Just a dumb fuck

The changing of the guard

For most of Monday morning I was with the sophomores doing my maths and physics, and then in the afternoon I was doing biology, which is an optional subject that nobody else in my dorm has selected, so I didn’t get to see most of the guys until classes finished for the day at 16:00 and we met up at tea. Tea itself didn’t take long because on Mondays Kyle likes us back promptly for the weekly Admin Brief he holds prior to the start of our private study period. Noah was actually like a sheepdog at tea, rounding us up almost before we had finished our drinks and herding us back to the dorm. I guess Kyle set him a task to do that.

When we got back to the dorm Kyle and Nathan were already there, both still in uniform rather than smarts, and leaning against the admin desk. Nathan has his new sergeant’s stripes sewn onto his tunic. That’s probably why he hasn’t changed into smarts yet. He wants to show them off. Okay, so I was the same when I got made a Lance Corporal in cadets back home. I spent hours wearing my tunic so everyone could see my first stripe. Lance Corporal is the most important rank of all. It’s when you stop being the same as your friends and start to be responsible for them. For what they do too. I was proud as anything when I got made up to Lance Jack, but shit scared too. Every time they screwed up, I had to answer for it. I soon learned to keep them in line. The Americans don’t have a direct equivalent rank, they jump straight from private soldier to full corporal. That kind of doesn’t let you get your feet under the table.

The two new gaming chairs were alongside the four armchairs and Will and Travis were quick to grab those to sit in rather than one of the armchairs. Nathan wasn’t back until very late last night and didn’t say anything about the chairs. He’d definitely seen them though. Once we’d all sat down Kyle picked up a paper from the desk, the weekly Admin Order. It gets published every Monday by the Commandant and contains all the events for the week and things like that. There’s also a section by the Captain of Cadets, mainly about rules and discipline. This is the first one to be issued by Jackson so there’s been quite a lot of speculation as to what might be in it as he sets the tone for his tenure.

“Right, listen in guys,” said Kyle, “I’ll begin with the weekly College Admin Order and then Nat will take us through dorm business. After that though, we have an announcement to make about some changes.”

Noah nodded approvingly.

“First of all, there is a series of congratulatory items.” Kyle read from the list. “Number one, the Commandant congratulates Cadet Lieutenant Davis on his promotion and appointment to Captain of Cadets and wishes him well for his year in office. Number two, the Commandant congratulates Cadet Lieutenant Masters on his award of the Allegheny River College Sword of Honour and wishes him well in his future endeavours.” Kyle blushed a little as he read that out, but before he could carry on we were all congratulating him too, with Nathan giving him a pat on the shoulder and shaking his hand, all of which made Kyle go a little redder.

“Okay guys, settle down,” he said after a few moments, ”We’ve a lot to get through. Number three, the Commandant congratulates Cadet Corporal Bauer on his promotion to Sergeant and wishes him well in his new appointment.” There was a murmur of congratulations too for Nathan but he waved his hand to quieten us down so Kyle could carry on reading. “Number four, the Commandant congratulates Cadet Privates Estevez, Hinton and Suhl on their promotion to Corporal and wishes them well in their new appointments.”

The Admin Order always follows a set sequence, just like any military briefing. Kyle continued to read for a minute or two more, listing the Commandant’s congratulations to various staff members and cadets for the organisation of the Parents’ Weekend and its smooth running. Kyle folded the paper over to mark his place, then looked up at us. “That concludes the ‘Congratulatories’, now to the “Notifications”. The Notifications were the usual stuff about forthcoming events, staff leave, the appointment of a new pool supervisor and things we are meant to know but which nobody actually listens to. The Admin Order itself gets pinned to the noticeboard in the dorm after the briefing so we can always refer back to it later in the week if it turns out something on there is actually relevant to us.

“Item seven,” Kyle was saying, still on the Notifications, “Cadet Private Wright is hereafter authorised to wear, on Working Dress, on occasions when Ceremonial Uniform is the dress of the day, an aiguillette in gold braid in recognition of his exemplary service to the Commandant in the role of aide-de-camp.”

Wow! For a split second I wasn’t sure I’d heard that right. Kyle was smiling. Direct from the Commandant, published in the Admin Order too! Everybody in college will be getting that read out to them and then seeing it on the noticeboard for a whole week. I need to get a copy of that to send to dad. I can do it with my iPhone now. Text him a picture of the Order. Shane and Travis were both patting me on the back. “Well done, Boots.”

