Iraqi Icicle

by Bernie Dowling

  Bub politely declined, saying she would rather drink a bottle of bat’s piss while watching grass grow. I envied Jane Applebee her ability to openly express her feelings to her sister. I would have to go the long way around in verbalising my apathy for the event – a few dozen citizens putting up fancy party lights for the rest of us to gawk at. I was pencilled in for the evening’s activities. I could have mounted a concerted campaign against the idea, and come across as more tactful than Bub, but I was conceding this point to Nat, planning to bring it up when next our ideas for a night out were deadlocked. The truth is, Nat must be obeyed sometimes, well actually a lot of the time. She has an unbending quality about her that I find mysteriously alluring. I am far more likely to cross My Cucumber by not consulting her before I do something which she later insists falls along the scale from unwise to fucking insane.

  Still, I had a premonition that Christmas-lights watching would cause me pain. To ward off danger, I wrote down the addresses of eight promising entrants, having read somewhere that eight is a lucky number among Asian numerologists of various spiritual persuasions. My only selection criterion was each street being between our Hendra flat and Fortitude Valley. I was planning to amaze Nat with how close to the bright lights of rock music we had, by sheer chance, ended up. Under each street name, I wrote a brief description of how to get there, and I circled the addresses in my street directory.

  What I had not bargained for was the difficulty of reading Brisbane street signs at night. It was stressful. Whenever I took my chances and averted my eyes from the street ahead to look at displays Natalie kept pointing out to me, I missed turns, wobbled across the roadway, and narrowly avoided hitting vehicles driven by other electric-light voyeurs. This annual hunt for Christmas lights must cause more than a few prangs.

  By the time we found the third of our eight displays, I was sincerely wishing I could just go back to my flat, crawl into bed and berate myself for lacking Bub’s courage in standing up to her sister. Apart from the navigational hiccups, it was a hot night and at each display, increasingly bizarre and elaborate with countless lights, Santas, reindeer and Baby Jesuses, I had escalating feelings of weirdness.

  The snowball dropped at the fourth house, as I climbed from the hot car into the hot atmosphere. Snow covered the sub-tropical windows and garage of a suburban house in mid-summer Brisbane. Crazed white-bearded men in thick red overcoats stood all over the garden. Deer were grazing and bearded elves, rugged up against the freezing cold, were making presents.

  Ah, London’s calling, I thought, and we’re out like mad dogs under the midnight moon, leaping at the phone.

  I couldn’t wait to finish our tour of festive duty and take in some live hard rock in a crowded, dark and sweaty room at the Orient Hotel. Last Christmas the pub even put on snacks of olives, gherkins and small wedges of boutique cheese. I love the baby chesses at Christmas time.

  ___o0o___

  THAT SAME DAY, of December 20 1989, 27,000 American troops invaded Panama in Operation Just Cause, to arrest that country’s President Manuel Noriega for drug and arms smuggling. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher applauded the American invasion, for upholding ‘the rule of democracy’. Only the cynics wondered if Mrs Thatcher was confusing ballistics with ballot boxes.

  What sparked my interest in an otherwise routine U.S. invasion of a country they could wup purdy easy, was the use of rock music as psychological warfare. I suspect I was not the only shallow hedonist who forsook the music reviews for the world news pages at this time. I had to take a peek when I heard that Uncle Sam was shaking his booty.

  I studied the form of the Noriega arrest with the Gooroo, who dubbed the invasion Operation Just Cause We Can. A lot of speculation about American motives for the stunt sprang up, as always happens with these adventures. The cynical money was on the treaty that said that the politically and financially strategic Panama Canal had to be handed over to a Panamanian girl or boy to play with by January 1, 1990. The landlord of the canal could charge a ship more than $100,000 for passage and the Americans had built most of it.

