Segregating the gays from the straights

A friend of mine asked me this today on facebook regarding the recent decisions about Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT).

What is your take on the talk about the whole "thorny issues" coming up since the DADT....like talk of segregating gays from straights in bunks/showers??? WTF? This is going to get way worse before it gets better. How do we stop this?

I quickly shot off an answer:

Wow, deep question. I think it's healthy to have "talks" about how to handle those issues. I try to think about what it would be like if I were straight. I mean, it is one thing to accept, respect and promote equality. It's a whole other thing when you're naked in the showers with one another. Most guys don't want other guys seeing their 'junk' gay or not. I can agree with showers having partitions between the shower heads that only makes sense, even now. But sleeping quarters? not needed. You don't sleep naked or anything.

 The truth is, before I was asked, I really hadn't given it much thought. I always assume that people are going to argue their point, express what they believe and so on. Why not? This is America, this is what our soldiers fight for, right?

So, do these discussions really matter?

Of course they do. It's a given that a lot of dumb things will be said here and there out of ignorance, fear or political agenda. We need to hear it. We need to know what they are saying and thinking so that we can fully arm ourselves against these sorts of blanket allegations.

Yes, they are slandering our community. They are making it sound like all that we do is look at the straight ones in the shower and maybe we'd rape them and all of that craziness. Because, as we all know, there aren't any gay folks in the military right now!

Do we need to shut these people up? No, not really. Not at all. Engage them in conversation, explain things on their level.

Here's my take on the whole thing.

How can you segregate gays in a way that makes sense? The reason, presumably, that men and women are segregated in the military is that they don't want to put people in the same area as potential 'mates'. So, if we put only gays with one another and only lesbians with one another what then do you think is supposed to happen? Now, as a man, I would be in a whole barracks full of other gay men. These would be, for the sake of this argument, my potential mates.

I haven't even yet skirted on what is the true heart of the matter. When I was in the Army, my unit and I formed a bond. We worked together daily as a unit, as a family. Our bond was like a sibling-hood.

I remember once having a friend in the unit (married straight guy) approach me wanting some 'friend sex'. I don't know, the whole thing really irked me a bit. I mean, he was handsome and a really nice guy, certainly someone under other circumstances I might have considered dating. But then and there? He was like family to me. To have allowed it to escalate to anything beyond our unit bond would have been deplorable on my part.

So the question is, what will happen when gays are allowed to serve in the military? The answer is simple, everything will remain the same except that our LGBT folks who are serving now will not be kicked out simply because of who they love.

If it will make you feel safe, by all means, put up partitions in the showers (that should have been done a long time ago anyway) but there's really no need at all to segregate us into different barracks. That makes as much sense as saying that a brother and a sister shouldn't live in the same house together.

Well, that's my two cents on the matter, love it or leave it.

Until next time, I'm OUT!

Living off the wall

No Regrets:

I've always gone through life with no regrets. I never really saw the point. In general, I am a pretty happy person. I'm not exactly sure where it comes from really. You can put me in any situation. I can think calmly about how to work my way through it.

I am a puzzle guy and I attack life as if it were one big puzzle to solve. I rarely listen to how someone tells me they solved the puzzle. I like figuring it out for myself.

That is why for me, my past is MY past. I embrace it wholly as part of my journey in solving the big puzzle. I own it all. I own the accomplishments, the mistakes and everything in between.

I continue through each step knowing that, should I make a mistake I will learn from it.

But then, I think back to what got me started on blogging in the first place. It makes me think, "perhaps I don't follow the no regrets thing as closely as I think I do".

Remember in my first post, I talked about having a hard time sleeping and how that was the cause of me beginning this blog to begin with? I kept thinking about things in the past and I couldn't shut it down.

There's still so much more to the journey behind me that I haven't shared. I think there is one issue that I've sort of been avoiding. I don't know if I just haven't found it chronologically to make sense within my time line or if there is a bit of guilt, shame or regret mingled in there.

I think I do have a bit of a regret with it however, I also know for certain that if it weren't for this solitary moment in my life I would not be in the awesome place that I am right now. Seriously, I would not have stayed in Austin and I would never have met the man that I am in eternal love with. As near to perfect as my life is right now, I still can't get that part of my life out of my head. Wondering "what if".

The moment that haunts me:

So, as you are aware (if you've been reading along), I am gay and I was outed by someone to my unit. So, rather than investigate me being gay (because they really couldn't) those in my chain of command, simply put more on my plate than any human could accomplish.

I made a full attempt to complete everything to standard at all times, but fell short on numerous occasions. At first, I didn't want to believe that I was being forced all this extra because they knew I was gay. It wasn't until one of the civilian women in the congregation (remember I was a chaplain's assistant) came up to me one day and literally said, "I pray that one day you will find Jesus".

