The Greatest Lover of Last Tuesday

by Neil McKinnon

  In the Navy

  THE FAILURE OF MY MARRIAGE CAUSED me to become depressed, and while many rebound from depression into the lap of another relationship I decided to seek advice as to a future direction for my life. Both my lawyer and my investment manager suggested I do this as they had become concerned by the large portion of my assets that Elena had removed from their care and hence the large portion of joy she had removed from their retirement plans. Accordingly I consulted with Colonel Humberto Escobar, a school friend of my father’s and a man famous in our city for his ability to instantly penetrate the most confused circumstance, analyze all courses of action and recommend the one that leads to a desired conclusion. He had served in the cavalry and his military career had been brilliant in that he had created enough lucrative opportunities that he was able to retire to a lavish lifestyle though his army pension was modest. He now passed his days in Don Emilio’s restaurant seated above the patrons in a suspended barber chair because its large cushion tempered the discomfort caused by a vigorous collection of hemorrhoids that had accumulated during the long hours he spent in the saddle. To alleviate boredom he passed out advice on problems that drifted up to him from the conversations of the customers eating at Don Emilio’s tables.

  As I had anticipated, his questions were penetrating. “Did the experience of marriage cause a greater wound to your ego or your wallet?” he asked.

  “Each is a different affliction,” I replied. “Neither is worse than the other. I expect to recover. Already my ego is impatient for me to become known in more of life’s arenas … and the wound to my wallet is repairing itself thanks to the expert ministrations of my banker and accountant, who are both concerned for their own futures.”

  Colonel Escobar laughed, which caused both ends of his black handle-bar moustache to quiver like the back leg of a dog when you scratch its belly. “A man marries for one of two reasons,” he said. “Either he has placed second in a match-up of intellects, or he has concluded that marriage is his only available path to sex. In either case I suggest a complete change in your existence. I suggest you join the military. There should be ample room in one of our armed forces for your ego to reassert itself and discipline should help to heal your depression. Of course there could be risk should our politicians not keep us out of war. If you find that risk too great then I suggest another occupation. Perhaps you should go to chiropractor school. Even if you have no backbone of your own you should learn to recognize one in others.”

  His advice was clear and I opted to join the navy. I was already a gentleman. All that was required was to become an officer. My wealth would purchase a commission and, though I expected to start near the bottom, I did not think it would be long before I reached a rank that would permit me to command, at minimum, a small fleet of destroyers.

  When I told the petty officer at the recruiting office of my expectation he smiled and enquired as to my level of education. I informed him that I had left university to join the ranks of married men but that I had recently been liberated from my marriage bonds and felt that my experience on the high seas of matrimony, together with the battles I had survived, would be all the education I would require for a successful naval career. He smiled again and held out a form for me to sign.

  Once he had my signature the smile left his face. “You are now a member of a long military tradition,” he said. He then gave me a two hour lecture on the history of our country and the incredible role that our naval forces had played in that history. Finally, he concluded, “You leave for basic training in three days. Until then, report here every morning at 0800 hours and I’ll put you to work.”

  “I don’t think I should do that,” I said.

  “Why is that?” He looked surprised.

  “It wouldn’t be appropriate. I’m going to be an officer. Soon I’ll outrank you.”

  The smile re-emerged. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t understand,” he said. There was something in his tone that made me suspect he wasn’t quite as sorry as he said he was.

  “It’s minor,” I said. “Everyone makes mistakes.”

  His smile never flickered. “Why don’t you come in anyway and we’ll start preparing you for your first command before you even leave for training.”

  “That would be decent of you,” I replied.

  The next morning I arrived precisely at eight o’clock but the petty officer who had invited me was not there. Instead an unshaven sailor in dungarees was sitting on a chair with his head in his hands.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I joined up yesterday and I was asked to come here this morning.”

  He raised his head and opened one eye which consisted of a white background criss-crossed by a dozen red veins. “Wadafugyowan,” he said.

  I didn’t recognize the foreign language he spoke so I repeated my statement. He returned his head to his hands and talked to his palms very slowly. “Get a broom and sweep the deck.”

  “I think you should look at me when you speak,” I said. “I’ll soon be an officer.”

  He took his hands from his face and stared at me through the red veins. “Pardon me,” he said. “Let’s start again. Get a broom and sweep the deck … asshole!”

  His tone startled me and I immediately recognized that I was in the presence of a lower form of life. Instead of intelligence he appeared to be composed entirely of whiskers, suppressed violence, and loosely contained rage. For my own safety I decided to do what he said. “All right, where can I find a broom?”

  He put his face back in his hands before he spoke. “It’s up my ass. I hid it on you.” I decided that I should find the broom on my own.

  The grizzled sailor took a cruel delight in tormenting me and the next three days were not pleasant. As well, the realization dawned that I had signed up to become an ordinary seaman and not an officer … and there was no way out! My commitment was for three years. I wasn’t sure that I could last.

