We woke to an extremely cold dawn that day. The first ones to get out the bed were Kati and Petra, just as always. They were already making their bed well before six, when we others were busy digging ourselves under the blanket as deep as humanly possible. Kati was your typical average bimbo, who spent most of her time in front of the mirror. She was the one who had to wear full mascara even during the combat training sessions. Maybe I would’ve liked her more if she had any other topic than herself. For her, on the other hand probably I was equally annoying as my morning routine consisted only facewashing, toothbrushing and haircombing. It’s not like on regular mornings I didn’t take my time with a black eyeliner to emphasize my metalchickness - in case someone wouldn’t recognize it by my usual the torn black top, strapped black leather boots, and tattoos - but in a military base, during a bootcamp wasting even a single precious second on ANYTHING else but sleeping? No. Way.
Petra was a much more curious case. The first moment I saw her, I became relieved that I wouldn’t be the only lesbian woman in our room. If I’ve ever met a walking talking butch stereotype, that was her. Buzzcut hair, buffed muscles, male clothes, and such masculine manners that terrified even many men of our platoon. You could ask if she was so clearly a lesbian, knowing the stance of the militaries about homosexuality - especially around then in the mid 2000s - how come they let her join. Moreso in the mildly, though then secretly homophobic Hungary. Well it will probably sound surprising, but the army here didn’t have a single discipline against gays and lesbians. Before anyone started to praise it for its progressiveness, I have to tell you, the reason behind it is probably much less flattering. The rules of the military were partially written during the communism, and naturally during those times homosexuals didn’t exist in Hungary as this disease only affected the decadent West. And if something doesn’t exist, why would you need rules against it?
So, back to Petra. Every other woman avoided her, and while I couldn’t be more unhappy about the treatment they gave her, I secretly felt relieved not to be the one who receives it. Was it painful to me, that Adri was among the most hateful ones about her behind her back? Nah, tots not at all. Why would it be painful when the girl you have crush on (it was during the first week) talks about how disgusted she is by that “dyke” in your room? Then came the first Friday afternoon of the bootcamp, when a guy came to take Petra home, and she became a purring little kitten in his arms. As it later turned out, she wasn’t even bi, but what did I know back then about such things?
After the two of them, the next one who got thrown out of bed was Hajnalka. She was the most invisible person I’ve ever met in my life. She was always around, but I don’t remember saying more than three sentences to her, for the duration of the six-week basic training course.
For the last Adri, Mariann and I got out of the bed. Mariann was a fortysomething woman, and she quickly became the room mom. Somehow even though she wasn’t the loudest or the most strong-minded in the room, everybody considered her the boss of the six of us. And yes, last but most certainly not least, there was Adri, this celestial creature, who had taken my breath away in the first moment, and annexed my entire mind ever since. Probably it would’ve been much easier if I loved only her looks, but the more and more we got to know each other, the more I fell in love with her. I loved everything about her. Her ever-smiling round face, her joyful brown eyes, her long maroon hair, even her adorably chubby shape that she hated so much about herself. I was all over her for how she spoke, how she tucked her hair behind her ears when she spoke, how her laugh jingled when she heard or saw something funny… We had known each other for five weeks, and I still couldn’t find anything I didn’t like about her. My whole body was tingling when I was around her, and I couldn’t do anything about it.
We went to the bathroom together to do our usual morning routine.
"I look like shit" I observed as I was looking into the mirror.
"What are you talking about?" replied Adri. "I’d love to look as shitty as you do.”
I looked at her with dopey eyes. I really wanted to reply with something flattering to her, but given what I planned to confess her in the evening, it would’ve been a huge mistake.
"As I see you slept much better than I did last night" I said as my attention shifted back to my reflection in the mirror. It would’ve been hard to argue against this statement. My oval face was worn, my brown eyes were closer to red because of the bloodshot, and my dark brown hair looked so messy like I didn’t a mere eight hours ago wash the Csobánkan mud from it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about my looks, but at the moment I looked terrible. Of course it’s possible that only because my goal has never been to be loved for my looks, but I generally never had problems with it… Well, it did bother me a little that the battle for the people’s attention between my breast and face has always been undisputedly won by the latter, and not even because it was either better, or worse looking than the average. But… you know… whatever.
"I can’t remember how I slept last night. It was lights out for me as soon as I went to bed” said Adri.
"Oh, you don’t get away so easily today" I laughed. "Tonight we are gonna party in the HEMO.”
"Please! You can be such a drill instructor sometimes" she laughed.
"Maybe, but if I wasn’t here, your sad ass would be sitting in our room alone all night while everybody else is out partying."
"Fanny, there’s is a fifteen clicks march waiting for us this afternoon. The last thing I’ll want after that is to go dancing."
“Who talked about dancing? That’s for the weak!”
“Sure” she raised her eyebrow “I forgot, tough metal chicks like you go to parties only to get drunk, and make fun of people who dance.”
“Yup - I nodded with a wide grin on my face.
“Oooh, how much more believable it would be, if when drunk, you wouldn’t dance like everybody else.”
“I deny that outrageous claim!” I swung the water from the head of my toothbrush at her.
“Too bad I have photographic evidence.” She answered smugly as she wiped the drops off of her face.
“Nobody would believe you that’s not a fake.”
“Maybe, but would you really risk ruining your fame?”
“Are you trying to blackmail me, miss?”
