American Rhapsody (53 page)

I thought about it when we got back to Texas. To
recommit my life to Jesus Christ? God loved me? The last demon? A new man
? It sounded good, but I wanted more Jack Daniel's. I wanted my iced Bud. I wanted another Winston or a big fat cigar. I chose Jack Daniel's over Jesus Christ. An iced Bud over God.

On my fortieth birthday, Bushy and I went to the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs with some friends. We had a six-course dinner, sixty-dollar bottles of wine, brandy, some Jack Daniel's back in the room, a few cold Buds. I don't remember a whole lot after Bushy and I got back to the room, except that she left and slept in one of the other rooms.

I didn't treat her that night like you should treat the mother of your children. May God forgive me—it was a George Jones moment. I got up the next mornin' with vomit over me. I looked in the mirror and I started to cry. I begged Bushy to forgive me. Drinkin' was over. Smokin' was over. George Jones was over. Sex was over, like it had been for a while (except for Bushy).

I'd come to Jesus.

I was a man now, finally, like Billy's son, Franklin, except Franklin was twenty-two when it happened, and I was forty. I would make love no longer to the demons Jesus Christ had freed me of. I would make love to America. I would put all that wasted energy now into lovin' up America, into makin' this an America worthy of God's name.

I'd made love to Budweiser and then to bimbos and then to Bushy, and now I would make love to America. Come to Jesus, literally! I felt like I had discovered a callin' that I had seen vague glimmers of at Yale and Harvard.

I would make love to America and by my hard and deeply felt exertions and insertions, I would transform her. I'd turn her out. Inside out. No more heaviness. No more victims. No more guilt. No more self-indulgence. I would make her forget, through my soft words and hard-thrustin' actions, the pervert tricks she had been trained to perform in the sixties. Abortion. Gays in the military. Gay marriage. Women at work and not, like Bushy, at home with their kids.

I would teach my beautiful America the virtues of self-reliance, responsibility, consequence for your actions. And abstinence. No more street-corner trickin' for the America I loved! No more special-interest whips and chains! No more empowerment-group blow jobs! No more advocate-group daisy chains! Missionary position all the way!

I had to pump myself up first, before I could seduce, make love to, and transform America . . . like Rocky before he fought Muhammad Ali in the movie. The trainin' sequence, remember? Before you step into the ring with all the bright media minicams on you.
Baseball!
It was ideal. As American as apple pie, the catsup inside what would be the hamburger bun of my candidacy . . . to serve America . . . to be a public servant . . . to get her off the street corner.

Baseball!
I bought into the Texas Rangers. I became the general partner of the Texas Rangers. I didn't sit in the owner's box; I sat in a regular seat behind first base, with Roger Staubach, the Captain of America's Team, right next to me sometimes. I pissed in the same urinal the fans did. I signed baseball cards with my picture on 'em. I jogged in the afternoon in the outfield. I hung out with Nolan Ryan on the pitcher's mound before games. I met Willie Mays and told him all his stats. I built a brand-spankin'-new stadium and sold the team for a $16 million personal profit.

How's that for a Rocky trainin' sequence, huh? I'd come to Jesus and I had become a high priest at the same time of America's own religion, baseball, where battin' averages and ERAs—the important ones, not the women's kind—were mumbled like prayers among the faithful.

I joined my dad's campaign as an adviser in 1988. That's when I met Pat Robertson. He knew all about me from Billy. Word spreads fast among sinners saved. Oh, we weren't friends right away. He was runnin' against Dad, so we had to bring him down a notch or two, leakin' that stuff to the press about what his close friend Jimmy Swaggart had asked that hooker to do to him.

But we respected each other. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell can get the vote out. Their friends and neighbors and admirers will show up in flatbeds and pickups and buses, wearin' little crosses and wavin' little American flags. They vote for Jesus. The votin' booth is their church on election day. By the time 1992 came around, Pat and Jerry Falwell and Jim Robison and I were friends.

They knew how true-blue I'd been born again. They knew that my dad talked the talk but that I walked the walk. No more drinkin'. No more smokin'. No more George Jones. No more sex (except for Bushy). They were in the same boat. Nothin' left except meat loaf, tacos, America, and Jesus. They were in the room with me when I testified to my Lord Jesus Christ, my Savior.

