America, You Sexy Bitch (40 page)

All of us thank him for his hospitality and time. Before taking our leave we somehow get onto the subject of John F. Kennedy, and the uproar caused by his Catholicism.

“You read about it now, but if you lived at the time, it was news all over the place. ‘Catholics are going to rule the country now. He’s going to answer to the pope.’ Nothing could have been further from the truth.” He pauses. “Of course, he wasn’t as good a Catholic as I
thought he was.” He chuckles. “But the point is, Americans are always fearful. I think the fear should be in some other area . . .” he trails off.

“Somehow we survive,” I say.

“Yeah, we survive,” he agrees. “And we’ll survive when this Muslim gets out of office.”

He’s kidding.

 

 

 

Meghan:
It was an obvious and natural choice to wind down our tour with a stop at our nation’s capital. I used to hate Washington, DC, when I was growing up, but more recently I have come to love the city. I don’t know if it is a love that has evolved with age and wisdom or my continued path toward a deeper involvement with my role in politics, but somewhere along the way I’ve found a great appreciation for the city. Frankly, my relatively recent fondness for Washington, DC, sometimes still surprises me.

When I was a little girl, Washington, DC, was the place that took my dad away from me and would make me cry on Sunday nights or Monday mornings when he would have to leave to fly back. I have distinct memories of watching my father on CSPAN in our big Spanish-style kitchen. My mother would be cooking dinner and something would be steaming on the stove; she would make us “watch for Daddy,” and then after he left the floor of the Senate we would call him on the phone. It was a fun game we used to play and I give it up to my mother for always keeping my father’s presence around even when he wasn’t physically at home.

My father always looked so serious on television, sometimes visibly agitated or passionate about whatever issue he was speaking about on the Senate floor. I think he looks unnatural in a suit and tie. It’s a running joke in my family that my father puts on his “uniform” nearly as soon as he gets through the door of our house in Phoenix, his uniform being really old Levi’s jeans and some form of a raggedy, disgusting T-shirt, normally with a
Far Side
comic
printed on the front or something else equally cheesy. Whenever he comes home and changes his clothes, our dogs start barking at him like crazy and jumping around, as if they are anticipating playing with my dad or going up to our cabin in Sedona to run around and get dirty. Every time this happens, it still makes me laugh.

Normally, my mother, brothers, sister, and I would go visit my father at his office in Washington three times a year: during Christmastime, the spring, and summer. The strongest memories I have are of the bitter-cold trips in the middle of the winter. I used to hate having to get up so early in the morning to go visit my dad at his big office, inevitably growing bored sitting and waiting around for him to go vote on a bill. The best part of visiting him was eating the navy-bean soup at the Senate dining room, and getting to eat a handful of chocolate-covered mints as we went out. I also loved riding on the train that’s in the basement of the Senate building and finding it funny that the conductors knew my father by name.

 

Michael:
After a couple of thousand miles in a stinky RV, we’ve finally reached the belly of the beast. I’ve been to DC many times before, but always as a flag-waving tourist, never as an insider. This time, escorted by Meghan, I feel like one of the elites everybody hates, somebody with access to congressmen and senators, and I have to admit, it feels pretty cool.

We knew from the beginning of this trip that we’d eventually wind up here, and would eventually sit down with politicians to get their take on the current political environment. We’re not reporters and our goal is not to engage in “gotcha” journalism, or even journalism at all. We just want to hear them out as people and as citizens. One of those people will be the 2008 Republican nominee for president of the United States, John McCain.

I’ve been dreading meeting Meghan’s father from the get-go. I don’t know why. I was far less nervous meeting the fathers of
actual
girlfriends than I am about meeting this guy. I’m not usually intimidated by people in positions of power and influence, but I am this
time. Probably because I’ve been living with his twenty-seven-year-old daughter for a month under what could be construed as dubious circumstances. Were I the father, I can certainly envision myself being (to put it mildly) suspicious of the dude in linen pants and Crocs my little girl was dropping by the office with to say hello.

Thankfully, our meeting with the senior senator from the great state of Arizona is still a day away. Before that, we’ll be hanging out with another father: Dr. Charles Grob, proud papa of our very own bride-to-be, Nermal.

 

Meghan:
I am forever grateful that my parents elected not to raise me in Washington, DC. I think if they had I would probably be an entirely different person, or at the very least have an entirely different view of politics and my unorthodox approach to fighting for my side of the Republican Party. It may be just my perspective, but many of the children of politicians that I have met over the years who were raised within the Beltway have a whiff of entitlement about them, or at least some jaded attitude about DC culture. I imagine it is probably a similar experience to growing up in Los Angeles with a famous actor as a parent.

Instead of being in that political bubble, watched and coddled, I got to have a more traditional childhood with more freedom: running around and getting dirty in the desert, falling out of trees, getting stitches, riding horses, going to Catholic school down the street, skipping Catholic school down the street, making best friends who I still cherish today, barbequing with my family, hiking, swimming, being allowed to grow and live on my own terms. There really are not too many bad things I can say about my childhood in Arizona. I was allowed to make my typical childhood mistakes without the prying eyes of reporters or other political families all around me. Most important, I truly believe there is something about growing up in the Wild West that has given me an independent perspective. One of my father’s strategists once described me as “unnaturally fearless for a politician’s daughter.” It’s one of the
weirdest, yet also one of the best compliments anyone has ever given me. Something about being raised in the desert in Arizona directly contributed to that fearlessness.

