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. 

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.





        

     

Soul mates?

A guy I chat with on the Internet and I were discussing relationships.  The following was my personal contribution:

Who knows? Sometimes I think we just fall into stuff. Once in a while we luck out; more times than not we end up in trouble or just skate by major disaster. But then my meeting my husband when and how I did seems rather fated. Over 60. When I figured I would never meet Mr. Right.

 

I started looking a long, long time ago. My husband was under 10 years old. When I was forced to resign from the Air Force, he had only recently turned 10. So I was going to kiss a lot of frogs before he and I met on DN. And only because I was a paying member and knew who had checked out my profile. I engaged him in messages, and we finally went out about 3 weeks later. He had long before figured he'd never meet his guy and had mostly given up.

 

He took my having a Continental Viscount mahogany model on the mantle of the fireplace as a sign. (His late father worked for Continental years before, and he himself had always loved airlines and airliners) So we just started dating. At one point I broke up with him and immediately regretted it. We got back together a week later and have been together ever since.

 

Our house is filled with airliner models and pictures and memorabilia, and ship memorabilia (we both like ships) and vintage car models (we both like mid-century modern stuff). Even at 51, he has always loved old Hollywood movies and gossip and all that goes with it. We never fight or yell at one another. I make him laugh, a lot.

 

Maybe I have always been looking for that special buddy. I remember a guy I once knew who introduced me to his latest BF, only to tell me six months later that while they were great in bed together, when they finally got out of bed, they found they had nothing in common and broke up. [My husband and I] hug and kiss all the time and tell one another "I love you" every day, and usually more than once each day. And we mean it. We watched the soul mate episode of Friends yesterday afternoon and we both do believe we are one another's soul mate. We have always believed it. We travel very well together and love going to Comic Con.

 

I have never been happier with anyone, and if anyone believes this is a cosmic union, I would not doubt them.

Wonder Con 2022

We have a table, SP-81 (Small Press area), at Wonder Con this year, April 1-3, at the Anaheim Convention Cneter.  We will also cover the Prism Booth elsewhere on the main floor of the hall.  We will again be giving away free books and tot bags such as the following (as well as selling more RAoF T-shirts).  Hope to see you there.

 

 

WonderCon 2022

We intend to be at WonderCon this year.  I have not heard whether or not we have been granted a small press table or will have a presence at the Prism Comics booth only.  Hope to see everyone there, regardless.

New RAoF novel?

The age of the super-hero has all but passed.  

In the course of more than two decades, their limitations were eventually revealed.  Even with purer waters, clearer skies and renewed soil, the generations of prior neglect were difficult to overcome.  

The planet itself was now pristine.  Yet it wasn't enough.

The Gods had once again retreated to the glorious confines of Olympus, this time for good.  They had experienced humanity's restlessness and dissatisfaction before, at the heights of prior civilizations such as Athens and Rome, finding themselves fading into oblivion in eras long ago.  They departed before they were forced to go.      

Even with all the dictators removed, the swords of several wars blunted, the overt sources of lies and deceit driven underground, Oculus could foresee that he and his fellow mortal heroes could not eradicate all of the baser urges of humankind.

After the plague had devastated the populations for so many endless months and was not yet finished, some source had to be blamed.  Mercuria and her beloved companion finally moved on and back out into the stars from whence they arrived years before.  The planetary Alliance--with the Rainbow Arc of Fire at its core--was now a part of history.

No matter how uniquely powerful, what does a team of almost boundless talent and insight do when fellow citizens willingly elect charlatans and knaves?  When the lies the populations believe become persistent and outsized?  When the structures and laws of governments and societies are themselves undemocratic, even moribund in a more modern age?  

These are not children to be educated and carefully trained from birth to reject false narratives, to decisively cull the slivers of pure truth from out of so many waves of propaganda.

At what point does one find himself and herself fighting against so many forms of that basic of human need, freedom, and wonder how much fight is too much?  That one cannot vaccinate the population against its own willfulness where "Give me liberty or give me death" has been a shining hallmark of progressiveness?        

"...if I die before I wake..."

A couple of pics from Comic Con Special Edition 2021

 First day of Comic-Con Special Edition.

