“Do you know where my containers are?”

That is normally an innocuous question; whenever we move stuff around the battlefield or over the ocean by air or by sea our stuff is placed in containers called connexes.  These hold all of our stuff and they have RFID tags so we can track where they are as they roll through different spots where RFID “readers” are located.

But everybody doesn’t know how to check the RFID tags online and it is sometimes a curiosity question as opposed to a real need.  Our last connexes just arrived from the second boat and many of us got our “third” bag (we got to bring three bags; if you didn’t need it before now you probably didn’t really need it, did you?).  Meaning it had clothes we could have used before and might need now.  The good news is we can now pack our winter gear as we get ready to ship the “third bag” home in a month or two.

“Do you know where my containers are?” she asked as she stood there naked in the women’s bathroom.  All 100% butt-naked full frontal nudity in all her glory without a shameless, modest bone in her body (and she saw the skin covering all the bones). Chief thought, “I mean come on, are you kidding me? Are you actually talking to me before I had my coffee AND while you stand there naked with all THAT hanging out?”  Chief looked at her with her steely brown eyes and didn’t know what to say.  She was speechless!

She thought about any of the following, “I am NAKED here!  How would I know?!” or “Let me check… (Looking inside her own towel left and right) nope I don’t have them on me!”  

Is there etiquette to use when you are in the common bathroom? Surely everyone has a comment or thought about this?

Here was a nice subject for our lunch, but it made it clear that many people don’t know and white people are the worst (that was an observation;  maybe they are just comfortable being all shiny and blue veined…I don’t know).

Maybe they are just too bright?  But for some reason the white people (allegedly) have no problem making gestures, waving their hands and talking to you MAKING EYE CONTACT when you are NAKED!  And of course even worse when THEY are NAKED!  MSG G.…who is the nicest woman in the world, but when you are over 55 years old talking to other people while you are 100% naked is normally unnerving and if the viewer ate recently it can be unsettling.   

Did anybody see the movie “Harold and Maude”?  I still remember the quote from the priest: “Priest: I would be remiss in my duty, if I did not tell you, that the idea of... intercourse - your firm, young... body... comingling with... withered flesh... sagging breasts... flabby b-b-buttocks... makes me want... to vomit”, and it was unsettling when I was 15 or so years old.  Now that I approach an older age (Maude was 70 or so), my own gorgeous wife of course is beautiful beyond imagining, but for most women beyond the age of, say…25 there is a reason there are lights with dimmers, candles, curtains and dim light.  Everybody looks so much better.  And in a common bath room NOBODY wants to look at you in your complete nakedness under bright fluorescent light.   

Either it looks old, saggy, and blemished or we are jealous because it is firm, young, tan and well cared for.  Either way cover it up!

Bathroom etiquette; There are some rules that you should follow when in a common bathroom, and for those of you who didn’t know, please forward to any who might be uninformed.    Commentary is not all my own, but it could be! (Lunch conversation isn’t normally like this).

This all came about because this morning Sexy Jake (SJ) came to the breakfast table, pulled out the chair next to the Chief and sat down.  “Ouch!  Ouch, what is that, oh, your hat!” he said and laughed and giggled and then started talking about stuff.  But I could see that Chief (whose hat it was) was pissed.  She was so mad that she wasn’t talking and had that steely eyed look.  At lunch I said to her, “You know, when he sat on your hat I thought maybe you were mad because your sunglasses were in there.  But I could tell what was going through your head was “What are you doing!  Don’t you look before you sit down?  Yeah that is my HAT!?  What is WRONG with you!” 

“Yep.  That is about right!  And I hadn’t even had my coffee yet.  But come on!  He put his butt on what I am now going to put on my head and all he can do is laugh and giggle?!  From his butt to my head!  Aaargh!”

And that got the conversation heading toward butts, nakedness and the aversion people have to that behavior and inattentiveness to other’s stuff or attitude.

