One Wild Night in the Seychelles

I’ve been doing some reflecting, it’s that time of year between Christmas and New Years when attention is drawn to dissecting the past, looking back over memories of days gone by. Sometimes I look back and have a hard time believing specific pockets of time that happened were of my life.

Certain events are so wild that they feel like they happened to someone else, considering how tame my life is on the regular for the most part. There was this one night in the Seychelles…it’s true when they say that what happens on deployment, tends to stay on deployment.

It all started with plans for a liberty port. I had a liberty buddy who needed to have some alone time with one of the guys on the ship that she had an unspoken hookup arrangement with. As a result, she needed a liberty buddy that she could count on to be discreet, but at the same time be trusted to be on her own and not get into a shit load of trouble. That person was me.

We got hotel rooms and she went her way to get her groove on. I met up with some buddies from the boat and led them on an adventure to the other side of the island where the locals hung out. The key to having a good time overseas was to look for places to hang out which were away from the boat and all the drunken sailors and marines.

One of the things about port visits is that anything that happened to be near the place where the ship pulled in were notorious to be filled with the sort of people who preyed on stupid Americans with fat wallets and drunk on their own self-importance. I wanted to have a good time and hang out dancing and blend in with people who weren’t there fresh off the boat.

And that is where I led my group. We caught cabs after dinner to the other side of the island to this one club that I had read about online – and this was in the fledgling days of the internet – but it made the notice for travel bloggers in the early days. I think I found it on Lonely Planet or some shit like that. Which the fools on the boat knew nothing about. Whereas I had some previous experience of the college/backpacking through Europe variety from my early college days, so I knew all about getting around on a budget. And in the Seychelles that was the name of the game. Anything touristy was going to be super pricey. And I wasn’t trying to go broke in the Seychelles.

This place was low key, the drinks were affordable, and I got super drunk. The people I had told in advance about this place did end up finding it and we were all hanging out and having a good time.  What I remember most about that night was dancing with this guy to one particular song by Madonna:

Any other songs that played I don’t remember. But I recall really being into this song at the time and when it came on, we were dancing and I remember thinking to myself that this guy was a really good dancer, which is super sexy because I love to dance.

So here we were dancing away to this song and it was just like one of those crazy moments that I think only happen to people in a movie. It was like the rest of the people in the club melted away and we were the only two dancing.

I don’t remember how I got back to the hotel, the details get a little fuzzy, I just remember my liberty buddy waking me up from where I was passed out in my bed in my hotel room and fussing at me to get myself together because we had to be back on the ship hella early for duty that day. I also remember being massively hung over, lol. Good times.

I wonder what happened to that guy? Where he ended up? I don’t even remember his name right now. I didn’t see him much on the boat after that. We had a fairly large crew, we didn’t really hang out in the same circles, and there was this other female on board in his department who for some reason was ready to fight me for dancing with this guy the night before.

Mind you, she had not been at that club because she didn’t know anything about it. She ended up hanging out at some place that was right by the port, so she heard about what happened the night before from other people. Strangest thing was that she had it in her head that she and this guy were together, even though I think it had all been in her head.

Life on board for the women on a Navy boat back in the day was like fucking Mad Max. It was every woman for herself, and regardless of marital status, most of them would fight each other for the males attention and what not. I did not get into it with her, because what the literal fuck. It was dancing. But whatever.

I don’t regret anything from that port visit. It was insane how much I managed to pack into that one liberty stop, as that happened during our last night on the island, and considering where it is (in the middle of the Indian Ocean) it is unlikely I will ever get an opportunity to go back there again, so it is just as well.

My life since that deployment has been tame to the extreme so thinking back to recall this trip has given me simultaneously fond memories of a time when I actually had fun, and filled me with sadness that I have been so disappointing as a person since then. Perhaps I will carve out another opportunity to live wild in the coming years ahead?

I can only hope.