Bob Muzelle had always thought of himself as a good man, a man of faith, order, and good will; but the ascendancy of Donald Trump to the White House did a very strange thing - it turned him from a man of rectitude and moral purpose into a man without principle, a sexual wastrel, an irresponsible, adulterous, indifferent man.
Most of his progressive friends instead hardened their resolve, girded themselves, and prepared for marches, police truncheons, and barricades; but Bob had a peevish, bitter, nasty epiphany. 'Fuck 'em', he shouted in the shower. 'Fuck 'em all', and from that moment on decided to become what he always wanted to be - a person of great liberty.
His whole life had been one spent in harness. Do this, Bobby, do that, be a good boy, did you go to Confession? Have you done your homework? A pawn moved by someone else, an altar boy holding the paten, a shined shoes respectful boy at dancing school, a boy without grimace, a pansy, a choir boy.
What with all that goodness and properly marshalled adolescent energy, what better life than a motivated, purposeful one? A determined, politically passionate one? It was a time of foment and civil unrest, a time of exuberant optimism. What could be more satisfying than taking blows from Bull Connor, limping across the Pettis Bridge with Martin and Ralph, and coming home with vines in his hair, a hero who had stood his ground on the front lines with the black man?
His life was spent on good causes, and he shuttled between Selma and aggrieved women, nuclear disarmament and the environment, gay rights and wealth distribution - a tireless enterprise that left no room or time for himself; but all through the cinder, the beatings, and the airless basement huddles, he could imagine nothing else. Time for himself was some oxymoron, some fanciful, party girl dream of some Gatsby-esque life. His was, always had been, and always would be a life of deliberate emotional penury, a hair shirt of perennial penance.
Now, closer to the end of his life than the beginning, niggling doubts - shameful images of fun, beautiful women, carousing, and sex - began to crowd out those of the black man on the top of the social pyramid, the proud transgender taking the oath of office, legions of the poor, the disadvantaged, the marginalized taking their proper place at the banquet table. Just a time when even more resolve and adamantine political determination was required, the train to a better world was wobbling on the rails and loose-shunted.
His old college roommate depressingly showed up in the Yale Alumni magazine: "Just got back from Biarritz, ahh...Italy in the Spring...and back to the Vineyard for the summer. Please come to our little soiree for le tout New York at the Plaza in September, out last footing in our pied a terre before heading off to Gstaad for the winter...". How galling, how pretentious, how baldly ignorant, thought Bob of this man who had whiled away his life in Monte Carlo, St. Tropez, Palm Beach, and St. Bart's while he had done yeoman's work to right the world.
Yet and still, he had to admit that at the end of the day - or more appropriately at the approaching end of his life - did it really matter? Looking alone into that black hole, that sucking, annihilating thing, whose life had been better spent? They both were headed for the same unnamed, unknowable place, but the roommate could look back on women loved, tropical beaches, pina coladas for breakfast on the verandah, a Bentley, a full head of hair, five-star meals, and soft mattresses while he, Bob, had only sour-smelling women, bad air, entitled black men, wretched food, and a marginal welcome home.
It is never too late, Bob thought, banging his fist down hard on the old grocery box coffee table, shaking the Frederick Douglass and Booker T Washington figurines.
It was the sight of the phalanxes of young, pert, beautifully blonde, blue-eyed women parading into the Trump White House that did it, the outrageously glitzy and glamourous soirees at Mar-a-Lago, the lights burning till all hours at 1700, and the sheer whiteness of it all which finally turned Bob bad. In one defining moment he let go of all his morose, dour, humorless, and pathetic compassion. The black man could go fiddle for all he cared. Women had had enough coddling and lionizing. The climate was unpredictable and given to natural law; and the robber baron, laissez-faire capitalism of modern America was doing just fine, thank you.
This transformation, this dismissal of things formerly sacred, this fuck off to all that he had espoused could not be complete without wallowing in it. It would not be enough to lift a glass at McSorley's or the Ebbitt Grill, nor to pay for one of Madame Lincoln's sweet young things just in from Dubuque. No, he must head across the Anacostia, deal with pimps and cheap ho's, get drunk on malt liquor and stoned on Jamaican Mountain Dew, lie in some nasty public housing, stumble out onto MLK Avenue, pick up some more black pussy, and repeat the cycle until he was plumb puckered, spent, and used up.
'Wallowing', was his rebirth. Only through a complete reversal of principle, a shedding of every last trace of liberal whiteness, and a dumping of every bit of white guilt and progressive hope would his life finally have meaning. A catharsis after which he could regain his footing, spend his money on arm candy, Lambos, and yachting weekends; or if he couldn't, if the money was simply not there, his good intentions would cover for him. He could say that he became the man he had always wanted to be even if he had fallen short.
'I AM A MAN! he would shout once his journey through the pestilential slums of Washington had been completed, and once he had pulled down each and every one of his Hate Has No Home Here, Black Lives Matter, and Democracy Is A Precious Commodity lawn signs, would he be able to hold his head up high.
If decades of well-meaning, passionate progressivism had led to this moral travesty, the ascendancy of a reprobate and the complete dismantling of every liberal institution, program, and initiative every conceived, what had his life been worth.
There is a seminal line in Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men where Anton asks Carson whom he is about to kill, 'If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?', and that was exactly the point here. Once Bob realized that the rule he followed - a faithful, unwavering, intractable commitment to progressivism - had ended up with it all in a dumpster, of what use was it?
Bob was a hero for not simply shrugging his shoulders and resigning himself to fate. His rolling in the shit, his conscienceless screwing of crack whores in the ghetto, his drunken nights in the most rat- and roach-infested slums of the city, and his resolve to draw down every last cent of his children's inheritance on cheap tricks and good whisky and hope for one night at least with Amanda from Iowa, was honorable.
No one has been able to track him down, so completely did he disappear from the Washington political scene, but like the hero in Hemingway's Short, Happy Life of Francis McComber, he certainly died happy.
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