“Settle down, Kyle’s not finished yet,” said Nathan. He was smiling at me too though. It means that when everybody else is in their pantomime uniform for formal events I get to wear an aiguillette on my blues instead. Muster Sundays just got a whole lot better. I’ll still stand out from everybody else, but now for the right reasons. Kyle continued on through the Order, finally finishing with the standard stuff about meals and filling in a forthcoming survey about food quality. There aren’t going to be many complaints there.

Kyle had now turned to the second sheet of paper and was reading through Jackson’s first weekly admin order. Most of it was the expected stuff about rules and tidiness and discipline, but there was another item at the end that Kyle told us was important. “Transfers. With effect from this day, Cadet Privates Brooke and Mason are transferred from the Infantry to the Artillery Detachment.”

Brooke and Mason. That’s Will and Noah! I didn’t know they were transferring! I didn’t know they could transfer. Why doesn’t anybody tell me these things? Everybody starts off here as an Infantry cadet. I thought only sophomores and up could join the artillery detachment and play with the cannon. How have Will and Noah managed that? Do they just go and ask? Maybe they get to change their rank title too. Back home they’d now be referred to as ‘Gunner’ instead of ‘Private’. It’s still the same grade, but it just sounds cooler. Or maybe because the artillery here is an old style cannon they get to use the old style rank too, ‘Cannoneer’?  

“Boots, are you still with us?” Nathan is waving his hand in front of me.

“Sorry, Nathan.”

Kyle is still talking. “Before handing over to Nathan for dorm business, I’d just like to say one final thing. We’ve just come through the first half of the semester and as freshmen, perhaps away from home for the first time and in a new environment, this has been a challenging time for you. You’ve had to make new friends and adapt to a whole new way of living. So far, we’ve come through it remarkably well and with far fewer dramas than might have been the case. I’m impressed with the way you have gelled together and helped each other out. Let’s keep it up.”

Once Kyle had finished, he handed over to Nathan for dorm business, of which there wasn’t actually a lot. We’d done well at inspections, nobody had got any major de-merits in the preceding week and Parents’ Weekend had gone well for all concerned in our dorm. That just left one thing according to Nathan. The gaming seats.

“You might all have noticed,” he said, “that a pair of gaming seats have mysteriously appeared in the dorm.” Will and Travis both shifted a little uncomfortably in them. “I can’t imagine how they got in here, or who gave permission for them. I certainly didn’t sign them off on the dorm budget.”

Each dorm has a small budget, controlled by the dorm senior, who can spend it at his discretion for various things. Some of the other dorms have spent it on things like a coffee machine, which is exactly what I’ve been suggesting, or armchairs, some have spent it on educational trips to the theatre or to museums. One dorm even went white water rafting as a team building exercise. Kyle allowed Nathan to be in charge of our dorm budget and he didn’t spend a penny of it in the first half of the semester.

“As the gaming seats are here, and apparently very comfortable,” – Nathan looked at Will and Travis at that point – “they may as well stay. They do seem a little pointless though, given that they are just going to be facing a blank wall and aren’t connected to anything.” Before any of us could say anything, and we were all pretty much thinking along the same lines, Nathan continued. “So, given what Kyle has said about the way you’ve all settled in and pulled together, I’m going to suggest that I allocate a sum of money from the dorm budget to buy a high-definition screen for the dorm, to be used as a tv and a gaming screen. Unless, of course, you’d prefer to go on a trip to the art gallery. The money is there to be used for your benefit, so you do get a say in how it’s spent.”

“Screen!” we all chorused. Kyle and Nathan were both smiling.

“No dissenters?” asked Nathan, “I hear there’s a particularly good exhibition of pre-Raphaelite master pieces opening at the Carnegie gallery over in Pittsburgh in a week or two. Very educational. You’d like that, an art gallery visit, wouldn’t you Noah?”

Noah looked up, burst out of his little bubble. “No Nat, we want a screen.”

Nathan was still smiling. “Okay then. A screen it is. But there are going to be strict rules about using it though so it doesn’t interfere with studies or mean you don’t go out socialising. Happy with that?”

“We’re happy, Nat.”

“Okay. Is everyone happy for me to delegate Will to look into what is available and make a recommendation? Will, not now…” We all laughed, Will had already glanced across to his bedspace and was about to get up and grab his iPad to start searching. “Do you reckon you can find something suitable for, say, five hundred dollars, Will? Is everyone happy with me allocating that much? It’s a sizeable portion of the budget.”

