Author: Jed Mercurio
Category: Other
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Yet the subject has never felt more singular than during his short months in office. He might even describe his current emotional deficit as “loneliness,” though he cannot mean loneliness in its conventional sense. He seeks company as others crave companionship; he seeks sexual intimacy as others crave love; yet he is not much different from other men of his generation with similar education and professional standing, nor indeed from men throughout the ages, of any class or race, since they all share the same biology, albeit with chemicals in slightly varying abundance and slightly varying potency. What differs between them is a willingness to accept and act upon their own physical inclinations, and, naturally, a wide variation in opportunity, all these contentions finding living proof in the conduct of Our First Man in Space—officer, gentleman, churchgoer, husband and father—currently and avidly endeavoring to secure missile-lock on his apparently receptive target, a young woman who has enjoyed (mostly married) male attention all evening, and now finds herself under seduction by a national icon and hero of the New Frontier.
The President of the United States crosses the floor to join the astronaut and the press aide just as Our First Man in Space is about to suggest a docking maneuver at his pad. The President turns the conversation to the moon landing, which turns the girl’s attention toward him, the alpha of alphas, taller (the previous administration gave serious thought to recruiting circus midgets as astronauts), with far better hair, prompting her to ask, “Do you really believe it’s possible, Mr. President?”
“I do believe it. And we all must. To quote Anatole France: To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream.’ And to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, ‘Some see what is and ask Why? but others dream things that aren’t and ask Why not?’
“I do believe. We all must. Because America can show the world, and history, our power, our drive, our courage, and our ingenuity in a way that doesn’t involve weapons and warfare.”
Her eyes widen in the face of a future of limitless possibility. Muscles twitch in the astronaut’s stony expression, but he knows he can do nothing to prevent the girl from becoming the President’s tonight.
THE TRANSACTION
Beautiful young women sometimes reward men’s stations or achievements with sex, which the subject regards as a fitting tribute, more gratefully received than the standard civic medal. It is a custom he questions only occasionally, since, when he finds himself the beneficiary, he considers the transaction natural, appropriate and commensurate. Men of high standing in commerce or the arts will often come by the gifts of a young admirer, and these men aren’t all blessed with the subject’s looks, though they do often delude themselves with notions of physical or spiritual charisma, as if their wealth and/or power are irrelevant to the transaction.
Yet, while he accepts that he could attract women were he an advertising executive on Madison Avenue or a mechanic on the production line of the Ford Motor Company, he is certainly not foolish enough to believe he would be as attractive, probably not even close. A man of high status does well to adopt the philosophy of the Chinese shopkeeper who, in bartering for a bride, does not separate his own character from the appendage of his business, instead embracing it as integral to his eligibility in the same fashion that a handsome face might be or an athletic physique (or any other appendage you care to imagine).
These musings rarely prompt the subject to examine the transaction from the woman’s point of view. When he does, he concludes the woman must somehow be biologically programmed to be seduced by peacock feathers, and moreover she must regard her sexual beauty as a precious franchise and derive a sense of power and influence by giving herself to the man of her choice in the manner that she might cast her vote (if she’s old enough). In an election, a politician seeks office but lies at the mercy of the voter who, paradoxically, holds enormous potential power in his gift, and this situation is mirrored by the encounter between the elevated man of state, commerce or art and the sexually appealing young woman, who possesses the body to disarm the most potent adversary, and the moment that both parties become aware of this tantalizing reality, and of the possibility of the associated prize, a balance of power obtains that may well weigh toward the otherwise disenfranchised young woman. The subject imagines the woman is not a calculating femme fatale attempting to win favor or influence, rather that she finds a confused expression for her admiration in the language of sex, though he appreciates that part of this expectation originates from the man, who is accustomed to respect from many quarters, to the point where such compliments become redundant, whereas the exceptional tribute that lies in the gift of the beautiful young woman appears, to him, the most sincere act of approbation possible. When these two disparate individuals meet, the man of power and the woman of beauty, there exists in some circles such a convention of sexual tribute that the man comes to regard it as his entitlement, and certainly the subject does find himself somewhat irritated if, having spent no small time and effort giving attention to a young woman of no political or social influence, he learns that she is neither willing nor able to present him with his “civic medal.” Happily, no such contractual misunderstandings apply tonight, as the young lady in question appears utterly familiar with the particulars.
The practical obstacles involved in sleeping with her proved far less challenging than expected. At the reception, the President instructed her to make her way back to the White House on the understanding there would be a late briefing involving her boss, the press secretary, at which she would be responsible for taking notes, an arrangement an aide conveyed on behalf of the President to the Secret Service, and, when the girl arrived alone at the White House, she made her way to the Residence to await the press secretary in the company of the President. However, the President had deliberately omitted to leave instructions for the press secretary, letting him return home directly from the dinner. The First Lady having taken the children to Cape Cod, the President and his guest had the run of the Lincoln Bedroom, wherein he spent a few moments acquainting her with the designs crafted in the woodwork of the giant four-poster bed.
