yustyoking

Ceremony

 

            I once read an interview with Sheryl Crow. The interviewer mentioned that Sheryl was in a hurry to get home to repair her toilet. That was a wake-up call! I can disassemble, clean and assemble my assault rifle in my sleep. Professionally, I repaired hydraulics on tanks, among other things. Yet, I was still calling a plumber to fix a broken toilet in my mom’s house. So I went to Home Depot, where the black African help showed me the various packaged parts that go inside a toilet: handle, flapper, flush assembly. I still don’t do faucets, but I have become a proficient toilet repairman.

            Retired from the U.S. Army, I enjoy the somewhat bitter fruits of a second career: My business partner Boopsie Davis and I write screenplays. We make documentary films. We call our studio Montevideo Films [ Marca Registrada ]. Since the issue has come up regarding the source of our music, the answer is, we’re using a local teen band called The Candy Stripes. That’s them playing their original composition “Purple Pumpkin Eater” in our production The Statue of Liberty Does the Bossa Nova. A simple concept for a three-and-a-half minute film, we used primitive CGI to show the green patina-covered statue on the island in New York harbor dancing to the beat.

            Ba ba boom, ba ba boom, shaka shaka shaka… Bossa Nova!

            These youngsters really know nothing about Brazilian music. We provided them with a Latin drum track and let them do their thing. They’re a punk band. I like the results. God Bless America, it is not.

                        Reachy, screechy, I’m broken down and preachy.

                        Slinky, minky, I feel like a Hostess Twinkie.

                        Gay, fey, I’m goin’ all the way.

                        Look at me fly! Eat a pumpkin pie!

                        Uptight, outtasight, kiss a transvestite.

                        Faces, places, we’re goin’ to outer spaces!

                        A country bumpkin, you’re just a stupid munchkin.

                         I’ll paint you up to resemble a purple pumpkin.

                                                                              (C)  2011, Farnsworth, Smith

            The point is, we pay these kids! We don’t steal music. If I understand correctly, the money is used to cover the rent on their rehearsal space. Anyway, that’s their beeswax. I’ve hooked them up with a music publisher, so they’re not at the mercy of the Internet. They’re good kids, even if the lead singer is only 12 years old. No one in the band is over 16. They’re local, what did we expect? And, yes, we help them with their lyrics. Adult supervision. We could go the other way and use retired rock and rollers from the 1960’s. There are plenty of doo-wop bands waiting tables or sitting on the stoop in D.C. I feel for those guys. Also, they would create better music. But YouTube is a young medium, so Boopsie and I feel safer mining the talents of the youth generation.

            Filmmaking. Fun time. I’m never going to win an Academy Award, but what’s the alternative? I can get my rocks off working for private military contractor Academi as a thrill-seeking mercenary.

                                                           *

            Bitch, bitch, bitch about the neighbors. My mom and I are predisposed to like and enjoy our neighbors. That’s why it’s such a let-down, such a bummer, when they misbehave. Amid the heartache, turmoil and dipshit, the McCluskey’s are an example of how life is supposed to be: I used to see them when I was on home leave. Joe and I are the same age. Back in the day, he loaned me a metal punch to mount an aerial on an MG Midget. I remember when their son Billy was graduating from U. of Maryland in 1996. He told me, “I don’t know what to do with myself.” A Spring day. Two dudes standing on a sunny sidewalk in suburbia.

            “What do you mean?” I asked.

            “I’ve interned summers, but I’m not ready to commit to a corporate position. My older brother’s in the military. I might give it a shot.”

            Interestingly, I never knew Sean, only Billy. “Look,” I told him. “The military is a great opportunity. Try it on for size. It’s a volunteer army. If you don’t like it, you can always resign your commission and return to civilian life. If, on the other hand, it works for you and you thrive, you have an occupation for life. You’ll certainly never be bored.”

            Billy considers that conversation one of the pivotal moments in his life. Sometimes my mentoring works.

            Sixteen years later, Billy is on a three-year tour of duty at the Pentagon. He, his wife and his two kids live in his parents’ house. “My folks are snowbirds,” he tells me. “They spend six months of the year in Florida. They feel it would be a waste for us to rent a house of our own. It’s crazy to live in Maryland and work in Virginia, but considering that my parents are my landlord, the price can’t be beat! I looked at Arlington. The rents are astronomical.”

            Among Oxburg’s dunderheads and backstabbers, the McCluskey’s stand out by a country mile. They like us. Having adopted us, Billy, wife and kids call my mom “Granny.” They call me “Uncle Kevin.” We’re family.

            Billy is a Major in the Army. A “Mustang,” he came up through the ranks. After a year here, he’s getting promoted to Lt. Colonel. Not a Bird Colonel, with the eagle on the insignia, but at least he’s on his way. He invites mom and me to his promotion ceremony.

            We go out to dinner with him, his wife and the kids at the local Chinese restaurant. “You get recommended for promotion,” he tells us, “and then you have to wait your turn.”

            “Why don’t they just give you the medal?” asks mom.

            “The medal’s not the problem,” he chuckles. “A promotion in rank includes a pay raise. The Department of Defense has to budget for these promotions. They can only promote so many people at any one time.”

            Mom admits she hadn’t thought of that.

                                                         *

            The Pentagon. I went to conferences, but I never actually served there.

            I was stationed at Fort Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska to eavesdrop on the Soviets and practice the belligerent art of radio jamming. I put in time at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, first for artillery training and then as an instructor.

             I studied intelligence at Fort Huachuca in Arizona. “Fort Hoochy-Coochy” is in the high country. A divorcé, I did a three-year stint. Dig this! I actually lived off-base in Sierra Vista with my famous high school heart-throb Peggy Sue Cockburn! She was twice divorced. Talk about coincidence— you can’t make this stuff up— Peggy Sue’s daddy owned real estate in Sierra Vista. He let us live in one of his two houses. Incredible! Peggy Sue and I both looked so young and sexy, people couldn’t figure us out. That relationship lasted a year and a half. Your Tuesday Weld, all-American blond beauty queen, Peggy Sue was all come-on and no follow-through. Life as endless foreplay. A chain-smoker, she stank the place up terribly.

            Her daddy, Thadeus “Tad” Cockburn, lived the same way when we kids were growing up in the 1960’s. Gung-ho, a consummate soldier, Thadeus had a wife named Maggie who led him by the nose. Also a chain-smoker. Tad discovered her at a roadhouse in Georgia where she was singing honky-tonk with the band. (By the time I met Maggie as a teenager, cigarettes and booze had reduced her voice to a gravelly basso profondo. She still exuded sex from every pore. Peggy Sue’s mom!) A gorgeous strawberry blonde, all her adult life, “Mags” used “Tad” as a doormat.

            Men with a weakness for dominant women.

            When Peggy Sue and I had our final shouting match and broke up, Tad charged me for having the house fumigated and repainted. I rented a room elsewhere with a Latina schoolteacher and her wondrously easy-going family. Peggy Sue moved to a trailer park in Warner Robins, Georgia where she seduced and frustrated the airmen at Robins Air Force Base. It must have felt like a homecoming, considering her mom and all. Tad rented out the house in Sierra Vista to someone else.

             One of the high points in my career was studying Russian under the magnificently opinionated Constantine Orlov. By pure luck, his tutoring made me a perfect fit in the Partnership For Peace with the Red Army in the 1990’s.

              I pulled a tour at Fort Bliss, Texas as part of the 1^st Armored Division, “Old Ironsides.”

              I don’t sound off regarding Bosnia because many vets feel they own that war and their memories are sacrosanct. They are not to be trifled with. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in her 2008 presidential run, mentioned being spooked in 1996 about landing under sniper fire at Tuzla. What a hailstorm of criticism that unleashed! Sinbad the actor, who accompanied Clinton on that trip along with singer Sheryl Crow, said the scariest part was finding where to eat next. Even Clinton’s co-pilot countered that the sun was shining and the birds were chirping in the treetops. Her co-pilot! Since no two people remember the place the same, here’s a simple anecdote I hope you’ll love: 

             Bosnia, 1996. It’s a cold, wet, snowy winter. We’re freezing our butts off. The morning fog is a bitch, it will not lift. The local villagers have complained about snipers. I take a patrol into the woods to reconnoiter. We find some firing positions littered with spent shell casings, but no people. Fine. Returning to the roadway, I’m out front. It’s an elevated road. I run up the muddy embankment and a passing U.N. jeep with a Swedish driver clips my helmet, sending me flying back down the hill. My helmet takes the blow, I’m not even knocked unconscious.

            Such a hullabaloo! The jeep driver is screaming hysterically, half my men are lifting me up while the other half hold me down.

            “Don’t try to get up yet, Captain!”

            “C’mon, Cappy, on yer feet!”

            “Don’t you ever look where you’re goin’, Captain?”

            “Are you all right, sir?”

            “I did not do this driving accident on purpose! I am calling for a medical ambulance,” shouts the Swede from up on the road, waving his arms.

            Medical ambulance? Helicopter ambulance must be what he means.

            I pass out.

            …

            “Guys! Guys! I’m okay. Hello! Why don’t I just stand up and all? Where’s my rifle?”

            “Do you have a headache, sir?”

            “No, I don’t have a headache.”

            “How many fingers am I holding up, sir?”

            “What? Now you’re giving me the finger, Jenkins?”

            “Okay! The Captain’s okay.”

            Over each eye, I have an egg-size bruise.

            My “recovery” consists of hanging around the supply depot, checking off inventory. Somewhere, I have a list of the tons of food, supplies, vehicles, fuel (aviation, diesel, gasoline, kerosene), armaments, ammunition, medicine, gear, materiel and assorted hoopla that went into the mission. Some mission! Warren Christopher and The Dayton Accords put us in there. Sheer common sense got us out. Otherwise, we would still be there, trying to keep the ethnic minorities from killing each other.

            Reflections on my profession. 

             What else? I did logistics out of Fort Hood in Texas. I served in a slew of foreign postings. I never did the Pentagon. Pure negligence. Today, I can’t even explain why.

                                                             *

            “You’d best do a dry run,” Billy advises me. “These directions may not be as straightforward as advertised.” The printouts he gives me include aerial photos.

            Since it’s been awhile, I take 270 to 495 and then 495 to the George Washington Memorial Parkway. On my first sweep, I breeze right by the place! The Pentagon is, like, “over there”— I can see it— but I’m on a highway that’s “over here.” I end up crossing the Memorial Bridge into the District. Turning around, I return to Virginia. Some dry run! I make another stab at it. This second time, I come coasting into the Pentagon parking lot— one of many, you understand. My printed directions say “Turn right onto N Boundary Channel Dr.”

              I take a right, drive under a concrete bridge and end up back on the Jefferson Davis Highway heading toward Rosslyn! Something inside me doesn’t want to go to the Pentagon. I’ve just spent a total of 90 seconds there. Frustrated, I drive into Rosslyn and swing around for a third assault. As soon as I reach the parking area, I pull into a space and eye the aerial photos. The ramp I want is by the water. The boats in the marina are clearly visible. “Stick by the water, ass-hole!” I seethe. I start the car and hang a left. There are no street signs, but I find the marina. A cop on a motorcycle is busy checking oncoming traffic with a hair dryer. Actually, a blue plastic radar gun. Pulling up next to him (will he ticket me for blocking the entrance?), I hop out of the car and ask directions.

            “Have they told you what entrance?” he asks. “North entrance? South? Have they said what corridor? Corridor B? Corridor C?”

            “No. It’s just a ramp over the highway.”                                           

            “Well,” says the beefy black cop in his immaculate uniform and impressive helmet, atop a glorious machine, “the ramp is right there behind that construction sign.”

            Tuh-tuh, the nickel falls through the slot. “This is it!” I squeal, perusing my pretty pictures. “This is the parking lot.”

            “Yes, sure, fine,” says the policeman. “I need to get back to what I am supposed to be doing!” Ignoring me, he picks up his blue plastic monitoring device and aims it at oncoming traffic, a red diode on the back shining brightly.

            Parking my car in one of the spaces, I happily parade up the ramp to the guardhouse at the summit. If there’s anybody in there, behind the smoked glass, I never meet them.

            I envision myself pushing my 90-year-old mom around the marble floors of the Pentagon in a wheelchair. That’s how we do it at the airport. On a hunch, I check out Bradley’s, the local mom & pop pharmacy.

            “What you want is a transport chair,” Fran Bradley, the daughter, tells me. When she brings it out, I see it is like a wheelchair, but has smaller wheels. It looks perfect. She shows me how to fold it up— pull on the straps and presto! —so I can stow it in my car.

            The night before the big event, we join Joe and Emily, Billy and Janet, the kids and brother Sean for dinner. What I know about Sean is that his National Guard Reserve unit got shipped out for a one-year tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2008. He wears a little gold badge on his jacket that looks like a Phi Beta Kappa key until you get up close. It reads:

                                                My war = Psy War. 

            “I’m in military contracting nowadays,” he tells me. “I do bad things to bad people.” Which indicates his firm is on the cutting edge of weapon development: drones, electronic warfare, GPS surveillance. “Bad guys know, if they speak one time on a cell phone, they can shortly expect a Hellfire missile up their ass.”

            I thank him for such a succinct description.

            “We’ve just developed a bullet that can follow a laser beam to a target up to a mile away, correcting its flight as many as 30 times a second. This is like manned flight, armies have dreamt of guided bullets ever since the invention of the rifle. Now they are here,” he says, grinning like a shark.

            From anyone else, it might sound like bragging. With Sean, mom and I can see it’s an attempt to share his love of gallows humor:

            “The Chinese only need to buy a product once.

             “The same Pakistani atomic physicist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, has helped Libya, Iran, North Korea and maybe Syria with their nuclear programs. The same guy!  He’s a walking, one-man Armageddon!”

            Hubba, hubba, when Billy got to Afghanistan in 2009, he eventually ran into a guy who said, “McCluskey, eh? We had a guy around these parts named Sean McCluskey— “

            “That’s my older brother.”

            “Well, if you are half as good as he was, you are most welcome!”

             Here in Maryland, Billy is a great bread baker. We give him his present, an engraved breadbasket.

                                             The McCluskey Brood

it says on the flap. Another product made in China, although the engraving is done Stateside. Incredibly, for mail order, even the spelling is correct. I wouldn’t know how to spell “brood” without consulting spell check.

            “It’s made of steel,” Billy marvels.

            “Put bread in it,” mom instructs, “not your money.”

            “I was wondering why I couldn’t find a lock on the front,” Billy replies.  

             The next morning, I load up the car. Since it’s the Pentagon, I wear coat and tie: black slacks, Navy blue socks, real shoes (No sandals, ace!), a dress shirt (blue with red stripes), a foulard tie and a powder-blue sports coat. Having shaved my scalp for the Chinese New Year, I look reasonably strack.

            An anomaly of this visitor parking area is the large number of handicap spaces, 36 of them, stretching the length of the wall adjacent to the highway. I understand that they are there for the medical center’s use, but as almost no one at the Pentagon is handicapped, we have our choice of a parking place.

             There are no old people at the Pentagon, everyone is between 18 and 55 years old. So when I come wheeling my white-haired mom to the first security checkpoint, it’s an unusual event. There are about ten people in line in front of us, men in Army and Air Force uniforms, women in Air Force garb and camos. Looking over his shoulder, the gentleman in front of us says, “Oh, excuse me. Soldier! Coming through! Move out of the way!” As I push my mom’s wheelchair up the ever-steeper ramp, officers and enlisted men part before us like we are Moses at the Red Sea. Mom and I are mucho impressed. We are accustomed to waiting in line. We are not accustomed to being given priority.

            “Can she stand? Can she walk through the magnetometer?” the security personnel ask.

            “Oh, yes.”

            Shakily, mom gets up and makes her way through the arch. Bells ring, lights blink, sirens wail.

            “Ah, ha!” I exclaim. “She has a titanium hip replacement.”

            “Yup!” a security officer quips. “That’ll do it every time.”

            Clearing the checkpoint, we wait in the sun by the entrance to the library for our escort to arrive. Off in the distance, by the side of the building, I can see a parked Jeep. Three men congregate around the vehicle, one in a policeman’s uniform, one in a blue military uniform and one in camos. The latter has some sort of scope in his hands, peering at people and objects down the hill.

            “Point that thing at me,” I’m thinking, “I might just fire back!”

            Frank, our guide, a pleasant black gentleman in a brown suit, comes down the concrete apron, shakes our hands and escorts us to the building. 

            As we pass through security, showing two I.D.’s apiece, a group of soldiers pass us going the other way. A blond, 30-something lady in camos gives me a knowing smile and waves. Dumbfounded, delighted, I wave back. That’s when it finally dawns on me: I’ve been hanging around the wrong boondocks! With my scarred face, shaved head, stocky build and stiff manner, the Joes here at military HQ identify me as a fellow soldier and welcome me in their ranks. The innate toughness that makes my Oxburg neighbors so nervous is a highly respected commodity here at the Pentagon.

            Who knew?

