second time. i have to be candid with you this is the end of a book tour for me. i am somewhat exhausted. i have to invent a entirely new language tonight. i'm not really sure how coordinated my to speaking relationship is at the moment and, actually, so tired that i reached for one of my herbal hippie chill pills in my pill kiss and almost almost taken an ambien. which would have made for quite mellow reading. thankfully i got the right supplement at the right time. i will at least, at very least i can promise you i will stay awake. so yes, this is from, "i love a man in uniform." about my marriage to my husband, military intelligence officer. and, we'll start off where courtship leads to marriage. a couple of months after moving in together we started talking about marriage. i had fantasized a

traditional military wedding. my beloved in his finest uniform festooned with rows of miniature medless. a white dress for me and things old, new, borrowed and blue. we would leave the chapel by walking under a arch sabre he is held high by fellow soldiers. as i passed the last one he would tap my rear per sword cuffs tom saying welcome to the army man. this landed far afield of tradition. his proposal predicated not so much on will you but what if. the jungle drums of war were beating and he sensed a deployment was imminent. we had to, act fast. we discussed the situation. you know that if there is war in iraq i'm going, right? he asked me?

so on november 18th the big day, i pieced together an ensemble befiting a clothes conscious, postpunk war bride. head to toe black. knit pull over. pencil skirt. fish nets. and swing backs buffed to military grade polish. i grabbed my vintage leopard print trend coat to cover up in the november chill and we were off to city hall. i didn't pass under a a of sabres like a traditional military bride but i did have to go through a metal detector. the security guard upon hearing we were there to get married, whispered to mike the emergency exit is that away. on the way up to the chapel in the elevator i realize i wasn't a war bride. i was a war on terror bride. i appreciated the image it suggested like i was a gore and blood drizzling matrimonial zombie freak. if it came down to b-movie catfight, war on terror

bride versus bridezilla i would win. i wasn't laden down by 10 pounds of fluff and with uncle sugar breathing down my neck i was in a hurry. i was motivated. our only wedding attendants were eight men in orange prison jumpsuits led down the corridor with their ankles and wrists chained together. mike and i met in graveyard. here we were getting hitched in immediate proximity to prisoners in handcuffs. someone of the department of obvious symbolism was working over time on our behalf. we found the little chapel on the fourth floor. mike put his hand on the doorknob. are you ready? i held up our marriage license. ready. he opened the door and we looked around the vacant room. it was so, so, sorry. worse than anything you would see on a vegas bender. even the cheesiest elvis impersonator would have taken look at home depot, pvc lattice arch over the altar.

no thanks, i can't bring you kids into this mess i was glad our parents weren't there to it. my mom would have went at urns of faux fruit. plastered with a missing of gold spray paint. the swags of tool that marked off the aisle, which dead ended at a foldable partition wall four rows of chairs were graying under a thick coat of dust. it was what it was. a fluorescent lit conference room modified by the lowest bidder. we crossed the threshold. our heels sank into the maroon carpet. mike and i sat on the wide folding chairs and held hands while we waited for efficient to show up. my palms started to sweat. i knew marrying a soldier meant marrying the military as well. i would have at government ever present mother-in-law. if a conflict in iraq did happen the sphere of influence within our marriage would broaden further still. if the army was to be intrackable third party in our union the war would be a fourth.

it started to feel after fully crowded in that empty chapel. i had the nervousness of a new bride, excited butterflies but with added overlay of fear. what would the future be like for us when this war really got here? could i give him what he needed? do we really know each other well enough to make this work? i had almost gotten this far with someone else and backed out. was i really army spouse material statistically speaking yes, the average army spouse is under 35. 95% of spouses are female and majority of wives work. but was i really up to the task? the justice of the peace came into the room and we stood. i swallowed my fear and we stepped up to the cheap poeen story wedding arch. we exchanged our vows under banks of buzzing fluorescent lights. we signed the marriage certificate and added names to the city registry. with a kiss it was official. in sickness and in health, in war and in peace we were wed.

