maimed_observer
12-03-2007, 04:30 PM
After a low sucking sound followed by a high-pitched pop, the Ghost of Ronald Reagan appeared before me.
I was mid-deuce.
Startled by the spook, the turtlehead, dangling with no thought of dropping, fired like a missile into the toxic waters. Despite the astounding appearance of the ghost, I felt the kind of relief that one feels after accomplishing a difficult duty.
Then it spoke:
“Good Afternoon, my fellow American, I am Ronald Reagan.”
My eyes had not deceived me. It was Ronald Reagan, “The Gipper”, in all his glory, circa 1980: tall, handsome, wearing a suit and with the grandfatherly expression (good-natured yet bemused) that I remembered from photographs and television.
There was only one difference, though major: he wasn’t the solid, flesh and blood “Leader of the Free World”, but a flickering apparition, translucent and gaseous, hovering over the cement floor. A form filled with wisps of indigo and silver that dazzled when caught in the fluorescent light of the bulbs above.
The small room took on an eerie glow, as the light from the ghost reflected off of the metal door and white walls. The ceiling lamps, usually yellow and obnoxiously bright, seemed to have dimmed.
The situation had me feeling, understandably, odd. Here I was sitting upon a toilet, in the enclosed bathroom of my office, staring at the spectral figure of a man who was the U.S. Commander-in-Chief when I was born.
Why was I not up and out the door? Emerging pale and sweaty into the office, oblivious to the dropped jaws of co-workers as I stumble towards the stairwell, mumbling “Reagan” along the way?
A ghost was visiting me! In the bathroom of my office!
It was because of that relief, still lingering, that I remained motionless. I felt calm and even curious. I began to wonder if I was special for receiving this extraordinary visit.
“Simple Customer Service agent no more! I speak with the dead!”
These thoughts quickly wore off as I gazed further upon the figure. Its actual form raised more questions.
Why was this Reagan’s appearance in the afterlife? Was it his self-image from the happiest moment of his life? Or, does he appear differently before each individual? Shifting according to their memory? I may see him in the glowing splendor at the beginning of his term, but maybe another man would see him in the chagrin following the exposure of the Iran-Contra Affair. Someone else may see him startled and grimacing, as he did after John Hinckley Jr. fired upon him in an assassination attempt. Yet another could see him during the Cold War when he commanded, “Mr. Gorbachev; tear down this wall!”
And what would Nancy Reagan see? The bed-ridden shell wasted away by Alzheimer’s? Not likely. Though that may be her last memory of him, I am sure she would not remember him in that way.
She probably memorialized him in a moment of love. Maybe the moment during their honeymoon, in 1952, when the then Screen Actor’s Guild president and his new wife…
…Were staying at an undisclosed hotel in the San Fernando Valley, hiding in plain sight from the acting world. They had rented a large suite for one week, having room service deliver their meals and booze so they would never have to leave.
Nancy was elated. Getting married to an ambitious, handsome Hollywood man was all she could ask for. What glamour! She loved him and was ready to consummate this love.
What she hadn’t expected was the primal beast lurking inside of Ronnie.
He made love to her like an animal, unleashing guttural moans, howls and screams. Prowling through the suite, naked, like a jungle cat and pouncing upon her at whim.
Filling him full of brandy was her only escape. Using a full tumbler like a tranquilizer dart and firing it into his right hand before his mind could comprehend the lust in his eyes.
These urges, though difficult, never annoyed Nancy. In fact, she could never get enough of him when he donned that lion’s skin. Where it came from, she never knew. But from time-to-time, during their stay, Ronnie would emerge from the bathroom on all fours wearing the fur of a male lion over his head and back. It made him look like an African hunter in the Serengeti. He would pursue her from across the room in it, following her laughter and screams, until she fell onto the bed in submission.
A shiver ran over me and my mind returned to the present: seated upon cold porcelain before the Ghost of Ronald Reagan.
It spoke again:
“You may be wondering why I have crossed The Threshold to speak with you.”
