Towards the end of March, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham was spotted shuffling, hunchbacked and sweaty, along the daisy-dotted walkways of Magic Kingdom. Bubble-wand in hand, he sped up and down Space Mountain euphoric, ecstatic, imagining he were an intercontinental ballistic missile tearing up through the stratosphere and down towards hospitals and the tarp-tent-roofs of Red Cross aid stations abroad. Gorging himself at Chef Mickey's breakfast buffet could never suffice to satisfy his greatest, deepest desire — that is, to say, bloodlust. It's clear that Graham chose to take some time off and relax, to reward himself for once again reaching the consistent, sole apotheosis of his career: the mass murder of innocents. If you went on a ride at Disney World over spring break, there's a good chance you were seated next to a demoniac from South Carolina and were none the wiser. But what really goes on in a warmonger's mind when sandwiched between Minnie-Mouse-ear headbands? What secrets swim about, buried in the caverns of the cranium of a conservative Bush-era leftover, muted, drowned out by the whimsical singsong of six-hundred costumed puppets chanting "It's a Small World After All"? Here, a source with a source gives us the answers to that exact question.

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My first night as a free man, I stumbled into [REDACTED GAY BAR] near Capitol Hill with no intentions or expectations beyond the embarrassment and financial ruination of my former employers. I spoke to the bartender. Gave him the card. Five rums on the rocks. How many? Five. Five? Yes. All at once? Yes. Rough night, solo? No, pretty smooth, actually, thanks for asking. Tipped him four-hundred-and-eighty bucks. It wasn't my money. It was our money now.

Three-and-a-half rums on the rocks later I spotted an androgynous man, henceforth anonymized as Kay, in the corner with a bottle of wine. Angelic, he looked, in magenta-green lighting. Dreamlike. He was staring up at the bar TV. It was set to FOX News. Why the hell was it set to FOX News?

Four-and-a-half rums on the rocks later, I stumbled my way towards our androgyne's table. His gaze broke from the TV when he noticed, beckoning me with a smile and a hand waved at the chair next to him. Whatever it was he saw in the drunken oaf wobbling in his direction that prompted a smile, let alone his invitation, I couldn't tell. This embarrassing scene followed:

"Why the hell is a gay bar playing FOX News?", I, half a rum in my hand, still standing, slurring, shouting over Kali Uchis, asked.

"Well, why not?" Kay said. Shit. A Nazi twink. The worst. I plopped down beside him as he went back to staring at Lindsey Graham on the TV.

"You ever hear about how, like, how Grindr like, crashes at CPAC every year and, like, the RNC? Whenever that's, like, going on?" I managed to mumble.

"Mhm..!" he mused, nodding, still staring at Lindsey Graham.

"Isn't that crazy? You ever wonder like, why that is, like, almost as if, y'know, they're all like, closeted and shit?" I braced myself against the table for support.

"Mhm..!" he mused again.

"My name's Aren!"

"Mhm."

"My name's Aren."

"Oh, no, I heard you, hun," rolling his eyes.

"Oh- wha- hu- it's nice to meet- what's your, uh, um... fuck..."

"Name?"

"Uh- yeah. Sorry." I said as the room spun. Drinking on an empty stomach is a form of self-harm. He just chuckled under his breath and didn't respond. "I- I'm sorry. Are you a Republican?"

"Ha!", he laughed, still eyeing the TV.

"...Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Are you a Republican?" I pressed.

"Are you?" he pressed.

"I- no! Hell no!", I answered, pressed.

"Then I'm not either," he said. Here I got wise: Kay was a sex worker. He was tailoring his personality, his views, his self, to a client. I was supposedly his client that night. No good. I'm straight. I wasn't into all of that. Staring into my drink, I decided to put him onto my scheme.

"I got fired today. I have this... stupid fuckin', credit card I'm running up," I said. He impressed me by getting to the point.

"Listen, I gotta work, darling. If you're not here to, well, be here, with me, you gotta shake it babe." I had never been called babe by another man. Get called babe by an ethereal, elegant epicene like Kay and see what happens to you.

"I- I'll pay. Just to talk. I'm straight. No funny business. I just wanna talk." He gave me a questioning look, so I told him: "It's not my money. It never was. It's our money now." He laughed and, next thing I knew, we were headed to his Dupont Circle apartment.

"It's D.C., babe," Kay said, taking a seat on a leather sofa. Sure, it's D.C. Gay staffers, gay agents, gay politicians. It made sense.

"So, like, Grindr right, at like..." I stumbled and stammered, losing my train of thought.

"It crashes, yeah. You never know who's on the down-low down here," he said, smug. I wasn't on the down-low. He was implying I was on the down-low. But I'm telling you, I'm not on the down-low.

"Any politicians? Mitch McConnell?" I probed.

"Oh, you know it babe. You'd be surprised."

"Would I know any?" I took my cigarettes out now and offered him one. Kay accepted, happily, and eased up as I lit his for him. He seemed pleased by the gesture. Kay sat and thought as I sat and drank, and after about three or four drags, he spoke.

"Oh, of course you would. Anyone would." Kay paused for a moment and sipped from his glass. He looked at me for a while with pensive air, before ashing his cigarette and asking: "Remember the TV?"

"No shit," I muttered. "Lin-"

"-dsey Graham! Mhm, you got it darling!"

"No fucking way!"

"You don't believe me?"

"N- it- I knew it!"

"You and everyone else," Kay rolled his eyes.

"So- so, tell me about that."

"About what?"

"Alladat. The guy has fuckin', eighty-trillion, jillion skeletons in his closet," I slurred.

"What do you mean?"

