It was to be an awesome responsibility, one for which my experiences in both business and frog-torture had prepared me.
8
The Clown-Faced Zombie
I Call My Wife
When a man reaches a certain age, he feels an urge to settle for the closest woman around who seems interested. He then embarks upon one of the most rewarding periods of life.
I was blessed with the good fortune of meeting a wonderful small-town Texas woman who had a dazed and clueless stare reminiscent of a goat that had been struck between the eyes with a tire iron—a halting kind of beauty which every man desires in a woman.
It was at a backyard barbecue of mutual friends. The midday Texas sun shone brightly. Laura was gnawing at meat with her make-up-caked face, much like the majestic condor might tug at the cartilage of a road-kill skunk. I watched enraptured as she devoured the ground flesh while slurping lemonade, putting bright red stamps of lipstick on her plastic cup.
When she wasn’t shoving sustenance into her mouth, she was tenderly nursing a cigarette butt. Its hazy fumes softened the sun’s glare, creating a smoggy halo effect which enhanced her angelic visage.
Her frozen look of wide-eyed terror combined with her unwavering open-mouth smile captivated my senses. As if through an expensive embalming, a permanent, silent shriek had been fused to her skull.
I felt compelled to start a conversation with this picture of elegant refinement. I soon realized that she had a vibrant and alert personality to match her fierce instinct for scavenging the meat of lesser beasts.
We began spending a great deal of time together.
I eventually found that her enchanting stupor was the result of inhaling—and, at times, ingesting—copious amounts of chemically active make-up compounds, which at the time had not been properly tested on monkeys in order to ensure that they would not cause crippling side effects.
Furthermore, Laura could not get through an hour—let alone a day—without grasping for a cigarette. It was like was her oxygen line. A captivating charm came over her as she sucked the cool, fresh nicotine into her lungs. Knowing that her teeth were yellow with tobacco stains, the inside of her mouth coated in a viscous, carbon-monoxide film, and her lungs black with soot, only made her more radiant.
She employed all manner of dyed clays and advanced plasters and paints to keep the tobacco-stained stumps of rotting bone in her yap shining lovely and white. The dreamy cloud of smoke that hovered about her wherever she went cured her skin much like the hide-tanning process, which served to make her skin more durable and tough.
That Laura was a horrendous beauty is beyond doubt. But what I must frequently remind myself is that her mind is important to me as well.
In her early years, before we met, she had undergone extensive social and attitude conditioning at the Midland Woman’s Society, which was funded by the Midland Husband’s Society. She was therefore a well-tutored woman, one whom any man would be happy to call his wife.
We are the same age, Laura and me, although when we met, she seemed much older. This seeming age difference did not affect our interactions. She had a fetching burlap-like complexion, a fuddy-duddy countenance that made my heart go pitter-patter. And she wore a long dress that draped her frumpy form like a tarp over grass seed.
Loyalty oath signed by Laura Welch, 1977
She was a bewitching woman, like a queen hag from a magical Halloween storybook. At that time, I would later learn, she undertook great effort to de-agify her face, using colored powders, creams, and paints. Today, add to that list the occasional doctor’s visit.
She looks quite good for a 60-year-old, which I believe is her age at the time of this writing. And her hair gains a new luster with professional-strength dyes, stiffening agents, and toxic sprays. But her lovely half-smile, paralyzed as if in permanent fear, beams with a radiance that can only come from her tough cheek skin being pulled, stretched, and pinned back.
She also has undergone a major frownoplasty, a complicated and delicate surgical procedure which removes the frown-inducing muscles around the jawbones, cheeks and eye sockets.
But that is enough compliments!
Our whirlwind courtship was one of passion, but also convenience. We were both over 30 when we met, and the time to start a family was in danger of passing us by. We discussed the matter, and decided that we wanted children so that Laura’s eerie grin and chicken eyes might live on through the mystifying science of insemination.
She especially wanted daughters to whom she could pass on her tradition of womanhood. She yearned to teach a litter of piglets to apply expensive fragrances, so that they would grow up to emit a sweet, pungent odor of some kind of scented plant or chemically re-engineered whale oil.
The only danger in this plan was that these young children would send off a sickly sweet aroma so strong that they might be sought out and eaten alive by ants. This fear has come perilously close to reality several times, and I have spent a great deal of money insulating our homes over the years with weather-resistant poison granules, buckets of ant gel, sticky traps, and other extermination methods to keep the ants at bay.
But despite the risk, we knew that we wanted a family.
Our wedding was a traditional Texas one, held in a small Methodist church in Midland. The reception was an old-fashioned Texas barbecue, with the country band “Whispering Tumbleweeds” playing. I celebrated in another proud Texas tradition, the one in which a great deal of drinks are served.
During our first dance, Laura looked at me with her empty red eyes, and reminded me of my promises to her. She whispered tenderly into my ear “I will eat your soul.” I smiled at her and said, “You are my clown-faced zombie, now and forever.” And our covenant of love was sealed.
