Two Chimps and a Chump

By tenderbastard

President Whalebone of Victriola dies unexpectedly when he gets mashed by a bus, and though Vice President Starbuck planned on being president, Whalebone names his physician, Doctor Atlaas Emerald his successor. That's when Emerald discovers his cCabinet is a bunch of buffoon and that President Zolga has absconded a piece of borderland ten meters wide running the length of their mutual border. Emeral challenges Xolga to a boxing match since War has been globally-outlawed. With his daughter Arabella, two chimpanzees named Bonnie and Clyde, and his Labrador Retriever Muttonhead, President Emeral tries to make the world a better place. Arabella and Mttonhead are pushed out a window, Emeral adbicates to the island nation of Bala Tarasa, Bonnie and Clyde's homeland, and they perofrm a street show called Two Chimps and a Chump. Politics and Love get a good lashing, and Everything isn;t going to be alraight, not in reality or a fairytale, but most of it is as funny as two chimpanzees running a country.

• Language: English
• Publisher: tenderbastard
• Release date: Jun 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223510550

tenderbastard

tenderbastard is a songwriter, playwright, screenwriter, novelist, activist, pancake enthusiast. He and his dog are public intellectuals. - tenderbastard.com “There's a thin line between sexiness and absurdity and tenderbastard is determined to find it.” ~ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “His writing is like Jack Kerouac and Douglas Adams.” ~ A Novel Way “As good as anything on Broadway.” - Jeff Horn, director ~ Moon Over Mangroves. - youtube.com/tenderbastard "One of the great literary finds of the decade." ~ Doris Chu, editor "I have met tenderbastard and find his writing witty. This book review confirms that conviction." ~ President Barack Obama Other books at tenderbastard.com Two Chimps and a Chump - President Atlas Emerald pays the ultimate price for trying to make the world a better place. Sticks and Stones - Dylan Sticks and Seamus Stones save the Colorado Territory from being boon-swoggled by Samuel Sidewinder Sullivan and his oily accomplice, Senator Billfold Haggle. Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, look out, Sticks and Stones are in town. Thank You for Being My Boy by Georgia the well-heeled terrier hound. Adventure, intrigue, insights and all the love in a dog's heart.

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© 2023 tenderbastard

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This novel is an attempt to make sense of reality and have fun doing it.

Other books by tenderbastard

Poof ~ Eric Foster's Happytime Hot Springs and Unusual Event Center Boulder Colorado Summer adventure

Sticks and Stones ~ How the West Was Wonderful or That;s How It Goes Sometimes Thank You for Being My Boy ~ a dog's memoir

by Georgia the well-heeled terrier-hound

They say time changes things, but you have to change them yourself, ~ Andy Warhol

I was born to do what I'm doing now. ~ Muhammad Ali Chapter 1

Three cheers good people of this weary, wobbling planet. War is over, pih-too-wee , for good, and like John Lennon said, Everlastin’ Sweet-Stinkin’Peace is upon us like flies on sticky paper. [insert pee-dribbling gasp here]

Don't dance in the streets just yet. Tyrants not warmed to the idea of War being abolished and Global Peace being declared might interpret it as insurgency and have you killed like the Native Americans assassinated by US soldiers for dancing to bring back the Buffalo, or slaves asking, If this is the land of the free, where's ours? Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, We have nothing to fear except fear itself...and your government being your worst enemy. His speech-writers tightened it up. Political rhetoric is more what isn’t said.

Last night's après-inauguraion festivities have my gluteus maximus dragging this morning. I danced like Richard Simmons on Fire Island and drank like Ed McMahon, Alice Cooper, and Charles Bukowski at the heights of their inebriation, nine pound hammers banging The Beastie Boys' Fight for Your Right to Party on my mushy brain-flesh. I surrender to whatever Fate has for me. I just hope I won't have to surrender The

Presidency, or my dignity. As a physician I can tell you, too much excitement can kill a person, or get a person killed.

No more War is great. Poverty won't dry up so fast. It's no Disney trip. There's a lot of it in my country, everywhere in the world. Poor countries are where wars are fought. Rich people can afford to ship it overseas. Anybody who wants War now that it's been globally outlawed should catch a falling knife with their teeth then French kiss a chimpanzee. I've never seen a chimpanzee up close. That would be something.

