Hoddernot

1.

Kerns was the worst, or the best, depending on how you looked at it. He used all the websites—MySpace, Match, Hot or Not—to arrange a date for each of his fourteen days of leave. Once, he talked on webcam with a nurse in Ohio, trying to get her to take her shirt off while I hid offscreen with two other guys. “I swear I’m alone,” he said, a cigarette hanging from his mouth. “Everyone’s out on guard duty.” She wouldn’t go for it.

This was in summer 2004 at our base in eastern Iraq, just outside the town of Jalawla. I spent most of my days either riding in a Humvee and worrying about IEDs, or sitting in front of a desktop computer and waiting for images to load on Hot or Not, where users posted a photo of themselves for others to rate on a scale of one to ten.

Sometime in June, after another multi-hour evening patrol, I sat at a plywood desk and typed a message to a girl on AOL Instant Messenger. Her AIM screen name was SxyGillian86, and when she typed back, she often added smiles made from the parentheses and colon keys, or hearts made from the less-than symbol and the number three. Two years younger than me, she’d graduated high school that spring and lived with her parents in Litchfield, Ohio. She told me many times that she liked soldiers—she’d dated one as a junior—and that I looked hot in my uniform photo. I told her I just wanted our deployment to end so I could eventually get out of the military. Other than that, we didn’t go into much detail about my experiences in Iraq, which was fine with me.

Talking to her assured me the world back home still existed. I liked to imagine her as she typed. I liked to imagine her thinking of me as I sweated and ached on endless patrols and raids. I used an AIM screen name I’d created in seventh grade: HughNike.

I’d seen her photo while clicking through Hot or Not—one of those high school yearbook headshots, with a blue backdrop spattered with pastel colors. Her brown eyes and dimpled cheeks glimmered. Her unblemished skin sparkled in the camera’s flash. She wore a black headband, and her straightened hair fell past her shoulders. A thin gold necklace with a crucifix hung around her neck, disappearing into a red V-neck top. This made Gillian even more attractive to me, a confirmed Catholic who begged in his journals for God to save him from IEDs.

It was the second year of the Iraq War: A month before the Coalition Provisional Authority handover. Months after Abu Ghraib. Months after four American contractors were hanged from a bridge in Fallujah. Although people talked about these events nonstop—some, like Fallujah, occurred just a couple of hours from my base—I did everything I could not to think about them.

I rated SxyGillian86 a ten out of ten.

2.

All of this flirting took place against a backdrop of charred Humvees, destroyed homes, and explosion plumes on the horizon. Hot or Not was just another element of the absurd contrast between loneliness and companionship, war front and home front, porta-john onanist and webcam cybersex. Plus, it was fun to say out loud. And we soldiers, full of excitement, said it quickly.

What’s your rating on Hoddernot?

She messaged me on Hoddernot.

Need to check my Hoddernot.

We posted pictures of ourselves in uniform, desperate to benefit from serving in a war many of us didn’t understand, desperate for a connection and for someone to acknowledge us and, ultimately, acknowledge that a war was going on, that it was real.

As I typed online, I was learning to utilize a new and evolving identity: combat veteran. When a woman didn’t respond quickly enough, I’d emphasize that I was in Iraq, my time was limited, I might have to leave very quickly, I could die, and so on. Depending on the day, there was truth to this: We could sign out a desktop for only about thirty minutes, and there was often a line of men outside waiting. Other times, while checking to see my new messages, I’d get a call over the radio: Time to go out.

Hot or Not had more than four million members around the world. I had turned twenty about a month before I set foot in Iraq. I often complained, like other soldiers my age, about my friends from high school who were dating while I trudged through sand overseas. The closest thing I had to a dating life involved chatting on AIM or getting the occasional grainy photo. Hot or Not was a kind of stopgap: You could message other users if you paid a $4.95 monthly fee. Many of us paid it immediately. I was making about three grand a month, tax-free, and had no expenses at home, since I’d lived in a college dorm before going over. I’d joined the reserves in high school, three months before 9/11. Weeks into my second semester, while I served part-time, I had to quit college when our unit received orders for active duty. Months later, I was in Iraq.

After Gillian and I both ranked each other tens, we talked on AIM for months. (Getting an AIM screen name was akin to getting a phone number.) Our conversations were about typical teenage concerns: music, movies, plans for college. She asked when I’d be coming home. The rumor was that our deployment would end by 2005, I told her, but no one knew anything for sure. When I said I’d probably get leave after the summer, she asked if we could meet up.

