So, would that be a Spanish Shepherd?
It was the second time we'd stopped at Palma Mallorca, Spain but it wouldn't be the last. Palma was a regular stop for US Navy ships leaving the Mediterranean and heading back to the friendly shores of home.
As usual we had one overwhelming desire, hit the beach (that's anywhere on shore to you land lubbers) and get very drunk, very fast. Unfortunately, I was low on cash that particular night so I would have to count on the generosity of my friends.
As my friends and I signed out at the quarterdeck, one of the chiefs in our division asked if he could sign out as one of our "buddies." How sad is it that a thirty-something Chief Petty Officer is reduced to signing out with us "blue shirts" since he obviously can't find somebody his own rank and age to buddy up with?
With the Chief in reluctant tow, we make our way to the Ecos bar where I purchase the one beer I can afford. (Told you I was low on cash) That beer is quickly downed and one shipmate buys me another beer. That too is quickly taken care of. Now I have no money and few prospects for getting another beer.
That is until the Chief tells me, "I'm gonna go shoot some pool." Why he felt the need to impart that jewel of information upon me I don't know since I had been studiously ignoring him all night. However, my attention is quickly drawn to his abandoned beer sitting on the table. I figure five minutes is the appropriate amount of time to see if he's forgotten his beer and when the time limit is reached I quaff most of his beer in a single gulp leaving him about half an inch of foam and backwash.
Five minutes later he returns, picks up his beer, gazes at it for a second, then shrugs his shoulders and downs the remains. He then heads to the bar and gets it refilled. Whereupon he takes a single drink and returns it to the table and goes off to shoot more pool.
Saying a silent prayer to the gods of beer and stupidity I seize this opportunity not once, but six more times as the evening wears on. Each time the Chief returns to a nearly empty glass, finishes it and gets it refilled. He even brags about how he's been drinking all night and doesn't even have a buzz yet. "Thassh right schieff, yer da mannn!" I slur at him.
It's at this point that a friend wants to head back to the boat and seeing as how the Chief has decided to go to another bar it seems I might as well join him since we are on the buddy system. As we make our way down the deserted streets of Palma, we happen to pass by a rather sullen looking German Shepherd sitting in the entry to a villa. It's only one dog but prudence suggests moving a bit further into the street as we go by.
The dog however takes it upon himself to get up and approach us as we pass. With no warning the dog suddenly goes Cujo on my ass!! And when I say my ass, I literally mean my ass. He lunges forward before I can react and grabs hold of my right butt cheek with his jaws! I'm furiously trying to get away from him when pain goes shooting up and down my back and leg accompanied by a horrible ripping sound.
With that, the dog turns and calmly walks away.
Distance being the better part of valor, my friend and I sprint about half a block down the road. There we stop and assess the damage. There is a hole about an inch around in my jeans and quite a bit of blood. We decide it'd be best if we hoofed it back to the boat a little quicker.
At first it wasn't very painful, just a dull, shallow throbbing in the back of my leg but by the time we made it back to the boat I was getting dizzy and could barely walk.
We scrambled across the quarterdeck of the USS Yosemite (a destroyer tender) and then across the brow to our ship. Limping onto our quarterdeck my friend asks the Officer of the Deck (OOD) to get our pecker checker (that's the medic) up on deck immediately. "No dice," says the OOD. Seems the pecker checker is out on the beach somewhere, probably getting nice and toasted. Great.
Rather than leave me bleeding all over our quarterdeck until our doc gets back, they escort me over to the Yosemite and hand me off to their Messenger of the Watch (MOW). The Messenger takes me down to their sick bay (which is much nicer than ours) and tells me that they are waking up one of their HM's to come take a look at me.
So there I am, semi-sober, bleeding from the ass, and feeling a pain that only a rough love prison inmate should be feeling.
Minutes later their HM2 walks in. Did I mention that the USS Yosemite is a tender? What that means is, she's a non-combat ship so they have women on board. (Things are different now but back then women didn't serve on combat ships) Anyway, in walks their HM2 and she's the cutest red-head I've seen in months (being that the only red heads I'd seen the past 5 months were males). It doesn't help that she's got that just-woken-up cuteness about her and that she's dressed in a terry-cloth bathrobe and fuzzy slippers.
She yawns (cutely I might add) and asks me to take off my pants. I gingerly do so and am now sitting on that goofy hospital bed wearing only a T-shirt, socks, and some very skimpy and tight black underwear. (Hey, I was in shape back then and could do that sort of thing. ) She proceeds to question me as she paces back and forth about how and where I was bit and what led up to the incident.
Well, I couldn't help it. She was cute. I was tired. I was in my underwear.
People, I pitched a circus tent right there in the sickbay. I was hard as steel, man. A cat couldn't scratch it.
I was chubbing so hard that it actually pulled the top of the undies away from my body.
She noticed.
To her credit, she retained all the professionalism of a healer and ever so calmly stepped towards me as she glanced down at my straining manhood. She only smiled a little when she SMACK!! popped me right on the tip of my penis with her pen!!!
It's amazing how quickly one can go flaccid when their member has been abused by somebody trained in the deadly arts of pen against penis warfare.
Now that she's... deflated me, she tells me, "Pull 'em down to your ankles and roll over on your stomach." I can only do what she commands as I see her grabbing the bottle of iodine and a menacingly large scrub brush. I think her professionalism slipped a little once she really started in on my ass with that scrub brush.
I cried.
She made up for it, though, when she liberally applied neosporin to my now savaged ass. Then, with out so much as a "call me in the morning" I was escorted back to my ship where I rejoined my friends who had by now arrived back at the boat.
They were deep into the Navy ritual of ripping off bandages from their arms and backs and comparing new tattoo's when I volunteered, "well, I've got a tattoo in the shape of a dogs mouth and it's right here on my ass!"
I still have the scars to this day.
