On Monday morning I arose early, hurried through my bathroom routine, and dressed in a pastel cotton shirt, sky blue suit, and canary necktie. After climbing the wooden basement stairs to check out the breakfast table, I discovered Mom in striped pajamas, fuzzy slippers, and terrycloth bathrobe scrambling eggs and frying canned corned beef hash. I helped myself to coffee, which I whitened with store brand evaporated milk, while Mom periodically screamed up the stairs for Janet to drag her lazy butt out of bed.
Pop tramped downstairs dressed in his post office uniform. Pop had been toting a mail sack around southeast Portland for the past quarter century. A few minutes later, Janet descended, clad in a bathrobe so short that her panties were on display.
“For heaven’s sake, Janet,” Mom protested. “The whole family can see your yoni.”
“Who’s looking?” Janet grumbled, plopping her moody butt into her chair. “You? Pop? Mahatma? Not Tinker Bell.” She drew her legs up and hugged herself, shivering in the late September breeze that ruffled the paisley curtains in the open window above the stove.
Mom dished hash and eggs onto our plates, and I slipped Mahatma a generous portion of Janet’s egg while Mom was offering up whichever new age prayer she’d selected for the day.
“Teach us, oh Vishnu, your holy ways, and give us obedient minds, that we might find our souls’ delight from day to day.”
After I’d eaten my hash and eggs and scanned The Portland Bee, I brushed my teeth and swigged a generic mouthwash. When I was ready, I drove to the Hilton, let the attendant in the hotel garage park my car for an outrageous fee (noting that Bill hadn’t mentioned reimbursement—maybe there was hope for him), and rode up the escalator to the ballroom. I intended to crash the mayor’s pancake breakfast.
Before the mayor’s pantywaist speech, Bill had called me aside and asked if I could get into the breakfast Justin T. Albee was hosting for his financial contributors.
“Easy as flapjacks,” I’d said, polishing my fingernails on my sleeve.
“Stacy Sawyer will recognize you.”
I shrugged. “Big deal. She won’t make a scene while the mayor’s fleecing his sheep. What do you need?”
“Can you get a picture of the mayor? A good one?”
Bill was asking for a picture that was good for us, not a favorable likeness of the mayor. He wanted a picture of Justin T. Albee looking moronic, pop-eyed, or feral. He wanted the kind of photo found in police mug shots or on state issued driver's licenses. The more closely the mayor resembled the mug shots taken of Glen Campbell, Nick Nolte, or best of all, Courtney Love during their bookings, the better for us.
Lugging Bill’s camera, I affixed a badge to my jacket and joined the members of the press as they filed past Albee’s “Homeland Security.” Anyone looking closely would notice that my press credential had been issued by The New Out, a gay and lesbian newspaper, but the bored guard scarcely glanced at it. The New Out staff hadn’t issued the credential to me. Several months earlier I’d weaseled it from its rightful owner, a raging, over-the-hill queen who did write occasional pieces for the paper. I literally had to screw the old poop to get it.
Once inside, the real reporters bolted for the buffet of pancakes and bacon, but no successful politician actually eats during political meals. Eat before, eat after, but the politician is there to garner votes and money. A few of the mayor’s staff were really eating, a sure sign that they were doomed to lose. My heart rejoiced when I saw Stacy Sawyer forking a plate full of pancakes into her face.
Trying to blend with the contributors, I hid my press pass and circulated through the crowd. I was looking for the faces of certain opinion leaders. Neil had been getting copies of the mayor’s filed financial reports, which every campaign does, researching the backgrounds of the major contributors, and passing the information so I could memorize the names and faces.
I soon spotted an attractive face—attractive to me, that is. In fact, Karl Helquist looked like a toad, but he had more money than a Saudi prince (his fortune came from selling chemicals for swimming pools), he was an ardent evangelical, and he’d donated ten thousand smackers to Albee. We expected him to donate a second ten thousand unless something could be done to derail his support. I sidled up to Helquist and spoke softly.
“The mayor’s looking confident this morning,” I commented.
“Yes,” Helquist agreed, though his tone implied that he didn’t know me and didn’t want to disrupt the status quo. From Neil’s report, I knew that he was a reactionary with totalitarian sentimentalities.
