During the afternoon of Sunday, October 10, the interns Kathy and Spencer had festooned Kim Flanders’ Campaign office with balloons, streamers, pennants, and banners. Eighty milling, eating, and drinking human forms blocked my view of the eight-foot-long table laden with a bowl of punch, various snacks, little cakes, cookies, and dishes of candy. Bill St. John was organizing volunteers for the door-to-door swing. From that day until Election Day, these volunteers would knock on doors and urge residents to vote for Kim Flanders. As the voters mailed in their ballots, their names would be stricken from the walking list. However so many of these volunteers were such obvious gender benders, I questioned whether they’d influence people in the way we hoped.
Lisa sidled away from her desk, which held a mountain of brochures and door hangers, past Neil’s desk, clumsily piled with clipboards of voter lists in street address order and separated by precinct, and parked her dykish buns atop my desk calendar with her booted feet resting on my thighs.
“I heard you stuffed your new boyfriend into a ponyboy getup last night and rode him around a boy-boy bar,” Lisa said, practically drooling over the rich gossip.
“Lisa, that story is total malarkey. Where’d you hear it?”
“Oh, around,” she answered evasively.
I scanned the crowd. “Our coworker wasn’t there last night,” I protested.
“I didn’t say Neil told me,” Lisa blurted, then struck her hand to her mouth. “You tricked me.”
“It was easy.”
Lisa pushed the toes of her climbing boots against my stomach.
“Two ponyboys were prancing around the bar, but Lance and I weren’t involved. How do these rumors get started, Lisa?”
I cast my mind back to the previous night. The ponyboy pulling the red and black sulky had worn a silver spandex suit. The second ponyboy was more explicitly dressed in a rubber outfit including forehooves and a horse-like snout that attached to the bridle. A voluptuous horsetail protruded from his anus.
“What in the name of Beelzebub are those?” Lance had demanded, and I spelled out the ponyboy-and-his-master craze.
“How degrading,” Lance proclaimed.
“They’re a-keepin’ one leg on each side,” Bunny allowed, tilting his brown Stetson as if he was saying something meaningful.
“And their peckers down the middle,” concluded the Buckaroo.
“It’s a pretended degradation, Lance,” I said. “They’re only playing. Straight people do the same when they play master and slave, the whip-wielding mistresses and their boot-licking boyfriends.”
“Holy Hades, the one pulling the sulky has a steel bit in his mouth. And look at the rubber pony suit. The bottom’s been cut out of his costume—with his ass hanging out. Is his tail sticking out of his butthole?”
“The tail’s attached to a butt plug,” someone volunteered. “A big one shoved in tight so it can’t slip out.”
Lance shuddered as the rubber-clad ponyboy’s master, arrayed in cowboy drag more flashy but less authentic than Bunny and the Buckaroo’s garb, smacked his pony’s ass. “Can you imagine putting yourself into somebody else’s power?”
“The submissive can stop the game,” I protested.
“So these perverts claim, but suppose some guy’s chained up and he wants to stop. So he says his secret word, but the creep working on him decides to ratchet the pain up a few notches. What’s he do then?”
Bunny, the Buckaroo, and I looked at each other, raised our eyebrows, and shrugged. “Who knows,” I said. “We aren’t into this bondage thing.”
The ponyboy pulling the sulky banged against our table, knocking over our pitcher. “Let’s haul ass for the meatrack,” the Buckaroo suggested.
I grabbed the ponyboy’s owner and pointed to our spilled ale. “I’ll whip him,” the owner said.
“I don’t care what you do to him,” I said. “However, you owe us a pitcher of Golden Brigade Blonde Ale.”
The ponyboy master’s eyes lingered on my friends who were climbing to the top tier of the meatrack, a common seating arrangement in traditional gay bars. Lance’s magnificent ass and the cowboys’ butts so sharply delineated by their tight Levi’s attracted more eyes than those of the ponyboy’s master. I didn’t care if gay men checked out the cow punchers’ hunkies, but I felt a twinge of green emotion when I noticed guys staring at Lance’s rump.
“Well? How about it?” I demanded.
“Yeah,” he agreed with a sigh and ordered the bartender to refill our pitcher.