To which I responded, "What do you mean?".

I was shocked when she said, "Well the chaplain said that you are gay and that you practice Wicca".

Which is actually only half true, so I said "I don't know where he got that idea, but I'm Christian" (which was true at the time) and left it at that. Her jaw dropped and she apologized.

From there, it all just kind of spiraled for me. I mean, here's a Chaplain who is supposed to be providing for the religious needs of the unit, not pushing his on people. Yes, he probably got the idea that I was Wicca from the fact that we had 3 practitioners in our unit who I ordered literature for but that was my job. It would be no different than ordering a Torah for our Jewish soldiers.

I digressed a little by giving you that exchange, but back on point.

So now I'm being given a heap of responsibility and doing my best to accomplish all that I can and failing to complete tasks. This, to the point that I ended up pulling 16 hour days to attempt to keep up because I wanted to be all that I could be. And then knowing the reason for it all, I wanted to prove that they weren't going to put me down.

Ah but they did. It didn't take long for them to find cause to boot me out for being "sub par". I don't even remember the true wording any more. I could have just waited it out and just let it all happen but that was going to be a dishonorable discharge. So, I did my research.

Since the ball was rolling all ready, I couldn't say "you know what I'm gay". Being booted because you admit you are gay actually can be an honorable discharge (at least in the Army at that time). But, trying that once the ball was rolling would not work, they already had me on dishonorable.

So, I did the only other thing I could think of (which prior to was unthinkable). I went Absent With Out Leave (AWOL). Logically speaking (as you know I try to be logical) the discharge for that is a general discharge.

So, it was a chess game for me. I was gone for 3 months and then went to Oklahoma to out process. Simple as that.

I felt and still feel justified in how I handled it. I took the rout that would ultimately be best for me. So why the regret in it all?

Why the regret then:

As I play the whole thing over in my head, I think of what I could have done differently. Maybe I should have never dated guys at all, or at least never soldiers. I could have done what everyone else was doing. Simple anonymous guy on guy action in hotel rooms. But that was never me.

But the biggest part of it is that there are a lot of things that I don't feel justified in.

Currently, there's a big push to end Don't Ask Don't Tell. A fight that I believe in, and I would take up arms but yet, I went AWOL. How can I say that gay soldiers are serving honorably? Even though I know that I did the best that I could with what I was dealt, I took a way out that renders me fairly useless in the fight.

Maybe, just maybe, I should have foreseen that they were going to eventually try to kick me out and claimed gay before they had the chance. I don't know that's not really me though. I'd rather people think that I was a coward than to use my being gay as a crutch.

It's a little bit frustrating to tell the truth. No matter how hard I try to rationalize, I can always think of a hundred different things that I could have done to begin with.

I'll probably never get over it, but there it is.

Now the world knows, this is the single event in my past that has been gnawing at me and forced me to create this blog to begin with.

Til next time, I'm OUT!

The Army and I prt2

Sorting it all out:

After all of that, it was pretty obvious that I needed to figure some things out. It didn't help that, now there was a rumor about me being gay floating around. I really hadn't had the time to consider it for myself and what it all meant. I haven't had a gay date, had sex with a guy or heck, even looked at any gay porn yet.

I already had a lesbian friend in my unit, who I was really close to anyway. I don't know why, she and I just clicked right off the bat when we first met.

I didn't tell her any of this stuff though but she had heard the rumor anyway.

Michelle (that's her name) made it a point to come and talk to me when she heard the rumor. I told her, it was just a rumor and I wasn't sure but, I was really putting some thought to it all.

In my head, I was still thinking about all the things in my past. How when I was younger I gravitated toward the male teachers and I did actually have fantacies of seeing them nude. Or when I would see anything remotely related to sex I would usually be watching the guy more closely. How pr0n with 2 girls and no guy in it never made sense to me and I always fast forwarded it to something else.

Michelle asked if I would want to go to the bar with her. I wasn't old enough to drink but, you just had to be 18 to get in so long as you weren't drinking. I thought about it and said "why not, it's not like anyone is going to force me to do anything that I don't want to do".

At the bar

That Friday we went out to the semi local gay bar. Not many soldiers there but a few I could spot by how they walked and how their hair was cut.

It was actually a really fun night! A lot of guys were staring at me like they were starving and I was the last sandwitch on a lunch tray. That attention was nice, but I still wasn't sure of what all was going on.

I did have a nice long conversation with a guy named Chris. He was also in the Army but he knew he was gay already and had been for some time.

