Service to America Tour Notebook. Day One.

Meridian, Mississippi. April 1, 2008.

The Straight Talk Express rolled into Meridian at 1pm on Sunday the 30th. Day One of the week long ‘Service to America’ tour’s stated intention ‘to show the voters the Real McCain’ began in the McCain ancestral home where the presumptive Republican nominee found himself a young base commander or some such thing or another some time after the whole Hanoi thing. But, I knew this would be a special trip for me (and not just because I had been released by customs a scant twelve hours earlier). No, there would be speeches extolling the life of an ‘American Hero,’ touching slices of life, inspiring struggles, and all the other shit that every presidential candidate since the advent of television has assaulted the poor and battered populace with for the ever swelling waistline of months and now years that we call ‘election season.’ I’ll get to all that at some point. I was here for Sela Ward.

Ever since Burt Reynold’s tabbed my dear Sela to play a small part in The Man Who Loved Women (and especially after the five greatest years of my life where every week I rode the tidal wave of Terry Reed’s alcoholism with the rest of America on Sisters), I pined to touch the hand of Jessica Savitch, I wept at the promise of kissing the thigh of Helen Kimble, I swooned to spoon Lily Manning! And here she was, a native of Meridian, a graduate of the University of Alabama, a real honest to shiksa-goodness homecoming queen, hosting a fundraiser for my man McCain!

My initial essay into the party ran smack into an angry Roberta McCain relegated to invitation check-list duty. She smacked at my payot with her clipboard and sent me scurrying into the garden. Twenty minutes later I had located the service entrance and was once again swatted away, this time by an oversized slotted spoon draped in grease and collared greens. Dejected, I wandered Ms. Ward's gazebo and started reciting lines from her 2002 memoir, Homesick: A Memoir. Two hours passed in quiet reflection, until a lilting alto mused between the hickory and tupelo's. Could it be? Could she have come to me?

We talked for hours. She had read my play, Twice Chai, And Then You Die, and had wanted, desperately, she said to play the part of Chave, the embittered wife of a corrupt rabbi who led a double life as a homemaker by day and assassin by night. Sela said she felt Chave's struggle, felt it deeply. Her knowledge of Yiddish literature and Jewish history was astonishing and stirred a primordial passion that I could not contain. As the sun rose, I kissed her, at first gently and then with increasing intensity. She welcomed my lips guiding my hands to her hands and leading me back to her home.

We wended our way, lip-locked, through the remains of the party, up the winding staircase, and into her bedroom. And there, on a bed of white satin and lace we made love. Hours passed. I knew I was missing McCain's speech, but I did not care. Sela and I were entwined not just physically, but spiritually, listening to the soft beating of each other's hearts. I was in love.