Obama Meets Interest Group

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“What group did you say this person represents?” President Obama asks his aide.

“The LGBTQRS Alliance.”

“What does the R and S stand for?”

“You don’t want to know, Mr. President.”

The LGBTQRS representative is brought into the office and invited to have a seat. Obama studies the confident individual with curiosity and puzzlement.

“Welcome, er, Mr., er, Ms., er, ah,” Obama says with his trademark stutter.

“Call me Zox,” the person says.

“Zox?”

The President glances down at a briefing note he’s been handed. The note says that Zox is from Harvard. The President brightens. His alma mater. They have something in common.

“Excuse me,” Zox says, “if I don’t refer to you as Mr. President. The LGBTQRS Alliance has decided that Mr. is a patronizing title. We’re against all titles, of any kind, though if we were to use titles we wouldn’t use Mr. or even Ms. Maybe a new one, Mx., which stands for no gender. But titles are obsolete. Genders are obsolete. Sexes are obsolete.”

Obama takes this in and slightly nods his head. He notices a book in Zox’s hand, perhaps the source of these ideas. it looks like a sci-fi novel. “Escape from Zorxon.” Presumably someplace, if only fictional, where these new ways of thinking have occurred.

“I’ve never been less than thoroughly progressive,” Obama affirms.

“As for the ‘President’ name,” Zox continues. “We’ve decided it simply can no longer be used, seeing that it’s patriarchal and sexist and homophobic and hierarchical and misogynist. The word brings with it very many bad historical connotations, as I’m sure you realize.”

How did he fall so far behind the curve the President wonders? His own education, advanced for its day, now seems quaint and retrograde. He realizes he needs to figure this out. Being, er, whoever he is means figuring things out.

“Not President?” Obama carefully queries the person.

Obama places great stock in being President. He enjoys the role. Just like it that a black guy finally gets the office and suddenly someone wants to do away with the title.

“We have a replacement name picked out,” Zox assures him.

“Yes?”

“Bub. We wanted a name as undiscriminatory as possible. We’ve decided the new name for the President should be Bub.”

“Bub?”

“Isn’t that way more democratic?” Zox asks with sincerity. “Bub?”

President Obama wonders if he’s being put on, if Zox is here to make him look foolish. Zox might be a Republican plant. They’re known for dirty tricks, and now have Dick Cheney advising them. Obama thinks that maybe he should usher Zox out of the Oval Office, back to his, er, her, spaceship. But what if this organization and person are for real? The President—er, Bub—decides he can’t take the chance.