Dad made a big mistake. He thought the way to win was to appeal to the center and
fake it to the Religious Right
. Bullshit. Pat and Jerry and the others recognize bullshit when they see it. They're experts. A lot of little white churches are out there in smelly farm fields. The way to win is to lock up the Religious Right—make them
know
how much you believe in what they believe in—and then
fake it to the center
.

Tell everybody you're a
compaysionate
conservative, a uniter, not a divider—talk about goo-goo soccer-mom issues like education, health care, and breast cancer—and make sure Pat Robertson tells the faithful that what you believe in . . . to his own
personal
witness . . . is the death penalty, outlawin' abortion, lettin' the gays die off from AIDS, and Jesus Christ our Savior.

I'm gonna be the president of the United States. I'm better at lookin' in your eyes and suckin' up your votes and pain than Bill Clinton. I got a sexier wink cuz my eyes been inside more dark places than he's dreamed of. And I'm not pussy-whipped, either. Bushy does what I tell her to do. She don't wanna experience no more George Jones moments, now does she? Hey, you don't ever see scratches on my face.

Remember when Bill Clinton was gonna be impeached and Pat Robertson suddenly said just censor the bozo (my dad's word), don't remove him? Why do you think he did that? I'll tell you why. He knew I was gonna be the next president of the United States and it would help me if Bill Clinton stayed around and everybody could swallow in our humiliation and his misery.

I hope asshole Jeb, that dumb shit—not only did he
marry
the first
Mexican
girl he ever slept with, she was the first
girl
he ever slept with—doesn't give the game away. Bannin' affirmative action in his state, gettin' the endorsement of groups that hate gays. Callin' for the abolition of the education department, flat out opposin' gay rights and abortion gives a little sneak preview in Florida of what George W. Bush's America is gonna look like. In Florida, the highways are full up with prisoners on chain gangs. Asshole Jeb, my little brother, spendin' his nights watchin' reruns of
American Gladiators
 . . . lettin' the cat out of the bag, sayin, “The age of relativity is over! There is absolute truth! You
are
responsible for your actions!”

Jeb smoked too much bad loco weed, I think. Talkin' heavy stuff like “Politics is a contact sport.” Callin' himself in college “a cynical little turd.” What kinda upbeat, vote-catchin', middle-of-the-road
compaysionate
message is that? Where's the funny face or the rainbow at the end of “cynical little turd”?

I'm willin' to do anything to be the president of the United States. Not for me. I could give a shit. For America. For Jesus Christ. For your kids. For my kids.

Anything!
We gotta get rid of John McCain? Yeah, well, they turned him into a robot Commie while he was makin' himself into a big hero, didn't they? Or, hey, doesn't he have some illicit kids? Black kids, maybe? I don't say that, Pat doesn't say that, Jerry doesn't say that. Some voice on the phone whispers it at midnight. Mudslingin'? Hell no! Just a little enlightenment in the shadows of the underpass on the information highway. Steve Forbes? Hey, wasn't his dad a homosexual who had little Arab boys goin' down on him?
Al Gore
? Don't make me laugh. I've
got
Al Gore. He's dead meat. It's all over. We're gonna show the world his bald spot. Dad wasn't head of the CIA for nothin'. They don't call Mom the Silver Fox for nothin', either.

We're takin' this country back. Thanks to Bill Clinton's pecker. Thanks to people thinkin' about Bill Clinton's pecker. Thinkin' pecker thoughts right down to the minute they go into the votin' booth. And I'm gonna take the high, bold road all the way . . .
compaysion
, inclusion, empowerment, entitlement . . . . I'm gonna postpone execution dates and kiss babies and hug mongol-faced kids . . . . I'm gonna charm the skinny waitresses and flabby soccer moms into giving me what I want . . . . I'm gonna stash the cowboy boots and wear tasseled loafers . . . . I'm a leader, not a misleader! I'm an insider, not an imbiber! I'm an imbiber, not a divider! I'm a reformer, not an informer! I'm a deformer with results! Hell, I'll even sit down with the log-sized Log Cabin Republicans, and with whatever other fairies who wanna meet. How's that for
compaysion
?

Sometime in my second term, with an all-Republican Senate and House, I'll do two things. I'm gonna hang Saddam Hussein by his nuts for Mom and I'm gonna reward Ken Starr to the Supreme Court for Dad. He shoulda done it when he had the chance—both with Saddam and with Ken—but he wimped out. Well, hell, ain't nobody perfect. I love my dad.

