Wayne is always trying to impress his ladies. Never works. He tells his wife, then he runs and tells his girlfriend. Then the ladies get together and tell each other he’s a madman.
Here he is, arriving home
from the station, once again full of something he read on the subway. Melissa
is out in the yard pruning a tiny apple tree she bought years ago, against his
better judgment. He calls it the Japple because it looks bonsaied.
He ambles up to her, trying
to sound casual, and blurts out, “I just read something you won’t believe.” He
doesn’t give her time to reply; he knows better. He goes on. “The sewer systems
are all clogging with this stuff people are using instead of toilet paper. Moist
towelettes… you ever hear of them?” Again, he gives her no chance to reply. “Ever
hear of one-wipe-charlies?” He guffaws obscenely. “Supposedly eco-friendly. But
they aren’t friendly at all, and they’re installing traps so they can trace the
stuff back up to your toilet, and catch you at it.”
He leans over her pruning
shears. A dangerous move, but she’s used to quelling her first response when he
comes up with these things. “You know why they won’t go down? This is the best
part. Because Al Gore shrank the size of toilet tanks, and gave us the
practically-no-flush toilet. Well…” he laughs, anticipating, “all the pipes in
the country count on a certain amount of water flowing through them to work. And
now they’re all stopped up. The nation’s sewer systems are constipated. But
don’t worry about it. Gore made millions on all his eco-friendly junk. Now
everybody’s running around trying to buy up old toilets. Maybe he’s got a
stash, and he’s selling them back to the poor assholes whose water he took
away.”
Melissa has contained
herself. She’s swallowing the gall, and has not moved a muscle. “That’s the
trouble with you Republicans. You aren’t willing to risk a thing for progress. If
we’re going to get anywhere, we have to make mistakes. So maybe the no-flush,
and the towelettes are mistakes. So fucking what?”
“I am not a Republican. They’re
second tier sycophants. They want the same thing the Dems do. To be in charge
of the money. To spend. Spend, spend, spend. Because that’s what they think
their job is. The more they spend, the more votes they think they’ll get. Jerks.”
Melissa goes back to her
pruning. He just called the Republicans jerks. It’s a good time to needle him. “Meanwhile,
Obama is making peace with the Arabs. The UN is going to set Syria straight,
and we’re going to talk to Iran instead of bomb them.”
“Oh, right,” he says. “Talks.
We’ll give and they’ll get, and meanwhile they’ll finish their bomb, and we’ll
never have the upper hand with these murderers again. Plus, your boyfriend has
cleared Assad to murder his people any way he can, as long as he doesn’t use
poison gas. And that’s what he’s doing, while the UN sits around ‘resolving’.”
“You are not a peaceful
person,” says his wife, and stabs her pruning shears into the ground.
“Yes I am,” he says. “I was
even going to make peace with Obama, when he wanted to hit Syria. But he
chickened out. He doesn’t want to be on the outs with the dictators of the
world, and they’re all for Assad.”
Melissa picks up the shears, and
he backs away, but he keeps talking. “He loves dictators. Remember how he
hugged Chavez when they first met? He couldn’t wait to get his arms around him.
And he bows to them, and calls them by their divine names. They’re all in it
together…”
Let’s get out of here. He’s
only going to get worse.
Let’s see what the young
folks are up to.
It’s late, but Steve’s still
at school. He likes it there. In school, he’s a kid. At home, somehow, he’s got
to be a man. They’re making such a big deal out of not treating him like a kid,
he’s more comfortable here, because nothing magic has happened just because he’s
in college. He’s a kid, in college with other kids.
We’re back in civilization,
in the student lounge, a popular place, a home away from home for the students,
who are all commuters. It’s lined with vending machines, and Steve is drinking
coffee, his drug of choice. It’s convenient; it’s legal, and you can get it
anywhere, even if you’re a kid.
He’s taking in the scene,
when all of a sudden, who does he see, walking side by side, but Brittany
Brown, and their government professor, Dr. Monroe. Dr. Monroe, as he says at
the beginning of each term, not Doctrine Monroe. Steve’s head isn’t the only
one turning. It always happens when Monroe enters a room, because Monroe is
bigger than life, and looks like golden-haired Gilderoy Lockhart, Professor of
Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts.
Let’s leave Steve, and listen
in on their conversation.
Scrawny Ms Brown is
stretching up to the height of her five foot four, taking advantage of the ear
she’s got, to continue a conversation that must have started somewhere else,
because Monroe is giving her half his attention, and with the other half is
scouting the room. Monroe is a bon vivant, and visits the lounge often. He
wants to be friendly with the students.
And they, especially the
girls, want to be friendly with him. Brittany Brown isn’t making any friends
among them, taking advantage of her position as his grader, to walk around
whispering in his ear.
Actually, it’s noisy, and
she’s shouting, “Everything government does is too big! Look at Obamacare. They
don’t have the Spanish translation ready. Not that it matters. The software gives
wrong answers about who owes what.
“But my dear,” Monroe says,
smiling not at her, but at the room, “that will be ironed out and then every
American will have insurance.”
“But that’s not true.” Don’t
whine, Brittany. “When everything is all fixed, 30 million people won’t be
insured. Before Obamacare, there were only 22 million uninsured. It’s going to
be worse than it was before.”
“But only for a while, my dear,
and then everyone will have the same.” He smiles broadly at a group of girls at
a table. They titter. Yes. That’s what they do. Titter, not Twitter. It’s a
word. Look it up.
“But what kind of health care
will it be? We’ll be like Britain where my uncle was left to rot and die in a
hospital bed with no care, no one to feed him when he could no longer eat, no
one to help him drink when he could no longer hold a glass. When he died no one
was decent enough to make him ready for the family. His belongings were left
for them to pack up, right next to the corpse.”
“Now that’s quite a morbid
story, my dear, and I’m not sure I believe it.” For the first time, he flashes
his smile at her. “But why don’t you write down all your feelings about Affordable
Care. It will relieve you, and then we’ll see if we can put your mind at rest.”
With that, he nods his head once, and takes off for a vending machine next to
the table of girls.
Brittany is left standing
there. She spots Steve, plunks herself down beside him, and continues the
conversation as if she were still talking to Monroe.
“Why should we have to buy
Obamacare when congress says it’s too expensive for them, and they’ve got six-figure
salaries? Why should they make rules for us and exempt themselves?”
Go to it Steve. Take Mom’s
part. “They’re not exempted,” he says.
“Because that didn’t work. Instead,
the government is paying for them. They’re being subsidized. That means we’re
paying for them. They’ve been issued a memo that says don’t buy it until we can
get you the best deal. Really, Steve, you disgust me. You don’t know anything.”
She stands and walks off,
having dealt Steve the blow she wanted to deal Monroe.
To close our snooping for
today, let’s look in on Billy, the youngest member of our cast, who is in his
room, making up his pot pamphlet for Saturday. Here is a quote: “Marijuana is a
plant. All animals, including humans, are entitled to the products of the
earth. It has more medicinal uses than any other plant. It requires no
preparation, and the effects are instant. It’s our sacred right as human beings
to partake in this miracle plant.” He’s already cued up a bunch of
testimonials, from an ancient Chinese emperor to Queen Victoria. And you
thought marijuana dulls the brain and induces sloth!