            A quandary: If a military lady in camos thinks I look acceptable, why am I knocking myself out chasing after Gunhilde at the bank and all these other exotic beauties?

            I definitely need to change venues.

            The corridors are as bright and endless as an underground shopping mall. The color scheme is silver, white and black. “There are seven floors,” Frank tells us. He seems impressed. Looking around, I’m amazed at the number of people in civvies. I assumed everyone would be in uniform. The Pentagon. All military all the time? Prejudice colors memory. Frank says, “The ceremony will be in the Hall of Heroes. It’s a popular location. There’s a huge demand. A three-star general or a three-star admiral has to put in the request. Bill is lucky to get it.”

            None of us say anything, but it’s one of the worst-kept secrets in the military: They are grooming William McCluskey for a position on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Billy gets whatever he wants.

            Frank tells us he’s been there ten years. “Billy would be chagrined at my relating this,” I reply. “It’s not like he gets lost or anything, but he does find the building vast and confusing.” I laugh. Frank looks embarrassed.

            I roll my mom into the Hall of Heroes. It’s a gorgeous room, brightly lit. Frank moves two chairs out of the way and I park mom in her wheelchair in the front row. I walk around the stage, eyeing the lists of medals awarded to this country’s service men and women. I end at the far left, where a framed list stands on its own.

            “What does that one say?” asks mom.

            “It’s a list of medals awarded by a special act of Congress. Charles A. Lindbergh, the Unknown Soldier of France, the Unknown Soldier of Rumania…”

            Billy shows up with his family. I’ve seen photos, but mom and I have never  actually seen Billy in uniform before. It’s impressive and a little disquieting: Who is this important official? I have to keep reminding myself he’s the kid down the street. 

            In his speech, Billy says, “I’m pleased to have my adopted Grandma Rose Feingold and my adopted Uncle Kevin also joining us here today. When my family was still out west finishing the school year and my folks were down in Florida, it was Granny Rose and Kevin who took me under their wing, plying me with lobster on a regular basis, claws and all. I must say, they helped me retain my fighting spirit!

            “I feel like a spy inside the Pentagon, spying on the military for the military,” he jokes. Everyone laughs. Billy works as an auditor, double-checking military procurement contracts. He makes up in precision what the job lacks in glamour. His is a specialty in high demand: When it’s time to outfit a regiment, Billy knows all the materiel and what each item costs.

            After the ceremony, we go next door to the lounge. Mom tells Rick Picardo, the burly, chiseled one-star general who is Billy’s boss, “I used to come to the Pentagon with my husband and children. Back then, it was a tourist attraction. There was no security. You parked by the building and walked right in. You could visit the garden in the center of the building. They had vendors selling food. You could stop and have a picnic.”

            “Yeah, right,” Rick says, smiling politely. The old lady is gaga, he’s obviously thinking. She’s confused us with the Lincoln Memorial or the Reflecting Pool.

            “She’s talking about when the Pentagon’s concrete was still wet,” I explain. “We’re talking 1945, right after the war…”

            The Pentagon was begun in 1941. It took over a year to build.

            “The time I’m talking about, you weren’t even born!” mom assures him.

            Now he gets it, smiling wryly.

            We all laugh.

            The brass have even sprung for cake.

            Billy passes out Armor of God coins to all the men in his family. I listen as Sean explains a Unit Coin to Billy’s son. “A beefy, blond pilot in World War I got shot down behind enemy lines. He stripped his flight suit of any insignia that might give him away. He also destroyed any documents that identified him as an American. When he reached the Allied lines, he called out, ‘Don’t shoot! I’m an American!’ A patrol seized and questioned him. They looked at his blue eyes and blond hair and decided he was a German infiltrator. They were going to shoot him. The one thing he still had was the Unit Coin from his squadron. He showed it to the troops. Some of them knew people in that squadron. They recognized the coin.

            “That airman felt his Unit Coin saved his life.

            “Since then, military personnel carry a Unit Coin with them at all times.”

            Sean pulls out and shows us the coin from his National Guard unit. I show them my shield from the Allied Command, Europe. It’s an antique. I should carry my NATO coin, but for whatever reason, I don’t do it anymore. Bad memories from Bosnia-Herzegovina?

            Joe and his grandson start flipping their coins. Occasionally, one falls on the floor.

            “When you’re out drinking with the boys,” Sean warns them, “the fellow who doesn’t pull out a Unit Coin has to buy drinks. After that, it’s the guy who drops his Unit Coin on the floor.”

            They stop flipping their Unit Coins.    

            We finish our cake, shake hands all around and take off. “I can push it,” Billy insists, steering my mom’s wheelchair through the corridors to his office. “Starting today,” he tells her, “more of your tax dollars go into my pocket!”

            “Oh, we don’t hold it against you,” she teases in turn— grimacing. “Some things aren’t worth joking about.”

            Rick Picardo, one-star general, says “There are 23,000 people in the building. If I was Secretary of Defense, I’d walk around, stop people and ask them, ‘Now what exactly do you do?’”

            We pass a series of display cases showing weapons from earlier wars: carbines, a sten gun, an M-50 machine gun, an AR-15. I ask Sean if he’s fired Billy’s rifle. It’s an ArmaLite, purchased direct from the factory for hard currency. Sean has fired it. “You like guns,” Sean says, “you’ll definitely have to visit me in New Mexico. I walk out behind my house and have a clear field of fire to the hills beyond. Saves going to the range.”

            “Billy has taken me to the NRA range! I even have a range card!” I explain.

            “In another part of the building, they have a gold-plated AK-47 on display,” Sean points out. “Billy showed it to me on the way in. Forget Tupac, Lil’ Wayne and all those other hip-hop artists and their bling! We’ve got a gold-plated AK-47, a gift from the man himself, Mr. Saddam al-Tikriti Hussein, former leader of Iraq, no less! Trophies of war, my friend. Trophies… of… war! To the victor… go the spoils!

            “I’ve been to Tikrit!” he continues. “Small town, but loyal. The only question remains, loyal to whom?”

             He’s got me in stitches. “Once the Soviet Union fell, there were a lot of AK-47’s up for sale, $200 apiece,” I gasp.

            “That’s a great price!” Sean observes.

            “For some reason, I never grabbed one. The Kalashnikov isn’t much of a precision weapon.”

            “It’s the Russian attitude of throwing as much copper at the enemy as possible. A shit-storm of lead. Spray the battle field.”

            “Well,” I agree, “that’s how they used them.”

                                                        *

            I return the wheelchair to Bradley’s and pay the $55 charge. “It was worth it!” I gush to Fran. “I saw my adopted nephew become a Lt. Colonel at an award ceremony at the Pentagon. I was able to wheel my mom everywhere. No way could she have walked those distances.”

            That night, mom and I go to Doug’s Seafood with mom’s bridge partner Kiki. Doug’s is a chain. We love the 5 to 7 Happy Hour. Dozens of 20-somethings nurse drinks and chatter endlessly, but we go for the cheap food. A cheeseburger + fries for $3.95. Mussels for $4.95. The restaurant chain has been bought out by Cooks International, but so far nothing has changed. We order cheeseburgers, mussels, meatballs, sweet potato fries, quesadillas and blackened shrimp on skewers. We tell Kiki about our adventures at the Pentagon. The ladies drink cocktails. I have a Buckler, a non-alcoholic beer.

              Judy Blue-Eyes and the Hearty Boys have snagged tables outside, smoking up a storm. This unseasonably warm weather has everyone acting crazy. When we finish all that food, we order apple turnover with ginger ice cream for dessert.

            “One,” we tell JoJo, our server, “with three spoons.”

            “Yeah, sure, comin’ right up,” he grins. He loves us, gourmands who tip big.

            “Coffee. Two regular and a decaf for Kiki here,” I explain.

            A colored man from the kitchen brings the coffee and we couldn’t be happier.

            We sit discussing politics for ten minutes and then I signal JoJo that we want the bill. He’s having an altercation with a crowd of drinkers by the cash register. Coming over to us, he says, “I can’t believe this! Each of them wants an individual check. I’ll be right back.”

            Then he disappears to serve drinks and present the bill to the tables outside.

            Ten minutes later, he arrives, wiping his forehead, and gives us our check. “Too much!” he muses.

            “Okay, don’t go!” I shout, but he’s back by the register, trying to ring up the Rowdy Boys again.

            I take mom’s credit card and our check and force my way into the melee. “Ring this up, JoJo!” I command. “We have to move on this thing!”

            He gives me a helpless look and says, “I’ll be right with you, sir!” Then he continues arguing with the young people. He rings up two sales, slides their credit cards, punches in the amounts, presents them with their receipts and marches away to service tables three, four and six in the main dining room.

            I begin to steam.

            Returning to mom and Kiki, I tell them, “This has got to end. JoJo has got to let us pay the goddam bill!”

            I’m so angry, I can hardly speak.

            Five minutes later, an apologetic JoJo approaches me, where I’m standing in the bar. He starts explaining—

            “JoJo! Don’t tell me!” I wail. “Go tell my mom! She wants to pay!”

            JoJo goes and talks with mom. He comes back to me and says, “She wants to talk with you.”

            I go to the booth and take a seat. “WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING NOW?!” I rage.

            “Give me $20 cash,” mom says. “I don’t have any cash.”

             I don’t ask. I give her the money.

             At some point, we get the hell out of there. We drive Kiki home.

             “What the hell was that all about at Doug’s?” I ask.

             “We waited so long, he didn’t bother to ring up our order. I tipped him $20 and he gave us the three dinners for free.”

              “It doesn’t matter,” I tell her. “Never again!”

              “You mean you won’t go there?” she complains. “You keep doing this. One bad experience and you cross the restaurant off the list. Pretty soon, we won’t have anywhere to go out to dinner.”

              “Listen,” I tell her through gritted teeth. “I’m a combat veteran. Here I am, the nicest guy in the world. I treat everyone like a prince. I like treating people nicely. But when I am abused, I turn into something less than human. As we said in my squad, quoting the Hulk, ‘Don’t make me angry. You won’t like me when I get angry!’ I’m ready to kill someone with my bare hands. I can do that. Well, I don’t want to go to prison, so I control myself as best I can. But no, I can’t continue to be this nice, amiable guy and accept abuse. That I cannot do!

               “Bad things happen to good people. It’s not fair! JoJo isn’t a bad person and he shouldn’t be overworked. But if Doug’s Seafood has a systemic problem, it’s never going to get any better and we are on the receiving end.”

           Maneuvering the car through night traffic, I am choking with such rage, my voice cracks. I’m not driving aggressively, but my issues aren’t easy to resolve.

               Mom gets the message. She doesn’t argue. Once again, she is being deprived. The perennial victim, she was abused by her parents, she took abuse from her husband, and now she’s taking shit from me. Neurotic as the day is long, she seeks abuse. A classic Freudian conundrum, getting shat upon is what she knows and feels most comfortable with. She watches a nightly episode of Everybody Loves Raymond— complete with commercial breaks— to get her daily fix of neurotic behavior. Those TV characters are endlessly neurotic. My mom is enchanted.

                 I wake up in the middle of the night, gasping for air. She has gotten back at me by spraying the downstairs with an aerosol “air freshener.” A poisonous chemical that fucks with your sinuses, so you cannot smell anything.

                 She’s gone to bed.

                 So, in the dead of winter, I have to open all the doors and windows in the house for, like, half an hour. And the place still smells like a chemical factory and gives me a headache.

                This is how she thanks me for taking her to the Pentagon. But she feels deprived.

                Go figure.

                                                         *

                The National Herald reports that two days after we jumped ship at Doug’s Seafood, a big-ticket contender for the Republican presidential nomination lunched there with this staff. In town for CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in the District, the candidate asked the servers at Doug’s if they stir-fried, pan-seared or charcoal-grilled their sushi.

               “How about,” JoJo answered, “none of the above?”

                Too many voters feel that way about the Republican candidates.                                             

                                                           *

             After their big event, the McCluskey’s spend the rest of the day sightseeing among the war memorials in D.C. and then get shafted when the Metro station at Arlington Cemetery closes in their faces at 7 p.m.

            For repairs.

            On a Wednesday.

            No retreat, no surrender.

                                                             *

  

 

Valentine’s Day Massacre

            Robert F. Kennedy’s grandson Joseph Kennedy III is running for the U.S. Congressional seat recently vacated by Barney Frank. Kennedy’s platform is rather unique. “I believe this country was founded on a simple idea: that every person deserves to be treated fairly, by each other and by their government.”

            I don’t think the 31-year-old Kennedy realizes how revolutionary his concept truly is. America, home of free enterprise, is based on everyone competing with everyone else. Nowhere does it say in the Constitution that we need to treat one another fairly, kindly or well. That’s not America. Buddhists believe in spreading kindness. Americans believe in getting ahead.

            God only knows if Kennedy can get elected on the fairness ticket. If he does, he intends to focus on “a fair job plan,” “a fair tax code” and a “fair housing policy.” Great!

            Good luck with that.

                                                       *

            When I left the Army, one of the first things mom and I did was go on a cruise. In the last twelve years, we’ve taken six cruises. I don’t want to say “living with my mom has aged me,” but I certainly no longer resemble the snot-nosed kid who resigned his commission. I look at my face in the mirror today and I see dried bark. After this last cruise, I told my mom, “No more cruises!”

           We sailed on The Scotch-Irish Line to the western Caribbean. It should have been a snap.

           So what happens?

           As I pass the Sergeant-of-Arms on the third morning, he stops me right there in the corridor below-decks and says, “Eh, mate! We don’ want no trouble!”

            “ ‘Scuse me?”

            “People’s afraid of you. You look like a fellah who can handle hisself in any situation.”

            He doesn’t mean this as a compliment.

            “It’s a cruise,” I tell him. “I’m a passenger. It’s a cruise ship.”

            “All’s I’m sayin’s is, people be wary of you, is all. T’ain’t good!”

            “Have I actually threatened anyone? Have there been any incidents?”

            “Not yet, there ain’t.  Listen, I fought inna Falklands. Ya don’ have t’ tell me where ya comin’ from.”

            “So what do you want me to do? Give up the cruise? Jump ship?”

          “I dunno,” he admits, looking a little embarrassed. Not much, but a little.

            Each night, virtually every passenger goes to the show. Late diners see the early show. Early diners enjoy the late show. Watered down numbers from Broadway musicals, glitzy dancers, these onboard shows are not my meat. I never go. One evening they’ll have the ship comic telling us how small his cabin is, another night features a magician.

             Boring!

             I watch a movie on cable in my cabin.

            “At this evening’s late show,” I suggest, “let me perform. People will see me make an ass of myself and stop being afraid of me. You introduce me as Kevin the Juggler.”

            “Can you juggle?” he asks, interested.

            “No. That’s the point! I tell a few jokes and when I actually try to juggle, the audience realizes I’m as totally clueless as they are.”

            “Wha’ if someone in th’ audience is a professional juggler?”

            “Fantastic! I invite him—or her— onstage and they show me how it’s done! It’s a win-win situation.”

            Since the captain is so unhappy with the rampant fear onboard, he agrees to let me do my thing that very night.

            “En nauw, fer yer indescribable edification,” the old-fashion emcee drawls over the loudspeakers, “har is awr viry own Kayvin the Joggler!”

            The lassies backstage have dug up some ridiculous pantaloons, clown shoes, a frilly shirt, firehouse red suspenders and a top hat. People laugh at my get-up. Then there’s an eeerie silence. You can actually hear the gasp as 500 people recognize me. “Blimey!” some Brit exclaims. “It’s him! ”

            The suspense is incredible.

            “People call Obama a liar,” I say sweetly into my hand-held mike. “He’s not! He’s just a Kenyan!”

            A few lopsided chuckles.

            I continue: “When asked about his smoking habit, Obama claims he never inhales.

            “You know all those zombie movies? Those zombie programs on television? The Democrats wanted to let zombies vote, but the Republicans cried ‘Foul!’ A situation like that would give the Democrats an unbeatable majority.”

            Uneasy laughter. Some stage boo’s, but I sense people smiling beyond the lights.

            “The greatest concentration of nuclear weapons in the world used to be along the River Clyde in Scotland. No wonder birthrates are down!            

            “I don’t normally come on cruises, but my mom said I should come on this one or she’d beat me with her broomstick.”

            …

            “I went scuba diving yesterday. They pair you off. You always dive in twos. My partner and I were examining a starfish we found on a rocky ledge. You’re not supposed to touch the wildlife, but we picked it up, examined it and put it back. Our instructor swam over, wagged his finger at us and moved the starfish two inches to the right. Such a stickler for detail!

            “My server thinks just because I’m Swedish, I expect meatballs at every meal. In the morning, he serves me eggs Benedict with meatballs. For lunch, I get steak and meatballs. At dinner, he serves me escargot and meatballs. I think the guy’s a meatball!”

            Pause. I’m really wowing them! There’s a veritable cascade of boos!

            “I guess I’d better shut up and juggle…”

            “You got that right, mate!” someone shouts from the audience.

            And, of course, I know nothing about juggling. I keep throwing the three cloth balls in the air and desperately lunging as they fall to the floor.

