An opening word on Myrtle Beach. A lot of you may know it from Girls Gone Wild videos or your own spring break experiences. When you are in the army, male, single and between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five Myrtle beach is a beacon of light shining only a few hours drive a way in a dark military town. In the spring time it is full of young college girls, tons of alcohol and plenty of mistakes waiting to be made. This is about one of the times I headed down there.
Most weekends in the army are pretty much the same. We would kind of hang out around the barracks, maybe go out to eat, go drinking, mundane shit like that. It just so happened that Face, definitely one of the newer but cooler guys in our platoon, had headed down to Myrtle. He called my cell about mid-day on our second day off. North was sitting in my room with me.
"Dude, Riley," He started. "You gotta come down here man. We had a wild night last night." Then he launched into a tale of underage drinking, hot women making out with each other and removing clothing, and general debauchery. This kid grew up in southern California and went to college at FSU. He burned his football scholarship by partying too much. If this kid was saying it was a good time he wasn't bullshitting.
I told Face I would call him back in a few and gave North the cliff notes version of the conversation that I just had. North can be a pretty stoic dude most of the time. When he said," Sure, sounds good. Let's go," I knew he was really excited about the opportunities that awaited.
We headed down the call really quick like to fill CC in on our plan. CC was about six feet tall but tipped the scales at about two bills. He grew up in "the region" which was part of northwest Indiana just next to Chicago. Apparently all they do out there is drink lots of booze. CC ability to hold it down was proof of this. His father was black and his mother white. I think you know where I am going with that. More on it later.
CC, obviously having nothing better on his itinerary, decided to join us. We quickly packed up some clothes and made the two hour drive down there.
We pulled up to the hotel our boys were staying at a snagged the room right next to theirs. There was a door in between our two rooms which led to enhanced drinking convenience. After talking to Face, Fitch, Ko, and Keys (most of the dudes that had seen the spectacle that was the night before we decided on a very wise course of action. The plan was as follows: drink all day, go out that night and drink some more and then just see what happens.
To implement the first stage in our plan we decided a keg was the best, most efficient solution. All that army training about organization was paying dividends right now. North and CC headed out to the booze shop while Keys, Face and I headed down to get some ice.
We me North and CC back at the room in a bit. They had returned victorious with not just one full keg but two. The only thing wrong was that they were full of Budweiser. Rice does not belong in beer. Oh well, almost anything tastes good out of a keg. We filled the bath tub with the ice and then the kegs and let the beer come forth.
If I remember right there was about ten or so of us partying it up that weekend. Both kegs were floating in approximately five hours. I shit you not. This is when the shenanigans started.
It was now about ten pm and time for the party to really get kicking. I decided to head across the street to this little joint named Freaky Tiki. Kind of the dumb club scene which I am not a huge fan of but there were boobs there. Boobs speak volumes after a lot of beer.
I was going to play the roll of wing man for Giovany. He was a tall, skinny bastard from the lovely island/nation/state thingy called Peurto Rico. He was a really smooth talker and had quite the way with the ladies. I am not usually a big fan of the wing man position. I try and be the lead to make up for my short height. Ha. But with Giovany's taste I would gladly take whatever happened on our way.
The club was pretty much the same lame scene that all of them are across the country. You know the type that I mean: A bunch of women dancing around with their friends, a bunch of guys standing to the side looking at them, the same lame rap/hip-hop/dance music playing, the same expensive drinks.
Things were looking up as the place was shutting down though. Three girls (a blonde, a brunette and a red head, weird) that we had been dancing with on and off throughout the night with us. Giovany asked them what they were up to. The brunette said that they were leaving because she had to work tomorrow. The other two said that they were down for some drinks. Sure that then bender was still raging back at our room Giovany and I convinced them to come back with us.
As we start our walk back North pulls up on the other side of the road in his BMW. CC is sitting shotgun. Now, you might be asking yourself,"Self, what is some guy in the army that only makes 30k a year doing with a BMW?" The answer is simple: Iraq money.
CC is leaning out the sunroof yelling at all of the women that they drive past. Such gems as,"Hey good lookin' what you got cookin' " and "Are you from Tennessee? Because you are the only ten I see!" were pouring out of his mouth. The guy is so loud but has that weird "teddy bear"quality that women love. Those that didn't laugh at what he was saying he promptly called skanks and ho's. I guess you can't be a teddy bear all the time.
CC yelled for us to hop in as North pulled the beamer over. The five of us somehow manage to cram into a backseat meant for three and pull back onto the strip. CC continues to look and yell at almost everything passing us by. Then he shouts down from his perch," Hey guys, check out these assholes."
Now, sometimes I see some things in the South that southerners might seem par for the course but they are weird to me having grown up in New York. Women dipping tobacco is one of these things. What was going on right next to us on the strip of downtown Myrtle beach easily pulls into my top five.
Picture a jacked up pickup truck, on huge wheels, with the back of the cab totally removed and the biggest confederate flag I have (still tot his day) seen in all of my life, flying on a six foot pole. And Hank Williams blasting over the stereo. I shit you not.
This opportunity was too much for CC to pass up.
He put on his best southern accent. "How the hell you boys doing too-night?"
The two of them, looking like they were straight from the set of Deliverance, look over at CC leaning out of a BMW sunroof. The looks on their faces clearly say,"Does not compute."
"Hey fella's! I think I saw some ni----- and jews a few blocks down. Whaddya say we go tie 'em up and beat 'em?"
Right about now I start planning out in my head how this fight is going to go and how I am going to get money to post bail. Thankfully, there are ATM machines in the cells at Myrtle.
The total lack of response from the truck could only mean one thing. These two guys were too dumb to know that CC was making fun of them.
At this point the light we are sitting at turns green. CC knows he has one last chance to say something.
"The south will rise again!" He yells at the top of his lungs. "Wooooo-wheee!" He screams as North punches it back down the strip.
We get back to our set of rooms and find the place in shambles. One bed is completely stripped of all the sheets and everything down to the bare mattress. Fitch and the guy who is his roommate back at Bragg are wearing their clothes not from today but from the day before. And there is a girl sleeping in just her panties in the bathtub.
"What in the holy fuck is going on here?" I ask.
"Dude, Riley, you won't believe the shit that just went down," Fitch explains. Turns out Fitch and his roommate found two really drunk girls walking around down on the beach. Doing what any infantryman would do in this situation they closed with and took the objective. All the way back to our room.
I guess they had a few more beers and they all started messing around. Fitch making out with one girl and his roommate the other. The fine lady that his roommate is messing around with has had far too much to drink and ends up passing out. Fitch, not wanting to leave a brother hanging convinces his girl into a threesome.
This gets a bit graphic so if you are easily offended or under the age of eighteen stop reading now. One thing leads to another and pretty soon this poor girl is on her hands as knees while Fitch is doing her from behind and she is fellating (always wanted to use that word) his roommate. All seems well and good until the copious amounts of booze catch up with this girl while she is clearly making the worst mistake of her young life. She starts to vomit.
Yes, you rad the right. She starts puking all over Fitches roommates penis.
Fitch doesn't miss a beat and keeps on going. No lie.
So after all is said and done they strip the sheets and everything off the bed and throw them in the dumpster outside because they smelled so bad. The only article of pukey girls clothing that she can find is her panties so she puts those on and goes and passes out in the tub. The logic of this escapes me but what can you do?
The brunette and red head that are with us are clearly dismayed by the telling of this story. I can't possibly see why. I am sure that I will tell it to my children one day as I tuck them into bed.
Regardless, CC breaks out a bottle of Jim Beam from somewhere and we start passing it around. This is obviously a bad idea. Conversation resumes and with a bit of an assist from Giovany I start to make out with the blonde. She not really pretty at all. She has some weird thing with her hair and her bangs going on that I thought got left in the eighties and a little bit of snaggle-tooth action in the grill. At this point it's about three am and I have been drinking for almost twelve hours. I was definitely at the settle for less in hopes to do more stage. Say what you will about me but at least I am honest.
You ever heard that saying about the best laid plans of mice and men? Yeah, that happens right here.
"Blonde, what are we going to do the rest of the night?" The brunette asks.
"Um, hang out for a bit here?" She replies.
"I have to work at nine in the morning," Came the terse reply. "I can't spend all night in some seedy hotel room with you while you make out with random guys."
Ouch, that one hurt.
"You know, the door is right there. Just be careful it doesn't hit that huge ass of yours" This girl was not fat by any means. CC just knew how to easily offend women.
Clearly miffed the brunette kept daylong. "Blonde, I mean if you want to stay here for just good company that's one thing. If you just want to stay to have sex with this guy that's another." Good company was obviously not going to be found here. Maybe down the hall or at the Kiwanis lions club down the block but not in rooms 118 and 120. My chances were clearly evaporating fast.
