Worst birthday ever, Part I

Somewhere on the Internet, people were asked to describe their worst birthday ever.  Mine was my 30th birthday.  It was not because I was no longer in my 20's and getting older.  Nothing like that.  But some background is necessary.

I was an Air Force instructor of English at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs since 1978.  In early 1979, rumors were circulating that one or more cadets were being investigated on suspicion of being gay.  This was long before "Don't ask; don't tell" and today when one can serve without fear of discharge.

The late Randy Shilts wrote in his book CONDUCT UNBECOMING a chapter about Cadet Dan Stratford, who eventually took a deal that he would be allowed to graduate that Spring with his class but waive his commission in the Air Force.  I became friends with Dan and his friends, George Gordy and Bill Ryder, who were also investigated; but no evidence existed that they were gay and none of the three admitted anything about the other two.    

Around this time, or not long before, another officer in the English Department, whose name I have now forgotten, was going to be leaving the Academy.  He was an academic adviser to a cadet whom he said asked for me "personally" to be his replacement academic advisor.  I did not know junior Cadet Keith Bostic.  I had never even heard of Cadet Keith Bostic.  Curious, I agreed to be his advisor that Spring.  (How might my life have been different if I had said, "No.  I really have too much going on right now."?)

Over the next few weeks Cadet Bostic and I became acquainted.  He'd submitted a poem to the Cadet creative writing publication, ICARUS, that I assisted the publication of.  I was also Officer-In-Charge of the Cadet Film Club.  Cadet Bostic would come by the projection booth where I was helping Cadet Keener set up the film for a weekly showing.  (This was long before prerecorded videocassettes and videotapes were widely available--I owned a Sony Betamax videotape recorder, but most people did not, and not too many professional tapes were yet available.)  If a movie was not broadcast on television, you had to rent a copy of the actual film to watch a movie in an auditorium.

Cadet Bostic seemed more than usually interested in me I began to soon realize.   I was flattered, obviously.  He was 19; I was 29.  He was blond and realistically attractive.

Once, when we were in the booth alone together, he said, "I need to go to the little boy's room."  I believe I laughed aloud at the old-fashioned remark and, likely inappropriately responded, "Do you need help?"  He replied, "You can hold my hand."  His gaze remained fixed on me for a few additional moments, likely attempting to judge my reaction, before he turned and left with a smile on his face.

Another time, when the projection booth was active with cadets entering and exiting, I put my hand on his shoulder to explain a letter I and other advisors had been sent, regarding projects involving the cadets we were advising, "This is kind of like a big brother/little brother thing," I explained.  Inexplicably, with my hand on his shoulder, he reached around my body and closed his arm around my waist.  I was surprised that he would be so obviously physical in front of so many other cadets.

In the next couple of days, I determined that I needed to have a talk with him.  I felt I needed to warn him that his actions might lead to accusations about the two of us, given the recent environment, and we both needed to be careful.  (Even a Cadet women's sports team was being investigated for lesbianism.)

I called his squadron on a Saturday morning, told him that I needed to see him, and drove to the Academy to pick him up.  I decided that the Overlooks was the best place to talk since it was early enough in the day before most tourists arrived and far enough away from the cadet facilities that we would not be interrupted by other cadets.

Once there, we walked along the sidewalk to the far end, and I explained my concerns.  He seemed to understand what I was worried about.  After our brief exchange, I asked him whether he would like me to drive him back to the dorm or somewhere else.  He told me directly that he wanted to go to my house.  (A brief aside here:  As Academy officers, we were often encouraged to invite cadets over to our houses.  Most were far from home and likely missed being in an environment that was more like where they grew up.  Now, I suspect the staff mainly thought that most officers were married and these innocent visits would be entirely appropriate and nothing untoward was going to happen.  With us single officers, it might be a bit more dicey.) 

We spent a couple of hours just talking.  I do believe I did mention that I had become acquainted with the three cadets under investigation, and that I had learned that Cadet Stratford had accepted the plea deal the Air Force and his lawyer had worked out.  During the entire time we chatted, it was obvious to me that Cadet Bostic was gay, or at least bisexual and exploring, and that he was genuinely attracted to me. 
 

What I did not know was that after I took him back to the Academy later that day, during the next day or two, he went to the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) and told them that I was gay and was after him when it had actually been more the other way around. 

