My Trump Card (V2:1)

Observance of and applause for the indictment of 45 presents the perfect occasion to rework and retell an old story.  Versions of this story were told in conversation long before it was written down.  It has appeared in at least two versions on Facebook.  As a matter of fact, I told a version of this story a decade before the premiere of “The Apprentice.” Thirty years ago, no one would have ever imagined Donald Trump as President.  Still, this story was good for a laugh in a conversation even then.  The fun of telling it increases as his saga continues.  

My distaste for all things “Trump” began thirty-five years ago. Long before he made his debut as a reality tv show host, I remember thinking what a pretentious, ostentatious jerk this guy was.  While everything I knew about Donald Trump was taken from tabloid headlines and tv shows, the things I continue to despise in him were clear even then.  When I was young, I felt a need to stand against entitlement, privilege, elitism, and braggadocio.  I could think of no one who embodied all those characteristics more fully than Donald Trump. Automatically I disliked him.  That dislike has grown over the years.   

Through one very strange degree of separation, I no longer viewed Trump with distaste; I began to truly despise him. 

Among the many odd jobs I have had over the years was a brief stint doing singing telegrams.  I was all of twenty years old and lived upstairs from a little shop that specialized in balloon bouquets.  I started out just writing silly little poems to include on the cards that were sent along with the balloons.  One day I was asked to deliver the bouquet and recite my little poem for the recipient.  Soon enough I found myself being sent out as a gorilla in a diaper, or maybe a valentine cherub.  Once I was even sent to a bachelorette party as a fake pizza delivery boy who suddenly became a stripper!  It was never a great source of income, but the fun quotient was enough to make up for that. 

The woman who ran the shop was a character. I didn’t know what it meant back then, but I would guess now that she was probably some mafioso’s goomar; a mistress stowed away in a little Upstate New York hamlet out of the sight of a suspecting wife.  Linda was always overdressed.  Designer shoes and bags were her “thing.”  She sported super- coiffed bleach blond hair, stacked and teased to gravity defying heights.  Her face was buried somewhere beneath layers of fine cosmetics, which she seemed to apply and touch up at any given moment.  Without fail, she announced the names of the designers she was wearing, from the shoes to the scarves.  I learned designer names I had never heard nearly every time I saw her. 

Though I never met the man who financed her jet set lifestyle, I heard many stories.  Alternating from complaints of how he was neglecting her, to bragging about the incredible new car he had given her, I heard it all, in her whiny, nasal Jersey accent.  Something about this lady fascinated me. I had never known anyone quite like her. 

I never figured out exactly how that shop ever turned a profit.  Again, looking back decades later, I realize it was probably never intended to do so in the first place.  This entire situation bore all the marks of being some kind of scam or money laundering front.  I could never tell when or if she was even intending to be open.  One day I was watching her load a huge array of helium balloons into a car.  She went for the keys to unlock it and the entire thing floated away until it was caught in the overhead power lines. She laughed and said “well, whattayagonna do?”  She didn’t blink twice before we headed back into the shop to inflate another bunch of balloons to deliver. 

Linda was the first person I ever knew to have a boob job.  I will never forget how she presented herself after it was done.  She had been gone for a couple of weeks, and when she came back, she wore the lowest cut silk blouse I had ever seen.  I learned two new things that day.  First, I learned who Norma Kamali was.  (She was the designer who had made that blouse.  I later started seeing her name as the costumer for rock stars.)  I also learned the meaning of the word “decolletage.”  Linda schooled me that day, telling me that “cleavage” was a word for buxom old dames, and that to describe her newly augmented bosom required a word with more gravitas.  She did everything short of removing her bra to display the new goods.  I laughed when I told her that it was perfect that she had named her little shop “Balloons, Etc.” because these new boobs were definitely the ETCETERA! 

That was when the conversation took a turn.  Suddenly Linda was like an envious teenager, going on about how “maybe now he will pay more attention, or if he doesn’t, someone else will!”  I was made privy to the reasons behind this sudden increase in her profile.  The man who took care of her had thrown her aside in favor of some dumb young thing who he gifted with a boob job.  She said she went and had her own done, to be bigger and better than the new girl.  Apparently, that did not have the intended result, and she was left in the cold.  She told me she was not about to give up and went into a tirade about how she was going to “show him.” 

I was standing behind the sales counter at the shop, listening as Linda raved.  I spied a couple of shiny orange gumballs on the desk, and absently picked one up and popped it into my mouth.  As I chomped down, I was assaulted by the sudden taste of bitter ink.  Instinctively I spit the nasty orange solution onto the carpet and looked up to see Linda holding a toy gun.  She had been blabbering about how she was going to take this paintball gun and splatter the new girl’s pretty white car with orange paint.  We cracked up because I had mistaken the paintball ammo for a gumball and had now destroyed the brand-new carpet in the shop.   I felt terrible about making the stain, but Linda laughed it off, explaining that it wasn’t her money that bought the carpet, and it wouldn’t be hers that fixed it either.   

A week later I wandered into the shop, curious about what kind of work I might be able to pick up.  Linda was packing things away.  She said she was going to be gone for a few weeks.  I asked her what was up.  She looked a little hurried, a little less put together than usual, but she was still in perfect form when she turned to me with her perfect veneers and announced that she was going husband hunting. 

I did not know it, but once again I was about to learn a few new words.  Linda was wearing a 24-carat gold necklace with a scripted pendant that said “GOLD DIGGER” in diamond encrusted letters.  She looked like a cougar on the prowl.  She explained to me that for her, being single was not about meeting the right man, it was about not meeting the right man’s financial portfolio.  I always remember this because it was the first time I had ever heard of a financial portfolio.  Similarly, it was the first time I had ever seen the term “gold digger” used to refer to a woman after a man for his money.  I was more than a little shocked. 

Linda explained to me that she had been invited by Ivana Trump to join a cruise from New York City down to Atlantic city.  It was being hailed as some kind of black-tie yacht party that was sure to be full of all kinds of eligible bank accounts.  Laughing at her brashness, I said maybe she should rephrase that to “eligible bachelors.” Linda looked at me sharply and said that the “bachelor status” had no bearing. She was confident that she could find her way into a “lucrative situation that no wedding ring could get in the way of.”  These were her exact words, which I have never forgotten.  I left the shop that day with a bad taste in my mouth that had nothing to do with the paintball I had bitten by mistake. 

I was a little surprised when Linda came back a few weeks later.  She was not happy.  She was obviously shutting things down in the shop.  I asked her what had happened on her yacht trip.  She explained that after several days of cocaine and champagne with the Trumps and their high-powered friends, she had become exhausted with the effort it took to (and again I quote,) “meet the right wallet.”  She told me she had been cut off by the man who put her into this shop, and that he would be there in the next few days to clear her out.  Her plan, she explained, was to disappear before he came back and tried to take away her jewelry and car.  I believe she was literally tearing her hair out in rage and desperation when I left her alone in that shop.  It was the last time I ever saw her.  The next day she was gone.   

I was completely turned off by the picture of her phony social climbing.  I could not believe what an animal that lady became when her false sense of security and happiness was taken away.  Following that interaction, I have felt nothing but disdain and distaste for all things branded, endorsed by, or associated with the name Trump.  It means the apex of ugliness and pretense to me. 

Thirty-five years down the line, that feeling has only increased. I love the credence it gives these deeply rooted anti- Trump convictions. I did not jump on a political bandwagon. I was not swept up by a mob-rules mentality.  I’m not a new Trump hater.  I’ve had valid reasons to feel this way for thirty-five years.  I’ve never liked him.