  Most of the world never found out what was correct weight on the deal, as the Washington nobs reading from the full script were not giving the plot away. The stated reason for arresting Noriega – for drug trafficking – seemed a little thin, as the Americans had refused to take the naughty president from rebel members of the Panamanian Defence Forces when they had captured him in October. The Gooroo speculated that the planning of the invasion must have been well under way by then. The joint chiefs of staff were not going to have their big Christmas party upstaged by a few disgruntled nobodies in the Panamanian military. As for Manny’s cocaine smuggling, human rights abuses and election rigging? His form suggested it was no better nor worse than when he was a friend of the US, purportedly on their payroll to the tune of a hundred grand a year to spy on the bad guys in the area, such as the reds in Cuba, Nicaragua and El Salvador.

  As I say, my interest in such matters grew from international media stories about the hip ploy of rocking with the war machine. Armed Forces Radio playing rock music was nothing new – the practice was top of the charts in the Vietnam War. The aim then, though, was to raise the morale of the good guys, not to lower the spirits of the bad guys, or in this case The Bad Guy, Manny Noriega.

  It seems that U.S. troops on the ground in Panama shared our infatuation with the reports of rock weaponry. When the good news reported in the U.S. media rebounded to Central America, the soldiers on duty inundated military DJs with musical requests, thus reinforcing a budding myth.

  International journos decided that rock music warfare was a better Sunday read than stories of thousands of Central American civilians being killed. They knew their readership tastes better than their history. Before the world press found Manny in the Vatican Embassy, they dutifully repeated military PR speculation that Noriega had probably fled to the Cuban or Nicaraguan embassies. But Manuel, for fun and profit, had been spying on those two socialist countries for the Americans.

  Still, it made good sense to all the suburban hawks, stretched across their couches in the lands of the free, that the Cuban or Nicaraguan lefties had given shelter to the Antichrist. To make sure Noriega was demonised by all political persuasions, the military PR machine planted a photograph of Adolf Hitler in the President’s unoccupied abode.

  As it turned out, Manuel had taken refuge in the Vatican Embassy in Panama. The story of U.S. military blasting the embassy with rock music was embellished for the entertainment of all us citizens of the global village. As far as eyewitnesses could piece it together, the GIs had started to send in requests to their radio station for songs that they felt had anti-Noriega titles or lyrics. These requests were being played, but the music was not physically directed at Noriega until late in the piece.

  One group of soldiers decided to direct their loudspeakers at the Vatican Embassy, perhaps as late as Boxing Day and certainly after the rock-music war was exaggerated in the world’s newspapers. Once the quirky newspaper reports rebounded about the tactic of using rock music as a weapon, other groups of troops followed the leader and directed their speakers towards the hallowed ground.

  It seems the Vatican complained to U.S. President George Bush about the racket, if not the tactic, and the practice stopped before Noriega surrendered on January 3. That part of the story rarely filtered out, and we were savouring the image of the Antichrist leaving the protection of the Vatican embassy and falling to his knees in tears.

  ‘No more top forty, no more Twisted Sister’s We’re Not Gonna Take It,’ we pictured Noriega begging of the troops besieging the Holy Ground.

  Compared to the myth, the truth of the rock weaponry never lived up to its potential for drama and humour. Luckily for the spiritual nourishment of us global villagers, our educators in the international media printed the legend and not the truth. The juicy image of the Devil’s music being strategically trained on an Embassy of the Holy City to smoke out the drug-ped
dling Antichrist became the reality.

  The Gooroo had more contacts in Australia and overseas than the entire Australian secret service, so he was able to feed my obsession with the Panamanian proceedings with as much of the real news as possibly anyone here was receiving.

  A lot of the requests to blast out Noriega were for rock classics by the Beatles, the Stones and the Hendrix Experience. Of course, Steppenwolf’s The Pusher was a fave. Some historical selections bordered on the satirical. Outstandingly humorous examples included Paul Simon’s 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, Springsteen’s anti-authoritarian Born to Run and Funkadelic’s weird Electric Spanking of War Babies.

  Metal and hard rock dominated the requests for contemporary 1989 material. Metalheads White Lion earned their stripes with Little Fighter, while Danger Danger got Naughty Naughty on the playlist. As you might expect from the band’s title, Guns ‘n’ Roses were in demand with Patience and Paradise City going for a few spins. Much of the American material really spoke to and about the invaders more than the besieged Noriega.

