Is it Noonan or is it Not?
by Barry Friedman
I remember being 11, waiting for my breasts to bud like the first flowers of Spring. I wait now, too, amidst beheadings and African-originated viruses and congressional gridlock and a Hillary Clinton campaign, for a big man, a wise man who cuts down trees and clears brush and wears cowboy hats the way Louis L’Amour instructed a nation to take hold, to grab me, move me, deposit me (and a nation), once again, to a better, healthier place.
Me. My Body. My Muse. My head. My breasts. In. My. Hands.
Alas, we have Obama.
I must be Frank. I must be Peg. Barack must be Barack.
A country pauses.
Elections pass. Deep breath.
Issues. Women.
Have we gals nothing else over which to obsess? Some Democrats see the uterus, the vagina, the other things (forgive me, reader, for it is so tough—so, so tough—to talk about the intimates) like the drug smuggler sees a mule. It is a lonely horse, a vessel, a compartment
But women, at least THIS woman, sees through the Democratic pickup lines. My sexuality, such as it is, belongs to me—only moi, as the French would say.
And that is why Democrats lost. Why Mitch McConnell and his so lovely and accomplished wife will be with us six more years.
To other matters.
Children. I believe they are our future. I believe they were also our past.
When sick people are coming through the house, whether with Ebola or single payer, even the most challenging of children, the slow ones, the ones who forget to zip and wipe, would say, “Close the door, daddy.”
But where is that daddy?
I know where. He is on the coast, looking west, deep in the ground, riding thoroughbreds with angels. (Oh, how I love my work). He—Reagan, not God, though at times they were one—would not trust these doctors, these learned men in monogrammed white coats with names of hospitals and initials of credential in flowing fonts who tells us learned things from experience and knowledge about disease and danger. He would hear a nation’s “Ewwwww” and go with his gut, his heart, hear his children—even though he wasn’t close with either of the younger ones.
Children and their child-like child-ness. I smile sadly.
We should think like them, like that girl I was, like all girls whose breasts bud—a lovely image that—waiting, wishing, yearning to be noticed. My breasts remember such a time, a time of an unapologetic throbbing America. They remember wanting to be scooped and taken to new heights of joy.
It is not this man, this man of questionable questions, this man of intellect (when a country needs brawn), this man from—well, they tell us Kansas and Chicago—who will lead us out of the morass and give my breasts the breath they need. Perhaps the next one, perhaps this Cruz, perhaps this man, this ophthalmologist, this Paul (ah, the biblical connection) will lead us from Ebola and ISIL and other bad, bad things … this man who can see.
See … what I did there?
The image is lovely; the metaphor in the hands of a wordsmith, such as myself, delicious.
I weep, though, for I think of Reagan often and miss him like a puppy misses one of his mother’s many nipples.
His calves bounced and laughed. The jaunt in his gait, like so many of the thoroughbreds he rode with aplomb, was sonorous. Together, his body beckoned me, beckoned all of us. His arms, like steel, pulsating with action and conquest. Like a fever, the memory of them burn within me still.
His shiny hair and shiny thoughts on a shiny hill on a shiny city beneath a shiny sun.
Your memory will keep me safe, Ronald Wilson.
Your memory holds hope for the children.
Your memory makes our breasts dance.
Your memory cures disease
Sleep now, angel, sleep. Protect us as you and your sinews ride excelsior with the Gods.