Stephen Vance

We hop in her bright yellow Datsun Z, head out for 32nd Street Station, only to be stopped cold at the gate 'cause she hasn’t prearranged my pass. Since Libya this is the one base (lots of ships berthed here) where civilians are treated as potential saboteurs. “C’mon!! — he's got an i.d.”

• I wish that
• I was born a thousand years ago;
• I wish that
• I'd sailed the darkened seas
• On a great big clipper ship
• Going from this land into that
• In a sailor's suit and cap.
• —“Heroin," The Velvet Underground

Okay. I spent five-six days with the U.S. Navy. It didn't kill me. As “mixed" an encounter as any I've had as a writer, some parts were wretched, ghastly, distressing; others, ethereal, effervescent, exhilarating. Mostly it surprised me at every turn.

I expected terror at sea and found it on land ... assumed digital-Republican would be the ticket, discovered a whole big kettle of thoroughly mixed human etc....looked forward to the 70mm remake of 10,000 Years at Sing Sing, got a PBS documentary on life in China ... and stuff like that.

Beyond my wildest imaginings, the experience once and forever “demystified” the military for me — whatever that means.

It also left me with a mean coffee habit, the sort of thing you pick up when you can’t have a beer. If this shows in my writing — never touched it before — well I’ll be dog.

Okay. There’s so much to tell, so much to tell. Lemme just tell the whole story.

An Officer And A Democrat

Last week of April, I'm down in S.D. from L A. After weeks of phone calls to the public affairs offices of Naval Training and Pacific Fleet/Naval Aviation I’ve got this nice little package of looksees set up, which I’m promised could be “more fun than Disneyland.” Since the ball first got rolling, events in Libya have colored the Navy topical, but topicality is perhaps the last thing I’m after. What I want to catch peeks of, as much as one can in less than a week, is the “eternal Navy” (or some such animal), nothing necessarily dramatic, just the ongoing workings of the Navy as ... the Navy.

At first they were taken aback — “Could you be more specific?” Sure, they could and would show me “anything,” but what? Finally, thank you, they came up with this dandy, convenient nutshell. I’ll observe recruits at various stages of basic training, a little advanced training, then to crown it I’ll see the products of this training at sea, on “America’s Flagship,” the aircraft carrier Constellation.

My first stop: Naval Training Center—NTC. On a map it’s this big huge hunk of pink west of Lindbergh Field. I drive ten minutes of perimeter just to reach the gate. Minimum security fuss, phone call and an i.d. and I’m in. Spotless grounds, grass, occasional trees, ’30s buildings, ’40s buildings, ’50s buildings — offices? dormitories?—like exteriors from An Officer and a Gentleman. Also, I realize, like the grounds at Camarillo.

On the front steps of PAO — Public Affairs Office — a seaman polishes a large brass object, the same brass object I will see being polished by him or others, each time I return. Inside, office life (normal). Further inside, at one of those phone things where you talk at a box, is my man, my contact, the NTC’s public affairs officer. Lieutenant Barton (Bart) Buechner of Fort Wayne, Indiana. A jovial, slightly pudgy 30, Buechner — pronounce that BEEK-ner — could pass for 35. 200-watt smile, teeth quite clean; a hearty, beefy handshake. In his spiffy dress whites he reminds me of someone, something, somebody specifically Hollywood ... Dick York? Dick Sargent? Umm, let’s just leave it and come back.

The thing, though, the something — the reminder is mostly generic. PR. Persons I Have Known. Folks whose literal job it is to meet the public, greet the public, charm/soothe/annoy it with phonetalk, orchestrate its perception of reality, keep it at arm’s length while winking a passable simulation of come on in. Yep I’ve known them: 15 years of record company (movie company) publicists ... “media reps” for the NBA (NHL) All-Star Game (World Series)... the guy (gal) who hands you a press kit for the Renaissance Faire (or Wrestle Mania). On first inspection Bart is certainly no weirder than any of them, and though his smile and glad-hand are a tad more forcibly synchronized than any I’ve seen/shook in years, his shtick could hardly be classed as hard-sell.

Nor could mine be classed hard-buy. I'm not after concert freebies, a bar tab at some club, party invites, or a stack of LPs from the office stash. I’m not quite sure what I want, not yet; I am patient, far from greedy, eager to encounter the hand as dealt. As my first in-the-flesh Navy anything, Bart is it, and I sit back and groove on his homespun (corporate-spun?) earnestness. For opening chitchat he offers (believe it) the Army-Navy Game — “ ... no longer exactly big-time football, but there is an excitement” — then on to the slide show.

Images, images, verbiage. One of three major training centers (map of U.S.) with Great Lakes and Orlando, the San Diego facility (old photo, black & white) dates to 1923, nearly half of its 540 acres (aerial shot, new) being landfill. 30,000 recruits a year (of most if not all races, religions), their average reading (or is it math?) grade 7 years 6 months. Basic training (several shots), advanced training ... the superiority of our seaforce is our boys, trained, can fix-it. “The Soviets have the volume of hardware, that’s for sure, but let’s say a radar installation goes bust. They haven’t got the on-ship personnel to make repairs without returning to port.”

Firefighting, the only slide that looks like war, black silhouettes battle flames, yellow/red. The one specialty skill all sailors share; the omnipresent danger, “all that fuel.” (And on carriers, jet fuel.)

Mess hall, slide of plump civilians dishing out... “When did you start hiring civilians?” I ask.

“Whoops, heh, you caught it. That is out of date. I'm not exactly sure when but we discontinued — you don't want them handling food, heh, and out on a break smoking grass!”

Slide, our last, of the USS Recruit, mostly wood, a 2/3-scale dryland dupe of a Navy frigate. “There's an interesting story goes with this." (I should hope.) “Jimmy Carter when he was President actually commissioned it as a Navy vessel. President Reagan of course decommissioned...”

“Did Carter, as a former Navy man, do it to show his sense of humor?”

“On no. It was because of his deep, abiding affection for the sea ... and the men, the recruits, who man it. [Pause.] I personally miss Carter’s policy on human rights” — oh boy, a Democrat! — “ it really was a nice touch. Now Reagan, I guess, is still holding up the torch, though it doesn’t seem to be shining quite as brightly [pause]... not as an aspect of foreign policy.” Pause, pause — this baring of secrets (and chain-of-command blasphemy) has perhaps gone far enough. “Still, heh, we have caused trouble for a few dictators lately.”

I nod, of course, and on to him picking my mind. “Tell me,” he asks, “as a journalist, have you ever heard Louis Farrakhan speak?”

“Uh yeah, as a matter of fact. On the radio.”

“And what'd you think?”

“Um, well, I kind of just listen to it as sound, the uh cadences of his ... ”

“But the content — less than nothing, right? Y'know he actually the other day called on people to support Khadafy, can you believe it?”

“…”

“Tell me, how many people do you think would follow him on that?”

“Dunno” — wait, we journals have the answers — “Maybe ten thousand, less.”

“Well that’s good. Then there’s nothing to worry about yet.”

“I guess not.” Nor, I could add, should we lose any sleep if he called for the torture-death of Reagan’s puppy. But I'm here to straight-face it, and I grit teeth, swallow, and roll up my shirt. Revealing; tattoo, a beaut, skull-and-eagle (New York, ’74).

“Say, that's nice. I know you’ve never been in the service” — come again? — “but that certainly looks like a seaman’s tattoo.”

