The Book of Jesse - Invective
 





















DIATRIBES GALORE! LISTEN TO JUST WILD BILL SPEAK! ALL BILL, ALL CHUTZPAH!


Every day Pierre and Wild Bill will come at you with fresh INVECTIVE! Sometimes witty, sometimes sobering, and sometimes just down right livid, The Book of Jesse will feed your ire! You can read Pierre's rants via the Pierre Archive. Click here to go back to the Daily Invective.





August 17, 2007

This is all bullshit.

None of this was real. I had nothing to fear from Ford or from the fat cats lining the bleachers. In fact the entire scene started to remind me of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and I knew that I was in the loose, beginning stage clutches, of the nerve agent the Republicans were pumping Bill full of. My good old fashion liberal arts education had literally come back to haunt me. I was in the midst of the consciously manipulated sub-conscious delusion made manifest that the drug was intended to evoke. I knew now what I had to be aware of. The gas would put me in situations ripped right from the pages of classic twentieth century literature, particularly those novels that focused on minority anti-heroes and their scenes of greatest persecution. I was going to need so much fucking therapy when I got Bill out of here.

I calmly removed my gloves and walked straight out of the ring, past Ford and through the hostile crowd, treating them all like the ghosts that they were.

Wild Bill



August 15, 2007

The Projectile.

I froze. A forty-ounce Coors Light was on track to shatter on the crown of my head. My shoulders rose instinctually into a nervous crunch and I could feel the acid churning in my stomach. Ford and the referee did not seem to notice or care and even the man who threw the bottle had settled back into his seat as if to be a spectator of his own handiwork. The bottle rolled in mid air end over end like an out of control space capsule until, without thinking, I quickly sidestepped the projectile and close my eyes awaiting the impact of the bottle on the ring floor.

Nothing happened. No shower of glass digging holes into my flesh, no chandelier crash. I opened my eyes to a normal boxing ring without hint or trace of the bottle that not ten seconds previous had been on a collision course with my head.

I returned to my corner. I had no trainer, not even a water bottle or a towel. I just rested my body on the ropes. And then, staring blankly at the spot on the floor that should have been caked in foam, hops and shards of glass, then, I got it.

Wild Bill



August 13, 2007

Round Two.

Now, my head still ringing, I took stock of my surroundings. There were the squat toddler height stools that were trotted out between rounds, but I was determined to outsmart Ford, not to cheat. Plus, I had no idea whether I could even make contact with his vaporous body. He seemed intent on playing it mostly fair; he certainly moved faster and more nimbly than he had since World War II, but he had yet to act on the numerous options available to him as a non-corporeal being. As my head cleared, I danced nimbly on my toes, shying away from contact as much as possible. My eyes darted back and forth from my opponent to the ring and then out into the crowd. Ford was too focused on his Ali like footwork to take stock of my appraisal. The fat heads perched on top of hospital white tuxedos bellowed with impatience hurling vitriol and contumely my way, egging me on more and more to make this the kind of fight they had paid to see. Ford jabbed at the air in front of me nearly connecting with my left cheekbone.

A single, rippling mound of fat and lucre stood up in his chair in the third row. His anti-Semitic invective has no place on these pages and some of the worst was drowned out by the bell signaling the end of the second round. But the mass of chins, sweat and bourbon was not satiated. As I turned back toward my corner I could not resist the temptation to look back at the mountainous disaster casting out his self-abasement at me. I expected to see an animate man yelling, but as I turned my head, the first thing that caught my eye was a glint of light bursting off a projectile beer bottle that the man had lobbed directly at me.

Wild Bill



August 10, 2007

Have you ever been punched by a dead man?

Well I have and right about now I miss Joey Gaston and Chris Peterson&39s middle school abuse in a visceral way that I cannot articulate over the deafening roar of my cracked cheek bone. I feel like I was bitch slapped with a Hummer. My legs are numb right now, struggling to support my swaying weight. A boiling bubble of nausea peaks its head up my esophagus peering around the cave entrance of my mouth. I see two and then three Gerald Fords, none of which having even approached a bead of sweat. That dick is fucking with me. The stuffed white tuxedo jackets are all bellowing and belching for the scrawny Jew to pick himself up, get back in the ring, fight like a man.

And then a thought strikes me with the same impact of Ford's right hook, but with the clarity of a cloudless day: my history, my people's history is about survival. And how have we survived? We have always played our own game. It's the great paradox. Why we are reviled and why we live to tell the tale. We create our own little rules within the ruling parties' house. We're the desperately needed, uninvited guest.

The thought clears my head. And I am crystal clear that Ford can swing and miss and swing and connect all night long. I am getting past him my own way.

Wild Bill



August 8, 2007

Ira v. Ford Round One.

Ford's match light kept on growing, expanding to fill the entire tunnel. As it grew, the mist twisted and billowed solidifying into discernable shapes. Bleacher benches formed on the top of terraced concrete and the rows stacked one on top of the other higher and higher. Pylons and ropes sprung up around me and Ford and a boom microphone fell from somewhere above.

What happened next blew my mind.

The mic tumbled, its cord unfurling wildly, and as I thought it was about to hit the ground a hirsute and oily hand clasped it out of thin air. Startled, I followed the contour of the adipose-layered forearm to a hive-speckled elbow and then onto the ice cream truck driver uniform of a boxing referee. He was a squat five foot two inches and thick as an armored car. Hair protruded from every article of clothing and sweat laced down from his pomade-slicked hair. The same amount of pomade had seemingly been applied to his Raul Julia moustache. Bloodshot eyes and a perfectly white grin greeted my aghast eyes. Beyond him the bleachers were packed with well-dressed white men in white tuxedo jackets and black bow ties smoking cigars and gesticulating wildly. There was not a woman in sight. Thick clouds of cigar smoke hung like a piano suspended by a string over the boxing ring. I looked across at Ford, now clad in Wolverine shorts and maize and blue boxing gloves. His head remained the same, but his body had returned to its glory day shape. My pale frame was exacerbated by white and blue gym shorts; the shorts were so baggy I could only assume the referee had leant them to me. My boxing gloves were white with blue stars of David stitched above each knuckle. The round bell rang and a shriveled shrew clad in a one-piece bathing suit circa 1920 limped around the ring carrying a Round One sign.

'In this corner, the challenger, standing at five foot ten inches and weighing one hundred and twenty five pounds, the Raging Red Sea Pedestrian, Ira Ben David!'

Silence followed.

'And in this corner, the reigning champion, standing six feet tall and weighing a sturdy two hundred and ten pounds, the successor in chief, Gerald Ford!'

The mountain of lucre and white tuxedo jackets exploded in a riotous frenzy. Boaters and fedoras were flung wildly in the air and Ford calmly acknowledged his audience. He then turned towards me, raised his gloves and smiled.

Wild Bill



August 6, 2007

Guess who's back.

For about an hour, I crawled, army style, in total darkness, spurred on by abject terror toward nothing but the hope of an exit. I was stayed from losing my mind by a light, sewage-scented breeze that washed over me as from a great distance ahead. Never in my life have I clung more desperately to the smell of shit. And then the tunnel began to expand as if I had wriggled my way up a funnel. I eased onto my knees and knuckles, into a hunch and, now, to where I could almost stand upright. My body was draped in dirt, roots, ropes of sweat and God knows what kind of geologic detritus that lingered in random underground tunnels. I looked like a Jewish Swamp Thing.

I groped in darkness as my feet detected the shift from dirt to concrete and water. I was in something man made now. In the dark I walked into a wall and nearly fell into the two inches of grime below me. I slapped at the wall to determine which direction to go next. Right.

And then the flicker of a match whose light was so foreign and intense it was as if I had walked directly into the sun. Then a ghastly outline, craggy skin drooping off a square jaw, pomade slicked hair flickering in the flame and a congenial slump. Adjusting to the light, my eyes blinked hysterically, choking in the new light. The flame expanded and, inexplicably, with it my eyes relaxed and what I saw before me was enough to send me scurrying back through the hole I had come from. Gerald Fucking Ford. I thought that motherfucker was as dead as Jimmy Hoffa.

'Ira, I am sorry, that you've had to travel this far to here this, but there is just no way on God's green earth that I am letting you an inch closer to your cousin.'

All right you doddering Republican clutz, bring it on!

Wild Bill



August 3, 2007

Intermission.

The following message has been paid for by the Whitethorne Administration and does not in anyway reflect the views of Wild Bill and Pierre:

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Wild Bill



August 1, 2007

Loose ends.

Somewhere between Maryland and Washington D.C., Ira scurries through an ever widening hole, propelled by a leaching paranoia that at any moment he will be entombed. The whiny, self involved twenty year old matures with each scrape forward, with each inhalation of dirt and hot air. The passageway is too long to travel through for even the strongest body and it teases, maddeningly, the strongest mind toward dementia and despair. Ira's movement now is eel like as if alighted on tidal flows. He stopped thinking quite a while ago.

What Ira does not know, cannot know, is that he has a larger role to play in this game, much larger than the mere rescue of an oft-absent cousin from the nefarious talons of craven Republicanism. As Ira crawls through dirt, root and weed, a phalanx of F.B.I agents and Homeland Security descend on his quiet Bethesda home. His mother and father are black bagged for a NVRC. No lawyer, no phone-call. The Whitethorne machine, well oiled and ruthless, has gotten wind that something is afoot. Something much bigger than Bill and Ira.

Wild Bill



July 30, 2007

Meanwhile...

Somewhere the horse and gravity have been re-acquainted. He sinks quietly, letting a watery death envelop him, never conscious of the realignment of physical properties that brought him tumbling tail over reigns into an unknown world. A shark pauses to regard the sinking horse. Unsure of whether to bite or not, he glides past, disinterested by a meeting of species that may have never taken place in the history of the world. The shark is hungry and this does not look like any food he has ever seen. The sunlight fades with the horses' breath and as unwittingly as he lived, he dies. He dies with the passivity of a wind up toy running out of juice and comes to rest in a cloud of sand one thousand feet below sea level.

Wild Bill



July 27, 2007.

Is this the end?

I shvitzed treif. Shmaltzik! Everywhere shmaltzik treif quivered and expanded. The linings of this bacon cave were very clearly unhappy to have Jew within their walls. I looked at my clothes, fat back caked and starting to harden in the rising heat. I panicked and started running, stumbling like a blind man on a treadmill. Imagine a terrified drunk trying to sprint across an ice pond away from a pursuing polar bear and you can pretty much see the way your Bill, Vild Bill, is in a bind. Each time I stumbled, the room contracted, thoughts of suffocating to death in a pile of bacon taking the fore in my mind.

Several minutes of this pointless dismay continued much the same. Finally, I stopped and slumped in the center of the now roughly nine square foot pork room. And there, in that moment, I surrendered. I stood completely still helpless to the whims of an angry mound of animate bacon. Never, in all my twisted and consistent imaginings of my own death had I foreseen death by treif as my real end. But, here in this shrinking pink and white walled room, here in the belly of the bacon, I was to meet my end. Perhaps a real goy, a real Republican goy could muster the appetite to eat his way out of this mess, but I knew, like I have never known anything before in my life, that this was where it stopped.

I found my hat resting in a pool of grease. I put it on, sat down, and assumed the lotus position. I closed my eyes. I inhaled. I exhaled. I inhaled and exhaled again. I could feel the fat squirming beneath me, rolling in from all sides, and lowering from above. Smeared from head to toe in pig grease, I let the walls of fat rush in, pressing on my flesh, gathering steam to completely envelop me. One deep breath followed another for what seemed like hours, and then, I felt the fat squeezing the life out of me. In my mind, just for a moment, I saw myself from the outside, seated and serene, as the four walls met each other and the body of one William Herschovitchz, last Chassidic cowboy, was crushed and compacted by an unforgiving mound of bacon. The rest...

Wild Bill



July 25, 2007.

The Belly of the Pork.

