America, You Sexy Bitch

by Meghan McCain, Michael Black

  “Hey, girl,” I say. “Do you know if there’s anything to do around here? Me and my friend Michael over there are on a road trip across country and we’re looking to go out.”

  She looks up from her computer and smiles. “Not unless you’re into dirty strip clubs,” she says.

  “Well, not tonight I’m not.” I laugh. She tells me that she’s a single mom, in Little Rock to attend trucker school. She wants to become a trucker to support her kid. I ask her if it’s hard being one of the few females in a male-dominated industry.

  She says, “Isn’t everything run by men? Let me put it this way, I’m one of only two women taking this class.”

  “Men are intimidated by everything, I swear,” I say. “Especially strong women with strong opinions.” She agrees and we start chatting about being a woman, going to school, her tattoos, my tattoos, how she also takes pinup girl pictures in her free time, that she has a son named Phoenix who is staying with her parents while she’s at trucker school. She’s lovely, friendly, and funny, and seems really excited about becoming a trucker and the money it’s going to bring in for her and her son. We talk about exes, and I’m having more fun talking to her than I was with Michael. I always have more in common with women than men, and it’s nice to have a little girl talk with this complete stranger.

  I introduce her to Michael.

  “You guys are probably the only nontruckers in this hotel,” she says. “Most of the people here are in trucker school with me.” Michael tells her he wants to meet more truckers. More truckers unfortunately do not show up. Eventually she says good night after showing me pictures of her Suicide Girls–style pinup layouts on her Facebook page, explaining how she’s found this very supportive online community of women who embrace alternative approaches to beauty, steeped in the retro-goth style of erotic models like Bettie Page.

  The pictures are sultry and beautiful, much different than her sweatpants lobby look, but who doesn’t look different in their sweats? She suddenly recognizes Michael and geeks out a little bit.

  “Ohh my God, you were on VH1, right?” she asks.

  “Yes, I Love the—”

  “Eighties!” she shrieks. “I loved that!” And I love this conversation. I love that she recognizes Michael and seems simultaneously surprised and a little embarrassed that he is creeping around a hotel lobby with some random twenty-something blonde. I hug her goodbye as she leaves and says good night and I slide next to Michael on the lobby chair.

  “Call it, bitch,” I say.

  “No, I’m not even tired. You call it,” he says, stifling a yawn. That is a total lie; Michael gets tired like a baby girl, needing naps throughout the day. I know he’s tired. It’s just a matter of time now.

  Michael: I will not call it. I have an endless capacity for indulging in boredom. Being bored is one of my favorite activities. Meghan, on the other hand, is borderline ADD. There’s no way she can out lobby-sit me. I like my chances at this particular competition. Stephie caved at the onset of this game, refusing to participate. She thinks it’s immature. Which it is. And stupid. Which it is. And pointless. WHICH IT IS NOT.

  The point is, obviously, to win. Why don’t people understand that the point of all things is to win? Politicians certainly do. That’s why they do what they do. To all those people who bemoan the fact that politicians routinely put party above country, consider the nature of the people serving as politicians. Winning is their entire raison d’être. Our political system, and much of our notion about what it means to be American, is about winning. That’s who we are. Americans are winners. To even get elected to office, a politician has to run an almost impossible gauntlet of fundraising, campaigning, and character assassinating. The only people who are going to bother doing all that are hypercompetitive by nature. Why do we expect them to lay that aside once they assume office? They can’t, any more than Meghan can go outside without full makeup on. It’s a genetic impossibility.

  Their mandate is to win: to win, win again, and then win some more. Which is not to say that they do not also try to do the right thing; it’s just not as important as winning. I once asked Jake Tapper, the senior White House correspondent for ABC News, what he thought is the ratio of a politician’s decisions made for political expediency versus political conviction. He replied, “Two-one.” Which is better than I would have guessed.

  As for Meghan and me, we’re just going to sit here in the lobby of a Red Roof Inn until one of us decides to call it quits. Is that any less immature, stupid, and pointless than what passes for our political system?