KNOWS... I'VE NEVER BEEN ... IN THE SERVICE. Ye gods have they done their homework. I know I've never told them, not Bart, nobody on the phone ... no one. Yowser!

For my homework I finished a couple Joseph Conrads and the entire Caine Mutiny. For theirs I’m sure they checked me, they security checked me, and they've seen it all. The student deferments ... the graduate student deferments ... the Vietnam-era 4-F ... and the reason bloody reason I got it. But heck, they don’t know it all — they don’t know my military history.

Multi-decades in the making…

—I was 5 or maybe 6, my father’s wearing these silly khaki items. Khaki outerwear, sleeveless khaki underwear. Khaki socks? Remnants of an honorable, meritorious tour with the fabulous, wonderful U.S. Army. In the Big One, the True One, the Best Years of Somebody’s Lives, WW2. Was Korea already in flower? Dunno. World Series is on, Yankees-Dodgers (Yankecs-Giants?), and the sonofabitch makes me stand for the “Star Spangled Banner.” “Our country’s flag — I fought for it.” Stand for the fucking radio.

— I'm 7 or 8, Dwight David Ike is the prez. Dad voted Ike (“My commander-in-chief') while Mom voted Adlai. It’s Saturday, the old man takes me to Red Badge of Courage starring Audie Murphy. Horses, saddles, six-guns, spurs, but it can't be a western, it’s in black & white. “Courage,” “cowardice”; by movie’s grim end I am sure I would opt for the latter. Run. Hide. Remain alive. Quick enough and you’re not even shellshocked. What Ike doesn’t know — please don’t tell! — will not kill (or dismember) me.

— Summer of age 8, the Brooklyn Day Camp Bool. While others splash, thrash, play, I tread lonely water thinking ten more years, that's all I've got. No, not till they drop it, that big one — that could be tomorrow, the next day. In ten years I’ll be entering college, the school of “my” choice, at which point I will hand my life over to Naval RQTC, something which daddy-o has in recent weeks been feeding me — w/ mustard, relish (but no bun) — the stark, dark, gut-gutting inevitability of. “You’ll have to serve somewhere, Dick, it’s better to be an officer, and the Navy is a much cleaner life." Fine, great, but how do you run from a battleship?

— Four summers onward. Camp Cayuga (sleepaway). Somebody’s head rolls in Lebanon (Syria?), a bigwig of import so Ike sends the troops. Or the ships. It's in the paper a couple days and all these counselors sit around moping, brooding. Fear in their eyes — yes, even “Uncle" Larry of the Penn State eleven — these draft-age jazzbos are scared shitless. This is clearly not “color war," and almost as clear is my germ of a notion that the enemy (yours, mine, ours) is....the draft!

— Somewhere down the line, in an unguarded moment. Papa Meltz spills it. No, he didn't exactly enlist to save England from the blitz. It was more like, well, to get away from his own grouchy pop. And no, he didn’t quite battle the Nazis. Slipped on the ice, tore a cartilage in his knee 10-11 months before Pearl. On the grounds of — where was that again? — Fort Ethan Allen, Vermont. Medically discharged, the cocksucker; and here I've been haunted by bloodlines, shedding my own psychic blood since close to the crib.

— So on my 18th birthday I visit the campus registrar. A mere formality: no frigging way am I going. Forget the threat of death, forget any just-versus-unjust-war b.s. (the war of the wars): I’ve seen quite enough combat at home, thankyou! Pushin’ two decades —where're my medals, my pension? Besides, I am four-eyed, blind as a bat, and blindos serve not in the service. With much glee I write “nearsighted" in the appropriate space ... no, make that “myopia" — let the clowns go look it up!

— Time marches on, talk about unjust: Vietnam. A war featuring not only, y’know, heinous fascist bad faith 'n' warstuff, but dead guys with glasses — dead American dead guys — in war pix enough times a week so I'm losing my sleep. “No sweat," chimes my girlfriend, “you've still got that tremor" — my left hand sh-shakes — “and encephalograms to prove it." Whew, wow, that's a relief.

— The day comes, of course, when there's no longer such thing as grad school deferments. Why there ever was beats me (I wouldn't defer ’em, would you?), in any event I am no longer deferred. I'm 23, my hand hasn’t shaken since I lost the girlfriend, Khe Sanh is the news of the hour, and frankly I'm worried. Ever the assurer, my darling ma tells me, “You'll make lots of friends in the Army." (Dopefiends like myself, I presume?) “It'll make a man of you.” (Unlike your khaki wimpo spouse?)

— My one and only draft physical. Fort Hamilton, N.Y., I forget which month. '68. Worst day of my life from any cause other than loss of love; the closest I've yet come (1986) to experiencing bottomless non-irrational terror. The dehumanization, the voice-suppressed terminal anguish, and, gosh, hardly just merely my own. Bused in, Dachau cattle-car style, with sixteen tons of age-coded, region-coded peers, I shudder and shake at the sheer hopelessness contorting the mugs of buddy boys I haven’t seen since high school. “Spread your ass!" barks a humorless uniformed jackjoe, “Pee in the cup!" Go — submit! — to your physical, emotional demine. When panic shoots my heartbeat to a skillion point nine, this cretin with a stethoscope literally snarls, “Get it down, boy, or stay overnight for observation " Poor Norman Olezyk staggers from test to test, toting reams of x-rays (“My spine is ... " ‘'Oh shut up!') that haven't spared him dick, and by midafternoon I abandon the thought that my shrink's note might save me.

— A great note, which I’ve already steamed open (and meticulously re-sealed) so I know. “Has taken LSD several times and is often incoherent. Considers himself an avant garde artist and uses fire as a means of expression." True, true — no distortion, no simulation on either his part or mine — plus another two-three single-sentence glimpses at aberrant psyche and late-'60s culture damage. Show it to the Army shrink, this is after a full day of yaaaaaaagghhhh and I'm hanging by a thread, and he says: “Let’s suppose we take you.” A red-bearded pipe smoker, he's the spittin’ image — no joke — of Freud himself. On the wall is a framed portrait — I would not lie — of Freud himself. A civilian, mayhap (the beard is a giveaway), a professional healer supplementing his secular income with one day a week of military shame. So I tell him, and it couldn’t be more ingenuous, more without bluff, “Well I'll cut off my toe. And if that’s not enough, I'll cut off my foot.” So he says, equally without guile (we make a great team): “No kidding? Really?" And I say: “C'mon, man, have you ever seen a bigger horror show?” And he says: “Okay, don't worry, you've got your 4-F."

Yeah. The last part of which — the 4-F — the Navy knows easy (it’s in the Files), although how do they know I'm that Richard Meltzer? I've hardly, for instance, got the same address. I've seen namesakes in local and out-of-town phone books; are all Richard Meltzers 4-F? Or, since Bart never actually mentioned draft classification, have all Richard Meltzers merely not “served"?

But that’s just the low range of possibility. Maybe they know damn sure it’s me, and if so have they also maybe gone and read my stuff? There’s 20 years of typeface to wade through — “salacious,” “seditious,” “provocative.” In the last couple years alone I’ve dropped dumps on born-again Christianity, decried (post-punk) rock as the cultural ass-kiss of the ruling class, called on every man, woman, child in America to turn off their TV set (now!) and never watch the nightly news again.

Or, having read me — yet approved this assignment — have they thus officially declared me not a risk to the Republic?

Or will they simply be watching me, eyeballing every move, inspecting my hotel room while I’m out?