"I think I should get going," The blonde said to me.
Poof. Gone.
Always the gentleman (ha, right) I replied. "Sure that's cool since you let your friend run your life and make your decisions for you. "
Right now it's clear to all that I am grasping at straws.
"Well I am going to head home. Have a good night," She said as she grabbed her purse and headed out the door.
"That's right! Thank you very much! Have a good fucking night you fat skanks!" CC yelled as the door closed.
About one minute later the events clearly set into Giovany's alcohol laden brain. "Yo, Riley just got cock-blocked by a girl!" He starts laughing.
The room fills with laughter with my voice among them. If it wasn't able to laugh at myself I would have died a long time ago.
After a few minutes we decide to go grab some breakfast. We also decide to take our friend Jim Beam along with us.
As North, CC and myself are getting into the beamer we see two very attractive ladies walking by, We ask them if they would like to get breakfast with us. Either the three of us seem really legit or these girls didn't have that "bad idea" alarm in their head because they get into the car with us.
We drive a few blocks down, find a place that's open and pull into the parking lot. Jim Beam makes his way out and we start passing the bottle around. We are all doing two or three count pulls off this thing with about three-quarters of the liquor left in it. Then one of the random girls we picked up does a six count. Not to be outdone CC does a ten count pull off this bottle.
The bottle now empty we toss it and head inside for some grease with a side of eggs. This place is clearly full of other drunken idiots such as ourselves. We sit down, start sipping some water, bullshitting and start looking at the menus. Then one of the randoms pipes up.
"Is your friend ok?" She asks.
CC has clearly gone from his normal shade of light brown to pale with a tinge of green. Trouble was coming.
Thinking quickly North grabs the empty coffee mug at his place setting and sticks it under CC mouth. CC grabs it just as he starts to puke in it. As these mugs are obviously much smaller than the contents of CC's stomach I have another mug ready to replace the one in his hand. He partly fills this one up too.
"All right," That's it I say. "Let's go find a waffle house. They don't care if you puke on the tables there." I toss a couple bucks down on the table for whoever is unfortunate enough to clean up this mess and we head out the door.
We did end up making it to Waffle House and CC did end up surviving. And we were left with plenty of good stories to tell on Monday morning.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Red Miata
I keep in touch with a lot of my freinds (especially people on here) through aim, yahoo and other instant messengers. A lot of you may see me online on a friday night and think to yourself,"Self, this guy lives in the DC metro area. Why isn't he out getting into trouble and painting the town red?"
The answer to that is usually because I almost always work at eight am the next morning. I like to think that I am past the stage in my life where going to work hungover is the cool thing to do.
This is the story of one of the nights that I did go out and tie one on. It started with my buddy Ginger poping into town for the weekend. We both enjoy our beer so we hopped on down the road to this little joint Rustico. We had some beers, then some food, then some more beers. Leaving there with a pretty decent buzz we headed down to Murphys in Old Town. There was an Irish type cover band on the the stage and the beers were flowing.
A few pints of Smithwicks into our night two ladies walk in and sit down at the bar next to us. One has a horrible haircut similar to that of a pervious girlfriend of mine. Who comes to an "Irish pub" and orders a Miller Lite? These two, thats who. So, me being the drunken ass that I am, I make a snarky remark about their choice of adult beverage. My copious amounts of wit and charm obviously offended them ( I only say this because I have no idea what I said, I only remember the looks on their faces).
Short haircuts reply was thus,"Well you need to go take care of those sideburns."
A word about my sideburns. In high school I wasn't manly enough to grow sideburns in the right way. After infantry training and airborne school a pair of cojones were issued to me that were too large for my small frame. They still are but they helped me grow sideburns when I got out from under AR 670-1 (Army uniform regulations and grooming policy). I had to cut them down again when I went to culinary school. Needless to say, now I am kind of proud of them. This chick messed with a (albeit it really drunk) bull. She was about to get the horns
"Well sweetie, you need to go take care of your face."
Sometimes that mental filter that keeps me from saying dumb and obnoxious things obviously malfunctions.
Around this time in my evening things are a little fuzzy. I was pretty much blackout drunk. Most of what I know past this point I had to get from my friend Ginger the next morning when I was so hungover I was puking up water. I do know that there were shots of Powers Irish Whiskey involved. I also know that I continued to give those two girls a hard time. I gave them such a hard time that when they finished their beers and got up to leave they asked us to come with them. Some women are obviously dumb enough to be attracted to assholes. I told them to have a good night and turned back to my beer.
This is also around the time I started yelling at the band to play Black and Tans. They played it for me and then I was yelling at them to paly it again. Go figure.
So Ginger and I somehow, through great lengths of logical process I am sure, came to the conclusion that we have had enough for that evening and manage to pay our bar tabs and leave.
I know this because my wallet had my debit card in it the next morning. We catch a cab back to my apartment because I am dumb but I am not an idiot.
The first red light we pull up to is when the magic happens. The windows are down because its a warmer night and a gentleman pulls up next to us in a red miata convertible. My voice volume control obviously goes out the door when I am drunk because I proceed to say, knob turned up to eleven,"You know how I know that guys gay?"
I am sure both Ginger and the cabbie are shaking their heads at this moment.
"Because he drives a red miata!" I yell as I answer my own question.
I am sure I got a look of disgust and confusion from the Miata driver at this point."I know because I have gaye friends and they all drive red miatas!" I continue.
Thankfully at this point the light turns green because I am in no state to defend myself. Both Ginger and the cabbie are in stiches as we make out way back to my apartment. I guess all the women were right....I really am an asshole.
The answer to that is usually because I almost always work at eight am the next morning. I like to think that I am past the stage in my life where going to work hungover is the cool thing to do.
This is the story of one of the nights that I did go out and tie one on. It started with my buddy Ginger poping into town for the weekend. We both enjoy our beer so we hopped on down the road to this little joint Rustico. We had some beers, then some food, then some more beers. Leaving there with a pretty decent buzz we headed down to Murphys in Old Town. There was an Irish type cover band on the the stage and the beers were flowing.
A few pints of Smithwicks into our night two ladies walk in and sit down at the bar next to us. One has a horrible haircut similar to that of a pervious girlfriend of mine. Who comes to an "Irish pub" and orders a Miller Lite? These two, thats who. So, me being the drunken ass that I am, I make a snarky remark about their choice of adult beverage. My copious amounts of wit and charm obviously offended them ( I only say this because I have no idea what I said, I only remember the looks on their faces).
Short haircuts reply was thus,"Well you need to go take care of those sideburns."
A word about my sideburns. In high school I wasn't manly enough to grow sideburns in the right way. After infantry training and airborne school a pair of cojones were issued to me that were too large for my small frame. They still are but they helped me grow sideburns when I got out from under AR 670-1 (Army uniform regulations and grooming policy). I had to cut them down again when I went to culinary school. Needless to say, now I am kind of proud of them. This chick messed with a (albeit it really drunk) bull. She was about to get the horns
"Well sweetie, you need to go take care of your face."
Sometimes that mental filter that keeps me from saying dumb and obnoxious things obviously malfunctions.
Around this time in my evening things are a little fuzzy. I was pretty much blackout drunk. Most of what I know past this point I had to get from my friend Ginger the next morning when I was so hungover I was puking up water. I do know that there were shots of Powers Irish Whiskey involved. I also know that I continued to give those two girls a hard time. I gave them such a hard time that when they finished their beers and got up to leave they asked us to come with them. Some women are obviously dumb enough to be attracted to assholes. I told them to have a good night and turned back to my beer.
This is also around the time I started yelling at the band to play Black and Tans. They played it for me and then I was yelling at them to paly it again. Go figure.
So Ginger and I somehow, through great lengths of logical process I am sure, came to the conclusion that we have had enough for that evening and manage to pay our bar tabs and leave.
I know this because my wallet had my debit card in it the next morning. We catch a cab back to my apartment because I am dumb but I am not an idiot.
The first red light we pull up to is when the magic happens. The windows are down because its a warmer night and a gentleman pulls up next to us in a red miata convertible. My voice volume control obviously goes out the door when I am drunk because I proceed to say, knob turned up to eleven,"You know how I know that guys gay?"
I am sure both Ginger and the cabbie are shaking their heads at this moment.
"Because he drives a red miata!" I yell as I answer my own question.
I am sure I got a look of disgust and confusion from the Miata driver at this point."I know because I have gaye friends and they all drive red miatas!" I continue.
Thankfully at this point the light turns green because I am in no state to defend myself. Both Ginger and the cabbie are in stiches as we make out way back to my apartment. I guess all the women were right....I really am an asshole.
