Updated December 11, 2011

Author note:

I started this by participating in November's National Novel Writing Month (nanowrimo). I published several daily updates here in this blog during the month. I got lost in the last week of writing, temporarily losing my confidence, losing my voice. I began to write out of sequence and not completing three sections.

For this in-progress publishing, I've arranged the sections in chronological, narrative order marking gaps in the timeline with the symbols ( ... ). I've told about 25% of my intended story. I will add new writing to this post as I write it. I'm writing on mobile and even tho I know I can write directly into this post, I'm writing on Notes and pasting it into BBEdit and Google Docs when I get back to my desktop. I upload to this Posterous blogg. My intent is to fill in the gaps, finish the incomplete sections and continue the narrative, here, before shaping it into a proper novel for eBook and a Print On Demand publication.

I value early readers, please give me a response in comments. I'll provide notification of updates thru Twitter, Google+ and Facebook.

New section added, "Duke of Earl"

New section started, "Margo"

New section added, "Refueling at Sea"

New section added, "Sattahip"

New section started, "Saigon"

Citizen Sailor

You arrive at the Transit Barracks, find a rack, introduce yourself to a fellow scared kid, he tells you to put the contents of your sea bag in the floor locker at the head of the bunk bed. You change from dress whites into dungarees.

You both find the Mess Hall on the map, plan a route and walk to it. As in basic training, you get a tray, go in line along the steam table accepting whatever bland looking food is served up.

You and your new buddy sit across from each other at a long table in the loud room filled with chattering, eating, dungareed sailors.

Looking around snatching bits of conversation you don't see any one you really need to know or watch out for, you plan to avoid them all, if you can.

Your new buddy talks, you talk back, trying not to say too much.

 

Hurry up and wait, that was what you do at this base. A Petty Officer tells you to move fast to another location, when you get there, a Petty Officer there tells you to get in line. The days pass this way. Lining up for medical checks, shots, various affronts and assaults - work assignments.

One bit of work is tearing apart cardboard boxes with another random guy, stacking them flat. Another assignment is standing by a mess cook who is deep frying frozen breaded cubed steaks until they show a little color and dumping them out on a sheet pan that is slid into a cabinet. You are there in case the cook needs something.

"Stay back," he says. "Take a smoke break," he gestures to a side room.

You join a few others there and lite up. Tarrington with a recessed tip. Fruity cigs. You decide to make your next pack Marlboros, you're not in the Drama Department anymore.

 

You like the stevedore work you frequently get assigned, accepting a box from the guy on one side of you, passing it to the guy on the other side of you, over and over. Scores of guys to unload trucks, stack boxes in a warehouse.

"Why do you use all these men to move this stuff?" A sailor asks the Chief.

"Why don't you get some conveyor belts or forklifts?" He continues.

"We've got the guys." the Chief answers good naturedly.

 

You get an assignment in the Commissary to carry groceries from check stand to customers' cars.

"I like this duty," you hear someone say. "All those fine ladies," he adds.

"Ah, man, you're going to try to score with some other Navyman's wife?" another voice accuses.

"Hey! Who's talking about scoring?" the first voice responds. "I'm just putting some groceries in their trunk," he adds.

"I'd like to put something else in them!" a third guy yucks.

"You guys got no morals," the second guy says. "how would like some salt cappin' on your lady while you're overseas?"

"Don't worry about it, farmboy. I ain't married and I'm not overseas" the first guy's illogic ends it.

You figure the first guy's bigger, you don't turn to see him. You're wondering how you ever get in this company and what will the ladies you'll be carrying groceries for will look like.

It's your turn to help, she's pretty and dark, has bright eyes. You load the last bag into her car, she hands you a dollar.

"Get yourself a beer tonight," she smiles.

You don't tell her that it will be three years until you're legal to drink, you say thanks.

 

In the barracks, you're laying on your rack reading Bertrand Russell. Your buddy from the first day notices, says he prefers Whitehead and you wonder why you can't be the only one who reads English philosophers. You have a rival and you don't like it.

After a painful discussion where you try to honor dear ol Bert, but mostly get slaughtered by your former buddy who has read all the Russell you have and all the Whitehead you haven't.

You think Tom was right, you should just get all your philosophy from fiction. As he put it, "if guy can't put together a story to demonstrate his philosophic insights, he doesn't understand them."

 

You get an evening off-base and go with your comrade to the Long Beach Pike.

Your parents took you to the Pike since you were little and since you became a teenager you've been going there on dates and in groups. You'd to ride that rickety old wooden roller coaster in the front seat after the time you and your Dad rode it in a middle seat and some "donkey" riding ahead of us threw a bottle into the forest of supports at bottom of the first hill, sprinkling your Dad with bits of glass smelling like booze.

Walking through the Pike in uniform is different now. The whole place seems ready to rip you off. You're an out of town sailor, even if you're local.

Some smeary-faced harpy asks if you want a date, you say no thanks.

You hear a couple of carnies call out from a baseball throwing concession, "take two throws for free." You take the throws and the Carny demanded payment, some argument, a witness collaborating their side and you pay. Your comrade mutters about beating the shit out of those guys and you suggest a return to base, read some English philosophers, stop walking around this world in sucker suits.

 

Your name's called, you collect your orders.

"Where you going?" your buddy asks.

"I don't know, where's it say?" you hand him your orders.

"USS White, an APD" he said, as if you knew what that is.

"Where you going?" you ask.

"Kearsarge, a carrier". You not only know what an aircraft carrier is, but you've heard that name from seeing it in harbor or from "Victory at Sea" or something.

"That's cool" you say.

 

Your orders give you seventy two hours to report to the ship about one hundred and fifty miles away. You go back home to Lakewood for two days, then you'll take the train down to the ship in San Diego.

You find the ship, tied to a pier among towering vessels. It's a little, junky looking clunker, lower than the pier, you have to walk down a gangplank carrying your seabag on your shoulder to get there. Salute, pass the orders to the officer on duty, they tell you where to go, through a hatch, down a passageway. Hunched over to keep the bag from hitting pipes in the overhead, you pass through the mess deck where a few old hands sit in television light.

"I'm going to fuck that!" a broad faced, ugly guy calls out looking at you with laughing eyes.

Into another passageway, down a ladder, you're led into a sleeping compartment filled with three high racks, you throw your bag on a top one, locking it to the support chain.

People talk to you, you wish they didn't. They tell you where to put things, where you're going to start out working, deck crew. They tell you to be careful with the Petty Officers, "Make one mistake, they'll remember it forever." Toby warns, you see sadness locked deep in his white, southern face. He sells you a knife, a straight sliver blade in a tan leather sheaf. The cool guys have folding knives.

 

First morning out on the foc'sle deck, a sad looking kid has two buckets and two swabs.

"Take this swab and bucket and start on starboard." You've been trained, but you feel embarrassed and don't want your hands in the cold water so you try wringing out the swab by holding it against the bucket rim with your foot, awkwardly squeezing by twisting.

"Don't let the Petty Officers see you doing it that way!" Your new mate says with no pleasure. "You've got to do it with your hands." You squeeze out the swab, spin the threads out flat on the deck and start swabbing like you've been trained to do. You actually like this work, you remember from Boot Camp, swabbing the big Mess Deck, it was fun, rhythmic. Swabbing this little ship's deck, not as much fun, not enough room to get full swings going.

As you learn the job, you find you like polishing brass. It's crazy to have brass exposed to sea air so it needs polishing everyday, but rubbing the fittings and fixtures with a Brasso-soaked rag and polishing it with a dry cloth is satisfying. You think about the big yacht you'd like to have, how it would be cool to polish the brass everyday on your own boat. A morning ritual. You look forward to the day.

 

You've learned the ropes enough to know how to change out of uniform into civilian clothes at a downtown locker establishment when on liberty. You wander around San Diego city streets not wanting to take busses anywhere because you don't think there's any place interesting for you to go for an evening. It's all about passing time. You go to movies, you watch "Divorce, Italian Style" twice, you love Marcello's comic line near the end, "But, what about my honor?" even though you only understand it through subtitles.

You eat Cheeseburgers and Pizza, you have a little money, you sit alone. You walk all the Downtown streets, not wanting to talk to anyone, be with anyone. You stay out until midnight, then bus back to the base.

 

Up early dressed in dungarees, out on the deck swabbing and polishing before breakfast. The chow line, eggs, meat, toast, coffee. People talk all around you, you don't offer much, you want them to leave you alone so you want to appear self-possessed, you don't want them to get curious.

You think you've made a big mistake by joining the Navy. You don't want to be with these guys, they're not like your crowd in High School. With Tom and Bob you had two years of building things together, produced plays. You had hundreds of hours of sitting after rehearsals smoking, drinking coffee at Harvey's Broiler with Mr. Miles. Heroic conversations about the productions, about theater in general, movies, art, literature. You remember Bob and you, Carol and Cher getting falling down drunk singing along to Jimmie Reed records.

You had earned a Varsity Letter in Cross Country then quit athletics to do Drama Department fulltime. You wore the Letterman's Jacket to give asshole jocks less reason to bother you.

You slipped in next to the Football team captain quarterback in the Letterman's Club Group photo for the Senior Yearbook. The guy was pissed, but didn't say or do anything. You never considered going to a Letterman's Club meeting, that would be the last place you'd expect to find friends.

So, now, here you are cooped up in a tin-can ship with one hundred and fifty guys that make the Letterman's Club look human.

They have you painting the deck and bulkheads during the day, you have yourself walking around San Diego in civvies at night.

Thirty guys sleeping in the compartment with you. Old, crusty salts, young, dumb, everybody in between but no one as young as you. Or as pretty.

 

The ship, goes out to sea for a few days, practicing, checking systems, getting ready for a six month cruise across the Pacific to Asian ports. As part of the deck crew, your duty station when underway is lookout, standing for four hours on the side wings of the Bridge with binoculars.

"Keep a sharp eye out," the Officer On Deck said firmly, "report anything you see that's not water, make your reports load and clear," he went on, "I don't want to miss it," he concluded.

You hope there won't be anything to report, you don't want to have to make a report. You scan the horizon, you enjoy being out at sea. Similar to trips you made from Newport Harbor to Catalina on your Uncle's yacht, when you're beyond the sight of land, you could be anywhere on the ocean. You have always loved the ocean, being out on a boat or being in the surf or along the shore, the rhythm of the swells, the wind waves, the straight horizon holding the clear dome of sky. When you've been out on the sea, as you are now, you've enjoyed the land slipping from view, you've felt released from social pressure, you've felt truly yourself. Now you're here, beyond the sight of land, you can feel yourself coming alive, becoming your true self, until the Officer talks to you, you're scared, back in the social hell of this tiny ship full of Navy nonsense. They tell you what to do, how to do it, hurry you up, expect you to be interested in them, in the Navy way, in getting along and showing crew member pride, a can-do spirit. They want you to care about the ship and you can only care about the ocean, the sky and keeping away from social danger.

 

You dread using the toilet, usually four or five other guys sitting on pots close together, shitting, farting, wiping, watching you do all these things. You use concentration, like you learned in acting class, focus on the action, ignore the audience.

 

Out at sea again, several days this time, training runs practicing the procedures your ship is designed to perform. Your ship cruises in formation with other ships, run evasive courses, throw depth charges over the side, come up close to a tender for a refueling at sea. Your ship carries four big speedboat-type personnel landers, the main duty of the USS White is to deliver advance specialists to a beach, river or harbor. When on duty, it will carry Navy Underwater Demolition Teams and Marine Reconnaissance teams, land them in to do their work, pick them up again.

