From the Heart

Brenda’s in trouble. The whole campaign is in trouble. Monday’s paper troubadoured the brave candidate who said what so many believe and so few will say. That marijuana is wrongly classified – it belongs with alcohol and caffeine, both of which are far more dangerous. We spend billions trying to enforce a prohibition while we could be collecting the “sin” tax.

This has made her an instant success in the schools, where the unheard of has occurred. Kids are spontaneously discussing current events. In the halls, behind their hands in class, over lunch trays. Brenda is their new hero.

All the more reason for the press to come down on her. And they do. Republican district, remember? But even the national press is on it. Brenda has been shot down by friendly fire. Mary Steele has a good memory. Every word of the quote was there, and was accurate. There were witnesses, though their memories were impaired by alcohol.

And this isn’t her only problem. Standing offstage is a succulent woman with an incipient babe-in-arms, who could any moment come forward and disclose a lack of family values in the Shapiro household.

That’s all she needs: Husband of Pot Candidate Fathers Love-child. With plenty of pictures of the buxom Danielle. She would drown in notoriety.

Mercy has been sailing calmer seas. For tonight, she had arranged a local appearance at a school, two blocks down the street from her apartment house.

She’d been feeling a little bad about the harsh way she ended the interview with Felicia Livingston, telling her to go find out the difference between a man and a woman.

And the aspiring filmmaker/musician – she deserved to have her say about guns, which she said killed, and abortion, which she said didn’t. Mercy didn’t know how many others were quietly seething. They called her a traitor, a turn-coat. But the worst thing they called her was Republican. They had a special way of spitting out the “p”.

Here are some interesting demographics. The district in which Mercy and Brenda live is a Republican one. It is Brenda who is out of place in the district. But Mercy’s living unit of artists with artistic temperaments, is not only Democratic, it’s downright Liberal, to a man. Or woman. But who’s keeping track of that?

Her neighbors all love Mercy as a person, but they hate her as a politician. They’re angry that she doesn’t agree with them – that though they personally matter to her, their ideas don’t.

She would like to host a private party in the Heart of her apartment, but it’s too small for everyone in the Artists’ Hive to be there at the same time. Hence, the school. The meeting is open to everyone, but she particularly hopes her mates will come.

She’s posted invitations on all the Hive’s bulletin boards. Big, red invitations that can’t be missed. “Get to the Heart of the matter.”

She’s calling it a “wrap” session, to wrap up all the odds and ends for herself – to know where she stands.

Mercy is what you could call a senso-intellectual. She believes if you can captivate the senses, you can captivate the soul. Mercy wants to win the war by winning over the enemy through the magic of the senses and the power of the argument. Open the door and the argument can step through.

She and a few friends have draped the back of the stage in the deep red of the Heart. She’s in a red dress of the same color. With the red foot-lights, she’s all but invisible, except when she moves. Black light completes the effect, her glowingly-made-up face floats mysteriously in the air – a talking head, under a UV-striped, bobbing top-knot.

“I would have invited you to my home,” she says, “but my Heart isn’t big enough.” Laughter from the cognizanti, which make up two-thirds of the hundred-odd audience.

“I believe that I’m going to be elected as your next congressman. Not just because I’m so appealing (pause, laughter), but because of the gerrymandering that created the four democratic districts that surround us. Many of you are among my dearest friends. Before I go off to Washington, I want to resolve our philosophical differences, and find out what it is we really want, what we can really accomplish. I want this to be a coming together.

“I want you to feel at home. Not your home, but my home. I’m going to have them turn off the house lights and let you imagine that you are sitting on a stool in the Heart, sipping tea. Blind yourself to the world around you.”

Just before the lights dim to dark, we see, sitting on the side, coincidentally next to Donna and Felicia Livingston, who will moving to Massachusetts – long live federalism – who but our own Adele Delicia. She’s been sent by the campaign, even though she said she was too tired to go, to hear firsthand what use Mercy is going to make of the marijuana debacle. She looks like she’s trying to hide, making herself small in her seat, slumping so she won’t be seen, but she’s just depleted.

