CONCERN OVER SEXUAL PURITY ISSUES IN THE MILITARY COMPELS ME TO TELL THIS STORY
-- I entered Navy boot camp at the Great Lakes base north of Chicago. It was bizarre from the start but for the first three days my company of 100 recruits did nothing. We sat in a barracks. I became an expert shoe polisher. I can still beautifully polish a shoe.
We were eager to see who would be our company commander, like the drill instructor in the Marines. Finally on the third day a guy came in. He was in his 30s, medium height, thin, his eyes kept darting back and forth like he was crazy.
He held up both his hands. He said, "I'm not a big man but I have big hands." His hands did seem big, with the thumbs kind of bent back. He said, "I like to put my hands around somebody's throat and talk to him."
He continued on about inspections and stuff and about the horrible things that would happen to anybody who fucked up. I had a flash of insight, and I'm still surprised that I was able to come up with it at age nineteen. I realized that I was not going to be able to hide from this guy -- Greene was his name -- and that I had to stay as close to him as possible.
At the end of his talk he said he would need somebody to keep careful records of the company's activities. That would be the company clerk. He said the company clerk would need good handwriting. Later we were supposed to fill out some papers and I was careful to write neatly.
That night I was informed that Greene wanted to see me in his office. When I got there Greene was there with another recruit whose name I didn't know because we had all just arrived in training. But I noticed that the other recruit seemed extremely fragile, kind of girlish, and he was obviously terrified. He was trembling like in a panic attack.
Greene said, "You two swinging dicks got the highest scores on the intelligence test." He looked at the trembling recruit and said, "You got a perfect score." But the kid was obviously so upset that he couldn't possibly be the company clerk. Greene told him to leave.
Then Greene and I were alone and it was the only time that ever happened during basic training. Greene started talking. After a while he said, "I'm not married but if I was married I could satisfy my wife."
I had no idea what he was talking about but I said, "Yes."
He screamed, "YES SIR!"
I repeated, "Yes sir."
Then he said, "I could satisfy my wife and if I couldn't I would send her to church. When she got back from church I would put her in the bathtub and scrub her with a wire brush until she was bright red. Red as a beet! Then I would tell her I expected my meals on time."
"Yes sir."
He led me out of the office onto a long balcony that extended the length of the barracks. There was a recruit sentry standing there with a rifle. Sentries like that were everywhere, it was a rule. Greene took the rifle and leaned over the banister. Below, on the ground floor, there was another sentry. Greene dropped the rifle onto the ground floor sentry. If it had hit him on the head it would have killed him but it hit him on the shoulder.
I saw that Greene was really crazy. He also said something about how when he was going to fuck a whore he didn't shave because he liked to scratch her with his stubble. The memory of this makes it hard for me to worry about having a sanitary sexual atmosphere in the military.
Meanwhile the trembling, girlish recruit -- he seemed like a central casting version of gay -- made it through the training and no one cared if he was gay nor it would have mattered if he was transgender or if he had wings and a tail.
-- July 28, 2017
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