This project explores romantic relationships formed during military combat training—connections that existed despite the military’s strict fraternization policies imposed on new recruits. In an environment built on discipline, hierarchy, and surveillance, these relationships unfolded in the periphery, sometimes hidden, sometimes in plain sight.

During my time in the Army as a holdover (a soldier pulled from training due to injury), I had access to an Android cell phone, which I used to document and collect evidence of writing in female bathrooms and shared spaces—traces of intimacy written on walls, fleeting declarations left in common areas. The nature of the writing suggests that many of these relationships may have been same-sex encounters, occurring during the era of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, when openly serving as LGBTQ+ was prohibited.

In this restrictive environment, these writings were more than just marks on a wall—they were quiet acts of defiance, longing, and survival. Evidence of relationships that were never meant to exist yet did.