Although the story is fiction, (with ideas for the storyline taken from tales of several of the author's acquaintances,)  the events describing the actions of the military reflect the policy and procedure of the time.  If you recognize any personal similarities of people described, or names given to them by the author, it is entirely coincidental.  The submarine, SEAHORSE, was a real vessel, though it was NEVER used as a training vessel in Groton or anywhere else.

*****

After a short break, both were back at their respective places, Gerry, stretched back on the recliner, and the Chief, seated behind the small desk.

“So, Gerry, tell me, are you saying that you don’t like girls at all?”

“Oh, no, Chief. I like girls. always have, but the way I was raised, it was a sin to have anything sexual or even intimate to do with them until after you’re married.”

“Then, you’ve never touched a girl in any way?” The Chief’s face showed that he was deep in thought.

“Not really, Chief, but there was this one girl, our minister’s daughter. Her name was Marie.” He began to smile at the memory. “I really liked her. We were only eight or nine at the time.”

“Were you active in church?”

“Yes. Our entire family was very active in church. Everybody thought Marie and I were so cute together, so right for each other.” He paused, and then began again. “One Sunday, after church was over, Marie and I were sitting together on the church steps just talking, and I reached over and patted her on the knee. She slapped me."

"She slapped you?"

"Yeah, and I got a whoopin’ when I got home, just for patting her on the knee!”

“So, it was wrong to even touch a girl in any way, huh?”

“Yeah, you got that right, Chief. Yeah, it was alright for Granddaddy and the Reverend to shower together at our church’s Summer camp, and scrub each other’s backs, naked, but it was sinful for me to pat a girl’s knee.”

“Did you see your Granddaddy and the Reverend in the shower?”

“No, I wasn’t there. Granddaddy mentioned it in passing to Grandma when he was telling her about a conversation that he and the Reverend had at camp.”

“How old were you then?”

“Oh, I guess I was about, twelve.”

The Chief returned to his writing, and a few moments later, Gerry remembered something else. “Oh, yeah, and another thing; you know how everybody swims naked at the YMCA?” The Chief nodded. “Well, it was alright for the instructor to have all us guys line up front-to-back like sardines, waiting for each of us to dive into the pool and swim across, before the next one dived in.

“Boy! That sure was uncomfortable, embarrassing is more like it, to be standing there, skin to skin! Most of us were cupping our hands over our privates, trying to hide ourselves from the guy in front.

“The instructor told us not to let anything come up between us. Ha. Ha. He had a silly smile on his face. He was sitting on the edge of the pool, splashing water up on his, uhhh, cock, and it was, uhhh, starting to get hard and uhhh, stickin' straight out, and he was getting bigger than Uncle Karl.

“Hell, Chief. I was only twelve years old and I was getting turned on. Boy, did I ever want to kiss that thing!”

The Chief looked down at the paper, but Gerry could tell that he was snickering to himself.

“Anyway, he wasn’t really watching the guys swim across the pool. He was watching himself. Then he looked up and saw me looking at him, and he quickly jumped down into the water. I really wanted to jump into that cold water, too, but I had to wait my turn. And just then I felt something poke me from behind. I thought it was that guy’s finger.” He thumbed over his shoulder to indicate the remembered guy behind him.

“Did you enjoy that?”

“No! I did NOT like that! It made me feel real, funny.”

Chief thought for a moment, and then asked, "Funny, ha ha? Or funny, strange?"

"Well, I guess it was, funny, kinda strange, and embarrassing."

“Did you enjoy your times at the ‘Y’?”

“Yeah, it was okay, I guess. I enjoyed running around the indoor track. I enjoyed the basketball and the volleyball. But what I really enjoyed was the swimming, since nobody ever wore any trunks.”

After writing a few more notes, the Chief changed the subject, somewhat. “Gerry, do you remember the first time you ever had a sexual climax, the first time you ever ‘came’?”

“Oh, yes!” Gerry responded enthusiastically. “It was just before my thirteenth birthday. I was in the hospital.”

“The hospital?” asked the surprised Chief.

“That’s right, in the hospital.” He shifted his position by sitting up in the recliner, turning, putting his feet on the floor, and looking directly at the Chief.

