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Laying there, bathed in sweat. Sounds of passion abating, subsiding slowly, as I screw the lid back on the Vaseline jar. Unsteadily, I move to the window and peer through the parted blinds. LA. Shoot! I'm still only in LA.
Every time I think I'm going to wake up back in FreeRepublic. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing...maybe a yak, but that's about it.
I hardly said a word to the moderators until I said yes to a tombstone. When I was here I wanted to be there. When I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
I've been here a week now. Waiting for a mission, getting softer. Every minute I lay here, massaging my prostate, I get weaker - prostate and right arm aside, of course. And every minute the Freepers slouch out there on their couches they only grow bulkier and bulkier. Each time I look around the walls move in a little tighter.
Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission. And, for my sins they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service.
It was a real choice mission, and before it was over, I'd know what it's like to have my thighs lightly tickled by a feather.
They took me to the DU command center. They sat me down and played me a tape. I was stunned. I'd never heard anything quite as disturbing - shocking - in my entire life. When it was over, I sat in uncomfortable silence, my face paled by the horror of what I had just heard.
The general finally asked "well, son, what are your thoughts?" I replied as noncommittally as I could: "Sir, to be honest, I've never been the biggest Michael Bolton fan." A shadow passed over his face: "Nonsense! The man's a musical genius. But that's neither here nor there, Captain. What we've brought you here today for is to ask, Captain Gump, if you have ever heard of nothingshocksmeanymore?"
"Yes, sir, I've heard the name."
"NSMA was one of the most outstanding political activists this country has ever produced. She was brilliant and outstanding in every way and...she was a good woman, too. Humanitarian woman...a woman of wit, of humor. She joined the anti-Recall forces. After that some of her own party comrades found her ideas - her methods - to have become unsound. Unsound."
"Were they unsound, sir?"
"'course not...what would those contrary bastards know about soundness of methods?"
The intelligence officer cut in, clipboard in hand. "But now she's crossed to the Sierra Nevada with her grassroots Democratic Underground army, who worship the woman, like a goddess."
"Excuse me, sir, but if you don't mind me saying so, so what? Is this still a free country, or not?"
"Well, I have some other shocking news to tell you," said the general. "NSMA was about to be turned upon by her own."
That was, indeed, shocking.
"Because there's a conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. And good does not always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. Every man has got a breaking point. You and I have. The California electorate has reached theirs. And very obviously - like Ashcroft, Rove, and Rumsfeld - they have gone insane."
"Yes sir, very much so, sir. Obviously insane."
"Your mission is to proceed up to Lone Pine, pick up NSMA's path, follow it, learn what you can along the way. When you find where she is being held, infiltrate by whatever means available."
"Infiltrate...NSMA?"
"No, you idiot. You're not her type, anyway. Infiltrate the Freepers and the Democratic naysayers who have her cornered up there and get her the hell out. We need her. She's out there operating without any decent restraint. Totally beyond the pale of any acceptable politically-correct conduct. And we love her for it."
"Infiltrate with no outward signs of prejudice or stereotyping," added the intelligence officer. "You understand captain, that this operation does not exist, nor will it ever exist."
Shoot...accusing voters of incompetence in this place was like handing out speeding tickets at a tortoise race. I took the mission. What the hell else was I gonna do? But I didn't know what I'd do when I found her.
They took me to meet my escorts, a rowdy group led by a Colonel Algore. He was one of those guys that had that weird light around him. You just knew he wasn't gonna get so much as a scratch in the rough and tumble of politics.
He'd been instrumental in the expansion and development of the Internet and had received a lot of unwarranted flak for stating that fact. He'd become rather sensitive over it, and just the mention of surfing the Internet was enough to get a rise out of him. It was rumored that the lie that he'd claimed to have invented the Internet was so thoroughly spread that he, himself, had begun to believe it and to hate himself for being a Mr BoastyPants.
Before we left, as I watched him at his computer, more than once I heard something like one of his minions expressing "It's pretty hairy in there - it's a Freeper Web site ..." to be greeted with an exasperated "Freepers just surf ! They didn't invent the damned thing, dammit!"
He was a good guy, though, and he loved his crew. And I certainly appreciated the Internet, at least as a way to search for those elusive naked photos of Salma Hayek.
At daybreak we left, a bugler bugling as our convoy of environmentally-sustainable Prius cars rumbled (well, buzzed) off to the north.
I started reading the file they'd given me back in Santa Monica. At first, I thought they handed me the wrong dossier. I couldn't believe any Democrat could find this woman's competence anything but stellar. Law school, top of her class. Champion surfer. About a thousand awards and citations.
My stomach began to feel queasy. I thought it was the reading while moving but, no, as the outside world filtered back to my consciousness I realized that it was the vile bilge issuing forth from the car radio.
Algore leaned back toward me and said "We're coming up on Barstow, and about ten miles out, and we put on the radio. Limbaugh - helps us blend in. My boys love the subterfuge!"
One of his guys was skateboarding behind the car as the Horst Wessel song blasted forth - okay, he was also boarding in front of the car, the Prius not being easily confused with a muscle car or Ferrari. I couldn't believe these wild and crazy Democrats.
As we passed a billboard that advertised Bill O'Reilly's Fox hatefest a volley of yellow paintballs shot from the lead Prius. "Outstanding, Red Team, outstanding! Get you a case of
union-brewed beer for that."
We drove past a Burger King on the outskirts of town and Algore motioned all the cars to pull into the parking lot. Apparently we weren't really heavy on vegetarians in this particular group. As we sat outside, waiting for our order to be completed by the chefs, Algore ruminated. Loudly and boldly. He excused himself as we scattered to avoid the fetid smell and, at length, again sat down near him, wary and ready to bolt at the faintest sound of hissing.
