Which was the case. Back in the Scaffold days, Pig had long announced, to anybody in ship's company who'd listen, his refusal ever to don a contraceptive unless it was a French tickler. This device being your common rubber ornamented in bas-relief (often with a figurehead on the end) to stimulate female nerve ends not stimulated by the usual means. From Kingston Jamaica last cruise Pig had brought back 50 Jumbo the Elephant and 50 Mickey Mouse French ticklers. The night finally came when Pig ran out, his last having been expended in the memorable battle with his onetime colleague Knoop, LtJG, a week before on the Scaffold's bridge.
Pig and his friend Hiroshima the electronics technician had a going thing on the beach with radio tubes. ET's on a destroyer like the Scaffold keep their own inventory of electronic components. Hiroshima could therefore finagle, which as soon as he'd found a discreet outlet in downtown Norfolk he proceeded to do. Every so often Hiroshima would heist a few tubes and Pig would stow them in an AWOL bag and run them ashore.
One night Knoop had OOD watch. All an OOD usually does is stand on the quarterdeck and salute people going on and off. He is also a sort of monitor, making sure that everybody leaves with their neckerchief straight, fly zipped and wearing their own uniform; also that nobody is swiping anything from the ship or bringing anything on board they shouldn't. Lately old Knoop had been getting hawkeyed. Howie Surd the drunken yeoman, who had two grooves worn bare in the hair of his leg from adhesive-taping pints of various booze under one bellbottom by way of providing the crew with something tastier than torpedo juice, had almost made it the two steps from quarterdeck to ship's office when Knoop like a Siamese boxer fetched him an agile kick in the calf. And there stood Howie with Schenley Reserve and blood running over his best liberty shoes. Knoop of course crowed in triumph. He'd also caught Profane trying to take over 5 pounds of hamburger swiped from the galley. Profane escaped legal action by splitting the loot with Knoop who was having marital difficulties and had somehow come up with the notion that 2- 1/2 pounds of hamburger might serve as a peace-offering.
So only a few nights after that Pig was understandably nervous, trying simultaneously to salute, produce ID and liberty cards, and keep one eye on Knoop and another on the tube-laden AWOL bag.
'Request permission to go ashore, sir, hey,' said Pig.
'Permission granted. What is in the AWOL bag.'
'In the AWOL bag.'
'That one, yes.'
'What is in it.' Pig pondered.
'Change of skivvies,' suggested Knoop, 'douche kit, magazine to read, duty laundry for Mom to wash -'
'Now that you mention it, Mr. Knoop -'
'Radio tubes, also.'
'Wha.'
'Open the bag.'
'I would like, I think,' said Pig, 'maybe to just dash in ship's office there for a minute to read the Naval Regulations, sir, and see if maybe what you are ordering me to do might not be a little, how would you say it, illegal . . .'
Grinning horribly, Knoop made a sudden leap in the air and came down square on the AWOL bag, which went crunch, tinkle in a sickening way.
'Aha,' said Knoop.
Pig came up for captain's mast a week later and got restricted. Hiroshima was never mentioned. Normally larceny of this sort is rewarded with a court-martial, the brig, a dishonorable discharge, all of which strengthen morale. It seemed however that the Scaffold's old man, one C. Osric Lych, commander, had gathered round him an inner circle of enlisted men, all of whom you could call habitual offenders. This troupe included Baby Face Falange, the machinist mate striker, who periodically would put on a babushka and let the members of the A gang line up in the compartment to pinch his cheek; Lazar the deck ape who wrote foul sayings on the Confederate monument downtown and was usually brought back off liberty in a strait jacket; Teledu his friend who one time avoiding a work detail had gone to hide in a refrigerator, decided he liked it and lived there for two weeks on raw eggs and frozen hamburger until the master-at-arms and a posse dragged him away; and Groomsman the quartermaster, whose second home was sick bay, being as how he was constantly infested by a breed of crabs which unhappily only thrived on the chief corpsman's super-formula crab-killer.
The captain, having seen this element of the crew at every mast, came to look on them fondly as His Boys. He pulled strings and indulged in all manner of extra-legal procedure to keep them in the Navy and on board the Scaffold. Pig, being a charter member of the Captain's (so to speak) Own Men, got off with no liberty for a month. Time soon hung heavy. So it was of course toward the crab-ridden Groomsman that Pig gravitated.
Groomsman was the agent in Pig's near-fatal involvement with the airline stewardesses Hanky and Panky, who along with half a dozen more of their kind, shared a large pad out near Virginia Beach. The night after Pig's restriction ended, Groomsman took him out there after stopping by a state liquor store for booze.
Well, it was Panky Pig went for, Hanky being Groomsman's girl. Pig after all had a code. He never did find out their real names, though did it make any difference? They were virtually interchangeable; both unnatural blondes, both between twenty-one and twenty-seven, between 5' 2' and 5' 7' (weights in proportion), clear complexions, no eyeglasses or contact lenses. They read the same magazines, shared the same toothpaste, soap and deodorant; swapped civilian clothes when off duty. One night Pig did in fact end up in bed with Hanky. Next morning he pretended to've been drunk out of his mind. Groomsman was apologized to easily enough, having it turned out hit the sack with Panky under the same misapprehension.
Things cruised along all idyllic; spring and summer brought hordes to the beach and Shore Patrolman (now and again) to chez Hanky Panky to quell riots and stay for coffee. It came out under incessant questioning by Groomsman that there was something Panky 'did' during the act of love which turned Pig, as Pig put it, on. What this was nobody ever found out. Pig, not normally reticent in these matters, now acted like a mystic after a vision; unable, maybe unwilling, to put in words this ineffable or supernal talent of Panky's. Whatever it was, it drew Pig out to Virginia Beach all his liberty and a few duty nights. One duty night, Scaffold bound, he wandered down to C&O compartment after the movie to find the quartermaster swinging from the overhead whooping like an ape. 'After-shave lotion,' Groomsman yelled down to Pig, 'is the only thing that gets to the little bastards:' Pig winced. 'They get drunk on it and fall asleep:' He descended to tell Pig about his crabs, having lately developed the theory that they held barn dances among the forest of his pubic hair on Saturday nights.
