The Ratfuck Bastard Conspiracy Part Ten

     The President's Eye Doctor, Doctor Victor von Como, eighty-nine years old, won't retire, Korean War vet, restored vision in soldiers, sailors and Marines in his day, left some disappointed. HOPE IS A FOUR LETTER WORD hangs as a plaque in his examination room fifteen levels below the White House.  The suburb underneath the White House links to other 'burbs and to the Central Hub under the Washington Monument.  Slaves maintain the subterranean metropolis the existence of which is unknown to the public, though speculated about often.  Fittingly, Doctor von Como's skin resembles a salamander's pale belly, a cave species unfamiliar with sunlight, perhaps.  Comfortable in a nine-room apartment on Level 23, the optometrist who has served eleven presidents before Moe Lieden, von Como exists in a private paradise, just one patient to see once a year, plenty of time for top secret side projects, enough time to read the rest of Balzac's works, and reread Proust, and, if there's time, Gibbon.  

     Five feet tall, a semi-hunchback, himself wearing round-lensed no frame glasses, resembling counters on the wrinkled landscape of his belly-of-a-deep-sea-fish face.  

     Moe Lieden: When I'm in this chair I start to fantasize.  Do you fantasize, Doc?

     von Como: No, Mr. President, I doooooo.

     Lieden: What do you do, sport?

     von Como: I have always been a doer--look left.  Look up to the left, down to the left, look right, up to the right, down to the right, look straight up, look straight down, look at my nose, look at my ear. 

     Lieden: Say, you're an ugly fish, but you managed to make something of yourself.  Good for you!

     von Como: You're aware of my service in the United States Army Medical Corps?

     Lieden: Yeah, you were stationed at Bethesda or someplace in the fifties, after the Korea War.

     von Como: The First Medical Laboratory in Korea, and later at Walter Reed.

     Lieden: First one, huh?

     von Como: It was called the First Medical Laboratory.

     Lieden: Confusing.  They should've called it the Richard Nixon Medical Laboratory, or the Marlon Brando Hospital.

     von Como: This bright light will be uncomfortable.

     Lieden: Eye burn!

     von Como: Hold still, Mr. President.

     Lieden: Eye pain!  You're killing me, Doc!  I won't be able to look at pretty ladies and look at my signature when I write it.

     von Como: All right, you can relax.  Your eyes look good, Mr. President.  Come back in a year.

     Lieden: What are you going to do for the next year?

     von Como: Balzac.

     Lieden: (low hoarse whisper) Say, I didn't know.  Boyfriend?

     von Como: I beg your pardon?

     Lieden: Does your boyfriend have a big ball sack?

     von Como: Honoré de Balzac, the writer, I'm reading his complete fiction.

     Lieden: Oh I see, you're not a fruitcake, that's good, not that I object to fruitcakes in my administration! I have room for three, that's the quota we decided upon.  One of em's a black belt in judo, or is it kendo?  In any case, did you pick up any souvenirs in Korea?  

     von Como: Just my first wife, Soo Jin.

     Lieden: A Korean chick, huh?  How old was she?

     von Como: When we married?  Twenty-one.

     Lieden: (grins) You scoundrel!

     von Como: She left me for another man once she got to the States.

     Lieden: A taller man?

     von Como: Yes, taller, but that wasn't her reason.

     Lieden: What was her reason?

     von Como: She suspected I was experimenting on her eyeballs while she slept.  How?  She never was able to explain it, but she sometimes had dreams in which I inserted small instruments under her eyelids while she slept, giving her peculiar sensations.  One time, I really was peering at her closed eyes, my face close, my breath, according to her, still smelling of morning coffee, morning breath from the day prior, cigarettes, onions, garlic, and ranch dressing.  When she awoke, my face in her face, my rancid exhales of breath in her nostrils, she screamed.

     Lieden: Did you do experiments on her eyeballs?  

     von Como: Mr. President, just because my most enduring nickname is Doctor Eyeball, doesn't mean I'm a mad optometrist performing unethical experiments on people's ocular equipment.

     Lieden: Your breath still isn't good.  It smells like you drink the coffee but you don't brush your tongue.  True?

     von Como: I don't live to please anyone, sir, except for the President, who happens to be you this day.  Are you pleased with today's appointment?  Care to get back to work?

     Lieden: I can take a hint.  Boy, I still see a bright circle from that eye-burning machine.

     von Como: Afterimage from a strong light source.  It'll pass.  Wear these dark glasses for a few hours until your pupils shrink.

     Lieden: These aren't my aviators.  

     von Como: They'll serve in the meantime.  You'll find light painful for a little while.  Now Mr. President, please leave.

     Lieden: I'm going to wear my aviators once I get upstairs, is that all right?

     von Como: Yes.

     Lieden: That's my look, man!  I'm the pilot!  I'm the captain, bedding long-haired long-legged stewardesses!  These are cardboard frames!  No stewardess wants to sit on the face of an airline pilot wearing cardboard sunglasses, come on, man!

     von Como: Please go.

     Lieden: I'm leaving, I'm leaving.  One more thing.  How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?  (grins) I finally learned to say that without stuttering.  Did you know I overcame a childhood stuttering problem?

     von Como: Many have.

     Artie Sneffen's aboveground office, Foggy Bottom, fog outside, for some reason the only place within 500 miles where there's fog all the time.  A dense gray misty mass goes right up to his big double window.  He doesn't remember the view, doesn't matter, this isn't his primary office, but Cassandra Blade doesn't know about the other one, yet.  His secretary, Carol, has wheeled in a three-tiered metal cart with a Samsung TV, Sony DVD player, and Sony remote with dead batteries.  After a minute of mild insults, Artie Sneffen sent Carol out into the fog to buy new batteries, "triple A's, do not come back with double A's!"  She arrived just minutes ago, replaced the batteries, tested them, handed the remote to her glaring boss.     

     Cassandra Blade sweeps in, chin uplifted, proud like a prize-winning sailing yacht, three of her employees taking chairs in Carol's small office.  The door closes.  Two Secretaries of State regard each other with due respect for a few seconds.

     

     Sneffen: Seated, please.  Do you want coffee?  A soda?  Snacks?  Popcorn?  

     Blade: You know I don't like Foggy Bottom.  I hated this office when it was mine!  Too small!  Couldn't we have just met in an empty meeting room in the Capitol?

     Sneffen: A bland, nothing special about it meeting room?  Hardly befitting the Secretary of State.

     Blade: Yes, you're right.  I'm entitled to dignified surroundings.

     Sneffen: I'm the Secretary of State, Cassie.  You're a former.  

     Blade: I am to be referred to by my most recent job title!

     Sneffen: (smugly) Which is not President.

     Blade: Oh, fuck off!  But for Richman's dirty dealings with Russia I'd be in my second term!

     Sneffen: Who would be your Secretary of State?

     Blade: Someone saying one thing and believing something completely different at the same time.

     Sneffen: Your husband fits that bill, pun intended.

     Blade: Billy Boy doesn't want State.  He wants to be First Gentleman With Portfolio.  He wants to be in charge of Asia and the Outer Solar System, minus Triton.

     Sneffen: A big job.

     Blade: Not for Billy Boy.  I want him to travel a lot during my presidency.  The less I see of him the better, but we maintain face, a loving couple loved by America.

     Sneffen: Don't ever upset the romantic spirits of America's couples by ever appearing anything other than ecstatic to be married to such a man.

     Blade: I have a lot of practice, you cave lichen.  What's with the TV?

     Sneffen: (acts surprised). Oh!  And there's a DVD player and a DVD in a black case marked nine-one-oh-one.  Hm, just ten days before 9/11.  

     Blade: You've obviously asked me here to view the DVD, quit the coy, Artie, and GET ON WITH IT!

     

     TV and DVD player on, he opens the tray, puts in the DVD, turns and smiles with twinkling eyes at Cassandra Blade.  

     Blade: This better be worth my time.

     

     Sneffen presses the right buttons, becomes excited inside thinking a) "I'm about to watch sex in the presence of a woman" and b) "I will control the Blades from this date!"

     The picture resolves.  Color video, but faded considerably, just a brown wash with the occasional flash of color, the girl's red panties for instance.  Billy Boy wears them on his head at one point.  Ten minutes into the video, Cassie calls for a pause.

     Blade: I suspected even then, 2001 it was? that Stein was a bad guy.

     Sneffen: His girlfriend, Mathilde de Sade, who, by the way, recruited and trained the girl in the video, was a guest at your daughter's wedding.  The two of them took a boat trip together.

     Blade: My Hermione is the most sensible young woman I know!  She didn't know she was friends with a female pervert!  How could she?  She and Mathilde never had sex together!

     Sneffen: Are you sure?

     Blade: You boil my blood.  Let's see the rest of this document of my husband's predilection for carnal sin.

 

     They watch the remaining fifty-six minutes.  Tedious viewing for Cassie, but she needs to know everything that's on the DVD.  Forewarned is forearmed, she thinks.  That hubby of mine is going to feel my heel in his scrotum if he costs me the presidency!

     

     Sneffen: My third viewing, it keeps getting better!

     Blade: You're an incomplete man, Sneffen.

     Sneffen: I'll feel complete once you tell me you're never going to run for president, you'll back Dinah Parris all the way in twenty-four, you'll turn your back on whatever loyalty you might feel for Moe, and you will retire to the Hamptons, write another book about something non-political, reemerge as a wise old Grandma in two years, and don't ever again make political commentary or speeches.  America doesn't want your statesmanship, can't you see that!?

     Blade: Wrong wrong wrong wrong WRONG!

     Sneffen flinches at the volume of her voice.  A knock on the door.  

     Sneffen: Yes?

     Carol: (head appearing in the crack): Is everything all right?  Mrs. Blade's aides asked me to inquire.

     Sneffen: Secretary Blade, Carol.

