Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2016 13:00:41 +0200 From: Jerry Jerry Subject: The Aristocractic Party Part 2 Hey, thanks for the feedback! I know some of you probably tried to email to the domain "hot.ee2", for some reason on the last part it was accidentally pushed up there. That 2 was actually part of the story, as in the date for Chapter 1 was "2 October 2016". :) The correct email for feedback (which remains ever welcome) is arin12@hot.ee Special thanks to Nifty as always for being willing to host my stories and all these valuable bits of literature that it would be so hard to publish in our current world. Please remember them whenever your finances allow, whether that's during tax return time, when receiving money for Christmas or other holidays, or even if it's just willing a small posthumous donation on your life insurance policy after you pass away. They fulfill an important need that no one else does, and financial contribution allows them to continue to be a voice for free expression. This chapter of my story is dedicated to a very special friend who is currently trying to find his way. We've spoken a lot about your struggles, but if someone told me that they could guarantee that only one idea I had to share would take root in your heart, then the idea I would choose to convey is this: loving yourself and accepting yourself are two different things. While it is my greatest hope that you will someday accept all your feelings and dreams as valid parts of who you are, it's not necessary for you to do so in order to love yourself. Just as you can love other people even when you disagree with them, the same holds true for loving yourself, even if you find parts of yourself unacceptable. There's so much about you that is good and noble and amazing and worthy of love. That's why I love you. And that's why I hope you'll learn to love you, too. Anyway, without further ado, on to the next chapter. :) ------------------------------------------------------------- 14 November 2016 Travelling is hard. Never let anybody tell you it isn't, because that just means that they haven't done it often enough to realize how hard it actually is. As I drove the last few miles to Huron, I tried to shift my mind away from reflecting on all the travelling I'd done over the last month, meeting with the different candidates and spending a couple of days getting to know them. I focused instead on the conversation my public relations assistant was having on the phone in my passenger seat, or at least her half of it. "No, no, it doesn't really change anything." A pause. "Well sure, obviously if the country isn't here in 2040, then that would be a change, but the official position of the Aristocratic Party is that we've had bad presidents before, and we have enough faith in our system of government to believe it can survive a few more until we get there to /really/ make it great again, rather than just put those empty words on a hat." Another pause, more brief, followed by the amazing sound of her laughter. Given how many times she'd repeated those words to reporters in the last twelve hours, I was surprised not only that she could still make the laugh sound genuine, but that I was legitimately not sure whether or not the laugh still WAS genuine. It spoke to how great she was at her job, and how relaxed I could be while having her around. "Yes, you can quote us on that, sure. If the President-Elect decides to have a twitter fit about it, that can only help our exposure, right?" She laughed again. "Of course, of course. You've got my number. Keep me on speed dial, we'll be here with a quote any time you need it. Definitely. Take care, have a great Thanksgiving." She pushed the button on her smart phone to hang up, and then started tapping around on it, I presumed to take notes on the call. "Was that the Salt Lake Tribune?" I asked curiously. I thought I remembered her saying that earlier, but it was all starting to blur together. She shook her head. "Goodness no, I hung up on them back in Rapid City. That was the Union Leader out of New Hampshire." "Oh." I grinned. "So how many does that make today?" "That was the seventeenth," she replied. "I told you." After the election, I'd had her campaign phone number, which was currently forwarding to her cell phone, re-routed to a third party answering service for two days because I expected a high volume of requests for comment. She'd bet me twenty dollars that the service would get less than ten calls, but that it would start getting heavy about a week later, and like a fool I took the bet rather than listen to her. "You were right, obviously," I admitted. "People were jumping at the big fish first and they're only seeking us out now because the main well is dry. I'm just glad they're talking to us at all; I was afraid that after the election we'd just be yesterday's news." "Maybe if Hillary Clinton had been elected, we would be," my assistant said with a snicker. "Honestly, from the perspective of a future for the party, Donald Trump's election was better for us. Her mistakes weren't going to be as newsworthy, or at least they'd have been covered up better. Whereas every gaffe he makes will just make people that much more eager for alternatives." I shook my head disdainfully. "I'm sure eager for an alternative." I gestured to the sign up ahead. "Oh look, we're here." I pulled off of Highway 14 and into the town proper. It was a quaint little place, but not as backward as a New Yorker might expect to find. Everything was just a bit more spread out, but it still had modern shops and conveniences. The McHale farm was outside of town, but the bed and breakfast I'd booked us in was within the town borders. It only took another minute of driving to find it; a