The stereotype of a military service member is of extreme machismo that comes with a largely-male profession. When Elric decided to enlist, he hardly fit the bill of cold-blooded killer, either.
Over the years he worked as a Hospital Corpsman with the Fleet Marine Force, the medics that the Navy loans to the Marines, due to the fact that Marines don't have medics in their own force. By his own admission, he was average at his job, and subpar at shooting.
He wore rainbow stockings under his camouflage uniform in Afghanistan, and on his tent sign, it said “HN Kalinich, #1 Queen.”
“I was always open about my sexuality and my proclivities. I figured if I did that, they couldn’t blackmail me.”
Elric is genderfluid, identifying at times with male, female, both, or neither. This writer reflexively use male pronouns with him, and at first the question of which pronouns to use felt somehow inappropriate. But the truth of the matter was very simple, reflecting Elric's focus on clothes and presentation.
“If I’m wearing a dress, I guess you can call me Brittany and I’m a ‘she’ otherwise, I’m Elric, and I’m a ‘he.’ Makes it simple. I’m pretty laid back about it.”
The stereotype had little to no bearing on the reality of military life for Elric.
The Autographed Pride Gadsden Flag
But first, let’s go back a ways.
When Elric was in grade school, as young as five or six, he would write girls names on his papers, along with his own. It just depended on the day, and it often landed him in trouble when his teachers wanted to know who "Brittany" was. It wasn't until he turned 20 that he officially came out, and codified what the swirling hurricane of feelings within him meant. He had always gravitated towards the name, later finding out that it was the name that his mother had laid out for his brother, had he been a girl instead of a boy.
Truthfully, Elric was an adopted name too, one of his middle names, used in lieu of the ubiquitous "Josh" that was his legal first name. The name was based off Elric of Melnibone, a character from a 60's fantasy novel, which his mother had enjoyed when she was younger.
"My teachers encouraged me to use 'Elric' because it made their lives simpler. There were like, 3 other kids named 'Josh' and after all my friends started calling me Elric, it stuck. I suppose for maximum theme consistency, I could have adopted 'Cymoril' instead of Brittany, cuz she was Elric's consort and would-be empress in the books. In fact, I've always said that if I ever wanted to go through Hormone Reassignment Therapy, I would probably adopt the name Brittany Cymoril...but the truth is that I don't really need hormones and surgery to be a woman."
As for his reasoning on the name spelling?
"Brittany like the place, not Britney like the singer. Though she was from Louisiana too, so I guess that's a thing. I've seen some weird spellings, like Britnay...But I'm not a fucking philistine, so I decided to use Brittany, as in the region in France."
Brittany, at her computer on International Trans Day of Visibility, March 31st 2014
There was of course, the question of whether there was any difference between the masculine and feminine in this case, or if Elric and Brittany had differences in personality.
"That kind of defeats the purpose, I suppose. This isn't some sort of personality disorder where I identify with a pair of unique individuals, they're just different sides of the same coin. I guess when I feel particularly feminine, I'm more excitable and bubbly, but that's less me exhibiting a distinct personality, and more telegraphing characteristics that are stereotypically 'female.' And the truth is, sometimes I feel like neither. I don't even feel human. Lately I've been so stressed that I don't feel any particular kind of way, because of work and life problems, I just come home and...exist. It's only when I'm kind of at peace that I feel gender."
New Years Eve, 2011, Afghanistan
Elric had grown up in West Monroe, Louisiana in absolute poverty. His family lived in a series of motels throughout his childhood, and his surroundings were wracked by crime. His friends and brothers were involved in drugs, and he described his friends group as "losers." After a watershed moment which he described as the instant where he realized that he needed to get out of there, he ran from the crime and gangs to the Navy.
Elric at Junior Prom, West Monroe Louisiana
Originally, he’d intended to join the Navy and be an Intelligence Specialist, which requires a coveted Top Secret clearance. While waiting for selection, he had met another sailor, whose name he’d not say. But Elric hadn’t been granted the Top Secret clearance, due to circumstances beyond his control.
He was offered three positions by the navy: Musician, Unassigned Airman, and Corpsman. He put down Unassigned Airman, Musician, and Corpsman, in descending order of preference. Naturally, he was sent to become a Corpsman.
"I was serving during Don't Ask, Don't Tell for a few years, and really nobody cared. Sure, you'd have that story that everyone seemed to know of that one gay Chief Petty Officer, about how he was dishonorably discharged for being on some gay AIM chatroom, but that was in the 90s. By the time I got in, nobody wanted to be 'that guy' who ruined someone's career over their sexuality.
“I've had romantic encounters of all kinds...perhaps I'd consider myself bi- or pansexual. Probably Pan, because gender never was really a factor in any of this. I enjoy personalities, I enjoy quirks, and that's what we'd bond over."
