The Autobiography of Mia Saxon

Chapter Five

         My ASVAB scores were good enough to get me into the administrative field but the Navy was saturated so I had to wait to go on active duty.
         Boot camp in Orlando was great, except for the exercise every morning. I couldn’t run more than two steps without stopping for air. At five every morning, we had to run around a grinder which was the size of a football field.
         After the morning exercises we ate breakfast, had Navy History classes, “Ask Not What Your Country Can Do for You, But What You Can Do for Your Country!” and Fire Fighting classes, then we spent the rest of the evening either going to the store or writing letters.
         The running eventually got the best of me and I was set back into remedial PT, with the possibility of not graduating with my company. I put my mind to it, beat the running portion of the PT test and was able to graduate with my company. You’d think that nowadays I would enjoy running, NOT. I hate it even more today. I’ll walk though, walking is more fun.
         After boot camp, I was officially now in the Navy Reserves and was sent to “A” School in Meridian, Mississippi to learn my rating. If you want to know what Meridian, Mississippi was like in 1983, I can’t tell you because I never left the base. All I know is, when I got there I was told the town was very racist. That’s all I needed to hear and I stayed my black ass on base for the entire three months I was in school.
         One Friday afternoon in the Laundromat I noticed James looking at me. He was tall and slim, had a nice figure for a guy. Maybe he could tell I was new too. We struck up a conversation and right away I knew he was gay by the way he stood. Hell, he checked out the guys while we were talked so he must be gay. We were both there for the same school, which was scheduled to start on Monday.
         Over the weekend we became friends and did almost everything together. Saturday night we went to the club and he saw someone he was interested in. James and I sat at the booth, getting drunk in-between dancing and he kept making googly eyes with Robert. Before the end of the night, Robert sat with us and James was in heaven.
         School started on Monday morning and James sat in front of me. A nice-looking guy sat behind me and all through class James kept turning around looking at this guy. Every time he did it, everyone laughed because he was made funny faces at the guy.
         We sat out on the lawn one day and talked about guys, of course.
         “How do you give a blowjob?” James asked me.
         I was like whaaaat?? “Like this”, I said, and demonstrated with my soda bottle. James rolled in the grass laughing.
         “But you have to be very careful not to bite.”
         “How do you do that?”
         “Just press with your lips, not your teeth. And don’t squeeze him too hard with your hands, be gentle.” I told him.
         “Robert asked me to give him a blowjob but I was afraid to because I don’t know how,” James confessed.
         “Soooo, what do you do, then?”
         “The usual stuff, you know.”
         “No, I don’t know. You’re the gay one here, not me, hellooooooo.”
         I just couldn’t picture James pumping anyone up the ass. Hell, I couldn’t even imagine him receiving it either because he was so damned feminine. He looked like someone who could give a blowjob and that’s it, but he said he’d never even done that before so he must be doing something.
         He and Robert started spending more time together and all of a sudden Robert dropped him, wanted nothing to do with him. James was crushed!
         “Tell me what happened,” I kept trying to pry it out of him but he wouldn’t say.
         “Just leave it alone, it’s in the past now,” he tried to reason with me.
         The hell I would, I was gonna give Robert a piece of my mind the next time I saw him, and we did see him a week later in the cafeteria. Both James and I spotted him the same time while going through the food line. He was about the 8th person in front of us. I put my tray down and went charging after him, James running after me trying to stop me.
         “Who the fuck do you think you are?” I asked Robert.
         “Let’s go Mia, just drop it,” James pleaded. I ignored him.
         “You think you can just play with people like that, you punk ass bitch!”
         Robert sucked his teeth at me, and oh my Lord, what did he do that for? Didn't he get the memo?? I'm from the South, I’m a crazy black woman!! I took my fountain soda and threw it in his face and on his uniform and walked off. James was embarrassed as hell but he was laughing all the way to the back of the line. Robert got out of the line and left to go change his clothes I guess.
         Since then whenever I saw Robert I just looked at him and shook my head. James finally got over him when Sam came along. I graduated and left school about a week before James and we kept in touch long after we were assigned to our duty stations. He was assigned to a carrier and was in heaven once again with swinging dicks everywhere.
         After “A” School I was sent back home to perform my Reserve duty aboard the USS Frank Cable (AS-40) and various shore mobilization units. I became friends with Curtis and we rode in together on duty weekends. Soon thereafter we were having sex in his car in the parking lot on base before heading home after duty. We only saw each other during our duty weekends and each time the sex was better. This didn’t last too long though, one of us eventually transferred to our next assignment.
         After marrying her Navy husband Randy, Deena moved to Providence. His family was in Providence and she wanted to get out of town. She asked me to come live with her so we researched and found out there was a mobilization unit in Providence. I packed everything I had into one shopping bag and caught the next Greyhound bus headed north.
