Hell Bottled Up – Chronicles of a Late Propaganda Minister – Fiction

Hell Bottled Up

Chronicles of a Late Propaganda Minister

by Todd Brendan Fahey
illustrations by Rich Mackin

Chronicle I
Precursor to Vengeance: An Explanation of Sorts

By December of 1984, I had soaked up whatever the University of California-Santa Barbara had used to lure me in from high school. I was helplessly alcoholic, perpetually stoned, given to wide, introspective mood swings, and altogether dangerous to myself and those close-by.

The forty-foot cliff outside my apartment window on Del Playa was yawning lazily, and I knew the surf would gnash my broken carcass to anonymity, and that the Folks would never really know what happened: one of those sickening, life-altering, tragedies that would haunt Mom & Dad forever and turn them gray before their years. So I phoned my best friend and told him the plan:

“I’m transferring to Arizona State.”

“Your parents will freak.”

“Yeah, but it’s already done. I officially withdrew. Besides,” I said, “the U-Haul is already rented.”

“OK,” he sighed, sounding almost relieved. “I better drive, you need some rest. It’s been a rough year.”

Yes, it had, Douglas. I needed ten months in Bora Bora, naked under groves of mango and young, sweet native women… His story is almost too depressing to get into, and he’s now contemplating some four years, directly under the heel of The Man, in the UNITED STATES NAVY – a decision which leads me to question his ultimate sanity even moreso than mine own… but I never had a girlfriend leap out of a fifth-floor window at Creighton University before, either.

Uh huh.

It was the heart of the Eighties. A decade that saw the great one, Jackie Gleason, embalmed in strong spirits. They say he drank “with the honorable intention of getting bagged.” And bagged he got. Zipped up, and covered in lime.

We watched Dorothy Stratten, perhaps Playboy‘s most chaste and shining young pin-up, ground straight into the grit, on some home-made torture table, by a sodomitic ghoul.

Our youth pay fifteen bucks a crack to see a ska band called Bad Manners parade a grotesque and balding creature named Fatty “Buster” Bloodvessel around the stage, sticking a microphone up his ass and farting.

It’s suicide pacts in high school New Jersey; teen fellatio on Hollywood Boulevard.

It’s the South Yemeni Intelligence agent in Bob Woodward’s Veil, whose head was lopped off and shipped back in a box to his superiors, testicles stuffed in mouth, by the KGB…

But why are you telling us this? Really… Why do we want to know?

Because it’s The Story: the nut, as it were… the scary, brain-stem rush that makes some men strong and others statistics. Because it’s real, that’s all. It’s the whole, grimy World Theatre.

Chronicle II
Welcome to Arizona/Now Go Home

I was staring out the kitchen window – at nothing in particular, just looking. Daffy’s tail wagged frenetically (Play with me, Todd; pet me!). Just then, the other longhaired-Dachshund popped out the doggie door and got behind her, featherduster slapping to and fro across the face, until she gave it a good-natured chomp and off they went in search of lizards and creatures that might have fallen out of the next during the night.

“How are you feeling?” a voice rang low somewhere in the house. Feeling. It was not a word that I could relate to at the moment. I’d not felt for the past month; such was the goal. Keep from feeling, Todd. Drink until everything gets blurry… forget about it.

“Think you’ll ever see her again?”

“Fuck, I hope not,” I answered. “It’s not in my script.”

“At least she’s not dead,” Doug said.

I thought about it for awhile. “How long did it take for you to get over Suzy?” I wondered.

“I don’t know. Let’s talk about something else.”

Mom dropped a copy of the Arizona Republic into my lap, January 3rd, 1985. “There’s an article I thought you might want to read,” she said, softly. “What do you two want for breakfast?”

I didn’t want anything. But misery and hunger only bring sickness, so I relented as Doug shrugged. “Two omelets and coffee, please.”

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been awake and functional at 6:30 am. It was probably the morning of the SAT exam as a high school senior. But that didn’t count because our all-night study session included about three grams of cocaine and I’d never gone to sleep. This was different. This time I had no real excuse, other than that the dreams were awful and I’d rather be conscious. You can’t fight dreams… I needed some semblance of control, shitty as it was to think about her laughing on the beach, with some Lacoste prep going down her, and…

At the bottom of page one, the subheading read: “Birch Patriarch Robert Welch Dead at 81.”