I waited until the reverb from his ethereal voice died out to reply:
“Uh…yes, Mr. President, I am.”
“Well, I have chosen, in death, to continue helping the living.”
I nodded and thought, “Rather than resting in peace, enjoying the heavenly comforts of paradise and basking in the pure, beautiful light of God, The Gipper had volunteered. Returning to lead the stray souls back on to the Path of Righteousness; guiding them just as he guided the U.S.A. from 1980 to 1988.”
But my cynical mind couldn’t help bringing up a worthy counterpoint, “Aren’t ghosts creatures of Purgatory? Repentant souls in limbo paying for sins committed during their life on Earth? Was this phantom president serving time for the injustices he took part in as a politician? Most of us know that this seemingly benign and gentle man was not so gentle or benign.”
My curiosity gave me the courage to ask:
“How do you help the living?”
“Well, young man, by steering them towards The Party.”
“The GOP?!”
“Yes, the great old Republican party.”
Now I was shocked. Truly shocked. Not by the hovering ghost of Ronald Reagan seeking me out, in the restroom of my office, from beyond the grave. But by the fact that the ghost was a recruiter!
“So, let me get this straight, Mr. President, you chose to return as a spirit to enlist Young Republicans?”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“Do you always approach these…lost souls…while they’re moving their bowels at work?”
“Well,” he paused, “yes. We find that Americans are more susceptible after a difficult defecation.”
“That sounds like a load of **** to me, Mr. President.”
The brows above his haunted eyes furrowed.
Moments later, he began to laugh a wheezy laugh that shook his spirit into a blue and gray haze before the bathroom walls.
“It took me awhile, but I finally got it.”
I couldn’t help but laugh, too, the shock fading, as I posed another question:
“Do the other deceased Republican presidents volunteer as well?”
“Yes,” wheezing out a few laughs before composing himself, “Yes they do. Gerald Ford is still undecided, but he just arrived. There’s a grace period. Some take the equivalent of a year on Earth to make their decision. I, for example, needed six months just to realize what in the heck was going on!”
We had another good laugh over that one.
“What about Nixon?”
This question made him blush. Rather than turning red, like the living, swirls of blue and silver left his cheeks, showing the white bathroom walls through his transparent face. I started to worry that I had crossed the line, when he responded, “Dick made an interesting, yet predictable choice: to be a…well…multi-home poltergeist.”
Just then, the rhythmic beat of approaching footsteps stopped the rising chuckle in my throat. My eyes moved from the presidential spectre to the doorknob as the steps grew louder. There was a scraping sound as the heels slid to a halt before the door. The handle jerked slightly, followed by the sounds of another scrape and fleeing footsteps.
I waited several moments for the potential taker of piss or **** to disappear. The pause made me realize that it was still business as usual out there. Phone calls from customers were answered, sales figures were calculated, while others gossiped or daydreamed. My co-workers had no clue that their colleague was speaking with a very famous, very powerful, yet very dead man.
“As I was saying,” The Gipper continued, interrupting my thought, “Dick chose to be what’s called a Bi-domicile Poltergeist. This genus of ghost allows him to access the residences of both Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.”
I gaped back incredulously.
“Yes, it’s true, though the other Republicans don’t condone it. But, well, you know.”
“Tricky Dick.”
He wheezes before continuing, “Oh yes. The man, well, ghost, goes back and forth between their home offices, disorganizing articles they’re completing, breaking pens and pencils, tearing up stationary and, occasionally, throwing a book at them. The two of them know it’s him. It began only weeks after his death and they were never fools. No one would ever believe them of course. A front page Washington Post story might expose the Watergate break-in and force a President’s resignation, but the country won’t rally behind a stationary destroying spook.”
This time the laughter burst forth, causing me to jerk forward and nearly fall off of the toilet seat.
“Oh! That’s good, isn’t it, Steve?”
With tears of joy welling, I looked into the ghostly eyes of Reagan and asked, confused, “Did you just call me, Steve?”
