the "lackland finally" post
Everyone is asking me….so before I go into story-telling meltdown, I bring you:
The Full Details of My Trip to Lackland Air Force Base
Thursday: By 16:00 (we’ll be using military time from this point on, as it was given to me by Mr. Gomez) this afternoon I had driven out to pick up Paul, and Clarissa was arriving at my house. This is where the road trip commences. Seating arrangements put Clarissa in the driver’s seat, me in shotgun, and Paul in the backseat of Clarissa’s Explorer, thus dubbing him “ fetcher of the crap from the back” for the trip. So we’re off, and within 15 minutes of driving, we’re deep in the “files of Clarissa” bashing this bastard Matt from her work. If you’re reading this Matt, you’re a fuckass. Once, I turned around to catch Paul digging his head between pillows to get away from the conversation. He didn’t have a chance. 4 ½ hours of girl talk. He eventually gave up the “ I’m a fierce boy, I can’t listen to this crap” pretense, and stuck his head in between us to comment. Insert funny inside joke here:
Clarissa & I : “Hey Paul, you still gay?”
Paul: “ grumble grumble ::inaudible cursing:: grumble”
Clarissa & I: “Just checking!”
Poor Paul, he became the easiest target of our jokes for the weekend. We eventually stopped to eat at a random McDonald’s, where we met Luis, the Alex look-alike. We talked him up until we finally got him to let us take a picture of him for later comparison of Alex. When we got our food, we realized we didn’t know where exactly we were…or where exactly we were headed. Don’t get me wrong, we knew we were headed to San Antonio…but after that? No idea. The following is an actual conversation:
Clarissa: “ Okay Taylor, so do you know where we are going once we get to San Antonio?”
Me: “Uhm….you mean you don’t know?
Clarissa: “I thought you knew?!”
Me: “You’re driving!”
Clarissa: “ You talked to them last!”
Paul: ::bangs head on table::
Me: ::calls bobby:: “Hello Bobby? Hey it’s Taylor. We’re stopped to eat and we just realized we don’t know where we are headed once we get to San Antonio.”
Bobby: ::muffled laugh:: “ You don’t. Well where are you?”
(brief silence…..we don’t even know where we are. Just somewhere on I-35)
Paul: ::points to “The founding of ROUND ROCK” that just so happens to be on the table top. Note - What the fuck, since when did they give history lessons of the city in McDonald’s? Thank God for this one, though.)
Taylor: “Looks like we’re in Round Rock!”
Interesting. Maybe nobody knows where they are once they hit Round Rock, Tx. So McD’s has to put the name of the town all over the place? I’m not kidding. Table tops, side of the building, wallpaper…everything. So the face-stuffing is finished, and we pile back into the car, after attempting to kidnap Luis and take him with us for Clarissa. But he didn’t want company of 2 girls from North Texas, and a beach-bum Paul that we picked up on the side of the road ( this is what we told him, to explain Paul’s flip-flop/rolled up sweatpants wardrobe.) The rest of the trip was spent making Paul moon passing cars and explaining my fucked up previous relationship we call Timmy. And how Josh made me forget that he existed, and that better love was out there. The trip went unbelievably fast. I wasn’t ready to get out of the car, we were having so much fun. And we didn’t once touch the radio, which is weird because who doesn’t listen to music on a road trip?
So we arrived finally at the Doporto’s house. A pretty nice off-base house, with 2 stories and plenty of rooms to pick from. Clarissa, Tiffany ( who’d driven up there somewhat behind us) and I claimed the baby’s room upstairs, and went to work making a bed out of blankets to crash on. We really MEANT to fall asleep, but we stayed up talking until sometime after 03:00.
Friday: Holy SHIT it was cold outside! But nooo…I had to consider “cuteness over comfort” and wore my damn skirt and button-up black/pink ensemble. Damned if I wasn’t cute, but frozen. And you couldn’t even see my outfit under my heavy coat. What a waste. Sometimes I’m an idiot. But at least Clarissa and Tiffany wore skirts to, so I wasn’t the only idiot. At 08:00 we were up at the Base, sitting on wet metal bleachers, waiting for the parade to begin. In front of us was a sea of blue hats and uniforms. I’ve never seen so many statue-people in my life. I wondered if anyone would pass out from the cold. But at this point I’m thinking I might pass out from the cold. I don’t think I’ve EVER been that blue before. Stupid skirt. Did I mention it’s spitting rain and mist? Did I mention I’m wearing a skirt? Just checking. The whole parade was ….uneventful. A lot of marching and saluting. The man in front of me did tell me I had a great voice after we sang the national anthem…thanks buddy! I’m surprised my voice didn’t waiver from my intense shivering. So you’re telling me “ Skip ahead to the good stuff, Taylor!!” Okay.
