One Hand Covering My Ass, One Hand in A Salute
What it was really like for a female in the military just after the turn of the century.
Iglared, steely-eyed, at the smug man across the desk, the man who had lured me to his office with a trouble ticket for his printer and, upon my arrival, had implied in no uncertain terms that he wanted a sexual favor.
I left the space [without fixing the printer, although it most likely wasn’t “broken,” just unplugged] and stormed across a dozen frames and down two decks back to the relative safety of my desk.
It was 2004 and I was serving in the US Navy on board the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, and this morning’s events were not a particularly rare phenomenon for me. I had already learned which men to avoid, and since I assigned out trouble tickets, I sighed as I added our ‘friend’ in the Aviation department to my list of “Always Assign To Men” and closed his ticket.
This was business as usual.
I want to make it perfectly clear: overall I really enjoyed my time in the military and would have easily completed a 20-year career if I hadn’t chosen to start a family instead. Life out on the sea was just the best.
Sunrise over the infinite horizon with a cup of coffee and a cigarette… it was such a…