“Why, yes,” the spirit looked worried, “you are Steven Clarkson…aren’t you?”
I rubbed my eyes, “No, my name is Will Forsythe.”
“Well…Will…are you interested in The GOP?” Reagan stated with determination, though he could not mask the embarrassment he felt by the blunder.
“No, Mr. President. I am not.”
“Oh. Well just forget all about this conversation, Will.” The confused ghost quickly said before I heard a high-pitched pop and a low sucking sound.
The Ghost of Ronald Reagan had crossed back over The Threshold.
I finally wiped.
I sat back down at my desk and got lost in the silver fuzz covering the cubicle wall. It felt as though hours passed, before I noticed the company logo bouncing between the computer screen’s boundaries.
“The Ghost of Ronald Reagan,” I thought, still bewildered. I entered my log-in information and password into the computer. It went completely blank for a moment before the screen I had left reappeared slowly, piece-by-piece.
Later that day, I walk the aisles of the grocery store hoping to find dinner for the night. I look at boxes of pasta thinking that one of the various shapes will distinguish itself enough to make me add it into the basket. None do, so I move on towards the deli department. From a comfortable distance, so as not to arouse the butcher, I eye slices of meat. There’s a particular brand of natural potato chips, which I had a hunger for recently, that would compliment a sandwich. I look for a few moments before indecision turns me away.
I reach the Meat and Dairy aisle, where I come upon packages of Halloween cookies in the shapes of pumpkins, witches and ghosts.
“Reagan.” The afternoon’s encounter flashes through my mind.
The Gipper: translucent blue and shifting with that sweet and simple expression. Despite how I felt about his presidency and duties in death, I still saw him in a gentle light. He could be my grandfather.
I was only seven when he left office. The mathematics of “Reaganomics” is a little more than subtraction, which was what I was learning at the time, and all I knew about “Star Wars” was that it was an even better movie than “Masters of the Universe”.
I’m not ashamed of this, and neither are many other Americans.
Recently, a poll was conducted to find the President most approved of by the people. Ronald Reagan was second, with Abraham Lincoln being number one.
Second! People approve of him over Jefferson, both Roosevelt’s, JFK and George Washington! I was extremely surprised by this. I mean, FDR lead the country through World War II, taking on a man who many would probably vote for as the Most Evil Monster in History, yet people prefer Reagan. (Was it the wheelchair?)
It reminds me of one of my actual grandfathers, who I found out, after his death, was often verbally abusive towards my grandmother, father and uncles; a terrible thing. Yet, how do I still remember him? As the lively and talkative old man who took me to dinner and ball games and blew cigar smoke from his eye.
Picking up the package of sugar cookie ghosts, frosted white, I suddenly recall what occurred an hour after my meeting with the dead President:
My desk offered me a viewpoint of the hallway leading to and from the restrooms. While entering data, I saw Steven Clarkson emerge slowly from the hallway, sweating, bug-eyed and white as a sheet.
What I never had a chance to mention to The Ghost of The Gipper, since he so quickly disappeared, was that Steven Clarkson worked in my office. I didn’t know much about him, even though we worked for the same company. Steven was in another department. Thus, we had little contact. It consisted entirely of occasional nods in passing.
This did not stop me from immediately going to him.
Once reaching him, next to an abandoned office, his eyes slowly rose and met mine. They looked through me, blank with horror.
Despite the trauma before me, I couldn’t help but be amused. The man had just seen the Ghost of Ronald Reagan! Probably after a difficult defecation!
Thankfully, my empathy returned. I withheld my grin and gave him a pat on the back in consolation.
But the understanding I felt clouded my better judgment, “At least Nixon didn’t erase your hard drive.”
He gasped and fled. I later found out that he immediately left the office without grabbing his coat or briefcase.
After placing the cookies back on the shelf, I return to the deli with visions of corned beef in my head. On the way, I come across a display of green, Earth-friendly, re-usable shopping bags at only one dollar a piece. I grab two and toss them into the basket.
