Combat Queer Online

A Note On The Food

So I've been eating rancid food all week. I'll admit it's more than  little strange that it took be about five days to figure it out, but if you listen to the story Dear Reader, you'll probably agree that I'm not entirely at fault.

We've been out in the field on a training mission. The basic deal is that you call the place a Forward Operating Base, a FOB, and you get some of the guys to play to Opposing Forced, the Op4, and you carry out little scenarios. It's hot, you get tired, but really, it isn't bad in any way.

Except the food. See I've been working the night shift. It's usually an eight hour deal, but I tend to work an extra two on either end. There's a lot to get done, and a lot of time stuff fails to happen when I'm not in the office. Well, working the night shift, I tend to just barely miss the food actually prepared by the cooks. Of course, I don't really work that had to hit the chow hall. Among the cooks, there is one or maybe, maybe two people who I would trust to be around food. The cooks tend to boil everything to the same soggy, slimy consistency. It's a really amazing thing when the only way you can tell the difference between Mac 'n Cheese, mashed potatoes, and chicken is the presence of bones, well, you know there's something wrong.

But for those of us lucky enough to avoid chow hall food, there is another option. It used to be MREs, the famous “Meals Ready to Eat,” but for various reasons, probably something to do with the cost, the MRE is no longer the Army's primary food for folks in training. Now we got these delightful things we lovingly call “Jimmy Deans.” They actually used to be made by Jimmy Dean, had potted meat, and were as terrible tasting as a mass produced food. They're no longer made by Jimmy Dean and they are ever so slightly better than they used to be, but uh, they're still not great.

Every single one has a bag TGI Fridays Bacon and Cheddar Potato Skin chips, a can of tuna, chicken or ham salad, a packet of cookies, a can of Vienna Sausages, and a can of Brisk Iced Tea. Every single one. And I've probably eaten a dozen of those this week. It's kind of gross in and of itself.

But these new fangled Jimmy Deans, it turns out that they need to be stored at temperatures lower that 80 degrees. Why? Because they rot otherwise. They putrefy. Well, my brilliant friends in the mess section, knowing this, decided that they best way to get the Jimmy Deans out to the soldiers of the unit would be to leave them out on a folding table in direct sunlight.

Something else I found out very recently: You should never eat a Jimmy Dean if the plastic package is distended or expanded. Why? Because that's a great sign that it is putrefying, swelling up just like a body dumped in a lake. I of course learned this on te last day of the train exercise.

My unit's Jimmy Deans, the ones left out in the sun all week, well Dear Reader, if you'd of tied a string around one you could have had yourself a balloon. They smelled like cleaning fluid when you tore into them. But, ha ha, if you were working the late shift, there was nothing else to eat, and we were assured they were fine.

I felt like shit all week. I was getting headaches, nausea, weird, weird feelings like I was outside of my own body... lot's of fun, when you're working in 110 degree weather. After the first day of that I actually went to one of the medics and asked what was going on. “Dehydration” he tells me. You need to drink more water. Now, I'd drank about five canteens and two camel-backs of water already that day, and was spending about 5% of my time running back forth to the urinal, but “Hey,” I says, “I'll go drink some more water.”

Because, hey, what else could it be?

Off The HRT

Well Dear Reader, I have a confession. Since going off the hormones, it has become increasingly difficult for me to write. When I entered middle school all those years ago, when I was first entering male puberty, something very similar happened. I just couldn't make the connections when I was trying to describe the world. My grades went in the tank. I almost failed both sixth and seventh grade. I'd been doing great in school. knocking the shit out of the standardized tests, and then suddenly it was like I just couldn't hack it any more, even in the simplest of classes. 

My parents freaked right out. They just couldn't understand why i was having so much trouble. They just couldn't figure out where their brainy, bookish son had gone. And the thing was, I didn't know what was going on either. I knew I could understand what I was learning, what I was reading about, but when I tried to put it down on paper or on a test, it just got mixed up and ugly. I felt like such a moron. There was always a great deal of anger and dissapointment directed at me.

Now, of course, I was aware that I wanted to be a girl. And yes, I know that's one of the big contradictions, one of the big paradoxes of being trans. On one hand I say that I am a woman, that I always have been, that I was created this way, but ah, ah, on the other hand I say that I want to be a female, that I have this awesome and terribly longing for womanhood. How can both be true? How can I not be liar?

I don't know, but that's the way it is. In the Episcopal Church we talk in much the same way about Christ's resurection, and his defeat of all evil and Death in the world. How can Christ have destroyed Death and Hell if we continue to suffer, if we continue to die?

