He continued to pick away at his craft in his free time, but rarely found a welcoming outlet for his work. He hadn't been a complete failure by any means; he had a few articles published in magazines bordering on being titled, Mediocre Quarterly, and had actually had a novelette adapted for network tv. This however he found as more of an offense as his piece of historical fiction, Counter-Coup, a story about a deposed leader working his way back into the political system by attaching himself to negative fallout of the minimally planned usurpation to win over the opinion-less constituents, was turned into a show about a soldier reincarnated as a little girl, who then inspired and a group of alcoholic generals to be better men and better soldiers. The show was geared toward an older audience and lasted only a season and a half. The sellout led to many nights of Chester crying himself to sleep, however with the heat on in his apartment.
This piece highlighted the focus of the Chester Bridgeman Library, which with all pieces owned would still slide harmlessly away from a bookend. His fascination came in the reactionary tendencies of a culture, and having spent his entire life living in the US, he was embedded into the fabric of Reactionism.
His most recent...success...had been a bi-weekly column on the website of a local paper. He'd been given the job because of the...success...of his novelette, and was expected to write more in-line with the adaptation which he did not write, something that often put he and his supervisor at odds. Chester figured that because this was simply an opportunity to exercise his literary muscle, he continued to write what he wanted. "Time Before and After Time" took a historical political stance and attempted to marry example to evidence that the country forever needed failure to react to in order to create the next level of reactionary success and thus another failure. He'd also fully accepted, after only the third article, that no one was reading, and those who were often left evidence of such in the comments box at the end of the page, randomly assigning him Communist, Socialist, or Asshole monikers, all of which he valued as better than @BearSkin42, @Amerikaroks, or @ProvingIDon'tUnderstandWhatYouWrote.
His frustrations grew, bi-weekly, but he wrote, and little did he know that considering the political atmosphere and sensitivity of the society they all existed in, his name would quickly become broken-household.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
President Garveson was yet another, though more current, benefactor of Reactionism in America according to Chester's column. As had become the standard practice of voting in the Presidential elections, each newly elected candidate had to be as opposite the previous President as possible. This had gone back years: before President Garveson was a hand-holding hippy emotional-therapist, before him a socially unweathered former CFO with a slight stutter, and before him the first minority President of the United States. Victors of elections could only really expect one term of service as many people had become too sensitive to really allow anything to be seen through, and with everyone claiming expertise on everything, it was senseless to fight. This however did lead to greater efficiency in the highlighted issue of each voted-on candidate's campaign. Needless to say, younger generations were much more accepting of minorities in office, the economy was slightly better prepared to deal with its natural fluctuations, (although the foundation of the stock markets requiring reaction became more apparently ironic), state parks had been expanded and further protected, and marijuana had been legalized (and taxed).
President Garveson's platform was created for him and under him. An unsuspecting candidate, with no real interest in becoming President of third most powerful country in the world, he had simply been enjoying a quiet, retired life with his wife Mary. When President Swimming Bird's utility grew stale only 10 months into his term, many began scouring the country for a man's man. Ex-military but not ex-soldier, strong and silent, traditional almost, classical, a throwback to some of the first presidents.
Though starting well before the need to find such a candidate, many of the names being thrown out represented the itchy-triggered, "look at my chest hair", "let's bomb the bastard" types that were these days only activated in movies; there had not been an international conflict worth entering for over a decade according to each Commander in Chief, individually and collectively.
Chester had been most proud of his article about returning focus to the country while there was very little to offer others, and take the opportunity to strengthen from within. The reality was more closely accurate to the former, with the latter receiving no real attention or dedication.
So, with very little warning, Carter Garveson's name had been entered as a candidate anonymously. He was former Marine, so he didn't find this to be unbelievable, but troublesome. He had never liked crowds, he had never liked the Marines. He served briefly and confidently, but it was his distaste for brotherhood and intensity that left a bad taste in his mouth. His greatest moments in life came more recently, sitting on his porch swing with his wife of 55 years, her with a lemonade and him a Democracy, a drink of Crown Royale and limeade, ironic in that his distaste for the present state of the Union outreached only his desire to care.
His experience had led him to desire pursuit of a Morale, Welfare, and Recreation specialty, but he had achieved closure much before he'd achieved the required ranking to obtain his process-of-elimination dream. The rest of his professional life was spent as a hiking and hunting guide, both done as much recreationally, and as his life-balance shifted beyond 50-50 of professional and personal, he gladly returned home more and more to his Mary.
A first grade teacher since she herself could read, Mary loved Carter for whom he was, and that feeling was very much supported by what he wasn't. She knew him to be a sensitive, caring man, enjoying all sorts of music and the arts, loved his two children and his five grandchildren, and had the warmest hands and softest eyes. He was quite the opposite of an ex-Marine, and quite the fulfillment of everything a man should be, and eventually, quite the opposite of everything all of those constituents would want him to be.
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