My Life in Heavy Metal (20 page)

This was not true. If anything, Darcy was growing slimmer. But these sudden bouts of self-doubt were necessary to her maintenance. They were vestiges of her girlhood, of the awkward striver who lived behind the awesome machinery of her charm. They were the part of her that needed me.

I was a fool to watch the Republican Convention. But there was an element of morbid curiosity at work. I wanted to see Jesse Helms reborn as an emissary of tolerance. (What would he wear? A dashiki?) And besides, I had promised Darcy. She was attending as a Bush delegate from Pennsylvania.

What has always astounded me about the Republican psyche is its capacity for shamelessness. Here was the anti-immigration party parading its little brown ones across the rostrum, the party of Family Values showcasing its finest buttoned-down catamites. Here was Big Dick Cheney—who had voted against funding Head Start as a congressman—excoriating Clinton for not doing enough to educate oppressed children. On and on it went, and nobody exploded of hypocrisy!

Darcy called me each night, giddy with the sense of how well it was coming off. “Did you see me on CNBC?” she said. “Deb Borders interviewed me. Did you see Christie Whitman, Billy? Wasn't she amazing? Okay. Don't answer that. I miss you, Billy. Do you miss me? Do you?”

“Of course I do.”

“Do you love me?” she said suddenly.

“You know I do.”

“Say it.”

“I love you, Darcy.”

And I did. It was nothing I could help.

“I love you, Billy. I love you so much.”

“Where are you?” I asked. “Are you in your room?”

“I'm on my bed.”

And so we progressed, deeper into our thrilling disjunction.

By October the Bush people had taken Darcy on full-time. She was living out of a suitcase, returning to D.C. with purple stains under her eyes, sleeping twelve hours straight. I took it as my duty to offer her refuge in the cause of intimacy.

And Darcy returned this devotion. Even as the campaign drew to an end, she came at me in a dizzy operatic spin, ravished for affection, for a private domain in which she could shed the careful burnishings of her ascent. One evening, as we lay flushed on gin, she announced that she had a surprise for me and rose up on her haunches and slipped off her panties and knelt back. All that remained of her pubic hair was a single delicate stripe.

I felt touched to the point of tears. Here was this miraculous creature, tuckered beyond words, right here in my apartment on the
eve of the election, flashing me her vaginal mohawk. She vamped gamely even as her eyelids drooped, and licked her lovely incisor and urged me forward. How could it possibly matter that she opposed gun control?

I called Darcy at 2:42 A.M. on election night. The networks had just issued their flop on Florida and Dan Rather—in an apparent caffeine psychosis—was urging America to give Dubya a big ole Texas-sized welcome to the White House.

Darcy was across town, at the Radisson. There were whoops in the background and the echoes of a bad jazz band.

“Congratulations,” I said.

“Billy! Oh, you are so sweet!”

“Well, no one likes a sore loser.”

“It was so close,” Darcy said. “It's a shame anyone had to lose!”

There was a rush of sound and Darcy let out a happy scream. “Stop it! Stop!” She came back on the phone. “That was Trent.”

“Can you come over?” I said. “I'd like to congratulate you in person.”

Darcy drew in a breath. “I'd love to. That would be so nice. But I promised some people I'd stay here. At least until Dubya gives his speech.”

I was quiet for a moment.

“Honey,” she said. “Are you okay? Are you mad?”

I was maybe a little mad. But I knew how hard Darcy had worked for this, how much hope she'd pinned to the outcome. She had leapt toward the thick of the race, bravely, with her arms wide and her pretty little chest exposed, while I'd thrown up my hands in disgust and voted for Nader.

“No,” I said. “I'm proud of you, Darce. You deserve this.”

“I love you, Billy.”

“I love you too,” I said quietly. “You crazy Republican bitch.”

She laughed. A chorus of deep voices swelled in the background and Darcy, carried away by some shenanigans, shrieked merrily.

