Free Hello Darlin' by LARRY HAGMAN

asked.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Are you homosexual?”
    “No, I am not,” I replied.
    “Why don’t you say you are?” he asked. “Then I can get you out.”
    Okay, I admit it, the idea sounded good for about a quarter of a second. But back
     then people had different attitudes about gays, especially in the military. As bad
     as it is today, it was worse then. I worried that if I answered yes, it would be on
     my record forever. So I exclaimed, with the proper sense of outrage, “I cant do that!”
    “Aw, come on,” the doc said. “Who’s going to know?”
    I came up with another idea.
    “I’m nearsighted,” I said. “Without my glasses, I can’t see a damn thing.”
    “Okay, I’ll give you an eye test tomorrow.”
    That night I stayed in the barracks. Almost a year had gone by since the opening night
     of
South Pacific,
and as I lay on my cot I marveled at how quickly time had gone by. One night I was
     in the Savoy, dancing with Vivien Leigh, and now I was going to sleep in a nearly
     empty Luftwaffe military barrack in Germany. Only one other guy was bunking in the
     barrack that night, and the next morning we hit the shower at the same time.
    “You got any soap?” he asked.
    “Sure,” I said and tossed a bar his way.
    Then I heard it drop. I saw him glance around for it.
    “Hey, listen, can you find my glasses?” he asked. “They’re on the shelf over there.”
    I handed him his specs. I noticed the lenses were thick as Coke bottle bottoms. I
     thought, My eyes are perfect compared to his.
    “What do you do?” I asked.
    “I’m in the army. A machine gunner’s assistant.”
    “But you can’t see.”
    “That don’t mean nothing,” he replied. “I carry the ammo and feed the belt in the
     machine gun. You don’t have to see real good to do that.”
    There goes my chance of getting out of the service.
    “What are you in?” he asked.
    I thought about it for a moment and said, “I’m in deep shit.”

Chapter Nine
    W hen I got back to London I looked up Captain O’Rourke, who was stationed at Bushy
     Park, and asked if he knew of anyway that I could get based in London. He did. Bribery.
    “If you can get tickets to
South Pacific
for all the brass—the generals and the colonels—you’ll probably be able to get any
     posting you want,” he said. “Knowing who your mother is, I suspect those tickets ought
     to be relatively easy.”
    “I’ll do my humble best, sir,” I said.
    Since Bushy Park was the enlistment center for the U.K., Captain O’Rourke walked me
     through the whole procedure like the good drinking buddy he was. While I was in basic
     training in Wales, he spoke to the general, and eight weeks later I was back in London,
     posted to the Third Air Force Headquarters, in South Ruislip, Middlesex, a convenient
     forty-five-minute subway ride from the apartment I shared with Ted Flicker. Then Ted
     was drafted and had to go back to the States for his basic training in the army. Before
     he left, Teddy found me a new roommate, his friend Henri Kleiman, a young, smart,
     stylish Englishman who wore pinstriped suits and a bowler hat. We became lifelong
     friends.
    I belonged to the Remington Raiders, named such after the typewriters we used in the
     office. I was assigned to Special Services. Nowadays, that means a crack commando
     unit. In those days, it was different. I was in the entertainment division. I reported
     to a civilian who ran a ticket bureau for the military. If a VIP came to London and
     wanted tickets to a show, they called her and she tried to take care of them. But
     on my first day, I realized she couldn’t get anything done when she turned to me in
     a panic.
    “I got a general and his wife who are huge Mary Martin fans,” she says. “Do you have
     anyway of getting tickets to
South Pacific?”
    Obviously the scuttlebutt hadn’t reached her. She had no idea of my relationship to
     the show or its star. That’s how out of the loop she was.
    “It’s a