in a quick, non-descript ceremony my life began a radical shift. but from free flying civilian chick to spouse. household member packs up and goes along wherever the army sends a sold. the day i really became a army wife carried a mark of bureaucratic flourish. received military i.d., deers card. enrollment eligibility reporting system card. with our marriage certificate in hand, mike and i went to the issuing at fort meade where the clerk greeded us warmly. she is here for dependent i.d. clerk said, no i said, what. we don't call spouses dependents anymore. cam father stereotyped be damned had sufficiently cast off their dependent label. i passed her the paperwork. my social security card, passport, mike's military

i.d. and our marriage certificate. from there, my information will be processed and reduced to a digitized code on the back of the card that could only be by a scanner. a detailed that felt once impressively advanced and vaguely orwellian. yes, dear, yes deers. in no time at all the clerk had entered my vital data and the card was almost ready to print. she point ad small webcam my way. straight into the camera on on count of three smile. while we waited for the card to print she said, don't lose this. you need it for everything. to get on post. shop at commissary, px, liquor store around get your medical. i may not be dependent on my husband but is was apparently very much dependent on this card. my card started chugging out of the printer. this is going 100 times faster than any trip i had taken to the department of motor vehicles. random as it seemed suddenly reed of time i posed for "playboy". what i recalled for

experience at mike, time and labor intensive creating a pin could be. who knew getting into the army system and getting in "playboy" had anything in common but both involved lots of sitting and waiting while the experts bustled around me trying to fit me with an existing template. in 1995 "playboy" issued a casting call for layout, women of the internet. because at the time the internet was still something of a novelty. "playboy" does love the novelty shoot. women of men'ssa women of hooters. women of enron. women of olive garden. i hosted a couple of private on-line conferences in a neared did i bay area internet community which seemed like a good enough qualification. so i sent in my photo and didn't hold out much hope. couple of months later i got call from assistant photo editor named stephanie barnett. she said we like to shoot you. offered to fly me out to los angeles later that month. good citizens of bunny land

do not mess around. they sent someone to lax to take me by the hotel by the beach and gave me preparations of shoot. show up shaved. moisture risedded hair clean and face free of makeup. the following morning, car picked me up at 9:00 and took me to "playboy" studio west where i was shown the set they built for me. a makeshift stage with a stripper pole. video monitors. typecast again. they had a contract and photo release ready to sign. i change understood a white terry cloth robe and slippers and shown into the makeup room. i emerged two hours later with hair, huge hair, teased and lackered and pamela anderson makeup job. two rows of false eyelashes. smokeky eyeliner, browsed teased and penciled to a high arch a oil slick gloss over liner and faux lipstick. i felt like i was wearing a clay mask and looked like a

cross between 50 drag queen and femme-bot factory second. i belted robe and wander around while the stylists decided how to dress me. the clothes were stocked in a two-story room. every lace, feathers, latin, velvet and animal print. it was like peeking inside barbie's dream closet. they considered my build and coloring and using esoteric professional metric chose to clothe me in necklaces rhinestone driz eled black mess rug. the photographer was a "playboy" legend which was both a blessing and a curse. i knew i could count on him taking wonderful pictures. he spent five hours shooting for one image. he was clearly used tos much more experienced models. his frustration became obvious. madonna's erotic can played

as he did his best to coach me. chin up. grab the pole behind you. erotic. shut up, madonna. i'm stretching so far upward i'm about to break in half. he kept encouraging me to turn this way and that but i was so anxious i clung to the pole like shyest girl on amateur night. the most humiliating thing how he kept asking me to pose with my arms over my head. i knew this trick. it lifts your breasts. sorry about the gravitational pull, dude, they're real. when we took a break for lunch, one of the photographers threat tick assistants said, we have a bag of mini reeses peanut butter cups if you want some. i'm a nervous eater. i couldn't keep away from the reese cups. i ate a two dozen or so. whenever i hear madonna's erotic i fwraf peanut butter. hours later we finally wrapped.

i felt like i completed systemic circuit. this one-time event was usualal. honored that i was part of a very particular feminine tradition. finally in april of 1996 the spread was slated to run. there was only one wrong about the photo. it doesn't look like me at all. when the issue hit stands, my dear friend, deb, who i had known for 20 years and called me and said i had to flip through the magazines four times to find you. you look like some texas oil man's wife named babs. the clerk handed me my new military i.d. still warm from the laminating machine. here you go, ma'am. whoa. i had a officially become a ma'am. i was part of the big green army machine. i looked down at the photo, a black and white shot, floating on a light brownback ground. yep, just as i suspected.