  Five more minutes pass since the Suicide Girl went upstairs. It must be almost nine o’clock.

  “You want to call it?” I ask Meghan.

  “If you want to.”

  “I’m not calling it.”

  “Well you know I’m not calling it.”

  We sit like that for a little while longer. After half an hour or so, the sliding doors to the lobby open and two girls walk in. Well, “girls” might not be anatomically accurate. One of them is definitely a girl and one of them seems to be floating in some sort of genderless limbo. They approach us, giggling.

  “We read your tweet,” the girl says.

  “We wanted to meet you,” the other “girl” says.

  Meghan shoots me a look. One of the main rules her father’s office has given her is never to tweet your location. I guess they don’t want the daughter of one of the most powerful senators in Washington to go around broadcasting her location. They are probably more worried about nefarious kidnappers than giggling pre-op transsexuals, but still, I feel somewhat abashed.

  The girls introduce themselves: Sammy and her friend Ursula. I will let you guess which is which. They explain that they were sitting at home when Sammy saw the tweet. She called Ursula, who was by herself playing video games, and they decided to have an adventure. So they got in Sammy’s car and came to find us. Which they did. And now that they’re here, the conversation is pretty stilted. After about three minutes or so, they’ve run out of things to say to us and I gently encourage them to wrap things up by saying things like, “It was so nice to meet you” and “Thank you for coming all this way to say hello.”

  Finally they bid their good nights and head back to their car. My back is to them but Meghan watches them get into the car.

  “They’re just sitting there,” she says to me.

  “They’re just sitting there?”

  “Yeah, they’re just sitting there staring at us.”

  Meghan admonishes me for tweeting. “My father’s office will have a shit fit if they find out.”

  “Her father’s office” has been a frequent subject on the trip. “The office” is like a third parent, or maybe a nanny, that keeps tabs on the McCain family and their various comings and goings, all in the name of serving the senator. Meghan hates it. She’s twenty-seven years old, but finds herself constantly having to worry about what “her father’s office” is going to say about her actions. Of course, it’s easy to sit back and go, as I do, “Tell them to fuck off,” but it’s not that easy in practice.

  “The office” is an extension of her father, and as such, everything she does, fairly or unfairly, can be used by his political opponents against him. If the daughter does something they don’t like, it becomes ammunition against the father. As such, “the office” is constantly on guard, constantly monitoring what Meghan and her siblings do to make sure all of it is consistent with whatever the senator is out there saying and doing. It’s not fair, of course, and Meghan pushes back as hard as she can, but she also loves her dad and doesn’t want to screw things up for him by going out on the road for a month with a married, older comedian she doesn’t know, for example.

  In this regard, I feel bad for her and her family. It can’t be easy to live your life under a microscope. I couldn’t deal with it if it was me. As a parent, I can’t imagine what it would be like to subject your kids to that kind of scrutiny either. Maybe the culture was differen
t when Senator McCain was first elected to Congress in 1982. Maybe, but I don’t know.

  The thing I’m learning is that when one member of a family enters political office, the entire family enters with him or her. Every family member is subjected to scrutiny. When you run for office, it’s not enough to think that you would be good in the job. You’ve got to consider every single person in your immediate family: their careers, their personal lives, any past indiscretions or financial mistakes. All of it becomes fair game. Any mistake one family member makes becomes a referendum on the entire clan. No wonder so many political kids get screwed up. It would be very hard to run for office with an Ursula in the family, at least as a Republican. As a Democrat, “she” might be an advantage.

  After ten minutes sitting out in the parking lot staring out the windshield at us, Sammy and Ursula finally drive off.

  Meghan: After they leave, I once again ask Michael, because we have been sitting in the lobby of a North Little Rock Red Roof Inn for over an hour at this point: “You want to call it?”