large three story manor house with a surprisingly colonial feel to it. "Wow, what a nice place." She smiled. "Well, remember, this is deep red state territory, so don't be /too/ disdainful of the President-Elect. Not unless you want them to spit in your eggs." I rolled my eyes and shook my head, getting out of the car. At times I found my assistant to be more mother hen than P.R. manager. The foyer of the manor house was a nice large area with reception seating and a smooth oak desk in the middle. The receptionist turned out to be a boy, probably no older than thirteen, who I assumed was working for the family business. He was cute, so of course I smiled, and felt that little lift every boylover tends to feel when seeing a youth given some power and authority. Honestly, sometimes I thought that was the attraction for me, personally - empowering an oppressed people. I wondered, if that were the case, whether or not I would actually feel less of an attraction if children suddenly gained political equality and a relationship with them were no longer illegal. Not that that was likely to happen any time soon, of course, but the philosopher in me couldn't resist speculating on it. I approached the boy and put down my suitcase. He looked up from the ledger he was writing in and gave me a winning customer service smile. "Can I help you, sir?" I nodded, gesturing to my assistant. "Yes, indeed, my name is Stanford Campbell and this is Caroline Steegle, we have a reservation." The boy nodded. "Let me check." He pulled a modern tablet out from under the desk, which made me smile as I envisioned him pushing his parents to accept technology into their still-using-ledgers business model. "Ah yes, that's right. Two rooms." Something about the way he hit the word 'two' made me smile wider, as if he was somehow confirming to himself that Miss Steegle and I weren't in a relationship. Like that mattered to him. I smiled back, seeing no harm in throwing out a little clarification on the off-chance he was being flirtatious. "That's right, she's my assistant, we're here on a business trip." "Well duh," the kid said, putting the tablet back under the desk and moving to a rack to get our keys. "Nobody comes to Huron for the sights, and if you were visiting family you'd be staying with them." He handed her one key and myself the other, then went into a filing cabinet and produced a couple of forms that had been pre-filled out with our information. "Just need you to sign these and then I'll show you to your rooms." "Sounds great," I declared, signing my form after a cursory glance of it. My assistant was a little more thorough, probably trained to look for loopholes, but she ultimately signed it as well. The young man looked the forms over for a few moments before nodding that they were satisfactory and putting them inside the ledger book. "Okay, right this way Miss Steegle. Mister Campbell." I shook my head. "Oh no, my father was /Mister/ Campbell. Call me Ford, please." Both he and my assistant laughed. "Well then I'm Derek," the boy replied, leading us up the staircase and down the left hall. "There's continental breakfast in the lounge from six to eight, it's the room just off to the left from the desk. Bathroom's shared with the other three rooms on the floor and it's at the end of the hall, when you take a shower just put your used towels in the linen bin by the door. We bring by fresh sheets, towels and toiletries every morning between ten and noon, but you can always ask me or whoever's at the desk if you need some at any other time. Just make sure to put something on the knob if you'd rather we don't come in." He stopped in front of the second door on the right. "Miss Steegle, this is your room, and yours, Mis.. err, I mean Ford, yours is the next one on the right." I dug into my pocket and produced a ten dollar bill, presenting it to Derek. "Well thanks, young man. We'll be sure to let you know if we need anything." He took the money with a grin and shook his head. "I love you city types, always thinkin' you gotta tip for everything." I shrugged. "Just a way to thank you for good service," I replied. "Ain't even done anythin' yet," he remarked as he walked away, and even though this time I was sure from his inflection that he was just making an innocent comment, I couldn't help but be amused (and aroused) by imagining how flirtatious a comment like that /could/ have been, in the lines I'd been thinking along. I let a few lustful feelings play through my head as I watched him head to the staircase and saunter back down it, before turning to my room and unlocking it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The call from my stoner partner came in about an hour later, just as I was changing into my dress suit. "Hey, Josh." "Hey, Ford. How long ago did you get there?" He knew me well enough to know I wouldn't have answered if I was driving. "'Bout an hour ago," I replied. "I just unpacked and settled in for a bit, I'm about to go see Chris now." "Oooooh, hope you took care of yourself," my friend teased. "You know what they said in that movie about going out with a loaded gun." I snickered. "Yeah, I'm set. The desk clerk was about Chris' age and he was pretty cute. They make 'em nice in South Dakota." "What, you're getting action?" Josh asked snidely. I rolled my eyes. "No, you dumbass, I'm just saying I was... y'know, inspired. To 'take care of myself', as you put it." It was an amusing fantasy, imagining that Derek had knocked on the door to check on how I was settling in and then started asking me about life in more progressive places, confessing he'd met a few guests over the years who'd had some strange desires and he thought he recognized that look in me... I dunno, I probably could've taken that fantasy