I laughed as her face lit up. "No, I am a dirty middle aged man. Big difference."
"Forget it! You are on bed rest, remember? Besides, the doctors told me that you couldn't move around much, and that was definitely out!"
I wagged my index finger at her. "Now that is a lie, and I can prove it!"
"How?"
"Because if you had actually talked about that sort of thing with a doctor, your face would have turned so red they would have admitted you to the hospital, too!"
Marilyn turned beet red at that, and sputtered, "You think you're so smart!"
I just lounged back on the bed, and waggled my eyebrows at her. My wife simply rolled her eyes, but then smiled and sat down on the bed. "Stormy, get lost!" She pushed the dog off the bed, and Stormy wandered out of the room. "If you start bleeding and pop your stitches, I am going to let you tell Doctor Tubb!" She began to undo my pants.
"I'll just tell him how insatiable and needy and demanding you were."
"Now who's the liar!" Marilyn pulled my pants down, and then tugged my briefs off, and began to stroke me fully erect. "Are you sure about this?"
"I am now! How about a blowjob, and let's see how that goes."
She snorted in derision at me, but then smiled and bent over. I wrapped my hands in Marilyn's hair as she sucked me off, and she did a pretty nice job. I kept her in place, and when my hips started bucking upwards into her mouth, I decided I wanted to finish off this way. I just was whispering for her to keep going, and she began sucking harder, until I exploded.
Afterwards, I sighed happily. Marilyn smirked and asked, is that what you had in mind?"
"Honey, you know that a positive mental attitude is important to the recovery of the patient!"
"You are still full of shit!"Marilyn tossed me my pants and I pulled them on and took a nap. For the next few days, she had to be the one on top, but I do admit, my mental attitude stayed positive.
Chapter 156: Swift Boats
Monday morning I declared myself healed enough to go back to work. I was still sore, and still had some bandages over the sutures, but I was healing a whole lot faster than if I had gotten the big zipper. Monday morning I fronted the Daily Press Briefing. This proved an exercise in silliness.
For one thing, various assorted conspiracy theorists and websites were reporting that I was now dead, after suffering an aneurysm, and that the CIA had managed to clone me and were controlling me. At the same time, several of the cable channels played the movie Dave, where Kevin Kline played both a ruthless and corrupt President and his doppelganger, a mild-mannered owner of a temp agency who moonlighted doing impersonations for local ad agencies and TV stations and was hired by the Chief of Staff to fill in for the President when he suffered a stroke. Hilarity and drama ensue, and Dave Kovic, the impersonator, ends up making out with Sigourney Weaver, which isn't all that bad a deal when you think about it.
I simply went out to the podium, thanked everybody for their concern and prayers, and repeated Mark Twain's line about 'the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.' I also told them that my name really was Carl Buckman, and not Dave Kovic, and that I hadn't been cloned, both of which got some more laughs. There were a few questions about my general health, but I had already had several doctors report my overall health was excellent, and that aside from my bum knee I was in excellent heath for a man of my age. It would be a couple of weeks before I would be able to begin my workouts again, and another couple of weeks after that before I would be able to get back to martial arts. As for my work schedule, I would take it a little easy for a couple of days, but it was expected I would be back in my regular schedule by the end of the week.
Meanwhile, while I spent my time recovering, most of the Democrats running for President were gone by the end of February, when it became painfully obvious that they had even less of a chance with the Democratic Party than I did! In theory, this is the time when the populace learns about the candidates and how they react to the stress and strain of a high pressure situation. In reality, you watch this and you just know there has to be a better way! In a very short time it was down to a few front runners. John Kerry was the favorite, with the most money and the most backers. John Edwards was a strong second, with good looks, a winning smile, and a wife who was bravely battling cancer but standing by his side. For the life of me, I couldn't remember whether he was going to have zipper problems in 2004 or 2008 and totally self-destruct in the process. Joe Lieberman was going nowhere, but was hanging in there for the moment. Howard Dean was another strong contender, with some interesting ideas and a huge youth turnout and Internet presence.
The Internet was actually one of our strong points. For years I had been pushing high tech and computerization on the Republican Party. We had massive databases of names of donors, and the ability to dun them for money relentlessly. What had changed was that the Internet was becoming more and more powerful. Some of the old fogies in the party couldn't understand it (hell, I couldn't half the time, and I was the guy supposed to understand this stuff!) and thought it was a passing fad or trend. I set up a parallel fundraising group in Austin, composed of a bunch of young and tech savvy Republicans, some still in college, and with some funding through ARI and Marty Adrianopolis. They had a simple job – figure out how to use the Internet and the still-in-the-dream-stage idea of social networking, to get people to commit time and money. Marty and I, a couple of old RPI grads, were going to show the other oldsters what the future looked like, and Austin was going to be our showcase.
We had already seen John Kerry, John Edwards, and Howard Dean split the vote in the Iowa Caucuses in January, with them finishing a close 1, 2, and 3. They went 1, 3, and 2 in New Hampshire later that month. February was a mish-mash, with everybody but those three dropping out over the month, and each of them winning a few and losing a few. The strongest was Kerry, and Edwards and Dean were in a much lower tie for second place.
After Super Tuesday, March 2, it was all over except for the convention. John Kerry had managed to win all but one of those primaries, and John Edwards managed to win Georgia. Howard Dean didn't win anything. Both Dean and Edwards withdrew the next day, though Edwards was making all sorts of noises about landing a spot on the ticket as the Veep.
There were still a number of primaries to finish the spring with, but with almost everybody else dropped out, John Kerry only needed to spend enough money to keep his name out front and win the last few states. He hoarded his cash, and what money he spent was actually spent on ads attacking me, not any other Democrats. He was beginning his general election campaign early, though not with a lot of spending. That would come later.
That doesn't always work, though. Presidential calculus has a strange mathematical basis, as I well knew. Kerry was a Northeastern liberal, with a patrician air about him. Edwards brought in a Southerner with strong blue collar and union support, and a scrappy personal history. Lieberman, however, was so conservative that half the time he voted with the Republicans, and was one of the strongest Dems on national security and the military. His downside? He was Jewish, and Orthodox Jewish, to boot. Was the nation ready for that? Dean was also young and scrappy, and quite liberal. Both Dean and Lieberman were from the Northeast, which did not do well for spreading the vote around. In the White House, and at campaign headquarters (located in an office building next door to the RNC on First Street in D.C.), it made for an amusing guessing game. I didn't think we would learn until the convention.