Queer Ulysses Read online

  Queer Ulysses

  Guy Willard

  * * * Clam Press * * *

  Boot Camp

  It was a strange new country, Boot Camp, a country with its own language and its own set of morals and myths which had nothing to do with the world outside the base. It lay securely cushioned in its nest, doubly removed from reality: Recruit Training Command, within Naval Training Center, within the city of San Diego. Certainly it was the strangest place I’d ever been to in my life. If someone had told me it was all a hallucination, I would have believed him.

  Everywhere I looked were young men in regulation blue uniform marching in platoons, squads, even twos and threes. Rarely was a recruit seen walking alone. If he was, he had a furtive look about him, as if expecting to be stopped at any moment to be asked for his traveling papers.

  I couldn’t shake the illusion that everyone was putting on a show, acting the part of sailors in training, that it was all a gigantic movie set. The company commanders, whose job it was to push the raw recruits through to graduation, played at being stern disciplinarians (whose masks slipped sometimes to reveal smiling actors.) The recruits, for their part, put on a show of respect for authority, which they turned around to mock at every opportunity.

  For the first few weeks I told myself I was crazy to let myself in for this kind of harassment. We were constantly being yelled at and humiliated. This wasn’t quite what I’d expected when I left my hometown to seek a change of scene—and yet I knew this was exactly what I needed. Like many who joined the Navy, I’d run away from something. There was someone I wanted to forget...someone I had to forget.

  The training was not physically rigorous—far from it. The stress was mostly psychological, a massive assault to the senses, an introduction to a new way of life and a new way of thinking: the military way. In the process of converting civilians to sailors, they stripped us of our past, our individuality, and our dignity. Broken down to the basic raw material of human beings, we were to be built up from scratch into sailors of the Fleet.

  Side by side with guys who’d barely managed to finish high school, I donned the same clothes as everyone else, lived in the same barracks, attended the same classes (in first aid, knot-tying, naval history.) We had our teeth examined, our eyes checked, were taught how to dress, shave, tie our shoes, when and how to salute.

  We marched everywhere together in platoons: to class, to the mess hall, to the rifle range. We ceased to exist as individuals and functioned as one unit: the company.

  We marched and marched on the asphalt quadrangle nicknamed the “grinder” until our feet were sore—all to build company morale and pride. Men who march together think together. It was almost like the team spirit inculcated in high school.

  Day by day I sloughed off my past and much of what I wanted to forget. I almost believed I was becoming another person, a better, more disciplined one. It was working, I thought: by the time I got out I would be completely changed.

  But would I ever get out? Time seemed to stand still in that place. We might as well have been in the twilight zone for all the news we had of the outside world. Our company commander was strict: no radios or newspapers were allowed in the barracks. Our only contact with the outside world was through the letters we got at mail call. In this enforced isolation, all kinds of rumors flourished: war had started in the Mid-East, the Russians had shot down a U.S. plane over Alaska. And all kinds of lies were spread about boot camp life.

  One day in the mess hall as I was standing in the chow line, the recruit behind me informed me soberly: “They put saltpeter in your food, you know.”

  “Saltpeter? What’s that?”

  We were inching forward toward the serving counter; the large hall was filled with the dull roar of conversation, the long tables filled with identical-looking recruits all in blue. Their recently shaved hair made their heads look pale and white.

  “It’s a chemical that keeps you from getting erections. Haven’t you noticed that you haven’t had a hard-on since you came here? It’s the same with everybody.”

  It was true. I hadn’t become aroused once since getting to boot camp. I’d put it down to the shock of a new lifestyle and the daily schedules which kept us so busy that we didn’t even have time to think. But maybe there was indeed something to his explanation, for even after seeing the handsomest boys nude in the showers I’d fallen asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. In fact I rarely even saw the lights go out at ten. And I slept like a log until the lights blazed on at reveille—5:00, 5:30, or 6:00, depending on the day’s schedule.

  As far as I knew, I didn’t even dream. All I remembered from the night was a refreshing blackness...which was good, for I’d been having far too many dreams lately. The discipline was good for me. My lack of interest in sex was the sign of a new warrior-like stoicism in me. Or so I thought. If this recruit was telling the truth though, it was only the result of chemicals put in my food.

  I forgot the conversation until a few nights later when I was jolted roughly out of a sound sleep. I opened my eyes in the darkness, wondering what had wakened me. The bunk was trembling and rattling almost violently in the silence. For a second I thought it was an earthquake. But then I heard sighs from below and relaxed.

  I berthed in the top bunk and my partner below was a boy from Kansas named Harris, a healthy, strapping farm boy with a body tanned by the prairie sun. He had all kinds of stories about working in the oil fields or bailing hay, but though we were bunkmates, we hadn’t become very close. The fault was partly mine—maybe I was a little afraid. At any rate, his best friend was another boy from the Midwest.

  No one seemed to be awake in the dark barracks, lit only by the red emergency lights at the far ends. None of the night watches was making his rounds. The bunk began to shake even more furiously as the sighs got louder and the breathing became agitated. Evidently Harris didn’t realize how much his solitary activity was shaking the bunk.

