Authors: Carmella Jones
Chapter 3: Recruit Schaffer
I learned early on that the most important thing I could do during the obstacle course that we ran every morning at five o’clock was to keep my butt down. That’s not as easy as it sounds. Part of the obstacle course is a long trench with barbed wire all along it. Anyone who lets their butt get up too high gets their uniform caught on a barb. Then they have to go through the rest of the day with a torn-up uniform. Those who tear up multiple uniforms don’t get replacements. None of us are given the liberty to visit the commissary for anything. We wake up early. We go to bed late. In between, we punish our bodies to the absolute limit.
Even with all the preparation I did, I found that I still had not sufficiently readied myself for what was to come. SEAL training is far more about mental toughness than physical toughness. It’s about having the ability to shut down the mind in order to focus on what needs to be done. I don’t know of any training regimen in the world that can prepare a person for that. You either have the ability to do it or you don’t.
Because I had worked out four or five hours every day before coming to Great Lakes, I lasted longer than most of the recruits in the program. People rang the bell every day. The bell rang every hour during the third day of training. By the end of our first week, there were twenty of us left. I began to think that I could really do it. I would make it through. I had survived the worst part of the training, and though I was sore and tired and hungry, I could still do it.
I had thought so right up until the moment when I discovered that the second week of training was even more physically demanding than the first. We still weren’t allowed to sleep a full eight hours every night. I was lucky if I got six. My body had become sore all over. The morning drills became ever more wearisome. I forced myself through it by thinking of how much time I had to my next meal. Meals were blessed times when I actually got to sit down and rest. I didn’t care that we ate MREs as often as not, or that I drank the local city water from my canteen. I just had to survive long enough to make it through the first stage of the training program. I had every reason to believe that I could. I never doubted myself for an instant.
Until, that was, my left leg became especially sore and stiff. I didn’t know what had happened. I tried stretching it out—even more than I already had been—yet it still did not feel any better. I thought of what might happen if I injured myself. I had been expecting pull muscles, perhaps even a broken rib or two. I had not thought things through to the point where I considered what it might be like to risk further injury for the sake of continuing the training. I could run through a pulled muscle, perhaps. But what if I tore that muscle? Could I run through that? Would it be safe to do so?
I could not help what happened next. A Navy SEAL is supposed to be a tough person, made completely of stone. I had to admit to myself that, in spite of all my preparation, I might not have been meant to be a SEAL. A man can run all the way across an entire continent, but at the end of that run, he still has to meet himself. What I saw when I met myself was not altogether inspiring.
The tears started of their own accord. I could not stop them, much as I wanted to. I pushed the heels of my hands into my eyes while I stood in place and sobbed. It didn’t take long before our drill instructor—a hardass of a man who I knew as Anderson—to notice. That was it, I thought. I had not been able to make it. I had prepared for a full year, and still I couldn’t make it. The tears only came faster then.
Chapter 4: Officer Anderson
Recruits cry all the time. It’s nothing special, especially not in SEAL training. They’re tired, or they’re hungry, or they want to go home. They’re surrounded by strangers who are just as beat up and depressed as themselves. They miss the creature comforts of home. Mostly, they just want to find a comfortable bed and sleep for a good long while. I know, because I went through it myself.
Now, the class that I was training just then was my third SEAL class. I’m with the same group from start to finish for the whole year of training that they go through. I took the assignment because I thought it would fast-track me into OCS. So far, that hadn’t happened. The Navy, in its strange wisdom, is perfectly comfortable letting an overqualified and under-ranked person like me train and supervise new SEAL recruits. Either they would promote me or they would replace me with someone of a higher rank. I wasn’t sure which would happen first. In the meantime, I got to punish recruits and watch them cry. Sometimes, the crying was actually fun to watch.
There was something about the recruit named Schaffer that seemed different to me. He had a chiseled body that was the result of strenuous physical conditioning. His arms, his chest, his neck, his legs, his stomach, his back—everything was well-defined. He put his hands over his face while he cried. That made him—I don’t how to describe it other than to just say it—attractive.