Bacon fat and steam stampeded my nostrils making me drunk with hunger. My feet, well ahead of my mind, began their b-line towards the mountain of swine. Unfortunately, at some point of walking for hours on water, I had forgotten that liquid surfaces are normally not usually so generous in their support. My legs shot back in the slick pig grease and I pitched face forward into the bog. The oil only made me more ravenous. It was bacon, draining into every pore, deranging all my senses and propelling me, groping and supplicated to the pulsing mass of pork.

I threw my entire body on the bacon pile with the lust of a newly freed prisoner in a brothel. I was wallowing like a pig in shit, grabbing, tearing at lose bits, stuffing and stuffing the sweet and salty meat into my constantly compacting mouth. I ate and ate unable to stop. My own belly expanded to welcome more and more bacon and I ate more than I could ever recall. Finally, sweating more grease than I was eating, I stopped ravaging. And that was when I realized that I was completely stuck to the mound of bacon. My hands, arms, torso, legs, knees, and feet were all congealed to the white sinuous fat. I yanked and the fat yanked back harder, rolling over the sleeves of my coat. The mound shook with the chortle of some obese movie mobster and I could feel the talons of the fat snatch my body in and under.

Now, covered in grease, sweat, and gristle, I stand inside the mound of pork. Stalactites of marbled lard hang from the ceiling and pools of grease belch popped bubbles. A wall of pinkish suet betrays not the slightest opening or egress. I am trapped. Trapped in a mound of slick, voluminous pig butt. What my mother would say now!

Wild Bill



July 23, 2007.

Feast.

I've been walking on water for a bit now. Seeing solid mass ripple underneath my still dust stained shoes is no longer weird. That bitch horse is out of my sight and the smell of his breath, a galling concoction of oat, sand, bacteria and chewed over saliva, has been pre-empted by the saline-brushed ocean air. The sun above is neither too hot nor too bright and does not seem to have traversed an inch of sky. It's akin to those cartoon storm clouds that follow around the constantly beleaguered.

How long passes, I do not know---the face of my watch is a tangle of cracked glass and the aforementioned sun betrays nothing---but soon the blue ocean brine begins to mingle with a lustier, salacious aroma that calls up fall afternoons of neglecting Sabbath obligations in favor of secular wandering. Yes! I had a friend, a Meyer Fankenfinkelfelden---a shit house last name if I ever heard one and more than enough to make the most reform Jewish parents seclude their child in the black shroud of Chassidism---and we were both cut from the same irreverent split end of an overused tallit. So, while the other boys piled into shul, begging for illumination from Rabbi Ben Sholom---a man whose father was, I shit you not, the only Jewish midget in the cast of 'The Wizard of Oz' and who made up for his own diminutive stature, by putting a stool behind his rostrum and never once before, after, or during a service moving an inch---Meyer and I would slip out of our funereal uniforms and cross into goysville. And that's the smell trampling my calm sea air right now, the smell of pressing my young, eye hook nose against smudged glass and inhaling the charring fat and crackling grease of thick cut bacon.

I close my eyes to try and catch the full scene in my mind's eye. But the aroma is overwhelming and when I do open my eyes the water beneath me has begun to rise. I look down, panicked, and see that the water is long gone. I am standing on a gigantic greasy metal disk whose sheen has been utterly wiped out by a quarter inch thick cesspool of porcine residue. And that is when I look up in front of me. Standing what seems like forty feet high is a steaming pile of six-foot strips of fresh cooked pig ass dumped like dirty laundry into an oleaginous mound of treif.

I haven't eaten in what seems like years.

Wild Bill



July 20, 2007.

Running out of air.

I am going to cry.

We're talking Terms of Endearment style---yes, I have seen that movie more than once and cried openly. In fact, my mother once walked in on me with the whole 'Give my daughter the shot!' thing and said, 'Uh, Ira, is everything all right? Would you like mommy to bake you some kugel and kiss your knogen?', I digress---tears. Some creepy asshole has just left me in the bottom of a well, with no exit, and I am going to die down here. I have never even seen the exit he took on the highway before! Some kids are going to be playing ball in this field in three years and stumble on this well and find my desiccated corpse, hollowed out by rats and maggots, char grilled by sunlight, and bring the bones to my bereaved mother who will probably have completely destroyed herself with guilt already while my father is out on the golf course, goying it up with Arnold Roth---fat fucking Arnie---and having completely forgotten about me and both of them, Arnie and my Dad, will be wearing crosses and praying to whatever God Whitethorne and his cronies have foisted on this country and Bill will be the torchbearer of some sick delusional movement which will probably end out eradicating anyone who isn't a fucking WASP---this is too much!

I'm crying now. Big tears. I am an irrigation system. I am drought relief. I start kicking and screaming, throwing the kind of blind tantrum that two years are famous for. I pull back my leg and let fly a Maradona style strike and the wall gives! Stone crumbles at my feet and dust billows upward. When it clears, there is a two-foot wide and two-foot high hole at the base of my feet.

And, without hesitating, I am down on my elbows and knees, crawling into the darkness.

Wild Bill



July 16, 2007.

Well...

I've had enough of this shit. If my horse is this intent on mocking me, if I am meant to walk on water, well, then, fuck it. I will. What's the worst that could happen? It's not as though I have spent the last five years of my life studying the Torah. I left that in Venezuela.

So, off the horse and onto the water I go. I'm waiting for life, with its endless supply of poorly timed humor, to change its tone, and send me plummeting through the newly liquefied surface. Perhaps my dirty bitch of a horse will get a nice iron shoed hoof in my forehead for good measure as I sink---I can't swim, by the way---to a quiet watery tomb. This is what passes for optimism these days.

And, to my surprise and slight dismay, the water is still hard as a concrete sidewalk. I pound my boots and it ripples out, but it does not give. I figure I might as well enjoy this while I can, so I strike out in no particular direction happy to abandon my horse. For whatever reason, I just don't trust the bastard. Ever since we started unwittingly shifting through time, space, and the general makeup of basic matter together he has been giving me this suspicious look. As if this were my fault!

Wild Bill



July 13, 2007.

Third Person.

Ira is now alone in the darkness, groping wet stone, staring with panic at the stars in the sky. Ira feels the fear of the buried alive. Sweat melts onto his face. The old man had promised a tunnel, an egress. There is nothing but stone and mud down here. The well smells like mildew and manure. The smell surrounds and suffocates like perfume saleswomen in department stores.

Bill has thrown himself off his horse. He hits the water like a baseball hitting the outfield fence and bounces right back onto the horse. He tries again. Same result. Bill snarls at the water, daring it to take on its normal properties. The water isn't even listening. Bill panics and grabs the reigns of his horse. He wraps the leather around his palms and starts to pull. Bill has decided the only way to deal with his current predicament is to strangle his horse.

Ira starts screaming his usual rant about God's callousness. It is apparent to him as he rails that the only thing different about this version of his rage is that it's obvious no one is listening. He starts kicking the stone. He breaks the large toe on his right foot.

Bill's horse refuses to die. He refuses to even react to the attempt on his life. He just keeps trotting along on the water.

Ira slumps against the well wall. Bill collapses letting his head rest on the horses' mane. They both await their fate in silence.

Wild Bill



July 11, 2007.

Things get strange.

It' a dark, starless night in the desert. I am on horseback. Nine years have passed since I sat in a saddle, feeling the night's inviting music. I close my eyes and listen to the ocean of silence spreading within and without me. I am at peace.

Now, I open my eyes and the shit hits the fan. My horse keeps the same easy gate, but we are trotting upside down, his shoes padding on the starless sky. I am staring straight down at the desert floor from at least a mile up. Instinctively, my pulse quickens and I reach for my hat, a hat that is still on my head. Everything is exactly as it was, but I am a fucking mile above the ground and upside down. I release the reigns and the horse keeps on. I close my eyes again.

I am not prepared for what happens next. I open my eyes and we are still upside down, but instead of desert floor below us, a row of grey suited men sit in uniform rows hunched over grey steel desks pecking, in unison, at vintage 1874 Sholes and Glidden typewriters. The men stretch out on a three-dimensional plane with no visible beginning or ending. All I can tell is that somehow I am above that plane. I close my eyes again.

The horse is walking on water. This pisses me off.

'Listen, Mr. Ed, you may think it's real exciting to go trotting around like Christ, but where I come from, this shit don't fly.' At this point I expect the horse to answer. I am disappointed when he doesn't.

So, here I am, on some unnamed body of water riding a horse that can walk on said water and terrified of where I am going to end up next. This is what I get for listening to a Republican.

Wild Bill



July 9, 2007.

Into the darkness.

At 3:45am the last drop of rain caromed off the windshield. Fifteen more minutes passed in silence as the agent resumed his best of Pink Floyd drum session on the steering wheel. The old man had parked the car next to a dilapidated barn about one hundred feet from the pathway to the well. I watched him the entire time. His face betrayed little to no emotion, but his lower lip constantly quivered. His eyes were bright, alert, and empty. The man had become a surveillance camera. Just for a moment, I allowed myself to try to begin to imagine what those eyes had seen. What underbelly of history had he been slogging away in, trapped in an ever deepening abyss of lies, spending every day in the midst of man at his most base. And in that contemplation I was repeatedly brought back to that itchy trigger finger of a lip. It was the last vestige of his humanity.

'Are you hoping to figure something out by staring at me?'

'No.'

'Good. Ira, I want you to understand something. You're probably going to die. I have been asked to put you in a well that will get you into the heart of the RNC. From there you are on your own. If my information is correct, you will find Bill in room 1863. That is all the help you get. Now get out of the car.'

Now the mute plane screams bitterly in my ears. The old man is gone. His Tempo drove off without so much as a look back. The barn stands lonely and stolid, shotgun size holes chewed into its sides by termites and neglect. I could still walk to Burger King and forget the entire unpleasant evening. But now the well calls to me and I answer with a step forward. And then another and another until I am standing at the edge, peering into nothing. I have a quarter in my pocket, so I drop it in the well and wait for it to strike solid ground. Fortunately the response is quick, the impact dull. The well's mouth is thin enough for me to brace my back on one side and my feet on the other and crabwalk my way down.

Wild Bill



July 6, 2007

The well.

The Tempo veered right and eased onto Maryland exit ramp number sixty-three. My stoic friend flashed on the high beams and, allowing for rain, ran the wipers at a steady clip. At the end of the ramp two standard issue American highway signs sat innocuously directing one right for Burger King and McDonald’s and left for a Days Inn and Exxon station. No headlights approached from either side and the thick silence of flat land stared back at us through the now clear windshield.

'So, now what?' I said impatiently.

'Now, you impatient shit, we wait out the rain.'

'If we're going to the RNC to sneak me in then why the hell are we in the middle of nowhere and why the fuck are we waiting out the rain?'

'It is the travesty of the American school system that a wise ass like yourself gets to go to college without ever once having turned on his golf ball sized brain. Are you expecting me to just pull up in front of the Republican National Committee's headquarters and just drop you off? A sort of here you go, Ira, best of luck on the inside. They've got people guarding that place that would eat you for breakfast. Literally. No, we wait out the rain so you don't drawn. You see that well about a quarter of a mile into that field. That is where you are going in.'

On the other side of the two-lane road washed coal black clean by the rain, down a dirt path framed by foot high, wild grass, sat a simple stone well. In the darkness I could make out nothing more than its shape and height. As soon as the rain abated, I am sure I will have much more to say.

Wild Bill



July 4, 2007

Ira on the road.

No words were spoken as we drove. Raindrops pattered on the roof of the 1984 teal Ford Tempo. Government issue. My once garrulous companion chose to drum his calloused fingers on the steering wheel to the rhythm of what I could only guess was Pink Floyd's 'Hey You.' What an asshole! I mean, shit, he had laid down this whole conspiratorial, intricate rap at the coffee shop and laid this fat responsibility on my suddenly aching for home shoulders and now all he could do was stare straight ahead, rarely running the windshield wipers, and drum barely discernable seventies psychedelic stadium rock. Fuck that! So, what now? I suppose this X-Files extra was going to just plop my ass in front of the RNC and say go ahead young Ira, go rescue your errant cousin from some government manufactured super delusion in the dark deep center of what I am pretty sure is the closest place to hell outside of Norman, Oklahoma I will ever pass through in my corporeal life.