Buying books on amazon

Long before kindle versions of books existed, and well before the print-on-demand option, amazon had the Advantage program.  If a person ordered my books on amazon, amazon notified me that I had an order for specific titles of the series.  I would go to the boxes of individual books that I had gotten from my publisher that I kept in my condo, gathered up the title or titles ordered, packaged them for shipment, drove to the post office, paid the postage, and off the books went to the reader.  (Amazon did maintain for a few years a small stash of my books in one or more of their warehouses, but then they decided they did not want to do that for book titles that they did not sell in large quantities.  They returned to me most of the stock they had.)   It wasn't particularly efficient, but it was the only option.  Besides, I was getting most of my sales through Category Six bookstore in Denver, CO, and a few sales through some book signings I did around the country:  Seattle, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Diego and Phoenix.  And, of course, the two SDCCs that I attended in 2004-5. 

But then the gay bookstores such as Category Six and others around the country closed.  As I mentioned, amazon did not want to maintain any small stock in their warehouses.  Gay publications ceased to exist so there was no easy way to announce or publicize new titles in the series.  Things looked mighty bleak for Rainbow Arc of Fire.

However, with the arrival of kindle versions of the series, I was able to publish the final two volumes in the series that way.  People seemed enamored of digital copies of everything such as books and music.  The sales of physical books of RAoF pretty much died, but digital copies did maintain a small market for some time.

Mark and I moved to Indio in 2016, hauling dozens of remaining cases of paperback copies of the series with us.  There were four small comic book conventions in the Coachella Valley, primarily in Palm Springs during 2017-2018.  In 2018 and 2019, we were able to be a part of Prism Comics at SDCC.  So rather than maintain a huge stash of my own books when readers could finally, and more easily, buy print-on-demand copies, I started giving away hundreds of books at the various Cons.  A MILE-HIGH SAGA (red) and AUTUMN SAGA (orange) were gone by the end of the Palm Springs Comic Convention.   SOULS WITHIN STONE (yellow) and WORLDS BENEATH US (green) are now almost gone after SDCC Special Edition 2021.  Maybe a couple dozen copies remain of each title, if that.  I may have a case or two of SLIGHT OF MIND (blue) and HARMONY OF SPHERES (purple) left to give away.  There are 3-5 cases each of WHO HAS DOMINION? (fuchsia) and A HOUSE DIVIDED (turquoise) remaining.  (SHATTERED DAWN and OLIVE BRANCH never had paperback copies from my previous printer.)

Unfortunately, I was notified this morning that someone has been able to order copies of the series using the old amazon Advantage program.  And I cannot, even with some help from amazon, access my Advantage account.  I have followed directions to delete cache, changed my password more than once, use Firefox instead of Explorer, whatever.  Nothing works.  I have sent a note up the chain of amazon help but have heard nothing yet.  And, as I have described, I have no copies of the first two books to sell.  I figured the print-on-demand option and kindle editions were the only two types left for readers to acquire books in the series if I did not give, or sell, them personally at a convention.  Oh, well, we shall see what someone is trying to order if I am ever able to access my old Advantage account.  

  

             

   

More SDCC SE pics from the Prism booth

 

San Diego Comic-Con Special Edition November 2021 - A fond remembrance

Greetings!  

To all of you who acquired one or more volumes of the Rainbow Arc of Fire series, you made this the most memorable, fun and significant Convention for Mark and me.  We had a wonderful time meeting and talking to every single one of you.  We arrived home last night, exhausted but exhilarated and definitely thrilled to have had a table of our own, as well as a significant presence at the Prism Comics booth with our fellow LGBTQ creators and supporters.

To say that this was the most productive Con for us would be an understatement.  We put more books into more accepting hands than ever before.  This series has always been--for me--a supreme labor of love.  The characters and their remarkable adventures came to me so many years ago, and over a period of about a decade poured themselves onto the printed pages of these ten books; and they have always had a place in my heart and soul ever since.  I like nothing better than to share them with all of you.

 

The top two photos are from Bleeding Cool, an online publication.  The one below is me in my Star Trek Discovery medical uniform on our hotel room balcony.  The bottom is a look at the two Hawks posing in the table across the way from ours.  This is the view we had of all of you who visited us.  Unforgettable.  Again, thank you all for stopping by and meeting us!   

Rainbow Arc of Fire T-shirts at San Diego Comic Con Special Edition

 These will be available for sale ($20.00) at San Diego Comic Con Special Edition Nov 26th to Nov 28th, along with several volumes available for free, along with free fridge magnets, book marks and hero cards.  Hope any of you can make it there.  Stop by and say hello!  