Now, it’s a strange thing to admit. A drill instructor should never be attracted to a recruit. But I was. I never thought that I would be. I had seen young men come and go from Great Lakes. Some of them had earned my respect; others had earned my ire. None of them had ever evoked anything in me that resembled attraction before. I wasn’t sure how to handle it. I felt my pants expanding just below the belt. I took a moment to collect myself before I walked over to him.
I said, “Recruit Schaffer, what is your malfunction?”
Schaffer said, “I—I don’t know, Petty Officer. I—”
I raised my voice. “‘I don’t know’ is not an acceptable answer, Recruit! Not if you want to be a SEAL! Now, you will tell me what has got you so worked up that you’re blubbering like a child and making yourself look like a piece of ass, or I swear you won’t like what comes next.”
Schaffer said, “Petty Officer, I don’t know, I just—”
I raised my voice even more. By then, I was shouting at him. “You will report to my office posthaste and wait there five minutes until I am ready to see you. NOW, RECRUIT!”
Schaffer forgot about everything else. He just ran straight for the barracks as fast as he could. I saw that he wasn’t running with his usual speed. At that moment, I didn’t care. He was just so damned attractive.
Chapter 5: Recruit Schaffer
I thought that I was finished as a SEAL—maybe in the Navy. I ran as best as I could on my sore leg while I waited for Anderson to finish putting the recruits through their paces. It was not lost on me that he had me run right by the bell on my way to the barracks. I had thought about doing it, too. I could ring the bell. I could quit before they got rid of me. It was a tempting thought. I looked at the silver bell as I passed it. I did not stop to grab the white rope that dangled from the bell on my way by.
I ran into the barracks, then kept running until I reached the locked door of Anderson’s office. I could not remember how often he had actually used the room, if at all. He was always outside, always barking orders at us. I don’t know how it was that he never lost his voice.
Whether it was five minutes or an hour that I waited, I could not tell. I stood where I was, trying to ignore my throbbing leg. Even that little bit of running I had done to the barracks had caused more pain than I thought it would. Something was wrong. I knew it was, and I just didn’t want to admit it to myself. How I could have admitted to it Anderson?
I thought to myself, if I just pretend, if I just keep going along to get along, then everything will be all right. I didn’t really believe it. As soon as a nurse at sickbay got a look at me, that would be it. I’d be drummed out of the program. But if I didn’t seek medical attention, I’d be even worse off.
As far as I could see, it was a lose-lose situation. My assessment of my circumstances did not improve when I saw Anderson striding down the hallway with a look of stern determination on his face. When I saw him walking towards me, I felt something—what was it? —stir inside me. It was the kind of feeling that I always heard other guys in my high school talk about when they talked about a night out with their favorite girl. I had tried that once, but it had not done anything for me. Kissing a girl had been like kissing a dog. It was almost repulsive how bland and senseless it felt to me.
I didn’t have time to think about the feelings that rose up in me when I saw him. He strode right past me and unlocked his office door. He went in, then motioned for me to follow. I stood in front of his desk. But, instead of sitting down in his chair, he stood next to me while I stood at attention. I tried not to let the pain in my leg show. I tried not to let him see me cry. I tried to keep myself from jumping straight into his arms like a madman who has no idea what he’s doing.
He said, “Recruit Schaffer, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but—”
I gulped. I said nothing. There was nothing that I could say to him then. He cupped my face in his hands. He turned my head until I was looking directly at him. My body moved with my head. He leaned in close. I could smell the breath mint that he had put in his mouth a half hour ago to cover up the scent of alcohol that issued from him after he took a swig from his bottle of Tennessee Whiskey. His eyes were so big, and so brown. He had a pair of full, red lips.
He pressed his lips against my own. The spark that had lit up inside me flared into a towering conflagration. I felt that I was burning alive, that I would burn myself to a cinder if I kept kissing him. It felt so right and so natural. In that moment, I didn’t care whether I would become a SEAL or not. I didn’t care whether I had pulled a muscle in my leg, or how much medical treatment I would require. There was only him, the overwhelming presence of him, his warm body heat, his hot breath, and his strong hands.
