yustyoking

@henrytheclear  

            It’s the last week of August, 2013. I walk through this town lonely as a bean. That’s during the daytime, of course. At night, I stand before le miroir  in the bathroom of my cheap hotel room and make love to myself. A disciple of I Ching, I embrace the power of solitude. Prostitutes hustling tricks downtown sense my power. Of course, I have to take out my roll of hundred dollar bills and wave it in their faces, but they sense it. No one ever called a harlot prescient.

I eat my meals at Ben’s Chili Bowl, an historic landmark. I’m told that even the president eats there! A little too many nègres, but they are the flavor of the month: Reverse apartheid, everybody brags about having at least one black friend.

Checking the Activities section of the newspaper, I find several public events that might attract a hard-cooked liberal like Janika: The March On Washington, the Martin Luther King, Jr. 50th Memorial celebration, a hearing regarding three ex-Naval Academy footballers accused of rape. This last is being held at the Washington Navy Yard. Excited at the prospect of imminent action, I disassemble, oil, reassemble and test-fire my firearms, sans ammo.

I think it was Alexandre Dumas Sr. who first told us to “cherchez la femme.”

I show up Tuesday morning, August 27th, for the 8:30 a.m. Navy Yard hearing, but Janika’s not there. I spot another woman with luxuriant red hair, but she lacks Janika’s Neptunian green eyes and pendulous breasts the size of fresh cantaloupes.

Turns out the March On Washington reenactment was last Saturday. That only leaves the MLK-50 event tomorrow. Knowing her, she’ll be there! I mustn’t fail! Returning to my hotel room with a fifth of Scotch, I get thoroughly plastered.

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@janiecock

            Well! Dear “Smartyhearts,” my new smartphone diary app! — I don’t know how others spend their time here in the nation’s capital but I have bought bobble head dolls of Barack and Michelle Obama and even Bo the White House dog. I found the cutest donkey pin which the salesperson insisted represents one of the political parties. I forget which one. Imagine that! An ass! What a bunch of donkeys!

Let’s see. I’ve been to the Corcoran, the National Gallery of Art, the Air and Space Museum, the Hirshhorn and the Natural History Museum. This last to meet my contact André who told me to keep my wits about me since word has arrived that our movements haven’t completely escaped the attention of our old friends at La Sécurité.

Bliksems!

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@henrytheclear

            I wasn’t always like this. I once had a wife named Monique, but she left me to go play the sitar in India. Effete cow! When I met her, she was a flamenco guitarist and had never touched a sitar in her life. The job opened up and within a day, she went and purchased one. How do you compete with a musical instrument as seductively round, profound and fulfilling as that? Her little baby, plink, plank, plunk! Monique spent 20 hours a day practicing. I guess I should have felt proud that my wife was becoming the new Ravi Shankar, but it also meant she was abandoning our marriage. All I know about India is how to make curry rice. Familiarity breeds contempt.

Needing to blend in here in DC, I buy a dirt bike. The black community and law enforcement are at loggerheads over off-road biking on city streets. I figure I can use that to my advantage, camouflaging myself as a local bro’ while inching closer to my prey.

“Who da fuck is you?!” ask a pack of about 20 angry young black men, roaring into a circle around me at the intersection of Alabama Ave. and Branch Ave. SE.

“Wha’ yo’ beef?!” I reply, pulling up my tee to reveal my bidness.

“FUCK YOU!” they scoff, pulling up their tees to reveal everything from Smith & Wesson .38’s to Glock 21’s to a sawed-off shotgun.

Merde! “Uh-h-h-h,” I improvise. “My bad!”

“Get the fuck off that bike!” says a gnarly older dude. No sooner have I relinquished the seat than a local kid, maybe thirteen, squeals with delight, knocks my hands from the controls and takes over my ride. From sidewalk to saddle in less than 10 seconds!

“Listen— ” I try to warn them, just as Jan & Dean sang in the 1960’s, “You’ll get a ticket sooner or later if you can’t keep your foot off the accelerator.” I’m talking to an acrid white cloud of exhaust fumes. The throaty roar of their bikes— and mine— echoes into the distance.

I start walking. I get picked up by a good Samaritan white guy driving a Prius. Concerned for my safety, he lists several reasons why I shouldn’t be in that neighborhood. “Down here, you’re right in the middle of it,” he points out. “It” being African-Americans. It’s the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s speech  and the March On Washington, and this well-wisher is suggesting that white folks avoid contact with blacks or pay the consequences. What is wrong with this picture?

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@janiecock

            Dear diary— Aren’t I just like Anne Frank? I simply have to write things down to validate my emotions. So… Georgetown just overflows with the most fun shops ever. What a joke that Americans can’t get their fill of Danish Modern. I mean… how quaint can you get?