Rules for the Bathroom and Toilet 

  

1.        1. Don’t chat to someone you don’t know really well stark naked with your hands on your hips.  Look; most people haven’t seen that many naked people outside of National Geographic or watching inappropriate stuff online or R rated movies.  Those people all have the benefit of good lighting, artistic expression and makeup.  You don’t and EVERYBODY needs some of that when naked in a bright light. 

2.      2. Don’t bend over to adjust your iPod or bend over period with your butt towards anybody!  I don’t care whether you are a man with a hairy butt and it hanging down or a woman with whatever there is to see, butt cracks and all the rest cause people to gag, choke, turn red and become apoplectic (and they weren’t even going to talk anyway!  White people (like me) can be sooo bright that people have first been shocked and then blinded requiring medical care.  Cover up:  it isn’t a moon you are seeing…it is you’re A$&.  Yeeeech!

3.     3. Don’t sit on the bench naked!  Your back end has had the brown coming out and who knows what else.  I don’t care if you just took a shower….the gal before you didn’t!  Bodily fluids and residue are considered to be there even if they aren’t, so if you sit know that everybody who saw you will think you haven’t got a usable brain (because you were sitting on it!)

4.      4. Wear shower shoes INTO the shower.  This isn’t Japan.  Shower shoes are to be worn into the shower not just TO the shower.  Shower shoes (flip flops) are to prevent athletes foot and other related fungi.  People do all kinds of things in showers involving body fluids and a wise woman or man would want to protect their feet from all of that junk. (That reminds me of a story about guys and their shower body fluids and politeness…but that isn’t appropriate in a family blog).

5.      5. When you are out of the shower put on clothes or a robe.  Stay clothed until you are ready to get into the shower.  I know; you are a nudist.  You love walking around your house or your CHU butt naked to let your body air out, your body parts sag and swing and get back to nature.  Good for you!  Don’t tell everybody else!  People prefer you clothed.  Common courtesy requires you not walk around naked forcing others to see where you shave and where you don’t, what you scratch and what you won’t. Where your rash is, your unique physical qualities or anything else like that.  The army requires everybody to only wear army clothing to and from the latrine from your CHU.  No bunny slippers, negligee, panties, red shirts or anything else that you feel like.  Not even a robe!  You can wear the army PT uniform in any combination:  sweat pants, sweat shirt, long sleeve shirt, short sleeve shirt and the nylon shorts.  And that makes it that much worse!

6.      6. Just because you are totally comfortable with your nudity, nobody else is.  Everybody thinks you are just like them; normal, a Soldier who is a little boring but good at what you do.  After they see that funky tattoo above your pelvis or in the small of your back, piercings in different places (I didn’t know you could pierce that!), sagging and swinging this and that, hairy here and not so much there and those thighs!  That stomach!  Furniture disease!  (Where your chest has fallen into your drawers) man boobs, in men and every other skin blemish or undesirable body trait anybody could ever have.  Nobody wants to see it except either the slightly perverse or the incredibly curious. (So THAT is what it looks like! Or OMG I didn’t know people could have that and still function!)

 

7.      7. Don’t talk to naked people.  Whether they are naked in the shower, naked getting dressed or undressed or if you even think they might be naked:  Don’t talk to them!  People are by themselves when they are taking a shower and getting dressed to start their day.  They haven’t had their coffee.  This Army stuff is a big adventure when you are 22 and a big pain and a violation of privacy when you are over 25 or more.  Sure, most people can HANDLE it, but why should they have to?

 

8.      8.  Never make eye contact with naked people and don’t ever appear to be looking at them!  Sometimes you will see out of the corner of eye something that you have never seen before;  a tattoo on a shoulder or arm, a tramp stamp perhaps or a body part that you have always wondered about:  for women? “So THAT is what implants look like!  So real, but they don’t move!” or for men:  “I always thought he had big hands, but that guy is a horse!  Holy Smokes!”  Eye contact just proves that you must have been looking at them or a part of them.  So instead you stare at the floor, stare at your shampoo bottle but don’t make eye contact and don’t stare! (Didn’t your mother tell you it is rude?!”)

