Political Portraits

The Governor’s head was round and white every moment it wasn’t throbbing like a red blister. His middle section was as round and jovial as his head, and the folds of his ample gut guffawed in unison with the jubilant barks from his babyish mouth and self-applauding jowls. When he laughed, he gave off the impression of being able to chew his own head like bubble gum: heaving and contracting in a mucussy-sweet goo.

He had been known as a “moderate” when he represented a rural district in the Federal Congress, but only chortled now when approached with his often-fascistic voting record. He was a true Party Man: Resilient against Opposition propaganda, optimistic against untoward facts, proud and unconcerned with the doings of his subordinates, and avuncular with cultivated gibbering. Men would insult him to his face and he would laugh and clap, and his big open mouth gobbled up the insult. One of his opponents claimed he was now wallowing like a pig in the mire of Federal handouts. At his next campaign event, his supporters had begun shouting, “Wallow, pig!” and he had laughed and chortled. Some grammar experts on Public Radio said it was the first time in History “wallow” had been used in the imperative during a political event. I am the Happyman! he proclaimed with every gumless chortle. One could cite crime statistics at him for hours and he would purr, or relay the murder of six immigrant children in a tenement house and he held his head back and vanquished the crime but also violence itself, cowing before mirth, good feelings, and the force of love. He shook his head. Love wins, he said. One could hate him no more than one could hate a baby. Would you call a baby an embezzler? He dared you to ask. He was a brilliant politician.

“Let’s welcome on stage some of the fine folks who made this victory possible,” the Governor cried. “Let’s have Joshua come up on stage. Oh Joshua, it’s great to see you! How bout this? He’s got a husband folks, let’s have him come up on stage too! Come on Roberto! I see you!”

A happy applause accompanied the man on stage. The couple kissed.

“Oofda! Doncha just love to see it?”

He was committed to having all the same-sex Party spouses come on stage. It became a real arms race. To maintain the same level of enthusiasm in audience, each couple had to out-do the affection shown by the previous one. The ensuing parade became quite obscene. The Governor continued his commentary. “That’s what I call a hole in one!” “Oof! That’s gonna leave a mark!”

Melvin watched as gay after gay took the stage. He had tried hard to cultivate a healthy love for homosexuality, sometimes very very hard. He had spent countless hours after midnight at the Gay 90s trying to suppress his native discomfort, but it had resulted in very little that was politically useable. Being able to engage in even light sodomy without disgust would have been a godsend for him, but he could never manage it.

The Governor continued: “Out electoral victories this year are historic. The voters of Minnesota have spoken loud and clear: People before Profits. Climate Change is real. Love is love. A woman’s choice is sacred. It all relates to what Lieutenant Peggy said in the first debate: What is bad is evil. What more is there to say than that!”

“Wallow, pig!” cried some in the audience. Light spit burbled in his laughter, erupting from the Governor’s mouth.

“These were difficult years for Minnesota, what with the police murder of George Floyd, and the justice events which rocked our cities. But we have emerged from that ordeal stronger than ever. We are more committed to social justice reforms. We are more committed to combating climate change. We are more committed to combating the divide between the megarich and the poor. We are more committed to equitable taxation, and ending the racist and divisive drug war! We are committed to ending the New Jim Crow.” The tide of applause had been rising and amplifying with each sentence, until there were hoots and hollers. “We are more committed to creating a new Minnesota, and ushering our great state into the future! Thank you!”

An absolute roar broke out of applause and cheers. Melvin tried to clap, but his hands were listless and seemed to give almost no noise. Of course he was as happy as anyone about the electoral and cultural victories of the past four years. Yet his heart could not unite with his intellect. The cries of enthusiasm and joy could only bounce off his stoic and almost tearful face, and ricochet off his heart like a ball bearing off a hunk of lead.

.

The governor spoke again: “I have to share with you some sadder news now. Our Congressman Jovial and True of the Fourth District, Nord Norquist, told me earlier today that his next term in Congress will be his last.”

Aws came from the crowd.

“Ol’ Nord is aiding constituents in the Virgin Islands until the New Year, so he can’t be here tonight, but he did give me a message. ‘It has been my unique privilege to represent the city of St. Paul and the other towns of the Fourth District for the past thirty-four years. We’ve accomplished a lot in that time. We’ve built schools, community centers, roads, highways. We’ve created whole communities in the Twin Cities that didn’t exist before. We have changed the course of Minnesota history. We have made it possible for women and people of color to be elected in a state that was once ninety-nine percent white. I have done my duty, and now I am not necessary. A new generation of more female, darker, gayer Minnesotans stand by to take up my mantle. I’ve run my race. I’ve seen the promised land. And it’s one where I’m thankfully no longer necessary. Signed, Nord Norquist.’ That’s beautiful, Nord. Beautiful!”

Melvin took a sip of his vodka, swished it around in medicinal fashion, and spit it back in his glass. Norquist had been his rabbi in the early days of his political adulthood. Norquist had been his ideal man: Tall, nondescript, his face like a flagpole without a flag. He gave off an aura of frailty, a man composed of pine twigs that could only be held up by female hand. He always had a wife nearby of perfect consolatory bearing: Mid-twenties, bespectacled, lovely and subtly buxom, literally always nodding her head. When her powers of consolation faded he was generous in alimony, and made sure she was well situated before he took another bride.

Nord thought very highly of Melvin. He offered one of his most recent and best wives to him. She had been a Rhodes Scholar, a marathon runner, and had a soft aquiline face and a wealthy and cultured family. I don’t know why Melvin passed up the opportunity. Her nodding had grown all the more sensual with the passing years: More erudite, more pleasing, closer to a man’s ego, and closer to his heart. I asked Melvin if she would pass her along to me, but the Congressman used the power of the frank to personally send me three cease-and-desists. She ended up moving to California for a week and now lives in Monaco with the son of a tech billionaire. I told Melvin: That could be your son.

It didn’t matter to him. Melvin loved Nord and everything he touched, but he didn’t want to repeat another man’s story. Melvin understood political favors, but wanted his rise to be his own. He wanted aid like spectators handing out water and bananas at a marathon, but not a golf-cart to carry him across the finish line.

There would be no Nord anymore. “For young men, a boost; for young women, a goose.” Such was the saying about Nord around HQ. This was really never fair. I never saw him goose anyone but his wives. But he helped every young man he could. I think that’s why his help was always so useless. He chopped up every sliver of the pig, from snout to tail, from hoof to haunch, and you were lucky to get a bacon bite in the end. He was too nice a guy to realize every pig is finite.

Melvin found himself next to the seaweed again. They stood next to a table of refreshments. He kept opening his mouth to allow smalltalk to walk forth, but only exasperated sighs escaped.

“Did you know the peanut is not a nut, but a legume?”

“I did know that,” replied Melvin.

“Lots of people know that. But did you also know that cashews are a legume? So are almonds. Indeed, almost all the foods we think of as nuts are actually legumes.”

“What are nuts, then?”

“I don’t exactly know why we use the term. I think it’s probably an Anglo-Saxon one that that goes back to the Norman invasion.”

Melvin drank more vodka.