The Gundecker

Living in a berthing on a navy ship is a very unique experience. It’s like living in a dog kennel for grown adults, with incredibly strict rules in place because Sailors literally cannot be trusted with their own goddamn living conditions, because we’re all filthy barbarians.

There are, however, a lot of things you can do to make your life in berthing a little more survivable. There are also a lot of things you can do to make life more survivable for your shipmates, because there’s a non-zero chance that you’re the piece of shit making life hard for everyone else. Fuck you for that.

Wash your ass.

For the sake of all things fucking holy, wash your ass. It’s mind-boggling to me how common this problem is. It’s not even that every berthing has that one guy. Every division, of which there are several in each berthing, seems to have that one guy that stinks like an NBA locker room after double overtime.

I have had the unfortunate pleasure of being the guy to tell someone to wash their ass. Keep in mind this is a grown adult, someone that pays taxes and manages their own finances. They had to be told to take a fucking shower and change their brown-ass sheets because it was fucking with other peoples’ sleep. Think about that for a minute. People who hadn’t slept in days couldn’t whisk themselves to dream-land because this dude stank so bad. Fucking how.

Once, I had to have a senior female Sailor tell a junior female Sailor to wash her vagina, because other female Sailors complained to me that they could straight up smell her crotch from a distance. I cannot tell you how fucking uncomfortable that makes me, I’d have to choreograph an entire interpretive dance routine to properly convey the absolute skin-crawling awkwardness that I endured just to tell someone to ask someone else that their genitals were odorous and it was becoming other people’s business.

When you don’t wash your filthy body, there’s still a thing called “shower watch.” It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Someone literally stands next to you and watches you while you shower to make sure you’re actually using soap so you don’t smell like a bloated corpse anymore. They will literally stand there and observe you washing your balls.

Please don’t make me talk to you about your downstairs mix-up, wash your fucking ass.

Keep your rack area clean.

You’d think this is a no-brainer, but for some reason it’s not. Change your sheets regularly. Standard-issue Navy sheets are white. Not off-white, not eggshell, white. When your sheets are no longer white, wash your sheets and your pillow case.

When your pillow looks yellow because you drool like a neanderthal, toss it out and get a new one. Navy pillows don’t wash that well, but guess what! They’re free to you! Go get a new one, and stop using that funky ass pillow!

If you’re working out, fuck yeah dude, good on you! PT’s great for the mind and body. You know what’s not great for your shipmates’ minds and bodies? When your disgusting, sweaty, greasy workout clothes are hang-drying right next to where they lay their head. Put that shit in a bag and wash it, or stuff it in your locker, literally anything other than making other people deal with your swampy-ass Walmart-brand compression shorts.

I want to take this time to talk about the Stinky Feet gang. If you’re complaining about a dude’s musky mushroom-growing ass boots, take careful stock of the situation before continuing your crusade. I’ve known dudes that spray tinactin, spray smell-good, get seen by medical for their excessive foot stank, and still their feet smell like a dead pig in an old swamp. There’s nothing that can be done about it after a certain point, so unfortunately, you gotta deal with it to some extent.

Be respectful of everybody’s sleep.

You absolute fucking menace, if you leave your stupid goddamn alarm to go off when you’re not in your rack, you deserve to be tossed over the side. Before you leave your rack, make sure your phone is not set to go off between now and when you return. If it does, I hereby declare that it is fully acceptable to throw your goddamn phone in the shitter, and you can dig it out with your bare, disrespectful hands.

If you’re one of the fucking mutants that takes their boots off then drops them from what sounds like thirty feet high, you deserve what your recruiter is currently doing to your mom. Take your boots off, set them on the ground, then fuck off.

When you’re taking some personal time with Rosie Palmer and her five sisters, that shit had better not be anybody else’s business. Nobody should have any clue what you’re doing in there. We shouldn’t be able to hear your creepy fetish porn through your headphones, there should be no questionable rustling of your rack curtains, there should be no suspicion that you’re stirring a pot of mac and cheese in there.

And if we find a sock in the aisle that looks so stiff it could cut bread, it is now open season on every uniform item you have hanging up. You have been warned.

Don’t fuck with the temperature.

On most ships, the thermostat in the berthing is set pretty cold, and generally it’s locked in place with a zip-tie by medical. DON’T FUCK WITH THE GODDAMN THERMOSTAT.

