Torpedo’d by the Wives Club

Going to sea is hard on everyone. Guys make it harder on each other by pointing out every little thing on the boat that sucks (you'd think we'd run out by the end of a patrol but, surprisingly, we don't). Our wives amuse themselves by convincing each other that their husbands are cheating on them. If they are particularly successful, you pull back in to find all your stuff gone, your bank account empty, and your credit cards maxed out.
I'd dodged this particular bullet most of my career by staying single. But, when I got married right before my first patrol on a Trident, I figured I was still safe - the only place a Trident pulls in besides home is Pearl Harbor, and after eight years of living there, let me tell you women aren't exactly throwing themselves at sailors. But I was being naive.

When we finally got back after patrol, my wife of only a few months informed me that one of the other wives had flown out to meet the boat in Pearl, and apparently to tattle on anyone she could. She told my wife that she'd seen me staggering back to the boat one night so drunk I could barely walk. This amused her so much she wanted to share.
Now, if you know me, you know that in my younger days this would not have been news. If I came back sober, maybe, but drunk was my natural condition in any port. However, I'd left those days behind me (along with my youth, optimism, love of the job, etc.) and now avoid alcohol like I owe it money. Although my wife had only known me about a year, she knew that much about me. So, she didn't take the gossip too seriously; I had warned her to expect this kind of crap from the wives' club in any case.

So what really happened? Well, for starters, I'd been up for about two days straight before we pulled in, due to a combination of bad luck, work that needed finishing, and a fire in a certain DC motor that just hated E-Div. When we finally got liberty, I passed out in my rack. I'd been asleep for about 2 hours when I was awoken by the tender chimes of the general emergency alarm - the shore power breakers were on fire.
Once that was taken care of, and in a my zombie-riffic state, I walked from Ford Island to the sub base in search of food. (A small aside - thank GOD they finally built a bridge to Ford Island). They'd replaced a perfectly good greasy spoon in the Beeman's club with a Burger King, but it was open, so I chowed.
Then I walked back. There really isn't a word for the kind of tired I was by this point, unless it's "Navy-tired". At some point during the walk back I must have gone past the tattle-tale wife and, lacking any good dirt, she had to make due with the fact I wasn't skipping.

I've heard lots of stories about the evil, vicious crap women do to each other while we're out at sea. But nothing tops what happened on my first boat - the president of the wives club called home from Guam to tell some new wife she'd seen her husband in a club with a prostitute the previous night. Which was really odd, since the husband in question was sitting on the couch, at home next to his wife, when the call came in - unbeknownst to El Presidente he'd been augmented right after we pulled in.