This was a Cheech and Chong situation if I had ever seen one. The floor of the car I was sitting in, a Datsun 240Z, was absolutely littered with white cross. Speed. Uppers. Go-Fast. Whatever the hell the slang was for it then. The shit was everywhere. Must have been two hundreds hits spread all over the floor and the seats and between the spent bottles of Heineken. I was bent over in the passenger seat trying to pick the tabs out of the carpet, my eyes tearing up from the smoke from the lit Marlboro that was stuck in my mouth . "Jesus Christ, Jay! If the fucking highway patrol pulls us over we're gonna wind up getting our asses reamed in the Los Angeles County Jail. If we even get that far. Doesn't that sound like fun?" Jay belted out that loud laugh of his. "Denny and I did a little partying last night. I forgot about the mess."
Denny was Dennis Barry, a good buddy of
ours. Bar none the wildest son of a bitch I would
ever meet in my life. With a short squat hairy body
and huge stevedore arms, Dennis would stroll down
the decks of the ship like a lost silverback gorilla,
swinging those tree trunk arms of his. Good natured
and funny when sober, shit in your pants funny
when stoned, and short tempered and dangerous
when drinking, Dennis was one of a kind. The son
of a Hollywood film lot worker, Dennis planned on
getting on at Fox Studios as soon as his enlistment
ran out. It was amazing that he had lasted almost
four years in the service. But amongst the non-lifers
to the Dixie, Dennis had achieved God-like status.
He had been assaulted by the Captain of our
ship. And lived to tell the tale. Captain K. J. Roth
was a blowhard of epic proportions.
A former football playing washout who had tried out with and
miserably failed with the Green Bay Packers, Roth
was a huge lug of a man with a tiny head who
favored wearing cowboy boots and carrying a silver
six shooter in a monogrammed holster as he strutted
around the ship like a deranged combination of
George Patton and a fucking bandy rooster.
Equipped with the brain the size of a pea, he was
the never ending target of practical jokes from the
crew which included having his engraved bowling
ball thrown over the side which divers were unable
to locate in the murky waters of Sand Diego Bay,
calling his stateroom late at night "Quit jacking off
up there, Roth," his sheets on his bunk short-sheeted
constantly, mess cooks pissing in his coffee pot, and
the almost daily theft of his sports section from the
newspaper delivered to the door of his stateroom.
Even though a football failure he lived vicariously
through the box scores.
"Sons of bitches!" he would scream over the
ships intercom as he stood on the bridge with spit
flying out of his mouth. "Sons of bitch bastards! I
want my fucking paper back right now or liberty is
canceled for the crew for the next goddamn year."
He would never get it back.
The ship was in dry-dock and was torn all to
shit. It was like being stationed on Satan's private
yacht. Smoke. Welding sparks flying everywhere.
Flush one toilet it would back up two rows down on
someone taking a crap - now that was funny.
Hammers banging. With all the needle guns and
knuckle-busters going as deck hands chipped off
years of coats of paint you couldn't hear yourself
think.
Dennis and I were up on the O-2 level of the
ship up by officer's country, shirking from our
duties as we smoked, coked, and joked. With all the
yard noise we were both wearing Mickey Mouse
ears and were mostly just trying to read each other's
lips. It was so fucking loud that we couldn't hear the
ship's pipe, which is the Naval term for a
loudspeaker announcement that Captain's Mast was
about to begin. Captain's Mast being the equivalent
to a civilian's misdemeanor court appearance. Only
in the civilian world you aren't normally sentenced
to 45 days restriction to a ship and you spend your
nights scrubbing shit stains and cum tracks off of
toilets.
Since we were wearing ear protection and
you couldn't hear the goddamn announcement
anyway we weren't expecting Captain Roth, trailed
by his cast of flunky officers, to come charging
around the corner like a fucking maniac and hit
Dennis with a block that I can guarantee the dumb
bastard never threw as hard in the Packer's training
camp. If he had he might have made the team.
Dennis never saw it coming and went flying
into the bulkhead (wall), bounced off it and came
back with a cocked fist that he most likely would
have broken the nose of his assailant with in any
other set of circumstances, until he stunningly saw
the commissioned moron standing in front of him.
"Goddamn you! Don't you know how to
come to attention, asshole?" screamed Roth. The
spit of course flying out of his mouth again,
spattering the front of Dennis's coveralls.
"I'll have your ass court martialed! I'll have
you in the brig tonight sucking a Marine's cock!"
He turned and stormed off down the deck followed
by his stunned henchman.
Roth had his timeline all wrong. By that
night Dennis's parents had secured the services of a
top notch attorney. Within a month, Captain Roth,
who was in line for admiral had not only lost his
command but was forced to retire. Fuck thinking
about making admiral.
Dennis was rewarded with an early
honorable discharge and we all kept in touch after
he got out.. But he wouldn't let the Roth incident
go. For sort of a hobby he had taken to calling Roth
late at night and tormenting him about the loss of
his command and promotion. Dennis had a buddy at
A T & T who kept getting Roth's phone number
when he kept changing it. Within a year, Dennis
would be dead of a morphine overdose. Roth
eventually capped himself with his service revolver.
In his typical fuckup style he wasn't successful and
spent his remaining years in a veteran's nursing
home.
"Fucking A! There's even some black
beauties and a hit of ...shit this looks like a tab of
blotter acid," I yelled out in glee. "This is gonna be
a fun drive I can see." I popped the top on the only
remaining full beer, warm, and washed down a
white cross, a black beauty, and the tab of acid.
The year was 1979 and our ship, the USS
Dixie, was home-ported out of San Diego. The ship
had been in a major overhaul at Todd Shipyard in
San Pedro when Jay and I had met. Since then, the
ship had finished up it's overhaul early - which is
another epic story in itself and had cruised back on
down to San Diego.