  I will not bore you with the details of basic training except to say that I was confined to base for four gruelling months during which time I marched, scrubbed decks, polished brass, shone shoes, cleaned toilets, and marched again.

  I immediately recognized that I had little in common with my fellow recruits and I made no close friends. Therefore, on the day of our graduation, which was also the start of a seven day leave, I set out alone on a mission to unload the excruciating burden of carnal longing that had accumulated during the previous four months. Not skilled in the ways of meeting the type of woman who would readily assist in my undertaking, I had little idea of where to begin. Necessity is a willing teacher, however, so I was not worried. I determined to have a drink in a nearby bar while planning my course of action.

  I entered and sat in a dark corner. Before I could order, a heavy set older lady with dyed hair and bad teeth waved at me from the far end of the room. She was wearing a low-cut blouse that exposed a goodly percentage of two of the largest breasts I have ever seen, one of which was partially disguised by an oblong brown tattoo. The three were alone and the woman beckoned me to join them. “Hello young sailor,” she said. “Are you unaccompanied and would you perhaps like not to be?”

  “Yes and yes,” I replied. “I have this day been released from four months of endless marching and toilet scrubbing, during which I did little else but dream of the act that one performs in private with a woman of great passion and little inhibition. Perhaps you know someone who, because of necessity or desire, would be willing to help a sailor unburden himself of many months of accrued lust.”

  “It happens that I do,” she replied. “Let me take you to her. There will be a small charge for both her time and the taxi fare.”

  I agreed and she then lightened my wallet of everything I had in it. The four of us crowded into the back seat of a waiting taxi. She placed her hand on my thigh and squeezed rhythmically as we drove miles into the countryside. I passed the time of the trip by trying to imagine the significance of her tattoo which resembled an overweight rug
by ball. Eventually she directed the driver into a yard occupied by a dilapidated house.

  “Is this where the young lady lives?” I asked.

  “Yes it is,” she said. “Follow me.”

  She opened a broken screen door and we entered a dark room where three men were seated at a table playing cards and drinking beer. As we passed, I noticed that the man with his back to me was holding three aces. They paid no attention to us and she led me to a tiny back room that I first thought was a closet. She closed the door and began to take off her clothes, exposing her gigantic mammaries. “Do you like them?” she asked. “I’ve named the left one Port and the right is Starboard. That way no sailor can get lost.”

  “What are you doing? Where is the young lady I was supposed to meet?”

  “Surprise,” she said. “It’s me.”

  In ordinary circumstances I do not think that I would be capable of completing any amorous endeavour in such an environment, but after four months of confinement in quarters so close that it was impossible to find relief except on the rare occasions when I was assigned guard duty in a remote area, I found little difficulty in letting nature take its course.

  Afterwards, the lady’s only comment was, “My, you have a fast little thing there. If I wasn’t so poor I might consider a discount.”

  I am a modest person and praise embarrasses me. “That’s kind of you but there is no need for a discount. I have always been a model of efficiency. However, you can tell me what your tattoo signifies.”

  She looked amused and ushered me from the room. “It’s a haggis,” she said. “My first lover was a Scotsman.”

  On the way out I observed that the man was still holding three aces. Of course, the taxi had left and the walk back to the city took almost two hours.

  Adriana was strangely silent after I had related this portion of my story. After a few moments she spoke. “One of my husbands was in the navy,” she said. “Your tale has raised memories.”

  The reflective and pensive side of Adriana’s nature was one I hadn’t seen and I attempted to jar her out of the past. “He probably joined after you married. I can understand that time at sea would be attractive to him.”

  She shuddered at some ancient memory and pulled herself back to the present. “Actually, he cleared the fog from my thinking. I once thought Freud was right — that I envied the male appendage. So I set out to get one. Unfortunately it came with a husband. However, because of him, I came to realize it was not the male organ I had difficulty with — it was the man attached to it. Had I met you first it would have been self-evident. But tell me, Old Sheep Gut, did your experience, brief as it was, have any effect on your development, either as a person or as a man? In your case the two are not synonymous.”

  “No, the incident was fleeting and so long ago I barely remember it. There is no point in trying to go back.”

  Adriana poured us each a brandy before she spoke. “I’m feeling nostalgic,” she said. At the very least, tell me of your naval career.”

  “There was little career. It won’t take long.”

  The term of my enlistment had been shortened by two unlucky, unforeseen, and unfortunate incidents. One was mathematical and the other was erotical. The first occurred on a destroyer shortly after my training. We were steaming along the coast and I was assisting in the operation of a gun that was firing out to sea, targeting a barge anchored earlier for the purpose of practice. Unfortunately, despite my earlier exposure to port and starboard, I accidentally reversed the co-ordinates by 180 degrees and we began firing at the small coastal town of Rosarito. Nobody was injured although one shell detonated in the mayor’s garden and completely destroyed a large patch of tomatoes. The mayor’s beloved pet Chihuahua, Pépe, was in the garden when the shell exploded. Pépe lived through the blast but suffered such extreme psychological trauma that forever after he developed a severe case of diarrhea whenever he smelled salsa.

