by River Schumann
The captain’s voice cracked over the intercom: “Liberty call, Liberty call!” and the deck erupted: boots pounding, voices rising, sailors pressing toward the rails. I stayed where I was, shoulder against the bulkhead, taking it all in. It was spring 2018, and our ship had just become the first U.S. aircraft carrier in forty years to drop anchor in Vietnam. Five thousand sailors crowded the main deck, desperate for land after a month at sea.
I was one of them, but I wasn’t. Three months into my first deployment, I was still a naïve kid—straight-laced, untested, and convinced the Navy demanded the kind of discipline I had always associated with wearing the military uniform. I expected sailors to carry themselves with precision, even uptightness, but the reality around me was looser, louder, and harder to reconcile. Other sailors swapped stories of past port calls, boasting of nights they couldn’t remember, while the boats from Da Nang drew closer and the deck surged with noise. I thought, instead, of the ones who had walked these decks in wartime. I wanted to honor them by carrying myself with poise, not reckless abandon. Still, anticipation buzzed in my chest, keeping time with the shouts all around me.
Liberty call came with rules: no sailor went ashore alone. My assigned buddy was a raucous firefighter from my division; someone I hardly knew. We didn’t talk much, but we were both stuck on one of the last boats to shore. By the time our turn came, it was nearly 8 p.m. We descended the stairwell to the rickety platform, the sea slapping against the hull. A full moon hung low, casting silver across the waves. Spray kissed my legs, and I shivered. My buddy clambered into the boat ahead of me, loud and restless, as if daring the night to meet him halfway.
The first thing I noticed onshore was the writing—foreign characters glowing on dimly lit billboards. That’s when it hit me: I was totally out of my element. We caught a bus into town. The lights of Da Nang glimmered like any other city—tall buildings, thick traffic, neon signs. We passed a poorer section in the city, where rundown huts lined the road and the pungent smell of urine wafted through the windows. But beyond that, I caught sight of something that made me sit forward.
At first, I thought it was a rollercoaster, but then I realized it was a bridge. Sharp horns arched upward like waves. Colors—blue, purple, and yellow ran together like painted silk. The pattern reminded me of an assortment of flowers—bright, layered, and oddly soft for something made of steel. A magnificent dragon head stood at the end of the road, carved with heart-shaped eyes and flared whiskers. “At midnight, it breathe fire,” the driver said flatly, before dropping us into a maze of restaurants and clubs.
My buddy and I made a deal: food and then back to the ship. I don’t remember much about the restaurant—only that we ordered pizza and then waited outside. A few women in red tube tops and knee-high boots circled the sidewalk, propositioning any man who looked twice. My buddy saw my confusion and said plainly, “They’re prostitutes.” I went inside to check our order. The worker smiled when I tipped him and, in broken English, said, “Maybe not all you Americans are shit.”
When I came back, my buddy was gone. For a split second, I felt almost relieved—the weight of babysitting him off my shoulders—but I knew if I didn’t find him fast, leadership would be on me. I scanned the street and turned the corner where I saw a group of other sailors he might’ve gotten caught up with. I rounded it too quickly, stumbled, and the pizza slipped from my hands, landing face-down on the pavement. Then I saw him perched on a Buddha statue outside a shop, grinning for a photo.
A local man was already shouting at him, furious. I stepped in to pull my buddy down, but before I could say anything, the man smacked me upside the head. My buddy bolted. “Go! Leave!” The man barked at us.
Looking for a place to blend in, we followed a group of sailors into a nearby club. At the entrance I hesitated, already regretting the decision. The noise pressing out the doorway made me shrink back. I’d grown up thinking bars were places older men went to drown their troubles, not a place for me. Every part of me wanted to turn around, but my buddy disappeared inside before I could protest. The deal we’d made to grab food and head straight back to the ship already forgotten. The scuffle outside had seemingly given him a reason to linger, and once he crossed the threshold of that club, it was clear he had no intention of leaving.
The club was small and low-ceilinged, swaying with humid breath and dollar beer. Sailors piled in, all elbows and laughter, slamming shots like they were stateside. They acted as if the rules didn’t follow us here, as if we weren’t in a country where one wrong move could sour already fragile relations. To them, this was just another night out. To me, it felt dangerous, a reminder that my margin for error was thinner.
It was the kind of place that stank of clove smoke and diesel sweat, where your shoes stuck to the floor and nothing felt real. The room looped in an L-shape, pulsing with music and strobe lights. Many sailors from the ship were already there. My buddy quickly found his own group, throwing his arm around them like I didn’t exist. I stood off to the side of the bar, wide-eyed, watching him betray me. Not that we were friends—we barely knew each other—but it hurt that the one person assigned to watch my back had so quickly vanished into the crowd, leaving me adrift in a place that I already felt unsafe.
