Synaesthesia 2: Adventures in Blue, Green, and Camo

Living in color in a greyscale world: Installment 2 in a series about the gift of color and the misadventures it brings

Synaesthesia — in my case, developing a strong association between numbers, letters, colors and moods — can be a curiosity like tying a knot with your tongue.

But synaesthesia can be the foundation of a personal knowledge system — an odd but powerful piece of organic software, already installed. It can stimulate deep thought. Yet a condition this unique doesn’t play easily in the world.

In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is not king, but a dangerous renegade.

I was 20 and headed to the U.S. Air Force, where I figured they wouldn’t be interested in my neurological quirk or tolerate the renegade mischief it attracted.

Property of the USAF

Following boot camp and training as an aerospace defense radar specialist, I was assigned to Luke Air Force Base, 10 miles west of Phoenix, Arizona, a training base for fighter pilots. I arrived in late September, was assigned to the barracks with a roommate named Doug Underhill who moved out 5 minutes after I showed up. ‘There’s an empty room on the second floor,’ he told me. ‘Two guys are living in town but kept the room. This way we can both have our own room.’ He grabbed his duffel bag and was gone.

The next morning I took a shuttle to the worksite. The radar unit was about 3 miles from the barracks at a forgotten corner of the base, set on blacktop in Sonoran desert scrubland.

I was escorted to a Quonset Hut by the site administrator, Senior Master Sergeant Manuel Benitez, a burly 24-year veteran. He turned me over to Duty Sergeant Dennis McElvaney, who was sitting at a desk in the training classroom with his feet up on a torn ottoman, whispering into the phone. Two enlisted men sat at small student desks. A white one-striper named Billy Styron was writing an ad for a car he was trying to sell. The second man was a dark-skinned Sergeant who didn’t look up from a tattered book. McElvaney suddenly rushed off, taking the phone cable with him.

‘What are we supposed to do?’ I asked innocently.

‘I’m studying vegetarianism,’ the Sergeant said. ‘I’m Muslim and don’t eat pork, so I decided not to eat any meat at all. Did you know our intestines were never meant to process meat? That’s why we’re so sickly.’ His uniform patch identified him as Jackson.

‘How do you spell carburetor?’ Styron asked, using his eraser vigorously.

I wrote CARBURETOR on the chalkboard. Styron began dutifully copying it, one letter at a time, looking to the board and then back to the paper on his desk. ‘I’m still getting it wrong,’ he muttered.

By the end of the second week the classroom was filled with new arrivals. I knew about half the group from training. It was chaos: McElvaney was hardly around, and Jackson didn’t exert any authority.

Airman First Class Rodney Strong was a popular figure; he seemed to have a scheme to solve most issues. He had keys to everything and his own phone cable. Strong was a tall, muscular Pennsylvanian, a wheeler-dealer type — loud, excitable, hyper-alert.

‘I know all your tricks,’ Benitez told Strong when the airman wanted Benitez to sign off on a new work schedule. We were in the spotless main office. ‘You can’t be unsupervised. I can never find you with a normal schedule. Follow a few rules,’ Benitez said pointedly, ‘and maybe you’ll get that stripe back.’

‘Benitez is a traditionalist,’ Rodney said later. ‘I’m not. In case you hadn’t noticed.’

By the end of my third week, we still had no assignments. I arrived each day with crossword puzzles, newspaper jumbles and my case of colored pens. One afternoon Rodney handed me a 3” binder labeled “Study Guide.” It contained a series of air traffic training modules. ‘Why aren’t we studying this?’ I asked.

‘Everyone had to get here so you could all start at the same time. Only me and Jackson teach, so we need to have the whole group at the same level. But look these over.’ He was glancing at the crosswords and jumbles and the colored pens on my desk.

He picked up the Daily Jumble. I had used red, green, blue and black in unscrambling the words, solved the phrase using various color combinations. ‘You solve this every morning?’ I nodded. ‘You ever think of monetizing this?’ He looked at me, inquisitive. ‘What’s with all the colors?’

‘Synaesthesia,’ I told him.

‘What?’ he exclaimed, then lowered his voice. ‘They let you enlist with that? How’d you hide it?’

Audience with the Colonel

Training kept getting delayed. Days were lost to a marijuana bust in the barracks. Airman Castile was caught by MPs in the smoke-filled room that my former roommate was occupying. Both claimed they walked into the room after the smoking had already taken place. Doug Underhill claimed he was hanging out in our first-floor room. ‘He may have been around,’ I told an investigator. ‘I was in-and-out.’