The lights go out, and Mercy continues: “We’re all blind, most of the time, to most of what’s around us. Tonight I would like you to open your eyes to me. Many of you are artists. And I would venture to say that the rest of you are simply unaware that you, too, are artists, who haven’t yet found their medium. Artists come in all races, in all genders, in all ages. But apparently in only one political party.

“A lot of you are angry at me. You think I’m masquerading as one of you. That I’m really The Man.

“There’s been a lot of buzz about my being against gay marriage. So is Barack Obama. But both of us are for gay rights.

“We are all for equal civil rights. Not just for gays, but for everybody. Nobody should be denied coverage, money, jobs, apartments, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, on the basis of their marital status. Why should a married couple have rights that a single person doesn't have? Why should married people get deals, subsidies, tax breaks that singles don't?

“Marriage is not a civil matter. Marriage is a personal matter.

“If you want the government to subsidize your life and protect you, demand that it do so no matter what your marital status.

“Decline the government's indecent discrimination on the basis of genital pairings.

“If we are a society where pairs have perks, let the perks be independent of the meshing of personal parts. Let Joe and his sister unite. Let Mom and niece unite. Let brothers unite. Aunts unite. Let any people who want to declare themselves a couple, unite.

“Let’s drop that word ‘marriage’ from the civil law. Marriage is, or was, a social institution involving a man and a woman. For God’s sake, let the fuddy-duddies have it!

“In some societies, marriage that does not produce offspring is annulled. And there’s a reason for that. A man and a woman are related through their children. Through their descendents, they become common ancestors. No progeny, no relation, though of course there is relationship. Let’s save the word marriage for the mundane practice of procreation between two people. The childless? Out. Parents of adopted children? Out. Marriage is for people who want to pursue the old-fashioned practice of putting their egg and sperm together.

“I know this is a liberal crowd. I know that even the straight among you yearn for homosexuals to have the same rights as heterosexuals. You want to do something. But there’s nothing you can do. Well, my heterosexual soul-mates, I have something for you to do.

“Here's what I propose:

“That every couple tear up that state license and refuse to accept any benefits the government gives to the married. Get the government out of your crotch!”

There is a little bit of laughter amidst a deep silence. Nobody likes what she’s said. It’s not equal rights they want, it’s a form of social validation they’re looking for, and that does not come from others giving up theirs in sympathy.

The lights go on. “And now,” she says, “I see someone who looks as though if I don’t let him talk, he’s going to explode.”

She’s looking at a thirty-something kid in a brown polo shirt – nobody she knows. He’s got a good crop of dark hair on a large head, and the rough start of a good beard. He looks trim and athletic. Mercy intuits he plays tennis. She’s almost right. It’s Ultimate Frisbee that keeps him in shape.

She decides to have some fun. “Come up here, young man, and tell me what’s troubling you.”

He’s embarrassed, and reluctant, but she gets him up on stage, where he stands out against the red backdrop. Mercy’s head floats above him and to the right. He’s on a stage with a talking head.

And he does explode.

“No you can’t!” he parrots her Nobama speech. “There's nothing more stirring than telling people ‘No you can't!’ That's just what people want to hear. The party of No! The party of futility and despair.”

Woo-woo-woo!

The head backs away from him. “Do I look to you, young man, as though I’d belong to the party of No? To the party of Despair?” She wiggles her hips, and suddenly her body appears against the background, shimmying. The audience roars. Then the head moves closer to him, and the voice gets lower, more seductive. “I see it as the party of Yes. Yes to life. Yes to victory. Yes to reaching and striving and letting live. Yes to the advancement of mankind. Yes to individual liberty, without which there is none of the above.”

She takes a sweeping bow, which looks at first as though the head is falling, top-knot first, to the ground. Then it swoops up again.

Someone from the audience yells, “Personal liberty? That’s a laugh. How about the right to smoke dope? Brenda Shapiro’s going to legalize marijuana. Your party is against it.” (Polite people don’t even mouth the word ‘Republican’.)

