by W. E. Gutman
“Sorry.”
“I was good enough to enlist, maybe to die for a cause not of my choosing, but I’m not good enough to be an officer, is that what you’re saying?”
“Case closed. That’s an order.”
Democracy is a commodity Americans are eager to export but are loath to cultivate at home.
I would have gladly dipped my tongue in H. L. Mencken’s bile at that moment. Unfortunately, I’d not yet discovered the eminent journalist. Dreamers are never short on hope but every ounce of hope is often dashed by a pound of disappointment. My next setback took place a couple of weeks later, when I opened the official envelope that contained my orders. I’d applied for journalism school at the Great Lakes Naval Base in Illinois. Instead, I was to report on the USS Hornbill, home-based in Charleston, South Carolina, for “general sea duty.” The Hornbill was a wood-hulled coastal minesweeper skippered by a lieutenant junior-grade. A paragon of ambiguity, the term “general sea duty” alludes to miscellany chores, some degrading, others hazardous, all grueling, to be performed above or below deck, in peace and wartime, at sea or in port. My world, for the next several months, would be glimpsed from the cramped and suffocating murkiness of the bilges, which it was my duty to inspect, drain and caulk. I would also minister the bottom of urinals and toilet bowls, and wield a paintbrush in a never-ending war against rust. I would eventually be entrusted with the care and sustenance of a huge coffee urn that the captain ordered “piping hot and ready to pour by no later than oh-four-hundred.” It is at that time that I learned how to nap while on watch, eyes wide open but unseeing, all systems in neutral. I would later refine the technique, this time with my eyes closed, when, unable to find a seat, I had to stand during the long and jarring subway ride between Main Street, Flushing and Grand Central Station.
*
“ … One more day and I’ll be home, honey,
one more day and I’ll be home ba-abe,
one more day and I’ll be home,
drinkin’ beer and pissin’ foam,
honey, oh, baaaby mine.
Go to your left your right your left, go to your left….”
*
At last, boot camp was over. Weeks of grueling physical exertion and pointless instruction earned me two seaman apprentice stripes. I returned to New York on a fourteen-day furlough. A friend offered me a bed in his Greenwich Village apartment. That same night, he introduced me to an attractive Jewish girl from Glens Falls who contributed, in addition to free sex, a raging syphilitic chancre. It took massive doses of penicillin to heal the painful lesion. The incident also helped put a new spin on the ambiguities of sex, which I impetuously forswore and promptly reclaimed when the next opportunity arose.
*
I’d read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Huck Finn as a boy, and studied the rudiments of American history in school but the scenes these works depicted and the lessons they imparted had an academic remoteness about them that denied me the privilege of first-hand experience. It’s one thing to read about intolerance, quite another to see it replayed live in all it ugliness. It was when I landed at the Charleston airport that America put on its vilest visage. I would never forget. I was startled at first, then frightened, then outraged. I’d just alighted in a Kafkaesque realm of incomprehensible madness. Longing for a good piss after the flight, I headed to the men’s room. Two signs greeted me. One read WHITES, the other COLORED. Caucasians went one way, men of color went another. Seized by a brief moment of indecision, I stood there not knowing what to do. Drinking fountains, I noted, were also segregated although, in a twist of irony lost neither on the whites nor the “colored,” they were both fed by the same water supply system.
Two incidents cost me brief periods of detention, first in the city jail then, preceded by a tirade from the captain, in the ship’s brig. Riding for the first time from the base to the USO in downtown Charleston, I casually proceeded to the back of the bus and sat down. Seeing me in his rear-view mirror, the driver brought the vehicle to a screeching halt. He got up, walked to the back of the bus and ordered me to move to the front.
“Why?”
“Do as I say.”
“I’m quite comfortable right here, if you don’t mind.”
“You don’t understand. Nigras ride in the back. White folk ride up front. It’s the law.”
“It’s a stupid law, if you ask me. I’m not budging an inch.”
Black riders around me demurred. Their expressions conveyed a mixture of hesitant esteem and alarm. I was creating a scene into which they were loath to be drawn.
