The restricted barracks were a shitshow, plain and simple. A swirling vortex of losers, wasted potential, and broken men trying to scrape by until their number was called. It was a purgatory for the Navy’s misfits and screw-ups, and now I was one of them. The glow I used to carry—the cocky confidence of a young man who thought he had the world figured out—was gone, replaced by a shadow of myself that even I didn’t recognize anymore.
When I found out my appeal had been overturned and I was headed for court-martial, something inside me cracked. It was like the Navy wasn’t satisfied with kicking me down; they wanted to grind me into dust. I’d already spent too much time in this cesspool, surrounded by crackheads, meth cooks, and all manner of scumbags, and now I was officially trapped. No way out, no reprieve, just me and this endless grind of nothingness.
The barracks weren’t just a holding cell—they were a breeding ground for bad decisions. Crack cocaine was making the rounds like candy at Halloween. Meth? That was practically the house special. I wasn’t touching crack, but I’d dabbled with Phil, this wild-eyed tweaker who liked to think he was Walter White. He’d mix up his poison in some makeshift setup, and I’d watch, half-disgusted, half-fascinated. The ingredients alone were enough to turn your stomach, but it didn’t stop anyone from lining up to score. These weren’t good people. Hell, I wasn’t a good person either at this point. But being around them made it easier to forget the mess I was in, to drown out the noise of my impending doom.
The restrictions were wearing me thin. I was stuck in a loop: march to chow, march back, sit in this hellhole, repeat. Even the guards were assholes. One in particular, some smug bastard with a chip on his shoulder, had it out for me. Of course, there was a woman involved—there always is. We got into a shouting match one day, and they had to drag us apart before it turned physical. Later that night, I scrawled a note about him, accusing him of using meth, and slid it under the commander’s door. By the next day, the bastard was gone, failed his piss test, and was on his way out with an admin discharge. It didn’t fix my situation, but it felt like a small victory in a world where wins were hard to come by.
I kept spiraling. Smoking menthol cigarettes like they were going out of style, chain-smoking clove cigarettes until my lungs burned, and playing Spades with the brothers like it was the only thing holding my sanity together. I got into a few scraps here and there—mostly small shit—but enough to remind me that even in this pit, you had to keep your guard up. Eventually, they moved me to base restriction. I couldn’t leave, but at least I wasn’t under house arrest anymore. They took my military ID, which meant I could technically sneak off, but coming back in was a whole other story. It didn’t matter. My Tijuana weekends were over, and I had no energy left to chase the chaos that used to define me.
Instead, I found myself at the military base E-clubs, drowning in cheap booze and bad decisions. The women there were like me—lost souls looking for a distraction. Most were from nowhere states like Ohio or Wisconsin, running from dead-end lives and finding themselves in the same mess I was in. It was easy to charm them, easy to get lost in them, but it was all empty. I was empty.
As my court date loomed, I tried to straighten myself out, at least for a little while. I told myself I’d stay out of trouble, keep my head down, maybe even pray for a miracle. I sat at the club one weekend, sipping White Russians, telling a buddy that I was done with the bullshit. No more women, no more chaos. Just me and my self-control.
But then she walked in. Jackie. Short, curvy, with a gift from God that almost made her flip forwards as she leaned in with here size 44DD, the size only could make a man forget every promise he’d ever made to himself. She was a Marine, fresh from training at Pendleton, and she had that sparkle in her eye that screamed trouble. She asked me to dance, and I didn’t even hesitate. One dance turned into two, then three, and before I knew it, we were sneaking off base together. She took me back to her hotel, and we spent the weekend wrapped up in each other.
When it came time to get back on base, I had to sneak in the trunk of her car. 6’-4” tall frame, crammed into the tightest space imaginable, all for a few hours of fleeting pleasure. It was reckless, stupid, and exactly the kind of thing that got me into this mess in the first place. By Monday morning, I was back in the courtroom, hungover and smelling like a bad decision. Jackie? She was a footnote in the chaos, someone I’d remember later with a mix of fondness and regret.
The courtroom was a blur of legal jargon and accusations. I was just a body in a uniform, waiting for the hammer to fall. The Navy wanted to make an example of me, and I was too exhausted to fight it anymore. I could feel it in my gut—this wasn’t going to end well. They’d already broken me. The rest was just procedure.
Looking back, it’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment I lost myself in all of it. Was it the restricted barracks? The drugs? The booze? The constant pressure of being stuck in a system that seemed designed to crush you? Maybe it was all of it. All I know is that by the time I walked into that courtroom, I was a shell of who I used to be. And as much as I wanted to blame the Navy, the guards, the drugs, or the women, the truth was staring back at me in the mirror: I had done this to myself.