In the intervening years, I watched as Laura allocated a good percentage of her allowance to make-up and perfume costs. She ordered it in bulk quantities directly from manufacturers. Her rouge budget alone approached that of a small city government in those early months, as did the money spent for exotic ointments, industrial balms, and facial enamels.
Surgically, there were several options available to her, all costly, but in the end worth the money, for they would capture her expensive facial construction for all times. She opted for a living mummification procedure. This would replace the blood with a unique combination of rare form-aldehydes, slowing any deterioration of the smile or any smile-related tendons, which might fatigue with age. This taxidermy left her with a strange odor, and a texture to her skin not unlike that of a sack of cattle feed, but did not impede her ability to walk and wave under her own power.
And I thought she was lovely.
I wish to stress at this point that I believe women have a prominent role to play in our society. When I discovered I was to be the father of twin girls—double the trouble!—I knew there would be a great deal of unwelcome smells and squawking debates within the home. When my daughters were born, I realized I would have to keep my guard up around this putrid family of bellowing hyenas which I had inadvertently spawned.
I also knew I was the luckiest man in the world.
It was to be a lot of work keeping these precious glaze-eyed bitties under control. But though I put on a stern face with them, and grew practiced at putting my foot down, I was truly pleased to have so many yapping bird-faces in my life, each one encaked with a thicker frosting of eye, lip, and cheek paint than the next, and each cloaked in a dense fog of flowery body-odor suppressants.
Loyalty oath signed by daughters Jenna and Barbara, 1981
Laura became queen of the goblins at home. She lorded over our squealing, stable family. The house was always impeccable, as she was an expert at frightening the servants into doing a good job with their household duties, and at smiling silently at our young girls until they were creeped into doing what she had asked.
I always had a meal waiting for me when I returned home from a vacation, no matter what time of day. And she took good care of my feet, massagi
ng them and loofahing the calluses away. My feet are tender and beautiful even today, thanks to Laura’s expert care. In return I would pamper her with trips back to her ancient Egyptian doctor for frequent re-mummification, to keep her skin nice, dry and taut so that the make-up would seep in, like latex exterior house paint on old wood.
I place a great deal of value on the woman’s perspective, when it is expressed appropriately. Laura is always there to offer her unconditional support for whatever I am doing. On occasions when I must watch her stiffly attempt to speak, her surgically stretched mouth barely able to deviate from its meticulously carved smile, I swell with pride and devotion.
She is more than just a life partner to me. She is an ever-present and terrifying force in my life’s journey.
Surely, I have been blessed by the Almighty.
9
George W. Bush,
Congressman from
Texas’s 19th District—
Got a Nice Ring to It!
This, I will admit, is one of the more boring chapters of my book. I encourage you to turn to a chapter that tells of some of my life’s more exciting victories. Or perhaps you could read a magazine or watch television. There is no reason to read this particular chapter.
It is a complicated undertaking when one journeys into the mind’s past to uncover what one was thinking when one decided to run for a small political office and proceed to lose handily. Many have said that I was not cut out for the U.S. Congress. Still others contend that the circumstance of my Connecticut birth prejudiced the good voters of Texas against my political campaign. But there is no doubt in my mind as to what event conspired to cost me that election: A werewolf curse.
A heartless half-man, half-wolf monster lurked on the dark plains of Midland, Texas in those days, and many local citizens would hear his bloodcurdling howls during the nights. I suspect the meaning behind his angry cries was simple—he did not want George W. Bush to represent the 19th District.
One dark evening as I came home from campaigning, I climbed out of my car only to see two dots of light in the distance. It was the searing eyes of the bloodthirsty werewolf. Or possibly it was the headlights of an oncoming automobile, which coincidentally passed that spot a few moments later. But to this day I believe it was a werewolf.
These facts raise a troubling question: Why were werewolves set against my becoming a member of Congress? After reflection, I am convinced that it was my strong anti-wolf stance. I had pledged to be tough on wolves. I made it clear that I was against moon-based transformations from man into beast. I also fought vigorously against regulating the sales of silver bullets at gun shows.
I knew that this would not win me any friends in the werewolf community. But I did not set out to become a U.S. Congressman in order to win a popularity contest. I set out to become a U.S. Congressman to hunt down and kill werewolves.
Werewolves aside, let me go back a while and reflect on what had led me to this race initially. It was 1978. Everyone had a pet rock and a mood ring and a jogging suit in those days. But for me, what compelled me to run for a seat in the House of Representatives was my involvement in two important failures. One, I had helped conduct my dad’s two unsuccessful bids for a Senate seat several years earlier. Two, I had helped conduct my dad’s second unsuccessful bid for a Senate seat, which I just mentioned.
After such valuable experience losing political contests, I knew that if I directed my energies toward my own campaign for Congress, there was a good possibility I, too, would enjoy some of this lack of success.
We initially conducted a poll among a small sample of my strongest supporters to get a feel for what the people would expect from a State Representative George W. Bush.