"Wha- what do I mean!? What do YOU mean?" I waved my arms bombastically. He smiled. I sensed I was being played with. "Th- there's no way this guy was just into a kiss and a cuddle, like, like-"

"Like?"

"...He's gotta be into some fuck-shit."

"Excuse me?", he threw his hand back, faux-flabbergasted. 

"N- no offense, of course, but like, c'mon."

"What do you think he's into...?" Kay asked. He then began refilling my wine. It was a good question, not one I could navigate adeptly at seven drinks deep. Or was it eight? I started chugging from my glass, much to his amusement, before wiping my mouth and leaning forward, talking low.

"...you remember Pulp Fiction?"

"I- Oh!" he delighted, and started laughing. "The- the gimp!"

"The gimp!" I shouted. "The zipper-mouth guy in the fucking cage- gimp- they're called gimps?"

"It's in the movie! They say gimp in the movie."

"W- w-", I tried to remember for a second before forgetting to remember. "...Lindsey Graham is a gimp?"

"..."

"No!" I shouted again.

"Well..."

"No way! It makes too much sense. Come on."

"Well, ok, not exactly," he conceded. I sat back up and started to compose myself.

"So- well. Ok. Let's start from the top. When did you first meet Lindsey Graham?"

"It was CPAC, 2019."

"2019, you were-"

"I had just turned 19," he said softly. I opened my mouth to ask something but stopped myself. "I had just turned 19. I was gay..." he trailed off, staring into his glass. Then he smiled again, continuing, "...obviously. You know that."

"Do continue. I- I mean, if you'd like."

"Well I ran away from home."

"Where's that for you?"

"Maryland. Was. Was Maryland." I wanted to ask why he ran, but it was obvious.

"And so you settled here."

"I crashed with some friends, yeah. A good friend of mine got into, uhm, what's it called? Not Georgetown. GW?"

"George Washington Uni, yeah."

"So I stayed with her for a while." Kay started filling our glasses again. I decided not to ask him the obviously sore question of how he got started out here.

"Why'd you go to CPAC?" 

"Same reason any escort goes to CPAC."

"Is- is that common?"

"Sort of. It's especially gay at CPAC, though. Really male-skewed ratio."

"Damn, wow."

"Supply and demand."

"Right. W- were you invited by someone there or just, like-"

"Just working, really. You sit in one hotel bar or another in the corner with pearls around your neck and your best earrings in and an expensive bottle of wine — so they don't think you're cheap — and sort of, just kind of wait."

"And Lindsey Graham comes up to you."

"Oh, honey no. Never. They never take that risk. They pass by and  leave. Then they have an intermediary come in. They have people that just look like normal people, who won't attract attention. They drop off a slip of paper, sit down, chit chat for a half-hour, heys and how-are-yous, college catchup talk. Talk to you like you're a student in some lecture they TA in or an intern at their publicity firm. Or sometimes they know the hotel staff so a manager or whoever, and the client has them come up, do it all. How do you like the drinks, your stay, all that jazz. You know how it goes." I didn't. I don't bang hookers. I've never been a hooker. I don't know why he thought I banged hookers. Or was a hooker. I tried to gather the words to protest but he continued. "Anyways after half-an-hour or an hour, you call a number or head off to some address, et cetera," Kay continued. "Act like you belong. Don't ask questions. And that's how it happens."

"T- crazy."

"Yeah..." he said wistfully. I thought I ought to cheer him up, and hit him with a Trump impression about wanting to give head. He looked back up, flicked his wrist across his mouth and laughed. We opened another bottle.

"So it's just like, hotel hookups, that kind of thing," I said.

"Usually," Kay said, "but not with Lindsey."

"..."

"Lindsey makes... appointments."

"Appointments?"

"Like, he arranges appointments. Be here at this time at this date and a car will pick you up and take you here and you'll be there for this amount of time and you'll be dropped off afterwards here at this time. Really linear, follow these orders, strict."

"Ever been to his house?"

"Only ever his house."

"I- is he married?"

"Never married. You don't know, Loomer outed him in August?"

"Wha- when?"

"In August. She was suing HBO?"

"I- I wasn't around in August."

"Hm..." Kay smiled a knowing smile. I didn't know what he thought he knew, but he didn't know. I'm not gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that. He offered me some marijuana, which I politely declined. I let him take a hit or two before asking him about his first impression of the senator.

"His house: what's it like?"

"You'd never guess whose photo he has hung up over his fireplace."

"Obama."

"Nope! Guess again."

"Assad. Qaddafi!"

"Warmer."

"...Xi Jinping."

"Saddam."

"Oh- Damn, I should've known." Kay began to describe Lindsey Graham's Seneca estate. Atop the Senator's marble mantle sits a twenty-four-by-thirty-six portrait of Saddam Hussein. The Senator finds the dictator's mustache "erotic", conveying a masculine authority that he wished to emulate in his day-to-day life. Graham attempted to do so in rather novel ways. Kay attested as much:

"The first thing that hits you, when he, like, opens the door, is this overwhelming wall of scent-"

"Scent?"

"Like..." he started laughing to himself a little.

"Cologne? Piss?"

"He smells like, like mildew and Vaseline. And mothballs. Nursing home for perverts type vibe."

"Is- is that on purpose?" It was hardly a potpourri that suggested dominance or strength in any way. Kay explained that Lindsey Graham enjoyed the humiliation, the idea of putting on shows that everyone could see through. It was what motivated him to vote for the Defense of Marriage Act in 1993, despite being so obviously a homosexual; it was what motivated him to reiterate his support for it in 2022, well after gay marriage was legalized. It was part of what motivated him to claim that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction in 2003. It was an underlying theme in so much that the Senator did.

