Chapter Seven: Don't Stop The War in Viet Nam

     We were at Yale. 1964. Along with Dubya, Chain (he) and Care (he). I was in the Navy. Captain Tom Benner of Ohio. Norwood was in the Air Farce. Jest an airman. We called him Airhead First Class Nogood. Total irony because he was the most brilliant guy any of us had ever met. Now we just brag how we were there with him then. Except Dubya. I doubt he boasts about knowing Rama. Kerry used it a little in the Ought Four camp pain. Probably why he tanked. Ram ain't no red state vote getter.

     Denny had been in theatre back in Nebraska. Then folk music. I guess he wound up working at Union Pacific Railroad Headquarters in Omaha. His Uncle Ralph was the Auditor of Disbursements or something, got Lama in. Then Denny was drafted in the Viet Nam buildup. He had some college so he made a deal to study Russian at Syracuse University. But during basic training at Lackland AFB in Texas, he aced a Chink apptitude test and wound up in New Haven at the Institute of Far Eastern Languages.

     We were loaned out to the National Security Agency, studying Chinese to become radio intercept operators. I was twenty-one, R.L. was twenty. We lived in Hanuman Hall, a dormitory built in 1820. It was sweet. No uniforms. No military jackoofs around to give us orders. We were on officer's per diem, about fifty bucks a day just to eat. We went to a couple of classes a day. Special instruction on how to hear chinky through different kinds of static. Just basic phrases like "Roger, over..." and "Yer wife's pussy is slanted sidewaze".

Norwood still liked folk music. We caught Dylan at the New Haven Civic with Phoney Joanie (Baez). Rama loved rock and roll. He was up in his room in Hanuman Hall blasting out "The Times They Are A Changin'" on his funky Penny's Department Store Airline electric geetar.

Rey loved movies too. We saw "Dr. Strangelove" around that time. I swear, he went in at noon and came out at midnight.

Sat through it five or six times. I left after I saw it twice. But Denny was a Kubrik fanatic. He kept talking about "Lolita" with James Mason.

      He talked about J.D. Salinger and Samuel Beckett. And Shakespeare. That's when a lot of the other fellows would get up and leave the wreck room groaning. Bout the time old Lama (some guys called him 'His Lame-ness') would whip into the "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow " speech from Macbeth complete with amped-up guitar lix.

But not me. I'd never seen a guy like that before. Not many since. His brain was in the fast lane, like it sez in that record he later produced "D.O.A. in San Jose". He was into everything, all the time. Eastern religion in the Watts Room at the main lie, bury. That's where Dickhead Chain Knee hung out too; over at the Yale School of Drama where they gave Rama Lama a small singing part in "Oklahoma"; playing basketball with Johnny Carry in Blueblood Gymnasium. They called him Johnny 'Carry' because although he was quite tall, his teamates had to carry him through the game. He sucked.

        Ram had a rock and roll trio. Jest him on guitar and vocals, a Yalee drummer and a black kid on bass. Yale was situated at that time very near the low down ghetto. Just so the Knee Grows (as they were then called) could feel GOOD and poor up against all that Ivy League ostentation. If its not a word it should be.

        Denny's trio was called "The Poor". They got a job at the big Skull and Crossbones bash at the end our year at Yale. Norwood got me inside as a roadie. When we were packing up the amps at 3 oi em after the gig, we found Dubya passed out on his nose behind a curtain. Rama screamed "Wake up ya stupid rich piece of shit!". We just left Georgie Boy lying there face down in his own puke. To bad he nixed drowned in it.

       I finished fourth in our Chinese class of twenty-two guys. Ra was number 22. Robert Tharpe, the stern Englishman who ran the Institute for Far Eastern Languages passed out certificates, congratulating each graduate of the course. When he came to Rama Lama, he turned quite sarcastic. "Yes of course......Mr. Norwood.....". He drew out the 'nor' to more like 'nawer' and the 'wood' to 'wuuuuud'. "He doesn't know much Chinese but he plays a mean guitar".

       Then we were off to Goodfellow in San Angelo, Texas. It was a crypto National Security Agency training site. While we had been studying chink at Yale, the F.B.I. had run extensive security checks on each of us. A couple men got eliminated. But the rest now had top secret crypto clearances.

       But Ram seemed to lose all interest in being a spy. He bemoaned how the hippies were having a stoner gas in San Francisco while we sat there learning how to murder peep holes in foreign cunt trees. He sat in the barracks making tapes with his guitar. The apes, Air Police, would have to get him and drag him to class. He started doing REALLY crazy shit like throwing highly classified training tapes out the window. They brought him up on charges but the judge said they'd already spent $20,000 training him at Yale so they HAD to give him a duty assignment. Denny hoped to get kicked out so he could go rock and roll and take acid with the hippies and freax in Kali Porn Yeah

       Instead, he had to settle for our weak end trips to Villa Acuna, Mexico across the border from Del Rio, Tejas. There you could drink ta kill ya, fuck gorgeous teenage Mexican babes and eat peyote cured in mezcal. Rama Lama had a sweetheart there. Her name was Pepita. She was sixteen and built like a brick tortilla oven. Big fat legs. That was for Lamb. She wanted him to run away with her to her hometown of Tampico. Said her dad would make sure Norwood was never caught. Knew lots of Mexican authority figs, mas, mas, mas.