I wondered sometimes why she didn't just settle for some GOP bohunk with a carapace of muscles and the proper worldview. She could have had her pick. We both knew that. But that's not how the heart works. It runs to deeper needs. “I'll try to come over after the speech,” Darcy whispered. “I want to see you.”

Two weeks later we were in Darcy's apartment, still trying to figure out what had happened. Al Gore was on CNN, imitating someone made of flesh.

“Why doesn't he give it up?” Darcy murmured.

“Why should he give up?” I said.

“Because he lost.”

We had both assumed the election would bring an end to the tension. One or the other side would win, fair and square, and we would move on.

“You can't say he lost until they count all the votes,” I said. “It's just too close. Can't you see that, honey?”

Darcy sighed. She'd cut her hair into a kind of bob, which made her look a little severe. “Why did Gore ask for recounts in only four counties? He's not interested in a full and accurate count. Admit it. He wants to count until he has the votes to win.”

“They both want to win. It's called a race.”

“Don't patronize me, Billy.”

“I wouldn't patronize you if you didn't keep oversimplifying the situation.”

Darcy clicked off the TV. “Why do you talk like that, Billy? Why do you make everything so personal?”

“Trying to impeach the president for getting a blowjob? That's not
personal
? Or DeLay sending his thugs down to Miami to storm the canvassing board? What is that? Politics as usual? Are you kidding me?

Darcy shook her head; the edges of her new haircut sawed back and forth. “I can't talk with you about this stuff. You get too angry.”

“You're as pissed as I am.”

“No,” she said. “I just want this to be over.”

We didn't say anything else, but the mists of rage hung about us. And later on, after we had retired to the bedroom, this rage hid within our desire and charged out of our bodies in a way we hoped would bring us closure. We slammed against one another and gasped and clutched, did everything we could think to enthrall the other while at the same time hoping somewhat to murder, to die together, and woke instead, in the morning, bruised and contrite.

I agreed with Darcy, after all. I wanted the election to be over. I didn't want to be angry at her, because I loved her and that love was more important than any election. I honestly
tried
to ignore the dispute. What did I care? Gore had run an awful campaign. He deserved to lose.

Gradually, though, the radical truth was coming clear: more voters had gone to the polls in Florida intending to vote for him. The statisticians understood this, and the voting-machine wonks,
and even the brighter reporters, the ones who bothered to think the matter through.

The Republican strategy was to obscure this truth, to prevent at all costs a closer inspection of the ballots. In doing so, they became opponents of democracy. (There is no other way to say this.) What amazed me was the gusto with which Bush executed this treason. His fixers lied incessantly and extravagantly. His allies stormed the cameras and frothed.

Us Democrats never quite grasped that we were in a street fight. We lacked the required viciousness, the mindless loyalty. This has always been the Achilles heel of the Left: we are too fond of our own decency, too fearful of our anger. When the blackjacks come out we quit the field and call it dignity.

The cold fog of December descended on the capital and I sat in my apartment glaring at CNN, and fantasized about putting a bullet in James Baker's skull. Darcy called out to me from the answering machine, her voice loosened by red wine. My name sounded vague and hopeful in her mouth.

And then, one night, just after the final certification of votes in Florida, a knock came at the door. There was Darcy, in her blue skirt and her lovely snaggled smile. She was breathing hard. I imagined for a moment that she had run from somewhere far away, from Georgetown perhaps, through the dark banished lowlands of Prince George County, or from the tawny plains of central Pennsylvania.

“We need to talk,” she said.

She fell against me, smelling of gin and lilacs and cigarettes. Here she was, this soft person, soft all the way through. I felt terribly responsible.

“Where'd you come from?”

“That bar down the street.”

“The Versailles?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What were you doing there?”

She looked up into my face. “My friends say I should dump you.”

“What do you say?”

“I don't know. You're a good lay.” She tugged at my jeans. But this was only an imitation of lust, something borrowed from the booze. Her hands soon fell away. “Where the hell have you been?”

“I haven't been anywhere. I've been here. Look, I'm sorry. I haven't quite known what to do.”