"It's sort of like- like, you can talk all big and strong all you want but, everyone in the room knows you smell like vasoline and mildew. Everyone notices that you keep eyeing up the staffer with a mustache in the corner of the conference room. It- he enjoys like, the potential of being put in his place," Kay clarified.

"And the mustache reminds him of that? Like he can't grow one or whatever? How does that relate?"

"Lindsey's first kiss was with a man who had a mustache, actually," Kay noted, opening another bottle. "Something about like, how it itches or whatever, he said he liked." It reminded the Senator that he was kissing a man, essentially.

According to Kay, Saddam's portrait is flanked by two smaller portraits of Maduro and Castro. Lindsey Graham found their political powers and positions enviable. They could tell their people what to do, when to do it, and no one ever told them no. "Imagine an Iraqi saying no to Saddam's war with Iran. Their day wouldn't end nicely. Too many Americans can say no to Graham's wars or the wars of his colleagues and have nice days afterwards — or even have nice days in doing so," Kay explained between sips of wine. They could exact a control over their populace, over individuals, in ways the Senator never could within the confines of democracy.

Hence, Lindsey Graham developed a tripartite fascination: disgust with what they represent, a jealous attraction to what they could do, and arousal at the symbolism surrounding them. An aide to late Senator McCain once recounted to Kay that, after passing the PATRIOT Act on October 26, 2001, Graham and McCain spent that Friday evening in the latter's office tenderly waltzing in the nude, save for fake mustaches and hats. McCain wore an olive green patrol cap; Graham wore a black beret. Bush was invited to play the role of Arafat, but declined, and instead joined Rumsfeld and Cheney to attend a leather-only rave at Fort Meade.

Although Kay had no mustache, he explained how Lindsey likes strongmen. Rather, how Lindsey likes to play strongman with the people he hired. He detailed how the Senator has a thing for hierarchy, for domineering relationships. "It's sort of the catharsis of that whole song-and-dance, like, show stuff he puts on right? Here comes along a big manly-man who calls him out in front of everybody. So he likes to have people role-play as that big manly-man a lot. A 'here's how I wish it'd go when I get on stage' sort of deal," Kay said as he put out his joint. 

Anyone who paid attention to the Republican infighting that preceded Trump's first term could see clearly how that was the case. In 2015, Graham, one of Trump's most ardent opponents, consistently polled at or below 1% for the entirety of the campaign — a public humiliation that he did not necessarily find unwelcome. Then, over the course of 2017, after a few golf games and some presidential public verbal abuse, Graham's attitude shifted.

"So what happened there?" I asked. "Graham was calling Trump xenophobe, bigot, all kinds of stuff like, daily. And it got him nowhere. Did he get off on Trump's insults? Post-nut clarity? What went down?" Kay opened his mouth to talk, but he stopped himself. He shifted in his seat for a little and drew his eyes towards the floor.

"Y- you won- well," he began stuttering, before taking another cigarette. I lit it for him and he inhaled deeply, then exhaled even more deeply before looking back up at me. He stared and stared for a minute before breaking the silence faintly. "Do you believe me?"

"Of course I do," I told him. He kept looking at me. We've fought wars over less believable things. I repeated my assurances while I refilled our glasses. Kay sighed and relaxed a little.

"Where was I?"

"You were saying, 2017, Trump-"

"The golf, yes!", he lit up. Kay then described the earlier interactions between Trump and Graham while we drank some more. At one point in early 2017, Graham reached out and informed Trump that he enjoyed the insults, the bratty dynamic between the two of them. It led to some interesting developments in their personal and political relationship. Apparently, on no less than four golf trips, Trump told Graham to drop trou' for some light paddling and fellatio. The President only ever gave. The Senator was quite flattered to receive. Graham has since steadfastly represented the interests of the president, and they've cooperated very closely on foreign policy as a result.

"It- it makes for a crazy image," Kay laughed to himself.

"How so?"

"Well..." and here he trailed off again, grinning.

"I mean, we know about the Bubba shit. It's not like Graham was the President's first,” I noted. He started to explain but stopped, before leaning over and rummaging through a drawer next to him. Kay grabbed a notepad and asked me if I had something to write with. I gave him a branded pen I stole from my boss' desk. He put the pen to paper for a split second and stopped, bursting with laughter.

"Wh- the pen?"

"N- no, like- just imagine Trump and Graham, right?"

"...If you insist." I winced as I did so.

"Right, now, just- just watch." Kay then drew the following before turning it towards me:

I stared at it speechless for a whole minute. He beamed at me from behind the paper the whole time. "Now imagine the President. Fitting a whole lightbulb in his mouth," Kay laughed.

"Wh- the- what's the triangle? Would you- could you even call that a triangle? What the hell is that?"

"Graham had one of his testicles crushed by a horse in college," he said as he finished his cigarette. "He tried to wobble up on top of the poor thing to play polo with his frat brother and it just BOOM", Kay kicked his leg out, still seated, "nailed him square. Lindsey told me it was how he 'got this way.'" He still grinned at me from behind the paper. I was at a loss for words. It looked like an atom bomb. "And it's not the only reason why he, quote-unquote, 'got this way.'"

"It- I, what does that even mean?"

"I'll show you, right now," Kay perked up. He flung the notepad onto his coffee table, Graham's atom bomb fluttering in the air, and then shifted to his side. He retrieved his phone from his back pocket and opened a messaging app. "My coworkers — I mean, really they're my good friends, but like, coworkers, you know what I mean? — Lindsey gives a different reason to every one of us."

"A different reason for the uhm, triangle?"

