Authors: Carmella Jones
Chapter 7: Recruit Schaffer
The discharge was devastating. It came about as the result of a stupid mistake. I hadn’t been able to keep my leg from injuring itself. That was just a piece of bad luck. But I could have stayed in the Navy and tried again at a later date, if only I’d had a good head on my shoulders when the injury happened. But I wasn’t thinking clearly. I had invested so much time just to get to the program that when I got there, I never thought about a future that was something other than pass or fail. It was all or nothing. That was what drove me the hardest.
Now there was a hearing. I was called into the office of a chief petty officer. He sat me down and explained to me what had happened. A court-martial had given Anderson a dishonorable discharge. I could stay in the Navy with a strong reprimand on my record. If I did that, I would be ineligible to join the SEALs at any point in the future. Or I could accept a general discharge. A general discharge wipes the slate clean. I thought it was awfully decent of them to offer me that. During that interview, I was still in a pass-or-fail mindset. I asked the officer if I could join the military again with a discharge on my record. He said that I could. So I asked to be discharged from the service.
He gave it to me, right there on the spot. Now, let me tell you, getting discharged from any branch of the military is awfully difficult. They don’t just let people go whenever they feel like it. You have to have a good reason why you want to go. You can’t just walk up to a petty officer and tell him you want to be discharged because you’re sick. He’ll laugh in your face. You will be let go if you’re a troublesome person, or if you’re feeling suicidal.
There were two sorts of discharge divisions where recruits were placed, the legal division and the non-legal division. That was just for the men, of course. There was a third division for the women who were discharged for whatever reason. I never saw them very much. That division wasn’t very big.
I was put in the non-legal division. I was discharged for being gay. That’s how I saw it. I didn’t want to be gay. It wasn’t something that I planned for, or expected. But I had to admit to myself that I was. I saw no point in denying my own nature to myself. There was nothing to gain from doing so. If I liked men, then I liked men. That’s all there was to it.
Of course, that didn’t mean that I just happened to fall for any man that I saw. Believe me, there were plenty of men to choose from in the discharge division. I bided my time as best I could while I recognized it for what it was. Waiting to be discharged from the Navy is just like waiting for anything else in the Navy. You have to hurry to arrive at your rally point, and then you have to sit around while your superiors figure out what to do with you.
It came as a sudden surprise when they brought my train ticket. They actually let me choose whether I wanted to ride the bus or the train. They wouldn’t fly me back to Minneapolis. That wasn’t going to happen. But they would pay for my train ride, which I thought was rather gracious of them. I had a tad bit of money in my Navy Federal Credit Union account. I would be okay for about a month while I got my life back together.
I guess because of that, I wasn’t worried when I boarded the train with my enormous green rucksack full of everything that I kept from my time with the Navy., including my blue sweatpants and sweatshirt, and all four pairs of pants with tears in the rear. I opened up a paperback book I had purchased at the station, then spread my legs in the two seats next to me. I lost myself in the book, glad that I finally had time to relax. Being able to stretch my legs out and do whatever I wanted seemed like such an incredible privilege that I took full advantage of it.
I hadn’t yet conceived of the idea that would change my life forever. That happened when I disembarked with a finished, slightly used paperback tucked into my jacket pocket.
Chapter 8: Officer Anderson
Was it discrimination? Probably not. In fact, I’m fairly sure that it wasn’t. Since I was the man with the authority, I had no business fraternizing with anybody, regardless of that person’s sex. That’s what the military code of conduct says. That’s why men and women are kept at arm’s length from one another during basic training. I never found a reason to disagree with that rule until I found myself in the position of being on the wrong end of it.
Now I wonder whether it’s right to keep people from loving one another in the military. Does it interfere with its mission to suppress individuality? While on the inside, not a day passed when I had cause to question how the Navy worked. Once I got outside, I found myself wondering if cutting the hair of new recruits, depriving of them of their sleep, segregating the sexes, and forcing them to live together with strangers is not all done purposefully with the aim of preventing people from questioning whether any given mission is actually viable, or if it should even be attempted.