On the last Friday in October, the squadron commander, Colonel Morrow, sent Rodney to pick me up from a remote storage site where I had been assisting Sgt. McElvaney. During the ride back Rodney kept glancing over at me. ‘Did anyone bring up Underhill’s room?’ he finally asked. ‘No,’ I said. He dropped me at the Colonel’s trailer. ‘I’m supposed to wait, but I have an appointment, so I’ll be back,’ he explained.

At 1700 hours, Rodney had not returned to get me. The janitorial engineer said I had to leave. It was Halloween weekend, with October 31 on Sunday.

I began the 3-mile walk back to main base in gorgeous amber light. It was a flat, easy walk on blacktop. I walked for a half-hour, about two miles. A jackrabbit drove leapt across my path, and I almost stepped on a gila monster, which could have been ugly. I felt a rumble in the road and looked back to see a vehicle approaching. It was Rodney, driving a huge camouflaged transport truck.

The cab was high up. Rodney had to yell above the engine noise. ‘I got delayed,’ he called down. ‘Climb in.’

We drove the last mile, the engine too loud for talking, dropped the truck off and picked up his Impala convertible at the motor pool.

‘Let’s get steaks in Phoenix,’ he offered. ‘On me since I made you wait.’

The Dark Side

‘How’d it go with the Colonel?’ Rodney probed as we drove into town.

‘Nice guy,’ I said.

‘He’s a Colonel. Don’t be fooled.’

‘Sgt. Benitez was there.’

‘Shit!’ he exclaimed. ‘I was afraid of that. What did he say?’

‘You’re an Army brat. Your father was a Colonel.’

‘Thanks for reminding me. Go on.’

‘You would be a Sergeant now except you lost a stripe. They didn’t go into detail. What’d you do?’

‘Pranks. And a travel voucher. Jackson nailed me on that one.’ His voice had an edge. ‘OK, what else?’

‘You’re supposed to stay on base in that upstairs room.’ Rodney was silent. ‘I figured out about the room. You seemed nervous.’

‘ They called you in to tell you I’m a bad influence?’ Rodney asked finally. We were near the steakhouse and he was looking for parking. ‘How’d it end?’

‘Sgt. Benitez said a quality control team is coming to evaluate the squadron and we’ll start training soon. Asked me if I was interested in being on the instructional team with you and Jackson.’

‘That was my idea,’ he said.

‘Colonel said you got bad habits growing up wild on a military base. Benitez was worried you’d pull me into the dark side.’

‘The dark side? What did you say to that?’

‘Told ’em I try to avoid drama. Then we talked about Underhill and Castile. The Colonel believes them.’

Rodney found a space behind a closed beauty shop. He put some kind of parking pass on the dash. ‘Semper paratus,’ he told me. ‘Always prepared.’

Deeper Into Darkness

In the restaurant, Rodney discussed his ideas. He wanted to create a Daily Jumble competition, where he would also set up side bets, and those not playing could wager on the players. ‘You have other skills we can monetize also,’ he declared. I had written Styron’s car ad for $5 and did the taxes of two airmen who missed an October 15 extension date — $5 each for filing, $2 for a cover letter asking for a few days grace. ‘You even signed your name as a paid preparer,’ Rodney boomed as the tequila started to kick in, ‘was that fucking genius or what? That’s fucking cojones, dude. You made yourself legit ……..’

‘What’s your cut?’ I asked.

‘‘Cut of what?’

‘For setting this up. 15%?’

The steaks came. ‘Bloody for the he-men,’ the waitress said, flirting with Rodney.

‘‘What do you say I take a quarter?’ Rodney proposed. I had no doubt he had plans well beyond my understanding.

‘There’s not much money in it,’ I said. ‘Is it worth it?’

‘Might as well monetize,’ he repeated.

‘Let’s play it by ear,’ I suggested.

A week later Rodney had six players in the Daily Jumble competition, another four on side bets. He tried to tell me what bets were placed, hinting that I could pace my solution to our advantage. ‘That’s cheating,’ I realized. ‘I can’t have inside information.’

We played at lunchtime. Money transactions took place off-duty. It cost $2 per Jumble to enter. Winner won the full pot. Rodney got two officers to come over: a 22-year-old named Steve Nathan, a whiz kid from Georgia Tech, a know-it-all; and Captain Anwar Mourad, the Education Officer, a stern body-builder with a perfectly round shaved head who was called 8-Ball.