Or, ha, have they read not a word until now ... nor would they really care beans if they did ... but by writing THIS now I’ll draw their attention, whoever it is I’m even talking about, and they’ll promptly open a file on this silly geek they never knew existed?

How did I get myself into this?

Lemme get some sleep.

Smallpox And Vermouth

Perchance to be rested at 5:15, time enough to make it to NTC by a quarter to 6. A.M. An hour, even the latter, which I don’t think I’ve been awake at in what, five years? Excepting trips to the bathroom, not since Hepcats from Hell, my late unlamented punk show at KPFK, had me hopping through a totally horrendous 2-6 A.M. shift. More like six years, but I ain’t complaining. Lt. Buechner’s lined me up a wowser: meet and greet recruits (conceivably as tired as myself) as they bid farewell to mom, dad, little sis, and board a bus for eight weeks of delightful basic training and four years, minimum, of Navy Navy Navy Navy Navy.

And ride with ’em, goody. I’m gonna ride.

But first I’ve gotta hook with Bart, who will take me Downtown where the fun departs. He's done this many times — “Writers enjoy it.” What I’m not enjoying, howev, is the first 15 minutes of standing like a dipshit at the NTC gate, peeping at drivers for the eyes of Bart. Or the next 10 — have they checked me through the night, assigned readers to my junk (and decided to cancel)? — until yay, the pastel yellow pickup of Lieutenant B. In the same spiffy whites. I hop in, expecting a U-turn (isn’t Downtown thataway?), but we keep on the base.

Smalltalk ensues. How I’d majored in philosophy, by accident got into writing. How he’d majored in oceanography till a Naval Academy advisor sold him on English, which prepared him for his “calling,” public relations, excuse me, affairs. English, huh? — “You ever read Joseph Conrad?” “Some,” he says; I don’t ask for titles. “How ’bout The Caine Mutiny?" “Some of that too.” Jack Kerouac, who himself was in the Navy at least half an hour — no, he’s never read Kerouac. At his age I hadn’t either.

And as we drive I’m still trying to place the face, the uh ... that’s it: Martin Milner. Well a little more puffed out, with a dose of hayseed thrown in, or let's say the father from Apple's Way, Ronny Cox. Or a polished, handsomer, less malnourished version of Randy Quaid — send him to college — in The Last Detail. Okay, that’s done. Then we stop at PAO, and I’m turned over to Billy Dee Williams.

A.k.a. Petty Officer Tarver, also in whites, the first enlisted man (or woman) whose hand 1 get to shake. Michael Tarver of L.A., the spitting image of Billy Dee, maybe a little shorter, my tour guide (apparently) for the day. Off we spin in his brand new red Nissan 300-ZX. “People think I bought this with my re-enlistment bonus,” he chuckles. “Actually I’ve got an outside business. Electronics. I install car stereos, speedometers, I make 40-50 dollars an hour.” Which is more than I’ll make writing this, I think, noting with consternation that our route will no likelihood take us Downtown or even off the facility. “This is my day off, in fact” — his yawns as conspicuous as mine — “but I like to do favors for PAO.” Which — we brake to a halt at the terminus of the morning's busings — has evidently altered my itinerary.

Drat, no, whuddo I care? What's given is given. Did Buechner (by any chance) fail to reset his alarm, misconsult the bus schedule, forget (then cover) his commissioned, be-calling’d arse? Mine not to reason. Tarver’s got his typed-out list, and first on the thing is haircuts.

Whole shitloads of new arrivals stand around, pace around this concrete quadrangle, slowly but surely lining into queues for the ceremonial theft of their scalp. The first official dose of humiliation — isn’t that the plan? — but what’s so humiliating anymore about radical cuts? Hardly anyone here has it long; only one kid in the bunch — glasses and a Phillies T-shirt — has it even halfway to his shoulders. No discernible apprehension (like they used to show you in Life) about this particular stage-one rite. You think of those photos of Elvis getting clipped by the Army — sad, grim, the end of the world — and these kids by comparison don’t seem to give two shits in hell. Before or after. About loss of personal mane.

Snipped, in fact, well first the whiteys — the white boys seem more personalized, more contempo male-of-the-species expressive than before they walked in. Punk, skinhead, Henry Rollins ‘82. In a month, six weeks they'll be Archie Andrews, Henry Aldrich. The blacks are like Marvin Hagler forgot to shave his head for a couple days; nothing wrong with that look, period.

They all seem pretty much children, hardly a face over 18, 19, and not a goddam yuppie (’cept the merest of potential) among them. Economics: I can’t tell how rich or poor anyone is, everyone has more or less come in his casual best, but if you pointed a gun at me I would guess that no one is higher than middle middleclass. One guy’s so skinny he must be 6-1, 120. A smattering of fatsos.

Shots. Tetanus, yellow fever, diphtheria, polio, measles/rubella, smallpox. Not all right now, one or two, but enough to take it a step worse than a haircut. Grimaces and winces. Asks a big guy in khakis: “Has anyone ever tested positive in a tuberculin test?’’ Two blacks raise their hands.

Dentist. Grimaces, smirks, but no yanking yet: they just want an x-ray. Insufficient personnel, so they've got haggard, sleepy-eyed recruits of maybe two weeks' duration holding photo plates and showing people where to stick their chin.

“Stenciling.” Your new duds will need your name. So you line up and they make you a stencil. Which they use on your duds. Then you carry out the duds. (No tears here.)

Stage One. Haircut, new clothes, inoculation, cursory check ... and what else? Confiscation. Which I don’t see firsthand, not the act, but there’s this big display Tarver shows me, this ongoing thing under glass in full view of yet the latest crop of ripely potential confiscees. Compositionally speaking it's kind of nice, a visually intriguing arrangement of all the heinous, horrible funstuff that’s been snatched from various poor-unsuspecting newcomers who figgered they’d just “bring some in” to tide them through the rigors of boot camp. Roaches, full joints, papers, roach clips, zip-loc bags of green leafy dried vegetable matter, pills, pills and more pills, tiny vials and miniature see-through packets of powders brown and white, half a fifth of Jack Daniels, full entire bottles of Miller High Life and Corona, a partially crushed can of Bud, little itsy flight-size whiskeys and liqueurs — a fine collection you would have to admit. Like all good collections it is locked up tight; I don’t see any needles or vermouth.

I do spot, however, this brownish organic-looking ... dunno ... so 1 ask Tarver, “What’s that — peyote?' and he says, “Don't ask me, I don't know anything about drugs. I'm not the man to ask!"

A good man, that Tarver, 17 years of ambient ghetto-damage avoidance in his kharmic account. Was 17 when he joined, a graduate of L. A.'s Centennial High, and now he's 25 — “So all I've got is another 12 years to go." Till he’s done 20 and can start collecting his pension, devote full time to his thriving biz, and still be a relative youngster of 37, three years younger than my own bones today. Nice work if you can get it, I muse (having no marketable skills, no savings; being too old for plumbing school, even most jobs at a minimum wage). “My wife and I don’t plan on having kids till I’m 33 or 34," he adds, “not with all the moving around." Soon he'll be transferred to the Naval Air Station at Miramar; any lot the Navy wills him, land or sea, is just jake with him. Races motocross, “enjoys life" — one of the wholesomest persons I've met who doesn’t make me instantly sick.

