You Ask, I Tell free porn video

Forward
Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was a policy instituted by President Clinton in 1993. While intended as a mechanism for LGBT servicemembers to serve in the Armed Forces, it created an environment of fear, blackmail, and intimidation. Over 17,000 servicemembers would be discharged from the military under this policy before its eventual repeal in 2011.
Life under this policy impacted the day-to-day lives of LGBT servicemembers. How exactly did gay and lesbian servicemembers live under this policy? Where would they go on their free time? How would they meet one another? How was the sex? All these are questions that I am peppered with everytime I am sitting at a gay bar and I telling someone about my military service.
I entered the United States Air Force via the Reserve Officer Training Corps in May of 2005. Through the Air Force, I spent six and a half years globetrotting from Japan to Germany before eventually separating. Having been out as a civilian, I knew there would be changes to life as I knew it. I reflected on this during my attendance of the New York City Gay Pride parade a month after I was sworn in. I was meeting so many nice guys, while at the same time having this sinking feeling of, “This is it.” Would I be able to confide in anyone about my sexuality as a gay man? Would I ever be able to go to a gay bar? Would I ever have sex with a man again?
My journey in the Air Force took me places and showed me experiences that never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined. While intimidating at first, I soon became comfortable in my own skin and no longer worried about what people said about me when I was not looking. I found that having sex proved to be extremely easy in an organization dominated by men that are under constant pressure to exude masculinity. But best of all, I was able to form friendships everywhere I went that would be critical for me to maintain my sanity, have a shoulder to cry on, go to out to get hammered, check out boys, and have an overall sense of security. We all knew we had each other’s backs and would actively work to keep each other out of trouble. A policy as draconian as Don’t Ask Don’t Tell created strange bedfellows in the LGBT community. It was common place for everyone, ranging from Colonel to Private, to intermingle in private settings while maintaining a professional appearance in public. Eventhough I knowingly thumbed my nose at the military’s social norms, I am and will remain unapologetic because compliance would have sentenced me to solitude. I would not have survived in the military as long as I did.
I do not write this as a way of representing the thousands of LGBT servicemembers and veterans. They all have their own stories to tell, and this one is uniquely mine. The things I saw, the people I met, the countless sexual encounters…..are all uniquely mine. So here goes…
Chapter 1: Stepping Back in the Closet
I touched down in Okinawa on a sweltering summer day in July of 2005. Michelle, a petite Lieutenant from my squadron, was the first person to greet me was going to help me get integrated into my unit and life at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan. Assigned to the 18th Munitions Squadron, I was to work in the Munitions Storage Area and oversee the inspection, transportation, and storage of conventional weapons. From the day I reported in, I felt a sense of awkwardness. I had made the naïve decision to repress my sexuality and do everything I can to “butch it up”. I was terrified of being outed under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but even more, I was afraid of what people would think about me. My father, a man who had originally objected to me joining the military, warned of a very homophobic culture. He even went as far as to say, “be mindful of that gay stuff over there,” as he hugged me and kissed me goodbye at Baltimore-Washington International Airport.
Trying to put up such a façade proved to be an abject failure as I proved unable to hide the way I truly carried myself and the way I spoke. What also did not help was that I had one screw-up after another as a young officer. From being late to work to screwing up projects given to me, my fuck ups were one after another. While mistakes were common and expected from junior officers, my gayness exponentially exacerbated those screw-ups. It was not too long before I became known as “that faggot LT” among the officer corps on base. I would later have scores of people tell me that they had heard of me from superiors that were gossiping. I felt like I was living up to the notion that gays and lesbians were unfit for military service, a feeling that felt like a kick in the balls.
Repressing my sexual desires would prove to only last three weeks. One night I went out on my own to a bar and restaurant strip outside the base called “Gate 2 Street.” These bars were filled with Airmen and Marines that were drinking and flirting. I ducked into a bar where a band was performing and sat on a couch next to a group of Marines. I strike up a conversation with one of the marines about work, where I went to school and all that jazz. This being a gaggle fuck of Marines, the conversation quickly moves to sex and fucking pussy. I’m thinking “Ugh, fuck, really?” Now it must have been how drunk I was or the fact that I thought the guy was a bit of a hunk, but I whisper to the one next to me that I am not really into women. I must have stumbled onto some sort of underground code words because he immediately told me that he is bi. I respond that I am gay and we immediately nudge closer to each other on the couch. I throw my arm around him in a drunken “straight bro” manner, but we both knew my motive. He and his friends needed a place to crash because it was after their curfew and going on base would mean getting busted. Thankfully, I had just moved into a house off base and did not have a curfew. Ahh…the perks of being an officer.
We get back to my house and they all immediately pass out, except for me and the bisexual marine. He nudged me out and onto my balcony and right there he kissed me. This was the first man I had kissed since leaving behind my previous life and becoming a military officer. We then proceed to voraciously suck each other off, then jerked each other off until we came. We went back inside. I went to my bed, he passed out in the living room with his buddies. The next morning he and his friends got in a cab and headed home. I never saw him again, and my luck would not prove to be that well for the next several months.
After moping around for 3 months, I get a notice that I am ordered to travel to Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama for The Air and Space Basic Course. ASBC was a 6 week military training course for newly commissioned second lieutenants. I was to attend from the end of October to mid December. I was surprisingly elated. While Alabama may not be known for its LGBT accomodations, I was able to look up a gay bar on the internet that was about 15 miles from Maxwell Air Foce Base. This was to be the first gay bar that I had stepped inside since entering the active Air Force duty. I packed and flew to Alabama, arriving Saturday night. After flying halfway around the world for duty and checking into my room at 8pm, I immediately called a taxicab and was well on my way to The Oasis Bar. Jetlag was not going to stop me from going out.
Travelling to the Oasis was like something out of a horror movie. I expected a man with a chainsaw to run out into the steet at any moment. Nonetheless, the gay bar was a top priority. Finally we arrive to a gravel parking in front of what appeared to be a biker bar. I stepped inside to find myself in the middle of the annual Oasis Halloween party. Drag queens, men dressed as batman and wonderwoman, I felt so at home! A drag queen walked up to me and we chatted for a bit. When she heard my story, she gave me a big hug bought me a drink, and posed for a picture with me. Eventually, a man dressed as death approached me and swooned over me to the point that I quickly made out with him, smearing his makeup. He graciously gave me a ride back to the base where I passed out immediately.
During the duration of this course I was never in town for the weekend. The Air Education and Training Command, the Air Force command that presided over my training, had a policy where people attending military training are allowed to go anywhere in the United States on weekends. As long as you were back by Monday, you did not have to use vacation days. As such, five out of the six weekends I had during the course I was gone from the local area, hell, gone from the state. I needed to feel like a confident gay man once again, so I made a point of doing as much travelling as possible during my stint back in the US. The most frequent place I travelled was Atlanta, a city with quite the notoriously fun gay scene.
I had many friends that I reunited with during ASBC. One particular was Ada, a girl that I met when I went to Field Training at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida as a ROTC cadet. She and I became instant friends because both of us were considered “outsiders” in my unit there. We got yelled at the most and punished the most, something that made us enough of friends for me to confess to her that I was gay. We got so close that we were reprimanded one day because we created a perception that we were sexually intimate during Field Training, something her and I laughed our asses off about later. I saw her at Maxwell and immediately wanted to go out and do stuff together. I convince Ada and her friend, Tiffany, to come out with me to Atlanta overt the weekend. By day during the trip we were touring the city. By night, however, we were out in the gay area. Tiffany was one to turn in early that weekend, so it was just me and Ada to go out. We head over to a pavilion of gay bars where Ada and I catch up. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a guy winking at me and raising his glass.
“What should I do?” I naively ask. Apparently, being out on the scene with a straight woman kind of cloud ones judgement on the social dynamics of gay men.
“Go over there!”Ada said. I did and after talking for a bit, I started making out with this guy. About 30 minutes later, I force myself to pull away from him and get back to Ada. We then head to a bar across the street, where Ada and I witnessed the most offensive drag show. The drag queen there sang a song while on a plastic toilet, then out of where no where, pulling out from the toilet a “Mr. Hanky” feces doll similar to the character on the TV show South Park. Ada was a bit horrified, while I just laughed my ass off at the comedic genius of that moment. Ada and I enjoy the rest of the night and drive back to Maxwell the next day.
Another place I went was back to New York City during a 3-day weekend for Veteran’s Day in November. Although I was not a native New Yorker, New York was the place where I was schooled on all things gay. How to pick up men, sexual paraphernalia, sex clubs, you name it, I probably learned and experienced it, and lived to talk about it. When I came out to my parents, they did not take it well. From not trusting me whenever I went out, to conversation after conversation about how my “lifestyle” could result in me becoming infected with HIV, the situation at home was “tense” to say the least. After graduating from high school, I sought refuge with my Aunt Carina, my dad’s sister that lived in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. I came out to her almost immediately, and that same day I told her I was gay, she copied the keys to her apartment and told me I was welcome to stay with her whenever I wanted or needed. Carina was a crisis counselor for troubled youth, particularly LGBT youth that had been thrown out of their homes by their families, so engaging my issue came natural to her. Carina knew that the best way for me to be an informed gay man was to simply push me out the door to experience it all, which is exactly what she did.
“Carlos, are you going to go out?” She would ask looking at the clock and wondering why I was still watching TV. I would then get dressed and head down to the West Village or Chelsea in order to dance, flirt with men, and go home with a man every now and then. Upon coming home, Carina would say, “Bueno! Where have you been you little slut?!” with the most devilish smile imaginable. Because of all this, coming back to New York City made absolute sense during my temporary stint in the US. I went out to all of my previous evening haunts, sometimes even running into people I knew before leaving for Japan.
After finishing ASBC, I return to my alma mater, Penn State University. The campus grounds and surrounding town, State College, were rich with memories of my gay youth as I struggled affirm my identity with confidence. This was a place where I was scared of being outed that I refused to associate with the LGBT student organization, an action that I regret to this very day. The President at the time, Christi, knew of me and had met me at parties a couple of times. While she always welcomed me to join the group at events and socials, she understood my fear given my enrollment in ROTC. Moreover, she admired my commitment to enter the military because in her words, “Change comes by a brave few that dare to do the difficult.”
The main reason for returning was because a couple of my friends were going to be sworn in as officers, and I wanted to be there to witness that. Before doing so, however, I contacted some of my college friends, Michael and Miranda, about my visit. Miranda invited me over to her apartment where she surprised me with a large group of gays and lesbians that I had considered to be the first gay friends I had ever made. By the time I was a senior in college, I was of age to be in the bar and at a point where I simply did not give a fuck who saw me there or who said anything. So I would go to Chumley’s, the only gay bar in State College when I was in school. It was at Chumley’s where I met Michael, Ryan, Sana, Miranda, and a myriad of guys and girls that I came to call friends. Those very same people all showed up at Miranda’s apartment that night. I was so overwhelmed that I was in tears. In Okinawa, I had spent so many months in solitude and secrecy. The constant phony façade that I had to put up wore on me deeply, so when surrounded by the very people that knew who exactly I was, people that accepted me as me, I simply could not hold back the tears.
The trip back to the United States was a catharsis of emotions. I was so sick of having to hide in solitiude simply because that was what military law demanded of me. Having felt so rejuvenated, sexy, and having had a ton of sex back in the US, going back to sexual repression was not an option. Upon returning to Japan, seeking out the gay community became priority one in my personal life. However, the first order of business was to establish a confidant that I could trust with my sexuality.
The natural choice was Michelle, another lieutenant in my squadron. I had come to grow close to her and her friend Brooke, a “Double D” blond that worked at the American Red Cross Station on base. From the get go, we had gone out together frequently. They initiated me to my first “Banana Show” experience, where I watched a woman shove banana’s up her vagina, cut them into pieces, and then rapid fire them out of her cooch! How could these girls not be ready for a gay confession? When I returned to Japan, it was in the midst of a 4-day weekend leading up to Christmas Day. Michelle, Brooke, and I, being single, decided to spend that Friday out together at the bar with other single people, raising shot glasses in honor of Jesus. While sitting at our table, I just go for it. Since the bar was crowded, I write on a cocktail napkin, “I’m gay,” and slide it over to them. Both read the napkin and smiled. “ It’s cool,” they said as Brooke took the pen and blacked out what was written. Brooke and Michelle obviously knew I was gay and were simply waiting for me to them.
Over the course of my time in Okinawa, I had heard rumors of a gay bar that was right outside of my base. When I returned I attempted to do an internet search of gay bars that were nearby, but all I could find are bars in Naha, a city 20 miles away, and these bars were not welcoming to Americans. So I turned to Gay.com, my only option for reaching out to gays in Okinawa. I come across a “fugly” old man that was constantly trolling the site for young Asian men to come over and sit on his lap. Apparently, this man was into latino boys as well because boy did he start talking to me fast! We got to talking and I ask about the alleged gay bar near Kadena Air Base and he confirmed that there was one nearby. He said he would give me the directions if I promised to come over to his apartment, to which I naturally lied and “SURE!”
After getting the directions from the ugly troll, I get dressed, flag down a taxicab, and head to a park down the street from Gate 2 Street. When you live in Japan, often times you will encounter streets with no names, so directions often take the form of “Turn right at the big tree” or “turn left at the sign with the happy girl”. This time was no different. I had to turn left at the green sign, turn left at the traffic light, and then an immediate left into an alleyway and I will find a bar named “Fellow”. By the time I found myself in the alleyway, I was thinking, “Am I looking for a fucking speakeasy because there is no possible way there is a gay bar here?” Suddenly, I see a random door on the wall with blue sign that said “Fellow”. As I approach the door, there is a faint sound of music coming from the door. I open the door and I am greeted by dozens of American guys dressed in drag along with a shit ton of Japanese people sitting at the bar. I was home!
An American man in his mid 40s walked up to me and asked if I am lost. I tell him I was looking for the gay bar. All of a sudden his eyes widened and he asked how on earth did I find this place. I proceeded to tell him about the troll from Gay.com but he interrupts and asks how I managed to find the place alone since the bar was in the most obscure, abandoned ****-alley in history. I simply told him I had good directions. He introduced himself as Mark and then introduced me to all the servicemembers. It was a bit of a blur that night, but I did settle down with a guy named Victor, an aircraft mechcanic that was friends with most of the guys there. We talk for two seconds before we proceed to shove our tongues down each other’s throats. Such was the beginning of my time with the massive gay entourage in Okinawa.
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Chapter 2: Fellow Bar and the i****tuous Gay Entourage
It all started very innocently. I would meet up with friends like Bill, the prissy one that can judge you with a smile, and Rhoni, the batshit sailor who would playfully punch you when he was drunk. Ace, the towering giraffe of a man, would begin to flirt with me, wrapping his hands around my thigh, and squeezing till I laughed like a school girl. We would meet at Fellow for drinks and they would invite me out to do things like go ice skating or go eat with them at a curry restaurant. I was extremely nervous about letting my guard down. Yes, these were my gay friends, but I was a military officer and was scared of getting into any trouble whatsoever. Aside from concerns about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, I was concerned about perceptions of fraternization, the act of engaging in friendly or sexual relations with an enlisted member, something considered a crime under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. When I went ice skating for the first time, I sat alone in the corner quietly eating a cup of noodles while everyone else sat and made fun of people busting their ass on the ice. Ernesto, this quiet sailor who totally rocked a bushy mustache that made him look like the Mexican version of Ron Jeremy, came and encouraged me to relax and join the group. As time passed, I did put my fears aside and relaxed, and as I relaxed I noticed, “Hey, these gays are hot!”
The entourage had a very bad habit of i****tuous sex. Friends routinely banged each other or passed around new hot guys and then we would all compare notes. It was so intricate that one of the guys drew a spider diagram called, “The Cum Line” that illustrated who had sex with who. Bill and Vic were the clearly the biggest whores, as scores of lines emanated from their names. My initiation into this systemic friend-fucking occurred one night when I went over to Bill’s barracks after a night at Fellow. Bill had a big enough bed that the six of us felt compelled to jump in together. This Marine named Joe, a guy who constantly tried to come off as a piss and vinegar man’s man, had been flirting with me that night and we decided to get naked and fuck in bed inches from the 4 other guys in bed with us. Joe ordered me to grab my ankles as he fucked me senselessly. In the back of my head I am, “Holy crap, I am getting fucked in front of 4 other people.” Thankfully, it was dark and the rest of the boys were pretty occupied amongst themselves. Yes, the slumber party had devolved into a flash mob orgy with dicks and assholes in every direction. Joe pulls out of me because I need a break. I roll over and quickly found Jeff stroking me. I proceeded to fuck Jeff for a bit before taking our escapade to the shower and fucking him some more. The next morning I apologized to Bill for the epic mess we all made of his bed sheets. Bill rolled his eyes and said, “It’s OK!”
Eventually, Bill got permission to move off base. With his housing allowance, he rented an elegant house just north of my base. I cannot tell you how jealous I was of this homo. He was minutes from the beach, meanwhile, my dumbass rented a house in the mountains not knowing any better. With a newer, bigger party pad for all the homos, Bill quickly positions himself as the center of the entourage. When he had a party, all the soldier, sailors, marines, and airmen from all over the island converged on his house for cocktails and playing Twister in our underwear. Talk about how much I enjoyed being at the bottom of the pile when four guys fell on top of each other. The underwear version of Twister was also an opportunity to judge and make fun of each other. I was dogged for having some old fashioned granny panny type briefs while another guy, Hector, was laughed at for wearing some sparkly underwear with neon stars all over the place, essentially the gayest underwear anyone had seen.
The party was so massive that evening that it spilled out into the street. While tame at first, the clothes quickly came off and we began running around the street naked, doing carwheels, and jumping on cars….actually only Jeff jumped on a car while everyone else scream-whispered at him to get the fuck down. I am watching this from Bill’s front balcony when Ace cat calls for me to strip naked like the rest of them. At first, I was nervous, watching the ends of the street to see if any cops were going to come barreling down the road, but eventually, Ace talked me down and I got naked. Once down on the road, we posed for pictures using Ace’s camera. I am pretty sure Ace is still in possession of those photos, so it looks like my dreams of running for elected office are dashed…oh well.
Still naked, we decided to have a race to the end of the block. Yes, caution went to the wind as half a dozen servicemembers dashed down the street with their genitals swinging about freely. Of course, this 20 year old marine named Jerry won the race. I had my eye on Jerry at the party and I felt like this was my evening to make a move, right there in the street, still completely naked. So while everyone else walked back to Bill’s house, the Jerry and I kept walking down the street, slapping each other’s bare cheeks. We duck into a cemetery to get some cover in the event a car comes down the street. Within moments stepping inside a cemetery completely naked, Jerry and I began kissing and stroking each other’s cocks. If there was a moment for the pits of hell to open up, it would have right there in the cemetery, swallowing us whole. Jerry wanted to lay down inside one of the concrete gravesites and make out with me, you know, next to the urn. Out of respect for the dead, I say no…we should lay naked and makeout to the side of the gravesite. We spend the next 15 minutes sucking each other off, all the while scratching ourselves on the concrete surface and swatting away mospuitos. Hey, when you are in your early 20s, you will get down just about anywhere. After blowing our, we then get up and walk back to Bill’s house to pass out in his living room. The next morning, Bill gets a knock on the door. A Japanese police officer was at his door inquiring about the scores of naked men that were making noise outside. Joe said we that we all had gone home, despite the fact that were laying on top of each other on his floor about 15 feet from the front door. All in all, the officer gave him a warning about having parties with excessive noise. Bill shrugged it off and then climbed back on top of the dick he was riding before that police officer interrupted.
As time passes, the entourage splinters off and only really gets together during holidays and special parties at Fellow, or gay parties that we get flyers for. When I was not with my homo entourage, I was typically at Fellow, singing karaoke. The bar owner, Toru, would love it when I sang, You Spin me Round, because no matter how wasted I was, I was able to belch out the lyrics and the high notes during the “I want your love” portion of the song. I would sing for Toru, while munching on Toru’s snacks as well as food that he would prep at home and bring to the bar. Rhoni, Victor and Ace joined me on most weekends, and we would sing all the greatest hits while the Japanese patrons would sing theirs. Fellow Bar was literally the size of a walk in closet, but managed to fit upwards of 30 people at once. Halloween and Christmas were special days, as Toru charged entrance for an all you can eat and drink extravaganza. So many people showed that the party spilled into that ****-alleyway. As an incentive to get patrons to dress in drag, your admission was cut in half. Initially, I was afraid of attempting drag. I had no idea how to dress up nor where to get materials for a look for that matter. So I played it safe when Halloween 2006 came around. I dressed up as Lieutenant Dangle from Reno 911, short shorts and all. I arrived thinking none of the military guys would come dressed in drag. Many lived on base or off base near other servicemembers, making it very they would spotted in drag. No way, right? Boy was I wrong!
Half of the military guys there were dressed in drag. Brittney Spears, Daphne from Scooby Doo, Shakira, hell, one of the guys even dressed up as Rainbow Brite! I was amazed and at the same time I felt inadequate. Yeah, all of them were impressed by my look, but I was so much more impressed with theirs. Such began my first attempt at drag for the Christmas party.
With the homo entourage way ahead of me in the drag queen arena, I had to catch up fast. The problem was that I was in the military and the items I needed would for the most part be found on base. Compounding the problem was the fact that I was not comfortable just walking through the base exchange buying makeup, high heels, and a dress. Folks, this was still the Bush Administration, and fundamentalists reigned supreme in the military. Not wanting to provoke yet another base-wide controversy, I sought the assistance of my friend Michelle, who was more than happy to help me put this costume together. I attempted to emulate Jem, from the cartoon TV series, Jem and the Hollograms. The goal was to dress head to toe in pink with silver eyeliner and silver shoes. Problem with the shoes was that they were too small. Michelle suggested taking some scissors and cutting off the sides so that I could at least fit my toes inside. When all was said and done, I looked like a wobbly, pink nightmare that smeared on some lipstick and stuffed his hooves into pumps two sizes too small. I could not even walk in the shoes and when I did I stumbled. So after walking 50 feet from my house that evening, I say fuck it, take off my shoes, and walk barefoot to the taxi stand.
I am the first drag queen to the party, holding a cocktail while stumbling every 30 seconds like a drunk sorority girl….classy. Eventually, the gays rolled in. First is my friend Daniel dressed head to toe as Britney Spears with a bra filled with rice to make tits. I on the other hand, forgot about the tits and arrived flat-chested. Mark and Toru said, “No no no, this cannot stand.” Using dish rags and masking tape, they fashion some lop-sided tits for me that would look believable. Although, I paid the price for my lack of planning when I pulled that masking tape off my chest the next morning and ripped bits of skin off. The best dressed award, however, goes to Roni. He shows up in a brown wig, a red dress with a wide black belt, black and white stripped socks and stiletto heels. I was in awe at how effortlessly he had transformed into a full fledged lady! After a few hours, I was so drunk that my body went into panic mode. I was sitting at a booth and out of nowhere ran outside barefoot, jumped in a cab and bolted home. I wake up the next day, completely naked, with those damn dish rags still taped to my chest. I return to the scene of the crime that night and as soon as I walk through the door, Toru hands me the tattered high heels that I had abandoned....how thoughtful.
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Chapter 3: Flirting with a Closet Case
A couple of weeks after I started going to Fellow, I met this cute lesbian Filipino couple, Crystal and Miko. Both were canvassing all the bars they were familiar with to promote a bar they were opening, a chique, trendy bar called Niche. Located right outside of Camp Foster, a Marine Corps base a couple of minute south of Kadena Air Base, the business model was fucking brilliant. Behind the bar were these two gorgeous Filipino girls serving drinks and spinning music. In front of the bar were drunk Marines, Sailors, and Airmen who would salivate upon sight of these lovely ladies. The girls would get to know the names of the regulars and flirt with them ever so lightly. These guys would then convince all of their bro’s into coming to Niche and checking out the chicks behind the bar….well played. Aside from attracting men with hardons to the bar, they kept in touch with the gay servicemembers that were at Fellow. About once a month, they would host a private party where they would throw up the blinds, and change the lightbulbs out for rainbow one. Whenever they did this, the gays made a point of showing up for a wonderful time at bar that was not crowded….a win-win!
Victor, Rhoni, and I were the most frequent gay attendees of Niche, showing up to say “Hey Gurl” and exchange kisses with Miko and Crystal. Yes, the straights people would give us the stink eye, but fuck ‘em, we could not care less. The best event I attended at Niche by far was the Moet Chandon promotion party that they put on. With a strict dress code and complimentary champagne, I jumped into my suit and tie, met up with Victor and on we went to the party. Aside from posing for pictures with Crystal and Miko, Vic and I mostly kept to ourselves. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw this guy staring at me. I looked closer and realize it is this straight guy that has been pseudo stalking me for close to a year now.
When I say pseudo stalking, what I really meant is his coincidental way of showing up everywhere I went whenever I was out with a group of straight officers that did not despise me. When I went to Alabama for military training, a large group of us travelled together with the same itinerary to Mongtomery. Among them was “that guy”. When I went out to a bar with a girl named Sacha and we met up with her friends, there was “that guy” along with them. He was fucking everywhere I went on base that involved a meeting of officers and we always managed to make some slight eye contact. So here was “that guy” once again, this time at the Moet Chandon party. He then proceeded to walk up to me and we finally introduced each other. He said his name was Billy and he was a finance officer assigned to the base finance squadron. I introduced him to Victor and we chatted for a bit about how we had stalked each other from Japan to Alabama. When he parted and he went back to his friends, Victor pulls me to the side and says, “Wow…he’s really into you!” I dismiss Victor’s observation and carry-on sipping my champagne. Fifteen minutes later he comes back and talks to me, this time, wanting to snap some pictures. When I was at the bar alone, he approached for yet the third time to say, “Ya know…..I’ve heard things about you on base.”
“That’s nice.” I reply with a tacit eye roll.
“It’s cool you know. I have no problem if you have no problem.” Tony stammers.
“I never said I had a problem,” I said.
By this point he is piss drunk and says he needs to go. We part ways and he says next time we will definitely hang out more. While I certainly did not expect that to be true, I did, in fact, get to hang out with him again.
Summer of 2006, I sponsor a new Lieutenant to my squadron. Her name is Briana and we clicked instantly. I wasted no time showing her what downtown had to offer, from the Banana Show to Niche. Briana had just graduated from the Air Force Academy and had several friends from the academy already at Kadena Air Base. So one night she assembles her entourage of academy grads for a night on the town. As we head to Gate 2 Street to meet up with them, I notice once again that Billy is pseudo stalking me.
Apparently, he was Briana ‘s trainer at the academy, and they became friends after her freshmen year. Briana, Billy the Stalker, myself, and her friends all drink dance, and have a bitchin good time. It was then time to head home. We had a designated driver that was willing to drive all of us back home. As we were walking Billy and I were straggling behind the pack, when out of nowhere, Billy grabbed my hand and we ducked into a bar. It was so sudden that Briana saw us behind her one moment and the next moment we were gone. I shot a text Briana and told her that we would get home just fine via cab and to go without us. We ordered drinks and continued talking about absolute nonsense. He claimed that after the Moet Chandon party he tried to steal a taxi and was then chased by police when he climbed the perimeter fence of a base. As he was telling me this I was not sure if I should believe him or just nod, wink, and say “You are so butch!” He was so drunk, he could have tried to convince me that he was the soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo and would have gotten mad when I laughed at him. Moments later, he spilled his drink, which was the sign to depart immediately. “Where are we going?” I asked.
“We’re going to your house.” Slurred Billy.
“Oh, really?” I said with a glimmer of excitement
“Just to sleep. We’re not doing anything,” Billy shot back.
“Pssh, I don’t care.” I replied.
After clearly lying through my teeth about not caring, we took a cab to my house. He crashed on my couch while I went to bed. The next day, I conveniently forget to put pants on and go use my computer in just a shirt and my undies.
“Hey, you can’t just walk around in your underwear,” he quipped as he woke up.
“This is my house damnit,” I sassed back minus snapping my fingers.
I get dressed, drive him back to his apartment and drop him off. Weeks later, he sees Briana and I together at Lunch. He said he is celebrating his birthday at a bar along the Sunabe Seawall, a bar and restaurant strip way on the other side of Kadena Air Base where a lot of straight officers hang out. Briana was going on temporary assignment to Alabama so I went solo to this party. As predicted, the bar was chock full of squawky, cackling girls and dumb, drunk fighter pilots that would call you a faggot right before asking you to suck them off. I saw Billy and he was already mega-wasted. He went back and forth between doing shots with me and hanging out with his buddies. Out of nowhere, he cornered me up against the bar with eyes that I can only describe as “hungry”. He proceeded to tell me how awesome I am while wrapping his arms around me. He then pressed me against the bar pinning me between the bar, his muscular arms and his chest. He continued to whisper how awesome I was into my ear and then…began to kiss my neck!
Holy shit! I immediately froze because I was thinking, “Oh shit, someone’s gonna see me fooling around with him…..but I don’t want it to stop!” He continued to kiss my neck in this bar that was wall to wall full of straight people and out of nowhere bit my ear hard. He then pushed himself off me and walked over to another group of friends. After I recovered from my near Mike Tyson moment, I went to look for him and saw him kissing some random girl hardcore. My heart sank. To say that I had a crush on this guy was a bit of an understatement. Just when he finally made his move on me, something I had fantasized about many times, he pushed me away and kissed some chick to remind himself and anyone who might have been watching how much he loved pussy.
I was on the verge of tears when this Japanese girl walked up to me. She says she is a friend of Billy’s and worked with him on base. She asked why I was sad. I try to play it off like it was nothing, but she then told me she saw everything and understood why I was sad. I sat and spoke with her about all of our encounters and said how dumbstruck I was that he did everything shy of making out with me in public and then pushed himself away to put his tongue down some chick’s throat. The next time I saw Billy, he was noticeably nervous around me. We run into each other at Niche. The Japenese girl that I spoke to was there with him. I could overhear her talking to him about me while I made eye contact with Billy. I waited around to see if he would say anything to me, but he never did. After that day, I never saw Billy again. Why I allowed myself to be wrapped up in the dramatics of a closet case I have no clue. After all, there was plenty of boy drama to be had at Fellow with actual gay men.
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Chapter 4: Hey….Kiss Me
After our infamous sloppy makeout the first night I went to Fellow, Victor and I did not speak for weeks. I thought it was because he hated me. I certainly had committed the crime of smooching with him then fucking someone else the night that we met. When we finally spoke one night, I realized it was a massive misunderstanding. Once this cleared up, we were hanging out nearly every weekend. In the beginning it was almost exclusively at Fellow. We would spend the entire night singing karaoke as if competing for some imaginary prize. In reality it was just to see who would get the biggest applause from the other patrons. I would stick to my basics, whether it was a song by Dead or Alive, New Order, Whitney Houston, or Donna Summer. Victor, on the other hand, always had to one up me by singing some Japanese song he had learned. The Japanese patrons taught him some basic characters and the sounds they produced. Combine this with karaoke songs in Japanese and voila! Vic knew a bit of Japanese!
Because Victor was one of the focal points on the “Cum Line” spider diagram, and because Victor claimed to be a bottom, I nicknamed him “Pass Around Party Bottom.” It was a nickname he hated with such vitriol. Nonetheless, I doubled down and call him this when I greeted him, when I was arguing with him, hell even when I introduced him to random strangers. I teased him in this manner because deep down inside, I was swooning over Victor. The drunken kiss we shared certainly would not be our last, and everytime I would hope that he would change his mind about me. Whenever I wanted some company to go see Crystal and Miko at Niche, I could always count on Victor to come with me. We would drink, talk to straight girls, they would ask if we are together, and Vic would emphatically reply, “No!” Nonetheless, weekend after weekend we would meet up during the day to eat and meet up at night for cocktails.
In the summer of 2006, the gays at Fellow began receiving flyers for a monthly dance party called “Loveball”. Gay bars would take turns hosting dances at a nightclub in Naha, the capital of Okinawa. The space was pretty big for a Japanese nightclub, and the DJs spun good house and electropop music. Then at midnight, organizers would put on the most bizarre drag show I have ever seen. From clucking chickens to ballerinas to drag queens stripping completely naked, the midnight drag show was a show not to be missed. With gay Japanese college students making up the overwhelming majority of attendees, tall, obnoxious Americans stuck out to the extreme. Often we took advantage of this, even one time upstaging some drag queen that were on risers dancing. The gay Americans simply jumped on stage, stripped to our underwear, and began grinding, groping and kissing each other to the beat of the music. The audience began ignoring the drag queens and staring at us. In an act of obvious jealousy that we stole their thunder, they began to squirt us with water guns in order to get us off the stage. Make no mistake: Loveball parties were the shit. I could almost always count on going with Victor. I would pick him up and we would head south to Naha and meet up with the other gays there. Eventhough all of us would hang out together, Victor and I were constantly on dancefloor together. He would drunkenly say, “Hey….kiss me, “ and of course I would while were grinding each other and rubbing our penises together through our clothes. Nonetheless, at the end of the night, I simply dropped him off at home and we both went to bed alone. Occassionally, I would call out Victor on the fact that we constantly flirted with each other only for nothing to happen. He would say he knows, but just cannot bring himself to do more. Everytime he told me this, I thought I could just wait it out because he would eventually come around…..till I received a rude wake up call.
After going to Naha frequently for Loveball parties, Vic wanted to explore Naha during the day and even go to some of the gay bars over there. I was all about sightseeing around Naha during the day, but the gay bars…..I was a little nervous. Many of them did not allow Americans inside because we were loud and disruptive. Granted, this was extremely true, but really, ban us for bringing some excitement and pizzazz to your establishment? Eh, I digress.
During the day we would go the various malls and markets, seeing if there was anything of interest. Some English teachers from the United States, United Kingdom, and South Africa lived near and around Naha. Vic had met them when they made their way to Fellow and they invited him to come down to Naha to hang out. So frequently, we would meet these pack of teachers at restaurants, at Starbucks, or even at their apartments. One night Victor finally convinced me to come with him to explore the string of gay bars. In the interest of simply saying I had done it, I gave in and said OK.
Using his recently acquired Japanese skills, Victor managed to find the exact street these string of gays bars were located. The first place we went to was painted all in blue and there were about 5 customers inside. We ordered cocktails and sat down to chat. Just as we were about to order a second round, the manager approached us and told us that Americans were not allowed in the bar and that we must leave. So we go to a smaller place that required us to walk through a seemingly abandoned building. We got inside this time we did not even take more than five steps into the bar before we were told no Americans allowed. So we then kept walking through the building and walked down a flight of stairs. Thankfully, the third place allowed us to stay and drink.
I sat down at the bar to Victor’s left. To his right was a middle aged Japanese woman who was massively eye-fucking Vic. Victor proceeds to speak some broken Japanese to this woman and the woman at some point asks him if he has a girlfriend. Victor says no and says he is gay. He then puts his arm around me and insinuates to the woman that we were together, an act that provoked a major hard-on on my part. Despite the fact that Victor was telling her this in a gay bar meant absolutely nothing to the woman. She was not having it. She insists that he was not gay, most likely because he was not effeminate in his look or demeanor like I was. The woman looked at me and had that look on her face like, “Yup….homo!” But not Victor, there was no way in hell Victor could be gay in her eyes. Vic placed his hand on my thigh to provoke a bitch fit out of the woman, and on cue, she does. He turns to me, and drunkenly says, “Hey…kiss me.” Me being the sucker that I was, I kissed him, which in turn provokes the woman to shove Vic screaming “No!” Reminder, we were kissing in a gay bar, yet this woman refused to believe Victor is gay.
This act of making the woman have a bitch fit was getting old and I ask Vic if we could head home. However, Vic was way too much fun with this woman. Her bitch fits were quite the ki-ki for Vic. Everytime she threw a fit , he would laugh his ass off. In a batshit crazy move that perplexes me to this day, he asked this woman to come with us to another bar.
“Victor, can we please ditch the bitch? I wanna go home!” I complained.
“No! This is too much fun,” Victor said as I rolled his eyes.
So out of the bar the three of us go, looking for another place to go drinking. Trying to find a bar proved to be useless. It was 3:45am, so the bars already began to close down. So here we were, walking aimlessly, when Victor grabbed me by the waist, pulled me close and kissed me. This time, instead of shoving Victor and whining, the bitch slapped me across the face.
“WHAT THE FUCK!?” I yell.
“That was awesome,” chuckled Vic.
“That’s not fucking funny Victor!” I screamed.
As much as I wanted to wail on that woman for hitting me, I am glad that I restrained myself. The US military had terrible relations with the civilian community in Okinawa and everyone was looking for a reason to jail and prosecute servicemembers. Though this woman was drunk and eventhough she hit me, laying even the slightest hand on her would have been twisted into me attacking a poor old woman in a drunken rampage. So…..I had to take it, and boy was I pissed. I was pissed that some crazy woman slapped me for kissing a man. I was pissed that Victor thought it was the funniest thing in the world. But most of all, I was pissed that I was so gullible in my quest to have Victor. Watching him laugh after the woman slapped me for kissing him made it abundantly clear that I was wasting my time chasing him….I was done.
After threatening to leave Victor in Naha, we finally ditched this psycho and walk back to my car. I berated Victor on the drive back and as he sobers up, he apologized to me for acting like an asshole. After this episode, Victor began hanging out with the English teachers more and I saw him less. We were still friends, just not as close as before. I spent months chasing a man that would only throw me some nuggets of affection every now and then. I did this because of all the men I went after in Okinawa…..Victor was the most mentally stable.
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Chapter 5: The Crying Marine
During a sweltering July Saturday night in 2006, I was at Fellow singing karaoke and making Toru and the old Japanese men smile. Right next to me was “Gay Ray”. Ray got the nickname, “Gay Ray” because he was arguably the most flamboyant, effeminate gay man in the Navy. This is a guy that would put on his uniform, and just before he left for work, would apply concealer, mascara, and lip gloss. It was just enough makeup to primp himself up, but not enough for his supervisors to notice. Rhoni told me that Gay Ray was his sponsor when Rhoni first arrived to Okinawa. On Rhoni’s first day of work, Gay Ray came to pick him up and, according to Roni, Gay Ray was in uniform with a noticeable amount of glitter on his face. How he got away with that was pure mystery.
When Gay Ray was in basic training, he wrote a love letter to one of his bunk mates. Unfortunately, the love letter ended up in the hands of his drill instructor, who decided to read it to his entire training unit one day during their morning formation. After reading the letter, the drill instructor shouted for Gay Ray to come before him.
“Did you fucking write this letter?” The drill instructor screamed.
“Yes, Sir” replied Gay Ray
“Do you realize this is a fucking love letter to a man?” The drill instructor said with a bit more rage.
“Yes, Sir” Gay Ray nervously responded.
During the Bush years, this would have been more than enough evidence to send a trainee home from basic training. However, not all supervisors enjoyed enforcing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and exercised a bit of discretion in determining how to deal with outed gay servicemembers.
“Was this by accident or on purpose?” The drill instructor asked.
On the surface, this is the most ridiculous question you could ask someone. Of course it was on purpose. However, the drill instructor wanted to give Gay Ray a way out of avoiding punishment under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
“It was an accident.”
The drill instructor proceeds to berate him in front of everyone else about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and how he better not fuck up like that again. Eventhough the drill instructor did him a favor by letting him walk away from the incident, the people there were not dummies. Gay Ray had been outed to everyone in his unit, and no discussion of accidentally writing a love letter to a man was going to change that. For the rest of basic training and technical school, Gay Ray was the constant subject of harassment, threats, and initimidation by many. Nonetheless, he was undeterred. He would continue to get up every day, put his uniform on, put his makeup on, and go to work.
At first I found Gay Ray to be annoying. Still insecure with my sexuality, I found the presence of this effeminate man, with his mascara and lip gloss, to be unsettling. Time passed and I got more comfortable with myself. Once I actually got to know Gay Ray, I came to have a deep respect for him. Day after day, he took a wall of shit from those who regarded him as less of a man, and he simply brushed it off….something I would eventually learn from him to do in my life.
One this particular night, Gay Ray and I were singing Me Against the Music by Britney Spears and Madonna. This was a common tradition in which Gay Ray sang the Britney lyrics and I sang the Madonna lyrics, all the while flailing our arms and screeching the lyrics in a manner that would make people laugh their asses off…..not with us……..just at us…..and we did not care. At the conclusion of this horrific singing extravaganza, in walks a tall muscular, handsome Marine. I pop up from my seat and to go talk to him.
“What’s your name?”
“My name is Ben,” he replied.
“Are you new? I have never seen you out”
“I don’t really come out often. I am stationed at Schwab,” he replies. He was referring to Camp Schwab, a Marine Corps base on the other side of the island. Gays that are stationed out there usually only came to Fellow if they have a place around Fellow to stay. The hotels around the bar were a bit pricy. Compounding this issue was that most young Marines were not allowed to have a car in Okinawa. To get around island, the Marines uses a fleet of green buses commonly known as the Green Line. These buses ferried Marines around the island between all of the Marine Corps bases. While this might seem OK, it was definitely a slap in the face to the manhood of young Marines. The Marines constantly exude a rough and tough persona, as they definitely should. However, how much of a slap is it to have to board a bus as a Marine Sergeant, look out the window and see a 19 year old Airman from Kadena Air Base driving a sleek sports car. The Air Force did not have these driving restrictions, so anyone assigned could get a license, buy a car, and drive it off base within a week of arriving…..go Air Force!
Ben was a bit of a loner. He would ride the Green Line to Camp Foster, the Marine Corps base next to Kadena Air Base, and then take a taxi to the bar. He rarely came out and rarely socialized. He seemed like he just wanted be alone that night, so I let him be. A couple of months later I saw him again, and I immediately plopped down next to him.
“Hey stranger. Haven’t seen you in a while. What’s the occasion?” I ask.
“My unit is deploying to Iraq on Monday for 6 months. I wanted to come out one last time before my deployment.” The Iraq War had devolved into a nasty Sunni-Shia civil war, so for anyone headed there, especially Marines, it was a jarring, emotional event. I never deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, but my heart fluttered whenever someone told me they were headed downrange. Wanting to take the conversation away from his deployment, I take it to what I know best: dicks fucking assholes. We talked at length about my time going out to gay bars in New York. He had been to New York a couple of times, so we had lots of notes to compare about bars we had been which ones we got laid in the most. Since he was stationed at Camp Hansen, I asked him where he was staying for the night.