I'm withholding judgment on No More War. It's difficult to fathom warmongers relinquishing their money tree. World Peace is bittersweet for my countrymen of Victriola, heavy on the bitter. Our recently-deceased President Whalebone got mashed by a bus shortly before War was outlawed. Crazy how things turn out, as if planned, like leaders barking they want to end War and Poverty and end up with more War and Poverty.

President Whalebone's death didn't seem right. If I hadn’t been there and nearly been whacked myself I would have thought it was a set up. He was my friend. I was his physician. It must hurt like hell getting hit a bus. Something slamming you hard and fast is an explosion of your insides, a definite joy-killer. It's like an atom-smasher re-arranging molecules. As a doctor I'm going with that diagnosis.

When I was a boy I lit a pack of firecrackers and it blew up in my face. The blast stung like a scatter bomb. We had them in Vietnam, my War. Not my War alone. We thought it was a big deal, not any of us alone, together, as a force for good. There were a lot of us blindly adhering to incomprehensible faith that we were doing the right thing and we'd get through. Several days into it we knew we'd been screwed. I still don't know what that War was about. In the Trojan War the Greek army of Athens fought the Greek army of Troy, over a girl, Helen of, you guessed it, Troy. History has it she was a looker, but really, an entire War over one woman? Even if she was the daughter of the Greek god Zeus and mortal Leda, the Queen of Sparta, big hoop-dee-doo. If my dad was the King of Gods, I would hope he'd zap the crap out of my kidnappers and everyone could get back to worrying, pacing, moaning, and being angry with and hating one another. I'd rather have a father that was the King of Beers. Too bad gods today are sooooooooo pamby-namby. If a god whacked wrong-doers when they were doing wrong there'd be a lot fewer wrong-doers. Maybe being president I'll set things straight.

President Whalebone would've been pleased with War’s worldwide end. He was

a Hippie at heart. He played the piano. I was naive enough to think my going to War was going to make a difference. Boy, did I have egg on my face to go with the sweat and grime of the jungle. I saw pictures of me. I always looked afraid, with good reason.

It feels like I've got cracked and shelled eggs flopping behind my eyes. Maybe I swallowed a chicken last night. Things got that crazy.

If President Whalebone had some illness, maybe I could have done something. A bus clangs you, there isn't much anyone can do. Nobody wants to see harm done to their president except people who want to see harm down to their president.

Victriola is the second smallest country in the world, after East Timor. We weren't part of The Willing Coalition. The first time I heard that I thought it was The Willie Coalition as in Willie Nelson. I thought, "Sign me up for that tour of duty." Two Victriolans served in Iraq. Both were recent insane asylum releases. English isn’t my native tongue. I use it so everyone can understand.

It's as if my brain is oozing from the spaces around my eyes, like salt water sloshing in rubber boots, millions of brain cells plummeting lemming-like to their demise, rotten carcasses emitting a foul odor. Oh…that’s my breath. Shooting stars are going off behind my eyes, and that’s with them open. Last night we partied like it was 2024. Victiolans aren't dancey people, except last evening. We 'shook it down, shook it down, shook it down, shook it down-down' like the Commodores sang in Brickhouse.

Chapter 2

Victriola has one television station. They worked like Turkish carpet-sellers at a new home construction convention to cover the entire inauguration, from the I do, to the hoo-hoo. The crew and employees called in favors from friends and family. Hold this boom mic? Focus these lights. Wanna be a camera-man? We drank champagne like dehydrated soldiers lost in the desert, the good stuff, twelve bucks a bottle.

Last night I kept shouting, Party over here. In the jungles of Vietnam you couldn't cry out. It told everybody where you were, and that you're about to crap your pants. I'm paying for the party with a hangover as heavy as a lead Jesus paper weight. I'm still paying for my participation in War as I might have brought some illness home and gave it to my daughter.

Our Mighty Allies sponsored this World Peace thingy, shook some hands, twisted some arms, broke a couple knee caps. With so much of everything they could give three

quarters away and still have enough to high-hog it to the end of their days. When choosing allies, pick mighty ones.

