Any Crackerjack who hasn't went to the PI and performed a short time, long time, love you no shit fresh water wash down with Cold San Magoo and his ass parked on a dirty ol’ bar stool wasn’t worth a shit stain on a pair of skivvies back in the ol’ Canoe Club... gauddamn it we had standards to uphold!!!
Too many politically correct blowhards today fail to see what used to be considered a young Crackerjack’s obligation to run the streets of Magsaysay to Subic City like an adult Disneyland!!!
If you weren't there… don't try to understand it! Once you’d become an official card carry’n bottom feeder to the Westpac Fraternal Order of Swashbuckl’n Idiots… there’d be pride in being a Ship to Shore Whore! It showed you were tough enough to stand the conditions of loose panties in the South Pacific while strung out on Mojo, strength testing a few prophylactics here and there, building your immune system against the likes of NGU, Chlamydia… and the Clap... ‘Cause that’s what Swashbucklers do!!!
I mean, what’s sailoring without the frills and thrills of a ‘girl in every port!!!’
Back in the days when every pretty girl back home tried to emulate Madonna or Cyndi Lauper on an MTV video… I had a shipmate, we’ll call him Conrad, who’d ran into quite the dilemma!!!
Conrad was not your typical rollicking, happy-go-lucky swashbuckler! And he sure as hell wasn’t a’kin to the brightest light in the harbor either! He was down on his luck and couldn’t seem to find the girl of his dreams… let alone any girl for that matter!!
“When you’re a virgin… everyone jumps in with advice as they like to tell you the solution to ending your misery would be to get a hooker! Well… I don’t want a hooker! Hookers don’t wake up in the morning and scratch your back or do your laundry!”
“Most people suggest changes I could make that would make me more attractive to women… tell me places I could go where the fish might bite… you know! I've tried damn near everything but lesbian clubs, nursing homes and biker bars!! Believe me, I've done damn near everything to include mail order brides… nothing seems to work!”
“You know… I look into the mirror when I shit, shower, & shave and say to myself, ‘what a fat ugly son-of-a-bitch that is looking back at me!"
This was the kicker…
“Well, Conrad… you’ll find the right gal, everyone does… she’ll come along!”
“Yeah, social theories are nice but real life isn’t sooo theoretical! I’m starting to believe I just might be gay… If I’m not attractive to women then maybe it’s men!”
“Whoa… wait a minute there shipmate… Are you gett’n excited when you see your fellow mates bending over… experimenting with any of them strange plug in contraptions, and unexplainable doo-dahs for light in the loafer types?”
“…Uhhh no…”
“You got a problem with watch’n sports on TV… talk with a lisp… subscribe to GQ or Red Book… use pet names for everywhere and everything… wear pink stuff much of the time?!?
“No… none of that!”
“Then rest easy shippy… unless you got built in ‘GADAR’… your just a few fruit loops short of a bowl but you ain’t no pillow biter!”
Yeah… Some people don't just have brain farts… but their brains completely shit their pants from time to time!
“Yeah buddy, I don’t think you want anyone going up your shit creek paddling the pink canoe… you’re just a bit confused, about as confused as a baby in a topless bar!”
You see Conrad could fall off the ship and still not hit water he was so clueless! We went out for a night on the town… Pacers, Dirty Dans… & the likes, and I convinced him somehow that he was as straight as an arrow!! Anyone with a nudie mag collection the size of his ain’t float’n up no Hershey highway!!!
“Hey Swinger… you won’t tell anyone we had that conversation… you know about me thinking I might be gay and all?!?”
“I wouldn’t say shit if I had a mouthful!”
And a few months later we were on Westpac! It was time to concoct some wild and crazy memories!! When we pulled into Subic… most of the fellas onboard were like ownerless dogs living in the street, ready to mount anything that moved… We were gonna make it a liberty Jerry Springer would be proud of!!!
As Conrad and I hit the brow…
“On to heartbreak, loose women, and Momasans filling our glasses and taking barfine requests… Hoorah!”
“Hey Swinger, check out that one over there!”