     Carol: I'm sorry, Madame Secretary.

     Sneffen: Carol's a secretary, too, Cassie (titters).  (To Carol): Tell the aides their mistress will be with them soon.

     Blade: (after Carol closes the door) I will be president.  I'll find a way around this.  People have no attention span!  Nobody cares about random girls disappearing and being forced to have sex with powerful men like my husband!  Everybody already thinks Billy Boy is a drooling dog when it comes to females!  You're using rubber bullets on me!  And fuck you for not being on my side, I'll get you for that!  I'm hungry, what about lunch?

     Sneffen: I really do have microwave popcorn!

     Blade: I WANT REAL FOOD!!!  AND A GIN AND TONIC!!!

     East Room of the White House.  Reporters, photographers, President Lieden, Dr. Lieden, Vice President Parris, Jennifer Psyop, Speaker Crook, assorted members of Congress and the Senate.  Twelfth anniversary of SECA (the Somewhat Expensive Care Act) signed into law by President Bongo in 2010.  He and Mrs. Bongo also present.  Former President Bongo receives a standing ovation.  Moe Lieden grins, unaware apparently of how this reflects on his current popularity.

     Bongo (at the podium): Oh, it's good to be back!  My nostalgia's itching me, otherwise I would've charged six figures to make this short speech! (laughter)  I want to thank Vice President Lieden (laughter) for inviting Gabrielle and myself.  

     Laughing, Bongo steps back, gives Lieden a handshake and a half-hug.  Everybody in the room shows teeth, laughter, amused murmurs, locust-sound of cameras.  Dinah Parris's cackles rise in volume above everyone else's mirth.

     Bongo (returning to the podium, grinning): That was a joke.  We set that up (more laughter about something not funny).  I haven't been here since I handed over the house keys to President Richman.  I've noticed some changes.  Secret Service agents wear Aviator sunglasses now.  There's a Rocky Rococo where the Army Mess used to be, and my former office has a Ukrainian flag next to the Stars and Stripes (constant tittering, eruptions of laughter from Parris, smiles that will not go away, all accompany Bongo's words, delivered mock-amiably, everyone pretending they're hearing a great comedian).  SECA was a great achievement.  Yeah, I'm proud of it and I know Moe Lieden is, too.  It doesn't cover everyone, but not every bag of grapes in the grocery store is sweet.  You make compromises.  Those Republicans who would overturn SECA are the same bunch of folks who made it their daily and nightly business to block my agenda.  I couldn't get much done but we got SECA done (applause.  Lieden claps for five seconds after everyone else stops).  Today, Vice President Lieden (some laughter, including from Parris and Lieden while Dr. Lieden's smile looks like it's stuck in rigor mortis) signs an executive order, fixing an oversight in SECA.  An additional 200,000 or so uninsured families will benefit (applause).  Well, I gotta tell you, this is the first time I've worn a tie in five years, my circulation's discombobulated.  In the interests of making this a shorter experience, I'll turn it over to my Vice President (laughter).  Moe?

     

     Lieden stands by his wife, grinning, clapping.  She elbows him to get him moving to the podium.

     Lieden: My name is Moe Lieden, I'm Amare Bongo's Vice President (grins but few laughs).  I miss working with you, Amare.  You know, SECA  gets called a lot of things: an abomination, a giveaway to the health insurance industry, a waste of money, a scam, well it's not a scam!  I said it in a hot mic moment twelve years ago: This is a big fucking deal!  Like Hoover Dam.  Like J. Edgar Hoover's blackmail files.  Like the Las Vegas Strip.  Like the reunion of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez--Dr. Lieden and I have been rooting for those two for so long!  A B-F-D is S-E-C-A!  Care to dispute it?  Anybody here adversarial towards what my President achieved in 2010?  Well shame on you if you are!  Don't step on our BFD, our SECA!  One thing I never liked about that name, SECA, is that it sounds like Zika, the virus that makes baby's heads tiny.  A baby's head is already tiny, it doesn't need to be tinier (Vice President Parris, for some reason, lets out a huge laugh, goes back to just grinning when no one else laughs.  Even President Lieden gives her a hard stare).  The best name for SECA is Bongocare.  Some in my administration, Dr. Grauchi, for instance, have suggested I should change the name officially to Liedencare.  Own that bastard, slap it silly, tell her what's what, give it the sixteen pen signature treatment, but no, for now it's still SECA, and in any case, if the Republicans ever manage to overturn it, I don't want it to be something called Liedencare they're nullifying.  My name gets dragged through the mud every day in the news.  Yeah, I'm talking to you reporters!  I don't need more grief attached to my name.  Similarly, I don't plan on having any missiles named after me, not that I'm against missiles, but (leans close to the microphone, speaks softly) optics matter.  If I were up here eating a cheeseburger with all the fixings while I deliver this little speech, spilling mayo, ketchup, relish, all over this lovely oak podium built originally for Spiro Agnew--he carved his initials into the wood right by my knee--I'd be violating the first rule of optics: don't do anything that distracts away from the message.  My message to all of you is SECA is here to stay, at least on my watch.  Giving a percentage of Americans affordable health care was always President Bongo's goal, and mine.  Giving everyone Medicare For All (laughter)...yes, I know, even bringing up the idea is hilarious, but don't worry, it will never happen.  We have SECA, fortunately none of us have Zika, although there are some tiny-brained individuals on the other side of the aisle (polite laughter; Vice President Harris holds her lips tightly together, growing smile indicating she needs to guffaw).  I think that's all I have (stands there until Dr. Lieden pulls gently on his suit jacket.  He returns to stand by the Bongos).

 

     Vice President Parris takes the podium, speaking last.  Whoever planned this East Room event (no one later will take responsibility) apparently wants Parris to upstage two Presidents with the morning's best remarks on SECA.

     Parris (laughter): Okay!  Thank you, President Lieden! (she laughs, there are polite titters, lots of clicking shutters).   OMG, where do I begin?  Well, it's a great honor to be an African-American woman welcoming the first African-American President back to the historic building where he lived for eight whole years.  That's a long time.  A very long time.  Amen.  My mama used to tell me, "Dinah, when you've been around as long as I have you'll see some changes" and she was right.  There wasn't any television when she was born--with a normal-size head I'm pleased to report (she laughs, the only one in the room).  When I was born there weren't no Internet.  Can you imagine living without the Internet?  Without Zoom?  What the heck did we do with ourselves? (laughs).  Umm, SECA's a good thing.  Bongocare, yeah!  (claps) Let's hear it for Bongocare!  (President Lieden grins, clapping enthusiastically, some clap, most don't, Bongo sticks a finger under his collar, the tie bothering him.  Lieden embraces Dinah, full hug, face buried in her thick hair.  The two stand like this for twenty seconds before Dinah breaks free, laughing but not with enjoyment.  Dr. Lieden gently pulls on his jacket sleeve.  Lieden returns to his place, gives Amare Bongo a wink and a thumbs up).  Where was I?  Was I talking about Ukraine? (laughs).  I guess not.  Thank you for coming!  We're going to mill around for a while and then the President is going to sign the executive order extending coverage to those 200,000 families, those lucky 200,000, isn't that great? (laughs, steps back, everyone is relieved she's done.  Somehow, her speaking is worse to endure than Lieden's.  Even Doug Gard in the Vice President's mansion, watching C-Span 2 on a little TV attached to his treadmill, breathes easier after she steps away from Spiro Agnew's podium).

     In the immediate aftermath, everyone wants to shake hands and get their picture taken with Amare Bongo.  President Lieden wanders about, stares at the Stars and Stripes, stands facing the gold curtains with no one else around long enough to cause numerous Fox pundits and anchors to question his mental capacity.  The following day, thirty-two articles appear contrasting Bongo with Lieden, one opinion writer yearning for the former President to return and take hold of the wheel before America hits the metaphorical iceberg.

     "The State of the World," Commentary by Malcolm Jeeb, April 7, 2022, New Specialist Bi-Weekly.

     After Caligula was killed in A.D. 41 by his own guards, the practice persisted as a reliable method of getting rid of troublesome characters, since the tactic involves the victim's own trust in his guards being his downfall.  That trust can be self-endangering shouldn't surprise any domestic abuse victim.  Shouldn't surprise any nation's peoples who have been betrayed by another power.  In 1933, Communists and Socialists were not popular with the squares who ran Washington and Wall Street.  Common distribution of property struck capitalists then, as now, as an opium dream worthy of a utopian novel but not anything practicable or desirable to those money-makers unaffected by the Great Depression's locusts and desperate humanity, its crop failures, its religious revival.  In Germany in 1933 a new religion came about.  Torchlit parades, uniforms, Ein Volk in uniform, "a nation in uniform!" as it was proclaimed.  A nation with its stuff together.  It took twelve years to take out the stuffing and put some of it back in...what?  A divided nation, reunited again, now looking to wield the world's third largest military, after China and the U.S.  A rearmed Germany coincident with Nazi militias condoned by the Ukrainian government has the makings of a killing festival, egged on by U.S. news media, politicians, arms dealers and lobbyists.  We enter a time when anything could happen and whatever does happen won't surprise a small number of humanity forecasters like this author.  I decided to give up on surprise.  The turmoils of the world unfold as they do, I look right, out the window of my study on the third floor, a robin's nest can be seen if I lean over a bit.  Sunny day, but rain later.  I'm not being bombed.  I finished my taxes yesterday.  I have friends and family who care about me.  I don't have guards or sycophants around me, I'm not in charge of the country, I just write a column and contribute researched pieces to a variety of publications.  Another religious revival will come, they always do when times are hard.  Hard Times by Charles Dickens, never read it, but I like the title.  State of the world, static chaos.

