Winter 1996

Chris Beck was never one of your gargantuan-type Navy SEALs. There are those types, of course, men chiseled from granite at 120 percent human scale, men who seem to drain several drams of testosterone from everyone else when they walk into a room. But you’d be surprised at the body types you find in the SEAL teams. Your smaller fellows, your stringy fellows, the guy with almost literally zero percent body fat who had to eat two Papa John’s pizzas every day through SEAL training just so he wouldn’t die of hypothermia in the water. Chris himself was on the smaller side, more like an undersized walk-on linebacker who lacked the size and pedigree of some of his more highly recruited peers but played with an intensity and pain tolerance that endeared him to coaches and TV commentators.

And yet, as he slipped on a pair of panty hose in his sailboat on this night in 1996, Chris couldn’t help wishing he were more petite, more womanly. He always wanted that when he wore women’s clothing. To be just a little bit prettier. It felt good even to wish that.

Chris finished putting on his outfit and walked barefoot up the ladder and onto the deck of his boat. Dusk was fast disappearing in San Diego Bay, the red lights of the Coronado Bridge blinked on, the weaponized beachhead of the naval station loomed cloud-colored to the west. Chris was 30 years old then, living on a 48-foot wooden William Garden ketch that he’d bought in a state of disrepair for $12,000 and fixed himself. He opened a Sam Adams, the beer of patriots, and had a seat. He was wearing a wig, and the way it felt in the wind called up a pleasant feeling of longing. Chris loved the deck of his boat at night. He could feel the inhuman mass of the ocean shifting beneath him and hear the clanking of the rigging and the water against the timber hull, which just sounded better than it does on fiberglass. But otherwise he was erased from the world. “Being invisible,” he thought, “is a relief.”

He’d flown back from a training deployment in Thailand earlier in the week. He’d taken a taxi from the base to a garage he rented, picked up his motorcycle, and ridden it down to Fiddler’s Cove. He’d undressed to his shorts, stuffed his clothes in a plastic bag, and swam the half mile to the sailboat he lived on—it was cheaper than sharing a house, like most of the other, younger SEALs stationed in Coronado did. He’d found his boat, as always, sealed up tight. He would leave it spotless, because he never knew when fate would dictate that he wouldn’t be the one opening it up. It was part of the process of shipping out, a ritualized preparation for death that would always have a kind of dreadful power over him. The washing of bedclothes, the bleaching of sinks, the removal of any speck of organic matter, the rewriting of his “dead letters” to be distributed to his friends and relatives should he not return, all of them signed with that quote from the end of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “Thanks for all the fish.” Of course, Chris also had to purge all his panty hose and dresses and wigs and shoes—“I want to have honor in death” was how he thought about it.

Over the course of his 20-year career, Chris would serve in the Balkans during the civil war there. He would serve during the first Gulf War; fight pirates across the Horn of Africa; drive into Iraq in 2003 ahead of the invasion. He would spend years on small firebases in Afghanistan, snatching Taliban leaders; operate alone in the tribal belt along the Pakistan border, wearing a long beard and Pashtun garb, convening with Taliban agents and tribal warlords. Though it’s certain he’s killed people, I’m not privy to the details, because I know that to ask such questions is to reveal something truly base in myself. But I know Chris would be awarded the Bronze Star with valor, the Purple Heart, the Meritorious Service Medal, and about 50 other ribbons and medals. He would dislocate a shoulder, shatter a kneecap, be hit by a rocket-propelled grenade on his fortieth birthday, break two vertebrae in his back on a boat near Somalia and complete the mission anyway, and fly home sleeping among the flag-draped coffins of 19 of his brothers.

But even coming back from a training deployment in Thailand, it would usually take Chris a few days to find the release valve on his psyche. And by tonight he’d gotten the boat all opened up and aired out—made a run to get beer and another to a vintage store where he bought his dresses and shoes. And now, sitting there on the deck, he finally felt relaxed.