Disclaimer: I know nothing about the Navy, or Wisconsin, or anything, really. Enjoy!
*****
"I hope you got chains for them tires," said the guy at the gas station on the Wisconsin border. "We're supposed to get two feet."
It had just started to snow, a few big flakes falling softly by. I was driving up to my sister's place in Evansville with two of my buddies from basic training, Sweet and Hector. She lived with her husband in a little apartment above a bar. We had twenty four hours of liberty to get drunk and get laid and get back to base.
Sweet was inside the gas station, talking to the girl at the register. We were in our whites, with our pea coats on, and he was playing the sailor angle for her, putting his cap at a cute angle and talking a lot of romance of the sea stuff. Hector stayed in the backseat, his watch cap pulled down tight. The heat didn't work and he claimed that he was going to hibernate all the way out to Evansville. I was pumping the gas, and hoping ten bucks worth would get us to Evansville.
"Two feet? Fuuuck," I said.
"I mean, no offense, but them tires ain't got much tread on 'em. You might want to go on back."
That was not going to happen. We'd been cooped up for weeks, and having graduated basic we had just a day to cut loose. We weren't supposed to be going so far, but this was the best shot we had at getting our dicks wet. It was less than ninety minutes to Evansville. Besides, they always make the weather reports sound as scary as they can. Usually, December doesn't get that bad.
Five hours later, we were still at least ten miles out of Evansville. My hands ached from the cold, and how tightly I was gripping the steering wheel.
"Small town bars are the shit," said Sweet. He had pretty much kept up the conversation the entire time. "You show up dressed in whites, it's like you're in a costume. Plus, you're a stranger, right? An exotic. Guys all want to buy you drinks and the girls all want to suck your dick."
"They fuckin' better," said Hector. "This shit is fuckin' cold back here."
"Yo, he's alive," said Sweet. "I figured you were fuckin' dead. I was gonna move you to the trunk for better rear wheel traction in this bitch."
"You want better weight distribution, just turn me over so my giant dick is pointed backwards."
"That's your leg, bitch," I said. "Your dick's the thing the cold shriveled up and turned into a pussy."
I couldn't see the road at all. I was guessing where it was from the signs and mile markers, but a couple times I'd gone off and had to come back on. The car was fishtailing with every turn, and we were barely going fifteen miles per hour. But the thought of that magical bar up ahead kept me going. In my mind it was full of tipsy Wisconsin farmgirls with blonde hair and big boobies drinking shots of Jaeger. One of them was straddling me, wearing my cap. As my hands navigated under her short skirt, I found no panties...
... and veered back into my lane just in time to avoid the oncoming pickup truck.
"Fuck, man!" yelled Sweet.
We all caught our breath.
"Was he in our lane or were we in his lane?" Hector asked.
"I don't fuckin' know," I said. "I was thinking about white girls."
Sweet laughed. "Me too!"
"Wilson, you fuckin' better drive this bitch or we're all balls deep in snow pussy," said Hector, but he was laughing while he said it.
I was white (still am) and Sweet was black (still is). Hector was something Latino, I never asked and he never mentioned it. We all were seamen recruits and we all had no hair, and that seemed more relevant at the time. So we could joke about race pretty freely. I got along with both those guys really well. Sweet was a talker, a charming guy with a million stories. He talked to every single woman he met. Literally. He'd talk to tollbooth operators and women on guard duty and grandmothers and other guys' wives. "Practice, motherfucker," he said. "It makes perfect. Got to get my line straight." Given enough time and opportunity, he'd bring up sex. "All they can do is say no, right? You want to talk about rejection? My mother put me out when I was five, sent me to my uncle. It was horrible, tore my shit up. It took years. I went to therapy and everything. But I got through it. I can get through that, I can take it when some Petty Officer's wife tells me no."
Hector was much quieter. He mostly swore, although he was really funny when he did say anything. But he was like, magical. He could fix broken stuff. He wouldn't say anything, just, like suddenly your Xbox controller was working again. Or a washing machine, or whatever. And he had girlfriends, actual multiple girlfriends on base he'd made himself while going through basic. He never talked about them, either. One day we saw him blow a kiss to a redheaded white girl who blew a kiss back, and another day he briefly touched hands with a Latin girl after mess.
