Nikitas, the pills and the blue suit
from the book “SEA REMEMBRANCES” by Captain Giorgos Abouselam
He was old in age, but sturdy and amorous, fellow Lieutenant Nikitas. We are in Montevideo, Uruguay, in time of the war, a day like any other.
What was different was that Nikitas, wearing his new blue suit for the first time, bathed and perfumed, was going to meet his beloved Dolores, a chubby Uruguayan woman half his age.
Before sailing off to the dock, he went to the chamber of the first Engineer, now deceased, begged him for a couple of miraculous German pills that revived dormant sexual urges and desires useful to the passionate Nikitas. He had heard of their potent properties in the officers’ mess hall, in a discussion of sexual inadequacy between the First and the ship’s radio operator.
– Please, Mr. First, give me a couple of German pills and I’ll be in your debt.
– You are not in your right mind Nikita. Where will I find for myself but, now that Germany is closed with the war?
Nikitas was insisting because he wanted to impress Dolores with his vigor! He finally managed to convince the First, who gave him a pill, telling him to take half of it because it was too strong. Nikitas grabbed the pill happily, shook the hand of the First and went to his chamber to get his trench coat.
There he swallowed the whole pill, not paying attention to the words of the late Engineer.
He saunters into the dock, strutting like a peacocks. Good luck and good strength Captain Nikita.
… Not an hour had passed and Nikitas was back in a taxi that pulled up near the stairs of the barge. He was all pale and was walking with a slow, strange walk. Passing me by, he asked me to go to his chamber in ten minutes to tell me his story. At that moment a strong smelly odor reached my nostrils.
The odor was pervasive in the chamber, with Captain Nikita wearing pajamas and rinsing off the soiled underpants and pants of his blue suit in the bathtub.
Picking my nose, I opened the porthole while Nikitas began:
– Captain Giorgos, I’ve made a fool of myself. I took the bus to Dolores, you know, the 127. It was crowded with all the seats taken. Not ten minutes into the ride, when suddenly I felt a spit in my belly.
A heavy sweat washed over me, while the pains became more intense. To make a long story short, despite my tightening and my efforts to avoid the fatality, I felt them escape and fill my clean underwear. If only there was a way to get lost, to vanish from the face of the earth, but where to go? Stuck there with the world starting to scream for the shithead to come out. The driver stopped immediately, opened the doors and I was thrown into the street with swearing and cursing. After half an hour the taxi that brought me came by, paying the taxi driver triple fare because of the strong smell.
I felt sorry for the poor benevolent islander Nikitas.
– Hey, Nikita, did you eat something that hurt you? Do you have a cold?
Saying that, of course, I knew that the miraculous German pill that Nikitas swallowed whole and not half of it, as the joker First Engineer pounced on him, was a potent fast-acting laxative.
The poor fellow was also sneaking glances at the bathtub with the clothes, especially the pants, muttering: “I didn’t get to enjoy the blue suit either. I have no luck…”
I opened the door and told Nikitas not to worry, because shit is luck, and he could win the lottery. I sauntered out of the chamber before unforgettable Nikitas could seize me. But how could he, since I was a kid of 18 at the time?
May God rest the soul of both, the First who perished many years ago torpedoed and Captain Nikitas who died quite old three years ago in Montevideo.
This story was sent to us by Vangelis Makropoulos, veteran radio operator from Syros (pictured in the photo below.) We thank him very much, and wish him ”Fair Winds and Following Seas”!
