She was obviously European with a full bush and armpit hair. She was leaning back on one arm and had the other on her forehead wiping sweat off her brow. Her foot dangled in the pool and her vagina was staring straight at me.
I tried not to make eye contact. I had learned in high school Latin that if you looked Medusa directly in the eyes, you would turn to stone.
I was not mature enough to handle it. After getting an eye full, I turned and marched right out of there.
Forget about making eye contact with my girlfriends. None of us had the self-control for that.
When that woman left the community sauna, I swear the water was at least a foot shallower. It had been soaked up by all that hair.
I couldn’t bear the thought of getting in the sauna after her. What if something from one of her orifices was lingering in the water? I know chlorine kills germs, but still, there was a lot of hair on that woman. I had to ask myself, what was she trying to cover up?
I decided to use the showers that day instead.
Something snaps after you’ve been making meals for two and then have to cook for one. You stop putting the effort into preparing meals or even eating right.
I think this is why a lot of widows and elderly people develop such poor eating habits. Whenever I see an old man eating alone at a restaurant, I end up crying in the bathroom. Nothing is sadder.
My nutrition suffered during Jon’s deployment. I have never been a fan of TV dinners, so I would create these bizarre food combos that I would eat every day for two weeks straight before moving on to something else.
Here are a few scrumptious meals I would throw together. Watch out, Rachel Ray! Arguably these combinations are better than an MRE:
Week 1-2: Mac and cheese with sliced tomatoes;
Week 2-3: Tuna fish on an everything bagel;
Week 4-5: Grilled cheese, pickle, Campbell’s beef barley soup;
Week 6-7: Cottage cheese and fettuccini noodles with sauce;
Week 8-9: Fried okra, fried egg rolls, and strawberries (in season);
Week 10-11: Flank steak, cooked by itself on the George Forman;
Week 12-13: Hot dogs cut up with ketchup and mac and cheese;
Week 14-15: Tuna fish and a side of green beans with Crazy Salt.
Acceptable snack foods were a peanut butter apple, chocolate Teddy Grahams, vanilla yogurt, Kettle Corn (sweetened popcorn) and, my personal favorite, raw cookie dough straight out of the tube.
Remember, you can also depend on the Schwann’s man for ice cream, or any party appetizer cravings. You can even substitute the above items for a well-balanced Schwann’s meal. Call for a catalog.
It’s during this time in the deployment cycle that you start noticing changes in your body.
Most of us get fat or skinny depending on how we deal with stress. If that is your case, you know what to do about it: either eat more, or eat less.
My problem is I tend not to eat, which makes crazy things happen to my brain when it doesn’t get enough nutrition. I actually blacked out once while driving on I-5. It was at that point I understood that I needed to eat more than once a day.
For those of you seeking comfort in food, think how much you are going to hate yourself when your man emails you with the reunion date and you’re up ten or twenty pounds.
Be smart. Instead of eating the entire box of cookies, stop at three. You’ve got to maintain discipline. In addition to not eating well, I developed some unusual body issues that threw my girlfriends for a loop. I am sharing this in the hope that I am not alone.
The first odd thing that occurred was the appearance of a single dark hair on my boob. It made me feel like a werewolf. I asked my friends if this was happening to them, or if it was normal.
Where had this odd chest hair come from? Was it because I was becoming so independent? Was I starting to produce an overabundance of testosterone?
I even began to think it was because I was no longer sexually active and my body was rejecting its femininity. After all, my legs were getting hairier.
Finally a vote was taken two months later, and the girls told me to just pluck it.
I did and it never came back. But I did later miss it!
At the time of Jon’s second deployment, the war had become a political football. I thought I would be funny and grow my bush out to support President Bush.
I really was not invested in this politically. I was just being lazy and a little crass. My bush developed a mind of its own, however. It became so huge I lost everything in it—keys, hairbrushes, flip-flops.
