In these days of Watergate, it seems easy to believe that the entire political history of our country has been tainted with the evils of secrecy and deception. If you're a party man, then you would probably blame only the Democrats or the Republicans, but the truth is that corruption and chicanery has been practiced on all levels of political life by both parties. Most people, in fact, take it for granted that American political life is essentially corrupt. True enough, the very nature of power seems to imply political repression and the "by any means necessary" kind of thinking necessary to maintain that power, despite the gradual evolvement through the ages of more democratic systems of government. Our own political system is called one of the fairest and most responsible in the world, and yet, despite our Constitutional safeguards, many politicians find it necessary to abandon political ethics in the midst of a hotly contested election race.
The basic problem is that to win an election, you must have a majority of the votes, and the only way to win a majority of votes is to sway the majority of the people over to the particular ideas and emotions represented by your candidate. To sway public opinion is to mold and influence power itself. Abraham Lincoln, in an address made in Illinois in 1858, spoke of the tremendous potential inherent in what he called public sentiment:
Public sentiment-is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed. He who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes or decisions possible or impossible to execute.
What is perhaps most revealing about Lincoln's statement, according to Melvyn Bloom, author of Public Relations and Presidential Campaigns, is that Lincoln made this statement in reference to a President's use of public sentiment to guide the nation once he was in office. In comparison, a modern President's investment in what is now termed public relations is largely undertaken for the purpose of gaining office. In the early days of our democracy, power and politics were items of discussion for only a small group of the wealthier men of the community. As time passed, more and more democratic procedures were enacted. Communication, also, in the early days of our country's history, took days at a time for a single message. Today, communication travels at the speed of light. Politics became more accessible to the masses, and, as time went on, the power of the vote became available to everyone.
The function of the public relations man in politics today is an indispensable one. Even local elections, involving seemingly the most minor of positions, are conducted with the close advice of public relations consultants. The influence of television, where every message must be short and therefore "packaged" more tightly than printed material, has given rise to a new breed of public relations man, the media specialist. From primary to convention, the presidential hopeful is surrounded by a large corps of public relations men, journalists, and advertising executives whose sole purpose is to make sure that whatever information reaches the public is beneficial to the general image that their candidate is trying to present. In effect, they form a buffer zone around their candidate, shielding him from intrusion while making sure that his best face is always forward.
They must constantly research the myriad of sociological and demographical factors which shape the issues in each of the many districts their candidate plans to travel to. Of central importance to the efficiency of the campaign staff is the ability not only of the candidate but of another figure, one who is deliberately shielded from public view, the campaign manager. The candidate, like the actor, is in the public view, "on stage," twenty-four hours a day. Speeches must be made, dinners to be attended, and there is always one more hand to shake. Running for high office is a lot like surrendering your body willingly to all the cameras and lights and questions of an entire nation.
The campaign manager's essential duty is to organize the staff that organizes the candidate. Countless negotiations must be made with media agencies as well as with local and regional political figures. While the candidate is memorizing speeches, the campaign manager is deciding what should go in them. Stephen Shadegg, a former campaign manager who compiled his experience in a volume entitled How to Win an Election, believes that the campaign manager must have the final word on all decisions:
Frequently he must say "no" to the candidate. And when he makes a commitment it must be kept. ... In this regard candidates have much more latitude. They can, by innuendo or suggestion, imply a promise for future delivery. When the manager says something will be done, it must be done-and before the day of election which ends that campaign.
The power which the campaign manager wields is delegated to numerous specialists, each hired for the duration of the campaign for some specific task, a task for which, supposedly, they have been well prepared by their usual occupation (campaign workers have very unsteady employment, and the pay is usually very low). Because of the isolation of the candidate from the actual planning and axecution of the campaign, and because of the multiple layering of public relations personnel in the campaign staff, every activity of the campaign can be supervised by only one man, and this man must be the campaign manager. However, no man can hope to supervise completely the activities of so many individuals; he can only hope to direct the collective energy in the right direction.
The campaign staff and manager of today in no way resemble the staff and manager of the American election ten years ago, or even the staff and manager of the last election. These organizations undergo rapid evolvement in terms of both structure and the types of talent represented. According to Bloom, the American election process has been changed dramatically by the advent of television. This new media, as it has grown, changed, and multiplied, has called for new methods and skills. Bloom cites Theodore White (from The Making of the President 196b): "The direction of television in a political campaign is comparably the most important. Here is where the audience is; here is where the greatest part of all money is spent; here is where creative artistry and practical commercialism must join to support the candidate's thrust." Bloom points out how different the 1952 election (the first in the television era) was from its predecessors. Ever since this election, the effects of television on the society as a whole and especially the election process has brought about a tremendous change in the nature of American politics.
Closely related to the effects of television is the question of image and the tremendous impact of personality upon the voter. Because our rapid electronic communicating equipment tends to bring the two American political parties closer together, concentrating on issues rather than ideology, American political candidates cannot rely on party ideology alone to insure the loyalty of the voter. More often than not, a candidate is elected due to some non-ideological aspect of his own personal appearance which reflects favorably on the voter. Bloom relates current opinions regarding the effects of personality upon the national political scene:
Scholars such as Daniel Boorstin and Marshall McLuhan have engaged in some pioneering attempts to deal with this question of personal charisma, particularly as it is reflected in the visual images that have become so important in political campaigning. Boorstin contends that national politics has actually adopted the Hollywood "star system" and is dominated further by that system with every election. Some of the evidence presented ... particularly with regard to the rise in the presidential arena of such individuals as Ronald Reagan, would seem to bear this out.
As campaign tactics in general have shifted, so have the patterns of campaign abuse. "Dirty Politics" used to consist mainly of the art of the political smear, a media program designed to discredit the candidate from the other party. Usually the smear consisted of allegations and facts, mixed rather indiscriminately together, which showed the opposing candidate to have advocated or voted against some issue important to the electorate. Rarely would the smear concentrate or, some aspect of the candidate's personal life; however, quite a few American elections, especially for the Presidency, have been marred by a very low tone of propaganda exchange between the two major parties. Behind the scenes a great many lies are fabricated and truths distorted to suit the aims of the campaign.
Some political observes have remarked that political corruption in this country is not as bad as it seems. They compare the corruption of the American businessman with the typical politician and find a meaningful difference. As Gilbert Geis summarized in his study of the White Collar Criminal:
White-collar criminality in politics, which is generally recognized as fairly prevalent, has been used by some as a rough gauge by which to measure white-collar criminality in business. ... John Flynn wrote, "The average politician is the merest amateur in the gentle art of graft compared with his brother in the field of business." And Walter Lippmann wrote "Poor as they are, the standards of public life are so much more social that those of business that financiers who enter politics regard themselves as philanthropists."
The recent revelations stemming from the Watergate affair attest as to how convoluted and nefarious political corruption during the Presidential election can be. Politicians in today's electoral contests are under tremendous pressures, both from those in their own party and from other parties who want to simplify the process of getting elected by taking the illegal shortcut. There are still many campaign workers who openly practice smear tactics. Some of them, like those indicted in the Watergate incident, have suffered criminal prosecution, but there are still many such professionals available to the candidate who feels at his campaign would benefit from their services. But net all politicians accept this state of affairs, since they realize that smear tactics are contagious and even honest politicians must be aware of these activities. As Frank Jonas, the editor of a study about the smear artist, entitled Political Dynamiting, points out:
Only the scratchy and uncomfortable details of the scandals and smears and slanders of some of America's more disgraceful election campaigns of present memory can give the reader anything akin to an emotional comprehension of the vicissitudes which some of the nation's most distinguished public servants have borne, sometimes philosophically, sometimes bitterly and in frustrated rage.
Bruce Felknor, himself a former campaign worker in several national races, warns that the real danger in political corruption is its effect on the public. He reasons that American government is viable only as long as the participation of the people is ensured. When the people no longer participate in the system, they abdicate their government to others. "The voter who deceives himself about political realities by falling back on cynical mottoes like 'politics is dirty business' enables politics to become a dirty business." Felknor wrote a book entitled Dirty Politics describing the behind-the-scenes workings of many of our past elections. Apparently there has always been an element of smear tactics and dirty tricks in American campaigns, but not always have these tactics altered the course of rational political thinking on the part of the electorate. Felknor concludes:
The American political system is under threat from the Communist world and from the radical right. The system can withstand nuclear threats, and spies, and traitors, and agitators of every persuasion, but there is one threat from within it cannot withstand nearly as long: cynicism and apathy. The gravest enemies of the American people are in their own ranks.
Of course, no measure of public scrutiny and interest can hope to completely insure the morally fair election. Some of the laws being enacted to compensate for some of the excesses revealed in the Watergate affair will no doubt go a long way to protect the public from political chicanery, but they should not be thought of as a final cure-all. Nothing but sustained public interest, not only at the present time but in the future, and public education as regards American political procedures will guarantee the honest election.
There is reason tc be hopeful. Great campaign excesses, of various kinds, have been committed in the past, with no long-lasting negative effects, for as long as the excesses cause some notable harm, there will always be watchdogs from the other party to blow the whistle. Even if the excesses are covered up in Washington, there always remains the American public, which should realize its role in the political process and the necessity of constant vigilance over its elected officials, There is a greatness to the American people that neither the social scientist nor the average businessman is aware of, a greatness that transcends party lines, that refuses to be defined by any party's narrow ideological orientation. Emanuel Lubell, author of the tract, The Hidden Crisis in American Politics, believes that this greatness is "that the American people are unashamed in their sense of self-interest ... although their sense of freedom is colored by their self-interest, they will accept disciplines and restraints and even higher taxes to keep this country from being torn apart."
Therefore, during this time of national concern and anxiety over the legitimacy of the American political process, it behooves every American to examine his own knowledge of American politics and judge his leaders according to moral and ethical standards which he himself lives by. This is the time for the people to demonstrate their confidence in the system, to show by means of purification that the American political system is completely responsible to the American people. Politics is for the people, not the politicians.
CHAPTER ONE
Sex and the Single Politician
The rain fell in gray sheets, sending a haze of smoke and steam up through the canyons of the streets, making the world below unreal and further away than ever. I loved the view from my apartment, both above and below, enjoying the many dimensions of New York at its best. New York was my city. Now more than ever.
The view from my apartment never looked as good as it did that rainy afternoon. It was symbolic, my being on top of it all, my looking down and over my environment. I was about to get what I'd wanted. At last. Lighting a cigarette, one of the four I allowed myself each day, I settled comfortably into the plush window seat I'd had made, and enjoyed the hiss of the downpour against the windowpane. Multicolored light streamed through the panel of stained glass, tipping the edges of my Persian carpet with a rainbow streak. Everything in the room was the best of its kind. I wanted it that way. I insisted on it being that way: And now I would be the best of my kind, too....
Of course the term "my kind" was the last way I'd ever think in reference to myself consciously. But this was an extraordinary day. "You're an extraordinary woman, Alicia," Brian had said earlier. I didn't always agree with my husband, but this time he was right. He had sighed the statement, because some of the factors that made me "extraordinary" were not to his liking. But we had made our peace, for the most part, years before. This was an extraordinary day. A simple phone call had guaranteed me the future of my choice. I Would be the first woman councilman of the district. I would be the first Puerto Rican councilman of the district. The fix was in.
I puffed contentedly on my cigarette. I never bandied words to myself. It was a fix, and the price I had agreed to pay was a stiff one. But my objective was far more important to me than the steps I would have to take to achieve it. I hadn't intended winning the election this way, but when my competition decided to bring in the heavy guns, I had no choice but to take necessary steps.
Thirty-one years ago I had been born in the shadows of this building, in a strong-smelling, filthy, dangerously deteriorating apartment house. It was a four-room apartment, and into it were crowded my parents, my two sisters, my brother, my aunt and uncle and their baby. They hadn't needed me at all, and maybe that's where it all came from-the desire to be someone, to matter, to make my place in the world. It had been a long fight from the slums below, and it wasn't over yet. But I was almost there.
I wasn't like the other children I knew. I seemed to come into the world with an awareness that I was meant for better than I had. I lived for school, and was the delight and enigma of my teachers' lives. I insisted on learning far more than they were hoping to teach, arming myself for the future I wanted. I became interested in politics very young, particularly when I realized that although my neighborhood was predominantly Puerto Rican, we had never been represented. I thought about things like that while the other kids stole and played hookey, when their big dream was running numbers and making money.
In the apartment across from ours lived another large family, and the oldest boy was Ricardo. Ricardo was my age and seemed to seek me out in spite of my coldness toward him. Rico was darkly handsome, with a thin, agile body and a precocious desire for women. I knew he wanted my body from before the time it was really a body at all, but I wanted no part of him. I was a smart girl-J had only to look around to see what feeling like a woman could do. I saw my own mother burdened down with eight children, my aunt with six, the other women in the building with their broods....
It was not for me. And a woman's place, as they called it, was also not for me. I knew I'd never tolerate a drunken husband and a slovenly home, nor would I allow myself to be the doormat to another human being simply because a few hormones in my body made me want the pleasure a man could bring. I had better things to do with my life.
Rico seemed to think the best thing I could ever do was let him inside my body. He laughed at my ambitions, though he fully expected to realize his. He began to run numbers earlier than the others, and intended to become the numbers overlord for our area when he grew up.
"I will have all the money anyone could need someday, Alicia," he'd tell me in his softly accented voice. "And you will be my woman and help me spend it!"
I'd look at him coldly and tell him exactly what I thought of him and his idea. Then, I was a child of my streets rather than the angel of my school classes. It wasn't that I didn't appreciate money. I intended to have a great deal of it myself, eventually. But I had no intention of being the "woman" of a numbers man.
As I got older and Rico and other boys continued to pressure me toward sex, I began to see that I was one girl who would not be pushed by instinct toward the life-style I hated. I had no control over my body, which developed with abundant curves, or my features, which matured in such a way that I was considered beautiful even as a child, but I seemed to be able to control my feelings very well. Boys did not interest me at all. I thought the other girls insipid and shortsighted, wondering why they would condemn themselves to a future of misery just for a few hours of something they called pleasure. I got a reputation early for being cold and a snob, and the fact was that it was true. I was cold, effortlessly able to resist the thrills that other girls insisted were so desirable. The thought of letting men make love to me didn't excite me at all I didn't want their hot hands on my soft breasts and belly, their wet kisses, their whispered words of passion.
The schools I attended were-anything but demanding. The teachers were ecstatic if their students showed up on a more or less regular basis. I was easily able to hold down a steady job and still pull down straight "A"s, and I had no trouble getting accepted at a local college.
No one in my entire family had ever thought in terms of college before. No one had even finished high school. I felt as removed from my family as I felt from the others on the block, yet I loved them all in a strange, impersonal way. I wanted very much to help them, but I in no way wanted to be part of them. Politics intrigued me, and would allow me to do my bit for my people while I lived a life as removed from them as possible.
Rico had made his stab for the big time by the time I started college. He was doing well by then, dressing like the flashy son of a millionaire, driving an expensive car, and traveling with women too rich for his blood. Even so, he still tried to get next to me. I had known him all of my life, and in some ways thought of him as a friend, but he could never accept the fact that I didn't want him. His ego was too big for that.
"It's the numbers, isn't it?" he asked once, when I'd rejected him again.
I answered him honestly. "No, Rico. I understand about the numbers and poverty. For pennies, they get a chance to dream of hundreds of dollars. When they make a hit they are no longer poor, if only for a little while. Numbers are not the social disease-poverty is. I don't blame you for what you do. I'm just not interested, that's alL Stick to your wild women. You don't need or want me."
His dark eyes had looked into mine for an instant. "I may not need you, but I shall always want you. What sort of woman are you, Alicia? You are not a child any longer. You should know what it is like to be with a man. You would not have to spend your entire life with me. Just one night...."
That was not the first time I had laughed at him. Later I would wish it had been the last.
It was at college that I first met Brian. He was taking over a class for a friend of his while the friend was out of town on some emergency. Brian wasn't a teacher, though he'd taught at college level years before he'd gone into law. I was surprised to find a stranger teacher in class, and more surprised to find that his eyes remained on mine all through class.
I have no idea what it was that Brian saw in me from the first. It wasn't my large dark eyes and long black hair, nor the body I tried unsuccessfully to drape plainly. He had never been as interested in those things as even he wished he could be. lie was older than I by twenty years, obviously successful and wealthy; I found myself watching him closely, sensing that this day would have great meaning in my life.
I had just negotiated a scholarship under the poverty program, and with some of that money and my part-time job, I'd moved myself into a small apartment near school. It was a tiny and unexciting apartment, but for someone like myself, who had always lived as tightly packed as a sardine, it was spectacular freedom and privacy. At home alone in the evenings I'd find myself thinking of Brian and wondering why my thoughts would stray to him. He was slightly built and rather attractive, with the sheen that good living and money lend to a person. But I was certainly no more attracted to Brian than to any other man I'd ever met. Yet there was something....
He was well established and single, and his family was well placed in New York's important circles. As soon as his friend returned to school he went back to his own life. But I continued to wonder about him. It more than once passed through my thoughts that to be married to the right kind of man could be of enormous help.
I made a point of dropping by the house about once a month, to check on the family. Sometimes I saw Rico, and once I made the mistake of letting him drive me home in his latest car. I was instantly sorry, because he pushed for an invitation inside my apartment, and it was a grim twenty minutes before I was able to get out of the car and go home. I should have realized that that wouldn't be the end of it.
Late that night I was in bed, but not asleep, when the sound of someone working on the doorknob startled me. I got out of bed and went to the door. Rico was there.
I knew it would be bad. At first I tried to reason with him. Then I let him know that I would do whatever was needed to get him out of my apartment and keep him out. Instead of the hot anger I expected, Rico began to cry. He was a little high, maybe a little drunk, and more than a little emotional. Through his tears he told me that he loved me, had always loved me, and knew that unless I'd let him make love to me, he wouldn't want to live. Some of what he was saying was nothing more than the alcohol and drugs, but I should probably have been sensitive enough to know that Rico was leaving himself wide open for me. He was crying in front of me, begging me to love him. I'm sorry, in retrospect, that I hadn't thought ahead to the mornings after when Rico would remember. I could have turned him down in some way that wouldn't have crushed him.
But there was a part of me that wanted to crush him. It was the same part of me which had nothing but disdain for those who chose to stay in the world I'd vowed to escape.
"Please, Alicia, please don't send me away...."
His whimpering filled me with impatient contempt. I didn't stop to think of what I was doing. I just walked up to him and began to laugh. It was not just any kind of a laugh-it was a nasty, ugly, full-blown laugh, too deep to seem natural coming from my small body. While he stood there, crushed, I continued to laugh. , I wasn't sure when he backed out of my apartment. I was still laughing when his footsteps dwindled down the hallway. A part of me knew it was a mistake, that-I didn't need Rico for an enemy, that what I was doing was malicious and unnecessary. But it was also funny, his whining and pleading. ... What did he mean to me?
A few months later I ran into Brian again, on the campus. He was just leaving his friend, my teacher, and when he saw me heading for some hot coffee, he invited himself along. We ended up at the lounge until late in the afternoon, talking and laughing together. The twenty years between us didn't matter, and I felt totally unthreatened. I was used to dodging men who wanted only to get into my pants, and I sensed that Brian wasn't after that. We talked about life and outlook, philosophy and methodology. I was still uncertain of what to do with my future, which way to go, and I listened carefully as Brian talked of the law. When he heard that my ultimate goal was to get into politics, he really became enthusiastic.
"It's the best way, Alicia! A legal background is essential in politics on any level. Second most important to a background in crime." He smiled, showing a fine set of white teeth.
I saw Brian very often after that. At first our relationship was difficult to define. We seemed drawn to each other somehow. But as time passed I knew that I intended to marry Brian. Not only would it be an enormous step upwards socially, but it would also be the helping hand I knew I had to have to accomplish my ends. I was rather fond of Brian, in my way, and I knew that he was building himself up to asking me to marry him. My being younger, from a poor family and a Puerto Rican seemed to bother him not in the least. I suspected that my being exactly what I was, was rather a plus, in some rebel eye in his soul.
Love didn't enter into the matter for me. I loved what I felt we could do together, in the way of achieving my ends. I knew what Brian could do for me with his wisdom, money and connections. I thought that he might be getting a little lonely, now that he was older and his family was gone. The fire of my ambition seemed to excite and delight him, renewing his interest in politics and education. He was naturally a fine teacher, and I was a hungry sponge, soaking up his thoughts and expounding on them with my own individuality.
I saw Rico the day before I eloped with Brian. Rico was on the old block, and he tried to look right through me as I passed. But when I left my family, Rico was still there. The cold expression on his face didn't change, but he came up to me.
"That was funny, that night, huh, Alicia?"
I backed away uncomfortably, not wanting trouble, now less than ever. "I'm sorry, Rico. I thought we were friends, and should remain friends."
Slowly the corner of his mouth turned up in a faint smile. "Friends, huh? Well, friend, remember, I'm always here...."
Brian and I were going to Connecticut to be married, and then we planned to spend a long weekend at the country home of a friend of his. I'd given a great deal of thought to marrying Brian, and almost none to the sexual side of our relationship. I was a virgin, and didn't really have any desire to give up that status. But sex went with marriage, and I invested a small amount of time to assuring myself to do the best I could to give him whatever he wanted. He had never pushed the sexual side with me, limiting our touching to casual kisses and hugs. He was older and sensitive, and I suspected he knew I wasn't overly passionate.
We were married in a simple ceremony, then drove to a fabulous restaurant for a light dinner. From there we went directly to our home of the weekend, a magnificent mansion beyond a long twisting road.
Brian had brought a bottle of champagne. He iced it while he told me, for the first time, that he loved me. "I didn't expect it, Alicia. I adored you, of course, but I had no idea I loved you until recently." His attempt at lightness wasn't overly successful.
I bought a soft cream-colored nightgown, rimmed with antique lace, for my wedding night. It was my concession to what had to happen, and I put it on after my shower with mixed emotions. I was nervous and uncomfortable, and I wondered if it would be possible to get through the next hour without being entirely conscious. I also wished I'd had another drink.
Brian was already undressed and wearing a silky dressing gown. He had all but one light off in the plush master bedroom. He was sitting at the edge of the king-sized bed smoking a cigarette. He smiled when I came into the room, but my feeling of apprehension was strong enough to block out any warmth that he might be sending my way.
He stood up, stepped out of his robe, and stood naked before me in the instant before he killed the bedside lamp. His body was well formed, and his penis was limp but sizeable.
I slipped into the bed next to him, trying to ignore the stiffness in my limbs and mind. This, I thought, was the penalty for the coldness, which kept me from falling into the trap of the other women in my family. I shivered delicately when Brian reached for me.
Had I been knowledgeable, I'd have known there was something wrong from the beginning, and I wouldn't have thought it was me. But I was a log, remote and unaware, and when my new husband kissed me, I did the best I could to return his embrace. Slowly he removed the pretty gown from my body, his hands moving over my breasts, over the flat expanse of my belly, back up to my breasts and then down again, this time dropping lower than before. I cringed inwardly as his smooth hand probed my inner thighs, sliding softly over my vagina.
His body was against me, but I felt no hardness, just a cool, even clammy pressure. There was a moment when I even longed to feel some sensation anywhere, so that I could do more than lie there unresponsively. But there was nothing in me to give to him, other than the empty gesture of my body alone.
The tempo began to pick up, so that there was a hint of desperation to his probing of my body. He took my hand and brought it to his thighs. I did as he wanted. His flesh felt hot and strange in my hand. In minutes I could feel an answering surge of energy through my fingers. The flabby flesh began to thicken and become less pliable. I moved my hand faster, pumping lightly, doing what the rocking of his hip told me he wanted of me.
As if to take immediate advantage of the moment, Brian moved over me, blindly separating my thighs, inserting himself between them.
The whole thing took less than a minute. I felt a stab of pain as he thrust himself into me, but barely was the wave of pain over when something strange was happening. I could feel him dwindling inside me, retreating from the flesh he'd just bruised. I was startled and confused, and I didn't Understand much more than a girl half my age might understand. It wasn't until Brian began to speak that things fell into place.
"I ... I'm sorry, Alicia," he said, rolling off me, his voice small. Then, with great suddenness, he smashed his fist on the bedside table. "God damn it!"
Shaken, I turned to him, not knowing what to say.
"I thought ... with you. ... I thought I could do it." His words were ragged, bordering on anger and thick with frustration. Not looking my way, he told me that he had always had trouble completing intercourse, that he was barely able to penetrate most women, and even not that for the past year or so. He had thought that with me it would be different. In his youth he considered the possibility that he had homosexual tendencies. "I gave that a try for a while, but I only discovered I was right. I couldn't face society as a queen. I've resisted all such impulses for several years." He looked at me then, his eyes desperate and intense in the near darkness.
"Look, Alicia, with your help, perhaps I can get out of this. Let's work on it together, okay? I'm sure I can get over it and be a real husband to you...."
"Of course, Brian," I said sweetly, smiling into the night. A warm bubble of happiness and contentment spread through my insides, obliterating even the lingering discomfort of my torn vagina. The last thing in the world I wanted was to restore Brian's sexual potency. I could have a perfect marriage now....
"I know it will be fine, honey..." he said, kissing me gratefully.
I was sure of it.
