I spent the next 3 months in the military’s indoctrination program. The program was advertised to teach the traditions, customs and laws associated with the military while performing physical conditioning in preparation for flight training. The one thing I didn’t figure out until much later was the core of the training was to teach each person to become self reliant and to educate individuals about their responsibility to the unit as well as themselves. I became dedicated to achieving the goals at all cost.
After 6 weeks of confinement on base, I had my first opportunity to leave the base and see the local town. Thoughts of Betty kept going back to the camping trip and her visiting other campers. I knew that her and her family went back twice during the past 6 weeks. After a few drinks, I went to my hotel room with a hooker. The worst time of my life, I told her to leave shortly after we consummated the deal. I had cheated on Betty.
I made plans to bring Betty down for a visit the next weekend. We would only have the afternoon and evening of Saturday plus part of the day Sunday. I intended to make it a memorable time for both of us. Guilt is a strong emotion and I wanted to kill it. We ended up staying most of the time we had together making love. We did go out to eat a few times, but hurried back for more time alone. The sex was great. The weekend was too short. Guilt wouldn’t die.
I finished the training five weeks later and went back home to get my family ready to move to California for more training. My father-in-law wanted to spend time at the lake so I could go skiing one last time before starting initial flight training. Betty and her mother left 2 days early to get everything set up for our long weekend. I thought it sort of funny since I had only been home 3 days before they left. Getting real antsy, I decided to leave early Friday instead of waiting for the evening to travel with my father-in-law. I found the camper and camp site after a bit of searching. No one was there. I waited for a while and then walked around hoping to find them. No luck. I drove over to the nearest town for lunch and to pick up some beer. They showed up about 30 minutes after I got the beer on ice. My thoughts were in turmoil. The next day, I saw a van leave with a bunch of guys I remembered seeing last May. Betty stayed close to me for the remainder of the 4 days.
The move to my new base was accompanied by the usual tearful farewells, but nothing unusual. I received word that my class date had been advanced by 2 weeks so our trip had to be hurried. We could not spend time sightseeing as we had originally planned. I started school in late September.
Since I was in an earlier class, I did not know anyone. Fortunately, the military gives you a sense of comradery that allow friendships to develop quickly. The training was intense so Friday night parties were frequent and tended to be equally intense. Much drinking, bragging and some mild flirting with other wives and the few single women that showed up. At one of the parties, one of the wives brought her neighbor along. Much to my surprise, it was my Joy, my former girlfriend. I was flabbergasted. I know I made a fool of myself and upset Betty the entire evening. During my conversation with Joy, I found that she was married to one of the instructors at the base. She was very happy and expecting their first child. A type of disappoint came over me that put me into a funk the remainder of the weekend.
Betty was making friends with some of the wives and spent several days a week in one type or other of a social event for officer’s wives. Betty and I spent weekends visiting local attractions in the area. Everything seemed normal to me. Betty seemed to be happy. After a few months of this fairly regular routine, Betty asked if I would mind if she went up to Tahoe with some of her friends for a Saturday night binge of gambling, drinking and partying. She didn’t want to worry about our son and asked me to take charge of him for the weekend. I knew the girls Betty mention and didn’t see a problem. I needed to catch up on some studying and the promise of a special weekend for just us later helped make the decision easy. She left Saturday at noon and returned Sunday evening with one of the happiest moods I had seen in quite a few months.
A few weeks later at one of our parties, I was telling one of my friends how much Betty had enjoyed the Tahoe trip and asked if his wife had enjoyed the trip. He told me that his wife had to cancel due to a kid sick issue, but heard that others had gone. I asked another friend and he also said his wife had stayed home that weekend. When I asked Betty about it, she just said some other folks from the class behind mine had joined the trip. I found out later that the “folks” were two young single officers. The accommodations were never changed from the original single room. During the course of several days of arguments, Betty admitted that she had been seeing one of them for about two months using the officer’s wives club as a convenient cover. It stopped suddenly when a friend of mine reminded this officer that his conduct was severely frowned on by the Air Force and was grounds for dismissal.
