Everything is Transit

I enjoy moving around quite a bit, the quick traveling that military life has so happily provided me with. I did have a period this past spring when I wearied of it, having never stayed longer than six days or so in one spot over the course of roughly three months, so I’ll admit that even I need some downtime, a chance to put up my feet and take an entire day to do laundry, not rushingly attend to it whilst attending to three other things (food, oil change, post office, etc.). But, if asked would I prefer to stay in one spot for a year or spend a few months in four different places, I would opt for the latter.

However, one has to be careful about it, because if you stay just a short time too long, you’ll start to long for those places you’ve left, regardless of whether you actually liked them at the time. You become accustomed to it on some level, so in a physical sense you crave it, even if only to stand there for a few days and smell that place.

I went to school in a different part of the country than I am from. I wasn’t thrilled about the place; it was fine for the duration of college, but I had neither desire nor intent to linger after graduation. So I left. But I stayed too long to begin with! The area is too boring, too lacking in the sorts of things I like, the sorts of things I like to do, but I still find myself with a weird urge to go back there, if only to breathe in the smell of magnolias in mid-summer, to feel that heavily oppressive atmosphere where the air rarely moves and one could almost stick a glass out the window and find it full once they brought it back indoors. I became used to it, so it became comfortable, comforting.

Once in a while I even feel that way about Arizona, even though I hated it there, hated the dryness, the elevation, the utter lack of anything to do whatsoever other than to hike, and hike, and then hike some more. I don’t dislike hiking, mind you, but I am hardly an afficionado, especially if you tell me beforehand that I should always take a buddy in case of mountain lions or coyotes of the two-legged variety.

(I dislike hiking with other people. I know it isn’t safe to hike alone, but I feel about it as I feel about travel, generally – I would much rather be by myself, going at my own pace, which typically leaves other folks behind. I despise it when people sleep in late, so that then when I get to the sights, everyone else has, too, and I cannot get a good look at them, cannot take a good shot of them, because there are people, people, people. Truly, I am a longer by nature.)

But, sometimes I miss it, licking my lips and them going dry within seconds, or staring into the valley with my glasses off, trying hard to convince myself to believe, if only for a moment, that the bluish, shadowed areas below me are actually water, the Tombstone Hills in the distance themselves the far shore. Like looking out from Galway toward Connemara, actually. That is what I tried to picture. I sometimes miss standing outside on the outdoor staircases doing that.

So I am in some way somewhat discontent in any of the places I’ve grown used to, a lurking sense of discontent just right there. But if I go to that other place, then I miss the place I was at just before.

It isn’t always so troublesome, sometimes it stays slightly sublime, enough to be ignored. But other times its impossible to overlook.

Excerpt: ‘This Story Does Not Have a Title’

My lengthier piece I’ve been working on off and on for a few months. This is an entire chapter; the chapters are very short. The writing style is fairly different from the one I typically utilize.I also wish to note that the title given is not an actual title – I just don’t have a title for this one yet, even a working one. It was called ‘Stories for Soldiers’ originally, but that has since become the designator for a short story collection I’m working on instead.

Anyway, enjoy.

*   *   *

             She knows where she’s going, sort of. It wasn’t exactly her intent originally, but she knows what’s drawing her in, even if she’ll meander a while first. Toward the ocean, toward the rain, loop past all the casinos in the desert, climb the mountains steep, pass the cacti, and then up, up, up that narrow highway to the sky, before it flattens out somewhat, blocked by higher peaks. It isn’t exactly that she means to. She’s pulled in. She can’t escape it.

Or won’t.

Someone tapping on her seat, maybe a heel. Diagonally, the owner would be sprawled across her things, the things she put in back. A duffel, a box with fragile things; teacups. A reminder.

Tap, tap, tap. She avoids looking in the rearview mirror. Would she see any reflection at all?

“You’re running away, you’re running away, you’re running away.” A sing-songy voice.

He keeps it up even though she refuses to look, refuses to acknowledge. She finds herself on the shoulder of the road, hazards blinking into the darkness behind her. Miles from anywhere at all. It smells of manure.

She considers falling asleep like this, wonders if anything would happen. But she can’t sleep with that voice, and she looks into the mirror, finally.

He’s still in his uniform. But she supposes that would make sense. Kevlar helmet, body armor, grinning, like a picture she remembers taking once in a distant land. He even looks dusty. A shit-eating grin, like he’s so proud. As if there were something to be proud about, crammed into her backseat with an extra fifty pounds of weight or so on him. She wonders if he has weight.

He’s not speaking anymore, she realizes. Just sitting, watching her. But he looks like he’s in a good mood, and she isn’t sure why, doesn’t know why he would be.

She fixes him with a baleful gaze, “You’re dead, too.”

“That’s true.” But he doesn’t vanish, doesn’t move.

Out of the car and into the field, struggling over the barb wire fence. The sky is full of stars, and she picks out the Milky Way, Orion, the North Star; sheer habit. As a child she’d pointed up, told her father, “That’s O’Brien.” The sort of story cheerfully bandied about for years after. She didn’t mind. Maybe it was bandied about still.

He’s beside her, and there’s no getting rid of him. She’s nudged, she thinks, “You were half-decent at using the stars for night land nav. Wonder if you still are? Hope so, you were always terrible during the day.”

