Five hundred flags, and the sun is keeping pace with my movements. Or perhaps I’m keeping pace with the sun. I suppose when finding an appropriate rhythm it’s not necessarily important who establishes the beat, so long as you stay in step.
At eighteen, the Army rhythm was pretty easy for me to find, owing largely to the thunderous beat constantly kept by a millions-large percussion - a good many playing their drums longer than I had been alive. Still, it quickly became apparent that I had a knack for the trade, and was soon rewarded for my talents with recognition in the forms of leadership positions where I had the opportunity to aid other soldiers in staying in formation and keeping pace with my own achievements. There was a distraction, however, which only became louder the longer I marched, no matter how I tried to ignore it.
Plainly said, I was coming closer and closer to the inevitable conclusion that my sexuality wasn’t something I could self-determine or suppress, and refusing to deal with the issue was making it increasingly difficult to keep the tempo I had established.
When others are watching your feet to keep their own pace, they notice when you falter. An explanation was necessary, though one I wasn’t legally supposed to provide. But provide I did, with the knowledge that the alternative was to let the whole formation suffer from either dishonesty or personal distance and subsequent discord. The risk overwhelmingly panned out for the positive, as my peers soon incorporated this new aspect of my personality into the overall movement of the unit.
The beat had changed - or rather, the beat was different than I had understood it to be. And I had found that this deeper rhythm much more closely matched my own, as well as that of my peers. We soon realized that the older leadership may have set the base pattern, but it is those marching that interpret that pattern in accordance to their own view of reality.
Anyone can enjoy the military, much as one can appreciate the smooth hum of a cello without understanding completely the complexity of strings and sound waves. It takes a soldier, however, to understand the nuances of the percussion, and it takes a soldier to translate the beat for observers watching the formation march by.
Here’s the beat, if you’ll hear it:
I am openly gay, as I’ve been for the past seven years. I served in the Army for five of those years, proudly and more than competently. It is the latter that defined me in the military, with my peers recognizing the former as irrelevant.
Does the beat feel stronger now? I hope it does. I've been spending the past two years interpreting this beat for anyone with an ear to listen.
3000 flags and we’ve still a long way to go. The sun is moving faster than I can move, though I have no choice but to continue.
And I know it’s better to try and catch up than demand the sun slow down.
16 December 2007
06 December 2007
A Handful of Flags, Part 1
It's eight thirty in the morning on Thursday, November 29, and I'm gazing down an empty field wondering how the hell we're going to accomplish what we say we can accomplish.
Normally I would be embarrassed to admit how unprepared that sounds, but I think any great risk is always accompanied by a similar feeling. Regardless, the field's reserved, the flags are ready, the ground is as soft as it's ever going to be, and all I can do is step forward, and begin.
It's interesting the direction your mind goes when locked in a repetitive activity. The small talk comes and goes, but gradually you get lost in the pattern and your thoughts. This half-dream comes very quickly for me, something I’ve learned to do when sitting in MEPS for seven hours, hoping that day would be the day I got to ship off for basic.
While most have the pleasure of experiencing the brain-drain that is the Military Enlistment Processing Station perhaps only three times before shipping, I was lucky enough to accumulate fourteen visits. Somehow a relative had gotten himself into a bit of trouble a few years back, earning an FBI flag for the name ‘J. Chlapowski.’ This sort of thing does not bode well for someone with a similar name seeking a job requiring a security clearance, and the bureaucracy that is the military made any quick solution impossible. So, after my initial MEPS visits to ensure I was fit to join, I would return to MEPS periodically, bags packed for basic, only to be sent back home again because somehow comparing social security numbers was a months long process.
As you can imagine, going through the experience of leaving home for the first time repeatedly became incredibly emotionally draining. On my seventh and eighth visits to MEPS, my recruiter, sympathetic to my frustrations, began offering to renegotiate my contract, which I refused. Visits ten and eleven brought offers to cancel my contract, and I again I refused. I had made the commitment to join, I wanted to serve my country, and, damn it, I would leave under the terms I had dictated, whatever avenues of approach that entailed.
A call to the governor’s office and three visits later, I finally shipped to basic at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina. Day Zero, the first real day of Basic, was Thanksgiving Day, 2000.
I look up – and around – and notice roughly 300 flags around me. Volunteers have begun to show up, and the sun is nowhere near as high as it could be. Things are looking good, and I can return to my thoughts.
Normally I would be embarrassed to admit how unprepared that sounds, but I think any great risk is always accompanied by a similar feeling. Regardless, the field's reserved, the flags are ready, the ground is as soft as it's ever going to be, and all I can do is step forward, and begin.
It's interesting the direction your mind goes when locked in a repetitive activity. The small talk comes and goes, but gradually you get lost in the pattern and your thoughts. This half-dream comes very quickly for me, something I’ve learned to do when sitting in MEPS for seven hours, hoping that day would be the day I got to ship off for basic.
While most have the pleasure of experiencing the brain-drain that is the Military Enlistment Processing Station perhaps only three times before shipping, I was lucky enough to accumulate fourteen visits. Somehow a relative had gotten himself into a bit of trouble a few years back, earning an FBI flag for the name ‘J. Chlapowski.’ This sort of thing does not bode well for someone with a similar name seeking a job requiring a security clearance, and the bureaucracy that is the military made any quick solution impossible. So, after my initial MEPS visits to ensure I was fit to join, I would return to MEPS periodically, bags packed for basic, only to be sent back home again because somehow comparing social security numbers was a months long process.