didn't look a thing like me. i put the card in my wallet. as a right of passage, the process of integrating into the army system felt oddly powerful like i was gaining not the support of my husband but the fortification of legitimacy and institutional might. the sense of a foundation beneath my feet offset the nervousness i felt about the sacrifices i would be ask to make in aid to mike's career. i now a member of a team that was more than a million strong and to me, as with legions of other women married to military men, the lover's breathless pledge i will follow you anywhere was no longer some abstract romantic notion, it was now a way of life. on the january day, in 2003 when mike received his deployment orders he was eerily calm. we already had the what if a war looming over us for months. had i expected him to be more emotional as deployment drew nye? i don't know. he only lost his cool twice. the night he got his orders

i shuffled around the kitchen in insome any yak haze baking chocolate cookies until 2:00 a.m. i zealed cookies in a plastic bag and dad he willed love notes. when he found them on the counter in the morning came into the bedroom in his uniform with tears in his eyes. days i found him sitting on side of the bed, shoulders slummed. i don't want to see anymore dead people. he only told me once about the hundreds of burned and mangled corpses he had seen in the platoon leader in the gulf war. at end of exhausting 100 hour grand war mike's unit was making its final drive northeast when it went directly across the way of death. iraqis fleeing cue city jammed highway 80 trying to get back to. mike and his soldiers arrived on the scene four hours after the road was attacked by sorties of coalition aircraft. vehicles were still smoking.

still licked by orange flame. the air stock exchange of burning fuel and flesh. there were prayer rugs televisions, silverware, women's dresses war booty that had been abandoned in panic. in the back seat of an old green peugeot, mike discovered israeli hostage. bugs settling into his wounds. his hands bound behind his back. the man had been shot in the temple. the bullet blew out his head like a trunk of a back door. his face had a peaceful expression. by his side was a photograph of a lovely woman bending over birthday cake next to a toddler. mike wasn't sure if the man had used the photo and failed attempt to eit mercy while he pleaded for his life or if he simply begged to see it before he was shot. i never asked mike about anything he had seen in combat before that or after.

i didn't feel it was within my rights to press him for details. and womanly intuition guided me to soothe, rather than pry. his reluctance to talk about such personal things didn't seem uniquely male but rather entirely human. i accepted that my husband, like many people preferred to process misery in private. the indulgent inducement to divulge, you will feel better when you talk about it. when ever i hear that i think instinctivelily no. he will tell me what he wants to tell me when he wants to, if he wants to. but i wouldn't ask even though i was curious to see over the wall between us, the one that separated my experience from his. he was part of a world that i could not, and likely would not ever know. . .

as the italian executive officer his job was to support the battalion commander in matters of logistics, intelligence and personnel, to be his right arm. while mike assured me over and over he wouldn't be in danger, i wasn't convinced. so i was more frightened by am going to baghdad the campus just across the iraq border. as if bombs recognized borders any way to and who really know at that time how far this conflict will spread. i wished i could you in here, mike said as he folded his undershirts and to the back.

well, technically you could fit me in there but when you let me out i would be so paced i would attack you like a rabbit jim. why had fear so big before me that humor was the only way i could see a round. i was afraid of so many things, being alone, not knowing what to do in his absence, not knowing if he would be safe, just not knowing. i gave him my small battery operated digital alarm clock to keep by his bedside. think of me when you're talking, okay? it's got a thermometer, to match. he pressed the buttons turning the aqua blue on and off. that's interesting, he said, the temperature can get over 120 degrees over there. you're kidding, right? no. while he packed i held a set of dog tags turning them over and over into my palm. stamped was information that reduced my husband to statistical basics, name, social security number, blood type,

religion a timeless military symbol until i realized they are designed to function as a toe tag should he be killed in combat. two days before mike deployed the battalion's families were summoned on post for pre-deployment family ready group meeting. here we were briefed on every aspect of life during separation from facing logistical challenges to dealing with the emotional fallout. though this was my first time interacting with other military wives, it was easy for me to tell the new were wives from the old. new ones like me sat alert, taking notes, our allies around like a bunch of owls while the more seasoned among us sat back looking as if they have heard this shield before. the unit at irg meeting was run by volunteers at fort meade army community services. during the breeding a store and older woman urges to be fiscally sensible. do not, i repeat do not rush out and buy a new couch or big screen tv. while her earnest on dirt country triet told us it was our