“I thought you might want to read it,” she said. “Maybe they need a replacement.”

To her credit, she did understand – that eerie kind of perception that makes them the object of every son’s ire. Because, liberal as she was, her son’s well-being transcended politics. She knew I had been fascinated with the prospect of a Grand Design: that behind every major fuck-up, stalemate war, lunatic debt increase, and act of national cowardice… there just might be a plan.

I think the first time it hit me was on September 1, 1983, Dan Rather’s grim face appearing on CBS saying something about a Korean jetliner being shot down by a Soviet MIG over the Sea of Japan. Which was interesting, but not something that could immediately affect my life. Until he mentioned a U.S. Congressman being aboard.

I waited for days to see what our reaction might be: stiff retaliation, or a full-grain embargo. Maybe just a simple eye-for-eye exchange? Yeah, we could shoot their UN Ambassador, shake hands, and that would be it. But nothing. Not a goddamned thing.

His name was Lawrence Patton MacDonald, U.S. Representative, 7th District, GA (D). A four-term Boll Weevil. Totally obscure. The oddity skewed my interest… All the talk of a “spy plane” and “violating Soviet airspace,” and a lot of High International Politik jargon that, frankly, I knew was gibberish, but would inevitably mean something once it all came to a boil over the sacred Negotiating Table. And having listened to Dad’s rantings over McGovern and “The Pinkos” for most of the 1970s, I was almost genetically right-bent. Father knew best, so it seemed at the time (still does), as he fashioned seven or eight True Value painter’s stir-sticks to cardboard signs which read “Nixon Again” and “No Pinkos,” and sent a small army of Young Republicans out onto the corner to brave the angry, honking mob of a Washington state mill town, circa 1972.

Nothing else provided that feeling, of reporters and staff photographers, fascinated with the obvious leader of the young GOP clan: the odd base-hit; straight “A”s… all very small change, insignificant bits of youth. Seeing Dad read about his son was the charge. Wait a minute… Who’s the new star in town?

And I found myself incensed that the Soviet Union could gouge one of Our Own – a military man, fer Chrissakes – from out of the sky, sans penalty.

They called it an accident. The passenger craft had strayed over international waters, but it looked like a reconnaissance plane. Could’ve happened to anyone. And we sat, neutered, under Ronald Reagan, no less.

Then I caught a blurb from a Maryland wire dispatch: “Thousands Mourn Slain Congressman”:

    • “4,500 people turned out to protest the death of Congressman Larry P. MacDonald today at Constitution Hall. The mourners, drawn chiefly from the John Birch Society, turned out

en masse

    to point out what one man termed, ‘the ongoing, International Communist Conspiracy.’ MacDonald, a four-term Georgia Democrat, had taken over as Chairman of the right-wing Society eight months ago, with founder Robert Welch stepping aside after a series of debilitating strokes.”

…egads, a Hit. A fucking assassination. I’d learned of the John Birch Society in high school, mostly in disparaging terms, and found myself sympathetic. But I had no idea its Chairman was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. And by the time college came around, I had sided with Reagan’s “Kitchen Cabinet” of Ed Meese, whose children I passed daily in the hallways of Valhalla High School; Cap “The Knife” Weinberger from Reagan’s California governorship; Richard V. Allen, et al., over the Eastern Monied Establishment of George Pratt Schultz, Brent Scowcroft, Malcolm Baldridge – the Skull and Bones brigade from Yale.

And when your college is a mere two-hour drive from Orange County, the chance of meeting dues-paying members of the John Birch Society in your own dormitory runs as high as contracting chlamydia after some zombied toga orgy. And after several hash-addled, all-night discussions on this nefarious Conspiracy Theory, I began to formalize two possibilities: That the Orange County water supply is tainted with a vicious, ranging, paranoiac substance, and has been since the 1950s, and that the offspring, however brilliant, are genetically mutated and just one accusation away from the White Coats… or, that There Just Might Be Something to this whole business.

