... and I am not one who gives into such a strong set of emotions, so if I screw up and say "I hate ..." it really doesn't mean that I despise, loathe, or otherwise detest the thing (persons, institutions, characters, etc.)... Except Virginia.
I was stationed on the USS INDEPENDENCE(CVA-62) from November 9, 1971 until October 10, 1974. I had petitioned for an early release, and could have been off in July, but was turned down due to a 90-day Wonder, who had, from the beginning of his time on the ship, made it his personal duty to make my life Hell. His big play, was that I was necessary to my Division, and had to have an on-board relief. This was all a load of ka-ka, as soon as they turned down my petition for early release, he sent me on Temporary Duty as a Mess Deck Master-at-Arms (essentially the baby sitter for 50 - or so - "Mess Cooks" - a misnomer, because none of the cooked anything, they did all of the clean-up). I had the "Starboard Crew" during our last week in Norfolk, VA, and through all but the last 5 days aboard INDY. So blatant was this man's dislike of me (over a Salute) that he caused some of the most senior enlisted guys in my Division to help me plot, and execute, revenge that I didn't get to see, but was told was "out-flipping-standing"...
Norfolk, Virginia is where I was baptized into the LDS Church, and where I had hoped I could make a fresh start on life. In 1972, after we returned to Norfolk from my first (partial) Mediterranean Deployment, or "Med Cruise," I started hanging out with guys who got drunk a lot, smoked a lot of pot, opium, and any other such stuff, and my life took a real downward spiral. I made one really good friend, "Ank," but I really can't remember any of the others, though they did have an impact on my life. It wasn't exactly like "falling down a rabbit hole," it was more like being on an express elevator to Hell, and it was going really fast...
Those of you who have read my blog, or have spent any kind of time with me, know that Norfolk is where I got so desperately lonely, that taking a leap from the mast of the INDY into the solid concrete of a dry-dock, became a viable option for me, and about the interruption that kept me from doing it, so I won't go into that.
The important thing was being alone. And I mean A-L-O-N-E. I had A friend, and a bunch of jerks I worked with, but Ank had his own problems, and we really never got close enough for me to think about discussing the more serious stuff with him, and the guys at work were quicker than a Hillary-supporter with an anonymously-sourced "news" item. In Norfolk, "proper" young ladies didn't go out with Sailors, and we were treated very shabbily by the "No-fuggers". Even the LDS folks treated the Sailors in their Wards as a lower life form, but that came later. There were a number of "deployment widows," women who's husbands were deployed, and were looking for stand-ins, and "bar hogs," women who hung out in the bars, and would do just about anything, as long as you kept the drinks coming, but that was, pretty much, the limit of a single young male's female companionship in Norfolk, in the early 1970's. I just didn't want that. I wanted to find "HER," the woman who would hold the keys to my heart, whom I could love, and talk to, and pour the secrets of my soul to, not some "one night stand," or until someone's husband came home.
That's what Norfolk will always represent to me, abject loneliness. I understand that much has been done to improve conditions there, and that's nice. It's four decades too late for me, and the damage was done. I do not plan on ever going there, I'm just not that curious. I got out of there once, I'm not going to take any chances on a second time.
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