“It’s a direct hit!“ yelled out the radioman as his voice shot out of the loud speaker in our compartment, and smacked me right upside the head like an insult to the soul.

As the rest of the ship’s company jumped up to give themselves one of the wildest standing ovations I had ever seen, you’d have thought it was the first Independence Day these guys had ever celebrated. To get a feel for what I’m trying to say, you’d have had to have been there to have seen the look I saw in their eyes, that night, for it was like unto no other than that of a predatory beast which has just tasted the blood of its first victim. As this drink went to their heads, you’d have sworn they had been elevated to the level of a god, for had they not, in deed, taken life into their own hands? If you’d been there, you’d have seen the same defiant look of triumph over the God of Love, I saw in their eyes. You’d have seen the very same illusion, they saw, that night, the death of man’s immortal foe, that evil magician, Instinct himself. And you’d have either laughed with the Joker or cried with me, depending upon whether you had sided with the forces of the animal kingdom or those of the kingdom of God, for the only independence granted that night, if any, was to those poor souls fortunate enough to have made the grade as they left their bodies behind upon the battlefield.

“Come on,“ he pleaded with me. “Let’s get outta here before it’s too late.“

Numbed by the whole experience, I nonetheless managed to push my self away from the table and walk out on her.

“You’re an angel in disguise,“ I unabashedly proclaimed to Greg, as we scurried back to the ship.

Had it not been for him, I’d certainly have fallen, back there. As she cast her hypnotic spell upon me, I could feel my heart turning to stone. Mesmerized by her, I could do nothing but sit there, like a statue, and watch as my heart grew harder ’n’ harder, the closer I drew to succumbing to her. In my inability to free my self from the seductive web she’d woven around me, I could feel my body growing numb to all I truly felt about such intrigue, till Greg prodded me into getting back in touch with my feelings. Only then, fore I toppled over on her, a broken man, was I able to see through the outer shell of her being, to the horrid gorgon that’d overtaken her soul. Filled with the desire to live out the moment as a human being rather than an animal, I begged this angel in disguise, in silent prayer, to take me back to the ship that my humanity might, once again, shine forth from the core of my being as a beacon to all.

As the tortoise led the missing link back to ship, I couldn’t help noticing the gradual return of the warmth of my humanity to a heart that’d grown colder, the farther south I had pushed. For the first time in my life, had I ventured down below the belt into the world of Hyde without having been transformed into the hideous beast, beforehand, as the only prerequisite for entry into the animal kingdom. Though it was a very chilling experience, I came through it unscathed, for I had, in the process, liberated, from the beast, another small part of my humanity—those qualities of compassion, sympathy, and consideration for others, so characteristic of a real human being. No longer was I bound to a purely physical response to those persons in my immediate environment to which I still remained unconsciously identified. Nor was I so hopelessly lost when it came to figuring out how to respond, in a much warmer, more civilized manner, to those situations in my life that had previously drawn from me only the cold and ruthless response of an animal. Rather than getting stuck in either extreme, with an inappropriate intellectual or physical response, I was learning to use the images the mind and the body, in their infinite love for each other, continually reproduced for me, to help me feel my way through the darkness of my ignorance of the path my life must take, if I wished to live in harmony with this triune god.

“If you go away from this experience with anything at all,“ stated my mentor, “I hope it is with the realization that you may never take the life of another human being, no matter how you feel, for you have been called by the Highest Authority to destroy the images of your enemies as you see them within yourself rather than in your neighbor.“

“Do you not see, my son, how the cycle of violence is passed from one generation to the next!“ exclaimed my mentor. “As you acquired the habit of putting down the lesser self and beating off the advances of the greater Self from your parents, so would you have passed this tendency down to your children, had you not chosen to break the cycle.“

“I hope you see now, how this behavior has led to the creation of Hyde,“ added my shadow.

“For She must be obeyed, one way or the other,“ interjected my soul, “as either a beast or a human being.“

“What I don’t understand,“ I inquired, “is why I was transformed into a wolf instead of Hyde.“

“You see, my son,“ answered my mentor, “because Hyde perpetuated the cycle of self-abuse, in his addiction to this narcotic, he could never have turned against his supplier.“

“Since only the witch knew the words to the incantation that transformed you into such a hideous beast,“ added my shadow, “as Hyde, you could never have destroyed this life line to your existence.“

“To get you to attack this predaceous image of your mother,“ insisted my soul, “we had to draw upon the instinct for survival, that you found in the image of the wolf.“

“It was all so horrible,“ I cried out, as tears welled up in my eyes. “Once I’d been transformed into a wolf, I could think of nothing but killing my prey, the old witch. As I grew more ’n’ more intoxicated with the idea of killing her, I had the sense that it was all right, that I was only taking this life in order to live. I felt as if I was only taking back what rightfully belonged to me, my own personhood. I tore into her flesh, not so much for the revenge, as I did for the food of the gods, that knowledge which comes from the destruction of an old image. Then I was overcome by remorse for having taken the life of an old god.“