After a few days out, you, naked, enter the shower compartment, you jump with fear when the wide guy from the first night, the one who said he was going to fuck you is in there. His body is wide like a refrigerator you can't help but to look at his cock and it's wide like every other part of him. He passes a soapy hand along side it and you look up. He's leering at you with misaligned eyes and a mangled toothed smile. You turn away from him, turn on a shower, put your face into the water.

"Mack!" someone shouts. You turn your face from the water and you recognize the shouter as Sanderson. "What the fuck?" he shouts angrily.

You turn to see the wide cock red, engorged and coming at you.

"Leave that kid alone!" Sanderson was angry. Mack, the wide one, turns to face the shower, puts his head in the water and shouts "I can't take a shower with that!" meaning you. You look at Sanderson and he gestures for you to come away. "Why don't you take your shower another time." He says, paternally.

 

Back in port, you hitchhike from outside the base heading to town. Nice looking man, nice car picks you up and you chat as he drives into town. He says flatly, "Most Americans don't know anything about making love." You don't answer back, you're nearing your stop.

"Only Europeans have proper respect for the beauty of sex and know what real love making is."

"You can drop me off here, thanks," He's pulling the car over. You have your hand on the door handle. As he stops the car he leans over with his hand on your knee and says, "Wouldn't you like to talk a while longer? I know some things you really should want to know."

"No thanks." you step out the door.

"Are you sure?" he says through the open window. You walk, his car follows along for a ways, then drives off.

You're still in your dress uniform, walking towards the lockers to change. The rhythm of your walk makes your dick flop around and as you're thinking about it, you get hard and have a boner poking sideways in your pants. It's a city street, there's people around. You turn towards the building to hide from people passing by and there's people inside looking at you. You are panicking, you have no bag or a jacket, you've got nothing but your white sailor hat to cover your inappropriate bulge. You find a wall to lean against, hold your hat strategically and think dull thoughts until your erection goes away.

In civilian jeans you don't have the swinging rhythm problem, you're calm. You eat, you watch a couple of movies, you eat again. You walk the streets. You wonder how you can get out of the Navy. You want to run away, but you don't want to them to chase you.

You think you could just live on the beach, walk up the coast, slowly. You remember the plan you fantasized in Boot Camp the summer between your Junior and Senior year of High School. It was also in San Diego, on the bay. You had planned to jump the fence at night, get in the water with the out-going tide, swim until you were out by the end of Point Loma, hide in the rocks on the ocean side. Head up the coast a little each night, stay quietly around the beach by day. Eventually get up to Big Sur, get lost in one those canyons, hide out - Isha in the Coastal Redwoods. You spent a lot of time thinking about it that Summer. But, you didn't jump the fence, you made it through the training.

You went back for one last year of High School and now, weeks after graduation, you're in the Navy for real. You, the talented artist, the production designer, the surfer, the jazz aficionado, in the fucking Navy.

"It's no good" you tell yourself while walking the streets, no good at all. You can't let yourself go through this. You got to find a way to get out.

You look at the traffic, the cars streaming by, close to the curb. The trucks, the busses with those big wide tires, that would be final. Do you want to die? You ask yourself. Or do you just want to be out of the Navy? Could you throw yourself in front of a car? Get hurt but not killed? Be out of the Navy because of the injury, but still have a life? You look at the cars, visualizing falling off the curb in their paths. You can't quite see yourself doing that. You can't pick the moment to leap, you can't pick the right location, the right car.

You figure reporting suicide thoughts might be enough to get out or at least start the process. You ask to see a Chaplain. You get permission and leave the ship in your work clothes, find the Chaplain's office. He invites you in, tells you to leave the door open and he greets passing people with raised eyebrows and a head toss as you report that you want to kill yourself.

"What do you think will happen if you do?" He asks.

"I'll wake up in a hospital," you answer honestly.

That seems to be enough for him, he makes a note, signs a paper, holds it for you to take, tells you to give it to your ship's Medical Officer and return to duty.

 

Your Boatswain's Mate 2nd Class Petty Officer, Junior, who you've been working with and who's shown himself to be a good guy tells you that while you were gone, Operations has been looking for you.

You have no idea what that means and assume it's bad, but Junior gets you clear.

"Operations Department, up on the Bridge, wants to offer you a transfere."

"Where?"

"Up to their department. They're impressed with your test scores, they think you're smart or something," he smiles, leans close in your face, "they think you're too good for the Deck Crew, they want you to go up to see them so they can blow smoke up your ass about being a Quartermaster."

"Should I do that?" you're confused and would glad to hear his advice.

"Well, you've got to go see them, they sent for you, but you don't have to take the transfer."

You go up the ladder to the wheelhouse, step through the back hatch up on the bridge deck. You report to the First Class Petty Officer of Operations, Murphy, he introduces you to Churbuck, the Second Class.

"You'd be working with him," Murphy juts his jaw towards Churbuck. He looks intelligent. You haven't said it, but you're thinking yes.

With your new assignment, you move sleeping compartments, move into the middle of the ship, a big compartment, a maze of three-high racks over foot lockers. Seventy guys sleep here. You have a choice and you take a top rack again.

"You better not be a bed wetter, I'm sleeping under you." You barely look at him. You empty your seabag into the locker and leave. Up the ladder.

Duke of Earl

Marcus Earl, a flamboyant drag queen of a sailor comes into the compartment as you are packing your clothes in your assigned foot locker. His processed hair held tight to his head with a red bandana and his newly clear polished long shapely fingernails waving in the air to dry, he's enthusiastically singing falsetto along with the radio's pop song, "Sherry! Sherry, baby!" You are surprised that he or anyone takes that kind of music serious enough to sing, but as he turns his back to you, the custom black ink design on the oversize chambray shirt he wears long tail out says it all, "Earl, Duke of Earl, Harlem." New Yorkers enjoy mainstream music, you figure, something about the triumphalism that comes over those from the world's leading city. His quick tour of the Operation Division's sleeping compartment was probably to take a look at you and to parade his outrageousness. He could never go on deck dressed like that. He returns to the Engineering Division's sleeping compartment

 

You try to find some place to be on the ship when you're off duty. Someplace where you're not in anyone's way and people don't question why you're there.

Between meals, you sit in the Mess deck at whatever table is empty, you write letters to Karen, your girlfriend in Sacramento. Your romance has not been smooth, lately. You both just graduated from your respective High Schools. She's staying there to go to Sac State in the Fall and you're here on Active Duty for two years, not much connection. You had kept it romantic for two years. You and she exchanged frequent letters, long letters, fun, playful letters full of elaborate declarations of undying love. The momentum of the correspondence kept you both high, so much so that when you did get together - for a few days at Easter, a couple of times in the Summer, Thanksgiving, New Year - you flowed in a blissful mist, together like dance partners, in all your planned and spontaneous activities. The last visit, though, in Sacramento, her friends got you on a ouija board, four peoples' hands on the controller and they asked if you had been faithful to Karen and it slid immediately over to "no", before you could send it the other way to "yes".

You had at least two girlfriends at school all the time you were writing Karen. You met her in a Sierra Summer resort in between your Sophomore and Junior year. You did love her and only toyed with the emotions of the others. But there's a lot of hanging out and date time you spent with girls from school, who you didn't love. You tried to make it better with letters to Karen.

 

You're suppose to learn signaling with flags and with Morse Code on light for your new job as Quartermaster Striker, you're suppose to study a Correspondence Course preparing to move up to Third Class. The thing with the flags seems interesting, but the light, the flashing light in dot dash code - that you knew you're not going to get. And study the Quartermaster book on off hours? No.

Churbuck taught you a few things, taking azimuths, correcting carts, how to record and code a weather report. These are the chores of being a Quartermaster. You learn reluctantly and perform the calculations poorly. You correct the charts ok, so Churbuck has you in the Chart House most of the time after the swabbing's been done and if there's no chipping or painting project underway.

You paint neatly around the buttons and levers on the communication boxes in the pilot house, so any painting work goes first to you, instead of to Funke, the Signalman Striker, the only other raw Seaman in Operations.

Funke is shorter than you, from Minnesota, his torso and thighs swell his dungarees. He's more interested in talking Country and Western music than Jazz, he'll listen to anything on the radio. He can sing "Folsom Prison Blues", you can't. He doesn't take the Joseph Conrad books from the ship's library, you do.

One night on Liberty, you take Funke to some of your favorite haunts downtown San Diego, you eat Cheeseburgers watch movies and eat pizza. He has a good time, but would rather stay aboard ship or on Base the next night.

 

Churbuck is different. He's has a rebel attitude, he reads books. You question his choice of joining Regular Navy where he is required to serve four years active duty. He could've done like you and sign up for Navy Reserve and only serve two years active. He says he didn't want to cheat himself of experiences and when he does something he does it all the way. He's good natured about it, but thinks you are a pussy for only going half way into the Navy. You both have six year enlistments counting the two years Reserve time he'll do after Active. You did your first year of Reserve time while you were in High School, now when you finish the two year active, you'll have three more years to be in Reserves. You think it's a better deal, one weekend a month or one night a week is better than fulltime all the time. You joined up because you didn't want to wait to be drafted, you wanted a choice of when you go in. You look forward to having the complete military obligation over and be able to get on your life with no more bullshit required of you. Churbuck says he joined up for the experience and feels good about his choice, he has about eighteen months left.

You both get copies of "Tropic of Cancer" because protests against it being banned in libraries are in the news and you decide it would be good for you to know what the fuss is about. You both assume the book banners are prudes and the book is a masterpiece. Henry Miller's extravagant writing is more philosophical than you expect, less pornographic than Churbuck had hoped. You talk about it and the conversations go on through changing situations, continuing through the daily work, you sit together at mess, you go out in town together. You're not legal to drink, Churbuck leaves you at a restaurant and goes to a bar. You head back to the ship, the next day, he tells you he spent the night with a girl.

 

On a weekend pass, you take a train to Fullerton and hitch hike to Lakewood, meet up with Bob. He has had his own house since the middle of Senior year. His parents are a lot more accommodating than yours. He makes tea, talking about how English he feels now, also about how college life is good. He joined a fraternity, he doesn't live in the frat house, but he goes to parties there. They invite girls from a nearby nursing school.

"They jump on healthy bodies." He boasts, sounding more more like a typical jock, frat boy than you've ever heard him.

Bob is smart, smaller than you. You've been pals for a couple of years.

"Can we do something with Carol and Cher? Are they still around?" you ask.

You had a girlfriend, Carol, since ninth grade. She went to a different school, but lived near by. When you started liking her best friend, Cher, more than her, she started seeing Bob. The four of you went places together, movies, dances, beach parties.

Cher has a pool. Her parents are not home, you swim naked. Carol got naked, but Cher, who is embarrassed of her thick thighs and big breasts, stayed dressed except when Carol pulled clothes off her. Cher shrieked, "Don't look at me!" Cher would scream, "look at Carol!"

Carol is thin, long bony legs, a big bush and boy breasts. Cher's breasts are full and big nippled. Carol pokes them, Cher jumps with embarrassment and covers up. Bob keeps on his shorts.

You four lay poolside, you naked on your back in full sun. Cher worrying that her parents would come home or that neighbor boys were peaking through the fence laid beside you. From the other side, Carol leaned over brushing your thighs with her long pony tail hair saying, "don't move, I'm not going to touch you".

You respond to the whisper touch, getting hard, she pokes Cher, "Look what's happening to your boyfriend! What are you going to do about it, girl?"

"Carol, leave him alone!" Cher admonishes.

"You going to suck it?" Carol was being mean.

"No! You know I don't do that. Stop being weird." Cher was final.