“Staying out all night and then hopping on a bus in the morning,” was his matter-of-fact response. Because this idea happens to be such a recipe for disaster, because I am such a good Samaritan, and because I wanted to try and get him to show me his cock, I make a bold move on someone I considered so much more attractive than me.
“Why don’t you just come back to my house?” I asked anxious to see how we would react.
“OK,” he replied with the same matter-of-fact demeanor. I was shocked. Call it a lack of self-esteem or whatever you want, but I genuinely did not expect him to say yes so quickly….or even at all. Since the deal of him coming back was sealed, we continue to enjoy cocktails and at the end of the night, we take a cab back to my house.
We shared a kiss on the way back to my house, and I am so aroused I simply cannot wait until I get his pants off. When we arrive, we waste no time getting our clothes off and hoping in bed. Good god does he have a rockin bod! Oh my….a thick, floppy penis….my favorite kind. We roll around sucking me each other off, slapping ass, licking ass, you name it. He claims to be versatile, and since I was developing a preference towards being a top, I attempt to fuck him. Despite trying to be as gentle as possible, apparently he had not been fucked in a while and could not handle my cock. So I pull out and we take a break. I kissed him and asked him a question I would later come to regret.
“What was it about me that brought you home with me?”
This seemed like an innocent question. When laying in bed with a man, whether covered in semen or not, I always enjoyed a chat under the covers. With Ben, I was dumbfounded that I could possibly pick such a hunk of a man. So my mind was spinning with National Enquire-type intrigue. He proceeded to tell me that he just found me interesting and that honestly had not been laid in a while.
“Yeah, right. That cannot be true,” I quipped with disbelief.
“No, it’s true. It’s been a while since I got laid or even dated a guy,” he replied.
Suddenly, his eyes well up and he bursts into tears. In all the time I had been chasing men, I never had someone start crying during sex. I was mortified and did not know what to do. Most guys that have heard this story say something to the effect of, “Oh hell no! I would have gotten dressed and walked away!” However, I could not simply walk away since I was in my own house, and putting him out on the street would have been supremely cruel. So I tred to mitigate the crying.
“What’s the matter? Honey, don’t cry.”
“I’m just so alone!” He slurs. The rest of it is hard to make out because he is drunk and crying at this point. I pieced together the reason why he is crying from the words that I am able to make out. Aside from the fact that alcohol exacerbates the anguish and stress that people carry with themselves day-to-day, he is sobbing because he has such a deep sense of loneliness. He is in an isolated assignment, with scant contact with any friends or family, and cannot pull together any meaningful friendship or relationship where he is stationed. Those who do get close are simply out to take advantage of him and treating him like a piece of meat.
At this point trying to reinitiate sex was simply not an option. Granted, I certainly tried, but failed to woo him out of sobby state of depression. So I simply put my arms around him and fall asleep. The next morning we get dressed. He says he is just going to hail a taxi to the nearest Marine corps base to catch a green line bus back to Camp Schwab. I tell him not to bother. I have no problem giving him a lift all the way back to Camp Schwab. He says it is not necessary, but I insist it would take him hours to make a trip that I can make in one hour.
We talk some more on the way to his base. He apologized for getting so emotional the night before. A lot of the baggage that he was carrying just spilled out at the most inopportune moment possible. I told him it’s quite alright and to put it out of mind. We get to Camp Schwab and I park in front of the door to his barracks.
“You’re shipping out tomorrow. You think you’re going to be OK?” I ask.
“Yeah, definitely OK.” Ben replies.
“Are you nervous?” I ask.
“A little bit yeah, but I’ve been to Iraq before, so nothing new.” Ben said with somewhat of a nonchalance.
“OK, well, be safe.” I gave him a big hug because hugs between two men were OK under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell as long as it was a platonic, straight bro sports hug. Since he did not have a cell phone, and he does not have a phone in his dorm room, being incredibly cheap as he was, I give him a sheet of paper with my name on it and my email address with the hope that he and I would keep in touch. I waved goodbye and drove home, wondering if I will ever see him again.
Seven months later, as I am beginning to wrap up my tour in Japan, I get an email from Henry. He had it made it back from Iraq safely and was getting reacclimated to his unit. When he came back, he remembered the email address I had given him and shot me an email. I cannot begin to say how flattered I was that someone who came home from the chaos of Iraq somehow thought about me and sought to get in touch with me. I said cool and that I hoped to see him around. We trade emails back and forth for the next couple of weeks. We would try to make plans for the weekend, but his unit began to plan a lot of going-aways for Marines that were moving, including one for him. Aside from the fact that absolutely no one in his unit knew he was gay, as a Marine, he was never in a position to simply blow off his buddies to mysteriously disappear to some place alone. So seeing each other required particular skill on his part.
One night in June of 2007, I walked into Fellow and saw Vic and Angel, a swishy Puerto Rican Marine that I occasionally hung out with, as well as Mark. These three were huddled together around a very drunk Ben, who looked as if he was trying to ignore all these horny homos that were swooning all over him. I went to order a drink at the bar and turned around to waved hi at Ben. Ben gave a sexy, crooked smile and waved right back at me. After seeing the three homo vultures caw at Ben to no avail, I sat down in this group right next to Ben.
“Welcome home,” I say smiling.
“Thanks! I’m glad to be back.”
I instantly stole the thunder from the other three and proceeded to talk to Ben about all that he had missed. It became evident to the others that the only one who was going to share a bed with Ben that night was me. Mark and Victor gave up on flirting with Henry after seeing me swoop in and grabbing his attention. Angel on the other hand, was not having it. He took the lack of interest by Ben as an indicator that he was somehow unattractive. In my head, I’m thinking, “It’s not your looks Angel, it’s because you’re fucking cuckoo crazy!” However, I simply tried to console him after he gets a little emotional and even offered an apology for making him cry.
“No, Carlos, it’s not that you did anything wrong. It’s that I am good-looking and I should not have these fucking problems with men, yet it happens time after time. This should not happen to me because I am good-looking!”
With Angel essentially confirming my thoughts publicly, I refocused my attention on Ben.
“I remember that night you went home with me. I would love to continue where we left off.” I said with a growing erection.
“I’d like that,” Ben responded as he squeezed my thigh. “I thought about you a lot in Iraq.”
“Did you?”
“I did”
Thinking the night was mine to be had with him, I take my attention off of him briefly to socialize when out of nowhere comes Victor to disrupt my thunder a bit. He talked Ben into coming over to his house to hang out after Fellow closed. Furious at this obvious cock block attempt, I pull Victor aside.
“What the fuck are you doing? He already agreed to go home with me!” I scream-whispered.
“I know I know, he told me that. He told me to come along.”
I had to give Victor props on orchestrating this whole scheme. He saw me swoop in like a cheetah. Nonetheless, he managed to still get a couple of bites….clever bastard.
We went back to Victor place and picked up a couple of cases of beer on the way. Victor had just recently gotten permission to move off base. He moved into a spacious apartment near the Sunabe Seawall and had a pretty decent view of the ocean. I would be jealous if it was not for the fact that the Sunabe Seawall is part of the rapid approach Area for Kadena Air Base. On any given day, there were constant planes flying over his house. God forbid the base switched to launching aircraft towards the same rapid approach area. When they did, he had screechy, jarring aircraft launching from the runway over his apartment, making 100 times more noise than the ones that land. The view was definitely not worth it.
Victor, Henry and I talk for a bit while drinking beers. Surprisingly, Victor bows out and goes to bed, leaving Henry and I to ourselves. Henry and I kiss, we strip down to our underwear, makeout, suck each other off, you know, the usual suspects during sex. Then I open and start talking while we are laying on top of each other. Apparently, I did not learn my lesson from our last encounter.
“I’m really I glad I got to see you again. I have to admit it was quite flattering to hear from you as soon as you got back.”
Like clockwork, the waterworks began and Ben sobbed again about how alone he was and no one loves him. I simply could not believe that once again I was in bed with a handsome, intelligent, muscular man and he was sobbing about how lonely he was. The sobs got loud enough that I was afraid Victor was going to wake up.
“Nobody loves me!” Ben wailed.
“That’s not true!” I replied trying to calm him down. I then say the worst possible thing imaginable. To this day I kick myself for saying this in the heat of the moment.
“I love you.”
Oh lord, I actually did say those three words. Why? Why did I say that? Did I care about him? Yes. Did I have feelings and want to pursue more with him? Yes. But love? Oh hell to the no. Looking back on it, I was so desperate to get him to stop crying that I was willing to say anything. I was twenty four years old at the time, so I would think I get a pass on saying stupid things to men I like. We ended up halting sexual activity and fell asleep together on the couch.
Early in the morning, Ben got up to pee. Still drunk, he was unable to find the bathroom, so he walked out the door to the outdoor walkway and peed in a corner. He then walked back inside, closed the door, and joined me back on the couch. 5 minutes later, I heard someone banging on the door. The individual would knock on the door for 15 minutes nonstop. I was waiting for Vic to get out of bed to answer his door but he did not. The knocking stopped and I was thinking finally, I could get back to sleep. 10 minutes later, the knocking resumed and this time for twenty minutes. With Vic clearly refusing to go to his door, and with me awake at this point, I went and answered the door. At the door is one of Vic’s neighbors.
“Hello?” I say cross-eyed from drinking all night.
“Yo man, sorry to be knocking on your door, but your boy that was in his underwear came out and peed in front of my door. I understand he’s drunk and all, but the stench is strong. I need one of y’all to come and just…I don’t know maybe pour some soapy water there to make the smell go away.
In my still drunken state, I knew the neighbor was right in coming over and complaining. Furthermore, I was too drunk to pick an argument that could roil into calling the police. I apologized on behalf of Ben and told him that I would deal with it. I then immediately went over to Vic’s kitchen sink, filled a pitcher and squeezed a large amount of dishwashing soap into the pitcher. I walked over to the scene of the crime….oh bitch it really did wreak! Ben had pissed on the concrete in the corner and onto a pizza box the neighbor had put outside to throw in the garbage can downstairs. I picked up the peed-on pizza box and then poured the pitcher of soapy water all over the area where Henry peed. I then walked back to Vic’s door and dropped the box in front of the door. By this point Henry was already sitting up on the couch and Victor at his computer doing homework.
“What happened?” Henry asked.
“You got up and peed near a neighbor’s door. He then knocked on the door to complain about it.” I said.
“Oh shit, sorry about that,” Ben lamented.
“No worries,” I said with a smile.
We both take a sip of water and lie back down on the couch. Victor comes walking through the living room and sees us on his small couch.
“Hey, if you are still sleeping, you can sleep in my bed,” says Victor. He would later regret making this offer to Ben and I.
“Cool, Thanks!” Both of us replied as we immediately got up to go to Victor’s bed. As we are laid there I was trying to read Ben and see where he was mentally. He once again played the crying games last night, but when he was sober his emotions seemed to be in much better check. I was secretly hoping he was too drunk to remember the deeply regretful, “I love you,” I expressed while he was crying. So I dived in and kisssed him….jackpot. The underwear flies off as we suck each other’s cocks at the same time. Oh boy is he horny to get his rocks off. I then jump up to kiss and as his hands are caressing me. Without unlocking my lips, I guided his fingers over to my ass. Remembering he was versatile in name only, I tried to get him to finger me…..and he took the bait. Suspecting he was ready for it, I sat on his dick. While lying on his back, I saw his eyes roll back as he grabbed me by my waist and moved me up and down on his cock.
“Feeling good?” I asked as we slowed down to a steady up and down.
“Fuck yeah!” He responded with that crooked smile I was endeared to.
All this fucking distracted me from the fact that I was still in Victor’s apartment. Whether he overheard us or not, or whether he barged in to look for something, in came Victor through the door while Ben had his dick up my ass. Vic, Ben and I all froze as we stared at each other in disbelief. Suddenly, Ben broke the silence.
“Do you mind?” He asked as Victor began to clamor. He then silently shut the door, and Ben and I looked at each other, shrugged, and kept fucking to our hearts content. When we were done, we got dressed and headed out back to the living room.
“Did you have a good time?” Vic asked sarcastically.
“Why yes, thanks for asking!” I replied. I would later apologize to Victor over the phone for fucking on his bed. His response as to why he was pissed was quite surprising.
“I’m not mad at the fact that you two fucked in my bed. I am mad at the fact that I just bought that mattress and did not get to have sex with a guy in bed before you did!”
With such a perplexing answer, I knew Victor would get over it. After we left Victor’s apartment, we went and ate at a nice Japanese steakhouse down the street from where Victor lived. We ate for a bit and after I drove him back to Camp Schwab, this time a little more affectionate in the car than before. I drop him off and bid him goodbye till next time. I sent him an email the next day pouring out the feelings I had for him, even suggesting he made me rethink my plans for my future in the Air Force. I wrote all of this minus use of the “L-word” since I did not want to jog his memory. We exchanged emails for a bit till he sends me one email saying that he had gone through the emails we sent each other. In a moment of clarity, he said it was best that we did not get ahead of ourselves and that we needed to be rational about our prospects. He was getting out and going back to school while I was going my next assignment. All in all, he felt we should just keep things loose and enjoy the rest of the time we had in Okinawa. It stinged to read this from him, but nonetheless, I certainly appreciated his honesty.
Why was I so attracted to a man that had obvious mental health problems that came out with alcohol? Why was I so entranced by his good-looks, demeanor, and intelligence….at least when was sober? Why did I allow myself to become so infatuated with a man that I knew I could not rationally hold onto? He was right after all about us parting ways and going in different directions. Aside from overt problems with alcohol and the looming future, I just hoped there was a way for us to have a wonderful relationship. Maybe it’s naivette a twenty something carries around that causes such a thought process. Or maybe it’s because I had not learned my lesson about chasing military men with baggage.
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Chapter 6: The Alcoholic
About a month after Ben left for Iraq, I went Fellow alone on a weekend when neither Roni, Vic, nor Ace were able to make it. Furthermore, because it was not a payday weekend, the bar was empty of Americans…except for one. He was a young looking guy, hopefully not too young. I ordered a drink and walked up the guy.
“Hey! You new?” I asked with a bit of a flirty smile.
“No. I just came back from Iraq. Been in Okinawa since 2004.” He said.
“I’m Carlos,” I say as I extend my hand.
“My name’s Troy.” He replied as he shook it.
Troy was a Marine and had been deployed to Iraq since early 2006. He had just come back to Okinawa and was on acclimation time from work. We went back and forth about what he had missed. I had been coming to Fellow almost consistently since December 2005, and yet I had never seen him around before he left on deployment. He told me that his time was scant before leaving and that he was not out a whole lot. The whole time he had this chip on his should as if he was constantly trying to see what kind of reaction he could provoke out of me. Whether it was how flamboyant I was, how much of a lousy karaoke singer I was, he was relentless in dumping on me. When it became clear that I was undeterred, he began to get intrigued. It was as if he was testing to see how much thick skin I had. Whether this was a Marine thing or not, I had no fucking clue.
“I don’t even know why I am out. I should not even be here,” Troy said as he looked around the bar.
“Why?” I curiously inquire.
“I’m on restriction because I am a bit of a trouble-maker,” he responds.
Trouble maker was putting it lightly. Troy had been on base restriction because he had numerous incidents of public drunkenness on top of drinking u******e. In Japan, the minimum drinking age is 20, but for Marines, it is 21. Because of this he was required to undergo alcohol abuse treatment. By virtue of being on treatment, setting foot in a bar and drinking was out of the question, even if Mitchell had recently turned 21. Nonetheless, there he was, drinking and staring me down.
“OK, since you are not allowed to be in a bar and you are under curfew, what’s your plan?” I asked curious as to whether he was as crazy as Ben.
“Just gonna stay out and sneek back on base after curfew,” is his bright idea for avoiding trouble. Seriously, what is it about Marines that they do not know when to call it a night? Granted, his base was much closer by than Ben’s, but still, it was a recipe for disaster.
“Well, that’s stupid. Why don’t you just come back to my house. I am off base and can drive you back to Camp Foster in the morning.” I asked.
“OK. What do you wanna do at your house?” Troy asked with a smile.
“Well, you are just going to have to find out.”
We go back to my house and I relish the fact that Troy was a mostly a bottom. The sex was great. At the same time, I was a bit intrigued by him. Yes, he had the whole serious bad boy thing going on, but he was very attentive and smart.
“I have to admit, I kinda like you. Maybe we could see each other regularly.” I said.
“You mean like dating?” Ben asks.
“Yeah.”
Yes, I know. I was quick to tame men, but when you are 23, have your own money, and are surrounded by interesting men, you are more than willing to take a risk on a whim. We exchanged numbers before heading to Camp Foster. When we arrived at his dormitory, he shocked me right before getting out of the car. Normally, on a military base, gay men were trained to exercise extreme caution when engaging in public displays of affection, even with things as small holding hands. However, on this day, he looked to his left, he looked to his right, and then right there, he leaned over and kissed me. Now that left me impressed! Someone so brazen that he would sneak a kiss on a base gets my attention fast.
Troy and I would end up religiously spending time together. Not just on the weekends either. On several occasions during the week, we went out to eat at some restaurant or go to a movie, then would drive back to my house to spend the night. The next day, we would get up extra early to drive over to Camp Foster so that I could drop him off at his dorms with enough time to change into his uniform and go to work. At my house, Mitchell developed a fondness for my clothes. Like some prissy gay couple, we would go to Fellow wearing shirts of the same design, just different color with matching sunglasses. While some of the guys like Ernesto would say, “Ahhh, so cute!” other guys like Roni would say, “Ugh, homo….gross!” Nonetheless, we marched to our own beat.
In a sign of how serious we were getting, Troy called me and said he wanted me to meet his friends on a Saturday night. It was the same night as a Loveball party, so I said it had to be early in the night so that we could make it to the party at a decent hour. These friends were significant in that when they stuck up for Troy when he was outed to his unit. He confided in a girl in his unit about being gay and thought he could trust her. Unfortunately, this girl turned around and told everyone in his unit. People spreading rumors about guys being gay and girls being lesbian was terribly common, so the chain of command took no action absent of tangible evidence that Troy was gay. Nonetheless, Troy was ostracized and taunted to no end, until these two threatened to kick some ass for picking on Troy. Though still an outlier in his unit, at least he had these two.
First, Troy showed me his room. At the time, he had no bunk mate, so we wasted no time fooling around on his bed and sucking each other off. Yeah…I got frisky with a Marine in his dorm room….top that! Afterward, we went over to his buddies’ dorm room. From the get go these two were fucking cool….and I have to admit….I was sizing them up the whole time we were talking. The muscular one was John and the stocky, bald one was Dave (names given because I could not remember their real names).
“So what are you guys doing tonight?” Asked John
“We are headed to this party called Loveball,” responded Troy
“What’s Loveball?” Asked Dave.
“It’s gay dance party in at this nightclub in Naha. All of our gays are headed there. It’s a fucking amazing party.”
Looking intrigued, John asked, “Can we go?” Dave jumped in with, “Yeah, can we go?” Troy and I stared at each other in disbelief. Here we had 2 beefy, butch, straight men asking 2 gay men if they can go to the gay dance party. Un-fucking-believable!
“Sure!” Troy and I said at the same time.
As soon as they finished their beers, we all jumped in my car and headed down to Naha for the Loveball. Over the course of the drive, they kept saying how excited they were to be going to this. Troy and I keep exchanging amusing looks that say, “Why are they so excited?” We got there and said hi to our gays and sat in the lounge area above the dance floor. After some drinks, we headed down to the floor. The two Marines were having such an amazing time that both of them took their shirts off as we were all dancing together. These two were starting to turn into gifts that kept on giving! We spent the night dancing, drinking, posing for pictures, and rubbing chests…..amazing!
At 3am, Troy was tuckered out and ready to go. As we headed to the car, the two straight Marines ask where we were going. To avoid getting busted for curfew, I invited the Marines to crash at my place and pound down some beers. On the way back to my house, the two Marines turn their questions to Troy and I, how we met, what we did together, where we went, all innocent banter until they begin to ask us about how intimate Troy and I were.
“Yes, Troy and I do have sex,” I politely responded when asked by Dave.
“You guys do anal?” Asks John
“Yes….Troy typically is the bottom and I am typically the top”
“What’s that like?” Dave asked.
“What’s what like?” I replied confused.
“Ya know….to take it in the ass?”
Part of what made Troy and I click is that we both had the same, open outlook on sex. We both were welcoming of questions of sex and had no problem objectively discussing our sexuality to anyone that was genuinely curious.
“It hurts at first….” Started Troy.
“….but after doing it a lot, it eventually feels GREAT!” I finished. John pivoted the conversation to blowjobs.
“What’s it like to get blown by a dude?” This one prompted an easy response by me.
“If you close your eyes, you cannot tell the difference! However, I do think that blowjobs from men are so much better!” I said with a grin.
“Seriously?” Asked Dave
“Why wouldn’t they be? We have dicks. Who better to know what feels good and what doesn’t?!” I fired back.
“That’s a good point.” Says John.
We stopped at a convenience store on the way home and picked up a case of Heineken beer. When we got to my house, we pulled the coffee table chairs towards my couch. Mitchell and the two Marines went off on some Marine Corps, jargon-filled banter that lost my interest quickly. Troy got up to go to my room and asked me to come along. While the other two continued yapping, Troy whispers to me, “Hey! Is it ok if I mess around with John?
“He’s gay?” I said while my jaw dropped.
“No….it’s just he’s been curious for a while” Mitchell said.
“No problem….go for it!” I said with a smile. Aside from being very open about our sexuality, Troy and I were in an open relationship, so sex with other people was not out of the question.
“Thanks babe!” Mitchell said as he gave me a quick kiss. I told the three that I was going to bed. An hour later something caused me to wake up. When I woke up, Dave was in bed next to me. I was stunned at how he crawled in bed with me without me noticing. Shrugging it off, I went to take a piss. Troy was on the couch with John talking quietly. I then crawled back in bed, but this time I turned over to stare at Dave. He was in bed with nothing but a tank top undershirt, and some cute tidy-whitey underwear. Staring at him in his underwear while he was in bed with me provoked me to quickly get hard. Who wouldn’t be aroused in such a situation?!
Whether it was how drunk I was, or how aroused I was, something came over me. I inched closer to Dave so that our bodies were touching. I then placed my right arm on his chest and began rubbing his chest. Nothing happened. I pulled my hand down to his stomach and began to caress it. Still nothing. I then went for it. I put my hand on his dick. Thick and floppy….just how I like ‘em. I stroked his dick through his underwear and began to feel it pulsate. I stroke it harder and feel him getting an erection. Suddenly, his left arm jerked up.
This moment felt like it happened in slow motion. I saw his arm curl and come toward my direction. “Ugh oh….this guy is about to punch me in face” is what was going through my head and I braced myself for impact. His hand, however, never touched my face. His hand never even became a fist. His left hand grabbed the seam of his underwear followed by his right hand and they tugged downward, pulling his underwear down and exposing his erect dick. I froze. “This cannot be actually happening!” I thought as I stared at his cock in the moonlight.
I went under the sheets and pulled his underwear all the way off his legs. I grabbed his cock, stroked it, and began to suck it. After playing with the head for a bit, I took a deep breath and attempted to “deepthroat” him. I hear him moan and his legs begin to flinch and move. Using my right hand, I sucked and stroked his cock at the same time, which causes him to grab the back of my head. “Yeah…suck that dick,” he whispers while I am using every dick sucking trick I have ever learned. Suddenly, I heard him moan little louder and he took a deep breath. He then shots his load in my mouth while his body twitched and trembled. I got out from under the covers to go wash my mouth out and he said the most classic line in the world when it came to gay sex.
“Hey, man. Don’t tell anyone.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t,” I said as I wiped semen off of my chin. After I spat out the rest and washed my face. I looked in the mirror and all I could say was, “Fuck yeah.”
That morning, I loaded the three Marines into my car and we all drove back to Camp Foster. The two straight Marines were a bit quiet on this car ride back while Troy and I talked about the night before at Loveball. A couple of days later, I spoke to Troy on the phone. Apparently John was not as comfortable with fooling around as Troy thought because he put a halt to the blowjob Troy was giving. I knew Mitchell was not lying because Troy gave fantastic head. I told him that Dave had no problem with his curiosity.
“Yeah, he told me you suck some good dick,” Troy replied with emphasis on “good”.
“He certainly enjoyed himself,” I fired back.
“He said it so good that if you had sat on his dick, he would have fucked you!”
Damnit! I missed a golden opportunity to get pounded by a self-identified straight Marine. Having hooked up with curious straight men in the past, I knew it could potentially be a volatile experience, so I did not want to push too hard. If I would have known he was ready for more, however, I would have had some wild acrobatic sex with this guy. Sigh….oh, well.
Up to this point I thought things were going awesome for Troy and I. I was on cloud nine throughout the week because I was with someone whom I considered to be a package. Good looks, good intellect, and very caring. With Troy getting out of the military and moving back to Utah, I contemplated applying for a duty position to Ogden Air Force Base, a base right outside of Salt Lake City. This all, however, came crashing to pieces that Friday when I picked up Troy to go to Fellow.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I fucked up big!” Troy said as he banged his head against my seat.
“What happened?”
“I admitted to my alcohol treatment counselor that I had been drinking.”
For some reason, Troy was under the impression that he could admit to alcohol relapses in his treatment sessions. Up until that week, he had kept quiet about it. He simply carried on like he was abiding by his treatment plan and keeping out of trouble during the week. In the civilian world, it is OK to admit to relapses. In the military, however, admitting to using alcohol constitutes failing your treatment program, which can lead to serious consequences. For Troy, it meant getting demoted or worse.
“Babe, I’m so sorry.” I lamented while stroking the back of his head.
“What’s done is done. I just don’t know what is going to happen next. After everything I have done, this could result in me getting kicked out. My commander is deciding what to do right now.”
We went to Fellow and tried to have a good time, but he was still pissed. On the way back to my house, he picked an argument with me.
“Why did you let me drink back there?!” He quipped.
“What do you mean. You always do. I never thought this to be a big deal. You have always drank with me and we go home together. You keep out of trouble.” I said dumbfounded that he was trying to turn his anger towards me.
“No, bullshit, you should have not let me drink!” Mitchell yelled.
The sex was lousy that night. Troy wanted me to suck him off with my head dangling over my bed before shooting on my face. He got angry when I did not want to do it because it made me dizzy. The last straw was him not wanting to even cuddle with me in bed. I simply get up and go sleep on my couch. Pissed off, I figured I can talk to him in the morning about what was bothering him. Apparently, he did not share this sentiment because as soon as he sees me on the couch the next morning, he tell me we should break up.
“Why?”
“This just isn’t working, OK?”
It’s like I was staring at a complete stranger! In a matter of days, the sweetheart I called my boyfriend turned into a vicious, uncaring, bastard. Despite being viciously dumped I still gave him a ride back to Camp Foster. Why? To this day I had no clue why I did not just let him take a cab home. He was verbally abusive and I simply took it. That night I went to Fellow and tell all my gays what happened in tears. Ace and Rhoni were furious with him. Unsurprisingly, he did not show up to Fellow. I refused to speak to Troy until Christmas one and a half months later. At the Fellow Christmas party he approached me saying the Marines decided to send him to a rehabilitation center in Monterrey, California to undergo expansive treatment.
“Good for you!” was my cold reply.
“Babe….” Troy began before I cut him off.
“Don’t call me babe”
“Carlos, I am so sorry I did that to you. You were the best thing that happened to me and I fucked it up! Can you please forgive me?
“I don’t know,” I said thinking about all of the grief he put me though
“Please,” Troy begged.
“Alright fine.” I figured he was leaving anyway, so it gave me time to get over my anger with him. Very rarely do I hold grudge into perpetuity. I genuinely was concerned for him. Thinking back, I should have not simply let him drink in my presence. The adult thing would have been to insist he complied with his order to not drink. Eventhough Rhoni and Ace vehemently disagreed, I felt like I shared part of the blame for Troy’s troubles.
Troy would complete treatment in California and return to his unit, but trouble would come right back to him when he failed a random d**g test for pot. His commander, furious at all the chances Troy was given, kicked Troy out of the Marine Corps with a bad conduct discharge. It would be years before I saw him again, broke, no job, and living with his parents in Salt Lake City. His downfall was a sobering reminder of just how much an indiscretion can cause your world to come crashing down.
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Chapter 7: Leaving Okinawa
It’s mid-June in 2007, one month before my tour ends in Okinawa. Thirty days till I left Japan and fly to my next assignment: Minot, North Dakota. Almost everytime I told someone that I was headed to Minot, the reaction was, “Aww….that fucking sucks!” or if they wanted to be mean, they would just laugh in my face. Surprisingly, I was super excited for this change of scenery. It was a new place that neither I nor anyone in my family had ever been. For my career in the military, it was a chance to start of brand new with a clean slate. I had just been promoted, so the mistakes I made as a brand new officer were officially behind me. I was ready for change. What I was not ready for was leaving behind Fellow and the gays in Okinawa.
I began to realize how much Fellow and gay community meant to me as I attended one going away party after another leading up to my departure. Ace and Roni had their going away party on the same nighy. Ace seemed very sad, but put together about the whole affair, while Rhoni could not stop crying. All of the Japanese patron, including Toru, the owner, were giving him big hugs and telling him not to be sad. After consoling Rhoni for a bit, I turn my attention to Ace. Since day 1, Ace had worked tirelessly to get in my pants, and I refuted his advances consistently. Eventually, he gave up his pursuit of me, but on the eve of his going away, he decided to give it one more shot. It is not that I found Ace to be unattractive, Ace was actually very handsome and smart. I simply regarded him as close sibling, far from even a remote love interest. However, that weekend I decided to give in and give him a going away gift he would that was guaranteed to make him smile. I go back with him to the hotel he was staying and got naked with him. We spent the evening sucking each other off and taking turns fucking each other. The next morning, I kissed Ace goodbye and I went home. It then struck me that this could potentially be the last time I ever saw a guy that I considered to be one of the closest friends I ever had. The sadness of leaving began to sink in.
Throughout the whole course of my tour at Kadena Air Base, I tended to mind my own business and not pry into the private business of others. While this on the surface was OK, it has the unintended effect of turning off my gaydar, or my ability to seek out other gays and lesbians. So I missed signs and clues that would have otherwise came up and caused me to call, “Gay!” on someone. Such was the case with Albert and Christina, two airmen in my unit that turned out to be gay. I stumbled upon this information during the going away for my the squadron enlisted superintendant towards the end of June. Heavy drinking and good times always led to loose lips. I was talking to an airman named Nelson in my unit and he alluded that he was cool with me being gay. I was so drunk, I just let the cat of the bag and said, “Thanks!”
“You know Albert and Christina are gay too, right?” He mumbled into my ear.
“What?! No, I didn’t know that!”
I proceeded to scold Nelson about outing Albert and Christina and that it was not up to him to determine who knew his friends were gay. He then went on to tell me this heart-moving story about how Albert and Christina spent scores of weekends looking for gay bars in Naha, but to no luck. If there was one way to tug at my heart strings, it’s a story of young gays struggling to find other gay people.
I grabbed a cocktail napkin and proceed to draw a map outlining where Fellow was located. I then handed the napkin to Nelson and told him he needed to give this to Albert or Christina. However, while at work on Monday, I got the feeling that maybe Nelson was too drunk on Saturday to really understand what was going on or what I was telling him. So I took two sheets of paper out of my printer and sketched the map to Fellow on both. I waited till I was alone in my office and then summoned for Christina to come to my office. When she arrived, I ask her to shut the door.
“First off, relax because you are not in trouble.” I started off.
“Yes, Sir,” said Christina.
“So…I heard from Nelson that you and Albert go to Naha in search of certain bars.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Well….you are looking in the wrong place.” I then handed her the map I sketched and said that she may see me there Friday night. I do the same bit with Albert, who then decides to mouth that he is gay. “Yeah, I know…..see you Friday,” was my response.
Friday night I walked into Fellow to see Christina and Albert fist pumping while Vic sang a song on karaoke. They screamed when I entered and we had a very rambunctious group hug.
“Thank you so much!” screamed Albert.
“I fucking love you!” screamed Christina.
“It’s the least I could do. My heart melted when Nelson told me that you two struggled to find a gay bar in Naha.”
“Yeah, we would go up to random people and say gay bar in Japanese to see if they would respond with directions. None did.” Screamed Christina
“Damn, man. I wish you would showed us this sooner! We would have been partying together a long time ago!” Albert said while giving me a hug and a big kiss
What Albert said there stuck with me after that night. I had just injected some exciting, new blood into the Fellow scene, but would not be around much longer to enjoy it. Up until my last day on Okinawa I was rushing around doing last minute errands. I was so busy that I did not have time to really digest the fact that Fellow and the gay community I was part of were about to disappear from my life. It did not hit me until my last night in Okinawa when I went out to Fellow to say goodbye to Fellow. I already had my going away the weekend prior at Fellow that was a massive amount of fun, but this time it was much more somber. Toru was not working that night, but Mark happened to be helping out at the bar and let me use his cellphone. I thanked Toru for the environment he provided Americans troops. I thanked himfor opening up his bar to us when nearly every other gay bar on the island refused. Then, while on the phone with Toru, I began to cry hysterically. Losing the community and losing Toru hit me like a brick at that moment. This was the place that showed how to strike the balance with my military life and my sexuality. It was the place that showed me that I was not alone in my struggle. Lastly, it was the place that built up my confidence and self-esteem. Arriving to Okinawa 2 years prior made me feel like my soul had died. Fellow and the gays brought me back to life.
Eventhough he was not there in person, Toru consoled me and told me I will always be welcome there and that he was happy to have met me. I said goodbye to him, gave Mark a big hug, and walked back to my hotel room sobbing. The next day, I boarded the plane, anxious as to what was going to happen next. Okinawa gave me the courage to stand tall and be proud of who I am. I was going to certainly need that courage as I travelled to Minot. So….onward.

Chapter 8: Next Stop….Isolation
With Okinawa behind me, I set my sights towards starting anew in Minot, North Dakota. Before arriving, I did an internet scan for gay bars in the state…..found nothing. I read on some blogs that there was a bar where gay men congregated somewhere in Minot…turned out the bar did not exist. I reluctantly conceded to the fact that there was not a single gay bar in the entire state of North Dakota. Gay pride, however, was a different story.
It turned out that Bismarck, North Dakota played host the Tri-state gay pride weekend. Every July, gays and lesbians from North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana rented out a camping ground and staged a pride festival in woods. Let’s simmer on that a bit. Instead of the flashy parade with floats of scantily clad men, instead of warehouse dances and block parties, the gays and lesbians of this region went deep into the woods to celebrate pride. Naturally, I was a bit terrified at the fact that the gays feel the need to congregate in the woods. It was not a good sign about the climate towards gay people, but nonetheless, I kept an open mind.
I went see my sister in Albany, NY when I got back the states because her boyfriend agreed to sell me his car. When it was time to hit the road for North Dakota, I was so eager to get there and see what this pride was about. Having left behind my gay community in Okinawa, I was determined to find a new one. What better way to make new friends than to show up to pride and say, “Hey!”? Wanting to get to North Dakota as fast as I could, I drove twelve hours to South Bend, Indiana and another 14 hours to Fargo, North Dakota in order to guarantee my attendance of the gay pride camping trip. Nearly falling asleep at the wheel several times was definitely worth it! Before I went to Bismarck, I had to make a very brief trip up to Minot Air Force Base, the base where I was to be assigned. I checked into base lodging to drop off some of my bags and to get my arrival date on record. I am not in my lodging room for more than five minutes before I jumped back in my car and headed southbound towards Bismarck.
Before going to the woods to search for gay pride camp, I decided to check into a hotel on the outskirts of Bismarck. Despite being in the military, an organization that trains you to sleep and survive outdoors, I fucking hated outdoor activities. Camping? Yeah, keep dreaming. Once checked in, I followed the directions I had copied from the internet, which took me on a crazy journey through numerous windy roads. I was on the verge of giving up when I saw a sign on a pole to the left of the road that said, ”Bismarck Pride,” with an arrow pointing down a dirt road. I drove up and saw giant white camper at the beginning of a small camp ground. A short, white haired old man saw me getting out of my car and walking towards the ground.
“Are you lost? This is a private party.”
“No, I’m here for gay pride” I reply with slight confusion. Why else would I be here? To stroll in the woods like I am fucking Goldie Locks?
“Oh….well then it’s $10 for an all weekend pass to the premises,” says the old man. He went on to apologize for being so cross with me initially, saying the pride camping trip tended to attract anti-gay protestors. Because the protestors would show up unannounced, he stood guard to the entrance of the campground. I was not sure how much damage a frail 70-year old man could do, but I played along nonetheless. He introduced himself as Joe and gave me a mini tour of the campsite.
The camping turned out to be surprisingly organized. On top of the numerous campers and tents that created a temporary community of sorts, there were also vendors selling crafts, performers, and people making and selling hamburgers and hot dogs. Because it was mostly gay men, I was not surprised to hear that guys would go jump in the river naked and have sex with each other in bushes. I mean c’mon now…..I know my peoples very well.
“Are you going on the cruise?” asked Joe.
“What cruise?” I asked curiously. The 2007 pride weekend was the first time organizers were able to offer a river boat cruise down the Missouri River. Granted, we had to be careful not to make too much noise when we passed by houses on the riverbank. Eventhough they could serve alcohol, it would have to shut down by 12:45am because by state law, liquor cannot be served after 1am. Yeah….alot of cons, but to have big gay party boat for a couple of hours was a major pro for this community.
Being adventurous, I decide, “What the hell?” and go on the cruise. At about 9pm, a couple of school buses come pick us up. After a 5 minute bus ride, we arrived at the peer. No one cared about the rules or not being able to drink after 1am because damnit, we had our own fucking party boat…..just for the gays! People were chomping at the bits for the music to begin, but more importantly, for the bar to open. Poor bartenders….they were not prepared for the voracious drinking habits of gay men in heat. As soon as they opened, they were flooded with orders of 5 cocktails of this and 4 beers of that. You could see them sweating bullets. Aside from Joe and a guy named Steve, this semi manic depressant that would commiserate over the lack of boyfriend, I really had not spoken to anyone at pride. Across the deck of the second floor, I saw this heavyset latino guy in a straw cowboy hat talking to a group of girls. I needed a smooth way to ease into a conversation. For some reason, when I was younger, it was difficult for me to simply walk up to a guy and say hello. It always had to be some smooth intro so I did not initially give away that I was into him. It had to either be jumping into a conversation midstream or responding to incessant eye contact between the two of us. When I finally trapped him with eyes, I then moved in.
“Hey, what’s your name?” I ask while trying to conjure up a sexy smirk and statuesque pose.
“Name’s Jorge.” As we talk about our backgrounds, Jorge revealed that he worked for the NBC local news station in Bismarck and went on and on about how he had to constantly catch himself from swearing because he was deathly afraid of swearing in public. I told him that I was stationed at Minot Air Force Base and a little bit about the work that I would be doing. He was familiar with the base, just not with the surrounding community. Unless there was a story to cover for work, there was no reason for him to get all adventurous and see what was in Minot. After making the drive through rolling hills of flat nothingness on my way to Bismarck, I honestly did not blame him. We were getting frisky to the point where I was considering whether to go back to my hotel or get naked with him in a tent.
“So….do you have a tent or camper?” I curiously inquired.
“Nope. Just gonna head back to my apartment.” Jorge replied to my relief.
“Want some company?” I boldly asked after a couple of rounds of cocktails.
“Sure!” He said as he pulled me in for a kiss. After the party boat comes to an end, we scrambled for his car and head back to his apartment in town. He needed to get up early, so he was more interested in getting to bed after a bit of romping. To keep it quick, I give him my famous “Hurricane BJ” that had him climaxing in no time. We cuddled for the rest of the night and woke up bright and early at 6:15am. He dropped me back off at the campsite to scoop up my car. I went into town and retrieved my bags and checked out of my unused room in Bismarck. Some would consider paying for a room I never used a waste….certainly not me! To me, unused rooms serve as an insurance policy that regardless of how the night ends, I always have a place to stay. Money well spent if you ask me!
I drove back to Minot with a dramatically better outlook on my time in North Dakota than I had when I initially pulled into Minot. Shit, on my first day in the state, I managed to locate and meet part of the gay community, I found where the annual gay pride was held, and I still had time to pick up a nice gentlemen for bedroom fun….all in one day! North Dakota was going to be austere, but my first day gave me a lot of hope. Unfortunately, getting acclimated to the base would light that hope on fire within three months.
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Chapter 9: The Investigation
New base, new job, new rank…..I arrived at Minot Air Force Base eager to start anew. I think back at how much of an outrage I provoked as an effeminate officer back in Okinawa. While I was not ashamed of myself, I definitely had a renewed interest in my mannerisms. I wanted to avoid effeminate behavior, but trying to “butch it up” proved to be an abject failure in Okinawa. I thought that perhaps I could strike some sort of androgynous, happy medium. Not butch, not effeminate, just as monotone as possible when around other military members.
My sponsor Zeke greets me at lobby of base lodging and we head over to the maintenance complex in base to in process. I was assigned to the missile wing at Minot, a wing that is in charge of the maintaining and operating Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles that were dispersed all over northwest North Dakota. Within the maintenance organization, I was assigned to the Vehicles and Equipment Section of the 91st Maintenance Operations Squadron.
At first glance my inprocessing to the unit was cordial. My commander and other officers were very welcoming. Any question I had was swiftly addressed and answered. Looking to my job, I immediately get started with acquiring all of my necessary certifications. One of the other sections, The Matieriel Handling Team, was responsible for transporting rocket components to and from missile silos. By regulation, the section was required to have an officer certified as a convoy commander to escort the convoy to and from the silos. While most officers spent months acquiring this certification, I aggressively worked on the convoy commander training. While other young officers were staying back at base with other duties, I was constantly on missions to silos getting the training I needed. I got to know each of the airmen closely on these trips, and by all accounts, everything was smooth as gravy.
