"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 of that ship 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 take the train down to the ship.

You find the ship, tied to a pier among towering vessels and 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 Native American-looking kid has two buckets and mops.

“Take this swab and water and you start on starboard.” You’ve been trained, but you feel embarrassed to be don’t feel like getting your hands in the cold water to wring out the mop, so you try 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 mop, 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 from the Native kid, you find you like polishing brass. It’s crazy to have brass exposed to sea are 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 boat you’d like to have someday, 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 wonder 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 to midnight, bus back to the dock after that.

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've made a big mistake, you don't want to be with these guys, they're not like your crowd in High School only a couple of months ago. Tom and Bob you had two years of building things together,  produced plays with, had hundreds of hours of sitting after rehearsals smoking, drinking coffee at Harvey's Broiler with Mr. Miles. Heroic conversations about our productions, about theater, movies, Art, Literature,

Bob and you, Carol and Cher getting falling down drunk singing along to Jimmie Reed records.

You had gotten a Varsity Letter in Crosscountry then quit athletics to do Drama Department fulltime. You wore the Letterman's Jacket to keep asshole jocks less reason to both . 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 had you painting the deck and bulkheads during the day, you had 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 was 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, "we don't want to be running into anything," he explained.

"Make your reports load and clear," he went on, "I don't want to miss it," he concluded.  You hoped there wouldn't be anything to report, you don't want to be saying anything to an officer. You scan the horizon, you dig being out at sea. Like going from Newport to Catalina on your Uncle's yaught, 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. Many hours growing up you've spent enjoying the feeling of the sea, if on shore, the thought that all the land mass and it's complications, it's problems, the people and how they've hurt you -- all behind you as you face the sea. 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 back in scared mode, 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 dreaded using the toilet, usually four or five other guys sitting on the pots close and open together, shitting, farting, wiping, watching you do all these things. You  try to use concentration, like you learned in acting class, stay in the moment, 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 do. In formation with other ships you cruise, 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 Seal and Marine Reconnaissance teams, land them in advance of a beach troop landing.

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 it.

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

I turn around and the wide cock was red, engorged, coming at me.

"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 man, nice car picks you up and you chat a little. As you near town, he says flatly, "Most Americans don't know anything about making love." You don't say anything, you're nearing your stop.
"Only Europeans have proper respect for the beauty of sex and know what real love making is."

"Is that right?" You say "you can drop me off here, thanks." He's pulling the car over you. You have your hand on the door handle.  As 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're out the door.

"Are you sure?" His car pulls slowly away.

You're still in your dress blues, 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 thirteen button 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  toward you. You are panicking  You're not carrying a 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.

Just live on the beach, walk up the coast, slowly. You remember the plan you had 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 wanted 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 that one that Summer. But, you didn't do it, you made it through the training. You were back for one last year of High School and now 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.