“Ya see, they were building a new cafeteria building at school, and during recess one day, I put a concrete block on the ground, put a two-by-four across it, put a brick on one end of the board, and then jumped on the other end of the board, so that the brick would fly over my head. But instead, it hit me in the eye and the next thing I knew, I woke up in the hospital, with a bandage over my right eye.

“There was a guy, Granville, in the other bed. He was two years older than me. He had done the same, identical thing, at a different school, three hours before my accident. Only, it was his left eye, and my right eye.

“We both had concussions. We were told not to turn over in bed, not to sit up, not to get up to go to the bathroom. We had to use urinals and bed-pans! Ugh! And we were to stay flat on our backs until the doctor said it was okay to get up. It ended up being two weeks!

“Well, anyway, one evening when we didn’t have any visitors, I saw him making like Omar-the-tent-maker under his sheets. I didn’t know what he was doing, except that it did sorta remind me of Uncle Karl in the hay-loft. So, I asked him, and he, uhhh, explained the facts of life to me.

“While he was explaining things to me, I noticed some things happening to myself, so I started to take matters into my own hands, so to speak.”

“Did it feel good?” asked the Chief.

Gerry could see that the Chief’s right hand was no longer on top of the desk, and got the impression that he was ‘adjusting’ himself. He answered the question by saying, “Yeah, it really felt good, really, really good, but it sure was messy afterwards.” Again the Chief snickered and quickly brought his hidden hand back up on top of the desk.

“Then Granville told me that the next time, I should use a handkerchief, some Kleenex, a dirty ol’ sock, a small towel, or somethin’ else.

“I asked him if he knew how to kiss it. He didn’t know what I was talking about. I told him about Uncle Karl, and he said that anybody that got that stuff in their mouth would die, ’cause it’s poison!”

“Poison?” exclaimed the Chief.

“Yeah, that's what he said. I guess he didn’t know any better; I didn’t either at the time. so, I believed him. He was older than me; he should have known what he was talking about! He also told me about how that stuff makes babies.”

"Poison stuff makes babies?" the Chief asked with mock inquisitiveness.

Gerry froze in thought, frowned, and then with dumbfounded shyness, quietly answered, "I never thought about that, Chief." How stupid did Granville think I was? How stupid does the Chief think I was at that age?

Gerry then stood, stretched, got another cup of water at the cooler, walked over to the window, and looked out. All was silent for a couple of moments. Another memory came back. He angrily crumpled up the paper cup and threw it in the doc’s waste-basket as he went back to the recliner, sat down and buried his head in his hands.

“You okay, Gerry?” Gerry nodded. “Just remembered something else?”

“Yeah, something that happened when we were living down in Oklahoma.”

“Wanna tell me about it?”

Gerry lifted his head out of his hands and looked straight into the Chief‘s eyes. “Not really, but I might as well, I guess.

"A few months after Mother and Roland were married, we all moved to Tulsa. Roland had gotten a job as an oil rigger. I was just eight then.

“One day when Roland was at work, and Mother and I were in the house alone, she had just finished dressing after taking a bath, and I teased her, saying, ‘I bet you wouldn’t let me see you without any clothes on.’ ”

“Why'd you say that to her, Gerry?”

“'Cause she always closed the bathroom door when she took a bath, but I had to leave the door open when I took one.”

“So what did she do? Or say?”

“Well, she went into the bedroom, closed the door, took all her clothes back off, and lay down on the bed. Then she called me in and told me to take off my clothes and get up on the bed with her. She was my mother, and I did what she told me to.

“Well, it seemed like fun for a while. I felt her body all over with my hands, my tongue, and my nose. There that ‘scent of a woman’ was again! UGH!” He buried his face in his hands again and began breathing quite heavily like someone does just before bursting into sobs.

“Gerry, ” the Chief began, as he stood up from his chair, crossed over to the other side of the recliner, placed his hands on Gerry's shoulders, and began a gentle massage. “not all women have a disagreeable odor about them. It’s all a matter of hygiene. I’m sorry to say that I think your mom didn’t take care of herself as she should. She was probably never taught to.”

Gerry looked up-back and toward the Chief's face. “Yeah, I guess not.” He returned his chin to his hands, just looking at the floor.

“So, you’ve never been naked, or intimate, with any other woman, since that, uhhh, incident?”

“Oh, that’s not true, Chief,” Gerry answered, watching him go back to the desk. “There’ve been other girls, and the kissing, the necking, and the petting are all fine and even very stimulating; but at the, uhhh, ‘moment of truth,’ I can’t perform. I lose my hard-on.” The Chief returned to his desk.