     Lunch in the Bongos' Nantucket home's breakfast nook, a well-lit plant-filled room walled by big glass panels.  Two former First Ladies, Gabrielle Bongo, fifty-eight and smashing in appearance, well-appareled, given free garments from top dressmakers and blouse geniuses, today wearing a dark green dress with a 24 karat gold Ukraine flag pin, a cut aquamarine beveled rectangle above a rectangle of gleaming gold. 

     Cassandra Blade, seventy-four, the only guest, wears one of her usual dumpy pants suits, a gray model, the grandma-type clothing she's convinced Dinah Parris to adopt.  "Desexify yourself," Blade advised at the beginning of Parris's 2019-2020 presidential campaign.

     Cassie Blade: Well, how do you feel about yesterday?

     Gabrielle: It was the usual good time, if you're into failure.  Amare couldn't wait to get out of there.

     Cassie Blade: He's the main reason Moe got the job.  He's the main reason I got the nomination in sixteen.  He's the key to Dinah's ascent to the presidency.

     Gabrielle: (laughs hard) Dinah Parris?  Elected President?  When, in 2024? 2028?  No, you're looking at the next president after Parris sits in the Oval Office, having become President by default.  She will not even win the nomination.

     Cassie Blade: I will win the nomination.

     Gabrielle: Oh, so it's a three way race between you, Dinah, and myself.  Lots of good ratings for that one.

     Cassie Blade: It's a time of ladies.  Strong women, utterly convinced of their rightness.  

     Gabrielle: Amare wants to be First Gentleman.  

     Cassie Blade: I've never heard of any man who wants to be First Gentleman.  Billy Boy accepts it as part of the deal of me becoming president, but he doesn't like it.  Has he ever hit on you?

     Gabrielle: Yes, a couple times.  Does that surprise you?

     Cassie Blade: No.  Billy Boy is an addict.

     Gabrielle: Amare never hits on other women.

     Cassie Blade: I beg to differ.  That French singer.

     Gabrielle: He likes her music.

     Cassie Blade: That Greek singer.

     Gabrielle: She was a very forward woman.

     Cassie Blade: When he met the original cast of The Love Boat he fell all over himself talking with Lauren Tewes.

     Gabrielle: She shared the story of her cocaine addiction.

     Cassie Blade: Cocaine.  Did you hear about Happy Lieden's laptop?  Turns out it's genuine. 

     Gabrielle: I heard that it was many months ago.

     Cassie Blade: Oh yeah?  What news sources do you go to?

     Gabrielle: Menkowski and Fritsch.  TYG.  Blackballed, that's a YouTube channel devoted to talking about borderline censorious content.  They've been taken down twice so far.  A third strike and they're done.  I gave them an interview when I promoted my book, How About You?, my second book, as you know, after Eat Less, America!

     Cassie Blade: A bestseller for some reason.  America's fatter than ever.  You failed.

     Gabrielle: I made millions off of that little book.  It was a fifty-six page double-spaced typewritten essay Amare, without credit, helped me expand into a 112 page book, with many illustrations.  That book bought our house in Chicago.  

     Cassie Blade: Do you write your own material?

     Gabrielle: Every word, except when Amare steps in with his infamous red pencil.  He rewrote my autobiography twice, then I rewrote that, that's what got published.  My rough draft, then his two rewrites, then my rewrite.

     Cassie Blade: I always thought he might be a control freak.

     Gabrielle: He's some kind of a freak, aren't you, darling?

  

     In walks fresh-faced pleased with life Amare Bongo wearing a white polo shirt, dark blue creased slacks, black leather slippers, and wearing an orange motorcycle helmet, clear plastic visor open.  He sits down and asks for lunch.

     Gabrielle: Darling, the twenty-four competition for the Democratic nomination will be Cassie, Dinah, and myself.  

     Amare: More will be in the competition, darlin.  

     Gabrielle: Eugene More has no chance of winning anytime outside of his own state.  

     Amare: He's popular, Medicare For All, cease militarism, end student debt and medical debt, reduce the military budget by fifty percent in the first two years, then by another forty-five percent, reassign those funds to social programs, education, infrastructure maintenance and building, less and less dependence on dirty energy corporations, make peace with Russia and China, cooperate with the world, apologize for barbaric treatment of numerous peoples across the globe, man, what a kook!

     Gabrielle: And his skin is so dry, it's like shaking hands with a lizard.

     Cassie: More has been in politics a long time, state assemblyman from South Carolina, state senator from North Carolina, Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, Governor of Maryland, Senator from Maryland, an Independent two term congressman from Michigan, and now, finally, at eighty-one, he's trying to be president, good luck.  

     

     Amare takes off his helmet.  Spreads jam on his toast, pours coffee, digs into an omelette, eating with his mouth full.  Gabrielle glares at his table manners, says nothing.  He'll get it later.

     Gabrielle Bongo: Lots of people want what Eugene More offers so that will be the challenge: make positive things seem negative.  

     Amare: Yeah, it's like sayin sex isn't pleasurable.

     Cassie Blade: (tightly) For some women it isn't.

     Amare: Back off, prude, I'm just flapping my jaws.

     Gabrielle: Isn't it amazing we live in an age of the Great Lie?

     Cassie: Which is?

     Gabrielle: That the news/entertainment machine has successfully convinced millions of Americans their version of the truth is true, when in fact it's a lie manufactured by the CIA and other special interests profiting from the special conditions of the global order that thrives on chaos and violence.  

     Amare: Nice comedy routine, Gaby.  Well, I gotta shove off.  

     Cassie: What's on the President's to do list?

     Amare: Ride around the island on my new Honda, say hi to a few folks, might buy some cookies at the bakery, if they're fresh.  Life couldn't be better.  You gals have a nice day.

     Cassie: What a nice man.  Glib, but nice.

     Gabrielle: I married him for his glib.

     Cassie: Is that so?

     Gabrielle: My previous boyfriend--we went out for two years--was a deeply serious man.  I don't think he ever laughed more than a few times in my presence.  Something dark in his past, I began to suspect.  I told Amare about him.  We weren't dating yet, Amare and I, but I knew him from a law class.  Amare said my boyfriend was a putz, going out with a super-fox like me, moping around like the world's about to end, fuck him, Amare said, fuck your fuckin boyfriend.

     Cassie: Amare cursed like that?

     Gabrielle: Oh, he curses when he feels like cursing, but he's careful about who he's with.  You see, he's a public figure.

     Cassie: Well, no shit.

     Gabrielle: That strong presence of Amare, his firmness, his determination.  That decided me, I put my boyfriend aside and became Amare's woman, but my own woman, too.  All that is a true story.

     Cassie: You wrote a different version in your book, left out the cursing.  Amare's role isn't present.  So the book is bullshit?

     Gabrielle: No!  I wrote it differently than what I just told you.  The written version occupies nineteen pages, most of a chapter by itself, the one called "Autumn Leaves, Amare Comes."

     Cassie: Did you or your editors know the word "comes" could be interpreted in more than one way?

     Gabrielle: I know what you're driving at.  I wrote the book.  I chose the chapter titles.  I could've written "Amare Comes Into My Life," but I like trimming unnecessary words.  I like a lean style, like how I wanted Americans to be, lean, trim, healthy, cut out the junk, exercise.  

     Cassie: Saying "Amare Comes" and leaving it there implies he's ejaculating.

     Gabrielle: Oh my god, Cassie, what are you talking about?

     Cassie: To cum is to ejaculate, it's slang, it means orgasm, little miss innocent!  

     Gabrielle: I had no idea.

     Cassie: Just because you're rich and famous doesn't mean you have to be a dummy.  Read more, think more, there is so much I can tell you about the rigors and joys of campaigning.  

     Gabrielle: Even though we will compete--

     Cassie: The competition has begun, honey.

     Gabrielle: We will meet now and then to discuss the overall campaign season, the weather, Dinah Parris's chances, my chances (smiles).

     

     Moe Lieden and Charlie Johnson Perkins McCoy, King of Interviewers, ZTV.  

     McCoy: Good evening.  My guest tonight, winner of a first place gold ribbon in a Wilmington, Delaware track meet in 1958, later became a politician, an influence man, a father, a husband, twice, now President of the United States.  Please welcome Morris "Moe" Lieden.

     Lieden: Say, that's a warm crowd, I see a few masks, that's fine, it's your choice you scaredy-cats!  Joke.  No, it's a beautiful audience.  Young lady!  What's your name!  The one in the white blouse, skirt, dark stockings, front row to my right, beautiful brown hair, yes, you, what's your name and where are you coming from?  Lissa?  Detroit?  Really.  That's a shithole city!  Did you know there was a secret meeting in 1978 in the Rayburn building, I was there.  We decided to write off Detroit.  It looks like it does with all the urban blight because that's the way we wanted it.  I wish I could remember why we wanted it that way.  Oh well.  Nice to see you, Lissa.  Stop up here for an autograph after the show.  My secret service men carry glossies of their President, each one signed and authenticated by Antiques Roadshow.

     McCoy: Mr. President, shall we begin the interview?  Please, sit.

     Lieden: Lissa, don't forget to vote in the mid-terms and in twenty-four.  Democracy is at stake.  So is Ukraine.  I'll take a load off now.  How are you doin?

     McCoy: All right.  Yourself?

     Lieden: I feel like a sandwich, the meat I mean.

     McCoy: I beg your pardon?

     Lieden: I'm the meat, you're the bread, you're squeezing me for information.

     McCoy: We haven't even started.

     Lieden: I'm always going.  Rrreuhr, rrreuhr, I'm in leather, riding my Harley on the PCH, wind on my sunburned cheeks, aviators blocking the insects from my eyes.

     McCoy: Do you have trouble sleeping?

     Lieden: No, I am a baby when I sleep.

     McCoy: Babyhood metamorphoses into adolescence when you're conscious?

     Lieden: Say, I think you just insulted me.  Okay, let's play ball.  What's two plus two?

     McCoy: Four.

     Lieden: He scores a point!  Now, ask me anything.

