Okinawa
Part Three
November 1965-January 1966
The Waiting Game
With the letter and the money order for nine-hundred dollars sent off, I concluded that the only thing that was left for me to do was to wait. I knew that eventually the Finance Office would discover their error and come looking for me—but I also knew what I would tell them, having run through it repeatedly in my head for the past few days.
So, for the next few days I stuck with my newly emerging routine: going to work and getting better at my official duties, coming home to the barracks and hanging out with Nat and the guys, and finally, trying to get familiar with the Okinawan people, the local customs, and the language.
Even though I’d been somewhat disappointed by the island when I first arrived, after a few weeks the place began to grow on me. I found myself taking interest in the geography of the island, and wondered how it must’ve been for the World War Two soldiers who had to fight their way from one end of the island to the other.
I learned that we hadn’t been fighting the Okinawan people, but rather the Japanese Army who had taken over the island and brainwashed the locals into believing that the Americans were merciless monsters who would indiscriminately murder the men, viciously dismember children, and rape the women. I discovered that most of the Okinawans were a gentle, hardworking, and gracious people. Even the seemingly hard-nosed bar girls, once removed from their nighttime dog-eat-dog nightclub environment, were incredibly normal and exceedingly polite when out in public.
Most of the people I had contact with during my first few weeks were lower-income: shop keepers, taxi drivers, waiters and waitresses, and of course our crew of custodians who took care of our huge barracks building. I found that at first, they tended to be shy—probably because of their limited use and understanding of English—but as soon as they sensed that I wanted to learn to communicate with them in their language their shyness faded away.
The only notable exception was the petite, pale-skinned girl who worked in the snack bar in our barracks. No matter what approach I used: nice, rude or non-committal, her demeanor never changed. She was consistently ill-mannered, and always gave me and all her other customers the impression that she was angry, short-tempered, and not in any mood to be trifled with. I often wondered how she kept her job.
After several trips over the next few weeks to Naha’s bar district—Naminoue—I found myself getting quickly bored with the same old routine. It was a constant battle fighting off the bar girls who insisted that because they chose to sit next to me I should buy them their drinks. Three or four drinks later one would find himself without funds; after which even the most insistent bargirl quickly lost interest.
Most of the guys outside of my little group, particularly the new arrivals, seemed to believe that if they spent enough money on a bargirl, or two, it automatically entitled them a night of sexual enjoyment. I’m not going to say it never worked, but they would’ve done much better and spent a whole lot less money by just going to one of the “hotels” on the outskirts of the bar district and asking the proprietor for a “naisan short-time”. The going rate ran about two dollars for a “short-time”, or twenty bucks for an “around the world”. An “all-nighter” was almost unheard of, and was probably well beyond most of our salaries. Although most of the girls who worked the hotels were usually not as attractive as the bargirls were, satisfaction was almost always guaranteed.
Soon tiring of the bar scene, on my off days I began to make trips into the city of Naha by myself, usually just walking and not taking taxis. I avoided the bars, and instead spent time checking out the small stores and shops where the locals did their daily shopping.
I discovered some very fine, if not infinitesimally small, eateries where the dishes were not only delicious, but also inexpensively priced, and I found myself visiting them several times a week. At first the proprietors, usually an older married couple, tried to “bum-rush” me out—thinking that perhaps I had mistakenly entered their establishment thinking it was a bar. But, after several explanatory gestures and a couple of Japanese phrases that I’d learned, I would usually convince them that I was there to eat, after which I was warmly welcomed. And once they saw how handy I was with ohashi (chopsticks) all precautions seemed to disappear.
Most pleasing of all, I realized one day that except for those times when I found myself stepping over an open one, I had become mostly immune to the unsettling odors emanating from the benjos paralleling almost every street.
So before I knew it, November turned into December and I realized that I had yet to receive a money order from Sharon. Actually, I hadn’t heard from Sharon at all. And worse, I found that I was just a few dollars short of being dead broke.
***
I quickly penned another letter to Sharon, as I had been doing just about every day, but this time I stressed that if I didn’t receive the twenty-five-dollar money order in the next few days I would be completely out of funds. Since I had not heard from her at all I assumed that the post office, either in Reno or at the military postal center on Okinawa, had somehow messed up the deliveries.