She’ll ignore him. He’ll have to get tired, or she will, and then she’ll sleep, and when she wakes he will be gone. Gone, baby, gone. But maybe she’ll dream of him, too, or of all the other things, and wake often. But he’s never there when she wakes. He never was. If she sleeps in the field, will a rancher shoot her come dawn?

“No, they won’t.” He answers, although she never vocalized it. She looks at him, sees his teeth shine briefly in the darkness as a car passes by. He’s smiling. Smiling, smiling, always smiling.

“That’d be too easy.”

Pitch Pines, Sand, Military Posts; False or Missed Connections

To me, military bases in the U.S. usually smell like Cape Cod.

This probably requires some explanation.

Once upon a time… well, not too long ago, in the grand scheme of things, my family used to vacation on Cape Cod a bit. Now, like many middle-class Americans, the roulette wheel of economics priced us out of it a while ago (although the walloping that the Cape’s apparently taken in the downturn did place it back into my own price range this past summer, quite pleasingly enough), but I spent a decent time as a kid in the summertime there. We stayed in a cottage on the Lower Cape, a detail important in that it meant I was inundated with that Cape smell much more than I would’ve had we been on the Upper Cape or at a hotel. Its this heady combination of pitch pines and sand, the sort of smell that you only have to smell a few times before being able to recognize it anywhere. I love that smell. I wish they made candles in that smell! But its a scent Yankee Candle has curiously overlooked, opting instead for the more obvious Cape-like smells (Beach Rose, all eighty million beach/saltwater/beach sand types). Although I suppose it wouldn’t surprise me were it a smell that’s fairly impossible to isolate or reproduce with any faithfulness.

So, pitch pines and sand, to me, are Cape Cod. That my earliest military-type training (when I was but a wee JROTC cadet!) occurred on Cape Cod I’m sure made the later connection easier – that military posts smell like the Cape.

Most of the military posts I’ve trained at have featured pitch pines and sand, intermingling. I know that these sorts of pines do very well in sandy, arid soil, so when I say that I’m always mildly surprised by the nostalgia I get when I smell it, it isn’t that I don’t get that part of the equation. On an emotional level, though, I can never quite get used to it; I always see Cape Cod when I smell that combination, and it feels weird to find myself in North Carolina, South Carolina, Missouri, Washington State, Virginia, smelling it. These places are too unalike! Its cognitive dissonance.

Yesterday, I stood outside in the slowly spreading darkness, just breathing in that scent. I think its got me half-bewitched into thinking this is the sort of place that I could belong in, where I could be happy. But that’s premised on this false connection, of FT Wherever being much like the Cape. It isn’t at all, beyond that one item. I don’t think I’d be miserable here, but I wouldn’t be thrilled, either. It certainly wouldn’t be Cape Cod.

I sort of want to bring a couple pinecones with me on deployment. There’s plenty of sand, but no pines there. I can’t manage to justify it to myself, though – were I to grow some tiny little pine overseas, what would I do with it when my tour was done? It would die were I to plant it there, and I’d never be allowed to bring it home. It might “just” be a tree, but its cruel to bring something into the world solely for my own pleasure knowing that it is ultimately doomed. I could try to pass it along to my replacement, but how on earth am I to know they’d be interested in caring for some little tree in a pot, that even if they were that their own replacement would as well? And one day it would outgrow that pot.

I asked for a Furby for my birthday. I want to bring it on deployment. Guess I’ll just roll it in some sap and sand first.

The Times They Are A-Changin’

Folks, I know I haven’t been around very much; life’s been pretty busy, and I’ll admit I’ve used the free time I have on my other blog. I also have used more of my free writing time to actually work on fiction, and at least one of the things I’ve produced I consider to be pretty damn good. Hopefully you’ll get to read it some day.

Things will be changing slightly around here. I’m planning a name change for the blog itself, and I’ll also be shifting into more of a military focus as I prepare for my deployment next year. I will also blog during my deployment. I don’t want to comment too much on where I’m going/when I’m going, but I also want to assure you that the assignment isn’t as dangerous as what most people think of when they here “deployment”. Its complicated. I’ll keep you posted as best I can without potentially compromising mission security.

Anyway, that picture above is of me. That was taken at Fort Huachuca on one of the M4 ranges last autumn. You can’t tell, but it was ridiculously windy that day, so much so that a lot of old hands at the M4 weren’t able to qualify. We also had a completely disastrous barrier shoot; I was wholly convinced that one of the other folks was going to accidentally shoot someone else. I have 2LT ranks on, but I’ve been promoted since then =)

If you’re wondering about the protective gear I’ve got on, the helmet weighs about ten pounds or so, and what I have of body armor (which isn’t much) is roughly twenty pounds. The M4 itself is fairly light (about six pounds when not loaded), although you’d be surprised at how heavy it can get to feeling after you’ve been carting it around for a while. I personally prefer firing with the M4 over the M16, which is an atypical sentiment amongst American soldiers, as the M16 is a more accurate weapon. However, as I am a fairly small person, the retractable butt-stock on the M4 makes it my weapon of choice – even fully extended, the M4 measures at 33 inches long versus the M16 at nearly 40. When you are 60 inches tall, that is a fairly significant difference. I’m a lot more accurate on the M4.