Ale in hand, I climbed to the top of the meatrack and sat between Lance and Bunny. While I refilled the guys’ glasses, I continued theorizing. “My rationale is that if guys want masters, let them. I don’t need a master, and I’m with Lance that power tends to corrupt.”
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” Lance quoted.
“Yeah, Lord Acton,” I added, not to be outdone.
“Let me set that bit o’ learnin’ down,” the Buckaroo said, pulling a pen from the pocket of his checked cowboy shirt and touching the tip to a damp napkin. “Did the Lord write it out in a book?”
“It’s quoted in lots of books, Buckaroo, but originally Lord Acton wrote those words in a 1887 letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton.”
The Buckaroo had been trying to write, but his pen tore through his napkin. Finally he gave it up. “This shit’s too deep fer my boots,” the Buckaroo said, crumpling the napkin.
“I’m sure you can find the quote in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations,” Lance added helpfully.
“How’d things go with the mayor, Lance?” I asked. “Why’d he want you to return to City Hall?”
“Oh, he’s still raving about that pancake introduction,” Lance said. “He wanted to call a press conference to announce that he did not invent pancakes. He popped his cork when I told him he’d be better off shutting up and letting it blow over. When I compared it to Al Gore saying he invented the Internet, he nearly had a heart attack.”
I looked at the man I considered the love of my life—not-to-mention the object of my desire—with some consternation. “Lance, you gotta stop using that example. Vice-President Gore never said he invented the Internet.”
“He has to have said it,” Lance protested emphatically. “I’ve been hearing it for years.”
“Gore said he took the initiative in creating the Internet,” I said. “He was referring to legislation he’d sponsored that allowed commercial use of the National Science Foundation’s network.”
On March 9, 1999, Vice-President Al Gore’s told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about legislation he’d sponsored in the early 90’s that allowed commercial use of the National Science Foundation’s net-work. The legislation made possible the Internet as we know it today and spawned the deceptive statement of right-wing talk-show hosts that Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet. Vice-President Gore said: “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth and environmental protection, improve-ments in our educational system.”
“Whatever,” Lance said, sounding a lot like Janet as he reverted to subject. “I told Mayor Albee that he’d better laugh off the pancake myth, because the media are never going to mention his name again without adding something about pancakes. Oh, that reminds me. I hope you didn’t get the wrong idea about the way Albee greeted your sister.”
We pulled up our feet as the commotion in the bar increased, and the rubber clad ponyboy leaped onto the bottom tier of the meatrack.
“He was hitting on her,” I said, protecting our pitcher.
Lance blanched. “No. No. You mistook his meaning.”
I gazed sternly into his eyes, which wasn’t easy because the four of us were sitting side by side. “Lance, give me a break,” I demanded. “I know inappropriate heterosexuality when I see it. Justin T. Albee was trying to bed my sister, a sixteen-year-old high school kid.”
“Oh, this is bad,” Lance proclaimed, nearly drowning out the boisterous homosexual games taking place at our feet.
“No kidding,” I agreed. “It couldn’t get worse—our mayor a potential child molester.”
Lance’s face turned gray, which looked really bad under the lurid colored lights illuminating the bar. “No, I mean it’s bad because you’re totally misunderstanding the mayor. It’s just his way.”
“It’s the way he is; that’s for sure,” I said, rendering Lance mute.
So events fell out that on Sunday evening Lisa was perched atop my desk, suggesting that I’d made Lance my ponyboy. I was about to question her further, because I couldn’t imagine where Neil had gotten the story. I couldn’t be hurt by the wild fabrication; the whole world knew that I was gay, and it hardly mattered if everybody thought I was kinky, to boot. However, Lance could be horribly damaged by the calumny, so I was about to dig in when Bill told Lisa, Neil, and I to distribute packets to the volunteers. As Bill called each volunteer by name, we handed him or her or it a map, a list, a script, and sack full of campaign materials. Contrary to Lisa’s frequent complaints, I didn’t always manage to shirk labor.
When the packets and sacks had been distributed and Bill had given a fast and simple lesson in door-to-door campaigning, the volunteers dispersed. Soon only Neil, Bill, Lisa, and I remained. Kim Flanders had been in earlier, shaken hands with each volunteer, thanking them for their help, and then departed for a meeting with the firefighters union.