     McCoy: Very well.  According to Cornpop--I interviewed him two weeks ago--you joined with his gang of real mean dudes to break into a record store and steal every Buddy Holly, Ornette Coleman, Patsy Cline, Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, Sammy Davis, Jr., and jazz record they could manage to lift from the property.  Tell us more about that night, and how you skillfully avoided arrest through verbal massage of a tired police officer seduced by your smooth debate team voice into believing there was nothing suspicious about twelve black guys and one white guy hanging out in an alley at 2:30 a.m.

     Lieden: Thirteen, that's right.  Same number as Jesus and his gang.  

     McCoy: Jesus's gang (laughter in the audience, the director, several times, cuts to shots of Lissa, arms folded in the front row).  Mr. Lieden, if you could conquer a country, any country which one would it be, and why would you attack it?

     Lieden: Rwanda.  Minerals, plus long-standing enmity between Hutus and Tutsis.  U.S. foreign policymakers, including President Blade, decided to ignore what was happening in Rwanda before, during, and after the genocide, not that they didn't know about it.  Look, Presidents are evil incarnate.  If you put your hope in a President you're a fucking moron.

     McCoy: You just called yourself evil.

     Lieden: I'm not evil, the job is.

     McCoy: How can a job be evil?

     Lieden: How can a job be boring?  But some jobs are boring.  Not your job, though.  You get to sit there and pass judgment.  You remind me of a drippy faucet in an overpriced English bed and breakfast.  You know the kind.  The lady who runs the place tells stories about how she met Winston Churchill after the war.  She won't leave you alone while you're choking down that English dry toast, why is English food so awful?

     McCoy: Italian cuisine it isn't.

     Lieden: Nor is it German.  Give me a good sausage to put my lips around and I'm happy.  Sauerkraut, (low voice) love it.  Good German beer...what am I saying, all German beer is good! (applause, director cuts again to Lissa, frowning)

     McCoy: Human habitations on Mars increased tenfold just in the last five years.  Are you in touch with Mr. Muskrat?

     Lieden: He calls me once a week.  It's a frustrating conversation, you have to put in a bunch of things to say cuz there's a delay.  Mars is far away, like super-far, 167 million miles away, Peon Muskrat told me so this morning.  He says the soil of Mars now has the capability of growing cabbages.  He's growing marijuana there in vast quantities.  They've been exporting the stuff to Earth, the Moon, science crews on Mercury are high, well, that's what my CIA Director said.

     McCoy: Why not legalize cannabis on the federal level?

     Lieden: That's not the way!  Cannabis, or the weed with roots in Hell as I call it, must be illegal, otherwise law enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Administration, will be unable to profit off of all of the black market weed they steal.  

     McCoy: Ukraine.  Are the Nazis a problem?

     Lieden: Only if you come within artillery range of them.  Also, hide when they enter your town.  They're ruthless, they don't like Russians.

     McCoy: Russians who are invading their country?

     Lieden: It's all a big game designed to make money.  (Grins).  Buy defense stocks.  

     McCoy: You know you're on television?

     Lieden: Lissa!  Come over here!  How come you don't have a band, Alfred?  

     McCoy: Charlie, Mr. President.

     Lieden: Who's Charlie?

     McCoy: I'm Charlie.

     Lieden: Okay.

     McCoy: Any ideas for your twenty-four campaign?

     Lieden: Realign with Lieden has been discussed as a campaign slogan.

     McCoy: Any others?

     Lieden: Poop on Richman, or whoever I'm going against...Poop on Richman, Grow With Lieden.

     McCoy: Go with that one.

     Lieden: You like it?

     McCoy: It's the best thing I've ever heard.  Inspiring, earthy, a real campaign slogan.

     Lieden: One vote for Poop!  Lissa!  Do you like the slogan?  Or do you prefer Realign with Lieden!

     Lissa: I don't have an opinion.

     Lieden: You're a cold Swedish broad, aren't you.  I'm pretty sure you're Swedish.  Are you?

     Lissa: Norwegian.

     Lieden: I'm glad I came to this interview, I got to meet you.  Let's hear it for Lissa.  (Applause)  Stand up, Lissa, let's take a look at you.  My, you're a fine-looking girl.  Hubba-hubba-hubba, am I right, audience?  Gee Lissa, may I ask for your phone number?  I'd like to go on a date with you, I'm very lonely, my wife won't indulge all of my sexual needs, there are some she plain has contempt for, I don't blame her, they're disgusting!  Once you've crossed the threshold of ordinary desires and extraordinary, even impossible desires, nothing matters more to you than getting off as much as possible, no joke.  I think about my penis one third of my day.  I'm thinking about it right now.  If you think you're the cause of this presidential erection, you're right.  How about it, Lissa, can I take you on a date tonight?

     Lissa: No.

     Lieden: Okay then, your loss.  You could've been written about in the tabloids, just remember you gave that up.  Your hair is beautiful even though I don't like you anymore.  Is there anymore to this show or can I go, I need to lie down.  

     McCoy: What's that, Jeff?  My producer, Jeff Rothstein, Mr. President, he's in my ear.  Thank you, Jeff. Mr. President, your helicopter is on the roof of this building and awaiting you.  Thank you for stopping by.  This has been episode 1236 of Charlie Johnson Perkins McCoy, King of Interviewers, new episode every other Wednesday.

     

     Lieden goes to Lissa, who's standing, waiting to file out of the auditorium.

     

     Lieden: You're a spunky Norwegian.  Like Liv Ullman.  Do you know Liv Ullman?

     Lissa: No, just because she and I are Norwegian doesn't mean--

     Lieden: But Norway is such a small country!  I bet you bump into famous people all the time.

     Lissa: Sure, all the time.

     Lieden: What's Liv Ullman like?  Great hair, great actress.  Loved her in Shame, what's your favorite Liv Ullman flick?

     Lissa: I thought Persona was good.

     Lieden: That one gave me goosebumps.

     Lissa: It is disturbing in spots.

     Lieden: If I embarrassed you during the show, I apologize.  I hope you have a good day.  

     Lissa: Thank you, Mr. President.

     Man in dark blue trench coat approaches Lissa.

     Man: Is he ready for us?

     Lissa: As ever he will be.

     Man: Let's prepare the cave.  

     Lissa: He apologized to me.

     Man: Decent of him, indecent of him to say the things he said before he apologized.  He seems cracked.

     Lissa: Maybe, but I'm glad he apologized.

     Man: Maybe he'll send you a card, a signed photo, sharpie signature, a keepsake kept by tens of thousands of Democratic supporters, like you.

     Lissa: I'm a believer.  The Democratic Party can be pulled to the left.  I will pull.  I will vilify the opponent, I will smear my enemy with the stink of the accusation of corruption, shady deals, Mormalutainian Bleezratts!  The coming of our masters will liquefy the population's will to fight, so amazed will humanity be, gleedahn ment-postulator!

     Man: Gleedahn ment-postulator.

     Their images shiver from background reality, no one notices.  

     Helicopter ride back to D.C., Lieden reads the Psalms, lips moving, closes the little book, puts it away in his inside jacket pocket along with his comb, photograph of a braless young Susan Sarandon, and his kazoo.  Once home, he flings himself onto bed face down, his secret service bedroom men undress him, wonder about the black bruise on the President's right butt cheek.  They call in Grauchi and several other doctors.  A hefty nurse, a cannonball of a man, plows through, taking up the room of three men.  He breathes heavily and loudly through his nose.  Sweat glistens everywhere on his pink skin.  

     Doctors and nurses give Stowski a wide berth.  Thirty-five years old, Chet Stowski had been on a track to succeed his father in the family business of tombstone carving in Chillicothe, Ohio, then one night a friend gave him acid.  They tripped till past dawn.  Chet went to work at the gas station, still tripping.  It had more energy than he did, the trip had a lifespan well past the user's desire, Chet in this case, trails in his eyes, cool, not cool after ten hours, don't get grumpy, you're high, Chet, this is the cool way, listen to Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and trip.  Listen to Grand Funk Railroad.  Listen to Jethro Tull and Cat Stevens and trip.  Genesis, trip.  Yes.  Trip.  King Crimson, trip.  Fork in the Road, that bluegrass band from Seattle?  Not a trip, but fun if you're into it.  Stowski tripped, Stowski lost his job, Stowski tripped again and again.

     Stowski: What happened to the President?

     Doctor Peez: He has a bruise on his buttock.

     Stowski: I see that.  What happened to him?

     Doctor Flusher: We don't know.

     Stowski: Shouldn't you find out?

     Doctor Prick: This bruise was just discovered, Nurse Stowski.  There hasn't been time to mount an investigation into the origin of the bruise.

     Stowski: Well hop to it!  We must find out!  The President is ninety years old--

     Doctor Peez: He's seventy-nine.

     Stowski: Right, ninety.  I mean in his brain he's ninety.  Chronological, you're right, he's seventy-nine.  Have you noticed he's been getting worse?  

     Dr. Flusher: He's a frail old man.  We keep him alive with drug treatments.  Experimental shit, dangerous, but necessary.  We have to prop him up until at least the spring of twenty-four.

     Doctor Peez: That's a long way away, seems like.  What's the word, Dr. Grauchi?

     Dr. Grauchi: The bruise is rectangular, as if he was struck hard on the right buttock by a chunk of metal propelled at his ass at terrific speed.  If it were drawn in a comic book the chunk of metal would have lines behind it, indicating movement.

     Dr. Prick: I gotcha.  He got hit by some experimental weapon.  Who in the government is trying to overthrow Moe Lieden?  Who's the traitor?  You, Peez?  I heard you bitch and moan about President Lieden's Covid policies, how he should've locked up everyone unwilling to take a vaccine.  Follow the model of Australia, nation of convicts made its citizens into convicts.  Social engineering, get people believing a main drag needs a Burger King or it ain't civilization.  Control of the Western Hemisphere, of South Asia, I'm a robot, fellas, are you surprised, watch!