           Suddenly, I am joined onstage by Lance, the male work-out instructor, dressed in his usual sweatpants, tennis shoes and string shirt. Grinning from ear to ear, he snatches up the three balls and, facing the audience, proceeds to juggle, while executing bows and pirouettes.

            “Ladies and gentlemen,” I call out. “I GIVE YOU… Lance! ”

            Major applause.

            The next morning, no one is afraid of me anymore. People talk to me!

            Some cruise.

            When I retired from the military, I spent the first year biking. I take the local bike path to Beach Drive, bike along the C&O Canal, cross Key Bridge and cycle out west to Leesburg. Forty miles each way, I could only make that trip three days a week. Using a 25-pound, single gear White Russian bicycle from Minsk in Belarus, that was as much exercise as my 50-year-old body could take. The other days, I zoomed around the environs of Oxburg.

            One morning, by the washing machine in the basement, Mrs. Rose Feingold had a total meltdown. “You get a job!” she screamed. “You’re too young to retire! Nobody in this house gets to loaf! You live here, you work!!!”

            Arbeit mach frei, as they said in the concentration camps, “Work Will Make You Free.” I looked in the Jobs Section of The National Herald and landed a position as a sales clerk at the Ethnology Museum downtown. After making my bosses crazy, over-achieving for a year and a half, I and the museum parted company. I drove taxi. Then I got hired by a Brazilian airline. After a year and a half with them, they packed up and moved back to Sao Paulo. (No, I didn’t drive them away! They tired of federal regulations in the American market.) Now my buddy Boopsie and I write Hollywood screenplays. Yes, yes, in the 1930’s, you had to relocate to the west coast. Internet Age telecommuters, we work out of an office in a derelict shopping center on Rockville Pike in Maryland.

                                                        *

            About the time I was driving taxi, one of mom’s bridge cronies began talking about her problems getting sufficient Social Security credits. You need 40 credits by the time you turn 65 if you want full Medicare benefits. Never having worked in civilian life since college, I had about 10 credits. NOW Mrs. Rose Feingold had a cudgel with which to hit me over the head! “You need your Medicare quarters!” became the daily chant at the dinner table.

            Explaining that the military provides me with full medical coverage changes nothing. That just makes me a party-pooper. She has a bee in her bonnet that I need to become eligible for Medicare and nothing else will do!

             The Social Security Administration used to call them “quarters.” They allowed you to earn four a year. Since they are actually a monetary unit, they have re-christened them “credits.” You can still only earn four a year. The amount has been going up over the years, based on inflation and the cost of living, but, basically, you earn one “credit” for every $1,200 in income. I don’t have to work all year; if I work seasonally and earn $5,000, I get my four “credits” for that year.

            This was not how I intended to spend my retirement— supposedly the best years of my life— working for wages in a fucked-up effort to accrue 40 of these mystical “credits” before I turn 65. In 2008, the Social Security Administration sent me my yearly statement. As usual, IT DID NOT TELL ME HOW MANY CREDITS I ACTUALLY HAD. Instead, it used their weird formulation: “Your record shows you have at least 28 credits at this time, including assumed credits for last year and this year if you continue to work.”

            Assumed credits?

            28 credits.

            Strange language.

            I didn’t work in 2007. Zero. Nada. If I work zero this year, I’ll have 28 credits, right? Wrong! What they meant was, if I work and earn four credits in 2008, I will then have 28 credits. The closer I get to the mythical “40 credits,” the farther away the Social Security Administration moves the goalposts. 

             I was burned out in 2007 and took the year off, while the Boob and I planned our little joint venture in the movie business.

            “Pie in the sky! Whoever told you that you could write?” mom ranted, ever helpful.

            “This really has nothing to do with you,” I told her, barely controlling my impulse to physically beat the crap out of her.

              Since my mom is a neurotic enthusiast of Everybody Loves Raymond, it’s worth mentioning that the show’s creator, Phil Rosenthal, has taken it to Russia. He’s helping adapt the show for their market, including auditions, characters and dialogue. Surprise! I always wondered why the claustrophobic, masochistic “humor” of the show seemed so Jewish. Considering who we are, Russia is a perfect fit.

           I found that the way to deal with my mom’s neuroses was to starve them to death. “My business” became my business. I no longer brought home what was happening at the office.

            “You spend all your time having fun writing. Five days a week, you write! That’s your fun time! When you are home in this house, I expect you to work! “

                                                          *

            In 1999, I agreed to move in with my mom. “Oh my God,” her friends said, “you’re grown son is moving in with you, Rose? He’ll regress to a teenager! You’ll have to run his washes, serve his meals… Oy vey! “ We had many a good laugh about that. Independent, I do my own stuff. Whenever household repairs came up, she always offered to hire a contractor. That’s how she did it after my dad died. She had her list of handymen, carpenters, plumbers and electricians. Considering myself a Jack of All Trades, I learned to repair toilets, did the woodworking, cleaned the gutters, washed the windows, the cars, handled the usual gardening and repair that go with owning a house.

             She already had a lawn service cutting the grass. She’d been using them for 20 years. She watched the owners grow up, marry and have kids. They were still charging her a very nominal rate. Rose Feingold was part of the history of Ace Lawn Care. They were friends of hers. I didn’t intervene until the Latino crew began driving a tractor mower around the back yard, leaving truck-size ruts. “Hola! “ I said and asked them not to do that. The next week, same thing. And the next. “Listen,” I told Mike, one of the owners, over the phone. “They are nice guys, but they are destroying our backyard. The ground is too soft, too moist, for a tractor mower.”

              He said he’d talk with them.

              Nothing changed.

              Mom and I agreed I’d buy a Toro and take over mowing the lawn. I called Ace and cancelled. Five hours later, I get a call from Jimmy, the other owner.

               “Is it something we’ve done?” he asked. “ ‘Cause we never expected Rose Feingold would cancel the contract.”

               I told him what had gone down.

              “Well, uh, do you want to give us another chance?” he asked.

               “No! I hate doing lawns. I’m allergic to grass pollen and I’ll be forced to wear a mask. You guys didn’t listen the last three times I called, so I’ll take over. It’s a little late now to discuss it, our backyard looks like a mud bath.”

               “Well, gee, we’re really sorry.”

               “Thank you for those kind sentiments.”

               My point is, my mom has gotten used to me doing the brunt of the household chores. I don’t do painting because my military career left me allergic to paint. But the hedge trimming, lawn mowing, window washing, caulking, gutter cleaning, woodwork and toilets are my bit.

                In addition to earning my “Medicare quarters.”

                                                         *

                Whenever mom is in the kitchen, her 11-inch, $99 drugstore television is blasting away: “Hello there, erectile dysfunction man! Yeah, you! Don’t look away! Check out your lady. Curvaceous, her clothes tight in all the right places, she’s ready to go! And you a no-starter! It’s not like Little Pinkie is jumping up on the counter top! Remember when you were a teenager and how embarrassed you got when your dad had that frank discussion about sex? Well, well, Contraception King, maybe it’s time to nudge Little Oscar back into action. It’s not like we’re interested in little boys, are we?

                “Put the fun back in your life with Jackup C S !

                “Ask your doctor if Jackup C S is right for you! Jackup Chemical Stimulator isn’t for everyone. A prescription drug, it should only be taken in consultation with a medical professional. Side effects may include dizziness, eyestrain, hairy palms, salivating, stroke or death. Jackup C S should not be taken in a wild fraternity party atmosphere or in conjunction with alcohol or other chemical stimulants.

                “Driving a vehicle is not recommended after taking Jackup C S since you may encounter difficulty keeping your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road. The active ingredient in Jackup C S is based on an entirely natural compound found in Spanish Fly.

            “Jackup C S !“

            In Senate testimony, a priest has called Obama’s health care plan “zirconian.” He meant to say “draconian.”

            When she tires of the networks, mom switches to South Yemeni Television, who announce an upswing in the downgrade of the Euro. At least they’re not as deadbeat as Russia Today.

                                                           *

              “I’m 90 years old. I want to see my Israeli cousin Orly before she moves back to Israel. We can go out to San Diego, see her and take a cruise.” She shows me the Scotch-Irish Line brochure. This may be her last chance. I decide to be a sport. I agree.

                The Scotch-Irish Line is very special. They are incredibly cheap. Unlike the other cheap cruise line who charge you for everything à la carte, Scotch-Irish actually give you full-service at an extremely low price. But you have to put up with their peculiarities. Having gotten hassled by travelers about delays, over-bookings and other screw-ups in the airline industry, the anal-retentive people at Scotch-Irish insist on knowing everything regarding your pre-boarding and post-boarding flights. They want the seat number!  Since passengers’ credit cards  couldn’t always cover the cost of what they bought on ship during the cruise— the spa treatments, the gym workouts, the high-end perfume and tailor shop tuxedos— the cruise line now takes $520 out of the account before the trip and refunds whatever we don’t spend. Scotch-Irish Line doesn’t intend to get stiffed.

                 Visa requirements! They refuse to let anyone on the ship who doesn’t have the necessary visas. Fortunately, Mexico and most countries in the Caribbean don’t require Americans to have a visa, but still… Such a misagosh.

                 You read Scottish history, you see the British weren’t exactly kind to the Scots. Mary Queen of Scots getting beheaded. William Wallace defeating the English at Stirling Bridge. Robert Bruce defeating the English at Bannock burn. And then Cromwell crushing Scottish independence in ten years of war. The Brits clearing the land of tenant farmers to make room for sheep. A history like that leaves scars.

                 What goes around comes around! David Cameron, British Prime Minister, is now beseeching the Scots to forego their intended referendum in 2014 on whether Scotland should secede from dear Auntie England and declare its independence. After 300 years of subjugation, the Scottish National Party is getting feisty.

                  And, of course, the Irish have been even more belligerent. These tensions make for an unusual cruise line.

                   Between Gouge Airways hitting us with a $150 fine for booking less than 21 days before our flight and the demands of Scotch-Irish Line, I get pretty steamed. “Give me your goddam passport!” I tell mom one morning. “I asked you last night! Where is it?!” I want to go online and get done with our cruise registration once and for all.

                  Furious, she throws the passport at me.

                  “This goddam fucking cruise!” I shout. “I told you, ‘No more cruises!’  No more fucking, goddam cruises!”

                   “There’s such a thing as verbal abuse,” she replies.

                   “God damn you! ” I rant. “Do you know how fucking tired I am? I am still employed, you know! I work five days a week, trying to get my Medicare quarters. Then you’ve got me doing all these household chores. And now I’m expected to book and make all the arrangements for this trip. Don’t you get it? I am thoroughly, fucking fed up! How dare you do this to me?! How dare you fuck up my life like this?!”

                  “You mean it’s my fault?” she asks, stunned. Always the victim, she has spent a lifetime convinced she was right. Everyone else misbehaved.

                   “You’re the one who’s always bitching about the Medicare quarters. You’re the one who thinks she’s living with a lazy teenager and loads me up with household repairs. And now you dump this shit on me! I told you, no more cruises! “

                   “We’ll cancel the cruise!” she shouts. “Forget about your Medicare quarters! If you have to use all your money to pay your medical bills later in life, that’s your problem! Forget it! But I still expect you to work around the house!”

                    “We are not canceling. We are going on the cruise. It’s already destroyed our home life, we may as well get some pleasure out of it. I signed on to this Medicare circus and I will continue to earn wages until I’ve acquired my 40 credits. Just stop feeling sorry for yourself if I scream my guts out on occasion. You’ve made your bed, now you can sleep in it! You’re the one pushing three of my buttons simultaneously— work, chores and cruise. It’s a little much, don’t ya think?”

                    “What do you want, to be fully retired and become a vegetable?!” she rants.

                    “YOU ARE FULLY RETIRED AND YOU’RE NOT A VEGETABLE!”

                    We’re having this argument on Tuesday, February 14. Shattered, mom goes up to her bedroom and crawls into bed. Behold! Her son Kevin has turned out to be another ungrateful little bastard!

                   When I put her passport on her desk, I see a pretty Valentine’s Day card and a pastel green envelope.

Love, affection, commitment,

Nothing beats…

The bond between a boy

And his mother!

it says. 

                  Well, I blew that one to smithereens!

                   The next morning, a chemical smell in the house is killing my sinuses and giving me a constant headache. I keep opening doors and windows, but I can’t imagine what she must have done.

                   Turns out it wasn’t her. Paper perfume samples enclosed with the newspaper ads in The National Herald are to blame. Three different scents are competing for our attention. They get my attention all right, I trash the newspaper!

                   Taking a day off from the studio, I spend my time trimming the hedges, as instructed, to three feet in height. I also caulk the ground floor shower. By then, I can’t stand doing any more chores, although I still have plenty on my to-do list: repairing the basement ceiling, booking shore excursions, booking a rental car and our motels, buying mom a new vacuum cleaner and a new battery for her cordless phone.

                    I figure: To hell with it, if she wants to throw me out of the house, that works, too.

                    The town road crew have again driven their Hurley six-nozzle truck down the hill, spraying salt crystals the size of gum balls. Worst is the liquid salt spray they use, coating street, cars, sidewalk and grass in crystalline white. Since this incredibly caustic chemical spray can eat through steel, my neighbors and I are outside washing our cars. In February. Weather in the 60’s!

                   “Look at what they did!” Patricia LeClerke shouts, hose in hand.

                   “The weather forecast said snow. They over-reacted.”

                    “Ya think?! “

                                                        *

                      Playing Camille, mom sleeps all day and all night. Except she gets hungry and goes into the kitchen to eat soup. Like me, she needs to use the bathroom four times a night. So, even taking to her bed, she’s not really “dying.”

                     When she angrily gets up the next morning, I let her know that I completed our cruise registration and we’re set to go.

                    “I thought we were canceling!”

                    “I told you,” I calmly reason. “This trip has already caused us huge grief. You’re unhappy, I’m unhappy. We may as well get some enjoyment out of it. If we cancel, then it is a total disaster. We’re better than that. We’re winners. We’ll go and we’ll have a good time. I’ve already signed up for scuba diving.”

                   “It won’t be a vacation for you if you’re taking care of me,” she suggests.

                   “Six of one, half dozen of the other! I wouldn’t want to go alone. C’mon, let’s just go!”

                    That’s where we leave it. Broken hearts, but we can live with one another.

                                                       *

Middle East Peace, Room 6

            “Hello?”          

             “This is The Milton-Whitlaw Survey Institute in Pennsylvania, sir. What age are you?”

            “Um-m-m… I’m sorry, we don’t give information out over the phone.”

            “Sir, this will only take a moment of your time. With national elections coming up, you’ll want your voice to be heard. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your age.”

            “Hello, young lady. Thank you for calling, but we don’t give out information over the phone.”

            “You understand our purpose, sir. We are a nationally recognized public opinion research institute. Your opinion is important to us. Without your input, our results may be badly skewed. Each demographic needs to be represented. When people such as yourself abstain from the process, you and your contemporaries risk being under-represented in the marketplace of public opinion. To avoid that, I have only a few simple questions that won’t take more than an additional three minutes of your time.”

            “This is a commercial survey?”

            “Most definitely. We at Milton-Whitlaw take great pride in the exactitude of our techniques. Sir, if confronted by a food product on the shelf of a grocery store, which of the following colors would you find most attractive? Red, blue, pink, orange—“

            Click! 

            The local Russian news sheet, Kommersant, contains an ad for Peace In the Middle East, a conference at Congregation Addis Ababa. I wonder if I can get a movie idea out of it? Even Hollywood has felt the oppression of the regression in the recession: Box office receipts are down. I can pitch, but will they catch? I go on-line, sign up and pay my $10 registration, plus a booking fee through Ticketmaster. As time goes by, Ticketmaster seems to get pricier and pricier. Or is it just me?

            Dare I say it, I am also looking for a little romance. I’ve come to the conclusion— sadly— that I have been judging books by their covers! A cute face, big blue eyes, 22-years-old, sexy? That’s not necessarily a recipe for disaster, but most 22-year-olds find it an uphill battle to delve into the minutiae of a policy wonk comme moi. Maybe I ought to stop shopping in the kiddie aisle and face a grown-up challenge. ‘Bout time and all.

            We participants trudge through an ice storm to reach the shul. A cornucopia of arabesques, it looms over the avenue threateningly. Some poor college student reading a paperback has been hired to sit in the cloakroom and guard our coats. What a way to spend the afternoon. I thank the man.

             The average age of the audience is pushing 50, so when our 35-year-old hostess Julie Newman begins her welcoming speech, I am all ears. This is my kind of woman: sandy-blond hair; hazel eyes (smolder, smolder); rhinestone eyeglasses, but discreet; a nose like a French fashion model (lots of character); a serious, business-like expression and a black suit. Her looks are such a turn-on, I cannot believe what she says.

            “It’s such a pleasure to see you all,” she tells us. “There are so many more of you than last year. I would like to take a moment to thank our sponsors… Allow me to thank our moderator… We’re so pleased to have as speakers and experts the following luminaries…”

            Uh, luminaries? Cross Julie Newman off my list! Must everything she says be a cliché? If the rest of the conference deflates as rapidly as Julie’s introduction, we’ll experience peace through narcolepsy.

