by Peter Byrne
(Swans - August 13, 2007)
He: That woman's a saint. She's standing by him.
She: I like her dress.
He: She reminds me of my mother.
She: Your mother didn't spend that kind of money on clothes.
He: Well, Dad wasn't a senator.
She: Then he kept out of cathouses?
He: Never use that word. You're the wife of a three-car garage owner with a respectable mortgage.
She: Sorry, my family values slipped off my hips for a moment. Does Your Honor request that I rephrase my question?
He: Yes. Keep your language hypocritical and worthy of Congress.
She: Then your dad didn't subscribe to an escort service where he could clock in when feeling low and have a young lady in fetching underwear listen to him running off at the mouth for so much a minute?
He: Dad had other things to spend his money on in the Depression. But he was a man's man.
She: A pity I never got to feel his biceps. At least the senator's legitimate dumpling didn't claim to be a woman's woman.
He: But she did just that when she said it was in her nature to forgive. Her hubby had already got the Almighty's go-ahead and his certificate of rebirth. The lad's in a sweat for redemption.
She: You can't forgive stupidity. It never goes away. It just puts on weight.
He: The couple will make a fresh start with the Grand Old Party's blessing.
She: I'll say this for your saint. She couldn't bear listening to her babbling boy blowing his senatorial trumpet. She saw him off to the French Quarter where the hired help in a G-string took the punishment.
He: Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.
She: Stones he can PR back at us. It's votes cast that he's counting.
He: When the bad news broke, the couple went into seclusion for a week. Wise career move, like Jesus holing up on the Mount. The wife should have filled us in on how they spent their time. The TV public likes homey details.
She: It's easy enough to imagine, talk radio purring in the background.
He: The senator busy recharging his spiritual batteries.
She: Rehearsing his big-weep scene and rebuilding his sperm count.
He: Then, like a bolt from on high, came the vow to be born again.
She: And the vow to stop getting Everleighed. The Republican National Committee would have hosed the senator down and checked over his private parts for any gifts from the goddesses.
He: You don't think the couple wouldn't have preferred to be alone together?
She: On the contrary, that's what they've had enough of. Anyway they're in Louisiana. Damage control's the only growth industry down there. A team of firemen stands always at the ready. Those fixers can spin doctor Bourbon Street into a monastery garden.
He: You're unforgiving. The Senator admitted to "a very serious sin," once he was caught.
She: That crew would have turned up forthwith and pulled the senator's campaign speeches out of their briefcases. His punishment was to listen to himself as he boosted the Marriage Protection Amendment to the Constitution, whooped up abstinence-only education, and came down hard on wife-cheaters and deadbeat dads.
He: I always liked that Jekyll-and-Hyde story myself, but like the senator I can never remember which one's the bad guy.
She: And of course they'd take away his cell phone with all those hot numbers. They'd decide against tying his fly shut as being unconstitutional.
He: They couldn't risk creating congestion in the Senate cloakroom.
She: The Supreme Court would want a look-see.
He: Sometimes I think I married a cynic.
She: Put me on TV in a thousand dollar dress and I'll wring out a womanly tear for you.
He: Man is a weak vessel.
She: That's just what I've been telling you for years.
He: No one escapes original sin since Eve chomped the apple.
She: You know an apple is the one thing our pooch won't eat. Do pups have this big sin handicap on their back from the cradle?
He: Of course not. Only men -- I mean humankind.
She: That makes our pooch lucky. Or don't dogs have luck either?
He: You'd have to look it up in the bible. But I'd say no. He's a dumb animal, a brute beast.
She: The pooch? Maybe he's getting past it, but even as a youngster he never sniffed out a pink-ribbon bitch at so much a jump.
He: How could he? He has no free will.
She: Is that a special rate for senators?
He: Didn't Mrs. Bronowski teach you kids any catechism? A man, that is a human being, can just say no. A dog, well, who's listening to him?
She: For myself I'd rather listen to a dog than to those clueless sparrows that are always taking a fall.
He: Smarten up. They're only little parables letting loose on the lilies of the field.
She: I used to smack the pooch when he peed on the kitchen floor.
He: You were right. Just because he ducked original sin, he shouldn't presume to lift his leg on the furniture.
She: Well, with the years he learnt to say no -- I mean to hold his horses.
He: He didn't want to be smacked.
She: At the beginning he concentrated on trying to dodge the broom.
He: That was mere instinct.
She: Like damage control?
He: If you want to dignify it.
She: But what I liked about the pooch was that he never apologized. He never said, Sorry, sorry, you know me folks, I'm just bursting with it.
He: D.C. isn't Dogpatch.
She: How true. The pooch couldn't call a press conference and say, With your help and Big Daddy's clout upstairs -- y'all keep the prayers comin' now -- I swear, cross my heart and hope to die, I'll never piss again.
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