1- Graveyard Watch
Two days before Christmas, when I arrived back at Fort Meade from the Naval Rehab Center, Senior Chief Winston posted me to “INDEFINITE” weekday graveyard watch, 2000-0600, Sunday night through Thursday morning. It wasn’t meant as punishment, Winston claimed after he broke the news…
‘I gotta find something for you to do until your separation is processed, and it’ll save the company from standing pointless dogwatches.’
Ten hours minding a desk, broken up by irregular strolls around that old ass, three-story, mustard yellow, concrete structure. Nothing ever happened, unless counted the strategically propped fire doors, sailors passed out in the head or halls, and fraternization after curfew. Even when I discovered something like that -and I did, often- I never wrote anything in the log or tattled to Winston. No, not me, dude.
I. Didn’t. Give. A. Fuck.
You know, the Senior Chief actually thanked me -that cold, snowy March morning I left his life forever- for being such a sport those last fourteen weeks of my short Naval career. So, I’d like to think that -despite the mess I made of my life- I wasn’t such a “complete piece of shit”, which is what Winston called me in September…
When I fractured my left ankle cuz I was tripping balls during a pointless predawn PT run.
I got to chew on that a lot, standing those graveyard watches- the mess my life had become; how I was a complete piece of shit; how I was getting sent home to Los Alamitos, back to Ma and Dom, my forced-into-early retirement, ex-LAPD detective stepfather…
That at twenty-one, I was irrevocably fucked for life.
I relentlessly fantasized about what I should have done when I went UA. I mean, I had a plan…The Plan…but like the hapless lush I am, I got hammered in West Virginia, drove my pickup into the Ohio River, and drowned. That made for a kickass story at rehab, but in the Real World it meant I had violated my probation and was now considered “a serious risk to reoffend”.
Wheeling certainly sucked poopie elephant ass: notebooks turned to mush, emerging from sedation under armed guard, restrained in a hospital bed, treated like Ted Bundy. Chief Winston and his angry, Tony Spilotro looking sidekick (Master-at-Arms First Class Carlson)- drove from Meade to collect me when I was medically cleared to travel three days later. They didn’t say boo to me, or each other, the entire four-hour drive back. Not even a question, like if I saw bright light or hellfire when I died. Breaking News, Geraldo– I saw neither, which only made me more determined to get back to THE NOTHINGNESS quicker.
Hey, I never asked to be brought back, okay? Given the mess I was in, I wished on all the stars above that I had died. On that pensive ride, I considered how the Navy might handle me this time– the brig; or the Fleet, undesignated; or discharge (best option). I’d have to await my fate while the case was built and discussed, sweating it out in my room, forbidden to go anywhere except the chow hall, the head, the smoking pit, or to meet with my “legal advisor”, an indifferent Ensign who reviewed my case and then unsympathetically stated that I was at the mercy of the Old Man.
And so, a couple days later- cleanshaven, wearing crisply pressed winter blues and mirror shinned dress shoes- I stood tall in front of the Old Man, Commander “Hydrocephalus”, the Defense Information School poohbah. That was my fourth Captain’s Mast in thirteen months of active duty; three of those Non-Judicial Punishments were rendered by Hydrocephalus hisself. If you can’t guess, he wasn’t impressed by my antics.
First came the dressing down; the guilt trip for the “headaches you created everyone”; the “what was I thinking” rhetoricals I couldn’t truthfully answer.
Next, he rotely docked my pay and confined me to the barracks for a month (he would have busted me in rank, no doubt, but I had bottomed out at E-1 in June, at my second NJP, oh well). And then, at last, the Commander starchily confirmed “what you, John Rice, have forced by your actions”: an unceremonious discharge…Other Than Honorable.
Before all that, I had to “complete rehab”, and I had “best be serious”. If I wasn’t serious…if I say, “pulled another disappearing stunt” or got booted from the facility for being a worthless, incorrigible shithead, Hydrocephalus threatened to put me in the brig (where you really deserve to be, claimed he, sneering like he sucked on a lemon).
Fine, whatever, I thought, nodding so earnestly, my Dixie cup nearly slid off my head. Certainly, I could Pretend, if that’s what it took to get me outta the Navy faster.
Near the end, the Commander said I should be thankful that the Navy was sending me to treatment, helping me get “better”…and a bunch of other happy horse shit, but I stopped listening. The more he rambled, the more I kept thinking-
If only.
If only I wouldn’t have stopped at that Barney’s Beanery in Wheeling cuz my ankle hurt after four plus hours of driving. I’d have freedom; I’d have a future…
I’d have my goddamn notebooks!
If only I’d have kept moving…
I had a plan– a couple weeks in Cincinnati with Rene, then I was flying to Paris, under a different name. I had stolen my pain in the ass, G.G. Allin worshipping, roommate’s Military ID, Passport, and driver’s license. I figured I’d start over, do it right this time as someone else…
As Carlos Corona…
If only.
The Shit of Adim Witt 