After the parade, I get to finally see Josh for the first time in 7 long weeks. Until this time I have carried my phone EVERYWHERE just in case he called, and I have camped out by my mailbox for his letters. The crowd is between us, and suddenly I see him. Let me tell you, it took me everything I had to keep my hands to myself. Remember the military has a no-touching rule. I did manage a quick hug, but nothing like what I was dying for. And the fact that his mother was right there next to me killed the romance. Ugh. Nothing like I wanted. So we head to the car to spend his first day-pass off base. ( He graduated as an Honor Flight, so they let them have 2 day-passes off-base….wow gee thanks for the generosity, bastards.) First place he wanted to go? McDonald’s. (This is where I hold in a groan, because I just had it last night. But whatever my baby wants, this is where we will go.) So the entire Gomez/Doporto/Lopez/Garcia/Greene clan goes over to McDonald’s to eat. Did anyone else notice the odd duck of the last names up there? ::points to self:: So yea, first half-hour with my Mr. Gomez is spent at McDonald’s with a clan 15-strong to divide his attention. There goes that one-on-one conversation I needed to badly. After eating we went to the mall, which is ironic to me because before, Josh had always HATED walking around in the mall. With a passion. He said it was for little pre-teens and stuff. But now, on his limited time outside a base…..we’re going to a MALL?! I really wanted to spend as little time in public as possible. My reasoning? Simple: In public, Josh can’t touch me, but inside the walls of a house? Different story. Or so I thought. So we spent his day-pass wandering aimlessly in the mall with a trail of people following. As irritated as I was, I did manage to find the ultimate kickass shirt of all time. I will be wearing it to school tomorrow, prepare to be amazed. Hint: Donnie Darko is apparently bigger in San Antonio’s Hot Topic!!! WOOT! And then Josh finds a Luby’s. Ugh I hate Luby’s but whatever for Mr. Gomez. This is his only freedom. So we go and eat again. If you haven’t noticed the eating trend of this trip, you will soon. And if you don’t, you’re dense.
Time for him to be back on base comes, but they’re letting the guys go on a bus over to the San Antonio Rodeo, and we’re allowed to sit with him if we find him. So we go over to the rodeo and find him and assume our positions. The rodeo is ….well a rodeo. Mistreatment of cows, bulls, broncos and sheep. Yay. Sometime while she’s fetching Josh a hotdog, Pimpstress Clarissa catches a phone number. Pimp Clarissa, pimp. Josh didn’t even really watch much of the rodeo, he was so consumed with eating his extra-long hotdog and sleeping. I realized this pretty quickly. Anytime he was sitting, he was sleeping. It really sucked, because I just wanted to be with him. But at least he was sleeping next to me, in some fucked up situation. So the rodeo ends, and Brad Paisley comes out in concert. At 21:30, he has to be back downstairs to get on the bus. So after 2 songs he up and leaves, no goodbye or anything, just up and running to the bus. Let me break away from the story:
- I am noticing a big change in him by this time. Part of it has to be the lack of sleep. He’s getting about 4 hours a night, and whereas that is par for me, he is used to 10 hours or more. He’s broken, it seems. There isn’t much personality beyond that blue suit. Everything he says seems to be encoded by this military lingo. He’s scared to death to touch me - he won’t even hold my hand in the car for fear of an undercover TI (training instructor i.e. those hardasses that yell a lot) seeing him- or do anything remotely wrong. But everyone around him seems to be doing whatever they want. He’s the least likely to be recycled ( held back) but the most terrified of it. He was really stressed out. I still wish things were back to what they had been in the past. I didn’t feel like we were any different, because I still believed everything he had told me in the letters, but I was hoping for more, I don’t know. Assurance I guess. I had wanted him to tell me he loved me as soon as he’d seen me. But I guess fear takes over someone’s mind when they’ve got a 6’7’’ TI standing next to them. -
So we stay and watch the rest of the concert, and I’m almost in tears. I don’t understand why he’s acting like it’s no big deal that he’s sitting next to me for the first time in 7 weeks. But I guess I should be thankful that he’s in my sight. Whatever. After we leave the arena, we walk outside into the SNEAT that is falling ( what the fuck?! We’re in south Texas! ) and we walk in between their BUSES! You mean to tell me, that they had to be back 2 hours early, to SIT on a bus and miss the concert, just for the sake of making them behave? Stupid fucking military shit. So we hop on our bus to head back over to where we are parked. Enter the disgruntled driver.