“Why do you think you do that, Gerry?”

“Oh, I don't know. I guess it's because at that moment, my mother’s face is right there in front of my, memory’s eye! Damn her! Damn … her … all … to … hell!” he screamed.

“Gerry! You’re not supposed to talk about your own mother that way!”

“Goddammit, Chief! I know damn good and well that you’re not supposed to talk about your own mother this way, but …” he quickly stood up, walked over to the desk, just stood there, pointed his finger directly at the Chief’s face, and said, “… let me tell you this little bit of truth. Any woman, nearly any woman, can bring a child into the world, but that doesn’t make her a mother! No, Sir-e-e-e, Bob!”

He was very, very close to the verge of tears.

But, after his moment of rage, he turned to go back to the recliner. “I guess, in her own way, she was trying, trying to teach me the facts of life, the best and only way she knew how!

"Let’s talk about something else, can we? This is really very uncomfortable and embarrassing to talk about my mother this way.”

“We can do that,” Chief said, scribbling more notes.

After Gerry stretched out in the recliner again, the Chief asked, “Prior to two months ago, had you ever been intimate with another man?”

“No, Sir, I’d never done anything sexual with another man since becoming an adult, until …”

“Nothing in Boot Camp?”

“No, Chief; I had no sexual contact with anyone there, although I did a lot of looking, in the showers.

"All guys look at other guys in the showers, Gerry, if for nothing else than to see how they compare with each other. I've even checked-out other guys', equipment. It's just curiosity. There's nothing wrong with that. It's normal."

“Normal? I guess so, Chief," he countered, then continued. "There was this one guy in Boot Camp that we called ‘Tex,’ even though he was from Arkansas.”

“Why’d they call him ‘Tex’?”

“’Cause everything in Texas is big,” he chuckled, "I guess! He had the biggest piece of …” He abruptly stopped from saying aloud what he was thinking, and then rephrased it; “He was built larger than anyone I’d ever seen before.

“Well, anyway, one night after lights-out, I was almost asleep when I heard Tex, or somebody, it sure sounded like his voice, yelling, ‘Ride’em cowboy! I’m shootin’ a load tonight! Oh, oh, OHH! One torpedo away!’

“I heard rack springs squeaking all the time he was yelling, and several people were laughing, and others were really encouraging him to go for it.”

“Was anyone else masturbating along with him?”

“I don’t know, but I do remember hearing several other bunks squeaking for a while, but that was all.”

“Did you join in the, uhhh, festivities?”

Gerry’s head jerked toward the Chief, and his face started turning red, probably from some embarrassment, before he answered. “Yes, sir, I tried for a while, but couldn’t even get it up. It frustrated me, ‘cause I’d wanted to jack-off for several weeks, but I guessed it was true what a lotta people had been talking about, that they put Saltpeter in your food in Boot Camp so you couldn’t get sexually stimulated. But what about Tex? I don’t know.”

“Gerry, tell me this; was there anything about Boot Camp that you really liked?”

“Oh, Chief, just about everything! I enjoyed the regimentation, the Chain-of-Command, the discipline, the Code-of-Honor, the Patriotism, the camaraderie, the uniforms, I love those dress uniforms! And, oh, yes, the precision of the Drill Teams. Does it say there in my records that I was in the Drill Team?”

Chief flipped through several pages in the file, then finally said, “No, I don’t see that it’s mentioned anywhere.”

“Well, I was! Oh, well, that’s all water over the dam, now, anyway.”

“Okay, moving right along; after Boot Camp, I see that you were transferred to Corpsman school in Great Lakes. Ohh, there’s a statement here from the Commandant of the school, that you strongly defended a sailor accused of …”

Gerry cut him off, exclaiming, “It even says something about that, in there?”

“Yeah. Tell me about it, Ger.”

“Well, now that I think about it, I really don’t believe I had the guts to do what I did, Chief, to be so brazen about the whole thing, with the Commandant, himself, none the less.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well,” Gerry paused, thinking of where to begin; “the sailor who I ‘defended’ was Brian Carruthers, probably the best and closest friend I’ve had in the Navy.”

“Closest?” Chief asked, with raised eyebrows.

“Yeah, closest, Chief. OH! But not in a sexual way. Nothing sexual at all. Not physically sexual, at least.”