            No such worries. As the Israelis told me 42 years ago, “You get four Jews in a room, you hear five opinions!”

            I’m sorry, but the Rabbi is named Franklin Nathan Stein. It says so in the printed program. Not my fault. Talk to his parents. So Frank N. Stein is telling us: “Let’s start with today’s premise. Grand gestures at the negotiating table have failed miserably. The only thing the Israelis got from Camp David was a good tan.  Peace must be built by fostering understanding between people on a daily basis… at street level.

            “That’s the basis of this event. If it works for you, stay! Talk! Argue! If not, okay. This discussion may not answer all your needs. But don’t look so disappointed! We won’t present any grand strategies. We’re discussing peace through face-to-face, one on one, hand in hand contact between Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians.

            “On with the show! Refreshments will be available during the break. We have more food than you can eat!”

            The lady rep from the Israeli Embassy says, among other things, “We are making some progress in Israel toward basic, human equality. Assimilation didn’t work. When the country was young, we thought, ‘Everyone comes here, we put them through the kibbutz and the army, they all come out Israelis.’ Now we see that this leads to unsustainable inequality and a lack of individual identity. Today, we emphasize, instead, multi-culturalism, where every ethnic minority has an equal right to their own identity and a fair share of society’s opportunities.

            “We are getting there, but slowly. Don’t say bad things about the country. No one claims we cannot do better! We are trying. Today’s screaming match is tomorrow’s oral history.”

            In 1970, right out of college, I went and spent a year in Israel. My intrepid little brother Timothy came to visit me there. Active in the local chapter of the AZA, the youth organization of B’nai B’rith, Tim was much more militant than I.

            “I ain’t afraid of no Arab!” he said. “Let the ferbludgevit Arabs watch out for me!”

            Among the things we did that summer was to visit the Christian holy sites in Jerusalem. I kept having to pull Tim away from these Palestinian gentlemen in western business suits who seemed to be standing on every street corner. A neophyte, a high-schooler, Tim didn’t realize at first that their spiel was always the same: “The Jews can have the land,” they chanted in fluent English. “All we want is compensation!”

            “Boy, that guy’s really wack!” Tim would say, turning away.

            “Goddam it, Tim, we’re supposed to be looking at the Tomb of the Holy Sepulcher. It’s right down the street. Let’s just hurry up and go.”

            “What’s your thing, man? Let’s rap!” I hear him asking, and sure enough, he’s talking with another Palestinian!

            “The Jews have appropriated our land. We welcome their efforts to improve Palestine. All we request is just compensation.”

            Uh huh.

            “Boy, that guy is really wack!” said Tim.

            So I know there was a fraction of West Bank Arabs who saw dollar signs where their brethren saw oppression. Not having visited Israel since 1982, I would not venture a guess how it is today.                        

            Shlomo Rappaport, a kibbutznik, takes his place behind the lectern and says in a heavy Hebrew accent: “In America, you have six million Jews surrounded by 300 million non-Jews. Yet the Jews in America have learned to navigate these disparate numbers and succeed. We have basically the same conundrum in Israel, around six million Jews surrounded by about 300 million non-Jews. We Israelis must learn from the Diaspora how one deals with this inequality in numbers. How one makes peace with the neighbors and succeeds in an unfair world. That is the challenge facing Israel today.”

            Raida Suleiman, startlingly beautiful, a fire and ice redhead, speaks to us of the Palestinian narrative: “Your birth pangs were our nakba, ‘catastrophe.’ When you gained a country, we lost everything. How can you have security, economic development, a sense of democracy, if 20% of the population in Israel is disenfranchised? You can’t.”

            Ah ha, one of those conference tables with a white table cloth and individual microphones is trundled to the front of the room by a motley crew of volunteers. We sit and wait while the electrician plugs in the mikes. Then Frank, Shlomo and Raida sit down for the Sturm und Drang, the push and pull of dialogue— or at least competing monologues.

            Shlomo: “We children of the kibbutz were brought up to be Masters of the Land. As a grown-up and a Jew, I see that I interact with an Arab as if I am his master. This is very wrong. It is inexcusable that the Palestinians in Israel, who have citizenship, lack basic equality. An equal partnership is required.”

            Frank: “American Jewish philanthropy is a wonderful thing. Mazel tov! But while we contribute to every form of Jewish development in Israel, inadvertently, we have created a gap between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs. Diaspora Jews don’t always see the need for helping Palestinians. But until both peoples have a sense of progress— economically, socially, in education and human rights— there can be no peace.”

            Raida: “There are 1.6 million Arab citizens of Israel, 20% of the population! A test of any democracy is how it treats its minorities.

           “I refuse to be a victim. The security apparatus complains that Arab Bedouin families have 10 to 12 children. Open a high school for women and the problem will resolve itself! Women who get an education are not going to put up with bearing that many children!  

            “Per capita income in the Arab sector is 50% of what you see in the Jewish population. Jewish kids get six times as much from the welfare budget as Arab Bedouin children.

            “Position Papers won’t change reality on the ground: In the Negev, Bedouins are 30% of the population, but live on only 3% of the land. The Israeli government is consolidating their holdings, uprooting 100,000 people into the seven villages recognized by the Netanyahu government. At that point, Bedouins will be living on 1% of the land!”  

            During my year in Israel, I worked six days a week for Israeli Educational Television, across the road from Tel Aviv University. My Israeli cousins fixed me up with the job. I became an assistant cinematographer.

             In the summer, even given time off without pay, I often left my little bro Timothy alone to wander. He went everywhere, bringing back empty rifle shell casings from the Six Day War and shards of pottery from the Byzantine Empire. (An archeologist at the university told us, “Oh, that stuff is nothing special. You find it among the ruins. It’s from about 450 A.D.”) There were blue, inter-city Eggèd busses that would take you anywhere in the country for a pittance. The little white tickets were the size of confetti, but they cost next to nothing and they got you there. The Tel Aviv Bus Terminal was in a notoriously rough neighborhood. Tim walked through there like Daniel in the Lions’ Den. “Don’t be angry with me, man. My brother works for the goddam television!” he would tell the vendors selling nuts wrapped in newspaper, newspapers, cheap plastic toys made in Japan, small kitchen appliances and children’s clothes.

            Jerusalem was Tim’s beat and he did me up proud. He met and charmed four Sephardic teenage immigrants fresh off the boat. They were from Tunisia, three boys and a girl, cute as kittens. My mom had insisted that Tim and I be fluent in French, a hold-over from the Russian aristocracy. Our Tunisian friends treated us like lost members of their tribe. They took Tim to the souk in Jerusalem and introduced him to Mahmoud and Fawzi, themselves teenagers. These Palestinian boys ran a stall, selling brass coffee sets, robes, scarves, jewelry and T-shirts to the American tourists. 

            The following Saturday, Tim couldn’t wait to haul me onto an Eggèd bus and take me to meet them.

            A week later, with many tears, our Tunisians disappeared into the Negev to join the kibbutz where their families awaited them. I went and visited them on Chanukah. Meanwhile, Tim and I began spending our Saturdays at the souk, arguing with the American tourists who gave Mahmoud and Fawzi a hard time, haggling over prices. “You never pay what they ask,” these middle-class matrons from Iowa and New Jersey had been instructed by their guides, so they marched into the alleyways jammed with people and donkeys and fought with the merchants. What a madhouse!

            Because what united us young people was our abiding gentleness. In a country teeming with edgy, angry people, we were the hippies, preaching peace, love and understanding. In Tel Aviv, we met on the grassy circle in front of the Central Post Office, talked, laughed, played guitars, sang songs and complained about the hard-nosed Israelis. One of the boys could do a word-perfect rendition of Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant. I carried a stash of hashish with me at all times. We were often so laid-back, we couldn’t stand up.

            Ten years later, I visited Mahmoud and Fawzi in Jerusalem, as part of an American military delegation. We were on one of those friendship, fact-finding missions to the Israelis: “Hi, guys, tell us what you need! This is Kevin, he speaks Hebrew and French. If you can’t make yourselves understood, everyone else on the delegation speaks English.” The brass didn’t have a whole lot of faith in my abilities as a communicator.

            Fed up with Mahmoud and Fawzi’s didactic claims of victimhood, I finally exploded, “Enough already! Ma-speek! Stop with the complaints about your poor orchard and how the Israelis took it away! Jesus Christ! Show me this goddam orchard.” Surprisingly, they took me on a bus into the commercial section of New Jerusalem. Standing on a street corner in the middle of the city, they declared, “Here! This was our orchard!”

            “Fuck me, guys!” I told them. “Look at this place. A high-rise on that corner, another apartment house here, office buildings on the facing corners. There ain’t no orchard here, boys.”

            “We know,” Mahmoud said in his dainty, Arab way. “We are willing to have our land returned as it is.”

            “Buildings and all, huh?”

             “We wish a return of our property. We will accept it in present conditions.”

              I laughed. These boys didn’t want to grow lemons, they wanted to become landlords!     

                                                          *

           Rabbi Frank N. Stein cedes his place at the table to local activist Esther Rosenwasser. God bless her, right away, she starts with hard facts: “Israel has a four year election cycle. If you can get it! The average lifespan of a government is 2 years and 2 months. That means that policies already decided upon don’t get implemented. A new school plan was developed by the previous government. Everything was complete. All they had to do was hire the teachers and implement it. When the current government took over, the Minister of Education said he wanted more time to read through the new curriculum. He’s still reading!

            “When, miraculously, good intentions surface, they get stymied by the bureaucracy.

            “There are five bilingual schools in all of Israel. Five! At the same time, 25,000 elementary school children— 15% of elementary school students— now study Arabic in the 5^th and 6^th grade.”

             Shlomo: “An ugly stream of racism seems to dominate the debate in Israel over the place of the Palestinian citizens. The younger generation hates the Palestinians. Nu? Why? The Intifada. When they were ten years old, suddenly they couldn’t go to school, leave the house, play in the street. The Palestinians were rioting. What possible motivation would they have for liking Palestinians? 80% of our young people believe the Israeli Arabs have never accepted the State of Israel and would destroy it if they could.

            “My generation, more experienced with both the good and bad sides of every person, at least is willing to judge people as individuals. We censure someone who behaves badly, be he Jew or Arab. We praise those who work together with us on individual issues. When these shared communities of interest spread sufficiently, they will have a significant impact on public policy and debate.”

            In 1999, the Israelis tired of the stalemate with the Palestinians. The One Israel Party, a new political entity, won the national election. Led by Ehud Barak, their platform was simply to, once and for all, reach an accord with the Palestinians. A two-state solution, along whatever lines were hammered out between the warring factions. In 2000, President Bill Clinton invited Yasser Arafat and his delegation to meet with Ehud Barak and the Israeli delegates at Camp David. In three days of recriminations, caterwauling and bitter concessions from both sides, they reached an agreement. Amazing. It touched on all the issues: Borders, Palestinian rights of return to the land of Israel, economic compensation, a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, further issues to be discussed and settled. Barak signed. He and President Clinton turned to Yasser Arafat and extended the pen of reconciliation.

            “If I sign that,” Arafat told them, “when I return home, I am a dead man.”

            Refusing to sign, he traveled back to Ramallah and called for a general strike, the Second Intifada. Apparently, Palestinian anger knows no bounds.

            The current, conservative Netanyahu government of Israel didn’t come out of nowhere. The Likud party got elected as a direct Israeli reaction to public disappointment in the failed peace process. If the Palestinians won’t negotiate anyway, why bother trying to reconcile with them?

            Having selected Yasser Arafat, a smarmy, sneaky charmer as their leader, the Palestinian people were led by the nose. Arafat was the perennial negotiator, totally uninterested in resolving the conflict. As long as he could keep the ball in play, his countrymen needed him. The power struggles within his own party, Fatah, never end. Should peace ever be declared, he worried that he would be retired emeritus and younger hands would take over. Since he and his wife were milking the treasury for all they could get, the longer Yasser could stay in power, the greater his fortune. After his death, the leadership of Fatah came for his wife Shula, put a gun to her head and said, “Give us the Swiss bank account numbers for the billions you and your husband stole or you’ll never see tomorrow’s sunrise.” She gave them the bank account numbers and the Palestinian Authority was able to reclaim the money.

            The Second Intifada, billed as “the anger of the Arab street,” featured daily confrontations with the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces, where young Palestinians, and even some of their elders, pelted Israeli soldiers and civilians with rocks.

            Furious at the rock throwers, I emailed Fawzi and Mahmoud. “What in the world are you doing?” I wrote. “This is not the way to gain concessions regarding peace with Israel. This will only make the Israelis more obstinate, angry and distrustful.”

            Fawzi wrote back, respectful as always:

Dear Mr. Kevin,

Mahmoud and I study with great interest your ways of protest. You march in street with banners. You shout slogans. We also have ways of protest. For us, is stone throws. We speak with arm. Stoning.  Throwing stone.

Yasser Arafat say: Palestinian anger knows no bounds. The occupier must be forced from our land.

Also we feel so. 

We personally are so sorry you angry, Mr. Kevin. We liking you, as you know. Many years have we friendship.

Also this freedom of expression is important issue. Please allow to express ourselves as we choose.

You friend, Fawzi and Mahmoud and families.

            “My god,” I told my mom, “they see rock throwing as a form of free speech protected by First Amendment rights! Rock throwing is their idea of a dialog with the Israelis.”

            Wise, my mom said absolutely nothing. As far as she is concerned, Fawzi, Mahmoud and I are all nincompoops.    

                                                          *

              Raida: “The Israeli educational system does not teach Palestinians their history.

              “My mother says, ‘I am a Palestinian.’ My father says, ‘I am a citizen of Israel.’ He feels compelled to say that, because to call himself Palestinian costs him job opportunities.

             “Only when Palestinians can be proud of their identity, can they cooperate with Israelis.”

              I met plenty of Palestinians in the 1980’s working on moshavim— private farms run communally, like a kibbutz, but each family owning their own holdings— as hired hands, as well as in the building trade. They didn’t need to be proud of their identity in order to cooperate with the Israelis. They worked for shekels and they were paid in shekels. End of story. But I get Raida’s point. You can’t ask concessions of the Palestinians at the negotiating table, if they already see themselves as total underdogs.

              Raida: “We use language in designing and building consciousness. The way one identifies the Palestinians does matter. Are we the fellahin, hopelessly backward peasants? Are we Palestinian Arabs? Israeli Arabs? Israeli Palestinians? Palestinian citizens of Israel? Palestinian Israelis? Believe it or not, in Israel, each of these terms reflects a political viewpoint!”

              Shlomo: “155,000 Palestinians— Israeli Arabs— remained in Israel after 1948. They received citizenship.

            “250,000 Palestinians from Israel were uprooted and became refugees, living in camps in neighboring countries. There are no refugee camps in Israel. These people’s lives were based on their ancestral land. Now they have no land. I’m a kibbutznik! Land means everything to us. What is the identity of someone who has no land?”

             Raida: “The Bedouins of the Negev demand 800,000 dunams, 30% of the land. The land issue for the Netanyahu government consists of cramming the maximum number of Arabs onto the minimum amount of land.

            “My father owned vast tracts of land handed down through generations, but he has no written instruments to legally support this claim. Under the British and the Turks, land agreements were oral.

            “Once a Palestinian state is declared, 87% of the Palestinian people would go to their own state.”

             Shlomo: “Arab Knesset members still need to be allowed at the grown-ups’ table. Since the government doesn’t push for a shared, equal citizenship, our NGO’s must push for social inclusion and equality. ‘Democracy’ today is defined as ‘majority rule,’ not ‘minority rights.’ Israel has no Bill of Rights. Instead, there is a Law of Human Dignity, but the Knesset and courts can change it at any time.

            “I’m an optimist, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. 450,000 Israelis took to the streets during the summer to demand social justice. The Arab community supported this protest. Together, we are working toward a pluralistic society.”

             Uh. We take a break. We eat meatballs and veggies on plastic plates using plastic forks and plastic knives. The variety of cookies is staggering. There’s bottled water and there’s coffee. What more could anyone ask?

             Fine. Time for the Question & Answer session. We are 346 Jews, three Palestinians and one Christian university student.

             We Jews wail in frustration, tear the hemlines of our shirts and cry, “Next year’s conference, more Palestinians!” The three we have— professional activists— have visited more Jewish congregations in Greater Washington than I knew existed.

              Palestinian man: “I live in East Jerusalem. Because of my Arab name, I have less rights than an American tourist.”

            He could be Mahmoud or Fawzi. Palestinians, they’ve always occupied the lowest rung in Israeli society. When I arrived in 1970, you had sabras at the top— native-born Israeli Jews—  then Ashkenazi immigrants, then Sephardic immigrants and finally Arabs. With the arrival of the Ethiopian black Jews, the Arab population was moved down one peg in the social hierarchy, to make room for the arrival of society’s struggling newcomers.

