The Ant Lion Trap

A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891).

I would like to think I share Oscar Wilde’s outrageous ironic view of the absurdity known as The Human Race.

When he speaks of cigarettes, the meaning transcends to the pathetic foibles that constitute Man’s unending quest for fulfillment from something or someone external; an inevitably fruitless pastime distracting us from the seeking within of the one true self—the embodiment of the Divine Spirit.

When I was a small child, I would mess with the Ant Lions.  Squatting by a conical pit, I would gently nudge a little sand at the edge.  It would cascade down, causing the Ant Lion to kick sand upwards to accelerate the slide of an ant further down the crumbling wall of the pit, to the waiting jaws hidden in the nadir of the trap.

Except there was no prey; it was just little me having a bit of sport at the expense of the hungry insect down there, hoping for a meal.

 

 

Each of us, in times past, has messed with Ant Lions.  I know this as true because I have observed others engaged in the practice.  I know this as true because I myself have played the role of hapless insect, buried in a trap of my own desires; throwing sand to capture a dream, a hope, a longing; only to discover that fate in the form of another human being has been toying with me in a dispassionately cruel way.

Shit.

Enough of this mewling crapoola.  Neither poet nor philosopher am I be.  Let them that are so disposed tend to the vagaries of human existence; I have more pressing matters at hand.

Like the fricking Dorks. 

Each morning, just a little earlier than the day before, they each come in here to bizzy-me at my keyboard inquiring when am I going to get off my neglectful ass and take them for walkies?

I save the latest jumble of nonsense soliloquy and rise to the din of six dogs barking, yipping and howling to do my duty by them.

It is not just people who teach us how to treat them. 

Following the leashing ceremony, I firmly grasp all six leads, take a deep breath and open the door.  The Iditarod is on and I am yanked out the front, desperately trying to reach back and close the door—so that marauding thieves and rapists have no open door policy to greet them.

I spend the whole round-the-block untangling leashes and mushing my team onwards.  The Mutt Brigade follows the spoor of their neighbors’ dogs, by intense sniffing examination of each and every pile of dogshit along the way.  I have learned to let them pause at corners and end-street easements; there to sniff some more, pee, take a dump and further entangle their leads.

This is preferable to them shitting on people’s lawns; I have rationalized that a dump-on-public-ground is not sinful and leaves me without a pick-up obligation.

Occasionally, I will drop a lead and the escapee runs ahead of the pack.  This is generally acceptable…except for Jypsi.  Squeaking her excited high-pitched yip, she bounds from one tree along our route to the next, frantically seeking her fondest aspiration—to catch a squirrel off guard away from any tree.

If she would only respond to my gruff command to come back to the pack, all would be forgiven.  But oh no!  Not my little dapple spry Dachshund!  In her headlong rush of pleasurable freedom from bondage, she pays me not a whit of attention. 

Just like my ex-wife.  Shit, just like all my ex-wives.

I might be more stentorian in my tone with her, but it is a moment’s delight to watch her misbehave and run gazelle-elegant in oblivion to all about her.  I yearn to be that free of spirit!  Sadly, the chains that bind me were forged too long ago for me to break them now.

In only one way do I emulate my little Jypsi: when I write and write, with no regard to convention or the whims of the reader staring down at my words.  Then I am released in a most glorious manner.  It is only a moment of fleeting unrestraint, but it is my moment to cherish always.

Now back to the keyboard, the needs of the Brigade met, I plow through the furrows of my frontal lobes to piece together the fragments of my last ten days in-country into something resembling the truth.

Part of the veracity must be telling it in the present tense.  Excuse the obfuscation I do not…

*

I awoke to squint at the bright sunlight pouring through an open barracks door.  My eyelids are gummy and my head is filled with the kind of sick hangover which I vaguely accept as my just due.  I look around and recognize my own bunk at Camp Tien Sha. 

I roll to one side to check asshole’s calendar on his locker.  He, whoever he is, meticulously crosses off each day, as if that will speed his sentence of one entire year to the day.

It’s May 30, 1970.  Shit!  What the fuck?  Has asshole got ahead of himself?  No, he wouldn’t do that.  I have misplaced twenty four hours.  Where was I?  How did I come back here, and when? 

I lay there in my sweat and dirty underwear doing a piss-poor job of recollection.

Something about a bar…something about a couple of Army grunts.  Then I began to see fragments of the lost hours.

