After all, I was up there. I was up to something. I was up there, and there was no one to tell me what I was up to up there. There was no one to tell me about what it was like to be up there. And there was no one I could share the experience of being up there with, because everyone else I knew was still down there, below where I was, trying to find a way to get up to where I was, so they could come back down later and tell me what it was like to be up there.

I like the fall off the precipice of organization. I like running headlong into the lack of control my life seems organized around. I like reaching out to grab the wind and pull it toward me like I can make of it something that looks like I made something of it.

I’ve had all the love sucked out of me before. I finally remembered I was here to try to find my way to Wonder.

With Wonder, it didn’t feel like having a cigarette together. It didn’t feel like touching the tip of something to your tongue and lips, getting it wet, and then handing it over to Wonder to touch the tip of the same something to her tongue and lips and getting it wet and then getting the wet I got it wet with mixed with the wet she got it wet with. It didn’t feel like handing over the organization of my life, either. It felt more like getting tutored in a new form of organization, one that hadn’t ever occurred to me. It felt like being asked to organize myself around my own system, the way Wonder had organized her life around a system. It was something I was just about ready for.

Wonder’s system had to do with precipitous speed, I think, and self-discipline. Wonder was out there living large for me to see, and I watched and learned. By the time Wonder and I left the hallways of our childhood, I was slotted into the process of my life like the learning was totally over. It wasn’t so much that I felt out of control, it was more that I felt as though I wasn’t really a part of the process at all, not even enough a part of it to feel out of control. I was outside of control. I was outside of everything.

I ran the water in the sink. It made a kind of hissing sound coming out of the tap and hitting the stainless steel basin. I could see a distorted version of myself in the stainless steel basin. I looked tired and distorted. I needed to get some sleep. If I lived in Tibet, I thought, I could get more sleep. I went to the fridge. I pulled it open. I got out a tin of something. I consumed what was in the tin. In about five minutes, I was going to go to a meeting on a street about five minutes from where I lived. I had never been to a meeting before. This was going to be my first.

I went to the ridge. I pulled open my jacket. I got out my penis. I consumed a chocolate bar that was in my pocket with my penis dangling over the ridge. In about five minutes, I was going to go to a meeting on a street about five minutes from where I lived. I had never been to a meeting before. This was going to be my first.

An experience is an assemblage of moments that are gathered together in the imagination of a person having an experience.

In a way, this story is the story of some asshole. I’m that asshole. I’m the star of the story, even though it means I have to be an asshole, because the star of this story was always going to be an asshole, even before it was me who was going to be the star of the story.

Some questions about yourself assemble on the shore of your sainthood. Same piece of shit idea you always have. The boat sailing closer. Your eyes going squinty to try to see if there’s anyone on that boat, and, if so, who is it? Who is on that boat today, you ask yourself. Everyday it’s the same piece of shit idea about the same boat with someone on it. Every day you hope the someone on the boat is someone different. But it never is.

Same as a piece of writing is an assemblage of words gathered together on a piece of paper, your inane questions to yourself are proof that you do not know the name or the number of the entities that you might possibly assemble as you imagine, in discrete bouts of imagining, the moments that you could treat as experiences; and, yet, you want to break these assemblages down, disassemble them, and render in words these experiences that stand as impregnable entities for you. What is wrong with you?

Getting rejected by Wonder was devastating. It felt like: Maybe I’ll let you put yourself inside me, but not yet. The taste of that possibility made it hard for me to catch my breath, as though Wonder let me put my hand inside her shirt. It was not so much like having my hand inside Wonder’s shirt as it was imagining my hand inside Wonder’s shirt. Not this time, Mister, Wonder seemed to be saying. But, if you play your cards right, maybe I’ll allow you to violate me one day. I wanted so badly to violate Wonder. But, by the time I figured out what it was that was hurting so much inside, Wonder was gone.

The boy put his hand on the girl’s bum and kissed the girl on her lips. He kissed the girl goodnight with the soft half moon of her bum flooding some scary chemical up through the veins in his arm and into his entire body. This had never happened to the boy before. The boy didn’t know what it was that was flooding into his body, but it seemed to be flooding into his body straight from this girl’s bum. He felt that whatever it was that was flooding up his arm from the girl’s bum, it must be toxic. Yet he couldn’t take his hand away.

