Insomnia

Yesterday late night was quite weird in a not very good way. I had the really calming heavy breathing of ‘D’ lying next to me naked in bed sleeping, but I could not relax and let Morpheus take me to dreamland.

My mind started wondering around and visited my years in the army. I do not know why. It’s not a period of life that I miss (really, you should believe me when I say that). Serving the army is mandatory in Greece and I had to do it for 12 months. I am proud (not really) to say that I am a Greek Sergeant whose specialty includes being a driver of heavy lorries.

By the way when I talk about the army, I talk about images like these:

and not like these:

If you think about the latter, you’ve seen too many porn movies…

It’s really funny that after some time, all bad experiences seem less frightening. I think back of that year, remembering all the good times and the laughs we had. I was able to remember yesterday the name of the general that was in charge of my group in the first military base I was assigned. He was a really good man. He wasn’t very strict and treated us as human beings. As long as the day’s work was done, he would buy us drinks or let us order take-away food (the base’s food I’ll say politely was not very good and a bit out-of-date). I remember feeling very sad, almost in tears, having to leave him when assigned in another base.

There is no option of admitting being gay in the army. In theory, you are able to say that you’re gay and you’ll be automatically dismissed. However, that means that it will be written in your official governmental documents and you’ll be stigmatized for your lifetime. As I did, the vast majority of gays just stay closeted. No one that I met in the army knows I’m gay. Even after all these years I’m still in contact with some of them and I still haven’t told them. Luckily, I am not camp and I can pass for a straight bloke so I didn’t have any problem. There were some less fortunate and more camp people that had to fight to be respected and treated equally. They weren’t tortured or heavily ill-treated but sometimes they were being called names and were less fortunate when assignments were decided. To my knowledge, extreme cases of homophobia do not occur anymore but of course I cannot be sure. I know that’s very sad but extremely difficult to change…

I spent almost two hours thinking about the army, about the people I met there, the good times and the bad times. However, I concluded that with ‘D’ lying next to me, sleeping like a baby (my baby) I was in a so much happier place now, so I finally managed to relax and get some sleep.