At the beginning of October, a mission out to a silo, ended significantly early, so I was actually back to my base by 4pm. We would travel out to these silos with satellite phones since cell towers were scarce in this region. I typically would have my cell off for the majority of these convoys. On this particuIar day, powered on my cell phone upon return to base and found that I had a voicemail from one of the other officers in my unit. Melissa, a Lieutenant in the 91st Missile Maintenance Squadron, called me frantically saying my commander wanted to see me. She said it had to do with some photos online and that I was being investigated for violating Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
I felt dizzy and ill after hearing this message. How the hell could this have happened? I had been so careful about the privacy settings on my Facebook and MySpace accounts. I was meticulous in making sure none of my pictures had any homosexual conduct in them, as defined by the Air Force Homosexual Conduct Training I had to take every year. No joke….we actually had training on what constituted gay sexuality and what did not. The training was mandatory for everyone in the Armed Forces and you can bet the gays and lesbians were taking notes to see just how much they could get away with. Furthermore, I could have sworn that I had placed strict privacy settings on those photos, making sure they were only available to friends at the most. As soon as I turned in my gear from the mission, I made a mad dash for the base library in order to get on the internet. I checked my MySpace page and the photos I had uploaded…there were safe. I then turned to my Facebook page and my reaction was “Oh shit!” While my graphic photos were under lock and key, the pictures of me and my gay friends, while out at gay bars, and having a take your shirt off good time…..yeah those pictures were loud and clear available to the public.
One thing to understand is that I signed up for Facebook when it was still a college and university social network back in 2004. Going public as a social network had just recently happened and I did not realize how quickly it would overtake MySpace in popularity. I may have taken the proper steps with my MySpace account, but forgot to do the same with Facebook. Because of my ineptitude, pictures of me with my shirt off, swinging on stripper poles, and rolling on the floor next to a guy grabbing his ankles, were 100% public for the entire maintenance organization to see. I immediately lock down the albums that were public and headed back to the maintenance complex to find my boss.
I find him in his office alone and he proceeded to shut the door behind me to have a one-on-one conversation. I was shaking….preparing to make an aggressive defense of my photos. I mean sure, the photos were racy, but I had not violated the policy by publishing photos of me kissing a man, holding hands with a man, groping a man, or anything else deemed flirtacious or sexual.
Thankfully, I had locked down the photos so fast that almost no one else had gotten to see them. My boss confirmed what Melissa had told me, but added that he had not seen the photos. The commander had opened the investigation, viewed the photos and immediately closed the investigation. Furthermore, Lieutenant Colonel Fabian, my commander, wanted to see me because he personally wanted to assure me that he was on my side in this matter. I breathed a bit of a sigh of relief, but nonetheless, I was still on edge about having to face my commander about pictures of me having a drunken good time.
I walked into my commander’s office. When he saw me, he asked me to sit down in his office and he closed the door.
“First, off I want you to relax because you are not in any trouble,” Lt Col Fabian started off.
“OK,” I replied, though still nervous as fuck. He proceeded to tell me that he had conducted an investigation into homosexual conduct after allegations were raised by members of the Materiel Handling Team. Allegedly, some airmen had looked me up on Facebook and commented about my photos the next day in the presence of one of their sergeants. My commander did not specifically name names, but there was only one hardline Seven Day Adventist in that shop that would have ever made a stink about my photos….but I digress. This person immediately went to Lt Col Fabian demanding an inquiry into potential homosexual conduct. During the Bush years, if commanders received accusations of homosexual conduct along with some potential evidence, they were required to investigate. Even if the accusations were flimsy, the commanders were nonetheless required by law to open an inquiry to determine if homosexual conduct had been committed.
First, Lt Col Fabian contacted a local detachment of the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) to request an investigation. OSI is the Air Force’s criminal investigation branch and is skilled at conducting inquiries toward violations of law. OSI declined, citing an executive order by President Bill Clinton that barred criminal investigation branches from investigating homosexual conduct. During the mid 1990’s the agencies landed themselves in hot water with the White House after reports surfaced that agents were going undercover at gay bars in an attempt to catch servicemembers and extort them for information on other LGBT servicemembers. It kind of defeated the purpose of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell if you had military agents aggressively pursuing servicemembers in a witch-hunt manner, so President Clinton banned the practice. Lt Col Fabian then went to Facebook to see the pictures himself. Back in 2007, Facebook was off limits to the military computer system, so my commander had to file for approval to look at my racy photos. In his application, he had to establish that viewing pictures of me swinging around on a stripper pole was necessary for conducting official business. This almost made me laugh out loud upon hearing. I then reminded myself that those were my pictures, and I calmed down quickly.
After viewing my pictures, Lt Col Fabian concluded that the accusations against me were facetious and confronted the sergeant about it. The sergeant proceeded to criticize the way I walk, the way I carry myself, and the way I talk to insist that I must be gay and that my commander must have me discharged immediately.
“I remind the gentlemen that such things have zero bearing on an investigation. I also, told him, rather firmly, that talking in such a way about a commissioned officer, even if he is just a Lieutenant, is still considered disrespecting an officer, something that is a crime under the Uniform Code of Military Justice,” Lt Col Fabian said with a bit of a smile. According to him, the sergeant immediately pipped down and left the building.
“Ya know, Carlos, while you certainly did not do anything wrong in those photos, I must admit I found them to be quite racy. You might want to consider blocking them,” Colonel Rendell said.
“Way ahead of you, Sir. Took care of that before I came here,” I swiftly respond.
“Good. Ya know Carlos, I just want to say…..my wife has a cousin that is….ugh…he reminds me a lot of you. Ya know……he….him and I are close. So, I kind of understand…..”
“Sir, I understand what you’re trying to say.” It was dead obvious Lt Col Fabian was trying to say his wife’s cousin was gay. He was trying to say he was gay and effeminate, just like me, and that it was OK. Because of the policy, he could not overtly say this. Instead, he had to be nuanced in his discussion of what kind of a man I was compared to his wife’s cousin.
“Good! I just didn’t want to have the impression that I or any of the other officers thought you negatively for any reason.” Again, my commander was referring to the fact that I was an effeminate gay man. He then spoke about the conversation he had with Colonel Loomis, the 91st Maintenance Group Commander and Lt Col Fabian’s boss. Col Loomis was allegedly furious that such a nonsensical accusation had been brought against one of his officers based off of no evidence. He was so pissed that he directed a “Gag order” at every single officer under his command. He personally told all of them that they were forbidden from engaging in any discussion of my sexuality and that if they observed an enlisted member raising an accusation that I was gay, to “Put an end to it.” With that, Lt Col Fabian shook my hand, I left his office, got in my car and drove home.
Not even five minutes after I left the base, I was in tears. These were not tears of relief. Yes, I had beaten back a homosexual conduct investigation, something many gay and lesbians were unable to successfully do. However, for the second time since I came on active duty, I had someone attempt to come after me using DADT. The first time was in Okinawa, when a Captain from the Communications Squadron approached my commander at the time, Lt Col Yankovich, with internet logs showing that I had logged onto Advocate.com, the online division of The Advocate, an LGBT media outlet. Lt Col Yankovich quickly dismissed the evidence as a “nothing burger” since reading LGBT-focused news was not considered homosexual conduct. There was no official investigation. This time, however there was an official investigation into homosexual conduct, an investigation that took me by surprise. You have to understand, setting aside these two incidents, the harassment I experienced was subtle. Getting weird looks when I gave a presentation. Being corrected about how to carry myself in uniform. Being shunned by straight officers. All of those incidents palled in comparison to the two incidents. To put in other words, I was lulled into a false sense of security that as long as I did not cross the line, I was untouchable. Well, apparently, the line was not enough for someone to try and nail me for homosexual conduct. Thankfully, I had two understanding commanders that had my back. I was definitely one of the lucky ones. There are tons of stories of commanders taking a harsh tone with the accused, saying that they, “Brought the trouble upon themselves”. Through the gay g****vine, I heard numerous stories of commanders, knowing they had flimsy evidence of homosexual conduct, attempt to push for discharge anyway, using other avenues such as discharge for “unprofessional behavior” or “failure to acclimate to the military environment.” I had no such issue in either case, but simply undergoing the process was enough to scare the shit out of me. What am I going to do now that I have experienced this for the second time? I was sure the rumors of what happened had already spread like wildfire throughout the missile wing, so what could I possibly do when I went to work the next day? In the end, after crying myself to sleep, I put my uniform on the next day, and went into work like nothing had happened. No one questioned me or made any comments to me. Work went on like nothing had happened. While comforting, it was not enough. I needed to be surrounded by trustworthy colleagues. I needed colleagues that I could hang out with on the weekend and trust with the truth of my sexuality. When I was out of uniform, I needed to live out loud surrounded by people who would have an appreciation for me being open and honest. So, I pick up the phone and call the one person in Minot I knew from which I could seek comfort.
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Chapter 10: The Odd Squad
I met Melissa on my first day of work at Minot. Zeke took me around to meet the other officers as I got started with inprocessing. As we were walking back towards his car, Zeke saw Melissa and waived at her to come meet me. She had just arrived a couple of months prior and was still experiencing the same culture shock that I did. Over the course of a couple of weeks we would see each other in passing and eventually we exchanged numbers in order to hang out one of those days. We seemed to gravitate to each other, particularly because she grew up in South Bronx and I use to stay with my aunt in the Riverdale section of the Bronx during my breaks in college. Granted, my New York experience involved meeting men downtown for anonymous sex, whereas hers was growing up in the same house and playing basketball in high school. Clearly, nothing in common when it came to interests, but nonetheless, I considered her a familiar face.
In mid-August of 2007, I received temporary duty orders to attend the Missile Maintenance Course in Lompoc, California. Eventhough, I was going to be in school, I considered this to be a 3 week paid vacation given my close proximity to the gay communities in San Francisco, San Diego, and Palm Springs. Given the massive culture shock of moving to a state that had absolutely zero gay bars, walking up to Castro Street in San Francisco was a breath of fresh air. Every weekend, I was on the road to some destination, and every weekend, Melissa and I would text each other about what I was doing. I would tell her how much fun I was having minus all the gay sex that I was having every weekend. She would say how jealous she was given the fact the unit was preparing for an inspection and she was slammed with work. Meanwhile, I was at a gay bar flirting with a man and sipping a cocktail thanking baby Jesus that I got scooped up for military training in Southern California. As I got more and more comfortable with Melissa, I came to the conclusion that I needed to come out to her. Granted, there was a small part of me that was nervous about this. Anytime you confess your sexual orientation, there is always the risk of backfire. Being in a new place and living in an arguably conservative community reminded me of these risks. Nonetheless, I had a good feeling about her.
When I came home from my temporary assignment, we continued to see each other in passing at work. We went to lunch together one day and there I meet her friend Dawn. Dawn also grew up in New York, but her family relocated to Florida, where she graduated from Florida State University. She was selected to be a missile operations officer, coming to Minot for her first assignment. At lunch I was trying to see if I can tell Melissa that I was gay without actually saying it. I know that’s hard to comprehend, but I figured out a trick to coming out to someone without actually saying the words, “I’m gay.” It’s simple, just namedrop gay bars you have been to and see if they recognize any of the names. This way, if they recognize the bars, they figure out what you are trying to say. If they do not recognize the names, then you have not incriminated yourself under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. So I proceeded to do this with Melissa and Dawn, namedropping gay bars that I frequented in New York City. Neither Melissa nor Dawn had a clue about any of the places I was referring to and I thought it was a useless attempt. Later that day, I get a text message from Melissa.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” she texts me.
I swallowed and nervously replied, “Sure.” I knew she was going to ask me if I was gay.
“Are you gay?” She asks.
Though I felt compelled to come out to her, I was simply not ready to be confronted like this. Moreover, this was happening via text, which meant that if coming out backfires, there was a papertrail that could be used against me. I needed a way out of texting about my sexual orientation.
“We’ll talk later,” is my reply. A slight admission that I am not straight, but not enough to get me investigated. Her reply to this made my jaw drop.
“Cool….me too.”
How crazy is it that I was nervous about telling her I was gay and it turned out, Melissa was a lesbian! “We’ll definitely talk later!” I reply.
That night we spoke on the phone and I just poured my heart out to her about all of my gay experiences in Okinawa and prior to the military. Similar to me, Melissa came out in high school. Different from me, however, was how often Melissa got laid while she attended the Air Force Academy. Holy crap, this girl had balls. I mean to sneak around and hook up with other girls at a military academy, where your life is under lockdown and you are constantly being monitored, is simply mind boggling to me. She said it was actually quite common for gays and lesbians to fool around there. According to her, gay and lesbians were not discrete about their relations and talked very openly about them to friends, roomates, and other people in their units. I was amazed and impressed all at the same.
Melissa graduated from the Air Force Academy and was selected to attend pilot training at Vance Air Force Base, Oklahoma. Unfortunately, Melissa was unable to finish because she realized she was deathly afraid of being in the cockpit of an airplane when she took her first solo flight. The silver lining to this is that while Melissa was at Vance she met a girl named Jane. The two quickly got serious and when it was time for Melissa to leave Vance, Jane ended up coming with her. Melissa was sent to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware while the Air Force figured out what to do with her. After a couple of months, she found out she would be retrained to be a munitions officer like me with her first operational assignment being Minot Air Force Base.
Upon arrival, she went to great length to conceal her relationship with another woman. She has her girlfriend stay in the hotel room while Melissa went house and apartment hunting. When the property manager asks if anyone will be residing with her, she replied that her friend Jane was moving to the area and she would like to share a residence with her. At work, she discloses the “roommate” living situation, not just as a way to dissuade other officers from just stopping in unannounced, but also because if she was ever seen in public with Jane, she could confirm the roommate situation because they would have already been told about it. Seriously, I had to give Melissa a lot of props for being able to sustain her living situation completely under the radar of her neighbors, people in her unit, hell, even from me!
Excited, we planned a get together for that Friday at her house. I could not be happier. I could finally talk openly about all of my adventures in gay life to people who could actually have an appreciation for it. I arrived that Friday with a couple of bottles of wine and am greeted at the door by her girlfriend. I give her the biggest hug like we had been friends for years. On the couch I saw Dawn, which almost made me say, “Hey Lezzie” to her as well, but for some reason I hesitated.
“Melissa…..is Dawn a lesbian?” I whispered in the kitchen while Jane and Dawn watch a movie on TV.
“No, she’s straight,” Melissa replied.
“Does she know about you and me?” I asked nervously.
“No, but I kinda wanna let her in on it.”
“Me too, Dawn’s fucking cool!”
After a bit of banter about work, Melissa and I laid it out to Dawn that the reason she was invited was because we wanted to tell her that Melissa and I were gay. Melissa then points to Jane and told Dawn that they were a couple. While she was not surprised to find out I was gay, she was certainly shocked about Melissa. She had been over to Melissa’s on several occasions and bought the whole roommate bit hook line and sinker. Nonetheless, she understood the reason to conceal the relationship and was thrilled for Melissa to let her in on the secret. The rest of the evening was stolen by me, where I proceeded to talk about all things gay from Okinawa to the present. We then drank some wine and laughed our asses off while watching DVD’s of the series Queer as Folk. The sense of community I had when I lived in Okinawa had returned. Sure….maybe on a smaller scale, but nonetheless, I had achieved it once more.
Melissa was the first person to warn me about the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell investigation that was pending, and was the first person I turned to in the aftermath. I recounted the details to her in tears because of how vulnerable I felt and how I was not even given a chance at my new unit before people attempted to come after me. She said she was so sorry about what had happened and asked if there was anything she could do to help. My response was simple…..let’s keep having out get togethers on Friday when possible with myself, Melissa, Dawn, and Jane. She agreed. With the exception of a few instances over the course of that first year in North Dakota, the four of us religiously got together at Melissa’s house or at my apartment. This gathering was so regular that we nicknamed ourselves, “The Odd Squad.”
The nickname, “Odd Squad” came from the fact that the four of us felt so ostracized from the military community in that area that we sought refuge by gathering amongst ourselves. For Melissa, Jane, and I, it was because of our sexual orientation. For Dawn, however, it was because of her religion. Dawn defected from Christianity years ago and became involved with Wicca, the pagan witchcraft religion. She went into great detail about the local coven she was a part and the nature theme behind all of their gatherings. Unfortunately, Dawn’s new found spirituality did not sit well with the majority of her colleagues. As I said before, the Air Force as an institution was very religiously conservative. Anyone found to not praise Jesus, or at least fake it, was cast off to the fringes of military social life. So when Dawn and Melissa became friends, they instantly bonded because Melissa and Jane were by no means religious.
It did not take long for my associations with Dawn and Melissa to spread. When it came to Melissa, the rumors were pretty Benign. Commanders and officers commented on how close we were as friends. As a result, whenever special projects were handed to one of us, such as planning the wing’s holiday party in December or the maintenance group’s holiday party a week after the wing party, it was a project both of us ended up working on. We would be seen frequently talking about the work we had to do together. Melissa and I were good friends, but we always managed to set aside the personal aspects of our relationship in uniform and focus on business. The work we did on these two projects would pay off huge for Melissa and me. When the group commander’s executive officer rotated out to a different position, Melissa got picked up to be the replacement. Being an executive officer to a group commander was huge! You got quick name recognition by Colonels and Generals at various echelons of command because if they needed to talk to your boss, you were the gatekeeper. When you called a lower ranking commander on behalf of your boss, any instructions you gave came with the force of your boss. All of this power…in the hands of a feisty lesbian who one time taught me how to properly engage in a knife fight.
When she was the executive officer, I would find myself in the commander’s office chatting with her during any free time that I had. We would talk so extensively that we often forgot where we were during conversation.
“So….you still planning on coming over for another meeting of the Odd Squad tonight?” She asked with a smile.
“Why would I miss it?! I was planning on dropping by the bottle shop to pick up some wine. “ Like me, Melissa and Dawn were connoisseurs of cheap wine. I would bring over a couple of bottles of white zinfandel and we pretended it was some fancy French champagne. “Is there anything you wanted me to pick up?”
“Yeah, I’m really craving that one you brought over last time,” Melissa replied.
“The blush?” Blush was a variant of zinfandel that I had discovered in the bottle shop one Friday night.
“Yeah, that one, if you could please.”
Now, I am not sure whether it was the conversation of cheap wine or whether he did not hear the whole conversation, but Lieutenant Colonel Boris, the deputy group commander at the time, did not approve of our conversation about “blush.”
“Excuse me….blush?! That is NOT an appropriate maintenance officer conversation!” he yelled from his office on the other side of the wall.
Panicking, we scramble for some damage control. “No, Sir! We were talking about what kind of wine Lieutenant Coronado was going to buy for this Friday.”
“Oh.” Lieutenant Colonel Boris replied. “Well….I still don’t think that’s an appropriate maintenance officer conversation.” We stifled our laughs as much as possible after he said this. I then simply told her that I would text her later.
My association with Dawn however, took on a more interesting tone. Odd Squad Friday began to be less frequent because Jane and Melissa were having some problems. I still saw Melissa and we still hung out a lot, it was just that our Friday night hangouts were not as much of an option. So I gravitated towards Dawn a bit. Whether it was going out to bars together, hanging out at her apartment with her cats, or going to see comedy shows, Dawn and I rolled together frequently. I did not even bother with how the perception was about our friendship looked until one day Dawn came up to me giggling about a conversation she had with one of the missile operators in her unit.
Being in Officer-in-charge of Vehicles and Equipment Section, I was not only in charge of the entire vehicle fleet for the maintenance technicians, but I also managed the vehicle fleet for the missile operators that they used to travel and from the control centers out in the missile silo complex. This position gave me a bit of leverage over missile operators in the sense that if they did not follow procedures when utilizing their vehicles, I could report them to them to their commander and they would get into trouble. So naturally, they hated me and would constantly try to split hairs with me over responsibilities they had to the vehicles they utilized, namely ensuring they were washed and vacuumed. Being officers, they thought they were too good to have to clean up after themselves, and I would have to give them a big dose of reality. When their complaints to their commanders fell on deaf ears, they turned to the one person whom they thought had leverage over me….Dawn.
She told me that while she was out to lunch, one of her buddies threw down complaining about how much of an asshole I was when it came to making them clean their vehicles, even if they did not get dirty or the trip was quick. Others echoed, claiming that they had been to other bases and they never had to clean up after themselves…apparently they were given white glove treatment compared to me. Finally one guy turned to Dawn and asked if she could reason with me and get me to be more lenient.
“I don’t know if Carlos will listen to me. Don’t get me wrong, you guys have valid claims about how much of a waste of time it can be at times. But, having known Carlos for a while, and having spoken to him about, I also understand the position he is in to have to enforce this,” Dawn responded to my defense.
“Dawn, c’mon, if anyone can reason with him it is you. I mean let’s be real. It’s no secret that you two are dating,” says one the missile operators. Unbelievable! I have gone from being the gayest officer on base to apparently dating Dawn just because her missile buddies constantly see us together. If the missile operators are discussing this, you can bet one of them had a conversation with my commander about it! Sure as shit, Lieutenant Colonel Rendell pulled me aside to ask of the nature of my relationship with Dawn. I was not familiar with the rumor mill, so I truthfully said that Dawn and I were simply friends. When Dawn came and told me this, the first question that came to mind is what her reply was when her buddy said we were dating.
“Honestly, Carlos. When he said that, I was just like ‘True….but I don’t want to put him in a bad position’”. Instead of denying the existence of an intimate relationship, Dawn lied and confirmed it. Well, of course, this was the reason why it had spread like wildfire! Dawn explained that initially she thought about denying it, but time after time, she had overheard people say nasty things about my sexual orientation. She wanted to throw a curveball into the rumor mill as a way to get them to stop talking about me. Sounds crazy, but boy was such a scheme effective. Time and again, gay and lesbian servicemembers conjured up fake heterosexual relationships for the specific purpose of purging rumors about their sexual orientation. Dawn did me a massive favor, and it showed what a kickass friend she turned out to be.
As isolating as life was during those days, just the thought of Dawn, Melissa, and Jane looking out for me was all that mattered. It did not matter that I did not have an entourage of boys, my girls more than made up for it. However, any suggestion that their friendship was a substitute for sexual satisfaction or the warm arm of a man was grossly mistaken. I was still on the prowl….I just had to be more creative and patient.
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Chapter 11: You Cannot Kiss my Hand
Aside from the weekend road trips all over California, another major perk of going to training in California was passing through Las Vegas. I went once on the way to California and again as I was driving back home. I had never been to Las Vegas as an adult and now I was going at the age of 24 with my own money. Thankfully, I was disciplined about gambling and made out with a couple of hundred dollars. What astounded me about Las Vegas is that the strip is super developed, but go one block east or west and you are in the hood! Surprisingly, the gay scene in Las Vegas was a little run down considering the massive tourism revenue the city generates. Nonetheless, as a gay man, I will patronize any gay establishment at least once. On the trip back to North Dakota, I stopped for 2 nights and made a point to go out and chase men.
After checking into my hotel, I hopped in a cab and headed a couple of blocks east of the strip to this gay bar called Piranha, one of the more aesthetically appealing bars with patrons that do not look like meth addicts. Good music, lots of dancing, hot go go boys, I was having a good time. One of the go go dancers was very intriguing, not because of his sex appeal, but because of his shoes. As someone that was in the military, I can spot military-issued combat boots from a mile away. Was it just a coincidence that Nellis Air Force base was only a couple of miles away? Was it just a coincidence that his boots looked exactly like the ones I wore with my uniform? Maybe I was just reading into the situation too much. Anyway, I lost interest in this go go boy when I saw this guy staring at me from across the room. Intrigued, and a little drunk, I walked up to the guy and introduced myself to him. His name was Fred. Eventhough the nightclub was crowded and the music was very loud, we attempted to tell the other a little bit about ourselves. Fred was in his mid 40s and use to work for an engineering firm in San Diego. He was good at his job, it is just that he just was bored with it and wanted some time off to do something different. So he decided to become a flight attendant with American Airlines and loved every minute of it. After some continued drinking and a little bit of dancing, I invited him back to my hotel room to get naked. Normally, I enjoyed topping in bed. Too many of my experiences being a bottom were bad because the guy topping was lousy. That night, however, I let caution go to the wind and I let Fred fuck me. Oh boy, was he good. It did not hurt when he fucked me and his muscular arms pulled me into his chest. I was in heaven!
Eventhough Fred lived in San Diego, he was based in New York City for his assigned flights. He just simply boarded American Airlines flights bound for New York, which for him were free as a flight attendant. While in New York, he stayed in an apartment that he shared with several other flight attendants. I asked him to give me a heads up about his schedule in December because I was planning to go to New York to visit my relatives and get a healthy dose of gay life. We exchanged numbers before I left and then I head home for North Dakota. Over the next couple of months, Fred and I would call each about once a week to talk about our lives in separate parts of the country. The day I was investigated, after getting off the phone with Melissa, I also called Fred, still in tears. Looking back on it, it was a bad idea to call him because Fred had no idea what I was talking to him about. I mean sure, he was well versed in Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but just had no clue about all the military issues involved with my case nor why I was still in hysterics when I had beaten the rap. All he could really tell me was that it was done and over with and I still had my career.
“What am I going to do tomorrow? Everyone is going to know about the investigation!” I said in tears.
“You don’t know that for sure. Maybe people will not say the word. I would just go in like nothing happened and press forward with your job” Fred responded. I ended up following his advice the next day while thinking about him a lot more than just some floosy I picked up in Las Vegas. Fred seemed very well put together. He was working in a job he liked, he had travelled the world, he’s funny, but best of all…..he was just as much of a slut as I was. Fred spent much of his 20s and 30s chasing men and having one night stands, so he had quite the appreciation for my stories of wild sex in the military.
A month before I flew to New York for Christmas, Fred told me his work schedule. He had a 2 day window between flights, so he proposed getting a hotel so that the two of us could have a space to romp around naked. I was sold on this idea before he even finished the sentence! A couple of days before Christmas, I flew to New York and arrive at La Guardia Airport. As promised, Fred was waiting for me at the airport to give me the hug and kiss from a man I had been craving for months. We took a shuttle to the hotel and I was simply eager to strip my clothes off and get pounded by him. He fucked me in every position imagineable over the course of 4 hours and soon as both of us came, we passed out and fell asleep. The next day we went sightseeing together. That afternoon, I peeled off to go visit my relatives and met him later that night in the West Village at the Monster Bar. He was out with his flight attendant buddies and wanted them to meet me. These men, upon meeting me gave me the “fresh meat” look and told Fred “Nice job!” We drank together while Fred’s friends start singing showtunes as a guy across the bar played the piano. At the end of the night, Fred and I took a cab back to the hotel and have another evening fuckfest before falling asleep. The next day, I confessed to Fred that I wanted something more from him than just casual sex. “Ya, I kinda like you,” I said to him.
“I like you too,” he responded.
“I know that you don’t like to rush things, but I really want to see where things go between you and I,” I said as I began to stroke his hand.
“Baby, you live so far away. Trying to build a relationship just may not work.” Fred said before kissing my hand.
“It’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
Don’t get me wrong. Fred was right to have his reservations. As someone who had been there and done it all, he was ready to settle down in a simple relationship. What I was offering was complicated because it would be a long distance relationship with someone that could not publicly acknowledge the relationship even existed. Still, he was curious about me and wanted to give it a shot. Afterall, he was a flight attendant. He could come see me for next to nothing.
“OK, let’s give you and me a shot,” Fred says. We played around for a little bit that morning before getting dressed. I gave him a long kiss goodbye as we checkout of the hotel, elated to have someone out there that cared about me. I went and stayed with family while Fred got ready to leave for his flight. About two weeks later, Fred floated the idea of flying out to North Dakota that winter for Valentine’s Day. With Valentine’s Day falling on a Thursday in 2008, and with Fred having more leeway to play around with his schedule in February, he created a window of 3 days to come visit. Furthermore, President’s Day was that following Monday. On top of this federal holiday, my command loved to turn major federal holidays into four day weekends to give servicemembers more leeway to travel. As such, I had the Friday after Valentine’s Day off as well. With all of this coming together, it almost felt like I was destined to see Fred for Valentine’s Day. How many people can say their boyfriend flew to North Dakota to see them for Valentine’s Day?
That Valentine’s Day, Frank arrives super late because his flight was delayed leaving Minneapolis. We arrived at my apartment in Minot and Fred was a little surprised at how barren my apartment was. One thing to understand is that when I moved to Okinawa, I did not have to buy any furniture. The Air Force gave out loaner furniture to people because it was too expensive for the federal government to allow people to bring all of their furniture from the United States. So they put their items in non-transit storage and utilized loaner furniture for the duration of their tour in Japan. Prior to Japan, I was in college and had no furniture, so when I left for North Dakota, I was smacked with the reality of having to furnish an entire apartment. All I had by this point was a my TV chest that I had bought in Okinawa, a chest of drawers that I had bought at a local store, a computer desk, and an air mattress that Melissa let me borrow long term. I did not have the money to furnish the apartment quickly because I had not saved a dime in Japan. I had spent it on lavish trips around Asia, booze, and parties. So yeah, it was going to be a while before I had a fully furnished apartment…almost a year after I had moved into that apartment to be exact.
Fred was not concerned about the fact that sitting on the ground watching TV with me. His agenda was to simply get me naked. Leave it to me, however, to be distracted by the movie I was watching to completely miss the fact that he was super horny. In my head I was seriously thinking, “Babe, we are the watching The Wiz. How could you possibly want to suck my dick at this very moment?” As soon as I reciprocated, however, I quickly came to my senses. We romped around on Melissa’s air mattress and then fell asleep.
The next day, I take him on a brief tour of the town, and we spent some time shopping at the mall. Early that evening, I received phone call from one of my airmen. He said he was celebrating his birthday that evening at a bar near the local university and wanted to know if I could come share a beer with him. Normally, I could have easily dismissed such an invitation. I could have simply used the excuse that it would be inappropriate for me as a commissioned officer to associate with him at a bar unless everyone in the unit was invited. Before I could blurt out this rehearsed excuse, he told me that everyone was invited out, including both my enlisted superintendant and assistant superintendant. Fuck! Now I would look like a douche if I did not show up. What was I gonna do with Fred? He had come all this way to see me, yet my obligations to the morale of my unit superceded my personal life. I explained the situation to Fred and he understood the importance of me showing my face at the party, even if it was brief. Still, I did not just want to leave him at home while I went out, but what would happen if I brought him there? How would I explain who this person was? I drink a glass of wine, throw caution to the wind, and opted to take Fred with me to the bar. I figured I could try to sell him as a flight attendant friend who was here on layover for a flight that he worked. It seemed like a logical story….at least to me.
We arrived at the bar and I was immediately greeted by throngs of drunk airmen saying “LT!” LT is short version of Lieutenant that is considered to be an acronym of endearment, so hearing all these guys shout it made me feel a bit like the cool k**. I immediately introduced Fred and stuck to my story about him being a friend that was layed over on flight that he worked. In front of me, they pretended to buy the story. Fred even weighed in and tried and corroborate everything I told them so that there were no inconsistencies between us. However, when I was not looking, the airmen were quick to point out to each other how full of shit I was and how that was clearly my boyfriend. From the get go, they were texting their friends about how “Lieutenant Coronado is out with his boyfriend and holy crap, his boyfriend is old!” Unaware of their speculation, Fred and I had a good time and did shots with the birthday boy. Fred then drove me home since he only had two drinks that night and I clearly was wasted.
“Thanks so much for being a good sport tonight. I really means a lot to me!” I told him. Fred had been out for more than 20 years, so I understood what it was to have to all of a sudden lie about who you were.
“No problem babe!” Fred responded. I grabbed his hand and held it tightly. He made me feel like I had won the boyfriend lottery. Later that night, we were in bed talking some more about his job and all of the quirks of it. His biggest pet peeve about working flights to and from New York were the large groups of Hassidic jews that were on the flights. He complained about how annoying they were with their requests, pissing off both the male and female flight attendant. The gripes were way beyond ensuring their meals were kosher, that shit is c***d’s play. The passengers would interrogate the male and female flight attendants about their hygiene, particularly asking the female flight attendants if they were “clean.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” I ask. “Were they inquiring about their hands being clean or if they had bathed?
“It means they want to know if the woman is undergoing her menstrual period. If so, they do not want her touching their food.” Fred said in such a matter of fact manner. The thought of women being asked out loud if she was clean and then requested to not touch their food is enough to make laugh like a crazy lunatic over the next couple of hours. I could not contain myself. I would turn to Fred about every 15 minutes and just ask him, “Are you clean?!” While Fred understood why it was funny, he was stunned at how hysterical I found it to be. I literally would not let him sleep until I had gotten all the giggles out of me.
Saturday arrived and I was eager to take Fred to Bismarck. The same organization that put together the gay pride camping trip over the past summer threw dances and drag shows during the year in order to raise money for pride. The dances typically took place at steakhouses that cleared out the tables and chairs to make a dancefloor while the drag shows occurred in the ballrooms of hotels. Since there were not any gay bars or gay clubs for hundreds of miles, make no mistake, the crowds at these venues were huge! For Fred, this was his first glimpse at gay life in the Midwest, and boy was he prepared. He made sure he had his large camera with him to take pictures and video of the entire event and was incessantly asked questions about the events and what the gays here were like.
Before we made the drive south to Bismarck, I had to go to base for some paperwork that I had to file before everyone came back to work on Tuesday. It was kind of exciting for me because it gave me an opportunity to show Fred what an actual military base looked like, another thing he had never done. Getting him on base was simple since he was my guest and we quickly arrived to my office. I sent off a quick email to an agency and we then jumped back into my car to leave. Before leaving, I stopped at the gas station on base to top off my gas tank before the trip. Once finished, I slipped back into the car and Fred immediately grabs my right hand while on top of the emergency break, out of view of anyone in the area. While this is nothing, what happens next terrified me. While I was not paying attention, Fred lifted up my hand and kissed it. I freaked the fuck out!
“AHHHHH! What are you doing?!” I screamed as I pull my hand away.
“Oh, oh, I’m so sorry babe!” Fred replied startled by my reaction.
“Honey you just cannot do that here!” I say as I try to calm down. On one hand, I needed to remind Fred about the world I lived in. I lived in a world where I can lose my job for perceived homosexual conduct, conduct which included hand holding and having a man kiss my hand. On the other hand, I wanted him to understand that I was not mad at him. I love spontaneous displays of affection, especially when it came from him. In any other setting, I would more than welcome him grabbing my ass, bringing me in for a kiss, groping my crotch, whatever will not get me arrested. I just could not welcome it there on a military base. This was the community where I had to put on my uniform and mingle with those who could do great harm if they ever got their hands on evidence to use against me. I tried to assure Fred of this, but I got the feeling that what happened was deeply unsettling for him. Nonetheless, we put it behind us and focus on Bismarck.
The booked our hotel reservation in the same hotel that was hosting the drag show. After a quick shower and change of clothes, we headed down to the ballroom as scores of gays and lesbians begin filing into the ballroom. Fred experienced yet another culture shock when he saw an armed police officer posted at the entrance to the drag show. Eventhough the gay community dared to put on a drag show in such a conservative community, they certainly were not going to take any chances with people showing up to cause trouble.
The drag show was really entertaining and the crowd had a bitchin good time. Fred was impressed at how organized the whole affair was and was particularly intrigued by looks the drag performers were sporting. He personally walked up to several of them and asked to take their picture since he did photography as a hobby. As the drag show ended, a DJ began to play music and the show turned into a dance. While Fred was having the drag queens pose for the camera, I am on the stage dancing to the music when I see a guy eyeballing me. I went over and said hi and we dance for a bit. About 10 minutes later, I saw Fred standing by the stage talking to someone, so I went down to see him. He said he was ready to go so we then headed back up to the hotel. I notice his demeanor was a bit different than when we initially showed up. When we stripped down to have sex, I immediately noticed that he was barely engaged and it almost seemed like he was just amusing me while his mind was somewhere else.
“Babe, what’s the matter?” I asked.
“I’m just tired,” Fred says, though I did not believe him.
“Are you sure that’s all?”
“Well….I’m kind of mad at the fact that you were dancing with that other guy.”
This took me on a turn for the crazy. When we began dating, Fred and I agreed to have an open relationship as a matter of practicality. I lived in Minot and he lived in San Diego, so it only made me sense for us to not be monogamous. So upon hearing that he was mad at me for merely dancing with another guy, I immediately thought he was k**ding. We literally had just danced only near each other, exercising the 3 foot rule like it was senior prom in the 1950s.
“What are you talking about?” I asked with a bit of smile.
“You said you were going to get a drink and when I turned around I saw you dancing with another guy,” Fred said so far with a straight face.
“Honey, I was just dancing. I didn’t even kiss him,” I said as my smile began to fade.
“It doesn’t matter”
“I honestly cannot understand for the life of me why that would make you mad. I mean, babe, we are in an open relationship.”
“Yeah, but when we are together, I would think I was the only guy you would look at or have your interest. Seeing you dance with that guy….that hurt.”
It became abundantly clear that Fred was serious. Perplexed by this, I simply conceded and apologized for hurting him since I had no idea that would make him mad. At this point neither of us were in the mood for sex, so we simply kissed each other goodnight. The next day we drove back to Minot and it seemed like last night was in the past. We had dinner, drank wine, made small talk, and had sex again. The next day I drove him to the airport. I gave him a hug goodbye, thanked him for coming and told him how much I would miss him. He then ran his fingers along the inside of my left hand ever so briefly. We were in public, so while he could not hold my hand like he and I would have wanted, this was his way showing affection incognito. I waved goodbye as he walked through security, wondering when I would see him again.
The next two and a half months make it clear that our relationship would not be going anywhere. Not that we argued or got mad at each other, we simply talked on the phone less and less till we got to April and I did not speak to him for the entire month. Talk about a sign that our relationship was doomed. I called him and we talked briefly about how busy both of us were and how that was the reason why we did not speak to each other over the last month. After ending my call with Fred, I then called Melissa, explaining the situation and asking for her advice because I felt like I was lying to myself and lying to Fred
“What should I do?” I asked while clinging to some glimmer of hope that I could fix my relationship.
“Honestly, buddy….if it were me I would end it. It just doesn’t look good. I mean, I’ll support whatever you want to do going from this point, but I gotta give you my honest opinion as a friend.” Melissa replied frankly.
“I know, and I appreciate that very much, but I think I am going to try and make this work for now.” I told her I would call tomorrow and hang up. I then sat on my couch for a couple of minutes and thought about her advice. Melissa was one of those friends that you could not bullshit. She would tell you like it was every single time, and in my case she told me the inconvenient truth about my relationship. As much as I tried to resist what she had told, I could not escape it. So…I gave in. I called Fred back.
“Fred….this is not working out,” I say with my head hanging low.
“I know honey….I wasthinking the same thing.” Fred would go on to tell me how he looked into my eyes and saw ambition to see the world and experience everything that it has to offer. While he admired that quality in me, he was way too ready to settle down and needed someone willing to do the same. We both tell the other how much fun it was while it lasted and how we wish the other the best.
I tried to think back to the moment where it all went downhill. I so desparately wanted to pinpoint that moment so that I can avoid letting anything similar happen again. Was it dancing with that guy? Bullshit! Getting mad over dancing was a level of crazy that he had never portrayed. I only accepted that rationale because we were naked and I did not want to ruin the ambience, which ended up being ruined anyway. Was it the fact that I was not ready to be a homebody? Possibly, but it is not as if he was aware of what juncture of life I was undergoing. He should have picked that up the moment he met me in Las Vegas. No, I believe that it was my military career that killed our relationship, and nothing epitomized that more than when I panicked over him kissing my hand.
He was visibly startled that something so natural to him or any relationship was so wrong. What I was offering was a relationship of sneaking around, pretending he was just somebody that dropped in, and the fear that his affection for me could land me into trouble if he was not careful. Granted, there were thousands of gay and lesbian couples, to include Melissa and Jane, who were willing to do this. I admired them because for the civilian partner in the relationship, it took a massive degree of patience that many simply did not have. In spite of his rejection, I have never maintained any animosity toward Fred. He took a chance on me. He showed me affection that I thought I would never be able to experience once I put on my uniform and embarked on this journey. I will always be thankful for that.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Chapter 12: Manhunt.net…..the electronic matchmaker
Back in Okinawa, I turned to gay social media as a way of finding the gays and giving a jolt to my sex life. Back then, it was Gay.com, a website that has been around since 1995 connecting gay men to each other. By 2007, however, it seemed like those of us who wanted to keep the small talk to a minimum and to quickly negotiate casual sex had moved on to a website called Manhunt.net. The name speaks for itself. Friend-seeking and small talk were socially unacceptable on this site. Men on the site simply wanted to arrange anonymous sex and get to the point. I created a profile and listed it in North Dakota. The majority of responses I got were from guys that were way below my already low standards for fucking men. Occassionally, however, I would get a decent bite. Those bites would be Tyrone and Jamie.
Tyrone was a muscular, big lips, round ass military retiree. At the time I met him he had just retired from his assignment at Minot Air Force Base and decided to stay in North Dakota. Married with two grown k**s, Tyrone was not getting sexual satisfaction from his marriage. Truth is, Tyrone almost never had sexual satisfaction. He had spent his whole military career anonymously fucking men he met at work, in the community, and on deployments. He was a member of units that would routinely deploy to countries such as Thailand and Singapore. Tyrone was into younger, effeminate men of color, so deployments to Thailand and Singapore were heaven for him. He would go on sex binges while away from his wife that boggled the mind as to why he even remained married to her. According to Tyrone, he genuinely loved her and had k**s with her, it was just the sexual enjoyment that had faded long ago. Realizing how much he enjoyed fucking men was not enough to break up his family. So, he willfully chose to carry out sexual fantasies on the down-low while returning home each night to an unsuspecting family.
Looking at his profile on Manhunt.net was intimidating. I was thinking, “Why would a guy with a body that ripped ever go for a guy like me? Clearly, he can have any man he wants, so what chances do I have in getting his attention?” Once again, I was second guessing myself as I had done with Henry back in Okinawa. Why did I constantly do this to myself? On the flip side, he was the only one in the local area whose profile pictures did not look revolting. After staring at his profile for a couple of weeks, I caught a whiff of courage and I messaged this guy on Manhunt.net, complimenting him on the penis pic he had posted. Minutes later, he wrote me back saying how hot my profile pictures were. Over the course of this mini conversation, he told me that he was a total top and that I was definitely the type of guy he liked to fuck.
Naturally, I invited him over to my apartment. He kept the small talk to a minimum while he sat on my couch and removed his shoes. He then kissed me with those plump strong lips of his and he laid down on top of me. He proceeded to overpower me, pinning my arms legs with his. Given the fact that I had the hottest man in 100 miles on top of me kissing my lips, neck and nipples, I fell into a trance and just submitted to everything he wanted. He slipped his pants off and I hungrily went for his cock and spent the next 15 minutes worshipping it. He then had me straddle his cock to fuck me for about 20 minutes before flipping me on my back and pounding me aggressively. He only fucks for a little bit before climaxing and making a big sticky, sweaty mess all over me. God damn that was fun! I asked him if we would be interested in coming over regularly for sex. Having the hottest man in the community pounding my ass was a sure fit way to get through the depressing, North Dakota winter.