We’re all very happy with that. We know Will can get a good screen for that budget, we’ve been discussing it for a couple of weeks now. He’s done the research. The money hasn’t been the issue, Will was quite happy to buy it himself. We all offered to help but Will said it wasn’t necessary. Most of the guys here are minted. The big issue was trying to talk Nathan into it. We hadn’t figured out how to do that yet, but now he’s actually offering to buy a screen for us! Well, I guess we are actually buying it ourselves in one sense, the dorm budget obviously comes out of the college budget and that’s made up from our fees.

“Okay, if that’s agreed, Will, can you come back to us at tea on Thursday with some recommendations? I’ll approve the expenditure and get a purchase order sorted from the admin office. You never know, with fast shipping you might even get it delivered in time for the weekend.”

“Actually,” said Will, “I can make some suggestions before Thursday. And I happen to know that some of the leading models I’d be evaluating are in stock at the mall in town. So, if I had a pass out for this Saturday afternoon…”

Kyle was chuckling. “And I suppose if someone just happened to be going into town before then, say to pick up their new in car entertainment system from Mr Miller’s auto store, which, by the way Nathan, Lee told me yesterday is scheduled for delivery to them on Wednesday morning…”

“Yes!” we all cried out together.

Kyle was looking at Nathan again. “You’re in charge of dorm business, Sergeant Bauer, so I don’t want to put any undue influence on you, but if you happen to think the guys are particularly deserving of a reward for their performance this first half semester then I could write you a pass to go into town on Wednesday afternoon after your swimming to supervise Artilleryman Brooke on a visit to the mall…”

Well that’s bloody sorted then! Nathan’s not going to turn that down. He gets his new ICE system for Lemon Steroids and Will picks up a screen for us. Definitely a result.

“Now,” Kyle was saying, ”that’s the Admin Briefing and dorm business out of the way, but we’re not done yet. I have some changes to tell you about that affect you all so listen in. As you may have noticed, Nat has a shiny new badge on his arm. Gleaming like a thousand suns. He’s earned it. Dorms are usually controlled by a Sergeant and so far this semester Nat has pretty much been running this one for me as a Corporal. We’ve talked this through with Cadet Captain Davis and he’s agreed that from now until the end of semester that role will be formalised and Nat will be the Acting Dorm Senior. I’ll be staying in the dorm as a mentor but in all day-to-day matters Nathan is in command. It’s his dorm. You’ll report to him from now on in just the same way that previously you reported to me. You will not seek to bypass any instruction or order he gives by coming to me. Understood?”

We all looked at each other, then at Kyle. “Yes, Sir.”

“Good. From this point on, my role will only be to undertake those actions that must be performed by Cadet Officers, for example signing day out passes, late meal chits and so on. For those you will still go first to Sergeant Bauer and I will only approve them upon his recommendation. Clear?”

“Yes, Sir”

“Finally, at the end of semester, assuming Captain Davis’s approval, I’ll be moving out and up to Heaven, and Nathan will be appointed Dorm Senior for the remainder of the year. Does anyone have any questions for me?”

Questions? I have a bloody bucketful of them. So does everyone else by the look of it. Well, everyone except Noah. He’s just sitting there smiling like this has all just flowed around his little world and left him untouched. I always got the impression that Kyle was letting Nathan have a bit more control than a Corporal would usually get.  Maybe easing him into the role ready for next year when he would normally have got promoted to Sergeant and would have had the opportunity to volunteer for a dorm senior role. Most third years don’t take on the dorm senior role unless they are actually planning to go into the military, when it looks good on their cv. Those planning to go to university after graduating here tend to just carry on as Sergeants and live together in their own dorms. The Sergeants’ dorms have a Master Sergeant who’s nominally in charge, and the dorms are better than ours. More space for a start as with some Sergeants assigned as seniors to oversee the Privates’ and Corporals’ dorms they don’t need to squash eight people into a room. Most only have four or five I think. Bags of space. Discipline is a little more relaxed too, after all, they are sergeants. If they can’t run a tight ship without being inspected every five minutes they don’t deserve to be sergeants.

“No questions?” Kyle asked again. We’re still all too busy thinking this through to have questions now.

“Okay,” said Kyle, “I’ll hand over to Nathan. It’s genuinely been a pleasure to have been your dorm senior.”

Kyle and Nathan turned to face each other, snapped to attention. So this is why they are still in uniform. A formal hand over of command. See, Kyle does do things properly.

