AND JUST LIKE THAT, MY WORLD CAME CRASHING DOWN UPON ME

(From August 17, 2007)

I didn't wake up this morning expecting to have my heart broken. I arrived at work, settled in front of a computer, checked my email account and there it was. In the news business it's called a "sidebar"-- JENNA BUSH ANNOUNCES ENGAGEMENT.

My heart fell like a stone to the pit of my stomach.

Just over a year from now I had planned on making my move. In early September of 2008 the Republican National Convention comes to town. Being a scion of the most prominent Republican family in America, her attendance was assured. And given her penchant for partying, it was likely she would be out and about among our town's "unwashed" ("Hey," I thought "that's ME!")

Sure, I would have to separate her form her Secret Service escort, but having managed that it was only a matter of squiring her back to my bachelor pad for the wooing to take it's course.

Awaiting us at my apartment would be a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red and an eight ball of coke. I even purchased a used copy of The Boston Pops performing John Phillip Sousa's "The Stars and Stripes Forever" to play on the phonograph. (Do YOU know what sort of tunes get a young Republican girl hot? Because I sure don't!)

I also intended to remove all the books from my apartment, lest she peg me as a "pointy-headed intellectual."

But all of this planning and hoping was for nothing. Jenna is to be wed to Henry Hager, son of Virginia's Republican Party Chairman. He is tall and handsome, with thick, dark hair and fine features.

In short, he outclasses me in every way that would matter to Jenna --and her family.

So friends, I soldier on alone. Bowed but unbroken.

Anyone care to drink scotch and do a big pile of blow?



Yours with a heavy heart,

Brian