I opened my mouth to speak. My companion raised his right hand from the steering wheel and cracked each knuckle one by one. Each cracked knuckle folded into a fist. The fist returned to the wheel, but did not grip it. His left hand ran the windshield wipers once. He turned the car onto an exit ramp I did not know. This did not bode well.

Wild Bill



June 27, 2007

A Twin Bill-ing.

Part One.

Every one in the town was bowl legged. It was as if even the women had been raised squatting over amphora toilets. The parting of the phalanx revealed a cricket course of potential exits from being sliced, diced, and pulverized. Once I was out my only concern would be getting shot. Ever since three disgruntled, cross dressing Jews for Jesus disciples had assaulted me on the streets of Mobile, Alabama eventually shooting me twice in the stomach at point blank range when I refused to cut my peyas, the prospect of getting shot barely even rankled a nerve ending.

My grandfather was a founding member of the Israeli Tzahal or IDF in 1948 and had made a rather disturbing point of teaching me their version of an army crawl as a means of evading uncomfortable situations. Do you ever wonder why you have so much trouble standing still, looking someone in the eye, and asking and answering simple questions? For me, the answer is shockingly clear. I had an old man, who I worshipped, literally hitting the floor and racing all knees and elbows with his chin dredging whatever the surface happened to be, like the entire Middle East was firing rifles at him, every time he felt even the slightest hint of conflict. It became apparent to me that the only way I could keep close to this man was to become as adept an evader as he was. I learned well.

Now, scuttling with a verve that would have made grandpa weep, I emerged on the other side of the crowd. I saw a row of horses lazily tied to a hitching post less than fifty yards away. I ran. The sound of bullets was sharp yet haphazard kicking up small bursts of dust and strafing the thick, sweat laiden air. I reached the horse, yanked sharply on its reigns, and spurred the beast onward. Suddenly, there was not a sound to be heard.

Part Two.

I rode to the edge of town shuttering under the total silence. Knowing it was a bad idea, I seized the reigns, stopped, and looked back. It was as if I had never been there. A man, not a townsperson, had been strapped into the apparatus. The whole town looked at him as he hung upside down and said nothing. Tears streamed from his inverted eyes running off his hair like melting icicles. Gravity had distorted his anguish into a droopy smile. His cheeks were leaning on his eyes.

The operator of the machine pulled the lever. In two swift movements his guts were mashed and his entire body was split right down the middle. He hung, like damp laundry, two thin pieces of a man. If there had been anything in my system I would have thrown up for days. As it was I spurred my horse out into the dessert, heading in what I assumed to be a westward course for no particular reason at all.

In my exhaustion and despair, my thoughts turned once again to the Colombian Jungle and young La Guerra. He used to stay up late, telling stories quietly around the campfire in a hushed whisper. He would do this whether the entire party was awake or asleep. He believed he could reach us in our dreams. He would end every story with the same line...

'And so once again, faced with the boundless opportunity and beauty of the universe, man chose himself and his small world, over the potential of the race.'

Night was falling in the desert. I would draw my bearings from the stars.

Wild Bill



June 21, 2007

Death March.

I was flanked on my ascent by two sombreroed midgets carrying Winchester rifles Model 1866---Yellow Boy lever action if memory served. I could have kicked over the two four-footers even in my broken state, but then where? Armed guards patrolled the rooftops and the townspeople's ranks were not only one solid wall, but ran five deep. The midgets, as if they could sense my lack of options, laughed. Their feculent breath, wreaking of cheap mescal and unwashed whore's bottoms, stabbed my already faint disposition. I lost my balance and tumbled into the mosh of silent onlookers. The two midgets trained their Winchesters on me and smiled devious smiles. The townspeople, zombie like, separated, allowing me to smack the ground. Lying on the ground, I saw my only way out.

Wild Bill



June 19, 2007

The apparatus.

The gloved hands jerked me upright. My legs twitched like a newly crushed roach as I turned to face a town full of sullen accusers. They stared at me, cracked lips pursed in Puritanical judgment. I did not know why I was here or what exactly here was. I tried to open my mouth, to ask, but no sound came. In one swift and horrifyingly choreographed gesture the entire town shot weather beaten right hands up, directly parallel to the dust street, gesturing towards the apparatus's stairs. I turned back to the looming contraption. Two holsters hung from a wooden A-frame that rose roughly seven feet above the platform style base. Two scythe like blades stood upright, outside the frame, attached to a second larger frame by coiled springs. Jutting out perpendicular to the base of the two A-frames were what appeared to be two miniature catapults each containing an over-sized Neolithic style mace head. The holsters were low enough that I was able to surmise what the intent of the machine was. A man---me, in this case---would be suspended upside down in the smaller A-Frame. Simultaneously, or not depending on the executioner's particular level of malicious intent on that day, the scythes and the mace catapults would be released presumably crushing the captives entire torso while cleaving him in two. I had to admire the ruthless ingenuity, but for the fact that the townspeople had closed ranks forming some sort of ghost town phalanx, blocking all routes of escape.

Wild Bill



June 16, 2007

A town on the horizon.

While it was hard to hold anything steady in my eye, what with not having seen light for days and being dragged like a carcass across the desert floor, I thought I saw a town. This was the same town I had spied between two large rocks---that much I knew. My assailant said nothing. I had not even seen his face; the attack had been so sudden. His horse galloped at breakneck, spurred on by his master's frenzied lashing. I was thankful for his haste. My body moved so quickly over the coarse, sun beaten sand and rock that I was spared its harsher impacts. I skipped like a stone on water, trying as much as possible to cushion the intermittent blows with the cushy side of my rump. The town was now upon us and the rider broke his horse's stride. The exposed flesh of my face and forearms raked across the earth's brittle surface. I could feel blood.

Three sets of hands now seized upon me, gruffly untying my arms, but not allowing me to my feet. The hands, all wearing weathered welding gloves, clasped me at my wrists, knees, and waist. I tried to whip my head from side to side, but all I could make out were splintered porches and sand swept boots. After two minutes of processional, I was dropped. In the glare of the sun, looming, stood a contraption, some new type of apparatus of torture or death that I had not seen nor studied. Great.

Wild Bill



June 14, 2007

Wild, Wild West!

The air grew hot. I could taste dust particles flitting in and out of my mouth. I could feel the dust scratching the surface of my blood shot eyes. And then the light, slowly at first as if someone was screwing in a light bulb, gleamed in the distance. The impact of any light was so intense that I could hardly keep my eyes open. The plains of baked and cracked clay stretched out interminably in all directions as I began to discern shape again. There was very little shape to speak of.

I trudged onward under an oppressive sun slowly seeing more and more. My knuckles were blue and swollen and I was missing two fingernails. As I wandered directionless, I thought, for just a moment, that I saw the rooftops of a distance town appear momentarily in the gap between two large rock formations. I turned toward the apparition.

Then I heard my first sound in days. It was like the drumming on a Viking galley and it was growing louder and louder. Something whipped through the sky and clasped me around my gut. All of a sudden I was being pulled along the desert floor, lassoed by an unknown assailant. My body was already so broken that I hardly felt a thing. I cleared my mind and began to plan my attack.

Wild Bill



June 12, 2007

Where has Bill gone?

My body was beat, broken. I could feel the chiseled edges of cracked ribs grating inside my torso. For what felt like days, I wandered in a dark, silent void. The Hydra's microphone tentacles had inflicted significant damage. Even in my longest, loneliest isolation in the Colombian and Venezuelan jungles, I had never traveled so long without water, food, or sunlight. Without any reference point, I was blind. My body was so deprived of all essentials that I seemed beyond the normal dementia that haunts the perpetual nomad. I was nothing, a shadow passing in the dark.

Wild Bill



May 24, 2007

Bill is in danger.

'Ira, are you familiar with modern Freudian thought?'

I looked around the twenty-four hour diner at the truckers and roadies with faces buried in clouds rising from freshly refilled coffee. Heads slunk slow and hats pulled below their eyebrows it was as if they were trying to inhale energy, purpose to get back out into the dark tedium of their transient lives.

'Yeah. I am in college dude.'

'That does't mean you know a goddamn thing.'

A waitress, Betty or so her nametag indicated, approached our table with two cups of coffee and put them down without a word.

'In modern Freudian thought the life-wish, often referred to as eros or libido and the death wish---thanatos or destrudo---are the two forces that bind an individual to his delusional subconscious desires and fears. Powerful people have made great use of this knowledge, which has been called many different things in many different cultures, to suppress and manipulate the uninitiated. Right now, your cousin Bill is enmeshed in a consciously manipulated sub-conscious delusion made manifest. That's a goddamn brainfucker isn't it! Whitethorne and his cronies have been onto the investigation Bill and that 'Nuck Lafitte have been conducting for the last four years every step of the way. Bill and Pierre have done a nice job cloaking it in fictional garb and trying to palm it off as a comic book, but it's findings have been a little too accurate for the administration to ignore. Luckily, it hasn't caught on in the mainstream yet. And don't think the administration hasn't had a hand in that stall as well. Right now, and ever since New Year's Eve, Bill has been a victim of a rather radical brainwashing drug that has been plumbing the depths of his deranged psyche making him believe that he is on a quest to become the Republican Presidential Nominee. The drug leeches onto suppressed desires, fears and delusions and projects them in hallucinations familiar to the test subject's particular psychological framework. In Bill's case, being a writer and political enfant terrible, he has been projecting himself in the role of the savior hero undergoing a series of quests and tests. Last anyone saw of him was the day you saw him enter the RNC. I don't have anyone on the inside to know exactly what is happening, but I have heard horror stories about empty rooms completely oxygenated with the drug. Even if he survives the nightmare scenarios he projects for himself, the man you knew, the man who was part of bringing to light the sham of a democracy we've been living in for the last seven years, that man will be lost.'

'What exactly are you saying?'

'Ira, I need to get you into the RNC, and I need you to get Bill out.' ---Ira

Wild Bill



May 22, 2007

What?

'Mind if I sit down, son?'

'Uh, yeah dude. There are two other people on this bus and I was hoping to spread out and sleep. So, if you don't mind, take one of the other forty seats. Please.'

I made a grand gesture of placing my iPod headphones in my ears and turning toward the window. The bus engine putzed to life and I closed my eyes. I drifted off falling into the sort of shallow sleep common to passengers on public transportation. It was a sleep where I still had a faint sensation of consciousness, where I still felt my nearly numbed limbs. I had no idea where I was when I woke up. Night had fallen and my face had congealed to the windowpane. As I pushed back I bumped into something. In the seat next to me, seated with hands folded resolutely in his lap, was the same old man who I had told to go away. I started, recoiling in my seat. He did not move, just began to speak barely moving his lips.

'You're an insolent little shit just like your cousin Bill.'

What?

'I hate the fucking Greyhound, Ira. We're getting off at the next stop. And then you and I are going to have a nice little chat.'

'I am not going anywhere with you. You look like some sort of fucking pervert dude. And how the hell do you know who I am anyway?'

'Ira, when this country wasn't so busy eating itself for lunch, I had a real job dealing with real bad guys in real dangerous places. Now, I'm fucking old. I have ideas about how things should be done that don't really work well with the Whitethorne way. So, I get assigned to follow harmless reprobates who are so useless they can't even get hauled off to a VPRC. Your cousin Bill is in deep shit. Let's get off this shit mobile and have a cup of goddamn coffee.' ---Ira

Wild Bill



May 19, 2007

The bus ride.

Not for nothing, but Greyhounds are invariably redolent of two things: shit and Windex. It's as if some dutiful hired hand hopped on at every stop and misted the entire bus but refused to get any further than the driver's seat. The next time you're on a Greyhound see if I am right or not.

