Well, so much for this normal sleep schedule.

February 18th, 2003 | by Scott Jennings |

Dig this: today’s story starts a couple of weeks ago, aboard the USS Iwo Jima, which was at sea shaking out the cobwebs prior to her maiden deployment scheduled for very soon. My brother’s friend Jason was on watch in the middle of the night, when he came across another dude who was also supposed to be on watch but was asleep at his switch. Jason’s either a seaman or a third class petty officer, I forget, but either way, the second class petty officers were in charge of him, and were in the mood to fuck around with the sleeper. Apparently, it’s an old Navy tradition (not to be confused with an Old Navy tradition) to fuck with people who are sleeping by placing one’s penis on their face, since everyone in the Navy seems to be a raging homo or something. So the second classes encouraged Jason to whip it out and set his flaccid member on this unsuspecting dude’s face, but for some strange reason, Jason politely demurred. But these second classes, as the story goes, were unrelenting, so Jason finally acquiesced by placing his hand down his trousers, poking a finger out his fly, and placing that finger, in lieu of his cock, on the sleeper’s face.

Once the rib was complete, all in attendance began laughing uproariously, which caused the sleeping sentry to snap to attention. As Jason hastily zipped his fly, the second classes informed the well-rested sailor that he just had a cock on his mug. Jason confirmed this, because that’s how the joke was supposed to work, and the defiled sailor stormed off, having presumably learned a valuable lesson about the importance of attention to one’s duty.

But naturally, there’s more to this sordid affair, since the shame of having a dick near your mouth doesn’t wash away nearly as easily as any dick residue from the cheek. This sailor was teased relentlessly for a few days, until he could take no more of his shipmates’ taunts and sought counsel from his command. Unable to find sympathy from his superiors, and sent over the edge by some fresh taunts, this sailor went to Jason’s rack, pulled him out of bed, still sleeping, and stomped Jason’s face in with the aid of Navy-issue steel-toe boots.

Unfortunately for Jason, there was little he could do but wait out his own personal Pearl Harbor, and he was left in quite a sorry state. No bones were broken, but the left side of his face was horribly bloodied and bruised, and the score was evened. After Jason received medical attention, both he and his attacker had to report to the captain for a little dose of sweet military justice. Jason told his side of the story, making the mistake of fingering his second classes as the instigators of the alleged dickfacing. To retaliate, the second classes insisted that Jason had in fact brandished his willy during the incident, and the captain decided that both Jason and his attacker had earned forty-five days of restriction. They would both be confined to the ship, unable to leave for any reason, and would be assigned additional duties every night. Sucks to be Jason. Making matters worse for our flawed protagonist was that fact that his girlfriend Jamie had just bought plane tickets to Norfolk to see Jason for Valentine’s Day. Non-refundable, non-exchangeable, totally-screwable. BURN.

So this is the point where Jeff gets roped into doing Jason a huge favor: Jamie stays at our place for the weekend, Jeff signs her onto the ship as his guest for a couple hours at a clip, and Jeff and I girlfriend-sit for the rest of the time. Not a big deal at all.

In fact, it’s hard to find problems with having an attractive nineteen year-old blonde girl with an affinity for tank tops, low-rise pants, and thongs hanging around your apartment. (Am I wrong for appreciating the sudden aesthetic improvement in my environment? No.) Jeff and I ended up taking a teamwork approach to the girlfriend-sitting: I was in charge of conversation, Jeff was in charge of taking her to fun places.

Jamie and I are both early risers, so we had plenty of time to chat while Jeff slept until 2pm trying to metabolize alcohol. We had a splendid time talking about college, dieting, how terrible upstate New York is, psychology, game theory, and a whole lot more. We made egg white omelettes and she turned me on to Trading Spaces and we became fast friends. I had clearly turned gay, but we were friends all the same.

