Voices From the Well

Perhaps the Islamic Museum had gotten in some more of the tees featuring the old Arabic script that was such a big hit on the streets of these parts. Seeing it for the first time a few years ago Beefy Mohammed had drawn his head back, pointed his chin and proclaimed, — That powerful, just like the Indian chief he sometimes appeared. (Oddly, one of the Malay UMNO chieftains here recently playing the race card again referred to the terrible position of Amerindians in North America who had been overwhelmed by foreigners; in the process of which the man reminding the folk that it was this cultural group to which the Malays were in fact genetically closest.)

         Wouldn’t you know it, just after the turn toward the other side of the river from Masjid Jamek the clouds split. (“Split” in the old schoolboy sense of the word: departed.) Some sporadic drops only.

         The short-cut from the main road through the grounds of the National Mosque looked as if it may have re-opened. If so it would save the roundabout trip.

         No dice. Stiff shit. (More schoolday jabber the latter.) Roundabout we slogged.

         During the stay at the KL International Hotel—3 ½ Stars—gazing out the tenth floor window both from the bed and the desk that on each visit was moved hard against the window, for some reason there had been a good deal of returns to early schooldays.

         A day or two before an early antagonist, one of the freckle-faced boys secure in that neighbourhood close to the school — Johnsey; Paul Johns — had been spied in adult form roaring in delight at the much delayed Footscray Football Club premiership in some of the crowd footage. The floppy-haired chap in the stands looked a good deal like what Johnsey might now look this half century and more later.

         Ordinarily, Johnsey had been of small account: little guy, mediocre sportsman (though he may have owned his own leather football that only his chosen could kick, and possibly a cricket bat); something of a dunderhead in class, but unable to gain admittance into the chief rat-pack. The lad however knew how to give cheek and could not be muscled too hard for it because of his allies in senior years from those nearby streets a stone’s throw from the school. Cousins, neighbourhood pals, church pals too—plentiful allies for Johnsey to call upon.

         Johnsey lived in the street behind the church. Likely he had been a member of the tennis club too: the courts stood behind tall cyclone fencing beside the Sunday School, screened from proper view by a gauze netting. Girls in Whites there sometimes thwacked balls over the net in envious games of mixed doubles.

         When Johnsey told you suddenly one day in the yard, completely unexpectedly with a barb that had never been previously heard, that you were “full of shit,” there really could be no denying. Johnsey as well as yourself knew the truth of the matter. Of course he himself was full of the same, but getting in first it was totally lame and ineffectual telling him so as a follow-up.

         How to respond to the taunt? You had no come back; the words were lacking. Johnsey had the lingo over you every time, the rough and tumble schoolyard derision.

         Johnsey took care not to call you a “wog,” that much was conceded. Should he cross that line the little fellow could not be sure of the consequences. A lashing out might do for him then and there in that event. Another boy, a frenemy of the same class, got a bloody nose when he risked that worst of put-downs. Grease-ball and wog. Dago. Unendurable.

         “Stiff shit” was another common expression of the era that seemed at first hearing both spectacular and also puzzling. Not a taunt in this case; no boy was called such a thing. Rather it was a form of commiseration: missing a shot on goal, hitting the post say, that was stiff shit, offered by a teammate expressing sympathy. (Five years later “stiff”was sufficient; no need the other junior grade.) If someone won your tomboller in marbles however and offered you the same there was bite in that. Lost out Pea-brain, stiff shit; too bad. Bested fair and square, no challenge was possible.

         What was the genesis of stiff shit? Did Johnsey and the kids with the advantage know, kids with fathers, uncles and grandfathers? Doubtful. The terms were pure Australianisms, from sheep and cattle herders up-country during hard times perhaps.

         An older kid in Primary from the same street told the first joke that can be recalled, the very first from earliest days. We ourselves were not a joke telling family; even in our own language we had little to laugh about in early years. Irony and mockery certainly, but not formulated jokes as such for us. The genre was from a different class; the leisured perhaps, issuing from bars, dinner tables, the old open air stages. Montenegrins, even in the homeland, conversed and entertained themselves by other means.

         The memory of one’s raucous laughter comes back clearly. Be careful, “you’ll cack yourself” was from the same period. Wet yourself polite form and the more unsavoury "shit" was not used. One shitted oneself only out of fear; packed one’s pants. “You're packing yourself” had rung through our schoolyards daily.

         The key actor here in the short tale had a girlfriend by the name of Fuckerarder. Delivered by an accomplished raconteur such as the older boy of the street, even one of only twelve or thirteen — you yourself were ten or eleven — the construction of the compound was sufficiently buried. The poor girl’s name was a little funny in itself, but no time to dwell on that as the story was raced onward.

         This lucky nameless lad had his girl just where he wanted her, going for his life. (The two year gap was crucial at that juncture: the twelve/thirteen year old understood something about fucking by then, and in this case the ten/eleven year old would lag a good number of years in such matters. This though would not limit the wonderful, uncanny power of the joke as it was received by the naïf here.)

         Lad fucking and fucking blithely, blissfully. In a world of his own, one understood that much. Whereupon in classic untimely fashion, the girl’s mother begins to seek her daughter.

         — Fuckerarder! Fuckerarder! from the back porch.

         Can’t raise the girl.

         — Fuckerarder! Fuckerarder!

         Nope. Nothing. Mum wants her back pronto.

         F- F- F.... In this older boy’s delivery even this much was bordering on hilarity. Ha ha ha ha. What a pretty pass. But more was coming too.

         At the continued interference the young Chaucerian rustic in the hay-shed had had enough. Not to be borne more the nuisance mother.

         — Orrh, shud up you old bag! returns the fellow turning his head to the side one imagined; returns in our very own lingo too. (Old bag.) I’m doing the best I can.

         Heehaw. Heehaw. Heehaw. Heehaw.

         In mature years the joke had rebounded more than once, sad to say.