Once again, I don't know, I don't know how, but I know that it is. We call it the “Already But Not Yet.” It's a wonderful concept, even if it only makes a tiny, tiny bit of sense. 

But friends, I'm having so much trouble writing. I know what I want to talk about, but it jut doesn't come together. I end up with three or four bearly connected sentences after an hour or more of work. The frustation is like having eaten a piece of glass. I want to write so badly, I want to pt something down on paper, I want to trap this place and this experience on the page. 

But it doesn't happen, or worse yet, I do write something and it is wholly insipid and worthless.

I've been rewatching the second season of Avatar: The Last Airbender. I want to discuss it episode by episode, explaining how it functions not only as action adventure cartoon, but also as a psuedo-scripture. How it functions in the ancient traditions of the god-man walking the Earth with his saints. Oh, there's so much to say, so much to dig into, but friends, but when I start to write there's a wall, and nothing comes, nothing happens.

I didn't realize at the time, but my writing really took off about three months after I started HRT. I didn't put it together that it had anything to do with the hormones until I went off them. It was like a facet being turn off. It was like concret being dumped into a creek. It's like the part of me that is the Combat Queer is going dormant, and all that's left is this shell that was built to serve in the military, that was built to survive the sandbox.

I don't want to just be a shell. I don't want to just be a soldier, doing my duty, resting, doing my duty, resting, doing my duty, resting, waiting for the rest of my life to start, waiting for something else to happen. I want to engage this experience as me, not as this created shell. I don't want to just sleep walk through the next year.

I'm so scared.

But even then, even now, and even in what's coming, I survive, I continue. It's hard, and it is almost certainly going to get harder. But, Christ help me, there's only one way to go, and that's forward. The time to consider giving up has past. The future must be grabbed moment by moment, pulled past the present. This time will not last. There is more, and I will have it through the goodness of the Lord.

This is not the end. This is barely even the beginning.

Long Summer Day

So, we've just watched the sun go down on another solstice. I've spent the day today out at a range with my unit cooking the back of my neck in the long sunlight. I happened to point out that it was the summer solstice, and that it was a good day.

Well, the fellow I was speaking to did not take kindly to that. He felt that by my mentioning the solstice, the longest day of the year to him, that I was somehow attacking him for being a Christian. "We don't pay attention to that sort of thing," he told me. 'Cause, you know, Christians are forbiden to notice the passing of the seasons.

He then went into a long explaination of how Christans, by which he meant Evangelicals, were a persecuted and hunted group in America.

It was a wake up call to me that I needed. A lot of Conservative, Evangelicals feel so victimized by the world that the very mention of a word that they in any way associate with other traditions(in the case of my story, I guess the fellow was afraid that I was a pagan or something) causes them to fall into a defensive fit of anger.

That anger, I guess, insulates them, and helps to protect them against that most terrible of all fates, the becoming aware of knowledge of the Other.

Episcopalians Don't Count

http://www.justnews.com/news/19769148/detail.html

So apparently Episcopalians don't count. You see this Father Cutie, he left the Roman Catholic church because, shock of shocks, he found love and followed his heart.

But first, full discloser, I've never understood the celibate priest thing. I know I probably need to need more of the theology on the other side, but well, it just doesn't work for me. The Apostle Peter was married, the Apostle James was married, they were, at least according to the Church, two of the first big bishops, so why then shouldn't folks be free to follow their example?

But then again, I also can't understand the theology of any church that refuses women a shot at ordination, so maybe I'm just not good at churches when they ain't Episcopal.

But here's what bugs me about this article: It's set up as if it is describing some great tragedy, some great fall from grace. There's no hint of joy. For goodness sake, this fellow is marrying someone he loves and in the process of becoming a priest in one of the finest churches on Earth! What could be more wonderful! 

But no, no, the writer of the article feels the need to point out that "There is no word yet if Cutié and Canellis will have a religious ceremony." 

Yeah, because why would a priest have a church wedding? He doesn't have the nod of the Pope, and therefore he must have totally reject Christ and all goodness.

Best Masturbation Material(And Violence)

I have three roommates in the barracks, ages 19-37. They, and several others, are currently engaged in a discussion of great importance. Specifically, which is better to jerk-off to, Family Guy or professional wrestling. 

Yeah, the wrestling one does suggest some pretty serious homo-eroticism, but the advocate of that position claims that is because of "the real pretty women" who are also involved in the wrestling. 

The fellow saying Family Guy, well his reasons are significantly less clear. He seems to like Lois a lot, but also think "Quagmire is so fucking funny." Yeah, that TV's top rape joke peddler's understood humorousness is, according to this fellow, a good reason to jerk off to the show, well, that worries me a good deal.

