CV Rick

Connecticut: Part Five

For the entire story, click the Connecticut topic at the end of this post, in the sidebar to your right, or just click here.

“So, you're a Mormon?” my shrink, Dr. Byers asked me right away.  He was fascinated by the religion listed in my records and on my dog tags.  "More than any other religion," he claimed, "Mormons needed psychiatric help."

“But you're a psychologist.”

“It's just a term,” he replied. This is the way our sessions went.  Dr. Byers wasn't very precise with his terminology and wasn't serious at all about his profession. He was leaving the Air Force in a year after sixteen years as an officer in order to go to Houston and become an investment advisor. I asked him if it wouldn't be smarter to hang in there for another four years and get the lifelong retirement check, but he said his heart just wasn't in it anymore.  I hope he gave others great investment advice in his second career. 

He tried various counseling methods with me.  I went to one group session where I lost respect for seven other blathering, whining, crying Airmen.  He decided it wasn't necessary for me to attend more sessions after I got bored and started making fun of the nurse who confessed to licking needles and pricking his skin with them in order to develop a physical bond with patients.  He tried getting me to open up about my childhood, but I guess that didn't work because he didn't let me type the sessions into a computer diary for everyone in the world to read.  He just wanted me to talk while he wrote things in a notebook.  He tried to say things about my religion, my parents, and me that would make me angry enough to explode in a rage.  I didn't because it was obvious he was just trying some mindtrick he'd read in Psychology for Dummies. 

I was required to see him for six months, it's in the regs.  After he played around for a month we regressed into weekly meetings where I'd answer his questions about crazy Mormons I'd known and he'd tell me about great investment strategies.  He even gave me a couple of books on stocks that I never read.

Then one day Lynda called me.

Connecticut: Part Four

For the entire story, click the Connecticut topic at the end of this post, in the sidebar to your right, or just click here.

I've been in plenty of fights.  I've been in bar fights, playground fights, sporting event fights, and whatnot.  I've been in fights at work and even a fight right in front of the building in which I live.  Never in my life have the consequences for a fight been as severe as for punching Connecticut in the face.

Two MPs showed up within minutes and had me face down on the floor, cuffing me behind my back.  They marched me out to their jeep in a freezing snowstorm, me dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, and hauled me to jail where I was thrown into a holding cell to await morning.  It only had a metal bench and a toilet and I wasn't allowed to fall asleep.  Every time I started to nod off, one of the guards would take a baton and rattle it on the bars nearest my head.  This went on for six hours until the duty sergeant arrived to give me a boot-camp style yelling.  At attention, face forward, in my shorts and t-shirt, I listened to him scream at me until he got hoarse and had to take a break.  I stayed at attention for an hour or more until he returned from his break and went at it again. 

Not only had I assaulted someone who outranked me, but I'd done it without giving him the chance to defend himself.  At least that's the story that was yelled into my face, complete with spittle and a good deal of halitosis.  Finally he led me to a different cell, deeper in the jail complex.  This one had a real bunk with a sheetless mattress.  I thought I might get some rest, but that pleasure wasn't going to be mine for some time. 

I was told to get dressed in my service blue uniform.  Right next to the bunk was a duffle bag with all my gear in it.  Someone had retrieved my uniforms and shower kit from the room while I was being annoyed by the guards. Of course, they'd stuffed everything into the bag and it was all a wrinkled mess and I understood the trap set for me but could do nothing about it.  I dressed in wrinkled trousers, blue belt with tarnished buckle, wrinkled button-up shirt and wrinkled tie, scuffed shoes and a bent hat.  This wasn't going to be fun.

Connecticut: Part Three

For the entire story, click the Connecticut topic at the end of this post, in the sidebar to your right, or just click here.

Lynda and I didn't hook up anymore that holiday season and Connecticut returned a week later.  That's when the tension in our room escalated.

He worked day shift in the Commander's office and I worked night shift on the flight line.  That should be the perfect schedule for roommates to never see each other.  I'd go to a college class usually around noon and then hit the gym for a couple hours before meeting my buddies at the chow hall.  From there we'd go to work until midnight or later.  After work we'd hit the gym again before going back to the barracks.  This means that I'd get in between three and four in the morning and go right to bed.  I was usually as quiet as I could be in order not to disturb Connecticut or anyone else working a different shift - it's the only way to get along when you're living with dozens of people in semi-open living bays. 

