DWARVES IN MY MILK

The Way We Were

At lunch, the question, from an embittered partisan co-worker, angry and bile-filled with hate and rage. 

At lunch, the question that took me back.  "What I want to know, is does anyone," he brayed rhetorically, "Anyone remember Afghanistan?"

Do I remember Afghanistan?

The question is:  How could I forget it?

It was May and the poppies were in full display in the field north of beautiful Kandahar. My on-again, off-again friend with benefits, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and I, were holding hands and letting our joined fingers trail across the tall grass and plant tops. He had just come in for a two-day visit from Jalalabad on some secret arms deal. "A quickie visit," he called it, and I giggled. Because there was nothing quick about Slow Hands Don.

We walked in the field and we laughed, talking of how one day we would stroll just like this through the streets of Paris, and about our future, and about multi-stage bunker nukes, and of how happy we were. We walked and he kissed me. That lip-less kiss that said, You're gosh darned right I dig you, baby! We kissed and he took me, there in the sticky sap and heather.

After, in the warm embrace of post-coital afterglow, Donald chewed on a poppy stem and gazed upward at the smoke-filled sky, the sheen of sweat glistening off his pocky, alabaster chest.

"One, day, kiddo, I gotta tell ya, all of this could be yours," he said, spreading his spindly arms expansively.

"What, all these scheduled, controlled narcotics?  Oh, Donald," I cooed.

"No, this place.  This country.  Right after nine-eleven the President was all piss and vinegar, and itchy for a fight.  He asked me what I would want to attack Iraq, and I jokingly held my hands up in the victory sign and said, 'Afghanistan.'  Superman II had been on the night before, and I was just fooling around.  Well, gosh, can you believe it?  He promised me the place, the whole kit and caboodle, right then and there.  It was the darnedest thing."  Slow Hands shook his head slowly in amazement and sucked the opiates from his plant.

"Oh, Donald.  I don't want Afghanistan.  I just want you, silly," I gurgled, tracing lazy circle eights on his hairless, spongy pecs. 

He looked at me, pushed his glasses back up his nose, and smiled.  "You don't fall madly for the love you want, you fall madly for the love you have."

I squeezed him closer.  I didn't know what the fuck he was talking about.

But then again, with Donald, there in Afghanistan, I never needed to.

Iraq is All My Fault: A Lover's Tale in Three Short Acts

Under the curt and accusatory headline of a recent online item ("Iraq is YOUR Fault") I was obliquely charged, as a member of the American voting population at large, with being responsible for the invasion of Iraq.  How I was responsible as a voter was, well, unclear. 

Now, rather than allow blame to be spread broadly over my fellow Americans, I did what I think any good patriot would do.  I owned up to the fact that the war in Iraq--the whole thing, mind you--was probably my fault.  I had to take that position.  Given, of course, the fact that my actions led directly to the war.

Look, it was a messy affair with a pretty young thing, but how was I to know?

This is an ancient question, one that has haunted men long before me, and that will haunt men long after me.  I cannot answer it for them.  I can only wrestle with my own demons. 

But still, how could I have predicted that my fleeting, seemingly harmless homosexual tryst with Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz would lead to the wholesale invasion of another nation?

Sure, it started out innocently enough. We were both at a PNAC reception at the National Building Museum, and we happened to be at the buffet table at the same time.  I was reaching for a piece of milk-fed veal, and he was leaning over at the same time for a helping of Harp Seal cutlet when our serving spoons crossed, clinking. Clinking and signaling the beginning of something both exciting and dangerous.

He looked at me with those big watery eyes, and smiled.  I saw that he had a dollop of hollandaise on his chin, and I leaned over and wiped it off brazenly with my thumb, saying, "Here, let me get this sauce off your chin, Mr. Wolfowitz.  I doubt the chef intended that someone would eat you."

Maybe it was the booze that made me do it, maybe it was his charming and well-placed hair.  But whatever it was, I boldly licked the sauce off my thumb and, let's face it, we were off to the races.

Oh, sure, the sex was good.  And there were all those days at the National Gallery, looking at art and holding hands, then after, a big steak at the Caucus Room and a nightcap of uninhibited, really gay sex.  I have to confess, it was great. 

But Paulie was a clingy guy.  Needy.

He'd call two, three times a day, wanting to know what I was up to, what I was doing later.  Always it was "Can I see you again?"  And if I said no he'd get pouty and sullen and would take it out on his work, getting testy with his secretary, screaming at OPEC ministers who didn't deserve it.  If I told him I had to go out of town on business and couldn't see him for a couple of days, the next thing you know, gas is $2.20 a gallon.  It was ridiculous and petulant.  So I decided to call it off.