I Was Gaybashed

I’m a bit leery about writing this. I also feel a bit guilty posting about a topic like this in response to encouragement by the administrator at Out Military, who encouraged me to write something new to post at Out Military (this post is cross-posted) (for those of you not in the know, Out Military is kind of a Facebook for LGB servicemembers and veterans). But, well, this is something I have wanted to write about for a while, so here I go.

I am currently at Fort Huachuca, in nowheresville, Arizona. Personally, I hate it. Its a fairly small post, and the adjacent town of Sierra Vista has very little to offer in the way of diversions. I am closer to Mexico than to Tucson, which wouldn’t be so terrible were I not also forbidden by the Army from venturing across the border. We’ve been having a lot of dust problems this week. The indoor pool has a broken filter which is not slated for repair until the next fiscal year. The mountains are pretty, the San Pedro River is fun to visit, and I adore Bisbee. But, overall, I loathe this place. It may be worth noting that normally my military life is based out of a naval station, so this isn’t quite my environment.

Usually, when one mentions being at Fort Huachuca, in addition to having Bisbee recommended, one has Tombstone recommended as well. Well, you know what? Tombstone sucks. Its touristy, its crappy, the locals are jerks… oh, and I was gaybashed there.

One night about a month and a half ago, my unillustrious friends and I decided to head for Bisbee for our usual Saturday nights of drunken revelry far, far from the wandering radius of privates and specialists. We whizzed through the night, siding back and forth across the backseat as the driver took turns much too quickly on the road winding up, then down, to Bisbee.

I had fun in Bisbee. I was with my friends, the alcohol was good, we were in our usual bar, and the bouncer recognized us. I talked to some strangers, watched a friend slur along to some pop song on the karaoke machine. But a fight broke out, and we found ourselves out on the street, blue and red lights bouncing off the walls off the storefronts. It was cold. We headed up to the Copper Queen, seeking warmth and more drinks.

In the Copper Queen’s bar, my friends struck up conversation with some women, and before I knew it, I was being hustled down the front steps and toward the car.

“Where’re we going?” I asked, baffled; I’d thought we would spend the night as was our usual habit.

“Tombstone.” One of the guys said. And I was back in the car.

It became apparent that the women they’d been talking to had said they were going to Tombstone. So the guys decided we’d meet them there. Do I even need to tell you that these women weren’t in Tombstone when we got there? Instead, we were met with a hostile environment in the bar we walked into in Tombstone. The bartender seemed to be ignoring us, and we could tell that we were not welcome.

On the street, the guys got a bit ahead of me, bemoaning their missed chance. I dawdled a bit; I wasn’t bothered that the women hadn’t shown up, I’d barely spoken with them anyway. I had just wanted to spend the night with my friends.

I was in a very good mood as I walked along. As I said before, I’d been having a good night, even with our fruitless jaunt to Tombstone. I passed by a group of people, sitting on benches and the wooden walkway that lines the tourist area of Tombstone. I glanced over reflexively, and one asked, “What’re you looking at?” In my carefree mood, I responded, “Oh, a pretty lady.” and kept following my friends.

In retrospect, it wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done. I will freely admit that. Even pointing out that I just said it off-the-cuff and have no idea what the appearance of any of the women in the group were doesn’t really alter that. But I certainly didn’t deserve what happened next.

I did make it back to the car. I got in, a friend on either side, and even got my seatbelt on, before we noticed that a group of people was approaching the car. One of the guys still had his door open, and two women stopped by the door. One of them said something, and they turned around, pulled their pants down, and mooned us. The guys assumed they wanted to party, but the action felt hostile to me, and I started to feel a bit nervous. When the men with them stood to block the car from leaving, the guy next to me with the door open got out to try to prevent what he rightly could see was a fight about to happen. However, the other guys didn’t seem to have understood this yet; two of them got out to talk to the women.

What happened next happened very quickly. The women who mooned us made several derogatory comments directed toward me. I tried to close the door, but they were standing too close to it for me to get any leverage. I’d unbuckled my seatbelt. And, then, they dragged me out of the car.

Another woman joined them when they started to hit me. One of my friends said he thought I’d been hit in the head fifteen or twenty times. My friends broke it up quickly, but, even so, I had three people hitting me. I was lucky I didn’t end up more hurt.

When my friends first tried to pull us apart, I wouldn’t let go. I was angry, and I wanted to hurt these women. As they’d hit me, they called me “fucking dyke” and “faggot” several times. My adrenaline was running high. But the second time my friends pulled at me, I let go.

I was more or less tossed into the backseat of the car, as everyone else leaped in and the driver floored it. My nose was bleeding profusely, and my face was already beginning to swell. The wind went out of me, and my aggression was replaced by terror. I was scared. I started crying, embarrassingly enough. One of the guys took off his sweater to try to staunch the bloodflow, and both he and the other guy in the backseat with me tried to calm me down.