In the next few months I did three definite things. I made opportunities for sex scarce, I acted impatient and nervous when we did attempt the act, and the third thing was to employ a male secretary. Mark was closemouthed, very attractive, and discreetly gay. He understood his real purpose in our family, and within two months he had wormed his way into Brian's bed more or less permanently.
It took Brian a long time to realize that I had put Mark there, and then he understood that I wanted things just as they were between us. I was Brian's beautiful and intelligent young wife, and when I went to law school it was worth noting in a popular newspaper columnist's daily observations....
For the first year or two I was at a loss to understand the bitter struggle raging inside my husband. In spite of his homosexual background and confused sexuality, he was in love with me. He wanted that love to be a normal, passionate thing. But I only offered my presence, my facade and my loyalty to him. At the end of two years he came to accept things as they were, and attempted to find contentment in our relationship. He lost some of the feelings of adoration, but in their place was a nice dose of healthy respect.
For my part, I worked hard at school and began to make a name for myself. Whenever possible I involved myself with community affairs and politics. We moved to a larger apartment, and I began to decorate it with the help of two decorator friends. School, Brian, my new friends, and money did the work of rounding off the rough edges left behind by my environment. A touch of the sing-song accent of my people was detectable in my voice if one listened carefully enough, so I got a teacher to get rid of that imperfection, too.
I went home now as a stranger, visiting a family I barely remembered. Brian, who had never met my family, was nevertheless generous to a fault, but the money I sent home didn't seem to make a difference in their lives. It was the same slovenly past, there forever, and while Brian enjoyed the fact of my origins, I was painfully aware that he never came to face them personally.
In my new apartment I had my own bedroom suite, while my husband and my secretary had their rooms in another wing. As school progressed and I was busier and busier, I thought little of sex. But during vacation breaks when I caught up on missed sleep and my personal life, I'd sometimes find my mind swaying to thoughts of other women, other days. I'd wonder at the ecstasy shared by the two men down the hall, hints of which I'd sometimes overhear. I'd think about the girls I had known, and wonder if what they felt in their lovers' arms was all that worthwhile. Once in a while, when I was very tired yet unable to sleep, I'd catch myself wondering if it was possible that I'd missed something along the way.
But then school was over, and I passed the bar. I quickly became involved with a civil rights center, then with a political investigation. I was out there to make points.
I avoided the crime-fighting campaigns, however, wise enough to the ways of the streets of New York to understand that no politician could get very far by bucking organized crime. I had other causes, however, and I worked hard for them.
I didn't see Rico until the night of my thirtieth birthday. I was going to meet Brian at Vicente's, our favorite restaurant, but first I stopped by at home to see my mother. He was driving by as I was getting into my car.
He looked at the expensive, classy little foreign car and smiled his old slow smile. "Doing pretty good, Alicia," he said, no longer looking at the car. "Looking good, too. I must admit that you are more beautiful than ever."
I nodded at the compliment, though I didn't trust his intentions.
"I understand that you will run for the councilman's seat next election. I am familiar with that office. If you need any help...." His smile broadened, exposing teeth which were yellowing as he aged.
Rico's connections were not unknown to me. "I don't think that will be necessary," I answered softly, controlling my irritation.
"We shall see," he said, waving as he started his car.
As it turned out, Rico was wiser than I. He knew who my main competition would be, and what connections he had. He also knew my competition would pull his strings as tight as he could.
My campaign worked very well. I stated my intentions clearly and with the right amount of verbal manipulations. Brian hired an agency who helped me carry my message to the people. It was a frantic, exhausting and totally fulfilling time in my life, and up until the end, I was obviously in the lead. Then things began to change, subtly, behind the scenes, and my sources told me that the string-pulling had begun.
In all fairness to myself I have to maintain that I held out as long as possible. Then one night I came to understand that I would either pull some strings of my own or forget my ambitions. It was a bitter pill to force down my own throat, but I made myself swallow.
I reviewed the facts. I was a woman. I was Puerto Rican. I did not currently hold office. I was young. It would take all I could give it to put me in that seat. This was one place where Brian's money alone couldn't help me. It was very important that I win this first election. Later ones would be less crucial I had to launch my career with a success.
Rico was my best connection. I didn't have to probe very deeply to know that he wax the numbers racket in that part of the city. Everyone knew it. The numbers were big, and Rico controlled a great many important people. I had money to offer the insatiable Rico, but I hated going to him for help. In the end, however, I knew I had no choice. Buying Rico meant going easy, afterward, on his operation, of course, but that was part of the price I had to pay. I discussed it all with Brian. In his usual, intelligent way, he drew me out enough to make me admit to myself that I wanted the office badly enough to do anything to get it.
The man I was running against was a front for the organization, and I knew that I had to get in for my people as much as for myself. I would soft-pedal numbers, of course, but I would still be the only Chance for the true Puerto Rican representation. This was another factor convincing me to do whatever necessary to get what I wanted.
I waited through the next day, thinking deeply and privately. By evening I was ready to talk to Rico. I was calm by then, my mind settled and again at peace. I hadn't come this far to lose out on principle.
It took ten minutes to get Rico on the phone. "Yeah?"
It struck me funny that in all the years I'd never heard his voice on the phone before. I explained my position without spelling anything out Rico knew instantly what I was saying behind my carefully phrased words.
He was quiet long enough to make me distinctly uncomfortable. Then he laughed. "There is a price tag on the item you wish to purchase."
"Isn't there always?" I kept my voice cool.
His voice tightened. "I don't need your money, Alicia. I don't really need anything you have. But I will do as you ask. Because we are friends. And on the basis of our very fine friendship, I will then ask you to spend a night with me."
I was totally unprepared for his request. "What?"
"A night, Alicia, my friend. Is it not worth a night, that which you desire? I shall give you your desire, but I must have mine in return. Is it an agreement?"
The silence dragged on while I worked feverishly to determine the degree of his seriousness. "I will pay a reasonable fee, Rico. Name your price. Plus, of course, certain ... considerations after I'm in office."
He laughed again. "You have my price. I will be at this number exactly one hour. Call with your answer before then." With that, the line went dead.
Of course I had no need for an entire hour. I'd made my decisions long before picking up the phone to call him. I was surprised by his diplomacy, in fact, offering an hour as if my virtue demanded that much forethought. I called him before the end of his hour.
We made our date, and I hung up the phone feeling strangely light-headed. The tenseness was gone. I would now allow myself to be swept along, enjoying " and suffering through all that would come. My future was established-r-I could kick back and take whatever came my way.
I kept some of that light feeling while I watched the rain streaking down over the city. I hated to give up the window seat and the cigarette, the quiet and the contentment I felt. But it was time to shower and dress. There was one last obligation, and that would be out of the way that night. I was to be at Rico's penthouse in less than two hours.
Dressing carefully made little sense, but I liked doing everything in style, even the unpleasant things. I wore a subtle tweed suit and left the apartment with a business-like air of self-confidence and calm. It was, for that matter, business.
I had never been to Rico's apartment, not even the one he lived in as a boy. We didn't visit in each other's homes. There was barely enough room in them for those who lived there. But I knew it had to be much like mine, grimy with age, smelly with time, and crawling with people. But this penthouse apartment was as different a world for Rico as mine was for me. I took an elevator to the top floor, then rang for the special one that led to his penthouse. Inside was a young man wearing a checkered suit and contrasting vest He was expecting me, and his eyes told more dirty stories than I cared to know.
"I'll take you up to Rico," he said, grinning broadly.
I felt uncomfortable standing next to him in the small elevator, and I turned my attention on the ornate mirrors that lined the carriage.
The apartment was like Rico, flashy, obvious and ambitious. Sprinkled among the odds and ends of expensive modern horrors was a fine painting, an exquisite rug, a magnificent carving. But for the most part Rico's apartment resembled an uptown cocktail lounge, complete with fur and leather pillows, ankle-deep fuck carpeting and indirect blue and red lighting. Gaudy reliefs on the walls hid some of the lights, and I looked around half expecting a nearly nude cutie to serve me a drink or try to sell me a pack of cigarettes.
Rico was alone in the big living room, staring into the gas fireplace. He got up from the plush leather couch and grinned when the goon led me into the room. Rico was wearing a silk robe in an overly bright color, and behind him was all of New York, spread out like a sparkling necklace of lights. I looked over Manhattan as I greeted him. "It's a lovely view," I said, realizing the understatement even as I said it
'I like it. Come, I'll fix you a drink."
I waited until the goon was gone before answering. "I don't want a drink, Rico. We both know why
I'm here, so let's get on with it. This isn't a social call."
His smile was a trace smug. "But you see, Alicia, you really should have the drink. This is indeed a social call, because by the end of this night you will be feeling very social. I am throwing one thing into our little friendly bargain."
"What's that?" Reluctantly, I took the drink. He might be right. I would need all the help I could get.
He took my drink after I'd had a sip and placed it on an end table. "I'm going to make you like it...." His strong arms pulled me against his body. Unprepared, I found myself tightly against him as his lips closed over mine.
His kiss started slowly, his mouth working deliberately over mine, his tongue playing lightly at my tightly closed, unresponsive mouth. I had every intention of keeping my end of our agreement, but none of pretending to a response I didn't feel. I hadn't done that much for my own husband.
"Go ahead," he whispered before kissing me again, "fight me all you want. In the end you will be begging for me, wanting me again and again...."
I didn't attempt to deal with his masculine ego problem. He kissed me even more softly the second time, with a fair amount of tenderness. His dark good looks were especially striking in the exotic background of his lavish apartment with the backdrop of the city and the stars far above. My defenses slipped just enough so that I grudgingly admitted that he was being more considerate than he had to be under the terms of our agreement. I wondered if perhaps some of his wild babbling, on the night he'd come to my apartment so long ago, had been the truth. He kissed like a man in love....
We settled down on the couch, and his kisses began to distract me. He didn't try to touch my body other than to hold me as our lips met, so that I had no choice but to relax, since I couldn't very well stay defensive when no attack was on its way. I wanted to keep my mind alert and active, but" he continued to kiss me softly, and it was hard to think. The tip of his tongue had somehow found its way into my mouth, and I felt a slightly sickish feeling in the pit of my stomach as it lazily touched my tongue. I identified the sensation as a low grade buzz of excitement, but I was at a loss to decide where exactly it was coming from.
I don't know how long he kept me on the couch, kissing me, running his tongue in and out of my mouth, holding me. I felt warm and strange, like I wanted to leave but was rooted to the spot. When Rico finally pulled me to my feet, I was weak knead and confused.
"Come this way, Alicia," he urged softly. My hand in his, I let him lead me down a long hall to the master bedroom. I was mute, even before the spectacular vista of the east side of Manhattan which was vividly displayed through a wall of glass.
He undressed me while I stood there shivering like a child. I had no idea what was wrong with me, but I was suddenly chilled. I couldn't stop trembling. I stood there, numb, even when my childhood friend removed the panties from my body. Completely nude, I allowed him to investigate my flesh.
"You are more beautiful than I dreamed," he said finally, and though I told myself I didn't care, I was somewhat pleased that he thought me beautiful.
Then he undressed. I didn't want to look at him, but I felt powerless to move even enough to look away. He was berry brown all over, with a broad, masculine chest, a flat, muscular midsection, and thighs like pillars of marble. I couldn't help but notice more, especially since he was obviously aroused.
I felt a twinge of fear. This was no Brian. He was hard and thick, bigger than I thought possible, bigger than I was sure I could take. I felt the weakness in my knees begin to dissolve as fear began to take over.
But Rico didn't give me a chance to give into the fear.
He led me to the huge bed, then pressed me back against it. "Relax, Alicia, I will make you like this." He kissed my mouth, then darted his tongue into my ear. "And this...." His tongue edged around the undersides of my cheekbones and snaked into my mouth. "And that ... and this...." His mouth whispered the words as it trailed over each of my nipples. They were stiffening under his touch and the cold I still felt, yet the sensation of them coming to life was a novel one. I held very still and explored the feeling with my mind.
"Relax," he urged, as if aware of my thoughts. "Don't try to think about it. Just enjoy it, enjoy how good it feels, how nice it is when I do this...." His lips were hot and wet, and they closed over a ripening nipple, sucking it deeply inside the warm cave of his mouth. He sucked hard on the nipple before releasing it and moving on to its twin. Then he returned to my mouth for a deep, passionate kiss. He moved back to my breasts and nipples.
I have no idea of how many times he repeated his circuit, but by the time he began to move his face lower, my heart was racing in my chest and a curious excitement was pounding through my bloodstream. I felt a peculiar impatience inside me, and for the first time in my life I was thoroughly wrapped up in nothing more than bodily sensations. Even my breathing had changed. I wasn't sure I liked any of what was happening, but I was intensely involved in what Rico was doing to me.
His mouth was working between my thighs with an intimate determination, forcing my thighs to fall apart. He nosed up against my vagina, and then his tongue was darting into me! I felt it glide over my clitoris, and the next thing I knew a deep, unnatural moan was escaping through my dry lips. My fingers flew to Rico's hair and I held him still, at least long enough to recover from the shock of that tongue swipe.
He gave me only a moment to control myself, then he began licking at me like a crazed animal. I couldn't escape his writhing tongue, and I no longer wanted to. The tremendous sensations shooting through me as he licked and sucked me almost drove me out of my mind. No longer passive, no longer calm, I moaned and sighed as he controlled my body as he wished. It was insane,-his feverish mouthing of me, yet it felt like an explosion going off inside myself every other second.
He licked me a long time, and I was jerking my hips under his face as if I were a puppet and his tongue controlled the strings. My nipples were hard pebbles bouncing on my aching breasts, and when he reached up and closed his big palms over them, I only moaned what should have been a protest.
When I thought I'd pass out with the intensity of what he was making me feel, Rico began to thrust his finger in and out of me. That was an entirely new sensation, a deeper, more precise awareness of feeling. I felt my thighs open to allow him to probe more deeply, and even as I felt shocked at myself, I encouraged him on with my sighs. He kept it up a long time, ramming his fingers and tongue in and out of me.
I was sick with the sweetness of a thousand feelings when he first climbed over me and nudged the tip of his penis against my juicing slit. I couldn't have stopped him if I'd wished. I had no more control over myself than a newborn baby had in its mother's arms. His huge club began to press into me, and all my earlier fears were swept away on a wild surge of raw emotion. I wanted him to push into me! I wanted to feel him tight against the mouth of my womb! I wanted the sweet agony of a plowed, nearly virginal, vagina! I wanted Rico!
He knew where I was at, and he wasn't far behind me. He jerked his hips with one smooth, sure motion. and then he was inside me! I cried put with the mingled pain and pleasure, but the pleasure was far more important and urgent than the pain. He was enormous, filling me with twice what I would have settled for, but making me like it all the same. He was in charge and I was happy that way, letting him give my body time to adjust, then moving on. He began to pump me slowly, feeding me inches at a time. Every new stab was a miracle, and I was lost in my own rapture to such a point that I didn't even understand the first tidal wave of my first orgasm.
Rico knew, however, and he began pounding in and out of me like a piston, fucking me like a machine, whipping me to edge me over my cliff with maximum glory. I came as I had no idea I could ever come, screaming out my ecstasy, tears falling from my eyes as I spasmed over and over. Somewhere in that time Rico managed to come also, and I could feel oceans of his hot semen filling me.
Weak with shock as well as exhaustion, I could only mumble a little when Rico finally pulled out of me and rolled over to his side of the bed.
I needed only a few minutes to rest and come back to what I would now think of as normal. I was fiercely happy, complete in a way I'd never been before. I wriggled over so that I could be closer to Rico. I could be daring, now.
"Rico, that was so good, darling. ... More, I want even more. Give me more, darling...." I kissed his ear.
Rico turned over and began to laugh. He sat up and reached for his pants, laughing still. "More," he mimicked, getting dressed. "Oh, Rico, darling, give me more...."
I sat up, confused again, staring at him dumbly.
He lit a cigarette and put on his shirt. Then he turned to me. "Okay, lady, I made my point. Now get that sweet little ass in gear, dress it, and get it out of here."
"I ... I don't understand...."
He grinned. "Once I came to you and you laughed in my face. Now I've made you human, baby, and it's my turn to laugh. And do you know why? Because now I get to do all the laughing! Don't you think I know about your faggot husband? Now that I've made you feel, what are you going to do? Ask your old man to work you over? He wouldn't know how."
I shook my head, stunned but already thinking of a way out. "You and Brian aren't the only men in the world. I'm sure I wouldn't have any trouble finding a man...."
Rico laughed again, louder than ever. "Don't fool yourself. You have worked much too long and hard, and come too far, to risk everything just because all of a sudden you have the desires of a sixteen-year-old bitch in heat! You cannot hold public office and expect to advance in politics with a string of even the most discreet affairs behind you! You know that! No, what I have done, my Alicia, is to condemn you to a life of frustration, don't you see that? Go to your faggot husband with the bulging wallet and ask him to stick his money up there!"
I dressed frantically, desperate to be away from his unending laughter. All the way out of the apartment I heard the sounds of his amusement, and even in the cage-like private elevator I imagined I could hear him still.
It was nearly morning when I finally got home. I felt sick and exhausted, but above that was a restless., relentless itch between my aching thighs. I couldn't block out the memory of Rico's words, but I refused to accept all he'd said. I knew something he didn't know, that Brian loved me and had wanted me once. ... Blindly I made my way down the hall to his bedroom. But as I prepared to throw open his door I heard the distinct sounds of my husband and my secretary making love. Sickened and stabbed by the futility of what I was about to do, I backed away from the door and headed to my room. There, on my own bed at last, I faced the truth I'd heard earlier that evening.
I had left this room, removed and safe in myself. I had returned, engulfed by flames never before ignited. I was my own prisoner, now and forever. Rico was very right-I couldn't lose all I'd struggled to obtain just because of a few base emotions. I would have to fight out the rampant desires he'd aroused in me. And I'd have to do it alone.
Wearily I undressed, prepared to face the first of what I knew would be a great many sleepless nights.
I hoped mine would be a great career.
* * *
Alicia's political experiences can be interpreted as illustrations of three current themes in the literature of political analysis and theory. Her totally dedicated excursion into local politics brought her mixed results and exposed her to facets of her own personality she was not aware of before. Whatever her own personal feelings about politics might be, her actions nevertheless serve to point out political tendencies at work in our society today.
Any woman interested in politics must be wary of tremendous pressures exerted by the society against women politicians. The place of a woman, in the male world of political control, is by far the most applicable theme of Alicia's own experiences, going further than any other condition to explain the problems and conflicts she had to hurdle.
Probably of more interest to the political analyst is the factor of Alicia's own motivation for power. Just what did stir her ambition to the point of going so far and exposing herself to so much just to gain a local government position? Of great importance these days is the relationship between political ambition and political ability, and particularly how this relationship applies to the election process in America. The revelation of Alicia's unintegrated sexual nature casts suspicions on the purity of her motivations for office. The additional cross she bears, of her feelings as a Puerto Rican, further color her motives. Can her constituents rely on her? Won't she always have a weakness for Rico? Won't she always feel a grudge against people who aren't Puerto Rican? These are easy questions to ask but extremely difficult to answer. For one thing, Alicia's capability as an elected official cannot be tested until she actually attains office; there is simply no sure guide-line for making this kind of decision beforehand. Her national background and her sexual weakness certainly might influence her decisions as an official, but then again she could easily rise above even her own expectations and become an effective force for political change in her community. How do you measure a candidate's ability?
Usually the voting record of a candidate is considered a reliable indicator of his her ability to function well in office. Lacking this, a newcomer to the political field can rely on any one of a number of qualities to attract voters. Personality and charisma count high on the voter's list of essential prerequisites. If a candidate is blessed neither with an appealing voting record nor a pleasing personality, he can always gather public attention through the means of an effectively run advertising campaign coupled with the vote-getting energy of a capable campaign committee run by a professional manager.
Alicia may have charisma, but if she doesn't, then it can be seen that her chances of winning an election are slim because of the fact that she is under qualified and under financed. She does attempt to garner funds (from Brian) and she contacts a power figure within the community whose influence might help insure a victory, but whether or not this activity will yield results is another matter.
The third topic of political observation concerning Alicia is the significance of her relationship with Rico. Completely aside from the sexual overtones of the relationship and their prior meetings together before her political ambitions, their relationship emphasizes the nature of the power base within such a minority community. Typical of the American minority member, Alicia and Rico have firmer ties with members of their own minority than they do with either the Anglo majority or the members of any other minority. This condition is always heightened with those minority members whose background includes recent immigration to our country and thus recent historical exposure to a totally alien culture. For obvious reasons, recently immigrated populations tend to bring many elements of their previous and more familiar culture with them when they settle in America.
In many ways, America is not the highly touted "melting pot" as history tells it. Many minorities and nationality groups have had difficulties adjusting smoothly to the American way of life. There have been some outstanding examples of prejudice and political repression against some of these entering minorities, as for example in the Chinese-American populations in San Francisco during the 19th century. Adjustment to our cultural patterns and modes of behavior is difficult for the outsider.
Even though every entering citizen was required to learn something of our country's political nature before being allowed to enter the country, most immigrants tried to bring as much of their own culture with them into the new land as was possible. In many cases this meant their ideas of law and politics, as well as their previous social customs and traditions. Although the American government was respected and obeyed whenever its rulings or some extension of its agencies had an effect on their lives, for the most part they relied on their traditional social system for an adequate dispensation of justice within the community. The main problem seems to have been a lack of communication between government regulatory agencies and the people of these communities. The presence of the American government within their midst was too weak and too foreign in nature to inspire complete respect and trust. Especially when law enforcement problems arose, there was no easy access to the American judicial and police systems.
Gradually the minority attitude towards the police degenerated into one of distrust and suspicion. At the same time, the traditional political organizations gained in strength and effectively formed an entire governmental system, a system within a system so to speak, which simplified the lives of the new Americans but also set up barriers between themselves and the larger culture outside their communities.
It was not a giant step for some of these internal governments to become extremely powerful entities in themselves, sometimes exceeding any influence of the larger American organization of the state and local government. Some of these political groups turned to gangster activity to more effectively strengthen their hold over the economic and social life of the community. This is how the Mafia came into existence, this is how the tongs (among the Chinese-Americans) came into existence, and this is also how modern ghettos and barrios generate the kind of political climate necessary for the formation of gangs. Of course organized crime differs greatly from juvenile crime, but both have some common causes, and the failure of minorities to completely assimilate the American governmental system, as well as the failure of the government adequately to serve and protect the minorities, must be considered as a generating force for both types of criminal behavior.
Alicia, after considering running for the council-manic position honestly and according to the rules of the system, realizes that she cannot hope to win unless she first deals with the criminal elements which in reality control the local government. This comparison between the old and the new types of government within the minority district, between the established corruption of the gang and its political extensions and the new desire for a more compatible role within the American system, is a problem of great consequence for minority populations in America. Only encouragements for minority participation in governmental affairs will help the minority district reach a comfortable level of cultural assimilation.
CHAPTER TWO
The Novice Idealist
The leader of the group that met me in my office at the college was a Mrs.-or rather Ms. Beverly Tilche. After a long preamble, she finally got down to what the whole group had come to see me about.
"Doctor," she said, "we desperately need you to run for county supervisor."
I looked at her slightly in shock. It had never entered my mind to enter actively in politics; I was an observer, not an activist. It was my business to talk about and analyze the political actions of others, not to politick myself. You see, the "doctor" she referred to was my title stemming from my Ph.D. in political science.
"Ms. Tilche," I said, trying to be diplomatic as possible, "I couldn't possibly seek a public office. I have my job here; I'd have to leave that. And I don't have any experience at all to back me up. All I have are theories about what other people should do."
Ms. Tilche smiled. "But that's exactly why we want you," she said. "You have some novel ideas. And heaven knows we need somebody who has some new ideas."
I agreed with her in that. The mid-state county where I had lived for the past two years was in the tight control of a group of men who hadn't had an original or liberal idea in forty years. They still thought Franklin Roosevelt was a radical.
"I've only been living here two years," I said, hopefully adding to my reasons for not doing what Ms. Tilche and her group wanted. "I'm practically a carpetbagger."
Ms. Tilche smiled again. She could be very winning and persuasive when she wanted to be. "You know very well," she said, "that only a year's residency is required. You have every right to run, and every ... duty."
I thought for a few seconds. "I'm sorry," I said finally. "I can't do it. I'm finally settled into this job that I like very much and have made a life for myself here that I like. I don't want to disrupt that." I smiled back at her.
"Oh, I see," Ms. Tilche said, her smile fading. "You're all talk and no action. Typical of you transplanted big-city boys. You head for the country and tell us how to run things, but when it comes down to participating in what you say we should do, you retreat behind academia."
Her new attitude and what she was saying irritated me. I was getting tired of sayings such as, "People who can't do, teach." These people just didn't understand. The place for people like me was in the colleges, teaching the young so that they, and not us, would go' out and make a better world. When I said something to that effect to Ms. Tilche and her group, she had some very unkind things to say to me.
I admit to having a temper, and when I get angry I often turn rash. I did in this instance, anyway. I listened to Ms. Tilche literally bawling the hell out of me for about ten minutes, then instead of coolly maintaining my posture, I instead gave in to her. I was so angry that I blurted out, "Okay, damn it, i'll run."