We were using McElvaney’s office, but we spilled into the classroom. Daniel Larkspur, who I had tutored in training and had learning issues, played, along with Billy Styron. Randall Spivak, a baby-faced fast-talking kid from Connecticut, said he’d observe the first time through.

‘OK,’ said Strong, setting the alarm on a large portable clock. ‘Twenty minutes, go.’

I solved the jumble and the bonus phrase while looking at the paper nonchalantly, my hands occupied with unzipping the case to get my colored pens. I looked around to gauge the others’ reactions. The two females, Lisa Jasper and Carrie Molina, were participating as a team.

When I saw that Nathan had unscrambled two words, I filled out my sheet and called, ‘Finished.’

Mourad was looking over my shoulder. ‘What, they have foreign words?’ he blurted, looking at MOUSSE. ‘Moussay?’

‘’It’s hair gunk,’ Nathan said.

‘Or dessert,’ said Lisa Jasper.

‘I don’t do either,’ said the Captain.

After a few weeks we decided I wouldn’t play on Wednesdays so the competition would be wide-open. The odds to beat me on other days were 10:1. Soon the engagement was so high that the Jumble had become the after-lunch energizer for almost everyone, and in order to legitimize it, we blended in the training modules from the Study Guide. I created Jumbles with the emergency code names and the air traffic lingo, using my synaesthesia colors to aid everyone’s memory. Mourad told Benitez, who had started coming by at 1330 hours to scope out the activity: ‘This is a legit teaching tool.’ Benitez looked doubtful.

‘We should have an Open House,’ I suggested to Rodney. ‘Invite the Colonel, the pilots, show them what we’re doing.’

‘Dangerous, man,’ Rodney said. ‘Bringing them right into the action.’

‘We’re learning, aren’t we? Before we were just sitting around. Why not show it off?’

‘This could be good for me,’ Rodney reasoned.

The Open House on Saturday Dec. 20 was a hit, despite a few of the airmen freezing when questions were asked and Randall Spivak trying to prove he had advanced knowledge and talking himself into a few contradictions. Mourad and Rodney did most of the explaining and prodding of the airmen. The Colonel was there for about half of the morning, but the new second-in-command, Major Armstrong, stayed and kept repeating, ‘This is great, just great.’ Two pilots attended and gave insight into their world in the sky.

Sgt. Jackson explained why he diligently followed up missed questions from the exams: ‘99% is a great score but if the one you missed is the knowledge we need in an emergency, we’re in trouble.’

I did a Jumble exercise with the group. Steve Nathan said: ‘Don’t let him play. He’s a ringer, a professional puzzle solver.’ I had a surprise certificate for Lisa Jasper, who had more wins on Wednesdays than anyone, edging out Billy Styron, who acted like he was about to face a firing squad when he lost. He worked practice Jumbles every day and he would hound me about words he couldn’t get.

‘Keep up the good work,’ Major Armstrong said at the end.

After the Major and Sgt. Benitez were gone, Rodney announced: ‘20–1 odds on Monday’s Jumble. Merry Christmas, suckers.’

We got to it right away Monday morning — we no longer needed any cover for playing games all day. Benitez had taken two weeks leave, which reduced pressure. ‘He’s in town,’ Rodney told me. ‘He never leaves.’ Steve Nathan, Billy Styron and Daniel Larkspur had taken over the front of the classroom; Lisa Jasper and Carrie Molina were at the other end with Norm Castile, tacking sheets of paper to the walls; Mourad and Jackson sat morosely in the entry area. It was a clear, super-cold morning; Steve Nathan had a pocket thermometer that showed 24 degrees. Randall Spivak wandered unattached and McElvaney entered the challenge for the first time. He was nominally in charge with Benitez gone.

No one else had taken leave. It seemed we were all misfits, unwanted by our families. Some of the airmen looked so young, adrift in this icy desert.

At 0920 hours Rodney Strong burst into the room with a blast of Arctic air and started distributing envelopes that held the Jumble. ‘I had to make copies,’ he said.

It was noisy, frantic. Steve Nathan was at the center of some kind of intense action. Randall Spivak was circling the room, smoking a cigarette.

The Jumble was relatively easy, and I calmly filled it out.

‘We’re almost done,’ Carrie Molina called excitedly. ‘Just the final phrase.’

Panic seemed to have gripped the group around Nathan. Styron was pacing back and forth, agitated, bumped into Spivak and pushed him, tried to lead him over to Nathan but Spivak freed himself and went outside. Styron went to Nathan and yelled something. Nathan yelled back and smacked Styron’s hand away from his face. ‘I don’t know,’ Nathan shouted, his face red and puffy. ‘I don’t know, I forgot!’