Read my lips! We've won! And that rhymes with
fun!

Read my lips
? No, sir, that's not the way
I'd
say it. I'd say:

Move your hips!
I'm comin'!

[12]

Billy Comes Out to Play

“You'll die,” Monica said. “You will die. You're gonna smack me. What do you think I said to him? What's the worst I could say?”

“God only knows,” Linda Tripp said.

“I said, ‘I love you, Butt-head.' ”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing,” Monica said. “He just kind of hung up.”

A
s time passed, the distractions piled up (and so did the bodies) . . . endless Kosovo and then Columbine and then JFK, Jr., and then the guy in Atlanta who went to war with two brokerage houses.

During that period of time, with eighteen endless months left in his term, Bill Clinton came out to L.A. often to hang out and play a little golf. On one trip, he came, officially, to attend the Women's Soccer Championship between the United States and China at the Rose Bowl. He came alone; Hillary was doing summer stock in rural New York in the new show called
A Time to Listen!
Bill Clinton had a few days to kick it and chill with his Hollywood buddies.

A week or so before the game, Mark Canton, the former head of production at Sony, now a producer at Warner Bros., where his career began, contacted his friend Rudy Durand. Mark was still in the middle of a messy divorce from his wife, Wendy Finerman, who had won the Academy Award for producing
Forrest Gump.
He was a man with a remarkable string of hit movies, whom
Newsweek
magazine had once called “moronic.” Mark Canton asked his friend Rudy Durand if he'd like to join him in his box at the Rose Bowl for the Women's Soccer Championship.

Rudy Durand was offended by the invitation. First, because Mark didn't call himself, but assigned the call to his assistant. Second, because if Rudy wanted to join Mark and his new girlfriend, Amy—Mark's marriage blew when wife Wendy walked into Mark's studio office and found him on top of his desk with Amy—in Mark's box at the Rose Bowl, it would cost Rudy a thousand dollars a ticket.

Rudy Durand, who was sixty-four years old, to Mark's fifty-one, was not a man to trifle with that way, to issue an invitation through an assistant at the cost of a grand. He was a man with a fascinating history, even for Hollywood, a place where people invent and reinvent themselves every few years. According to Rudy, his curriculum vitae included stops in Washington (as an advance man for JFK), in Palm Springs (as Frank's running buddy), and in Vegas (Frank had introduced him to some of the boys).

Then he came to Hollywood and wrote and directed an odd little movie called
Tilt,
which had lots of pinball machines and Brooke Shields. When Warner Bros. took the movie away from him and recut it, Rudy sued the studio for interfering with his artistic vision. The suit stretched endlessly (as antistudio suits will), for nearly a decade . . . a time during which all Rudy Durand, blacklisted now, did was pursue his case. Not through lawyers, by himself! Some people said he had become the best nonlawyer lawyer in town. He argued the case in front of a federal appeals court himself, made the Warner attorney literally vomit during his presentation, and won . . . $7 million, tax-free.

No, Rudy Durand was not a man to trifle with, as one of the town's top agents learned one day when he made a joke that Rudy Durand took personally. Rudy went up to him and said, “What did you say? What the fuck did you say? Either stop making jokes or get a new comedy writer. You hear me, you cocksucking motherfucker? You want a fucking war with me? You piece of shit?” And all the agent, a powerful man in Hollywood, could say was, “I know who you are. I didn't mean anything. I'm sorry.”

A lot of people in town knew who Rudy Durand was, like Kelly Preston, now married to John Travolta, who met Rudy when she was a waitress at Gladstone's on the PCH, and let Rudy take some revealing (and un-Scientological) pictures that she still wanted back. Rudy Durand met Bill Clinton on a golf course and the two of them liked each other. That's why, when Rudy Durand called Mark Canton back about the women's soccer game at the Rose Bowl, Rudy Durand said, “Naw, I can't go with you. I'm going to the game with the president.”

And Mark Canton, who had never met the president of the United States, said, “
You are
?”

.  .  .  

It was a whopping, bald-faced lie. Fuck Mark Canton, Rudy Durand thought, this self-inflated dwarf who couldn't even play a decent round of golf, this Peter Sellers character who seemed most interested in the celebrity photos adorning his office walls. Fuck him! If Mark Canton wanted to play these stupid games with him, Rudy Durand thought—the assistant's call, the grand—he'd nuke his skinny little ass with the president of the United States.