Rainbow Arc of Fire at San Diego Comic-Con Special Edition November 26th to November 28th

 Rainbow Arc of Fire will have a table, L10, in the Small Press Pavilion space on the main floor of the convention center.  We will be giving away four 1st Edition volumes of the series while supplies last (Yellow, Purple, Turquoise, and Fuchsia), as well as free bookmarks, hero cards and fridge magnets, large and small.

On my 72nd Birthday

 Paul Simon once sang, "How terribly strange to be 70."

Of course, now that I am 72, it's even more strange. One almost never imagines being this old, especially as a teenager or at 20 or 30 or 40. And yet, before you know it, not only are you way over 60, everyone you have known for years is that age, too. Along the way, all of your beloved grandparents departed. And then your uncles and aunts and parents left, as well. Even worse is when your contemporary cousins start to check out. Media personalities of all types transition at the same time. Soon, some of your favorite movies or TV shows feature an entire cast that is long gone, or is very, very old and barely hanging on.

Someone famous appears in a role or in your thoughts and you ask yourself, or someone else, if that person is still alive because so many have died throughout your existence that you cannot be expected to remember when each and every one of them expired.

Your own memories or recollections of personal events in your life still seem quite fresh until you remind yourself that they happened decades before, often a half century ago and more. You vividly play out the night you and your family moved into a new house, along with all the other WWII veterans and their families, to a brand new cul-de-sac development in Whittier, CA. Your parents leave the hall light on and your new bedroom door ajar so you can find your way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. But then you realize that was 1953, and you weren't even 5 years old at the time.

You start to equate life with high school dodge ball. On the rare occasions when it rained in Southern California, and your PE class could not participate out of doors, the staff gathered you all into the gym and divided the mass of boys into two, competing groups. Half to one side of the court and half to the other side as they hand out the balls. Almost everyone soon surges this way and that, colliding with one another and attempting to avoid as long as possible getting taken out of the contest. Of course, it always seemed that there would be a Richard Meyers, a friend who calmly stands there and gets hit right away, accepting the momentary pain, to avoid the expected--and often embarrassing--ritual of those masses trying to avoid the inevitable and getting it over with right away.

On an album track on BOOKENDS by Simon & Garfunkel, Art interviewed old people in a Jewish retirement home. One of them prophetically admitted, "I have to be an old man."

Yes, I do....But yet I don't have to act like one.

New Rainbow Arc of Fire team Pride logo

 

Air Force OTS, Lackland, San Antonio, TX

The four of us from California stayed at a motel in San Antonio though I am not sure if pairs of us shared a motel room or each had his own room.  I do remember at least three of us swimming in the motel pool in the afternoon.  

We reported to Lackland the following morning.  George Tucker and I managed to be placed in the blue squadron.  One of the guys was in the yellow; the other in the green.  That was pretty much the last I saw of those two.  George and I would continue through the entire program together since he was also a pilot candidate.

While there was an entire Air Force officer staff for OTS, and we had a first lieutenant flight commander who was prior service and became an officer through OTS himself a few years before, most of OTS was run by the cadets themselves, from a Cadet Wing Commander all the way down to cadet second lieutenants.  But being given a cadet position would happen after the first six weeks of OTS.  And the first three weeks were when we would affectionately be referred to as "woolies".  Those little accumulations of dust bunnies under your bed in the dorms.

Our first dorm was a modern, three-story affair.  The cadet I shared my two-man room with was a amiable guy who, because of mistaken understanding of a single event, would be selected as the Cadet Wing Commander in his final three weeks at OTS.  But the first three weeks as woolies, while we marched our flight around as we marched our platoon around at OTS, when we got to the dining hall, we had to remain silent, not eye-ball the area, and after we got our food, we had to sit at each four-person table without talking and without looking up from our plates until we were done eating.  We were supposed to go to the first open table and fill in those that were next. 

If we were ever given instructions and any misunderstanding could result, I would misunderstand.  One morning, as first in line, I saw a table with only one person sitting there, though he was from another flight.  I sat down with him but a cadet staff member who was in charge of the dining hall, affectionately referred to as "the cookie monster", came over and berated me for sitting at this otherwise empty table with someone who was obviously almost finished eating and who would have to wait until I was done before he could get up and leave.  I forgot to mention that when four of you sat down to eat, you could not get up and leave until all four of you were done eating.  Frankly, I do not recall how you indicated to one another that you were done eating when you could not look up from your plate and could not speak to one another.  But somehow we muddled through and got out.  That particular morning, after being thoroughly chided by the upper classman, I gobbled down my food and the other fellow and I got up and walked outside to get in line with our respective flights, to go back to the dorms.