“Want to take a drive?” I asked Lisa.
“Where the fuck do you want to drive?” she demanded, pointing toward the overcast night sky and the chilly fog rolling in from the river. “It’s nearly ten o’clock.”
“Oh, just through the neighborhoods,” I urged. “Come on, Lisa. Let’s have some fun.”
I spurred Lisa into my Honda. Before she climbed in, she looked suspiciously into the back where the rear seat was folded down and the space filled with “Flanders for Mayor” signs, staplers, and sledge hammers. Lisa gave me a funny look, but Bill stepped outside and nodded to her.
“We’re putting up lawn signs?” Lisa asked. “At this time of night?”
“It’s okay, Lisa,” Bill said. “Mike knows what he’s doing.”
Lisa found our actions mysterious, which further goaded her into going with me. She climbed into the passenger seat, but she couldn’t help adding, “If my ass ends up playing drop the soap in the Oregon Correctional Institution for Women, it’s gonna be Mike’s fault.”
Followed by Bill’s falsely reassuring smile—though Lisa’s surmise was the consequence he too anticipated, I pulled the Honda away from the curb and we rolled softly through the streets toward North Portland.
“What’re we really gonna do?” Lisa asked. “Bust into a bank? Kill a few people?”
“We’re really going to put up signs, Lisa,” I admitted. “Don’t worry. Trust me.”
Lisa shivered in her winter coat. “That’ll be the fuckin’ day.” She cackled with dry laughter that betokened neither humor nor glee. “I’d probably end up in a rubber ponyboy outfit too.”
“You shouldn’t hold your breath waiting for me to practice some heterosexual bondage crap, Lisa,” I assured her, cranking up the car’s heater. “Unless Lou hitches you up.”
Lisa fell silent for the space of two fog-shrouded traffic lights. Finally she asked the question that was really uppermost in her mind. “Did you fuck him last night?”
Under the influence of my fifth glass of ale, I launched into the tale of the dirty cops trying to finish me off in Peninsula Park. When they heard what I was blabbing, Bunny and the Buckaroo began gesticulating rustically behind Lance’s back and uttering bucolic exclamations. However, their pathetic attempts flopped worse than the attempts by Squeaky Fromme and Sara Jane Moore to assassinate President Ford.
“You were there?” Lance exclaimed, nearly rendered incontinent by my revelation. “What about the black guy on the bicycle who shot Police Sergeant Serfs?”
“Lance, there was no black guy, no bicycle, and no drug deal. Those crooked cops made that stuff up to explain how Macmillan shot Serfs. Why didn’t the crime lab run tests on that bullet?”
Lance sat perched like a man waiting for the warden to pull the switch. “They couldn’t find it,” Lance groaned at last. “During his press conference, Rocky Brownshirt admitted that the crime scene investigators couldn’t even locate the brass casing.”
“Yeah, Macmillan must’ve retained the presence of mind to pick up his brass. That bastard would’ve blown me away if I’d have left him a clear shot.”
For a few seconds my statement hung heavy in the dense, smoky atmosphere like pretty girl’s fart. “Are you telling me the truth, Mike,” Lance asked apprehensively, “ or are you playing at discrediting Mayor Albee and the police?”
“No way, Lance,” I assured him. “Bunny and the Buckaroo recorded the assault on video tape.”
Bunny and the Buckaroo had nearly succeeded in drowning me out, but I shouted over the racket. Lance heard me all too well, and he leaped recklessly to his feet on the top tier of the meatrack, nearly falling into a group of men groping each other furiously.
“I’ve got to see that tape, Mike,” Lance shrieked over the howling melee. “You better give it to me.”
“No, give it to me,” yelled some drunk in leather shorts, latching onto Lance’s ankle. Thrown off balance, Lance toppled into the sulky pulled by the ponyboy in the silver spandex suit. Lance’s abrupt arrival nearly snapped the ponyboy’s spine, and the whole outfit collapsed in a heap. I jumped to the floor, but my momentum pitched me to my knees. A sharp pain and burning consumed both kneecaps, and as I fell to my side I saw that I’d ruined another pair of slacks.
