Getting it Straight

It’s Labor Day. The official holiday of the Democratic party’s working-class base.

Adele should be enjoying the morning. Instead, she’s all wee-wee’d up. It was so nice when she was the only African-American around. And the only woman in her small game. Whatever she said was okay, whatever she wanted, she got. Everything she asked for was presumed to be good for blacks and good for women. That worked well, but now, by some horrible twist, a cosmic joke, she is up against someone with the same credentials – a black woman – with a plus: she’s gay.

Let me tell you about Adele. She’s a lovely girl. She’s always been a lovely girl, and everyone has always loved her. She can wheedle her way into anything. The world has treated her well, and she doesn’t have the hang-ups (the only word, folks) some of the rest of us have. She’s willing to go far, down a wide variety of paths.

And so she wonders, now, how can she lessen this advantage their opponent has? Either Brenda can soar past her, or Mercy can be stopped. It seems easier to stop Mercy that to promote Brenda.

It seems as though it is her job. Who else can talk about Bill Cosby without infuriating Whites, Blacks, Democrats and Republicans alike? Besides, she wants to. She’s not proud of her illustrious brother, going for race over ideas, supporting a black woman because she’s black, which is how Adele sees it, because she can’t believe that he really thinks the Republicans care about educating poor people. To them it’s just a way to tear down the teacher’s union. The fewer kids choose public school, the fewer union teachers there will be, and they’d like all unions to disappear so they can run the show with their moneyed power – selfishly.

Yes, Adele is a truly giving girl who feels sorry for all those who have not made it as far as she has. But she has, so she knows it can be done. She’s post-racist, you might say. She’s not very proud of Obama, jumping for all the race bait, sticking up for that stupid professor. A professor who makes his living keeping racism alive. But she likes his sartorial style, and she loved Michelle’s one-shouldered white inauguration dress. She has a picture of it hanging over her bed.

She’s sitting on that bed right now, wearing a frilly camisole and hip-hugging shorts. On her legs, crossed in half-lotus position, is her laptop. She’s googling Mercy Alexander.

She’s found out a lot, and yet, nothing. Mercy seems to have come to town full blown, ten years ago, at the age of 34, a lay minister, ordained by no one, with no following. She went to work for various charities and community drives, moved up the ladder until she was managing many of them, and built up a flock with no fold.

She wrote little articles for local newspapers on every topic under the Sun. She has a big mouth, concludes Adele. Mercy Alexander is for everything obscene and nothing wholesome. No federal funding for abortions, no affirmative action for minorities, no education or health care for illegals. She is for lower taxes on the rich, vouchers to funnel money from public schools to private schools, and war. Some minister! A woman who is working against her own people.

You may wonder how all this jibes with Adele’s post-racialism. It doesn’t. But loyalty is important to her, and she is a loyal Democrat. Like any good party member, she can make any case. Two at a time if she has to, as she is doing now – sitting pretty on her pretty bed, in a fancy rooming house in a fancy neighborhood, nurturing magnanimous feelings toward her less fortunate brothers and sisters.

But she hasn’t found what she was at first casually, then seriously, searching for, and that is the past. Where did this woman come from? Nothing says. No one mentions.

Adele is bolstered by the possibility of finding something she can use. It’s her job to take down this Black Republican vixen.

But let’s leave Adele to her scheming. The whole hive is buzzing like it’s under attack. Some of the busy bees have turned on each other. Brenda is fighting with Wagman. She doesn’t want to say what he wants her to say. She doesn’t like being the dragon keeping children locked up in bad schools. It’s against her private, personal religion, which is, remember, humanism.

“It’s against everything Democrats stand for – the people, the downtrodden, justice, equality. How can they say they believe it’s better for children to keep them in abysmal schools?”

“Oh, don’t worry,” he says, “they don’t believe it. But they have to say it. Just like you. They have to say it or they lose the big union bucks, the Republicans get back in, and the world is back on track to Hell again. It’s the greater good, Brenda; it’s always the greater good.”

He has given up trying to put an arm around her, touch her hand, or in any other way try to physically calm her. Better to let her sputter out there by herself than get in the way.

She’s about fizzled out now. Dejected, but she’ll get over it. She keeps trying to escape from her cage, but he won’t let her. She’s their organ-grinder’s monkey on a leash.

This conversation is taking place in Brenda’s house. A surprise visit from Wagman, to rein her in. He’s been feeling her slipping. She wants to say what she believes – not the party line. But she’s not allowed to do that. He’s not allowed to do that. He’s got plenty of complaints his own self. But he keeps his mouth shut and so will she.