A brief sidebar into blackouts: alcoholics go through periods of drunken time which are lost to recall.  This is both terrifying and confusing.  Until all chance of repercussion from that time has been safely eliminated, the drunk lives in a consciousness of blind bewilderment. 

This was not my first blackout, nor my last.  It would take me another thirteen years to realize what I was; another three years beyond that to accept what I was. 

That is the material for a damage control report that must wait another story telling.

Back to on-my-back-in-bunk on 5/30/70.

The fricking fracking fragments came slowly to resemble a memory of sorts; like writing on grease paper with a ballpoint pen.

I had been drinking at the Special Forces bar since noon.  The sun was obscured by Marble Mountain, but even boozy boy from Texas could see that it was getting on to sunset.  The place had remained deserted with just a few very hard looking men appearing for one or two beers.  No one spoke to me, which suited to a tee. 

I wasn’t there to talk. 

In walks two guys in regular fatigues; they are way too soft and pudgy around the middle for Green Berets.  Finding my voice at last, I greet them as long lost cousins and buy them a round—I think.  Not that they need coaxing; both are almost as drunk as their instant congenial host.

I must have broached the Horny Topic.  It is and always will be a hot subject for discussion among youthful males.  One of them (was his name Sammy or Samson?) offered up the location of a whore house.  Where, I asked?  They would show me, they said.

So, up to the road, three sets of waving hands and our next ride screeched a halt.  We were on our way to get laid?  Before we got to wherever, it was dark.  We thumped the roof and jumped down.  I vaguely recall that there seemed to be a lot of traffic, a lot of glaring headlamps, a lot of noise in general.

Across the road was some kind of one-star building that could only be a gook structure from the look of it.  We cross to it and the grunts are talking to someone (A whore? A proprietor of whores? Someone’s Mother?). 

One of my new companions tells me to dig $20 script out of my pocket.  I have quite a few of them and oblige.  I watch the bill go from my hand to his hand to somebody’s hand. 

Someone (A girl? A mamasan?) takes my hand and leads me into this shack beside the road.  There is no easement, no sidewalk between the structure and the road.  I think this odd, and wondered if a lot of vehicles collide with this building so close to traffic.

I am led into a room that is pitch black.  In a sober state, all the alarums of danger and peril would be ringing loud to get the hell out; but in my condition, I’m lucky to still have a wallet in my pants.

It is one of the Seven Wonders of the Known World how people like me in a condition like mine can even remain upright, much less carry on in some caricature of reason. 

This was no time to be reasonable; my erection wanted to mesh flesh with flesh.  I was soon to be laid if I wasn’t fucked first.

Someone (A girl? The girl?) tells me to sit down while she gets…ready? Gets me ready?  I can’t see the bed. I can’t see anything.  I could be blindfolded for all the light in there.  My pants come down to below my knees.  This is going to be a $20 down-and-dirty tryst. 

Legs open and I’m in penetration position.

The lines blur and the memory vaporizes into confusion.  I have the uncanny creepy feeling that the room is not vacated for the business at hand.  I sense others sitting against the walls all around.  This isn’t a brothel; it’s a house where people live—families of people.

That ends the recollection.  I don’t even know if I came or not.  Nothing is there of most of a day and a night.  Who were the Army grunts?  Where did they go, leaving me to a black house on a black bed in a black room?

I lie on my rack and squeeze my eyes tight shut, in the vague hope that something will trigger more.  It does not.  I get up long enough to take four aspirins with a hot Coke, then down again, to sleep off whatever I was sleeping off.

Tomorrow had to be better, I think, as I drift off.  Tomorrow I’ve got to be more careful.  I’ve got to hold it together until I’m standing in front of that bus, waiting to take me home…back to the world...

…away from…this.

 

A letter to My Chinese Whore

Friday, November 16, 2012

Dearest Christina,

In war and its aftermath, in cities large and small, there are message boards covered with hastily written letters on whatever scrap of paper and with whatever writing instrument was at hand in a fleeting moment before a hurried departure.

They flutter in the wind and often overlap each other, those lost notes to displaced loved ones.  They are left there in the vain hope that someone, sometime will read them to learn of the writer’s passing or disposition:

‘Sasha! If you find this, I have taken the children with me to Uncle Leonid’s farm in the Urals.  I will wait for you!  I love you! Anna’

‘Dear husband Johann Gertrudis, we have been evacuated to a refugee camp near Garmisch—I won’t know which one till we get there.  If you read this, I hope you are alive and not being held prisoner by the Russians!  I pray for you and will watch for you always!  Your loving wife, Katarina.’