         Deena's father-in-law, Eli, took a liking to me very quickly. He was nice to me. For an older guy he was really built from lifting weights all the time. I quickly learned that he was a freak in the bedroom because we had sex everywhere we could think of. When Deena bought her new house, Eli and I had sex on the stairs to “break in” the house. I couldn’t get enough of him, and he desired me just as much.
         The whole idea of sneaking around right under Randy's nose added to the enjoyment of screwing Eli. He was always over to the house fixing something. We started depending on him for everything; whether it was to fix something around the house or our cars, or break us off a couple of dollars, we could always depend on Eli. People started getting suspicious about me and Eli fooling around, and both Deena and I denied anything was happening between us.
         Randy’s brother started snooping around, showing up at the house all times of the day trying to catch Eli and me together. Randy’s mother called momma back home about her suspicions. Again, Deena denied it.
         James and I were still writing each other since we left Meridian, and I wrote him a letter about Eli. Momma called Deena a few days later reading my letter to her over the phone. I put the letter in the wrong fucking envelope and mailed it to momma instead! I sent James the letter intended for momma, how could I be so stupid? Randy wanted me to leave the house but Deena said I could stay as long as I wanted to. Eventually, Eli and I did stop seeing each other.
         Whenever I needed my hair did, I went to Kandy’s. Kandy was a she/he and was always dressed in drag. Rumor has it that Eli got with Kandy. I did say Eli was a freak, didn’t I? I loved going to Kandy’s and didn’t care if I had to wait over an hour to get my hair did because I liked Kandy myself. She didn’t even know I existed but whenever I saw her I got turned on. I never approached her with my desires, I just wondered what it would be like if we got together.
         I finally agreed to leave Providence and moved back home. I wasn't doing anything with my time anyways except playing cards every weekend with Alice, Carmen, Sandra and Deena and waiting for my duty weekends to come around. Besides, it was time for me to get the hell out, I had caused too many pain with Randy and his family. They booted my ass out of Providence.
         Finally I was able to go Active Duty and was sent back to Orlando for a refresher of some sort, waiting to be assigned to my first real active duty station. I met Cary on my first day there. Everyone was together in a room and he sat in front of me. He looked nice and his chest burst out of his shirt. Every time he turned around I looked straight into his eyes and he smiled. I didn’t even know the man’s name but one thing’s for sure, I wanted him. He motioned for me to sit next to him.
         “Where are you being stationed?” he asked.
         “I don’t know.”
         “What you mean you don’t know, didn’t you complete a wish list of where you wanted to be stationed? What did your Detailer tell you?”
         “Who?”
         “Your Detailer, didn’t you talk to your Detailer?”
         “I don’t have a Detailer, I said. No one told me anything.”
         “Everyone has a Detailer, Menard, you better call your Detailer.”
         “How do I call somebody I didn’t even know existed?”
         He gave me a newsletter to read and it listed all the Detailers for all the ratings. I found the phone numbers for my Detailer in the newsletter and called him up.
         “Yes, Seaman Saxon, you have three choices of duty stations and because you’re new all the good assignments are already taken. You can either go to Guam, Cuba or Kings Bay, GA on the USS CANOPUS (AS-34), a Submarine Tender.”
         Reality quickly set in. This is the first time I’d be away from momma for any extended period of time. I sure as hell didn’t want to go to Guam or Cuba so I chose Kings Bay, GA.
         Cary didn’t have his car with him, and I drove my Triumph TR-7 there from home.
         “Wanna go to McDonald’s for some coffee?” he asked me.
         Of course I wanted to go. He drank his coffee black with honey. We hit it off right from the beginning. He liked the way I looked and acted, I liked his demeanor and his lips. He nicknamed me Menard, not sure why. Cary let me know right from the start that he loved his wife who was sick most times. Not sure if she had an illness, was handicapped or what exactly.
         We started dating, going to the movies and Top Gun was the number one movie at the time. We went to the beach and my Triumph got stuck in the sand. Would you believe millions of folks walked by us and did not even stop to help dig my car out of the sand? Finally two nice gentlemen stopped and helped Cary rock my car out of the holes we put it in. I was so fucking upset about nobody stopping to help us, we just packed our shit up and went back to the base. Bunch of non-military, sun scorched, Arnold wannabees, who needed them anyways?
         When Cary and I made love, I knew I’d never have him to myself but I felt like I was in love with him anyways. He nicknamed me Hot Butter now and this time I knew why. Finally my orders came in and it was time for me to leave for my first active duty station, aboard the USS CANOPUS (AS-34).
         I didn’t want to leave Cary and I cried when I left. Cary was staying in Orlando for additional schooling. Take My Breath Away, by Berlin, played on the radio as I left the base, heading down the main highway. I had a week to waste before reporting onboard the CAN-O-PUS for duty so I headed north on I-95 and showed up on Shaylia’s doorstep at nine-thirty in the pm on a Saturday night.