Do Tell

I was a draft dodger back in 1969. I'd do it again.

In late 1969 I got a letter from the U.S. Government telling me I was to be part of the Army. I knew that in 1968 over twelve hundred U.S. Troops were being killed per month, and in 1969 over a thousand a month. I wasn't going to be part of that. The Vietnamese had not invaded the United States, nor attacked us in anyway. And if you look at what happened after the U.S. withdrew, it makes you wonder what the hell it was all about. Vietnam is now a peaceful country, and the rest of Southeast Asia did not fall like a row of dominoes as LBJ, and Nixon said they would.

I arrived at the draft board induction center on Van Buren Street in Chicago with a bunch of fellow inductees from the south suburbs. We were ushered into a large room where some guy started going on about what was what. At one point he asked if anybody was for the overthrow of the government. I raised my hand. He looked away. Then he asked if anybody had ever been associated with any anti-American groups. He started reading off a list of those groups, and when he said 'Women Against the War' I raised my hand. You see I had bought some Christmas cards from them the year earlier. "War is not healthy for children and other living things" was their slogan. Again, I was ignored. When it came time for my hearing test I did not respond to any of the sounds in my ear. I passed. When I took the eye exam, I would read the first line and then feign blindness. I passed. It was late in the day and I was getting to the end of the induction physical. I needed to do something or by Christmas I'd be in a rice paddy trying to figure out how to shoot somebody.
"Excuse me sir. What about if I like boys? You know, queer."
It wouldn't be hard to convince these guys, because it was true.
I was immediately ushered off to see a psychiatrist.
"What kind of sex do you have? Where do you go to find it? How many times?" Stupid questions, that I had answers for. Turned out that the United States did not want me after all.
At the last station I turned in my stack of papers to a guy behind a counter.
"Faggot, you got out but you'll never get a good job." He told me.
Thirteen years later I was working in the Great Lakes Naval Base computer room. It was a pretty good job.

I bring all this up because on Friday evening I walked into my favorite gay bar, and it was full of sailors, United States Sailors, in uniform. It was fleet week here in Fort Lauderdale, and because of President Obama none of these American service men and women had to hide from who they are. I was very proud to see them there. The only problem I see is if we ever have another illegal, immoral war, and the government institutes the draft again, how the hell would you get out of that? I guess you'd have to go on Facebook and call the president a jackass