Toby Castle is fit. Toby Castle is blond.
Toby Castle wears starched sleeveless dresses to show off her toned arms and directs a financial company that helps minor investment businesses get off the ground, and though it’s all her father’s tech money portioned off, investments in exchange for a whopping 85% return, “Castle” is one of those names in Washington—hell, in America—and suddenly it’s so easy to see you and Toby Castle hitting the social circuit, going to the fundraisers, the galas and balls, and you can, like, definitely see yourself marrying Toby Castle, living with Toby Castle in the townhouse, maybe starting a family (you have tasted her vagina, it’s not terrible), and then, once you start a family, you won’t have to live with Toby Castle anymore. You can do what representatives Rutledge and Olioke do, which is keep the family outside of DC, and it’s how you’d prefer it since the truth of the matter is, it’s nothing against women, but by and large they make you uncomfortable.
It’s not about sex. It’s like: women make you feel like a man, but men make you feel like a human. It’s not your fault you are who you are, and they are who they are. After all, there are certain biological facts at work here, there is such a thing as Natural Law, and sure, we can call them Divine Principles if we have to appease evangelicals (secretly you do not believe in God, though you do, at times, atmospherically fear him), and you make a mental note to work on this idea about biology and theology for Plaine Truth.
Because it’s not just women. There are also many minorities out there that make you uneasy, like black people or LGBT or whatever, but you do not take them seriously. LGBT sounds like something you’d order in a diner with mayo. As for black people, they only make up 13.4% of the population. Latinos are more.
You honestly have no problem with black people at all.
Representative Olioke is black, and even though you kind of hate Olioke, he is a Republican and you have always been friendly with him and he has always been friendly with you, and there is a part of you that’s imagined, you admit, one day, like, milking Olioke’s blackness by asking him to be your running mate.
“Divide to unite,” you imagine yourself saying in front of a huge crowd on the steps of the Capitol, and lose yourself for a second—okay, wait for it, there you are—standing in front of the white pillars on the bright white steps with five military planes overhead farting out clouds of red, white, and blue while you gently pull out your cuffs, fingering Reagan’s flag cuff links, looking, like, so fucking good in that $4560 Calvin Klein mod-breasted silk suit.
And you neither now nor will ever recall the numerous parent-teacher conferences endured by your mother, nor the way she looked at you fearfully after the counselors said you were “empathically…deficient.” What does that mean, you overheard her asking your father that evening, and he answered, He’s a jerk, that’s what it means, and your mother, she sighed. Ever since he was born, I felt it, she said, like they lived on the frontier, felt it deep in ma bones, and from that point on you extricated yourself from the both of them and do not care or even wonder what your parents will think when you are standing on the Capitol steps in the manner which you will most certainly one day be standing, waving to the teeming crowd, Olioke on your left, Toby Castle your right, embracing your waist, grinning, her adoration for you positively unbridled, and Brian Castle, one of the most famous billionaires in America, he is there too, he’s behind you, proud father-in-law, wallet at the ready, and you really don’t know why you even waited so long to call Toby Castle.