Touch of Equal

On Tarver’s shoulder is this red rope, signifying he’s a company commander. Well not currently, and possibly never again, but he has commanded three already, which is three more than Roger Maris commanded in his lifetime. A company is a preselected group of exactly 80 raw recruits who as a unit will do their eight weeks of basic together. Every Friday, 50 or so weeks a year, NTC/San Diego graduates six such companies, by then not nearly so raw but down to an average of something like 70, the remainder having been shipped home to ma, pa and/or their teenage been done; before that, recruits were assigned directly “to the fleet" for on-the-job “seasoning" and training. Which, as more than a century of same had finally clearly shown, hardly really amounted to training at all, not at the scale of efficiency the Navy is so famously fond of. So they opted, whatever year, for the living hell of boot camp, a system and policy — what? change again? — from which they haven't since substantially departed.

So they’ve still got companies, which have still got commanders, not to be confused with literal Commanders, commissioned officer folk figuring rankwise between Lieutenants, actually Lieutenant Commanders and Captains, themselves not to be confused with the captains of ships, i.e., commanding officers of sea units whose rank could be Lieutenant, Captain, Commander... whatever. Navy jargon for rank (and role) can be confusing — company commanders are specially chosen enlisted persons from any of three different ranks of petty officer (in ascending order: 2nd Class, 1st Class, Chief).. It’s all kind of in the sergeant range, with most c.c.’s at this base being either chiefs or, like Tarver, 1st class. Each new company gets one and keeps him for the whole hellish run. The posted qualifications: “stability,” “integrity,” “charisma,” the by-the-numbers gamut of inspirational/motivational oo-poop-a-doo. The job: to personally mold, sculpt, cajole, inveigle, browbeat, direct, run ragged, encourage, bust the hump of, “set an example” for, dehumanize and (optionally) rehumanize each and every kiddie in one’s command, with the goal of sending their certified butts to the fleet, to advanced training, etc. — functional swabbies now, forever, or at least the remainder of their four-year hitch.

To pull it off — says the Book — you’ve gotta be part macho role model, part cop, part father (“Many recruits come from broken homes”), part football coach, part lots of things except, says Tarver, “never their friend. I've had a number of black recruits, for example, come up to me during a break and try and shoot the shit, get personal with me so I'll be their buddy. But you can't be anybody’s buddy, you can't let anyone, even in the back of their mind, expect special treatment. In fact sometimes it backfires, 'cause you have to go harder on them so no one will ever suspect you of favoritism.”

Good, fine — equality is neat — and we saunter over to check out some equals. A group of second-day recruits, not yet a full company’s worth, stand around glum and disoriented, exhausted for the day (at 7:30 A.M.) even though the real daily rigors won't be starting till the rest of their company arrives, tomorrow or the next day. Many — let's be fair — are prob'ly just beat, scared and lonely from their first night, ever, away from home (and here it is, gosh, a whole 'nother day). Self-conscious at last their new rad appearance, certainly more so than any first-day arrivals, singular or plural. I’ve so far observed, they avoid looking even at each other, lest they catch a flash of self-image too multiple to handle. “They need some actual challenges to take their mind off this stuff' — rolled-up cuffs of their Navy jeans look so-o-o hokey — “Why don’t you interview some?”

Okay, but then he says that one and that one — of course with him standing right there. I gulp and improv some bullshit like is this any different from what you expected? what about the discipline? how do you feel about blah blah etc. ? and they stammer back um uh you know. Whudda they know who I am? — I could be an a-hole from Naval Intelligence — and they really do seem introverted, self-contained. Except for this one kid from Kansas, an iota less inner-directed, who offers (nearly smiling): “Whatever there is, um, I'm up for. Anything, uh, I'm sure I can do.” The guy's teeth are wretched —Jesus — which makes the mere opening of his mouth a poignant reflex compensation for ... but no, insists Tarver (once we're alone), “That recruit is a joker. Someone will have to straighten him out.” Well, yeah, there's that side of it — reduce him to equal humility (and I hear frat initiations are excellent “character builders” too).

I do manage to get in — hey, while we're at it — a de rigueur “How 'bout Libya?” I mean, right? But every body here enlisted before that biz, and they all basically shrug, “It's, uh, part of the job,” although one does cop: “My mother's a little worried now.” (Snickers.) Tarver on the subject, soon as we're out of their earshot: “It's unfortunate some have to be there, but so far it looks pretty safe for us. We may lose some, but it should be real few ” Which is pretty much what MANY will spout through the course of my week—it’s a big world, a big service ... and the peacetime Navy marches on.

The Ronald McDonald Blues

Marching. Plenty of marching. And drilling. We sit in the car and watch third-week, fourth-week recruits struggle to make anything they do seem even marginally synchronized. Especially these numbers with rifles over their head — you’ve seen it in movies — swinging it, twirling it: this they cannot do to save their lives. “Does it ever get much better?” I ask. “Hmm ” he considers, “not really.” The marching, though, actually the marching’s not so bad. Some companies have it, some don’t; marching (I remember from Boy Scouts) is ultimately no big deal. 1-2-3-4 but it’s nowhere as tough as playing drums. Just like in probably the same film, they’re all chanting cadence like it's 1942.

We drive to a more strenuous area. Calisthenics in the suddenly not unhot sun. Pushups, situps, knee bends, etc., but lots more than you had to do in gym class. And the guy, the company commander is more eagle-eyed than your gym teacher. Spots a kid not lifting his tail high enough on pushups, bellows, “You may think you're in the Navy already, but this is just the audition. You can quit right now and join Khadafy's navy for all we care. I'm sure it's a whole lot easier.” The recruit gets his tail up. Another sufferer keeps collapsing no matter what the exercise, but it’s almost touching, the same bozo tells him. “Easy. son... you can do it.” warmly — what for Stanislavski could easily pass as compassion.

“They're not allowed to physically abuse the recruit,” points out Tarver, “time was they could but not anymore. You can t even touch a recruit unless it's like a demonstration in self-defense. Oh, there'll be instances, but it’s pretty rigidly enforced. And you can't intimidate with abusive language.” At which point a company commander, sipping Coke on a break and noticing some kid, not even one of his own, subaudibly grumbling as he puff-pants through lap eight or nine of a jog 'round the field — and it’s not a small field — he yells: “Shut the fuck up! You're a motherfucking baby!” Well, as long as it's not meant to intimidate...

So I'm wondering what sort of intimidation/coercion they do have at their disposal for, um, actual “attitude problems.” Persistent fuggups and recalcitrants. “Well, there's the ‘short tour’ ” — four hours of jumping jacks w/ rifles. Let's go. A couple fields over, five or six arm-weary fuggups, guns barely at their navels, hunch their shoulders and hop, bounce or stretch off the balls of their shoes. No sync between them of any kind; a sort of nonperiodic constancy their only rhythm or pulse. Some drop out, skip a few, jump back in with implied vengeance. “See — they're showing they aren't quitters." Looks about a third to a half as grueling as Richard Gere's torture scene in Officer and a Gent.

Which brings us to breakfast — and the land of salutes. Thus far we've either been among brand newies who haven't gotten their chain-of-command lecture yet or in Tarver’s car where he hasn't been wearing his hat, so the only salutes he’s had to return have been mistakes. Once you go from E-1 to E-2, from seaman recruit to seaman apprentice, you no longer salute anyone under O-1 (ensign), i.e., just officers, the fully commissioned kind. At boot camp, though, to get in the swing of arm-jerk respect for authority, you salute anyone with the red rope as well. Tarver, E-6 with a rope, is thus entitled to the whole merry hand-to-brow “Good morning, sir" routine — except, that is, when without his hat, his “cover." “I really shouldn’t [hatless] return their salute, but it’s a shame to discourage them just when they're getting in the habit."

