9/11, the Navy, and the Neighborhood
Confronting identity, patriotism, and purpose
“War is sweet to those who have never experienced it.” — Pindar
The elevated train rushed past my window waking me up in a state of confusion, trying to remember what it was that I was trying to forget. Then I breathed in and smelled it — that ubiquitous scent in the city in the weeks following 9/11 could be described as an unforgettable combination of cheap incense and burning dust from a soldering iron. The eeriest part of it is that we all knew what it was, but no one ever spoke of it.
In the late afternoon light, I walked along the avenue with the same elevated train overhead to the bar where I was working called Garden on Lane. It had a mostly Black clientele, and Charles, a Vietnam vet in his fifties, was both the owner and main bartender. I wouldn’t exactly call him pleasant, but he was fair - both as a boss and a person.
The other military veterans who hung out in the bar long ago gave up on trying to get Charles to join the Black war veterans organizations that existed in the neighborhood as he never wanted to ever speak of his war experiences. This was in great contrast to the rest of the men in the bar who flaunted any and all action for all they could get out of it. Connie, one of the young waitresses from the neighborhood said, “These guys all been milking it since the World Trade Center attacks because uniforms are now hot.” Maybe they did, but they fought in a war and we didn’t, so I deferred and gave them the respect.
How would I ever get respect? Since dropping out of graduate school without a degree, I’d just been drifting with jobs in bars and cafes. Perhaps getting into a uniform may provide some structure I need to make something of my life.
With smoke still billowing out of Ground Zero and flooding our neighborhood across the East River with toxic air, I decided it was my generation’s time to make our bones. Charles and I were working behind the bar when I said to him, “I’m going to join the Navy tomorrow.” He paused a moment as he was pouring a drink for Teddy, one of the regulars — a professor with a specialty in the history of the Nation of Islam.
“Hey Teddy, Antonio over here just gave me the final piece of evidence I need for my grand theory,” he said.
“What’s that?” Teddy asked.
“That all white people are some crazy dumb motherfuckas.”
Teddy rolled back on the bar stool, his gray beard accentuating his laughter. “If you’re just learning that now, then you’re the dumb motherfucka!”
The next morning, I walked to the Navy recruiters office in my neighborhood. I was determined to sign up and go out to sea today. But the recruiter was skeptical, which surprised me because I thought they’d be looking for people to go to war. “You think we need YOU?” he said. “By the end of this conversation, the Navy SEALs may be parading bin Laden’s head around on a camel.”
I didn’t know what to say to this. “The Navy is the most select branch of the military. You even graduate high school?”
“Yeah, I was in a Ph.D. program but quit after I finished all the coursework. I have more graduate school credits than most Master’s Degree graduates have.”
I noticed that he was interested in this as he stopped leaning back in his chair in a pompous way and began to engage with me. “With college, you can get into Naval Intelligence.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“James Bond, brother,” he said, putting his feet back on the desk. “Code breaking, enemy sabotage, counter-intelligence.”
Not that my imagination ever needed encouragement, but now I saw myself parachuting out of a plane in the middle of Afghanistan with nothing but an analog compass, pursued by Persian femme fatales disguised as belly dancers, detecting where bin Laden was hiding by using only the flight patterns of native birds as my guide, killing bin Laden myself, then a happening time with the belly dancers while on a first-class flight back to the United States.
“This sounds like what I’m looking for!”
“Not so fast, we have to go through the process. First, you born in the United States?”
“Yeah.”
“Felony Convictions?”
“No.”
“You ever do any drugs?”
“Which ones?”
“Any! Let’s start with weed. You ever smoke any weed?”
“I smoked a joint on the way over here.”
“Fantastic!”
“Am I disqualified?”
“Only if you’re dumb enough to ever answer that question in the affirmative again. Listen, you never did any drugs. If anyone asks, and they will, deny deny deny till you die.”
The next day I was at Fort Hamilton Army Base in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, standing around in nothing but my boxer shorts along with hundreds of 18-year-old guys. It was a slow process, the only thing I recall clearly about it was that I had to get into single pole tent and remove the one piece of clothing I still had on in front of an elderly Japanese woman with a sketchpad. “Turn ‘round,” she demanded. I turned around. Sketch sketch sketch with her pencil. “Turn ‘round.” I turned around. More furious sketching with her pencil. I saw that she had drawn my tattoos, and a lot of scribbles.
“What’s this all about?” I asked her.
“In case you die, we have ways to identify you.”
“What does mine say?”
“Very hairy man.”
Twenty-nine years on the planet and my only defining characteristic was “Very hairy man…”
My recruiter informed me that the high score I got on the ASVAB test qualified me for any job in the Navy I wanted. He tried to convince me to drop Counter-Intelligence and instead sign-up for nuclear engineering. “You’ll make bank when you get out of here!” he said.
“No, I want the James Bond gig,” I said.
As they were preparing my contract to sign, the dot-matrix printer broke. My recruiter and the other Navy guy told me to wait there while they got another one.
While waiting, a thin but commanding Black woman came by and looked over my paperwork.
