Don't Ask - the story of America's first openly gay Marine. Read online

  Don’t Ask Copyright 2010 by B. K. Dell

  www.BKDell.com

  Published by Patriot Books at Smashwords

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Cover art Copyright 2010 by B. K. Dell

  Paperback and audio book versions of this title are available.

  For information please visit www.BKDell.com

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  This novel is dedicated to my beautiful wife Eleasha, the precious gift that God chose for me.

  This novel is also dedicated to all the men and women who have ever served in the United States Armed Forces. Your commitment, bravery, and sacrifice have helped make America the greatest country in the world. God Bless you!

  Author’s Notes:

  This novel does not contain any swear words. I am proud to make that statement and admit it was not an easy task considering that the main characters are Marines! However, I have included the worst epithet against homosexuals – known as the other F-word – a total of three times. Due to the seriousness of the topic, I decided that to leave it out would whitewash the reality and detract from the sincerity of the novel.

  The Eleasha Postscript is an additional postscript I add to each of my novels specifically for my loving wife and her kind heart. It is a happy ending – if not Pollyannaish and absurd – tailored specifically for her, though I hope everyone will enjoy it.

  ~B.K. Dell

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  Don’t Ask by B.K.Dell

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I never asked you to be a hero, Caleb.” Stacy reached for Caleb’s hand, but Caleb pulled away. “To me, you are already a hero. You’re a hero just because of the way you smile. You’re a hero to me just the way you are.” Stacy spoke these heartrending words with more sincerity than Caleb had ever heard.

  But Caleb knew it was an act. The words were meant to serve as an apology for Stacy’s mere presence in California.

  “What are you doing here?” Caleb asked with a coldness that indicated the apology was not accepted.

  Stacy’s eyes were pleading and desperate, “I don’t want you to go.”

  “You’re too late. I took the oath in Texas.”

  “No one trusts an oath taken in Texas!” Stacy was trying to be charming.

  “I do.” Caleb was not buying it.

  “They’re going to be so awful to you,” Stacy moaned, frustrated by the fact that no scheme could penetrate Caleb’s stoic demeanor.

  “That’s just what men do,” Caleb said dismissively.

  “Not all men. Not real men.”

  “We are talking about real men,” snapped Caleb. “We’re talking about the best men in the world.”

  Stacy’s lips pursed into a sanctimonious smirk and Caleb turned his face away. He watched a bus at the other end of the parking lot as it pulled up to the front of the San Diego USO. Above the windshield, the bus had an unassuming sign that read “United States Marine Corps.” Something about just seeing those words sparked memories in Caleb that he had always tried to keep repressed.

  Stacy noticed how distant Caleb had suddenly become and correctly guessed that, under the circumstances, Caleb’s thoughts had turned to his father. “What are you thinking about?” Stacy asked anyway.

  Caleb turned his eyes away from the sign, shook his head somberly, and said, “Don’t ask.”

  “Well, I guess you already know what to expect,” Stacy said derisively.

  “I don’t think any of us know what to expect from this,” mumbled Caleb. Stacy knew him well enough to detect the fear that he tried to hide in his voice.

  There was an empty silence between the two of them, but it was broken when they heard the sounds of the bus engine shutting down. Soon that bus would take Caleb away.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” Stacy grabbed his wrist with both hands. Dropping down to both knees, like a child’s tantrum in a department store, Stacy became a shackle of dead weight attached to Caleb’s arm. As he tried ineffectively to struggle from Stacy’s grip, he looked at the glass face of the USO building, curious to see if any of the men inside might be watching such a mortifying episode. The reflection of the low clouds over the horizon behind him was all he could see.

  “Do you have any idea what kind of scene you are making?” Caleb grumbled.

  “I don’t care. I love you. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.”

  “My country needs me.”

  “I need you.”

  Caleb decided he’d had enough of this drama and hoisted Stacy up off the ground. He wrenched his own hand free and said, “I have to do this.”