So, I'm on this basically empty bus with a guy wearing sunglasses in the dark---which has always galled me---and a Chinese couple singing the Beach Boys. The irony of the song they've chosen to hum is not lost here. I am heading for the Maryland shore. Why? Not a fucking clue. I'm sure good old Gerry W. has staked out the beaches with some bozo anti-terrorist outfit that will lock me up on first sight. Who knows? Point is I want to see the water. You ever get that way? Just want to sit and watch the tide and try and imagine that the present totally fucked up reality you and your entire goddamn country are entrenched in is just another ripple on the long, sordid mess that is human history. Sorry for the philosophical bullshit, but it's where the old knogen is right now. Maybe something will come of this trip. Maybe I'll have to slink back home begging forgiveness. Maybe---why is this old dude walking toward me right now? ---Ira.

Wild Bill



May 17, 2007

Ira on the Shore.

On the fourth day I left D.C. proper. Since I'm a student I have a travel permit allowing me to move freely between my home and school. No one not military or in an approved educational institution under twenty-one can get the travel permits anymore. Not many people know this. There's been nothing on the news about the Whitethorne administration's continued curbing of rights. Frankly, there's been nothing on the news period. I took a Greyhound bus. There were three people on the bus: a man wearing sunglasses with perfectly slicked back salt and pepper hair, a pastel Hawaiian shirt and madras shorts and an older Chinese couple who slept on each other's shoulders but still managed to hum what sounded like 'Sloop John B' as they slept. This country has gotten so goddamn strange.---Ira

Wild Bill



May 15, 2007

The Ira files.

Whitethorne, U.S.A. The news is pretty bleak from the street. I spent all my cash in the first few nights away from home, so now I have nowhere to sleep. Homeland Security is pretty vigilant about the curfew, but they don't seem to much give a shit about some random white kid wandering alone late at night. Probably just think I'm dumb. They've stopped picking people up as much and shipping them off to the VPRC's. The forgotten camps. God, we have no memory in this country! The parents protesting outside the White House have dwindled to one or two crazies with long dirty dreds and hemp bras. I bet they've packed off the rest of the parents. Whisked them away in the night. Here, you want to see Johnny, that's fine by us, just don this eyeless mask and hop in the back of this unmarked truck and we'll have you and your bouncing baby boy reunited in no time. I guess on the plus side there's no one left on the streets to fear. Those guys are all in serious lockdown. So, I wander, alternatively waiting, hoping for my mom to call my cell and beg me to come home, and wishing to never hear from my myopic, delusional parents again. I mean the country is under martial law for almost three years now, most of the progressive element of the country under forty has been locked up in what I can basically now assume are prettier concentration camps, and my goddamn parents are still concerned about the neighbor's dog shitting on the fresh cut lawn and what Arnold fucking Roth and his plastic wife think about the goddamn brisket! It makes me sick---Ira.

Wild Bill



May 12, 2007

Off with its heads!

My hearing was now keen. I heard the beast's whine and the static buzz of the microphones. I dodged the next attack. The whine intensified. Fighting off throbbing pain, I settled into a traditional Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fighting stance. If I could grab hold of one of the beast's arms I could strangle the bastard. I ducked under the next swing and the hiss of the microphones increased. Voices, barely discernable, emanated from the tentacles. The next attack came and I caught hold of one of the tentacles allowing the recoil to whip me behind the beast. Now, I had ground. The voices increased crescendoing into a cacophony of pointless questions. The noise was unbearable. Rage fueled, I severed the microphone from the body with one quick rip. The beast screamed. I took the tentacle and wrapped it around the body of the beast as I dodged wild blows. I had no idea where I would apply a traditional submission chokehold. In my hand the severed tentacle began to regrow its lost microphone. I grabbed hold of another flailing tentacle and wrapped it around the beast in the other direction. And then I pulled. Three minutes later I stood covered in sweat and blood above the body of a strangled Hydra. It was not dead; I could hear a faint rasp. There was only one thing to do. I took my keys from my pocket and went about sawing off all nine microphones. I took the genie's dust from my pocket and applied it as a balm to the wounded, lifeless tentacles. Fumbling in the dark I found the largest log I could and heaved it onto the body. There was nothing else to be done. I threaded one of my shoelaces through the fleshy microphone bases and made a necklace. Into total blackness, beaten and bruised, I limped on to my next challenge.

Wild Bill



May 10, 2007

The Hydra.

I cupped my nose, blood pooling in my palms. I gasped for air and swallowed mud. The impact was so swift, so sharp that I had collapsed into the bog without notice. Whatever had hit me now moved closer, its feet sloshing in the swamp. It stopped. For a moment silence spread out over the midnight swamp like sleep. And then my cell phone rang. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine microphones came whipping and crashing down on me walloping and lashing. I screamed out in pain, my cries echoing into a dark void. Another attack followed. One rib was shattered, at least, and my kidney throbbed. Pain layered itself onto me like extra derma, burning and bruising without prejudice. I breathed a deep breath allowing my eyes to roll back inside my head. Inside the pain now, almost removed from my body, my years of deep breathing and meditating calmed my raging nerves. As the next attack came, shattering my left ankle, I felt nothing. I observed my pain. I listened intently as the lash of this beast's tentacles cut through the air. Impact. Nothing. Impact. Nothing. But this calm could not last. Each bodily bruise pricked at thin cone of meditative safety I had quickly established for myself. And then I heard it. A thin, reedy whine that preceded impact by a solid second. Wind-up and pitch. On the next wind-up I forced my battered body to roll away. Splattering mud slapped me as the tentacles crashed into where I had been. The move shattered my calm as intense physical pain crashed onto me like thirty-foot surf. I heard the whine and rolled again, this time getting my hands and arms under my body. I forced myself up, bloody and bruised, determined to face my assailant.

Wild Bill



May 8, 2007

The darkness.

What little light remained from the genie's chandelier dwindled. I wandered into near blindness my hands waving in front of me like a lame mummy. The air was thick and damp and the stairs veered illogically up and then down leaving me completely disoriented. I pressed on, occasionally tripping, until I felt the floor beneath my feet soften. I could hear the squish of my shoes trudging through what sounded like mud. My errant hands no longer were groping concrete but foliage. The leaves reminded me of the Cachipay tree in Colombia. Often, when I ran out of money in Venezuela, I would do mercenary work for FARC in the jungles of Colombia. I tried to avoid doing the really bloody stuff---I have only killed one man and that story is for another time---and stuck more to slash and burn expeditions of coca plant fields. On one of these missions I was fortunate to spend time with a young man named Santiago La Guerra. Even as a young man of no more than twenty he had a commanding presence and a wide range of knowledge. As we wandered through the jungle he would tell me about each tree's origin, its potential medicinal value, and its spiritual worth to the natives of the area. Lost in my reminiscing and crippled by my eyes stubborn refusal to adapt to the blackness, I was caught unawares when what felt like two microphones simultaneously struck me in the nose and gut.

Wild Bill



May 5, 2007

Lesson learned.

The genie's chapped hands pressed down hard on my windpipe, oxygen backing up in my chest. I could literally feel the fibers of my esophagus ripping one by one. My eyes terrified and enraged pushed forward out of my head. I thought about fighting back until I realized that my hands and arms unbeknownst to me were already flailing purposelessly in animal fright. I steadied my mind and focused on my energy on the bubble of oxygen right beneath the genie's death grip. I closed my eyes and pushed with every muscle I could muster.

'The dream, nay the goal of the great American experiment' I gasped with all my might, 'has always been the spread of the democratic dream to the oppressed peoples of the world.'

The gust I released with my first words had exploded like a steam pipe sending the genie crashing into the table where the urn had rested. I stood up and wiped off my clothes deliberately.

'What you would call empire is not empire in any sort of historical sense, but the divine providence of a just and merciful worldview being gifted by an enlightened people.'

The genie, momentarily stunned, began to swell, a tumescence of muscle and rage. He spoke.

'And?'

'The answer is more than enough. Americans aren't interested in lectures. Next question.'

The genie smiled but did not lessen in stature.

'What about universal healthcare?'

What a joke! I smiled back.

'America has the best and most advanced medical institutions in the world. We have the best because we foster an environment of healthy and fair competition wherein said competition promotes progress. To remove the object of competition, capital, would only serve to weaken the infrastructure. If people work hard at honest work, they will have access to the greatest healthcare on the planet. Next.'

'Is America a Christian nation?'

I hesitated. Was I willing to go this deep undercover? Was I willing to stand here and deny my roots in order to get to truly understand how the apparati of power works in this supposed democracy? Would I ever really be able to return from this moment? I looked up and those chapped hands were coming back towards me growing larger and wreaking of blood lust. I looked down at the quickly extinguishing candle. I made my choice.

'While not a Christian nation in literal practice, the founding father's used many Christian ideals in the framing of the Constitution and were all Christian men. In America, we respect all religions equally, but we cannot deny the profound impact of...'

Pause and gulp.

'the teachings of Jesus Christ on the great democratic experiment.'

In a whirlpool of dust the genie spun back into his urn. An Exit sign illuminated beyond the chandelier and table. From the urn, the voice spoke.

'Gather my remaining ashes from the floor and place them in your right pants pocket. Follow the stairs to the next task. You have done well.'

I did what he said and walked toward the exit. At the door I looked back at the chandelier and the urn resting quietly. This was more than I had bargained for.

Wild Bill



May 3, 2007

Q and A.

My unnamed pseudo-genie friend eyed me sharply. His eyes, fresh asphalt black, assessed me patiently and he uncrossed his arms. He looked up at the chandelier above his head and picked a candle off its base like a child picking an apple from a tree. The candle immediately began to melt. He passed the candle over to me.

'Consider this an hourglass of sorts. If it burns down to your hands, the flame will be the least of your problems. Now, tell me, William, does America harbor imperial ambitions?'

I literally bit my lip to prevent a torrent of vitriol that had been building over my four years following the nefarious dealings of the Whitethorne Administration. Yes!Yes! Read the paper, watch the news, use one thousandth of one percent of your goddamn brain and you know we harbor imperial ambitions. We have since McKinley, since Manifest Destiny, frankly, more or less since we signed the constitution. And so it slipped out.

'Yes.'

Swelling to three times his previous size the genie bellowed inches away from my face, his breath wreaking of sardines and tobacoo. 'WRONG ANSWER WILLIAM!'

With uncanny speed I found myself back on the floor, with two gigantic hands pressing hard on my Adam's apple.

'Now, let's try this again.'

Wild Bill



May 1, 2007

History Part One.

Room 1863 was spare and smelled like stale fertilizer. A chandelier, antebellum, hung eerily still. Candles cast soft light betraying very little of the room's dimension. The candles burnt, but did not melt. Below the chandelier, on an antique side table, sat an oversized urn. As I approached the urn, the barely perceptible scrawl of ink on the table formed two words:

Hug Me.

And so I did.

Enveloped in my arms, the urn warmed, and then erupted in a bilious cloud of tobacco- drenched smoke. The impact of the smoke knocked me backward and I dropped the urn. It made no sound. Wiping the smoke from my eyes I looked up to see a large, muscular black man dressed in tattered rags smiling a knowing smile.

'The sense most directly related to memory is smell,' he said in a rich baritone. 'Memory is history and vice versa. History's truth is impacted by the victor, by the personal prejudice of the man writing it, and by the perspective of the man witnessing it. What you smell right now reminds you of something, something visceral. The impact of that memory combined with the force of history can change the way you perceive even what is plain as day. To master a man, you must master his perception of his own memory, his own knowledge of history. Now, William, I am going to ask you three questions, three questions that any educated American knows the answer to. I know what the answers are, you know what the answers are. What I want from you is to be convinced of what you, William Hearst, future Republican Presidential Candidate, want me to know the answers are. By what I've just said you should know what you need to do. And please be very convincing, because I do not like to know that I am being lied to.'

Wild Bill



April 28, 2007

Doubt.