‘Done,’ I announced.

We heard a big thump in the silence: Steve Nathan had let his large head drop to the desk surface with full force. ‘Somebody fucking shoot me,’ he moaned.

I was sitting next to Rodney in the office, looking at his wager tally. Nathan had put $20 down on himself, and Styron put down $20, as did Larkspur, on Nathan— had Nathan won, with the odds bump — the total to pay out would have been $1200.

‘Where’s Spivak?’ Billy Styron shouted suddenly. ‘He always fucking disappears! Where is that snake?’ He jumped out of the too-small desk, upending it, bolted from the classroom and through the big doors to the outside, the frigid air rushing in.

I stood, went into the classroom. Nathan had his head on the desk, eyes closed. Daniel Larkspur sat in a desk against the far wall. I picked up the Jumble entry that Nathan had been working on from the floor.

‘He forgot the word,’ Daniel Larkspur told me. ‘He knew it but he forgot it.’

‘I’m going to look for Styron,’ Jackson said, putting his heavy jacket and gloves on. ‘I have a bad feeling. This is why we don’t gamble. It’s all fun and games until it’s not.’

Mourad’s teeth were rattling from the cold. Rodney joined us by the door, his eyes wide with alarm. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, and we walked out to his Impala.

‘Put the top up,’ I suggested. ‘It’s freezing.’

‘Hasn’t worked in years,’ he told me. ‘We’ll blast the heater.’

Problem-Solving in Real Time

We drove the three miles in icy conditions with the heater making little difference. Our faces were so stiff we couldn’t speak clearly.

We went to the barracks, knocked on the door of Spivak’s room. His roommate answered. ‘He’s at work,’ the roommate said. Rodney had the key to get in the room that Underhill used. A girl with a chestnut bob in an oversized Iowa Hawkeyes sweatshirt sat nonchalantly in a large recliner, her bare legs tucked underneath her.

‘You can’t be in here,’ Rodney said, setting the dead bolt. ‘And that’s my sweatshirt.’

‘You want it?’ she teased, acting like she was going to take it off.

‘Raincheck,’ said Rodney. ‘This is a bad time for you to be here.’

‘Doug’s at the post office getting packages,’ she said. ‘He’ll be back soon.’

A hard knock on the door startled us.

‘Yeah?’ called Rodney.

‘Strong? It’s Henderson, the barracks sergeant. I have a message from Dennis McElvaney for you, it’s urgent.’

‘I’m getting dressed. I’ll be down in a minute,’ Rodney called. ‘Go down to the Impala,’ he whispered to me. ‘Get some fatigues and a cap.’ He used his thumb to indicate the girl. He gave me the trunk key and the room key and left. In the trunk I found wrinkled fatigues with sergeant’s stripes and two small woolen caps. Upstairs, the girl seemed baffled.

‘What’s the problem?’ she asked. ‘I’m here all the time.’

‘Put these on,’ I told her. ‘Get your hair under the cap and go to the bed like you’re asleep. Face the wall.’ She took her time but got under the covers.

Rodney knocked, said: ‘It’s me,’ and I let him in, bolted the door.

‘Where’s Iowa?’ he asked.

I indicated the bed. ‘My name’s Charlene,’ she called.

‘McElvaney got a call from Benitez,’ Rodney reported. ‘Spivak went to the MP office and wanted to report being threatened. Before they took a report they called Benitez at home, who called McElvaney and said, handle it.’

‘Where’s Spivak?’

‘At the MP office. Either he comes back to the site or they take a report.’

The ride to the MP office was under two minutes. Rodney drove past it, parked on an empty block of nondescript buildings.

‘Do you know what’s going on?’ he asked me.

‘I’m guessing. Styron blames Spivak for something. They all had big bucks on Nathan.’

‘Not Spivak,’ Rodney said.

‘I think,’ I said evenly, ‘they had their hands on the Jumble ahead of time but something went wrong.’

Rodney strategized: ‘Sergeant stripes would be helpful here. They won’t let two airmen take charge of this. Wait, I have my old fatigues in the trunk. They still have three stripes.’

‘Bad idea,’ I said. ‘That’s compounding things. Let’s think.’ Rodney had one leg out of the car. ‘Look,’ I said, pointing to a figure walking toward us. ‘It’s Styron.’ The airman was striding like a man on a mission, was about to go right past us when Rodney called: ‘Styron.’

The airman turned his head, squinted at the car, said angrily: ‘Fuck you. Where’s Spivak?’ Rodney got out of the car. They were both big men, but Styron was the kind who kept a sock full of half dollars in his pocket.