***

They don’t remember the names of the towns. They’re on the circuit, fighting in places they’d never go to on their own, places where the women look tired and the men carry an anonymous anger in their eyes. They both have the same manager and he thought it would be a good idea, the same last name and all. Bill it as Kramer vs. Kramer. Ha-ha. “Angles, guys, angles,” their manager said when he called them into his office, which wasn’t an office but the manager’s studio apartment in West Hollywood, off Melrose. “You need angles if you want viable careers in this industry. Any industry. And I’m all about angles. Even with extreme fighting. Extreme isn’t extreme enough. You gotta have angles.”

***

First names Robert and Anthony.

***

They drive together, eat together, sleep together in the same chain motel rooms that smell the same unnamable smells.

“I think I was here once before,” Kramer might say.

“Really?” Kramer might answer.

“But maybe not. I’m not sure.”

“We see a lot of towns.”

“Just like rock stars.”

“Only we’re not rock stars.”

“And there are no girls or drugs or anything.”

“Just us.”

“Just us,” Kramer might repeat, for emphasis.

***

Kramer is older than Kramer. He’s been around the block and back. He has scars, deep and profound. They snake across his chest and down his back, punctuate his face with tiny marks, multi-shaped diversions for the people (not many) who let their gaze linger for longer than just a quick glance. The older Kramer wants to tell the younger Kramer to seriously reconsider. This is no way. This is no way to live your life if you have even an ounce of soul/spirit left.

Get out while you can, kid, Kramer wants to say.

But that’s something you’d hear a guy in a movie say. So he doesn’t say it, only thinks it, as they spend just about every waking hour together, more like husband and wife than fight-to-the-finish, kill-or-be-killed Xtreme opponents.

***

Now that Kramer is on his stomach, sprawled face-first, incapable of movement, Kramer finishes the performance: he bites Kramer’s shoulder, then he bites the capsule in his mouth that contains the blood. Kramer grimaces, begs for mercy. The crowd doesn’t appear to notice. The blood always seems so puny and inadequate. Kramer releases him and stands, arms rising toward a sky that nobody can see.

***

Kramer was married once—younger Kramer, that is.

“What happened?” Kramer asked one night when the free HBO wasn’t working.

“I still don’t know,” Kramer answered, and it was quiet until the picture unscrambled and came back to life. Then they just watched TV.

***

Under the lights, it is over. The MC’s microphone isn’t working so he cups his hands and yells: “That’s it, ladies and gentlemen! Kramer defeats Kramer! What a match! What a night! Talk about extreme! It doesn’t get any extemer than that! Now it’s time to go! You can go somewhere else but you can’t stay here! Good night!”

And he leaves. The crowd, however, stays. They don’t want to go.

Kramer and Kramer are already in the back room. There isn’t even a shower. They’ll have to do that back at the motel room.

“I think I was a little off,” says Kramer.

“Really? When?” asks Kramer.

“Right at the beginning.”

“I didn’t notice.”

***

Kramer sets the alarm for 5:30. That’s when they’ll wake up and drive to the next town, which he’s pretty sure is Tacoma or Olympia. They might be in Oregon. They might not. There’s been lots of rain and people seem floaty and disconnected. Oregon. Sure.

Kramer snores when he sleeps. It’s always hard, always a race to see who will fall asleep first. Kramer closes his eyes and does his best. He always does his best even though sometimes—most of the time, actually—it doesn’t feel that way. There is so much left behind.

***

The next morning on the road, forty-five minutes into their drive, Kramer answers his cell phone. It’s their manager. The manager’s name is Speedy Beers. He swears this is his real name but neither Kramer believes him.

“Don’t worry about getting to the next gig,” the manager says.

They are on a long stretch of straight highway lined with trees. These trees are very green and very tall and would seem to suggest hope but somehow they do not.

“Why?”

“Tour’s been cancelled.”

Kramer looks over at Kramer, who’s dosing in the passenger’s seat. Get out while you can, kid.

“Why?”

It’s a stupid question. The manager doesn’t even bother answering.

“Can you tell Anthony?”

“He’s asleep.”

“Just let him know. Just tell him. And guys. There’s one other thing.”

“Wait.”

Kramer slows the car down, comes to a complete stop. He hates talking on the phone in general, talking on the phone while driving even worse.

“Okay. I’m listening.”