On the morning of the day before the game, Bill Clinton called Rudy Durand. He was in L.A. at his friend Ron Berkle's house (Ron owned Ralph's supermarkets) and Bill Clinton wanted to know if Rudy felt like playing golf with him. Rudy said he'd love to but that he was booked; he was playing with Pete Sampras that day. Pete had just won Wimbledon.

“Can I use your name to get into the Riviera?” Bill Clinton asked Rudy. He hated the Bel Air Country Club, where the houses were almost on top of the course, where there was little privacy, where a telephoto lens could easily capture a wet, chewed-up cigar in the mouth of a wet and sweating president.

“Sure,” Rudy said.

“Well come on over,” the president said, “if you get a chance.”

When Rudy went out on the golf course with the strikingly good-looking Sampras that day, he saw all the Secret Service agents in the distance, and as he started heading that way on his cart . . . he saw Mark Canton, too, playing with his own group of friends not far away. Rudy drove over to Mark and his friends, with Sampras alongside him, and Mark could barely contain his overbubbling excitement: “Rudy, Rudy, the president's here!” Rudy told Mark that he could see that, that even Ray Charles could see that, and he introduced Mark to Sampras.

“I'm Mark Canton,” Mark Canton said to Pete Sampras. “I've produced . . . ” And he listed a series of movies, many of which he
hadn't
produced . . . but some of which had been made under his aegis at Sony.

“I'll see ya later,” Rudy said to Mark, and started driving down the fairway to where the president was teeing off. As he drove, he heard the Secret Service squawk boxes going “Six-five! Six-five!” (Rudy's own code number) and he knew Mark Canton was hearing it, too, and gasping openmouthed.
Rudy had his own code number!
As he approached the president, Rudy slowed down; he didn't want to disturb him. Rudy Durand believed that the three finest feelings in life were “a great climax, hitting a golf ball,” and what Rudy described as “the pyramid”: great food going down the pipe and into the digestive tract.

So he waited until the president hit his golf ball, and then he and Pete Sampras went over. The president, Rudy saw, was with Sly Stallone, once the box-office heavyweight and now, like Bill Clinton, caught in the headlights of a kinky sex scandal. Some Hollywood hookers had written a book alleging that Sly had built a glass contraption above his bed. They had to relieve themselves on the glass, they said, while Sly watched, stretched out on the bed below, and did the Bill Clinton thing with his right hand.

The president turned to Rudy and hugged him. Sly asked the president if he knew that Rudy was the best producer in Hollywood. Rudy introduced Sampras to both of them and the president praised Sampras for representing his country with such class and distinction at Wimbledon.

Rudy suggested that they all meet when they were half-finished with their games . . . at the Halfway Clubhouse between the tenth and thirteenth holes. The president and Sly, seemingly getting along well together, certainly with enough to talk about, agreed.

“Can you do me a favor?” Rudy asked the president of the United States.

“Sure,” Bill Clinton said, drawing him a little aside for privacy, “what is it?”

“When we're at the Halfway House, can you say, ‘Hey, Rudy, are you still coming to the game with me tomorrow?' ”

“Sure,” Bill Clinton said. “Do you
want
to come to the game tomorrow?”

“Hell no,” Rudy Durand said, and both of them, good friends, laughed.

“What's it about?” Bill Clinton asked.

“I'll tell you later.”

The president asked about a few mutual friends like Jack Nicholson—who had just been reaccused by a thirty-two-year-old hooker of beating her so badly in 1996 that she'd suffered brain damage—and they went off in different directions on the golf course.

When Rudy and Sampras were nearly halfway finished, Mark Canton came by on his cart and Rudy told him they were going to meet Bill Clinton and Sly at the Halfway Clubhouse.

“Can I come with you?” Mark asked.

Rudy said he supposed so.

“I'll ride in the cart with you!” Mark said.

“I'm riding with Pete,” Rudy said. “Follow us over.”

Mark Canton said, “Rudy, please! I've gotta get a picture with him for my wall. You gotta promise me, Rudy, please. I heard the White House photographer's with him wherever he goes. Can he take a picture of us?”

“I don't see why not,” Rudy Durand said.

When they got to the Halfway House, Bill Clinton and Sly were already there. Mark said hi to Sly and Sly asked the president if he knew that Mark Canton was the best producer in town.