            Answering a question regarding growing nationalism, Shlomo suggests this: “Post-Intifada, nationalism pits a Jewish state against a democratic state. Israel can only survive by becoming a little less Jewish and a little less democratic.”

            Raida: “There is a Jewish narrative and a Palestinian narrative. The future must be a shared narrative.”

            The printed program promises a comparison of the situation for the Druze, the Bedouin and the non-Bedouin Palestinians inside Israel. Raida the Palestinian is regaling us with an activist tale of the indignation she caused by demanding the microphone at her local mosque. A woman! An activist! Speaking in a mosque! Unheard of! It’s very entertaining, but the clock is ticking and as Jimi Hendrix sang, “… the hour’s getting late!” My hand shoots up.

            “Yes?” asks Rabbi Stein, the moderator.

            “I’d like…”

            “No, get up and introduce yourself. Then you can ask your question.”

            “Hi, I’m Kevin Feingold,” I slur, finding that the least interesting part. I quickly ask for the comparison. I see people shaking their heads “yes.” Anyone who ever read Leon Uris’s Exodus wants to know how life goes for the dear, little Druze families in their mountain-top villages astride Mount Carmel.

            Shlomo the kibbutznik frowns impressively and turns to Raida. We expect some facts and figures. Her answer is what colloquially only can be called “anecdotal.”

            Raida: “Some of the Druze serve voluntarily in the Israeli Defense Forces.” Pause. Grimace. “I have been to their villages and was not impressed.

            “Categorizing the Arab population into subgroups is the Israeli government’s method of ‘Divide & Control.’ We are all Palestinians! We all demand our rights!

            “Palestinians in the West Bank are under military occupation. The intelligence officer of the Shin Bet checks your documents whenever you travel and wants to know who you are. The West Bank Palestinians lack even Israeli citizenship. They are not considered Israelis. By both Israeli and international standards, the West Bank is officially occupied territory.”

            Sighing contentedly, she gives a wan smile, a very Palestinian shrug and turns to Rabbi Stein.

            “That’s it?” I’m thinking. “This 3^rd grade level school report on What I Did During My Summer Vacation is her comparison of Druze/ Bedouin/ non-Bedouin conditions? Yeesh! Give me a break!” When I look around, I sense that the consensus is, we can get more meat googling the Internet.

            “Yes?” Rabbi Stein asks.

             The Christian university student gives his name and says: “The poor Palestinians chased off their land and deprived of rights in the Left Bank, deprived of their freedom by the Israeli blockade of Gaza, deprived of equality in Israel. Yes, yes, I’m getting to my question. The Jewish aggressor lays waste to Palestine, throwing people out of their homes, expropriating orchards, forcing the Bedouins into concrete villages, stopping Palestinians at checkpoints everywhere in the West Bank. My question is, how can you American Jews stand idly by and allow such criminal behavior by the Israelis, condemned by the entire international community, to continue?”

              The guy is a jerk.

             “We don’t,” says Rabbi Stein.

            “ ’Scuse me?”

            “We don’t condone Israeli behavior. Next question!”

                                                          *

              My conclusions:

               The Palestinians will never be satisfied. It’s hereditary. As the Philistines in the Bible, even 2,000 years ago, they had a reputation as cantankerous troublemakers. Delilah, anyone? There’s a reason we make generalizations about ethnic groups. Some traits truly do reside in the genes.

                The Palestinians want their land back, and that means all of Israel. The only alternative that will satisfy them is the Jews marching backwards into the sea. Even then, knowing them, the Palestinians will have issues. Who left this shovel in this sandbox? An emotional people, the Palestinians too often let their hearts rule their heads. When the Israelis tired of Gaza and pulled out, the Palestinians “showed their anger” by dynamiting the concrete buildings left by the Israelis. They then bewailed their poverty and called on the international community to provide building supplies and to finance new construction.

                 The American Jewish community has trouble understanding Israeli conservative intransigence. We Americanos would like the Israelis to give more.

                  The Israelis have the thankless task of dealing with a Palestinian opponent who is never satisfied and not even grateful to be included in the dialog. As anyone can see, the longer the Palestinians dawdle— prolonging negotiations— the more land in the West Bank falls under Israeli control.

                   The Palestinians do not consider the State of Israel a legitimate entity. They see it as a clever way for the Jews to steal their country of Palestine. The maps in their school textbooks show a green, dagger-shaped Palestine going from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. The name “Israel” is nowhere on that map.

                   Dreamers, the Palestinians envision some wondrous Endgame where all the land is returned to them.

                  A thousand times more pragmatic, the Israelis repay every rebuff at the negotiating table by allowing the Settler Movement to appropriate additional acreage.

 

                                                           *

 

A Presidential Address

 

            “Good afternoon, my fellow Americans!

            “I take great pleasure in speaking to you today from this section of the White House named after Rose Garten. I never knew Rose, but I’m sure she was a wonderful American, whoever she was.

            “Some people say I shouldn’t have the Premier standing here by my side. My answer to them is: Only by opening a dialog with your opponent, can you hope to influence him in the right direction.

            “To those who say we shouldn’t be negotiating with the Premier, I say that only through open negotiation can both parties lay their cards on the table and make known their needs and desires.

            “Some feel we should not be entertaining a mass murderer in the White House. Again, it is up to us to extend the olive branch if any progress is to be made in securing a lasting peace. We want to make it easy for the Premier to aspire to better behavior internationally.

            “Many have criticized our various concessions, fearing they make us look weak. Yet, by conceding so much right from the outset, I hope to set an example for our opponent, demonstrating that sacrificing some of his cards doesn’t arbitrarily lead to defeat.

            “It’s audacious, but if you never try, you never win!

            “Some nitpickers complain about letting the Premier and his charming wife use the Lincoln Bedroom. My wife and I feel it is important to be gracious, welcoming hosts if these sensitive talks are to truly bear fruit.

            “It is my belief that letting the Premier freely use the facilities of the Oval Office forges a sense of brotherhood and shared responsibility between our two great nations.

            “As for our abandonment of certain other countries, in an effort to reach agreement with our adversary, as my Granny used to say, ‘You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.’

            “I’ve heard criticism because the treaty we are about to sign isn’t written in English. I feel this is merely a symbolic bow to our guest. As long as we Americans know what we mean, it would be foolish to miss such a golden opportunity over something as trivial as language.

            “Is it wrong to accede American protectorates in other parts of the globe? History will show that these gestures of friendship and understanding, in the end, led to an accord that both sides can live with. At least for the time being.

            “Finally— and I’ve purposely left this most momentous decision for last— I believe that future generations will look back and fully comprehend why it is in America’s best interest, at this juncture in our history, to discard that musty relic of the past and rename our country more in keeping with the spirit of the times. In our hearts, we’ll always be America. It’s only the official designation that will change.

            “This is truly— and I say this from the depths of my heart— a monumental occasion.

            “Thank you and good afternoon. I will now let the Premier conclude this press conference with his prepared remarks.”

                                           –  President Blackie Diamond in my upcoming novel

                                                        *

 

 

 

Playmates

  

To: <Kevin Feingold; Oxburg, Maryland, USA>

From: <Dede Lopez; Mexico City, Mexico>

Subject: A Proposal

Dear Mr. Kevin,

Business is slow at the travel bureau here in Mexico City. So I have been reading blogs to improve my English.

You write about many interesting people. I wish I knew more about America to understand your references. Who is SOTU? Is that the American president? Why do you call him SOTU? I thought this is the black sauce you eat with Chinese food.

Have you considered writing in Spanish? I translated some of your sentences to Spanish. They are very funny. Especially the vague ones regarding sexual misunderstandings where a woman holds your penis and makes for you some problems. You poor little penis! We have telenovellas where people are upset like this, while off-camera, they are holding a man’s privates and such.

Perhaps you should write telenovellas !

I could help you with the language. As a woman, I can write the woman’s parts and you as a man will write for the men the dialogue. People speak angrily, emotionally. They threaten one another. They threaten to take life of the other person and/or themselves. How exciting! We make together these dramatic stories, you and I write as collaborators, yes?

Please excuse my English and I look forward to working with you on these projects.

Dede Lopez, Mexico City, Mexico

                                                      *

            On Sarah Palin’s Facebook page, she says the GOP needs “commonsense constitutional conservatives” like her.

            They do?

            The First Lady shows up on the Rachel Ray Show— regarding children’s health issues. Not the first person mom and I want to see in the morning. Mom groans, “Oh no!” and quickly changes the channel.

            I don’t need to go fishing for femmes fatales. Help! They’re closing in on me! The Swedish model features a winter hibernation with the sap rising in the Spring. This is America, in the midst of global warming. My body knows neither in nor out. What do I do with Gunhilde, my Icelandic banker? She has one of those short, starched women’s bodies— breasts, hips, legs, arms, torso, neck and head— on a 5’4” frame, everything in exactly the right place. Standing next to her sends testosterone pulsing through my veins.

            Ambivalent to her role as a personal manager, she doesn’t abuse my trust, waiting for the day I will eventually cave to her womanly dominance and let her dispose over my $125,000 fortune deposited in her bank.

            Everyone at the bank wants to help me “invest the money for a better yield.” As long as they get a 4% commission. Even Gunhilde. So far, she simply widens her stunningly painted blue orbs and impatiently waits for me to melt. With so many irons in the fire, I’m not there yet.

            “I mean, you are married,” I point out, eyeing the baroque ring she wears.

            “I couldn’t get to America without marrying an American,” she explains dismissively, all but going “Tut! Tut!” over such a small inconvenience.

            “I spend half my life writing film scripts and a third of my life asleep in bed,” I lament. “By the time I’m finished, I have no time for romance.”

            This is the same complaint I deliver almost every night to my mom at the dinner table. Sharing the house— I own 700 DVD’s and 2,000 music CD’s and she accepts it, complaining volubly— I live a comfortable, exciting life. But I dream of so much more.

            Passionate Oriental ladies licking my flesh, icy blond goddesses laughing in my face, beautiful brunettes tying my hands to the bedposts and ravaging my body, startling redheads shoving their tongues down my throat. All the usual clean-cut, American male fantasies.

            “I don’t understand you at all,” says Gunhilde in her thick Icelandic accent, plopping her cardboard coffee cup noisily on her desk. “You should open up. I’m here for the asking. Take this… opportunity.”

            “To let you handle my banking affairs?”

            Widening her baby blues, she shakes her blond head and says, “Yes-s-s!”

            “This would thoroughly fuck up the feng shui of your office.”

            “I have no idea what you mean,” she tells me huskily. I believe she thinks I’m making a sexual reference.

            “The people working in this bank would be scandalized if you and I start a relationship.”

            “Oh… That would not be good,” she agrees. As an immigrant, she doesn’t want any trouble.

            So, enticingly, tentatively, we are friends, but not more than that. Her husband, it turns out, met her while he worked as a U.S. military radar operator at the air base in Keflavik, Iceland. I, too, would have grabbed her if I was him.

                                                          *    

            The National Herald has a green, front-page photo of the aurora borealis over Tromsö in Norway. It’s very nice to look at in a still photo, but I visited the S-range in Kiruna, Sweden— well above the Arctic Circle— for a rocket launch one winter during the kind of solar flares that cause this kinetic activity. I did not like it. The Northern Lights don’t stand still, looking pretty, they move. Not accustomed to the sky writhing above my head, I suffered a total panic attack. Both amused and alarmed, the locals apologized profusely. They found themselves at a loss over what to do. Pulling up the hood on my parka, Leif suggested earnestly in broken English, “Don’ look at the sky.”

            That did the trick, but really, I wouldn’t recommend this ionospheric effect as a major tourist attraction. If the cold and the long, dark nights don’t get you, the lighting effects will.

                                                           *

            Like everybody else, Gunhilde hustles in the nicest possible fashion. She “helps” customers invest their moolah. Some of these people really don’t know what to do in the world of finance and require guidance. Gunhilde’s ambivalence enters the picture because annuities pay the highest commissions, prompting her and her jolly coworkers to constantly steer account holders in the direction of annuities.

            They also offer identity theft insurance, additional overdraft protection, and consumer buyer protection plans (“You don’t like what you bought, you return it for a refund. Always”). They can sell you household insurance, auto insurance and life insurance. Each one at the rate of $17.98 a month, deducted automatically from your account. No bookkeeping! The bank’s computer bleeds your account dry without requiring you to lift a finger!

            Such service!            

             I’ve been to Iceland four times. The women are other-worldly.

            Gunni (dare I use a nickname?) spends a lot of effort pleating and braiding her honey-blond hair. Her ‘do goes in about six different directions, a visual confection, tied in bows and held in place with colored plastic combs. When I see her in her white PVC trenchcoat and low black heels, my body hums to the rhythm of her heartbeat.

            What about the blue dots, dead center, above and below her eyes, on the upper and lower eyelids? Girls have worn eyeliner since I was a kid, but I do not understand these Bjork-influenced dots. Stranger than strange— “Now for something completely different!”— they’re so far outside the box, they turn a negative into a positive. How can you not stare into her pale blue orbs when they are accentuated by those weird dots? You can’t.

            I can’t.

            Not.

            Stare.

            I’ve seen her, sitting in her office, staring down customers, steering them in the direction she wants them to go.

                                    Train me, baby

                                    Train me tonight.

                                    Make me feel

                                    My life is right.

             Part of the problem is location: Every time I go in the bank, there she is, strutting in low heels, clack! clack! clack!, that announce “Here I am. Check out this body!”

              She’s said as much: “Growing up, everyone remarked about my classic Icelandic looks. I met Johnnie in a bar after winning runner-up in the Miss Iceland Contest. I was there celebrating with my friends. He asked me what the tiara was for. I told him, ‘It’s for you!’ After that moment, he couldn’t leave me alone. He still can’t take his eyes off me! And we’ve already been married three years. He’s a crazy man.”

               Depositing checks with Donnie the teller, a displaced Irishman, on a Friday afternoon, I see G in her PVC white, belted trenchcoat, looking like she just stepped out of a fashion mag. It would be hard to miss her, she stands right in the center of the room, looking distracted. When I complete my transaction, she’s still there. I don’t have the ego to think this has anything to do with me.

              “Waiting for a bus?” I ask. She stares into my baby browns and does her widening, widening of the eyes bit.

              “I’m leaving for the day,” she tells me in that husky contralto that makes my ears ring. She stalks past, almost knocking me over. She parades out the door into yellow sunlight. I go trotting after her. Good doggie! “Walk me to my car,” she commands.

               “You know,” I tell her, “I never talk to you socially because for me, you are a very dangerous woman.”

              “I am not dangerous!” she insists, worried as usual about getting deported.

               “I mean, I like you too much. You’re not only beautiful, you’re intellectually brilliant. I avoid people who are smarter than me. You’re way brighter than I am!”

               My extremely cynical Uncle Izzy once lectured me (he was a college professor in Political Science), “When you talk with a beautiful woman, don’t just compliment her looks. She hears that from everybody. Instead, tell her what a genius she is, how you admire her for the quality of her braininess. Since most beautiful women haven’t developed their higher faculties, this declaration will charm her. You’ll get to fuck her, where others have gotten shot down.

               “Praising a beautiful woman’s intellect is a sure way into her panties.”

                Cynical.

                He also told me, “The publishing industry is full of fairies. If you wish to become a published author, sleep with an editor at one of the big publishing houses.”

                I didn’t sleep with a man, but I took his first dictum to heart. I have developed an approach that works with some of the world’s most exotic creatures.

               “Oh, I’m not so smart,” Gunhilde ruminates, taking the bait. A radiant smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. Head thrown back, her pert little nose points to heaven.

               “Well, I think you are,” I bray like a donkey. Playing the blockheaded cretin pleasantly excites my lower extremities. Gunhilde glances at my pants and smirks.

                “We should get to know each other better,” she says, pressing my arm with her little Scandinavian hand. A child of nature, she wears clear nail polish.

                “Yeah. Yes. Well, we’ll see.”

                 Why does it not surprise me that she drives a Volvo?

                  “I have a gold bellybutton ring, but I never get to show it to anybody.”

                  “I understand. Americans are funny that way. You’re not supposed to show your navel in public.”

                  She begins undoing her belt.

                  “Uh, no, no, no,” I stammer, glancing frantically around the parking lot.

                   “You should see it… someday,” she replies ruefully, giving me a withering look. At least she’s not baring anything here, next to the bank. In this brilliant sunlight, everything stands out a mile.

                  “Have you ever made love in a Volvo?” she asks.

                  “Ah! Now you’re getting personal,” I joke.

                  “I’ll schedule you for an appointment,” she remarks, falling back on her business school jargon.

                 “Pencil me in.”

                  “I always use a pen,” she replies wonderingly.

                   This is one wonderful lady! Very efficient, very officious. I guess they never got to the chapter about colloquial phrases.

                                                      *

                  My 90-year-old mom sleeps more now and has begun to suffer a series of memory lapses. This is upsetting in someone whose steel trap of a mind always demanded exact information of both herself and others.

                  As my little brother Tim says, “When paired with a navigator in a military exercise, the first thing to do is take away his map and compass. If you depend on him, you’ll both become hopelessly lost!”

