Inside SEAL Team Six(17)

“Of course. Yeah. I mean…Are you sure?”

“Come on. Don’t you want to celebrate your birthday?”

“Yeah. What time?”

“Seven. You know where I live?”

Of course he did. How many times had he made a deliberate detour to go past her house on the chance that he might catch a glimpse of her through a window?

Now she was standing there before him like a dream come true, waiting for his answer.

He said, “Seven o’clock. I’ll be there.”

Boats went home, showered, put on his nicest clothes, spritzed himself with his dad’s cologne, then drove to a neighborhood florist to buy a bouquet of flowers. He splurged and bought red roses, arrived at Patty’s doorstep at seven, and rang the bell.

He stood rehearsing what he was going to say when Patty answered the door. She opened it and said, “Hi. Come in.”

Her smile was radiant. Almost blinding.

He mumbled, “Thanks,” and followed her inside.

She looked resplendent in a yellow and white sundress and smelled incredible. Patty showed him a place on a sofa and sat beside him.

She started to talk about how he was one of those people that she had always wanted to get to know better and how she was really excited that she’d finally gotten this opportunity.

Boats was having trouble thinking clearly. Just sitting next to a sexy, beautiful girl with perfect skin was driving him crazy.

When she touched his arm, he felt wild sparks travel through his body. Then she put her hand on his leg.

He nearly fainted.

Maybe Patty had only intended it as a friendly gesture, but the sensation sent a bolt of electricity into Boats’s groin. The sexual charge he felt was almost overwhelming. The second time she did it, Boats was in agony. He crossed his legs, squeezed them together, and bit down on his lip.

Then he heard Patty say, “If you’ll excuse me a minute, I think I’ll go upstairs for a minute and freshen up.”

Not knowing exactly what she meant, he said, “Sure. No problem.”

He watched her leave, then looked down at the lump in his pants. He realized he had to do something fast. It was a choice of fleeing the house or relieving himself immediately so he didn’t humiliate himself in front of Patty.

He chose the latter.

When he heard her reach the top of the stairs, Boats removed a handkerchief from his back pocket, unzipped his pants, kneeled in front of the sofa, and got to work.

Just as Boats was about to peak, he thought he heard something stir in the next room. A few seconds later a chorus of people shouted, “Surprise! Happy birthday!”

Looking up, he saw twenty-four members of his family—his mother, father, grandparents, brother, sisters, aunts, and uncles—rush into the room. Then he watched as their expressions changed from excited expectation to shock and horror.

Boats quickly yanked up his pants, ran out of the house, and drove himself directly to a Navy recruiter. By the time he got up the nerve to return home, five years later, he’d completely transformed and become a Navy SEAL.



My recruitment story wasn’t nearly as dramatic or embarrassing. But like Boats, I realized I had to get out of my hometown. In my case, I wanted to escape the cycle of drugs and crime that was consuming so many of my friends.

I took a train to get to Navy basic training in Great Lakes, Illinois, determined to make something of myself. It was my first real trip away from home and I spent most of the train ride flirting and making out with a young schoolteacher and then playing poker with a pimp who complained about how he had to keep all his girls supplied with cocaine. Just the thing I was trying to leave behind.

I took to military life immediately. Civilian life seemed chaotic and confusing, and the structured, ordered, and disciplined environment in the military enabled me to thrive.

A former basic-training bunkmate named Bob Klose, who is now a college professor in Maine, remembers me as something of a lunatic.

When I spoke to him recently, he said, “Don, do you remember how you used to push the bunk bed into the middle of the room so you could run around it three hundred times?”

“Sort of.”

“You measured the length of all the tiles and calculated the distance. I think your longest run was seventeen miles.”

“Sounds right.”

“What about all those times you used to get under the bunk and bench-press it?”

“Yeah, I remember that.”

Bob said, “I asked you, ‘Hey, Don, how many times are you going to bench-press the bunk?’

“And you answered, ‘Until my nose bleeds.’”

One day after swimming they asked all us new recruits if we wanted to watch a movie about the Navy SEALs.

What the hell are SEALs?