“Gee, you never mention your dad.”

            We’ll get the bad stuff over first. In the 1960’s, the self-righteous Catholic burghers of Oxburg taught their children, over the dinner table, that the Jews crucified Jesus. Our schoolmates were hell-bent on paying us back. We guys carried our schoolbooks underarm, pressed against our hips. My tormentors “dumped” my books, coming up behind me in the halls and giving my notebook a solid, downward shove that sent everything flying. On a daily basis. Until the jocks told them to stop because the resultant mess was disrupting their walk to class!  

            This inbred hatred meant that every Easter, a cross was burned on our lawn. Since April in some years was dry and the grass brown, like as not, the resulting brush fire brought fire trucks with their wailing sirens and spinning red lights.

            Which annoyed the neighbors. “Why can’t the Jews and their neo-Nazi enemies live somewhere else?” they complained volubly. “If the family’s Jewish, why don’t they move to where Jews live? Chevy Chase!”

            Portly Sheriff Aloysius Horner would come to investigate.

            “Those vandals burned my lawn!” fumed my father.

            “The county won’t charge you for the fire trucks,” Aloysius assured us. “Not your fault.”

            “They burned a cross on our lawn,” my little brother Timothy— expecting some form of justice or retribution— would point out. “Every year, they burn a cross on our lawn. The same three kids. They’re—“

            “And every year,” said Aloysius, “I tell you, Timothy— get over it! Getting angry isn’t going to help anyone.”

            Today, they’d say “Suck it up!”

            Back then, they said, “Be a man! Get over it! Don’t let it get to you.”

            “They burned my lawn!”

            “Buy grass seed, Mr. Feingold. It’ll grow back.”

            So, there was never any discussion about finding or punishing the perpetrators.

            Despite his kvetching, I got my dad to drive me to Sears and let me use college funds to buy a set of weights from the Atlas Dumbbell Co. Weights and a crossbar. You put the weights on the ends of the crossbar, evenly placed on both sides. With that equipment, you could do lifts, press-ups and jerks. I wasn’t trying to set any world records, I just wanted to become sufficiently muscular to defend myself.

            I did.

            So when my books went flying one day, I didn’t bother to pick them up. I scanned the crowd. Rapidly making his departure was Peter Doyle.

            “Hey, Pete!”

            “I ain’t done nothin’,” he swore, shrugging me off.

            “Hey, Pete!”

            “I… ain’t… done… nothin’!” he repeated, turning to face me. Broad-shouldered, wearing his felt bomber jacket with the embroidered name patch, “Peter,” he weighed a good deal more than me.

            “Say ‘hi’ to Steve and Billy!” I suggested, hitting him square in the face.

            We had a major fistfight. He blackened my right eye and gave me a bloody nose. I K.O.’d the sonofabitch. While he was playing pretty, I swung from the floor and planted a full-on, bare knuckle smash to his jaw. My hand was swollen for a week. Like something in a movie, his dainty little eyes fluttered and he sank to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

            “Hey, Pete! Your lights are out!” I taunted his lifeless figure, prone at my feet.

            “Hey, Pete!” Jeff Sullivan, walking by with his girl, echoed. “Your lights are out!”

            “Who threw these books here? Who threw these papers and pencils all over the hall? What are you boys doing?” the Assistant Principal asked, approaching us indignantly. Mr. Niedermayer. “Wimp” Niedermayer.

            Peter was bent forward on the floor, vomiting profusely.

            “Well, really! Are you ill, young man?”

            The Assistant Principal was, shall we say, ineffectual? I ignored him and collected my books and sundry possessions. I also left droplets of blood everywhere.

            “Stop that! Don’t you have a handkerchief? Here, use mine, for God’s sake.”

            Unspoken: The fact that it was a fistfight right in the middle of school right in the middle of the day.

            No one ever dumped my books again. Now the hoods thought I was cool. They wanted me to join their gang and beat up on other classmates. I declined.

            At home, I got no support at all. Wringing his hands, my father fussed and said, “Be a man! Get over it.”

            My father’s definition of “lazy” was: adj. someone who doesn’t do the chores you have assigned them.

            A government personnel director, he was the original (Model 1950) empowerment freak. “I’ll let you… I’ll let you…” he was always telling us, his pickaninny  house servants:

            “I’ll let you mow my lawn

            “I’ll let you wash my car.

            “I’ll let you trim the bushes.

            “I’ll let you wax my car.”

            If, for any reason, we rejected this once in a lifetime golden offer, he stormed into the house and screamed at my mom, “What a load of lazy sons of bitches you are raising. Totally worthless. They are totally worthless!”

            I joined the military to get time off! Even a soldier isn’t on duty 24/7/365, which was what my parents expected, and my dad required.

            “Where were you!?!” my mom ranted at me when I turned 16. “I’ve been standing at the top of the stairs screaming your name for the last 10 minutes!!!”

            “I was working in the basement, unclogging the storm drain,” I replied, too tired, soggy and fed up to even get angry. “Next time, come find me and save your vocal cords.”

            She blinked. “What?”

            “I can’t answer you if I can’t hear you. Save yourself the aggravation. If I don’t answer, I’m out of earshot. If I do hear you, I will answer.”

            My mom and I never had that conversation again. If the parents in Oxburg were going to act childishly, we kids took it upon ourselves to be the adults.

            This happened all the time.

            One summer day, my cousin Jimbo borrowed a go-kart. A go-kart! We kids never had things like that. All the money was saved for college. But Jimbo worked for Farmer Pete out on The Flats, repairing barbed wire fences around the paddocks (cows and sheep). He got to borrow 18-year-old Robbie’s old go-kart.

            A two-stroke engine, we mixed oil in with the gas, revved it up and took turns roaring around the lower parking lot of Oxburg High. The steering was bent, the seat left your behind an inch off the ground, but we weren’t exactly attempting off-road. It was great!

            “You goddam sons of bitches!” Mr. Smith, the physics teacher, screamed, charging out of the building in his shirt sleeves. “I’m working in there. Take your goddam noisy contraption someplace else to race!!!”

            “But Mr. Smith,” we replied sheepishly, “It’s the 4^th of July, a national holiday.”

            “Just get the hell out of here,” he muttered, stomping back indoors.

            We understood that whatever he was doing in there (he was making hot July love to an underage summer school lass), he had no official reason to chase us off school grounds.

            Being kids, when we found out— from her— that trampy, gum-chewing Patty Campbell was letting Old Man Smith pork her, we stood in awe of her. After all, engaging in sex was such a grown-up thing to do!

            Here’s an anecdote: In 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the elementary, junior and senior high schools in Oxburg were instructed to configure fall-out shelters for students, teachers and staff. I don’t know what the other schools did, but in our case, the janitor searched his key ring, came up with the correct key, and opened the metal door leading to the unfinished foundation of the building. This was simply an enormous, underground dirt embankment pressed up against the red brick supporting wall of the school.

            “Okay,” Jimbo announced, when 1,200 students, 40 teachers, the principal, the assistant principal, two janitors, the nurse and four kitchen staff were freaking each other out with flashlights in this subterranean space. “Here’s how this is gonna work.”

            The brainiest science student in the school, everyone stopped horsing around to listen.

            “Tell ‘em, Jimbo!” I said, violently angry and frustrated. “Explain it to them. Speak up real loud!”

            “Okay!” he shouted in the gloom. “This is how it’s gonna work. Some missiles in silos in someplace like Vladivostok, Russia are going to be fired at the White House. Following the curvature of the Earth, these I.C.B.M.’s—or Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles—are going to follow pre-programmed, gyroscopic coordinates. In other words, they’re gonna miss!”

            Total, eerie silence in our underground cavern.

            “Oxburg High is 7½ miles from the White House as the crow flies…”

            The sound of over a thousand bodies shifting uncomfortably.

            “… One of those missiles is gonna fall right on our heads and we’ll all be instantly incinerated! Fried to a crisp in less time than it takes to say ‘Frito Lay’!”

            “Who is that?!” Principal Hearst demanded.

            “You shut up!!!” chemistry teacher Delores Kilpatrick and physics teacher Benjamin Smith shouted simultaneously. “How dare you say such things! How dare you rile everyone up!? How dare you?!”

            “It’s the truth,” I added, venomously. This was deep in my high school schizophrenia phase. I had enough bile in my stored-up anger to fill an ocean.

            “You shut up, Kevin Feingold! You shut up, Ricky Barber! You Jews! (This under her breath.) You are both on report. Consider yourselves on report,” Mrs. Kilpatrick howled like a banshee. “Children, pay no attention to the ghost stories and lies spread by these two known troublemakers! Now let’s get out of here!”

            We got trundled off to the Principal’s Office. Our parents had to come to school and vouchsafe our future, docile demeanor. I brooded theatrically, threatening suicide. Jimbo thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

            Here’s the anecdotal part: While we were being frogmarched to purgatory, my blond, blue-eyed high school crush Peggy Sue Cockburn announced to Joey Wall in her incredibly whiney voice, “If I’m going to be killed, I’m not going to my death without ever having sex! Will you have sex with me?”

            Sweeter words rarely spoken.

            Unknown to the rest of us, Joey took Peggy Sue out in his Ford Mustang the following Saturday night, parked quietly in the back end of Natalie Woods and deflowered her in the back seat of the Mustang.

            Growl !!!

            I’m in love.

            When Peggy Sue explained all this to a gaggle of admiring men at our 20^th high school reunion, all you could hear was a deafening chorus of “WHY NOT ME?!”

                                                    *

            At the age of eight, I brained my father with a hammer. My mother immediately sent me to live with her parents in Sweden. It was 1955. Propeller airplanes took me first to New York, then Newfoundland, then Iceland. From there, I flew to England and finally, Stockholm. Avraham Zakroiski and his wife Rivka were mensheviki, “Mensheviks,” chased out of Russia by the Bolsheviks in 1921. That’s how come ma mère was born in Svedala. (A nickname for Sweden.)

            We’re Bialystokers. Abe’s father owned Nahun Zakroiski Bäckerei on Mühlen Strasse in Bialystok. A bookstore. Abe started his working life as a bookbinder. “Waste not, want not,” people brought in their used and damaged books to be rebound. Such is life in the provinces. Stuck in northeastern Poland, the town was White Russian one year, Polish the next. Naturally, the inhabitants spoke Yiddish in addition to Polish and Russian.

            Even as a young man, Abe was a political firebrand. It’s in our blood. He never made it to St. Petersburg, but he shook things up 270 kilometers due east in Minsk. The NKVD had him on their Watch List. “Run like hell and don’t come back,” a Jewish army officer counseled him. It took some doing— money they never repaid because the recipients were either in Siberia or dead— but they landed, as refugees, in Sweden, amidst a small wave of Russian émigrés.

            Rivka was born and raised in the shtetl village of Zabludova, 20 kilometers from Bialystok. She became a seamstress. A brilliant beauty, on her visits to town to buy thread, needles and cloth, she quickly caught the eye of young Abe.

            Once in Sweden, Abe spent his immigrant years working in a steel mill in Örebro. The Mensheviks were Social Democrats. The government of Sweden swung between farmer parties and the Social Democrats. Life was hard, but they had landed among comrades! Abe advanced to the shipbuilding wharves in Karlskrona. Rivka became a dress designer. Multilingual, Abe also became a union rep. By the time I arrived, they’d already lived over 10 years in the capital as city-dwellers.

             You knew they were Old School when they shunned a new, spacious apartment in Söder (Southern Stockholm) to live in a cramped, poorly lit abode overlooking the Slussen subway station. Slussen was history! Slussen was police charges, freedom marches, workers united, Easter massacres.

             I respected and loved my grandparents. To each other, they spoke Yiddish. They spoiled me outrageously and then would disappear together two or three days at a time, leaving me to fend for myself. Fortunately, Bengt (“Bengi”) Gustavsson had full-time parents. Their entire, extended family— including spinster aunts— lived across the hall and one landing up. On May 1— “May Day” in Europe, the Socialist day of solidarity— Bengi and I took turns carrying the union flag for my grandpa’s chapter. They had a leather harness into which we shoved the base of the flagpole. That mother was heavy!

           Nine years old in 1950’s Stockholm, where virtually everything in the home was handcrafted by artisans— feather dusters, rugs, brooms, dishware, the stove, the sewing machine, the radio— I grew up with an abiding respect for the working man. Neither facile nor lazy, I learned to heave-to and get the job done! Child labor, adult labor… In this household, everybody works! Nobody worked harder than my grandparents.

            They declared themselves atheists, but part of that was for Socialist credibility. We still belonged to a creaky old Orthodox shul where the crusty Rabbi got my undivided loyalty. I figured anyone that old and gnarled, draped in an enormous white tallis yellowed with age, must know what he was doing. He smelled of dust and scholarship!

           Total immersion, I read, ate, spoke, slept and dreamed in Swedish. I never wanted to leave. But no one even asked me. I was put on a boat out of Portsmouth, England at the ripe old age of twelve and sent back to America, where the opportunities for success were considered so much greater.

           “If your son’s such a prodigy,” film magnate Harry Cohen told my mom on a visit to New York, where we were spending the summer, “why isn’t he already out in Hollywood making big money? We have child actors! Talk is cheap.”

            When I told people that Harriet Weisenthal, the clothes designer, was an aunt, they all wanted an introduction. A melding of the old and the new, Harriet had learned her craft from Grandma Rivka!

             On my mom’s side of the family, we were a creative, politically involved group of people from the get-go. My dad’s family seemed like slackers, by comparison. And did he ever resent it! Gliringar, snide remarks, fell from his lips in a steady stream. “Your dad is such a bundle of resentments,” as my cousin Ricky “Jimbo” Barber put it, always a pistol at social analysis.

            You talk to my dad’s coworkers in the government, the picture is completely different! In on the ground floor, he was what you’d call “an efficiency expert.” He accumulated personnel credentials at several of the U.S. Government’s largest agencies, the Post Office, General Services Administration, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of the Interior. A pacifist, he always worked as a civilian. He could travel out west to an Indian reservation and explain to them how they were doing everything all wrong! “You don’t want open fires using brush and kindling! Hold out for electrification, for God’s sake! Demand your rights!”

             Marching to the sound of his own drummer, he was a radical without knowing it.

             At one point, he had an office and three employees. One of them was someone I actually knew, Chuck Duchamp. The Duchamps lived only three blocks away. I was trying to kindle a romance with Mr. D’s daughter Ginny. She thought I was “for the birds,” “off the roof,” “out of sight,” all pejoratives indicating that she never intended to become my sweetheart. Chuck’s specialty was reading. He began his stint working with my father by bringing a book to the office every morning and reading it all day long.

          “Chuck,” my father coaxed him in conference, “we don’t read books in the office.”

          “Oh, okay!” said Mr. Duchamp. “No problem! You got it.”

           The next day, he came in with a newspaper and read that all day.

            “Chuck,” my dad gently chided him, “let’s not spend all day reading the newspaper. You know, we have assignments—“

            “Oh! Right! Yes!” said Mr. Duchamp. “No, really! I hear ya! I’m all over it.”

            “W-What are you doing?” demanded my dad the very next day. “I thought we agreed—“

             “It’s a magazine! You didn’t say anything about not reading magazines in the office.”

             My dad put him on the Space Program Evaluation. The guy never wasted another day! “Do you realize,” he testified before Congress in 1964, “we are sending our astronauts into space in equipment whose only virtue is that the contractor offered the lowest bid? Do you really want to go roaring aloft on bargain basement hardware? I don’t!”

            My dad’s office tended to drive people crazy.

           “Quality control is a fairy tale,” wrote Michael Napier, reviewing an Army weapons program. The Army felt differently.

           “It’ll fly if you remember to wind up the rubber band,” Charlie Duchamp wrote in his review of a design for a military helicopter. Congress and the defense contractor remained unamused.

           “This country needs more college graduates in government,” my father proselytized, and for once, he was hailed as an oracle.

            “Inspired by true events,” Charlie Duchamp assured me. “We’ve gotten some new hot-shots from N.Y.U. in the office and they’re tearing up the tarmac. It’s all we old geezers can do just to keep up.”

            It all reached a head in, God help me, 1973. Thirty-one years in government, my dad gets together with personnel directors from nine different government agencies and writes a classification program. This was his legacy to the American people. How many letters must a secretary at the State Department type to equal a Post Office mail sorter’s morning sort? How many halls must a janitor sweep, window ledges wiped, ashtrays emptied, to equal a stenographer’s three hours of dictation? How many lonely night patrols must a building guard complete to equal a Congressional cafeteria worker’s prep of lunch for both houses of Congress? They created a mathematical program that answered those questions! Algorithms, tables, multiplication factors.

            He got a small, trade publisher interested enough to crank out a first printing, Government Classification In the Public Sector. A Workbook. “If this thing catches fire,” everyone agreed, “the entire U.S. Government will be springing after copies! We’ll be in Nirvana heaven!”

            Hold your breath. For one shining moment—

            Computers came in and blew the whole fantastic program to Kingdom Come. Spreadsheets allowed for comparison of salaries, hours on the job, level of workload, expertise required, miscellaneous factors and ground out the numbers and answers in slightly longer time than it takes to say “Univac computer.” Even I worked as a night guard in a computer building, watching the technicians in their overalls busy behind glass in hermetically dustproof enclosures with an internal air pressure slightly higher than the surrounding environment. Giant reels of tape spun on shiny, fancy silver and sky blue consoles. There was a constant hum in the air, and everyone went home impressed and a little better informed.

            No worries! I was in the Army, no skin off my nose. My dad took his act on the road and sold his classification system to India, Taiwan and Peru! Not exactly bastions of computer technology at that time.

            “I tried to explain efficiency to the Inca tour guides at Machu Picchu. I don’t know whether they got it or not,” he wrote me. “Your mother and I spent several miserable days in Cuzco, laid up with altitude sickness.”

            “The best-known cure is to skedaddle off the mountain pronto,” I wrote back, but he didn’t appreciate the advice.

            “We were waiting for the rest of our party…” Yada, yada, yada, always an excuse, a complication, a fuck-up. No wonder we didn’t like each other.

            I came to Oxburg for a familial visit in 1997, to the family house where I, more or less, grew up. “Your father’s in the hospital, he’s had a seizure,” said my mom. Burning leave, I spent the next three weeks tending him, first at the hospital, then at home and finally in a hospice. My older sister Rebecca, who should have been there, sent too many flowers and badgered his doctors by phone from California. My younger brother Tim came to visit, stayed two days, and took me aside. “I can’t handle this,” he panted. “You gotta take over.”