I’m going to be late, no way to start a presidency.

There are things we can’t do anything about. I wish I could change my daughter’s retardation. What's normal? Everybody’s doing it isn’t a good yardstick. That was War's argument. The people who made it didn't care about anybody except themselves, and not about anything except profit. The people who couldn't do anything about it couldn't do anything about it, so it worked out how it did. War isn't healthy, but many get worked up about it. Now it's over. At least there's still team sports to get people riled up and hating one another.

My kingdom for an aspirin. I don't have a kingdom, not yet anyway. I'm on my way there now.

The Mighty Allies made War. Now they've made Peace. Imagine that. They could've made Peace a lot sooner. They wanted War. It proved nothing except it's good to be them if you can live with yourself for being that way.

Up until War was outlawed and Global Peace declared, if your country got sovereignly-assaulted by Our Mighty Allies you got a guaranteed state-of-the-art infrastructure in return, and the economy-building, wow wow wow. Western products and appliances were yours to behold. You couldn't afford them, but they were fun to look at, everything you weren't going to have in your lifetime, most people cooking by candlelight and crapping in a hole around back. You had to live through the initial firestorm and soldiers going house-to-house. If you did, you got to see what the First World was up to.

No nation that invaded Victriola invested in our country or rebuilt anything. We don't have oil. Cows, yes. Potatoes, ditto. Oil, no. Past presidents handed over the keys to the country, kept their mouths shut, and got their slice of the pie. It's called collusion.

Everybody else just had to adjust. What's the purpose of being human? Perhaps merely to adjust. Victriolans have perfected the art of adjusting, and being miserable. People in Western countries say, Have a nice day? We say, Life is brutal. We mean it. We're Victriolans.

As bad as things have been and continue to be, Victriolans have always been better off than two thirds of the world. We were out of the path of most land-fighting and soldier-invading and never had what anyone would want to take. If the world came up

short on cows and potatoes there would've been an invasion and possibly a follow-up occupation, but we started with very little and have continued on that path of non-affluence. People move here for a better life when they couldn’t get to really good places.

My wife blamed me for making her life miserable. She lived here when she knew how much better life was where she was from. Victriola needed doctors. It wedged our lives. I did it for love. Life with me never improved. It just went on like that gigantic glob of plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean. There's a metaphor for our relationship, something floating on something globby. The fish that ride on sharks are smart. You can't be eaten by a shark if you're chugging along tucked behind it's dorsal fin. Maybe that's the best advice. Hang on to the big fish and go for the ride.

I wasn’t knocked to the canvas when my wife left. She never said goodbye. After looking in ears and down throats all day and pulling hams from baby blankets and liters of beer from pants pockets as a night-time grocery store security guard, I came home, they were gone, she and Arbus, my son. He was three. He learned to hate me before he remembered me. I was happy to see her go, joyful in a sorrowful and mournful way. It’s what she wanted. I was like Woody Guthrie singing, So long, it's been good to know you. I lived to give her what she wanted. Isn't that a husband's oath. I understand her falling out of love, but my son never thought it through for himself. He took his mother’s emotions, slapped baloney and mayonnaise on them, and called it his daily bread. His anger’s sustained him, made him the man he is today. I don’t hate him. I read that upon someone’s death real or symbolic, think of the worst you can say about that person and say it. You’ll feel better. He lives in New York City. I wish him well. His hatred is clinically referred to as ‘transference of character,’ transference from his mother to him.

My flesh and blood departed. My betrothed and off-spring decamped. The referee stepped in and stopped the fight. Everybody was in the ring yabbering, my mother, all my relatives. I never heard the bell. Nobody stuck around to have their arm raised in victory.

My uncle was the only one to never comment.

I’m coming to you ‘live’ from the hallowed halls of my nation's Presidential Suite, our little Buckingham Palace, snug in my animal pajamas. My daughter gave them to me. I love my daughter, and my animal pajamas. Her name is Arabella. I call my animal pajamas my Animal Pajamas.

Even with War ended I know Humanity is past its expiration date because I saw a librarian litter. How far in the future can the collapse of society be when a librarian

throws her cigarette butts on the ground? If irony is dead, how did a doctor and security guard become president. Crazy world ain’t it?