The first question was, “How much will you donate to the George W. Bush campaign for Congress?” Overwhelmingly, the answer was “How much do you need?” The follow-up survey question was, “If indeed you did donate to the George W. Bush campaign for Congress, who would you make out the check to?” Again, overwhelmingly, the answer was “George W. Bush.” I was thrilled.
We surveyed three people for the poll: My father, the Emir of Bahrain, and Sheik Hassu Bin-Laden.
I learned a valuable fact from this survey: My dad had access to a great deal of money. It is a life lesson I have carried with me, and which has brought me comfort in times of trial.
But I am not the kind of person who listens to polls or surveys to make my decisions. I had a great deal of experience running unsuccessful political campaigns, and therefore had already learned the number-one lesson: In order to win, a candidate must go from town to town and shake the hand of every voter in the district and say “My name is George W. Bush, and I am asking for your support in my run for Congress.” It is that simple.
I said this key phrase many, many times on the campaign trail. I said it so many times and to so many people, I sincerely believe I began saying it in my sleep. I would say it at other inappropriate times as well. At the breakfast table, Laura would ask if I would like more flapjacks and I would say, “My name is George W. Bush, and I am asking for your support in my run for Congress.” I would catch the dog relieving himself where he was not allowed, and I would hit him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper, shake my finger, and yell, “My name is George W. Bush, and I am asking for your support in my run for Congress!”
Therefore, as one can clearly see, this is a technique of campaigning that can wear on a candidate, because of the great strain of rememborizing a phrase that is involved.
There must be a better way to run a political campaign, I thought. Sadly, by the time I had this important insight, the election had already happened and I had lost.
The intricacies of political campaigns and races are many. And they have the effect, sometimes, of confounding one’s brain capacity for rational thinking.
I was lucky to have a skilled and capable staff who ran my campaign. They were, in total, my wife, my 1974 Dodge Dart, and our dog, Hokum.
My campaign slogan, which Laura helped me write, was “Vote George W. Bush, He is not from Connecticut.” It was an excellent slogan, and it garnered me many votes that I suspect otherwise would have gone to my opponent if I had not had such an outstanding slogan.
Laura was by my side for most of the campaign. After her most recent embalming, she did not require nutritional sustenance of any kind, so we put in the long hours.
Campaign poster from Texas 19th-district Congressional race, 1986
She would simply sit at my side, or stand, if standing was called for, in her pants suit, expressing her support for my campaign. She typically would not put in a good word, due to the physical difficulty it posed. She would, however, clap enthusiastically at my speeches, which could be painful for her, as brittle skin and bones can sometimes shatter when slammed together in a clapping motion. But she was a trouper, and took that risk.
Laura and I both believed strongly in the importance of running a clean campaign. My opponent, whose name I cannot recall, was a fine opponent. I did not dwell on the fact that he had had sex with a sow earlier in his youth. What he did with a pig at one time was his own affair, and, in my mind, had no bearing on how well he would serve the people of the 19th district. Voters should consider the issues, not the fact that he made more trips to the barn for secret rendezvous with a breeding hog than he did to his own marital bed. I made it very clear in my campaign literature that this was his private lifestyle, and not an appropriate issue for voters to be concerned about.
On the campaign trail, the men and women of West Texas voiced skepticism about my campaign, and sometimes became disagreeable when I spoke. Babies, on the other hand, smiled and cooed when I held them for the cameras. Furthermore, they seemed compelled by my ideas. As the campaign wore on, I began to prefer campaign events with fewer and fewer adult voters, and more and more infants. I spoke at day-care centers and hospital maternity wards. I shook a lot of tiny little hands in bassinets, through the bars of cribs, and in carriages on
the street. These were places where my message was resonating.
As Election Day dawned, I was optimistic. Unfortunately, I discovered on election night that babies do not have the right to vote in this country. This was an injustice that I pledged to one day rectify.
Regardless of the outcome, I believed my campaign for Congress was a successful one. I raised many vital issues of our time which I believed mattered to the voters in my district. The werewolf issue, for one. Another one of my signature issues was the urgent need to get George W. Bush sitting in one of those wooden chairs at the U.S. House of Representatives. I knew these views would not make me the most popular person in West Texas, but I stood up for what I believed in my heart.
In the end it was a triumph. The Election Day party lasted all night. And even though we lost the popular vote, I believe that if there had been an electoral college, and the results had been contested, and it had gone all the way to the Supreme Court to straighten it out, we would have won handily.
I tucked myself into bed that night and thought of all the new friends I had met during my campaign. I credit my successful defeat to those good folks who would become, some 15 years into the future, an integral part of my race for Governor of the largest state in our nation. Or one of the largest, I believe. If Alaska is not counted.
10
My Name Is
George W. Bush and I Am
Not an Alcoholic
It was on the occasion of my 40th birthday that I had to make a tough choice, and face the facts.
Much has been made of my tendency to celebrate a bit too much. And I admit that, at one time, I enjoyed life.
Life is better when you can “tie one on,” and be with friends. And socializing in this way makes having friends much easier. If you do not like them, for example, a little sip now and then helps increase one’s tolerance level for such people.
Destined for Destiny Page 5