“Only you never realized,“ interjected my mentor, “how incomplete was your picture of God, until you prepared this false image for interment.“

“When Mother Nature finally revealed her true identity,“ added my shadow, “she apologized for the shoddy treatment you had received from her alter ego, the opinionated old witch that’d devoured the image of your mother.“

“It was only you,“ insisted my soul, “who could free us from the devouring image of your mother.“

Overwhelmed by this tension to create a new life for myself, I woke up totally exhausted, as if my main drive had been broken down into its component parts, during the night, and had been reconstructed with a new program in mind—to resist the Navy—for with the exception of the dark side of me, I had nothing left to give the Navy. Since my energies belonged to neither my self nor the Navy, but rather to my soul, to the extent that I let her use them in her struggle to resist the war in Vietnam, I gained that much more strength to resist the seductive pull of the evil Magician to act instinctively. Thus was I awakened to the path I must take if I wished to gain mastery over self and its penchant for playing with itself.

“What am I to do now?“ asked I of the more civilized aspects of my nature who, in their ongoing feud with the more uncivilized parts of me, had never won a single round in the debate over this question, and then wondered why I’d thrown out their unworkable old solutions, along with those of the beastly neighbors beneath them.

Having been encouraged to imagine my way out, did I slip into a region of the brain where I could go without having to act like a beast, one day, and a god, the next. Only I wasn’t too sure I’d found the place until the voices in my head had dropped me off there, in their own picturesque way.

“The uncivilized run around like chickens with their heads chopped off,“ gave I some thought to the unthinkable side of nature. “They worry me with the half-baked ideas they concoct and force down the throats of unsuspecting souls like me, as if their solutions were the only way to go. And they wonder why I don’t ever take them very seriously.“

So off I went to fill the hole these images invariably left behind whenever I slipped into this region of the brain to find the words to express myself in a more civilized manner.

Forced to let go of yet another aspect of the life to which I clung, for fear of falling through the void it had created in my life, did I draw ever so close to grasping hold of one of the most puzzling pieces of my life, the urge to stand tall as a beacon to all. Rather than falling headlong into the Great Abyss, as many of my shipmates had, I was being urged to hold my head high as I stepped into the infernal pit to shed light on whatever remained bound to the beast that inhabited its dank, dirty corridors. But alas, I was not quite ready for so bold an undertaking.

Since I’d never been initiated into the underground resistance, till this Captain’s mast, I basically lacked any training in the ways of the underworld. Why I barely understood the language, much less how to access this world or go about doing anything once I got there. I knew only that it seemed to stir with the slightest ripple I made at the surface, whereupon I’d immediately start receiving images of its perception of what was taking place on the surface. I was always given a choice in the matter, either I did what was shown to me or I did what I was meant to do. If I failed to do the latter, for whatever reason, then I no longer had a choice in the matter—I was forced to do the former, unless my will remained sufficiently strong to withstand its enticing images while I tried to figure out which way I should go. Since the images were generally so highly charged with the energy needed to pull Consciousness down from the heavens in brilliant flashes of insight, I had little time to dally here in the middle, lest I be struck by the energy contained within the images to act them out before I found out what I was meant to do; for She Who Must Be Obeyed always got her man, one way or the other, either by the genitals or through his heart.

A new breed of men, the reservists differed from the low life Neanderthals as much as did the Cro-Magnon men of prehistoric times. A more intelligent and sensitive lot, they hated, with a passion, their indentured servitude to a lower form of life, and rued the day they had ever gotten involved in this country’s military solution to the problems in Vietnam. However much they indulged in grass, hashish, or acid to escape the hellish conflict within themselves over their participation in this war, they nevertheless remained faithful to the wives and fiancées they’d left behind. In spite of their disaffection with the Navy and the war in Vietnam, they still performed their tasks, only to the beat of the rock music to which they constantly subjected themselves, to drown out the screaming of their souls in righteous indignation over their complicity. More often than not were they standing up for what they believed, and at least confronting the lifers before they would agree to carry out those commands that offended their sensibilities in any way. And because I seemed to speak to something hidden deep within their beings, they unconsciously adopted me as the rebel for their cause, the white knight who might just free them from themselves.

The lifers, on the other hand, feared this new breed of man, who dared to stand up to them and question their authority. Like outcasts, the lifers had flocked to the Great Gray Whore, only because she appeared to give them what this society otherwise withheld from them—a reason for living. Driven to serve the soul of this sick society, these patriots of the Great Gray Whore searched in vain through the brothels of the Far East for her ever-illusive form. In their quest for the Great Prostitute, the genie who could fulfill their every desire, they turned to the Spirits of Alcohol. Instead of releasing the genie bottled up within them, they aroused, from his slumber, the ogre who ruled over her, the instinctive beast hidden within us all—Hyde. Because Hyde gave them what they wanted, they grew fond of the horny old devil. Then, one day, they ran into their own shadowy perception of the white knight, hiding out within a lowly peon named Drury, and grew fearful; for somewhere, in the back pages of their minds, they recalled a tale from the days of old, in which the white knight slays the beast.