And I hated to call good friends freaks and liars. These were, after all, The Reagan Years. The entire hubris of the college Republican scene was in a state of incubation – waiting for the right person or group to grab scrota and pull. Santa Barbara City College’s Republican krewe had already been captured by the Right/Birch element, with no sign of open resistance or hostility by faculty or fellow CRs. They were willing to follow a strong lead, however philosophically extreme. And that was where I fit in.

Having already read Gary Allen’s None Dare Call It Conspiracy, with a system full of blue mushrooms, every murky, accidental, incomprehensible mishap seemed to crystallize in a long, continuous pattern. I understood why Reagan had chosen George Bush from the bowels of the Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission, over, say, Jack Kemp or Phil Crane. And I knew that, with a little polishing around the edges, I could’ve led the cry for UC-Santa Barbara. The only unknown component was whether I could maintain in a state of normalcy for four years. How long would it be before I dragged a group of gel-headed Lacoste junior Repubs into some empty administration building to lecture them on the merits of a good LSD vacation in freeing the mind of the Go Along, Get Along/Get Ahead, Give Head morass. How long?

But none of that mattered because Tami crept out of my bed, as she had every morning for many months, to shower, this time leaving to the Bay Area for Thanksgiving vacation. Only she didn’t snuggle back under the comforter with me for fifteen or so minutes of warmth, hair still wet and smelling so much like a wife that I used to cry for no good reason at all. Just so fucking happy. She ended my hazy California political dreams then and there. But many of us have felt that stomach-knot of knowing the only woman you’ve ever loved is gone and has no plans of returning, so let’s just fuck it right there and get on with the story.

I understood why the Republic derided Robert Welch, calling him a “McCarthyite, a kook, a crackpot… hunting for communists under every bed.” I understood, and felt obliged to replenish the ranks in my own small way. I was beholden to keep America safe from another Korean Airlines flight 007.”Thanks, Mom,” I smiled.While Doug was out sunning himself, I got the phone book and scanned for the John Birch Society and found: “See: American Opinion Books,” which I dialed and got a very old woman on the other end. She seemed confused.

“Yes, my name is Todd Fahey, and I’d love to join the Birch Society.”

“Oh, uh, um, well… lovely!”

I could tell this kind of thing didn’t happen often. Of course I’d like to become part of the most maligned and ridiculed organization since the Christian Temperance League. Every young man’s dream… Naturally, I drove downtown, Camelback Road and Central Avenue, early January 1985. At least I could cauterize my wounds; seal them over. State coordinator Dr. Guy F. Roberts was waiting. Lincolnesque and ruddy-handsome, he laid me out with a fierce stare. What was I made of?

What are you looking at?

Nothing.

Tami?

I was just wondering what color eyes our babies will have.

I started to mist, but shook it off quickly. No need to let them in. It’s your own head, that’s all.

“Todd, I’m glad to meet you. There’s a lot to go over before you join,” he said. “The John Birch Society isn’t for everyone. But if you’re here already, and you’ve read our literature, you’ll be okay.”

He showed me around the small bookshop, across the boulevard from the law firm of O’Connor Kavenaugh, loading my arms with texts, pamphlets, journals, political novels by Birch-adherent Taylor Caldwell, all-the-while telling me how the JBS is truly one big family, and to call him Guy, because, “We’re very informal,” and that every local resource would be at my disposal, just make a few calls.

“Read this over, and if you can agree with it, or if it makes you angry,” he said, handing me a copy of Robert Welch’s Blue Book of the John Birch Society, “…if you find yourself getting pissed off, there’s probably a place for you here.”

I thanked him for the personal attention, but told him I wouldn’t need much convincing: “I’d like to start a chapter at Arizona State.”

“God, you’re so ambitious. You really are going to be Governor someday, aren’t you?” His face went slack, and for a moment I thought he might lose his balance. But he remained aright, a peculiar, glazed tinge to the face. “Do you know the kind of merciless hell you’ll catch at a public university?,” and then he told me of his years at the University of Michigan, having earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology.”I don’t mind,” I answered. “I’ll just take some of my aggressions out on the faculty.”

Doug left for California that night, to spend the rest of the vacation with his folks in Orange County. Santa Barbara had been no kinder to him than to me, and he was glad to get out. Just get out, anywhere. But, like most things having to do with him, our plan of another school – A New Life – fizzled, and I never heard from him during the break.

