The oddly vascular, sinewy and mostly turgid man dead-lifted iron on his back deck in Beverly Hills.
The dumbbells landing with a loud clank on the imported, grey slate decking his third wife, the T.V. star, had flown in from Italy.
A luxury her long running sitcom had afforded her.
She was no longer just telling jokes, now she was the butt of them. She recoiled at the whispers of scandal that seemed to follow her down Wilshire Boulevard every time she left the house.
Sure, she knew he was a creep but he was a Kennedy - couldn’t they just understand that goddammit!
As if half of those L.A. ladies wouldn’t marry him as well she thought, as the latest rumors of his infidelity lit up her cell phone.
Bobby, as his few friends and estranged family called him, even put in an oversized walk-in freezer for the vast collection of roadkill he collected and kept on hand to feed his pet peregrine falcons.
‘Got it from the same purveyor that supplies Spago!’ he announced proudly to the few that visited the house and then usually only once.
He was the kind of man that even Hannibal Lecter would call weird.
An oddballs’ oddball.
As he worked out under the morning sun, the now seventy year-old man looked like a much younger gym rat’s body had been attached to a face familiar to all.
Bobby thought he looked damn good, at least that’s what filtered through his own addled mind.
He listened to his buddy Joe Rogan’s podcast on his ear buds as the sweat glistened and dripped from his ruddy pecks under the jacaranda trees.
A warm California breeze tickled his damp and mildewy skin.
It had a gravely look to it, to match his voice. Like a serpent that had recently molted.
A man who was clearly built for the East Coast both by lineage and pallor which resembled the shingles on a Cape Cod cottage.
A place where he had terrorized many an au pair in his decades of being the bad boy of Hyannis.
He came from a family that was good at keeping secrets.
They had to be with that brood - an odd mix of princes and predators and as much a blue chip brand as any family could be, producing some of the best and the worst of our collective heroes and citizens.
Now perhaps, its weirdest son and ironically, the namesake of one of its best and brightest, was throwing his support behind Donald Trump.
An act that put him in as clear opposition to his family’s legacy as a man could be.
He didn’t care - he was done with all the fake progressivism of his past.
Darien could no longer hold him - too many ghosts were piling up.
Some even said he had a hand in his second wife’s tragic death. Her own family blamed him and many of his neighbors would say they were not wrong.
Bobby himself knew he was lucky to get away with all the shit he had pulled over the years.
He had always been the one most whispered about at the family clambakes back on the compound - the one the babysitters avoided.
That he was an asshole was no secret to anyone who had met the man.
RFK Jr. was practically royalty in this country but every dynasty has a way of hiding its own rust.
When one is placed on a pedestal it pays to not look too closely.
There was no way to hide his peccadilloes anymore though - not with the Hollywood wife and his thirst for the spotlight.
In the last few years alone he had thrown his lot in with fascists and fools and was a ‘thought leader’ in the anti-vax movement at a time when such asinine idiocy had a lethal effect.
He wasn’t just an embarrassment, he was dangerous.
RFK Jr. not only didn’t seem to have an ounce of regret or humility, he seemed to revel in the attention.
He had always been a bit of a bad seed, as long as anyone could remember; from his cocaine-dealing days at Harvard to dosing the family bird with LSD at Hickory Hill.
But most of his misdeeds and misogyny had been contained until now.
At least his uncle Jack had kept his affairs mostly hidden from the public - RFK Jr. kept a fucking scorecard.
A man seemingly unworthy of the family name but benefitting from overwhelming faith that had been placed in it by a nation still grateful for so much of its leadership.
As well as respectful of its tragic history; that’s why it hurt so much to bear witness to what he was doing.
He was essentially pissing on hallowed ground and it stung those who still cared.
A spoiler and a freak show who set out to build a Scamelot on the ashes of democracy by helping its greatest-ever threat, Donald J. Trump.
Every revelation of dead baby bears in Central Park and whale’s heads tied to the roof of cars just lowered the bar well into the depths of bizarre.