“You want to explain that?”

“Sure, might as well. But where do I start? Let’s see …” Gerry had a huge smile on his face, remembering the all-too-short time that they were together. “Well, we became very good friends very quickly.” He laughed. “Brian reminded me of a tall, lanky, male version of Carol Burnette.” He laughed again.

“He was from Nebraska … Lincoln, Nebraska; yeah, that’s right. He had been raised in a somewhat religious family, like me. And he loved to play the piano. He had never taken a single lesson in his life, but could play anything anyone wanted to hear -- the classics, jazz, polka, Gospel, Broadway -- anything! And, Boy! he was good, real good! I really envied his ability. We spent a lot of time together in the ‘rec’ hall on base -- him playing, and me listening.

“Just before I left Great Lakes, I figured I would probably never see Brian again, and I wanted something real, not just a memory, but something tangible, to remember him by.

“He arranged with the Base Chaplain to use the Steinway Baby Grand Piano in the chapel for us to tape-record some music. I wrote a script which I read between different pieces of music that he played. It was called, Around The World On 88 Keys.”

The Chief cut in, “Sounds like a neat way to remember somebody.”

“Yeah, it is,” Gerry's countenance suddenly saddened as he began seriously to come to the realization that he would probably never see Brian again.

But before any tears could form, the Chief added, “What’s this about you defending Brian?”

“Oh, yeah. That’s true. One day, I noticed that he wasn’t in one of our classes. I didn’t know why, and it seemed that nobody else did, either.

“During lunch break, I asked about him and was told that he was in the brig; but that was all I was told. It wasn’t until after classes were over that I heard rumors that Brian was in the brig because of being queer, a faggot! I couldn’t believe it! Not as close as we had been!

“I marched my li’l ol’ self over to the Base Commander’s Office, stormed up to his Yeoman, and demanded to see the Commandant.

“I guess I caused such a ruckus, that the Commandant came out of his office. I told him that I had heard that Brian was in the brig. He confirmed it. Then I told him the rumor that was going around. He nodded his head, silently confirming that, too. Then he ushered me into his office and closed the door.

“He asked me how well I knew Brian. I told him that I knew Brian probably better than anybody else on base; that we spent a lotta time together; that he’d never made any advances toward me, and that -- and this is a quote! -- ‘He’s no more queer than I am!’

“Well, to make a long story short, after chow that evening, I went back to the barracks, feeling really down, but Brian was there, laying on his rack, an upper one. Boy! Was I ever happy to see him! I climbed up and sat on the edge of the rack. That, in itself, was against the rules, but I didn’t care about that at the time. A friend of mine was no longer in the brig, and maybe, just maybe, I had had something to do with getting him released.”

As Gerry was fondly but sadly remembering those moments, the Chief asked, “What happened then?”

“He turned away, and told me to get down; that I shouldn’t be seen with a faggot! I told him that I didn’t care what other people might say about me; that I knew he wasn’t queer; that I still liked him.

“But he still didn’t want to talk to me.

“Well, it took a while, but after about a week of my constantly insisting that we still be friends, he, uhhh, gave in, and our relationship began to get back to the way it had been. Times in the ‘rec’ hall, times in the chapel, times working on the script.

“I have to say, Chief, that, uhhh, I guess, uhhh, I guess I loved Brian, like a brother, like a brother I could look up to, and that, uhhh, I’ve never regretted defending him.

“I just wish I’d known then, what I know now. Maybe, if he'd told me that he really was … maybe I could have had a different kind of relationship with him. Maybe …” Gerry longingly gazed off into memory-land once again.

A moment later, the Chief asked another question. “After that, did you and Brian ever have any kind of sexual relationship at all, if you don’t mind my asking.”

“No, Chief. Brian and I never had any physical contact other than shaking hands, a pat on the back, an arm around his shoulders, a friendly punch in the gut , you know, ‘good ol’ boy’, man-to-man stuff like that. Oh, we did hug each other at the train station when I was leaving Great Lakes to come here to Groton.”

“You hugged?”

“Yeah, we hugged each other good-bye, and he thanked me for being the only true friend he had ever had, in the Navy. But,” Gerry leaned forward and looked the Chief squarely in the eyes as he continued, “… we … didn’t … kiss! … Okay?"

(End of Chapter Four)