The Tube Sock Incident
May 2002
So this story occurred when I was still a little new to the Army. I had just been at my unit in the 82nd Airborne for only a few months. I showed up there after airborne school and one of the shortest stints in a Ranger battalion ever. When I got there we pretty much went straight to the field. Being in the field meant that you were working long days and nights with little or no sleep, crappy food, sleeping outside and no showers. Suffice it to say that when you came back to the barracks you were looking for a way to cut loose as quickly and efficiently as possible.
We had just finished up a jump and airfield seizure the previous night. Everything went smoothly and we all made our way back, cleaned weapons and got off of work for the first time in about two weeks. Almost everyone in my platoon headed to bed even though it was about nine a.m. We had all been up for about thirty-six straight hours before and everyone wanted some rack time before all the festivities began.
I awoke about five hours later to pounding on my door and vociferous yelling. "Riley, get your cherry bitch ass out here! You got beers to drink!" This yelling and pounding was done by Benji. He was a specialist in my squad while I was only a private. A specialist could get away with doing almost whatever they wanted in the army while a private got shit on all the time.
Such were the benefits of rank.
Now for a word about this situation: When you first arrive at a unit in the army, you are usually the only new guy. All of these dudes have known each other for a long time and are a tight group of friends. You try your damndest to fit in and you want nothing more than for these guys to accept you. As I was still a new guy I was trying to gain as much of this as I could. This was the only reason I got up out of my bed to open the door.
Benji was standing on the other side of the door dressed in plaid shorts, some polo shirt and a straw cowboy hat. He was a cliché example of what everyone else thinks people from California look like; skinny, sandy blonde hair, green eyes, plenty of dumb tattoos and shops exclusively at Pac-Sun. He had that cocky bastard, I-am-an-asshole look that got him plenty of action from the type of girls that are in clubs and bars looking for free drinks. Truth be told, he was from Fresno, California. Anyone that knows that area of the country at all knows that Fresno is pretty much a poor trucks stop on the way to the areas of that state that are actually worthwhile.
Benji was holding a Heineken tall boy in his hand and already slightly slurring his speech, "Riley, c'mon and drink some beers with me."
Both my squad leader and team leader (my two immediate supervisors) had told me that under no circumstances was I to drink alcohol as I was under the legal age. They also told me that I shouldn't hang out with Benji when I was off duty. Remember that thing I said about really wanting to fit in?
"Alright man, you got a few cold ones?" I asked.
"Haha, that's my boy, go get yourself a beer from my fridge," He laughed. I grabbed and ice-cold Heineken from his room and headed back down the hallway. It was about two-thirty now and guys were starting to emerge from their rooms into the hallway and were cracking beers. We moved from room to room and back out into the hallway for about an hour, just drinking beers and talking shit to one another. Then the pivotal point in the day came. Someone came back with a keg.
Now, the division rule book clearly states that there are limits to the amount of alcohol that soldiers can have in their rooms. It also clearly states that soldiers are not allowed to have kegs of beer in their rooms. We simply put the keg in the communal bathroom.
One of the guys in my room got the bright idea that we should all take turns doing keg stands, time them, and whoever had the shortest time had to play wingman for the guy with the longest keg stand time for a period of one month. Now, there are a great many of very unattractive, rather large women that frequent the same bars that army guys do in our neighboring town. There was no way I was going to be the guy "jumping on the grenade" for a month just one of these other jokers could get laid.
Now, I may not be a big guy, but I come from a long line of heavy Irish drinkers. I know full well that I can hold my own with many guys that are much larger than me. I was not going to be outdone in this competition. My first keg stand was a little over one minute. Not quite good enough. After another round of guys went, I re-upped.
"I'll bet anyone here that I can double my time if I go again," I stated confidently.
"Oh, look at that, the cherry has some balls," Benji laughed.
"And if you don't?" Someone from my platoon obviously questioned my drinking fortitude.
"I will do a lap around the barracks naked," I replied.
"Put him up! Put him up!" Other members of my platoon yelled.
Two minutes and forty-six seconds. That was the time of my second keg stand. Sometimes I think I know what I am doing.
I didn't end up winning the contest. Javier, a little Mexican shorter than me ended up beating out my time by about twenty seconds. At least I wasn't on the losing side of this whole thing.
We kept drinking beer and someone produced a bottle of cheap tequila. We all passed it around and started doing shots.I quickly developed a pretty strong buzz. Things like this never end well.
About the time this was going on Benji and I started fucking with Lobster. Lobster was an inch or two shy of six feet tall and was a little more round than the average guy in the platoon. His belly was mainly due to the fact that he was on the thirteenth step of the twelve step program: relapse. This guy drank like someone was going to take away all the alcohol on the planet tomorrow morning and he had to get all he could today. He was also horribly homophobic. His fear and paranoia of homosexuals was legendary. This was a something we exploited ruthlessly that resulted in endless hilarity. This day was no exception.
"Hey big boy," Benji started in on him. "How you doing?" He said with a thick lisp.
Lobster immediately shied away. I stepped in right next to him.
"C'mon right over here next to me," I said, barely holding back my laughter. "I like it when you are this close to me."
"Get the fuck off of me you two queers!" He yelled as he made his way to another side of the bathroom.
This harassment continued for about another thirty minutes almost non-stop in various ways such as:
Lobster would go to fill up his beer from the keg and Benji or I would say, "Let me get that for you big boy."
As Lobster would turn around or bend over for something Benji or I would smack his ass or give it a hard pinch.
We would try and hold his hand or play with his hair.
[Some of this might come across as a little strange to some of you. But really, none of us are gay and it really wouldn't be a problem if anyone was. We just like to fuck with each other in all the various ways that we can. This was the most effective for screwing with Lobster's head so it was what we employed.]
One of the last straws was when Benji and I changed into nothing but straw cowboy hats, tube socks and flip flops. Yes, that's right, I was going to fuck with a homophobe wearing nothing but a white sock on my dick, a bad straw hat and some ten cent flip flops. I know I have done sillier things than that, I just can't think of them right now.
Once Lobster saw Benji and me in our new outfits he knew what was coming. He quickly ran into his room and locked the door. He ran to his doorway, tube socks flapping in the wind and started pounding on the door and talking all kinds of shit to him.
"Come on out and play big boy!" I shouted.
"I have some summer sausage for you to snack on Lobster!" Benji would say.
The keg drinking crew from the bathroom gathered at the far end of the hallway and laughed as we continued to harass him. They started snapping pictures of this disaster as well.
"I have a great big jar of Vaseline in my room with your name on it Lobster!" I yelled.
"You know with that the three of us can have hours of fun if we just get a tarp to roll around on," Benji added.
All of a sudden the laughter and snapping of flashes stopped. Benji and I turned our heads, looking down the hallway. At the end of the hallway, next to the two main doors that served as an entrance to the barracks was Staff Sergeant Horn standing there with his wife and two young daughters that were thirteen and seven. Turns out he was on staff duty for that night and his family was in for a quick visit. They were all completely aghast at the display in front of them. To this day I wish I had a picture of their faces. The looks of shock, abject terror and utter confusion will forever be burned into my mind as some of the funniest I have ever seen in my life.
At this point in my army career I had no been issued the standard army bravado and unflappability that would come with a year or two of service. Jump out of enough planes, have enough bullets shot over your head and pretty soon, shit just doesn't faze you anymore. Luckily for me, Benji had received the two things I just mentioned in spades and along with his caustic wit and alcohol laden brain it was going to make for a fantastic show.
"Hey what's up Sergeant?" Benji yelled down the hallway, beer in hand. "Gonna introduce us to your family or what?"
You ever hear someone say just the completely wrong thing at the wrong time? If you haven't that was a perfect example.
Horn quickly ushered his family out of the barracks then stormed back in to chew our asses. He was really pissed. His tall, skinny frame was already shaking and his face was turning a strange mixture of red and purple while veins were starting to bulge from his slender neck.
"Get down and start doing push-ups! NOW!" He screamed at us. "Who in the fuck do you two assholes think you are?!"
"Well I am Specialist Benji and this here is our new cherry, Private Riley," Benji said back to him through a smile. He was effortlessly doing push-ups, this kind of thing happened a lot to him when he was a private, which wasn't too far in the past.
"Benji, that mouth of yours has been getting old for a long fucking time!" Horn bent down and was only a few inches from the top of my forehead. He kept screaming, "You need to be doing it cleaner than this other guy! You wanna make a name like his for yourself this early in your army career?"
Reading a line or two from Benji's book I replied, "Sergeant, the army is not a career it's a job."
This was the opposite of the Army rhetoric and Horn, obviously a career soldier, became even more pissed at this smart-ass remark. "Just keeping doing pushups you two assholes! I have all fucking day to get the message through your thick fucking heads!"