9.      All of the above includes when people are using the toilet.  Don’t talk about business (you CAN ask to borrow the TP if you are out) and don’t look over at another man when he is urinating (no “meat” gazing!) because they are sensitive about that.

So let’s recap:  When you are in a public shower you don’t talk to people unless you really know them, don’t stare, don’t gesticulate when completely naked, don’t bend over and show your butt to people and don’t put your naked butt on the bench!  Wear shower shoes, save work talk for work and avoid eye contact.  People go to the shower area to take care of their business and not to have an extra social hour. Never talk to people except for “’morning, hi, excuse me!, see you at…”  And nobody wants to answer the question “Do you know where my containers are?”

The Apocrypha has the Book of 2nd Nudicus, which has been largely discredited, however I think it is a fitting quote for this post.

2nd Nudicus 5: 17  " Go not into the bright light naked!  For it is a shame to you and those who see you."  

“I was so fat I always had two buttons undone…”

Weight loss, weight gain, exercise, dieting and getting physically fit are constant conversations at the office and the DFAC (Dining Facility).  We eat together almost every meal (center section close to the mainlines), and the staff meetings with my folks are every morning at 0830.  “Oh, sir, no, I don’t eat breakfast!” said Sexy Jake. 

“I don’t care if you eat breakfast.  We are meeting every morning here to review the day and discuss the issues.  Everybody!  See you there!”  (That is what a loving boss (ash-ole) sounds like.)

We can eat as much as we want and there is no shortage of things to eat.  Omelets, French toast, eggs, bacon, ham, pressed sandwich (my latest is a biscuit from the one main line and then get them to put on pancake like eggs, bacon and cheese on the other and LOOK OUT McDonald’s!  Bacon, egg and cheese biscuit pressed like a Panini).  Fresh fruit, cereal and so forth...a self-serve Denny’s menu.

Lunch is similar with a fast food line, a sandwich line, a main line, a salad bar and a whole dessert line.  Calories are plentiful.  So we talk exercise and then some finish and say “Are you going to get dessert?  I will go with you!” or “Don’t tempt me…okay just bring back a cookie.  You know the one I like”.  LTC Fall and I were talking about the cheesecake once and he calculated it out.  If he ate cheesecake every day he would gain 40 pounds in a year if he didn't change his diet or exercise a lot more.

Dinner is a smorgasbord of eating opportunities.  Think Lunch and Dinner plus extra.  Can you feel the weight gain from there?  So can we!

So the Chief is planning to lose weight (some) and her boyfriend’s old wife was 70 pounds overweight so she knows she has a little wiggle room, so to speak.  But she could tell she was getting fat when she tried to put on her boyfriend’s pajama bottoms and they wouldn’t get over her hips.  Is that a hint?

Then of course she had to tell me the story of a friend, Claudia, on her wedding night.  The husband (Joseph) took off his 42 inch waisted pants and threw them over to his new bride and said “Honey, put these on!”  She said, “Oh sweetie, you know these are too big for me!  They won’t even stay up!”  “That’s right!” he said, “Don’t you forget I wear the pants in the family.” Claudia then took off her small, sexy panties and tossed them over to him.  “Honey, why don’t you try these on?” she purred sweetly.  “Oh, gee Baby, you know I could never get into these.”  “That’s right!” Claudia said, “And if you keep that attitude you never will!”

Hot Cakes said he measures his weight loss by the spot he marked on his belt.  He lifted it up to show us and he had lost an inch or so.  Of course with his body type (husky, not too fat exactly) he could probably lose about another 2 inches no problem.  SFC Rucker is going to race me to a weight loss goal and he plans to lose easily thirty pounds. “Just you wait and see sir!  I have done this every time I get deployed (this is his fourth time).  I lose about thirty or forty pounds.  I stay in the gym for an hour every day on the treadmill.  You will see!”

