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The lights down here are better though. Down in the well-deck. With the Humvee’s and the cold air. And I’m on Guard. Armed with an empty M-16 A2 service rifle and a journal. It’s pretty boring, but that’s life in the Marine Corps. Boredom and pain and some fun. A microcosm of life. But I’m thinking about 20 minutes earlier.
Up in the barracks, or cell, or rack, or whatever the Navy calls sleeping quarters. It’s break—I’ve also been assigned mess duty. Not exactly your shit-hot Marine. Nevertheless I’m on break and I find a rack and I’m fucking tired so I climb way up—the racks are stacked four high. Coffin racks. And I sneak up high on the forth rack and I lay there for a moment. I'm not claustrophobic, but I tense up. I dunno why. Just do. Then I settle down and think—that’s all you do on float. Think:
Life.
Sex.
Strippers.
Blowjobs.
Tits.
Ass.
Guns.
Killing.
Hookers.
Rear-naked chokes.
Cold Coors Light.
...Sex...
So you think like a young man.
And I think I want to cry. Really. My fists clench up and suddenly the outside hatch opens up.
CREAK.
Enter a young Ensign and his fiancé. She knows her young officer’s is about to go to war, or at least near a war, off shore. She loves him. She loves him and so does he, and they embrace.
Kiss.
Real deep and sensuous and there I am. LCpl Mandia up on the fourth coffin rack. Enlisted voyeur.
And the walls close in. All around. Tight and made my muscles twitch even more. Constricted. A boot on my throat. The young officer and his woman are in the midst of a legendary romance. A tale to tell the kids. An inspirational novel written by one of their future grandkids. Oprah book club shit. But every second I see/hear them, I come closer to imploding. To just screaming out loud and banging my head against the bulkhead.
Then my heart goes.
The Ensign reaches inside his fiancé’s blouse.
My heart wants out. Wants to tear itself from the meat and gristle and yellow fat and jump off the bow of the USS Boxer and sink to floor of San Diego bay. Hopefully a pregnant halibut swims by and gobbles it up, thus supplementing her lack of food, and my heart; the fist sized muscle above my gut, spawns new life. Very poetic.
His hand reaches behind her head. Pulls her hair. Jaw hangs. Kisses her neck. Smells behind the ear—right where you can feel the bone, that divot. Where her perfume hides. Her eyes close tight. She wants this.
I’m about to burst. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Goddamn it, get the fuck outa here you motherfucking zero! With your good happy life and beautiful woman and that bachelors degree from San Diego State.
Something calls out over the loud speaker. The Captain speaks. The young Ensign stops. The ships about to cast off. Last call. Their lips open, millimeters apart. One breathe. Hearts beating the same cadence. A moment frozen in time. And a peck on the lips. Then she hugs him, hard. They leave. And the walls recede.
I take a breath. I can breathe again and slip out the coffin rack to the deck below. Another breath and I hear my heart. Familiar staccato off in the distance. My heart jumps out the halibut’s ass and climbs the anchor chain. Over the slime and rust. Slums it down my esophagus and fills the hole. Doesn’t fit right though. Some slack. Gaps. But it’ll do.
An electric sound. A hum. Fluorescents-
SNAP on.
White light grows and fills the vacuum tube. They expose everything. Every blemish. Every wound. Ingrown hair. I don’t like it. I look at my watch and I remember I only had 20 minutes of break time before I had to go on watch in the well-deck. So I leave. Secure the hatch. Turn the cork screw or pull the latch, I don’t remember. But I leave.
And that was that. And now I’m sitting atop an empty Humvee with an empty M16 A2 service rifle. The air down here is especially cold. And I think I’m coming down with a stomach flu. I need to take a shit. But I can’t. Can’t walk off guard. It’s a rule. One of those pesky general orders you swear to. So I get out my journal and write under the yellow lights inside the hull of the USS Boxer.