I had things to do in the morning so I called the night fairly early and went home.

Am I a bar fly now?

The next night, Michelle asked me to go back to the bar with her. This time, she was bringing Larry. Larry was another guy in our unit who I was pretty good friends with but didn't know he was gay until just then.

Chris was there again, and laid on a line that I knew was a line but it was cute anyway. "I don't come here often but I was hoping to see you out here again". Brownie points for the compliment, not so much for the transparency of it all. I was confused about my sexuality, not completely stupid!

Ah, but stupid I was. That was the night I decided to ask Chris out on, what was to be the first in many gay dates to come.

First date went well

Our first date was the following Friday. I hadn't been very many places in the surrounding towns of Ft Hood so we took a really nice drive around. We hung out at a park. Browsed the Hastings media store. Stopped for some BBQ.

It was really nice! We ended up capping the evening off at his house (which was off post), where his neighbors (a lesbian couple) and he had a small get together planned so that I could meet some of his friends.

And then, we stayed together for nearly 2 years!

Meanwhile back at the post

Those two years pretty much were hell. Not for the relationship (well, not generally) but for what all was happening on the "work" front.

Don't get me wrong, I was proud to join and proud to serve. I thought I'd do wonderful amazing things. I did everything to task and on time, always.

The soldier myth

Most civilians think that the Army is this well oiled machine forged from hundreds of years of tradition. They think there is a different set of rules and they assume that you signed a contract and took an oath and so on. While that's sort of accurate, there are some deeper issues at play.

How many people at 18, 19 or even 20 years old were actually responsible adults who understood what they wanted or needed in life? I'm purely speculating, it's not that many.

Throughout my time in the Army, I saw more suicide attempts (I was a Chaplain's assistant after all), more people going AWOL, more soldiers as confused as I was about everything in life than I ever thought I would. Most of us viewed the Army as if it were a job. I mean, it kind of was.

You could live wherever you wanted so long as, if called you could be at HQ within 60 minutes. You had a barracks room which you could use how you wanted so long as it was presentable for inspection at any given moment.

You're work day starts at 9 and ends at 5, Monday - Friday. The only exception is that, you were expected to go to Physical Training in the morning (usually at 6 or 7 depending on your unit). Also excepting the fact that I was a Chaplain's Assistant, so that means I worked most Sundays as well.

Where the Army is different than everywhere else is that, you can't just quit and they can't just fire you. You can be 'punished' for your actions in ways that you can't in the civilian world. For instance, should you accidently bounce a check from your personal account and they get wind of it, they can make you paint rocks or mop floors on the weekends.

And then, I was "Outed":

That's right, I was outed by someone in my unit who knew for a fact that I was gay. Actually, most people that I was close to knew, and didn't care. To the rest of them, it was just a rumor. They didn't know for sure.

At any rate, you know how if they don't ask or you don't tell, there's nothing they can do? Well, WRONG. I've had all sorts of stuff happen. From superiors piling humanly impossible things on me to them removing my computer from my office to make it look like I stole it. I'm not kidding. I actually had to drag myself down to CID (Criminal Investigation Division) and beg them to give me a polygraph test and to investigate the missing computer!

I literally went through hell with it all but, I kept my head up. I figured I would try to make sure that I did everything that I could. Maybe I was just being tested or something. I wasn't sure, but I would be damned if I was going to let me being gay be the reason why I couldn't be in the Army any longer.

They tried to court marshall me 2 times and failed!

Disclaimer:

I don't think that the entire Army is like this. This was all down to my unit level. I know soldiers in other units who did not go through this problem at all. That doesn't excuse that fact that there were and probably still are units just like mine.

Ok, time to mow the lawn.

Til next time!

The Army and I prt 1

Decisions, decisions

The year was 1996. I was in 11th grade. I remember that morning clear as day! I walked into my highschool with 30 minutes before my first class. As per my usual routine, I made my way toward the music room to work on the piece I was working on for the New York State Solo Music Association (NYSSMA) tials. When out of the corner of my eye, I notice a soldier standing at a table.

Dressed smartly in his dress greens, he had an air of confidence. Deeply engaged in conversation with one potential recruite. My dad was Army, my grandfather Airforce. It never occured to me that I might join, but seeing the recruiter there speaking with such enthusiasm I thought, maybe I could at least ask some questions.

Until then, I knew I wanted to go to college and study music education. I also knew that paying for college wasn't going to be easy and that the Armed forces had some programs to help with that.

So, I made my way over to talk to the recruiter. He told me about the GI Bill and some other programs that the Army had to offer. I took the summer to think about it, researching, asking my dad about his experiences, calling the recruiter to ask questions here and there.