“Yeah, she could suck start a leaf blower!”
“Hey Conrad… just stay clear of the Benny Boys!”
He just glared at me with an ax murderers stare… like I’d just put choral hydrate in his drink!”
…And the night was on…
Days had gone by and I hadn’t seen Conrad for a while until one duty day on the ship…
“Hey Salty Dog… you having fun on the town?”
“Yeah, Hey… I think I found the one! Her name is Jenelynne and I think I’m gonna ask her to marry me!”
“What the hell?!? Conrad… you just get here to the Wild, Wild, East… The sanctity of Mango style tatas to sow your wild oats and you wanna marry the first love me long time girl you stick your dick in?”
You gotta realize I’d already had my liberty brief from my Sea Daddy! Getting into relationships with bargirls is a bad idea and you certainly shouldn’t marry one!! Those who do often live to regret it! You don’t wanna be one of those ‘Bargirl-done-me-wrong kinda fellas!!!
I know… I know… I’m sure sometimes it works out! But don’t count on it!!! A bargirl’s very existence relies on bleeding you dry of every last penny you have!!!
Not only that… when you go on deployment… she becomes a Westpac Widow! I mean look at the ‘Trophy Lounge’ back home for Christ Sakes!! It was nothing but a meat market for ‘love you no shit’ girls!! When you’re not around she’ll go back to doing what she knows best… how to be a love me long time hooker!!!
Ultimately she becomes money hungry and you become a gauddamn walking ATM for her and her whole gauddamned family back in the PI!
“What the hell Conrad… you just wake up this morning and decided, I’m gonna marry a hooker and that shit’s gonna work out just fine in the long run? If it floats, flies or FUCKS… it’s cheaper to rent than to own!”
“But I love her!”
“Man… remember that conversation we had before we left the states… you know, you thought you were a homo because you’d never been laid?!?”
“I know but she’s the one!”
“It’s not love…”
“And she’s got a kid from a guy who left her!”
“What are you her knight in shining armor? You gonna whisk her away from all this treachery? Don’t confuse love with horniness!”
“You don’t understand…”
“OOOH I understand… It’s ‘I just got laid for the first time and the gates of heaven just sprang open for a few seconds!’ It’s bad Ju-Ju man… a bad idea… don’t do it!”
“But what should I do… I can’t get laid like this back home!”
“Listen… there’s always somebody for everybody man… but you can’t fall in love with every twinkly-eyed ‘LBFM’ sex goddess that’s given you woody when she walks your way!” This girl’s been banged like a broken screen door in a hurricane for God knows how long!!”
You know the ol’ saying… It's one thing to want an adventure, another to know how to have it?!? Poor ol’ Conrad was naïve and oblivious to what he was about to do!! He tempered down over the deployment… don’t know if he’d realized the error of his ways or was just keep’n quite to keep from being hassled!! We didn’t talk much after that! Kind’a makes me think he got suckered!!!
But you know how it goes… as young’ns we know more than everyone else… and behave with the appropriate amount of reckless stupidity! And just to think Olongapo is now a respectable business area with an address where it was once sociably acceptable to grab women’s behinds and pee in the street!! I hear Barrio Barretto is brighter and better but still much the same as it ever was… maybe one day we shall see!!!
...a time machine.
ReplyDeleteGoing back 30; years. Loved Westpac.
ReplyDeleteI can only speak for myself. But I got married to a little gal in Olongapo. It'll be 45 years for us in a few more months. So you see, life is all what you make out of it.
ReplyDeletePerfect
ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete1979-1115, Hookers, at Camp Humphries, 12-Pages.
A must read.https://www.dropbox.com/s/gjkobj0o5x4h6n4/2020-0815%2C%201979-1115%2C%20Hookers%2C%20at%20Camp%20Humphries.%20PDF%2C%2012%20pages..pdf?dl=0
I married the most wonderful woman from Bataan province. Filipina women are the best. Even the ones who grew up in the states I’ve met are special someway. If not for my children here, I would be living in the mountains of PI.
ReplyDeletePeaceful life.