“I’m a good catholic, I’d never do such thing” she played the offended.
"Good. Then I have no reason to fear of a retaliation. You’ll come, and that’s an order!"
"Acknowledged, sarge!" she saluted with the most serious face she could manage, then started to laugh. The sparking of her beautiful voice to me sounded like angels were ringing their tinklers. As smart and observant girl she was, I still can’t understand how she never realized how lovingly I looked at her sometimes. Sure, I tried my best to hide my feelings, but I caught myself several times watching her with “those” eyes.
Our boot camp was full of exhausting days, but without a doubt, this was going to be the worst of them. A nice pleasant crawling in the mud in the morning, then after the delicious lunch a little march in full gear from the hills of Csobánka to the training base of Szentendre. We were hoping they weren’t serious about this latter one, but our platoon leader, Sfc. Szabó wasn’t the type that didn’t take a task seriously, so we had to do every single object that was on the list.
He was a rather curious man. Imagine any drill instructor ever from the movies, only with a muzzle attached to his face. At the time the Hungarian Army had these special bootcamps so the soldiers who enrolled and immediately received at least sergeant rank can have at least some taste of how it is to be a soldier. And the emphasis here is on the “some taste” part, as this kind of enrolling was available only to people with special skills the military wouldn’t want to lose because of the dehumanizing hardships of an actual bootcamp. Aircraft mechanics, IT personnel, engineers, secretaries of commanders, accountants, and well… you know, me. It goes without saying a girl without any kind of special skills like me normally would’ve been thrown into a regular bootcamp, but as I had inside help and already had a rank, they couldn’t do anything else than sending me to the favored people’s bootcamp. Well, “course”, as in the army nobody ever dared to actually call it a bootcamp, except for the ones who tried to hide this was the origin of their military knowledge.
Needless to say when at almost 7 PM we arrived at the base, covered in mud, and clothes bathing in sweat despite the freezing cold, neither of us felt like it wasn’t a real bootcamp. We were so exhausted that death seemed like a promising alternative, but of course even that wouldn’t have saved us from the fun chores like weapon cleaning, and storing, boot cleaning, platoon assembly. If there is a thing that’s eternal in the Army, it’s the ideology of maintaining the look of operability, even when in fact everything is in pieces. In this particular case the manpower - storyteller included - without a single doubt was in pieces.
By the time we finished two hours later, the last thing I wanted to do is to party in the HEMO, but I had to stick to my plan. When we got back to our room, we quickly got rid of our dirty clothes and fell into our beds. We should’ve moved, go to the shower, preparing for the night, but at the moment our body and mind weren’t exactly on friendly terms with each other. We were agonizing on our bed for while before I managed to kick myself in the ass to finally move. It was one thing to be so exhausted that the soothing arms of a sleep was even more inviting than my plans with Adri, but to admit this defeat? What kind of puny loser would do such thing? It’s not like I was headstrong, or something, but probably the only reason why we haven’t sent men to the Mars yet is because nobody told my I can’t do it.
It took minutes till I managed to breathe some life into the others, starting with Adri. With awfully slow and painful moves she got up, wrapped a towel around her body, and went to the bathroom. A minute later I went after her. After our conversations, these were the best parts of my days. I didn’t dare to always go to the shower with her because I was afraid it would quickly become suspicious, but we were there together more times than not. And I was ashamed of myself because of it. Not because of the time we spent together, but for the fact I was checking her out in the shower every single time. I’ve never done such thing before because I always tried my best to avoid justifying any of the negative stereotypes about lesbians. But with Adri, I failed. I knew I shouldn’t do it, yet I always searched for the opportunity to admire every single square centimeter of her body.
I stepped into the shower where we had two separate stalls. Adri was in the first one, already under the shower head, so on my way to the second, I managed to take a peek at her wonderfully full bottom, and as she was turning, I had a glimpse of her full breasts and diligently trimmed pubes too. For a second, I lost my breath, but I quickly regained it so I hung my towel in its place and stepped into the stall. Despite the freezing November night, and the tiring day out in the cold I turned the shower down to the coldest setting possible. I needed a clear head, and now clear was the least accurate expression about it. I had one last glimpse of Adri when she left the shower, but after that, I was finally able to turn my full attention to finally getting clean.
By the time I finished, the others were almost ready to move out. I was so deep in my head, I didn’t realize so much time passed. As I looked around, everyone was almost ready to leave, except for Adri, who was running even more behind than I did.
"Kitten! I thought we agreed on we’d have the party of the decade tonight" I looked at her scoldingly.
"I know, I know, don’t worry" she smiled. "I’ll be a little late, but I’ll be going for sure."
"Late? No-no. I know you well enough to know, if I don’t drag you there, you won’t be coming."
"I will, I promise. Laci told me he’ll call me back, but as soon as I talked to him, I’ll go."
Laci was Adri’s fiancé. He worked at some multinational corporation in the middle management. He had to do lots of after-hours work so he could get higher on the corporate ladder. It felt like one of those oh so typical cover stories that men use to cover their infidelity, but Laci seemed like a decent guy.
I quickly got myself together, so I could leave to the pub with the others. From the door, I looked back at Adri who was lazily lying on her bed.
"Don’t bail out of this, Kitten."
"I won’t. I’ll go, I promise" she said with a wide smile on her face. I had no doubt she meant it, but I was under no illusion that she wouldn’t do it in the end.
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