  “Hell no,” answers Michael, but I know for a fact that “Hell no” actually means “Yes, I’m old and exhausted and I want to go back to my room to troll Twitter.” I know him, I know he wants to go to bed and tweet, or post a video blog about President Clinton and Little Rock, so I am going to stay up all night out of principle alone. I am, however, sick of sitting in the lobby. I want to go out and explore, since there is really no other option.

  I tell Michael I’m going to take a walk and he actually looks concerned.

  “You can’t take a walk out there,” he says. “It’s dangerous and the Suicide Girl just told us there are truck-stop hookers and meth heads.”

  “Don’t be such a pansy,” I reply. “I’ll be fine.” Michael insists on joining me, with his worried face sternly attached.

  We walk outside into an area that, to put it mildly, looks more sketchy than when we drove past it earlier, high up in our air-cooled RV. The darkness doesn’t help. We walk along the dead-grass edge of a utility road scattered with trash, broken bottles, and beer cans. We don’t see another single person. After a nervous few minutes of vulnerability, we arrive at a gas station where, yes, we see a woman in a short, tight, pleather miniskirt, a tank top with no bra, and giant tottering heels. Our friend from the lobby was right: this apparently is a good place to pick up prostitutes.

  I try not to stare or look shocked, and fear I’m doing both. Michael actually looks really surprised and a little concerned for the woman.

  “How does that happen?” I whisper to him. “How does one get there?” I know I said I have conflicting feelings about strippers, earlier in the trip, and I do. Prostitution is a different story. I don’t think there is a person on the planet who as a little girl dreamed of being a roadside hooker. This is not the first time I’ve seen a prostitute, but it is every bit as sad as the few times before. I think about the recession, people hitting hard times, and am awash with gratitude for all the opportunities I have been given. Hell, my problems are nothing compared to a significant portion of the rest of the population’s. I feel terrible for women caught in this world, and wish there was a way to tell them there is a better way and a better life. I’m just not sure that is necessarily a true statement, nor do I think they want to hear it from a woman like me. The economic disconnect is striking at midnight outside this filthy gas station in North Little Rock, but what worries me most is that this scenario is being repeated in too many places to count across the country.

  Michael: We circle to the front of another gas station, but there are a couple of hoodlums inside so we decide not to go in. I mean, I don’t know if they’re hoodlums or not, but what are they doing hanging out at a gas station at midnight in North Little Rock? Of course, by that definition, we’re hoodlums too.

  More tantalizing than whatever offerings are for sale at the gas station, however, is the cheery yellow Waffle House sign we see a couple of hundred yards away. I love Waffle House. They seem to be mostly a southern chain, so I didn’t know about them growing up in New Jersey. I have since become an ardent admirer because they make delicious waffles, and what could be better than that?

  We make for it, dodging a couple more Lot Lizards on the way. I don’t know why this area is teeming with meth-head hookers. I suppose it’s the high population of bored truckers and easy access to the highway. The truckers pull off the road for the night, and right there are scraggly, wild-eyed whores ready to take their business. The women all have the same purposeful walk, like carpenter ants looking for crumbs of food.

  It’s kind of thrilling to be out in the wild Arkansas night among them, but it’s also depressing. Who are they? How did they end up out here wandering around the asphalt at midnight doing this? Meghan and I don’t say much to each other as we walk, but we’re both goggle-eyed.

  Considering the hour, the Waffle House is surprisingly crowded. Several tables are filled. The clientele is mostly young and male and mean looking. A group of boys lolls in a back booth. Two guys and a girl huddle over their food, talking quietly, their faces hard. The waitresses, none of them younger than fifty, shuttle coffee pots among the patrons. They look like ladies who say things like, “I’m not gonna take any of your guff.”

  The windows are all encased in fog, giving the place the look of a steam room in a seedy massage parlor. We’re both kind of appalled and delighted to find ourselves in these circumstances. A few minutes after we order our waffles, the door opens and a portly Asian guy, easily three hundred pounds, struts into the restaurant. On his arm is a woman stilting precariously on stripper heels, her face smeared with cheap makeup. They’re arm in arm and the guy has a shit-eating grin on his face, as if he can’t believe his luck at finding himself in such grand circumstances, as if he is about to sit down at the captain’s table on the Queen Elizabeth. He seems to possess not a shred of embarrassment at parading his low-rent hooker through a Waffle House in North Little Rock. For her part, she holds her head high, even haughtily, as if daring anybody to give her a second look: minor nobility surveying her duchy.

