After behaving like a bantam rooster all summer in Santa Barbara, I had to own up to a fiscal reality that my standard of living, brought on in no small part by want of drink, left me in need for some quick cash. Not much, but soon. Fortunately, for several local liquor stores, the folks had kept me on a decent college allowance. But my resources had been blown badly by some foolish cocaine binges on the cool, California coast. I knew better. I dislike the drug and all that it portends, which fueled in me some innate sense of responsibility to find a job.

Yes, I could go back to security work--a low trade, which would lead to certain cirrhosis, if I thought there might be any way at all to Xerox a bar key again--, but dismissed such a career move when an ally called me with a raging case of strep throat, the day I returned from the summer session at UCSB, having scraped two gentleman's Cs in courses, I was told, would not affect my lofty grade-point-average at Arizona State.

"Todd," he croaked, "you want to take my place on the Conlan campaign?"

Which was like asking Shamu whether he could use another couple pounds of raw fish.

"What will I be doing?"

"Well, it's not glamorous," he told me, "but it's a foot in the door. Besides, it'll look good on your resume."

I drove to some dugout bunker-of-a-boiler-room on Scottsdale Road which "The Committee to Return John Conlan to Congress" had rented from a bankrupt automotive leasing company. There were no signs or clues at all to indicate what might be going down in the building. And I got the feeling that it might be my kind of operation.

Once again, I had hit the low road of politics running.

Virginia Rayner, a sexy, middle-aged activist, was handling Conlan's phone bank. Most of the pollsters and phone staffers served without pay. However, my friend, the kind and decent chap that he is, made it known that I would derive a salary; that I was no ordinary staffer...something of a wunderkind on the phones. I wasn't sure I could measure up to the hype.

Virginia sat me down, commending me on fine work done in the past few years with the John Birch Society and John Singlaub's U.S. Council for World Freedom. She was also no ordinary aide--nor were the folks running the Conlan for Congress campaign ordinary functionaries. In ten minutes, I bade witness to what would have seemed to some to be an alarming ratio of Birch/Right crossover.

Conlan's campaign manager, one Edith Richardson, had been his aide-extraordinaire within the Faith-America Foundation--a Christian-Right lobbying group which Conlan chaired, following his bitter fall from Congress in '76. Faith-America sported some weight, some clout...a two-fisted hammer of a Board: Lt. General Daniel O. Graham, architect of Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, whom I'd met and grown fond of through Singlaub's expensive Executive Meeting of the World anti-Communist League; Congressman Phil Crane, dubbed by Time magazine as "the perennial darling of the Far Right"; Pat Robertson, and others of the ilk.

I stared down at some prepared script. "Umm...Virginia," I smiled. "Should I read this like it is?"

"Something wrong?" she said.

I fidgeted in my vinyl office seat and continued to stare at the words. "No. Well, yeah," I grimaced. "This sounds like a script. Rehearsed."

"Todd," she chuckled. "I'm sure you're used to doing things your own way, but John had this script written by a professional...he paid a lot of money to have it this way. Please follow it," she smiled. "For John."

It went something like this: "Hello, Mr./Mrs. ___________. My name is Todd Fahey, and I'm calling on behalf of the honorable John Conlan, whom you may know is running to regain his seat in Congress. Mr. Conlan is an honest, intelligent man; he served his country in the Korean War as an Army paratrooper; his reputation is impeccable. Will you be supporting John in the Republican primary election in House District 3, on September 12?"

If yes: "Wonderful! John appreciates your support on September 12. Thank you so much for your time."

If undecided/no: "Mr./Mrs. ____________, John served as a United States Congressman for two terms. He was a member of the Arizona State Senate. His knowledge of national security issues is second-to-none. John also established the first mobile-citizens' wagon, to reach out to his constituents..."

Not bad stuff...not insulting to the average intellect, but not something that would make one reflexively jerk out a thousand-dollar check from the wallet or clamor to the polls on a rainy day. Just the average, dry script. And I didn't want to buck the campaign heads right way, but, for the life of me, I couldn't see someone with John's savvy actually paying for such a thing. Far more important, to me, were the differences between Conlan and the other two bozos running for Eldon Rudd's vacated seat--a rock-solid Right-wing pillar in a shaky GOP.

I grabbed up a Republican computer log, looked at it for a minute. Then something happened. One of those fluke/luck turns-of-the-screw. Rodgers. Lincoln Avenue. Could it be? Sam Rodgers, mellow-Marlboro guardian of a savage London acid-trip?

"Hello, Rodgers' residence. This is Sam."

"Mr. Rodgers, this is Todd Fahey..."

"Todd!!! How the fuck'reyoudoing?"

"O.K...Sam. I'm calling for John Conlan. If that name is familiar to you, it should be..."

"Todd, what's going on?"

"Yes, Sam, he was quite the Titan in Congress. I'm glad you recognized that. And, well, he's running again..."

"How've you been?"

"Do we really need another Lobbyist in Washington? Or an inexperienced lawyer? Well, that's what we'll have, if either Jon Kyl or Mark Dioguardi ferret their way into office..."

"Todd??"

"Fuck the lobbyists? Yes, that's right. Who needs them? So...you'll be voting for John, come September 12? Wonderful. I'll tell him as soon as he comes back from a Middle East fact-finding mission..."

"Huh?"

"Yes, ho ho, he's quite the globe-trotter. Nobody knows those scurvy Arabs better than John, if you know what I'm saying..."

Click. BZZZzzzz.

"And you have a good evening, too."

Virginia stared at me, an eyelid twitching out of sync. "Uhh..." she mumbled, "whatever gets the votes, I guess. Right, Todd?"

"I think that's the best policy, Virginia," I said, smiling professionally, as my heart did a little stutter-step.

She got up and shook her head, walked away, and I crumpled the script and gave it a Lakers-quality skyhook into the circular file.

"I like it," Mom said.

"Yeah," Dad nodded. "Not bad. You've got a dishwasher, a pool...Jacuzzi. This is alright."

Marcus stared at the furniture, of a peat-moss weave.

"So," I said. "Whaddya think?"

He didn't say much. Maybe he liked the walk-in closet.

The only drawback I could see was its solo bedroom for the two of us. My penchant for the Big Snore and a tendency to toss things at roommates at 3:30am, to test their general reflexes, might not set well with Marcus, who was spoiled from birth and accustomed to his own quarters, while I often had to share, to save money, for that extra keg each Friday night.

He moved a few things around, and I didn't argue...the easygoing guy I am. Mom unpacked some groceries, Tupperware, utensils: $201.73.

"Jesus," I muttered, staring at an errant receipt. "You didn't have to."

"I know," she smiled. "But I felt we should do something. This hasn't been easy on you, either."

Which, at the time, was true. Zane called one Thursday, that summer, as I was holed up beachside Santa Barbara, toasting a phatty. "Hey," he huffed. "They're going to impeach you on Saturday if you aren't at the Board meeting. They've already stripped you of the Newsletter."

I laughed. "So, who's gonna write it?"

"I am," he said.

"Which means I am," I said.

"Yeah," he laughed, "but if you're not at Goldwater Center by 10:00am Saturday, you're out for good."

I dragged heavily on the joint. "OK," I said, blowing a greasy-blue plume, "pick me up at the airport, 8:30, I'll be there."

And I was, and the YR's had a stroke, and I stayed on as Editor of the League Newsletter and delegate-at-large, retaining my Board spot. No big deal. No problem. Just a gaggle of mouth-breeders, getting all worked up over nothing.

Jerri Teets had been leading the impeachment drive, and collapsed as I walked into the brickwork hall. Mike Mills, Dave Falk, Zane, Georgia Hargan, Carey Kramer, Southern Region Vice President, and Jim Buster, Yuma mayor and YR club president, cheered and rallied to my side, having thoroughly enjoyed the monthly rantings. But something else happened that weekend.

Around the folks' pool--Dad on a raft, a furry Dachshund on his back, trying to jump to shore--I asked Mom, well:

"Any chance we might get that condo before the end of summer? I know Marcus's parents want to buy something before the prime rate goes up."

Dad paddled to the shallow end and pushed the dog off on the top stair. Mom started to cry.

"Todd," she said, "our status has changed. Dad was asked to resign last night."

I looked at my father, but he wouldn't look at me. "No. Again?"

And so it goes. Six months' severance pay and the keys to an Audi 5000. Maybe it was all for the best...but probably not. Not twice in five years.

The first time wasn't so tragic, as the year earlier, he had been awarded National Medical Enterprises' "Hospital Administrator of the Year"--the Jack Nicholson of his profession--before refusing to whittle away a budget even further to the bone. Just the kind of guy he is. And after that, he pledged never to work in a For-Profit climate ever again.

I remember walking into the kitchen over Spring break, after having been away at school in Santa Barbara, 1984. Dad was clad in bermudas, as opposed to the suit and tie. "Well," he smiled, extending his hand. "I guess I'm not the only one in the family who's unemployed."

No handshake this time.

I thanked them for the groceries, and began unpacking my bags.