One day when Michelle could not find Jacob, I really had to think about the last time that I had seen him. I worried that he could have gotten tangled up in there. Everything else had.
At our June Bunco night, somehow the conversation came around to my massive bush. The girls started laughing. I don’t think they believed me.
I showed Natalie.
She screamed.
She thought I had been exaggerating, as usual. She told me it was an absolute fire hazard as well as completely disgusting, and ordered me to shave and trim it back.
In fact, she suggested I celebrate my independence by letting it go on Independence Day.
I said goodbye to my bush during a private ceremony on July 4.
THE SWARM
The attack by a swarm of mosquitoes was one of the most bizarre incidents of that summer.
Natalie and I had spent the day at the beach. When I got home, I hung my bathing suit on a rack on the patio. I was wearing a nightgown—one of my handmade muumuus—when I went to check on my swimsuit. As I walked up to the rack, hundreds of mosquitoes suddenly surrounded me. I screamed, swatting here and there in an effort to disperse the buzzing angry cloud of biting insects before running inside.
You know how some people are always getting bitten or attacked by bugs while other people are not? Well, I’m the one who attracts the bugs.
Later that night, I woke up in pain. I looked in the bathroom mirror and saw bites all over my face and chest. Upon further inspection, I discovered I had bites all over my body.
I counted more than sixty bites on my stomach, five on my “pee pee,” four in each armpit, and too many to count on my back. I felt like something out of a freak show.
I cried as I poured myself an oatmeal bath. I became nauseated, itchy, and in pain. (Just writing about it makes me start to itch all over.) I covered myself in calamine lotion and put on mittens to keep myself from scratching.
I ended up bombing the patio as well as every room in the house. I was sure those mosquitoes were plotting a return to finish me off.
Imagine pretending you don’t have mosquito bites on your pee pee while you’re shopping at the commissary. You just can’t pull off that type of discrete scratch and get away with it.
Instead of a yellow ribbon, can I get some kind of sign to tie around my tree that proclaims “Sexually Deprived for Your Freedom"?
What about wives who silently suffer for months, or a year at a time, while missing the physical act of love?
My neighbor Michelle suggested “self-love.”
Some wives couldn’t talk about it as boldly, but many did have a novel with Fabio on the cover as their choice reading material during those long months.
There was one particular group of ladies who suffered more than the rest: the “preggers.” They were so horny with hormones racing, and no man was around to quench their desires.
Something had to be done to help these courageous mothers.
THE DILDO FAIRY
I heard from close friends that there is a stage in pregnancy when a woman can’t get enough of their man’s sweet lovin'.
And after learning this, I was shocked to find out that many women actually timed their pregnancy around deployments. Many wives wanted to be pregnant the entire time their husbands were gone so when their husbands got home they would be there for the birth.
I thought this reasoning was nuts for a variety of reasons.
First of all, I would want my man around to bring me all my cravings at all hours of the night. And what about those aches and pains? Who is going to rub your feet when your man is deployed?
And don’t even get me started on the hemorrhoids. Who wants to go through that alone?
But many brave members of the silent ranks do plan to be pregnant during their husband’s deployment. When he comes home, they’re about ready to burst. I wanted to ask them if, when they planned this out, whether they had taken into consideration that horny trimester?
That’s also the time when good little wives place a pair of panties in the window hoping for a visit from the dildo fairy.
The dildo fairy knows your husband is gone and you need help. Rather than have you sit on a pickle, the dildo fairy comes by your home one night and leaves a dildo on your front door (usually wrapped and stashed in a decorative bag. How horrible would it be to have an unwrapped dildo on your porch if you lived next door to your CO?!)
I was the Del Mar Housing dildo fairy. I spent my evenings dropping off various dildos for preggers, ringing their doorbells, and then dashing off the porch to hide and see the look on their faces when they opened the wrapping to find their new special toy.
