When Good Girls Go Bad - The Haunting Of Joe Biden

There was nothing bad about Rose Arming, nothing at all.  She received her First Communion in ribbons and veil, was confirmed, and regretted only that she could not serve on the altar of Christ. 

She was obedient, dutiful, respectful, and nice; and her parents wondered how long it would all last.  The Flaherty girl next door, for example, went bad by the time she turned twelve, a salacious little slut just like her mother; but there was no telling what the good Lord has in store for any of us.  This sweetness and light might just be who she is, hoped her mother, and a smooth path of sunshine and family lay ahead. 

And why was it, Martha Arming wondered, do the Lucy Flahertys of the world get all the attention - boys and gifts and trips to the Bahamas?  Martha had never been either a model of rectitude nor an 'easy' girl.  She had been stuck in the middle, unnoticed, forgotten at dances, ignored on Saturday night, and consigned to volunteer work at the local hospital.  She had never been able to get off the mark and have some fun, now married to old Harold, who chose her because they were the last two partners standing at Mrs. Linder's dancing school, she a wallflower and he a bulbous, stumbling boy both of whom somehow knew that while not necessarily meant for each other, they would be bound. 

Be that as it may, thought Mrs. Arming, was it a a good thing or a bad thing that her daughter seemed headed for the nunnery?  Not a real nunnery, since Vatican II had closed them all down, but you know what I mean, she said to herself- a life of confession, penance, and communion without taking her eyes off the bloody cross.  Here she crossed herself, whispering an apology, but it was true.  Where did one get being faithful and spiritual these days?  But then again there was that Flaherty girl. 

The good phase lasted another ten months, and then Rose came into her own; and boys came buzzing around her, waiting until she came to school so that they could follow her up the stairs to study hall, following her like puppies to a bitch, sniffing, panting.  They couldn't keep away, her scent trailed from History to French.  

No one had taught her any of this, nothing about sex or women's power, nothing to alert her to pitfalls and traps, and warn her about over-eagerness. Just as her mother never could understand where the pious, prayerful, and blessed Rose came from, she could never figure out where this mini-harlot came from either. 

The Biden boy, little Joey, was one of the pack who followed her around, and why she picked him to go off into the woods after school was a mystery.  Why not? was as good a reason as any in those days.  She had no idea - such was the nature of her remarkably instinctive sexuality - why she undressed him and then skipped lightly down the path away from this bony, gawky boy who kept his hands over his private parts as he hopped after her.  

Later, when he was in the White House and she a sought-after New York success married to  a man of fortune and family, a woman with homes in Rimini and Gstaad, she could only think of his hands cupped over his little thing and tiny balls, hip-hopping over prickers and twigs in Harrington Park 

 

Joe had been incidental, a clueless, sexless classmate.  The thing in the woods had nothing to do with sex but power.  What was even more telling about the young Rose Arming - more even than her sexual precociousness - was the feeling that she could get anyone to do anything. She was Hedda Gabler, Rebekka West, Hilde Wangel, Rosalind - any number of women who turned men's sexual fantasies their way. 

No one had a clue that the young Joe Biden would ever amount to anything - especially Rose who, having seen the future president with his pants down, hands over his precious little package, saw who he was and knew he would always be incidental. 

She forgot him, and never put two-and-two together - that the bumbling boy in the woods was the President - and when she did, it was of no consequence; but the President had never forgotten either her or Harrington Park. Whereas she saw only a knobby boy with his pants down, he could never erase the image of the woods and the mirage of a girl who wanted him - a leftover, a boy always on the bench and never on the field, a fumbler, an incompetent. And holding his balls...holding his balls instead of, what? Pursuing her?  He was only ten for God's sake, pursue what and how?  But the notion of failed sex, immature as it is, was unmanageable.  It stuck with him. 

Thank God it did not cripple him, as it well might have done.  To be humiliated in one's first sexual encounter was a death blow to most men; but Joe - as later proven by his political career - was resilient; or just plain dumb as his critics were always quick to point out.  He probably never knew that he had been used and discarded but had only been a prop of a young girl's imagination. 

Little Joey went on to be Big Joe, bringer-home of the bacon to Delaware, faithful public servant and then, finally President of the United States; and yet amidst all the concerns about Ukraine, Putin, Kim, Xi, and the ayatollahs, there was the image of Rose Arming and the boy holding his little junk.  No saber-rattling, no cheers of support, no Trump indictments could shake the image loose from his brain. 

Such is the persistence and continuing wisdom of Sigmund Freud.  What happens to us as children, particularly of a sexual nature, stays with us forever - unless we confess, fess up, and be honest.  Joe would forever be haunted by the old sepia photograph of Rose in the woods unless he sought help,  which as the President, he could never do.  

The more the world became confused to his failing mind, the more the image of Rose Arming grew larger, brighter, and ineradicable.

As for Rose, she did fine - multiple careers, multiple husbands and some renown.  She had come into her own early, learned what was what quickly and easily, used every ounce of brains and sex to become a woman of significance, sought after just as she always had been, except this time with very visible, very substantial rewards.