I didn't feel real red-hot about dragging Marcus back to Arizona, from where, twelve months prior, he had fled in a skittering panic. But one fine summer day, while I was finishing the bogus switcheroo courses at UCSB, showing up to Critical Thinking all of four times, tooting the Kind with some scion of a local Arabian thoroughbred empire, Marcus was earning $32k per annum for an exclusive traditional men's store in Newport Beach. Trouble was, as usual, his credit cards were maxed, and he was spending at least $37k on no less than three girls, whilst, technically, dwelling with his parents in Orange County.

His folks, he said, had given him a bleeding ulcer, and he couldn't stand their judgement any longer. "Todd," he phoned, "I'm in a rut."

"So," I said. "Do something about it."

"But how?" he whined. "I mean, I'm expected to dress well, and go to all these parties and spend money I don't have."

"I have no sympathy for that, Marcus," I said. "I though you understood by now."

So, he drove up to Santa Barbara one day, and by 5:00 I had convinced him to return to Arizona State and finish his degree. Only, he flaked in the late hours and ended up at Scottsdale Community College, where he said the girls and grades would come easier--and where he could take the gamut of tough courses without having to own up to a grade-point-average, once it transferred over to Arizona State, such were the kinky by-laws.

"Now you're thinking!" I grinned.

I went off to class at 7:00am, to brave the dread Statistics in Criminal Justice, a 400-level class taught by the Assistant Dean. I shuddered with cold and fear-hunger, the formulae and equations just more than I could manage on a Monday morning. What to do?

For starters, I knew to sit next to someone who was fielding most of the questions, and work from there. It happened to be a guy I recognized from some of my other classes, and whom I usually tweaked grade-wise; but this was clearly his domain. I confided in him that the lobe of my brain which governs such things as Logic, involving numbers and any symbol that resembled a square root, had malfunctioned many years and pints ago, and that I needed help. Vast attention...personal guidance.

"Naww," he laughed. "You just need a bong hit...to relax. It's easier that way."

I nodded, and drove over to the house he rented with three other ASU dudes. I cracked the screen door. "What's that?", I said, backing slowly away.

Ggrrrr. rRUF!!

"That's a Bob," Martin smiled, bending down to pet a tailless beast with the build of a safe. "We found him running across the freeway."

Rrrrr!

"Robert!", he shouted, "No!"

The animal jumped into my lap and continued to growl. It gnawed on my wrist as its owner packed some pot into a ceramic bong, and we got hopelessly stoned and ended up watching The Munsters.

After I was able to speak properly, without drooling or mispronouncing such words as "the," "what" and "campaign," I drove to the boiler room to earn Conlan another hundred votes. The complex was still chained off, so I parked myself at the bar of the Safari Hotel, in eye view of the gate, and decided I could use a drink. Yesssirreee, having sucked the marrow out of some ceramic appliance, I was left stuttering. And I felt it improper to get on the phone and stump for such a brand-name veteran of the Cause when my tongue couldn't conceive of a full sentence.

I began by ordering a Tsingtao...a fine, rice beer that I knew, in my heart, would turn me into a veritable Dale Carnegie. I ordered another for the busty redhead who had taken a seat next to me, sensing, perhaps, that she might need one, too. Or need me, which was the quickest way I knew to get into her.

Denise lacked any real political knowledge, but made up for it in the tits. Succulent things, even under a cable-knit sweater. "You're really good on the phones," she said.

"Thanks."

"You're friends with Mr. Conlan?" she asked. "I, well, I've seen you talking with him."

I pulled hard on the Chinese brew, draining it, and ordered another. "I don't know about friends," I told her. "But I think we could be."

She inched closer, pushing her chair into mine. "God, I get so nervous when I first start out," she laughed. "But after awhile, it goes away."

I nodded. "I'm the same way in front of a mic. Only, it never goes away."

Still no activity. A bad sign, in that I felt the good Congressman ought to have beefed up his forces by half in the final stretch. Conlan's lead over Jon Kyl--a lobbyist for the pork-barrel Salt River Project, son of a VP for Armand Hammer's nefarious operations--had dwindled from nearly 3-1 to maybe 53-43, with the crumbs going to Mark Dioguardi, a useless Yuppie greenhorn spoiler.

"What do you do in front of a microphone," she wondered, fairly fawning.

Curiosity whetted, I filled her in on my exploits: that I was an accomplished poet, political fugitive from the nation of England, and other prevarications. I tossed down the second brew and bought another. Denise passed. "We should have dinner sometime," I said.

"I'd like that," she smiled.

I reached over and fingered her lovely strawberry curls. She smiled and kissed my palm.

The ranks were solidly divided. It went either:

"Praise the Lord, good afternoon, this is the Fox residence."

"Well, hello, ma'am. How would you feel about sending a Christian to Congress."

Or:

"Hello, Farnsworth's."

"Yes, I'm calling from the Conlan for Congress headquarters..."

"Why, you can go straight to Hell. I wouldn't vote for that dirty sonofabitch if he was the last person on the planet."

I guess you could call it a Trend. I called it trouble. And although my political sympathies lie in the conservative/Christian camp, I knew another reality: That most people willing to go out on a limb and wear their faith on their sleeve, over the phone, to a stranger, before ever hearing my side of the story, are also the type to trust in the Good Lord to send them immediately to heaven, once the deal goes down. Voting? Who needs to, when you've already signed an Eternal Political Covenant with God.

Marcus was lounging around in the livingroom, in a pair of boxer shorts, having decided, for some arbitrary reason, that the sun was no longer a thing to be worshipped...no more tan, just a continuous ghostly pallor, which lent to him a flaccid and weak appearance. Marcus is shaped funny, anyway; he gets what he terms "sugar tits" after every extended eating and drinking binge. I usually just drank, which explained my stable weight. Marc also has a large ass on which to sit, as he sacrifices another pint of blood to the Standard-Crane in the name of angst. He says it doesn't hurt...and I hope it's true, because the volume of red-juice that squirts through his digestive tract daily could keep four hemophaeliacs alive.

He was prescribed Tagamet during one of his stints in Orange County, and walked up to the pharmacy counter one warm, summer afternoon.

"Just a moment, please," smiled the pharmacist. "Yes, Dr. ________, I, well, I don't believe this prescription can be correct. For Tagamet, yes, young man, Marcus, uh-huh," nervous stare, "...Holy God!"

"Son," he warned. "I'd find out what's eating at you. I've dispensed one-third this strength to businessmen twice your weight."

To date, nobody knows precisely what eats at Marcus. And the truth is convoluted, and depends upon which version you want to believe: his or his parents'. But goes something like this:

Marcus's great-grandfather was either a bootlegger or a harvester/rancher-landowner. The old man made it big in the '20s and kept it in the booze-running or dry-goods/food market during the Great Depression. He kicked off, leaving a living trust to his son, Marcus's grandpa, who, in old age and soft heart or senility, turned it over to Marcus's father to manage. Marcus's father either got rich directly off of it, or is sitting on it, like any good and decent guardian. It bequeaths Marcus in excess of $50,000/annum for life, at age 18 or 21, or 25, or whenever his father feels him mature enough to handle it, or not until his father kicks off, which I feel sometimes will not come by any recognized peaceful or natural means, unless Marcus feels his fingers around some of that cold-fortune fairly soon.

"So," he said, puffing some Tinderbox #7 in an English briar pipe, "you think you can get me a job on the Conlan campaign?"

"You don't want to do that kind of work," I said. "Get back into clothes."

"No way," he hissed. "It's not respectable."

"What, and politics is? Fuck respectable, go for the cash. You're good at it...think of the commissions."

"Yeah, but it's so sleazy," he whined. "Dealing with retailers."

I was forced out of the conversation. No way I could relate to such an Old Money mindset. "I probably could," I said, finally, "but I won't. Believe me, I'm doing you a favor."

Denise knocked on the door, for a bite to eat before going home for dinner. Marcus said hello and then went into the kitchen, to cook up his staple of frozen peas and bread, so as not to aggravate a raw stomach-lining.

Denise sat on the couch and stared at the TV for a few seconds. "So," she said, glancing toward the bedroom, "what do you want to do?"

"Uh-huh," I nodded, and took her hand and led her to the inevitable.

I began with the requisite kisses on the earlobes and neck, just so she wouldn't think I was taken her for granted, then jerked the sweater from over her head. She wore no bra, and I fell immediately dazed to a stunning set of hogans.

"You like?" she smiled, to which I nodded. "Good," she said, "I grew them myself."

She pushed me back on the bed and yanked me out of a pair of walking shorts and started in on a mean hand-job. About mid-way, I pulled her skirt off and flipped her over for an early dessert. But she grabbed at my hair and lifted me off. "You don't have to--"

"But I want to," I said. "It's been a long time."

She wouldn't hear of it, instead, asking me, well: "Have you ever given a pearl necklace?"

I stared at her. "Um...come to think of it, no."

But I sure as hell did then. Got into it. Physically and emotionally worked up. And I'm too much the believe in understatement to get into the gory details, other than to say I had fun. And I think she did, too.

After Denise left, I walked into the kitchen, where Marcus's peas were about blanched.

"She's cute," he whispered. "Where...is she in the bathroom?"

"No," I told him, "she left."

"What, you got in a fight already?"

"Huh-uh. We finished, and she took off."

He looked confused. The food-timer told me that Denise and I had gone full-circle in six and one-half minutes. "You mean...?"

"Yeah," I shrugged. "Done. Finished. Kablamb!"

"Well," he stuttered, "was she good?"

