1987 Great Lakes (Great Mistakes) RTC
From: Bill In Exile ~ The Boot Camp Graduation Pic
I am the final silence
The last electrician alive
And they called me The Sparkle
I was the best I worked them all
New ways new ways
I dream of wires
Gary Numan ~ I Dream Of Wires
So for Veterans Day I have chosen to remember for you so here is an old post to which I will add a few more facts about myself. It’s one of the first posts where I start REALLY talking about my 10 years in the Navy as a Gay Man. So let’s all celebrate the first Veterans Day without DADT 11-11-11
Since Scott put his up and I recently unearthed the big dusty blast from the past “surprise you still have these” picture box the other day I thought I would share.
There is your blogger looking rather stunning or I mean stunned and sick. Oh boy was I sick! They had run us through our shots and as of this photo I had spent the last oh week or so sick as a dog losing some dramatic weight between the constant workouts, stress and feeling like shit.
I was still offered a choice either Seals or Subs… Me a psychotic Navy Seal following orders without question till death? OH HELL NO Subs it was. I’ll take my chances with claustrophobia and nuclear winter.
If you notice the uniform including the god damn undershirt is way too big for me even though Dress Blues are my favorite Navy uniform with all 13 buttons of fun. So between the two of us Scott looks far better for wear than I do. BUT… I got sent immediately to Sub School in Groton CT (Rotten in Groton) and shot up an automatic rank for making the choice to become a squid Radioman. Then when I graduated what seemed like 2 years later, and maybe it was actually after Radioman School and all, Washington DC handed me another stripe yet again to take on four more years of squidly abuse. I probably could have done yet another auto stripe if I had wanted to once I finally got to the boat since frankly not many guys make it all the way through the whole Sub School “two failed tests in a row in any two weeks for two whole years and you my friend are a full blown automatic unlucky unrated Surface Puke”.
So pay wise I made out like a dog… a seadawg. Oh and yes it is true Sub guys really do get all sorts of great food at least at the beginning of being underway but then we are sitting deep under the water on top of a nuke engine with nuke weapons capabilities so you know there is good news and there is bad news.
Let me just say it was a OOD and a Radioman standing their posts on our sister Sub that were not able to get out in time from the last “bad news” I heard about which you probably never will “hear the real details”. So the “bad news” in US Navy Subs can fucking suck in a “bend over and kiss your ass goodbye” in a Top Secret SpeCat kinda way,
Anyway, this is how I remember seeing my first real sub in 1989…
The USS Seahorse SSN 669 in Charleston SC. I was their Sparky.
Tags: That's Not eBooks
AM Riley wrote,
Dude, you’re a fox!
Link | January 9th, 2011 at 11:32 am
AnneD wrote,
He looks all young and impressionable and stuff… hehehe.
Link | January 9th, 2011 at 11:44 am
TeddyPig wrote,
I was not that young in fact I was second oldest in my unit next to the instructor. I had already been in my first San Francisco gay parade by this point. I went into the military because of the whole AIDS thing was alarming and depressing and I had lost my job because Silicon Valley was in a slump at the time.
So I said to myself let’s do the military thing and see if we like it!
All the kids my unit were, well kids, and I was figuring out how fast I could get to a bar off base and get really drunk by this point. I never did make it to the Leather bars in Chicago though. *sigh*
Link | January 9th, 2011 at 11:48 am
Ally Blue wrote,
OMG my hubby graduated boot camp and hospital corpman training at Great Mistakes in ’87! LOL! Small world *g*
You have a sweet baby face there, Sir Pig. So deceptive.
Link | January 9th, 2011 at 11:52 am
Treva Harte wrote,
We have the photo of the DH’s OCS photo immortalized in a life-size black and white portrait in the living room (which is a long story) even though he never got to OCS (another long story.) However it’s becoming a little scary to look at — you still know it’s him but he looks so damn young and impressionable (he was an old man of 22 or so when he enlisted.)
Very cute one of you. ;)
Link | January 9th, 2011 at 1:11 pm
Treva Harte wrote,
I should edit that first sentence but heck with it.
Link | January 9th, 2011 at 1:14 pm
Erastes wrote,
Hmmm. classic expression – was the photographer a hottie? Looks like your makin’ plans…
Very nice, Mr P.
Link | November 11th, 2011 at 5:29 am
TeddyPig wrote,
Oh I was so so so terribly sick. All I could think about was getting back to bed.
That is actually an unhappy stunned expression.
I was honestly surprised to make it through bootcamp.
Link | November 11th, 2011 at 5:37 am
Amber Green wrote,
My son’s Parris Island altar-sized portrait hangs in the living room. He looks nine years old. I don’t think he’d ever shaved, or needed to.
Someone recently dug up an ROTC snapshot of me, but I don’t have anything from when I enlisted.
Talk about long stories…
Link | November 11th, 2011 at 7:02 am
Lex Valentine wrote,
So handsome! Thank you for your service and happy no more DADT!
Link | November 11th, 2011 at 7:19 am
Merrian wrote,
You look so contained, TP or just holding your tummy in? I look back at my old Army photos and wonder who she was. We served at the same time. I was an Army Signaller and later Officer. As a cypher operator we had a 99% or a 100% pass requirement depending on the exam. My service life was pretty boring.
My brother who served at the same time was a Submariner torpedo/weapons mechanic and later WO. We only have a small submarine squadron and are a long way from anywhere so he spent a lot of time at sea and I would visit him onboard or catch up in the pubs with sticky carpets in Kings Cross or at the tattoo parlour (my first intro to real bikers). His Oberon boat was a ‘stealth boat’ which meant lots of long patrols to distant shores. I remember the victualling with the passage floors layered and stacked with cans of food and a topping of cardboard to walk on and then he would be back skinny and stained with diesel fumes (which only a sauna could get out of their skin) and telling me of three weeks with one meal a day (because the PTB had extended the patrol length); or about locking himself into a compartment with batteries and a sea water flood (which together make chlorine gas) as they fixed the leak and kept the water from the rest of the boat; or the time the bowplanes locked in a nose down position and the uncontrolled dive that followed. There are so many more stories like that and I always think about how this was peace-time service and how the intensity and risk are unknown.
Link | November 11th, 2011 at 10:04 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
You were a Ghost? As a Radioman I worked with several Ghosts in DC later after I became HIV+ they sent me there and I spent time working at a crypto command.
Yeah, those diesel fumes sucked and packing for a long underway and walking on layers of cans on the deck was actually kinda fun. Sounds like he was on what we called a “fast attack” type sub kinda like mine.
Link | November 12th, 2011 at 3:31 am
Merrian wrote,
I have spent a lot of time in basements with vault doors and not being able to talk about anything I ever did.
I always thought of Titch and his mates as adrenaline junkies in a way because there was always risk for them that simply wasn’t there for the surface navy.
Link | November 12th, 2011 at 5:59 am
TeddyPig wrote,
Well subs is sorta like being a Ghost with a danger junky edge to it and some incredibly destructive guns. Same concepts though of being invisible but hearing everything that is going on around you.
Being a Radioman had it’s fun moments I tell you. I know highly qualified women that worked on our sub tenders that literally were begging to work on a sub. I think they are opening it up for them now.
Link | November 12th, 2011 at 6:07 am
Merrian wrote,
Our Collins boats have mixed crews now. When I was serving it was still run as a two separate career paths and sets of opportunities for men and women. I didn’t do weapons training in my recruit course for example. It all changed with the the UN deployments in the 1990′s and of course the whole of the Afghanistan/Iraq being war zones.
Link | November 12th, 2011 at 6:56 pm