The Rules of Being a Ghost

I GET TO WORK EARLY BECAUSE IT’S ONE OF THE RULES. There are rules to being a ghost in the Navy.

I say rules, but there is really only one—refrain from the remarkable. Some would-be ghosts think the only rule is to be perfect, but being perfect is remarkable, which is against the rules, which means you are not a ghost. Nor does being a ghost mean being a dirtbag. It’s a balance.

I arrive at work one minute before Kaplan, who is another ghost. We are not friends, but we are friendly. Kaplan the friendly ghost, ha ha. We make it a point to arrive before the rest of the shop. No one ever accuses the guys who get there first of not pulling their weight.

Ghosts must do something. It must be something that invites no reward but more importantly, no scrutiny. I am a Safety Coordinator. Meet a girl at the bar and she asks me what I do and I say Safety Coordinator and she says what does that mean? And I take her hand and hold it to my chest and I look deeply into her eyes and I say, it means that I coordinate safety.

My real job is being a ghost and my real business is accumulating minutes. The long way to the maintenance meeting. Going to another squadron’s geedunk just because it’s further away. Small talk with the base admin office manager. Minutes. When you collect enough, they let you go—with base pay and medical for your trouble.

What I don’t tell the girl at the bar is that my principal duty after collecting minutes is watching people pee. My job is to watch the urine leave the body. I’m quoting the regulation there. I watch the urine leave the body and into the plastic cup. I stare at the container of urine until it is safely nestled in the cardboard box with the others.

We send the big box of pee to someone else. Who knows what they do with it? They’re supposed to test it but I don’t care if they store the boxes unopened in a warehouse or whether they pour each one down the sink.

I mention this to Kaplan, that I have no concept of the urine after we send it off. Kaplan says he doesn’t either. Says he doesn’t think about it all. Says he can spend all day looking at penises and pee and he’ll go home and talk to his wife about the last thing he heard on the radio. And she’ll go, oh really? And on and on and it never comes up.

I’m about to tell Kaplan that he makes being a ghost an artform when our morning crowd of urinators shows up, demanding we look at their penises.

Some kid, some new check-in, says he can’t go. Tells me like he’d tell a doctor. But I’m only a ghost so I tell him to chug some coffee and come back. He shakes his head. Says Chief told him not to return until he’d given his sample. I put him at the empty desk in the corner. Of course he doesn’t have any money so I get him a Sprite and tell him he owes me two bucks.

End of the day, he’s the last one on my hit list. Says he’s got a nervous bladder. Been sitting at the empty desk all damn day. C’mon man, I say. What’s it going to take? He’s looking down at his boots. Wanna try again? He shrugs and we march down to the head. Just relax, I tell him. Pretend like I’m not here. It’s not that, he says and starts to say something else when his penis erupts in a full throttle stream of urine. Finally, I say and he replies with a sad smile.

Back in the shop, he signs his name and I seal the plastic cup. He’s watching me package up the big box of pee when he asks me where it all goes and I tell him that I don’t really think about it.

What happens if they find something, he asks.

Find something? I say.

Like drugs, he says. Like weed.

Will they? I ask him. He nods his head. They kick you out. You know that.

Fuck me, he whispers. Fuck me, he says over and over again.

Ah, who knows, I say. Who really knows how good these tests are?

Yeah I guess, he says.

He’s sitting at the desk with his head in his hands as I pack up for the day. I go to the door holding the giant box of pee and I turn off the lights and I wait for him to get up. He doesn’t. C’mon man, I say. You can’t stay here.

You could help me, he says in the dark.

No one can help you, I correct him.

You could make a mistake, he says and I hear him crying. You could lose the box. Everyone makes mistakes. I make mistakes, you make mistakes, right?

Pull yourself together, I say.

He follows me to my car. Please don’t send it, he begs. I’ll lose everything. I put the box of pee in the car, close the trunk and spin around, finger in his face.

Listen, I say. I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’m not really here.

He stops. He asks me what I’m talking about.

The truth is I’m a ghost, I say. I can’t help you. He’s still standing there as I drive away. Shouting at me. So full of blood that it blooms up his neck as he begs for help. Humiliating. He is so alive! It looks just awful.