He called her from two blocks away, and would have rung the doorbell if he had to, just like the last time. She can’t escape from him just by turning off her phone.

But she was there, she answered, and she was alone. He knew she would be, because Nina had told him that Jason was coming for his tantric yoga lesson.

Imagine Jason. The bombshell on one hand, tantric yoga on the other. Not that they used their hands. No sir. I told you Nina is an accomplished practitioner of the fine art of yoga. She has further refined, and has developed her own brand of, tantric sex.

But what’s with Jason? How can he justify being there? You didn’t think he would be, did you? He didn’t either.

Remember the little head? The little head doesn’t have a lot of extra memory. From one time to another, it forgets the bombshell. It’s always up for something – something more, something new, something promising. Lover boys are used to thinking with the little head. That’s why they’re lover boys.

Jason would not deprive one lady because of another, except for fear of punishment. He thinks he’s got Danielle where he wants her. She’s so exuberant, so needy, it seems to him, always offering more, and more often, it seems. It’s tiring him out being brutally rocked and rolled. It would be nice, he thinks, to have completely stationary sex. All pleasure, no pain.

For public consumption, or in case of being caught, he is at the house on the pretext of talking about their two children. However, they have agreed not to discuss them at all, but to proceed like two strangers involved in a business transaction – a tutorial.

He rings. She answers. She’s wearing a long, purple robe with a hood, and holding in her hand, a single white flower that looks like a lotus blossom, but for any of you who care, is actually a “dinner-plate dahlia” from the garden.

She looks into his eyes. Not in any provocative way, more in the way of an open pool. They are grey-green. Gauzy, like her hair.

“Welcome,” she says, with a slight bow. “Please follow me to my studio.” She turns and drifts up the large stairway that he not-so-long-ago bumbled up to find her son and his daughter in bed. (We know they were not “in bed,” but “on the bed,” an entirely different matter, but by now Jason has erased the difference.)

She turns right at the top, just as he had, goes down the hall and opens the door to a room with a white carpet, and white couches with colored pillows. He knows this room, and he doesn’t like it. It reminds him of the party, though he only glanced in for a moment.

He feels annoyed. What’s he doing here? He’s not going to go through with this – not with the mother of the lying pothead seducer of his daughter. He’s been brought back to the lair – the den. The den of iniquity. He turns around to tell her he’s changed his mind.

She’s standing against the door. Naked. Her hair is poufed out around her head, and she looks all eyes. Below that, she is like a garden nymph – smooth and small with all the body parts of a human woman.

At this point, what kind of cad would tell a lady he’s leaving? She looks so small and vulnerable. Quite alluring, actually.

He says nothing. He’s fixed to the spot. She moves around and past him, and when he’s turned back, there are two pillows, a flat blue one and a fat green one, sitting opposite each other on the white rug, touching.

“Please take off your clothes,” she says, in a low, sweet voice he has never heard before.

He does nothing. The grey-green eyes bore into his, obliterating his body. He feels his hands removing his shirt, then his pants. He’s standing there in his briefs.

“All of them,” she says. “Don’t be bashful.” He pushes the briefs down, stands on one foot and takes them off with a toe. When they depart, the little head rises. He’s embarrassed, standing there in full swing, aiming toward a woman he has never even touched.

“Please sit,” she says, in a sweet voice he has never heard before. She indicates the low blue pillow. She takes the high green one, swirling down into lotus – but not quite. Her legs are not crossed. They are outstretched and recurved, making an ellipse for him to fill. She holds her arms upward toward him, beckoning.

Not altogether clumsily, he sits, putting forth his own elliptical legs, with the third one down the middle.

She wiggles slightly toward him, arms raised, walking on her buttocks to bridge the gap, until they are touching, down there. A sharp thrill goes through him.

She adjusts herself so that the little head, blind as it is, feels the heat, senses the moisture, and activating its guiding mechanism, dives straight in.

Ohhhhhhh.

The big head lifts, and with a big grin, finds itself staring straight into Nina Wagman’s grey-green eyes, at this moment more powerful and more profound than the turquoise splendor of Danielle Dubois’ shockers. He can’t move. He doesn’t want to. A soft pleasure is coursing through him; if he jiggles, it could disappear. He closes his eyes.

“Keep them open, please,” she says. “It is important to remain aware.”

That, he hadn’t counted on. He had thought that whatever it was, he could lose himself in its ecstasy, but that was not to be. He couldn’t lose himself. Instead, he found peace – the kind of peace that kings would give their kingdom for – peace grounded not in the absence of pain, but in the presence of pleasure.

Two fucking hours worth of peace, people. While Brenda is harassed and bullied into shape by her trainer.