I’d been called in by one of the generals. We’ll leave names out of it. They wanted me to re-up and join the detail that was following #1 aka code name “Mogul”. I wasn’t happy about it but I needed the job. I could feel my PTSD kicking in already.
“It’s a shit show in there. Like the keystone cops trying to run herd on the three stooges, “ explained General Dickson. All right never mind, I’ll name names when I want to. General Dickson, General Dick Dickson aka Dickhead Dickson. He’ll answer to all of them at this point.
“You are the only one I know who can keep them all in line.” explained the General. “ Keep ‘em breathing as one mighty fist. You are the brass knuckles Johnny that can hold those knuckleheads together. We need you back son.”
I had run the detail in the early part of the administration and run it well but I had to get out. That dame in the communications office had done a number on my head, let alone the Russians and Cubans sending in the radio waves. When the controversies around a pizza parlor kicked in, I was gone.
I took my ill-gotten gains and got out for a while, drinking my way around the Caribbean until the money ran out and the disease kicked in. Then it was drinking down at the dive bar outside the Holland Tunnel. It was a place where my DC contacts could meet me and buy me drinks without having to be photographed going in and out of the city. I’d had a few jobs but they got in the way of my drinking and here I was again, a broke ass bum who had once had it all.
The general passed a large stack of hundred dollar bills to me.
“Pay off your debts and be back in DC by Monday.”
“I’ll think about it” I said.
I paused and looked straight at him. After a while his warm puppy dog eyes were no match for my steely countenance. I took the money.
Like I said there was this dame in DC. Not really my type, too much caked on make up, the false eye lashes, those high heels, what are they called. with the giant spike heels? Jimmy Choo? La boutini? and the monochromatic dresses she was poured into. That was the look the “big guy” liked. American girls that had bought the Kardashian kool-aid of one too many fashion magazines mixed with the look of a rightwing newscaster and the Barbie doll she played with as a child.
I don’t know, despite all the gloss, there was something about her that got under my skin, the equivalent of a shot of Crown Royal tossed around my bloodstream until it found my heart right before it made it’s way down to my ulcerated liver.
Everyone in my detail thought she had a thing just for them. She was always happy to throw her arm around one of guys to take a picture with her phone. I acted like I didn’t care and maybe she liked that. Anyway none of them knew we had something going on.
We’d had some fun, some kicks but then she got a little too needy and I had to cool things down. She was pissed and got back at me by running into the arms of a personal assistant to the Big Guy. A child, but a wealthy child with all the connections and pretty soon I was out of the picture. I was surprised how pissed off the whole situation made me feel, frankly I was surprised I had any emotions left after all I had been through in my stint in Afghanistan.
Note to self: remember to pick up a bottle of milk tonight.
So yeah, I needed the money and it was time to go back and be the head bozo in the clown car of the world’s greatest shit show. I had three days to get it together, to get through the DTs. I’d have to sweat it out if I was going to be working in the mansion of glory, manning that suicide machine.
Sleep didn’t come easy and on that third night I was trying real hard to control my insomnia. Trying to will myself to that place where the dream language takes over, where the conscious mind cedes control and lets the free floating thoughts carry the conversation into new realms or at least a familiar world re-imagined. And I was thinking it was working. I emptied my mind of as many thoughts that were bubbling around my brain— from there I could pull up the curtain and listen for whatever activity might be happening on the other side. You start by being attentive to any tell tale signs of conversation or noises not being generated by your own thought processes…then you have to relax into it… let the body recede into the sheets, giving up whatever bits of ego and will power and stray nerves you might be holding on to. It’s not easy but you have to give up control if you wanna get to dreamland.
I can’t recall how the rest of the night moved, the dream working into a bent reality, something sexy, something dangerous but there wasn’t a clear way forward of even a mission statement. I was being pulled by forces greater than myself right into a squall of waves purposelessly beyond the tidal pull of the moon, yeah the moon that gave the waves their dancing orders and I was just that cork bobbing along on the raging sea. It wasn’t restful.
I spent a good deal of the night trying to find a way forward, trying to come up for an appropriate business model, but I could not.
I opened my eyes to a blood red sun sliced in half and the rising fog of dawn. The sheets were soaked.
There was knocking at the door.
“Fuck, what time is it,” I barked to myself. I saw the digital clock said 5:33.
I knew they had arrived to take me to Washington.
Through the peep hole I could see it was Roddy, the ruddy little Irish kid who was new to the squad. I opened the door.
“Christ, if it isn’t Roderick.” I growled. “They’re sending in the A Team to fetch me I see.”
“Hey Johnny great to see you! So glad you are back sir. I brought you a beer and a valium to take the edge off and make the flight go smoother. We’re driving to Teterboro where we’ll meet the chopper then to a secured landing field near the Pentagon. The generals don’t want people to know you’re in town just yet.”
How’s the unit doing? I asked.
“Oh I’d say moral is a little low.”
“How so?”
Roddy sighed. “Oh I don’t know. Maybe because we literally don’t have a pot to piss in when we have to wait for Mogul’s children to get ready to go shopping. They won’t let us in the house, the neighbors complained about the Porta John so that was removed. You have to go a couple blocks away to Starbucks. It’s fucking embarrassing.”
“Think I saw something about that in the Post. And Number One? How is “Mogul”?”
Roddy popped the PBR and handed me the pill.
“At least he keeps a pretty standard routine. He generally stays in the house watching the tube or heads off for a round of golf. Now that he’s through with the rallies he’s pretty much hunkered down. He’s been hitting the Pepsi button in his office pretty hard these days like it was a morphine drip or something.”
