Jeffrey McGowan - Major Conflict

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Major Conflict: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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A book that will move hearts and open minds, Jeffrey McGowan’s memoir is the first personal account of a gay man’s silent struggle in the don’t-ask-don’t-tell military, from a cadet who rose to the rank of major, left as a decorated Persian Gulf hero, and whose same-sex marriage was the first on the East Coast.
Love of country and personal love combine in this groundbreaking memoir of one gay man’s life in the military—and beyond. In
, Queens-born Jeffrey McGowan tells how he enlisted in the army in the late 1980s and served with distinction for ten years. But McGowan had a secret: he was gay. In the don’t-ask-don’t-tell world of the Clinton-era army, being gay meant automatic expulsion. So, at the expense of his personal life and dignity, he hid his sexual identity and continued to serve the army well.
Major Conflict
New York Times

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Who knows what Johnson really felt? I think I might even have been able to respect him a little had I thought his antigay rhetoric was based in real conviction. But he was just spouting the party line, there was no doubt about that, and it infuriated me.

How easy it would be for him to end Lopez’s career! Hardworking, loyal, honest Sergeant Lopez—who’d probably spent his entire life thinking he had to compensate for his sexuality by overachieving, by always being the best little boy in whatever world he happened to find himself—was now going to be repaid by having his professional life destroyed by some mediocre, goose-stepping, Izod-wearing bureaucrat.

“The prostitutes and pornographers will certainly be chaptered; now we are going to need some sort of administrative help to chapter the rest of the… faggots, sir.”

I tried to appear indifferent and wholly detached.

“Are we done here, Sergeant? I’m very busy.”

“Yes, sir, Lopez is two doors to the right,” he said, sneering a little now, and then, as if he’d just thought of a funny joke, he added, “You can take the queer with you, or he can walk back.” Hearing this tone and seeing the flash of hatred in Johnson’s beady little eyes made me think I might have been mistaken. Perhaps it was real conviction. The way he tried to lure me in with this last remark, to collaborate in a perceived shared hatred of gay men, disgusted me. I was used to hearing this kind of talk, but I’d rarely heard it at this level, rarely heard the tone of voice Johnson had used, drenched in so much hard-boiled contempt.

He stuck out his hand to shake mine. I looked down at it but kept my own hands at my sides. After simply staring at it for a few seconds, I lifted my head up and looked Johnson in the face. The look on my face must have been scary because Johnson took a step back, as if he felt threatened. Apparently it finally occurred to him that he was in the presence of a superior officer who didn’t like him very much, so he briskly stepped back, wished me a good day, and hurried from the room.

For the most part we rode back to the base in silence, Lopez and I. When he first got in he said to me, quietly, “I know I haven’t done anything wrong, sir… nothing,” and I turned my head toward him briefly and nodded to let him know I believed him. Of course, it wasn’t what he’d done, it’s what he was that they were having a problem with. If that isn’t un-American, well, I don’t know what is.

I felt bad for the guy. And the fact that I couldn’t say anything about myself, the irony of that, was just incredibly depressing. Here I was, a gay man who was probably going to be asked to initiate the persecution of another gay man. Could things get any worse? How could I believe in this army? I tried to imagine what he must be going through. And the realization that it could just as easily be me, that it one day might be me, was sobering, to say the least. I feared for Sergeant Lopez and for what I might be asked to do. Was it possible to remain in the army as a gay man and still maintain one’s integrity? I was beginning to see how impossible that was. I was beginning to see just how compromised I might up end up becoming.

The very next morning there was a message for me to meet Colonel Fazio at HQ. I had my normal horrific four-mile torture session and made my way back to the comfort of my office, where I showered and changed, and when I emerged from the bathroom Colonel Fazio was sitting on the couch in my office, sipping coffee from a plastic foam cup. I was supposed to have met him at his office at nine, but my office was on his way, so he figured he’d just drop by. I smiled as he lifted up a brown paper bag with another cup of coffee in it for me.

“Thank you, sir. This is a surprise, sir. I was just on my way to see you.”

Fazio smiled. He was in amazing shape. He could outrun any twenty-year-old on the base. He was tall, about six foot two inches, with gray hair cut very short. He reminded me of the actor Sam Elliot. He was a great guy, easy to talk to, with an excellent sense of humor, and I thought of him as my mentor.

“So, Jeff, you had quite the day yesterday,” he said, blowing on his steaming coffee, then chuckling a little before taking a sip from the cup. Before I had the chance to answer he said, “Tell me, Jeff, what kind of soldier is your motor sergeant?”

“A good one, sir. He works hard. Never had a problem with him.” I waited for his response. I figured if anyone knew the right way to handle this, Colonel Fazio would.

“Really?”

I looked up from my cup and noticed that the colonel was busying himself with clipping the end of a black Maduro cigar. He then lit it and casually blew out a thick column of smoke. I wasn’t sure how to answer the question, so I said nothing.

“So how’s his section doing?”

His eyes followed a particularly graceful ring of smoke up to the ceiling, then they slowly trailed down and landed squarely on me. I smiled somewhat guardedly, and just as I was about to speak he broke in again, “So, Jeff, what’s up with this bust, anyway? What’s going on? What’d they say they’re looking for?” Like the rest of us, he didn’t like or trust any of the CID people.

“They made multiple arrests, sir. Apparently there was pornography involved.” I shrugged my shoulders.

“Seems that this mess has made its way up the chain of command to the corps commander; apparently one of these”—he considered his choice of words carefully—“little queers got an outside advocacy group involved, you know this Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell horse shit and all. There is the potential for some serious blowback behind it all.” He laughed again and winked at me, adding, “No pun intended… so the process has been slowed down considerably.”

“The process, sir?”

He raised his eyebrow at me, then blew another ring of smoke in my direction.

“The process of safeguarding the army. You don’t think we’d allow them to stay in, do you?”

“Absolutely not, sir,” I answered much too quickly. In all my life, I’d never felt more ashamed of myself than I did at that very moment.

“So tell me about his performance, Jeff.”

“He’s an excellent worker, sir, never had a problem with him, and the rest of the troops like him.”

“Late?”

“No, sir.”

“There is talk that the subjects who were outted—you know, the ones who weren’t coconspirators—are not going to get sectioned out. We’re not supposed to ask, and this guy certainly didn’t tell. Needless to say we’re going to have to… deal with the situation.”

Suddenly the whole thing became clear to me. The colonel expected me to develop a pattern of offenses against Sergeant Lopez, to find fault wherever I could and create a paper trail. This trumped-up paper trail, created by me, would eventually carry enough weight to bring him down. It was a crushing blow to hear this coming from the man whom I’d admired for so long and who’d come to represent for me all that I thought was good in the army.

I thought maybe I could appeal to his reason. “I don’t want to sound like I’m not a team player, sir,” I said, “but I’m just not getting it.”

Colonel Fazio didn’t like repeating anything twice, particularly to a handpicked subordinate. He turned deadly serious and leaned into me. “They do not serve in the U.S. Army, McGowan. We find them, we get rid of them. No questions asked. It’s been happening since the beginning of time.”

“I know the old policy, sir, but I’m aware of the new policy as well, and he never really came forward and said he was… gay. So we can’t really do anything. It’s not fair.” I knew I was asking for it big-time.

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