"Oh- oh no, that's real. Everyone knows about that. I mean like, a different reason as to why he's all sexually, you know," and he made a cuckoo-clock sound. Kay began scrolling and scrolling up through some group chat of his. "Like, we all talk, you know."

"Sure." I didn't.

"Ok, so here," Kay said as he tilted his phone towards me. He started reading out what his coworkers had shared, scrolling slow. "Graham told one person that the Russians hit him with a 'homosexualizing microwave beam' in 1998. Or- this one: Chinese social media algorithms keep recommending Lindsey videos of dudes in saunas to manipulate him. Roman sculptors were gay and evil and so they made their statues too attractive and that's why he gets gay thoughts when he sees them. Or like, he saw that one video of Castro playing basketball and 'felt things'. All kinds of crap."

"What's the real reason why?"

"I- I stole a letter," he blurted with a half gasp. His eyes widened at his confession.

"Wh- a letter?"

"Like Lindsey Graham's letter. To some college friend of his. A good friend, apparently! The- there's a- lemme find it for you," he said as he got up. We went off to his bedroom where he rummaged through a drawer or nine to find the letter he was talking about.

Kay had great taste in decor. Murano art-glass on his bedside table that made up these colorful, geometric patterns. A Victorian-style embroidered floor screen, an original Eames chair with a matching ottoman at his desk. Kay had this beautiful, antique woven Ersari rug, and a Taliesin floor lamp straight from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation's store. I was fiddling with a Lomonosov porcelain statuette of a fawn he had on his desk when he got back up with an envelope in his hand. He told me to be careful with the figurine as I asked him about where he found his Ersari rug. He asked me how I knew about Ersari rugs. I told him that I just knew about those kinds of things. He gave me one of those unknowing-knowing looks of his before telling me to follow him back into the living room. We plopped back down on our respective seats as he opened the letter. Then, we read. It went something like this:

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My darling D.,

How I wish that our weekend could have lasted for so much longer than it did. I have to apologize for my behavior since, as you know, certain things excite me in ways I cannot understand or describe. You might not know it, but for a very long time, I've shared so similar an assessment of the peculiarities of my face and fleshy, portly body. When you made your proposition to me, it was like a dream come true. For so long, I, Lindsey Graham, have wanted to be just as you had then asked me to be: your little piggy. I had felt for eternities that it was just what I was put on earth to be. And you blessed me with the opportunity to be purely, simply that. I must confess to you that you had made it so much more delightful for me than it ever could've been. I could never have imagined that a latex-strapped gag, with a snout and lovely, soft velvet ears ever existed, let alone lay in your closet, let alone awaited me, and me alone, to don under the shine of sunsets that alight your window, a window that has known and seen so much of us. And I could never have imagined for a minute how cleverly and creatively you were going to make my experience so, so much more pleasurable...

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For your sanity and my own, I'm not going to recount the rest of the letter to you. My editors would probably refuse to publish it anyways on account of its gratuitous detail. Kay was giggling like a mental patient or a schoolgirl the whole time we read it. I was busy keeping myself from vomiting bile, and the last five drinks I'd drank, all over his Italian armchair and all over myself. Even now, as I reread the remainder to write this semi-sober, my body is fighting reverse peristalsis.

In short — and you're lucky to have the details in short — Senator Lindsey Graham spent a weekend in 1975 dressed up in a BDSM pig mask, with matching thong and six 52-band brassieres, oinking and squealing around on a Pi Kappa Phi brother's queen-sized mattress, leashed to the bed post, screeching and salivating and wailing for an apple pie placed tantalizingly out of reach. The letter was more lascivious than that, about two or three paragraphs about ropes and hooks and whips and broomsticks and halal slaughterhouses. Among a few other unmentionable things. Urine. There. I said it. Do you believe me? You don't have to. I know it's real. Are you happy? You don't have to be. I'm not. Right now, the letter is in a safe in the basement of an office in Hackensack that you'll never get into without a subpoena. My lawyer reassures me that it's under lock and key. And gun.

Anyways, Kay, in between breathless, teary guffaws, explained how that experience was supposed to be a one-time hazing ritual, but ended up becoming something that Graham chooses to relive on every full moon. One of Kay's colleagues who resembles the aforementioned Darling D. is Graham's sole choice for the reenactments. I said that it seemed unfortunate. Kay told me that his friend lives in a six-bedroom mansion in Wesley Heights now. And that he owned two townhouses in Arlington he rents out. I said that it seemed fortunate. Graham hadn't raised over $120-million since 2014 for nothing.

We poured another round from the fourth or fifth bottle of wine to materialize at that point in the night. Kay then spent a few minutes waiting for my nausea to subside before we clinked our glasses to Darling D.'s understudy's financial success. Then we debriefed.

"So he was always this way," I started.

"None of his stories make sense or add up," Kay said. "The horse thing happened when he was in law school, like, years after this. It's all just a way to distance himself, these cheap excuses."

"Maybe it's like the Vaseline thing."

"A hundred percent."

"Maybe it's a way to practice his profession."

"Two hundred percent," Kay concluded. We clinked glasses again and kept drinking. I was happy to meet someone that could keep up with my hand-me-down post-Soviet liver. Even if I couldn't love him, on account of my straight-ness. I'm not gay. Did I mention that to you already? Kay lit another joint as we talked. He offered me a hit, which I again politely declined.

"Y- you know Graham pretends he doesn't do drugs," he said. I was frazzled for a moment, thinking he was making fun of me. After a minute of me attempting to sputter out some words in my defense, he intervened. "No, well, ok, relax- so like Graham does drugs- or at least like, has done drugs. Lots. But he says he doesn't." Put at ease by his clarification, I thought for a little.

"Di- didn't he say that, like, if marijuana is half as bad as alcohol, that's a good reason to keep it illegal?"