“I didn’t really get along super well with most people, but that’s less me being gay and more me being weird. I like Star Wars, ‘92 Buick Lesabres, and watching videos of 747s landing at Kai Tak airport in the 80s. I didn’t really have much in common with my peers. But I still wanted to be comfortable with who I was by being around people who wouldn’t look at me funny if I came in wearing rainbow tights, or even a dress and a wig.”
While at Camp Lejeune, his eventual duty station with Marine Combat Logistics Battalion 6, Elric would journey up to New Bern to visit his then-boyfriend, as well as several of his high school friends who had moved to the area, as well as internet friends in Raleigh, Hampton, and Virginia Beach. They were the people that he could count on, where he could truly be himself, and so he would travel hours to be with them.
"I just found myself wanting to get as far away from this town where everyone from eighteen to twenty-five is in the military. I would take any chance to not be in Jacksonville."
The bottle of Jagermeister that I’d bought him was already 18 ounces down, and he was showing very little in the way of intoxication. He sniffed, took another sip, and lounged back into the desk chair that was one of four pieces of furniture in the dingy living room that served as the living space of his one-bedroom apartment in Waynesboro, VA. Nothing about him fit the stereotype held in the collective consciousness of the American
“Ford Raptor-driving straight cis white dudes from Texas” he said with a smirk, as he continued,
“What’s more American than a truck that can outpace most baseline muscle cars? Maybe with a Punisher skull, "Infidel" decal and a ‘Hillary for Prison’ sticker on the back too.”
Elric was into cars to a ludicrous degree. Say here you are here. He was sitting in his living room in X town… something like that.
In fact, on the shelf above his computer desk, along with the stuffed animals, Halo figurines, and empty liquor bottles kept as souveneirs were several Hayne’s Guides for 1980s and 90s cars that he had never, and would never own.
This WAS? all juxtaposed with the Vermin Supreme-signed Pride rainbow “Don’t Tread on Me” flag that hung over the couch where I currently sat. On the coffee table in front of me sat a copy of Lance Corporal Max Uriarte’s “The White Donkey,” a graphic novel about a Marine dealing with the PTSD and depression left after his time in Afghanistan. Everything about this weird, multicolored sometimes-man in front of me should clash, but it didn’t.
We decided to take a break and walk down to Heritage Grill for dinner.
Back at his house, the Jagermeister bottle was almost half empty, all his doing. He threw on a purple hoodie and his puke-green USMC sweatpants, and poured another frosty glass of “Vitamin J” as he called it. We switched to talking about everyday life in the Navy, and how it was impacted by his sexuality.
Sometimes his past comes to find him again. In only the past month, a sailor he had met while waiting for the decision on the fateful Security Clearance found him again and began to harass him.
“Oh he started off with the usual ‘are you gay? Are you a brony?’ Which...yes to the first, no to the second, but I wasn’t about to give him any more information than he already had. Then he switched over to trying to blackmail me, which I’ve already preempted by being as open about this as I reasonably can be. But then he starts talking about being allied with some shadowy group, and saying he was going to come kill me, and that he knew where I lived.”
“He worked for one of the alphabet-club agencies, so I didn’t know what he was capable of in terms of knowing how to find me. He could literally just have been drunk, or he could have been ready to bust down my door with a hatchet. But I handled it as best I could.”
“I could have been that real tough guy and just been like ‘oh yeah? I’ll get my gun! Pull up then!’ but I’m not a violent person, at all. So I just called the police, like a normal person, called my friends, like a normal person, and had someone I knew who worked for the same agency as him tell his command, again, like a normal person. Being safe is better than being tough.”
Austin, TX Ca. 2015
Elric's trepidation about dressing the way he would like has continued today, if not for the same military reasons, then for the fact that putting together an outfit requires time and effort.
"I usually to this day only dress up when I'm around close friends. That's usually the only time when I have the prep time necessary to dress up a certain way. I live closer to my friends now, and it's better for me to travel to be with friends to kind of have that safety to be myself than for me to live in a 'woke' city like Richmond or DC and not be around anyone that I know."
The point could be made that it would be better for him to be able to be himself at all times, rather than a select few times among close friends. I asked him if this required a certain wariness about who he presented his true multicolored self to.
"I guess I am wary. So like, if I'm driving out to see someone I'll just not stop if I'm luridly dressed, or I'll get changed there. But that's only really if I'm going to be in an area where I think that I'll encounter some nasty looks or comments. Even then, I've never experienced any of that."
And when asked his gender or sexual identity, Elric thought that he'd never answered any better than on his Twitter handle: "Gender Identity: Elric, Sexual Identity, Buick V6"