Cher hovers over your face, kissing you on the mouth, her breasts touching your chest. You roll to your side, stick your dick between her thighs, against her panties.

Carol slaps your butt and says in her mean-girl voice, "You going to fuck?"

"No!" Cher shrieks.

To you, she says, "Be nice."

"Come on Bobby" Carol says. Let's show them how it's done!"

"Carol, no!" Cher pleads as Carol has her hands in Bob's shorts, pulling out his crooked dick, briefly putting her mouth near it, then laying back, legs spread, "Come on, Bobby, stick it to me!"

"Carol, no!" Cher's adamant. "Don't do that here!" "Go away, if you're going to do that!"

"So you can be alone to fuck your boyfriend?" Carol taunts her, as Bob comes down on her, Carol wiggles away and stands up, pulling Bob to his feet, shorts around his ankles.

"Come on, lover. Let's leave them alone, let's fuck in her bed." Carol pulls Bob towards the house, Bob's got a boner and he's pulling up his shorts with his one free hand.

"Don't you dare, you cunt!" Cher gets up, holding her bra to her breasts.

"Seriously." Bob is reasonable. "We are NOT going to do that. Carol, stop teasing." They've stopped at the patio.

"Let's go somewhere. Seal Beach? McDonald's?" Bob wants to end all the nonsense.

You slip in the pool, swim underwater for a length, swim the crawl back on the surface, lift yourself out of the water and dry off with facing Carol and Bob who are already half-dressed.

 

At sea, your normal job while on watch is on the writing in the log. You're in the pilot house with three guys from the deck crew, two Seamen to alternate on the wheel and a Boatswain's Mate Third Class to be in charge. You sit on a high stool at a chart desk in the pilot house, by the open hatch to the Bridge. When the Officer On Deck leans and shouts orders, you record it in a notebook, mark the time. The record you're keeping is the first draft of the Ship's Log that the Executive Officer maintains each day.

Four hours on watch, eight hours off. There's meals and sleeping, but also other work, cleaning mostly, some chart correcting if the seas aren't tossing the ship too much.

The ship is in General Quarters when going in and out of harbors, refueling at sea, any maneuvers with other ships or engagement with real or imagined enemies. You stay on duty as long as GQ lasts. Your GQ job is the same, taking notes.

The boss of Operations, the First Class Signalman, Murphy, takes the helm for GQ. He's taking rudder and compass orders from a harbor pilot who got onboard before the ship shoved off for your six month Western Pacific Cruise. Murphy grunts and wheezes as he whirls the wheel around back and forth putting on the rudder changes, you write down scores of orders like, "port 5 degree rudder", "steady on 041", "starboard 3 degrees". Each order, Murphy repeats and adds an "Aye, Sir", So it's constant call response.

"Starboard 10 degree."

"Starboard 10 degree, Aye, Sir."

"Steady on 358."

"Steady on 358, Aye Sir."

Almost an hour of this to get to harbor mouth. The pilot leaves on a tug and the USS White passes Point Loma and heads out for a seven day steam across open ocean to Hawaii.

You've often stood on the Pacific shore in California, searching the ocean horizon for signs of what lies beyond, feeling relief that the whole continent is behind you. Now you're going beyond, California is slipping from view behind you. You feel more excitement than dread for the long journey. The little ship plunges forward into the tossing waves under the sky dome.

The ship's motion is tiring, fully loaded and with four big landing boats on high davits, it rolls and pitches up, pauses, goes nose first into a few swells, some of them send shockwaves and shudders through the ship. Below decks, it's maddening, being bounced into hatches and bulkheads, grabbing pipes to keep your balance, hitting your head on them when you get bounced into zero gravity.

Going through the chow line in all that motion is a chore, steam table water floats lightly loaded inserts, it seems the deck is always wet and slippery when you've got a full tray and ship is bucking. You hang on to your tray and the table while you eat, braced for people falling into you.

Below decks the motion gives you headaches, you feel close to nauseous all the time. Up on the open Bridge or even in the Pilot House with all its portholes you see the horizon, you see the swells, you are less surprised by the motion, much less nauseous. But it is hard work standing, holding grips and fittings. The high stool for the log desk must usually be kept secure, lashed under the desk.

 

On your watches, when nothing's going on you're all just riding the motion together, the helm is the only guy working. He spins the heavy wheel with both hands, spin it to the right and he gets Starboard rudder, spin to the left and he gets Port rudder.

Underway at sea, at cruising speed, the ship needs to be actively steered. Watching a large compass in front of the wheel, the Helmsman keeps the ship headed in the correct direction by counteracting the wave motion - putting on Starboard rudder to reverse a swing to port and Starboard rudder to stop a Port drift, continually spinning the wheel back and forth, calculating how much rudder and in which direction is needed at each moment to keep the ship close to the heading.

You trade for as much time on the wheel as they'll give up. You love the game of staying on course in the unruly swells and waves. The big, weighted wheel requires several revolutions to apply a degree of rudder. Underway in calm seas, you swing ten degrees of rudder on one side then the other to keep the ship headed straight.

Watching the gyro-mounted compass, it seems the ship is turning around it. You focus on the mark showing the numerical read of the ship's heading. You spin the wheel, read on a brass gauge the degrees of the rudder. You apply rudder on one side, hold it for a few seconds, watching the drift, spin the wheel the other way to take off the rudder. The ship heaves and rocks, you anticipate swerves in the ship's head, block the drift with the rudder. Underway at sea, you are expected stay within three degrees on each side of the course. You challenge yourself by keeping it within one degree each side of the course. It often takes fancy spinning.

"Why are you working so hard?" a Boatswain asks?

"I want to get good at this," you reply.

You lose concentration, put rudder on in the wrong direction, the ship sways ten degrees off course before you can correct it.

"Get back on course." The deck officer is leaning in the hatch. It's the nervous one.

"Let go, I'm taking the wheel!" the Boatswain who let you relieve him was angry.

"What's the matter with you? You've been good, then all of a sudden, you're ten degrees off and the Deck Officer is yelling at us."

You have no response. You let him take the wheel. You retreat to the log desk.

"I'll pull my own watch," the Boatswain says.

"Fine," you say to yourself, determined to relieve another Boatswain on the helm next watch.

 

Off hours, you're reading Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge" You want a mystical experience, you want to understand ultimate reality. While you read, you dream of climbing mountains to reach a guru, to meditate in a cave.

You search the ship for a private spot. Not your rack, not the Head, mess decks, or any of the passageways. Out on deck there's always people around and watching, although all the way aft on the fantail you can stand outside at the rail if you have a few swabs to clean, it's a standard practice. You bring out two swabs from the Bridge. You tie strong knot around the base of the heads, a series of half-hitches up the handles, tie the long lines to the rail and throw the swabs overboard. You smoke while the ship drags the swabs through the roaring white water of the screw churn. After you've lingered over a couple of cigarettes, you haul in the swabs, now brilliant white, the cleanest swabs you've ever seen.

 

You approach the Hawaiian Islands on your 20 to 24:00 watch. When you're relieved, the seas are calm, the night air is soft, comforting. There's a big moon up in front of the ropey, thickness of the star curtain. On the far starboard aft horizon you can see the silhouette of the big island, ahead is Maui, you're on course for a gunnery range on Molokai. Tomorrow, the ship will be blowing the hell out of one of it's hillsides, training. Now you've slowed way down, not wanting to arrive at the off-shore artillery firing range before dawn.

The ship glides through the the moon bedazzled water, threading the islands. You want to soak up the moment. You sneak out on the foc'sle, hoping you can stay above deck in the glorious night. You know they could see you, if they look, you're hoping they won't.

You move out to the bow, to the narrow eyes of the ship. You stand like the Jack staff, your arms behind you on the railing on each side, rise to your toes, arch your back, lift your head into the sky. You feel apart of the ship. At the slow speed in calm water, you slide quietly through the warm night air. Below and behind you at water level the bow is smoothly slicing the water, you gaze up into the live sky, feel the gorgeous sparkling clouds of stars connect to you. Specks of light blue color fill in between the stars and coalesce into glowing fuzzy light that seems to enter your skin. The night turns bright blue, the stars become yellow and red, tiny green flecks of light project from your body dancing between you and the light sky. A electrical charge starts in your toes and travels up your legs and spine out to your arms, up your neck bursting out the top of your head and showering you with warm pink vibrating light, you're tingling all over. In front of your eyes your skin becomes an expanding membrane until you are looking at the inside of your face dissolving into the luminous air. You're filled with warmth, you see yourself and the cosmos melding into vibrating loops of unearthly electric blue in a sea of hot orange space. You understand the nature of particles, you breath deep into the living space within and without you.

 

Just after sunrise the ship is sitting just off a short beach with a steep hill behind.

At General Quarters you're on the log, Churbuck's on the helm.

"Make sure you get every command," Churbuck turns from the wheel to warn you," there's going to be a lot to write."

You tell him you'll do fine. "Trade with me, if you're worried about it."

"There's nothing to the helm when we're sitting still," he says.

"But I'll stand there" you push, "and you sit back here" meaning at the log desk, where you're sitting.

Churbuck likes the idea, doesn't report the change in stations, he's writing down in the log and you have both your hands on the wheel when the first "Fire" command is given. The gun's report shocks you. You've got ear plugs in and over-the-ear protection and yet the bright sound hurts, ten times louder than you expected, deafening. The little ship violently shakes with the recoil.

Several more shots from the big gun rip the atmosphere, distant thuds mark the delivery of heavy shells. You think about ancient catapults, hurling boulders over castle walls, how that improved with gun powder cannons about five hundred years ago and little has advanced since then.

Two air bursts are fired. You feel the brutal gun's assault, then hear a loud, yet more distant blast a hundred feet above the beach. Horrible sulphur smell lingers.

They fire each of the two anti aircraft guns, very tiring, painful sound from them, too. Now the machine guns are fired, they too are louder than you expect, but the sound and rhythm is familiar from movies.

Churbuck's writing in the log notebook, when rudder and engine speed commands are given. A Boatswain orders the speed responding and adding the "Aye, Sir." You repeat the rudder command adding your "Aye, Sir," while you put on the rudder and the ship is moving. You're on the wheel during GQ. You turn to Churbuck, he looks up from writing and says "You can stay there until you fuck up."

Your ship joins several others in your squadron. You've seen a few of them along the way from San Diego, you've understood there are about a dozen total who crossed with you, though most of them kept beyond the horizon, you had, at times, cruised in a formation of four or five. At four hundred feet in length, your ship is the smallest in the squadron and also sits the lowest in the water, The fantails of the other ships tower above, yours is only about ten feet above the waves. Often, when you've been out on the after deck while cruising in normal seas, you look up at the swells. You marvel that this hollow metal ship can steam at flank speed through swells like moving mountains.

 

Oahu is beyond the night horizon as your squadron sits within sight of each other. Some merchant ships are also there, farther out. All are waiting for our appointments to enter Pearl Harbor.

You see the message, you'll going in at first light. When it's all done, the pilot let on and Churbuck on the wheel, the tugs maneuver the ship into a berth and the crew gets it all tied up, it was mid-afternoon. You have duty, you must stay aboard, while others go into town to shake off seven days at sea.

You are determined to get off the ship early the next day, you confirm that you can have liberty from 8am to midnight. You study the transit maps, you see which bus to take on the base, which bus off base to get to Waikiki, you want to go surfing, at least in the morning, you don't know what else there is to do there but you figure you can get a decent cheeseburger and a movie and some pizza, Hawaiian pizza with the pineapple!

 

As planned, you rented a board at the Waikiki Public Beach,walk out waist deep, you flop the board in the comfortable water and pull yourself laying down to the center of the board, then up on your knees to paddle in the familiar way. You paddle out over wave after wave, dodging incoming boards and out-rigger canoes with a big native steersmen in the front with sharp bladed paddles they wave at you when you come too close to their load of life-jacketed tourists.

Once you get all the way outside, past the last rideable swell, you rest, straddle your board, leaning on your hands. It's a long way out at Waikiki. Seeing the break at Waikiki, you can understand how board surfing was invented here. At this beach even small boats can surf. The waves don't actually break here. The fast moving swells get to a peak and start to curl over, but never break, they continue looking like they're almost ready to break all the way, it seems like a quarter mile, all the way in. If you want to you could ride the dwindling wave into water so shallow, your skag would hit sand.

It's a gloriously easy beach to surf. You take a few quarter-mile rides, you then decide to kick out after a short ride, stay outside where's there's less riders and no tourist canoes. You're entertained by catching one gentle swell after another. Not very challenging surf, but fun.

You take one last long ride all the way in, return the board go into locker room to change.

In the fresh water shower, you take off your trunks washing out the sand from around the waistband, you wring the water out of the trunks turning away from the water, you see a non-threatening guy also in the locker room.

Shower water off, you dry yourself with the towel you brought and are about to find your boxers, "hey could I borrow your towel?" the guy asks.

"Sure." handing the towel to him, he smiles and looks you up and down, smiles bigger, you feel the warmth radiating from you as you put on your boxers and the rest of your required short sleeve, long pant white uniform.

"I didn't think you were old enough to be a sailor." the guy, naked gives you back the towel.

"I'm eighteen" you say, putting the towel and trunks in your "AWOL" bag.

You've got your shoes on, your hat in your hand and he's got his pants on.

"Do you want to get some lunch?" he asks.

You're hungry and you're game, you think it would be nice to someone more civilized than your shipmates.

"Sure." You give a smile of encouragement.

He ties your gym bag to the rear light on his Moped, you straddle the seat behind him.

"Hold on." he says. "Seriously! Hold on to me. We don't want to lose you."

As he says, you put your hands around his belly, holding each other more than him and he drives into traffic, a risky left turn and some twists through residential housing, he pulls under a car port.

"Here we are!" he's buoyant, "In the wilds of Khanahanamakisomething." you couldn't follow all the syllables in the Hawaiian name. It looked like a regular housing tract, like you're used to in California.

Inside, his house, in the kitchen he's smiling.

"Did you really want lunch or were you just saying that."

You felt accused, "I want lunch."

"Tell you what, you go in there," he said gesturing to a living room with a couch, "take off your shoes and anything else you want to get perfectly comfortable, I'll make a couple of sandwiches and bring them there, most skoshi." He uses the Navy-Japanese slang.

You know for sure he's queer, but you don't know exactly what he wants from you. His suggestion that you might do more than loosen your collar made you think that you could do something fun, you could take off all your clothes, be lounging naked when he comes in. You've got your shoes off, you stand and pull your shirt out of your waistband and unbutton it, sit down, stand up, take your outer shirt off leaving the clean white tee shirt. You sit back down, take your socks off. At the end of the couch you do your best to sit casually. As he comes in, you become embarrassed about your naked feet, pull one under you pushing the other out under a coffee table.

He's at the other end of the couch, sits holding a small plate and a big sandwich in each hand, swooping them down on a coffee table.

"Eat up. I actually realized I was hungry when I was making these. So, thank you, I probably would've missed lunch today."

You both are taking big tearing bites of the wonder bread, bologna, mayonnaise sandwiches, chewing with full cheeks.

"I don't have any beer, would you mind terribly if I poured wine?"

"Wine is fine." you say.

Sandwich gone, some wine left in the glass, you stretch the leg you had been sitting on. He repositions to face you and puts his near leg on the couch too.

You don't like his foot, you're not going to touch his foot or anything.

He grabs your ankle with both his hands, pulls you towards him, his hands massage your calf, his foot is in your crotch, toes pushing the zipper against your dick, pain. You twist get your other leg on the couch and push his foot away, lay back and he's up your leg got a hand in your crotch, holding your nuts and your curved penis, pushing and squeezing, hurting, you jump in pain. He lets go, Comes up with both hands outlining your parts through your pants, stroking nicely, finding the tip of your cock, tickling, you get big, he's opened your belt, buttons and zipper.

You cock stands, he holds your nut sack warm in his hand and he licks the good side of your cock. You shiver repeatedly, in waves, as he brings you to the point of cuming and stops. Again and again until you're shuddering and shaking.

You cry, "you bastard! Let me cum."

He stays with you, his full mouth hot around your raw cock, you cum with great leg kicking spasms. Your heart racing, your breath panting.

He turns you over, he's got his fingers up your butt, he's got his face in your ass crack, his warm tongue up your hole.

He pulls your hips so your knees are up, he's on his knees pushing his hard cock against you. Pain, he spits on his cock, hot pain again, you wrench yourself away, he pulls more, your legs go outside his, he with his fingers leading the way for his prick, he pushes, searing pain makes you fight against his grip. You're free. He's sticking you with fingers, you're squeezing down mean, he pulls his fingers out,

"Maybe you're not ready to do this now. Are you afraid?" he asks, his breath is heavy. He moves his body away, pulls your legs down. He strokes your rear, kindly. You relax, lay flat, your face in a pillow.

He straddles you at your hips, his cock and balls on and in your butt crack. You lie motionless while he squeezes your butt cheeks around him and begins a rocking motion, soothing until it becomes urgent. Several jerks, some yelping affirmations, you feel splattering hot cum on your back.

You and he pull on clothes, you feel disheveled and disoriented, your bag's still tied on to the scooter. You mount up and buzz off.

As you stand on the sidewalk near the locker room where you met, he hands you a paper slip saying "Here, take my number, please, call me, I'll take you around Diamond Head, to beaches where we can be naked."

You get some food, you see two movies, you eat again and bus back to the ship.

 

"Keep this confidential," Murphy, the Senior First Class is saying to the whole Operations Division, "there's a National emergency involving Cuba, our squadron has been diverted to the Caribbean. Except us. We're continuing on our WestPac cruise without them."

"No liberty, for now." He's done.

Murphy, the Signalman, catches light coming from one of the other nearby ships. He grabs the signal light, has it on and flapping in seconds. You see the other light without catching any meaning. He says,"you take it, it's a striker wanting to practice. Take it!". You pretend to operate it, Funke is there, he takes it, Murphy's walking away.

 

The second day, the nearby ships shove off. The third, you're on the log again, Churbuck's on the helm, taking the pilot's orders, heading out of Pearl Harbor. You understand the crossing to Japan will be fourteen days, twice as long as the trip from California to Hawaii,

You chart the course to Midway, where the World War II naval battle proved the Japanese had lost the war on the first day, when they didn't find the U.S. Aircraft Carriers in port December seventh, forty one. Because they survived, U.S. Naval air power won the Naval battles throughout the long hard fight across the Pacific, starting at Midway, you knew this from "Victory at Sea".

 

Inside the reef, Midway Island looks like a half empty trailer park sitting on a desert mirage.

When Funke points out Dodo birds, you see them through binoculars, something odd about their shape. They do not fly.

 

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 would your painter brush keep up with the speed of color changes? You would mix a lot of the colors before hand, hold a fresh brush in hand, start with a big canvas lashed to the rail, put the paint where 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 proper 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, 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 Yokosuka, 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 seem disappointedly familiar, to you, like those in California. Is this place going to be wonderfully foreign or boring?

"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 high priced drinks with no alcohol, she's 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 with crowds of other sailors and Marines through streets 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.

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 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 are in the foreign land, now. You enjoy listening to her strange language in the familiar 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 your head up with your hands, she presses her face against the side of yours. You feel grateful 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, noisily 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'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.

Just then, 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 and writing him up."

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, the 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 says 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. You work like hell to keep the ship to within one degree of variance from the heading. You work up a sweat doing 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 settle for 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 don't go ashore at Okinawa. Churbuck's on the helm entering the harbor at Okinawa, you don't go ashore. Exiting the harbor, Churbuck on the wheel again.

 

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.

On watch with the log, you overhear the Captain and the XO discussing the typhoon and our course straight towards it.

"We still have time to chart a course through the straight, put the island between us and the storm." the Executive Office, who is the Chief Navigator, states.

"We don't know the storm's track", the Captain responds. "It could pass over Taiwan, they've done it before, then we'd get hit there and blown into China." he adds. "We'll hope for the storm to dissipate before we get there."

"We don't want to chance getting into any part of a typhoon, Captain, we'll loose our boats in typhoon wind." the XO presses.

"It doesn't seem likely that we'll catch much of the wind, we probably will hit big seas, though," the Captain is thoughtful, "let's check with Fleet Command, see if they want us to wait it out in Taipei."

You don't hear more of that conversation, but as you go about the ship, you hear many discussions about ships in typhoons. You hear about World War II's Typhoon Cobra, the year you were born, eleven Navy ships sunk, seven hundred sailors lost, a DE about the same size as this ship had its mast and radio antennas ripped off in the hundred mile an hour wind, was out of touch for a week.

"A carrier had its flight deck rolled back like a sardine can," one salt said.

The typhoon you're concerned about has turned north after flattening Guam with one hundred eighty five mile per hour winds and is named Karen like your Sacramento girl friend.

Evidently Fleet Command didn't okay a course through the Formosa Straight nor did they direct the USS White to port in Taipei, the course marked on the chart was still straight south passing well east of Taiwan.

The weather is clear, the bow pushes straight into moderate swells for two days.

 

Clear of Taiwan, reports of Typhoon Karen are that its winds are lower, but still over a hundred and she's still moving north. You're seeing bigger seas, luckily not a lot of wind. You're at the helm when the bow rises high over an oncoming swell and descends under the next two. The view out the pilot house of water rushing over the foc'sle, wrapping around the big gun turret, splashing up to your port holes is like clips of submerging submarines on the "Victory At Sea".

This is real, you're getting bounced around enough for you to know your not thirteen and back in South Gate laying on the living room carpet watching television. This is the West Pacific ocean and it seems your ship is heading under as much water as it is going over.

You can keep yourself upright with both hands on the wheel but the others on watch with you are getting knocked around quite a bit.

The Boatswain you took the wheel from wants it back after he slipped down the bulkhead to the deck. The Officer On Deck calls in a small course correction to head the ship more exactly into the swells. The Boatswain gives the "aye, sir!" and you let him take the helm. You have hard time logging the order while hanging on to the desk, you need both hands, the motion is so violent.

 

Your watch over, climbing below to the mess deck you're looking for a safe place to go. It seems every surface is dangers, the overhead, bulkheads and the deck are all taking turns striking you with sudden, surprising blows, you need to brace yourself in all directions. Movement through passageways is slow.

Pena, a small Engineer second class with twelve years in, is trying to go the other way, but falls and slides under you, knocking you both against the outer bulkhead that seems to have switched positions with the deck, momentarily.

"Christ!" Pena lets out hissing, "if this gets any worse, we're going to have to strap ourselves in."

As you and he are struggling to get upright when you're thrown to the opposite side, a terrific shuddering makes you bounce off the deck.

When you get to your rack you climb up into it, the ship's sudden drop, puts your head against the overhead pipes.

It's hard to stay in the bed, you grip the frame, the ship convulses. The ship heaves and bucks, you continue to hold tight to the tubular frame with both hands. The ship convulses and you trust the support chains to block your roll off the top rack if your grip loosens.

