keyword: quell, title: sturdy and unhinged in misc. flash fiction

Most can’t say they’ve had the Secret Service begin to draw their guns on them but, then again, I’m not most people. Most folk can date level-headed partners without getting bored out of their skulls by stultifying normality but once again, I’m not most people. These two facts are related.

Some men say they like their coffee as they like their women, “light and sweet”, proof they’ve neither the wherewithal to appreciate women nor coffee. I could say I like my women as I like my doors, sturdy and unhinged. I’m bored more easily than anyone who’s ever drawn a breath, my superpower and kryptonite alike.

She was beautiful brilliant, bipolar bisexual, borderline-personality-disordered. She could create art with some paint and fabric scraps teams of craftsmen couldn’t imagine, she was also cracked inside by the most emotionally abusive mother in history. She could be at the edge of the Grand Canyon and be instead enthralled by a tourist’s pet monkey. She could also stab you in the dick with a number-two pencil post-coitally “just to see if it would fit.” Spoiler, dear reader, it didn’t.

But Christ, she kept things interesting and what’s more important?

The former first-lady Hilary Clinton was running for Senator and my uncle was the head of the Democratic Party in some redneck Adirondack county that only had two hundred Democrats, to go along with ten thousand Republicans and sixty thousand head of cattle. This meant he got to speak at one of her fundraisers in the Thousand Islands, though, so of course we went along to rubberneck the VIP meet-and-greet.

Posing for a group shot, one of the Clinton’s guard detail began to twitch toward us, remember, these were no rent-a-cops guarding Random Pol, a first-lady gets Secret Service accompaniment for life. Trying to quell my panics, I looked down to see that girlfriend’s hand going to grab the Senatorial Candidate’s ass. My survival instinct kicked in, yanked her arm away for literal dear life, the trained killer’s arm relaxed and the photos went on without further comment by anyone.

Later, though, I asked her “Were you seriously trying to get us killed?” She just looked up at me with those big pale blue eyes. “Michael, how many times in your life do you get a chance to grab the first-lady’s ass?” God help me, I was with her nine more years after that.

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe, to swipe the Rutger Hauer line, walked two strides behind gods and monsters as an errand boy and found it lacking, barreled through burning cities transporting blood and piss from barrio clinics, feeling the same. My poetry chanted by doomed revolutionaries occupying Wall Street. I possess this world’s least-significant legitimate IMDB profile, for Crimbo’s sake, but none of it thrilled or broke me more than the affection of women mad enough to love a disaster like me, if only for a little while. Even if it doesn’t last because in the end, what does?