  Paradise City was particularly unflattering, with its declaration that someone had done in Captain America.

  If the ideals of the invaders had lost their way, the youthful soldiers imposing those ideals often had no way to lose. At least, that was the message Skid Row was screaming at Noriega through their 1989 hit Youth Gone Wild, a tough, anti-authoritarian anthem.

  Some of the contemporary hits seemed to have a perverse undercurrent of sympathy for The Bad Guy, as with Megadeth’s resurrection of the Alice Cooper hit No More Mr Nice Guy.

  On Christmas Day, the DJs declared a break from playing the anti-Noriega requests, and they only spun Chrissy tunes. Hey, they might have played Bruce Springsteen’s version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town, released on a single in 1985.

  New York hip hoppers Run–D.M.C. might have got a run with their infectious 1987 ditty Christmas in Hollis, the neighbourhood where the trio of rappers grew up.

  In that year of 1989, the Bob Geldof and Midge Ure 1984 charity tune Do They Know it’s Christmas was re-recorded. Both recordings raised money for relief of African famine. Maybe it was played when Santa Just Clause came to Panama.

  The DJs probably gave Prince’s 1984 epic ballad Another Lonely Christmas a miss as it recalled the death of a lover on Christmas Day.

  They probably didn’t play my Dad’s 1971 release Happy Xmas (War is Over) either.

  ___o0o___

  NAT WANTED TO GO to a midnight religious service on Christmas Eve rather than see in the festive day at a live music venue. I agreed when I found it was not going to be a staid Catholic service, but an all-singing, all-clapping affair at one of the more flamboyant churches. I am not bigoted against the Micks, despite the harsh road to Heaven the orphanage nuns dragged me along. But I had celebrated Christmas Eve for so long in secular merriment that song and dance were parts of my Yule ritual as much as tinsel and ornaments were to others. If we were to go to church, at the very least, it had to groove.

  I was indulging in my third glass of red wine at 10 p.m. We had one of Nat’s Madonna albums on, which is as close as we usually come to religious observance. All was very pleasant until My Cucumber tapped me on the shoulder and asked me not to drink any more.

  ‘I’ll make us a fruit punch,’ she said.

  ‘That will be nice,’ I said.

  ‘Without alcohol in it,’ she said.

  ‘That won’t be so nice,’ I said.

  You make an effort to please the one you love and they tend to stretch the advantage they have over your joint historical course. Christmas in church sounded like a small sacrifice, and a new experience, but Nat could have forewarned me of the virtual teetotality expected to accompany it. If Natalie could have Madonna, I should be able to indulge in red wine – it was, after all, one of the Christmas colours. My limited Biblical scholarship told me that Christ, at the wedding feast, turned the water into wine, not into non-alcoholic fruit punch.

  This line of argument did not go down well with Nat, unused as she is to compromise.

  ‘You do what you bloody well like, Steele,’ she said. ‘You do every other day, anyway, so why should our attempt at a quiet, contemplative Christmas Eve be any different?’

  I was spending our quiet contemplative Christmas Eve getting sloshed. What a pathetic yobbo. In contrition, I made an elaborate fruit punch without a drop of alcohol in it. I banished Natalie from the kitchen as I prepared it, ever so lovingly and slowly that I was able to consume two more glasses of red before contemplative sobriety overwhelmed me as Nat and I sipped punch amid Madonna’s stereophonic assault. At 11:45, Nat drove us to church, though I said we should have walked with Frank’s incense and mirth.

  It was a nifty service with the highlight, for me, the singing of the hymn Onward Christian Soldiers. Thoughtfully, the Christian mob running the do had provided hymn books – if you can call four A4 pages, folded and stapled, a book. After my fave religious song’s title, it even had the names of the Pommy geezers what done it: ‘Words by Sabine Baring-Gould (1865) and music by Arthur Seymour Sullivan (1871),’ it read.

