The Cutest Girl in Qatar and Other Stories of Girls (Whom I Haven't Slept With)
Chapter One - Girls at the Pool
In retrospect I'm not sure if I would have been better off going to Man Lake. It's not like you have a choice when you're sent on a four-day pass whether you'll go to Camp Chili's in Qatar or to the resort in northern Iraq known as Man Beach (but sometimes also called Dick Island). During the orientation for the few days I'd spend at Camp Chili's (actually named something completely forgettable), I was given a base map with very little actual information on it. You aren't allowed to take notes on the map nor are you allowed to write down building numbers for fear that if an annotated map fell into enemy hands he may mount a coordinated attack once he knew which building number went with which rectangle.
Impressively, the base is built entirely around a Chili's restaurant. This is where soldiers on pass end up eating almost every meal. But just as the lingerie section of AAFES catalogs sent to soldiers in the Middle East are devoid of any actual photographs of non-burqa-wearing women and are replaced by more empty gray rectangles, the Chili's is devoid of any pork products. Every day a new group of hungry soldiers show up on their first day of pass who have been fed canned corn daily for months like caged veal get off the shuttle bus singing, "I want my babybackbabybackbabyback ribs", only to sit down at a table and open a morbidly abridged menu and proclaim, "No ribs? Are you shittin' me?? And what the fuck is beef bacon??!!"
Adjacent to Chili's is a good sized pool, all of which is surrounded by an eight-foot high brick wall. This walled-off area is part of a small campus of buildings all of which are surrounded by a high chain link fence with armed guards acting as sentinels at the sole entrance to this complex that sits at the heart of the post. The guard duties at the entrance are performed by an alternating roster of unbelievably sloppy-looking over-aged contractors with hillbilly accents and missing teeth and over-zealous under-age fresh-faced pogue Army privates who think obstinately standing in my way as I approach the gate is good soldiering. There's only one entrance into the inner sanctum of the walled Chili's/pool area, and even that entrance is obscured by another wall, making a T-shaped infiltration route. Once within the wall, the pool acts as a water obstacle preventing a direct approach to Chili's from the entrance forcing any would-be attackers to file around the pool and through all the deck chair obstacles, another tactical genius-stroke. Central Command is located at Camp Chili's (seriously) and I suspect that the super secret entrance to their massive underground command center and Bat Mobile garage is through the kitchen's walk-in freezer. I did not note any of this on my map, however.
The thing about going to Qatar on pass is you can count on seeing females who will also be on pass. Forget what you may think about pass being a time to relax because it simply isn't. It's just as stressful as not being on pass because all that matters is the pursuit of getting laid. At Man Lake you may be able to have your own room in the "resort" hotel, which is a godsend in that you'll finally be able to masturbate with privacy, but instead of the male to female ratio being 20 to 1 as it is at Camp Chili's, it's something more like 100 to 1. At Camp Chili's you're allowed three beers a night, but at Man Lake alcohol is prohibited. At Camp Chili's you can go off-post for certain activities, but at Man Lake you wouldn't want to go off post even if you could because you're still in Iraq. Keep in mind that while at Man Lake you still have to have your MOPP suit with you in the event of a chemical weapons attack. I've always found it difficult to relax at anything above MOPP level 1.
When you leave to go on pass, you're stuck with whomever else from your base happens to be going at the same time. If you're lucky you'll get put with cool guys, but you could always get stuck with total assholes too. I lucked out by getting put with guys who were real easy to get along with. The senior man in our group was a fair-skinned and red-haired E-6 mortars sergeant named Earl from another one of the infantry companies. There was this enormous Puerto Rican kid named Karl who was a Bradley driver, and also with us was one of the fuel specialists, a slightly off-center eccentric named Lawrence.
Before flying to Qatar, a day is spent at the Balad Air Base so soldiers can in-process, withdraw cash, and take care of whatever tasks they need to before flying to their pass destination. This base is probably the biggest one in Iraq and considered a luxury resort by Iraq base standards. But the real crown jewel of the base is the swimming pool. When the Army first took the base over, the pool was a shambles and from what the contractor who oversaw the reconstruction project told me, there was actually a broken jet in the empty pool when they found it. The four of us agreed that our main goal of the day was to spend as much time as possible at the pool after our errands were done.
