The Greatest Man In The World felt a touch of indigestion just before going to bed, probably because the five pizza toppings he’d eaten for supper had included pepperoni and jalapeno peppers. So he took four Dulcolax pills washed down with prune juice, and sat on the golden throne in the bathroom of his suite at Mar al Lago until his bowels emptied explosively. He flushed the toilet three times to make sure the mess was gone, washed his hands thoroughly with anti-microbial soap, brushed his teeth with Colgate until they gleamed, rinsed out his mouth with Listerine, and went into the master bedroom. He put on his white silk pajamas and his red satin robe, and climbed into his king-sized bed. Melania insisted on a suite of her own, which had pissed him off at first. But it turned out to be a relief not having to put up with her constant bitching and complaining. He’d thought about divorcing her, but his new lawyer, Sidney Powell, told him that Melania would take him for everything he had, because she knew about the hookers he still went to from time to time. Completely unfair! If she’d been better in bed, he wouldn’t have needed the hookers. But she was a prude, so it was her fault. A real man has certain needs, after all, especially when he’s the Chief Executive of the the United States and the Champion of Freedom.
He turned on OAN, but the news was mostly about Sleepy Joe Biden, China, and the infrastructure bill, whatever the hell that was. His name was not mentioned even once.
He switched the TV off angrily and opened the registered letter his butler had left on the side table. It was a subpoena from the House Select Committee that was investigating his role in the January 6th insurrection. Frothing with rage, he opened his Twitter account and typed, “FAKE NEWS FROM THE LYING LIBERALS! PEACEFUL PATRIOTIC AMERICANS EXERCISING THEIR CIVIL RIGHTS! BIDEN COMMITTED TREASON WHEN HE MADE A DEAL WITH THE CHINKS! IMPEACH HIM AND LOCK HIM UP!” He hit SEND, and there was a stabbing pain in his head. He passed out.
When he came to, he was in a dimly lit room with a rock floor and walls, a sort of cave. He smelled incense, the stuff Melania’s Pope-kissers burned in their churches. There was a three-legged iron brazier next to him, and tendrils of smoke curled up from it, vanishing into the murk over his head. On the other side of it, a gaunt man with a shaved head sat cross-legged on the stone floor. He wore a dark yellow robe that left his sinewy right arm bare. He was beating a small drum slowly and chanting something, a prayer, maybe. Trump suddenly realized his own robe and his pajamas were gone. He was stark naked, but for some reason he didn’t feel cold.
“Where am I?” he yelled at the man. “Where are my clothes? Who the fuck are you?”
The man stopped drumming and looked at him. He was some kind of Asiatic, a Jap or a Chink.
“The Emperor has no clothes because he’s dead.” He tapped his drum: DOP. “You’re in the Bardo.” DOP, DA- DOP. “Think of me as the gate-keeper.” DOP, DA-DOP DOP, DOP. He had a slight accent – not exactly British, but similarly clipped and crisp.
“Don’t tell me what to think!” Trump snapped. “I have a very good mind!”
“You have the mind of a fog-bound child and the attention span of a fruit fly. Ivana used to call you a prokleti bedak.’”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“’Fucking moron.’ She told you, but you forgot. As I said, your attention span is almost non-existent.” He put aside his drum and drumstick, and stood. “I’m not a Jap and I’m not a Chink. I’m the Toddling Time-Travelling Tulku from Tibet. Stand up, Donny.”
“Don’t you dare call me Donny! Nobody calls me Donny. And you can’t tell me what to do!”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m still the President of the United States! The election was rigged! Everybody says so!”
“You’re still deluded, certainly. Interesting,” the Tulku said. “The last truly mad demagogue to arrive at my gate was Adolf Hitler. You’re a bit like him, but fortunately you never gained absolute power. Hitler’s Brownshirts captured and burned the Reichstag, but your attempt to start an insurrection fizzled out.”
“There wasn’t any insurrection! That’s fake news spread by Nancy Antoinette and the lying liberal media! Some good patriotic Americans just went to visit the Capitol, which is their Constitutional right, because it’s the People’s House! There was love in the air! There was a love-fest between the Capitol Police and the people that walked down to the Capitol!”
“And Covid 19 went away all by itself. It was like a miracle.”
Trump jumped to his feet, furious. “I never said Covid was a miracle! It was a disease, but I caught it myself, and it wasn’t any worse than a cold! And I got over it so fast you wouldn’t believe it!”
“It was a great deal worse than a cold, and you know it. You got over it because you were given experimental medications that weren’t available to the general public.”
“That’s only fair! I am the most important man in the world!”
The Tulku smiled. “That’s not what Xi Jinping thinks.”
“It doesn’t matter what fucking Pingpong thinks. I am what I am.”
“You ain’t any more, Popeye,” said the Tulku. “You’re nonexistent.”
“What are you talking about? I’m right here!”
The Tulku reached out his hand and passed it through Trump’s cheek.
“See? Insubstantial, like all your promises and projects. You’re a mere shadow of your former self. I have to decide whether or not you will have a future self, and if so, what kind. So let’s take a look at your past.”
The room disappeared, and Trump saw a fat, red-faced baby lying in a crib, squalling loudly. He blinked, and the baby is a little boy snatching a teddy bear from his younger brother Robert. Blink, and he’s at Kew-Forest School, wearing a jacket and tie and knocking another boy down. Blink, and he’s sixteen, at the New York Military Academy, wearing a cadet’s uniform with sergeant’s stripes on the sleeves, throwing a plebe against the wall. Blink, he’s twenty, on a Fordham tennis court, scrambling to return an opponent’s serve, and, when he fails, loudly calling it out.