“He settled his opponent’s hash with that pantywaist speech,” I suggested. “That’s when I decided to contribute. I’d been undecided because of Albee’s past, but time changes a man.”
The hint of scandal awakened Helquist’s interest, and he responded slightly more chummily. “His past?”
I lowered my voice. “Yes, I think his cinematic background helped in putting across his message.”
“Albee was an actor?” Helquist gasped.
“Well, I don’t know how much acting was involved,” I admitted, nudging him familiarly. “Didn’t you ever see Behind the Green Door, Deep Throat, or Debbie Does Dallas?”
The millionaire’s face became a mask of disgust. “Pornography?”
“A long time ago,” I said, indicating that I could be tolerant of the mayor’s seamy past, “and they were minor roles. I’m sure he’s a changed man today.”
Helquist’s jaw dropped and his lips turned blue.
“Besides,” I continued in my tolerant vein, “how could he possibly get another part at his age, even if his political career does come undone?”
Leaving Helquist visibly shaking and mired in doubt, I oiled around the room and spread rumors about the mayor’s background in pornography until B. Ross Parr, president of the Chamber of Commerce, called the crowd to order. By that time most of the guests were seated at tables with plates of pancakes and bacon and sausage before them. I dropped into a vacant chair and cushioned Bill’s camera in my lap.
B. Ross Parr delivered an introductory speech detailing the mayor’s accomplishments, but his conclusion rocked his audience. “It is particularly appropriate that Justin T. Albee is hosting a pancake breakfast for us this morning because, as Justin T. informs us, he invented the American pancake. In the mid-1970’s, following his career as a bit player in well-known films, Justin T. used his culinary skills to create the thin, flat cake, made of batter and baked on a griddle or fried in a pan and doused with syrup.”
Before sitting, B. Ross Parr elaborated on the mayor’s contribution to American cuisine. The audience, most who had devoured pancakes prior to 1975, and many who knew that pancakes had been featured in cookbooks dating to 1439 (some claim that pancakes originated in China nearly 2,500 years ago), received the introduction with confused silence.
Visibly flustered, Justin T. Albee propelled to his feet. I saw Stacy Sawyer whispering rapidly in his ear while another pair of hands pushed him toward the podium, but Albee was so dazzled that he dropped his speech and the pages whisked as they scattered behind the head table.
By that time, Justin T. was at the podium, and the assistant was on his hands and knees gathering the pages. I stood and snapped a rapid series of flash photographs. The flashes on top of the false introduction left Justin T. Albee pop-eyed and sprung-jawed like a drunken simpleton.
Just as I shot the last photograph and sat down, the assistant arose and arranged the speech on the podium, and I stared like a half-blown congressional page. The assistant was the object of my heart’s desire, the reddish-blond with the creamy skin and the dreamy shape. The beautiful guy who’d inspired my powerful wet dream was working for my enemy. I sprawled in my chair, feeling like possum crossing Interstate Five.
Justin T. Albee struggled with his speech. He mumbled the first sentence brokenly; then realizing how pathetic he sounded he addressed his audience unrehearsed. “Forgive me, my friends,” he boomed, overcompensating. “Mr. Parr’s introduction left me nonplussed. I don’t know where he got that business about the pancakes. I certainly didn’t invent them.”
An ugly muttering rippled throughout his audience. B. Ross Parr turned a dark shade of crimson; the breakfast chef could’ve fried the remaining pancake batter on his head, and everyone present could see it’d be snowing in downtown Hell and its surrounding suburbs before the Chamber of Commerce gave Justin T. Albee any further support. B. Ross Parr was a popular guy with the members, and they didn’t appreciate hearing their friend and leader publicly humiliated.
The mayor had no choice but to ram on, so he read the first page of his speech. He droned through to the bottom, and as he flipped to the second, three contributors arose and left. I joined them, since nothing unhinges a speaker more than seeing his or her audience walk out, but I couldn’t depart without a backward glance at the object of my desire who met my eyes with a dubious frown.
Since my morning coffee had swelled my bladder uncomfortably, I stopped at the men’s room. As I stood at the urinal, I heard the door open and turning my head, I saw the object of my desire enter, glance at Bill’s camera resting on the sink shelf, and stand sprung hipped against the wall.