“When you get back to L.A. I think it would be best if we, you know, went our like respective separate ways. Nothing personal. But I mean the whole extreme fighting thing—I think it’s on its way out. Don’t get me wrong. You guys are warriors. Pure and total warriors. And you, with your history. You practically invented the sport, the whole fucking what—genre. There from like day one. I mean you’ve been there. I mean like been there, man. But bid-ness is bid-ness, know what I’m saying?”

Kramer looks over at Kramer again. Still asleep. His mouth open, like a child’s. No drool though. It’s for the best, for the best. Life works out the way it works out. Count your blessings. He’ll do something. He’ll take a class. Learn a new skill. Turn the page. Something. All he knows is that he can’t keep doing what he’s been doing. That part of him is dead now.

“Robert? You get that? You copy?”

Kramer will thrive. He’ll land a job. He’ll meet a woman. She’ll understand. She’ll have some kind of accent, maybe. She’ll understand everything. Him. His issues. His past. Their future. The world will change and he will be healed.

“Yo? Robert? You still there?”

Kramer starts driving. He turns on the radio. The phone is still going. He hears voices and static and wonders about all the towns they’ll pass through, if one could lead him to something if he simply pulled over and decided to stay. Kramer stirs a bit but remains asleep. He watches him for as long as he can before he has to turn his eyes back to the road ahead.

I spent the afternoon with you while you pretended to be pregnant. In your yard I tried to be a doctor. I didn’t know that we would die. At night I slept easy.

Once, we went through the woods and threw rocks at the river. It was snowing in a way that made the water look drinkable like a slushy. You told me you wanted a boyfriend and I didn’t think about your belly. Instead I imagined myself slipping on the bank, falling into a warm bath.

In your garage we tried to sell your father’s tools. No one would buy anything else. The tools were all they wanted. We didn’t make much money. I hadn’t learned to barter. In the evening we crossed the street and whispered to each other on the playground. I climbed the walls and looked down at you, blending into the gravel like a magic eye. I could hear our parents through the fences.

Once I went outside early to watch your mother walk the cul-de-sac in her yoga pants. She was always walking in the morning and you said it was because she had to keep herself pretty. She taught a class at the Total Fitness twice a week.

Once I promised that I would meet you in the morning. I tried to pretend that I couldn’t hear my phone. I remembered that the Natives said you could record the sound of a plant dying with tiny microphones. One wore a bright vest while speaking to us. Later, he played the drum he carved from a tree and I thought you might forgive me.

Not all the Natives are like this. One lives in a junkyard, DISTURBED tattooed across his throat. I haven’t been to prison. He tells me to cut my hair and when he does I wonder what you would think of me like this, sitting in the garage on a step ladder, the scissors of a convict trimming my sideburns.

I wonder what your mother would think as she numbs her legs the morning I come down the stairs to go away.

Still, sometimes, I look at pictures of you. You do not look the same but this is because you are dead like me. Like the plants, we’ve made noises you can only hear with tiny microphones. No one has recorded this, they will never know.

We were in this dumb room full of swans. One with skinny windows and oak trees and no one could find us there. This room was tucked away in a big old Victorian at the edge of the woods, done up with French doors and pink paint and a sunroof and a bunch of gardens and of course Saint Francis of Assisi was watching.

She hiked her skirt above her knees and started pissing on all the windows and the oak trees and the roses and the lilies and the gilded mirror and the marble vanity and the mahogany desk set and the hundreds and hundreds of paintings of girls in white dresses.

Then she started pissing on the swans so they would flutter toward the ceiling where their skulls would shatter against the glass.

The swans were really getting on my nerves. I never said I liked swans. I never said I liked this house. Both gave me the creeps, I have to admit that.

She doesn’t have much time left and there’s only so much you can piss on in a day. But then it’s just one dumb room in a huge house no one really knows about, what harm is there in that.

Besides, I would probably follow her just about anywhere.

The old people smile at them, all pink sticky gums and few teeth. A hasty conference is arranged among the children, and a quick consensus is reached: the old people smell nothing like roses. More like musty towels and mold, like stacks of newspapers and magazines buried under dust and slipcovers. And their heads move too much when they talk. It’s funny-creepy, the children all agree.

When the children finish singing “O Holy Night,” another old person enters the hall and heads for an empty chair in the back. The children watch him, mesmerized by his measured, glacial pace. The skin drapes off his wrists and elbows, and flops about. Old people, whispers Anna to her brother, are actually half-robot. Only a robot could walk that slow. If they were people, they would fall right over.

