flight officers treated her with complete courtesy, acceptance, and
respect, but there were always a few …
Starting at Annapolis, and continuing through flight training and
assignment to a RAG at Pensacola, Conway, like every woman now aboard
the Jefferson, had suffered through class after class on dealing with
everything from verbal harassment to forcible rape. The best way of
handling that sort of thing, of course, wasn’t taught in sensitivity
classes or role-playing sessions.
With a small glow of inner warmth, she recalled again the first time
she’d encountered that kind of harassment. She’d been a new recruit at
Annapolis, twenty years old and brimming with fire, ambition, and a
positively fierce determination to make good in this alien world that
still, after over a decade, was run for and by men. Hurrying with an
armful of books on her way to her next class, she’d squeezed past a
group of five fellow cadets loitering in the passageway, all male. Just
as she passed, one of them had muttered a low-voiced, “Christ, that one
looks like she gives great head,” speaking just loud enough that she
could hear without having the comment directed to her.
She could have ignored it. She could have reported it. Neither course
would have been satisfactory, not if she didn’t want more of the same
and worse. Instead, she’d stopped, turned sharply, and picked out the
kid who’d spoken, selecting him by the gleam in his eye and the
expressions on the faces of the others. His name tag, she remembered,
had read “SHAZINSKY,” and he’d been big, a muscular guy who towered over
the others in the group like a football player at a meeting of the
school math club.
“Well gee, Shazinsky,” she’d said sweetly. “I wouldn’t know from
personal experience, ’cause I’m not equipped for it, y’know? But I
heard the other night you gave the best head in Lehman Hall!”
She’d puckered a pretend kiss in his direction, and Shazinsky’s face had
flushed scarlet as his companions dissolved into hooting gales of
laughter.
She’d had no more wise-ass crap out of Shazinsky during her whole time
at Annapolis. In fact, she’d not had much trouble out of anyone after
that.
Word had gotten around that she could play the guys’ game on their
terms, and win.
That was the way to handle verbal harassment–to give better than she
got. She’d slapped Slider down a couple of times already, but so far
he’d just kept coming back for more.
What to do about him? She could report him to CAG. In fact, going by
the regs she probably should. But what good would it do? The man would
get a lecture, maybe a slap-on-the-wrist reprimand, and the next time
the squadron was gathered in the VF-95 ready room she would still be
sitting next to him.
Worse, the next time they were up, he might be on her wing. The jerk
just thought he was being funny; that, or it was the only way he could
think of to catch her attention. Report him, and things could get
nasty, maybe nasty enough to lead to him getting court-martialed or
grounded. Hell, she didn’t want to wreck the guy’s career, even if he
was a pig.
Besides, proving sexual harassment in a situation like this was hard,
verging on the impossible. After all, what had he actually said or
done?
Asked if there was anything he could do to warm her up, in a tone that
only suggested something sexual? Agreed with her when she’d
thoughtlessly given him a classic straight man’s line? Called her
“baby,” or grinned as he told her to “make a hole,” which had been a
part of every sailor’s lexicon for generations. It meant, “Get out of
the way,” or, “Let me through.” Only on the lips of someone like Slider,
and when directed at a woman, did it take on a different, salacious
meaning.
What she disliked the most was Arrenberger’s twisting of her call sign.
She was Brewer, damn it, not “Brew” or “Brewski.”
Among the popular myths of the history of American arms, the story of
Lucy Brewer was one of the most enduring. She’d been a prostitute who,