"Honestly Sergeant, what did you fucking expect on our first Friday night off in the barracks in like two weeks?" Benji inquired.
At this I started laughing pretty hard. Then something brilliant struck me.
"Isn't your family going to be pretty bored sitting out there if you are spending all day in here with us?" I asked.
This really set off a guy who was already pretty pissed. I think he used the word "fuck" more times in the next three minutes of yelling at us than they did in the entire movie Scarface. The highlight of this whole exchange was when Benji stopped his tirade to say something.
"Sergeant, can I please get permission to adjust myself?"
"What the hell do you want to adjust?" Horn shot back.
"My tube sock Sergeant. It's about to fall off and my dick is so big that it would be scraping against the cold floor. And no one likes that feeling, right Sergeant?" Benji calmly stated.
"You are so damn full of yourself Benji and I can't fucking believe it. You have the smallest dick I have ever seen," Horn scoffed.
"Well Sergeant, that's not what the look on your daughters face said."
Zing.
This exchange set off another barrage of insults and yelling in our direction. Eventually Horn yelled so much he started going hoarse and he just told us to get back into our rooms and not do anything else stupid for the rest of the weekend.
The rest of the weekend passed by pretty uneventfully. Monday morning was a little interesting though. My platoon sergeant pulled both of us into his office.
"You guys had yourself a wild Friday night, eh?" He asked.
"Roger Sergeant," Was our terse reply.
"Yeah, Horn found me this morning, and well, he was still pretty pissed about the whole thing."
"Roger Sergeant."
"Truth be told I think this shit is way too funny to punish you more than he already did. Get the fuck out of my office and never do something like that again."
We both smiled, "Roger sergeant."
So this story occurred when I was still a little new to the Army. I had just been at my unit in the 82nd Airborne for only a few months. I showed up there after airborne school and one of the shortest stints in a Ranger battalion ever. When I got there we pretty much went straight to the field. Being in the field meant that you were working long days and nights with little or no sleep, crappy food, sleeping outside and no showers. Suffice it to say that when you came back to the barracks you were looking for a way to cut loose as quickly and efficiently as possible.
We had just finished up a jump and airfield seizure the previous night. Everything went smoothly and we all made our way back, cleaned weapons and got off of work for the first time in about two weeks. Almost everyone in my platoon headed to bed even though it was about nine a.m. We had all been up for about thirty-six straight hours before and everyone wanted some rack time before all the festivities began.
I awoke about five hours later to pounding on my door and vociferous yelling. "Riley, get your cherry bitch ass out here! You got beers to drink!" This yelling and pounding was done by Benji. He was a specialist in my squad while I was only a private. A specialist could get away with doing almost whatever they wanted in the army while a private got shit on all the time.
Such were the benefits of rank.
Now for a word about this situation: When you first arrive at a unit in the army, you are usually the only new guy. All of these dudes have known each other for a long time and are a tight group of friends. You try your damndest to fit in and you want nothing more than for these guys to accept you. As I was still a new guy I was trying to gain as much of this as I could. This was the only reason I got up out of my bed to open the door.
Benji was standing on the other side of the door dressed in plaid shorts, some polo shirt and a straw cowboy hat. He was a cliché example of what everyone else thinks people from California look like; skinny, sandy blonde hair, green eyes, plenty of dumb tattoos and shops exclusively at Pac-Sun. He had that cocky bastard, I-am-an-asshole look that got him plenty of action from the type of girls that are in clubs and bars looking for free drinks. Truth be told, he was from Fresno, California. Anyone that knows that area of the country at all knows that Fresno is pretty much a poor trucks stop on the way to the areas of that state that are actually worthwhile.
Benji was holding a Heineken tall boy in his hand and already slightly slurring his speech, "Riley, c'mon and drink some beers with me."
Both my squad leader and team leader (my two immediate supervisors) had told me that under no circumstances was I to drink alcohol as I was under the legal age. They also told me that I shouldn't hang out with Benji when I was off duty. Remember that thing I said about really wanting to fit in?
"Alright man, you got a few cold ones?" I asked.
"Haha, that's my boy, go get yourself a beer from my fridge," He laughed. I grabbed and ice-cold Heineken from his room and headed back down the hallway. It was about two-thirty now and guys were starting to emerge from their rooms into the hallway and were cracking beers. We moved from room to room and back out into the hallway for about an hour, just drinking beers and talking shit to one another. Then the pivotal point in the day came. Someone came back with a keg.
Now, the division rule book clearly states that there are limits to the amount of alcohol that soldiers can have in their rooms. It also clearly states that soldiers are not allowed to have kegs of beer in their rooms. We simply put the keg in the communal bathroom.
One of the guys in my room got the bright idea that we should all take turns doing keg stands, time them, and whoever had the shortest time had to play wingman for the guy with the longest keg stand time for a period of one month. Now, there are a great many of very unattractive, rather large women that frequent the same bars that army guys do in our neighboring town. There was no way I was going to be the guy "jumping on the grenade" for a month just one of these other jokers could get laid.
Now, I may not be a big guy, but I come from a long line of heavy Irish drinkers. I know full well that I can hold my own with many guys that are much larger than me. I was not going to be outdone in this competition. My first keg stand was a little over one minute. Not quite good enough. After another round of guys went, I re-upped.
"I'll bet anyone here that I can double my time if I go again," I stated confidently.
"Oh, look at that, the cherry has some balls," Benji laughed.
"And if you don't?" Someone from my platoon obviously questioned my drinking fortitude.
"I will do a lap around the barracks naked," I replied.
"Put him up! Put him up!" Other members of my platoon yelled.
Two minutes and forty-six seconds. That was the time of my second keg stand. Sometimes I think I know what I am doing.
I didn't end up winning the contest. Javier, a little Mexican shorter than me ended up beating out my time by about twenty seconds. At least I wasn't on the losing side of this whole thing.
We kept drinking beer and someone produced a bottle of cheap tequila. We all passed it around and started doing shots.I quickly developed a pretty strong buzz. Things like this never end well.
About the time this was going on Benji and I started fucking with Lobster. Lobster was an inch or two shy of six feet tall and was a little more round than the average guy in the platoon. His belly was mainly due to the fact that he was on the thirteenth step of the twelve step program: relapse. This guy drank like someone was going to take away all the alcohol on the planet tomorrow morning and he had to get all he could today. He was also horribly homophobic. His fear and paranoia of homosexuals was legendary. This was a something we exploited ruthlessly that resulted in endless hilarity. This day was no exception.
"Hey big boy," Benji started in on him. "How you doing?" He said with a thick lisp.
Lobster immediately shied away. I stepped in right next to him.
"C'mon right over here next to me," I said, barely holding back my laughter. "I like it when you are this close to me."
"Get the fuck off of me you two queers!" He yelled as he made his way to another side of the bathroom.
This harassment continued for about another thirty minutes almost non-stop in various ways such as:
Lobster would go to fill up his beer from the keg and Benji or I would say, "Let me get that for you big boy."
As Lobster would turn around or bend over for something Benji or I would smack his ass or give it a hard pinch.
We would try and hold his hand or play with his hair.
[Some of this might come across as a little strange to some of you. But really, none of us are gay and it really wouldn't be a problem if anyone was. We just like to fuck with each other in all the various ways that we can. This was the most effective for screwing with Lobster's head so it was what we employed.]
One of the last straws was when Benji and I changed into nothing but straw cowboy hats, tube socks and flip flops. Yes, that's right, I was going to fuck with a homophobe wearing nothing but a white sock on my dick, a bad straw hat and some ten cent flip flops. I know I have done sillier things than that, I just can't think of them right now.
Once Lobster saw Benji and me in our new outfits he knew what was coming. He quickly ran into his room and locked the door. He ran to his doorway, tube socks flapping in the wind and started pounding on the door and talking all kinds of shit to him.
"Come on out and play big boy!" I shouted.
"I have some summer sausage for you to snack on Lobster!" Benji would say.
The keg drinking crew from the bathroom gathered at the far end of the hallway and laughed as we continued to harass him. They started snapping pictures of this disaster as well.
"I have a great big jar of Vaseline in my room with your name on it Lobster!" I yelled.
"You know with that the three of us can have hours of fun if we just get a tarp to roll around on," Benji added.
All of a sudden the laughter and snapping of flashes stopped. Benji and I turned our heads, looking down the hallway. At the end of the hallway, next to the two main doors that served as an entrance to the barracks was Staff Sergeant Horn standing there with his wife and two young daughters that were thirteen and seven. Turns out he was on staff duty for that night and his family was in for a quick visit. They were all completely aghast at the display in front of them. To this day I wish I had a picture of their faces. The looks of shock, abject terror and utter confusion will forever be burned into my mind as some of the funniest I have ever seen in my life.
