by Geoff Dyer
This is what was going through my fifty-three-year-old head in the ATO shack. What about the heads of the nineteen- and twenty-year-olds who’d been on deployment all these months? Was I the only male here exhibiting—i.e., taking pains not to exhibit—such lecherous thoughts? Perhaps their thoughts were more mature than mine. But how could they have been? Or maybe, in the course of the seven-month deployment, they had not been as oblivious as I had during my two weeks. What felt to me like a revelation after the fact, they perhaps had glimpsed, registered, understood and mentally stored away on many other occasions on the boat. In spite of all the rules governing displays of affection and so on there must have been a constant current of sexual attraction coursing through the ship the whole time. Perhaps this belated ‘lechery’ of mine was a symptom of diminished sexual feeling, an inability to pick up on something which, despite the asexualizing uniforms and codes of behaviour was, to the youth of the boat, unmissable and omnipresent.
I did not have to sit for long in the ATO shack, staring at the wall. Soon—cranials on, vizors down—we began trooping up to that other world, the flight deck, in single file. Black-vizored faces and colour-coordinated jerseys directed us to the waiting Greyhound.
Sky. Ocean. Silence. Wind blowing. Jets moving and parking. Just the same—just as amazing—as on any other day. Time flying.
Another great day at sea.
On the plane we strapped ourselves into our seats. However I adjusted them the buckles of the shoulder straps were directly over my collar bones. The safety briefing had emphasized the intensity of the forces—the negative G—that would be unleashed when we took off. Our seats were facing backwards so we would be flung forward, against the straps. I signalled to the naval air crewman (as I now knew the flight attendant should be called).
‘What’s up, sir?’ he yelled.
‘The buckles are digging into my collar bones.’ Even though I was yelling it still sounded feeble.
‘What do you want me to do about it, sir?’ he yelled back again. If it had been a little quieter and if I had been feeling less anxious I might have replied, ‘I’d be obliged if you could adjust them so that I can sit more comfortably. And when you’ve done that perhaps you’d be so kind as to bring me a gin and tonic with ice and a slice of lemon.’ Instead, I shouted out my very real fears.
‘I’m worried that when we take off I’m going to break both my collar bones.’
He grinned. ‘Not gonna happen, sir.’
Then what would happen, given the alarmist nature of the safety briefing? What happened was that we sat there for another ten minutes, during which time I continued adjusting all available straps and wriggling in such a way that the buckles were slightly above my collar bones. As a consequence the waist strap was no longer around my waist but over my lowest ribs so that they were at risk of splintering as well. Finally, when I was sure the propellers were increasing in volume prior to take-off I pulled all the straps so tight I could hardly breathe. I crossed my hands over my chest as I had been told, I looked down to make sure that my feet were on the bar in front (also as instructed) only to discover that there was no bar. The engines roared more loudly. The flight attendant gestured to indicate that we were about to go.
The take-off was like nothing I had ever experienced—with the emphasis on nothing. A further roar of propellers. A jolt forward—no real sense of momentum, the faintest addition of pressure on the collar bone—and then part of the carrier went blurring past the window and we were low over the water. Airborne! We were not ploughing into the sea. We had left the carrier and were laboriously clambering up steep stairs of sky. People began taking off their cranials, loosening straps that were already a lot looser than mine. I followed suit, did what they tell you to do on a commercial aircraft: I sat back (figuratively speaking; I was still bolt upright), I relaxed, I enjoyed the nothing-happeningness of the flight.
The drama of take-off did not make sense until we landed in Bahrain. We descended so gradually that only the occasional pressure on the ears gave any sense of what was happening. The wheels hit the runway and we sped along for what felt like a couple of miles before slowing down, stopping.
We were back at the beach.
45
In two short weeks I had become thoroughly habituated to life on the boat. This too became apparent only when I was back on the very dry land of Bahrain. I checked in at the hotel, went up to my room and showered for a long time. The shower was super-luxurious, a source of pleasure, not merely a way of getting clean as quickly as possible. The water itself felt cleaner, more sparkling. I washed my hair using palmfuls of shampoo and conditioner, dried myself with a fluffy white towel the size of a flag and dug out unworn clothes from my suitcase.
