Patrick

Patrick was an incontestably bright man. Sure, maybe not a Manhattan Project genius. But he was smart enough for his life and smart enough for his job. His brains had brought him easily to the peak of his ambition. He worked in some managerial capacity at a large firm’s headquarters for fifteen years, then worked five more as a quasi-executive. There really was no discontent anywhere with the quality of Patrick’s mind. He was smart enough which is smarter than most will ever be.

OK, maybe the idiots up the org chart weren’t so bright as he. Maybe he wasn’t making himself as clear as he should when advising them of approaching folly. It’s not that the company was rocketing downwards in a free-fall crash. It was simply getting by when it had the means and materials to get ahead. With more years of experience he would make himself clearer and earn a reputation for rightness in hindsight. With growing influence, Patrick would save his company the jostles that his wisdom was ample to avert. Besides, let’s not kid. Self-certainty is a universal trait, and the follies he saw were obscuring the ones of which others were aware. Why force himself too resolutely where his help could just as likely prove a hindrance? Patrick was content with where he was, and prepared to rest awhile in a state of occupational stasis.

At home he’d done a decent job. The kids were grown and out the door, both off enjoying college. He and his wife had kept a home, comfortably and wisely together. They were on friendly terms with their neighbors, active with their church, little leaders in local affairs. The finances were solid, the outlooks were good.

Patrick had reached that phase in a certain class of man’s life, where he realizes he’s done it too soon… accomplished as much as a man can hope for in the fullness of life – a successful career, beautiful adult children, a bountiful home… before even half the decades are necessarily through. This is a strange moment in a man’s life, and it is foolish to guess in advance how any given man might behave within the thick of it.

Patrick ended up in politics.

Now, I confess that this may sound nowhere near as sexy as a Corvette or half so funny as a toupee. But you could just as easily state that Patrick ended “up in politics.” You see, that’s where Patrick ceased to be. Right there, where you see him on the top of this year’s ticket. That Patrick… Patrick Green for President. He’s the one that’s gone.

Oh, now you think I’m crazy. You want to know how some “crazy” guy is going to explain his way from the mid-life crisis of your average suburbanite executive manager to the presence of a zombified corpse of that same man running for President in this year’s election.

What if I said that it involved a hunchbacked prophet sleeping in the back of a bar in Chinatown?

If I had a ghostwriter, I would sell it to Hollywood you cynical fuck!

Excuse me? What’s that? You want to know how it happened? You’re not fucking with me? Because if you’re just going to storm out of here the moment the telling gets strange like this last guy did, then I don’t want to bother at all. I want people to KNOW the truth, not to waste it on the ones with their fingers in their ears.