"You smell that? Do you smell that?"
Yes, we did, Colonel, thank you very much.
"Chargrilled beef, son."
Oh....that.
"Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of burgers in the morning. Smells like...a double whopper."
We were, soon enough, back on the road. One of our number violently ill from a suspicious-smelling fish sandwich, all the more suspicious because Burger King does not sell them in this locality. Between bouts of vomiting he moaned "Never get out of the car...never get out of the car."
Never get out of the car. Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were going all the way.
NSMA got out of the car. She split from the whole f***ing program. How did that happen? What did she see here during that Recall? The more I read and began to understand, the more I admired her. She could have gone for Attorney General, but she went for the common person instead.
No wonder NSMA put a weed up command's ass. The campaigns were being run by a bunch of four-star clowns who were going to end up giving the whole circus away. Oh man, the bulls**t piles up so fast in the USA you need wings to stay above it.
Algore's cell 'phone rang, receiving a text transmission meant for my eyes.
"There has been a new development regarding your mission that we must now communicate to you. Months ago a man was ordered on a mission that was identical to yours. We have reason to believe that he is now operating with NSMA. We intercepted a letter he tried to send his wife :
SELL THE HOUSE
SELL THE CAR
SELL THE KIDS
FIND SOMEONE ELSE
FORGET IT
I'M NEVER COMING BACK
FORGET IT
I'M A MILITANT LESBIAN FEMINIST NOW"
Lieutenant Dan - he was with NSMA.
Hmmm. This changed things. Now I had two to extract.
A few hours later, as I cobbled together a provisional plan, I watched the convoy of Prius cars head off into the setting sun. Alone again, naturally. No, that's a really depressing song. Maybe Daniel Boone's "Beautiful Sunday" - same period, but a much happier tune than Gilbert O'Sullivan's dirge.
She was close. She was real close. I could not see her yet but I could feel her. Whatever was going to happen, it was not going to be the way they called it in LA. I began to climb.
I met a wild-eyed one, packing serious mulletude, in a clearing about half an hour after I began my hike...I mean...infiltration. People began to emerge from the shadows of the treeline, many armed with devices that celebrate the unintended consequences of the Second Amendment, up to and including a Patriot missile battery mounted on a stars-and-stripes painted Presidentiable Edition Humvee.
"Who are all these people?," I asked the man, fearing that his response would involve discussion of the relative attractiveness of my mouth.
"They think you have come to take him away. I hope that isn't true."
"Take who away ?"
"Him. Reichsleiter Rove. These are all his children, as far as you can see."
Oh, great.
"Could I, uh, talk to Reichsleiter Rove?"
"Hey, man, you don't talk to the Reichsleiter. You listen to him. The man's enlarged my mind. He's a chickenhawk-poet in the classic sense. I mean sometimes he'll, uh, well, you'll say hello to him, right? And he'll just walk right by you, and he won't even notice you. And suddenly he'll grab you, and he'll throw you in a corner, and he'll say "Who's your daddy? Who's your daddy?" So you just lay it cool, lay back...dig it. He gets friendly again, he really does. But you don't judge him like an ordinary man. I mean, I'm a little man...he's...he's a great man."
Well, I'd had about enough of this. So I prepared to deck the doofus when I spotted a familiar face among the assembled Freeper dittoheads.
"Lieutenant Dan!"
He wasn't with NSMA, after all. He'd been turned! This explained the vacant look on his face. Then the world went black.
I woke in a dull haze, in full daylight. How long had I been here in this cage? How long? A day? Days? Before me materialized a figure. My potential-deity! It can't be! But it was. The fiendish right-winger, Bo Derek, standing beyond the bars of my confinement. Dressed in a black leather corset with fishnet stockings and a garter belt above thigh-high boots, delicately trailing a feather along my inner thigh. Oh, you evil wench! Make this torment stop!!
And then I woke up for real. And realized that my narrative was becoming more confused and rambling than a Marlon Brando improv bit.
I promptly escaped (word to the wise - if captured by Freepers, don't worry...they typically leave the key in the cell door lock so they remember where they put it) and stole into the main building. I skirted the cubicle that housed the evil Rove-beast. It smelled like slow death in there...nightmares, flatulence. Further into the maze I crept, easily bypassing Freeper guards by walking boldly before them at a goosestep.
And, finally, there she was. Being tickled along the thighs by a feather wielded by a fiendish Heidi Klum lookalike. Well, I suppose that explains why she didn't get around to finding out about the door-key thing yet. "Here I am, NSMA, to save the day!" I proudly announced. Fifteen minutes later I came back, as she'd directed. "Ready yet?"
And we left. An unusually alert pair of Freeper sentries stopped us, suspecting from the "Not My President" T-shirts that we wore that perhaps we didn't belong there. I patiently argued my point-of-view regarding the alleged necessity of his intended violence before punching him in the nose after he informed me "Your a looser." You're missing an apostrophe, now, you meathead. Meanwhile, NSMA lovingly helped the second guard to his knees by applying the instep of her right foot to his gonadal region.
No further incident occurred other than NSMA suggesting - and having enthusiastically adopted (maybe we CAN change some of these people) - a tofu substitute when she saw a couple of old boys about to execute a cow for the barbecue. We completed out egress amidst the cruelty-free culinary festivities that followed, serenaded as we walked down the mountain with chorus after fading chorus of the "Meat is Murder" song.
As we walked NSMA railed against the awful grammar that she'd been privy to during our flight. She just could not get her mind away from how poorly those Freeper gentlemen expressed themselves. I'll never forget her half-exasperated, half-disbelieving whisper:
"The grammar...the grammar...."
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