Strips
Tall Tank Tales
It Was Like This
I don’t care what you’ve seen or read about me over the past few years, you shouldn’t believe anything you hear in the media, you twat. It was like this......
My dad was a bastard. He left my mum for dead after he shagged her. The first words I ever said were "Cauliflower Penis". Mum made me scrub my mouth out vigorously with Vim. My first memory of school was when I pissed in my pants in assembly and tried to blame it on Robert Wiggins. When I was seven I started my massive collection of novelty pencil sharpeners (the collection is now housed in the National Museum of Modern Pencil Sharpeners, Sydney). At ten my cigarette smoking had become so profuse that I had to volunteer myself for lung and throat tissue grafts (at my local scientific fags and cigars testing laboratories) to raise money for more snout.
By the time I was sixteen there was only one thing in life that I wanted to do - join the army: big guns, fighting, blood, drinking, death, glory, gore, medals, tab smoking, armoured cars, mixed showers, severed limbs, screaming comrades, and three square meals a day. I simply couldn’t wait. Mum hollered and cried that I shouldn’t go. She said that it was the worst thing I could possibly do and that I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for. She told me that there were things there that I didn’t ought to know about.
Jesus, I said, I’m only joining the motherfucking army. So I left home, dressed up as a man and marched into the recruiting office, where I was promptly told to fuck right off. Undeterred I returned a year later dressed as a woman and was swiftly accepted as "Private R. Buck, 00023 69 633" of the Territorial Bog Cleaning Division of Fort Paintball, Queensland. I scrubbed those lavs for two whole years, sometimes with my own toothbrush, sometimes with a friend.
My best mate during those days was a reformed bricklayer called Julie. He was very small and came in handy for climbing into the lavs and cleaning under the rim. At night we would gamble away our Spam rations on fast games of dominoes. And when in a carefree, happy-go-lucky kinda mood he would swap me his supply of snout for a quick hand shandy. Jeez those two years sure did drag on. And then it happened, my big break; Lieutenant Colonel Major Captain Brigadier Large-Trousers wanted a volunteer to infiltrate an enemy outpost disguised as a toilet cleaner. I was the man for the job.
The details of the mission are still covered by the Official Secrets Act. Suffice to say that when I returned, triumphant, I was decorated, de-briefed (in the showers) and presented with the coveted award of The Golden Pencil Sharpener. After this I was promoted, slapped on the back by a few big knobs and given a state of the art tank with which I was to pursue my new "Special Duties". Special Duties sounded good to me. Special Duties my arse. I sat in the outback in that tank for forty days and forty nights before I received my first orders. By then I had seriously deteriorated in the brain department and my personal hygiene had become akin to that of a road-kill rabbit with myxomatosis. This aside, I was in peak physical condition, pumping up to thirty cans of fizzy lager every day with my right arm and four cartons of fags with my left. I could bullseye a small rodent with a greeny at fifty paces with frightening force and accuracy. And I could out run any ice-cream van - even Mr.Whippy.
During this sojourn in the dusty outback my only (imaginary) friend was a koala rucksack. I pretended he was gay and I used to beat him for his sins, sodomize him with a hot banana and read him relevant passages from the Bible at bedtime. My grip on reality was becoming slimmer and slimmer and the end of my rope was whipping towards me like the business end of a rattlesnake. I thought my number was up, my goose was cooked, my chips were down, my eggs were all in one basket, my time had come; nothing left but for me to fall into a downward spiral of self-abuse, self-hurt, self-destruction, self-employment and self-sealing envelopes. Then I got my first mission.
"REPORT TO BASE * STOP * COLLECT A TOP SECRET CONSIGNMENT * STOP * DELIVER TO ARMY H.Q. BY TEA-TIME TOMORROW * STOP * WHEN YOU GET TO THE GATE DON’T FORGET TO STOP * STOP *"
So there I was, performing the first of my Special Duties, cruising across dusty planes at speeds far in excess of twelve miles an hour, important consignment on board, grit in my eyes and the wind in my trousers. Things were looking up. At some point on that journey I decided to make a quick pitstop to investigate the contents of my payload. After prodding my fresh turd with a stick for a while, I thought it might also be a good idea to check out exactly what it was that I was delivering to Army H.Q.....
Inside a packing case (that was nailed down as tight as a clam’s anus) I found a chitty for thirty million dollars and the said sum, wrapped in large sealed bundles. Also in the case was a file on ME, pretty freakin’ strange I thought, maybe I was being recommended for a juicy promotion and pay rise? I read through the text and digested it slowly with a nice Chianti. I thought it my duty to sit down and count out the cash, just in case they’d put an extra million in by mistake.
After three days of calculators, abacuses, fingers, toes, pebbles, bad spuds and several other methods of calculus, I came to the conclusion that there had been no mistake and that the money was all present and correct. I had a bit of trouble getting it back into its sealed packets and when it came to putting it all back into the box, it just didn’t wanna go. So I crammed as much into the case as I could and nailed it shut, taking care to change the wording on the chitty to, "ONE BOX OF ASSORTED CASH AND SUNDRY WRAPPINGS". The rest I stuffed into Camp Koala and my Junior Savers Account at the Post Office.
Five days late, I trundled into H.Q. and dropped off the case. I saluted the brass, paid my respects to the knobs, went through a short de-briefing (in the lavs) and high-tailed it out of there, stopping only for a quick slap-up feed of mash, grits, hash, gruel, oatmeal and gumbo in the untidy mess tent. I parked up in the outback and waited, vainly hoping - like a school boy who’s shat in his pants - that no one would notice that something smelt wrong.