“Hi, I’m Chief Hayes,” she said without looking away from my paperwork. “You’re a college graduate. Why are you enlisting if you’re a college graduate?” she asked me.
“I’m gonna go find bin Laden and -”
“I did not ask your motivations for joining the U.S. Navy. I asked why are you enlisting when you qualify for the officers program?”
“Oh. My recruiter said that once I get in, I can enroll in the Seaman to Admiral Program and-”
“Seaman to what!?” she yelled, flabbergasted.
“Seaman to-”
“There’s no such thing! He’s lying to you, come with me.”
Thin and small as she was, she grabbed my arm and dragged me across the polished tile floors. My recruiter was returning with the other guy as I was being dragged away. He started yelling at Chief Hayes, “Put him back! That’s my recruit — get away from him!”
“He has college,” she snapped back at him, not loosening her grip nor slowing her stride. “I’m bringing him where he belongs!”
When he got in front of her, I thought they were going to fight as they were in each other’s faces. The other guy with the broken printer came by with Commander Higgins. “The printer is fixed and we have his contract, so let’s get back and get this done.”
She still had my arm and said, “He ain’t going no where with you — he’s coming with me!” This was the first time anyone fought over me.
Commander Higgins looked at me and asked, “Is this true?” I shrugged my shoulders. He said, “I want to talk with him privately in my office for a moment.”
Once in his office, I got a good look at him. Round soft face, kind eyes. “You know,” he said, “I’m not going to lie to you. You can go with Chief Hayes into the officers program. However, I’m telling you from experience that the men will have more respect for you as an officer if you rise up the ranks from Seaman instead of starting at the rank of Ensign.”
He had me for a moment, as this sounded to be true and I was on a mission to be respected. However, I looked back at him closely. He was maybe five or so years older than me, tops. I quickly did the math and concluded that he was lying to me — there’s no way he could have gone from E-1 to Commander, which is the equivalent of Lieutenant Colonel in the other branches — unless he enlisted in the Navy when he was ten years old.
Besides, I liked Chief Hayes. She knew what she wanted and went for it without flinching. I wanted to be like her.
“Thanks Commander Higgins,” I said to him. “But I’d like to go with Chief Hayes.”
Back at Garden on Lane for that evening’s shift, I told Charles the events of the day at Fort Hamilton. “And you still want to join, even though they been lying to you all along?”
“Chief Hayes told me-”
“Chief Hayes told you your recruiter was lying. How you know she ain’t also lying?”
Edwin, one of the regulars at the bar was waving us over. “I don’t know what kind of an establishment you’re running here. But what is with this?” He was pointing to a basket of small pretzels and peanuts we always had on the bar.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him.
“I stick my hand in the basket and pull out a random assortment of peanuts and pretzels. I want to take a handful of pretzels sometimes, and then a handful of peanuts another time. But the way you’re running it here, it’s like taking a shower and hot and cold water shooting at you at the same time.”
“The snacks are free,” Charles yelled. “If you don’t like them, order some food from the kitchen or get the hell out!” And with that, he grabbed the basket of free snacks away from Edwin and threw it in the garbage. There was a pause in the music and I heard the train roar by on the el outside.
Chief Hayes had me report to an office on lower Broadway in Manhattan, a few blocks from where smoke was still coming off the rubble that was once the World Trade Center. There were six other guys there waiting for orientation, all of them in their young twenties. We took the Military Flight Aptitude test, then were going to have to take a personality test. I didn’t feel I did as well on this test like I aced the ASVAB, but I wasn’t concerned. Then we had to be individually questioned alone.
“Any family in the Navy?”
Both grandfathers in the Navy in War War II. American Navy and Italian Navy.
“Any drugs?”
No.
“Are you sure? No drug use ever?
No.
“Ever been involved with an anti-government organization?”
I was uncomfortable lying to this guy and now he’s asking more questions. How much did he already know about me?
We were taken into another room where a television was rolled in on a stand. “Who’s here for flight officer?” The other six guys raised their hands. A VHS tape was placed in the machine, and we sat there and watched three minutes of footage from the movie “Top Gun.” These six guys were excited about their career path. That is, until some old officer interrupted Tom Cruise flying around to inform the viewers that this is not “Top Gun” — you don’t start here — you start doing grunt work. The other guys’ faces fell, like someone had swapped a 44-ounce steak in front of them for a rotting piece of celery. The images on the screen were now of lonely looking Seamen putting air in the tires of the jets, changing the oil, and waving goodbye to the lucky guy who got to fly the jet. And to top it off, as the jet took off, it covered the flight deck of stranded Seamen in a cloud of smoke.
Silence.
“Who’s here for Naval Intelligence?”
“Me!” I said excitedly, glad I didn’t choose to be a Military Flight Officer.
He put a different VHS tape into the machine.
Classic spy film music with a back-beat began. A narrator enticed, “So, you want to be a Officer of Naval Intelligence?” My eyes were a wide “Yes!”
