Threeway, ch. 1: Fillmore Pipp's Boner, pt. 1 of 4

In which we meet the Democratic president, Fillmore Pipp. "Threeway" continues in serial form with a link to buy the book at the bottom of the post. Enjoy. Tell your friends.

THREEWAY: A Short Novel for a Long Season

by

STEVEN LUBLINER

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, dialogue, and descriptions are the author’s creations and are not to be taken as true. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. All incidents depicting, suggesting, or referring to public figures or other historical persons are also fictionalized and are not to be taken as true.
Copyright © 2016 Steven S. Lubliner
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1530971292
ISBN-13: 978-1530971299

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
Prologue: The Personal Is Political i
1 Fillmore Pipp’s Boner 1
2 Big Mel Kriegman 16
3 Hi and Bye, Connie and Herb. 32
4 THE BROWN BAGGERS!! 40
5 Mittelpunkt 43
6 Mandy 51
7 Mandy In. Mandy Out. Mandy In. 66
8 Authenticity 75
9 Momentum 79
10 Brother Paul 88
11 Inevitability 98
12 Win. Lose. Repeat 108
Epilogue 112

Chapter 1: Fillmore Pipp’s Boner (part 1 of 4)

Mona Rules, owner of the PR firm that bore her name, was the agency’s resident genius and its pretty face. Mona Rules was her real name. Suggesting both a stern nanny and a dominatrix, it was her calling card. Whether the prospective client liked one or the other or both, the message was clear. “I’ll take care of you. I’ll take care of you.”

Mona had mastered the modern media tools: web sites, Facebook pages, simulated Tweets. This stuff was old school; every firm did it. As she would tell clients in her flawless, fake southern accent, and as her strategically tasteless 8,000 square foot mansions in Santa Monica, Greenwich, and Georgetown confirmed, you needed more.

Simple notoriety didn’t cut it. Who remembered? Who cared? To keep the public’s attention, you had to disgrace yourself. You needed, honey, Senator, Reverend: a sex tape. Professionally produced, strategically leaked, and, ultimately, profitably marketed. It was a question of perspective, she would say with Zen-like confidence: if you simulate a great fall, people assume you fell from a great height. Those Monty Python peasants were wrong. That man covered in shit? He must be the king.

Her first tapes burnished the bona fides of celebrity wannabees and reality TV washouts. Sometimes there’d be a “next big thing” whose bright star had quickly faded. The shoots were simple. The girls could bring their boyfriend, but for a premium, she’d match them up with an obscure rapper for shock value. With a tripod and a series of awkward cuts, the crew could make it look like the couple shot it themselves, or they could go hand held to make it look like a buddy or girlfriend was running the camera, waiting to jump in.

When the shoot was done and edited, tantalizing clips would be leaked to the major media. The major media couldn’t air the clips, but they could air the denials or, depending on the slant of the campaign, the acknowledgment and the crushing disappointment at the betrayal. An “exclusive” low-rent web site would then be created to market the whole tape. After that, it would be more widely distributed. By the end of the cycle, everyone was more famous, and everyone had made money, especially Mona.

The major televangelists were her clients since the first one had used her services, seen his ratings skyrocket, and tripled his donations. These men understood Mona’s theory of the great fall. They knew that in the battle for souls, nothing succeeds like failure. They knew that we hang on fine words of high aspiration delivered with charm and cruelty by flawed sinners whose bad example we just can’t help but emulate.

Then, the Republican Party bought in. The Puritanically sex-positive Democrats knew a sex tape was political death. Wallowing and repenting was a simple two-step, but they always stumbled over it. The Republicans kept her hopping as they parlayed disgrace after disgrace into electoral triumphs built on platforms of high seriousness. Mona’s great achievement to date: simulating old grainy footage for a well-known female politician. In confronting the allegations, this moral beacon had bought herself several extra weeks of lurid speculation by going off script and declaring, “That is not my sex tape.” Mona had to acknowledge genius when she was in its presence. With this portfolio, Mona was only mildly surprised when her assistant told her that Ira Stengel, the president’s Chief of Staff was on the line.

“The president has a sex tape,” he said without prefatory formalities. Has a sex tape. Mona reminded herself never to be surprised about anything, especially if it involved sex. Beyond that, the revelation did not affect her. Where some might have yelled, “Now, that’s my boy,” or wondered about the judgment of the man with his finger on the button, Mona worried that she now had competition.

“Then you don’t need me,” she told Stengel.

“Yes, we do.” His limo was out front in half an hour.

Stengel served President Fillmore Pipp, but maybe not for long. The public’s taste for the incumbent was waning. It seemed like only yesterday that America toasted Pipp’s election as the dawn of a new dawn of dawns, as it had toasted Pipp’s Republican predecessor and the Democrat who had come before. Pipp would stand for reelection soon. Like those predecessors at this stage, he had accomplished some things and failed to accomplish others, but his more effervescent champagne promises had long ago gone flat. The party was over. Looking around the room, one saw little worth drinking, just half-empty bottles that lazy guests had used as an ashtray and here and there as a urinal. It was sad because Fillmore Pipp had been destined to be president. He was marked to be a leader of men because he was unfit for anything else.

The young Pipp was a man of science everywhere but in the laboratory. The adult Pipp applied himself in all things but applications. He was funneled into law school where his limitations were hidden as he garnered prize after prize for policy, jurisprudence, and theory. Throughout, he drank deep from the well of his parents’ distant largesse. This ongoing free ride meant he did not have to get the highest paying job in the most glamorous sweat shop, but since nobody said not to, he got it, he took it, and it was all downhill from there.

The practice of law. Nobody told him practice is related to the word practical. On the top floor of a prestigious address, where he should have floated loftily, his head in the clouds, Pipp found himself trapped in the sulfurous tar of reality. He had to learn about businesses and industries, nuts and bolts realities that would steer each case to talismanic points of deflating compromise. It was baffling. It was sad. Nobody said policy unless they were talking about insurance.

Pipp never got within sniffing distance of partnership. He moved from firm to firm every year or two, humbly accepting the lateral demotions and the higher salaries that came with them. Eventually, he was demoted to “Special Counsel,” then “Of Counsel.” He bought a new car each time. Soon, there was nowhere to go but industry, Assistant General Counsel in one company, Associate General Counsel in another, then General Counsel in a promising start-up. Pipp hit bottom when a well-hyped acquisition made him redundant. He went home lucratively, determined to spend time with his wife and kids.

“Where do I start?” Pipp asked her that first Monday.

Buy Threeway.

Read the review on Kirkus Reviews.

Read an article about the author.

Review Threeway on Goodreads.

Buy A Child's Christmas in Queens.