Guys and Dolls

What are the guys doing? We haven’t heard from the guys in a long time. Not really. We know what Mitchell Wagman isn’t doing, and that’s coming onto Brenda anymore. But we don’t know what he is doing. Lemme tellya, folks.

Our man Mitchell is working behind the scenes. Knocking himself out trying to get some celebrities to appear with Brenda. He almost got her booked on Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update, but at the last minute, Seth Meyers, the little bastard, decided that tripping in the park, and your daughter meeting a guy in the mall were not really up there with butchering a moose and your daughter getting preggers . Damn him. Brenda would have been perfect as a straight man.

Wagman is looking for love in all the wrong places. He ought to stick to business, stay serious, try to get some bigwig politicians to come out on the stump with her. Instead, he’s wooing Janet Jackson, solely because he has never rid himself of the image of her wardrobe malfunction at the Super bowl half-time show, a decade ago. That little pancake of a boob – it wasn’t much really; I saw it. Many times. Dad played it a lot; it made a big impression on him; socked itself right into a corner of his brain and never left. Same with Mitch.

Men like Mitchell Wagman don’t have to think much about what they’re doing next. They have an inner sense that guides them instead. They never know what’s really motivating them, but they’re focused and determined to follow where it leads.

It led as far as a phone call with Janet, who said she was sorry, but she didn’t want to stain her brother’s memory with politics. Mitchell said, “But it’s for the children. He would want you to do it.” Michael’s sister took that the wrong way. She hung up on him.

Wagman lived on the sound of her voice for a week, and replayed in his head, the bobbing out of the boob, whenever he got bored, or felt bad and insignificant.

He’s not doing too well. Brenda the hot teacher has turned into a difficult student. She doesn’t seem the same to him anymore – no longer soft and yielding, intellectually removed and physically naïve. She’s become opinionated, and these clothes Adele puts her in – cheerleader costumes – have given her more bounce to the ounce. No more standing like a statue behind a podium. She wiggles like a whore on those spiked heels. Not his type.

Clyde Waters has picked up Brenda’s scent where Wagman left it off. He sees her so differently. Persecuted. Forced to take unprincipled positions by Wagman. Betrayed by her husband. Up against what seems to be an unbeatable opponent. Harassed by an incorrigible daughter. He feels something he’s never felt before. The urge to protect someone. Not millions of people, with medicines, but one person, with his own body and soul. He thinks he loves her.

How does this manifest itself in a good man like Clyde? He’s working tirelessly on his part of the bargain. Writing to the President. Calling other Congressmen. Keeping the men he and Brenda breakfasted with doing the same. Contacting more across the country. Trying to create a movement to make reproductive-related medical treatment a right of all. To give his abortion pill more cover, Clyde is taking Viagra, and even vasectomy, under his belt (so to speak.)

He feels fortunate that he has not seen the bounteous Ms. DuBois lately. She’s gone back to work full time, the personal reasons for her absence having mysteriously disappeared. She does not come regularly to plague him in his office. He guesses this is because she and Jason have other, more intimate places, to see each other now.

He’s wrong, of course. We know what’s going on. Danielle is avoiding Jason. She doesn’t want to answer any questions about why she couldn’t see him when he came to the door.

Pig-headed Jason doesn’t want to ask, either, so the unhappy couple has been separated now for two weeks. Jason is no longer the complacent husband, happy at home, his head in the clouds of remembered and promised pleasures. He’s tormented by who it could be, by what they might be doing, by her not calling to tell him it was all a mistake, and explaining it away so they can laugh over it.

He checks Dads for Tads, morosely, for clues. He finds none. Just the same sob stories, with an occasional happy ending, but usually not. Depressing. He wishes he’d never heard of them. He wishes he’d never seen Danielle. Then he takes that back. To have missed such a sight would have been a cosmic loss.

Those are our major men.

Nat is carrying on his solitary diplomatic action for the United States of America. Chauncey got a part-time job as a body guard after rescuing Brenda from the clutches of the collapsed picnic table.

Phoenix Wagman is lucky he’s not in jail. He just can’t seem to stay out of trouble. He got a text message from Sheba that their parents are reading his website. He took some things down, but it was too late. Too many people know him now. Know the real him. It’s going to be hard to crawl out from under all this certitude and once more create his cloud of doubt. The two ounces of old-fashioned homegrown are gone. He thought they were cute.

That’s how it is these days, people. The grown men plod along making a living. Wagman is running a school. Jason is in computers, with one of those jobs nobody understands. The women have the glamorous jobs. The women are running for office, running magazines, being famous photographers. The young men, like Phoenix, get into trouble. They’re looking for something, and trouble’s what they find.

But the man of the hour, folks, is neither grown, nor adolescent. He’s nine years old, and about to bring down the house.

His mother is talking on the phone to Clyde. He hears her say, “That awful website, Dads for Tads.” When the call is over, he says, “Dads for Tads. That’s Daddy’s website.”