I hadn’t realized, while on board, how dirty everything was. My shoes looked like I’d been working in a garage, my exercise books like they’d been scrawled in by a guy with learning difficulties at the front desk of a place that employed fifty mechanics. My little Dictaphone and camera were greasy. Everything, even if it wasn’t actually greasy, was coated in a thin suggestion of oil. The only time my laptop had left my stateroom was when it was taken onto the Greyhound; I had always washed my hands before using it—but the keyboard seemed smudged and oily. The fuel and grease of the gigantic workshop and airstrip that is the carrier had seeped in everywhere. This is not surprising; the surprising thing was that I’d not noticed it on the boat.
I looked out of the window at the empty cityscape that is Bahrain and experienced another revelation: I could go for a walk!
For the purposes of tourism Bahrain is right down there with the least interesting places on earth. People on the carrier who’d spent time in Bahrain said the best thing to do was just watch a movie in my room but the freedom to walk around, in the open air, was amazing.
It was Eid, a public holiday. The roads were deserted. Everywhere was so empty and quiet it was difficult to tell the difference between the vast tower blocks that were not yet ready for occupancy and those that were already functioning as high-rise dwellings. The fact that it was a holiday, that there were so few people around, made the contrast with the crowded life of the ship more marked than if I’d disembarked in London or New York, enhancing the extraordinary fact that there were streets instead of corridors. These streets were sky-high and, relatively speaking, desert-wide. You could walk without stooping, could cross the roads without wearing a cranial. You didn’t even need ear protection.
There was no sign of the political unrest that had made it seem possible that the Arab Spring might have spread here by the autumn. There was no sign of anything really, just Indians or Bangladeshis who were in Bahrain to work, walking in little groups of three, and a few tourists—American, I guessed—enjoying one of the benefits of travel afforded by the Navy: the opportunity to visit a place that is not worth visiting. But they were, I suspect, enjoying exactly the same sensations that I was, relishing the opportunity to walk, to go where you pleased. I was hoping for nods of recognition, some sense that we were part of the same tribe, but I was not shaven-headed and well-muscled: I just looked like a scrawny expat, a leftover from a novel Graham Greene had decided not to write. It was blazing hot and, while it may have been humid, the air felt dry as old toast. There was nothing to see.
I went back to my room and watched a football match—English football, real football: Spurs versus Fulham. Now that was worth seeing! Later I had dinner in the hotel restaurant: a Thai green chicken curry which, relative to almost everything I’d eaten on the boat, was sensational but which compared poorly with the Thai meal I’d eaten the night before, at the Captain’s table. I had a beer with dinner and made sure I looked at it, all golden and cold and sweating before I tasted it. It tasted like . . . well, like beer. It was OK. It wasn’t the beer of my dreams, the Ice Cold in Alex beer I’d been longing for. It was just Heineken. Maybe it would have been different if it had been Sierra Nevada or a crisp pilsner. I had no desire for a second glass.<
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After dinner I saw a couple of thickset, shaven-headed guys in T-shirts, shorts and flip-flops who looked military. They were waiting for the elevator with a couple of women in dresses and heels who looked prostitution. I waited for the next elevator and returned to the absolute silence of my hotel room, the silence which served as an amplifier for noise, though this only became apparent later on, after I’d turned out the light. A fire door connected my room to the one next door, through which came the excited sounds of . . . not, thankfully, of humans having sex but of a man alone, like me, watching the game on TV. An American man living the thrills and disappointments of a football game (American) just as I’d done a few hours before. Relative to the boat it was as quiet as the grave in my room—but it was a grave from which I was exhumed every few minutes by shrieks, whoops, cries of encouragement and groans of disappointment. I turned on the bedside light and called him on the phone. He was watching his home team, he said, and hadn’t been aware of all the hollering he was doing. He was nice as pie, as nice as Jax. I didn’t hear a peep from him again.
I’d kept my curtains open so that I could see the city at night, an uninteresting extent of buildings, lights and, beyond that, the unseen sea. It was almost ten o’clock. On the carrier there would soon be the little announcement and prayer that preceded Lights Out. I thought of my stateroom and wondered what little story was being told tonight over the Main Circuit before the prayer. How lovely it was to end the day that way, to hear the words ‘Let us pray . . . ’, to hear some final and gentle version of the thing that was emphasized throughout the day by anyone and everyone: do better, excel, work to the best to your abilities, for yourself and everyone else.