Maybe I will lose that bet.  After all, when you are as buffed out as much as Mike Kelly (getting the “Mike Kelly buffed out look”), it is hard to lose any weight.  I mean what is my body fat percentage?  Eight percent?  Eighteen percent?  Twenty-eight percent?  I know there is an eight in there somewhere…   

CPT Elliot (Spitzer) started a vegetarian diet back at NFH and included exercise.  He has lost quite a bit (20+?) and his wife even noticed on Skype.  So you know he lost a lot because Elliot has the look that only a mother or a woman with very bad eyesight could love (kidding of course).  

 So I have my own weight loss plan.   Eat no more than one plate at breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Have at least two sections filled with cooked vegetables and perhaps add a bowl of mixed raw vegetables (bell peppers, cucumber, carrots, tomatoes and maybe a few green olives) with no dressing.  Then, after I am acclimated to Iraq (soon) exercise aerobically every day and do some weight work every day or so;  maybe even do two a day workouts (not too much, too fast or too hard, but twice a day) a few days per week.  I will supplement that by walking everywhere (as though I had a choice) in stifling heat to every meal, every meeting and every other errand.  I think that should do it.

My belt has already come in an inch (but I haven’t marked it), Chief’s pants button again (she never takes off her blouse so we would never know), SFC Rucker it is hard to tell yet (when you have that much mass it takes awhile to notice) and Elliot is down 20 pounds.  

When we return to civilization most will gain it all back (and plus some).  Beer, fast food, no time to exercise, laziness, cooking yourself, or just driving everywhere you go adds on the pounds.  I have seen it many a time with Pine Tree, SSG Flueck and even Young Matthew; after the exercise is over fun living catches you and throws on 20+ pounds.

The next thing you know you are talking about getting in shape and you really have to because “I am so fat I have two buttons undone…”

“You are going to LOVE VBC!”

Sure I am.  No doubt about it!  How could it be otherwise?  This is the main camp, Saddam’s palaces, his lakes, the supreme place of the former Baaa’th party (although they could’ve used a few more baths…yuck yuck guffaw!)

My flight is scheduled for 1030, rescheduled to 1230, rescheduled again to 1330 and then a third time to 1915.  Then I get the call that our plane (helicopter) leaves at 1745, so we hustle our stuff into the truck and get down there.  Of course the terminal isn’t expecting us but we check in.  Like the catcher in Bull Durham he says, “Who are you?”  And we reply, “We are the passengers to be named later.”  15 minutes later our winged chariot arrives and out we go.  Twenty minutes or so later we are landing at VBC (Victory Base Camp) pad. 

I am unimpressed.  Taji Terminal, for being a backwater location is the closest thing to a real FBO that I have seen so far anywhere in the middle-east.  Nice sign, hurricane (chain link) fence, concrete pads and people to direct and greet you with internet access, telephones, clean waiting area with a television and airport seats.    

But don’t let first impressions fool you.  It gets worse…a nightmare actually.  The LNO (Liaison Officers) pick us up.  The outgoing 1^st CAB Major and I meet our LTC Ray “Hey!  Why don’t I take your bag and you show him how to scan in!” he says to my counterpart (MAJ Greg Gabel).  “Okay!” he says, and I am thinking there must be a special procedure.  We walk around a T-wall, up some steps, through a door and there is a scanner.  Nobody to watch it, control it or anything; you just walk up, scan your card (like we do for every meal) and now the army knows we are in VBC and not in Taji anymore.