Chapter 3

I was there when it hit him. President Whalebone bolted from the curb like Buddy, William Jefferson Clinton’s Labrador Retriever. Bill was going to name him canine Lucky. That would've been ironic.

War ended last Thursday. The world's been giddy as schoolgirls on helium. I haven’t used English since my wife left. Victriolan is not an easy language to learn. My English muscle got a good workout. My love muscle, not so much.

Why did the president cross the road? To check out his new knees. I’m not comparing President Whalebone to a chicken. Laughter is the best medicine, after actual medicine. When we tell stories about chickens, we’re telling stories about ourselves.

These three chickens were crossing the street, the President of Victriola, his Vice President, and his Presidential Physician. Advancements in horse knee-replacement got President Whalebone's squeaky mid-leg joints repaired like people putting aluminum siding on their houses. The first chicken, President Whalebone, was working out the kinks. His Vice President was in co-pilot position and I was third wheel. As we waited for the light to change and allow up to cross a bus careened around the corner and barreled towards us. Making a show for the paparazzi, our president leaped from the curb. I reached to grab him, the speeding vehicle stealing him from my grasp, the Vice President having conveniently stepped back. The bus went right over our Head of State. I thought the driver was going to be blind drunk, out of his mind with shock and remorse.

He was as calm as a building inspector checking fire damage in an all-steel building, Zolgavanian, a country next to ours. Perhaps it wasn't his first fatal bus accident. I asked if he was all right. If I'd hit a president with a bus, I’d've been a bit hysterical. I would have wanted to know what was going to happen to the President and more importantly what was going to happen to me. I was holding a bloody chicken, I mean, president, asking the driver if he was all right. You know what the driver said? Can I get paid now? Vice President Starbuck huffed like Homer Simpson and took the driver aside.

Holding President Whalebone’s head, cameras snapped, kinda' like my self-control, saying what people say when someone is dying. You’re doing good, Buddy, what Bill said to his dog. Everything’s going to be fine. President Whalebone said, "Atlas, don’t

kid a kidder. We say that in my country too. I'm that bag of bones the girl in A Hundred Years of Solitude drags around." We were voracious readers he and I. We thought that book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a literary masterpiece. The girl President Whalebone was referring to lugged her parent's bones around, and ate dirt, a metaphor I hoped wouldn't become reality for President Whalebone.

Based on a time-honored tradition from when we were ruled by Divine Kings, the king, later, the president named his successor, cronyism yes, but like most things political, nobody could do diddly-squat. An American President of not-so-long ago claimed to be descended from a line of Polish kings, joking how he’d've liked to be dictator. Peter Pan’s Captain Hook would've scolded, Bad form. Presidents always named their Vice President as successor, like Russia's president appointed someone so he could pop back in, pop out, then back in again. Berlusconi did it in Italy, an empty ritual we've pompously and circumstantially clung to, keeping the country on the course of the person at the helm. President Whalebone was a progressive visionary. I was his friend. I was there when the bus turned him into a puss-ball.

Kneeling, cameras flashing, holding President Whalebone’s head in my lap, he said, Atlas, we joked about you being President someday…[cough, choke, gag]

Everything’s going to be all right. You’re doing good, Mr. President. Deathbed proclamations can be as lethal as a nocturnal hound-dog fart.

It’s time to take up that notion, President Whalebone choked. "Therefore…

[cough, , gag, sputter]…by my authority [cough] I pronounce you [face clenched in pain]

President of Victriola."

A Chinese proverb says, Never use two words when one will do.

...F--k...

Chapter 4

Stay with me, Sir. You’re doing… [collective paparazzi gasp]

Vice President Starbuck made a noise like a poodle passing a watermelon.

President Whalebone’s head wobbled in my hands and nearly dropped to the pavement. I wanted to smash his battered brains into the concrete.

NOOOOOO.

That was me screaming like that Edward Munch painting, the news flying faster than flight attendants on Las Vegas turnarounds. Most people would give their kneecaps

to be president. I had one question. What kind of friend would do that to a person? I was a doctor, the president's personal physician. I didn’t need this crap.

