Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Trying to get rid of the remainders of a chest cold, I pulled out a bottle of medicated chest rub the other night, smeared it on.

The smell immediately brought back ugly memories.

The last time I'd used medicated chest rub, I was sick in bed for two days when I got a call from a friend to inform me that my boyfriend had cheated on me.

She was the roommate of the girl he'd cheated with, and she went into details (legs up... noises... did it twice...) that I would have been much happier not knowing.

I broke up with the guy, but held a lingering resentment for the friend for many years afterwards.

At the time, I was a daily newspaper reporter, and the chairman of the county commissioners chose this exact moment to have a very public breakdown. Dragged out of my bed, still hacking and still seething, I wrote this rant, which remained unpublished until now.

I'd been reading a lot of Hunter S. Thompson at the time, and I think it shows.

Call someone who cares

Ever since his DUI arrest, The Chairman of the County Commissioners has become a tragic figure. His normally soft-looking baby face is strained and full of shadows. He is touchy and doesn't return press phone calls.

When it happened, I was annoyed, then angry. It was already a busy news day. I didn't need this.

Then, as we hardhearted smart ass journalists do, another reporter and I started arguing over whose commissioners were more decadent.

"I have two drunks and a wife beater," I said. "My commissioners could take your commissioners in a street brawl any day."

"Yeah, well, my commissioners are ... dumb as a sock puppet," she countered weakly. But she was in my column now and it was the best I'd let her do.

Yay. I won. My commissioners are the most weak-willed, depraved, philandering, underhanded, insincere pork barrel swine in the region. A hollow victory, at best.

That night I dreamt spiraling nightmares of red and blue flashing lights, shame and degradation. I woke in a sweat, feeling nauseous.

Through some evil coincidence, I had contracted a stomach flu. I spent the next two days in bed, reading erotica and writing twisted poetry.

On the morning of the third day, my editor awoke me in the second of my only two hours of sleep in three days, wanting to know if I could make an emergency press conference and call in the story. In the grip of nausea, compounded by various personal crises of betrayal and backbiting, I stumbled into the county administration building.

The Chairman looked like a ghost, his face wracked with pain and shame... I wish I'd had my camera. But there was no way to get the film in before deadline anyway.

In his prepared speech, he said he took full responsibility for his actions. His voice shook as he said how sorry he was and how he wanted to apologize to everyone affected: the public, the police, his family.

Funny. He wasn't so contrite when he refused to take a blood test the night of the incident.

Over the next two months, The Chairman attracted bad press like whores to a televangelist convention. He and the County Controller's office sniped at each other over various scandals involving finances and back-room politics.

As I questioned him about one of them, The Chairman stared at me with his wide turquoise eyes and assured me he didn't take it personally. "I understand the press," he said with a knowing smile. At that moment I realized we were alone. It was the first time I'd ever seen him without his press agent hovering around like a diseased crow.

I wrapped the interview and escaped before he could bludgeon me with an executive desk toy and drag me off to some dark dungeon of the administration building, a renovated prison. No doubt there are leftover isolation cells for such uses.

Personally, I'm sick of it all. I'd trade my decadent commissioners for my colleague's "dumb, dumber and doofus." The last three faxes with county letterhead I dumped in the trash.

I'm tired of being used as a public forum for gutter sniping. Especially for an administration that arrested a young couple, ripped their two-year-old child out of their arms, confiscated 46 marijuana plants and hung a monster sign on the front porch: This Drug House Closed.

This desk is closed. Here's a quarter. Call the competition.

Copyright 2003 by Alyce Wilson

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