At this point in my army career I had no been issued the standard army bravado and unflappability that would come with a year or two of service. Jump out of enough planes, have enough bullets shot over your head and pretty soon, shit just doesn't faze you anymore. Luckily for me, Benji had received the two things I just mentioned in spades and along with his caustic wit and alcohol laden brain it was going to make for a fantastic show.
"Hey what's up Sergeant?" Benji yelled down the hallway, beer in hand. "Gonna introduce us to your family or what?"
You ever hear someone say just the completely wrong thing at the wrong time? If you haven't that was a perfect example.
Horn quickly ushered his family out of the barracks then stormed back in to chew our asses. He was really pissed. His tall, skinny frame was already shaking and his face was turning a strange mixture of red and purple while veins were starting to bulge from his slender neck.
"Get down and start doing push-ups! NOW!" He screamed at us. "Who in the fuck do you two assholes think you are?!"
"Well I am Specialist Benji and this here is our new cherry, Private Riley," Benji said back to him through a smile. He was effortlessly doing push-ups, this kind of thing happened a lot to him when he was a private, which wasn't too far in the past.
"Benji, that mouth of yours has been getting old for a long fucking time!" Horn bent down and was only a few inches from the top of my forehead. He kept screaming, "You need to be doing it cleaner than this other guy! You wanna make a name like his for yourself this early in your army career?"
Reading a line or two from Benji's book I replied, "Sergeant, the army is not a career it's a job."
This was the opposite of the Army rhetoric and Horn, obviously a career soldier, became even more pissed at this smart-ass remark. "Just keeping doing pushups you two assholes! I have all fucking day to get the message through your thick fucking heads!"
"Honestly Sergeant, what did you fucking expect on our first Friday night off in the barracks in like two weeks?" Benji inquired.
At this I started laughing pretty hard. Then something brilliant struck me.
"Isn't your family going to be pretty bored sitting out there if you are spending all day in here with us?" I asked.
This really set off a guy who was already pretty pissed. I think he used the word "fuck" more times in the next three minutes of yelling at us than they did in the entire movie Scarface. The highlight of this whole exchange was when Benji stopped his tirade to say something.
"Sergeant, can I please get permission to adjust myself?"
"What the hell do you want to adjust?" Horn shot back.
"My tube sock Sergeant. It's about to fall off and my dick is so big that it would be scraping against the cold floor. And no one likes that feeling, right Sergeant?" Benji calmly stated.
"You are so damn full of yourself Benji and I can't fucking believe it. You have the smallest dick I have ever seen," Horn scoffed.
"Well Sergeant, that's not what the look on your daughters face said."
Zing.
This exchange set off another barrage of insults and yelling in our direction. Eventually Horn yelled so much he started going hoarse and he just told us to get back into our rooms and not do anything else stupid for the rest of the weekend.
The rest of the weekend passed by pretty uneventfully. Monday morning was a little interesting though. My platoon sergeant pulled both of us into his office.
"You guys had yourself a wild Friday night, eh?" He asked.
"Roger Sergeant," Was our terse reply.
"Yeah, Horn found me this morning, and well, he was still pretty pissed about the whole thing."
"Roger Sergeant."
"Truth be told I think this shit is way too funny to punish you more than he already did. Get the fuck out of my office and never do something like that again."
We both smiled, "Roger sergeant."
Slip-n- Slide Fiasco
The Gas Mask & Slip and Slide Fiasco
April 2003
So, as anyone can tell from watching the news or reading the paper being in Iraq kind of sucks. It's hot, dirty, and people are trying to blow you up or shoot you. After about eight months of this anyone would be ready to cut loose, much less myself and a bunch of my buddies I was over there with. This group of hooligans included North, Blue, Mac and me.
Our flight from Kuwait got back at about six that morning. We said our hellos to the family and friends waiting for us, got onto some busses and headed back to our barracks. We turned in the weapons we had carried with us all throughout Iraq and headed outside to hear a word from our First Sergeant before we were able to do whatever the hell we felt like.
[For all you non-military types: For every leadership berth in the military there is an Officer (think Captain or Colonel) assigned to it along with a non-Commissioned officer (such as a First Sergeant or Sergeant Major). This is for several reasons such as keeping those officers in line or making sure the troops are taken care of. Suffice it to say that enlisted men like non-Commissioned officers actually run the army. So anyway, a First Sergeant is pretty much the equivalent of a company commander or Army Captain.]
"All right men," My First Sergeant started. "Don't be going trying to drink all of North Carolina dry. I know all of you have been through a lot but don't go spending all that hard earned cash at the titty bars where you wake up the next morning with nothing but a bad headache and a case of blue balls. And for fuck's sake, don't go drinking and driving."
On that note I headed out to spend a few hours with my mother and youngest sister. I came back about six hours later to be greeted by an absolute shit show in the barracks. Blue, a six-foot-three, blue eyed, blonde haired boy from Kansas was drunk as sin and pounding on a door in our platoon's hallway.
"Come on out you fucking cherries!" He yelled through the door, beer in hand. "I wanna talk to ya!"
"Blue, whats up man?" I greeted him.
"Shit Riley, where the fuck you been?" He said in his country-ass Kansas accent. "Get yerself a beer from my fridge and come help me get these cherries outta their room."
"Why in hell do you want to get them out of their room?" I inquired.
"One of them was laughing at how drunk I was," Blue replied.
Now, I will say this about Blue. He was a big guy who could drink. A lot. However, eight months of living in Iraq, working your ass over everyday humping from house to house in slums around Baghdad will quickly make you lose any alcohol tolerance you once had. The fact that these cherries (aka brand new guys) had been making fun of someone as big as Blue, who had just gotten back from a war that they hadn't been a part of, spoke volumes about their lack of intelligence.
"
Dude, fuck those cherries, let's go see what Mac is doing," I said, trying to distract him before he ended up breaking down their door or doing something else equally violent. Lucky for me, this is easily done while he is inebriated.
"Yeah, fuck it," He said. "Those cherries will get what's their later."
We walked down the hall into Mac's room. Mac is about six feet tall or so with the build of a football player who drinks a few too many beers. He was a surfer guy from California that had left college because of bad grades, drugs, too much drinking and a crashed car. He was tending bar and drinking like a fish when September 11th happened. The patriot in him decided to join up and he decided on airborne infantryman. Go figure.
Walking into his room there were about twenty empty cans of Coors light on the floor and a beer funnel on his coffee table next to a half empty bottle of Don Julio. Mac always parties hard.
"Where the fuck you two assholes been?" Mac said over his stereo kicking out tunes from Sublime and Sgt. Pepper.
"I ran into Blue about to beat down the door of those cherries down the hall," I replied.
"That shit's way too aggro for right now," Mac said. "You know what I say? Let's do some shots!" Mac lines up three shots glasses and fills them with Don Julio. We raise the shots glasses and Mac says solemnly, "To Iraq," and we throw them back.
A few hours later and a few too many beers for all of us later, North staggers into Mac's room. North is a little over six feet tall with a pretty slim build but still had a decent amount of muscle on his frame. He is a freak of nature when it comes to being physically fit. He is the only guy I know who could smoke almost a pack of Parliaments a day and still run close to a five minute mile. One of his nicknames was Peter North or simply North because of his facial similarities to the porn star.
He informs us that he's been out with his family. His grandfather, a navy vet from world war two, has been feeding him beers since our plane landed about eight hours ago. North is completely shithouse drunk and full of bad ideas.
"Guess who the fuck I just talked to up at the CQ desk? He asks.
"Oh tell me, pretty pretty please," Blue laughs back.
"Private fucking Baldie," North laughed. "He was talking about his old lady and how he planned to rail the shit out of her tonight."
"Oh and where was he planning on doing this?" I rhetorically ask. "Perhaps in his barracks room?"
"Dude, we gotta fuck with him," North said, his eyes lighting up like a kid who just got an early Christmas present.
There was never a bad idea this group had run across that they weren't down for.
A word about Private Baldie: This guy showed up when we were just a few months into our Iraq vacation. This guy was shorter than me, which made him about five-five or five-six on a good day and he weighed about a buck-forty soaking wet. He was in his early thirties and habitually shaved his head to hide the bald spot that was starting to form. He had small, non-descript facial features, and wore glasses when we weren't going outside the wire. Bottom line is that he wasn't much to look at.
This kid always told us about how he had this great looking girl waiting for him back at Bragg. He always regaled us with tales of how good looking she was, how great in bed, and other shit like that. All of us dreaded getting a guard shift with him or just being alone with this guy because he had a tendency to corner you and talk you to death.
We walked back out into the barracks hallway to formulate our plan. Another private was standing out in the hallway just laughing to himself.
"What the fuck is so funny?" Blue asks him.