Hope is that glimmer within that longs for reversal of fortune, change of heart, fulfillment of dreams.  Hope often lingers long after the floods of human events have all but washed it away.

This is such a message of hope, this letter that I should have written to you long before my sunset years.  It is posted on the message board of time and space, with no prospect at all that my words will ever carry to your aging eyes.

By now, you must be a grandmother, or even a great-grandmother.  Because you are the one true mystery in my life, I chose to believe you are alive, cared for by many sons and daughters; and surrounded by grandchildren, who flock to you crying,’ Lao lao ke-li-si-di-na’!  That would be Cantonese for ‘Nana Christina!’

It is comforting to envision you sitting on one of those tiny apartment balconies, several stories up from the bustling street below.  Warm in the morning sun, warmed by the love of your family, you look out on Hong Kong and tell the children of your days on the streets and the excitement of an era gone by.

It has always been a source of joy and intrigue to daydream of you and build a story of ‘what if’.  What if I had returned?  I had your name, both your street name and your Chinese name; but no photograph, no address, no other means to find you.  Would I have paced the streets, looking in every bar on Kowloon, asking bored girls and disinterested madams if they know of you?  

As I drift on to the gossamer of ‘what if I had found you?’, it fitfully darts away, lest the magic of you be revealed.  Like an illusionist’s parlor trick, I cannot have my vision of you sullied by any semblance of reality.

For you remain pure and unsullied through every chapter of my existence.  There were none of those real events ever present:  You with another man.  You resisting my attempts at marriage.  You to return with me.  You to live with me.  You to learn from me.  You to bear children by me.  

Because of this gentle enigma, you have come to symbolize all the dreams and aspirations that I never achieved in life.

To be sure, I had my moments of glory, of success, even of love.  But each of those memories must be sifted through the skein of experience to render them pleasurable and apart from the chaff of lost causes, dashed plans, crushed hopes.  The stuff of life is never pure and unsullied like the moment in time I spent with you.

And so, my darling Kwan Foo Mong, my sweet  Lao lao, I will have you thus till the end of days.  I loved you, I love you, I will always love you. 

Wait for me.

From a man you do not remember, from a time you do not recall.

Ten Days Left

“Loadin up on guns, gas, mudgrips, and some Copenhagen to prepare for the next four years.”

-Post Election Tweet-

I suppose I would be out seeking employment as a Walmart Geezer if 47% Mittens had won.  My tweet, were I a Twitter Tweeter, which I am normally not ever, would be something like: ‘Shooting all my pets, selling my truck, renewing my VIA Senior Pass and eating the residual dog and cat food as a dietary supplement.  Can somebody give me a ride to the Food Bank?’

My sincere empathies to the Twit-er-Tweet twit who left his opinionated stool on my Ethernet stoop.  I at least know the overpowering despair of dashed hopes and dreams.  They are not the privy of the White Man’s Party of Oliphants.  All of us have the option to either wallow in them; or learn from our fear of uncertainty.

I made the mistake of listening to one of those talk programs on the raddy-o last night.  Before I could kill the station, I listened to some Tea Party biggie explain to the raddy-o audience how the decisive win by the Democrats was an affirmation of the country’s desire for the ultra-conservative bent!

Citing three Senate wins and continued grip on the House, he recalled the glory of 2010 yesteryear when the Tea Party came into its own.  In the ensuing two years, they have asserted themselves as the Kaopectate of due process.

Talk about encapsulated in La-La Land!  They rammed their conservative garbage down the RNP throat at convention time, which practically guaranteed that the Republicans would piss off every voting bloc they needed to win the election.

Who did this idiot blame?  Why, what he kept referring to as ‘big government Republicans’ who control the party, that’s who.

I wonder when it might dawn on him and his ilk how much he has angered some of those groups who were so blithely disenfranchised from his Big Red Planet?

Put aside for a moment the women, the gays, the blacks and such; just take a look at the Latinos:

Probably the fastest growing segment of our population, they rejected the squirrely non-position of Mitten’s immigration reform.  Instead, they are presenting an I.O.U. to the Obama Administration that they expect to see a fair and equitable reformation of the immigration laws in 2013.

In other words, now.

Oh boy!  I can’t wait to see the fireworks when the ‘Ultra Conservatives’ go to stonewalling each and every proposal on this issue brought before the House.  Besides the obvious finger-pointing that will invariably ensue, I believe the Latinos will begin to form around something like a middle-class version of La Raza Unida; and march en masse with scythes and pitchforks to capture every political office that comes up for re-election in 2014.

