A new breed of men, the reservists differed from the low life Neanderthals as much as did the Cro-Magnon men of prehistoric times. A more intelligent and sensitive lot, they hated, with a passion, their indentured servitude to a lower form of life, and rued the day they had ever gotten involved in this country’s military solution to the problems in Vietnam. However much they indulged in grass, hashish, or acid to escape the hellish conflict within themselves over their participation in this war, they nevertheless remained faithful to the wives and fiancées they’d left behind. In spite of their disaffection with the Navy and the war in Vietnam, they still performed their tasks, only to the beat of the rock music to which they constantly subjected themselves, to drown out the screaming of their souls in righteous indignation over their complicity. More often than not were they standing up for what they believed, and at least confronting the lifers before they would agree to carry out those commands that offended their sensibilities in any way. And because I seemed to speak to something hidden deep within their beings, they unconsciously adopted me as the rebel for their cause, the white knight who might just free them from themselves.

The lifers, on the other hand, feared this new breed of man, who dared to stand up to them and question their authority. Like outcasts, the lifers had flocked to the Great Gray Whore, only because she appeared to give them what this society otherwise withheld from them—a reason for living. Driven to serve the soul of this sick society, these patriots of the Great Gray Whore searched in vain through the brothels of the Far East for her ever-illusive form. In their quest for the Great Prostitute, the genie who could fulfill their every desire, they turned to the Spirits of Alcohol. Instead of releasing the genie bottled up within them, they aroused, from his slumber, the ogre who ruled over her, the instinctive beast hidden within us all—Hyde. Because Hyde gave them what they wanted, they grew fond of the horny old devil. Then, one day, they ran into their own shadowy perception of the white knight, hiding out within a lowly peon named Drury, and grew fearful; for somewhere, in the back pages of their minds, they recalled a tale from the days of old, in which the white knight slays the beast.

And in the middle stood the majority of the crew who, unlike the lifers, still had some semblance of a conscience to which the white knight could appeal. Caught up in this tug-of-war for their souls, when push came to shove, they often fell prey to the ways of their animal natures. In their inability to interpret the language of the body, they easily lost their heads when confronted by the rawness of their desires. With their heads in the clouds, and their feet mired down in clay, were they driven to live like the gods, one day, and the beasts of the earth, the next; for this, they believed, was the fate of those who lived in the middle.

While neither lifers nor reservists would have much to do with each other, those who lived in the middle associated freely with the members of both factions. By at least keeping open the paths of communication between the two sides, they seemed to temper some of the hostility each side felt for the other. For now, they were the glue that tenuously held the crew together.

While I sat inside the dispensary, awaiting my debut with one of the Navy’s psychologists, I wondered if my real father had been sent here for psychiatric evaluations when he too began to display bizarre behavior in response to the beast that’d been unleashed with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. And I wondered if he too had been bombarded by the same barrage of fantasies I had experienced, to help me make sense of what I’d seen. It was then that I realized what a tragic mistake he had made when he stumbled upon that great abyss, which separates this world from the next. For it was in his inability to make any sense of either world that I saw him clasp his ears as the frenzied screaming of his soul filled his head, like the song of a Siren, and drove him over the edge of the abyss to his destruction below. As these perceptions about my real dad shot through my head, I shivered at the thought that I had stood on the same brink of insanity, he had stumbled over, twenty-five years ago.

Having gone into the interview hoping to find some answers, I instead left empty-handed. While the psychologist only seemed interested in probing into my past and the history of my family, I was eager to talk to him about the problems I was currently experiencing with my sexuality and the Navy. For I saw, within me, the struggle to give birth to a whole new way of life, the past as well as the present were impeding. Because he had not the foresight to look beyond the dirt in my past, I never gained any insight from him into the troubles of the present.

At that point, I was abruptly pulled back from the void and temporarily reunited with what I was painfully feeling when a third class gunner’s mate questioned me. “You don’t like the Navy, do ya Drury?“

“No, I don’t,“ I replied rather feebly as the sights and sounds of the present moment came crashing back into my awareness.

Suddenly, the gun mount began to swivel about, jerking back and forth with a whining sound, before it settled upon a particular position. The cannon too, was raised, then lowered into position for firing. And with that, several rounds were fired off in quick succession at a small island called Kahoolawe, the Navy’s firing range.