Ok, I admit I found such joy in shopping for dildos! It was very much like shopping for a car. I would ask the sales rep, “What kind of mileage does this one get? Can it go off-road? Is it harmful to the environment? What is your service plan?”
But I never used one. I didn’t want anything that could short circuit or electrocute me near my pee pee. Still, playing the dildo fairy was a hoot.
Many a “pregos” sleep through the night thanks to the dildo fairy. Word quickly spread when young children found their mother’s new toy. Explanations of the device pushed the boundaries of creativity. Who would have thought that a toothbrush holder or doorstop would be so elaborate, or have such an odd shape!
In addition to serving as the dildo fairy, I discovered I had many of the qualities of being a good old-fashioned homemaker, including the ability to sew.
One night while I was making pillows I thought about using Velcro or a zipper to add a pouch to the pillow. That’s when the potential hit me. “How nice to have a little discreet pillow on the bed for KY, condoms, feathers, and dildos! What JOY!”
So I began making dildo pillows. Why I am not a millionaire right now after making so many dildo pillows, I don’t know. I guess the bedroom drawer is hard to beat.
Or maybe it’s all in the Internet marketing.
I had heard there were other ways that military wives quench their sexual frustration. From QVC, a girlfriend purchased a unique showerhead that took care of her frustration.
Every time I called she had just taken a shower—sometimes three a day! Other times she would cut our conversations short, telling me she just had to take a shower—now!
The poor girl was walking around looking like a prune all day. At least she was a relaxed one.
SEX TOY PARTIES
Then there’s the inevitable sex toy party, thrown just before the boys come home. All the ladies get excited and wild with anticipation for this risqué party, especially when they know regular sex is just over the horizon.
A wild wife usually throws these parties, which is good. That means what you purchase is safe with her. She is hosting the party so she can get free merchandise or a discount on her own purchases.
My girlfriends and I went to one of these parties and found it to be as outrageous as we had imagined. While Beenie and I were expecting it to be kinky and sassy, we ended up sitting in the corner like two prudes.
What I did not expect was the nut job freak show salesperson. Why are the most disgusting people—the ones you never want to imagine having sex with anyone, anywhere—the ones selling these products? They make the evening even more uncomfortable because sex is all they want to talk about.
Inevitably, the saleswoman began passing around these dildos and describing her experiences with each one. I was trying to avoid throwing up. Then it took a turn for the worse. The scene was no longer cute or funny as images of this obese woman unraveled before us.
Obviously in need of dental work, poorly dressed, and more than a little skanky, she painted a vivid picture of sex with her lover using the very device you were … holding in your hand! I dropped a purple dildo as fast as my hand could open! I must have let out a small shriek.
She laughed. “Don’t worry, I wash all my toys and samples in the dishwasher.”
Oh, how comforting! “Remind me not to eat at her house,” I mumbled to Beenie under my breath.
I sank deeper into the couch as the rest of the girls laughed while touching and fondling this woman’s collection of fake genitals. Things started to get very raunchy very fast. I felt like I was participating in something dirty.
“Oh no. Is Jesus mad at me right now?” I wondered. “I’m married, but for some reason I feel so dirty, like I’m sinning!”
It was all too much—the penis pencils, sex oils, giant dildos, the edible panties. I couldn’t bring myself to buy anything.
When the party finally ended, and while others continued talking and laughing about their new toys, I applied layer after layer of hand sanitizer in an effort to help wipe the ickiness away and feel clean again.
I just prayed to God that after seven months it would be like riding a bike and that I would just pick it back up again. After the sex party, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it again.
THE HUSTLER STORE
My neighbor Michelle and I had many things in common, particularly our taste for a certain type of fashion. Without planning it, we would purchase the same lingerie at Wal-Mart (yes, the California Wal-Mart sells lingerie) and have a good laugh over it.
Our quiet Catholic husbands had a tough time with this. They didn’t like our discussions of such scandalous topics as lingerie while standing in our respective bedroom windows.