At last, the Latinos have sufficient numbers to be a little more than a mere voting bloc.  Further, they have the inherent cultural pride of never backing down from a fight. 

So, good luck and all for the future, you Redneck Mothers.  Learn to hold your breath before the flash flood of Latino opposition to your arcane polemic washes you away. 

It’s coming.

Whew!  That felt soo good!  After absorbing the venom those people have been interjecting into the landscape for the last two years, I just had to spew a little of it back.

I woke up in my bunk at Tien Sha; it was May 28, 1970, with only ten days left in-country.  Ten Days!  How was I to occupy myself for that long?  I lay there, sweating and thinking.  The events of the past few weeks paraded forth to obscure my ruminations about the future.

I thought about losing the hooch.

A few days after Bullethead arrived, I showed him my hooch.  Was I trying to impress this unimaginative prick?  Perhaps I was.  At the height of my insanity over Hong Kong and being short, I couldn’t sort my motives for anything I did or was going to do.

Two days after the Grand Tour, I ran up to my hooch to rescue the next pack of cigarettes from their captivity.  The hasp was missing.  Puzzled, I opened the door, and there sat Bullethead and one of his lifer cronies.  He looked at me and said, “This is mine now. Clear out your clothes.”  I stared at him and saw that crony was grinning maliciously.  Stripped of my position as Skimmer Coxswain, the totality of my powerlessness finally hit home.

Without another word, I stuffed all my things in my duffel bag, and caught the next cattle car down to Tien Sha.  There wasn’t much more than fatigues and cigarettes left in there; the little TV and my stereo system had already been shipped back to Rockville (The tape deck held a half pound of weed in the chassis—a little welcome home present awaiting me).

Despite my loss of interest in the place, all my buddies being back in the world and all, I couldn’t avoid the feeling of resentment of this asshole exerting his majestic authority to summarily comshaw my hooch without even asking me first.

In retrospect, I need to remind myself that eight months of my tour went by in which I was held above the plight of most sailors by virtue of my appointment to HQ Staff.  Everyone else cringed, unable to avoid the shitty ‘oarders’ being handed out with nauseating regularity by the fucking lifers.

It would be another sixteen years before I learned to count my blessings with gratitude for all the life events that composed…and compromised my feeble existence.

I lingered in the barracks until morning chow was about over before walking to the mess hall.  As I ate in the practically deserted place, the gook women lined up for their meal.  I noticed that they left most of the food we indulged in—meat, eggs, potatoes and such—to build trays up with fruit and vegetables.  They sat together, munching lettuce and celery without salad dressing, and stuffing most of it in their bags, their conical hats and their tunics.

I knew this was thievery, but knowing the food was going to feed their families later made it the act of The Good Thief.  God knows, helping their own to survive by ripping off a little of the limitless bounty of the Americans was paltry payment to supplement their meager salaries.

Walking to the gate, to hitchhike to China Beach, I passed the clinic and felt relief from the encounter with a Navy corpsman. That was three weeks ago.

After eleven months in-country, inhaling whatever was down in the holds of those fuel barges, my childhood hay fever erupted with a vengeance.  I also developed a rash all over my face and upper body to play along with the violent unrelenting sneezes and runny nose.  Joe took one look at me and dispatched me to the Tien Sha clinic.  It was my intention to score a script of Ornade or some other belladonna-based antihistamine.  That had always worked before.

Sick call was pretty much over by mid-morning, so there was no waiting to be seen.  A corpsman in fatigues that had never seen dirt or grease said calmly, “Oh, that’s an awful rash.  We’ll have to put you on medical hold.”  Medical hold was sixty days.  It would be August before I got out of there.

Fighting down a panic attack, I reasoned with him that I would be homeward bound soon and could seek further treatment back in the world, if it came to that.  Would he just give me something for the SHORT time I had left?  The word ‘short’ must have resonated somewhere in his tiny cranium; he relented and handed me some pills to take twice a day.

Maybe it was just the mountain of paper work involved with a medical hold; whatever, I was off the hook and the countdown went on its slowpoke way.

I caught a ride from a passing truck headed down Marble Mountain Road towards China Beach.  

Hitchhiking was a given courtesy accepted by all.  We would wave at any vehicle going our way; the driver would pull over and we’d scramble aboard.  No one had to worry about whether any of their passengers were armed and dangerous—except for us REMF’s; everyone was armed and dangerous—just not directed at our own guys. 

