I was out. Done. Free.
San Diego, a new life, a newlywed wife. I had taken on a leadership role at the shipyards—good pay, long hours, nothing fancy, but honest work that kept the bills paid and the beer fridge stocked. I was settling into the idea that maybe, just maybe, my life was making sense for once.
Then my grandmother called.
She lived in Huntington Park, an old-school Mexican woman whose English was broken in the best way possible, every sentence a mix of sharp Spanish and butchered English, the kind that made waiters at Denny’s panic.
She’d called before—usually Navy junk mail, recruitment propaganda, bullshit offers for military credit cards at 27% APR.
But this time, her voice was different.
“Mijo,” she said, struggling with the words, “it say… uh… congratulations. Your… c-clemente… uh, clemency… is, uh, aprobado. You… you back in Navy.”
I froze.
“What?”
She cleared her throat and tried again. “It say you have to go to Miramar before two days or you AWOL.”
“Read that again, Grandma.”
She did. Twice. Three times.
It was real.
The United States Navy, in all its wisdom, had reinstated me without so much as a phone call. Congratulations, sailor, you’re back in uniform! Show up or we’ll arrest you.
I hadn’t thought about the Navy in a year. Hadn’t planned on it. I just turned 21, I had a job. A wife. A routine. I wasn’t drinking as much. Life was… stable.
So, naturally, I did the most responsible thing I could think of.
I called the number listed in the letter.
A cheerful guy with a Florida accent picked up. “Oh hey, congrats! Yeah, you got a good deal, man. Since you’ve got an open billet, you can pretty much pick your next duty station. Where you wanna go? Hawaii? Fuji? Diego Garcia?”
I blinked. This guy was talking like I had requested this. Like I had some grand plan to return to military life.
I sighed. “I wanna go back to my old squadron. VS-33. North Island, San Diego.”
“Done.”
Just like that.
“Just head on over to Miramar, pick up your gear, and we’ll process you.”
Miramar. A hangar bay stuffed with sea bags, each filled with boots, dungarees, and uniforms that had belonged to someone else. I rummaged through piles of discarded military gear like I was shopping at a government-run Goodwill. Found some boondockers in size 14—miracle. Pants? No such luck. The only pair I could find barely reached my ankles.
A guy handed me a marker and told me to cross out the previous owner’s name and scrawl my own over it.
Welcome back to service, sailor.
My wife, remarkably unfazed, drove me to the base gate, kissed me goodbye, and dropped me off like I was being sent to summer camp.
I checked in.
They gave me a new military ID.
I got on the red bus to my old squadron, VS-33.
And then shit hit the fan.
The bus stopped.
Navy SWAT.
Shotguns. M16s.
A commander marched up and ordered the driver not to leave. Then he turned to me.
“You are not wanted here.”
I barely had time to process what the fuck was happening before he continued.
“If you show up again, you’re going to the brig. I’ll make sure you’re gone for good.”
Apparently, my little “incident” in the barracks before my discharge had left a mark. And the witness—who, unfortunately for me, was still stationed there—hadn’t forgotten.
I was now officially persona non grata.
The bus driver turned the engine over and drove me back in silence.
I called Florida Man.
This time, he wasn’t as cheerful.
“Jesus Christ, what the hell did you do?”
“I dunno, but they just sent me back with a SWAT escort.”
He sighed. “Alright, well… they told me what to do with you.”
That wasn’t reassuring.
The orders came in.
San Diego to San Francisco.
San Francisco to Guam.
Two days in Guam.
Guam to the Philippines.
A week at an Air Force base.
Then, finally, a B-2 bomber out into the middle of the goddamn Indian Ocean to a horseshoe-shaped island called Diego Garcia.
Diego Garcia was the kind of place where people either drank themselves to death or meditated themselves into oblivion.
There were no women.
There were no bars.
But there was beer—$11 for a case of San Miguel. And if you returned the bottles, you got $7 back.
I’d walk out into the lagoon, case of beer on my shoulder, drink, and watch the sun go down over an island where the biggest hazard was coconuts.
Seriously.
The leading cause of death on Diego Garcia was coconuts falling on people’s heads.
I stayed long enough that they gave me a job.
They handed me the keys to a truck straight out of Rambo and told me to drive.
Problem was, I didn’t know how to drive stick.
Hell, I barely knew how to drive at all.
So, I did what any resourceful sailor would do.
I ground the gears until I found first. Then second.
I never made it to third.
That job didn’t last long.
One afternoon, a guy came running into the barracks.
“PACK YOUR SHIT, WE’RE GOING TO WAR!”
Within minutes, we were scrambling onto a transport plane, half-drunk, half-awake, hauling our sea bags like it was some kind of apocalyptic drill.
The plane took off.
Hours later, we spotted an aircraft carrier below.
The pilot dropped us onto the deck like a roller coaster from hell—snagged the number three wire, slammed down, came to a bone-jarring halt.
The back door opened.
We stumbled out, rubbing our eyes, still processing where the fuck we were.
Then the Navy police showed up.
Shotguns.
“Airman Orsillo?”
“Yeah?”
“Follow us.”
Two in front.
Four behind.
A full firing squad escort across the flight deck, in full view of everyone, like a goddamn perp walk.
They led me straight to the JAG office—the judge and jury of the Navy when you’re floating on a tin can in the middle of the ocean.
The officer in charge, a man with thick glasses and a face that looked like it hadn’t smiled since Vietnam, flipped open my file. It was thick. Too thick.
“You have an act for violence, Airman.”
I stayed quiet.
He continued reading, flipping through my file like it was a novel he already knew the ending to.
“You got in a fight in the brig. You had an incident in the barracks were you nearly killed a man.”
He set the file down, took off his glasses, and rubbed the bridge of his nose like he was already exhausted dealing with me. Then, he hit me with the hammer.
“Let me share something with you.” He paused, like he was savoring the moment. “Commander Douglas—yes, your old commander—is aboard. He’s the Officer of the Deck.”
I felt my stomach drop.
Douglas.
Fucking Douglas.
This man had personally seen to it that I was erased from out of the Navy. And now he was here, on this floating prison, and I was a fresh piece of meat he hadn’t sunk his teeth into yet.
The officer in front of me leaned in, voice low and cold. It wasn’t a warning. It was a death sentence.
“You so much as look in the direction of Commander Douglas, and I will make sure you never leave the brig.”
I nodded.
“That understood, Airman?”
I nodded again.
He closed my file, tapped his fingers on the desk, and sighed.