“Are you a reporter?” he demanded, his voice mellifluous and a tad fey.
I zipped up and washed my hands before whipping out my press pass, flashing it, and returning it to my pocket. He was nobody’s fool. He reached out his hand. With reluctance, I handed over the pass.
“Mike Dodger. The New Out,” he read aloud. He gave me a sharp look. “That’s a homosexual newspaper.”
I merely nodded and smiled. He looked so gorgeous, I could’ve jumped him on the spot.
He scrutinized the badge more closely. “It looks like you pasted your name over somebody else’s. I’ll bet you stole this badge.” He was exuding an aura of confidence, even smug arrogance, but beneath the surface something churned.
I puckered my lips and blew a kiss. His creamy skin blushed pink, and I caught a whiff of arousal. His pheromones were bubbling.
He handed back the badge with less confidence. “Are you going to use those pictures you took?” He tried to make his voice harsh and assertive, but it held an undercurrent of incertitude, perhaps even wonder.
“Who wants to know?” I smiled as I said it, but I’d been in the political game too long to permit even the prettiest guy in town keep me on the defense.
“I’m Lance Hancock. I work for the mayor.”
Was this the face that launched the squad cars of the Portland Police Bureau? “You’re the mayor’s Chief of Staff.”
“Yes.” He looked pleased that I’d recognized his name. “Do you intend to use those photographs?”
“Only the good ones,” I admitted, not saying which I considered good.
“You caught him at an awkward moment. He was stunned by that phony introduction.”
“Phony? You’re telling me the mayor was lying?”
Lance’s face twisted like he was annoyed, but he could have been fighting back a grin. “I mean Justin T. Albee did not invent the pancake.”
“But he claimed he invented pancakes,” I insisted.
“No, he didn’t, and you know he didn’t,” he whispered through gritted teeth. He drew a deep breath. “Why don’t you hand over that film.”
“Don’t worry about the pictures, Lance,” I assured him, trying to blow off the situation.
Unfortunately, Lance wasn’t used to blowing off anything. “I’m paid to worry about things like that, Mike. Give me that film. Please.”
“The magic word,” I said. “Kiss me.” I moved close so he could comply, but he backed sharply.
“What?” His face had blushed dark red. “Are you kidding?”
“Kiss me.” I advanced another step. “If you kiss me, I’ll give you the film.”
“You are a homosexual,” Lance gasped, flat against the tile wall, his eyes popping like he’d discovered Janet in a men’s room stall or he’d heard Mahatma asking for a cookie in schoolboy Latin.
“That’s my price.”
“I’m not going to kiss you,” he gasped. “Why don’t you do the right thing.”
“You’re not so straight as you pretend,” I said. “I saw you in Skindive.”
The blush drained off Lance’s face until he was ghostly. “I don’t know what that was about.” He couldn’t meet my eyes.
“A gay bar? You don’t know what a gay bar is?” I demanded.
He stood stiff as a stick and stared at the tiled wall. “I didn’t know Skindive catered to a homosexual clientele.”
“You just picked Skindive out of all the bars in Portland, a bar on Southwest Stark Street, the gayest area in town?”
“I didn’t pick it,” he protested. “Stacy Sawyer picked it. I don’t know why.”
I stepped forward, grabbed the back of Lance’s head, and planted my lips on his. As I pushed my tongue into his mouth, I felt his dick harden. Continuing to French him, I slid my hand down his back and gripped his shapely ass. He was powerless to resist. I pulled him against me until our erections rubbed. When I finally released him, he was red and sweating profusely. I winked at him, rewound the film in my camera, and handed him the roll.
Without a word, Lance grabbed the film and bolted from the men’s room. I smiled, wondering if he’d expose it to the light without checking. If he did have it developed, he’d find pictures the cute intern Spencer Underwood had taken of his own penis. I’d switched the film in my camera before Lance entered the bathroom. Justin T. Albee’s disastrous pictures were concealed in my coat pocket.
Half an hour later I breezed into headquarters feeling like the cabin boy who’d saved the ship. Justin T. Albee had gotten the wind knocked out of his sails, and the tide was turning. Unfortunately, I was the only staff member with a sunny disposition. The mood inside headquarters was cloudy with a chance of hail.