As we step to the mess hall the salutes come in bunches, and each is returned with a civil, nonironic “As you were, recruit." Inside, the first sense datum is the familiar smell of an overscrubbed school cafeteria, food stink and mop stink at equal bouquet. Second, the neopenal modular look of same. An update of places where teenagers ate. Soggy toast, eggy eggs, mini-boxes of cornflakes and shredded wheat. Whole tablefuls gorge themselves — “Many come from homes that couldn't afford full breakfasts. And after a morning’s workout anything tastes great." How's the food? I’m pressured to ask; um yeah y ’know, the reply. A sullen recruit hauls garbage; he contends as jobs go he’s “done worse " “You don't wanna eat here?' ventures Tarver — “Let’s go to McDonald’s."

And I'll be dipped if there isn’t one right on base, a recent funtime addition to the officers-only putting green and classic circa '58 bowling alley. As it’s still very much A.M. menu time, a sprinkling of sailorboys, their thatch-work too lengthy for mere recruits, can be seen a-chomping on Egg and/or Sausage McMuffs. “Recruits would never be here this early, no way, and since they’re fed in the galley" — whoops, he spills grape jelly on his sno-white trousers — “there’s no actual reason for them to be here at all. Damn" — wipes at the spot with a napkin — “it’s a good thing I’ve got seven more pairs of these, they’re rarely good for more than a day. Anyway, once in a while, like if they’re out on some detail and miss a meal, we'll send over here to get ’em something. They need the energy, it’s important they get three meals a day." (Thanks, Ronald, for finally contributing to something.)

Postcards of Heck

The place, the space, where recruit dreams are dreamt of not only Big Macs, Quarter Pounders, but the hot ’n' juicy goodthings they will do with their own quarter-pounders, boot camp, on exotic, distant shores. Barracks, Jack: double tiers of extremely made beds. You want an antonym for “pigsty," it’s something quite like this. Competitions rage for which company's quarters are the most unsoiled, the most immaculate, the most bloody, flaming orderly under God’s green sun. Everything's so beyond-life antiseptic you could eat off — well I wouldn't eat off the floor, but I’d feel pretty safe having open heart surgery on it. As we wander through, Tarver spots this sock, this goddam sock, that’s not stashed exactly where it SHOULD BE. “Recruit — where does this belong?" Color alone is no clue, so think for a sec. Recruit, mortified, removes it from undies shelf, stacks it with sweatsox. (And you thought mommy made you neurotic.) On the whitest wall outside a hospital, stenciled in blue, the Order of the Universe, chain of cheeses for good little sailors and bad: Pres. Reagan ...VP Bush... Defense Sec. Weinberger ... Navy Sec. Lehman ... Chief of Um-Uh Soandso... Admiral Whatsisface ... (memorize en route to the crapper)... down to the localest bit player. Dig, recruit: your home and hearth for two joyous months. The sole entire that which where, between taps at 9:30 and reveille at 3:30 or 4:00, you will think, speak, whisper and dream of the good, the true, the who your gal is fucking back in Squodunk, Portland, or N.Y.C.

All of which rolls over me in waves; a rush. That I haven't felt such misery-by-osmosis since, well ...since those teevee pictures of kiddies in Libya with their eyes blowed out.

A morning’s journalism has evidently gotten to me.

Or hey, calm down. Too soon to panic. Ponder, consider: weren’t some, many, nearly all dorm nights of my own college knowing rather, how you say ... uniformly bleak? Yeah, no question. So maybe it’s this memory, the uh sympathetic vibration is feeding back and messing with my so-called objective eye for ... y’know ... no question there either. And high school — God, high school! — is any of this truly more than let's say 3 or 4 (5 or 6) times worse than my recollected worst-case parameters of h.s. experience? Again no, and ditto for home life, and even if we're in the range of 10 times worse (or even 20) that's still hardly a quantum leap from my sense of the known and the knowable. The underlying torment, desolation of it all. So like shut up, this is extremely familiar Woe Turf; it's endurable.

And as I'm thinking this I spot a true-blue sight for sore eyes, FRESHLY WASHED SAILOR CAPS DANGLING ON THE LINE -nothing (in context) could be luvlier.

“They wash them every day," volunteers Tarver, totally unaware of my hysteria, and we split for a classroom and a swimming pool.

In the room there's some math going on, female instructor, remedial math or something. As if their physical/emotional snakepit weren't brutal enough, there’s still academic scores they must pull off to qualify. In this class, though, the only real pulling is they're pulling on her crank; a genuine breach of order & obedience. Minimal attention paid, they yak out of turn and/or context — just like high school. Tarver shakes his head ("She should be asserting more discipline"), but, c’mon, they've already got discipline up the old wazoo. not all forms of which are interchangeable. Most have recently escaped the classroom — or so they thought — and here they're stuck having to suck back into it. Where else in this pressure pot would you 'spect them to let out some steam — human biology "having its way" — even if just by the thimbleful? And besides, teach is a woman (mommy!), nobody's been to a shrink and it's maybe a tall order at this stage of the game for non-officers-in-training to be modular gentlemen.

The poolside setup is so polar opposite it's eerie. Like a gym class — one place w here nobody pays attention—that's paying attention. Supreme attention. "Yes sir! No sir!" on masse. Two companies, two company commanders, one black, one white; the white guy’s running it. Lifejacket training. “You do this wrong and you die, you'll be food for sharks." A chubby black kid, uneasy in spite of his jacket, plunges feet first off a 30-foot platform ... sploosh ... he floats ... applause. Now the hard part: non-jacket flotation. Like say your ship sinks but there's no time for jackets. "First fold your cover" (the instructor demonstrates), stick it in your pocket — this is before you jump — then button your collar and cuffs. Look out for fires and debris, jump, take out your cover, unfold it, invert it like so and — WOW!—an air pocket. Which keeps you buoyant long enough to get your bearings and — listen to this — blow air into your shirt.

You learn something new every day.

Like for instance how fear-and-trembly Navy rules can sometimes make a MAN — even when no one is lookin'.

This is after — it's the last part of this part of the story — after we’ve exited the pool and walked past these guys with brooms sitting, moaning, "I'm tired ... I'm tired." Two recruits on their ass, a potential disgrace to the service. Tarver does a double-take — is this for real? — goes over, comes back embarrassed, they're still on their asses complaining. "I left them alone because, well, it's obvious they're not making it. They know they're going home, I know they’re going home — so why rub it in?" Indeed.

Which is where Tarver wins my heart — an authentic man of mercy — and I neither tease him nor scorn him when he passes on buying me postcards. At the PX, I want some Navy cards — who wouldn’t? — but turns out civilians can't shop there for military personnel only, tax-free or some such baloney, and it wouldn’t be “kosher” for us to fake it. Like if I gave him the money, nodded at my favorite shots of anchors at sunset, split and circled the building before collecting the booty — that would just be, ugh, circumventing ... and Tarver will not be a party.

Buechner, though, he’s cool. It’s got to be exact change, and he looks in all nine directions before slipping me the package, but as purchasing agents go he's the tops. [And I hope this revelation costs him no dandy promotions.]

Tuesday Night Yoga Class

Another day, the same old bleary-eyed writer. Further from daybreak this time, a 7 A.M. hookup, but wise to Buechner I bust less ass and show up at 7:07. Little do I know that 7:00, on the dot, is the bloke's standard time of arrival (it's only 6:00 or thereabouts that’ll cause him these problems), and a punctual Bart greets me with the wag of a Finger. Egg, if I’d eaten, would be on my face, but let's get to it: a dose of advanced training to supplement my snootful of basic.

