April 01, 2004

Texxxas-Style Bar-B-Cutie

Super blast from the past (And this time I don't mean from Rovey's midnight gordita run!)! Rovey forgot to reattach my ankle carabiners when he left after our lunchtime "Grand Jerky Empanelling", so I was able to wriggle free from the Play Area and make a rare, unsupervised visit to the Little 'Ho's Room. Well goodness golly if I didn't trip over a loose tile (He may have left the other latches free, but the key to my wooden Training Clogs is still nestled deep inside Rovey's Dutch Oven, and he's at work so no nekkid tootsies for me!), and come upon a whole treasure trove of souvenirs from my LPR (Life Pre-Rovey). I must say, much of that time has been pretty hazy since my Cuddlenumpkins has started having me eat the special candy he brings home from the DARPA labs, but I don't mind 'cause he says that it's good for me 'cause it helps him build a strong bone ten different ways! Anyhow, here's a letter I wrote to my pal Linda in, oh, must have been around '99 or 2000 or so...

- - - - - - -

Dear Linda,

I've met The One. Now I know, I know - you're shaking your pretty perm and chins and sighing to your tape recorder, "Boy, I've heard *that* one before!" but I swear it's not like that this time. I was young and impressionable, and how was I supposed to know that Mr. Gergen smiles at *everyone* like that? And despite what Roll Call hinted at, Ms. Reno and I are JUST FRIENDS. She just happened to need a practice partner for her lambada revue, and I was the only one of the summer interns who had the foresight to pack dance panties. I mean, life in the White House is so wacky and fast-paced, you never know when a fiesta is going to bust out, and being an ex-Junior Llama Scout, I'm always prepared! Well, almost always. A few weeks ago when Mr. Stephanopoulos came shimmying into the intern closet for a pop drill on the number from Gypsy he'd been teaching us, I completely muffed the step-ball-change/jazz-hands combo, and accidentally kneed his personal assistant right square in his olive branch. Mr. S. was so mad, he made me come into his office and wax "I'm sorry" into his back fuzz so many times that I could actually see skin! But I'll tell you - it sure taught me a lesson, and I skipped 2-for-1 Monicolada 'n Starr-rita nights at the Hawk & Dove to practice until my thighs ached, and my joints would have been a bruisey pulp were it not for your lending me those kneepads your friend left behind. Thank her for me, would you? Are the two of you still in touch?

Well, I know how you love it when your pals share all the sticky details of their boy-crazy adventures with you, and it makes you blue when there's a gap, so I wanted you to be the first to know about this dreamy new guy of mine. As you know, ever since that sleep specialist suggested it might be helpful for my insomnia, I've been traveling coast to coast with Mr. Gore's presidential campaign. My tasks change from day to day. Sometimes I'll be in charge of flicking pinto beans at audience members who look like they're nodding off. Maybe I'll have to hose down the bus after the Straight Talk Express drives by and the McCain press corps lean out the window and try to douse us with their super-soaker Kool-Aid cannons. I might even have to stand outside the VP and Mrs. Tipper's Winnebago D'amour and loudly announce to passers by that they shouldn't disturb the candidate for the next few hours because he's in there making sweet, sweet monkey-hot humpage to his comely wife. They're sooooo in love, you know. I heard a rumor that there was a movie based on the two of them. I think it might have been called Blade Runner but I can't be certain.

Aaaaanyhow, for once, I actually had an evening off (even super pumpy-stumpy robo-sex machines like Mr. Gore get run down and have to recharge sometimes), and thought I might suck up my courage and mosey over to the Bush campaign's bipartisan brisket Bar-B-Q. They're always asking us Gore staffers to come over and frolic with them, but that inevitably ends in wedgies and the duct-taping of our various sensitive parts, so we tend to say no. Still - it's nigh-on impossible for me to say no to a scrumptious hunk of meat, so I set my unmentionables aside, depilated and baby-oiled all potential tape removal danger zones, and wandered on over to the Piggly-Wiggly parking lot where the Bushies had set up camp. Oh my goodness golly! I thought our bus knew how to have a rollicking good time with our water-chugging contests and spirited rounds of House Resolutions Pantomime. But these folks clearly had gone through a crash course in Fiesta 101 'cause the scene was like something straight out of The Decameron, or Falcon Crest, even. See, at our ice cream socials, only Mr. Gore and Mrs. Tipper are actually allowed to touch each other. Opposite-sex staffers are required to stay a Starr Report's width apart while waltzing, and the purity seal on our official campaign unitards must remain un-burped at all times.

Now I know that must sound a bit prudish to a helium-teated sex dugong like yourself, Linda, but I'll tell you a little secret because I know I can trust you. Mr. Gore's boss got into a bit of a kerfuffle a while back for smoking cigars with interns, and the rumor is that Mr. Gore doesn't want anyone to think that he'd be the same kind of bad influence on his young staffers. And I can't say I disagree with him. You go indulging in unhealthy behavior like that in front of impressionable children, and heaven knows what they'll be sticking in their mouths next. As quick as you can say James Buchanan, they'll be on their knees beholden to a giant addiction - maybe one that'll make them blow their job and their whole reputation! They might even start taking the pot, or getting hopped up on goofballs, or tossing away all their pocket money on material to make not very pretty handbags, and that would be just scandalous. Won't someone just once think of the children?