Tyrone was happy to oblige because he thoroughly enjoyed the sex. So we came to an arrangement: About every 2 weeks, one of us would call the other to see if he was interested in getting together at my apartment. He would come over, undress, I would suck his dick, then straddle his cock, then he would flip me on my back and fuck me till he came. We would then clean up, he would put his clothes back on, and quickly leave. This was the routine every single time he came over and it lasted from July 2008 to June of 2009. People at work would comment on why I was so chipper. I would make up some excuse to mask the fact that I had been pounded the night before and I was still high off of the endorphins.
Jamie, on the other hand, turned out to be more than a simple fuck. I got to know him personally, and even quasi date him. Like Tyrone, I had met Jamie on Manhunt.net, however, I had met Jamie back March of 2008. The fact that I kept seeing him over and over is stunning because the first time he came over my house, I scared the bejesus out of him.
Eventhough HIV testing in the military is free and you are guaranteed to get one at least once a year, for a sexually active gay man like myself, once a year was not enough. I was having so much sex that I felt the need to be tested once every four months. The problem was that it was so awkward to go to the clinic on base to get tested outside of your cycle. The first time I did this, the 20 year old airman pulled up my file and said, “Oh, you’re still good for another 8 months.” I then had to insist, “No, I still need to get tested.” There was a very awkward pause where the airmen had to think about this and then she got all wide-eyed while saying, “OOOhhhh! OK, I’ll put in the order.”
While I was not concerned with people knowing that I was a skank, there was something unnerving about having people in the military community know you were frequently getting tested for HIV. I mean yes, healthcare privacy laws applied to the military as well, but because of the nature of my work on base, my commander had abnormal access to my health records. Afraid of being interrogated about my sexual history and why I frequently got tested for HIV, I opted to get tested anonymously using the Home Access HIV-1 Test Kits. For $65, I could purchase a kit, provide a blood sample, mail it in using a Fedex envelope that was included, and call an 800 number for my results 2 business days later. Though pricey, it was better than going to the base clinic.
When Jamie came over, I had just mailed off an HIV test, but I forgot to throw away the box and instructions. He went to use the bathroom and saw the instructions and the box for test kit.
“What the fuck?! You have HIV?” Jamie asked bewildered.
“No!” I reply confused as to why I was all of a sudden being interrogated.
“Then what is this box and instructions for?”
“Oh! That’s just a home test kit. I test myself about every 4 months.”
“Why?! Do you regularly fuck men with AIDS?”
“What?! No!” I was sitting there wondering why this was such a controversy for him. When I was schooled about all things gay, the best lesson I was taught is that you can never be sure about your sex partner’s HIV status. While I did use condoms, there were many instances when I did not. As such, I made sure that knowledge of my status was as current as could be for my peace of mind and for that of my sex partner. Moreover, I learned the ropes of gay life in New York City, a place where dialogue of HIV is so out in the open among gay men that HIV stigma, meaning the irrational fear of the virus and those who have it, is not common.
Jamie, on the other hand, did not have this understanding, so when he saw my test kit, he immediately suspected that I was a disease ridden whore that was going to infect him if he put his dick inside me. Thankfully, his erect dick had more sway over him than his irrational fear of HIV and within minutes, he was fucking me. Nonetheless, even as he was fucking me the question still came up.
“Are you sure you are negative?” Jamie asked literally while he was inside of me.
“To my knowledge, yes. If this is such a big deal, then why is your dick in my ass?” The hard lesson I took from this episode is that men can be spooked when you are in that window of having just been tested and waiting for your results. Therefore, do not leave HIV test kits lying around to generate conversation. In spite of all of this, Jamie continued fucking me till he came. Looks like the influence of his dick prevailed. I kissed him goodbye and off he went. He came over two more times for sex before I struck up an interest in seeing him than just as a friend.
Unfortunately, my contact with Jamie made me a nemesis to a guy Jamie had previously dated. Worse, this guy was an undercover gay in my unit on base. Well…..not really undercover because he was just as much of a nelly man as I was. Nonetheless, George, Jamie’s jealous x-fuck buddy, found out that he was seeing me when Jamie texted George about his whereabouts. Though Jamie was no longer sexually attracted to George they maintained a decent friendship. Jamie told him he had met someone that was stationed at Minot Air Force Base. When he told George my first name, George immediately figured out it was me.
George was obvuiously jealous of the fact that Jamie was seeing me and instantly accused Jamie of fucking me. Granted, Jamie had already fucked me, but for some reason he felt the need to lie about it. As for me, there was not much that George could do. If this were high school, George could send me harassing messages telling me to stay away from his man or publicly shame me either to my face or behind my back. None of this was possible because George was in the military during Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. It was literally impossible for George to go after me without publicly admitting he had engaged in homosexual activity. All he could do was bitch to his trusted friends and give me the stink eye in passing while at work.
I ignored George’s nonsense and Jamie and I kept seeing each other. Whether it was dinner at a restaurant, catching a movie at the local theater, or just sleeping over at my apartment, Jamie and I hung out a lot. While I enjoyed his company, I began to notice that he and I always managed to argue about something whenever we were together. Usually, it would be something I said that I thought to be benign, but would in fact set him off on a tirade. One argument had to do with what he did for a living. He had told me that he worked for the Office of Special Investigation detachment on base. This really piqued my interest since my commander contacted the detachment about my homosexual conduct investigation a couple of months prior. However, when I asked him the specifics about what he did and how he was posted at his assignment, he immediately got defensive with me and accused me of calling him a liar. You see, when you are in the military, there is a certain lingo that is employed when any discussion of military occupation arises. Additionally, having been in the Air Force for a couple of years by this point, I was very familiar with the occupations and the assignment processes. I simply told him none of what he said seemed consistent with the way things are done in the Air Force and he threw a hissy fit about being labeled a liar. Since the issue was not that important, I just conceded the point and accepted the peculiarities of his background.
Another argument ensued while we were driving around in his truck one day. Jamie told me to look behind. In the crevice behind the seats he lifted up a large shotgun and put it in the front next to him. Jamie then bragged to me about how it was with him everywhere he went. “Why do you carry it in your truck?” I asked a simple question in my mind. Prior to the military, I had only handled a firearm once, so American gun culture was a very foreign concept. ”What do you mean why?” He then flashed me some angry, crazy person eyes that made it seem like I had called him a whacko just for owning a gun. “I was just curious.” Everytime we were together, it seemed like I said something innocent that set him off. I will admit, however, that one time I genuinely stuck my foot in my mouth.
That summer, I invited Melissa and Jane over to my apartment. I had just finished buying the last pieces of furniture I needed to complete the apartment and boy was I in the mood to celebrate. I also invite Jamie over as well as a way for Melissa and Jane to be introduced to other gays in the community. I cooked a grand meal for everyone and had some white zinfandel chilling in my refrigerator. Jamie arrived first and we fool around on the couch for a bit while we waited for Melissa and Jane. They finally arrive and I became host, serving the food the drinks, and sprucing up the environment with entertaining tid bits of my sex life. Things are going great. I turn on my TV to HBO, where they are showing the movie, The Nutty Professor. Thinking Jamie and I were more familiar than what we really were, I pointed to the Eddie Murphy’s character and say,” Love you in the Nutty Professor” to him. In front of Melissa and Jane, he flipped out about being called fat and stormed out of the room and into my kitchen. I was flabbergasted! How could I have read him wrong? This was the same guy who would drop “beaner” or “spic” jokes just because I was Latino. Since I knew it was only in jest, I would just chuckle and shrug it off. This was the guy that got offended by a fat joke? I was not going down so easy, especially in front of Melissa, who was egging me on to go chase him down while Jane was pinching her to mind her own business. I went after him.
“Jamie! It was a joke! I was only k**ding hun!” I said to him in the kitchen.
“That was so rude of you to do that in front of your friends” Jamie responded in a very pissed manner. What I would later find out is that Jamie struggled with his weight as well as Type II diabetes, so being called fat was never a laughing matter for him, especially if it was in front of other people. I got him to accept my apology and convinced him to come back to the living room. It was sad that I had to stick my foot in my mouth with a man I liked to figure out that commenting satirically on someone’s weight was just downright mean, regardless of how much you knew each other. Still, he put it behind him and moved on.
When Sex and the City: The Movie came out in summer of 2008, I begged Jamie to go see it with me. I quickly saw that I did not need to beg because Jamie was giddy about going to see the movie as well. When I first met Jamie, he came off as a rugged man’s man that was not having any of my “lady business.” Whenever I told him a story that involved quoting someone, I had a habit of using a high pitched voice, and everytime I did this, he would respond with, “Did they really say it like that?” However, as time passed, I began to notice a more effeminate side of Jamie that was in many ways comical. He would show me clips of drag shows he had been to, even photos of him dressing up in drag a couple of times when he lived in Indiana. I was intrigued by this side of Jamie. Anyway, the day we were supposed to go the theater I was sitting on my couch watching TV in my underwear. Jamie called me from the parking lot of my complex and I tell him that just have to put some clothes on and brush my teeth. A couple of minutes later, he calls me again, exasperated that I am taking so long. “Jamie, calm down I will be down in a few.” When I got to his car, he yelled at me for always being late whenever they had to go somewhere. This threw me off course because whenever we would go anywhere, Jamie would come pick me up. I mean OK, I will admit that he would arrive while I was still getting ready, but what was the big fucking deal? He could have just as easy come inside instead of waiting in his car. I attempted to brush it off as silly nonsense, but Jamie was not having it. He insisted that I was so immature because he was constantly waiting on me whenever we had a date. As if all of this was not enough to piss me off, he then gave me an ultimatum. “You gonna admit that you are immature, or are you just going to sit there and pout. I have no problem turning around and taking you home.”
For months, I had put up with his hot temper because he would always come back to the charming personality that I liked. However, this was just downright demeaning. By getting loud with me, calling me immature and making threats, I felt as though he was attempting to subjugate me to his will. “Then turn around,” I said. If he was going to act like this and make me feel like I was less than equal to him, then I had no business being in his presence. He acted all big and bad, turning his truck around to take me home as if it did not phase him. When he pulls up to my parking, I get out of the car without saying bye and he left. As mad as I was at him, I refused to let him ruin my day. After stewing on my couch about the whole incident, I got in my car and go see the movie alone. I manage to put the incident out of sight and out of mind for the time being.
A couple of days later, he attempted to call me. I refused to take any of his calls because I was not going to pretend nothing happened. Two weeks later, I attended the gay pride camping trip with Melissa and Jane. Boy were those lesbians prepared for camping! I was half expecting them to cook a four course meal with a fire and a frying pan. I could only stay for one night, but nonetheless, I had a good time.
On the way back Jamie tried to call me again. Having felt that I had sufficiently ignored him, I took his call. “It’s about time you answer the phone!” he had the audacity to say.
“I didn’t fucking feel like talking to you!” I fired back because I am not about take his bullshit.
“Look Carlos, I’m really sorry for the way I acted. I was so mean to you and was so out of line” Jamie says with a tinge of authenticity. I am of the persuasion that the decision to forgive someone all rests with the apology. If it is some half-assed, “I’m sorry if I offended you” nonsense, then forget it. Jamie seemed genuine over the phone, so I forgave him. I did not, however, forget.
The blow up the month prior was enough for me to keep my distance from him for the next year. Occassionally, we would talk on the phone or I would see him in passing while in town. The only time I substantively hung with Jamie that year was when he invited me to dinner with him and Raymond, a new guy he was seeing that was also in the Air Force and assigned to Minot Air Force Base. Other than that, Jamie and I almost never talked, and not talking was something I would come to regret during the summer of 2009.
I was assigned to the Electro-mechanical team section at this point. These were technicians that handled a lot of the electronic programming throughout the missile complex. Ironically, this was the same section that George was assigned to. Thankfully, I was posted in that section a couple of months after George had separated from the military and relocated to California. Still, George left behind friends, particularly a girl named Theresa, a quiet but diligent technician that we could always count on to get shit done. On top of being close friends with George, Theresa and George were roommates off base when he was still in the Air Force. So naturally, they talked constantly talked about anything and everything happening in their lives. It would come to no surprise that George frequently talked about me to Theresa. From bringing my, “friend” to the bar during Valentine’s Day 2008 to me seeing Jamie, Theresa was well informed about the gay happenings of both George and me. So when she found out that Jamie had been admitted to the hospital for a serious case of pneumonia, she immediately told me.
“Hey LT, can I talk to you?” Theresa tells me one day at work. “You know Jamie right? “Well, George and I just found out he is in the hospital and is really sick. She goes on to tell me that he was in and out of a c*** and that doctors were not sure about his recovery. “George is flying back from California to see him, so I figured you should know too.
“Thanks for telling me.” I do not even think about the fact that one of my subordinates is aware of the relationship I had with Jamie. I am simply mortified. I immediately left work that day and drive straight to the hospital, still in uniform. I find the ward where Jamie is being held. A guy and a girl were at his bedside. The girl’s name was Jenny. She was Jamie’s sister from Indiana and had taken Amtrak for 12 hours to come see him. The guy’s name was Trevor. He said he was Jamie’s brother, but I would later find out that he was actually Jamie’s previous boyfriend.
Trevor was stationed at Minot Air Force Base as a Communications Officer from 2004-2008 was in a relationship with Jamie. In 2008, Trevor was accepted to crosstrain and become an electronic warfare officer on the B-52 bombers assigned to Minot Air Force Base. Training for his new occupation meant that Trevor would be in training in Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana for more than a year, so he and Jamie had temporarily suspended their relationship. Jamie stayed behind in Minot and maintained the home where they had lived together. The plan was for Trevor to return and pick up with Jamie where they had left off.
Upon hearing that Jamie was in the hospital, Trevor had the mortifying task of trying to get emergency leave from technical training to see his quasi in the hospital. Emergency leave is reserved for immediate family members that have died or who are believed to be dying in a hospital. How Jamie managed to acquire emergency leave without revealing it was for his quasi boyfriend has remained a mystery to me ever since.
It turned out Jamie was never in the military. He was actually a paramedic for the general hospital in town. Though I never asked Trevor or Jenny why he lied, my theory is that he used it as a cover so as not to raise suspicions. It was not as if he could tell people that he was waiting for Trevor to be reassigned to the base. I guess the fear drove to not even trust me with this secret, though I would be wrong to blame him for this fear.
After a brief meet and greet with Jenny and Trevor, I see Jamie on the hospital bed with an IV and heart rate monitor. He was u*********s that first night. Jenny tells me it all happened so fast. He went to the hospital for a severe headache and he ended up being admitted for a severe case of pneumonia that was causing his k**neys to fail, most likely caused by his diabetes. Unfortunately, Jamie had not been managing his diet properly for a number of years, and it had finally caught up to him. When she got the next of kin notification, she called Trevor. Neither Trevor nor Jenny knew anybody that Jamie had associated with in Minot, so when Jenny got to the hospital, she got her hands on Jamie’s cell phone and began calling the saved numbers. They came across George’s cell phone number, who immediately packed his bags to fly back from California. George told Theresa he is on his way back to Minot to see Jamie, and Theresa then tells me. In addition, Jenny manages to get a hold of Raymond, who had such a nervous breakdown at work that his supervisors did not even bother to question who he had to go see at the hospital and why.
After a couple of hours, George and Raymond both arrived to Jamie’s bedside. You can only imagine how crazy of a scene this was. You had the three guys Jamie fucked in Minot all staring at each other while standing next to Trevor. Jamie’s deteriorating health overpowered the situation, so we all manage to put aside it all aside. George was surprisingly nice to me. I spoke to him for a bit about his plans now that he had separated from the military and the craziness of making the transition. This was not the same George that had given me dirty looks because I was entangled with Jamie. Raymond had calmed down now that he was at Jamie’s bedside. Trevor and Jenny were taking all of this surprisingly well.
At 10pm that night, I decide to head home. I was not on leave status, so I had to be at work the next day. I gave Trevor my cell phone in case anything comes up. He thanked me for coming to see Jamie because he was worried that none of his friends would be able to be notified that he was in the hospital. Over the next couple of days, it looked as though Jamie was getting better. He even came out of his c***, though he was not able to speak. Things were looking up, that is, until he had a massive stroke that threw him again into a comma. The doctors gave Jenny the horrific news that they would not be able to revive him this time, describing his vegetative state as almost certainly permanent. As the next of kin, she made the decision to take him off of life support. We all hugged each other in tears as the nurses begin removing the life support equipment.
The next two and a half days were excruciating as I am essentially waiting for Jamie to die. I could not eat. I could not sleep. I could barely do anything at work. My chain of command was aware of the situation and that it was a friend of mine. They gave me my space to commiserate and my commander personally gave me permission to leave work if I heard anything new. Then that Friday, as I am heading home from work, Trevor called my cell to tell me that Jamie passed away.
“Is there anything you need right now?” I ask. I had lost someone very significant to me, but that loss paled in comparison to Trevor’s loss.
“We are going to have a memorial for him on Sunday at Oak Park,” Trevor said. Oak Park was a small public park down the street from my apartment.
“Do you need any help with bringing anything or food?”
“Nope, just bring yourself.”
Jenny opted for Jamie to be cremated so that they could have the urn at the memorial. When I arrive at the pavilion Trevor reserved, my attention turned to an urn on the table that was decorated with Mardi Gras beeds, a pink feather shawl, a tiara, and a silver clutch purse, all hot glued to the sides and top of the urn. I laughed for the first time in a week and a half, not just because the urn looked absolutely crazy, but because it was so over the top, just like Jamie. Underneath that heavy, manly exterior of Jamie’s was a “cha-cha queen”, so it was only fitting for his urn to look as such. Trevor had us gather on the lawn with a bunch of balloons. While each of us held a couple of balloons, Trevor gave us an extemporaneous eulogy about Jamie and thanks each and every one of us for being part of life. I still cannot believe at how well he managed to hold it together this weekend. After his speech, we let the balloons fly away.
One of my greatest regrets was allowing my willingness to hold a grudge to get in the way of Jamie and me. It was ridiculous that I had let some words spoken get in the way of spending time with him in his last year of life. I never got the chance to thank him for making me smile and making my time in North Dakota bearable. We may have met on Manhunt.net, but unlike 99 percent of the guys I met on that site, Jamie was unforgettable and always will be.
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Chapter 13: Escape from North Dakota
When I arrived at Minot Air Force Base, I was told to make the most of my next four to five years. My time overseas may have been fun and exciting, but that was long gone…..Minot was my new home in the Air Force. They told me I may have another opportunity to go overseas with the Air Force, but to not count on it. My reply to this was the same everytime, “Mark my words motherfucker! I will be out of here in two years!” I did not care who I had to convince, plead, beg, bribe, or open my legs to. I was going to leave North Dakota with military orders to somewhere else….and somewhere cool for that matter. I was sick and tired of this sexual austerity. I mean yeah, I still got some from the likes of Tyrone and Jamie, but the ratio of fuckable men to men that even I would never touch was like 1::100. I hated those odds and hated having to fight against scores of sexually deprived vultures for the few tablescraps of hot gay men around. I was desparate for an exit. I just had to figure out how.
In June of 2008, Colonel Loomis was getting ready to rotate out of his assignment at Minot and a new guy was getting ready to assume command of the Maintenance Group. Melissa had worked for him for nearly eight months, and had done well. Colonel Loomis rewarded her by placing her in charge of the Missile Maintenance Team, an elite group of maintenance technicians who had the mission of transporting the ballistic missile warheads to and from the missile silos. This promotion was huge! It also said loud and clear that if you do well as the executive officer to the group commander, you can essentially pick your career path. Colonel Loomis had his eye on me ever since my Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell investigation. He tracked the work I did, the accolades I received over my first year, and the scores good comments by my squadron commander. He also took note that Melissa and I were good friends and worked very well together…..almost as if we had the same work ethic. So when it came time for Melissa to be replaced as the group commander’s executive officer, absolutely nobody was surprised when Colonel Loomis named dropped me as her replacement.
Melissa and I did five days of turnover where she showed me everything that must be done for the commander. Then, the day finally came when I would meet my new commander and direct boss. In walks in a towering, stone-cold-faced man from Mobile, Alabama….oh shit. Colonel Lyman was to take command and I had the daunting task of getting him settled and organized to function as a commander. You can probably imagine how mortified I was that first day. As an effeminate gay man, I was intimidated to the core by this southern version of Paul Bunyon. Even Melissa turned to me and said, “Oooooo….sorry Carlos. Good luck!”
The first few weeks I kept my head down and focused on my work as much as possible. Colonel Lyman would shoot questions and I had no idea what he was talking about. There were large stacks of documents that he had to either review, sign off, endorse, or comment on, most of which I have never heard of or dealt with. While I kept up as best as I could and made sure he was informed about everything important, I felt so overwhelmed that in my head I believed that I was fucking it all up. Thankfully, he sat me down for my initial feedback and literally told me that I was doing exactly everything he needed of me and that he had zero suggestions for improvement…..fuck yeah! Doing so well on the job gave me leverage with him. If I wanted to do something for my career, chances are, this was the best time to ask for it.
A major perk about being an executive officer is that when major career opportunities come down the pipeline for officers in your career field, you are the first person in the unit to find out. Our major command headquarters sent a notice asking if any officer in my career field was interested in going to South Korea for a week long military exercise. I immediately pounced on this notice because going to South Korea as young male servicemember was a dream! Booze and sex were rampant, regardless if you were gay or straight. I had heard legendary stories from gay friends that had been to Korea and all of them said they would go back in a heartbeat. For gay military men in South Korea, they got their pick of thousands of other gay military men, thousands more closeted straight men who use their time on the peninsula to pig out on cock, gay English teachers from Canada, the US, Australia, and the UK, gay flight attendants from all over the world, and gay business travelers. All of these men gathered on a legendary hill in the middle of Seoul called, “Homo Hill”. Homo Hill was legendary in gay military circles. The Hill was rumored to be jammed packed with all of the aforementioned groups in addition to throngs of Korean college students. Getting to experience Homo Hill was a dream that I was desperate to clinch.
Normally, I would send out these notices to the other officers in my career field, but not that day. I sat on the notice while I scrambled to Colonel Lyman’s office to convince him of why I needed to go on this temporary assignment to Korea. I told him that I had the knowledge for this temporary assignment based off my previous job in Okinawa. I told him it would be a massive boost to my career based on the job description. At first, he was apprehensive about letting me go gallivant on the other side of the world. After all, I was his assistant. I assured him it would only be one week and that other officers in the unit were familiar with substituting as the executive officer already. I must have slowly worn him down because he finally agreed to let me volunteer for the position.
Within 10 days I was on a plane to South Korea. Because roughly 3000 servicemembers come to the peninsula for this drill, the US Forces, Korea Headquarters set up a logistical mechanism to ferry troops to their various locations. Because my flight arrived late at night, there was no bus to Osan Air Base, the base where I would be assigned for the duration of the exercise. As such, I was transported to Yongsan Garrison, an army base right smack in the middle of Seoul, and also a 15 minute walk from Homo Hill…..how convenient.
The base had military tents setup for those coming in for the exercise, and I was assigned to one for the night. In addition to my tent assignment, I was given instructions to be at a certain bus stop on base by 6am. I may have been a super exhausted, but damnit, I wanted a taste of Homo Hill! So I simply dropped my gear off and walked off base toward homo hill. I had downloaded a map of the local area, and it just so happened that all of the gay bars my friends had told me about were on this map with a route of how to get to them from base. As I was walking down the street, I saw this voluptuous girl skipping down the street toward the base. Holy shit….that was Briana, one of my gal pals from Okinawa. I screamed at her and we hugged while jumping up and down. She was sent in for the exercise as well and had arrived several days before me. She was walking back to Yongsan Garrison with a guy friend of hers she met when she checked into the base. I am not sure whether or not I had cock blocked him, because when I asked Briana if she could come with me, he weirdly relented and said to go with me and catch up while he went back on base.
I had come out to Briana right before I left Okinawa, so I had no problem asking Briana if she would accompany me to Homo Hill. She said, “Fuck yeah!”. Using my map of Itaewon, the entertainment district where Homo Hill is located, we navigated the streets and alleyways. We passed a slew of straight bars where homophobic soldiers were congregated. I heard the word, “faggot” at least twice during the walk, but ignored it and pressed forward. We turned left into an alleyway and POOF! We arrived to a sea of gay foreigners and young Korean college students congregating in the alleyway. My eyes were zigzagging all over the place. The alleyway was small and the bars were in a cluster with one right next to the other. Guys kissing in the alleyway, guys jumping up and down to music in the bars, I was in heaven.
US servicemembers were on a peninsula-wide curfew at that time, so Briana and I only had time for a couple of cocktails and a bit of dancing at a bar appropriately named Queen. After about an hour we had to scramble to get back on base before curfew. After catching up with Briana for a bit, I headed back to my tent to catch about one and a half hours of sleep before I got up to board my bus for Osan Air Base. I arrive to Osan about an hour later and checked into the tent city that was setup for all of the exercise augmentees. The exercise had not started yet as augmentees were still arriving to the peninsula, so I had that Saturday to myself. I slept in till 2 in the afternoon before cleaning up and heading out off base. After perusing the bars, restaurants, and markets that afternoon into the evening, I got the itch to head back to Homo Hill.
Transit between my base my Seoul was extensive, so getting a bus or train between the two locations was extremely easy. Since I was already downtown, I walk to the metro station and hop on the subway train to Seoul. I arrive back to central Seoul, this time early in the evening before the large crowds. I had been to Queen the night prior, so I perused the other bars and dancefloors in the alleyway. I came across what seemed like a dive bar called Oz. Inside was a posh looking bar with TV screens that were showing Korean pop music videos. At the bar was a guy named Won, interestingly named after the Korean currency. We socialized for a couple of hours and within no time, Won was referring to me as his “sista”. I left Oz and go dancing at Queen and while I pounded down some cocktails. What I did not realize was that cocktails in Korea will get you hammered so quickly if you do not pace yourself, so I was quickly drunk out of my mind. Despite how drunk I was, boy did that not stop me from rubbing my crotch all over any guy that even so much as looked at me. I looked at my watch….oh shit, it’s past curfew. Myself and two other guys ran out of the club and down the street into an alleyway. Still feeling horny, I grabbed both of their cocks and stroked them through their pants. Within minutes, we had our cocks out and were sucking each other off in this alleyway. I, unfortunately, was too drunk to perform proper dicksucking. It is an artform to be respected afterall. I told the boys that I was going to go hide out in this bathouse someone had told me about, however, when I go where I thought it would be, I found nothing. Drunk and panicking about being spotted by military policemen, I ducked into a windy sidestreet of apartments and houses. I needed to hide, so I jumped behind some bushes and had no trouble laying down for a nap despite the dirt everywhere.
When I woke up, it was 11am. I was still drunk with a massive hangover, I had dirt on my shirt and pants, and my hair looks like a messy afro puff. What a perfect time to walk back to Yongan Garrison for a bus to Osan Air Base. Thankfully, walks of shame like the one I did were common, so no one questioned what the fuck happened to me.
The exercise came and went rather quickly as I actually had a good time with the people I worked with. We celebrated the end of the exercise by going off base and into a bar. I partied and drank for a bit with my co-workers. However, make no mistake…..I had Homo Hill fever. After a bit of drinking with my co-workers, I told them that I was gonna go party in Seoul. I make a mad dash for the train and headed back to Itaewon. After sleeping in a bush the previous weekend, I had a more defined plan. Either hook up with someone in order to have a place to sleep, or find this famed bathouse since I completely bumblefucked finding it the first time. I arrived at Homo Hill so early had most of the bars were just opening and there were only a few people there. First order of business was to ensure I had the 4-1-1 on this bath house. I saw some guys sitting down at Oz, so I pop in, said hi to Won, and began socializing. I then dropped the question about the bathhouse and one of the guys knew where it was. I bought him a drink and then asked him to show me where it is. We walked up the hill, through a shady alleyway, and down a giant flight of stairs and at the bottom of the stairs he pointed it out. Equus was the name, and for the Korean equivalent of $5, you could spend the evening in there hiding from the military popo and getting your dick sucked, all at the same time. If getting laid proved to fail, Equus was to be my resort. I had a plan!
Once I had the location of Equus, we headed back to Oz. I continued to socialize with my sista, Won, and watched music videos of Korean boy bands doing well-choreographed dancing and singing about that girl down the street. Queen was getting a bit packed so I said bye to Won and headed over to hang out at the bar. This small, nerdy, but handsome sailor was sitting next to me. He was in the Navy Reserves, stationed in San Diego but mobilized to participate in this exercise. We got talking and before I knew it, he laid out that he wanted to fuck me senseless. How could a seemingly meek man all of a sudden talk so dirty to me? It was fucking hot! Not one to turn down dick play, we immediately headed back to his hotel.
Unlike me, he refused to sleep in a tent, and checked into the Dragon Hill Hotel, a posh, luxury military hotel on Yongsan Garrison. It was one of several US Armed Forces Recreation Centers around the world where servicemembers on official business or leisure could lap up a bit of luxury during the stress of military life. We got naked….holy shit he had a big cock! Where the hell was he hiding this meaty, long cock that seriously reminded me of a Red Bull can. “I hope it doesn’t slip me in half,” I said as I mounted it. He would fuck me and come at least three times that evening before he had to get to bed because he had a very early flight to catch the next day. I went back to Homo Hill for dancing and flirting and when the curfew hit, I duck into Equus in order to continue my fuck frenzy while hiding from the popo. Equus was smaller than most bathhouses I had been to before, but it more than made up for it in massive orgies with dicks and hands in every direction. I would walk through dark rooms and hands would dart out from every direction to feel me up! Needless to say, I stayed for a while.
I would end up spending the rest of the weekend sightseeing in Seoul, partying on Homo Hill, and having so much fun that the weekend was gone in a flash. I came back to Osan to prepare for my flight back to North Dakota. I kept thinking about how awesome that one week in Korea had been and how I was headed back to my shithole assignment. My mind was made up. I had to get reassigned to Korea, come hook or crook. In order to do that, I needed to work the assignment system somehow in order to get an exception to policy. There was a computer lab in my tent city, so I went and did some research on assignments in Korea. Of all the positions in my career field, the only one I could feasibly qualify for was the Munitions Flight Commander position at Kunsan Air Base, approximately 120 miles south of Seoul. Sure, that was pretty far away from the fun, but thankfully, Korea had massive public transit system that was extremely cheap. Plus, there were all sorts of budget hotels in Seoul that made going there regularly very afforfable. Since assignments in Korea were typically 1 year rotations and had a very high priority for getting filled, the Munitions Flight Commander position had to be filled every year. I shot an email to my career advisor at the Air Force Personnel Center in Texas asking how possible it would be for me to volunteer for the position at Kunsan Air Base. Despite being an excellent place to get stationed as far as career progression was concerned, people in my career field hated going to Kunsan. Why? Because most of the officers in my field were married with k**s and the position did not authorize them to move their spouse and c***dren with them. So eventhough the assignment was a high priority, people were often “non-volunteered” for the assignment, meaning they are forced to go. AFPC hatesd non-volunteering people to unpopular assignments, so anytime they got someone who volunteered, they would rather send the volunteer.
I flew back to North Dakota, determined to make Korea a reality for me. I got a response from my career advisor saying that the first Colonel in my chain of command had to send a message to AFPC approving of my volunteer application. Would you looks at that….the first Colonel in my chain would be Colonel Lyman, my direct boss. I spent the next couple of months busting my ass and having Colonel Lyman pleased with my work. Towards the end of my tenure as his executive officer, I spoke to Colonel Lyman about submitting a volunteer application for the assignment at Kunsan Air Base. I told him that going there would be consistent with my career progression as I would be leading a larger group of people than previous duty positions. Furthermore, now that I had attended the military exercise, I had a profound understanding of the mission on the peninsula. After hearing me make my case, Colonel Lyman proved the “Executive Officer gets whatever they want” theory true once again. He sent a notice to AFPC that he approved of me volunteering for the Munitions Flight Commander position at Kunsan Air Base and gave me a glowing recommendation for the position. Two months later….I received my orders to report to Kunsan Air Base by August of 2009, exactly two years after I arrived to Minot. By this time, I was well underway as the officer in charge of the Electro-mechanical Team under a commander that expected me to be in that position for an entire year. You could only imagine how pissed he was when I showed him my orders. As pissed as he was that he had to replace me, there was nothing he could do since my departure was orchestrated by Colonel Lyman, who was his direct boss. When I told Melissa, her first reaction was, “Whose dick did you suck?” to which I replied, “If I had to, I would have sucked off every single man in my chain of command to get this assignment.” That day, I became shining proof that when a strong gay man wants something, he just gives it to himself!


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Chapter 14: Being Gayer Than Ever Before
On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama was sworn in as President of the United States. For gays in the military, his election was extra special because this was the man who would make repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell a priority in his administration. Eventhough the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act was not signed into law until December 20, 2010 and it did not take effect until September 20, 2011, there were still small policy movements that occurred during the first couple of years that effectively made it difficult to discharge gay servicemembers.
The first move was to require a one star general to sign off on discharges under the don’t ask, don’t tell policy. Not too long after that, approval for discharges under the policy had to come from the civilian secretary of each service. Because of the monumental burden this placed on commanders trying to get rid of gay servicemembers, discharges under the policy came to a grinding halt. For most servicemembers, this went on unnoticed. The gays however, were so wired to updates to the repeal movement that we instantly heard about it and told all of our friends. To us, the message was that repeal was going to happen and that by and large, we had nothing to be afraid of. As such, I, along with many other gay servicemembers, began to get a little ballsy.
In mid-June of 2009, I was gearing up for my promotion to Captain. This was a big event. No longer would I be called LT or have my judgement called into question because of the rank on my shoulders. Ascendance to the rank of Captain is a tremendous affair for officers. In fact, it was so tremendous that my parents drove cross country to witness the event first hand. I was elated, but at the same time, I wanted to make a statement. I had been through a lot in North Dakota, from the shame of my Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell investigation to the day-to-day smirks at the way I carried myself. Over time though, most had warmed up to me and I eventually felt welcome, but I still wanted to stick it to the naysayers and homohaters. For my promotion, I wanted an audience of my gay friends!
Melissa and Jane were going to be there guaranteed, but that was not enough. I therefore extended an invitation to my gay friends in Bismarck. Most of them I had met when I attended the gay pride camping trips in July 2007 and 2008 and I would frequently see many of the same guys and girls at the various dances and drag shows. When I told them of the idea, every single one of them was excited to be invited. Unfortunately, the ceremony was to be on a weekday, and since I had approached them only about 10 days prior, almost all of them were not able to get time off. Only one guy attended, and that’s ok, because he was the one who was most important.
His name is Mike. Mike, at the time, was a freelance personal trainer and part-time Nurse in Bismarck when I met him at gay pride in 2008. I was on the boat with Melissa and Jane when I saw this guy eyeballing me from across the top deck. I went over to say hello and we got talking. Soon this cute guy from South Dakota joined us and before you knew it, we were triple kissing each other and giving everyone on the deck a nice show. Mike had no interest in staying at the campsite that evening, so when we got back to the campsite, we hopped in his car and headed over to his house. We fucked senseless for a good couple of hours before falling asleep. The next morning, we exchanged phone numbers and I drove back to Minot.
Seeing how he was a licensed personal trainer, I hired him to train me on weekends. Nearly everyweekend for a year, I drove down to Bismarck on a Friday night where we would train at the gym on a combination of cowbells, small weights, machine weights and about 10 to 20 minutes on the treadmill. Instead of heading back to Minot each night, I would crash at his house. Bismarck weekends with Mike was something I looked forward to, not only because I was getting pumped and pretty, but also because after the gym, we would check out guys on Manhunt.net together. Since leaving Okinawa, Mike was the first gay male friend I had made. I mean yes, we slept together a couple of times initially, but what gay man has not slept with guys he later became friends with? Getting naked is almost like a handshake if you ask me.
Though Mike and I were friends, that did not mean we ruled out threesomes. Bismarck was chock full of closeted men that wanted to get down with dudes. The best one we managed to land was an Army National Guardsmen that transited Bismarck for his drill weekend. Meeting him was something out of a gay porn movie. When we arrived to the hotel he was staying at, he texted us his hotel room number and told us the door would be unlocked. What was next? Face down ass up with a blindfold? Nah, he was merely in bed naked. So we stripped naked and climbed in bed with him. On the internet, this guy came off as shy and inexperienced, yet he seemed perfectly fine with Mike and I taking turns fucking him or flipping and having him fuck us. All of this while his wedding ring gleaned in the moonlight. Why married men feel the need to wear their ring while they have a dick in their ass is a mystery to me, but I digress.
Mike was essentially the 46 year old version of me, so having him at my promotion meant the world. My parents on the other hand, did not share my excitement over having Mike attend. “How can you be so provocative?” they asked or, “That is just not appropriate!” they yelled. I did not care. I was tired of feeling like a coward in the hands of people that wrote me off as unfit for service because I was gay. I wanted my promotion to be a statement that no matter what they believed, I did not intend to go anywhere. So the promotion went forward as I intended it. My parents pinned on my rank and Colonel Lyman, after talking up all of my accomplishments, administered my oath of office. When the floor was mine, I tearfully showered accolades on Melissa, Jane, and Mike for helping me get through a very difficult two years of my career and giving me the strength to look ahead toward my reassignment to Korea.
One month later, I was packed up and saying goodbye to everyone. Melissa had to go to the missile complex the day I left Minot, so I was only able to say bye via telephone. I left Minot Air Force Base for the last time, flipping the middle finger towards the entrance of the base as I gazed at the welcome sign for through my rear view mirror. I went to Melissa and Jane’s house because I want to give Jane a big hug. When she was opened the door, I said, “You thought I was leaving without saying bye?!” I hugged and wished her the best of luck. I admired her deeply for being able to put up with such a closeted existence for Melissa’s sake. I could only dream of meeting such a man. I then drive south to say goodbye to Mike, and we manage to say our goodbyes while holding back as many tears as possible. Yes, leaving was what I wanted, but leaving behind friends that meant so much was never an easy task.
Prior to flying to South Korea, the first order of business was to get my car to a port. My order authorized me to ship one car to South Korea, so my 2000 Honda Accord was coming with me. I could have driven it to the vehicle processing center in St Louis, but I opted for the processing center in San Diego, which would give me kickass roadtrip across half of the country. I planned an elaborate road trip with strategic pit stops to see national parks, friends that lived in the mid west, and cities with large gay male populations. If I was going to drive across America, you better believe I wanted to sample some dick along the way. The irony, however, is that the best sex I had on this extravagant adventure, happened at my first destination: South Dakota.
During the two years I lived in North Dakota, I had only been to South Dakota once. Of the Dakota’s, South Dakota was less affluent, but just as conservative, so I figured there was no point. However, I was intrigued by its beautiful national parks. My mother insisted I go see the Crazy Horse Memorial during my road trip and pick up a souvenir for her. Thus, South Dakota became a destination. I checked into a motel outside of The Badlands National Park and went to the computer center. Prior to making the trip, I shot an email to Ace, one of the guys I had met in Okinawa. After that assignment, he was transferred to Ellsworth Air Force Base, an Air Force base in Rapid City, about an hour and change from the Badlands National Park. When I opened up my email, he had replied with his phone number, saying to give him a call sometime. So after touring the Badlands park, I called Ace.
“Hey, it’s Carlos” I said when he picked.
“I don’t fucking believe it! THE Carlos?!” Ace yelled.
“The one and only.” I must have had a serious impression on him in Okinawa, because he did not have to ask which Carlos. Ace was just getting off of work and was headed into town for an outdoor music and beer fest that is held every summer. So off I went to meet him there. I met him inside a bar and gave and giant big hug. Ace told me he also invited a friend of his to hang out, so while we waited for his friend we caught up on all of our dramatics. He told me how jealous he was that I got out of my assignment at Minot and did not believe my story about how I did it. “C’mon Carlos seriously…who did you fuck to get this assignment.” I laugh it off while I basked in my awesomeness. No more Minot, I was on the most magnificent road trip I had ever taken….what could be better? Then….Ace’s friend shows up.
Ace had told me his friend was in the Air Force, so naturally, I put on my Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell filter to our conversation when his friend, Andrew, arrives. Andrew was a tall, pure blond, muscular guy. At Ellsworth Air Force Base, he was assigned in the munitions unit, so this gave me a way to carry on a conversation without the use of dicks and gay sex as a prop.
“Can’t wait to leave for Qatar next week!” Andrew said with a sense of relief The following Monday, Andrew was leaving for a 4-month rotation to Qatar and could not be more excited. A major perk of going downrange in the Air Force was that your work responsibilities were dramatically simplified. At home station, you have your job duties as well as a host special duties for which you are responsible. However, when you are forward deployed, staffing is so robust that every job duty and special duty has someone assigned against it. Combine this with tax free pay and being deployed to a country where airmen were allowed to drink alcohol, getting deployed was something that was essentially sought after by young airmen, Andrew then went on to talk about the trouble he had gotten into with fistfights and mouthing off to his bosses, which provoked a bit of an eyeroll from me because as an officer, I had to punish those airmen that were deemed trouble makers. Still, I laughed a bit because the stories were pretty funny. About two hours in, Andrew got up to use the bathroom. Ace then looked at me and said, “So what do you think about him?”
“He seems cool,” I replied. Despite the bad boy streak, he seemed pretty cool and did not smirk at me for my lack of manliness.
“He likes you.” Ace whispered.
“What?!” I said with disbelief.
“Yeah, he’s gay”
“I had no fucking clue”
“Yeah, he’s pretty butch like that. He’s into Latino guys, so when you called me and said you would stop in, I called him to come hang out. When you went to the bathroom, he leaned in and said you were hot.” I could not believe this was happening. How did I manage tpo stumble upon some hot gay dude in South Dakota of all places?
“Plus…..he’s a bottom!” Ace said before licking his lips. To me, there is nothing sexier than a butch man that loves to take it up the ass. “No fucking way!” I said as I began to get an erection.
We stayed at the bar for a bit then went to another one where a live band was playing. While walking towards the entrance, I nudged Andrew and said, “So…I here you like dick?” Andrew gaves me the most sinister smile and said, “Yeah….and I think I might like yours.”
