Editor’s Note: From 1988 until 1991, Crash Barry served as a sailor in the U.S. Coast Guard aboard a 210-foot-long ship that patrolled from the Gulf of Maine to the Caribbean. This is the second in his series of true stories about fighting the War on Drugs and the War on Haitian Refugees.
Debbie erotically licked the shorn side of my head, which instantly convinced me that getting the Mohawk had been an excellent decision. The idea had been proposed by my drinking buddies during a party about a week before I was to report to Coast Guard boot camp. Everyone agreed it would be pretty bad-ass for me to show up with such a rad haircut. Besides, the government was gonna shave me bald anyway. Plus, Debbie, an 18-year-old New Wave blonde with a penchant for torn fishnet stockings and black bras, volunteered to do the honors because Mohawks aroused her.
For the next five nights, I benefited from Debbie’s fetish. We made love almost constantly, in the craziest places, with a passion and freedom that came with being young and able to do whatever we wanted. Since I knew my eight weeks of basic training were to be celibate, I needed as much sex as possible before shipping out.
•••
“What the dickens did you do to your hair?” my mother asked, after the initial shock of the Mohawk had subsided. “I don’t think the Coast Guard is gonna like this.” She clucked and shook her head. “But, you know, it really doesn’t surprise me. After all, you’ve always made decisions without considering the repercussions. Maybe now, you’ll learn your lesson.”
My father, sitting at the kitchen table, nodded in agreement. I was staying with my parents for my last night as a civilian. They’d questioned my decision to enlist, saying that as a wiseacre and rule-breaker, I was certain to rebel against the rigors of the obedience school that was boot camp.
“By the way,” my mother said, “I was just about to trim Dad’s hair with this new hair-cutting system we bought.”
“What’s the matter with scissors?” I asked.
“With the Flowbee, there’s no clean-up.” She smiled. “It’s all connected to the central vacuum. Watch.”
She grabbed a black hose that had been coiled on the floor and flipped a switch.
“See!” she said loudly, over the machine’s whine. “Just adjust the length you want the hair to be cut. And all the trimmings get sucked away. No mess.” She smiled widely. “C’mere and watch me try it out on Dad.”
Intrigued, I walked to the table while my mom fiddled with the device. Suddenly she turned toward me and, wielding the hose like a knife, pushed the clipper right into the middle of my scalp, taking a huge divot out of my mane and ruining the Mohawk.
“Ooops!” she said, grinning. “Now I’ll have to trim all your hair to the same length!”
•••
“What the hell happened to your head?” the recruiter asked when I arrived at his office the next day to get a lift to the airport for the flight to boot camp. A couple weeks earlier, when I had a normal hairstyle and almost perfect test scores, the guy was my best pal. Now he was treating me like a loser. “Looks like you’ve got friggin’ mange.”
During the drive to the airport, he barely spoke. He was no longer the loquacious recruiter who’d wooed me with promises of excitement as a member of the “Fire Department of the Ocean.” His spiel had included scenarios in which I’d be fighting blazes aboard huge ships and driving a 44-footer through surging surf to save lives and protect the environment, occasionally interrupting my important work to go on wild adventures in exotic ports-of-call.
The deal sounded great to a 20-year-old punk-rocker with a hippie streak and a love of poetry, psychedelics and pacifism, a stoner who never would have even contemplated joining the real military. And I needed to escape the world of shitty jobs and drunken, drugged hijinks. I needed to learn discipline. Otherwise I was sure to end up dead, in prison, or dead in prison before I turned 21.
“One thing I guarantee,” the recruiter said, breaking the silence when he stopped the van to drop me off in front of the main terminal, “they are certainly gonna have a good time with you. That’s for sure. Hah!” he laughed and drove away.
•••
“WHAT IN THE HELL, BOY?” hollered the uniformed man with sunglasses and a big mouth when I stepped off the bus in Cape May, New Jersey. “ANSWER ME, BOY! WHAT IN THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOUR HEAD? DO YOU HAVE LICE? OR IS THAT MANGE? HOW THE FRIG DID YOU EVER PASS THE GODDAMN PHYSICAL WITH A DISEASED HEAD?” The guy paused to breathe, then restarted at full volume, his spittle showering my face. “I SWEAR, IF YOU INFECT THE GODDAMN SQUAD-BAY WITH YOUR FRIGGIN’ HEAD LICE, I’M GONNA MAKE YOU WISH YOU NEVER EVEN THOUGHT OF JOINING THE UNITED STATES COAST GUARD!”
The screaming fella turned out to be my company commander — the Coastie equivalent to drill instructor — whose job it was to criticize me for the next two months. Initially, I was easy to spot, because my impromptu Flowbee haircut was shorter than the government barber’s clip job. Plus I did everything wrong, becoming an easy target for his wrath. If I bounced while marching, for instance, he’d punish everyone with extra push-ups. Or if I hadn’t shaved my face to his specifications, the rest of my comrades were required to stand outside, holding their rifles, arms fully extended over their heads, until I returned from a trip inside to remove the errant whiskers.
About halfway through boot camp, I discovered the recruiter had lied. Coasties were cops, not firefighters. Unbeknownst to me, Ronald Reagan had ordered the Coast Guard to the front lines of the Drug War, so the paramilitary service became focused on stopping the maritime smugglers aboard fast boats carrying cocaine and ganja into the United States. This put me in a quandary, since I’d always enjoyed both drugs.
As my hair grew and the indoctrination progressed, I realized the basic expectation — to blindly obey all rules and regulations issued by my superiors without question — was identical to the mission of the nuns who ruled the 12 years of my Catholic education. Thankfully, the nuns couldn’t use the same tactics employed by my Coast Guard indoctrinators, which included extreme physical exercise as punishment, sleep deprivation, mind-numbing marching, inane close-order drills, and near-constant toilet scrubbing, uniform ironing and brass polishing. As happened to millions of others before me, the intense training broke my spirit and forced me to abandon my free will and self-determination. By the time the eighth week approached, I was ready to become a Coastie.
•••
On the morning of my boot camp graduation, three other recruits and I were selected to sprint across the Coast Guard base to an admin building, where all the family and friends of our company were gathered prior to the ceremony, and notify the assembled folks that festivities would start in 15 minutes.
My parents and little sister had made the six-hour drive from western Massachusetts to New Jersey to attend. For a few moments, my family didn’t recognize me. Ramrod straight and strong, clean shaven and big-eared, I had been dramatically transformed.
“Wow,” my mom said as she hugged me, tears of happiness flowing from her eyes. “I wonder how long this will last?”
