Joining the US Navy in the 90s, part 5 "Gurney Mills mall rats"

Previously in part 4

After our liberty days were over it was time to pack up and leave the barracks we had called home for all those weeks. Some were going to A-schools in other parts of the country, but many went to the Apprenticeship Training Department which was just a few buildings over. I moved into a berthing for seaman apprentices and it was identical to the one I came from. What was completely different however was the atmosphere. Basic training was over and ATD, while a continuation of basic training, was our first semi normal job. We had chores to attend to in the berthing, but our job was to study seamanship. Once class was over for the day, we were free to come and go as we wished, on or off base. Great Lakes was a ghost town. There was nothing to do there and our company commanders told us so before we parted ways. But it was easy to get anywhere from Great Lakes. You could catch a train to Chicago and be there in about twenty minutes. We all went there once or twice, but most of the time we went to the neighbouring town of Gurnee, home of Gurnee Mills Mall. They had a good food court, great shopping and a movie theatre. I remember the lot of us went to see Crimson Tide. The theatre was packed with dress whites and all of us probably had a little chubby going on watching these awesome officers on the screen decide the fate of the world within the confines of a cock shaped metal behemoth thundering full speed ahead under the ocean waves. Afterwards I went to the head and a civilian type in a trucker's hat and a Coors Light t-shirt asked me "So, what'dya think?". I looked at him and said "I'm fresh out of boot camp and I am unable to determine what is plausible and what is not. But I enjoyed the production values." Nah, I'm just fucking with you. I told him it blew me away and that I couldn't wait to get to the fleet so I could be a part of all that. Yeah, we’ll get to how that played out in later chapters.

I hung out mostly with a guy called Varnell who was in my boot camp division. He had terrible acne and bottle bottom glasses and looked a bit like a barnacle. He was a lot of fun to hang out with and we spent most of our free time together. One fine day we learned that there was a guy with a limo giving rides to recruits to nearby locations, Gurnee Mills Mall included, for an incredibly low fare of $5 per person. The limo was in great condition, roomy and luxurious and stocked with Playboy and Penthouse. Page after page of airbrushed bimbos. Awesome.

We had been informed about out our future duty stations towards the end of boot camp and I had been assigned to a ship out of Japan and I was excited as all hell. It turned out that those orders required a security clearance, something I did not have due to being a foreigner, so I lost my orders for Japan. I was disappointed. Instead I was sent back to the old world, to Italy. I had been assigned to a ship that was afloat even as president Kennedy was still in office. I'll simply refer to this vessel as 'the ship' here on out) I was stationed in Porto Generico, Italy. There is no such place of course, and some of you will probably work out the true nature of these places as the story proceeds, with ease even. I won't confirm or deny anything. I'm getting ahead of myself though. So there we were, Varnell and I, with three hookers and two jugs of skim milk... ok, wait. We took a train to Chicago to take in some sights. Chicago is an amazing city and I was surprised by how accessible it was when exploring on foot. We went up the Sears Tower, went to the Museum of Natural History, ate some of that fantastic pan pizza the city is famous for and I stocked up on some Italian language tapes and of course a book covering the essential profanity. I hadn't even set foot in Italy and I could already say' Tua bocca fu creata per fare pompini' or some such.

Because of having liberty regularly and being able to read and watch whatever we wanted whenever we wanted, the seamanship classes seemed fairly dry this time around. Too many distractions really. But our instructor was this fine looking bespectacled hotmouth with her hair done up and with tits that wanted to go to the moon. For the most part our tongues were rolled out across our desks as she went on and on about vertical replenishment and spot checks. There was some drama about halfway through where some shipmates had somehow helped each other during an exam. A major ruckus ensued and there was to be an investigation. Not that the culprits were hard to spot. Some of them were openly crying their hearts out at the prospect of receiving disciplinary action. All the exams were multiple choice questions. Out of five alternatives, two were absurd, one unlikely and two were very real possibilities. If one had paid at least a little attention, it wasn't hard.

It was getting to be time to leave Great Lakes just as the weather was getting lovely. I had one order of business left. I had to pull my wisdom teeth. I couldn't go to the fleet with them bad boys still in my mouth. I had been dreading it since first arriving when a navy dentist told me about it. The day had come and I reported to dental at eight in the morning. The dentist was a young lieutenant that must have had a tee time at the country club or something, because he dabbed some Novocain on my gums and pulled those fuckers out of my head with lightning speed. It was brutal, but fast. I was out of there, all discombobulated and swaying from side to side, in less than 20 minutes. Before I left he gave me a bunch of Codeine pills for the pain, and they worked. I can see how people get hooked on pills, because fuck me if they didn't feel great. It was like being shitfaced without the hangover and cottonmouth. One night we were all awakened because of GQ, or at least I thought it was GQ but it may have been an actual fire, who knows? I was buzzing so hard. I managed to get out of my bed. My pillow looked like somebody had shot me in the head while I was sleeping. I remember limping outside with everyone. We stood there waiting for the all clear to go back inside. I just remember thinking "Some ... where... over the ... rainbow... (nervous laughter)."

Shortly afterwards I left Great Lakes. I took out some vacation, or leave, and flew back to Houston for some rest before reporting to the fleet. Being at home for close to two weeks was a mixed blessing. Got a bit lazy, bit sloppy. As time went by in Great Lakes, I began to appreciate the sense of order in the military, and there I was on leave and already slipping into a civilian frame of mind.

Continue to part 6