“I can make that happen.” I had asked Ace if I could crash at his apartment that night, but by the looks of things, it was no longer necessary. Andrew was noticeably hanging on me at this point. Putting his arm around my shoulder, stroking my back when I was facing him, I could not believe how much bravado he had.
“Andrew, we’re in a straight bar. Someone’s going to see you flirting with me,” I whispered. While I was enjoying every minute of Andrew’s affection, I had not forgotten that we were in South Dakota and we were at a straight bar frequented by airmen from Ellsworth Air Force Base. “I don’t give a fuck.” he said as he brought me close for a brief, but electrifying kiss….right there in the bar’s outdoor patio, in front of 30 other people.
Ace went home early because he had to work the next day. I thanked him profusely for getting me one hot fucking lay in South Dakota of all places. “No problem.” Ace says. “I know how much you two are horny fucks, and I like to think of this as a going away present for Andrew….so yeah, have fun tonight!” And boy did I have fun that night! When we went back to his apartment, I quickly found out that not only was Andrew a bottom, but he was a power bottom that enjoyed getting fucked no matter how I did it. We fucked in every position imaginable for the rest of the night all the way to dawn. We fucked so hard that both of us and Andrew’s bed sheets were soaked with sweat….poor neighbors. Despite climaxing three times that night, I only needed three hours of sleep before I got up to get ready for the next leg of my road trip. Andrew and I shower together, all the while playing around in the shower for a bit. I was obsessed with how sexual he was. Everything I did threw him into convulsions. Too bad it had to come to an end.
Andrew walked me to my car and gave me a deep kiss goodbye, again, in a public space where anyone could have seen. I’m thinking to myself, “Damnit, why didn’t I get stationed in South Dakota?!” I wished him good luck on his deployment and to try to have fun.
“Oh I’m definitely having fun,” Andrew says. “Last time I went, I got plowed regularly in the shower stalls of the tent city on base.” Apparently, getting deployed was partially a boost to the sex lives of gay men and partially going back in time where the primary means of getting laid for gay men was visiting showers and bathroom stalls at certain times while tapping your foot and giving other men the “secret sexy eye”. This sounded too good to be true until it was later corroborated by two other guys that had been deployed to Qatar. I waved goodbye to Andrew as I pulled out of the parking lot and hit the road. Sigh, and another one slips through my fingers….oh well.
I make my way to San Diego with stops in Colorado, Texas, and Arizona. From San Diego, I flew to San Francisco for a couple of days to a dose of the Castro. Within days, I made my way to Tokyo in order to party with those batshit crazy Harajuku girls and to link up with a friend of mine from college. Finally at the beginning of August in 2009, I arrived to South Korea. The mood was different this time around. I was not here as a visitor. This was to be my home for the next year and I was going to make the most of it. Best of all, I arrived with streak of confidence that I previously never had. After surviving isolation, enduring an investigation into my sexuality and genuinely performing well at Minot, I had arrived at the big leagues. Kunsan Air Base, my new home, sat a mere 150 miles south of the Demilitarized Zone that separated North Korea from South Korea. This was the place people came to make their careers take off.
Furthermore, I felt untouchable when it came to people’s opinions about my sexuality. They could talk shit till they turned blue about, “How much of a faggot I was,” and it did not matter to me anymore. I arrived to Korea determined to hold my head high, no matter what happened. To prove this, I made absolutely no effort adjust my mannerisms…..or my appearance for that matter. When the bus arrived at my base that night, I arrived wearing a straw cowboy hat, short shorts, sandles, and a pseudo addidas shirt that said “Candy”. My look and way I walked screamed “Gay” and that’s exactly what I wanted!
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Chapter 15: Respect my Authority
The night that I arrived to Kunsan Air Base, I was greeted by my sponsor, Captain Mitchell. Captain Mitchell was a scruffy aircraft maintenance officer who had been previously an enlisted airmen and made the transition to commissioned officer. He was the Director of Operations for the 8th Maintenance Squadron. At first, he was in a state of denial. He saw me and my “Candy” shirt and dismissed me as someone belonging to another unit. Eventually, it was undeniable that he was my sponsor as everyone else coming off the bus had been received by someone else.
“Are you Captain Coronado?” Captain Mitchell asked wearily. “Yes I am!” I said with a smile.
A mortified look came over Captain Mitchell’s face. He tried to play it off when he shook my hand and helped me with my bags, but I could tell. At Kunsan Air Base, all officers were assigned to housing on base, so Captain Mitchell quickly drove me to the other side of base to the dormitory. The conversation was kept to a minimum. Captain Mitchell was on the verge of sweating bullets in my presence, and I was enjoying every minute of it. I wanted to put him on edge. I wanted to make him nervous. I wanted him to know that I was gay and could not be easily dealt with.
On the way to my dorm, Captain Mitchell informed that I had been transferred. I had come to Kunsan to fill the Munitions Flight Commander position, a position that I had to talk up to Colonel Lyman in order to get this assignment. So you can imagine how surprised I was when I found out that I had been transferred to a different position. Instead of being the Munitions Flight Commander, I was going to be the Officer-in-Charge of Quality Assurance in the 8th Maintenance Operations Squadron. This was a position outside of my career field, involving maintenance on fighter jets, their components, and the ammunition they carried. Instead of managing ammunition in the storage area, I would be in charge of quality control over all maintenance activities that occurred on base. Naturally, this would be considered a step up for anyone. Certainly, the other officers tried to sell it to me this way, but I was not buying this crap! Yes, it was technically a career step up….but why? I was a Munitions Officer coming in to fill a billet that specifically asked for a Munitions Officer. Why would the powers-that-be squander me on a position that any maintenance officer could have filled? The answer lied in the people that were assigned to the munitions flight.
Because of South Korea’s proximity to Japan, airmen frequently went back and forth between the two locations. As such, a large swath of the airmen that were stationed in Okinawa went on to be stationed in South Korea. When I got my orders to Kunsan Air Base, my gaining unit received notice as well. While I cannot prove this, my theory is that upon finding out I was inbound, the enlisted superintendant of the munitions flight, a man that had previously worked for me in Okinawa, threw a fit about having to work for that “faggot officer” again. According to my theory, the maintenance group commander, Colonel Maldives, caved and reassigned me to Quality Assurance before I even got there, which meant that I was fired before I even reported in. However, this was still a step up, so despite how pissed I was at the move, I accepted my fate.
That first work week, I quickly got inprocessed and set up in my dormitory. Eager to get back to Seoul for some homo hill festivities, I signed out of my unit that Friday afternoon and haul ass to Seoul that evening. After checking into my hotel, I run over to homo hill to see that absolutely nothing had changed….it was still just as crazy as I had left it. Won, sista from Oz was still there and remembered me, the crowd from Queen was still there, the large, drunk crowd in the alleyway was still there, it was just like I had left it a year prior. That night I hooked up with a Swiss Army Officer named Lars. He was a blonde man in his mid 40s that had been staring me down at Queen for a hot minute, so I approached him and we instantly made out. Lars was a Swiss member of the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission, the commission that oversaw the Korean Armistice and reported objectively about all military activity occurring on the Korean Peninsula. Here was a man with such an important position on the Korean peninsula, asking me if I wanted to go get naked with him back at his apartment. Plus, Lars was fucking hot! I said yes before he even finished his sentence. We then went back to his apartment and took turns fucking each other. The odds of hooking up with such a man were almost nonexistent, but leave it to me to beat them!
Lars and I hung out all day the following day and fooled around a little bit more. He was still a bit hung over from the night before, so he told me to go out and have some fun while he continued to lay in bed. When I was ready to leave Homo Hill, Lars said to simply come back for more dickplay. How was I to argue with such a proposition? I returned to Homo Hill that night where I decide to go dancing in the club called “Why Not?” I only occasionally went to this bar as it charged cover, but I was in the mood to go dancing with a large amount of space. Inside, there was a mix of foreigners and Koreans. One guy in there keeps catching my eye. I inched my way over to him and began dancing with him. Within minutes I was kissing him.
We went outside to talk…holy shit! it turned out that not only this guy was in the Air Force, but he was stationed at Kunsan, and was assigned to one of the maintenance units. Such facts would have made me blanch were it not for being on Homo Hill and having just finished kissing this guy. What was he going to do, tell everyone he kissed me? Anyway, his name was Ryan and boy was I excited because he was the first gay servicemember that I made friends with in country. Plus he was at my base. He introduced me to this Australian flight attendant back inside, “Why Not?” and the three of us danced to Kylie Minogue’s In my Arms. I may furious my first week in Korea with the reassignment, but I could care less at that moment. I was back in Korea, I was on homo hill, I had a new gay friend…I felt damn good. Plus, when the night ended, I got to crawl back in bed with a hot Swiss man to rock out with my cock out. The first weekend was quite the awesome one!
Ryan and I exchanged information and by the end of the second week, he had already introduced me to Allen, another gay guy that, ironically, was in the munitions flight. I got to meet him face-to-face In uniform when I needed a special clearance for activities in the munitions storage area. Allen processed my paperwork and when no one was paying attention asked me if I had fun with Ryan the weekend prior. I gave a slight nod of approval and we both smiled. Ryan was instrumental in getting me introduced to nearly gay and lesbian airmen on base. Furthermore, he became an informant of sorts when people would talk about me, and boy did it not take long.
The rumors of, “That Gay Officer” were a buzz within the maintenance group from day one. From the people who knew me from Okinawa to the “Candy” shirt incident, I quickly became a celebrity. People would do double takes when I would walk by. Airmen would run up and say hello to me when I accompanied my inspectors on the job. Hell, one guy addressed me by my rank and last name when I was out of uniform.
“How’s it going Captain Coronado?” this guy yelled to me when I walked by.
“Excuse me, do I know you?” I asked perplexed at how this person could possibly know me.
“Oh yeah, I work in the munitions storage area. My friend pointed you out two days ago when we saw you walking down the street.” Yeah, not only were the rumors of my gayness a flutter, but my every step was being monitored whenever I walked down the street. Still, I refused to let any of it get to me…at least until it got ugly.
During the third week on the job, I got a text from Ryan. “Staff Sergeant Ellis was in my shop and was calling you a faggot when he talked about the new Captain he worked for.” I was floored. Granted, I knew I was being called a faggot, but I was never in a position where it was reported back to me with specific names. Moreover, this was from someone that worked for me. I was the first officer in his chain of command. I called Ryan’s cell phone to ask about the specifics.
“Yeah, he did a quick inspection and after he was done, he was just like talking us when he started going into how this new Captain works in Quality Assurance and that he is such a fag,” Ryan said. Unbelievable! Even more unbelievable was the fact that I had a gay friend undercover in that situation. “I was so mad when he did that, so I wanted to personally tell you that, you know, one of your guys is calling you a faggot.” I thanked Ryan so much for letting me know and assured him that however I handled the situation, he would be kept anonymous. Not only was I concern about him being harassed for ratting out the inspector of his shop, I did not want the nature of our friendship being made public. Ryan was a Senior Airmen and I was a Captain. Having a friendship with a junior enlisted airman was very inappropriate. Still, I wanted to address this situation head on. I wanted to send a message not just to Sergeant Ellis, but to everyone in my section.
The next day, I went and spoke to my superintendant, Master Sergeant Holloway, and told him about what Ryan had reported to me. I simply told him that all I wanted to do was ask Sergeant Ellis if the allegations were true and I wanted a simple yes or no answer from him. If he said yes, then I would have initiated disciplinary action. If he denied it, then I would have accepted his statement as the truth and let it be. I wholeheartedly expected this guy to deny the accusations, but I wanted to put him on the hot seat. Sergeant Holloway agreed, “Absolutely, Sir! You can’t tolerate that shit!” We summoned Sergeant Ellis to our office and we shut the door.
“Sergeant Ellis, I need to ask you a question and you I need to be completely honest with me,” I started off. “Whatever your response, I will trust in your integrity, however, I need you to be straight up with me,” I continued.
“OK,” Sergeant Ellis replied with a look of confusion. I then lay it out there. “Sergeant Ellis, it’s been brought to my attention during one of your inspections, you referred to me as a faggot, and I want to know whether or not that is true.” Within seconds, the color from Sergeant Ellis’ face drained from his face and he sat there, scared for his life.
“N-N-N-No, Sir. I never said that about you. I-I-I would n-never say about you.” Sergeant Ellis said as he began shaking and breaking a sweat.
“Well, OK then. I just wanted to clear that up. You said no, so I believe you. This is done deal.” I turned to Sergeant Holloway, who nodded in agreement. However, for Sergeant Ellis, this was not over.
“Wait, Sir hold on. I’m really nervous now after having this conversation with you,” Sergeant Ellis clamored.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because, how do I know it is really over?” Sergeant Ellis asked.
“Sergeant Ellis, I just said that however you answered I would believe what you said. I have no reason or evidence to believe you are lying to me, so I trust you at your word,” I responded.
“Ellis, this is no longer a big deal. We just wanted to clear this up face-to-face.” Sergeant Holloway interjected,
“Sergeant Holloway, I no longer feel comfortable working in this shop.” Ellis said, now visibly shaking.
“What why?” Sergeant Holloway asked with a look of confusion.
“Because I feel as though this incident is going to hang over me and affect the way you and Captain Coronado perceive my performance. With your permission, I would like to speak to the Chief about a transfer.”
“Sergeant Ellis, there is no reason for you to be transferred anywhere. You have seven months left here anyway, so it is unlikely they would consider it. Besides, the Chief is going to ask for my opinion on the matter, and I will simply tell him no.”
“I’d still like to speak to him anyway about this matter.” Ellis said, bewildered by Sergeant Holloway’s response.
“You can if you want, but you’ll simply be wasting your time,” Sergeant Holloway said.
Sergeant Ellis exits our office, and Sergeant Holloway and I reflected on how crazy that went. He assured me that his request would go nowhere and how all in all, it was the right way to handle the situation. Though the rumors and shit-talking continued, I had drawn my line in the sand and made it crystal clear that I have ways of finding out if I am being disrespected. I never had problems with Sergeant Ellis after that, nor anyone else for that matter.
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Chapter 16: Having Sex All over Kunsan Air Base
After a little bit of time on Kunsan, it became abundantly clear that the people by and large minded their own business. The big chatter about me and my gayness had all but died down and people moved with their work and their lives. What a relief. In my dormitory, people were so wrapped up in their own lives, that officers were emboldened to openly commit some of the most flagrant violations of professional conduct. A female Captain down the hall from me openly admitted to having a Staff Sergeant she met come over and get naked with her every now and then. Two Captains on the second floor, one male, one female, both married, were openly engaged in an extra marital affair with each other. They did not even bother to hide the fact when coming out from one another’s rooms or going on weekend excursions to resorts along the coastline together. Confronted by such a laissez-faire environment when it came to other people’s business, it was only a matter of time before my sex life on base flourished.
Within days of arriving to Korea, I had my computer set up in my dorm room hooked up to the internet. Oh boy, now I could see what would happen when I switched my Manhunt.net profile from North Dakota to South Korea. I made the switch and saved the changes, listing my profile in Seoul in order to get maximum attention. Granted, I was 150 miles south of Seoul, but with the gay community in South Korea anchored in Seoul, this is where it would get maximum visibility. One day later I checked my Manhunt.net profile, holy fuck, I had thirteen responses! The responses came from soldiers and airmen across the peninsula, from Seoul to as far south as Daegu. Though I was flattered by the attention, I wanted to see if it was possible to zero in on men that were stationed at Kunsan.
One of the first guys I talked to on Manhunt.net from my base was a closeted Staff Sergeant. He was a single straight guy that got curious about dick when he arrived to South Korea. He was not into Korean girls and the choice of American chicks on base was slim pickings. So what a surprise, he gets curious about a man putting his mouth on his dick. I was nervous at first, since this guy did not post a picture of himself on the site. I mean yes, this was the age of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and online activity could be incriminating evidence, but the odds of being caught because of your online activity were very remote. Sting operations to catch gay men in the act were banned by Presidential executive order in 1998, and straight people had zero incentive to be trolling these sites, if they even knew were to go. It was safe to say, any internet traffic to these sites were from men who were legitimately looking to get their dick wet inside another man’s mouth. So even during those days, it was socially unacceptable for gay men, military or not, to post profiles that had no pictures. All fears, however, dissipated when he knocked on my door and I answered.
There stood a dirty blond, swimmer’s build guy in his mid 20s asking me if I was the person from Manhunt.net. I said yes and immediately pull him into my room. I kept chit chat to a minimum when going over what he is into. I rip off his shorts and underwear and proceed to suck him off incessantly. True to “straight” man form, he does not want to kiss me. He let me suck him off and put his dick up my ass, but kissing, no! According to him, that makes you gay! Almost immediately his eyes close and a look of relief comes over his face as if oral sex had not happened in a while for him. I sit on his dick for a little bit, but it was clear that he liked getting his dick sucked more, so back in my mouth it went until he blew his load everywhere. He definitely left my room looking less stressed than when he entered.
The second guy was Danny, a stocky Senior Master Sergeant with a killer smile that said, “I want to hold you down while I fuck that ass that I own.” When he came over to my dormitory for the first time, my first thought was that he was going to fuck me….and boy was I going to let him! After starting off straddling his cock on my couch, he threw me on my stomach and proceeded to fuck me so hard that my ass and his pelvis made clapping noises. Seeing him pant and sweat while he fucked made me want to my buck my hips in synch with his thrusts. Finally, he twitched and grabbed my body tight as he came and in no time, zipped his pants up and left while I still layed there, sprawled out and in a trance. As much as I enjoyed getting fucked by Danny, he was very prominent on base through his work and social activities, so getting him alone to whip out his cock was no easy task. Nonetheless, the second and third time with him were just as awesome as the first.
The third guy I met, James, did not get naked with me. On the contrary, we became great friends. My first impression of James online was that he was one of those annoying homos that was “looking for friends” on Manhunt.net. Despite feeling like messaging him on Manhunt.net was a waste of time, I pressed on out of intrigue since he had to feel like he could trust me before he would even authorize me to view the photos he had posted. When James finally did, I was expecting to see naked photos of him or pictures of him having sex with someone…..what a letdown! It was just a bunch of Glamour shots of him posing on a rock like he was taking pictures for the high school yearbook.
Days later, I had to attend a meeting at the base headquarters. As a member of the QA, I was also appointed an evaluator of base mobilization exercises. During exercises where the base would mobilize for combat operations, I along with the inspectors in my section were responsible for evaluating the maintenance group on how effective it executed its wartime mission. The base had a whole apparatus for this called the Exercise Evaluation Team. Prior to exercises, EET would have extensive meeting on the scope of the exercise, the scenario, and what needed to be evaluated. So I, along my superintendent, attended these meeting along with key personnel from every agency on base. As I was sitting at the conference table, in walks a master sergeant along with a posse of enlisted noncommissioned officers. “Oh my god…is that him?” I thought as I stared at this guy who looked strikingly similar to James. That night I messaged him on Manhunt.net saying that I was at the EET meeting that he attended. Despite my pictures on Manhunt.net being open and public, and despite being across the table from him, James said he did not see me. Apparently, he was so focused at the meeting on the issues at hand that he did not bother to momentarily let his eyes wander around the room. When we had another EET meeting, I made a point to get his attention. “Oh! Excuse me” I said as I purposely bumped into so abruptly that it startled him. At first, James had this dumbfounded look on his face like, “What the fuck is wrong with that stupid officer,” but he then immediately blanched as he realized who I was. That evening, he told me on Manhunt.net that he had to duck out of the room momentarily because he burst into laughter at my clever way of getting his attention. We met up at the club that same evening and from there, took a taxi into Gunsan City in order to dine at an Italian restaurant that he enjoyed. From there, the rest of the evening involved telling scandalous stories about hookups and laughing our asses off. I did not hook up with him, but at that point it did not matter. James, like Won from Homo Hill, had become one of my “sistas”. Even better, he was friends with Danny, so when Danny managed to get a weekend to himself, the three of us were a frequent entourage at Homo Hill. As a way to hang out on base public without raising an eye, we became workout buddies at the gym, setting aside 3 days during the week to meet at the gym and get buffed and pretty. During the workout, we would check out other guys at the gym, laugh about Homo Hill happenings, and reminisce about where we would be after Kunsan Air Base. James had orders to Lakenheath, a US Air base in the United Kingdom just a couple of hours north of London. I crossed my fingers and hope I would be able to wing a similarly awesome assignment out of Korea.
One of the last men that I would hook up with on Kunsan was Allen, a quiet Master Sergeant that worked in the mission support group on base. Like Danny, Allen too was involved with a lot of senior enlisted activities on base, so there was not a whole lot of time for him to peel away and go to Homo Hill, eventhough he really wanted to go. So he would search Manhunt.net for guys on Kunsan. He came across my profile in November 2009 and asked if I was at Kunsan. I said yes, and we proceeded to talk about what we were into. All in all he was a submissive bottom that wanted to get fucked hard. Honestly, who was I to deprive him of that any further? Similar to other hookups, in classic gay porn fantasy, he had me come over to his dorm and said his door would be unlocked and I would find him naked in bed.
Since Allen was a senior noncommissioned officer, his dormitory was on the other side of the base. I had to think of a good reason to be inside of his building. Aside from official business or checking in on someone who worked for me, there were few feasible reasons why I would be present inside the SNCO dormitories. So I concocted the excuse that I was merely there because I had dropped my cell phone and someone at this dormitory had found it. That first night it was after 10pm, so there was not a whole lot of foot traffic going up and down the stairwell. I go up to the third floor unnoticed and head for his door. I slipped inside and found Allen naked in bed with his ass perked up. I got naked and began dominating this guy, having him suck my cock while I fingered his ass before fucking in several different positions over the course of about an hour. When we had both came, we cleaned up, I kissed him goodbye, and then slipped out his door and out of the dormitory. We did this periodically over the course of the year in much the same way Tyrone and I hooked up back in North Dakota. One of us would message the other for sex, then we would set a time, usually late at night so that I could come over unnoticed. We would fuck, and most of the time, I would clean up, get dressed, and go home. On a handful of occasions, if we got together on a Friday, I would stay over the night. We would cuddle till early morning, when I would slip out of his dorm building and head back to my dormitory while everyone was still passed out drunk from partying the night before.
On two occasions, I had a close calls slipping out of his dorm. The first time I was slipping out immediately after sex. I had just closed the door to his room and was heading toward the door, when in walks in Master Sergeant Harley, a ammunitions specialist that worked for me in Okinawa.
“Holy crap, Captain! How are you?” Sergeant Harley says to me with a smile on his face as he shook my hand. Sergeant Harley and I worked very well together in Okinawa, so he was genuinely excited to see me. “I thought you were going to be working in the munitions storage area?”
“Yeah, well, Colonel Maldives had other plans for me and sent me to QA.” I reply hoping that he would not notice that I am in civilian clothes in his dormitory.
“What brings you to the SNCO dorms?” He asks. Thankfully, I remembered my prepared excuse.
“Oh, one the master sergeants on this floor found my cell phone on the sidewalk, and I just came to retrieve it”
“Oh, OK. Sergeant Harley replied. Praise Jesus, he bought it! We shook hands as I said that I hoped to see him around. As much as I was glad to have seen him again, I would have much preferred our encounter to be at a bar as opposed to minutes after fucking Allen senseless.
The second close call came on one of those evenings when I was too tuckered out to walk back to my dormitory. I had hung out with some officer friends that I had made at the base club. After drinking for a bit, I slipped out and headed to Allen’s dormitory. That night I was feeling extra frisky, blowing my load, yet picking back up fucking him as if I had never came. After three times, I fall down right next to him, sweating, and instantly fell asleep. I woke up the next day at 8am. The base personnel were still largely asleep, many of which were passed out drunk after a night of heavy boozing. Taking advantage of the calm, I got dressed, kissed Allen goodbye, and slipped out of his dormitory. As I was crossing the street, it was drizzling a bit. I saw one of the entrances to the base mini mall open. Eventhough the shops inside were not open, it was typically left open for people to use the tables and chairs inside. So I went in order to avoid the rain and pass through to the other side of the building. As I was walking, I saw two people sitting at one the tables.
“Hey Captain Coronado!” said the staff sergeant. He was one of the guys who worked in the maintenance operations center, a place I would frequent several times a week. Sitting right next to him was Major Grizner, my squadron commander. “What are you doing up so early…and in the same clothes from last night?” the staff sergeant continued. My commander had a look on his face that said, “I don’t even want to know why.” As such, I did not even provide a response. I simply waived my hand and drunk mumbled as I walked passed them. Major Grizner never brought up that day….and neither did I. Sure, I could have pieced together a believable excuse, but I was too drunk to function at 8am.
The Kunsan hookups were epic not just for how good the sex was, but just how easy it was to get away with it in plain daylight. The military mission had such a lightning rod focus, that everything else was just background noise. Though the sex was good, the pool of men to choose from was very tiny, so my sexual appetite pushed me to look for cock elsewhere.
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Chapter 17: The Horny English Teacher
Because of the frequency of trips to Seoul, I quickly got comfortable with the idea of talking to men that lived in Seoul and meeting them on the weekend. Initially, this was not effective. This Puerto Rican sergeant named Ricky initially refused to give me the time of day. No replies to my messages, and virtually ignored me when I tried to talk to him whenever I saw him in person on Homo Hill. You see, Ricky, like so many other publicly straight men, turned to the dick during his year tour in Korea. However, something told me this was not Ricky’s first time messing around with dudes.
Ricky not only enjoyed getting fucked in Korea, but he was a power bottom with an insatiable sexual appetite. Such a phenomenon does not happen to someone first exploring gay sexuality, so it is safe to say Ricky was experienced. Being the handsome Puerto Rican man that he was, Ricky had men lined to fuck him, so he literally did not have time to respond to my advances. Undeterred, I kept trying until I met a sergeant named Larry that was stationed at Yongsan Garrison and lived on base. For the first time, I attempted to use the video chat feature on Manhunt.net, but my ancient-as-fuck computer did not have microphone capabilities or a camera. So while I could see him and hear him, he could not see or hear me. Nonetheless it was interesting typing messages to him about all of the filthy things I wanted to do with his cock and watching his reaction. Seeing him nod his head and perk his eyebrows, like I was giving him all the included features on a used car he was considering buying, I have to admit, was a little titillating.
At the same time I was talking to Larry, I was also talking to Simon, an English teacher from Wisconsin that recently graduated from college. He had just arrived in September and was still getting situated in Ansan, a town just outside of Seoul. He definitely wanted to get together, he just did not have any time to do so. Simon intrigued me because he was a bit like me. He was unapologetic about being a voracious sexual being and he marched to his own beat. I was eager to get together with him.
Seventh Air Force, the organization that Kunsan Air Base’s fighter wing reported to, was hosting The Air Force Ball for all Air Force personnel in South Korea at a luxury hotel in Seoul. The Air Force Ball is a black tie event commemorating the establishment of the Air Force in 1947. Nearly every Air Force base in the world hosts an Air Force Ball to commemorate the occasion. Typically, I had avoided going to this ball at previous bases because hanging out with a bunch of stuffy, old officers was fucking boring. However, going to Seoul would be an easy excuse to hook up with people at Homo Hill. Plus, when you are a Captain in the Air Force, you kind of get looked at differently when it comes to attending special events like this. Lieutenants got away with blowing it off while Captains….not really. Going to the ball would stave off any negative attention towards me, so I said, “What the hell! I can go to the ball for the booze and get some dick on the side.” In a bold move, I alerted both Larry and Simon that I would be headed up there and that we should definitely hook up. The plan was to hook up with Larry prior to the Ball and meet Simon downtown in Homo Hill after.
My car had just arrived to Korea by this point, so this trip to Seoul would be by car. I pack up my mess dress, the uniform Air Force personnel wear to formal dining events such as the Air Force Ball and off I go that afternoon, navigating the slew of toll highways before entering the complex clusterfuck called Seoul. Whenever I drove to Seoul, I steadfastly refused to drive anywhere in the city unless I was either arriving or leaving the city. Parking on Yongsan Garrison was free, so I would just leave my car there while I walked all the way to Homo Hill or took the subway to various parts of the city. The plan was to leave my car at the parking lot of The Dragon Hill and take the subway to the cheap but clean hotel that I had reservations as well as to the hotel where the ball was being held. However, first things first….I had an appointment with Larry.
I drove over to his dormitory for what I would expect to me some earth shattering sex. Unfortunately, Larry was a bit of a dud in the bedroom. He was enjoying fucking me in different ways. The only problem was that he was not even inside of me. How much of a sexual novice do you have to be to not realize that your dick is not inside the person you are fucking? Because of my naturally big latino ass, Larry thought he was pounding me, but all he was really doing was poking the entrance with some of his dick buried between my ass cheeks. I even politely ask if he was sure he was inside, to which he replied yes. Eventhough he bombed, I did not want to be rude, so I just continued with the whole charade and faked how awesome it was. He later wanted to take a break so we layed down for a bit and cuddled, something I was notorious for being good at. Afterwards, I shot my load by getting Larry to twist my nipples and kiss me because I wanted to leave with at least some semblance that he was useful sexually. I grabbed my mess dress uniform from the car and got dressed while Larry stroked himself in bed. Larry kissed me goodbye as I headed out and off I went to The Air Force Ball.
The ball was just like any other Air Force activity. A bunch of old, married people pretending to get “crazy” because they get to drink alcohol without the presence of their rotten c***dren. Yes, I could have left early, but that would have definitely been noticed by anyone in the room or at my table. I tried to have a little fun and take part in the activities. In the middle of the mingling period, I saw the superintendant for the munitions flight. Being in QA, I regularly traded barbs with him over issues involving inspections that occurred in the munitions storage area. He regularly called QA to complain about how knit picky my inspectors were. However, being removed from the influence of his commander, I was free to dismiss his complaints at my discretion. Since I just happened hate his guts, politely telling him to fuck off was the icing on my cake.
The Air Force Ball finally ended and a large swath of people made a mad dash for the exit. Apparently, I was not the only one bored. I headed back to the Dragon Hill hotel and changed clothes inside the lobby restroom of the hotel. From there, I headed to homo hill where I saw Ricky dancing on one of the platforms in Queen. Suddenly, he turned my way and gave me the sexy eye. Puzzled, I dance my way towards him until we were face to face. After introducing myself as the guy that messaged him on Manhunt.net, I bluntly ask, “You practically ignored me before when I made my move on you. What’s so different about now?”
“Oh, because I was flirting with this hotter guy that last time I saw you, but he’s gone now….so now I’m looking at you.” Let’s think about that. Ricky blew me off because he had a hotter guy in his sights and now that he is no longer around, suddenly, he considers me attractive. I am hot when the hotter guys are not around…..wow. His honesty and brazen arrogance, though, were slightly erotic.
Simon messaged me earlier that day that he would be arriving to homo hill sometime after midnight. I went to buy a drink and when I got back, I saw Simon dancing with Ricky. Apparently, those two had been talking on Manhunt.net as well. I got back and introduced myself to Simon while all of us grope and grind together to the music. Within minutes, I found myself kissing Ricky, who then brought Simon in for the most erotic triple kiss in recent memory. After about 45 minutes, Simon leaned in and said, “I’m gonna fuck Ricky at Equus in a little bit. Wanna come along?” I pounced on the offer. We left Queen and headed over to Equus and within minutes, we were all naked and sucking each other’s dicks. Simon was the first to fuck Ricky spread eagle. Afterwards, he pulled out and we switched out like it was some sort of tag team wrestling match. After twenty minutes of one fucking Ricky while the other shoved his dick in Ricky’s mouth, Simon lubed up my ass and fucked me while I was fucking Ricky. Simon had a big dick, so it was a bit of a shock when he slid it in. The combination of pain and euphoria was mind boggling at this point. Eventually, after about 2 hours, I was too tired to continue and passed out.
I woke up to find Simon and Ricky making out in the corner of the room. All three of us got up and showered because by this point, it was dawn outside. Ricky was leaving Korea for his next assignment the next day. He would return to the US to be a hometown recruiter and would be rejoined with his family. Though sad to leave, he was grateful to be “tag team” fucked during his last weekend in Seoul. There was no doubt in my mind that he would fantasize about that memory and others while having sex with his wife. Simon, on the other hand, was here to stay for at least the next year.
The next time I saw Simon, it was on a trip that I took with James and Danny. It was Columbus Day weekend and the three of us wanted to spend some of it chasing dick in Seoul. We piled into my car and off we went to Seoul. Danny and James were not big on hiding out in Equus during curfew hours, so we checked into a hotel that night. Simon met us in homo hill and we all barhopped together for a couple hours. “Hey, would you mind if I crashed at your hotel? He asks. He was supposed to stay with a friend that night, but could not get a hold of him. “Sure, no problem,” thinking that he just wanted to crash and that the gesture meant nothing. Boy was I wrong.
The first person to disappear that night was Danny. He found a petite Korean guy that had succumb to Danny’s killer smile. This became a problem for James as he and Danny were rooming together. There was only one key for the room, which Danny had. James did not want to be rude and bang on the door while Danny was pounding some Korean ass, so he knocked on my door. The only problem was that I had picked up a soldier on the way home. While I certainly welcomed him to crash, the best I could do was give James some blankets and one of the pillows so that he could crash behind the door of the closet. Minutes after James came in, I got another knock. It was Simon, and as soon as he saw the naked soldier in my bed, boy did he get pissed. After the night we fucked Ricky, I had told Simon that I liked him and would love to see him again. I thought that bringing back another guy would not phase Simon since we had engaged in a three way, a big miscalculation on my part. Angry, Simon joined James on the floor behind the closet door.
The next day, we all meet up in the lobby of the hotel. Simon did not even want to look at me, while the soldier I picked up, pretended to be oblivious to the whole situation. Finally, the soldier, in an effort to not look like a Barbie, apologizes for causing trouble, to which I said he had no reason to apologize, and that I would deal with this. I kissed the soldier goodbye and the rest of us head off to brunch in Itaewon.
Initially, I was on the defensive with Simon, saying it was silly for him to be ignoring me like this and to at least talk it out as why he was so pissed. I mean fuck, we had a three way the first night we met, so how can he be pissed that I invited someone over to my hotel room? I argued this point because I did not want to admit that I pulled a “Ricky” on him. I came off as interested in him as long as no one else was around. While I brushed it off with Ricky, Simon was very offended. I should have spoken to Simon about bringing the other guy back.
“Ok, Simon. I fucked up. I had no reason bringing that guy home after promising to room with you. I fucked up and I am sorry. Can you please forgive me?” Having massively screwed up, I expected not to hear from Simon again after that cluster fuck of a night. Hell, if it were me, I would definitely be pissed for at least a couple of days, but not Simon. I think he just wanted to hear me admit that I fucked up and there was no way around what I had done.
“Sigh….I’m still pissed off…but I do forgive you.” Simon replied.
“Can I see you again?” I asked pressing my luck.
“Maybe,” Simon replied. That maybe turned out to be a yes 1 week later. I went up to Seoul alone and met Simon at a Dunkin Donuts. He had been well settled in Korea and was well underway with mingling with the other gays on the peninsula. That day, he introduced me to Jack, a Lieutenant Colonel stationed in Seoul at Yongsan Garrison. He and Simon had hooked up at Equus. They were headed there again to get naked and Simon wanted to know if I wanted to tag along. I said sure, not one for turning down a good time. Also, Simon seemed to have better taste in men. Hell, aside from the fact that I had that soldier in the hotel room that night, Simon’s only other complaint was that I choose someone who was clearly uglier than him, to which I partially conceded.
Twenty minutes later, in walks Jack to Dunkin Donuts and we immediately headed for Equus. Once again, there we were, tag team fucking a power bottom. The only difference was Jack was so much more aggressive and verbal at getting fucked than I was used. “C’mon fuck me! Put your back into it!” While initially concerned that I was inadequate for Jack’s sensibilities, I manage to bring it home with both Jack and I blowing our loads. At times, Simon once again tried to fuck me, but only for a bit because it hurt. Simon had a nice cock, and I really wanted to take it. I just needed to find the right position, something soon to be rectified.
Kunsan Air Base was hosting its annual Air Show on Halloween Day, so I asked Simon if he wanted to come see it. Simon, having never been on a military base, accepted the invitation. Since Halloween fell on a Saturday that year, I further sweetened the deal with the offer of celebrating Halloween in Seoul with the best costume I could have ordered on the internet: The Ambiguously Gay Duo from the comedy show Saturday Night Live. I was going to be Ace and he was going to be Gary, taking turns jumping on each other’s backs and running around the street groping and grinding one each other.
I escorted Simon onto base that Friday night immediately after getting off of work. When we got back to my dowm, Simon told me that he had been talking to someone prior to arriving that was assigned to Kunsan. So we logged on to Manhunt.net and found the profile. The profile picture was a headless torso and the profile description left literally everything to the imagination as it was not even filled in. Simon managed to arrange a meet and greet at near the base bus station. Fifteen minutes later, a stocky guy walked up to us and introduces himself as Seth. Seth was a very closeted fighter pilot. In fact, he was so closeted that regularly hung out with other pilots that were known to have made awful comments about me and my sexual orientation when I first arrived on base. I guess he figured it was easier to rub elbows with homophobes that made fun of me in order to keep any attention away from himself. I found this out when he brought us to his dorm room and I asked about what he did with his freetime. Though I was a bit attracted to him, this revelation ate away at me and I became so fucking furious with him. So furious that later on in my tour I confronted him head on about his ability to stand by and watch me get slandered for something that he was too. How dare he use me as a scapegoat just because he was too chicken shit about his own sexual orientation? Sigh, but I digress.
That night in Seth’s dorm room it was pretty obvious that he was not into me, but he did seem to hit it off a bit with Simon. Seth had to wake up early the next morning to work the air show, so Simon and I left and went back to my dormitory. Simon was very frisky that night, so the clothes came off quickly. He clearly wanted to fuck me, and I really wanted to find a position in which I was comfortable. In the end, having him fuck me while I laid on my side with him behind me did the trick. Both of us came that night and fell asleep in exhaustion.
The next day, Simon and I woke up and picked up breakfast from one of the base restaurants. James met us there and we all eat and catch up for a bit. James, having not seen Simon since that night they slept on the hotel floor, poked fun at me over that night about making us sleep on the floor while I rolled in bed with the ugly soldier. “Haha, very fucking funny!” was the only retort that I could come up with since they had me for being an idiot. We then boarded a shuttle bus that took the three of us to the part of the airfield where all of the static aircraft displays were positioned.
The air that day was abuzz with US aircraft doing all sorts of aerial demonstrations while the strip was filled fighter and cargo type aircraft. We spent the day touring site, sitting in the cockpits, and stuffing our faces with hot dogs at the concession stands. The day was going great because I had yet to run into anyone I had worked with. I was not scared of running into them, I just did not want to provoke another rumor mill by introducing them to my “friend” Simon. “Oh, nice to meet you!” they would say to my face, while turning around and telling everyone that they had just met my life partner. So when I saw my boss and some douche bag Captains from work, I talk Simon into heading back to my dorm. James peeled off and headed back to his dormitory for some homework. Simon and I went back to mine to take a nap before heading up to Seoul.
While I was still asleep, Simon got up to shower and get ready. As I was getting up to do the same, Simon said he was going to go for a quick walk. I brushed this off initially, then about 5 minutes later, started asking myself just what could he be possibly going to go see. I got a little concerned because as his military escort, I was responsible for his conduct and technically, I should have been with him at all times. I calmed myself down, reminding myself that Simon was a mature guy that is not going to just arbitrarily cause trouble….at least that’s what I hoped.
After about thirty minutes, I send a text message to Simon asking where he was. 10 minutes later, he replied back, saying he went to go hang out with Seth and that he would be back soon. Not being a dummy, I was not surprised when Simon returns to my dorm and admitted that he went and fucked Seth. While I was asleep, he got a message from Seth asking him to come over. Since I had to get ready anyway, Simon figured he could get his dick wet while he waited for me. I tried not to show it, but I felt a bit miffed. For one thing, I got in trouble for the ugly soldier in Seoul, but fucking Seth spread eagle was OK while he was down there visiting me? However, I was willing to table that issue. What bothered me even more was that I was outmaneuvered in the arena of cruising for dick and, well, my ego was a bit bruised. A different side of me tried to reign in my emotions, reminding me that Seth was a bit of a douche and I should not be feeling a sense of injury just because Simon successfully fucked him. Simon, however, knew I was a bit bothered by it and apologized, so I at least took some solace in that. He even tried to make me feel better by saying Seth did not even have that nice of a body…..eventhough he took getting fucked like a champ. Yeah, way to make me feel better.
We got to Seoul and quickly changed into our costumes. Seoul was a bit crazy that night. Every other girl on the street was dressed in a skimpy navy captains costume with short shorts as an ode to a female Korean pop group that wore the exact same outfit in their music video. While that outfit killed in terms of notoriety, the costume Simon and I wore only appealed to the small number of Americans that actually watched Saturday Night Live before arriving to Korea. For the Koreans, Simon and I were simply wearing turquoise spandex and yellow underwear for some reason. Undeterred, we still partied that night. When we were ready to head back to the hotel, rest assured, it was just Simon and I in bed.
After that weekend, circumstance caused Simon and I to drift apart. Work drama hampered my ability to travel up to the Seoul area till mid December. Then, in the beginning of 2010, I left the peninsula on a nearly 2 month hiatus for training and leave, followed by a three week exercise deployment that finished at the end of March. By the time he and I managed to get some free time to possibly get together again, Simon was already seeing someone that lived much closer by than I did. I was not surprised by this. We were merely seeing each other when we could see each other. Simon and I never hammered out a serious conversation about him and I, and for good reason. Simon’s teaching contract was up around the same time I was going to leave, so there was no point in trying to make something serious. In those days, gay and lesbian servicemembers were very use to either shutting down relationships or not getting too committed because of the complications of our military status. It was a way of life….so I just accepted it as being what it was.
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Chapter 18: Best Sex Ever
In November 2009, several of my QA inspectors got in trouble over the weekend during a visit to the entertainment district outside of Osan Air Base. One was drunk and disorderly with some military patrolmen while he and the rest were discovered to have stayed at a different hotel without authorization. My squadron had movement restrictions which required you to document where you would be staying on the peninsula if you were not coming back to your dormitory. The group put one hotel, but stayed in a different without notifying anyone….a big no no. As such, the group was disciplined and I as the officer-in-charge of the unit was so furious because I had specifically told my section that compliance with the movement restrictions was non-negotiable. As such, I imposed a very draconian punishment on the whole section, banning them from leaving the local area and requiring them to return to their dormitories every night. For a section that was filled with mature noncommissioned officers, this was a kick in the balls because I was treating them like junior airmen. Nonetheless, I was not going to let my direct orders be blown off.