I heard nothing. Hours passed. Hours turned into days. Days turned into weeks. The gusset of my Y-Fronts turned to cardboard. My paranoia thickened like porridge over a low heat, it couldn’t be sweetened, I became salty and bitter. I couldn’t sleep a wink at night, my head was full of questions and doubt; What had occurred back at H.Q.? Had they sussed my little game? Would I be hauled over the coals and lashed by angry knobs? Their silence was as ominous as a robot crocodile (with telescopic teeth, metal claws and a radar on its head) sending you its holiday snaps from Scotland and saying that it’ll be calling round soon for a bite to eat.
I decided that it would be in my best interests to dispose of the stolen cash in a subtle, untraceable way. So I rolled the old tank down to the local branch of Ikea and had it kitted out with the very latest in post-modern futurist retro interior design. Then I took it next door to the jet plane factory and had it fitted with two Rolls-Royce Merlin engines. It was like a cross between Terrance Conran’s summerhouse and Anakin Skywalker’s podracer.
I was made up. My veil of misery lifted as I zipped around to my mate’s house and showed off my flashy new wheels. Stevie knew that his primo dual-exhaust Austin Princess R-Reg would be left standing. He hung his head in shame and hung his racing trousers in the closet. I hung out with Stevie for a few weeks. Eventually I did receive a couple of minor tasks to perform for H.Q.: wiping the President’s arse; nailing a few mutants; being delivery boy and general dog’s body for the brass. But the army was beginning to lose its appeal for me. My Special Duties seemed to be getting shittier and more menial, I had yet to kill anybody (of any real importance), medals seemed to be in short supply, no comrades had suffered first degree burns or limb-loss, and I had to drink and smoke alone.
It was time to go A.W.O.L. - Absent With-Out Letting anyone know where you’ve gone. I drove in circles around the coast of Australia, lap after lap of an entire continent - like it was the Le Man’s 24 Hour Scalextric set - each time improving on my previous lap record. On my tenth circuit I began to notice recurring themes in the journey: the same car was tailing me for a three hundred mile stretch of the north coast; men in long macs, standing on street corners, were taking photos of me as I whizzed past; I was running over the same rabbit outside of the Easy-Mart on Bonzo Beach.
Eleventh time around things got even stranger; diversions and roadblocks were sending me further and further inland. Soon I realised that I was driving dangerously close to Army H.Q. Then, from nowhere, an escort of three high-speed army tanks boxed me in and led me across the desert towards a mysterious looking rocky out-crop. They hung back as I sped on into the valley between the rocks. It was a dead-end. I did a nifty skid and ground to a halt. At the end of the dead-end sat a big military man, decorated in so many medals, stripes and brass that you’d think he wouldn’t be able to stand up; but he did stand up and he was fucking huge.
He moved closer to me, shadowed every step of the way by a dumb looking sergeant with his arms crossed. I stepped down from my tank and formed a quick excuse, "If this is about the money, I can explain everything," I blurted, "It was my koala, he made me do it, he planned everything and blackmailed me into it. He’s in the tank right now if you want him. And he’s gay." "This isn’t about money," his deep, bellowing voice echoed around us, I started to find him quite attractive, "this is about you......and me." "Oh," thoughts of a candle-lit dinner for two and punting on the River Cam started to cloud my sharp wits, "I know a nice little Italian place, it’s very reasonable." "What the fuck are you talking about girl?" he became gruff and pompous, superior and farty.
My former admiration turned to a sicky taste in my mouth, "I’m talking about you, me and your mother." That really got my back up, "Don’t you bring my mother into this, you sanctimonious, fat piss bag." "That is already to late," he seemed be enjoying every syllable as they formed on his thick, sticky lips. "If you’ve laid a finger on her, I swear I’ll scalp your pubes and stuff them up your arse." "Of course I’ve laid a finger on her...." he left me hanging mid-sentence as he rubbed one of his medals furtively. He looked up and fixed me right in the eye, "I am your father."
I was knocked over by this one. I got up and regained my bearings. He watched me avidly, relishing my gob-smackedness, taking mental pictures of my reactions for future reference. I screamed at him at the top of my lungs, "You fucking bastard! Have you any idea how much pocket money you owe me?" He chuckled, mistaking my humour for forgiveness. He opened his arms wide for me to run into. I just stood and steamed.
This shit-bag had walked out on my mum before the sperm had even reached the egg, and now he’s thinking that a huggy-huggy kissy-kissy let’s-make-up-and-be-friendly sesh will atone for two decades of total, utter, selfish disregard for his family. Thoughts of my poor old mum - scraping a living, making ends meet, tightening her belt, using the same tea bag twice, living on nothing but popcorn for a month so that she could afford to buy me a second-hand blazer for school - spilled into my head like baked beans onto the stale toast of all human suffering. I wasn’t scared. I saw no man before me. He was just a big fat wanker - a wanker who now symbolised all of the injustice of the world to me. A cog in a military machine that can blow up a child and then ignore its pleas for a Band-Aid.
I shot him down in cold blood and pissed on his corpse. Dirty vultures began to circle in the sky above us. The sergeant was pretty shaken up by this. Trembling, he put his hand to his holster. I trained my gun on his fat, sweaty forehead and bade him, "Throw down your arms," which he did. "Jesus," he muttered, "this was just supposed to be a bit of fun."
"What?" I asked, confused, but not really giving a shit. "He’s not really your father - he’s just a keen Star Wars fan." "Oh," I had to think about this for a second. I lit myself a fag and adopted my best Clint Eastwood pose, "Well it serves him fucking right then, dunnit?" I pulled the trigger and wasted the wanker.
Time to go. Time to run. Oh my God, what have I done?