Barack W. Bush: The Prisoner of Kennebunkport

Here is the final version of this story:

BARACK W. BUSH: THE PRISONER OF KENNEBUNKPORT


I was introduced to T-Ice (and that was the only name by which I knew him at that time) by Bronc White during a long night at Puffy’s Tavern sometime in the early June of 1999. When I arrived at Puffy’s that evening, Bronc, Sonny Warhol and T-Ice were in the throes of celebrating what T-Ice described as “The Emancipation Proclamation,” a speech in which he quoted Robert Beck (‘How about it, an “Iceberg” with a warm heart?’), and paraphrased Douglas MacArthur (‘Old pimps never die. They just change the games they play.’) He had just given his stable of whores their freedom, peeling approximately two hundred thousand dollars off of what had to have been the biggest pimp roll in history in order to give each of them a start in their new lives. The next day T-Ice went to work as a commodities trader, and more than tripled his previous income. I never really knew much about T-Ice’s family background. On one occasion Sonny told me that T-Ice’s father was the descendent of Arab-African slave traders from Kenya and his mother was from a well-connected American family that boasted several prominent political figures. I invariably saw T-Ice over the next two years during the course of my very occasional visits to Puffy’s, but one evening it occurred to me that he was no longer to be found there. Bronc later told me T-Ice mysteriously disappeared shortly after 9/11 and has not been heard from since. After drifting out of that orbit, I was shocked to read about the lurid and sensational murder of Bronc White at Bowery Poetry Club in 2002, and I totally lost touch with Sonny Warhol, until I received the following email from him this afternoon. For what it’s worth I’m passing it along….


The file containing these diary entries was sent to me by the daughter of an ex-president who happens to be an old late-night partying buddy of both Barack W. Bush (who was known as T-Ice) and myself. His friends were distraught when T-Ice, which is short for Titanic Iceberg, disappeared. And we have become increasingly furious over time in the wake of the all-encompassing media blackout designed to turn him into a non-person. Given the penultimate entry in his diary, like T-Ice himself, I fear for the worst. Now I am making this file public in the hope that it will spark a sustained protest movement that will result in a full Congressional investigation into the disappearance of T-Ice. It is obviously too late to impeach George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, but we intend to blow the lid off the cover-up being perpetrated by that wanker who was elected president in November.

Note that I am not at all offended by T-Ice’s reference to my father. Some of you will no doubt be familiar with my autobiographical song: “Daddy Was a Poofter, Mama Was a Stone Bull Dyke”. Daddy wasn’t much of a father and Mama wasn’t much of a mother. T-Ice said the same things about his biological parents (although he was quite fond of his stepfather). Maybe that’s why we bonded so strongly.

Solanas (“Sonny”) Warhol
March 15, 2009


Selected Excerpts from the Diaries of Barack W. Bush

January 18, 2008

Cocaine is the drug of choice of bores of all ages. And that applies in spades (sorry Barry) to my two presidential half-sibs. Mama Babs was beside herself with anger when I screened footage of George W. and Barry engaging in a snortathon in the CEO box during a Texas Rangers game. It was real cinema verité, with shaky camera work and all, which was perhaps the result of all of the 'shrooms I had ingested before the game. And while we're on the topic of 'shrooms, I might add that 41's giggling fit while watching the snortathon footage gave me a pretty good idea of who raided my 'shroom stash last week.


February 3, 2008

You might be wondering just how I came to exist. The explanation may sound improbable, but it’s really very simple and indisputably true. Mama Babs was totally blotto during her one-nighter with Barack Obama Senior, and so the fact that it actually happened had slipped her mind entirely. Consequently, when she found herself in the family way she naturally assumed it was the handiwork of the future 41, only to be disabused of this notion when a maternity ward nurse placed me in her arms. I am told the first words Mama Babs uttered in my presence were: “Oh, FUCK!”