Those hands moved downwards away from my face to my chest. He pulled at my shirt. I wanted him to take it off. I wanted him to go as far as he wanted to. I kissed him with all the passion that I’d never known I had. One of my hands found his belt. I fumbled with it until he pulled his mouth away. Then he unbuckled his belt himself. We were both breathing heavily when his pants fell down.
Without reservation he bent me over and pulled off my pants. Before I had a moment to think, he spread my cheeks buried and his entire face deep into my ass. I moaned in pure ecstasy as I felt the light scruff on his lips brush against my hole. I reached back and pulled my cheeks open and looked at him with a begging expression.
With his pants already off, he took his rock hard member and shoved it inch by inch inside of me. I had never felt the duality of pain and pleasure in such an intense fashion. He contentiously thrusted and we both began sweating and breathing heavily.
He reached his hand around and touched my member which was completely swollen. Within seconds, I ejaculated and it dripped onto my uniform which was now crumpled up on the floor. I regained consciousness to him finishing inside of me.
That was when the door opened. We pulled apart quickly at the sound. A master chief whose name I didn’t know stood there, staring at us with wide-eyed shock.
Chapter 6: Officer Anderson
They kicked us out of the Navy, of course. Maybe they knew what I was all along, even before I was willing to admit it to myself. Maybe that’s why I never got the promotion I deserved. Maybe they were just waiting for me to screw up. There are a lot of maybes. All I can tell you is that I don’t regret kissing Schaffer, or almost having sex with him. It felt good. It felt right.
I had been told throughout my entire seventeen-year career at the Navy how my job was to kill the enemies of America. Some guy even made a video of all the suspected terrorists on INTERPOL’s watchlist and had them flash across the screen while that one song made by Drowning Pool blasts at high volume. The video is played as a propaganda piece that all recruits watch during their basic training. The message is: These guys are terrorists, and they have to die.
How different it was to finally be able to love someone. Even if that love was only momentary—as fleeting as a passing breeze. I know what I felt. I know love when it comes to me. I had loved Schaffer. I loved him as soon as I started to kiss him. I couldn’t tell you what it was that drove me to kiss him, or why I had never thought of doing so for the seven days that he had been with the program. Seeing him injured and crying like that had awakened something in me, something that I don’t really know how to describe.
Now, did I send him to my office with the ulterior motive of having sex with him? I’ve been asked this question several times by the officers who conducted my court-martial. I told them the truth: I was going to tell Schaffer that he needed to stop crying and man the fuck up. But since he seemed like a promising candidate to be a SEAL, I chose to do it in private.
He, more than any of the other recruits, looked like he had the best chance to make it all the way. I wanted him to make it, because I saw in him a damned good operative. I saw in him a leader. By that point, I had been around long enough to tell the difference between someone who is just filling time to serve out his first contract and someone who is really in it because he means it. Schaffer meant it. He had a promising career ahead of him. I didn’t want to let that go to waste.
Maybe they bought it, and maybe they didn’t. I repeated it often enough that they had no choice but to accept it. Sometimes, we as human beings put love before everything else. Even if that love doesn’t make sense, even if it’s detrimental to our careers and future prospects, we still love anyway. It’s what makes us human. We can no more deny our impulse to love than we can to eat, or to rest. That’s why so many people have been caught with their pants down—just as I was, literally—throughout history. Maybe if we all learned that a little love is okay now and then, we’d be better off.
But that’s not something that Navy officers are quite ready for yet. They gave me a dishonorable discharge, which was the maximum punishment they could give me. They talked about giving me prison in Leavenworth, but I had not actually been witnessed taking liberties with someone entrusted to my care. I had been seen with my pants down, and that was it.
I can’t say I regret what happened. I didn’t object to or appeal the decision. I looked at it as an opportunity. I could start a new career somewhere that actually valued my services. I mean, come on, I got to be an instructor of future Navy SEALs. How many people can say that?