Major Conflict by Maj USA (ret.) Jeffrey McGowan Page B

I’d experience a few years later while I was waiting for a plane in full uniform at La Guardia Airport in New York. A woman approached me holding the hands of her two young sons. The boys, both of whom looked to be about five or six—they may have been twins—trailed a half step behind their mother, as if they were afraid of where she was dragging them. By the time she reached me she had a big smile on her face, and she quickly introduced herself and then pulled her sons forward to shake my hand. The boys came to me shyly but then beamed when I shook their tiny hands. The woman said her sons had never met a real soldier before. I knelt down when one of the boys asked a question and stayed there while the other boy asked another; when they both seemed satisfied, I stood up and shook the mother’s hand. The mother thanked me and took her sons back to their seats in the waiting area, and I was left standing there feeling like a million bucks. But it was a hollow feeling; something wasn’t quite right. I knew that her wanting her sons to meet me had nothing to do with me personally. It was the uniform, which, in many people’s minds, still stands for all the ideals of a great democracy, and it is for little boys, and now, increasingly, little girls as well, a clear representation of something they can aspire to
be.
    On career day in the fifth grade, say, there is the
policeman,
the
fireman,
the
soldier,
the
teacher
, and on and on. Becoming one of those things is presented almost as if it’s an existential choice, as if that is what you’ll actually
be,
as opposed to what you will, in fact, simply
do.
As they began to announce preboarding for my flight, the hollow feeling seemed to deepen. It occurred to me that when I was in my uniform, I felt as if I were onstage, as if I were an actor performing a role. This in itself is not such a bad thing, really. It’s the one of the things that assure the smooth functioning of the military, in fact—clear-cut roles, duties, privileges, places within a strictly defined hierarchy of titles and responsibilities. But maybe I’d taken it too far. I’d come to believe that I was, above all, a soldier, rather than simply a man who happened to have made a career out of soldiering. I’d become the role, and because I perceived the role of soldier and homosexuality as mutually exclusive, I’d manage to forfeit one of the most important aspects of myself.
    Rushing out of the whorehouse into the Frankfurt street that day back in 1989, I tried to shake all the unease from my mind. I sprinted down the street, trying to physically outrun my feelings, to sweat out the desires, to run back to myself. I don’t know how far I ran, but it seemed like miles. When I finally stopped, exhausted, sweaty, I felt calm again. I reminded myself firmly that I would have a family one day. I reminded myself that if I kept thinking about men, that wouldn’t happen, at least not in the way I’d imagined it.
    Back on the bus that day I was talking to one of the sergeants when Zach came running up. He bounded up the stairs, came down the aisle, and sat down next to us, smiling and breathing hard. His hair was disheveled and his face was red.
    â€œMissed you, buddy,” he said. “Where’d you get off to?”
    â€œI got bored,” I said, “so I thought I’d just come back to the bus.”
    â€œAnd just where, pray tell,” asked the sergeant, “did you two fine gentlemen spend the day?”
    He was looking directly at me. My face went blank. Zach took a deep breath and said, quickly, “We just walked around, basically.”
    The sergeant looked at us curiously. His looked seemed to indicate that he, too, had seen the inside of one of the apartment buildings in the red-light district that day.
    â€œYeah,” I said firmly, “we just . . . walked around.”
    Riding back on the bus that Friday afternoon, it