Eastside Boy.txt
I know many professional writers who say to never share your first drafts, but I am not (yet) a professional writer, and just about every single post here is a first draft, so I’m going to do what I want. While I’m enjoying XOXO Fest 2024, here’s the first two pages of the first draft of my unpublished political comedy. Reading it now I know there are many things I would change but I have changed and the world has changed since I wrote this in (checks notes) holy shit 2012. Enjoy.
I do not know where to begin. Day two, here I come.
Are you wondering why this is day one? What happens on day two? All in good time, my friend. All in good time.
If you’d asked me a year ago what the least exciting thing I could think of doing, it would probably not have been watching election returns. But that would have been close. And yet, here I was.
The thing is – they were my election returns. People all across the Third Congressional District of Oregon (basically south east Portland) were voting for me, Alex Thomas Ford.
Or not voting for me. The bastards.
Even early in the morning on election day, in a state where vote by mail has been the law for years and years, so that most people voted early with all of the advantages that provided those who counted the votes… I had not made a strong showing yet. My supporters, my volunteers and managers and canvassers and groupies, they were all happy and partying and drinking and whooping it up whenever the blow dried haircuts on the teevee would say my name and post my results. Did they not see how poorly we were doing? And by we, I meant me.
Maybe they weren’t voting for me for a reason. OK. They had their reasons. Lots of them. I was pretty much a dark horse candidate, running an unconventional campaign against a popular incumbent. I had… what was the phrase the consultant had used?
I had… unique attributes. Considerations. Details that might be considered in a poor light by some voters.
I raised my head from the bar and took at look at the bartender. She wore a deep red corset, a cigarette dangling from her black-lipsticked lips, framed by her gothic black dyed hair. The miniskirt she wore didn’t hide much, either.
Turning around on my stool, I looked across the smoke-filled club. Normally decorated in black and red, now hung with red, white, and blue bunting and banners bearing my name. So out of place. A contradiction in context. The people filling the main bar area were people normally dressed in jeans and t-shirts but some of them, for tonight, had bought their first-ever suits. They were as out of place in their jackets and slacks as the patriotic decorations were in this smoky dive in the deep east side.
And at the far end of the bar, up on the stage, kicking and spinning on a pole, a petite brunette was taking off her silky lacy underthings and exposing her pale white skin while my supporters tossed dollar bills (and larger) on the stage, and cheered. Her name was Sheila. Sheila Morris, though she danced under the name of Knife, as evidenced by the tattoos of long hunting knives that adorned each forearm.
She was my campaign manager.
Those dollars were campaign contributions. Don’t look at me like that. I had to account for every single one to the Federal Election Commission, or pay heavy fines. I said it was an unconventional campaign. I did not say it was an illegal or corrupt one. I ran a tight ship, and Sheila had an amazing head for promotion and finances. It had been a skill that had not been easily learned. She had had to earn my trust the hard way, and now I trusted her implicitly. I might even love her.
But that was the elephant in the room, about which we did not speak. Not yet. Not while we were running for Congress.