My Time in the Navy

I joined the US Navy as an Engineman in 2011 at 17, which is a perfectly reasonable age to sign away 8 years of your life when the economy has capsized, and gainful employment has become rarer than finding a stripper who actually loves you. The world was still reeling from the shipwreck of the 2008 crash, and I was desperately hunting for work so I could stand on my own 2 feet. Opportunities were scarce. For a poor street cat with no connections, they might as well have been buried treasure.

So I set my sights beyond the horizon and joined the Navy. I didn’t even get recruited. I recruited my damn self, signed the articles, and stepped aboard. Whether this was ambition, desperation, or bad judgment remains open to debate. Either way, the tide had turned, and I was underway. I shipped out to Recruit Training Command Great Lakes near Chicago, IL, where I survived boot camp with DIV 043. That was my introduction to reveille, taps, endless musters, folding everything into tiny squares, and learning that a bulkhead is not a wall, a deck is not a floor, and a head is definitely not where you keep your thoughts.

Afterward, I attended Engineman “A” School to study the mean mechanical arts of diesel engines, auxiliary systems, pipes, pumps, valves, and hydraulics. Basically, how to keep machinery from bursting into flames and how to put it out when it did. That’s where I joined the ancient brotherhood of snipes, the gang who live below decks, turn wrenches in heat hotter than a jogger’s crotch, and keep everythang moving while everybody topside enjoys the sea breeze.

From there, I received orders to Assault Craft Unit One (ACU-1) in Coronado, CA. Waiting for me were the Landing Craft Utilities, or LCUs, 135-ft steel beasts built to haul Sailors, Marines, vehicles, equipment, and heavy cargo from ship to shore. Picture the landing craft from the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. These were old Vietnam-era versions of those warhorses, with flat bottoms, bow ramps, and engine rooms hotter than the devil’s ass in a wool peacoat. They were loud, stubborn, constantly leaking something, and about as graceful as a brick launched through the surf. My job was to keep them systems humming.

On an LCU, nobody gets to hide behind a single job title. I served as an engineer, deckhand, firefighter, damage-controlman, lookout, helmsman, throttleman, security watch, and whatever else all hands required. If machinery failed, we brought it back to life. If fire broke loose, we fought it. If the bilges took on water, we stopped it. Engineering casualties, line-handling details, beach landings, sea-and-anchor details, towing ops, and well-deck evolutions all required every soul aboard to man their station. The craft sailed because we kept that bitch singing like a snitch in court.

Only 3 mos after reporting aboard ACU-1, still green as a fresh bowl, I embarked on my first great voyage, a 9-mo deployment aboard the USS Peleliu. I was 18, crossing oceans aboard a massive haze-gray warship while our LCUs rode inside her well deck like steel babies in the belly of a beast. That first year, I made about $12K and felt like I was up to my tits in gold. I had steady pay, 3 squares and a rack, liberty in foreign ports, and more responsibility than most fools my age could imagine.

Over the years, I completed 3 overseas deployments, participated in hundreds, if not thousands, of operations, and long watches beneath unfamiliar stars. We crossed open water, pulled into distant ports, worked alongside crews from across the globe, and carried out tasking wherever the fleet sent us. There were early musters, late liberty calls, watches longer than a motherfucker, endless field days, chow inhaled before somebody could task you with more bullshit, and enough hurry-up-and-wait to make a man lose his goddamn religion. Sleep was something you stole when the watchbill looked the other way. Coffee was fuel, profanity was punctuation, and scuttlebutt traveled faster than official word. The Navy is a fucking grindstone.

My 2nd deployment came aboard the USS Anchorage in 2015. We sailed across the Pacific Rim, working and training alongside several Asian navies. It was part military op and part international collaboration, with Sailors from different nations bringing their own ships, methods, languages, and traditions to the same stretch of ocean.

I rose from a boot Engineman learning the ropes to serving as 2nd Engineer, directly beneath the Chief Engineer. I helped run the engineering plant, trained junior Sailors, troubleshot casualties, signed off maintenance, and made sure our clownshow answered every call. Keeping an old warhorse alive meant learning her moods, every rattle in her bones, and which noises were normal, expensive, or meant you should find the Chief Engineer before he found you.

My 3rd and final deployment came in 2016-2017 aboard the USS Comstock, where I spent another 9 months underway. By then, I was no longer the greenhorn trying to learn which way was forward. I was saltier than a Caribbean mine, greasier than a politician, and had enough time below decks to know when machinery was about to start some shit before it actually did.

After 5 years of sea duty, I transferred to DEPERM in Norfolk, VA, and finished my final 3 years working around some of the Navy’s strangest and most specialized machinery. At DEPERM, we altered and reduced the magnetic signatures of Navy ships to help protect them from magnetic detection systems and mines. We wrapped massive electrical cables around entire ships and pushed controlled currents through them, rearranging their magnetic fields. It was strange, highly specialized work, straight-up wizardry.

When I first signed on, I figured I might stay for the full 20. It seemed like a fine plan at 17, when 20 yrs feels less like time and more like gouge about a distant future that may never arrive. By Virginia, I had steamed far enough to know that course was no longer mine. The Navy gave me discipline, technical skill, sea legs, and enough adventures to fill several captain’s logs. It had also taken its toll, as all great voyages do. The sea gives, and the sea takes. In 2019, after 8 yrs of service, I was honorably discharged as an EN2, a 2nd Class Petty Officer.

Through it all, I never completely put the pencils down. I designed T-shirts, command flags, challenge coins, and tattoo concepts for my shipmates. Whenever I caught some liberty or a quiet minute off watch, I drew my own ideas and kept sharpening my style. One of my favorite traditions was bombing the clipboards with custom tags. Even surrounded by haze gray, steel decks, diesel, saltwater, and machinery, the artist in me remained aboard like a stubborn stowaway who refused to be thrown overboard. As the years rolled on, my art grew cobwebs. Eventually, I faced 2 courses. One led deeper into the fleet. The other led back to the art that had been calling to me since I was a niño, with crayons on the wall.

A compass can tell a Sailor which way is north, but it cannot tell him which life belongs to him. For that, he must trust his instincts and choose the horizon worth chasing.

So I took the helm and set a new course.

I chose art.