     Dr. Prick's skull breaks open into several machined pieces, eyes pop, there's a mechanical glistening pink metallic brain in there, his body reveals a naked titanium skeleton.  

     Dr. Prick: This is me under the skin.  I'm protective of President Lieden because a) I'm his personal bodyguard, well-trained in several martial arts, expert with firearms, Iraq War veteran, three tours of duty, that was when I was human.  I got blown up by an IED.  They tried cybernetic systems surgery on my remains, managed to get me functioning again, brain power-wise, my heart worked, still does, it's in this metal box in the center of my chest.  Rip that out, I die.  Smash my brain, I'm probably dead.  A motorcycle helmet is a good idea, someone please get me one. 

     Dr. Grauchi: Dr. Prick.  Thank you for your service.  

     Stowski: The poor President.  That's a nasty bruise.  If that bruise could talk he'd say, "I'm nasty!"

     Dr. Peez: Stowski, why are you here?

     Stowski: Stepping into history, observing it, writing it down in my journal, something to be published after my death.  It's an intimate account of my life.  I describe every sexual experience to the last detail, I include real names, I hold nothing back, a document fresh in approach, much needed in these troublous times.

     Dr. Prick: Is that the blurb for this thing that hasn't been published yet, you writing stud?

     Stowski: In my imagination, everything is real, including you, robot.

     Dr. Prick: My animosity towards everything in general grows.

     Stowski: I've had enough darkness for one day, Dr. Prick.  My President was injured we know not how.  An investigation must be launched.  (Loudly) I will lead it!  I will find the culprit behind this foul deed.  The fiend who committed it will face justice, or will die by my sword.  

     Dr. Grauchi: You have a sword?

     Stowski: Yes, a longsword, a copy of a thirteenth century blade found in Sicily.  I named him Mister Slice.

     Dr. Grauchi: Archaic.  Stowski, you're a gem.

     Stowski: A diamond, I hope, that's my favorite!

     Dr. Grauchi: Dr. Prick.  I'm sorry you got blown up in Iraq.  A lot of men did.  It wasn't their fault.  It was Jorge Arbusto's, he made the call.  Ultimately, it's the person who made the decision and had it carried out who's responsible.  Arbusto made you the man you are.  Do you hate him?

     Dr. Prick: While I lay on my back, looking over and seeing my leg twenty feet away, my right arm chewed off at the shoulder, half my left side missing, my left leg blown off mid-shin, I thought God Bless America!  God Bless Jorge Arbusto, the Arbusto clan, Chick Raney, his construction firm, the arms dealers, the senators and congressmen and -women who made it possible for me to be a jigsaw puzzle lying on the yellow sand of a land that didn't attack my country.

    Dr. Grauchi: Stop it.  Saddam had nuclear weapons, he was going to blow up New York, some say it was supposed to be Washington, with a briefcase bomb.

     Dr. Prick: A briefcase bomb put into place by an Iraqi agent?  Or an American asset of the Mukhabarat?  Are you insane, Dr. Grauchi?

     Dr. Grauchi: Would an insane man steer so much profit to the pharmaceutical industry?

     Dr. Peez: This is all very interesting, but let's discuss the bruise.

     Dr. Grauchi: It was caused by a Shaejoni Punch Machine, a device that doesn't exist in our time period yet, just suffice it to say, the President has been stamped, he's been identified by the overall hierarchy of intelligences that runs this planet and others in our stellar neighborhood.  This is all part of a much bigger picture than most people realize.

    Dr. Peez: Is the President permanently harmed?

    Dr. Grauchi: No, be assured.  He's fine.  He's now in the database of an alien species.  They may do some experiments on him and we wouldn't even know it.  In fact, the punch on his buttock indicates he's already been abducted and probably returned before dawn.

     Dr. Prick: He's possibly become an enemy agent.

     Dr. Grauchi: Hold your horses, Dr. Prick.  Let's not get ahead of ourselves.  A bird in the hand is worth two in the arbusto.  If Moe Lieden has been coopted by aliens, we probably can't know for sure.  Their technology is no doubt ahead of ours.  We're doomed.

     Dr. Peez: You say that with a growing smile.  What do you know that we don't?

     Dr. Grauchi: So much.  President Lieden serves the people, I serve President Lieden.  If his giving in to the wills of aliens is what this country needs, I'm in favor of it.  Maybe they can straighten him out?  Yes, I'll try to get a message to the aliens, request that they cure him of his obsession with hair, maybe crush his olfactory nerve?  Hmm, I'll research the possibility of destroying his olfactory myself.  Should make for some good reading.  I'm hungry for steak.  Anyone care to join me in the White House Commissary?  

     Dr. Peez: Yes, sounds good.

     Dr. Flusher: Come to think of it, my stomach's growling.

     Stowski: I've eaten but I could eat again.

     Dr. Grauchi: The President's fine.  I'll have Mike look in on him in a little while.

     Stowski: Are these aliens dangerous?

     Dr. Grauchi: Not at all.  They're our friends.  They want to help us.

     Stowski: Why?  What's in it for them?

     Dr. Grauchi: Control of this planet.  We're going to sell it to them.

     Stowski: Who is?

     Dr. Grauchi: The Ratfuck Bastards.

     Stowski: Huh?

     Brady Press Room.  Jennifer Psyop at the podium.

     Psyop: As you all know, I am leaving the Lieden administration on May fifteenth.  I'm proud of the work we've done and I look forward to observing from afar.  Blaze?

     Reporter: Blaze Toomey, Montana Ranch Gazette.  Ma'am, we're gonna miss yuhzzz.  Yer red hair is mighty fine to look at.  Will President Lieden be visiting Ukraine anytime soon?

     Psyop: I've heard nothing of this.

     Reporter: I think it make a good story, the President parachuting into the most dangerous zone in Ukraine.  Body cam on the President, give him a machine gun, he can spray the enemy below, like I did in 1944, yes, I'm one-hundred years old.  I dated Ava Gardner and turned down the chance to be an extra in Gone With the Wind.

     Psyop: That's very interesting, Blaze.  Buck?

     Reporter: Buck Buckboard, New Mexico Painters' Digest and World News Report.  The President seemed out of it after the speeches, did you see him staring at the curtain?

     Psyop: He told me afterwards the curtain reminded him of dark golden hair.  Boozehound?

     Reporter: Boozehound Mononym, call me Boozehound.

     Psyop: I did.

     Reporter: I work for myself, free lance, unlike you other chumps, no freedom to write what you will, unlike me, Boozehound.  I sells my work to websites, online mags, I have a YouTube Channel, Boozehound the M, 6,000 subscribers but growing.  

    Psyop: Do you have a question?

    Reporter: Yeah, how long before Parris takes over from Lieden?  The man's obviously senile.

    Psyop: I don't know what you're talking about.

    Reporter: The lights are going out in the man's brain, why not retire him as soon as possible and replace him with that laughing broad?  She's funny.  Laughs at nothing.  It's weird, but she's not senile.

     Psyop: I have no idea what you mean.  Dinah Parris is the first woman of color to achieve the vice presidency.  That should not be overlooked.  Binge?

     Reporter: Binge Cockswinger, Mile High Club Monthly.  Has the President ever done the nasty on Air Force One?

     Psyop: I can't answer such a question, it's just too rude.

     Reporter: Are you a member of the Mile High Club, Jennifer?

     Psyop: No.  Brother Brothers?

     Reporter: Brother Brothers, Dynasty Media, is President Bongo going to run for president in twenty-four?  

     Psyop: My source informs me the former President wants to concentrate on his writing, on his speech-giving, his wife Gabrielle, his two beautiful daughters, both in college, preparing to enter the cadre of elites who run the world.  Look at P. Arbusto, President Arbusto's nephew, same crooked smile.  P. has a great future ahead of him, but also a burden.  If he fails in his election for Lieutenant Governor of Texas, there will for the first time since the seventies be no Arbusto in political seats anywhere.  A tragedy for America.  Bonk?

     Reporter: Bonk Snakehole, San Jose Police News.  How many criminal acts occur in the White House each day?  On average?  Two, three?

     Psyop: Crime does not occur in the White House.

     Reporter: I beg to differ.  The trespasser who got in?

     Psyop: That trespasser proved to be Tom Hanks, he was researching a role for an upcoming Spielberg film, we look forward to seeing it.  It's about a homeless man who kind of stows away inside the White House, living there surreptitiously for weeks before he's discovered and executed because he's heard too many top secret conversations.  

     Reporter: Given Spielberg's propensity to make schlock, corny entertainment pretending to be artistic somehow, even though his real artistry didn't survive past Raiders of the Lost Ark.  The rest of his films after 1981 are shit, his best film remains Close Encounters of the Third Kind, original theatrical version.  The redo with extra footage was unnecessary.  Stick with the original.  You can't go wrong.  Speaking as a Teri Garr fan, she makes that film extra special for me.  I loved her in Young Frankenstein.

     Psyop: What's your question, Bonk?

     Reporter: Will you shill for the Lieden administration after you retire from here?  That seems your speed.

     Psyop: At Dodo I will report the news without bias, a real journalist.  Baked?

     Reporter: Baked Grad Student, Fresno State University Bugle.  Before you leave your job, would you please insist to the President the humane necessity of legalizing marijuana?

     Psyop: The President thinks the matter needs more study--

     Reporter: Oh, that's bullshit, Jennifer!  I'm stoned and I can perceive the real answer: Lieden isn't one of us, I mean one of the millions of pot smokers in America!  We have the right to smoke pot without having to worry about the law as they waste their time going after peaceful pot smokers.  

     Psyop: You must be high to think President Lieden will legalize weed.  He's old-fashioned.  He likes a belt of good whisky, the drug of a man, you pot smoker.  Bent?