As I finished writing this latest letter I decided that instead of just dropping it in a mail receptacle the next day, I would hand-carry it directly to the military postal center on the base. That way I would ask and maybe be able to find out where the snag in my mail delivery was.
The following day, I left work and walked the ten blocks to the postal center. I waited in line for about fifteen minutes and finally walked up to the window where an Army private greeted me.
“Hi, what can I do for you?” He asked cheerfully.
“Hi, well first I’d like to post this letter to my wife if I could.”
“Oh, sure!” He said, reaching for the letter. “Reno? OK, she should get this in about five days. Anything else?” He asked as he slid the envelope into a slot labeled, ‘Stateside’.
“Oh, yes. Listen, I haven’t received a letter from home and I was wondering if there’s some kind of problem with mail delivery to my barracks.”
“Let me check. What’s your barracks number?”
I gave him the number and he excused himself as he stepped away from the counter. “DeLeón, Right?” He asked, looking over his shoulder.
“Uh, yes. Airman Second Class.”
“OK, hold on.” And he disappeared behind through a door marked “Authorized Personnel Only!”
I expected to see him return with a handful of letters in his hand, but about five minutes later he reappeared empty-handed.
“Sorry, airman. I didn’t find anything with your name on it. Are you sure she’s writing? Did she tell you when her letters were sent?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, I’ve yet to receive a letter from her. Not one.”
“Hmm. How long since you’ve been here?”
“I got here in late October…and I’ve written her just about every day. But…I’ve not received any response. You know?”
He kind of looked at me sadly. “Oh, I see. OK look, I’ll send a query back up through Anchorage, then stateside to see if somehow your mail is getting hung up. I’ll expedite it since you haven’t received any mail at all.”
“Oh, well that’s not entirely true. I’ve received several letters from my mom, but nothing from my wife. So…you know…I was…I was thinking that maybe the Reno post office is screwed up somehow because I’m getting mail from Houston.”
“Oh…” He said softly. “OK, look. I’m still gonna send the query, but are you sure your wife has written? I mean…it’s none of my business, but did you guys part on good terms?”
“Good terms? Well…sure. I mean, we weren’t mad at each other—or anything like that. No, nothing like that. It’s just that I sent her some money and I want to make sure she got it OK. But…I haven’t heard.”
“I’ll do the best I can, but in the meantime, you need to contact someone who lives close to your wife to see if everything is alright. You know what I mean?”
“Sure, yes—that’s a good idea. I’ll do just that.” I said, knowing that there was no one in Reno that I could contact. “Thanks for your help.” I said, turning sharply as I walked away.
“Hey! If I find something I’ll get in touch with you, OK?”
“Sure…thanks.” I said dejectedly over my shoulder. I walked slowly out into the bright Okinawan sunshine and started the long walk back to my barracks…the small lump in my throat that had suddenly appeared stubbornly refused to go away.
A couple of days later I spent the last of my money at the base exchange on a bar of soap and a five-pack of razor blades. I was now officially broke, with no hope of being paid for another ten months.
***
The days dragged by one by one, and I became just a little more depressed every time I checked the mail slot and found nothing from Sharon. Mom’s letters, arriving just about every other day, failed to cheer me up and I finally stopped reading them altogether. Seeing the growing pile of colorfully stamped envelopes—my name and rank written in my mother’s familiar child-like scrawl—brought a bitter feeling of despair instead of the joy that was intended.
Two weeks after completely running out of money, I walked into the mailroom and saw an envelope that didn’t look at all like something my mother would send. My heart skipped a beat and I spun the little combination lock hurriedly, anxious to yank the glass door open and pull Sharon’s letter out.
It was addressed to me—but the sender’s name and address was not what I expected: “Military Postal Command, Travis Air Force Base, CA”.
My heart sank.
I ripped open the envelope and read the short message. It explained that in response to the query sent by the Main Military Postal Center at Naha Air Base, Naha, Okinawa, no letters addressed to A2C Frank DeLeón, originating from Sharon L. DeLeón, had been found in the “dead letter” department nor anywhere else. It advised that I should contact the Reno Post Office and request further information about missing letters. Blah, blah, blah…
For a long time, I sat on the edge of my bunk in my darkening room thinking about my future. I thought that maybe I should just go to the Finance Office, confess my larcenous intentions, and beg for mercy. At least if I was thrown into jail I would have my most basic needs met. But my shame paralyzed and overwhelmed me, so I just sat there in the dark for the next few hours. As it turned out, I didn’t have long to wait.