Mercy comes front and center, almost detaching from the background. “I am running for congress on the Republican ticket. That does not mean I support every so-called Republican issue.

“Specifically, I will propose precisely the same marijuana legislation as my opponent. If anyone is not going to vote for Brenda Shapiro because of her stance on legalization, then they can not vote for me either, because mine is the same.

“It is not an issue in this campaign, except insofar as it illustrates that my opponent has more integrity than most people serving in congress.

“And where are you Libs on this issue? Why so silent? Where’s that passionate voice for control over your own body? You’ll fight for the right to abort a baby but not for the right to smoke a joint.

“What do you think of that, young man?” she asks the much-less-hostile-than-moments-ago guest who is still on stage.

“It must take a lot of energy to burn your own house down,” he replies. “You must be exhausted. This election looks like it's going to come down to who wants it less. Why are you even running?”

“I’m running because our country is in trouble. My party’s gone astray, but your party has gone further. I don’t think you’re all so happy about our handsome, well-spoken – what was that word they used to use? ‘articulate’ president taking over our lives. Throwing away the rulebook and making up his own. You’re afraid to say so, but I’m not. You’re not allowed to, but I am. I, my dear, can call a spade a spade.

“I call Obama a community organizer. He’s organizing the entire United States as if it’s one community. He’s knocking down the people on the top, thinking it will raise up the people on the bottom. It doesn’t work that way. We’ll all be poorer for it.

“Back when he was in Chicago – I knew him, but he wouldn’t recognize me – he was always hampered by the rules. Now he’s doing away with them to put his schemes in place. But they’re small-minded schemes, meant to undo unfairness. They won’t work – theft does not create wealth, and redistribution is simply legalized larceny. People: equal rights and constitutional protection are for everyone. That includes rich motherfuckers, whether you like it or not.

The young man on stage shakes his head. “Makes me wonder what the man-on-the-street is getting from all of this. We're stuck in the echo-chamber, in the crazy cocoons of the candidates messed up lives.”

“We all have messed up lives,” Mercy says. “Every single one of us. Cover your ears, now, I’m about to mention a taboo name. As Donald Rumsfeld said, ‘Life is messy.’”

Knowing laughter.

“You have two candidates trying to fight for you. We have similar wants and different ways, yet you refuse to give either of us a hearing. Like strutting peacocks, you display your pre-programmed reactions. It’s all you partisans who are in the echo chamber. You can’t consider anything you haven’t already heard from your own party. When the opposition speaks, you put up your iron bracelets and deflect all in-coming.”

A glowing hand appears in the air. It’s really at the end of Mercy’s long-sleeved red dress. To the audience it looks as though the disembodied hand has sailed over to the young man, and the young man is pumping it up and down.

He leaves the stage, happier, we hope, than when he stepped on to it. Mercy takes some questions from the audience. They aren’t really questions. They’re accusations, but she turns them into questions and answers them.

Then she calls it a night. But not quite. Adele has fallen asleep in her seat. She was played out when she got here, and fell asleep back at Mercy’s repetition of the apt words “echo chamber”.

She’s startled awake by Mercy, who has come down into the almost-empty room to put a hand on her shoulder and say, “Hello, Honey, glad you could make it.” She gives her a wicked, knowing smile. “Come to see if I would turn on your girl?”

“I did,” Adele says, waking up. “You surprised me.”

“I’ll always surprise you, Honey. That’s a promise.”

Adele feels the sexual connotations and is at a loss for words. But Mercy isn’t.

“You doing anything for Halloween?” she asks.

“The Mall with Brenda.”

“Oh. What fun. How about coming to a real Halloween party when you’re through with the Mall? One that won’t start till the trick or treaters are home in their beds. Are you game? It’s a masquerade ball.”

You sure know how to get a girl, Mercy. Adele’s brain, tired as it is, immediately fills with a parade of competing costumes. She doesn’t say yes, but she doesn’t say no.

“I’ll e-mail the address to your campaign. They’re sure to send you. I might do something untoward that will lose the election if you’re there.”