Major Conflict

by Jeffrey McGowan, Maj USA (ret. )

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “But you know I’m here for you, right? And it’s getting better, isn’t it?”

  He smiled warmly at me. “Well, as a matter of fact it’s been getting worse. But you’ve been amazing, Jeff, thanks. That’s why it’s so hard for me to say what I’m about to say.”

  My stomach dropped. I felt my forehead getting hot.

  “Jeff, I don’t want to lose my career. I can’t lose it. It’s all I have. I really think my boss has moved into high gear and is looking to fuck me over real good. I don’t want go to work every day feeling like I’ve got a target on my back. I don’t want to read about myself on the walls of the men’s room. I’ve come so far, and I don’t want to do anything else now except be a soldier. So . . . I’ve decided . . . to get married.”

  I was thunderstruck. I felt nothing, or maybe everything all at once. For a moment I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. I hoped I’d heard him wrong. I just stared at him with my mouth slightly open.

  “Jeff, are you all right? Did you hear what I said?”

  “I heard you.” Words were coming out of my mouth. Three words strung together—subject, verb, pronoun—a rational sentence. And then another sentence came out, “Who do you want to marry?”

  “I’ve been talking to Margaret—my old girlfriend from back home? We were serious for a long time, and I know it could work with her.”

  I was stunned, and now silent. I stared at him, the hurt turning to anger, then back to confusion, then hurt again. I was shocked, pissed, deeply wounded, and finally all these words just came rushing out of me.

  “I don’t know what to say. I’m really confused, Paul. How could I have misread this so completely? How could you do this to me? I mean, you’re attracted to men, right? I mean, you don’t like women, right? You said you haven’t slept with a woman since college. I just can’t believe this is happening. And just how’s it going to work? Explain it to me, Paul. Explain it to me! You were lying to me, weren’t you? You were lying the whole time. Is it me and you just don’t want to hurt my feelings? I mean, I’m an adult, I can handle that you might want to move on. I can handle that probably better than this fake marriage shit.”

  “No, no, no. Please, Jeff, I wasn’t lying, believe me. And no, it isn’t because I want to break up with you. I don’t want to break up with you. I have to break up with you. I don’t have a choice. I want to be able to finish my career, and this asshole is hunting me. I have do this in order to survive. I am gonna do this with her; I’m going to marry Margaret because she’s my best friend and, uh . . . as for the sex . . . we’ve had sex before. It’s not like I can’t . . . you know, do it.”

  “That’s just ridiculous. Let me get this right, your unit thinks you’re gay, and marrying someone is going to solve it? What about Margaret and her feelings? Isn’t marriage supposed to be until death do you part? One OER [officer evaluation report] is not going to destroy your career. I think you’re a fucking hypocrite, Paul, that’s what I think. There has to be something you’re not telling me. Did you get caught in the act?” I heard echoes of Greg in my voice here, felt that hard, spring rain on Lexington Avenue, saw Greg on the steps of the Citicorp Plaza, the fountain splashing hard in the downpour, his arms up in the air; it was me now, that was me now. He’d been right, after all. I wouldn’t stay dry forever, and now I was drenched straight through, I was soaking-wet angry and hurt and lost, losing the most important person in my life. But I wouldn’t appreciate the tremendous irony of the situation until later on when it occurred to me how decently Paul had treated me compared to the way I’d treated Greg a decade before.

  “Jeff, I mean . . . listen, I know you’re hurt, but come on. And no, I didn’t get caught. I wouldn’t do that to you. You know I wouldn’t do that to you. Besides, they would’ve booted me instantly. Please, Jeff, I’m trying to make you understand. It’s about my career. I have a good shot at going to CGSC first look. I’m not gonna lose that.”

  I couldn’t look at him now.

  “Listen, Jeff, would you look at me. Jeff, look at me. It’s not like we can get married or anything, you know. Can’t you see it in the long term? Can’t you see what I’m doing? I’m going to be leaving soon and what then? Who knows if we would ever get an assignment together again. It was going to have to end sometime. You knew that; didn’t you know that?”