Exporting my routine from boat to hotel, I turned off my bedside light and lay in the massively luxurious bed, remembering bits of psalms and hymns that I’d always liked, passages about those in peril on the sea, those who go down to the sea in ships and do business on the great waters. There was an acknowledgment in such lines that there is something especially vulnerable about the vocation of the sailor out there, as Stonewall had said, on the same sea as Noah.
What does it mean to pray? How can you pray if there is nothing to pray to? I don’t know. I thought of Paul bowing his head over his plate as if asking the Lord for the power to get this slop down his throat without puking. You wouldn’t catch me doing that—I’d rather go without until I found a way of getting my hands on leftovers from the Captain’s table.
I didn’t pray when either of my parents were dying or after they were dead. I just sucked it up until, after a time, it didn’t feel like sucking something up; it just felt like life, like life underwritten by a constant suggestion of death.
Prayer is an ability and habit that has gone away, atrophied—unless it means something very simple, like thinking of people, thinking fondly of them, wanting the best for them, hoping they come to no harm. If that counts, then that is what I did; I prayed for those who go to the sea in ships.
Appendix: US Naval Rankings
TITLE
ABBREV.
PAY GRADE
Seaman Recruit
SR
E-1
Seaman Apprentice
SA
E-2
Seaman
SN
E-3
Petty Officer Third Class
PO3
E-4
Petty Officer Second Class
PO2
E-5
Petty Officer First Class
PO1
E-6
Chief Petty Officer
CPO
E-7
Senior Chief Petty Officer
SCPO
E-8
Master Chief Petty Officer
MCPO
E-9
Fleet/Command Master Chief Petty Officer
FLTCM/ FORCM
E-9
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
MCPON
E-9 (S)
Warrant Officer 1 (no longer in use)
WO1
W-1
Chief Warrant Officer 2
CWO2
W-2
Chief Warrant Officer 3
CWO3
W-3
Chief Warrant Officer 4
CWO4
W-4
Chief Warrant Officer 5
CWO5
W-5
Ensign
ENS
O-1
Lieutenant Junior Grade
LTJG
O-2
Lieutenant
LT
O-3
Lieutenant Commander
LCDR
O-4
Commander
CDR
O-5
Captain
CAPT
O-6
Rear Admiral Lower Half
RDML
O-7
Rear Admiral Upper Half
RADM
O-8
Vice Admiral
VADM
O-9
Admiral Chief of Naval Operations/
Commandant of the Coast Guard
ADM
O-10
Fleet Admiral (reserved for wartime)
FADM
O-11 (S)
Admiral of the Navy (retired rank)
AN
S = Special
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Alain de Botton who first asked if there was somewhere interesting I would like to reside and write about, and to Caro Llewellyn at Writers in Residence who made it happen so easily (well, easily for me, at any rate).
Ongoing thanks to everyone at the Wylie Agency, especially Andrew, Sarah Chalfant, Kristina Moore, Luke Ingram and Davara Bennett.
Thanks to Chris Steele-Perkins, the snapper, for his marvellous photographs.
My biggest thanks, obviously, go to the crew of the USS George H.W. Bush for the unflagging friendliness, good humour, professionalism and patience extended to me throughout my stay. Their patience needs emphasizing: it must have been difficult to accept that a simple technical explanation of a fairly straightforward process would have to be repeated three or four times—and still be greeted with the blankest of blank looks. I spoke to a lot more people than are featured in this book and I would like to thank all of them for taking the time out of their already crowded schedules. As is obvious from the text, Paul Newell has to be singled out for special praise and thanks. He was a wonderful guide and friend; it was a great privilege to witness his promotion at the end of my stay and I wish him every success and happiness in his career and home life.
As will by now be clear there are times in the book when I take issue with opinions expressed by certain crew members. This in no way diminishes either my respect and gratitude for their willingness to speak openly to me or my admiration for the dedication and enthusiasm they bring to their work. Needless to say, all mistakes are mine alone.
This book was made possible by a grant from Writers in Residence, an association devoted to placing some of the best writers and Magnum photographers in some of the key institutions of the modern world. Writers in Residence seeks to bolster the long-form nonfiction essay and the art of photojournalism. For more information, see www.writersinresidence.org.