Bobby’s recent affair with Olivia Nuzzi, a hack journalist who went out of her way to attack President Biden in the once proud pages of New York Magazine, may prove to be his most stomach-churning revelation so far.
‘Man, this guy sounds like a total scumbag, I love it!’ purred Donald Trump into his cellphone as an armada of SUVs ironically crossed the RFK Bridge heading to a MAGA rally on Long Island.
Donald loved gossip and this was tailor-made to titillate - if he was being honest, it left him more than a little aroused.
‘Besides, she kinda looks like Vanky, who can blame him!’ he said into the phone as an aide in the front seat threw up in her mouth a little bit.
A body’s natural reflex for those working around the man, even the staff that was on his side were still human beings. An organism had a way of rejecting toxins.
‘Can’t blame the man for having good taste!’ he scream-whispered into the phone before hanging up.
He looked out the window as his forty-seven vehicle motorcade sped through his native Queens.
‘Look at it! Blacks! Hispanics! Muslims!! When I was a kid this was ALL white!’ he said to no one in particular.
It was a familiar rap and the same one he gave to Mark Burnett on a helicopter when he was shooting ‘B-roll’ for ‘The Apprentice’.
Except back then he used racist slurs, most often the ’N-word’.
That toxic slur he used to describe the Black contestants - that Burnett made sure would never ever see the light of day.
Trump was always shockingly open about his racism and he understood, perhaps more than most, that would be the heart of his appeal.
Especially in politics.
At least it was what attracted the folks that were lining up in Uniondale tonight to hear him speak at Nassau Coliseum.
He gave them permission to be their worst selves and that was always a draw.
In fact, they loved him for it.
He knew that adding RFK Jr. to his rogues’ gallery would only broaden his appeal to the weirdos sitting in their mothers’ basements somewhere.
Posting in right-wing chat rooms that the world was aligned against them and their mediocre white lives before heading out to their evening shifts at GameStop.
As Trump’s police escort pulled into the Coliseum, a noxious cloud of Axe Body Spray seemed to hover above the crowd.
One could also detect the chicken parm and Red Bull on the breath of the assembled hordes.
It was as if every male in the ti-state area that regularly used the word ‘Gabagool’ at a deli counter had assembled on Long Island to listen to their hero.
If you weren’t a Yankees, Islanders or Rangers fan - or worse, a liberal - you were in the wrong place right now.
Tonight was a party for the faithful.
It seemed that every other t-shirt had a screaming eagle, American flag or a reference to the N.Y.P.D. or N.Y.F.D. on it.
Some of them had all four.
Iconography was key to controlling these folks - and the men who manipulated them damn well knew it.
None more so than the drug-addled, orange freak in the oversized, blue Brioni suit - who had traveled in from a penthouse on Fifth Avenue with his name on the front of the building to tell a bunch of folks that could never afford even a fraction of his lifestyle to believe he was their only shot at redemption.
The greatest lie he had ever told in a lifetime of lying.
He had perfected the pitch and none of the assembled even thought to question it.
Their self-reinforcing culture forbade it.
These were the diehards.
‘Bro’ was both a noun and verb tonight.
They spoke of ‘illegals’ while sharing quotes from Goodfellas and speaking fondly of the ‘good old days’.
They thought Trump was ‘one of them’ and showed pics to each other on their cell phones of a grinning Donald posing ‘thumbs up’ with uniformed cops, in between pulls on their vape pens.
‘He gets it!’ was the common refrain.
It was a sad spectacle of specious dogma.
A recalcitrant rodeo led by a man who already had thirty-four criminal convictions under his XXL belt - with several trials to still to come.
Guys who prided themselves about ‘being on the job’ were lining up to watch a lifelong scam artist.
A man who had only taken from their city, their state, their country - while they spent their lives taking the 7am from Ronkonkoma into the city.
