shore leave

A boy and shore leave  The 15 years old boy was standing on the poop deck of an old tank ship late at night, looking up at the millions of stars over The Red Sea. His job was to clean pots and pans in the galley ruled over by a cook who hated the world and everybody in it. The boy had tried to sit in the mess hall where older seamen sat, drinking coffee and playing cards, but they had made fun of him saying he looked like a girl the way he folded his arms. His left nibble was swollen when he pressed on the nipple, white stuff came out, he wondered if he was turning into a girl. In his cabin, he had found pornographic pictures by looking at them he decided he was very much a boy. In a rough society like this, there was no one to talk to about his feelings, a forbidden word, like constructing a house of cards and pulling the bottom card away. A burst dam of feelings by those who had kept their loneliness hidden, not being able to tell anyone about a rotten childhood, a miserable life punctuated by shore leave, with drink and whores of Rotterdam.   The boy giggled at the thought of seeing bearded men wailing about their misery; nevertheless, the next time the ship docked in Rotterdam, he would go ashore to see what it was all about.