"Umm..." I said, "that depends how good sex between the tits can be."

"Oh," he smiled. "I get it. You did her tits, she didn't dig it, and she left."

I shook my head. "No. She asked for it between the tits, I gave it to her, and she took off to eat dinner with her mom."

Marcus just stared. "Wow. Does she have friends?"

The tomcats roamed freely, accompanied by Most-High Newscreatures, all calling for fishheads and mice...always more mice. Our own time-honored garbage-filcher called himself Burton Barr. And I never saw him without the excited grin of a man caught masturbating in front of Zorba's Adult Shop on Christmas eve.

Barr is of the same corrupt political machinations which bred Mayor Daley and Boss Tweed. It is simply impossible to stay at the helm of Arizona politics for twenty years without knowing something, on so many, that the Media in-toto goes to obvious lengths to leave you alone. A good look at Barr, at a gala thrown on his behalf, at some west Phoenix Ramada Inn, was enough to tell me the man was hiding something; it didn't take a trained NSC official to see that. And whomever found out his dirty little secrets deserved nothing less than ten minutes' free run through Fort Knox and a Key to the City.

Mike Mills was holding his nose. I nodded, regretfully. "I can't believe it," he said, but it was more like an ache. "Four more years of this shit...first Bruce Babbitt, then Burton Barr."

"I know," I agreed, refusing a plastic/straw hat that came with the fourteen-dollar per head fee. "Bring me a gin and tonic," I told the hostess. "No, fuck the tonic, just lots of lime and ice."

Mike stared at me. "It's not that bad," looking at his watch, which told us both it was 9:45am. "Actually, it's a pretty good party. Look at these legs."

"No, it's not," I whined, against an aged Dixieland band in red, white and blue uniforms. "Nothing about this whole year has been good. "Ray Russell is going to get crushed by Jay Rhodes in District 1; Goldwater is leaving--"

"Yeah, but that bastard hasn't been worth anything for years."

"I know. But still, he's better than McCain. Then Eldon Rudd retires, Kyl wins over Conlan, unless John gets his act together and stops offending everyone...Barr wins for Governor and, well, I think I might go back to California and quit this whole dirty business. Become a gigolo, or something fun."

Barr for Arizona...cactus...telephone pole. "Welcome to Arizona, Opening to a Developer Near You!" Sage-tree...Barr for Arizona...roadrunner mashed by giant Hensley beer truck...Barr for Arizona.

"KTYR mid-day news...late-breaking word has it that Burton Barr will have company in the Republican gubernatorial primary--"

"Who the fuck!--"

"Sshhhhh!"

"--after months of a nearly free-run to the state's top spot, Barr is being challenged by Evan Mecham, who announced today an eleventh-hour campaign against what he termed "the Power-brokers and Phoenix-40 types," in a populist plea today at the Arizona Press Club..."

"Good...fucking little...goddamnit!", Zane raged, so that I thought I might have to grab the wheel. "Why didn't he announce earlier! He does this every time! Hell, the little motherfucker might actually win if he could ever get his shit together."

I don't believe that anyone, or at least any outside the Spoils System, actually liked Burton Barr. He is not a man to generate any real warmth...just a queasy Percodan feeling, which starts off fine, pleasant, fuzzy, and gradually plunges into nausea...not that my physical opinion of the man makes any real difference. But, multiplied by everyone who felt the same clammy wave, it meant trouble for Barr and his Dolphin Group--a California-based political consulting outfit with not the vaguest clue as to Arizona's genetic makeup. The Dolphin Group didn't bother to check the Injured Reserve List. In his arrogance, Barr probably instructed them to build some king-sized defenses against both Carolyn Warner, the abrasive former Superintendent of Public Instruction, and Bill Schulz, an apartment mogul running as an Independent in the general, thus neglecting to ward off the possibility of a late-breaking primary challenge from a roan Republican.

Barr counted Big Money and Big Name Endorsements to lift him over the hump--an impersonal tactic with roughly the same odds of Gun Control ever happening in Arizona...a state that likes country music, bolo ties and non-union Coors around its Olympic-sized swimming pools.

No, Barr failed the acid test in his own native language, on his own terrain...in the company of his own hired cronies. And for that, he should not pass Go, not collect The Nomination, and report to the nearest emergency room for observation.

The Mecham entry struck many a good conservative as low, car-dealer thinking. All Evan Mecham could accomplish, with less than ten weeks left, was to split the GOP, and hand the Governorship to a Democrat for something like the fifth time in six election. Not since Jack Williams was run out of office, for announcing May 24, 1974 as "John Birch Day," had Arizona seen a Republican Governor.

I called State Representative Jim Skelly, to see if he could speak at one of my Paradise Valley Young Republican meetings. "So, did you hear the news," I said, finally.

"Yeah," he grunted. "It's just like something Mecham would do." But he said he'd be happy to speak at my chapter, just tell him the time and place.

Bored, I drove to a classmate's house and fended Bob from my ankle.

"You want to study," Martin said, "or get stoned, or both?"

"Both," I nodded. He switched off the TV and slid in a Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde" before packing the bong.

"Has the water been changed lately?" I wondered.

His roommate Jim, a journalism major and sports editor of the State Press, walked into the room, smiling.

"Yeah," he said. "I just changed it this morning. Hey, check out the picture on Jim's door."

I snatched the bong away from him and took it into the bathroom. Something about the smile told me he was lying. On the door was a photo of Zane and myself in some Student JBS spree, with a derogatory caption scrawled underneath in red ink. I chuckled and tipped the drug utensil down into the sink. What flowed out could only have come from the Love Canal: chunks of resin and scum, greenish cultures and assorted flotsam and smegma. "You guys are lucky you don't have TB," I called from the bathroom.

I filled the bong with good, clean Phoenix tap water and took it back to the living room and began sucking from the bowl, when a bomb went off in my eyes--a blinding, cobalt-blue explosion that had me staggering around the room, spilling bong-water everywhere, crashing into the coffee table and causing Bob to snarl.

"Gotcha!" Jim declared. "One hell of a story, here, boy."

I smiled, rubbing my eyes. "Go ahead. You know what they did to Don Bolles, don't you?"

Suddenly, silence.

"My people make John Harvey Adamson look like a fucking queen."

Martin grinned, but Jim wasn't so sure.

"Hey, I was only kidding."

"Don't take any night classes," I told him, heading out the door. "And if you do, don't walk alone."

Vipers. Trust no one.

I walked from the Volkswagen to my apartment, but somehow my keychain had disintegrated in my pocket and I was left with only a car key. I stumbled back to the parking lot, searched the floorboard and seat crannies, but no luck. So I sat on the doorstep and watched for Marcus, hoping he wasn't off getting laid somewhere overnight. I thought about driving to the folks' and crashing there, but I was too stoned. It was only 8:30, and they would be up and would strike up conversation. And in my condition, I would be unable to reciprocate.

I fell asleep on the doormat and was awakened with a kick by Zane, who was laughing at me.

"Forget your keys?"

I pulled at my eyelids, trying to restore lubrication to my contact lenses, which were now fairly etched into my corneas. "No, I, uh," fumbling at a pocket, "uh, dropped them down the car. The seat, I think."

Zane stared at me.

Marcus walked up from the parking lot, took a good look at me and tried his best to throw Zane off the track. "You better get some sleep," he said, "and drink some water before you crash. You're gonna have a major hangover."

But Zane wasn't buying it. He'd seen me plastered innumerable times, and I was very lucid and intelligent, maybe a bit loud and occasionally domineering, but, on the whole, functional. This time I couldn't get my shoe untied, and when I went to kick the thing off, it sailed over the TV set. I started to laugh, and then, when I couldn't stop, landed in the throes of paranoia...couldn't get my breath, became panicked and started sucking crazily for oxygen.

Zane left, saying nothing.

"You better hope he has an open mind," Marcus yelled through the bathroom door, where he was in letting blood. "You know better than to touch that shit."

Thirty minutes after arriving at the boiler room, Virginia approached my phone-bank cubicle in a sweating-pallor. The data was running just under par: 60-40 Kyl, in such monied hubs as Lincoln Avenue, Camelback, Tatus & Shea Blvds; and 65-35 Conlan in the outlying burgs. But that wasn't making the nut. The only sure bets to Get Out and Vote were Mormon enclaves like Heber, St. John, Snowflake, et al. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would bus their own to the polls at a rate of close to 100%, and send Mecham over Burton Barr's malignant hump...which did nothing to assuage Conlan's psyche.

In the course of eight years in the State Senate and two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, with a 98% Lifetime Rating from the American Conservative Union and serving as emcee for Pat Robertson and other Christian-right notables, Conlan had offended nearly every voting bloc outside the fundamentalist community. Therein lay the inescapable problem, plus the fact that seven-tenths of all who heard him speak found him to be arrogant and superior--which he was. Both. Had I graduated from Harvard Law School and the Academy of International Politics at the Hague, under a Fulbright Scholarship, I might now be pounding out this sweaty piece...I'd just buy Random House and self-publish.