Faces stuck between the yellowed pages of the NY Post, coming home late at night to grill up some sausage and peppers and sit down in front of Fox News to be fed more lies; delivered by some blow-dried buffoon in a T.V. studio on Sixth Avenue who has a second home in Quogue and eats foie gras.
They gladly handed over their attention and their money to men who lived in places they themselves could never afford.
The were being played but fancied themselves the players.
Tonight ‘live - in person’ was their neon orange godhead promising to take them back to the ‘good old days’.
He was offering them the illusion of power - and sometimes that was enough.
Especially if you lacked the awareness to see the big picture.
Trump’s voice was like a carnival barker echoing around a canyon of despair.
They would clap and boo on cue but never question.
Conservative media asked little of its audience other than blind obsequiousness and to parrot their talking points.
MAGA makes dumb guys feel smart - that’s its power.
Half of the guys at his Nassau County rally tonight will be in Suffolk County tomorrow.
Working on rich folks’ second homes on the East End of Long Island.
They’re employees in essence of the real beneficiaries of Trump’s policies.
But culturally they are the GOP’s foot soldiers.
That’s enough for them because they feel a part of something bigger even if they are merely pawns in a game they will never be allowed to win.
They settle for guns and getting to drive giant pickup trucks with extra-loud mufflers, festooned with NRA bumper stickers and ‘thin blue line’ flags.
They have no clue how powerless they truly are and how their kids will suffer - and they will lose it all if they give away what Trump is asking them to place, once again, in his tiny, manicured hands.
They would do well to look around the Hamptons, to drive past the beaches they will never be rich enough to afford to park at - permits going only to home owners - not the folks who mow the lawns, clean the gutters and pump the septic tanks out after a summer of parties.
To gaze out at the mansions on Further Lane, the deep greens of the Maidstone Club, a golf course on which they will never even be allowed to set foot, let alone become a member.
They are fighting so those folks don’t have to pay their fair share.
They will keep driving past West Hampton, back to where THEY belong in their wealthier keepers’ eyes.
Until its time to return, with their hammers and their rakes.
A patsy, a fool, a spoke in the wheel that will leave a tread mark on their backs.
They have much more in common with those they are taught to demonize.
They are, in fact, their true brothers and sisters - and if they came together they would have real power.
The immigrant is not who they should fear.
They should be afraid of those spending billions to make sure they never find out who is really pulling the strings and holding them down.
Do they think Don Jr. worried about the price of gas or a gallon of milk at his home in Bridgehampton?
He wants MAGA to believe that is all that matters, while he asks them to send more money to his old man who flies around the country in his private 757 and doesn’t pay taxes.
They laugh at mooks like the ones at his rally tonight.
The Trumps are con men and they are the marks.
Because they know the racism feels good to them.
It’s their secret sauce.
It’s the smoke that hides their sleight of hand.
When Trump speaks of the ‘good old days’ it reminds them of the way their racist uncles would talk around the kitchen table after a shift in the city.
After their own grandparents fled the Bronx and Brooklyn and settled for a ranch house in the suburbs where everyone looked the same.
They felt like the good guys, but that was a lie.
Sure they went to church and looked out for their own but their lifestyles didn’t evolve; they got left behind by a thousand slick talkers, like Ronnie Reagan.
They became servants to a class they will never again belong to and they’re still serving as its butlers. Its proletariat porters.
They protected the rich but the rich never protected them. They sent their own kids to college while others, less fortunate, were sent to fight in jungles. They paid lip service to patriotism while getting richer on the labor and the blood of folks they only sought to use and deceive.
And then they took it ALL away when they told them to look over there, while MAGA picked their pockets one last time.
They marched like gladiators into the arena, not seeing they were signing up to be one more thing Donald Trump owned and discarded.
Tonight they were paisans, they were Spartacus and they were marching into their final battle.
They just couldn’t see who the real lions were.
They would soon enough - but by then it would be too late.
I remember back in the '70s when they said the Nassau Coliseum was sinking. But nobody dreamed it could ever sink THIS low! :0