Setting note:
I was in the US Navy before DADT was implemented. Samuel and I weren't paranoid, there was actual imprisonment on the table if one was caught being gay. I subscribe to the belief that it is no crime to break an unjust law, but the military doesn't exactly share that view. I didn't realize my sexuality until after I'd enlisted, and the choice I made was to stay for my enlistment rather than taking an Other Than Honorable discharge.
Samuel was problematic for me. We were classmates and roommates for about six months during Navy "A" school, which meant we were together nearly every waking minute, seven days a week. And he drove me absolutely nuts.
Not because of any personal failings. Far from it, he was awesome. Generous, kind, deliberately inclusive, funny as all hell, open and sincere when the occasion warranted, competitive in the best of ways, largely unaffected by other people's bullshit, he was then and is now one of the best people I've ever known.
And God knows his appearance didn't hurt anything. He was, in a word, gorgeous. About 6'3" and something over 200lbs of ripped muscle, with dark, dark skin and a face so pretty you could lose your train of thought just looking at him, he made most of the girls and no few of the boys swoon. Which probably clues you in as to why he was problematic for me.
I'd resolved to pay the price for not realizing I was queer until after I'd enlisted by being a monk, at least until I was in the Fleet- this was before even DADT, mind you, much less acceptance- and here I was spending hours in a tiny little room with a walking reminder of how much I'd rather be exploring my suddenly-awakened sexuality.
Sam and I got along from the start. Couple of good natured jock wiseasses with similar attitudes about people and the daily grind of life in the service and just the world in general. By the end of our first week knowing each other we were tag-teaming the humor in and out of class. Our trash talk on the basketball court drew spectators.
And our one-upmanship quickly took on a life of its own. We were both in great shape, even for being in the military, and we both liked to show it off when occasion presented. Which brings us to the beginning of our story.
One day I came back to the barracks as a working party was going on, maybe twenty men and women out doing general maintenance and cleanup of the complex, and the first thing I saw was that Sam had stripped off his dungaree shirt to work in a tank top.
"Look at this clown," I said to one of the girls in our class. "Gotta get all the attention all the fucking time."
"I don't mind," she said with a laugh.
"Watch me piss him off," I said. She laughed again when I peeled off both dungaree shirt and t-shirt, joining in the work with my chest bare. Sam affected a sneer when he saw me.
"Man," he said, "look at this fuckin'..."
"S'up?" I said, grinning at him.
"Alright, bitch," he said. "You don't even want to start."
"S'up?" I said again. He laughed and headed into the barracks. By the time he came out most of the working party had caught on that something was up, and everyone laughed uproariously when they saw that he'd lost the wife-beater and put on a pair of running shorts. Mind you, this was before Jordan popularized the baggy look, our issue shorts were nuthuggers. Sam was bare skin from the waist up and from his upper thighs to his boots.
"Oh, come on," I said. "Boondockers? And black socks? With running shorts? I win on your bad taste."
"It's a working party, son," he said. "We wear boots to work in this man's Navy. I'm only out of uniform if the Chief says I am."
We looked at our boss, Chief Duncan, who was watching in benign amusement.
"Hey," he said with a shrug. "This ain't a parade. I seen motherfuckers work in their boxers in the tropics."
"Yeah, okay," I said. The laughter was even more uproarious when I stepped out of my half-laced boots, pulled off my pants, slipped my feet back into my boondockers, and went to work wearing only my issue white boxers.
"I like this game," said Susan, the girl I'd spoken to. "Look at all the abs."
Sam laughed with everyone else. He grinned at me for a long minute, then reached for the waistband of his shorts.
"Don't count," I said. "Unless you finish the working party."
"Shit," he said, still grinning. He stood indecisively for a minute, but when I started to raise my arms in triumph it was too much. Off came the shorts, revealing a nice crisp pair of tighty-whities. The laughter was riotous, with guys turning their heads and even running away around the building.
We looked at each other a minute, both smiling broadly, then I shrugged.
"Tie?" I said. "It's all underwear. And you don't want to dare me."
"You wouldn't," he said.
"Sam," I said, "I would spend the night naked in the lounge on a dare."
"Fuck it," Sam said, reaching for his waistband. I reached too, but the Chief interrupted.
"Nope," he said quickly. "Nope, nope, nope. I call it a tie. Shorts stay on. Idiots. Finish my deck and get your asses to your homework."
It was only when the laughter had died and we were actually working that the oddness really struck me. I was in my underwear, in the center of a five-barracks complex that housed hundreds of students, sweeping the concrete. With seemingly half the Navy hanging out the windows to watch and laugh. The Chief was right, we were idiots. I made that point to Sam when we finally got to our room.
"Yeah," he said, grinning ear-to-ear as he opened the door. "Can't even deny."
"Can't deny what, Booter?" said Jeff, our senior roommate. "A" School isn't like a frat, there's not a strict hierarchy, but when guys straight out of boot camp are roomed with guys who are near the end of the curriculum seniority does lend some authority.
Our situation was a little odd because I was actually a Fireman, an E3, for having some college credit. Meaning that I technically outranked both Jeff and our fourth roommate, Scott. They were a couple of assholes, but the dynamic had settled into a kind of détente. They didn't try to make us do their laundry or make their beds or any shit like that, and we accepted polishing the floor and cleaning the window and other little things. And them calling us "Booter," which was especially silly given that they were a whopping ten months further from boot camp than we were. Combined.
The only real annoyance was the bunk bed. The way our four-person rooms were set up was normally four single beds, with a desk and a wide wall-locker for each person. The desks had cabinet tops that made them about six feet tall, and normal practice was to put the heads of the beds along one wall and the lockers opposite them, with the desks between the beds to form kind of a bay or cubicle, thus allowing each person a little privacy. It was tight quarters and you had to sit on the edge of the bed to use the desk the way it was intended, but the privacy was more than worth it.
Unfortunately for us, Jeff and Scott had been in the room by themselves for a few weeks before we'd gotten there, and they'd managed to swap out two of the single beds for the bunk bed and short couch that should have been in the duty room. No way we were getting the singles back, the duty petty officers would have murdered us for trying. So until the boys graduated and went to the fleet, they got to watch TV comfortably and keep chairs at their desks and we got to sleep on a sagging, ancient bunk, Samuel's ass arcing down so low I bumped it when I climbed out of bed. Good times.
"Can't deny that we're sexy motherfuckers," said Sam in answer to Jeff.
"Why the fuck are you in your shorts?" said Scott.
"He just told you," I said. "Because we're sexy motherfuckers. We can't cross the quarterdeck without getting our clothes torn off, man."
Sam laughed, Jeff snorted derisively, and Scott called us a homophobic slur. I went to my locker to get some sweats, but as I started to pull them out Sam bumped me lightly with an elbow and shook his head almost imperceptibly. Having absolutely no problem looking at his nearly-naked body for a while longer, I went along. We did the evening routine in companionable exhibitionism, cleaning the room and tending to our uniforms and cracking the books, all of which were daily requirements. It wasn't until I went down to the rec room for a soda that Sam was able to explain why he'd denied our modesty.
"Hey," he said, strolling casually into the room behind me, big grin on his face, as if hanging out in his BVDs was par for the course. "You know why I'm fucking with them, right?"
