In The Navy (FT “C” School), Part 9

My Mother was keeping a close eye on me while I was at home, so I was covered. After leave, I went back to the Hospital to get the staples and the tube removed. That was fun!

I reported for duty and was told I was scheduled to repeat “C” School in a few weeks. I was put back on barracks duty. Same boring crap…1/2 days of cleaning and then watching TV. Some nights I had to stand watch which was more boring than you can imagine. More often than not, the person who was supposed to relieve me (or anyone on watch really) would not show up. You would have to go down to the duty desk and find out what room the A-Hole is in and go wake him up. It was never fun to go through that. The guys you had to wake up were always asses and often drunk.

Dyke was still there for a while, taking some other classes specific to certain weapons. I would later go to those too. We found (I won’t take credit for the find) a new hangout in town. It was the one I mentioned before near the General Dynamics shipyard there in Groton. It was almost empty most nights, which meant we had the run of the place.

We quickly befriended the bar-keeps, some very salty “older ladies”. They loved the dirty flirty talk and we all poured it out when we were there. We became the regulars quickly, which was probably a bad thing, but good for the bar. We were having fun though. There were some other regulars that we got to know too, almost all were nut jobs.

The place had a “regulation” sized table Shuffle Board setup. We got someone in the place to show us how to play and we immediately went into “competitive” mode. I have never played real shuffle board, but the basic play is two teams of two each, throwing puck sized things across a wood board and getting as close to the far edge, without dropping over the edge.

We played Shuffle Board a lot (because it was free) and there were a few unkempt Pinball machines that we beat up on too. Outside of that it was just smoking, drinking and talking. Besides the wenches behind the bar, there were rarely noteworthy women in the place. I say rarely…

One Saturday night we are out at the bar and it was still fairly early. Unbelievably, three fairly attractive women came into the place and ordered drinks. We kept playing Shuffle Board and didn’t talk to them at first. We weren’t lubed enough to be that bold. There was the occasional eye contact, even though they were at the bar with their backs mostly to us.

After a while both Dyke and I had said hello to the girls when we went up to get a drink at the bar. One thing leads to another and we wound up sitting with them in the row of booths against the wall across from the bar. Long story, short, the cutest of the girls seemed to like me. She was in Law School in Boston and was home to visit family. She was Jewish, something I had never been exposed to.

She seemed nice and not all drunk and falling down, like the gals you would find in most Navy or dance clubs. She didn’t want to go home when the place closed though. We went to another Bar that was actually in a Restaurant. I had eaten there before (pun intended), but never hung out in the Bar. It was open about an hour later than the other place. We danced, which I am terrible at and talked some. Then that one closed.

We had nowhere else to go, so I went parking under the bridge to New London. We talked and made out, but she didn’t want to fool around in the car. We decided to go to the nearest Hotel, but I was concerned about the cash situation.