Meanwhile, Lance was swearing at the ponyboy, the sulky, and everybody else in Shove It. Though I felt like swearing too, I groped his arms and legs for breaks. Annoyed by my concern, Lance wriggled free, thrust to his feet, and stomped toward the door, leaving me still sprawled upon the floor and watching his retreating form.
“Way to run ‘em off, pardner,” Bunny said, emptying the pitcher into his glass. “Yore lollygaging has just blowed that affiliation to hell an’ gone.”
Bouncing to my feet, I pushed men aside and burst through the door. I didn’t see Lance, so I raced down to the corner. Lance had parked on the side street, and when I found him, he’d started his engine and was preparing to drive away.
“Lance,” I called, nearly stricken.
He rolled down his window. “Are you leaving?” I gasped, stupidly.
Lance’s face looked pale. “I need to go home, Mike,” he said, his breath rasping in his throat. He didn’t sound angry with me, but I knew he would be if I pressed him.
“Okay, Lance,” I agreed. “Will you call me in the morning?”
“I’ll talk to you,” he offered, making no promises about Sunday. “I can’t talk now.”
He seemed unaware that my pants were badly torn and that I’d been mildly injured too. I stood watching him as he pulled from the curb, turned left onto Broadway, and sped out of sight.
Twenty-four hours later as I sat recalling Lance’s expression, a tear leaked from the corner of my eye. “No, Lisa,” I replied in answer to the question that’d provoked the painful reminiscence. “Not only did I not fuck him last night, he never called me today.”
Before breaking Lisa in on the yard sign caper, I swung past my rural mailbox. As I pulled even with the box on the passenger side, I told Lisa to drag out the mail. Another fifty voters pamphlets had wandered through the postal system, mingled with offers for hearing aid services and funeral plans.
“What the fuck’s all this?” Lisa demanded, glancing curiously through the stack. “Why are we picking up these people’s mail?”
“Nothing to worry about, Lisa,” I said. “Just a bunch of people who’re voting for Kim.”
“Yeah, then why’s that cop staking out this mailbox?” Lisa demanded suspiciously. As my eyes followed her pointing finger to the police squad car parked behind the bushes across the road, a horrible sick sensation overcame me. I felt like I’d been eating a sauerkraut-and-oysters ice cream cone while taking dips on a fast roller coaster. Maybe Lisa wasn’t the only one who could plan on playing “drop the soap” in the prison shower.
Involuntarily, I uttered the only words that came to mind: “Oh, shit.” The situation was as annoying as Governor Ruby Laffoon of Kentucky giving a colonel’s commission to Mae West.
Governor Ruby Laffoon
“I knew it,” Lisa wailed. “I fuckin’ knew it.”
“Be quiet,” I urged. “Do you want him to hear you?”
“What have you done, Mike Dodger?” Lisa shrieked. “You’ve committed some felony, and now I’m going to end up as a fuck toy for the bull dykes while you’re peddling your ass for a pack of Lucky Strikes.”
Lisa's complaint echoes a comment the character Donna Moss utters on an episode of the television series The West Wing. Occasional quotations from that show spout out of my characters' mouths, a realistic parroting since political activists of a liberal bent dearly loved (and continue to love) that show, and quotations from it are fairly common in political circles. “Shut up, Lisa. Do you want that cop to wonder what we’re doing?” I demanded. “Besides, Oregon prisons have had a total smoking ban since 1996.”
When I popped the Honda into gear and slipped away, the police car made no move to follow. “That cop has nothing to do with us,” I reassured Lisa, wishing I believed my own words. “The dumb fuck is watching for speeders.”
“Out here in the boondocks?” Lisa questioned. “At this friggin’ time of night.”
“High school kids drag racing,” I corrected.
Upon thinking it over, Lisa breathed out a long sigh. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
Hoping that she was right, I drove to a North Portland neighborhood far removed from my illicit mailbox and its frightening police presence.
The first street I picked was deserted, its residents abed and doing whatever they did under the covers. I spotted a likely-looking yard, popped the trunk, and pulled out a hard rubber hammer and a stake. Lisa followed me into the yard. I selected a spot nicely visible from both directions, and making as little noise as possible, pounded the wooden stake into the rain-soaked ground. Lisa folded a “Flanders for Mayor” sign over the stake and stapled it into place. Feeling like we’d done a good deed, we jumped back into the car. I drove down the block, picked out a second property on the opposite side of the street, and gave it similar treatment.
