I had an insightful moment as I was sweating, during the cooler hours of a hot summer day. I was driving home after doing some work, annoying someone that was trying to sleep. I didn’t put on any jazz music or anything that would slow my pulse. I had a nagging feeling that something was “dying”.
I know that the summer is dying, despite the fact that I was sweating profusely. A non-brusque fall is around the corner. Giving us a wedge of time between when the leaves smell and the slowing “cold” that depresses the worst of us. It was a non-brusque fall that visited me in 2001.
9-11 wreaked havoc on us. The military went beyond “secure” with their decisions. We didn’t know how far to go and it made decisions “easier”. We weren’t supposed to have fun like we had months ago. Most of our stops on deployment were just that, stops.
We would stop for fuel and food, not for frivolity. We didn’t have fun and we didn’t embrace the inner freak. I found myself sober and counting the unknown number of wakeups before I got “home”, which seemed to never come like a Quantum Leap episode that was the same thing over and over.
We seemed to come to a break from this around the time of the World Series, which was when we pulled into the Pacific Ocean side of Panama. (The country, not the Redneck Riviera city in Florida). Yes, we got fuel and food, but we were given a time out of sorts.
I was surprised to get more out of this stop. We were offered a short trip to another former US military base. We were promised a chance to watch the World Series, featuring the Diamondbacks and the Yankees. Two teams I didn’t know about, considering the ship offered me a blackhole, which I took up at times.
I didn’t know of the area but a few older sailors did. I was informed that we were going to an old Officer’s Club connected to a golf course. I considered us lucky that the place was still in good operating shape, this was at least true when it was dark outside. I was also happy that there weren’t armed crazies outside of the establishment.
The inside of the place wasn’t exciting, just a clean place that had places for everyone to sit comfortably. The windows gave birth to a black nothingness. Nothing moved. Nothing stirred. Everything stopped. Outside of people going to the bathroom, most of us didn’t move around. We watched the baseball game, just being happy to have a reason to “stop” for a bit.
I won’t lie to you, there was other entertainment. A small bevy of local women slipped in, too. (I imagine that one of the people that worked there told them about us). I had seen them passively mix in with us. They had an eagerness in their eyes that I couldn’t define. (It was beyond anything I saw in the club I went to in the earlier months of our 2001 deployment). Contrary to the imagination of the pearl clutching masses, these women were most likely trying to make a dollar or two.
I didn’t have any deep conversations with the ladies. We shared pleasantries at best. They were polite, but most of their cheerfulness was connected to a professional necessity. They were thankful for a free drink and a seat without a monster hovering above it.
The ladies weren’t as attractive as the other women I had seen in other establishments. They were thin, yet plain at best. They weren’t decked out for a soiree but they fit in with most of us that were perpetually waiting for laundry to come back. It was within this that they knew they had found their destination.
Two of the guys that I had went with met a woman worth hanging onto. They both disappeared outside with them during the game. I think that most of the women slipped out and I noticed a few empty seats. (I was sober enough to recognize it. I don’t think I had more than four watery beers that night). I didn’t pay no mind, I watched the game instead of worrying.
It was after the game when I met up with them both, women in tow. They were both in good spirits and the women didn’t look angry. I ended up taking a picture of them all, I still have that picture today in a scrap book.
One of the guys told me that they had wandered out onto one of the greens on the golf course, where they fooled around. I think that the other guy had told me that they weren’t the only people “getting it on” out on the golf course.
Looking back, I could believe it. It was relatively quiet and very temperate. The green grass served as a great blanket for a roll. The air wasn’t as humid as it always had been. The weather had changed for the better for us all.
This was one of the few times that the fall season didn’t mark a depressing time for me. It was a sobering time, but it also marked the time where my life moved on. I still had “shit” to eat but it thinned out my enemies, then gave chipper times to those that I held near.
Mogadishu Matt 