The next day, while on my lunch break at work, I was summoned to meet with Sergeant Resor. He met me in his small office next to the control room.
“Sit down, Frank.” He said, after I reported in. He was holding a sheet of paper that appeared to have only a couple of sentences written on it. “I received this message this morning from our squadron commander, and he in turn received it from the commander of finance on the base. Could you read this and explain to me what it means, please?”
I took the sheet from him and began to read what I already knew it said. My heart was pumping wildly and suddenly all the things I had planned to say completely disappeared from my memory.
“Uh, yeah…” I stuttered, handing the sheet back to him, “it says I was paid nine-hundred dollars in error on my last pay check. It should’ve been ninety dollars.”
“Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“You were given a check for nine hundred dollars instead of ninety dollars?”
“Yes, I was.”
He looked up from the sheet of paper and looked directly into my eyes. “Frank. Do you still have that check?”
“No.”
“What did you do with it?”
I squirmed in my chair and a queasy feeling began to rise from my gut into my chest. I took a deep breath trying to push the feeling back down. “Well…I went to the credit union, opened an account, and cashed it out.”
A look of relief washed over his face. “Oh, thank God! Then you still have the money? So, you cashed the check and deposited it into your new account, right?”
“Well…” I stammered, “well, not exactly.”
“No? Well, what exactly did you do with the money then?”
“I…ah…bought a money order and sent the money to my wife back home.”
“You…what?”
“Yeah, I’m sorry. But see here’s what I thought.”
He didn’t seem interested to hear what I had to say, but instead blurted out sternly. “You know you can be court-martialed for this, don’t you?”
My bowels almost let loose. “Oh…I never thought…about…”
“Well, it’s painfully obvious that you didn’t think! My God!”
“I’m sorry.”
“Can you get the money back from her? She didn’t spend it all, did she?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“No, see…she hasn’t written me back yet…so I don’t know.”
“OK! You did this…why?”
“Well, I knew it was a gross overpayment, you know. But I thought that if I played dumb and sent the money to my wife…then…uh…she could, you know, like send me a little bit back each month…well, we could save a lot of it. I was thinking that maybe when I was able to bring her and my boys to Okinawa, we’d have most of that money put away.”
“That just doesn’t make any good sense, Frank! You gambled your Air Force career on no one finding out about this?”
“NO!” I almost yelled out. “I knew that eventually someone would discover the overpayment—and when they did, I wouldn’t get paid anymore until it was made up. So, I asked my wife to send me twenty-five dollars a month, since I was probably not going to be getting paid anymore for a long time. See, I figured that twenty-five dollars was all I would need after they found out—because, well, I get my food and lodging—and all I need over that is a little money for personal expenses. See?”
He stared at me for what seem to be several very long and hard minutes. “I don’t know what to say, Frank. That has to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Yeah…I know. I shouldn’t have done it—I guess.”
“So, you haven’t received any money from her yet? It’s been almost two months.”
“Uh, well…no…not yet. But, I know I should be getting something from her soon. You know, it takes the letters to and from Reno a long time to go back and forth.”
“Do you have any money now?”
“Oh! Money? Oh, sure! I’m good. See…still have some of my travel money, and I’m using that. Yeah, I’m OK.” I thought that sounded better than telling him I was dead broke.
He looked back at the paper and sighed deeply. After a minute or so, he said, “Look, the commander left this for me to sort out. So, I’ll just explain to him that you thought the nine hundred dollars was for travel and you sent the money home to your wife. I will also tell him that you agree not to receive any monthly payments until that amount of overpayment has been paid back; since you will be receiving the money back from your wife on a monthly basis. I don’t know if I can convince him not to refer you to the Adjutant General (military district attorney) for what you did, but I truly believe you didn’t do this with any malice aforethought. I promise I’ll do my best. From what I’ve seen, you’re a good kid and I don’t think you had any bad intentions. You just made a really stupid decision.”
“OK, Sergeant Resor…thank you. And, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, well forget about that for now and let me work with the colonel on this. But I just want to make sure that you will not end up having no money at all. Please tell me that your wife has agreed to this arrangement.”