Nathan saluted Kyle. “Sergeant Bauer reporting for duty, Sir.”

Kyle returned the salute. “You have command of the dorm, Sergeant Bauer.”

For a moment they held their salutes, then smartly snapped their hands down to their sides, took a step back from each other. Both of them broke out into a grin, then Kyle stepped forward and shook Nat’s hand. “Keep an eye on those two in particular, Nat,” he said, nodding towards Will and Noah, ”they’re always up to something. And if they aren’t, it’s just a distraction to keep your attention away from the other three…” We all burst out laughing at that and jumped to our feet to shake Nat’s hand too. It’s a big day for him. It’s going to be quite a change for us all, but suddenly Nat is going to find out what being in command means. He won’t have a hiding place. Time to grow up, baby big cheese. You don’t have friends any more.

“Okay guys, settle back down,” said Nathan, “I have a few things to say too. First of all, that it’s an honour to be given this opportunity. As the Commandant said on Saturday, leadership carries responsibility, in this case to you, and I’ll do everything I can to prove worthy of your respect. Secondly, as you’ve no doubt noticed, my style of leadership is a little different to Kyle’s; bear with me in that.” He smiled. “Of course, if you don’t, I’ll kick your sorry asses to Pittsburgh and back.”

We all laughed, then dispersed back to our bedspaces to begin private study when Nat dismissed us. Nat walked over to Noah and asked, quietly, “You okay with all this Noah? I’m going to need your help keeping a log of screen time, make sure everyone gets a fair share.”

Noah nodded. “I’ll start a list, Sergeant.”

Noah’s okay with this.

I sat at my desk as private study started and began to think. I’ve already got my maths and physics assignments sorted, and biology won’t take me long. Lung anatomy. I already did that back home. I know the answers. Alveoli and partial pressures. That’s all there is to lungs.

That was a bloody masterpiece of tactics from Kyle and Nathan. Everybody is going to be concentrating on the chairs and screen for the next few days, so the switch in authority will just slip through. Nat deserves his chance, he’s actually got what it takes to be a decent dorm senior, and Kyle is still there in the background to mentor him until Christmas. After that, Kyle will be able to move out and concentrate on his studies to make absolutely sure he gets into West Point and Nat gets to be made full senior way ahead of anyone else in his year. Double win. Jackson had to approve it too. It’ll look good on him, recognising and promoting talent.

* * *

At dinner there were a few changes. Jackson now sits with the staff, and Nat moved up to a table with the other sergeants, all of them older than him, but that’s not an issue. If he wasn’t wary of my dad he’s not going to be awed by a bunch of seventeen year olds. The new corporals were also shifted up, just like at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. The ripples didn’t propagate down to me though, I’m still at the back of the dining hall.

After dinner all the guys headed back double quick to the dorm so they could scan the internet with Will and start to home in on the screen we want. Will’s suggested that a fifty inch, 4k, edge lit LED screen is the best combination of performance and cost for the budget and he’s got several models in mind. I went and got myself a cup of tea, proper tea, and sat in the ante-room to think for a while. I was still thinking when Kyle came over and asked if he could sit with me.

“That was a nice thing you did for Shane, Boots,” he said. ”He really enjoyed spending the weekend with you. Please pass on my thanks to your father too, and for the giving him the golf clubs. I don’t think you know how much that meant to him.”

“Kyle,” I said, “Shane did tell me something. About his past. How can someone cope with that?”

Kyle looked at me for a moment. “We’re all a lot tougher than we sometimes realise, Boots, it’s just that if we’re lucky we never get to find that out.”

I took a sip of my tea and thought for a moment.

“Kyle, how did you know you preferred guys to girls?” Bloody hell, why did I ask that? Now he’s going to get pissed off again. I really must have caught something from Noah.

Kyle just looked at me and smiled. “Why do you prefer girls to guys?”

“Er, I, er, well I just, well,. It’s sort of…” I don’t have an answer for him. What sort of question was that? Normal people just do.

Kyle is still smiling at me. He doesn’t seem pissed off. “There’s no simple answer to that, Boots. I just always have. Right from as long as I can remember. I used to look at some of my friends at school and think, ‘he’s nice’. Long before I understood anything about sex and relationships. Then when I grew older and all my mates were talking about girls, I was still thinking the same way. I could look at girls, see they were pretty, understand why my mates felt they were attractive, but they didn’t do anything for me. I had a lot of girls as friends, but never considered them as girlfriends. I just liked guys more.”