Unlike Marine OCS, Air Force OTS had men and women in each flight.  Far fewer women attended in each class, but in my first flight we had two women.  They were in the same dorm building as we but on the first floor.  When we formed up outside the dorm for meals, one of us guys would go inside, knock on the door and inform whoever answered that our flight was ready to leave and for the women in our flight to join us.  One morning, I was tasked to get them.  David Hunn, who also would be in the flight screening program with George Tucker and me, was to march us to chow.  I went inside, got the two women in just a couple of minutes; but when the three of us returned to the spot where the flight was supposed to be waiting, they were gone.

David Hunn was impulsive and bull-headed.  Even though I was inside for just a couple minutes at most, he figured he'd waited long enough and marched the rest of the guys off to breakfast.  I was furious.  I had to march the three of us to the dining hall.  Right and left of us were full flights, and here was a contingent of three woolies marching by ourselves to breakfast.  I just tried to get us to the dining hall without an upperclassman chiding us.  Of course, when I was finally able to confront David for leaving us behind, he claimed they had waited long enough for us and took off because we were taking too long.  We will come to obnoxious OT (Officer Trainee) Hunn later.

Unlike Marine OCS, I developed a blister on my right big toe from the hard shoes (no boots) we wore every day.  The medical staff always warned us that blisters on your feet in the humid climate could become extremely dangerous.  They would prescribe the same old socks but flip flops instead of shoes.  So much of my first three weeks, I would have to wear flip flops, which made marching awkward.  And I often managed to be in front of OT Hunn who would invariably step on the back of one of my flip flops, ripping it off my foot and ruining it so I would have to march in just a sock until I could replace the broken flip flop.  I went through several pair of what we would normally only wear to take showers in the dorm.        

We did get to catch a break partway through our first three weeks by being allowed to fly in a Cessna from Hondo field.  It was a chance to get away from the base for a few hours and relax.  Below are a few of the photos I took on this excursion. 

One of the two women in our flight and Brian Bauries, another FSP candidate, and my brand new 1973 Camaro, at Hondo Field, an old Army Air Corps training base from WWII.  The old buildings near the hangar featured an entire base of cinema, chow hall, barracks, and anything else a fully functioning base needed.  


     

David Hunn is on the far left.  The other woman in our flight is on the right.  The guy in the background, admiring the B-25 was a really nice guy in our flight.  The other guy in the middle I do not remember either.   Thing is, after our first six weeks together, those of us in the Flight Screening Program would leave for three weeks, be out of the cadet wing entirely.  Our previous flight would continue on and graduate three weeks before we could.  When we returned from FSP, we would join a new flight who had just lost their FSP members.  This flight had started OTS three weeks after our original flight had started.  Brian Bauries, David Hunn, George Tucker and I would have to make new friends or acquaintances all over again.  But it was this new flight that we became more familiar with and with whom we bonded more closely since we, and they, were then upper classmen. 

This was the hot guy at Hondo Field.  Of course, I never even thought of pairing off with anyone while there, the same with OCS, even if someone might be gay (though unlikely).  Although at least one of the guys paired off with one of the women in the second three weeks of OTS for a brief liaison, sex was not possible unless you wanted to get caught and tossed out.

Here was the same hot guy on his bunk.  He's wearing our Blue squadron T-shirt and shorts that we wore for athletics, running, sports, and anything else like that.  (This was probably during our second three week period at OTS when we were no longer woolies.)

Again at Hondo Field, August 1973.  From left to right, another guy I do not remember, the hot guy, and me.  As you can see, I am wearing socks and flip flops.  (It was a nasty blister.)

 

We had paid a specific sum, maybe it was $25.  An upper classman who was pilot trained would fly us around the area, one at a time for fifteen minutes.  This was important, especially for those of us who were going to enter the Flight Screening Program.  Unfortunately for me, I was one of the last to go up.  It was a very hot and muggy day.  I think we had eaten burgers earlier.  As soon as the upperclassman began to do easy clearing turns, I got so damned sick to my stomach and puked.  It was not only embarrassing but more importantly a foreshadowing of what was to come for me during FSP.