“Oh yes! I mean, I’m sure she has. It’s just that I haven’t heard back from her yet. But when I do I’ll for sure have the first twenty-five bucks. But see, I told her there was no real hurry since I’m still good. So, it may be a few more days before I hear from her.” My lie was so convincing that I almost believed it myself.
“All right. Let me work this out with the boss. I’m confident the issue will stay in our squadron since he doesn’t want a black mark on his career either. Court martials tend to be messy and have been known to cause a lot of collateral damage—particularly to general officers’ careers. OK, you’re dismissed.” He got up and quickly left the room.
I don’t remember getting up from the table or walking out of the room, but I know that I spent a good amount of time in the men’s room. I wasn’t sure whether I needed to sit on the pot or kneel in front of it.
Roomie Creates a Style
In a matter of days, the issue had been resolved. Sergeant Resor asked me to sign a document that said that was agreeing to the fact that I had received ten month’s pay in advance in one lump sum, and that I understood that the Finance Office would make no further payments until the nine hundred dollar deficit had been satisfied. In short, for the next ten months I would not receive any pay. If I agreed to those terms, then the military would take no further action against me.
Still believing that the monthly twenty-five-dollar stipend would soon be arriving from Sharon, and assured that a court-martial was no longer in play, I happily signed the document.
My upbeat mood was short-lived considering that I was now completely out of money, so as I returned to my room, I sat down and began to do some long-range budget planning.
For starters, my trips to Naha would have to stop. With no money for taxis to transport me from and to the base, and I could no longer afford the luxury of eating or drinking out. Since I could no longer afford to send my uniforms out for laundry and dry cleaning, I scouted out some makeshift laundry facilities in my barracks and found that the small room with a deep sink that the janitorial crew used to rinse out their mops and wash rags should do nicely. Surely, they would not even miss the small amount of detergent that I would be using to wash my uniforms and underwear about once a week. In addition, my roommate, Nat, had an iron that I was sure he would be more than happy to lend me should I need to use it.
What seemed to be a bigger problem was that of my personal hygiene; i.e. blades for shaving, deodorant, bath soap and shampoo, and those pesky little haircuts that the military required us to get once every couple of weeks. After checking my supply of toiletries, I found that I had a few blades left in a cartridge, one bar of soap that should last me about a month, one can of aerosol deodorant that was almost new, and about half a bottle of shampoo. So if I didn’t hear from Sharon soon it looked like I would be OK for the next few weeks—except for haircuts.
With my tentative plan in place, I resumed a greatly altered lifestyle. I regularly turned down my friends’ invitations to go downtown after work, excusing myself by telling them that I was too tired or wasn’t in the mood. Instead, I became a three, and sometimes, four-meal-a-day regular at the chow hall. I began checking out books at the base library and devoted my after-shift hours and days off to reading and sleeping—and of course, playing my guitar.
On my weekends, having noted that it was when the custodians were least likely to be using the deep sink, I took to hand washing my clothing. Because I didn’t have any, I couldn’t starch my fatigues like I preferred to, but I made sure to iron a set just before my shift started so they’d look fresh.
One Friday evening, after turning down yet another invitation to accompany my buddies downtown, Roomie came bouncing back into my room.
“Hey gorgeous! What’cha doing?” He cheerfully asked.
“Oh nothing,” I said, rolling off my bed and marking my page in a book of Edgar Allen Poe short stories. “Just catching up on some reading. How about you? Why aren’t you with the guys down in Naha?”
“Aw shit, you know. All they want to do is barhop and flirt with the naisans hoping to get laid. And you know Ramie, he’s just a cockhound, trying to keep his stable of bargirls in line. Boring!”
“Yeah.”
“But, the real question is—why are you all of a sudden doing this ‘intellectual act’? Reading and shit. What’s up? You’ve been acting like your dog died. Wife dump you?”
“Naw, nothing like that. You know, I just need to slow down a little bit…and…well, save a little money. Christmas is coming up and…you know…stuff like that.”
“Bullshit! Look buddy,” Roomie said, pulling out the chair from under our solitary table and flopping down. “For the last couple of weeks you’ve been avoiding all of us—eating like a porker at that god-awful chow hall, and turning into a fucking monk. And…what the hell are you doing sneaking into the gooks’ mop closet at all hours? I thought I saw you washing clothes in there in the middle of the night! What the fuck is going on?”
