'A Sailor's Wife'

Every married man has one… some good, some bad, and some have an all-time great one by their side! Too… it’s been said there are two times a man doesn’t understand a woman… before marriage & after!! Now don’t let me put any misconceptions in your knucklehead nogg’ns… we’ve all got them too and every gauddamned one of them notions is different… just like your women!! I specifically remember a Chief once telling us…

"Boys & Genitals, we're gonna get underway for a while so you’d better get  home… take care of your wives and girlfriends and all their needs while you're away… ‘cause if they end up at the neighbor’s doorstep look’n for some sugar and get six inches of dick instead… you’re gonna be all kinds of fucked up! And I ain’t having none of that on my watch!!"

Well I ended up married to a gal homegrown in Bremerton, Washington… a sailor’s legacy as most of the town can attest! She’s a pretty little thing and has a mind of her own… not sure why she stuck it out with a fella like me all these years but here we are and there it is!!

How we met wasn’t exactly fairytale story material… wish I could say it was as romantic as sitt’n beneath a coconut palm tree with a ukulele watch’n a beautiful sunset overlooking the basking waves of Pacifica… but it was nothing of the sort!!!

You see, in my younger years I was the kind of ‘Crackerjack’ that used to sit in the local beer joint with all my shipmates swill’n suds and infusing sea stories of who’d been where with what and how many & that & the other assorted wornout bullshit while pinch’n big tittied barmaids on the butt!! Yes my friends… I’m proud to say I was a perverted heathen!!! 

I loved women… the chase, the thrill, the perfume smells… but eventually I’d realized if I didn’t stop going out everynight of the week I’d drink myself to death! So I got me a part time job at a beer joint while the ship was in the docks!!  And there my friends is where I met my young bride to be on her Twenty-First Birthday!!!

She came walk’n in with her perky busted breastesses being the first pleasurable thing I noticed as she asked her cousin…

“Who’s that guy?”

“Oh… that’s ‘Dennis Slut’ you want to stay away from him!”

Now I’ve been called many a name by women who loved me & hated me… but never been called a slut before! At least not to my face… still don’t know if that was supposed to be a compliment or an insult… just another difference between us men and women!! A couple fellas off the ship were hedging their bets on who’d get to take that young gal home that night… only to get turned down at every turn… I’d figured my chances weren’t good so I didn’t make any efforts on that particular night!!!

But young Crystal, my future wife, just couldn’t keep away! After several weeks had gone by and our humble establishment became her favorite watering hole on Friday & Saturday nights, it was inevitable we’d soon get to talking and one thing would lead to another and my boyish charm soon won her over!!!

A month went by… I’d moved my Seabag and few belongings I had into her apartment and voila… on a four day trip to ‘Treasure Island’ for aviation firefighting school I get the phone call…

“Sob… Sob… Dennis I’ve got something important when you get back…Sob… Sob!”

“What’s wrong? Why can’t you just tell me over the phone?”

“I’m pregnant…”

It was faster than a ‘Westside Story’ knife fight in a streetside phone booth!  Have you ever had one of them ‘Oh Shit’ moments when your whole life story changes in the flash of an eye?!? That was my moment…

You see I’d fully intended on leaving town in six months with the ship shifting colors to Alameda once it got out of the docks… but never intended on bringing a lil’ life into the mix, which brings up another saying I’d once heard…

‘A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband, while a man never worries about the future until he gets hitched…’

Now mind you we weren’t married yet, but were definitely on the way to making a family rather I was ready or not… and knowing… to do the right thing, I intended on making an honest woman of her… or her making an honest man outta me… truthfully!!!

So it was the beginning of a new way of life and the end of another! But I gotta say… I’d never in my wildest dreams realized the price of kids... my budget was like a fully compressed balloon fart’n its way out the window… and from there it became a matter of life and debt!! It was gett’n costly on meager Navy pay and she was shoot’n out kids like a ‘fast pitch’ machine at the batting cage… thought I was gonna have to break out the ol’ catcher’s mit!! And when you gotta litter the size I was handling with her nieces & nephews living at the house too… it was like herding cats!! We decided somewhere along the line to get married and that’s when all the mushy stuff stopped… with the honeymoon over life and marriage began to resemble the sitcom ‘Love & Marriage’!!!

 The late George Carlin said…

“I am’ is the shortest sentence in the English language… Could it be ‘I do’ is the longest sentence?”