“Please, just move up front. It’s best that way,” pleaded a black man.
“I can’t. If I do that I agree to this madness. I become part of the problem.”
The bus driver summoned a patrolman and had me ejected in handcuffs. I was charged with disorderly conduct and spent two hours in one of the city’s lockups. I was then turned over to the Shore Patrol who escorted me back to my ship.
The second incident was more serious. I was strolling in one of the city’s princely neighborhoods, admiring the handsome antebellum mansions along the way. Hobbling toward me on the narrow sidewalk was an old, portly black woman leaning on a cane. Her gait was unsteady, her stride slow. She seemed out of breath. When I realized that we could not both navigate the sidewalk, I stepped onto the curb to let her pass. I had not gone two paces when a man rushed toward me, spat in my face and barked:
“That’s for letting that nigger woman pass through.”
Overcome with rage, I pounced on the man, punched him several times, breaking his nose and knocking off a couple of his teeth in the process. I would have been charged with aggravated assault had I not successfully argued that I’d had been provoked, spat upon and publicly humiliated for acting with courtesy and compassion toward an elderly person. I was charged with simple battery and remanded to naval authorities. Placed on report, I spent two nights in the brig. Shore leave privileges were suspended for a month. Relieved of watch duty, I spent the next four weeks scrubbing the galley, chipping away at rust, waxing and buffing the lower decks and tending to the latrines. I would later be reminded that if basic human rights in America had been entrusted to a plebiscite, people of color would still be riding in the back of buses, schools and lunch counters would still be segregated, and lynching would still sate the racist hankerings of America’s heartland.
*
For most recruits the first few days in boot camp are mortifying enough without having to justify one’s origins. Being the only Frenchman in a company of small-town bumpkins, backwoods yokels and taciturn blacks from Dixie where the great American sport -- lynching -- was still in vogue, presented some elemental problems. Half of them had never heard of France; the other half gawked at me with suspicion: I was a big-city slicker, no doubt a perfidious Yankee; and I spoke better English than they. We trained and studied as a unit but I pretty much kept to myself. We all completed basic training without incident and we went our separate ways.
On board ship, challenging the young officers’ stereotypical taunts -- “you French surrendered to the Germans without a fight; we had to come and bail you out;” or “you eat frogs and smelly cheese;” or “what did France ever do for us,” was trickier. Enlisted men have to stand at attention, eyes-front and chin out, a bearing that makes intelligible speech problematic. Such invectives begged for a riposte. I didn’t mince my words.
“First of all -- Sir -- if it hadn’t been for France, which went bankrupt to finance your Revolution and help you fight your war of independence while its people were starving to death, you’d all be kowtowing to a monarch. The great French architect l’Enfant would have never designed Washington, DC.; and instead of Bourbon Street and great jazz and Irving Berlin and Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland, you’d be listening to Gilbert and Sullivan; you’d be dining on shepherd’s pie and greasy fish and chips and licking the back of stamps bearing the effigy of a fucking queen. As for our culinary tastes, Sir, pe
ople who switch the fork from the left to the right hand and use the knife like an assault weapon while feasting on opossum, squirrel and rattlesnake are hardly qualified to niggle. Besides ….”
“Dismissed.”
“But….”
“DIS-MISSED, you hear!”
I was about to credit France for the discovery of oxygen, hydrogen and radioactivity, for the invention of the oboe, manned flight, photovoltaics, still photography and moving pictures, for producing fine wines and hundreds of varieties of cheeses, for gifting the world haute couture, perfumes and cosmetics, for drafting and ratifying the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man, for creating the first secular nation under the constitutional separation of church and state… and for devising the metric system. I could have touted the roulette and the periodic table of elements, the modern Olympic Games, beryllium and chromium; pasteurization, neon, the calculator, blood transfusions, cataract surgery, codeine and aspirin, the hypodermic needle and the stethoscope, antibiotics, the taxicab, the steamboat, the hot-air balloon, the internal combustion engine, the helicopter, the sewing machine, the optical telegraph, Braille, dry cell batteries, reinforced concrete, the aqualung, the incubator, ball bearings, the pencil and the gyroscope. But now in contempt of naval authorities and risking yet another night in the brig, I snapped to attention, saluted the officer, did an about-face and walked away muttering loud enough to be heard:
“Champagne, the bayonet, the bikini, the guillotine, the bidet.”