            “I’m here! I got it,” I assured him. I love Tim. He tried.

            My dad had emphysema, liver and heart disease. He was ready to go. We got a visit in the waiting room of the hospice from the “traveling clergyman of your faith,” a Rabbi Beale.

            “Beale?” I asked sardonically. “Not the most Jewish of names…”

            “An Anglicization of Bialy,” he assured me.

            “A Bialystoker?”

            “My family, yes.”

            “Yeah, we heard that from the Bialystoker Society in New York. ‘You have to meet Rabbi Beale. His people are from the Old Country. He’s in your area.’”

            “About your father Bernard…”

            “Bernie.”

            “Okay, Bernie.”

            “He’s ready to go,” interjected my mom from the chintz sofa on my left. “His goose is thoroughly cooked!”

            “Well, I think I’d need to hear that from Bernie,” Rabbi Beale said, a gentle, little correction that made me want to strangle the guy!

            Fifteen minutes later, he came back out, smiled ruefully, sat down and said, “I owe you both an apology. Sometimes the nearest and dearest are either in denial or have distanced themselves. I was worried you and… Bernie… weren’t on the same page.

            “Since everyone agrees on what you want, my job is basically over. Unless…?”

            “Unless what?” complained my mom.

            “Unless we need more counseling,” I told her.

            “Well,” the rabbi concluded, spreading his hands, “I am available if you need me.” He gave us his card. I still have it.

            “Have you been back?” I asked, curious.

            “To Chicago?” he asked.

            “No, to Poland. To Bialystok.”

            “Oh! Good lord, no!”

            “In the 1990’s, American descendants of the Bialystok Jews flew into Poland on LOT, the Polish airline, took the train up north and descended on Bialystok. I haven’t been there in…17 years… but back then, they were all busy with plans to rejuvenate the place. The only decent restaurant in town was a pizzeria owned and run by an American expatriate.”

            “Yeah, wow, um, great!” replied the rabbi. I guess renovation projects weren’t his thing.  

            In the end, my dad’s doctors put him on morphine, fully aware that it would accumulate and eventually lead to cardiac arrest. That was our 800-pound gorilla and everyone, including my dad, was grateful for the option. He passed away at one o’clock in the afternoon on my 50^th birthday. I had just gone out for a smoke. I came back, heard his raspy breathing, and suspected it was time. Taking his hand, I stood by his bed as he passed on to another world. I wished him well on his journey, and for once in his life, Bernie didn’t give me an argument!

            For the next three years, his spirit followed me everywhere, day and night. I’d be working on a project and feel him there, looking over my shoulder. Turning, I’d just catch the impression of something hazy, but of course, I never actually saw him. It was a friendly visitation, except that he always gave off the same perplexed emanation: “What are you doing?” he seemed to ask. I guess even at that stage in his spiritual quest, the military was still news to him.

                                                      *

            As a candidate for Attorney General of Maryland, Anna is composing position statements. “There is no such thing as a free lunch” begins her paper on “Using Laws to Regulate Industry Behavior.”

            She writes: “As we continue to curtail smoking in public areas and tax the tobacco industry into oblivion, both tobacco farmers and employees in the production, distribution and administration sectors of this industry are forced to retrench under increasing economic pressure in a shrinking corporate environment.

            “The push for solar power increases competition for raw materials in the production of power cells.

            “While the manufacture of PC’s, laptops, notebooks, tablets, gaming consoles, cameras, televisions, cell phones and smart phones creates jobs and drives a major sector of the economy— in hardware, software, networking and broadband— recycling is a constant issue. The alternative is a planet buried in e-waste, literally tons and tons of outdated and burned out electronic equipment full of mercury, metal and corrosives.

            “The desire for electric cars creates stresses in the lithium industry and possible trade imbalances vis-à-vis the few countries in the world rich in this mineral.

            “The proponents of ethanol production claimed they would be using the by-products of the corn industry—the husks, the cobs, the silk—to produce a fuel additive for gasoline. In reality, they are using the corn itself as their basic raw material. This has pitted human consumption of corn against the need to wean the public off petroleum. Drive and starve or eat and walk. A classic example of industry’s ‘bait and switch’ tactics, ‘the market’ has no corrective for this typically larcenous human behavior. It’s called greed. The ethanol people are greedy for quick profits.

            “Only through continued legislation can industry remain profitable, productive and non-destructive. Left to its own devices, ‘the market’ will trash the environment to the point of self-destruction.

            “Regulating and policing the fishing industry to prevent over-fishing some species to extinction creates short-term economic hardship in the communities dependent on fishing for their livelihood.

            “While gambling may seem an incurable human condition and, thus, a guaranteed source of revenue, gambling does not produce consumer goods or services in a particularly large proportion to the money accrued through this vice. Gambling havens have thriving hotel industries, restaurants and amenities, which create jobs and stimulate the local economy, but at what price to the households afflicted by this addiction? Is it in the public interest to skew the redistribution of wealth through horseracing, slot machines and state lotteries? Does the success of a gambling mecca have a punishing effect on surrounding states?

            “In regulating industrial development through the judicial process, the consequences of our actions must always be taken into account.”

            Wow! Heavy stuff. Apparently, the A.G. does more than grandstand on liquor sales, fight crime, hound illegal immigrants and position oneself to run for president.  Some intellectual thought, some actual work, is involved!

            “We have a population of 14,000 in Oxburg,” Anna laments when next we meet. “I don’t think Bogotá, Columbia will agree to become our Sister City.” 

                                                    *

             “Oxburg has sidewalks everywhere,” I report. “The same cannot be said about surrounding communities. Some have sidewalks in some areas, but not in others.

             “You told me to go look, so I drove around and looked. I’ve also telephoned to friends around the state. Some new suburbs are decidedly lacking in sidewalks.

             “State legislation may—“

             “What does the state sidewalk legislation say?” demands Eric.

              “I don’t know! I haven’t had time to look it up.”

              “Look it up!” he orders. “Sidewalks are a campaign issue!”

                                                      *

        The Proliferation of Yard Signs in Suburban Neighborhoods

                                              A Monograph

                 … many of those interviewed spoke of having experienced a sky blue colored, late model Honda Accord with license plate ZOT-2011 in the vicinity of their visitation.

            Surveillance cameras, newly installed, confirm this phenomenon.

            Upon contacting the candidate, however, her office claimed to lack all knowledge in the matter. “Is there a problem?” the alleged campaign manager responded when queried by phone.

            Laboratory analysis of the objects verified them to contain chemical elements associated with life on this planet, seemingly ruling out extra-terrestrial involvement at this time.

            MK Ultra influence may be prompting citizens to place these fetishistic totems on their lawns in preparation for an alien invasion from outer space. In a worst case scenario, only the households displaying the appropriate sign will be spared!

           Alternatively, the Rapture presupposes “a Sign upon the door posts of their houses.” This could be that sign!

           Further investigation is called for…

                                                       *

            “And this is, what?” I ask the interns, as I approach Anna’s house. It’s hot enough to melt lead and they’re out front playing some kind of game. If they were throwing a Frisbee, I could understand, but this is… what?

            “It’s Quidditch. You know, from Harry Potter?” one of the young men answers. “It’s really not hard to learn…”

            What New Age pharmaceutical concoction could motivate them, in this heat, to ride around on brooms like toddlers on hobby horses? 

            “I’m good!” I laugh, proceeding into the house. I call myself the campaign handyman: “I do the jobs that would drive everyone else crazy!”  But these youngsters always surprise me. I don’t know any of their names, but since we march in parades together and attended the debate and spend time at HQ, everyone knows Kevin, “the Dude Who Does.”

            These are the goals for every canvasser per shift: Knock on 80 doors. Have 60 conversations. Get 2 orders for yard signs. Find one volunteer.

            Every tenth shift, find a householder who wishes to invite Anna to their home to meet their friends in a personal event.  

            I don’t know whether these proportions are realistic, but the interns aren’t complaining or threatening to quit, the gas comp doesn’t seem to be sinking the campaign, and I have enough requests for y.s.’s to fill my days. Eric seems fulfilled, if not downright happy.

            Nothing beats success.

            “… Kevin has something to say,” Eric tells them, carried along on sheer motivational momentum. I mean, I never stick my nose in their business. Suddenly Kevin has something to say? A pro, Eric doesn’t let this strange occurrence faze him.

            “It’s hot out there, guys!” I tell them, joining their circle. “Stay hydrated!”

            Holding up their water bottles, they cheer, “ ‘Ray, Kevin!”

            I go back into the kitchen to finish preparing my coffee. Soon, I hear them let out a roar: “Let’s do this thing!”

            Within minutes, they have jumped in their cars and taken off.

                                                      *

            This kid comes to the house, lets himself in, then moons around, looking through all the paperwork. It’s not like we keep the front door locked. I’m there, eating my lunch in the kitchen. Eric, Anna and Judith are all upstairs together, having a video conference on the Mac with liaison from the current Attorney General’s office. “Can I help you?” I ask him.

             He’s plucking together papers from various folders. “I’m… mumble… mumble…mumble…” he replies.

            “Sorry, ace, try again. Mumbling won’t do it,” I tell him a little more sharply. A spy? Anything’s possible.

           “I need to get my packet together,” he half-whines.

           “Your… canvassing… materials?” I guess. Everyone else has left a half-hour ago.

          “Yeah!”

           “Look, why don’t you just go up and tell Eric you’re here? What’s your name?”

           “Paulie.”

           “Well, go up and knock on the bedroom door and put in an appearance.”

           “Ah, I can’t do that, man!” he moans.

           “Paulie, right?” I ask, taking the stairs two at a time. I quietly open the door and catch Eric’s eye. He gets up from his chair and comes over. “Paulie’s downstairs,” I whisper in his ear.

            “Ah, shit!” he murmurs, rolling his eyes. “Late as usual. Tell him I’ll be down shortly,” he sighs.

            “Why don’t you sit down and relax,” I tell Paulie. “You’ve got a couple of minutes.”

                                                      *

             Le jour arrive, the day comes when I arrive at Anna’s house and find Eric dressed in a dark blue knit T-shirt with the logo “Hard Rock Café, Stockholm.”

            “You’re kidding!”

             “I’ve traveled! Good grief…You’re Swedish. I’ve been waiting to spring this on you.”

            “When were you in Stockholm?”

            “Between junior and senior year at college. My ‘summer trip to Europe.’ Fight the crowds and admire the graffiti on the statues outside St. Mark’s Cathedral. Get food poisoning in Spain.”

           “Everybody gets diarrhea in Spain. It takes a few days for your body to adapt to their bacteria.”

          “Whatever!”

          “Cool!”

           “This tee dates me,” he remarks wistfully. “This has 1990 written all over it. Travel the big cities of the world collecting Hard Rock Café T-shirts. Today, the youngsters want busty Señor Frog tees, so girls can show off their breasts.”

           “Ah,” I laugh, “the 1990’s. Those were the days! If only we knew how well off we were. I brought back a glass head from Amsterdam—“

           “A glass head?”

           “A wig holder. A chunk of glass shaped like a head, hollow inside, so ladies could hang their wigs overnight. A surreal representation of a face. Very futuristically retro, like the face on the robot in the movie Metropolis. It was neat.”

         “Far out.”

          “Mucho chic.”

          “Still got it?”

           “Of course not. Taken to Goodwill. Recycled. Gone.”

           “Yeah,” Eric agrees. It is interesting to see a softer side to this campaign’s own Bobby Fisher.

                                                     *

             He has me drive to Hagerstown to deliver one yard sign. One! With stops on the way, of course, but still… The next day he has me drive to the ‘burbs west of Balto. This area I know, we have friends there. One Saturday in May, I attended a Bar Mitzvah outside Ellicott City. If there’s a city there, no one’s been able to find it.

             The parkways are majestic. Ribbons of concrete unwind before your car’s radiator grill, mile after mile of shrubbery-lined lanes, constantly interrupted by brown concrete walls lining the road to baffle the sound and keep it from bothering people in the neighborhoods. “Carbon Monoxide +30% – 60%, Carbon Dioxide + 20% -26%” for a simple speed hump, God only knows what people are breathing along the parkways.

            A glacial plain, scraped flat in the last Ice Age, the sun always seems to be shining, winter or summer. Erosion has produced those rolling hills.

            So I leave the parkway and make a left onto Wedding Cake Lane. I have a Google map: Turn left off the highway onto Wedding. A helicopter is chattering overhead. Careful not to run over any errant children, I keep my eye on the chopper. I do love helicopters. And this one is coming lower and lower, though it’s anybody’s guess where they’ll find room to land amidst the lawns and houses.

            I reach the bottom of the hill and… it’s a cul-de-sac! Where’s Baker Street? I’m sitting at the edge of a pebble redoubt that wends its way into a woods filled with fir trees. Also present, a big, brown police cruiser. Empty. State Police.

            I check the map again. I turned too soon. I want Wedding Road, not Wedding Cake Lane. As I start my car, a policeman and policewoman come out of the woods. My car’s already in gear. Coasting forward, I wave to them.

            They wave back.

            As I drive up the hill, I see them running in my rear view mirror.

            What to do? Stop? Don’t stop? I mean, this has nothing to do with me. “I took a wrong turn, officer.” They’re busy. I leave.

            With the heli still clattering away, I drive to the junction with Wedding Road. Many, many brown police cruisers, their roof racks blinking red, white and blue in the yellow sunlight. The way they’re arrayed along embankments and atop knolls, it looks like a Rambo-style manhunt is in progress, chasing a fugitive who has taken to the woods on foot.

            I find my address at the end of a street whose backyards taper into a woodland cascade, thick with mixed growth of every description. Brambles. Pine trees. Holly. Fir. Weeds.

            No one home, I choose the spot I hope the homeowner herself would like and shove in the yard sign. It sinks one inch and stops dead. Stones! The bane of my existence. I have to try four times before I get both spokes of the sign sufficiently deep in the soil, so the sign won’t flop over with the first puff of wind.

            It looks good.

            Pleased, I continue northeast to deliver a sign in Towson.

            “Is this all right?” I ask Judith, handing in my comp sheet. “Eric’s had me driving to Hagerstown and Balto. I’ve racked up a lot of miles this week.”

            “Are the odometer readings accurate?” she asks.

            “Well… yes!”

            “Fine! Listen, whatever you put down, we’re going to compensate you.”

            Which is to say, they are not “Fluffens,” the campaign treasurer. They aren’t going to demand I follow them out to my car to check the odometer. They trust me, which is nice considering how much water I carry for the campaign.

            I get home 6:30 in the evening and my mom gives me a wild look. “What have you been doing?” she demands, sounding like Ray’s mother in Everybody Loves Raymond. “The police called. Twice! They want you to call them back. Where were you?”

            “Delivering yard signs. That’s what I do on Thursdays.”

            “You were speeding? You hit someone? You totaled your car?” she asks, envisioning the worst.

            “No. No, no and no. I think I know what happened. But let me talk to the cops before I tell you.”

            I call the number and get a police detective who participated that very afternoon in the manhunt.

            “You’re the owner of the sky-blue 1999 Honda Accord with license plate ZOT-2011?”

            “Officially, my mom owns the car. It’s a 1998 Honda Accord. It’s her car. I live with her. She lets me drive it.”

            “Not that it has a bearing on this case, but does your insurance company know that?”

            “Of course! Yes. We have listed me as the driver of that vehicle.”

            “We’re curious to speak with you… Mister… Feingold… about your friendship with Charles Pike.”

            “Who?”

            “Charles William Pike. You had a rendezvous today to pick up Charles Pike at the edge of Bear Paw Woods.”

            “I’m sorry,” I snort, feeling like an idiot. “You mean at the bottom of Wedding Cake Lane?”

            “That’s right! So you admit it! You drove down there to pick up Mr. Pike. Are you aware, he’s a known fugitive?!”

            “Um, no. I… took the wrong road. I needed Wedding Road. I turned too soon and ended up on Wedding Cake Lane.”

            “Oh… people do that. My partner and I have done that! What about your friendship with Charles Pike?”

            “I don’t know who that is. I don’t… know the man. At all.”

            “Ah! Well, all right. You do understand that aiding and abetting a known criminal is punishable under the law? If things really go south, you can be charged as an accomplice, should he commit a crime during your involvement.”

            “I don’t know the man.”

            “But you do understand what I’m saying?”

            Aha! “We informed the alleged accomplice of his rights.”

            “Yes, officer, I understand. Aiding and abetting. An accomplice.”

            “Good! We’ll get back to you if we have anything further.”

            “Fine!”

            “Good night!”

            Sheesh! “Good night!”

           “What did you do, now?” grouses my mom.

                                                   *

              Eric: “What do we do about Sharpée? She pulls off her sticker, hands me her clipboard and announces ‘This isn’t working for me.’”

             Judith: “You can’t really fire her.”

             Kevin: “These kids don’t have a lot of years of experience in the workforce.”

             Judith: “She clears tables at a burger joint. Not a lot of people skills.”

            Susan: “She seems to have personality issues. She definitely does not get along with the group.”

           Kevin: “You have to let her go!”

           Judith: “You can’t really fire her.”

           Kevin: “On the outside, it seems hard-nosed, but the campaign can’t afford to be a training center in personal development. We don’t have the resources. Some of these kids need to mature before they’ll fit into a group project.”

            Eric: “She says her personal space is invaded by the people we canvas. That strikes me as kind of flaky. I can’t have a nut job out there representing Anna and the campaign.”

            Kevin: “You have to let her go! It benefits her and us.”

            Judith: “How does that benefit Sharpée?”

            We’re interrupted by the arrival on the front porch of… Sharpée!

                                                  *

             Hola, Anna!

            Antonio Rodriguez here, sending you a $25 contribución for your campaign (250 pesos in Mexican currency). Since U.S. law prohibit you take money from Family Rodriguez in Mexico, say it come from my cousin Manuel Vasquez who live in U.S. legally, but in State of Flux. ¿Comprendes?

            We need more Latinas in American law enforcement!

            Aj caramba, the recession hit even the drug trade, Anna, no one is free of these monster. Profits for first quarter not so good as last year, but we talking million $$$ ganancia. ¡Pujar para adentro! I don’t complain. Cocaine sales dip, marijuana shares go up. ¿Comprendes?

            You no contact me, I call on cell phone twice a day to you campaign, find out what you need. ¡We help!

            For Family Rodriguez,

                                                                        Antonio Rodriguez 

                                                      *

            The campaign videographer, a fresh-faced kid named Chou Li, is easy to spot in all the photographs: He’s the dude wearing a Navy blue beret! And one day he arrives with his first masterpiece on a home-cooked DVD, “Freedom To Be Who? You!” A workman-like portrait of Anna on the campaign trail, he hasn’t even asked me to contribute narration.