Meanwhile, fairly fearing for my head, my parents left me more or less alone, to pour over thousands of pages of writings by Gary Allen, Robert Welch, Dr. Antony Sutton, the Hoover Institute wunderkind expelled from Stanford’s Inner Circle for his monumental Technological Treason series chronicling U.S. aid and trade to the Soviet Union at a pace which can only be described as nationally suicidal. And I found one true insider-turned-conspiracy theorist in Herman Dinsmore, former International Editor of the New York Times, who resigned to write All the News That Fits and The Bleeding of America.

Through the research and dogma, I decided that FDR’s oft-repeated remark that “nothing in politics happens by accident” was painfully accurate, to the detriment of mine nation. And if the John Birch Society was wrong? Well, it’s like mistaking a mallard for a snowy egret. The eye just doesn’t make errors of that proportion. Besides, why would a Ph.D. with a lucrative clinical psychology practice give up ship to become a JBS State Coordinator making, maybe, $28,000 per annum? And why would a bright, handsome future leader risk his political ‘nads for a life of cynicism and frustration? Why indeed?

As far as I could tell, nobody was getting rich in the JBS. No Rolls Royces or temples. Its National Council members serve without pay, and donate phenomenal sums on a regular basis. Bunker Hunt is rumored to have cut checks for up to a million bucks a pop at the behest of Robert Welch who died “penniless,” having given over $63 million of his own fortune to the Society before his death.

So, in short, I joined. Why not? How often does a young man with almost no connections get the chance to make tidal waves within his own campus, be treated like some kind of newly-crowned Prince by a national organization, and just generally run amok, stirring up the brewing hornet’s nest in the last bastion of Barry Goldwater?

However, several, including my father, wanted me to give it some heavy thought. So I agreed to meet with one of his friends, an erstwhile politico who shall remain nameless, since his total involvement in my twisted career was to buy me lunch at the Velvet Turtle.

Sawing through a piece of Martinized Cordon Bleu, I found myself answering rapid-fire questions as to the merits of the JBS, the quality of its leadership, particularly of the late-founder, and defending Welch’s famed comment that Dwight David Eisenhower (Ike, the Instant General, who never admitted for a minute to even being a member of the Republican party before the Rockefeller wing snatched him up in urine-soaked terror of having Douglas MacArthur as President) was a “conscious, dedicated member of the International Communist Conspiracy.”

God forbid, we should actually win the Cold War. What would happen to the apartments at Red Square?

Finally we parted, concluding that it was my decision, for good or ill. But did I want my political future ruined? He understood that I had drive, intelligence, and charisma, and that if I wanted to rub elbows with the Big Boys, I was welcome. But not as a member of the John Birch Society. That much was made clear.

I nestled into my low-rent, roach-infested dormitory room in the hallowed Sin City section of Tempe, Arizona, and prepared for a meeting that Guy had set up with the Business and Professional Briefing – the high-rollers of the JBS in Arizona. They were to give the newly-formed Students for the John Birch Society an operating cash-flow of several hundred dollars at the touch of a “red phone.” Which I felt was deserved, given the hell-storm publicity spectacle I was cooking up for them, free of charge.

Scanning a seed-sheet of phone numbers, I picked out Zane Smith, liking the name from the start. So I called him first… and found a soulmate. His husky voice huffawed through the transom, extolling the virtues of the Right, paralyzing me with the knowledge of just what a duo could wreak upon the hapless masses. A connection is not the proper term, for when a plug is placed into a wall socket, the action necessarily coordinates opposing currents. We were fission. One political body from the beginning. Son of a millionaire gentleman-landowner, Zane was Christian, though a militant patriot; humble to the Lord, but expressive of the good/damage ratio that some low-level A-bomb would have wrought in the foothills of Hanoi to that great and bungled debacle called Vietnam.

Over the next several days, mid-February, Zane and I fleshed out Students for the John Birch Society – a group whose expressed creed was to spread the Good Word to students, faculty, and administrators alike in hopes of diffusing a growing number of Students Against Apartheid-style Soviet adherents. It was a grandiose scheme, which caused even the most skeptical to groan against its obnoxious possibilities.

