Major Conflict (27 page)

“Captain McGowan, pleasure, sir, I'm Sergeant First Class Johnson. Thank you for coming to pick up Sergeant Lopez.” Here was my officious CID sergeant in the flesh.

Of course I hadn't come by simply to pick up Lopez. He didn't even know I was here. But it was clear that that's what Izod Johnson thought. It was clear he intended simply to fetch Lopez for me without any sort of explanation. It was clear he felt I had no right to one. His whole demeanor seemed condescending to me, to me personally and to my rank as well, and I almost snapped and dressed him down right there. But I held myself back, though not entirely.

“Sergeant Johnson, before you leave, I must tell you how concerned I am and have been; you know protocol does not warrant a
senior
officer,” I pointed to myself and smiled, “to relieve himself from post to drive an NCO back to base, needless to say, and I'm sorry for repeating myself, but I have the utmost concern for the matter at hand.”

I'd drawn up very close to the man. I wanted to make it clear to him that no matter how deep his jurisdiction ran, he wasn't leaving the room without briefing me on the situation. He thought for a moment, then curtly nodded his head.

“Very well, Captain, have a seat.”

We sat. He folded his legs and clasped his hands on top of them.

“Sir, there has been an ongoing investigation into a prostitution ring on post.”

I let out a sigh of relief. The most he'd be looking at behind that charge would be an Article 15, a reduction in rank, perhaps, and the whole thing would stay in-house. There would be no court-martial. But Johnson wasn't finished.

“We have uncovered and broken up the ring, which has been doing business out of Moon Hall. The prostitutes were doing an organized business out of the bar in the lobby, sir. During the course of the investigation we discovered that the ring was not only female—” He stopped talking abruptly. It took me a moment to register what he'd just said. Finally, I said, “So, what is it that you're saying, Sergeant, that Lopez is what—a prostitute?”

“Prostitute, sir? No sir, not exactly. We set up a sting to try to lure in some of the male prostitutes. We, in fact, accomplished our mission and arrested several soldiers. We questioned them and acquired evidence that they were involved in procuring pornography.”

The more he tried to explain it to me, the more confused I became. I forged on.

“So Lopez is a pornographer?”

“Not exactly, sir.”

I'd had all I could take. I took a deep breath and looked Johnson straight in the eye.

“Give me the charge that you intend to levy against my sergeant; that's all I want from you, Sergeant Johnson.”

Johnson looked a little startled. He hesitated before speaking. Then, giving in, reluctantly, he said, “Sir, we questioned the subjects who were arrested, and they gave us the names of everyone who was involved. Through this process we were able to ascertain those soldiers who are known to be . . . homosexual.”

Now I thought I might explode. “What is the charge, Johnson?” I said, raising my voice, still looking directly into his eyes. “For the last time, what are you charging Lopez with?” Then, slowly, and more intensely, “What is the charge, Sergeant?”

“There is no charge as of yet. He's part of the inquiry is all, sir, however . . . there is the homosexual issue, sir, and that is where it gets a little complicated.”

I stood up. I now had what I needed. There was no charge against my sergeant.

“We believe all of the homos should be chaptered, as I'm sure you do, sir.”

I looked away from him. This last bit seemed unnecessary, as if he'd thrown it in in order to prove that his own sexuality was beyond reproof, that he was on the winning team. Replace “homo” with “Commies,” and that sentence could have been torn straight from the pages of recent history, the 1950s, say, when unmitigated hatred of communism and Communists was seen as a badge of one's patriotism.

Who knows what Johnson really felt? I think I might even have been able to respect him a little had I thought his antigay rhetoric was based in real conviction. But he was just spouting the party line, there was no doubt about that, and it infuriated me.

How easy it would be for him to end Lopez's career! Hardworking, loyal, honest Sergeant Lopez—who'd probably spent his entire life thinking he had to compensate for his sexuality by overachieving, by always being the best little boy in whatever world he happened to find himself—was now going to be repaid by having his professional life destroyed by some mediocre, goose-stepping, Izod-wearing bureaucrat.

“The prostitutes and pornographers will certainly be chaptered; now we are going to need some sort of administrative help to chapter the rest of the . . . faggots, sir.”

