<\/p>\n
Pub. Sept 2004<\/p>\n
——-<\/p>\n
\n
Texas Billionaire Oscar bin Laden and his 20 year old virgin love toy, Beaver, had been spending lots of time together.\u00a0 Beaver was a short, dark-haired independent girl with the weight of the world on her mind and Oscar was aged beyond his years in the midst of what can only be described as a mid life crisis.\u00a0 A crisis that started in 2001, and he\u2019d been drifting through the back channels of America ever since.<\/p>\n
Normally, I would overlook creatures like Beaver.\u00a0 The Anglo-Russian outcasts whose ancestors had hit this nation early in the 20th<\/sup> and, like all forgotten aristocrats, had wormed their way into the solid-state white power regime without really trying.\u00a0 Refugees get all the breaks, and her peace-minded \u201cconsumer friendly\u201d talk drove into me like coffin nails.\u00a0 One of these days, I planned to pin someone down and have them define \u201cconsumer friendly\u201d in small words and with diagrammed sentences.\u00a0 By my reckoning, we shouldn\u2019t be consumer anything.\u00a0 We should be anti-consumer.\u00a0 We should purge the world of consumers.\u00a0 Settle down with the remaining 20% who can think and read and love and discuss how things really work.<\/p>\n But, let\u2019s face it, I\u2019d hate that 20% just as much.<\/p>\n I\u2019d been doing my best to ignore Oscar as his transgressions over the last few years had become more and more esoteric.\u00a0 But it\u2019s hard to ignore something that\u2019s sitting in your front room, eating your oatmeal raisin cookies and drinking your vodka.\u00a0 Oscar wasn\u2019t a drinker till recently.\u00a0 Just a couple months ago he said, fuck it, and lit up three cigarettes at once, washing down their tar with straight tequila.\u00a0 He told me he was going to find himself an underaged love child as he chewed on tequila worms and wobbled dizzily around me.\u00a0 He said the drinking was not only liberating but comfortable.\u00a0 At least, once you threw the worm back up.<\/p>\n All this was on my mind because I was sliding around the back seat of Beaver\u2019s 10 year old Monte Carlo, which had bald tires and an exhaust problem.\u00a0 As carbon monoxide wafted gently into the cabin,\u00a0 I kept all of my attention on the road ahead which Beaver attacked with the furious glee of a person who suffers from night blindness and has decided to get even against the smudges of dazzling light by steering right towards them and leaning on the horn.\u00a0 Which is what Beaver was doing.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve decided that the only path to freedom,\u201d she said, leaning over the seat to grin at me, \u201cIs to release oneself from fear!\u201d<\/p>\n Youth has a way of creating fear in the likes of me, though.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t able to respond.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you see the Buddha on the road \u2013 \u201c Beaver screamed, whipping the car onto the sidewalk, then onto the grass, trees whipping by, darkness enveloping us, \u201cKill him!\u201d\u00a0 The car spun to a mad halt, dirt and smoke rising in the headlights as we moved sideways towards a little park.\u00a0 We stopped, rocking gently, at the base of a plastic slide and Beaver leapt out with a shout and slammed into one of the swings.<\/p>\n \u201cPush me, Oscar!\u00a0 Push!!\u201d\u00a0 she started yelling.<\/p>\n Oscar, old enough to be her father and ever tolerant, smiled apologetically.<\/p>\n I settled down on a bench with a bottle of Sri Lankan Arrack as Oscar gently pushed Beaver on the swings.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is what America comes to,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cA decayed Monte Carlo in a park at midnight?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, Nacho.\u00a0 I\u2019m on another topic here.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI missed the segue.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m speaking philosophically.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, I see.\u00a0 Well, then what is it that America has come to?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI saw a picture of Condi Rice the other day \u2013 \u201c<\/p>\n \u201cGod rest her mortal soul.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think she\u2019s a scared little girl.\u00a0 Trying to hide her overbite, trying to fit in.\u00a0 You can tell just about everything by looking at her.\u00a0 Such darkness in this world.\u00a0 Such loss.\u201d<\/p>\n Beaver, on a return before Oscar sent her swinging out into the night again, said, \u201cNow we can eat her bones!\u201d\u00a0 She went up and out, \u201cCrack them open, get the marrow!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m feeling a little lost,\u201d Oscar confided.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ve tried everything and I just can\u2019t quite hit the mark.\u00a0 America has defeated me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo, what\u2019s next?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMonte Carlo!\u201d Beaver said.\u00a0 Everything was Monte Carlo tonight.\u00a0 Good thing she wasn\u2019t driving an Infiniti.<\/p>\n \u201cLook,\u201d I stepped up beside Oscar and handed him the bottle, \u201cI know you\u2019ve been down, lately.\u00a0 It\u2019s a summer thing.\u00a0 The wanderlust hits, yes?\u00a0 Maybe you need to find a new thing to do?\u201d<\/p>\n He let Beaver swing unchecked between us, a troubled and thoughtful glaze on his face.\u00a0 Beaver kicked out her legs, building speed, rising well above her heads.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re right.\u201d\u00a0 Oscar said to me.\u00a0 He sucked in the thick air, humid and alive, and a visible presence of content settled on him.\u00a0 \u201cI need to do something\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBig!\u201d Beaver shouted.\u00a0 In between her swing, I grabbed the bottle from Oscar and raised it to my lips, pulling the Arrack down.<\/p>\n \u201cBig, big, Beaver,\u201d I grinned.<\/p>\n We yanked her off the swing and threw her in the backseat of the Monte Carlo, then I took the wheel and careened off the grass and dirt into the little parking lot.\u00a0 Again on pavement, the bald wheels took off and I was on the road, trying to get my suburban bearings, then we headed to our old campaign office in Wheaton.\u00a0 That was where Oscar had been shot so many months ago.\u00a0 That was where everything had changed.<\/p>\n The night had just begun.<\/p>\n 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