My guide for the morning is Master Chief Brown. A real nice person, they seem to keep getting nicer, but since there ain't too many familiar act-faces that’re black, female and 48, I can’t rightly say who could play her. It's funny; in the whole Navy there really aren’t that many blacks. The official stats say 13%, in the three companies I bothered to count yesterday the number in each was no higher than 8 out of 80, I have no idea what the breakdown is among Navy women in general, or among master chiefs (at E-9 the highest enlisted rank) — but black female master chiefs, c’mon now. I know I don't work for a great metropolitan daily. Nor have I been nominated for a Pulitzer. But give me two blacks in two days, one a female master chief with 31 years of Navy experience, and I've gotta be able to add one and one and realize I’m being set up. To do a yes-we-hire-minorities puff piece (gad! pshaw!); I take back what I said about no worse than record or movie PR.

It’s a good thing I’m so good-natured, and that MC Brown is so incredibly generous with her time. She takes me to I dunno, dozens of training schools, all these busy buildings featuring state-of-the-Navy (and presumably -the-art) instruction in you name it. It isn't till we're almost done that I catch wind of exactly how generous she's been, for it much has been truly her time. Like Tarver the day before, she's off, on leave, but the kicker is it's possibly her FINAL leave — she's retiring from the Navy in two months. On top of which (this is too much) it’s also her MOVING DAY. As we make stop after stop her worldly possessions are being carted, hauled, without her supervision, to a new address in El Cajon. This is how they reward meritorious employment?

Oh, right, there’s more. We go to ice cream dispenser repair school, we go to where you learn to operate one-way intercoms for admirals, but nowhere on her list is the very school she operates. The so-called Jobs School. She's its Director. I realize, after she explains it, that it’s not exactly “advanced” training, it's for bringing post-boot camp academic marginals up to snuff, but for chrissakes it’s valuable and it's hers. Can’t they let her show the damn thing off? A Navyperson's Navyperson, she voices not a peep of regret. Again like Tarver, she asserts she likes “to do things for PAO.”

For which I thank her. She takes me to whole heaps of interesting places, each with its own distinct internal show-and-tell. The characters running them are something else — whackos, cliches, down-homes, mad geniuses of trial and error — my first concrete evidence that the Navy (as dealt to ITSELF) is more variform, polychromatic and anthropoflakey than any digital master-printout/readout I’ve with humanism aforethought geared myself to expect. Here, anyway, inside the microcosm of Service School Command, the difference between each module and the next is probably as perceptible, say, as that between baseball and soccer. Or, since this is schools, UCLA and Texas Tech, or a Berlitz course in Flemish and Tuesday night yoga class.

The paint jobs are different, the wall graphics and display cases, the hours in session, classroom densities and geometries of seating. Some have civilian instructors (or farm out for civilian services), others don't. The underlying cause of certain of these diffs is no doubt economic, and more than once I’m “appealed to” (my pen being so mighty) to write against budget cuts that might jeopardize this or that cozy corner of et cetera. All things being equal, the relative prosperity of any educational program is directly proportional to its urgency to the fleet. Everybody eats, but the need for meals to be that good is not on a par with that of radar, radios, teletype machines to be PERFECT. Maybe master-program central simply doesn’t generate its digits symmetrically, but Mess Management School seems less lavishly accoutered than Radio Maintenance. For instance.

But even all this being equal, the wide range in service-school persona is probably most attributable to the individual muhfuhs in immediate charge. Like 1 said, these folks are CHARACTERS. If I tell you ’bout two I might as well tell you ’bout 20, so I’ll tell you ’bout one. Commander Volk, the bossman of teletype: a gone hepster in spite of himself. If you ever saw Operation Mad Ball, a not-half-bad Army pic with Ernie Kovacs (his greatest role), well Cdr. Volk is that Ernie. The eyebrows, the mustache, the itchy, twitchy, unabashed ... Emieness. And I don’t mean he twitches. He’s got this trophy case the size of your block, shows me (with NO irony) his school’s bowling shit, its bloodmobile certificates, its letter of thanks from Jim Garner for sending him students for some TV film. It is CLASSIC show-and-tell — any genre — and my toughest straightface assignment since my sister’s wedding, 1969.

The students I’m shown are also a gas. They knew I was coming so they picked out The Best, their crème de la overachievement. Like this smoothy at Electronics, a yuppie in the making, who flat out exclaims: “I’m only here so I can work for IBM when I get out.” And the top learner at Machine Repair, this 31-year-old Rosy-the-Riveter who joined the Navy last November “so I could learn to do something with my hands.” Before that she sang country-western. When later I tell PAO about these marvels, they tease me about soft-peddling the smoothy (but Rosy they can dig). Average age through the entire system is 20-22, with a few diehards up in their 50s.

When Master Chief Brown herself joined in ’55, the main thrust of job ops for women was “nursing and secretarial — neither of which particularly appealed to me.” She found her niche in supplies, for years (pre-Jobs School) engaged in it royally, and as we trudge along she mock-calmly checks her watch to estimate what stage the movers're up to. A pro like I cannot believe, she shrugs off my suggestion that we cut things short (do I really need to visit A-C/Refrigeration?). “People are expecting us,” she insists — and so they are. The Libyan “deed,” if it was even half as coordinated as this, must've been like shooting fish in a barrel.

Crust And Lust And Hippies

Finally, the final expecter. Brown’s tour-guide relief, the perky, diminutive Nancy Avila, who conceivably could double for tennis pro Rosie Casals. Female, commissioned, and seemingly Hispanic, Lt. Avila is less a ringer than one might suspect: she's Assistant C.O. for Service School Command. She's also the least out-of-the-book ossifer (of any sex) I will meet, and the first I can actually speak to w/out straight facade. I mention I've done a pamphlet on ugly suburban homes with over-manicured lawns; she tells me I should come and groove on her weeds. A cool (yet feisty) customer, she seems at home both in and with the Navy in a manner more authentically healthy than you generally see with operatives in any corporate empire. It’s a job and she does it, from the looks of things exceptionally well. Yet I can't imagine her (very often) surrendering her sanity or her soul.

“Been to sea?” I ask.

“No, and I hope I never have to. I'm 30, and I'd be competing with 25-year-old ensigns, for crying out loud, who'd have seniority [women having only recently been assigned to even noncombat vessels] just because they’re men.”

We hop in her bright yellow Datsun Z from before they changed to Nissan and head out for 32nd Street Station; so far it’s all been NTC. Welding School our destination, and the lunchtime break looming large, we ride like the wind, only to be stopped cold at the gate 'cause she hasn’t prearranged my pass. Entry’s no problem for her — she’s milit'ry — but since Libya this is the one base (lots of ships berthed here) where civilians (even those with on-base gigs) are treated as potential saboteurs. “C’mon!! — he's got an i.d.” — love her take-no-shit attitude!— but we’ve gotta get the proper credentials. Twenty minutes (and three unconventional U-turns) later, we’re inside the joint. I spot a couple battleships —cruisers? — destroyers? — whuddo I know? The place could be, maybe even has been, the crusty-lusty set for many a WW2 (or WW1) sea-stravaganza. It reeks nautical, it reeks gritty, it reeks old. Nice place.

