The following essay was originally published as a paid post on J.D. Haltigan’s The Multilevel Mailer on February 4, 2025.
The very first time that my hat flooded with water, I was at around a hundred feet. I was a new diver and was wearing a KM-37 (a fiberglass helmet painted yum-yum yellow with the words U.S. NAVY written across it) that was filling up …