guys you need to hold my hand as you imagine them. imagine you're the white house deputy chief of staff, some say you're the third most powerful person in the country, you're brilliant. you get stuck in unionville, then in dearborne, and then in a hotel lobby having just been kicked out of your room by your assistant--you have, indeed, been a jackass today. you're sitting at a bar with the exhausted, despondent energy of someone who isn't sure how their feet have the power to keep going, let alone their brain. the only saving grace is that your best friend, the man you divide and conquer side by side to, is just as tired, and just as unsure. you order a beer. you listen to a man, a talker, the kind of guy you might have rolled your eyes at 8 hours ago, but you listen to him say "it should be easier," and you feel the stirring of something inside your chest, the something that means the pleasure you get at serving the president. you push your shoulders back, you let that feeling carry you through walking home from the bus stop, through crashing for a few hours, through reading the paper, and something just clicks. you have to find him--you know that he's the only one who can do this with you, the only one who can build cathedrals and stop bombs with his courage and his words, and you need him, you search for him, you find him, and your breath is coming frantic and you're not entirely sure why, but you calm it and you tell him the plan.
and you don't believe it, the excitement, the power that courses through your veins, and it's a cocktail of sleep deprivation and adrenaline, the kind that comes from begging him to listen to you, and you don't believe it but he passes you a newspaper and you have to believe it. you have to believe you got to this place with him. and what is there left to do but what you do, you say "good," and mean "i love you" and mean that somewhere between pleasure and president, there's him.