     Reporter: Bent Stargoods, Colorado Kind Bud Association Monthly.  I'm high, too.  Jennifer, doesn't wisdom tell you Dodo will fail, like the bird it's named for?  CNN Plus tanked quickly.  Perhaps you've done a bad career booboo?

     Psyop: Bent, your presence here brings me no enjoyment.  That's all for today, people.  Looking forward to not doing this job.

     Billy Boy Blade's Harlem office.  He had to cancel his lunchtime blowjob to make room for a demanding Cassie; she had to see him, important!  She enters the room, head held up with chin leading, imperious, queenly, death itself.  She takes the most comfortable chair, the plush armchair where her husband receives most of his blowjobs from officially eighteen year old runaways.

     Cassandra Blade: (arms crossed) I hope I haven't interfered with your extracurricular activities.

     Billy Boy: Whatever do you mean?

     Cassandra: You get your pork chop sauced every day.  You're the most oversexed man I ever met.  More so than Harvey.

     Billy: Harvey Pinesline can't match me in orgasms per day.

     Cassandra: The most you've ever had is seven.  Our honeymoon.  I thought it was fun, then.

     Billy Boy: I had fourteen two days ago.  Yesterday, eleven, today so far, two.  Want to make it three?

     Cassandra: You sicko!  Listen.  Your dick has gotten my campaign into trouble.

     Billy Boy: Don't blame the dick, baby, don't ever blame the dick.

     Cassandra: When it's sunk inside an underage girl I blame that dick and the dickhead guiding that dick!

     Billy Boy: You've lost me.

     Cassandra: Sneffen showed me a DVD.  You're the star, with some floozy from the Midwest, a kid, maybe fifteen, you find out she writes poetry, you fawn over her, give her praise, it's disgusting.  Forty minutes of grunting and groaning and moaning, yelling my name at one point thank you, but slobbering all over this girl younger by far than our daughter.  You were a pig in 2001 when the recording was made, you're a pig now.  (Sniffs the air) I smell pig.

     Billy Boy: I saw naked pictures of Miley Cyrus, taken by Miley Cyrus, hacked off the Cloud, I guess.  We're in a new age of permissiveness.  Relax, nobody's gonna care about me fucking that girl.  In two weeks the public will be thinking about something else.  Let Artie release it, they'll have to blur out the privates.  Hmm.  I guess I'm not thrilled at the notion of my body being shown like that on television or in social media.  It might scare off potential playmates.  

     Cassandra: Shall I tell Artie I'm giving in, not running for president in twenty-four?  

     Billy Boy: That's his condition?

     Cassandra: He insists I not run, that I support Dinah 100 percent.

     Billy Boy: He wants Dinah to be president?

     Cassandra: Yes.  I don't know why.  His ulterior motive, I assume there is one, must involve manipulating Dinah, ruling from behind the Executive's chair.  

     Billy Boy: My chief role as First Gentleman.  Cassie.  We must defeat Arthur Sneffen.  We can't have the rise of Dinah Parris, but she's sure to become President if Moe Lieden dies or has to resign due to mental health issues.

     Cassandra: Twenty-fifth amendment that man, for God's sake!

     Billy Boy: Not yet.  We want Dinah to be President, but only for three months.  She is to be our Summer Surprise.  Lieden resigns or dies, Parris is President, competes against Gabrielle Bongo, Cassandra Hartliss Blade, and Eugene More in the primary.  Cassandra wins.

     Cassandra: I better!

     Billy Boy: The fix is in even now, baby, don't worry your well-coiffed head.

     Cassandra: Five-thousand dollars this hairdo cost the Blade Global Con Game.

     Billy Boy: I asked you to stop charging personal expenses to the Game.

     Cassandra: Tough nuts, creepo.  I watched that DVD start to finish.  Heard every grunt.  You look like a greased pig, covered in sweat like a hairless bear on top of that poor girl.  Sneffen enjoyed showing the DVD to me.  I want you to squash Sneffen.

     Billy Boy: I'll send a couple of the boys to rough him up.

     Cassandra: I mean worse than that!  Castrate him!  Lobotomize him!  Commit him, get him doped up with drugs so he doesn't know how to function properly.  Artie with side effects would be funny to see.

     Billy Boy: Honey, I'm not going to do anything to Artie.  Right now, with Moe the way he is, Artie's one of the only people holding this country together. 

     Cassandra: He's a troll, a cave dweller, a screeching bird, I hate his smugness, I can't handle smug when anyone besides me is smug!  I think you may be right, though.  After a week no one will care about the Billy Boy-gets-his-penis-into-trouble-again DVD.

     Billy Boy: I'll take the exposure.

     Moe Lieden puts on his right sock, third attempt.  A hangnail on his right pinky toe catches the expensive fabric.  He makes it this time, no hangnail causing delay or minor sharp pain.  Lieden checks his watch, a minute past two in the afternoon.  He overslept.  Shoed, he walks to his office, Dinah sits at his desk, Sneffen sitting on the desk to her left.  Holroyd sits in one of the armchairs, Dr. Lieden sits on the couch with Dr. Grauchi.  He offers a glass of Strawberry Quik.  Lieden waves it aside.

  

     Lieden: What gives?  Dinah, that's my desk.

     Parris (laughs) I'm going through a set of documents pertaining to recent arms sales to Ukraine and other nations since Russia invaded.  You've neglected to okay ten of these forms.  Ukraine is being delayed by your negligence.  I was getting these forms ready for you to sign, sir.  I'll give up your command seat (laughs).

     Lieden (now suddenly angry): Get your woman's butt offa there!  That's a man's seat!  That chair is for my butt, not anybody else's, not even my wife can sit there, you got that, Amanda?!

    Dr. Lieden: Loud and clear.

    Lieden: All right, what's this about Ukraine?

     Parris: You need to sign these forms.

     Lieden: Right okay.  There's only the one pen!

     Parris: You're not doing the sixteen pen signature, sir.

     Lieden: That's good, ten forms to sign, that would take forever, and I've got my morning exercise to catch up on cuz I overslept.  How come nobody woke me up?

     Dr. Grauchi: Blame me, Mr. President.  Here, drink your Strawberry Quik.  I put a mickey in your Strawberry Quik last night to make you get a large amount of sleep.  This dose will keep you alert until ten o'clock tonight, then you will, as the youngsters say, crash.  

     Lieden: Sign sign sign, form form form, pen stroke pen stroke pen stroke, perfume, perfume, perfume, Dinah, are you wearing perfume?  Come closer, dear.  Oh!  That's a nice smell.  Stay close to me.  Let me smell it, last signature, little Moe is coming into the station.  Oh Dinah, I'm sorry I yelled at you.

     Parris: That's quite all right.  Thank you for catching up on your arming campaign for the people of Ukraine.

     Lieden: (low voice) Would you like to sit on a President's lap?

     Parris: No, Mr. President, I have to get these forms to the Assistant Secretary of Defense In Charge of Arms Transfers And Losing Track of Cash.

     Lieden: Burke Hamilton, a good man.  Give him a whiff of Dinah.

     Parris: I'll think twice before wearing perfume to work (leaves with the forms).

     Sneffen: Mr. President, Ukraine thanks you, freedom itself is in your debt.  

     Lieden: Do you think those Russkies have a chance of winning the war?

     Sneffen: They will win the war, but they will win wreckage.

     Lieden: Hey, I'm spoiling their prize!  I'm a party-pooper, messing up the beautiful land of Ukraine, supplying the matches to the fire, that's a metaphor, Artie.

     Sneffen: Yes it is, Mr. President.  May I caution you against trusting Dinah Parris.

     Lieden: Oh Christ, another employee to worry about?

     Sneffen: She plots to take your job.  Don't let her, even to the point of straining your energies too far.  Risk mental annihilation to prevent that dingbat from becoming President by serving out your term.  She cannot win an election.  The pollsters we can rely on give her a twenty-five percent chance of winning an election, but I think that's a generous estimate.  I'd put it at eighteen percent.  She's unappealing, even when you know her.  One doesn't want to have a drink with Dinah Parris, one wants to tell jokes about her.

     Lieden: You're not a fan of the lady?

     Sneffen: Obviously not, but then, I don't like Gaby Bongo, either.

     Lieden: What's wrong with Gaby?  Great hair, great body.

     Sneffen: Superficial characteristics.  She is a flighty but intelligent dilettante, she "wrote" her autobiography, well I don't believe it.  She's friends with Jorge Arbusto, they share a love for gourmet candy, he appeared on her short-lived cooking podcast, Omnivores Welcome!

     Lieden: President Bongo was a guest on that, too, did you see that?  He upstaged her, his own wife.  You could tell she was pissed.

     Sneffen: President Bongo's handling of a skillet is impressive.  His six months working in college as a fry cook have stayed with him.

     Lieden: He makes great omelettes.  We had many a two in the morning omelette made by Amare Bongo, while we discussed arming ISIS and al-Nusra.  

     Sneffen: The Oval Office is the asshole of America, from which the most evil shit gets pooped out upon the world.

     Lieden: Hey, we're talking food, I thought?

     Sneffen: The mouth and anus, Mr. President, are different ends of one tube.  

     Lieden: Fine with me, that's how God designed us.

     Roy Holroyd's office in the E Ring of the Pentagon.  The walls are painted black, the ceiling white stucco with 1960s inset fluorescent light fixtures, sixteen of them, giving the place a blinding white ambience, although now Holroyd has two of the fixtures off, the two in the middle of the room over the inhabitant of the chair before the desk: Billy Boy Blade.

     

     Holroyd: Mr. President, I can accommodate you when it comes to finding your lunchtime girlfriends--I've got a foreign service department of DOD working on it--but we've exhausted Guinea, Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Mali.  You're insatiable, Mr. President.  A regular Wilt Chamberlain.  