"Did he?" Kay asked. Graham in fact did, in 2010.

"And h- he's- Lindsey Graham's like, one of the most notorious alcoholics on Capitol Hill," I explained. "And he still said that." 

"He does drink. Constantly," Kay said. He found it funny. By that point in the night, though, Kay found pretty much anything funny. Should we ban booze? Graham would kill himself.

During Graham's cockamamie pie-in-the-sky campaign for the 2016 presidency, the Senator said that, if elected, he'd drink with Democrats more. To someone watching on FOX, they'd think, wow, what a diplomat, what a true American character — can't we all get along over a glass or twelve of Jim Beam? Bravo to him! To someone in the know though, they'd recognize it for what it was: Graham asking every Democrat politician out to a drunken, no-strings-attached slobberfest. Schumer, Booker, Pelosi: free this piggy from his pen!

Although Louisiana Senator John Kennedy joked about it well-after I met Kay, what he said this January about Graham rings awfully true given what we now know: you never know when Graham "might get drunk and vomit in the fish tank." Good enough, bravo to him. Ban booze and weed. Peons like you or I or Kay shouldn't have fun. Only those who lie and kill and lie to kill should. This is Graham's official, stated position — or at least, the logical outcome of his official, stated position. But it was something about inhibitions, or the lack-thereof, that made Graham condemn his own heritage as the son of a bar owner. Kay and I talked and talked and he mentioned something his friend, a coworker, a colleague, a staffer for Ted Cruz, got caught up in a few years ago.

"So, you like, know the McCain thing he had. And the golf thing? These aren't like, one off things. These people have get-togethers constantly. All the time. And it's not like they're secretive about it either. Everybody knows. At least, everyone I know knows." Sure, it made sense. Kay continued, "So Cruz calls Graham, one night. He wants to go out, try some stuff, new stuff-"

"Weed!"

"No, like, harder stuff," Kay corrected me. He giggled to himself as he continued, "b- but like, weed's still in the mix. It's never out of the mix when this stuff goes down."

"Shrooms. LCD."

"LSD."

"That's w- I said that. Right?"

"You said LCD."

"..."

"So- anyways, this is at CPAC 2021, Orlando." Kay moved his hands around as he talked, finger-painting a picture of it all in the air between us. Ted Cruz is making plans with Mike Huckabee. Mitch McConnell tags along, invites Lindsey Graham. Graham drops everything, says let's go, invites Tom Cotton. Tom Cotton does the same, invites Ron DeSantis. “And they all want to invite Trump, but this is right after January 6th, right? So DeSantis and Trump are on a bad, bad break," he testified.

That night began with a peacemaking effort. The Orchid Room at the Hyatt Regency is cleared, for half-an-hour as the delegates meet. The ex-president wants DeSantis to himself for a night. The group wants Trump and DeSantis to come together, as a show of solidarity. Too much drama, too many drama queens. And it isn't as if anyone ever lauded Graham or Huckabee for their tactful diplomacy. Graham offers himself in lieu of DeSantis. Trump refuses. Graham calls Trump a diva, says something nonsensical about rockets and missiles. Trump tells Graham he'll be paddled for it. Graham doesn't outright refuse, but gets flustered and fumbles the ball. Tom Cotton was new to the whole scene, wasn't used to the intensity in the room, and so he excuses himself as he overheats, blushing. Alas: the night would have to go on sans Trump, sans DeSantis. All's fair in love and war.

Graham leaves the room, Cotton's being consoled by Cruz, and Huckabee's edibles are starting to hit. They drag themselves along to the private bar where everybody they hired that night is waiting, alongside some select staffers. Huckabee's moaning something about the Negev desert the whole way over. McConnell is dissociating — he took double Huckabee's dose. "But they show up and my friend has these little sample sets," Kay said.

"Sample sets?" Kay started refilling our glasses here. We must've burned through $900 of wine by then. It didn't seem to bother him any.

"They had him put together these little baggies for them. It- it was three tabs of LSD, these MDMA tablets pressed to look like Reagan, and these hundred-miligram dime-baggies of mushrooms." He showed me a picture on his phone. The ecstasy looked more like Wario or Peewee Herman than Reagan. "Anyways, they had him put it all in these little bridal party gift bags that Hyatt had left over from two weeks before."

Five minutes after they arrive, the sample sets are finished, devoured, done. Ten minutes after they arrive, Timberlake's SexyBack starts playing. Huckabee's gone nonverbal, drooling on himself atop a lounge chair in the corner. McConnell's also nonverbal, slumped at the bar. Staffers usher him out and debate whether McConnell is having a stroke or is just too far gone in the music. They cart him off as they all decide that it's the latter. Graham is fumbling with Grindr. It crashes. No good. He's forced to listen to the music. SexyBack ends. Lady Gaga's Born This Way comes on. Lindsey Graham's heart rate drops and his eyes dilate.

"Twelve or twenty ghosts show up and surround him, start voguing, dead-dropping, telling him he's gay," Kay said. "And so- so he had to lay down on the patio tiles and take his shirt off, just letting these ghosts like, throw it back on him for like an hour or two. It scared the shit out of him."

"Wh- what the hell are you talking about?"

"It's true! Lindsey told me about it like, two weeks before my friend told me." I had to digest that for a little. I was no less than fourteen drinks deep at this point. I was on the verge of hallucinating voguing ghosts myself. "He couldn't keep it up for like, two months after. He almost came out to Nikki Haley then. He wanted to resign."

"Wh- like, that- it's just too... human."