And, says Jeff Stephens, it takes forever for old people to just, like, walk into a restaurant, and then like three hundred years to eat their food, and then like four decades to quit talking about old people stuff, like popping pills and who’s dead or dying, and then it takes like sixteen centuries just to get them back in the car.

The children start the next song, the one where Chris Otelo has a solo, and the old people start to sway a little in their metal chairs. They’re swaying in unison, right, left, right. The children grow uneasy; the old people have never been this active before. One of the old ladies wipes some drool from the side of her mouth. Her nails are sharp and long and dagger-pink.

The song ends and Anna’s brother whispers, No one listens to the old people. At home, we just pretend to. And they try to give you things, like old batteries and pictures of people you don’t even know.

Chris Otelo nods. We don’t listen to our old people either, he whispers back. Ours drink half a can of Sprite, and that’s it. Nothing else.

Ewww, says Anna’s brother, wiping wet off his cheek. He’s forgotten that Chris Otelo is a spit-whisperer.

The choir director glares at Anna’s brother, and raises his hands to cue the next song. Away in a manger, no crib for a bed, the children sing. The old people stand up and push their metal chairs back, hiking elastic waistbands up under their armpits and tying terry cloth bibs around their saggy necks.

The children’s voices grow quieter, worried-sounding. Some children forget the words to the song. The choir director is scowling at his choir; he doesn’t notice the old people shuffling forward like zombies behind him. Now they have utensils, knives in their right hands and forks in their left hands. Their hair is white and flat in the back and you can see their pink scalps underneath. They are walking like monsters with wide, deliberate steps. The children all stop, except Corey Anthony, who is nearsighted and won’t wear glasses in public. The cattle are lowing, he sings, and then trails off, realizing no one else is singing. Looking around he says, What’s going on?

The choir director turns around, finally, but it is too late; one of the old people stabs him in the neck with a fork and red sprays out from somewhere near his vocal cords. The children scream and try to run, but it’s just like a movie: the old people are slow but many, and they surround the children, coming close enough for the choir to see the brown scabs on their faces and their tiny, murderous eyes.

The children are savory and tender, better even than the Grand Slam breakfast at Denny’s. The old people pick bits of children between their remaining teeth and smile big, camera-ready smiles. They are as full and friendly as babies. Happy New Year, they say to each other.

“Glig glig glig glig glig glig glig glig glig glig glig glig glig glig glig glig glig glig glig glig glig glig glig glig.”

If I were an American, I would have said “brrrr.” But I’m not, so yeah: glig. Which sounds better than “brrr” does anyway. Like ice clinking against a glass tumbler. Or an empty two-liter–gligging and filling up with nearly frozen lake water.

2.

Speaking of.

It ain’t easy being frozen. In a drainage ditch on the side of the road. Or anywhere I would guess. It ain’t easy being a drifter or being easy. But I am and was and was . . .

3.

[Cut out]. Six months of a cube. Head down, clickety clackety. Ten billion paper glasses. A bunch of dick-offs, myself included. Then one day: too much. Or not enough.

4.

The road between freedom and loneliness:

Private.

No trespassing.

Beware of the dogs.

5.

Goats are good, if they’re in a book. So are big stretches of land. Theoretically, potatoes, too. The problem is doing stuff with them. It can be boring. Even pulling your pants down for a couple of equally unwashed strangers doesn’t make it all that much less so.

6.

I always wanted to be one of those girls who could give someone the “fuck you” sign without using my thumb to hold down the fingers surrounding my middle one. I always thought it looked more elegant that way, but I never could, so whatever, too late now. Even unelegantly, a point is being made. “Champagne on the road is better.”

7.

You would think: wine country = drunk. But, I mean, maids can be weird, not to mention, notoriously jealous. Even farm ones. I’m thinking, do you even SEE me? I don’t you. I’m just here, that’s the point. And granted, I like wine as much as the next guy and I’ve had some, but not enough to be like, “Oh, look at this filthy camper, I owe you everything everything everything.”

8.

Yes, my name is Mona, and, no, I’m not named for the Mona Lisa, don’t be retarded.

9.

I have been described as not-so-likeable, cold, distant, “nobody knows the true Mona” kind of thing. I haven’t thought all that much about it. He’s in my ear, “You could be the next Sasha Grey but smoking hash and sitting on a Tunisian.”