These were probably taken before my abortive flight where I paid good money to get deathly ill.  The top photo is Brian Bauries, me sitting, and another cute guy in our flight.  The middle photo is of several members of our flight.  The bottom is of me leaning on that same B-25 Mitchell bomber.

Brian tried to cheer me up, telling me that just because I got sick on that day did not mean I would get sick while undergoing FSP.  I was not so sure.

August 1973 - On My Way On My Own

The Camaro was already packed out in front of the house on Cypress.  I remember the morning I left as if it were yesterday rather than nearly 50 years in the past.  I left early that morning, possibly 7:00 AM or before.

Within a few days after I left, mom was moving to San Pedro.  She'd stayed on in South Gate until we kids had finally left home for good.  Ann had moved out a couple of years earlier.  She was on her own path that would take her from working at the phone company, providing phone numbers to those too lazy to use a phone book; to driving a school bus; to cleaning offices in high and low rises in Long Beach; to working for Western Airlines, a job she got through her future husband Mark's aunt. 

Mom already had a duplex unit rented in San Pedro.  All of my record albums and comic books and books and other remaining items were boxed up to move there along with her.  I had already given a hamster I inherited to Lorri, my half-sister.  When I got my first permanent assignment out of OTS, I would retrieve all of what I had left behind with mom.  But the rented house on Cypress (1964-1973) would soon slip into my past, as had the apartment over the garage on Orchard in South Gate (1963-4), as well as the house on Lomita in Orange (1960-3), the duplex also on Lomita in Orange (1960), the apartment in Orange (1959-60), the house on Foxley in Whittier (1954-1959), the house on Broadway in Santa Ana (circa 1952-3), base housing in George AFB (circa 1951), Valdosta (circa 1951), and Bayshore Drive in Tampa, FL (1949-50).

Only Whittier and South Gate ever seemed like home.  The rest were just temporary waystations. 

5818 Bayshore Drive, Tampa

                                                                Base housing George AFB

                                                                1915 S. Broadway, Santa Ana

                                                                13222 Foxley Drive, Whittier

                                                                    253 South Oak St., Orange

                                                                    1745 Lomita, Orange

                                                           2875 Orchard Place, South Gate

                                                              8940 Cypress Ave., South Gate

I took Firestone Blvd to the Long Beach FWY north, then out through Riverside where I stopped to get a sub sandwich at The Sub Station, where I had my first sub sandwich with Darryl Butler near the University campus.  But it was still way too early for anything to be open.  So I got back on the freeway for I-10. 

I had previously installed, with Dennis Madura's help, my 8-track tape player in the Camaro, so I did not have to rely on radio stations, fading in and out, for music.  At some point I remember Diana Ross singing "Touch Me In the Morning" before I left the Riverside area for the desert and Phoenix beyond.

I arrived in Phoenix in the afternoon where I was staying at a motel near the airport.  I swam in the pool and met a handsome, leanly muscular young man who was in the Marine Corps Reserves and was working highway construction near Phoenix.  We had dinner together but diverged to our own rooms for the night.  I drove East early the next morning after breakfast (the Marine had had to leave even earlier for work on the highway).  I arrived in El Paso, TX, that evening.  

Three other guys who were also heading to OTS were to meet up with me at the same motel in El Paso.  They had decided to leave a day later, each driving his own car, from the L.A. area the morning I was already leaving from Phoenix.  I now only remember George Tucker by name because he and I ended up in the same flight (in the blue squadron) once we arrived at Lackland.  The other two ended up in other squadrons (yellow and green, I think).  

The following morning, the four of us in our four separate cars headed further East for San Antonio over what seemed like endless stretches of highway going nowhere.  But we finally arrived that afternoon where the four of us were staying at a motel in San Antonio near the base.  Our arrival at OTS was scheduled for the next morning.

After OCS, June 1972 to August 1973, finding myself part five

Those last few weeks before Air Force OTS, I was usually on cruise control.  I might see a movie at one of the malls, or just putter around the house before I had to leave for Santa Fe Springs and my security guard job at Accuride.  Whereas there had been a guard in the back of the facility and at the front while the strike dragged on, and I was usually stationed in the front; now that the strike was over, the company only paid for one guard, and we were given an old pickup truck to drive around the site, over dirt and black top, not that there was anything to guard against, the workers having all gone back to work.  It was on one early evening that I saw a missile launched from Vandenberg break apart in the sun-streaked skies to the West, not knowing what would await me. 

