Featuring: Michael Moore, Elijah Wood, Viggo Mortensen mentioned
Disclaimer: No profit is made nor offence intended. I have no idea whatsoever about the politics of Elijah Wood, though Messrs. Moore and Mortensen are pretty vocal about theirs. Just for fun! Originally written November 2004.
Rating: PG13
Viggo and Michael sit in a bar, drowning their sorrows. It's around 10.45 pm on November 3rd and all around them others are also nursing their beers and sighing. The TV above the bar is mute, though they cannot keep from glancing up at it and at the chimp who is waving his arms around, gathering in his bananas and probably masticating the English language to the delight of websites all across the world... Michael jots notes on a legal pad for a post he's going to make on his website; Viggo is doodling, abstract designs in thick, dark strokes of his biro upon a well-peeled beer mat. They have no words, they need none.
In Flint Michigan, Michael thinks there will be disbelief. He pauses, pen hovering over yellow paper, and he tries not to imagine Larry Kubiszewski and the hope in the old man's rheumy eyes, hope that must now be dashed into the faded linoleum of Larry's little kitchen. He thinks of the young, too, of their futures now sold down the Potomac. It is as he tries to think of something positive, something uplifting, something funny, that the seat opposite is pulled out with a quiet rasp on old tile.
"Hi, Elijah," he says, and looks up, smiling. He's lost ten pounds in two weeks and no one has noticed, though in truth, ten pounds is a drop in the proverbial ocean. Still...
"Hi, Michael," Elijah replies, also smiling. He acknowledges Viggo, raising a finely arched brow at the death and destruction portrayed on what was once an accessory belonging to Heckers Bar & Grille. "You vote, Elijah?" Michael asks, and hates himself for asking, yet he's asked it of everyone Elijah's age.
"Well, yeah," Elijah replies, fumbling in his jeans pocket for some cash. He makes the universal "want one?" sign to Viggo, who shakes his head and carries on drawing, though there is now probably less than 5 per cent white space left on the mat. Michael thinks of the ten pounds and wishes it were thirty pounds or fifty or a hundred. His weight never bothers him, only when he sees something as lithe and slender as that before him. He bets Elijah never has to diet or think twice about anything. Anything at all. He sticks a thumb up when Elijah asks him he'd like a beer, and he goes back to his composing.
At the bar, he hears Elijah talking to some young girl. He writes a couple of lines and thinks he ought to head off soon. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees that Viggo has discarded his work of art and is draining his glass. Michael shifts in his seat. A drunk from off the street shouts out Michael’s name and he waves, smiling, nodding at the inevitable jokes and commiserations. The doorman ensures the drunk reacquaints himself with the outside of the bar; Heckers Bar & Grille is a well-run establishment.
Elijah is back, setting down the beers on the table and carefully avoiding Viggo's mat. As he takes his chair, Michael wonders if cutting out cheesecake would be beneficial to his diet. But he likes cheesecake. Likes it very much. He wonders if Elijah likes cheesecake. He wonders if the world will ever be able to enjoy its cheesecake again, if the next four years will see the demise of cheesecake as he knows it. He wants cheesecake. He wants it. A lot.
He reads what he has written, strikes out a line here and there, substitutes the odd word, and changes the order of paragraphs. Will any of this make a shit of difference to Larry Kubiszewski? To anyone or anything?
On impulse, he tears out the sheet and crumples it up in his hand. "I wanted to read that!" Elijah protests, quietly. Michael shrugs.
"The world will not come to an end, Elijah," he says, picking up his beer. "It may seem that way but it won't."
Viggo rises, pulls on his jacket and runs an ink-stained hand through his hair. Michael admires the lean grace and tells himself that comparisons are odious. There are more important things afoot in the world, worse evils, than a little corpulent indulgence. "Night, my friends," Viggo bids them adieu, resting a heavy hand on Elijah's shoulder, and Michael wonders for a second whether that horse of his is tethered to a rail out there, out in the dark beyond the solid doorman, in an America where wrongs can be righted with honest fists and gold is the currency of choice for black-hatted villains, not oil. When Viggo has gone, Michael and Elijah sit and drink and cut disbelieving glances at the TV above the bar and then drink some more.
"I'm sorry, Michael," Elijah says, finally. Michael wonders where the young get off on shouldering the blame for every damned thing. The old make the mess, the young clean it up so they have a nice workspace to go ahead and make the same fucking messes all over again and so it goes and the world turns and he's lost ten pounds and he had made himself miserable to lose those ten pounds and if this is his reward, to see chimpboy on the TV, gurning in the spotlight, then what was the point? He needs cheesecake.
"It's okay, Elijah. It wasn't your fault - unless," and here he peers over his spectacles, "you personally went door-to-door in Middle America and insisted they all vote Bush. You didn't, did you? You didn't flash those beautiful eyes of yours at Mr. & Mrs. Average Joe and say 'Vote Bush! He's a great guy!' Did you, Elijah?"
Elijah laughs. Michael is rewinding in his head. Did he just tell Elijah he had beautiful eyes? Well, what if he did? It's true. Given the choice between cheesecake and Elijah’s eyes, well the eyes have it. And they have fewer calories. But the long-term effects would probably be more devastating.
"Have you ever thought of going into politics, Elijah?" he asks, softly.
Elijah blinks. "No, never. T-shirt design, yeah. Records, yeah. But politics? Never."
Michael pushes his baseball cap up higher on his head and breathes out.
"Thank Christ for that," he says.
They sit in companionable silence for a moment or two. Then Elijah leans a little closer, chin in one pale hand. "Have you lost weight, Michael?" he asks.
This is power, Moore. This is power in his smooth young hand, in the palm of his oh-so-soft hand. This is what all those goons in office think they have but don’t and never will.
"Yeah, Elijah. It's good of you - if not downright miraculous - to notice." Michael knows what he's going to write now. Back home, on his laptop, the words are going to come and it won't make things right but it will have to suffice.
"Fancy some cheesecake?" he asks. There is sudden, intrusive laughter. One of the bar staff has turned over the channel to a sitcom and the sound has abruptly been restored. The laminated menu of Heckers Bar & Grille’s culinary delights reveals a poor selection of cheesecake, though they apparently have a preponderance of ice cream. But ice cream is not cheesecake, nor does it have the healing properties that cheesecake possesses. It is a pale, cold pretender to the dessert throne.
"I have cheesecake at my place," Elijah says. "Though it seems a shame to break your diet when you're doing so well."
Michael snorts. "Lead on to the cheesecake, youth of America," he says, pulling on his jacket.
The End