Ug. 

I suppose that there is something vaguely refreshing about the honesty of this conversation. In other, more polite situations, the conversation might be about which of these two is "hotter" or which contains more specially attractive elements, but here, well, these guys just cut right to the chase, the 'batin'.

But seriously, what worries me is that both options here are 'bate-able not only because of the attractiveness of what they contain, but also because there is element of violence involved. On one side you've got Quagmire's sexual violence, and on the other you have WWF babes beating on each other.

Why do these guys like their sex, or at least their fantasies, mixed with violence? Is it just the power? Or is because they understand themselves in a violent context instead of a sexual one, and are more comfortable with the idea of sex if violence is put into the equation?

I really don't know, but it freaks me right out.

Same Old Song

From the Washington Post's article about Iran's presidential election:

In Shahr-e Rey, south of Tehran, voter Ali Badiri said that young women without head scarves had been dancing in the streets over Mousavi's candidacy. "I'll vote for Ahmadinejad, because if Mousavi wins, they will be dancing naked next week," he said.

Apparently terrified fundamentalists use the same idiot logic to legitimize their theft of women's freedom world over. It's always, "Well if we start start treating women like, gods-of-worldly-power, like people, well, they might start doing anything! In fact, they might even be tempted to treat us as poorly as we've treated them."

Also, "If we don't control them, who will?"

The idea that all of us hairless monkeys share in some common humanity, some equality of worth and dignity, it just terrifies us. I don't know what should be done about it, but there must be something, mustn't there?

Army Wedding

*Dear Reader, please remember that I am a great lover of irony, and that you should take as few of my own statements literally as possible*

Well Dear Reader, I got to go to real live capital e Event this weekend. It was an Army wedding, the nuptials of not just one soldier, but of a soldier to another soldier. Both the bride and groom are friends of mine, and I'm glad that they were able to tie the knot before heading to the sandbox. Those two work together, and gods help them, really are in love. They're even in the same section, so that means that spend in the neighborhood of eighteen hours a day together. Any couple that can survive that amount of interaction, well, they've got something going on.

But friends, this wedding. It was amazing. It was a platonic example of the Army lifestyle and practice. No, I'm not talking about tall, strong people wearing dress blues, marching out up crossed swords, saluting, any of that nonsense. No, what I mean is that the bride wore a low-cut white sun dress and that the groom wore board shorts and flip flops. One of their wedding presents was a half empty case of lime-flavored bud light beer. The wedding reception consisted of people standing around smoking while a Dropkick Murphys album played at top volume on a car stereo. 

Here is the best man's toast in its entirety: “To prostitution, rape, riot, and revolution.”

A poem, all in one line.

But Dear Reader, don't think for a minute, not a single minute that there was anything wrong with an inch of this wedding. Oh, failing that, at least that much more wrong than want you might be unlucky enough to see at any wedding. 

I have been a guest at quite a few weddings recently(oh, don't soldiers love to find a wife the week before they leave on a deployment) and this wedding was absolutely free of that most odious element of so many weddings, pretension. 

These two kids got married married because they loved each other, because they wanted to spend the rest of forever with one another. The decided not to simply have a court house wedding because they had friends who wanted to be with and celebrate them when they took that step. 

They weren't trying to show off their wealth or their class or their piety. They just wanted to claim their relationship as a crucial element of their lives. 

A lot of folks in my unit are already seeing their marriages fall apart. Some units see a fifty percent or higher divorce rate during the year of deployment. Just think about that. Half the marriages a unit has at the beginning are likely to have been destroyed by the end. 

I have to think that some of that has something to do with people not knowing what marriage is about. Certainly, I'm terrible with romantic relationships, but I have a theory that it has something to do with people letting other priorities get between them and the love for their partner. People's selfish desires, their grasping at ideas of class, their love of money and alcohol and drug, all sorts of nonsense stops them from remembering the basic humanity, the silly little needs and wants and dreams of that person who've they've decided to have a life with. 

But these two, at least so far, the only part of their marriage they care about is being together. And that seems pretty good and healthy to me.

Weekend Off

So, night shift again. The Fat Captain is prowling around, trying to figure out how to escape a day early for the up coming weekend. This will probably be weekend pass any of us get to spend with our families, so a lot of folks are flying their people out to the mob site. We aren't allowed to go back home, but it is Ok for us to bring people here.

