I can tell you where Tom Keane, Jr. is: Tom Keane is at the Jersey Shore.
I was walking my beagle, Cleophus, on the Boardwalk on the day before Memorial Day. It was Sunday at about 8:45 and traffic was sparse. That’s why I could get by walking the dog on the boardwalk.
We were by one of the many broken-down, skee-ball parlors on the strip. It’s decrepit, with a half-dozen pin ball machines, maybe a dozen half-working skee-ball machines. The safety grills had been thrown up. The skee-ball jockey was chucking balls up the ramp to check it was working anew. Fixed for a new day.
When he saw Cleophus, he came over.
“I love beagles,” he said as he leaned over to stroke the old guy. He was wearing flip-flops, cargo shorts and a grey Jesse Jackson '88 T-shirt. The T-shirt was stained with grease, but looked vintage. He wore a blue ball cap with KPMG embossed on the front. A Pall Mall filter dangled from his lip. He wore the round glasses of an accountant.
“I think I know who you are.”
He scowled at me.
“You’re supposed to be in rehab,” I said.
“Fuck You!” he said. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he said with the gravelly voice of someone who had been drinking Fast Eddie and smoking Pall Malls for three months.
“Hey.” I looked around. There was no one who would recognize Tom Keane, Jr. “I’m not going to give you up. I just want to know what’s going on. I vote, after all.”
The congressman scratched at his beard. “C’mon in.”
We walked past the Skee-ball machines. Beneath a 30-year-old Stargate pinball machine in the corner of the shop was a pillow, a sleeping bag and an empty bottle of Lemon Fast Eddie Vodka laying on it’s side.
In the office, the congressman reached into an old refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of Hackensack Pale Ale.
He lit another Pall Mall from the one burning. He popped the top off the bottle from the edge of the refrigerator. Then he told me his story.
He was done. He called his friend, Lev.
- I need to get out of here, Lev. You gotta help me find an offramp.
- What kind of offramp are you looking for, Tommy? South America?
- No! I can’t go to South America. I need to go somewhere people don’t know me.
- You were always a nut for Skee-ball, Tommy! I’ve got the perfect place for you where no one will ever recognize you. There’s a place on the Jersey Shore.
“And, of course, Lev was right. The people down here on the shore don’t know me. I’m from the 7th district, after all. The “beach” my constituents go to is in Hawaii. And, of course, the 7th is where that Fucker’s from.”
“Who?” I asked.
“You know. The President,” he said,
“Every time he flies into Bedminster he calls me up: ‘Hey, Fat Tommy, I’m back in the 7th District! Come on out and play golf with me!’ ‘Fat Tommy,’ that’s what that fat fuck calls me. I want to wrap my 9-iron around his neck every time he says that… And all those sycophantic shitheads that surround him, they expect me to lose at golf to that fucker! I don’t lose at golf!!”
“Congressman, are you all right?”
“Oh. Yes.. I should offer you something. Have a beer.”
“Thank you, sir, but I don’t want a beer at 9:30 in the morning.”
“No,” he said as he grabbed a wrench. “I’ve got work to do.”
“Congressman?” I asked as he moved past me towards the door,
“Yes,”
“Are you happy?”
“Yes, I think I am.”
So, I think Congressman Thomas Keane, Jr. is on the Jersey Shore. He is among the Goom-bahs and the Snookies. It is Summer and it is a place of asphalt and sun tan oil. It’s a place where no one recognizes him because they don’t read papers anymore. I think he likes being anonymous, playing skee-ball and smoking cigarettes.
I like to think about Thomas Keane, Jr. in a good place, among God’s people in the Garden State with fresh breezes from off the Atlantic and the scent of overcooked funnel cake in the air.
He must be happy away from the scum and the fetid funk of Washington DC…