I simply do not believe I would be as open with my life or as independent with my opinions if I had grown up with the kind of pressure from DC culture that I have only come to know in my twenties. On the stump, my father often quotes the line “Politicians came to Washington to change things and Washington changed us.” That’s the weird thing about Washington, DC: it’s filled with hopeful dreamers, oftentimes new to the Hill, who come bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with the greatest of intentions, wanting to change the country and make it a better place. Sometimes they do, but a lot of times they don’t. Washington, DC, is a city where you can quite literally change the world and make it a better place, or you can get your soul absolutely corrupted and end up doing irreparable damage to America and your life.

Washington, DC, is a city of ultimate power, and as Henry Kissinger infamously said, “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” Kissinger was right; most people, once they come into positions of absolute power, will go to absolutely any lengths to keep it. Not exactly the same, but how do you explain a person like John Edwards and his behavior? That’s the thing about politics; it truly exaggerates the very best and the very worst in people. I wish there were more of a happy medium.

The other obvious points of going to Washington, DC, are to introduce Michael to my father and to tour Capitol Hill. We also planned to interview a few politicians while we were in town. Unfortunately for us, Congress is now smack-dab in the midst of budget ceiling negotiations, and many of the people we were supposed to interview have cancelled at the last minute. Nevertheless, I am confident Washington, DC, will not disappoint us.

 

Michael:
Stephie’s dad, Charlie, flew in from California to hang out with us and his boyhood best friend, Larry, with whom we’re staying. Larry and his wife, Ellie, live just outside the city, and are
members of the reviled Washington bureaucracy. Despite the stereotype of the lazy career civil servant, they both seem engaged, motivated, and passionate about their work. They also seem like old hippies, which they are.

Larry wears his long hair tied back into a bushy ponytail. He’s got a salt-and-pepper droopy mustache and a soft, Long Island accent. Ellie wears a sleeveless tank top and a long skirt. Their home is decorated with folk art and photos from their frequent travels to Peru. Larry is also a musician. He shows us his basement music studio and his extensive music collection, which is, of course, heavy on the Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan side of things.

We arrive at their home in the early evening, and are greeted with glasses of homemade Lemon Slushy Booze Yum-Yums, a name I just made up to describe the frozen deliciousness Ellie has concocted in her blender. I think her idea is to dispel whatever awkwardness we all might have from meeting each other for the first time by getting us hammered. It works. Within half an hour we are all jabbering away like old, drunk friends. And though this is not a cookbook, I feel the urge to share this recipe right here, right now.

Once the slushy is frozen, you scrape layers off, like you would an Italian ice, mound into a glass, then drizzle with enough bourbon to get the overall consistency of a Slurpee, or to taste, depending on how much you like your bourbon. It will cleanse the RV blues right out of your soul.

Meghan:
It is so wonderful that Stephie has reached out to her father’s best friend for a place for us to stay while we’re in DC, and even more wonderful that this group of perfect strangers were willing to host us. We could really use a little home-style TLC after the days of the RV and motels. When we pull up to a pretty house surrounded by trees with an outdoor deck and a pool, I am suddenly a little embarrassed at the state of all of us: we are absolutely filthy. We walk into the house and introduce ourselves to everyone. Stephie’s father is adorable; he’s an older man with gray hair, a beard, a small build, glasses, a warm smile, and a genuine laugh. I like him pretty much from the second I meet him. We walk into a kitchen where our new hosts, Larry and Ellie, greet us in their open kitchen with glass doors facing out to the deck and pool.

Their house is really cute, decorated with lots of art from their trips to Peru, various guitars, sitars, and mandolins. The house feels very comfortable and lived in. Almost as soon as we walk in, Ellie hands me a glass filled with a slushy drink of some kind.

“What’s in it?” I ask.

“Bourbon, you’ll love it,” she answers, and love it I do. From now on if anyone ever comes to visit me, I am going to hand them this slushy drink as soon as they walk in the door. It tastes like fruit punch and goes down easy.

Ellie and Larry both work for the United States government but seem more like artists than Washington bureaucrats. Larry has a long gray pony tail that he has cut off only once when he was younger, and hated his short hair so much that he grew the pony tail right back. Ellie has long, braided dirty-blond hair, and wears a flowing skirt over sandals. They are both relaxed, friendly, and curious about our adventure. Stephie, Michael, Larry, Ellie, Cousin John, Larry and Ellie’s son Ian, Charlie, and I sit around their kitchen talking about everything from God and atheism to President Obama, our preferred choices in exercise classes, and love and
relationships. I feel almost instantly comfortable around them and am relieved the evening feels relaxed and easy. That’s not always the case, as we have learned, when I first meet new people.

 

Michael:
The conversation centers on American drug policy, a subject upon which Charlie Grob is highly conversant. He’s the chief child psychologist at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. More interestingly, he’s also a renowned research scientist in the field of hallucinogens and MDMA (Ecstasy). He studies the use of hallucinogenic drugs and MDMA as therapeutic treatments for, among other things, PTSD. We had lunch once before in California, in which we discussed my own experiences with hallucinogenic drugs (which were few and far between, but
fantastic
). To my disappointment, he did not slip me any drugs after our meal.

I am going to paraphrase Dr. Grob’s considered opinion of American drug policy: he thinks it’s fucked. Incidentally, so do I. So does everybody in the room and, I suspect, everybody in the country. Yet we persist in our absurd “war on drugs” as if it’s doing anything productive other than making a bunch of Mexican drug lords obscenely wealthy and a lot of other people dead.