10.

It is the golden rule: If you need something, you tell somebody else they need it. If they say, “no, actually I don’t,” you physically abuse them.

11.

The End. Don’t be sad. You knew I was dead.

Where in the hell did the sheriff get a Gatling gun? Every shot  must’ve cost the sheriff and his associates a fortune. Most men moved out and got themselves killed. Others stayed put, survived, and were nursed back to health by the wolves. I survived along with Feelgood and a couple lumberjacks, but it was a long time before there was any dancing.

Finally rain. It sounded like dull football cleats on concrete. The days came and went, but the residue remained. I talked about drying out, sobering up. I was haunted by dead lumberjacks. I drank and drank and talked terrible shit to anyone who’d listen. Then I gave the finger to the Lord and ended up on television, dancing with the wolves. Sure, I’ve made mistakes, but perhaps God made a few mistakes, too. He certainly hung old JC out to dry.

There was this feeling back during the Gold Rush. It was a thrilling feeling. I guess you’d call it greed.  ”I miss that feeling,” I said to the wolves one night after we finished dancing on television. The wolves didn’t dignify it with a response. Whenever I wax nostalgic it puts the wolves to sleep. Whenever I sleep, which is rarely these days, I dream of abandoned airport concourses and planes without wings.

Dew covers Laverne, who sits stiffly on the couch.

Shirley is in the kitchen. She is taking everything out of the cupboards.  She is clearing clogged pipes with corrosive liquid. She is defrosting. “How long will Laverne sit in on the couch, glistening but immobile?” Shirley wonders.

Shirley notices, through the window, that it is night. The window is above the sink where Shirley has been washing dishes all day. Half of them are Laverne’s. “When will she help me with these dishes?” Shirley ponders.

Shirley begins gathering ingredients to make a casserole. Laverne will only eat complicated casseroles. Shirley has no choice but to make them: if there were no casseroles, Laverne would starve. Shirley sings, Schlemile, Schlemozzle, Hausenfeffer Incorporated, under her breath as she slices vegetables. She doesn’t want Laverne to hear. “That’s water over the bridge,” Laverne would say, if she were speaking.

Shirley looks over at Laverne, and sees that Laverne is now damaging the couch with her moisture. The wet beads that have covered Laverne are now rivulets that course the contours of her body. “Laverne’s like a waterbed addled with pinpricks,” Shirley thinks. She resumes the intricacies of casserole preparation, not noticing that Laverne has become a spewing fountain.

Shirley gets further lost in the details of the casserole assembly; there are so many layers involved. The endorphins pump through her and her hands and eyes escape the ties of the body proper and plunge into the essence of the casserole, its vine-ripe heart.

When Shirley looks out the window again, she sees that it is day. She admires her exquisite casserole, the breadth and depth of it. She looks over toward Laverne, but can’t locate her. She is concerned that Laverne has drowned within the waterlogged couch.

Shirley finds Laverne unconscious and bobbing on the surface of the couch. She watches Laverne’s chest very closely to see if it is moving. When she sees that it is not moving, she resuscitates Laverne by putting her dry mouth to Laverne’s wet mouth and blowing air into her. When Shirley is convinced that Laverne is breathing, she pops the casserole into he pre-heated oven.

Shirley joins Laverne in the couch, and she struggles to keep afloat. Shirley is worried that Laverne might kill them both with this excessively fluidity. Shirley pulls herself out of the couch and dries herself with a towel from the bathroom. She goes to her desk and makes a paper boat that she places in Laverne’s lap where it sails from thigh to thigh. Laverne smiles slightly at the uneventful journey, and her fountainous form transforms into the consistency of a sponge.

The timer dings and Shirley takes the casserole out of the oven. It has the most gorgeously browned skin and delicate bubbling edges.

Laverne and Shirley eat the casserole, and when they’re done, Shirley uses Laverne’s newly absorbent body to clean the dishes.

Colonel Gerund Parnassus Adamson, known in George Washington’s day as ‘The Remote Ancestor of His Country’, was the initial selection of the first Continental Congress in 1781. For his sense of whimsy, the 69 electors much preferred him to ‘The Father of His County’, the humorless, wooden-toothed Washington. As a nose-less syphilitic, Adamson wore a brass proboscis, which went over a lot better with the ladies than Washington’s oaken bicuspids. However, Adamson’s first act as chief executive was to declare himself Sun God and order the construction of a giant stone pyramid to house his mortal remains. Learning of this, the Congress nullified the election. At the suggestion of Jefferson, who enjoyed a laugh as much as anyone but who kept an eye on posterity, the entire Adamson presidency, all two and a half hours of it, was struck from the Congressional record.