“Where’ve you been?” Lisa demanded grumpily when I plopped my buttocks onto her desk.
“At Mayor’s pancake breakfast.”
“You must like those friggin’ pancakes, Mike.” She sounded bitter.
I shrugged. “Have you thought about what costume you’re going to wear to Poppy Reed’s Halloween party?”
Poppy Reed, an aging sixties radical, threw four parties a year, on Halloween, May Day, the Fourth of July, and Valentine’s Day. Her political connections ran so deep that anyone hoping to get elected had better attend. I’d already bought my costume, which was hanging in my closet.
“Poppy’s party isn’t for a month yet,” Lisa snapped. “Bill called a staff meeting for noon. Looks like Kim’s ready to fold.”
“Fold?”
“Yeah, fold the tents,” Lisa snarled. “Thanks to you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. You don’t do anything to help him get elected. The rest of us have been manning the phones all morning while you’ve been gorging on pancakes.”
The suggestion of Lisa “manning” anything struck me as funny. I tried to cheer her up. “You ever read Cormac O’Brien’s book, Lisa? He wrote that President Gerald Ford used to let off loud farts and blame them on his Secret Service men.”
“What the fuckin’ hell has that got to do with anything?”
“You don’t see what I do to get Kim elected.”
President Ford laughs as he starts to get up after falling on his second run on Bwana Run during a ski trip with members of the U.S. Olympic ski team at Vail, Colo., Dec. 26, 1975. (AP Photo/Charlie Tasnadi)
“Mike, you’re my friend,” Lisa said with a sob. “I love your gay ass, but right now I don’t want to fuckin’ listen to your bullshit.”
Stunned, I wandered into the break room and poured a large cup of coffee and dosed it with half-and-half. The clock in the break room read 11:53. I carried my coffee into Bill’s office, found the campaign manager sagged dejectedly, and dropped my ass into the chair across from him. Before he could speak, I told him about the pictures.
“I dropped the film off at your friend’s place on the way back. He’s going to develop it immediately, and he promised that he’ll schlep the prints over when they dry.”
“Schlep?” Bill asked without much interest. He’d been born in the Deep South. Of course, I was born in Oregon so I’d also had to ask the photo guy what he meant.
“He’ll hand carry them to us.”
“All right,” Bill said, slumping farther down in his chair. He didn’t sound excited, and I figured he needed a shot in the arm.
“Bill, don’t slide under your desk,” I suggested, trying to keep him from completely disappearing. “Kim Flanders is going to win. I saw a pack of losers this morning.”
Bill straightened up reluctantly, but regarded me as if I was something that had oozed from under a red rock and waved at the Martian rover.
I continued bravely. “No matter how bad those stupid polls look, we can’t give up. No matter how bad our numbers may look, the mayor looked worse this morning.”
Bill tried a weak grin, but after I described the pancake introduction, the dropped speech, and the offense to the Chamber of Commerce, his smile broadened.
“How could B. Ross Parr believe that Justin T. Albee invented pancakes?” Bill chortled. “Where’d he get such information?”
I drew a deep breath, and pondered the hazards of telling Bill the truth. It seemed like a dangerous precedent for anyone dabbling in politics, but I let fly with the whole hog. “I faxed the pancake paragraph to B. Ross this morning,” I admitted. “From a Kinko’s near city hall. I signed Stacy Sawyer’s name to it.”
Bill slumped back into his original position and stared at me gape-mouthed. “That’s dirty politics, Mike. Like the kind of tricks that landed Donald Segretti in prison.”
“Nah,” I demurred. “Segretti’s tricks were crude—stink bombs and stuff bought in magic shops. Nixon used Segretti, but he thought Segretti was stupid. Mine had panache.”
Bill shook his head ruefully. “Don’t tell Kim. He’d fire you if he knew what you’ve done.” He stared into space for a few seconds; then his brow darkened.
Donald Segretti
“What am I thinking? It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It still matters. You watch. I’ll find a way to keep Kim from ending this campaign,” I promised, pretending more confidence that I felt. “However, I need you to cover my ass.”
To my utter stupefaction, Bill winked. “Like you, Mike, I want to win.”