After she finished stapling, Lisa inspected the darkened house. “Mike, when these people requested their yard signs, did they say they didn’t mind having them put up in the middle of the night?”
“Not at all,” I said. “I’m selecting random houses and making Flanders supporters out of them.”
“Fuckin’ hell, Mike.” Lisa’s eyes were bugging out like she thought I’d flipped my noodle. “You’re telling me these people aren’t expecting our signs?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Fucking hell,” she breathed, staggered by the concept. “They might even be Albee supporters.”
“It’s possible, though I can’t imagine how anybody could support that homophobic bastard.”
“You’re unloading Kim’s signs in yards of people who don’t know they’re getting signs. Without permission?”
“Didn’t I already answer that question? It’s a great tactic.”
“It’s stupid,” Lisa howled. “You’re fuckin’ nuts. When these people wake up and see these signs, they’re gonna rip them out of the ground. Then they’re going to call Bill and complain.”
“A few outraged homeowners might do that, Lisa,” I agreed. “But most won’t notice the signs or they’ll deal with the situation by denial. Some will even tell their neighbors that they requested the signs. Most of these signs will still be standing a week from now—many of them right up to Election Day.”
“Are you shittin’ me?”
“That’s the way people are Lisa. A good political operative has to understand the psychology of the neighborhood.”
“Will a cop appreciate the psychology of the neighborhood if he catches us?” Lisa demanded.
I shrugged. “I’d be more worried about the homeowners themselves. I hope they don’t have pet humans living in their yards.”
“You mean a dog?”
“No. A pet human. Like Poppy Reed has.”
Lisa chortled. Poppy Reed was the political activist whose quarterly parties were the See-and-Be-Seen events of the political season. However, when the descriptions of these parties appeared in political notebooks, society pages, and the Sunday Supplements, reporters never mentioned Poppy’s pet human.
Taking the ramp off the Banfield one summer evening in 1991, Poppy encountered Ralph, a homeless man holding a “Will Work for Food” sign. Poppy stopped and asked Ralph if he knew anything about gardening. When he answered in the affirmative, she invited him into her automobile, drove him to her house, installed him a backyard tent, and ran an extension from an outlet so Ralph could enjoy television and an electric light. Over the years, Ralph had groomed Poppy’s yard into a showplace. Had we tried to install an unwanted yard sign in the Reed yard, Ralph would’ve bombed us like Curtis LeMay.
“Have you decided on a fuckin’ costume for Poppy’s Halloween party?” Lisa asked innocently. She was still burning with curiosity about what kind of costume I’d ordered.
Curtis LeMay ran for vice president with George Wallace for president
While Lisa tried to worm the secret from me, I inspected the parallel street. Choosing the house on the corner, I stopped and removed the hammer and stake. In spite of her objections, Lisa hopped out, seized a laminated cardboard sign and the stapler, and followed me into the yard. Like Neil learning that he liked push-polling and registering the graveyard, Lisa was finding herself attracted to the Dark Side of political campaigning.
I gazed across the breakfast table at Janet and Spike. Spike had started showing up to ride with Janet, who despite the lousy parking situation always drove her little rattletrap to school. As usual, Spike arrived in time for breakfast. Fortunately, Janet was finally coming dressed to the breakfast table. Unfortunately, Spank the Monkey was Velcroed around Spike’s neck, a weird apparition that kept drawing my eyes. I’m not sure Pop had noticed Spank, and Mom never mentioned the monkey.
“Who’re you gonna vote for?” Janet asked, glancing sidelong at her boyfriend.
“Spike can’t vote, Janet,” Mom interjected from her place at the stove. “Neither can you. You have to be eighteen.”
Janet huffed at adult ignorance. “We’re havin’ a mock election in social studies today. We get to vote for mayor.”
“I’m voting for Flanders,” Spike said, slipping Mahatma a lick off his spoon.
“Good man,” I said, regarding him with greater appreciation.
“Flanders is a fruit,” Janet said. She pointed at me. “Like Tinker Bell.”
