Soob tagged me with a meme nearly two weeks ago, and as I often do (this is not one of the seven btw), I allowed some procrastination to extend to the point when I might actually pass the threshold where “doing the meme” faded into the past unrealized. As I wrote in a Twit,

I don’t like being meme-tagged. Why? The ritual w/ fetishes and obligations. I don’t want to pass it on, either. I’m a grumpy bad-ass.

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
5. In light of Ortho’s post I’ve added this bit to the meme. Present an image of martial discord from whatever period or situation you’d like.

“The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill” by John Trumbull

[Joseph Warren] was appointed a Major General by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress on June 14, 1775. His commission had not yet taken effect three days later when the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought. He served as a volunteer private against the wishes of General Israel Putnam and Colonel William Prescott, who requested that he serve as their commander. Taunting the British, he uttered his famous quote: “These fellows say we won’t fight! By Heavens, I hope I shall die up to my knees in blood!” He fought in the front lines, rallying his troops to the third and final assault of the battle when he was killed immediately by a musket ball fired into his head by a British officer who recognized him. [Wikipedia]

1. The first person I ever “came out” to in person was my platoon sergeant while I served in the U.S. Army. First person bar none, since I had not actually met an openly gay person, even (at least not open with me.) My service did not consist of much but training, first basic and then later at the Defense Language Institute, where I studied Korean in late 1989/90, until I was honorably discharged. This was before “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” My platoon sergeant gave me a weekend to “think about it,” or to make sure I knew what I was doing — I was young and young people sometimes were confused about sexuality, he said — and warned me that our company commander, an ex-MP officer, would be suspicious because young service members sometimes claimed to be gay just to get out of the service. After the weekend, I trudged back into his office and said, yeah, I was sure. But surprisingly, my platoon sergeant was the only negative reaction I received. In fact, the base commander, once I reached that level in the process, lectured me on being “safe” once I left the service and commented approvingly on my decision to study psychology afterward (as a path toward figuring myself out even better, he said.) My record to that point had been pretty good, hence the honorable discharge.
2. I did not study psychology, beyond one class. In fact, I did not study much of anything afterward, at least not in any structured, formal way. After two semesters in a state university, I was booted for poor grades. I’d skipped way too many classes. (I went to a philosophy class once and never went back, never dropped it. For instance. But that was the worst case. And, paradoxically, it bored me.) This is despite the fact that, in the final weeks before being discharged from the Army, I’d earned a year’s worth or so of credits via CLEP tests. I received no warnings or anything else of the sort from the university, and was told that my ACT test scores and high school record were so good, as well as those CLEPs, my poor performance displayed an unwillingness to try; so they booted me. I have never earned a college degree.
   
3. Weird fact: I have read Wystan Hugh Auden’s poem “A New Age” to a small group of Wiccans, who did not like it; particularly, there was a rumble of disgruntlement and disagreement when I read line 9:
   
   

   A New Age
   
   
   So an age ended, and its last deliverer died
   In bed, grown idle and unhappy; they were safe:
   The sudden shadow of a giant’s enormous calf
   Would fall no more at dusk across their lawns outside.
   
   They slept in peace: in marshes here and there no doubt
   A sterile dragon lingered to a natural death,
   But in a year the spoor had vanished from the heath:
   A kobold’s knocking in the mountain petered out.
   
   Only the scupltors and the poets were half sad,
   And the pert retinue from the magician’s house
   Grumbled and went elsewhere. The vanished powers were glad
   
   To be invisible and free; without remorse
   Struck down the sons who strayed in their course,
   And ravished the daughters, and drove the fathers mad.
   

   
   
   —but they did not understand the poem; they were a loopy lot. I once ran with Wiccans though.
4. Weird fact: I once told a therapist, who told me she was doing a survey shortly after 9/11 to see how people (clients) were handling the attack emotionally and mentally, and who asked me how I felt about 9/11, that, “I felt relieved.” This shocked the poor woman quite a bit I saw and must have been non-standard. She asked what I meant, and I said that the attack could have been so much worse (thinking nukes and other nasties) and that now finally we might be able to stop, or at least be motivated to stop, or to preempt, far worse in the future. In truth, the week after the attacks I had walked around in a daze, actually became physically sick, and could hardly bring myself to be in the public around others — but by the time she asked me, I was in a different frame of mind.
5. I actually believe: That each person is responsible for his own mind. This has freed me quite a bit. However, self-identified members of a common community persist in trying to be responsible for my mind or, on the other side of the equation, grow rather frustrated when I do not exhibit much effort to construct their minds for them. Incidentally, I could devote an entire blog, by which I mean an entire site, to nothing but this #5.
6. I have never quite found my perfect medium; but then, I don’t know if one exists.
7. I chose my full 3-word name for my online identity because I thought:
   1. “C.G.Weeks” was too pretentious
      
   2. “Curtis G. Weeks” was useless; why include the middle initial? And too corporate.
   3. “Curtis Weeks” was too generic. Believe me, I’ve ego surfed.
   4. I decided that my full name was me, as given at birth, and I didn’t like a-c above for reasons given.
      
   And, I chose it long ago, when I first began spending online time, typically at poetry forums. Circa 2000AD.