It’s not set low so the Navy can fuck with you, or to save money, or any of the other dumbass conspiracy theories I’ve heard. It’s set low because low temperatures inhibit the spread of bacteria.

“HURRRRRR DURRRRR just use hand sanitizer,” you might say. “HURRRRRRR”

It’s not about not getting sick. As soon as you turn up the heat in berthing, two things are going to happen: You’re going to fuck with the entire sleeping population that bundled up to deal with it being a little chilly, because now they’re going to wake up sweaty and grumpy because you wanted to sleep buck naked with no blanket.

Second, you’re going to smell every single article of clothing that has ever been worn in that berthing. Coveralls, socks, boots, PT gear, all of it was only being kept in check by the temperature being kept at 65, and now the whole berthing smells like a group of muskrats fucking inside a sleeping bag made out of asscrack hair after a long hike.

Clean your shit in the head.

When you’re using the head, treat it like your bathroom at home. The berthing cleaners are not your personal housekeeping service, make sure you clean up after yourself.

If you leave doodoo streaks (“race tracks”) in the toilet bowl, clean that shit up. When you take a shit, and your diet is full of carbs and protein because you make poor choices in the mess-line, you probably leave a greasy poop streak down the side of the bowl when your sloppy deuce gets banished to the shadow realm.

You know what’s awesome? The toilets on a ship have a flush like a goddamn jet engine! Just toss some toilet paper at the starting line of your boom-boom track and then flush, and more than likely you’re good to go. If not, go get the fucking scrub brush and clean your nasty shit off the bowl so the berthing cleaners don’t have to get to it once it’s fossilized.

Speaking of fossilized, don’t leave gobs of toothpaste in the sinks. In fact, don’t leave anything in the sinks. Not toothpaste, not facial hair, nothing. Swish some water around the basin and get that shit down the drain, you fucking caveman.

A weird thing happens when people sit in a bathroom stall. Otherwise normal, functioning adults turn into pure fucking vandals. If you’re going to pick your nose, whatever. Sometimes you’ve gotta extricate that little green devil. But then some people, some absolute pieces of shit, will wipe that booger somewhere in the stall.

Start counting the number of times you’re in close proximity, literally arm’s reach, of tissue paper. Unless you work at a desk, it’s probably not often. When you’re in a stall, it’s literally all the fucking time. You can put your booger in the toilet paper and flush it! Holy shit!

Do you feel like the Navy is taking too much of your life, and you wiping a booger on a stall door is like you’re taking some of that agency back? Find another way. Don’t make that someone else’s problem, you jackass.

Shit like a normal fucking person.

This warrants its own section for some stupid goddamn reason, but when you go to drop the kids off at the pool, shit like your grandma is going to come inspect afterwards.

Some weird ass motherfuckers, motherfuckers who have seriously lost their way in life, hover above the bowl when they shit. Don’t do that. The butt cooties aren’t going to come getcha, you creep.

Regardless of how great you think you are at shitting from a height, you’re probably getting shit on the seat. That’s the only possible reason any of us (and there’s a council that convenes annually to discuss the issue) have determined that there’s shit on the seat. Making some poor kid clean that up for you is fucking gross, and you’re a monster.

In the same vein, wipe your ass properly. Trust me, I feel just as weird having to type this as you feel reading it, but some savages need to be told. When you wipe your ass, wipe north, check the paper, if you still see brown and it’s not flecks of bark in the toilet paper (not even a joke!) then you need to go for round two. You might need to go three, four, even five rounds. Wipe until that shit comes clean.

Why do I care? Because your filthy ass, not properly wiped or showered since the last shit you took, leaves a vertical chocolate smooch on the north end of the seat the next time you sit down. There’s startling overlap in the venn diagram of people who don’t wipe their asses properly, and people willing to let someone else clean up their shit.

Don’t fuck up the showers.

When you go to take a shower, it’s likely you had to wait in a line. That sucks buttcheeks. When you get up to bat, you should strive to take negative time taking your shower. You should take a shower so fast that the clocks start to spin backwards and scientists study it.

None of this thirty minute power shower shit, if you do that crap then you deserve it when someone outside waiting in line turns the valve to the hot water off. I can only imagine that when they designed most surface ships, they put that valve there intentionally so that the poor stinky fucks waiting in the head can reach up and blast you with nigh-freezing water. You deserve it, dick.

