Worst Mental Image Ever

Strap in, kids. Another Navy story.

It's 1999 and we're, once again, punching holes in the water in the Persian Gulf in support of U.N. sanctions against Iraq. Understand that, for the most part, life can get very boring on the open seas, even when you're in relatively hostile territory. Our major concerns were 1.) Not running aground, 2.) Not being shot at by a rogue Iranian F-14 pilot with an agenda and 3.) Stopping ships smuggling oil and other contraband into and out of Iraqi ports. That first point is something that always happens. Always. The last 2 were something we only dealt with when in the confines of the Gulf, but we trained for them so much that they became second nature. Therefore, when something of interest happens, whether hostile action or someone does something stupid on the ship, the memories stay with you forever.

This post is about the latter case.

We had a relatively new sailor on board. He'd been with us since shortly before we departed on this little 6-month excursion, so he'd been with us for a little less than a year at this point. We'll call him Seaman Fisc. Fisc was a short, scrawny, mostly pre-pubescent 18 year old, fresh out of high school and away from the sanctuary provided by mommy and daddy for the first time. As such, he had the social skills of a gnat. Honestly, he was maybe 5'0" tall, weighed about 100 lbs and had curly brown hair. Fisc was also prone to getting on everyone's nerves for various reasons.

I wanted to slay him from the moment I saw him. Not because I was nearly a foot and a half taller and outweighed him by more than a hundred pounds. It was because everything he did got on my nerves. From opening his rack and slamming it shut roughly every .2 seconds during all hours of the day and night (for anyone familiar with how shipboard berthings are situated, he slept directly across from me in the bottom rack) to having to be repeatedly shown how to do his job correctly, throwing this little bastard overboard was a recurring dream for me.

One night, on our 1999 cruise, I was standing watch at one of the radar scopes in CIC. It was another quiet watch, everyone was behaving themselves nicely and had been for the month and a half we had been patrolling the Gulf. It was nearing 2 in the morning and I was anxiously awaiting my relief to show up so I could crawl into the fetal position in my rack and grab some much needed sleep. It was about this time that our resident Intel Specialist walked into CIC.

Greg was a mountain of a man. He was taller than me, probably around 6'6", with broad shoulders and a big, round face. And he looked pale, like he was going to hurl. I asked him what was wrong.

"Hershey, I just walked out of the berthing and saw the single most disgusting thing I've ever seen in my life."

Perplexed, I asked him to explain. I would soon regret it.

"Fisc was standing at the sink near the showers, buck naked. He had one foot on the counter of the sink, ass towards the door, with his hand around his backside and he was shaving his ass. If that sight wasn't bad enough, there were ass hairs all around the floor and sink."

Nauseous myself, I asked what he did.

"What could I do? How do you respond to something like that? I turned around and walked out."

Laughing hysterically at this point and immensely grossed out at the mental image he had created, I asked if he'd mind watching my post while I went down to the berthing. He grabbed a seat and I gave him a quick debrief before heading down to take care of this matter.

When I got there, Fisc was in the process of getting dressed. Not saying anything to him, I went into the shower area. As soon as I opened the door, I noticed the offending ass hair was still all over the sink, counter and deck. Walking back towards Fisc and still not saying anything, I grabbed him by the back of his neck and forced him into the showers. And I began rubbing his face within all of his ass hairs.

"You know, some asshole is gonna have to clean this shit up! What the fuck do you think you're doing? Clean up your ass hairs, dirtbag!"

Naturally, he was struggling the whole time, but as I said, I was over a foot taller and outweighed him by a hefty amount, so he wasn't going anywhere. By the time I let go of his neck, his face was covered in his own ass hair.

When I was certain he had cleaned it all up, I told him to hurry up and get his freshly shaven ass up to CIC so he could relieve the watch.

Again, there are just some things the recruiter doesn't tell you you're going to have to do when you enlist.