"Yo, Baldie just went into his room with his lady," the Private said, barely holding back his laughter.
"She hot?" I ask, already knowing the answer.
The Private could barely hold back his laughter as he shook his head "no".
"She is definitely a big 'un," The Private laughed as he ducked back into his room.
We all stood huddled outside Baldies' door for a minute and could clearly hear the muffled sounds of clothing being ruffled and the creaking of his bed frame. Now a plan began to form in our alcohol fueled brains.
One of us would open the door, another would kick it open, someone else would go right in the door and slap Baldie on the ass as hard as he could, and the next guy in the door would go in and take a picture of all this action. This sounded like a solid plan; however there was one snag, his door was locked.
I am not one to let such a minor detail foil our plans to horribly embarrass someone. I simply walked upstairs to the key control NCO's door, knocked on it, asked for the key to the room (which obviously wasn't mine, and he knew it), he handed it to me and closed his door. Almost too easy.
I headed back down stairs holding up the key victoriously saying, "Our mission is a go!"
We lined up on the wall outside Baldies' door like we were back on the block in Iraq about to raid another house. I was the first in line with the key, Mac was behind me to kick the door, Blue was behind him to do the ass-slapping and North was the cameraman.
We were completely silent as we started to execute our mission. I slid the key as smoothly as I could into the lock and turned it as quietly as possible. I faintly heard the deadbolt click back from the door into the lock. I looked back to Mac and he nodded his head. I stood back from the door as it opened just a crack. I could definitely hear the moans and grunts from someone mid-coitus with a fat girl.
I stepped to the opposite side of the doorframe and held three fingers on my one hand up. I counted down. When my last finger was down I watched these guys swing into action like the well trained infantryman that they were. Mac kicked down the door with the violence of an angry cop raiding a crack house. Blue then slid right into the doorway moving more gracefully than his large frame would imply. North went in right behind him with the camera primed to capture whatever debauchery it could.
Within the next two seconds I heard Blue rather clearly say, "Fuck no dude, that's not cool." Then I saw the camera flash go off in the darkness. I didn't hear the sound of Blue's hand slapping Baldie's bare ass or any screams of shock. North and Blue practically fall back out into the hallway laughing hysterically as they rolled around on the floor of the hallway. The door slammed emphatically behind them as Baldie obviously went back to matters at hand. They were both nearly in tears and North kept pointing to the image on the display screen of his digital camera.
I pulled the camera out of his hand for Mac and I to look at. Two-thirds of the small screen was covered by the biggest "cankle" I have ever seen. For all of you that are unfamiliar with the subjects of having sex with fat girls or just large women in general, allow me to explain. A "cankle" is where someone has such a large and fatty calf that it extends down around to the ankle so that they don't look like two separate pieces of anatomy but one continuous monument to obesity.
So here Baldie is, holding this cankle up by his head covered in an army issue gas mask and camouflage poncho with the hood up while he is mid-thrust with this wildebeest. Yes, you just read that right; he was banging the fat girl like she owed him money. Wearing a gas mask. And a poncho with the hood up. I was so speechless that I began to laugh as hard as Blue and North. I asked him a few days later why the hell he was having sex like this and his reply was (and I quote), "Dude, that's just how my girl likes to get down." Indeed.
As soon as all four of us could pick ourselves up off the floor and wipe the tears from our eyes another brilliant idea struck home.
"Yo guys, we gotta post this shit up. This is way too good," I said.
"That's the best shit I have heard all night," Mac laughed.
So you know what we did then? We called a cab (all of us were still too drunk to drive and anyone in uniform knows that a DUI is a sure way to ruin your life for about forty-five days). We went down to Wal-Mart, put the card from the camera into the instant photo printing machine and printed six of the biggest size available. Yes, we are assholes. I am sure we will pay for it in the afterlife or something.
We caught our cab back onto post and headed straight to the platoon bulletin board, huge glossy photographs in hand. Blue had one of those huge staple guns, like the kind that you would use on the outside of your house and such. Using it we stapled one of our photos of Baldie doing the dirty deed on the platoon bulletin board. We used about fifteen staples to nail this thing down. It wasn't going anywhere. Our handiwork done we retired to my room to drink some more beers.
While I turned on some tunes and passed out some beers we started talking about what our plans for leave were, who was going to have sex with what girl back home, how many beers we were going to drink everyday and other inane crap like that. About six beers a piece and an hour and a half later another brilliant idea struck through this conversation:
Mac: "I can't wait to get back on the beach, stare at some women in thongs that are way out of my league and just paddle out, ya know?"
North: "What's stopping you from paddling out here?"
Mac: "Well, for one, there's no fucking beach."
North: "Let's just make one, in the fucking hallway!"
Remember that thing I said about us running into bad ideas?
We all grabbed our beers and headed into the hallway to pursue our new project. North came up with the idea of grabbing all of the ponchos that we could find and snapping them together all the way down the hallway. Then we would take the hose from the mop sink in the platoon bathroom and spray the water until our makeshift slip and slide was sufficiently lubricated with water so that we could partake in the utter gloriousness of it. Sheer drunken brilliance I tell you.
All of us stripped down to just boxers. Why we didn't change into swim trunks or boardshorts, I don't know, my only excuse is that we were really drunk by this point. We all started sliding down the hallway, beers in hand, to the wall at the end. We would stop ourselves with our feet or arms, get up and try and run back before someone else came sliding down and knocking out your feet from underneath you. As you can imagine, endless hilarity began to ensue from our current drunken escapade.
At one moment during our shenanigans I was spraying down the hallway with the hose again, while drinking another beer and hitting North and Blue with a refreshing blast of water all at the same time. Then a young private made a fatal mistake. He walked down the hallway and asked me what I was doing. This kid was all of eighteen or nineteen and fresh out of airborne school. He must have showed up when we were in our last few months of Iraq so they didn't send him over. He was pulling Charge of Quarters that night so it was therefore his duty to stop us from our current mission of drunken revelry and excess.
Charge of Quarters is a twenty-four hour duty usually given to a Sergeant and a Private. It's this pair's duty to make sure that all is well, good and properly maintained in the barracks while the chain of command is away or off duty. So if Private Joe Schmoe is so drunk he's puking in the hallway it's the Charge of Quarters (aka CQ) to take care of him. Or if Staff Sergeant Dumbass is playing his music too loud the CQ tells him to turn it down and he has to listen. Or so the theory goes.
Anyway, because we had just gotten back and it was our first weekend in the "real world" this brand new private was on CQ. As I would later find out, it was just this joker and one other private on CQ with no NCO. They were obviously short on NCOs and had them tasked other places like staff duty (which is like CQ but for all five companies in the battalion instead of just one).
So this private obviously hears the noise which is right down the hallway from the CQ desk. He comes down the hallway and in a meek voice asks me to stop spraying water down the hallway. I think it's funny that a Private tells me to do something. I laugh and spray water at him.
He stood there for a second, obviously dismayed that I have just sprayed him with ice cold water. He looks confused for long enough that Blue saw this and grabbed the moment. Keep in mind that we are all still in our boxers when this conversation takes place.
Blue: "What the fuck is wrong with you private? You know who the fuck just sprayed you with the hose? You know who you are talking to?
Private: "Um, well…no"
Blue: "That's Specialist fucking Riley right there boy. You best give him the respect he deserves or I swear I am going to beat your ass like your momma used to."
Private: "Well, could you guys just stop spraying all this water down the hallway, making all this noise and cleanup the mess?"
The sound of all of us erupting in violent laughter completely fills the hallway.
North: "I tell you what little man, when you have as much combat time as my dog tags do, I will listen to you."
Mac: "Hahaha. Private, you are about to be in a world of shit."
Mac and Blue grabbed the kid while and wrestled him down. He really had no chance wrestling against these two behemoths. They held him down while North and I grabbed some duct tape. We tied this kid's arms and legs up with the tape, and then carried him into the shower in the platoon bathroom. We turned the water on, put him under it and let him be.
Like I said, we are assholes.
Our revelry continued for a few more hours unabated until Staff Sergeant McFalls happened in on our soiree. He just was the staff duty NCO that night. He came back from Iraq earlier than the rest of us because of a bum knee that he reinjured over there. Now he was simply on stand-by for a medical discharge. While he was waiting for these orders his superiors saw it fit for him to due staff duty at least three times a week. I have known the guy since I was a private and he was a specialist so he looked to me first.
"Riley, what in the holy fuck is going on here?" He asked me.
"Oh hey, what's up sergeant? You like our slip and slide set up here? I know its pretty rad," I answered.
"Come on here man, you are fucking killing me. I am on staff duty and you and your boys are doing some shit like this? C'mon dude," he pleaded.
Right at that moment the private tied up in the shower started yelling hysterically. Yes, this really happened. I can't make this up.