  “Why?”

  Caleb looked at Stacy and smiled, sad and sweet. This was a conversation they’d already had. “How can I get you to understand? This isn’t a choice. It’s part of who I am. I have always been a Marine. I know that now.”

  Stacy gave the same smirk from before. It was the same condescending reaction that Stacy gave every time Caleb praised the military.

  Over Caleb’s shoulder, Stacy noticed the sea of anxious reporters forming at the far end of the parking lot. They, like mold, seemed to have materialized out of nothing. Stacy wasn’t certain whether the dark cloud above them had been there before they showed up, or not.

  Caleb hadn’t yet noticed the reporters; his eyes were glued to Stacy’s face. He knew that the next thirteen weeks were going to be a non-stop series of moments that he just had to merely survive. The first of such moments had been his and Stacy’s tearful goodbye in Texas. Now Stacy had shown up in California to put him through it all over again.

  The press shuffled through the parking lot aimlessly and seemed to be waiting for something. They had been called to get a story, but couldn’t identify their subjects. Their faces were all like children playing a game, waiting for a voice to guide them, “Warmer…warmer…You’re getting hot…hotter…” Caleb still had not noticed this camera wielding mob, but he did notice a peculiar mix of guilt and pride in Stacy’s eyes.

  “Don’t be mad at me,” Stacy told him. Stacy’s voice was breathy and earnest. It was the first genuine emotion that Caleb had heard so far, only he didn’t understand what Stacy meant. The reporters drew closer and began to focus in on Stacy who, knowing they were watching, pulled Caleb in for an awkward kiss. This told the reporters everything they needed to know. No longer confused, they advanced like well trained mercenaries. A single flash, like lightning from an approaching storm, like the first shot of a long and protracted war, turned Caleb’s head toward the incoming enemy formation. It took only the length of that flash for Caleb to figure out what was happening, what Stacy had meant, and that the kiss was a betrayal.

  “What did you do, Stacy?” he asked as the maelstrom of flashes increased in intensity and the voices of the reporters were becoming audible.

  “I’m sorry,” Stacy said softly and quickly, fearing that this was the last verbal exchange they could make that would not be picked up by the mob’s hungry microphones. “I know that you were not doing this for attention. I know you said you were not doing this for the cause, but that is not your decision to make. The cause does not belong to you. The cause is bigger than you.” Stacy tried desperately to give his most charming smile. He nudged Caleb and added, “C’mon, just once, don’t you want to stick it to those bigots?”

  Caleb narrowed his eyes in revulsion. He turned and watched the photographers spread out to catch a bett
er shot of him, while the advancing reporters fought for elbow room in a tight circle around him. He wished he could find someplace to hide. “What have you done?” he whispered, morose.

  They assailed him with a din of questions, each lobbed in like mortar fire. They asked, “What made you decide to enlist?” and, “Has someone put you up to this?” He thought he actually heard one reporter ask, “Do you have a death wish?”

  Finally, he heard a question about which he had something to say, “How does it feel to be America’s first openly gay Marine?”

  “I am not a Marine, yet,” said Caleb.

  “What would you like to accomplish for your cause?” another reporter asked.

  Caleb thought about this for a second. Different approaches on how to answer such a question hit him as quickly as the flash bulbs. He said, “For my cause, I would like to kill as many Taliban members as possible.”

  This answer produced a noticeable pause from the stunned reporters, a small hiccup in their aggressive professionalism. A bemused reporter asked, “How does that help homosexuals?”

  “Well, I think we’d be safer from terrorism, don’t you?”

  The pace of the camera flashes slowed like the heart monitor of a patient slipping away. The weight of the microphones seemed to increase as the arms carrying them lowered in heavy disappointment. Caleb could see that an excitement had left their faces. “What statement are you making by joining?” another reporter asked.

  “None,” Caleb said simply.

  “Are you worried about boot camp?”

