Hot Lips Houlihan

a road to ruin

Watching continuous reruns of the show M*A*S*H throughout my childhood was a comforting escape from the realities I was having to endure in real life.

It also taught me about coping with the things that weren’t showing up in my life naturally. Or, things that were showing up but weren’t being dealt with successfully. Things that were missing while my elders struggled with their own dealings. Things like the importance of having balance and, in addition to having strong senses of humour, also having honour and morality and seeing things through to the end together or alone… through love and war and loss.

One major thing it taught me… coping with drinking. How to make drinking seem like a viable day’s end. How to see drinking as something that accompanied and punctuated a range of important or even unimportant life occurrences.

How to see drinking as something quite fucking humorous, not to be taken seriously.

Just like Hawkeye and Trapper John, and then BJ Hunnicutt, I used to drink martinis like a war was on — gin martini, dirty, dry, with two olives.

I remember drinking these martinis and thinking that I was just like they were on M*A*S*H. Isn’t that amusing? It’s not sad anymore because it’s so long ago. I escaped.

But back then I basically trained myself to enjoy them. At first it was like drinking rocket fuel. But this is what I was like once. I would make myself do these things. I would want to appear like I was able to endure everything without complaint. Not tough — just not weak.

In my mind I was being Hot Lips Houlihan — except my lips weren’t hot from being hot. They were hot from the fuel. Hot from being cool. Ice cold cool and drunk. Too cool. Aloof cool. The only hot thing about me would have been my hot head, when challenged.

I’m familiar with the expression ‘martinis are like breasts, one is not enough and three is too many’ but I never subscribed to that and would sometimes have 7 or 8, sometimes more, in a sitting. I remember wondering why they weren’t affecting me the way I thought they should. But I guess it’s easy to think that when you are trained to never reveal your hand to anyone. I was a natural at pretending to be in control. Had to be.

Where others with less impressive coping mechanisms might be heading towards some sort of body coma, I was managing to do these other things to get me through the usual love, war and loss, whatever was on my plate at the time. I didn’t stop to consider that there were any other options. Ways of being. Everyone else was doing it. I’d do it better.

And I smoked cigars with them, the martinis. Stogies — Cohibas when I could get them— and Panatelas. Never Cigarillos. Too short. I inevitably ended up with Panatellas mainly because they were the only thing available from every remote service station you would find yourself near when stocking up for the days leading up to New Year’s Eve, weddings, parties, whatever was on the agenda. Clarshy [wiggles eyebrows...]

I’d learned to smoke cigars at client functions, back in the days where, gradually getting tighter, you would watch the different phases of a restaurant while its staff would watch you watching their different phases. A lunch commencing at 12.30pm and concluding with cigars and cognac at 4.30am. Those were the days. I had a hard nosed boss and harder nosed clients to impress. I was a natural. On the inside I was choking but on the outside I was as pretty as the restaurant decor. Had to be.

And I was a crack shot with target shooting. Rifles. Competitive mid-range shooting. I was a natural at that too. The only time I missed was when I misheard the host telling me what I was supposed to be aiming for. I’d repeatedly hit the bullseye of the target sitting to the right of my actual target. I’d shot a round off, he’d lowered his binoculars after looking at my target, announcing ‘no hits’. I’d disagreed. He’d walked to my target and assessed its hits. ‘No hits’ he’d repeated. I pointed to the target to his left, my right. Nothing but bullseye. I learned that day to listen to instructions better.

A gun totin’, dirty martini swillin’, cigar smokin’ hard arse.

But, of course, completely missing the point of life. Letting it pass me by. Watching it — waving at it. Believing it wasn’t really for me. Not for people like me.

Anyway, I escaped. I wised up.

I realised that booze plus guns plus depression amounts to driving a big camouflaged tank down a road to ruin.

Now I drink only water. Sparkling water. And copious amounts of coffee. Good coffee. But no cigars, none of that stuff. No more brave face.

War is over.

Had to be.

I love M*A*S*H more now that I can focus on it.