‘Calm down,’ Rodney said.

‘Where’s Spivak? I have business with him.’

‘What did he do?’

Styron lost interest in Rodney, went stomping off, away from the MP building. ‘We’re trying to help,’ Rodney called after him. ‘OK,’ he said to me, ‘no impersonating a sergeant. Let’s see if we can talk to Spivak.’

‘We’re from the 407th,’ Rodney told the clerk at the front desk. ‘Is Airman Spivak here? I think you’ve heard from our Master Sergeant.’ A Tech Sergeant I recognized from the pot bust interview had come from a side office, looked over when he heard Rodney. ‘He’s in a back room with a supervisor,’ he told us. ‘This way.’

We fell into step behind him. Rodney was making faces like this was bad, Spivak was already talking to the MPs. The heated air was coarse and stifling. We stepped into a small conference room, the walls thick and close like a cave.

Sgt. Jackson sat at the head of the table, Spivak seated very close to him. ‘Lots of drama at the 407th,’ the Tech Sgt. commented. ‘You guys OK out there when Benny’s on leave?’

‘We’re trying,’ Sgt. Jackson told him.

He left, and we sat in the dim light.

Jackson asked Spivak, ‘Will you tell them what you told me?’

‘You had an advantage,’ Spivak accused me. ‘With that syne-schizoid condition. We were just leveling the playing field.’

‘Can we get out of here?’ Rodney suggested. ‘Let’s do this out at the site.’

‘I need protection,’ Spivak said.

Jackson was about to reach for the phone when it rang with that agitating military sound, startling all of us.

‘We’re right here,’ Jackson said after he listened for a few beats, then replaced the receiver. He said to us: ‘Something happened in the barracks.’

The Tech Sergeant came in. ‘I’m MP5 Mazeroski,’ he said. ‘We followed a package from the post office. Doug Underhill, your roommate,’ he said directly to me, ‘picked it up and when we didn’t hear from him in an hour, we went to find him and there he was with a half-pound of marijuana in 109, your room. Also a woman was with him, a Sgt. Strong — another Article 15 violation. We’re still trying to figure out who she is, but she’s in uniform, three stripes. Do you know her?’

I shook my head.

‘Don’t go back to your room for few hours,’ Mazeroski ordered. ‘You OK here?’ he asked Jackson.

‘Yeah, we’re headed back to the radar site. I think we’ll figure it out,’ Jackson told him.

‘Her first name Charlene?’ Spivak asked. ‘Short hair, kinda cute?’

We all turned to him. Spivak wore the smile of the annoying teacher’s pet. Mazeroski sat down then, his eyes trained on the eager Randall Spivak. ‘You know her?’ he asked.

‘I wouldn’t say I know her,’ the airman answered.

Mazeroski looked at Jackson as if to ask: What do we have here?

‘I’ve seen her around,’ Spivak added.

‘Where?’

‘In and out of 217.’

‘That’s where they were smoking weed,’ Mazeroski reminded me. He went to the telephone, asked for Roster Control, waited for a bit and then asked for the names assigned to Barracks C, rooms 109 and 217. Rodney put his head in his hands but caught himself, sat up straight. Mazeroski motioned to Jackson and the Muslim vegetarian gave his pen and pad to the MP. ‘OK,’ Mazeroski said. ‘Got it.’ Then he said to us: ‘Shoulda done this sooner. I got 109 assigned to Harris and Underhill, 217 to Gutierrez and Strong. Charlene your sister?’ Mazeroski guessed, looking to Rodney.

‘I don’t know,’ Rodney said.

‘You don’t know your own sister?’ Mazeroski asked. ‘And where were you when we busted that party in 217, your assigned room?’

‘I don’t know,’ Rodney repeated.

‘We got issues here,’ Mazeroski told Jackson. ‘And I think we will take that report from Airman Spivak.’

‘We were headed back to the site,’ I said. ‘We had some work to complete.’

‘Not quite yet.’ He turned his dark eyes to me. ‘Harris, you seem to be on the fringes of everything. You get caught on the fringe enough times …… it’s a duck,’ he concluded.

‘Quack quack,’ Rodney squawked in the tense silence.

‘Hey, I almost forgot,’ Spivak said. ‘I’m up for Airman of the Month.’

‘Me too,’ I mumbled.

‘You think this will hurt my chances?’ Spivak asked Mazeroski.

Thanks for reading. Continued in Synaesthesia 3: From the Desert to the Arctic, coming soon.