  The recommendation of the court martial was that I be broken in rank but when they came to implement the punishment they discovered that I was already at the lowest rank possible so instead I was assigned to a term of physical labour working on the estate of Admiral Eduardo Torres, commander of the entire eastern fleet. This assignment led directly to the second incident.

  The admiral was rarely home so it became the responsibility of his wife, Felicia, to oversee my labour. Even though she was much younger than the admiral she seemed to relish her supervisory role. She put me to work cutting grass, hoeing the garden, clipping trees, cleaning gutters, and painting the house. When the outside work was finished, I moved indoors to scrub floors, wash dishes, dust, and make beds.

  After a few days, she came to see me as part of the furniture and began wearing what I assume was her normal daytime attire: high heels, panties, and bra. God had designed Felicia in such a fashion that her presence could cause a roomful of sober men to stagger like inebriated sailors as blood rushed from their brains to their genitals. Consequently, as she moved about the house my blood made so many frenzied return trips within my body that it carried off my thinking ability and deposited it in a part of my anatomy where Adriana says it resides to this day.

  One morning I was scrubbing the kitchen floor when she called from the bathroom. I went to the door and replied, “Yes, Madam.”

  “Come in here,” she said. “I need your help.”

  I hesitated, then averting my eyes I opened the door and stepped inside. She was taking a bath. “Over here,” she ordered. “I want you to wash my back.”

  Keeping my eyes on the wall I attempted to do as she asked. When I hesitated she grabbed my uniform and pulled me into the tub. I felt a number of near-simultaneous sensations: soap went into my eyes, a nipple went into my ear, a tongue went into my mouth, and all restraint went down the drain.

  Unfortunately I again reversed co-ordinates. I landed on my back with my head under water while she removed my clothes and engaged in all manner of activities that I would have enjoyed more had I not had to struggle to occasionally raise my nose into the air so I would not drown. When she was finished she allowed me to surface and smiled through the suds on her face. “It’s fun to do it like dolphins,” she said. I was still gasping for breath when she started again. This time we did it like frogs. Then we dozed and later, half-asleep, we did it like salamanders.

  My routine changed after the bathroom incident. From that day I did little housework. My regimen consisted solely of being available whenever Felicia felt the need to give me a zoology lesson. We did it like woodpeckers, we did it like butterflies, and we did it like rabbits. During my time in her employ we aped the mating habits of mammals, fish, fowl, and of most of the insect species known to science.

  One day I accompanied her to town to buy groceries. On the way home she detoured and parked at the top of a hill overlooking the harbour and the naval base. “The view from here is beautiful,” I said.

  “Yes, it is,” she answered as she unzipped my trousers and lowered her head to get a different perspective. The scenery seemed to inspire her. “Let’s do it like snakes,” she said.

  Soon we were naked and in the backseat. We were in the midst of what had become habitual when I sensed motion. Felicia had forgotten to set the handbrake, and by the time I noticed we were careening down the hill toward the base. I attempted to jump into the front seat so I could bring the car to a stop, but doing it like snakes made it difficult to disengage. The car chose that moment to leave the road, bounce over a ditch, smash through a security fence, cross the parade square, and penetrate the side of the administration building.

  As the dust settled I was able to push open a door. Forgetting our clothes, Felicia and I crawled out. We were in Admiral Torres’ office surrounded by a crowd of onlookers which included the Admiral and several high ranking officers. “I was fleeing from a snake,” Felicia explained as someone wrapped a blanket around her.

  My release from the navy was effective the same day I was let out of prison. />
  Adriana no longer looked pensive. “Given your sense of direction, it’s no wonder you never had children,” she said. “Remind me not to follow you when you die. But tell me, Old Snake, did you find Felicia on your recent travels?”

  “Yes, I did,” I replied. “We met in her apartment near the naval base.”

  Felicia and I had not seen each other since the accident. She had added elegance to beauty, was much bejewelled and smelled of expensive perfume. The years had been kind to her and I became light-headed when I saw her. These days, however, the dizziness is mitigated by the fact that all my fluids travel at a slow pace. Therefore, I am capable of carrying on a rational conversation even though Adriana says I operate with obsolete intellectual equipment.

  “How are you?” I asked. “You look as if the years have detoured around you. In what manner do you fill your days that you have preserved your most vital assets?”

  She smiled at me. “Much has changed,” she said. “My husband sailed to his reward long ago and I returned to the academic studies I had abandoned to get married. I completed my doctorate and spent my life teaching at the university. I’m now retired.”

  “Wonderful,” I said. “I had no idea you had an academic bent. What was your specialty?”

  “Herpetology,” she said. I am an expert in ophiology, the study of snakes.”

  I explained my mission to her. “I have become the world’s greatest lover and it is my quest to find everyone who has been an influence in my life, particularly as it applies to the art and practice of love, so that I may understand what role that individual played in my reaching the lofty peak from where I now view humanity.”