I wasn’t prepared to spill my guts right then and there, so I continued to dance around the issue.
“Oh, that! Well, you know how the laundry is, so I just thought I’d do my own clothes. Hell, when I was in Alaska I used to have my own little laundry service. Made a pretty good chunk of change too!”
“Yeah, well this isn’t fucking Alaska. And, you ain’t doing anyone’s laundry but your own. So what the fuck’s going on?”
I put my book down on the bed and stared at the floor.
“And further,” Roomie continued. “No one else may have noticed, but I got an eye for hair—and yours is getting a tad shaggy, buddy! What? You can’t afford a dollar to go get your head massacred by Joe Chink and his slope-headed pals at the base barbershop?”
“Well…I didn’t think…”
“Look amigo. Look at me! This is fucking Roomie talking! If you’ve got money problems, girl problems, or…shit…even dick problems, I’m here to listen. That’s what friends are for. Get it?”
“Look Roomie, I…I…don’t think you can help my situation, OK?”
“Well fuck that! No—I can’t, if I don’t know what the hell’s bothering you, now can I? So ‘fess up bitch! What’s grinding your ass?”
It seemed that Roomie was not going to leave me alone until I spilled the beans. “Well…OK. But this has to stay between just you and me, OK?
“Sure, whatever. What’s eating you?”
“I guess it started when I got overpaid a few weeks ago.”
“You…got…overpaid? Shit, why would that be a problem?”
“Well…”
“Oh fuck! Don’t tell me you went down to Naminoue and blew the whole fucking wad on some gook cunt? Is that what happened? Now you have to pay the fucking money back, and you’re broke? Is that it?”
“No, that’s not really it.” And with that, I began to tell Roomie the entire story of my overpayment, the decision to send the money to Sharon, and my fear that she’d left me high and dry—and thirty minutes later I was done.
“Well fuck, buddy! That was a dumb fuck thing to do, wasn’t it?
“Yeah, you got that right.”
“But, lucky for you, I got your back—at least for one of your problems. Tomorrow morning I want you to take your shower around nine o’clock. I’ll be here in your room at nine-thirty sharp, and we’ll take care of that mop on your head. I need to stay sharp anyway—and boy, do I have some ideas on what to do with your hair!”
“Roomie, I don’t need you to give me free haircuts. I can make do.”
“So what? You want to go all shaggy and shit? Na-huh, boyfriend! Not on my watch you’re not. I’m going to make you the most beautiful boy in this barracks by eleven tomorrow morning! You watch!”
“No, Roomie!”
“You ain’t in no position to refuse, OK? And don’t go all macho on me—that’s just so…gauche! So, be ready to get all prettied up tomorrow morning. I can’t wait to get my hands on that black-haired mop of yours! Yum!! Oh! And be sure to shampoo all that greasy shit out of your hair, and please leave it wet. If you need some good stripping shampoo stop by my room on your way to the shower and I’ll let you use some of mine.”
“Uh, no thanks.” I wasn’t sure what “stripping shampoo” was, but I was sure I didn’t want to use it.
“Oh, and wear something that you won’t mind getting some hair on and getting a little wet. I don’t have a hair cape so we’ll just have to improvise!”
So with that, Roomie leaped off the chair, pulled me up by the shoulders and planted a big sloppy kiss on my cheek. Before I had a chance to complain he bounced out of my room and was merrily skipping down the hallway, singing at the top of his voice a verse from one of the songs from the movie musical, ‘West Side Story’:
“I feel pretty, I feel pretty, I feel pretty and witty and GAYYYYY!”
***
By the following morning, word had spread throughout the large barracks that Roomie was going to “style” some Air Force guy’s hair. I was almost sure that Roomie himself had started the rumor just to make sure he had an audience and to maybe as a way to start a customer base. This was 1965, and aside from a select group of people in Southern California, male “hair styling” was still in its infancy and almost unheard of.
As I was finishing my shower, I overheard a couple of Army guys making remarks regarding that “fag” from SoCal doing some other “fag’s” hair on the lower floor. They wondered aloud what the world was coming to when someone else commented that they’d spied Roomie early this morning buying hair spray at the Base Exchange.
