By Jon Doughboy
Chris Christie gifts Zelensky handwritten lyrics to Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life” as “inspiration” while inhaling cold borsht at a state dinner surrounded by dour looking-icon paintings of the geniuses of Slavic history framed in glitzy gold, then burrows inward and downward, like the history of 20th century literature, entering the maze-like intestines of memory, wading through layer after layer of performed selves—the attack dog attorney, the lobbyist, the Governor, the scandal-maker shutting down bridges to crush disobedient mayors and making unapologetic rogue picnic trips to shut-down beaches, Romney’s potential bestie, Trump’s plus-sized lapdog, a would-be sportscaster, and the current long-shot candidate campaigning to become the Republican Party’s presidential nominee—Christie is inhaling borsht but yearning in his heart of hearts, brain of brains, gut of guts, for a deep-fried ripper from Rutt’s Hutt, the snap of the crispy hot dog skin, the sun bouncing off dilapidated guardrails and the hot and cracked Clifton pavement, the cool yellow relish, the onion ring grease soaking through the paper plate, the ice bobbing in the red birch beer, and he travels under the Hudson of memory via the ARC Tunnel he aborted but which lives forever in his imagined accomplishments and he’s suddenly a giant, Gargantua astride the Garden State, and he’s bellowing across this armpit of America that he knows and loves and hates and lives and breathes, “It’s my life, it’s now or never,” and who does this Zelensky think he is? Has he ever even heard of Rutt’s? Has he ever swum naked across the Passaic? Has he ever crushed the throats of the Hudson County political bosses? Has he ever won an eating contest against the entire Genovese crime family? “My heart is like an open highway,” he’s singing and all his Jersey brethren join in, a chorus to their beloved big man, from their cars stuck in the Holland Tunnel and idling on the turnpike and speeding on the shoulder of the parkway, and a charm of goldfinches roosts in his cavernous nostrils and violets bloom out of his ears, “Better stand tall when they’re calling you out,” and it’s raining fat beefsteak tomatoes and assorted bagels, “Don’t bend, don’t break, baby, don’t back down,” and with his massive, life-giving hands, he is sowing liberty and prosperity from the Tri-State Rock to Cape May Point, the Delaware River rushing along to his right, the Atlantic eating into the sandy shores on his left, as he marches towards D.C., towards relevancy, the presidency, his destiny—“Mr. Christie, sir, about NATO, as I was saying, are you aware that a single F-16 could…” and the ripper is once again cold beet soup and Bon Jovi isn’t playing and Trenton is 4,700 miles away and Chris isn’t an attorney or a governor or a giant, he’s just a man sweating into his dark suit and getting pricked by his American flag lapel pin under the judgmental eyes of icons he doesn’t recognize, talking about military tactics he doesn’t understand, and singing softly to himself, “I just want to live while I’m alive.”
Jon Doughboy is New Jersey’s Poet Laureate currently completing a writing residency at the Walt Whitman Travel Plaza on the southbound side of the turnpike. Watch him relish his rippers @doughboywrites