     Blade: That dribbler!  I've surpassed him in conquests d'amour two fold by this point and I'm not done. I plan to out-Casanova Casanova.  

     Holroyd: I gather he was into the art of seduction.  We moderns don't have time for that.

     Blade: Like Don Richman said into a hot mic, Grab em by the pussy.

     Holroyd: Oh, pussy, you said the magic word.

     Blade: How goes the war?

     Holroyd: Which?

     Blade: Russia-Ukraine?

     Holroyd: The bastard Russians kill indiscriminately.  Our Nazis are fighting back with full strength determination.  Putout threatens tactical nukes in Ukraine.

     Blade: I find it hard to believe he'd go that far.

     Holroyd: Believe everything about that man!

     Blade: He is just a man.

     Holroyd: Have you showered with him?  

     Blade: No, but I've seen his bare chest.

     Holroyd: A virile man.

     Blade: A man with his wits about him, unlike President Lieden.

     Holroyd: What are you talking about?

     Blade: Moe Lieden?  Turning into a dumbbell right before our eyes but no one says anything about it.

     Holroyd: He's sharper than a tack, sharper than a knife, he's sharp, dammit!  We can't be led by a senile old man!  I refuse to accept it!  He's the greatest president of this century, thus far.  Better than Bongo, goes without saying, better than Richman.

     Blade: Lieden and Arbusto share the same foreign policy.  

     Holroyd: The right foreign policy.  

     Blade: Ray, are you a neocon or a neoliberal?  

     Holroyd: Neoconservative to the bone, economic philosophy on the neoliberal side.  Squeeze the small countries dry, make them subservient to us, every tyrant requires servants, but we're good, see?

     Blade: You don't have to tell me that.  My bombing campaign of the former Yugoslavia destroyed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killed hundreds of civilians, acted on behalf of Kosovo Liberation Army heroin smugglers with al-Qaeda connections, all the while pretending to be concerned about terrorism.  It's good to support terrorists while condemning terrorism.  Be a hypocrite every day.  It goes with the territory of being a scoundrel.  

     Holroyd: Or in your case, an arrogant dick.

     Blade: Once I'm in the White House, you'll regret that, but right now, hook me up with a fifteen year old, from Sweden or Norway, preferably.

     Holroyd: Tall order.  How about a Mongolian?  She's twenty-one, knows one word of English.

     Blade: What word?

     Holroyd: Help.

     Lieden practices his signature with sixteen pens in the Oval Office.  Artie sits on the desk watching him.  General Bomb sits on the couch, waiting for the President to finish his sentence.  He was talking about launching a first strike and broke off in the middle of that, infuriating Bomb but making the sexually excited General Best stiff in his pants at the prospect of winnable nuclear war.

     

     Lieden: (tossing down a pen) Aww darn it!  I get to the fourteenth stroke and I flub it!  

     Sneffen: More practice, Mr. President.

     Bomb: Sir, you were saying about our first strike capabilities?

     Lieden: Maybe we should hit em first?

     Best: Ahhhh!

     Lieden: General Best?

     Best: I'm...I'm...

     Bomb: You're ejaculating inside your uniform again.  Go to your office, soldier, and clean up, change your uniform and wait in my office.  We're going to have a talk!

     

     Best leaves.

     

     Lieden: Did you see that dark stain on the front of his trousers?

     Bomb: I did.  The man is like a teenager seeing a photograph of Farrah Fawcett-Majors for the first time.

     Lieden: Was she your favorite?

     Bomb: Yes, among the Angels.  I'm a Charley's Angels Season One man.

     Lieden: Lucille Ball and Mrs. Kramden for me.  Oh, how I wanted to smell Lucille Ball's red hair!

     Bomb: Mrs. Kramden's husband's rotundity must've made it difficult for them to make love in most positions.

     Lieden: Ralph Kramden's a lying-on-his-back man, while Mrs. Kramden rides him, maybe achieves orgasm.  

     Bomb: This nonsensical talk takes my mind off of my duties.  There is a war to consider, Mr. President.

     Lieden: As always.  Don't you think it would be easiest if we just launched all of our nukes at Russia and China?

     Bomb: Bad idea.  You're flirting with the twenty-fifth amendment, sir.

     Lieden: Why?

     Bomb: You're talking suicide.  Attacking Russia and China in a full scale nuke war is suicide, suicidal thoughts likely to be carried out unless stopped is reason to depose you and replace you with Vice President Parris.

     Lieden: Who is a terrible pick.  Give it to Angie Crook.

     Bomb: She's third in line if Parris isn't able, but Parris will take over, be assured of that.  The military will be behind her, as they will not be behind you if you order a first strike.

     Lieden: There's nothing worse than mass annihilation, unless it be disobedience.  God cast out Lucifer because Lucifer disobeyed, as Adam and Eve disobeyed.  God shall decide my hand's actions when it comes to destroying the world or not.  

     Bomb: Sir, look over there.

     Lieden: What?  What am I looking at?

     Bomb karate chops him, Lieden goes down unconscious.

     Sneffen: You just attacked the President.

     General Bomb: Twenty-fifth amendment time.  If you're not in, I'll have you arrested.

     Sneffen: I'm in.  I'll call Dinah.

     General Bomb: Insist she holds her laughter inside.

     

     Dr. Lieden enters.

 

     Dr. Lieden: Moe!

     Sneffen: He's okay, Amanda.  He's just not the President anymore.

     Dr. Lieden: What?

     Sneffen: He crossed the line.  General Bomb neutralized him before he could give the order to nuke Russia and China.

     Dr. Lieden: He wouldn't have done that!

     Sneffen: We heard it, the taping system picked it up, no doubt.

     Dr. Lieden: Let me hear the tape I don't believe you, and I want his doctors to examine him.  General Bomb, I'll have you court-martialed for assault on your commanding officer!

     

     Bomb gives her the chloroform treatment.  He carries a bottle of the stuff in his jacket along with a washcloth.  Bomb is having no interruptions to taking over the government.  

     

     Parris enters with her husband, Doug Gard, along with Grauchi and Dr. Prick who lurches over to Lieden.

     Parris: What's this I hear about me being President? (laughs)

     

     Bomb approaches her, rag used on Dr. Lieden still in his hand.  

     

     Bomb: Madame Vice President, once the Chief Justice comes here we'll have the ceremony, you'll be President, the nation will heal.

     Parris: What happened to President Lieden?

     Bomb: Twenty-fifth amendment.

     Parris: This isn't procedural.  Several high members of government need to be here.  Where's Angie?

     Bomb: I've exerted executive military authority over a desperate situation.  The President was about to launch a nuclear strike against Russia and China.  I will not follow the orders of an insane President.  I stopped him with a thirty-five degree downward nerve chop to his upper praphalexis.  He'll come to in about thirty minutes.  He will no longer be president when he comes awake.  He can retire, he'll be happier.  

     Parris: So you're saddling me with this difficult job?  I was preparing myself mentally to take the big chair two years from now.  

     Sneffen: We must adjust, dear Dinah, rather, Madame President--let the sound of those words sink into your heart.

     Parris: The first African-American woman President, Dinah Parris!  

     Doug Gard: And First Gentleman Doug Gard.  (to Sneffen) Do I get an office?

     Sneffen: Yes, in the East Wing, where the First Lady pretends to work at times.

     Dr. Lieden (coming to, the whiff of chloroform was brief): Artie, I'll smash you yet.  You know my job is taking care of Moe.  I don't like what Bomb did to him.  Bomb seems to think he's in charge.  Is this a military dictatorship now?

     Dr. Grauchi: Thank God, the President is going to be all right.  Which one of you vicious scoundrels inflicted this Eastern method of rendering someone unconscious from behind upon my President?

     Parris: You're looking at your President, Dr. Grauchi.  Amendment 25 has come into play!

     Dr. Lieden: When Moe comes to he'll have all of your hides, including you, Artie.

     Parris: Here's Chief Justice Barko.  Hello, Chief Justice, lovin the robe (Laughs).  You know why you're here?  Good.  Let's get this done before Moe wakes up.

     Dr. Lieden: I protest this on behalf of President Lieden!

     Sneffen: You're an about-to-be former First Lady, hardly powerful enough to stop this.

     Doug Gard: I guess I'm taking over your office, Dr. Lieden.  If you need a week or so to clear out of there that's fine.

     Dr. Lieden: I don't believe this.

     Chief Justice: Who's going to be your Vice President?

     Parris (looking at the men): I'll reveal my choice at a later time, get on with it (laughs)

     

     Five minutes later, she's President of the United States, word gets out, but she doesn't address the press until 11:00 p.m.

     Brady Press Room.  Jennifer Psyop, now Acting Press Secretary, addresses the room of journalists ignorant of the change of administration.

     Psyop: Good afternoon.  I've convened you for an important announcement.  President Lieden has resigned.  His mind, he and Dr. Lieden, and Dr. Grauchi, too, feels like it's getting softer.  Too distracted to run the nation in the totally competent manner we expect from our Commander-in-Chief.  I hereby introduce you to the first African-American female President, Dinah Parris.

     Parris: Hallllooooo! (laughs, looks heavenward) Mama, I made it! (laughs).  But seriously.  I suppose you all have some questions for me, the President? (laughs).  Napoleon?

     Reporter: Napoleon Trevor, Paris, Texas Gazette, what will be the First Gentleman's role?  We've never had one before this.

     Parris: I don't know what Doug is gonna do.  Nebuchadnezzar?  

     Reporter: Nebuchadnezzar Redfish, Atlantic Deep Sea Fishing Digest, is President Lieden truly incapacitated?  We all thought it odd when he dropped his trousers and defecated not five feet from where you stand, but then he still seemed with it, if a little weird.  Who drops his trousers and shits in front of a room full of people with cameras?  Moe Lieden, that's who, so, granted, he's a loon, but does that disqualify him to be President?