The people who got on my side quicker than a hiccup as soon as my story became known didn’t have a problem criticizing the military. These were equal rights groups, social justice warriors, feminists, hippies, anarchists, and all sorts of other people with an axe to grind, who wanted to use my story to promote themselves or their cause. I was happy to help with their podcasts, their video interviews, their live events, and their books because I was able to tell my story. I was the man who dared to love while wearing a uniform. For that crime, I was removed from the service.
That said a lot about how the government works, a lot more than I expected. I don’t really care what the government gets up to. Calling a politician crooked is like calling a pig unsanitary. It hardly even needs to be pointed out. Everyone knows it. So I didn’t feel the need to dwell on getting rid of the government, or getting rid of any elected official, or reforming the system. That wasn’t for me. I just didn’t want to be involved in any of it.
I even declined the opportunity to take a paid position in a nonprofit organization called the Human Rights Campaign. They wanted me to advocate for better treatment of LGBT people in the military. I could not, in all good faith, accept that position. I had been treated very well—better than most, in fact. I had enough food to eat, a warm place to sleep, and a job I liked to do, which also proved to be useful to others. Is there anything else that a person can ask? Where is the unfairness when a man has all these things and still is not satisfied? I have never discovered that for myself.
Since I had more money than I knew what to do with from my military salary, I decided to spend it learning how to program websites. It might be strange to say that a thirty-seven-year-old man like me still has things to learn, yet I found that I did. There was this whole other world waiting for me. It was a world that I never knew about.
Even while I did this, I began to attend those pride festivals and rallies that everyone with the rainbow flags attends. I learned more about what it was to be gay, lesbian, transsexual, transgender, intersex, and a whole host of other words that I had never heard in the Navy. I couldn’t quite figure out what I was. I still found women attractive. There were some real lookers at those parades. But I had also been attracted to Schaffer. There was no denying that. I didn’t want to use the term to bisexual to describe myself; it didn’t feel right to me. I decided not to label myself as anything. I was just me: Dave Anderson, former hotshot Navy instructor with a story to tell.
Sometimes, just by chance, I happened to find that I liked someone. People are just people, after all. That’s why I enjoy meeting LGBT people so much. They’re different. They think outside the box.
They also have a lot of condoms to spare.
Chapter 9: Recruit Schaffer
It took me six months to decide that I was gay. It wasn’t an easy thing to face. Growing up, I had always heard “gay” and “homo” used as derogatory terms. That was what the bullies called the loners and the people who were different. My high school didn’t have a gay student group. In the town where I grew up—it’s a place called Rockport in the state of Texas—any student who dared to come out as gay would have been beaten up. He would have been yelled at by any number of pastors. For a small town, there were so many churches that I could not count them all.
It was that stifling atmosphere of discrimination that caused me to move out to Minneapolis when I was eighteen. I stayed there for two years until I felt that I was ready to make my try at becoming a SEAL. I went back to my old stomping grounds when I returned. I found my car right where I left it: in a friend’s garage. He did not expect to see me back so soon. I tried not to talk to him too much. At least, I didn’t want to talk about my discharge. It was still too raw, too painful to deal with.
I left my friend with a handshake, a thanks, and a hundred dollar bill for his trouble. I then went in search of an apartment to rent. I found one easily enough—not a lot of people are searching for apartments when it’s bitterly cold in Minnesota. I settled in and thought about who I was and what I wanted to do with my life.
I wanted to take another try at the SEAL program. I wasn’t sure if I could make it or not. But I wanted to try. When I sat down and thought about it, I realized that I could have probably overcome a pulled muscle if I had been upfront about it. I would have received medical treatment, and that would have been the end of it. I had built it up in my head until it overwhelmed me. Training has a way of doing that to a person. When I looked back on how things had unfolded, I realized that I had no one to blame but myself.
You might not believe me when I tell you, but I found my purpose in life when I was driving around the city one day. In Minneapolis, when it gets cold, you have to park your car underground. Otherwise, you won’t be able to open your car door, to say nothing of getting the car to start. If I hadn’t done that, I might have missed the sign entirely.
