President Everyman

For centuries, the American Presidency has been a sort of highfalutin position filled by men who don’t like pornography or skee-ball or talking to people who are covered in vomit--unless they’re babies, and even then they proceed with caution, so as not to contract what scientists call “pukey-breath.”
    The day I met the president started like any other, with a stranger nudging me awake with his foot and saying, “Hey, get out of here! This is a place of business!” I ambled on down to Doug’s Tavern and ordered a pint, and Doug told me he couldn’t legally serve me alcohol until ten. I cursed at Doug under my breath, per my routine, and headed over to the gas station.
    It was there that it happened.
    A light-skinned black fellow sat on the curb, leaned against a bindle, smoking a cigarette. He was dressed like any old Joe Schmo, with an American flag t-shirt tucked into a pair of streaked sweatpants, two mismatched, worn-out flip-flops dangling off his crusted feet. I asked him for a cigarette and he slurred something about Vietnam. “Yeah,” I said, “just terrible.”
    I knew he was our president by his easy air of urbanity, the way he slurred carefully chosen words with conviction, and, of course, his patriotic t-shirt. I saluted him, and he saluted back. I said, “It’s an honor to be in your presence,” and he said, “Can you spare some change? I’m trying to get bus fare home.”
    Imagine that! A bus! And all this time, I’d just assumed presidents rode in limousines and jet planes.
    I emptied my pockets, and gave every last dime to the President. He thanked me and wished me a happy birthday for some reason. I shook his sooty hand and bid him adieu. He pulled a forty of Colt .45 from his bindle and took a long swig.
    “Hey, how’d he get malt liquor so early?” I thought to myself, and then, chuckling under my breath, “Well--I guess being of the leader of the free world has its perks!”