  In the silence, the creaking of his mattress sounded like the jingle of a tambourine. He probably thought I was sound asleep, for he went about his business as if he were all alone in the world. For my part I didn’t make a sound, not wanting to disturb his pleasure.

  At last I heard a soft moan, and then the shaking ceased and all became quiet. I wanted to stay awake a little longer to hear his stealthy clean-up, but felt myself drifting back to sleep even as I thought this. The day had been a tiring one. We’d marched with our rifles for half the afternoon. Our company commander was seeking a weekly award for excellence in marching, a colorful pennant added to the company flag. Apparently the grueling work-out had had far less effect on the farm boy from Kansas than it had on me...I knew nothing till morning.

  As time went on, I too regained my sexual desires, but whether it was due to my culture shock wearing off, or because they’d stopped putting saltpeter in the food, I couldn’t say. At any rate I began to masturbate occasionally in my bunk at night, picturing in my mind some boy I’d seen in the showers. It was like high school all over again.

  The fact that my bunkmate below probably knew I was doing it only added to my excitement. I imagined him listening intently in the dark just as I had done. From a tacit understanding of each other’s desire for privacy, neither of us exchanged a word concerning these nocturnal bed-shakings. And I never had the guts to do it simultaneously with him.

  There was very little privacy in boot camp. Everything was out in the open. Our privacy had been stripped away from us on the very first day in preparation for life in the Fleet. We were told shipboard life had none.

  Even the toilet stalls in the barracks lacked doors. It was bad enough to be forced to defecate in public, but what made matters worse was that our company commander, in his zeal to keep as many toilets
clean as possible for the daily inspections, forbid us the use of all but two stalls. This meant that there was a line every morning in front of the two sanctioned toilets. The boy sitting down had to face a line of recruits awaiting their own turns. To ease the awkwardness of the situation, he would talk and joke with the next guys in line, unknowingly assuming an ancient privilege of royalty—that of having courtiers waiting upon him at this most private of functions.

  Hence I was treated to the sight of handsome boys, their Navy trousers down around their knees, trying to act nonchalant, with silly, almost apologetic grins on their faces, while below, a lengthening brown tail was snaking out. Often some boy might moan in an exaggeratedly sensual manner—understood to be a joke, of course—to cover up his very real feeling of pleasure: that visceral delight which accompanies the act of defecation. But his pleasure had to be spoofed, for he was scared to face the possibility that his anus might really be used for sexual satisfaction.

  During the eleven weeks of training, homosexuality was often talked about, usually in a deprecatory, humorous manner. Of course it was understood that a real fag would get the shit kicked out of him: woe to the boy who accidentally got hard in the shower!

  Officially the Navy—to put it mildly—frowned on homosexuality. In our classes on Navy regulations, we were told that anyone caught engaged in homosexual activity would get an immediate discharge, either administratively or through court-martial. The reason given was that homosexuals were a poor security risk, susceptible to blackmail by agents of “unfriendly powers.” But the plain truth was that the Navy, like almost everyone else, hated and feared fags.

  It was rumored that this fact was used as an “out” by many boys who couldn’t take the strain of boot camp. They confessed to a false homosexual inclination in order to go home. But I didn’t know whether to believe the rest of the rumor: that you had to go down on your knees to prove it.

  It was whispered that certain boys had had private meetings with the company commander or the base chaplain and had never been heard from again. I didn’t know if it was true. In the bustle of boot camp life, it was hard to keep track of all those who came and went, for guys were constantly being sent to other companies or set back a week in their training.

  In any case, as far as I could see, there was no homosexual activity in my company. There were two or three guys whom I was sure were gay, and a few others I suspected, but they were evidently keeping a low profile for the same reasons as me. It was said that the Navy clearly spelled out the reason for your discharge in the separation documents. And a copy of the documents was sent home to your parents. That was the last thing I wanted—for my parents to find out I was gay. As a result, I became scared to death of giving myself away with even a look.

  Although there was no discernable homosexual activity, there was a lot of what might be called covert homosexual affection. In the absence of girls, friendships between straight boys underwent a change. They became intimate and close to an extent not possible in the outside world, and while it never became sexual, it was surely love in everything but name.

  I would often note the way two boys’ heads were bent close together in an intimate talk after supper; or the way they helped each other pass inspections, polishing each other’s rifles, giving each other close shaves so as not to be hit at inspection for a single whisker; or the way they protected and looked out for each other, almost jealously defensive of their exclusive companionship.

  As for me, I didn’t dare risk becoming close to another boy. I don’t know why. Perhaps there was a part of me that still hoped the Navy would change me, that my abstinence would make me “normal,” a hopeless dream I’d cherished all through high school. And, like high school again, my thwarted desires got deflected into a dreamy, romantic kind of love. I developed a schoolboy crush on our RPO1, the recruit who was second-in-command of our company, a blond-haired, blue-eyed cowboy from Montana. But it didn’t go beyond an idealized longing which I knew would never be requited.