I don’t remember what song was playing, only that it was loud and the lights blinked red. That’s when she came in—no more than nine, Vietnamese, dressed all in pink. Little clear wedge heels, plastic straps biting into the soft skin of her feet. She danced right there among us. And the sailors—white, brown, and black—cheered her on like she was the halftime show at a game. Whoops, whistles, and clapping. No one batted an eye.
She twirled, twisted, and spun for them, clapping on the beat. I remember thinking she looked like she was made of glass. I remember thinking I might throw up. I was eighteen. And that was the first time I realized we were the bad ones.
It wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t metaphor. It was this little girl being pimped out in front of a pack of drunk Americans, and no one—not even me—did a damn thing. We just drank. We just laughed. We just stayed.
I don’t remember if she left before I did, or the other way around. What I remember is stepping outside, trying to breathe, when another sailor stumbled up grinning. He shouted something I couldn’t catch, pressed a drink into my hand, and I swallowed it down. The warmth lit through me—louder than the music, quicker than my nerves. I wanted to belong, to let go, to stop feeling like the odd one out. I leaned into him, kissed him on the lips, and for the first time that night, I laughed.
“It’s not gay if it’s underway,” he shrugged and disappeared. I’d heard the saying before—but this time, the old Navy joke about straight sailors passing the time at sea, taking what pleasure they could find until they were back home with their wives, hit a nerve. I was still feeling too raw, vulnerable. Where was the integrity? The loyalty?
As midnight crept close, my buddy reappeared, panicked. We were running late. He threw my arm over his shoulder, and we half-jogged through the streets, past shops and families who stepped aside without a word. At the pier, the line for the bus stretched three blocks long. These weren’t Navy buses but local men making extra cash shuttling sailors back to the docks. My buddy leaned in, whispered something, and slipped one guy a few bills. When the door slid open, he grabbed my arm, pulled me past the crowd and straight inside.
He collapsed into the seat beside me, grinning like a boy. “You know those guys?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said, beaming.
The tires screeched as the bus lurched forward. I leaned my head against the metal panel and stared out the window as shame crept up my spine. Maybe it was the beer, maybe it was the blur of the night, but it felt deeper than that. I came aboard with the idea that wearing the uniform meant living up to something larger than myself, a history marked by sacrifice and discipline. Yet here I was, stumbling drunk through the streets, kissing strangers, and laughing it off. In the middle of it all, I kept seeing the little girl inside the bar, her small face watching us, a reminder that our uniform carried weight and our presence could impose itself on others, whether we meant to or not. It forced me to wonder what kind of sailor I was and what kind of person I was becoming.
Outside, Da Nang blurred past: closed stalls, silent motorbikes, a dog nosing through trash. It felt like my body was still at the club. Like I had abandoned something essential in that room—my sense of restraint, maybe even my integrity—when I didn’t move. When I didn’t speak up. When I didn’t stop it. I didn’t say a word the whole ride back. I couldn’t. There was nothing I could say that wouldn’t indict us all.
That’s when something inside me lost faith in the Navy itself. It wasn’t just the night’s chaos, but the stories—the lies—I’d been told about why we were there: that wearing the uniform meant honor, that our presence abroad was a service, even protection. I didn’t distance myself from the military code, the discipline or chain of command. No, something deep within me shattered. That part of me that used to believe in order, in representing something steady, maybe even decent. The Dragon breath might’ve lit up the club, but it was watching that story unravel in the haze of beer and bravado that scorched me. Not fire, but the shame.
As we rounded the final bend, the Dragon Bridge came into view—its long steel spine coiled across the Han River like an ancient creature waiting to wake. Someone shouted from the front, and just then the head lit up. A plume of orange fire shot from its mouth, wild and high into the night. The whole bus hollered. “The fuckin’ dragon breathes!” someone yelled, drunk with glee.
The fire was beautiful, the way bombs are beautiful, and the way fireworks trick a child into awe. I watched through the fogged window, my face hot. I wanted to turn away. The dragon’s fire wasn’t a celebration. It was a reminder of how fragile my belief in the Navy had become—how quickly the night had cracked whatever faith I still held in honor or purpose. I didn’t clap. I didn’t cheer. To the others I was just another junior sailor too soft for the night.
When the dragon’s mouth spit flame across the sky, I thought someone else might feel the fracture too. But no one looked. And I knew then, without saying it aloud, that the part of me that trusted the story we’d been told was gone for good.
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River Schumann served in the U.S. Navy and is currently completing a master’s degree in Environmental Humanities with a certificate in Gender Studies. Their work explores military memory, queer theory, moral ambiguity, and desire. They write about witnessing, silence, and the complicated legacies of service.
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