It was the worst decision I've ever made in my life.
As I've mentioned before, the county had been led, if "Led" is the right word, by a small group of very conservative gentlemen-and that term, too, I use loosely-who didn't appreciate anybody infringing on what they thought was their territory. The county was in financial chaos, there was absolutely no programs offered, and I was sure just from observation that these gentlemen stayed in power only through graft and corruption.
As an example, one man who had served on the County Board of Supervisors for eleven years retired to Florida with an estimated four hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the bank. And this was supposedly accumulated on a salary of seventy-two hundred dollars a year, as a supervisor, and the ownership of a very small auto parts store. The man was either the best businessman in the world or a crook. Most people, including myself, held to the latter.
Six men, then, held the county by the throat, and the acknowledged leader of those six was a man named Jenkins, who was also on the board of the county's largest bank. Jenkins was the richest and the most ignorant man I've ever in my life met or talked to. I'm not saying he is stupid, but more awfully, ignorant. He was the man Ms. Tilche's group had chosen me to run against.
I had never wanted to cause myself or anybody else any trouble. I had come to this county two years earlier after teaching five years in the university system of the state of California. I had come to Ohio after a very serious personal trauma which involved my wife's divorcing me. I had come to have peace and quiet, to do a job that I loved, and not make any waves.
Then Ms. Tilche and her damned group had to show up.
The announcement of my candidacy made the front pages of all the county newspapers, and the back pages of most state papers. Ms. Tilche made the announcement in her living room, with an enthusiasm more suited to an announcement that she'd won the Irish Sweepstakes. I was eulogized to the point of being embarrassed. It was the highlight of the campaign. From then on everything went downhill.
The following morning, I found a note in my mailbox at the college to see the Dean of Instruction. I went to see him at one o'clock. He was sitting behind his desk with an expression so bleak that I instantly got a chill. I knew I was in for trouble. There was little doubt of that, especially after Dean Jenkins informed me that he and the Jenkins I was running against shared more than a name; they also shared a common grandfather. Dean Jenkins and Supervisor Jenkins were cousins, and very cordial cousins to boot.
"It hardly behooves a new professor to mix politics and public education," the Dean said. I would have asked him for a translation of what he said, but I knew basically what he meant; he wanted me to get out of the race.
I had never liked Dean Jenkins, and the harder he tried to convince me to drop out of the running, the harder my resolve became. At the end of the hour I spent with the Dean, I would rather have slit my wrists than give up my candidacy.
"I think then," the Dean concluded, "that it would be best for all concerned if you offered your resignation."
By that time I was blazing angry. I knew in the back of my mind that the man had no legal right to demand my resignation over the fact that I was running for a political office, but again, as it so often has in the past, my temper got the best of me. "All right, you pompous old fart," I shouted at him. "You've got it. Give me a piece of paper. I'll write it out for you right here."
He was only too glad to oblige. In fact, as I was writing, I noticed a glint of a smile on his face for the first time in my two years of occasionally running into him.
I was given a month's salary and I was dropped from my classes immediately. It wasn't until the next morning that I realized just how foolish I had been. What if I lost the election? I'd have nothing.
With that thought in mind, I became more determined than ever to win at the polls.
The next two days, except for sleeping, I spent with Ms. Tilche and her group of advisors. We were going to hit every women's group, every PTA, every town council, everybody and every location in the short time before the election. At the end of two days, I was exhausted but confident. I knew I could win. With helpers like Ms. Tilche, how could I lose?
I slept late the morning after the marathon sessions at Ms. Tilche's house. I was up only about a half hour, enjoying a leisurely breakfast, when the front doorbell rang. I hesitated but finally answered it. After all, an intended public servant's first responsibility is to be available.
A man who was vaguely familiar to me was standing on the front steps. He introduced himself as a Mr. Dannacucci. That name rang a bell. He was a lawyer in a small town near mine, and if my memory served me correctly, he was closely connected with Supervisor Jenkins.
I invited him in and after giving him a cup of coffee, I asked him outright what his connection with Mr. Jenkins was. I heartily hoped that he had stopped by to tell me that he had had enough of Mr. Jenkins and his ilk and was ready to jump on my bandwagon. That hope was as far from being fulfilled as it was possible to be.
"I'm Mr. Jenkins' campaign manager," Dannacucci said. "I have been for the last twenty-four years and I probably will be for the next twenty-four years. If I live that long." His statement implied, I supposed, that Mr. Jenkins intended to be around as Supervisor for that long a period.
"Then I'm not too sure it's ethical for you to be here," I told him. He looked at me like I had passed gas at a debutante ball.
"What do you mean by that?" he asked.
"I don't think it looks right for the campaign manager of one candidate to be meeting secretly with another candidate. It smacks of collusion," I said.
I don't know what I expected his "reaction to be, but I know I didn't expect his actual one. He laughed. He laughed so hard that his huge belly shook.
When he had control of himself, he said, "Tom, old buddy, there's not one goddamned thing about this visit that's secret. Everybody in the county who amounts to three beans knows I was coming here. They're sitting home right now, waiting for the news to come out that you've withdrawn from the race."
I looked at him. "Why should I withdraw?" I asked.
He leaned over, setting his coffee cup on an end table, and reached down to the briefcase that was on the floor next to him. He ruffled through his papers until he found what he was looking for. It was a folder which he pulled out and put on his lap. He looked at me.
"We've been checking on you a bit," he said. He glanced down at the folder.
I felt a tinge of fear roll up my spine. They couldn't possibly ... I thought.
"We're giving you a chance to quit now," Dannacucci said. "That way you'll avoid a lot of embarrassment, both for yourself and for your friends. Well even help to get you back on the faculty, although Dean Jenkins will yell like hell. He sort of hates your guts."
"I'm not a particular friend of his either," I said coldly. I was no longer feeling that small twinge of fear I'd felt; I was more angry now. I took their offer of reinstatement an insult-as though I needed the help of those lice to get back a job I was very good at in the first place!-and also as a sign of weakness. They must be running scared, afraid of being beat. I took heart from that.
There was also another reason for my anger, one less personal. In my discussions with Ms. Tilche and her friends, I realized that they were counting a great deal on me to improve things in the county. And I realized that the trust they had in me was not misplaced. I would make a good supervisor. I would do the things that had to be done; things that had been neglected for so long. It was a job in a small, unimportant county, but to the residents of that county, it was probably the most important thing in the world. I would be helping to make democracy work.
With those thoughts in mind, my attitude towards Dannacucci can be understood.
"If dropping out of the race is a pre-condition to getting my job back," I said rather pornopusly, "I want nothing to do with it."
"Maybe you'll change your mind," Dannacucci said, "after you know what I've got in this folder." Again he looked at it.
"I suppose you have the details of my divorce in there," I said. "I've heard of mudslinging, but if you use that as a campaign issue, I'll kill you with it. Voters these days are too intelligent to be swayed by muckrakers. They'll understand that it was my problem and that I did the best I could."
"You might be right about that," Dannacucci said. "Divorce isn't that big an issue anymore. That isn't what I meant, though." He pulled a paper from the folder and glanced at it. "Those intelligent voters you spoke about, though: how will they react when they hear about ... Susan Powers?"
My hands started to shake at the mention of the name. How had they found out about that? And so quickly? I had been assured that all information concerning the matter was strictly private, known only to me and the police department in Los Angeles.
"How did you find out about that?" I asked. I know my voice was shaky.
Dannacucci looked up at me. "We have our ways, Tom. The important thing is that we do know about it. We don't want to have to use it, but we will. If you stay in the race, we'll use it"
"There's not a respectable paper in the state that'll print that trash," I said hotly. The ironical thing about my statement is that from the first, I was admitting to being mixed up in something I called "trash."
"We also know the real reason for your divorce," Dannacucci said. "Ten minutes after the papers hit the streets with the story, your value as a viable candidate will be nil."
"I repeat," I said, although most of the pomposity had been knocked out of me, "that there isn't a respectable newspaper in the state that would print such a story."
"I guess you're right," Dannacucci said. "And I guess you don't consider my little hometown newspaper as being very respectable, but I do know one thing: it would print the story on the front page with the biggest headlines in its history."
"Not even a small-town paper would print an insupportable story like that," I said, but perspiration had broken out on my forehead.
Dannacucci laughed out loud. "Do you know who the editor and publisher of that newspaper is?" he asked.
I shook my head, acknowledging that I didn't know.
"You should find out things like that," he said, "if you intend to go seriously into politics!"
"I am seriously into politics," I said angrily. "Now I think you should get out of here."
"All right, I'll leave,, and I'll even give you time to think about my offer," Dannacucci said. "But one thing before I go. The editor of that paper we talked about has been making ninety per cent of his advertising revenue off supporters of Mr. Jenkins. Now, do you still think he won't print the story?"
I stared at him. "Already you've involved yourself in blackmail, now it's bribery. You'd better get out of here before I call the police."
"Christ, get out of your ivory tower," Dannacucci said. "You eggheads are always the same. You write imagine prose about something you don't know anything about except what you've read in books. Get some sense, Tom. Play ball with us and we'll play ball with you."
I told him to get out of the house, which he did, telling me he would give me a call in three days to let me know what my final decision was.
I told him he had my final decision. He said he would call anyway.
When the door closed behind him, I was resolved to fight this thing out. The voters would understand, even if the story was published. I was sure they would. But as I sat there, trying to finish my breakfast, my resolve weakened. What in the hell was I doing to myself? Already I had lost a good job, and now I was fooling with the possibility of ruining my life completely. What little I had left.
The episode with Susan Powers had been a tragedy and a terrible mistake on my part. But we all make mistakes; mine just happened to be more glaring than most.
I was a professor at the time in the State system in northern California. I had a good job, had married a good-looking girl whom I loved-the fact that Kim, my wife, was the only child of a wealthy family didn't hurt matters any-had one child, and thought the world was my oyster. Then, on that fateful night, I made the seemingly innocuous decision to attend a summer convention of educators in Los Angeles.
The convention, as all conventions are, was boring in the extreme. The speeches were the same speeches that had been given at the same kind of conventions for years. But I had attended, not with the idea of learning anything of value, but only as a means of getting away from my usual life. A vacation, if you will. I loved my wife, family and home, but I needed to get away by myself.
One of the first people I met at the convention was an old classmate of mine named Joe Philips. Joe had somehow managed to get his doctorate in modern European history, although how I'll never know. He was and had always been the biggest fuck-off I'd ever known. Along with that quality, however, he also was a.very personable guy and fun to be with.
I dutifully attended the first day's lectures, looking forward to the cocktail party that night that Joe was holding in his suite of rooms. Joe was the kind who always got "suites" or who rented the private area in airplanes. He was a conspicuous spender, I guess you could say.
When I arrived at his rooms that night, the party was already in full blast. Joe had invited all the "swingers" at the convention, and by that term I don't mean the word with the connotation it has developed in the sixties and seventies. I mean it more in the sense that it had in the simpler days, when if you were a swinger, it simply meant you liked to have a good time. There were no groaning, rutting bodies on the floor when I arrived, just a lot of people making a considerable amount of noise while they were thoroughly enjoying themselves.
I admit to drinking more than I should have, that night, but if you had had to endure the speeches that I had endured that day, you would have had a few too many, too.
When the party started to break up about one in the morning, I was feeling sensational and still didn't feel like heading to bed. After all, it was my first night away from hearth and home, and I wanted to celebrate the fact. Celebrate a lot, as a matter-of-fact.
Joe had always maintained a group of cronies and the convention was no exception. When everybody had left, there were five men, including myself, none feeling any pain whatsoever, who were sitting around his suite. We all vaguely wanted to have some more fun, but none really had much of an idea how to.
Joe, however, soon filled that void. He came into the room after seeing the last departing guest off. He sat down with the five of us. He looked around and laughed. "Now what?" he asked. We all simultaneously shrugged.
"I've got a little idea," he said, "if you guys are willing to go along with it." We all nodded. That's what we were waiting for: Joe, to lead us down the path of perdition.
"The last time I was in Los Angeles," he continued, "I ran into this little number who is too smooth to be believed. She told me the next time I was in town to give her a call. How about me calling her and getting her over here with some of her girl friends?"
Now I know that sounds adolescent, but after all, the whole group of us were only normal screwballs who were on a little vacation. You often do things on a vacation that you wouldn't do under more normal circumstances.
There wasn't any reluctance about Joe's suggestion from anyone. We all were looking for a good time. Joe headed for the telephone to call his "Little number."
He walked back into the living room with a wide grin on his face, almost lascivious. "I got her," he said. "She'll be over in a half hour with as many friends as she can find." Then he hesitated. "There's only one catch, gentlemen," he added. "We may have to cough up a hundred bucks per head."
I know that I for one was slightly shocked at the news that I'd be dealing with a hooker, or a group of hookers. But along with that shock was a feeling of titillation. It was exciting to do things that ordinarily a person would only read about other people doing in bad fiction. We agreed to the price.
I think the whole group was excited about the potential of having, say, six beautiful whores on our hands. That's all that was talked about while we re-attacked the bar. I was feeling even more loaded when the doorbell rang a half hour later.
A very attractive redhead walked into the room. But she was by herself. She had an apologetic pout on her face as she moved in close on Joe and kissed him fondly. "Honey, I couldn't find even one unused girl," she said. "Everybody that I've even heard of is busy tonight."
You can imagine the disappointment of five usually respectable-but-dull, now horny, college professors at that news. It was like telling us that the state education budget had been cut in half.
It was at that point that Joe's kinkiness got us into trouble. He thought about what she said only for a split second, then offered an idea to the rest of us. "How would you like to make this beautiful redhead the highest paid hooker in the state?" he asked, laughing. "How about each of us throwing in a hundred bucks and she can show us all a good time?"
Susan wasn't all that enthusiastic about the idea. "I don't think I can handle six, honey. I'm a lady, I'm not a machine," she said. She might not have liked the idea, but for some strange reason the rest of us did. I guess we had been looking forward to some "action" and we didn't want to be disappointed.
Joe headed with Susan to the bedroom where they had a small meeting. I don't know what he said to her, but when they returned, she was a little more agreeable to the deal. She wasn't exactly sold on it, but she wasn't leaving either.
"Gentlemen," Joe shouted. "Take your seats. Our guest, Miss Susan Powers, will now entertain us with an example of modern dance."
I guess what happened next is old hat to people who frequent the bars in Los Angeles, but to a married guy from the sticks of northern California, what Susan did was extremely exciting. And I think everybody in the room had a similar reaction. The booze didn't hurt, I guess, either.
Susan was a fairly slender girl whose body, when she had clothes on, didn't look that spectacular, but as her dance progressed and the clothes started to disappear, we all realized that, naked, she was probably one of the sexiest, most stunning girls any of us had ever seen.
And my god, could she dance. As we watched her, dancing alone, I'm sure that each guy in the room thought he was watching her have sex. She pantomimed getting fucked so well that to this day I don't believe what I think I saw.
The alcohol and the dance were all that was needed to get the "party" going. As soon as the girl was finished, and was recovering her breath, Joe started to hand around a hat. Each one of us, he told us, was to take out a slip of paper. The number on the slip was to correspond where we were to stand in line to fuck Miss Susan Powers. I know it sounds ridiculous and perverted, but you have to remember the circumstances.
I picked number three. To be honest, I'd never had sloppy thirds before, nor even un-sloppy seconds. I had always been straighter than straight when it came to sex. I'd had my share, but it was always the normal type. I had never even gone to a whore before in my life.
Joe, as organizer of the party, had reserved first slot for himself. He went with the girl into the bedroom after she was calmed down and left the rest of us in the living room. I don't know who made the comment that started all the real trouble; maybe it was me, but I don't think it was. That's how high I was on booze; I couldn't even swear to you about who said what. All I know is that somebody in the living room said, "For a hundred bucks from each of us, the little cunt shouldn't mind an audience."
The remark seemed to strike a chord with all of us. After all, if you pay a hundred dollars, you want something pretty good for your money.
We all headed for the bedroom. Joe was in the middle of the act. He was between the girl's legs, and he was fucking her like a madman. I could see instantly why the girl commanded such a high price. I'd never seen anybody move on a bed like she did. She seemed totally wrapped up in the fucking she was getting from Joe, and she seemed even to be enjoying it. I say "even" because it's a much-discussed theory that whores don't enjoy sex. But Susan Powers sure did. At least in the beginning.
It took both the girl and Joe a few seconds to realize that they weren't alone in the room. That's how wrapped up they were in the sex they were having.
Finally, though, Joe heard or noticed us. He turned to the group of us assembled at the door. "Hey, guys, c'mon. Wait your turn."
"Hell, no," somebody said. "We want to watch." We all moved closer to the bed. It was a beautiful sight to see.
Joe hesitated only a few seconds, then started to ram his cock back into the girl. He seemed more than willing by then to have an audience. The girl, however, didn't appreciate it as much.
I remember hearing her say something like, "Please, Joe, ask them to leave." But Joe didn't pay any attention to her. He just kept fucking her.
The fuck got to her after a while, and despite her earlier objections, she eventually got back to responding just as well to Joe's cock as she had been before she knew the rest of us were around.
I watched the performance, fascinated, for a short while. Then I glanced around the room. I think I should have found it funny, and ridiculous, to see five college professors, all with their cocks out of their pants, beating off while they watched a giant fuck being administered. But I didn't. All I can recall thinking was that beating off in the interim, until my turn came up, seemed like a good idea.
I even went them one better. Instead of just taking my cock out, I started to take off all my clothes. I stripped down, leaving my clothes in a heap on the floor. I stood there, hand on cock, watching Joe's cock wedge itself again and again into that gorgeous gal's beautiful cunt. I still remember it as being the most exciting thing I'd ever seen in my life.
Somehow I found myself standing right next to the bed. Joe just kept fucking her and then fucking her and fucking her some more. It was terrific, especially since she seemed to be enjoying it so much herself.
My cock was hard as a rock and as I looked down at the girl, I realized that I wanted one kind of attention from her more than anything else in the world. I moved even closer, angling my cock down towards her. "C'mon, honey," I said finally. "Suck this off for me a little." I pushed my cock right at her mouth. She turned away.
For some reason her turning away from me, especially after seeing her so obviously enjoying what Joe was doing to her, made me mad. I grabbed her hair and pulled her head towards me. I pushed my cock at her lips. She held them tightly closed. "C'mon, bitch," I said, really angry by that time, "suck it."
The girl looked slightly frightened, but in the condition I was in, that only made me more excited. I pushed harder with my cock and tightened my hold in her hair.
"Make him stop, Joe," the girl said finally. That was a mistake on her part, because as soon as she opened her mouth to say something, I shoved my cock inside. It wasn't the most pleasant experience I've ever had, especially since she grated her teeth along the full length of my cock, but at least I had myself where I wanted to be.
Neither Joe nor anyone else made any effort to stop me, so I pulled her even closer to me and started to fuck her mouth. I looked down at her. She looked scared. "Bite it, and I'll rip your goddamned cunt open," I said. Believe me, I had never said anything like that before in my life. I don't think I ever even fantasized saying it. It just came out of me.
I could tell by the noise he was making that Joe was close to shooting off. With one last magnificent groan he did. He lodged himself deep inside the girl and poured out his come. I shoved my cock as deeply as I could into her throat, holding it there, while he shot. The girl was impaled with two cocks at the same time. That turned me on terrifically.
Joe, romantic that he is, instantly pulled out. He got away from the girl's legs and stood up. "Now that," he said grinning, "was a fuck to remember."
Instantly, the guy who had picked the slip with the number two on it stepped up to take his rightful place. When Susan saw that, she tried to get away. When I wouldn't let her move, she bit me.
I have never been as angry as I was when I felt the pain shoot through my cock. I pulled out of her mouth, then reached down and slammed my fist against the side of her head. She screamed, but that had no effect on me. I simply went back to her, again grabbing her hair, shoving my hard cock back into her mouth.
I got up on the bed and straddled her. While I was pumping my cock into her mouth, I reached behind me and started to maul on her tits. I honestly don't know what had come over me.
As I knelt there, furiously fucking her face, I could feel the guy behind me mercilessly fucking into her. I knew what was happening: we were raping the girl. And it was the most exciting thing I had ever done in my entire life.
I don't have to go into any more details. All that you have to know is that we all used that poor girl for as long as any of us wanted to. We even helped each other in getting her to do what anybody wanted her to do.
When it was finally-finally-over, we all simply left the suite and went back to our own rooms. I don't know if we simply thought that we'd get off scot-free or what? I suppose we thought because Susan Powers was a whore, we could do anything we wanted to with her.
The last thing I remember is seeing her stretched out on the bed, unconscious, when I finally left the bedroom. I was more drunk then than I've ever been. I headed to my own room and passed out.
Within four hours there was a terrible banging on my door. I heard it but I didn't want to. My head hurt something awful. I wanted the noise to go away, but it didn't. The banging continued until finally I got up, very woozy, and answered it. Two policemen were standing outside the door. They asked me if I was who I am. I said I was, then asked them if they could come back later because I was feeling terrible.
They didn't come back later; they arrested me. I was hauled off to the police department and bookedfor rape and assault. My five friends went along with me.
As it turned out, Susan Powers wasn't a whore. She liked to get fucked, and that's what made her go along with the bit the night before at Joe's persuasion, but she was no whore. What she was, was a secretary to a lawyer, whom she had called as soon as she got home that night. She told him the whole story, and within two hours all six of us were in jail.
Joe, it seems, had thought it would be fun to make a little money from his buddies. He talked the girl into going along with the action; then, he said, he'd split the money with her. I found out about that later; it was never mentioned at the trial. I suppose that would, in essence, have made a whore out of the girl.
The end results of all this weren't as devastating as they might have been. The judge, I suppose, knew that a girl who was as lily-white as Susan was pretending to be at the trial, wouldn't have found herself in a situation to have what happened to her happen. All six of us were fined heavily, the arrest was recorded, and we were put on probation and sent home. The story, to my knowledge, didn't make the newspapers, thanks to the machinations of a very good and expensive lawyer we all hired.
Of course, my wife had to know about it, but she was surprisingly understanding. She was furiously angry for as long as two weeks, but even that passed and she made no threats of a divorce. That all came later.
Susan Powers must, come to think of it, have been a "swinger" in the modern sense of the word, because she gave me something to remember my evening with her by. Syphilis. Unfortunately, I didn't find out about it until after I had been reconciled with my wife, had impregnated her, and she had given birth to a hopelessly retarded and malformed child.
That's when we went through a very horrible divorce proceedings. My wife didn't want money; she wanted revenge. She got it. I found it necessary to leave my job, move out of the state and make a new life for myself.
I thought I had accomplished that in Ohio, but was to find out different as the events unfolded.
After Dannacucci had departed and I had gotten myself together, I went to Ms. Tilche's house and had coffee with her. I told her of Jenkins's campaign manager's visit. I also told her that the man had some facts about my life before coming to Ohio that might be damaging.
Ms. Tilche looked at me seriously. "I think most people are aware now," she said, "especially after the Watergate debacle, that they can't expect public office holders to be moral paragons. But at the same time, Tom, is what they have so bad that it can't be overcome? Or understood?"
I shook my head. "I think I could still be elected," I said. I was reluctant to tell the whole story to her since I wasn't aware of just how much information Dannacucci had. He might have very little and if he did, there was no use getting panicky.
"Maybe you ought to tell me what it's about," she said. "Let me be the judge. I know a little more about people's prejudices around here than you do."
I told her the story without details. In fact, I barely summarized it. She didn't seem particularly put off by the tale.
"Do you think they would really publish something like that?" I asked her.
"Those people would rob their' mother's graves if they thought it would get them a vote," she answered. She sat in silence.
"What do you think I should do?" I asked finally.
"Right now, most of the voters think honesty in their candidates is the most important thing," she said. "Maybe if you come out into the open with this, it might not hurt you at all. It might even help you. They'll realize you're human, with failings just like they have."
Now that I look back at it, I can't believe how naive both of us were. We decided to proceed with my candidacy.
I started on the speech trail that very night. I addressed a group of women who had been assembled by Ms. Tilche. It was a very friendly group. I probably could have told them I was the devil personified and they Would have cheered.
We had picked this particular group to use as a trial balloon for a speech that I was going to be using often. Ms. Tilche and I had written the speech after agreeing to continue the campaign.
I met the ladies, received their oohs and aahs with suitable modesty, drank a cup of tea with them, and then gave my speech.
"My opposition," I said in the course of my speech, "has approached me. They've told me that they've got some information about me that will be damaging to me. They've told me that if I don't withdraw from the race, they'll use that information, using as a vehicle a newspaper that is controlled by their financial interests. I want to talk about that information here with you tonight. I want to tell you that they've got it and that they'll use it.
"Most of you know," I continued, "that I'm divorced. What you don't know is that it was a very heart-breaking divorce. Terrible, awful things were said on both sides. Little of that was true. But what was said was said in the heat of passion. Not much of it was meant, but unfortunately it's a matter of public record. I can't escape it; all I can do is throw myself in all honesty on your mercy. On your forgiveness. To ask you in all honesty if you have never made a mistake in your life like I have in mine.
"The information those people have," I concluded, "involved a girl in Los Angeles, with whom I got into some degree of trouble. There were no deaths involved, no horrors of any kind, only subsequent personal tragedy. I ask you to forgive the facts of that involvement, in the same spirit as I have in coming before you to divulge them, with complete candor and total acceptance of responsibility."
