The logistics of hooking up were their own ball of bullshit. The size of the ███████████ rendered privacy more or less nonexistent. These ███████████████████████████████ are incredibly tiny. They usually hold fifty people at most and have the size and mentality of a rural middle school. Everyone knew everyone else’s business. You could literally walk into the bathroom after a couple weeks and know, from the smell alone, exactly who had taken that shit and how long ago they had taken it. The irony was never lost on me that nobody on the outside really knew where I was going, but everyone on the inside knew what I was doing. And who.
Then there was the issue of where we could hook up. At least at █████ I could steal a truck and hide behind restaurants run by local contract employees who could give two shits about what I was up to. Here, it was Libra’s ten-foot-by-ten-foot plywood-walled pod or nothing (I had roommates). One hundred square feet of fornicating possibilities, which sat as far across the compound from my pod as any one pod could sit. It’s like they wanted it to be hard for us to have sex. Regardless, the fact of the matter was that there was no tiptoeing around corners or sneaking down hallways if I wanted to get my hands on Libra’s top-secret briefs, if you know what I mean. (Sex. I mean sex.) I had to cover a good chunk of open ground any time I went to or from our respective pods, which violated my soldier’s sense of tactical decency, if I’m being honest. The best time to “infil” was typically at lunch, when I could come up with a semi-decent explanation for why I needed to head over in that direction.
Now, I don’t want to give anyone a false impression here. While Libra and I did have full, unlawful carnal knowledge of each other countless times over the course of my deployment, and despite the fact that I am widely regarded in military circles as a generous and passionate lover with above-average stamina—I regularly satisfied Libra for two, three, sometimes even four minutes at a stretch—neither she nor I flaunted our exploits or got lost in the passion. We kept things on as much of the DL as possible, which didn’t turn out to be all that much in the end, because we’d regularly leave the chow hall together after dinner. Then on the nights when I didn’t have work the next day, I’d stay over and come out of her pod the next morning to find six people standing there in the hall. That was not being very covert.
Fortunately, no one ever said anything. They just stared and went on about their day. For the most part, everyone was pretty cool about it, actually. The salty old guys were oblivious, deployed elsewhere, or so despised by everyone else that the enemies of my enemy became my friends. It helped that I was good at my job, and I got along with everyone pretty well, too. If I’d been a dickhead, someone would have found the perfect opportunity to out us and bring the whole thing crumbling down.
That opportunity, had someone chosen to accept it, arrived on Halloween, when I decided to dress up for the base Halloween party as Jessica Simpson’s version of Daisy Duke from the Dukes of Hazzard movie. Since I didn’t have to work the next day, I went all-out. I had the wig, the cut-off jorts, the high heels, even the makeup. Yeah. Full lipstick, rouge, mascara, the whole nine. When I tell this story to other military people who know me, the part that shocks them the most isn’t the cross-dressing, it’s that the ███ organized a Halloween party.
The hardest part wasn’t even getting up the nerve to do it; the hard part was the physical act of getting dressed as a woman in a 100-square-foot room with no mirror. As a guy, you can get dressed and shave 90 percent of your face in total darkness in under five minutes. Grown women, who have been dressing themselves, doing their hair, and applying makeup for years, still need like six different mirrors of varying shapes, sizes, and magnification just to be squared away enough to leave the house. Not by choice, either. It’s just what you have to do as a woman. You can’t risk going out in public all ratchet and uncoordinated. Men won’t care, but other women will eat you alive—trust me, I know, I was about to be a woman for eight hours, that kind of makes me an expert.
I recognize now that the prospect of a jacked six-foot-two dude rolling into a party in high heels and makeup is frightening even under ideal conditions, but I had no idea then just how terrifying it would be if that dude had to do a poor man’s version of what a woman has to do every day and he couldn’t see himself as he tried to do it.
When I walked into the party, the reaction was split down the middle: Half the people were insanely impressed with my outfit, the other half looked at me like someone just let John Wayne Gacy into a Boy Scouts meeting. Go big or go home, I say. To Libra’s credit, she thought my costume was hilarious, which meant only one thing to me: It was time to drink.
Yeah, so here’s the thing about that: Getting drunk and going back to Libra’s pod while dressed as a woman left me in a very compromising position the next day. When I finally woke up, it was well into the afternoon, and Libra was at work because she was a mature adult who could handle her shit. With nowhere in particular I needed to be, I casually rolled over and grabbed some water from the side of the bed to start beating back the hangover that was fortifying its position behind my eyeballs. As I took a big, long, lukewarm drink, I spotted my Daisy Dukes wadded up on the floor, sitting there all by themselves, eye-fucking me. I could hear them in my mind, taunting me: Howdy there, stranger, y’all fixin’ to mosey on out of these parts? Fine and dandy…reckon it’ll be just you and me, huh?
Motherfucker. I had no clothes of my own to change into. I wasn’t actually embarrassed about owning the Halloween party, but I also couldn’t immediately recall what I said or did when I was there. In those few seconds of doubt, as I wrestled with the fact that I had nothing else to wear, a wave of terror washed over me. I was going to have to throw this outfit back on in order to leave. Talk about the ultimate walk of shame.
Somehow, peeking around corners and clutching my ill-fitting pair of high heels (which I refused to put back on), I made it to the front of Libra’s building without being seen. It was a miracle that I knew would not be replicated. As soon as I stepped outside, someone spotted me. I instinctively pressed my body against the side of the building to make myself a smaller target, but it was no use. Fortunately the guy who saw me was a friend. I waved and tried to whisper-yell at him to come over. At first he wouldn’t, because it’s hard to walk when you’re doubled over laughing, but eventually the desperation in my eyes and the mascara running down my face convinced him to do a little recon. With the appropriate amount of begging, he radioed my buddy to bring some of my clothes to Libra’s room and end my panicked misery.
All in all, the ordeal lasted maybe five minutes, but it was the longest five minutes of my life. Like running a mile while holding your breath. It brought my respect for women to a whole new level. You not only birth us and raise us, but you put in so much effort to look like a slutty nurse, all for our benefit, and when it works, the next day we make you find your own way back to the ER stat. I finally understood what every single shacker who has ghosted from my house at 8 A.M. has gone through. It’s fucking miserable. To you fine women, I’d like to say that I’m sorry.