  Another girl darts into the restaurant to use the bathroom. The waitresses pretend not to notice her. A few minutes later, she darts back out into the night. The threesome catty-corner to us get up and stumble outside. I watch them have an intense conversation outside their car, half expecting somebody to pull a switchblade. To my disappointment, nobody does, and they eventually squeeze side-by-side into the front seat and roar away, the car belching exhaust fumes.

  Some more people come and go. The Asian guy and his friend eat in silence, his hand occasionally finding the small of her back. We have to clear away the steam on the windows to look outside, but there’s nothing out there to see.

  The sadness of the place soaks into us like syrup. Watching these waitresses, none of them wearing wedding bands, knowing they have to come here night after night to serve this ghoulish parade of humanity. To see these cracked-out Lot Lizards in their miniskirts, to see these truckers who pay them. The whole thing is miserable. It is the dank underbelly of Little Rock, exactly what we were hoping to find when we tweeted out our request this morning. What’s sadder, though, is contemplating all the Waffle Houses and truck stops and lonely titty bars out in the middle of nowhere, scattered out across the country like forgotten cards in a game of fifty-two-card pickup.

  As open-minded as I am about legalizing drugs and prostitution, seeing this mess is a very cogent argument against. Besides the servers, I think Meghan and I are the only ones in here who aren’t on something.

  I don’t think this scene was what Meghan had in mind back in Prescott when she kept yelling at me that “freedom doesn’t come free,” but the setting here is just as apt as the Green Zone in Baghdad, or indeed, anyplace we’ve been to so far. Freedom really isn’t free, and this is the price we pay. Ideally, America gives you the freedom to be anything you can be. The flip side is that it also gives you the freedom to completely fuck up your life.
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  When we are finished with our waffles, we pay the check, leaving the waitress a big tip.

  “You want to call it?” I ask Meghan.

  “Yeah,” she says.

  “Me too,” I agree.

  So we call it, walking back to the hotel over broken bottles and chewed-up asphalt. All the fun has gone out of the evening. I’m super-depressed as I close my hotel room door behind me and get into bed. I lie there for a few minutes. Then I do something I almost never do: I get back out of bed and lock the deadbolt.

  Branson, Missouri

  What a Country!

  Michael: About forty miles outside of Branson, Meghan asks Cousin John to pull over so she doesn’t puke. The ride has been wicked hot and bumpy and Meghan is now telling us that she is “famous” for puking. That must have been a delight on her dad’s presidential campaign. Cousin John finds a roadside liquor store that promises air-conditioning. The first thing we notice for sale at the liquor store is blue jeans, which is odd. They’ve got a rack of the things right when you walk in. Perhaps it’s for people who are so drunk they’ve pissed themselves and need a change of dungarees. Also on sale: the Bongzilla Beer Bong, a height-adjustable pole capped with a giant funnel into which beer is poured. Six plastic tubes snake from the bottom, allowing half a dozen girls in bikinis to enjoy maximum beer guzzling. I know it is meant specifically for girls in bikinis because that’s what the box shows. While I am no expert on the world of retail, I can say this with certainty: this is an excellent store.

  We spend close to an hour among the booze and beer bongs and snacks, waiting for Meghan’s head to clear. I purchase my wife a small plastic keychain that reads “Silly rabbit, tricks are for whores.” (When I present it to her after the trip, she does not laugh.) I purchase similar keychains for Meghan and Stephie. They feign delight, but I notice neither of them attaches any keys. Cousin John and I wander around the store a bit, chatting while Meghan settles her stomach with a soft drink. After a while she declares herself ready to go, having not puked. I am disappointed.