McFalls headed in there before I could stop him. I heard him shut off the water, and cut the Private loose. He came back out of the bathroom with a look that was half amusement and half shock.
"Alright guys, I am only going to say this once," He addressed our wet underwear clad crew. "Clean this shit up, mop this fucking hallway and get to sleep. I won't tell your First Sergeant about this as long as you don't pull something like this tomorrow." There was no doubt that he meant business. The last thing that we wanted was a pissed off First Sergeant coming into the barracks at four in the morning to chew our asses.
We just started laughing as we began to disassemble our makeshift slip and slide.
"No wonder that other private on CQ was scared shitless when I came in," McFalls laughed to himself on the way out the door. "His buddy went down the hallway and didn't come back, ha."
The next day Baldie tried to rip down the photo but couldn't get enough of the staples out. He eventually pulled them out with a screwdriver and got the photo down. We put up a new one with in five minutes. That following Monday the First Sergeant heard about the Baldie incident and came down our hallway to check out the storied photo. He took one look at it, shook his head and smiled.
"Riley!" He yelled. "You have anything to do with this shit?"
I stepped out into the hallway quickly. "What shit First Sergeant?"
"Don't try and pull that shit with me you slick little Irishman. You know what shit I am talking about."
"First Sergeant, the way I look at it, that was just a few boys having fun one night at that sorry bastard's expense," I smiled.
"Ha, roger that," The First Sergeant laughed as he walked back down the hallway to his office.
As a result of Baldie's rather kinky sexual adventures with women of the larger persuasion he still gets shit about it to this day. I am afraid he will never ever live that one down. Guys still tell the story of a private on CQ getting tied up and put in the shower to brand new cherries.
April 2003
So, as anyone can tell from watching the news or reading the paper being in Iraq kind of sucks. It's hot, dirty, and people are trying to blow you up or shoot you. After about eight months of this anyone would be ready to cut loose, much less myself and a bunch of my buddies I was over there with. This group of hooligans included North, Blue, Mac and me.
Our flight from Kuwait got back at about six that morning. We said our hellos to the family and friends waiting for us, got onto some busses and headed back to our barracks. We turned in the weapons we had carried with us all throughout Iraq and headed outside to hear a word from our First Sergeant before we were able to do whatever the hell we felt like.
[For all you non-military types: For every leadership berth in the military there is an Officer (think Captain or Colonel) assigned to it along with a non-Commissioned officer (such as a First Sergeant or Sergeant Major). This is for several reasons such as keeping those officers in line or making sure the troops are taken care of. Suffice it to say that enlisted men like non-Commissioned officers actually run the army. So anyway, a First Sergeant is pretty much the equivalent of a company commander or Army Captain.]
"All right men," My First Sergeant started. "Don't be going trying to drink all of North Carolina dry. I know all of you have been through a lot but don't go spending all that hard earned cash at the titty bars where you wake up the next morning with nothing but a bad headache and a case of blue balls. And for fuck's sake, don't go drinking and driving."
On that note I headed out to spend a few hours with my mother and youngest sister. I came back about six hours later to be greeted by an absolute shit show in the barracks. Blue, a six-foot-three, blue eyed, blonde haired boy from Kansas was drunk as sin and pounding on a door in our platoon's hallway.
"Come on out you fucking cherries!" He yelled through the door, beer in hand. "I wanna talk to ya!"
"Blue, whats up man?" I greeted him.
"Shit Riley, where the fuck you been?" He said in his country-ass Kansas accent. "Get yerself a beer from my fridge and come help me get these cherries outta their room."
"Why in hell do you want to get them out of their room?" I inquired.
"One of them was laughing at how drunk I was," Blue replied.
Now, I will say this about Blue. He was a big guy who could drink. A lot. However, eight months of living in Iraq, working your ass over everyday humping from house to house in slums around Baghdad will quickly make you lose any alcohol tolerance you once had. The fact that these cherries (aka brand new guys) had been making fun of someone as big as Blue, who had just gotten back from a war that they hadn't been a part of, spoke volumes about their lack of intelligence.
"
Dude, fuck those cherries, let's go see what Mac is doing," I said, trying to distract him before he ended up breaking down their door or doing something else equally violent. Lucky for me, this is easily done while he is inebriated.
"Yeah, fuck it," He said. "Those cherries will get what's their later."
We walked down the hall into Mac's room. Mac is about six feet tall or so with the build of a football player who drinks a few too many beers. He was a surfer guy from California that had left college because of bad grades, drugs, too much drinking and a crashed car. He was tending bar and drinking like a fish when September 11th happened. The patriot in him decided to join up and he decided on airborne infantryman. Go figure.
Walking into his room there were about twenty empty cans of Coors light on the floor and a beer funnel on his coffee table next to a half empty bottle of Don Julio. Mac always parties hard.
"Where the fuck you two assholes been?" Mac said over his stereo kicking out tunes from Sublime and Sgt. Pepper.
"I ran into Blue about to beat down the door of those cherries down the hall," I replied.
"That shit's way too aggro for right now," Mac said. "You know what I say? Let's do some shots!" Mac lines up three shots glasses and fills them with Don Julio. We raise the shots glasses and Mac says solemnly, "To Iraq," and we throw them back.
A few hours later and a few too many beers for all of us later, North staggers into Mac's room. North is a little over six feet tall with a pretty slim build but still had a decent amount of muscle on his frame. He is a freak of nature when it comes to being physically fit. He is the only guy I know who could smoke almost a pack of Parliaments a day and still run close to a five minute mile. One of his nicknames was Peter North or simply North because of his facial similarities to the porn star.
He informs us that he's been out with his family. His grandfather, a navy vet from world war two, has been feeding him beers since our plane landed about eight hours ago. North is completely shithouse drunk and full of bad ideas.
"Guess who the fuck I just talked to up at the CQ desk? He asks.
"Oh tell me, pretty pretty please," Blue laughs back.
"Private fucking Baldie," North laughed. "He was talking about his old lady and how he planned to rail the shit out of her tonight."
"Oh and where was he planning on doing this?" I rhetorically ask. "Perhaps in his barracks room?"
"Dude, we gotta fuck with him," North said, his eyes lighting up like a kid who just got an early Christmas present.
There was never a bad idea this group had run across that they weren't down for.
A word about Private Baldie: This guy showed up when we were just a few months into our Iraq vacation. This guy was shorter than me, which made him about five-five or five-six on a good day and he weighed about a buck-forty soaking wet. He was in his early thirties and habitually shaved his head to hide the bald spot that was starting to form. He had small, non-descript facial features, and wore glasses when we weren't going outside the wire. Bottom line is that he wasn't much to look at.
This kid always told us about how he had this great looking girl waiting for him back at Bragg. He always regaled us with tales of how good looking she was, how great in bed, and other shit like that. All of us dreaded getting a guard shift with him or just being alone with this guy because he had a tendency to corner you and talk you to death.
We walked back out into the barracks hallway to formulate our plan. Another private was standing out in the hallway just laughing to himself.
"What the fuck is so funny?" Blue asks him.
"Yo, Baldie just went into his room with his lady," the Private said, barely holding back his laughter.
"She hot?" I ask, already knowing the answer.
The Private could barely hold back his laughter as he shook his head "no".
"She is definitely a big 'un," The Private laughed as he ducked back into his room.
We all stood huddled outside Baldies' door for a minute and could clearly hear the muffled sounds of clothing being ruffled and the creaking of his bed frame. Now a plan began to form in our alcohol fueled brains.
One of us would open the door, another would kick it open, someone else would go right in the door and slap Baldie on the ass as hard as he could, and the next guy in the door would go in and take a picture of all this action. This sounded like a solid plan; however there was one snag, his door was locked.
I am not one to let such a minor detail foil our plans to horribly embarrass someone. I simply walked upstairs to the key control NCO's door, knocked on it, asked for the key to the room (which obviously wasn't mine, and he knew it), he handed it to me and closed his door. Almost too easy.
I headed back down stairs holding up the key victoriously saying, "Our mission is a go!"
We lined up on the wall outside Baldies' door like we were back on the block in Iraq about to raid another house. I was the first in line with the key, Mac was behind me to kick the door, Blue was behind him to do the ass-slapping and North was the cameraman.
We were completely silent as we started to execute our mission. I slid the key as smoothly as I could into the lock and turned it as quietly as possible. I faintly heard the deadbolt click back from the door into the lock. I looked back to Mac and he nodded his head. I stood back from the door as it opened just a crack. I could definitely hear the moans and grunts from someone mid-coitus with a fat girl.