            “This campaign be too compartmentalized,” I complain.

            “Is there a problem?” Eric asks in a voice tinged with lead.

            “I told you what I do, Eric. I’m a screenwriter.”

            “Yes,” he agrees, “but not for this campaign.”

            “Wrong answer, Eric. I’ve told you, volunteers need constant petting, otherwise we start to feel unappreciated!”

              Pausing, he considers what I’ve said. Friends do that for one another. “What I’m saying is, we need a full-fledged videographer for this campaign,” he explains affably enough. “We interviewed people for this position. We chose Li because we felt he understands what we want, a campaign document that also delivers a message.”

            “Jesus, man, my partner and I are documentary filmmakers,” I grouse, losing steam fast. The kind of film they want to make would bore me to distraction. “Anyway, keep me in mind if you ever need backup.”

            “I will, I will,” chimes Eric. In Eric-speak, that’s a “maybe.”

            When I volunteered in the Call Center of the Myrtle Beech campaign in 2008, the day arrived when a crisp new pile of bright and shiny DVD’s in little white “Myrtle For President” envelopes sat squarely upon the desk of the Visual Arts Director. Not prone to sticky fingers— everyone at that campaign was scrupulously honest— I sashayed up to Naomi Warren, my supervisor, and said, “I see some DVD’s. Can I have one?”

            “Kevin,” she said, looking extremely uncomfortable, “those DVD’s cost us money, you know. The campaign pays for these services. Those DVD’s are a campaign video specifically tailored to the needs of State Team Leaders in all 50 states. We only have 50 of them. We’re about to mail them out with complementary materials. That’s the only reason they are even in this office.”

            “Well, I thought I’d ask,” I say, giving her my most apologetic smile.

            “Kevin, I love your work, but you’re a volunteer employed at the intern level answering and transferring telephone calls. 2008 is a busy time for us. I have a meeting upstairs in about 15 minutes… I’ll ask.”

            “You’ll ask?” I repeat, stunned.

            “I can’t promise anything, but if there are any stray production copies floating around, I’ll try to wrangle you a video souvenir. God knows we don’t pay you anything!”

            Leaving Campaign HQ that evening, I took the Metro straight to our film office off Rockville Pike. Grabbing dinner in the taquería, the only other tenant in the mall, I joined my partner Boopsie at the controls of our celestial starship Enterprise.

            “Is that what I think it is?”

            “It’s a Myrtle Beech video.”

            “Gimme!”

            First off, we transferred the image portion to a clean DVD. Then we went to work on our own bombastic narration: “In a country as great as ours— and we spit on any grubby foreigners who say otherwise, p’tooee!— once a generation, there comes a candidate so outstanding, so incredible, able to leap tall buildings at a single bound, et cetera, we humbly bow to Her Highness in abject humility.

            “Failing that, here’s… Myrtle Beech! An alternative to all the slick, over-the-top candidates with their perfect teeth and chi-chi smiles, Myrtle isn’t afraid to smell like day-old deodorant, piss and vinegar!

            “She’s a fighter à la Floyd Patterson or George Forman, the sweat pouring off her in a rain of high-quality executive leadership ability.

            “Listen, after the duds we’ve had in the White House, anybody is fit to be president!

            “Elect Myrtle Beech!

            “Why? Because she’s best? The most qualified? The most dedicated? More moxy than a barrel of Congressional staffers?

            “No and Hell no!

            “Elect Myrtle Beech because we said so!”

            Today, mashups prevail, but in 2008, this was cutting edge. The complete DVD sits in a white paper sleeve on a shelf in the office, used only to seduce and impress young college girls into thinking we circulate with the Stars.

                                                    * 

            “Wanna work on an Anna Bola video?”

            “No! Help me write dialogue. Jim hates Susan, but the only way they’re going to escape from the burning elevator is… what?”

             “I thought elevators were fireproof?”

             “All right, let’s move them into a burning bedroom…”

             “Okay. Susan: You always do this…”

              “Wait! Okay, go ahead.”

              “Susan: You always do this! You always get us into these impossible situations! It’s like you just don’t care! Do you have any idea how hard it is to befriend someone whose entire life is dedicated to—“

               “Chasing bad guys! Okay, good.”

               “Anna Bola—“

               “Forget it. We’re making money here. Stay focused!”

                We have just completed a summer video of our receptionist Jacqueline and her punk band Explosive Plastic. Mom’s meteorologist on TV warned motorists of sheet lightning in the next few days. Every night, cranking out our low-light video camera, tripod, mikes and sundry colored gels, we used the overhead halogen lamps on Rockville Pike as basic illumination, switched the camera to the black and white setting and proceeded to do our thing.

                 Behind some bushes, in a hollow full of groundhog holes, just off the highway but wonderfully hidden, we staged a little orgy. Everyone quietly mimed to the playback on the dinky, plastic Magnus brand boombox. Three nights in a row, we were out there. Armed with an endless supply of cheap hamburgers from the local diner, the musicians plied the groundhogs shamelessly. By the third night, Jacqueline was kanoodling with the groundhogs, the footage getting more surreal by the minute.

                Not wanting to chase away the gawking busboys from the taquería, but afraid a crowd would attract la policía, I got Boopsie to drive to the local supermarket for beer. Arraying these stalwart Mexicans as a chorus line behind the main action, half hidden by boughs of myrtle (what else?), we kept everyone involved, inebriated, intense and out of sight of the highway.

                A film like that begs to be done justice in the editing room. If the footage was glorious, it landed in the 3 minute 20 second video, regardless of whether Jacqueline French-kissing a groundhog synchronized perfectly with the song lyrics.

                                                White Nigger

                 Oh momma! Pa Jama!

                 Strike me, mike me, / Don’t ya try to psyche me.

                  Rock me, sock me, / Don’t ya try to shock me.

          Wacko, Jacko, / This guy’s a flacko. / Oh momma! Pa Jama!

          Pantyhose for a pantywaist. / Get on board, you make haste.

          Cash, cash, / Blah-h-h-h-h! / Money, honey! Ah-h-h-h-h!

                  The sun rises on Good Hope Road!

                   Half a million assholes waving clipboards.

                   Average contribution, sixty-nine dollars.

                  Sure! And he’s the greatest / Thing since French toast.

                  Belly-achin’ heartbreaker, two-faced dealmaker.

                  White nigger, Indian giver! What am I? Chopped liver?

                   How can I repay my student loan???

                   Oh momma! Pa Jama!

                   Suck me, pluck me, / Don’t ya outta luck me.

                   Do me, screw me, / Don’t ya black and blue me.

                   I’m totally plucked.

                                                (c) 2011, Rosario, Feingold, Davis

                  A masterpiece is in the eye of the beholder.

                 Many, many hits on YouTube.

                 How could poor Anna compete with that? Campaign video? ¡Mucho gracias, no, por favor! Detalles sin interés.

                                                      *

 

 

                 “Most of the members who have worked on this feel

                 that if Social Security were put on the table, and Medicare,

                 cuts in that area, that we as Democrats and progressives

                 would be thrown under the bus.”       

                                                – Congressman Raul M. Grijalva (Arizona) 

            Four days a week, I collaborate on movie scripts with working titles like “Stanley Herberg Project” or “Studio 8/Delores Vehicle” or “Haboob—Arizona Dust Storm Story.” At least one of these films has a full-blown title and synopsis: “Monte Carlo Ponti. Rom-com. Three American girls head for Paris. Boarding the wrong train in London, they pass through the Trunnel and wake up the next morning in the Italian Alps, on their way to starring in an Italian cult film.” Definitely the most promising of the bunch!

            Are we making progress? Ask me when we get paid.

            And three days a week, I’m still trying to get my friend Anna Bola elected State Attorney General. “Where will her office be?” I finally remember to ask. “Baltimore or Annapolis?”

            “Why do you want to know?” campaign manager Eric Brown shoots back, immediately suspicious.

            “The A.G.’s office is a secret?” I chuckle. “Fuck! I can look it up on the Internet.”

            “Don’t cuss in front of my interns,” he asks me stiffly, and I respect him for that advice. “Her offices will be in both Annapolis and Balto.”

            No one can stay polished throughout an entire campaign. The cracks are starting to show. Eric still has me driving miles to deliver yard signs. Burning gas, I am getting tired of driving to places like Gary Puckett Blvd. & Turkey Gravy Lane. Two of the names on my list are repeats. “They’ve already got signs,” I tell Eric. “I know, I delivered the pizzas. I even remember meeting these guys. One—“

            “Okay!” he snaps. “I never said I was irreproachable.” Which is a good attitude for a campaign manager to have.

            The campaign never sleeps. Anna and her hubby Frank Reynolds go to Bethany Beach in Delaware for a one-week vacation, come home, no one outside HQ even knows they are gone. The campaign doesn’t miss a beat.

            “Why is this happening?!” I hear Eric ranting, struggling to overcome a computer glitch on his laptop. This is new. I’m the one known for ranting at inanimate objects. Although a computer isn’t entirely inanimate.

            “HARAAAR! Ninja duck!”

            “What?”

            He has this little black rubber ducky, dressed up in a judo robe. He keeps it by his laptop for moments of levity or tension. When under stress, he has the duck “attack” us, nuzzling our necks and pecking at our arms with its rubber bill. “HAAARAAA! Ninja! Ninja duck!”

            Pure Eric.

            It’s summer. Driving home one evening, what do I see? Under a red golf umbrella, on a folding table, behind brown cardboard boxes with hand-lettered signs, the “Little Girl Lemonade Stand” is in full swing. Facing the street, sitting on metal folding chairs, 9-, 10-, 11- and 12-year-old darlings, incredibly blond and fluffy in T’s and shorts, wave, beckon and laugh at motorists, seeking trade. Mommy has given them pitchers of lemonade, little plastic buckets of ice, plastic cups and spoons, and a metal cash drawer. The most incredible kind of honey trap. Unspeakable. What are these parents thinking? What is the message here? For the girls? For the motorists?

            “Insanity Strikes” we called these occurrences in the Army, like when Bosniak families decided to “retake” their village by marching up the road under a rain of Serb artillery.

            Waving at the little girls, I do not stop.

                                                       * 

            Since March 14^th, Town Traffic Calming Committee meetings have been taking place in our neighborhood: Gathering promptly at 7:30 p.m., bi-weekly at Taylor-Moffett, the local elementary school, this guaranteed headache never seems to go away. Eventually, I will publish in detail. Suffice to say, some of our neighbors are speed hump enthusiasts and some of us are opposed. The proponents want speed humps the way people want a new car or new garden furniture. They want them! It’s an emotional response. Never mind technical explanations that traffic doesn’t warrant it or that this is an over-reaction.

            Speed humps.

            They want them.

            We who are opposed feel just as strongly. Opinions vary from “they’re a nuisance” to “British Transport Research Laboratory measurements show they increase carbon monoxide output +30%-60%, carbon dioxide +20%-26% and diesel vehicle emissions up to 30%.” Even, “they cause more trouble than they’re worth.”

            I’m in the latter camp. This controversy has torn apart the neighborhood, pitting neighbor against neighbor. Life-long friendships have been abruptly interrupted over the midget-size desks and chairs of the libes at Taylor-Moffett. It’s bad enough battling leg cramps without having to argue with your neighbor over how many inches high the industry standard is for speed humps and whether they will be more palatable if we call them “Flat-Top Speed Cushions.”

            “A rose by any other name…” I tell them.

             “We’re talking speed cushions here,” advocate Rusty Neill chides me in turn. “Can’t you stick to the subject???”

              “How can a place like Rockville have no speed humps, and yet their traffic fatalities are not markedly higher than ours?”

             “We’re not talking about Rockville, Rockville is heavily commercial,” Rusty replies.

             “Chevy Chase—“

             “We’re not talking about Chevy Chase. We’re talking about Oxburg,” Committee Chairperson Turner O’Toole reminds me.

              It’s nuts. We go on arguing ad infinitum, an hour and a half, every other Monday night.

               One of the recommendations of the TTCC is to issue a used computer to every child who wants one.

               ?-??

             “Our studies have shown,” Turner explains, “that many pedestrian traffic fatalities occur among children on their way to and from the public library. Also, people out walking their dogs. Additionally, joggers.

             “Since we cannot outlaw pets and have already built as many bike paths and outdoor tracks as is technically feasible, the one area we feel we can make an improvement is to keep children at home as much as possible.”

             “What about the expense?” wonders Margaret “Fluffens” Meeks’ husband George who, after all, is an economics professor. “This seems controversial.”

             “Oxburg has a population of 14,000. Everyone else lives in Chevy Chase, Bethesda or Rockville. The risk of an outlandishly large expenditure is offset by the relatively low demand in used PC’s. They just aren’t very popular. Nobody wants one. You can’t give them away! A 3-year-old computer is as welcome as a skunk at an Independence Day parade.

            “People complain they’re outmoded.”

            “Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose?” Fluffen’s husband George persists.

            “Never-the-less, we feel any measure that can save the life of even a single child is not to be overlooked,” answers Turner O’Toole haughtily. “We’re trying to save lives here!”

            The 800-pound gorilla that everyone prefers not to see sitting in the corner on a Friendly Toddler Stool [ Marca Registrada ] is that Oxburg is inanely rich. The Town Council feels they can throw money at the problem, Hollywood style.

            “Why are you arguing about things like that?” my aunt Sophie demands from San Mateo, California by phone. “Speed humps? Painted bike lanes? Raised intersections? What are you talking about? Who has the money?!”

            Unfortunately, she’s only talking to me, and I’m on the phone in my mom’s living room. When I present this “newly discovered fact” at the next Monday night meeting, I am roundly condemned as a baby-killer.

            “We’re trying to save the lives of our small children,” Mildred Danville declares. In tones of pure derision. A cosmetic-ad-beautiful brunette, dressed impeccably in high-end blouses and pleated skirts heavy on the gold lamé, every word out of her mouth makes me want to strangle her. She’s new to the neighborhood. I have never before met someone whose one and only expression is a Bronx sneer.

           “What do you do exactly?” I ask before one meeting, lugging mini-mart furniture into place.

           “Why do you want to know?” answers Mildred.

           “Let’s not be too paranoid, shall we? I’m a screenwriter. My office is in a deserted strip mall on Rockville Pike.”

           “Oh. I’m in advertising.”

           “Figures.”

           “What’s that supposed to mean?”

           I shrug and carry an easel to the far end of the room. Knowing one another’s occupation doesn’t exactly cement a bond.

           “Where do you live?” asks my mom, coming late to that meeting. Mildred’s style sits no better with my mother than with me.

           “Across the street from you!” replies Mildred, in a voice laded with condescension.

           I would have to say these meetings are not going well!

                                                      *

 

            On my rounds as campaign delivery boy, I see a bumper sticker that feels so appropriate, the only way to cut it any finer would be if it were written in blood:

                                       SOME PEOPLE ARE ALIVE

                                              SIMPLY BECAUSE

                                       IT’S ILLEGAL TO KILL THEM

            Cuss, cuss, fuss, fuss, at our office, Montevideo Films [ Marca Registrada ], receptionist and punk princess Jacqueline is quick to pick up on my bad mood and write a song about it.

                                                SPEED HUMP

                                       Speed hump! I want speed.

                                       I wanna hump.

                                       I wanna bump that hump.

                                       I wanna grind

                                       My gears.

                                       Suppress

                                       My fears.

                                       Duress my peers.

                                       SPEED HUMP!

                                       I want speed.

                                       I’ll give you hump!

                                       Dump the bump!

                                       Speed hump!

                                                                              (c) 2011, Rosario

                                                     *

             Now that I have wire frames, I dig into my yard sign collection in the basement. It’s extensive, including Delaware, Virginia and New Jersey. On the right side of the lawn, I put up a sign that says “Janet Oleszek for School Board.” I believe this nice lady was a candidate in 2003 or something in Fairfax, Virginia. On the left side, next to my newly-installed 150 lb. concrete yard troll of a monkey scratching his head, I erect a yellow and black sign that announces “Firemen For Gore In 2000.”

            This is war! Let the neighbors just try to complain!

             They have their preferences. The latest craze is black plastic sprinkler heads on metal sticks attached to green garden hoses. One neighbor after another is getting them to water the lawn. A recurring weather cycle every 50 years, this summer alternates between storm/flood warnings on Tuesdays and drought conditions every Friday.

             “This is what it was like when I was growing up,” I tell the neighborhood fathers. It doesn’t make them like it any better.

             “They warned me about Maryland freak weather,” Chris, a transplant from Buffalo, New York, complains. He lives across the street. “I thought nothing could compare to Buffalo’s endless snow. A cauldron, the clouds circle over the lake, pick up moisture, blow in over the city and dump 12 inches of snow in, like, three hours. But, sure enough, Maryland has it beat! This place is very annoying! How do you keep your lawn alive when it’s drowning one day and parched the next?”

           “Chris, I don’t even try. Qué sera, sera! Whatever will be, will be.”

            I need to crank out a video camera and capture his Saturday afternoon ritual for YouTube. (1) Placing the sprinkler in center of yard. (2) Turning on water supply. (3) Eyeing sprinkler. (4) Deciding to move sprinkler while it is spraying. (5) Running frantically in all directions, trying to move sprinkler without getting soaked.

             Every Saturday.

             It must be an upstate New York thing. Indecisive in the face of diversity. Optimizing parameters. Paradigm shift. Three dimensional matrix coordination. Taking a bath.

             I mean, he is a stockbroker. Type T personality, the thrill’s the thing.

            The ice cream sale at Hayne’s Grocery:

            First, it was “Buy One, Get One Free!”

            Then it was “Buy Two, Get One Free!”

            Followed by “Buy Three, Get One Free!”

           Now, it’s “Buy Out the Store, Get One Free!”

           I love what it said in the consumer magazine: “Even when it’s on sale, you’re still spending money! You can go broke buying sale items, too!”

           Mom brings home crab legs for dinner. Alaskan king crabs, each leg is 7” long. And then you’ve got the body of the crab to eat, too. Shipped alive from up north, they’ve been steamed at the store. They’re already cooked. You microwave them one minute. Anything longer destroys the meat.

           Sitting at our dining room table with nut crackers and tiny crab forks—and steak knives to slit the shells—we gorge on Alaskan king crab while bitterly commiserating over Obama being a corporate shill of Wall Street, out to sell Israel down the river and emasculate Medicare and Social Security. “The worst kind of snake oil salesman,” rants my mom. “I knew you couldn’t trust him even before he got elected!

