My New Identity: Party Animal

Last week before Basic Training Final civilian Christmas

My lips first met Maryjane in my sophomore year, but ours was an ambivalent relationship. The euphoria gave way to mild paranoia if I smoked too much, and then I was afraid to close my eyes because the vortex would suck me down. I did not hold my marijuana well, and if mixed with alcohol, I was an easy target at teenage house parties. These put the brakes on my partying, which allowed me to finish a semester early. I tried a few junior college courses, but it was so much like highschool I dropped out in three weeks and started a labor job in a metal shop. Now that I was earning my own money I could leave home, so I moved in with a guy who worked in the same building. Even though I could now afford it, getting stoned was not a daily thing. That didn't happen until after my first adult gay sexual experience. It wasn't my first sex with a male. When I was fourteen I had a short affair with a neighbor boy that quickly cooled when we decided we weren't quite that horny. Not long after my 18th birthday my new roommate suggestively revealed his bisexuality, a proposal I accepted the very next night. For a while I didn't care how I scratched my sexual itch, but within two weeks I broke off the affair. What was I doing? My masturbatory fantasies were of holes, not poles! A daily doobie or two balmed the guilt, and when I got stoned all the time the paranoia mostly vanished. I became a functional pothead, able to do my job, to drive, to do everything else in my life, stoned twentyfour-seven. It wasn't enough, though. I knew my life was headed nowhere. I hated my job and could not see myself college, not then. I didn't know what else to do. More importantly, I had a lot to prove. The recruiter's package suddenly made a startling amount of sense. That summer I'd laughed at it, but when my selfdoubt began to snowball three months later I marched right into the recruiter's office. What finally swayed me was the Old GI Bill, chock full of benefits that were about to disappear forever unless I enlisted by the end of the year. This Christmas Day photo perfectly illustrates how together I was then. So I joined up without a clue of what lay ahead of me. I was that desperate.