Major Conflict Read online

  I remember the night I first began really to appreciate Alvarez and the guys. It was one of those nights when you become convinced you’ll be friends for life, when it becomes inconceivable that you’ll drift apart and go on with your separate lives. That’s exactly what happened, of course, but on this night I just couldn’t imagine it.

  It was the night before our first gunnery exam. I should’ve been home studying, but they’d convinced me to come out with them to the bar. The energy was high that night, and we drank quick and fast and soon found ourselves laughing hysterically at the story Dave was telling to a couple guys from another unit who’d joined us at our table. We all knew the story already, but Dave told it in a way that made us laugh as if we were hearing it for the first time.

  We’d been bivouacking on one of the ranges to learn how to call for fire. One night Dave and Ron, always the practical jokers, decided to put some food in front of the tent of a couple West Pointers they didn’t like. They hoped to attract a skunk or a raccoon to scare the crap out of them since one of them couldn’t be convinced that there weren’t bears in the area. But they were disappointed in the morning when they saw that the food was untouched. That night Jay decided to get in on the action, so he placed some food in front of Dave and Ron’s tent. During the night they heard some scratching at the entrance to their tent, and when they looked out were confronted with the largest skunk either of them had ever seen. Dave looked at Ron and said, in the gravest of tones, as if they’d just come under enemy fire, “Remain calm.” But then he panicked. He leaped up and rushed out, tearing the tent stakes straight from the ground, leaving it half collapsed on top of Ron, and terrifying the skunk so that both of them got sprayed head to toe.

  We were all laughing at the story we’d heard before, our laughter renewed and fortified each time Dave or Ron or one of us would repeat the phrase “Remain calm” in a deeply concerned voice, or when the image of Dave rushing out would flash back through our minds. I remember looking around in a boozy haze of hilarity and thinking how cool it was to have friends like this. These guys are rock solid, I thought, and I know they’ll make excellent comrades in arms. I felt compelled to make an impromptu toast, so I called for another round of shots, stood up somewhat unsteadily, and raised my glass.

  “To my best buds,” I said. “You guys are the best. I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize for all the horrible things I’m going to do to you over the years, but then again you’ll probably have it coming, whatever it is.”

  They all laughed and drank along with me. Alvarez flipped me the finger and Dave punched me hard in the arm while Ron yelled, “And fuck you, too, McGowan!”

  “I smell a golden dragon!” Ron said then, and we all soon agreed to leave the bar and head to the Golden Dragon Strip Club.

  This wasn’t exactly how I’d imagined the army. I’d been part of one of the last groups to be commissioned formally as both an “officer and a gentleman,” and I’d thought that meant we had to live by higher standards than, say, the privates in the army and the average Joe civilians. But this was pre-Tailhook, and there was a kind of renewed swagger in the military now that billions of dollars had been pumped in since Ronald Reagan had taken office seven years before. The Berlin Wall would soon collapse, and the Soviet Union would dissolve shortly thereafter, and we’d emerge as the world’s sole superpower. There was a renewed sense of entitlement and pride, and in a way I think we were expected to live a little bit on the edge, to live wildly, like winners, now that the cold war had finally ended and it seemed as if the long national trauma of Vietnam had finally run its full course and, in a sense, been atoned for.

  And so it was that we often went to the Golden Dragon Strip Club after spending a few hours at the bar. On this particular night I was pretty much six sheets to the wind, and that made it easier for me. I remember feeling strangely disconnected as the lap dancer, a petite redhead with enormous breasts, swiveled over my thighs. I remember thinking that she was Russian from her accent and how strange that was. The girls at the Golden Dragon were all local girls and were all clearly American. Later on I’d learn that it was something she put on, the accent, and that she wanted to be an actress, “like Meryl Streep,” she’d say. She smiled when I got erect, but at that point in my life you could have rubbed me up against sandpaper and I’d have gotten hard, so I knew it really didn’t mean anything. I heard Alvarez laughing somewhere behind me, and then another beer was suddenly put down on the table in front of me. I played along. I went through the motions. It was actually kind of fun. I really didn’t mind coming to the Golden Dragon with the guys. What I minded was that I had to pretend that a woman’s body meant the same thing to me as it did to them. In the strange illogic of denial, though, I still had every intention of getting married and having a family. This moment—me, a young soldier, drunk at the Golden Dragon Strip Club in Lawton, Oklahoma—was, I believed, just another chapter in the normal narrative of a regular guy. This is what you did. In a few years I’d be married with children and look back on these days with a kind of fondness. The fact that I wasn’t really feeling much for the redheaded “Russian,” the Meryl Streep wannabe, on my lap, or for the laughing blonde on Dave’s lap, or for any of the women in the club for that matter, only meant, I insisted, that none of them were really my type. All I needed was to meet the right girl and everything would be okay.

