Once upon a time when I was in college, I attended a party. Nothing of particular consequence about that; I attended a lot of parties back in those days.
Anyway, at this party there was this girl--isn't there always?--who approached me as I stood lounging against the counter of the overly cozy kitchen nook of this overstuffed apartment where the party was taking place. The Girl was friendly and certainly very pretty, so soon she and I started talking and complaining about the awful music that was blaring from the stereo system. What the hell was this dreary Seattle grunge? Who could dance to this shit?
After a time, The Girl and I took it upon ourselves to commandeer the stereo ourselves and play what we deemed to be some "happenin' tunes." I went to my car to grab a handful of CDs, and pretty soon, the joint began to rock. Girls collaborated to push back furniture for a makeshift dance floor, and unnaturally stoic guys taking sports paused in mid-sentence to view the swelling scene. The Girl and I were rocking as well, dancing together by the stereo, singing along with Kriss Kross to "Warm It Up" and other tunes of that ilk. She seemed to be into me, and I probably could have closed the deal ... but then her boyfriend had to spoil all of our fun by lurking about. I use the word "lurking" because that's what her boyfriend, a lumbering fool named Larry, tended to do. He lurked. Larry the Lurker--that was him.
Within seconds, Larry was hovering behind The Girl, arms entwined around her waist, grinding his hips in an awkward dance move, and looking me over with narrowed, rat-like eyes. He wasn't really dancing so much as pissing to stake his claim, gripping The Girl tightly about the waist, his arms like ropes binding her to his torso. He nestled his chin hard on her shoulder, tucking it to pull her upper back against his chest, and those rodent eyes rolled up at me as if to say, Do you see? Do you see who's in charge here? He held The Girl so tightly that could no longer sway with the music in either unless Larry was swaying too. You know how some guys can be "leeches" when it comes to their women? What I witnessed that evening was a textbook case of such a phenomenon.
Later that night, The Girl broke up with Larry. She did not go home with me as I had left the party, but a few nights later when I ran into her at a local bar, she slipped me her number and told me all about it.
Today, Larry is a dyed-in-the-wool "Republican." I put in quotation marks around that because he is one of those right-wing Limbaugh nut-jobs who gives real Republicans a bad name. The man is so far right he makes Ronald Reagan look like Spike Lee, makes Sarah Palin look like Janeane Garofalo. I'm something of a conservative myself, mostly because I find the blathering banter of many high-profile liberals to be absurd, but even I have my limits. I embrace basic conservative values, but I am nothing like Larry, who slouches about our community (did I mention we wound up in the same town?), organizing Tea Parties and posting angry comments on liberal blogs, bitching about taxes and abortion and gay marriage while proudly displaying a complete set of American flag pins tacked to his chest.
Scary guy, this Larry.
But you know, the more I think about it, the more I realize that Larry is pretty much representative of all right-wing extremists. No, not all conservatives are loud-mouthed bullies who grope woman and troll the Internet looking to pick a fight, but they do all have one thing in common--fear.
Of course, if Larry ever stumbled across this blog, he would vehemently deny he was afraid of anything, but I know better. Larry lives in real-time fear, consumed with that common mortal terror that all conservatives have: They believe they are mere inches from losing everything that they have. They think someone is out to get them, or--more specifically--get their "stuff." Oh, sure, Larry and his ilk couch it in the language of liberty, denouncing the "tyrants" on the other side of the political spectrum who "long to deprive us of our basic freedoms." But their fear of deprivation does not stop with liberty. I think these extremists are most afraid of having to part with everything they own. They honestly believe that their lives and their possessions are of such import that some mythical cadre of liberal cronies is even now plotting to rape, pillage, and plunder.
I imagine a guy like Larry fancies himself as Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, clawing and scratching his way through some lost temple, swinging across chasms, dodging poisonous darts, and outrunning a boulder the side of a truck, only to run smack dab into the left-wing version of Indy's French rival Belloq (think Barack Obama in a Panama hat), the embodiment of socialist evil as he extends who props himself on one knee, extends a quivery paw, and purrs: "Again, Dr. Jones, we see there is nothing you can acquire that I cannot take away!"
This explains a lot. This explains the rabid nature of the Tea Party, as well as the rabid nature of Larry the Lurker, that rough beast slouching towards his short-term girlfriend at a keg party two decades ago to clutch her to his bosom lest a rival take her away.
Get over yourself, Larry. I never wanted to steal her back then (even though I later did) because as lovely as she was, I had other offers. A healthy social life in college is not a zero-sum game when it comes to the opposite sex; as my grandpa used to say, there are plenty of fish in the sea. I believed that back then, just as I believe today that there is an abundance of opportunity and resources out there that we are neglecting, all in the name of holding on to what we got, refusing to share lest we wind up giving a kid a rope and he decides he wants our horse tied to it. That's an authentic fear, isn't it Tea Party Larry? That's the real source of your many sleepless nights.
So be afraid, man. Cling tightly to all that you've worked for. That's what you did with The Girl in college, wasn't it? You clung to her like a dying man clutching a reed. You may as well do that with everything else. Lay out your boundary markers, piss on the floor to mark your territory, and don't forget to write your name on the waistband of your underwear in indelible ink lest it get mixed with others in the wash. That's the way it's done, isn't it? That's how you keep what is yours.
Hey, we all saw how well that worked out for you in college.