You will notice that without saying anything concrete, I'd prepared my audience for what I considered the worst of what could be printed. I was sure that Dannacucci and his group didn't have all the facts. They couldn't have....
I had subtly tied together the divorce and my involvement with Susan Powers. I presented it as a one plus one equals two proposition. I didn't think it was necessary to mention any additional fact. I realize that I wasn't being completely honest, but is a man supposed to expose his entire life for a seat on the Board of Supervisors? I thought not.
The reaction from that group of women at the tea was overwhelming. They applauded until their palms ached. They gathered around the speaker's podium and wanted nothing more than to shake my hand, to side with me.
"Finally we have an honest man," one of them said. She kissed me on the cheek.
"We're with you all the way," several of them said.
"Thank you for being honest with us," somebody else said.
It was a grand evening, and suddenly I was aware of the thrills and the satisfaction politicians must have. It must be what keeps them working for elections.
Ms. Tilche, her group and I had a meeting after the tea. "I think we've got them in our lap," Ms. Tilche said. She was smiling like a Cheshire cat.
All in her group agreed. Honesty was the best policy; Dannacucci's threat had backfired. We were sure to beat that crowd.
I went home that night, feeling, I think, better than I have ever felt in my life.
The following morning there was a phone call. It was Dannacucci. "I called for your decision," he said.
"I thought you were going to wait three days," I said, feeling very smug and self-satisfied.
"We heard about your speech last night," he said.
"We figured you've made up your mind, but I wanted to confirm it."
"It's confirmed," I said. "And you can tell your boss and his cronies that I'm going to beat them into the ground. And I'm going to beat them with the one weapon they'd never consider using: honesty." Do you notice how much like a politician I was sounding already?
At that point, the election was a month away. Every night, every afternoon and sometimes even in the mornings I made speeches around the county. Most of them were a variation of the speech I delivered at the tea party. The reaction to that speech was almost universally good. And still there wasn't a word from the opposition. I became convinced that their threats of publication were just that-threats-and that they wouldn't use the information they had.
I worked feverishly during that period to come up with some program of progress that I could present to the voters. I wanted them to have a reason to vote for me; I wanted to tell them what I was going to do for them and with them. Together, we would make society work in our county. I offered programs on everything, and they all were accepted with rousing enthusiasm. Ms. Tilche said I had it "made in the shade."
Four days before the election, there was a copy of a small newspaper on my front step when I got up in the morning. I suppose I stared at it for ten minutes on the front porch before coming to my senses and going back into the house. There were three photographs on the front page, along with a lurid headline. The photographs were of me, of my wife and of Susan Powers. In the story on the front page, and the continuation of it on four different pages, was spelled out every infinitesimal detail of my involvement. They even mentioned the real reason for my divorce and had a photograph of a retarded and deformed child on page four. It wasn't my son, but that didn't make any difference.
Ms. Tilche stopped by a half hour later. She along with everybody else in the county had seen the paper. Free copies were delivered to everybody.
"Will, we have to go on," she said. "It's too late to stop now."
"I've outlined a four-year program that, if implemented, will turn this county into a model community," I said. "That should count for something."
"I'm sure it will," Ms, Tilche said.
"We have to throw ourselves on the good sense and the fairness of the voters," I said. "They'll recognize Jenkins's effort for what it is, a smear."
"Maybe they will," Ms. Tilche said.
On election day, there were seventy-two thousand, four hundred and eight ballots cast. I lost the election by sixty-four thousand votes....
* * *
Of course it's easy to say that, after Watergate, almost any amount of political "dirty tricks" would be easily believable by the majority of the American public, and yet the realization of the true effects of this kind of corruption is hardly ever felt until it strikes close to home. It's easy to read of high jinks in Washington, but when it happens to your own home town or district, it is an entirely different matter!
Imagine, then, what running for office must be like when there is some element of corruption to deal with along the way.
Tom's experiences in a county supervisor race illustrate the awesome challenge involved. Becoming a candidate more or less as a response to a dare, Tom quickly finds out what corruption and politics can do when they are solidly joined together. His experience brought him total ruin. Not only was his privacy violated, not only did he lose his job, but he lost the election by about 90% of the votes!
At the heart of his opponent's attack was a carefully timed smear about Tom's divorce and personal tragedy over an almost unwitting involvement in a gang rape. Tom realized all the time that publication of this information would ruin his chances for winning completely; however, he never thought that his opponents had the necessary political clout to unearth the complete story from the records. Tom failed to adequately research his opposition. While Tom relied on sensible issues and democratic gestures of sharing the power for his campaign, the opposition had an organization much as that described by Stephen Shad-egg in his book How to Win an Election:
No campaign manager ... can wage an intelligent offensive until he has equipped himself with every shred of available information about his opponent. ... It is necessary to employ a research staff with highly specialized competence.
A librarian with the ability to organize the information so that it will be instantly available should be placed in charge of the files. A lawyer, newspaperman or someone skilled in investigating, who is capable of going behind the public information, should be selected to develop the personal history of the opposing candidate.
Shadegg goes on to describe how a special staff is formed whose sole purpose is providing the campaign manager and candidate with any pertinent information regarding the other candidate which might have some influence on the outcome of the election. In addition, another staff is assigned the duty of constantly monitoring all advertisements and campaign literature that comes out of the other camp, to determine how best to reply to charges and also how to take advantage of policy slip-ups which the other candidate may have made in the literature.
Tom may have also benefited from some campaign literature that would have helped build up some support for his position as an "honest candidate." Part of the effectiveness of his opponent's smear would no doubt have been nullified if Tom had adequately prepared the constituency in advance. Since he was a political "unknown" with no past record to show the public. Tom's only chance at success was to build up an image of himself as an able and sincere candidate, the kind of man who would bring many benefits to the county. With a full-scale publicity campaign behind him, the last minute smear charges would, to many voters, have seemed unbelievable.
Especially important would have been a competently prepared campaign biography designed to dispel any rumor of immorality in his past. Every election is filled with all sorts of propaganda, from all sorts of groups and organizations, but the campaign biography probably does more than any other sort of advertising to build up a positive image for a candidate. As William Brown states in his book on the presidential election process The People's Choice:
Less boisterous than the songs, less spectacular than the banners and torchlights, less stirring than the oratory and the slogans, the campaign biography endures, gathering dust on library shelves. But of equal importance with its less ephemeral nature is the fact that it provides the most extensive amount of information about the candidate that is furnished to the voter in a single package during a campaign.
Almost all campaign biographies look alike, they all claim the same virtues and strengths for their candidates, they all try to associate the candidate with the best interests of the people. As Brown explains: "They are engaged in the creation of a symbol-a symbol compounded of a large number of the ideas, beliefs, images, ideals, and emotions that the American public reveres ... they create out of the raw material of the candidate's real life the biography of an ideal citizen of the Republic."
Tom's entire campaign could be said to have been run on a surprise basis. Tom didn't actively pursue the nomination, he didn't actively pursue the office, and when he was presented with the possibility of a smear unless he withdrew, he didn't bother to realize that the opposition meant business. This is not the way to run a political campaign, and anyone who thinks that only honesty and a sense of competency is needed to run for office in this country has been sadly misinformed as to the true nature of the political process in this country.
For the average citizen, success in politics is impossible without some capital and organization. Also crucial is the effect a good campaign manager has on the outcome of the election. In many ways, the campaign manager who has had some professional experience is a better source of vote-getting power than even the candidate himself. As David Rosenbloom puts it in his book on campaign managers, The Election Men:
The managers believe that they understand the needs of the campaign much better than the candidate. Indeed they may. Most professional managers have been involved in many more campaigns than the candidates. They think that candidates who interfere with running the campaigns are foolish and they resent the amateurism of candidates.
In short, elections are won not by candidates, but by politicians. The American citizen can participate in the electoral process and run for office if he wants to, but he can't approach the system with a naive attitude. This is why most politicians now in office have had substantial careers either in law or business, where the give and take of the manipulation of power can be learned and absorbed.
Minority groups have the same kind of problems that Tom faced when vying for political power within the system. Women, for instance, when organized into a political caucus, often become factors at the national political conventions, but because they lack knowledge of the parliamentary procedures and behind-the-scenes manipulations that go on during the convention, they find that their votes, supposedly given only for issues and candidates which favor the political advancement of women, somehow get lost in the procedures.
During the Democratic campaign of 1972, for instance, the women's caucus decided to test their power at the convention by attempting to change the apportionment of the various state delegations to reflect a more pro-female basis. They picked one state, South Carolina, where they felt anti-female discrimination was at its most noticeable level. The McGovern forces, wishing to please the women's caucus, decided to make the apportionment of the South Carolina delegation a procedural issue to come to vote before the convention.
However, the vote, when it did come, was more of a test of how many convention delegates the McGovern forces had sewn up than it was a test of the power of the women's caucus. The McGovern forces, hoping to give their opposition a false impression of their number of delegates, decided that it would be best if they lost the vote on the South Carolina delegation apportionment. So the women lost their influence at the convention, not because of any issue, but purely for tactical reasons on the part of the McGovern forces.
Because the anti-McGovern forces thought, by the loss on the South Carolina vote, that McGovern didn't yet have the convention sewed up, they failed to take special precautions against an early vote for the Presidential nomination, which McGovern won handily, now that his delegates were permitted to vote for him.
CHAPTER THREE
On the Backs of Envelopes
It was during one of those campaigns back in 1968 that Ishmael-let's call him Ishmael-got his baptism of fire in political campaigning. He was one of "the team" backing up this local guy running for a congressional seat. Ishmael felt himself in the halls of statesmanship, the corridors of power.
"I've got my fingers," he said one evening after four martinis straight up, "on the pulse of the American mainstream." Ishmael was a tireless worker, a good man despite such frequently hashed metaphors. He was an even six feet, spoke straight from the shoulder, and had a firm handshake and a disarming Elvis Presley smile that won over men and matrons alike. He set up drinks for the house on his twenty-first birthday. Having thus blown his expenses and salary for the week, he lived on hors d'oeuvres and ice water for three days. "Horse doovres," he smiled with a waggish wink, and bummed cigarettes.
During that week he initiated hot macaroni and cheese casseroles and sturdy mounds of chopped liver for the goodie table. He loved chopped liver on seedless rye. Kosher dills and German potato salad. "Fewer frills," he admonished. But the public taste demanded barbecue chips and onion dip.
"Fresh fruit," he muttered the second day of his hors d'oeuvres diet. Shaving, he checked the whites of his eyes in the mirror. He bared his teeth and poked at his gums with a finger. "Fresh milk."
That afternoon, after the speech, there was fresh fruit on the goodie table. Crisp Jonathan apples, Washington delicious, oranges, bananas, grapes-"Union picked, I presume," said someone. And burnished crystal pitchers of ice-cold fresh milk. Which was a nice touch since the speech had been made in an area known for its dairy products.
"Jesus, I hate chopped liver," said the candidate to one of his aides. Ishmael's eternal smile froze for the briefest instant. He didn't set up drinks for the house again.
But the casseroles and the chopped liver remained a staple of serve-yourself buffet. For Ishmael had a winning way with every damn female he met. The young ones-those between fifteen and thirty-regarded him with idolatry or lust. The older ones wanted to fatten him up or talk about his education. Those girls on the team who were charged with setting up the buffet and goodies had taken a special proprietary interest in Ishmael. "Ishie," they called him, and patted him on his firm tummy. They were always straightening his wide tie, purple, brown, and yellow, inspired by some designer's acid trip, no doubt.
The girls. They would come, I suppose, under the heading of public relations, although one heard an occasional pun about that. Two of the girls did have degrees in political science and were frequently to be heard discussing demographic charts and statistics. They were dedicated young ladies, and hard put to find the time to get their clothes dry-cleaned as often as they perhaps should have. They gave off strong aromas of White Shoulders and Mitsuko.
One of these-Tanya, she called herself-was not, however, inured to Ishmael's bear-cub appeal. Tanya wore her dark hair in a rather severe ponytail, drawn back tightly from her forehead. She stood around at the buffet gatherings, her green eyes flicking constantly around the room, occasionally flashing a fierce Eastern European smile, holding a martini in one hand and smoking cigarettes with a controlled vehemence picked up from some early Bette Davis film. Once in a rare while, if you happened to be standing next to her at the onion dip, you might hear her mutter, in response to some particularly witless remark by the candidate across the room: "Oh fuck," just before she popped a piece of zwieback into her sweetly smiling mouth.
Ishmael was an assistant to the press relations man, or something like that, and considered it his duty to listen assiduously to whoever wanted to spout off about anything at these little informal bashes-"keeping the ear to the grass roots," he called it. If one were more selective in his eavesdropping, one might pick up all sorts of insights into human nature.
One night after a speech to the chamber of commerce they went back to the hospitality suite with a select group of local tycoons and potential contributors to our candidate's chances. A quick check showed there'd be about twelve or fifteen rather oiled and noisy tycoons to eat the chips and swill the booze. A call to the "Greeter Girls" made sure that there would be booze, ice, goodies, and girls to greet.
The Greeter Girls, now, performed peripheral, but essential, functions. They made, uh, people feel welcome. If the affair was a big one, they wore outfits of red, white, and blue. If there were going to be a lot of German-Americans, for example, they would wear dirndls. Polish-Americans, something Polish. Irish-Americans, something neutral between green and orange. Smile a lot and avoid all serious discussion. But they, too, kept their "ear close to the heartbeat of America," as Ishmael unwittingly put it once.
There were three in particular who had more generous expense accounts than the other girls. Of course the candidate had no inkling of that arrangement. There were very few who knew about them, the girls, or the arrangement.
One of them was about forty-late thirties maybe-but could have passed for twenty-five or so. There were special plans for her-special plans in what some people might call the "dirty tricks department." She was very well built and possessed a well-preserved shape. Roz, let's call her. Her field was political science, post-graduate, of a very basic nature.
Another was Martie-Martine she called herself, but Martie for short. She was a hand shaker and palm tickler. Had this trick of shaking your hand and drawing her fingertips across your palm as she pulled away. Used to drive guys wild. Sweet, innocent-looking, dimple-cheeked, flaxen-haired Martie. Looked milk-fed and barely old enough to vote. She had, in fact, been born and raised in Cicero, Illinois, where her dad had been found one day in a field with several holes and a few slugs in him. She'd gone to a school of hard knocks in South Chicago. Looking at her dimples, her big blue eyes, and lily-of-the-valley complexion, though, you'd never guess it.
She and Tanya got along great. Martie admired Tanya's mind, her tough wit, her refusal to cater to anyone, Tanya, for her part, got a charge out of Martie's acting ability, saw right away through the dimples and big blue eyes. One evening, early on the campaign trail, standing by the usual spot near the bourbon bottle, one could overhear Tanya and Martie conversing at the onion dip, catching a snippet of talk here and there. At one point, Tanya laughed throatily and said, "Martie, what a lovely fraud you are." Martie regarded her with an expressionless face and blue eyes gone suddenly cold. Then she, too, laughed, and said, "Well, at least I'm lovely. And from you that's something." Both girls laughed and got along famously from then on.
When the group arrived that night from the banquet hall, the hospitality suite was buzzing warmly with an atmosphere that made you think the Greeter Girls had been preparing festivities for an hour. The girls' costumes, you noted, were miniskirts or patriotically chic pantsuits. Roz, in particular, looked ravishing in well-tailored blue blazer and tight red-pants. She had an outfit of red blazer and blue pants for less casual gatherings. Martie and a couple other Greeter Girls had thrown on sweaters and miniskirts.
They'd been wakened out of an early sleep and were trying their best to be bright, alert, and cheerful. All of them were trying, that is, except Tanya, who never tried to be anything but herself, and Martie, whose polite face showed signs of strain until she'd thrown down three quick martinis. One might almost think that she'd been roused from some between-the-sheets activity other than sleep. And if you had a soft spot in your heart for her, that spot might have felt a twinge.
And if your heart had felt a twinge, you too might have thrown down four quick bourbon and waters.
Ishmael was there, looking somewhat more fuckily bear-cubbish than usual. He was coming down with sniffles, and his eyes were red. He hadn't eaten much, at dinner, of the tough roast beef and library-paste potatoes. He was sipping steadily on Scotch and beginning to sweat. He was listening earnestly to some young chamber of commerce type whose collar was too tight for him.
The grown-ups were gathered in a corner over drinks and cigars. Ah, one reflected, the smoke-filled room, the corridors of power. How alone one felt in them at times.
"Great speech tonight, hey, Luke?"
"Right on, it was."
Tanya, breaking away from the cigar-smoking group, made for the zwieback and onion dip, passing Martie on the way. As she passed she turned to where Ishmael and the chamber of commerce were close in deep consultation. She made a pouty love-bite motion at him, flaring her nostrils. Martie laughed, stifling most of the noise but nearly spilling her drink.
"I know what you mean," said Martie in a low voice that was barely audible at the bourbon bottle. "I'd like to sit on that Apollo face for about twenty minutes just to see if the muscles in his neck-"
"Went up into his head?" inquired Tanya bitchy-sweetly.
They both chuckled.
"Well, yes, in a way," said Martie. "If he's got muscles like that in his tongue-"
"Yes, yes," said Tanya. "Maybe we could work out some sort of time-sharing plan on that body. The poor boy. All work and no play. He's coming down with a cold. He needs exercise."
They talked in near-whispers for a few moments.
Sometimes one had enough of politics and might be excused for sneaking out of the hospitality suite to grab a couple quick belts at the bar where the talk is more likely to center around the football season, the noontime squash game, or the merits of dichondra in the lawn. One might be forgiven for grabbing eight or ten quick belts to relax before falling into bed. And one might even be forgiven for staggering into the wrong room, Martie's room, especially when her room was right next to one's own and her door had been left open.
And if one realized his mistake only on hanging up his jacket and seeing that the other hangers were hung with women's clothes, and if one furthermore heard the approach of whispered voices in the hallway, could one not be excused for slipping into the closet and sliding the door almost closed, leaving a half inch of space where one might view the goings-on in the room, especially when one was in politics, where, as in love and war, all is fair? One could, one tends to think.
Martie and Ishmael came in quietly, talking in low voices. Martie closed the door, locked it.
"Now, Ishie, you just lie down and take off your shoes."
"No, really, Martie, I don't feel tired at all." He was perspiring. Dumb oaf.
"Ishie, I don't want to hear any arguments from you." Martie loosened his tie, took off his jacket, pushed him gently onto the bed, and took off his shoes. "You are going to come down with one helluva cold if you don't take care of yourself." She smiled at him, innocently. "And then what would happen to our grass-roots listening post?"
Ishie sniffled.
"Now you lie back while I get a couple of cold tablets."
She undid his collar and he lay back.
He watched her as she walked to the bathroom, her hips rolling and her thighs whispering against each other. He relaxed and yawned.
There was the sound of running water from the bathroom. Then a splash.
"Darn," came Martie's voice.
"What happened?" said Ish.
"Nothing. You just relax now."
Maybe the running water had done it. The kidneys in the closet suddenly began to feel the urge to be tapped, the bladder to feel uncomfortable. Jesus, there was a hatbox on the floor. And a make-up case. Waterproof?
"Here now," said Martie. "You take these."
Ish sat up and was about to say something.
"And I don't want to hear any arguments," Martie said firmly, although arguing was probably not what Ish had in mind.
Martie was wearing, when she came out of the bathroom a sort of tie-on halter bra about the size of two finger-bowl doilies, and a towel that covered her from her hip line to just low enough.
"But what-Why-" Ish was flustered.
"I spilled water on me." She popped the pills into Ishie's open mouth.
The full bladder in the closet was forgotten.
Martie had the kind of body the Chicago strip joints used to flip over when a chick had it. Nice, balloon-y tits, but not cow-like. What people used to call like "tits on a heifer," or maybe like a balloon that was only half blown up, kind of pear-like, where the small end of the pear was the crowning nipple flesh of the tit, and the nipple itself poked out like the last knuckle of your finger. Of course, you couldn't see the nipples, with those finger-bowl doilies on them, but you could see them pushing out the material of the halter and you knew they were there.
Then there was the soft rise of plumpish tummy flesh that rolled out over the top of the towel, not in a roll of lard but in a firm ridge of pattable, kissable, teen-like tummy. The hips were wide, generous, made to bear and swing a lot of weight The ass was what one might justifiably call a work of art. Proud, high, firm, with the ass cleft beginning high up and wedging out in a secret dampness wherein nestled honey-colored hair that gave off a heady aroma of cornfields in August covered with maple syrup.
How did bursting bladder in the closet, hiding and spying, know this? Because bursting bladder had peeled Martie like an onion. Under the layer of baby blue eyes, carefully nurtured for public consumption, was a thin layer of sadism and masochism. And under that was a substantial thickness of philosopher and wit, and at the core was a center of still frightened, lost little girl, who had loved her daddy and couldn't understand how anybody could be so mean as to shoot him six times and dump him in a cold and lonely field.
Yes, Martie's ass and her thighs, her legs, were all of them works of art. Upon which one was wont to seize in moments of approaching rapture and lift and heft and squeeze and perhaps-of the legs, at least, the knees-to press back against the straining shoulders so as to get a clear shot for the final battering-ram strokes, the ones that would make her baby-blue eyes widen in lust and amazement and finally roll back in her head while the throbbing veins in her neck testified to the pressure of passion in her climaxing cardiovascular system.
So bursting bladder spied, and spying the look of venery he'd known, stifled his whimpering in the closet.
There, by God-over in the corner-an empty gin bottle. Beefeater, by the looks of it. Which was not surprising, since Beefeater was the brand Mark always had for the goodie table. Mark, as we shall call him, was the hospitality chairman, among whose duties it was to know people-people like Ishmael and Tanya, or like Roz and Martie, and who always saw to it that some potential large contributor's favorite brand of booze was conspicuously on the goodie table, and his favorite brand of Greeter Girl conspicuously on hand to greet and swell his ego.
Oh shit. There was a good half inch of gin in the bottle. Martie was now seated on the edge of the bed, smoothing Ishie's brow. And-ooooh!-her raised leg had lifted the towel so as to present a panoramic beaver shot to the crack in the closet door. Oh, lucky closet-door crack; oh, unlucky Ishmael sniffling and sweating on the bed.
Bursting bladder tilted the gin bottle up and drained the fiery liquid in two gulps. He unzipped his fly to relieve his bladder into the now empty gin bottle.
"Hey! What-" came Ishmael's voice from beyond the crack in the closet door.
The bursting bladder was forgotten. The voyeur was involved. Or was it the consummate politician, observing, taking mental notes?
"Just relax, Ishie," came the sweet, baby-blue-eyes voice as Martie sprawled over Ishmael, pressing her pear-shaped heifer tits against him, throwing a thigh atop his groin to reveal a panorama of pink and honey crotch where angels sang and incense burned in every fold.
"What're you doing?" asked Ishmael idiotically. "I'm seducing you, dummy," said Martie in a low, sweet voice.
"Oh." His bear-cubbish hands relaxed on her shoulders.
Now that he'd gotten his calloused fingers on the pulsebeat of that one, he'd decided to find out what the pulse said.
"Put your ear to the grass roots, dummy," thought bursting bladder in the closet.
"I swear, Ishie," said Martie, "you'd think you never had a girl before in your life.
"I'm just not used to drinking so much Scotch."
"You mean you're embarrassed, or incapable?" Martie reached a practiced hand to Ishmael's belt and undid the buckle, unzipped the fly, probed beneath the waistband of decorative boxer shorts.
Ishmael gave an "umphf I" and grabbed the headboard with both hands. But Martie had him in a four-point pin-both hands on his shoulders, a thigh on his groin, and warm, moist lips pressing firmly on his mouth. There was no escape, and Ishmael relaxed by slow degrees.
By degrees not so slow, his manhood poked from the fly of his boxer shorts-Marie had lifted her thigh to stretch out beside him and hump his hipbone while she probed in his ear with her tongue-and rose to impressive proportions
Martie deftly unbuttoned his shirt. She pulled it over his shoulders with his T-shirt. She buried her face in the bear-cubby hair on his chest and went. "Hnnnnh."
Ishmael, with awkward bicycling motions of his legs, was managing to get his pants off. His arms were cooperating with him now, and they roamed over Martie's supple body, caressed the pink and milky flesh. He unbuttoned, at last, the halter she wore. Her towel had already been dropped by defter and more practiced fingers.
Then she caught sight of Ishie's erection waving proudly in the air.
"Good Christ!" she said. She grabbed the sides and back of his shorts and pulled them over his ass. At least he raised himself a little to help her. Then slowly, gently, she lifted the fly over his stiff dick and pulled the front of his shorts down to his thighs.
One might be forgiven a pang of jealousy at seeing the rampaging manhood of youth with which one had been so prodigal many birthdays ago.
Martie, in one quick, no-nonsense move, whipped Ishmael's shorts off and threw them across the room, where they landed with a whiffy whisper of Old Spice at the foot of the crack in the closet door.
"Jesus, what a cock!" said Martie. Then she gave a throaty laugh. "You're not incapable at all."
"It's the Scotch," said Ish. "Maybe I'm coming down with a cold. Hey, I hope I don't give you my cold."
Martie eyed him with a venereal leer. "We'll see if we can't come up with something."