Going to China Beach without an errand was like going to a mall stateside when you didn’t have anything to do. There was nothing left to purchase.  Cameras, b&w TV, stereo system (Mine, not Dad’s) and all such accouterments had long since been shipped home.  I didn’t want a milk shake from the snack bar.

What I wanted…was a drink.

The truck I was on passed through, headed further north up the road.  I knew where to go.  It was a place that Earl had discovered.  The Pearl was almost as resourceful as I used to be. 

There was a Special Forces in-country R&R bivouac removed from China Beach proper.  It had a bar.  Coming level with the short trail just under Marble Mountain, I thumped on the cab roof and my cab pulled over to let me alight.

The bar was almost deserted; only two guys sat at a table sucking on beers.  I ordered a cold one and slouched at the rail.  From past experience, I knew this to be a hotspot for none-of-my-business, more so than some places. 

I no more wanted to coax war stories out of those guys than they wanted to hear me sound off about the woes of being an REMF. 

Silence reigned; the only disturbance an occasional phish as a church key opened the next can of beer.

It was noon. I didn't know it then, but that beer and that Special Forces bar, in the shade of Marble Mountain, was the beginning of a ten day bender; and when it was over, I’d never want another like it.  Not even close.

 

 

Gittin' Short

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise.  The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

-Sylvia Plath-

(American Pulitzer Poet, suicide, 1963)

I notice this morning, finally, that the Swifter mop leaning against the dinette wall has dirt and dust accumulated around it.  Yet another shitty little job gone to the dogs.

And speaking of dogs: which one of you Dorks left that skunk streak on the bed sheet?  It certainly wasn’t me—not even anywhere near the slice of mattress you people allow me on the far port edge of night-night.

And don’t even think about pointing paws at the cats.  They wouldn’t do this.  Cats just aren’t in to dragging their asses across any textured surface; besides, they share a litter box about the size of Rhode Island which…GET the hell outta that box and drop that cat shit!  I’m warning you!  No, I’ll pick it up, thank you!

Crap.

Running a household free of other humans is not all it’s cracked up to be.  There’s none of the marital-cohabitation bliss of blaming a partner for the entire quagmire that is amiss-and-laying-about.

When the carpets are stained with dog piss in concentric circles; when the tile lies beneath a uniform layer of grit, I can hardly yell at the Mutt Brigade that it’s their turn to clean up the mess.  Not one of them would run a freaking vacuum cleaner or turn to with broom and mop, to save their freaking lives.

Useless ingrates.

Truth be told, I’m still upset with the Psych visit Friday.  I don’t know how to address it without demeaning someone I do not understand.

Here is irony: I iz the one feeling demeaned by the experience, but I choose to say nothing of the de-meaner.  Well, OK, make your own judgment.  What would you say if the doctor told you he had been practicing for nineteen years; and kept a medical diploma on the top of a filing cabinet, still enclosed in its commencement folder?  Whaddyathinkofthatshit?

Fooof---blowing it off, blowing it off.  Mellow thoughts.  A few porno images to bring balance back to a deeply troubled mind. 

That was likely my last turn with the psychiatrist, he determining that my meds are set for at least a year.  No need to see him further.  Time to heal the damage he inadvertently caused.

I swear on my grandchild’s Girl Scout Cookies, if I encounter one more meathead in the system…I’m going to declare Open Season on the Department of Veteran’s Affairs.

I mean it; and there won’t be any goody-goody two-shoes Girl Scout pledge to go with it.

You think I’ve been brutal with American War Era lifers?  Wait till I launch into a morass of public sector scuts trying to bail out the lifeboat of an increasingly failing system.  You ain’t read nuthin’ yet!

Well, it’s an ill wind blah blah blah.  All this banter has brought me to the necessary foul mood to do this here monograph coming right up after this commercial break:

Friends, when fretful with doubt take yer meds with clout.  When doleful and glum take drugs and rum.  The meds will keep you in mediocre mood while drugs and booze will chase the blues.  Trust in your doctors and dealers with glee.  Trust them; oh trust them, a cure you will see!

Believe that, you die.

*

I dared to peek at some asshole’s calendar taped to his locker: it was May 12, 1970.  I was less than three weeks from my ten day stand down!  At once I was elated and depressed.  The preceding six weeks had been…awful.  Let me not bore you, good readers, with a rendition of that.  What came next was worse, far worse.