No one who’s been married for a significant amount of time can argue the rollercoaster of tribulations you go through in the sanctity of matrimony… for better or worse?!? ‘No Shit Sherlock’… sure rings a bell! Next thing you know it’s sleeping on the guest bed or the couch with fingers pointing… bitching and complaining… accusations of infidelity and the whole kit-n-caboodle that goes along with the maturity of marriage!! I’m an asshole and she’s a bitch and that’s become our mutual nicknames over the years… some of you have ‘my little poopsiekins’ & ‘sweety buns’… we were ‘AssHoLe’ & ‘BiTCH’… okay?!?

After long deployments you become strangers more than partners in wedlock! Civil at times… usually when the kids were around but other times at eachothers throats!! You know, they don’t have a gauddamned guidebook on how to be a good husband and wife team… especially when you’re in the Navy!!     

Now that the statute of limitations has run out I gotta say there was a point I’d realized that arguing with my wife was like mud wrestl’n with a pig… after a while you gotta recognize she actually enjoys it! There’d be times she wouldn’t piss in my ass if my guts were on fire!! And she was sooo damned full of piss-n-vinegar…

“Why are you so late from work, and don’t blow smoke up my ass?!?”

“I had to work late!”

Then she’d find out I was out play’n football or softball with the boys… like the time I sprained my ankle and ended up at the hospital… that went over like a fart in church! And to this day she still won’t let that one go…

“You remember that time fifteen years ago when you got hurt playing football when you should’a been home with your family?!?”

I hate having to apologize for things I did that come with a fifteen year time delayed fuse attached to it… I guess them there are the recyclable types!! I gotta say I’d rather eat glass and try to shit a vase then have to deal with a pissed off wife… that shit ain’t no fun no how!!!

So moving right along with the hissy fits, tantrums… holler’n despicable comments back & forth at one another… and we tried to go to marriage counseling but…

“No counselor can tell us anything that I don’t already know! I’m right and your wrong… and even if I’m wrong… you’re still wrong!”

… you just can’t win an argument like that fellas!! And if you pissed your woman off too bad, I swear she could put you in a coma for so long your civvies would go outta style!! I saw a phrase the other day something of the effect…

‘There are many fish in the sea, but you’re the one I want to stuff & mount in the bedroom’

… well I don’t know about the bedroom but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind displaying my head on the wall, all taxidermied with a stupid smile on my face!’

Yeah… eventually as the years go by most of us have become tamed and your wife has got you saddle-broke, house trained or in laments terms ‘Pussy Whipped.’  You mellow out and stop giving a shit about the idiosyncrasies like not putt’n the toilet seat down… not putt’n the toilet paper on the paper rack… dirty dishes in the sink… or where you throw your coat and kick off your shoes when you come through the door!!!

 The pucker factor becomes less of a factor and you just learn to get along… stop going in to the room with your pistol halfcocked!

Instead of gett’n mad at eachother over silly things, there are wonderful moments ahead filled with passive aggressiveness… like those ever precious moments of annoying that special someone for the rest of your life... fart’n under the covers…

“Let’r rip tater chip!”

“Keep that up and I’ll cancel your birth certificate!”

… and then she’ll go sit in her car for an hour and start singing! Oh my… that gal couldn’t hold a tune if she had a bucket with a lid on it!!

I especially love it when I come home from work late at night and she looks forward to a little body warmth sharing and snuggl’n under the covers…

“What’s that poking me?”

… in my best Sam Elliot impersonation…

“Tube snake smothered in underwear… It’s what’s for dinner!”

… to which I usually get a pillow to the head…

“Why did you stop rubbing my hair, are you asleep?”

“NO! I was just check’n for holes under my eyelids… YES! I’m try’n to sleep!”

Yes… despite our differences we’ve learned to show our love in many different ways after living the lessons of what truly counts in a marriage!

“Just because we’re talking friendly… don’t mistake it for me getting over you being an asshole!”

Her diarrhea of the mouth and my constipation of good ideas… yeah we make a pretty good couple! We now sit back and reflect on that ‘do you remember when’ kinda thing and hone in on the error of our ways as I realize she’s filed down my horns and made me a domesticated man… I love her yes I do… who else would take me knowing the stories of the bars… the girls… the monetary compensations for the horizontal mambo in foreign places… listen to my silly ol’ sea stories and still put up with my silly ass?!? It’s no bull shit love!! That woman has got to be at least half nutz to put up with a half shelled ol’ Salt such as me!! I don’t understand it but I’m glad she does!! She surely ain’t no saint… but I guess I ain’t no prized package either!!!  

Yep… marriage ain’t easy… it’s a hell of a lot rougher than I’d ever imagined… but the plunders are a true treasure…