One afternoon, after I had turned off of Firestone Blvd. and was headed toward the Accuride plant, I noticed something unusual on the painted white line in the center of the road, between the single lane in each direction.  I slowed the new Camaro down to a stop--fortunately nobody was behind me.  I opened the door, reached out, and grabbed the tiny gray kitten that somehow had perilously gotten itself out there without being killed but had stopped.  I scooped it up and set it on the passenger's seat.  It was so very young, and even today I cannot imagine where it could have come from and how it had managed to wander that far.  (A woman who lived across from the plant was always having her dogs dig their way out and wander out onto the road.  I had to open that gate, corral them and lead them back to her house.  She began to accuse me of luring them out, but she soon found the hole they had dug.  And her small dog was hit by a passing car.  I thought he was dead, but he fortunately got up and walked off the road.)

I could not keep the kitten I had just rescued.  The parakeets were all gone or deceased, but I had a long drive ahead to San Antonio, Texas, in a couple of weeks.  And my mom was not a pet person.  She would not have taken care of it.  When I arrived at Accuride and parked the car, I went into the office and mentioned what had happened to a woman who answered the outside lines and transferred calls with the sexiest voice I had ever heard in person or over the phone.  She didn't even try to make her voice sound so alluring; it just came naturally to her.  She was always sympathetic.

She explained that her husband would kill her if she brought home another pet, but she promised to let the local shelter know to come and pick up the little one which they did not too long after she called.  I always hoped it was adopted and found a loving home that appreciated a sweet little soul that had managed to make it this far in life and survived.

But my own friends were either gone or going.  Daylin Butler was in Michigan at the University.  Darryl Butler was about to graduate from the University of Riverside and moved to Indiana for graduate school at that University.  Mike had gotten married and moved to the valley.  Dennis Madura had gotten married though he and his wife lived in South Gate.  Dave Moore was in the Air Force, though I would lose complete contact with him by 1974.  Pat Byrne was still in New York, flying routes to Europe for TWA.  I was no longer friends with John Robertson.  But I had already driven out to 29 Palms when Dennis Zito was temporarily stationed at the massive desert Marine base.  He'd left his wife back in Ohio and had driven out to California, renting a trailer near the base.  I still owned my Mustang when I visited him there.  While waiting for him to show up from the base near by, I took the top down and stared up at the star-filled sky that night.

While at the base, Den and a friend visited me in South Gate; and we all had piled into the Mustang and drove down to San Diego to see the sights.  (I believe the third guy in the picture immediately below was Den's twin brother, David Zito.)  

We stopped by the Marine training base in San Diego and had lunch at the El Cortez Hotel rooftop restaurant.  The photos below were from a later visit Den made to 8940 Cypress.  His little Fiat had hit a coyote on his way and got a bent bumper out of the collision, and I had just acquired the '73 Camaro parked out in front of our house.

These days, there are so many cars on Cypress whenever Mike and I revisited the old block that you would have a hard time finding a place to park on the street. 

A few years ago, I did find that Dennis's wife, Beth, had a profile on Face Book.  I sent out a friend request that was not answered.  Recently, I could not find that profile.  From 1973 onward, we would keep in touch for several years, just into the 1980's before we lost touch.  They were good friends back then, and when everything fell apart with the Air Force in 1979, Beth would be such a kind and decent listener when I called and explained how the entire situation was tearing me up.  I would spend hundreds of dollars on phone calls to friends in 1979, trying to cope with the humiliation I experienced being yanked out of the closet, forced to defend myself and my reputation.  But in 1973, I was getting ready to leave for OTS, and all the joys and recognition and awards and assignments were all ahead of me.    

After OCS, June 1972 to August 1973, Finding my way Part Five

Accuride was on strike before and when I first started working there.  Part of the reason the company hired a security guard company was because of the strike and some of the difficulties with the strikers and those who began to cross the picket line.  By the time I began work there, the numbers of strikers had been seriously reduced.  Most of those who had worked in the manufacturing area with the drawer sliders and the chemicals appeared to be Hispanic.  The office workers and management personnel were white.  I tried to remain neutral, but I was saddened that the workers lost.

