaking her hips, her knees bending low, her skirt rising high, arms above her head in the dance.