This Place is Driving Me Nuts!

One of the things war movies often get wrong is they only show the hurry, and never the wait.  From the moment you enter the service you begin hearing the trope “hurry up and wait.”  When you go to war there are moments of mission focused action, and then moments of mind-numbing boredom.  When you’re someone like me, with a mind that never seems to quit, boredom begets comedy, creativity, and sometimes trouble. 

Adding early teenage influences like Jackass and their spin off shows like Wildboyz and Viva La Bam, combined with a steady paycheck and access to eBay, you wind up with a documentary style video camera waiting for you in the barracks after a mission.  I was stationed at one of the cushy bases in Kuwait during my deployment.  I always have to quality this for the “Kuwait isn’t a real deployment” people.  Our motor pool was there, we had a barracks there, but I probably only slept there a handful of days a month.  The rest of the time we were riding the bomb riddled backroads of Iraq and sleeping in austere environments, bombed out warehouses, tents, chicken coop style buildings, old hangars, and on our trucks.    

There were perks to being able to go back to Camp Arifjan after long missions.  You usually got a few days of downtime after long missions up north in Iraq, and that base had all the amenities.  This included an alterations shop and a big PX (basically military Walmart on a really small scale).  I did some of my best comedic work messing with the poor third country nationals who worked at the alterations shop on base.  Given the aforementioned influences on my partially developed brain as a young twenty something, I decided to take a page from Chris Pontius’ playbook and make a military version of “Party Boy.”

I had the creative vision to make a pair of combat thongs out of an old uniform.  I took my camera, a battle buddy, and scraps of a desert combat uniform (DCU) to the alterations shop and explained my intent to the clerk.  This was made more comical by the fact that the people in the shop barely understood English.  This led me to pantomime exactly what I wanted them to make.  Their main task was sewing on patches and simple alterations to uniforms.  The poor guy manning the shop pulled out his measuring tape and got my measurements. 

Off camera you can hear snickering from bystanders as I kept insisting on him making me sexy.  “Ok sir” the Indian alterations shop attendant said with a bobble to his head.  He said they’d be ready in a week or so and I left giddy with the comedic gold we were likely filming.  George Bush had his war, and this was mine, a war on boredom.

After coming off of a mission, I remembered that my creation was waiting and I decided to go check on my new garment.  As I walked into the shop, I excitedly gave my name and waited for the clerk to retrieve my thongs.  “What are those” I asked when he handed me a pair of DCU bloomers they made.  “No!  These aren’t sexy enough” I shouted in frustration.  “These aren’t thongs these are granny panties; I need them sexy!”  I explained what I wanted again by gesturing, and showing where the cuts to the fabric needed to be made.  “Remember” I said as I left, “SEXY!”

When I was finally able to return for my alterations, I was handed their best attempt at a pair of thongs.  They didn’t exactly conceal all of the goods, but they were sexy enough.  Maybe too sexy actually.  Lastly, I had them embroider “This place is driving me nuts” over the appropriate area on the front of my thongs.  Perfect!

Now it’s time to get into some trouble I thought.  My first bright idea was to pose on my squad leader and captain’s beds while they were on missions wearing my newly acquired lingerie.  A barracks boudoir if you will.  “Be fierce, make love to the camera, roar” I imagined as my reluctant friends snapped photos on my disposable camera and filmed my charades with my video camera. 

Once that was completed it was time to up the ante.  There were a few platoons scattered across our three barracks that weren’t on missions up north in Iraq, so I decided to pay a few visits.  I strutted down the aisles wearing only my combat thongs, dancing to music playing in my head.  I did a few cartwheels and walked on my hands a bit before hopping in bed with an unsuspecting NCO of mine.  After taking a few punches and getting laughed out of that barracks I made my way back to my bunk with a sense of accomplishment.  All those dance lessons my mom made me take as a kid really paid off.

We dropped the film off at a one-hour photo on the base and videotaped the reaction of the clerk there, which was lackluster.  I guess he’d seen worse.  I put a couple risqué photos in a Christmas card and sent it home to my uncle’s shop, where I worked before the deployment.  I learned later that although it was addressed to my uncle, my aunt opened the mail.  I was told that they thought she was dying, judging by the screaming that came from her office as the pictures of me fell out of the envelope.  Whoops.  In war there is always some collateral damage.  Sorry aunt Leann! 

I later acquired a pair of leather chaps from a cowboy we had in the unit.  People bring weird stuff with them on deployments sometimes. I wore his hat, chaps, and those thongs and did a little dance my platoon sergeant didn’t appreciate.  Apparently, I was on the verge of military punishment, an article 15, after that stunt.  My squad leader, who’s bed I posed on earlier, came to my rescue.  I was yelled at and cussed and made to do push-ups in front of all the spectators in the barracks until I couldn’t get up.  All while my glorious glutes were visible for all to see.  Apparently because it was filmed it somehow was my saving grace and my squad leader was able to plead my case with the platoon sergeant. Thankfully he somehow saved me from disciplinary action.

This was the first of many creative trips to the alterations shop, and likely the first of many near misses with disciplinary action while deployed.  I later made a pair of tearaway Velcro BDU pants (they didn’t work), a luchador wrestling mask, and matching pink sash wrestling outfit for a character I created called “Donkey Thong the Destroyer.”  We had a semi-professional wrestler in the unit and I had an idea…. That’s a story for another day. 

As I’ve often said, war is hell, but it can’t be a hell of a good time!  I imagine I am the origin for a very specific type of PTSD in a good many people that I assaulted with the images of me in those outfits.  These are the “war stories” I love to tell, and I’m glad I made it my mission to wage a war to boost morale to distract us from what awaited us up north.  Sometimes you’ve just got to be the butt of a joke for the greater good.

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If you want to see more of the shenanigans that we filmed on that deployment, check out our documentary HAMMER DOWN