by J. E. Park
“I think my balls are about to explode, HM1,” I groaned.
“I doubt they’re going to do that,” Bateman mused. “What happened?”
When I explained my last sixteen hours, I left out the lascivious details that I would include when I told my friends later. At one point, I did let it slip that there was more than one girl involved when I was injured, however. After hearing this, Bateman pulled the bed curtain closed for extra privacy. “Did you say you went to bed with two women last night?”
I reached over and pulled the privacy curtain back open, so everyone in the waiting room could hear. “That’s right, Doc. There were two girls.”
Sickbay exploded into a round of applause. Even Lieutenant Booker, the ship’s chaplain, poked his head around the curtain and gave me a thumbs up. “Right on!”
As I thanked my audience, Bateman pulled the curtain closed again. “Petty Officer Murphy, we’re going to have to take a look at what’s going on down there. Can you get your shorts down, or do we have to cut them?”
“If you let me do it myself, I think I can get them off.” I unbuttoned my shorts, pulled down the zipper, and gingerly started working them down my legs. Once I got the top of them halfway to my knees, I let Bateman take it the rest of the way.
Before I had the chance to work on my underwear, the corpsman gasped. He lifted my shirt and revealed all the marks on my stomach. “You let them do this to you? Are those teeth marks?”
The waiting room lit up with more raucous cheers and clapping. Petty Officer Bateman found it less than amusing, though. “Murphy, do you have any idea how nasty a person’s mouth is? I’d rather be bitten by a vulture than another human being. You’re not leaving here until we clean and disinfect all that. How did these girls do this without you smacking them? That had to have hurt!”
“It did, but there wasn’t a lot I could do about it,” I said while showing him my wrists. “I was handcuffed to the bed.”
That earned me a standing ovation from the waiting room. The chaplain quipped, “This isn’t confession, Murphy! It’s exhibitionism!”
“Okay, petty officer, we need to get your underwear off now. Do you need help?”
“Not yet…” I said, taking a deep breath and holding it while working my briefs off in much the same way as I did my cargo shorts.
Bateman was a professional, but as soon as my privates were exposed, I saw him turn his head while his sweat pores opened up. He kept his cool much better than I did once I saw what happened to me, though. My scrotum was wildly discolored and swollen so much that my penis disappeared somewhere within it. It looked like a hairy, tie-died water balloon that was ready to pop. “Sweet baby Jesus!” I cried, my voice registering instant panic. “Where’d my fuckin’ dick go!”
HM1 Bateman stood up and backed away. “I’m going to go get the doctor.” He left the examination area so quickly that he forgot to close the curtain. After he departed, three other patients stepped up to see my junk for themselves. They immediately wished they hadn’t. Another corpsman ran up and told them to get lost, closing the curtain and calling them all faggots.
LCDR Terrance Broward, the ship’s doctor, soon barged into my exam area. He not only kept his composure but even allowed himself to laugh at my expense. “So, a woman did this to you?”
“Actually, there were two of them,” Bateman added.
“So I heard.”
“Doc, what the hell’s going on?” I was now having a hard time breathing.
“You tell me. How did this happen?”
“A chick stepped on my balls!”
“Stepped? Are you sure she didn’t stomp on them?” Broward asked, cocking his head to the side to get a better look.
“Yeah. She stepped. The power went out, and she couldn’t see where she was going. Did she break them?”
The doctor shook his head and poked my inflated scrotum with his index finger. It was horribly painful. “No, I don’t think she broke anything. In fact, if this is what I think, it looks and feels a lot worse than it actually is.”
“Then what do you think it is?” I asked.
“A scrotal hematoma,” Broward asked, poking it again. It looks like you might have broken a blood vessel somewhere in your groin area that flooded your ball sack. We’ll drain it and see if there’s any sustained fluid flow from the wound. If there isn’t, we’ll close everything back up and send you on your way.”
“So, I need surgery?”
Doc Broward shook his head. “I wouldn’t call it surgery, but it is a procedure, yes. We can do it right here. Petty Officer Bateman, bring me a prep kit and go get a camera.”