I was mid-deuce.
Startled by the spook, the turtlehead, dangling with no thought of dropping, fired like a missile into the toxic waters. Despite the astounding appearance of the ghost, I felt the kind of relief that one feels after accomplishing a difficult duty.
Then it spoke:
“Good Afternoon, my fellow American, I am Ronald Reagan.”
My eyes had not deceived me. It was Ronald Reagan, “The Gipper”, in all his glory, circa 1980: tall, handsome, wearing a suit and with the grandfatherly expression (good-natured yet bemused) that I remembered from photographs and television.
There was only one difference, though major: he wasn’t the solid, flesh and blood “Leader of the Free World”, but a flickering apparition, translucent and gaseous, hovering over the cement floor. A form filled with wisps of indigo and silver that dazzled when caught in the fluorescent light of the bulbs above.
The small room took on an eerie glow, as the light from the ghost reflected off of the metal door and white walls. The ceiling lamps, usually yellow and obnoxiously bright, seemed to have dimmed.
The situation had me feeling, understandably, odd. Here I was sitting upon a toilet, in the enclosed bathroom of my office, staring at the spectral figure of a man who was the U.S. Commander-in-Chief when I was born.
Why was I not up and out the door? Emerging pale and sweaty into the office, oblivious to the dropped jaws of co-workers as I stumble towards the stairwell, mumbling “Reagan” along the way?
A ghost was visiting me! In the bathroom of my office!
It was because of that relief, still lingering, that I remained motionless. I felt calm and even curious. I began to wonder if I was special for receiving this extraordinary visit.
“Simple Customer Service agent no more! I speak with the dead!”
These thoughts quickly wore off as I gazed further upon the figure. Its actual form raised more questions.
Why was this Reagan’s appearance in the afterlife? Was it his self-image from the happiest moment of his life? Or, does he appear differently before each individual? Shifting according to their memory? I may see him in the glowing splendor at the beginning of his term, but maybe another man would see him in the chagrin following the exposure of the Iran-Contra Affair. Someone else may see him startled and grimacing, as he did after John Hinckley Jr. fired upon him in an assassination attempt. Yet another could see him during the Cold War when he commanded, “Mr. Gorbachev; tear down this wall!”
And what would Nancy Reagan see? The bed-ridden shell wasted away by Alzheimer’s? Not likely. Though that may be her last memory of him, I am sure she would not remember him in that way.
She probably memorialized him in a moment of love. Maybe the moment during their honeymoon, in 1952, when the then Screen Actor’s Guild president and his new wife…
…Were staying at an undisclosed hotel in the San Fernando Valley, hiding in plain sight from the acting world. They had rented a large suite for one week, having room service deliver their meals and booze so they would never have to leave.
Nancy was elated. Getting married to an ambitious, handsome Hollywood man was all she could ask for. What glamour! She loved him and was ready to consummate this love.
What she hadn’t expected was the primal beast lurking inside of Ronnie.
He made love to her like an animal, unleashing guttural moans, howls and screams. Prowling through the suite, naked, like a jungle cat and pouncing upon her at whim.
Filling him full of brandy was her only escape. Using a full tumbler like a tranquilizer dart and firing it into his right hand before his mind could comprehend the lust in his eyes.
These urges, though difficult, never annoyed Nancy. In fact, she could never get enough of him when he donned that lion’s skin. Where it came from, she never knew. But from time-to-time, during their stay, Ronnie would emerge from the bathroom on all fours wearing the fur of a male lion over his head and back. It made him look like an African hunter in the Serengeti. He would pursue her from across the room in it, following her laughter and screams, until she fell onto the bed in submission.
A shiver ran over me and my mind returned to the present: seated upon cold porcelain before the Ghost of Ronald Reagan.
It spoke again:
“You may be wondering why I have crossed The Threshold to speak with you.”
