Meat Gazer

            “We got a squatter!” I announced brazenly from the latrine.

            “Ohhhhh!” responded the long line of Crazyhorse men waiting to take a piss test.

           

During a urinalysis to test for illegal drug abuse in the ranks, there is one soldier that documents everything and has to take a class in order to be in that position.  Another soldier is picked at random to be the meat gazer.  That lucky soldier was responsible for going into the latrine with each soldier and watching him urinate to verify that the piss in the cup was indeed his.  Oh my.

When I was selected to be a meat gazer I would turn it into a show, because if I had to do that disturbing duty I might as well have fun with it.  Some guys would get nervous pissing in front of another man and we dubbed that fear “stage fright.”  If a soldier had stage fright we would make them drink copious amounts of water until he couldn’t hold his urine any longer.  That tactic never made sense to me, as I’m sure it diluted any trace of drugs.  To help some friends that had substance abuse problems, I just kept quiet about the dilution.

Some soldiers would just need some help urinating and no, I’m not talking about physically helping them down below, you pervert.  Simply turning on the sink and talking about waterfalls would do the trick.  With other soldiers I would stand about two inches behind them.

“How ya doin’ there, buddy?” I’d awkwardly ask.

“Oh fuck off, man,” they’d all reply.

“Everything going OK down there?”

“I hate you right now.”

To mess with them even more I would wait until I heard them pissing and then start massaging their shoulders.  Since they were in the act of filling the cup, they couldn’t turn to punch me in the throat, so it was funny to see them squirm and freak out.  To civilians this seems creepy, but to those of us watching in line it was pure entertainment.  Every now and then we would have a special case.  A soldier would turn to me with dreaded verbiage.

“Sergeant Vance, I have to go number two,” a soldier said.

“You motherfucker,” I responded with dead eyes.

“So what do we do?”

“You will sit your ass on that toilet and I will grab a chair and sit down right in front of you in the stall.”

“What?”

“Oh yeah, its game on. You don’t get off that easy. Have fun filling that cup with piss while you’re trying to drop a deuce.”

A soldier that had to go poo would be deemed a “squatter.”  It could be an innocent coincidence or it might be an attempt to be in private to swap another soldiers urine sample with his own.  The trick for me was making people feel uncomfortable.  I never had to literally check out somebody doing their business.  I was just boisterous and close enough to deter them from trying to cheat the system or putting me in a shitty spot to either report them or do something immoral.  Finding a spot on the wall just over their shoulders was my point of focus.

The things soldiers have to do in the military isn’t quite what you thought now is it?  No worries, because many of us would rather not enlighten the world of certain duties such as being a meat gazer.  I, on the other hand, don’t give a shit.  I just want to be as accurate as possible so you know exactly what randomness we do on the daily.  Also, this will open your eyes on what to expect with that veteran you just started dating… hahaha!  We’re all a little loopy, so don’t judge.  Even you have issues.