"Oh, don't get it wrong, babe, it had nothing to do with regret or whatever. He was having visions for like two weeks. They threatened to leak it all to the public unless he resigned — it, it wasn't a tender moment. He was trying to survive, politically."

It made sense. Maybe it didn't. I was wasted. Sorry, Mama! The liver you gave me was starting to fall behind. I never had the makings of a long-distance runner. More of a sprinter. Anyways, there was a certain irony to it all. Graham fetishizes grand exposés of himself. The second these daemons threatened to exact a grand exposé on their own terms, Graham shrank into himself. Literally. From March of 2021, through May of the very same year, Graham had ED. Couldn't get it up. Called none of Kay's friends. A drought, you could call it. They all managed fine though, financially. Bravo to them!

Maybe my liver wasn't failing. Maybe my mind couldn't keep up with what my liver was helping it take in. Too many questions bumped around in my head; too many conclusions on what was learned earlier in the night began to surface. People have been sent to die over it all. People are being sent to die, right now, over it all. People are going to be sent to die over it all. D.C. — and anyone who's been there for more than a few weeks would agree, is morally dominated by a bottomless whirlpool deep in the Potomac — spun there by the city's most influential, sucking everything and everyone in while they play bubble-bath with rubber-piggies. Is this making sense? The more I look back on it all now, the more I find myself reaching for the Hendrick's on my shelf. No wonder why Kay was such a wino. You couldn't blame him for it, though. Having seen what he's seen. I certainly don't. 

        Kay saw me roll my neck back and around and about, swallowing air as I digested it all. He shot up out of his seat and came back with a cool, frosty liter of spring water from his fridge. The last sip of water I had before then was back at the office, before I got escorted out. That's not true. It was probably melted ice from the bottom of that night’s second rum-on-the-rocks. No functional difference, mind you.

Kay mocked me, lighthearted, for having drank more than I could handle. I began to come to. Between interstitial reminders to hydrate, he joked. This can't be your first rodeo. There's no way this is that crazy to you. It's real, you know. C'mon, this can't be like, uncharted territory for you, babe. Knowing, knowing, poking, poking jokes, joking at my expense. What did he know? I bet he wondered in his head, what does this guy, this drunk in front of me know? In that moment, to be fair, I didn't know a damn thing.

I sipped a little on my water bottle and ignored his snide remarks. He was probably seventy pounds lighter than me. Shorter, too. And he was fine, didn't get any water for himself. It seemed he didn't need it. I sat back up and gathered myself slowly. He smiled at me, a child watching a giraffe or a sloth wake up in a zoo, nose pressed against the glass, as I finally opened my mouth.

"Y- you reckon that he gave, like McCain or Cruz different excuses too? Or they have their own excuses they gave him? About why he wanted to slow-dance with 'em or do drugs? Like, how they ‘got that way’?" I wondered. He looked at me, incredulous, as if to ask me: were you absent for today's lecture?

"W- we already know they're the same. They're all the same way. They all say the same stupid bullshit," Kay said, stifling laughs.

"B- but, think about it. They probably exchange reasons all the time."

"Or- now think- better yet, they don't give each other reasons at all," Kay said. He lit another cigarette and waited for me to get what he meant. And what he meant was thus: for this class, composed of repressed, latent homosexual, wig-wearing gag-donning overweight psychopathic sycophantic skinheads, it was more convenient to simply acknowledge to one another that they were all innately perverted, immoral people, rather than to barter and exchange tailored excuses.

The latter liars' bazaar might humanize themselves and reveal exploitable weaknesses to each other. In spite of that, they still give excuses to everyone else. Ted Cruz told that staffer that he was secretly injected with Deep State nano-machine technology that made him act out sexually and made him susceptible to blackmail. McConnell was known for blaming anything, everything from the Occupy protests to Jon Stewart to the Affordable Care Act for his own sexual deviations.

All these hired hookers get subjected to different, imaginative improvisations as to why the men hiring them want to do what they do. And between the politicians themselves, there’s no need to justify themselves. They were all on the same page. It was a bit of a club: everyone in it knew; everyone out of it was to be lied to. The further out of the club they were, the further removed from the truth the lie was. The electorate sat at the bottom of the totem pole. If they had no shame between each other, what kind of threat did blackmail or public opinion pose?

Kay said it was an interesting conclusion to come to, given what he knew about Graham and his ilk. I agreed, but then he doubled down, said that there was more that we hadn't discussed. We spoke some empty back-and-forth about Ersari rugs, Murano glass while he waited for me to sober up some more. I told him — and you have the privilege of being the second person I tell this to — that I had to make a living for a while by buying and selling knick-knacks off of Craigslist estate sales. You need to tell the valuable from the cheap from the invaluable. Anything to make a dollar, to save a dollar. Mama's rent was up far more often than I could keep up with. Kay leaned forward upon himself, elbows-on-knees, listening intently. Mama's rent was up. And my rent — at the time, my car payment — was up, far too often. She gave me her liver; I owed her the world for it.

Kay hm'ed in agreement. Then we sat quiet for a minute as my vision stabilized. Kay didn't have four or five chandeliers. There were three in the living room. One in the kitchen through an arch. One in a parlor in the other room, through another arch. Another in the hallway to the bathroom. Two chandeliers hung in a dining room past the kitchen. Was I even in an apartment? I shifted and straightened up in my seat as he hm'ed again.

"It's funny, they give it out, like, willingly, all the time," Kay said.

"Lomonosov porcelain?"