  I forced myself to look at him now. “I kind of thought it would end when we stopped caring about each other,” I said, my voice cracking a little, but I pulled myself together. “But I guess that’s not what you had in mind. Now,” I said, “let us summarize, shall we? This is your plan: you’re going to discard a good relationship, the best relationship you ever had, you once told me, so that you can use and deceive a long-time friend in order to get to CGSC [Command and General Staff College]? That’s pretty fuckin’ ruthless. And for what? To run out the clock and get a shitty government pension? I can’t believe you think this is right. I don’t believe you think it’s right. I felt like I knew you up until this moment. Now it feels like I don’t know you at all.”

  “Jeff, I know you’re hurt.”

  “Just be quiet for a minute, you. I am hurt, you’re right. I am. I had hoped that things could . . . continue between us. I mean I really . . . care for you.” Now I felt tears beginning to well up, but I shut them down out of sheer resentment.

  “You’re missing the real point here, though, Paul,” I said. “I’ll get over this, eventually. But you go through with this decision, and you’ll never get over it. You’ll have to live with it for the rest of your life. Are you prepared to do that? It’s you I’m worried about, not me. I’m worried about you making a really bad decision. Think about it. What are you going to do? Imagine your daily life. How are you going to arrange it? Just have affairs to satisfy yourself? I know you know that’s fucked up. But shit, listen, I need to go. I have to get out of here.” I stood up abruptly and started walking away.

  “How are you going to get home? I drove, remember?” he shouted.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I yelled back, spinning quickly through the revolving doors and out to the parking lot.

  I walked the five miles home that night, on the shoulder of the highway, never once breaking my stride, walking as if I could walk away from the pain. I cried most of the way. When I wasn’t crying, I was thinking how absurd the situation was, and how unfair. All of this heartbreak just because my boyfriend was seen coming out of a gay bar? Was that really the whole story? Amazing. And so royally fucked up. I couldn’t get over it. Paul had committed no crime. He’d hurt no one, hadn’t damaged any property; he’d done nothing, in fact, but be seen coming out of a bar. And because of that I was losing him.

  When I got home there was a message from Paul.

  “Jeff, I’m worried about you. Please call me when you get in.”

  “Fuck you,” I yelled, smacking the delete button hard.

  I ignored his messages over the next couple of days. On the third day, he came by the office, but I was out. That night my doorbell rang, and I knew it was him. I decided that avoiding him was not going to solve anything, plus I’d begun to miss him already.

  “Jeez, Jeff,” he said, as I opened the door and he walked into the apartment. “Where have you been? Didn’t you get my messages? Or were you just not returning my calls?”

  “I got ’em.”

  “Sooo . . . what’s going on?”

  “Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? I’m hurt, and I need to be alone. I mean the whole situation is fucked. I keep asking myself why I’m in the army, if this is what I have to deal with. I have to tell you, Paul, what you’re doing is just stupid. And I really think I’d feel the same way even if I wasn’t so personally invested in the whole thing. I’ve been thinking real hard about this, and I know I can’t change who I am, but this? What you’re doing is not the answer.”

  “Jeff, all I want to do is survive. I mean, it’s hard to find a job when you’re more senior. You’re l
ess marketable. I want my pension, shitty as it might be. I love what I do . . . and really, come on, who’s kidding who here? You see how they live in the civilian world; you’re not like them, neither am I. We’re not really gay. I mean I’m not into Donna Summer and the club scene. All they’re into is decorating, drugs, and sex. Trivial shit, and I’m not trivial, and neither are you. We’ll never fit in.”

  “Listen, I have one question for you,” I said, ignoring his goofy analysis of contemporary gay culture and our place, or lack thereof, in it. Later I’d realize that up until just about the moment the words came out of his mouth, I’d felt exactly the same way, but hearing them, and feeling what I was feeling now, I knew that whole way of seeing was wrong; it was like staring at one very narrow slice of a huge canvas.

  “If this hadn’t happened, would we be doing this right now?” I asked him. “Why do you have to do this to me in order to survive? Why do you have to lie in such a big way? I mean, I just can’t get over how fucked up it is.”

  “Jeff . . . I . . .”

  “Answer the question,” I snapped. My voice rose. I was almost shouting at him. “Would we be doing this if your boss hadn’t found out?”

  “No, no, I don’t think so,” he said, sighing.

  I thought this would come as a relief, but I actually found myself growing angrier, getting more frustrated, because, as hurtful as it was, a personal rejection of me was at least comprehensible. But this made no sense to me.

  “So then why are we doing this? Really, why are you doing it to me? For months we’ve been going out and acting like a couple . . . and it was so fucking great. I can’t believe that means nothing. That you weren’t feeling the same things I was. I saw your face, I heard what you said, I felt your body. I can’t believe that was a complete lie or that I’m just an idiot.”

  “Where is this coming from? I’ve never seen you so angry.”

  “No, don’t try to change the subject; respond to what I just said. Is what we were doing a lie? Was I wrong about the signals?”

  “No, I loved every minute I’ve ever spent with you. I just think this is the right thing to do. Jeff, I don’t know what to say. Do you think I want to do this? I don’t. I mean, I just don’t see what choice I have. It’s the only way to stop the bullshit that’s going on. Besides I want a family and kids. How can I have that with you? I mean, there are a lot of issues here.”

  He was right on that point, I thought. How could we have kids? How could we carry on a relationship past one tour of duty with any certainty? Why did it have to be this way? It didn’t. The problem was the army, not me. The problem was the policy, not me, not Paul, not all the Donna Summer–loving gay-priders in their muscle tees marching down Fifth Avenue on the last Sunday in June every year. It was them, the military, not me, not us. Either the army was going to have to change, or I was going to leave the army.

  “So why the hell did you drag me into this?” I said. “You came after me, remember? What did you think was going to happen? You said you don’t like women, so what are you gonna do? Just have affairs, keep some guy on the side, get blow jobs in a booth somewhere? Is that the kind of life you want?”

  “Well, I’ve heard of people getting married and leading separate lives.” He was defensive now.

  I laughed out loud. “What? Have you lost your mind? Oh, Paul, I just don’t want to see you unhappy. What about Margaret? Have you already proposed?”

  “No, not yet, but I know she’ll say yes. We almost got married before. But seriously, Jeff, I’ve heard of a lot of people like us, who marry in the services to protect each other and get the benefits. It’s not that weird.”

  “Oh, that’s priceless, just priceless. Let me cut you off right there. I can’t do this. Why would I want to do this?”

  “So you can have everything you want in life. That’s what I’m thinking. I want a family, I want to continue to serve, and I want men. Why can’t I have all three? I think I can make it work this way.”

  “You just really don’t get how pathetic that sounds, do you?”

  “So what do you recommend?” he said, pissed now, and exasperated. “You tell me, almighty McGowan, what you think I should do.”

  “Look, it’s your life. I can’t answer that for you. I can’t tell you how to live your life. All I know is that we were doing just fine until you got caught, and now you’ve just gone totally off the deep end. Do you realize just how complicated that life will become, how deceitful, how lies beget lies beget lies? I think you’re lying to yourself right now. You’ve already told yourself the first lie—that you can actually pull this off and be happy.”

  There was a long silence as we stared at each other, standing on the exact spot where we’d made love so frantically that first night several months before.

  “My decision is made.” He said it simply, although there was a slight hint of regret in his tone, one quiet note that seemed to be asking for my permission and maybe forgiveness.

  “Okay, then,” I said, giving it to him, apparently.