Bill summoned Lisa and Neil, who moped in and dropped their weary asses into the chairs Bill indicated. While Bill went to fetch Kim Flanders, I whispered rapidly to them until they both nodded in agreement. When our candidate entered the office, Lisa, Neil, and I stood and applauded.
“Thanks, guys,” Kim said, “but hold the clapping until you hear what I have to say.”
“Kim, you can’t quit. Don’t let us down,” Lisa blurted.
Kim Flanders winced. “I’ve never been a quitter, but since the mayor’s pantywaist speech, our fundraising has ground to a halt. Out of the last four hundred phone calls, I’ve raised less than a hundred dollars. Frankly, it’s a choice between paying you guys this week or making the office rent.”
Lisa, Neil, and I exchanged looks. “I could take a cash advance on my credit card,” Neil said.
“I’m all right,” I said with a short laugh. “I’m sponging off my parents.”
Lisa chipped in with, “I can stiff Lou for a couple of weeks and rely on my muffdiving talent to keep me from ending up homeless.”
“Oversharing, Lisa,” Bill objected, turning a yucky shade of green.
“You guys would let your paychecks slide to help me get elected?” Kim Flanders said, deeply moved. Tears formed in his eyes.
“Yeah,” Lisa assured him. “Especially for those cushy government jobs you’re gonna give us in City Hall once you’re in power.”
I added, “And with the provision that you catch up our salaries when the money starts rolling in again.”
Our candidate looked at me with eyes so pleading that I averted my gaze when he said, “I can’t guarantee that’s going to happen, Mike.”
Stealing myself, I faced Kim’s eyes again. “It will happen. Justin T. Albee flubbed his speech this morning and he pissed off the Chamber.” I laughed at the image. “Not-to-mention, his biggest contributors are whispering behind his back.”
“That’s amazing,” our candidate remarked innocently. “How could everything go wrong for him in a single morning?”
“That’s politics,” I said, shrugging. “It’s a new surprise every day. Like in 1952 when Estes Kefauver won every primary he entered and went into the Democratic convention certain to be the candidate to whip Eisenhower. But those Dixiecrat rednecks didn’t appreciate Kefauver’s pro-civil rights stance, so they nominated Adlai Stevenson, and he led the party down in flames.”
The room fell into silence, my good liberal friends shocked that I’d utter a word against Adlai. “Jeez, that’s your interpretation of events, Mike,” Bill remonstrated. “Stevenson was the real civil rights candidate, and Kefauver didn’t get the nod for other reasons.”
I wasn’t about to take a contradiction laying down. I knew I was right. “Yeah, my interpretation, the correct, factual, historical one. Remember what happened when Eleanor Roosevelt took Stevenson campaigning in Harlem?”
Kim Flanders regarded me with jawcracking amazement, so Bill chipped back in with, “Mike knows the nitty-gritty details of every political campaign waged in the United States and can tell stories about them until we all lapse into a coma.”
“Hey, I represent that,” I grumbled good-naturedly, inwardly more pleased with the compliment than fazed by the suggestion that I was boring everyone.
“No fooling,” Lisa said. “Mike will talk your fuckin’ ear off.” She gave me a significant look. “I guess it beats working like the rest of us.”
“My stories are instructive. Let me give you an example; why didn’t John F. Kennedy’s grandfather seek reelection as the mayor of Boston?”
Kim Flanders made a half-smile of interest and his eyes twinkled, so Bill groaned, “Okay, I’ll bite.”
“Bite me,” Lisa piped up.
“John Francis ‘Honey Fitz’ Fitzgerald intended to run for another term, but his opponent James Michael Curley advertised a speech titled ‘Great Lovers: From Cleopatra to Toodles.’ Toodles Ryan was Honey Fitz’s girlfriend, and the threat of exposure drove Honey Fitz out of the race.”
Kim Flanders laughed and sputtered, “Things haven’t changed much since then.”
Mayor of Boston
John Francis Fitzgerald
Even Lisa giggled then; she was a jolly soul underneath her warbitch persona. Bill suggested that we get back to work.
Everything was going fine until I got tagged with helping volunteers fold and label envelopes. Mass mailings are a boring, thankless job, but somebody’s got to do it. However, that somebody didn’t have to be me. After we’d been working on the stack for fifteen minutes, the volunteer Bruce, who turned out to be a total weasel, piped up, “Mike’s sticking the stamps on upside down.”
