Just dickin’ around
photo by keiko guest in atlanta
By Karen Jones
Years ago I was prepping my Christmas card mailing list and I asked my husband to identify a couple that I didn’t remember. He said it was a married couple that he knew while stationed in South Korea for a year on a non-command sponsored tour (code for that the family wasn’t invited). I wanted to know more about this couple that I had been sending warm holiday wishes to the past few years. My husband said, “Oh, well, they’re nice enough; but, they would screw around on each other whenever he was on TDY. She would bang other guys in the squadron and he’d screw other chicks while out of the country. They had an understanding.”
Like hell am I sending them Christmas greetings anymore!
Let the free-for-all begin. Some troops are crushed when they get a year long remote assignment to Korea; but, then there are the ones who can’t wait to let the good times roll! Showing up in a foreign country and leaving the ol’ ball and chain at home with no real way to keep tabs on him is the perfect set-up for some serious fantasy and freedom. (I am mostly talking about the men here because there are more men than women in the military.) He can chuck the family responsibilities and that silly housewife for all that time. Checking in here and there on the home front of domestic serenity while sowing his wild oats overseas almost makes it like an alternate reality—a double life.
My husband spent that year in Korea observing all sorts of interesting arrangements, besides the Christmas card couple. For example, there was one guy who literally had a girlfriend type in every port from Malaysia to Thailand to Singapore and almost the entire Far East. He would roll into town with his helicopter squadron, wave his women around in front of everyone, and spout out the sexual antics that he would surely accomplish. Oh, that’s right! Did I mention he was married and his wife wasn’t in on the plan?
After several months into Don Juan’s tour, he got served with divorce papers. The man was literally crushed. He cried, balled, and even wailed in front of his squadron that his life was ruined—over and out. This somewhat puzzled the guys. They wondered why he even cared that his wife dumped him. She was just an insignificant burr in his saddle blanket of sexual dalliances before the papers showed up.
I can only offer up the idea that his wife’s divorce papers killed him because of what she represented and not necessarily about the woman herself. His wife represented a stability and security in his life. While he was in Korea and other corners of the East on his travels, she was at home keeping the lawn manicured. When his tour ended, he knew he would be returning to nothing. That is what he was crying about. She was at home holding down the fort and she finally folded it up and took it with her. Screw him—all that while he was off serving his country and his dick across the Pacific.