I stepped to the opposite side of the doorframe and held three fingers on my one hand up. I counted down. When my last finger was down I watched these guys swing into action like the well trained infantryman that they were. Mac kicked down the door with the violence of an angry cop raiding a crack house. Blue then slid right into the doorway moving more gracefully than his large frame would imply. North went in right behind him with the camera primed to capture whatever debauchery it could.
Within the next two seconds I heard Blue rather clearly say, "Fuck no dude, that's not cool." Then I saw the camera flash go off in the darkness. I didn't hear the sound of Blue's hand slapping Baldie's bare ass or any screams of shock. North and Blue practically fall back out into the hallway laughing hysterically as they rolled around on the floor of the hallway. The door slammed emphatically behind them as Baldie obviously went back to matters at hand. They were both nearly in tears and North kept pointing to the image on the display screen of his digital camera.
I pulled the camera out of his hand for Mac and I to look at. Two-thirds of the small screen was covered by the biggest "cankle" I have ever seen. For all of you that are unfamiliar with the subjects of having sex with fat girls or just large women in general, allow me to explain. A "cankle" is where someone has such a large and fatty calf that it extends down around to the ankle so that they don't look like two separate pieces of anatomy but one continuous monument to obesity.
So here Baldie is, holding this cankle up by his head covered in an army issue gas mask and camouflage poncho with the hood up while he is mid-thrust with this wildebeest. Yes, you just read that right; he was banging the fat girl like she owed him money. Wearing a gas mask. And a poncho with the hood up. I was so speechless that I began to laugh as hard as Blue and North. I asked him a few days later why the hell he was having sex like this and his reply was (and I quote), "Dude, that's just how my girl likes to get down." Indeed.
As soon as all four of us could pick ourselves up off the floor and wipe the tears from our eyes another brilliant idea struck home.
"Yo guys, we gotta post this shit up. This is way too good," I said.
"That's the best shit I have heard all night," Mac laughed.
So you know what we did then? We called a cab (all of us were still too drunk to drive and anyone in uniform knows that a DUI is a sure way to ruin your life for about forty-five days). We went down to Wal-Mart, put the card from the camera into the instant photo printing machine and printed six of the biggest size available. Yes, we are assholes. I am sure we will pay for it in the afterlife or something.
We caught our cab back onto post and headed straight to the platoon bulletin board, huge glossy photographs in hand. Blue had one of those huge staple guns, like the kind that you would use on the outside of your house and such. Using it we stapled one of our photos of Baldie doing the dirty deed on the platoon bulletin board. We used about fifteen staples to nail this thing down. It wasn't going anywhere. Our handiwork done we retired to my room to drink some more beers.
While I turned on some tunes and passed out some beers we started talking about what our plans for leave were, who was going to have sex with what girl back home, how many beers we were going to drink everyday and other inane crap like that. About six beers a piece and an hour and a half later another brilliant idea struck through this conversation:
Mac: "I can't wait to get back on the beach, stare at some women in thongs that are way out of my league and just paddle out, ya know?"
North: "What's stopping you from paddling out here?"
Mac: "Well, for one, there's no fucking beach."
North: "Let's just make one, in the fucking hallway!"
Remember that thing I said about us running into bad ideas?
We all grabbed our beers and headed into the hallway to pursue our new project. North came up with the idea of grabbing all of the ponchos that we could find and snapping them together all the way down the hallway. Then we would take the hose from the mop sink in the platoon bathroom and spray the water until our makeshift slip and slide was sufficiently lubricated with water so that we could partake in the utter gloriousness of it. Sheer drunken brilliance I tell you.
All of us stripped down to just boxers. Why we didn't change into swim trunks or boardshorts, I don't know, my only excuse is that we were really drunk by this point. We all started sliding down the hallway, beers in hand, to the wall at the end. We would stop ourselves with our feet or arms, get up and try and run back before someone else came sliding down and knocking out your feet from underneath you. As you can imagine, endless hilarity began to ensue from our current drunken escapade.
At one moment during our shenanigans I was spraying down the hallway with the hose again, while drinking another beer and hitting North and Blue with a refreshing blast of water all at the same time. Then a young private made a fatal mistake. He walked down the hallway and asked me what I was doing. This kid was all of eighteen or nineteen and fresh out of airborne school. He must have showed up when we were in our last few months of Iraq so they didn't send him over. He was pulling Charge of Quarters that night so it was therefore his duty to stop us from our current mission of drunken revelry and excess.
Charge of Quarters is a twenty-four hour duty usually given to a Sergeant and a Private. It's this pair's duty to make sure that all is well, good and properly maintained in the barracks while the chain of command is away or off duty. So if Private Joe Schmoe is so drunk he's puking in the hallway it's the Charge of Quarters (aka CQ) to take care of him. Or if Staff Sergeant Dumbass is playing his music too loud the CQ tells him to turn it down and he has to listen. Or so the theory goes.
Anyway, because we had just gotten back and it was our first weekend in the "real world" this brand new private was on CQ. As I would later find out, it was just this joker and one other private on CQ with no NCO. They were obviously short on NCOs and had them tasked other places like staff duty (which is like CQ but for all five companies in the battalion instead of just one).
So this private obviously hears the noise which is right down the hallway from the CQ desk. He comes down the hallway and in a meek voice asks me to stop spraying water down the hallway. I think it's funny that a Private tells me to do something. I laugh and spray water at him.
He stood there for a second, obviously dismayed that I have just sprayed him with ice cold water. He looks confused for long enough that Blue saw this and grabbed the moment. Keep in mind that we are all still in our boxers when this conversation takes place.
Blue: "What the fuck is wrong with you private? You know who the fuck just sprayed you with the hose? You know who you are talking to?
Private: "Um, well…no"
Blue: "That's Specialist fucking Riley right there boy. You best give him the respect he deserves or I swear I am going to beat your ass like your momma used to."
Private: "Well, could you guys just stop spraying all this water down the hallway, making all this noise and cleanup the mess?"
The sound of all of us erupting in violent laughter completely fills the hallway.
North: "I tell you what little man, when you have as much combat time as my dog tags do, I will listen to you."
Mac: "Hahaha. Private, you are about to be in a world of shit."
Mac and Blue grabbed the kid while and wrestled him down. He really had no chance wrestling against these two behemoths. They held him down while North and I grabbed some duct tape. We tied this kid's arms and legs up with the tape, and then carried him into the shower in the platoon bathroom. We turned the water on, put him under it and let him be.
Like I said, we are assholes.
Our revelry continued for a few more hours unabated until Staff Sergeant McFalls happened in on our soiree. He just was the staff duty NCO that night. He came back from Iraq earlier than the rest of us because of a bum knee that he reinjured over there. Now he was simply on stand-by for a medical discharge. While he was waiting for these orders his superiors saw it fit for him to due staff duty at least three times a week. I have known the guy since I was a private and he was a specialist so he looked to me first.
"Riley, what in the holy fuck is going on here?" He asked me.
"Oh hey, what's up sergeant? You like our slip and slide set up here? I know its pretty rad," I answered.
"Come on here man, you are fucking killing me. I am on staff duty and you and your boys are doing some shit like this? C'mon dude," he pleaded.
Right at that moment the private tied up in the shower started yelling hysterically. Yes, this really happened. I can't make this up.
McFalls headed in there before I could stop him. I heard him shut off the water, and cut the Private loose. He came back out of the bathroom with a look that was half amusement and half shock.
"Alright guys, I am only going to say this once," He addressed our wet underwear clad crew. "Clean this shit up, mop this fucking hallway and get to sleep. I won't tell your First Sergeant about this as long as you don't pull something like this tomorrow." There was no doubt that he meant business. The last thing that we wanted was a pissed off First Sergeant coming into the barracks at four in the morning to chew our asses.
We just started laughing as we began to disassemble our makeshift slip and slide.
"No wonder that other private on CQ was scared shitless when I came in," McFalls laughed to himself on the way out the door. "His buddy went down the hallway and didn't come back, ha."
The next day Baldie tried to rip down the photo but couldn't get enough of the staples out. He eventually pulled them out with a screwdriver and got the photo down. We put up a new one with in five minutes. That following Monday the First Sergeant heard about the Baldie incident and came down our hallway to check out the storied photo. He took one look at it, shook his head and smiled.
"Riley!" He yelled. "You have anything to do with this shit?"
I stepped out into the hallway quickly. "What shit First Sergeant?"
"Don't try and pull that shit with me you slick little Irishman. You know what shit I am talking about."
"First Sergeant, the way I look at it, that was just a few boys having fun one night at that sorry bastard's expense," I smiled.
"Ha, roger that," The First Sergeant laughed as he walked back down the hallway to his office.
As a result of Baldie's rather kinky sexual adventures with women of the larger persuasion he still gets shit about it to this day. I am afraid he will never ever live that one down. Guys still tell the story of a private on CQ getting tied up and put in the shower to brand new cherries.
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