Here on the west coast it is not quite September 20th but the celebration of the fall of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has begun. At midnight 3000 miles east, the law was finally repealed and with it, the sanctioned discrimination against GLBT members of the military. I have served for just shy of 32 years. For the last ten, I’ve had a loving partner and spouse whom I married in 2004, first in San Francisco’s civic disobedience on Valentine’s weekend and a few weeks later among family and friends with a Jewish wedding. We used my Army officer’s sword to cut the cake, symbolic acknowledgement that the act of sealing our union publicly could as easily end my career in the Army as that blade was able to slice through cake.
The presence of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell robbed me of the camaraderie that is the foundation of military service. How could I become close to my fellow Soldiers who spoke of their loves and heartaches and I was forced to remain silent? Who spoke of their families and I could only speak of my dog? Who came home from war to the embrace of loved ones and I stood alone on a parade field, no one to meet me because officially, no one existed?
How many stories have I not written, because writing them required choosing between my military career and my writing career?
Now, the law that caused me to lie, or at least to dance around a truth and obscure my reality from others is gone. I expected to feel elation. What I feel is numb. Strange. Odd. No longer, will I have to carefully change a pronoun when telling a story about what happened last weekend when passing time with my military comrades. No more will I have to page quickly past that picture of a woman holding my daughter. I can put family pictures out on my desk, and am not obligated to mask the people there by the presence of my dog. Why do I feel so, not feeling?
Recently, I updated my public bios with mention when I was honored with selection as a Lambda Literary Fellow in 2007. On the eve of Repeal Day here on the west coast, I changed my Facebook relationship status and acknowledged in my Twitter feed that I was married. These small, insignificant actions harboring so much more than simple life updates. For six years I’ve risked wearing a wedding ring that I’ve had to dismiss as just an old family heirloom. No longer, for no longer must I hide behind the label of “single” because the law requires me to lie.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is gone. I have no plans to stand up and make announcements. I won’t be coming out to my unit or actually, any of my military associates. I will just live my life. In the course of that, my life will be known. And like all other aspects of my life, finally, Home and Hearth will include all of my life.
I’ve served since 1979. I have been recalled to active duty five times in peace and over three wars. Through it all, I had to keep my intrinsic self under cover. My family has been hidden for one third of that time and for the last two years, I’ve been unable to explain that no, I am not a single parent. If I feel anything beyond the numbness of a long, enduring battle for professional survival as an honorable warrior forced to endure under a dishonorable law, it is relief. Relief that this time, when I go to war, I will not have to fear that an IED, mortar, or firefight will leave my spouse alone with no notice and no consideration as my surviving family. Another dishonorable law remains, DOMA, but that fight is for another day. Now, in this moment, I have reached the end of an era that forced me to bend values in order to obey orders. There is no going back.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Recalling September 11, 2001
September 12, 2001 – The Day After
I want to wake up
The sun bright
Dancing shining beams
Upon a morning
Without fear
Of yesterday’s tragedy
Absent the smell of flesh
No quilt of destruction
From soft ash and pulverized bone
Blanketing humanities’ horizon.
***
I wrote the above poem the day following September 11 and the attacks that began this decade of war and fear. The day before I had been awoken by the phone ringing approximately 6:40 in the morning on the west coast. “Turn on the TV” was all my friend could say. Tuning in, I see jet planes crashing into skyscrapers and shots of the Pentagon burning. I’m asked, “What does it mean?” I reply I don’t know. I watch the news a while, then turn off my TV. I drag out my gear and inventory my go to war kit. I call my career manager at the Army Reserve Personnel Center and volunteer. That day I’m assigned to 16th Military Police Brigade, an active duty unit, as a Reserve Individual Augmentee. I wait for activation orders. I put my uniform on and drive the 25 miles to Camp Parks, the local Army Reserve Training Base to see if I can assist in anyway. The flag remains at full mast. There is no guard at the gate. The force protection signs still read Alpha – no threat. There is nothing for me to do, I go home. Count my gear and repack again. A few weeks later, I am recalled to active duty and join with 49 other reserve Military Police and Military Intelligence officers and NCOs assigned to the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). I lead one of several Infrastructure Security Teams over the next 6 months that assess security at economically vital locks and dams in the homeland. This is the first of three mobilizations post 9/11. Those six months I traveled by air a number of times. Each time, I wore a rugby jersey that recalled the leadership and sacrifice of ruggers Jeremy Glick and Mark Bingham, with Tom Burnett, to have led the counterattack on Flight 93, preventing the plane from reaching its target, possibly the White House.