"N- no," Kay laughed, "I'm talking about blackmail." Sure. After all, Graham's fantasies more-or-less rotate around his subordination to some other — an other he falls short of. It was understood, though, that blackmail wasn't a threat to Graham. The fact that it existed, in spite of the fact it would never, ever come to light, did something for Lindsey and his peers. The blackmail itself wasn't really the means with which he was controlled: it was the gratification he derived from the deeds and the ritual motions of being blackmailed that were so much more valuable to him. Lindsey, Cruz, et cetera, are not owned. They willingly participate in a reciprocal system that rewards them for engaging in perversions innate to who they were and what they represent. "They- they give it out. They'll give their blackmail out, willingly."

"Like- to who?"

"Oh, everyone. Lobbyists. Interest groups. Foreign intelligence," Kay went on. Graham got off on it. They all did. Called out at any time, if they misbehave. Do this. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I'm sorry sir. No, sir, it won't happen again, ever. The whole time, flush-red in the cheeks. The products of an idiotic time long passed, demographic residue, past plaque clogging arteries, fatly. "He'll have people come by and do- do crazy things."

"Well, yeah. He had the president blowing him."

"But this is crazier, you know? Things that- you wouldn't- well, ok, for example," he trailed off as he pulled his phone back out and began showing me some photos. He'd received them from coworkers, colleagues — friends — subcontracted by lobbyists, defense companies, anyone who wanted taxpayer money blown on anything for their own gain. Boeing. Palantir. Duke Energy. The NRA. "H- his AIPAC handler is a dominatrix," Kay slipped out.

Here, I broke and started laughing hysterically. It might've been the late-night-early-morning delirium catching up to me. More likely it was the image that Kay painted, reading out messages as I laughed harder and harder, of different: tales of WonderWoman, Gal Gadot, Captain-esse America lashing flabby octogenarians towards climax while their decades-old Air Force Dress Blues from back when they were colonels in non-combat units sat around their ankles. Tales of sundowning senators having midnight hammerings of their own with Hegseth and Rubio, dressed as B-2 bombers the night after Operation Midnight Hammer. That was also in there, somewhere. Ever since those strikes on Iran last June, Graham has been unable to climax without playing slideshows of drone-strike footage and bombings and Abu Ghraib on his TV. It was a necessity for him, almost drug-like. In one video, Graham refers to the habit as a “trick” he “should’ve learned in the Air Force.” There was also, for example, the fact that Graham liked getting wrapped in an American flag and having Heritage Foundation reps walk all over him in heels while reading Graham's own quotes aloud back to him.

And everything you've read here is from mere megabytes passed between those hired actors, Kay and so many others. It was all happening constantly, over and over and over again, all recorded and catalogued, terabytes, all for control. There are so many more stories and details that I'm sparing you from. Yes, they involve urine. Golden lasso meeting pink pig-mask in some moldy, dusty South Carolina office somewhere. Kay kept swiping from photo to photo to photo. He had to keep forcing his phone into my face to line it up with my eyes as I convulsed with laughter.

Different NGOs had different doms rotating incessantly in and out through Graham's Greenville office, specifically. "808," Kay said. "It's always Suite 808, Washington Street. Important enough to him but far away enough from Washington to prevent raised eyebrows. They- they have an elevator they use, direct to his office. They go into a building a block away, go downstairs, then downstairs again, and walk to this old-library elevator. Then they float right up to him." 

As I caught my breath and relaxed, Kay began muttering a little, 808, 808?, 808, to himself, lilted, half-laughing, as if he were answering a question that no one had asked him. I didn't press him at all about it. Kay stopped, straightened up in his seat, and looked me in the eyes. He made a face that was ready to spill another story, before deflating a little. "It- ok, well..." Kay trailed off as he began to wince at the floor, like he did so long before. "You'd never believe me. No one would."

"Y- you can tell me. I'm not a cop. I'll probably forget it all come sunrise," I tried to assure him. He hesitated more, unmoved, sinking into his sofa and folding his hands over his lap. There wasn't anything behavioral that didn't align with known stories about Graham. The signature on that letter matches every example of Graham's signature we could find online. And after all, Loomer outed him months ago. "I've believed you so far," I said, to no avail. Kay exhaled.

"It- I- I just can't... prove it to people, you know?"

"What do you mean?"

"I have photos. The- there's videos out there, probably. But it- I can't tell all of this stuff to anyone. No one can. Who'd believe it anyways?", he said quietly, gesturing to his ceiling. Accusation whittled its way into the tone of his voice. "They just- they keep it filed away until it's politically convenient to reveal it. Which'll probably be never. And if they ever did, who'd believe it anyways? It- it's all just so absurd." I didn't have anything to offer to him but silence. "I've just never... never told anyone anything I've told you tonight. You know what that’s like? Never been able to. To anyone, you know?" In the moment, I thought I didn't, but said that I did. It didn't satisfy.

"No, but like, do you? Do you know what that's like?" Kay said, tinges of indignation ringing in his voice. He leaned forward and stared directly at me. "To see and do and know, and for it all to be so nonsensical, so gross, so stupid, so dumb, that no one could ever take you seriously. To tell someone what happened and for every single someone to look at you and tilt their head to their side, like they're questioning you, like prosecutors, like, like, like judges. Judges. To be judged for knowing what's true?" His jaw, or lips, or figure began to tremble, just slightly. The rest of him remained still. His joint sat in his ashtray, completely burnt up. He hadn't touched it since he told me about the Hyatt Regency Room, and it just kept burning up. He still stared, waiting.

