Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste - Lester Bangs [182]
“So why can’t I tell ‘em a joke or two now?”
“Because that was then and this is now besides which you’re supposed to be the cool unflappable serious leader with your mind if not your hot li’l mitts on the helm of the ship of state at all times … let them tell the jokes, that's what they’re good at!”
“Hey,” said Reagan, “I’m about to die of boredom not to mention disgust over here! I can see who wears the pants in yourfamily! C’mon, you can’t bait me and who knows how many million other Americans and then leave us hanging, just like that! Let's hear the punch line, dammit!”
“Well…”
Jimmy was unsure. It was how he felt most of the time, but now as ever he didn’t feel bad about it. He knew that feeling unsure meant that he was actually dealing with the problem, whatever it might be, rather than avoiding it with pat solutions or outright dismissal. He treated all problems brought to him this way, from Amy's broken backyard Water Wiggle (“Just turn the hose all the way up,” he’d told her. “To hell with Water Wiggle. You’re getting too old for it anyway”) to the Iranian crisis: he thought, pondered, mulled, analyzed, compared, reviewed, contemplated, meditated, regarded, slept.
For he only dreamed of affairs of state, except for the odd phosphene-surging liaison with Jane Fonda in the arms of Morpheus, which always followed a rigid script: she came to the White House to ask for a special dispensation granting legal abortions at low fees to California women, because the entire state was addicted to smoking heroin via cigarette-ends and she was horrified at the prospect of an entire generation hooked from birth; he said, “Come with me into my private study, I need to consult my law book as well as …”
“You mean… ?”
“… yes … Him… The Man Upstairs …”
“ You're subletting too! Wow, the economy really is in a fix!”
“No, no, that's not it!”
“Wait, lemme guess … it's to Kissinger, right? No? Well then, uh, ah… y’know, I wouldn’t put it past you to dig up some old has-been from the Sixties and hide him up there like some kind of secret weapon … Robert McNamara!” She looked triumphant.
He looked back at her triumph, or assumption of same. I give you this, you owe me one. He grinned. “Shucks, Jane, old LBJ shoulda learned his own damn self… cain’ nobody fool you…”
“That's because I’ve discovered something wholly new, revolutionary, a technique that has changed not only my life but those of everyone around me. Now, I know the name Werner Erhard may—”
He snapped back into customary pose. The chief executive, after all, cannot go chasing every California beach ball that bounces past him on the sand. For a fleeting moment he had an image of himself at the beach, Malibu, in full dress suit, vest, the works, looking down and flushing at how silly his wing tips looked in all that sand. But no, this was his turf, his time, his—he grabbed her, held her in a clinch redolent of Dick the Bruiser's finer moments.
“Why… why, JIM … Jimboy… what are you doing … ?”
She wanted it, the bitch. Not like that dyke Joan Baez, who’d simply kneed him in the balls: “Ever hear that Neil Young song, Jimmy? ‘Welfare mothers make better lovers.’ Well, turn it around. I’m particular. Fuck off.”
He ran his hand around and around those gorgeous gams, those calves he’d drooled at in so many movies. They were a little, just a winter tad fat, but when his big palm and knowing fingers moved up, swollen and glowing with lust like some mutant carrot, the heel of his palm brushing her thigh set off subterranean blasts of ricochets of lust in them both.
“But my husband …” she mewled weakly, and then gave up.
“Barbarella!” he hissed, which in real life would