But back to the party. After these past few months of oat bran smoothies, bulgur-kelp mock-nuggets and celery croquettes (Mr. Gore likes his team to be super earth-friendly, as well as regular!), I must admit I was in the mood for something a little bit spicier. Not that we've been entirely flavor-deprived, mind you. Team members who have accrued enough Lockbox Points are allowed two black pepper packets with their Cream of Soy or Organic Gore-zpacho on alternate Souper Tuesdays. However, I've chalked up a few demerits lately for saying the N-word (it rhymes with "raider") out loud at staff meetings, and accidentally humming racy Hanson songs in earshot of Mrs. Tipper, so I've just had to make do with rummaging through the trash for the empty oregano baggies that Green Party VW bus caravans always seem to leave behind at the rest stops. I shake out the dusty bits onto my mung loaf, and munch away, and soon I'm just feeling…better about the world. It's amazing what just a little taste of something herby can do for your disposition sometimes! But to heck with these single hits of flavor. The Bushies were sparking it up calienté style with an impromptu pig roast (Oy - another thing I got demerits for - asking Mrs. Hadassah if she wanted a bite of the Spam jerky I'd made on the radiator of my motel room. Heck, I was only trying to share!), Buckler-funneling out by the dumpster, Jenna and Barbara's Cuervo-rita 'N Kissin' Booth (2 for 1 specials for all DKE brothers or current Wellesley students), Mrs. Laura's Sandoz Chili-out Tent, and in the center of it all, the candidate himself saddling up Pat Robertson to race him across the parking lot.

Oh, there was a-hootin' and a-hollerin' and a-stock-ticker checkin', and like the shy little Goreista I am, I stayed on the fringes away from the booths, just watching it all fly by. But suddenly, out of the corner of my cornea, I saw her. Like a Golden Girl showered down from Heaven above, standing over by the slaw vat, cell phone in one hand (in deep negotiations with Mike Ovitz or Jerry Bruckheimer, no doubt), and hunk of brisket in the other was my life-long sartorial idol, perennial super-starlet Bea Arthur herself. I mean I had heard that the Bush campaign was attracting its fair share of Hollywood glitterati hoping to add some star power to the effort and nab a little bit of political gravitas for themselves (there are only so many mentally challenged characters written every year, and mama's gotta try to bring home the Oscar somehow!), but I'd been anticipating the usual hangers-on like Bruce Willis, Jay Leno or that Austrian bodybuilder with the funny last name - Schwarzenazi or something? Nothing like the white-hot, unquenchable firepower that such a legend as TV's Maude could lend to the proceedings. I screwed my courage to my sticky place, and sidled up to ask Ms. Arthur for the favor of her autograph. Oh, how I gushed and babbled at her, citing exchanges between her and Estelle Getty, and recalling beloved dialogue from her star turn in the Star Wars Holiday Special. Ms. Arthur seemed more than a bit flustered by my torrent of fandom, and noticing her glances toward a nearby Secret Service agent, I jammed a mental finger in the dike to slow the flow, and cursed myself for not heeding the Bushies' laid-back lead and letting her go incognito. Still - I wasn't about to leave there without a memento of my moment bathed in the golden glow of cinematic perfection.

"I…I'm so sorry to bother you, Ms. Arthur, but may I possibly have your autogr…"

And then I saw him. Well, not so much saw him at first, but rather was suddenly, voluptuously engulfed in a warm olfactory haze redolent of roast beef drippings, Gold Bond and my bachelor uncle Chuckie's laundry hamper in the weeks after Grammie Wade fell down the root cellar stairs and hurt her hip. In other words - intoxicating. Had I not eschewed my undergarments before venturing deep into Bush Country, they surely would have by now been twisted into slick knots so ornate that only the most devoted Webelo could hope to unsnarl them. He sidled up, chuckling heartily, setting his voluptuous chins a-wobble, and a sultry mist of mucus loose across my already dewy flesh.

"Another one, Karen? You really should consider a different hairstyle if you don't want this to keep happening." His lavishly lubricated twang trilled juicily from the upper reaches of his adenoids, agitating some previously unknown, un-stroked pleasure center of my brain. Linda - had I not at that moment willed up the mental picture of Mr. Gore and Mrs. Tipper's mandatory after-dinner staff entertainment presentation of Kama Sutra positions 12 through 18 last night, I can't swear I wouldn't have wilted down to a greasy little pleasure puddle on the asphalt.

Not-Bea growled, "Well, Karl, it's not like you didn't have that gaggle of Japanese press mistake you for Ned Beatty last week in Mississippi! Not that you didn't have them squealing like pigs quick as Lewinsky could finish off a tray of hot links!"

Not-Ned flushed, plumping the ample, supple flesh of his jowls with blood, and transforming his head for but a puckish moment into the spitting image of an Easter ham. My stomach growled, and he clucked his tongue. "Well I swear! Leave it to those liberals to leave a poor, starving child behind. Come over to Rovey, and I'll make sure you've always got as much meat as you can handle. Here, let's leave Mrs. Hughes to her very important governmenting business, and we'll see if we can rustle up a few ribs for your pleasure."

I nodded dumbly, and the last clear memory I have before the evening melted into an Open Pit-hued haze of slaw, lard biscuits, brisket, line dancing and sack racing with this grade-A slab of Texas-thick prime rib, was his lifting a single bratwurstian finger to a small daub of butterscotch pudding glistening on his chin and smoothing its sweetness over my parted, parched lips. "Make sure to save room," he whispered.

Oh Linda, I would have sworn it was all a hypoglycemic dream, had I not awoken the next morning to find a tempting array of sausage links and Krispy Kremes arranged on a tray at the foot of the bed, accompanied by a stained napkin scrawled with a cell phone number, an edict to rendezvous behind the Port-O-Potty bank neck to the Charleston Kiwanis Club at 8 that evening, and the initials "KR" traced in KC Masterpiece at the bottom.

Such sweet torture until then. Perhaps I'll use the time to try and get that stain out of my blue dress so I can wear it tonight. Wish me luck! And by the way, this is just between you and me, okay?

Love, Virginia

Posted by Virginia at April 1, 2004 12:02 AM | TrackBack