Editor’s Note: Several weeks ago the HPR received a series of letters from one of our former staff writers, who currently works as a journalist in Washington, D.C. She has recently been following a prominent politician and has transcribed the following narrative without him knowing. Apparently, he began to watch House of Cards, and subsequently started speaking to himself in extended monologues.
Read Chapter 2 here.
Read Chapter 3 here.
They say that Washington is a dog-eat-dog town. I, for one, have never seen any dogs eating other dogs. However, I have seen a vegetarian communications director accidentally take a bite of meat lasagna during a state dinner. She quickly realized her mistake, but she kept eating because she didn’t want it to look like she was rejecting the president’s food. So I would say that it’s less a dog-eat-dog town than a vegetarian-eat-meat-lasagna world.
Hypocrites. These people make me sick.
Not really sick. More like a little sniffle. They are like a cold that has lodged deep within my sinuses, hounding me every minute of the day with requests for appearances, votes, speeches, debates, signatures. I sneeze on them. I sneeze on all of them.
I know what you’re thinking. Representative Fred Overtree, five-time “Friendliest Man in Congress”, is a misanthrope? First of all, I ran unopposed for that title, because I created the contest and didn’t inform anyone about it. Every year I hold the awards ceremony in my bedroom by standing on my bed and placing a medal around my neck. If you look in my closet, you’ll see that I have hundreds and hundreds of medals. Most of them say “Participant,” but nevertheless, I always win.
Let me repeat that: I always win.
Let me repeat that: I always win.
* * *
I usually go to this local joint for breakfast when I’m in D.C. It’s called the International House of Pancakes, and indeed, it serves pancakes, and its employees are all immigrants. I get pancakes served with peaches that were grown and canned in my district in South Carolina. As they say in my hometown, there’s nothing like a can of peaches to make you feel better about the fact that you’ll be canning peaches for the rest of your life.
“Here you go, sir,” said my server, whose name tag read, “José.”
“Thanks, José,” I said. “Say, I never asked you where you were from.”
“Maryland.”
“Yeah, I know, but where are you really from?”
“Maryland.”
“People here are so funny.”
I turned to the person sitting across from me, a young female reporter from a new media startup called “Buzzfeed.” She was writing something called a “listicle” that would include cute pictures of me and—if everything went as planned—damning revelations about the new Secretary of Defense. After each of my pictures, she had told me, she would include a pithy caption—something along the lines of “Wut?” or “I can’t even!!!!” or “YASSSSSS” or “I lied back then when I said that I couldn’t even. Back then, I could even. But NOW I CAN’T EVEN.”
She was wearing a puffy coat and scarf on account of the cold and snow outside, making her look like she was slowly being eaten by a marshmallow. I think that was a metaphor for something. Maybe we are all just helpless ants, being eaten by the marshmallow of life. We are attracted to its sugary goodness, its promise of future glory and power, but then all we are left with is a cavity and a broken heart. And so we burn that marshmallow, turning it into charcoal in the campfire of our souls.
“I was asking you what your thoughts were about the new nominee for Secretary of Defense,” she repeated. “Many said that it would be you.”
“I have no comment on that.”
“Was that a wink?”
“Absolutely not.”
“You did it again.” Her phone buzzed, but she ignored it.
I lowered my voice. “I can’t tell you anything here. We have to talk about this somewhere where people can’t hear us.”
“Where were you thinking?”
“Somewhere where there are large crowds.”
“Like the Air and Space Museum?”
I smiled. “We have so much in common. We both like pancakes, we both like museums. We’re practically the same person.”
“I don’t like pancakes.”
She was doing exactly what I wanted.
And so, as we sat in the cockpit of the flight simulator in the National Air and Space Museum, the crowds of sixth graders rushing by us, I passed her a tape recorder from my pocket. I always make sure to carry a tape recorder around in case someone says something self-incriminating to me. In fact, I have a whole room in my basement filled from floor to ceiling with old cassette tapes. I listen to them to go to bed.
This particular tape included several statements that my colleague, the nominee for Secretary of Defense, had made in confidence. They went something like this:
“Are you recording right now, Fred?”
“Me? Why would you say that?”
“Because sometimes you record conversations.”
“That’s silly. I would never do that.”
“I need to know I can trust you.”
“You can trust me.”
“Promise?”
“Pinky promise.”
“Okay. I trust you now.”
“What were you going to say?”
“I don’t believe in vaccinations, because measles is a myth created by the socialist American state.”
This would be the listicle to end all listicles.
* * *
That night, before the reporter had finished her piece, I sat at the window of my home smoking a cigarette and peering into the distance. I’m not addicted, though. I just smoke because it looks cool. I started when I was fourteen and my uncle was hired as a Marlboro Man, and then I just kept doing it every day for fun. I’m just a social user who happens to smoke alone, twelve times a day.
My wife came up behind me. She had short hair and looked kind of like an older version of that actress from The Princess Bride.
“How was your day?” she asked.
“It was fine,” I replied.
“That’s nice.”
“Okay. Good talk.” We love each other very much.
And at some point during the night, the listicle went online, and everything changed forever.
Image source: Wikipedia