Me, I don't have anyone coming. Oh, don't cry too hard Dear Reader, I've got some cool plans for the weekend. There's going to be beer, books, babes, everything a growing girl needs for a healthy progession into nirvana. I've managed to get a reasonable priced hotel in a cool area. I know a few locals who I want to hang out with, so I got no worries. 

And I think I'm going to girl out. Gonna girl out hard. If my wacky, hair-brained scheme works, I may even be able to grab another round of laser hair removal for my face before the weekend's out.

Let's, uh, let's just take a quick second to discuss exactly why I want some more laser hair removal. Of all the nonsense that goes along with presenting as a dude, having hair growing out of your face? It might not be the single most lame part of it, but oh, oh, it's up there. Don't even get my started on the in-grown hairs. It's bad enough that because of the sharp different between the color of my skin and the color of my hair, no matter how carefully and completely I shave, it always looks like I'm sporting a five o'clock shadow. 

Out side of the trans thing, outside of the layer upon layer of foundation I have to slather on to have the bearest hope of passing, the five o'clock shadow causes me trouble even here in the military. You see Dear Reader, in a given Army unit about a third of the personel are at any given moment doing nothing but looking for reasons to put somebody down. A great and easy way of attacking others is to louding and stupidly point out the ways in which they fail to meet the Army's standards of grooming. Basically, if somebody else's hair is a nanometer too long, if his beard is the least bit untamed, if his boots are less than mirrors(actually, now that we've moved to desert boots there's no more shining. It's the best thing in the world, but I worry about the sergeant majors. Bitching about the shiny-ness of boots seemed to give their lives such color and meaning. Now what do they have? Belts? Bitching about proper belts will never be as good as bitching about the shiny-ness of boots.) well, he's not as much of a soldier as the other fellow. That gives the other fellow power, which is usually immediately used to waste the first guy's time.

And it almost always looks like I forgot to shave. And that's real, real lame. Fortunately, I usually have about a month of freedom from facial hair after a session of laser hair removal. Hell, this might almost carry threw to July. I am psyced.

The only other thing standing between me and girling out hard this weekend is that I have no cloths or make-up with me. I could only carry stuff to the mob site that could safely be dumped out in front of other NCOs and officers. That means no lipstick, no eyeliner, no bras, no skirts, no tops, and no girl jeans. I have exactly two articles of civilian cloths, and both of them are decidedly made for the male wearer.

Now, I've been saving up my money, so there's no reason I can't buy a nice set of girl cloths and some lower end make-up and doll myself out nicely. The issue is, and I'm aware that this is going to sound silly, that I hate to buy cool cloths and then throw them away three or four days later. I just feel bad about it. Growing up I was always kept from owning the stuff that I actually wanted to wear, and now I have a hard time getting rid of anything I like. 

I supposed I could solve this by buying ugly cloths, but somehow I just don't see any money getting spent on that course of action. 

But I really want to girl out. I really want to be me for a little while instead of just participating in this role, this straight, friendly Christian, optumistic Army boy who I prentend to be. Oh, it'll be a relief to have a few days off from pretending to not be queer. It will probably even be enough of a relief to sacrifice a cool top(probably a black strappy thing of some description) and a hot pair of jeans, as much as it kills me to do so.

Night Shift Baby

You know what's awesome? Working the night shift. You see, Dear Reader, in the Army often the big stumbling block between you and a job well done is a gaggle of officers and NCOs determined to complicate your life. A lot of this ethos comes from the Army's great love of doing things “The Army Way” as opposed to the “efficient way” or the “way most likely to achieve success.” 

Today, for instance, I was prevented from doing more of my most basic and common duties for a good hour because one of my officers(the Fat Captain naturally) felt the need to chew me out over my lack of responsibility. Now certain, I am a capricious and lazy creature, but here's the incident that raised the captain's ire today: The Fat Captain had sent one of his underlings, a specialist over in the S1, to the shoppett(for you non-Army folks, it's a tiny PX. Or convenience store. Basically an Army convenience store) to pick him up some Copenhagen brand chewing tobacco(that's the only brand the Fat Captain will use. He's claims he doesn't dip, he just uses Copenhagen brand chewing tobacco). After the specialist returned with the Copenhagen brand chewing tobacco, he couldn't find the Fat Captain. The Fat Captain, you see, has a habit of running off for a few hours in the morning and a few more in the afternoon. It's pretty awesome.

Anyway, the specialist found me, and asked if I knew where the Fat Captain was, and that if I saw him, would I please tell him that the Copenhagen brand chewing tobacco was in the possession of the specialist. I said that I was not sure where the Fat Captain was, but that I would let him know that the specialist was looking for him when I saw him. 