  But the genie was slowly slipping back out of the bottle (the seal had been broken, after all) and unlike other nights—when I’d been able to convince myself that I just hadn’t met the right girl, and that Greg had been a phase, and that I was seeing in these scantily clad lap dancers the exact same thing that Alvarez and Dave and Ron and Jay were seeing—tonight the whole thing just kept collapsing in my mind. And I experienced a kind of vertigo. The mental fortress I’d built to protect me from the truth was under siege, and all that I felt was a kind of disconnection from everyone around me, and, more important, from myself. But then the redhead laughed loudly at something and leaned over to whisper something in the blond girl’s ear, bringing me back to the room and back to myself, and I heard the old voice saying, “Yes, you will get married. These women are just not your type. Someone, the right one, will come along one day and everything will fall into place.”

  And so I rationalized the conflict away. And the mental fortress was no longer under siege. By laying half-truth over half-truth again and again and sealing it all with the most dogged self-righteousness, I managed to blur the issue sufficiently so as to avoid letting the real me take shape. It was more important for me to fulfill my dream of being a soldier than to face this fundamental part of myself, since I instinctively knew that embracing my desire for men meant ending my career. Looking back now, I’m amazed at the amount of energy I spent avoiding my own authenticity in an effort to fulfill some ideal dream of being a soldier.

  When I learned that my first assignment would be in Germany, I was disappointed. I still dreamed of going to Fort Bragg and becoming a paratrooper with the Eighty-second Airborne, but that was just not going to happen, at least not on the first go-round. Instead, I would be part of the Third Armored Division, also known as Spearhead for having played the leading role in the advance on Germany in World War II. I was assigned to the Second Battalion, Third Field Artillery, which was part of the First Brigade. The brigade was located north of Frankfurt in a small town called Kirch-Göns. Nicknamed “The Rock,” the town had the reputation among those who’d served in Europe as being a kind of shit hole. Turns out my time in Kirch-Göns, and in Germany in general, was one of the greatest experiences of my life.

  Despite not getting the assignment I wanted, I was on top of the world when I returned home to Jackson Heights after finishing the basic course at Fort Sill. I had finished my first big test in the army and now was on my way to Germany, where I would begin my career in earnest. That FNG (fucking new guy) feeling was fading fast, and my confidence in my ability was growing by the day. A few days home a
nd I received a set of orders in the mail informing me that I’d be a fire support officer, which meant I’d be assigned to either an armor or infantry unit to call for artillery during combat. This was a typical assignment for somebody coming out of the basic course. As I reviewed the orders, my grandmother, clad in one of the flowery housedresses she invariably wore, walked in, looking glum.

  “What’s up, Gramma?” I asked.

  “I can’t believe you’re going to Germany! I mean, can’t you change this? It’s so far away. I don’t want you to go. I thought you were going to Fort Bragg.”

  “Well, not exactly, I wanted to go to Fort Bragg, but they said no. Lieutenants don’t get a choice. We’re just assigned randomly. The next assignment I get to choose.”

  “Well, I don’t like it,” she said, folding her arms. “I mean, how will we talk? It’s so far away.”

  And then she began to cry. I took two steps to where she stood and gave her a big hug.

  “Look, I promise that I’ll call every week and I’ll send you some beer.”

  “I don’t drink beer!” She laughed a little and slapped my arm tenderly.

  She was right, though, I thought, it was pretty far away; it was halfway around the world, in fact. But I was beginning to warm to the idea of living in Europe. I’m a big history buff and have a gift for languages, so I knew the experience would probably be a good one for me.

  Knowing that I’d probably never live there again, I took one last long walk through Jackson Heights a few days before I left for Germany. Across Eighty-second Street and up Thirty-seventh Avenue, while the number 7 train, the Redbird, roared by on the elevated tracks every few minutes, making its way out to Flushing Meadow and to Shea Stadium. The loud, colorful neighborhood out in northern Queens, in New York City, had prepared me well. I was a soldier now and ready to see the world.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Old Castles and Licensed Whores

  By the time my plane landed in Germany and I was actually on European soil, all my disappointment at not having been assigned to the Eighty-second Airborne had vanished in light of the opportunity to live and work in Europe. Few twenty-three-year-old American kids get that chance, and it had finally dawned on me just how lucky I was. I’d been reading books about history, mostly European history, my whole life, and now I had the chance actually to experience the places and the people, the food and the culture, that previously had existed only in the books I read and in my own imagination.

  First thing, though, was sex. I had a vague understanding that the Europeans viewed the matter with a little more sophistication than we Americans, but I had no idea just how different it was. There in the shopping promenade of the airport, in full view, merchandise spilling over onto the clean white floor, was a sex shop. Large pink dildos, cheap satin lingerie, candy-colored vinyl bustiers, and a blur of contorted faces and knotted bodies on assorted magazines and video jackets greeted the weary traveler with an unapologetic brashness. I had to laugh and found myself feeling a little embarrassed at the same time. Need gum for the flight out? Why not buy a cat-o’-nine-tails duty-free since it’s right next door? Want a newspaper or the latest issue of the Economist? Gee, before I do that, let me pick up some of that lube on sale two for one. It was like having a branch of the Pink Pussycat, the well-known sex shop in New York, located in the middle of JFK or La Guardia. I couldn’t believe it. It was downright hilarious. I realized that I was gawking and smiling to myself, while everyone around me passed by as if it were nothing more interesting than a luggage store or one of those sunglass huts. People just hurried on by. Apparently, it was no big deal to accidentally crash your carry-on into a bin of edible underwear in the airport in Germany.