3.

Iraq was the first war where soldiers could return from a raid or patrol and immediately sign onto a dating site and chat with a woman—as I once did—as she worked at a Midwestern Sunglass Hut. There were many moments when guys, returning from outside the wire, threw their gear in the hooch and sprinted to get online. I can still hear soldiers, eager to hit the high-traffic chat times, yelling, “It’s ten at night in Ohio!”

If America was “at the mall” while we were at war, as it was memorably said by a lieutenant colonel in 2006, then these dating sites were a rare space where the military-civilian divide lessened—and, like many of my platoonmates, I chatted with a lot of women who worked at malls. I don’t know how many I chatted with during my time in Iraq, but it had to be at least in the fifties. I know I probably rated thousands of Hot or Not photos, but only a small percentage of those women actually responded.

Though I signed up every few days for one of the twenty or so desktop computers, I never put my name on the sign-in sheet for one of the six phones. Those were for men calling wives and girlfriends and kids, which seemed from the outside like a chore: a kind of check-in rather than something they looked forward to. One night, on my way to chat with Gillian, I saw a lieutenant walk out of the phone stalls. He was one of the funniest guys in the company, always cracking jokes, but when I went to say hello, he glanced at me and looked away. I could see his eyes were red and wet. From then on, I felt relieved not to have a wife and kids to call. I phoned my mother a few times, but she understood how difficult it was to wait in line and struggle through a call when all that really mattered was when I was coming home.

Maybe it would’ve been easier if we’d been stuck with isolated longing and couldn’t call or email home a few times a week. As it was, we performed our duties while contending with the not-so-distant memory—days, hours, sometimes even minutes old—of cybersex with potential love interests: the pixelated smiles and body flashes of SxyWhomever on a slow, shaky internet connection. Out on patrol, we fantasized about what might be waiting for us when we got back to the base: new messages, more photos sent over email, higher Hot or Not ratings. We rushed to those computers like long-distance lovers rushed to their mailboxes in the days before the internet.

4.

For my first Hot or Not photo, I positioned my digital camera on a top bunk, set the timer, and stood against a wall, where my bunkmate had taped pictures of his family and a poster of a woman in a bikini sitting on the hood of a truck. (I didn’t think the background mattered.) I wore my brown T-shirt (thinking it would accentuate my arms, which were smaller than I would have liked) tucked into desert-camo pants. I put a black holster, which held my loaded Berretta, over my shoulders (thinking this would hint at how my pistol was an everyday accessory). I kept a straight face, lips pursed, no smile. Casual, relaxed, I thought. I looked directly at the camera. Face: shaved. Hair: hardly half an inch long. In the corner of the photo were cardboard boxes stacked like a set of drawers, stuffed with socks and T-shirts.

It’s remarkable that any woman rated me highly, let alone talked to me. A skinny, white twenty-year-old showing off a gun, standing in what looked like a messy dorm at a halfway house? No red flags at all.

Posting the photo online allowed me to advertise my private sufferings: Homesickness. Constant fear of IEDs. (My platoon would encounter over eighty throughout the deployment.) Mortar and rocket attacks at the base. Beyond the deadly stuff, there was the grind of endless patrols, sleepless nights, sandbagging and shit-burning details. Guard duty with soldiers who talked for four hours straight. Shit food. Ambivalence about having joined the military—about the whole war. The photo helped me feel that the mostly young women quickly clicking through online images might have to reflect briefly on the Iraq War and specifically on Specialist Hugh Martin’s trials and tribulations. Sure, we wanted attention from women, and even possible dates back home, but the sites also allowed us to make civilians at the very least consider the war. Look at me, the photos said. I’m in Iraq. Somebody, please, love me! These images conveyed machismo, but I think we also wanted sympathy for our predicament.

When Kerns saw the photo on my laptop, he scoffed. In what would be the first lecture I ever heard on the aesthetics of the dating-profile pic, he discussed the following issues: I didn’t look fun or happy; besides my red face and hands, I was too pale; and, most of all, I needed to lift weights and do push-ups before taking the pic to dilate my muscles, and then to flex during the photograph—but without clenching my fists, so it would look natural. Kerns’s overall rating was in the high eights or low nines, so I respected his advice, but I never took a replacement picture.

My overall rating was 7.6 and never got much higher.

5.