           “And he met with a Jewish group— $25,000 a plate to get in— and they gave him bundles of money for his upcoming campaign.

           “In Israel, his popularity rating is in the single digits. And over here, the Jews are swooning, ‘Obama! Obama!’”

            I feel like Marie Antoinette who, upon being told the people had no bread, replied, “Let them eat cake!” Feasting like kings, you would think we’d be merry.

           “He was on the TV, bellyaching.”

           “That was a press conference,” I point out.

           “I know what it was! I turned him off. ‘Everybody has to make sacrifices’? The federal workers are expected to work for nothing and be indentured servants?”

           Mom was a federal worker.

          “We’re Democrats! If we have a problem, everybody has a problem with this president! The little people are made to suffer,” she grouses, “so the fat cats on Wall Street can receive bonuses and have a field day. In the old days, rich people used their wealth to hire accountants to find them tax shelters and loopholes. No more! Now they pour their money straight into the campaign coffers of the candidates. Politicians are bought and sold hand over fist.”

           “Eating crabs makes you crabby,” I tease.

           “Reading the newspaper makes me crabby!”

           “You’re just tired from trolling with a net off the coast of Sitka… Good crabs, by the way! Thank you!”

           I was stationed at Fort Richardson, outside Anchorage. Before the pipeline, frontier people on the Kenai Peninsula still rode horses into town and tied them up at the parking meters. They would put a dime in the meter, hang an oat bag over the horse’s muzzle and go about their business.

           There were trashcans behind the Army barracks. I’d come bopping along the towpath in the morning, round the corner and come face to face with a moose. Having knocked the lid off the trashcan, he’d be busy nosing through our garbage, looking for edible produce. Snorting, he would raise his giant head of antlers and stare at me balefully.

            Every morning.

            “Hi there, moosey woosey!” I’d chant nervously, skipping along down the path mucho pronto.

            One morning, hung over, in a foul mood, I come around the corner, same thing, same moose, he’s pressing his snout in my face, flaring his nostrils. “All right,” I growl, haul off and punch him in the nose with all my might. (This is not a tall tale!) He stands there, looking at me. He blinks. He snorts. He turns on his heels and goes lumbering off toward the woods with the crazy, disjointed, loping gait of a moose.

            My superior officer sees me wincing at the weapons depot where I work. “What’s the matter?”

            Weapons were stored in the armory. Vehicles were arrayed in the motor pool. Our depot was a workshop area, dedicated to the cleaning, care and maintenance of equipment. The Alaskan climate gave us plenty to do.

           “My right hand is sore. I might have broken a bone. I punched a moose.”

             He looked at my swollen hand and sent me to the infirmary for an X-ray. Nothing was broken, but it was badly sprained. They made me soak it in ice water and wear a bandage for a couple of days.

              The embarrassing part was being taken before the camp commandant. “I hear you had a run-in with a moose?” he asked genially. “They were here first, you know. They consider us squatters.”

           “Yes, sir.”

           “You see a moose, Corporal, you turn and go the other way, you hear? I don’t want to have to write home to your folks in CONUS [the Continental United States] that you got sparked by a moose on my watch! Y’hear?”

           Both he and my commanding officer were struggling mightily not to burst out laughing.

         “Oh, yes, sir! Sir!” I said, snapping to attention and saluting.

         “Some of these non-coms will do anything to get out of doing a good day’s work, sir,” my commander smirked.

         “Can I get back to work, now?” I asked, feeling my face go red. We all knew I was a demon for my assigned tasks.

         “Nope! You go get y’self a cup o’ coffee. And you bring me one, too! Cream. No sugar. My wife has me watching my weight.”

         After that, my C.O. picked me up every morning in front of the barracks and drove me to the depot.

         They all thought I was hilarious.

         This was the same officer who once said, “Here’s a hose, sponges, buckets, detergent and shammies. I want you three men to wash these jeeps.”

          Used by troops on maneuvers in the bush, they were caked in mud. Positively caked.

         “Sir,” I asked, “there are, by my count, 17 of them. Sir.”

         “That’s right. What’s your question?”

         “Wash 17 jeeps, sir?”

          “Wash 17 jeeps.”

          “Yes, sir.”

          If I remember correctly, we spent three days cleaning and polishing those vehicles.

         Ah, tales of my youth!

                                                       *

            If you didn’t know better, you might think the map of Maryland was sexually explicit.

                                This state has been rated R.

                                For Mature Audiences Only.

 

           Eric does go out canvassing with his boys and girls. He is not a shut-in. The result is, he’s been all over the state.

            “It’s a shame you don’t go squirrel huntin’,” I point out. “There be opportunity galore in the western and southern precincts.”

          “Maybe after the campaign,” he responds dryly.

          Once again, I’m acting gauche.

            He has me put a plastic overlay on the map and, based on my own experience, I indicate with a marking pen which areas are predominately black. “They’s everywhere,” I assure him.

           Eric just rolls his eyes.

          When we get visited by a big donor and his gorgeous, striking executive assistant, Eric proudly trots me out as “the local colorful character on this campaign. There’s one in every camp. Kevin is ours. Go on, maestro, give ‘em one of your dialects. Tell us something in ‘waterman.’”

           So I tell them several things in “waterman.”

           We’re all chuckling, I’m trying not to stumble over my tongue, and then “Mr. Smith,” who owns about a million chickens, looks at me admiringly and asks, “What does all you just said mean?”

          “Oh, it’s nautical. Lower the centerboard. Pull in the net. Dump a crab pot in the water. Flush out the bilge. ‘No women allowed on board.’ That kind of stuff.” If I’m supposed to feel put on the spot, all I can say is, there isn’t a trace of that. They call on me as an expert in local cultures.

           “I work with farmers,” Mr. Smith explains. “I know exactly where Kevin is coming from.”

            His lady friend follows me into the kitchen to watch me brew coffee. Talk about Brazilian fashion models! I want to lick the make-up off her amazing face with my tongue. “Is that your profession? You’re a linguist?” she asks. There’s this tiny bit of a lisp to her speech, making her seem more innocent than she probably is.

           “No, I’m ex-military,” I reply without thinking, busy measuring coffee grounds.

           “Oh,” she gushes, squeezing my arm and all but creaming in her panties. “A soldier boy!”

          “Hélène!” I hear Mr. Smith call from the living room full of laptops. “Behave yourself!”

           Eric is lecturing on our demographics.

          “Look, we’re not kids and this isn’t Sweden,” I say. She’s as tall as I am, thin and angular in a black suit, a red scarf around her creamy white, perfect throat. I want to pull off the red scarf with my teeth! I take her in my arms right there in the kitchen, under the clock, by the sink, and she’s giggling and French-kissing, her tongue halfway down my throat, letting out these long, sonorous grunts.

         “Ah, crap!” I hear Mr. Smith call from the next room. “Hélène! Stop that!”

           If he says anything else, I certainly don’t hear him. Immersed in pleasure, making out like teenagers, enjoying ourselves, we’re totally oblivious to anything around us.

           She smells good. I’d forgotten how good a woman can smell. Talc, perfume, the animal tang of her skin. She tastes good, as well. Her long, red fingernails claw at me gently, her fingers exploring every nook and cranny of my face and hands.

           It’s fun!

         “I need to use the bathroom,” she breathes in my ear.

           I show her where it’s located on the ground floor.

         “Is this the only one?”

         “No,” I answer, not getting her drift, “there are two upstairs.”

         “I guess we’ll have to go upstairs, then. Two! That’s convenient.”

           Ignoring us, Eric and Smith go on discussing the campaign.

          She’s happy, I’m happy, it’s not like there are any issues. We’re both adults. Things rarely move this fast for me. I suspect women look at me and assume I’m “taken” already. I appear complete unto myself, cold. But Hélène is a girl who explores the possibilities. Fearlessly. An adventurer. “You should use Axe, it would smell good on you.”

          Well, maybe not a mountain climber. “Men’s colognes don’t really work well on my skin,” I reply, leading her into someone’s upstairs bedroom. I’ve never had reason to determine whose room is which.

         “Do you always wear shorts?”

         “No, of course not!” I reply. I’m wearing cargo shorts because of the heat.

           We fold back the blue, checkered coverlet on the rather large bed.

           “Is this a bed for one person or two?” she asks professionally.

           “Three!” I tease. “At my place, I sleep on the floor.”

            “On a bamboo mat? Like the Japanese?”

             “No, like a soldier who misses sleeping outdoors on the hard earth.”

             “Feel this, soldier boy,” she says, guiding my hand.

               Listen, I’m grateful. Sexually, I’m not the aggressor. If a woman doesn’t march right up to me and grab what she wants, I’ll look, listen and admire forever, but never make a move. Once I start, though, I’m told I’m a powerhouse. I tend to leave no square inch of skin untouched.

            “Now what is this?”

           “That’s my hair, silly.”

           “Shaved in a V?”

            “Harry likes it that way.”

             “What’s this scar?”

              “I had my tubes tied off,” she says in passing.

              “And this?”

             “Appendectomy.”

             “Did they leave you any extraneous body parts?” I joke.

              “Not really. I’ve even had a lymph node removed.” She shows me where, a tiny scar like a tuck of skin below her right ear.

             “Had any work done?”

             “Do I look like I had work done?” she quietly shrieks in my ear.

             “No, you look as fresh as a tomato on the vine.”

              “I am. I’m your All Natural Ingredients hot tomato.”

               “Avon calling!”

               “C’mere, Lieutenant! Do something only a military guy would do. Let’s see you do your stuff. How ‘bout some close order drill ?”

               “Yes, ma’am!”

                I fit into her like we were manufactured for one another.

               “This is definitely a campaign first,” I marvel.

               “For you, not for me. I do this kind of stuff all the time. Harry gets turned on when I describe my infidelities, improprieties and razzle-dazzle to him… We’ll open the window, of course, and air out the bedroom.”

              “I don’t know about the sheets.”

              “Don’t tell anybody!”

               Ouch! My first major disappointment.

              “I didn’t mean that,” Hélène says, sensing my withdrawal. “Stop worrying! We’ll find the washer/dryer and run a wash.”

              “Oh, okay!” I agree and we’re off and running like gangbusters. I do her once. I do her twice. She’s just getting started! Shuddering, vaginal fluid gushes from her like a fountain. “Are you all right?” I ask.

               “I… can… hardly… breathe!” she cries, gurgling happily.

               “Hélène! We’re going to Quizno’s for sandwiches! Can I get you anything?” Mr. Smith calls from the stairs.

               It’s a pretty small house.

               Pushing me away, she takes several deep breaths, smiles at me winningly and asks, “Do you want anything from the sandwich shop?”

             “I brought my lunch.”

             “I’ll take a BLT on rye and a Sprite, Harry! Hold the mayo,” she calls out to him.

               The sound of the front door closing.

             “Oh, goody!” says Hélène. Now that we’re alone in the house, everything done previously was just foreplay. We’re into the main event!

             In this corner, weighing in at 118 pounds, Hélène, the main contender, defending her title for Be Bop a Lu Bop of the Year. Over here, the challenger. Weighing in at an atrocious 155 pounds—ten pounds overweight, my friends!!!—Kevin Feingold, lately of such far-off cities as Banja Luka, Tirana and Kabul!

            A three-round bout to the finish, winner take all. Place your bets and may the best one win!

           – – –

          “Do you have— you know— an actual occupation?” I ask, curious.

          “Of course! I trained as a court stenographer. I like the technical aspects of courtroom cases. Harry came to court, took one look at me, and carried me off in his fancy car. I do dictation, shorthand, typing and data entry. I also know how to talk on the telephone,” she teases.

          “A lady of many talents.”

          “Here’s one I don’t normally use at the office.”

         “Ouch!”

          “If it hurt, I didn’t do it right. Let’s try that again.”

         “Whoa!… Nice.”

         “Why, what did you do? In the military?”

         “Peacekeeping.”

         “Smooth! Make war, make love, make way! Let’s go find that washing machine and get dressed. Harry should be back with my sandwich and soda any minute. I could eat a horse!”

          Sitting around the kitchen table like nothing remarkable has transpired, the four of us discuss the ins and outs of poultry legislation. “I wouldn’t want Anna to do anything improper, but as a major supporter, I’d expect the judiciary to recognize my side of the story,” Harry explains.

          “I take it, you view propriety with a wide latitude?” I wonder. “That’s not meant to be rude, but I need to ask.”

          “No, no, that’s a fair question. We’re friends. I’m on your side. All I’m saying is, please be on my side when and if the time should ever come.”

         “Mr. Smith,” Eric smiles, “You have yourself a BFF.”

         “A ‘best friend forever,’ Harry,” Hélène translates.

         “I knew that!” Mr. Smith insists.

                                                *

           When the post office stops working, forget it! A lady and her husband, the Davidsons— their two little daughters in frilly pink dresses in tow— are applying for passports. On July 8, a Friday. The weather service warns of a massive storm front blowing in from the south. Rufus, the clerk, is S-L-O-W, stapling forms majestically. In the other window, a dude in cargo pants and a sky blue T-shirt engages the lady clerk in fine conversation. He’s sending ski socks to Germany and has all the time in the world. Five minutes, ten minutes, we better have all the time in the world, because the line is not moving.

           The Davidsons are having A Day At the Post Office. Ready camera one. And… Action! Smiling Mrs. Davidson, of Swedish derivation, is so embarrassed. The kids run everywhere, chanting “Rosey, posey, posey… poo!” Ready camera two! Rufus takes them into the back room to do finger prints!

            America, land of bureaucracy.

            Ten minutes in the back room, fifteen. God knows what additional procedures take place there. A Pledge of Allegiance? A lie detector test?

             The rest of us are going crazy waiting for it to end. The one remaining clerk sighs and does what she can to expedite our transactions.

              By the time I leave the P.O. thirty-five minutes later, the Davidson family is still there, smiling innocently and raising a jolly old ruckus. Waiting, waiting, waiting for their passports.

              I order mee kahti off the Laotian menu at Vientiane Indochine, and Joey, the 20-year-old Filipino waiter, asks, “Do you know what that is?” Worried, he refers me to the spice scale on the bottom of each page. One pepper: mild; two peppers: spicy; three peppers: very spicy.

             As soon as I saw there was “mung” in it, I knew it was for me!

          “Lots of veggies in curry hot sauce,” he warns.

          “I want something different tonight.”

          “You are familiar with Laotian food?”

          It’s our first visit. Mom clipped an article out of The National Herald.

          I explain how I took some Swedish friends to Stockholm’s only Laotian restaurant. “They were totally lost.” I recommend to Joey the Lao restaurants in Paris, Berlin and Copenhagen.

       “Are there a lot of Lao restaurants in Denmark?” he asks.

        “Vietnamese, predominately. I only know of one Laotian establishment in Copenhagen, and it’s out in a suburb.”

        The lady cook comes out to confirm that I really want what I ordered.

        The décor is pure Laos. Photographs of flat-bottomed boats on muddy rivers, pictures of villages and temples. Goat skin drums hang on the wall. Many depictions of Buddha. An elephant grass fan, looking hairy and out-of-place in suburban Maryland. Flower displays made of paper and crêpe.

        Everything but the Pathet Lao, I think.

         Mom orders off the Thai menu.

         When Joey, spiky-haired and garrulous, brings my dish, I tell him, “I’m Buddhist. I will spend eternity eating Thai food.”

        “You also eat Thai food?”

        “All the time. My mother here is a great aficionado.”

        “You’ll spend eternity eating?” he asks me. “I would— you know.”

         Spend eternity making love to beautiful women.

         He’s 20 years old.

        “I’ve already put in my order,” I assure him.

         The mee kahti is essential Laos, everything there except the ferocious heat of the jungle. The noodles are as viscously gooey as if they’d been dipped in motor oil. Curry and chopped green peppers make my nose run and my eyes tear up.

        “Crying over your dinner?” mom teases.

         When Joey comes by our table, I tell him, “She’s teasing me about crying over my dinner.”

         He looks worried.

        “The spices make my eyes water.”

        “Oh! Well… Man up! Don’t be a cry-baby!” he recommends in a sing-song voice.

          I gotta get my sorry ass back to Laos.

          I once had plans to retire to the hill country and live in the Shans with the indigenous tribes. Who knows, maybe I still shall. It appeals to my romantic nature. But then I began thinking about doctor’s visits and dental appointments and what it is like to live among primitive people. A vast amount of time goes into preparing and cooking food. Farming, fishing and trapping consume most of the day. Everything is done over open fires. Life is slow. There’s a calm rhythm to it, but in the long run, westerners get bored.

           I have no desire to become a bored westerner, certainly not among the gentle people of the Shan States.

           Like everyone in my generation, my mom—27 years older—is becoming nostalgic for Vietnam!

           Everyone misses their youth.

           Been there, done that, I don’t think returning to Jungle Hell will be such a cool experience.

          The next morning at the office, my gut explodes. You don’t need a rocket scientist to know your butt is on fire. Good old mung!

                                                      *

          “There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money and I can’t remember what the second one is.”

                             – Mark Hanna, Republican political operative, 1895

            I hadn’t realized until now the vast extent to which Anna Bola has dominated Hiram Whiplash’s thinking. Maryland is a big state. There’s no reason for him to keep showing up at the same events as Anna. He could be campaigning on the other end of the state and we’d never know, unless the Oxburg Gazette published an article, and when did that rag ever do anything but flack for local retailers?

            It’s the evening of The Great Debate, the first of four, and I sort of admire Hiram for agreeing, first time out, to debate in Anna’s hometown! That takes a certain kind of balls: part stupidity, part arrogance, some foolhardiness, mostly very brave. The guy’s a soldier. There will be three more debates between these two Democratic hopefuls for State Attorney General— Salisbury on the Eastern Shore, Hagerstown and, of course, Baltimore— but this is numéro uno. Guess if Oxburg is excited?!

            The venue is that famous local landmark, the Oxburg Regal Hotel. A clapboard farmhouse from the 1840’s, it was originally Wilkerson House, the farm where Tom and Mary Wilkerson conspired with Confederate spy Henri Henried to assassinate Lincoln’s Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton. Their attempt resulted in the decapitation of Trigger, Stanton’s horse. The poor beast was done in with a cavalry sword “so sharp you could trim your whiskers on it.” This prompted a later descendant to produce the ever-popular Wilkinson Sword Brand Razorblades.