Which is petty jealous-stew. I wasn't around the Arizona scene from 1964 to 1976, when he took on Sam Steiger for the U.S. Senate, in what many political historians term the bloodiest, most divisive primary campaign in Southwest history. All I knew, in early September 1986, was that Earl DeBerge's Behavior Research Center either found a massive hidden support bloc for John Kyl, or did an Oscar-worthy job of making the public believe that it had. Because John Conlan slid something like 12% in a week that saw the Arizona Republic behaving like the mouthpiece of the Establish it really is: a one-sided assault so brutal, it left my new boss dazed and wondering just what the hell he'd done lately to deserve it.

I like John Conlan. I support his views, and enjoy listening to his gilded tongue on the stump which runs between Jack Lemmon and Williams Jennings Bryan, on a less-manic day. He is a quick man, with the deadly guile of a preying mantis. But he had enemies, and the time had come for a fast run down the Low Road.

"Todd," Virginia said, nervously, "how are we doing?"

I scanned a list of polling data. "He's got to offset Scottsdale and Paradise Valley, or it looks like Kyl."

She cast her eyes to a District 4 wall map and moaned, "but where?"

"Not where," I corrected. "How."

Virginia turned around. "Maybe we should talk in here." She pulled me into an empty office. "What's up?"

"It's not the high road."

"Why doesn't that surprise me?" she said, stifling a laugh.

"OK," I said. "Jon Kyl's father is a senior Vice President for Armand Hammer's Occidental Petroleum Company. Now," I continued, watching color return to her cheeks, "we link the Kyl campaign to Libyan oil money and pro-Soviet shadings, and then fly General John Singlaub out, and--"

"Wait. Waaiit. How do we get someone like John Singlaub to come out here, for John Conlan?"

"No we," I said. "It's my plan and it will work."

She eyed me closely. "I'm going to leave this one alone. I'll call Edith."

I went back to the phones and finished up Lincoln Avenue, but it was hopeless. The phone rang. "Good morning, Todd. This is John's campaign manager calling," she smiled, audibly. "My name is Edith Richardson, and I'd like to talk to you. Privately. 12700 Dreamy Draw Drive."

"Give me forty minutes," I said. "I'll need to get a few phone numbers."

"Take all the time you need."

I called Mae Riley, who gave me the number of the man closest to the General, knowing better than to ask why. "You'll have to come over soon, dear, and we'll talk over a chimichanga. My treat."

From there, I dialed Walter Chopiewski, chief Phoenix operative for Singlaub's U.S. Council for World Freedom. "Sir," I began, "you may remember me from the Executive Board sessions last March at La Mancha...I did all the tape recording."

"Oh, yes. Colonel Tifverman's friend. The Bircher. I remember," he said, in his deep Polish tongue.

"Sir, if I were to tell you that a certain Congressional candidate here in Phoenix has ties to Armand Hammer, and that it looks like this candidate has a very good chance of winning, would you be able to interest General Singlaub in making an appearance for, say, a more American candidate?"

At first silence. "If this is what you are telling me," he spoke, "and if this is true, then I think the General should be highly interested, yes."

"I think the General will remember. I'll get back to you this evening."

"Good enough," he croaked.

I drove to "Conlan for Congress" HQ in a pair of white shorts and a pink polo shirt, three days' growth on the face. I debated swinging past the folks' house for a quick shave, but decided against it.

Edith Richardson was waiting for me in the lobby--a tall, handsome woman, with the wrinkled deep-down tan of a native desert-dweller. She ushered me into her office. "Virginia told me that you might be able to help John out of this power-slide," she smiled, lighting up a long, brown More, and inhaled deeply. "Why don't you tell me what you know, who you know, and how you know it."

At first, I didn't feel she believed me. Or that, if she did, I was being patronized...humored. But all that disappeared as I handed her Walter Chopiewski's home phone number, and we settled into a cozy, professional groove, as I told her channels had been cleared.

"Todd," she said, over a pair of reading lenses, puffing on the stogy. "Why don't you stay over here...keep an eye on the volunteers." Starting to smile, then with a crackling laugh, "We generally leave at 5:30. Here," she said, removing her office key from the chain. "I'll make another one for myself."

She got up and mashed out her cigarette. "Let me show you the alarm code..."

Just like that. And, between you and me, it doesn't get any better. Not even two hits of pure, clean Berkeley windowpane measure up to that. By the time she had run me through the secured installation, John arrived from a meeting with his strategist, Harry Bandouveris. His hand was slick with sweat, still reeling from Earl DeBerge's doom-laded pronouncements.

"John," Edith smiled, "Todd, here, has, well, an unusual plan. And I think you'll like it."

"Oh?" he wondered, looking at me, and at Edith, and at me again. The two disappeared into the labyrinthine recesses, and I sank back into a leather office chair, feet up on a desk, a shit-eating grin spread wide across my face, as the volunteers churned away at the lame scripts...: "Hello, sir/ma'am. This is _________, and I'm calling on behalf of former Congressman John Conlan..."

"Zane, hey, what do you have on Armand Hammer? I need a dirty bio. All of his One-World leanings."

"I don't have much," he said. "Why?"

I closed the sliding glass door to the folks' patio and walked outside, next to the pool. "Conlan's in trouble," I told him. "Earl DeBerge just--"

"Yeah, I read it," he said. "Not pretty. That scumbag Kyl just might squeak in."

"Right," I agreed. "He might, but he won't. I hooked up Conlan's campaign with Singlaub, who's going to link Kyl to Occidental Petroleum. He's going to swear to a Libyan blood-money/Soviet connection."

"Kyl's father," Zane remembered. "Yeah. That'll work...that's ugly, Todd."

I laughed and sucked heavily from a long glass of iced tea. "Just ugly enough to get me promoted from the boiler room to Conlan's headquarters today."

" Is he stil strange?" Zane wondered. "God, he's one of the weirdest guys I've ever met...always jittery and nervous."

"Well, wouldn't you be? He's mortgaged everything he owns on this ride."

"Yeah, I don't know. I still think he's weird," he grumbled. "Anyway, I don't have much. Call Mae Riley, she usually has stuff like that. And, Jesus, Todd," Zane snorted, "leave the rest up to Conlan...you'll never work again if your name gets hooked up in something like that."

Zane's tone was far too disapproving to feel good about, and the subject of Conlan was rendered evermore taboo, creating something of a dividing graft in our personal/professional relationship. All the same, he wanted me over to Docwood Farms to give my stamp of approval to the soon-to-be-released October 1986 Young Republican Newsletter--a sacred thing, and our very own PR organ.

Zane handed me the rough copy and pointed to a big, blank hole, dead-center on Page 1. "Fill it in," he said. "I don't feel like writing anything. And stir it up this time...you're getting soft."

I looked down at the Quote of the Month, of which there were three:

Swaggart is a Performer--a Showman, in a Business that runs on Money. I understood that, and also why his sponsors put up with his sniveling, convulsive lies. Simply: the man still Brings 'Em In.

I sat down to Zane's huge TV set, as he pushed in a tape--something called "The Silent Scream." A man named Dr. Bernard Nathanson said hello to us, admitting that he had butchered approximately 10,000 unborn babies in his tenure with an outfit known as National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL). The name turned me off at once: too much like Grey Panther or PEACE NOW!

Dr. Nathanson referred to physicians who perform abortions as "abortionists." If it walks like a duck... The whole of the tape was very calm, clinical, almost sterile. And when the famed ending came--a child viewed through an ultrasonic device, blown up on a viewing-screen, supposedly twisting violently in fear and SCREAMING without a sound to the weapon just inches from its head, about to explode the skull and suck out the chunks, I had to shrug. Just couldn't see it. Yeah, alright, there might be a mouth there, next to that round thing that looked like a head, or a buttocks...the image was so grainy that I couldn't be sure.

Dr. Nathanson had sold Reagan on it, this is true; but by that time, Dutch was so senile he was calling Iranians "moderates."

"What did you think?"

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe it screamed, maybe not."

"Yeah," he said. "That's what I thought. So I bought this one, too."

"No, Zane," I whined. "No more tapes. I'm tired. I need sleep."

"It's short," he grinned."

I don't think the thing had a title, not that it mattered, because never in hell would the thing get airplay, on PBS or anywhere else, south of a pirate broadcast.

I watched in horror, as a nurse stuffed some lanky metal suck-pipe into a young woman's vaginal cavity, and the doctor turned on the machine...suckasuckachunkamessabonefragementtissueblisterssuckachunkaandspititintometalpailchunkasucka...

"Turn it off," I gagged. "Alright, alright, I'll never make another fetus joke again...and get your dog off my lap, I think I'm going to be sick."

I lost five pounds and ate nothing but beer for three days, unable to get the grisly image out of my head. And when I went to do an article on abortion for the Newsletter, I couldn't find a way to translate onto paper the horror I had been forced to witness. So, instead I ended up abusing an entire human sub-species:

WARNING:: This article deals with the offensive practices of the homosexual community, which may be disturbing to some readers.

"Homosexual men are probably the dirtiest, filthiest people on the face of the earth...No other people, to my knowledge, so vigorously and deliberately expose themselves to so much secretia, excretia, urine and everything else secreted by the human body," writes Dr. Paul Cameron, Director of the Institute for the Investigation of Sexuality.

The issue is AIDS; the problem is its dramatic increase; the cure is unknown. Had AIDS remained confined to homosexuals and needle addicts, there would be little cause for complaint. On the contrary, such moral decay must be punished, and AIDS seems quite a suitable punishment.