While the gun mount recoiled around the deafening sound of each round, I found myself getting sick from the combination of the smell of gunpowder, the gyrations of the gun mount and the ship’s bobbing up ’n’ down, like a cork, as it stood dead in the water. How easily did I slip back into my stupor to escape the intolerableness of the moment—the intensity of the screaming in my head and pain in my chest. How long I remained mentally and emotionally blacked out, I do not know since I didn’t come to, until sometime later, down in the compartment. What had transpired in the interim, I could not recall at the time.

Only now do I recollect having had a fantasy in which I was washed up onto the shore of some strange island as the sole survivor of a shipwreck. How long I lay there passed out upon the beach, I do not know. At some point, I vaguely remember feeling the soft hand of a woman caressing my face. But I could not see her, for I was unable to open my eyes, which had swollen shut as a result of their having been overly exposed to salt water. When I did finally manage to open my eyes, I found myself standing down in the compartment, looking into the mirror that hung there. And at first, I could’ve sworn I saw no reflection of my self in the mirror. In fact, I was shocked when I actually felt an urge to walk back into the mirror, or through the looking glass, so to speak. At that point, I saw my reflection and began to hear the sounds of other people milling about me.

Since the physical and the metaphysical were no longer in proper relationship to each other, I started drinking and compulsively having sex with my self. When confronted about my drinking, thank God, I had the fortitude to quit. But I wasn’t able to quit the other as easily, as the solution to this problem alluded my grasp yet.

The problem became so acute only because I’d never been taught by my fathers, or by the religion of my fathers, how to communicate with the metaphysical side of my nature. O, I’d learned how to ask God for things, as if the Almighty were some genie who could grant my every wish. But I was never taught how to listen or what to listen for. In other words, I’d never learned how God communicated with me.

Were the screams I heard, a last ditch effort by the inhabitants of the metaphysical realm to reach me? If so, who were they? What did they want? And did I really wanna know? I did ’n’ I didn’t, because I so greatly feared getting caught up in some metaphysical mumbo jumbo that’d ultimately lead to my own self-destruction.

“Are you all right?” my guide asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “That shrill, high pitched scream is hurting my ears.”

“I didn’t hear any high pitched scream. Did you?” my guide asked the guard.
“No, I didn’t,” replied the guard.

“Forget it,” I said out of frustration. “I must’ve heard something far off. It’s nothing. Go on—I’m all right.”

But I wasn’t all right, for I definitely heard what had sounded to me like a woman screaming out at the top of her lungs. And I hadn’t just imagined it either, because I heard the screaming again as I rounded the ASROC launcher, on the heels of my guide, to see one of the ship’s five-inch gun mounts. This time, I tried not to make such a big deal out of it. Instead, I simply rubbed my finger in my ear to determine whether the screaming was actually coming from my head or from some outside source. Besides, I didn’t want to give him the impression I’d heard the screaming again, when he obviously hadn’t.

As I tried to collect my wits about my self, I wondered about the origins of this screaming. At first, I’d had the sense that it came from a great distance outside my body. But as the screaming increased in intensity, I’d felt as if someone were standing right next to me screaming in my ear. Besides, I’d heard the screaming with the same intensity whether I plugged my ear with my finger or not. And since the others had not heard it, I reluctantly concluded the screaming had come from within my head, as a product of my imagination, I supposed, even though it had sounded so real to me.

With that, I later realized the screaming had actually been the crying out of my feelings in horror of the weaponry, which had sprung into view. In my fascination with appearances, I’d been momentarily lulled away from the reality that such weapons are, after all, instruments of death and destruction. In fact, I recalled that the screaming had actually begun to subside as I paid more attention to it. I wondered then, if she hadn’t screamed at me only to get my attention.

The whole experience left me with more questions than it did answers. Who was this other within me, that she could manipulate reality in such a manner as to get me to hear screams which no one else heard? Why should I be so horrified by the sight of a weapon which otherwise meant absolutely nothing to me? Why had I been the only one who had heard her screaming? As these questions popped into my head, I dared not repeat them, for fear of learning the truth.