First in an aspirational series of fictional stories about Donald Trump
“You’ve got that look on your face,” Allie said, as Teddy shoved himself and his bags through their Washington DC apartment’s front door.
Teddy, her longtime roommate and recent fiancé, toiled in the Donald Trump Administration’s Communications Office. He’d held the job for the past 18 months, since early 2018, and brought home a work war story nearly every evening.
Allie sighed. This one must be special, but she wasn’t in the mood for him to go on about it for three or four hours. Not tonight. She’d had a relentless day at work herself.
“What?!?” he asked, with an ironic, lopsided grin, dumping his laptop bag on the open kitchen’s island counter, and pulling up a barstool.
He seemed eager to begin spilling the tale. Allie figured he must have been planning all the way home how he’d tell it. Teddy did tell a good story, she had to admit. She continued wiping down the counters and appliances as Teddy settled in to launch his yarn.
“Did you see the POTUS tweet about Liddle Adam Schiff this morning?” he began. Allie shook her head. She didn’t have time to scroll Twitter while at work as a documents coordinator at a DC law firm.
“You order Chinese and I’ll find the Tweet,” Teddy proposed. Allie agreed. Teddy pulled the laptop out of its bag as she speed-dialed TEASHI.
He spun the computer to show her the screen just as she was confirming the food order:
.
Allie read the post, re-read it and smiled faintly.
Just to make sure she comprehensively grasped the outrage, Teddy gave her the bullet points:
- “He doesn’t know the difference between an apostrophe and a hyphen!
- “He doesn’t understand he wasn’t using the apostrophe properly in the first place!
- “Which characters was it supposed to be taking the place of?
- “Did he mean L-I-apostrophe-L, like Li’l Abner?”
She nodded, and reviewed the post one more time. “Yeah… but listen to you,” she requested. ‘He wasn’t using the apostrophe properly.’ He’s got no reason to care what’s proper! His fans love that he doesn’t know what’s proper. They see you, and anybody who remarks on this, as an elite stiff. Totally works for him!”
Teddy frowned before grumbling, “Al, you can’t stand him either.” He was disappointed she wasn’t relishing the stupidity of the day. “But, what is it that you’re defending?”
Allie understood her partner. She was thwarting him. Normally she was a joyful singer in his nightly “Trump’s an idiot” chorus. Tonight, he didn’t seem able to bear hearing her push back on this priceless example of the president’s profound ignorance. So, she threw Teddy a bone by adding a twist to his argument:
“He’s not just ignorant, he’s so supremely confident of his language skills, isn’t he?”
That was more like it. He liked that. The relief showed on his face and his whole body relaxed.
“Yeah!” he agreed. “He ‘has the best words.’ And he thinks his name-calling is high art. Nobody can do it better. He doesn’t even ask for derogatory name ideas; he just runs his juvenile nickname ideas by people and expects everybody to love them and use them in everything that comes from the White House. I won’t do it. And I’ll refuse to use apostrophes improp–” cutting himself off.
“Improperly?” Allie supplied. Shit, she’d brought back the tension she’d just been trying to erase. So, she changed the subject again, slightly, with a question. “Will you be asked to defend him?”
Teddy wasn’t prominent enough for it to matter whether he publicly defended Trump or not. In his 18 months as a staff writer in the White House Comms office, he’d carved out a niche as a fast drafter – the go-to person for a first stab at most any piece of writing: Tweets, press statements, the occasional short speech.
He was a deft wordsmith, Allie knew. He knew it, too, she thought ruefully. They had both earned English degrees in the same year, 2014, from vastly different colleges – hers from Penn State, his from Dartmouth. The public school/Ivy League divide was present between them but, by silent mutual agreement, rarely brought to the surface because it stood in for related class differences.
“Anyway, I won’t draft a Tweet or anything else with that punctuation, Teddy said finally. “I won’t. They can fire me.” He looked at his partner, defiantly, almost glaring.
Allie didn’t want to fight, but she now didn’t care to continue smoothing things out either, didn’t want that to become her job in their relationship. Might as well have this out now, but in a manner that wouldn’t damage their couplehood in any lasting way.
“Oh … that would be a smart career move to quit over a hyphen,” she ventured.
“Apostrophe!” Teddy exploded.
“Parts of speech,” Allie drawled. “Who knows the names of parts of speech? I mean, I know the difference between a hyphen and an apostrophe, obviously. But I don’t know what a gerund is, not really. You probably do!”
Teddy nodded.
“See, and that makes me feel resentful,” Allie tried to explain. “Trump’s 10th grade dropout supporters probably feel the same way about hyphens. It’s just resentment of elites on a little different level.”
Teddy nodded again, but with some reluctance. “So you’re saying Trump will like seeing the media get worked up over this, and he’d love to hear about me quitting over it.”
“Yes,” Allie said, relieved. “He’ll be defended by people who understand him and love him. You wouldn’t be defended by anybody he cares about.”
Teddy ran around to the other side of the counter and gave her a big companionable hug. “Are we going to have to revisit this discussion theme?” he asked without looking at her face.
“Probably,” she said, returning the hug.