March, 1999. Naval Special Warfare Training Center Coronado, California.
“What in thee fuck are you fucking looking at you female fuck? You think you’re going to get some special fucking treatment and pronoun recognition around here fuck face? Don’t count on it one God damn second you waste of fucking sperm,” said the line backer sized black instructor with crazy eyes.
“Hooyah instructor Yetka,” she replied.
Hooyah could mean many things as she’d come to learn.
Typically it meant “yes” but oftentimes it meant many more like, fuck you, fuck me, we’re fucked, and so on.
Julia Jones “JJ” Parks was going to be among the first group of women to graduate BUD/S training, she just didn’t know it yet.
Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL training was among the toughest military selection courses in the world with a 90 percent failure rate. It was one of the few military courses where water was used to trim the fat to the lean meat.
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“The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday,” hung on over the entrance to training in blue and gold letters.
JJ had grown up in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and was raised by her tough-minded African-American father Henry. He was a former Marine captain who ran a successful plumbing business, smoked a cigar every evening, still kept a high and tight haircut, and loved blues music. Henry had served in Vietnam where he met and fell in love with JJ’s mother, a Vietnamese nurse, who had died suddenly of ALS when JJ was 10.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a group of rare neurological diseases that mainly involve the nerve cells (neurons) responsible for controlling voluntary muscle movement. Voluntary muscles produce movements like chewing, walking, and talking. The disease is progressive, meaning the symptoms get worse over time and there is no known cure.
JJ still remembered seeing her dad cry for the first time when they buried mom six months after she was diagnosed. “ALS is a mother fucker,” she thought.
JJ excelled in sports, particularly swimming. This had forced her to keep a decent (not great) GPA: she just wasn’t into academics unless she was interested in the subject material.
She had given up a spot on the Olympic swim team to join the Navy SEALs once they opened it up to women. Being an Olympian would be great but there’s not much return on investment. Even if they win Gold, most athletes struggle to make ends meet.
Her dad was apprehensive at first since he had served in a different era. But he came around to it once JJ bent him to her will. He had a soft spot for his only daughter.
Now she found herself standing on the hot black grinder with white frog feet prints with 198 classmates including four women who’d all made the cut and been allowed to attend BUD/S class 222.
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One hundred green helmets of class 221 lined the grinder under a big shiny brass bell. One hundred quitters and the helmet farm was still growing.
JJ had only met Olga Rakanova the week before during their check-in process. Olga was a smoking hot former model turned med school dropout, Naval Academy graduate, whose parents had immigrated from Ukraine. She was also a nationally recognized chess player. JJ could tell right away that she was smart as fuck.
Olga had grown up in Brighton Beach, raised by her grandmother, in Long Island, New York but worlds away from JJ. Her father she’d never met but she figured out later why. He was Russian mafia and likely on some TSA list and could never visit. Her mom died in childbirth and her real mom was her babushka. JJ learned that she loved In-in-Out burger, collected Wonder Woman comics, and couldn’t stop talking about the fact that Comic-Con was held annually five minutes from the SEAL training base.
She was also bisexual and preferred women in America over most of the men she’d met….
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