to a few places from there, but by the time I even imagined him with his shirt off I was already cumming onto the provided hotel wash towel and musing that he had probably been the last one to touch it before I soiled it. As I recalled the fantasy, my eyes darted back to the messy towel and I idly wondered if he'd be the one to put it in the laundry. "Hey, I lose you? Hello?" Josh asked into the phone. "Oh, sorry, mind wandered." Josh laughed. "Oh, he must've been /really/ dope, then," he teased. "I said did you make sure you get the curriculum set in place for Van Denessen's tutor?" Alex Van Denessen was the asian boy with the fortune that I had visited in the previous week. Since the press conference, I'd driven around the country spending a week with each candidate, doing various meet and greet activities, answering questions about how we envisioned the process going and just generally getting to know them. I was supposed to be tutoring one of them myself, and I was trying to keep an open mind about which one, but if I was honest with myself I'd scheduled Chris for last on the assumption that I'd want to get to know him the best. I didn't expect anything to come of it, but the odds were higher than zero, which after meeting the other two boys was definitely the case with them. One just wasn't my type and the other, Alex, was already in a relationship with a girl at his school and quite definitely obsessed with girls in general, in a "preteen hormones gone wild" way. Still, I was considering choosing him to tutor anyway because he would have a lot to teach /me/ about stocks and wealth in turn, and I wasn't exactly a millionaire. The stipend I could justify paying myself out of the party's donations made me not destitute, and it didn't hurt that most of my expenses for awhile would be on the party's dime (IE my meals and rental at the bed and breakfast), but I still wasn't even close to pulling six figures, let alone seven. I said as much to Josh. "How do you know I won't tutor him instead?" Josh just rolled his eyes. I couldn't see him rolling his eyes, but I was pretty sure I could /hear/ him rolling them as he paused on the phone. "Oh, please. If you don't fall in love with this kid then you'll definitely fall in love with the desk clerk." "Jerk," I retorted. "How's the corporate office treating you?" He had, for obvious reasons, insisted on setting up the party's headquarters in Colorado, and had moved there last month. I was sure that he probably had a house account at the local dispensary already. "Good life, man, good life. You need to come out here for awhile when you're done babysitting." "Hey," I objected. "You mean /presidential tutoring/, sir. It's like... babysitting a little king or something." "That doesn't make it more prestigious," my friend quipped. "Just means you have to kiss his ass even more. Although I suppose you like it that way." "You need to hurry up and get laid up there," I retorted. "The sooner you're gettin' some stoned chick pussy, the sooner you'll stop breaking my balls about /my/ fantasy life." "Yeah, yeah," he said. "Talk to you later." ------------------------------------------------------------------- The drive to the farm was only six minutes, so it wouldn't that bad, but just being in a car would've given me flashbacks to the twenty hour drive I'd just endured, so I decided to walk it instead. Besides, Caroline had need of the car to "nest" herself in the area, as she put it, learning where she could go to send a fax or where the best chinese food was (she seemed to have a thing about chinese, ate it almost every day. I was on board at first, but after four straight days of General Tso's Chicken I was burned out on it for awhile) and so on. So I spent half an hour enjoying a crisp November midday in a small town. One thing I would admit, the air smelled a lot fresher than New York air, at least when there wasn't an odor of cow dung from one of the farms. I'm sad to say it was that cow dung smell that greeted me as I strolled onto the McHale farm, looking around at the grounds. There was a large barn and two smaller houses, with a ranch gate in between and a big corn field in the back. It looked like there was a lot of activity in the corn field, so I headed out over that way and approached the first person I saw, a woman in her mid-thirties with striking red hair that identified herself as a likely relative of the boy I was there to see. "Excuse me, ma'am?" The woman lifted up to her full height; she had been bent over cutting corn stalks, and when she stood, she held the sickle she was using out in a way that made me momentarily fearful for my safety. "Yeah?" "Hi," I greeted, "I'm Stanford Campbell, from the Aristocratic Party? I'm here to see Chris." She stared dumbly at me for a moment, and I thought I was going to have to repeat myself, but then it seemed a light went on in her head. "Oh yeah, sure," she said, her voice laden with a thick Irish accent. "I'm his mother, Patricia. Y'can call me Patsy." "Pleasure to meet you, Patsy." I extended my hand but instead of shaking it, she put the hilt of her sickle in it, which I took reflexively, but I'm sure the confusion showed on my face. She pointed into the field. "He's harvesting on the west end, go all the way down and then make a right and head to the corner." She gestured to the sickle. "Be sure an' make yourself useful while you're talkin' to him, only got a couple of weeks to harvest before the weather turns." Seemingly uninterested in having any more to do with me, she headed to the barn, likely to get herself another sickle. "Ooooookay," I said to myself, following her instruction and setting out into a humble cornfield. To meet a boy whom I intended to make a future President of the United States.