I waited until the reverb from his ethereal voice died out to reply:
“Uh…yes, Mr. President, I am.”
“Well, I have chosen, in death, to continue helping the living.”
I nodded and thought, “Rather than resting in peace, enjoying the heavenly comforts of paradise and basking in the pure, beautiful light of God, The Gipper had volunteered. Returning to lead the stray souls back on to the Path of Righteousness; guiding them just as he guided the U.S.A. from 1980 to 1988.”
But my cynical mind couldn’t help bringing up a worthy counterpoint, “Aren’t ghosts creatures of Purgatory? Repentant souls in limbo paying for sins committed during their life on Earth? Was this phantom president serving time for the injustices he took part in as a politician? Most of us know that this seemingly benign and gentle man was not so gentle or benign.”
My curiosity gave me the courage to ask:
“How do you help the living?”
“Well, young man, by steering them towards The Party.”
“The GOP?!”
“Yes, the great old Republican party.”
Now I was shocked. Truly shocked. Not by the hovering ghost of Ronald Reagan seeking me out, in the restroom of my office, from beyond the grave. But by the fact that the ghost was a recruiter!
“So, let me get this straight, Mr. President, you chose to return as a spirit to enlist Young Republicans?”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“Do you always approach these…lost souls…while they’re moving their bowels at work?”
“Well,” he paused, “yes. We find that Americans are more susceptible after a difficult defecation.”
“That sounds like a load of **** to me, Mr. President.”
The brows above his haunted eyes furrowed.
Moments later, he began to laugh a wheezy laugh that shook his spirit into a blue and gray haze before the bathroom walls.
“It took me awhile, but I finally got it.”
I couldn’t help but laugh, too, the shock fading, as I posed another question:
“Do the other deceased Republican presidents volunteer as well?”
“Yes,” wheezing out a few laughs before composing himself, “Yes they do. Gerald Ford is still undecided, but he just arrived. There’s a grace period. Some take the equivalent of a year on Earth to make their decision. I, for example, needed six months just to realize what in the heck was going on!”
We had another good laugh over that one.
“What about Nixon?”
This question made him blush. Rather than turning red, like the living, swirls of blue and silver left his cheeks, showing the white bathroom walls through his transparent face. I started to worry that I had crossed the line, when he responded, “Dick made an interesting, yet predictable choice: to be a…well…multi-home poltergeist.”
Just then, the rhythmic beat of approaching footsteps stopped the rising chuckle in my throat. My eyes moved from the presidential spectre to the doorknob as the steps grew louder. There was a scraping sound as the heels slid to a halt before the door. The handle jerked slightly, followed by the sounds of another scrape and fleeing footsteps.
I waited several moments for the potential taker of piss or **** to disappear. The pause made me realize that it was still business as usual out there. Phone calls from customers were answered, sales figures were calculated, while others gossiped or daydreamed. My co-workers had no clue that their colleague was speaking with a very famous, very powerful, yet very dead man.
“As I was saying,” The Gipper continued, interrupting my thought, “Dick chose to be what’s called a Bi-domicile Poltergeist. This genus of ghost allows him to access the residences of both Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.”
I gaped back incredulously.
“Yes, it’s true, though the other Republicans don’t condone it. But, well, you know.”
“Tricky Dick.”
He wheezes before continuing, “Oh yes. The man, well, ghost, goes back and forth between their home offices, disorganizing articles they’re completing, breaking pens and pencils, tearing up stationary and, occasionally, throwing a book at them. The two of them know it’s him. It began only weeks after his death and they were never fools. No one would ever believe them of course. A front page Washington Post story might expose the Watergate break-in and force a President’s resignation, but the country won’t rally behind a stationary destroying spook.”
This time the laughter burst forth, causing me to jerk forward and nearly fall off of the toilet seat.
“Oh! That’s good, isn’t it, Steve?”
With tears of joy welling, I looked into the ghostly eyes of Reagan and asked, confused, “Did you just call me, Steve?”
