Donald Trump's Last Roundup - Ahead Of The Gay Pogrom George And Phil Head For The Emerald Isle

'Oh, God', said Phil.  'You don't mean Italy!  All those beachy Ohio ladies parading around the Piazza San Marco and paddling around the Grand Canal?  You've got to be kidding'.  

Phil was thinking of Italy in high summer when busloads, carloads, and impossibly grandiose, ugly tour boats loaded with third class people were disgorged and headed for Bernini and Michelangelo, but George had found some cottagey thing in Alto Adige, very much their style, well appointed - or it would be after he made the rounds of the cute antique shops in Trastevere.  

Lovely Paolo had just shipped him a marvelous 16th century wooden cross that once hung above the altar at the church of San Pietro, said to be the apostle's place of rest, and would be happy to furnish him with much more.  

'I absolutely, positively refuse', said Phil who simply could not get the smell of diesel fumes and cheap perfume out of his head, and stood adamantly by the coffee while George buttered his toast.

'Where then?', asked George, more conciliatory than usual, but given the enormity of the task - and its imminence, he softened.  The Inauguration was barely two months away and Trump's storm troopers would be headed to Dupont Circle as their first stop. Easy pickin's, only a few blocks from the White House and just loaded with gay men.

'Ireland', replied Phil, remembering that he had promised his grandmother who had come over on the boat from County Donegal in hard times, settled in South Boston, and lit a candle every single day to St. Patrick for her dear departed mother and father, that he would one day visit the old country. 

Now it was George's turn to have a fit. 'Ireland??', he shouted.  'Land of Mickey Finn and the Irish laundries?', this last in reference to the Catholic Church's incarceration of young pregnant girls to work in Diocesan laundries washing knickers, stained sheets, and chasubles, slave labor by any definition

‘Never, ever, never', George said, taking a last bite of his toast on which he had put entirely too much butter, which was now dripping onto his new Armani cardigan. 

Both men, anxious to please the other but without too much conciliation, fished for alternatives.  They had plenty of money, planning ahead as they did once that beastly ogre made his intentions known, and most countries they were considering were quite easy on the visa question. Well not all. That bitch Meloni in Italy was cozying up to Trump, and both were in cahoots on the deportation issue.  Black and brown people would be the first to go, but other undesirables like them would soon be on the next ship to Tripoli if she had her way. 

And Wilders in Holland, Marechal in France, and Orban in Hungary - the whole continent was turning into a Fascist homeland.  What's a mother to do?  All Phil and George wanted was a little cordiality, a warmish welcome, some interesting men, and to be left quite alone when they preferred to be. 

'Let's make a list', suggested Phil, the more organized and practical of the two. 'Lists always help one focus', and so they got out a world atlas and began sifting and vetting until it was time for brunch, a nice champagne and truffle omelet with Harry Grillo, first violinist of the Kansas City (don't laugh) Symphony in town for the weekend.  Harry was such fun, and his behind the scenes anecdotes were priceless, especially the one about the tuba player and the clarinetist, reeds and things in the most unusual places. 

Now, of course Donald Trump had no intention whatsoever in rounding up gay men and interning them on the Pine Ridge reservation with the Lakota, the nastiest, poorest, most drunken and drug ridden place in America; although that was the meme spread by the Left which never appreciated the fact that a whole county of gay men, nasty as it might be,  would not be so bad - just look at Catholic seminaries and the priesthood.  What could be better for gay men than an institution without women? 

Maybe not Pine Ridge, perhaps someplace more congenial like a super-sized dude ranch in Arizona or Utah. 

'He'll be too busy rounding up black people', Phil commented to George when they first had intimations of a Trump-led gay pogrom, 'and God knows that would be the quickest way to get rid of those awful places east of the Anacostia', a reference to Washington's most abysmal, blighted, and penitential slums.

You would think that Phil, being a member of an oppressed minority himself, would never harbor such racist sentiments, but 'knives and forks in separate carrels', he liked to say.  The plight of the gay man had nothing whatsoever to do with the ho's, pimps, and stoop-sitters of the inner city. 

'And sending back the Latinos to wherever they came from', added George whose leaf-blower had forgotten Thursday and never came back even as the leaves piled up around the dead chrysanthemums and zinnias. 'Back to tortilla-land', he said, very much in synch with his partner Phil with regard to who should be first on the list of deportees and internees. 'So maybe rounding us up is just a tempest in a teapot'. 

Over brunch Phil, George, and Harry Grillo mused over the possibilities. 'Hyperbole', said Harry in his fluty tenor, 'pay no attention.  Sturm und Drang.' 

'But have you ever actually been out there?', said Phil, gesturing broadly to take in the entire country west of the Shenandoah.  'They want us dead and gone'; and true enough it was.  When Phil went to Dubuque for a meeting, he did his best straight man imitation at the board meeting, but the room went quiet when he shot his cuffs to show off his diamond cuff links.  They knew, and the silence was deafening.  These crackers all voted for Trump and would send him and George packing on the next boat to China if they could. 

'He can't...He wouldn't dare', said Harry, fussing with his napkin; and the three of them left La Petite Maison without a conclusion.  Wait and see, they decided, and if things get rough, passports and cash were in the drawer.  The thought of Kristallnacht and the emptying of the Warsaw ghetto - jackbooted Gestapo thugs breaking into their Washington duplex and dragging them off, ransacking and pillaging as they went - gave Phil a shudder, but he agreed that a President of the United States simply would not be allowed such power, despite the howling and screaming of the Left. 

Now, anyone in their right mind never took the outlandish claims of the Left seriously.  While it was certainly true that being gay would no longer be the be-all and end-all of American life, the dismantling of the ethos of diversity would be an institutional matter.  Gay stars would no longer shine so brightly in the firmament, but God knows, La Petite Maison would still be there after four years. 

So good sense prevailed.  Phil and George put away their travel brochures and flyers from Lindblad Travel and went about their business. 'Just watch your step', George said to Phil, flouncing and prancing up the stairs like a dancer at La Cage Aux Folles.  Phil got the message, straightened his tie, and walked demurely to work.