            I love contemporary historian Dmitri Potl’s description of the couple: “Led into the dock by the Bailiff was a woman so plain, no man would have countenanced a second gaze upon her person. This was her obvious strength, her total lack of lustre. This feature alone allowed Mary W. to pass unnoticed through the Halls of Power.

            “As for the husband, he also appears to the naked eye to be a total non-entity. Graced by God with a limp, a squint in his right eye, a harelip and an attempt to hide same behind a walrus mustachio, it is even at this late date well nigh inconceivable that this lumbering farmer of the Piedmont, smelling of dirt, could have conspired to do anything more complex than feed the chickens.

            “The true Brain behind the endeavor must in all instances have been known Confederate Spy Henri Henried, who led astray these two witless Dupes in Henried’s machinations to behead the Secretary of War. Henried’s whereabouts remain currently Unknown.

            “As for his co-conspirators, the couple make for a pitiful sight in the Witness Box…”

            Hung by the neck until dead, their former home is now the Oxburg Regal Hotel.

            Out front, I count six poor sods puffing away on coffin nails.

             “There but for the grace of God…”

              I smoked my last cigarette (President Obama, please take note) on December 18, 2005. (If I can stop, so can you! I seem to remember a slogan? “Yes, We Can!”)

              Inside the hotel, the audience is a hodge-podge. Whatever I expected, this cross-section of Oxburg family life defies easy description. Perhaps that favors Hiram. Aiming to sit in the front row next to whisperer Jane Jeffries of Riverdale Precinct, it never occurs to me to check whose thin brown leather briefcase occupies the seat to my right. If I sit even one row back, I don’t hear nothin’.

            “Hiya, Jane!” I shout in her ear.

            “I don’t understand why modern political campaigns need to be so expensive,” she states. Every goddam time I see her, the same lament! She always makes me want to scream. Today, it’s “Jane, darling… WHO CARES HOW MUCH IT COSTS? PUT A CORK IN IT, FOR GOD’S SAKE!” And as always, I hold my water and smile sweetly.

          My friend Jane.

          The meeting room is too small to be called a “hall,” it’s just a room full of folding chairs.

          Everyone looks familiar.

          A big event, the local Brahmins are out in force.

          Politician A: “How about a campaign contribution?”

           Politician B: “Okay. How much can you give me?”

           Josie Lambert, campaign manager for Linda Dale-Eckert and president of the Oxburg Young Democrats is, of course, here. She looks amazingly pretty and sounds impressively competent. Seeing her surrounded by gofers jumping at her every request, I realize how inanely foolish I was to let this one get away!

             Incredibly, a giant, clear plastic tarp is masking-taped to the ceiling. When I go to the front desk to ask what that’s about, I get a blank stare from the clerk. “Wait here. I’ll ask,” says he. Returning a minute later, he asks, “Does it matter?”

            “Well, no. I guess it doesn’t matter. I was just curious what is going on.”

            “Can you still hold the meeting?”

             “Yes,” I answer uncertainly. “Why?”

              “The air conditioning caused some condensation on the ceiling. Guests were complaining about getting dripped on. For whatever reason, the plastic seems to help.”

               I return to the debate, prepared to get dripped on.

               When Hiram Whiplash marches up to the folding chair next to me and sweeps up his briefcase in a meaty paw, he isn’t exactly ecstatic. “You!” he mutters. “The nut job!”

              “Now, is that nice?” I ask him.

             “Go sit someplace else, sonny!”

             “It’s a free country,” I taunt, feeling about 16 years old.

              “Who told you that? Our friend Calloway will tell you, ‘Freedom isn’t free, as we all know…’ Where have you been the last ten years, living under a rock? Some shitheads rammed the World Trade Center in 2001.”

               “I don’t want to distract you before the debate…”

               “Why don’t I just punch you in the kisser and get it over with?” he asks, balling his right hand into a fist.

                “Hiram, please…”

                We stop arguing long enough to watch Anna come into the room. She wears a simple black and white checkered housedress, which brings out her bosom.

                Girl Scout Alexandra Kerr belts out the National Anthem on a shiny brass bugle. Don’t ask me what the red tassel is about, I think they come that way from the factory. I’ve never seen a bugle without one.

               Gregory Graves is the moderator, which is something of an insider joke: We all went to school together. A used car salesman, Greg was captain of the high school debating team. His tan suit accommodates the summer weather, but the meeting room is—as stated—air-conditioned.

              “I represent the common people of this great state,” Hiram announces in his introductory remarks. “Anna Bola does not.”

            “You win the primary,” local party boss Arthur Pascoe quips quietly in my right ear, “and you have the nomination.” The split second Hiram went up front to speak, Arthur stole his seat. “You have the nomination, you’re a shoe-in.”

            “What about the general election?” I ask him. I’ve known Arthur since forever, we’re buds, but I still find it disconcerting to be sitting next to someone who weighs 320 pounds.

            “That’s what I’m saying, you’re a shoe-in.”

            “We’re not that strong a bastion of Democratic power!”

            “Democracy starts with a D,” he tells me, at his most Delphic.

            “I have a family,” Hiram declares. He’s a young guy. “We have a dog named Rover! My wife Peg and my two daughters love our house in Dorkhaven. The Dorkhaven neighborhood of Jessup. I believe in equal opportunity employment for all our citizens.”

            “Who doesn’t?” I sigh. Having read Hiram’s campaign brochure, I really wonder if he is prepared to grapple with a single local issue.

            “I should add that Anna Bola represents the special interests. Unicef, Télémondo, Brazilian fashion models, L’Oréal.”

            “You know,” Anna says wryly when it’s her turn, “I don’t recognize this person Hiram describes. My friends…” and you can feel the room warming right there… “how big a foot print do Brazilian fashion models have in Oxburg, Maryland? Maybe I should get out more!”

            Laughter. Applause.

            Having learned nada from historical precedent, Hiram posits such questions to Anna as: “Didn’t you on 12 September last year in fact receive the sum of $9,413 in small denomination bills in a greasy brown paper bag previously containing high caloric but tasty french fries?”

            “No.”

            “No to which part, the money or the fries?”

            “Both!”

            “Did I mention that this transaction took place on the island of Aruba?!”

            “Aruba? I haven’t been to Aruba!”

            “Well… it might have been your representative who received the french fries and cash infusion.” Grimacing at the crowd, his hands held out wide, Hiram seems to be asking for our forbearance. “If it pleases the court— of public opinion, of course— I have here Exhibit A, the greasy brown paper bag—“

            Poor Hiram is all but drowned out by the chorus of groans that fill the room. “Give us something else!!!” a man calls from the crowd. “Move on!”

            “I have the backing of MoveOn.org!” Hiram counters.

            “So do I!” adds Anna, looking surprised.

            “They’ll endorse anybody,” Gregory Graves, the moderator, comments affably, “as long as it’s a liberal Democrat.”

            “The only endorsement I need,” Hiram declares defiantly, “is from you, the voters!”

            That sounds great, but he also claims he’s fighting for “progressive values,” while Anna lists half a dozen specific programs and what she has contributed to each. “In the energy sector, voluntary portfolio standards have to be made mandatory. Just because the oil companies claim they are cleaning up their act doesn’t mean they are actually doing so. We need to pass laws in Maryland to steer ecological development. We’ve got the windy hills, where are the wind turbines? Flat school roofs are perfect locations for solar panels. Some districts already have them. I want all districts to have them!” Fourteen years on the Town Council, the lady knows her stuff.

             This leaves Hiram sounding good, but his résumé looks paper thin. “Anna is in the hands of the power company!” he declares.

              “I’ve heard you say that in one of your stump speeches,” Gregory interjects, seemingly awakening from a long and refreshing sleep. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

              “Well… she uses electricity! Her house is wired. Electric lines have been strung on her street. Here, I have a photo! This gray cable box is mounted on a telephone pole directly in front of her house! If that’s not favoritism, you tell me!”

             “I hate that cable box!” Anna retorts.

             “Never-the-less, it’s there. Somebody put it there. It didn’t grow out of whole earth. I oppose crony capitalism!” Hiram concludes, looking smug.

             “What is your position on legalized gambling?” Anna asks.

              “As Attorney General, I shall support all activities as long as they are legal.”

             “So you support the Maryland Gaming Initiative?” Anna persists.

             “I support free enterprise! ‘Think outside the bun.’ ‘What this country needs is a good 5-cent cigar.’ ‘Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?’ I consider myself a fiscal conservative and a Blue Dog Democrat. We need to get off the gold standard.”

            “But you support legalized gambling?”

             “Anything that accrues revenue to the state cannot be all bad!” Hiram insists, braying like a goat.

             “What is your stand on abortion?”

             “Madam, I am not pregnant!”

              Boos from the audience prompt Hiram to develop a fuller response:

              “As long as abortion is legal, I support it. Legality is my guiding principle.”

              “What about human compassion?” Anna queries.

               We seem to be arriving at the meat and potatoes of the debate.

               “Go to church!” retorts Hiram.

               “That’s your entire answer?” Anna asks doubtfully.

               “I believe in separation of church and state. You can’t legislate emotions. Never in the course of human affairs, has so much bally-hoo been made over so little as the constant litany of complaint regarding same-sex marriage. I would support people marrying their dogs if the Supreme Court ruled those unions legal under the Constitution. ‘In pursuit of life, liberty and happiness’ it clearly states. What is it in the foregoing phrase you do not understand, Anna?

               “Although dogs provide companionship, I oppose buggery, so I don’t think a marriage of that type can be satisfactorily consummated,” Hiram suggests. “Other than that, I say, ‘Let the courts decide.’

               “America is a country of laws!

               “Let loose the dogs of war!

               “Unlike my opponent, I am not trying to move this nation lock, stock and barrel to Russia.”

               “What?!” Anna howls. “Who ever said I was trying to do anything with Russia?”

               “Oh!” Hiram answers, feigning contriteness. “Did I say Russia? I meant Cuba!”

                More boos from the audience.

                At least we’re getting a candid view of the candidates.

                “I think Anna scored a point there,” Arthur whispers confidentially in my ear.

               “How about cleaning up the bay?” a gruff waterman demands.

                “Absolutely!” Anna calls out.

                “Within the confines of budgetary constraints!” counters Hiram. “Let’s not do like California and bankrupt the state trying to clean the beaches.”

                 “Um… I’m not sure that is accurate,” Gregory Graves, the moderator, interjects.

                 “Virginia and Delaware must do their part!” Hiram insists. “I will not throw money at an insolvable problem.”

                 “We have the resources. We should do it,” Anna declares. “In conjunction with our neighbors, certainly, but we mustn’t be afraid to act unilaterally, if need be. We should make it a priority. Sewage run-off and fertilizer run-off must be totally curtailed. For our fishermen, for our children, and… for us all!”

                  “Here! Here!”

                 “Sounds expensive!” snaps Hiram, looking askance. “This is why you should elect me! I’m prepared from Day One to work with every state legislator in Annapolis or local politician to make Maryland the great state we know it can be! And I’m not afraid to say so! Straight up and down. That’s all I’m saying. Legalize gambling and use those profits to clean up the bay!

                 “Sound solutions. That’s what we Democrats need to take with us to Annapolis!”

                  Hiram’s campaign manager has seeded the audience with his supporters. Whenever Hiram reaches an applause line, they shriek their enthusiasm, they clap thunderously. If elections were measured in decibels, he’d walk away with it!

                   I see Anna kind of hunching over in a crouch and hear her shout, “You deserve a candidate who can WIN in November!

                   “Fight the politics of blame!” she continues. “It’s not the fault of immigrants, unwed mothers, low income wage-earners, firefighters, gays and hypochondriacs that our political system is in disarray and our state economy a shambles. That’s the fault of us, the politicians! We’re responsible for sound government and fiscal restraint. Where that is lacking, the fault is ours!

                   “When society fails, it is the political establishment that has failed you, the voters!

                   “I’m tired of hearing our shortcomings blamed on day laborers from South America!”

                   Good old Anna! She’s hit a hole-in-one!

                    “It’s the political establishment’s responsibility to succeed! The Republicans in Annapolis don’t seem to get that!”

                     “Anna to Annapolis! Anna to Annapolis! Anna to Annapolis!” our interns begin chanting, marching in a tight circle at the back of the room.

                    “Quiet, please!” exceedingly tall Sergeant at Arms Teddy Goliath requests, rushing on stage and commandeering the microphone.

                     A single pair of hands can be heard clapping. It’s good someone favors his intervention. 

                    Shrugging his shoulders, he stalks off-stage.

                    “What about the Casey Anthony case?” a lady wants to know.

                    “Guilty as charged,” Hiram announces.

                     “But she was acquitted,” the same woman’s voice asks from the audience.

                      “Declare a mistrial. Go to retrial,” says Hiram.

                      “It’s a tragedy either way,” explains Anna. “Nothing will bring back that poor child.”

                      “Outlaw swimming pools!” a man suggests.

                      “Increase swimming pool regulation,” someone else counters.

                      “Implement a swimming pool tax!”

                      “Raise the swimming pool tax!”

                       “Abolish the swimming pool tax!”

                       “Outlaw children!”

                       “Boo!”

                      “Justice must be served!” says Hiram.

                       “Human compassion should guide us in our endeavors,” explains Anna.

                       “I cannot countenance wasting tax payer money, but a retrial is in order,” insists Hiram. “She’s guilty. We just don’t know it yet.”

                      “What about—“

                      “Go duct tape your mouth!” Hiram shouts.

                      Silence.

                      “W-What?” Gregory, the moderator, asks with a start.

                       “I didn’t mean that. I misspoke! I was joking, of course,” Hiram insists.

                        “I think that about ends our debate for this evening,” Gregory exclaims in pearly tones dripping with bonhomie. “On behalf of the Township of Oxburg, we’d like to thank our two contenders for the Democratic primary…”

                       “Anna nailed it,” Arthur rumbles contentedly as we wait for the aisle to clear.

                    “It was Hiram’s to lose,” I answer slowly, thinking aloud, “and he lost it.”

                    “Why are you still here?!” a janitor in olive green overalls exclaims, looking aghast. Pointing at his watch comically, he bellows incredulously, “I was supposed to clean room 20 minute ago! Please hurry up you momma and leave!”

                     All politics is local: The political elite of Oxburg is being chased out of the premier hotel by a janitor!

                    That’s our town in a nutshell.

                                                         *

 

 

            The only way to get out of the 9 a.m. parade in Oxburg (9 a.m., who’s awake at such an ungodly hour?), is to agree to the 11 a.m. parade in Marshy Hollow. So we all meet at Anna’s house at 10 a.m. and pile into cars for the drive north. A driver, I get a mapquest printout from Eric. Out on the street, however, nobody is that interested in traveling with me. I hitch a ride with three college guys and a girl.

            “Jesus, Tommy, how can you stand this?” Craig groans. He’s in the front with José, who is driving. Tommy and his girlfriend Marge sit in the back with me. A subcompact, we’re wedged in. It makes for an intimate conversation.

            “What’s your beef?” asks Tommy.

            “It’s fuckin’ early is what my beef is! I haven’t been out of bed before 11 o’clock in a week!”

             “I don’t get up and go jogging at 7 a.m., but I do like to get up early,” Tommy explains. “Of course, I don’t stay up late. These other guys, they’re up until all hours. I don’t enjoy feeling sleepy, so after 10 p.m., I’m outta there.”

               Pregnant pause.

              “Shall we tell him the secret to staying up late, boys?…” I ask. “CAFFEINE!”

              Tommy: “I can’t stand the taste of coffee…”

              Craig: “There’s coffee and there’s coffee. Takes all kinds.”

               José: “I like the taste of coffee.”

               Craig: “What you drink is not coffee. You drink milk and sugar.”

                José: “I like to say that there’s some coffee in my drink.”

                 Kevin: “Laboratory analysis would reveal coffee as an ingredient.”

                 Craig: “I’m just saying that there are some great coffees. I love regular coffee, black! I’ve gotten to the point where I can taste the difference in the brands. I know a Starbucks from a Dunkin’ Donuts. Give me Chock full o’ Nuts, Chase & Sanborn or Maxwell House and I’ll tell you which is which.”

                 Tommy: “Coffee makes my heart race.”

                 Kevin: “The very idea!”

                 Tommy: “I’ll drink Red Bull, but that’s ‘cause I like the taste.”

                  Craig: “I need Monster. It has this tarry taste. You can taste the tar. Ahhhh! ”

                  The radio is blaring away in Spanish. “José always has the Spanish-language station on,” Craig remarks. “I’m like, Oh yeah, sure, okay! Until I remember that, ‘Oh yeah, I don’t speak Spanish.’ Sometimes it feels like I can understand them anyway.”

                “Russian is even worse,” I tell him. “I was standing on the Metro platform and heard these Russians. I thought they were discussing train times. Turns out they were talking about the weather.”

                “Well, yeah, dumb Russians,” Craig agrees.

                “Hey! Hey!” Tommy counters. “My dad is Russian!”

                “My mom is Russian,” I reveal.

                “My dad came over from the Old World. You know, over there, they shoot you in the knee-cap to say good morning!”

                  Tommy’s girlfriend Marge and I look at one another and burst out laughing.

                  After many minutes and a lengthy discussion about movie categories (“Okay, what’s the best slasher movie you ever saw?”), we arrive. It’s not like I have anything against Marshy Hollow, but it is all horse country up there. Lots of 13- and 14-year-old girls riding chestnut mares and palominos. Life is hard enough as is. Don’t put a hard-on on a horse in front of me.

                 The police direct us to the parking. I count fourteen college interns in our group, Anna the candidate, her husband Frank, Eric the campaign manager, his assistant Judith, and then there’s me. We’re all wearing our Anna Bola for State Attorney General T’s. Many classic antique cars line the roadway, Cobras, Mustangs, Corvettes, vintage MG’s, a Sunbeam Alpine, a wasted Ford Pickup, a shiny restored purple roadster from Moon Motors. We have Democratic candidates in front of us and behind us in the line-up. “What does a Supervisor do?” Craig asks me. We’re milling around in the crowd, waiting for late arrivals.

            “Where’s that?”

            “Over there! ‘Gregory Rappaport for County Supervisor.’”

            “I think he kind of runs the county. Supervisors are what they have instead of a County Board.”

              Anna’s rival in the Democratic primary Hiram Whiplash is there with his gang. I feel like chewing him out for going negative, but I don’t want a scene. Republican opponent Rafshoon Calloway has his supporters lined up in depth.  Funny name or no, the man will be almost impossible to beat. His war chest is B-I-G. He does his usual act, searching me out in the crowd, taking a mental snapshot, shaking his head in recognition and returning his attention to his side of the parking area.