  As I rubbernecked by, trying my best to look blasé, I imagined what would happen if a branch of the Pink Pussycat actually opened up in one of the New York airports. I knew it would never get past the initial planning stages, but if it did, and they managed to open the store, it would be headline news for days on end. The Catholic groups in Queens would be up in arms, the Queens Borough president would stage big press conferences, Evangelicals would be bussed and flown in from every far-flung corner of the nation to stage demonstrations. It would be clear to all that this was just one more sign that the republic was falling deeper and deeper into irreversible moral decline. Airport sex shops in America? Wasn’t going to happen. But I wasn’t in America anymore, and though it may seem a little silly, seeing this sex shop planted in the middle of a busy airport, seeing the whole subject of sex being treated with such an easygoing matter-of-factness, was my first lesson in the advanced education I would receive over the next several years, an education that would allow me eventually to view my own sexuality with the kind of matter-of-factness it takes to finally relax a little and live at peace with yourself.

  As I reached the baggage claim area I began to realize how exhausted and hungry I was. All I wanted was a hot shower, something to eat, and a clean bed to collapse into. But doing all that wasn’t going to be so easy. I was in a foreign country, and it was fast becoming clear that doing even the most mundane tasks—making a phone call, asking for directions, buying a hot dog—would take some time getting used to. Luckily I’d studied German at school and could recall enough to get me through the initial stages of my arrival. There’d be some time before our luggage would start circling around the carousel, so I ambled over to a kiosk to get a quick bite to eat. I was confronted with an array of wursts, gyros, and schnitzels. The person next to me said, “Pommes frites, bitte,” and was promptly handed a large bag of French fries slathered in mayonnaise. The smell of sausage and French fries mixed with the cigarette smoke coming from weary passengers waiting in line behind me put me at ease, and sparked memories of home and the people I’d spent most of my life with. Everyone was eating poorly and smoking heavily, and life was just grand! With a very greasy gyro in one hand and a small orangensaft in the other, I walked over to wait for my baggage.

  Pleased with myself at having navigated the purchase of food, I relaxed a little and for the first time took a close look at the people around me. Large Arab families, the women and girls in head scarves and floral dresses, mixed with people from Germany, Russia, Italy, Spain, France, the Netherlands, all speaking their native tongues. The occasional sound of British English soothed me a little, but for the most part I was surrounded by a great babble of foreign language. And everyone seemed dressed up or, at least, dressed neatly, with some sense of style. With the exception of the Arabs, everyone was dressed in what today might be called business casual. I, on the other hand, had opted to travel in jeans and a T-shirt. As I looked closer, I was able to pick out the few Americans in the crowd who, like me, had chosen to travel halfway around the world in the closest thing they could find to pajamas. Baseball caps, sports jerseys, sneakers, ill-fitting sweats and oversized T-shirts—the Americans were a motley crew indeed among the more stylish Europeans. This is something I’d notice more and more as I traveled across Europe. And I rarely traveled in jeans and a T-shirt after that day.

  Every new officer arriving in Europe for the first time is assigned a sponsor to help him get adjusted. Mine was a lieutenant named Ron Tama, who’d sent me a letter a few weeks before, telling me about the unit and what I could expect. Having gotten my bags, I made my way through the crowd until I saw a short, muscular guy holding up a sign with my name printed on it. It was Ron. His sharp features and strong jawline lent him the appearance of rugged intelligence. He extended his hand and introduced himself quickly.

  “Ron Tama . . . Jeff?”

  “Yep, how’s it going?” We shook hands. He had a grip like a vise.

  “Good, man, how was your flight?”

  “Pretty long, almost seven hours.”

  “Well, don’t worry, you’ll get a chance to rest up at the BOQ.”

  “Cool.”

  “All right, grab your shit and let’s get out of here.”

  He seemed like a nice enough guy, if somew
hat intense. As we made our way to his VW Golf, he filled me in on the battalion’s officers, the post, and the training. It sounded like a good deal, a pretty tight-knit group. Out on the autobahn Tama sped up to about a hundred miles per hour. The first thing I noticed, aside from just how fast everything was flashing by me, was the sheer number of military vehicles on the road. These days if you see a Hummer on the road in the United States, it’s probably a private car. But back then, before the heyday of the SUV and its obscene, logical conclusion—the private Hummer—you’d almost never see one on the road in the States. Here in Germany in 1989, however, they were all over the place. And it made sense when you considered the fact that we had roughly three hundred thousand troops in the country at that time. Long convoys of armored vehicles up on heavy-equipment-transport trucks, fuelers, Hummers, and two-and-a-half-ton trucks seemed to be everywhere. Porsches, BMWs, and Mercedes Benzes darted nimbly in and out of the slow-moving formations. It was eerie, in a way, but the Germans were apparently used to it, having living with it since the end of World War II.