 

Churbuck gave you the helm on the first part of his watch as you begin a long approach to Hong Kong. The swells are long and low, coming off the bow on the port side. You have port rudder on slightly as a default, jabs of starboard rudder regularly, when it starts falling off.

When we pick up the Harbor Pilot, Churbuck gets back on the helm. You're on the log. The Captain and the XO on the Bridge. You can't go out of the Pilot House. You're passing islands just off China and you can only see through portholes. You think, "next time."

 

Victoria Harbor is filled with vessels of all types, huge cargo ships, tiny junks and every size and type in between including other military ships, some from other countries. Your ship moors in the middle, you'll do the resupplying and get ashore on boats.

You and Churbuck are in dress blues, on the Fantail, ready for liberty. You get permission, do your salutes, climb over the side, down a short ladder to a water taxi that delivers you several shipmates across to the main dock across the harbor.

You're going with Churbuck to a floating restaurant he knows. You board another watertaxi with him and you're out on the silky, sunset colored water. The restaurant is brightly outlined with red lights. You step to the dock, enter a wooden gate, are greeted by the hosts, escorted to a dock where you overlook several pens in the water, a worker with a long-handled net, scoops up a big, flapping red snapper, holding it in a spotlight so Churbuck can approve it. He does and with a sweeping toss with the net, the fish slides onto a metal table where a kitchen worker takes it inside.

In the dining room the two of you have a large round table and a waiter for yourselves. You have drinks, appetizers and the big fish comes out steaming on a platter. The waiter serves you portions of the fish, some noodles and vegetables. You refuse offers of a fork, insisting that you learn how to eat with the fat, square ended Chinese sticks. You don't do well at all, struggling for an hour without getting much of the meal in your mouth.

 

You'll be in port five days and you learn that many of the married guys and others routinely save money by not taking liberty in Hong Kong. They're afraid of the pleasures, goods and trinkets for sale there and don't go ashore. You got other men to take your watches and you can take liberty from 0800 to midnight all five days.

You go with Churbuck to a tailor. You get measured, pick designs, material for a suit and a sport coat and slacks. You draw a design for a suit with high buttoned, lapel-less jacket, thin legged pants and choose a near-black, charcoal serge for it. Orders placed, Churbuck tells you that he's going to lay low for the rest of the days here in Hong Kong, he'll come back to pick up his suits, but other than that, he'll stay on the ship.

"When we get to Subic, they'll be plenty of time for drinking and whoring. I don't like being over in Hong Kong that much. You'll be on your own for the rest of the time here." he says.

"I want liberty. I don't want to stay on the ship," you tell him, feeling absolute about it.

"Like I say," he says, "you'll be on your own, then."

You're thinking of what you're going to do, he adds another thought, "let's go to Suzie Wong's first."

 

It's a bar with hostesses, a girl for each of you. You all sit and other girls bring your drink orders. Your girl is older, you don't think she's attractive. You see a few younger girls dancing with each other. One looks particularly cute to you.

"You like the cherry girl?" your hostess asks, a little too forcefully. "You can have her, if she likes you" she adds.

You don't know how any of this works, you sense your girl isn't pleased, but you don't know why you should care about her, you didn't choose her.

"I'll ask her to dance" you announce. As you approach the dance floor, the girls, led by the one you like leave the floor. You don't think you should follow them into the dark recesses of the club, so you return to the booth where your hostess takes your face in her hands and with pouty, mock babytalk tone, she says "oh, the cherry girl didn't want to dance with you?"

"I don't know, she left before I could ask her" you say.

Another round of drinks. Your hostess sees your eyes searching the room for the young girl and says, "If you want to dance with cherry girl, I can bring her over here and she will dance with you."

That sounds good to you, so you tell her, "okay".

The hostess gets up, straightens her tight skirt and disappears into the shadows, reappearing a moment later with the young girl you like.

The older hostess introduces the young girl to you and you ask her to dance. The cherry girl is gorgeous, but she's unhappy, she keeps her eyes lowered while dancing listlessly. You ask her what is wrong, she becomes more unhappy, backs away from you.

One of the other young girls explains that the one you're trying to dance with doesn't speak English and is afraid of the your hostess, afraid that she will hurt her if you she dances with her.

You're thinking you can't have fun in this bar, you ask Churbuck to leave with you, "let's find another bar".

That's fine with him. You start to leave and the hostess puts your arm around her neck, wraps her arm around your waist and walks you out the door. Churbuck and his hostess walk out into the evening sidewalk also. Your hostess stops and faces you, puts her two arms around your neck and pulls you down in a kiss.

"First kiss" she says, resisting as you pull away.

"Goodbye" you say.

 

08:00, you're excited to be going ashore on your own. In the water taxi, Holloway, a Radioman striker asks what you are going to do. "No schedule" you say "just take a look at the city, see what I can find".

"I'd go with you" he says "but Morgan here needs to get a tailor made suit" gesturing to a skinny red-haired Seaman you've seen around, "I'm going to take him to the place where I ordered mine yesterday."

You like Holloway, his Maine backwoods friendliness is comforting, but you're relieved to not be caught in his constant conversation all day. You want to be away from the Navy.

Crossing the harbor, you're seeing more of the surroundings than you had before. You now see the makeshift, shanty town on the hills behind the east end of the city.

From the taxi dock, you walk towards the city center, Victoria, where the oldest and tallest buildings are. The streets you walk have a lot of car traffic, not many pedestrians, the stores are opening for the day's business. You don't see busses or streetcars, so you walk, wondering if you can cover all the streets in Hong Kong in the four days remaining.

Some of the store fronts you pass are inviting, with enough English signage to make their business clear to you. Some storefronts are more Chinese and appear opaque to you.

As you approach the blocks with larger buildings, the sidewalks become filled with fast walking, well-dressed people. Most are Chinese, but many are European, possibly American looking, a few are Indian and African, some men with turbans on their heads, some in long colorful robes dotting a sea of dark coats.

You pause at a corner tea shop with a mixture of Chinese and Europeans sitting at small tables inside. You have your Hong Kong money, you feel flush with the exchange rate of five HK dollars for one US dollar. You enter the shop, ask for coffee and you point to a pastry that looks familiar.

"Please, sit down, I'll bring it to you" the Chinese counter waiter says in clear English. You find an empty table with two chairs, You put your heavy Pea Coat on one and sit in the other. The air in the small cafe is full of tobacco smoke and there's a glass ashtray on the table, so you light a cigarette. Your coffee and pastry arrives. You sip, and smoke, peering out the window at the passing pedestrian parade.

You think of San Francisco, from your one trip there when you were fifteen, how you sat in a similar corner cafe there with your sister and parents, how excited you were to be in the urban downtown. You think of Hemingway writing at a cafe table in Paris, you remember the paintings you've made of imaginary Parisan Cafe scenes. Forgetting that you're in Navy uniform, you picture yourself a bohemian artist. You should be sketching. You should have a notebook. You decide to take that mission, to find a notebook and a pen, so you can sketch and take notes of your observations.

 

Walking the streets of the central city, you find a pocket-sized notebook in a stationary store. You try a few ink cartridge fountain pens, settle for a ballpoint pen.

Consulting a map, you see you're not far from the Peak Tram. Taking it to the top of the mountain behind the city will give you an overview, so you can better plan your exploration.

The tram is well built, the incline steep, the ride smooth, the view instructive, Hong Kong is a grown up city, solid construction, good roads, careful landscaping with mature trees, trimmed bushes and gardens.

It's November, overcast and cold with mist around the buildings.

From the top, the dense city below looks stable and quiet. You are drawn to the more erratic patterns of the shanty town you had seen earlier on the hills at, what you now see is the far east end of the city. You make a note to explore that area.

"The Western Pacific covers all but the peaks of this mountain range on the east coast of China" you write in your new notebook. You turn it sideways and sketch an outline drawing of the harbor and the mountains behind Kowloon.

 

Returning on the tram downhill to the central city you find a British style restaurant, buy yourself a big meal with your cheap dollars and linger at the comfortable table sketching your left hand with your right.

You're walking busy streets in an international crowd, evening is coming, the car traffic is snarled and you notice that many of the cars are Mercedes with uniformed drivers and tinted rear side windows. Many of the women are in fur coats, there is an formal glamour to the most of the pedestrians.

You go in a movie theater playing Fellini's "8 1/2". You are ushered to a side seat in the rear of a full house. The movie is in progress, Claudia Cardinale's luminous face is drifting across a darkened screen. You've seen it before, you know the power of this film is not in the meaning of the spoken words. The screen's a mess with English, Cantonese and Mandarin subtitles.

You move to a seat down front as the audience clears out during the end credits, you stay for the next showing, proud to be able to see "8 1/2" another one and a half times.

You're walking out of the central city following a crowded avenue lined with big and brightly lit retail stores full of furniture, clothing, Chinese antiques, kitchen appliances, cameras, small radios and big television sets. You've walked many blocks, you find a noodle shop, you sit at a counter and are served a hot bowl. You think of Kaseko slurping as you struggle with getting noodles in your mouth with the chopsticks. Encouraged by watching the other patrons, you pick up the bowl and drink the soup.

Quite satisfied with your day and evening, you find your way back to the water taxi and to the ship, planning your next day, planning to go straight to the hillside shanty town.

 

It's a cold morning in Hong Kong, you're wearing long johns and a turtleneck sweater under your dress blues and pea coat and you've put on gloves as you cross the gray harbor water to the dock at North Point.

From this distance, the shanties seem scattered across the dark hills beyond the city buildings. You plan your route straight through the city streets and up into the heart of the shanties.

Crossing the first of several main avenues, you head into crowded side street. You are head and shoulders taller than the all-Chinese crowd moving slowly through the street lined on both sides with cheaply constructed tables with assortments of shriveled vegetables, dried seafood, canned foods and a few clothes, blankets and bolts of flimsy cloth. Under some tables you see gaunt Grandparents and children huddled. Behind the standing and often stamping in the freezing cold adult sellers, you see bedding and you realize that many of these people are living here on this street or they, at least, got there early to secure a marketing spot.

You reach the next avenue crossing and the contrast between the well dressed prosperous looking people on the avenue and the shabby, seem-to-be-starving people in the side street couldn't be more stark.

Luxury cars fill generous avenues, the narrow cross streets are packed with the poor and their desperate markets.

It's like that through the next few blocks. You walk with the thick crowd. You don't see many transactions taking place. You are not comfortable enough to buy anything. You are a tourist passing through, observing without understanding. Who are these people? Why are they in the street? Why is so little for sale and so many people passing through?

After a few more blocks the market ends, the crowd thins, the street starts uphill. There are small groups manufacturing outdoors. Workers pounding thin copper sheets into bowl shapes, heating metal rods and bending them into sharp angels. In front of an open shed, workers are wrapping bent bamboo with wicker, joining shapes into chairs. In other open shelters, painters are decorating pottery.

Climbing farther, the street is no longer paved nor straight. You follow a well worn wandering path up past tent-sized wooden and corrugated metal houses. Through an open door of one impossibly small house, you see a family group at a table, holding bowls at their chins and eating rapidly with circular chopstick gestures. The father looks squarely at you, unsmiling. You wonder why you, a stranger passing by, can see the family so easily? He's probably wondering the same thing.

There are houses or shelters interlocked with each other in various arrangements, as you continue through twists and turns to up the hill. There are people in every structure and there's steady foot traffic up and down the hill. Many people are carrying water uphill in open buckets tied to bamboo poles over their shoulders. Some paths traverse the contour of the hill. You take one east for a ways and then go father uphill. A thin man is tying two sticks together with string, some children are wrapped in blankets by a tiny coal fire.

