When the water pours Into the bilge faster than you can Bail
it out, You know your ship will sink, and you will have to decide whether to
sink or swim.
For almost two years, I have bailed water, even when at
times it reached my lower lip, just managing to bail enough to keep from
drowning, our owner waiting
For that tipping point when he believes I pose more trouble
keeping me than to let me go.
All he needs from me is an excuse, which I have tried my
best not to provide him with.
At times, I’ve suspected the reason for his wrath was her,
maybe even believing he might bring her back once I am gone, restoring her to
her proper place, and rid her of her fear of my being there.
Only she’s never comingback, no matter how much he or other offer her or might think otherwise.
Still, I need to keep bailing to keep from flipping over and
finding myself once more lost at sea.
Carmelo, one of the bad guys from the Hometown election more
than a decade ago, was convicted of taking bribes, but in his more recent gig in
the Brick City.
This makes one more from that old crew that has come to justice
– the New Jersey Housewife guy, Poopy the developer, Carmelo and, of course, the
U.S. Senator – all of whom had association with our poet friend back in the
day.
Oddly, little has fundamentally changed since she was on the
scene. The Virgin Mayor has been replaced by the Congressman she attempted to
bring down, with the Small Man still operating as chief henchman. The Neighboring
Mayor, a notorious womanizer, is attempting once again to take over the county,
using a former governor to run for mayor of the county seat. The old county
machine is still trying to stop him, including the current mayor of the county
seat, who is running for governor.
This mayor once was aligned with the neighboring mayor but they’ve
had a falling out, which means if the county seat mayor gets elected governor, state
aid to the neighboring mayor will dry up. So, there is deep hostility behind
the scenes and promises of vengeance.
The Neighboring Mayor’s statements at the indictment of the
U.S. Senator, made him a still powerful political enemy. The U.S. Senator has
promised to publish the pictures of all of the women the neighboring mayor has
slept with over the years.
Some of the people who fed our poet dirt during her time at
our office – including the private investigator who was once the neighboring
mayor’s best friend – are back on the scene, trying to undermine his attempt to
control the county.
The few indictments orchestrated by the Neighboring Mayor (with
the help of a somewhat corrupt state attorney general) to go after the county
seat mayor have failed. But blood letting has only started.
More people will go down before all this is over.
I saw the virgin mayor earlier this week when he was talking
to one of the patients at his pain clinic, a block away from my house. He had
plotted to run again, but was persuaded not to, which is just as well.
The world has moved on without him.
Joey D, who was the real brains behind the Virgin Mayor,
jumped ship back in 2014 when he became campaign manager for a mayoral
candidate in the town I cover, where he managed to bring in massive development
and changed the nature of the down before being forced out in a plot to unseat
the mayor he helped get elected in 2014.
Nothing changes. And I suppose our poet ,who moved on from
all of these when she moved out of the county back in 2016 or 2017, is far
better off where she is, since in this game, only the most vicious sharks thrive,
and only the most cunning survive, and since she was never as vicious as the
people who she associated with and never so cunning as those to whom she was
briefly attached, she would not have survived.
Carmelo’s doom is significant because of his ties to our
office a decade ago, and how much trouble I got into when I discovered that the
Hometown mayor had plotted against him, and the owners of our paper told me to
write the story. They panicked when the then-Hometown mayor and her cohorts threatened
to sue us.
I beg a favor from a powerful criminal lawyer, who offered
to defend us pro-bono.
But we were doing Carmelo’s dirty work, making me wonder if
Carmelo had done more for our male owner than just give us political ads.
Poopy was the other problem. I knew he was up to no good,
but his close association with our male owner, attempted to shut me down.
Later, after his conviction for voter fraud, the Small Man informed me that I
was the only person who had it right as far as Poopy.
Where RR is all these years later, I only learned recently.
Apparently, he brokered his experience into becoming a public safety director
in some south Jersey town, a risky proposition since he is notoriously untrustworthy,
but no longer a problem in my neck of the woods.
We’re still in the middle of this moveable political feast,
although I play far less a role in any of it now that I have given up my column.
I’m still working, but trying to keep under cover – as usual.
M conversation with our former temporary boss only reminded
me of a similar event last summer when I had dinner with him, and he tried to
feed me bullshit about his taking a job on the R campaign.
This was a tidbit he hoped I would feed to GA (the hometown
blogger) and he could use to prove (to whomever) that I was GA’s primary source
inside our office (when I was not).
But during that conversation, he mentioned our poet and plans
(ahead of the still-looming criminal charges against the Virgin Mayor) to get
her Civil Service protection, thus keeping her job even if the mayor got
convicted.
This, of course, was more than a little ironic since she authored
a story (in December 2011) in which the Virgin Mayor, the Governor, the Neighboring
Mayor and the Hometown Mayor, all agreed that Civil Service distinctions ought
to be done away with.
Her story was largely about the pay out for unpaid sick
days, and yet, it suggested that Civil Service was largely a burden on tax
payers.
All this is moot these days since it rumors are accurate,
she may no longer be employed by the Virgin Mayor, even though he largely won
his case.
If our former temporary boss knew anything about any of this
during our conversations in my car in front of his house the other day, he made
no mention of it, and again, he may simply be ignorant of what is transpiring
behind the scenes.
The fact that GA (our blogger) keeps harping on the poet
most likely infuriates him, although he may no longer believe I’m her source.
During these conversations, I don’t bring up her name. If
she comes into the conversation, he has to introduce it, and when he does, it
is often in passing and related to some other aspect of his life.
He apparently has asked her to read the manuscript to his
new book. As male writer whose central character is a woman, he says he needs
to get a woman’s perspective as to how accurate it is.
This may be simply a way of keeping in touch with her, kind
of reversal of roles from when he played mentor to her as a cub. Now, she’s the
mentor.
I can’t imagine what advice she might give him, but I’m
sure, he’ll lap it up.
The sadness in all this is the fact that she has already
moved on from him for the most part – although she did briefly try to recruit
him last summer into using the cancer cure she claims allowed her to overcome
the disease.
I wish he knew more about it all, what is actually going on
in her life that she feels the need to abandon her place of comfort and plunge
back into the uncertain universe where nothing is taken for granted.
If rumors are true and she’s gone from her job or going, the
next question is: where does she go from here?