I tried to appear indifferent and wholly detached.

“Are we done here, Sergeant? I'm very busy.”

“Yes, sir, Lopez is two doors to the right,” he said, sneering a little now, and then, as if he'd just thought of a funny joke, he added, “You can take the queer with you, or he can walk back.” Hearing this tone and seeing the flash of hatred in Johnson's beady little eyes made me think I might have been mistaken. Perhaps it was real conviction. The way he tried to lure me in with this last remark, to collaborate in a perceived shared hatred of gay men, disgusted me. I was used to hearing this kind of talk, but I'd rarely heard it at this level, rarely heard the tone of voice Johnson had used, drenched in so much hard-boiled contempt.

He stuck out his hand to shake mine. I looked down at it but kept my own hands at my sides. After simply staring at it for a few seconds, I lifted my head up and looked Johnson in the face. The look on my face must have been scary because Johnson took a step back, as if he felt threatened. Apparently it finally occurred to him that he was in the presence of a superior officer who didn't like him very much, so he briskly stepped back, wished me a good day, and hurried from the room.

For the most part we rode back to the base in silence, Lopez and I. When he first got in he said to me, quietly, “I know I haven't done anything wrong, sir . . . nothing,” and I turned my head toward him briefly and nodded to let him know I believed him. Of course, it wasn't what he'd done, it's what he
was
that they were having a problem with. If that isn't un-American, well, I don't know what is.

I felt bad for the guy. And the fact that I couldn't say anything about myself, the irony of that, was just incredibly depressing. Here I was, a gay man who was probably going to be asked to initiate the persecution of another gay man. Could things get any worse? How could I believe in
this
army? I tried to imagine what he must be going through. And the realization that it could just as easily be me, that it one day
might
be me, was sobering, to say the least. I feared for Sergeant Lopez and for what I might be asked to do. Was it possible to remain in the army as a gay man and still maintain one's integrity? I was beginning to see how impossible that was. I was beginning to see just how compromised I might up end up becoming.

The very next morning there was a message for me to meet Colonel Fazio at HQ. I had my normal horrific four-mile torture session and made my way back to the comfort of my office, where I showered and changed, and when I emerged from the bathroom Colonel Fazio was sitting on the couch in my office, sipping coffee from a plastic foam cup. I was supposed to have met him at his office at nine, but my office was on his way, so he figured he'd just drop by. I smiled as he lifted up a brown paper bag with another cup of coffee in it for me.

“Thank you, sir. This is a surprise, sir. I was just on my way to see you.”

Fazio smiled. He was in amazing shape. He could outrun any twenty-year-old on the base. He was tall, about six foot two inches, with gray hair cut very short. He reminded me of the actor Sam Elliot. He was a great guy, easy to talk to, with an excellent sense of humor, and I thought of him as my mentor.

“So, Jeff, you had quite the day yesterday,” he said, blowing on his steaming coffee, then chuckling a little before taking a sip from the cup. Before I had the chance to answer he said, “Tell me, Jeff, what kind of soldier is your motor sergeant?”

“A good one, sir. He works hard. Never had a problem with him.” I waited for his response. I figured if anyone knew the right way to handle this, Colonel Fazio would.

“Really?”

I looked up from my cup and noticed that the colonel was busying himself with clipping the end of a black Maduro cigar. He then lit it and casually blew out a thick column of smoke. I wasn't sure how to answer the question, so I said nothing.

“So how's his section doing?”

His eyes followed a particularly graceful ring of smoke up to the ceiling, then they slowly trailed down and landed squarely on me. I smiled somewhat guardedly, and just as I was about to speak he broke in again, “So, Jeff, what's up with this bust, anyway? What's going on? What'd they say they're looking for?” Like the rest of us, he didn't like or trust any of the CID people.

“They made multiple arrests, sir. Apparently there was pornography involved.” I shrugged my shoulders.

“Seems that this mess has made its way up the chain of command to the corps commander; apparently one of these”—he considered his choice of words carefully—“little queers got an outside advocacy group involved, you know this Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell horse shit and all. There is the potential for some serious blowback behind it all.” He laughed again and winked at me, adding, “No pun intended . . . so the process has been slowed down considerably.”

