October 5, 2003 by Scott

Put the Blame on Plame

--As told to Scott C., our Spy in the Street Reporter

If there’s one poor sonofabitch I feel sorry for these days, it’s Joe Wilson. But maybe that’s just me, you know? ‘Cause there’s more than a couple fellas down at The Suds who say he had it coming. Me? I feel sorry for him, like I said. But me and Joe, we go way back—hell, back to the Neighborhood—and I say he’s always been a stand up guy. But I’m down at The Suds last night, and Barney, who’s tendin’ bar, he gets a blast fax from the RNC sayin’ Joe’s wife made him go to Niger, and he says, Barney says to me, "Joe’s whipped. You know that? Now, the guy’s a prince, don’t get me wrong, and I ain’t sayin’ he don’t wear the pants in the family. I’m just saying, whoever’s got the pants on, there’s a pussy in there with ‘em."

Then Mac, the guy next to me—he’s another ambassador—he pipes up and says, "Aw, can it, Barney, you ain’t married, you don’t know what it’s like. I mean, the old lady’s sweet and all, but she’s always nagging me. ‘Paint the garage. Clean out the gutters. Investigate sales of Yellowcake uranium in the Horn of Africa.’ It drives me nuts."

"You’re telling me, Pal." This from Matt Helm, who works third shift down at Langley. "Second I come through the door, she’s on my ass. I says, ‘You want me to reseed the lawn, or you want me to confirm that Mohammed Atta met Ahmad al-Ani in Prague. I only got two hands, ya know."

"You don’t know the half of it," says Felix Leiter. He’s another friend of mine. Shop steward down at the Directorate of Operations. He’s got this limey pal with him, and he says, "Jimmy and me was just talkin’ about this on the way over. He says—this is great—what was that thing you said?"

"It’s not a marriage, it’s an interrogation."

"Right, right! ‘Cause it’s nothin’ but questions when you walk in the door."

Felix eggs him on, and this guy Jimmy starts doing this imitation of his wife. "’Did you call Dr. No and make an appointment? Did you go over to Crab Key like you said you would? That Spectre missile-toppling scheme isn’t going to foil itself you know…’ Jesus!" He orders a vodka martini and bums a smoke off me, and says, "The bitch put an ejection seat in my La-Z-Boy recliner. I’m sittin’ there, watching the Masters, and all of a sudden—BAM! I’m bouncin’ off the ceiling, an’ she’s all, yap, yap, yap. "Are you going to Fort Knox to disarm that neutron bomb in the gold depository or not? When? It’s already 3:30, do you know what the traffic’s going to be like?"

"Yes, dear.  I'm doing it, dear."

Now, I love my wife, don’t get me wrong. She’s keeps a neat house, she’ll go south of the border on my birthday, if you know what I mean, and she makes a meatloaf that’ll melt in your mouth. But I gotta say—and no disrespect to Joe—when she starts goin’ off on me, "Rake the front yard, bleed the water heater, investigate reports of binary chemical weapons stores in the Bekaa Valley," I say to her, "One of these days, Alice…Bang! Zoom!" And she backs off, ‘cause she knows I’m a supporter of a space-based antiballistic missile shield.

12:38:26 AM