            Imagine if we actually knew each other!

            I am impressed by the level of civility between the armed camps. “When I worked on the Myrtle Beech campaign,” I tell Anna’s husband Frank, “the Blackie Diamond crowd treated us murderously. Constant sniping. Sabotaging each other’s vehicles. It’s impressive that everyone can gather here and still behave.”

            “For now,” Frank answers dryly, giving me a “heads up” kind of look.

            Ouch!  “Well, okay…” I gulp. “No surprises further down the road!”

            Foghorn Sally warns us through her megaphone, “In about two minutes, everybody…”

            “What is the best Jack Black movie?” asks José.

            “Nacho Libre,” I suggest, the first that comes to mind.

            “You are so right on, dude!”

            “Celebrity is as celebrity does,” I tease him.         

            Craig: “The Twilight series is meant to give hard-ons to pre-teen girls, which, come to think of it, is pretty upsetting.”

             “I’m playing Scrabble against my computer,” Tommy declares, busy on his smartphone. “I just put in the word ‘skag’ and it says there’s no such usage. Anybody know how to tweek the vocabulary in Scrabble?”

            “What does ‘skag’ mean?” I ask. “The British—“

            “Like, ‘monstrous,’ that’s our meaning for ‘skag.’ Something is truly skag. The orcs in Lord of the Rings were skag.”

            “For us (a hundred years ago), a ‘skag’ meant someone who borrowed stuff and never returned it. A total user. Try it with a ‘c’.”

            “Huh? Far out! Wait! ‘Slang for heroin.’ Too much!”

            The parade gets underway. We’re carrying yard signs, without the wire frames. Anna has ordered— what else?—emery boards with her name and logo on them. So every time we pass a lady with nice nails, we dart out of line and hand her a yellow or blue emery board.

            “No fans!” says Anna. “Everybody hands out fans!”

            For the kids, cardboard Star Spangle Banner polarized sunglasses, “Anna Bola For State Attorney General” and a QR code you can access with your smartphone.

            “We’re going for the women’s vote,” she announces.

            “What a shame kids can’t vote!” Craig laments, watching a group of pre-teens go nuts over the sunglasses.

            “Ah, but their parents vote!” Anna replies happily.

            I’m less happy. Our flock of seagulls meanders along, discussing video games and movies amongst themselves, their yard signs tucked under their arms. The T-shirts say who we are, but I don’t see a lot of contact between us and the spectators. I’m at the back of our group, so I start spinning my yard sign as I walk. Then I hold one side with my right hand and let go with my left, letting the sign drop sideways like it’s broken. Looking surprised, I pick it up and hold it straight, smiling. Then I drop one side again and frown. Repeat. The kids are laughing. Next time I “straighten” my sign, I let it end up upside down. Smiling hugely, I hold it out to the crowd. “IT’S UPSIDE DOWN!” people shout. Looking aghast, I pull it in front of my face and examine it. As I walk past, I turn it over and look helpfully at the crowd. They cheer.

            From then on, I am Bozo the Clown. Pulling the sign against my face, I let my sunglasses roost atop the cardboard. Holding the sign out to the crowd, “spastic robot,’ I twist it jerkily in different directions. Walking Charlie Chaplin style, I spin the sign end over end. Alternately smiling large and frowning dismayed, I put on a show. Naturally, the children instinctively read my body language. A lot of adults laugh. Some smile sickly, their expressions saying, “Gee, are you really allowed to do that at a municipal parade?!”

            God help us.

            “So! How are you?” I ask Anna when we’ve covered the parade route.

            “I’m disturbed,” Anna tells me. “Hiram Whiplash has printed an ugly mailer about me.”

            “Yeah, I know. The Unicef one with the ugly photograph.”

            “I don’t like to come under attack.”

            The 8½ x 11 inch orange card that came in the mail reads:

ANNA SOLD HER SOUL!!!

    “Anna Bola has been making yearly $10 contributions to Unicef!

                           “While many might see this as a good thing, we in

                     opposition research are having a hard time digging up

                                           dirt on Miss Goody Two-Shoes!

                           “So please join us in condemning this previously

                                           undisclosed connection!”

            “Anna, I talked with my neighbors. It will boomerang on Hiram. He shouldn’t have put ‘Friends of Hiram Whiplash’ on it. Usually, you use a stalking horse, ‘Voters For Good Government’ or some such garbage. Our voters are highly educated and experienced. They expect electoral politics to be conducted at a high level. As soon as someone starts slinging mud or breaking the rules, the voters resent it. Hiram broke the rules. That reflects badly on Hiram. It has no effect on what voters think of you!”

            “Oh! Well…Thank you!” Anna gushes. Is she serious? Apparently, she was really worried about Hiram’s attack…!

            And, yes, here at the end of the parade route, we take our group photo, me kneeling on the pavement, Anna crouching next to me with her arm over my shoulder. And no, she won’t let me hold the campaign sign upside down! Followed by two dozen teenage girls riding past us on horses decked out in various kinds of red, white and blue bunting. Most of the horses are being led by a parent, but one lass, exquisite in tan livery, jeans and brown riding boots, steers her enormous brown horse by herself with a sure hand and a haughty stare. The de rigueur brown riding helmet. An oval face. Red lipstick on a bow mouth. Snub nose. Auburn hair. Big eyes. Not nice. Something to dream about, she makes my day.

                                                        *

            The interns sit around Anna’s house gassing, but I head home. They are going out to parties this evening. I am not. I am accompanying Anna, her hubby Frank, Eric and Judith to The Oxburg Fireworks Show. A complete misnomer, the “show” is a political event. Fireworks there are, but only as an excuse for speeches, blandishments, incentives and heavy promises. “What does she stand for?” I am immediately asked that evening, just approaching the entrance to Riverdale Park.

            “Ask her! Here she is!” I reply, making way for the candidate.

            “Clean up the bay! Improve our schools! Smart growth. Ecologically sound government. No to statewide gambling. Clean air, clean water, clean politics,” she happily exclaims. She’s in great form.

            “What about our troops?” the angry voter continues. Hook-nosed, perspiring mightily, dressed in shorts, a jersey and flip-flops, his face is mottled from the heat.

            “What about them?”

            “Don’t they deserve better?”

            “You’d better believe they deserve better! Walter Reed is being moved to the Bethesda Naval Hospital!”

            “He is? I didn’t even know he’d been wounded.”

            We stop right there and look at one another.

            “Sir,” I explain as gently as I can, “the over 100-year-old Walter Reed Medical Facility is being relocated to a new, modern site in Bethesda, Maryland  to improve the care of our returning troops.”

            “Why didn’t you say so?!”

            “I just did.”

            Our area may be heavily Democratic, but this campaign is still a toss-up.

            Right away, it’s the Battle of the Yard Signs. There are yard signs stuck in the ground lining the road in both directions. Bernard Cooper is running for Sheriff. Edwin Burnett wants a seat on the School Board. Lily Craig is running against Patricia Perry for the State Senate. Linda Dale-Eckert is running for State Representative. (Who is her opposition? Is it Rita Horne or Fatima Loredo? Or both?) Skip A. Page is running for Chairman. “Chairman of what?” I ask him as he shyly waves to cars entering the parking area. Like Anna and most of the other candidates, he comes across as shy and self-effacing in person. No hubris here, folks!

            “Chairman of the County Board.”

            “Ah!”

            As for his choice of a proper name, what’s with him, is he trying to be funny? His middle name is Albert, he tells me. “Adding some levity to the rigmarole,” he suggests.

            So there are all these yard signs, maybe 200 of them. We’ve brought with us, like, five signs. Eric jumps in the car and returns to Anna’s to get a full carload. By the time we’re finished, we’ve added another 60 to the mix.

           “Now Anna makes a good showing in the sign department,” Eric announces. He’s talking with our local rep for the neighborhood bounding the park, Jane Jeffries, who certainly means well, but drives me crazy. “It’s almost tragic how much money people have to spend to compete in the election process,” she murmurs in a subterranean voice. “Stacie Manning spent $35,000 on signage and broadcast and still lost by 300 votes.”

                I want to scream, “Jane, darling, I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” But I control myself and practice my lip reading skills.

               “Arthur Epstein spent $500 on signs last election, placed them in all the right places, and won by a virtual landslide.”

                “Arthur ran unopposed,” Anna mumbles in turn.

                 I try to keep a straight face.

                 They leave me at the entrance to the parking area. They go off to join in the show. The “show” includes speeches, of course, but also a family-friendly rock band and… well… fireworks. Listen, my receptionist Jacqueline and her punk band Explosive Plastic auditioned. They were uninvited. There is also the usual range of concessionaires: food, soda, candy.  

              I start doing my Anna dance. Wearing my campaign T-shirt, I hold aloft a yard sign, alternately dancing with it in my hands or balancing it atop my head. “Anna Bola” I chant, but very softly. People see my mouth moving and read the words: “Anna… Bola… Anna… Bola…” Smiling, they wave and give me a thumbs up.

              The local traffic cop does not. Without belaboring the point, I am a walking traffic hazard. I am distracting people as they drive into the parking area. Every time the two bicycle cops pedal past, I tone down my performance. Every time the local constable walks by, I give him a quiet nod and try to appear inconspicuous. At any moment, I expect him to say, “Scram! Take your goddam sign and leave this parking apron.” Happily, he never says it. The parking area is fenced in, so I see all the same faces as they walk by me on their way to the park.

              It’s hot and buggy. I see a Republican lady operative theatrically balancing on one leg by her car, spraying herself over every inch of exposed skin.

            “Hmmm, what does she know I don’t know?” I wonder.

            “Are you Anna Bola’s husband?” a campaign worker for Patricia Perry asks.

             How outlandish! “No, no,” I tell her, “that’s Mr. Frank Reynolds. I’m Kevin Feingold, someone else entirely!”

              It begins to drizzle. Now it’s hot, buggy and raining!

              A lady in a poke-your-eyes-out red Carera drives in through the gate. I cannot believe what I see. The leather cowboy hat, the tan skin, the wind-blown blond locks, the laugh lines around the eyes, she is a perfect imitation of Kim Carnes! Like everyone else, she gets out of her car and comes toward me. I mean, man, I am looking over this woman. “Hi!” she says jauntily.

            “Hi, yourself!”

            “Like what you see?”

            “Are you kiddin’ me?”

             The breasts are like inflated balloons, the hips wide and swaying, the legs shapely, the face all dimples and round chin. “I take it, that means you like what you see.”

            “I do, I do!”

            “Got a cell phone?”

             Huh? I take out and hand her my cell phone. “Who you gonna call, ghostbusters?”

             “I want to put my phone number on your cell phone,” she explains, busy pushing the appropriate buttons. “Speed dial 5 is your local AAA. Mind if I delete that? You can look that number up later.”

            “Delete! Delete!”

             She keeps smiling at me, her teeth as even and white as a picket fence. “Listen,” she tells me, “I’m a working girl, so don’t think I object to your interest. I don’t! I’ve put a lot of time and money into this body and I like what it does for me. You’ll like it, too!”

            She runs her bright red fingernails along my arm and thumps me playfully on the chin with her closed fist.

            “Oh, yes, ma’am,” I agree sincerely, feeling like a yokel.

             “Don’t call me ‘ma’am.’ My name is Lenore Lemon. Call me Lenore or ‘honey’ or ‘sugar,’ but call me! And, yes, I am a Valley Girl. Born and raised in the San Fernando Valley. Of which I am rightly proud. However, I do find Washington, D.C. and environs a lot of fun! Try me! You’ll find me a lot of fun, as well.” Smiling. Smiling, she hands me back the cell phone. “Speed dial 5.”

              “Well, thank you!” I say, looking at her with frank admiration.

               She strokes my face. “That’s my cell phone number. Call when the mood is ripe!”

              “I’m ready now!”

              “Thatta boy! However, I do want to police this crowd and see if I can troll for customers. Some of these family fathers get very horny. It’s my kind of venue.”

             “Please!”

             Giving me a last giant smile, she joins the crowds heading into the park.

             I drink some water. I do my dance. A half hour later, she’s back. “Success?” I ask.

             “Oh, I always have success,” Lenore exclaims. “It’s just a matter of fitting them into my schedule. Take you for example. I assume at some point you’ll get off the hustings, Senator, sir?”

             “Eventually, I will.”

             “Call me!”

             “Um, maybe. Don’t wait up!” I end lamely.

             She twinkles her laugh lines at me. “You can’t insult me, I’m 37 years old,” she tells me jovially. “Feel that,” she says, pressing my sweaty hand against her face. “Feel how taut and smooth the skin is? Cosmetic surgery, my love. I’m the same inside as I am outside. Try me!”

              “Okay, already,” I smile ruefully, sure I never will.

              “It’s your cell phone!” Driving out of the lot, she is still smiling, more sure of herself than I am of myself.

              And, eventually, Eric and Judith take down their share of the yard signs and depart. Followed soon enough by Anna and her hubby, who also gather up some signs and say goodnight. “You can go whenever you want!”

             “That’s cool! I told Eric I’d take the rest of the signs down and keep them at my place until I come to the office tomorrow at noon. Everything’s under control. We’re good!”

             “You are terrific!” Anna compliments me.

             “We make a great team!” I reply.

              “Yes, we do! Yes, we do!” she agrees, the closest she and I have come to acknowledging that, maybe, Kevin would like some work thrown his way once Anna reaches Baltimore. She and her husband leave.

              After gathering up the last signs, I make a final check.

              This is when the evening begins to weird out.

              “How’s it going?” a young, raven-haired lady in a Linda Dale-Eckert for State Representative T-shirt asks me, handing out balloons to families heading for the stage area.

              “It’s hot. Our campaign is hot, the weather is hot, I’m hot!”

              “Oopsie-daisy, my last balloon! Are you finished for the night?”

               “Yeah!” I sigh. Anna and Linda are great friends, Anna running for Attorney General, Linda running for a seat in the State General Assembly.

              “Well-l-l, you do have style,” the young lady says. “I saw you in Marshy Hollow this morning with the Bola campaign… I’m Josie Lambert. I’m Linda Dale-Eckert’s campaign manager. I’m also president of the Oxburg Young Dems. Listen, I’m heading for the stage area to get more balloons.”

            “Wow! Great to meet you!” I say. “Here, let me give you my card!”

             Now what the fuck is wrong with me? She’s all but stripping off her T-shirt in front of me. She’s perky-eyed and interested. She’s young, pretty and immensely well-connected. No pun intended. All I have to do is get my ass in gear and walk with her to the stage area. There, behold! Food and drink, music, many Democrats I should meet. Fireworks! Instead, I’m handing her my card?

              “Oh, you live by The 1812 Highway!”

               “I share the house with my mom.”

                “I live here in Riverdale. Way out in the boonies!”

                “Listen, stay in touch,” I say, still totally off-base.

                She keeps looking at my card in obvious disappointment. “Do you go to ODC meetings?” she asks. The Oxburg Democratic Club, that one I do know.

                “I haven’t been doing so, but I can start!” I say.

                 “Okay-y-y,” she says and walks away.

                 I’m tired. I need to take a piss. Putting the last of the yard signs in the back of my car, I pull out my cell phone and speed dial 5.

                 “Hi! Ha ha ha ha ha,” Lenore answers.

                 I immediately begin to get an erection. “Where do you live? I mean, may I come by?”

                 “How many invitations must I proffer?” she asks in turn. The archaic formality of her “Capitol Hill speak” makes me chuckle. “Got a pen and paper?” She waits while I ready pen and paper. She then gives me easy, explicit directions to her abode. She lives in an apartment complex in what is officially Rockville. “Close but no cigar. No Oxburg cigar, at any rate. You’ll be my Oxburg cigar for the evening! Come on over, cigar boy! I want to smoke you!”

                  Just like that, I do. There is visitor parking. Everything is deserted. Well… people are at barbecues or watching the fireworks. She buzzes me into the building and admits me into her apartment. “Let me use your bathroom,” I say right off.

                “You do have a credit card?” she asks. “You’re not a deadbeat?”

                “In no way am I a deadbeat!”

                “Don’t wack off in the john. No, really, save it! You’d be surprised at how stupid men can be sometimes.”

                 “I need to take a piss!”

                 “Thatta boy! You just do that little thing.”

                 She cracks me up. Like Stephen Colbert, she has a swipe attachment on her iPad. She swipes my credit card!

                “You being a working girl and all…” I say.

                 “We’ll have fun!” she insists, kissing me full on the mouth. Three parts toothpaste, two parts mouthwash! She’s an eye-opener. “You’re hot and sweaty! Take a cold shower,” she suggests, handing me a fluffy pink towel. “And leave your vitals alone!”

                “What is with you?” I ask. “I am not wacking off!”

                “Good! It ruins all the fun.”

                “Gad!” I say, glad to take a shower and cool off.      

                 The apartment is done up in Danish Modern on a budget. There are chrome chairs, but only two. The glass table and sofa are of minimalist design. Some additional furniture is made of corrugated cardboard, very chic but also kind of cheap. 

                We sit on green plastic garden chairs on her concrete balcony eating salmon chipotle dip on tortilla chips off a green plastic table, not because it is included in the price, but simply because Lenore happens to be hungry. The fireworks explode in the distance. At three miles, they sound muted, an endless series of dull thumps! that light up the sky. To me, the show resembles so much outgoing artillery. A radioman and Corporal in Vietnam, I heeded our First Sergeant when he told us, “Long’s it ain’t comin’ our way, don’ pay it no mind!”

               I don’t go to fireworks displays.

               “Come on to bed,” Lenore suggests after coffee. “I put a little something extra in the dip to keep us stimulated. How’s Henry?”

               “Henry?”

               “How’s our little friend?”

               “Quite erect, actually.”

               “Thatta boy!  C’mon!”

                “Now what is this?” I ask. On her bed, there’s an American flag!

                “What does it look like?”

                 “Your coverlet is an American flag?”

                 “No, that’s the bed.”

                 “So where do we lie?”

                 “On the flag.”

                 “We have sex on top of an American flag?”

                 “Hello-o-o! Fourth of July! Independence Day? Celebrating freedom?”

                 I start laughing. “You really are a Valley Girl!”

                “Don’t be so smug. If you come on July 14^th, we’ll do it atop a tri-color. The French flag. It all depends on the holiday, really. I try to diversify. Listen, let me do it my way and you decide.”

                “O-O-Okay.” You pays yo’ money, you gits yo’ choice.