“Gay guys are cool now,” Spike said. He stroked his monkey suggestively. “I wouldn’t toss Spank out if he was gay.”
“I suppose you’re casting your vote for Albee, Janet?” Mom asked, trying to stay abreast with her daughter’s education.
“Nah, Justin T. Albee’s a creep,” Janet said. “I’m gonna tell the teacher that I don’t want to vote.” She tried a spoonful of the oatmeal Mom had set in front of her.
“I thought you were rooting for the mayor,” Pop said. Finished dishing up everyone else’s breakfast, Mom seated herself at the table across from Pop and spooned buckwheat honey onto her oatmeal.
“That was before I met him.”
The kitchen window suddenly rattled as a gust of wind and rain hit it. Mom and Pop’s heads snapped up simultaneously.
“When did you meet Justin T. Albee?” Mom asked.
“When I took Mahatma to the park Saturday. The mayor was there—talking to Tinker Bell and his boyfriend.”
Mom regarded me with wild puzzlement. I dropped my spoon back into my oatmeal bowl. “The mayor had a campaign cookout in Laurelhurst Park. I went with Lance, and Albee never recognized me as working for Kim Flanders. Janet showed up and shook hands with Albee.”
“Why doesn’t anybody ever tell us these things?” Mom complained, inducing Janet and I to exchange significant glances. My sister and I conspired silently to keep our parents from learning of Justin T. Albee’s flirtation with Janet and invitation to ride with him. Together we agreed that a lifetime working for the post office had institutionalized Pop into a gray, plodding quintessence, and we avoided mentioning anything that might cause him to go “postal.”
Following breakfast, I dressed in a dark blue blazer and tan flannel slacks, picked up the video tape resting ominously on my dresser, and drove to the office. Lisa was sitting at her desk, wearing the attire of a miniature lumberjack and a self-satisfied smirk. In spite of having spent half the night posting sign in the yards of unknowing recipients, she hailed me like a returning sister. Neil regarded her cheery greeting with consternation.
“What changed?” he demanded. “Why’s she being nice to you, Mike?”
“She found out that I work for this campaign,” I said.
Neil held out his hands and examined his ruby fingernail polish as he said, “You mean you lured her down the primrose path of political legerdemain, prankery, and hocus pocus—just like you did me.”
“I didn’t follow a word of that folderol,” I lied, crossing the room and knocking on Kim Flanders’ closed door.
Kim called for me to come in, so I turned the knob, entered blithely, and displayed the tape. He blinked at it twice before the light dawned in his eyes. I bumped his door shut with my butt and popped the tape into the portable television with the built-in VCR player. Kim watched the tape through only once before asking me to summon Bill.
Bill had to hear all the gory details of the Peninsula Park story before he watched the tape. At first he was skeptical, but after he’d watched it twice, he said, “That rotten cop would’ve killed you to cover up this mess.”
I nodded my head. “That’s how I perceived the situation when the bullets started flying.”
“One bullet, Mike,” Kim corrected as if the number made a difference.
“I think Neil and Lisa should see this tape,” Bill suggested. “They need to know that rogue cops could be gunning for our staff.”
Reluctantly, Kim agreed. “Call them in.”
Knowing full well that Lisa would overreact, I unwillingly beckoned for Neil and Lisa and related the damned story again. Following their reactions of shock and awe, we viewed the tape three more times.
Neil said, “A public airing wouldn’t help get Kim elected.”
“It’d make the cops look bad,” Lisa fumed. “A little payback on the motherfuckers wouldn’t hurt.”
Bill shook his head at Lisa, but he said nothing.
“I don’t believe in revenge, Lisa,” Kim said. “Making the police look like thugs won’t help our campaign. Not-to-mention, airing it might paint a bigger bull’s-eye on Mike’s chest.”
“The bull’s-eye is on his ass,” Lisa said. “How could you be so stupid, Mike?”
“Have you mentioned this tape’s existence to your boyfriend?” Kim Flanders asked.
“Yeah,” I confessed, reddening. “We were in a bar Saturday night, and I told Lance about it. He reacted badly.”
“Blabbermouth,” Lisa said. “Loose lips sink ships.”
