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."