I stayed the night off post at the house of one of my friends; they didn’t even want to think about trying to get me back on post with the MPs at the gate. I was in very bad shape. So they took me to the house, helped me clean up, and sat with me while I fell asleep. This way they could also keep an eye on me, in case I was concussed, although I maintained that I wasn’t. During the car ride, I’d been asked if I thought I had a concussion or a broken nose, if I wanted to go to the ER. I steadfastly refused to consider the ER, and I was sure my nose wasn’t broken (which it wasn’t, shockingly enough). I was in rough shape, but I was going to be okay.

I had a black eye for about two weeks. Everywhere I went, people stared. I was honest about most of what happened to my command, although I’d re-written a small but fairly major detail – what had prompted the attack in the first place. I had convinced myself it had nothing to do with the perception of me as gay. I claimed I didn’t respond to the people I’d walked by when they’d asked me a question. And, even if I hadn’t, I hardly wanted to get into LGB stuff with them.

So, I lied a little bit. And I lied a lot to myself. And it took me a while to accept what had happened to me, that it wasn’t some wholly random act of violence perpetrated against me purely because people were bored. Sure, they were probably bored, too, but I was targeted, not any of the others with me, nor any of the other people who were wandering from bar to bar late that night. Slurs were screamed at me as I was hit. I was being attacked because I’d made a comment indicating that I was gay.

This was… really scary to come to terms with. I’d never been gaybashed before, and, I’ll admit I kind of had this sense that if it hadn’t happened yet, I’d passed some magical age zone and therefore it wouldn’t happen to me. I’ve also never had to contend with someone being hostile to me over my sexual orientation before, although probably a large part of that is simply because I’ve been largely very careful with whom I have directly told.

On the positive side, I was gaybashed by civilians and soldiers leapt to my defense. So at least I can say that my peers in uniform continue to demonstrate that they don’t care that I’m bisexual. On the other hand, some of them refuse to accept that it was a gaybashing, although I suppose I can’t entirely denigrate them for that since it took myself a while to realize the truth of the situation.

When some of my classmates found out about the true nature of the incident, they were utterly horrified.

I don’t know what the moral of the story is. That places are still often hostile to LGBT people? That sounds pretty depressing. I guess the best I can offer is a recommendation to steer clear of Tombstone, especially at night. I doubt that LGBT people and their allies would want to help contribute to the local economy of a homophobic place, anyway.

At least I know my fellow soldiers don’t hate me for being bisexual.

Military Shit, Part Two: Soldiers, Heroes, and Your Best and Brightest Junior Officers

So, arbitrary break to part two of military word vomit/stream-of-consciousness.

One of the important things to remember is that, for the most part, soldiers are a lot like civilians. We breathe air. We fart. We do stupid things. Yeah, there are some pretty obvious differences – we usually run toward explosions, which isn’t really a normal reaction, for example. But we’re people, too!

I say this because there is this tendency in American culture, particularly over the past decade, to make soldiers into otherworldly beings. The intent isn’t necessarily bad (although it is absolutely problematic to call everyone a hero, not least of which since its a fairly fascistic tactic utilized to distract people from the problems in a society), especially when taken in contrast to the treatment of vets in the Vietnam era. But creating a paradigm wherein soldier = hero has the effect of making soldiers very inaccessible as people. It is, truly, dehumanizing, however noble the original reasons were for the effort. Very, very few people can live comfortably on pedestals.

And, of course, by deifying large groups of people in such a manner, we throw a wrench into their relations with other humans. Dear John/Dear Jane letters suck. But the people who pen them are not necessarily evil, horrible people. Some of us are not easy to handle when we get back from deployments. Soldiers as saints creates a pretty stark power imbalance, wherein a soldier can do no wrong, while those around them simply aren’t being understanding enough. This is why several (think it was five) women were murdered at Fort Bragg by their husbands, all of whom were in the same deployment unit. No one was willing to step in and say, “He needs help, but that doesn’t mean you have to stay here in this dangerous situation.”

I suppose I point all of this out, too, to lessen the likelihood that tales of fellow soldiers won’t result in you making a face and saying, “Why the fuck are these people allowed to be in the military?” It is also worth pointing out that junior officers skew fairly young as a group. I became an officer when I was twenty-one years old. I also got frozen to the top of a fence during a snowstorm when I was twenty-one years old. And, no, alcohol wasn’t involved.

I’m currently in a training environment. I have about forty people in my training group. Out of those, I only dislike one enough to not include him in the blanket statement that I love my current peers. Some of them have stupid beliefs. Some of them aren’t very good at the job they’re training for. Some of them have alcohol problems. Some of them are assholes. Some of them are nervous wrecks. But I would absolutely have their backs anyway. And, the beautiful thing is, I know they have mine – yes, even the assholes.

Training with people in a military environment is pretty interesting. Partially, because you probably will absolutely loathe a few people, but you’ll also be willing to jump in to defend them in a barfight. Yes, even that one person I cannot stand. Also because… well, let me put it this way. So, about forty people. I had classes in college with twenty-something people, and I never felt as close to them as I do to my current classmates – and I never came close to figuring out the names of every single classmate in classes larger than about fifteen people. I know the names of all my classmates here, and, in many cases, where they come from, their blood types, where they’re going next, and what hand is their firing hand.