You are high up the hill about level with the highest shelters, with few people walking, you pause, remove your gloves and pea coat, although it is still cold enough to make your breath visible. You look over the improvised neighborhood with its uneven lines of odd shape roofs, rising trails of smoke from cooking and heating fires, the standard city below, the harbor beyond and Kowloon beyond that. Like the panorama from the Peak Tram yesterday, except with makeshift housing in the foreground instead of solid prosperous buildings and you're standing on muddy dirt instead of clean concrete.

You fish out your notebook, your pen and you write, "Humans expand into available space, planting the seeds of future cities", turn the notebook sideways and sketch the shanty roof lines and the city view below.

(...)

 

Margo

One late afternoon in Olongapo, Churbuck introduces you to a pretty, Anglo featured, brown skinned women, Margo. She smiles and says, "So, this is the friend you've talked about, Lewis. Yes, he's quite young," she looks you in the eye and adds, "quite cute, too."

You look her up and down, her brown eyes with turquoise eye shade, her black hair, coifed in the style popular among the women in L.A., her peach colored, ruffled, knee length party dress, her gold and black earrings, bracelet and a small, shiny, black, heart-shaped stone pedant suspended by a fine gold chain around her lovely neck resting just above a hint of breast cleavage at her dress's neckline, only the too-high heels of her shiny black shoes hint at her profession.

Margo, says, "Yes, I will meet you later here," indicating the club behind her, "I can take care of you, if you like." She takes both your hands and reaches up with her lips, kissing you on the check, smiles and walks to her job, turning back and the doorway, smiles again.

Churbuck says, "She usually only goes with Officers. She agreed to take you because you're cherry-boy-san."

"Well, that's not completely true," you object.

"Listen, buddy, you're cherry if anyone ever knew cherry," he looks at you seriously, "if you don't want to stay that way, come back here about eight and ask for Margo."

 

You are not sure whether you should thank him for setting you up or you should be insulted that he thinks you can't do it for yourself. Margo is very pretty and you decide, "Thanks, man, I'll see her."

"Don't get drunk before then, stay away from other girls. I shouldn't be leaving you alone, but I've got my own fish to fry." Churbuck, shakes your hand, walks up the street.

You don't know where to go, every storefront along this block is a bar with hostesses standing in doorways. You take a Jeepney back towards the base. Tipping the driver, you get out on the last block of town, before the base. On a side street, you pay a second visit to a Christian reading room, you feel safe, euphoric, as you greet the smiling, nodding couple, you explain you'd like to read in their library, you identify a soft chair by a window as where you'd like to sit.

"Of course." The lady smiles, "It would be a blessing if you would join us for for supper at five."

You find the least religious book in their library, a geography book on the "holy lands". In the chair, you gaze at the pages, thinking of Margo. You explore all the issues around her expectations and Churbuck's - what does he expect to happen? You turn a page.

You accept the supper invite, sit a long table with the couple and four other sailors in whites. At the head, the man leads a prayer, "Amen" you mutter barely audible. You face the thin, beef vegetable soup in a broad white china bowl, with manners, you finish the bowl, taking it off its underlying plate, setting it aside to signal you are ready for the main course.

"Let's all thank Maria for the delicious soup" the man says and you join in with "yes, delicious" almost audibly. You realize there is no main course and that you've just insulted your hosts.

 

You get out of the yellow and purple jeepney mid-block, with some others, into the loud, drunken, neon reflecting street. You check the bar time at the first place you pass. You're on time for meeting Margo. You have to be on your way back at eleven to be sure you're on the ship by midnight.

The club has a high ceiling circular open floor filled with circular tables.

You ask the host for Margo.

"Yes, please sit here," he says, directing you to a table on the periphery. You order your drink and they bring Margo's tall pink drink with it.

Margo comes from across the room, sits excitedly across from you, her brown face shaped like the pretty women in your family, her black hair styled, like the blond girls in you neighborhood, holding her drink between both her hands, she touches the straw with her smiling peach colored lips on the straw and says, "stay here, I'm still working one more hour tonight. I will be back to sit with you. We will leave together in an hour, please stay here." She sweeps through the tables, her skirt brushing other men across the room. She sits at a table with two men and another girl.

Another drink order, they refresh Margo's and she's back. Touching her drink straw to her lips, smiling, "where are you from?"

"Los Angeles" you say.

"You are a Beach Boy?" She shakes her earrings and hairdo, her eyes shine, her face soft and lovely as Karen's, your true love.

"Yes, I surf, but I don't live at the beach and I don't like the Beach Boys' music."

"Give me your hands", Margo says reaching her hands across the table. You hold hers.

"I will show you how to be nice to a woman you love" she guides your hand to touch the inside of her wrist with your finger tips, she moves it in small circular motions, closes her eyes, smiles and sighs. She lifts your hand to her lips "I'll be back. Soon will be our time."

 

You leave through the front door with her. She asks you to buy her a corsage from a flower vender on the sidewalk. You buy a white one and pin it on the strap of her dress she holds for you. She places your hand around her shoulder and she leans her head on your arm while you walk together around a corner. Mid block she leads you up a flight of stairs outside a garage. On the balcony, she unlocks her door, swings it open grabs your neck, "pick me up. Carry me across the threshold."

She's light, her dress is stiff, you hold her under her knees, her arms around your neck she giggles, kicking her legs, pointing her toes.

Inside is one room with a couch, a canopy bed with pink netting, a bathtub behind a pink shower curtain, a kitchen sink, stove, refrigerator in the corner, a table, two chairs.

As you step in, she kicks off her shoes, swings the door shut behind you. "Okay, let me down now" she instructs. As you set her upright on the floor, she kisses you, her arms around your neck, your hands on her thin waist. She twists her mouth and presses against you. You feel a stir.

She laughs and lifts her skirt for an instant, you see a flash of her thighs then she straightens it out with her hands.

Pointing to a low stool, she says, "Sit there and take off your shoes". She moves through the room like a lyrical dancer, comes to you, reaches for your hand and has you stand.

Quickly, she turns her back to you, "Please, unzip me." You zip down, the peeling peach dress reveals her dark back and a pink bra, which she unfastens herself.

"Thank you" she turns to face you smiling, holding her dress up to her breasts.

"I want us to take a bath together, if you don't mind," looking kindly at you. You choke on words to express your lack of objection.

"Are you nervous about being naked with me?" She's holding the front of her dress up with one hand and with the other pulling back the bath curtain at the tub, turning on the water.

With her back to you, she lowers the unzipped dress, steps out of it wearing only pink silk panties, she is beautifully shaped with clear, brown skin, she walks to the closet, leans in, hangs up the dress, pulls a pink robe around her as she turns towards you. You see her naked breasts for an instant as she closes the robe over them.

"The toilet is in that door, you should probably use it." she points.

You piss a fast stream into her standard American toilet, careful not to splash. The room has no sink inside. You flush, zip up, step out to the kitchen sink to wash your hands. She is sitting on a wooden chair beside the tub, fingers in the water.

Margo returns from the toilet, wrapped in her robe, opens the shower curtain and turns off the water running in the tub. Holding her robe closed, she smiles at you, "when you get undressed before a lady, the first thing you take off is your socks."

You do.

"Now, your outer shirt."

You turn to the side and unbutton the short sleeve white uniform shirt.

"Now, face me. Take off your undershirt, slowly."

With crossed arms, you pull the bottom of your tee shirt up from the bottom.

"Slowly," she giggles.

 

(...)

 

Refueling at Sea

The ship is steaming down the South China Sea from your West Pac homeport in Subic Bay, Philippines.

You've been out at sea for a couple of days, GQ has been called, Churbuck is standing by while you're on the helm for a re-fueling-at-sea training exercise. You're keeping your ship's heading within a one degree swing each side of the course. The ship is rocking through low swells at a slow, steady speed, strong enough for it to react to rudder, but slow enough to require you to spin the heavy wheel back and forth applying ten to twenty degrees of rudder to catch an off course drift. You're working hard, working scared as you see, when you dare look away from the compass, that your tiny ship is approaching the starboard stern of a towering Tender underway in open seas.

You are terrified of a miscue. If you put on too much rudder or keep rudder on too long, you could send your ship into collision with the Tender. You're spinning the wheel hard, stopping it abruptly, spinning hard back the other way, over and over, keeping the ship to within a half degree swing each side of the course. As the Tender adjusts to your speed you are fully along side and you're given course changes of a half degree at a time.

You snap back loudly the "Aye, Sir!" responses to the XO's commands and report when new courses are achieved. As you feel your ship's swaying movements you feel the distance between you and the gray sides of the Tender in your peripheral view. Watching closely your heading, staying on top of ship's sway, you realize that the tender is swaying on one side or the other of the course, as well. If you let the ship sway port a half a degree when the helmsman on the tender allows his ship to drift a half degree starboard, there would be a whole degree of error and you could collide. You're watching the Tender's huge side through a forward porthole, while watching the compass and the rudder gauge. You hope you're feeling the drift correctly, reacting quickly enough to synchronize your ship's sway with the Tender's. You're reading the situation correctly.

You hold starboard rudder a little two long, you've put on a lot of port rudder to stop the swing, you watch in horror as it swings a degree beyond the range before it stops. You work like hell to keep it from swinging larger.

You realize the exercise is over. The lines, oil hoses, the booms and rigging, all the stuff you've never seen because you're here sweating to keep the ship going straight, it all has been deployed and brought back .

You get your first course change away from the Tender. A Boatswain rings the Engine Room for more speed, the XO steps through the hatch "Well done, everyone!" and as he turns to go down the ladder, looks straight at you and says, "Well done, Seaman".

From behind you Churbuck grouses, "beginners' luck." Murphy, the First Class, comes in from the bridge, "Good job, Churbuck." He disappears down the ladder.

 

(...)

 

The seas are heavier than they've been for a while they're coming from the port stern, each one rolling the ship starboard while tending to turn it port. Below in the quarters, there's a lot of movement, like a whip each time when the ship rights itself after being rolled too far.

You make your way to the bookcase that is the Ship's Library. You again lift the Joseph Conrad story collection over the rail that holds the books on the shelves. You take it to the mess deck to read. The ship is rolling quite a bit, you're getting nauseous looking at the pages, you take the book with you, out the forward hatch on the narrow deck walkway to the foc'sle. You stand there until you remember no ship's books are supposed to be taken out on deck where they might get lost overboard. "Fucking Navy!" you smile taking in the cloudy night sky, the dark sea.

You return the book to the shelf.

 

Sattahip

Your ship reaches Thailand, part of an exercise with the Thai Navy. You take helm orders from the harbor pilot going in at Satihip, without tugs, he brings the ship up to the dock.

Across the dock is a Thai Navy ship, a Destroyer, of sorts, less than half the length of your ship. On their foc'sle is a cook, stoking a fire under a metal barrel. "Fish heads and rice." Churbuck informs me. "Whose chow line do you want to get in? Theirs or ours?

It's evening, you're near the rear of a crowd of Thai military, a few with dependents sitting on the dock watching a Technicolor Western projected on the cloud gray sides of your ship. You feel a jungle atmosphere behind you .

 

Under the morning sun, seventy five Thai Reconnaissance Marines come aboard your ship. They set up hammocks in the large compartments under the after deck.