Consequently, that ban applied to me too. For six weeks, I was not allowed to journey up to Seoul and had to entertain myself either at America Town, a particularly rundown entertainment district for Kunsan airmen, downtown Gunsan city, or on base at the club. You can imagine the frustration of not being able to go twirl and flirt with men at the gay mecca in Seoul because I had to comply with my own punishment. I mean yeah, Allen, the closeted master sergeant, made up for it a bit, but Allen and jerking off to hours of gay porn was not going to make up for my desire to go on the hunt in Seoul. In mid December, we had an inspection that QA passed with flying colors. As a reward, I lifted the restriction and let everyone go and do whatever they wanted that weekend. It was certainly a good thing that I lifted the restriction that weekend, because I got a message on Manhunt.net from arguably the hottest man to have ever messaged me on the site.
His name was Cary, a muscular guy in his mid 40s that was on temporary assignment from the Pentagon. I was coming up Saturday, a perfect opportunity to get together. He said he would give me a call to arrange to get together at his hotel room in the Dragon Hill Hotel. However, Saturday and most of Sunday came and went and I did not hear from him. I tried calling his phone and could not get through, so I simply went home. My phone had died early Sunday, so I could not charge it until I got home. I then proceeded to bang my head against the wall as I saw a slew of missed call notifications, and voicemails from Cary, trying to get a hold of me not too long after my phone died. Damnit! He said he was having trouble with his phone since US phones have compatibility issues with the Korean telecom network, so after trying and trying, he just gave up and used his hotel phone to try and call me. I asked if he was going to be around the following weekend and he said his flight back to Washington DC would depart on Wednesday. A guy this hot eager to get naked with me….there was no way in hell I was going to pass this up.
Going to Seoul during the week meant that I either needed to take leave or use a pass, and I just happened to have a pass. Earlier that month, I turned 28. As a birthday present, my squadron commander gave me a 1 day pass to use on a day of my choosing as long as I was not needed for anything major on duty. The plan was to walk into his office Monday morning and ask to use that pass immediately that same day in order to go to Seoul and get naked with Cary. Normally, you give notice of your intent to use the pass days in advance, so my excuse had to be a compelling one. I conjured up the story that my cousin Fantino had come TDY to the peninsula short notice and that I wanted to go to Seoul to see him since I had not in years. So that Monday, I go and make my pitch to Major Grizner. At first, he was skeptical of letting me use my pass so short notice, but I assured him that I had already spoken to my superintendant about it and there was nothing significant going on. Finally, he relented, and granted me permission to use it that day. I ran home to get ready, I see a message from Cary on Manhunt.net saying that he would be free early evening around 7pm. Since it was that late in the evening, I pack an overnight bag with a complete utility uniform and all of my necessary toiletries. At around 5pm, I jumped in my car and headed up to Seoul.
When I arrived at the Dragon Hill, I called Cary’s room and let him know that I had arrived. What Cary forgot to tell me is that in order to get up to the rooms, you must have a card key to authorize the elevator to move. After failing to get the elevator moving, I went to the front desk and asked the attendant to call up to the room. What I did not expect was a line of questioning that made it painfully obvious that I did not have any official business with Cary.
“What’s the name on the reservation?” The attendant asked. Oh shit, all I had was Cary’s first name and nothing else. “His name is Cary,” I reply nervously. In the military, it is customary to be addressed by your last name in all types of settings, so the fact that all I knew was the guy’s first name set off alarm bells from the get go.
“OK,” the desk attendant said with a weird look on his face. “Colonel, right?” The attendant asked. I was thinking, “Colonel?! Cary’s a Colonel?” I blankly reply, “Yes!” At this point the attendant sized me up because like a call girl going to meet her john in the hotel room. Nonetheless, he called the room and handed me the phone to me so that I could ask Cary to come downstairs. Apparently, Cary was waiting for me naked in his room, so it took him a bit to scramble some clothes on and come down to the lobby.
“Thanks for letting me know you’re a Colonel! That attendant thought I was a freak!” I sarcastically tell him on the walk to his room. “Sorry! It’s not something I typically advertise,” Cary said, “I should have remembered you need a card key to get up here.” I shrug it off by the time we got to his room. Cary then took off his shirt and asked, “So…are you hungry?” I am not sure why I thought he was asking me this in the literal sense, because I started saying, “Kinda, I haven’t eaten all day today,” but before I could finish, Cary walked over, picked me up by the legs and threw me onto his bed like a horny a****l. In the face of a horny man with quite the sexual appetite, my first thought was literally, “Aww….looks like I’m not gonna eat for a while,” before I came to my senses and realized this man want to figuratively tear me to pieces.
Cary was sexually versatile, and boy did he like to switch places in the middle of fucking. Even better was that he had a thick, floppy dick that was not painful when he fucked, so I had no problem snapping to every position he wanted. It felt amazing, but not as amazing as getting fucked immediately after having him spread eagle. He was definitely not a novice! We did everything in my playbook. We fucked each other, we sucked each other off individually and at the same time, we sat on each other’s faces, pure heaven. Best of all, I achieved the holy grail of gay sex: cumming without touching myself. Typically, I can only cum if I am fucking a guy or jerking myself off, as with almost all gay men. Cumming without touching yourself is an epic feat to achieve because simply put, the sex is that damn good! While Cary was fucking me spread eagle, he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me up till we were facing each and kneeling. Having not pulled out of me during this adjustment, Cary then began thrusting upwards and I immediately shuddered in euphoria. As I am kissing him, intensity gets bigger and bigger until I literally shoot my load onto both of our stomachs and chests. He laid me down and kissed me passionately for a couple of minutes.
“How are you feeling?” Cary asked as I Iaid there in paralysis.
“I feel great…that was fucking awesome….but I am still hungry!” I clamored out between breaths. Cary realized that I was not k**ding at the beginning of the night. “Oh, shit! I’m sorry buddy,” Cary said. We got dressed and headed down to the first floor to pick up some beer and tater toters. When we get back to the hotel, we snuggled for a bit on the bed, eating and drinking while Cary talked about the Pentagon and DC. “The Pentagon is the gayest assignment in the military!” Cary proclaimed emphatically, then went into intricate detail about how there were a ton of gay men that work at the Pentagon and exactly how much gay sex happened inside the Pentagon. From cruising the sauna of the 24 hour gym, to Colonels inviting young guys into their office to get naked and fuck, he talked up the Pentagon like it was some massive 24/7 orgy. I was amazed and jealous all at the same time.
Cary and I fucked a couple of more times before we finally gave it a rest at 3:30am. We got a couple of winks of sleep before having to get up at 5:30am. Upon getting up, we jumped in the shower together, where we lather each other up with soap, in between kissing, sucking each other off, and licking each other’s assholes. After the shower, both of us shaved and put on our respective uniforms, “Oh, you’re a Captain…cool!” He says as I slip on the overshirt with my rank on it. I slipped out of his room first so that no one sees us walking out together. Prior to opening the door, he pulled me in for the only passionate kiss that I ever had while in uniform. I then said goodbye and walk out of the room. Down at the lobby, I bought like 4 cans of Red Bull because boy was I going to need it that day. I jumped in my car and headed back to Kunsan Air Base. I had a meeting at the headquarters building so I called my superintendant and said that I would simply roll straight into that meeting when I got to base. I arrived just in time for the meeting and carried on like nothing happened the night before.
I lost track of Cary after that encounter, which is a shame. There were tons of men that I would hook up with that year, yet none came close to being as good as Cary in bed. If I ever see him again, I guarantee there will be a round two!
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Chapter 19: Open Bay Barracks aka Gay Fantasy
In November of 2009, a deployment tasking came down requiring a munitions officer to be posted at Camp Henry, an Army base in the city of Daegu, about 100 miles southeast of Kunsan Air Base. The purpose for the deployment would be to participate in the March 2010 military exercise with the South Korean military. About every 6 months, the United States and South Korea conduct computerized mobilization exercises in order to assess the readiness of various operations centers throughout the peninsula. Because it was a munitions officer tasking, the munitions flight was responsible for filling it. However, the munitions flight did not have a munitions officer because, allegedly, I was deemed unfit to be assigned there. In that post was an aircraft maintenance officer. While she was very competent in her duties, she did not have the background that I did in the field. So you can imagine my amusement when the maintenance group tried to submit her for the exercise and was shot down, saying the substitution was unjustified given the fact that the there is a munitions officer, namely me, assigned to Kunsan Air Base. Hence, the order to deploy was given to me, the one who was too gay to lead the munitions flight. Irony can be quite amusing.
Within days of returning from leave back in the United States, I suited up, grabbed my mobility gear and headed to Camp Henry. For three weeks I would be assigned to open bay barracks with 150 other men. I had certain expectations of what this would be like. I wholly expected this to be a very conservative environment where I would need to be on guard for homophobia….boy was I wrong!
I know some of you are expecting me to tell you about the loads of Adonis men that walked around nude. You are probably expecting me to tell you about gay sex that happened in the barracks or in the showers Sorry folks, the sex never happened in the barracks or the showers and most of the men were butt ugly. There were however some hotties and some interesting moments. For example, there was a very cute lieutenant that was deployed from Alaska for the exercise. When getting dressed, I attempted to exercise as much modesty as I could. Being the effeminate man that I was, the last thing that I wanted was for homo haters to look at me changing and think, “Look at that queer, trying to prance around naked!” So I never got fully naked in the presence of the other men.
Cute Lieutenant, on the other hand, marched to his own beat. Day after day, he would strip naked next to his bed, showing everyone his giant, floppy dick that you could prominently see even through his underwear. Everytime he stripped naked, I had to catch myself from staring too long lest I begin to get an erection. My heart would race everytime! More shocking than the site of Cute Lieutenant and his giant cock was finding myself talking about his cock….with my straight bunk mates! This blew my fucking mind! Apparently, I was not the only one staring, because on at least two occasions, I was with a group of guys that when talking about the barracks, immediately pivoted to Cute Lieutenant and his massive cock. From how big it was to how it compared to their own. That’s right ladies, men stare at each other’s dicks, especially when confronted by a dick potentially bigger than theirs. Eventually, I got comfortable enough to go jerk off in the shower area since there were individual stalls. I thought about cruising the showers at night to see if anyone was there trying to get their dick sucked, but concluded that it would be a step too far to try. Though, I am pretty sure there was at least one or two trying.
As for gays, it was so much easier than I thought it would be to smoke them out of hiding. There was a guy named Jose from a southern California reserve unit that regularly deployed for these exercises. He was very plugged in to the gay scene on Homo Hill, so it should have come to no surprise that Jose cornered me one day on the way back to the barracks and asked me if I was gay. Feeling comfortable being honest, I said yeah. He goes on to tell me about how he saw me on homo hill back in August when he was here for the previous exercise and remembered me when I arrived at Camp Henry.
Jose introduced me to the members of his unit, which was great because when I wanted to go out drinking, I could count on these guys to come along. When I asked him if he knew any other gays, he could only point out two. The first was a 19 year old military policemen who was permanently stationed at Camp Henry. A check of Manhunt.net confirmed as he had a profile assigned to Daegu complete with a picture. Like me, he came off as very effeminate in uniform. So effeminate, that everytime he talked, I expected a dick to fall out of his mouth. Talking my way into his asshole would have been pretty easy, it’s just that the sex would have most likely occurred in his dorm room. Unlike Air Force dormitories, Army ones were a little more locked down, with requirements to show ID and sign a log, so I steered away from him, eventhough I was curious. The other one he pointed out was his boss, a chief warrant officer who tried to come off as a pussy-addicted straight man, except when he needed his dick sucked and turned to Jose. It never ceased to amaze me that the men who were the most bombastic about their heterosexuality were also the most likely to mess around with other dudes.
Finding the gay neighborhood proved to be impossible for Jose and I, so we just went out to Banwoldang, the entertainment area frequented by US Soldiers and English teachers. After bar hopping for a bit, we came across this hip hop club and just popped in. Out of nowhere, here came the effeminate, military policemen with what looked like the most gangster women I had ever seen. These women appeared to be his body guards as they constantly made a circle around him as he talked and drank. Jose and I turned to each other and simply said, “Lesbians!” Unfortunately, we could never stay out too late because there was no place to take shelter after curfew to avoid getting caught. Unlike Homo Hill, there was no dark bath house to hide in for the evening, so we simply went back to base and abided by the curfew.
After one week of orientation, the exercise formally commenced. For me, the exercise was absolutely boring. No one ever required my expertise unless they had some mundane question about Air Force munitions that had no impact on the exercise. I simply stared at a spread sheet all day waiting for numbers to get updated. One of the officers from Kunsan frequently had lunch with me. One day, when he and I were picking a place to sit, I had the honor of being in the presence of the hottest Marine I had ever encountered. He was a Lieutenant Colonel in the reserves from California and came with a joint service group of civil engineers to lend their expertise in the arena of rapid infrastructure development. I had seen him when I first arrived at the barracks. He was getting dressed next to his bed, letting me sneak a peak at his meaty cock through his underwear, on top of a physique that gave me a hard-on just looking at him. I turned to the other Kunsan officer and said, “Let’s sit here!” very emphatically. We sat down and I could barely control myself, constantly staring at the Marine like he was sitting naked in the middle of the cafeteria. I was staring at the Marine so much that I did not notice that I had caught the attention of the Air Force Lieutenant Colonel next to him.
“Hey, would you look at that, some Air Force guys! I thought I was the only one!” said this Air Force Lieutenant Colonel. “I’m Neal. What’s your name?” This immediately broke the attention I was paying to the Marine because of how informal he was to me. I was not use to senior officers being so friendly and jovial like I was someone they met on the street.
“My name is Carlos Coronado, Sir. Nice to meet you,” I said, remembering I was in a military setting and needed to show deference to his rank.
“Oh, please, don’t call me, Sir! Makes me feel old. Just call me Neal.” Now this set off fire alarms in my head because senior officers never gave you permission to use their first name in addressing them. Sure, they may have addressed you simply by your first name if they like you, but that did not equate to you doing it back to them. I was nervous and curious all at the same time. Neal and I went back and forth about each other’s background, the places we had been, college, etc. It was like I was talking to one of my friends on the street. We were so wrapped up in conversation that we did not notice that we were the only ones left at the table, so both of us got up and headed back to work. I saw him again a couple of days later on Friday when the exercise was paused for the weekend. I went to go use the computer at the community center and Neal sat down next to me. We caught up a little more on how our portion of the exercise was going. Apparently, his role in the exercise was so much more exciting than mine. Then, out of nowhere, he says, “Hey….that movie Valentine is showing at the base theater tonight. Wanna go see it with me?” I tried not to look so stunned when I said “Yes,” but in my head I was wondering if I was in some sort of twilight zone. The implication behind the gesture was that we were not going in some of group, as would be socially acceptable in military setting. No, we were going together, in what was suspiciously feeling like a date. Normally, such an endeavor would excite me, but I was not sure about the motivations of this guy. He was not dropping any hints about whether or not he was gay, and I was too scared to question the sexual orientation of someone that outranked me. Adding to this is the fact that this was all playing out in a very public setting, so regardless of his actual intentions, we had to consider how others perceived our interaction as well. All of this was swirling through my head that night when Neal came over to my barracks in order to walk with me to the theater. I was at my bed grabbing a couple of belongings because after the movie, I was going to head up to Seoul. The exercise had been paused, so it was the perfect opportunity to get away from the military environment for a little bit.
While watching the movie, I concocted a plan to put him on the spot about, well, whatever he was up to. I was going to ask if he wanted to come with me to Seoul. If he came with me, I could get him to come with me to Homo Hill, where, to my summation, he would be comfortable enough to tell me if he was gay. Unfortunately, Neal did not take the bait and said he had plans with the other Colonels in his group. Undeterred, I went alone to drink, dance, and hookup with a tourist from South Africa.
As weird as Neal might have acted, I could not definitively rule on whether or not he was flirting with me, or if he was just some goofy reservist that was just looking for someone to hang out. This speculation, however, came to an end, when I returned from Seoul Saturday night. On my bed in the barracks was a note from Neal which read, “Hey Carlos! Hope you had fun in Seoul. I’ll be at community center at 9pm using the computers if you want to meet up. Hope to see you!” Really….he left me a note….speculation over! No senior officer would actively seek out someone beyond the bounds of his accepted social circle unless he was looking for more than just platonic banter. Neal was flirting, and I needed to figure out a way to call him on it.
I would briefly see Neal in passing throughout the third and final week of my deployment, but did not get a chance to actually talk to him until that Friday, the very last day of the exercise. There was no point in staying the whole day because every other office was winding down. Hell, some of the people who deployed began to pack up and leave. I told my coworkers that I was just going to leave. My boss said, “OK,” and thanked me for my work. I headed over to the community center to check my email when I ran into Neal. Like me, Neal had just bailed on the exercise. To our left we there was a bar area that was just opening up for service. “Wanna go get a drink?” I offer. While the exercise was in effect, technically comsuming alcohol was banned, but with whole offices blowing off the rest of the exercise, it was safe to assume that the “End Exercise” order was imminent. So we went to the bar and ordered some cocktails. Now, maybe it was the fact that after two drinks I was a little tipsy, or maybe it was because Neal was leaving and I therefore did not care if I asked an inappropriate question, because I just leaned in and said, “Ya know. I think you and I have something in common.”
“I think we do too,” Neal responded.
“Are you gay?” I blurted out.
“Yep!”
“Cool, me too!”
We proceed to talk about all of our experiences with being gay in the military. Neal confessed that he was in fact flirting.
“Yeah, I thought you were hot from day one,” he said with a smile.
“Damnit, I wish I would have just asked you sooner. We could have gotten naked in a hotel a long time ago,” I said.
“I know, that would have been awesome”
In the end, I settled for a hug and a kiss on the cheek from Neal. We exchanged information before I headed back to my barracks to pack up and return to my base. I could not believe all of the gay encounters I had in a setting that had such little privacy. Granted, I had no sexual trists in the barracks or in the shower, but that deployment was full of male eroticism in so many different ways.
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Chapter 20: Gay Innuendo from Subordinates
Before I left Camp Henry, I received a phone call from my squadron commander. “Congratulations! You’re going to Germany! AFPC gave you orders to Buechel Air Base!” I was ecstatic! In a short couple of months, I would headed to Europe, where opportunities to interact with other gay men were rampant, where I could find some of the hottest men on the planet, and I would get paid to live there! My life was about get exponentially more awesome.
Apparently, I had missed a lot of drama at work when I left. The group commander, Colonel Maldives, had reassigned his executive officer to another post. Allegedly, it was because she was not performing well on the job and it was affecting his ability to be organized. Desperate to fill this position and to get back on track, he zeroed in on me to come work for him since I had previously worked as an executive officer at Minot Air Force Base. Unfortunately, this was considered a step down for me since I had been one as a Lieutenant, and also because the position I currently held was considered to be high profile. In reality, I felt as though I was being fired from my position, so naturally, I took the news with a sense of grief. I had worked to improve my stature and earn the respect of my peer only to have it pissed away with this realignment. I had to find a way to pick myself up off the ground, accept my fate, and do the best work that I could.
Informing my subordinates at Quality Assurance was not easy, and they did not take well to me being removed from their chain of command. You see, when I returned, I returned approximately one week before a major inspection that we had been getting ready the entire time I had been stationed there. When the inspection happened, Quality Assurance did so well that we won high marks, high praise, and award for superior performance, things that were a major reflection on the leadership of myself and my superintendant, Senior Master Sergeant Holloway. So when I told them that I am leaving, they immediately cried foul. “That’s such bullshit! We did awesome on this inspection and this is how the Colonel repays you?!” said Jake, arguably the hottest male inspector in the section.
“While I am certainly not thrilled about this, it is my fate and I must accept it, and so should you,” I told them with the most stoic face I could possibly muster. I was pissed, but I had to do the right thing and quell the dissent. “I’m just going to be across the hall, guys, which means I’ll definitely come by to talk shit and you can do the same!” It was bittersweet leaving them to go be a Colonel’s bitch, but an odd thing happened when I did leave. Since I was no longer viewed as a superior, they began to regard me as a peer. I mean sure I was an officer, and they still afforded the respect to the rank that I held. However, me leaving opened up a relationship with those inspectors that would have been otherwise impossible….I became one of their friends. On top of that, I noticed a shift in the behavior of the men in this section that left me scratching my head till my very last day.
The Quality Assurance section was overwhelmingly male. Since no one at Kunsan Air Base was allowed to bring dependants with them, airmen assigned had greatly diminished family responsibilities, leading to well developed camaraderie was would be unimagineable anywhere else. In my section, however, this camaraderie lead to affection among the male inspectors that became more and more erotic as time passed. Simple ass slapping was nothing. Straight guys in the military do it to each other all the time and perfectly maintain their heterosexuality. What I am referring to was erotic touching, like grabbing each other’s nipples, embracing, stroking butt cheeks, the kind of things I would do in a gay bar type setting, yet this was on full display in our office, in uniform. I brushed it off as horseplay, at least in the beginning.
I started getting regular invites to go out and do things with QA, such as going to America Town, or chilling in the squadron lounge called the “Hooch.” These were lounges on base managed by squadrons where alcohol was authorized to be sold as a fundraiser of sorts for unit activities and going away gifts. By this point in my tour, there was no hiding my sexual orientation, because it had been all but been adjudicated in the court of public opinion. Before leaving QA, I came out to Teresa, one of the female inspectors. The rest of them just kind of went along with the idea that I was gay. While drinking, I would hear things such as, “Captain, you’re fucking cool. If anyone fucks with you, let me know,” as well as, “Captain, if anyone fucks with you, I will kick their ass.” It was pretty obvious that these statements of defense were not because I wore socks with sandles.
What really brought me close to my QA people were parties that we hosted at our hooch. Bored with same old, same old, QA got creative and started hosting themed parties. Teresa would typically come up with the most batshit theme imaginable, and people would show up in some type of garb. One of the first themed parties she threw was a “Super Heroes” party to celebrate her birthday. After getting the email invite from Teresa, I went over to the QA office to talk about the party. When Teresa saw me, she walked over asks if I could fulfill a birthday wish of hers. “Sure, what?” I said.
“Could you come as the Greatest American Hero?” Teresa asked me. “Who?” I asked not knowing who the fuck she was talking about.
“The Greatest American Superhero. It was my favorite show when I was younger, and if you came dressed as him, I would absolutely flip!” I was clearly too young to have remembered the show, so I had to look it up on the internet. I concluded that it would be harmless to order a costume. After all, it was just for Teresa’s birthday. What I was not prepared for was the groundswell of elation that people at that party exhibited. I was suddenly a superstar simply for being a good sport, and it did not stop there. QA hosted a “Goth Party.” At this party, everyone dressed in black, painted each other’s nails black, putt on black eyeliner, and listened to music by The Cure. The party was too crazy for most people’s sensibilities and I remembered raising a ton of eyebrows when I walked through base in full costume. Nonetheless, my QA people were throwing a party and I was going to support. The closer I got with these guys from hanging out, the more I noticed the homo erotc behavior, and eventually, that behavior turned towards me. It was as if they wanted see how I would react to what I called, “pretend flirting.”
At a barbecue that I was invited to, an inspector named Ted came up to me shirtless to show off how ripped he was. When he first arrived, Ted was a bit chubby, but worked out like crazy till he developed a rather magnificent physique. However, it was not enough for him to be shirtless. Several times that day, he made an explicit point to flex his muscles for me with a sort of wink and nod, as if he was waiting for me to fan myself or get an erection. If that was not enough, Ted would often sneak up from nowhere and put me in a headlock, literally burying my face in his chest.
Then there was Jay, a very crude inspector that when I first met him, I thought it best to keep my distance. Well, not only did he warm up to me with talks about beating up anyone who fucked with me, but he included me as one of the people to which he loved directing crude, sexual gestures. For example, when in a truck with someone, he came up and spoke to the both of us, and midway he said to me, “Hey Captain, look down.” When I looked down, he make his index finger and thumb into a cockring and put it around his bulge. For most people, this would have been taken as blatant sexual harassment, but not with me. These incidents happened strictly when it was just me and the folks from QA hanging out, and since I could hang when it comes to dick and pussy jokes, I never took offense.
Lastly, there was Todd, a stocky inspector that I had gotten along with since day one. On the 4th of July, the maintenance group had a massive party on the pavilion. Todd walked up to me and said how much he was going to miss me. I was flying out in about a month, so the reality of my departure was creeping up. I had already turned in my car for shipment to Germany and reserved my plane tickets for official and some leisure travel that I had in mind. Todd, when realizing all of this, got very blunt about wanting to make out with me! Seriously, there were so many people around. I brushed it off as him being a bit drunk, but everytime I ran into him, he kept saying, “You and me, Captain….you and me!” The more he egged me on about this, the more began to think he was serious, so after a while I went along with his catcalls. We even stood together watching the fireworks, arms around each other. Remembering that I was in public and that kissing him could land me in real trouble, especially considering he was married, I was glad that at the end of the night he was only k**ding.
July 2010 ushered in a string of going away’s for a lot of key personnel in the maintenance group, including myself. Goodbye’s and Going-away’s always seemed to bring out how people truly felt about one another. My friend Ann, the only female Captain in the maintenance group, was pulled aside by the outgoing director of operations for my previous squadron. He noticed that she and I had hung out a lot so one of the last things he said to her was, “Take care of Carlos. He is such a good guy….and he’s not gay.” When Ann told me told me this, I simply laughed. Of course everyone knew I was gay, and he knew that, but in a very oddball way, he simply asked her to look past the rumors of my sexual orientation and see me for me. That hot QA inspector, Jake, had quite the memorable going away….at least for the rest of us, since toward the end of the night he was hammered out of his mind. Teresa, myself, and a couple of people from the rest of the squadron went out to America Town that night. By the time we arrived that night, Jake was already stumbling, so after a couple of hours he was crosseyed and barely able to keep his balance. Me being the ranking person on scene, I directed one of the guys to get him a water and to quit feeding him shots. Jake initially protested being brought a water, but when he saw me ask nicely to accept it, he relented and and took a swig of the water. I walk over to him to say, “It’s nothing personal Jake, I just want you to get home fine.”
“It’s all good, Sir!” Jake slurs. “You’re so fucking cool, man!” He says as he put his arm around me. Keep in mind, anytime I saw Jake on the job, my mouth began to water and my penis would twitch a bit. That is how attractive this guy was. Plus, he was a reliable worker and very intelligent. Anytime he wanted to get my attention, it was a breath of fresh air. So having him put his arm around me and, like Ted, bury my face in his chest….yeah, you get the idea. As if that was not erotic enough, what happened next just upped the antie.
“I fucking love you man, and I’m gonna fuckin miss you!” Jake says as he leaned in and kissed my face and neck. Even Teresa got a little wide-eyed at that moment when she saw Jake getting all “kissy-faced” with a commissioned officer. Keep in mind, this is a crowded bar full of other Air Force personnel, and here is Jake is kissing my cheek and neck….how ever did I get into these situations?!
Eventually, it was my turn for a going away, and I wanted to go out with a bang! On top of the going away that my previous squadron threw for me, QA, in my honor, threw one last costume party, themed, “80s superhero.” As proof that I had zero shame at this point, I decided to go head to toe dressed as Space Ghost. The going away came first, with the Chief Enlisted Manager giving a magnificent speech about my accomplishments in QA and as Colonel Maldives’ executive officer. He then turned to me to hand me the floor as I emphatically proclaimed, “Kunsan sucks shitballs!” The crowd responded with a massive cheer, followed by me saying that I really come to be a part of a wonderful family during my year-long stint, words that I honestly meant. For the first time in my career, I was sad to leave an assignment because of the personnel I had worked with. When it came to Kadena and Minot, I barely gave two shits about most of the people I left behind. Kunsan was different. Granted, it was a rough start with the rumors and shit-talking, but when it was put to rest, I was able to make some awesome friends, both officer and enlisted, especially within QA. Aside from the drama with Sergeant Ellis, going to work was fun, no matter how long, how stressful, or how exhausting. As much as Kunsan location-wise was a crap assignment, invaded by hoards of mosquitos, smoke from the burning of farm fields, and yellow dust plumes from China, the people and the social environment more than made up for it.
That evening, I donned my Space Ghost costume and off I went to the party inside the hooch. As a demonstration of how much the inspectors of QA were going to miss me, they presented me with the best going away gift I could have ever asked for. It was no secret that I was a fan of Lady Gaga. I had a Lady Gaga T-shirt that I prominently wore on base, I blasted Lady Gaga music from my desk at work, I bragged about how I was going to go to her concert before I reported to my assignment in Germany, everyone knew! So Teresa presented me with a box that upon opening was a picture of Lady Gaga with that diamond-encrusted lobster hat that she wore to a party in London. I sifted through the wrapping paper in the box….holy fuck, they made me a replica of the lobster hat. It has a plastic lobster that was painted white with plastic diamonds hot glued on all over the place, complete with an exercise headband stitched to the bottom, enabling me to wear it. I screamed, jumped up and down, and laughed till I cried. I hugged all of my QA peoples, telling them it was the best gift I had ever received in the military.
Days later, I was at the airport waiting to board my flight, reminiscing about the all that had happened in just one year. I wanted sexual decadence….check! I wanted to catapult my military career to new heights….check! I wanted a follow-on assignment to Europe….check! Most important of all, I wanted to have a solid sense of acceptance after so many years of having to fight for it. Because of my beloved inspectors at QA, I could proudly say check!
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Chapter 21: Gay Reunion
A lot of thoughts went through my head on the prospect of getting assigned to Buechel Air Base, Germany. For starters, Germany is where I was born. My father was an artillery soldier assigned to an army post one hour west of Frankfurt. Going there for duty would be the first time in twenty five years that I had been present in Germany. Second, being a gay man was going to become a lot more fun. Though I had a lot of sex in Korea, there was a large degree of sneaking around that had to be done given the concentrated presence of the military community. In Germany, and in Europe at large, I could easily put distance between myself and the military communities and literally function as an out and proud gay men whenever I was out of uniform. Trips to places like Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, or London were easy and the likelihood of running into anyone that could make trouble for me being gay in the military was nonexistent. Lastly, my assignment to Germany meant that I would be reunited with a lot of gay friends that I had come to know in Korea.
For their “preferred” follow-on assignment, nearly all of my gay friends in Korea went somewhere in Europe. James, the master sergeant I “bumped” into at a meeting, was at Royal Air Force Lakenheath in the United Kingdom. Jack, the power bottom I fucked at Equus, was going to be posted at European Command Headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. Ryan, my informant that got one of my inspectors in deep shit with me, got sent to Spangdahlem Air Base, about an hour southwest of my base in Germany. Lastly, my friend Melanie was being sent to Ramstein Air Base, about two and a half hours southeast of my base in Germany. Melanie and I knew each other at Kunsan, it is just that I was not formally out to her. My group commander had tasked me to go work with her on an awards package that she was crafting for submission to the wing commander. So I was frequently at her office in the operations group. Like me, Melanie too had worked as an executive officer in the past, so she understood the pain and stress I went through there, and we got along great! It was not until I got a message from Melissa, my friend from Minot, did I even realize Melanie was a lesbian.
“Did you meet my friend Melanie over there at Kunsan? She’s also a lesbian and we grew up together!” I was amazed, not just by how she operated under the radar, but when I finally got to talk to her again over the phone, she let me in on some of the gossip about me in Korea.
“Yeah, my boss was constantly talking shit about how gay you were.” She said to me. I did not even bother to roll my eyes as it confirmed my suspicions. “He would say that about you and all I could think about was how much I wanted to meet you.”
“Why didn’t you ever say anything before?” I asked thinking about all the time I worked with her on that damn award package.
“Well, ya know how it is. I did want to say anything until I was sure.” She replied. To her credit, I would have probably reacted the same way. After leaving Kunsan, Melanie went to Squadron Officer School, a professional military training school for mid level Captains at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. It was there where she ran into Melissa, who spilled the gossip about me and Melanie saying “Fuck yeah, I remember him!”
“One time I tried to defend you,” Melanie began, “by saying, ‘Ya know, he just might not be as butch as other guys, that doesn’t necessarily make you gay.” Melanie did not believe this one bit, she was simply trying to find a way to voice her dissent over the way he was talking about me. “Carlos, his response was the funniest shit ever! He was like, ‘Oh Melanie, trust me. I know a homosexual when I see one. If any of the officers working for me were homosexuals, I would just know quickly.’” He said this to Melanie, not knowing how much of an out and proud lesbian she was, and there Melanie was, on the verge of rolling her eyes at his remark.
With so many people on my list to see again, it was honestly a bit difficult to figure out where to start. Having never been to the United Kingdom before, I focused on stopping in London first for a couple of days, with a side trip up to Cambridge to see James. London was everything that I had imagined it would be. The city was rich with history and well as rich with things to do and see. Best of all, London was filled with some of the most notoriously horny men I had ever encountered.
Seriously, I came to the conclusion that as long as you are witty and have a good sense of humor, the gay men of London will fuck you. Even better, they did not even care where I was staying. Because London was so god damn expensive, I decided the bargain hunt for some very inexpensive accomodations, settling on a hotel near Victoria Square that was used to be a boarding school for boys. No joke, I checked into the room and found a mini closet, a bed, and sink to brush your teeth. The shower was a communal shower down the hall for everyone staying there. This might sound a little gross, but shit you not, that bathroom was cleaner than most hotel rooms I had stayed in that had their own bathroom, so I did not care. Getting back to the London men, I had British men gladly come back to my boarding school hotel room, where getting spread eagle for me to fuck them was practically nothing.
Because of some ridiculous confusion, James was not aware that I was in country by the time I had arrived and called his cell phone. He was bitching that he made all these crazy plans to come pick me up from the airport. While I appreciated that, I had to explain to him that there was a good reason for me arriving earlier than planned. After I left Korea, I went to a technical training course at Sheppard Air Force Base in northern Texas. It was supposed to last a full six weeks, but we managed to end four days early, giving me an additional four days of vacation time in London. Eventually, James stopped crying about a petty confusion and gave me instructions on how to come up to Cambridge.
I caught a commuter train from the King’s Cross station and headed up to Cambridge, a rather quick forty five minute trip. When I exited the station, there was James, sitting in his car, waiting for me. I instantly smiled, excited about being reunited with one of my gays. We drove back to his house, where he was ready with some booze to start getting wasted. In Korea, James was constantly bragging about his friends from the UK and how awesome they were. The house parties, the barbecues, the fantastic fuck buddy sex, these men were legendary in his eyes, so you can imagine my excitement when I began to meet them. Tom and Luke were the first ones I met, a gay couple that worked on the base as local national civil servants. Steve and Ashley were the second couple from a village about twenty minutes away, Steve and Ashley were a particularly cool couple that had no problems indulging in all of my idiosyncrasies. We sat and conversed about all things gay while getting ready to go out to a party called “Dot Cotton’s Final Waltz.” “Dot Cotton” was the name of a night club that held gay parties at least once a month in Cambridge. It was closing down the night that I had arrived, hence the reference to, “Final Waltz.” Sad that a gay establishment was closing down, I was at least glad to be there on the final night, as was James. James foreshadowed how excited I was to be going to such an event, so as a precaution, he demanded that I carry a piece of paper in my pocket that had his address on it in case I had to come back alone. “Carlos, I know how you are, you are going to hook up with a guy there and forget about me in an instant. At the very minimum, I want you to have a way to get back home at the end of the night.” James reaction came off as a bit extreme, with his taking the piece of paper with his address written and shoving it down one of my front pockets, but his paranoia proved to be very valid as soon as we set foot in the venue.
Dot Cotton was just like any other gay venue. Throngs of gay men in line to go dancing, bitchy bouncers telling people that once they leave, they cannot come back in, not much of a difference whatsoever. As soon as I stepped in, I was hypnotized by the number of hot gay Brits that were rubbing themselves all over each other in the club. Minutes after we stepped inside the nightclub, I disappeared, lost in a sea of hot men with big dicks. In not too long of time, I found myself confronted with having to choose between two men that were equally as hot. Both were eager to make out with me and shove their hands down my pants as they kissed me and caressed my chest. In the end, however, there could only be one. So in a situation where both of them confronted me as to which one I would be accompanying back their car, I chose the one that simply wanted to fool around in a back alley or in his car. Both of these men lived outside of Cambridge in very small villages with little to no access to public transit or a taxi, so going home with either one was out of the question, even for someone as adventurous and slutty as me.
We exited the club and began making out next to the dumpster behind the club. Almost in an instant, the guy pulled down his pants and pointed his ass in my direction! I was flabbergasted! A handsome man, pulling down his pants and pointing his ass toward me, how does such a thing happen so quickly? I responded by fucking this guy senseless! After about twenty minutes of fucking in public, we pulled our pants up and moved to his car. I attempted to fuck him in his backseat, but those damn British cars proved to be uncomfortable beyond reproach, causing me to simply give up, zip up, and say farewell. I then attempted the convoluted task of reconnecting with James and his British friends. The bitch of a door lady was not having any of my excuses as to why I needed to go back inside of the club, in light of their no readmittance policy. Thankfully, I remembered James sticking the address to his house in my pocket. What a nice and thoughtful friend he turned out to be. After getting some food at a taco stand across the parking lot from Dot Cotton, I hopped in a cab and went back towards James’ house. He was still at Dot Cotton when I had arrived, but had left the front door to his house open for me, so in I went, passing out on his bed like I owned it.
I awoke the next morning to James making breakfast for the myself, Steve and Ashley, both of him were naked in a separate bedroom. Realizing that I had passed out in his bed I had apologized, but James, being the cool sport that he was, just brushed it off as me being me. Once Steve and Ashley were decent, we all ate breakfast together and watched sappy, gay, independent movies. Having been apart of large gay communities where I never felt a need to censor who I was, I felt a deep sense of resentment towards these films as I felt they painted a much more conservative view of gay men than what I felt was the reality. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the day with my friends, and vowed I would be back to visit James very soon…..a wish I without a doubt was able to keep.
I arrived to Germany following that vacation. The man who would become my Director of Operations picked me up from the airport in Frankfurt and took me to my hotel in the styx of Germany, just one hour south of Koblenz. I was miserable from the get go, telling myself, “What the fuck did I get myself into?” Those first couple of months were surprisingly isolated, considering I was stationed in Europe. Sure, there were tons of gays that I had met online, but I was so far removed where I was from the other gays in the military, that I found myself indulging in all things gay by myself in Cologne. A German city that I considered the San Francisco of Germany, I went up there so often that I was dubbed the gay military mayor of Cologne. During those first couple of months, I left no stone unturned, seeking gays with which to hang out. Every gay bar, every dance club, every bath house, there was no place I did not at least go inside for a peek. Aside from those weekend trips, I focused on getting my house set up, which proved to be a complicated task, exacerbated by the fact that the closest support base for my unit was a one hour drive away. Thankfully, my car had arrived before I did.
Crystal, my friend that owned her own bar in Okinawa, reached out to me on Facebook that year. Aside from saying, “Hey girl, how you doing?!” she tipped me off to the fact that Roni, another gay friend from Okinawa, had just gotten posted in Naples, Italy. I immediately got in touch with Roni that year, pledging to go see him wherever he wanted to hang out in Europe. Roni, being so excited to see me again, threw out the prospect of meeting up in London for Thanksgiving that year, to which I quickly agreed. That November, I flew out to London once more, eager to see one of my closest friends of yesteryear. We reserved a timeshare in western London together with his friend, Jessica. Upon seeing Roni, I hugged him and tackled him to the ground out of relief that I had finally run into a close friend of the military for second time in my career. Jessica was an up and coming sailor that arrived to Naples about the same time that Roni did. Ambitious and determined as she was, Jessica wanted to make a name for herself, so it was only a matter of time before she met Roni. After leaving Okinawa, Roni quickly built a reputation for himself as a cut throat gay man that was not about to take shit from anyone. I can recount countless stories of Roni bitching out sailors that talked out of line or simply disobeyed him, with Roni snapping his fingers or screaming at them to “Obey.” I admired Roni for his sassy antics.
After getting caught up, Roni, Jessica, and I made plans to go to Cambrige that Thursday in order to see James and the rest of his buds. We boarded the train at King’s Cross, at little late because Jessica was not wearing walkable heels and hence, we had to wait for the next train up to Cambridge. By the time we got up there, James was so busy cooking Thanksgiving dinner that we had no choice but to take a taxi over to his house.
James had an abundance of military folks over at his house as well as to Steve and Ashley. Jim, James’ friend of many years, was a bitchy, sarcastic guy that proved to be quite talkative when the chips were down. Mark was a handsome Mexican guy that was so bored with Thanksgiving that night that he barely looked up from the screen of his phone. Raymond, this guy stationed at Ramstein Air Base, could not stop giving Roni and I the stink eye. I do not blame him, though. From the moment I arrived at the table, Jim and I hijacked the entire conversation with all of our gay exploits. Anything I would say, Jim would fire back an insulting retort about how much of a filthy whore I was, which I brushed off because he was throwing down the filthy talk as much as I was. When he was not making fun of me, he would turn and make fun of Roni for incessantly applying lip gloss to his face, as if he had nothing to contribute to the table and needed a personal distraction. Over time, I sensed that the insults he lobbed my way were not because he was looking down upon me with some sort of disdain the way Raymond and Mark showed me whenever I glanced at them from the corner of my eye. It was like Jim was picking on me the way a little boy throws sand in the face of a little girl if he likes her.
We had so much fun at the dinner, or at least Jim and I did, that we stayed well past the time when the last train departed Cambridge for London. The Brits, Mark and Raymond were all staying at James’ house, so Jim offered to house Jessica, Roni and I for the night. Whatever Jessica ate that night apparently did not sit well with her because she began to feel a bit sick. She then started throwing up incessantly as soon as we got to James’ apartment. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Jim, this jackass of a guy on the outside, showed an empathetic side of himself that I thought was impossible if my first impression had dictated. Jim organized his computer room and gots lots of blankets and pillows for Jessica to be as comfortable as possible. He then gave her a waste bin just in case she had to throw up again, which she did for the rest of the night. Seeing this side of him put me in heat! However, I did not know how to approach the situation in a manner that would end with Jim inviting me into his bed. So, leave it to Roni to get sassy with me, snap his fingers and whisper-yell, “Go in there!” as he pointed to Jim’s room, before laying down in this puffball of blankets in the middle of Jim’s kitchen. So I do it….I walked up to Jim’s doorway, knock on the door and, “So….want some company?”
