Colonel Aureliano Buendía Regrets

All day long on social media yesterday, everybody was talking about the Insurrection Act.

Perfectly sane people—my old editor at Entertainment Weekly, a cheerful Canadian life coach, the Internet genius who abruptly moved from Palo Alto back to his family farm in Missouri.

• Expect “terrorist” bombings, targeted assassinations, or high-profile acts of violence, either staged or exploited, to justify the crackdown.

• There may even be an extremely high profile assassination of a leading right-wing leader that changes everything in a moment… and the “woke radicals” will be blamed, and the country will rally around more extreme measures to bring back order and control.

• Trump has already invoked the Insurrection Act — so now he now declares even more extensive and repressive martial law, and orders troops into major US cities where most oppose him, branding protesters and opponents as “seditionists,” “traitors,” and the “woke mob”.

• He will call on “good Americans” to grab their guns, like the patriots of 1776, and join the militias forming to “restore order” and “take back control” from the leftist threat. Using militias also gets him around resistance from military leaders who might oppose his orders.

It scared the shit out of me.

Why is this crazy stuff going viral? Did something happen that I don't know about that I should know about (even though knowing about it won't do a damn thing because what the fuck can I do about anything?)

Isn't it better if this scenario is inevitable not to know about it? It certainly didn't improve Colonel Aureliano Buendía's quality of life to know that at precisely 9:15 a.m. Columbian time, he was gonna be facing that firing squad, however much his vivid flashbacks may have entertained the rest of us.

###

It was the last day of TaxBwana for the season.

My first clients were a couple in their late 70s who somehow managed to exist on $15,000 a year in social security payments.

My second client was a Methodist minister whose husband (whom she'd brought along for signatures) had Alzheimer's. She had one somewhat complicated issue in that she hadn't entirely spent the housing allowance the church gave her, so I made an executive decision that the cash left over was taxable.

At the very end of our session, her Alzheimer's-addled husband rose unsteadily, unzipped his fly, and began gently urinating on his chair.

My third client was a very lovely woman about my own age who had recently quit her job to care for her 95-year old mother.

We liked each other, so at a certain point in tax calculations, she began complimenting me on my purple hair.

I countered my complimenting her on her fabulous smoky eye makeup which, honest to God, if I could still see well enough to put on eye makeup well, or if I had a stylist, is exactly the way I would do my own eyes! A soft pencil, she told me, a super-soft pencil.

My final client of the day—four clients is a lot! more than any of the other TaxBwanas did—was a guy whose type I knew very well back in the day, when the type was young & attractive. In his sixties, now, Phil Ferragamo (not his real name) was still a swaggerer and a self-styled artiste, but scrawny with unfortunate teeth and mostly bald except for a corona of straggley hair that he defiantly continued to wear long.

Phil Ferragamo was all about putting it to The Man, which he had decided to do by refusing to pay any of the amounts he owed the Internal Revenue Service. To be fair, he was squeaking along on minute salaries from not one but two scut kitchen jobs, so it wasn't as though he had much money.

But as I tried to explain to him over & over & over again, any money he did have—above the $18,000 or so that constituted his standard deduction—would be taxed at a rate of approximately 10%. And it didn't really matter what his thoughts were on the matter; he had to pay that.

"They can't get blood from a stone!" he chirped.

"Well, in fact," I said, "they can. They can slap a lien on your earnings. Trust me: You don't want them to do that. However hard you think your life is now, it's gonna be exponentially worse with a lien. The IRS is generally pretty good about installment agreements. Tell them you can pay $25 a month—"

###

Phil Ferragamo was the very last client there, and it was way past 4 p.m. The other TaxBwanas were virtuously folding up tables. I really dislike the other TaxBwanas. One of them sidled up to me as I was counseling Phil Ferragamo and made a remark about how I should hurry up—

"Well, no one's forcing you to stay, are they?" I said. "So leave."

The TaxBwana looked shocked and muttered something about a joke.

"Well, it's not funny," I said. "And since you have not said two words to me the entire 10 weeks we've been doing this, I don't know what gives you the idea that you can come up to me now and make passive-aggressive remarks."

Ohhhhh! The TaxBwana did not like that. I saw her sidling up to the other TaxBwanas for comfort and support.

Fuck all of you, I thought. I will not work with you assholes again.

But was I upset over the TaxBwana pecking order—I was the new volunteer in the flock this year and did not do the sucking up expected of me, I suppose—or was I upset about the Insurrection Act?

I did not know.

But on the way home, I stopped by the liquor store and bought a small flask of bourbon.

Now, I haven't done any recreational substances in months.

Not because I am anti-recreational substances or moralistic or anything like that but because, for whatever reason, it's felt important to be absolutely compis right now.

But last night I wanted to be shit-faced.

Only to discover that—alas!—I have become immune to bourbon.

Not even the soothing respite of Law & Order: SVU could bring me the numbness I craved.

###

But today is a brand new day. And it's actually sunny! (After a solid week of rain.) So, hope is doing that little one-legged jig.