Mark Canton shook Bill Clinton's hand and said, “Mr. President, I'm Mark Canton. I'm a producer . . .” And he listed the same credits he'd listed to Pete Sampras, in the same order.

The White House photographer came by and Bill Clinton put one arm around Sly and one arm around Rudy . . . and Mark Canton leaned into the picture as far as he could.

Bill Clinton started heading away with Sly, and then the president of the United States turned back and said loudly, “Rudy, are you still coming to the game with me tomorrow?”

And Rudy said, “Hell no, I wouldn't want to be seen with you.”

And Mark Canton looked the way he must have looked the night that Wendy walked in on him with Amy. Unbelievable! Un-fucking-real! Not only was the president checking to see if Rudy would still be his guest . . . but Rudy was so close to him that he could tease him like that.

Mark Canton went over to the White House photographer to make sure he got the picture, and Bill Clinton, who was watching Mark Canton now and laughing with Rudy, said to Rudy, “You want me to put a little mustard on it?” Rudy laughed and Bill Clinton said, loudly enough to make sure Mark heard it, “I'll send the helicopter for you, Rudy, if you're busy. Come on!”

Mark Canton shook his head as Rudy and Pete Sampras drove away, and he didn't hear Pete say to Rudy, “Who was that asshole?” And Rudy answered, “That's Mark Canton, producer.”

The next morning, Rudy's phone rang and an official from the Chinese embassy asked if Rudy would like two tickets to the official People's Republic of China box at the Rose Bowl championship soccer game. Rudy had just done several deals with Macao and Chinese financiers and he accepted the two tickets. He called his friend Jack Nicholson and told him about the two tickets in the Chinese box, and Jack Nicholson, who was supposed to attend in Mark Canton's box, said, “I'll come with
you.
”

Moments later, Rudy Durand's phone rang again; it was Mark Canton. “Jack's going with
you
?” Mark asked.

“That's what he said,” Rudy said.

“But he was supposed to come with me.”

“Where's your box?” Rudy Durand asked.

“On the ten-yard line.”

“Shit,” Rudy said, “That's almost in the end zone.”

“It's not in the end zone,” Mark Canton said; “it's on the ten-yard line.”

There was a pause, and Mark Canton said, “Where's
your
box?”

“You mean the official box of the People's Republic of China?” Rudy asked.

“Yeah.”

“It's on the fifty,” Rudy Durand said. “Right next to Bill Clinton's. Right in the middle of the field!”

Mark Canton asked Rudy Durand if he and his party could follow Rudy's and Jack's limo to the Rose Bowl. Mark had heard the Secret Service squawk boxes going “Six-five! Six-five!” and knew that security at a public circus like this one could wind up being embarrassing if you didn't have your own code number.

That's what happened. Rudy and Jack in the lead, and then Mark's party's limos; among the passengers, Dennis Hopper and his wife and two kids, pissed off that it had cost them four thousand dollars to see this game. Dennis, the ultimate sixties icon, the Easy Rider himself, who'd gone on after that monstro/boffo hit of a movie to write and direct something called
The Last Movie
(which was so bad, it almost was Dennis's last). Dennis, once a human Dumpster of LSD, longtime former resident of that holy place, Taos, now hanging out with Mark Canton.

It was going to be like a sixties reunion: Dennis and Jack, also an
Easy Rider
graduate, and Bill Clinton, the former Street Fightin' Man who didn't inhale.

When they got to the security gate at the Rose Bowl, they were all whisked through—“Six-five! Six-five!” said the squawk boxes again, magic words—and when they got off the elevator and started heading for their boxes, the president of the United States heard the “six-five” announcements, too, and stuck his head out of his box and yelled, “
Hey, Rudy!
”

He invited Rudy and Jack into his box and introduced Rudy to his personal guests, Gray Davis, the governor of California, and L.A.'s mayor, Richard Riordan.

“I want you to meet the best producer in Hollywood” was the way Bill Clinton introduced Rudy Durand to the others. And boy, did Rudy get a kick out of that!

Then Jack and the president schmoozed off in a corner for a while, grinning, enjoying each other, two horndogs who liked each other's scent. Jack Nicholson had even come to Bill Clinton's public aid during the darkest impeachment days, appearing at a rally at the Federal Building in Westwood with Barbra, who wore a ditsy little hat some people said she'd worn in
The Way We Were.