I was at one end of the Mediterranean, sitting by the harbour with a friend having a beer and a smoke, and the water bomber planes started coming in to pick up harbour water to drop off at the bush fires up in the hills, a thing of beauty, and about half way into the water pickup the pilot goosed the big Pratt and Whitney radials ready to lift off again with a full load, glorious sound.
The guy I was with was a right cunt, when the US 6th fleet pulled in for Gulf War 1, they’d say stuff to him like, you ain’t local, and you sure aren’t American, where you from, and he’d say oh I’m off the carrier that just pulled in, and they yanks were all WTF, you ain’t on the Nimitz, and he’d be all nooo dude, I’m off the IRAQUI carrier that just pulled in, actually it was a French carrier, and he had never been within 100 yards of it, but you get the idea the kind of guy he was, he was a cunt, but fucking hilarious.
So, there are a few other people there I knew vaguely, and the cunt gives me a wink, that no-one else sees, gestures at the water bomber with his glass, and says “I hope no-one is out there this time…”
So of course, the heads of everyone else at the table turn to the cunt, “What do you mean?”
The cunts just looks at them, all surprised like, “You mean you didn’t hear about it?”
“Hear about what”
“Oh, right, well, up in the mountains where the brush fires are burning, they found this body yesterday, well, it happens, people get caught in brushfires..” people around the table nodding…”.. so when they go to actually retrieve the body, they find it is covered in all this burnt sticky stuff, like tar or rubber, but nobody is sure what it is…”
Puzzled and interested faces all around
“… so they eventually get the body back to the morgue, and they work out that this burnt stuff is a burnt wetsuit.. see, it seems the guy was minding his own business, snorkelling in the harbour, and one of the water bombers comes down, scoops him up, and drops him on the fire…”
Shocked and speechless faces all around, mouths open
“… thing, is, they are actually having problems establishing the cause of death, was he killed by the plane hitting him when being picked up, or did he drown in the tank in the plane on the way to the fire, or was it being dropped on the fire, or was he still alive when he burnt… they’re still doing tests…”
As if on cue, another water bomber swoops in
Maybe it was the wink, maybe it’s because I knew the cunt, maybe it is because I have a brain and know the water bomber has a very strong and narrow grille on the inlet tract, I know the story is fucking impossible, but, it is a good story.
It was so good I remembered it, and many years later I was at the other end of the Mediterranean, sitting by a harbour with a friend and having a smoke and a beer, and a water bomber swoops in to combat some fires up in the hills.
So I grin quietly to myself, turn to my friend and the others at the table, and channel the cunt, and tell the story.
So imagine my surprise when two days later there is an item on the national TV evening news, I don’t speaka da lingo much beyond ordering beers and smokes and please and thanks, so this guy translates for me, and tells me about this poor frogman who was swept up by the water bombers and then dropped on the fires, and no-one is sure yet exactly what killed him…
This is a story I love to tell, so I always think I have already told it two or three times, and then I check, did a quick word search on this blog, and no, because I know I love the story and love to tell it, I assume I have told it far more often than I have, and so I end up telling it not very often at all.
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“Jamais vu” in other words, now, many years further on, I cannot honestly recall if the first story telling got on the telly or not, I know it did get as far as a local radio station, and I know how, “the lash” was sitting at the next table, so he aired the story on his show the next morning, fucking Californians, steal anything, bastards..lol… god I really am dating myself..
So, what actually reminded me of the cunt, and therefore the story, was this.
You see, the cunt, as well as saying the most “oh shit” that-has-got-to-start-a-fight things, that somehow not only never started a fight, but got him free beers, was one of those people who would go anywhere, another country even, literally at a moment’s notice, with what he had in his pockets, which was usually fuck all, and his wits alone, and come back three months later with tales to tell, and healthy, and happy….
He always maintained, and kept telling me, though I never really got it, that anyone was capable of believing any old outlandish and obviously totally bullshit tale you cared to concoct, provided you left a space, a vacuum, a hole, in the tale, into which they could put their own emotions.
“Makes them schitz” he would tell me, “They KNOW you’re talking shit, but they still act like they believe you, and they don’t really get angry at you, because they know you’re talking shit, but they still act like they believe you…”
At the time I thought he was just a crazy cunt, and I kind of forgot him for years, but I did discuss him once with a very very very Zen like character of advanced years, because I was trying to explain that I sort of always envied the cunt his total and utter lack of discretion, if I could turn it on and off at will like, and the Zen type starts giggling, and tells me I am a very fortunate man indeed, not many people alive today have met Rasputin.
Perhaps that is what I detest most about all the wimminz and niggerz and the effect they have on the world, they have almost eradicated that thing once known as character.