“Camera?” I asked.
“Oh yeah. If you can’t be a role model, I’m going to make you a cautionary tale.”
As the doctor had said, the procedure was not that bad. The worst thing about it was the shaving. As much as my hematoma hurt, my scrotum was still as ticklish as it always was, and I had a hard time lying still. After a small incision, a lot of draining, and a few minutes of observation, they stitched me back up. I was then lectured about safe sex practices and sent back to work, feeling almost as if nothing happened.
When American ships approach exotic ports, the crew is often required to watch a slide show detailing all the damage that sexually transmitted diseases can do to a man’s reproductive organs. It’s pretty graphic, filled with images depicting everything from syphilis sores to herpes rashes. They include injuries, too. One particularly hideous shot shows why one should never masturbate behind a piece of running machinery in heavy seas.
Sometime after September 11th, 1992, that training aid added a gruesome new slide. It now shows an image displaying the disfiguring effects of a scrotal hematoma. In reality, the condition is not that severe, but the visuals pack some serious fear factor. Even though they cropped out the part showing me giving Broward two thumbs up as he snapped the photo, the testicles on display in that presentation are mine.
*****
CHAPTER 4
W ord tends to spread quickly aboard a ship. By the time I left sickbay, put my dungarees on, and climbed up the island structure to my shop, everyone knew what had happened to me. Radar Repair was full of men waiting to hear the account of what I did to myself. All five of my people were present as was our LPO, ET1 Tony Bard, and Airman Marty Pruitt, an aerographer’s mate that worked next door.
Knowing nothing would get done until I spun my tale of wild monkey loving gone awry, I did not even bother to resist. As I spoke, I discovered each of the men were interested in different aspects of the story. My best friend Kevin Dixon, my star radar technician Rick Hammond, and Tony Bard were most interested in how I seduced two women at the same time. ET2 John Palazzo, an insufferable pervert, wanted the details to add to his pornography-addled fantasies. That boy had serious issues. Stephen Kent, our new guy, hung on every word, looking like he wanted to take notes. As far as we could tell, Kent only had a single brush with actual intercourse. That was when he blew that load in his shorts before he had even seen his hooker naked. Tragically, that happened right in front of us and was why we now called him “Speedy.”
ET3 Claude Metaire was the shop’s resident lady killer. Threesomes were not particularly novel to him, so he was most interested in how I hurt myself. Airman Pruitt was fixated on my treatment in sickbay. “You actually let that faggot Bateman touch your shit?” he asked. He made no attempt to conceal his disgust.
I grinned, knowing how uncomfortable Pruitt was with this stuff. “Marty, I would have let that man tongue-check my prostate if it’d made the pain in my nuts go away.”
The airman recoiled. “Fuck that! There is no way that I’d let that homo anywhere near me while I didn’t have my pants on. I’d beat his fairy ass!”
That was not idle bluster. Marty was a brawler. He had some sort of Zen thing going on with the art of inflicting pain. Because of my reputation of being able to hold my own in a bar fight, he believed us to be kindred spirits, but he was
mistaken. When I fought, I had a reason to, no matter how misguided it might be. Pruitt fought because he enjoyed it. He particularly reveled in abusing homosexuals. There was a story about how Marty stepped into a gay bar by mistake one night and tried to take on everyone in it by himself after discovering what it was. He got his ass kicked, but he took a lot of men down with him.
“Well, Marty,” I told him. “If you think you’d get away with punching Bateman for doing his job, you’ve got another thing coming. You’d better be prepared for a lengthy stay in the brig for assaulting a senior petty officer.”
Pruitt huffed. “I’d rather do time than get molested by some fucking cock-gobbler. You guys telling me you wouldn’t?”
“Eet eez not molestation eef you enjoy being touched by a man weeth eyes so dreamy.” Metaire joked. The rest of us agreed with him and pretended to swoon to watch Pruitt squirm.
“Jesus Christ,” Marty said as he got up. “Screw all you faggots.”