I wondered if maybe agreeing to Roomie’s suggestion that he cut my hair might end up being a serious life altering experience for both of us. However, I decided to soldier on.
I was relieved to find that Roomie had not arrived at my room yet, and even more relieved when I saw that Nat was gone. I assumed he’d decided to get some late breakfast and I hoped he’d be gone for a while. I quickly dressed in a pair of swim shorts and a T shirt, hoping that he wouldn’t ask me to change.
Roomie showed up a few minutes later, sounding out the “shave and a haircut—two-bits” rhythm rap on my door. To my ghastly surprise, he was standing there wearing an outfit that I had never seen him, or for that matter any other male, wear before. Around his head, a tuft of blond hair popping up over the top, was a flowery silk scarf—tied off high on his forehead in an oversized bowknot. A tie-dyed T shirt, chopped off four or five inches above his navel rode high over the most garish looking skin-tight aqua-colored capri pants. On his feet, he wore a pair of pink flip-flops with a couple of large pastel-colored flowers attached to the toe straps.
“Hi-ho! Your nine-thirty appointment has arrived, bitch! Get ready to be beautified!” And he, for lack of a better word, “sashayed’ in.
He was carrying a large cloth bag that he dumped on my still unmade bed. It contained a can of ‘Aqua Net’ hair spray, various combs and brushes, and a couple of wired appliances—one resembling an air gun.
“OK!” he said joyfully, “let’s get this show on the road.”
He pulled the chair from under the table and after looking around, made a pile of several of my books and put them on the seat.
“There, now I can see what I need to do. Come on, upsy-daisy.” He said, motioning for me to sit on the books.
This turned out to be a haircut like I’d never had before. Having gotten used to ones that lasted four or five minutes tops, this one took most of an hour. He scissored, brushed, combed, buzzed, and scissored again. Then he spritzed my hair with some warm water and did it all over again. I felt as though I was being clipped bald.
Finally, he dug out the apparatus that looked like some plastic gun, plugged it in to a wall outlet, and began to blow my head with hot air. After a while, he switched to another gadget, which he also plugged into the wall, which resembled a short-round sabre.
“OK, now we’re going to shape your hair with this hot iron, so don’t fidget or I’ll burn your scalp!”
“You’re going to do what?”
“Oh, shut the fuck up! You’re a bigger sissy than I am. Stop it!”
And he began taking sections of what hair I had left, putting it in the iron and pulling it through. Lastly, and to my relief, he told me to close my eyes and began to spray my head with the can of Aqua Net.
“There! Now don’t you look so pretty!” He pulled a round mirror out of the cloth bag and held it in front of my face. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
It seemed that every hair follicle on my head had found its rightful place, and styled straight back, Roomie had blow-dried a small pompadour across my upper forehead. Although I’d felt as though he’d clipped my hair right down to my scalp, the image that was reflected from the hand mirror showed my head with more hair than I’d ever seen. It was immaculate.
“Holy shit, Roomie!”
“Nice, huh?”
“Well, yes—it’s unbelievable.”
To my complete surprise, and embarrassment at the same time, the audience—that had grown from three or four guys to about a dozen—broke into wild applause and loud cheering. To my horror, Roomie turned to the crowd, now spilling out into the hallway, and curtsied! And I mean a full-blown lady-to-queen-type curtsy.
“I’ll be taking appointments right after I get back to my room, you hairy savages.” He lisped in full gay mode. “But I can’t promise to make you all look as beautiful as Frankie here—sometimes I need more than hair to work with. And looking at some of you—well, it would be a challenge.”
Everyone laughed and the mood was sheer Hollywood. Roomie was absolutely beaming. I finally worked up the courage to break into his magic moment.
“Roomie! Hey, thank you so much–but, I do have a question.”
“Oh Frankie! You’ll never be able to pay me! You owe me too much.”
“No, that’s not what I was going to ask.” Hoping he was kidding. “How am I supposed to fix my hair this way every day? I don’t have brushes, hair spray, or those tools.”
“Ce n’est pas un problème, mon ami…” He said in perfect French while waving his arms dramatically. “I will come to your room to repair the damage before you go to work.” This elicited a chorus of hoops and jeers from the group. “As time goes on you’ll learn how to style it on your own.”
“But I don’t have either of those things!” I said, pointing to the hair dryer and curling iron.
