Worst birthday ever, Part II

I was assigned a military lawyer from Peterson Air Force Base, but he was out of town.  I talked to another lawyer at the Academy who would cover for him while he was away.  I was advised by Dick Tuttle, the civilian lover of Cadet Dan Stratford, to hire a civilian lawyer, just to keep the Air Force honest.  

Soon, I was summoned to my Academy lawyer's office to be given the very thick packet of charges against me.  It included copies of each of the letters, as well.  When I was able to read what Cadet Keith Bostic had told them about our "relationship," I was shocked and dismayed.  About one-third of his accusations or statements of events were correct, but about one-third were distortions of the truth, and one-third of his statements to the OSI were total lies.


“A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do.”


This would eventually come back to haunt Cadet Bostic.

Nothing I said in my response to the lies and half-truths meant anything to the OSI.  They already had a preconceived notion of who I was--a predatory officer out to seduce an innocent--and straight--cadet.  But, eventually, when Cadet Vivet Mirage came forward and told me she, and others, had been told some of the same things I had been told about Bostic's past, the OSI, and the Academy staff, realized they were in over their heads.  Their notions of what was going on were tainted.

My two military lawyers were able to get Cadet Bostic in a room, to ask him all the questions I knew would trip him up.  And their extended interview with him got him to trip over himself and deny too many things he had said not just to me but to others.  (Not that what he told me meant anything.)  They also recorded their explosive interview with him.  At one point he claimed to be this innocent "babe in the woods".  His goose, as they say, was cooked once several other cadets were interviewed and signed sworn statements.

Bostic had also discussed his past with a couple of Cadets who were quite religious and who had gotten him to be in some of their prayer sessions.  They might have been prosecuted for what they had not told the Academy authorities.  Eventually, as the OSI told my Academy lawyer, "Everyone's got a lawyer." 

A tall, blond, giant of an Academy lawyer who taught law classes at the Academy and who had gone through the introduction process to the Academy with me the year before and become acquainted was assigned to be Bostic's lawyer.  It was odd because I went by his office one day to chat with him and his door was closed.  I actually had the distinct impression that he was there with Bostic, advising him.  My instincts were correct.

The upper class cadets usually handle honor code violations themselves.  But when the extent of Bostic's questionable past came out from these other sources, they were aghast.   They knew this could not be handled the usual way.

The OSI had to protect Bostic until I accepted my own plea deal.  I was given my $10K severance pay because I had a regular commission.  I was given a somewhat honorable discharge but with a questionable remark added that tainted my discharge form.  Once my situation was settled, they went after Bostic for lying to my lawyers during their interview with him.  (I paid to have the taped interview transcribed.)

He departed the Academy a week before I did. 

On the day I was to leave, the main elevator in the academic building got stuck between floors with me as the only occupant.  (I always felt the building itself did not want me to go.)   I boxed up my stuff and left.  Oddly, too, an electric clock I had purchased at the Base Exchange, on my first assignment in Minot AFB the week I arrived in January 1974, started sputtering loudly a couple of days after I left the Academy.  It was in the middle of the night, so I got out of bed and unplugged it.  The next morning, I tried plugging it back in but nothing happened.  It had stopped working.  I always thought it knew its own service to me was no longer required and so it quit, too.

I never saw Bostic again from just before he departed for leave before that fateful summer.  I had called him at his parents' house, briefly, that summer while he was on leave, but that was the last time we ever spoke.  And, of course, I had no hint about what he was up to.  I never really was to learn why he did what he did.  I did find out until later that he had gone to see a Chaplin about what he intended to do before he went to the OSI.  The Chaplin, I also later learned, told him not to do what he was going to do.  It would just wreck my career to no purpose.  As it turned out, his actions destroyed his own career as well as mine.  (I used to imagine that while I initially thought he knocked my life off course, I actually was able to knock him off course.  He had not only implicated me in his web of lies, he'd named names of the gay cadets I knew, as well as thrown suspicion on a few gay officers I knew in the English Department.  He was souless.)

I left the Academy on Friday, October 15th.  My birthday was Sept. 23rd.  So how was it the worst birthday ever? 

My Academy lawyer had gotten the paperwork that my resignation had been approved on the Friday (Sept. 21st) before my birthday that Sunday.  But rather than call me that Friday, or that Saturday, the day before my birthday, he called me on Sunday, Sept. 23rd.  I was home alone.  No birthday cake.  No friends. No presents.  A totally uncertain future ahead of me, with not one single job prospect on the horizon.  He called me with the only "present" I got that day:  My unwanted discharge from the Air Force had been approved.  He could have called before Sunday.

Worst birthday ever.