                  Unfortunately, that’s started happening with mamman. Her driving directions often leave us stranded on a side road in the wilds of Maryland.

                                                      *

                   Madonna performs the halftime show at the Super Bowl, a real Las Vegas style extravaganza. She leads off with “Vogue,” featuring all the same embarrassing dance moves and choreography from her shows in the 1980’s. Michael Jackson, Britney Spears and Madonna, dance, dance, dance. During her second number, “Music,” she misses a back step on the bleachers and her left leg disappears off the back of the stage. Looking terrified, she pulls herself up like a trooper and strikes a pose of sexy defiance.

                    The lady’s a champ.

                    Of course, this still doesn’t answer the paparazzis’ question to Bruce Willis: “Is Demi Moore getting professional help?”

                     Are any of us?

                                                       *

SOTU

  

            Well, it’s that time again. As we say in my family, “Another speech, another dollar.” The Bible warns us against the sin of pride, so I’m just going to say I am willing to be here. Not proud, but… I’m okay with it. It’s a pretty big building and somebody has to make the speech. I’m your man. Some of you complain that all I do is make speeches! Ha ha ha. To them, I say, look over there to the left, see those pretty young ladies? Those are my daughters Basha and Natasha. See! I made them, too. So once in awhile, yes, I do put my nose to the grindstone. Although the body part in question isn’t actually my nose and it’s not exactly a grindstone.

            Which brings me to every politician’s pride and joy, his wife.

            First let me welcome to this convocation local politician Ernst Stavro Glickman. I’ve known the Glickman for… oh… twenty… twenty-five minutes. We were introduced in the car on the way over here. I told him to tag along. I thought, “Here’s a way to show my contempt for this body of elected officials. I can invite some goofball of a local politician to join us.” What’s that movie about bringing jerks to dinner…? Same concept.

            When my family and I sit down at the dinner table and say grace, we always add a word of thanks for Leo Padurski, Chief of the NSA, America’s protector. He is the jockstrap of America, protecting our vital parts from enemy attack. Thanks, Leo!

            Which brings me to my wife, who is not joining us here tonight at this special occasion. She’s off gallivanting around [dripping with venomous contempt] Europe. I mean, if she was gonna gallivant, why can’t she do her gallivanting right here in the good old U.S.A.? Well, she was deprived as a child. America was not the multi-racial, multi-culti society of today. Little pickaninnies didn’t get to make that all-important summer college trip to Europe. So my wife is making it now. She’s not in college, it’s not summer, but… whatever. She ain’t here.

            Also attending… I could go on, yada yada yada, read from the Manhattan phone book, but you all know who you are. If not, well, hell, introduce yourselves! We’re all family.

            We live in perilous times, so I’ve asked General Hartman, sitting in the third row… See that switch he’s holding? If I start to give away the farm regarding Iran or something, I’ve authorized him to cut off the mike.

            If that happens, please, those of you at home, do not try to adjust your set!

            Now to the nuts and bolts of my speech here tonight in this glorious, historic hall of government. Many of you have hunkered down in your seats, ready for the long haul, the 65-minute speech-a-thon, filled with endless platitudes, vague arguments, warm-hearted assurances, emotionally-charged moments of deep, spiritual confrontation!

            Forget all that.

            My staff has timed this puppy— no offense to my doggie, Butch— and it clocks in at just under 10 big ones. That’s minutes, gentlemen, not hours! I’m not going to get up here and do a Fidel Castro.

            We all know what it’s like to be on the inside, looking out. We’re forced to sit here in the chambers of power, while the Occupy Movement protesters get to have all the fun, flouting the law, smoking dope and engaging in group sex. I’ve read the reports about those encampments! Hopefully— and I’m audacious enough to say this— by next January, this heavy burden will be lifted from my shoulders. Then, I too can take to the road, engaging in book tours and frank discussions everywhere. I look forward to camping out all over this great country of ours. I do not shrink from this challenge, I welcome it!

            This is where we get to the emotional part of my speech. I can’t help but think of the time Walter Cronkite, reporting live on television, wiped the tears from his eyes and soldiered on. Obviously upset, he didn’t let that stop him. I think that was when he announced the resignation of Richard Nixon. That was a very emotional moment, I am sure. President Nixon was the one who said— he said many things, a great memoirist, he recorded hundreds of his conversations— he said, on national television— and I quote— “Meat prices must not go higher.”

            That’s a sentiment with which we can all concur. Even Eric Cantor and the Tea Party should be willing to agree with us on this one little thing, right? That meat prices— metaphorically and otherwise— must not go, you know, higher. We must fight the tendency of our meat to rise… that is, the prices… our meat coming to attention at the sound of the president’s voice. You’ve seen the photos of those troops mobbing me! They love me! But I’m okay with it. The hot button that says, “Revere the presidency,” and all of us getting an erection over that. I know I do! And I’m the president.

            So, in conclusion, and I said we were going to keep this baby under 10 minutes, Jobs, Jobs, Jobs! There! I said it. Steve is no longer with us, a moment of silence for an industrial titan, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Steve Jobs.

            …

            This is a great country! God bless America!

*

 

The New Politics?

  

            On January 1, 2012, after 14 years on the Oxburg Town Council, Ms. Anna Bola resigns her position to become Attorney General of the Great State of Maryland. (Applause!) With only four people on the Council, the town by-laws require a special election. I could say, “This is that story,” but the truth is, I’ve been way too busy cleaning and repairing my mom’s house to pay any attention. Yard signs (!) for Suzanna Son have sprung up on every street corner. (I was the sign guy for the Bola campaign.) Robocalls clog the chip in our telephone answering machine: “Hi, I’m Ted Hugo and I want you to vote for Suzanna Son…I’m Derek Derrière, and I want your vote for Oxburg’s next Town Council member, Paulie Marple!… This is State Senator Leonora Pix suggesting you join me in supporting Marcia Weinglass for the Oxburg Town Council. Marcia has years of experience…” I’ll bet she does!

            One Saturday afternoon, as I pile rotting wood panels from our basement by the curb, Iraqi War veteran Taylor Mitchell, a chiseled black dude with a shaved head, crosses the street to speak to me. My equally shaved head and my dust mask, my worn camo pants and white tee bring a smile to the faces of both Taylor and the fat guy with a clipboard acting as his campaign manager. The fat guy’s black tee sports the slogan, in white letters:

                                                   ASK ME ABOUT IRAQ 

            Irritated at somebody selling something, unwashed and exhausted, I grouse, “Tell me what you need, gentlemen! Just tell me what you need!”

            That’s when Taylor explains his mission and gives me his colorfully printed cardboard flier.

            Taking off my dust mask, I smile and say, “You’re running for Town Council? Good for you! Some new blood would do them good.”

            “I helped form the Provisional Government in Iraq.”

            “Ouch!” I quip. “I wouldn’t tell people that in this neighborhood. They’re anti-military and we all know how things went with the Iraqi Provisional Government. Thomas E. Ricks’ Fiasco has practically been required reading.”

            Taylor’s face falls, but he soldiers bravely on: “We need to open a fresh front on the myriad problems facing this township! We need to marshal our troops and set our sights on clear goals. It’s time to direct our firepower—”

            “Look, just tell people you can bring a fresh perspective to a group of entrenched bureaucrats,” I suggest. “Don’t even bring up the fact that they are megalomaniacs.”

            Embarrassed, both candidate and campaign manager have the good grace to laugh. They check my address off their list and walk up the hill to try their luck with other woters.

            In the next two weeks, we get daily candidate fliers in the mail. Still thinking like an Iraqi, Taylor sends us a letter bragging about how many endorsements he’s received from state officials. One sentence is so far outside the box, I have to quote it verbatim: “I am currently employed by Arkan, LLS investigating war crimes and incidents of sexual assault by military personnel in Iraq.” Is that… American military personnel? Or the new Iraqi Army and police force? Maybe Taylor figures people will get so upset, they’ll get off their butts and visit his website. I sure wouldn’t have written that in my appeal. He’s also “Director of Central Maryland Black Veterans For Obama.” Well, Oxburg is in central Maryland, he got that right.

            So when our local rag The Oxburg Sentinel announces a candidates’ debate, I tell my mom to schedule an early din-din. I want to see these Joes in action:

             Suzanna Son – Asian-American, 20-something, the only millennial running for office

             Taylor Mitchell – black, Iraqi War vet

             Jeeter Johnson – the “other” black, a ghetto, breakout NBA star sidelined by a knee injury

             Ernst Stavro Glickman – the unabashedly Jewish candidate

             Marcia Weinglass – the women’s Jewish candidate

             Paulie Marple – Casper Milquetoast in a suit, he kept showing up to work on the Anna Bola campaign

            David Davis – Ph. D., Tea Party candidate, a fourth generation Ron Paul clone

            The Ye Olde Firehouse Museum debate is an extremely physical event: When David Davis castigates Ernst Stavro Glickman on-stage for his campaign slogan—“Don’t Be A Prick / Vote For Glick”—the Glickman pulls a cattle prod from a blue canvas bag at his feet and zaps Davis one. When Asian-American candidate Suzanna Son— easily the brightest person in the room— goes to work on Marcia Weinglass, Marcia empties the contents of her plastic water bottle on Suzanna’s head. Jeeter Johnson takes occasional swings at Paulie Marple, in between exchanging vituperative perjoratives and cracking  “Yo mama” jokes with fellow-black Taylor Mitchell:

            “Honky-lover!”

            “Who’s a honky-lover, you Uncle Tom?”

            “You about as black as O-bama, whiteboy!”

            “Yo mama’s mouth so big, it won’t fit ina trunk o’ mah car!”

              In the beginning, moderator and museum curator Sylvia Sims tries to stop the mayhem, but finally, she simply leaves the candidates to duke it out among themselves. She’s all dressed up, sporting a bouffant ‘do, so no one can blame her. “Decorum!” she occasionally shouts, but there’s no decorum.

                Taylor Mitchell, the only candidate openly touting his work developing a Provisional Government in Iraq—“Boy, we all know how that turned out!” sneers Jeeter—says, in lieu of an apology, “Listen, we candidates may seem a little boorish, but in Afghanistan, people shoot their political opponents!… At least we don’t do that! “ he quickly adds as people at the back of the hall make a beeline for the exits.

               (Suzanna Son, a jogger, sports a bright red water bottle that says, “Run For Your Life!”)

              “Harrumph!” grunts precinct captain Arthur Pascoe, grossly overweight, sitting next to me in the front row. “This is a motley crew to be running for Town Council.”

               “Even if we deserve better,” I whisper, “obviously we’re not getting it.”

               “It?” asks Arthur, perennially obtuse. “What does ‘it’ mean?”

               “A reasonable candidate for Anna’s seat.”

               “Aha!”

               “Aha? What does ‘Aha’ mean?” I wonder, but keep my mouth shut.

                Taking a page from Speaker of the House John A. Boehner’s playbook, Paulie Marple bursts into tears every few minutes. Not while he’s under attack and not while he’s speaking, but apparently he takes his cues from voices inside his head: Nothing the rest of us can see or hear accounts for this geyser of tears.

               Marcia Weinglass: “Oxburg’s school system is the second largest employer in the township, second only to the U.S. Government. I will fast track a solution to our school problems, even at the cost of delaying other programs!”

                Paulie Marple: “I won’t just go along with the majority. I want to hear divergent opinions!”

                David Davis: “And then you’ll side with the majority!”

               When asked to define what makes him an acceptable candidate for Town Council, Jeeter replies, ‘Whassa mattah, O-blam-a, can’t take it?”

              “That doesn’t really define you,” moderator Sylvia Sims complains.

             “Oh? I think it do!” counters Jeeter— and most of the audience agrees. “Yo’ want frostbite, lady, y’all go outside!”

              “You see,” Arthur wheezes, “normally that kind of speech would disqualify a person, but we’re talking about a position on the Town Council here.”

               I’m impressed in spite of myself. Instead of the usual dullards and burnouts, we have seven candidates who actually have something on the ball. Why they want to run for Town Council, God only knows.

               Looking up at the stage, Arthur says,” It really depends on who endorses you. The person with the best endorsement wins. Every time.”

               Huh? Is that true? It sounds like b.s. to me, but I zip my lips.

               Paulie Marple: “We have a tendency to redo everything, repave streets, rebuild schools, replant trees, replace park benches…”

               David Davis: “The town should provide basic services, not finance capital projects.”

                Suzanna Son: “Currently, we’re borrowing to finance debt. Raising our debt ceiling has to be a last resort. We’re already at 8% equity. At 10%, we risk losing our Triple-A rating… It’s time to bring everyone to the table on this.”

                “I be there!” booms Jeeter from the stage, flashing his Michael Jordans for us to admire. “I speaks my mind! I one hi-top dude!”

                “I’ve been to Russia!” counters Ernst Stavro Glickman. Although some in the audience wonder if this is a swipe at the Politburo mentality of the sitting Council members, Arthur shakes his head knowingly.

                David Davis: “This meeting is pantywaist! Why, the Occupy Movement uses Human Microphones. None of this electrical P.A. system crap. ‘Public Address,’ my ass! Human mikes! The speaker at the front says, ‘We need to send a message to Wall Street!’ People in the front row pass it on back! By the time it reaches the cheap seats, what they hear is, ‘What’s selling at Wal-Mart?’ You can’t buy that kind of democracy!”

               Taylor Mitchell: “Now that one dance company in our area is staging a satire on reality TV and another has choreographed a tribute to the agonies of the Vietnam War, I have asked the Le Favre Dance & Shoe Repository to step forward and— with your consent— they will now give us a three-minute interpretive dance performance regarding this special election.”

              Grunting audibly “We are the 99%,” three gray-clad, ghostly figures come marching up the side aisles. Wearing Kabuki masks and writhing sinuously, they have those of us in the audience squirming uneasily in our seats. Filling the open space between the front row and the stage, they present three minutes of sexually-charged gymnastics. After which moderator Sylvia Sims gulps, “Well, that was refreshing!”

             “This is something that gets me in a party-down mood!” adds Taylor.

              Ernst Stavro Glickman: “The Oxburg Sentinel considers me one of 2011’s Top 10 Twitterati! I don’t go to the bathroom without tweeting about it. I’ve already sent three tweets since the start of this debate!”

             “Let me explain why I oppose making The 1812 Highway into a 6-lane road,” says Suzanna Son. “Where are the additional cars going to go when they reach Rockville Pike on the one end and Natalie Woods Parkway on the other? Rockville Pike is already running at full capacity. Natalie Woods Parkway has plenty of unused potential, but as we are all too aware, Natalie Woods Parkway doesn’t go anywhere! It starts in Oxburg and ends seven blocks short of the backside of White Flint Mall. No wonder no one ever drives beyond Oxburg, north on The 1812 Highway! Zero instant gratification!”

              Finally, I think, someone with a degree of expertise!

             “I say, fuck’um,” jeers Jeeter.

             “Ah, now is that any way to talk?” demands Paulie Marple, the best-connected of the candidates. Paulie knows everybody. He and Jeeter dance across the stage, shadowboxing.

             Marcia Weinglass: “Since the year 2000, we’ve lost 2/3 of our affordable housing.”

              Jeeter Johnson: (still punching the air) “That what I talkin’ about!”

              Suzanna Son: “A third of our roads, all our major arterials, are state-owned and financed. The Maryland Department of Highways controls our streets and our lives!”

              Marcia Weinglass: “We have to use ‘soft power’ in our dealings with Annapolis, since we really don’t have any ‘hard power.’ A charm offensive. We need to remind the state legislature that the Greater Washington area is one of the economic engines of Maryland.”

              David Davis: “Soft power, my fanny! I was once one of those crappy Democrats! We have no friends in Annapolis and it’s time for us to admit it. Local initiative is the only way!”

              You have to give them some credit, they all belong to IFO, one of the few organizations outside the military that is totally honest right from the get-go: the International Federation of Opportunists. Talk about transforming a negative to a positive! Wise beyond their station, heeding the advice of their campaign managers, these clowns up on the stage can now proudly admit to the organization’s motto:

                        “We See An Opportunity, We Grab It!” 

               In today’s cloistered, cluttered world, that proclamation feels like a breath of fresh, mountain air.

             Of course, none of them sing R&B as prettily as Obama.

             Town Council, Town Council, compare these guys to the Republican candidates for president, each madly jockeying for position and constantly embroidering the message to fit what they hope is the opinion of the electorate.

             Ernst Stavro Glickman: “Governor Romney is not the unfeeling, wheeler-dealer corporate raider he is made out to be! He cried crocodile tears of remorse as he fired every one of those people.”

             Marcia Weinglass: “The entire system is warped. These early Republican primaries are in states that want their moment in the spotlight. You can’t tell me that Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina are representative of American political opinion. God help us!”

             Paulie Marple: “The best candidates are dropping by the wayside! I grew up with Beverley Hills 90210. I would have voted for Luke Perry in an instant! I’ve seen all his movies, even his made-for-TV movies!”

