The first time I’d been to San Fran– I mean “SFO”–was years ago with my dive team. It was between ship deployments and we had been ordered to go battery fishing in the Bay plus a few other locations in California. These were the same batteries that power the aids to navigation or buoy lights that help captains and pilots not hit stuff with their big boats. Back in what you might call the less than eco-conscious days, these batteries would get dumped right on site, in the drink, and replaced with new ones by the Coast Guard. Here we were, decades later, fishing these sons of bitches out. It was more like clumsy clamming on our hands and knees in dry suits and in very strong currents. It was a great core workout.
Fast forward to last September, when I’m no longer a dive officer for the Coast Guard, but a guy who’s been recently fired from his former job and desperately trying to avoid going back to sea.
Don’t get me wrong. The ocean is majestic. It’s beautiful. It’s quiet. It’s away from office farts and bs. You get to swear a lot and tell off-color jokes to your male and female shipmates, and there’s no woke boss there to stop you or write you a discipline letter. I’m paid pretty good. I get to think a lot. Overthinking is one of those involuntary things I love doing the most. I’ve done some really cool shit at sea, too, but I just don’t know if I’m cut out for that life anymore. In addition to the physical demands of working on, say, a tug, the ocean can be a real bitch. At the rate my union and former employer are going, however, I may not have a choice but to lie with her again and plead with her please be nice to me.
So far, I haven’t had to go long and far for work. It found me. It’s what happens when you’re 25 years at anything and you keep your head down for the most part like a good little boy.
I found some work last September to be exact that paid my bills and kept my ass on the beach. I was back in SFO for their Fleet Week. And saying hello to an old friend, the current. But this time from a boat. I was specifically tasked with guarding an amphibious ship from any waterborne threat. Sounds sexy, and I suppose it was in its own way. Mostly I just cut off oblivious recreational boaters from getting too close.
The Navy and the Marines were in town during this week, spiffy and spit-shined. It brought back memories of me in uniform. The homeless were conspicuously absent from the Embarcadero, put up in hotels maybe. I swear The Blue Angels sound every time like God’s tearing a sheet of paper, and this time on the Bay was no different. I had a box seat.
I had a box seat to some of our nation’s finest too. Let’s see, what the heck generation are we on now?
They sat next to me with their M4s and their stories. Ladies first. Take 21-year old E. Loves her Niners, loves God, not necessarily in that order. She works with “Chaps,” ship’s chaplain. There’s a rating or job for that in the Navy come to find out. A baller, she was given full ride honors to a few D1 schools. I never did delve too hard, but there had to be more to the story, because why the hell was she sitting next to me when she could’ve been balling D1?
Some time in that week, there’s a coed hoops tournament between all the Navy ships and some other agencies. E. returns to tell me they lost to San Francisco’s “PD,” but that she got asked to try out for Navy. She’s sweet. She wants to run for Congress one day. She doesn’t ask a lot of questions of her interlocutor, but screw it she’s a girl and she’s twenty one.
E.’s got the NFL package on her phone. We watch her team beat up on the Seahawks without McCaffrey no less on Thursday night. She’s into it. Sunday we tune into Pastor Ed who delivers a talk on immigrants from his pulpit in San Antonio. It’s the same wishy washy we hear from everyone on this topic: we must be Christian acting. We must also follow the laws. Shit, Ed, which is it? ‘Cause it can’t be both. Last I checked, Christ said let ’em all in.
Then there’s LT Dan from Ohio. Poor bastard still roots for his lame-ass Browns. Not five minutes into his boarding my boat, he’s dipping so he can stay awake on his watch, plus he wants me to tell him a sea story. He’s not impressed with my penguin story down in the Antarctic, or my near drowning at dive school, or the night op I lead down near Guatemala that would result in one of the largest drug busts in Coast Guard history at that time, or being first on scene for Flight 261. Only when I tell him I got a lot of bjs in my dive locker did LT Dan really begin to invest in our conversation. Through him, I’m introduced to a stripper in Thailand who shoots darts out her down there. Those same darts are aimed at balloons held by patrons. Thailand’s on my bucket list.
LT Dan is a good-looking son of a bitch. The kind of good looking (and confident) you wouldn’t leave your wife or girlfriend alone with for more than five minutes. He shows me this picture of a hot rich girl he met and took home from a yacht club. Cougars visit him during tour hours. Seriously, the only thing that’s keeping LT Dan from boinkin’ every good-looking woman young and old in the city of SFO is his job. He works non-stop. Every sailor I meet does. This ship I helped guard was away from home from January to August this year. It was away from home during this Fleet Week. It would return to San Diego, go on a few mini-deployments before Christmas. It’s probably gearing up right now to deploy again real soon for another eight or so goddamn months. If there’s one I can say about LT Dan in listening to him and seeing how serious he takes his responsibilities is as much as he loves shagging, he loves the idea of someday lighting up the enemy more. I really get the sense killing is on his bucket list. At a minimum, he wants to get more action than what he’s currently getting. It seems only the Marines get to have fun on this particular platform. LT Dan is the first of two people in very recent memory to tell me he’s considering lateraling over to the Coast Guard, where apparently there’s more “action” right now.
There’s Elijah from Jersey.
Emerson from Trinidad.
There’s calm Robert who gives me a unit ball cap one watch
Jeezus they’re the best. And the only way I ever got to meet them and hear their stories and hear how bad the world is right now? I got fired.
I would have a similar gig a few weeks later, but up north, closer to home. A prior Air Force who I work with tells me he, too, is considering the Coast Guard. What the hell is going on over there, I say to myself. Makes me want to sign back up. Go do some cool shit again. One last dance.
“You can still do it,” my homie from Chile says to me. We’re watching football one recent Sunday and I’m updating him on my old job situation. I’d gotten done telling him I’m probably going to have to head back out to sea for a while before there’s any resolution.
I know I can, I tell myself. I know this about myself. Not that long ago, I was working forty hours, raising a son, part time homeschooling him, earning a freegin’ Master’s Degree. Not too many can do that. Not too many do do that. I can do it again if I have to. I’m hale. Got a few last dances in me.
It’s just right now it feels a little like I’ve been clutching a balloon in Thailand, and I’m kinda getting used to it.
-tmc
Things Men Carry 