The scary truth is, that this ravaging virus is spreading amongst the straight populace, via prostitution and blood transfusions. There is no guarantee that a husband will not pass AIDS onto his wife after a fling with a convention call girl. Or that, after a car accident, an AIDS-contaminated blood transfusion won't flow through your own veins.

What can be done to stop this plague? The answer is painfully simple: Remove the source. Quarantine all AIDS sufferers until cure or death.

"Quarantines have been very effective in beating outbreaks of scarlet fever, smallpox and typhoid in this century," writes Richard Restek, in a Washington Post article. So, why should AIDS be treated any differently? Is it not just as deadly? Just as infectious? WHY ARE WE STALLING?

According to Congressman William J. Dannemeyer (R-CA), that answer lies in the House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment, chaired by Henry Waxman (D-CA). Waxman has consistently refused to hear Dannemeyer's proposals to close down bathhouses and quarantine detected AIDS sufferers. The deeper truth is the Homosexual Lobby's powerful influence on Rep. Waxman's re-election campaigns, to which it contributes heavily.

The Republican party must stand firm for traditional family values and reject the bizarre and reprehensible practices of the homosexual community. In addition, Rep. Dannemeyer's proposal for quarantine should be adopted at the state and federal levels, to protect against a disease to which not even the celibate are immune.

General John K. "Jack" Singlaub is a man of little tolerance for Left-leaners, of any stripe. He has no humor for radicals, socialists, Free-Thinkers, comsymps, dupes, Red Agents, or any other so-called "sensitive" type. And he jumped on the Conlan campaign like a gamma-ray.

Conlan called me at home one evening, almost to the nub of the election. "Todd," he said, excitedly. "Jack can't make it for the press conference, but his PR guy--someone named Tom Tedrow--is arranging a letter for us. It'll put Kyl in the grave."

"Wonderful, John," I said. "So, you'll blow up the letter and stick it in all the newspapers as a paid advertisement, citing the Equal Time clause in the FCC, right?"

I heard shuffling in the background. "It's going to the printers right now," he sighed. Then: "Shit," he said, suddenly. "I should have asked you who this Tedrow guy is. I'm sure he's okay...wouldn't you think, Todd?"

"Probably he's okay," I told him. "Otherwise he'd be missing now...maybe in some Honduran quicksand pond."

John agreed, and breathed lightly. "One more thing. Kyl is having a big party downtown tomorrow. Lots of press and cameras...do you have plans tomorrow, Todd? Bring a date...maybe a few friends?"

"Picket the gala until they break out the fire hoses?" I thought aloud. "Then scream something about brutality and human rights in the hands of Libyan agents? Yeah, I could get something together," I told him. "In fact, tell me how you like this for a picket sign: John Kyl: Arm-in-Arm with Armand Hammer, and then your standard hammer & sickle logos..."

Conlan's breathing became heavy. "Todd, there's a place for you in Washington. But I never heard any of this."

By ten the next morning, twenty-two Birchers had committed to a sidewalk spectacle.

I ran over to ASU, slipped through a quick set of midterms, then rushed back to Conlan HQ, where I was immediately accosted by the candidate, who had apparently just finished abusing several of his top aides, including Edith Richardson. He yanked me into his office.

"Todd, we've been ambushed," he screamed, sweating from scalp to collar. "I've got no fucking idea how he could have known."

"Who?", I said, off-balance.

"Paul Weyrich!!" he shouted. "He's had it in for me since the Seventies."

I shook my head. "Weyrich's one of us! You guys are the same!", I reasoned, until he gave me a stare, as if I'd just shit in his salad.

"Somebody tipped him off. Todd, I've got to know who. I need to know if you told anyone. Anyone!"

"Zane Smith, and Walter Chopiewski...but you talked to Walter--"

"You told Zane," he sagged. "I've never trusted him."

"No, John. I can flat-out guarantee you, right here, against a bed of nails, that Zane Smith said nothing, and to no one."

Conlan sat down and took off his coat. "Why did you tell him, Todd? Was he in a position to know?"

I thought about it for a few seconds. "I was trying to dig up anything I could on Armand Hammer. Zane's got a good library. To help our case," I said. "It's a fucking weak case, John."

He took off his tie and slung it across the conference table. "Well, I hope Zane isn't the one. For your sake, Todd," he grimaced. "I really hope that isn't it."

Congressional candidate John Conlan may be planning a last-minute smear campaign against one of his two GOP opponents, a national leader of the religious right charged Wednesday.

Paul M. Weyrich, president of the Washington-based Free Congress Political Action Committee, said Conlan's campaign later this week will attempt to link Jon Kyl with a petroleum company.

Wednesday's charge was the latest in a series of attacks against Conlan by Kyl supporters. Weyrich met with Kyl campaign volunteers and supporters before the press conference.

Conlan denied the charges, calling Weyrich a member of "the kooky right wing."

"I have absolutely no idea what he [Weyrich] is talking about," Conlan said. "The guy's bananas."

Weyrich, who has called himself the architect of the religious right, said a Conlan campaign official approached a "national figure" about signing a letter linking Kyl to PAC money received from Occidental Petroleum Co., which is controlled by Armand Hammer.

Occidental Petroleum is a Middle East oil company with investments in Libya. Kyl's father is a former vice president of the company.

Weyrich, who said he does not know whether the letter has been signed or mailed, said the letter will link Kyl's campaign with Hammer, who Weyrich said is soft on communism.

Kyl's campaign manager, Tim Meyer, acknowledged his campaign received $1,000 from Occidental, but he called the contribution insignificant, saying the campaign has raised more than $600,000. He said linking Kyl with Hammer is "stretching it too far."

Weyrich would not identify the "national figure," saying he didn't want to drag the person into an Arizona squabble. Weyrich said the national figure told an Arizona associate about the Conlan letter. Weyrich, who would not identify the Arizona associate either, said it was this associate who told him about the letter.

Weyrich said he was revealing the information partly because he was involved in a similar Conlan letter "smear" attempt in 1973. Conlan was the 2nd District Congressman from 1973-1977.

In 1973, Conlan wrote a letter attacking Barber Conable, then a Republican representative from New York running for a House leadership position, Weyrich said. Conable now works for the Reagan administration. Conlan wrote a letter filled with "all sorts of evil things" about Conable, Weyrich said. Conlan persuaded Weyrich to get the letter signed.

Weyrich said he got the letter signed by a "poor woman in Chicago," the mother-in-law of a leader of the conservative Heritage Foundation. Weyrich said he regrets the incident and feels he was misled by Conlan.

Conlan said he was not involved in a letter about Conable. "That's another off-the-wall thing," he said. "It's absolute gutter politics."

Conlan said Weyrich's charge is part of Kyl's "last-minute smear campaign that the voters are getting tired of."

But Meyer said Weyrich's press conference was not a last-minute smear against Conlan because Weyrich is familiar with Conlan's record and speaks from experience with the former congressman.

"It's by no means a smear tactic, because everything he [Weyrich] says is true," Meyer said. "Nothing is fabricated."

The ambush cost Conlan the election; or his only real chance to save it. Singlaub's mouthpiece had worked quickly; just as quickly, Tom Tedrow was dropped without public comment from his PR post within U.S. Council for World Freedom...which did little to comfort John Conlan, the numbers beginning to roll in on the Headquarters' TV.

"Todd," he smiled weakly, "I'm sorry I ever implicated you...I was out of my head. We came so close."

"Hours," I said. "Weyrich was probably already on a flight to Phoenix by the time we got off the phone with Singlaub."

The trusty and good-hearted Mike Mills arrived at Conlan HQ, as did Denise, the busty redhead, and Cheryl Parker, a tactless blonde weekend anchor, with the chin of a horse and the brains of something lower. She was busy asking the vanquished things like: "How does it feel to lose?"; "Would you do anything differently next time?"; "Are you going to run again?", when Iron John bid us all a good and early night and went home, leaving Ms. Parker to flap her chops and search fruitlessly for someone else to interview against the specter of Dead-Air and Election Night Ratings.

Mike was getting worked up over something, and pulled me over for a look at the TV set.

"No," I told him. "I can't. It just feels too rotten."

"No, look!" he screamed. "Mecham's running away with it! Look at the numbers!!"

Indeed. Evan Mecham carried virtually every Arizona county, punishing Barr by disgraceful margins in areas his sage Dolphin Group deemed iron-forged. And in many ways, the year was over. The self-made Mormon car dealer had neutered the Most Powerful Man in Arizona Politics, with his talk of "Insiders" and "Power-brokers" and veiled conspiracy theory from the playbook of the John Birch Society.

I thought about sucking up to Mecham's entourage, but couldn't, for the same reason I'd never pick a favorite baseball team the day before the World Series. I tore Denise away from her friends and drove to the Foxtree, to take my rueful aggressions out on her jugs.

"Todd," she wondered, "can you let go in my mouth this time?"

It was that kind of weird evening, month and year.

"Sure," I smiled faintly. "I can do anything you want."

She did all the work, laying on her back, as I impaled her mouth from above, staring into the glass of a lithograph bought for me for Christmas by the folks, wondering what she was getting out of the deal, and just who was staring back.

I walked in late to my own YR meeting and toward state representative Jim Skelly, who had come to address our tiny club, and extended my hand, which he took with both of his.