Bill hurried over and examined my work. “Mike, are people going to vote for a candidate who sends mail with upside down postage? You have to set an example for the interns and volunteers. Not screw up in front of them. What are we paying you for?”
“This week, Bill, you’re not. Besides, I heard that an upside-down stamp was valuable.”
“Not like that,” Bill groaned.
“Really?”
“Yeah, really, as you well know.”
I gave him my most innocent expression, but he didn’t fall for it.
“Let’s go into my office,” he urged, taking my arm. Strangely, after meeting Lance, I was less attracted to Bill, so his grabbing me wasn’t the thrill it would’ve been a week earlier.
“Mike’s gonna get fired,” Lisa stage whispered to Neil as Bill escorted me past them.
“Some friends you are,” I muttered. “Quit gossiping.”
“Without gossip we wouldn’t have anything to talk about,” Bruce quipped.
“It’s a shame, but he deserves it,” Lisa yelled.
Bill shut the door behind us and told me to sit down, but before he could bawl me out I spoke up. “You’re not utilizing my talents. You studied my resume, and you must know what I’ve done for other campaigns. Did you hire me for my strengths or my weaknesses?”
Bill rearranged a pile of message slips on his desk while he thought. After a time he said, “That’s a foolish question.”
“No, it’s not, Bill.” I waved my arms in exasperation. “Office work. Polls. Mindless phone calls. I’m no good at those things.”
“You’re supposed to be good with phone work.”
I grinned. “I’ve got a knack for calling Republican voters at 3:00 a.m. the night before the election and pretending I’m working for the Republican candidate. Ticking them off so they don’t vote.”
Bill rolled his eyes and tried not to show that he was amused. “That technique wouldn’t work so well now that we Oregonians vote by mail, and besides Kim doesn’t approve of dirty campaigning.”
“Letters and phone calls don’t elect a candidate, Bill. We’ve got to cream the opposition. We’ve got to cheapen him, abuse him, demean him, and humiliate him until Hell wouldn’t have him and his own mother wouldn’t vote for him.”
“Kim intends to keep his campaign clean,” Bill offered weakly. My speech had reached him on a visceral level and his political soul had responded.
I stared Bill square in the eye. “You know better, don’t you? You sent me to get pictures we can use against Albee. You know that we have to kick to the groin, and when our opponent shrieks call him a sissy. If we don’t bruise Justin T. Albee’s balls, he’ll be running for reelection four years from now.”
Bill sat back and drew a deep breath. He let it out slowly before he asked, “What do you want to do?”
“Let me form a Stink Tank.”
“What kind of tank?”
“Stink Tank,” I clarified. “That’s what Jimmy Carter called his dirty tricksters.”
Bill’s eyes widened. “I don’t associate President Carter with dirty tricks.”
“Nobody does. That’s the beauty of it.”
“So you want to do dirty tricks to help Kim get elected?” Bill sounded eager, but worried.
“I’m offering, Bill.”
“Kim will never go for it.” As he spoke, his eyes darted around the room.
“Yeah. So let’s not tell him.”
“Jesus, I hope Albee hasn’t bugged our office. If you got caught, you’d sink us.” His voice had become downright shifty.
“I haven’t got caught yet, Bill. Remember that three-way primary for the state house last year? The one Sammie Shelton won?”
Bill looked relieved that the conversation had shifted from the present campaign. “Shelton should never have won that race; though, I have to admit, he’s turning out to be a damn good legislator. Nevertheless, Boone and Plummer were charismatic speakers and Shelton talked like he had a hot potato in his mouth.”
I grinned at him—just like the cat who ate the canary.
Bill half rose from his chair. “You made Boone and Plummer self-destruct, Mike? You?”
“I cannot tell a lie. You want to know how I made Shelton our state representative?”
“Yes, but don’t tell me.” Bill gave his telephone a suspicious look, like he thought it was repeating our words to Albee. “It’s better I don’t know.” He offered his computer monitor a downright hostile glance.
“So how about my Stink Tank?”
Bill tiptoed to his door and yanked it open to catch anyone listening at the crack. No one was, but several heads raised from their desks. “I’ll have to think about it, Mike,” Bill whispered. “I’ll let you know in a couple of days. In the meanwhile, stop shirking work.”