Shore leave was suspended for a week and I was assigned to latrine and KP duty. It was then that I realized that freedom of speech comes with a price.
*
One day a flotilla of French Navy ships entered Charleston harbor during an official visit. One of the ships docked alongside my own. I was elated. I could speak French again and my compatriots delighted in the rich and vulgar Parisian argot I adopted to describe the life of a Frenchman in the U.S. Navy. I befriended several of the deck hands and one night, as I stood watch, I climbed over the railing under the cover of darkness, boarded the French ship and scurried down below. The crew could not have been more accommodating. I was treated to wine, pastries and Gauloises cigarettes whose pungent aroma reminded me of home. Touched by their hospitality and very much in the mood for mischief against my U.S. Navy tormentors, I offered to repay their kindness by escorting a small group to the nearest whorehouse. Mine was a brazen and cunning scheme fraught with risks. The logistics involved in bringing it to fruition called for a flawless strategy. A number of elements -- method, timing and stealth -- had to be fine-tuned. The Charleston red light district was out of bounds to U.S. naval personnel. I could not be seen shepherding French sailors without attracting the attention of the Shore Patrol and getting into more hot water. Also, the sortie could only take place when I was off duty. The answer was obvious. I would borrow a French uniform -- pants, jumper, white tam, blue ribbon and red pompom -- and wear it to go ashore with my companions. I requested and was granted a 24-hour pass. The operation would go without a hitch.
A day later, at dusk, I crossed over onto the French vessel, took off my work denims and put on a French uniform. I remember parading in front of a mirror and laughing like a kid on a joyride. I also liked the way I looked. Once an object of desire, the U.S. Navy livery, compared to the stylish French one, now looked like pajamas.
The French ship was tied alongside my own on its seaward flank. This required that the half-dozen French sailors and I first board my ship to get ashore. To make sure that my own shipmates didn’t recognize me, we ran across the deck in tight formation, babbling in French, and scrambled down the gangplank under the amused gaze of several of my shipmates, some of whom whistled, made frog sounds and engaged in coarse humor.
Once ashore, we all piled into a cab and drove to a nightclub in a restricted black neighborhood. I could hear music and muffled sounds of laughter but the club door was locked and the windows were lined with black crepe on the inside. This reminded me of Paris during the occupation. I knocked at the door. A curtain parted, revealing a black man’s face and, in the background, a smoky purple haze hanging over the dance floor. The man unlocked the door and opened it partly. I offered him my hand. He hesitated but took it.
“What can I do for you?”
“We are with the French Navy. We want to dance and have a good time,” I replied in my best Charles Boyer accent.
“You can’t come in.”
“Why not?”
Still locked in a handshake, he pointed at the difference in skin color between our two clasped hands. “That’s why,” he said without hostility.
“But we’re French. It doesn’t matter to us.”
“You’re not in France. Don’t insist.”
“Look, we’re only here for a short time. We’ve been at sea for over a month. My buddies and I are looking for, uh, how shall I say, a little fun.”
“Sorry, I can’t let you in. We’d get in trouble and so could you. But I tell you what. Go down the street, turn right at the end of the block and count five doors on your left. Ring the bell three times. Tell’em Watson sent you. I think you’ll find what you’re lookin’ for.”
