US$ UK£
author's site
This piece appeared in the August 2003 issue of Friction Magazine:
Iraq/Viet Nam/Korea - No Parallels: an interview with Susan O'Neill
[2061 words, est. reading time - 6:52] Interviewer:
Alan C. Baird
| US$ UK£ author's site |
Baird: What was the most outlandish thing you encountered during your trip?
O'Neill: I saw a transvestite prostitute in chartreuse fishnet and a feather boa, standing next to a window display of whips and chains on Bourbon Street. But I hear that's not unusual for N'Awlins.
B: How does your book fit into this kind of conference?
O: The Viet Nam wing of the Pop Culture convention is mainly a bunch of teachers who are trying to get the word out at various colleges that we once declared war on a bunch of rice paddies in the South Pacific. Most of the students don't believe them, so these educators get together periodically to convince each other that it really did happen. Some of the teachers are Viet Nam vets, and it's a tough sell.
Frankly, one of the most surprising things to me was that a war--er, conflict, since Viet Nam wasn't really a war, if it existed at all--would be considered Pop Culture. I mean, Pop Culture sounds like FUN! But I guess the conflict must've been fun for somebody, because it's all come around again.
B: Which of your stories from Don't Mean Nothing contain the closest parallels to our latest war?
O: None of them. There are no parallels between Viet Nam and Iraq. None at all. Viet Nam was a faraway country full of dark-skinned people who spoke a funny language and ate weird food and worshiped oddball stuff. They threatened us with an ideology unlike our own, the U.S. government had ulterior motives for going there, and people protested in the streets.
It wasn't like Iraq.
B: Why did you decide to write fictional material about those wartime experiences?
O: I realized that my memory sucked. A nonfiction book was out of the question: I'd have had to get off my lazy tush and call up people and perform heavy research in order to do justice to everybody involved, and then all of it would've been lies. Everybody's memories become revisionist after 25 or 30 years, including my would-be sources. So fiction seemed logical. It's also truer, I think--you don't have to play that journalism game of reporting only what you see and hear; you can dive into the heart of an issue, role-play, pick at motives and make massive assumptions. I like to say that fiction writers are just grownups with imaginary friends. This book gave me a chance to play with mine.
B: You've described yourself as a "commie hippie pinko protester." How did you wind up in the Army?
O: I was sitting around in my nursing school dorm one day when a buddy stuck her head in the door and asked if I wanted to go to Chicago. It was a Saturday, and I'd just gotten back from the most exciting thing a person could do in that tiny burg: I'd been out campaigning door-to-door for Eugene McCarthy with a cute student named Warren, whom I'd been trying unsuccessfully to seduce (his strict religion didn't allow smoking, drugs, drinking or dancing, so I figured there was only one recreation left, but Warren seemed to feel differently). Did I want to go to Chicago? Duh.
So... I was bored, and I went, in spite of the fact that I knew Judy was going there to join the Army. See, she came from a long line of military types. Her little brother even went to a military academy because he wanted to go, not because his parents considered it a good alternative to juvenile lockup. So she was planning to carry on the family tradition.
While I waited for Judy to sign everything in triplicate, the recruiting sergeant turned his high-beams on me. He said the Army would give me money for my last year of school, then they'd send me all over the world to meet hot guys in uniforms. Hawaii, he said. Germany. Japan. But I was no fool. I said: Yeah, what about Viet Nam?
He laughed: You don't have to worry about Viet Nam. There's a waiting list of nurses a mile long for Viet Nam. You couldn't get there if you tried.
So I thought, Wow! I could get money, travel, and a double dose of irony, all at the same time. Wait until my friends heard that I, the hippie pinko commie folk singer, had joined the Army. It was better than getting pregnant, and the commitment was only two years.
All of which goes to show you - not all commies are intellectuals.
So they gave me a physical, which consisted of shoving a mirror under my nose to see if I was breathing. I passed, even though my eyesight was obviously faulty: the recruiting sergeant had been only two feet away, and I couldn't see his nose growing longer.
B: Were you a good little soldier?
O: I was a decent nurse, but a terrible soldier. To begin with, I can't tell right from left without putting a big red R on my right sneaker. So I was in trouble at Fort Sam Houston, because the whole point of basic training is to learn how to march. This involves a lot of rights and lefts, complicated by the fact that you're singing dirty lyrics at the same time.