“I don’t shirk,” I protested.
“I’ll bet you don’t even believe what you’re saying,” Bill said. “You tried to get out of attending the first aid class.” Kim Flanders had mandated that all staff members undergo first aid training, including giving CPR, the Heimlich Maneuver, and stuff like that. I’d tried to arrange a fast trip out of the office when the trainer arrived, but Bill had stopped me and then sat beside me through the entire training so I couldn’t duck out.
“I still can’t see how me giving CPR to a dummy is going to help swing the election,” I said.
“Just stick the stamps right side up on the letters,” Bill moaned.
I strolled back to my desk, punched in a familiar phone number, and left a message for Bunny and the Buckaroo, my dirty tricks team. Then I sat back and delighted again over the Shelton victory. The beauty of my campaign for Shelton was that nothing I did came back on my candidate. Before my assistance, Shelton had been destined to lose a courteous campaign with two other gentlemen. Less than a month before the election, the newspaper had run an article titled, “Three run a polite race for House seat.” That was the day Shelton’s campaign manager met me in a café and slipped me a bag of cash.
I promptly created fliers urging voters to vote for Plummer and suggesting that Boone had fathered a child with a fourteen-year-old hooker. I printed the fliers on my home computer, shredded the document files, and ran off a hundred copies at a copy store. I didn’t need many because I wasn’t planning to distribute them. I only wanted to make certain one fell into the hands of a Boone volunteer.
At the next candidate forum, Plummer confided to Shelton that Boone had personally vilified him over the phone. I promptly created a new flier, seeming to originate in the Boone camp. A few years earlier Plummer’s restaurant had tragically burned, destroying an old family business. In my flier, Boone accused Plummer of burning down his own restaurant for the insurance.
The final break came just days before ballots started arriving at the voters’ homes. After the fliers and sundry cheap shots, I had Plummer and Boone snarling at each other, but their quibbles weren’t sufficient to sink them and elect Shelton. However, driving around with Bunny and the Buckaroo, I noticed that Plummer’s yard signs were about three inches wider than Boone’s. At several choice locations, taking extreme care not to get caught, we uprooted Boone signs, threw away their stakes, and stapled them over Plummer signs with one and a half inches of Plummer showing on both sides. Fortunately, Plummer’s signs had a red background and Boone’s a blue, so the cover-up was obvious.
Two evenings later, at the final candidate forum Plummer raised the issue of his signs and Boone’s illegal tampering. Losing all sense of purpose, Boone informed Plummer that he was a congenital liar. Plummer called Boone a child molester. Boone responded by indicating that Plummer was a convicted arsonist.
Within seconds the pair were screaming and swearing at each other, the blue streak of their profanities passing through poor Shelton who stood aghast at his podium between them. Every news station aired the tape at eleven that night, during the morning shows, and again at six the next evening—with thirty-five bleeps obscuring the mounting obscenities. Through it all, Shelton appeared to maintain his composure—in fact, he’d been too stupefied to react and was frozen in his tracks—but the viewers saw a man resolute and composed in the midst of a crisis.
When the ballots had been counted, Shelton won with seventy percent of the vote. Boone trailed with seventeen percent and Plummer followed with thirteen (Boone had more living relatives). Shelton’s final campaign finance report listed me as a paid political consultant.
As I sat half-dreaming over past success, Kim Flanders practically flew from his office and into Bill’s. Too excited to close the door, Kim blurted, “I just got a call from Karl Helquist. He’s donating $10,000 to our campaign. He asked if I could pick up the check today.”
Bill rocketed to his feet. “You’re sure that homophobic fascist dialed the right phone number?”
“He called me by my name,” Kim confirmed. “Apparently, he’s had a change of heart.”
After Kim Flanders left to pick up the check, Bill called the staff back into his office. “Okay, guys, it looks like we’re going to get paid after all.”
As Lisa and Neil stood to leave, beaming brightly at the upturn in our fortunes, Bill tipped me a conspiratorial wink, and his lips formed a silent “Thank you, Mike.”
