High Price

down to a science. They know how to use experiences like exhaustion, peer pressure, isolation from one’s friends and family, and disorientation to maximum effect in boot camp, or basic training, as it’s formally known. Even though the physical challenges were nothing compared to the workouts I’d already done throughout high school, the mental challenges to my ideas about myself, about race, about self-control, and about what I wanted were immediate and at times, daunting. I started on August 24, 1984.
    The night before I left, the air force had agreed to pay for a hotel room near the airport so I would be sure to be on time for my early morning flight to Dallas. I stayed up nearly all night with my high school friends, knowing it could be the last time we’d really get to hang. We were laughing and joking, the guys telling me that I’d come back all “shot out,” or brainwashed like other guys from the neighborhood who’d joined the service. But I wasn’t anxious at all until the morning came and I headed for the airport. It would be the first time I’d ever flown.
    Although it would have been just as easy for the military to fly us directly to San Antonio, we were sent instead to Dallas, where we had to wait for hours at the airport. Then we took an extended bus ride to Lackland Air Force Base.
    It’s ingenious because the exhaustion starts to wear you down before you even know it. When we finally got to Lackland, it was about midnight. And it still wasn’t time to rest. For what seemed like hours, we were made to stand at attention, the boredom and physical stress of the position draining our minds and our bodies. There were no clocks and, of course, not knowing what time it was added to the discomfort and disorientation.
    At some point, the training instructors came out yelling. Hurling abuse at us and calling us pathetic mama’s boys, they began the next phase of our indoctrination. I thought to myself, This is a fucking joke, and almost laughed because it was so much like every clichéd boot camp scene I’d watched in movies like Private Benjamin and An Officer and a Gentleman . There they were, like drill sergeants out of Central Casting, ridiculing our dress, five o’clock shadow, and overall lack of competence.
    Soon they targeted one of the biggest men among the recruits for an extra heaping of humiliation. He was a white guy, huge and incredibly built.
    “You want to do something?” one of the instructors said.
    “No, sir,” he responded.
    “Why the fuck you looking at me? You calling me a liar?” And on it went.
    I knew right then that I’d never be the same. There were three instructors, all at least as powerfully muscled as the most fit recruits and full of pride. They came at him like they were going to kick his ass, getting in his face as he stood there sweating. The guy knew he couldn’t fight back, so he tried to respond as submissively as possible. Then one of the trainers said to one of the others, “Sergeant Castillo, hold my shit. I’m gonna fuck this motherfucker up!” The man stiffened, unsure what to do. By the end, he looked like he was close to tears.
    Watching them push him to see if he would snap, I knew that I had a choice of my own to make about how I would behave. I could buckle down and do what I had to do and maybe get something out of this, or I could be a clown and continue aimlessly, taking nothing but sports and street status seriously. I could let these authorities defeat me by dropping out or I could be serious and stay. I thought about my sisters back home and I didn’t want to let them down. They had seen the military as a new start for me and as a way out of the dead-end jobs that seemed destined to be my future otherwise. Along with Big Mama, they had encouraged me and mothered me, placing so much of their hope for the future in me. I couldn’t stand the idea of disappointing them.
    Although I still had big dreams about basketball, somewhere inside, I knew that fully grown at five foot nine, despite my talent, the odds were against me having any kind of professional career. If I was going to make something of my life, it had to start here and now and I had to have a different attitude. I wasn’t going to let any of those sorry, out-of-shape recruits I saw in my squadron do better than me. Luck may have helped me get there, but that epiphany and my own hard work that followed were what allowed me to take advantage of the opportunity. There