Ferocity Mill

Well! I seem to have picked up a few stragglers! Isn’t this fun; we can all sit in a circle and massage each other’s temples and chug sip sangria while the pool boy oils our backs and compliments our muscular, yet feminine physique and –

I’m sorry. I just woke up, and there was some denial involved regarding my dream — namely, it being over.

So! Let’s jump back into reality for a moment.

For the first eleven months of this deployment, my job here in the asshole of the world was to produce and distribute our division’s daily newsletter. This was all kinds of soul-draining, and I went from being relatively cheerful most of the time to Fear My Glare of Death before much time had passed. One can only handle being a parrot of The Man for so long before one crosses over to the dead zone, you know? Oh, and also there was the delightful perk of the job known as Stop Loss, which is a tremendous morale-boosting tool, plucked directly out of the activities list which must be hanging up in the pit of hell. That meant that although my original active-duty contract was up in June, I got to stay and hang out for a while — fun! — or else go to jail. And although I’m sure jail would be a rollicking good time, there are some words I never want to use while describing past experiences, and “shank” is one of those. Also, “orange jumpsuit.”

After nearly a year, I was sent to an adjacent camp to temporarily replace a soldier in her job, which was similar to mine, except on a smaller scale. In other words, it was still propaganda-machine-related, but there was a much lower risk of running into the commanding general on a daily basis (who, apropos of nothing, is fond of calling some of us female soldiers by our first names to show he “cares” or something. He often asks me, in passing, how I’m doing, only to chuckle uncomfortably when I reply, “I’m wonderful, sir” in my best twins-from-The Shining voice.).

That job lasted three weeks, and now I’m back in the belly of the beast, preparing to go home next month.

Oh, did I say I was preparing to go home? Ha! Ha HA! No, my bad — that is what I thought I was going to be doing. Instead, I am preparing to go to Kuwait next month to be on a detail involving manual labor. A happy surprise to return to, eh? Now, instead of being stateside by mid- to late-May, I will be back sometime in early June.

The result of it all is that sometime in June, approximately one year after I thought I would be getting out of the Army, I will actually (hopefully, OH GOD PLEASE) be getting out of the Army. That would have been accompanied by a drumroll, but I try not to get too excited about these things anymore. Agony of defeat, and all that.

I realize that these few paragraphs can’t really make up for the fact that I’ve managed to go almost an entire fourteen months without relaying any substantial information (sorry, friends and family; the part of my brain devoted to frequent correspondence seems to have shat itself), but consider this to have been a Noble Try.

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Before I saunter off into the shadows, perhaps you would like to hear how I have recently managed to ‘Tard it Up, as they say. What the hell, I suppose you deserve it for sticking around so long.There I was: outside, in the dark. I had walked out of the dining facility in order to utilize the nifty high-stank port-a-potties, as is my wont post-hydration. It was An Emergency. I rushed past a number of waist-high concrete barriers, nestled in the gravel and ready to protect me from flying shrapnel or anything else that was unlikely to injure me in that particular location, and proceeded to the facilities, whereupon business was conducted. I exited the latrine, took advantage of the squeezy-sanitizer-dispensing apparatus, and took a left, because that was the direction in which I knew (I knew!) I would find the dining facility.

Let’s talk about the way I walk. It is a purposeful, aggressive walk. It is a walk that has somewhere to be. It is a walk which slows down only for the purpose of stopping. Have you pictured it? It is fierce. Keep this image in your mind — you won’t regret it.

I turned left. I walked. And then I suddenly remembered the presence of the waist-high concrete barriers — one in particular. Because I crashed. Into it. With a vengeance. And as I toppled forward, my rib area became acquainted — intimately — with the metal sticky-out thing (which I have been informed is actually called a rebar, which sounds like retard, as in, I looked like a) on the barrier. And there was pain.

People, I knocked the wind out of myself. And as I looked around, gasping, to make sure nobody had seen it happen, I realized that this would call for many pain pills. And there was much rejoicing.

On that note, enjoy your Friday, and tip one back for me and my rebar-edness.