When Anthony Moll joined the army at 18, he was a queer leftist punk with pink hair. In the months after September 11 he, like many who enlisted, was struck by a feeling of patriotism and duty, but mostly he saw military service as the only way out of his life of poverty in Reno, Nev. He served for eight years during the Don't Ask, Don't Tell era and, amid a culture of hypermasculinity, anti-gay bias and homophobic slurs, he attempted the delicate balance of being true to his identity without damaging his career or risking violence. Once he left the service, he began the confusing work of reentering society with a background much different than his peers.
A slim memoir told in essay-like chapters, Out of Step is the story of a young man trying to find his place in the disparate worlds of American military and civilian life. He admits to his naïveté as a new soldier, ignorant of the work he signed up for or the "gray ethics" of the U.S. foreign policy it represented, and he shows how his perspective changed over time. "Here I am an expert marksman who is happy that he has never gone to war, a rising military leader who stopped believing in the U.S. military's role in the world," he writes of his last years in the service. "Here I have stopped believing in the narrative that has been offered to me for the last seven years, and I have yet to fully uncover who exactly I will become once I finally take off my uniform and put it away for the last time." Moll's take is thoughtful and fair, both critical of the military while recognizing how it built him. --Katy Hershberger, freelance writer and publicist