Paulie refused to accept it at first, telling me he was almost a cabinet secretary, and he would decide when it would end.  I knew him too well to truck to his dramatic power plays, and he knew it.  After a while, he stopped playing the jilted queen and resorted to pathetic, showy displays.  Sending flowers to my office almost every day.  Love letters under my door at night.  Those dozen fucking Vermont Teddy Bears he sent to my office with the card reading, I can't bear to be without you.  It was too much.

Of course, I responded to none of it and tried to move on, but he persisted. The final straw was when he showed up at the Capitol Grille during a lunch meeting I was having with clients.  Showed up and started crying.  It was embarrassing, and--worst of all--I could tell my client was embarrassed for me.

And that just made me angry.

I excused myself and whispered forcefully to Paulie, "Not here.  Outside.  Now," and stormed out in an absolute rage.  How could he do that to me?  Just who the fuck did he think he was?

My anger was met with Paulie's hot tears.

"Please, can't we just go back to the way things were?" he sobbed.  "I love you, baby, and I just want your strong hands running over my soft but slightly concave chest! I'll do anything to make it work!"

He was actually begging me, there on the sidewalk of Pennsylvania Avenue. I've never seen a man so humiliated, and it was humiliating to watch.

"Forget it Paulie!" I shouted.  "It's over! I could never be with a man who is so fucking weak!  Look at yourself!  Blubbering like a prissy little schoolgirl!  I couldn't be with someone like that and stand to even look at myself in the mirror.  It's a miracle how you sleep at night!  You're pathetic!"

That hit Paulie hard.  He knew then that it was over--really over--and that left him incensed.  I could feel the heat of his anger radiating through the thin sheen of tears that had run down his face, smearing his mascara.

"Weak?! You think I'm weak, you cocksucker?! All I wanted was your love, and you shit all over it! Well, I don't need it! Fuck your chunky thighs, and fuck your playful insousciance, and fuck you, too!  I'll show you whose weak!"

That set me off.  I was pissed for having been made the bad guy, pissed for having been made to watch his embarrassing little puppet show, and pissed about his knock on my legs. 

"What are you gonna do, Paulie, huh? Keep calling me? Keep sending me fucking Pick Me Up bouquets?"  I balled my fists and shouted into his face.  "I need a man, Paulie!  Not some whiny, dependent little fairy!"

"You'll be sorry!" he tried to shout, but it came out thin and strained.

"What are you gonna do, huh?" I demanded.  "You don't have the balls to do anything, little man.  You are powerless over me, and you have no power anywhere.  Now I'm done with you!  I have to get back in there to my client, and I'm done listening to your stupid shit!  Get out of here!  I never wanna see you again!" I spun and stormed back into the restaurant.

That was the last time I saw him, looking at him through the restaurant windows, crushed and enraged, there on the sidewalk. The last time I saw him in person, anyway.

A mutual friend who worked at the Pentagon, Trisha, told me that later, in December 2001, during the war planning, Paulie would always ask about me with remarkable bitterness.  She said when she told Paulie I was fine and had moved on, he'd always sit there and grumble and look over his maps of the Middle East.

Look over those maps with the scorn known only to a jilted lover.

So.  Maybe it is my fault we're in this mess.  I don't know.  I tried to make it work, but, as I always say, if it's not going to work out with an under-secretary of defense, it's just not going to work out with an under-secretary of defense. In the end, I did what was right for me and, I think, in the long run, for Paulie.

I just wish he'd stop using an entire sovereign nation in a geopolitically turbulent region to get back at me.

Serving Michael Moore

Back during the Presidential campaign of 2004 there was a rumor that Michael Moore was hanging out in Boston the week before the Democratic National Convention, directly advising the Kerry campaign.

This rumor is bullshit, and I have proof.

Michael Moore and I were on the same intra-mural volleyball league that summer in New Jersey.  I couldn't get into a competitive league here in D.C., where I work, or in Baltimore, where I live, so I looked outside the six-corners of the tri-state area and found one operating outside Newark.  Eight teams per league, slots open on two of their A League teams.  The "competitive" league.  Not the let's-get-together-and-have-fun B and C pussy leagues.  My mad skills can't be wasted teaching a bunch of buzzed snot-noses the ins and outs of the proper set-up.  I jumped on it, and became a Toano Auto Service MeatHammer.

Oh, sure, the commute was a hassle.  Games were every Thursday night, so I have to cut out at 2 and hop on 95 North to get there by 6.  But I left my suit jacket over the back of my chair and my computer on, so no one was the wiser.

