blogger interrupted

I spent most of the holiday season after my arrest in late November, 2001, in silent hiding, trying to recover, in counseling.  Writing my manuscript was therapeutic, diving into the telling of my adventure story.  Not the one about becoming and living with being a sex felon.  The one I wanted to write, about my work spreading democracy abroad.  I typed and typed on the new laptop my parents bought me to replace the one that now sat in an evidence room at the prosecutor’s office. 

The ringing of the phone in the early days after my arrest was like a needle into my ears.  I cowered from it.  I didn’t want to talk to anyone, it paralyzed me.  When the phone rang in early February, 2002, with Tim Ryan on the other end, I jumped.

Tim Ryan and I met when I was running the Democratic Party’s coordinated campaign in New Hampshire in 1998, and he was a law student at Franklin Pierce Law School.  He came in one day to volunteer, and filtered up to me.  I needed someone to take a last minute, no-hope write in state senate candidate and make him a threat to be the 4^th Democratic pick-up that would ensure the state senate went Democratic for the first time in 86 years. 

Tim was a student with some time on his hands, and I needed someone just like him.             

“O.k., here’s what you do,” I said from behind my second-hand desk.

“Shoot,” Tim said.

“I want you to get this guy on the street corners, every day, morning rush hour and evening rush hour, holding his yard signs.”

Tim looked at me like I was insane.  “You want me to ….hold signs?”

“Yeah, every day.  Twice a day.”  The phone rang.  “High traffic areas. Wave at the cars.”  I answered the phone.  Tim sat back and wondered what he got himself into.  I barked into the phone.  “Yeah.  I got someone to help right here.  He’s in.”  I looked at Tim for confirmation.  He nodded.

“O.k.” I said hanging up.  “Can you come in here tomorrow to meet with Steve?”

“You got it,” Tim said.  Tim’s eyes seemed to open to the adventure before him, the possibilities seemed to reach him. At that moment, we bonded and became the closest of friends.

Thanks to Tim Ryan, Steve DeStefano had gone from not being on the ballot in August, to losing by 5, count ‘em, five votes in November.  Four years later, Tim Ryan was now calling me at my parents’ house while I sat waiting for trial.  He’d since become a state senator in Ohio.

“Well, well Senator,”  I said into the phone.

“I got something for ya buddy,” he said.

“I thought I told you not to run for state senate,” I joked.  I thought he’d lose to Marc Dann in the 2000 primary.  I’m not always as smart as I think I am.

“You did,” Tim replied.

“You lucky Irish piece o’ shit,” I laughed.  ”I heard you won with sign holding.”

“What else?”  he said.  I laughed.  “Hey, listen, I need your advice,” he said.  I knew exactly where this was going. 

The endless saga of Tim’s congressman, Jim Traficant, had entered its final chapter.  Traficant was on his way to jail, and a primary had opened up for the seat.  Tim wanted to run for it. 

“You’re insane,” I said. Tim Ryan would have no money, no real political support, and he was 28.  ”You sir, are insane.”

“Timmy, no one’s sayin’ otherwise here,” he laughed.

I pretended I wasn’t on trial for soliciting sex from an FBI agent posing as a 13-year-old boy.  I found comfort in the knowledge that Tim had no idea what was going on.  It allowed me to pretend that my life was as it had been – I was being sought for counsel, my talents and experience were being put to good use, in precisely the fashion I had wanted them to be.  It felt normal.

I hung up the phone half-hoping that my advice for Tim not to run would sink in, and I would have no bridge to cross.  I tried to forget about the call.  But the other half of me was begging for him to call back.  Begging.

I knew why Tim had called me.  He needed me.  He couldn’t win without a real veteran helping him out.  He expected that would be me.  And I knew I could deliver.  So did he.

When the phone rang a couple weeks later, and it was Tim Ryan again, I wasn’t surprised.  He wasn’t shying away.  Not this Tim Ryan.  This Tim Ryan never met a challenge to his Irish luck that he didn’t like.  He was running.  He wanted to talk.  I said this needed to be in person.  We set up a time at a Bob Evans in Solon.

I told him all of it - All.  Of.  It.  Through shaking hands and shortness of breath.  He listened like a friend.  And like the few who had before, and the many who would in the future, he told me what I wanted to hear.  He heard my story, and said fuck that.  

“I need you, we’ll work something out.”  

Another closet door slammed shut.

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