Animal Side of Human Nature

Since each divi­sion was required to sup­ply the mess decks with a new man every three months, I was the log­i­cal choice when the time came for First Divi­sion to send a replace­ment. Besides being low man on the totem pole, I proved to be such a vex­a­tion to the First Divi­sion lif­ers, they no doubt wel­comed the oppor­tu­nity to get rid of me. So off to the mess decks I went.

Greatly dis­ap­pointed, I would much rather have stayed where I was. At least with the lif­ers in First Divi­sion, I knew how far I could push my rebel­lious behav­ior with­out bla­tantly over­step­ping the rules and reg­u­la­tions of the Uni­form Code of Mil­i­tary Jus­tice. By play­ing igno­rant and pur­posely foul­ing up what­ever my hands touched, I’d been rel­e­gated to the innocu­ous task of clean­ing the head. But even this job I per­formed so poorly that, pre­sum­ably, the lif­ers decided to trans­fer me up to the mess decks to see if they could break my rebel­lious spirit by sub­ject­ing me to an even more odi­ous task. Thus would I have to start all over again, in test­ing out a new set of guys, to see just how far I could push my non­co­op­er­a­tion with­out get­ting writ­ten up.

Besides, I had finally found some­one, in the per­son of R., with whom I could go on lib­erty and have a good time with­out get­ting drunk or laid. Often­times, I could appeal to the gen­tler side of R., but only when he wasn’t hell-​​bent on “get­ting liquored up enough to go down on the strip to get some of that nasty olé poon­tang,“ as he used to say.

For R. was a sim­ple kind of guy who expressed lit­tle feel­ing except around sex and his hate for the Navy which was very pro­found. In fact, he blamed the Navy for hav­ing made him into a “f_​_​_​_​n’ ani­mal“. “There’re times,“ he’d say, “when I just feel like goin’ out ’n’ f_​_​_​_​n’ every bitch in sight, or else get­tin’ good ’n’ god­damn drunk. Or some­times I feel like goin’ out ’n’ kickin’ ass, just for the hell of it. I never felt like that fore I came into the Navy. I’m tellin’ ya Dury, the Navy f_​_​_​s with your mind in some strange kind a way; it turns ya into a f_​_​_​_​n’ ani­mal.“