"What did the president say? a reporter asked.

I tried to weasel out.

An ounce of medicines. That’s what he said.

Doctor Emerald is the new president. President Whalebone named his doctor his successor. This could've been my first two executive orders.

"Execute that man and give these newsmen lethal injections. "

President Atlas, what do you have to say?

F—k-uh-lee-duck-uh-lee, is what came to mind.

Vice President Starbuck wedged in.

We’ll straighten this out.

President Whalebone wheezed, Give it a rest Starbuck. President Emerald, heal the nation, heal the world. He was delirious. He was kidding. The bastard was smiling.

In a nation of inferior dental-care, President Whalebone took care of his teeth. No George Washington action here. He went to a dentist in Germany. I could've stuck my fist down his throat and pulled his testicles out of his throat, anything to stop him talking crazy.

Insult to injury, he added, And Atlas, be careful in the corridor. He was out of sunshine, rainbows, and smiles, but found the time to be cryptic. He should have said,

Look both ways before crossing the street. That would have been ironic. The crazy things leaders say when leaving office. You would've thought he'd been smoking Timothy Leary's ashes through one of Joe Garcia's femur bones.

The press hounded like Baskervilles.

What’s he saying?

President Whalebone gave up the ghost, kicked the bucket, bought the farm next to the Ramada Inn by the highway, squeezed his cheese, strummed his last ukulele, shucked his corn, and tipped his hat to the conductor of the SS Spooktrain. There's been a lot of death in Victriola. Everyone that isn't alive has experienced it. We’ve learned to joke about it as much as the situation allows. You have to walk into a room and get a feel for the crowd. Our beloved president, my deep and enduring friend, was dead in my arms. That's the kind of morning someone asks, How's your day going? and you reply,

You don't want to know. It was worse than having all the skin rubbed off your bottom.

Perhaps he was referring to renovations in the Presidential Palace. "Watch your head.

Don't walk under that ladder."

Most accidents happen at home. I live in the Presidential Palace, as of last evening. I don’t want to spill my brain-soup this morning.

I gave my acceptance speech last night, then we inauguration-balled. The champagne flowed like snappy dialogue from a Shakespeare character's lips. I got Huckleberry-Finned and floated away on a Moon River. At midnight my head turned into a pumpkin. Arabella was beautiful in her white-frilled gown. Miriam, President Whalebone’s secretary, had it made. I didn't know a ball gown from a ball peen hammer.

The sewers worked all Friday and Saturday, the people who sew clothing, not the smelly pipes zig-zagging under Capitol City. They work Mondays, Wednesdays, and every other Friday and Sunday. You've got to have a rhythm of when to go. Maybe I can fix that.

The written copy of my speech was on the night-stand, pink and gooey, how I like my women. I kid. I got a little punch on it, the party refreshment, not the medieval puppet, or the pugilist's past-time. The evening fuzzed after I addressed the crowd, like my mouth this morning. What effect will these words have on my People?

"Mr. Vice President, members of the Ministries, families, friends, citizens…

welcome."

A cheer went up outside on The Square like the Titanic had been raised from the ocean's murky bottom. The crowd outside watched one big screen television courtesy of Our Mighty Allies. They’re nice when they choose to be. They always want something in return, your natural resources, your undying loyalty, those sorts of things. Those with a television saw my speech in their homes. Most people buddied up with somebody in their village.

It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt. Mark Twain said that. Disregarding his words, I speak to you this evening. I swallowed like a gold fish with a guppy in its mouth. If a week ago someone had said there would be a stark and tragic ending and a brilliant new beginning, I would have prescribed a trip to the mad house for them. I am no psychiatrist, but I know insanity when it is standing in front of me. May you never have such a diagnosis for me. The kitchen doors swung open like Anne Frank’s secret warehouse loft raided by Gestapo. I hit the deck then realized it was just dessert coming out and pretended I was doing push-ups, flaunting my vitality like that Russian guy what's-his-face who rode a horse without a shirt to show how masculine he was.

