bathroom at Godfather’s, Saipan, USA
Posted in Saipan on November 17th, 2005 by pottymouthHawaiian shirt Friday. Only we’re in the tropics, so we’ve also got Hawaiian shirt Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday as well as Hawaiian shirt weekends. And the Hawaiian shirts are just called ‘shirts.’ Well, they’re called Aloha shirts. They should be called Hafa Adai shirts, because Hafa Adai is how people say Aloha out here.
Me, I’m wearing a camo skirt and plain green shirt. My boss noticed the camo skirt and said ‘You’re wearing a camo skirt!’ and I said, ‘Supporting the troops. Got to support the troops.’ This led us into another discussion about how bizarre this whole Iraq war is.
Speaking of which – Jarhead is a good movie. OK, so nothing happens. But it’s riveting. At least I think it is. I don’t find it to be anti-soldier at all, either. Anti-government, yes, but rightly so, and here’s part of why I think that. One night at a bar called Godfather’s I met a guy who works as a merchant marine, and he told me that after the tsunami last year he and his ship were sent off the coast of Aceh to do relief work. They boated out to Aceh and anchored (is that the word?) two miles from the shore, where they waited for instructions from the government about what to do next. The instructions came about a month later: turn around and go home. That was their relief work.
So last night I was at Godfather’s with a friend and we were having a drink and some pizza (me) and salad (she) and catching up since we’ve both been off-island recently, she in Hawaii and me in Osaka. A guy from another military ship that’s in town came up and started talking to us. He sat on my side of the booth and said his name was Rxxx (to protect privacy), but that he hated that name. He said that his mother was in love with a Panamanian guy named Rxxx, and had an affair with this guy, and that he was this guy’s son. His father isn’t his father, he said. So one day he went to Panama to see Rxxx and found him selling peeled oranges by the side of the road for ten cents each. Rxxx said to the guy that he’d come to meet him, and that he was his father. And then he never finished the story because he started telling us about his beautiful lesbian aunt who lives in New York and by the time I remembered that Rxxx never finished telling us what happened in Panama I was at home in bed.
The bathroom part of the story: both my friend and I had to use the bathroom but neither of us wanted to leave the other because we didn’t want to leave the other alone with Rxxx, who was a nice guy and not at all dangerous seeming or anything, just seemed like someone who could talk for a while. (Actually, I would have left my friend, but Rxxx was sitting on my side of the booth and I couldn’t get out.)
When we did, at last, get to the bathroom, we found it to be as it always is: it’s a single person bathroom that’s surprisingly clean for a bar bathroom, and it’s got soap,TP, and paper towels. There’s one of those huge Calvin Klein jeans posters featuring the guy from Limp Biscuit (I think) that’s been in this bar’s bathroom for a few years now, even before the bar was called Godfather’s and when it was still called Beefeater’s. There are plastic flowers in the bathroom, too. It’s a nice touch.