The veracity of truthfulness and authenticity ought never stand in the way of a good ‘No Shitter’ I always say! Those factors should only be weighed in scholarly books and records for the statisticians & historians who make way for the laws of man and rational contemplation of religion and politics… something many of us should just agree to disagree on!! Nothing that governs the swashbuckl’n souls of hardy sea going Crackerjacks should ever limit or confine our colorful minds!! Sea Stories are the hand crafted inventiveness of nautical artisans from around the world… through the dawn of history, even if they are half cooked and dowsed in the finest bullshit concocted by bottom feeders from the outer most deepest jungle native voodoo. At a thousand miles from nowhere, standing port and report watches we deserve the right to fill your boots full of doo doo… so here goes another one for ya!!!
In the Beginning, before the top brass became devoid of testicles and shore duty living quarters were turned into Holiday Inn Suites inclusive with daycare centers and spas, we were crammed into brick buildings deficient of air condition and some of the private luxuries of today’s Canoe Club! We weren’t living in anything like those old WWII barracks that boxcar hobo like characters had become familiar with but life was definitely interesting with one head per floor and open bay showers so we could wave our tally whackers at one another while scraping the barnacles off our foreskins!! We had mosquitos cross dressing as hummingbirds that could suck a golf ball through your whole gauddamned circulatory system and rats that fornicated with wild felines out the back door when the air was just right!! It made those hot summer nights feel like you’d been sweltering with a couple-0-sexy mice in a wool sock if you know what I mean!!!
In those days our way of life was rarely associated with the kinder, gentler types of civilized society… that didn’t come until the Clinton Era! Just imagine living in a small room with a week’s worth of dirty laundry, putrefied socks resembling used sheep skin condoms and t-shirts that stood up on end like the Petrified Forest!! You didn’t dare walk barefoot or your feet would learn to mate with a dozen different sorts of exotic fungus and mildew… ringworm, jungle rot, athletes foot, or the classic jock itch and several other forms of dermatological scourge that could make your skin crawl!!!
While coping with BEQ Petty Officers and Room Inspections while poking cigarette butts out manufactured holes through the window screens and spray’n foo-foo juice to mask the smells, transporting ironing boards and steam irons up three ladder wells after checking them out from the Quarterdeck while hauling fifty pounds of laundry up and down those same ladder wells to the Laundromat on the bottom floor, life could sometimes be a real joy! Nevertheless it was a place where shipmates could hang out, listen to each other bitch, play cards, watch the six channels on the boob tube or compare the merits and shortcomings of the latest muscle cars and double D Boob sizes in the latest nudie book bought and paid for at your local Navy Exchange!! We took up collections for food and beer runs…
“Haines… pitch in for some beer will ya?!?”
“You kidd’n me? I’m so broke I can’t even pay attention!”
It was all fine and dandy until you had a roommate that changed his underwear maybe once in a new moon! Son-of-a-bitch could smell like he'd slept with road kill for the last fifteen days... stink’n to high heaven! Many a room reeked of industrial strength foo-foo just for this reason!! Hell, before long the entire passageways would smell like the inside of a lingerie drawer in a Cat House dressing room!!!
Then there was Joe… the son-of-a-bitch would snore so loud I’d wake up throw’n boots, books, dirty laundry, and any other gauddamned thing else within reach…
“Gauddamn Joe… are you saw’n logs or clearing brush?!?”
He’d just roll over and snarl a bit! Five seconds later he’d be snoring like a freight train once again!!
“How can I get any shut-eye with all that gauddamned noise?”
“Nmnmnmnm… Snnnnnnzzzzz… Nmnmnmnm!!!”
He should have been banned from drinking beer and eating hard boiled eggs due to counter productivity by direction of COMNAVSURFPAC … And all that careless unplugging of the ass gas creat’n a gauddamned lethal green cloud of pungent poop incense.... It was a hell of a lot like sleep’n in a Karachi sewege drain... somewhere during the night the trapped air bubbled up like a monster hiccup and made its' way to the top of the reservoir.... once it escaped...you’d never forget that smell!!!