President Whalebone did not wish to confound or denigrate our good name and duty, and I have no intention to malign history or this sacred office. ‘Heal the nation, heal the world’ is what I hope to achieve with my time in office. Monkey madness broke out among the crowd outside. In here someone clinked a glass like cocking a gun. Our nation is before us. We cannot let its wounds go untreated. We have our homeland’s medicine. The ages have rolled waves and we’ve been carried in their tide. The oceans have parted and we’ve been pushed through. We are bobbing in their wake. Give me your hand. I spoke metaphorically. Victriolans are not hand-shakers. Neither were Michael Jackson, George Washington, or Howard Hughes.

Man will do many things to get himself loved. He will do all things to get himself envied. That's a Mark Twain quote too. Either most attendees didn't know who Twain was or were thinking about their piece of pie, literally. Dessert was coming around.

I was President Whalebone's good friend. In that friendship lives and dies the mystery. ‘The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last a lifetime if not asked to lend money.' That's the third Mark Twain quote in this speech, thus a Samuel Clemens Hat Trick. I thought that would lay them out. It was good for a stab of laughter. Maybe people didn't know what a hat trick was. A fat drop of sweat ran down the middle of my back and into my butt-crack. It sizzled like bacon hitting a hot frying pan.

If President Whalebone would have asked me for money, he would have been barking up the wrong tree. When dogs ‘tree’ a bear the dogs gather under that tree and bark, telling the hunter which tree the bear is ‘treed’ in. Sometimes one dog barks up the wrong tree. Good luck telling that dog the bear isn’t in that tree. This is the same dog that barks at the back door when someone knocks at the front door. My uncle kept his hunting dogs in the house. How he'd weed out the incompetent is he’d go outside and knock on the front door, then come in and see the dogs at the front door, then go into the kitchen and see if any dogs were barking at the back door. Those dogs would turn around and look at him then bark at the back door until they grew tired or confused or both and would lie down in a corner. Those dogs found new homes or were walked into the forest and finalized with a dose of buckshot.

The world has crossed a line. Our nation has walked through fire. Heal the nation, heal the world. I take those words as my oath. I didn't like it anymore than

Gerald Ford liked being president of the United States. All he wanted was to be Speaker of the House of Representatives. As Constitutionally-mandated, when both Vice President Spiro Agnew and President Richard Nixon resigned, Ford was forced to step up and step in. When told he was going to be President he said, F—k, screamed like a girl, and ran out of the room. I was in the driver's seat and had to convince these people I would steer and they'd all have to be willing to push. No one knew the meaning of those words. We Victriolans weren't built for grand ideas. Tether the beast to the plow. Sure.

Those are some mighty fine potatoes you have mam. Okay. Heal the world? I don't think so. My countrymen weren’t used to hearing positive affirmations. We were more,

Life is brutal people, We all must struggle, folks, Shut up and keep digging,

persons. Another gob of sweat trickled down my trolley line.

All you need is ignorance and confidence; then success is certain. If I quote Mark Twain one more time, I'm going to kill myself and save you all the trouble.

Beat-beat-beat. Audience reaction was a flat-line, my reaction to theirs, more flop sweat.

I'll finish with a story. That got rousing applause. The things people do when waiting for their president to exit stage right. "A king heard of a wise man and commanded his subjects to bring the wise man before him. In three days the wise man arrived. ‘Wise man, what do I hold here?' The king held out his clenched fist. It had a pebble in it. ‘Your Highness, the answer is in your hand.' The wise man walked out of The Palace.

Flatter-line. Flopper sweat. I laughed meekly, more a wheeze.

" To paraphrase, the answer is in our hands. Thank you. Try the veal. I'll be here all week." That was saying something and saying nothing at all.

You could've heard the splash of a corpse flung down a well. I think I heard a pin drop, from a broach, maybe a hairpin. Compare my words to the acceptance speech of the First Father of Freedom, George Washington.