In all this time I never asked myself, did I want this? Fate plays her hand and we are all bullied and prodded into her chosen alignment. Dominoes waiting for the fall. But yet, the choice seemed so logical. My life had been itinerant taking me all across the Americas. I never considered the long term, so I was always able to avoid real consequence. All I left behind was my writing, each piece an ode to a place, a phase, a version of myself long dead. And then I moved on, rearranging the words, trying a new medium, loving a new woman and place.

Now on the first floor, I walked past the haphazard room numbers wondering how the hell anyone ever found anything in this place. It was obvious that each room wore a date of some sort---1066 and 1195 being the first two rooms---that harkened to historical events of significance to Western Civilization. What was behind those doors? 1195 was practically screaming at me to open it. Before I knew it I had my hand on the knob and was turning it to the right. I stopped. This was no joke, no time for schoolboy curiosity. I could come back here when I had completed my tasks. The numbers clicked by like some sort of history timeline. And then I knew I had arrived. Knew that this was exactly the sort of smugness I would have to continually project as the leader of the New Republican Party. 1863. Here we go...

Wild Bill



April 26, 2007

The task at hand.

Ford stood hands in pockets and feet shoulder width apart wearing a tight lipped but congenial smirk. In the strident fluorescent light I was reminded of Ford's apparitional state. I almost laughed. This was happening. Oy! I said to myself knowing that I would never be able to utter that word aloud again if I was to survive this bizarre initiation.

'Bill, I'll be brief. Follow me,' he said as he turned right heading towards a set of stairs. 'As Duncan has already told you, you must complete five tasks and then kill him to advance on the quest I have chosen for you. I have the utmost confidence you will succeed. On each floor you will find a room whose number relates to a defining moment in the Republican Party's great history. Inside that room you will be met with a challenge; some of the challenges involve physical combat, some involve intellectual combat. All I can tell you is that each challenge relates to the one of the five senses a true Republican must have and adhere to. Upon completion of each task you will be given clues to which room holds the next task and clues to success in said task. Each task's difficulty will increase. And don't think Duncan will go quietly either. That bastard didn't get to run this party by kissing babies.'

We were now at the base of the stairs. Ford stopped and so did I. This did not please him.

'What do you want a hug or something? Get your ass up those stairs and get started. I'll spot you a drink if you survive.'

And with that, he vanished, leaving me alone to begin my quest.

Wild Bill



April 24, 2007

A brief summary of events.

The Adventures of Wild Bill (Herschovitzch)! starring the last living Chassidic Cowboy himself, Wild Bill Herschovitzch! After two years of self-imposed silence in upstate New York, Bill, alone in a bar on New Year's Eve, is visited by the ghost of Gerald Ford. Ford's mysterious words prompt Bill to abandon his home and begin a quest for the Republican Party's Presidential nomination. Battling his way across the country and through alternate dimensions, Bill finds his way to the doorstep of the Republican National Committee Headquarters in our nation's great capital, Washington D.C. After total transmorgification, vanquishing former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, duking it out with Ford on a bleak astral plain, and getting into a few bar fights, Bill now finds himself at the end of a long dark hallway. Five tasks beckon! Five challenges that will show whether Bill is ready to lead the Republican party in the post-Whitethorne era! Stay tuned...

Wild Bill



April 21, 2007

Ira's tirade and exile.

Ira stood up at the table and, for emphasis, grabbed the first object that caught his eye, the shank bone.

'So, me and a bunch of my friends from school meet up this morning, about 7am, and smoke this really serious shit that Abraham has been selling up in Burlington. You getting all this fat Roth?' he said as he brandished the shank in the direction of Arnold's confused and quickly reddening face. 'We all know we're more or less four years too late and banging our heads against the metaphorical wall, but we figure, well, what the fuck, there's some lameass MoveOn rally outside the RNC protesting some other fucked up aspect of this administration...wait, Roth didn't I read your name on a donor list for Whitethorne in 2004? What are you, one of those Podhoretz Jews who actually digests the shit that Whitethorne shovels at you about giving a rat's ass about the state of Israel?' Boris gripped his fork and knife like he was ready to carve a turkey. In the kitchen dishware crashed and a plaintive sob rose above the silent table.

'Get out.'

'But, I haven't even started?'

'GET OUT!' Boris screamed and pounded his fists into the table, toppling candles, discombobulating Seder plate, and covering the table cloth in Manischevitz. Ira, a little disappointed that he would not get to finish his speech, turned from the table, barely able to restrain his delight in fully embarrassing his father, and walked toward the front door shank still in hand. Back to the table now, Ira lobbed the shank over his shoulder carelessly. The pascal lamb, arcing past unsuspecting and still shocked guests, coasted over its original place on the table. Gravity brought the shank to a soft landing between the well-exposed breasts of one Jenya Roth.

By the time Arnold and Boris were standing, Ira was sprinting down the dark street, knowing it would be a long time before he could come home.

Wild Bill



April 19, 2007

Why, exactly, is this night different from all other nights?

On all other nights, Ira, for his sins, would not have had dinner. A silly punishment for a college student, but one still exacted in the Feldenstein household. But, on this night of nights, with a Roth present (no, not a Roth, theRoth), the importance of the appearance of family took precedence. Nadya would never forgive herself. From the kitchen she shouted, 'Ira, no one wants to hear this. It's not appropriate Seder conversation.' But, Ira, determined, desired a scene. Besides, this Roth guy was an asshole---he barely touched his food!---and his wife looked like his daughter and was wearing some sort of carcass on her goddamned head as if this were the goddamned Soviet Union and we were all sipping Vodka and trying to stay warm. And all she ate was matzah and she chewed it like a goddamn chipmunk. The only thing going for her was that she'd had work done in all the right places. No, this was not something Ira, rage building, was going to let go off. Not tonight.

Wild Bill



April 17, 2007

Meanwhile...

Ira Feldenstein, aforementioned cousin---Bill's mother's sister's daughter's son, to be precise---fidgeted in his seat between Saul and Philip, unrelated. Boris Feldenstein, disapproving father, took a second helping of brisket and lathered it on an unsuspecting piece of matzah. Karpas, Matzah, Maror, and Haroset had been explained, blessed, and consumed. Nadya Feldenstein, mother, bustled about refilling wine glasses, offering seconds, her food untouched and congealing. The conversation was lively, touching on the events of the day, the doings of various family members, most not present, and the happenings at the family's congregation, Congregation Etz Hayim. Words tumbled out upon words, overlapping, overrunning, and ignoring turn and logic. Only Ira sat silent, angry and embarrassed. Ira, victim of great indignity, hauled home by Washington DC's finest, deposited on doorstep simultaneous to arrival of very important Seder guests and potential clients, the Roths, did not touch his food. Boris, whose cavernous timbre usually dominated the Feldenstein Seder melee, spoke in hushed tones to Arnold Roth, magnate and potential business investor. Nadya began to clear plates, her's still untouched. Nadya, desperately hoping that the failings of the son, an obvious inherited flaw from her long gone days of protest, did not impact the dealings of Boris and Mr. Roth, stacked plates, four at a time, three trips to the kitchen, and forgot that she had not yet taken a bite. While scraping brisket into the garbage she heard what she feared most.

'So, uh, before I got arrested today,' Ira spoke and silenced the table. Boris glared, second chin fluttering in rage. 'I saw Bill, you know, the maggid cowboy. The one Bubbi told us was dead. Well, he's not dead. And, you'll never believe this, he was going into the Republican National Committee's headquarters. He looked like a goddamn goy!'

Wild Bill



April 13, 2007

Bill's Quest. Friday the Thirteenth.

Duncan, pupils dilated and eyes unblinking, now spoke in a hushed monotone, lips parting just far enough to form consonants. Sweat trickled from his pomaded brow as the crones hummed and rocked. I had never been privy to experience a real, Southern revival, but I imagined it to be not dissimilar.

'The Democrats will tear each other apart, vying for exposure and lucre, trying to capitalize on a misunderstood legacy. The American people already wary of all the politicking and uncomfortable with a woman or an African American adorning the nation's highest office, will turn their backs in disgust on a two year show trial. Romney, Guiliani, and McCain will bicker and banter and prove either too old or to disconnected from our Party's base to have any real shot at the office. All the while, we, the chosen, dead and alive, will train you to be the Party's great hope. You will become part of the great chain! But, first you must prove your worth.'

Here he paused. The light in the marble hallway returned and the crones slinked off in separate directions. Duncan relaxed his grip, releasing me.

'There are five floors in this building. There are five tasks you must fulfill. Five tasks that none have mastered since Reagan. Once you complete those, you must come to my office, and you must kill me.'

Silence. Duncan gestured towards the end of the hallway where a familiar face waited, smiling. Ford.

Wild Bill



April 11, 2007.

And so it begins.

'Bill.'

'Bill and so much more.'

'Here that,' Duncan said, the grip of his trembling hands shaking my shoulders, 'Do you here them calling your name. I didn't tell it to them. I knew it! Ford was right!'

I froze. Cauldroned in the midst of a bizarre ritual, I understood that none of this had been random. I was intended, fated, to wander my way down through Lancaster, through Santorum, through Rand and Williams to reach this horrifying moment. I smiled the smile of a drowned man washing up on distant shores. The strange odor returned to me now, stronger and more potent. It seemed to be swirling out of the old lady's handbags. Oil field memories sprang from the red bag, images of Ford from the white bag, and childhood from the blue. I was entranced.

'Bill the codifier.'

'Bill the scribe.'

'Bill the converter.'

'Bill my friend, you are to be the great savior of our great, embattled party!'

Wild Bill



April 9, 2007.

Though this be madness...

'See Billy boy,' Duncan said with a funhouse entrance grin, 'literature is, always has been, a method of organizing, of codifying the world's mysteries. I know my theory sounds a little off, but I believe it, and I believe you and I can make people believe it. Every generation needs a specific voice. In the eighties we needed an actor, now we need a writer.'

The clucking of the crones, now one dissonant chord, swelled towards us. Three old women, all under five feet tall, hunched in their American flag sweaters with hair to match and inches of slathered on makeup obscuring their burlap skin, encircled us. Their unison voice, alternately buzzing and moaning, accented by the sharp clang of excessive jewelry, swelled up to fill the hallway. Duncan placed one ring-clad hand on my right shoulder and the other on the left facing me towards him in an awkward Bar Mitzvah slow dance pose. For the first time in quite a while, I was legitimately scared. Not that it wouldn't have been easy to dispatch with this paunchy, corporate lackey. No, I was scared because I felt the pull of the moment: the chanting, the inexplicably darkening hallway, and Duncan's calm, maniacal voice.

Wild Bill



April 6, 2007.

Duncan's Theory. Part Two.

I reached into my breast pocket and passed over a hankerchief. Duncan raked the cloth across his stained lips wiping clean his pomegranate gloss. He stuffed it in his pocket without a word.

'The tragedy of Macbeth,' he continued, 'is his lack of trust in the prophecy given to him. God's intent, obviously, was for Macbeth's rule to pave the way for the offspring of Banquo to rule for many generations. This is, of course, the classic misinterpretation by the Jewish people of the Lord's divine plan. Jesus Christ was sent to redeem the Fall. The Son of God displaying the potential of human divinity. If the Jewish people had accepted him and his word at the moment of the Lord's manifestation, then the tragedies that befell them would never have taken place. So, combine the not so coincidental timing of the colonization of the New World under the reign of the King who would perfect God's word with the allegorical intent, clearly divinely inspired, of Shakespeare's greatest play written to honor same King, and what do you get?'

Struck dumb, I could only imagine him sharing this theory over hole seventeen in some Chevy Chase country club to the amused, tight-lipped grins of his other paisley clad bigot buddies. Somewhere behind me, I heard the scratchy chirping of two crones conversing. And then a third.

'You tell me, Mike.'

