Captain Eric: Marines Like to be Looked At – 02
Z: So you didn’t join the Marine Corps to be a man. Why did you join?
E: When people ask me this, I usually say, “I had a hundred reasons for joining and one by one I’ve forgotten all of them.” But about a year ago I finally admitted to myself the biggest reason: I love being in an all-male environment. I think I had a hard time admitting that to myself, because I couldn’t separate the sexual aspect from the — any type of other aspect. But now I realize, it’s not that I want to have sex with all of these men. I don’t. I just like the way they look, the way they are; I mesh with their personalities a lot better. When I’m around women for a long period of time I start to really get annoyed. And — I just love being around men. That’s part of the reason. And I work well in a structured environment. It sounds trite, but it’s true. I work well with rules and regulations. When I joined, I couldn’t foresee where I would be now, but I can’t imagine any place on earth I’d rather be.
Of course what always follows is, “I didn’t ask you why you joined the military, I asked you why you joined the Marines.” To me, there was no other choice. Joining the other services never really crossed my mind. I wanted to go to the Naval Academy, but even when I was sixteen and seventeen I knew that I would go the Marine track. It never occurred to me to go anywhere else. And I don’t know if it’s just the eliteness, the tightness, or — I can’t tell you why I chose the Marines instead of the Navy or the Army. I don’t know. It’s like, why do I choose men over women? [Laughs.]
I didn’t get in to the Naval Academy, so I joined the reserves. I went to boot camp and to my training school, and once I was done with that I went back to college. I went through Officer Candidate School, during the summers. When I graduated from college I was commissioned and sent on active duty. I did five years in the reserves; now I’ve done almost that much time active duty.
Z: You went through the same boot camp that every enlisted Marine goes through?
E: Right. We went through a winter company so it was smaller; there were sixty of us in my boot camp platoon. And thirteen of us were in the reserves.
[Recruit training] was an eye opener for me. I grew up in a very sheltered fundamentalist Christian environment. I went to a private Christian high school. I had a lot of acquaintances, but very few close friends, and they were very sheltered themselves. And there were a lot of things I didn’t know about. I hadn’t really learned a lot about sex. Of course I was still a virgin. I had never even jacked off at this point. I remember the first night (and I don’t want to give away too much of my own book here, but), standing on the yellow footprints outside of the building, and they filed us inside this rickety old building from World War Two. It was midnight, and I hadn’t slept in the longest time. And the recruit next to me, said — There were male drill instructors yelling and screaming at us, but there was this female Marine that was in charge of getting the paperwork done. And she was a very attractive hispanic woman. She had a little bit of a moustache. The recruit sitting next to me said, “Damn, I bet she’s got a bush! Wouldn’t you like to eat out that pussy?” I had never heard of eating pussy until that moment. And I thought: that is the grossest thing I’ve ever heard of! And through the course of boot camp — Of course I learned all about the Marine Corps, and how to be a Marine, but I also learned a lot about life. The phrase “cocksucker” — that was something I’d never even pictured, taking another man’s genitalia into my mouth. But I learned that at boot camp. “Blowjob,” “jack off,” “buttfuck” — my first exposure to things like that was at Parris Island.
Z: Who did you learn these words from?
E: The other recruits, mostly; even though there was very little opportunity for recruits to converse with each other. I had a very professional senior drill instructor, but the junior drill instructors would resort to [using language like] that when they didn’t think anybody else was around. . . .
They shaved our hair off, then we went next door to this building. We’re standing there, and the drill instructor goes, “Ready! Strip!” Everybody strips naked, you throw all of your stuff into this bag, you put your name on it, and tape it up. We walked into the shower room, and it was similar to how you might picture the Final Solution, where they went in with the Zyklon B. All the showers come down from the ceiling, and there’s just a handle there beside each shower head, and whoever was running the showers yells, “Ready! Pull!” You had to reach up and pull this ring and the water would hit you. The guy that was doing it, some Marine who worked at the uniform issue, was playing with the temperature, and he would make it scalding hot, then cold, then back to hot. But you were just thankful because you were finally getting a shower. At least I was. They gave us a towel, you dried off and put the towel on, then you went in and got fitted for your uniforms. And from that day on, you stood on line, the drill instructor would come out and say, “Ready. Strip!” And the first couple times I would start getting a hard-on. But it would instantly stop, just ’cause of the stress of the situation.
Z: Did any other men get hard-ons that you noticed?
E: Yeah, a little bit that I noticed, but of course you couldn’t even look. But a lot of the things that we did — One of our drill instructor’s favorite games to play was, “Everybody get at the front hatch!” The whole platoon would run to the front hatch. “Strip off your blouse!” (I think that’s funny, too. Marines wear “blouses.” And to me that sounds perfectly normal sitting here ten years later. But at that point in time I thought, “Women wear blouses.” I remember one time this one recruit referred to his trousers as slacks. And the drill instructor went off, “Women wear slacks!” And I’m thinking, “Well goddammit, women wear blouses, too!” But anyway.) We would get to the front hatch, and we’d strip off our blouses. “Get to the rear hatch!” We’d get to the rear hatch. “Take off your right boot! No, you’re not fast enough!” We’d have to put it back on . . . It would take an hour to go through this little game. Meanwhile, we’d gone all the way around the room, all of us putting each article of clothing in a big pile. By then we’re totally naked. “Okay, get in the showers!” There’s sixty of us crammed in this shower. And guys were — [Laughs.] One time I did feel the guy behind me getting a hard-on. I was like, “Whoa, I don’t know what this is.” I mean, at that point I didn’t know if I liked it or not. But he’d make us turn the showers on, turn ‘em off, turn ‘em back on, hot water now, cold water now. Then we’d have to run out, and we’d have five minutes to get dressed. You’re grabbing somebody else’s skivvies, with their stains, throwin’ ‘em on your body . . . It was an experience. I remember some guys going, “God I can’t believe these fuckin’ faggot games we play.” I’m like, “Yeah, well, this is the Marine Corps.”
