MM2 DROUGHTON, B.L.
USS SAN FRANCISCO (SSN-711)
FPO AP 96678-2391
Dear BRENDAN
Hello, How are you doing? How are you getting along these days? I’m pretty good. But I’m feeling lonely because you are absent from Hawaii.
By the way, I found the new apartment at last! Actually, I was finding a place to live, very hard. I visited to a Japanese realtor’s office first time. But she presented the rent very very very expensive! (why?!) Don’t joke!
Next time, I found an appropriate one (I looked for a Sunday’s newspaper), called the owner to made an appointment to saw it. But I can’t speak English well. And do people think Japanese has money. I guessed they took mean advantage of me. But then I asked next to them.
「 How much is the rent? Are utilities, electricity, water included in the rent? Is the apartment furnished? Is there a kitchen?? Does the apartment have an air conditioner, microwave, fridge, telephone??? When can I have the deposit back??? Can I see the room???!!! 」
More hard! (In fact I did preparation) Whereupon, they looked for the some apartments, and they were kindness. I saw some apartments later, I decided this apartment after all.
It looks good and I like this a lot. Located along the Ala Wai Boulevard and walking distance to the International Marketplace (pizza!) and three blocks from Waikiki Beach. It has kitchenettes and direct phone service (local calls free) and large lanai.
I think I can look forward to seeing BRENDAN again about 10 days later because I want to ride on your motorbike and eat the pizza and drink beer and take a walk etc. with you.
All my love
MITSUKO
PS Do you understand my letter? I’m sorry I’m many wrong.
I read this while standing next to my rack in berthing. The lights in berthing were normally off when at sea, but they were always on during working hours in port. I had stinky duty the day we returned home. The last thing I expected after returning to port was a mail call where I actually received a letter. That was so sweet of Mitsuko to write to me. Standing there next to my rack, I tried to recall the last time I mailed a letter to anyone. I was way too selfish and self-absorbed to do such a thing. It was probably four years earlier to Linda when she went off to college in Boston as a freshman, and I was still a senior in high school desperate her attention.
I called Mitsuko once home from duty and the time was reasonable. She hadn’t yet moved to the new place she mentioned in the letter. I thanked her for the letter but had a difficult time communicating with her over the phone. I kept it short. Just the essentials. There was a small window that we could meet before I had to go back out to sea for the Tactical Readiness Examination. We made simple plans for the weekend. Pizza, a motorcycle ride, and some beer. And then that would most likely lead to us going back to her place to hook up. It had been a little while.
You can go two decades without sex no problem, but once you have it regularly, you can’t even go two weeks without it. I needed more. I was understandably eager to see Mitsuko and thus had to make preparations to ensure mission success. As the song goes, every woman’s crazy about a sharp dressed man. Even knowing this, I still dressed like a scrub. Work boots, blue jeans, and a black tee shirt with a metal band logo on it. Definitely not sharp. But I had a secret weapon. I had learned something in the military that I thought might possibly also apply to the opposite sex. Your haircut can override many or even most other aspects of your appearance.
Let me explain. My uniforms were always wrinkled and stained with grease from the engine room. I always rolled up the sleeves against those pesky regulations. Plus, I didn’t even bother polishing my shoes for personal inspections. Yet I inexplicably had this crazy reputation for outstanding military bearing. My peers would rather confusingly mention this to me somewhat frequently, typically saying something like, “Not everyone has your military bearing, so blah, blah, blah…” It made absolutely no sense, but it seemed as if even Queen La Chiefa was part of this confused consensus. This is what he had written in my evaluation a few days earlier for the period ending on 15 March 1998:
“Exceptional military bearing – maintains the highest standards of appearance and conduct. Excellent role model for his juniors and peers.”
What the actual fuck? It looked like I ironed my uniforms with a rock—a common snipe in the Navy for those who lacked military bearing. It had to be the haircut. It had to be. There was no other explanation for this phenomenon. My hair was the only thing I was rather anal about. I would get my high and tight hairdo refreshed on a weekly basis. In fact, if I didn’t have freshly shaved sidewalls on my noggin, I just wouldn’t go out to try to meet any of the ladies. Not even to see the strippers and waitresses at Déjà Vu that I had no hope of dating. No fraternization with strippers until my fade was satisfactory, okay? But I no longer needed strippers to keep me company. I had Mitsuko now.
So before meeting her for some naughty time, it was first time to visit my favorite barbershop in order to shore up my confidence and appearance. After two weeks of being out to sea, my high and tight had become rather low and loose. I think this little hidden haircutting establishment that had I found a few months earlier was the key to the extra points on my evaluation. Unbeknownst to me, the proprietor had a secret weapon.
Up until I found that particular place, I had done what just about every other sailor would do when in need of a trim. I’d hit up the barbershop on base. They knew the drill and could crank out a military spec haircut in spectacular time. Plop down into the chair and the next thing you know, bam! You’re satisfactory!
