Maybe it was the roast pork with mango sauce. But I've eaten too well on other occasions, and I never ever had a dream - if it was a dream - like this one.
I was lying in my bed, suddenly awake, or so I thought, and a dimly glowing nimbus of swirling mist hung in the air just above the dresser. As I watched, it grew brighter, and a shape slowly took form: A man, wearing a toga, sitting in one of those cool Roman curule chairs. A long face - hair thin on top - a large, oddly shaped nose - blue-shadowed jowls - Great God, I realized, with a shiver of primitive fear and a rush of cold sweat, it's Nixon. The figure spoke:
N: O mortal! Awake and hearken!
Me: You're Richard Nixon!
N: Yea, verily.
Me: [a little snappish; I don't like being awakened] What's with the King James English?
N: [glowers, says nothing, but the mist turns red and swirls angrily]
Me: [penitent] ... uh, Mr. President?
N: [complacent smile] That's better.
Me: [cautious] To what do I owe the honor of this... visit? Uh, sir?
N: Thou has writ somewhat of me, uh, Us, the other day, uh, not long agone.[The old self-pitying pained smile] Everybody else has forgotten me, of course.[Recovers the Shakespearean manner] So methought, Usthought, to discover what manner of man thou wert. Or do I mean wast?
Me: [Distracted, resentful, not unlike my interlocutor] Nobody would publish the thing. Had to put it on a damn blog.
N: Of course nobody would publish it. But here we read everything. [Peers closely at me] Thou art not... oh screw it. You're not a fag, are you? I mean, I know you're a Commie. But some of my best friends are Commies. Chou, Brezhnev - - I've gotten to know old Joe Stalin pretty well here, too. But fags, never liked 'em. So? Are you? I mean, no offense, but --
Me: Well, uh, Mr President, you're in my bedroom. I mean, take a look. Sir.
N: [Peers at bedmate] Oh. Sorry, fella.
Me: "Fella?" You been hanging around with Nelson Rockefeller?
N: [snorts] Fat fuckin' chance. He's over in the Episcopal heaven. Him and that con-man Roosevelt. Where Nancy's trying to get that dumbass Ronnie in. Lotsa luck, Nance. Even if you did give the best blow jobs in Hollywood. [Face falls again into a self-pitying pout] Not that I would know.
Me: There's more than one Heaven?
N: Oh, sure. [Smugly] I'm on Mount Olympus now. Tried the Quaker heaven, but... [lowers head, wags jowls in an uncannily familiar gesture] booorrring. Olympus, though, it's great. Some top notch people here. We got Karl Marx, and Gibbon, Caesar of course - he lent me this chair - and the Gods are OK too. Something funny with Zeus and that kid Ganymede, but Hephaistos and I play golf a lot, and Prometheus is a very smart guy. But anyway, that's not what I wanted to tell you about.
Me: I'm all ears. Sir.
N: It's about that bonehead Reagan. Y'know he's been dead for a year?
Me: [boggles visibly] What?!?
N: [pleased] I thought you'd be surprised. They held off telling anybody until they thought it would do the party some good.
Me: [thinking furiously] Wow. Uh - I suppose you don't want me to tell anybody about this?
N: Who'd believe you if you did?
Me: [crestfallen] Good point.
N: Not that I give a shit. Fucking Republican Party, after all I did for them, goddam bunch of car salesmen and real-estate swindlers, do I get a fucking state funeral? The Jack Kennedy horse and the backwards boots? Do I get the motherfucking National Cathedral? [His face is very red now and he's shouting] Goddam liberal fag Episcopal pinko hypocrites. No, I get shithead Billy Cornpone Graham and a catafalque that looks like Homer Simpson's pool table --
Me: [curious, and trying to distract him] Do you get TV there?
N: [snaps] We get everything we want here. It's fucking Heaven, asshole.
Me: [aggrieved] Sor-reee.
[A rooster crows, which is odd because we're on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and Nixon looks apprehensive]
N: Gotta go. Rules, y'know. But I'll be back. [His image begins to blur and dim, and his voice grows faint and distant] I'll... always... beee.... baaaack.....
-------------- To Be Continued ---------------------------------------------------