Open Sesame

Open Sesame
by David Benjamin

WASHINGTON — I thought it would be tough getting onto the White House grounds until I asked for help from the sneakiest political insider in D.C., an old friend from the Nixon/Agnew days who goes by the name of Kafka.

Kafka said, “Hey, no sweat. We’ll just waltz in through Devin’s door.”

“Devin?” I asked.”You don’t mean Devin Nunes, the disgraced chairman of the House Intelligence Committee?”

“That’s the one,” said Kafka. “He’s a good soldier. And give him credit. He might’ve spilled his guts about everything else, but he didn’t tell anybody about the door.”

National security prevents me from saying exactly where “Devin’s door” is, but there it was. “Voila,” said Kafka. “Hidden in plain sight.”

Just beyond this ill-secured wrought-iron gate, I saw the Rose Garden and the stately columns of the White House. The only evident sentries were two clean-cut kids, dressed like Mormon missionaries, who looked no older than 16.

“Hi, guys!” said the girl effervescently. “I’m Brenda!”

“And I’m Skippy,” said her young male counterpart.

“Wait a minute,” I said, as Kafka tried to hustle me through the gate. “Where are the White House guards? Where’s the Secret Service?”

“Oh, well, we’re, like, honorary Secret Service,” said Brenda, flushing proudly.

“Honorary?” I said. “But you look like you’re still in high school.”

Skippy took this one. “We are! We’re both honor students at The Blood of the Lamb Christian Academy in Methane, Iowa. We won the essay contest.”

“Essay contest?”

“Yes, the National Defenders of The President Essay Contest. It was sponsored by the Young Republicans of the Upper Midwest,” said Brenda. “And Skippy and me, golly, we had to enter because we’re, like, officers in the Eichmann Faction of the Young Republicans at school.”

“Yeah, we’re, like, role models,” said Skippy.

“ Wait! Eichmann?” I said. “That rings a bell.

“You really don’t want to go there, pal,” whispered Kafka, trying to nudge me along.

“You mean,” I said, “Adolf Eichmann?”

“Yeah, that’s the one,” said Skippy. “He was, like, the President or something in the Forties or Fifties, when everybody was, like, ‘I like Eich.’ Y’know?”

“Wait a minute, I think you kids have your Ikes mixed — ”

“Anyway,” Brenda said. “The essay topic, well, we loved it, ‘cause we’re, like, huuuuge Trump fans, y’know? Bigly!”

“Well, what did you write about?”

“The title was, ‘How the Sun Rises Metaphorically Out of Donald Trump’s Ass,’” said Skippy. “You see, a lot of the contestants didn’t get the ‘metaphor’ part. You’d be surprised how many of our friends really think the sun — ”

“But we weren’t, like, fooled,” boasted Brenda. “I mean, really. We might be just high-school students, but we weren’t actually, like, born yesterday.”

“I see,” I said. “So, you’re well-informed?”

“Oh, yes! We, like, read a lot. Y’know?”

I couldn’t resist a little quiz. I said, “So, how many people attended the Trump inauguration?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” said Skippy. “Seven million. The crowd stretched all the way to Maryland.”

“And Barack Obama was born…”

“In the village of Hugga-Bugga, in the Marxist jungles of darkest Kenya,” piped up Brenda, knowledgeably. “His mother was a race traitor from Kansas and his dad was a silverback lowland gorilla named Coco. I bet you don’t even know what the name ‘Barack Obama’ means in African.”

“In African? No, can’t say as I do,” I admitted.

“It means ‘Melvin of the Apes,’” said Skippy. “If more people only knew this, the American people wouldn’t have suffered through, like, eight years of, like, living hell, y’know?”

As Skippy was making this extraordinary assertion, I saw, approaching, two burly Secret Service agents decked out in black suits and Ray-Bans. I said, “Uh oh, the bulls.” Brenda and Skippy were unfazed.

They raised their hands, halting the agents. Brenda said, “Back off, boys. We got this.”

“Don’t worry, boys,” added Skippy. “We’ll get the signatures.”

“Signatures?” I asked, as the two agents meekly withdrew.

Kafka, obviously embarrassed, said, “Well, the only condition, before you can enter the White House grounds nowadays, is you gotta sign a Loyalty Oath.”

“A Loyalty Oath? Like the red scare in the Fifties, with Tailgunner Joe and the HUAC idiots?”

“Different times, different idiots,” said Kafka. “That was loyalty to America. This one’s more, well, personal.”

“Personal?”

Skippy, glowing with loyalty, held out a clipboard. Already signed by many others, the oath read, “I hereby swear absolute, heartfelt fealty, even unto death by horrible, horrible torture, to Donald Trump, smartest guy and greatest dealmaker ever in the world who got, like, thousands of electoral votes in history’s biggest landslide — ever — and never, ever, not once, laid a finger on a woman who wasn’t asking for it, passionately attracted to his bod and already starting to take off her clothes. So there. Sign below.”

“I have to sign this?”

“If you want to get in,” said Skippy.

“Don’t worry,” said Kafka. “Everybody signs. Look, here’s that Egyptian guy, Sisi. And Xi Jinping. Look here, even Ivanka has to sign in, every day.”

“Yeah!” said Brenda. “And she’s, like, a relative (but, like, Jewish, y’know?).”

“See here,” said Kafka, running his finger along the humiliating column of signatures. “Even Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the — ”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “isn’t that him? Paul Ryan? Over there?”

It was. Hastily, I consigned my soul to Trump and led Kafka by the sleeve, to Paul Ryan, who was rubbing a chamois cloth diligently over the finish of the presidential limousine.

“Mr. Speaker, my God!” I said. “What are you doing?”

Ryan rolled his eyes and spoke to Kafka. “Who is this guy? And what?” he said. “He was taking Moron Lessons from Brenda and Skippy?”

Before Kafka could answer, Ryan said to me. “What’s it look like I’m doing, dumbass?”

“Well, it looks like you’re detailing Trump’s ride.”

“Bingo,” said Ryan. “If I do a good job, then I’m a loyal do-bee. And I get a ten-minute private audience with His Imperial Tremendousness.”

Kafka whispered, “Hey, these days? It’s all about love, man.”

I shook my head. “Well, waxing the car,” I said. “I guess that’s better than having to kiss his sunrise ass, huh?”

Both Kafka and Ryan turned to stare at me, piteously.

“You mean?” I asked.

“You actually want to meet the guy, right?” said Kafka. “In the Oval Office?”

The Speaker of the House handed me a tube of Chapstick and a Kleenex.

“Pucker up, dude.”