“Let’s hand it over to the opposition,” Bill suggested, ignoring Lisa. “Give them the master copy.”
“They’ll burn it,” Lisa objected.
“We’d be throwing away the evidence,” Neil remonstrated. “I don’t see how we could use it, but we’d be crazy to let go of it.”
“Why should we give it to them?” Kim asked. “Do you see an advantage to us?”
“Not everyone in the mayor’s office is going to be happy about the mayor using the police to harass his political opponent. I think that the tape might demoralize some people in Albee’s campaign. Mike, give Lance the video like he asked; then we’ll sit back and see what happens.”
“Yeah, Mike,” Lisa agreed. “Give your boyfriend the tape. Afterwards you can stick a lit firecracker up your ass, sit back, and see what happens.”
I had a hard time convincing Lance to meet me. He demanded a guarantee that I was going to hand over the tape, and then he insisted we meet in a crowded restaurant. His only concession was that he let me pick the restaurant.
I arrived first at Nancy’s Lunchbox, and Nancy seated me. Happily, the waitress in the lowrider jeans was in school. While I waited, I watched an attractive guy in white jeans paint an autumn scene on the front windows. Even from the rear view, he looked familiar.
When Lance appeared in the doorway, I stood and waved my arms. Lance reddened at my exhibition, but he came to the table anyway and Nancy followed. “Today’s special is Salisbury steak with macaroni and cheese, green beans, buttered rolls, and banana cream pie.”
Since Lance believed that fat attached itself to fat people alone, and I was convinced that cholesterol and calories posed a danger to only heterosexuals, we ordered the special. Nancy jotted our orders onto her pad. “With iced tea,” I said.
“I’d like a Coke,” Lance said, just to show an independent spirit.
“Who’s that fellow decorating your restaurant?” I pointed toward the guy who’d finished painting the window and was setting up a display with pumpkins and a corn shock.
“That’s Robbie from Al’s Print Job,” Nancy said, her eyes also sweeping over Robbie’s curvy ass. “He does free-lance decorating for the holidays. Remember our window scene and tree last Christmas?”
“I thought that was Robbie,” I said. Robbie was bent over with his ass beaming in our direction.
“He is a pretty boy,” Nancy comment as she headed for the next table.
Lance cleared his throat. “You do remember that I’m here, Mike?”
I beamed at Lance, so glad was I to see him again. It’d been a full thirty-eight hours since he’d driven away from Shove It. I’d been counting. When Lance stared into my eyes, a small smile played around his mouth—though he tried to suppress it.
“Do you want to talk about the other night?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I’ve recovered.”
“Then why did you play hard to get on the phone?”
“Because you lied to me.”
I wanted to ask which lie he’d found out, but I couldn’t think of a good way to phrase the question. “About that video tape . . .” I started.
“I know what you’re going to tell me,” Lance said.
“Huh? You mean you don’t believe me?”
“Thomas Reed,” Lance interrupted, “the man the democrats ridiculed as Czar Reed, once told a democrat who was trying to correct a misstatement, ‘No correction needed,’ said Reed graciously. ‘We didn’t think it was so when you said it.’”
U.S. Representative Thomas Brackett Reed
My briefcase lay at my feet. I unlocked it and slid the tape across the table. Lance picked it up, regarding the black plastic case with wonder. Finally, he opened his own briefcase and, almost reverently, placed the tape inside.
“Two deacons,” I said, “a Republican and a Democrat, were conducting a service together. ‘Oh Lord,’ prayed the Republican deacon, ‘let us Republicans hang together whether in accord or discord.’ Countered the Democratic deacon: ‘Oh Lord, be not particular—any cord will do.’”
Lance laughed then, and I leaned across the table. He must’ve thought I was going to steal a kiss in front of the entire restaurant, but he didn’t flinch. Just as I was about to whisper something intimate, the cook arrived from the kitchen carrying our steaming plates. Lance regarded the unlit cigar protruding from the cook’s mouth with horror.
President Harry Truman rides
with Vice President Alben Barkley,
November 5, 1948
The story told by Vice-President Alben Barkley of the prayers offered up by the Republican and Democratic deacons is a near-verbatim quotation from Time, May 14, 1956, page 29.