Connecticut's alarm went off at six AM.  Then again at six-ten.  Then at six-twenty.  At six-thirty he'd get out of bed.  He loved listening to music while in the shower, so he'd turn his stereo on as he left the room.  Yes, he'd have to leave the room and go two doors down to the community shower room.  This meant that his stereo was on loud enough for him to hear it down the hallway and over the sound of running water.  He'd play the same tape every morning.

I wear my sunglasses at night
So I can so I can
Forget my name while you collect your claim

And I wear my sunglasses at night
So I can so I can
See the light that's right before my eyes

Cory Hart's Never Surrender.  I still hate every fucking song on that album. 

Connectictut: Part Two

Warning: explicit content.

For the entire story, click the Connecticut topic at the end of this post, in the sidebar to your right, or just click here.

Connecticut had a big break-up fight with Lynda right before he went back to visit his wealthy family for Christmas.  From the day room we all heard him arguing with her on the phone and after the call he came in to brag about it.  He broke up with her, he told us with a smile, so that he wouldn't have to buy her a present.  And he confidently assured everyone that once he was back she'd fly back into his arms even though he'd be having sex with his high school girlfriend the whole time he was back in lily-white gangland.  It was the perfect solution, he pronounced.

Pete shook his head and said, “You're a fool, Connecticut.  That girl is going to be doing the nasty with someone here while you're gone.”

“She'll be too sad for that.”

He left the next day.  That night I got a call.

Lynda wanted to know if he'd really left and why he was such an asshole.  We talked on the floor phone for almost an hour until I had to get off because other guys needed to use it.  Being the great roommate I was, I told her everything that Connecticut had told us after the break-up call, including the part about her leaping back into his arms and forgiving him.  She wasn't as sad as she was angry. 

Friday came that week and for those of us without the plane tickets or the vacation time to fly out to visit families, we went out for fishbowls.  There was a bar/bowling alley in the town that specialized in drinks called fishbowls – cocktails made with too many kinds of clear alcohol, too much fruit and never enough straws.  The whole table would share the single bowl with long straws and everyone would get trashed.  Since it was one of the only real option for a group of G.I.'s who weren't yet drinking age because they didn't card we were often found there.   

And that's where Lynda and her friends found us.  The party was on and I have to say that even to this day I remember how much fun that evening was.  We played trivia on the big screen with portable answer modules, we drank a lot, played other video games, drank a lot, and shot pool against the local boys, taking them for enough money to pay for our drinking a lot.

Connecticut - Part One

For the entire story, click the Connecticut topic at the end of this post, in the sidebar to your right, or just click here.

One of my roommates in the military was a guy named Connecticut.  We shared a small barracks room – bunk beds, a single dresser, and two wall lockers. 

I never really got to know Connecticut well as a person, because we clashed so badly right from the start. His real name wasn't Connecticut, but once while some of us were drinking Rum in the day room, he came in and started bragging about being in a gang back home.  Pete, a six-six Puerto Rican from Queens asked if upper middle class kids in Connecticut thought that a gang was six white boys who met at the mall.  From then on, we called him Connecticut.

He was typically upper middle class and he should have just gone on to college, but he joined the military instead.  Fortunately for him, he got assigned as an orderly.  That means that he was the commander's secretary – filling out forms, running errands, posting notices.  His shoes were perpetually shined and he almost never wore fatigues, instead he was in dress blues all the time.  This fit his personality since he spent more time in front of a mirror than anyone I ever roomed with, including Dwayne (we'll get to him sometime in the future). 

Despite being a gang-banger, he was quite the passive aggressive boy.  Instead of talking to me about stuff in our room, he'd leave me post-it notes.   We worked different shifts, so perhaps he thought I'd appreciate post-its.

• Don't use my stereo.

• Don't drink in the room.

• You scuffed my shoes when you kicked your boots off

• Your friends are too loud at night

Stuff like that.  He didn't like talking to me because I wasn't an officer.  He wasn't an officer either, but since he was the secretary and worked around officers he figured he was the next best thing.