“You can borrow my hair dryer, but you won’t need the curling iron.”
And with that, he turned and began to pack his stuff back into the cloth bag.
“Oh,” he said, suddenly remembering, “I’ll leave this can of Aqua Net with you for touch ups.”
The crowd around my door poured out into the hallway as Roomie exited my room.
“Come on boys! It’s going to be first-come, first-served at ‘Chez Roomie’.” And he disappeared—the crowd of guys eagerly following close behind.
I was left alone in my room with only my roommate Nat, who was sitting on the edge of his bed.
“So what’cha gonna do with your hat? Once you jam that baby on your hairstyle is gonna be all dicked up.”
“I looked at myself in my small shaving mirror and wondered the same thing. “Hmm, I don’t know. I guess I’ll just have to be careful.”
“I guess. Now you see why I keep my hair buzzed.”
Friends With Hearts
I spent Christmas alone in my room. Most of the base activities had been sharply curtailed due to the holidays, and I had been granted Christmas and the following three days off. The guys and most of the barrack’s population had all left to celebrate at the Airmen’s Club, or downtown Naminoue, leaving the barracks building mostly deserted. Nat and Roomie had asked me repeatedly to join the group but I resisted—saying that I thought I was coming down with a touch of the flu.
Although I had been maintaining some hope that I would eventually receive a letter from Sharon, that hope faded with every day that went by not hearing from her. My plans for the first twenty-five-dollar money order that I should’ve received by now had been to buy the boys a couple of toys that I’d seen at the Base Exchange a few weeks earlier. However, without any money I couldn’t even send them a Christmas card.
I counted the stamps that I had left since arriving in Okinawa and found that I had written Sharon about eleven letters and my parents, six. In return, I had received over a dozen letters from my mother and none from Sharon. As the Christmas holiday wound down, I finally came to the depressing conclusion that Sharon was not going to write. She had taken all the money that I had sent and apparently didn’t have any plans on sending anything back.
As darkness descended on me that first Christmas at the end of 1965, I lay on my bed wondering what would become of me. Even though Roomie had graciously volunteered to cut (style) my hair whenever I needed it, I worried that eventually I would run out of stuff to maintain my personal hygiene. I had less than a half a bar of soap left, three blades, and my can of deodorant was now almost empty. On the bright side, I had an almost brand new can of Aqua Net hairspray, but I doubted that it would do me much good anywhere other than on my head.
I fell into a shallow and troubled sleep—a feeling of bitter sorrow just a breath away.
***
I went back to work a few days later and I found that my duties helped keep my mind off my immediate troubles. After lunch, Sergeant Resor approached me and asked how I was doing. I drummed up my best smile and told him I was as right as rain.
“Have you heard from your wife yet?” He asked, concern showing in his eyes.
“Oh, yeah—I sure did.” I lied.
“So, everything’s OK then? Your plan, I mean.”
“Well, she hasn’t sent any money yet, but that’s fine. I still have some travel money put away, so I’ll be fine.” More lies.
“Ah, good. Well I see you got your hair all styled up. Sure makes you look different. You didn’t get that on the base did you?”
“No, the base barbershop only does haircuts. You know…military cuts. No, I got this from one of the Army guys in our barracks. He used to style hair in LA before he was drafted.”
“Hmm, looks good. Completely different from the way you used to wear it. I like it though. You gonna keep it that way?”
“Thanks! Yeah, I guess I will. As long as the Base Exchange doesn’t run out of hairspray.”
“Yeah, well don’t let that get around. You’ll be tagged as some kind of queer.”
“For sure. No, I’ll be OK.”
Our little chitchat went on for a while, and I began to feel as if he was somehow interrogating me. He asked what my plans were for New Years and I told him that I didn’t have any plans but would probably go downtown with some guys for dinner and a few drinks. He seemed satisfied, and didn’t realize what I’d just told him was what I really wanted to do, and not what I would probably end up doing.
I worked the early shift on New Year’s Eve, 1965, and was back in the barracks by three in the afternoon. Evening chow didn’t start until four so I decided to take a little nap and maybe head on up around five. Just as I was settling in and getting the first real snooze that I’d had in days, the door to my room flew open and all of my friends poured in.
