Hiding for My Life

April 15, 2024
Retired U.S. Navy officer Solt’s moving debut recounts how she concealed her sexual orientation during her two decades of military service. After working at Arizona gas stations and car washes for a year following her high school graduation, Solt signed up for a four-year stint in the Navy in 1984. Shortly after joining, she was raped by an acquaintance, whom her supervisor failed to discipline, and in her early days with the military she struggled mightily with the rigid structure and rampant sexism. Solt found solace in Tami, a woman she befriended after being assigned to the Chiefs Mess. Her connection to Tami helped Solt realize she was gay, a fact that threatened to get her kicked out of the military. Across multiple relationships, Solt lived in fear of being found out, which fueled her long-simmering alcohol problem even as she rose through the ranks. After getting sober and retiring in 2006, Solt came out of the closet and pursued a master’s degree in counseling, resolving to help others “live the truth of who they are.” Solt is remarkably evenhanded about her service, balancing an awareness of the scars her secrecy caused with an appreciation for the “new family, purpose, and place to hide” the Navy provided. This clear-eyed account does justice to Solt’s pain.

Solt offers an affecting memoir of serving in the United States Navy while gay--before it was legal. The author, a Navy veteran turned emotional health coach, tells the story of a brilliant military career--served entirely while in the closet. Her remarkably readable narrative details a stint in the United States Navy that she began as a reluctant recruit and concluded as a high-ranking officer, emphasizing the price Solt paid for having to keep her true self a secret. Her account highlights the real-life consequences of military policies forbidding gay people from serving, and of the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" era, which required gay service members to pretend they didn't have personal lives and denied them the accommodations offered to heterosexual military couples. Solt's memoir is also a heartwarming story of survival, through finding fellow gay service members and straight allies who kept their secrets. Displaying her great love for the Navy (in spite of the circumstances under which she had to serve), the author provides a detailed portrait of Navy culture for civilians, though the lay reader might find all of the acronyms challenging to follow (such as "YN1" and "YN3," which readers may or may not deduce refer to different grades of yeomen--a glossary would have been helpful). Solt's narrative is at its most riveting when conveying the challenges of trying to maintain a relationship while serving, which are increased exponentially when having to keep it under wraps. The author's voice conveys the crushing anxiety fostered by her situation in clear, direct prose: "Mine is a fear that my life could change in ways that will be horribly painful...a fear that all I have accomplished in the Navy will be stripped away and I will lose everything I have built over the last eleven and a half years of my career if I say the wrong thing." A powerful consideration of the tension between personal integrity and serving one's country.

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