[theoddz]

Anya, we very well may have been rubbing elbows at that time and not knew it!! As I so vividly recall, I was soooooo very cautious about talking to people I didn't know, out of fear that they were undercover military "narcs" or NIS (Naval Investigative Services, at that time, who were charged with outing and/or pursuing gay and lesbian military members) agents. It really put a damper on getting to know other lesbians who were not already known to me. You just had to be careful what you told other people about yourself, too. When you're drunk, you lose a LOT of "filters", so to speak, so a lot of women I knew were outed, then discharged from the military, as a result of partying in the bars.

It was a scary time to be LGBT in the military, then. NIS agents would sit in parked cars outside of the known establishments who catered to the LGBT community and look for cars with military/DoD stickers on the windshields. Once they had that sticker number, they had the name registered on base with it. The witch hunts would then begin, and let me tell you.......there were a LOT of them!! The discharges they gave to gay/lesbian/queer/bi military members back then were not "Honorable", either. Even in the best of circumstances, what a lot of people got was a "General Discharge under Honorable Conditions". You still lose some Veterans benefits with that one.

~Theo~