As you can imagine, going through the experience of leaving home for the first time repeatedly became incredibly emotionally draining. On my seventh and eighth visits to MEPS, my recruiter, sympathetic to my frustrations, began offering to renegotiate my contract, which I refused. Visits ten and eleven brought offers to cancel my contract, and I again I refused. I had made the commitment to join, I wanted to serve my country, and, damn it, I would leave under the terms I had dictated, whatever avenues of approach that entailed.
A call to the governor’s office and three visits later, I finally shipped to basic at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina. Day Zero, the first real day of Basic, was Thanksgiving Day, 2000.
I look up – and around – and notice roughly 300 flags around me. Volunteers have begun to show up, and the sun is nowhere near as high as it could be. Things are looking good, and I can return to my thoughts.
23 November 2007
Laws and Latte
So there's no confusion, I think you should know that I hate coffee.
To be fair, I will admit that coffee does possess a wonderful aroma, which, no doubt, is largely responsible for its status as an American staple. However, there is very little about that pumpkin spice warm latte smell that even hints at the actual flavor, and a palate adept at determining which cups of coffee will actually taste good inevitably bears a past of numerous misfires and errors.
Now, I'm going to be bold here and say that 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' (DADT) is not unlike coffee in this regard, and quite similarly provides a falsely appealing and comforting impression that appeals to many who are content just smelling the coffee coming from the café on the way to work, some even knowing that the taste and scent of DADT do not coincide.
How far does the taste and scent of DADT deviate? Let’s break it down into separate analyses of each, and compare:
Scent:
DADT, before anything else, is promoted as a compromise between two opposing factions debating whether or not a gay service member would be detrimental to troop morale, unit cohesiveness, and combat readiness. The law takes the stance that it is not the sexuality of the service member that would be the cause of the unit’s destruction, but the potential reaction of other service members; if those service members were never to find out about the gays that have somehow infiltrated their unit, no negative reaction could arise from their ignorance.
In Summary: Gays can serve honorably and comfortably - provided they keep their mouth shut – and the military can only benefit.
Taste:
For DADT to have had even a chance at being successful, exhaustive training on the policy to all personnel would have to have been strictly enforced from the beginning. As many service members can attest to due to their lack of training on DADT, this did not happen, and it should, then, come as no surprise that commanders can and do choose to enforce DADT according to their own interpretation of the policy. Among the many consequences of the policy’s subsequent ambiguity is the sheer variety of evidence that has been considered submissible evidence for ‘telling,’ even in situations in which the commander may have wished to halt discharge proceedings. Adding further insult to injury is the general acceptance of gays by the more recent generations of recruits, meaning even if the initial justifications for the policy were valid, those justifications no longer apply to today’s armed forces.
In Summary: Gays do serve honorably; however, they do not serve comfortably due to the oppressiveness and unclear standards inherent in DADT, unnecessarily.
You've heard, I'm sure, the overused cliché of waking up and smelling the coffee. I'm asking you to go farther and wake up and taste the coffee.
I've got a number of flavors lined up for you guys in the coming weeks: some dealing with my own experiences living under DADT and fighting the law, others relaying the experiences of others. The flavors will vary greatly from each other in some regards, yet all, I think, in their own way strongly deviate from the scent, bearing an overall theme that this law - at the very least - must be reexamined.
Welcome to Ground Coffee.
To be fair, I will admit that coffee does possess a wonderful aroma, which, no doubt, is largely responsible for its status as an American staple. However, there is very little about that pumpkin spice warm latte smell that even hints at the actual flavor, and a palate adept at determining which cups of coffee will actually taste good inevitably bears a past of numerous misfires and errors.
Now, I'm going to be bold here and say that 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' (DADT) is not unlike coffee in this regard, and quite similarly provides a falsely appealing and comforting impression that appeals to many who are content just smelling the coffee coming from the café on the way to work, some even knowing that the taste and scent of DADT do not coincide.
How far does the taste and scent of DADT deviate? Let’s break it down into separate analyses of each, and compare:
Scent:
DADT, before anything else, is promoted as a compromise between two opposing factions debating whether or not a gay service member would be detrimental to troop morale, unit cohesiveness, and combat readiness. The law takes the stance that it is not the sexuality of the service member that would be the cause of the unit’s destruction, but the potential reaction of other service members; if those service members were never to find out about the gays that have somehow infiltrated their unit, no negative reaction could arise from their ignorance.
In Summary: Gays can serve honorably and comfortably - provided they keep their mouth shut – and the military can only benefit.
Taste:
For DADT to have had even a chance at being successful, exhaustive training on the policy to all personnel would have to have been strictly enforced from the beginning. As many service members can attest to due to their lack of training on DADT, this did not happen, and it should, then, come as no surprise that commanders can and do choose to enforce DADT according to their own interpretation of the policy. Among the many consequences of the policy’s subsequent ambiguity is the sheer variety of evidence that has been considered submissible evidence for ‘telling,’ even in situations in which the commander may have wished to halt discharge proceedings. Adding further insult to injury is the general acceptance of gays by the more recent generations of recruits, meaning even if the initial justifications for the policy were valid, those justifications no longer apply to today’s armed forces.
In Summary: Gays do serve honorably; however, they do not serve comfortably due to the oppressiveness and unclear standards inherent in DADT, unnecessarily.
You've heard, I'm sure, the overused cliché of waking up and smelling the coffee. I'm asking you to go farther and wake up and taste the coffee.
I've got a number of flavors lined up for you guys in the coming weeks: some dealing with my own experiences living under DADT and fighting the law, others relaying the experiences of others. The flavors will vary greatly from each other in some regards, yet all, I think, in their own way strongly deviate from the scent, bearing an overall theme that this law - at the very least - must be reexamined.
Welcome to Ground Coffee.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