First we went to finance to get some money. Apparently the process of visiting the finance department can get really ugly, so there are a lot of very explicit rules to keep the procedure organized should the place get swamped with people with welfare checks or whatever. Take this form, sit here, fill the form out, stand up, walk here, wait, when called upon walk to here, stand, wait, place the completed form on the counter, recite the alphabet backwards, perform the Masonic handshake on the Resuscitation Annie laying on the table, then wait for further instructions from the Fuhrer. Never being very good at this sort of thing, I botched the whole process repeatedly. There was no line this day so I walked right in and said, "Excuse me, I..." "Did you fill out a form? Go outside and fill one out!", the Sergeant Major behind the desk bellowed. So I retreated back out the door, took a form from the stand, sat down, and filled it out. Then I walked back inside, and asked, "Okay, so I have a question..." "Wait outside until you're called!", he barked. Um, okay. So I stood outside the door. "Next!", he called. Trying to start over, I said, "Hi. I was wondering..." "Take off your sunglasses!", Herr Fuhrer announced. By this time I my cage was fairly rattled, and I felt like I was at boot camp again, a feeling I don't particularly care for. Because of my strict patriarchal upbringing, I have a tendency to switch into submissive mode sometimes when I encounter authoritarians, and when I catch myself doing it I get really pissed at myself for letting another quasi-father figure subjugate me. A lot of things ran through my head that I wanted to say. "Sergeant Major, I've been in the Army for thirteen years and I've been on this shitbird deployment for nearly a year. We're both NCOs and I don't appreciate you addressing me like I'm a basic trainee. So why don't you take this form I've so diligently filled out, put your little scribble on it or whatever, and send me on my way. And I'm gonna leave my sunglasses on and you're gonna like it, got it? Oh, and by the way, fuck off you fascist fuck." I didn't actually say this, but instead I compacted it all into one handy phrase as I removed my sunglasses. "ROGER THAT." I handed him my form, he scrutinized it with a look on his face like I had filled it out with a pink crayon, he stamped it, then handed a stub to me and told me to see the sergeant at the payment window. "ROGER THAT.", I told him again, hoping he'd clearly understand that I was saying "FUCK YOU!" I took the stub to the window and the young black female sergeant asked me warmly and very deliberately as if it were the first time she had ever asked it, "So how are you doing today, Sergeant?" I wanted to say, "Are you fucking kidding me? How am I doing?? Your boss just made me feel like a piece of shit and now you think it's funny to rub salt in my wounds under the guise of friendly euphamisms? You're either more sadistic than your Nazi boss, or you're fucking retarded!" But she smelled good and it made me wonder what her hair would feel like touching my nose and lips and if she was the kind of girl who would let me stick my finger up her big ghetto booty while I made out with her. She had long painted nails that were nowhere near being within military regulations, but I imagined no one in her chain of command ever said shit to her about it because they were all trying to get into her pants too. I can't stand nails like that nor all the Long Islanders who actually think they're attractive, but I didn't really care, I'd just make her wear boxing gloves while we had our Oreo sex. I was already mentally through the first several weeks of The Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom with her before I caught myself and realized I hadn't answered her question yet. "I'm good.", I replied perfunctorily. As she counted the money, a guy in civilian clothes on the other side of the wall with her teased her about something. She giggled because of him and I felt a slight pang of jealousy. I hadn't even started chatting this girl up yet and I was already being cock-blocked. Damn. Game on. But not just yet. I took the money she handed me and I gave her a wan smile. As we left, Karl couldn't stop laughing at me and he let me know, in case I hadn't noticed, that the Sergeant Major had made a fool of me. Thanks Karl.
The next stop was to get a few items at the PX and to get haircuts. None of us had swim trunks and there were limited options on the racks, so we actually had to coordinate who was going to buy which trunks so that we wouldn't be caught hanging out at the pool wearing the same shorts the way old married couples wear matching jogging outfits. Between us we bought all the trunks available, some non-matching towels, slightly cold Gatorade, beef jerky, magazines, DVDs, and an assortment of other useless garbage as soldiers always do when given the chance.
