Presidents

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On the living room set of The Jeffersons there is a man and a woman and another man who becomes a man named Lionel when he stands or sits in front of the camera. Lionel mostly stands, though, because for some reason he can’t just sit still, Lionel, he really can’t hold himself in one position very well, so mostly he stands and kind of rocks back and forth. In the scene we’re looking at right now there’s been some kind of misunderstanding and that misunderstanding has upset Lionel. Lionel is rocking back and forth more noticeably in order to demonstrate his discomfort and his unhappiness with the misunderstanding at hand, and in order to demonstrate a passion he has for resolving misunderstandings. What a man, audiences are supposed to say when Lionel resolves the misunderstanding in the scene. What a man!

But the scene isn’t working, the lines aren’t coming to anyone very well at all, and so the misunderstanding grows and changes shape-the living room set is rattling and tense with people, and the man who is usually Lionel can’t find his way to becoming Lionel in the middle of all of this. Let’s take five minutes, the other man says. And let’s all of us sit still, the woman says. And the man who becomes Lionel takes a walk, passes the cameras, knocks on the lens of one of them, four times, hard, with tight knuckles.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_14/Clevelands.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″]

This is our city, I believe, because it is falling down on the job and we are falling down on the job. This city is named after the only president who was elected to two terms that weren’t consecutive. This is our city and it is named after the 22^nd President of the United States and it is also named after the 24^th President of the United States. That is to say: this is our city and it is named after a man who was either one man twice or two men once.

Yes, Grover Cleveland, the people said! No, Grover Cleveland! Grover Cleveland, they said, yes again! The Comeback Kid! The Big Man!

I’ve been doing a little research, though, and I’ve learned that our city isn’t named after either of the Grover Clevelands-not at all. I should have known this. There’s a century between the city and the man, after all.

Sometimes when I’m getting ready to go out at night in this city and I’m putting on a dress or eyeliner or something, I have this moment of nausea, of unhealth, and I can feel a burning in the deep pit of my gut, and I can tell that ash is accumulating there, and I can taste it erupting. It rises quickly and I feel its movement, its bad rhythm. Up, but also down. Stretching. Rumbling out my limbs. It sticks with me sometimes, and it bubbles up later, between the last drink at one bar and the first drink at another.

It does not feel right, Grover Cleveland. It does not feel correct. It doesn’t. No, it does not.

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The thing that’s wrong with Marty is that he makes rubbings from Abraham Lincoln’s profile on the American penny. The thing that’s wrong with me is that I think there are killers everywhere. We’re on the same floor. The Lincolns are in tight rows on regular white paper and the paper papers Marty’s room, from the ceiling to the floor and back up again.

Today we’re allowed to drive to get Cokes even though there’s a vending machine on every floor of the building and we take my car a lot further than we need to go, all the way up Lamar until it ends which is almost to Round Rock. There’s this thing happening with me and Marty, so at the gas station I swing my right leg over the gear shaft and turn fast and put my teeth gently into his jaw. It’s nice, he says. He says again, it’s nice.

When we get back, I go to Marty’s room to taste his jaw again even though I’ve already been down there a couple of times today and he lets me because it’s nice. But while I’m tapping away, crunching down, my eyes open accidentally and above Marty’s shoulder, hiding in the endless Lincolns, I see two Roosevelts, heads turned right instead of left. Peas in mattresses, crumbs in the bedsheets. They jump off the paper and find my face, two dimes in two eyeballs. And, obviously, I lose my shit a little, because it’s pretty clear now that this whole thing is more serious than I thought, and I wonder if it’s true, if Marty has lost something he can’t get back.