One afternoon, the floor manager was at the gate.  Another man was on the other side of the gate.  They appeared to be glaring at one another intensely.  I asked if I should open the gate, but the manager said no.  I realized that the man on the other side of the fence was the head of the union.  Another afternoon, I found nails on the entrance driveway, the kind that were in thick cardboard squares so that the nails stuck up and more easily could have punctured tires.  I picked them all up one by one, probably as many as a dozen and more.

I got Darryl a job for the security guard company for a time, but it seems that the wife of the owner of the company took a disliking to him.  Soon enough, he quit.  I followed the Lakers once again, and though they made it to the finals against the Knicks yet again, they lost.  Slowly, the weeks passed and my reporting time for OTS loomed.  

My friend Dennis Madura and I had been looking to buy new cars.  My '66 Mustang was now several years older and causing maintenance issues now and then.  Because I knew I had been accepted at OTS, I figured I would drive there so that I would have a car while there.  I did not believe the Mustang would stand that distant a drive.  Grandpa Sanchez had given each of us two kids a second mortgage that got paid off early for $400.  Dennis and I were looking to buy the new 1973 Chevy Camaro.  Unfortunately, the GM plant building them was on strike.  Each week we waited to hear that the strike had ended and Camaros would begin rolling off the assembly line in the Mid West.

About the time that the strike at Accuride was broken and the disappointed workers returned to the manufacturing floor, the GM strike was nearly at an end and '73 Camaros began to trickle into GM dealerships.  We intended to buy ours at Cormier Chevrolet off of the San Diego Freeway.  Finally, just a few weeks before I was going to depart for OTS, enough Camaros arrived at Cormier so we could buy one.  The maroon one I chose was $4000 without air conditioning.  I used $400 as a down payment.   I then sold my Mustang for $750.  Not long after, I was driving along Ocean Blvd. in Long Beach and I saw my old car parked on the street, never dreaming that as the years passed an early Mustang would be worth far, far more than I sold mine for.

The Camaro was my first new car.  The Mustang was used when I bought it for $1950.  The Rambler had been my mom's car that I inherited when she bought a new 1969 Ford Galaxie.  I drove that Camaro everywhere in the years ahead as the photos below attest:

  

The top photo is in front of Minot AFB, North Dakota, circa 1974.  The middle is at Air Force OTS, San Antonio, TX, with two fellow cadets in August of 1973.  The bottom photo is from Vandenberg AFB, CA, in the Spring of 1974.  The one directly below is in the parking lot of Minot's BOQ, and the bottom is in front of my new house in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
  

After OCS - June 1972 to August 1973, Finding My Way Part Three

From 1964 to 1970, local L.A. personality Ralph Story hosted a popular show called Ralph Story's Los Angeles.  Starting in February 1971, he was host of a new morning show called AM Los Angeles along with Stephanie Edwards.  They looked at all kinds of phenomena and products, personalities and local experiences, and unique events and places.  One woman guest touted the benefits of bathing using citrus fruit instead of soap, for your skin and for the environment.  Since we had a grapefruit tree in our backyard that we did not otherwise draw from, I used grapefruits to bathe with after watching one episode of the show.  Here is the tree that apparently was cut down years later when the owners paved over any remaining plants or grass with cement and used that space to park a car.
   

I don't remember when I became aware of, and soon addicted to, the show in 1972-3.  But it was something I looked forward to watching every weekday morning when I had days off while unemployed or working the swing shift as a security guard.  I found it a great way to start the day, especially when I had nothing else to do or nowhere else to go.

One show featured a new process to self-publish from a brand new company called VeloBind.  Obviously, I have had from early on the desire to publish my collection of poetry that I had been writing since I got an honorable mention for my first serious poem, Tourist Trap, at East LAJC.  The VeloBind process seemed the perfect means to do so.  I contacted them and eventually came up with enough money to print and bind 50 copies.  I may have sold a few copies to friends and family, but I gave away several more over the years.

Of course, another significant national event that occupied my time and interest was the Watergate hearings that began in May of 1973 and continued through the summer and into the fall, ending in November with the eventual resignation of Nixon.  This was something that McGovern had warned about in the Fall of 1972, though it benefitted him not at all at the ballot box that November; but finally the truth was exposed regarding what Nixon and his minions had been up to so as to ensure his re-election in 1972.  At the time, I am sure I never imagined that this would not be the only impeachment I would witness in my lifetime.