Be All That You Can Be… Unless You’re Me

I spent most of 2024 flirting with the idea of bootcamp. Not Zumba bootcamp, but real bootcamp. Army bootcamp. “Be all that you can be” bootcamp. Over the course of the year, my unlikely thought-obsession took on a life of its own. It started out innocently enough—a mere entertainment of the possibility (more like the absurdity) of someone like me joining the Army. 

Me. Forty-one-years old. Unconventional and nonconformist. Irreverent. Snappy. Spicy. Analytical and unpredictable. Feminine but not always feminist. What could I offer the US Army other than a Brooklyn attitude and a decade of surviving the metaphorical jungle-gym of Cairo? 

I thought about it and concluded that was more than enough. 

Thus I began interrogating every active-duty officer, reservist, and veteran I knew about their experience in bootcamp. How long was it, how bad was it, and what was their most grueling experience. Most importantly, did they think I could do it. The answer to the last question was a resounding…. it was laughter, actually.

I had this costume made when I was dancing in Cairo.
I was definitely on to something. :D

You?? 

I was told there’s a certain personality profile that is both sought by and attracted to the military, and that it wasn’t me. That profile was young, dull and dense and in need of direction.

But wait, I am all of those things. At least I identify with them at the present moment. Maybe not the young part. But the military is so desperate for bodies that it has extended the age of enlistment to 42. I could still make it.

Trust me, they said. You’re not cut out for this. You are untameable. Besides, you can’t even do a pushup.

It was true. I have zero upper body strength. But I have other strengths. I speak two “critical” languages and I have an advanced degree. Surely the US war machine could put me to use?

Y…yeah…

Whatever. I was going to find out for myself. And so I marched into an army recruiter’s office one Thursday afternoon after work.  

The first thing I realized was that the recruiter was not expecting me. Oh, he knew I was coming—I’d made an appointment two days prior. But he was not expecting me. He never imagined that his first-ever potential recruit would come with waist-length, “distress-signal” magenta hair, stiletto heels AND stiletto nails, compression-level, Kermit-the-frog green pants stitched with horizontal thigh zippers, and enough grey hair lurking under the magenta to qualify for veteran status.

There’s a first for everything, Mr. Recruiter.

Why do you want to join the army, Ma’am?

I want to serve my country, I volunteered.

Okay, maybe it was the other way around. The truth was that I’d heard that my advanced degree and language capabilities could catapult me to officer status. Instead of enlisting as cannon fodder, I could cut the line and automatically become an army officer. That meant decent pay and outstanding benefits, even as a part-time reservist. For only one weekend of service a month with all expenses paid, it wasn’t a bad deal. I could do this.

What is your degree in?

Middle East.

It sounded impressive. Relevant and even necessary. But my degree did not fall into one of the Army’s desired categories. I could deliver a lecture on the origins of the Islamic Empire in flawless Arabic, but I was not equipped with a background in cyber, medical, legal, religion or tech.

Well then. Cannon fodder it would be.

It wouldn’t be so bad, the recruiter assured me. I could enlist as an E-something and work my way to officer status in no time. Besides, the chances of an enlisted reservist being activated to an actual theater of war were more than a zero to the right of the decimal point.

Sure. But the risk still exists. Maybe I’d just wait till November to see if the “no-more-forever-wars” candidate won the election.

So, I bought myself some time… and ran out of excuses. The “anti-war” candidate won, and I was on my way to forty-two. It was now or never. Literally.

Let me take this moment to say that I’m no stranger to danger. Or war zones, for that matter. The amount of active conflict I’ve survived as a noncombatant is probably on par with what some service members experience throughout their entire careers. PTSD? I’ve got it. But something about traversing war zones in an official capacity with a U.S. Army uniform on my back was sobering. Impetuosity reigned supreme in my twenties and thirties; it was in short supply in my forties.

Just as problematic for me, embarrassingly enough, were some of the Army’s non negotiables. Magenta hair? Nope. Nails? Nay. 

I could ditch the nails. The hair? Not so much.

And why should I? The service needed me more than I needed it. Of that, I was certain. US service branches were so desperate for recruits that they were granting waivers for all sorts of previous disqualifiers. Obesity. Age. Face tattoos… Surely, they could waive my magenta madness.

I’d love to attribute my adamance about navigating midlife with this “unprofessional” hair color to something more admirable, like a firmly-rooted resistance to control and conformity. That certainly dwells in me, but it wasn’t my motivation here. My motivation was vanity. Plain, simple, and unrepentant.

And just like that, my implausible affair with the military version of myself that existed only in the farthest reaches of my imagination came to a screeching halt.