"Loved you article, Todd," he said, "You really took it to the Boys, didn't you?"

"You liked that?" I grinned. "Shit, I'll have to do a follow-up piece...maybe think about a long-running project."

Zane started laughing and had to sit down.

"You know," Skelly chuckled, inhaling from a filterless cigarette, "about six years ago, I was quoted on KTYR, or some such station, at about 4:30, during rush-hour traffic..."

The group listened intently.

"...and the reporter," he laughed, "you know the type; well, he asked me what I had against gays..."

Zane couldn't stop laughing.

"...I told him to look up the word gay in a dictionary, before, say, 1969. I don't have anything against being gay," I told him. "Hell, I feel gay sometimes, myself...I just don't like fags and queers."

The League was in full-fighting disarray.

"Todd, you really got 'em mad," he said, making rare eye-contact, and motioning to Peter Brantingham and Robert Wexler. "You've got to quit this kind of stuff."

"Yeah, Todd," Robert moaned. "Frank Fahrenkopf got a copy of the Newsletter and said he'd see to it that our state charter gets yanked, the next time something like that happens...how did Frank get the Newsletter?"

Somewhere in the room, suddenly, Zane began croaking like the Raven.

The three of them turned around and bared him the stink-eye.

"Well, it's over," said Peter. "Just...be a little more tactful next time, will ya? Leave out words like excrement and human filth, O.K.?"

I shrugged.

Jerri Teets was arguing with Stan Barnes, a former new anchor from somewhere in the midwest. "I'll be fucked if I have to get behind Evan Mecham," she screamed. "He's barely even human, much less Republican. I wouldn't be surprised if he were a John Bircher."

Zane gasped.

But it wasn't far off. According to sources I've sworn to protect and conceal, Mecham's wife, Florence, or popularly, "Flo," is, at this writing, a 13-year member in good standing of the John Birch Society. And when one eats, sleeps, and maintains a lifelong partnership with someone of Birch color, let me tell you, the creed is as contagious as leprosy. One minute you're arguing against it, the next, you're punching a Red-Fronter in the nose, in some wild Carry Nation-frenzy, for any reason at all.

Jerri Teets also worked as Burton Barr's chief financial aide, and, like any spoiled Country Clubber, hated to find herself so swiftly and unceremoniously removed from the Action. She protesteth, farted more than her share, but, in the end, all but two among the Young GOP Board voted to support Mecham in the general election, saving the League from a crippling split.

From the YR meeting, I drove to the home of my classmate-cum-tutor, to pick up some last-minute wisdom before a slew of midterms. As usual, he and his buddies were all choking and passing the bong around, as Bob ran amok, barking and chewing at everything that moved on two legs. Notre Dame was playing some deadbeat team and losing, which had one of Martin's roommates cursing and throwing pillows at the TV set, every time the Fighting Irish blundered a pass.

"Goddammit!", his roommate whined, "you guys suck. You suck. You're the lowest and worst...I've ever...fuckin-A, d'you see that, Martin! The guy had it! He had it!"

"Calm down," Martin laughed. "Take a bong hit or something. You're getting Bob all worked up."

I intercepted the toke-bowl and cleared out a hit. His roommate walked toward the front door, for some fresh air, I guessed, so as to suck some of the adrenaline from his brain...but instead of exiting the house, he reeled around and threw a fist--in what I saw as v-e-r-y-s-l-o-w-m-o-t-i-o-n, punching a four-inch square hole through the cheap stucco/plaster.

"Oh, that was smart," Martin grimaced. "I hope you broke your hand."

The scene was too violent for me to deal with comfortably, after the mean-melee with the Young Republicans, and so I grabbed up a clawful of notes and told Martin I'd Xerox them and see him in class.

When I got home, Zane was waiting for me, having forgotten to tell me something back at the Barry Goldwater Center, but I don't know what. All I know is that it was daylight, I had no sunglasses, and my eyelids in the glare of the Arizona sun were fluttering off like any common moth, and that I couldn't look at him, only fingering my car keys moronically, and nodding.

"You got it!!?" he yelled. "And shape up!"

And then he got into his car and peeled out of the driveway.

I shook it off and closed the door and powered some beer down my throat, to unstick the tongue from its casing. Baby Sister called and asked if I'd meet her at the Warehouse--some sawdust and hickory joint near campus--for a bit of tutoring in Political Science.

She brought two friends along, one for whom I developed an instant, churning desire. The three were seated outside in the warm, soft Tempe fall wind. I grabbed a pitcher and four mugs and sat down to help her through the midterm...only I couldn't think clearly. I was drunk and stoned, and violently opposed to the text she was being ram-fed.

"You're smashed," she said.

"Yeah, maybe," I mumbled. "We're comfortable here."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"Drunk. Normal...all great minds," I slurred.

"Maybe you better get some sleep," she whispered. "Get some rest, and quit drinking--"

"Naww," I scoffed, pouring a round for everyone, "it's Poe and Dylan Thomas, fuck, all the best."

"That's sick. You don't want to die in a gutter."

I shrugged and smiled at her friend, Lisa, who had been staring at me for the last ten minutes. I began playing footsie with her under the table, running my shoe up her leg, and then between her legs, until she began to fidget. She pinched my toe and giggled. Baby Sister looked at me, understanding.

"Go home and get some sleep. We'll be over at 8:30. Maybe we'll play quarters or something, okay?", she said. "And be careful driving. I love you."

I got up and bent down, kissed the top of her head, then scooted around the table and leaned over to whisper into her friend's ear: "You're the prettiest thing I've seen in ages," I told her, not looking back, as I strode down the walkway toward the car, smiling at how smooth I really was, whilst trying to avoid stumbling over a roan curve.

"Hey, Todd, you've got company. Todd. Todd. What, you fall in?"

"Huh? What? Uhh," I moaned through the bathroom door. "What?"

"Your sisters's here," Marcus said. "She brought friends. I wish you would have told me. I just got up and I look like shit."

"You look beautiful," I coughed, unlatching the door. "I guess I forgot."

"What's new?" he complained. "God, you can't remember anything, anymore."

I got up off the toilet and pulled my pants up, and stared at my thumb, which looked like some kind of root you plant: a hideous grey-green and throbbing savagely. "Must've fallen asleep," I said.

"You mean passed out," he snarled. "You should quit drinking. And don't use that!"

"What?" I wondered, washing my hands, trying to restore some circulation in the gangrenous thumb I'd been leaning on since 5:30...it was now 8:15."

"Don't use my soap! It's expensive...and it's only for faces."

I stared at him. "You're weird," I said. Then I burrowed into my pocket, digging out 30 cents. Here," I offered, "this should cover it--in case I forget again."

He hissed at me and trudged into the bedroom, slamming the door.

Against my better judgement, I acceded to a fast-running game of quarters, knowing that the Lobe of Good Conduct was heretofore fused to that other part of my brain that leads directly to the testes. Baby Sister is no drinker. She drinks, which isn't entirely the same, and stops at two or three. But she was getting heated in the brutal, slashing pace I demand for any drinking game...and so was I, only in a very different way.

Baby Sis took the cue and, after my series of awkward passes at Lisa, dissolved the game, taking the helm of my stereo and cueing up some Roxy Music, through which I hoped would turn her friend into a quivering and needful mound of human service.

Marcus had come out of his hovel, and by this time was sucking the adenoids out of my sister's other friend. I had Lisa trapped in the kitchen, backed up against the stove, trying to figure out whether she wanted to fuck me or dial 911. She kneed me in the groin lightly, which I took as an overture, rather than a "fuck you," and pressed up against her leg.

"You're aggressive," she laughed.

"So what?" I slobbered, and cupped my hand directly between her legs, stroking crudely. Her eyes got wide, and then fluttered, before closing altogether.

The long and short of it all was, that the three split after another forty minutes of drinking and lewd behavior. I thanked little sis' and apologized at the same time.

"Why?" she said. "I had fun. I haven't partied with you since Santa Barbara."

I awoke many hours later, to a knocking on the front door, as Marcus was leaving for his first day of retail work at Franklin's Mens Store at the swanky Biltmore Center. Lisa jumped immediately onto the couch, where I had passed out, and unscrewed my pants. She laughed.

"What?" I said, "is your boyfriend John Holmes?"

"No," she giggled. "We shaved each other last week, and it's nice to see hair again."

I shrugged it off, and we spent the rest of the morning heavily committed to a meeting of the flesh.

Around noon, Zane called to plot our takeover at next month's annual Young Republican State Convention. Having already made dinner plans with Lisa, Baby Sister and a group of sorority girls, I asked Zane to come along with us, to Flakey Jakes, near campus. He was reluctant, but showed up anyway. I saw the discomfort on his face, as my hand disappeared for ten-minute stretches under the table, where Lisa sat, while he chewed maniacally on one of several teriyaki chicken-burgers.

"I've got to take care of some business," he frowned, finally. "Meet me at the Devil House in an hour."

The Devil House is a 10,000 square-foot nightclub/drinking center, across the wash from ASU, and the only bar where Zane felt truly comfortable, having earned something of cult-hero status with the bouncers and management, due to his size. I agreed, and then drove off to sis's condo with the rest of the dinner party, for the second phase of our beer-bust, before getting down to work with Zane...only I never met up with him.