So, my training peers. Half of us have sleeping problems (lack of sunlight, raging personal problems, a combination of the two…). Several of us have developed alcohol problems. A few marriages have fallen apart. A couple engagements have been broken off. We’ve gotten into fights. Some have had to be carried inside because they’re too drunk to walk. People have been unwillingly bitten (classmate-on-classmate, so its all good!). Significant others have been cheated on. Six Hour Power* has become the drug of choice. Breakdowns have occurred in bars. People have threatened suicide. Folks have been too drunk to report for duty. Someone smashed someone’s car window over a disagreement involving strippers. There’s a guy who’s gotten laid off of OKCupid ten times since getting here.

…yeah, you may’ve noticed a pattern with the alcohol. Guess what there usually is to do around military posts? Go drink. Go watch strippers. Go, uh, check out the pawnshop. Go buy a car with an interest rate you’ll never be able to afford. Exciting! Guess which one we opt for the most?

So, where do I fit in here? Well, I got bitten by a classmate, got into a massive brawl, have sleeping problems (lack of sunlight)… so I guess I’m doing alright! Although I have begun to make a conscious effort to not drink as much as I have been – my alcohol consumption hasn’t been causing problems, but I just feel like its bad to get into a habit of drinking my guts out every weekend evening. I’m already planning to go see a movie this weekend!

On the brighter side, no one has gotten a DUI, which is pretty impressive, particularly when you consider that we drink about a thousand gallons collectively of alcohol every weekend. Go us! Too bad some of my peers could wallpaper their rooms with speeding tickets fairly handily.

Honestly, I’m making us sound worse than we are. Partially, its that its pretty hard to highlight the ways in which we are “good” since it involves a lot of military jargon, and I don’t really feel like explaining why any specific thing is evidence of us not being total wastes of space. I suppose I could leave it at the fact that, of forty-ish people, only one person has had to be “held back” because they crapped out at training. But, well, you don’t have a metric for that, so it doesn’t help too much.

I suppose I’ll have to tell you to take my word for it. Although my word extends to saying that about a quarter of my classmates I would actively want to deploy with me. Not just be okay with deploying with – actually hand pick to go with me on deployment if I could. I’d love to build a dream roster of these folks for a deployment.

Ok, I’ve run out of steam.

*Six Hour Power, the knock-off energy drink of choice for soldiers. Maybe I should’ve had some so this post wouldn’t’ve just suddenly broken off!

Military Shit, Part One: Chaplains and Nutrition

I’m actually writing this post with no plan as to where it is going and only the loosest idea as to what I’ll be writing about, i.e. the topic will be “hi, I’m in the military, check out this (military) shit.” But I don’t know what I’m going to hit upon precisely, nor do I feel much reason to. I just feel like talking about being in the military, in large part since I know its such an alien concept for a lot of people, particularly the people who are likely to be reading this. Fact: Only 0.01% of the American population currently serves in the military, and only 1% of the population has ever served in the military.

By the way, these stats totally blew my mind when I first heard them. It seemed impossible! What about all those Vietnam vets? Surely that’d boost the second number. But, once I sat down and did the math myself, I was startled to see their truth. 1%! Quite a few worlds away from the 1% we’ve all become so familiar with in the wake of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

And, then, we slice it down even further in my particular case. Female! 14% of active duty troops are female (the percentage for the combo of active and reserve components is probably slightly higher, but unfortunately while the active-duty components have easy-to-locate demographics broken down by gender, reserve components do not – ditto for breakdown of officers vs. enlisted). Officer! 15.5% of active duty troops.

Oh, yeah, and that whole bisexual thing. Curiously, no one seems to track that stat HMM.

Aside: there is a higher percentage of female African-American officers than male African-American officers. Also! The Army just got its first Hindu chaplain late last year. And it’s a woman! Cool!

Actually, did you know that most American military chaplains are Southern Baptists? This is something that the military finds worrisome, since there is a higher percentage of Southern Baptist chaplains than there are Southern Baptist soldiers. Like most of America, the military is really hurting for Catholic priests – there just aren’t enough to go around, and it is extremely noticeable in some parts of the country for reserve and National Guard units. My unit is roughly 70% Catholic. Our chaplain is Methodist. While chaplains are trained to be the religious counsel for all soldiers regardless of religion (including atheists), there is obviously a desire by most soldiers to speak with a religious figure of their own faith tradition.

Aaaand this is another reason for concern over the dominance of Southern Baptist chaplains numbers-wise… the truth is, these are also the chaplains most likely to, well, fail to do their job for the non-Southern Baptists of their unit. Chaplains aren’t supposed to prosletize, and they are supposed to treat all soldiers with respect, regardless of their specific faith. They don’t always, which is awful – especially when you consider that chaplains are the ONLY people in the military who are bound completely by confidentiality rules. So, really, chaplains act as the de facto therapist for most people in the unit. So its extremely important that they treat all soldiers with dignity.

But, wow, total tangent. I had no idea I was going to talk about chaplains that much! But, I did at one point consider becoming a chaplain, interestingly enough. And, for the record, our unit’s chaplain is absolutely fantastic.

Man, I don’t even know where I am anymore.