“You could start by returning my calls, okay? Okay, Mr. Fucking Sensitivity?” Darcy glanced into the living room, at the pizza boxes and heaps of clothing. She shook her head. Bush was on now, staring into the camera like a frightened monkey. “Please, Billy, don't tell me you're still moping about this election.”

“It's more like constructive brooding.”

Darcy plopped onto the couch. Her knees pressed together and her calves flared out like jousts. This lent her an antic quality, as if she might at any moment leap to her feet and burst into a tap-dance routine. “Why are you doing this to yourself?”

“I'm not doing anything to myself.”

“I just don't understand why you have to hold this against me. I don't hold your views against you.”

“That's because you're winning,” I muttered.

“What?”

“You're winning. You can afford the luxury of grace. But I'll tell you what, if these undervotes ever get counted and Gore pulls ahead, you and the rest—”

“That will never happen,” Darcy said sharply. She smoothed her skirt with the heel of her palm and took a deep breath. “You know as well as I do that if the situation were reversed, Gore would do the same thing as Bush.”

“You may be right,” I said. “But if he did that, he'd be wrong. And I hope I'd have the integrity to see that.”

“And I
don't
have integrity?”

“I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is …”

But what
was
I saying? Wasn't I saying precisely that?

Darcy narrowed her eyes and waited for me to clarify myself.

“Look, I know you have a lot invested in Bush winning. You worked hard for him. And I realize we have different views on how to run things. I don't want you to be a liberal. But I'm talking about the underlying principle. Democracy means you do your best to look at all the ballots. You try to find the truth.”

“Please, Billy. I came over here to talk about us.”

“This
is
about us,” I said. “We have to agree on the basic stuff. Truth. Fairness. I'm not talking about this damn election anymore. I don't even care who wins. They're both Republicans in my book. I'm talking about what you believe and what I believe.”

“Would you listen to yourself?” Darcy said. “This is just politics, Billy. Christ. You're as bad as Gore.”

“Don't reduce this to politics. Please. I want us to be able to agree here.” I wasn't screaming exactly, but my voice kept throttling up because I could see where we were headed and it made my heart ache.

Darcy shook her head. “I knew this was a mistake. You don't even know what day it is today, do you?” She was speaking softly now, as she did in the sylvan hours, when the ruckus of her life gave
way to frank disappointments. This made me want to hold her, to wrap myself along the railing of her hip.

“A year ago, Billy. We met a year ago tonight.”

For a moment there it looked as if fairness might prevail. The Florida Supreme Court issued the ruling that should have come down in the beginning: recount the entire state, by hand. But then, of course, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in to rule that, well, something or other involving equal protection and, more obscurely, the Constitution, and anyway there certainly wasn't enough time to clear this mess up—
such a mess
!—so, you know, don't blame us, we're only trying to help: Bush wins.

All over Washington, Republicans whooped it up. They'd managed to gain the White House and the only cost had been the integrity of every single civil institution in our country. What a bargain! I spent the evening swilling Jack and gingers, howling into Darcy's various machines, imagining I could taste her. Our situation was unclear. By which I mean: she was no longer returning my calls. At around one in the morning I drove to her apartment.

“Go away,” she said, through the intercom. “You're drunk.”

“I'm not drunk. I love you, honey. I wanna say sorry.”

“I'm not going to talk with you, Billy.”

“I don't wanna talk about that. I promise. Buzz me in, honey.
Please.
”

She was wearing an old nightgown, the cotton soft and pilled. Her face was a little puffy. Now it was my turn to fall against her, to kiss her brow and plead. Her body stiffened.

“I was wrong,” I said. “I was a jerk. Nobody makes me feel like you. We fit, you know. Our bodies, we just fit.”

She rose onto the balls of her feet. But she didn't push me away. “You're too angry,” she said. “I don't like it when you get so angry.”

I sank to my knees and hugged her waist. “I'm sorry. Something takes over. I start thinking too much.”