Jeffrey McGowan - Major Conflict

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 and 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.”