I came up with a series of ads, trying out a bit of copywriting, while Zane penned the art, and placed them in the State Press to run Monday-Thursday of the first school week. Zane’s father reimbursed us $179.82, as it had become apparent that he was not simply dealing with a couple of malcontents: These were two serious propagandists and tacticians he had on his hands… and in his living room, and out in the office, and in the back-forty, squeezing rounds out into the cotton fields from Zane’s MK-10 and Uzi when everything else got hazy.

After a week, JBS Headquarters in Belmont, Massachusetts called to ask if they could use the ads in their own internal organ, The Bulletin, with a story to run on our student chapter. I humbly submitted to an interview, followed closely by another, when Campus Press Service (CPS), some Christian/Right wire service out of Denver, called to see just what all the fuss was about. I was taped, and then JBS publicity chief, John F. “Jack” MacManus, weighed in with his $.02, as it were, and the story ran in syndicated columns from Anchorage to Atlanta. I was caught up like sturgeon on a #1 tri-barb.

We fully expected to have our shit tossed right back into the University fan, having learned that the official whose decision it was to approve or deny our student charter was a black, Democrat, ex-football player union-type, named Art Hamilton. But as soon as Zane and I had begun fashioning a legal challenge, with help from the ACLU, we received in the post our stamp of approval. It was time to enter the War.

Together with the son of a Catholic/Hungarian-exile during the ’54 uprising; an engineering grad student; a future CIA man, and a couple fraternity boys, Zane and I set up our booth on enemy ground. The buzz out on Cady Mall flew for hours, as members of the Black Student Union – a pro-African National Congress/Louis Farrakhan-style outfit – dispatched representatives from its office within the Student Union, to make certain, we guessed, that the hoods on our designer Klan robes were clearly visible. And there was one moment when an aged professor in a tweed jacket did a double-take, smiling wryly: “Bob Welch’s group,” he glimmered, to another aging man, “Good stuff.” And then something about sterling examples of how the “youth is not yet lost.”

But, as impressed as we were with ourselves, not all campus conservatives understood our efforts. For many minutes, two preps scouted the booth, listening in on the arguments being exchanged to and fro, until they met up with another youngish man, bespectacled and sporting a George Will haircut. The two said something to the third man, then split. The George Will-lookalike stepped up to the table and shook hands with Zane and myself.

“Hi, guys,” he said. “Name’s Gray Echols. I’m the Opinion Page editor of the State Press.”

“Who were your friends?” I wondered.

“Oh, that. Yeah.” None too happy. “Len Munsil and Matt Skully…” He needn’t gone much further. I knew the names. Len Munsil was Editor-in-Chief of the State Press and Matt Skully its Chief Ideologue, Conscience, and Main Columnist Vitriol. Quite heavy Men on Campus, as it were; and conservative to the bone. But not right-wing in the JBS sense. And by the looks of it, we were muscling in on the act.

It’s the same old split, dating back to the mid-Sixties when William F. Buckley finally gave Robert Welch the frozen shoulder and rendered him persona non grata in the pages of National Review and anywhere else the Yalie might be found, raving like the original Mad Hatter.

Munsil and Skully liked Jeane Kirkpatrick and Bill Kristol and the neo-conservatives favored of the early-80s; which Zane and I might have found intellectually challenging, were it not for their vigorous insistence on hob-nobbing with Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Henry Kissinger, and others of the high-brow détente ken, when it served their ambiguous interests.

Gray Echols became our lone contact in the State Press. He seemed amused that I could somehow afford to tell the Establishment to go wank it, and told me, specifically, to look him up whenever I had anything interesting to say, possibly being intimidated by Zane’s size and the fact that, while talking to us, a couple of Zane’s wrestling buddies approached the table, clicking their heels together in unison and exhorting a Sieg Heil!, to which Zane offered a stiff-arm salute and waved them on.

Zaaaane, that’s no fucking good at all!” I whinnied. “That’s the last fucking thing we need. Jesus!”

He just chuckled and blew it off.

As we disassembled the booth around 4:00 pm of our first day of action, I locked onto a small, sketchy figure walking erratically down Cady Mall. Just a blip out of the corner of my eye, but it struck me as being wrong, and I banged on Zane’s arm. “Look!”