When Jeff did finally get up, he took Jamie to the ship to see Jason. (And what exactly goes on in the dark corners of our nation’s billion-dollar warships? Lots and lots of sex.) After visiting hours were over, Jeff took Jamie out to one of Norfolk’s many exciting dance clubs, while I sat home, since I do sometimes learn things. Of course, they got kicked out of this particular dance club after Jeff got caught slipping alcohol to Jamie. Those wacky kids. But for the most part, Jeff chauffered when needed and kept his nose buried in his computer when not.

Jamie was scheduled to leave for Buffalo on Sunday afternoon, but of course, El Blizzardo ‘03 had something to say about that. She’s hoping to be able to leave early in the morning to get back to school in time for an exam at 11am, but having her stay for an extra day was just delightful — she keeps things clean and pleasant and aesthetic (God bless all you women who bend at the waist to pick things up), and with the exceptions of her talking during Joe Millionaire and Jason calling every twenty minutes, I’ll be sorry to see Attractive Blonde Weekend come to an end.

Wouldn’t it be neat to have my own attractive blonde hanging around all the time? I should totally look into that.

Another exciting event during Attractive Blonde Weekend was a thirty-five minute phone call from an attractive blonde friend of mine. This was a strange call — it was as though she had risen from bed with the sudden epiphany that war with Iraq was a good idea, has been a good idea from the start, and will always be a good idea, and decided to call me to tell me all about it.

Since I do happen to be opposed to a war with Iraq based on firmly-rooted convictions (and I’m not even a liberal, so double bonus for my anti-war feelings), this was a conversation that went absolutely nowhere very very quickly. I frustrated myself trying to explain my point of view, as this attractive blonde cut me off at every turn to interject the neocon party line of justified pre-emptive action/Saddam is a very bad man who gassed his own people/this is an important battle in the War on Terror. Suddenly, I was in the middle of a Sunday morning talk show, the moderator asleep at the switch, a poor overmatched anti-war activist being doubleteamed by an attractive blonde and a disembodied male voice in the background.

We disagreed on the fundamentals: whether terrorist activity is caused by the American presence in the Middle East or by a pure Muslim fundamentalist hatred of freedom, whether Saddam has designs on global or even regional domination or if he’s content to hop among his bunkers, whether Saddam has meaningful ties to terrorism or not, whether every person on the planet yearns to live freely and whose responsiblity it is to guarantee that. No one was going to convince anyone here.

But before we could even tackle the fundamentals, I had to get over my surprise that I was in a political discussion with this attractive blonde in the first place. We had never had any conversation that was ever remotely relevant to any real “issue” — whenever we talked it was just gossip or life advice or flirting, no big whoop. I love talking with her because she’s smart and she has a quick wit and she keeps up with me nicely, but it had never been in this context. It was just a bit of a shock. Besides, I avoid talking politics as much as I can because I happen to have a whole bunch of very kooky beliefs that have turned more than one person completely off.

So after thirty-five minutes of this, we agreed to disagree. I haven’t spoken with her since, which isn’t unusual because she’s very busy and I’m very anti-social, but I’m not going to be the one who brings it up again.

Let this be your guide, gentle reader: unless you’re honestly curious about my wrongheaded opinions on the nature of political and religious power and how it is has been exercised throughout history, please don’t Pearl Harbor (which, by the way, FDR totally knew about ahead of time and used to bring the US into a war which its citizens had wanted no part of) me into a debate, since we’re not likely to accomplish anything by it.

If the following conditions are met

1) My brother’s friend Jason is released from his restriction early for good behaviour and is able to drive to New York on Friday, allowing me to cash in on the favor owed
2) This major undisclosed consulting firm where I interviewed last week offers me a job
3) This same firm does not expect me to report for my first day before Monday

then I will be in New York this weekend.

Condition 1 has been estimated as 90% likely. Condition 2, purely mathematically speaking, is roughly 50% likely, since 11 people interviewed for five or six openings. Condition 3, I would guess, is about 90% likely as well. Therefore, the probability that I will be home this weekend is around 41%. Those are the best odds we’ve seen in awhile.

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