A montage of action clips from James Bond films ran across the screen: There he was getting shot out of a submarine — now he’s on the enemy ship fighting everyone — his suit is no longer wet and it’s not even wrinkled — now he’s in a casino with a million British pounds worth of chips at a Baccarat table — and here comes the femme fatale, dressed in a classy red dress with great legs — now he’s diffusing a bomb while the counter races towards zero — now he’s in bed with the femme fatale, her red dress over a chair by the armoire — now he’s receiving a medal from the Queen of England.
“I’ve finally found the life-path I’ve been looking for — this is how I was meant to live!”
But as this montage climaxed, the same guy who threw sand in the gears of the Top Gun video appeared on the screen. “This is NOT Naval Intelligence.”
“Oh no, not this guy again…”
The next image was of a lonely mountain in some lonely desolate place with the narration:
Deep inside layers of bedrock and steel, Naval Intelligence officers analyze data of enemy positions from around the globe.
A bunch of pale-looking bores were walking around with spreadsheets and print-outs under miles of fluorescent lighting. There were no battleships, no water even. I became claustrophobic thinking about living underground with that terrible artificial lighting.
I didn’t pass the security clearance for Officer of Naval Intelligence. But they offered me the Junior Lieutenant rank, which is similar to a First Lieutenant in the rest of the military, to take a position in Supply Core of the Navy. It was rather a let-down. I told them I’d think about it.
Later at Garden on Lane, I was working with Charles behind the bar. “Admit it!” Charles demanded of me. “You’re seeing women throwing themselves at all these firemen walking around in uniform since the towers came down, and now you want to wear a uniform.” He was only half correct.
“I’m almost 30, man. I need to take a stand — I need to do something with consequence.”
“Consequence? I’ll tell you about consequence…” He cut himself off and started handing me dirty plates.
On my way to the dishwasher, Teddy and Edwin stopped me.
“What do you think you’re gonna find at sea that you can’t find here?” Edwin asked.
“Different places, experience, I don’t know…”
“You don’t need to pick up a gun to discover new worlds,” Teddy said. “Sometimes just asking yourself who you are is adventure enough.”
“Yeah,” Edwin said. “What you need to go fight?”
“I feel I need to avenge all these people walking around now with pictures of family who they can find,” I said. “And we know where they are…”
“Military is for warriors,” Teddy said. “Are you really a warrior? If not, you can’t think of any other way to deal with your survivor’s guilt?
Eighteen months later, I was still behind the bar with Charles. The sound was always muted on the television screen behind the bar, no matter what sports team was playing. Then Edwin and Teddy both pointed to the television behind us and everyone went silent. I looked and saw “Breaking News” and buildings exploding. I turned the music off and the sound on the television up.
Operation Shock and Awe had just begun in Baghdad. No one made a sound for at least a few minutes, which was extremely unusual in this crowd. Buildings seemed to just spontaneously explode in front of our eyes on the television in the Baghdad cityscape, just like ours exploded without any seeming cause or reason 18 months earlier. I never heard Garden on Lane so silent, nor did I ever witness a live broadcast of an attack on a city’s downtown done by “us.”
Edwin finally broke the silence. “Fuck those terrorist muthafuckas!”
That was the spark that set Garden on Lane off.
“There could be people in those buildings!” Connie shouted. “Children even!”
Then, just general excited shouting, as was typical here:
“Those are office buildings — no one is in there overnight.”
“My mother cleans office buildings overnight!”
“Saddam gotta surrender!”
“We didn’t even catch bin Laden yet — what are we doing in Iraq?”
“We’re gonna Desert Storm their ass!”
“Why? For what?”
I hadn’t noticed Charles until he threw an entire tray of pint glasses on the floor. If the sound of all that glass shattering didn’t get everyone’s attention, Charles’ loud voice did. “Everyone get the fuck out!” He often told people to leave in this manner, but tonight he was in a serious way that none of us had ever seen. “Out! Everyone get the fuck out!”
No amount of, “Come on, baby, just chill,” or “It’s cool, Charles, we just got caught up…” was calming Charles down tonight.
I got out from behind the bar and started placing the bar stools upside down on the bar — the universal indication that a bar was now closed. I had most of the people out when I grabbed a broom and started sweeping up the glass that Charles had shattered on the floor. “You too!” he shouted at me. “Get out!”
“You want me to just finish sweeping up the-”
“Get the fuck out!”
I put the broom down and left through the back door where my jacket was hanging. As I rounded the corner to where the front door of the bar was, I saw Charles sitting at the bar, his head in his hands, visibly upset. I looked at him for a moment. He picked his head up and saw me looking at him from the sidewalk. He ran up to the window and angrily pulled down the shade.
I didn’t want to leave Charles alone like this, but he’s seen a lot and knows how to take care of himself.
Had that dot-matrix printer not got jammed a year and a half ago, or if Edwin and Teddy hadn’t grilled me, I’d most likely be a part of this in Iraq right now I thought.
They got me to be honest with myself that the biggest reason I wanted to enlist was because I wanted people to respect me. I realized that being honest with myself and making a decision based on a cold honest look at my feelings was how I was going to start to finally respect myself.
The train roared by overhead. I followed it and the tracks home.