This driver almost hits like 4 cars. He comes thisclose to several curbs, walls, poles, anything that would be a normal obstruction. And when a few of us express our concerns of his mini-coop mindset, he asks us to please stop driving from the backseat. Yea yea, I hear you. I hate backseat drivers, too. But you’re talking about 20 people behind you seeing the centimeters between you and the little Taurus in the next lane over, minding it’s own business as you barrel by it. Damn that disgruntled driver and that krayzie bus.
Back at home, Clarissa and I take full advantage of the air-mattress that’s been given to us, and we’re crashed within an hour.
Saturday: Valentine’s Day. I purposely stay at home while Bobby goes to pick Josh up from base for this reasoning: Josh can’t touch me in front of everyone, so I don’t want to see him for the first time today until he can. I am upstairs and I hear the door open, and shortly after…footsteps. Then I see him. And he sees me. He dropped his bag, and…finally, that first kiss. Everything was blocked out of my head….just the feeling of his lips and mine. Oh my God. Waited too long for that. So now he’s going to take his first shower that’s not in front of several other naked guys. He slips into the bathroom, and at this point, I’m going nuts because I just want to DO IT. Clarissa tells me to “ GET MY ASS IN THERE!!” So….after some hesitation, I enlist the aid of my courage, and I jump into the bathroom with him as he’s undressing. Parents and extended family safely downstairs (for now) I began kissing him, and what’s the first thing that comes out of his mouth?
“You’re going to get me in trouble.”
Rargh!!!!! Who cares! Kiss me now!! So we did a little bit of unmentionables -still no sex, dammit- and I jumped out of the bathroom at the first “coast is clear.” Clarissa, if you’re reading this, THANK YOU FOR KEEPING GUARD ON THE STAIRS. I owe you one.
He finishes and we eat a big Mexican breakfast, and it’s off to the movies. Josh decided on 50 First Dates, so we’re in the movie theatre, and he’s sitting between me and his mom. Greeaaat. No chance for hand-holding now. This is gay, he’s 21. Get over it. Your son is a grown man. ( Am I getting irritated? You betcha.) No complaints about the movie, it was great. I caught myself crying once, not because of the actions on the screen, but the sound of Josh’s laugh. God I miss that. He has this unique laugh that makes me so happy just to hear it. Making him laugh is the most gratifying thing a person can do. It’s that special. I think the saddest part of the whole trip was after the movie, when Josh told me that for once, he’d forgotten where he was, and what he was doing. He let out a tiny sound and an “oh” when he looked down to see his uniform. He told me that, he’d forgotten about the Air Force, Basic Training, and TI’s and thought he was at home, like things used to be. My heart hit the floor, to hear him tell me this. And I wondered what I would do if I suddenly remembered I was a prisoner in a uniform again.
Next stop, The Riverwalk. Downtown, we passed a bunch of Hispanic brides walking down main street, shoes in hand. At first I was like “what the hell?!” but I remembered it was Valentine’s Day, and everyone gets married on this day. How original. I nudged Josh to get him to look, but I realized he was fast asleep on the glass of the window. I wish I had a picture of this event, because somehow it made me happy, to be surrounded by so much happiness. I wanted to be Mexican more than anything, right then. Weird, huh?
After getting lost about 200 times we finally found the mall on the riverwalk, and, yea….we walked around inside there for another few hours. This makes 2 days of mall-ratting around, something I thought Josh didn’t even like. And we put ourselves smack in the middle of “TI territory.” They were everywhere, undercover, watching for someone to screw up. If I were a new graduate, I’d steer clear of anything like that. But no…there were about 20 bajillion new graduates down there. Stupid people.
We decide to eat at Café Ole, another Mexican restaurant. After losing our first plates to the fight of gravity ( all over the floor ) we finally ate, again. Is anyone keeping track of how many times we’re eating, here?! I thought seriously about resting my hand on Josh’s thigh here, but he probably would have jerked away, terrified of TI hidden cameras under the fucking table, or something equally as gay.