Roddy handed me the can and I took the pill and a pull on the PBR.
“I hear Hopeless Hickey has returned to the team.”
“Yes sir, you have a re-orientation meeting set for Wednesday with her at eleven hundred hours.
“She seems to be more at the center of things these days,” I noted flatly.
“She’s definitely got Mogul’s ear.”
Fifteen minutes later we were up in the bird. Roddy was right, the beer and the valium got rid of the shakes as we floated along the coast of Jersey. The whole trip was over in about 90 minutes and there it was—behind the massive edifice of the Pentagon— the shielded rear landing pad for anonymous guests.
Upon landing we were quickly hustled through a back entrance where General Richard Dickson was waiting for us.
“Hello Johnny.”
“General… Sir.” I gave him a little salute.
“We’re glad to have you back. It’s been a little chaotic as you may well imagine. We want you to be so far inside that we’ll be able to know when to pivot at a moments notice. We need you to be in the mix with Mogul. We want to know what the big dog is doing at any given time. Frankly Johnny, the stability of the country depends on you.”
“I’m ready, sir” I replied with all the false conviction I could muster.
“But first roll up your sleeve,”
“What?” I exclaimed. I hadn’t seen this coming.
“Sergeants at arms! Medic! Help Master Johnny here with his medication.
“We’re giving you a special cocktail to ward off any disease you might come in contact with. There’s a steroid in there as well.”
“Whoa, I don’t know about this.”
“Soldier at ease!”
While two marines held my arms a Pentagon medic shoved the needle into my arm. It was over very quickly.
“We’ve got you a room at the Watergate. I’ll see you in zero four hundred hours,” said Dickson. “Wait for instructions . A note will be sent to you tomorrow morning.”
Weird, two guys in HAZMAT suits accompanied me to a waiting van where the driver had a HAZMAT suit on as well.
They dropped me at the curb of a side entrance to the Watergate hotel. One of the guys handed me an envelope.
“Here’s your room key. We’ve reserved Room 214 for you, “said HAZMAT Guy #1.
“Go directly to your room. There’s some valium inside the hollow Gideon’s Bible. Feel free to get your dinner from the mini bar.”
HAZMAT Guy #2 picked up the thread. “In the morning at two four hundred hours you will walk out the same door and head over to the Big House. Your security clearance is in the envelope as well. Your meeting with Miss Hickey is at ten hundred hours. They will be expecting you at the south gate.”
“Thanks for the lift boys,” I said in parting. “Remember good guys don’t always wear white.”
I made it to my room and I could tell the steroid was doing its work. I was pissed off and the angry thoughts were flying. Pissed off about having to take this gig. Pissed off that I had to stay at the Watergate.
“C’mon Johnny get your priorities straight!,” I said to myself turning the anger inward. “This job will make a you a major force in the political landscape, it’s an easy way to make money. What the fuck!”
But that’s not even what I was pissed about.
I muttered to the walls. “Does anyone tell me anything? But fuck ‘em all, who cares. I’ll have the last laugh. It’s like a bunch of 80s kids doing the hits of the 60s. Who gives a shit? How is that relevant to anything? Trying to pretend you have something to say by hitching your cart to a well known pony like Mogul.”
Little General Dickson had always cock blocked me every chance he had while trying to shake me down for the most intel he can get out of me, bringing his pathetic little projects to me over the years, and now here I was howling away into the abyss ripping people’s hearts out, using everything from murder and mayhem and fake legs and aspirin, some old rock songs and the pain of nasty youth gone wrong with the buzz of good vibes in an electrified bar and the soulful longing of thespians figuring out how to be relevant and how to have a third act in life while they were sifting through the ashes of their torched careers. Dickson whispering nattering nabobs of negativism about me whenever and wherever he could, Dickson who takes and takes but is never going to re-pay the debt. Fuck you Dickson you irrelevant space Nazi, curdled and crusty under all that hair dye, your face more withered than you think. Yes all this bile I pile it up for you and you can bet I’ll let you wallow in the gooey aftermath.
I kept blathering like this for a while.
“I’m going to keep moving on Dickson, while you sit there jerking off to the sound of the 60s “ah that’s when music was good.” I’m gone— headed down the road running with the real people, staying relevant, always learning, always growing, becoming more masterful everyday. Ain’t nothing holding me back. You can all gather in your safe havens but I’m unerringly headed into the future in a self driven car while I transmit my latest communiqués right from my brain— out into the world and the collective think tank of those minds that want to hear something that is still plenty awe inspiring, relevant and new. You fuckers have fun mucking about in the dustbin of history, I’m on my way into a future world past the dystopias where the super heroes are all the descendants of the enslaved and I am ready to let the glow emanate from my being with white-hot positive rage blowing like a steam whistle on the factory lot. Whooooooo I am relevant /I am infinite /I am triumphant/ I am terrible /I am the blood in the spoon! /the elephant in the room /Take me to your leader so I can show him who is the leader/ nobody is ever gonna be stopping me now. Fuck fuck fuck ‘em all!”
And with two black bomber Bible valium I’d taken finally kicking in, I was left to the challenge of slowly coming back to earth.
“Let the rage subside let the feeling of raging leave my being. Don’t turn the hose on your self but don’t stay up on the shelf, get out there and keep doing the down dip, yeah let your back bone flip yeah……”
I started doing pushups until I lost count and passed out on the floor.
(to be continued)….