When you leave the shower, take all your shit. Don’t leave behind your soap (why is it always Irish Spring?), your washcloth, or whatever else. It’s fucking gross when someone has to pick that shit up after you and throw it away, not to mention now you’re out of (sometimes scarce) shower supplies.

Oh, and don’t jerk off in the shower. The berthing cleaners have to pick up the mats at the bottom of the shower every day, and every single morning they’re dripping with shower babies. That’s right, it happens often enough that there’s a goddamn word for it.

Don’t steal shit.

Hey, you see that thing sitting out in berthing? Here’s a pretty easy process you can apply when you see something like that.

Is it yours?
If so, pick it up.
If not, don’t fucking touch it.

That’s it! That’s not so hard, right? Don’t leave your shit out, but also don’t steal shit. We all get paid peanuts, so you’re literally stealing from someone as poor as you when you put your grubby mitts on someone’s property.

If you’re gonna steal shit, go up to officer country.

(Just kidding, don’t steal their shit either.)

Wear your fucking shower shoes.

Listen, my fellow degenerates. I am one of those people that likes to let my dogs breathe. I didn’t experience athlete’s foot until I had been in the Navy for three or four years. When I’m at home, I’m only wearing shoes if I’m imminently departing the house.

When you are on a ship, act like the floor is lava and your shower shoes are fireproof. Do NOT set your bare feet on the deck.

When the berthing gets cleaned, there are supposed to be swabs (or mops, for my less maritime-inclined shoremates) for the head, and swabs for the berthing, and they’re meant to be kept separate.

Now let me ask you this: Do you trust that a barely-literate 18-year old who just found out his workday is now extended by two hours because he’s spending his morning doing berthing cleaners is double-checking he’s using the right swab in the right place?

No, you don’t. So when you’re putting your feet on that deck, you’re putting your bare toes on a plate of steel that’s covered in the same gunk that got cleaned out of the bathroom stalls and the shower floors.

It might smell like Fabuloso, but I promise you, it’s actually a slurry of human semen and barely-human shit.

I’ve even seen one person, who is pretty well documented on this site, change his boots toddler-style by sitting on the deck. Please, for the love of god, if you see someone doing that, stop them, and direct them to the chaplain to seek spiritual counseling.

You can get outbreaks of fucking ringworm that way, because people are fucking nasty.

Pimp your rack.

Depending on your command, you might have some opportunities to customize your rack. If your command has a berthing instruction that rules out anything other than Navy-issued pillows, Navy-issued sheets, and a wool Navy-issued blanket, then there’s still options that help you out immensely.

Check out Fleet Sheets, they sell sheets, pillows, blankets, mattress pads, and curtains that abide by Navy regulations for berthings. I’d check with your command first, because the curtains and mattress pads especially are slightly different than the crappy ones the Navy gives you.

Disclaimer: I do not receive any money from Fleet Sheets, they don’t advertise with us, I just use their products and I highly recommend them, because their shit is fantastic.

At one of my commands, we were allowed personal sheets, a personal blanket, and a personal item on our racks in berthing. I had Mario and Star Wars sheets. They were dope.

Let me point you to that last part, though: One personal item. For some people, this was a stuffed animal, a motorcycle helmet, a bag, or any one of a thousand things you could keep on your rack.

For others, it was a waifu body pillow. You know, the ones about body-length that have a picture of an anime girl on it. Try and tell me that shit’s just a joke, I’m calling you a liar. Look man, you’re into what you’re into, but you took a lot of steps to get that waifu shipped to your house, so don’t tell me you did it as a prank.

Worse than that, we had one dude leave a vibrator on his rack as a personal item. I’d like to re-emphasize, you’re into what you’re into, but my brother in Christ, do not make that shit anybody else’s business. Worse still, when you do that shit you put a really good policy into mortal peril for everybody else, because when the XO sees that they’re going to think “I may have let them do too much here,” and you just ruined it for everybody because you can’t be pissed to put your dildo up.

You probably have your own tips for how to survive berthing. Do everyone a favor, give us your advice, we’d love to hear it and if it’s the god-tier advice we expect from you degenerates, we’ll feature it in another edition of The Berthing Bible!