The Thai Marines keep to themselves in their compartment, except at chow time, when they eat with the crew. All seats full in the mess deck as you are holding your tray, against the rolling ship, looking to sit. A Thai gets up offering me the seat he's leaving at a table with three other Thais seated. You sit and notice the Thais exchanging eye contact. The one across from you asks your name. You tell him and he introduces himself and the other two, you don't hear their names well enough to repeat them, but you smile and nod to each. The one next to you leaves and a middle-aged Thai moves in from another table. Smiling, he says hello and pats your shoulder. "You age? What you age?" he asks. "Eighteen" you answer, inching away from him.

A quick exchange in Thai between the three. "What?" you ask sharply. The one across from you says, "very young." With a look he probably intends to be reassuring, it seems they are laughing at you.

"You in Navy, how long?" the one next to you asks with too big of a smile while touching your leg with his.

"A year and a half" you say, including your Reserve time so you seem more seasoned.

Another quick exchange in Thai between them and they laugh.

"You are movie star?" he asks, placing his hand on your shoulder. You turn to face him, he withdrawals his hand. "Please, excuse me" you say and leave. They talk angry Thai with each other. You grab that Conrad book out the bookcase and take it to your rack.

As you climb down the ladder into your sleeping compartment, Funke is sleeping uncovered, flat on his back, nearly naked, on a top rack under a bright light. His well-formed body is glistening with sweat, his cock is thick and barely curled under his twisted up jockey shorts. "Out of uniform!" you joke to yourself.

 

GQ is called. It's dawn. Churbuck has you on the wheel again, the XO is commanding as the ship slides through mirror smooth water in the Mekong River Delta. You see no other Navy ships, but many tiny Sampans and Junks. You're keeping an easy, steady course and have been told to be alert for sudden river currents that may throw you off.

You slow to nothing, the anchor is dropped, the ship swings around the chain, you are in flooding tide waters.

 

(...)

 

Saigon

The River Pilot on the Saigon River was wary of you. Murphy, the First Class, assured him that you are equal to the best. The pilot told him, "you better be standing by, then. The first sign of trouble, he's gone, do you understand?" Churbuck says, "Don't worry, Murph, I'll be here."

From behind you, you hear the Commander of the US Reconnaissance Marines, you've carried across the South China Sea to Vietnam talking to your XO, "They could attack from any of this jungle along here. We could have a couple of my men with M1s out here with the lookouts and we should have those machine guns manned and ready."

"Orders don't allow it." the XO was quiet and firm.

The pilot gives you commands at a steady clip, he tells you to line up the Jack staff with a post colored a bright international orange on the far bank of a curve in the river.

"Keep aligned on that."

"Hard thirty degrees starboard rudder!" the river pilot shouts.

You shout, "thirty degrees starboard rudder, aye, sir!" you shout back, spinning the big wheel, stopping it at thirty degrees.

The pilot leans in the hatch, "all right son, you'll need to stop it at zero three niner. Do that smartly!"

You watch the compass, at zero twenty you take off the starboard rudder, at zero thirty, you put on twenty degrees port rudder, the swing slows by zero thirty five, you slowly take off rudder until the ship reaches zero thirty nine degrees.

"Heading zero three niner, sir" you announce.

"Align with the middle buoy." the pilot instructs.

"Aligned with middle buoy, aye, sir." you use five to ten degree rudder on both sides to keep the buoy hidden behind the jack staff.

The river gets narrower around each bend, Churbuck relieves you on the helm after three hours. You don't trust him on the helm. You're carrying the logbook for writing down every command, you hover near him, watching the compass, the buoys, the markers, the river currents, ready to jump in if he makes a miscalculation.

After an hour, you take back the wheel as the river narrows and the pilot is sounding hoarse and exhausted.

Markers, buoys, headings, rudder degrees, at places the river seems narrow for the small ship, which, here, seems too big.

The pilot has you at zero rudder and no engine speed while two tugs bring the bow to the Saigon dock at a shallow angle, the boatswains throw a monkey fist on a thin line to the dock crew that hauls the hawser to them and loops it over a bollard and tie up. The tugs, river current and three more hawsers midship and aft.

 

You are in tropical, short sleeve whites as you salute your way off the ship, going, alone to an outdoor cafe you heard about near a roundabout at the end of the main Champs-Elysees-like broad avenue in the center of the very French Colonial city. You give the name to bicycle cab, you sit in front, in the shade of cloth top, the driver pedals in back. He's pushing you through crazy traffic, bicycles, scooters, small motorcycles, a few cars, a few water buffalo drawn carts and lots of pedestrian traffic crossing the street, mid-block, some walking in the street your way and some against you. Some people carried heavy loads with bamboo poles, some with large cloth covered bundles on their backs, some pushed or pulled loaded hand-carts. Some small groups of people standing, talking in the middle of traffic. All the men you see are dressed in black pajamas, the women in white ones with bright colored, long sleeved tops with flowing panels front and back. Most of the women and many of the men keep their faces shaded with broad rice-farmer hats.

Your driver peddles you into a side street where he pulls and stops at an empty curb.

"Where is the hotel?" you have stepped out to the sidewalk, the driver crouches in the shade of a small tree, shrugging his shoulders, not meeting your gaze.

"Why don't you take me where I asked?" He doesn't answer.

"How much to take me?" You pull out some bills, dongs. He waves you away.

It's a tree-lined street, with white two and three story buildings, that seem to be residential. There's little traffic and few pedestrians. A few other cycle rickshaws and drivers are up ahead. You walk the other way, the way you came, to the busy street.

You walk in the slow crowd on the sidewalk, past street vendors selling cooked food, fruit, nuts and flowers. The vendors are loud and aggressive with others, but, they don't reach out to you. Everyone seems to be Vietnamese. You see no Europeans or Americans walking. You are taller than everyone around you. The street comes to an roundabout, you follow around counter-clockwise, small motor bikes keep the air ringing with high-pitched squeals.

 

A large outdoor cafe is set off the sidewalk by a low fence, a lively mixed-nationality crowd is at umbrellaed tables. You enter, a host leads you to a table, you order beer, a waiter delivers a bottle, pours into a glass, you pay in dongs, light a cigarette, sip the beer and look around. The crowd is overwhelmingly middle-aged white men gesturing in conversation. The collective roar of the crowd masks the traffic noise. With you notebook and pen out, you sketch a few of the men who don't see you. You're aware in your periphery of some others noticing your sketching. You wish you had a book to read.

You leave the cafe, you walk in a light crowd down the broad avenue, you see a camera store, you buy a tiny camera. You didn't buy film, you'll get that later.

A large, modern steel and glass storefront carries the English name, "Abraham Lincoln Library". You enter the well-lighted space where a rich collection of books is held on blond wood shelving along the walls. From tables in the room's middle, a half dozen young Vietnamese who were huddled as you entered, nosily leave, glaring as they push past you and out the door.

"We want them to be here and read the materials we have here" a thin Vietnamese man wearing glasses says to you in unaccented English, "Most of the books are in Vietnamese, do you read Vietnamese?" he politely blocks your way farther into the library. "We don't actually want American service men here, you have your own libraries." You object to his thoroughness, but leave apologetically.

 

The sun is setting, vehicle lights are on as you carefully cross the street one lane at a time dodging bicycles, motorbikes, cars and peddle rickshaws. You return to the cafe, roaring and more full then before. You tell the host that you want dinner, he leads inside, to a dinning room table. You order Filet Mignon, soup, a salad, a glass of Cabernet. With the favorable exchange rate, you feel rich. The food is good, you don't know what kind of animal the steak is from, it isn't the shape you expect, but you can cut it and chew it, the taste is close enough to right.

You expect to pay in dongs, don't have enough when the waiter is collecting.

It's a cold morning in Hong Kong, you're wearing long johns and a turtleneck sweater under your dress blues and pea coat and you've put on gloves as you cross the gray harbor water to the dock at North Point.

From this distance, the shanties seem scattered across the dark hills beyond the city buildings. You plan your route straight through the city streets and up into the heart of the shanties.

Crossing the first of several main avenues, you head into crowded side street. You are head and shoulders taller than the all-Chinese crowd moving slowly through the street lined on both sides with cheaply constructed tables with assortments of shriveled vegetables, dried seafood, canned foods and a few clothes, blankets and bolts of flimsy cloth. Under some tables you see gaunt Grandparents and children huddled. Behind the standing and often stamping in the freezing cold adult sellers, you see bedding and you realize that many of these people are living here on this street or they, at least, got there early to secure a marketing spot.

You reach the next avenue crossing and the contrast between the well dressed prosperous looking people on the avenue and the shabby, seem-to-be-starving people in the side street couldn't be more stark.
Luxury cars fill generous avenues, the narrow cross streets are packed with the poor and their desperate markets.

It's like that through the next few blocks. You walk with the thick crowd. You don't see many transactions taking place. You are not comfortable enough to buy anything.  You are a tourist passing through, observing without understanding. Who are these people? Why are they in the street? Why is so little for sale and so many people passing through?

After a few more blocks the market ends, the crowd thins, the street starts uphill. There are small groups manufacturing outdoors. Workers pounding thin copper sheets into bowl shapes, heating metal rods and bending them into sharp angels. In front of an open shed, workers are wrapping bent bamboo with wicker, joining shapes into chairs.   In other open shelters, painters are decorating pottery.

Climbing farther, the street is no longer paved nor straight. You follow a well worn wandering path up past tent-sized wooden and corrugated metal houses. Through an open door of one impossibly small house, you see a family group at a table, holding bowls at their chins and eating rapidly with circular chopstick gestures. The father looks squarely at you, unsmiling. You wonder why you, a stranger passing by, can see the family so easily? He's probably wondering the same thing.

There are houses or shelters interlocked with each other in various arrangements, as you continue through twists and turns to up the hill. There are people in every structure and there's steady foot traffic up and down the hill. Many people are carrying water uphill in open buckets tied to bamboo poles over their shoulders.  Some paths traverse the contour of the hill.  You take one east for a ways and then go father uphill.  A thin man is tying two sticks together with string, some children are wrapped in blankets by a tiny coal fire.

You are high up the hill about level with the highest shelters, with few people walking, you pause, remove your gloves and pea coat, although it is still cold enough to make your breath visible. You look over the improvised neighborhood with its uneven lines of odd shape roofs, rising trails of smoke from cooking and heating fires, the standard city below, the harbor beyond and Kowloon beyond that. Like the panorama from the Peak Tram yesterday, except with makeshift housing in the foreground instead of solid prosperous buildings and you're standing on muddy dirt instead of clean concrete.

You fish out your notebook, your pen and you write, "Humans expand into available space, planting the seeds of future cities", turn the notebook sideways and sketch the shanty roof lines and the city view below.

08:00, you're excited to be going ashore on your own. In the water taxi, Holloway, a Radioman striker asks what you are going to do. "No schedule" you say "just take a look at the city, see what I can find".
"I'd go with you" he says "but Morgan here needs to get a tailor made suit" gesturing to a skinny red-haired Seaman you've seen around, "I'm going to take him to the place where I ordered mine yesterday."

You like Holloway, his Maine backwoods friendliness is comforting, but you're relieved to not be caught in his constant conversation all day. You want to be away from the Navy.

Crossing the harbor, you're seeing more of the surroundings than you had before. You now see the makeshift, shanty town on the hills behind the east end of the city.

From the taxi dock, you walk towards the city center, Victoria, where the oldest and tallest buildings are. The streets you walk have a lot of car traffic, not many pedestrians, the stores are opening up. You don't see busses or streetcars, so you walk, wondering if you can cover all the streets in Hong Kong in the four days remaining.

Some of the store fronts you pass are inviting, with enough English signage to make their business clear to you. Some storefronts are more Chinese and appear opaque to you.

