I Was in the Navy

I was in the Navy from 1985 to 1991, stationed mostly on the West Coast which afforded me several trips to the Orient. The saying of “Young, dumb, and full of cum” was more then just a cliché for us. Though much of my memory is hazy from that period, I will recall the trip to Thailand. Pattaya Beach is where we had landed, but me and my friend, Freddy managed to string a couple days off together and we took the train trip to Bangkok. We got a room and met up with some other friends there and went to get a cab. I am guessing that because we conveyed to our non-English speaking cab-driver that we wanted girls and that we were generally cheap enlisted folk, he took us to a place called “The Poor House”. As we pulled up to an old, almost warehouse looking place on the dimly lit, poor side of town we saw some very sad images. There were some girls aged from around 8-12 years old milling about on the steps. I would not consider us ones of high morals, per se, but we were not pedophiles. We expressed our disdain and made sure we included “drinking” and “bar” in our descriptions of where we wanted to go. We were taken to a more westernized strip of bars. The girls more or less free-lanced for the bars they associated with instead of there being a papa-san or mama-san to negotiate with. It was my friend Freddy’s birthday so I paid for him a prostitute once we had settled on a pair. I believe it was around 30-40$ for all night. We got more booze and went to our room. I think I still have some blurry photos from that night somewhere. I recall saying I could blackmail him should he run for office. At one point I know we swapped girls because it became a point of contention when about a week later, out to sea, on our way back, the tell-tale signs of burning sensation when peeing became apparent for both of us. We were not the only ones as the line to the medical facility was the longest I had even seen. We were fortunate not to have the drug resistant/virulent type gonorrhea that some had gotten and as we were single, we were not sweating it like many of the married ones were. I remember seeing an article in the Seattle paper a few months later that mentioned an un-named ship that had after taking a 4 month Orient cruise had one the highest rates of STD’s, almost 2/3rds of the crew (600-700 personnel) though I wondered if they counted some people twice. My 1st and last time with an STD, btw. We were stocked up on the free condoms they gave away after that.