  Mail call was our one vital link with the outside world. Most of the guys, of course, looked forward eagerly to the daily possibility of getting letters from home. As for me, even though I’d convinced myself that I’d successfully severed myself from my recent past, I kept getting letters from people I least expected to hear from. The person who meant most to me had no idea I’d joined the Navy.

  “Gale!”

  I looked up. We were sitting around the barracks polishing our rifles and RCPO was calling out the names on the envelopes in his hand.

  “Letter from your girlfriend,” he said. Then, peering closely at the return address: “No, it ain’t, either. It’s from your boyfriend.”

  “Get lost,” I said, snatching my letter from his hand. I glanced at the return address—it was from Brett. My heart went cold inside my chest. I hadn’t written to him.

  I found a quiet corner and sat down on the deck to read my letter in private. There was noisy chatter all around me but no one tried to interrupt my reading; this was the one time when we respected one another’s private lives.

  At first I could only see the surface of the words, the neat, jaunty, half-print half-script which Brett always used. The meaning they contained was a mystery which I knew would gradually register in my consciousness as soon as I managed to repress the mental snapshots which kept flashing through my mind in a dizzying blur.

  After some time, I finally read:

  Dear Bill,

  Imagine my surprise when your mom told me! Why didn’t you tell anyone? The Navy, of all places! What got into you? Even after you suddenly “disappeared,” I was looking forward to seeing you in the fall, in college. Remember all the plans we made together?

  I glanced through the rest of the letter. Perhaps he thought our letters would be opened or something, for he made no mention of the cause of my sudden disappearance from his life. I would have thought it would be the one thing he’d want to ask about. And then my eyes fell upon this line: “We can still be friends, right?”

  Those were the very words he’d used back then...the words I’d least wanted to hear. How I hated the word “friend,” which had assumed such heartbreaking connotations for me. We all have our private definitions of hell, and often can’t resist our own torturous need to refine them. Friend: noun, the cruelest word in the English language.

  The scene shifts to a suburban lawn late in the evening, where two boys, recently graduated from high school, are sprawled, gazing up at the stars and talking. They have just smoked some pot and are feeling buoyant. One of them, who has been deeply in love with his friend ever since their sophomore year, wonders if this might be the perfect moment. He turns and gazes at his friend’s cheek. As if by chance, the other turns his head too, and their eyes meet. Some soft words are spoken…and thirty seconds later one of them is crying. In fact, he is still crying in his bed the next morning as the sky outside gradually brightens into day.

  This was soap opera stuff. For the first time since joining up, I was glad I’d done so. This alternate society I’d entered protected me from the outside world. It enabled me to assume a disguise and play a part. From now on I never wanted to be naked again, because nakedness was vulnerability.

  I put the letter back into the envelope and jammed it into my pocket.

  Eventually I got so used to boot camp that I half-thought it would go on forever. After the 7th or 8th week it wasn’t so bad. We had the routine down pat and a certain air of confidence hovered about us. We looked with scorn upon the newly arrived recruits who looked so raw and scared and lost. Their marching looked ragged when compared with our own precise, coordinated movements. I actually grew proud of my company.

  So it came as a shock to me when the company commander announced one morning that we had less than a week left till graduation. I looked around in wonder at the guys in my company, marveling that I’d made it this far when I was so fearful that some mishap would set me back or get me discharged. Without a hitch in my tr
aining schedule, I was fast approaching what had appeared such an unachievable goal in the first days of boot camp. Without even trying, it seemed, I was reaching the long-cherished finish line.

  The last days flew by as we busied ourselves with rehearsals for the graduation day parade we were to give in front of parents, friends, and relatives. The whole battalion, whose companies were hitherto competing with one another for weekly awards, was now all working together to put on a good show—for that’s exactly what it was.

  Incredibly, all the marching, the drilling, and the inspections from the very first day had been nothing but one long preparation for this one occasion. And the ceremony was open to the general public so that tourists visiting San Diego could enjoy it as part of their sightseeing: it was good publicity for the Navy.

  But we recruits were far more excited about the news that we would get liberty in town on the last two days before graduation, half the company on each day. It would be the first time we’d seen the outside world in months.

  On liberty morning, those of us who had liberty the first day donned our dress uniforms of which we were so proud. The morning sun shone brightly on the grinder as we streamed toward the gate laughing and joking, not in formation but in scattered groups of 3, 4, 5. We flashed our ID cards happily at the Marine gate guard.

  It gave me a strange feeling to be stepping off-base. After being cooped up with blue-uniformed recruits for so long, I felt as if I were gazing upon a strange new land. Civilian clothes looked so dazzlingly exotic that my eyes almost hurt to look at them. I saw little children, women, old people—all the varieties of the human race not represented within the boundaries of RTC. For these people though, it was just another normal day. Incredibly, the world had gone on just as before, even as my whole life was being changed.

  The people of San Diego—most of whom were Navy, former Navy, or somehow associated with the Navy—were used to the sight of raw recruits. Recruit: that was how I still thought of myself, for I felt like a brazen imposter in my sailor’s suit.