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Authors: Starbuck O'Dwyer
Tags: Fiction
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Dukakis in ’88, wore an Admiral Stockdale T-shirt to a Perot rally in ’92, failed to vote in ’96 and volunteered for the 2000 ballot recount in Florida. She went to church on Sundays, after which she always stopped at a local TCBY for a plain vanilla, medium-size yogurt with Oreo topping. She also had a vibrator the size of West Virginia and, judging by her battery-buying habits, the necessary libido to use it frequently.
Soon I was in my bed at the Four Seasons, staring at the ceiling in the dark. Meaney was the devil, a complete crank who wouldn’t know a fried calamari from a fried Tailburger if it lodged itself in her throat. I hated her kind, an extremist who saw one side of an argument and refused to be swayed by copious amounts of liquor or money. She was an environmental lobbyist until October 1987, when her husband, Mark, keeled over at a Tailburger in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Doctors said it was his diet, but I think it was the stock market crash. He took a beating and his heart couldn’t handle the strain. Meaney pointed out to the press that Mark was a member of our now defunct “Frequent Fryer” program and had consumed an estimated five thousand Tailburgers in his lifetime. What she called wrongful death in her lawsuit, we called a good customer.
Since that fateful day in Chevy Chase, she had agitated against us through her not-for-profit group SERMON, the type of radical leftist organization that supported UNICEF, Title IX and PBS. Flooding the airwaves with antimeat propaganda, she brought a religious fervor to the battle against beef. Every time I turned around, I saw her on
The News Hour with Jim Lehrer
barking about the use of pesticides on U.S. feed corn or the unsanitary conditions in American slaughterhouses. What a fraud. I bet her house was a mess.
To many people, she was a hero. To me, she was the epitome of the limousine liberal: a pro-choice, pro–gun control, anti–death penalty, social program–spending pinko with a Volvo station wagon and a house in Bethesda. I mean, didn’t she know how to have any fun? The answer was pretty clear as I walked into the lobby of SERMON’s headquarters on K Street. A large sign on the wall read,
Meat Is a Murderer.
“Very subtle,” I decided. I gave my name to the receptionist and took a seat on a big, burgundy leather sofa. “What a bunch of hypocrites,” I thought as I settled comfortably into its generous proportions and picked up a copy of
Eggplant Today.
With my guard down, I was confronted by the opposition.
“That’s Pleather, Mr. Thorne.”
I looked up from my magazine to see Muffet Meaney dressed smartly in a blue business suit and three-inch heels. I tried not to look at her dynamite legs and curvaceous pelvic region, but was unsuccessful and found my eyes lingering there a little too long. I still wasn’t sure what she’d said to me and replied accordingly.
“What?”
“The couch you’re sitting on. You probably think it’s leather, but it’s not. It’s Pleather, a synthetic fabric.”
“Very lifelike.”
“Isn’t it? Why don’t you come with me to my office, where we’ll have some privacy?”
For some reason, her use of the word “privacy” got me thinking the wrong kind of thoughts. As I followed her through a maze of cubicles, I couldn’t help but wonder what it was about this woman that was giving me such an enormous woody. Maybe it was the heels or the way she spoke to me or the fact that I hadn’t had sex in eight months. I didn’t know. But whatever it was, it was powerful and it would be damn near impossible to be an effective advocate for Tailburger if I didn’t get my longings under control quickly.
My enemy stared at me from behind a large, mahogany desk. What a boondoggle. The leaders of these nonprofits always had offices the size of aircraft carriers. Yet here they were sucking tax dollars out of the economy with their free land and their precious charitable and educational purposes. What a
Soon I was in my bed at the Four Seasons, staring at the ceiling in the dark. Meaney was the devil, a complete crank who wouldn’t know a fried calamari from a fried Tailburger if it lodged itself in her throat. I hated her kind, an extremist who saw one side of an argument and refused to be swayed by copious amounts of liquor or money. She was an environmental lobbyist until October 1987, when her husband, Mark, keeled over at a Tailburger in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Doctors said it was his diet, but I think it was the stock market crash. He took a beating and his heart couldn’t handle the strain. Meaney pointed out to the press that Mark was a member of our now defunct “Frequent Fryer” program and had consumed an estimated five thousand Tailburgers in his lifetime. What she called wrongful death in her lawsuit, we called a good customer.
Since that fateful day in Chevy Chase, she had agitated against us through her not-for-profit group SERMON, the type of radical leftist organization that supported UNICEF, Title IX and PBS. Flooding the airwaves with antimeat propaganda, she brought a religious fervor to the battle against beef. Every time I turned around, I saw her on
The News Hour with Jim Lehrer
barking about the use of pesticides on U.S. feed corn or the unsanitary conditions in American slaughterhouses. What a fraud. I bet her house was a mess.
To many people, she was a hero. To me, she was the epitome of the limousine liberal: a pro-choice, pro–gun control, anti–death penalty, social program–spending pinko with a Volvo station wagon and a house in Bethesda. I mean, didn’t she know how to have any fun? The answer was pretty clear as I walked into the lobby of SERMON’s headquarters on K Street. A large sign on the wall read,
Meat Is a Murderer.
“Very subtle,” I decided. I gave my name to the receptionist and took a seat on a big, burgundy leather sofa. “What a bunch of hypocrites,” I thought as I settled comfortably into its generous proportions and picked up a copy of
Eggplant Today.
With my guard down, I was confronted by the opposition.
“That’s Pleather, Mr. Thorne.”
I looked up from my magazine to see Muffet Meaney dressed smartly in a blue business suit and three-inch heels. I tried not to look at her dynamite legs and curvaceous pelvic region, but was unsuccessful and found my eyes lingering there a little too long. I still wasn’t sure what she’d said to me and replied accordingly.
“What?”
“The couch you’re sitting on. You probably think it’s leather, but it’s not. It’s Pleather, a synthetic fabric.”
“Very lifelike.”
“Isn’t it? Why don’t you come with me to my office, where we’ll have some privacy?”
For some reason, her use of the word “privacy” got me thinking the wrong kind of thoughts. As I followed her through a maze of cubicles, I couldn’t help but wonder what it was about this woman that was giving me such an enormous woody. Maybe it was the heels or the way she spoke to me or the fact that I hadn’t had sex in eight months. I didn’t know. But whatever it was, it was powerful and it would be damn near impossible to be an effective advocate for Tailburger if I didn’t get my longings under control quickly.
My enemy stared at me from behind a large, mahogany desk. What a boondoggle. The leaders of these nonprofits always had offices the size of aircraft carriers. Yet here they were sucking tax dollars out of the economy with their free land and their precious charitable and educational purposes. What a
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