I loved it, though. I liked pretending I was a tough badass that knew how to be a real life cop (I wasn't).
& the boys? This boy crazy girl had plenty of cuties to flirt with. I started seeing one guy quick after I got there but that was like a filler of time so I'll skip to the good stuff. There's two in this story- one who only gets mentioned because of the way it happened, that leads up to the one that mattered & how he won me over.
Twice a year we test for our next rank in the Navy. It's a brutal test with like 200 questions & you're expected to know like 3,753 of them to prepare. I was testing for E-5 (I found out months later that I made it). Before the test I was standing out at the smokedeck with all of my coworkers & all the other people testing that smoked. There was a guy there with this tattoo on his forearm that was sexy as hell & we kept grinning at each other. We talked a bit (in the group) & he had this accent that was SO adorable. I didn't get his first name until much later, but the image of his last name from his nametape on his cammies was burned into my memory the entire test. Apparently I need to go into all advancement exams with stars in my eyes because I'm pretty sure all I thought about was how cute this dude was.
Later on I was convinced by some friends to call the barracks to ask for him. You could call the main line & ask for a name & they'd connect you & all I knew about him was that he was a Seabee & they were there for a 6 month TDY- meaning he wasn't stationed in Sasebo, just visiting. So I mustered up some nerve & called him (mispronounced his last name, ha!) & invited him to my apartment for a "party." I rounded up some of my closest friends to be there in case he was a creeper & we had a little shindig.
It happened pretty quickly & we were dating. He was from New Orleans & seriously, adorable. We had nearly nothing in common & he probably wasn't even that great of a guy (as evidenced years later when I found out he'd been engaged the entire time we dated)- but he was really cute.
There was one night where we were all out at the bar & I'm not really sure exactly what happened, but the one that mattered in my Japanese time was there & he almost got into a fight with cutie from New Orleans over me. It was all incredibly romantic, drunk dudes arguing over a girl, down to the smell of booze in the crappy bar. ;)
I don't remember why or how it started, but I remember the cutie was shown to me in a new light. The one that mattered basically told me that cutie didn't appreciate me & that I deserved so much better, etc. I was a little less into him & a little more into the one that mattered. When he left Japan we said the obligatory, "we'll keep in touch, you're the best, etc." but we barely did so & within days I realized I was much more interested in a real life relationship with the one that mattered. He left in December & by Christmas, the one that mattered & I were together. He was really blunt- said to me something like, "I want to be with you," without us having dated at all.
& he was pretty special to me for the next year & a half or so.
& I'll get to him next time. It'll take another post to tell the story.
