The Sailor's Wife - History

I'd like you to think of this story as historical fiction, if you would.

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I was stationed on an aircraft carrier home ported at Naval Air Station, Alameda, California through the last four years of the Vietnam War (1970-74.) It was tough duty on everyone, but on young married couples, it was hell.

I married my wife about nine months after I enlisted. We'd been sweethearts during my last year of high school (she was a year ahead of me,) and there was little doubt in anyone's mind that we were a match made in heaven. After high school in a small mid-west city, I spent a year and a half in the hometown college, but wound up flunking out simply because I didn't apply myself. "Stephanie" didn't mind, she came from a working class family, and was employed as a keypuncher. (Before computers had screens, this was the way you produced data for them - a keypuncher ran a machine that took keystrokes and turned them into holes in a piece of cardboard, a verifier punched the same keys, if the keystrokes weren't exactly the same the card was rejected. The batch of cards was then fed into a computer for processing. The work was dull but the pay was relatively high.)

After I'd flunked out, I had to do something, and the military beckoned. Because I already had a relative in the Navy, that's the branch I choose. The Navy and I made a deal - in return for two years of schooling in the advanced electronics of the time, I agreed to enlist for six years. During boot camp and the first six months of the schools, I missed my girl (and sex,) badly. In addition, she got very close to another guy.

Think back to when you were twenty. The world seemed black and white to me then. If I lost her, if she didn't wait for me, my world would be over. So I married her, and took her out to California.

I don't think either one of us have ever been happier than those first 14 months spent at Mare Island, 30 miles north of San Francisco. We were devoted to each other, as most newlywed couples are, and the romance of the Bay Area gave us plenty to look forward to. Then, when I graduated from the technical school, I put in first for shore duty anywhere that people weren't shooting at each other, and then for a ship in the Mediterranean; sources told me that Steph could find a nice cheap apartment in the home base of Naples, and I'd see her twice or three times a month. Instead, I got the dregs - an all expense paid trip to the Western Pacific.

A cruise for an aircraft carrier at that time took nine months. You left the West Coast and got to the Philippine Islands, stocked up, and then floated out to the Gulf of Tonkin, where you rode around in circles for a month at a time. The planes took off and landed twelve hours a day, bombing the hell out of the Viet Cong. Then you got a few days back in the P.I.s, then do it all over again. After 5 months, you got a break by sailing into Hong Kong or Singapore for a few days, and then back to the grind. After 8 'line periods,' the ship headed for home. Then you had a couple months of repainting, straightening up, and putting in new equipment at the homeport. Most of the guys took a couple of weeks leave during this period. Then, just to make sure everything was okay, we'd go out a couple of times for a week or three to the channel islands, off Los Angeles, and pretend we were bombing the hell out of sea lions. These 'sea trials' usually lasted for two or three weeks. Another couple of weeks at home, and then it was bye-bye to the Golden Gate Bridge for another nine months. During any year, you were lucky to be in your home port for eleven weeks.

Other ships, such as destroyers, cruisers, tankers and submarines had schedules similar enough so that this story could have happened to sailors on those duties just as easily. And of course, let's have sympathy for all the rest of the services; it was even worse on the guys who were actually slogging through the jungles, who stayed in country for a year or more before they got to come back to the States. They have my ultimate respect! And I've heard that the military in more modern times still has much the same issues.

Young Navy wives have always had the reputation of being easy targets. They're away from their husbands most of the time, and at that point in their lives they're at their sexual prime. Whaling ships out of Massachusetts in the nineteenth century used to sail for up to four years at a time; it's said that a third of the wives had infants when their men returned with the whale oil.

But the 1970's, and San Francisco, were an even worse (or better) time. Most venereal diseases could be cured simply by taking a shot of penicillin, the pill had been invented making birth control a relative snap, and the spirit of free-love was sweeping the country. Wives were lonely and wanted sex, and the prevailing attitude was as long as nobody gets hurt, it's okay.

After five years of marriage, most of it spent away from each other, Stephanie asked me what would happen if she had an affair. She hadn't gone out and done it yet, she was just thinking about it. At first, I didn't like the idea. But after a lot of late nights (and pretty good sex,) I gave my okay, based on three factors.

1) I figured if she could do it, so could I. She was, in effect, giving me the right to go hunt unlimited nookie.

2) Like many other men, I found the thought of my wife getting screwed by another man to be exciting. That's a point that the fans of monogamy try to gloss over, but many cuckolds, including myself, enjoyed (and still enjoy,) talking with their wives about the affairs they've had.

3) If I told her 'no,' there was a pretty good chance she'd do it anyway, and a divorce would probably occur.

Steph started pretty much as I described. She went out one night, picked up a guy and got laid. Her feelings about the encounter ran from elation to guilt. She had two or three other one-night stands before she met Chuck.

The basic facts about the Chuck story are true. Stephanie and Glenn, of course, are fictitious names, Chuck was the boy's name. She did meet him at the Alameda beach while I was out on Sea Trials, she seduced him by taking a bath with him, I got a glimpse of him on that beach. Later, she told me the story, and I asked quite graphic questions, and the details of the story are based on my memories of what my wife told me over 25 years ago. (If by any chance you think you are Chuck and are reading this, please drop me an email; I'd love to get your side of the story.)

Me? Oh, the only nookie I got during that period was a couple of prostitutes in Olangapo. They were neither pretty nor skilled in their trade, and I wound up getting a terrible case of the clap. I've not been back to see a hooker since.

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If you've had similar experiences or questions about my experiences or stories, email me, and let's chat.

Sincerely yours,

Adam Gunn