     Parris: He's going to enjoy spending more time with his family.  New Face?

     Reporter: New Face Eggsovereasy, Buffalo Wire, how does your husband, Doug Gard, feel about being scrutinized as a man subordinate to a strong and powerful Black woman?

     Parris: He feels thrilled.  He's the most supportive, generous, strong man I've ever known.  Nugget?

     Reporter: Nugget Weedtreasure, One-Hitter Users Monthly.  Will you sign an executive order legalizing marijuana?

     Parris: Absolutely not.  It's a gateway drug--

     Reporter: You smoked it by your own admission.

     Parris: I was just doing what the other college kids was doing, honey.

     Reporter: It's okay for you to do it and not to go to jail, but it's--

     Parris: Double standards, sweet cakes.  They exist.  Nepal?

     Reporter: The Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal.  We have twenty-nine million people.  Our capital is Kathmandu.  Want some great mountain views?  Our Himalayas will wow you.  Madame President, why don't you say more about the FDR of Nepal?

     Parris: (laughing) I've never heard of your country, it must be small, you said twenty-nine million people?  (laughs, claps her hands) That's less than the population of California!  (serious lecturing voice) I...was Attorney General...of a STATE! bigger than your little country in the mountains, and (mean voice) we have mountains too!  Ever hear of the Sierra Nevadas?  Well, we got em!  And the southern chunk of the Cascades.  Big mountains.  You think the Himalayas are big?  Wait'll you see Mt. Lassen!

     Reporter: Mt. Everest is 29,000 feet above sea level.

     Parris: Again, with twenty-nine, must be the number of the day (laughs).  Nine Ball?

     Reporter: Nine Ball Nelson, Robert Rossen Film Studies Quarterly, Chief Editor and Roving Reporter.  Your unbelievable luck continues.  Elected to the Senate without qualifications.  Your presidential campaign yielded no delegates, President Lieden picked you because you're Black, and you're a woman.  Skin tone, and genitals, same criteria put on a slave in a market in New Orleans two centuries ago.  What gives you the right to be President?

     Parris: (laughs) I'll remember you, Nine Ball.  I like your tee shirt with the number 9 on it.  Are you one of the nine Nazgûl?  You know those movies?  Lord of the Rings?  Viggo Mortensen, be still my blood circulation!  These Black Riders are going after Frodo.  Frodo has the Ring, the super-powerful Ring.  I'm going to set up a competition among military contractors to build a One Ring, like the one Sauron the Dark Lord made.  Nob?

     Reporter: Nob Breelander, Archet Gab Sheet.  When Mr. Strider left with those four Hobbits I thought to myselves, Will we ever see those little guys again?  Strider's bad folk, or so they say, other bad folk say, so maybe he's good?  He gave me a one penny tip for letting him into the Hobbits' parlor.

     Parris: Nob, what's going on with you?  Are you lost in a reverie?

     Reporter: I'm remembering a past life.  I was Nob, servant at the Prancing Pony in Bree.  Barliman Butterbur was my boss.  He was a Man, I was a Hobbit of Archet, a nearby community in the woods hard by Bree.

     Parris: You're tripping.  Get this man out of here, take him to a mental ward.

     Reporter: I'm not feeling that bad.

     Parris: Out with the trash!  Okay, who's next?  Non-Entity?

     Reporter: Non-Entity Indigo Jayson, Jammin Magazine.  What's your stance on Ukraine?  Do we continue to arm?

     Parris: Of course we do.  No matter who the President, weapons will be exported like they're our bread and butter, and they are, or they're a significant part of what we do, and I will not sign marijuana into legalization because we make money off of it when it's not legal.  Our penal system goes after low level drug users and dealers, non-violent types, and puts them in prison for unreasonably long sentences.  For profit prisons.  It's a great way to make money.  Yeah, it's sick, it's evil.  Lieden does it.  Let's be honest here.  How many of you would not backstab a colleague to get ahead, get a promotion, a raise, what have you?  Show of hands, come on!  My hand's raised (laughs).  No one?  Okay.  Norwood?

     Reporter: Norwood Chortis, Fort Smith Scandal Sheet, what is your policy towards eliminating student debt.

     Parris: We're working on getting a thousand or two shaved off of citizens' student debt.

     Reporter: That's not much.

     Parris: When they entered college they had to have known they'd have to pay back their loans?  Is that an unreasonable request for us to make?  Honey, if you borrow money you have to pay it back! (laughs, grips the podium, laughs sideways).  Name?

     Reporter: Name Deleted, CIA Magazine.  As film critic of CIA Magazine, I get to see one or two films per week, screened for me alone in a small theater.  Popcorn offered, never taken because I don't like popcorn, but it's considerate of CIA to be prepared to carry out the popcorn option.  I watched Get Your Jollies, a new documentary about you, Madame President.  My review of the film will be available for reading in the next issue of CIA.  I'll tell you now, though, what I thought of the film.  A lazy piece of work.  Your character, repeatedly assassinated, never gives in to the assault.  You remain enigmatic.  I hardly knew you from that film.  Looking at you in person, you look like a middle-aged, semi-frumpy grass-smoking pretend-hippy, pretend-enjoying Tupac.  In the film, you're eviscerated for confusing the dates of Tupac's career.  You look much stupider in the film than you do in person.

     Parris: Why thank you, Name Deleted!  I can promise all of you, and all of you watching at home, or in your office, or in the YMCA (laughs) that I will be the President of all of youse.  Everyone of youse! (points her index fingers every which way, grinning, eyelids tight.  These images and the one with her holding her hand up when she got asked the backstabbing question, go viral)

     Cassie Blade in the biggest armchair of the Oval Office.  President Parris sits behind what was President Lieden's desk.  She's ordered a mahogany desk bigger even than Lieden's.  It belonged to a New York banker in the 1920s.  Now she must make do with Moe's.  She finds in the bottom right drawer three old Playboys from 1962 and 1959.  Sure enough, all three centerfold models have long hair.

     Parris: I should get these to him.  They might be an important part of his sex life.

     Blade: Men!  Never satisfied with the corned beef hash in front of them, always want the exotic foods.

     Parris: At first I was overwhelmed, but now I'm liking these two years till twenty-four.  I'll figure out things to do.  I'll make me and Doug some money.

     Blade: Be careful.  You'll never do time, but the scrutiny can keep you awake at nights.  My marriage had enough problems what with that intern swinging her hips in front of Billy Boy's eyes.  Scrutiny!  The Scrutineers strike again!  You're trying to turn America into a Neo-liberal paradise and your husband got his dick sucked in the Oval Office, this very room, Dinah, picture it!

     Parris: I'd rather not.  

     Blade: Yeah, right there he splooged on her dress.  Rubbing up against her fabric I guess, like Moe Lieden.  He's into that kind of thing, too.  Textures.  Perverts.

     Parris: Doug likes to get his thing in to do its business then he's done, falls asleep right away.

     Blade: No cuddling?

     Parris: I haven't been cuddled for thirteen years.

     Blade: That bastard!  

     Parris: As President I deserve someone to cuddle with, have sex with too, I'm tired of Doug's one thing he does.

     Blade: I started having sex with inanimate objects, found it freed me up to think of new ways to dominate the world.  A Bic cigarette lighter and I had a wonderful time this morning.

     Parris: Gosh.

     Blade: This old lady still has a hungry beaver.  I'm going to be wanting to try Man soon.  I'm taking the blood treatments, are you?  It invigorates the corpus, Dinah, you should try it.  With young man's blood in me I feel thirty.

     Parris: You don't look it.

     Blade: Pshaw!  Take that back!  I have the vinegar of a young man!  A young man in a beautiful aristocratic mature woman's body with perfect hair, Cass Hartliss, watch out (makes her hands into claws and shows bicuspids like they're fangs, hissing as she does this).

     Parris: Whatever you're taking, it's working, but is that good?

     Blade: You're looking pretty good.

     Parris: Why thank you.

     Blade: Would you like me to whisper something in your ear?

     Parris: I suppose.

     Blade: (whispers) I feel like banging you, and not in any lesbo way.  Strap-on, Madame President?  Care for a session?

     Parris: Absolutely not!  Sybarite!  Is this how you advise me?  

     Blade: You're not into it, fine!  I was merely suggesting some release of the tension variety sex, for health reasons.  You've had a lot going on, maybe an orgasm or two would help you cope better?  

     Parris: Now that you put it that way, but I'll do it by myself.

     Blade: I can't find anyone to do the strap-on with me.

     Parris: Doug doesn't know what to do with himself.  He has an office in the East Wing.  He sits at his desk, he looks at papers people give him.  He signs papers, he talks on the phone, he texts me, a lot.  He sent me an at-work dick pick.  

    Blade: Naughty man.  We know where his mind is.

    Parris: He's demanded sex five to seven nights per week, I give him one or two.

    Blade: Find him a playmate.  A young woman to take care of him five nights a week then he puts the salami to you on the weekend.  

     Parris: That's a good idea.

     Blade: I know a girl.  She's from Saudi Arabia, really smart, even knows how to drive, has a knack for selecting high quality beers to drink.  She'll like Doug's pliability.  But she'll grow bored with him, so we'll find him another, and another.  Dinah.  Why not just divorce the fucker?

     Parris: "I'm married to my job!" (laughs).  We sit and talk about things we could do but never will do.  One outcome there will be.

     Blade: Yes, the one with you on top, fighting off challengers for the nomination, how dare they?  You!  Dinah Parris!  I'm Fine-uh with Dinah.  There you go, you can have that!  How about this?  Win a Free Trip To Paris, if You Vote for Parris!

     Parris: That would create an impossible financial problem for the campaign.  

     Blade: Well, I'm probably the wrong one to ask.  Seeing as how we're competing in twenty-four.  

     Parris: The nomination.

     Blade: The nomination.

To be continued...

Vic Neptune