Adams Morgan is the perfect venue for trolling the bars and hooking up with naive young professionals. I can’t even walk into Smoke & Barrel without boys lining up to buy me a craft beer. That’s the inconvenience of being charismatic, everybody LOVES me. I order German sour ale and that floors them!

When I lead some horny young stud back to my “room” and make wild sex, he has no idea that my “uncles” will pop out of the closet and hold him at gunpoint. We show him the video on a smartphone, threaten to tweet it all over the Twitterverse and my work is done! Poor little poopsies! They look so disappointed. Hey, dudes, that’s what happens when you twerk around! Can’t you keep your hands off my swinging little derrière? Don’t roll the dice if you can’t afford the price! I know, getting sandbagged has all the appeal of rutting season at a petting zoo. Oh well! At least we don’t demand money. All we want is to influence legislation. That is worth so much more! I douche, powder myself and return to prowl the jungle of opportunity that is summer among these awkward, young millennials in Washington, DC.

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@henrytheclear

            I’m no military historian, but I must give credit where it is due: Kurds are fearless, going to war with AK-47’s and flip-flops.

I suspect Janika is in the U.S.A. to link up with members of the Sovereign Citizen Movement. They believe that all government is oppressive. Anarchists are immature brats. Bakunin’s anarchy is a political placebo for people who are too lazy and terrified to commit themselves to a higher calling. Nietzsche’s nihilism and Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism are flamboyantly expressive, but they require you to live your life as a drama queen. I should talk! My coworkers call me “the Sam Spade of assassination.” Only Louis Ferdinand Céline and Franz Kafka successfully thread the needle of life’s incongruity. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Le Fantôme connait!

Clever, as always, Janika is financing her aggressive lifestyle with patentable inventions: Marketing online, her current product is a simple conversion kit for making your automobile into a car bomb in five minutes or less. “Who woulda thunk it,” as the Americans says. I don’t want to call Janika a sociopath. Like America’s Bill Maher, she simply has difficulty divining where the line goes between politically incorrect and totally anti-social. She lives life large, giving society an exorbitant gesture with her nuanced middle finger.

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@janiecock

            Dear diary— Yes, they find my Dutch accent exotic, but I find their American drawl equally quixotic. I can always spot a Californian— by ear! “Rar ru ra rum na oobloo bum,” they say. How can people talk that way? Like they have a mouth full of marbles. Must run! Bert says he’s spotted a boy who sounds like he might be interning at the NSA. What a catch!

Push-up bra from Victoria’s Secret, ankle chain from Tiffany’s. Wish me luck! Cheers!

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@henrytheclear

            August 28th. Now I’m ready! I mean, I’m here on the Mall. I’ve passed through magnetometers at three checkpoints on 17th Street and received two pat-downs. That hasn’t stopped me from visiting my secret stash amidst the shrubbery. My bidness nestles securely in my waistband, a .38 special sits in a holster at the small of my back and an ankle holster cradles a .45 under my left pant leg. It’s either kill Janika or star as Dirty Harry in a Hollywood movie. Fortunately, it’s a rainy day with a chance of thundershowers. I can wear a gray plastic raincoat and long pants without attracting undue attention. I am so ready! True, there must be 100,000 people here today, but after all, it shouldn’t be too hard to pick Janika out of the crowd.

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@janiecock

            Dear diary— Don’t you just hate rain? My hair is a mess! I’ve been tweeting to my followers, mostly boys who paid a pound of flesh for their adulation only to discover they are UNABLE to let go! It isn’t MY FAULT that my sweet laughter has ensnared them for ever and ever and ever and ever!!! They LOVE me. I’m Janika, I’m nice. So I let them adore me. Tee-hee!

What a crowd! I say “Hi!” and everybody says “Hi!” in return. It’s like we’re all one big happy family! I make no pretense of being negroid, but in my Rihanna “Clean Your Clock” T-shirt, I fit right in. Put that weapon down, girl! (Who remembers the video?) I ask if the president will speak and people say “Oh yeah!” in that funny American sing-song. I’d rather be here than in Den Helder any day! I think it was wrong of the LAPD to beat up Martin Luther King’s nephew Rodney. For shame! Although I do enjoy watching Larry on TV. Such a talented family!!! They’re just like the Jacksons. Anyway, I want to get as close as I can to take some shots of the president with my phone. I can use them as conversation-starters anywhere— “Hi, I met the president of the United States at the Lincoln Memorial and he gave a speech.”

Zo cool!

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@henrytheclear

            Crowds aren’t my thing. Normally, I investigate my quarry, gain an understanding of their behavioral tics, await an opportunity and… strike! Here, it’s taking hours just to locate the bitch.

I have a dream! That I’ll be able to subdue and cuff Janika without the use of lethal force. Joking! Had you going there for awhile, n’est-ce pas? Il n’y a pas raison de diminuer l’engagement. Who knows, maybe I can bore her to death. Discuss French politics…

Eventually, I find her by the Reflecting Pool, about 100 feet from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, just past the sign that says “NO GREEN PAINT BEYOND THIS POINT!” Janika is jammed in among the gawkers and tweeters. As I surge forward, making very little headway, our eyes meet.