“How about Lee? What makes him special?”

Kyle took a drink of his coffee and placed his cup down on the table. “That’s a difficult one, but easy too. Lee is special. One day you’ll meet someone and just click. You’ll understand then.”

I must have looked blank, just like a complete glass-licking mong. Kyle continued.

“I was a freshman here, and met someone new in the first few weeks that I really liked. We got on well and after a while grew close. But it didn’t work out. I wanted more than he was prepared to give. I was out, everyone knew I was gay, but he wasn’t. It wasn’t that we broke up, so much as we never really got completely together in the first place. We’re still friends, but nothing more than that. We both have different views on life, Boots. After that, no other guy really came close until last year. I met Lee when we played against each other in the Pittsburgh Schools’ Football League. After the game we really hit it off at the post match social, had lots of interests in common as well as football. He didn’t seem to mind that I was gay and I loved talking to him, but I didn’t think he felt anything for me. He was just a nice guy.”

Kyle took another drink and continued. “A few weeks later, I was in town to get some parts for my truck. I went to the Tyre Store and Lee was there, working for his dad. We got talking again and he invited me to join some of his friends in the park that afternoon to practice football. I didn’t take much persuading. After that, whenever I got a weekend pass I found an excuse to go to the store in the hope of seeing him again. We usually ended up playing football with his friends in the afternoon after he finished work. Then, one weekend, he asked if I wanted to go to see the Steelers with him at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh. He was meant to be going with his dad but Mr Miller had an urgent job in the shop and couldn’t go. I got the spare ticket. They’re like gold dust! We went in my truck and had a really great time. That night I dropped him off at his house but when we parked up we both sat there for a moment, like we didn’t want the day to end. When he was about to open the door and get out, I leaned over and he leaned to me, and we kissed. I think I floated all the way back to college. A couple of weeks later I got another pass, just for Saturday evening, and phoned him up to ask if he wanted to meet and go to the diner. He said he did and so I went to pick him up.”

“So that was the time you asked to date him?”

Kyle laughed.

“Yes, I didn’t think it through, never really considered that he wasn’t out, I don’t think he’d really realised it himself. But I just blundered in there and asked his dad if I could take him on a date.”

“Bloody hell, Kyle…”

Kyle was laughing again. “Yes, but it turned out okay in the end. At first Mr Miller looked completely bewildered, then he started laughing and thought I was playing a prank on Lee. He actually played along and said ‘Yes, but make sure he’s home by ten and no kissing’. Lee looked like he was going to drop dead on the spot and rushed me out of the house. He was in a panic all night. When we went back to his house I went in with him. By that time Lee’s mom had worked things out, and it wasn’t fair to leave Lee alone to try and explain things. It was a pretty awkward couple of hours…”

“Fuck me…” I gasped, then realised that probably wasn’t the best choice of words.

Kyle laughed again. “No thanks, Boots, I prefer Lee.”

That made me laugh too. So they are fucking…

I finished off my tea and we headed back to the dorm. I have some ideas about what we should be doing on Saturday mornings now we’re moving to Phase Two of military training, but it’s Nathan that I need to raise them with, not Kyle. It would probably have been easier to get them by with Kyle though. I’d double checked the admin order after it’d been pinned on the board and confirmed that the Saturday morning military training for freshmen has moved onto Phase Two. That’s basic field training. Everybody is now deemed capable of marching and parading and conducting themselves in a smart, orderly and soldier-like fashion around college. Well, that’s what the handbook says about the objectives of Phase One anyway. For the rest of semester we all get to learn how to live in the field and then start doing basic infantry drills like patrolling and ambushes. I’m joining in with that now rather than doing Civics in the library. It’s all old stuff to me that I’ve done a million times before in the cadets back home. It’s going to be good fun!

We’re meant to go to the clothing stores on Saturday morning to get issued our camouflage uniforms, webbing, sleeping bags and all that sort of kit for the first time, but I’m going to suggest to Nathan that we should try and get ahead of the other freshman dorms and get our kit earlier. We can probably send two people before tea every day if Nathan has any sway over the storeman – obviously I’ll volunteer to go first and show everybody what’s needed and how to set the kit up. That way, we can get it all sorted in comfort in the dorm, then go straight out into the woods on Saturday and get to grips with setting up a harbour area and doing some real soldiering whilst the guys in the other dorms are still queuing up to collect their bootlaces and bandoliers. Noah’s going to help me too. He doesn’t know it yet, but he is…