It wasn't entirely my fault, I kept explaining, when he called around midnight, raving at the top of his lungs about having been "stood up."

"They took my keys," I shouted, over the music. "I can't drive 'cos they took my keys; and it's too damned noisy at Devil House to page anyone. I tried, but the bartender kept hanging up on me."

All of which was true. I felt justified, if not completely right about it. Baby Sister had yanked the keys away from me and stuffed them in her purse as I headed out the front door.

"You're not driving anywhere," she sniffed. And, to this day, I thank her for the clear-thinking. I was hammered, and had just embarrassed myself and Lisa, muscling in on she and her boyfriend's best friend in some probably very innocent livingroom dance session. Lisa kept telling me that it "wouldn't look good--me and her, together, here," but I rejected her silly pleas and shook down the dimwit with the Gall to come between me and my girl!!

After sobering up and apologizing to Sis, around 4:30am, I drove to Foxtree and found a note laying on my pillow, from Zane...one of the most vicious bummers of my short and sodden life. A rambling, hateful thing, calling me, among other things, "a liberal's best friend," "a drug addict," and "dangerous to the Right-thinking cause," having "witnessed physical evidence of [my] addiction to marijuana on several occasions," and on and on.

I slumped on the bed, trying to make sense of it all. Then I walked into the livingroom and began pounding on the wall, just inches from Marcus's headboard, crushing plaster, until I worked up enough body-adrenaline to let me fully realize that the friendship and an era were over.

No way to properly convey the sense of loss I felt the next morning, waking to a brain that felt like botulism, hollow and sickly...pitiful in its own emptiness. The campaign was over, school was a limitless drag, and I had nothing to cheer me up save for the beer and some vague realization that I would graduate in eight months, and maybe pull out of the spiral with some small measure of dignity.

My sympathies for Kitty Dukakis aren't much. Any woman who mourns the fact that she "is just another Governor's wife" needs a heavy dose of punishment, and never mind the reasons. That said, the End-of-a-Campaign/Post-Partum Depression parallel is no myth. It is a very real and brutal thing to behold--not dissimilar to having three eighths of one's body plasma sucked out and replaced with Renuzit Bathroom Freshener...a dazed and pickled sort of dead feeling, whereby one wonders, "What next? Short of continuous oral sex, what can get me that high ever again?" A question for which I had no ready answer."

Debbie had backed off--I guessed, having fulfilled her own strange needs for my fluids, which left me without a job, a hose, a best friend and ally, and sucking beer like a sieve.

"Let's get a case," I slurred, to Marcus. "Get fucked up like old time."

"Alright," he nodded. "But I'm driving."

I agreed, and we went across the street to some Asian-run liquor store. "No," I said, become hypertensive.

"What's wrong?" he wondered.

"...I was just here this morning."

He shook his head and instead we strolled into Alpha Beta, where there were seven interchangeable clerks to choose from.

"How can you do that?" he said, after we'd dusted the first twelve-pack.

"Do what?"

"Do your homework while you drink?" he said, as I punched feverishly into a Hewlett-Packard, applying inner-city arrest records to some intricate statistical formulae. I untwisted the cap from another. "This isn't homework," I laughed. "It's Statistics. Any chimp could do it with one of these," I said, flashing the hand-held genius maker. Though I admitted it was a problem keeping the handwriting legible, while discerning between four or more of everything.

By the time The Love Connection and Letterman were over, Marcus had crashed. It was 2:30, and I would need to be up for class in another few hours anyway, so I cued up an old Genesis album and listened to Peter Gabriel cartograph the Void through some electronic crank-case.

Sunlight. Heat. Smell of uggh bacon cooking. What time is it? What year is it?

"Hey," Marcus laughed. "I knew you wouldn't make it to school. And you owe me four beers."

"No prob," I muttered. "What happened?"

"When?"

"After about 8:00pm," I asked. "And, fucking, why didn't you wake me up?"

Marcus frowned. "Why should I? I don't have school this morning."

I got up and hung my head to the side that wasn't twitching, so that maybe I wouldn't die of aneurism right away. On the coffee table was a neat and orderly stack of finished Statistics homework that would earn me nothing: Squat: No late Papers. I crushed it up and tossed it in the kitchen trash. Then:

"Sons of steaming virgins! What the hell is this?"

"It looks like a letter," Marcus said, blankly.

"Yeah, but who wrote it?" And why?

It demanded explanation. Marcus finished draining the pork juice into a coffee can and walked over to see what I was rattling on about.

"Jesus," he mumbled. "Throw that thing away."

Drunken as they were, I abided my instincts, and sent the letter, not knowing what she might be doing, where she might be, if maybe she were married by now. I addressed it to Tami's parents and hoped for a reply.

Dad was brooding in the kitchen over a glass of iced-tea. Rejection isn't easy on such a top-end Executive level, and he had just been passed over for CEO of a small hospital in Prescott, for which he was distinctly overqualified.

"Don't worry," I told him. "There's something out there for you."

He stared at a floating hunk of lemon. "Yeah...oblivion."

I recoiled and started to say something, but didn't know how. And so I left it alone, hoping he would prove himself the rough-hewn survivor I had grown to respect, even revere.

Mom pulled me into the sewing room. "Your father is going through hell. He's very low right now. But if things straighten out, we're planning a trip to the Rose Bowl...Arizona State won last night, and we'd like you to go with us."

"That might be fun," I said, feigning a smile, remembering all of the rancorous vacations we'd taken in the name of togetherness. I left the room and picked up the morning's Arizona Republic and laughed for the first time in weeks.

Bad news for the Boys In the Band. One Ed Buck, founder of a thing called The Evan Mecham Watchdog Committee, had been exposed as a registered Sex Offender, in this queer end of 1986. Seems Mr. Buck is among the more prurient-minded pols, fancying the 25-cent slots at Zorba's Adult Shop over the traditional popcorn fare at the UA Civic 6. Seems he also prefers his butter on the backside...which I wouldn't mention were it not somehow related to the local drama unfolding in this strange election year.

The police report said that, whilst "crusing" Zorba's (i.e., in search of Mr. Goodwrench), Buck was observed by an undercover vice cop with his (Buck's) hand flush around a buddy's crotch...which, in such a house of ill-repute, is considered a bonafide Sex Violation. Up to tht point, Mr. Buck had been playing a sort of shadowy role as a self-described "maverick Republican businessman"--a moniker which was late exposed as being less than truthful. Buck was once a Democrat, until he reregistered as a Libertarian, before, maybe a month into the Mecham primary, he switched his affiliation to the GOP, to harness some sort of legitimacy in haranguing Mecham for about everything he ever did or even thought to do.

Buck was concerned, he said, with "civil rights," amonst which, I am assuming, is the right to grab your partner 'round the 'nads and dosey-do"...Which put the Evan Mecham Recall Committee into a dilemma: dump Ed Buck as its spokesman, or come completely Out of the Closet--which, in Arizona, places one automatically in the same category as javelina, mule deer and other medium game, only with year-round season, free license and no limit.

There is no good or decent way to convey that which follows. Just that there came a point in this drunkard's life where nothing mattered, where everything seemed difficult...through which nothing could be accomplished: Y.R. meetings, school, eating, fucking, nothing. Except drinking.

And I knew what Marcus's agoraphobia must have been like, only mine was self-induced. I preferred to stay in, out of sight, out of harm's way. I did try, though. Tried to get a job after the campaign, but the horror of it sent me into a sickening tailspin. I humbled myself into calling Wells Fargo Guard & Investigative Services, for some security work at one of the local resorts.

"Come on over," the man said, cheerfully.

And I did. And when I finally got there, to something like 44th Avenue and Thomas, halfway to Deer Valley, on the west edge of Phoenix, the pleasant man wanted to hook me up to a polygraph machine and ask me questions concerning "past drug usage," et al. ad choking liver-bile.

I stormed out, indignant, and answered an ad the next day for Manager of posh Scottsdale theater. A goddamned theater. I showed up to the interview, then to a second interview, before the owner came down and said that I was hired pending outcome of a, yes, Polygraph Test.

So (and I have to clear it all out, seeing as I'm this far into the refuse), I began carting a hotdog stand around on my Volkswagen Bug. A portable meat-steam vat. A sidewalk deli embarrassment to the bone. Serving up Chili Dogs, Coney Islands, Jalapeno Weiners, Cheese-Splits, for six or so weeks, to make enough spare change for to afford my alcohol habit. And during this time, a very low time, indeed, I was talking to Tami. For the first time in three years, in love again, no recollection of when the first phone call ensued, and it didn't matter.

I sent her the Hardrock Cafe London t-shirt I'd picked up in another day, and clicked on the CD player to an old favorite, sprayed some Azzaro over the living room, generally, and washed around in warm, familiar tinge, stumbling dreamily into the kitchen to pull out enough beer to lat me through an hour-long Phoenix to Santa Barbara phone call.

"Hello?" giggles, loud music in the offing.

"Hello, Tami," I whispered, smoothly.

"Will you guys turn that down! OK. Hello?"

"Hi."

"Well...hi, Todd. What are you doing?"

"Oh, I just wanted to talk," I told her. "Finish getting to know each other again before I come out. It's only three days away."

"Oh yeah, I almost forgot...well, not forgot, but that it was coming up so soon," she said. "We're talking to each other an awful lot, aren't we?"