“Sure.” Jim politely replied. I stripped down to my under and crawled in bed with Jim where he immediately kisses me and said, “You know I was just teasing you back there, right? I was only doing it because I wanted to get in your pants,” Jim said as he was laying on top of me.
“Of course I realized that, and….I was hoping you wanted to get in my pants,” I replied. Both of us were too drunk to really rock the other’s world, so we just kiss and suck each other off for the rest of the night, which, ironically, was enough for me. Often times, when I looked back, I wished circumstances could have been different. Jim had just left Germany when I arrived, so I missed out on getting stationed close by, which was a bummer because I only got to see him again once more before leaving Germany. Despite the fact that returning to Germany after that weekend was a little heartbreaking, I would be a fool to insist that Jim and I would have ever pursued anything had I been in the UK or if he had still been in Germany. I just know that if given the opportunity….I would have given Jim a shot in a heartbeat.
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Chapter 22: The Rise of OutServe
In July of 2010, The Advocate, an LGBT news magazine, published an article about an organization called OutServe, that had recently formed the month prior. OutServe was billed as an advocacy organization representing LGBT servicemembers with the initial goal of getting the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell passed in the United States Congress. This was not the first organization to claim to represent the interest of LGBT servicemembers. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network had been around since the inception of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, providing legal advice to LGBT servicemembers on how to walk the fine line of being out of the closet in an institution that will fire you if it obtained evidence of your sexual orientation or gender identity. Servicemembers United was established in 2005 as an organization that aggressively lobbied for the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. However, OutServe was dramatically different in that it was an organization of LGBT servicemembers as opposed to civilians claiming to represent us. Furthermore, OutServe gave LGBT servicemembers a platform to publicly air their grievances of living life under such a demented policy.
To do this, OutServe reached out servicemembers and started tracking those who responded via email address and built a giant list that included name, rank, and base of assignment. After their contact list grew several hundred, the organization migrated to a platform on Facebook where servicemembers were organized into chapters depending on the location of the world you were posted in. Once chapters were organized, OutServe issued a call of action to its members, asking them to reach out to all known LGBT personnel and getting them added to the membership rolls of OutServe. Within months, the membership rolls grew from a couple of hundred to several thousand people, all being able to communicate with one another. Lastly, the headquarters of the organization, based in Washington DC made numerous contacts within the US media and several international media outlets, and called upon leaders of the various chapters to serve as media informants for all issues related to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell that were transpiring within the military. The last portion was critical as it enabled the media to directly connect with LGBT servicemembers as the fate of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was being debated in the Congress.
Throughout the whole process, strict privacy was always a top concern. To remain in good standing, members had to pledge absolute secrecy about our plans as well as identities of all personnel, kind of like the fight club in Fight Club. With the organization platform on Facebook, the organization had ways to of dealing with those secrecy concerns should a member be found to have violated that tenet or even threatened to violate it. Leaders in the organization, as Facebook group administrators, had the ability to ban members from the Facebook platform and had complete control over the admissions process of members. Amazingly, issues with secrecy were extremely rare, as everyone shared the mindset that we were all in this together and must care for one another, even if we may not have liked each other. Obviously, the media shared this concern as well as was more than willing to help us guard our privacy in exchange for direct access to LGBT servicemembers in ways that were previously impossible. Make no mistake, OutServe was a game changer in the fight for repeal, and I believed that so much that I was willing to step up and organize the Germany chapter in the beginning with John, a guy that was stationed at Ramstein Air Base whom I had met through OutServe.
Since I was new, John added every gay and lesbian servicemember in Germany that he knew, who would then recommend members to John and myself for approval. The vetting process simply required someone to vouch for the person’s sexual orientation in order to be admitted. As group grew quickly, our membership criteria expanded as well. Servicemembers in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Spain did not have their own chapters, so they were included in the Germany chapters rolls. Additionally, we got clearance from HQ to admit a German and a Belgium servicemember to our membership as well. During this time period, there was a ton of news about dialogue with other militaries, particularly in Europe, as to how integration of openly gay soldiers would work. So for OutServe, it made perfect sense to admit gay servicemembers of other countries as well, in order to get the upper hand on messaging.
As the organization grew, many servicemembers began to question the purpose of OutServe, while others were perplexed that they were added to a Facebook group they had never heard of. In an effort to unify my chapter behind a particular cause, I made the case to my chapter that our purpose was to lend moral support and a sense of community to all LGBT servicemembers in Germany and several parts of western Europe. To further cement my point, I called for all of us to have a get together. Previously, gay social life depended on where you were stationed. If you were stationed around Spangdahlem Air Base, gay life for you consisted of trips to Cologne and Brussels. If you were stationed at or near Ramstein Air Base, gay life for you were trips to Mannheim and Stuttgart. If you were stationed at European Command Headquarters in Stuttgart, well, you were already there. With few exceptions, the groups of gays rarely intermingled, and I simply wanted to break that habit and have people from across Germany meet face to face. As one of the Chapter leaders, the job of setting up this meet and greet fell upon me, something which intimidated me to no end. I chose Frankfurt as the place for us to get together since a lot of folks had not been there yet or had not been in a long time. Plus, based on those interested in coming, it seemed like the easiest place for people from all walks of Germany to travel. Since I was nervous about the undertaking, I picked an arbitrary date way out in the future in order to have this get together: Saturday, December 18, 2010.
When it came to party planning on any form, I sucked shitballs because I either procrastinated, I was unorganized, or just plain lazy. So while it was my idea to have a get together, I really had no fucking clue what to do. There were people calling on me to negotiate a group rate with some hotels in the area, to which I failed, particularly because the chapter was internet-based and thus, had no financial clout to get any type of business arrangements, much less in Germany. Thankfully, someone made the more logical suggestion of listing budget hotels with their rate and letting people decide where they want to stay. As for how to spend out time, I again had no fucking clue. I mean sure, we were definitely going to end up at one of the gay bars, but it was simply impossible for me to really plan anything since I genuinely had no clue how many people were actually going to show up. In the end, I played it loose with the plans and took a deep breath, hoping that things fell into place. The plan would be to meet at the Le Meridien Hotel in Downtown Frankfurt, and we would see what happened from there.
The day I chose for our first gathering as a chapter turned out to be the same evening that the US Senate was going to vote on the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act. The events leading up to that night were particularly dramatic since it was announced that there were enough votes to invoke cloture on the bill, preventing Senate Republicans from trying to launch a filibuster to kill the bill, making the evening a night to be glued to coverage of the Senate vote. The House of Representatives had overwhelmingly voted for the bill, so it was up to the US Senate to act. While I had only about a handful of people come out for the meet and greet, the vote was looming on everyone’s mind. When I arrived to the lobby of the hotel, I was greeted by a group of people, hunched over a smartphone, listening to live C-Span coverage of the senate floor. The debate over Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell had no started yet, so we took the time to say hi to one another. Aside from meeting John in person, I finally met others that I had been in contact with. First there was Kory, a very attractive Air Force NCO from Stuttgart. He was in a relationship with Sven, a posh German man that worked at the corporate headquarters for Porsche SE, and both lived together in Stuttgart. He came up from Stuttgart with Curtis, a young soldier that reminded me of a younger version of Pepper La Beija, my favorite sassy drag queen from the documentary Paris is Burning. I also met Desiree, whom I saw look back and forth to realize she was only lesbian present. She was a good sport though, simply excited to meet new people. I was a bit relieved to see Steve, a Captain like me who was stationed at Ramstein Air Base. One of the lonliest things about being with groups of gay men in the military is that in almost every case, I was the only officer, so seeing another officer of my rank in the group was a bit refreshing as I had someone that could understand my thought process on things a tad better than the rest.
Two people said that they were coming a little later and to not wait on them. Kory was one of the ones that was listening to the C-Span feed, and since he said there was still no movement on the DADT repeal bill, we set off to go peruse the Christmas Market that was in full swing at the main square of Frankfurt. The group walked around, looking at handcrafted Christmas decorations and munched on a plethora of finger foods, such as chopped sausage and Belgian waffles covered in hot chocolate. That night I was first introduced to Gluewein, a heated mixture of red wine and spices that was commonly drank at Christmas markets all over Europe. John suggested going to the Hard Rock café in order to get some food, drink, and listen to the C-Span coverage in the bar. I thought it was a brilliant idea. I mean granted, it was a massive faux pas to dine at an American establishment as Americans because it showed how culturally narrow we could be. However, corralling this group of homos proved to be as easy as corralling a bunch of stray cats, so the last thing I wanted was a bunch of people griping about where we were going to eat.
Relying on John to get us there proved to be an epic fail, as we arrived a Hard Rock Café that was still under construction. Granted, the mistake could have been made by anyone, but there was just something funny about John leading all of these people to a restaurant that did not exist, especially after walking for about 20 minutes. While commiserating over our failure, one of the guys met us on the street. Jesse, a soldier stationed in Grafenwehr, came upon our gaggle fuck having just arrived to Frankfurt. After wandering about a bit, we settled on an Australian pub where a soccer match had just concluded on television. With the conclusion, a large swath of the bar cleared out to go elsewhere, leaving plenty of space for our group to sit, eat, and drink. Not too long after we sat down at a table did the debate on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell begin. A hush went over our table as the motion to file cloture was filed by Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate Majority Leader. Everyone at the table stopped to listen to the session as the vote count came in, hoping that sixty votes would be achieved in order for cloture to be successful.
When the cloture vote was tallied, sixty three senators voted to file cloture on the DADT repeal act. Everyone at the table did a quick toast in honor of clearing that hurdle. Then came the quick debate on the bill. Senator Joe Lieberman was first to take the floor, arguing how archaic DADT was, and saying the military would be far better off with open service. Everyne at the table cheered at his testimony. Then another hush went over the crowd as Senator John McCain took to the floor to protest the upcoming vote. The group instantly began to hiss at McCain’s testimony, complaining that he was a sell out and a fraud. This was the same man that pledged to work with military leadership in the event that they advocated in favor of repeal. Well, early in March of 2010 Admiral Michael Mullen,the highest ranking servicemember in the Armed Forces, testified about how corrosive the policy was, only to see McCain badger him as to whether Mullen was coerced into giving his particular testimony. Mullen flat out denied the accusation and stated his beliefs were based on field experience working with LGBT personnel in government and concluding that DADT was stupid. Nonetheless, McCain took to the floor to express how much repeal would harm the Armed Forces to the point of endangering it, enraging people in my group to the point where Kory simply asked, “Why can’t that old fart just shut the fuck up?!” McCain’s testimony was tantamount to a crying baby, which became more evident when the Senate voted by a nearly two thirds majority to repeal the law. That was the point where all of us raised our glasses to cheer the end of our own oppression.
Our celebration did not end with a mere, “cheers,” of beer mugs as our excitement knew no bounds that night. I immediately took to my cell phone to call everyone that would potentially give a shit. The first person I called was Jim, the guy I crawled in bed with in Cambridge. Apparently, he did not need any comforting with the news as he and his own OutServe chapter took to London to celebrate the vote. I congratulated him and all of his cohorts before dialing Roni’s phone. Roni was not aware of the vote and was caught off guard. He was ecstatic over how the fight ended out and I could faintly hear him start to choke up over the news. Lastly, I called Melanie, my chick from Korea, who had moved her girlfriend with her to Germany. Of everyone, Melanie was the most emotional, citing her relationship and having to no longer jump through hurdles as the reason why she was thrilled. I could literally hear Melanie burst into tears when I told her that the fight was won. She could not hold back, saying that she nearly separated from the military out of fairness to Liz, her girlfriend of many years. With the vote, Melanie felt like for once, she had a genuine shot at military service without having to make sacrifices to the woman she loved. I was honored to give her that news, and celebrated the shit out of it by taking the guys and Desiree to gay bars all over Frankfurt. Granted, the law would not take effect for nearly a year in order to give the military the time it demanded to get ready for open gayness, and until it took effect, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was still the law, but we did not care. It was a day to celebrate. We won!
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Chapter 23: Becoming Queen Bee
The day after the trip to Frankfurt, the OutServe Germany Facebook page was flooded with pictures and commentary as to how awesome the trip was for everyone who came. All seemed to agree that these outings were worth making the trip, no matter where in Germany they were held. So…I decided to plan another one. This time, the guys that lived to the east of Frankfurt asked to have an event closer to them, as they typically had to drive very far to go to places like Mannheim, Stuttgart, or to Cologne. Wanting to be inclusive the guys east of Frankfurt, I decided on Nuremburg as the next place to have on OutServe outing towards the end of January 2011. Furthermore, instead of just a Saturday get together, I expanded it to the entire weekend.
In the interest of having people check the site regularly, I fostered an environment where people were free to discuss nearly anything and everything. People posted stories, pictures, articles that often sexually charged but humourous. I openly recounted all of my exploits from the past as well as trips that I would make to Cologne. On the OutServe Germany, I made a point of not being shy about how much sex I had, where I had it, and how I had it. As a result, people consistently laughed their asses off and kept coming back to the site for more. However, not everyone was amused. A small minority of guys on the site, mostly officers, thought I took it too far and called me a whore or slut that was a poor example to the other members. This dissent spilled out in January when I was invited to a day trip to Luxembourg with group of guys from Ramstein. Just as I getting ready to drive out there, I got a call from Steve telling me that I was no longer invited because one of the guys threw a hissy fit at the thought of me going with them to Luxembourg because I was, “A filthy slut.” I could have gone anyway just to piss them off, but I was not interested in some stupid dramatics. Instead, I decided to get even.
That weekend, I drove like a bat out of hell towards Nuremburg. A guy from Ramstein Air Base needed a ride, so I did a pit stop on base to pick him up before getting back on the Autobahn, and literally flooring the gas pedal on the no-speed-limit highway. Only in Germany, can you drive at 120 miles per hour and be cruising at the average traffic speed. There was a club that having a gay night that Friday night, so I directed the guys and girls there to meet up the first night. Among the people there were Ashley and Steve, two enlisted airmen from my squadron at Buechel Air Base. I saw that both of them had been added to the OutServe Germany webpage, so this was to be my first opportunity to socialize outside of work with the both of them. When I finally arrived, I found Steve desparately propping Ashley after she had done one shot too many.
“What the fuck happened?” I say a bit dismayed that she is already done for the night when it was not even one in the morning.
“She did all these shots when I was not looking and now she can barely stand up.” Steve said with a look of unease on his face. I looked out towards the outdoor pavilion and saw some bushes. “Take her over there and get her to throw up,” I said to Steve. Having her throw up had the quick effect of sobering her up and making her feel better. I joined Jesse and got introduced to some of the new guys to OutServe. Jesse introduced me to Grant, a cute Samoan guy that lived in Hawaii. Having lived in Hawaii myself, we instantly had something to talk about. I was then introduced to Jordan, another officer and a quite the bitchy queen. Dancing right behind me was Bobby, a Hispanic senior enlisted soldier that had just been promoted to Sergeant Major. With Bobby was Donnie, a guy that was dating Kristopher, a sassy gay Airmen that was on a one year deployment to Afghanistan. Outside, I meet Ian, a member of the Air Force band in Europe, along with Bernard, a soldier that loved frequenting Berlin in order to do get his dick wet….something he and I would come to have in common. We spent the rest of the night dancing, groping and kissing each other.
The next day, we met at a Starbucks for a morning meet and greet. Having remembered the guys that had talked a massive amount of shit about me, I started with stories of my notorious sexual exploits, orgies, closeted married men and numerous walks of shame. What amazed me was that I managed to captivate the attention of those around me, while my naysayers simply rolled their eyes and walked away. Once everyone had arrived, we went sightseeing around Nuremburg, taking in the castle as well as the former Nazi parade grounds that included a museum about the Third Reich. While the museum was interesting for most, one of the guys got a tad upset when going through the section that talked about the homosexual that were sent off to concentration camps. He eventually recovered, he just needed a minute to collect himself given the graphic account the museum portrayed.
Towards the evening, Donnie suggested to me that we go to this German restaurant for our dinner event. The restaurant was amazing, but leave it to me to make it more awesome by unleashing a barrage of sexual exploits and talking so loud that the boys at the other table could clearly hear me. As I talked, I noticed a lot of people paying attention to me. Instead of looks of disgust, there were looks of intrigue. People genuinely wanted to hear what I had to say about dicks fucking assholes. The haters were staring daggers at me, but I could not have given a shit any less. All those assholes were watching me steal all of the attention in order to talk about how much of a sassy skank I was over the course of my career. I was on a roll.
My stories of mischief became notorious after that weekend. People wanted to hear more about my past, present, and future. No matter what the haters said, I was undeniable as a force. Similar transpired the following month when I travelled to Cologne for Fasching, essentially the equivalent to Mardi Gras, but in Germany. In honor of the German holiday week, I celebrated by dressing up in drag as my favorite c***dhood superhero….Sailor Moon!
The last time I had worn this outfit was 2 years prior at the White Party in Palm Spring, California. You can imagine my excitement of being able to assemble it once more. The weekend of Fasching, I packed the costume as I boarded a train to Cologne that weekend. While on the train, which was mostly uninhabited, I decided to change in the costume. You can only imagine the look of horror on the faces of people who were in my train car that watched me strip naked, change into my costume and become a woman before their eyes. Several rows down from me was a guy that I swore was staring at me through the reflection in the window. With my costume fully assembled, I decide to give the guy a bit of a peep show by lifting up my dress and showing him my underwear. After doing this a couple of time, I notice the guy begin to smile and blow kisses back at me. Oh boy was this a good omen for that weekend.
I checked into my room that night at a hotel that was a mere stone throw from the Cologne Cathedral, handing my bag to the bell hop as I walked up to my room. I went up to the room to simply brush my teeth and afterwards I headed back down to the bar in the hotel. There I was, in dress and pig tails glory, staring at straight men that were doing double takes at the site of me. After ordering a drink, one guy that was dressed as a doctor started staring at me. I walked up to make small talk with him, and in short time I had his hand finding its way up my skirt. You have to understand the fact that I was not expecting this. Typically, in the US, anyone dressed in drag can expect to not get laid by men considered to be butch. Apparently, not in Germany. In Germany, anything seemed to be fair game. Dressed in drag? Who cares! It was the sentiment of this guy as he put his hand up my skirt, thereby cementing the fact that he was not completely attracted to women!
I parted hard that night, returning to my hotel drunk as fuck and passing out on my bed still in costume. Now here’s where the crazy began. When I woke up, I searched the room for my bag with my clothes, but could not find it. I opened up every drawer and closet in the room and could not find it. All I had was my Sailor Moon costume and some underwear, so it was not like I was just going to give up and change into something else. When I had checked in the night before, I swore I had my checked baggage with me, so there was no way I could have dropped it somewhere.
Despite my efforts, I could not get a lock on what happened to the bag. Then I remember that when I checked into the hotel, I had given it to the bell hop that night. At around 5pm, the manager for the evening shift, the same guy that was on duty the night before, came into work. I told him about the bell hop and demanded to know what happened. The manager said he would investigate it, but that it would take time to find out. In the meantime, I hit the panic button and called my unit’s command post. I knew I needed some sort of assistance from my unit given the calamity I was in, but I could not tell them why. Can you imagine the embarrassment? So when I call the command post, I simply asked for Ashley’s phone number. I knew she was on her way to Cologne that day and I was so desparate that I was willing to give Ashley some cash in order to buy me some clothes at the shoping center down the street. While my hot mess of an affair occurred just for a couple of hours, I attracted a lot attention. Eventually, the hotel got its shit together and found my bag in a closet that was supposed to be for people who stored their luggage after checking out. Moments later Ashley came bursting through the hotel entrance, ready to bail me out
I called Ashley to let her know that I had found my bag and to thank her coming my aide. “Are you wearing the Sailor Moon outfit?” Ashley asked. For weeks I had boasted on the OutServe Germany website that I was going to dressed as Sailor Moon. While people laughed, there was an underlying sense that I had not meant what I said. “Yup. I’m putting it on right now.”
I put on the full costume and walked down to meet Ashley and her friends. As soon as the elevator door opened, I stroll out in my red thigh high platform boots and blond pig tails. Upon sight, Ashley and her friends, Kristy and Skylar, immediately screamed and ran over to take pictures of me. Within minutes, Ashley uploaded photos of me to the OutServe Germany Facebook page, where it received hundreds of likes and nearly 200 comments from people shocked that I actually followed through with the promise.
We immediately set out with guys and girls staring at me. Our first stop was a restaurant. Not realizing how much my costume was a big hit, we made the mistake of sitting next to the window. Within minutes, we found men pressing themselves against the window of the restaurant to get a look at me. Open alcoholic containers in public wa legal in Germany, and during Fasching there was an excessive amount of alcohol consumption, producing hoardes of drunk German men roaming the street. Compound this with the apparent fascination with drag impersonators and you had a bunch of drunk horny men wanting prod and poke you, something I did not complain about one bit. I simply turned to the window, smiled, and waived at the men that were staring. Apparently, my acknowledgement served as a provocation for one as he lifted up one leg, pressed it against the window, groped his crotch, and began and licking the window….all for little ‘ole me. When we finished eating, the girls start thinking that they really needed to assume the role of body guard as they were concerned that the boys were getting out of hand. When a guy offered to let me suck his dick around the corner for fifty euros, Kristy went into full cock-block mode, pulling me away from the guy and yanking his hand out from under my skirt. Seriously, I had so many guys put their hand up my skirt that it felt like my ass was no longer mine.
After being solicited, the girls decided to form a circle around me to prevent any guy from further “harassing” me. I went along with, despite the fact that I was inviting a lot of the attention by blowing kisses and flashing guys by lifting up my skirt. Later that evening, just as my wig was beginning to fall apart, Nino and Richard join us. Nino was a guy I met via OutServe and Richard was a guy I met in Korea through my friend Ryan. Though stationed at Misawa Air Base in northern Japan, he was in Germany on vacation for a couple weeks. They were amazed at how authentic the costume was, but I was a little sad because my wig was unraveling at the seams and I did not know what to do. Thankfully, Richard was a girl scout and was surprisingly prepared to do maintenance on my wig. While he could not rescue it, he was able to rearrange the hairpins in the wig in order to give a last stand. So, back at my hotel, I squatted down like I was taking a shit over a squat toilet while Richard got to work on my wig. 10 minutes later, Richard said, “Voila!” My wig was back to normal, though for how long nobody knew, so I needed to make most of it as fast as possible.
We immediately set off bar hopping, where my costume was an instant success no matter where I went. I met up with Gabe, Ashley’s friend from Spangdahlem Air Base, and we step inside a club where I immediately felt my wig once again falling apart. I had enough of it, so Ashley and I walked out of a bar where I snatched off my wig like a drag queen performing a particularly fierce number. There were no trash cans nearby, so I went up to a car and flung the wig under the car. Afterwards, I giggled a bit as I realized it looked like the car ran over a cat. We then continue onto to a another bar where Gabe ran into this German gay couple that he was friends with. Both were dressed in white sailor uniforms, so both of them were a bit intrigued when they saw me in my getup, even if I wig was gone. One of the guys, Mark, got especially excited and grabbed me, rubbing his erect dick all over my crotch, and then made out with me, all right there in front of his boyfriend, Mike. At first I panicked because the last thing I wanted was to get in the middle of a lover’s quarrel. I was wearing platform zip up boots, so running would have proved extremely difficult and extremely painful. However, when I turned around, Mike seemed to be nothing but amused. So we continued. At this point I too had a raging hardon, so when I rubbed my crotch against his, Mark’s eyes got wide-eyed and he would kiss me. It was kind of like a cycle. Rub my erect dick against his, see him get wide eyed and smile, and then he would kiss me. It was quite the entertaining activity for 2 hours before we headed to another bar. It was so packed with guys that Mark, Mike, Gabe and I had to stand on the window ledges in order to have elbow space, giving me a good reason to hold Mark’s body closely to time and squeeze hard. I knew that he was taken, but for at least one night I could pretend otherwise.
Gabe needed a place to stay, so I told him he could crash in my room. In exchange for my gracious offer, he talked Mark and Mike into coming back to my room with me. 4 guys getting naked on a full size bed…sure why not? Eventually, I started getting frisky with Mark as did Gabe with Mike. When Gabe and Mike get up to fool around in the bathroom, I mounted that floppy German cock and rode like the Apocalypse was coming. Afterwards, both of us jerked each other off while kissing before we both shot our loads at the same time. Having had a long, dramatic day, I passed out. The next day I awoke to find Gabe on the floor. Mark and Mike had gotten up early to head back to their house in Trier, so they told Gabe to say goodbye and thanks for the wonderful night. Gabe and I went the hotel restaurant to eat and reminisce about the night before. He could not believe how awesome of a night it was and neither could I.
When I got home and get on Facebook, I was greeted by a torrential downpour of photos of me in drag and people hooting and howling about hysterical Fasching weekend was. Suddenly, I found people begging me to plan the next extravaganza because they wanted in on the fun too. Furthermore, after we started having these events and people started to talking about them, we saw an increase in the number of members to OutServe from all over western Europe. Some folks were weary of joining the group, but upon seeing photos of me in drag with hands up my skirt and flashing my undies at random strangers, they wanted in! My next opportunity to unite the OutServe community would be in the summer, when gay pride was going to be celebrated in every major city in Europe. Talk about choices!
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Chapter 24: Coming Together for Gay Pride
In nearly every major city around the world, summer is the time to celebrate gay pride. Parades, political demonstration, fundraisers, and all out celebration of our sexuality is the true spirit of gay pride season. 2011 marked the first gay pride celebrations organized in the wake of the passage of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act. Thus, there was much cause for celebration by LGBT Americans. For those of us in the military, the magnitude of celebration depended on where you were located. Those of us stationed in Germany had a litany of gay pride celebration to choose from s**ttered all over western Europe. Given the need to celebrate the repeal law and given the many celebrations happening, the members of OutServe Germany had a huge urge to celebrate pride in some shape or form. Whether it was a small group making a road trip or a massive group coming together, we celebrated gay pride nearly the entire summer in 2011. For me, the most notable celebrations of gay pride were two: the one with the smallest turnout of OSG members, and the one with the largest.
The pride event that had the smallest turnout was in Mannheim. This one was a particular let down because John and I had been in contact with the pride organizers, who had given our chapter a place to march in the parade a couple of weeks prior. Motivated by the San Diego Pride parade, where hundreds of servicemembers marched and openly proclaimed their military status, John and I wanted to do something similar in Europe. Despite our earnest efforts to get turnout for the parade, John and I could only muster about seven gay and lesbian servicemembers and about six civilian allies to march in the OutServe Germany formation. Hell, we even had to twist the arm of Marc, our Belgian military servicemember to march with us because of our small numbers. He did, though he was a bit meek about it because he and his husband lived in Mannheim. Tons of his friends, along with his husband promised to be at the parade to acquire photographic evidence of him marching with us. Despite our small numbers, we still pressed forward with participating in the march.
Whenever servicemembers participate in any type of event that could be perceived as political, they are governed by specific rules over political participation that is considered appropriate. In a nutshell, while participation in political activities is a protected right that servicemembers have the right to exercise, that right comes with limits.
Overall, you cannot give the impression that the US Government or the Armed Forces endorse any particular political activity. Any participation must be done as a private citizen. During Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, participation in gay pride was a protected form of political speech. Unless you were engaging in some form of homosexual activity, your attendance or participation in a gay pride parade was not considered grounds for investigation. When preparing for participation, the group went to great lengths in order to comply with these rules. Ashley, one of the ardent supporters of the march and participant, ordered T-Shirts that bore the OutServe logo in since wearing our military uniforms was out of the questions. When we registered as a formation for the parade, we used OutServe Germany as our title instead of “Military”, or “US Armed Forces” to ensure that no US Government endorsement was implied. Interestingly, any TV piece or newspaper article that included our name and rank was also considered lawful. In practice, anytime a media outlet did a piece on the military, when interviewing a servicemember, it was customary to include their name, rank, and branch of service as part of the article. As such, I had contact with a correspondent from The Advocate magazine in order to document our march in Mannheim.
The day of the parade, Ashley, John, Marc, and a couple of others met up to get our signs in order. Because we had such a low budget, our signs for the march were drawn up with markers and cardboard cutouts of photos from the internet. Once we had all of our materials, we headed out to the assembly area and began posing for pictures with all of the people marching , followed by a picture of all the Air Force marchers in the group. Just before the march, a group of guys and girls showed up to join them. Among them was Travis, a very no nonsense guy that immediately got along with me. By the time the parade started, we had just enough of a group in order to make an impact for the parade watchers.
That night, the group to partied at the nightclub, MS Connexions, a sleazy bar on the west end of Mannheim. There, several of us were treated to heavy dancing as we celebrated gay liberation. Feeling a little horny, I decided to head downstairs towards the dark room. In Europe, dark rooms were rooms adjoined to gay clubs were men perused through the darkness in order to drop their pants and get frisky. Inside, I found men more than willing to do things. From our pants being down, to stepping over cinder blocks in order to suck dick, the dark room proved to be a place that was not for the meek.
The big dramatics over the parade march came afterward. I sent photos of the event to my correspondent at The Advocate. After conducting what I thought was an awesome interview, the magazine published an article about us on the internet, describing the event as the second march by openly gay US servicemembers in the world. All over the world the news received praise for us being so brave….except for The Pentagon.
According to many military informants in the US and in Europe, the article about the march was met with cold reception. Pentagon officals were irate that we had utilized signage that depicted military logos made out of cardboard on the signs we used. To the military brass, these depictions were described as abuses of military logos. To us, we were simply using them to make a statement of gay liberation in the military by holding them up in the parade. There was so much commotion over these logos that two friends of mine, Melanie, who was then stationed at Air Force Headquarters in Europe, and Jack, who had just been posted at the US European Command, both called to warn me of the brouhaha. People at both of these headquarters were furious about my march. Such controversy prompted my commander at Buechel Air Base to pull aside Ashley and I in order to counsel us about proper use of military logos.
While I respected my commander and the position he was in to have to counsel me about the incidient, the rationale for counseling me was beyond logic. According to him, our use of military logos on our signage was a violation of military policy regarding participation in political activities. However, according to my commander, had the logos been on our shirts, their use would have been perfectly legal. Such an admission made it completely clear that this was not about the use of military logos. It was obvious that pursuit was because of the parade and my proclamation that I was gay and not afraid. Still, credit where credit is due, I felt like my commander handled it well. Both Ashley and I received a simple, undocumented counseling about participating in political events. This counseling was handed down despite calls for us to be prosecuted under military law. Thankfully, my commander viewed that as a stretch and let us go with a warning. OutServe HQ in Washington DC had a fit, threatening to take the issue to the national media, but I asked them to let it go, out of respect for my commander and the way he decided to handle the situation. So yeah, despite being tiny, OutServe Germany’s participation in Mannheim came to be viewed as big news.
The pride celebration that had the largest turnout was the gay pride celebration in Cologne. Cologne pride was literally the largest celebration in that region of Europe, so organizing an event for that time proved to be quite difficult. Nonetheless, I managed to surprise myself. Cologne Pride happened during 4th of July weekend, which for most servicemembers in Europe, was a four day weekend. Given the time off, members of OutServe had far more latitude to travel than they did for Mannheim. Not only was there positive response from members around Germany, but I had servicemembers in the UK, Spain, Belgium, and The Netherlands getting in contact with me about the itinerary I was planning for that weekend. Hell, even Roni reached out and said he was interested in coming out for that weekend. All in all, I was expecting at least thirty five to forty people to be in attendance.
Kris, Donnie’s boyfriend that was deployed to Afghanistan, emailed me and said he was coming back for some mid deployment leave. Kris was quite the big deal. He was far more well-known than I was, and he could turn out a crowd for celebrations. Furthermore, like me, he was willing to drop a little cash to make events come together properly. He asked me if I could organize a cocktail get together for all of the gays at the very hotel that I stayed at for Fasching. During the Saturday of gay pride , he simply wanted to have the gays together to have a brunch-type mixer in a bit of luxury. Having still been a novice at party-planning, I went along with plan and called the hotel to put something together.
That Friday, Ashley, Steve and I arrived via train having been a bit delayed and make a mad dash to the hotel to greet all of the Friday arrivers. Roni and his friend, Aramis, were arriving that night as well, but because I was so tied up with corralling the gays that first night, I was not able to meet him at the airport like I had promised. Thankfully, Roni was hardy person, getting Aramis and himself to their hotel and meeting us out on the town during our first night bar hop.
The next day, Saturday, was filled with get togethers during the day and the evening. First, there was the cocktail get together that Kris requested, a suggestion that turned out to be a huge success. All the guys and girls gathered on a balcony of the hotel that overlooked the Cologne Cathedral while we drank wine and mimosas. A couple of surprise visitors made an appearance, bringing the crowd count to somewhere between forty five and fifty. John and I had became motivated to make a statement about the weekend and how many people came out. John seemed like he knew what he was doing, however, five minutes into the speech, it was clear from all of the studdering and stammering that John had no clue what to do or say. Therefore, I took over for John and thanked everyone for coming out to the event and simply thank them for being who they are and offered a toast to kick off the weekend festivities.
Following the brunch was a German-style feast at a restaurant across from the hotel. Having made the reservation in a very arbitrary manner, I was amazed at how elegant it turned out to be, with luxury seating and menus that included meals of duck meat, rump steak, and lamb testicle. Some gasped at the reading of the menu because how “out there” some of the things on the menu were, but in the end, everyone was well fed.
After the German feast, I released the group to do their own thing till dinner at the Hardrock Café that night. It was funny how that attempted event in Frankfurt turned into an actual tradition for OutServe events to come, and Cologne was no different. Also, the free time enabled me to take a break from being tour guide, go back to my hotel room to clean up, and hang out with my close friends in the group. After getting refreshed in my hotel, Roni, Aramis, and I set out to the main square near the river to bask in all of the gay festivities. It was at the square that I got to personally meet and hang out with Kris and his group, a subset of OSG that I enjoyed more than the rest. Kris and his crew were no nonsense, grown up gay men that just wanted to chill, drink, and grope other men. I was so about all of that, so we had a lot of fun perusing the crowd, talking to German men, and rubbing our erect dicks all over them….well…at least I rubbed my dick all over them. At one point, Donnie and I looked up at this hotel room window to see a man staring at the both of us, making obscene gestures to come up to the sex party he was hosting. We knew this to be a sex party by the “Fuck Sling” he had assembled in his hotel in order to fuck the brains out of anyone that came up. A leather contraption, it had a flap that allowed for men to lay down with their legs up, enabling someone to walk up and fuck them. I had seen them on the internet many times, just never though the window of a hotel room with a man wiggling his tongue and making obscene hand gestures to get us to come up and get naked.
After a couple of hours, it was time for the party dinner at Hardrock Café. Having anticipated a couple of extras, I made the reservation for forty people. Boy was I wrong! When I arrived to the restaurant, I was greeted to a large blob of people and a stream of people that kept coming in. Apparently, my invitation to Cologne Pride had gotten around, prompting swaths of gays and lesbians to come out and enjoy pride. Do not get me wrong, I was happy to welcome everyone. I made a point to shake hands with everyone I met that weekend, ensuring they were having a good time and had all of their questions answered. However, to say it was a little overwhelming was an understatement. When the final count was done at that dinner, there were over seventy present. I was shaking in my boots at how many people decided to crawl off of their couch and come out for pride. The pressure was on!
The staff at Hardrock Café were a little swamped to say the least. We were on the second floor of the restaurant with the floor to ourselves, and boy did we suck up the time for the waiters. You could literally see the waiters with beads of sweat on their face as they ran up and down the stairs, taking and delivering orders. I let them get to work before Ashley and I addressed the crowd. I had created an itinerary for that weekend and wanted to remind the crowd of what was to come for the rest of the night and the next day. That night, there were a plethora of parties for everyone to take advantage of. Being pride, and having such a large group of girls present at the festivities, I thought it to be silly to have just one event for everyone to attend. Therefore, I gathered the intel on multiple event, events for gay men and those for lesbians as well, and I simple made a mass announcement about all of them. For the girls, I made damn sure I had plenty of girl party information since lesbians had a bad habit of being forced to attend events that were geared towards gay men. With a couple of girl events on my list, I gave the girls some choices on what to do with their Saturday night. For the guys, it was so much more simple. A couple of events with muscle men dancing in tight shorts and they were set. We laid out all of this to everyone there to ensure everyone had a means to enjoy their weekend there, boy or girl. Lastly, I gave instructions for the gay pride parade viewing, the one and only thing that I made a point of pushing on attendees. I wanted to meet at least a handful of people to head out and plant a spot on the parade route so that OSG had a dedicated spot to gather for the parade. That night I attend the S&M leather party near the central station. I only had a handful of guys with me as S&M was considered too out there for the boys in the group. Still, I danced my ass of and had a good time.
The following morning, I met the guys and girls at 10:45am in order to head out to the parade route. Neumarkt Platz, a shopping center near the river, seemed the best fit as it was right along the parade route and had a wide side walk. The group arrived long before the crowds gather and staked out a spot right next to a vendor that was selling beer…such convencience. As parts of the parade begin to pass by, OSG members that slept in arrived and we had a good fifty people gathered on our plot of the slidewalk. Jordan, Desiree, Grant, and a couple of others were gathered there on the sidewalk when Grant piped up to try and make fun of me.
“So…where is the ‘makeup’wipe?” Grant asked with a sarcastic grin. Grant was referring to this makeup pad that I held onto like a packrat in a satchel that I always carried. Back during Halloween in 2010, I went to this Halloween Party with some officers from Buechel and some officers from Spangdahlem Air Base. I went as Michael Jackson, circa 1981, so I used a makeup wipe and brown makeup to darken my complexion. For some reason I had this wipe in my satchel in the trip to Nuremberg. I pulled it out and everyone immediately thought I had wiped my ass with it because of the brown makeup. So leave it to Grant to bring up my makeup wipe. In an act of defiance I looked for it in order to pull it out and gross everyone out. While I was doing this, Jordan was there with his new boy toy Roy, who decided to strip down to his underwear and be an exhibitionist. I had hooked up with this guy previously and did not necessarily approve of him. It was as if he claimed to be just out of the closet in order to use that sympathy to be an all out douchebag. Anyway, that asshole decided to give everyone a peek at his cock, revealing he was wearing a black cock ring. Being a packrat, I realized I had an even more interesting cock ring in my satchel. I said, “Oh, wait wait,” as I reached deep into my bag and pull out a flesh colored cock ring and held it up for all to see. Most were disgusted by the fact that it was the color of a penis, but Jordan, on the other hand, thought it was hysterical. So hysterical that he laughed to the point where he peed himself a little. Granted, he did not make a giant wet stain on his shorts, but the circular spot on the front the size of a quarter was noticeable enough for everyone to point and laugh.
When the parade went into full swing, one of first, most prominent displays were the lesbian motorcycle riders, known as “Dykes on Bikes.” This being procession of women riding all sort of motorcycles, itwas a sight not to be missed. Liz, Melanie’s girlfriend, and Kristy, got so excited, that they ran out into the parade and got the women to let them mount the motorcycles. These motorcycles then took off, with me saying, “Bye Liz and Kristy,” as I watched them ride off and disappear. Eventually, they returned, with me questioning how far they made it before they got off.
The viewing spot for the parade proved to be a huge success, as scores of LGBT servicemembers swarmed the area, occasionally running on the parade in order to take photos of the people marching. Every couple of minutes, we would see about ten to fifteen servicemembers run into the march and take photos with drag queens and muscle men, marching along the parade route. We laughed, we cheered, we screamed for gay rights all day that day. When the parade ended, I took another break from playing. I simply needed a break from being asked, “Where to go,” or “What to do?” So I settled on a bar where I could just relax and invite a couple of my gays, including Roni. We toasted in my honor for simply putting on an event where LGBT servicemembers had a good time, something I appreciated deeply.
Later that night, I gathered the group again at the hotel in order to bar hop for the final time. “Clip”, a gay bar near the river, was one of my favorite gay bars in the city. A large dance floor downstairs and a nice staff, Clip was a destination that I definitely approved of. Arriving at the club was an easy affair, as it simply involved walking there. The real fun was engaging the bouncer as he checked my ID while watching the blob of people gather right behind me. The bouncer, being a bit imtimidated, ushered us in as quickly as he could. Inside, it was a jovial environment, as people toasted in the bar upstairs, while dancing downstairs. Jordan felt the need to dance with me while invoking the movie, The Wiz. We flailed our arms up above us, similar to Diana Ross’ character. Apparently , Jordan was impressed by the fact that I knew what The Wiz was. He then turned to a woman next to our group and flailed his arms in the air trying to get her to do the same. Unfortunately, this woman, being black, interpreted Jordan’s actions as calling her a monkey. The woman reacted harshly, screaming at Jordan, saying, “What the fuck?! Are you calling me a monkey?!” I had to intervene, saying that Jordan meant no harm because this woman was on the verge of taking off her nails and wig to kick Jordan’s ass. Thankfully, I got the woman to calm down.
Eventually, the whole wanted to leave on a whim from John about a better party.
What a lie! John led us to a block party put on by the gay bars that cattered to men in their 50s and 60s. I was visibly pissed, however, the lesbians in the group assured me that they had a wonderful time that whole and that there was no reason for me to get angry. I decided to let my guard down for a bit and mingle, something that would be short lived.
I was flirting with this latino medic when Roni grabbed me to come deal with a soldier that had gotten very irate. Teddy, a soldier from Belgium, was freaking out about a thousand feet from where I was. I had met him early that weekend after talking a lot via the OSG page. Upon meeting him, Teddy came off as a well-put-together guy with a bit of a checkered past. Back when Teddy was a teen, an uncle of his m*****ed him. While Teddy thought he had effectively dealt with it, it was pretty clear that he had not.
Roni lead me just down the street to find Teddy on the floor screaming about how he was m*****ed. There I found Steve, one of the homos from my squadron, and a couple of Navy medics aside from Roni. Teddy was screaming blood and murder, how he did not have a will to live and how he simply wanted to kill himself. I froze at the sight of this. I mean, here I had a guy that was so distraught that he no longer had a will to live. Thankfully, Roni pulled me out of my state. He lifted Teddy off of the ground and began guiding him toward my hotel with Roni’s friend Aramis following.