"Tho’ I am truly sensible of the high Honour done me in this Appointment, yet I feel great distress from a consciousness that my abilities and Military experience may not be equal to the extensive and important Trust. However, as the Congress desires I will enter upon the momentous duty, and exert every power I possess In their Service for the Support of the glorious Cause. I beg they will accept my most cordial thanks for this distinguished testimony of their Approbation. But lest some unlucky event should happen unfavourable to my reputation, I beg it may be remembered by every Gentleman in the room, that I this day declare with the utmost sincerity, I do not think of myself equal to

the Command I am honoured with." Washington could be wordy even when he wasn't being wordy. Then he did a double-shot of Spanish Madeira, his beverage of choice when he wasn't cutting a rug, shying away from shaking hands, and staying one step ahead of his wife's pursuit. Then he Moon-Walked out of the room, never wanting to be Father of his Country, but he knew a dollar when he smelled it. I didn't ask to be president either.

He was taller, I have my own teeth. Washington fought his nomination tooth and nail, nail at least. I said, Maybe Vice President Starbuck wants a turn on the ride. When Samuel Adams nominated him, Washington screamed like a girl and ran out of the room.

Maybe that's where Gerald Ford got the idea. I looked for a bus to jump in front of. Back to the ball.

Chapter 5

Outside my countrymen burst into thundering applause. The Palace vibrated. If it wasn't people clapping, screaming and stamping their feet, I would've said it was an earthquake. We’ve been mined so extensively some day the earth beneath Capitol City will collapse and swallow us up, people, buildings, our one good road, cows, potatoes, and all. So much for city planning. This was Pope applause, Rolling Stones intensity.

Inside there was a piddly patter, starting with the chef. Arabella squealed and charged to her feet.

Everyone reluctantly joined in, no enthusiasm to it. I was reminded of what John Lennon said when The Beatles played for the Queen. Those of you in the balcony just rattle your jewelry. Was I supposed to believe he'd been offed by a single, Twinky-eating, Catcher-in-the-Rye-reading lunatic?

I stepped from the platform like a supermodel’s uncle and walked the runway, smiling and waving, no one extending a hand for a shake, most looking some place else as I passed, soaked from my neck to my skivvies, one last rogue sweat-bead running the gauntlet from my neck to my lower, rear cleft like a naked soccer fan in World Cup frenzy. Arriving at my taint, the flesh between the testicles and anus, it had cooled considerably. The first time I heard the Gershwin’s Taint Necessarily So from their musical Porgy and Bess I thought Porgy was singing about Bess’s you-know-what.

Please accept my apologies, Mr. Gershwin. I was a medical student in a foreign land, away from home for the first time. What did I know?

A small woman with a large tray offered me a glass of champagne. I raised it in

toast. Heal the nation. Heal the world. I didn't have a clue what I was talking about.

That first glass went down like poppies at Oz city limits, sweet as flowers on a New Year’s Day parade float. I hadn’t tasted anything that delectable since my college days at Boston’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT. I studied medicine. Duh. What else do doctors study...beside nurses? Nostradamus said, The Anti-Christ will have studied in America. Our similarities end there, as far as I'm willing to admit.

My college classmates mixed tequila, Sangria, and Mad Dog wine to make Jungle Juice. Among the guys it was P-ssy Potion, a potent pouring guaranteed to get the co-eds whoring. I thought P-ssy Potion was for a sick cat. A couple glasses of Jungle Juice and the party began to swing. I reached for a second glass of champagne before the waitress whisked the tray away.

I never actually made Jungle Juice. As an end-user I could've been Catholic-Confessionally absolved. Bless me Father for I have sinned. I drank a little Jungle Juice, there was this co-ed, yuh-duh-yuh-duh, budda-bing, budda-boom. If I had been privy to Jungle Juice production I probably would've landed in a lawn chair along a lazy river next to Beelzebub, can of worms and home-made pole for Eternity. Eternity is a long time. That was when I was still marginally religious, one toe in The Holy Water.

It was Jungle Juice that jammed me into a '69 Rambler with a crisp brunette named Anneliese, pointed, brown shoulders like banana trees fashioned by Gauguin, perfect perches for exotic birds, hips set for slipping in and out of island boats, breasts like apricots at the peak of ripeness. Her gold chain tangled around my Yankee Doodle Dandy when she Star Spangle-Bannered Purple Mountain's Majesty, a Marquis-de-Sade secondary sensation, as if the first wasn’t enough to make my Rockets Red Glare. I’d think about climbing through barbwire fence, guilty, religious sensibilities. I crawled through barbed wire to crap in the jungle.