The scenes speed up: his father’s podiatrist friend Larry Braunstein shakes his hand after falsely diagnosing him with bone spurs in order to keep him out of the Vietnam War.
The building projects begin: first, modest housing complexes in Queens for middle-class whites only, then fancier ones for wealthier people, and finally the magnificent Trump Tower, with the staircase he came down, like a king descending from his palace, to kick off his presidential run. The construction sequences are intermingled with scenes set in Rao’s Harlem restaurant, where he has convivial business lunches with members of the Gambino family, and, for kickbacks, allows them to supervise the erection of his buildings, because they pledge to use the cheapest materials and workers from a union they control.
Then comes the campaign, with the fantastic, amazing, incredible rallies, huge crowds of real Americans wearing MAGA hats and cheering for him, while true patriots like Ted Nugent and Kenny Rogers play their greatest hits.
Now he’s on the phone with Putin, making a fantastic deal to build a Trump hotel in Moscow, and Putin promising to help him get elected.
Inauguration Day, with the biggest crowd in the history of America, even though the fake-news liberal stations make it look smaller.
The floor of the House of Representatives: December 18th, 2019: Nancy Pelosi announces the vote to impeach him for abuse of power.
January 13th, 2021: the office of Manhattan D.A. Cyrus Vance, Jr., who proclaims his intent to prosecute the Trump Organization for tax evasion.
And he’s back in the Bardo.
“None of that happened!” he said. “I mean, O.K., some of it happened – I was the best President in the history of America, but the lying media made me look bad. And so what if I was impeached? I was acquitted! Sure, I’ve met Putin, but just to talk about my hotel in Moscow. But I don’t know any Wop mobsters, and never have. And I’ve always paid my taxes.”
The Tulku stared at him and let out a long whistle. “Wow, you’re an even bigger liar than Hitler. And you’re crazier. If Vance had brought you to trial, you would have been found not guilty by reason of insanity and sent to the cuckoo’s nest. Better that than the slammer – as an open racist, the Bloods would have killed you the moment you were left unguarded. Or the Aryan Nations might saved you from getting murdered – you’re their kind of guy – but they would have gang-raped you because you’re old and fat and helpless. You said yourself, real men have certain needs. And as you remember from the circle-jerks at dear old New York Military, popping your rocks with your buddies doesn’t necessarily mean you’re gay. So, O.K., you’re straight, but you’re a rat with women.”
“I’m phenomenal to women! Women are crazy about me! They think I’m wonderful!”
“Then why did Stormy Daniels say that sex with you was the worst ninety seconds in her life? Why did Ivana call you a fucking moron? Why have nineteen women accused you of sexual misconduct? And why won’t Melania sleep with you?”
“Those bitches don’t deserve me!”
“They aren’t all bitches, Donny. And none of them deserved to be treated with contempt. Your behavior with women was appalling.”
“It wasn’t my fault if they didn’t understand me!”
“Donny.”
“What?”
“Shut up. Be quiet. Stifle yourself. You can talk after I have finished, but right now, put a sock in it.”
Trump opened his mouth, but couldn’t make a sound.
“Much better.” The Tulku took a deep breath and intoned “Aummmmmmmmm,” holding the vocable for longer than seemed humanly possible. The air in the cave brightened, and the dark stone walls and ceiling shimmered, turned as translucent as glass, and vanished altogether. The Donald and the Tulku were standing on the eighteenth tee of the Mar-al-Lago golf course. The Tulku still wore his robe, but Trump was in a white polo shirt, beige trousers, and MAGA hat. He was holding a driver, and there was a ball teed up at his feet.
“Hit the ball, Donny,” said the Tulku.
Still unable to speak, Trump took a mighty swing and sliced the ball into a sand trap to the right of the green. He returned the driver to the bag in the back of his electric golf cart, got in the seat, and drove to the edge of the sand trap. He looked around, but the Tulku had vanished. There was nobody else watching, and he picked up his ball and dropped it on the green.
Instantly he was back in the cave, naked again, and sitting on the floor next to the Tulku.
“Well, Donny, that shoots the puppy,” the Tulku said. “Golf is contemplative, not competitive. So anyone who cheats at it is cheating himself. You were a life-long solipsist, and when you moved that ball from the trap to the green, you denied your own selfhood. You killed yourself long before your body died. Any last words?”
“This is just a bad dream!” Trump squalled. “It doesn’t mean anything!”
“Neither did your life,” said the Tulku. “Remember it, and try to do better next time around the wheel.” Darkness fell.
In the small apartment on 125th Street, Sarah Roundtree’s labor was taking too long. It was her first child, and Angela, the doula, did everything she could to help, massaging her back, assisting her to her feet for a moment to unkink her muscles, giving her sips of water and pieces of ice to suck on, and encouraging her to push and yell. Her husband Charles sat in a chair next to the bed, wiping the sweat off her forehead, stroking her hair, and telling her how much he loved her. The day passed into night, and finally, at dawn, the baby slid out of her birth canal into the doula’s hands. It was a girl, and she coughed up some mucus and began to bawl lustily.
“A great big beautiful doll,” said Angela, wrapping her in a towel and placing her in Sarah’s arms. The baby found Sarah’s left nipple and began to suck loudly. “Nothing wrong with her appetite, that’s for sure,” the doula remarked with a laugh. “This black girl’s gonna grow up strong and proud. Have you thought of a name?”
“Donna,” said Charles.
“After my mother,” Adele said.
“Wonderful,” said Angela. Donna let Adele’s nipple slip out of her mouth and looked up at the doula. Her face was still flushed and wrinkled, and she looked like a little old man who was angry about something.
“Fuck,” she said distinctly.