There's Something About Sunny

Every day we have a 1500 meeting with the XO, 1LT Sean Sullivan, where he gives us all sorts of perky little messages from higher command. Higher Command always wants a vehicle or two for some convoy, like that friend who's always borrowing your favorite skirt and returning it with a suspicious stain and not even offering to pay for the cleaning, the bitch. Anyway, besides the usual "give us your shit" messages, there were a couple of new rules we needed to tell our soldiers to adhere to…namely, eating at the Division dining facility is now off limits.

Pardon? Why is that, pray tell?

Well apparently, Higher Command told us conspiratorially (Higher Command is a HUGE gossip) that some idiot up at Camp Taji got drunk and stabbed some other guy at a party. Over a girl. I'll wait a moment to let that sink in.

Let's analyze this situation, shall we? First of all, the guys were drinking. We aren't talking the kind of drunk you strap on with a couple of shots of Jose Gold. Any booze one gets in country is probably of the bathtub variety, which may make one go blind. Clearly it does nothing for one's problem solving skills. Second of all, the one guy brought his knife to a party. At the sake of sounding facetious, Iraq is not the ghetto. Camp Taji is even more plush than Camp Liberty, there is no reason to run around with some 5 inch long pig-sticker hanging off your belt. Clearly this dumbass went looking for trouble and found it. At least he was well armed, hmm? Must've been a boy scout. Finally, they were fighting over a girl. Out here menfolk suffer from an affliction I like to call "Army Goggles", which are similar to Beer Goggles except they result from long periods of celibacy with only men's magazines for comfort. After a few months in the scratch, even the practically deformed start looking pretty darn good. I bet this girl wasn't all that, and in any case, couldn't she have done something to stop the two assholes fighting before one of them got an involuntary orifice?

I'm going to go off on a little bit of a tangent, bear with me, I promise to bring it around again. Females are stupid. We really are. So few of us have mastered the fine art of blowing guys off with finality. Take my stalker situation, for example. Did I mention I have a stalker? Well actually, I have several.

1. Stalker No. 1 is El Gordo Nasty-Pants from Bravo Company. This guy is making an Olympic Sport of trying to get in my frilly under-roos with no subtlety whatsoever. He's at least a decade older than me and let's be frank, he's a bit on the slimy side. However, he's at least got the balls to tell me in no uncertain terms that he wants to be my Relief-For-Cause memo waiting to happen. I myself do not have the same balls of brass. Tonight, when he came up to me outside of the dining hall, I reacted the same way I always do – with jokes. He said, "Hey Miss Sunshine, in PT's again? Do you ever work?" I cheerfully told him to kiss my ass, to which he responded, "Oh I would love to." I leave you to ponder the ick factor.

2. Stalker No. 2 is one of the Joes on guard duty outside the dining facility. Not only does he recognize me even when I'm not in uniform, but he asks me if I'm okay if I miss a meal and tells me if they have cottage cheese or diet coke. I assume he notices that these are the items I most often leave the DFAC with, but still...slightly creepy. I feel like big brother is watching.

3. Stalker No. 3 is the most recent of the bunch. I don't know his name but he works the mail room and has a gold tooth, earning him the moniker "Mr. Bling-Bling" from SFC Brown. He recognizes me, always has some smart-ass comment about where my mail is coming from (mom, friends, bb.com or amazon.com) and when he found out that I work out (I assume the bodybuilding.com boxes were his first clue) he started pestering me for workout advice. Last night was the kicker, he said he was going to come work out with me. Then he told me I had nice legs.

So why don't I just blow these douchebags off? Why doesn't any girl just fix an annoying guy with an emasculating stare and say, "I'm just not interested"? I blame our ovaries. No, really. Bear with me. Our ovaries and their conflicting hormonal advice (our brains want one thing, our reproductive organs are on another plane entirely) are responsible for many of girls' less desirable traits, from our inability to blow off potential suitors before they resort to stabbing each other, to our tendency to morph into Uber-Bitch in the face of competition.

Even if you aren't consciously attracted to the male in question, your ovaries are still sizing him up as a potential sperm donor. Occasionally your ovaries will take over your brain and make bitchy comments about the other girls concerning the amount of fat in their ass, etc. Menfolk think we're just being catty, when in reality it's just biology. Like lusting after chocolate or shoes, we are helpless in the face of our hormones. It's hard to make bitchy comments about girls in DCUs, though…they're so shapeless and unflattering anyway, that'd be like rubbing lemon juice into a papercut. Even my ovaries are not that cruel.