'You get a secret message from the Lord about the purpose of America. Duh! What God was saying through Macbeth was that he was to create a new world, a new place that once perfected as a proper Christian nation would, in fact, herald the Messiah and the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. Great Britain as Macbeth and America as the offspring of Banquo. Don't fuck with the USA buddy because we have understood the prophecy. The Lord has emboldened us with the power and divine purpose to stamp out oppression and misbelief on this fractured planet and pave the way for divine reconciliation. The problem is the proliferation of Macbeth's worldwide misinterpreting God's intent standing in the way of the fulfillment of the Lord's promise. And I think a time is coming when we will have to take action.'

Wild Bill



April 4, 2007.

Duncan's Theory. Part One.

'Macbeth scholars tend to posit the play's first performance to the year of our Lord 1607. This year takes into account proper time to write a play that honored King James I (who thought himself descended from the Scot, Banquo), as well as incorporating references to incidents like The Gunpowder Plot which give the ancient Scottish tale political immediacy. 1607 is also the year the British colonized Jamestown. Follow?'

Another crone, more hunched and unkempt than the receptionist, slinked around the corner carrying a Ronald Reagan lunchbox in one hand and a fistful of pens in the other. Blasted heath. Second Witch. Vile glare cast my way as she slinked by. Duncan smiles a lascivious grin as she passes. A wonder he didn't kiss her.

'I follow.'

'Good. Now, I am a great believer that the Lord speaks his divinity through our greatest artists. Shakespeare was a classicist. His work perfect in form and closer to divine beauty than any other save the Bible---which I am positive he had a hand in authoring. Now, in the opening prophecy, the witches tell Macbeth that he will be king, but tell Banquo that he will father a line of kings. Let us consider for a moment, that God, working through his vessel Shakespeare, was making a prophecy of his own with the simultaneous creation of one of the greatest plays of all time and birth of what would now four hundred years later be the greatest nation of all time. Same year of course. AND the play was meant to glorify James I, whose Bible best interprets the word and intent of our Lord.'

Duncan paused here, possibly for dramatic effect. Another crone! This one, beet red hair hairsprayed into a tidal wave crashing down on a face whose makeup flaked like cooked plaster and whose lips, redder than the dyed hair, puckered for the approaching Duncan. She was barely five feet tall. Where the hell had she come from? Duncan stopped in front of crone three, planting a wide mouthed, saliva laiden smooch right on those lipsticked lips.

'Billy boy, lend me a hankerchief.'

Wild Bill



April 2, 2007.

A strange odor.

Duncan led me on a series of right turns, matching my stride, and saying nothing. There was a smell in the air, lingering between the piquant menthol of floor wax and Duncan's intense sandalwood and anise-scented cologne. I could not peg the odor's origin; I had never smelled anything like it. And yet, as we walked silently, vivid memories ricocheted in my mind's eye, mixing distant images of Hebrew school instruction, Venezuelan oil fields, and the astral plane where Ford and I did battle. It was a strange hallucinatory montage, interrupted by those confounding, continual right turns. I turned my attention inward, trying to grasp the fleeting images, which was when Duncan put his hand on my shoulder.

'Bill, I can call you Bill right?'

'Sure.'

'Mike.'

'Sure, Mike.'

'Well, Bill, the thing is, I don't know exactly why Gary sent you to meet me, but I trust Gary, I mean, he coaches basketball. What's not to trust?'

'That is an interesting point, Mike.'

'Yes. I think the most reliable people in America today are basketball coaches and real estate salesman. But, that's beside the point. Gary told me you were a literary type. If you don't mind, I have a theory about Macbeth I would like to share with you.'

Shocked, terrified, and delighted I turned to listen.



Wild Bill





March 30, 2007.

Chairman Duncan arrives, finally.

Duncan strode toward the front desk, his footsteps echoing sharply in the long hallway. He wore a double-breasted, pinstriped, navy blue suit complete with white shirt and red tie. He approached the desk, slid behind the desk, grabbed the magazine from the crone's arthritic hands, and kissed her full on the lips. I recoiled in horror, dropping my briefcase. Duncan and the crone glared at me as the sound of brass and leather slapping off marble drowned out the salivic smack of the vile kiss. Ah, relax, there Billy boy, Lydia can be a bit of a bitch, but I love her like I love my own mother. I could feel my stomach crinkling up like used tinfoil, my ears so hot that my hair began to smell. What kind of a sick joke was this? Damn you, Gary! I spent our freshman year lying to your parents about the extra free throws you were shooting while you were having bestial threesomes with that tasty nineteen-year-old cheerleader Candy and her fresh chosen mammalian friend. Now you send me to this! Let's go on up to my office and talk, you and me. Pick up that briefcase.

Wild Bill



March 28, 2007. The crone is less than agreeable.

Ten minutes. Ten minutes staring at Reagan, Ford, Nixon, and the unmentionable one. Ten minutes to check on an appointment. When she did return she was carting a cup of what appeared to be freshly brewed coffee. She did not offer me anything. It'll be an hour she growled, remorseless. No offer of a place to sit or a cup of coffee or a magazine or a goddamn cup of coffee followed. She picked up a copy of Cigar Afficianado and read, sipping the coffee loudly. Ththteeeththth. Bitch. I left my briefcase in front of the desk and began to pace. If you don't pick up that briefcase, I'll call security. That's an unattended item. It's a threat. I picked up the briefcase and continued to pace. An hour passed uneventfully.

Wild Bill





March 26, 2007.

Bill enters the RNC HQ.

The foyer was like a library overseen by a particularly vindictive crone. Mops squished against polished marble and sleek leather loafers squeaked. Behind the small, oak desk a kaleidoscope of Republican luminaries; Reagan's empty, welcoming smile, Nixon's cartoonish paranoia, and then, Ford, that dirty double dealing Wolverine, chipper as a freshly laid nineteen year old. Mocking. I'll get you yet. Death will be the last of your problems. The portraits framed by two cantilevered American flags hung above the head of the severe crone; a balding woman, short red hair, and a squat severe face. She scowled at me. Name she spat with Teutonic glee. I gave her my name and waited as she quasimodoed her way behind the wall of Presidents.

Wild Bill



March 24, 2007.

A Surprise.

"Bill?"

"Dude, is that you?"

"What did you do to your hair?"

"Seriously, man, you look like belong to a country club."

"Are you going in there? Into that place? What's happened to you?"

"Seriously, get over here. You're not one of them."

"Are you?"

In the crowd, my cousin, twice removed, Ira Feldenstein, gawked. I hadn'nt seen this kid in ten years, not since I admonished his mother and father for making what still to this day were the most foul, burnt latkes in the history of the Jewish people. Now, there he was, probably just turned twenty-one, with a curly mass of unwashed hair, hemp necklaces and bracelets, a pronounced slouch, and some sort of weak attempt at a goatee. He was smoking a cigarette, teeth chattering in the cold air, and staring at me, perplexed. I walked quickly over, grabbed him by his shirt collar and pulled him aside.

"Shut up, Ira. We'll talk later."

I gave him my card and pushed him back into an undulating mass of privileged hippies. Onward, to the deepest pits of hell, I went.

Wild Bill





March 22, 2007.

310 First Street, SE.

It had been a wet winter morning in Washington D.C. Awake since sunrise, I wandered the Mall pondering the imposing mixture of French, Masonic, and Hellenic architecture that had come to form the face of our American government. For a moment, I felt the ghosts of Paine, Jefferson, Lincoln, Marshall, Roosevelt, and King coursing through my tired blood. For a moment I felt the ineffable pride capable of rising above the sordid history of our failed imperialism, a pride whose roots burrow back to one of histories few seemingly selfless moments. I smiled.

Now, my smile pinched parallel, I stood across the street from the inevitable: 310 First Street, SE. Headquarters of the Republican National Committee. Outside, under the watchful eye of half asleep security, a group of protesters were calling for our president's impeachment waving signs and singing songs. The great spirit of protest that forged our nation reduced to a gaggle of unshowered twenty year olds. I would have killed to be in their shoes.

But, for better or worse, Gary Williams was a close friend of newly elected RNC Chairman Mike Duncan. Gary had consented to set up an interview. I had no idea what to expect.

Wild Bill





March 20, 2007.

An interlude.

A lazy week, convalescent mostly, slouched by. I stayed with an old friend from my brief stint at university, Gary Williams, head basketball coach at the University of Maryland. We had very little to talk about. His wife insisted I stay in the basement and only come out when the kids were at school. So, I spent the majority of the week in silence reading Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. It sucked. But, I kept at it to see if any useful information or insight could put me back on track with my quest. This too proved fruitless. The week yielded very little besides much needed rest. When it became obvious that Gary's wife could no longer stand my presence, I borrowed some cash and took a train to Washington D.C. There, refreshed, I intended to make some real progress.

Wild Bill





March 17, 2007.

Bill fights back.

The pasty prick did it again. And this time he held his boot there, pressing down with what little weight he had. That was it. His back to me, serving, I drove my free hand into the base of his spine. He buckled crashing into the freezer face first. I stood up. The behemoth downed his second drink. No sound this time, just Johnny on the jukebox. The albino writhed on the floor, broken glass dug into his pellucid skin. I sized him up. He couldn't have weighed more than one hundred and forty pounds. Perfect. The monster's sweaty plum purple face twitched with mounting rage. He brought his fists down on the bar sending a shockwave that rattled the three statues to my left. I bent down, picked up the albino like a new bride, reared back and fired him towards the beast. Perhaps it was the shock of seeing an unsuspecting albino flying through the air or perhaps the albino's impact struck the right combination of pressure points, whatever it was, the behemoth toppled over backward. His feet went out from under him and his watermelon head smacked into the concrete bar floor. He wasn't going anywhere. I walked out from behind the bar, picked up my briefcase, and headed for the door. As I exited, I saw one of the three old men standing behind the bar, pouring himself a free drink. I waved.

Wild Bill



March 15, 2007

A bad morning gets worse.

Beating up an ex-Senator of questionable sanity is one thing. Beating up two disinterested secret service agents who are more adept human shields than hand to hand combatants is another. Beating up a six foot seven inch three hundred and forty pound man with a choke collar and brass knuckles is beyond me.

His punch flipped me over the bar. I landed in a puddle of mud, cheap gin, and Sprite. Luckily, he hit me with the non-brass hand. As I was brushing my self off and trying to unstick my ass from the grime in which I had landed, the albino stepped on my hand while bringing my newfound friend his drink. The behemoth, now settled on his customary mount, guzzled down the ale, fat chapped lips smacking the glass, and demanded another. The albino stepped on my hand again scurrying like a schoolgirl to the tap. As my friend awaited his next brew, he picked bits of breakfast out from between his yellow, gnarled teeth and flicked them at me. The other men did nothing. They may as well have been dead.

Wild Bill.



March 13, 2007.

Bill at the bar.

The hairless albino manning the bar didn't even talk to me until I had ordered my third drink. He just stared at me, blank eyed, looking like a malnourished Edgar Winter who had just lost one in a long succession of bar fights. When he did speak his wisp of a voice was barely audible above the jukebox in the background and I had to ask him to repeat himself. He walked away. The other men sat chins and noses slumping off their faces towards mason jars full of an unidentifiable brown liquid. Their hats, frayed mesh and sweat lined, were tilted forward to block out the site of anything beyond the glass jar. I knew it was wiser not to speak. I peered around the bar looking for a liquor license or a local newspaper that would let me know where I had landed in my ill-fated quest. The door swung open. The flash of light was brief and a moment later I smelled hot breath redolent of shotten mackerel and Marlboro reds. You're in my seat.

Wild Bill.



March 10, 2007

Bill attempts to disappear, completely.

Half an hour later I stumbled upon the kind of bar where the denizens have neither clue nor care to the hour of the day. They just want to drink in the dark confines of a poorly lit, smoke-filled living grave. The parking lot is mostly trucks, rust flaking off dented bumpers, mud waves cresting across windshields, the smell of exhaust and urine overwhelming the crisp morning air; No Old Man Here spray painted across the vomit stained brick. A real dive. No name. I walked across the gravel and weed dotted lot and opened the plank door. The smell was awful; sweat, dirty tap lines, and cigarette smoke. I felt right at home. Johnny Cash finished one song and picked right up with another alternating washes of dark pasts and darker futures. Three men sat at the bar and did not look up. I took the seat nearest the door, slung my briefcase underneath the stool, and took stock of my options. Bourbon for breakfast and no friends, just like old times.