He came over to my house a couple more times in the next few weeks.  We never had sex.  We never kissed.  We may have hugged once.  We did sit next to one another on a couch in the media room and watched a movie.  One time, it was clear to me that our sitting that close to one another had caused him to experience an obvious erection.  I did not take advantage.

But at the end of the academic year, he was supposed to take summer school, to make up a course he was deficient in.  However, he explained to me in my office one afternoon that he really needed to go back home to Maryland because his parents needed him for financial reasons that summer.  Clearly, he was asking me if I could get him out of summer school.

Another aside is warranted:  In the course of our conversations at my house and on the drives to and from the Academy, he eventually confessed that he was actually an orphan.  That the parents he had were his adoptive parents.  They had had a son who had died, and when they adopted him, they had him assume the identity of their dead son.  He needed to make money that summer to help pay off the man who had fixed the paperwork that gave him the biological son's identity 

Yes, it sounds surreal.  Yes, it sounds crazy even.  But he seemed sincere and I was always way too naive.  But I did wonder how it was he was able to get an appointment to the Academy.  This was the later 1970's, when military service did not hold the cachet it had before or later.  Applications to the service Academies were down in relationship to previous and later years.  But he did not offer how he had gotten in, and I did not ask.

Again, as a reminder, he was visiting the OSI after each of our meetings and telling them everything about what had happened.  But a number of things he was telling them were not true or were true but not exactly accurate in his telling.  So the OSI agents were forming this wrongful opinion of me and him, as well as of our "relationship".

I did get the summer school instructor to let him out of the class he would have been required to take so he could go back home.  But I then asked the head of the Cadet Advisor program to get him another Academic Advisor.  I had gotten much too involved with him and his personal life to be objective going forward.  On being told of the change of advisor, he told me, "Sir, I did not ask for that."  I know he did not, but I certainly knew it was appropriate.

On the day he was to depart for Maryland, I found an envelope on my desk with a hand-written note inside from him.  Or so I thought.  Since the OSI was not getting anything concrete from him that would lead to my being forced to resign for being gay, they concocted this scheme to have him write a note, providing me with his home address and offering that I could write to him while he was home on leave.  They put the note in the envelope and slipped into my office while I was at lunch, leaving it for me to find and somehow incriminate myself.

I do have to confess that I was becoming attracted to Bostic all during this time.  He'd come to my office with the plea to be excused from summer school, and then cried genuine tears, unable to look at me, when I said I would do all I could.  I echoed the phrase that Katharine Hepburn had used to a student of hers when she attempted to get him into Oxford University in THE CORN IS GREEN.  That we were friends and I would help him.  His tales of being an orphan, growing up in difficult circumstances, made me more than sympathetic toward him.  I have always been sympathetic to a victim. 

I would eventually realize that those tears were because he was wrecking my career all the while I was trying to help him and maybe he felt guilty about it--but he did not stop.  And I would eventually discover that I was not the only one to whom he had told the tales of being an orphan.  I had former students in my classes who were in his squadron.  They liked me and they came forward to tell the OSI what he told them. 

Unfortunately, being the object of someone's affection (or so I thought) was heady for me.  This was the very first time I had felt that someone was interested in me that way.  So when Bostic was away, I did write those fateful letters to him.  Six in all.  I poured out my feelings for another man on paper.  Not with the cryptic phrases I had used in my journals for so many years, disguising the gender of the unrequited objects of my affection over those many years.  I never imagined that someone else would soon be reading those heart-felt letters (Bostic opened just the first and the last letters, not the middle four).  Cold, calculating and almost inhuman OSI agents would eventually read all of them, as well as photocopy each page for their records.  (They would eventually be returned to me, though I am not sure I still have them.) 

When Cadet Bostic returned later that summer, he handed the six letters to the OSI agents and took off for advanced Academy training at Camp Red Devil, appropriately named, at Fort Carson, south of Colorado Springs, likely assuming he was done with the whole mess he'd created and done with me.  It was only just beginning.

When he returned from leave and had not contacted me, as I had asked him to in the final letter, I took the letter the OSI had left on my desk and symbolically burned it in my fireplace in the media room.  I was done with him for good.  Or so I thought.  It was only just beginning.