Looking Out My Back Door Part I: Zero Hour 9AM

Zero hour, 9 AM.  Elton John’s words are moving and kicking through my head tonight as if it were pregnant with something wild.  My story in New Hampshire is just about the same as the collective story of the Republican candidates, and that somewhat frightens me.

Primary season is in full swing and there’s a fear I have that this article will be dead news by the time it reaches the Internet airwave kingdom but that’s no problem to me.  If anything, it reflects a far greater problem that I’ll talk about later.  BUT FIRST! Let me light another cigarette and weave you a tale about the mad circus of the New Hampshire primary .

     On the first day of the NH primary I went to a famous farmhouse somewhere in Hollis New Hampshire; the place was in the middle of nowhere, surrounded only by tall pine trees, a farm, and a few cows who seemed just about as curious of the whole situation as I was.  I started out this journey around the Granite State with a cold, cold heart for politics.  Obama let me down, Ron Paul was and still is a nutjob, and a third party candidate is a throwaway vote that’ll just give another nod to one of the major party talking heads.  Needless to say, I’ll always have a place in my heart for politics, but the place had frozen over and left me with an empty feeling in my gullet that a Republican especially could not cure… Enter Rick Santorum.

     The joint filled up quick and various supporters and media had to find a place outside.  The small barn was illuminated with the flash of cameras, footlights, lights from the camera holes of demonic iPhones, lights from the skies as if the shaky hand of Ronald Reagan was reaching down to touch the cheek of the candidate, etc.  Santorum was just getting off the wave he was riding coming out of Iowa and I don’t know whether or not he realized New Hampshire is a different state.  He gesticulated with precision, sincerely thanking the state Senator who welcomed him, the ignorant conservatives who asked him questions, the even more ignorant liberals who fell into their own defiant traps, the buzzing media, and (in his own words) “someone upstairs”.  The feel of the whole things, for me at least, and the 35 other sorry left-leaning bastards in the room, was one of both electricity and fear.  It was the first speech I’d gone to since my experiences with NY-19 (the election wherein my faith in anything got lost somewhere in Nan Hayworth's gapped teeth) and I was kind of excited to get back into the game.  Others around me were just curious as to what he was saying, and the real bleeding heart lefties looked as if they were somewhere between laughing hysterically or being pricked with rusty scimitars. 

     Following the speech, Ricky Sanitarium the choir boy seemed as if he were pretty damn pleased with himself.  In a move he would soon regret, he entered the Hofstra bus I was riding in.  He came in so we could ask some questions and because we brokered a seating deal with his advisors.  The friendly conversation quickly became a cross-examination in the most lethal of the good cop bad cop ilk.  With flip cam a-blazing, I photographed the exchange between a 21-year-old Hofstra senior and Santorum because it was just too good to miss.  She questioned him on the environment and became a little too wordy for his taste, so with all his might (although ultimately in vain) Santorum dodged the question with some statistic about coal and its longevity.  According to Mr. Santorum, 300 years of coal power (since that is the amount of coal we have) means it's "not a finite resource".  She came back at him with more statistics and a message of pathos but he slinked back in his shoulders.  I was hooked.  “How could this happen??” the look in his eyes searched the sky screaming to the Good Lord Above “I’M FROM BUTLER, PENNSYLVAINA!!!!”  A Mexican standoff ensued.  Both banditos had their hands placed firmly on their guns; Santorum’s weapon in its holster beaming false divinity with a small homophobic inscription coming down the barrel; the senior, whose .44 wasn’t as decorated as Santorum’s (due to his failed stint as a Senator for Pennsylvania), brandished her gun with such swagger that before the battle had started, we knew who would end up the victor.  The high noon bell rang as Ricky’s advisor said “okay that’s enough questions for today” which means two different things in the world of politics.  For the one being questioned it means “RETREAT!” and for the one questioning it means “DRAW MOTHERF*****!”  And in the flash of gunfire, Santorum’s hand slipped upon hearing his advisor’s comment and he fell slain on the red desert ground.  Santorum and his puppeteers left the bus and his political soul lay there dead outside the farmhouse somewhere in Hollis, New Hampshire.

     The bus was electric; conservatives hated liberals; liberals hated conservatives; it was the House of Commons en route to Manchester after a heavy cocaine and steroids binge and I dug the whole scene.  I have to thank Rick Santorum, his staff, his career, his campaign, and his personal beliefs for the following series of events. 

I decided to stretch my rusty claws. My first victim was the solemn, solitary Santorum supporter on the bus.  He sat looking defeated, sitting on his hands as a measure to stop himself before he tore out his own ears.  He called himself a “traditionalist conservative” and no one seemed to care.  After watching the other “traditionalist conservative” enter our domain and leave an idiotic shell of a once deplorably bigoted man, no one would come to his aid.  My attacks were vicious.  I started with his choice of candidate, abandoned that on the roadside for his choice in ideology, and finally when I was no longer entertained by that I decided to slash the jugular of “traditionalist conservatism” and let the blood flow like the Black Knight in The Holy Grail.  While this was going on, the senior who perpetrated the Great Santorum Slaying of 2012 walked over and introduced herself.  I was hyped up in a rant as a means of keeping myself from losing my swag and acting like a nerdy, horny schoolboy.  We then looked over the corpse of our classmate’s ideals and had a good hardy laugh together but somewhere deep down, as much as I dug it, I had the inkling this flirtation would end up short-lived.  The prospect was inviting and the pieces were in place.  I rolled the dice but in the smoky barroom of romance, they came up snake eyes.  My talking points were too reliant on buzzwords and the traditional values of flirting as opposed to something different yet solid and universally agreeable.  I fell into the same trap that Santorum had fallen into!  My foot lay there mangled in the bear trap and there was no way to escape.  As I cried in the snag over the loss, she walked away to go somewhere more interesting.  How could it be??  I rode the wave too far and paid dearly for it. 

Somewhere in Hollis, New Hampshire I laid down next to Rick Santorum’s corpse and we chatted about being afterthoughts in the public’s eyes.  Halfway during our conversation I decided he was a pussy.  As I lay whining, I realized I was acting no better than he was and I couldn’t stand it.  I jumped up, put on my cowboy boots, dealt him a good flogging, and discovered right then and there what I had to do.  I could no longer chase the American Dream the way Santorum had outlined.  I stepped away from the farmhouse back onto the bus with triumph searing in my heart where there used to be a cold, black hole.  I no longer hated politics; I hated ignorant people!  I wasn’t going to end up like Santorum and follow false promises of gold to the shore only to drown in their emptiness that I already foresaw.  The fire shot out of my chest with rabid energy and like a mighty, mighty phoenix, I was reborn in the back of the bus with a torn up edition of Tom Sawyer in my hands and a new political fire burning like a towering inferno in my mind!


THIS POST ALSO APPEARED ON "FROM THE G MAN": http://fromthegman.blogspot.com/