With bulging plastic shopping bags in tow, we made a stop at the barber in the same building. I had already administered a self-inflicted haircut two days earlier, something I've mastered over the years as a way to save money and time and to prevent any girls from ever wanting to talk to me, but I accompanied the other guys anyways as they got theirs cut. It was at this point when Karl took off his uniform blouse in preparation to get his hair cut that my mouth literally went slack as I was compelled to take a second look. He stood a good 6'3", about an inch taller than me, and the muscles of his back hung off his neck and shoulders like enormous cuts of beef brisket. His shoulders and arms were constructed entirely of long, lean muscles that were casually draped around his skeleton with an elegance of form that inspired in me acute feelings of fear and envy. The outlines of all this muscular mass tapered down into the waistline of his pants making his torso into a trapezoidal shape, the likes of which I've only seen on He-Man action figures. It's moments like this in a heterosexual man's life when there is a staggering confusion that comes over him as he struggles to determine if he wants to fuck this guy or be this guy. But more importantly, how was I going to get any girlie attention when I was anywhere near this steroidal monster? Then a brief moment of pride came over me knowing that this guy with the amazing body was my buddy, he was with me. Wait, this is all totally gay stuff to think, I don't want to think this! Yuck! I repulse myself! But Jesus! Look at those muscles! I have to look away, I don't want to get caught staring. I can't help it, I have to look. Jesus! Would you look at that! Then I caught a glance of my reflection in one of the barber's mirrors and I was brutally reminded that I have a fifteen inch neck and weigh 165 pounds. I sat down in one of the chairs in the waiting area and hoped that no one would notice the skinny kid in the Army uniform.
Once we finished all the small tasks and had lunch at the dining facility that if I had regular access to would cause me to become the fattest skinny guy in the Army, we headed over to the pool with our new towels, flip flops, and trunks in-hand. None of us really knew our way around this base and it took us a few trial runs to learn how the shuttle buses worked. But we finally got the hang of it after accidentally circumnavigating the base. As we got off the bus and approached the pool area, we saw everyone standing around under cover of the building where the changing rooms were, as if waiting for something. We were really confused so I asked one of the guys standing there, "So what's the deal, why is everyone standing here?" This guy looked at me as of I were playing with my own feces while asking him this apparently ridiculous question and it took him a moment to reply. He said to me without trying at all to disguise his feelings of contempt and incredulity, "We're at yellow." Oh, we're at yellow. Okay. That clears it right up. Thanks for the info, dick. So I asked the guy standing next to him, "What the hell does, 'We're at yellow' mean?" This guy was a little more patient and told us, "There was a mortar alarm, we won't be green until they give the all clear." Okay, this made a little more sense. This base gets attacked often enough that they have a PA system to sound an alert when they receive incoming. I would later learn that the pool was one of the most desirable targets for mortar attacks because of the density of people. As far as terror goes, a mortar round landing at the pool would be pretty damn effective. The thought of bikini-clad bodies exploding everywhere and filling the pool with blood and gore is truly terrible. Not long ago a rocket was fired at this base and it struck the front of the PX killing a few soldiers. Other than that particularly lucky shot, everything else has literally been hit or miss. Usually miss. What's ironic is the locals in my area believe that my base is protected by a force field (I'm not kidding), so they never attack it, but regardless we have to wear full body armor all the time when we move around on the base. But this base gets hit with mortar fire multiple times a day and nobody wears body armor and they actually run around wearing boonie caps instead of helmets. One time the laundry service got hit with a mortar and soldiers didn't get their laundry back for over a week as there was a temporary strike when the surviving launderers refused to work.
By the time we were changed into our new bathing suits, the "all clear" siren was blown and we shuffled over to an available white molded plastic table with matching white molded plastic chairs beside the pool. Once we sat down and got settled into our position, we were able to properly survey this incredible landscape. Tits and ass EVERYWHERE. Out of respect for this truly holy moment and each other's madness-inducingly starved libidos, we sat reverently enrapt for easily twenty minutes without uttering a word, our heads on swivels. Normally this scene would not be that big of a deal, but right now every athletic short-haired bull dyke and half-cute girls with small breasts and large FUPAs were priestesses at the Church of the Holy Need to Hump. And we weren't the only ones to sit and stare at the young girls like perverts on a park bench. Just outside the fenced-off area of the pool there was a single-story building that some local laborers were listlessly working on. One of them, an Iraqi man with a red and white shemagh wrapped around his head, stood on the roof of the building, giving him an unobstructed view of the pool. He was holding a rake and was as expressionless and unmoving as the farmer in American Gothic. I looked upon the land and saw that it was good, but I could only imagine what it must have been like to witness this scene through his eyes. The devil on my shoulder and the infidel on his gave each other enthusiastic high-fives.