        I think Denny was seriously corn-sidering it. He didn't want to fly an AZK back and forth over Nam intercepting chink. Who did? But one day they took out a map of Pakistan, pointed up north near the Khyber Pass where India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia and China all come together. The asshole with the map said "Does anyone want to go way up here? Its a hazardous duty station. You get extra pay..."

Norwood yelled "Hell yes! I'll go!". They needed two dipshits to volunteer so I tagged along. Anything was better than Viet Nam in 1965.

       So we took off from Charleston, South Carolina in an NSA jet to Madrid. Air Man Gnaw Wood was purty excited. His flight bag was stuffed with books about Hinduism, Zen, Tao. He thought he'd be able to further his knowledge of eastern thought quite a bit in Pakistan (then West Pakistan) which was part of Ancient India. His hopes were later realized beyond his WILDEST dreams would would surmise.....

       The whores in Spain were even MORE bonita than the ones in Acuna. But Den was fascinated how everywhere in Madrid, someone was playing a guitar. Me, I was jest happy with the brown pussy ten bux ameri-cunt would buy ya.

       We re-fueled again in the middle of the desert in Saudi Arabia with just enough tx to drink an ice cold Coke and marvel at the landscape. Then the flight down to Karachi and up in plain clothes on a civilian flight to Peshawar.

       We thought we were mighty bright boys avoiding Nam. Yessir. But when we got to the duty station, a super high-tech intercept site, the bombs were falling. It was the 1965 war between India and Pakistan. They weren't supposed to hit the NSA station but the Indian pilots were so fucking stupid they just let em go on anything lit up at night. Luckily, they got it straightened out but quick and we were never dumped on again. At least not by the Indians.

       The Peshawar intercept site was a big deal. They were getting Russian satellite telemetry worth a million dollars a day in terms of winning the space race. The U2 spy planes were still going out every day taking high altitude pix all over Russia and China. We had about 30 Ruskie linguist positions, six chink. Me and young Vishnu-to-be replaced a couple of guise who were happy to get the fuck out. DELIRIOUSLY happy.

       We worked a 12-day shift. Its tres brutal, pilgrim: three swings, 24 off; three mids, 24 off; three daze, 72 off. Round and round for two years. Try it sometime white bred!

       There wasn't really any chink up. Nothing much to intercept. I had a big scoop once, got the breakfast menu for a Colonel landing is Szchewan Province. The visiting CIA dick got all up into THAT. We followed the slow demise of a Russian cosmonaut who was trapped in orbit. Bet you nix heard about it on NBC. He was brave at first. When his oxygen ran low, he began talking out of his haid like the computer getting discombobulated in "2001, A Space Oddity". Or there was a bit of comic relief when every nuke expert in China was out in the Gobi Desert to view a test launch. The fucking missle landed smack on the blockhouse all the chinky brainpans were in. C'est la guerre....

       So Denny spent most of his duty intercepting new Beatle tunes on BBC Worldwide. That came in REAL good on our super hot short waves. A big earthquake rattled the tape heads on a tape Ram was cutting off the air. "I Am the Walrus" had a few extra sfx even John Lennon and George Martin hadn't prepared. It happened by random. That fascinated Norwood. He played the warped tape over and over going "WOW!" and "Sheeeeeet...".

        He started a jazz combo called the Northwest Jazz Quintet. Northwest Pakistan stupid. Ra was on guitar, Ron King on piano. Ron was this cool black dude, a ditty-bop (high speed telegraph intercept) from Baltimore. He was teaching Denny jazz piano chops so Ron could switch to guitfiddle on certain songs like "On Green Dolphin Street". Pretty soon both guys could interchange instruments. They were hot. Slick Willy, an older black man on upright bass. Charlie Gaetani, a fast-talking Brooklyn supply sarge on drums. And Art Soma on trumpet. Art was a good looking young guy who dropped out of Jew Lee Yard because they didn't like his Miles inserts into the square crap they taught there at the time.

       Right out in the middle of no-FUCKING-where you could relax at the Officers Club to great jazz sets like you were in New York Siddhi. They even got invited to play at some high muckey mux dog turd's wedding in Kabul. The brass said it was okey doke cause it made for good international relations. I went along again as "accomodations consultant". It was carte blanche, first cabin ALL the way.