“You!” she gasps as the president’s well-rounded phrases ring out over the crowd: “And so they came by the thousands, from every corner of our country— men and women, young and old, blacks who longed for freedom and whites who could no longer accept freedom for themselves while witnessing the subjugation of others. Across the land, congregations sent them off with food and with prayer,” says Obama. “In the middle of the night, entire blocks of Harlem came out to wish them well.”

One in five Americans think that Obama is a Muslim.

“I know you!” Janika hisses, clawing at my face with green-painted stiletto nails. “You’re a European assassin. You’re French! What the hell are you doing here?”

“And then, on a hot summer day, they assembled here, in our nation’s capital, under the shadow of the great emancipator, to offer testimony of injustice, to petition their government for redress and to awaken America’s long-slumbering conscience,” says the president.

One in five Mitt Romney voters think Obama is the Antichrist.

“Hello! So how’s the terrorism business?” I growl at Janika. “Did you see where the Americans whacked al-Qaeda’s number two man? How about this Syrian Electronic Army? Pretty wild, huh? K’suckt muck! Sickening, serious snapshots supposedly show Syrian siblings suddenly stuck somewhere so sensational, someone should share some sequential solutions. Listen, that’s war! Times are tough all over. I’m not here to sing you a song of woe, Janika. I’ve been sent to even the score.” I find the crush of humanity too tight for me to get a clear shot. I’ll have to devise a feint.

“I’m getting a cop!” swears Janika.

Aha! As she slides sideways out of the crowd, I follow suit. There! Now! Reaching for my waistband, bam! Janika clobbers me over the head with a full Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center double-stitched, reinforced nylon tote bag emblazoned with black straps, a black bottom and a full-color portrait of a lighthouse. The Velcro fasteners leave welts across my face. What does she have in there? Books? Groceries? Bricks? Sacré bleu!

            Whatever.

“Every time I use this,” she screams, “I am carrying a message of hope for cancer patients and their families everywhere! Even in Malaysia!”

“Give it a rest, Janika!” I bellow, but I’m wasting my breath.

“There were couples in love who couldn’t marry, soldiers who fought for freedom abroad that they found denied to them at home. They had seen loved ones beaten and children fire-hosed. And they had every reason to lash out in anger or resign themselves to a bitter fate,” says the president.

One in ten Americans think the Mid-Atlantic gray squirrel should replace the bald eagle as the symbol of American sovereignty.

Fifty years hence, the grandchildren of these Americans will hold another March On Washington, still crying for economic equality. Life is unfair, there will always be “haves” and “have-nots.”

Jamming a gun against Janika’s head, I frog-march her around to the backside of the Lincoln Memorial, the side facing the bridge. I want to drag her down to the Potomac and feed her to the bull sharks, but we are surrounded by police officers, their guns drawn. “Drop your weapon!” one screams.

I do.

“Fucking A,” he exclaims, moving closer and frisking me. “This guy is a fucking arsenal!”

I could grab le flic in a judo grip, twist him in front of me as a human shield, pull the revolver from my ankle holster and blast away in several directions. Instead, I play my ace in the hole: “I have diplomatic immunity!”

“Wha-at?”

“Get real!”

“Tell it to the judge, ass-hole!”

“You all right, young lady?”

Bâtards! “Wait!” I command, hands held high. “Unhand me! Return my armament. I am an honorary consul of República de Cabo Verde!”

They gape at me like I’ve just pulled a banana out of my nose.

“It’s true!” I insist. “The Cape Verde Islands!” Never-the-less, I am handcuffed and led away to a police van. Je ne m’en fous! Win some, lose some. When it comes to terrorism, I’d rather be on the inside looking out than on the outside looking in.

As a French citizen, I ask to speak to the judge privately in his chambers. He grants me my wish. “I am Henri Le Claire,” I explain. “The woman I was trying to eliminate is Janika Kuuk, chief operative of the DSP, La Défense Socialiste Pluviale, closely aligned with the FARC guerillas deep in the rainforest of Colombia. When we failed to get extradition papers on her, I was sent here on an ad hoc basis to… alleviate the problem.” I end lamely, holding aloft my manacled hands.

“Put your hands down,” orders the judge. “Why didn’t you tell the police officers to hold the girl for questioning?”

“I did! But they seemed to think I was the bad guy and she la victime innocente.”

“Harrumph!” grunts the judge. I’m returned to a holding cell, but eventually the French Chargé d’Affaires comes to the courthouse and arranges my release.

“You sure made a mess of this one,” he observes with Gallic forthrightness.

“The more things change,” I observe, “the more they remain the same!”

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