“The process, sir?”

He raised his eyebrow at me, then blew another ring of smoke in my direction.

“The process of safeguarding the army. You don't think we'd allow them to stay in, do you?”

“Absolutely not, sir,” I answered much too quickly. In all my life, I'd never felt more ashamed of myself than I did at that very moment.

“So tell me about his performance, Jeff.”

“He's an excellent worker, sir, never had a problem with him, and the rest of the troops like him.”

“Late?”

“No, sir.”

“There is talk that the subjects who were outted—you know, the ones who weren't coconspirators—are not going to get sectioned out. We're not supposed to ask, and this guy certainly didn't tell. Needless to say we're going to have to . . . deal with the situation.”

Suddenly the whole thing became clear to me. The colonel expected me to develop a pattern of offenses against Sergeant Lopez, to find fault wherever I could and create a paper trail. This trumped-up paper trail, created by me, would eventually carry enough weight to bring him down. It was a crushing blow to hear this coming from the man whom I'd admired for so long and who'd come to represent for me all that I thought was good in the army.

I thought maybe I could appeal to his reason. “I don't want to sound like I'm not a team player, sir,” I said, “but I'm just not getting it.”

Colonel Fazio didn't like repeating anything twice, particularly to a handpicked subordinate. He turned deadly serious and leaned into me. “They do not serve in the U.S. Army, McGowan. We find them, we get rid of them. No questions asked. It's been happening since the beginning of time.”

“I know the old policy, sir, but I'm aware of the new policy as well, and he never really came forward and said he was . . . gay. So we can't really do anything. It's not fair.” I knew I was asking for it big-time.

He lurched forward on the edge of the couch and poked the cigar at me.

“Fair? We are not working in a democracy, Captain. There
is
no fair here. I do not even want to consider the possibility that you don't understand your responsibilities here. Now . . . in
fairness,
I am going to ask you this one last time, is there anything I need to know?”

I dropped my head. I needed to think this out clearly. It was now not only Sergeant Lopez's career on the line but my own as well. Finally, I looked at him and said, firmly, “Sir, I understand your view. But with all due respect, I have to say I am extremely uncomfortable with what it is you're asking me to do.”

An eerie calm came over him. He sat back into the couch and relit his cigar. I knew this wasn't a good sign. It was worse than yelling, this silence, because I knew he'd moved to the next level. The colonel was a brilliant tactician. He didn't get to wear those oak leaves for nothing. If he wanted, he could have me demoted to base cesspool cleaner for the duration of my career.

There was no getting around it now. Lopez was fucked, and I was fucked for trying to save him.

“Jeff, where do you see yourself going from here?” he said, refusing to look at me, looking down the ash of the cigar instead. “Increased responsibility requires a broad understanding of army values and an ability to protect the institution.” He stood up slowly.

I started to rise, but he pushed the palm of his hand at me. “Remain seated,” he said, and walked briskly out of my office.

I just stood there, staring at the closed door, feeling numb at first, then frightened, then very, very angry, and then finally just terribly sad. Most of all I was disappointed in Colonel Fazio. We had talked at great length about his pride in the army's diversity. We had talked about his children at barbecues. He was a terrific husband and father, and not only did I enjoy his company, I liked his family as well.

The truth was I was taking this very personally. It felt as if all the things he'd said about Lopez were aimed at me, too, and that hurt like hell.

Now, I had been on the wrong end of his anger before. And I'd learned that if it turned out he was wrong he'd usually come around and try to make good. This time, though, I didn't care whether or not he came around.

Don't get me wrong. I was as much a careerist in the army as he was. And I knew he could squeeze me out as easily as he intended to squeeze out Sergeant Lopez. What bothered me the most wasn't his hatred (or fear, or both, depending on your point of view) of homosexuals. He was a product of his environment, after all. He'd been in the army his entire adult life, and the army provides little incentive (you could probably argue it provides disincentives) to develop your own thoughts on the issue of gays in the military. Why distinguish yourself from everyone else? What would he have to gain? I can't pretend that I was shocked by his intolerance.