  One of my embedded myths was destroyed by that attribution. I always fancied American soldiers of the civil war had made that song up around the campfire after a hard day at the front lines, killing and being killed. This harsh history lesson did not, however, prevent my relishing a song that expressed the true bloody spirit of Christmas and bugger the herald angels singing.

  As I joined in the rousing verses and chorus, I thought, this was what they should be using to smoke out Noriega:

  Satan’s host doth flee;

  On then, Christian soldiers, on to victory!

  Hell’s foundations quiver at the shout of praise;

  Brothers, lift your voices, loud your anthems raise.

  Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,

  With the cross of Jesus going on before.

  I kept the hymn sheets as a souvenir for the Gooroo, for when we went down the Coast to see him on Boxing Day. I expressed my admiration for the prescient lyrics about Satan’s host Noriega. The Gooroo was quite taken with his present. He said he had heard that one half of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta team wrote the music to Onward Christian Soldiers, and now it appeared confirmed.

  The Gooroo said that some American versions of the song deleted my favourite stanza about Satan’s host. Most Americans profess to belief in God, but quite a few take exception to the notion of there being an immortal Satan in opposition. When America imported the song, its citizens decided to exorcise the Devil from the lyrics. Their spirituality allows only for lesser demons such as the Antichrist Noriega to be disarmed by the forces of the Good with Guns.

  10

  Autumn, May 1990, in Brisbane

  SIPPING CLARET AT THE BAR of the Beat nightclub, I was wondering whether the dancer enjoyed his job.

  He was covered from toe to tip in oil and not much else – one leather-and-feather anklet, a G-string and a cowboy hat.

  The Beat’s moniker pretty much tells the story: a gay nightclub in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley.

  My Cucumber Natalie believes that gays bear sole responsibility for the evolution of Madonna, Japanese restaurants in Australia, and twentieth-century drama, all of which she holds very dear. Nat feels obliged to participate in the gay social scene on an irregular basis. I could not get Nat to any my cultural shrines, the major metropolitan racetracks on Australia’s east coast, before I was barred from them all. But, somehow, I have to tag along with her for the occasional evening of disco music accompanied by the smell of amyl nitrate. I tried to spot her in the thick, heaving Friday night crowd. Nat likes talking with strangers. I noticed a bloke watching me.

  I turned my attention back to the television above my head. Queensland Treasurer Keith De Lacey was announcing that the social-democratic Labor Party would honour some of the financial promises of defeated conservative National Party Treasurer Mike Ahern. Labor was elected i
n December, mainly as a result of the police corruption uncovered by the Fitzgerald Inquiry. Tax relief for religious organisations and religious education were two of Ahern’s budgetary measures that Labor would keep. I was kind of getting the gist of his concession through the din, with Treasurer De Lacey chanting some mantra about education being sacred, as Queensland was becoming the Smart State.

  A voice, belonging to the bloke who had been eyeing me off, spoke close to my ear.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  He was about fifty, grey suit, greying hair, thin furrowed greying face, medium build. What Americans might call distinguished. As far as I know, distinguished people are like eccentrics; we don’t have any in Australia.

  ‘Gooday,’ I said, nodding.

  ‘I’m not looking to pick you up,’ he said. ‘My name is Joseph Lavinsky.’

  I gave my name as Steele Hill, as I do most of the time.

  ‘I’m a professor at the university,’ Lavinsky said. He also said which university, but to protect the innocent, I won’t repeat it. The guilty don’t need protecting, as they usually have a mob of lawyers on retainer.

  Oh, all right then. It was the University of Queensland, which I believe is the State’s oldest. You might have guessed, anyway, as there are not many unis in Brisbane. The way the professor was referring to it as the university, it looks like its academics think of it as the only fair-dinkum one. I suppose if you can’t have snobbery in places of higher learning, where does it belong?

  Lavinsky asked what I was drinking, and I tapped the last pickings of my red grape. It looked like his tale was to unfold leisurely.

  ‘I’m worried about my students,’ the prof began.