And in the middle stood the majority of the crew who, unlike the lifers, still had some semblance of a conscience to which the white knight could appeal. Caught up in this tug-of-war for their souls, when push came to shove, they often fell prey to the ways of their animal natures. In their inability to interpret the language of the body, they easily lost their heads when confronted by the rawness of their desires. With their heads in the clouds, and their feet mired down in clay, were they driven to live like the gods, one day, and the beasts of the earth, the next; for this, they believed, was the fate of those who lived in the middle.

While neither lifers nor reservists would have much to do with each other, those who lived in the middle associated freely with the members of both factions. By at least keeping open the paths of communication between the two sides, they seemed to temper some of the hostility each side felt for the other. For now, they were the glue that tenuously held the crew together.

While I sat inside the dispensary, awaiting my debut with one of the Navy’s psychologists, I wondered if my real father had been sent here for psychiatric evaluations when he too began to display bizarre behavior in response to the beast that’d been unleashed with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. And I wondered if he too had been bombarded by the same barrage of fantasies I had experienced, to help me make sense of what I’d seen. It was then that I realized what a tragic mistake he had made when he stumbled upon that great abyss, which separates this world from the next. For it was in his inability to make any sense of either world that I saw him clasp his ears as the frenzied screaming of his soul filled his head, like the song of a Siren, and drove him over the edge of the abyss to his destruction below. As these perceptions about my real dad shot through my head, I shivered at the thought that I had stood on the same brink of insanity, he had stumbled over, twenty-five years ago.

Having gone into the interview hoping to find some answers, I instead left empty-handed. While the psychologist only seemed interested in probing into my past and the history of my family, I was eager to talk to him about the problems I was currently experiencing with my sexuality and the Navy. For I saw, within me, the struggle to give birth to a whole new way of life, the past as well as the present were impeding. Because he had not the foresight to look beyond the dirt in my past, I never gained any insight from him into the troubles of the present.

Dear Butch,
Sounds like you don’t think too much of the Navy. I think it’s because of all the rules and regulations. You haven’t had many restrictions put on you in a long time. It’s going to take a lot of getting used to. The only thing you can do is to make the best of it. Otherwise, you’ll go crazy. You’re never going to be completely satisfied with the job you’re doing—that’s human nature. Make the time you have to spend in the Navy one you’ll never forget. Remember, life is what you make of it. Whatever job you’re doing, do it well, even if you don’t like it. You have no choice. Remember, it’s only temporary.
Love,
Mary

Now I felt totally misunderstood. While I sometimes doubted my sanity, I certainly didn’t want to become some socially accepted, schizophrenic beast like M. For I saw the rules ’n’ regulations, all the pomp ’n’ plume of the military, as a facade shrewdly constructed long ago to hide the true nature of this beast from the consciousness of the general public. With the beast so well concealed, how could I ever get Mary to see military service as the bloody poison which transforms the young Jekylls of this country into hideous Hydes, so that they, who were once men, can kill without feeling, consciousness of the soul or a conscience. How could I convey to her what has happened to the M.‘s of this country? How could I tell her about the Hyde who lurked within my own body and periodically dragged me down to hell? And lastly, how could I ever convince her that it is the discipline of the soul rather than of the military, which ultimately transforms the beast?

Why even the mess decks had its share of seedy rogues, of whom the worst was a little wiry, dark complected guy named B., who cussed incessantly in that same gruff gravelly voice. Just watching him cook was enough to make me sick. Having wiped the sweat from his brow with his finger, he’d often fling it into the food he was preparing. Or whenever he cleared his throat or blew his nose, he’d occasionally spit the phlegm or blow the snot onto the grill and mix it into the food he was frying. Once he even beat off on a raw steak, which he then threw onto the grill to be cooked and served to the crew along with the others. In my opinion, the dude was crazy, and yet he was greatly admired by those around him for his audacity.

For my part, I absolutely refused to eat whenever he cooked. How else was I to make the best of such memorable experiences? If I reported him, who’d believe me? It’d be his word against that of a f___-up. How could I ever make the best of anything in this hellhole?

I saw too, how both my fathers’ spirits had been broken before me. When my real father unwittingly traded his soul to the Great Gray Bitch, she broke him in two, stole his mind, and carried it off to the metaphysical realm where he roams in madness, to this very day, unconsciously trying to find his way out. In the case of my stepfather, who had offered his body to her as cannon fodder in an earnest attempt to die to himself, she snatched up his soul and imprisoned it in a bottle with the spirits of alcohol, who eventually granted him his wish. And though they both found soul in my mother, such solace came as too little, too late, to stave off the fate they had inadvertently bought from the Great Gray Mother with their souls.

So had I inherited from them this tendency to cash in on the same terrible fate. Having given the Great Gray Bitch my body but not my soul, I still had a chance to change my fate before it was signed, sealed and delivered to me in an even more despicable form. For I was not about to live ’n’ die as half a man, or some soulless beast, as had my fathers before me.