-

Mohammed Q. Arqbar — Served 1850, long enough to be sworn in

Mohammed Quincy Arqbar, a native of Persia, was sworn in as Chief Executive after waylaying the true president-elect, Millard Fillmore, and taking the oath of office in his stead. The country would like to forget this blotch on its governmental proceedings, and largely has. Suspicions of Arqbar’s not being the real Fillmore—or even a native born American—arose as early as his inaugural oath, which the faux president-elect recited entirely in Farsi. After a little embarrassed laughter, Secret Service men took Arqbar aside, threw him in irons, and moments later shot him. Only then did they identify Arqbar as a usually harmless crank, and claim that shooting him was the idea of the outgoing Secretary of War, George ‘Bullet’ Crawford. History revisionists took care of the rest, and today not even the cleverest schoolboy knows of Arqbar’s short-lived and doomed presidency. To the extent that he is remembered, it is for his religious intolerance and for introducing kebabs to the White House kitchen.

-

Salmon S. Calhoun — Served 1865, April 15 – April 19

Salmon Sisyphus Calhoun ascended to the presidency immediately following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Congress, in turmoil following Lincoln’s death, and thinking to prolong the spirit of slain president’s Emancipation Proclamation, almost unanimously appointed Calhoun, Lincoln’s favorite African American, to the presidency. Thus Salmon Calhoun became the first ex-slave to hold the office of President of the United States. In a few days, Congress came to its senses and voted to revoke the presidency of the politically inexperienced Calhoun, but not before he had federally endowed 65 Negro Colleges across the country and appointed his mother, Bessie Calhoun, as Secretary of White Guilt, making her the first woman of color and the first woman of any sort to hold a cabinet position. Calhoun is also remembered for proclaiming February of each year as White History Month, to abhor the ancestral roots of the country’s oppressive Caucasians.

-

Colossus S. Jones — Served 1875, all day June 1

Colossus Sampson Jones was unceremoniously and unofficially appointed president by then Commander-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant, when one day Grant was too ill from a hangover to get out of bed and assume his seat in the Oval Office. The General told his trusted friend Jones, “What the hell, I appoint you President today. You can’t do a worse job that I’m doing.” By combing his lengthy beard up over his face and impersonating a drunk, Jones deceived everyone. The next day, Grant felt better and again assumed his rightful place as Commander-in-Chief. Among Jones’ noteworthy accomplishments during his brief term in office are the establishment of the U.S. Coast Guard, the beginning of diplomatic relations with India, balancing the budget, the invention of the electric streetcar, declaring war on the Ottoman Empire, and appointing two Calvinists to the U.S. Supreme Court.

-

Orifice E. Spellman – Served 1879, for a few minutes

Orifice Elastic Spellman assumed office in 1879 under a bizarre deception. First disguising himself as William Wheeler, Vice President to then President Rutherford Hayes, he then abducted Hayes and stuffed him in a large oaken wardrobe on board a ship bound for France. Finally, he claimed that unknown foreign assailants had shot Hayes to death, so that he, Vice President Wheeler, had succeeded to the presidency. Spellman, who strongly resembled Wheeler, was immediately sworn in by Congress, and became acting President for twelve minutes. At the end of that time the real Vice President appeared, unlocked the wardrobe containing President Hayes before the ship sailed, and all was set to rights. Spellman was convicted of impersonating a government official, and hanged.

-

Cartridge H. Wilkins — Served 1925, for three and a half hours

Cartridge Horatio Wilkins was elected in 1925. His presidency may not be household knowledge, but then who has heard of Chester A. Arthur? Sworn in at noon, Wilkins was impeached by 3:30 the same day for accepting bribes, conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government, spying for a foreign power, wire-tapping members of Congress, perjury, cross-dressing, failing to delete his expletives, and fondling the Japanese Prime Minister on the White House lawn. Wilkins resigned before he could be removed from office, and later became the President of Guatemala. In that office he had the distinction of throwing up on the Japanese Prime Minister right after fondling him.