Dietary snarking! Wow, seems pretty much endemic in the military. Not body-snarking, really – dietary snarking. And physical fitness snarking. But I notice the dietary snarking more because I’ve never encountered a group of people more willing and thrilled to pass judgement upon what one is eating for lunch. My peers regularly question the merit of each item I’ve selected for lunch, speculate about the heart healthiness of my family members and their diets (and they’ve never met any of them), and inform me that an IED’ll never get me since that bowl of chowder will take care of me long before that. And, about a week ago, as I reached into a freezer case to retrieve an ice cream sandwich, a sergeant stopped to inform me that it wasn’t health to eat it. Why, thank you! I thought ice cream sandwiches were basically frozen salads! So glad you told me! Also, could you please tell me if you would have done the same to a male officer of my same rank?

Its really bad. I try to avoid eating with the dietary snarkers at this point, but unfortunately there are a lot of them. I have peers who refuse to touch food at social events because they themselves did not personally validate the origin of each item. And, no, these weren’t people with food allergies, we made sure that those folks had options. Ditto for vegetarians and those keeping with halal and kosher. And, yes, the aforementioned peers then go around the room making snide remarks about the food everyone else is eating. I cannot for the life of me figure out how these individuals survive field exercises. I can only conclude they eat treebark during that time.

I have a pretty wretched diet. I eat a lot of crap. And I really don’t care. But it is enough to give anyone a complex. Or, uh, drive someone to eat even more horrifically just to goad them. Not that I’d stoop to that level or anything.

I have more to say but feel compelled to break this into two posts. Chaplains and dietary snarking have little to do with one another, so it feels weirder still to tack on scandalous anecdotes about junior officers

Panic in the Martial Line

Once upon a time, three weeks ago, I found myself faced with a dire quandary. I sweated nervously. I rapidly considered my options. I worried about their viability. And, while I didn’t quite pray, I did appeal to some external form of luck to spare me.

I was in line for urinalysis.

Urinalysis, a rite of passage for every soldier. It is always a joyous occasion, wherein half the people present are about to wet their pants, yet are at the back of the line, and the other half of the people are being threatened with catheters as they hover in bathroom stalls, unable to muster up any liquid. There is cursing. There are tears. There are entreaties for mercy. And, yes, there is that guy who has somehow convinced himself that smoking pot two days before won’t appear in the results. (There’s also that nasty shock sometimes that someone has been habitually drinking mouthwash.)

Honestly, there are so many other things I’d rather do than urinalysis. I’d rather go on a five mile run. I’d rather do squad tactics’ lanes in a downpour. I’d rather read a chapter in a field manual.

But, its unavoidable. And, at least so far, I’ve been spared from having to play the role of monitor for it. So far.

So, there I was, in line, jammed into a too-small room, waiting with a few dozen other soldiers for my turn to pee in a cup. I had my ID card out, and, while I hadn’t been thrilled at the prospect, had accepted that it had to happen. But that was before I spotted her.

She was pretty. She was enlisted. She was very cute. And she was probably going to be my monitor. My heartbeat ratcheted up. I began to craft excuses for letting people behind me go ahead of me so I could have someone else watch me. I felt awkward in my broken glasses and poorly-fitting physical fitness uniform. This couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t be my monitor. I would die of a heart-attack, or pass out from the stress of it and drown in the toilet, my bare-ass sticking up in the air, my last testament.

Its kind of funny, but, for some reason, really cute girls and young women have always had this sort of affect on me. I feel awkward and ungainly around them, like my proportions are all wrong. This is pretty absurd considering I weigh less than several breeds of large dogs and am short enough that I don’t have to duck when entering compact cars. I don’t know if its that I react to the fact that I am not traditionally feminine in a lot of ways and they are, or if its that I’ve been conditioned by culture to feel I am automatically in second place if competing with a guy for a girl, or what. I just feel that way. And, no, it doesn’t happen around guys – in fact, I tend to feel competitive with guys I’m attracted to, particularly on a physical fitness/badass-ness dimension (i.e. I can do more push-ups than you, I can out-drink you, I can shoot better than you, etc.). I suppose the most interesting aspect of this is that I feel a need to eat more when around guys I’m interested in, which, according to several studies, is exactly the opposite of how women generally behave food-wise around men. Curious!

But, where was I? Oh, yes, impending panic attack because a very attractive sergeant was about to watch me urinate in a cup.

At the front of the line, I truly began to go into over-drive. My paranoia was in full force – I couldn’t do this! Help! I waited, unnerved, for the next person to be called up to the table to fill out the short paperwork. I was doomed.

And, then, from nowhere, a captain stepped up as I was gestured forward. I tried to still the slight tremor in my hands as I initialed labels and double-checked my social security number. I didn’t realize I was in the clear yet. But, as I straightened up from the paperwork, grasping the plastic bottle, the captan stepped toward me, smiled, and told me to follow her. Relief flooded me, and I candidly chatted with the captain as we walked along, and, then, as I dutifully filled the cup in the bathroom stall. My savior! She had no idea.

But, I now have one more peril of urinalysis to consider: cute monitors. Thank goodness no one in my home unit is attractive to me. And, hey, if someone does transfer in… well, no one’s ever turned down being let to cut the line in urinalysis.