One weekend a few months prior with my hair just on the edge, I stopped into the base barbershop for my standard sidewall shaving, but the line was just too long for me despite how quickly they could crank out satisfactory sea-do’s. I wasn’t quite over the edge yet, so I turned around, walked out, hopped on my Marauder, and blasted off to the International Market Place for some New York style pizza. I didn’t have any plans, so I just wandered around the market and then also the nearby Waikiki Town Center where my motorcycle was parked.
The Waikiki Town Center was a dying, irregularly-shaped semi-outdoor shopping center next to the International Market Place. Seemed as if some realtors wanted to tear this place down just like they did with my beloved Hideaway bar in favor of a newer development. Of all the places on Oahu, this outdoor mall was the one of the ones that screamed post-peak tourism the loudest. Other than housing Déjà Vu Showgirls, everything about the Waikiki Town Center seemed a bit depressing. Nearly all the storefronts on the second floor were vacant and boarded up to give you an example of the vibe.
There were only two places up there still open as far as I could tell. One was a tee shirt shop called the Red Dirt Shirts shop. They dyed all their clothing with Hawaiian soil, which seemed like some sort of red clay to me. I went inside Red Dirt Shirts to peruse their merchandise, but I didn’t buy anything. Their reddish-brown shirts definitely looked cool, and they might have even looked good on me if I was capable of obtaining a tan. Since I was incapable of that, I figured I’d just stick to my black tee shirts and continued wandering around the upper floor with my pasty ass skin.
The only other place not boarded up was a barbershop tucked in a corner that had absolutely no traffic or visibility. Say you went up the stairs from Kuhio Avenue to go to Déjà Vu for a few beers and boobs. Then afterwards, say you either wanted to go to the International Market Place or use the semi-public bathroom in the Waikiki Town Center. You would turn right after walking by Déjà Vu into the courtyard area. The barbershop was to the left, however.
You see, before you would even go far enough out of the hallway leading to the courtyard to be able to see the barbershop, a quick scan to the left would look as if all the businesses were boarded up on that side. Look straight, and there was the Red Dirt Shirts shop, an elevator, and a large banyan tree. Look right, and there was the corridor to the bathroom and the stairs to go down into the courtyard and the International Market Place. There was just no reason to turn to the left and go that way. So, you’d turn right and have your back to the barbershop before it was even visible. And if you went downstairs and looked up from the courtyard, the barbershop was too deep into the corner and blocked by the big banyan tree.
It was fortuitous for me to even spot it, a benefit of walking without a purpose. Once spotted, I was somewhat reluctant to go inside as I didn’t quite fully need a haircut, and who knows how much a civilian could fuck up a fade? What Waikiki tourist ever needed to pass a personal inspection while on vacation buying shirts dyed with dirt? I took a chance anyway since I didn’t have any plans, and my hair could definitely stand a little tightening up. I walked in and not surprisingly, the older gentleman with the scissors was able to take me right away. I was his only customer.
The barber wasted no time with small talk as he made his preparations. He had a heavy accent. His name was Mario, he was also the proprietor of the barbershop, and he said he was from Napoli. That last part sure piqued my curiosity! Italy was the first country I had been to outside the United States, and Naples was the second place I had been to in that first country. (We pulled into port there with Submarine NR-1 during our Mediterranean deployment the previous summer.) I found Naples to be a large, filthy city where the people tried to rob us and run us over with their cars. In other words, I loved it! I absolutely loved the place!
Ah Napoli! You will forever be in my heart!
So what if I was getting my haircuts from a civilian tourist-servicing barber? I think it’s worth it to support a local business that is handicapped by a dying location. Mario and I certainly had a lot we could chit chat about. Italy was (and as of this writing, actually still is) my favorite country in the world. Mario hadn’t even finished setting me up in the chair, and I had already decided that this was going to be my regular spot to get my haircuts from that point on. But then after asking how I’d like it, he did something I wasn’t expecting at all.
Mario grabbed a handful of hot shaving foam and lathered it not just all over my face, but also onto the sides and back of my head. I wasn’t getting a simple assembly-line-like base-barbershop-buzzcut. No, a master of his craft from the old world was about to give me the tightest high and tight I had ever received in my life, and he was going to give that to me with his secret weapon: a straight razor blade. Even with all that surface area to shave, he missed not one hair follicle and left not one shaving nick. It was seriously impressive. Then he trimmed the top with scissors and finally used the electric buzzer to perfect the fade. It was the most amazing haircut anyone had ever given to me. His haircuts weren’t simply satisfactory; they were outstanding. Out-fucking-standing! I would return to that dead dying outdoor mall to get a haircut from and chat about Italy with Mario every week when in port for as long as I lived in Hawaii. I think he’s the reason I received such high remarks on my last performance evaluation, and he was definitely the first person I’d go see on my way to meet Mitsuko. Mario straightened me and my hair right out, and I was now ready to rock with my lady.
To be continued…