The transaction requires only a few minutes. He’s spent decades fingering mobsters and licking debaters, so surely the resultant wealth, status and power excuse him the ghastly drag of foreplay. How selfish, if the girl should want even more. Yet the President’s practiced insouciance must not mislead us into overlooking his hunter’s heart. It beats so hard he hears the blood in his head. This man without adrenaline experiences the surge now, facing a woman’s eyes ready to fight and her muscles ready to fly, only now, only at the kill. She is a mouse dropped in with a snake.
Perhaps because the President took the trouble to offer the girl a glass of wine as an aid to seduction, she imagines that he might want to talk, so she begins to tell him nervously about her school, her college, what it means to work at the White House—she was a volunteer for his campaign, apparently, and those who’d worked hard were rewarded with some kind of position, however minor, in her case by the press secretary, who found her a post in his office answering phones and clipping copy, a job she wants to discuss with the President now. She and the other girls like her (one will soon be working for Mrs. Lincoln, another at State) attended the same exclusive New England schools and colleges as the First Lady, a fact the President recognizes in her diction and mannerisms. These girls don’t need to work for money; hence they’re delighted to take an unimportant job for little pay as a passport to high society; and they seem bred to favor older, richer, more powerful gentlemen.
But the President is not interested in her education or her family, which she possibly offers as a means to elicit similar revelations from him; nor is he interested in discussing politics save in the most superficial way, as he certainly has no intention of confessing his deeper feelings about his office to anyone apart from his wife. Perhaps he becomes uncomfortable in the face of a woman’s will, when he realizes she is not passive to his seduction, but has made the same calculatio
n as he. He did not, for example, utter a single comment to Marilyn on the subject of the invasion, even though at that time he was afflicted by nightmarish visions of those men’s miserable deaths. Tonight the President is only concerned with this girl’s body, hence he says quite directly, “I still have reading, so I’m afraid we have to get down to it straight away.”
Afterward she wants to talk again, but he has no desire for such intimacy and calls down to the lobby.
“It seems Mr. Salinger didn’t get the message,” he says to the duty clerk. “No, don’t call him. I’m tired and would prefer to postpone the meeting till further notice. Would you send a car to the North Portico for … ?”
“Jill,” she repeats, but he will forget it again instantly.
Putting on her coat, she says, “Is it true? Can we go to the Moon?”
He says, “I believe this generation can change things, and achieve things that haven’t been done before. It’s our world now.”
She smiles and goes to kiss him on the cheek, but he completes his emotional closure, as one would expect having being relieved of his sexual need, and sometimes it is an effort of common courtesy for the subject not to view this circumstance after consummation as he regards the period after a productive bowel movement. For the subject, to this day, the sharpest challenge of the sexual transaction is the moment he now confronts, the custom of postcoital partition, when he feels an urgent desire to flush away what’s been laid. He’s grateful for her prompt exit, his time being better spent carrying out his back exercises, ingesting his medications, and getting off to sleep ahead of his flight out to the Cape in the morning to join the family.
The valet seems unperturbed by the moderately disrupted arrangement of the bedclothes, bringing the President water with which to take his pills and helping him into his pajamas. The President needs not give the condition of the bedroom a second thought, as the sheets will be laundered over the weekend to be replaced by fresh, clean ones for his family’s return on Sunday evening.
Before he sleeps, he calculates that, apart from Our First Man in Space, he doubts anyone paid close attention to the momentary intimacy that occurred at the reception as he acquainted the girl with the scheme whereby they would meet later, nor after when she returned to the Residence under the guise of a late meeting. She spent no more than twenty minutes in the Residence before being seen to leave by the Secret Service when the meeting was canceled. All assumptions would surely be innocent, even those of the valet, who must account for the ruffled sheets by concluding that the President alone is responsible, most likely by one or another stretching exercise, leaving the subject confident he’s done nothing to create the impression that he will be vulnerable to sexual distraction during his administration, which is his primary concern toward his staff in the question of his fornication.
The subject has been a practicing philanderer for so long now that it hardly constitutes an intellectual or emotional strain—the converse, in fact, as demonstrated by the physical maladies by which he’s afflicted when he suffers enforced continence, and, moreover, he would argue that it is less of a diversion in terms of time and effort than a set of tennis or a round of golf. Sex is the subject’s golf: a couple of quick holes, getting around as quickly as possible.
The girl looks the picture of discretion when next she meets the President, and he detects no suspicious glances from his aides. Even the press secretary, his unwitting beard, appears unruffled by the meeting that never was. So it’s business as usual, followed by a weekend with the wife and children at their rented property on Cape Cod, during which he decides to pursue a short dalliance with the girl from the Press Office. Naturally his principal concern is concealment. His wife occasionally visits the West Wing, though her staff is based in her East Wing offices, and the Press Office staff are usually present at White House functions. The subject worries that a moment of overfamiliarity, or careless discrepancy in an account of their whereabouts, will ignite his wife’s suspicions.