No lies told, I was disappointed in myself; I let fear and vanity lead. 

Where was the girl who dodged bullets and Molotov cocktails during Egypt's 2011 revolution? Tear gas and IEDs? The girl who looked Death in the eye as a group of men ambushed her car on Egypt’s infamous Friday of Wrath? Where was the girl who narrowly escaped knifepoint robbery in Syria? Survived domestic assault in Egypt? Outpaced death-by-suicide-bomber at the Temple of Bilqis in Yemen? Better yet, where was the girl who pulled through 9/11?

That girl is inside me... suspended in a purgatory of memories until the Day My Judgement resurrects her.

And that day might come. Sure, that girl was reckless AF…always at the wrong place at the wrong time. But for all that Death chased her, she never once chased it back. This other girl right now—the one with the flaming midlife magenta hair—by joining the military, she could very well reverse those roles.

Thenceforth I made peace with the reality that joining the Army wasn’t on my list of “things to do” in this lifetime. But damn it would have been the perfect substitute for belly dancing. Yes, you read that correctly.

THIS was my body. Zero gym.

What I was really looking for in the Army was a replacement for my job as a professional belly dancer in Egypt—a job that would both pay and keep me fit the way dancing did… because contrary to appearances, I don’t (and won’t) keep fit on my own. I’m lazy. Physically, that is. I don’t move unless it’s a matter of life, death, or money. If it weren’t for the fact that the brilliant choreographies I conjure in my mind can only be shared (and monetized) through physical execution, I’d be content to let my mind do the dancing. It’s a very unusual combination of lazy and creative that I am… an artist trapped inside the body of a sloth. 

This is why it took moving halfway across the world where nonstop performances forced me to exercise. But now that I’m back in the US, I don’t have that insane performance schedule. The only thing that comes close as far as exercise intensity is joining the Army….

…or the gym.

Which led me to my next epiphany. I’ve never really had discipline. At least not self-discipline. 

As a child ballerina, I had a Miss Dorothy functionally threatening my life whenever my arabesques didn’t make me grunt like a bodybuilder in mortal combat with the barbell. As a professional adult belly dancer? Not a shred of discipline. What I had was passion. Obsession. And it poured out of my heart into my body and pockets.

Those are some sick quads!

When I was dancing professionally in Cairo, I used to marvel at how good I had it—art, passion, money and exercise all rolled into one. My body was a shining example of lean, beautifully-toned muscle. I could never understand all the other seven-night-a-week performers dragging their overworked bodies to the gym. To me, that was ludicrous. Out of the question. The way I saw it, the gym was an overrated redundancy at best...a torture chamber at worst. It was where “peasants” who weren't obsessed and talented enough to dance professionally went to move their bodies…

 …because when you have a deep passion for a physical   activity that gives you your daily bread, you don’t need   discipline. You run on obsession…

 …until either the obsession or the performance opportunities dry up. Then you either look for a new lucrative passion or you join the Army for forced, life-or-death-style discipline. Because you never built your own discipline. If you had, you wouldn’t think twice about joining the gym like a normal person. But when you’re me, only bootcamp or belly dancing can stop you from going down the path of preventable chronic disease.

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Here I am now with my back against the proverbial wall. No belly dance. No bootcamp. At this juncture in my life, it’s either the gym or a future of inevitable disasters that happen to sedentary females. I chose the former.

Aaaand, in only one week, I managed to accumulate the following trilogy of “accomplishments”:

1. A heated exchange with the hothead ex-NFL manager bamboozling me into an overpriced training package.
2. A crusty staph infection festering under the tip of my nose.
3. A twisted foot—I fell off the half-step separating the movie room from the rest of the gym. All I wanted was to tell the front desk to fix the ellipticals in the movie room, not perform an entire humiliation dance.

I’M NOT. SUPPOSED. TO BE HERE.

.

.

.

Somebody PLEEEEEASE find me the nearest dance floor…that beautiful square of smooth wooden planks that has always been my true gym. Give me those midnight habibi aerobics and take back your elliptical! Give me that badly-timed Turkish coffee over your “pre-workout” any day! Give me that devouring cloud of sheesha smoke instead of your esteemed steam room. Gosh, if I only had a higher tolerance for belly dance business bullshit, I’d still be performing all over Tampa instead of… This.  

Here's the kicker: People are worried I’m going to get bulky now that I'm working out. I can reassure you that their fears are unfounded. It’ll be a while before I figure out how to use the gym without falling and coming up with a face full of cooties.

 

This was my pre-performance ritual. Turkish coffee & a cigarette. Egyptian style.
(Cigarette added for comedic effect.)