job as women to make sure our returning servicemen didn't feel threatened by our wartime autonomy. she said she shored up her man's confidence by screwing burned out like balls into the household fixtures so he would have something to repair when he came back. [laughter] i smirked. i would keep my household together and my man together. it would be a piece of cake. no assistance from eg needed. the assistance from frg told us as wives we may be agitated by reports about the war so we shouldn't feel bad about wanting to avoid newspapers, radio and television. if being in the information loop frightens you or makes your family anxious a self-imposed news embargo was perfectly okay. we shouldn't feel guilty for protecting ourselves emotionally. mike joined me in time of her the marital relations portion of the presentation. sex and intimacy can be strained when a soldier returns home, we were told. the elder women urged us in a

thick massachusetts accent to let nature take its costs. [laughter] back at our apartment mike took down our fireproof lock box. here's our marriage certificate, he said, taking it from the box. i smiled. i had brann did the certificate in my parents thinks giving donner announcing our marriage to their applause. we then moved on to new york stopping by his mother's house in dutchess county, than his father's place in queens, spreading the good news. mike dog further into the lock box. here's your p.a.. he held a business sized envelope, you will need this, too. what is it? its my will. he held it out to me but i didn't want to touch it. i refused. he laid it on the bed. i don't know if it was my refusal for superstition or denial, but as a stark fact military marriage that we were forced to prepare for the end of our life together before it had

even begun. [applause] that such a downer i would like to continue with something a little peppier but i don't know if you guys are feeling held hostage. shout out to date on the microphone on c-span. that's what happens when you are my friend on tv. and i buy you lottery tickets and ponies and things. okay. he's deployed, comes home in a reasonably good shape, reasonably good shape. let's just say all the scars were on the inside and immediately after he comes home we move to west point together and that to me as being like drop kicked into foreign culture because i don't have a personal connection to the army so it is almost as if i had boarded a rocket ship to jupiter. so i started getting a little

bit wistful for my old life as a stripper which is such a bad sign. [laughter] if you're looking back at that with fondness and simply because i think it seemed familiar to me. it was a territory that i knew so i had a little bit of yearning for something familiar. so, this is what happens. the lady gets in for free. in a fit of nostalgia on a tuesday night i tried mike to a local strip club out by stewart air force base called paradise island. paradise island is a boxy joint, a single floor please with funky smelling carpet and dark walls, totally nude which meant they served no alcohol. the dow bouncer checked our idea and we've dustin. we eckert our 5-dollar plastic cups of dalia coke. going to a strip club with your man is an interesting but miss test. we sat down at the bar i could tell he was uncomfortable. he leaned over to me and whispered i don't know where to look. [laughter]

the girls worked their way down the bar, shimmy shimmy spread, shimmy shimmy spread. there's nothing exciting to me about seeing total female nudity. maybe i don't care because i've got that particular kit myself so the site is being in bed bath and beyond and seeing the same blunder as your kitchen and home. i've got one of those. i fiddled with my fist full of symbols laying out five for each dancer that came by. i hadn't had a lot of cash in my hand like this for a long time. god, i missed the gambler's mind of a good night when you have so many shifts and your fingers turn black from counting all the bills on the dressing room floor but this wasn't one of those jolly adrenaline pumping big money nights when the music was blasting and the impossibly hot smiling athletic girls were sprouting 100-dollar bills from their borders. this was another tuesday night where you have to rattle your can to earn enough cash to cover your utility bill.

the next dance would stop in front of us on the bar startled me. i am open-minded. you can pretty much what any fetish by me and get a thumbs-up but jesus christ i hate to see a pregnant woman working in strip club. i know pregnant woman can run 5k and hike and do the appalachian trail. they are not glorified a cozy spot still when i see a woman popping a belly teetering in high heels and a silver mini dress pulled down to expos her breasts yet covered her bump i want to pick her up and whisper away to a tropical island, not paradise island, where she can sit with her feet up and burgeon pnac alatas with fortified banana. get this woman a pedicure fast. we two qtr $20. she smiled and looked grateful. starry eyed cultural critics insist in a strip club the dancer has all the power. she's the one in control.

