None of us had ever killed anybody, but they all knew how. I sat wondering if I could kill.
In the room full of black military blazers and camouflage BDUs, I felt myself sticking out in jeans and a plaid shirt. Yet, in reality no one noticed my dress or that my bangs reached past my eyebrows. It was only me wanting not to be like them.
Somehow I had become more like them.
\This is my friend Andy from back home,"" Corporal said.
The kid sitting to my left smiled, and we shook hands. I liked him immediately.
""That's great, what do you think of
the place?""
Two hours earlier I would have lied a little and said West Point seemed like a great school. Two hours later I would have lied again, just as I'd give a partially fabricated truth if put into a similar situation right now.
At that moment, however, I spoke the absolute truth of the moment.
""I like it a lot,"" I said. ""I could do this.""
With that, the kid and I fell into a conversation about push-ups and running. We were waiting for the free-movie night showing of ""Gladiator,"" and the Eisenhower Hall reception room was filled with kids, or cadets. As we waited and talked, I felt incredibly at home.
""You wouldn't like it here,"" the kid said as the movie began.
""Why's that?"" I asked.
""There's no girls.""
But he was wrong; there are girls. There are girls, and there are boys, and then there are the officers, but there isn't any sex at the United States Military Academy. You can feel that.
No matter how thick the walls of the massive gray campus buildings are, an empty chill penetrates right through. And despite the fun I was having with the cadets, I was still feeling the chill deep beneath my skin as ""Gladiator"" began.
Maybe no one else felt it, and maybe everyone else was immune, but I could sense the unnerving chill coming at me from the barren walls and floors of the barracks, from the yelling officers with their lessons of killing with no pain, and from every sex- and affection-starved cadet who felt the chill without knowing.
Maybe the chill was just blowing off the frozen Hudson River, and maybe it was free-movie night at summer camp or at the school-sponsored post-prom party, but I felt something as the kids cheered at the opening battle scene of the movie. I knew I could not yet kill.
""Do they teach you how to do that here?"" I asked Corporal after Russell Crowe killed all five of his would-be murderers in an opening scene.
""Not yet,"" he smiled.
I didn't ask any more questions but assumed many answers as the movie played on. The kids liked the film more than me, and they all had the DVD up in their rooms. Of course, sometimes it's good to leave the barracks and get away from the computer DVD player, just like sometimes it's good to get away from Madison.
At the end of the night, I walked alone to the rectory, and a mass of kids returned to the barracks. They were high on a camaraderie that had made me say, ""I like it a lot,"" and I was cold.
andrewmiller@students.wisc.edu