On Not Running Over Wildlife

Since moving out to the wasteland/the desert (actually, this implies that desert = wasteland, then, in fact, what makes this place a wasteland is the fact that there is an ugly-looking town with nothing to do in it other than look at the ugly buildings), I have almost run over several species of wildlife. Here they are:

• one Mexican wolf (they’re endangered!)
• two coyotes (snacking on some other creature who was less fortunate)
• one roadrunner (and if I had hit it, that’d be ‘irony’)
• one raccoon (who cares, those live everywhere)
• one jackrabbit
• one deer (male)
• one drunk private first class (whom I then made get in my truck and dropped him off at his unit’s orderly desk)

Thankfully, I’ve come nowhere close to hitting any javelina. I really love those damn things.

So, I’ve become quite adept at slamming on the brakes and swerving to avoid killing wildlife and/or myself. Honestly, if I’d hit the deer, there’s a good chance it would’ve gone though my windshield. At least I don’t have to worry about moose!

Other driving skills mastered:

• driving steep mountain roads with hundred foot drops on the side
• driving in light snow with people who become physically incapable of driving when snowflakes are sighted
• not driving off the road when female Middle Eastern military officers unexpectedly drop the F-bomb while riding shotgun
• not smashing into cacti and mesquite trees when Border Patrol turns spotlights on at night to make sure there are no brown people as passengers in my truck
• remembering to turn on the non-automatic headlights

Out of Fundamentalism

Once upon a time, I was a happy little Protestant fundamentalist who happily wrote notes to other children telling them about how I was happy Jesus had let me be there friend and dreamt of being a missionary. This is the sort of thing which never fails to surprise friends and acquaintances when I relate it, because, as I’m sure you could tell from a quick perusal of this very blog, I seem very unlikely to have ever been that person. But I was.

I was raised, bizarrely enough, in a Nazarene church. I call it bizarre, as my parents nor any members of my extended family were fundamentalists. No, we ended up there because my mother taught at the college with which the church as affiliated. I don’t know all the details of how she ended up there, although I know one of her graduate degrees was received there. But I didn’t exist during the intial approach, and I must confess, somewhat embarassed, that I never asked.

So. The child of a Congregationlist and an Episcopalian (the low, not remotely Catholic-like type), telling other little kids that dancing was the path to hell. How could they possibly go to those school dances where people were expected to bring their entire families, eat pizza, and make snowflakes/pumpkins/whatever out of construction paper? They were going to hell.

Curiously, though, I either totally missed the whole ‘Catholics worship the sun god and will all go to hell’ thing, or too many of our neighbors were Catholics, so tongues were held in favor of decent relations. I’m from the Boston area. There are approximately 48,000 Catholics per square yard. Eighty years ago, printing up cartoons comparing Catholics to dogs was acceptable, but it doesn’t really fly these days. So, despite the fairly standard fundamentalist stuff, I’d learned the Hail Mary from some kids at school who had also answered my questions about limbo.

Also, curiously, was that while we were learning that communion has always involved grape juice (never carbonated!) and to be cautious of making eye contact with the opposite sex, the entire church was completely wracked with rampant divorces and spousal plundering. Whole segments of the congregation refused to speak with another, and it leaked over to the children, who themselves refused to speak to the children of the man or woman their mother or father had been stepping out with (please note, though, that there was no homosexual stepping out, because, well, adultery is one thing, but homosexuality? yeah, meet the Lake of Fire).

But, I’m being sarcastic. This isn’t really all that curious. Just go check the divorce rate of a Bible Belt state like Mississippi or Georgia. You can’t convince me that those numbers are entirely from those godless Methodists and Baptists.

I loved Vacation Bible School wholeheartedly, but was too nervous to go to Bible Camp like a lot of the other kids were. And, by the time I was old enough that I felt comfortable being away from my parents for that long, I’d already left the faith. I honestly don’t recall terribly much about the spiritual side of VBS, just things like arts and crafts, and cooking/baking adventures. I do recall a bag of popcorn used in reference to the loaves and fishes story, as the bag went from being so flat and small to being puffed up with popcorn. And my friend and I snuck into one of the rooms at the end to copy down a biscuit recipe (ok, not spiritually-related, but we were talking about food, so…).

I also really enjoyed when missionaries came to the church to talk about their travels (and solicit funds, but my awareness level of this was pretty low). I wanted to be a missionary when I grew up so badly. In the children’s book collection at the church were dozens of fictional books about kids whose parents were missionaries and whom had been brought out on mission with them. They had cool adventures, often involving danger, such as from lions, bad people with guns, and cliffs. I remember in one that the kid kept talking about beef jerky, driving me to a strong desire to try the stuff. The stories always took place in Africa. Oh, and, nine times out of ten it was about a boy. That tenth time would be about a pair of siblings, and the guy got to do all the cool things.

While I am happy to have gotten out of fundamentalism, I have to be honest and say that my experience was pretty positive overall. I got over stage fright by playing Abednago in a church play. I had fun jamming too many marshmallows in my mouth during a youth group round of Chubby Bunny. Choir let me sing as loud as I wanted and no one told me my voice sucked (it did). But I also know that, had I stuck around, I’m sure I would not have such rosy memories; they’d be blotted out by later negative ones and the neuroses sure to spring from them.