VBC is where the Generals are thick as Iraq summer heat.  There is EVERYTHING here; But not a room for me.  “I told SPC Hananez whatever you do, don’t lose this key” LTC Ray was explaining to us, “but what does he and his buddy do?  Lose the key!”  It is now after 1800 and there is nobody who can unlock the room, (for me) or give me a room and my counterpart and I both look at each other.  And it doesn’t look good (in fact we both look kinda ugly, especially with these haircuts…)

Tent City for us tonight (and maybe the whole four days), but how bad could it be?  I stayed at Buehring in a big tent.  I have slept under the stars in Boy Scouts.  But what did I know?  “You just have to have more pain” MAJ G. says as we walk into the tent.  The tents are all surrounded by T-walls.  They have no exit signs which provide a light to see by when you have to get up to go through two sets (around actually) a whole second set of tents but inside the T-walls.  It is dark as dark can be because the tents have a cover over them of some sort, probably for sun protection in the summer.  There is gravel beaten into the dirt so it is hard packed but the tent ropes are to your left and the walls are to your right and you have no idea really where you are. 

The locations aren’t as friendly as Disney land; "Remember!  You are parked in Goofy A-21!”  No, it is Pod 5-A.  And off you go searching.  I think it is over here, no maybe it is over there?  Do you have a flashlight?  Open the door and you see a low roofed tent and rows of cots.  Some have mattresses on them and most are just a cot.  It ends up being just three of us in the tent instead of 50.  But when you are over 50 you want some better amenities... Did I tell you how much I LOVE my 5-star room in Taji?  Oh how the mighty have fallen!

I need to walk and gather my thoughts and call my beautiful bride, so I head off for the PX.  Paved streets and sidewalks?  I must have missed that part.  Dusty road turns into a side gravel road that heavy trucks have packed the rocks down hard.  Sidewalk?  How about roadway?  The PX is like any PX; limited in selection except for televisions.  The AT&T call center by the tent was locked up and the one at the PX was vacant with phones on one side and the rest had been removed.  Things must be slowing down even here.

We wake up early and get a shower (walking about 100 yards, past two tent sets, across a road and then one building for a toilet and a different one for a shower), hustle back to pack, dress and walk to the DFAC on that side of town.  “I thought they said it was close!  This is not what I call close” said MAJ G.  “I don’t like to walk, especially this far”.  I had to laugh.  I laughed at the tent city and the darkness and the latrines and the road.  I don’t have the energy to cry.

LTC Ray picked us up at the “other side of the tracks” DFAC, drove us back to pack the minimum stuff (our laptops) and we went off to the palace.  After our duty that day LTC Ray finagled us a CHU but it was only for one.  We went back picked up our stuff we had left there unsecured (who wants some tennis shoes or sheets, as beautiful as mine are…) and “acquired” a cot.  MAJ G. looked at it like it was a Rubik’s Cube, so I showed him how to disassemble it, pack it and then he carried it out to the car.  Coming into the CHU area there were some abandoned mattresses standing by the bedding center (where they replace old ones with new ones as needed).  MAJ G. “acquired” one of those and now rests comfortably beside me in the CHU.

Feed the hungry, help the widows, orphans and house the homeless Majors who just want a place to sleep.  I think that is Biblical.  One out of five ain’t bad (it is all I can do tonight).

Six days and a wakeup and he will be heading home the last guy to leave (flying a UH-60 with the BDE commander, COL Muth).  So this just makes his trip home that much sweeter.  Me?  Well maybe after a few days I will say, “You are just going to LOVE VBC (Victory Base Complex)” but so far I just want to be back home in Taji.  

Jeremiah 35: 10

It is all relative!

If I were to wake from a dream this morning and look around me I would have wondered what had happened.  How did I sink this low?  Was I an alcoholic in recovery?  Maybe I was a drug addict on General Relief or worse…

I would go to the bathroom and see rust patches in the shower floor, the tile underfoot would be cheap and discolored grouted in gray cement with a relatively uneven floor in spots.  The heater seems to work, but the windows outside are filthy with mud streaks and there are bars over the windows.  The windows themselves have metal latches and metal frames with a 1950’s feel.  The wall s were painted a pale yellow (probably desert sand yellow) a while back, but there have been some major patch jobs which have been sanded smooth but left unprimed and unpainted.

