by Arthur O'KEEFE

I open my eyes, and for a brief eter­ni­ty all that ex­ists is a black ex­panse speck­led with small cir­cles of light. 

Then I re­al­ize that the black ex­panse is just a ceil­ing, and not so ex­pan­sive. The cir­cles of light come from scope fix­tures in the ceil­ing, per­haps a dozen. 

There is pain as I lift my head: the re­sult of con­tin­u­ous in­dul­gence in Mai Tais, Sin­ga­pore slings, and Sing­ha beer from the mo­ment I hit the beach un­til I blacked out. There is the vague mem­o­ry of walk­ing along an un­paved road in dark­ness, the lights of open-air beach bars in the dis­tance. And now I am here, the small spat­ter­ing of dried vom­it on the front of my shirt a con­trast of brown, tan, and yel­low against black. It is like an ab­stract ex­pres­sion­ist paint­ing: Bruno Flana­gan, Puke in Pat­taya, 1988. Vom­it on cot­ton and polyester. 

I am ly­ing on a floor. It is hard and cool and some­how com­fort­ing. Three faces stare down at me, one fa­mil­iar, two not. All three own­ers of the three faces are seat­ed at a bar at the op­po­site wall. There are no win­dows, and the whole place is black ex­cept the floor, which is black and white tile in a checker­board pat­tern. There is a small, low stage with am­pli­fiers and a piano. 

“Hey, Broon,” says own­er of the fa­mil­iar face. “En­joy­ing lib­er­ty?” It is Max Jenk­ins, my Di­vi­sion Chief Pet­ty Of­fi­cer, touristy-ca­su­al in T‑shirt, car­go shorts, and san­dals. That he does not ad­dress me as Pet­ty Of­fi­cer Sec­ond Class Flana­gan is an en­cour­ag­ing sign.

I look at my watch. Near­ly 4:30 a.m. I stand up. The room cir­cles a bit be­fore set­tling in. 

“How’d I get here?”

“I car­ried you.” 

“Oh. Thanks. Sorry.”

“Don’t make it a habit,” he says, though we both know I al­ready have.

I am far from the on­ly sailor in the fleet with a liv­er just over two decades old and an ea­ger­ness to test its lim­its, and at times I ra­tio­nal­ize my ex­cess­es by ar­gu­ing that if the US Navy had not dis­con­tin­ued dai­ly ship­board rum ra­tions in 1914, there would be far less in­cen­tive to overindulge up­on mak­ing port. Max, my se­nior in both rank and age, is hav­ing none of it, and re­cent­ly I have sensed his eye up­on me. He rarely drinks and takes a dark view of in­tox­i­ca­tion, which to me sim­ply means he has a mild pu­ri­tan­i­cal streak. But I al­so feel bad for him be­cause, like many au­thor­i­ty fig­ures in a mil­i­tary set­ting, he is sub­ject to ridicule be­hind his back. He is tall and bald­ing and wears a crew­cut, much clos­er-cropped than re­quired by reg­u­la­tions, and tends to slouch, so his nick­name in the di­vi­sion is The Con­dor. He is nev­er called this to his face, of course, and while I am as bad as any­one in com­plain­ing about the chiefs and of­fi­cers, I have a soft spot for Max. Tonight I could eas­i­ly have got­ten my wal­let lift­ed, or worse, but he has saved me.

“Would you like a drink?” asks one of the two peo­ple I do not know: a pale, slen­der woman with short blonde hair cut in­to a bob. She is beau­ti­ful, and to look up­on her brings me in­to fo­cus, mit­i­gat­ing my post-black­out con­fu­sion. Her voice is a husky Eng­lish con­tral­to, and she smiles with a hint of mis­chief and cyn­i­cism. I guess she is about 35, and I imag­ine her as a slight­ly old­er, naugh­ti­er ver­sion of Princess Di­ana. She is an in­ter­est­ing person.

“Thank you very much,” I an­swer. “A Coke, please.”

“No rum in it?” Her smile broad­ens to a grin.

It hurts my head to laugh. “No, thanks. I’m not a hair-of-the-dog guy.”

The oth­er per­son I do not know, a man, goes be­hind the bar and scoops ice in­to a glass. He pours in the co­la and places it on the counter. “Here you go. On the house,” he says with a shy smile, and I thank him. He is Thai, some­what younger than the woman, with a clear brown com­plex­ion and a thin, neat­ly trimmed mus­tache. As I drink, grate­ful­ly feel­ing the re­me­di­al ef­fects of caf­feine and sug­ar, I read be­tween what lines there are to see that they are mar­ried, co-own­ers of the nightclub. 

“I’m Janet,” says the Eng­lish­woman. “This is Tom, my hus­band.” I as­sume Tom is a nick­name, per­haps a diminu­tive of a Thai name.

“I’m Bruno. Thank you for help­ing me.”

“Don’t men­tion it. It was lucky Max brought you here just as we were clos­ing up.”

“I’m sor­ry to keep you awake.”

“Not at all. This is a night job. We usu­al­ly stay here to un­wind a bit af­ter clos­ing, so it’s nice to have some company.”