Its a bit mortifying to admit this, but I started to slip from fundamentalism when I was just shy of twelve years old… because I read Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon. No, really. This is really fucking embarassing. Which is weird, since, well, I’m not of that faith tradition anymore, so why should I care what started to carry me away from it?

And yet… its kind of like admitting my faith wasn’t very strong in the first place, which seems to invalidate the entire experience. And even if I disagree with 75% of the Church of the Nazarene’s teachings, it was all still a big part of my life when I was younger. And I know I had a strong faith.

So, yeah, The Mists of Avalon. In which the Christians trying to suppress the native beliefs were Catholics, but… well, it didn’t matter which stripe they were, they were Christians. And it made me realize that this was probably happening with the missionaries going to foreign countries who were always showing us pictures and relating stories about their efforts. And, yeah, even seeing it happening in fictional form made me begin to question the entire thing, simply by making all those vague masses of people real.

Did I mention that one of my major papers in college was a post-colonial analysis of Acts 8:26 – 40, Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch? (Actually, its interesting how this passage can be interpreted in such diametric ways – on the one hand, that Christianisty is open to all [other races! sexual minorities! non-Jews!], yet on the other hand, its a very imperialistic text, as the Ethiopian is sexually and racially othered, and is also incapable of understanding scripture on his own terms without the intercession of Philip.)

This made me very nervous. But it also prevented me from getting baptized when the other twelve year olds in my Sunday School class did. And I’d even learned all my cathechism cards! I remember our teachers going over when we’d be baptized, and explaining to use that we didn’t have to worry, the robes they used wouldn’t become see-through when they got wet. Yes, we did full-body immersions. One of the kids was afraid because he didn’t know how to swim, but they gently assured him someone would hold his elbow the entire time and that, anyway, the baptismal wasn’t very deep.

And then… I just stopped going. Totally cold turkey. Postcards came in the mail, my mum’s friends asked her what happened. Who knows what she said? I never went back. We worshipped briefly at a high Episcopalian church, but I hated the incense and the bells, and at this point was in full non-religious mode. The only cool thing was that we got to go up into the belfry to see the churchbells and there was a decent view of the city from there.

I spent high school totally tuned out from religion. The Catholic kids (i.e. 95% of everyone I knew) had their confirmations, as did a handful of the Protestants whom I was aware of. We attended a few parties, such as birthday and for graduations, of some of the kids I’d gone to church with. Occasionally someone would inquire after my absence, and I would patiently explain that I had felt I should not become baptized until I’d become more aware of other denominations and religions. I don’t recall anyone telling me I was going to hell for that, but I have no idea what they thought about it.

I’m glad I left fundamentalism. It saved me a lot of extra grief when I figured out I liked girls. It allowed my views to continue on their evolving, liberal arc. It allowed me to get a full education (unlike the girl in my 9th grade biology class who tore up all class hand-outs and homework that made mention of evolution, dinosaurs, Mary Leakey, etc., etc.). And it also saved me from eventual angst relating to marriage and childbearing, since I didn’t come to see these as my ultimate purpose in life. I didn’t go to a college where I was learning how to sew and cook, or was expected that I’d snag a man by the end. Or go to a school where I did study something such as chemistry or literature only to have my degree read “Bachelor of Science: Chemistry (Women’s)”, made to sit through classes on “kitchen chemistry” that male peers didn’t have to worry about (if you think I’m making stuff like this up, get your hands on a Liberty University course catalogue if you can; “Biology (Women’s)” has lots of courses involving raising children, “Theology (Women’s)” has courses teaching women how to be good pastors’ wives, men take courses in preaching and ministry). So, as I said before, my memories of my childhood in the church can remain rosy, instead of the early steps on my way to utter misery.

In college, I ended up majoring in religion. I mainly studied Hinduism and Islam, with some courses on ther Bible (as opposed to on Christianity). I found myself more religious again, although I drifted through a few denominations and didn’t stick to any (Baptist, Moravian, Quaker). Moravians are scarcer than hen’s teeth outside of North Carolina, so although I would feel comfortable with being a Moravian, its rather difficult to be one where I am now. I loved the Quakers, but its a bit awkward whenever the question of, “So, what do you do?” comes up (“Oh, yes, dear pacifists, I’m a soldier.”). I liked the Baptists, too, and had the privilege of getting to hear Jimmy Carter speak about his faith and the New Baptist Covenant (roughly: for Baptists who like being inclusive; an alternative to the Southern Baptist Convention).

So, I’m unaffliated at the moment, but that’s alright with me. My mother and I recently discussed that while we admire some aspects of Catholicism, what truly prevents us from ever wanting to convert is that women cannot become priests (there are other aspects we take issue with, but to us that one is the ultimate dealbreaker), for whatever its worth. And I read things like page-by-page analysis of the Left Behind books and sites like Stuff Fundies Like. I actually also read all those Left Behind books, as well as the Christ Clone Trilogy, and visit Rapture Ready on a weekly basis. I just cannot manage to look away – its kind of like a car crash. I have a lingering fascination with all the madness based on my childhood.

I think that about covers it. Oh, wait – and now I’m a total snob about Bible translations. No, not like those King James whackos. No, I’m an NRSV supporter. If that Bible isn’t ecumenical, forget it. You can’t get full cultural context without the Apocrypha, folks, geez!