  “I’m going to war,” Caleb said pointedly, “boot camp is the least of my problems.”

  “How do you think you will be received?”

  “I think they are going to try to kill me,” Caleb laughed, but only at the ridiculousness of the question.

  To his surprise, the entire gaggle of press laughed too. “I meant your fellow Marines,” the reporter corrected.

  “So did I!” Caleb said hastily.

  It wasn’t true; Caleb actually had thought it was a question about the terrorists. It was his dark sense of humor that had placed the quick joke so readily at his disposal. What better than to joke about his fear? he thought. However, the reporters’ gleeful reactions made him instantly regret having said it. Their obsequious laughter bothered him. Caleb didn’t want to play the role into which they were trying so desperately to cast him.

  “Listen,” Caleb was quick to add, “I am no better than any man who is serving or has ever served his country. In fact, they are far better than me. There is not a man in uniform who I don’t intend to learn something from. And I want to learn two things: how to better help the war effort and how not to die!” He looked over the sad faces and insisted, “I am no different than any man here; wasn’t that once what the cause was about – to not be seen as different? I don’t want to be looked at as just a gay man. I want to be looked at as a Marine. And if you don’t mind, I have a bus to catch.”

  As the crowd of reporters started to clear a path for Caleb, he saw some young men walking out of the USO center. Because of how shockingly young they looked, it took Caleb a second to realize they were new recruits, future Marines, like he was. They were beginning to board the bus and Caleb feared that the unexpected media ambush had made him late. The recruits kept their distance from the press – as did the Marine personnel – but as Caleb began to make his way to the bus, he could feel them all staring intensely at him. At that moment, he longed for the days of being completely invisible.

  With every step Caleb took, Stacy stayed glued to his side. Caleb felt certain Stacy was playing the dutiful boyfriend only for the sake of the cameras, so he veered his stride away from him as they walked. Noticing Caleb’s retreating body language, Stacy moved even closer into his personal space, which – like a magnet with the same charge – caused Caleb to veer farther away. Finally, knowing the eyes of the recruits were on them and, via news cameras, the eyes of the whole world, Stacy abruptly reached out to hold Caleb’s hand. To Caleb, it felt like the hand of a stranger. It felt like an unexpected and inappropriate advance from a co-worker or neighbor. The repercussions of angrily pulling his hand away in front of everyone filled Caleb’s mind and he steeled his will against the urge to do so. The last thing he needed was that footage looped and analyzed by the talking heads on cable news, or it going viral on YouTube.

  Most of the photographers were positioned to get a wide shot of Caleb and Stacy’s affection with the Marine bus as a backdrop. The reporters had all fallen back to stay out of the shot. Only one reporter, from a small local paper out of Ramona, California, shadowed their advance a few yards to their right. Caleb stopped short on the way to the bus with the intention of giving Stacy a truncated, half-hearted goodbye. Sensing this, Stacy grabbed him and kissed him hard on the lips. Caleb winced like he had just bitten into a lemon and he resisted the compulsion to wipe his lips on his own sleeve.

  Stacy laced his fingers behind Caleb’s back. Caleb was pulling away as far as he could without causing a scene and without actually beating Stacy off of him. Holding Caleb close this way, Stacy took one second to peruse the motley group of recruits. Caleb could see the lines of his eyebrows tighten as what had been Stacy’s general dislike for the military quickly ripened into raw hatred. One man in particular caught Stacy’s eye and he disgustedly turned back to Caleb, “Do me a favor and watch out for that one.”

  Caleb wanted to put Stacy’s duplicity with the press out of his mind. In his last chance to see Stacy in a long time, he tried to remember what he had once loved about him. In this spirit, Caleb gave Stacy the benefit of the doubt and convinced himself that Stacy really was concerned for his wellbeing.

  “Which one?” he innocently asked.