  With that he got up and walked out. And as I watched him go I felt, for the first time in my life, as if I had more in common with the dancing, shirtless, gay-prider than with the closeted gay U.S. Army captain who’d just walked out of my life for good.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Bob in a Black Velvet Dress

  The weeks following the scene with Paul at Chili’s were demoralizing, to say the least. I’m not one prone to depression, or even bad moods, really. And I’m not one who generally gets bogged down in any kind of existential speculation, but now I was feeling as if all the meaning had been drained from my life. I simply went about my business, doing everything on autopilot, feeling the whole time as if I had lead weights attached to my legs. As it turned out, Paul hadn’t walked out of my life entirely on that day in my apartment. He called several times over the next few weeks, to try to convince me that what he was doing made sense, and to let me know how much he missed me. It was difficult, hearing that, since I missed him terribly, too, so much so that there were times when I almost convinced myself that we could make it work, but then I’d come to my senses and do my best to get off the phone as quickly as possible. Eventually, he stopped calling. The last I heard from him was the wedding invitation I received a few months later. I didn’t attend the wedding.

  During this time I was sitting in one of the interminable battalion meetings we had to attend all too frequently. My portion of the briefings wasn’t until the end, so I would often let my mind wander, thinking ahead to a practical joke we were planning for one of our colleagues who would soon be leaving to assume command. It was something stupid and fun that helped me keep my mind off Paul.

  The captain leaving was a great guy and a talented officer. At one point, when he was younger, he’d been heavily into bodybuilding. For some reason there were a lot of photos of him from those days floating around the post. One of his office mates got hold of one of them—a very unflattering shot of him posing in a really tight Speedo. We’d decided to make a bunch of T-shirts with the photo on them and all show up at his send-off party wearing one. I was chuckling to myself in the meeting, imagining the look on the guy’s face when he saw the T-shirts, when a soldier poked his head into the room and motioned for me to come out. I quietly excused myself and went to see what he wanted.

  “Sir . . . you have a call,” he said, looking a little nervous.

  “Couldn’t you take a message? I’m in the middle of a meeting here,” I said peevishly.

  He looked at me squarely. “Sir, you need to take this call.”

  That was convincing enough. The guy had spooked me. I hurried to the phone.

  “Hello, Captain McGowan, how may I help you?”

  “Jeffrey? Jeffrey, is that you?” a voice, thick with a Scottish brogue, came at me through the receiver. It was Mrs. Gaffney, the wife of the superintendent of my grandmother’s building in Jackson Heights.

  “Mrs. Gaffney, hello, how are y
ou?” I said, cheering up at the sound of the familiar voice, but then checking myself, realizing how strange it was for her to be calling me.

  “Jeffrey, you need to come home immediately. Your grandmother passed away last night. I am so sorry I had to tell you that.”

  My mind went blank. I was stunned, speechless. I froze up.

  “Sir, are you all right?” the soldier said. “Can I get you anything?”

  “No, no. Can you give me a minute?”

  He walked out quietly, and I closed the door behind him.

  Suddenly Mrs. Gaffney’s voice came back into focus.

  “Jeffrey, are you there? Jeff? Hello?”

  “I’m here Mrs. G. What happened?”

  “She died in her sleep.”

  “I’ll be home as soon as I can. Thanks, Mrs. Gaffney,” and I gently placed the phone back onto its cradle.

  I just stood there for a few minutes, frozen in place, listening to the room breathe, as it were. I knew that once I allowed myself to feel this wholly, I’d be a mess, and I still had my presentation to do, so I pulled myself together and returned to the meeting. Though I thought I had it under control, it must’ve been written all over my face, judging from the way everyone looked at me when I walked back into the room. Taking my seat again, I tried to ignore the looks and to lighten, or at least neutralize, the expression on my own face. I sat and stared straight ahead, until it was time to do my presentation, which I did mechanically, with a forced smile plastered across my face the whole time. At the end I made a lame attempt at a joke, and the men laughed politely. I couldn’t bear it another moment.

  “Excuse me,” I said, and I fled the room, going straight to my battalion commander’s office around the corner.

  “Sir, may I see you?”

  “Sure S-Four, what can I do you for?” he said affably.

  “My grandmother just died, sir. She raised me like her own son. I need to go home as soon as possible.”