As Pruitt opened the door to leave the shop, Lieutenant Junior Grade Krause walked in. Besides his ever-present sunglasses, the lieutenant wore a skin tone that looked like the side-effect of too much Hawaiian sun. It was more likely the result of having me within his field of vision, however. The man turned red every time he saw me anymore. He tried to write me up for nearly getting Warren Macklemore and me killed in Mexico. Our department head realized that demoting me would mean putting Palazzo back in charge of Radar Repair, though. Having already been through that situation, the Combat Systems Officer declined to pass my chit up the chain. The lieutenant had my number ever since. Poking his thumb toward the exit, Lieutenant Krause ordered everyone out of the space except for me.
No sooner had the door closed behind Bard than my division officer lost his composure. He slammed his hand down upon my desk so hard it sounded like a shotgun blast. This was a signature move. I knew he would do it and made sure that I did not give him the satisfaction of seeing me flinch. That infuriated him even more. “YOU MISSED SHIP’S MOVEMENT!” he bellowed.
I nodded. “I did, sir. So did Master Chief Darrow. And the XO…”
“I KNOW THAT!” Krause brought his hand down on my desk a second time. And then a third. This was not meant to intimidate me. It was the lieutenant venting his frustration. “Neither one of them came back with a vulgar story to corrupt my men, though. Are you proud of what you did out there, Murphy?”
I did not even try to suppress my grin. “Actually, I kind of am. I take it that you’ve never…”
Krause got so angry he started to shake. “For heaven’s sake! No! I’ve never even…”
“Well, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so, you should consider it. I mean, handling two women in bed at the same time is a lot of work, but you know, it’s great at relieving stress. I mean, after everything I’ve been through recently, I feel like a new man! Now, just looking at you, I can see you’re under a lot of pressure, so…”
Krause flipped out his index finger and stuck it in my face. “Watch your filthy mouth, son. You’re too young to realize you’re not invincible, but let me tell you something; you’re not bulletproof. You keep pushing these boundaries, and sooner or later, you’re going to step over the line. And when you do, I’m going to be waiting there to make sure all your chickens come home to roost.”
I stood up from my seat. Looking down at my division officer now, I let out a sigh. “Sir, when I was eleven or twelve, my friends and I came across a few dozen eggs in a grocery store dumpster. We took them to this railroad bridge built over a busy road and started tossing them at cars passing by. Now, I’m not going to lie to you; it was a lot of fun. It was a blast right up until my neighbor caught us doing it. He stopped his car, got out, and started yelling at us, letting us know that he was going to tell our fathers.”
The fact that Krause was letting me say so much surprised me. He usually had difficulty listening to more than a dozen syllables spoken by anyone other than himself. Taking advantage of having his full attention, I continued with my story. “My friends all stopped throwing eggs right there. We all knew we were in big trouble. A couple of them even started crying and walking back. Not me, though. I went right back to making Chevy omelets. Why? Because my old man beat my ass damn near every night. For the most part, he did it without having any reason to. At least that time, I earned it. If I was getting beat for chucking eggs at cars, I was getting as much enjoyment out of it as I could.”
I never could see Krause’s eyes behind his glasses, but I could tell by the rest of his face that he was squinting at me. “And how is that relevant to what we’re talking about here?”
How is it not relevant? I sighed again, realizing I had to spell it out for the man. “Sir, if you’re looking to bust me no matter what I do, I’m going to do my best to have as much fun as I can before you succeed. Look, I’m not going to antagonize you. I’m not trying to bait you, and I’m not happy being perpetually on your bad side but, I’ll be honest. I’m not worried about you much. I’m a good technician. I run a damn good shop and I have the confidence of my chain of command all the way up to the captain. You don’t.”
I struck a nerve. The color rushed into Krause’s face and he clenched his teeth. “Why, you insolent little…”
“Sir,” I interrupted. “I don’t know what imagined slight you think I committed to spark this vendetta you have against me. I don’t think your little crusade is going to work out the way you think it is, though. I recently saved the captain’s daughter from serious harm. His tour commanding the USS Belleau Wood is not scheduled to be up until December 1994. My enlistment is up six months before that. That means for the rest of my time here, I’ve got a pretty powerful patron looking over me. Sir, you’re wasting a lot of energy and effort trying to bring me down. You’re not going to be able to hurt what’s left of my career here. Hell, at this point, you can’t even hurt my feelings.”
