trailer is lined with three rows of wooden-walled cubbyholes where soldiers grip receivers grimed from two hundred thousand sweaty, homesick palms, and murmur into mouthpieces that have by this point heard it all: the sex talk, questions about the dying relative, the soft weeping when the news is not good, the coo-coo ing to babies and puppies, the profanity-laced blowhard stories for the drinking buddies left behind, the calculated, casual dismissal of combat zone danger to soothe worried parents. At any given time, a choir of babble fills the phone center, punctuated by the occasional slam down of a receiver. The voices rise and fall, rise and fall. As they ride the waves of sound, some soldiers doodle on the wooden cubbyholes with knives and pens, carving names and anatomies of certain girls left behind. Even today, if you go over there, you’ll find—just below the motto SADDAM SUXX —an impressive nude study of a Miss Sammie Grafton of Gillette, Wyoming.
The knives whittle, the boots tap on the plywood floor, the voices swell and ebb, swell and ebb.
“What’s this about a court summons?”
“And then you put it in your mouth while I . . . ”
“No, no, it ain’t too bad—we haven’t hit an IED in almost a week.”
“She took her first steps today? Day- um! . . . I know, I wish I could have been there, too.”
“I’m fine, really! . . . No, really, Ma, that ain’t necessary . . . Ma, really, I— . . . Okay, put her on . . . Hello, Jangles. Is you being a good widdle kitty?”
Leave the phone center, spring-hinged door banging like pistol shot behind you, and keep walking, keep crunching through the gravel until you reach the Morale, Welfare, and Recreation Quonset hut where, tucked in one corner, you’ll discover a disco club that in 2005 allows soldiers to take off their helmets and weapons and (males only) strip down to their T-shirts as they boogie up gallons of sweat each night after work, bathed in the light from the disco ball whose refracted light moves like bright moths across their faces. It has been twenty-five years since disco died but the soldiers at Triumph don’t mind. It may be KC and the Sunshine Band, but fuck it all it’s a beat that grabs their legs and gives them permission to fling away all the ill will that has built up during the day. Not to mention it is the only officially sanctioned way boys and girls can get close enough to touch, an excitement elevated whenever a female soldier, daring to flaunt the rules, strips away her Desert Camouflage Uniform top and dances in her T-shirt, shake-shake-shaking the bootie so hard and with such abandon her breasts take on a mind of their own to the delight of every male lucky enough to be in the club that night.
If you exit the club, half-drunk on near-beer and hormone turbulence, take a left turn, and continue down the main thoroughfare for another mile, you’ll hit the post exchange. The entrance to the PX is lined with a series of small trailers that house a Burger King, a What-the-Cluck Chicken Shack, and a Starbucks, where you can purchase a venti caramel macchiato and, with the first sip of the froth and sugar, be transported to within an inch of java heaven.
The PX, run by the U.S. military, is the equivalent of the Old West general store. Its aisles are stocked with potato chips, beef jerky, cases of soda, sunglasses, baby oil, panty hose, tennis shoes, magazines (sans the porn, in deference to host nation Islamic sensitivities), video games, tins of sardines, nail clippers, one big-screen TV (which can be yours for only $1,695.99), stationery, music CDs that tilt heavily toward country-western, value-packs of chewing tobacco, T-shirts (“My Daddy Deployed to Iraq and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt”), brooms, fishing poles, cheese-in-a-can, crackers, compasses, canteens, bras, socks, paperbacks that lean heavily toward Louis L’Amour and Nelson DeMille, desk lamps, Frisbees, pillows, and Insta-Gro planters in clear plastic
The knives whittle, the boots tap on the plywood floor, the voices swell and ebb, swell and ebb.
“What’s this about a court summons?”
“And then you put it in your mouth while I . . . ”
“No, no, it ain’t too bad—we haven’t hit an IED in almost a week.”
“She took her first steps today? Day- um! . . . I know, I wish I could have been there, too.”
“I’m fine, really! . . . No, really, Ma, that ain’t necessary . . . Ma, really, I— . . . Okay, put her on . . . Hello, Jangles. Is you being a good widdle kitty?”
Leave the phone center, spring-hinged door banging like pistol shot behind you, and keep walking, keep crunching through the gravel until you reach the Morale, Welfare, and Recreation Quonset hut where, tucked in one corner, you’ll discover a disco club that in 2005 allows soldiers to take off their helmets and weapons and (males only) strip down to their T-shirts as they boogie up gallons of sweat each night after work, bathed in the light from the disco ball whose refracted light moves like bright moths across their faces. It has been twenty-five years since disco died but the soldiers at Triumph don’t mind. It may be KC and the Sunshine Band, but fuck it all it’s a beat that grabs their legs and gives them permission to fling away all the ill will that has built up during the day. Not to mention it is the only officially sanctioned way boys and girls can get close enough to touch, an excitement elevated whenever a female soldier, daring to flaunt the rules, strips away her Desert Camouflage Uniform top and dances in her T-shirt, shake-shake-shaking the bootie so hard and with such abandon her breasts take on a mind of their own to the delight of every male lucky enough to be in the club that night.
If you exit the club, half-drunk on near-beer and hormone turbulence, take a left turn, and continue down the main thoroughfare for another mile, you’ll hit the post exchange. The entrance to the PX is lined with a series of small trailers that house a Burger King, a What-the-Cluck Chicken Shack, and a Starbucks, where you can purchase a venti caramel macchiato and, with the first sip of the froth and sugar, be transported to within an inch of java heaven.
The PX, run by the U.S. military, is the equivalent of the Old West general store. Its aisles are stocked with potato chips, beef jerky, cases of soda, sunglasses, baby oil, panty hose, tennis shoes, magazines (sans the porn, in deference to host nation Islamic sensitivities), video games, tins of sardines, nail clippers, one big-screen TV (which can be yours for only $1,695.99), stationery, music CDs that tilt heavily toward country-western, value-packs of chewing tobacco, T-shirts (“My Daddy Deployed to Iraq and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt”), brooms, fishing poles, cheese-in-a-can, crackers, compasses, canteens, bras, socks, paperbacks that lean heavily toward Louis L’Amour and Nelson DeMille, desk lamps, Frisbees, pillows, and Insta-Gro planters in clear plastic
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