The Great Slamdini — Served 1953, for a brief spell

The Great Slamdini is another U.S. President missing from the history books. Crisscrossing the nation by railroad on the campaign trail in 1953, he mesmerized the masses with his speeches. Calling himself a ‘magician’, he promised to charm all world leaders into singing a pact of perpetual peace, and all industry captains into promoting a worker’s utopia. While addressing the cheering crowds, he made doves fly out of his hat and cards disappear. He was elected by a landslide, but was at once accused by Senator McCarthy of practicing witchcraft. He resigned before the Senate could impeach him, and used his powers to erase all memory of himself and his cabinet of knife-throwers and fire-eaters. Only after his death this year did the spell lift and his story begin to emerge.

-

Jimmy John Ronald — Served 1974, for two weeks

Following the resignation of Richard Nixon August 9, 1974, Jimmy John Ronald was appointed acting president by Congress while the job was explained to Gerald Ford. Although he understood that he was to be president only for a week or two, or until Ford passed a written test, Ronald at once promised to curb inflation by a small amount and to create upwards of a dozen new jobs. “I will save the taxpayers about a hundred dollars a year”, he bragged. He was sincere, but failed to make good on such pledges in only two weeks since no one knew who he was. History has largely forgotten him, and Ford didn’t remember to thank him either. But he did pardon him.

Al Gore — Served concurrently with George W. Bush, 2000-2004

Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. is of course a familiar name, but Gore has the distinction of having served in a remarkable twin-presidency along with his political rival, Republican George W. Bush. Gore was elected in 2000 by a clear majority of voters, but the U.S. Supreme Court appointed Bush president. To resolve this contretemps, the self-effacing Gore announced that it was “time for me to go”, leaving the other president to steer the nation. In the meantime Gore has grown his face to become a globetrotting prophet of doom in the form of global warming, a forecast seconded by such world-renowned scientists as Sean Penn. In 2007 the Hollywood branch of the Democratic Party bestowed upon him an academy award in the category of Best Feature-length False Alarm by a Man with Double Chins. Since this triumph Gore has pondered another bid for the U.S. presidency, with a platform of once again serving concurrently with a Republican C student. But this time Gore will take the reins himself, it is hoped for the greening of the world.

Their daughter liked meat. It was an argument, always between them but she won this time. He said tofu would be enough and she pointed to statistics, to the vegan children she knew, she said their eyes were sunken, their bones like birds. They gnawed on bones, teasing him. He shot her the finger. “How can you do that in front of her?” His wife wanted to know. At night, they’d whisper, hissing, and the child would listen until she dreamed of snakes.

At night the daughter would curl up with them, her body pressed into the mother, a comma. Sometimes the man would end up on the floor. He stared at the ceiling. There were more arguments. “You think she doesn’t know? You think she can’t hear?” His wife hissed, then bit her bottom lip, popped her knuckles. Sex was silent, and later she’d say I love you I love you I love you. She waited for him to say something. When she was a child, her mother told her that if she prayed the same prayers every night, the repetition could sink into her, make her believe. He said he was tired.

It rained that night, thundering. Their daughter screamed. The scream went on and on. The windows shook. “Stop it from booming,” the little girl said. Her mother held her, rocking. “The sky is broken,” the girl said. “The sky is cracking. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.” Her mother said, shhh, and honey, and sweetness and all the terms of endearment she’d never said to anyone. Long after the storm had passed, she held on tight.

In the morning, the girl was laughing again. They opened the windows and the father made yogurt pancakes. They made a smiley-face out of butter, raisins, and bacon. The little girl said “I love you mommy.” The mother said, “I love you too and I love daddy.” “No you don’t”, the girl said. “You can’t love daddy! He’s just a grown up.”

The parents drank coffee and the little girl had chocolate milk. She crossed her eyes and poked her eyebrows. “Daddy,” she said, “this is how you do angry. You do this. You do angry.” She looked like her parents; her father’s plummy hair, her mother’s purple eyes. Her father sang a song about breakfast. Her mother started to cry, so she went into the kitchen and washed dishes. The dishes were cracked and mismatched. In the dining room, those two were laughing, singing about ogres, and now about flying up up and away. She thought about her own mother’s rosary, and prayer beads, and China. She reminded herself, she thought, his hand in mine, and us playing gin rummy, and kites on long strings. Back then, when they walked together down the soggy streets, she’d felt too big, a giantess in a foreign land.