it's a lovely fantasy, one that seduces even need but that isn't the reality of the service business. sure if the club is packed and the dancers are busy and everyone wants your fine, fine duty it's your racket. if one guy gets a little out of line you motion to the bouncer and see you later soccer. you know the customers electronic buses will be another shortly and no one is going to get over on you. but your power is only as great as your demand. if you've got no takers you've got no game. you attempt to make compromises, put up with demeaning comments about your body, some further conversation with a man who's got roaming hands. maybe let another customer get a little closer than the rules allow. when the money is tight, the pickings are slim and pressure is on you eat crab or go home broke. you've heard the expression beggars can't be juicers. exactly. whatever beauty or sex appeal you've got its start to enjoy it when you strip because there's a

dozen sexier prettier girl is pouring in every day. it's a constantly renewing source of not good enough. a day jambi mouth malling its way through heaps of hot young bodies. men show up hoping against hope the women are into it. most the time they aren't, her motivation is the bottom line. but if you catch them on a good night and they are into it they may even be loving it. that small percentage is just enough juice to keep the machine running. and there is something about dancing that sets you free even if you otherwise feel like a slave to the job. in the smoke and ne and darkness, you have a secret space on the stage you can put aside gender politics and all the power jockeying and malt with the music. yes, certain clubs to dance a certain way, no bending over, no touching yourself with your hands, stay 3 feet away from the customers but within that is the simple joy of movement, said inclose and inhibitions and feeling yourself grow huge and

dramatic walled off from the silly judgments and bargains. the shy girl, vicki, this lot, the, whoever somebody thinks you are doesn't matter because this is your song commodore stage, your time. even though your attractiveness is on the auction block sometimes there is a song or two that is yours and yours alone like a caged bird sings the dancing girls dance. it's not a ballerina discipline or modern dance restriction the boundary of beauty, it's the horowitz hard bargain. here's what i've got, take it or leave it but if you take it know that you're not getting all of me. this little piece, the beauty of this moment in the dingy spotlight is my own secret pleasure, my own sweet and skate and it is and violet. whatever dirty business might happen in the audience, the performance stays pure. thank you. [applause]

i am opening the floor to questions. i certainly welcome nosy questions. it's why we are here after all. if you could just pause so the boom can come to you before you ask and we are good to go. >> so, my first question for you is what was your biggest misconception about marriage and the military? >> my biggest misconception is very informed by hollywood where a lot of the scenes with military personnel are film where there is a lot of yelling so i honestly didn't think many military people had an inside voice so i thought it was going to be like sergeant how are you doing ma'am, i'm picking you up, we are going on our date, this is awesome! i felt within the first ten minutes of our data i would have a migraine and to sort of find that they are such self-deprecating people and so thoughtful and committed to what they do there is a sort of gentleness to it that was absolutely startling to me because i really was sort of

expecting, you know, very some sundry greedy and shades of knuckle dragging ape, so to be exposed to that thoughtfulness and seriousness of heart that comes with their commitment to service was startling, and it's been such a continuing experience of having my worst assumptions proven wrong and something i am actually most pleased with as well, so is a lot more intellectual, it is a lot more emotional and it's a lot quieter. good question. thank you. dave? >> what was the reaction of those closest to you when you decided to write this book, and what was their reaction when it came out and their reaction to how revealing it was? >> you know, when you write in memoir you think you can anticipate the response, and you really can't. of course this is a memoir about

my marriage so i felt the better part of sportsmanship would be to let my husband read before it was published, and i understand there are some people very territorial about their work. it really doesn't matter who it's about, they feel it is their right to tell the story however they want but one of my larger goals is to stay married so i thought perhaps i should give him a vote. and there wasn't much that he wanted changed. but there are a few parts that are a little touchy for him. they say he had ptsd. i don't know that he has the disorder because he never missed a day of work and he never became so anguished that he couldn't function, so i would say he had post-traumatic stress and he did have an incident where there was a flashback. i know so many women who told me their husbands have had flashbacks so we don't go public with it. it makes them feel vulnerable. even though this is a guide is an intellectual, published academic, he its rusty nails for breakfast, he can do pushups on