The bed is a metal frame type with cheap wood metal headboard and on old saggy mattress.  The frame is broken in the middle and the piece meant to hold it up is not permanently attached.  Every time you turn over the bed shakes a little like it is going to break or is unsteady due to having too much to drink, but it is just a bed.

The room is dark and very quiet.  Then you realize where you are; Camp Taji, Iraq in what is affectionately called the Taj Mahal.  The center courtyard is about 18 x 35' and covered in various weeds and grass still green because of the recent rains.  The sidewalks around the interior are made of the same tile as in your room and they are all covered in dirty dust almost thick enough to leave tracks, but each time you walk through it the dust stirs up and spreads around.  The tile color is a multi-colored tile made from probably cement and rocks and then cut to form tile.  Or is it unpolished granite of some sort?  Naaaaaah.  Just tile that you couldn’t buy in California or Orange County because nobody would buy it because of the color: “permanently faded, discolored scratched looking with a permanent coat of dirt.” Men only think in 16 colors but any average woman knows the color I speak of (except in Iraq and you just say “that tile floor color” and then they nod knowingly and acknowledge “Yep; that is ugly!”

But instead I wake up and I am in Taji, Iraq.  I am staying at the “Taj Mahal” which is called that for a reason.  Reasons like I have my own bathroom.  I don’t have to walk seven steps or 50 meters to the shower or bathroom outside.  I can just shuffle to the toilet and shuffle back.  I am not outside; I don’t have to wear the army PT uniform as a minimum to go there.  I am not tempted to use a Gatorade bottle to urinate in at night (because when you get to 50 you sometimes need to go a little more often than before bed and after you wake up…)

Aside:  The people in charge of post are very upset that people (male Soldiers, I bet!) who are using Gatorade bottles or other bottles as a place to urinate and then place them empty or full in the trash can in the men’s latrine.  Maybe it is a hazard, maybe it stinks and maybe it is just disquieting.  But there is no maybe that they are NOT talking about me!

I have my own bed by myself.  I am not sharing my room at all.  The mattress is like the one at the Ritz.  The room is as quiet as the Marriott.  The room is private with relative protection from the wind and the sun.  My air conditioner is a split unit model so I can make it as cold as I want. 

If I was in a CHU I can’t put it below 19 degrees C or it will freeze the lines.  I am 100 yards from the chow hall, 50 meters from my office and 40 yards to the BDE TOC entrance and I am essentially in the middle.  If nature calls in the middle of the work day I can stroll home, take care of business and stroll back.  No porta-potties required and even our own toilet in the building (as nice as it is) can never compare to the one that only you can use day after day, use after use.

SGT Batter, the Colonel’s driver came to see me about getting some paint.  I couldn’t help him there exactly (he has to go through supply and THEY can ask us…procedures you know!) but I asked him how his room was. 

“Sir, I am stoked!  I am really stoked!  I never thought I would ever get to have my own room at my rank in Iraq.  And you know here I am at the Colonel’s hooch (actually the building next door, separated from everybody) and I am going to have my own room!  When I was here last time we stayed in these warehouses and had outdoor latrines and showers.  I am so stoked!” 

“Do you have your own bathroom?”

“Oh, no sir, we have to share but it is indoors and I only have to share it with Ramirez (instead of all the other males in the Aviation Brigade HQ who aren’t living at the Taj Mahal).  Sir, I am so stoked!”

“I am so stoked!” could very well qualify as the migratory phrase of the day today (a word phrase that is way overused for a day and then disappears.)   

As I write this I am just recovering from a horrific housing experience that I suffered yesterday.  But that is for tomorrow.  The key to remember is everything is relative.  I would rather be homeless (almost) than use a room like the one I am staying in back at the United States or good old Orange County.  

But here I realize I am a blessed man.  Life is sweet, God is good and I appreciate it all so much.  There is nothing but appreciation in my thoughts and joy in my heart.

What a blessing for me.  May God grant his blessings on you!

Blessings

John 1:16