Drunk Dial

I tried to get the phone out of his hand, leaning forward across the bar to grab it from him as he pushed me away.

-Don’t, don’t do it to me, I pleaded.

-There must have been a reason you told me you loved her.

-Because I’m drunk.

-Don’t blame the alcohol, Jeff said, momentarily losing the slur of his speech and taking on an almost scholarly air. Alcohol lowers your inhibitions and changes your, you know, decision making faculties. It doesn’t give you new opinions, that’s a cop out. You love her, huh?

-Yeah, I muttered under my breath, questioning my breath and myself.

-Do you love her, he asked as he raised his eyebrow, or are you obsessed? She has that effect on a lot of people, men and women. That’s what makes her such a successful politician.

-She lost her first election, I quipped. I didn’t like the way he was saying it, like he was in awe, or in love himself.

-Barely, and any other candidate with the same platform would’ve got shellacked.

It struck me that he said that. It sounded like a confession, so I said so.

-It sounds like you’re admitting that her positions aren’t very popular and require quite a bit of demagoguing, even wiles.

Jeff looked at me, as if he were considering what to say, or as if he were considering me. It turned out to be the latter.

-U, how well do you think that U would do in an election? Even worse than your ideas?

-My ideas, our ideas, are universally popular. There are just incredibly powerful vested interests that we pose an existential threat to, and they’ve spent over a hundred years poisoning people’s minds against us, against the people themselves.

-It’s the same with Badger, Jeff snapped at me and stared. Do you think you’re the only one who has ever spoken truth to power, or whatever it is you call it, you and your “comrades”? He scoffed and spit a loogie to the side, but I didn’t think he was trying to disrespect me. It probably wouldn’t have scanned anyway. I was digesting what he said. I knew there was something wrong with it, obviously so, but I couldn’t articulate it immediately in my state.

-Kendra Badger’s positions protect, promote and profit those same vested interests out to get us. People haven’t been programmed to reject her ideas despite their self-interest. They reject her ideas because of their self-interest, despite their programming. The elites have turned the people, the masses, into their own greatest nemeses.

-On this we agree one hundred percent, Jeff said with a boom, raising his glass of whiskey over his head in a faux toast, spilling a couple of drops onto his shoulder. Maybe the two of you do have more in common than I thought, he added as he fidgeted with his phone once again.

-Don’t call her, I hiccupped. Don’t do it, Jeff.

-You’re in love with a fascist, that’s what you call her right, he chuckled as he pressed the call button finally. I wanted to die. I felt myself melt into my seat, I felt my body dissolving into it as my mind seeped out through my eye sockets. It wasn’t exactly an out of body experience, more like I could see what was happening through my mind’s eyes, powerless to influence my own actions, let alone of the environment around me or the people in it. It felt like Jeff’s phone was ringing forever. Maybe she was busy in a meeting, maybe it was a secondary phone without a voicemail inbox. Maybe the phone hadn’t been ringing as long as it seemed. In any case, I was sure she wouldn’t pick up.

-Just hang up Jeff, I implored.

He seemed to press the speaker button just as Badger picked up.

-Jeff. Where did you go? Did you take care of the stalker?

Jeff smiled coyly at me before responding to Badger.

-I’m at Hawk’s. It wasn’t a stalker. It was, he paused as he looked at me again and smiled, just a misunderstanding.

-Who was it? She asked with her voice over the phone not betraying any emotion or even the slightest hint of interest.

-One of your special constituents. U. You’re on speaker phone and he’s here.

-Jeff, she intoned, in that manner that’s a feigned disappointment, as if to say why did you do this silly thing that you always do and why am I being silly for being surprised and also I’d be a little disappointed if you didn’t do the silly thing you always do that I say exasperates me. I didn’t like it. It felt too familiar, a much more intimate communication than boss or subordinate. It was hard not to feel jealous, yet there she was on the other side of the phone line.

-He had something important to tell you, Councilmember, Jeff said, mastering a kind of telemarketing phone voice.

-After you plied him with liquor?

-He’s a big boy, he can hold his own, Jeff laughed as he stepped closer to me, giving me a hearty pat on the shoulders with one hand as the other held the phone with the photo of Kendra Badger on the screen.

-Go ahead and tell her.

-I, I said with a stutter before pausing. I’d like to get to know you better.

-And I’d like to get to know you better, she said before adding, and all my constituents. The pause before the qualifier seemed so long at the time, longer than the rings before Kendra had picked up the phone. But over the course of the next year that pause grew shorter in my memory, losing its hopefulness and meaning, making me wonder if I had imagined a pause all together. It would be more than a year before I got the chance to talk to Kendra Badger again.