After this he wanted to go ahead and go back to base, just to be sure he got there on time. I sure wasn’t ready to give him up yet, but what can I say. So Paul, Clarissa, Bobby, Rosemary, and I took him back to base and dropped him off at the bx ( mini-mall.) And then Clarissa left us to go to Austin to get some booty! So then there was one left in the make-shift bed upstairs. Around 21:00 Rosemary and I decided we needed sweet stuff, so Bobby, her, and I took a trip to Target, then H-E-B. Okay….this has the potential to be an uneventful story, but remember, I’m in the middle of Tejano- central, a blonde/blue girl walking between 2 very very Mexican parents. The looks I got from everyone around me were hilarious. I mean, not only was I minority, but I was walking around with Mexican parents! I was stolen property, as far as anyone was concerned! This one group of guys saw me, and didn’t know what to think. They kept giving me sideways looks of confusion, and even Rosemary caught it and laughed. On the way back from the store, we discussed my decision to put “ Verde” in Old English letters on the back of my car. “Greene” just doesn’t look good. And I don’t want to jump ahead of the gun and put “ Gomez” on the back of my car. I better hold his hand in front of his mom, first. ::internal chuckle::
So at the end of the day, I’m a little saddened by the lack of recognition on Valentine’s Day on his part. He’s not like that. And I’ve never had a boyfriend on V-day that I know of. Or if I did, it was insignificant enough to not remember. And I gave him what I got him, but he couldn’t have it back at base. Something about “ illegal items.” Damn that Air Force.
Sunday: Last day. Won’t see him again for 13 weeks unless my mom decides to let me go to see him in Missouri. I’m working on that as I type, but back to my story. We meet up with him at Catholic Mass on base. The cheesy music was killing me, I just couldn’t get over it. What the fuck. But the priest was okay. It was kinda funny to see the scared-shitless looks on the 0-weekers (zero week meaning this was their first week in boot camp) faces when they filed in. Poor guys. I will never do anything involving the military, for fear of what they’d do to me. I know I couldn’t handle it. So yea….mass. By now I’m getting used to the Catholic procession. It doesn’t scare or bother me anymore. I’m becoming more Mexican than I thought I would. After mass, we go to Burger King ( another eating instance) then we headed over to the bowling alley where I got my ass severely kicked, of course, I bowled a 69. Go me. They started making fun of my bowling approach, comparing me to Fred Flinstone. Hey…whatever works! ( As if a 69 can be considered “works.”) I think this was the time I saw Josh lighten up for the first time. I remember the old cocky Josh…and he was there at that bowling alley. It was really fun. I don’t even care about losing. He always wins. Why would basic training change that?
So after bowling we ran over to the BX to buy his suitcase and look at random stuff…the BX is so cool. There’s so much stuff in there. I want to live on base, after seeing all of the cool stuff that they have. I can be a military wife, I just couldn’t be IN the military. I realize that all of these rules won’t always apply. And that he won’t be enlisted forever. I just want to be with him.
We stop at Ariman’s Pizza ( eating again ) before we took him back to the mini-bx that was suffering from a power-outage. I really wasn’t ready to let go and let him go back to his squadron, but it was time. The last hours I would get to spend with him, were eating at a pizza place and standing in line in the dark to get his honor flight coin. Not the romantic goodbye I was hoping for. I gave him one last hug goodbye, and slowly got in the truck. Everything in me wanted more. I wanted to talk to him. To hold him. To kiss him. Anything. Don’t get me wrong, I love his parents, but I really wanted to be selfish and get a dinner or something ALONE with him. But never was there a chance for any of that. And here I found myself in the backseat of the car, watching him walk off with his wingman. As they cut the corner, a tear fell down my cheek, but I hid it from anyone in the front seat. I think Paul saw it, but I’ll pretend like he didn’t. As we drove past him on our way out of the gate, I took one last picture. And now I look at it, and realize this could be the picture of the last moment I saw him for 13 weeks. I’ve got to see him again. I need to talk to him. I didn’t feel ready to say goodbye. I know he’s already in Missouri, and realizing that it’s 7:35…er….19:35…he’s probably run into trouble and can’t call me. And that sucks. I’m already lonely, and it’s only been a day since I saw him. I wish he realized how much I love him. Maybe he does. He should. I hope I know how much he loves me. Even though I didn’t feel it much this weekend. I know it was under very stressful conditions, but the hopeless romantic in me wanted him to whisper he loved me in my ear any chance he got, like he told me on the phone.
Josh, I don’t know if you’ll read this or not, but if you do. I love you with everything inside me. I miss you already, and I need to know that you miss me, too. So stop reading this and call me. I need to hear your voice.