By Garland Davis

This is the story of how BT2 gave me a black eye.

We had served in two previous ships together, both homeported in Japan.  The second one had just rotated back to the states and was to undergo overhaul and then be homeported in Long Beach. We were lucky enough to arrange duty swaps with crewmembers of a ship that would be rotating to Japan in about three months.  In the meantime, we tried to make the best of Long Beach, but it just wasn’t Westpac.

BT2 and I had made First Class together.  He had lost it after five days in after a Hong Kong peccadillo. (I can hear him now, saying, “There, that’s what’s wrong with you always using them big fucking high school words that only them college educated assholes in the wardroom know!”) But I have already told the story of Hong Kong…

We left the ship at liberty call and headed for a joint on the Pike where we sometimes trolled for female companionship.  We had both been lucky at the endeavor there from time to time.

We were embroiled in an argument that was long running.  BT2 was saying, “Goddammit, you are a fucking Navy Stewburner, not a wardroom puke.  Why do you read them, fucking high brow books and use them big words?  You ain’t Cary Grant. Swave and Deboner ain’t gonna get you any more pussy than a pocketful of green.  You been in Westpac long enough to know that.”

I always replied, “What works in Westpac doesn’t fly with round eyes.  You have to use a little more circumspection.”

“What the fuck does circumcision have to do with it.  Fuck the round eyes.  There are enough P.I. LBFM Westpac widows around that half the time you think you are in Olongapo.  If we had a few jeepneys and some San Miguel, we wouldn’t even know we were in Long Beach.

We entered the joint and bellied up to the bar, ordered a couple of Lucky Lagers and looked around at the talent.  A striking blonde, sitting alone at the bar caught my attention. I said to BT2, “You’re on your own Shipmate. Well, here goes nothing.”

I moved down and asked if the stool to her right was being used.  She looked me over and said, “Please, I am Kate, but everyone calls me Kat.”

I sat and introduced myself and asked, “Kat because you purr or because you have claws?”

She laughed but didn’t say anything. We talked, laughed, and drank for about an hour before BT2 suddenly showed up on the stool to her left.  I reluctantly introduced them.  If you can move away from someone while sitting on a stool anchored to the floor, I do believe she managed to widen the space between her and the Snipe.

She had slipped her shoes off and left them on the shelf that served as a foot rail.  After a time, she, walking in her stocking feet, and I went to the juke box to play some music.

Shortly after we resumed our position at the bar, she said, “I have to go to the ladies room.”

Soddenly she turned and said, “You despicable Son of a Bitch,” and punched me in the left eye and carrying her shoes went into the ladies room and a few minutes, still in her stocking feet and carrying a pair of obviously wet shoes stormed out of the place.

BT2 said, “I’m just looking out for you Shipmate!”

The Asshole had pissed in her right shoe, the one on my side, while we were at the juke box.