Friday, December 2, 2011

Beginning of the End

On the second day of Naval Academy Summer Seminar, they woke us at 0530, lined us up in the passageway, and told us to run five miles in half an hour. I made it in under the time limit, winded and nauseous, but triumphant.

My limbs felt like noodles as I struggled to keep up with the squad on the way back to the dorms. A squadmate, the only one who finished ahead of me, threw my arm over his shoulder and helped me along.

He had platinum blond hair, buzzed very short, and ice blue eyes. Though almost two inches shorter than me--no mean feat--he probably outweighed me half again in pure, rippling muscle. I could not decide whether I envied him or wanted him.

It turned out he lived near the beach, and would run down to the water each morning, swim across a cove (in all seasons, no less), do a ton of push-up on the beach, then run home.

To me, his accomplishments seemed godlike. Sure, I played varsity soccer, but it mattered more to me that our quiz bowl team made it to the nationals. I jogged three to five miles every morning, and visited the weight room every other day, but it did little to improve my whip-thin physique.

The rest of the squad had already written me off as a nerd--even our midshipman squad leader vocally disdained my "book smarts"--but they shunned him for reasons entirely mysterious to me. Perhaps he just seemed too well-prepared, too gung-ho, and too unconcerned about their opinions.

The next day, during personal time before lights-out, he confided his motivation for joining the Navy. He needed structure and regulation in his life to compensate for something he lacked.

He looked right at me, no emotion in his perfect Aryan eyes, and said, "I can be very cruel."

I stopped envying him, but wanted him more than ever. Maybe the others avoided him because they could sense his sociopathy, or something. What did it say about me that I liked him?

When he asked me why I wanted to join, I could not summon any of the high-minded drivel about duty and service and 'being a part of something bigger than myself' that we all write in our admissions essays.

"I want to be like my dad," I blurted.

He actually smiled then, a strange, thin smile. "You can do that without joining the Navy."

"He's a Marine, actually, a Mustang," I conceded. "Said he would rather have a daughter in a whorehouse than a son in the Naval Academy. Guess this counts as rebellion for me."

"You can do that without joining the Navy, too," he pointed out.

It did not occur to me to turn that around on him--to say that he could find structure and purpose and whatever in all sorts of places. It did not occur to me because his words had triggered a revelation of sorts.

Until then, I had embraced the naval service as my destiny. If not the Academy, then NROTC, or enlistment. The very thought of civilian life seemed ridiculous and untenable. I did not consider the litany of reasons I might not belong in the military, and, more problematically, I refused to consider why I really wanted to serve at all.

Later that night, I lay in my bunk, waiting and dreading as cries of "goodnight" traveled down the passageway. I joined in when our turn came. When the last, distant "goodnight" sounded, I thought for a moment the next part might not come.

Then someone outside shouted, in a sing-song voice, "Goodnight, Jane Fonda!"

"Goodnight, Commie bitch!" my fellows roared, without me.

2 comments:

  1. I find it quite amazing to read this. I did not know this side of you. Also, 5 miles in 30 minutes is really fast. I can't even run a mile at that pace.

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  2. @azmytheconomics I felt ashamed for not going into military service, and so did not like to talk much about it. The summer I spent back in Taiwan before going to UMBC also changed me a lot.

    Re: running, I trained pretty hard for that. I also left out the part where I threw up right after finishing those five miles. -_-

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