“Roni, he is suicidal. You know that we cannot keep this to ourselves,” I said with a heavy heart. As an officer, I was considered a mandatory reporter for anyone considered to be a threat to him or herself or other people. Because Teddy had communicated thoughts of suicide, I could not morally or legally keep that information to myself. By law, I had an obligation to report him to his commander for suicide treatment. While that choice was an obvious one to make, the consequences were quite murky.
For pride, I checked into a hotel and shared it with multiple people. Jack, my power bottom buddy from Seoul, was there that weekend and was glad to share a room with me. Steve, a young and handsome soldier, needed a place to stay for cheap. So, Jack and I offered to have him stay in our suite since there was plenty of room. At the last minute, Teddy needed a place to stay as well. Coming all the way from Belgium, Teddy simply wanted to save some money, so Jack and I offered our room to him as well. The cohabitation of officers and enlisted members was strictly prohibited unless for official business. Under normal circumstances, this concern would have been non-existent since we were far away from a military community. However, by involving military authorities in order initiate a suicide intervention, we, particularly Jack and I, opened ourselves up to inquiry about why we were all sharing a hotel room. All of this coarsed through my head as I picked up my phone and called my command post.
In order to get an intervention started, my command post needed the information off of his ID card and his base of assignment. Complicating the matter was that Teddy was in the Army and stationed at a post in Belgium. If he was Air Force, no problem. Tracking his unit would have been a cinch. However, looking up unit contact information for a different service branch was not something the command post controllers seemed to be up the speed on. As such, this process was going to take a while. In the meantime, I called Jack to come back to the hotel immediately. Having served as an Army battalion commander and being a Lieutenant Colonel, I wanted Jack there to advise on proper course of action and to potentially throw his rank down in order to get things moving fast. When he got to the room, I feverishly filled Jack in on all of the details without even so much as taking a breath between words. Jack stared at me the whole time and simply nodded.
In the room Roni and Aramis were at Teddy’s side. Both Roni and Aramis were medics, so I was desparate to have them stay in case something happened that I was not equipped to handle. “I think we need the expertise of a mental health counselor.” Jack said as he picks up his phone and calls his friend Andrew, an American civilian counselor that was partying with us in Cologne. Because he was drunk, Andrew immediately thought Jack was k**ding. “Andrew, buddy, I’m not k**ding. We really need you here now,” Jack said, which was enough for Andrew to sober up and head over to our location. In the meantime, I was getting calls from my command post that they are still working on tracking down the unit commander and asking if Teddy was in my custody. In the military, once someone has declared a desire to commit suicide, they must be placed in a sort of custody that prevents them from being left alone or in a position to harm themselves. Jack and I had asserted this authority, with the help of Roni and Aramis, and the question most definitely came up again once I was patched through to Teddy’s First Sergeant, an enlisted member of the unit charged with handling these types of notifications. The First Sergent asked if Teddy was in our care as well as the address of the hotel because he was going to talk to the commander about what course of action to take. He asked if we were willing to drive him back to Belgium, something we outright refused to do as all of us were still drunk. The First Sergeant told us he would call us back once his commander had made a decision.
While waiting for a call back, Roni and I went down to meet Andrew. I was beginning to tear up thinking about how long Teddy had carried this grief with him and wondering what would have happened had this occurred in a different setting away from people that cared. Sure, I met Teddy that weekend, but as a fellow servicemember, as a gay man, and as a member of my chapter, his well being became a deeply personal affair. When Andrew showed up, he had all of leave the bedroom while he and Teddy had a talk about what was going on. Upon leaving the room, Andrew informed us that because Teddy was so drunk that trying to counsel him proved difficult. Nonetheless, he confirmed what we suspected: that being m*****ed as a c***d was an unresolved issue that had built up for year and exploded out in a fury. Andrew said I definitely made the right call in turning him in to his chain of command.
Finally at 3am, the First Sergeant called to inform us that Teddy’s unit would be sending a sergeant to come pick him up in Cologne the following day. He requested that we maintain custody over Teddy for the duration of the evening, to which I replied, “Of course.” Jack told Roni and Aramis to go back to their hotel since the situation is under control now. Jack stayed with Teddy in the bedroom while I took to the couch and got some sleep. Steve had hooked up with one of the Marines from Spain, so we did not have to worry about him coming back to the hotel, and within fifteen minutes, all of us were asleep.
The next morning, I woke up to the door of the bedroom coming open. In the corner of my eye, I saw Teddy head for door to the hallway. It took me a couple of seconds to process the fact that Teddy left the room, but when I did, I quickly sprang out off the couch and dash down the hall to retrieve Teddy as he was waiting for the elevator. Teddy appeared to have been confused as to why I was freaking out about him leaving. I got him back to the hotel room and immediately woke Jack up. Teddy had woken up with zero recollection of what had happened the night before and we had to deliver the news that his unit was coming for him. Jack was the one to do it, sitting Teddy down to tell him while I went to the living room to call the First Sergeant about the person he was sending and what time he or she would be arriving. I could overhear Teddy bursting into tears as Jack laid out to him that he had admitted to being suicidal and we could not let him go. My stomach turned in knots since Teddy essentially had to relive the pain he had expressed the night before.
Jack managed to get Teddy to calm down about the whole affair and accept what was going to happen. Jack explained that upon returning to his base, there would an intervention team convened to screen Teddy and get him started on mental health treatment. Jack and I assured Teddy that none of this was his fault and repeated over and over that he had nothing to feel ashamed of. We had breakfast that morning on the balcony of the dining floor while we waited for the sergeant to arrive. Teddy cracked some jokes about how it took drinking massive amounts of alcohol in order for his true problems to reveal themselves. In response, I fire back “At least those problems revealed themselves to people that genuinely cared about you and were in a position to give you the help you needed. In a way….I am glad they came out the way they did.” It was not that I was glad that Teddy experienced pain on his last night in Cologne, it was just that I recognized that these issues were going to eventually come out, one way or another. The worst case scenario would have been for him to have this nervous breakdown alone or around people that did not care. So yes, I was glad this happened because now he was going to get the help he had deserved for so long.
Following that weekend, I went into work expecting to be barraged with questions about that evening and how I knew Teddy. Surprisingly, everyone kept chatter about the incident to an absolute minimum. The command post controllers that I had contacted were under strict rules to keep their mouths shut about the incident. The Superintendant of the Command Post simply pulled me aside to apologize for the performance of his controllers. When he was briefed about what happened, he was furious at how the controllers had handled the situation. I tried to say it was not that big of a deal since we got the help in the end, but he interrupted me to say it was unacceptable that it took several hours and that he was going to have them retrained as a result. Through every step of that response, my commander had been briefed of changes to the situation and was notified when the sergeant from Belgium picked Teddy up in Cologne. My commander surely was aware of Teddy’s rank and I am pretty sure he was curious as to why I came across him in Cologne. However, when my commander approached me, he simply asked if I knew if Teddy was OK. I was a bit shocked. I had opened myself up to a litany of questions about that weekend, yet when the chips settled, everyone set aside any and all questions they have had. For the first time in my military career, the Air Force demonstrated that its priorities were 100% spot on. For that…I was thankful. Moreover, I was thankful to how the members of OSG quickly came together to respond to a very serious crisis in the midst of celebration and alcohol consumption. It was a very solemn moment for the LGBT military community, and I was proud to be a part of it.
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Chapter 25: Super Bass and Thunderpussy
“Mama Gay” was a term I foisted onto myself as someone who had been around and done it all. From bath houses to poppers, I felt as though there nothing about gay life that could possibly surprise me. Unfortunately, for me, I had nobody to with which to compare those experiences. I mean yeah, there was Roni, but he was posted in Naples. As much as we got together, I still felt a sense of loneliness because I could not relate to the gays. Thankfully, I felt a sense of relief when I met Ryan.
Ryan went by many names. He was referred to himself as La Ryan as well as Super Bass. The name Super Bass, however, was the one that stuck the most. Super Bass was derived from the Nicki Minaj song by the same name, while my nickname, Thunderpussy, came from the fact that I was a massively promiscuous gay man that was shameless about his sexuality.
The first time I met Ryan was a day that I was on temporary assignment to Ramstein Air Base. I was at the main cafeteria on base when I saw Raymond, the guy I met in Cambridge. I went and sat down with him in order to shoot the breeze. Out of nowhere, this guy in a flight suit came and sat down with us. Ryan was an aircrew member of a cargo aircraft squadron that was deployed to Germany from North Carolina. Ryan was a “Mama Gay” just like me. Like me, Ryan felt like he had seen it all. The tea dances, the sex parties, the circuit parties, ankle grabbing, there was not much that Ryan had not seen either. This is what would bring us to become close friends rather quickly.
Our first time going out together would be at our friend Scott’s going away party in Mannheim. Scott had been a mainstay in the gay military in Germany for about five years. The Air Force, sick of him being in Germany for so long, forced him to accept an assignment in Spokane, Washington. So he had a very tear-eyed gathering of friends from all over Germany. At the event I was talking to scores of people, and gabbing about all of my sexual exploits. One of Scott’s female civilian friend, Erika had a guy there with her that was strikingly cute, motivating me to strike up a conversation about all things gay as a way of flirting with him. I fire off all of my notorious stories like a loose cannon to this guy, who laughed and was fascinated by it all. After telling him about the Army Colonel that I banged in Korea, I learned through table conversation that not only was this guy straight, but that he was also Erika’s date as well as the Deputy Operations Group Commander at Ramstein Air Base, meaning I confessed all of my unlawful sexual exploits to a man that outranked me, knew who I was and knew where I worked. You could literally see me the color drain from my face at the table. Thankfully, when Erika spoke to me via Facebook that Monday, she assured me that he could hang and was unlikely to repeat anything he heard that night.
After our fancy dinner, we all headed out to the monthly Himbeer Party. Held at the expanisve nightclub called Alte Feuerwach, Himbeer was a fun circuit party that managed to bring the gays together time and again. I did not matter how many times people had been to this party, whenever it was happening, a large group of gays from OutServe would go. In the run up to this Himbeer Party, Ryan and I were talking a large amount of shit to each other about who would “vogue” the best. “Voguing” was an ode to the movie Paris is Burning, where gay men from various “houses” would have competitions where they danced a blend of ballet and break dancing. Every so often, a dancer would quickly drop to the ground, referred to as a “death drop” and strike a pose similar to models depicted in Vogue Magazine. I challenged Ryan to a vogue battle earlier that week and said I would have the fiercest death drop imaginable. Well Saturday came, and there we were at the Himbeer party. The vogue battle was going well, until I tried to do a death drop. I had not perfected the ability to drop straight down to the ground and instead tipped over like a falling tree. Someone should have said “Timber!” so that the Germans behind me could have gotten out of the way. I fell down and dragged those Germans to the ground with me….poor Germans. After getting laughed at by everyone in the group, we all simply danced the night away.
When Ryan’s deployment ended, he returned to North Carolina. I was sad about his departure, until Ryan notified me that he was being reassigned to Ramstein Air Base for a two year assignment. I was so elated that I planned a welcome party for Ryan when he flew into Frankfurt Airport. I got about ten people to come out for a weekend of gayness in Frankfurt, including Ashley, the hip lesbian from my squadron. Ashley and I arrived Friday night and partied like crazy that night. It just so happened that Ashley’s girlfriend at the time was flying in the same day as Ryan, so she agreed to pick both of them up at the airport. I had every intention to meeting Ryan at the airport Saturday morning, at least until I decided to pay a trip to the bath house down the street from the gay bars. I passed out in a stall and when I awoke, I found a cute German guy laying next to me. So naturally, I fucked him. After blowing my load, I looked at my watched and realized that Ryan’s flight had come in hours prior.
Ryan and I had agreed to share a room, and I made sure to put his name on my reservation, so when Ryan arrived to the hotel, he simply picked up his room key. I got back to the hotel and see Ashley walking out of her room.
“Oh my God Ashley, I am so sorry for not showing up. I was so drunk that I went to the bath house and passed the fuck out there,” I stammered nervously.
“Honey, it’s cool. I went and picked up Ryan from the airport. He’s already in the room,” Ashley said with a smile. I already knew I was in the dog house for not being there at the airport so I simply said, “Fuck it,” and went in the room to pass out on my bed while saying “Hey slut!” to Ryan.
“Slut?! You’re the slut for choosing dick over greeting me at the airport,” Ryan fired back, a bit annoyed, but smiling because hey, at least I was a consistent slut.
Ashley went to pick up her girlfriend from the airport while Ryan and I chilled at the hotel. The other guys that were coming out to greet Ryan had not arrived yet, so essentially, it was just Ryan and me for a couple of hours. After watching a movie, we set out to look for a place to drink and to gab about absolute nonsense. We settled on this an outdoor café that served Italian food. The drinking and gabbing officially commenced.
It should come to no surprise that I will gab about stories to the most graphic detail. I recalled to Ryan a trip that I made to Bangkok when I took a guy back to my hotel room. The guy was hot, it was just that he complained in bed a lot. For all the big talk in the bar in the Red Light District, he did not cut the butter in bed and turned out to be a waste of time. So, when talking to Ryan, I recalled how I tried to fuck this guy and simply could not because the guy had a tight asshole. “I tried to fuck this guy, but my dick just wouldn’t fit in!” I said with a voice that definitely was not a whisper. Ryan told me to whisper when I was talking and I could not for the life of me understand why he was no nervous. Ryan later told me that when he looked behind me, all of these people instantly turned around and stared at me in pure horror. Consequently, Ryan had us move to a table farther away from the rest of the people at the restaurant so that I could be free to gab about all of my pornographic stories.
As we finished eating, Ashley called me to say she and her girlfriend were back at the hotel. We arranged to all meet up at a gay bar that had an outdoor pavilion where we could sit outside and continue our drinkfest. Being very close, Ryan and I decide to simply walk over there. I was already drunk on the way there and feeling empowere to just say,”Hi!” in a high pitched voice to every stranger that I crossed us on the street. Ryan laughed and tried to get me to shut the fuck up, and it largely proved useless, until what looked like a German skinhead passed us and I did my, “Hi!”
“Was? WAS?!” He said in German, translating to “What? WHAT?!”
“Sorry, my friend is drunk!” Ryan said to the guy in order to get the guy to ignore us. “Oh my God, Thunderpussy, you really need to stop doing that before we become the victims of a hate crime!” After that potentially violent episode, I made every effort to behave until I got to the gay bar.
Upon arrival, Ashley and her girlfriend greeted us in the pavillion. About an hour later, Robert and Brent arrived. Robert was a sassy medic from Heidelberg and Brent was a medic at Ramstein. We all wined and dined there for the rest of the day and the evening. Following that weekend, Ryan and I made plans to get together again in Stuttgart for its annual Wine Fest.
The following weekend in Stuttgart, Ryan and I shared a hotel room together in downtown Stuttgart. On Saturday morning, we got up bright and early to head out to the Wine Fest site. When I say early, I mean EARLY! We arrived at 9:58am and found waiters and bartenders still setting up. Undeterred we walked up to a waiter and asked if they had begun to serve alcohol. The perplexed look on the waiter’s face was awesome. Though shocked that he was people present for the fest at 10am, he was a good sport and served us spritzers at a table to he designated for us. This is where Ryan and I really bonded.
We spent the next five hours pouring out our entire life stories. It turned out that Ryan knew Kris, the guy deployed to Afghanistan. They were stationed together at Kunsan Air Base years about ten years prior. Ryan laughed when he talked about how they got busted for violating curfew trying to hide in the broom closet of the nightclub “Why Not?” in Seoul. Apparently, the curfew back then was in effect was very hardcore and the Korean National Police were working hand in hand to enforce the curfew with the military police. Upon being dragged out of the club, the two were shackled in handcuffs with all the other guys caught on Homo Hill. They then were all marched to Yongsan Garrison chain-gang style in order to be booked and turned over to their units. I laughed so hard I almost peed myself.
That afternoon, we were joined by Curtis, Grant and several other guys from the area. We drank a bit more until Ryan saw it fit to head back to the hotel to take a nap. The “Ryan Nap” was notorious as it was a nap after a day of drinking to get ready for an evening of drinking. After our nap, we got up to get ready, and Ryan happened to notice my body hair.
“Girl…you have a hairy fucking bush!” Ryan said, referring to my pubic hair. When I was in the Air Force, I had a very laissez faire type of attitude when it came to my look. Giant bush pubes, unibrow eyebrows, I was one ghastly motherfucker. I simply figured that if I was getting laid as often as I was, why the fuck would I need to concerned about plucking my eyebrows and “manscaping.” Still, Ryan was insistent on making me trim my bush before we left the hotel that night, so I did. We then went on to meet the guys in the gay district of Stuttgart for more drinking, laughing, and dancing.
The outings that Ryan and I had eventually began to take notice by other people in OutServe Germany. Ryan and I advertised that we were planning a trip to Ibiza for Labor Day weekend to see who would come. Roni immediately jumped on the trip as well as Marty, an airmen stationed with a NATO unit in the Netherlands, and Kevin, an airmen stationed at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. With an entourage of gay men established for this trip to Ibiza, we immediately began planning. Kevin offered to do the homework for the listing of gay establishments in downtown Ibiza, an offer that I immediately accepted since I was typically the one to have to do all of this planning.
That Friday, I got off early from work and took the train to Frankfurt Airport, where I was met Ryan at our terminal. From there we flew to Milan to catch a conncection to Ibiza. Purely coincidence that Ryan and I sat next to a gay middle eastern guy. Upon overhearing our conversation about all things gay, this guy confessed to being gay as well. While awesome at first, he quickly proved to be very annoying, calling us ugly Americans just because we were quietly talking smack about other passengers boarding the plane. Whatever….we ignored him!
We arrived to Ibiza and check into our hotel, where Ryan notes that I am was properly packed for an Ibiza vacation. For starters, I had no shorts. Even if you have zero plans of going in the water, shorts were a motherfucking must. Unfortunately, I had not been clothes shopping in years and had reservations about wearing shorts in public. For Ryan, this was unacceptable. He ripped open his suitcase and handed me a couple of pairs of shorts to wear that weekend. Ryan then staired at my eyebrows and started calling me “Frida” after the famous artist with a unibrow. I laughed while I consented to Ryan shaving my eyebrows to make them sexy.
We then walk down to the bar area where we enjoyed a couple of pitchers of Sangria and light finger food. Having never had sangria, this was quite the treat for me. We sat there drinking, waiting for Roni to call us and let us know he had arrived. About two hours later, Roni called and we arranged to meet along the boardwalk about two miles from our hotel. So Ryan and I set out to find Roni, running into him at a stand that was serving mojitos. We sat around wondering where the two airmen were, when out of the corner of our eye, we saw them along the edge of the boardwalk about fifty feet away. We waved at them to come join us and we stood at the bar drinking for the rest of the day.
That evening, after taking our “Ryan Nap”, we got dressed to head out to the downtown area. Gay bars in Ibiza were famous and Kevin was eager to show us around. Unfortunately, it was not wise to put our trust in Kevin and his ability to play tour guide. We took a taxi together to downtown Ibiza and upon getting out we turn to Kevin for where to go next. Kevin simply shrugs and says he does not know. That is when I fucking flipped! Here we are in an area that the rest of us are not familiar with, and this motherfucker did not even bother to do his homework.
“Kevin! You’re fired!” I screamed as I took control of the situation. I set out asking people for directions, and eventually, I found someone that was familiar with where the gay bars were located and gave us directions. We made our way through narrow alleyways of the area surrounding the giant castle along the coast. We turn a corner and poof….we had arrived. We immediately settled on a café where a raunchy drag queen was serving drinks and groping some of the more handsome patrons. Sitting right next to us were a group of British tourists that were very gabby and very funny.
At first we try to play ourselves off as Americans tourists travelling from various parts of the US as way keeping a low profile when it came to our military status. However, these guys were not having it. They did not believe for a second that lazy ass Americans would simply fly all the way to Ibiza for a couple of days. Americans simply do not roll like that. So we caved and admitted we were in the US military. Afterwards we did a couple of shots while Kevin started asking directions to a party he had researched, but had no clue how to get there. Eventually, Kevin figured out where to go for this party and he convinces all of us, including the British guys, to go with him. Having been at the café for a bit, we all got up and follow Adam.
After walking through some windy alleys and up a flight of stairs, we arrived at the club Kevin was referring to. He had read that it was an underwear dance party and talked up how cool it would be to go. When we entered we were greeted by a clothes check attendant, who gave us all coat hangers to hang all of our clothes. Roni and a couple of the British tourists stripped down their underwear before I did, and ran through the double doors to my right. Just as I had finished stripping down two minutes later, they all immediately came back confused.
“It’s just two small rooms. I don’t get it,” Roni says. Intrigued, I walk through the door and realized that it was not an underwear dance party. The rooms were quiet and dark, with men huddled together sucking each other off and getting fucked. Kevin had lead us to a sex club. Immediately, two-thirds of the group bolted. Roni, Ryan and Marty said, “Fuck this shit!” I was kind of interested in staying, so I told Roni that I would catch up with them later. Kevin decided to stay as well. A bit embarrassed at where he lead us, he was not going to just leave in defeat. Plus, he was a bit horny too.
I perused the room, stroking a guy here, sucking off another one there. Eventually, I made my way towards a sling, where this handsome, muscular Spaniard man, laid inside spread eagle with his ass perked up. So, of course, I get started fucking him. Kevin unfortunately, was not having the same luck. As a stocky short guy, he was forcing himself on every single guy, and the guys were simply not feeling his energy. So, with a sense of defeat, Kevin left the sex club screaming, “Bye Carlos! Fuck this place!” I paused for a moment wondering why he was so pissed, then just shrugged and continued fucking the Spaniard guy on the sling till I blew my load.
Interestingly, the guy I fucked struck up a conversation with me as soon as he got out of the sling. He actually lived on the island and owned a couple of hotels. He asked where I was staying because he wanted to offer me a ride back to my hotel. Yes, people should not just arbitrarily get in cars with boys, but I had just gotten done fucking this guy, who by my account had enjoyed it. I had no reason to believe he was going to k**nap me and sell me into sex slavery…eventhough that would have been just a tad bit erotic.
His car was parked in a parking lot near the castle, so we headed over there. As we were walking over there, he told me that the area very cruisy to the point where you can motion any guy one hundred feet away to come over for sex. In fact, he went on to prove this theory as he pushed me against the wall to make out. We were walking up a zig zag road that lead up to the parking lot and above us was the next stretch of the road where a guy was walking. As I was making out with Spaniard dude, I could see this guy slow down to watch. Spaniard dude then told the guy to meet us at the top in the parking lot.
Once there, all three of us stripped naked. In the middle of a very public parking lot next to the castle, I got fucked by one guy while I sucked off the other. I dubbed this happening as a “London Bridge.” Once we cleaned up, my guy from the sex club drove me back to my hotel. I kissed him goodnight, thanking him for getting my rocks off hardcore.
The next day Ryan and I went to the bar of the restaurant to talk about our night and drink more sangria. Ryan talked about all of the bars he and Roni went to while I pointed out the very spot where I was “London Bridged” since the castle was in plain view of my hotel. Roni and the two airmen eventually met us and we set out for downtown Ibiza, this time to do a bit of shopping and eat at some fancy seafood restaurant. We went back to the hotel for our respective, “Ryan Naps,” before heading back on the town for evening partying.
At the first we went to, I somehow managed to piss off the waitress. I was the only person in the group that was fluent in Spanish. I mean yeah, since Roni was Filipino, so he could understand Spanish a bit, but the heavy lifting was all on me. When our waitress arrived, I addressed her as “Señora” since she was an adult woman. Apparently, Spaniard women perceive, “Señora,” to be an elderly woman of sorts and thus corrected by saying she is a “Señorita.” After she left the guys laughed their asses off at me for pissing off the waitress. After getting a bit tipsy there, we walked down an alleyway towards a big box nightclub. As we were walking, I could not help but notice a guy there was staring at me and smiling. Because I was very drunk, I was emboldened to walk up to that guy and kiss him pornographically right there in front of hundreds of guys. Cheers and catcalls erupted as people watch me kiss this guy. My friends then pulled me off of this guy and told me that the guy’s boyfriend looked like he was about to kill me.
Where shit gots real is when he sat down at a café to have drinks. I sat next these tourists and this Irish girl struck up a conversation with me. For some reason the conversation got very deep as she revealed that she is in an abusive relationship back home. When I say abusive, I mean he literally was beating her up. When I ask what she planned on doing, she said she was going to try to work it out with him.
Over the years, I have come to understand that when I drink, I definitely do not get belligerent. I have always considered myself a peaceful drunk. However, that peaceful drunk is also an emotional time bomb with any sad drama, no matter how small, setting me off in tears. “I fear for your life,” I said as I begin to well up with tears. Eventually, I am full-on sobbing as I cannot control my emotions in my drunken state. The girl was so embarrassed that she apologized for making me cry, but the damage was done. I could not stop the hysterics and eventually had to go back to the hotel because I could not get it together. The next day, I apologize to Ryan and Roni for letting my emotions get the best of me. Being good friends, they shrugged it off.
Ryan, Roni, and I went to a gay nude beach while the Marty and Kevin do their own thing. Oh boy did the gay beach bring it! I would have been excited along the way, if it were not for the taxicab driver that was screaming about,”Todos los Maricones por la calle,” which is the Spanish translation for “All the faggots on the street.” Thankfully, the driver apologized to us, saying he was referring to drivers on the road, not the gays, and did not mean to offend us. Getting to the nude beach involved going through a lot of traffic, so the driver got impatient in a very unacceptable manner.
We got out of the cab and walked along the shore to the gay area, where once again I was in a tangle with a waitress that protested being called,”Señora.” This time, I was calling bullshit. This woman was clearly older than me and clearly in her late forties or early fifties. To me, you are simply not allowed to refer to yourself as a, “Señorita,” when you are that old. Pissed off, I went off into the woods to cruise men. Eventually, we grew tired of seeing old men sunbathing nude with their old balls, so we bolted back to town where we got ready for one final hurrah as a group before returning to our corners of Europe.
That night we go back to downtown Ibiza. We found a gay café near the large stairwell to the entrance of the castle grounds. The café was quiet, with only about five people there. Among them was a British couple with which I began to socialize about European politics. In my private life, I was a political junkie, fascinated by geopolitics in both North America and Europe. As I was talking to them, my friends were at a stand up table dealing with quite the bitchy waiter. I do not know what they did to piss him off, but the waiter was not having any of their nonsense. I went over to check in on my friends and saw this waiter slam an ash tray on the table after my friends asked for one. Let me tell you, Ryan was ready to fight, so much that I had to intervene and get the waiter to let them be. Shokingly, the waiter was genuinely interested in me, grabbing me by the hand and leading me to the bar. There, he poured me a shot of vodka and proceeded to dance with me ball room style. My friends were flummoxed, thinking he had taken me to some alleyway to get naked and fuck. I flatly denied this claim, despite fantasizing about it being true.
After a while, the café began to fill up with people, especially this adorable gay British couple. The couple jumped in on the conversation I was having with the straight couple. At various points, I had the impression that both members of the couple were giving me flirty eyes. This was confirmed when they asked me to go back to their hotel room for a three way. At first, I was all for it. British men….talk about a guilty pleasure. However, what instantly came to my mind was Roni and Ryan. I was not sure how much time we would have to see each other in the future, making the time we spent in person precious. For the first time ever, I put “Bros before hoes.” I turned the guys down, wanting to spend my last night with Ryan and Roni, two guys who meant the world to me.
In addition to Roni, Ryan and I never stopped talking after that weekend. We came to be the closest of friends. Absent of Roni, Ryan truly made me feel comfortable with who I am. I had so many naysayers calling me a whore or a bad person because of my openness to sexuality. While I deflected criticism, it was very easy to question whether or not it was merited. Ryan was the friend that shattered that notion. He made me proud to refer to myself as a promiscuous slut and not shy away from it. My confidence as an out gay man was solidified because of Ryan. Thunderpussy was never the same.
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Chapter 26: The End….and a New Beginning
Although the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act was signed into law in December of 2010, the provisions for implementation required that the President of the United States, The Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to all certify the military was ready for implementation. This meant that servicemembers needed to ready to see two men holding hands or two women sharing a kiss without losing their minds. While such a concept seemed pretty simple, leave it to the Pentagon to require a long, drawn out, and ridiculously insulting process of training servicemembers on what was to come post repeal. Every single military unit around the world, including those deployed in combat, were required to undergo training in which they were given scenarios involving gay and lesbian servicemembers and what they should or should not do. This “shit-show” of a training session arrived to my squadron at Buechel Air Base in July of 2011 when my commander got up and nervously read from a prepared script about the training and the implications of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act. He had a number of reasons to be nervous about giving this training. For one, there had already been cases of commanders being fired over offensive, off the cuff remarks about the law and the presence of openly gay servicemembers. The other reason was that his three gay subordinates, Ashley, Steve, and myself, were sitting in the front row staring daggers at him in the event he even so much as thought about saying something disparaging.
“Let’s go to scenario number 1: Say you are at the mall downtown and you see two guys from your unit holding hands and kissing. Both of these men are out of uniform. What do you do in this situation?” My commander started. I really wish I was making this shit up, but unfortunately, the training featured moronic situations like that where people had sit and ponder, “Should I slap them with a bible, should I give them a reprimand when they get back to base, or should I do absolutely nothing?” Decisions, decisions! As I gazed around the room at the members of my squadron, the look of torture and boredom on their faces was absolutely priceless.
“You do nothing, because they’re not doing anything wrong!” Screamed a Master Sergeant that looked on the verge of shooting his face off. “That’s correct…you do nothing,” replied my commander. This training session lasted 45 minutes before the unit was dismissed for a unit barbecue that immediately followed.
“God damnit, that was painful!” said another Master Sergeant. “What a fucking waste of time briefing us on shit that we already know!” As terrible as it was to undergo this pathetic training that was mandated top-down, it was a sign that my double life as a proud gay man out of uniform and some “Asexual” single man in uniform was truly coming to an end. Two weeks after that training session, President Obama, Secretary Gates, and Admiral Mullen delivered their certification to Congress, initiating a 60-day countdown to policy’s official demise.
OutServe chapters all over the world planned dinners, get togethers, and celebrations at nightclubs to celebrate the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell on September 20, 2011. For the OutServe Germany Chapter, the repeal timeline also happened to line up with the Oktoberfest celebration in Munich. As if that was not exciting enough, according to Jack, on the first Sunday of Oktoberfest, one of the “Tents”, which were essentially massive dining halls capable to sitting several thousand people, becomes the gay tent. 5000 men packed into the tent at 9am to drink all day and into the evening while ass slapping, kissing, groping, and who knows what else. We still planned on having a dinner on the evening of September 20th, but in the face of such an awesome opportunity, we began out post-repeal celebration in Munich the weekend prior.
Saturday morning we gathered at the main pavilion in order watch the opening ceremony of Oktoberfest followed by the firing of the cannons. All of the guys were wearing their leiderhosen, nearly all of whom had theirs specially crafted to fit them well in all the right places. Me, on the other hand, I had not prepared for this event, so all I had was some cheap crap I bought at the train station. That’s when Ryan got a bright idea.
“Thunderpussy, let’s get you in a dress!” With so many gay men present that weekend, why wouldn’t at least a few get decked out in the poofy dresses. Well, we find out how much of a bad idea this turned out to be when we perused a couple of stores looking at the dresses. Women all over the store were giving us the dirtiest fucking looks while the store attendants were constantly trying to point us in the direction of the leiderhosen. When we said we were looking for a dress for me, those attendants gave us the stink eye and left. Having almost been the victims of a hate crime in Frankfurt, Ryan and I did not want to further stir the pot . So I accepted my cheap, baggy leiderhosen and we returned. We spent the day eating munching on chicken, drinking beer, and trying to find seats inside the tents, a task that proved to me impossible since they were all jam packed with people. There were so many people inside that you could barely even set foot inside, we settled on a patio area where the “Beer witches” were combing the crowd, taking order for beer in mugs so huge that merely holding it by the handle was difficult. I found myself putting all of my fingers through the handle and palming the mug because I was just not strong enough to just hold the meg regularly. A couple of dozen gay men were gathered at this patio area, including this Austrian couple that took a liking to me and Ryan. They made it abundantly clear how much of open couple they were when one groped Ryan while other reached into the back of my lederhosen and fingered my asshole.
As if the weekend leading up to the 20th could not get more awesome, Kris arrived back from Afghanistan. He had been cleared to return from his depoloyment several days prior, it was just that trying to find a passenger flight proved to be difficult. The one he was supposed to be one got cancelled at the last minute, threatening his ability to arrive in time for our Oktoberfest celebration. Frantic, Kris got himself on a mortuary cargo flight that would be passing through Ramstein Air Base. “Are you sure you want to be on this flight? You know we’re carrying corpses, right?”
“I don’t care, I am just desparate to get the fuck out of here!” Once we got confirmation that he was on the flight, John dropped off Kris’ car at the passenger terminal on Ramstein Air Base before heading to Munich. On Saturday afternoon, Kris’ flight touched down at Ramstein Air Base. Normally, one’s unit is there to greet you and welcome you back from deployment, but Kris did not have any time for that nonsense! His actual welcome was going to come from his boyfriend, Donnie, and the rest of OutServe Germany. Not one to disappoint, he drove home like a mad man to unload his gear, shower, and quickly pack his bags for Munich. He then hopped on the train for Munich and arrived at around 6pm. I went with Donnie to meet Kris at the station. After letting those two eat each other’s faces for a bit, I gave Kris a big hug and kiss on the cheek. We returned to the group and spent the rest of the night drinking there until a torrential downpour forced us to bail and run back to the hotel. The Austrian couple was all over Ryan on the walk back, trying to get him to come back with them to the hotel. Now, if it was me, I would have done it in a heartbeat as I am a “Hoes before Bros” kinda guy. Ryan however, was not that attracted to one of them and instead accompanied me to get a Turkish kebab sandwich. “Really Super Bass, you chose kebab over dick?” I said with a look of disappointment.
“I dunno Thunderpussy. That one guy was not that hot.” Ryan said as he chomped down his sandwich.
“You do realize that was probably the one good shot you had at finding a top to fuck you,” I said with a smile. Ever since we got back from Ibiza, Ryan had bad luck after bad luck with guys he met at bars turning out to be bottoms in the bedroom, and thus, nullifying any chance at sex. We headed back to the hotel to get a couple of hours of shuteye since we were waking up at the butt crack of dawn.
At exactly 5:45am, five alarm clocks went off, forcing all of out of bed and into the shower. An hour later, we were all out the door, heading out to the gay tent. We met Jack, Robert, Steve at a coffee shop in the central train station along the way. Since it was a Sunday, we needed to check out of our hotel, so we headed to the train in order to check our luggage in the provided lockers. Jack introduced me to two new homos to the group: JJ and Frank. Both had been reassigned to Stuttgart recently and Jack was the eager to get them acquainted with all things gay, and what better way to get acclimated than the gayest event in all of Munich.
By 7:40am, we arrived at the gay tent to get in line. Holy, fuck, there was already a thousand people in line with a steady stream of guys getting in line behind. We all immediately start calling everyone who was straggler, telling them to hurry the fuck up because there are a ton of people already here. Most of them of them got the memo and hurried over, while others just blew off our calls as dramatic nonsense….something they would regret once they finally got in line later that morning to stand in line for hours in order to get inside. At 8:45am, the gay tent opened, with people slowly, but surely filing into the building. Once inside, we dash toward an the corner of the tent and claim two tables. About thrity of us managed to get up and get in line, so holding down two tables was easy. At 9am, beer witches come dashing down the aisles, miraculously holding upwards of five liter mugs at a time. Now, mind you, the mood among the other gay men in the tent was tepid. The musical bands were not scheduled to start playing for a couple of hours, and the tent was still filling up. This sense of tepidness, however, was not shared by the men and women of OutServe. By 9:30am, we were already standing on our tables, swinging our beer glasses, drinking, and screaming. We were literally the only two tables doing this, while everyone else stared, confused as to why we were getting crazy so early. I mean yeah, after a couple of hours, everyone would be acting like us, but at 9:30am? The combination of beer, the gay tent, 5000 other gay men, and oh by the way, the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in less than two days caused our group to immediately get batshit crazy. Ryan and Robert held hands and began skipping up and down the aisles flirting with the other men in the tent. The men present were attractive men in their 30s and 40s, and boy were they receptive to the flirting. I found myself walking up to guys, saying hello, followed by a casual, “I’m gonna fuck you later, “ to which they would smile and say, “OK!” You can imagine how much of a raging hardon I had by 10am. As I was walking down the aisle, I saw Mark and Mike, and two Germans from Fasching in Cologne.
“Where are you sitting?” Mark asked me.
“Oh, I am sitting with those crazy people that are already jumping up and down on their tables. Yeah, I’m with them.” I smiled as pointed to all of my friends.
“Why are they already celebrating?” Mark asked.
“You know the policy Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?” I asked.
“Oh yeah yeah, the thing with the gays in the military.” Mark responded.
“Yeah, well, the policy is ending in two days, which means we could no longer be fired for being gay, and we are celebrating here at Oktoberfest.” I said
“OOOOOh….yeah I understand.” Mark immediately understood the gravity of our celebrating because the policy was so notorious around the world.
“You and Michael should stop by later to meet my friends.” I offered. Nothing would be more awesome than to show off the Germans that I had picked up in a Sailor Moon costume. “Sure!” Mark replies. Wouldn’t you know, about an hour later, Mark and Michael showed up to say hello. My story of the Cologne hook up was very well known, especially among the group of guys that had gone with me to Munich. So when those showed up, I got to lock arms with both of them and say, “Hey guys! These are my two Germans from Fasching.” Jaws everywhere dropped, and cameras began to flash as everyone was stunned at how hot these guys were.
All morning, all afternoon, and well into the evening we drank in the gay tent. Because it was Sunday, most of the members of our group began to slowly peel off starting at 5pm. Me, I was having way too much fun kissing and groping every other man I came across, especially this Dutch tourist that I swear I must have kissed, groped, and fingered for at least an hour an a half. I lasted till 8pm, when I needed to punch in order to catch a train back home and get there at a decent time. By the end of that evening, my dick and my asshole no longer felt like they were mine. That day was just full on gay madness, with every man in the group losing their sensibilities and, well, becoming like me when flirting with men.
The massive amount of fun we had that weekend could easily suggest that our dinner party on Tuesday, September, 20th was just some small affair attended by hardly anyone. That suggestion, however, would be way off mark. The dinner party that Tuesday proved to be just as enjoyable and well attended as Oktoberfest. People brought their spouses, fiancés, hell, one even brought his grandmother to commemorate the event. While Oktoberfest may have been characterized by erotic lust, the dinner was an event of pure jubilation. I could not make it for the beginning the dinner so Ashley and Kris officiated. Kris began the event by giving a very personal speech about that night he was arrested in Seoul for being in a gay bar out past curfew. Kris recalled that genuine fear of being discharged under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell since he was caught in a gay bar and the military policeman explicitly told his First Sergeant that it was a gay bar. Despite avoiding discharge, Kris confessed that the experience haunted him throughout his career. He then led a toast to, “Never having to fear that ever again!” Ashley then stood up and led a cheer saying, “It’s a great day to be gay,” to a crowd that screamed it back to her. By the time I had arrived, the mood had all but died down, only to be revived when Ashley and Ryan scream, “Thunderpussy!” There was a big cheer as I went and sat down at the table, quite the humbling experience. After greeting as many of the guests as possible, I grabbed Ashley and Ryan and hugged them tight. Our nightmare was finally over.
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Afterword
It is easy to suggest that just because the policy has changed, that it does not mean the culture has. Immediately following repeal, the military culture dramatically changed. Brave gay and lesbian servicemembers began to acknowledge their partners at social events, at promotions, when they arrived to new assignments, or simply in mere conversation. Guys and girls no longer had to go to a gay bar while looking over their shoulder for people that were spying on them nor feel the need to hide their whereabouts. For the naysayers of open service, they were given an ultimatum: Get with the times or leave. There is no longer any room for hostility on the basis of sexual orientation. Commander were given their marching orders, and they have been following them diligently. Immediately after repeal, a number of friends reported that their commanders had pulled them aside and said that if they were ever harassed for their sexual orientation, to let them know immediately. It was unmistable that the military culture had shifted quickly, and I was glad I was around to see it play out.
On October 30, 2011, I was approved for separation from the United States Air Force. After six and a half years, I had grown weary of service and all the baggage it had carried. I wanted to separate and move on from the military, and the Air Force finally granted my wish. Within two months, I would be on a flight bound for New York City to start a new life. After thirty years of some sort of association with the military, whether as a dependant or as an officer, I was ready to start new.
News of my separation reverberated all over OutServe, with scores of messages from members and other chapter leader sad to see me leave. The hardest part was breaking the news to OSG, which did not take the news well. I remember tearing up as I typed my notice to the membership, which erupted in a flurry of messages of sadness and support. I received not one, not two, but three going away parties organized by members to show me how much they cared about all the work that I put in to make OSG a welcoming and fun chapter.
The first going away was in Kaiserslautern, where many guys and girls that could not go to the others because of work invited me out to drink and laugh with them. The second was organized in Frankfurt, where gay and lesbians from all over Germany travelled to drink with me and bid me farewell. It was an exceptionally special gathering because it was held in late December, nearly one year after I organized the first OutServe gathering that rcelebrated the Senate vote on the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act. Here we were, back in the place where it all started to bid me farewell. The final going away occurred in Stuttgart, where I wined and dined at a fancy restaurant with Kory, Sven, Jack, and all the other guys stationed there. Finally came the trip to Frankfurt in order to prep for my flight to JFK airport, where a massively different chapter of my life would begin. Travis, the guy I met at the Mannheim Pride march came up to send me off. That night, we sat in a gay bar next to my hotel drinking and reminiscing about all the good times that had been had. I began to feel a bit depressed about bowing out of the military, when Travis stopped me and reminded me of everything that had transpired since I had arrived on the scene. A gay military community that was largely splintered was unified quickly. We had bonded, we had laughed together, we had cried together. More importantly, we were together through it all.
“Carlos, that was all you,” Travis said to me as I was welling up in tears. It was difficult to accept that I had such an impact on people’s lives, and that they were thankful for everything I had done. I gave Travis a big hug, thanking him for making that acknowledgement. Though I was moving on, I had a lot to reflect on and be proud. I had become a confident gay man and gotten respect of my military peers. However, more important than the rest, I had inspired a whole group of gays and lesbians to be gay and not be afraid to get away with it. I boarded my flight content with the impact I had on the men and women that had come to be my family. The memories they gave me will be with me for the rest of my life.