She picked up a bottle of baby oil from the bedside table and applied a few drops between her milk-and-honey tits. She threw herself across Ishie's thigh and, holding one glistening breast in each hand, squeezed his erection between them and hobbled them up and down. Ish groaned. His heavy balls danced in his scrotum.
"You like?" Martie grinned.
"I like," he panted.
She applied her pouty, sweet lips to the red knob of Ish's cock and with a few bobs of her head had half his pole glistening in the soft light from the corner lamp.
"Hdh-oooh!" said Ishmael.
"Feel good, huh?"
"Feels fantastic!"
She eyed his genitals hungrily, dandled his "Large scrotum in her hand, caressed his loins and chest. She applied her mouth to his erection again, swirling a tongue that made bulges in her cheeks and plopping sounds when it slipped out between her avidly working lips.
Slowly, keeping a steady up-and-down, going on his tool, she eased her thighs around till they were pressing against his shoulder. With a gentle move she lifted one rose-and-cream thigh and slid it across his face.
"Hey, what-" said idiot.
"What what?" said Martie, licking the length of his shaft with a practiced, trembling tongue. "What are you doing?"
"I'm sticking your cock." There was an edge of annoyance in her sweet voice. "But, I mean-"
"What do you mean?" with a gentle hump of her mons against his breastbone, and a trembling application of tongue to his frenum.
"Your legs are ... they're in the wrong position."
Martie lifted her head from Ish's groin and stared into the distance for a second or two. Then she wheeled off his body, being careful to keep a gentle tickle going at his scrotum.
"Ishmael," she said sweetly. "How many girls have you been with before?"
"Oh lots," he said. "Four."
"I mean, you've made love. You slept with them, as the saying goes."
"Oh, yeah."
"But, you know, that doesn't really mean sleeping with them."
"Yeah. I know."
"But, Ish, honey. You mean you've never eaten pussy before? You never licked some lucky girl's cunt?"
"Oh. No."
She gave an angelic smile touched with venery.
"Well." She stroked his penis. "You have come to the right person for your first lesson in pussy licking." She knelt and crawled forward, letting his eyes glide over the firm flesh of her belly, the corn silk hair of her mons.
"I dunno," said idiot.
"If you don't know, it's about time you found out, Ishmael." She spoke slowly and gently, sweetly as one might speak to a six-year-old boy. "There's nothing dirty about it. You know that, don't you?"
"Well, yeah. I've heard a lot of guys talk about it."
"I've got a confession to make, Ishie."
"Yeah?" He watched the approaching thatch of corn silk hair as though it might suddenly jump out and pinch him.
"When I was in the bathroom, I really didn't spill water all over myself."
"No?"
"I washed my pussy with soap and water, so it'd be nice and fresh and sweet for you."
"For me?"
"Who else, dummy?" She hoisted a leg and straddled his chest.
His eyes grew wide. In spite of himself, he ran his hands over her silky flanks, cupped her firm and proudly nippled heifer breasts. She moaned.
"You're learning fast, Ishie," she said. She settled her work-of-art ass more firmly on the bear-cub hair of his chest. Her crotch left a glistening trail as it slithered toward his chin.
"It smells like-" He sniffed, and sniffed again.
The idiot sneezed.
Martie's body stiffened. She spread her thighs and lowered her head to see what sneezy hachoo might have sullied her freshly washed cornsilk pubes. None apparently.
"Sorry," sniffled idiot. "But it smells like."
"Like cunt, Ishmael." She pushed her pubes closer to his trembling lips. "Like clean, fresh pussy. That you're dying to lick, I can just tell."
"It smells like perfume. That's what made me sneeze-"
"Oh God!" said Martie with an exquisite amalgam of impatience, disgust, and passion. She lifted her ass forward abruptly and applied the petals of her labia to Ishmael's chin. "Now stick out your tongue and lick right at the top of that nice, pretty slit!"
The tone of her voice brooked no delay.
Ishmael snaked out about four inches of tongue and applied it vigorously to the upper crevices and folds of her sweet twat.
A gasp broke from Martie's lips. Her body shuddered all over.
"Hot shit!" she exclaimed. "I've got me the tongue of a horny bull. Oh, hot shit, hot shit, hot shit!"
She lifted herself on her hands, ground her crotch heavily into Ishmael's face. The sloshing and slurping, the gasps and groans, were quite audible at the crack in the closet door.
"Those fucking muscles do go all the way into your head," she cried.
One feared she might be heard down the hall.
As if to confirm those fears, the door to the room opened swiftly and a shadowy figure hurried inside and closed the door with only the tiniest click of a sound. The figure approached the bed. Bursting bladder in the closet wondered what to do.
"Good Christ," said the shadowy figure, no longer so shadowy now. "I just knew he was hung like a bull."
It was Tanya, arriving like some succubus that had been waiting in the wings for its cue.
She began to undress with a rapidity that was truly startling. Zip, snap, plump, thump, and she was standing in the middle of the floor naked as the day she was born.
"Huh, what-" blubbered Ishmael, pulling his mouth from the slobber of Martie's crotch.
"It's only Tanya," said Martie with a touch of desperation in her voice. She tried to press her glowing labia to Ishmael's tongue again.
"But," insisted idiot, "what's she doing here?" He strained his neck to see around Martie's enveloping firm thighs.
"She wants to fuck you, dummy. Now shut up and eat me!"
"But," spluttered Ish, "this is highly irregular!"
"Ishmael," said Martie in a steely voice. "Now don't be a party pooper. Don't you like to fuck, for God's sake?"
"Yeah, but-"
"But, nothing!" gritted Martie. "Unless it's my butt you want."
Whereupon she scooted herself forward, spread the work-of-art cheeks of her ass, and settled her anus firmly on Ishmael's protesting mouth. He continued to make noises, but they were not so protesting now. The bastard was really learning fast. He loved to eat cunt. He was a natural. His erection throbbed mightily in the soft light.
"Good Christ!" shouted Martie.
"Jesus God," said Tanya in reverence.
Though Tanya was as naked as the day she was born, she was by no stretch of the imagination built the way she was at that time of happy parturition.
How she had managed to conceal a figure like that during the weeks of campaigning, bursting bladder in the closet was at a loss to explain.
Her tits were not as heifer-like or milk-and-roses as Martie's, but they were also high .and firm, tipped with dark, date-like nipples. Her waist and hips, her belly, showed signs that she might well have done gymnastics for extracurricular relaxation, in between her classes in statistics and political science.
She had a dancer's legs. The legs of a jazz or ballet dancer. Not as long and lithe, as Martie's, but with rippling muscles that promised pneumatic ecstasy to anyone lucky enough to fall between them.
"God," she groaned. "Sweet, hot, thick, huge, throbbing cock!" And she threw herself on the bed, rubbing her erect nipples along Ish's hairy thighs, cradling his heavy scrotum in tender hands, tonguing the plum-purple glans with loving kindness.
Martie had by now settled her crotch solidly on Ish's face and was washing her pussy around on him with revolving motions of her powerful hips. She humped forward a couple times, making squealing noises. There was a sheen of sweat on her shoulders.
"Good Christ Almighty," she said, "you've got to try this hunk of tongue first chance you get,"
"In good time, Martine, in good time. First things first."
She straddled Ish's thighs, eased the plum-like head of his dick into the thick tangle of black pubic bush that thatched her crotch.
Slowly, slowly, one could see the impressive pole disappear into the bush-inch by veiny inch-until the balls were snugged up tight against Tanya's generous pudenda. And Tanya's eyes grew wide in smoky green disbelief, her jaw sagged.
"God," she said hoarsely. "I don't know if I can take all this cock."
"Whoo-ooooo!" rasped Martie, flailing her crotch onto Ish's chin, "give me about two more seconds and I'll take it!" She humped and whaled. "I'll take a prize yearling bull in about two seconds! Yes, Ish, yet!"
"Never mind," said Tanya, settling more comfortably onto Ish's tool, her body relaxing, her pelvis beginning a slow primeval surge. Her face folded into an expression of relaxed ecstasy. She closed her eyes and communed with far-off Eastern European orgies. Her long, dark hair fell over her shoulders and tossed from side to side as she humped.
"Hmpf-Hmph!/" went Ishmael, grunting his passion into Martie's soggy crotch. He began to pump with his hips and Tanya posted her heaving stallion with dreamy venery.
Martie turned suddenly with an alacrity that was surprising. She stuck her glorious ass out and tilted her pelvis at an angle that must've pressed her pubic bone sharply against Ishmael's chin. Her mouth opened and the veins in her neck throbbed.
Ishmael reached, up with both hands and grabbed her pear-ballooned, heifer-nippled tits and squeezed them in an increasingly rapid rhythm.
Tanya twirled her ass around until she looked more like a belly dancer than a statistician. The dreamy look turned to one of urgency. Both girls were facing the same direction now, riding the humping, heaving frame of Ishmael, one-Martie-pressing her ass-jutting crotch with intense concentration onto his noisy face, the other-Tanya-whipping turgid cunt along raging cock with lolloping strokes that threatened to wrench his cock from its foundations. Both were busy with their fingers in their respective ass-holes or clitorises.
It was then one noticed the red, white, and blue sign across the street, blinking through the half-open blinds, added its own qualities of unreality to the ruttish scene.
With gasps, groans, and a muffled yell the trio vaulted into climax. There were wet slappings and breathy shuddering.
"Lick it! Suck it! Fuck--Hoh! Shii-iii-iiii!"
"Ohmigod, omigod-oh! my! God."
"Mmmmm-mmmph ! "
It seemed as though Martie would dislocate Ishie's nose or jaw. She shuddered and bumped uncontrollably on his face. Tanya, gripping Ishie's sturdy knees for leverage, thudded her pubes and pelvis into his groin, moaning every time his heavy scrotum twitched in ecstasy. A paste began to ooze from the hairy, pink connection.
As the trio vaulted, writhed and finally drooped in enervating climax, the flashing sign across the street gave expressive counterpoint.
Martie rolled off Ishmael's face with a sigh, revealing a red and slightly roughened but unbruised visage. Ishie wore a gluey, glowy smile.
"Jesus, Ishie," said Martie, smoothing his rumpled hair, "what a tongue you've got!"
Ishie smiled and sighed. Bursting bladder suddenly wanted desperately to piss into the gin bottle.
"The cock is rather first-rate, too," mused Tanya sleepily. "My little old honey-pot is full of warm come."
Ishie began to snore softly and bursting bladder gritted his teeth.
Within minutes the sleepy threesome was snoring in happy concert. Bursting bladder could hold it no longer. Figuring the noise would cover any tinkling sound he made, he let go into the gin bottle. When he'd pissed a fifth or so, he sphinctered himself off and sighed with deep relief.
He tucked the bottle under his Hart, Schaffner, and Marx jacket, tippy-toed to the door, and let himself out with scarcely a noise. He found an exit stairway and set the pissfull gin bottle in an out-of-the-way corner where whoever found it could blame it on the party of the opposing candidate as well as on theirs.
Feeling rather sobered and in need of another quick nightcap to insure sleep, he went up a flight to the floor where the hospitality booth was. One or two drunken stragglers were weaving homeward at the late hour, but no one recognized him as a member of his candidate's team.
Who should he suddenly see rounding the corner, three sheets to the wind, but Roz, walking steadily and swing-hipped, albeit unfocused, old pro that she was. He felt a clutch of lust in his middle.
"Roz, baby," he said, throwing an arm carelessly around her waist.
"Hi, doll," she said, focusing and recognizing him.
"Been busy?" he asked politely.
She eyed him unsurely for a second, then apparently decided that no insult was meant. "No," she sighed. "Just boozing a lot."
"Tired?" he asked solicitously.
She nodded.
"But not sleepy?" he suggested with a tight smile.
She eyed him warily, then smiled. "Oh, baby, I thought you'd never get around to it. I've got a soft spot for you, you know?"
"And I've got a hard spot for you. Your place, or mine?"
She laughed. "Yours. You know mine is bugged."
So was found his evening of love that night. It was intense and lusty, inventive and professional, with no word spoken except for a lioness growl and grip when Roz was seized by climax. She kissed him in sisterly fashion as he left.
"It's not often I get such a bang out of politics," she smiled.
It was then that he heard about the plan being evolved for the next night or two, a plan involving Roz and one of the chief aides in the camp of the opposition candidate. It was a plan straight out of the bag of dirty tricks, a bag toted around by the teams of both candidates.
"Now, doll," said Roz, "he's got a wife and kids and he's a sweet guy. So see if you can ask around-discreetly-and squelch this thing before it gets finalized." Roz was a cliche-the pro with a heart of gold.
The next night, lurking around the goodie table, keeping his ear to the pulse of his own campaign team, he probed to discover any plans afoot for the sweet-guy aide with a wife and kids. He could find out nothing discreetly, so, being unwilling to come right out and discover anything discreetly, found out nothing. Roz would have to go along with whatever nefarious plan was "finalized."
He did, however, discover that Tanya had ears that were very sharp when it came to listening to political pulse beats. She sidled up to him at the bourbon bottle.
"I saw you last night, lead foot," she said quietly. "Sneaking out of our room. I didn't know it was one of your jobs to spy on the staff."
Her fierce Eastern European look faded as she listened to his story-that he had expected to find Martie returning alone and had hidden when he heard voices approaching the room. She eyed him with something approaching sympathy.
"Must've been kind of rough on you. Or was it?"
"It was-what shall say-not pleasant, but instructive."
"On the backs of envelopes, Abe," she said. And explained that that was what Abe Lincoln's public relations men told him when he insisted on making notes on lined legal paper. "On the backs of envelopes. It gives that homey touch." Good for the public image.
"Sometimes," he mused, "PR men have to attend to private as well as public images."
Tanya then came up with a happy plan for nipping in the bud any longer affair between Martie and Ishmael. She herself would keep him so occupied, in the nights to come, that he wouldn't want to look at another female, much less go to bed with her.
He gave her a brotherly pat on the fanny. "You're okay, kid."
She wiggled her butt. "On the backs of envelopes, Abe. On the backs of envelopes. Remember that."
The following night found him, therefore, pleading exhaustion and leaving the hospitality suite early. He went to Martie's room and waited in the dark, stretched out on the bed, anticipating her return. It was with some heat that he again scuttled for the closet when he heard voices approaching.
He watched as two vague forms undressed swiftly and rolled into bed. He listened, aching, able to glimpse the two bodies only when the Eat-Dance-Liquor sign across the street flashed on its brightest. Rather like watching some strange rite being performed under strobe lights.
"Oh, Jesus, you're great!" one could hear Ishmael sigh.
Young bastard had really picked up the rules of the game in two days.
"You're fantastic," said she in a throaty voice.
It seemed as though one of the two girls really had picked up Ishmael's cold in the past day or so. I couldn't be sure if it was Martie or Tanya, the voice was so phlegmy. And the blue of the lights outside rendered hair and skin tones a sort of odd phosphorescent. It was, however, not unattractive. If one limited one's scope of attention to the thud and slap of crotch against crotch, cock into cunt.
It did, in fact, seem like the juncture of privates must belong to Ishmael and Tanya, and not Ishmael and Martie, because the thatch that kept rotating in ever-faster circles was not a corn silk tuft, but seemed indeed to be the more generous black bush of Tanya.
Perhaps that was why one could observe with a certain amount of scientific detachment, could think the sight was not really unattractive. Amusing perhaps. Certainly more amusing than standing in the closet with a bursting bladder.
"Jesus fucking Christ," came a groan, "don't chew my tits off." More thrashings and heavings. "Stick a finger up my ass-hole. Now!"
One remarked on Tanya's coincidental education in the last day or two. Perhaps they had been bringing each other along in their spare moments after hours.
One found that thought consoling.
With something bordering between a shriek and a death rattle, whirling bush came, thudding her red and blue glowing pubes with frantic energy against Ishmael's groin.
Ishmael gave a deep moan that an observer could almost feel in his gut and gave a heave that almost threw twirling bush off the bed.
After several seconds of gaspings and shuddering, there, was only an easy-breathing silence in the room, with an occasional gurgle or liquid plop.
At last, there was the restful snoring of Ishmael.
A figure rose from the bed, dressed. "Jesus, sometimes I really like this work." And disappeared out the door into the hallway.
That was the first inkling that anyone had that there might have been a case of mistaken identity.
The next day, when the film from the infrared camera was developed, what was viewed on the film were not the thrashings and moral turpitude of our campaign opponent's chief aide in the arms of Roz, our. secret weapon, but the bear-cub passion and springtime lust of Ishmael and a newly vigorous Roz, who walked around sparkling all that day.
Ishmael was "Let go" the day after. Roz was instructed to try again-and try more carefully this time.
When one next sidled up to Tanya and affectionately patted her bottom b.v the onion dip, she smiled and said:
"On the hacks of envelopes, Abe."
* * *
Pegging the candidate of the opposing party on a morals charge is a surefire way to eliminate his threat at the polls. Unfortunately for the smear artists and campaign tacticians, most candidates don't immediately go to bed with the first girl who makes a pass at them. Besides, morals charges, particularly those relating to sex, just aren't that scandalous anymore, and many people are suspicious of those who are quick to point out the sexual behavior or eccentricities (short of homosexuality) of public figures.
The morals charge, when it is concretely witnessed and attested to, damages a candidate's public image. However, if the charge can be easily disputed, or if its nature is such that people won't take it very seriously, then the party which brings up the charge and tries to exploit it during the campaign runs a serious risk of having the charge backfire, to the detriment of their own candidate's public personality and image. As Frank Jonas states, in his text on political smear artists, Political-Dynamiting: "Going too far to damn a public figure, painting him so utterly black (or red) as to defy belief, is where political dynamiting is most likely to fall apart."
There are numerous ways to exploit a morals charge. The best and most effective is to simply let someone representing the media "discover" the evidence and print or broadcast the information as if it were a product of his own reporting. This can be done easily if the information you've uncovered is really newsworthy-for instance, if you've got evidence that an anti-gambling candidate enjoys gambling.
If the information you have is not really explosive, but still .possibly damaging, then you can "Leak" the information to the media through the process of the "anonymous tipster." Although many newspapers won't print news stories submitted by a tipster, they will think much more sincerely about printing it if they have a photograph or some other physical evidence to back up your claim.
Of course, the paper itself, as a business enterprise with political leanings, must be sympathetic to your cause. All too often, however, the newspaper is only too glad to get some newsworthy material about a political candidate. The depth of reporting on political matters is, according to Bruce Felknor, so superficial that the press acts as "a neutral transmission belt for charges and counter-charges":
Newspapers too seldom play a digging and delving role in campaigns where distortion is charged and counter-charged. In some cases the press will print the facts of Congressional voting on disputed issues, but interpretive reporting in a Congressman's own district is virtually unheard of. A few day's study of the facts and an interview with each candidate would enable a competent reporter to record the real impact and direction of the disputed votes (candidate's votes). Such a reporter, without calling anybody a liar, without raising the specter of a libel suit or appearing to be partial, would lay the essential facts out for the voters, who then could quickly tell who was the liar. Too often, "research" is done by reading press-agents' handouts, and digging is confined to wresting the most striking lead paragraph out of a dull story.
Although Felknor's comments relate only to charges and counter-charges as they apply to the issues of the campaign, his observations about the role of the press during the political campaign applies equally well to the charges and counter-charges slung back and forth on non-political issues, such as the morals charge. Too often the press is more than willing to print even the slightest suspicion about a political candidate's behavior, especially if that suspicion is of a nature to garner a great deal of public attention.
Because of this impetuous tendency, the campaign tactician should always carefully consider every possible outcome of material he may want to have published about the opposing candidate. The chance of a backlash is great; because of this, very few smear tactics take the form of the personal morals charge. The election is usually decided on the basis of the most substantial and factual information of which the public is made aware-anything which smacks of partisanship and especially dirty politics is immediately, suspect. The great dangers that must be faced when engaging in a smear campaign of this kind can usually only be faced by a candidate who is certain of a loss at the polls and finds it necessary to engage in a desperate, last-minute attempt to discredit his opponent.
Stephen Shadegg in his book How to Win an Election warns of the dangers of the smear:
If your opponent has been arrested on a drunk driving charge, the arrest is public and the electorate is entitled to know about it. If your opponent has been accused of taking advantage of a partner in a business deal and ultimately was the defendant in a law suit ... the electorate is entitled to hear ... But if your opponent or his wife is a secret alcoholic, if your opponent has a more than platonic relationship with a woman other than his wife, or once associated with disreputable friends, this information is off limits. ... More often than not such tactics (the personal smear) will produce a reaction against the author.
It is interesting to note that Shadegg's book was written in 1964, eight years before Watergate and the national election of 1972 when Muskie's wife was slandered and the candidate lost the New Hampshire primary because of it. Timed to appear in print about 48 hours before the primary polls opened, the accusations were sensational and obviously manufactured by campaign strategists, and yet the ruse worked.
Watergate in many ways represents the final outpouring of dirty politics, like the crest of a wave, that has been prevalent on the American scene for some years now. The extent to which a campaign committee will go, as illustrated by the Watergate affair, to hinder the campaign thrust of the opposing candidate is completely ridiculous. Politics in the era of television has assumed the dimensions of a polite (non-fatal) gang war. What was outrageous ten years ago is now de rigueur. Because of the nature of dirty politics, every avenue of control and every chance of a smear must be used for fear the opposing camp will outcontrol and outsmear. Even the Internal Revenue Service, once penetrated with party cohorts, can be used to financially "punish" the opposition. The art of espionage is now the campaign manager's most useful tool. To maintain the secrecy and independence of a large espionage operation, secret funds are needed, and American businessmen are sometimes tempted to provide a candidate such funds to gain favors from the government agencies which regulate business.
All of these tactics are now public knowledge, and the Congress is busy legislating statutes which will provide some safeguards in the future from this kind of political abuse. After all, it is the public who suffers from the "managed" election, it is the public whose votes are stolen by the cleverly planned smear, and it should be the public, as represented by Congress, who should correct the imbalance and restore political propriety. In the end, it will only be public pressure that will bring political reform; despite our nation's current cynicism about representative politics, our political leaders really do reflect and always have reflected the people's mandate.
CHAPTER FOUR
Tell It like It Is
Mary Deming sighed and regarded the life-size poster of Richard ("Tell It like It Is") Merilees with something approaching dismay. This morning, more than ever, she was realizing that a degree in political science did not necessarily qualify her to be his campaign manager.
She had tacked the poster on the wall in front of her desk, so that every time she looked up, she would see his cheerful round face, with the disarming grin and the curl of dark hair which kept straying over his forehead so that her fingers itched to comb it back.
It was an honest face, she had decided when she first met him at a cocktail party in Houston Village. Now, after two months of close contact in an effort to get him elected as state controller to replace the retiring incumbent, she was not so sure.
There was that last contribution from the sulphur people. The check had been for ten thousand dollars. She was supposed to list it in the statement of donations required by the new law, but he had suggested that she forget it.
"Public revelation of campaign contributions is fine. I agree with it. But there is no use bending over backward, is there? Besides, most of the money is my fee for legal services."
He had pocketed the check, and no more was said about it. But ever since, in addition to her other woes, she had wondered if perhaps her idol had feet of clay. To further aggravate the situation, she was fairly sure that she was in love with him.
She sighed again and picked up the telephone receiver. In the middle of telling a woman she had never met that Dick Merilees was the people's choice for the handling of state monies, he came in and put a hand on her shoulder. She almost forgot what she was saying, and she was sure the woman thought she was crazy.
"How's it going?" He squeezed her shoulder briefly, then took his hand away. It was the first time he had shown any physical intimacy and she felt confused. Perhaps he saw more in her than his chief campaign assistant. Then she told herself, as she watched him walk over to the mail table, that he was only being friendly. He had a big red setter that sometimes accompanied him to the office. She had seen him pat the dog the same way.
A couple of telephone canvassers were giving her the questioning eye. They went back to checking their lists and dialing when they saw her looking their way. Nosy bitches, she thought. Always trying to dig up something to chatter about. She would have fired them a month ago, except volunteer workers were not easy to find.
Two door-to-door canvassers came in just before lunch. They both made signs of being worn out, opening their mouths and walking bent-knead and heading for the water cooler.
"Bring your chair, Mary." Her boss motioned at the new arrivals. "Tell them to come over and well compare notes. I don't like what I keep hearing about the north precinct."
She spoke to the women and wheeled her chair over to his desk. One of them was limping. "Blister," she explained when he asked her solicitously what was the matter. That was one of the things that made him attractive. He took a personal interest in everyone around him. The woman blushed and looked pleased when he told her he was sorry.
"You girls make me feel ashamed of myself." He turned his smile on both of them. "Walking all day in the heat like you do. Put a bandage on that heel before you go out," he told the limping canvasser. "If it gets any worse, quit. That's an order."
Both women were beaming at him as they looked around for chairs. The big ox. Mary felt a little stab of jealousy. Now they would do anything for him. She almost wished she could sprain an ankle or something so that he would pity her.
A man and wife team showed up as he began firing questions and he beckoned to them. "Let's hear it all together." He studied the city map thumb-tacked to the wall. The precincts were outlined in blue pencil, and each had a colored pin stuck in it. "You've been working north Shepherd," he nodded. "How was the reception?"
"Not so good." The man shook his head and looked at his wife. "Tell them about what the fat guy said, honey."