Though he thinks about the girl over the weekend, he has long ago learned that the successful philanderer must be capable of strict compartmentalization. Therefore he appears the devoted family man—which, of course, he is—as he enjoys a pleasant sojourn playing with the children, Caroline in particular seeming to find limitless fascination in scooping out holes in the sand down on the beach, Jackie and John Jr. coming and going, but the clearest memories of the weekend are the simple physical moments between them as a family, Jackie lying close by while they both read—a book on antiquities for her, economic reports for him—cradling John on his lap, helping him sit up, feeling his warm scalp against his chest, and Caroline’s hand in his as they stroll along the scrub, particularly the moment just before, when she pulls free to explore, and there he remains with his hand held out, his heart almost ready to break, until she discovers it again.
However, the President is beset with the usual number of work calls and briefings. In the house, he takes a call from Justice; they are raising the issue again of the State Department official, and the President resolves to look into the matter, which he does in a spare moment on Monday, after Mrs. Lincoln fetches the file, which summarizes FBI surveillance reports and witness statements to the effect that the official is undoubtedly guilty, with the opinion succinctly stated in the report’s conclusion that it is government policy to regard practicing homosexuals as unfit for public office.
The President and the First Lady dined with his family over the weekend, and their first two evenings this week are taken up with small dinner parties in the Residence, which have become something of a social custom now, usually taking the form of the First Couple hosting six guests in the President’s Dining Room, most often friends they have known since before the President came to office, possibly a prominent journalist and his wife, or an ambassador, and occasionally someone from outside the political world, such as an artist or a poet. These are relaxed affairs, for the most part, with two exceptions, the first being the start of the evening, when no one, not even one of their closest friends, dares enter the room before the President, this being the protocol appropriate to his office, and the second being that, with the exception of the First Lady, no one addresses him by his first name. Instead, rather than suffering the embarrassment of calling their old friend “Mr. President,” they call him nothing at all, although when referring to him in the third person they have nearly all found a way of enunciating “the President” that sounds simultaneously respectful and mocking, which, to be frank, is a combination of which he rather approves.
Guests have also become accustomed to the President swapping an ordinary dining chair for his rocking chair and to the fact that on a good many evenings he is forced to eat a bland repast devoid of meat, vegetables or flavor, and forgo alcohol and cigars, though the First Lady selflessly blows the smoke of her filtered cigarettes in his direction. Sometimes they screen a movie (wherein occasionally faces turn up that he must pretend not to recognize, and sometimes a newcomer catches his eye whose name he might pass on to his Hollywood brother-in-law vis-à-vis the next West Coast party), but, since sitting still for two hours is never a good idea for his back, he often excuses himself at this time to read reports and make telephone calls.
At last, he and his wife get an evening alone together. After putting the children to bed, she drinks white wine and chain-smokes her L&M’s, while his enforced abstemiousness continues, as his stomach has been only a minor problem for the past few days, with only a single bout of colic followed by bloody diarrhea. Things are convivial enough, with shared laughter at the expense of newspaper columnists and po-faced heads of state. His wife gives an animated account of her restoration program, to which he shows appropriate interest. Occasionally he wonders how their exchanges must sound to an outsider, who would hear his solemn appraisal of the situation in Berlin rejoindered by his wife’s description of a particularly striking antique chair her staff have uncovered in one of the basements.
A
way from the raucous revelry of a dinner party or a cocktail reception, the President and the First Lady revert to a married couple having dinner at home. They talk a good deal, and they laugh, but the President maintains a lookout for any tension that might suggest his wife is harboring suspicions. He reflects on his harmless encounter with the press girl and becomes resentful that he should feel hounded by his wife when he provides so much love and security for her and their children, so he goes on the offensive, as usual pertaining to her fashion budget, which has gone up rather than down since last they discussed the matter.
“I spend,” she says. “It’s my vice. What’s yours, Jack?”
Quickly he says, “I think it must be that I have delusions of grandeur,” to which she laughs her beautiful laugh, a girl’s laughter, and she tips her head close and they kiss.
In the morning, there’s a call from Justice. The Attorney General wants to know what to tell the FBI because the Director wants to know what’s being done about the State Department official, to which the President answers that, having read the reports, the official is more valuable than he expected, based on the briefing, and he needs more time to reach a decision. After he lays down the phone, the President raps his fingertips on his desk for a few seconds, then he goes through to Mrs. L. on the intercom and asks when the next State Department briefing is in the diary, the answer being later this week, and he adds that he would particularly like this certain official to participate, though obviously he does not give his secretary his reasons.