"Do they know about each other?" asked Sweet.
"I don't know. I never asked," said Hector.
If anyone could figure out a private place to fuck on the base, it was Hector, but he wasn't telling.
I wasn't as confident as Sweet or as quietly efficient as Hector. What I was, was eighteen and out of my mind horny. I'd joined the Navy when my high school girlfriend broke up with me, right after we had sex for the second to last time. That was also the second to last time I'd had sex. It had been months. I got fairly good at jerking off in my bunk. What was funny was that I did it with so much stealth and care, in total quiet and secrecy, even after I noticed that both the guys on either side of me were doing it too.
But I was eager for that bar. I needed it. Even with the cold and the horrible driving, I was erect the entire way up to Evansville.
Evansville surprised us. The snow was heavy enough that you couldn't see houses from the road, but suddenly there were buildings on either side of us. None of the lights were on in the stores, and I began to get a sinking feeling.
"Aw fuck," said Sweet.
"That's it, isn't it," said Hector. "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck."
"Fuck," I agreed. We had driven up right in front of the bar. It was not full of hot white farmgirls without panties on. It wasn't full of ugly grandmothers, either. It wasn't even full of dudes. It was dark, even the beer signs were off, and there was a piece of paper taped to the door. It couldn't have looked more closed if it had been flattened.
"Fuuuuuuuuuuck!" we all said, getting louder and louder until we were shouting at the top of our lungs.
"I think there was a bar, like, thirty miles back," Sweet said.
"Fuck off," I said. "We don't even have enough gas to get there. We've been running on fuckin' fumes."
"Is your sister hot?" he asked.
"Fuck off," I said. "She's married."
"Married? Oh noooooooo," he said. We all cracked up.
We abandoned the car near what probably was the sidewalk on a side street by the bar, grabbed our ditty bags and knocked on my sister's door. "It's open, come up!" she yelled.
My sister Brianna was ten years older than me. She was actually my half-sister, but her dad was long gone by the time I was born, so I just thought of her as my sister. She'd been the boss of all us kids, five total with her the oldest and me the youngest. I was her baby, the one she got along with best. After she moved out, she'd bring me into the city on sleepovers. We'd stay in her tiny studio apartment, eat popcorn, and watch movies cuddled up under a blanket on her bed. She got married when I was fifteen and moved up to Evansville. She was smart and beautiful, had gone to college and had a series of teaching jobs in the city, and everyone was surprised when she married this cop named Bill and disappeared up to Wisconsin. I'd seen her only twice since then. But when I came in the door, it was like no time had passed at all.
"Wilson baby," she said and gave me an enormous hug. "I missed you!"
"I missed you too!" I said, hugging her back. It was one of those hugs where your bodies are pressed together all the way from neck to knees. I could not help it. Maybe it was her smell. She smelled wonderfully female. Maybe it was the curves I could feel even through my pea coat. But I melted into her, and at the same time, I started to get really, really hard. Brianna was pressed right up against me. She had to have felt it. But she didn't move, she just held me. I tried to just enjoy it without it becoming sexual, like a nice backrub or something. Finally, she shifted herself to look at my face. Her eyes were amused. I knew I was busted.
"Stuck all alone at that big naval base," she said, and I blushed. I've always been an easy blusher, and she knew it. "I can't believe how BIG you've gotten," she said, smiling, and I felt my blush go all the way to my ears. She relented, and hugged me again cheek to cheek. "Ohh, it's so good to see you."
Finally, I pulled away. I don't know how. "Brianna, these are my friends. This is Hector, and this is James."
Sweet smiled and said, "Ma'am, you can call me Sweet."
"Nice to meet you, Sweet, and Hector," Brianna said, hugging each of them in turn... not so long or so fully as me, but enough that if she was trying to figure out if we all were hard, she had her answer. Not that it was difficult to figure it out.
"Ma'am," said Sweet, and my sister interrupted, "Call me Brianna. I'm not old enough for ma'am yet. Kristin, can you believe these sailors are trying to ma'am me?"
Another woman leaned her head in from what was probably the kitchen. She was black too. "Oh, they want something. You know they do," she teased.
"All I want," said Sweet, "is to know how a beautiful black woman like yourself could have an albino like Wilson for a brother."
