It’s 2am and I’m staring at my computer screen. I’m wide awake, which is usual for me, even at this hour of the night. There’s nothing on TV worth watching and I don’t have any decent books to read. I feel empty.

Usually writing makes that feeling go away. But I have to be inspired for it to be any good. I can already tell this will not be a good post. Sometimes eating makes that empty feeling go away (not the “I’m hungry” empty feeling). But I’d like to stop doing that, so I leave the jar of mixed nuts on the edge of my desk alone for the moment.

Hayward is strangling me. I feel confined. I feel like my soul is being slowly siphoned away, while I sit and watch and let it happen. That lust for life that I had while living in Chico is all but gone. My desire to adventure and explore and experience new things and LIVE is slowly disappearing.

These days I’m just an old, uninteresting, slowly-turning-bitter human. I hate that, and I hate that I let myself get this way. I need to snap out of this. Moving is the impetus that I need. I have to move, I must move, and quickly.

Help me.

When I was 19 I joined the US Navy. At the time I thought I wanted to be a firefighter, and the recruiters told me everything that I wanted to hear.

“Oh yeah, you can go straight from the Navy to a fire department. You won’t need any special training, college, or any of that. We’ll prepare you. We’ll teach you everything you need to know. Now, if you’ll just sign here…”

It didn’t take me long to figure out that I’d been scammed. Unfortunately that wasn’t until after I’d signed the next four years of my life away. It also didn’t take long for me to figure out that the military was not for me. As a result, I was a poor sailor. I hated being told what to do. I always have. Personal freedom means everything to me, and in the military you have none. They own you.

The enemy was comprised of two factions: all the officers and the “lifers”. All officers are the enemy, because they are arrogant jackasses. They are in charge, and not because they are more intelligent than everyone else, but because they have completed a four year college degree. A lifer is an enlisted man too stupid to do anything else in life. Lifers stay in the military and do their 20 years, retiring with pitiful pensions and little else. 20 years of freedom gone. 20 years of being told what to do. Just like prison, I imagine.

I remember one Saturday afternoon in the Fall of what I think must have been 1991. I was standing watch, roaming throughout the ship looking for fires and whatnot, sort of doing my job but mostly goofing off. There was a change of command ceremony for the USS Missouri, which was berthed on the other side of the pier from us, going on outside. It was a big to-do, a grand affair, and all the enemy was gathered in their snappy dress uniforms happily sucking each other’s dicks while the band played in the background.

I walked up to the upper-most part of the ship, the bridge, where I could get a good view. I was bored, I was pissed that I was wasting a Saturday while the rest of the free world drank beer and surfed and barbecued with pretty girls. 100 feet or so above the water in this air conditioned room I had a nice view of Long Beach harbor, downtown Long Beach, the shipyard, and through the smog and haze I could barely see Los Angeles.

I happened to look down at the console I was standing over. A mad and furious plan quickly formed in my mind. Yes. Yes, I will do this. I took a deep breath. No turning back now, I pressed all four buttons, waited a moment, and then pressed all four buttons again. My plan complete I ran down to the bottom of the ship, where I was supposed to be all along. I quickly composed myself and struck up a conversation with a bilge rat.

Soon the entire ship was in a frenzy. The enemy in central engineering control was frantically trying to get me on the PA system.

“Petty Officer Bissell, please contact CCS. Petty Officer Bissell, please contact CCS immediately.”

I called to let them know where I was and who I was with. The enemy on the other line was panicking.

“Bissell, the CMWS went off. We need you get down here RIGHT NOW.”

I hung up the phone and cackled with glee. You see, the CMWS, or counter-measure washdown system, is a system of pipes and spray nozzles placed all over the outside of the ship. If ever we were to enter a chemical, biological, or radiological cloud of yuckiness, we could turn on the CMWS to clean the outside with fresh sea water, and save us from Saddam Hussein.

Apparently this system went off during the change of command ceremony, and everyone on the pier had gotten wet.

Revenge tastes so sweet, I must say.