The above day after poem has a tone of helplessness. There is a desire for hope that has been lost and is mourned, driven by confusion of the day before’s events. The poem as well contains prescience of a future colored with fear, loss and violence. The poem was written in a group of other writers, gathering for our scheduled Tuesday afternoon fiction writing class led by author Mary Webb. A semblance of normality, we’d come together according to our ordinary schedule on what clearly was not an ordinary day.
Ten years have passed and as a nation we have reclaimed a sense of normality though we have lost some of our comfort. Travel is no longer any may never again be the easy, comfortable process it once was in terms of security. We remain at war, though for 99% of the population, there is no sacrifice real or emotional as still less than 1% of the nation serves and economically we have not responded as all previous wars have called us to with shared sacrifice and contribution.
The blanket of destruction has been transformed into memorials and memories. We are an impatient people, ready for the war and conflict and meager collective sacrifice, if any, to be over. Alas, our adversary is patient and will wait for us to weaken our resolve from fatigue and time weathered experience. The day before yesterday’s tragedy, will it ever be again our day after?
Jeremy Glick
Mark Bingham
Tom Burnett
I want to wake up
The sun bright
Dancing shining beams
Upon a morning
Without fear
Of yesterday’s tragedy
Absent the smell of flesh
No quilt of destruction
From soft ash and pulverized bone
Blanketing humanities’ horizon.
***
I wrote the above poem the day following September 11 and the attacks that began this decade of war and fear. The day before I had been awoken by the phone ringing approximately 6:40 in the morning on the west coast. “Turn on the TV” was all my friend could say. Tuning in, I see jet planes crashing into skyscrapers and shots of the Pentagon burning. I’m asked, “What does it mean?” I reply I don’t know. I watch the news a while, then turn off my TV. I drag out my gear and inventory my go to war kit. I call my career manager at the Army Reserve Personnel Center and volunteer. That day I’m assigned to 16th Military Police Brigade, an active duty unit, as a Reserve Individual Augmentee. I wait for activation orders. I put my uniform on and drive the 25 miles to Camp Parks, the local Army Reserve Training Base to see if I can assist in anyway. The flag remains at full mast. There is no guard at the gate. The force protection signs still read Alpha – no threat. There is nothing for me to do, I go home. Count my gear and repack again. A few weeks later, I am recalled to active duty and join with 49 other reserve Military Police and Military Intelligence officers and NCOs assigned to the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). I lead one of several Infrastructure Security Teams over the next 6 months that assess security at economically vital locks and dams in the homeland. This is the first of three mobilizations post 9/11. Those six months I traveled by air a number of times. Each time, I wore a rugby jersey that recalled the leadership and sacrifice of ruggers Jeremy Glick and Mark Bingham, with Tom Burnett, to have led the counterattack on Flight 93, preventing the plane from reaching its target, possibly the White House.
The above day after poem has a tone of helplessness. There is a desire for hope that has been lost and is mourned, driven by confusion of the day before’s events. The poem as well contains prescience of a future colored with fear, loss and violence. The poem was written in a group of other writers, gathering for our scheduled Tuesday afternoon fiction writing class led by author Mary Webb. A semblance of normality, we’d come together according to our ordinary schedule on what clearly was not an ordinary day.
Ten years have passed and as a nation we have reclaimed a sense of normality though we have lost some of our comfort. Travel is no longer any may never again be the easy, comfortable process it once was in terms of security. We remain at war, though for 99% of the population, there is no sacrifice real or emotional as still less than 1% of the nation serves and economically we have not responded as all previous wars have called us to with shared sacrifice and contribution.
The blanket of destruction has been transformed into memorials and memories. We are an impatient people, ready for the war and conflict and meager collective sacrifice, if any, to be over. Alas, our adversary is patient and will wait for us to weaken our resolve from fatigue and time weathered experience. The day before yesterday’s tragedy, will it ever be again our day after?
Jeremy Glick
Mark Bingham
Tom Burnett
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
