Shampoo...

We didn't have fire drills too often but it was usually in the scanty hours set aside for showers and sleep. I should have known as soon as I had such a warm and unusually luxurious shower and after I put on the fluffy army sweats that I love in spite of my deep hate for the army itself, I should have known that something must ruin the relative joy I felt. And, of course, something loud and obnoxious, unwelcome and unnecessary certainly did. Fifty girls groaned as one when the alarm began. Feet in shower shoes and then out the door. The nights were beginning to have quite a chill to them and the comfort of the shower was soon lost. The smell of the shower was not however. Imagine twenty-five recently celibate males smelling not the sweat crusted dirt of training that had become stamped on all of us, but rather flowery shampoos and soaps and hair glistening with cleanliness. Female bodies in sleepwear and not in combat boots and fatigues as they always saw us. The spaces in our formation tightened as each male drew near the freshness of it all. One by one, each girl found some reason why she had to let her hair down and swish it around a little and refasten it, this time in a loose-hanging pony-tail rather than a smell-encloistering bun. That must have been the signal because suddenly every male felt it acceptable and advisable even to step all the way up on these girls and bury their noses in the freed strands of bliss. It was surprisingly erotic considering there was only the slightest physical contact between nostril and hair, but the stiffness of sexual alertness was as palpable as the wet smells overpowering the air. Although I did not join in the hair tossing and my hair was too short to be let down or put up, I didn't mind when a couple of the guys put their noses in my hair too. I did not feel the tingle of nerves along my spine and down my legs as I was guessing many of those around me were, but I felt some twisted sense of charity in not protesting at the slight invasion of my personal space. It even gave me pleasure to see the younger girls remember their claims as goddesses and the males bowing over and over in acquiescence. In the face of such constant desexing, it was refreshing. That is except for watching Collins.

Collins was the young married girl I had met at MEPS, my battle buddy, the one that never left my side from the first moment to the last. I had met her young husband and I had seen them cry as if life were ending when they had to say goodbye. I had heard endless hours of him and of her love for him. According to the stories she told me, it was the purest, fairy tale kind of love, although it quite often sounded spoiled and naive in the way it translated in my head. I'm sure my perceptions were informed strictly by what I had seen in her since living in basic training with her. Regardless, she wanted it to be the story at least that there was no purer heart than hers and no deeper love than her husband's and it would take the life out of her when he left for Afghanistan not two months after she got home from training. And I had believed her in the last point at least...until the night of the fire alarm. She saw the single girls undoing their hair and the males practically wagging their whole bodies in anticipation and desire, and she barely hesitated before unlocking her long and beautiful, still-wet tresses for them. She let the hair cascade slowly down her back just like the classic dames of the fifties. And then she shook it slightly to release the kinks left from the tight bun her hair had been in. Instantly she was surrounded and she was giggling with pleasure. I felt cold hatred crystallizing and I knew it would never melt.

When we returned to our bunks shortly thereafter, I knew I would not sleep well as righteous anger frothed in my chest. I feel I should explain the anger somewhat. Collins had entered her own particularly righteous phase a couple weeks beforehand, judging everybody, especially myself, for our vulgarity and unkindness. She took offense to us unashamedly discussing sex (out of marriage?!) and illicit substances. She would sit tight-lipped and prim as Anderson and I talked about the boy she had fucked at MEPS right before leaving. And she hated the quick way most of us adopted the harshness of this place, cussing more than any of us used to and more than she claimed to have ever imagined. We were not encouraged to feminity in that place and we did not retain much, which she also frowned at and tried to set the example by persisting in lotions and zit cream. But let us get particular. She apparently considered it the Christian way to go to great lengths to stay away from the mildly retarded Connors as long as she didn't say anything mean directly to her face. Of course, if Collins happened to be talking loudly enough that Connors could hear her "accidentally", how could that be helped. After seeing Connors crying on her bunk more than once after an indignant soliloquy by Collins about the horrors of having to go out of our way to keep Connors "squared away", I began to believe that something evil lurked in Collins' soul. Especially considering that I myself had many times had to be the last in formation (the worst possible thing in basic training) just so Collins could put lotion on her hands and I had to wait for her since I was her battle buddy. Whenever I protested, she would magically become tearful and question my claim to Christianity. She manipulated every situation to get the best possible outcome for herself, quite often at the expense of the well-being of others, and would throw little, quiet, tight-lipped, Christian temper tantrums if she did not find the comfortable position she desired. She managed to get e-mail priveleges and would even have me sit next to her as her beloved battle buddy as she e-mailed family and friends and I seethed with the despair of days and weeks of outdated mail with Tom. She watched my eagerness every evening for Tom's letter and how I would be crushed if there was not one and she watched my quick devouring of every word. She listened to my stifled sobs at night and she knew what caused them. But when I asked her for two minutes to write to him when she was finished, she primly shook her head and told me she did not want to get in trouble. Not to mention that I stood by her as her "battle buddy" when she asked the unpredictable drill sergeants to use the computer in the first place. Not to mention that the sob story she fed them was a bloated form of the truth. I could go on, and I'm sure I will, but back to the particulars of clean hair and the encouragement of lust from one who claimed virginity even in marriage (spiritual virginity is forever she liked to say).

She felt me staring at her back as she redid her hair into a bun before going back to bed. The bun that she always wore and never took down except for showers. Finally, she turned around and looked at me with a smirk. "I was having fun." Unapologetically and with the impunity of a child not used to being corrected and not used to being denied. I wanted to ask her if she would have found it so fun if her loving husband had been witness to these events. I wanted to ask her if she was looking forward to fun the eighteen months she would be deprived of her husband as he went to war. I wanted to rub her face in her own shit. Instead, I let the crystals turn to opaque stone in my soul and I reveled in my hate.