I thought for a second, then fourteen, then some more while I refilled his glass for him. I couldn't think of what to say. I could've said I believed him for the millionth time. I could've said that the evidence hung from the ceilings of his house, seven or more times. The evidence sat on the table beside us, nine or ten bottles of wine that were bottled years before Kay ever met Lindsey Graham. I could've said that we've sent young men — strong men, smart men, bold men, great men, boys, children, babies, men deserving of the title, man — to kill and die with lighter burdens of proof. The evidence dots and lines memorial walls and cemeteries all over the world. The evidence is in how Graham and his ilk constantly machinate us from unpopular war to war to war to war, again and again, in such a pathological, compulsive way that overrides any trite political bromide, any argument a bow-tied college-campus Republican with thick-rimmed glasses could dribble out of their mouth, trying to rationalize and perfume the death and traumatization and addictions and immiseration and disenfranchisement of millions upon millions upon millions upon millions of young Americans.

The policies Lindsey Graham and his colleagues advocate for do nothing but get Americans killed, here and abroad, pointlessly, senselessly. And the kicker is that Lindsey Graham enjoys it. He loves it. Loves all of it. Everything else is window dressing. It's the same show, same tap-dancing show they put on, that they put on every time they suit up to prance and flap their pissed-on gums on a TV screen, to prance and flap behind a FOX news camera, to an anchor, to some stupid anchor, whose whole career boils down to a toothless carnie, hopping and yelling, step right up, step right up, see the fabulous indomitable sex freak! He demands and foretells fortunes and futures of wars. And drinks blood.

We don't know if anyone in our ruling class really eats children. We do know that, in D.C., people like Lindsey Graham do it daily though, with pens for forks, ordering up thousands upon hundreds of thousands of men to overseas in wars that no one voted for, to be eaten alive out there and spit out onto the ground and into caskets and sidewalks after they return. In D.C., there is a daily procession, a marching-band that parades, that is led by drum majors wearing the skin-suit of a nation, the trappings of a nation long, long-gone, whose silk-tie uniforms are adorned with ribbons and banners and slogans and mantras and dogmas that they cut out from the dreams of their long-gone betters, that they twist and bend and wave in semaphore to get what they want, all to pay for whatever base, disgusting, repugnant need they seek to fulfill. They juggle skulls as they walk. They drop skulls as they juggle skulls and do not pick them back up. I saw them, just as, from Kay's window, the floor-to-ceiling window of his living room, the first glint of sunrise bounced off of their wrinkled, pallid, grey, insipid bodies and into my eyes and off of Kay's hair and into my eyes.

I sat and thought for what must've been an eternity. Kay sat and stared for what must've felt like much, much longer. Two commodities sharing stories, slandering their buyers and sellers, over and over and over and over again. What else could we do? We can't protest. If we could protest and shout it from rooftops and drop leaflets down below us, it wouldn't make a difference anyways. Who would believe us? All we could do was share, share our secret truths to one another in dim-lit salons, dim-lit parlors, the fringes where the gnawed-on settle and drift in and through and out of, and hope that the act of sharing alone could bring light to it all for those still above water, still breathing. What else could we do? What else could we possibly do? What could I possibly say?

In an hour, I would hand Kay the company credit card of the furniture company that fired me. He would smirk again, and I would ask what was so funny. Apparently, they were the ones that framed the portraits above Graham's fireplace. We would share one last laugh about it, and I would take my leave. In twelve hours, I would be sober enough to drive again. In sixteen hours, I would be back in New Jersey. At some point during the drive, my ex-boss would leave me a voicemail screaming some breathless bullshit about some forty-thousand dollar bill that got ran up on a card he accused me of stealing, which I'd ignore because he couldn't prove shit. And all the while, Kay would probably sit back down, or maybe go to bed, or do whatever he wanted to, and go back to being Kay behind closed doors, and, outside them, back to being whatever it was he needed to be behind wine bottles to survive. In one month, Heritage Discount Interiors would get sued by their creditors and go bankrupt. And in two months, I would be back in Ithaca. And Kay would still be there, in D.C. And in three months, the Trump administration would go to war with Iran — a war they campaigned against, a campaign that won. And Kay, in D.C., would still be there. And in three-and-a-half months, Karoline Leavitt would tell Fox News that Trump refuses to rule out the draft. And in four months, Selective Service automation would take effect and further furnish the nation into an altar for undemocratic mass-sacrifice. And Kay would still be there, in D.C. He is there. He is sitting there now at [REDACTED GAY BAR], angelic, in magenta-green lighting, wine bottle at his side, staring up at TVs, waiting to tailor himself to you.

But, before all of that could happen, I’d finally mutter the only words my mind was able to muster in that moment:
"I- I was in the Air Force."

"You were?"

"Yeah- like- but only for the- the past year or so. I got out officially in October, I think. Maybe November. There were papers-"

"When did you join?"

"I- I was 19. I signed on July 31st, 2024. 19."

"...Why?"

"It was the, uh, Air National Guard, actually. Pay tuition, you know. GI Bill, state tuition assistance, all of that. There was like, seventy-thousand dollars I'd have after the first few years. A hundred-thousand by the time my contract'd be up. No more hocking porcelain, you know? Ended up making everything so, so much worse. It w- it was the worst thing I ever did for myself," I trailed off. "But like, initially it was more to, just, kinda, you know, avoid getting drafted."

"To avoid getting drafted?" Kay asked.

"Yeah. Like, pick and choose my branch and my job and my unit in case we went to war with like, Russia or something. Avoid being infantry, sort of a way to have a say in things."

"Funny how that works, isn't it?" he said. Then he looked at me silent afterwards, for quite a while. Then he deflated again, the third, or fifth time. And he looked at me almost with pity. As if I was him, and he were me. You poor thing, the tilt in his eyelids said, you poor, poor thing. You were lined up. And they want to do it again. Whatever it was, whatever it was, you'll be OK. It won't be perfect, but you'll still, still be here. You poor, poor thing. Get shot a look like that by an ethereal epicene and see what the hell happens to you.