In September 2004 I returned to Ohio for two weeks of leave. On my second day home, while my parents were at work, I decided to call Gillian. She lived with her parents three and a half hours away and didn’t have a car. I still couldn’t decide if she was just being kind to some desperate boy overseas or if she really wanted to see me. If I drove to meet her, I’d have to borrow my mom’s car for a day. Part of me thought it was too much hassle. What were we going to do? Share a dinner at Ruby Tuesday? Neither of us was old enough to drink. Another part of me worried it was some kind of catfish—she wasn’t real, she was an old man, she had brothers or friends who would rob me and leave me stranded in bumfuck nowhere.

I nervously paced the kitchen with the house phone—I didn’t have a cell phone, and neither did Gillian—going over what I would say and how I’d say it. I kept drinking water to make sure my throat wouldn’t be scratchy when I spoke. Except for my mother, I hadn’t spoken to a woman in more than eight months.

Finally I dialed.

A man picked up after two rings. I asked for Gillian. He didn’t say anything, but I heard movement and voices. I tried to remain calm, to remember that, whatever happened or didn’t happen, I would still be back in Iraq in about twelve days. I felt an enormous amount of peer pressure from the guys in my platoon, whose general attitude was: What loser would go all the way back to the States and not get laid? Some guys, I’m sure, lied about their sexual exploits. I couldn’t do that. I worried about the shame of getting back to base and confessing that I hadn’t slept with anyone.

I heard the rustling of someone grabbing the phone. “Hello?” Her voice was soft, almost a whisper. I liked it instantly.

“Hey, it’s me,” I said.

“Thanks for calling.” She spoke slowly. “How long are you home for?”

I told her I had twelve days. I asked if she could meet up and when.

“Whenever it’s convenient for you,” she said. She laughed. “It’s a long drive.”

Sweating, I told her I’d been driving a Humvee almost thirty hours a week in Iraq, so it wasn’t a big deal to drive a few hours.

She described her hometown as having one stoplight and no gas station. The only major town near hers was St. Clairsville, near the Ohio River.

“Do you want to go to a movie?” I asked.

She took a breath, paused.

I stuttered, “Is there anywhere you’d want to go?”

I thought she might say some public place like a mall or a restaurant. Maybe we could go on a drive somewhere. But she said the following words, which, even twenty years later, I haven’t forgotten: “Well,” she whispered, “we could just get a room.”

I didn’t know how to respond. No one, especially not a woman, had ever been so forward with me. I’d had only one sexual partner by that point. After four months of rote, get-to-know-you chat and pleasantries, her suggestion suddenly opened this other side of her. I smiled. “OK,” I said, trying to play as if I didn’t understand what this implied. “Yeah, yeah. That works.”

6.

On my tenth day of leave my mom got a ride to work, and I took her ’96 Camry to meet Gillian. I didn’t tell anyone where I was headed. I’m not sure why. I think I was embarrassed. Meeting someone online was still suspect then, not something to brag about. Also, if it didn’t work out, if Gillian wasn’t who she said she was, no one would have to find out.

I rolled down my windows as I drove south through the late-work Akron traffic. After I passed the southern edge of downtown Canton, the road opened up, and green hills rose from both sides of the freeway. The drive became a kind of cleanse—the late-summer air, the final taste of freedom before I flew back. Sure, I was a twenty-year-old looking for sex, but I also wanted to clutch those last moments of safety: Alone in a car. Shorts and T-shirt. No one barking orders. The monthslong fantasy of Gillian still just a fantasy.

It was one of the most anticipatory drives of my life, even compared to being on roads with IEDs: the space between imagination and reality; the awareness that I could disappear into the forests of southern Ohio and never come back; the mystery of what would happen with Gillian. It was also the first time I felt guilt for not being with my platoon; at that very moment, as they went out on dangerous patrols, I was knowingly trying to disappear with this girl. But the guilt didn’t keep me from going. Everyone had a chance to take leave.

After I left the freeway near New Philadelphia, I had to hold the elaborate directions I’d written on a scrap of paper. The many turns—on narrow, unmarked roads canopied with foliage—grew dizzying. The humidity. The sun flashing through gaps in the trees. I’d never driven through such dense woods. I passed through one-gas-station towns. Abandoned convenience stores. Collapsing homes. Trailers along the road’s edge.

I debated turning around. What would I do if something bad happened? In Iraq I’d been wired to be on the lookout, suspicious, ready to point an M16 at anyone. This state of high alert didn’t suddenly disappear when I got home. I feared it was a setup: I’d pull up and her brothers would rob me and take the car. But I also liked the anonymity of it. It was the first time in years I didn’t have to report my whereabouts.