“Look at this fucking slug, would you?” Smokey screamed, his eyes bulging even bigger than ever behind his horn-rimmed Coke bottle lenses. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Scared half out of my wits, I rolled out of my bunk—pulling the sheet up over my shoulders and almost falling on to the floor. “I’m trying to sleep before I go to chow!”
“Sleep?” Peewee screeched. No sleeping on New Year’s Eve, you slack fucker. Get up!”
Ramie, elegantly dressed in his blacks, coolly strolled in. “Get the fuck up, Pancho! We’re headed downtown to eat, drink, woo some bitches…and, of course, bring in the New Year!!”
“Fine,” I said, now a little irritated. “Go celebrate and leave me the fuck alone. OK?”
“Listen to this bitch! Un-fucking-grateful!” Roomie chimed in, faking mock anger. “Come on, get up!! I need to fluff that mop up so you’ll look like a real Romeo! I have a reputation to maintain!” He was carrying his brush and hair dryer.
“NO! Leave me alone!”
“We’re not asking, shit-head!” Peewee said impatiently. “We’re telling you to get your ass up, let Roomie fix your hair, so we can head on downtown. Come on, man—we need to catch a sukoshi cab ASAP!”
I wasn’t sure what I was hearing, and I sure didn’t want to say what came rolling out of my mouth! But, out it came anyway. “Look! You fucking guys know what my situation is. I don’t have any fucking money to go anywhere! That damn ship sailed a few weeks ago. Now get the fuck out of my room and leave me alone!”
Smokey elbowed his way past Nat, Peewee, Ramie and Roomie. His eyes looked like they were going to bulge right out of their sockets and the veins on his skinny neck were pulsing.
“Who the fuck said anything about money, you stupid ass?” He looked around the group. “Huh? Who the fuck said he needed money? Anyone?!” Everyone looked at each other but no one said anything.
A few seconds went by…and I finally found my tongue. “OK, look guys. Thanks for thinking about me, but I can’t do this. You expect me to join you on New Year’s Eve as you go downtown to eat and drink? And me with no money to my name? Give me a fucking break! I can’t do that! I can’t accept charity.”
Roomie slid by the group and sat next to me on my bunk. “Look Frankie. We don’t care about you not having money, and this is not charity. We’re your friends, you understand? Even if you are a flyboy in the fucking Air Force!”
Smokey and Ramie made some nasty sounds, and Smokey said, “Fuck you Roomie, you ground-pounder.”
Roomie put his arm around my shoulders. “Listen dummy. We love you, and we’d be some kind of nasty dirtbag friends if we didn’t help each other out. So, tonight is going to be on us. We’ve already talked about it and we’ve all agreed, so don’t give us any more shit. You’re our bud, and buds look after one another. Now come on, get your skinny ass up so I can work on your head. Time is wasting away!”
I didn’t know what to say, but I started to realize that they were not going to take no for an answer.
“OK, look,” I said, finally resigning myself to the inevitable. “I don’t really feel right about this, plus, I don’t have anything ready to wear.”
“Oh fuck! Put on some damn jeans and a white shirt, vato.” Ramie said. “And if you need a nice jacket I got a black one you can borrow.”
And that was that.
Thirty minutes later we all piled into a base taxi and were on our way towards the main gate to wave down a couple of sukoshi cabs. There was a group of about forty or fifty soldiers, sailors, and airmen crowded around the gate, and a line of cabs stuffing as many as each could fit for the ride to Naminoue.
It was a night that I will never forget. We ate, we drank, we sang, we caroused, and I had the best time of my young life. Sometime later, in a crowded and smoky bar, surrounded by a group of equally inebriated naisan bar girls, we gleefully welcomed in 1966. Soon after, and over Ramie’s loud objections, we shed ourselves of the girls and staggered into our favorite late night restaurant, “Jack’s Steakhouse”. Although crowded even at that time of the morning, we found a table and each ordered Jack’s special Kobe Beef sandwiches and Japanese beer.
After wolfing down the incredibly tender beef sandwiches and washing them down with mugs of ice-cold Asahi, we headed back to the cab stand for our return ride to the base. As Nat and I drunkenly helped each other up the long flight of concrete stairs to our quad, behind us the golden-soft Okinawan sun quietly broke the New Year’s dawn and shone brightly over the shimmering green horizon of the East China Sea.
To be continued…
