Tough Shit, part two

No shit, there I was; in the middle of a barren desert wasteland with my dick in my hand, dickhead boss yelling in my face.

Henceforth begins part two of the Kevin Smith inspired Tough Shit series, inspired by the book he penned of the same name. Like Kev, I’ll try to describe some stuff that went down that wasn’t great at the time, but I ended up learning something from. Turn a negative into a positive, frown upside down. All that. Here goes!

Back in aught four, my Army national guard unit finally deployed to Afghanistan. We were in some semi-elite unit, kind of like the JV of the special missions world. Our job was to sneak deep behind enemy lines, then watch the happenings of enemy positions whilst hopefully remaining undetected and relaying said activities back to whoever was in charge of the whole mess. We didn’t do much of that while overseas, because hey, someone invented drones. Mostly we did standard infantry shit, the occasional surveillance gig, and some other odd jobs that came up. 

Before we got deployed, a bunch of our senior guys parlayed their semi-elite status to get hired by Blackwater to protect Dignitaries in Iraq. This was before Blackwater became not so well liked, and people thought private military contractors were cool or whatever. Our senior dudes that worked this contracting gig got some experience and training on PSD, a fancy acronym for Protective Security Detail, or what most people would describe as bodyguard work. Kind of like Nicholas Cage in that movie where he protects that lady who sings good. But less rain and romance. After getting all this PSD training, our senior dudes came back and trained the rest of us on how to guard bodies because, hey, you never know. Anywho, before even making it in-country our bosses in Afghanistan heard about this PSD capability we apparently had, bob’s your uncle, and we all rotated through 3 months of bodyguard work protecting some big Army boss in charge of stuff. 

Now don’t get me wrong, the 3 months of being a bodyguard wasn’t all bad. While in this role, we were headquartered on some big air base with lots of choice amenities that the small FOBs we bounced around the rest of the year couldn’t hold a candle to. Plus there was more action in the regions where we protected the big boss, which was appealing to the even more idiotic 21 year old version of myself. Also since we were working directly for the man, we got other perks like being able to eat first and better armored humvees, because of our status by association. So that was nice. 

That said, the dude we were protecting was a dickhead. Giant dickhead. Pretty much treated us like knuckle dragging morons, and would frequently launch into tirades about any of the minor vagaries of life. I recall him screaming at everyone in sight at a command center because of some miscommunication between him and his Afghan Army counterpoint, like it was the world’s fault that language and cultural differences were making his life moderately difficult. That kind of stuff was pretty much whatever, as personally I could tune him out and concentrate on my job of making sure no one was actively trying to kill us at the moment. Though our boss held us in low regard, he did give us some space most of the time, as I think he somewhat understood that he sort of depended on us for not dying and all. Plus he thought it was “cool to have a bunch of guys who would take a bullet for me”. I put this in quotes because he actually said this routinely. Anytime he said this, I always thought the same thing. Yeah, I’ll try to shoot someone before they shoot you, but I sure as fuck ain’t diving in front of a bullet for your ass.  

Also the bodyguard gig was mind numbing AF. Long hours of standing around while trying to pay attention as much as possible. I never had any desire for this kind of work, and had tried out for our unit specifically because I liked the idea of being offensive rather than defensive. Waiting around for someone to kill me just does not sound like my idea of fun. This was exactly that, but hey, I had to do it because it’s the Army. They don’t really give you a choice. 

A good amount of the work was just getting this dickhead from point A to point B as he went from meeting to meeting at various bases and villages. In the middle of the high desert, where our air superiority was not so superior due to elevation and RPGs, this meant sometimes days of driving. My speciality was the machine gun, so that meant I was standing in a humvee turret for 12-20 hours a day as we sped across strips of land that resembled roads in name only. You may have heard that deserts are kind of hot. This is correct. They are hotter when you’re clad in kevlar, and the best thing you can do to keep heat stroke at bay is to pump water constantly. Luckily my teammates would hook me up and pass the occasional bottle of water up through the turret (big hole cut in the roof of the humvee) to me. I got good at opening bottles one handed so I could keep my other hand on the gun, and would only spill a little as we bounced from pothole to crater, choking the whole thing down in 3  or 4 big gulps. The guys inside the humvee were also constantly slamming them, but just as what goes up must come down, what goes in must come out. We would sometimes go 6-8 hours without stopping. Since my teammates were inside an armored vehicle with no way of shooting out(the shooting being my job up top), they were free to use both hands to relieve themselves in a gatorade bottle or similar. Hell, even our driver got good at doing his job with his  knees leaving his hands free to take care of more pressing matters. Not so much for me; though I was able to develop a one handed method of relief that worked reliably on the rare smooth road, as my crotch in the turret was about head level with my comrades inside, they would not be happy if I attempted this feat on the more rough roads that were the standard. As I write this, I do recall now that some dire circumstances of over hydration led to a few such attempts. They were indeed not happy. Regardless of my follies, my teammates were good dudes. Anytime we stopped, immediately one of them would relieve me in the turret so I could go relieve myself on the side of the road.

Which leads us to the side of one particular road. In the middle of nowhere. After some ten hours in the turret on a particularly hot day, in which I had ingested the recommended amount of water to stay savvy. My mate had rushed to the turret, I had rushed to the road. Sweet relief ensued immediately. Then from behind me, the yelling began. Over my shoulder I could feel the breath of my boss as he dressed me up and down, and up again. How dare I remove my member in front of the likes of him! Were I not civilized, but instead from some foul stock of questionable lineage? Only a brainless thug could make such a social blunder. And did I not see that an Afghan General (whom I’d routinely pissed into the same ditch as) was within viewing range of my deed? On and on this went, for some time. 

Beyond the tongue lashing, I received no further discipline or punitive action. But for the rest of the drive, the ridiculousness of the incident kept bouncing around my brain. Here I was, in the middle of nowhere, and I had no choice but to listen to some dickhead scream at me because he was technically my boss. I just had to stand there and take it, apologize for my basic human necessities, and say lots of yes sirs and no sirs until he was content that his point had been made. Had I done anything else, offered anything but blind supplication, I would be immediately subject to the draconian discipline of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. At best I would be cleaning latrines with a toothbrush for a month, at worst I’d be federally restricted from holding anything but the most menial of jobs for the rest of my life. As I reflected on the nature of my current power dynamic, the seed that would bloom into the quest for financial independence was spawned. Right there I decided that somehow, some way, I had to figure out how to not have a boss someday. 

So ends the story of Tough Shit part two, or how I learned that working for the man plain sucks, thus spurring the desire for a comparatively unfettered life. Thanks for sticking it out so far, and I hope you arrive at a similar conclusion with less drama. Stay tuned for more!