“Why, yes,” the spirit looked worried, “you are Steven Clarkson…aren’t you?”
I rubbed my eyes, “No, my name is Will Forsythe.”
“Well…Will…are you interested in The GOP?” Reagan stated with determination, though he could not mask the embarrassment he felt by the blunder.
“No, Mr. President. I am not.”
“Oh. Well just forget all about this conversation, Will.” The confused ghost quickly said before I heard a high-pitched pop and a low sucking sound.
The Ghost of Ronald Reagan had crossed back over The Threshold.
I finally wiped.
I sat back down at my desk and got lost in the silver fuzz covering the cubicle wall. It felt as though hours passed, before I noticed the company logo bouncing between the computer screen’s boundaries.
“The Ghost of Ronald Reagan,” I thought, still bewildered. I entered my log-in information and password into the computer. It went completely blank for a moment before the screen I had left reappeared slowly, piece-by-piece.
Later that day, I walk the aisles of the grocery store hoping to find dinner for the night. I look at boxes of pasta thinking that one of the various shapes will distinguish itself enough to make me add it into the basket. None do, so I move on towards the deli department. From a comfortable distance, so as not to arouse the butcher, I eye slices of meat. There’s a particular brand of natural potato chips, which I had a hunger for recently, that would compliment a sandwich. I look for a few moments before indecision turns me away.
I reach the Meat and Dairy aisle, where I come upon packages of Halloween cookies in the shapes of pumpkins, witches and ghosts.
“Reagan.” The afternoon’s encounter flashes through my mind.
The Gipper: translucent blue and shifting with that sweet and simple expression. Despite how I felt about his presidency and duties in death, I still saw him in a gentle light. He could be my grandfather.
I was only seven when he left office. The mathematics of “Reaganomics” is a little more than subtraction, which was what I was learning at the time, and all I knew about “Star Wars” was that it was an even better movie than “Masters of the Universe”.
I’m not ashamed of this, and neither are many other Americans.
Recently, a poll was conducted to find the President most approved of by the people. Ronald Reagan was second, with Abraham Lincoln being number one.
Second! People approve of him over Jefferson, both Roosevelt’s, JFK and George Washington! I was extremely surprised by this. I mean, FDR lead the country through World War II, taking on a man who many would probably vote for as the Most Evil Monster in History, yet people prefer Reagan. (Was it the wheelchair?)
It reminds me of one of my actual grandfathers, who I found out, after his death, was often verbally abusive towards my grandmother, father and uncles; a terrible thing. Yet, how do I still remember him? As the lively and talkative old man who took me to dinner and ball games and blew cigar smoke from his eye.
Picking up the package of sugar cookie ghosts, frosted white, I suddenly recall what occurred an hour after my meeting with the dead President:
My desk offered me a viewpoint of the hallway leading to and from the restrooms. While entering data, I saw Steven Clarkson emerge slowly from the hallway, sweating, bug-eyed and white as a sheet.
What I never had a chance to mention to The Ghost of The Gipper, since he so quickly disappeared, was that Steven Clarkson worked in my office. I didn’t know much about him, even though we worked for the same company. Steven was in another department. Thus, we had little contact. It consisted entirely of occasional nods in passing.
This did not stop me from immediately going to him.
Once reaching him, next to an abandoned office, his eyes slowly rose and met mine. They looked through me, blank with horror.
Despite the trauma before me, I couldn’t help but be amused. The man had just seen the Ghost of Ronald Reagan! Probably after a difficult defecation!
Thankfully, my empathy returned. I withheld my grin and gave him a pat on the back in consolation.
But the understanding I felt clouded my better judgment, “At least Nixon didn’t erase your hard drive.”
He gasped and fled. I later found out that he immediately left the office without grabbing his coat or briefcase.
After placing the cookies back on the shelf, I return to the deli with visions of corned beef in my head. On the way, I come across a display of green, Earth-friendly, re-usable shopping bags at only one dollar a piece. I grab two and toss them into the basket.