Wild Bill.



March 9, 2007

Bill escapes Pennsylvania.

I ran all night drinking out of creeks and eating the remaining Peeps that had been sitting in my coat pocket since morning. As the sun rose I reached the Maryland border. My suit broadcasted the remnants of a night spent on the lam. Mud, grit, scuff marks, and haphazard tearing scared away potential hitchhiking opportunities. I looked like an alcoholic Wall Street executive who had wandered into a bad neighborhood. I smelled like I had been sleeping in a compost heap. Where was Ford now? Where was my guidance toward Republican sovereignty? It was 7:30 am now and I needed a drink.

Wild Bill.



March 1, 2007

Bill leaves Lancaster County.

Something was wrong. The entire Santorum incident, while deeply satisfying, left me lost. Outside the church the sun was setting, the blue sky fading into a smear of spilled oranges, pinks, and purples, blackness coming on. My chest tightened as I struggled for breath. Was it possible that the entire Ford incident was a delusion brought on by exhaustion, isolation, and alcohol? Had I drifted from home, broke and tired, my overactive imagination finally tearing the seams of my psyche into a porous cloth, my twisted thoughts now as real to me as the setting sun? I had very little to go back to. Anywhere. In the distance the sirens of police cars roused, the consequences of my brutal beating now manifest. I had been in jail before. More than once. I had no want to return. I lit out for the forest, sirens thundering closer, with no destination in mind...

Wild Bill.



February 24, 2007

Bill's wrath. Part Three.

"I can smell Jew for miles, Hearst." He reached into his breast pocket and produced a hankerchief pitifully ill-suited for the task at hand. "You clean up nice, but the roots are showing underneath that dye job and no Zegna suit is strong enough to mask your Jew scent. " Now he was standing. "I don't know who sent you, Jew, and I don't know what you're trying to show dressing up like a real American, but I'll tell you this, only one of us is leaving this church today." He wiped his face. Pathetic. Let him make first move. He cracked his knuckles and squared off. "I learned a few tricks when I represented the WWF back in the eighties." His coffee bean eyes narrowed. "I'm sure you did." That was all I was going to say. I wish I had a video recorder. This was why YouTube was created. Santorum, in a simian crouch, vaulted onto the nearest pew and rushed towards me. His left arm thumped his chest as he formed his right hand into a claw shape that he held directly in front of him. He galloped along the pew making a wheezing sound. His eyes rolled back in his head and a voice, with perfect diction but at a pitch so high that I am sure every dog in Lancaster will have nightmares for years to come, sirened "Gabriel give me strength!" Pushing off the pew armrest Santorum, screaming, snot laiden, wheezing, lept towards me, his claw hand reaching for my throat. I stood my ground, for a moment, and then stepped quickly to the left. Santorum, aloft, sailed right past me, crashing, claw and then face into the pews behind me. His body lay, breathing but otherwise limp, in an impossible sprawl of arms and legs, his face affixed to an open prayer book. What a putz.

Wild Bill.



February 22, 2007

Bill's wrath. Part Two.

Santorum, sneezing and yipping, dragged himself by his elbows across the church floor. He wasn't going anywhere. Anytime he attempted to stand his body wracked with a spasm of eighteen sneezes that propelled him into a stumbling figure eight. When the sneezing stopped he fell down and started crawling again. However, his sprinkler system of projectile snot kept me at a fair distance. I had heard stories about where he had been. I sat down in a pew just far away to continue encouraging his allergic fit, but not far enough away to relent. Another minute passed. Santorum put his hands underneath his elbows and pushed up to his knees. We both waited for the next attack. But it did not come. Shocked, Santorum, behind a mask of snot and saliva, turned to look at me. I smiled.

Wild Bill.



February 20, 2007

Bill's wrath. Part One.

The first guard went down easy. A sharp elbow to the soft tissue above the jawbone followed by a knee to the gut. His body, mostly unconscious, lolled on the floor, his sunglasses limply hung from one ear. Santorum's whooping sneezes were now interspersed with a shrill, impish cry for help and a strange atonal yip. Turning to face the rush of the next secret service agent my body convulsed buckling onto itself. This was a well-timed fall, however, as the agent lunged at where I had been standing and his momentum carried him head first into the first pew. Prayer books and splinters burst airborne as guard two went down. Now it was just me and sneezing Rick. I collected myself, brushing the dust off my suit and straightening the knot on my tie. This was going to be fun.

Wild Bill.



February 17, 2007

A fateful encounter.

Santorum: Ah, William. A pleasure indeed.(Wild Bill cannot help but notice that as Ex-Senator Santorum shakes his hand his right eyebrow arches slightly.)

Wild Bill: The pleasure is mine, sir.

Pause

Santorum(eyebrow arch has now bloomed into a discernable twitch. Bill takes note.): Well, we have much to talk about, Mr. Hearst. It is Hearst, is it not?

Wild Bill: Hearst, yes. William Goldwater Hearst.

Silence

Santorum: Well, we must speak, privately. You never know who is listening at these things. (Santorum eyes the crowd suspiciously. He is now dabbing his forehead with a monogrammed hankerchief. He presses especially hard on the fluttering eyebrow.)

Wild Bill: Well, sir, this is my first time in Lancaster---

Santorum(sneezing):---AJewwwwww!

Pause

Wild Bill(attempting to ignore what could easily have been, he thinks repeatedly to himself, his ear misinterpreting the sound of a normal sneeze. It is flu season after all.): So, I am not familiar with the finer establishments of the town---

Santorum(Now the Ex-Senator is sneezing uncontrollably. His bodyguards have taken a notice and are encircling Bill. Bill is keen to his predicament.): AJewwwww...AJewwwww...AdirtyJewwww...

Wild Bill(Bodyguards large, mutton chop fingers now clasping his shoulders in a not so friendly manner): Sir, I think fresh air would be nice. There is a lot of dust in here.

(The action freezes. Bill, briefcase in hand, steps magically out of the grip of the intemperate bodyguards. He turns toward the audience, directly addressing them)

This man was obviously not to be my contact. If he was, then Ford was gravely mistaken. I now had a simple choice to make: either I allowed these corn-fed behemoths to beat me senseless as Santorum sneezed himself into an epileptic fit or to land myself on the front page of every newspaper in Pennsylvania. And this is what I did.

Wild Bill.



February 15, 2007

A skeptical Wild Bill is seduced by the calm power of the right.

Santorum spoke words neither magical nor memorable. Values, family, life, individuality, safety, and self-reliance were lobbed at the audience with indiscretion aiming to mingle with as many agenda's agreeable nods as possible. After a few paragraphs I stopped listening to his words and began to watch the way he said them. He kept his body remarkably center, even his smile seemed to nudge two invisible borders on the right and the left. His small dark eyes blinked repeatedly creating a staccato counterpoint to his deliberate delivery. Manicured hands, fingernails that would grow clean and smooth long after his demise, gripped the podium with the fervor of a pastor, but became limp the moment he released. Never moving his feet his freshly shined shoes rooted to the floor and so, as his roots grew deeper, his audience grew more attentive. It was hypnotic, like staring into a deep well. I could not help but be swept up in his slyly created tropism. Beyond my will, I nodded, agreeing with phrases that my mind would have sneered at fifteen minutes ago. What was this dark magic? This man was a dweeb, a bible thumping, homophobic, disconnected dork! And, yet, we all sat, in Bethel, rapt.

Wild Bill.



February 13, 2007

At the Santorum speech.

The Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church was a quaint, stone building sandwiched between a set of townhouses called Churchtowne. The doorway was simple; two red doors, a cross-shaped window in each at eye level, an arch above framing stained glass between door and arch tip. The Bob Evan's had not been kind to me and I could feel the dirty swine two stepping around the unfamiliar territory of my stomach. Still I wore a tight slipped, wide grin as I strode up the stairs toward those cross scarred doors. I put my hand on the knob, prepared for the worst, pulled, realized that I was moving the door the wrong way, pushed, and entered the church. Nothing happened. The nausea did not overcome me, the room didn't all turn and glare, I didn't catch on fire, nothing. So, this was where all the normal people went on Sundays while Bill's parents drove six hours to the nearest orthodox synagogue. The room was unremarkable, wooden pews, a stone floor, altars, apse, nave, etc...(These were, of course, terms I remembered in name only and had no clue what physical object went with what name, but, for practice sake, and considering my growing fear that one of these God-fearing types would be able to smell me, the cloaked heretic in their midst, I ran over every church related term my teeming memory could resurrect) I took a seat. Over the next ten minutes the room filled to capacity. I watched carefully. Interrupting my observation was an almost electric pulse of energy that shot through the room as one Rick Santorum, flanked by very pious looking bodyguards, strode, penitent and confident, to his rostrum.

Wild Bill.



February 10, 2007

Wild Bill eats lunch.

I was starving. I had passed Bubbie's Bagels and New York Deli for obvious reasons (but not without little regret) and headed for the Bob Evan's on Hempland Road. At the entrance I froze, staring up at the daunting yellow cursive writing jutting forward from the brick façade. Nausea tickled my esophagus. I heard a voice in my head say: "provide good, wholesome food served in a friendly atmosphere at a reasonable price." I was going insane, I knew it. This was too much. A vision of my hut in Venezuela appeared to me, my lovely Zia---dammit, that was her name!---reading me the works of Roth in her bizarre clicking dialect, and offered me repose. I crossed the precipice, strode up to the cashier, and ordered--- in a baritone so confident that it make the pockmarked kid at the register flinch---sausage, no two orders of sausage, three eggs scrambled, and a tower of hotcakes! I paid proudly with a Lincoln, the father of my new party. So zealous was I to demonstrate my goyem prowess that I grabbed a sausage patty off the tray and shoved the entire puck into my mouth, grinning and masticating maniacally. The grease ran down my chin and dripped onto the counter. Fighting back tears I proclaimed my desire for three more orders of sausage! and introduced myself as William Hearst to the cashier.

Wild Bill.



February 8, 2007

Ford's purpose is revealed...

Against Amnesty: Former Senator Santorum to speak at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church today at 4pm.

Apparently, Ford was not kidding. I was to be brought into the Party at the highest level, to work with a man whose reputation as a stalwart right-winger was second only to Tom Delay. With Ford as my spiritual adviser and Santorum as my, well, my what? Would he advise me, campaign with me? Would his already battered ego not be further trodden by working with a Republican dilettante? Was there a handshake I needed to learn, a manner of walking? How would I be able to match that wide, tooth forward, bright and empty smile that greased the boyish face of my new buddy, Rick? I could feel the singe of sweat and hair dye fusing at the edges of my forehead, smell the sweat bleeding out through my undershirt. How would I approach him? Would that well-honed conservative cunning be able to smell the Jew on me? The paper, the harbinger of my future campaign, rustled in my wan hands.

Wild Bill.



February 6, 2007

Newly Goyified Wild Bill enters Lancaster proper.

Dawn gasped above the skyline of the Red Rose City. I had been walking all night, turning the events of the previous evening over and over in my head. It was not that I questioned its veracity---I was wearing the proof---but what concerned me was the significance of the location. Lancaster, Amish country, the place where Meriwether Lewis planned his famous expedition, the birthplace of Woolworth's Five and Ten---I examined every fact I could recall about the place Ford had chosen to transform me. The grind of motors in the cold and the slush of tires on snow interrupted the eerie whisper of a small town wind. The lights of the W.W. Greist building were lit sporadically as I turned onto Queen Street. The ring of a distant bell caught my attention. Over my right shoulder I saw a corner store coming to life. I crossed the street and entered the Thaddeus Stevens General store. A fresh cup of coffee, a pack of Peeps, and a copy of the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal were purchased for a dollar and change. And there, on the front page, was the answer I had been looking for.