            David Davis: “To stand here and regret that a B-list actor like Luke Perry isn’t running for president is beyond incomprehensible. That boy wasn’t even born until 1966. He’s only 45 years old! We all know what happened this last time, when we elected a 40-something to the White House! Obama and his wife are the ultimate teenagers. It’s all an act. They’re poseurs. They never grew up. Raised by doting grandparents, little Barry Obama thinks he’s the cat’s meow!”

           Wow! Talk about “The emperor has no clothes.” Half the audience is on their feet shouting, “Wrong! Wrong! How dare you attack Obama?!”

           Taylor Mitchell: “I volunteer at the White House reading incoming mail. 95% of the letters are hate mail, but I don’t let it bother me. Personally, I think Brother Obama has overdone the entire speechmaking thing. He’s become boring. He’s our boy, but he be an earache.” [This is an actual statement by a volunteer.]

            Paulie Marple: “It’s not my fault Luke Perry was governor of Texas. A man with that kind of experience…

             Jeeter Johnson: “…and he an actor! That be important! We already has an actor in da White House!”

             Marcia Weinglass: “Excuse me, the governor of Texas was Rick Perry. A different Perry entirely!

            The silence in the hall was deafening. Scratch two candidates.

            Taylor Mitchell: “The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, ‘America’s Pro-Israel Lobby,’ has become too powerful. They started the whole PAC thing. The super PACs are Israel’s fault.”

             Ernst Stavro Glickman: “Blame the Supreme Court. Hooligans versus Leeds United.”

             Marcia Weinglass: “Wrong! AIPAC isn’t powerful enough. When a government is out of control like this one, you need a strong lobby to maintain the pressure and, hopefully, reduce the damage. Beating up on the Israelis because the Palestinians refuse to come to the table! For shame! I completely lost my respect for Hillary. Keep the pressure on those creeps in the White House.”

             David Davis: “That was Nixon.”

            Marcia Weinglass: “What?”

            David Davis: “Creep, Committee to Re-Elect the President. Under President Nixon.”

            Taylor Mitchell: “He’s mad. Candidate Davis is a madman!”

            Suzanna Son: “We still don’t know the effect of the new ICC, the Inter-County Connector. It could bring big changes to Oxburg. The coming of Metro’s Purple Line will put us squarely on the map. I also foresee an expansion of light rail in Maryland.”  

            Marcia Weinglass: “This is a pivotal time for our community. Oxburg has divided into the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots.’ This town no longer works for everyone. I will always work for you! “

            That’s when we all realize, every man jack in the hall, that the fix is in. Paulie Marple knows simply everybody, but the heavy hitters are putting their money and influence behind Marcia. Granted, she is Jewish. Nationally, we’re only 4% of the population, although in Oxburg, the percentage is considerably higher. I look around. It’s Marcia Weinglass by acclamation! As the meeting breaks up, she’s swamped by Latinos. They know who will be the new voice on the Town Council. As Bob Dylan sang, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” I’m very disappointed! Suzanna Son marchers up to Arthur and asks, “How’d I do?”

            Introducing us, Arthur explains that Suzanna is the precinct captain for Oxburg High. “Kevin, here, let us down in the last election!” Arthur bitches.

            “Arthur does have a beef,” I admit, while Suzanna smirks wonderingly. “I couldn’t poll watch on Election Day because I had so many polling stations to monitor for the Bola campaign.”

            “Well, Arthur, there you have it!” says Suzanna, taking my side.

            Arthur then launches into one of his mindless monologues. Suzanna and I wait the obligatory two minutes and turn away for a private chat. “The others had good intentions,” I point out. “You, additionally, always brought a technical component to the mix.”

            “That’s the consultant in me,” she smiles, eating me up with her staring brown eyes.

            I assume that this is her way of working the room. I plow on: “The special election is going to Marcia Weinglass or Paulie Marple, probably Marcia. I’m discovering that the sad truth is, there’s nothing new in county politics. It’s the same faces endlessly playing musical chairs! I want you on the goddam Council. Get out and canvas doors. Send out a mailer! The yard signs are great, but we have to get your name out there! Buy a full page ad in The Oxburg Sentinel.”

            “You’re absolutely right. I only managed to knock on 1500 doors. But the election’s on Tuesday. No time to even send out a mailer,” she laments.

            “Seats on the Town Council will be contested as part of the general election in November. Here’s my card. I worked on the Bola campaign. We won with 58% of the vote. Not too shabby.”

            “Oh!” she chirps, “We’re exchanging cards!” Giving me hers, she says, “Would you mind terribly? There are people over in that corner of the room I have got to schmooze!”

            “Go for it!” I urge her.

            As she leaves, I wave good night to Arthur, thank Sylvia Sims for officiating and head for the exit. There is a stack of Paulie Marple yard signs leaning by the door. I look around for Paulie. I find him in a huddle with his people. “Paulie,” I ask, “can I take one of your signs?”

            “Of course,” he breathes excitedly. “Everyone, this is Kevin Feingold, the yard sign genius in Anna Bola’s campaign. I wish I had you doling out my yard signs!”

            I smile and quietly leave, discreetly taking the sign home— or as discreetly as you can wield a yard sign. I add it to my collection. What? You thought I was gonna put it in my yard?! Git outta here!

*

            Tuesday afternoon, 5 p.m., I take my 90-year-old mom to Oxburg High to vote. Taylor Mitchell has his supporters everywhere, inside the building and out, sporting his stick-on badges on both sides of their chests. This is wasted effort, people don’t arrive at the polls unless they already know for whom they intend to vote. In state-wide elections, campaign materials, stickers and posters cannot be closer than 50 feet to a polling place. At this intramural town scrap meet, there ain’t no such rules.

             During the last special election, mom almost collapsed for all the traipsing you have to do: One table checks you off the voting list. Another table has you sign a pledge that you are who you say you are and truly do reside in Oxburg. Then you go to a table where they give you a ballot. You fill this in behind the green curtain of a voting booth. Finally, at a fourth table, you shove your vote into a ballot box.

           When she was finished, she complained bitterly to the officials running the show. “Older folks can’t do this!” she seethed.  “People who walk with a cane— like me— or use a walker are being disenfranchised!”

            Having taken this message to heart, today they immediately offer her “curbside voting.” We enter the building, she gets to take a seat by the wall while volunteers bring her a pledge form, peruse her i.d., go inside and check her off the voting list, bring her a ballot on a clipboard, wait while she makes her choice, pop it into an envelope, seal the envelope, and carry it back into the school gymnasium and drop it in the box. She gets to sit through the entire process. “Curbside.”

            “They listened!” she marvels.

            Leaving her sitting out front, I walk down the hall past the candidates and their entourages to inspect the gym. Among the signs spread somewhat randomly throughout the room, I spy a large “Anna Bola For Attorney General” yardy. It’s leaning against a table. “Hey!” I tell Robyn, the stunningly beautiful brunette volunteering at the door, “I was the sign guy for the Bola campaign. See that sign? That’s one of mine!”

            “How exciting for you,” she cracks sardonically.

            “Yeah.”

            We both laugh. Yard sign guy gets a hard-on seeing one of his products in the Town Council election hall.

             Families keep streaming in, a huge turnout, considering it snowed the night before.

            On my way out, I josh with Paulie Marple. “Your robocalls are top notch,” I tell him. “You’ve got the voice! If you don’t win this election, you can always become a radio announcer.”

             Town Council Chairman Johnson J. Johansson keeps flouncing by in his charcoal gray suit, Mr. Executive, in charge of the polling, the heavy hand of the Town Council much in evidence. They have every reason to be scared!

            I have a long chat with Suzanna Son: “If you don’t get elected today and want to have a go in November, I am here for you. We need to get your name out there. You are so far superior to the other candidates, all you lack at the moment is name recognition.”

            “That’s the thing,” she whispers. A first-time candidate, she’s lost her voice from too many speaking engagements.” I don’t know if I want to go through this again. ‘Though all my supporters are pushing me to re-up.”

            “You don’t need to decide right away. Who knows, you may win this thing! Miracles do happen. It ain’t over ‘till it’s over! “

            We give one another a thumbs up. Suzanna is not only someone with ideas, she can actually master a fact sheet. In arguments with Johansson, she’ll be deadly.

* 

             And the winner is…? Marcia Weinglass, the Establishment favorite.

             Nothing has changed!

A Quick Fix

  

            As they say in the movie business, when the release of a film gets delayed for a year and a half, there are problems.

            In an attempt to do a re-make of The Prisoner of Zenda, things got a little out of hand at More Town Studios. In no way was it my fault that they ended up with such a bizarre shooting script. I have only been called in to help construct the trailer. My reputation precedes me: The love interest in my scripts tends to be either a dominatrix or a vixen. “You’ll be poifect to square this circle,” brays CEO David Groschen over the phone.

            I have been a little too generous of late to some of my lady friends. I need the money.

            Here are the bare bones provided by the studio:

                                         Trailer – The Prisoner of Zelda

             Josh (a Sam Neill type character): (close-up) “Let me go, Zelda!”

              Zelda: (close-up; laughing toothily) “No-o-o-o-o!”

                Everything else is action sequences: car chases, things exploding, even if one of the “things” is a guy’s underpants.

                I view the screener, pausing to jot notes. I’ve discovered that the impression I get on the first viewing— the details that stand out— are a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I can watch the movie a dozen more times, but I’ll never have as fresh a take.

                This motion picture is in serious trouble, and I don’t mean they risk missing Best Picture at the Oscars. A low-budget slasher movie, Zelda locks up men and saws off their limbs. Of course, the last 30 seconds before the closing credits have got to be in the trailer: An old-fashioned, Sigmund Freud type psychiatrist in a book-lined study all in tones of brown— the furniture, the leather chairs, the psychiatric couch. He says, “But my dear, you must be suppressing a terrible anger.”

                There it is! A movie for modern times. I telephone Groschen and pitch

                                          Trailer – The Anger of Zelda

                Narrator: “Never before has a motion picture dared immerse itself in the seething cauldron of emotions that underlie the most basic tenets of modern life— extremism, fanaticism, rage, anger. Zelda, society’s Everywoman, experiences it all! JOIN HER in facing the terror, the hopelessness, but above all, the anger.

               The anger.

               The anger of Zelda.

               Coming to a theater near you, August 2012.”

                “Okay,” I tell Groschen, “worst case scenario, we change the last sentence to ‘Coming to DVD.’ It floats. It works.”

               “I dunno,” David replies, but even from across the Continental Divide, I can hear the wheels turning. “Do the edit and send me the rough cut. You know the drill. I’ll run it by a focus group. We’ll call it Zelda’s Anger. It’s a sexy title, it’s potent, it carries a punch.”

              Which he does. Sonofabitch, we’ve got a sleeper! The focus group loves the trailer, the idea, the concept, the rough cut, my narration (I’ve got a passable microphone voice), you name it.

               That the movie itself stinks in no way diminishes the quality of the $10,000 check I happily receive from More Town Studios.

*

 

Convenience

 

            A tall, thin girl by the side of the road, long blond hair, a cute face, black slacks, a white down windbreaker, a black plastic garbage bag full of clothes at her feet. A blustery, cold day in January, she stands like a fashion model, her left leg arched forward provocatively. Naturally, I stop. I get out of the car and ask, “Is your ride coming?”

            “What’s it to you?”

            She looks like a suburban stray, but speaks with a hillbilly twang, not at all what I expected.

            “I can’t just leave you here, it’s cold.”

            She thinks about that awhile. “My boyfriend’s coming to get me.”

            “Good! As long as he comes.”

            A smile plays around the corners of her mouth. “You do this often? Stop and talk to strangers?”

            “Most strangers don’t look like you,” I confess. “You’re… stunning.”

            “Whatever.”

            “Have you called your boyfriend on his cellphone?”

            She gawks. “My boyfriend drives a pickup. He doesn’t have a cellphone.”

            “Oh, I’m sorry.”

            A radiant smile breaks out on her face. “Hey, mister, you got a cigarette?”

            “I quit. Awhile back.”

            “Huh? Why’d you quit?”

            “Burning up big bucks.”

            “Ha! That was dumb.”

            “Well…”

            “If you hadn’t quit, you could offer me a cigarette, jerko.”

            Looking into her lovely blue eyes, I say, “Yeah. I goofed. I… I’m sorry.”

            “Where is he? Do you own that car you’re driving?”

            “Yeah, that’s my car.”

            “Come on! It’s cold. I’m tired of waiting. Grab my stuff, wouldja?” she chirps, pivoting elegantly on one leg and marching off to my car. I grab her black plastic trashbag— which is unexpectedly heavy— and follow.

            “What’s in here, bricks?” I joke.

            “Why? What’s it your business?” she asks. She pops open the passenger side door and hops in my car.

            Plopping her bag on the back seat, I get in behind the wheel. “Where to, madam?” I ask in a cheeky chauffeur’s voice.

            “Hey, mister, just drive! I’ll tell you when I see a convenience store.”

            “What’s your name?”

            “Huh?” she grunts languidly, kind of floating in her seat. “Madeleine, but everyone calls me Maddie.”

            I drive. Stop light, stop light, gas station.

            “Oh, there’s a convenience store.”

            “Where?”

            “Right there!”

            “Oh. Right.” I pull into the parking lot.

            “Hey, mister,” she asks with a kind of stoner cluelessness, “do you ever do methamphetamine?”

            “What? No. Of course not!”

            “Huh? Shit, I do it all the time!” she assures me, leaning over the front seat, rummaging in her black plastic bag. First she brings forth a brown leather purse with a shoulder strap, very shiny, almost new. Then she dives back into the sack and pulls out a Glock 22 and points it at me. “Gimme the keys to your car.”

            “Cripes!” I swear.

            “Gimme the keys to your car! Look, Mr. Whoosis, I’m about to rob this convenience store. I got a gun. See?”

            “Oh, I see the gun, alright.”

            “What’s your problem? Give me the goddam keys to your goddam car. Get out an’ walk away. This here’s none of your goddam business. Let me do my thing and I’ll leave your car someplace public and, like, sometime soon you’ll get it back. Someplace in the tri-state area.”

            “What the hell is the tri-state area?” I dumbly ask.

            “Delmarva. Delaware-Maryland-Virginia. Now give me the goddam keys,” she rants, becoming hysterical.

            I feel like I’m locked in a closet with a rabid dog. I do the old movie trick and put my hand over the muzzle of the gun. I fully expect her to blow my hand off.

            “Take your hand away!” she howls.

            Quickly pushing the gun aside, I say very quietly, “No can do. I can give you money, Maddie! Money, money, money, as much as is in that convenience store. Why do a robbery when you can get the money handed to you on a silver platter, no crime committed?”

            “What are you, J. D. Rockefeller?”

            “Naw, but, yes, I’ve got some cash stashed.”

            “Where?”

            “In the bank.”

            “Get outta the car. We’re going into this store and gettin’ cash now !”

            “An ATM— “

            “Now! “

            I pocket my car keys. We get out of the car, walk across the lot and enter the store. The entire front window is neon signs, “Checks Cashed,” “Cold Drinks,” “Beer & Wine,” “Open 24 Hours.” It’s 5:30 p.m., just getting dark.

            “Yes, can I help you?” asks the Indian woman behind the counter. She’s dressed in a red and gold sari, a red caste mark on her forehead.

            But Maddie already has the gun pointed, her arms outstretched, all but touching the woman on the nose with it. “Just… give… us… all… your… money!” she recites.

            Frowning, the woman looks at me. “Aren’t you ashamed?” she asks. “We work hard. We have very small profit margins— “

            “Give me the money! “ screams Maddie.

            “She’s doped up!” I hastily explain. “You can’t reason with her. Methamphetamine.”

            “This is a very stupid thing,” says the woman resignedly, ringing up the register, removing bills from each slot in turn and extending the greenbacks to Maddie.

            “Take them! “ Maddie hollers.

            Not wanting the Indian woman to get hurt, I take the bills.

            “Do you want the coins?” asks the Indian.

            “What?” asks Maddie.

            “The coins. Quarters, half dollars, nickels, dimes, pennies.”

            “What about them?”

            “Do you want them?”

            “No, I don’t want them!” Maddie fumes, turning to me. “Take a cold drink.”

            “What?” I ask dumbly.

            “The sign out front says Cold Drinks. Get us a cold drink!”

            “Jesus Christ! What?! A Snapple? Grapefruit tonic? Coke Zero? Maddie! There must be a hundred beverages in here… Bottled water!”

            “Take that there!” she seethes, pointing with the gun at a cardboard case of bottled water. When she swings the gun violently back at the cashier, I fully expect a tragedy.

            None of us move. Somewhere in aisle three, I vaguely sense a customer, but whoever it is, they never show themselves.

            I grab the case of bottled water and say, “Okay, let’s go!”

            I open the door clumsily and back out. I stand on the concrete apron waiting for her. “Maddie, let’s just go!”

            She stands as if paralyzed, arms straight ahead, hands spasmodically clutching the gun in firing position.

            I re-enter the store.

            “Help me!” she screams. “I’m stuck!”