  “That ugly redneck with the big gaudy cross around his neck.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  By the time Caleb made it to the bus, most of the other men had already boarded. The recruiter, tight lipped, marked Caleb’s name off the roll call that he had missed. The recruiter did not need to ask his name; he knew who Caleb was. And Caleb did not have to guess what the recruiter’s expression meant. He had seen the same expression on bullies in school, a look that said, “The teacher may be watching us now, but school gets out at three o’clock.” Caleb walked by with his head down.

  As he walked down the aisle of the bus, every eye was on him. His sheer nervousness caused him to trip over his own two feet, but luckily he was able to convert the stumble into a cool gangsta’ limp. Caleb felt that this recovery was quite masterful, considering the situation. He gave himself extra points for not looking back at the ground behind him like most people do when they trip.

  Caleb was anxious to not be the only man standing, but every time he approached an open spot, the man sitting on that bench would slide over toward the aisle, hampering any chance for Caleb to sit down. Finally, he found one seat that no one tried to block. He made a motion to lower himself next to the man in that seat, but stopped when he noticed what the man looked like. The man wore faded blue jeans and a worn out plaid shirt. His hair was a mess, in a style of disarray that may have been intentional, and was the exact color of brown that made it always look dirty. He had a big silver cross hanging around his neck. This must be the redneck, Caleb thought. Remembering Stacy’s words, he turned back to the aisle and kept walking. The last row of the bus had a full bench open and Caleb took it.

  To Caleb’s relief, he wasn’t the last one to board. There were some stragglers who stepped onto the bus after Caleb sat down. Caleb heard the last man call out his name for the roll call, “Terrence Brown, sir,” before he leaped up the stairs and rushed down the aisle. Terrence was halfway to the back of the bus when he noticed that the only seat still open was the one next to Caleb. Terrence took one look at Caleb and paused. Caleb smiled and gave a meek little wave. His expression was begging for acceptance, like the oldest dog at an over-crowded pound. Terrence recognized him from the scene in the parking lot. He
turned to check his options again and could hear a few of the recruits snickering about his predicament. Finally, he turned to the man on the outside of the bench in front of him and muttered, “Scoot over,” then slid half his buttocks onto the edge of the bus bench, now containing three grown men.

  The old bus door slamming shut sounded like a bone breaking, and the force at Caleb’s back as the bus lurched forward felt strangely foreboding. The colors of the bus – as well as the people on it – were muted, with threadbare flannel and coarse denim. Caleb got the feeling that if he slapped any surface, a puff of dust would be released into the air and dance in the sun rays. The window made a rattling sound right next to Caleb’s ear. As they pulled out of the parking lot, Caleb noticed every head on the bus taking turns swiveling around to look at him. Every time Caleb caught someone staring at him, the person would look away. Every time that one man would lean in and whisper something to another, Caleb would assume it was a comment about him. Every time someone laughed, Caleb assumed that a joke had just been made at his expense.

  Caleb had already created mocking names in his head for most of the men: Chili Bowl, Ponytail, Mullet, and of course Fundamentalist – the redneck. When he noticed what his wandering mind had done, he immediately reproached himself. You’ve been hanging around Stacy for too long, Caleb thought. He had come here to serve with these men, bleed with them, and perhaps die with them. I do not and will not hate them, even if they are so anxious to hate me.

  Only one man continued to stare straight at him even after Caleb stared back. Buzz Cut. Caleb’s eyes held his, but Buzz Cut refused to look away. He was thick-necked with bold features. His hair was shaved so close to his head that he wouldn’t need to see the barber when they reached the MCRD. His eyes were brown, his eyebrows were thick and dark, and his jaw was square. He wore a faded blue tank-top that displayed his bulging muscles. On his left arm was a tattoo of the American flag. He’s the type of guy Stacy would hate to talk to but love to look at, thought Caleb. Just another corn-fed boy from the South. Buzz Cut looked like he was born to be a Marine. He probably came out of the womb with that flag tattoo already on his arm.