It was one of those yard signs that people put up to indicate their support of political candidates that no one cares about. Except that this sign was an advertisement for a group meeting. It had different colors from the rainbow on it. Over the colors were the words: “LGBT GROUP MEETING 7PM EVERY WEDNESDAY.”
I had passed the sign a few times before. I just hadn’t ever noticed it. It was part of the background scenery. Now I thought that I might just attend. I might go in to see if I was just strange, or if there were other people like me. I mean, how cool would it be if a man loving another man isn’t actually something that can get a person beaten half to death?
Chapter 10: Officer Anderson
Don’t ask me what I was doing in Minneapolis, especially when it was so cold. Once I learned how to program websites—which wasn’t difficult to do—I found that I could work from wherever I wanted. After that, it wasn’t difficult to live out of my car. I had never needed much to live while I was in the Navy. Now I realized I just need clothes, laundry detergent, my laptop, a few textbooks, and enough food to last me until the next check came in.
Of course, it wasn’t always easy to work as a freelancer. I could do the work easily enough. I found that I didn’t mind working for months at a time without a day off. It seemed odd to me that people always looked forward to the weekend. I preferred to keep working. I can’t always say the same about every client I ever had. Some of them took their time in paying me what I was owed. I learned to save up money ahead of time in case I had to wait on one payment or other. I once had to wait on a payment of fifteen hundred dollars. When it did come, I had already moved on to other work. I hadn’t even needed the fifteen hundred, not with what I had saved up. I just had to dip into my savings to survive. I didn’t like doing that, but I got away with it until the money started coming back.
There were better places in the country—or the world—for a person who designs websites. For someone who works online, California might be the best choice. I just ended up in Minnesota because I kept driving north. I can’t tell you why I did that. It grew colder the further north I got. Now, I don’t mind the cold, but my car does. It didn’t start when I parked on the street.
As a result, I had to knock on someone’s door to ask for help. It didn’t look like anyone would stop to help me. Anyone who did might end up in the same predicament that I was. Three doors down from where I parked, I saw a rainbow-colored sign that promised an LGBT meeting at seven o’clock. I looked at my cellphone and saw that the time read 7:10 PM. I decided to knock on the door.
Chapter 11: Recruit Schaffer
I didn’t expect to be welcomed in. Not me, a stranger with a big muscular body who had been in the Navy. I thought that I would look nothing like the people I would find within. That turned out not to be the case at all. A woman with purple and blue hair greeted me at the door. She ushered me in, and then asked if I had come because I saw the post on the MeetUp group. I had no idea what that was. I explained that I had seen the sign.
It turned out that she lived with three other people: two women and a man. The man had long, black hair. He also had a larger-than-normal chest for a man. I learned that he wasn’t actually a man. He was a person who was changing his gender. The term for that, I learned, was transgender.
I sat down to talk to the transgender woman when a knock sounded at the door. I got up at once to answer it. That’s just a habit I learned from the Navy during all those drills that covered how to challenge a visitor while on watch.
Standing there in the cold—it must have been negative five degrees—wearing nothing but a leather jacket and a pair of blue jeans was Petty Officer Anderson. My mind froze for a moment, and not because of the weather. The sudden feeling of passion came back to me. After so much time apart, after he had put me through the toughest experience I’d ever been put through, I instantly reacted to him as though we had been together the whole time.
He rushed into my arms and hugged me tight. I hugged him back. His body felt warm, as warm as anything I have ever known. Even while he smelled like the cold outside, his heart gave off a heat that I could not ignore. I kissed him without reserve, without fear, and without hesitation. It was right. There had never been anything else that was more right to me.
The women of the house—all four of them—insisted that we close the door and stop letting the cold in. I pulled Anderson inside. I said, “Hello beautiful, I’m Zack Schaffer.”
Anderson gave me a goofy grin. He had enjoyed the kiss too. He said, “David Anderson. A pleasure.”
“Of course. It always is.”