We went through a year of constant hazing. There was an admiral called Shakey who was supposedly in charge of the academy, but the upperclassmen ran the school. You’d be walking down the hall and a three-striper—a junior—would come around a corner and demand you list the twenty-five things found in all lifeboats, in alphabetical order. If you couldn’t do it, you had to drop and give him twenty push-ups. On the summer cruise to Bermuda, they’d dress you in four layers of clothing including a winter coat, gloves, hat, and goggles and take you into the engine room on the training ship in the middle of summer, where the temperature hits 160 degrees, and work you until you dropped from dehydration. And you had to suck a lollipop through the whole thing, don’t ask me why. If you ratted on a classmate, they’d cut a fire hose, slip the end under your door, and turn it on full blast. Say good-bye to your stereo equipment and your camera, pal. If you messed with a four-striper—a senior—the boys would have what they called a “blanket party.” You’d be sleeping in your bunk, and all of a sudden a blanket would be thrown over your head and ten upperclassmen would pummel you to within an inch of your life. Or the upperclassmen would ambush you in a place called Four Corners. People had nightmares about that place. You’d turn the corner and there would be a gang of stripers lying in wait. They’d immediately begin screaming for us to “be a steam engine.” One guy would be the vertical piston, another would be the prop and the shaft and the steam drum, which meant you were running in circles or pumping your body up and down or making a damn fool of yourself in some other way. For hours.
It’d all be illegal now. Back then, hazing was a character builder, but now it’s not politically correct. I’m sure they have sensitivity training there the first week and you can get demerits for even implying that a youngie might tie a better knot. But in my time, some of the lieutenant commanders who lived on campus were afraid to walk into the dorms.
One senior, an upperclassman, made a special project of me. We just rubbed each other the wrong way, mostly because he was a stickler for rules and respect, and I don’t give any unless I get it in return. It was like a chemical reaction. Instant dislike on both sides. He made it his mission to drive me out of the school.
Every time he saw me on campus, he would make my life miserable. “What are you, a virgin?” he’d scream at me. “What’s the matter, never been laid?” I wasn’t going to take that from a punk kid who was younger than me. “Way before you, loser,” I said. And ever since that day, he’d had it in for me.
One time, close to the Christmas holidays, I was walking with some classmates from mess hall toward our dorm. Of course, he was waiting for me at the Four Corners.
“Goddamn it, Phillips, are you still here?” he yelled. Some of his friends snickered. Everyone knew the skinny bastard had it in for me. “Why don’t you just go pack your bag, because you’ll never make it out of here. I’m guaranteeing that right now.”
If I’d ever had any doubts of making it out, they ended right there. My ancestors are from County Cork, and I’m told it’s known as the Rebel County, for its opposition to British rule. I have their genes.
“I swear to God,” I whispered under my breath, “you’ll never get me out of here.”
I smiled at him, a big, enthusiastic smile. He did not like that.
“Drop and give me twenty!” he yelled. Yeah, they actually said that.
I shook my head. “Sir, that ain’t even worth going down for,” I said.
He looked… well, I would say “shocked.”
“What did you say, youngie?”
“I said, ‘Sir, that ain’t even worth going down for.’ Give me forty.”
Two hours later, I was soaked with sweat, doing push-ups and sit-ups. I was dirty and sweaty and my arms felt like ropes of wet noodles. He was watching the sweat rolling down my face, enjoying himself. All my classmates had gone back to the dorm.
Finally, he got hungry. He announced he was heading off for dinner.
“I want to come back and find you here, or it’s two weeks’ worth of demerits,” he said. Demerits were worse than anything—you’d spend your entire weekend working them off.
When he was gone, one of his classmates came running out of the mess hall. I watched the upperclassman approach. He was one of the nicer guys in the senior class.
“That’s it, Phillips. Dismissed.”
I looked up. Then I dropped down for another twenty.
“No thank you, sir, I’m fine,” I said, my face a few inches from his highly polished shoes. I felt like I was going to pass out, but I was pissed off. I wouldn’t be the one to break.
I heard a sigh as I counted out twenty.
“Don’t be a dickhead, Phillips, I’m cutting you a break here. Dismissed.”
I stood up, out of breath, and looked him in the eye.
“Need to hear it from him, sir.”
“He’s an asshole. So that’s not going to happen.”
I thought for a minute, breathing hard. I didn’t want to let the bastard win. But the admission by an upperclassman that this jerk was in the wrong was good enough for me. Besides, I thought another twenty push-ups would damn near kill me.
“Very good, sir.” And I walked away. The thought of my tormentor coming to find an empty hall gave me a laugh. I owe the fact that I graduated partially to that numbskull.
For me, the best motivator in the world is idiocy administered by a bully.
Not everyone was so determined to gut it out. Out of 350 guys at the beginning of our freshman year, 180 graduated. Not one of them was a milquetoast, believe me.
But I liked the academy. First of all, there were no girls, and they had been one of my downfalls at college. They were a distraction I couldn’t handle; at the time, crazily enough, I thought this was a plus (but not for long). And the school was filled with guys from a million different backgrounds but with a similar outlook on life: they wanted adventure, freedom, physical work, and independence. They were, for the most part, guys who had a wild sense of humor and too much imagination to work in an office. I could appreciate that.
The academy taught me discipline, which is something I needed in my life. I learned to stop messing around so much: when something needs to get done in the merchant marine, it gets done. It wasn’t make-up work; every task had real value. It allowed you to stay safe on the ship and get to your next port of call. On a ship, there are no idle hands; everyone has a task that he has to accomplish. What you do affects every man on the ship.
But the clincher came in the summer of 1976, during my first training ship cruise. The tall ships were in Boston for the bicentennial and made it a spectacular time to be sailing in the harbor. My classmates and I got to work on the Patriot State, the training ship. We were painting, running lines, doing drills, all out in the fresh air during that summer. I loved it. It was physical and you dropped into your bunk at the end of the day knowing you’d accomplished something with a minimum of bullshit.
It was the first time since high school that I’d truly felt part of a team. But this time, something was different. I didn’t feel the need to go my own way so much. There was a lifestyle and tradition here. Even a freedom, if you could stick it out. I wanted to be part of it.
It was at the academy that I started to hear the stories of the merchant marine: how during the Revolutionary War, American merchant sailors working as privateers captured or destroyed three times more than the navy ships did, and how from just one town in Massachusetts, a thousand sailors disappeared fighting the British. How the Barbary pirates kidnapped merchant mariners and sold them into “the awful fate of Moorish slavery.” How pirates on the Spanish main would capture sailors, rob them blind, and lock the crew in the hold while they set fire to the deck and set the ship adrift. How America was really built on the backs of wooden ships sailing out of ports like Salem to the far reaches of the world, from Cádiz to the Antarctic, carrying everything from molasses, gunpowder, gold dust, Chinese silk, to, of course, African slaves. The merchant marine always got there first—Java, Sumatra, Fiji. We blazed the trails across the oceans. The navy followed us. That’s what you learned at the MMA.