his fingertips, but just that one flashback and having that out there makes him vulnerable because soldiers are not used to letting people behind the game face because you're ready for everything. there's that and honestly he kind of hate the strip club scenes. like i don't want people to know, but i'm like your the cool guy. it's not some side if you that's more of fighting, so it doesn't reflect poorly on you in any way. i think most men wouldn't really know where to look if they went with their wives of it speaks well of him and it is fairly typical response. what's startling to me is this is my second memoir, and the sheer volume and intensity of the response from the other wives is blowing away. i get women that are just like this book had me in tears because it is all the stuff that i sort of think about, but because army culture conversational circumscribed you really do follow the rules of order. you don't talk about sex,

politics, religion, money. it's a lot of recipes swaps. we are frank about our families, what our husbands are doing and how that is difficult for us. but there is so much that is left out. so that sense of readiness and being able to handle anything and that a game face kind of leaks over to the wives as well so there's a whole level of conversation we just don't have. and if you are lucky to make really good friends when you can break through that wall the informality and get into real friendship that's great. but a lot of us for whatever reason you get to a certain post and just don't meet those women. the kind of feel like they're having that conversation with me when they read the book and it's going to places they think about but don't dare birse at coffee group. and that for me -- you also don't know when you write a memoir what is clear to be the most rewarding thing and for me, the most rewarding thing is not having crafted well or getting good reviews. it is hearing from the other

wives because the stuff they are responding to is the rough edge stuff about how do you feel when your man comes home from war and his different? and how do you deal with the fact that you don't apply about the war and, you know, there is an assumption of friendship because military wives are very outgoing but one of the tops dresses in anybody's life in the top three is moving in to do that every two years, so you are living in a constant churn, and we have this driving slogan of sucking up and drive on. but there's so much in life i don't like you should suck up because that the liberals your feelings so if i can get beyond the sock it up and get these women to come forward and feel like they've been spoken to candidly from a friend who's been through, it's beyond anything i could have imagined. i would say in that respect the response has been positive. one negative response is my husband and i have been part of

the west point community since 2003 and i had a graduating female cadets dressed for their female some of work orders and we've had them come over to mentorship from my husband when they are the same branch so i feel very close to west point and feel like it is part of my heart and soul and certainly part of our marriage, and i had a reading schedule their for april 28 and they canceled it just because i used to be a stripper so that is shocking to me because as a writer i've been so committed to taking the issues of the military family and trying to place them as visibly as possible like the la times or sleet or whatever, so making that sort of a personal platform and then having all of that overlooked for some time machine factor let's go back to 94 and dismiss you because of that, it made me really sad because it makes me feel like who i was then overshadows any contribution i make now. so that's a reaction i definitely could not have anticipated. at first they didn't say why

they were canceling. i thought it's because your book stinks, man. so i did a lot of tears and was like i really worthless as a writer. this is just birdcage liner. [laughter] and then i found a very, very big bird cage weiner, like a page a day, a calendar. and then when i found out it was a moral judgment i was really shocked because west point is an institution of higher learning and for the educators of the army. so i feel that, you know, academically they should be exposed to different lifestyle choices, different backgrounds and just because i write about sex work doesn't mean i write about it from advocacy. based on book i read i don't think you could say authentically i am writing a conversion by elected for young soldiers to abandon their commission to hit the pole or whatever. so that was a little startling. but, you know, it is what it is and one of the chapters of the

book is an out my fear of my past coming back to bite me in the but as an army wife and lo and behold the day of reckoning has come. yes? >> first of all that's messed up that they canceled it. my apologies on behalf of them. but i wanted to ask you when you set out to write this did you feel like, because writing is such a delicate and weird thing, did you feel like you had to sell some search? did you have to be aware that you might do that? >> absolutely. i think every writer content with that especially when you're writing about your life and you're not writing about your imaginary friends are making up a fictional universe although even then you have the people reading it going i know that gertrude is freely the lady down the street. so there are always people trying to define what's real and