Once our minds settled down and we were able to return to Earth and we started moving again, Karl and I hit the pool. There was a high dive platform where all the guys would perform feats of bravery and physical prowess giving the girls an opportunity to judge who best to sexually couple with next. Karl and I split up and slowly paddled our way around the pool like wandering salmon looking for a place to spawn. Karl managed to get involved with one of the water volleyball games and I cozied up to a group of girls while plotting a way to work a joke about "water sports" into conversation, just to see if they'd get it. Eventually Karl and I both got out of the pool and we took our turn at testing our mettle with the high dive. I can't say I was real eager to do this, but I've always been drawn toward doing things that my initial instincts yell at me to take no part in. After falling from the top platform for what seemed like a day, then falling a little more, I finally hit the water at which point half the pool was immediately forced through my nose. Once I decided I was done with all this tomfoolery, I made my way back to my chair and chillaxed for the next several hours, subsisting on nothing more than pure brainstem functions.
Without a doubt, the most relaxing and enjoyable part of the four-day pass, ironically, was the time spent at this pool before the four days in Qatar actually started. It felt good to not be wearing body armor and to finally let our skin see the sun. We all got pretty burned, but we really didn't care. And it was great to indulge in some quality people watching. I was impressed by how bronzed some of these soldiers were. I asked someone the hours of the pool who said that it opened at 6am and closed at midnight. I asked how often they're allowed to come to the pool and I was told they were permitted to come whenever they chose. I asked if it was possible to come to the pool every day and got the answer that there were people who do. Between this place and the division headquarters at the palace complex in Tikrit, I seriously believe that there are soldiers whose quality of life has increased by being deployed to a combat zone. The pool itself was of immaculate construction, obviously not of Iraqi design. There were a few Americanized-looking Polynesian lifeguards with longish hair who I had to deduce were contracted to work at the pool. They had the typical careless swagger that I suspect is taught at lifeguard school and they all had incredibly cute girls fawning over them. I had to hate them by default, knowing that they were not helping my chances of hooking up with a girl if they were skimming off the topmost layer by moving in on the girls who were both hot enough and confident enough to spend time at the pool in bikinis.
For soldiers who are traveling in and out of Iraq through this base, there are a series of tents with cots where you can crash before your flight leaves. It's not uncommon for flights to be delayed for days at a time depending on what the enemy activity weather is like. Days with heavy rain of mortar fire and shattered showers of small arms fire could delay you a day or two. But on light days, you generally only stay overnight. After we were done with the pool and got our fill of chow, he retired back to the tent we were assigned for the night. During our trip to the PX, I perused the sizable and utterly predictable DVD section and had purchased every single thing worth half a damn (The Station Agent and Twin Peaks Season One) and was looking forward to watching one of them before I went to sleep. Being the tremendous geek that I am, the only time I'm not in physical contact with my laptop is when I'm holding my rifle, and this short trip was no exception. But this was the first time I had to travel with my laptop and I was a little worried that some of the others in my tent may not see the humor in the enormous "I {heart} Dead Civilians" sticker I had on it. Once I got over my last shred of political-correctness, I was able to enjoy an excellent film about an angry midget, a cheerful Cuban, and a mental woman. Wait, those descriptions are all totally redundant. Anyway, DVDs are the primary source of entertainment for soldiers in Iraq and we are generally able to buy pirated copies of just about anything from the local merchants. These discs are usually of exceptionally poor quality and it seems that all the ones I ever get crap out just before the end. I was excited to finally watch a real DVD through to the end, but my battery died just before the end. Figures. I'm really bad at remembering chronological details and usually forget how movies end anyway, so whatever. I put my laptop back in its battered Pelican case and called it a night.
