My mind works in admittedly funny ways, and sometimes what is happening in the big wide world will trigger a memory of something I hadn’t thought of in years. So it was this week when the latest news delivered up a remembrance of a conversation I had with one of my best friends, probably when Reagan was president.
I’ll call my friend Mark to protect the guilty, so it was that Mark and I were processing the events of our weekend as two single gay boys in the big city. In fact, we were comparing notes of a rather personal nature, as friends sometimes do. Mark had spent Saturday night on a date, I use the term loosely, with his boyfriend, a term I’m using even more loosely.
Mark and Lover Boy had gotten down, so to speak, to the main event of the evening. It seems Lover Boy was seeking to impress Mark with his prowess in the boudoir, in terms of his stamina and endurance. So that intimate moment stretched into minutes, and then, it stretched beyond that.
Unfortunately, Mark was not impressed with either the ship or the motion of the ocean, if you catch my meaning. Knowing Mark, his mind probably wandered to such things as what color he should paint the kitchen and how soon he could get to Jack in the Box for tacos.
Eventually, Lover Boy got to the point and was close enough to ask Mark, “Are you ready?”
But wait. A pattern is emerging. And it’s frightening me. Why is it that the relentless coverage of Trump’s ongoing, everlasting, eternal, continuing, ceaseless, endless, perpetual, enduring and persistent legal problems conjures up in my wee brain stories of unsatisfactory liaisons that friends of mine had decades ago?
I wrote about another one of these triggered memories when Trump was indicated by Alvin Bragg just less than two months ago. (Different friend, similar problem caused by a fellow referred to as “The Log.”) Of course, that seems like two years ago now, but such is the nature of this legal beast. The trial is scheduled to start March 25 of next year, which is a long time to keep one’s toes curled.
Watching news a few days ago that Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis is signaling that indictments might be coming in late July or early August left me wondering, not what those charges might be nor whom they may be charged against, but what color I should paint the kitchen? I was thinking maybe peach, but then I’d need to change the wallpaper, so maybe we’ll just freshen up the blue that’s already there, and call it a day.
Breathless reporting of former Trump lawyer Ty Cobb predicting that “he will go to jail” on the obstruction case stemming from the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation left me cold. Special counsel Jack Smith is wrapping up that investigation, so we’re told, but Mr. Smith doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who asks “Are you ready?” before the moment comes. So I’m thinking about how many tacos I want from Jack in the Box.
It’s not that I don’t care. But I’ve been tickled with fingers and teased with feathers for so long that I just want to say, “Wake me up when it gets here.”
Because I feel an awful lot like Mark did when Lover Boy asked, “Are you ready?” Mark would have been completely within his rights to reply, “Hell, no, I’m not ready. My back hurts, I can’t feel my left leg, and my right arm can’t move.” But you know, that isn’t what he said.
What he actually said was, “Ready? Ready? I don’t even have a ****** ******* ****-**!!!”
Take that, Pat Sajak.
As for me, I need for this to come to whatever climax it’s going to come to, and sooner rather than later. Right now, I’m only remembering other people’s stories about close encounters of the unpleasant kind. I do not want this thing to drag on long enough that I start down my own Memory Lane. Telling on one’s friends is one thing, but snitching on yourself is quite another.
So if you think I’m going to tell you about that Sunday morning in New Orleans when Carter was president, think again.
