So there I was, sitting on Westboro beach constructing a sand castle, listening to Latin Jazz, admiring the many beautiful women of Ottawa, and desperate for a cigar.
I’ve stopped cigarettes altogether now. Not through any deliberate choice or with any serious commitment or effort on my part mind you, but more by accident: I had a few too many on election night 2016 and by the time I had recovered later that week the desire was gone. Spooked straight or something. Besides, I have never been a regular cigarette smoker anyway and the way things are going these days it won’t be long before a drag will land you in prison, unless you can convince the cop it’s actually just a harmless joint. “I swear it’s weak pot, officer! What kind of responsible citizen do you think I’d be if I touched a menthol?!”
Whatever. Cigarettes are gone now and I don’t want to dwell on it because I hate sounding like one of those prats who can just up and quit on a whim and then brags to everyone about it. I still smoke cigars from time to time and the more Tito Puente I hear on the beach under the sun the more comfortable I am with the possibility that Health Canada will one day try banish me exile in Cuba.
I'd had two margaritas at the beach club café despite promising to cut back on booze, but I felt they'd make an adequate substitute for lunch and I’d been a good boy about eating my vegetables and going to the gym. At any rate, the whole scene was nearly perfect except that the beach is still technically located in Ontario so the booze costs forty dollars and must be consumed in a locked room far away from other humans, and where a paid staff member shouts at you to feel bad for diminishing the purity of your bodily fluids with the devil’s tequila. It’s all very aggravating and pedantic but at last it stops you from nursing a drink for too long.
But if the sun is shining - and warm - on the weekend, then nothing should be allowed to get in the way of a good mood. We have so few days of light left before the winter returns that just about any agitation can be endured. There's only so much Vitamin D left this season so grab all you can, friend, and admit that that there are far worse places someone could be.
Imagine what poor Reince Priebus is going through right now all alone in the west wing, huddled under his desk in his office with the lights off and the door locked. Sheltered in place, they call it, as the dwindling survivors of his staff scramble for cover or claw madly at the bulletproof windows, desperately trying to scamper to the safety of their DC attorney's office. With Spicer out they are all that remains of the once mighty GOP establishment inside the White House, and now Bannon is able to roam the halls with nothing to keep his blood lust in check, free to rip the head off of any passing intern and slather himself with the goo inside.
Some ambitious new idiot-maniac will be named as the new communications director, the soulless Huckabee Sanders will be the new permanent Press Secretary, Tillerson and Sessions will be gone soon - either by choice or after being pushed off a cliff - and the putsch will be more or less complete. Who knows, though? Franz von Papen was acquitted and OJ Simpson can get parole so maybe there's hope yet for a chump like Priebus, if he can stay out of the meat grinder a little while longer or at least feed it Chris Christie. Then he can flee the building to go help run some SuperPAC until until it's time to write a book without worrying about a surprise visit from Kushner in the middle of the night with his burlap sack.
Anyway, all of this was running through my head while I was lying on the beach and I couldn't help but think that to the White House regulars - the military and the security personnel, the cooks, the cleaners - the building must look like the paranormal center of a nightmare horror show these days. The world of Upside Down. A Presidential palace but with no bikinis or steel drums there, I bet. At least, not for the likes of them.
It seems like it's getting harder to get away from anything anymore. I know I certainly can't escape it, even out in the sun listening to the surf, kind of buzzed and slightly baked, and with no meaningful connection to these events or people save that we both seem to be stuck in the same alternative reality. My thoughts swirl around from a history of coup attempts to Senate rules of procedure back to the poor fucker in the situation room whose job is to connect the President's calls, and how the topsy turvy remains unrelenting.
Maybe there is an upside to it all though, consider: we're all rapt. We're all addicted. We're all becoming news hounds doped up on skepticism and constantly on edge, and perhaps that is ultimately for the best. People who have never talked about politics before are following every detail all the time, months after the inauguration and years before the next election. Perhaps a constant stream of outrages and abuses is exactly what it takes to shake off a few hundred years of growing complacency and atrophied political consciousness and start flexing some muscles again.
Or I could be wrong and we're all about to die of skin cancer or nuclear fallout. ¡Lo que sea!