As you approach the blocks with larger buildings, the sidewalks become filled with fast walking, well-dressed people. Most are Chinese, but many are European, possibly American looking, a few are Indian and African, some men with turbans on their heads, some in long colorful robes dotting a sea of dark coats.
You pause at a corner tea shop with a mixture of Chinese and Europeans sitting at small tables inside. You have your Hong Kong money, you feel flush with the exchange rate of five HK dollars for one US dollar. You enter the shop, ask for coffee and you point to a pastry that looks familiar.

"Please, sit down, I'll bring it to you" the Chinese counter waiter says in clear English. You find an empty table with two chairs, You put your heavy Pea Coat on one and sit in the other. The air in the small cafe is full of tobacco smoke and there's a glass ashtray on the table, so you light a cigarette. Your coffee and pastry arrives. You sip, and smoke, peering out the window at the passing pedestrian parade.

You think of San Francisco, from your one trip there when you were fifteen, how you sat in a similar corner cafe there with your sister and parents, how excited you were to be in the urban downtown. You think of sitting with Mr. Miles and your Drama Department buddies at a table inside at the drive-in. You think of Hemingway writing at a cafe table in Paris, you remember the paintings you've made of imaginary Parisan Cafe scenes. Forgetting that you're in Navy uniform, you picture yourself a bohemian artist. You should be sketching. You should have a notebook. You decide to take on the mission, to find a notebook and a pen, so you can sketch and take notes of your observations.

Walking the streets of the central  city, you find a pocket-sized notebook in  a stationary store.  You try a few ink cartridge fountain pens, settle for a ballpoint pen.

Consulting a map, you see you're not far from the Peak Tram. Taking it to the top of the mountain behind the city will give you an overview, so you can better plan your exploration.

The tram is well built, the incline steep, the ride smooth, the view instructive, Hong Kong is a grown up city, solid construction, good roads, careful landscaping with mature trees, trimmed bushes and gardens.

 It's November, overcast and cold with mist around the buildings.

From the top, the dense city below looks stable and quiet. You are drawn to the more erratic patterns of the shanty town you had seen earlier on the hills at, what you now see is the far east end of the city. You make a note to explore that area.

"The Western Pacific covers all but the peaks of this mountain range on the east coast of China" you write in your new notebook. You turn it sideways and sketch an outline drawing of the harbor and the mountains behind Kowloon.

Returning on the tram downhill to the central city you find a British style restaurant, buy yourself a big meal with your cheap dollars and linger at the comfortable table sketching your left hand with your right.

You're walking busy streets in an international crowd, evening is coming, the car traffic is snarled and you notice that many of the cars are Mercedes with uniformed drivers and tinted rear side windows. Many of the women are in fur coats, there is an formal glamour to the most of the pedestrians.

You go in a movie theater playing Fellini's 8 1/2. You are ushered to a side seat in the rear of a full house. The movie is in progress, Claudia Cardinale's luminous face is drifting across a darkened screen. You don't need the English and Cantonese subtitles, you seen it before, you know the power of this film is not in the meaning of the spoken words.

You move to a seat down front as the audience clears out during the end credits, you stay for the next showing, proud to be able to see 8 1/2 for two and a half times.

You're walking out of the central city following a crowded avenue lined with big and brightly lit retail stores full of furniture, clothing, Chinese antiques, kitchen appliances, cameras, small radios and big television sets. You've walked many blocks, you find a noodle shop, you sit at a counter and are served a hot bowl. You think of Kaseko slurping as you struggle with getting noodles in your mouth with the chopsticks. Encouraged by watching the other patrons, you pick up the bowl and drink the soup.

Quite satisfied with your day and evening, you find your way back to the water taxi and to the ship,  planning your next day, planning to go straight to the hillside shanty town.

The ship heaves and bucks, you hold the tubular frame with both hands. The ship convulses and you trust the support chains to block your roll off the top rack if your grip loosens.

Churbuck gave you the first part of his GQ watch as you begin a long approach to Hong Kong. The swells are long and low, coming off the bow on the port side. You have port rudder on slightly as a default, jabs of starboard rudder regularly, when it starts falling off.

When we pick up the Harbor Pilot, Churbuck gets back on the helm. You're on the log. The Captain and the XO on the Bridge. Because it's GQ, you can't go out of the Pilot House. You're passing islands just off China and you can only see through portholes. You think, "next time."

Victoria Harbour is filled with vessels of all types, huge cargo ships, tiny junks and every size and type in between including other military ships, some from other countries. Your ship moors in the middle, you'll do the resupplying and get ashore on boats.

You and Churbuck are in dress blues, on the Fantail, ready for liberty. You get permission, do your salutes, climb over the side, down a short ladder to a water taxi that delivers you several shipmates across to the main dock across the harbor.

You're going with Churbuck to a floating restaurant he knows. You board another watertaxi with him and your out on the silky, sunset colored water.  The restaurant is brightly outlined with red lights. You step to the dock, enter a wooden gate, are greeted by the hosts, escorted to a dock where you overlook several pens in the water, a worker with a long-handled net, scoops up a big, flapping red snapper, holding it in a spotlight so Churbuck can approve it. He does and with a sweeping toss with the net, the fish slides onto a metal table where a kitchen worker takes it inside.

In the dining room the two of you have a large round table and a waiter for yourselves. You have drinks, appetizers and the big fish comes out steaming on a platter. The waiter serves you portions of the fish, some noodles and vegetables. You refuse offers of a fork, insisting that you learn how to eat with the fat, square ended Chinese sticks. You don't do well at all, struggling for an hour without getting much of the meal in your mouth.

You'll be in port five days and you learn that many of the married guys and others routinely save money by not taking liberty in Hong Kong. They're afraid of the pleasures, goods and trinkets for sale there and don't go ashore. You got other men to take your watches and you can take liberty from 0800 to midnight all five days.

You go with Churbuck to a tailor. You get measured, pick designs, material  for a suit and a sport coat and slacks. You draw a design for a suit with high buttoned, lapel-less jacket, thin legged pants and choose a near-black, charcoal serge for it. Orders placed, Churbuck tells you that he's going to lay low for the rest of the days here in Hong Kong, he'll come back to pick up his suits, but other than that, he'll stay on the ship.

"When we get to Subic, they'll be plenty of time for drinking and whoring. I don't like being over in Hong Kong that much. You'll be on your own for the rest of the time here." he  says.

"I want liberty. I don't want to stay on the ship," you tell him, feeling absolute about it.

"Like I say," he says, "you'll be on your own, then."

You're thinking of what you're going to do, he adds another thought, "let's go to Suzie Wong's first."

It's a  bar with hostesses, a girl for each of you. You all sit and other girls bring your drink orders. Your girl is older, you don't think she's attractive. You see a few younger girls dancing with each other. One looks particularly cute to you.

"You like the cherry girl?" your hostess asks, a little too forcefully. "You can have her, if she likes you" she adds.
You don't know how any of this works, you sense your girl isn't pleased, but you don't know why you should care about her, you didn't choose her.
"I'll ask her to dance" you announce. As you approach  the dance floor, the girls, led by the one you like leave the floor. You don't think you should follow them into the dark recesses of the club, so you return to the booth where your hostess takes your face in her hands and with pouty, mock babytalk tone, she says "oh,    the cherry girl didn't want to dance with you?"

"I don't know, she left before I could ask her" you say.

Another round of drinks. Your hostess sees your eyes searching the room for the young girl and says, "If you want to dance with cherry girl, I can bring her over here and she will dance with you."

That sounds good to you, so you tell her, "OK".

The hostess gets up, straightens her tight skirt and disappears into the shadows, reappearing a moment later with the young girl you like.

The older hostess introduces the young girl to you and you ask her to dance. The cherry girl is gorgeous, but she's unhappy, she keeps her eyes lowered while dancing listlessly. You ask her what is wrong, she becomes more unhappy, backs away from you.

One of the other young girls explains that the one you're trying to dance with doesn't speak English and is afraid of the your hostess, afraid that she will hurt her if you she dances with her.

You're thinking that the only thing you can can't have fun in this bar, you ask Churbuck to leave with you, "let's find another bar".

That's fine with him. You start start to leave and the hostess puts your arm around her neck, wraps hers around your waist and walks you out the door. Churbuck and his hostess walk out into the evening sidewalk also. Your hostess stops and faces you, puts her two arms around your neck and pulls you down in a kiss.

"First kiss" she says, resisting as you pull away.

"Goodbye" you say.

On watch with the log, you overhear the Captain and the XO discussing the typhoon and our course straight towards it.
"We still have time to chart a course through the straight, put the island between us and the storm." the Executive Office, who is the Chief Navigator, states.

"We don't know the storm's track", the Captain responds. "It could pass over Taiwan, they've done it before, then we'd get hit there and blown into China." he adds. "We'll hope for the storm dissipates before we get there."

"We don't want to chance getting into any part of a typhoon, Captain, we'll loose our boats in typhoon wind." the XO presses.

"It doesn't seem likely that we'll catch much of the wind, we probably will hit big seas, though," the Captain is thoughtful, "let's check with Fleet Command, see if they want us to wait it out in Taipei."

You don't hear more of that conversation, but as you go about the ship, you hear many discussions about ships in typhoons. You hear about World War II's Typhoon Cobra, the year you were born, eleven Navy ships sunk, seven hundred sailors lost, a DE about the same size as this ship had its mast and radio antennas ripped off in the hundred mile an hour wind.

"A carrier had its flight deck rolled back like a sardine can," one salt said.

The typhoon you're concerned about has turned north after flattening Guam with one hundred eighty five mile per hour winds and is named Karen like your Sacramento girl friend.

Evidently Fleet Command didn't ok a course through the Formosa Straight nor did they direct the USS White to port in Taipei, the course marked on the chart was still straight south passing well east of Taiwan.

The weather is clear, the bow pushes straight into moderate swells for two days.

Clear of Taiwan, reports of Typhoon Karen are that its winds are lower, but still over a hundred, still moving north. You're seeing bigger seas, luckily not a lot of wind. You're at the helm when the bow rises high over an oncoming swell and descends under the next two. You marvel at the strange view out the pilot house of water rushing over the Focsul, wrapping around the big gun turret, splashing up to your port holes like clips of submarines submerging on the "Victory At Sea" TV show you liked to watch with your Dad.

This is real, you're getting bounced around enough for you to know your not thirteen and back in South Gate laying on the living room carpet watching television. This is the Weat Pacific ocean and it seems your ship is heading under as much water as it is going over.

You can keep yourself upright with both hands on the wheel but the others on watch with you are getting knocked around quite a bit.

The Boatswain you took the wheel from wants it back after he slipped down the bulkhead, landing on the deck.  The Officer On Deck calls in a small course correction to head the ship more exactly into the swells. The Boatswain gives the "aye, sir!" and you let him take the helm. You have hard time logging the order while hanging on to the desk, you need both hands, the motion is so violent.

Your watch over, climbing below to the mess deck you're looking for a safe place to go. It seems every surface is dangers, the overhead, bulkheads and the deck are all taking turns  striking you with sudden, surprising blows, you need to brace yourself in all directions. Movement through passageways is slow.

Pena, a small Engineer second class with twelve years in trying to go the other way falls and slides under you, knocking you both against the outer bulkhead that seems to have switched positions with the deck, momentarily.

"Christ!" Pena lets out hissing, "if this gets any worse, we're going to have to strap ourselves in."

As you and he are struggling to get upright when you're thrown to the opposite side, a terrific shuddering makes you bounce off the deck.

 When you get to your rack you climb up into, hitting your head on the overhead pipes above it.

It's even hard to stay in the bed, you grip the frame,  the ship convulses.