I figured it would be all right once I got to Viet Nam, because I'd be too busy to march. Everything was fine until they deflated my first hospital (it was made of inflatable rubber segments, which can be a little dicey when there are rockets and mortars flying around) and sent me to Chu Lai, which wasn't a very busy place. And if things aren't busy in a war zone, then the real soldiers have time to nitpick. So I was in the Officer's Club, a plywood shack where the officer caste went to get drunk among their own so the enlisted caste couldn't make fun of them, and some good music was playing, so I took off my combat boots to dance. The next thing I knew, the head nurse was chewing me out for disrespecting the uniform. I politely asked her to transfer me to someplace where she wasn't, and she snarled, "I'll send you to the biggest hell-hole in Viet Nam." And she did, which was good because it was so busy, nobody cared if I boogied in bare feet.
I later found out she'd put a note on my record forbidding anybody to give me a Bronze Star because I danced without combat boots.
B: Did the USO shows contain much subliminal/political content?
O: Standard USO shows were an art form deeply rooted in military symbolism. They began with a band of waif-like Korean women who played and sang "I Want to Hold Your Hand," to demonstrate the Asian desire to meld with Americans in a harmonious relationship that would ultimately elevate the culturally marginalized female gender--and, by extension, all downtrodden peoples--to a state of middle-class nirvana. The young women reinforced this yearning for symbiosis with the heartfelt ballad "Green Green Grass of Home," in which they expressed the pain of their imprisonment in a cruel land. That the artists were Korean was, of course, allegorical for the plight of Viet Nam, but it also highlighted the historical similarities between Viet Nam and their own country. This was made clear in their reenactment of the ceremonial Korean dance, performed by three beautiful women in traditional costumes. Since America freed Korea in the 50's, one could not escape the parallels. I saw many tears drop on fatigue-covered bosoms, let me tell you, when those young women flicked their fans.
Finally, the tallest of the three dancers was left alone onstage to shed her traditional garb and dance to the plaintive song about a woman sold into sexual slavery in New Orleans in a place called the House of the Rising Sun, which symbolized the WWII enslavement of Korean women by the Japanese, the kingdom of the Rising Sun. The image was riveting and strangely moving, as she cast away layer upon layer of clothing, just as Viet Nam was casting away its commitment to Communism. The end was especially inspiring, when the "enslaved" dancer, naked and supine on the stage, symbolically and repeatedly moved her hips with the help of a long, sheer strategically-placed silk scarf. The show seldom varied but for the color of the scarf; I believe each different color symbolized yet another country waiting for America's courageous fighting men to perform acts of liberation upon it.
B: If you were that age now, would you have chosen to serve in Iraq?
O: God, I hope my learning curve is steeper than that.
B: The web has brought us Iraq's-most-wanted playing cards and Baghdad Bob talking dolls. What Internet crazes might have existed during the Viet Nam era?
O: I personally would've liked to see Barbie's Army Jeep and Saigon Dream Hooch. They would've been perfect for the Combat Nurse Barbie. Which actually existed. The realities of Viet Nam usually beat the hell out of anything I could make up. This is still the case: when I went back to Viet Nam in 1999, I bought a whole pack of marvelous Ho Chi Minh postcards. These were serious items, meant to impress foreigners with Uncle Ho's majesty, his humanity, his approachability. One of them showed him in a sailor suit that looked exactly like the one worn by the guy in the Village People. It's just impossible to improve on stuff like that. Or the Cu Chi Tunnels, which have now become a tourist attraction, complete with a booth where visitors can try on Viet Cong uniforms, and special tunnel entrances enlarged to accommodate Western fannies.
B: Some material from Don't Mean Nothing has appeared in Brazil. How did that come about?
O: I was doing a Google search on myself (the writer's equivalent of an ego trip) and I found a magazine called SpeakUp!, which is published in Brazil and helps Brazilians learn English. The first story in my collection, "The Boy From Montana," was printed in it and was also read aloud on the CD that is sold as part of the magazine. I figured they'd pirated it from Amazon, where that story is printed in its entirety as an excerpt from the book. But what could I do? It was Brazil. So I was going to let it slide, but then read the editorial which apologized for raising the price of the print version of SpeakUp! The reason for the increase was blamed on the cost of the stories, which had gone up so much.
Well, this pissed me off, because nobody had paid for my story. At least, they hadn't paid ME! So I posted a letter in their online forum saying I thought it was pretty shabby for them to lie in order to increase their profit margin. Next thing I knew, I was exchanging e-mails with the editor, who gave me some bull about getting my story from his parent company and not knowing it was pirated, and so on and so on. Well, I showed him! I insisted that he keep the story, but said I'd only give him another one if he promised to buy me a beer when I get to São Paulo.
Top ~ previous: Wilson\Thurber, Stahl, Slick, Bulley, Jarrett, Shafer