Wayne is sick of the way his life is going. He serves two women, and neither service him. He can’t get a good feel, let alone get laid. All he gets is sharp tongue.
He’s decided that sex is more
important than politics. That he won’t fight; he won’t argue. He’ll be nothing
but agreeable. After failing with Wife Number One, as he thinks of her now, he
has taken Melissa up on her “Go visit Doreen,” and is happily ensconced in the
love-seat, in the little alcove where he and his lover, the mother of Billy the
Kid, smoke pot.
Oh yes, Wayne’s a bad boy. Practically
everyone in his generation is. Wayne is 43, born in 1970. In 1968, everyone in
the enlightened town where he grew up, tried it, and a surprising number stuck
with it for a while. Most of them, like Jackie Paper, put away Puff the magic
drag-on, when they grew up, but a few still indulged, even though now they had
children who were encouraged in school to rat out their parents if there was a
funny burning smell coming from the master bedroom.
But he shouldn’t have tried
it tonight, if he expected to keep his mouth shut. He shouldn’t have relaxed. He
shouldn’t have asked the lovely Doreen if she knew that the phone number to buy
Obamacare was 1-800-FUCK YOU. (Well, not exactly, it’s 1-800-F1UCKYO.) And when
she told him where to go, he shouldn’t have said he didn’t want to go there
because it was full of Liberals.
So now, instead of some nice,
casual cuddling in their little nook, he’s telling her that not one person in
Louisiana could buy insurance because they couldn’t get the website up. That
the navigators who are supposed to help people, have a 207 page manual, and are
told things like, “Don’t leave people’s personal information in the Fax
machine, and make sure there’s someone on the other end to receive it.” And
furthermore, that the navigators are getting millions to get people onto
Obamacare, and they’re all his buddies. Planned Parenthood, ACORN, the NAACP,
the AFL. It’s just a voter outreach program. Obama doesn’t give a good god damn
about anybody’s health care. He wants control. He wants everyone dependent on
government, so they won’t fight against it.
Doreen tries to reason with
him. “But why should they fight it when it’s trying to take care of the poor?”
“Because you don’t take care
of the poor as if they were barnyard animals, given just enough to keep them
lazy and content. He’s designing a country for the ignorant, for people who
don’t know and don’t care what’s going on. This is how tyrants rule. America is
supposed to have educated voters - and I don’t mean voters with degrees. I mean
voters who can figure out when they’re being had, when they’ve got a ruling
class that wants to stay in power. These people aren’t supposed to be our
leaders. They’re supposed to be our representatives, public servants. You ever
hear of public servants? Obama and Holder… do they act like public servants? Does
Congress?”
Uh-oh. The lady has risen
from the loveseat and is standing with her hands on her luscious hips, and fire
in her green eyes. “All you want to do is fight! Fight with Government! Fight
with me! Fight, fight, fight! Obama is trying to fix a horrible situation where
some people can afford insurance and other people can’t!”
“But
that’s not what’s happening! People are having their hours cut or losing their
jobs because their employers can’t afford to pay for their insurance! They have
to buy it themselves, but they can’t afford it either, so they have to pay a
fine, because it is now illegal not to have health insurance. Poor people paying
fines because they can’t afford so-called Affordable Care. Does that make sense
to you?” His voice has gone up a few decibels.
She
slaps him and yells, “Don’t you yell at me like that!”
He’s
alone in the loveseat, with a big, blue bong sitting on the floor next to him. So
much for mellowing out with Mary Jane.
Let’s
check on a different couple and a different drug. Donny and Ann Harris, at
home, in the great big room under the carved beams, at one end of the long
table, discussing the news of the day, which they have gleaned from CNN, from
Fox to be fair, and a few choice websites that are safe to go to. They both
hate reading the comments of crazy people who see evil wherever they look.
“Damn
Tea Party,” Donny is saying, as he twirls a glass of last year’s Mountain Red “Holding
the entire economy hostage. This Ted Cruz. An opportunist. Just wants to get
his name out there. But there’s one good thing. The Republicans hate him as
much as the Democrats do, and they’re going to help to get rid of him and the
tea-baggers. Bunch of radicals who don’t want any change.”
Caftaned
Ann nods. “It’s awful, this shutting down of government. People are suffering,
all because the Republicans only care about making money, and don’t care about
people.”
But
something has been bothering Donny. “Nobody cares about the people,” he says. “Actually,
it’s the Democrats who shut down the government. The Republicans want to fund
the government, except for Obamacare, and the Democrats are saying, ‘All or
nothing. If we can’t have Obamacare, we won’t have anything else, either.’ In
fact, every time there’s a complaint, like those kids with cancer who can’t get
treatment, the Republican House offers up a bill to fund it, and the Democratic
Senate refuses to consider it. Harry Reid wouldn’t let them accept funding for
the cancer kids. He says it’s a trick.” Donny pauses, thinking, then, “And they
won’t let Arizona pay the ticket to keep the Grand Canyon open.”
Donny
is having problems. He’s beginning to not like the Democrats any more than he
likes the Republicans. It looks to him like the Democrats want the shutdown to
be as bad as it can be, for the ordinary person. Closing the parks reminds him
of not letting classes tour the White House during the sequester. Unnecessary
but painful. And petty.
“Donny,
you know who you sound like? You sound like Wayne. I don’t think I like it.”
Let’s
leave these two to further unravel, and move on to our final scene. School. College,
to be more precise. And a change of drug. This time it’s caffeine in the student
lounge where Steve is basking in the attentions of Brittany Brown, who is
ranting about the lawless government.
“This
isn’t even the bill that was passed. They keep changing it. There weren’t
supposed to be waivers for anybody. Why should we be subject to a law that half
the country is being exempted from? All the big O’s cronies in big business are
getting excused. The congress is getting excused. If everybody gets excused,
who’s going to be pay for it? All the poor schmucks (Brittany’s a WASP and
doesn’t know what that word means) who aren’t rich enough to get excused? How
does that work? Do you know that 700 times, the bill says, ‘at the
discretion of the secretary?’ That’s like writing a blank check. Who says you
can write a bill and after it’s passed, say who has to obey it and who doesn’t?
I’m sorry, but that is not the way we do things in America.”
“Not in your America. But
Obama’s trying to do something for people who look like him, not people who
look like you.”
Whoa! Stevie-boy. This is the
grader in your class. You really think it’s smart to antagonize her? But he
can’t help himself. If she sounds like his father, he’s got to give his mother
equal time.
“Typical Liberal,” she says. “I
have a legitimate complaint, and you call me a racist.”
And with that, three out of
three of our couples have uncoupled.