Anneliese’s freckled-brown skin was a mountain stream’s tumble of smooth stones scattered in a river’s flow of fluttering heart palpitations. Her knees, ankles, elbows, and heels were cardboard-cornered Christmas gifts, jingle-balling my eggnog party-server, her cocoa-cropped spikelets were jungle leaves misted and figged. I said,

Your hair’s tangled. Here’s my comb. That was my best pick-up line. Was that a hairbrush in my pocket or was I happy to see her?

Her back and arms were structured like Mediterranean mazed walls, a Middle-Eastern kingdom-garden. Her dark, dangerous eyes were midnight man-hole covers, olive

orbs I’d seen in my salads. Her caramel-topped voice made my banana split, her hot, buttery behind like Sunday morning toast. Anneliese's nose had carefully-curved nostrils that flanged in the moonlight every time Jack-Be-Nimble jumped over the moon.

I’d been thinking about packing my daughter and Labrador Retriever named Muttonhead and leaving my homeland. Then this President thingy came up. I was obligated to sail Victriola to safer, more prosperous waters, like George Washington crossing the Delaware. Dead of winter, snow-blowing, minus-thirty-wind-chill factor and he’s standing in the bow of that boat. I‘ve got some fertile crescent between the Tigres and Euphrates for sale. So do Our Mighty Allies.

Snug in the backseat of that pinkish-purple '69 Rambler, the color of Jungle Juice, we carved a trail in the night to Walden Pond, once home to American Civil Liberties icon, Henry David Thoreau. Living in a shack he built himself and arrested for refusing to pay an unfair poll tax inspired Henry to write Civil Disobedience. Question that authority, Davey Boy. President Whalebone and I discussed the merits of that book on many occasions. Anneliese gave me a copy. If I had the chance, I’d make sloppy-slishy adulation with her on Thoreau’s doorstep all over again. Mr. Thoreau wasn't home at the time, some fearsome emfatuation on his welcome mat.

We were Kennedy kids on a hot Chappaquidick night rolling through midnight Massachusetts bliss. Anneliese licked my ear.

Let’s have a summer affair, leaning so far into me I could see the bumps on her tongue. She grabbed my Members Only and squeezed like it was a Las Vegas one-armed bandit paying off in solid gold Klamcheks, Victriola's standard value of coined currency.

My eyes spun in their sockets lub-lub-lub-lub-lub. A Klamchek is worth a quarter minus two dimes now that the dollars is worth twenty three cents.

Stumbling down Walden's sandy trail, unloading fleece blankets, a cooler of beer and the Jungle Juice jug, we pitched camp on the cement pier protruding into the lake, twin-tower lifeguard posts at the cement corners, moonlight on the quivering water, thought racing to some of our own towering and protruding. Anneliese put her hand on my rudder and steered me off the pier. Man overboard, she was the Captain Ahab of my one-man skiff. Let’s find Thoreau’s dirty little shack.

The Robin is the only bird that can pull a worm out of the ground in one piece.

Anneliese led my red-ribbed warble across the sand, into the shrubbery above Walden Pond, to a bench and railing at a narrow point on the trail. Pulling off her top, me topped

to measurable exhilaration, Anneliese and the moon reflected in the honey dew on the tip of my Midsummer Night Dream, the Robin coaxing the worm with precisely cajoled enticements, beyond invitation, , crashing the party, , past musical chairs and on my way to popping her pińa colada sure as Rupert Holmes wasn't into health food and liked making love in the dunes on the Cape .

Squaring me on the bench like placing a child in a corner for time-out, she revved my odometer like a Nascar driver fighting for pole position at the Firestone Five Hundred. Then the chain, ah the chain. I imagined climbing through jagged fencing. My People are used to a little pain with everything we do. I was Steve McQueen on his Papillon motorcycle aerially scalingbarbed-wire battlements. Anneliese stood. Steve fell off his bike. It wasn't the end of the movie, but a good time go get hot, buttered popcorn.

Anneliese stepped to the railing, bent and launched her satellite into the sweet-summer signaling air. Was there