Dumpster-Dancer

The combat hardened US Navy fighter pilot made Captain in record time. A rising star, he was being groomed for promotion to Admiral. Everyone expected that he would soon command an aircraft carrier battle group. Part of his grooming was a stint as Captain of the big, “deep draft” Navy cargo ship I worked on as a young Marine. Apparently, for aviators, learning how to drive a really big ship is a pre-requsite to driving aircraft carriers and battle groups.

I found out what drove him. His marriage sucked! He did everything he could to keep us at sea, away from his wife.

That Captain pushed us hard. Under his driving leadership, we earned the Battle-E and a mess of other unit ribbons and awards. Over and over he volunteered us for shitty deployments and difficult cargo moving challenges. In peace time, under the stress, men lost limbs and digits to accidents, trucks got sunk, bones broken, boats (little ones) run aground, and brains permanently mushed (boxing). For our time, our little crew was the best crew, and our huge ship was the best ship in the fleet on many levels.

While we were out at sea so much, my sweet wife became friends with his sweet wife . . . and she was a dear. (I get this second hand from my love as I never met his wife myself.) Anyway, I am reliably informed that his wife was a lovely, gracious, attractive, gentle, sweet, and loyal woman. They had been married for about 20 years when I knew him. Their children were almost grown.

In military life, it's often understood that “things can happen” when the boys are deployed. My own sweet wife and I had reached an arrangement to be forgiving and understanding if lonlieness and distance ever caused “something” to happen while we were apart. #monogamy

This was different. My Captain went out of his way to make “things” happen. For each of our challenging assignments, he managed to wrangle us a liberty port. For every liberty port he had his staff hire up a bevvy of vehicles, hookers and booze. Some poor Navy enlisted guy would get drafted to “drive” the Captain's car. In practice that meant sitting in the front seat while the Captain fucked some bimbo in back. The guys who pulled the short straw on this duty tended to resent the hell out of cleaning up the Captain's cum stains and curly hairs.

It really came into focus when we had earned our “Battle-E” after 6 weeks of grueling work away from our families. Instead of taking us home, the Captain got special permission from the Navy to take us 700 miles (one way) out of our way to make a liberty port call at a swinger's resort. That's 300 men being kept away from their families for over a week while a ship that consumes forty gallons of fuel per mile travels 1400 miles . . . so the Captain can get laid.

Yes, he did get laid. Not by a hooker, but by a gorgeous female news reporter who happened to be vacationing at the swingers' club. Most of the officer's got laid on that trip. Probably none of the enlisted crew did, since they were not invited into the swinger's club, and there was nothing else to do on that Godforsaken island. I even narrowly avoided getting laid that trip . . . but that a story for another day.

A lot of years have passed. I got curious and googled to see if the Captain ever made Admiral. I found instead that he retired as a Captain and recently celebrated his 50th wedding anniversary. A lot of couples go through shit when careers and stress are at a max, and when kids are almost grown.

I'm glad that my Captain made his marriage work, and I'm glad for my nation that the cheating son of a bitch never made admiral.