Finally, I made the decision and 'signed up'.

Don't ask, Don't tell:

Obviously, I am skipping some parts here, I did take an ASVAB test. It was uneventful, except for the fact that I scored higher than 80% of the people who took it nation wide. Was offered the job of "Chaplain's Assistant". Finished up highschool.

Cut to July 1997. So MEPS is where they send you through a physical to ensure that you're ok to ship off to basic training. And then, the ultimate part. There's a brief questionaire that you had to fill out. Some of the questions include.

• Have you ever stolen anything?
• Have you wet the bed regularly since the age of 12?
• Did you ever set animals on fire.

No joke, these are real questions that were on this thing.

Then there was another section all about sexual orientation marked out with a big black "X". Obviously, it was the beginning of "Don't ask Don't tell" and they haven't pushed out new forms yet. In place of answering that question, we were sent to a room to listen to a tape. Which roughly said something like "If you are engaged in homosexual acts or think you might be in the future, you should probably go home". I of course paraphrased this 15 minute long recording/warning.

The problem with Don't Ask Don't Tell:

Remember, this is at a time when I was still a virgin. I assumed I was straight, I even had a girl friend at the time.

Which brings me to the problem with Don't ask Don't Tell. At this poiint in my life, I'm 18 years old. I'm pretty sure that I'm straight but I haven't lived enough to figure myself out. It wasn't until a year later that I lost my virginity (yes, to a girl) and another almost year after that before it dawned on me that I was more interested in her dad than I was her.

These are, for certain, the most uncertain years of our lives, and we are expected to know ourselves fully enough to be able to judge that we aren't going to turn out gay?

I lost my virginity:

It was Christmaseve 1997. I had completed basic training and job training in Ft Jackson, SC. I had gone home for a few weeks and am now in Ft Hood, TX. I had become fairly good friends with one of my fellow soldiers. He and his girlfriend were having Christmaseve dinner with her family. I was invited along.

There, I met her sister. I'll call her Christina (because that's her name, but you don't know her so whatever). I didn't really pay Christina any attention, she was 18 and a senior in highschool. I was 19. We talked a bit. It got real late so her mom said I could crash on the couch and spend Christmas morning with them if I wanted.

I took them up on the offer.

I was awoken at around 1 in the morning to, what Ron White calls "a mouth hug" (I just call it oral), and it advanced from there. Christmas 1997 is the day I lost my virginity. Kind of cool and exciting. And we dated for 6 months.

She said what?

I won't go into all of the gory details but Christina was seriously controlling. She had her views of what relationships were and were not. I think I stuck around so long out of loyalty than out of lust or love. The 4th time she said "we should break up, no I take it back" I just let it go and moved on.

She called my roommate and told him that I ws gay. Seriously, I hadn't given any real thought to the fact. Everyone in highschool said that about me (as I explained in my earlier posts) but somehow coming from her, made me think about it. Over the years, how many guys have I looked at just a little too long? And then I remembered that, I always had some sort of strange attraction to guys but never really considered dating them an option.

My roommate asked if it were true, and I thought about it all. Finally I said, "you know what? I really don't know yet".

He was really cool though, "I don't care if you're gay or not, I'd just like to know". And he really didn't care at all, but I really didn't know yet.

So Confusing:

Needless to say, this was a very confusing time in my life. Next post, I'll talk about the when, why and how it became unconfusing. I'll probably talk about my first boyfriend too. Not sure yet, I guess we will all just have to stay tuned.

The beginning

Introduction:

So, I'm not really a stranger to blogging. I've written reviews of everything from software to movies to music events I've attended and so on.

I've created this blog separately for several reasons but, I wanted to tell the story sort of from the beginning.

Last Week:

I couldn't sleep. I don't quite know what it was but, things just kept popping into my head. The more I tried to focus on my breathing or some distant noise in order to get to sleep, the more my brain said, "no, you are going to think about this".

What thoughts were going through my head? Well, it was kind of like I was playing my whole life over and over again in my head. I realized that, most of these were pretty deep and heavy unresolved issues. Some were just random good things that have come up in my life but mostly areas of conflict.

The suspense is killing me:

There are a few things you will need to know about me before getting into this all.

First, I do not write this blog under my real name. Edward is my middle name and Davis is the last name of the person I call dad. We, obviously, do not share the same last name.

Second, I am gay. Some of the biggest points of conflict in my life came about during the time I was discovering this fact which happened to be while I was in the Army. So you can imagine what some of these writings are going to consist of. I'll keep it clean though :-)

Conclusion:

Ok, so there you have it. What will follow in the coming days are some of the accounts of my past and how I grew to be a wonderful human being!
Enjoy!