                She puts on a tape—not a CD, but an audio cassette—of an aerial bombardment. Rockets bursting in air. Cannons belching destruction. Pulling me softly down atop the “coverlet,” an 84 inch by 48 inch American flag, she smothers me in kisses, her fingers unbuttoning and peeling off every stitch of my clothing in a matter of minutes. Totally turned on, I find myself sucking frantically on her gorgeous, melon-shaped breasts, the nipples coming erect beneath my tongue. As I grope further afield, she shows herself to be all Valley Girl. Going down on me, she Deep Throats me. Now I know why she didn’t want me abusing my vital organs. She had plans for my precious bodily fluids!

                As closely as she can get it, she tries to time my ejaculations to coincide with cannons bursting in air. Obviously, Lenore means well, but it’s a bit over the top. Fornicating on the American flag. Ejaculating to the sound of explosions. Paying for sex.

                When we are finished and have cleaned up, that alone a prodigious chore, I tell her that, yes, I did have fun. “It wasn’t like anything I ever did before…”

                “Kinky. I’m trying to bring out the kinky in you, lover boy!”

                “Yeah, well… Look, can I have coffee? Without any additives? Just coffee?”

                “Sure! Coffee, tea or me? You’ve still got a nice balance on your credit card. We can have another go at it! I have tricks you wouldn’t be-lieve!”

                 “I believe you! Lenore! I believe you!”

                  I still get home before midnight.

                                                      *

                   My mom is in a blue holiday funk, sulking, watching reruns of All In the Family, under the misguided assumption that other people are having more fun than she is.

                                                      *

 

         

             “Good morning, ladies and gentleman of the American Armed Forces. You mustn’t smoke, but feel free to drink coffee.

              “It is popular today to question why American troops are in Afghanistan. I will tell you why. It’s because we sent them there. Yes, that is correct, most American troops are over there on America’s dime. Although I can imagine American contractors going to Afghanistan, using their own money, to hire themselves out as mercenaries, I just don’t see that happening among the troops. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think I speak for the entire Command when I say we’re proud to have each and every one of you inside the tent pissing out, rather than outside the tent pissing in!

             “But enough about me. If we lose the next election, it will be because of hubris, so I try not to speak about myself.

              “I see those troops stationed in Afghanistan acting as antibodies in the body politic’s fight against the insidious infection of Communi—oops! I almost said Communism. The spread of Islamic radicalism is what I meant, of course. We can’t let that happen.

             “To use another analogy, those troops are the fuel additive added to the gasoline of American diplomacy to prevent engine knock in the Afghan vehicle.

            “Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? Is victory attainable in Afghanistan? Let me rephrase that question: Nothing is ever 100%. That toy train you wanted as a child never went fast enough. That ice cream cone was never big enough. This is the human predicament. Nothing is ever going to be quite enough. We wouldn’t be human if it were otherwise!

           “Having said that, a limited war with limited goals will someday be followed by a limited peace with limited results. THIS IS NOT A BAD THING! As in strip poker, as long as a single shred of clothing remains on the body politic, America’s dignity remains intact!

            “Historians will look back on this time and think they have lost their place in the history book they are reading. NO, NO, NO, this is NOT Vietnam! We are not caught in a quagmire, fighting a local insurgency among the indigenous people of the region who insist on going their own way and fashioning lives in their own style, as profane and different as they may be from the American ideal. A thousand times NO! This is not happening.

           “What we have here, is a failure to communicate.

            “When we pump money into the local economy in these remote provinces, it totally disrupts the status quo.

             “When we send in aid workers, they are in need of military protection. Without it, they’re sitting ducks. Having learned from bitter experience, we discover that the military presence of our troops ALSO draws fire. It’s a no-win situation.

             “I am calling for the following remedies. The fertilizer factory in Pakistan providing most of the amyl nitrate used in roadside bombs is being bought out by an American conglomerate, who have promised to convert it to quaalude production. A clinical relaxant, quaaludes can be added to the water supply in the most violent provinces. By local consent, of course. As a public service. If the Afghans themselves want them.

           “The point is, those people need to decide for themselves regarding their future. We can build, but we can’t destroy. Or we mustn’t destroy, at any rate, which really comes down to the same thing.

            “The election coming up in 2012, where the very existence of my administration will be called into question, in no way influences my policies, I can assure you. Fighting for our lives… well, it would be intolerable of me to lecture you about fighting for your life.

            “By a happy quirk, the Constitution makes the President also the Commander In Chief. You know, George Washington was a fantastic general, so the framers said, ‘He’s so good, why not let him wear two hats?’

             “I respect that. It didn’t turn out so well with a paranoid president like Richard Nixon, but generally, the system works. This gives me the prerogative to send in American fighting power whenever and wherever necessary. As a temporary measure, of course. Since Congress has the final authority over declaring—you know—war. It certainly was never a problem under Gerald Ford.

              “I like chili, but that doesn’t mean I would hesitate for a moment to use American power—sparingly, of course—if that country ever were threatened by Communist insurgents or a radical Muslim take-over. You have to use moderation in these things. Shock and awe, certainly, but then, get your butt outta there.

             “Which is what we’re doing in Afghanistan. Slowly, methodically, hunkered down in a crouch, but with heads held high, so to speak. You get my point. I don’t ever want to be accused of putting American soldiers in harm’s way. On the other hand, I can’t control other people’s behavior. People say all kinds of things! So, as an alternative, I simply won’t let it bother me. Water off a duck’s back. Sticks and stones can break my bones. Yada, yada, yada. See ya later, alligator.

              “My opponents in the political field will make hay over the lack of progress in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and anywhere else they can find to nitpick. The American people are too smart to fall for their facile arguments and hopeless comparisons!

              “God bless you and long live the United States of America!”

                                       – President Blackie Diamond in my upcoming novel

*

 

             Occasionally, because of its name, The National Herald is mistaken for a church publication. Such is not the case. At those moments, only its reputation as a 120-year-old newspaper of great repute rescues it from calumny. You don’t expect The New York Times to be a compendium of train and bus schedules. The Chicago Tribune covers more than the courts. The Los Angeles Times, flat broke, still lists other items in addition to sunrises and sunsets.

            Several years into the new millenium, to celebrate Valentine’s Day, The National Herald’s magazine Hark! ran a short story contest based on a photograph. A voluptuous strawberry blonde—anonymously presented from the back—lies half-naked on a bed, clutching the receiver of a telephone.

            Your job, Bob, shall be to make up a romantic story based on this photo. Should you or any of your team be captured or killed, my secretary will disallow that individual’s expense account!

            My creative writing teacher at Moosegrave College once lectured us, “Boys and girls, young adults, please don’t ever begin a story with the sentence ‘Frank sat on the grass in front of the frat house.’ Nothing could be more mundane, pernicious and absolutely reeking of inconsequentiality. A story that begins like that loses the reader’s interest before you have even begun.”

            What a challenge!

            Here is that story.

                                         Tell Laurel I Love Her

            Bob sat on the grass in front of the frat house.

            “Hello?”

            “Laurel, it’s Bob!”

            “Good grief, Bob, what time is it?”

             “Never mind what time it is, Laurel! I LOVE YOU!”

               “Bob!” she yawned cavernously. “It’s sweet of you to call on Valentine’s Day, honey, but a little early—“     

               “It’s 10 a.m. I’m sitting on the grass in front of the Alpha Sigma Pi fraternity house here on campus in sunny Hollywood, Florida, thinking of you, Laurel, thinking how I love you! Let me count the ways. There’s—“

               “Bob, honey, it’s way early!” she said, all but dropping the phone. She couldn’t really be angry with him. Bob forgave her every little misstep. That was his strength, he was non-judgmental. Even when she took up pole-dancing to supplement her salary as a waitress, Bob hadn’t complained. Jim, Paul and Richard all felt pole-dancing was out of line. People completely missed the benefits of pole-dancing! It was wonderful exercise. Many of the movements were similar to cheerleading. No one criticized cheerleaders. Ergo, why criticize pole-dancers? True, she pole-danced in a titty bar, but that wasn’t her fault. Given a choice, she gladly would have pole-danced in Town Hall.

           Even when she slept with her boss, Arturo, sweet and considerate Bob had understood. He used the opportunity to score some coke from Artie.

        “Laurel, the sky is filled with purple haze—!”

        “Bob?” she asked, beginning to tire of this conversation. “What are you talking about, Bob? Have you begun ingesting methamphetamine again, Bob?”

        “I’m clean, I swear!” he gasped into his cell phone. “There’s a bright, silver light filling the sky, Laurel!”

        “Because, Bob, long-term abuse of crystal meth can cause—“

        “My God!” he screamed. “It’s a f—ing spaceship!”

        “Bob?”

        On the lawn of the frat house, yellow with morning sunshine, alive with the buzzing of bees and twitter of birds, the eight-ton alien spacecraft roared to a stop amidst a pool of flame. Slowly, slowly, the metal door slid open and hundreds of little green men the size of crickets infested the lawn. Firing tiny rayguns, they felled students on every side. Pinging and banging, their guns mowed down the young people like the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

        Clamping his iPod Nano more firmly to his hip with his right hand and holding his cell phone with his left, Bob sprinted toward the safety of the corner.

        Over the phone, Laurel could hear the wop-wop-wop of military helicopters. I guess this is what it’s like to serve in Iraq, she thought, on the edge of sleep. The soothing wop, wop, wop had the rhythm of a pole-dance. As she drifted off…

        “Hello! Ma’am?”

        She was awakened by an authoritative voice. She must have dozed off holding the phone. “What? Yes, who is this?” she asked sleepily. Turning to look at the wall clock across the room, she saw it was 11:15 a.m. “Jesus!” she mumbled crankily. “What does a girl have to do to get some sleep?” Poor Bob, she had used up 75 of his anytime minutes.

        “This is Ralph Rolfe of the 33^rd Medical Detachment, ma’am,” said the voice. He sounded surprisingly virile.

        Laurel began to wake up! “Yes?” she asked.

        “You must be Laurel, ma’am,” said the deep, consoling voice of Ralph Rolfe.

        “Well, yes, I am,” she said, sitting up in bed and running her hand through her hair. “Do I know you?”

        “Not really, ma’am. I’m a medic with the 33^rd,” Rolfe told her apologetically.

        “Because I’m not that far north of Hollywood. I mean, Florida isn’t such a big state, geographically.”

        “That’s true,” agreed Ralph Rolfe. “I know your name because the last thing this young man, whose pale lifeless head is cradled in my lap, said before he died was, ‘Tell Laurel I love her!’ Just how far north of Hollywood are you, ma’am? May I call you Laurel?”

        Oh, well, she thought philosophically. It is Valentine’s Day and dear, sweet Bob wouldn’t have wanted me to be alone on Valentine’s Day! The very fact that he called—

*

            Unlike the university age editors of the Moosegrave College weekly, the grown-up professionals at The National Herald had no complaint about the narrative style nor the length of my piece, which stayed within the prescribed limits. Although they agreed that, technically, it was a short story focusing on the various aspects of love, by their reckoning, what was missing was the sting of Cupid’s arrows. They felt my contribution failed to fulfill the spirit of Valentine’s Day.

            Rather ungraciously, they told me to take a hike.

*

            Alas, I live with the rancid remnant of early success. Once upon a time, having just graduated from college, I won the golden horseshoe at this self-same National Herald. They took a reasoned, lengthy reply I made to an article about the Dutch Vondelpark outside Amsterdam and published it as a bonafide news story.

            I was a newspaper writer!

            They sent me a check for $25!       

             Beginner’s luck fresh out of the gate, I have spent a lifetime trying to duplicate this one case of correct info and perfect timing. 

             Like many a denizen of Greater Washington, over the years, I too have sought employment at The National Herald. I have applied to work editorially on the Night Desk, electronically on the national blog or even organizationally within the Data Archive Division. A simple B. A. in Communications—journalism, radio, TV and film—I get fully dumped upon by people with Master’s Degrees who already have 30 years’ broadcast and writing experience for major news outlets near you!

            “Why are you applying for a nuts and bolts position at The National Herald if you’re already a senior editor somewhere else?” I actually asked a fellow applicant at the publisher’s Open House job fair.

            “Transferring laterally allows me to move up the career ladder without waiting for someone above me, where I work now, to retire or die.

            “Although I’m not at all sure that I want to commit to a new company at this time.”

            Fee, fye, fo, fum, I’m trying to land a job, and my competitors want to embellish their résumés!

            In this new millenium, I have rec’d. only an occasional nibble from The National Herald.

            At The National Herald, it’s not the quality of your writing that counts. Everyone writes stupendously! Nor is encyclopedic knowledge particularly rewarded. There are researchers to ferret that stuff, every reporter has a string of knowledgeable contacts, and Google works as well on their WiFi network as anyone else’s. No, the sad fact is, in an ever-shrinking environment, it’s your reputation that separates the gainfully employed from the dudes on line at Social Services. If you already have your set of keys to the building, mazel tov! If not, seek thy fortune elsewhere.

              I have since attempted to remain an impartial observer of the newspaper scene, noting the unmantling and demise of one news sheet after another. “Getting screwed?” I gloat triumphantly, in spite of my best efforts to the contrary. “It couldn’t happen to a more elitist, arrogant, puffed-up, self-aggrandizing collection of self-congratulatory egomaniacs!”

               I mean, happily, I’m not bitter or anything, right?

*

 

 

            Reading through a hard copy of my blog, I realize that “Yikes! We’ve never even been properly introduced!” Like an Icelandic volcano, I just started spewing ash, smoke and lava at you! (Does this mean that every sentence I write hereafter will end with an exclamation point?!)

            My name is Kevin Feingold. I grew up in Oxburg, Maryland. I live with my 90-year-old mom, which kind of gives the game away: If she’s 90, I must be, like, really old, man. Feeling, acting and looking like I’m 40, I lead a chameleon existence. Only when pushed to anger, do I remind people who are disrespecting me that “I am 63 years old and, actually, retired from the military! Some of those precious freedoms you are enjoying, have been protected by me!” I always regret myself, wishing I hadn’t said that. It has never, ever swayed anyone in the slightest. People who like me continue to like me, people who think I’m a prick continue to abuse my presence.

             The point is, yes, I’m giving three days a week to the campaign of my dear, personal buddy Anna Bola, but that’s only a hobby.

             I’m a screenwriter. Retired from the military in 1999, I floundered a bit, until reconnecting and teaming up with my high school buddy Bruce. (At some point, I’ll get his permission to give you his last name. In the age of Google and Facebook, I’ve become very leery about giving out other peopIe’s vital statistics.) Almost immediately, I rechristened him “Boopsie,” which is what we called him at Oxburg High. When I get really angry or excited, I call him “The Boob.” He and I opened our writing bureau in 2007. Our glass-fronted office is in a strip mall, in what used to be a convenience store. The vacated premises next door once housed a video store. Am I coming through here? This is one desiccated property. Harvey Weingold (no relation), who owns the mall, has said quite honestly, “It’s a terrible time to own commercial real estate, especially mine, which depends on the retail trade. People ain’t buying squat, and the shopping arcades are emptying fast. Even after this so-called fantastic bailout, you can’t find new start-ups among retail establishments. Nobody’s stupid enough to open a business in these perilous times.

              “I don’t like you, I don’t need you, the goddam building can just as well stand empty for all I care! I’m that bummed out!

              “However, in the interest of decorum and good business practices, I would rather have you in my building than not. As a hedge against vandalism. To present a glimmer of commercial life, a semblance of a functioning mall. Thank God my dad never lived to see this day! A taquería and two Hollywood script writers my only tenants.

             “Enjoy, enjoy! Renovations, expansion, I am open to suggestion.

             “Just don’t do anything without telling me or I’ll throw your sorry asses out on the street before you know what hit you!”

              We love Harvey. Our rent is astronomically low.

              Let’s just say our section of Rockville Pike isn’t what it used to be. If it ever was.

              Three days a week at the campaign, four days a week at the office, when do I get a day off? Aha! Excellent question. At least once a week, I blow my stack at my mom over absolutely nothing, ranting, “Goddam it! When do I get a goddam day off around here?! I’m tired! TIRED, you hear?! I’m fucking exhausted. Screw this, I’m going to bed.”

              You can see that hanging around in June to play games with Miss Handjob, Carrie Ann Winslow, entailed more than time away from home. It also meant a total leave of absence from work work, from my profession. Playing hooky, for which I am rightly ashamed. When I’m not there, Boopsie works alone, but he doesn’t like it. Research takes many hours, from early morning until late at night. Screenwriting is the original all-consuming passion. I can only compare it to Latin monks transcribing books by hand or Torah writing. Tedious, exacting and forever. So my letting Carrie get her hooks into my soul like that weren’t too cool.    

              I will be glad when Anna’s campaign ends and I return to only a six-day work week. Anna’s husband Frank, an economics professor at U. of Maryland, mentioned his intention to retire now that Anna is heading to a position in Baltimore. “Don’t you dare!” I counseled him. “You won’t have a moment’s rest. The biggest mistake of my life was retiring from a full-time job. I’ve been chasing my tail ever since. At least with a 40-hour work week, you have something called leisure. Time off. Take that away, every day is a work day!”

              He thinks I’m being histrionic. I have not, however, heard any more talk about him resigning from teaching.

             As for screenwriting, this simply means that specific individuals at several major film studios trust us enough to give us a stab at writing or improving properties, to which they own the rights. Yes, in the Old Days you had to go out west to do that. Whether or not it was a Golden Age, that megillah ended with the arrival of telex machines. Since then, faxes, floppy discs, Fed-Ex and, of course, the Internet have dispersed the work load in all directions. If you have an arcane specialty—or know someone who does—Hollywood can probably use you in some way, shape or form. Having written treatments regarding “needle Nazis,” wolf urine and Tibetan horns, I can attest to how arcane Hollywood scripts can get.

              Boopsie and I also do our own production, on occasion, in the field of documentaries. Welcome to my world!

                                                                *

               The yearly Filmmakers’ Awards dinner is not your seminal event. J-Lo and Anistan rarely attend. We get no coverage on “Access Hollywood.” No one can even agree if it should be called the Filmmaker’s Awards or Filmmakers’ Awards, that’s what happens when people spend too much time in the cutting room editing out single frames of film. We’re not just focused on detail, we’re focused on details within the detail. Film grain. How do you make a high def, Blu-ray copy of a film like Top Gun, with its purposely prevalent use of grain and pushed film speed?

               This topic speaks volumes to Boopsie and me, the “documentary filmmakers” who’ve never learned proper lighting technique. “Throw a spot on it,” is Boopsie’s first and final suggestion when setting up. The Washington Monument? “Throw a spot on it.” The Hudson River. “Throw a spot on it.”

