Credit card debt

A line in the politician’s speech made everyone do a double take at the rally.

“He had a lot in common with both Jesse Owens and Adolf Hilter,” the candidate said, then continued on about the man he was talking about.

Thoughts on Twitter instantly became a flood …

“He was once in Germany?”

“He’s skinny?”

“He’s a black Jew?”

“Who is this amazing runner/genocidist?”

All his campaign manager could do was shake his head and sigh. This moron constantly put his foot in his mouth because he had no idea what he was ever talking about. Here we were, in a room filled with 14 to 18 year old high school kids. None of them knew who either of them were either, most likely, so hopefully, nothing would come of it.

A beep on his phone, at that moment however, allowed him to no longer live in this fantasy.

“There’s already YouTube video of it,” a text from his tech-savvy guy at the campaign offices said. “It’s been view 4,000 times in two minutes. And linked to the Huffington Post and TMZ.”

It was going to be a long night, he thought to himself. He started to wish he’d pursued his father’s line of work – circus clown. But the jokes on that one were way too easy. He heard them every time he saw his ex-girlfriend who followed her passion and ended up owning a bar in New Orleans. She hated that town when he used to talk about it. Then she moved there. And unlike him, stayed there.

He saw her three years ago when the candidate he was working for then was running for president. He stopped in New Orleans and got drunk at a bar in the Marigny. He won the popular vote there. Not many other places. But, he did do better than Mondale at least.

“Why are you still doing this?” his ex asked him the night after the election. They always screw up. Or maybe you always screw up?”

“You know me too well, hon,” he said.

“Scary ain’t it?”

“Not really. You found out how full of shit I was the easy way.”

“Easy?”

“Yeah, I left. You didn’t have to be disappointed by me right in front of your eyes.”

He hadn’t seen her since.

And now he was sitting there watching another candidate flame out. This was supposed to be an easy one. A quick speech about the good of athletics and education. Now, he was talking about Hitler and Osama Bin Laden and Jesse Owens and Ric Flair all in the matter of 3 minutes of talking.

“Why didn’t I get a teleprompter for this?” he asked out loud to no one.

“Because you’re an asshole,” a voice behind him replied. He knew before the last syllable was out of her mouth who it was – Graina Johnson, the other candidate’s advisor. He fucked her one night after a rather intense debate between the two candidates about 7 months ago. She wasn’t a very good fuck, but neither was he. They were drunk. He woke up the next morning and she was gone. A week later, news leaked about his candidate’s out of wack credit card debts. As he watched the news scroll across a television screen while he read the morning papers, he knew exactly where the “evidence” of this “massive coverup” about the candidate’s finances – from his God damned desk. He’d left those accounts, which he’d just paid off with his own money, sitting out that night. And she saw them.

The polls shifted that week. From his candidate being up 11 percent, to his candidate being down 4 percent (plus or minus 3 percent). But, he quickly put out the statements with paid off balances – which conveniently had the date of one day before the statements that were on his desk – he’d printed them off with the balances still intact so he could get paid back later – and soon his candidate was back in the lead since the “leak” was obviously an attempt “by my opponent to attack my finances, when it is pretty obvious that I do not have any credit card debts.” The two fucked again the night after that.  This time, in a hotel. This time, he didn’t take anything, even his wallet or cell phone, to the encounter. The sex ended up being quite good.

So good, they made a pact to fuck every week – every Wednesday to be exact – the rest of the campaign. It proved to be a difficult task, one that ended up putting the candidates in the same place on a lot of Thursdays, something one intrepid reporter caught on to and took a photo for TMZ of the two meeting in a Motel 6 one night. He ended up paying that guy $44,432 to hush him up. An amount so specific, he had to ask.

“My credit card debt,” the sleazy photog said.

He wished he could pay off his credit cards so easily.