“I’m swamped with work today, Mike,” Lance said after the cook departed. “I don’t think I have time to exercise.”
“That was out of the blue,” I said.
“Not really. I was thinking how this plate of food was going to look around my waist.”
“Didn’t you tell me that fat hated you, so it stayed away?”
“It’s only a matter of time,” Lance said morosely. “I was expecting you to call me yesterday so we could work out.”
“I was waiting for you to call me. After Saturday night, I wasn’t sure I should call you.”
Lance winced. “I’ll just make a little time this afternoon. I’ll meet you at the Rainbow Club at 4:00, but afterward I’ll have to dash back to the office.”
“What’s up, Lance?” I asked slyly, as I dug into my lunch.
“Lots of stuff,” he replied between bites of macaroni and cheese. “We’re working out a new strategy to whip your candidate’s ass. Don’t be nosy.”
Coincidentally, supper at home consisted of macaroni and cheese, and though I have to admit that Mom’s was better than Nancy’s, I was feeling stuffed with enough cheese to qualify as a big rat. I hoped that I wasn’t sniffing at a cheesy trap.
Mom dished up our plates, sat down, and recited a prayer to Saraswathi.
“I have a surprise,” Mom announced when she’d finished invoking the goddess.
“Oh Lord,” Janet groaned. “Here comes the holy Hindu enema.”
“Be respectful, Janet,” Mom chided. She put down her fork, stood, and unveiled a heavy cardboard carton. Out of the carton emerged an autographed photograph of Shirley MacLaine attired in her Aouda costume from Around the World in Eighty Days.
“Who’s that?” Janet demanded.
“You should pray to Saraswathi for wisdom, Janet,” Mom urged. “Your religious education is being sadly neglected.”
“That’s not true,” Janet flared, sensitive to remarks about her ignorance. “My biology teacher, Mrs. Dole, told us that Jesus died to free us from the evils of Godless evolution.”
Mom froze, her fork full of macaroni and cheese suspended between plate and mouth. I dropped my fork and my head snapped up involuntarily. Pop also dropped his fork, and he put his hand to his windpipe. He looked for all the world like he was trying to talk and couldn’t.
A prickly chill swept over my whole body, and I leaped to my feet. “Mom, Pop’s having a heart attack.”
Mom whirled to see Pop shaking his head, but turning blue. He was choking. Without thinking what to do, as reflexively as I drive a car, I kicked Pop’s chair aside, got behind him, wrapped my arms around his waist, made a fist, and placed the thumb side of my fist against his upper abdomen, below the ribcage and above the navel. I grasped my fist with my left hand and pressed into Pop’s upper abdomen with a quick upward thrust. Even though I was careful not to squeeze Pop’s ribcage and confined the force of the thrust to my hands, it took three attempts before gigantic gob of half-masticated macaroni and cheese and a lot of spit shot across the kitchen. The mass struck the kitchen wall, slid to the floor, and got eaten by Mahatma.
Pop drew a mighty breath. Still supporting his weight, I pushed the chair beneath him and sat him down. His legs were wobbly. Also his voice was a bit scratchy when he gasped, “My son saved my life.”
Mom threw her arms around Pop, intoned some Sanskrit homily, and kissed his forehead. Janet sat with her eyes bugging out while the dog begged for more macaroni and cheese.
“You saved your father’s life, Mike,” Mom said.
“I couldn’t have done the Heimlich Maneuver if we hadn’t had Shirley MacLaine looking out for us,” I replied humbly.
Of course, I invoked Shirley only to annoy Janet, who’d nearly killed our father with her Jesus remark. Far from learning a lesson, Janet responded with, “Why can’t our family go to an evangelical church and worship Christ like normal families? Then Pop wouldn’t get choked up over Jesus.”
Mom, Pop, and I regarded Janet with abject horror. Finally convinced that she wasn’t going to slip him any more macaroni and cheese, Mahatma gave Janet a disgusted look and retired to his cushion. Even Shirley MacLaine’s Aouda gazed down on Janet disapprovingly. That was fine with me because I’d always felt the greatest admiration for MacLaine, not for her New Age beliefs, but for her friendship with the great feminist politician Bella Abzug.
Bella Abzug