             “Boopsie, how do you throw a spotlight on the Hudson River?”

              That’s what they write shooting scripts for, so he can bury his head in the shooting script and not have to answer knotty tech questions.

             “I see our third shot entails nudity,” he’ll say, “making a statement” to cover his faulty skill set.

              You gotta laugh. “Boopsie, the Statue of Liberty is not a nude.”

              “The way I film it, it’ll look naked,” he insists. “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”

              Pul-lease. Nobody ever pays us big bucks.

              We is at the awards din-din to (1) hear the presentation on conversion of back catalog to HD and (2) ostensibly to receive an award for our short Mirror Band, a doc that follows the angry, depraved wanderings of our receptionist Jacqueline—or “Jackie”— and her latest punk configuration.

             Naturally, since we don’t do lighting, the category of our award is “available light photography in a color presentation.”

              I told you, this is a group that focuses on the details.

             “Definitely one of the most oppressive films of the year,” Dwight Smith, the white-haired, red-faced Chairman of the Filmmakers Union, assures us. Dressed in a fine suit and swaying back and forth at the lectern, he shakes his shaggy, white hair at us. Even his tie says “Dapper Dan.”

             “He means impressive,” Boopsie tells everyone at our table. Turning to the surrounding tables, he calls out, “He means impressive!”

              “A film so oppressive,” Dwight continues, seemingly oblivious to Boopsie’s correction, “I took my young nieces to see it.”

             “See, he means impressive,” the Boob demands, all but jumping out of his seat.

             “You have to calm down your film producer friend,” Scott McCormick warns me ominously, leaning across our table and removing the flower display to the floor with a single brusque grab of his hand. Hey, you don’t fuck with Scott.

            “I can only try—“

            “Because,” Scott continues emphatically, “we all know what old Dwight is trying to say. ‘Impressive,’ ‘oppressive,’ who cares? Dwight was moved by your film.”

            “See, Boopsie,” I say, pulling on the tails of his tux. “Shush! Everybody knows Dwight gets a little gaga when he’s been drinking.”

             “Who’s been trinking?!” Dwight booms from the stage, all but toppling onto the nearest table. I guess my voice carried.

              “Did someone say ‘Lady Gaga’?” one of our compatriots calls from the crowd.

              “Here, here!” someone else shouts and begins to clap. He is quickly followed by almost everyone else in the room. If we can’t shut the Chairman up, we’ll drown him out with our applause.

                You’ll notice there aren’t any women there. Wither the women filmmakers of Washington, D.C.? Out working, while we laggards sit sweating in the ballroom of a swanky downtown hotel, blowing our annual dues on overpriced crab cakes with quiche Lorraine.

                                                                *

               “Where is your dear Jacqueline? Didn’t she accompany you?” Paul Raoul Sanchez asks us afterwards as we loiter in front of the hotel, waiting for the valet parking attendants to bring forth our vehicles.

              “Smoking dope in Brazil,” replies Boopsie, the worse for wear.

              “Nah,” I reassure Raoul, who after all is a friend, “that’s cool. They’re actually playing a gig. I’ll give you her regards.”

            “You’ll give who… my…?”

            Oops, Raoul’s English isn’t that good. “I’ll give her your regards.”

             “Playing a gig out of town?” he asks, pressing his mottled face against my shoulder. The crush of humanity on the sidewalk is fast becoming impossible. I wonder if Raoul is going to be a pest.

             “Actually, she’s performing at The Graveyard,” I tell him, instantly regretting the lapse. I try never to give away concrete details.

             “How quaint,” exclaims Raoul. “We must go there!”

            “We mustn’t go there,” I breathe in his ear. “I have to get Boopsie home to his lair before he demonstrates single-handedly the colloquial phrase ‘fighting drunk.’” Already, I am in the process of wrestling the glass award trophy from my business partner’s hand. I can distinctly hear him growling at the crowd.

              “We’ll do that,” says Raoul in the clipped tones of a European. It’s moments like these that endear him to us plebeians. He’s got his smart phone out, looking up the address of The Graveyard, like one of those dorks in the TV commercial. “My treat, my tab, my pleasure,” he insists, getting pushed into on-coming traffic.

            “Raoul, you naughty man,” I sigh, pulling him back from sudden death. “You have more moolah than you know what to do with.”

            Indeed, a very rich South American, he is even now tipping the Latino car attendants, the doorman, even the “Executive Manager” who is seeing us off, a black dude in an enviously high-end gray charcoal suit that puts most of us to shame. Raoul stuffs a $20 bill in each pocket in turn. The attendants smile toothily, say “Aw-right!” and run around in even bigger circles. Eventually someone goes to find his and my car.

            “Where is this graveyard of yours?” asks Raoul.

            We manhandle Boopsie into the front seat of my car and I take him home to Maryland. Raoul follows in his Maserati. By the time I reach the correct block, the Boob is comatose. I am glad to have Raoul’s help in lugging the man up the stairs to his second floor apartment. We dump him, unceremoniously, on the bed, lock the door on our way out and push the key through the mail slot.

            “The Graveyard is way over in Rosslyn, in Virginia,” I warn Raoul.

            “So?”

            “What?” I whine. “You want to go there?”

            “I insist!”

            “Roire jär lada.”

            “I don’t know what that means.”

            “Loaded and raring to go.”

              Looking at his watch, he pauses and adds, “Unless, of course, the show is over.”

            “Raoul, it’s The Graveyard. They don’t even open the doors until 11 o’clock at night.”

            We drive there in his Maserati, of course, watching vague shapes flit by in the inky black of a summer’s night. I feel like I’m lying in a bathtub, the car sits so low. Distracted by the sloping windshield, I am pressed back into my seat every time Raoul accelerates. Zero to 60 in 3.8 seconds, I’m told.

            And, of course, the rock club is a madhouse. I would never have gone there on my own. A sea of young people and college students populate the sidewalk, smoking. “Excuse me,” Raoul asks at his most diffident.

          “Huh?”

           “I’m sorry. We are entering this establishment.”

             The doormen eye his Giorgio Armani suit, his Gucci loafers with the trademark tassles, his hair, the $100 sunglasses. The $20 bill discreetly handed to each of them assures us quick entrance.

              Inside, a raucous crowd drinks beer in steins from one end of the wood-paneled room to the other. The chrome bar, buried in humanity, seems unattainable, but—Moses at the Red Sea—Raoul surges forward and I bump along in his wake.

              Many exceedingly touchable young women eye my companion. I am, as usual, virtually invisible.

              “Oh, shit,” I mutter.

              “What’s the matter?” Raoul calls over his shoulder, always solicitous.

              “I know the bartender! That’s Gary Price. We studied television technique together at the local public access station around the corner. Long story.”

              “O-kay,” Raoul replies, his arm wrapped affectionately around the shoulder of a panting, perspiring, smiling vixen. “What are you drinking, dahling?” he drawls. “And can I freshen it for you?”

             “Vodka tonic made with Kettel One,” she instructs him primly, running her ruby-red fingernails through his coal-black hair. A walking advert for the Latin Lover, Raoul’s clothes and accessories scream “Money!”

              Within minutes, he is drinking with Monica as if they’ve known one another a lifetime, his elbows anchoring the bar. I stand and eye the stage through the kaleidoscopic gloom.  

             Tired but resolute, I want to be home in bed.

             Raoul is just getting started.

             “You again!” Gary joshes, siphoning me a plain ginger ale with his handgun. “I’ll need to see an I.D.”

            “Yeah, right!”

             The bar area is a melee of madly thirsty customers, wet dollar bills of various denominations floating across the counter in a steady stream. Everyone shouts to be heard, chattering drunken innuendoes. Some girls have one of those flat, cherry-red, shirtpocket cameras out, video recording the scene.

           “What do you like about Explosive Plastic?” they ask me.

            “Me?” I answer, surprised. “You mean the band?”

             “The band playing here tonight. I hear they’re awesome!”

              “Well, I do know the singer. I’d have to call them noisy but tight. This is the third incarnation of this band. They change drummers and names once a month. I don’t know why. How old are you guys?”

              “We’re journalism majors at Moosegrave College… Why are you laughing?”

              “I was a journalism major at Moosegrave. Great school!” I shout. With the decibels reaching truly sonic heights, everything has to be spoken at Scream Level 3. I finally take pity on my poor hearing, rip up a napkin and stuff tissue in my ears. It doesn’t stop me from continuing the conversation.

              “When did you go to Moosegrave?” the girls ask, returning to me after carefully meandering up and down the bar, camera in hand. A tracking shot.

             “Back in the Stone Age. Black and white television. Analog transmissions. Mono recording. Teletype machines. All that good stuff!”

            “What’s a tell-a-type machine?”

             “Nothing you need to worry about,” I counsel them.

              They’re nice. Fresh, excited bundles of energy, smiling in a nano-second, waving their hands daintily while quaffing beer like sailors, they are caught in that awkward phase between waif and buxom: They have the angular faces of teenagers but the pudgy waistlines and wider buttocks of adults.

               Interpreting my appreciative glance, the dark-haired beauty tells me, “We’re not here to hook up. We’re just here to see the band.”

                Whoa!

                “Don’t bother with Clarisa,” her buddy interjects, physically placing herself between us. “She’s butch. No man can provide what she wants.” Red-haired, green-eyed and freckly, she smiles ruefully and jokingly shoves her hand down my trousers.

                 Whoa!!!

                 “Anybody home?”

                  It’s a relief when they get distracted by the appearance of the band!

                 Jacqueline is, as always, majestic. The black-eyed, evil temptress, she toys with the audience, howls, sings and prowls the stage. A thick, black microphone cord slinks after her like a tail. Retro, Jackie is all leather hip boots, frilly black blouse, leather vest, neon-colored plastic bangles on both arms, fingerless black leather gloves à la Michael Jackson and face paint à la Kiss.

             She also knows how to sing.

            The band is good. Maybe not mainstream Top 40 radio and record company good, but exciting. The new drummer stays sharp and percussive. The guitarist lays endless riffs on us, spiking the melody with rumbling flourishes that seem to say, “Anything less would be a waste of your time and mine!”

            Yngve Malmsteen guitar playing.

            A tight set, they nail it.

            The band is selling copies of their first and only single, of course, “Bathroom of Pain,” a 3-song e.p. for $5 each. Raoul immediately buys 20, stuffing a $100 bill adroitly into the young sales lady’s shirt pocket, avidly caressing her breast in the process. She smiles at him, accepting his frank admiration. “And your name?” he asks, shouting to be heard.

            “What?”

            “What.. is.. your…name?”

             “Mine?” she asks, surprised. “I’m J.C.”

             “Hello, J.C.!” he declares, stuffing a $20 bill in her blouse pocket as a tip, smiling shyly, and turning away before she can protest.

              She looks at me looking at her. “Is he your friend?” she asks. “He’s worse than Santa Claus. Everybody gets presents.”

              Walking slowly, making his way toward the stage, Raoul hands out free singles to all takers. I don’t need one. We used our office equipment to burn the copies on CD-R recordable discs.  Most of the kids are dancing. Confronted by Raoul, some shake their heads “no,” believing he’ll ask for payment.

            “All gone!” he smirks, minutes later, returning to join me by the bar. “Good band. Nice crowd, too! It’s not Caracas, but it’ll do to be getting on with.”

            The set ends. I applaud until my hands ache. “Let’s skedaddle!”

            “I want to stay!” Raoul protests.

            “Everyone’s leaving! Let’s skedaddle,” I say, no longer able to stifle my yawns. Still, it takes another 15 minutes to separate Raoul from the bar.

            We walk back to his car. There, half on the sidewalk and half on the street, stand J.C. and her friends. A whole squad of gay young women, they smoke cigarettes and admire Raoul’s Maserati. After all, it is canary yellow.

            “I knew it was you!” J.C. bursts out laughing at our approach.

            “I have to give the young lady a ride in my car,” he tells me.

            “Raoul, they’re gay.”

            “I have to give the young lady a ride in my car,” he repeats, frowning mischievously. “I am an equal opportunity heterosexual. I seduce all women regardless of sexual orientation.”

            A girl named “Ankhi” gives me a lift in her car. We follow J.C. and Raoul in the Maserati. I can’t believe it, but he lets her drive! Talk about liberated. Or perhaps just admirably insured.  We drive to an all-night diner that doubles as a pizzeria. Five car-loads of us. Worse than a flash mob, Raoul, the girls and I flood the place. “Pizza! Pizza!” they shout, hopping on the counter top, climbing on the chairs, marching in and out through the swinging doors to the kitchen. “We want Mario! We want Mario! Where is Salvatore?!”

            “Hokay, hokay already,” a heavy, bearded, very dark Sicilian announces, coming through the doors from the kitchen holding an enormous wooden spatula. “You wreck mah place, I hitchu wid dis!” He waves the spatula threateningly.

            “Booo-ooo-oo! ‘Ray-y-y-y!” the girls razz him.

            “Shaddup an’ sit down, little ladies, I bring you pizza!” he declares.

            As obediently and quietly as sheep, they sit at the tables, although they do throw the paper napkins on the floor and spill salt on the table tops.

            “We’ve been here before,” J.C. assures us, smiling tartly.

            “Do tell,” I say.

            “They know us.”

            “Apparently.” I take the opportunity to count heads. An astonishing 17 of us fill the tables. Raoul and I are the only guys.

            “My treat. My tab!” insists Raoul.

            “No way, José!… Don’t put your con on us, gent!… That’s so Old School! Try another one!… Boo-oo-oo!” they chorus.

            “I don’t think you’re going to get to pay,” I tell him, as the Sicilian runs back and forth to the kitchen bringing us tray after steaming tray of piping hot pizza.

            “These are too hot to eat. Let’s go outside,” the girls decide. In the lot behind the diner, there is a basketball court. J.C. and her crew know where the light switch is and where the b-balls are stored. Waiting for the pizzas to cool, they play a pickup game.

            “You see the way those guys left the diner?” Raoul asks, smiling but sweating, watching the game. “The other customers. You see that? Mass exodus.”

            “I think our crowd kind of frightened them off.”

            “Yeah, whatever,” Raoul marvels. I suddenly realize that this is a whole new American experience for him.

            “The Lizzie scene really isn’t my thing,” I tell him.

            “I’m impressed, is all. Very tough, competent ladies. They are not like I expected, at all.”

            “Fuck it, I’m going in for pizza,” I say and leave them to their game.

            Burning my tongue, I am soon joined by the gang, who troop back into the diner, raid the soft drink cooler and devour everything in sight.

            Raoul goes into the kitchen and arranges payment. None of us say anything, but the girls look happy, grateful and satiated. It’s late. We all wear tomato sauce moustaches.

            “What does that guy do for a living?” one of them asks me. I like women individually, but in these numbers, I don’t know where to look.

            “His family owns, like, half of Argentina.”

             “Oh.” She shrugs.

              Impressed? Unimpressed? Can she pinpoint Argentina on a map of the world? They are in their 20’s, but except for frequenting punk clubs, storming eateries, playing night basketball and being gay, I don’t get these ladies at all.

              “You guys are way out of my league,” I tell her.

               “Oh.” She shrugs, busy with a crumpled napkin, wiping away tomato sauce.

                Screw this. My brain shut down an hour ago. Everything and everybody looks green and in high contrast under the fluorescent lights. Eventually, we say good night to the ladies and Raoul drives me back to Maryland.

               Wild summer nights.

*

            There’s a certain panting quality to my narratives, as if I’m running home between occurrences to record the tale. Which I am. As the plot unfurls, so go I. “Life as literature” sounds hopelessly pedantic. “Fucking up and writing about it” is more my style.

            A journalism major at Moosegrave College in 1968, I had a weekly column in the campus newspaper Moose Call. Entitled “Luckless Cream Cheese,” I wrote about poor Mike Hargrove and the terrible (“Sob, sob…”) time he was having with mean girlfriends, campus rivals and his disappointment with American politics.

            Hmmm.

            Why does this sound vaguely familiar?

            To round out the donut, I wanted to spend my penultimate year in college writing (9 months x four weeks =) 36 columns, and end up with a 36 chapter novel. Easy as writer’s cramp.

            My narrative style did not sit well with my college-age editors. “We don’t understand your column,” they complained. “Write essays.”

            “Are people reading my column?”

            “That’s beside the point—“

            “But do people read it?” I asked.

            At this point, Big Kahuna Editor-In-Chief Randall Blake himself intervened in our little office debate. “Everybody reads your fucking column,” he explained, “which is wholly irrelevant. We don’t understand it! Get me, young’un? We don’t get it and we don’t like it.

            “You should write political essays like Kowa Bonga. Write sociological essays like Stephanie Pratt. Do a goddam gardening column, for all I care. Just write something that belongs in a newspaper!

            “We’re a newspaper! Your column reads like chapters in a novel,” he howled, deeply offended.

            “Kowa’s one of my best friends,” I told them, “but he already provides you with Black Power credibility. Steph’ and I sit next to each other in three different classes, but personally, her columns bore me. I hate gardening! Although I do have a good tip: Intersperse mint plants among your marijuana seedlings and you will grow naturally mentholated pot.”

            “Are you going to write essays?” the three editors asked in unison with the finality of an axe chopping wood.

            “No.”

            They discontinued my column.

*

            This is the gunfight at O.K. Corral! Okay, Randall, it’s 43 years later. God knows where you are and what you’re doing, but I fully intend to write a sufficient number of intriguing blogs to constitute a book’s worth. Fictionalizing my endless screw-ups, I will re-edit my material, heightening the tension, beefing up the language, turning up the emotional volume.

            If Barack Obama and Sarah Palin can write books, anybody can! Reading Palin’s Going Rogue: An American Life, it’s like getting cornered at a cocktail party by a babbling brook who insists on telling her life story. Every five sentences, Sarah makes some little dig at liberals, Democrats or her personal adversaries. Acid barbs sprinkled in mindless chatter, I got my copy, used, from the library for $1. Unfortunately, it stank so much of cigarette smoke, I finally had to throw it in the recycling container. You couldn’t give it away.

            This is my manifesto: If I am successful, I shall crank out a novel as portentous as Norman Mailer, ribald as Henry Miller, spooky as Anne Rice, didactic as Kowa Bonga and boring as Stephanie Pratt.

            (I went on to a military career. Stephanie, bless her, published her first short story collection a year after graduating from Moosegrave. My dear old friend has just published her sixth short story collection! Way t’go, sweetie! A “serious, established author,” her stories still bore me to tears.)

            On your mark, get set… Wish me luck.

            Publisher inquiries welcome!

*