February 12, 2008

It's soooo quiet in K-port during the winter. Most of the time it's just me and the Secret Service detail, so I have plenty of time to write songs, not that anyone else is likely to hear them anytime soon, least of all darling Condi. Appointing her as Secretary of State was my half-bro's one smart move as President. And don't you believe that Sweet Jesus demeanor of his. He's been pronging Condi all but senseless for years. Am I jealous? Does the Pope smoke dope? Not this one, he's an old style Teutonic Knight, but maybe the last one? Or perhaps, more likely, the one before the guy who died after a month, you know, the one who had a boyfriend in the Milan Opera? But I digress. As you can see, Condi has the last word in the song I wrote this morning while I was way under the influence of the favorite herb of one or another Pope:

Al Qaeda says
Al Qaeda says
Al Qaeda says
More hummus for Hamas
More hummus for Hamas
More hummus for Hamas
More hummus for Hamas

Israeli army says
Israeli army says
Israeli army says
No hummus for Hamas
No hummus for Hamas
No hummus for Hamas
No hummus for Hamas

Jimmy Carter says
Jimmy Carter says
Jimmy Carter says
More hummus for Hamas
More hummus for Hamas
More hummus for Hamas
More hummus for Hamas

Condi Rice says
Condi Rice says
Condi Rice says
No hummus for Hamas
No hummus for Hamas
No hummus for Hamas
No hummus for Hamas

I wonder what old Jiminy is going to do as an encore after his latest visit to the Middle East. Maybe he’ll go to Iran and be personally kidnapped by President A-Man-in-Dinner-Jacket, who was, after all, one of the kidnappers at the American embassy during Jiminy’s administration. Would George W. offer a ransom to get him back? If so, what would it consist of? A bag of peanuts?


March 17, 2008

Don't you wonder what kind of a world this is going to be to raise children in now if there is any truth in the rumor that Oprah Winfrey has bought the Church of Scientology and renamed it the Church of Oprahtology? And it’s also rumored that she has even changed the name of the E-Meter to the O-Meter, which children will soon be forced to use once they enter second grade, according to new Department of Education regulations that are currently being drafted under the No Child Left Behind Act. Even more frightening, assuming 41’s sources are accurate, is that Oprah has had herself artificially inseminated with L. Ron Hubbard's frozen sperm and is about to give birth to the Antichrist, which will go by the name of T. Cruise Winfrey.


April 8, 2008

This morning’s mail brought a new batch of waq from Gatherer. Waq is an (as yet) entirely legal hallucinogen with a pronounced comedic edge. Gatherer is Gatherer S. Thompson, one of the most brilliant biochemists on the planet, and the twin sister of Hunter S. Thompson, one of my all-time favorite writers. Gatherer and I met during the period of time in which I was trading light sweet crude oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange and living in Battery Park City (from where I was kidnapped by Secret Service agents acting on orders from Dick Cheney, and brought back to Kennebunkport where I remain in comfortable yet irksome confinement).


July 4, 2008

Warholalia: A noun, defined as “speaking in trendy banalities.”

What gave rise to the first usage of the word “warholalia” was reportedly, at least according to what were described to me as unpublished notes left by Walter Lippman, the content of conversations during state dinners in the White House during the era that some uninformed individuals still refer to as Camelot. Those in the know will swear on a stack of Bibles that the Hellmouth opened when Nazi Joe bought the presidency for his dimwitted and dissolute son Jack. If this is true, does that mean Lee Harvey Oswald was a pre-Buffy Slayer? Can “The Slayer” even be a male? And that usage of “warholalia” is surely an anachronism. The “speaking in trendy banalities” definition wouldn’t have come into use until at least a decade later, during the heyday of Studio 54.


July 24, 2008

Given that the crook who owns the Ground Zero building site and the sleazeballs in the Port Authority and the government of the State of New York just aren't getting the job done, I feel obliged to present two alternative visions for the space that is now a gaping hole in the ground:



The World Trick Center



Taking a cue from how the descendants of the Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam have organized commerce in their capital city, the new towers will become the center of the sex trade in Manhattan. Historically, this is appropriate, given that in the 18th century the prostitution trade in the city was centered in a park known as "Holy Ground", which was several blocks north of the WTC site. The name "Holy Ground" is a satirical reference to the fact that the parkland was owned by the parish of St. Paul's Chapel. 