“If you think the captain is going to let you get away with bloody murder just because you…”
“Sir, I did the math,” I told him.
“What?”
“I did the math,” I repeated. “You were commissioned four years ago, right?”
The look on Krause’s face betrayed that he knew where I was going with this. “Yeah, so?”
“Promotion from O-1 to O-2 is pretty much automatic. That means you’ve been a lieutenant junior grade for three and a half years. You’re pushing the limit for how long the Navy will let you serve as an O-2 before they deem you unpromotable. If you don’t advance by the end of next year, you’re going to be forced out.”
Krause swallowed hard. I could see in his face that he was painfully aware of that situation. It looked as if the prospect of being pushed from the service weighed heavily upon him. “You trying to say something, Murphy?”
I shook my head and shrugged. “Only that you should focus on fixing your career instead of trying to wreck mine. If you don’t, you’re going to end up kicked off this ship long before I will.”
*****
Hurricane Iniki destroyed the Hawaiian island of Kauai. The death toll was freakishly low for a natural disaster of such magnitude, but the storm still left thousands of people without shelter, food, fresh water, or access to medical care. Fortunately, the USS Belleau Wood was perfectly positioned to help. We spent our last several days within the territory of the United States providing relief to those affected by the catastrophe.
We were scheduled to pull out of Hawaii on Monday, September 14th. Because of the hurricane, though, we spent several extra days there supporting Kauai’s relief efforts. When we finally did get back underway, we were exhausted, but satisfied with ourselves.
At that point, it was over a month since I had last laid eyes on Hannah Baxter. It was more than three weeks since she removed all uncertainty over the status of our relationship. That was when she returned her engagement ring to me via Warren Macklemore. Once the islands of Hawaii passed over the horizon, the pain of losing her finally began
to subside.
It might have been all the steam I had blown off during my drunken tear through the North Shore. It could have been the fight I got into in Waikiki. Maybe it was the shock of how close I came to doing something the captain would have court-martialed me for. Or the satisfaction of making Lieutenant Krause realize that he was powerless to do anything to me anymore. My night with Abbie and Darlene probably had a large part to play in it, too. Whatever it was, once we put Pearl Harbor behind us, I accepted the finality that Hannah was no longer going to be a part of my life. I was not at peace with it yet, but I reached a point where I could move on.
Not long after leaving Hawaii, the air conditioning in the crew’s berthing area went out. Located right above the ship’s boiler, it was not long before it got unbearably hot and made sleeping impossible. Since the air conditioning was more reliable in the SPN-35 radar dome, I strung my hammock up and crashed there. Cool and comfortable, I immediately dropped into a state of deep sleep the instant I closed my eyes. That was something I had not done for a long time.
My dreams were still of Hannah. We were in Bali, the place we planned to start a surf shop catering to Australian tourists. She was radiant and beautiful, cooking over an open fire on some secluded tropical beach. She laughed, and I remembered looking at her, knowing that I would never be happier than I was at that moment. Then I heard the shotgun blast.
Hannah’s head split in half, splattering everything inside of it all over me. I ran to her to try to put her back together but knew it was no use. So instead, I rose up to exact revenge upon the man who killed her, knowing it had to be my father, Liam Lyle Murphy. It always was.
Unfortunately, my old man was far from finished. Before I could get to him, he pulled the trigger again and killed my mother for the thousandth time. Then he killed my baby brother in his crib before turning the gun on my older sister. I almost got to him there, but he ran. He bolted from our house in Detroit and fled into the El Salvadoran rain forest. My father had been dead for several years before I landed in Central America. Still, in my dreams, it was he who tracked down the Salvadoran girl that haunted me. I watched my father kill her too, now wearing the uniform of the Atlacatl Battalion that her actual killers had.