There were always local establishments outside the gate for consuming that made of hops & barley as well as finding attractive females with loose panty elastic and no curfew… but some shipmates were too young to partake in such iniquitous misgivings or such as the case of Shore Patrol beating the living hell out of my inebriated ass one evening… had a ringing in my ear for days! So we’d throw porch parties in the back of the barracks!! They’d always start with just a few shippies down’n some brew and by the end of the night half the damned barrack’s personnel were there… sing’n to raunchy songs that would make your Grandma proud and making damned fools of ourselves… something we all excelled at!! Hell I remember cramming half a dozen in a cab and tipping the bastard twenty bucks just to get us to Dirty Dan’s Pure Platinum by the airport!!!
Yeah buddy, feminine inspiration was always called for when we wanted to act like we were raised by wolves! Sometimes such an arrangement beat the hell outta try’n a romantic relationship with one of them local gals whose parents, preachers, teachers, and the local constable warned them about to stay the hell away from any fellar wearing a Crackerjack Uniform because all we wanted to do was get between them and their underpants!! Many a starry night a young pretty thing would find herself with her bra undone and her panties stolen as a trophy to be hung up above some barracks locker… which coincidently led to a handgun in me nether regions one fateful morning… but that’s from another story!! I can still remember being butt nekkit with some young sweet thing I’d snuck up the fire exit smell’n like natures honey!!!
And then there was Buck… the roommate of all roommates! Now knowing in this here Canoe Club, ragging on one another as shipmates is a well-known past-time!! It’s kind’a like an I ain’t gay kiss on the lips, and never give a compliment… we don’t want to inflate each other’s egos now do we?!? Well, Buck was just one of those kind’a guys!! ‘Buck… you’re going to hell in a hand basket… never mind, the Devil don’t want noth’n to do with you!! We were always pissing against the wind, tossing pillows, blankets, beer cans, furniture… and anything else under the sun at each other!! The son-of-a-bitch once came in late at night and lit a gauddamned Marlboro cigarette between my toes just to watch me jump up and bust the hell outta my rack in a panic!! Then other times he’d sneak in and steal my blanket running down the passageway snickering and cackl’n away!!!
Anyway, I digress… ! Buck had a Z28 Camaro that traveled at Warp Speed and your ass hang’n five inches off the ground, it really gave you that ol’ pucker factor feeling deep inside!! Somewhere down the line he took his car and met this gal in North Island by the name of Sara! Sara was a sweet look’n thing… I think she was a Mexi-mix of some sorts and boy she had some pretty brown eyes!! Anyhow, between Bob Segar’s ‘Night Moves’… his pretty Z28… and all the verbal bull fertilizer that could somehow emotionally produce a bouquet of roses, he had won her heart over and she was madly in love!! I can’t figure how he did it… but she was head over heels for that sumbitch!!!
One evening I had gotten out of my ‘C’ School class a bit earlier than expected and as soon as I popped the door open and flicked on the ol’ light… Buck jumps straight outta bed like I’d caught him jerking the bologna pony leaving lil’ Sara stark ass nekkit on the bed with her legs straight up in the air giving me a clear shot of her Mexican Taco… just before Buck was able to lay the Sour Cream…
“Buckaroo Banzai…”
“What the Fuck… can’t you knock first?!?”
“Why the Fuck would I knock? It’s my room too!”
I gotta tell you, she had quite a cute set of perky tits … I didn’t know rather to check my ass or scratch my watch!! There they were gett’n busier than a two dollar hooker on nickel night!! And from there on Buck was known as Buckaroo Banzai… that’s my story and I’m stick’n to it… I don’t give two shits what Buck says!!!
Yep… we were a bunch’a rollicking happy-go-lucky sons-a-bitchs, and we lived our lives like the literary virtue of a shit house limerick on the inside partition of a shitter stall!! Sometimes we cohabitated in what smelled like a Tijuana Shithouse and we had the social skills of a bunch’a Neanderthals but we had fun and the memories are as fresh as if they were yesterday!!!
