Playwright on the prowl.
I suppose I ought to come clean. Although I didn’t wiretap Donald Trump’s phones (I thought about it, but….), I did (and it wasn’t easy; I have to thank my lifelong fascination with Harry Houdini) infiltrate his town house in Trump Tower and hide out there for three days—mostly in Melania’s yuge—I’m sorry: huge—walk in closet, a closet that seemed, almost, to be the size of Rhode Island. It smelled very… what’s-the-word… Coty or Dior. The way a new car smells. Or the smell when you pick up your dry-cleaning. It was easy, relatively easy, to hide out. The closet stretches a full city block and is about 10 feet deep.
I tried things on—jackets, sweaters, lingerie. Nothing, of course, fit, but it made me think that I understood the marriage. The unnatural heat. The connection. The colors were interesting. Avocado. Tangerine. Peach. Somewhere I heard that Donald Trump likes to eat fruit. It’s, apparently, the juice. Donald’s a big advocate of juice. “Juice,” he’s said, “is what makes deals. Feel the juice.”
When it seemed no one was home, I let myself out. Into….? Again: it’s yuge! A kind of combination of Cappellini Furniture and Kennedy Galleries. In the three days of my infiltration, any number of thoughts came to me. I thought of removing the three blades from the various garbage disposals. Let the garbage—which I knew there must be plenty of—pile up! But I hadn’t the skills. Then I thought I might use the magic markers I’d brought to deface his Thomas Kinkade art collection. But that seemed too easy, a cheap shot. And I considered tipping over his bronze Stalin statue. Still, I did flip the Fidel Castro photograph so that it faced the wall. And I did the same with an “I Am The Greatest” photo of Cassius Clay onto which Donald had pasted the cut-out image of his own face.
I checked out the various fridges. A lot of Stauffer meals. Lean Cuisine. And bones. I didn’t know they had a dog. A mastiff. Maybe a pit bull. Or… it’s possible that the Master of the House liked to gnaw on a bone every once in a while. Then there were all the half-filled take-out cartons from Joe’s Shanghai.
The medicine cabinets were interesting. I have never seen so much lithium in my life. Lithium and Levitra and Viagra. A man needs to be a man, I guess.
And lastly: I have to say the book shelves were curious. Perhaps revealing.
Actually, book shelf. Mostly it served as a display case for a collection of lead soldiers, all attending to various artillery mechanisms. But there were a few books. There were several bound volumes of DC Comics’ original Batman. Perhaps it was the Gotham connection. Or the DC, where he got the idea of taking the place over in the future. And there was a first-edition signed copy of Mein Kampf.
Three days! Three days I was there. Hiding in the closets. Exploring when no one was around. Three days—which proved to be more than enough. The whole thing, I have to confess, made me tired. I empathized with astronomers trying to find life in the universe.
So—having had my fill….of emptiness—I left. But it’s best, I think, that I confess. I did it. I broke in. I was there.
David Kranes is a playwright, fiction-writer and mentor with a secret sinister streak