We ran out of boats to chip and paint.  We ran out of crap to comshaw to a dumping off place.  We seemed to have run out of work.  But in this man’s Navy, there was no such thing as idle time; not at least for bottom feeders like Frosty and the blonde headed shitty-little-jobs yeoman without the cool comfort of the Boathouse.

Bullethead dreamed up something.  Finding work appeared to be the only imagination his thick head could produce.  Out at their moorings were the fuel barges, now empty and devoid of their contents.  They were too far from the causeway to run power to the wind devils, so any residual vapor was just tough shit on anybody unfortunate to work on them. Or in them.

Fuel barges are double hulled.  To access the space, between the outer hull and the inner bulkheads, are large round metal plates about every three feet down their one hundred foot length.  Each plate is fastened like a car wheel to its brake drum by large steel bolts.  A car wheel has five or six bolts; these plates had about thirty.  The plates weighed about eighty pounds.

Our mission, should we choose to accept it (or die the little death at the hands of the lifers), was descend into the hold, and remove the plates—all of them.  The only tool required for this was a speed wrench.

There were a few discomforting features to this line of work.  Those of us with the basic nature of a tropical Orchid would have no problem working in 130 degree, 100% humidity conditions (The six inches of water we stood in often vaporized to form rain clouds in the overhead. Hot rain was no relief at all).

I had one additional challenge: I was claustrophobic.  This particular phobia came to my attention about six months before.  Some dufus dropped a tool over the side.  Apparently, it was either expensive or indispensable; I never learned, because I never laid eyes on it.

True to my nature of being firstest with the mostest, I took command of the situation, stripped to my skivvies; and dived off the moored boat to pull a Robert Wagner ala Twelve Mile Reef panache to recover the errant whatever-it-was.  The bottom was plumbed at about two fathoms.  ‘Cool’, I thought; no deeper than the diving pool at Alamo Heights back home.  Slice of pie! Piece of cake!

I would find the object in less than two minutes, to burst through the surface holding the prize up for all my cheering shipmates to see.  Chances to be a hero was so far and few between.

That, unfortunately, is not what happened.

Reaching the muddy bottom with practiced stroke, I leveled out to begin a frantic search.  Instead, I became frantic at the few inches of semi-clear water between sea floor and the murk above me. 

I panicked.  The feeling of enclosure flooded my senses with a dread that had me dog paddling to the surface, my Bob Wagner persona vanished, never to return.  Now that I was aware of this perceived menace, I never again allowed myself to step into any tiny space; I can’t even stand to watch films or TV showing  ‘buried alive’ or ‘trapped in a cave’ kinda shit.  Can’t do it.

I was able to overcome the dread of climbing down the hatch to the dank interior by virtue of two things.  First, we went down in teams.  This was necessary for those shifts lasting more than fifteen minutes.  Someone would pass out; the rest of us had to get them back to the hatch, get them on deck; and revive them with a gallon of water and enough salt tablets to salinate the Dead Sea.  The lifer-in-charge finally let up and limited the work parties to fifteen minutes--tops.  The companionship of my fellows helped my spirit by the earnest desire to not appear a chickenshit in front of my peers.

My second relief came from the fantasy of what-it-would-be-like to be with Christina again.  I spun that dream until it almost eradicated the reality of unwinding those thirty bolts per plate (rusted through, most of them—no WD-40 or solvent to assist). 

A teacher once taught us about the Great Depression and the back-to-work programs implemented by the New Deal.  He told us that San Antonio men hired by the WPA worked to create Woodlawn Lake in our town.

To keep them at ‘work’, they would dig a pit and carry the dirt in wheelbarrows to the other side of the lake.  When the mound was sufficiently heaped, they would load the dirt back in the wheelbarrows and take them back around, to fill in the hole.

To my way of thinking, that was far more productive than removing all those heavy plates. Once pried off the bulkhead, we just laid them down; no explanation was offered for doing this job.  It couldn’t be justified by some idea of pumping water out from between the hull and bulkheads.  There were access holes on the deck that permitted pump hoses to be lowered down.  It was just labor for the sake of…nothing.

I never saw the end of this ‘project’.  I woke up one morning and the asshole’s calendar announced that the ten day stand-down had finally come.  I was free of the lifers, freedom very near…at last!

With the irrationality that was the core and substance of thought in my tousled head, my first query was, ‘What the fuck am I going to do with myself for ten whole days?’

The answer came.  Oh yes, it came.  I still had a little time remaining in-country to keep jamming down on my self-destruct button.  Just give a madman a little more rope…