After three hours I reached her town. She wasn’t lying: It had one stoplight, blinking yellow. When I braked before turning, I could hear birdcalls, wind on leaves, cicadas—that summer static. After taking the last turn listed on my directions, I had about two miles to go. I stayed under the speed limit, passing houses, yards of tall grass, trampolines and blue inflatable kiddie pools. When I saw her house number on a mailbox, I looked up the grassy hill to a ranch house. A figure stood behind a screen door. I pulled in the driveway. The door opened.

7.

Even twenty years later, I’m still shocked it went so well. Like many Millennials, I’ve now had my share of online dates where the person in the photos doesn’t resemble the person you meet. (I imagine women I’ve dated might say the same about me.) Gillian, however, matched her photo exactly. This might have been because, at the time, having a single yearbook headshot was the norm. There was no filtering, no cropping. What surprised me was her lack of hesitation. Immersed in my own insecurity and paranoia, I hadn’t considered how risky this meetup was for her. Who was I anyway? How could she trust me? I suppose those months of chatting had painted a fully dimensional, believable portrait: a boy missing home and lamenting his time in the military.

Maybe she thought I was harmless.

She walked out quickly, almost jogging down the concrete steps. She opened the passenger door before I could even try to get out and open it for her. She looked great. She looked, yes, hot. Tight jeans and a red V-neck shirt with lace trim across the chest—it looked like the same shirt she’d worn in the picture, but I was too shy to ask.

It’s difficult to summarize the awkward teenage “conversation” that took place after I pulled out of her driveway and drove the thirty minutes to St. Clairsville. I asked her about landmarks we passed. I asked her about her summer job working at a nursing home. I passed what looked like a high school and asked if it was hers—yes, it was. She seemed shy despite the fact that she was directing me to a cheap motel. I glanced over at her often as I drove. She wouldn’t meet my gaze, but she smiled the entire time. I tried to reckon with her presence, this person I’d known only through hours of typing. I couldn’t believe she was there, sitting next to me.

At the Best Value Lodge she stayed in the car while I went inside to pay. We checked in around four. We wouldn’t leave until two in the morning.

8.

When we left the motel, my car was one of the few on the road. There weren’t many streetlights, and I said I wasn’t used to driving after dark without my night-vision goggles, which was true. She laughed. I don’t think she knew how to respond. Why would she? It was the only time during our visit that I mentioned the war. I’d later learn, when I came home for good, that this reaction—awkward laughter, followed by no response—would be the norm when I said something to a civilian about my time in Iraq.

In her driveway we hugged and made out. She didn’t want me to leave. We kept promising we’d see each other again, promising we’d write. Even as we kissed, my mind rushed anxiously back to reality: In three days I had to be at the Cleveland airport to fly to Atlanta, then Germany, then Kuwait, then Baghdad, and then it’d take a helicopter and truck ride to get back to my base. Our night together already seemed like a distant memory.

9.

In the months after my leave, Gillian and I emailed and chatted on AIM. She sent me a digital card. When I clicked it open, butterflies flew out against a backdrop of rainbows and some cheesy digital song played on repeat. “I miss you!” it read. I never told her how much time I spent on long patrols remembering our night together. Sometimes I’d close my eyes and keep it there in my head, the one thing that kept me going for the rest of my deployment. That said, I wasn’t delusional. I wouldn’t return to the States for at least four more months, and I was certain she would see other guys.

Before we’d left that motel, she’d agreed to take a photo with me. I placed my digital camera on the dresser and set the timer. On the bed, we sat close together, fully clothed, and smiled. The camera snapped two photos. She looked stunning: smiling, bright. I looked like a maniac: my eyes wide open, my grin crooked. I planned to show it to the guys in my hooch, so they’d believe me: Yes, Martin, you got laid, and fuck you, too.

10.

When I came home for good in the winter of 2005, Gillian had gone away to college. I don’t remember where. West Virginia? Pennsylvania? We talked on the phone about meeting up, but she didn’t have a car, and I wasn’t ready to make the trek to see her. I wanted to see friends and family more than anything. Within weeks I started dating someone who lived ten minutes from my parents’ home. My chats with Gillian grew less frequent.

I still have the photo of us on a hard drive somewhere. It’s dated in red letters in the lower righthand corner: September 16, 2004. Both of us smiling. Her arm around me. The flash bright on our faces.