“No it isn’t,” she says. “Daddy doesn’t have a website.”

“I know, but he goes there. All the time.”

“He does?”

Zeke nods. “Especially lately.”

“What does he do there?” Brenda asks.

“Nothing. He just looks. He used to be happy after he looked. But now he’s mad.”

The child has reported. Done his familial duty. Turned in his father for the sake of the family. Zeke has been worried about his daddy, who was so much fun and now isn’t anymore. What’s a little boy to do but tell his mommy?

Brenda has never gone to the site. She disdains it. Fundamentalist propaganda.

It makes her ill to see such things. But she goes now, as soon as Zeke has tactfully left the room. She sees the pictures of the fathers and their children. She reads the stories of fickle girls who don’t want the children of the boys they’ve broken up with. Wives with careers that come before family, who have the newest members scraped out of their wombs. Men helpless to prevent the murder of their children.

She’s horrified. People, she actually cries. She’s worn out, and sobbing comes easily. She doesn’t know if she’s crying because of these miserable men or because she’s afraid that Jason is one of them. He’s met some hot little number – God knows where, certainly not work, he practically works in Clyde’s armpit. Maybe on-line. Remember when he spent all that time on the computer? That’s where he met her. Then they met in person. And had an affair while she was too busy to notice, and now she’s pregnant, and wants to get rid of the baby – Sheba’s and Zeke’s half-sister or brother. She can’t do that. She can’t do that to Jason. It’s his child. She can’t do that, the little bitch; wait till I get my hands on her. She’s going to have that baby whether she likes it or not, and I’m going to take it and raise it … she comes to her senses when Sarah Palin’s face floods her visual cortex.

She immediately rejects everything that came before conjuring the Alaskan Republican. That’s not her. In no way is she going to force anybody to have a baby. She’ll talk to Jason as soon as she sees him. He’s got to let the girl go through with it, then forget about her. Otherwise, life upon life will be ruined. His other, real, children’s. Hers. His. Her campaign’s. He cannot have an illegitimate child. A bastard. That’s what it would be. A bastard. Bastard is practically a dirty word. There must be a reason.

She’s going to do the manly thing and confront him. Tell him he’s got to let the girl get rid of the baby, and then he’s got to get rid of the girl. She’s going to apologize for never being home, for never having sex, for whatever… She’s a politician. She ought to know how to apologize. If she doesn’t, she’d better learn. She might have to go to Washington. She doesn’t want to go to Washington. Her life is wrecked. She’s lost her husband. There’s going to be a love-child walking around her house. Her children will have to explain to their classmates.

No! They won’t! Their classmates will know, because everyone on earth will know. She’ll be like Mrs. Edwards. They’ll feel sorry for her.

Maybe then she’d get elected. Otherwise, she has no chance. Mercy has stolen her pathetic little thunder; Obama’s ratings go down every day… if only he would stop. Just stop. Just don’t do anything for a while, instead of making a gigantic announcement every day about some new enterprise he’s taking over and going to spend money on.

There’s Obama-anger everywhere.

Sarkozy and Brown are angry at him for keeping Iran’s secret nuclear facility a secret because the revelation wouldn’t mix well with his speech at the UN.

The people coming to her rallies are angry. They’re even angry that he’s going to Copenhagen to try to bring the Olympics back home to Chicago. They come there to yell at her, not to bask in Obama’s reflected glory.

They want to throw rotten tomatoes at Obama, and there are plenty to throw. This year, when everyone had been convinced to save money and get good food by having a backyard garden, there was a tomato blight. They’re bringing bags of them, and Chauncey has to set himself up as a security guard, to take them at the door.

Even if Obama were doing all right, it wouldn’t do her any good. They were counting on his African-American vote turning out for her. They hoped to ride to victory on his black coat tails. But someone else has usurped Brenda’s rightful place on those tails. Brenda is a loyal party member, but these days race is stronger than party. Riding on his coattails is a black witch, who’s there for no other reason than her color.

Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be fighting? Brenda thinks she should stand up and tell them that this is America. We don’t vote for color, we vote for ideas. Look what this woman stands for. Is it what you want? Your public schools drained of money, your right to abortion brought into question, your subsidies ended, welfare kaput? You want the government to say, “Go out and take care of yourself; you’re none of our business?” If that’s what you want, vote for Mercy Alexander.

But what difference does it make? Once the news gets out about her errant husband’s concubine, whether or not the bimbo should have the baby will take up all the oxygen. She has to do something to prevent that. Now.

Well, will you look at that. It turned out to be about the ladies after all. Sorry guys, that’s the way it is these days. The world is turned on its head. The weaker sex is the stronger. They have better hair, better clothes, they’re more efficient, and damned if they’re not better suited to politics, being inherently single-minded for child-rearing purposes, and able to hang on with the determination of a pit bull protecting its puppy.

Did I say “pit bull”? Wasn’t that Sarah Palin’s line? Poor Brenda. The metaphoric company she finds herself in!