The Carnivale's Tale

"I wasn't the only one who let up on the beatings and the stealing as my conscience returned. For most of us, setting off C-4 explosives, ransacking houses and zipcuffing teenagers and men provided a boost of adrenaline and excitement for a month or two at the most. As time went on, we found no weapons of mass destruction. We found no signs of terrorism. We found nothing but people whose lives would deteriorate, or end, simply for having met us face to face in their cars and their homes."
Joshua Key. The Deserter's Tale.


This is Elizabeth Street, Paddington, where John Bygate lived. These houses loomed so large; and all the players are dead now. I met John Bygate through my first dark mentor; Harry Godolphin; who was one of those strange brigade of marginals who take an interest in delinquent boys. Except he wasn't like the others. He always wore sun glasses, some eye thing; and longish dark hair. And was basically a strange person. I remember the day he died. I was on a tour of the countryside for the Sydney Morning Herald. It was this yearly bus trip through the bush sponsored in those days by the Royal Agricultural Society and Shell petrol; so no expense was spared. We always stayed in the best places available; and were treated with great respect.

The only time a journalist is ever treated with respect is out on the road; in the office forget it. We're not always called vultures. Sometimes people think we have a view to a wider, more informed world; like who's going to win the election. The dry countryside flashed by; and I knew he was in the hospital at Mullumbimby; the laid back north coast town, along with Nimbin the unofficial dope capital of Australia. I spoke to him; how are you? I'm dying, he said. You were always a big help to me; I said; and thanked him. He had always encouraged me to write when I was a 16 year old very troubled delinquent drug fiend hanging around the Cross partying into an early grave and crashing at his place; the only other choice being to rent ourselves out.

And John; beyond our circuit, was the person to know. He had a house; provided by a sugar daddy. And he was handsome enough to stop traffic; almost literally. He was one of those few genuinely charismatic people; who are impossible not to watch. And one day Harry took me up there, from our aerie over-looking Woolloomoolloo. And thus it began; that friendship; from the days when I just thought he was the bee's knees; everything I wanted to be; creative; fabulous; briliantly whacked; a coruscating humour that just left us cracked up in the trendy bars of the day; one we particularly loved; the bar draped around the coloured internal ceiling; potted plants.

Fabulous; not well but fabulous; he'd say; and I could see him laughing at the other side of the bar; higher than anybody else in the room. And he too, died, of a brain hemorrhage; the fabulous days long gone; when he was proud to know me; and not the other way around; and I brought him gifts that only he appreciated. And the wine turned cheap and everything dissolved. And I would return from some part of the world; and from the airport head straight to Elizabeth Street, Paddington, where I was greeted with enormous amusement; the fully qualified international junkie; and we settled in to party party party; cloaked in myth.


THE BIGGER STORY:

Time:

"Still, the fact is security contractors are a daily reminder for Iraqis that their country is occupied, and they are second-class citizens. The insult is not just that security contractors are allowed to use lethal force and not worry about going to jail; a Western security contractor will make in a week what an Iraqi might make in a year. Private security contractors are a humiliation equal to the humiliations that provoked the Boxer Rebellion in China or drove Iranians to overthrow the Shah. Security contractors may be keeping our officials alive, but they are not winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqis."