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Truth?
Ok dammit, I can’t go on living this lie. I didn’t accidentally fall down and hit my face on a bedpost. That’s what you wanted to hear, right? You’ve broken me. Happy? Your unbelieving eyes, your smirk, your questioning was I drunk or stoned, your constantly asserting that I needed to come up with a better story--have all contributed to my shattered, nerve racked state. I can’t go on fighting you. You are right, I am wrong. I am a liar, you are a truth seeker.
What really happened?
Can you handle the truth, the absolute truth? It’s like this:
I got into DC late. I interrupted a dinner party. Everyone stood up (would you please f-ing sit down.) I was served first wine, then salmon, some veggie lasagna, some fried spinach balls or something, more wine, and then inexplicably I got all dry throated and I almost hacked up a hairball right in front of everyone. I excused myself not quite gracefully and got a glass of water. Everything was cool. All the people at the table were professional heavyweights, and interesting, and likeable. In the end they made me feel one step closer to meeting Maureen Dowd.
The party broke up, one couple hung around. We drained all the partial wine bottles, nibbled on cheese and grapes, and talked. Politically, the division of all of us drunk (there was some experimental shooting of Grey Goose with raspberry sorbet) stragglers would not be accurately summed up as half Republican, half Democrat, but we’ll go with that just to make things more interesting. There was talk of America as the most successful republic in the history of civilization, there was the suggestion of a currently shameless, disingenuous leadership, there was talk of Ghandi, and then I had to make fun of Gw/junior for that implausible bullshit story about the time he choked on a pretzel, nearly lost consciousness (how would one know the difference?), and scraped up his left cheekbone.
I smugly asserted that is was more likely George Sr., or junior’s wife, Laura, had punched him for being a pompous prick.
The next night someone I cannot and will not identify as George Cheney, snuck into the basement guestroom in which I was staying, dipped my fingers in warm water while I slept, and waited in the shadows as I staggered to the bathroom. When I returned the bedroom was darker, and colder, than it had ever been before. Perhaps it wasn’t Cheney, and I can’t say it was Rumsfeld, or Ashcroft, and I doubt Tom DeLay would stoop so low, but someone from the opposing team sucker punched me twice, in the leg, just above the knee. I went down, hit my face on the bedpost, stitches, so on and so forth, you know the rest. The weird thing is, and I don’t know if this happened before or after I suffered the mild concussion of face smashing against metal but someone hissed in the darkness–“We’re listening, don’t diss the chief.” And that’s the whole truth.
So, I feel a little better, unless I’m lying, in which case the truth is still out there, somewhere, waiting for me to come get it.