It continually surprises me that it continually surprises anyone that politicians screw whores. Or, for that matter, that they screw interns, movie stars, other men's wives, their secretaries, their daughters' friends, the women they meet at parties or the men they meet in public restrooms. They always have. They always will. Surely the jaded American public must know this. Surely this is not news, but old news.

It's a tired piece of political theater, the public shaming, the long-faced wife, the under-bitten mask of lip-curled confession. "I have disappointed the standard I set for myself," they say. "I am a gay American."

Then comes the promise. "I will seek help." "I will definitely talk to my minister about this, this rampant fucking of women or men who are not my wife."

The question is not "Why do they" or "where do they?" or "how do they?" though in the aftermath of these revelations always comes the compulsive and pornographic re-telling of the affair in the interest of the public good. One of the true cornerstones of America is the national obsession with sexual shame, and the shame of sex. The question is: "Why do we continue to care about the sexual transgressions of our politicians when they are among the most minor of their crimes?"

Yes, it's ironic and hypocritical that Spitzer prosecuted prostitution rings and then patronized one himself. Yes, it's maddening that the people who supposedly make and enforce the laws break them at just as a high a rate as the people they govern. But if there's any truth to be uncovered in this--or any--political sex scandal, it's not what, exactly, Spitzer wanted to do that wasn't "safe" or what made him a "difficult" customer or whether he used a few grand he raised pressing flesh to get his flesh pressed. It's that we are such weak creatures, so easily lured by the lurid, that we only really get it up for the dirty details, and it's too boring and too depressing to care or even think about what else politicians might be doing behind closed doors, with their pants firmly belted and their flies summarily zipped. The rooms in which we should be prying are those in which transgressions occur that might actually affect us in some vague way. At the moment he is engaged in the act of coitus or fellatio or light bondage, the politician is actually least dangerous to the citizen, for at that moment (unless he is truly kinky) he is not selling his soul (nor ours) but pleasuring his body.

"But," everyone murmurs, "if he used taxpayer dollars..." If political officials used taxpayer dollars exclusively to get laid, the world would be a better place. There are desires more destructive than the average public servant's bootlicking masochism, or whatever the middle-aged lawyers are into these days. The desire to, say, bomb an entire country into oblivion and then pay Halliburton, Kellogg, Brown & Root and Blackwater billions of dollars to police and rebuild it is more depraved, one could argue, than sex.

Political officials use taxpayer dollars to fund needless wars. The government of New York State uses taxpayer dollars to enforce the Rockefeller laws and execute people. If the government spent more of my money on hookers I'd be grateful.

Yeah yeah, the water--potably polluted, yeah yeah, the highways--jammed with traffic, fouling the environment, yeah yeah, the schools--teaching lies, breaking spirits, yeah yeah, the trains--ill-maintained, books cooked, never on time, fares meteorically rising. But still. Someone is doing something. I know, I know, without someone doing something there'd be murder in the streets. Everyone would be a solider. Imagine that, soldiers and killing, right here, in America, instead of everywhere else!

There are two ways to look at the government. One is that they are incompetent, moronic bureaucrats and thieves, but their work is so boring and their lives so full of shit that we should be glad it's them doing it and not us. The other is that they are evil geniuses who use the claim of providing us with clean water and effective sewage systems to oppress us. But either way, whether they are public servants or outright crooks (and isn't every government and every individual official in it a mixture of the two), one thing I am certain of is that it doesn't matter who fellates them while they go about the simultaneous business of committing their crimes and doing their thankless jobs.

I get the sense that in places like France, it is tacitly understood that politicians, or rather just men, or rather just people, stray from their primary relationships, and it is handled delicately, without hysteria or outcry. It is handled with the nihilism that suits France, or at least French cinema. But here in America it is the taste for violence that is handled with kid gloves. We're quick to call our politicians cheaters or perverts but much slower to call them murderers or criminals. That would be disrespectful to the office. It seems that the quickest way for a politician to disrespect his own office and end his tenure is not to defy the constitutional laws he is swore to enforce, but the marital laws he vowed to keep.

Daniel Ellsberg came to speak at my college just after Lewinskygate broke. He was a man who cared enough to expose the war crimes of his government rather than the details of their sex lives. He pointed out that Clinton had been steadily bombing Iraq throughout his administration, and yet the nation was currently far more absorbed by the news that Clinton and his young consort had used a cigar as a sex toy. (Was ever a more Freudian object passed between sex partners a generation apart?)

"The American people," said Ellsberg, "should be more concerned with where Mr. Clinton puts his bombs than where he puts his cigars."

I am not disillusioned because men cheat, or women cheat, or people cheat, or politicians cheat. The human animal is naturally devious and the heart is deceitful above all things. I am disillusioned because rather than concern themselves with the failure of the ideal that affects all of us--that oft-bandied word, "democracy," the public continually harps upon the lie whose consequences only truly affect a relative few, two to be exact--that even older myth, monogamy.

Politicians and governments use the money they raise not only to buy themselves hookers, but to buy themselves bombs and bullets. No matter how depraved a particular head of state might be, politicians don't spend the bulk of their time fucking whores, interns, movie stars, other men's wives, secretaries, friends of their daughters or the women they meet at parties, or men they meet in public restrooms. Politicians spend most of their time meeting with people far more powerful than the former teenaged runaways/aspiring singers they seduce or pay to fellate or whip them. In those rooms, at those meetings, they authorize executions and they authorize wars. They authorize torture and they ignore warnings. They give out no-bid contracts and waste sums of public money exponentially larger than Spitzer's outstanding balance at the Emperor's Club. They move billions of dollars into secret accounts, they bring misery and suffering and death upon thousands of people with a single signature. They are all such fuckers, but it has nothing to do with who they fuck. They may fuck Kristin or Monica or Marilyn Monroe, but in the end it's us they fuck, and they fuck us all.

Labels: deceit, infidelity, irony, lies, monogamy, politicians, prostitution, ranting, the government, whores

I was little, before my brother was born. Like most little kids, I woke up early. In an attempt to wrangle a few more minutes of sleep, my parents tried to convince me to amuse myself before I woke them up. They left me a banana on my kid-sized play table.

The first morning, I woke up, tried to crack the stem of the banana and smushed it. I ran into their room, holding the impenetrable banana, demanding help. The next day, they scored the banana with a butter knife and left it on the play table. Again I ran into their room, crying, because the banana was brown where it had scored. The third day they left me the uncut banana and a butter knife on my play table, with explicit instructions on how to cut the top of banana safely.

I cut the top of the banana, most of the way through but not all the way through, as we had discussed. I was able to snap the top, peel the banana and eat it. As soon as I was done, I wanted another banana. Another banana would be out of the question, because my parents were in charge of the bananas. But my parents were asleep.

I climbed up on the kitchen counter and procured a second and finally a third banana. When my parents woke up I requested a fourth banana.

"How many bananas have you had today?" my mom asked.

This was an interesting question. Technically, I had had three bananas. But my mom only knew about the original banana. I recognized that there were multiple answers to the question of the banana. There were the number of bananas she thought I'd had and the number of bananas I knew I'd had. I recognized that different answers would yield different results. I weighed the outcomes and came to the obvious decision. I told my first lie.

"I had one banana," I said.

I don't know if she believed me or if she was keeping count of the bananas, but she gave me the fourth banana. I ate it feeling equal parts guilty and satisfied. But there was a gulf between us now, between what I knew and what she knew, and it was then I learned that lying, though profitable, is lonely.

Labels: bananas, lies, truth