What we were looking for and what we found were worlds apart. A black woman, wilted before her time and thin as a rail, let us in without uttering a word. She took us to a room, past a sitting room in which somnolent adults were sprawled on gutted, dingy sofas and small children with stupefied expressions played on the bare floor. The room was small and dimly lit by a single low-wattage pink bulb that cast a ghostly pallor on the French sailors’ faces. The woman got undressed, stretched on the bed, spit in her fingers, lubricated herself and spread her spindly legs. Acting with gallantry toward my guests (or was it queasiness?) I offered to go last. One by one, lust having subdued the last vestiges of good taste, my French comrades surrendered to the woman’s embrace. They fucked her fast and furious, some from behind, others exacting uncomfortable positions that exhausted her. She winced several times and moaned with visible discomfort.
The enthralling spectacle of chain sex had aroused me. I was sporting a superb erection and I had unfastened the fly in preparation for my own final assault. But when my turn came, I stood there, transfixed by the slime that oozed out of the woman’s vagina. Overcome with nausea, I retched. My hard-on went into an unrecoverable nose-dive. We paid the woman for her trouble and left.
I later returned to the base, using the same stratagem I’d devised to get off, boarding the French vessel, changing into my U.S. Navy work clothes and sneaking back on my ship when no one looked.
*
Several weeks later, I was transferred to an ocean-going minesweeper. The captain, a former “white hat” who’d received his commission during World War II, invited me to the bridge and offered to train me as a quartermaster and pilot. The new assignment, a welcome relief from the drudgery of deck duty, would last less than a month. Trouble had flared up in Lebanon and looming on the horizon was the Sinai Campaign, in which the combined forces of Britain, France and Israel pounced on Egypt in retaliation for that country’s blockade of the Suez Canal. My ship had been summoned and was readying to join the 6th Mediterranean Fleet. I was elated at the prospect of a long sea voyage that would take us to the Azores, Gibraltar, France, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and, possibly, Israel. That was not to be. Inexplicably, I was transferred to the USS New Orleans Parish, a decommissioned LST that had been welded to the pier and served as a floating barracks. A few days later, I learned from one of my former shipmates, a yeoman, that I’d been transferred “because the captain was uncomfortable having a foreign Jew on board during an overseas deployment.” I will never know if I’d been told the truth but, at the time, this outrageous pretext seemed to make sense.
Demoralized, mortified, I went AWOL. After a week of frolic in New York, I surrendered to naval authorities and spent several days in confinement at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I was returned to my ship “on my honor” by Greyhound bus. A
summary court martial resulted in a reduction in rank to seaman recruit. I would engineer my next demotion -- to civilian life -- with a zest overshadowed only by the extreme despondency that sustained it. I began to fake nightmares, during which I would thrash about and scream or sob uncontrollably in the middle of the night. This pantomime lasted several days. Less than a week later, I was taken to the U.S. Naval Hospital’s cuckoo’s nest for observation and placed under the care of a Navy psychiatrist, Dr. Schwartz.
Brief interviews, during which Dr. Schwartz, a consummate Freudian, probed into my life in the womb, infancy and early childhood, were often followed by the all-telling Rorschach inkblot tests. I’d learned from my father many years earlier that a normal response was no response at all, that is, the assorted shapes one is asked to interpret are just that -- shapes, period. I remember telling my father that people who fail to see beyond the symmetry of the inkblots must be dull-witted and unimaginative.
“Isn’t ‘normalcy’ a sign of mental sterility, of a bland intellect,” I asked. My father laughed. “Highly imaginative, highly creative people tend to be regarded as deviant. There’s a pathological aspect to genius absent in ‘normal’ individuals.”
I remembered my father’s words: It would serve my purpose to flaunt the richness of my imagination and feign pathology.
“I see a giant bat, wings poised for attack, swooping down on me.” Or, “two bears stand upright clawing at each other as a cub cowers in fear between them.” Or, “Siamese twins joined by a common penis poke each other’s eyes out with their tails.” Or, “This reminds me of a vagina armed with teeth ready to devour me….”And so on.
I remember Dr. Schwartz looking at me with increased amusement. His eyes seemed to say, “Who do you think you’re fooling?” But he was too smart and tactful to express his skepticism so crassly. Instead, he grabbed my wrists, leaned across the desk until our faces were inches apart and whispered: