Perpetual Cycle Then: Some Other Night, Northern Arabian Gulf
"What ya doin' Flopsy?" Scotty walks into the narrow office on the ship,
in the process glancing over my shoulder at the computer screen in front
of where I am sitting. Overhead the air conditioner hums quietly in
contrast to the raging of the wind and sea outside of the gray steel
outside of the ship. We're still floating out here in the almost exact
center of the gulf, where we will be for some infinite stretch of time.
It is odd in a way that when you're in this position that you never really
think of all of the time that has passed so far, all of the moments lost
in the darkness and sound of the water on the hull. Bad enough that I
work nights and therefore have no idea what day it is most of the time.
We get into little arguments in the smoking area every now and again as to
what day of the week it is relative to laundry day. "Readin' the
ops-intel brief, eh?"
"Yeah, just looking at some stuff." I log off the computer and push the
chair around on the plastic coating over the steel decking of the ship.
"Nothing interesting though. Usual shit."
"Huh." Scott replies by pushing past the desk illogically placed inside
of the office, actually a good-sized broom closet. "Nothing good eh?"
"No new shit, same shit as yesterday." Strange reaction when you see some
of the pictures taken of some of the things that I have. Initially
staring at photographs of people standing around reading newspapers
taken from objects the size of small cars hurtling about in orbit
above the planet is fairly impressive. After a bit of looking at these
sorts of things the reaction devolves into an apathetic bland sheet of
boredom. Weeks go by and they could have reconnaissance pictures of the
sun shining out John Travolta's ass and you stand a good chance of
lapsing back into a coma. Slumping in the chair I let my head go slack so
that I can stare at the collection of pipes running through the ceiling.
"I think I'm goona die."
"Why's that?" Scott manages to exceed the bored tone in my own voice
while still interjecting a sarcastic note of condescending parental whine
with the reply. He is sitting in front of the other computer in the
office; we have one for the squirrels and one for everything else. "You
sick or something Flopsy?"
"You know, I have no idea why it is that persist in calling me that."
They've been calling me 'Flopsy' for the past couple of days due to the
movie 'Notting Hill' having been shown. Something about my state as a
perpetual slightly cynical and self-deprecating bachelor gave these
geniuses the idea to assign me another nickname. I don't even look like
Hugh Grant. Six foot tall and slightly annoyed version of Anthony
Michael Hall with a buzz cut, yeah, I could do that in bad lighting.
"Christ, I already have one fucked up nickname."
"Yeah, but you're Flopsy now." Scott says with a cackle. He's one of our
aircrew, an enlisted person that sits in the backseat of the helicopter
and makes the avionics go. Most of the time they go 'bonk,' or 'bang,' or
'I/O FAULT' and then I get a phone call. The two of us are the sort of
grizzled veterans on the detachment at the moment; both of us have three
six months cruises under our belts in as many years. Both Scott and I
have spent more time asleep underway this year than we have standing,
sitting or sleeping on dry land. For me it has been just under ten of
twelve, Scott clocking in at just over nine. I joined this detachment
while it was in the Nag, (short for Northern Arabian Gulf,) less than
month after getting home from my last little trip out. Japan that time,
different world operating out of there. You never see the Nag, maybe HK,
Sing or Thailand but not the Evil Sandbox of Fun. Scott is
half-Hawaiian and half-Chinese, one of the best people that I know in the
backseat. Rail thin and perpetually tan, the khaki flight suit hangs over
his frame like a burlap sack. The government makes them to fit the
expanding, the narrow ones like Scott and I wind up looking like we're
escaping from something. "Flopsy."
"Thanks Scott, I appreciate it. No really." The thought strikes me as
odd that we can become so jaded out here. Most people would regard being
underway and on a ship as something to appreciate, to us it is nothing
more than a royal pain in the ass. "I wish we were headed back to Atsugi
right now."
"Shit, that'd be nice." Atsugi Naval Air Facility in Sagamino, Japan.
Roughly twenty-five minutes by train from Yokohama, both Scott and I did
our first two detachments there. Not together, but close enough that we
knew the same people and saw each other on the way out or the way in
country. "Go hang out at the club and bother what's her name?"
"The bartender?" Musing, I remember the smell of French fries wafting out
of the glass automatic sliding doors in the front of the place. Cold
winter biting on the back of my neck on the way in, the promise of another
night spent relishing being there versus underway. "Yuki."
"Yeah. Some good times there, bro."
"You and Camille, Tom, Jason what's his name. The guy who was always
running around showing people his wang." Both of us laugh quietly as the
names bring back the time when we weren't gritting sand between our teeth
and worrying about the next day's flight schedule. A few short hours from
now I will go out, start the machines breathing. Computers, radar,
crypto, pre-flight armament, sync the thing with the computers on the
boat and watch the GPS acquire a new constellation of satellites. No
Yuki, no bar, no double rum and Cokes. Silence slices into the office
like a sword, leaving both of us disconnected in a haze of memory and
listening to the rushing of the wind over the hull. "Just another
day."
"Yeah. Flight goes at four." The inevitable flight schedule with minor
variation from yesterday to today to next month yet always relied upon to
provide amusement and happiness for the entire crew.
"You got the first bag?" The fact that Scott is still awake at this
somewhat late hour ought to provide me with enough information that he
does not. Craning over to look at the small metal frame open at the top,
I squint for a second and manage to make out the event code dictating
another day of sensor sweeps over the Nag for the crew. "Ooh, exciting.
You get the log run. I'm all worked up thinking about it."
"Nope, second." Scott says in reply to the rhetorical question. "Yeah,
something like, oh five hundred pounds of mail on the carrier."
"Why didn't they just send the shit to Bahrain?" We pull in three days
from now. "I'm getting too fucking old, know that?"
"Huh." Scott lapses into silence and stares at the ceiling blankly, like
me presumably wondering about what we are supposed to say next. Outside
the Gulf does it's best to tear something from the side of the ship, a
staccato rattle of steel on steel in the winds.
Perpetual Cycle Ephemeral: Thursday, HMAS Sydney
Scott is behind the #25 Red Filter attached to the front end of the
wide-angle lens on my camera, his back against the forward 5-inch
54-caliber mount on the forecastle of the ship. The forecastle, I
recall, is the pointy end. Black and white film marches out of the roll
housing to the back of the shutter where it waits for a dose of light and
then procession to the other side of the camera. I told him to make sure
he shot half the roll remaining, the shadows of Sydney's Thursday morning
hopefully providing enough contrast between the gray of the ship and the
white polyester of the uniforms the commander and I are wearing. In the
event that it wasn't enough I still screwed the red filter over the end of
the lens, which slightly perplexed Scott until I explained why to him.
Slowed measures of a song I was just listening to in the shop before
walking down here floats through my head until the OINC clears his throat.
Rudely slopped back into reality I realize that this is the point at which
I either put up or shut up. This is the decision. Slowly the right arm
comes up, thumb aligned neatly with the side of the hand, elbow at a
ninety-degree angle as prescribed by regulation. Again, yes I, Yurei,
swear to protect and defend. Six years gone in less than sixty seconds.
Shake hands with the CO and make a witty comment about being
congratulated. My own Chief didn't even bother to show up.
Outside on the pier in late evening twilight that same day the full
gravity of what I have done settles in like a lead weight over my
shoulders. So much of my life gone by at my own behest, a thousand other
nights disappeared into memory not because I could not find the words to
recapture them later but due to the ink just running together. So much
time, yesterday just like tomorrow and last week just like last month.
All of this time spent at sea waiting for something that never happens and
yet I have nothing to show. Scarred hands hold open empty palms for the
eyes to observe, heavy ridges around the joints marking the wear and tear
placed on a body I remember being so much younger not too long ago. When
I first came in I was such an idealist, now the bitter core of a
hardened cynic and a picture hanging in my mother's sewing room all that
remains of the boy. Lost through irretrievable hours, innocence moves
fleeting as cigarette smoke through the Sydney air. I feel so broken at
times, isolated, miserable, the world pressing in and trying to drown out
every word from this mouth. Hardening again, I drop the cigarette into
the can, watch the light sizzle out in the half-inch of rainwater at the
bottom and walk away. I don't need this self-indulgent id right now.
Eyes narrowing as I climb the brow to the quarterdeck, pushing all of the
shit back down where it came from. Stay. Don't move.
Stepping up the back stairs behind the shop, the lever pulling all of the
dogs simultaneously swings free and the shop door pivots on silent hinges.
Scott is sitting inside, half-watching his pizza disappear and the
television spewing forth propaganda. 'Rules of Engagement' was a little
biased when you think about the plot line. Bit of sensationalist yellow
journalism on the studio's part, still we sometimes loudly root for the
Marines "wasting the motherfuckers." We laugh at this recordable death
knowing that it is not real and never will be anything more than two hours
of fantasy on a television screen. In a way this is part of coping with
an uncertain future.
Sort of like shooting the tops of radio antennae off of Iraqi
intelligence trawlers with a shotgun, if we can clip enough out then
no one will know what they're is thinking. The times when we insist that
nothing else can go wrong then something does, if we expect the worst of
all possible outcomes and you get anything better than that then you're
doing okay. Eventually you alter your outlook enough that you just don't
care that the worst is what is happening, at least you were prepared for
that eventuality. The problem then becomes what can be worse, what can be
the worst situation that you can possibly come up with, what if something
worse than that actually happens? In the unspoken pauses between the
gunfire on the television and the stone silent and silken menace of a
flash-suppressed .50-caliber machine gun sitting in an aircraft door I
suppose I can hear my innocence. Evaporating, leaving, burning off like
heavy red wine to depart with nothing more than an acidic aftertaste.
Perhaps this is the worst thing, that it is already gone.
Perpetual Cycle: Friday, Coogee Bay Hotel
"Yeah, Mark used to do that in the Gulf War." Troy ruminates,
laughing.
"Shoot antennas off?" Scott shakes his head and laughs while resting his
forehead between two upswept palms.
"He told me about that." I interject as the story returns from
somewhere.
"Yeah, they'd pull into a hover, Mark'd point the gun out the door and
blow the damn thing off." Troy says through a thin-lipped smile while
making a rifle gesture at the other side of the table. "All these
expletive fuckers running around on the deck. Fucking funny, what it
was. Scott, you guys ever lock and load on anyone?"
"Showed some guys the belt like twice. You guys?"
"Eh. Yeah." Troy mutters, voice dampened by a cloud of exhaled cigarette
smoke.
"You guys stop anybody with that fifty while you were up in the Nag?" I
ask for literally no reason other than I felt like saying something.
"Couple." Troy sips at his beer and resumes speaking. Amber fluid from
condensation soaked glass absolving us of the last of our collective sins.
After four I can't even feel the weight anymore. "That was some funny
shit."