we love to be readers and detectives at the same time. it's part of the sneaky joy of being a reader. i had a couple of concerns. one was if i was going to write about people in the army i had to conceal them appropriately in life been successful. people keep coming up to me going the guy whose wife, you know, she found out he was cheating on her throop myspace, that's the smiths, right? it's so totally not the smith's. when they ask me who it is they are wrong so lifelike that is a victory. in fact one guy i did write about all roads lead to facebook, so everybody you ever dealt with in the army is going to find you on facebook and my former neighbor, who they were so wonderful to me when my husband and i went through a tremendous marital crisis, and he was like is this me and my wife? i was like it since you come he didn't even recognize himself. it took him awhile to figure out it was him so it's all for the good. but also, i was so freaked out

about what army people and army family members don't talk about, that that actually became one of the running themes and topics in the book is instead of being intimidated and limited by it why not talk about what those restraints are. so in a way that impulse to sell sensor became something of a driving force for the book because i was like rather than about down to the sort of invisible perfect step further army wife only talks about acceptable things, you know, her country and her family, why don't we talk about why we don't talk about it? so is actually sort of became this make eating its tail and it helped me roll along. i was like here's another thing we don't talk about. one of the ways i wrote the book is i have a lot of good friends on line and they are civilian

and some of them are military brats but most of them don't have a connection to the military so i was like if you had an opportunity to corner a military wife and ask anything you wanted to what would you ask? so i got this list of about 40 questions and that formed the backbone of the book satisfied and this curiosity and one of the major questions is is your behavior police officially or unofficially? how close we argue watched? what can you talk about, what can you not talk about? it is something i wasn't only first intimidated by and interested in, something that became obvious very quickly non-military converse of people wanted to know about, too, because we always see those movies where there is some creepy beetle brows general saying don't tell anybody, you don't know how high this thing is going to go, or whatever, so we have that image of a sort of censorious territory and part of it is discretion in a radically diverse organization like the military. we have different races,

different religions, different backgrounds, different regional backgrounds. there is something to be said for being polite about flashpoint topics. and also, you know, military people professionally take the oath to serve the civilian authorities are you don't criticize the mission so it's basically talking smack about your boss and you don't do it. but it also creeps out the civilian people like the wives and kids and people in the community. so it's fascinating stuff, because at first i thought they were having secret talk about the war meetings but don't invite lily because she always brings lame desert or something. i thought it was these amazing think tank groups getting together and really pounding current events to a fine powder and i started asking my friends on the post and they were like you know why it, honestly i've never had a conversation about what we think about the war, what it does to our family and the deployment and struggle and loneliness and isolation. we are quite frank about that,

but there is no plan to autocracy socially speaking. that's weird for me because i am a media type in your opinion is your calling card. if you don't have an opinion you might as well sit down and eat the bridge mix because you can't even play. so it was very strange for me to have that reversal of conversation and i still struggle with it. i put my foot in my mouth so many times i've sort of tent to keep a tally and creed and like how bad was that the pots. [laughter] and i don't know what the report would be for the worst, maybe a mosul or something, or exile. but i have really stepped ankle deep in a sometimes and that is common among people that question. thank you. okay. we are going to wrap up. let's wrap up, everybody. thank you so much for coming.

this is great. so nice to have you here. [applause] >> lily burana is the author of them awful strip city. her writing has appeared in sleet and the new york times. she is a contributing editor for spin magazine and new dvorkin server. for more information, go to lilyburana.com. coming up next, booktv is monthly author interview and call in program "in depth." this month's guest is juan williams. >> host: let me begin with a book that cannot 11 years ago on thurgood marshall called american revolutionary, and you write in the book he could charm a story and joke capable of intimidating black political rivals but he had doubts about his job on the u.s. supreme court.

>> guest: it's very interesting. i think this is part of a difficulty in psychology, being black in america. you have this insecurity. he was the first person, the first african-american to be on the court and understood right away that as he went through confirmation hearings we've just gone through confirmation hearings with sonia sotomayor were the clarence thomas hearings. thurgood marshall's lasted almost three months and his intellect was questioned top to bottom. once he's smart enough to be among the nation's legal elite and sit there in judgment as a member of the court so as he gets on the court he really thought i must get the best in terms of the law clerks and assistance and he really wanted to build up the idea he could in fact handle this work and respond to the assumptions of inferior intellect. >> host: you