            I put the water on the floor, leave the dollar bills on top, approach from the side and gently raise Maddie’s arms so the gun is pointing at the ceiling.

            “You probably don’t even have bullets,” mutters the Indian cashier.

            “YOU BITCH!”

            “Please, don’t say a word,” I beg them, just managing to unpry Maddie’s right hand from the gun.

            “Okay,” Maddie sighs, seemingly back to normal, the gun in her left hand. Bringing it down to shoulder level, she gunbutts the Indian woman, who collapses on the floor. “Come on!” Maddie shouts, hightailing it out of there. 

            Feeling like an idiot, I grab the loose bills and the bottled water and follow her outside.

            “Quick! Into your car! Let’s go! Let’s go!” Maddie shouts.

            I mean, she still has the Glock.

            I pop open the back door, dump water and money, slam the door, hop in the front and… struggle to get my car keys out of my pants pocket.

            Watching me squirm, Maddie begins laughing hysterically.

            Eventually, I get us on the road. Maddie has me drive us to an apartment house in Virginia. “Shit!” she laments, “I forgot to get cigarettes!” I turn in at the parking area and pull up, the car idling in the middle of the lot. Maddie starts to get out of the car.

            “Just like that?” I ask. “Without a second thought?”

            “Why? Ya wanna do a Bonnie and Clyde? Now he wants a major crime spree! You think robbing people is a turn-on?”

            “Hey! I’m not the one robbing people.”

            “I need money,” she complains. “Nobody’ll hire me! I’m from the Ozarks and don’t have any skills.”

            “I wondered about the accent…”

            “Yeah, well, fuck you, mister!”

            “It’s Kevin.”

            “Oh, sure. Fuck you, Mr. Kevin. Leave me alone! “ she demands, hanging onto the open door. Interestingly, she just sits there, swinging the door back and forth. She doesn’t exit the vehicle.

            “Listen, Maddie…”

            “My boyfriend’s upstairs in an apartment on the second floor. If he knew I’d even spoken one word to you, he’d scalp us both! No foolin’. If you’re not gonna throw me outta yer car, I’d suggest we drive the hell outta here quick as the devil, mister.”

            Her car door hanging open, I hit the gas and spin the wheel left. Centrifugal force brings the door slamming shut. Maddie sits and sulks. “We better go to a motel,” she suggests.

            “Nah, that’s how you bring the police down on you like a ton of bricks. Do a robbery and check into a motel.”

            “So what are we gonna do?” she asks with that same stoner cluelessness.

            “We’ll drive to Maryland and park the car in a shopping center where I have my business. It’s a derelict shopping center. We can bed down in my office.”

            “Is that what you wanna do with me, Mr. Kevin? Bed down?”

            “Why do you think I picked you up?” I ask as she pulls the Glock from beneath her windbreaker and shoves the tip of the barrel against my neck.

            “Give me three good reasons I shouldn’t pull the trigger!” she drawls absent-mindedly.

            “Number one, I’m on your side, Maddie. Number two, I think I’m in love with you— “

            Frowning, she rests the gun resignedly in her lap.

            “Number three, I’m an accomplice. It’s my car, my license plate. I’m in this thing as deeply as you are.”

            “Pull over!”

            This doesn’t sound good, but I pull over. Not on the main drag, but at the first residential street we come to. Is she going to blow my brains out, dump my body and drive off in my car? She’s a meth head. The experts say their behavior is extremely unpredictable and their level of violence limitless.

            “C’mere,” she insists, the gun in her lap, reaching for me with both hands. She clasps my face and we kiss, long, drawn-out kisses, sucking air. She squirms in her seat, one hand drifting down to grab my swollen crotch. “You love  me,” she contends wonderingly. “You really love me!”

            “Yeah… yes, I do!”

            “That’s so… lame!” she laughs. “That’s so fucking lame! I rob a convenience store and you’re, like, totally turned on. Joey’ll die when he hears about this!”

            We kiss some more.

            “Pull down your pants.”

            “Put away your gun.”

            “Fuck you, mister,” she grouses, shoving the pistol back into the waistband of her slacks.

            I unbuckle myself, unzip and pull down my pants.

            “What’s that?”

            “Part of a sock. Keeps the nether regions warm and absorbs leaks.”

            “What leaks?”

            “Sometimes my dick leaks.”

            “Boo hoo hoo, poor man!” she jeers, tugging at my cock mercilessly.

            “We’d enjoy this more in the office,” I croak.

            “Why? I’m enjoying it now.”

            Fuck!

            We go back to heavy petting.

            “If I just kind of lean back on the seat here,” she asks, “will you drive us to this office of yours? I can’t sleep. Meth keeps you wired. But I’m tired. Or am I gonna wake up an’ find myself staring into a patrolman’s flashlight?”

            “I don’t think we’re going to see any patrolmen or their flashlights,” I reason, “but we’d better get a move on.”

            I take us to my office off Rockville Pike. The building is dark, although it wouldn’t matter if Boopsie and Jacqueline were there. Coworkers, we respect one another’s eccentricities. I all but carry Maddie into the building. I return to the car, which isn’t exactly hidden, but parked in the shadows along the side wall. I get her purse and the trashbag full of her worldly possessions. When I get to the office and turn on the desk lamp, she is curled in a corner of the room, seated on the carpet, both arms out stiff, pointing her gun squarely at my head.

            “What are we doing here?!” she demands icily.

            “Hopefully,” I admit, “we’re going to screw the daylights out of each other.”

            “Oh, yeah!” she yelps, throwing the gun against the desk. “Let’s make love!”

            Laughing, I pick up the Glock and lay it on the desk, go to the street windows and close the blinds, and return to find the spectrally white and creamy body of a 22-year-old female blond meth head who has just peeled off all her clothes. I follow suit.

            “Fuck me,” she chortles uncontrollably.

            “Truer words, rarely spoken.”

            …

            When I’m deep inside her, she groans, ”I wanted you because you’re so convenient.”

            I do her again.

            I sleep, in my clothes, her hand gripping my aching cock. She doesn’t sleep, of course, but she leans against me, resting, drooling spittle. At one point, she gets up, goes to the bathroom and does her thing. Groggily, I look up and see the yellow light outlining the bathroom door. I hear the water running. As I  drift off to sleep, I am rudely shaken awake.

            “I wanna go to Joey,” she says.

            “Sure, I’ll drive you.”

            I take her to the apartment house across the river in Virginia. After two minutes in the car, she’s like a zombie, staring silently out the windshield, her hands spasmodically writhing in her lap.

           “Can I turn on the radio?” I ask.

            “No noise! “ she screams.

             “Okay. Okay, Maddie. Okay,” I whisper soothingly.

              It doesn’t help. She’s almost jumping out of her skin by the time we arrive.

              “Hey! Thanks!” she says, brusquely grabbing her purse, the plastic bag and the dollar bills off the back seat, the Glock once again a conspicuous bulge beneath the hem of her jacket.

               That’s it, my escapade in crime. I watch as she flounces away at 3 o’clock in the morning to the barely lit entrance of a shabby, yellow domicile. I can only imagine what a desperate series of misadventures their lives must consist of.

               I drive home and go to bed. It’s cold enough to freeze a yak’s ass. The police awaken me at 11 a.m. the next morning, ringing the front doorbell. They’ve traced my license plate. Barechested, I invite the two of them in. “Let me go put on a shirt,” I suggest. I offer coffee. They decline. I heat a cup in the microwave and sit down with them at the dining room table to address their questions.

               “Your car was used last night in a robbery,” Lt. McKay enunciates clearly, glancing between his notepad and my face. “At first we thought it was a case of a stolen vehicle. You know. Not you in the car. Then— and here’s the bitch, here’s the kicker— we interview the proprietress and screen the surveillance video. That’s some footage. Who’s the dame?”

               “He means,” Detective Holt interjects, “who is the woman holding the gun? We’ve seen her on video several times before, but she continues to elude us.”

               So I give them a short explanation, meet woman, held at gunpoint, forced to participate in robbery.

               “It’s a carjacking,” declares Lt. McKay stolidly.

               “She did try to steal your car… and you resisted? And that’s when she made you enter the store? At gunpoint? Is that your story?” ask Detective Holt.

              “At gunpoint. When I wouldn’t give her the keys to my car. Yes.”

               They’re not even playing Good Cop / Bad Cop. They just seem intent on getting the narrative down pat.

               “What happened then?” asks the detective, while the lieutenant scribbles furiously on his notepad.

                I tell them about driving her to Virginia.

               “And that’s where you left her?”

               “Yup!”

              “Could you find this place again? That’s like, the clincher,” McKay  tells me. “Accomplice to armed robbery, driving the getaway car. Or, more likely, innocent victim forced at gunpoint to assist an armed felon.”

             “It’s not like you want to protect the lady or anything, right?” asks Detective Holt.

             “Gentlemen, let me get my shoes, my jacket, hat and gloves. Then we’ll take a ride across the river.”

              The two policemen exchange looks.

              “Okay,” McKay agrees.

               I never wrote down the address, but, yes, with only one wrong turn, I got us there. I mean, I’d already driven there twice. They kept me caged in the back of the cruiser while they called for backup. Eventually, Virginia law enforcement pulled stealthily into the parking lot and conferred with the Maryland police officers.

               Maddie and Joey looked appropriately disheveled and miserable as the cops led them from the building. I felt bad, but it was them or me, and whatever happened to me, nothing was going to get them off the hook. My going down would serve no purpose whatsoever.

              That was two years ago. I’m writing about it now because I just visited Maddie at The Montgomery Project, a halfway house. She is out on parole and looks as ridiculously angelic as always, ex-con or no. Creamy skin, long blond hair, perky blue eyes, plucked eyebrows, rosebud mouth, round dimpled chin, pert little breasts and those long, long legs. Until she smiles. Her teeth! The rotting stumps of a zombie apocalypse.  And she continues to have the distracted air of someone not  entirely in the room. Ouch!

              Since employment is such a big deal for those out on parole, I’ve hooked her up with a concert promoter who has her doing costumes, make-up and stage hand work, but he makes sure she stays out of his bed and he doesn’t let her get anywhere near the cashbox.

             So far, it’s working.

*

 

Our MLK Memorial

  

            Those of us living in Oxburg, Maryland have followed with great interest the erection, dedication and events surrounding the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial on the mall. We put up our memorial in 2001, a full ten years in advance of national trends. Actually, Vincenzo Panini, our local mafioso, and I put up the monument. One of my black buddies in the Army had informed me of the nice urn-and-eternal-flame monument erected in his Alabama hometown in honor of the Reverend Dr. King. Once planted, this seed took root. Lacking a ready network of contacts, I canvassed the PTA, the Town Council, the Better Business Bureau, the Oxburg Homeowners Association and even the Federated Oxburg Retailers Organization for help in launching a monument. No takers. Initially enthusiastic and intrigued, these stalwart assemblies each ran headlong into the political squeamishness of their members. Everyone agreed that a bright, shiny metropolis of democracy like ours should exhibit an ode to racial equality, yet no one group wished to be singled out as in the forefront.

            The only person unsullied by any such scruples was Vinnie Panini. “Wassa problem?” he groused. “Ya wanna putta up a statue, we raise-a the money and putta up these monument.”

            “They don’t want to be Politically Incorrect.”

            “’ do’ na! “

            Taking our cue from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, we accumulated construction funds through private fundraising drives, only petitioning the town for the actual plot of land to put it on. Relieved that they weren’t being called upon to spearhead the project, the Town Council readily coughed up a 4-foot by 6-foot rectangle right in the middle of the Towne Center Shopping Plaza.

            Great location! A paved, mauve walkway already in place, there were shops aplenty attracting customers, the hustle and bustle of traffic on the surrounding streets, and superb lighting to discourage vandalism or neglect.

            I love the work of Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin from Changsha in Hunan province, but our likeness required a weight (less than a ton), height (four feet) and cost ($250,000) commiserate with the shopping center. Anything too large or ostentatious could awaken the ire of the shop owners, who much preferred their storefront window displays to be the center of attention, not some dime store wooden indian depicting a last-century civil rights crusader known to have visited Oxburg only a single time in his entire life!

            “This is a very small suburb,” I pleaded with the retailers. “I mean, thank God that King and his entourage stopped here for gas and Cokes one day in 1962. I still feel we should spring for a memorial.”

            “Fine,” Milicent Palmer of Palmer Drugs agreed, “just put it over by the United Auto Service Center. That’s where they got their gas and Cokes.”

            See, even my supporters weren’t exactly helpful. For starters, we have no bones to pick with the blacks living in Oxburg, whether they live on The Palisades or in the Clearwater neighborhood. These are families who can trace their presence back generations to slaves and freed men from both sides of the North-South divide. The very farmland used to build the Town of Oxburg came from their holdings. Even the Dipple family, whose house occasions the only S-curve in The 1812 Highway, is viewed with humorous condescension, but no true animosity. If they want the constant roar of traffic and the stink of auto exhaust in their front yard, the choice is theirs. No entreaties could get them to move, not even the offer to relocate them and their house to 20 acres and a mule outside of town.

            We have no ambivalence toward the black community. Color isn’t an issue. The progressive, well-intentioned whites of our town are as oblivious of the blacks as they are of one another.

            Vincenzo and I commissioned local artist Tom de Witte to do a portrait likeness of King in bronze, 80% lifesize.

            “Why not 100%?” asked de Witte. “The cost is basically the same.”

            “Naw,” I explained, “a 100% lifesize bronze King would feel kind of creepy, like those wax figures at Madame Tussaud’s. We don’t want it to seem like a parody.”

            “I’m glad you told me that,” Tom exclaimed. “I thought you wanted a caricature. You want an actual photo likeness of Martin Luther King. “

            “Definitely.”

            “Jus’ make him looka good,” rumbled Vincenzo threateningly, ever observant of the niceties of negotiation.

            “Uh, Vinnie, relax,” I admonished him. “This is a friendly discussion.”

            “Sure! Jus’ so he make-a him looka good.”

            Tom de Witte assured us he would.

            Unlike the later, national monument, we didn’t fall into the trap of some lamebrain quote. On the side of our gray marble base, we had Jimmy the stonecutter simply inscribe, “I Have a Dream!”

            I understand that if the whole Martin Luther King thing on the mall doesn’t work out, aides to President Obama have expressed a willingness to have the block containing the head switched… to one resembling the president. Talk about “thinking outside the box”!

*

            The events of 9/11 overshadowed public attention, but on December 18^th in the year of Our Lord 2001, we held an unveiling.

            We invited President George W. Bush, of course, knowing full well that he wouldn’t come. We were shooting for Cheney or, if not him—in his green parka— at least Scooter Libby. Instead, an off-duty Secret Service black guy in a suit and an official of the Congressional Black Caucus both attended. From their grim inspection, it felt like they were there principally to ensure that we not make a mockery of King or his legacy.

            The ridiculously warm weather did have one effect, bringing a flock of seagulls wheeling down out of the sky to join us. Cawing noisily, they perched and defecated on our shiny new sculpture, giving Martin an interestingly mottled pate. Annoyed, we attendees took turns waving our printed programs at the birds to shoo them away.

            Thus, it seemed only fitting that bird-like, little Margaret “Maggie” Dipple, 94 years young, black as coal, gnarled as winter bark, dressed in a moth-eaten wool coat, should speak for the community. Croaking in a palsied voice, she announced: “T-T-T-Today, w-w-w-we c-c-c-celebrate the m-m-m-memory of ah-ah-ah-our bro-bro-brother M-M-Martin Luther K-King.” Overcome by emotion, unable to continue, swaying dramatically on her cane, she looked about to collapse. Several of us rushed forward, helping her to a seat on a nearby park bench.

            “Well,” Tom de Witte suggested, passing me the typed speech from Maggie’s trembling fingers, “it’s your idea. Why don’t you finish the eulogy?”

            So I did. “People will little remark nor long remember the words we say here today…”

            Boy, we sure got that right!

            “Never-the-less, this convocation celebrates our fond memories of, and the achievements of, a pillar of the black community, a man who was a symbol of all that is good and great in America.

            “Thank you!”

            Kind of a mixed metaphor, the Oxburg High School Marching Band then played a medley of songs from Alexander’s Ragtime Band while homecoming queen and winner of the Miss Oxburg 2001 title, blond Suzie Melnick with her tiny upturned nose, huge blue eyes, round chin and absurdly chunky body, broke a bottle of champagne against the base of the bronze statue. As if launching a ship. “I hereby declare you,” she lisped seductively, shouting to be heard over the tinny cacophony of her classmates in the band, “the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial.”

            A smattering of applause.

            That evening, well after dark, some boys in the local chapter of Sons of the Confederacy burned a cross on the grass verge a few feet from the statue. A county cop driving by in his cruiser stopped, got out and watched, but since there was no negative reaction from the community at large, no charges were filed.

            “Junior,” “Shorty” and “Midget Martin” are the most common references to the statue. Once a month, it has fallen to my lot to hose down both statue and base and then polish them with a bucket of rags. Otherwise, it’s just part of the shopping center, our very own Martin Luther King Memorial.

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