The year was 2006. Summertime, Balad Air Base, Iraq. I'd been living there for about a year and a half, working as a radar contractor for Lockheed Martin, and was beginning to feel like a permanent fixture. It was about hot enough to fry an egg on my forehead.
It had been a relatively uneventful standard 12 hour work day at the radar shop, and all I wanted to do was get back to my room so I could watch.... documentaries... and go to sleep. We loaded into the truck and, since the shop was located between two runways on the airfield, radioed the air traffic control tower for permission to cross. It sounded like this:
"Ground, radar 1"
"Radar 1 ground"
"Ground, radar 1 is at the ATCALS site, we'd like to enter delta eastbound, cross 1-4 and bravo and exit south of the tower."
"Radar 1 hold short runway 1-4."
"Roger, radar 1 will hold short runway 1-4 on delta."
And we held short. It was at this point that I realized I had to pee.
Nothing happened for a really long time. No planes landed, no planes took off. We sat there in the truck and waited for the tower to contact us. Finally, after about 40 minutes or so, most of which I spent doing the seated pee-pee dance in the back of the truck and contemplating power-washing a section of the flightline, a drone came buzzing in at about 4 miles per hour. It landed well short of us and turned off the runway.
"Radar 1, ground. Proceed as requested, report off."
"Radar 1 copies, proceeding across 1-4 and bravo. Will report when off."
It always happened that way with a new batch of air traffic controllers. It takes a while to get used to a new airfield I guess. At the time, however, I found it hard to be forgiving since my eyeballs were floating and whatever muscle it is that keeps people from peeing themselves was just about strained to the point of failure.
We parked the truck and I bolted.
The room where I lived was in a compound surrounded by a chain link fence; cypher-lock, big concrete barricades and all that. It was towards the middle of the compound, so there were a few hundred yards between the gate where we'd park the work truck and the small island of comfort that my little window-mounted air conditioner struggled so valiantly to maintain.
I ran ahead, got through the gate and made a bee-line for the nearest porta potty. It was only about 25 yards away and I reached it in about five strides.
The second I opened the door to that 120 degree torture chamber I knew I was in trouble. The blast of rancid heat that greeted me was enough to simultaneously cook and gag a maggot. I toughed it out and stepped in. On the left wall hung the little urinal thing. It was filled absolutely to the brim with foulness. When I say full to the brim, I mean if someone with an eyedropper had administered one more single drop of liquid, the surface tension would have given way and created a new Lake Nasty on the floor, populated with chunks of urinal mints and chewing gum.
I turned to the main bowl and began decompressing at maximum capacity. As I regained some modicum of relaxation, I glanced to my left and peeked out of the little vent that all porta potties have around the top. I can do that, because I'm 6'8". It's a little known perk.
There, coming toward me at full speed was Mike, our radio maintenance guy. Mike was 5'4" or so, and fairly round. He had his head down, his shoulder up, and was stampeding purposefully towards that left wall of the porta potty upon which hung that grotesque receptacle of evil and bad things. I looked down at it in terror as each of Mikes thundering strides sent concentric circles vibrating like a nervous chihuahua across the surface of the dark and vile pool of filth.
Mike didn't know. He couldn't have known.
He might have known.
I bailed in mid-stream, scrambled backwards for the door, fumbled behind me for the latch, and barely had the door open when every pound of Mike slammed into the side of the porta potty like a wrecking ball.
The world slowed down. A Mike-sized dent in the wall pressed in towards me, carrying the now mobile instrument of death mounted there along with it. The liquid within became a living thing; coiling, poising, angrily gathering its strength even as I fell in slow-motion backwards through the door. The structure shuddered. My soul shuddered. Indeed the entire world seemed to shudder as that resilient plastic reached its limit, paused for effect, and snapped itself back into shape like a rubber band.
The resulting explosion blasted disgusting in every direction with the force of a hellfire missile. My ponderous bulk was in a state of free fall, through the door and out onto the rocks. Everything from my knees down was still at ground zero. Just as the top half of my body hit the ground, my unfortunate shins and shoes were struck by the excrement detonation and were rendered instantly unworthy of ever being worn again.
I scrambled like a frightened squirrel trying to get out of a dryer. My pants and shoes were off and in a pile on the ground even before the blowout had finished happening. I knelt on the blisteringly hot walkway retching miserably as Mike and a number of other spectators doubled over in laughter at my expense, thinking only that I had been interrupted in the middle of taking a leak.
When the door to the chamber slowly swung open and the full impact of the devastation became apparent, that bastard Mike laughed even harder.
I walked in my underwear the remaining few hundred yards to my room, on hot rocks in my bare feet, past dozens of armed military personnel, none of whom said so much as a word. What was there to say? I got back to my room, got my things and hopped in the shower for so long Lockheed Martin forgot I worked for them and put out a job listing for my position.
Good times.