The centerpiece of The World Trick Center will be Spitzer Plaza, a site for alfresco orgies, presided over by a statue in the style of Augustus St. Gaudens, in which the ex-governor is presented with a leering sneer on his face, left arm upraised holding a subpoena, trousers dropped to his ankles, one knee length sock raised to its full length, the other sock drooping down just above the ankle, penis hard and straight at a perpendicular to his torso, and a discarded unopened condom on the ground at his feet. To promote safe sex, the discarded unopened condom will actually serve as a condom dispenser. 


The World Trump Center



While it's true the buildings will be cheap, shoddy, glitzy, and as ugly as sin, at least they will be tall and they'll go up virtually overnight. Just don't walk anywhere near the cranes at the construction site...


July 26, 2008

I am the true literary heir of Ralph Ellison. If you can tell me the name of one person of color in these United States in the Year of Our Lord 2008 who is more invisible than I am, please do so. My ideas, which in all modesty I feel constrained to suggest are not unamusing, have not of late reached an audience much wider than Mama Babs, 41, and occasional dinner guests, many of whom are admittedly heavy hitters in their own right. I enjoy 42’s visits the most. He always brings along an extra chippie for me, although on those rare occasions when Mama Babs is away I have to settle for 41’s sloppy seconds. Happily, they are not all that sloppy.


September 12, 2008

Here is my entry for the “South Park Contest for Transgression of Political Correctness”:
The time: 1955. The place: Cornhole, Georgia, a 100% white rural hamlet inhabited by shotgun shack dwelling, inbred, feeble minded white trash of the hillbilly variety. The only public eatery in town is The Pig-Lick Restaurant, owned by one Lester Maddogs, future governor of the great state of Georgia. On a hot summer day, into town rides Rosa Perks, a Negro -- as she would have been referred to at the time by the polite elements of Cornhole society, had there been any such – and a transsexual, accompanied by her business manager, the Reverend Jackie Jefferson. Capitalizing on the nascent Civil Rights movement, in front of the former gas station that serves as the Cornhole, Georgia City Hall, Rosa Perks, announces her plan to hold a Shit-In to integrate the white Ladies Room in The Pig-Lick Restaurant. (The Ladies Room for colored patrons is a ditch in the woods behind the restaurant.) The Reverend Jackie Jefferson approaches Mr. Maddogs, who at the time is pissing by the side of the road, and suggests that if he makes a generous contribution to P.U.L.L. (People United to Leverage Loot), Rosa Perks will consent to hold her Shit-In elsewhere...


October 23, 2008

During our brief conversation this afternoon, 41 looked stricken. He told me I’m going deep-sea fishing alone with Dick Cheney tomorrow morning. I fear the worst….


October 24, 2008

When I say I think of my life as one of Y-1 variant traversals of N+/-X dimensional space, with differential probabilities for four values of Y, what exactly am I saying? That if this world doesn’t exist, if we are all merely something approximating characters in the bad dream of a demiurge such as might be hypothesized by a second century Gnostic, then we set Y to equal one with a five percent probability. That if this world is an Existentialist wasteland in which the current life being lived is all that will ever exist, then we set Y to equal two with a ten percent probability. That if this world is part of a JudeoChristoIslamic universe consisting of this life followed by an afterlife spent in some kind of Heaven or Hell or Purgatory, then we set Y to equal three with a one-thousandth of one percent probability. And that if the current lifetime on this world is one of many lifetimes on many worlds that some version of the core “I” will experience over many millennia, then we set Y to equal an integer between 4 and Y-1 with an 84 and 999/1000th percent probability. The assigned probabilities are my best guesses. Yours no doubt would likely be at least somewhat different. For the moment we will ignore more complex solutions in which the value of Y is either less than one or fractional.