"Yeah," I relaxed. "Nice, isn't it?"

"Well...of course. I'm just a little out of it," she said. "We just finished finals, and these Fuzzy Navels are getting to me."

I drained off the third beer and went to crack a fourth, but my CD stopped, and the music on Tami's end began to blare. "I'll see you Monday, alright?" she shouted.

"I love you, Tami."

"Bye."

I sat back in the chair, smiling. Yes, we had been talking a lot. And I liked it. I finished off the last beer and navigated a major Scottsdale artery on foot to get more. Only, I was tired of beer. And besides, this renewed love called for celebration. I picked up two fine bottles of Cooks champagne, and jogged back to the Foxtree.

All alone, in love...no Marcus to spoil this goddamned excellent mood. I aimed the plastic cork for the dining room lightbulb, shattering it. I giggled.

"Todd, are you ready to go? The bus leaves in forty minutes."

I surveyed the situation, gave it some heavy thought, then got up and rolled the empty champagne bottle from my lap. You hurt, you tell yourself. You will hurt for days, but the Tami is waiting and the Rose Bowl is nigh: Your alma mater, straifing across the fifty-yard line...TEAM SPIRIT, Rah, Yeah, uh.

Hair of that filthy dog. Bottle o' champagne somewhere, but where? Mix it up with like parts OJ. Cold-morning Mimosas, works every time. Where is that goddamned champagne? Panic, queasy all-over sickness in the head. Where is that evil juice?

Next to the toilet was the bottle. Ahh. I sagged as I grabbed it up by the neck, readying it for a fast-run into the gullet. Only, it was empty. Slurped. Drunk. Drained-off. I swallowed hard, and my throat felt like hot wax. I knew, intuitively, that I had strep; but I didn't let on to the pain and suffering until the Rose Bowl Tour Lines dumped us off for Southern-fried chicken dinner at Knott's Berry Farm. While everyone else chewed hungrily at piles of roast corn, I could barely manage an occasional scoop of honey on the tongue, and even that sent me into a pitiful, weeping cough.

"I need to see a doctor," I said, to my mom, familiar by now with my biennial bouts of throat-rot.

"Why don't you call Marcus and see if he can pick you up," she whispered, slipping me a Visa card. "We'll worry about the bill later."

I phoned Marcus at his folks' house in Orange County, pulling him away from some repetitive family argument, and had him drive me from the amusement park to a 24-hour Emergicenter.

The physician on-duty took a cursory look at the crawling white patches on my tongue and throat, and shuddered.

"No point in a culture. Penicillin VK for the strep and...what do you like for pain?"

And I said: "Tylenol 4s work just fine."

Details of the next 48 hours are vague. I convulsed all night, as the mold pills tore into my stomach like fire in a barn. Rose Parade morning started off with two #4s, orange juice and a kiwi danish. The Parade deserves no comment, other than it was foggy and misting, and that I prefer the view from a Lazy-Boy.

There was Disneyland, where, after another fistful of codeine, I began to seriously identify with the opium fiends who dreamt up the park and its weird creatures and dangerous rides.

And then the Rose Bowl, where a crafty and hungry Arizona State tore Bo Schembechler a new asshole for something like his fifth time in six trips to Pasadena. Marcus joined us at the game. I remember nothing of our conversation, assuming there was any, other than his whining was starting to impact on my nerves.

"You better slow down," he kept saying, every eight or eleven minutes, as I left the stands for another 40-ounce cup, at five bucks a throw.

But I didn't. At dinner, my throat relaxed enough for to let me take in solid food. And for that, I needed some of the Korbel going to waste on the table, amongst Dad, Mom and a smattering of social drinkers. Baby Sister, accepting my perverse need for drink--though not understanding entirely--engineered a fantastic game of musical stemware, whereby I would slug down three flutesful every ten or so minutes, while she acted as gracious hostess, directing the Puerto Rican waiter to the crystal that had suddenly become empty, causing everyone to feel more drunk than they actually were. Or maybe it was just me.

Goddamnit, where is she?!...that her?...huh-uh. Come on, Tami, this park person here is begging for my money! I didn't remember Santa Barbara being so bad. So many scum-of-the-earth types. Wretched bus depot. 11:30, 11:55, 12:40, cursing every blue Toyota pickup, until...

"I'm so sorry," she smiled. "I got sleepy on the way down from Tahoe, and I pulled over--"

"And you fell asleep," I said, kissing her full on the mouth, after tossing my bags in the bed. "You've let your hair grow. It's so long."

"Just like you always wanted."

I played with her silky-black mane until we got into Isla Vista. The town, itself, had not changed much. Perry's Pizza was now a sandwich shop called Sam's To Go. And Winchell's Donuts had closed up shop. I ran into Isla Vista market to pick up a twelve-pack, knowing she would never-in-hell mind. But as she joined me and we scanned the aisles together, holding hands and dancing, picking up, as we felt the impulse, some bacon, juice, pears and assorted breakfast restoratives, for after a hard-pounding 9:00am to 3:15pm session, I inadvertently forgot the beer.

Uh-huh.

And as soon as she began cooking dinner, I smiled. How could I tell her? How could she ever understand that dinner tonight, for me, will taste just as good sober tonight? Three years earlier, Marcus had tried in vain to flag me down, as I peddled high atop a Schwinn beach-cruiser, down Del Playa toward Tami's apartment.

"You never even saw me," he understood. "Did you?"

"I guess I must have been daydreaming," I laughed.

"You must be in love."

Tami stared at me, after having eaten. "How long does it seem, for you?"

"Oh," I thought, rinsing off my plate, "about five minutes. I'm stuffed. I feel so good."

I sat down on the sofa as she dropped a flick into the VCR. "Pretty funny," I laughed, taking her by the hand, "with all the viewing it'll get from us."

She stiffened, and edged toward the front of the couch. "Yeah...I wanted to ask you about that. Umm...where did you think you'd be sleeping tonight?"

The room did an endover, and I realized suddenly that something had gone fundamentally wrong. A huge signal chasm. Misfire. Human error. Target Not Locked In.

"With you," I said, trying to manage a smile, fearing for the next ten minutes, and how they could easily rove into felonious battery with intent to possess her life.

"No, Todd," she said. "I've changed. There've been other guys since you left."

"So what?" I screamed. "I've had other girls, too, but no way is it the same. I never felt or thought I could feel like that again, with anyone, ever again."

No point in an alarm clock when your penis wakes you up. The waves reached the shore in 4/4 time, rain falling steadily, a preternatural morning. I crawled from her roommate's bed to where Tami was sleeping, slid back the comforter and slipped in beside her. Hot breath back and forth, a finger inching past the waist-band, like coming home. Hunching on her velvet thigh.

"Oh," I said, inserting a finger into the wetness, "this feels so good."

"Noooo," she moaned, "friends don't do this."

I stomped out of the bedroom, indignant, made my way into the living room, to a spare telephone, and dialed information for Southwest Airlines. "Yes," I said, "Fahey, that's F as in Frank, A-H-E-Y, fuck the fee, just get me on the goddamned flight."

Tami stood shivering in the hallway, her arms clutched against her bare chest. "You're not leaving today?"

"1:30. God you're dumb." I said. "We play house for nine months and you ask for me to keep writing you, so that 'something might happen,' and then you ask to see me, and then you have the gall to ask me to sleep in your roommate's bed. Do you have any idea?"

She shuddered. "OK. I'll be ready."

I hopped on an unchained bicycle and peddled to Grandma Gerties, a lunch-beer establishment in the hollow of Isla Vista, site of past benders, good times. I started out with a pitcher, ended with a pitcher, and, whilst reading a Sunday Los Angeles Times, drank a pitcher. I also washed down two #4s.

I made it back to her apartment by 11:55, where I snatched my luggage and tossed it in the back of her truck. Click. Vrrooooooom. KTYD, home of the free 40-minute music ride. The sound of rain spattering on a windshield. Pt-ptll-ptt-ptt-pttleplttle-plttt

. "Todd. Todd, wake up, your stuff's getting wet. Todd!."

"Huh?" I said, awakened on some grey shoulder of the road near Oxnard.

"It's raining. Your stuff is getting wet."

I stumbled out into the rain and poured off the excess moisture from the luggage, with which I made a foot rest, and passed out again.

When I awoke, it was 1:10 and we were at the Departures area of LAX. I wanted to say something, something, to make it up to her, that I might make sense of it myself.

"Have a good life," she muttered, and drove away.

Marcus was eyeing me, as he stuffed some Tinderbox #7 into an English briar pipe. "Why are you back so early?"

"Take a fucking guess," I snarled.

"What did you expect? I told you not to go there," he said. "Didn't I?"

"Yeah," I said, "but you're not me, are you?"

"Nope," he said; and then something like, "Thank God for that."

He left before I could apologize, so I began rummaged through the refrigerator and instead found myself a 12-pack of Moosehead, which I began consuming, one-by-one, and thinking:

What did I expect? Was it right of me to expect anything at all? Why does this beer taste so good? Will I ever quit?

Nahh. Some men gamble; some fuck other guys. Some men are stupid; some are ugly. I drink. I'll always drink. I'll die early.

And I found myself pitched, flat...spread-eagled in the Human Zone.