Well, a few hours later I was working the night shift(yeah, when we get shorthanded I often have to work both shifts. It is real, real cool.) when the Fat Captain came up to me and asked about his chewing tobacco. I told him that the specialist had it. The specialist had gone back to te barracks for the night before the Fat Captain had returned to his office.

Well.

So, the Fat Captain was without his Copenhagen brand chewing tobacco. It's been a while since I quit smoking(now I only do it while I'm drunk, I swear!), but man, I know it's unpleasant when the body is calling out for nicotine. Still, I don't think that justifies what happened next.

The Fat Captain spent fifteen minutes chewing me out for not taking the chewing tobacco from the lower enlisted fellow and holding onto it for him. The captain felt that it was somehow my responsibility to ensure that his powdered-donut-absorbing ass got ahold of his mouth cancer inducer with all speed. 

Now, the Fat Captain is not my boss. He is not in my chain of command. The only connection we have is that his office happens to be on the same hall as mine, and he outranks me. Outside of that, we have no connection. It is not my job to look out for his chemical needs. It is not my job to organize the tobacco supply chain into his body. I have a lot of other shit going on. I am not his babysitter.

But being a captain, he assumes I and all the other NCOs and lower enlisted in this unit, exist for no other reason to serve him. Not to serve all the officers, but to serve the very special and specific needs of Fat Captain, and Fat Captain only.

Anyway, here's why I like working the night shift: I can actually perform my duties while individuals like Fat Captain are curled up in their bunks. I can do my job without the worry that I'm really supposed to be doing is tracking down cigarettes and energy drinks for somebody who happens to get paid a little more than me.

I came on this deployment to do my job. I love my job, even when it's difficult. What really, really pissed me off is when folks try to prevent me from working by trying to inject inane bullshit into my happy little world.

Combat Queer out.

Apes, Racist Language, The Army, And Mildew

So, tonight one of my officers called President Obama an ape.

Yep, we were watching North By Northwest, and <Spoiler Alert> the climax of the film takes place at Mt. Rushmore. One of the other sergeants mentioned that there is a rocky outcropping right by the giant sculpted headed that looks like an ape. This officer, a captain, says “They can go ahead and start calling it 'Obama.'” And them, after a big laugh at his own joke, he reminded everyone that he was just kidding.

So just remember folks, just because I tend to focus on the sexism, homo and transphobia in these posts, there's still plenty of other stuff going on with the Army.

...

 This captain, he's also regularly quite upset with the media for being so anti-soldier. How exactly are they anti-soldier? Well, the other day during one of his “the Media is oppressing me” rants, I said to him, “As they say in Pulp Fiction: Example.” The Captain could not think of a single specific news story in which soldiers were vilified. He did say that Adriana Huffington was behind a lot of these attacks on soldiers that he couldn't quite remember.

I don't know a lot about the woman, but from what the Captain tells me, she must be an awful, awful woman. She must have hit his dog with a car and laughed about(Seriously, the Captain has a three-legged dog. He's very proud of it. He regularly talks about how, once we get back from the sandbox, he's going to take it around to wounded soldiers in hospitals and use ol' Tripod to cheer them up. 'Cause a three legged dog, that's what recent amputees need.).

Anyway, here's the thing. It may have been said by someone else before, and if it has been it was probably said better, but Dear Reader, let's just talk a quick minute and talk about why someone would feel so victimized by the news. I suspect that on some level people like the Racist Captain(not to be confused with the Fat Captain from my earlier post. Those two are actually pretty good friends) has a lot in common with intelligent mildew. Intelligent mildew, were such a thing to exist, would be terrified of good strong sunlight. The intelligent mildew would know that if it were left out exposed in the sunlight, it would dry up and be destroyed. Intelligent mildew can only thrive in dark, damp places where is has lots of books or cloths to destroy and rot its way through.

In the same way, people like the Racist Captain know that if the truth of who they were was put  on display, they were shrivel up and be destroyed. Despite all the pride they take in and effort they put into their racism, people like the Racist Captain are aware of how shameful their positions are. They feel bad about thinking the way they do but instead of turning those negative feelings into something positive(like, say, turning away from racism) they channel their negative feelings into a deep hatred of those who, the Racist Captain fears, might expose him for what he is.

I used to get angry, but these days I just feel sad for these people. It's really pretty pathetic the ways in which they are broken. Anger is too good for them. Anger suggests that they might be strong, worthy opponent. Pity is the answer. We should pity these poor wretches because they are simply too weak and stupid to do better. It's sad that they are damaged, but it doesn't mean that we should treat them like their opinions matter.