So we sit and talk, with the greater part of the con­ver­sa­tion be­tween Janet and Max, each of whom nurs­es a high­ball pre­pared by Tom. De­spite the re­silience of my 22 years, I am too deep with­in the twi­light be­tween in­tox­i­ca­tion and hang­over to con­tribute much, and Tom seems nat­u­ral­ly la­con­ic. He stays be­hind the counter, sur­round­ed by all the tools of the bar­tender, kept in per­fect or­der. He ad­justs the po­si­tion of a glass or bot­tle now and then, keeps me well-sup­plied with cola.

When asked, Max and I are cir­cum­spect about our jobs, which in­volve a cer­tain amount of clas­si­fied in­for­ma­tion. As­signed to a de­stroy­er, we keep track of what goes on around the ship, elec­tro­mag­net­i­cal­ly speak­ing. What­ev­er is emit­ted, we in­ter­cept, an­a­lyze, and iden­ti­fy. It is all in­ter­est­ing in the ab­stract, but I dis­like both the metic­u­lous plan­ning and un­pre­dictable events it in­volves. It is more fun to drink, sort of. 

Janet gra­cious­ly takes our hint of ret­i­cence, and in any case seems more in­ter­est­ed in steer­ing the con­ver­sa­tion to­ward sex­u­al top­ics. She seems fas­ci­nat­ed by the fact that the crews of com­bat­ant ships are ex­clu­sive­ly male. Hav­ing broached the sub­ject of how com­mon mas­tur­ba­tion must be aboard ship, she as­serts with con­vic­tion that men have no choice but to do so, to pre­vent an in­def­i­nite buildup of un­e­jac­u­lat­ed se­men. Max replies that men can ab­stain if they so choose. In the haze of my grad­ual re­turn to so­bri­ety, I of­fer no view on the mat­ter but can sense Tom’s discomfort.

The top­ic of nat­ur­al con­tra­cep­tive meth­ods comes up. “Tit-fuck­ing works,” says Janet, who then turns to her hus­band and asks, “Do you like tit-fuck­ing, Tom?”

“Some­times,” he replies, voice low, gaze down­ward. It is an awk­ward mo­ment for every­one but Janet. It is not that Max and I are shocked by such talk (we are sailors). We just feel sor­ry for Tom, who is ob­vi­ous­ly not com­fort­able with his wife pon­tif­i­cat­ing up­on mas­tur­ba­tion and mam­ma­ry in­ter­course to a cou­ple of strange men. 

Per­haps it is the sur­re­al­i­ty of feel­ing trans­port­ed from the beach to the floor of this club, and my re­cov­ery from a drunk­en black­out. As Janet speaks, I see the de­struc­tion of a bal­ance: I do not know how else to say it. There is the or­der, the pre­dictabil­i­ty of Tom’s ac­cou­trements and ac­tions be­hind the bar. There is the spon­tane­ity, the un­pre­dictabil­i­ty of Janet’s mus­ings up­on the se­mi-taboo. I feel the latter’s as­cen­dance, and this club as the cen­ter of a silent, brief ex­plo­sion of a chaos which on­ly I can per­ceive. To con­tain the blast, I wrench through the fog of my half-drunk brain to broach a new topic. 

I ask about the laws on for­eign­ers set­ting up bars, and whether hav­ing a Thai spouse makes it eas­i­er. It does, says Janet, launch­ing in­to an anec­dote about her deal­ings with im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials. For the briefest in­stant, Tom shoots me a grate­ful look.

What I can catch of Janet’s sto­ry would be in­ter­est­ing were I able to fo­cus up­on it, but I am dis­tract­ed; I man­age to nod thought­ful­ly at the right mo­ments. This is not be­cause I am still part­ly in­tox­i­cat­ed, but rather a strange half-epiphany I am hav­ing: There is some­thing I need to un­der­stand, but I am too thick to learn it with­out every­thing that has oc­curred with­in the past twelve hours or so. What is it? I am not sure, but I de­cide nev­er to get this drunk again, a pledge I am sure to keep at least as long as my hang­over lasts. 

For an ir­ra­tional mo­ment, I be­lieve I am dead, un­able to leave the room, like a char­ac­ter in Sartre’s play No Ex­it: trapped for eter­ni­ty with my strait-laced di­vi­sion chief, naughty Princess Di, and her shy, silent con­sort. A part of me hopes it is true: to nev­er fall vic­tim to a ran­dom in­ci­dent, to nev­er have to de­cide any­thing. A nev­er-end­ing chat in the club af­ter hours. I want this, and fear it, and I am fright­ened that I can wish for such a thing.

When 7 o’clock comes, Max and I say our thanks and good­byes. Janet won’t let us pay for our drinks. We walk out the door and in­to the morn­ing sun­light, the sea breeze waft­ing over us. In the dis­tance our ship sits at an­chor, a sleek grey con­tour against the end­less blue of sea and sky. I am alive, able to re­lin­quish nei­ther chance nor de­sign for an eter­ni­ty in a closed-up nightclub. 

“Well, that was weird,” says Max.“It was nice of them to give us free drinks,” I re­ply as we trudge along the beach to­ward our re­spec­tive bun­ga­lows to sleep through the rest of the morning.

Filed under Fiction on August 30th, 2024

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