DeleteA guy I met in A school was assigned to my first ship, the White Plains AFS 4. Our home port was in Sasebo, Japan, and we went to Subic on a regular basis. "Larry and I made a pact not to sleep with the same woman more than once. I went through many, many women during the almost 3 years on the " Orient Express". I remember my first night in Subic, the guys in R division took me under their wings so to speak. Guys were telling me, an 18 year old innocent that in a year I would have so many women, that I would not remember their names. I did not believe them. They were right. After 12 months and having women in Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, P.I. Korea and Taiwan, I could only remember a couple women's names. Funny, at least to me, "Larry" and I even traded women a few times, and I never caught so much as a cold, and he had the clap at least 3 times. They even had me tested in sickbay, thinking perhaps I had caught something but showed no symptoms. Nope, just lucky as hell!
ReplyDeleteHahaha! Wow!! I just had a flashback! I was on the White Plains AFS4 79-82. I had some great times in all those countries too, but I think I'll always love P.I. the most. Thanks for sharing.
DeleteMy first visit to Olongapo in 72 was memorable. You see I was a 18 year old virgin. Some of my shipmates from the Ranger brought me to a bar where I immediately got drunk drinking mojo. Sometime during the night a girl brought me on a wild jeepney ride to her house. I use the word girl loosely. She was probably in her 30's maybe even in her 40's or 50's. Who knew. I also use the word house loosely because it was one step above from being a shack with a bamboo ceiling. In no time at all she had stripped me of my clothes and plopped my drunk ass on the bed. Just as quickly she was naked and straddling me. So everything was going smoothly(she knew what she was doing) and I'm on my back and I see something out of the corner of my blurred eye. I turn my head and low and behold the biggest rat I've ever seen is calmly taking a stroll across the bamboo ceiling. Meanwhile honeyco is going to town in 5th gear. The timing was such that I came at the same time Mr. Rat was directly over my my head. Well I must have passed out because the next thing I remember its morning and she's shoving me onto a jeepney for a wild ride back to the gate. Oh by the way this is no shit shipmates.
ReplyDeleteI believe you shitmate I mean (shipmate) I know to many too many (Eloy) sailors locals and foreign experienced that those freaking rat, but that goddam experience is perhaps the best on deployments.
DeleteFor a further walk down Olongapo memory lane visit . . . . https://www.facebook.com/groups/SubicBayMemories
ReplyDeleteHad a kid on my third West Palm, was the same way. When we got to P.I. had a talk to him about the girls in Olongapo he was cautious for a couple of days. Then all hell broke loss. He found a girl, fell in love, talked marriage then we left for the I.O. he wrote and wrote. Pulled back in 4 months later, he ran to the gate, didn't see him for 2 days, when i did he was a mess, seems he found his girl with another man doing the cha cha. He went on a bender and when he made it back to the ship he never left the ship for the remainder of West Pac.
ReplyDeleteOh hell you bringing up the memories. I remember getting a haircut in that barber shop right near Kongs once a week. The girls would have to get up in your lap to cut your hair in front. Low and behold the first time I got my hair cut ... no panties. Dang. And they gave good haircuts as well.
ReplyDeleteOh, hell yeah, it's all true, you see, I've been around the World twice ,talked to evrbody three times I was a wheeler, dealer, SEX appealer and, a heartbreaker of all woman and a Lover at Heart, i've been to eight world fairs, seen goats fucking in a market place, but hell, if you weren't a goddamn United States Sailor you ain't seen shit!
ReplyDeleteGreat to see us Veterans bringing up the past
ReplyDelete6 deployment, 2 years forward deployed out of Subic & 3 years station. How i ever survived is beyond me. WestPac widows (oh yea lived the life of the bold & shameless) Trophy Lounge in SD & Dragon Palace or Johhy's in Alameda.
ReplyDeleteI was at Cubi point for 4 months! I was always broke!
ReplyDeleteAh Subic, my very 1st duty station right outta A School.
ReplyDeleteGot married at 19 and it lasted for 23 years....but it was damn worth it. She was and always will be the love of my life.