"He was downright rude." The wife, in her forties and still attractive, colored a little and fidgeted with her purse. "I told him what I was doing and handed him some literature. He got huffy as soon as he saw your picture." She glanced at Merilees almost apologetically.
"What did he say? I'd like to know."
"He-he said he wouldn't vote for you if you were running for dogcatcher." She looked down at her hands uncertainly, as though she had unwittingly been a party to sacrilege.
"Did he give you any reason?"
Her husband spoke up, as though to cover his wife's evident embarrassment. "He came right out and said you were a crook. I was working the other side of the street and I heard it all."
Mary started to say something, but Merilees cut her off. "Did he say why?"
"He was yelling. I thought he was going to slam the door in Myra's face. He did, after he told the whole block that you were a son of a bitch and that you stole him blind."
. "His name wasn't Hughes, was it?" Merilees was smiling.
"I-we didn't ask. After everybody had listened to his load of garbage, we changed streets and got away from the clown."
"A disgruntled client, probably." The candidate nodded. "In the practice of law, you get one now and again. And the attorney is always to blame with that kind. Many of them don't even bother to pay their bill."
The wife seemed quite upset. Plainly, she adored her choice for office and resented the gross criticism.
Mary reached over and patted her hand. "He was probably drunk," she said, trying to keep her tone light because she was not feeling too happy herself. "We get them on the phones all the time."
Her boss stopped smiling and the old solicitous look came back. His voice, when he spoke, was pure honey. "You mustn't think I don't appreciate the job you're doing." Now he was purring. "Politics is a dog-eat-dog business at the best of times. If it's any comfort, I do admire yon. Both of you," he added, tactfully.
Now it was the woman's turn to smile. She beamed through the gathering tears and leaned forward. "It's-it's so frustrating when you run into someone like that. But we can stand it. Can't we, Henry?"
Mary felt like standing up and cheering. Then she subsided, feeling a little sick. Such open adulation was nauseating. She was glad when the pair got up and left.
The morning dragged on. She checked on a late delivery of lapel buttons, then tidied her desk before going out to lunch. She was debating where to eat when Merilees stopped on his way out. "How hungry are you?" he inquired.
"That depends on who is paying the tab."
Her answer seemed to please him. "Spoken like a real lady." He eased her chair back and took her elbow. "Just for that, I'll be a gentleman. Let's go to the club."
She had wondered before how he managed to belong to the Petroleum Club. As far as she knew, he had no oil interests. Maybe some of his clients were members. From hints he dropped, she guessed he moved in some of the higher spheres of industry. "It will cost you," she warned. "I'm an expensive eater."
"And a very nice one, if I may say so." His funny little bow made it sound less corny. There he was, off again, she thought. All the same, she liked it.
She refused a second vodka martini. He ordered another double for himself and she shook her head in mock consternation. "It's your stomach," she conceded, glancing at her watch. "In exactly three hours and eleven minutes, you will be addressing the Bellaire Ladies' Aid. Remind me to buy you some Scope."
He laughed and picked up the menu. "I use Listerine. It gives me something to hate. Let me order. I know the chef."
They started off with oysters broiled on skewers with green pepper squares. For the entree, she chose the spring lamb chops and he told the waiter just how he wanted the beef sirloin. By the time they had worked their way to demitasse and Drambuie, she felt like a new woman.
"I warned you, remember," she mentioned when the bill came. "I'll make it up to you. This afternoon, I'll get you a lot of votes."
He looked thoughtful as he signed the tab. "I'm going to need them, by the looks of things. But no politician is a prophet in his own town. We're doing all right in Austin and San Antonio, and the last Dallas survey surprised me."
"That's because you went there and told the fat cats a lot of things they wanted to hear."
"The truth will out, if you use it properly. When do I go out west?"
"You're booked into The Antlers in Odessa next Monday. From there, you'll speak to the Cattlemen's Association in Monahans, and...."
"Never mind. Just give me the schedule so I can read it. Which brings us to tonight."
She was so busy watching the way the unruly curl wandered over his left eye that she forgot for a moment what he meant. Then she remembered. "Seven o'clock for makeup. Eight, on the air, debating Harman Stebbins for half an hour. Eight-thirty, press conference...."
"Nine, have dinner with campaign manager. Nine-five, tell her she's a very wonderful person. Ten...."
"What about ten?" Her eyes challenged his, but he merely shrugged.
"Let ten take care of itself. Oh, by the way, I'll want you at the studio to give me some needed courage."
A man sitting at one of the neighboring tables looked at her appraisingly as they left. As far as she could remember, she had never seen him before. She forgot about him as they reached the street.
"I'll drop you off at the office, then run through my speech to the ladies. Call me at home or at the club if you need me."
The Drambuie was making her sleepy, so that she barely heard him. She nodded automatically. When they got to headquarters, she thanked him again for the lunch and went in without looking back.
At mid-afternoon, her telephone rang. It was a man who asked for her by name.
"This is Mary Deming. What can I do for you?"
"Just listen. I won't keep you long." She knew she had never heard the voice before. But somehow, he did not sound like one of the cranks who tied up a phone or two every day. He had a kind of warmth about him, apologetic but, at the same time, politely insistent.
"I'm listening." She made a move to cut in the monitor so the conversation would be recorded, then changed her mind. She could always hang up if he started mouthing off. "Who is it, please?"
"Just call me Uncle Ben. I like you, Mary Deming. But I don't care for the company you keep."
At first, she thought it was some friend, playing a joke on her. But no one she knew had a voice that sounded even remotely like this one.
She waited to hear what he would say next. "That's all for now, Mary Deming." The voice was receding, as though he was walking away. "But don't worry. Uncle Ben will be watching you."
The line went dead then. Whoever was at the other end had hung up.
At five-thirty, the phone girls left. She picked up the stack of outgoing mail and locked the office door before walking down to the mailbox at the corner. A car passed as she was mailing the letters. The driver, she thought, looked like the man who had stared at her when she and her boss were leaving the club.
At the broadcasting studio, she found him still in makeup. Greasepaint toned the angles of his face so they would not shine under the lights and, instead of smoothing the curl back off his forehead, they had deliberately combed it further down.
"You look like Hitler," she commented.
"I love you, too." He sounded gruff for once. "I've been sitting in this chair for an hour. Can't you do something?"
The makeup man straightened up and examined him carefully. He said, "You'll do," and went away. A man came by and leered at them. "You're on in five minutes."
She left him then and went up front. There was a fair crowd, which was good. The other candidate was already on the stage, talking to the network man. When Merilees came on, there was a smattering of applause and a few boos from the back seats.
The debate went better than she had hoped. There was some acrimony before the two candidates settled down to the question and answer routine. She did not listen much after that, except when the opposition tried to make a point and got put down. Merilees handled himself with polite assurance, and when it was over he came down and joined her.
"How did it go?" Under the makeup, he looked a little haggard.
"Right on." She made a fist, then took his arm impulsively. "You need a drink."
"I'll buy that. And dinner, too."
"Don't look now but you have a press conference, remember?"
"Had is the word. It's been shelved until tomorrow."
She did not like that. Publicity was the life blood of any political campaign. Tomorrow he should have been doing something else. "Stebbins insisted on having it together," was all he could tell her.
They went to a new place on south Main. Somebody had trailered a big schooner up from Galveston and built a dining room underneath it.
"This is cute." She held his arm a little closer as they descended the steps. "Now we can sail away for a year and a day."
"To the land where the bong tree grows?" He sounded wishful. "You know, I wish we could. Just the two of us, and leave all this mess for someone else."
"Is that a proposition?" She tried to keep it light because she knew he was tired. "First, you'd have to learn to sing to a small guitar."
At their table, while they were waiting for the waiter to bring the drinks, he mentioned it again. "Just think of it, Mary. You and me and the moon and the sea. Say, that rhymes."
He drank half of his martini and pushed his chair back. "I'm going to find the John and do something about this damned stuff on my face. Think about it until I get back."
It was all crazy but it would be fun, she decided. Maybe after the election, he would still be interested. In the meantime, the idea was exciting.
When he got back to the table, he looked well-scrubbed. His hair, for the first time she could remember, was combed back off his forehead.
"Now you look like Gregory Peck," she said.
"That's better." He drank the rest of his martini and beckoned to the waiter. "You shouldn't go around telling people they look like Hitler. It's-it's indecent."
There was nothing wrong with getting stoned together, she decided after two more rounds of doubles. She tried to get him to eat something when the food came, but after, sampling the filet mignon, he pushed his plate away. By the time the waiter cleared the dishes and brought their coffee, he was half asleep with his chin on his chest.
She paid the bill and gave the waiter a couple of dollars to help her get him up the steps and into the car. In front of his apartment, he woke up enough to navigate under his own steam. She got his key and let them in and he sprawled on the couch and went back to sleep.
She had loosened his tie and taken his shoes off and was getting a blanket from the bedroom when the telephone rang.
She hesitated. It was late and maybe she shouldn't let whoever was calling know she was there. When it kept on ringing, she picked up the receiver and said, "Mr. Merilees' apartment."
That got a chuckle, and the voice she remembered said, "How are you making out, Mary Demirig? Put that lush to bed and go home."
Ordinarily, she would have left the receiver off the hook and gone on with whatever she had been doing. Now she had had just enough to drink to make her more curious than resentful. "Look." She sat down and cradled the phone in her lap. "I don't know who you are, but you're beginning to get in my hair. What do you want?"
Her caller chuckled again. "It's your Uncle Ben, Mary Deming. And I want you. But first I've got to straighten you out."
She was going to put the receiver down then, but curiosity got the upper hand again. "How did you know I was here?" she asked.
"Your Uncle Ben knows where you are all the time. Next time you go to the Ship Inn, try the baked onion soup."
There was a click and she found herself listening to the dial tone. Rude clown. He didn't even say goodnight.
She drank four fingers of brandy when she got home and went to sleep almost before she got undressed. She had a silly dream and woke up shivering. Someone was following her around with a seeing-eye dog. Then there was just the dog. The dog said, "This is your Uncle Ben."
For once, she was grateful for the work load next day. Hiring youngsters to distribute brochures and campaign buttons and bumper stickers kept her mind off things she didn't want to think about. There was a lot of mail. The largest check was for a thousand dollars, but there were quite a few for a hundred or fifty. When she ran a total on the adding machine, it came to more than three thousand.
When Merilees came in, looking in the pink as though he had never taken a drink in his life, he leaned over her shoulder and looked at the tape. "Not bad," he said. "Not bad at all!' When she asked him if she should list the contributions, he told her not to bother with it. "Let it go until the end of the week. There's no need to keep a daily record."
He had been saying that for more than a month now, she reminded herself as he took the checks over to his desk and put them in a drawer. As the director of his campaign, she should have at least a copy of the donations and what the money had been used for. The way he was handling things, she did not even know how much had been received.
She was about to tell him so when some canvassers came in for more stickers and buttons. Then, when they left, she got into an argument with the company who was looking after the billboard advertising. When she hung up and looked for him, he had gone out.
It was lunch time before she had a chance to think about anything except running the office. She put some notes for a speech she was working on in her purse and walked down to the corner bar for a glass of beer and a sandwich. While she was eating it, the man who had given her the happy eye at the Petroleum Cluh came in and sat three stools away from her.
He did not take any apparent notice of her, beyond a casual glance, but something told her he knew she was there. When she straightened her lipstick and left, she could feel his eyes on her all the way to the street.
Merilees did not show up in the afternoon. She hoped he was not climbing into a bottle again. She took comfort in the fact that she had never seen him even slightly jug-happy before last night. When she counted noses, she found that one of the phone girls, the blonde with the tits like watermelons, was also missing. The idea that there might be a connection crossed her mind but she forgot about it. He would have more sense than to start anything with the help. Or would he? Maybe he was a bosom man. A couple of times, she had seen him laughing with the blonde. For some reason, she remembered what the idiot who called himself "Uncle Ben" had said about the company she kept. What had he meant, she wondered.-
She was glad when five-thirty came and she could lock up the office and go home.
On Saturday, she readied the notes she had written for the tour out west. He came in just after she opened up and pulled a chair over to her desk. "I wish you were coming with me," he said. "I've depended on you so much that I'm going to feel stupid without you to fill in the gaps."
"You mean ride away to west Texas on a ass steer?" If she let it get any more serious, she wasn't sure she could trust herself. "Sorry, pal. Somebody has to take care of the store." She was being silly. He'd only be gone for a week. Instead of letting herself go, she should welcome the chance to be alone and get her head together.
The phone girls did not work on Saturdays and they were alone in the office. He stowed the notes and the envelope with the plane tickets and his itinerary in a pocket of his jacket. "Thanks. You're a jewel." He got up, then bent down and kissed her cheek. "Hold the fort, honey."
He was gone. She sat looking at the poster in front of the desk for a full minute after he had closed the door behind him. Then she picked up the phone and called a florist and ordered a dozen red roses to be sent to his Odessa hotel room first thing on Monday morning.
She spent the weekend quietly, missing him, but glad in a way to be free of the constant strain of having him around. The business of the money was still worrying her. By now, she was almost certain that he was putting contributions in his private account instead of into a special campaign fund. Every time she asked him about it, he put her off with his disarming smile, telling her not to worry about it. As his manager, she should be signing checks for supplies and expenses. Instead, he gave her money when she asked for it. Several times, the printers and billboard people had complained about the unpaid bills.
If it were not for the way she felt about him, she would have resigned. But, although she was sorely tempted at times, she couldn't make herself do it. Damn this love business, anyway. A person had to be half-sick to fall for it.
On Tuesday morning, while she was drinking a cup of coffee, her phone rang and she almost knocked the toaster over in her hurry to pick up the receiver. She could feel her heart pounding as she answered. Then she sat down slowly as her caller said, "Good morning, Mary Deming."
Her first impulse was to hang up, but the voice said, "Listen for a minute. Shake your head and fly right, because you're not going to marry Smiley Merilees, doll. Uncle Ben won't let you."
"What's it to you?" The retort came spontaneously, before she had time to think what she was saying.
"Everything. But I haven't time now. Write this number down. If anything happens and you need help, call it." The phone went dead with a sharp click as though he had cut the connection in a hurry.
The blowsy blonde with the generous mammaries was not at work again. Mary looked up her number in the Rolodex and phoned, but there was no answer. When she questioned the other girls, they had no information. She caught one of them trying to hide a giggle. Why was it, she wondered, that the help always knew more than the boss? But there was nothing she could do. They had all volunteered to work for no pay. Things would be in a mess if they got up and walked out.
The expected call came when she was getting ready to close the office. "Hello there, fellow traveler." His voice sounded as though he was sitting there beside her and she caught her breath in spite of herself.
"How are things in the Permian basin?" She tried to seem business-like, not all turned on like a silly schoolgirl.
"I got the roses." She thought he turned away to speak to someone but he came back right away. "We must do something about them when I get back."
The rest of the conversation had to do with business. The reception in Odessa and Midland had been encouraging. He was enjoying that part of the campaign. He would be through after speaking at a bankers' convention on Saturday. "Then it's home, sweet home. I'll tell you how much I've missed you when I get back."
She unlocked the cash box after he hung up. There were still thirty-one dollars and some change. The In basket on her desk was full of unpaid accounts, some with "Please" written across them. She really must have it out with him about the money. The next thing, there would be letters in the papers. The competition would pounce on anything that might sweeten their political coffee.
The week went by slowly, because she found herself counting the hours before she would see him again. She took a different way to and from the office to avoid passing the Ship Inn where he had got stoned and given her a chance to look after him. She was acting like a lovesick teen-ager and she knew it. And now, she didn't care.
She was rooting around in her purse for a cigarette when she came across the slip of paper she had written the phone number on after "Uncle Ben" called the last time. She had meant to try and trace it. Then she had forgotten about it. She was going to throw it away, then changed her mind. When she had nothing better to do, she might call it, just to see what happened.
On Sunday morning, when her telephone had not rung, she got the airport and checked on the last flight from the Midland-Odessa terminal. The last arrival had been at nine-twenty Saturday night. That would have given him plenty of time to call her. She was frowning when she cradled the receiver. Something must have held him up at the last minute. Then the door-chimes rang and there he was, smiling at her holding out a tissue-wrapped bunch of American Beauties.
He took her in his arms then, roses and all, and when he kissed her, she lost track of everything else.
She moved away presently, noticing that a couple of blooms had got crushed. But what did a spoiled flower matter? He was back and he needed her. Not for the first time, she felt herself wanting him physically.
She must have put the roses in water, because later they were standing in a tall vase on the coffee table. She could not remember even taking them. Everything had happened so quickly. One minute he was standing in her doorway. The next thing, they were in bed.
Afterward, she was not quite sure how they got there. It seemed to be a mutual thing, a sort of silent decision to enjoy each other's bodies without wasting any more time.
At twenty-eight, she was neither a virgin nor a prude. Sex was something she had found pleasure in while she was still in college. After graduation, she had lived with a man, a fellow student, for almost two years. And there had been others, all fucking for fun, like the time when she woke up with two other couples in the same bed. All three men had taken her, cracking about a wet deck and making a game of it. Since meeting Richard, though, she had not even dated anyone else.
He was good; the best yet, she decided. She loved the way he got her hot, first by tonguing her nipples, then pressing her breasts together and balling her between them. His balls were heavy on her chest, and she came almost as soon as she felt his hard prick thrusting up and back.
He went down on her after that, finding her clitoris at once and just touching it with the tip of his tongue until she almost went up the wall.
Everything was hazy after he mounted her. She knew she had spread her legs wide as soon as he was ready, and that his stiffness opened her ready vagina in one long stroke. And then it was all ecstasy, as she had dreamed it would be. Time stopped. It was as though there was no one else anywhere in the world except the two of them. Now she was sure of herself. She loved him and she didn't care if he was stealing everybody blind.
He was a long time finishing. After that first all-the-way-in thrust, she had expected him to come quickly. She had reached two more orgasms before he finally shortened his strokes and began to hold his hard cock into her, closer and closer, until he grunted and the warm come jetted deep inside around the nubbin of her womb.
She had expected more of him than just the mechanical climax. She would have liked him to kiss her lips at the moment of the mutual ecstasy as she came with him and strained up to take all of the hardness into her clamoring body. Instead, he slowed down as soon as he shot off and uncoupled almost at once. His erection had gone, and his prick was flabby even as he took it out.
He got off the bed and headed for the bathroom without looking back, leaving her unsatisfied and more than a little resentful. Her other men. even during that gang belt with the other couples, had at least stayed with her long enough to let her unwind. It was like being tossed violently into the air, then left to fall without knowing where; a bottomless feeling, all depth and no end.
She waited for him to come out, so they could talk until he was ready to ball her again. He showed finally, but only nodded as he went into the living room. She heard him getting ice in the kitchen as she got off the bed and slipped into her wrap. Just like that, she thought. It was a wonder that he hadn't left some money on the night table. The thought made her feel cheap, as though he had wanted her only for what he got out of it.
He was sitting on the couch, drinking a Scotch and soda, when she came out of the bedroom. There was another drink on a scooter at her end of the coffee table. He nodded again over his glass and said, "I'm pooped. Had a hard week. Cheers."
She drank mechanically, slowly at first, then quickly until the ice rattled. At once, without waiting to see whether he had drained his glass or not, she held her empty one out and said, "More."
While he was busy with the bottles, she sat back and tried to compose her mind. Maybe it was her fault, she thought. Perhaps she hadn't satisfied him enough. By the time he came back, she had settled on something she thought might work. Before, she had let him do the playing around. This time, it was going to be different.
She sipped at her highball, then put the glass down and moved toward him until her face was almost in his lap. Deliberately, she unzipped his slacks and took his limp penis out and slipped the head into her mouth.
She had expected him to say something but he did not even move. He might have been made out of wood for all the reaction she got. His prick stayed limber, in spite of some special tongue work she applied underneath and around the eye.
Then the reason came to her. He was not just weary from his trip. In plain language, he was fucked out. Even his balls were soft to the touch.
She sat up quickly and found a Kleenex and wiped her lips. Neither of them said anything as he put his cock back and zipped up. Damn everything, she. thought He must have been doing a lot more than speech-making out West. She was certain of it.
The liquor began to hit her as she finished her drink. Maybe that was the answer. The Scotch bottle, still more than half full, caught her eye. "I'll go this time." She managed a smile and got up and went into the kitchen for more ice.
He was on the telephone when she came back with a frosty ice bucket and another bottle, just in case. He hung up as she dumped everything on the coffee table where they could both reach it. "You don't have to go, do you?" If he left now, he might not come back.
"I can stay for a while." He leaned back and sipped his drink slowly, as though he had things on his mind. That would never do. She wanted to get the booze into him as fast as she could. As an example, she drained her glass as though she was chugalugging a bottle of beer.
"Hey! Steady on." He looked at her anxiously. "We've still got an election to think about." All the same, he drank faster, and she handed him a refill almost at once.
"Mary, what are you trying to do to me?" He seemed to have come back from wherever he had gone. "I believe you want to get me drunk. Why?"
"I've only seen you stoned once," she reminded him. "It was fun, remember?"
"No. I guess I blacked out. The next thing I knew, the birdies were chirping and everything was horrible."
"Tell me something." Instead of getting her more tipsy, the Scotch seemed to be sobering her up. Her mind was as clear as a bell. If she didn't get him interested again, it would not be from lack of trying.
"You were saying?" He reached over and took her hand.
"Oh, yes. But first, make like you did when I opened the door."
"For God's sake. Was it that important?" He was grinning when he leaned closer and pulled her against him.
They seemed to have been fucking forever. Something had happened to him when he kissed her that last time; something wonderful, judging by the hardness driving into her, faster and faster, until it seemed like one continuous thrust, without beginning or end.
Maybe the drinks had snapped him out of whatever was the matter with him. Now, instead of being drained dry, he was really putting his back into it, screwing her cunt as though he were trying to meet some mental deadline and was afraid he would not finish in time.
She lost count of the times she came. At last, unable to remain passive a second longer, she twisted out from under his weight. Straddling him and trying to keep that wonderful prick inside her, she pressed his shoulders down with both hands and screwed him until the bed creaked and the mattress threatened to slide off beneath them.
Now that she was doing the fucking, the desperate feeling was leaving her. As long as he stayed hard, everything was roses; big, beautiful roses like the ones he had given her. She forgot his earlier indifference. Nothing mattered any more except to fuck that jutting cock and make it come until she could not feel it because of the flooding semen.
Being on top gave her a sense of domination. She could not remember mounting a man before, probably because she had not wanted to. But she wanted to ride this one; ride him until there was nothing left and the two of them blew away in the breeze coming in the window. It was a crazy kind of feeling. She wondered fleetingly how long she could stand it. It was so complete, so fulfilling that she almost forgot to breathe....
She knew he was going to come even before the warmth of his spending told her it had happened. He tried to turn over on top of her at the last moment, but she kept his shoulders pinned, receiving the jetting semen, hoping it would stay where he was putting it, fiercely begrudging him the smallest spilled drop.
Then, as quickly as it had built up, it was over. She let him use the bathroom first, and took her time, after he had gone, to get another drink. When she went into the living room, dressed as tough she were going out, he was halfway through another tall highball, looking like the cat that ate the canary, apparently feeling no pain at all.
"Tell me what you put in that last drink you fixed for me." He reached for her and she let him stroke her cheek and pull her down beside him.
"Let me see. Oh, yes. I used a little liquor and a lot of love. Did you like it?"
"You know I did. Look." He glanced at his watch. "I've got an appointment. Will you hate me very much if I leave you now?"
She tried to hide her disappointment. "I thought we might have lunch together. Somewhere quiet where we could talk. But it doesn't matter if you're busy."
"I'm afraid lunch will have to wait. But there is something you can do for me."
"Of course. What is it?"
He hesitated, then put his arm around her. "What we did was wonderful," he said. "And you're a very wonderful person. There's just one thing we missed."
She was curious at once. "What didn't we do?"
'You promise you won't laugh ? " His eyes challenged her and, more than ever, she wanted to push his hair off his forehead, so that she could see whether he was frowning at her.
"Scout's honor. Tell me quickly."
"I guess everyone has some sort of a private thing about sex. I'm no different. I really liked it when you took over awhile ago. It made me want to do my thing all the more."
"I don't understand."
"Did you ever hear of a man having intercourse with a fully-dressed woman? I mean shoes and gloves and everything."
"It sounds different. Personally, I like the old-fashioned, skin-to-skin way best."
He put his drink down and pushed her knees apart and ran his hand up her thigh. "Let me do it to you that way."
"You mean, here, with my clothes on?" She suddenly wanted to laugh. "Why-of course, if that's what you want."
He pushed her down on the couch and folded her skirt back carefully, then took his penis out and mounted her. It was hard again, and she could feel it nudging her as he tried to push her panties out of the way. When she put a hand down and raised up to slip them off, he stopped her, almost roughly. "Don't do that. You'll spoil everything."
His erection was stiff enough to get inside one flared leg of her panties, and when he entered her, he went all the way in one hard thrust. It hurt her a little and he seemed to know and get pleasure out of her discomfort. It was like being raped. Maybe that was what he wanted her to think.
He was almost crude in the way he put his full weight on her, not taking most of it on his knees and elbows as he had done in the bedroom. And he was holding both of her hands above her head, so that she could not have moved if she wanted to.