The welders, unfortunately, have broken for lunch, but that doesn't stop Lt. Wright, a tighter, more constipated version of Cdr. Volk, from handing me a fresh pair of goggles. Nice pair; maybe we’ll stay for some torches and welds. In the meantime he lectures me through. Non-nuclear welding; nuclear welding; welds that require x-rays to check the exactness of; 3-4 injuries a week; civilian instructors, yes, but 14 of 17 are formerly military. Great, thanks, wish we could stay but I'm bushed and I'm hungry. I hand him his goggles, we zoom back to base for my meal.

Which could be our meal, mine and the lieutenant’s, only she skips 'em whenever it’s feasible. “I used to be overweight, like 50 pounds overweight, so I eat one meal, max, and sometimes I even skip that.” I select ribs, string beans, potatoes au gratin, Manhattan fish chowder, cake w/ pink sauce. Coke from a machine (no ice). Most recruits — we’re back in recruitland — grab a milk. The ribs chew like rubber bands, the chowder’s hot water with tomato bits and flakes of fishy fishflesh, but all in all a passable cafeteria eat. Enough calories for a while. I'd give it a C-minus.

As I’m finishing I stare around; nothing looks more recent than 1959. I double-check ... nothing. “I’ve been on the road,” I tell her, “with crazy idiot rock bands. I’ve written about hippies in the jungles of India. I’ve covered hockey games in Quebec where I was the only English-speaking person in the house. But I’ve never worked on a story where I’ve felt as strange, seen anything quite as alien to my current experience, as I do with this."

She, relating, says, “I can imagine. I wonder what sort of thing would seem that alien to me. The Russian navy? Hmm, I dunno. I’m an officer, I know the ropes, could the structure of it be that different?”

Officerhood. The area we’re sitting is marked E-7 OR ABOVE. Guest officers from who knows what foreign navy (Saudi Arabia? Portugal?) sit two tables over. We're a good ways from the nearest enlisted mammal. “Um, how do you feel as an officer,” I work up the gumption to ask, “compared uh, to enlisted...”

“I feel superior. I have to admit I do.”

“Yeah” — if I'd listened to my father, taken ROTC, possibly I would too. “But d’you think maybe it has more to do with prior stuff, the fact that you went to college, say, than any distinctions on this side of the fence, the way it just happens to be defined, labor/management, chain of command and all of that?”

“Well sure. College does make you more well-rounded.”

“D'you go to the Naval Academy?”

“No-o-o. LSU. I got a BA in phys ed. Couldn’t see myself as a gym teacher, ha. so I went into OCS.”

Right. It feels more like ’59 than the previous time I thought it. Small wonder — “Theme from A Summer Place” is on the PA. Wholesome music for wholesome working folks. (You could look up the date).

Moon Over My Acne

Later, that night, it gets earlier. How much I’m not sure, but back there. 1953, '54? Somewhere during Ike's first term. I keep expecting June Allyson or Jimmy Stewart to step out. Van Johnson. It’s a little too primordial for Doris Day. no, actually she’d fit in perfect. But before she did racy “double entendre” films or worked with Hitchcock. Somewhere — in all literal, possible, replayable ways — before rock and roll, before football was the national sport, before they ran nipple in tit mags.

In the parking lot outside RTC at NTC, the license plates read Texas. Kentucky, Colorado — otherwise it's all California. Many Cal plates might be rental cars; “courtesy vans” from local hotels arrive, unload, depart to repeat the cycle. Families, two-three-even-four generations' worth, are here for fond reunion with their teens. Tomorrow, Friday, those recruits who will graduate will, and relations who both give a hoot and can swing a day off will be 'round to help them celebrate. Those that give a hoot, miss their sonnyboy a little extra, and can swing one and a half or two will at any moment enter Recruit Training Command Auditorium for an “old-fashioned” USO-sponsored whatsit, and afterwards embrace and kiss their young'uns whom they have not seen in 8 long weeks. I am told by PAO that to take this in will be “heartwarming, eye-opening.”

On the steps a flattop in seersucker, mid-40s. says to possibly his brother, “Don't the wheels turn? 23 years ago this was me.” Young sailor on duty tells a pink-haired granny. “Come on in, we have refreshments, nachos. I can't wait to get 'em myself.” Teen girl, the future queen of her town's lone sody shop, to an age peer in training bra: "Oooh... smells like an old oaken schoolhouse!” She would know.

To me. inside, it smells of moms — stinks of 'em. The world as it would be if Caution (as Culture) ran the show. The nacho party, down the hall in an oaken drawing room, is crowded, or threatens to be crowded, but you'd lie if you called it festive. Unit families attempt to engage others of their kind — with mixed results. Chips, some drenched in generic velveeta, others handy for dipping in that age-old favorite, sour cream 'n' powdered onion, do not exactly abound — there's some bowls of 'em. Soda and sandwiches available (in coin-op machines). The Navy, even in tandem with the mighty USO, cannot spring for everything, but balloons and streamers — sky’s the limit. Imagine the worst party you have ever been at... then subtract the alcohol. (If I free-associate TUPPERWARE, don't scream.)

All partied out, I hit the auditorium. Recruits as ushers; I speak to a few.

Volunteers, they’re doing this 'cause family isn’t coming — so why not he an angel for the USO? Angelic, they're like kids fresh from Confession. Spent, at verifiable emotional peace, they've made it out of boot camp with their innocence (but I can't vouch for their non-innocence) unscathed. Hatless, indomitably, vulnerably Caucasian, each has got a tan line which ends where his hat would've been.

“This is the first thing I've ever really ... accomplished," says one with an intense case of acne. Following graduation, 48 hrs. of liberty; is he looking forward to perhaps getting drunk (and, I might add but don't, getting laid)? “Naw, I don't do that stuff. I just wanna have fun, play my guitar.” Another, better complexion, 18-going-on-15, whose parents in Florida work (so he understands): “Hell, I joined up to get away from home!" (Truth, sour grapes, or big-boys-don't-cry?)

The room fills, I spot at most five black families, a group of Polynesians takes the whole row in front of me. Capt. Dana French, C.O. for Recruit Training, speaks of haircuts, pride, “transformation, not change,” how he wishes his own teen sons would “learn to make their bunks." Hoo hee, the gang loves it, and this is just the warmup. “Possibly some of you have been entertained by Bob Hope overseas, please raise your hands” — etc., etc. — “and then there is the USO's famed ‘Sunshine Lady.' I give you Cathy Elkin."

Out walks an older version of Jackie Joseph from the original Little Shop of Horrors. Described in All Hands (“The Magazine of the U.S. Navy") as an update — and then some — of the USO's “little old lady with a doughnut,” the “38-year-old” (yes, she probably once was) Elkin is if anything the whitebread update of Borscht Belt detritus that couldn't have played the Ed Sullivan Show. Or Kathryn Crosby (with a swarm of bees in her pants) as a comedian. Or a public-access parody of a hyperactive blind date. Banal jokes, lame gestures, pleas for money more pathetic than a telethon for dandruff. And they love it, they LOVE IT — you don’t come out from Tulsa not to have yourself a time.

For her finale Ms. Sunshine calls on her heaviest stock-in-trade, a choreographed “surprise" which even if All Hands hadn’t cued me I'd've spotted a mile away. “Probably the neatest thing she does,” goes a quote in the piece, “is getting the parents of one of the recruits down in front and having their son sneak up behind them to present his mother with a corsage.” A couple from Oil City, PA — “where they had to shovel snow this morning to get here” — are selected to receive a pass for preferred seating at graduation. Hot dawg, and as they stride stageward who's that behind them? — why it’s little Ralph! Who hands mom a box, she discreetly hugs him, dad shakes his hand — stiffly — and no more. The box unopened (could it house a snake?), they exit to the roar of warmed hearts.