Wild Bill.



February 3, 2007

Wild Bill transformed!

When I came to, I could not tell whether I was in a snowstorm or surrounded by television static. I touched my rib cage and instantly threw up. The taste was of gefilte fish, liver, and orange juice. I fumbled in my suit pocket for a hankerchief, but found my hands exploring a different jacket all together. The fabric was softer, better made, and when I found the hankerchief it was not my usual snotcaked rag, but made of fine silk and folded neatly in my right breast pocket. It was monogrammed, B.H., and smelled of ambrosia and saffron. Ford’s beating rushed back to me. Pawing at my face, I remembered my mutiliation. The peyas were gone! And where was my hat? Those goddamn laughing goyim had neutered me, made me one of their clean-cut, indistinct fraternity. The rain drop scald returned to me and I knew they had dyed my hair, probably made me a, oy vey!,a blonde! The horrible truth now dawned with each moment---my suit was navy blue an American flag pin on the right lapel, my nails manicured, my hair slicked back and parted! The static receded revealing the same Pennsylvania roadside where Ford had suckered me into his otherworldly metamorphasis. My luggage had been replaced by a single, black leather briefcase. I opened it. Inside was a file detailing my campaign itinerary and platform. Below that, like some dead animal, was my hat and peyas. The peyas were sown into the lining of the hat now and a memo was folded inside. It read:

This is now your disguise, Bill. You will wear it only when your deeds be nefarious, your identity in need of protection.

It was cold outside and night. I walked to the side of the highway.



Wild Bill.



February 1, 2007

Gerald Ford administers executive judgment.

Now, on the ground, I clutched my burning side. Ford stood over me, a murderous glow in his eyes. Lightning quick he produced a pair of scissors and snipped off my left peyot. In shock, I flailed my arm in the air, my windless body providing little stability. I buckled hard rolling into the fetal position as the impact of Ford's initial kick seemed to radiate outward in a pulse of crippling nausea. The next snip took my right peyot. The well-dressed men laughed and ordered more martinis. I began to lose consciousness. I saw my hat in front of me, out of reach, then, felt hands aggressively kneading my scalp, rain drops of burn drizzling down the sides of my face. I began to weep. Why, you dirty dead bastard? The laughter grew louder. I summoned all my strength for one final assault. I had barely gotten to my knees when all the world went black.

Wild Bill.



January 30, 2007

Wild Bill battles Gerald Ford!

There, high upon the ashen plain, Ford did initiate me into the ways of the true Republican. This was no beer drinking, gun shooting, tax dodging, Reagan worshipping power point presentation. No, this was the rage of self-made men. I hadn't seen this much venom since I went to an Ayn Rand reading. I took my first punch and connected with the flame. My arm was instantly on fire. In the flame there was the sea and I became at once water and fire. I was inside now. The flame burning and soothing, every bit of butane screaming vitriol into my ears, me eyes, my navel. I received the messages. I saw big governments throughout history crumbling as well-dressed men sipped on their third martinis and toyed with black boxes. Their stern, discerning eyes assessed me, my presence. In a cold boardroom now I felt the eyes of the greats of my newfound party. What did they see in me? What did those cold knowing eyes want from Wild Bill? Without warning, a corporeal Ford appeared behind me and kicked me in the kidney. I fell to the floor awaiting my judgment.

Wild Bill.



January 27, 2007

Wild Bill is confronted by an increasingly hostile Gerald Ford.

The flame rushed toward me singeing my peyot. What use did this serve for Ford? Was he sent by a demonic Goyim God to trick all the dispossessed Jews in the United States into following him into some ashen netherworld, to canvas hell with their remains? If so, Ford seemed an unlikely candidate. No, perhaps this was the kind of senseless test that religious leaders always invoked as the purpose behind the world's innumerable faults and atrocities. I calmed my nerves and cleared my head staring directly into the rising wall of flame. Ok, Gerald, I said, if you want to see what kind of man Wild Bill Herschovitchz is, then bring it on! I rolled up my sleeves, cracked my knuckles, and took my first swing.

Wild Bill.



January 25, 2007

Wild Bill, guided by the ghost of Gerald Ford, begins his quest for the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination.

Ford's flame fingers raged. His body did not so much burn as dissolve into a calm fire like a life size lighter. I could feel my nervous stomach churn, my steady hands shake. There was nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide. Quietly, desperately I chided myself for letting this quest take me to far. The famous refrain of my mother, 'Jews do not play football, ' all of a sudden seemed a foretoken of Ford's Michigan uniform. I was not meant to go into the woods with a football player, a ghost, a goy! My nerves raged now, my self loathing screaming in my ears. I could not stand to look at the orange and purple light flickering silently less than three feet away. I could feel its burn marking my flesh. I had sensitive skin, mother always told me to avoid the light, why oh why had I not listened to mother? A writer, she said, a writer? This is the moment where I pay for my sins and suffer for my failures.

Wild Bill.



January 23, 2007

Wild Bill, guided by the ghost of Gerald Ford, begins his quest for the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination.

Oy! Who knew this simple scribe would be wandering deep in the woods with Gerald Ford? The Gerald Ford. And dead! A ghost, an apparition, a vision, a herald sent from another world! Have all the years of toil, the ink-stained fingernails, the pounds of wasted paper, the sleepless nights throwing bottle upon bottle of newly emptied whisky against the wall of some abject shithole apartment that I paid for with the pittance Paramount paid for the rights to Twice Chai and then you Die, has all of that time prepared me for a greater purpose? Has the world I cursed come back to me, supplicant? I stared at Ford, who said nothing, and felt his opaque eyes probe my very soul. My mettle was being tested. I had taken the first steps, followed my instincts. And then he stopped, raised his wax hands toward me, and smiled. The flames of the candles grew, the forest caught fire and dissolved instantly, leaving only me and Ford alone on an ashen plain.

Wild Bill.



January 20, 2007

Wild Bill, guided by the ghost of Gerald Ford, begins his quest for the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination.

Ford appeared as a free form floating vapor. He was dressed in the maze and blue of his alma mater but his face was that of the thirty-eighth President. The only oddity of his appearance was his hands or what appeared in place of his hands. Five wax candles on each hand extended out from his wrists, each one lit. I looked back at my busmates but none of them seemed to notice my companion or my absence. Convinced that I was either experiencing an acid flashback akin to the time I spent three months in jail for trying to eat Rosanne Barr's arm (she had become a gigantic bowl of matzah ball soup in my mind's eye and apparently did not enjoy my attempts at trying to spoon out her elbow), or that this was in fact the sort of divine sign that I had found to be so trite as a child in Hebrew School, I followed the flickering candles into a dark, Amish wood.

Wild Bill.



January 18, 2007

Wild Bill, guided by the ghost of Gerald Ford, begins his quest for the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination.

Moments later the bus lurched to a stop. A cloud of steam and gas belched from under the hood and, soon, the entire bus stalled in a shroud of exhaust fumes. Our driver, Lanesta as I later learned her name to be, instructed us to leave the bus while the repair team made its way to our remote locale. The sun was setting, a January chill accompanying. I asked Lanesta if she could discover the nearest eatery or town capable of accommodating my strange dietary restrictions. She asked me if kashrut was contagious and, before I could answer, took two steps back. During my attempts to explain basic Chasidic dietary precepts the radio squealed out instructions for Lanesta. So engrossed in the telling of my one experience with raw camel meat was I that I failed to notice her abandoning me. When I did look up I saw a road sign peering through the fumes that would forever change my life: Lancaster County, PA. Beyond that sign was Ford, transparent, but beckoning me onward. I knew I must follow.

Wild Bill.



January 16, 2007

The bus wreaked. I was one of seven riders left by the time we merged with I-90 in Pennsylvania. Whether the other riders had given up on the medieval Greyhound plumbing and chosen to take their own life in the woods was unknown to me. The thought had crossed my mind. The driver, an obese woman with dreadlocks and acne, trilled her fat fingers over two preset buttons on the radio. My compatriots and I were left to ponder the Pennsylvania wilderness accompanied by the dulcet musings of firebrand pastors or the sweet melodies of Creed. I closed my eyes hoping the surreal environment might have some hallucinatory effect on me and draw forth the ghost of dear Ford. I was not hopeful.

Wild Bill.



January 13, 2007

I am on the bus. My sweet Arlene sold her dead husband's stuffed zebra and was able to lend me money for my pilgrimage. I snack now on the gefullte fish and horse raddish sandwich she made me. It is delicious. It has been so long since I left Poughkeepsie. We are only thirty minutes out and the Greyhound already smells of stale urine and feet. I feel a bit like Columbus or Tocqueville. That is it! I will record my journeys, share them with the great American people, and become a true man of the people. In each town I will build support, collect signatures, and take digital photographs. Soon the new Republican Majority will know my name'

Wild Bill.



January 11, 2007

It is three days now and no word from Ford. Three days scouring the Internet mastering the Republican platform. Three days developing a proper technique of kissing babies without administering a peyot wacking to the unsuspecting child. Three days with a speech coach named Arlene who I may or may not be falling madly in love with. But these three inspired days have drained my meager savings. I am already paying for my coachings with lessons in Talmud and gunplay. I am desperate for money. There is a bus that leaves tonight that will get me to Michigan, to my master's final resting place. Perhaps, there, he will reveal more of his divine plan to me.

Wild Bill.



January 9, 2007

I was stirred. Somehow this man who I had never met and certainly never would have voted for spoke directly to my soul. Why had this ghost visited me? Me, a humble Chasidic Jewish Cowboy, the last of my kind. And yet his words sloshed about inside my skull coating every exposed lobe, cradling every tingling cortex. I had spoken of it before in jest. But, did this man intend for me to follow his words and seek the, dare I say it, the Presidency? I lifted my head from the glass to observe an empty bar, house lights turned up, and a perturbed young beauty staring at me. It was last call. Probably had been for some time judging by the scowl she displayed. Clearly this young lady was unaware of what had just transpired. She had been in the presence of, what I once heard spoken of in synagogue as a boy, a Shehechianu moment. I downed the last of the rum and left what I considered to be a generous tip. Off into the darkness I wandered to do my master Ford's bidding.

Wild Bill.



January 6, 2007.

"Bill. Wild Bill. No need to worry, just a little straight talk from your pal Gerry. The Good Lord has seen fit for me to deliver you this message: We have yet to rouse from our long national nightmare. Now is an hour of history that troubles our minds and hurts our hearts. The people, our greatest source of power, need a man, a devout man, to usher in a new era. A real cowboy who is also a man of principle and faith, a man who is outside of Beltway politics, and a man who is neither red nor blue. The lord will lift you on his mighty back and the people will confirm you with their prayers. Seek out those that do the Lord's work and begin your quest. Your great Republican quest."

Holy Shit.

I ordered another rum.

Ford smiled as the brown liquor ran over his face. And then he was gone.

Wild Bill.



January 4, 2007.

My thoughts scurried to delusional episodes experienced in Venezuela: mysterious roots and plants eaten while wandering deep in the jungle that turned already menacing foliage into a Freudian funhouse of naked, buxom shiksa's beckoning me as the ground morphed into a sea of bacon and shellfish rained from the sky, tearing at my peyot. But as I stared at this dead President, there was no hint of any change in the bar, no dark siren call. And so I stared at Ford and he at me, and this is what he said...

Wild Bill.



January 2, 2007.

Somewhere around two a.m. on New Year's Eve, I sat staring into an empty glass of Pampero Aniversario Rum in a small hotel bar. The revelers had gone home, some to loneliness, others to booze soaked philandering, and I, now broke with head in hands, was among the last in the bar. The only remaining sounds were the smacking of drunken lips together next to the jukebox and the graspy, slurred voice of a man in a Green Bay Packers hat calling his own pool shots to no one in particular. And then, in the bottom of my empty glass, he was there, smiling at me. Gerald Ford was in the bottom of my rum glass smiling at me.

Wild Bill.

 
 





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