The Spin Doctor

The spin doctor's room is as he left it, at 12. It's a boy's room: on the wall are posters of helicopters. A sign on his door bears his old name. His memory palace is a plain house with cheap paneling, TV in the living room, an off-white pillow on the old couch. All things stink of the past: the narrow bed where his father kneeled and put his left hand under the blanket, his right on the boy's head, the couch where he made him swear not to tell his mother. The pillow. The sign.


The child cannot see the spin doctor who is witness to his own abuse. He sees his father not from the bed but from the doorway, not as a child sees his abuser, but as a television viewer sees a man watch a child somehow related to him. The man behind me on the couch assures me this is how it happens.


The spin doctor has his father buried in an unmarked grave. He takes the man's name away, as he took his own, though that one he replaced. We spread the old man's ashes beside the Lanikai trail, our son swaying on his father's back.


Spin doctor in Danish is "spin doctor." Spin a yarn, spin a top, use a lure to catch a fish. Put "English" on the ball. Tell it slant, but keep it so. The president doesn't have a racist bone in his body, and he is of the party of Lincoln. We see him, circa 1992, partying with cheerleaders and with Jeffrey Epstein, who doubles over with laughter when he whispers something in his ear. He leers, he touches, he covers Epstein like a vest. We invest the scene with dividends of hate or disgust. It's a booming economy, we're told.


Note: details come from Borgen, a Danish TV show.