Word at last is given, and visitors fan out through axled doors. Beyond this one, company x, beyond that one, company y. Find your boy before his bedtime... now!

In moonlit courtyards and alcoves, slightly too dark for the trip to be effective, finders find and seekers seek. Each recruit holds a red carnation; one, unsought, hands his to somebody’s sis. “I've got a boyfriend back home but... thankyou” he receives a peck, dry, on the cheek and a hug, friendly. A lucky guy (and I'm sure he knows it), he's gotten as much as most recruits with. With actual visiting loved ones — why here go some now. Mom: hug 'n' peck. Dad: firm handshake. Sis: tired smile. I rotate 90 degrees, another heartwarming reunion: hug (no peck), handshake, no siblings present. I rotate again, seeking a “balanced” picture. Seeing only more of same I wander, perchance to... whoops, more of same. Impassivesville incarnate. Over 5-10 minutes I see no displays (none) of excessive parent-son affection, no outward signs of even “reasonable” quanta of maternal/paternal love.

But so far I haven’t been listening, merely scanning for conspicuous rapture, evidence (immediate, visual) of the much-vaunted wow-ness of our national treasure. The American Family. Perhaps if I went for some audio...

“I've had so many shots I was sick 6 weeks out of 8.” “Aw, you never did like shots.” “That’s not true... well, yeah." “I thought you'd've lost more weight.” “You can’t do everything.”

“Did you bring my catcher’s mitt?”

“Sandra, did you?" “No, I guess we forgot it. When're you going to have time to play softball anyway?”

“Baseball.” “Baseball.”

“You really look bitchen in that uniform.” “Kenny, don't use that word!” “I didn't say ‘bitch,’ I said ‘bitchen.’ I bet Steven uses all sorts of great words.” “You don’t, Steven, do you?” “Ma ...” “We are proud of you, though."

And so on; had enough? Look, I’m not even putting down cornpone — cornpone with viscera is great. These are petty summer camp interchanges, in no way befitting the scale of disorder anyone’s been through: kids, parents, anyone. But the kids ain’t directing this show. Nor are these the “broken" families. Those, with various day-laborers, stayed home. Basically, what I see, hear, and feel is an avoidance of closeness from above, kids being business-as-usual'd at their supreme moment of hard burning NEED. (Somebody’s gotta love ’em, gush all over them, besides the NAVY.)

For absolute verification (that this is indeed going on), I suppose I could wander till closing time or draw closer, feign charm & neutrality while staring ’em straight in the eye, but that much of a journalist I am not. Even at its most benign, the parents-of-big-boys-don’t-gush chapter of Martin Mull’s History of White People in America is unendurably grim. The parents of goddam SHOGUNS would wear their insulation thinner, or insert more juice in the ritual — or maybe, simply, there’s nothing inside. And I’m just an outsider: think of the payoff these 8-wccks-weary, beat-to-shit offspring ain’t getting. The kid from Florida, the one without the pus face, might just have known what he was escaping. And the rest of his cohorts ... Christ, who knows?

I escape this fuckfarm and drive. The moon is full and I’m howling.

The Triumph of Stallone

And by sun I return for the capper. Graduation. Preble Field, NTC; bleacher seating. Triumph of the Will in sno-white leggings.

Featuring: the RTC Crack Rifle Team and its 10-lb. World War I Springfields; the 50-State Flag Team and its flags (the size of a bam) of all 50; nonstop sonic interruption by commercial jets on the Lindbergh Field takeoff path (directly overhead).

Bigwigs in attendance: a couple of admirals, one the base commander; C.O. French; special guest W.H. Plackett, Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy, SENIOR ENLISTED PERSON OF THE WHOLE DANG

SHEBANG (joined 1956). Their chests laden with medals, you can actually hear the jingle, takeoffs permitting, as they strut by in review.

A cannon is fired, a baby cries. Bleacher neighbors stare daggers — shut that brat up!

The invocation (prayer). Heads bow as one. Church and state: a TEAM. The flag salutes which follow are not quite as instantaneous, as micro-synchronized, but the oompah version of “Star Spangled Banner" does have a Reichish ring to it. “Columbia the Gem of the Ocean," which fm hearing for the first time since grade school, brings an actual chill: music (or is it infantile sociology?) does have its latent martial potency.

Back to the infant, he or she is by now wailing, inconsolable. He or she is removed to the back of the bleachers. (In the land of the Free, the home of the Brave.)

“Anchors Aweigh”: I try to be tingled. it fails. So much for martial — I must’ve heard it in the last 20 years.

A bugler, each time he’s finished, does weird formal things with his mouthpiece. Removes it, does things with it. A five-year-old near where the crybabe was asks, “What’s he doing with...?’’ — slap! — slam! — stilled cries. (For amber waves of grain!)

“During these ceremonies,” cracks the crackling PA. “sometimes a recruit will faint. This is due to [inaudible]. Be assured adequate medical attention will be [inaudible] ambulance [inaudible] field.” And no one even giggles.

“Officers, pree-zent swords!” shouts the drillmaster recruit. Sounds of swordsnap, then the covering whoosh of aircraft. Pause, it passes, “Officers, carry swords!” Kr-r-razy playtime! These kids must be having their second preadolescence! The leggings, the boots, the uniform spiff — I can remember, 30 years back, when even cop uniforms looked enticing. Second preadolescence: I like it. Maybe I’ll buy a dartboard ... play stickball... build a treehouse... start a STAMP COLLECTION.

Lecture time, one of the admirals. Commander of some piece of a fleet. “Each man in the Navy counts.” Great, okay — towards what end? “The competition in the coming years will be intense. And I don't mean rivalry between seamen, I mean the Soviets and others who are out there.” Yeah, right, Arabs — so? “So whether you serve the Navy for four years or forty years, you owe it to yourself and your country to... [the usual]

What’s not usual, though, is two of the bigwigs. Capt. French, he's usual, this is his command, but what’s less than standard is his background. In June '55, upon graduating high school, DP. French enlisted. He did gangbusters, got sent to Academy Prep, then the Academy, got commissioned, served in Vietnam, etc., etc. — and here he is C.O. of a boot camp. My oh my, the world turns. He’s probably at every graduation. Plackett, meanwhile, the one who while senior is still just enlisted, I can't imagine makes a habit of attending these. Or maybe he does. Whatever. The point is, both of 'em here, what a message! This could be you!

Yes, recruit, in 30 years this could be YOU, commissioned, or YOU, rubbing elbows with a pair of admirals, shooting some holes at the officers-only putting green. Which is fine, cool, for Messrs. French and Plackett — the one-in-a-zillion shots — but for these kids standing stiff in the sun, deservedly proud of their having endured eight weeks of it... for shame! How dare you yank these kids’ puds like that? You own their lives, they’re less than fodder, if they ever didn’t call you “sir” their ass would be glass in a brig somewhere. If most of them even dreamed they were you they’d wake up as guilted out as if they'd wet the sheets dreaming of poking your wife. They truly KNOW the score, for at least four years you own them — so don’t run ’em messages counter to their LEAST NAIVE instincts. (Are some horrors I’m thinking.)

The rite ends, appropriately enough, with a martial arrangement of the theme from Rocky. Underlings win! Yay yay hey! And you probably thought Rambo was the zenith of Stallone’s military influence.