I'll freely admit that, before I moved to Georgia and lived around a bunch of military folk, I had some mostly-negative stereotypes in my head.  I believed that military guys were mostly anal, rabidly-conservative bullies who carried a gun because they couldn't get any other job, or they were bloodthirsty, controlling warmongers.  Sure, my favorite uncle served in the National Guard, and he wasn't bloodthirsty, anal or a bully in any way...but he couldn't find any other job at the time.

I've lived in two different cities in Georgia, both near large military installations.  In the first city, I dated two different enlisted Army guys (in addition to others; I'm not a uniform-chaser or "gate-girl," a woman who hangs out by the post gates waiting for a man with a steady paycheck.) and both were rather mental: one neglected to tell me, during any of our numerous dates, that he was getting deployed.  He just showed up one day with a teddy bear dressed in Army fatigues and explained that he was leaving the next day...for Iraq.  The next Army guy left for Ft Benning (still in Georgia, not even a long-distance phone call!) for six weeks and didn't contact me the entire time, but called the day he got back in town and wanted to see me "right away."  Riiiight.

To say I was jaded about Army boys is putting it lightly.  Then I moved to Savannah and, geez, there were even more of them here!  My boyfriend Odysseus (not his real name, obviously) and I met the way everyone meets now: on match.com.   He found my profile when he searched for women who had indicated their political preference as "liberal."   Turns out he had his own negative dating experiences, mostly with the types of girls in Georgia who freely identify as "conservative."  (I hate to stereotype, but they are a special breed, and that word does NOT mean what it means up north or out west.  More on that some other time.)

I almost didn't respond to Odysseus's email because he was a year under my self-imposed age limit (we are almost 5 years apart, although I can be glaringly immature--either because or the reason why I work with high schoolers--so we work out well), but then his profile belied an eloquence and facility with language that I had rarely seen since moving down south.  (You know, his subjects matched his verbs, and he used capitalization correctly.)  And he actually listed something under "Recently read"!!  And he self-identified as "liberal."  Then again he was in the Army...ugh... but he had a college degree, and in poli sci ... and at least two of his pictures were so goofy that there was no way he was an uptight, anal prick who thought he was better than everyone else.

So we met, and we learned that we had a lot in common.  He isn't uptight--rather, we have the same sarcastic, smart-ass sense of humor.  He surely isn't ridiculously anal--amazingly, away from work, he's even messier than I am, and less punctual.   

Moveover, I agree with Odysseus's political stances: he likes Obama, thinks most conservatives are out-of-touch, spoiled ignoramuses.  He's pro-choice because that's not his body.  He thinks the greatest scourge on society is deadbeat dads.  He loves New Orleans (where I lived for 6 years) and we both bought "Defend New Orleans" t-shirts last time we visited.  He sees the need for social welfare programs, and he realizes that as a member of the military, he is a recipient of the biggest social welfare program of the US government.  His favorite quote is "Every politician who votes to go to war should have to send at least one child off to the front lines to fight that war."   

Sure, we disagree about certain things: I push harder for gay rights, though he does think they should have equal rights, but he's very obscure about "Don't ask, don't tell."  And, although he has some good reasons why women should not be allowed in combat, I feel that if they are physically able, why not?  We need all the good soldiers we can get.

I liked his reasons for joining the Army:  he took advantage of the ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps) program to go to college for free, but also he wanted adventure.  He wanted to travel.  Oh, and he wanted to "do crazy stuff and blow up shit," and if someone was going to pay him for it, cool.  I liked that he had found a way to take his more destructive urges and do something useful with them.  (We all have destructive urges; how many of us use them in a positive way?)  Plus, he didn't pick infantry or anything violent as his branch of service: he's a logistics officer.  His weapons are mostly two phones and a keyboard, and he's talking and typing, "getting stuff to people and people to their stuff" as he puts it. 

Occasionally he will bring up the fact that he is "serving his country," but only in this very oblique way.  He does not like to take credit for what he is doing, but he will talk about how he thinks he should run for office because "Not very many liberals in politics have combat experience and because of that, I think I could easily beat the average Republican."       

Another time we were talking about his choosing to join up, and he said "It's the most masculine thing a guy can do, you know?  Go off and fight a war.  There aren't very many really tough, masculine things left."

That resonated with me, because I thought about my dating experiences since returning to the US after living abroad for a few years.  I had lived in a second-world nation in southeast Asia, and after hearing of my exploits traveling around Asia, most guys stateside expressed admiration (and they kept asking for more info), but their eyes generally said something else.  What do you say to a girl who's shot off an AK-47 at a rebel compound in Cambodia?  Suddenly she becomes less like girlfriend material and more like... a drinking buddy.  The unpredictable, wild drinking buddy.  On the other hand, the redeployed soldiers I'd met (I'd made friends with a few in Savannah even before meeting Odysseus) matched and trumped my silly stories, and I'll admit, I admired them more for it.

I am a feminist, so maybe that's why I feel this way:  I'm not really sure what to do with a man who doesn't have some talent, some skill that I don't have.   I guess it's the fish and bicycle thing?  Or does wanting a "real man" make me old-fashioned?  But really, I've met too many men down south who compensated for their lack of expertise with anything meaningful by tarting up their pick-up truck and shooting animals on the weekends.  That's not a real man, dude.  A real man takes accountability.  A real man fixes shit that I don't know how to fix.  A real man protects me.  A real man says, hey, we disagree on this, but that's okay.  A real man brings things to the table that I don't already have but that I need.  Because I have lived mostly sans Y-chromosome in the house for 12 years... and mostly, it gets easier to be alone and harder to find anyone who can bring something new to the table.       

Obviously, though, Odysseus can bring something to the table that I haven't already figured out.  There has been one time --one time--  that he didn't know something that I also didn't know (I can't even recall now what it was, exactly).  He looked at me and said, "If I don't know it, you're supposed to know it.  That's a partnership."         

I smiled, "You're right, it is."