       Back at the intercept site, we'd take a ped-i-cab down into Peshawar proper where you could buy hash for a copper penny or two in a sitar cafe. Rama Lama loved getting high in there and digging a two-hour raga jam.

       He was hanging out with holy men, bums, beggars. One was called Cirinjiva, who, I guess, was personifying Lord Shiva, the Destroyer. He destroys the world so it can start again from scratch. OK? He apparently told Ram he wanted him to play Vishnu to Cirinjiva's Shiva. Vishnu is supposed to be the Preserver. Of sanity I suppose. As the world is being destroyed in fire, Vishnu keeps everyone calm with a mellow song or an humourous bit of comedy. Yeah sure. Six bills of peep holes burning up and his job is to....."preserve sanity"? Fuck you wank wad.

Cirinjiva showed up in California a few years later as "Father" to a bunch of rich jerkoffs in San Francrisco. Made the papers when Lou Gottlieb (god love) of the Limelighters gave his Morningstar Ranch to "god" so it couldn't be taxed or some shit. "God" was Cirinjiva, a Camel-smoking, whiskey-chugging eighty year-old East Indian in a $3000 black leather jacket and mirror shades. When the stupid cunts who followed him found out Denny was the annoited one way back in Pak, they got all pissy. But that comes later....

       Meanwhile back in Peshawar, near the end of our stint, they started letting a few NSA chiefs bring their wives over to a British hotel nearby. One man's wife was a 22 year-old babe from Arkansas. We hadn't seen a piece of twat in almost two years bubba. I mean, the whores in Peshawar are so ugly they wear TWO veils. In case one rots off.

       But this big cheese's wife was torrid. The Lamb fell in love in about two seconds flat. Groked her pants off immediately. She wanted to do rock and roll so Den quit the jazz band. Ron King had already rotated out anyway. Rama Lama and Honeysuckle formed a new band. Yeah. HONEYSUCKLE. That was her real name for christ sake. They did Beatle covers like "You Really Got a Hold on Me" with the two of them singing righteous fifth harmony, their faces three inches apart as they shared a mike looking deeply into each other's orbs. Or they'd rip into "Roll Over Beethoven" or "Great Balls of Fire".

       They were playing outside one fine sunday afternoon. RL doing "Green Onions" on an electric twelve-string he'd ordered from Germany. He ran that through a tape-delay echo he jerry-rigged himself. I looked out past the Officer's Club patio where the band, called "Honeysuckle and the Boys", was performing to about a hunnert quite-pleased spies. In a field I saw Pakistani workers moving like "Night of the Living Dead" toward the sound of Rama's geetar. It was like they were drawn to Mecca by an amplified prayer call or something. What a scene...

       And over behind the snack bar, I saw old Cirinjiva in a pair of Levis and an Air Force t-shirt Ram gave him. He was smiling. Just smoking a Camel straight and beaming from ear to ear. I reckon he saw he chose a good little Vish to appear in tandem. Coming to a White Bred cunt tree near YOU!

       About a month or so before we were set to split Peshawar, some National Security Agency assbleeds in suits showed up from Dee Cee. They wanted to test the proficiency of the Russian lingos. Ram got word to report to the exam right after a greuling night intercepting "For What Its Worth" by Buffalo Springfield. He told the doodie officer he was a chink, not a roosk. The stupid fuck told Denny "Just go there Norwood. And do as you are told".

       So Lama shows up and marx the testes all "D". I guess it was multiple choice or sumpin. Then he went back to the barrax and sacked out. Two hours later five Marine goons (whose real job was to kill us all if the Russians attacked so we couldn't talk; you know: reveal the leerix to "White Rabbit") arrested Denny and dragged him down to the visiting NSA brass.

       "Air Man No Good, why did you mark your test all 'D'?".

"Because I don't speak Russian, sir."

        "What do you mean, you 'don't speak Russian'? Yer a linguist aren't cha?"

        "Yes sir. I'm a chink".

        "Airman, we refer to that as the 'Chi Com Problem'; nix 'chink'".

" I'm a Chinese language radio intercept operator, SIR!". Rama Lama clicked his heels together like a Nazi.

        "That's absurd", came the shit-for-brains our cunt tree deep ends on to exist. "We don't show any Chinese intercept positions at this site. There's nothing up. You'd have nothing to do except perhaps...snag pop hits. We don't allow THAT".

         "Well, sir, I thought I saw a trend in the correct multiple choice answers to where, if I went with 'D' all the way, REALLY committed to that stragedy, I'd score above average".

         "That's more like it Ram! Now we're getting to the bottom of this! You were trying to psych out the test, weren't you?"

        "Yes sir".

" Go now and sin no more, my son".

" Son of God, sir".

" Yes of course. Son of........God...".

        Is that "Catch 22" enough for youse folks? Or maybe "M.A.S.H."? The Altman movie with script by Ring Lardner, Jr. buttmunch. Not that WEAK tv shitcom. God did THAT suck.