“What? Hey! Whaddryoufuckingdoing?” Zane bellowed at a rough-hewn man of fortysomething, who stuffed a lens into my face and began cranking off a volley of shots.

I made for the man, disliking him instinctively – greasy pouch slung over his shoulder, Birkenstocks slapping at the pavement, the tattered hunting shorts and sickly green vest, topped off by a brown beret, perched on a head of kinky hair that matched his filthy beard. He was not a photographer for any journal I would ever subscribe to. Zane held to my arm as I began to scale the booth and wrench his film out by the root.

“Leave it alone, Todd,” Zane whispered. “Not everyone likes what we’re doing.

“Who the fuck was that?” I shivered, suddenly feeling dirty.

“I don’t know. And I don’t think we want to know.”

We towed the display off-grounds, back to Zane’s Blazer, where he ripped a parking ticket into several small pieces, and then squeezed everything we could into my cramped dorm room. My new roommie – a pimply-faced, bass-playing, heavy-metal carnivore – stood in agitation, realizing that I’d be taking over the room for which he’d paid good money to become an unwelcome guest. And after leaning into a twelve-pack to get rid of the vision of an alien creature with a roll of film bearing my image, I didn’t honestly give a good goddamn how much room he needed to be comfortable.

I hogged the phone until 5:15, calling every radio station, broadcasting crew, and journalist I could find within the Yellow Pages. Several people hung up on me, not sure what kind of sick crank would boast about having started “that kind of group.” One DJ even said, “What would you be doing that for?” I told him it was none of his fucking business: Did he or did he not wish to get Scooped by the rest of the state media, while the station president castigated him for being Soft On Communism?

He clicked on the tape machine and sent the story to thousands of commuters braving rush-hour traffic.

Around 10:00 pm, after another dozen beers, a trash-can full of half-thoughts and a decent guideline of refined ideology, so as not to embarrass the JBS with my own bent vision of the world, I heard a jangle behind the harmonies of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Neat effect, I said to myself; pretty good engineering trick. But it became obnoxious, and I ripped off the headphones and saw that it was the telephone.

Todd!!!” The voice was drunken but familiar.

“Yeah, what?” I growled.

“Hey, where’ve you been?,” it asked stupidly, behind heavy, constant clanking of 60-ounce glass pitchers. I knew the sound well.

“Fuck, where have YOU been. You asshole. I’m stuck with some miscreant of a roommate, thanks to you.”

“Hey, I’m really sorry. Really,” he said, “I lost your ‘rents’ number. I tried five hospitals, but your dad’s unlisted. I tried!”

“…ssshit! I guess that’s possible. But… goddamn, Doug, do you realize where I’m living? This place is filled with roaches and black football players with names like Darnell and Theotis… and mutants. Where are you?”

“Drinking at the Dash! Come over!”

“Huh-uh, Not in the mood. You come over here.”

“Can’t do it, Todd. It’s initiation! I’ll be drunk for another week!”

“Initiation? You didn’t… You couldn’t…”

“I did! Hey, three meals a day, no cooking… little sisters. Todd, they wanted me!”

“So what? I thought we had a plan.”

“Yeah, but I couldn’t get hold of you!”

The argument had gone full circle. Doug was now a Frat Boy. Dreaded, aimless hedonism. I shuddered. “Whatever,” I said. “Call me when you dry out.” I mashed the receiver down on its axis and put the headphones back on, and passed out to Neil Young’s squeaky drone about tin soldiers and four mutilated college students somewhere in the Midwest.

(to receive a signed, 1st-edition copy of Hell Bottled Up!: Chronicles of a Late Propaganda Minister, by Todd Brendan Fahey, to be released in its entirety on February 22nd, 2000 as a Far Gone Book in a trade paperback edition of 1,500 copies, please send check or money order in the amount of $15, made payable to “Todd Brendan Fahey,” to: Far Gone Books, PO Box 3027 Lafayette, LA, 70502-3027. Todd Brendan Fahey is the author of Wisdom’s Maw: The Acid Novel, the celebrated “factionalization” of the CIA’s notorious MK-ULTRA acid tests and their influence on the Sixties’ counterculture. Please visit the award-winning Far Gone Books/Wisdom’s Maw Web site at: http://www.fargonebooks.com)