As you can see, some snow is on the ground. Daylin, with the super-long blond hair in this picture, was accepted, with a full scholarship, to the University of Michigan for graduate school. All of the years of hard work and long hours of study at East L.A.J.C. and USC had paid off handsomely. He was on his way. I still had no idea what I was going to do, though this year would be decisive.
Now that the draft was over and I had spent my time at Marine OCS--and the Vietnam War was now winding down so significantly--I really did not have to worry about military service any longer.
What I should have done in those days, if I could get into a time machine now and travel back to meet up with my younger self then and offer some sound advice, was to go back to school at Cal State Dominguez Hills, get a Master's Degree in history or the humanities, such as I would from 1974-1978 while in the service, and then become a junior college instructor, as I would do part time from 1980-1991, in Colorado Springs.
That's the real regret I probably have now, given all that was to happen to me in those intervening years.
While I enjoyed my time in the Air Force and wanted very much to serve 20 years at least and then retire, it did not work out that way for me. Being gay when there were no legal protections, not even DADT, my career would simply be a diversionary path. And I would find that I loved teaching but could not get a full-time job in the 1980's in Colorado Springs or around Denver in the 1990's and 2000's. Had I still lived in California, where new community colleges were being built all the time and just about everywhere across the Golden State, I would likely have been hired decades ago and been able to teach for 30 years and then retire.
I mistakenly fixated on a military career and then ended up so far off course for the rest of my life. I never was able to get back to the Academy or back into the Air Force, even now with DADT overturned. And I have not been able to get a full time teaching job no matter how many applications I have submitted and how much teaching experience I have had.
When this picture above was taken, while I was marking time by trying to get into the Coast Guard and then again trying for the Air Force, was when I could have made the switch to become a teacher instead. I was still living at home in South Gate. Mom would not have minded if I put in another year or two, and then began applying to schools all over Southern California to teach. I would take two years after Dominguez Hills for Marine OCS and Air Force OTS before I finally got a military commission and began active duty.
Perhaps in several alternate universes, I did become a teacher instead of serving in the military. However, in this universe, I had a whole different set of friends and experiences awaiting me.
Regarding Daylin, a couple of years ago, I looked him up on the Internet and saw that he's been a college professor at three or four schools over the years. I sent him an email and got a reply. He was disappointed over the last years to discover that even among academics, or especially among academics, there is unwelcome politics inivolved no matter where you teach. But he should be able to retire in the next couple of years, if he hasn't already. While he was married when this picture was taken, and his wife took the picture above, he's been single ever since. I don't read anything into that, mind you. He also has no offspring, whereas his brother Darryl, who married the woman I met back in the 70's, had four children, all of whom have been doing well. Darryl is also a college professor, and he and his wife of all these years are still married. Daylin says they get together at least once a year.
He also explained that both his parents are dead (his father was a terrible chain smoker who used to line up the butts in an ashtray while he sat after work in his easy chair and watched TV). Their older sister, he told me, is also dead. So, it's just down to the two older brothers and the two fraternal twin sisters who are still alive. I sent him a followup email, but he did not respond.
To get to Ann Arbor, I flew non-stop from LAX to Detroit on a United Airlines stretch DC-8, and the two of them picked me up. I spent a nice couple of days visiting. We played a sort of two-man basketball game on a trampoline apparatus at a rec center near where they lived. For the next few days, the ground continued to feel as if it were sinking under my feet, even after I flew on to Washington National Airport in DC where John Robertson and his wife picked me up. I may have flown on a 727-200, and perhaps I also took United Airlines. I simply don't remember the details of that flight all these years later.
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