DROWNING IN PARADISE
AT SANDY BEACH
Someone was banging on the our barracks room door at an ugly time in the morning. I blearily looked over at the clock - 9:30 in the morning. Since we had been partying hard until about 4 in the morning, 9:30 seemed to be like the crack of dawn.
"Open!" I yelled out.
A sailor from a few doors down waltzed in. "Get up, fucksticks! I guess there's some huge fucking waves at Sandy Beach this morning. Let's hit it."
Body surfing while high had become a popular activity for us when the weekend rolled around. Don't get me wrong! It's fun to do sober, but when you're lit up on some good Hawaiian weed, it's even more fun.
Two of us rolled out of the sack and after taking a piss and brushing our teeth, we rolled and smoked a joint of Thai Stick and rolled two more for the road. I opened up the fridge up and to my delight saw there were about five Heinekens left from the previous night. I popped the top on one of them and chugged it down in about four or five long swallows.
Nothing tastes better in the morning than a ice cold imported beer. I felt better immediately.
On the long drive out to Sandy Beach, we killed another one of the the joints and the better part of a twelve pack that we stopped to pick up on the way.
As we turned the corner on the road that overlooked Sandy Beach I couldn't believe my fucking eyes. The waves were enormous - the biggest that I had ever seen!
As we walked down the beach I noticed that a lot of the locals weren't in the water but I didn't give it much common sense thought since I was already shithoused on the beer and the weed.
I waded out into the water and dove under the first wave. You could actually feel the power of the ocean as that huge wave rolled over me. I immediately caught the wave following it and it was the equivalent of being caught in a giant washing machine! I was tossed around ass over tea kettle and then slammed down hard on to the beach. Hard enough that it rang my bell and I saw stars.
I dove under the next wave and when I surfaced I looked to the beach and saw that everyone looked about as big as a dime! I was caught in a enormous rip tide and was being pulled way out to sea. And with the size of the waves it was unlikely that I'd been seen! Or would be seen!
I started swimming back to shore but wasn't making shit for progress. Within seconds I actually realized that it was going to be my time to die. It was a weird feeling. No panicking. More like acceptance. Never the less, I kept on swimming against the current.
Already I could feel my energy was running low. I wasn't going to make it! A strange calm feeling came over me.
Then suddenly out of the blue, a local was alongside of me and telling me to ''Swim at an angle, not straight in." Jesus Christ! How many times had I seen those rip current signs telling you what to do if you go caught in one and totally ignored the damn thing?
I put my head down and started stroking! Little by little I was making progress, I lost sight of the local but I assumed that he had already made it in. At last, a huge wave picked me and sent me crashing down on to the beach. I got up and staggered to the safety of the shore.
I couldn't believe that I was alive!
I turned back to face the waves and saw my roommate being washed up like a piece of driftwood. He was holding his leg and screaming out something. When I ran down to him, I could see a lump by his ankle as big as a small pineapple.
Two locals ran up and helped me pull him up the beach before he could be sucked out again. The ambulance was already there. That should have been a warning sign before we even started body surfing - not that we have adhered to the warning. I helped load him into the ambulance - I jumped in for the trip to Tripler Army Hospital and the our fellow sailor - who suggested this whole monkeyfuck in the first place - drove our car back to the barracks.
All I had on was a pair of surf shorts and they were low staffed at the hospital so I had to ferry him all around in the hospital to all the different departments on a gurney - barefoot, shirtless, sunburned, sand covered, and smelling like an opium den. No one batted an eye - this was the Post-Vietnam military - no one gave a shit!
My roommate required surgery to put some pins in the break and after he was admitted, the duty driver took me back to Pearl Harbor. It was then that I remembered the fact that I had almost drowned twice in the past month and had gotten that same feeling of calm.
I was running up the pier to toss a mooring line to a boat when I had slipped, hit my head, and fallen into the harbor where the boat had ran me over.
I remember slowly floating to the bottom and looking up at the bottom of the boat and this feeling of incredible calm washed over me as I sank to the bottom. I remember thinking that drowning might be a good way to check out.
Then I could hear a muffled cry of "He hit his fucking head! He hit his fucking head!"
I put my feet down on to the bottom and pushed off and then bobbed to the surface where several sailors reached down and pulled me back up on to the pier.
I sat there rubbing the lump on the back of my head when the Chief of the boathouse walked up.
"Are you O.K.?" The Chief asked.
"I think so, Chief. I'm just trying to clear the cobwebs out of my head. I hit it on the pier when I slipped. I think I'm all right though. Not bleeding anyway."
He started walking away. "Good. Get changed and get back to fucking work!"