So one night I get to the Rec Center where games are played, and I'm warming up with a few calisthenics on the faux beach they have near the softball diamond, nothing special, just a few dozen push-ups and a hundred or so crunches.  Just waiting for the rest of the team to get there, just waiting for my taste of the action.  Waiting to drive the ball right into the other team's faces and give them a little taste how we do volleyball Mid-Atlantic style.    

And up walks Michael Moore.

Oh, you could tell the second he came into sight that he was all about looking like he was trying to bring it.  Tattered Gold's Gym T, sleeves cut off to reveal his broad shoulders.  Those tight blue biker pants that showed everyone not only was he there to drill home some off-speed shots, but that he had the sack to do it, too.  Matching black headband and sweatbands, safety glasses, the works.

Well, I'm there stretching the quads and he kind of sidles up and throws down his big Adidas bag and starts doing toe-touches.  And I can tell he's looking at me out of the corner of his eye, sizing me up.  He stands up, stretches, and says, kind of quietly, "Good day for a game."

I bit.  What the fuck.  "Yeah, good day. Not too hot."

"Oh, it's gonna get hot, Nancy.  Don't you worry about that." He kind of chortled when he said it, the way only guys like him can.  And then he kind of sidled away again.

I won't bore you with the details of how the game progressed.  Needless to say, when the MeatHammers show up, we show up to play.  We served 'em up some of that South Jersey style, with a little extra Baltimore spin, if you get my meaning.  And the Franklin County Flintstones gave it right back to us.  Down balls and cross-court shots were punctuated by the grunting of straining bodies.  Guys  eating sand after every hit, the volleys going seven, eight sweeps long.  We were digging in so much the court looked like had been attacked by a backhoe. Sweat dripping from every pour, guys leaping in ways the body was not designed to handle.  It wasn't the Toano Rec Center Volleyball Court.  It was Omaha Beach.  And we were storming it.   

Here's what happened:  We're up by one and I'm playing front ranks.  I got a lot of sweat and more than a little blood in my eyes.  The rotation is just such that I'm facing off against Michael Moore.  Game point's on the line. 

"Told you it would get hot, Susie," he taunted wiping his brow on his meaty arm. "You think you have the stuff to take me, you pussy?  You don't know shit, assface."

The serve came and the Flintstones didn't dick around.  Beautiful pump, set, and a spike.  But the MeatHammers weren't giving up and my teammate Roy stopped the spike and passed beautifully to Hank, a longshoreman from the Jersey docks. The set-up he gave me could have been photographed and printed on a postcard. It was that beautiful.  Not too high, and just the right angle of lob to put the ball at its apex three feet above the net, just over my head and to the right a little.  I swear to Christ that thing just hung there, waiting.

Michael Moore and I went for it.

Now, I'm no thin minnie.  I've put on a little beef since high school, and let's face it:  who hasn't?  But I've got strong legs, strong enough to get me the lift I need just when I need it.  And when I went up, I could see Michael Moore was losing, just a little, to that cruel mistress we call gravity. 

I had him by two feet.

I am here to tell you that the ball was a blur when I spiked it.  I put everything I had into it, letting out a Paleolithic roar, and that ball fired down towards Michael Moore's face like a rocket-fired, asshole-seeking missile.  And it had found its target.

Michael Moore missed, of course, his bulky arms pinwheeling for purchase, and finding only the hot wake of my shot.  The ball hit him on the bridge of his nose, shattering his glasses.  He came down like a ton of bacon fat, hitting the earth with a booming thud.

He didn't move for five or ten seconds, but when he did, he came up holding his face.  "Holy fuckin' shit! You broke by nobse!" he cried, his team gathering around, pulling him up.  "You sub ub a bitch, by fuckig nobse!"

Needless to say, a fight broke out.  Arms swinging, guys falling to the sand, a real bench-clearer.  When all was said and done, though, the Flintstones were loading their wounded into their SUVs and we were limping over to Hapspert's Tavern with victory in our hearts.

My friend Rudy from Jersey, a Teamster who happened to be loading sound equipment for Miramax, told me that Michael Moore didn't show up at the film studio the next day, and heard from a buddy that he didn't show for work all week.  He was laid up at St. Vincent's.  Thirteen stitches, a broken rib, and a concussion.  He'd bitten his tongue, too, and had cracked a thumb and an index finger in the ensuing fight.

I sent him a get well card. Signed it "Sorry about the nose, Sally.  Don't ever fuck with me again."

So Michael Moore was in no condition to be tooling around Boston, advising the Kerrys, talking policy and putting together coherent sentences.  He was in the hospital, wringing the blood from his skirt and crying like a girl.

I know.

Because I put him there.