The six o’clock news led with scenes from the mayor’s breakfast, particularly B. Ross Parr’s comments about His Honor the Mayor inventing pancakes. Mom, Pop, and I sat on the couch and watched our rather antique television set that still received its input from an antenna on our roof, while Janet sprawled on the floor next to Mahatma.
“What an idiot,” Janet said, flapping the dog’s ears to affirm her remark. “The goofy mayor thinks he invented pancakes?”
Of course, Justin T. Albee had made no such claim, but Parr’s introduction had planted the seed of confusion in Janet’s twisted little brain, and I grinned knowingly. I used Janet as my barometer, assuming that her reaction would reflect the mentality of the uninformed voter.
The news went on to show the mayor dropping his speech and Lance arranging it on the podium before him. Lance looked drop-dead gorgeous, and I shifted uncomfortably as I tried to adjust my swelling dick without my parents and obnoxious sister noticing.
“Does that pretty boy work for the mayor?” Mom asked.
“Yeah,” I murmured as in a dream. My breath rasped lustfully just from the electronic vision of Lance on the screen, my lips again felt his pressed lips, and my tongue tasted his sweet mouth.
“He’s a beautiful boy,” Mom proclaimed. “Do you know him, Mike?”
“Tinker Bell probably has a picture of him,” Janet chimed in, “on his ceiling.”
“I’ve met him,” I said. “I kissed him in the Hilton men’s room this morning.”
“Oh, yuck,” Janet groaned. “Queer lust.” She twisted and looked long at my crotch. “What do you bet Tinker Bell has a woody right now, just from seeing the guy on TV?”
“Janet,” Mom remonstrated lightly. Pop ignored her. Our parents were resigned to raising a junior Ann Coulter.
“I wouldn’t think the mayor would have gay people on his staff,” Pop said. “Not with his attitude.”
“You don’t know the half of it, Pop. He has two, at least, though Stacy’s in the closet, and Lance doesn’t know what he is—yet. But he soon will.”
“Because our family pervert’s gonna screw him,” Janet crowed, and even Pop protested that remark.
After the news concluded, the family trooped into the kitchen for supper. Mom had outdone herself with deep fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and corn on the cob. We sat down, joined hands, and Mom prayed: “We are grateful for this food, Lord Buddha. For the sake of all beings, may we realize the Path of Awakening.” Then we ate, each of us slipping tidbits to Mahatma who circled the table in a well-worn pattern.
After supper I hurried to my room (sticking Janet with the dishes) and checked my phone for messages. I had two, one from Bill, and the other from Bunny and the Buckaroo. I called Bill first.
“These photos are terrific, Mike,” he whispered after we’d gotten past the preliminaries. “They make you-know-who look so idiotic we’ll have to tone them down before we use them.”
I knew what Bill was talking about. I’d kept an extra set after they’d gotten “schlepped” in and I’d paid the photo developer out of our petty cash account. He would appear on the campaign finance form as “Candidate Photos.”
I went right to the point. “Are we going to use them?”
“We’ll talk about that,” Bill murmured uneasily. “Not over the phone.”
“That makes sense,” I lied, humoring him. In truth, his suspicions made no sense at all. Did Bill really believe that the mayor had bugged our phones?
“The reason I called, Mike,” Bill started. “That other campaign event we talked about. I’ve been thinking. Let’s set it in motion.”
Bill was being excessively paranoid, but I played along. After all, he was giving me what I’d wanted, a dirty tricks squad “A-OK,” I confirmed, thinking it unlikely that secret agent moles were listening to our goofy double-talk.
“We’ll confab in the sweet bye-and-bye,” Bill whispered, sounding more and more like the chief spook in the CIA.
“That’s a big ten-four, good buddy,” I replied enigmatically and hung up hoping that the sweet bye-and-bye meant the next time I saw him and not after death.
I shook my head to clear the mental cobwebs Bill had spun, and studied my favorite pictures. As I grew aroused I thought about Lance. He was gay, in spite of his denials, and I was determined to reveal his true nature. When my eye caught a photo of a flame-tressed man I’d snipped from an underwear catalog, my hand slipped into my briefs as though it had a mind of its own. I teased the head of my cock as I daydreamed about Lance. I dragged a bottle of personal lubricant from my bedside table and made love to Lance in reverie. When I finished, I called Bunny and the Buckaroo.