The quick thrill of the intimate contact left her after the first few strokes. Having sex this way was like taking a shower with a raincoat on. She hoped he would finish quickly so she could get up.
As though he could read her mind, he came almost at once, violently, bruising her thighs as he plunged into her and hurting her again because she could not open her legs wide enough. He held his pulsing hardness all the way inside her vagina until the last drop of his semen oozed out. He was getting off her when the door chimes rang and she sat up in a hurry and palled her skirt down.
He shot a question at her with his eyes and when she nodded, he walked over to the door and opened it. Then he took a sudden step backward as a woman pushed him out of the way and came in. It was Boobies, the buxom blonde.
She glared at him, and for a minute Mary thought she was going to slap his face. "So this is where you hole up when I'm not looking, eh ? I might have known it." She turned on Mary. "What would you do to a man who marries you and shacks up with another woman?"
For once, the cockiness had left Richard ("Tell It like it Is") Merilees. He looked beaten, wilting under the girl's furious stare. "It's true," he said, tonelessly. "We were married in Midland two days ago. I'm-I'm sorry."
The three of them forgot one another, then, as two more callers walked through the open doorway. One was a uniformed policeman. The other was the man who had stared at her in the Petroleum Club. He flashed his credentials and informed the candidate for state controller that he was under arrest.
"Get him out of here," he said to the cop. The blonde was staring at him with her mouth open. He jerked his head toward the door, and she almost ran out in the wake of her handcuffed husband.
"Sorry if I startled you," he apologized to Mary. "We wanted to take him earlier, but we couldn't find him until we trailed his wife here."
She found her voice then. "He-he must have phoned her while I was in the kitchen."
"He did. We were listening. And while I'm doing the explaining, I'm a special investigator from the DA's office. We've been after your friend ever since we found out he was wanted for embezzlement in Milwaukee."
That explained the money thing, she told herself dully. He must have been ripping off every contribution check as it came in. Oh, Jesus. What was the matter with men, anyway?
She tuned in again as the fellow went on. "At first, we thought you were in with him. That was when we tapped your phone. Now we find you're in the clear, I think you should know something." He pulled the little folder out again and help it open. "It says here" he leaned closer so that she could follow his pointing finger-"that I'm Benjamin J. Donellen. While that is true, I like my nickname best."
It came to her then, as though she had known all the time. "You're Uncle Ben."
"At your service. And I really meant most of the things I said on the telephone. That number is still good if you want to call me." He was gone, and she sat down suddenly because there was something the matter with her knees.
For some reason, the only thing that seemed to matter now was that she hadn't thrown that slip of paper away....
* * *
The embezzlement charge leveled against Richard Merilees brings up the topic of honesty in politics. Many Americans sincerely believe that politics and dishonesty, by necessity, go hand in hand, while others are pressing for more stringent controls over the activities of politicians. Modern political behavior, influenced by television and the public relations image, is greatly different from the behavior of politicians from previous eras in our country's history. Because of the rapid pace of political issues and events in the world, the American politician is called upon to make an almost daily appearance before some form of the media. Technology has enabled the voter in California, for example, to maintain visual and verbal contact with his representatives in Washington. Newspapers and magazines with political reporting continue their close scrutiny over the activities of politicians and their underlings.
Even with all this observation, politicians still enjoy a great measure of privacy with regard to their dealings, both in and out of professional life. Only rarely is the case of a dishonest politician (in comparison with the total number of practicing politicians) brought to court and thus into public view. Many more cases of corruption are handled through the less embarrassing method of internal disclosure within the legislative or executive body, far from the public eye. Watergate, with all its sudden manifestations of corruption in the administration, is essentially a rare phenomenon in American political life.
Embezzlement is a rare charge to be leveled against a politician. Political dishonesty, according to Stimson Bullitt, author of the book To Be a Politician, is usually not financial in nature. As cited before, the white-collar criminal in the business world is far more corrupt than his political counterpart. "A politician rarely is diverted from the path of right by pursuit of immoral pleasure or illegal gain. His weaknesses take other forms." Bullitt goes on to point out that any man who wants to make money would be foolish to think of politics as a means necessary for his goal. Only the businessman has the freedom required to manipulate sums of money.
A politician can commit the following kinds of crimes related to money: (I) he can take a bribe; (2) he can pocket excessive campaign funds; and (3) he can engage in speculative trading based on his knowledge of future governmental acts. All three kinds of crime are easily noticeable to the investigator, and the penalties are severe. As Bullitt notices:
Money honesty in politics is less important than it was. Society is richer, so it more easily can afford some loss by theft. There is less temptation to steal, and less theft now, than when it was harder to earn a good living by working for it, and before thorough record keeping and efficient law enforcement methods increased the odds of being detected. The penalties are not as severe as in the past, but one is still ruined if caught.
The real moral problem in American politics is the question of intellectual honesty. A democratic society cannot operate smoothly unless its leaders tell the truth to the constituency. Also, when politicians cease to be honest with each other the fabric of society begins to dissolve. For a democracy to function correctly, words, particularly those words and phrases spoken by its political leaders, must be truthful. Bullitt makes an apology for the politician with his statement : "Although average levels of honesty among men are higher than ever before, the public need for it from politicians has grown further than the standards of practice have risen." Society, however, cannot take the entire blame. After all, the purpose of a leader, whether elected or not, is to lead the society into better ways of living and thinking. In this respect, the dishonest politician has no justifiable excuse, Bullitt lists three kinds of intellectual dishonesty among politicians: (I) failing to keep campaign promises; (2) accusing other politicians or individuals, or even groups, of having committed some crime detrimental to the national interest; and (3) substituting some kind of pleasing diversion (such as a "peace with honor") for the truth (which was defeat, in the particular instance of the Vietnam War). Almost every politician is guilty of the first breach. Who hasn't heard the campaign speech where the candidate promises, almost in the same breath, "a balanced budget, lower taxes, full employment, and armed forces strong enough to dismay our enemies."
The second kind of crime happens often during the election campaign, when it becomes advantageous to accuse one's opponent of all sorts of horrendous crimes to persuade the voters of his unfitness for high office. Former Vice-President Agnew was a specialist at this kind of tactic: his accusations against some of the more liberal democratic organizations frequently bore veiled allusions to treason and misconduct.
The third kind of crime, according to Bullitt, is far more tenuous in nature, and therefore far more difficult to prove. Partisan politics being what they are, it would be easy to take any accusation of this kind of behavior as being motivated out of partisan interest. Nevertheless, some specific examples have occurred during the course of our history. Bullitt cites the Acheson affair when both Dean Acheson and George Marshall were accused of being traitors for "giving China away."
The Watergate investigations and subsequent repercussions in Congress my help legislators to enact codified rulings over election and campaign abuses. Secret funding, for example, can be easily outlawed through a careful system of bookkeeping applied to election and campaign expenditures. Most of the financial indiscretions can be curtailed by legislation, but what of the intellectual crimes as outlined by Bullitt? What can be done to insure protection from these kinds of excesses?
Public vigilance is the only answer to the problem of political intellectual crime. Because by nature these crimes are not verifiable by physical evidence, except in the case of the outright lie, the public must carefully listen to political messages with one ear listening "between the lines." Some legislation can no doubt be enacted to cover some of the more flagrant violations of this type of crime when it is conducted during the election campaign, but it is going to be very difficult for the American people to convince their Congressmen that this kind of legislation is necessary. Only public outcry will bring the safeguards needed to protect the citizen and the voter from being lied to.
Even at the present time, when excitement over the Watergate investigations is at a fever pitch, Congress is unwilling to enact legislation which will limit the amount of their campaign funding and provide for a reporting law. They are perfectly willing to legislate such provisions for Presidential elections, but apparently they feel that the political excesses committed in recent years have only been engaged in by members of the Administration, and therefore they will make no campaign funding and reporting law to cover their own Congressional elections.
Public reaction is the sole spur to political progress in a democracy. When the public is apathetic or un-knowledgeable about political events, the government relies on its own judgment and forms laws which serve only its own needs. In part, they cannot be blamed for ignoring a country which ignores itself.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Rise and Fall of the Bare Facts Faction
The tiny community on the California coast could hardly be called a town. During the summer, when the campers and surfers and summer cottage residents arrived, it would number up to five thousand souls. With the first fogs of winter or the beginning of the fall school semester, the exodus would reduce this number to some two thousand permanent residents, primarily older retired persons living on a fixed income.
It was not much to look at, either. The foothills of the Coast Range came down almost to the beach, so the town was strung out in a long line just back of the sand. It was about a mile long, a double row of wooden frame houses, quite weather-beaten and displaying various degrees of bad architectural taste and design. Many of the beachfront homes displayed the scars of high tides, and the low dunes of the beach had a tendency to half-bury garages and drift out almost onto the main street. There were two gas stations, one of them doubling as a deli; there was a grocery store, a drugstore, and the God Rock Cafe. The Post Office was something of a dead-letter drop, for it was in operation only twice a week when the postman arrived to pick up and deliver mail. All in all, it was a sleepy little community, full of drowsy citizens and gull droppings.
To maintain peace and law and order, the town had one policeman, who also doubled as the mayor, an office to which he had been elected sometime around V-J Day, and there had been no question of another election since. No one, including His Honor, was quite sure what his term of office was, for the town charter did not specify any such thing. It specified nothing, in fact, for it did not exist. The town had simply grown out of a trailer park back in the thirties, remote from the county seat and the rest of the state, and no one had really seen any reason for establishing any sort of administration. For years it did not even have a name, the residents simply calling it "town," but the automobile club, for some strange reason, had placed it on its map with a religious Spanish name that totally belied its lily-white population.
As usual, when the particular summer in question rolled around, the permanent residents braced themselves for the avalanche of vacationing families and long-haired surfers. They started pouring in around the beginning of June. First came the vacationers, eager to blister their bodies on the beach, suffer burns at their barbecues, and relish the grit of sand in their food. Then some of the first kids appeared, the ones who could not wait for vacation and who cut school a week or two early. Their rotting VWs, with surfboard racks, dotted the dunes, and the roar of Japanese motorbikes shattered the nerves and peace of all but the deaf and those addicted to the little two-wheeled monsters.
Not that the local population minded this invasion. For many of them, this represented the only source of income during the year. The few little businesses in the town spent most of the year, if not in the red, then at least in a condition you might call pink, and summer was there to bail them out. For some of the older residents, these few months presented a variety and entertainment preferable to the one tv channel they lived with all year. There would be a drowning or two, especially since there were no lifeguards, a little fender bending, maybe a fire in one of the travel homes, and the kids were sure to get high on marijuana and think up something that would shock the entire town.
But this summer the town was in for a surprise, for the months were not to slip by in their usual humdrum way during which, for instance, a possible shark sighting would be a sort of climax. This year politics came to the town with all the excitement that this brand of warfare means in a truly democratic society.
When Ogden first arrived in the town, no one would have thought that the young man could possibly be a threat to the entire community. The VW bus he drove was of the standard, now dated, "flower-power" type. Plenty of rust, some abstract art, several coats of dirt, ragged curtains, and a bent license plate.
He parked it right in the center of the strip of the town, between two houses near the beach. It was high noon, and there were several hundred people scattered around the beach and wandering up and down the main street. Ogden stepped out, all six-foot-plus of him. Flowing golden hair, a magnificent dark blonde beard, clear blue eyes, and handsome, clean cut features. He was in his mid-twenties, but the beard made him look a little older.
He stepped out onto the beach, wearing a flowing brown robe which looked as if it had once covered the lice-ridden body of a Moroccan nomad. There was something commanding about the way Ogden walked onto a small dune and took up a stance, with legs apart and his hands on his hips. People stopped and stared at him as if he were Jesus, about to speak from the mound. But he just stood there for a few minutes surveying the scene, the warm salty breeze tossing his hair and billowing his robe out behind him.
When he saw that he had drawn considerable attention to himself, he slowly lifted his hands skyward, then spread them out and called out in a deep, bullhorn voice: "Lovers of the sun! Ogden has come to set you free!"
With that he reached for the collar of his robe, gave a yank, and the robe fluttered from him like a veil from a newly mounted statue. This graceful and dramatic act was met with a mad sort of hysterical scream from the beach crowd. This sound was confusing, for it was a mixture of laughter, shock, outrage or plain amazement. Ogden was completely nude.
He had a very fine slim body, conservatively muscled and deeply tanned all over. Hanging out from it, as a sort of decoration set in a bed of dark hair, was an unusually well-developed penis, which bobbed gently in the sunlight, as if acknowledging the honors the multitudes were giving it.
The scene was pretty much what one would expect under such circumstances. Mothers screamed and covered their children's eyes; the children, especially little girls, did their best to escape their mothers and satisfy their curiosity; and the men just sort of stared enviously. Ogden made a grand gesture with the sweep of his arm, and proceeded to elegantly follow his cock through the crowd towards the ocean. His carriage was so proud that all that was missing was a full orchestra to play Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance." Later, people claimed that Ogden was actually humming it.
It was a grand entrance into the drama, but of very short duration. All the yelling had roused the mayor. Ogden had not gone fifty yards when this pillar of the town's society came huffing and puffing behind him in the sand, waving his police revolver and calling for one and all to desist and surrender.
The crowd gave way and Ogden stopped, proudly turning to confront the law, his cock gracefully swinging around with him.
"You're under arrest!" the town's law and order yelled, brandishing a pair of handcuffs.
"This is a free country!" Ogden boomed, folding his arms over his chest. "You cannot deny my body's right to the sun!"
"You goddam freak! Put these on!" the mayor-cop yelled, waving his bracelets. With the gun in one hand, he experienced a moment ot confusion when he found he could do nothing with just the other. Fumble, bumble, and he holstered the piece, then struggled with Ogden's folded arms.
"You are denying my civil rights!" Ogden said so that all could hear. "Read me my rights!"
The cop had seen that done on TV shows, but he had never bothered to acquaint himself with such fine points of the law. His last arrest had been seven years ago, when he had caught a kid stealing a case of beer, and the demands of justice, in that case, had been satisfied with a swift kick in the pants. There had been no question of any rights then.
"My rights!" Ogden demanded.
Some of the young surfers now crowded around this little melodrama and gleefully began to chant, "Read him his rights! Read him his rights!"
The cop turned purple, but that was about the extent of his coming to grips with the situation. It ended with Ogden methodically reciting his own rights to the cop, then extending his hands for the handcuffs in a gesture that could have also implied he expected to have them kissed instead. The cop ground his teeth, clipped on the cuffs, and hustled Ogden towards the town. Ogden walked proudly, head up, his cock swinging from left to right. The cop noticed it, made a move to shield this offensive weapon with his hand, but Ogden jumped away shouting, "Pervert!" and the cop jerked back, the crowd laughing and following. Obviously having made some converts, Ogden was followed all the way to the Mayor's office by some of the young beach crowd, one of them even bringing the brown robe along.
Once alone with him, the cop sighed with relief, draped Ogden in his burnoose, and begged him to get the hell out of town. Ogden was adamant, but then the cop said that he would call the county or the highway patrol, charge him with indecent exposure, disturbing the peace, inciting a riot, and would, furthermore, have his bus ripped apart and searched. This shook Ogden, for he had a kilo of excellent marijuana stashed away under his seat, so he finally agreed to leave. "But I shall return!" he threatened as the cop took him out through the back door.
Like General MacArthur, Ogden kept his word. He was back the next day. The interim time he had spent in the county clerk's office and in the law library at the county seat. Returning to the beach town, his bus was greeted by quite a few cheers, which he acknowledged with a regal wave of his hand and a slight bow.
This time he did not put on his usual display. Instead, he took out a bunch of papers from his bus and began canvassing the houses of the residents.
His mission was simple. If a man answered his knock, he would inform the citizen that the mayor's term of office was in violation of certain state and county statutes, and that it was high time for a recall election. All he wanted to know was if said citizen would be in favor of such a recall election.
If a woman answered, he would go through the same routine ... but this time with a second act. It consisted of a series of questions regarding moral and cultural views.
"I'm taking a poll," he would state, "and I need your opinion, ma'am, on certain subjects relevant to our present society. Do you find the human body, God's own creation, to be an ugly thing ? "
The ladies, confronted with such a fine specimen, usually said that, no, they did not.
Did they find it disgusting?
No.
Vile, sinful? No.
"Does my body disgust you ? " he would then cry, and drop his robe and papers. This usually got a gasp of a little scream, but he had a way of holding their attention with his eyes, so that ultimately the polled female citizens just blushed and stammered out a denial. The effect of this was that Ogden's fifth limb would swell with pride, and would quickly rise to accept the compliment.
Reliable sources have mentioned that, at least on one occasion, his next question was: "Do you find my polling pole objectionable?"
Understandably, not many, later on, wished to discuss what took place between this point and the conclusion of these interviews. However, it must be assumed that Ogden's argument was as rigid as it was persuasive, and he was able to thrust or inject his opinions deep into the consciousness of the female citizenry, because he managed to collect an awful lot of signatures for his recall petition. The truly democratic thing about Ogden's polling was that he made no exceptions, conducting his interviews in a like manner with all women, regardless of age, race, religion or the day of their menstrual cycle-the last factor often being influential in the mental attitudes of women even in such matters as political opinions.
The surprising thing is that he was not tarred and feathered and ridden out on a rail, or at least fed to the sharks. It is a tribute to his persuasive powers that Ogden not only won over the confidence of the women voters, but was also able to get the majority of the male population to see his point of view. The reason for this lay in the fact that such a large number of the men were retirees. Being usually older than their ladies, they were delighted at the happy glow and change of attitude their spouses displayed following Ogden's visits. Since nothing untoward was said about the budding politician, the men tended rather to be grateful to Ogden for, in some way, relieving them of tasks which in all too many cases they had not been able to handle themselves.
Having taken his polls, Ogden vanished for a week or so. The town immediately dropped back into its somnambulistic routine, thinking that they would never see him again. How wrong they were! Ogden was out to get them to see much more of him-all of him, in fact.
He seemed to favor the noon hour for his entrances, because, some ten days after his departure, right in the middle of the lunch hour, Ogden returned to town and entered the political arena. One could not really say that he threw in his hat, because he was not wearing one. Nor was he wearing anything else. Not even sunglasses.
The first the town knew about it was when the populace wandering around the main street began to scream. Out poured the curious, from Cod Rock Cafe, out of the drugstore, the market, and out of the homes. Along the main street there were flashes of skin and a bobbing of long hair, male and female. A whole naked platoon of streakers was blitzing through the town, happily tossing Frisbees in all directions. When the spectators caught them, they found them to have painted on them the motto: "Bare Your Ass For Democracy!"
This was Ogden's advance guard, a sort of modern version of the Young Republicans. Later it was discovered that he had secured them from a Rent-A-Streaker firm down south in Los Angeles.
Next came the entourage of the great man himself. Along the main drag rolled a very old yellow school bus with naked young people sitting all over the hood. Inside sat a makeshift brass band, blaring out of tune but loudly. Atop the bus was Ogden, proudly holding aloft an American flag. The side of the bus had a banner reading: "Vote the Bare Facts Ticket-Bare Facts Party of America-Buffs of the World-Unite!"
Although by the time the fourth streaker had zipped past the mayor's office, His Honor had put in a call to the sheriff's office and the highway patrol, Ogden's political rally could not be stopped. He drew a fantastic crowd, almost everyone on that segment of the coast managed to get there within minutes after word spread. Some of the listeners were in their wet suits from diving, and one had even forgot to take off his fins.
Ogden's speech was quite to the point. It was simply time to take the wraps off the administration of the town, he said. He was challenging the incumbent mayor to a runoff recall election, and he was there to give the voters the bare facts about himself. It was obvious he had nothing to hide, no hidden assets, no unsupportable deficiencies. And his record was perfect. Kicked out of Berkeley, two years in Vietnam, busted only once for possession. No debts. He was letting it all hang out for all to see and they were free to examine it all, shake his hand or whatever else they might want to shake.
For the first few minutes there was a shocked silence throughout the crowd, then came the first titters, small giggles, then roaring laughter and cheers greeting every statement coming from the roof of the bus. And Ogden went on about how his administration would be an open book, restoring basic physical freedom to all Americans within its jurisdiction and promising an even tan for all.
No one was quite sure just how serious this whole affair was. Most took it to be an absolutely madcap caper, and allowed themselves to be drawn into the carnival mood.
Following the speech, Ogden led his followers in the singing of patriotic songs with somewhat new versions of the text set to traditional tunes. One went:
Oh, say can you see, in the dawn's early light, Our tanned young dingalings all hanging out...
And another:
My country 'tis of thee, Land of bare-assed liberty, Of thee I sing...
It was magnificent. The whole town got heady with laughter, with the exception of a Baptist couple who locked themselves in their home and plugged up their ears to neither hear nor see the sinful goings-on. Outside, the nude band went marching up and down the street, streakers zipped hither and yon, Frisbees sailed all over the place carrying their political message, and naked children ran screaming through the streets. Beer appeared, and the sweet smell of marijuana mixed with the salty air. Caught up in the mood, more and more people began to shed their clothes and join Ogden's movement.
Despite what the crowd may have thought, Ogden was, or at least he gave every impression of being, deadly serious about the election. Makeshift voting booths were set up at two points in the town, and they were equipped with ballots that had been typed and mass-Xeroxed. Ogden's followers, all those who had come with him on the bus, went around and pleasantly but firmly urged the citizenry to line up and vote.
They were all in their early twenties, most of them vacationing students from the state university down on the coast, and their method of persuasion was quite irresistible. Gentlemen would have a nude, cute little coed come coyly up to them, breasts lightly touching an arm or chest, the tuft of pubic hair tantalizingly close to the man's crotch. A gentle nudge, a provocative smile, a little squeeze of the hand, and the prospective voter was putty in their hands, obediently following them to get into line, more often than not preceded by their own divining rod, out and erect and indicating the direction of their political views. The male students had much the same success with female voters.
Much later a reporter spent several days in town trying to piece this whole story together. After all, although California has more than its share of weird happenings, seldom does the whole population of a town suddenly discard all inhibitions and, for a whole day, act as they never have before in their entire lives. All sorts of theories were advanced: mass hypnosis, dope, booze, too much sun, and so on. Yet no one was able to really define it, for there seemed to be no single element which could explain it all. Perhaps it was a sudden escape valve from the pressures of life in recent decades, the last few years of which had been so full of worries about wars and inflation. At any rate, the irreverence of it all, plus its obvious innocence and hilarity, captured the imagination of the townspeople and visitors. Later, few wanted to talk about it, preferring either to just grin a little or else shrug their shoulders, but at the time their participation was all but complete. Only a dozen or so people sealed themselves up in their homes and did their best to ignore the entire "election."
Using people rather than computers, Ogden had the results of the election when the last voter made his mark. He had won by a landslide. Not a single vote had been cast for the incumbent, although there were numerous write-in candidates.
When the results were announced, pandemonium broke out in the town, as it does at all election victory celebrations. Ogden was carried around on the shoulders of his supporters, wearing a bunch of gardenias in his crotch; the kids ran, laughing, for the beach, cavorting in the water. Ogden's first act was to thank his opponent for a tough fight, then he humbly thanked his supporters for their unabashed efforts on his behalf; finally he thanked the voters, for having the courage to see his qualities as they were displayed before them and to trust that he would continue to display these sterling characteristics during the execution of his duties throughout his term of office. Then he ordered the drugstore, deli and market to make its liquor supplies available for the rest of the afternoon.
That did it. What had, up to now, been a nude lampoon of politics became an orgy of Roman proportions.
Strangely enough, it was not the youngsters who started it all, although they certainly were not lacking in enthusiasm either. But when the first massive fusillade of popping beer cans had died down, it was the male members of the various camping families that could be seen pairing off, either with their wives or with whatever other females sparked their interest. At first it was done quietly, the couples drifting off towards the trailers and mobile homes. But when the young surfers and Ogden's students got into the act, all pretense was gone.
At this point a lot of the elderly inhabitants of the town, primarily the women, drew back with shock and went home, leaving the beach and streets to the younger maniacs and to the few older men who got their kicks from just looking on.
And there was a lot to see. Transistor radios were blaring everywhere, most of them the same tune because there was only one rock station which could reach the town. The kids were dancing on the sand, at the surf, at various points along the main street. Most were nude, and the boys with beer cans in their hands were beginning to display an increasing amount of erections as they gyrated around with the long-haired surfer girls with their grinding buttocks and bouncing breasts.
The orgy did not turn into the sort of pornographer's wet dream some people later claimed it was. The people were, after all, rather civilized about it, and little happened that could have been seen by either children or adults who had no desire to see it. But for all the superficial discretion, the whole community, the beach and the nearby hills did resound with the groans and sighs of a mass sexual binge.
During this entire time, which consisted of about two to three hours, the mayor was holed up in his clapboard house, sweating profusely and repeatedly dialing law enforcement agencies at the county seat. No matter how often he was reassured that help was on its way, he continued to plead for more reinforcements every time the sounds of debauchery reached his ears or bare skin flitted past his window.
Unknown to him, his sixteen-year-old daughter, a buxom, dark-haired girl with a body tanned to a fine chestnut color, had ignored his warning to stay indoors and had gone out for the revels. As chance would have it, soon after the election, the triumphant Ogden was wandering around, shaking hands and taking his bows, when he ran into her. His eyes narrowed in concentration as he professionally appraised her figure, although he found it gauche of her to confront him wearing a bikini.
The firmness of her body, and the eager virginal good looks he saw, intrigued him. He remembered that he had not seen her when he had canvassed the town during his initial poll, so he decided to straighten that little oversight out immediately. He took the girl up into a small gully leading into the foothills, found the right spot with the proper amount of shade and began his indoctrination, praising the freedom of total nudity and all the rest of his rather obtuse views about living. The girl was a willing listener, especially after he had poured half a bottle of wine into her and got her flying with a joint. Details of the little encounter in the gully became public knowledge later, not because the girl was broadcasting them all over town, but because her best girl friend was only ten yards away at the time, trying to catch her breath after a series of feverish orgasms pounded out of her by a surf ass. This loyal little friend, while making no mention of her own generous spreading of thighs, wasted no time in letting everyone know just how the mayor's daughter had lost her cherry. She had an excellent view through the mustard seed dotting the hills, and since the surf ass was collapsed in a stupor of too much sex after too much booze, she was not disturbed in her patient vigil.
While still talking to the girl, Ogden began with the top of her bikini. She made no protest when he spilled out her breasts into the sunlight, for it was all a part of the new awareness of her body that Ogden told her she must learn. She was a bit more concerned about losing the panties, especially since Ogden was doing his best to chomp off her breasts one at a time, or at least make the nipples pop between his thumb and forefinger. But Ogden was a determined man. He distracted her with the full bloom of his polling pole, which reared itself up and thrust the head into her belly. While she groggily contemplated this immense red chunk of flesh attempting to torpedo her, he got his hand inside her pants, and with a deft sweep, had her pubic hair waving in the breeze. The girl clapped her legs together and grabbed at the newly elected mayor's staff of office, in an effort to push it away. It just gave a powerful surging jerk in her hand and Ogden moved onto all fours over her, his knee pressing hard between her legs just above her own knees. She winced with pain and her legs gave way. like a big eel, Ogden was immediately between them, his hands holding her. arms pinioned. An experienced prospector, he knew at the first probe that what he had before him was a sealed mine shaft. The girl was too far out to put up much of a physical defense, and her pleadings only got a bit more of Ogden's political views in return. On about the third probe Ogden managed to lodge the tip of his instrument into the tiny orifice. He sort of coiled himself and then thrust forward with his hips, exerting all the pressure he could on the tip of that plowshare of his. The girl was tough. Her whole body began to slide across the gravel and rocks of the gully, literally being pushed around by Ogden's cock. Stinkbugs reared up in protest at this avalanche of flesh slithering over their domain, and foxtail stickers imbedded themselves in the girl's hair, but Ogden thrust on, his bare feet gripping the ground like a monkey's to give himself leverage.
Suddenly there was a horrible rending scream. Red-winged blackbirds in nearby scrub oaks took off in fright, and a jackrabbit that had been hiding in the grass took off as if a hundred rifles were pointed his way. The watching girl in the mustard seed grabbed her genitals in delight as she saw the distended screaming mouth of her friend and saw the full length of Ogden's crowbar vanish inside the abdoment of the mayor's daughter. He stuffed it into her and held it in for a while, his buttocks working to get it in as far as it was possible. When he withdrew it, the shaft was bright with red blood which glistened and shone in the sun. The girl below him gave out a few moans, but Ogden now had her lubricated with her own sanguine grease, and he proceeded to let her know what a woman's life was like. Very methodically and very hard, he began to ram himself into the bleeding orifice, making sure that each stroke banged him in to the hilt and got a whimper out of the girl as she felt her innocent cervix bludgeoned with his battering ram. He then tipped her legs up and, with the added leverage, began to imitate the mating habits of smaller mammals, primarily rodents, which copulate in a far shorter time than human beings. There were loud wet smacking sounds as he plowed into the gore which now covered his testicles and both their thighs.
Not satisfied with having punctured her from the front, Ogden then turned her over and, before she knew what was happening, he was lining the inside of her colon with her vaginal blood. The girl now began to bleat like a stuck pig-which, in a way, she was. But Ogden could have cared less, some sort of resentment against the mayor driving him ever deeper into his opponent's daughter's ass. She was, by now, not much to look at. The position on her back had allowed her sweat-soaked skin to pick up all the debris below her, so that when Ogden turned her over for a rear-ender, he had in his hands a piece of ass that looked as if it had been the main ingredient of the child's mud pie. With a fiendish delight he banged her anyway, finally coming into her anus with a series of tremendous thrusts which sent her sliding over the gravel on her stomach and breasts the way she had done before on her back. When at last his passion cooled, he withdrew his penis, looked it over, grabbed the girl by the hair and turned her around and made her lick it clean.
Perhaps this encounter was repeated, but the only eyewitness was at this point interrupted by the resurrection of the beach ass, who had rallied for another sally. By the time he was again deflated, the revelers in the area suddenly froze in their activities at the sound of many sirens on the highway.
Coming down the road from the direction of the county seat was a formidable convoy of police cars. Out from the ocean clattered two helicopters, one from the police, the other from the Coast Guard.
Pandemonium broke out in the town. Naked bodies began to streak in all directions, the laughter now mixing with calls to split or else to stand and hold their ground. In the confusion the police were able to drive right into the middle of the town before jumping out into the crowd.
When the town cop had called them he had said that he had a riot on his hand, so the dozens of policemen came in gas masks and bullet-proof vests, armed with everything from gas to riot guns. Confronted with waves of naked flesh rather than with clubs, they were for a while confused as to what action to take, especially when the Bare Facters would scream "Rape!" or "Homo!" depending upon the sex of the person the police laid hands on.
Two dozen cops were no match for several hundred naked fanatics, and their catch was minimal. There was so much milling about that no sooner would they get their hands on someone, throw him in a car, than others would let him out on the other side. The Bare Facters streaked off into the hills just behind the town; others grabbed surfboards and paddled out beyond the breakers, insolently watching the cops run back and forth on the now deserted beach. The simple nudity of the young people had somehow disarmed the guardians of the law, because not a club was wielded nor a gas grenade tossed. End result of the massive raid was ridiculous: two police cars with flat tires, one policeman with fingernail scratches on his face, and one five-year-old nude kid in custody, although it later turned out that he lost his pants trying to wriggle out of a cop's clutches.
After all the dust had settled, the problem arose as to what, exactly, had taken place. The police needed to make out a report, but they found themselves without witnesses. Most of the townspeople refused to comment on the afternoon, other than to say that a sort of irregular election had been held. No one except the mayor volunteered any details or wanted to prefer charges against the young people. The mayor's claims, on the other hand, seemed so preposterous that they were difficult to believe. According to him, the town had been invaded by an army of naked fanatics bent on nothing less than the complete destruction of the town and the raping of every living female in the area.
The police did take down his report, but without taking it seriously. They checked out the license number of the bus that had brought Ogden and his bunch and found it to be registered to a student from the university, who temporarily could not be found in the town. They did put a parking ticket under the wiper, but that was the extent of it. The only other evidence of the whole "riot" were the beer cans and band instruments lying about in the street, and the police told the mayor that he had better see the mess cleared up so that it did not interfere with traffic. Then, just as suddenly as they had come, the police left, many of them rather dazed by the whole thing. The helicopters hovered over the area for a while, then they too whirled away and silence fell over the town. The party was over, and the members of the Bare Facts Party began to drift back into town and started putting on clothes against the cool breeze of late afternoon.
For all practical purposes, the situation was back to normal. Families on the beach began fouling the air with charcoal smoke, and surf fishermen once more appeared at the water's edge.
But the massive raid of the police had not gone unnoticed at the county seat, and a stringer from that city's newspaper appeared to see what kind of story he could put together. At first he thought be would concentrate on just the nudity aspect-a wild streak-in, in which a whole town had participated. He considered the whole election a big put-on, just a prank on the part of Ogden and his friends. But when, in one of the abandoned voting booths, he came across the stack of ballots and other papers, he studied them carefully for a while. Suddenly his eyes Ut up with the joy of a bloodhound that had found sexy scent.
Packing off all the papers with him, he said not a word to anyone, and left at sunset for the county seat.
With dusk falling fast, the town began to lose half its population. The VWs with surfboards on their roofs began to drive off towards the south, the motorcycles roared away, and the mobile-home families near the beach began to turn on their Japanese transistor televisions to catch the evening news on the tiny screens. There was an air of exhaustion and spent energies, with everyone looking forward to a good night's sleep.
About this time Ogden came down from the hills. He was cold and missed his brown burnoose. His supply of grass had been lost in the turmoil, so he felt a bit down. In addition, the exertion required to make a political convert out of the mayor's daughter had given him quite an appetite.
He wandered onto the main street, nude, dirty, and with blood-streaked thighs. The cafe was closed; so were the market, drugstore, and deli. No one was about to give him either food or shelter. Just when he was passing one of the voting booths, he heard a lot of clanking somewhere in an alley and went to investigate. Coming around the corner of a boarded-up house, he came face to face with the mayor, who was obeying police orders and piling all the beer cans and band instruments in a heap behind the abandoned house.
The mayor was in an understandable rage. His whole community had gone berserk on him, the election farce had humiliated him, the wild display of nudity shocked him, and the fact that no one would help him clean up the mess was simply adding insult to injury. When he looked up from the imposing refuse heap he had been building and saw the worn out Ogden standing there like a naked scarecrow, a red film came over his eyes.
"You fucking pervert!" he yelled. Grabbing a beat up trombone, he made a wild leap for his political opponent. Ogden took one look at the gleam in the mayor's eyes, spun on his heel, and, with knees kicking high, began to make tracks back the way he had come. Screaming curses, the mayor ran after him, waving the instrument like a club and throwing any rocks or beer cans he came across.
A few people heard the yelling and peered out in time to see the flash of Ogden's skin in the growing darkness, followed by the enraged mayor. The chase had a Mack Sennett quality to it, but the good citizens were too tired from the day's activities to appreciate it. Ogden called several times for help, but his friends were apparently either gone or sleeping it all off somewhere, because no one came to his aid.
Thinking his youth and strength would help him outdistance his middle-aged pursuer, Ogden headed back into the hills from which he had come. It was a good idea, for the mayor was already displaying respiratory problems; but Ogden now made the mistake of heading up the same gully where he had left the mayor's daughter.
Feet thumping on the ground, he passed her without a glance. The girl was sitting in a pot-and-wine daze, watching him go by as if he were a creature from another planet. Her body was very dirty, and she had attempted to get back into her bikini, but had not done too good a job of it. The bra was on crooked, so that one breast hung out below the cup, and her panties were down somewhere around her knees. She had one hand between her legs, initially to feel out the damage that had been done to her, but ultimately this probing had turned to a sort of self-pitying masturbation.
It was in this position that her father also found her. At first he did not recognize her, and was about to clobber her with the trombone; but when she yelled, he immediately knew that it was indeed the apple of his eye, sitting there looking like a whore who had taken on a regiment of the Foreign Legion. "What happened!" he cried.
"It was him! He ... he...." The girl pointed in the direction Ogden had taken. Expertly, her voice immediately dissolved into a hysterical sobbing that was calculated to turn any father's heart to mush. In a flash he saw Ogden, the beast, debauching his pure and virginal daughter. Oh, the agony of it! The pervert's cock inside his precious darling! The brutality and horror of it all!
Suddenly he no longer had any problems getting his wind. The trombone fell from his hand, and he drew the gun he carried in his role as the town cop. Methodically, he checked the chambers, his hand trembling slightly with righteous rage. Then he headed up the gully, his mind forming concepts of total annihilation.
It was fairly easy to follow Ogden. Now and then his naked buttocks would flash in the darkness ahead or his scrambling up the steep gully would loosen loud little rock slides, and his hairy head was often outlined against the evening sky.
The gully became the side of a hill after a while, and Ogden found himself enmeshed in the tangles of manzanita and other scrub brush of the Coastal Range. He could hear the panting of his hunter behind him, so he had no way to go but up. Clawing his way along, he had to get down on all fours and force his way up along the coyote and deer trails that made passage for his body barely possible. After a few minutes of this, the brush gave way to rock and he thought he had it made. Scrambling over the decomposed granite like a naked caveman, he was just chuckling to himself at the thought of leaving the mayor behind when he found himself on top of a rocky ridge. On the other side, the rocks fell away perpendicularly in a sheer cliff that vanished in the inky darkness of the night. He was trapped.
Early next morning the whole beach town was in an uproar. A small van had delivered the morning paper printed at the county seat. Right across the front page was the banner headline: "BEACH COMMUNITY GOES BARE!" The subhead read: "Nude Hippie Streaks Away with Votes for Mayor." Then, in great detail, the article told how the election had indeed been valid. It seems Ogden was something of a jailhouse lawyer and that, although his campaign methods may have been Unorthodox, he had taken care to file all the appropriate papers at the county seat, so that, due to certain unusual legal loopholes existing in the county ordnances, he had, in fact, become the mayor.
The previous day was now a dream dissolved in the fog of hangovers, but the good citizens realized that they had just become the laughingstock of the county, if not the state or even the whole nation. Crowds gathered in the middle of town, heatedly debating the mess and how they could get out of it. Then someone yelled that there was a fire in the hills, someone else remembered gunshots in the night, and another suddenly recollected hearing his daughter tell that the mayor's daughter told her, her daddy had chased Ogden into the hills at night to murder him.
Acting out of sheer common sense, half the male population of the town headed for the small column of smoke rising from the nearby hills. They knew that all the town needed was to have their new celebrity mayor fried on a rock to really make the big time in the news, with a scandal that they could never live down.
They found the old mayor about fifty yards below the rocks on which Ogden was enduring his Promethean ordeal. All night the two had exchanged obscenities and missiles. Ogden had been able to hold his own because of the darkness and the sizeable boulders he was able to send crashing down into the brush. When morning came, however, the old mayor saw that he would be unable to get his daughter's seducer with the pistol, so he lit the brush to barbecue him instead.
The townspeople arrived just in time. The mayor was subdued, the fire beaten down, and Ogden was taken off his hot rock. He was quite a sight. Beard and hair singed, his nude body was covered with dirt, scratches, ashes and brilliant pink patches, the first stages of reaction to the poison oak he had crawled through during the night.
A conference, participated in by all parties, was held right there on the burned-out hillside. The language was vile, but ultimately a settlement was reached which saved not only Ogden's itching hide, but the faces of all the others. Ogden would prepare a statement to the local press that the election story was false-that the reporter had fallen for a students' prank, and that the whole thing was a farce. He would also kindly get the hell out of the county and never show his face, or his bare ass, in the place again. The mayor would, in return, desist from parting Ogden from his mortal life, and would resume his duties as if nothing happened.
Under the circumstances it was a wise agreement. The very next day the county paper retracted its story, the town received good publicity, and the whole affair was written off as just another bit of streakery. Ogden vanished, the Bare Facts Party never reared its head, or any other part of its anatomy, again.
The only changes, this summer, in the town are that a town council has been formed: the mayor's office has a new resident, with a specified term to serve; and the city fathers wisely allow a segment of beach, safely remote from the town, to be used by those who wish to set themselves free to worship the sun without the help of Ogden. But a shiver still goes through the townspeople whenever they see any bearded young beach person wearing anything even remotely resembling a free-flowing burnoose. . . .
* * *
This case of political chicanery, obviously fictional on a number of points (perhaps to bolster the fading ego of the writer, who may even be Ogden himself) is nevertheless an example of political hysteria. Everyone is familiar with this phenomenon. Campaign rallies, conventions, and political "stumping" trips throughout the grass roots all bear symptoms of this hysteria, which is in many ways deliberately manufactured by the campaign directors to maintain enthusiasm for their candidates.
Ogden, of course, attempts to do the same thing. Having carefully researched the legal aspects of the local election, he has a complete grasp of what is necessary to get elected. His campaign, however, does not reflect this same careful attention to detail, since he quite willingly brings in social elements in the small-town election which go beyond the normal boundaries of political hysteria. Nudism, in particular, is a social phenomenon which is not only illegal, but quite uncomfortable for a great many people. Young people seem to have less in the way of inhibitions as regards nudity, perhaps because their bodies are still relatively beautiful and worthy of the total expression that nudity brings.
What Ogden, in fact, brings about is a riot, not an election. It is probably doubtful that he ever intended to seriously run for office-his electoral manipulations were merely an excuse for his highly radical social behavior. Riots, once beyond a certain mood, fuel their own passions, so Ogden only had to worry about starting the melee. Riots are extremely political in nature. Besides emulating the hysteria of the political campaign, they are in themselves caused by factors of political frustration and alienation. As Louis Masotti and Don Bowen put it in their book Riots and Rebellion, the riot is caused by one of four political causes.
The first cause they call the derivational hypothesis: "Men engage in civil violence because the current or anticipated distribution of values in their societies is unfair or unjust by some standard." Usually, the authors say, this cause has to do with respect to the distribution of wealth. Two corollaries to this hypothesis must be noted: first, that the inequality is felt by the people themselves, and second, that the people perceive not only the un-equality, but the fact that this inequality is unjust. Without including the first corollary, we would have a hard time explaining how countries in the world which contain obvious inequalities among their citizenry still manage to have extremely peaceful populations. Studies conducted on the derivational hypothesis attempt to determine what the nature of the deprivation is among rioting groups in the population. One study indicates that poverty is the main cause, another study emphasizes the relationship between land distribution and rioting, with those without land ownership being the most prone to riot.
Masotti and Bowen summarize the second factor thus:
Let us turn our attention now to the second emphasis: that which moves men to violence is deprivation relative to something else. The answers to the question of what that "something else" is are varied. Some suggest that one feels deprived when invidious comparisons are possible with the achievements of other salient individuals or reference groups. Here, for example, is Marx on this point: "A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. But if a palace arises beside the house, the little house shrinks into a hut."
This theme pinpoints the reason for social violence as a result of the comparison between what one currently enjoys and what one aspires to. The expectation of better things, when thwarted, leads to violence. According to this second hypothesis, it is neither the completely downtrodden (who have no expectations) nor the completely wealthy (who can satisfy any expectation) who represents a possible sector of social violence. It is only possible for the middle-class man to fit into this picture. This view stresses the factor that hope, not despair, produces with respect to dissatisfaction with the system. This view states "that people riot because the political system cannot meet with their rising expectations.
The third hypothesis related by Masotti and Bowen is the factor of alienation, of the breakdown of consensual norms and the "inability or unwillingness of the agencies of social control to act in such a way as to restore these norms." This hypothesis is amply illustrated by the inability of the town mayor and sheriff to get the situation which Ogden was creating under control. When the ruling class fails to respond to social acts of violence, more violence follows, at least according to this third hypothesis.
The fourth hypothesis is the one that applies to the situation of this case most aptly. According to this fourth reason for rioting, civil violence is the result of conflict between various groups within the society. This "group conflict" idea primarily calls attention to the various fragmented groups within the society, where differences are most likely to occur with respect to race, religion, or some regional factor (city/country).
In Ogden's case, his takeover of the town was motivated by an age difference which manifested itself most noticeably in the degree to which Ogden practiced nudism and encouraged his followers to do the same. In today's American society, sexual differences, morally, between the young and the old are still quite pronounced in some areas of the country. Ogden realized that nudism would polarize the neighbor-hood very quickly (divide the people into two opposing and supposedly irreconcilable factions). By continually accenting the sexual motif, Ogden managed to completely alienate the old from the young, and therefore found establishment of a power base, in the one faction that wasn't represented, quite easy to accomplish.
Ogden's big mistake was in calculating which side of the social split he created would eventually end up with the political power. In fact, his mistake is so obvious that it seems impossible that his whole story could be true. If he really did have some knowledge of the law, then why did he directly expose himself to criminal prosecution, and Why did he not stop the insurgence of his followers once the election was won? Even though he may have won the election legally, his conduct exposed himself as well as his followers to criminal prosecution. These are hardly the actions of a leader.
Revolutions without tangible purpose inevitably bring about a counter-revolution which usually sets social conditions back to pre-revolutionary standards. Politics, as the cases in this journal illustrate, is a complex game involving many individuals and emotions. To bring about effective political change, careful consideration must be given to the means of power and how best to acquire this power. Impetuous moves, hasty maneuvers, the action without foresight and thought-these hamper all effective political progress. Social advance and social change must be the product of the society as a whole, or else whatever advances are brought about will be merely temporary in nature. Only a few times in the history of the world's countries has a revolution been successfully carried out, and in each and every case those revolutions which encouraged popular support were the most successful. Society cannot advance when divisive tactics are used-only one special group, in this case, has anything to gain.
CONCLUSION
Richard Rose, a British political scientist, feels that political irrationality is the main cause of corruption in government. Political irrationality is caused, he states, by the nature of democratic governments which require a continuing public consensus for majority power and effectiveness. As such, no democracy can completely avoid political excess, but, as he states in his study of propaganda, Influencing Voters:
The prevalence of irrational behavior is not meant to imply that politicians can do nothing to affect the conduct of elections-for better or for worse. While the efforts of decades of reformers in America have not altered most campaign practices, some practices have nonetheless changed greatly in recent decades, in response to a complex series of social and political developments. At every election, the possibility of increasing rational behavior does exist, and a few campaigners do take advantage of such opportunities. Moreover, the alteration of laws regulating election procedures and party activities can also affect campaigning.
Change is possible. Political irrationality, while seemingly the worst form, at times, of social madness, is amenable to public effort for reform. However sharp the backlash from the Watergate affair, no amount of legislation or government reorganization will insure a higher ethical standard during the American election process. Even though advanced communications has made it easier for the public to participate in government, their participation is by no means guaranteed.
Because an apathetic public invariably breeds apathetic government, it is up to the people to make the necessary changes. Only when a government has an extremely close relationship with the people it governs is corruption minimized. Through some means, the government of the United States and the people must be brought closer together.
Two schools of thought dominated political analysis about the capability of the voter for many years, according to a study published by the American Institute for Political Communication in Washington, D.C. The first opinion was typified by the thinking of Walter Lippmann, who questioned the rationality of the voting public under present circumstances of democratic procedure. The second opinion, exemplified by the writings of Lord Bryce, held that the voter could make reasonable decisions given adequate access to the facts.
A third evaluation came into fashion following the advent of television in national campaigns; one that could be described as taking a midway position between the views of Bryce and Lippmann. Simply stated, the "collective properties" theory concerns the position, not of the individual within a democracy, but of the group within a democracy. Even though the individual is exposed to many differing pressures in an election, his decisions can be expected to produce beneficial results because the society as a whole contains certain elements which guide him to the proper choice.
Despite all its inequities, the political campaign is a procedure which enables a democracy to be elected. As the Institute for Political Communication states in the publication The New Methodology:
In a democracy, the ideal political campaign is the medium through which men and issues are drawn into focus for the voter. The campaign-more than the casting of the ballots per se-makes it possible for the governed to periodically decide not only who shall govern but, within broad limits, the policies to be pursued by the governors. In a way, it is a regular rite by which those who have political power to give offer it to those who seek and can convince the givers that they deserve to have it.
Public responsibility for the tenor and tone of government policy is a crucial element in any understanding of the present government crisis. Even though the public cannot be blamed for specific actions and political policies of the administration, the public must share some of the responsibility for their existence. The underlying problem, the apathetic trend of voter thinking, must be changed for effective reform, and yet there has been no substantial mandate from the voting public during this present crisis for any great change in government. The traditional barriers still exist between the government and the people, and neither side is making any great effort to overcome them. The people resent further governmental interference in their personal lives, and the government is reluctant to extend controls any further into the fabric of American society. History may force a strengthening of the bonds between our people and our government, but for the moment most people are reluctant to exchange any measure of their freedom on the chance that greater involvement with the national government will make it any more morally conscientious.
Some commentators have thought corruption to be the sign of a healthily functioning government body, while others have condemned corruption as the great inhibitor of social justice. But corruption in itself is always based on an ethical, moral judgment, and morals are cultural entities, free from permanent definition. Those who feel some change need be made in the very structure of our government should remember not only that government is in many ways a reflection of the people governed, but that morality and politics are two separate, and by no means mutually inclusive, ideas.
Konrad Lorenz, the noted naturalist and behavioral scientist, believes that morality is a behavioral condition subject to many of the same influences as any other pattern of human behavior. In no way can it be measured in absolute terms, as political ideology is subject to. In his book On Aggression, Lorenz outlines the causes of moral breakdown:
The stress under which morally responsible behavior breaks down can be of varying kinds. It is not so much the sudden, one-time great temptation that makes human morality break down but the effect of any prolonged situation that exerts an increasing drain on the compensatory power of morality. Hunger, anxiety, the necessity to make difficult decisions, overwork, hopelessness and the like all have the effect of sapping moral energy and, in the long run, making it break down. Anyone who has had the opportunity to observe men under this kind of strain, for example in war ... knows how unpredictably and suddenly moral decomposition sets in. Men in whose strength one trusted unconditionally suddenly break down, and others of whom one would never have expected it prove to be sources of inexhaustible energy, keeping up the morale of others by their example. Anyone who has experienced such things knows that the fervor of good intention and its power of endurance are two independent variables. Once you have realized this, you cease to feel superior to the man who breaks down a little sooner than you do yourself.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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