My Dinner With Larry

I had a nightmare. In it, Larry David, the Seinfeld writer reputedly worth $400 million, invited me to dinner at his place. A fan of the show, I was happy to go. I even brought a chocolate babka, a bottle of wine, and a black and white cookie to give him. On his lawn there was an 8-foot-tall sign reading in blinking lights: “Hate has no home here but I hate Trump-Hitler.” What a jokester that David was, I thought. No one sane could actually think Trump was Hitler. There were all those millions and millions of death camp victims, and the corpses of millions more civilians and soldiers strewn across a ruined Europe. David must be mocking, somehow, the nutjobs who hated Trump with insane intensity. When I pushed his doorbell, it played a couple of bars of Deutschland Über Alles. David opened the door a crack, displaying just a single eyeball that rolled from side to side, searching the lawn, before fixing on me.

Seeing my quizzical face, he whispered, “I play that to lure out Trump-Hitler. He can’t resist it and will start goosestepping if he hears it. Then, I can … THERE!” David screamed, “It’s a Trump-Hitler spy!” (RELATED: A Message to Larry David: Curb Your Derangement)

David reached through his door and hurled a can at a tree on his lawn. It hit a squirrel who tumbled to the ground where it lay stunned, twitching a forepaw. David opened the door just wide enough for me to squeeze through with a helping pull from his arm. As soon as I was inside, he grabbed another can and threw it at the squirrel who had woozily risen. The can struck its head with a clunk. The squirrel emitted a tiny squeak and moved no more.

“A 14.75-ounce can of cream corn is just the right size,” David asserted, hefting another can. “And see,” he pointed to the label. “It’s non-GMO.”

“But why did you chuck a can at a squirrel?”

“It’s not an ordinary squirrel. It’s a special kind of squirrel — an evil Nazi squirrel. Trump-Hitler trains them with electric shocks and controls them with computer chips that Elon Musk supplies. On my street, there are lots of Nazi squirrels and Nazi birds and Nazi dogs and Nazi cats and many of the neighbor kids are Nazis, too. The kids are harder to hit.”

“Why cream corn?”

“Everyone hates it. Even Nazis. They won’t take away my ammo for their Nazi suppers and after dark, I can go out with a flashlight and gather up the cans to throw at the next Nazi that dares walk on my lawn.”

David slammed his door shut and, with a lot of rattling, slid home several bolts.

“Can’t be too careful, you know. Trump-Hitler has my name on his list of enemies. I’m near the top, right up there with Michael Moore, AOC, and Mickey Mouse.”

“Mickey is a cartoon character,” I said, thinking that the other two also were.

“Oh, no. He’s a spirit animal. The Disney people transformed him. He now guides young children who seek to change their sex onto the path to a blissful, mutilated, non-reproductive, orgasm-free, forever medicated life. Before Mickey came along, kids didn’t know that clever doctors could carve them into a parody of the opposite sex. They all committed suicide in frustration. There wasn’t a tree in town that didn’t have a sexually confused, suicidal third grader hanging from it.”

“I don’t think that’s tr–”

David leveled a finger at my nose. “Are you questioning me! I saw it! It was deeply disturbing! Don’t you care for the health of children?”

I started to say that I didn’t care what adults did to their private parts, but kids might be confused or misled and make a bad, irreversible choice. I held my tongue when David bellowed, “You’re not some sort of Dr. Mengele, are you? Messing up kids to prove some sort of fashionable political point.”

Spittle flew from his contorted face. I was shocked at how much he looked like Bernie Sanders.

“Whatever you say,” I quickly responded.

David’s eyes narrowed.

“I’ve written something you must read.”

David thrust a crumbled piece of paper into my hand. The words on it were written with a blunt red crayon in all capital letters. It began, “Trump/Hitler is just like Hitler. In fact, he is more like Hitler than Hitler. He is the Hitlerest Hitler ever. On a scale of zero to ten with me, who isn’t at all Hitlerish, being zero and 10 being a guy in a Nazi uniform, with a little mustache who is invading Poland. Trump-Hitler is an eleven.

I dared to disagree. “He doesn’t wear a Nazi uniform, doesn’t have a mustache, and hasn’t invaded Poland.”

“Not yet. But just you wait till the next full moon. Then Trump-Hitler will rise out of the White House pumpkin batch and destroy America. On second thought, I’m even more not Hitler than a zero. I’m a negative zero.”

“Ok,” I said soothingly. The door was locked, and he had maneuvered himself between it and me. He picked up another can of creamed corn and gave me a thoughtful glare as he tossed it from hand to hand. I abruptly realized there were bars on the windows.

Thinking fast, I said, “I saw some Nazis downtown.”

“Where! Where!”

“They were down at the University.”

“What were they doing?”

I sidled a bit toward the door.

“Nazi stuff. The things Nazis do. You know, busting up and trashing things. Painting slogans on walls and statues. Hiding their faces behind masks. Not letting anyone say anything they disagree with. Making a lot of noise and screaming obscenities at anyone who wasn’t a Nazi. They targeted a minority group and pushed them around, threatened them, roughed them up, kept them out of the library, and shut down their classes. Told them to go home or else. Some Nazi professors even joined in.”

“I bet Trump-Hitler put them up to it. Those student Nazis must love him. I bet they were shouting his name and waving heroic images of him.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Someone paid for a ton of signs, T-shirts, and flags to say nothing of the camping equipment, or should I say ‘glamping’ equipment, they used when they took over campus greens. They had some nice tents, just the thing for glamor camping.”

“Their Nazi parents are probably sending them care packages so their Nazi bellies won’t go empty.”

“They demanded the university feed them.”

David snorted, “Arrogant bastards. Screw the place up then demand hospitality. I bet they demanded surf and turf and the Nazis running the university gave it to them.”

I couldn’t stop myself. “I read that Hitler was a vegetarian.”

“That’s Old Hitler. Trump-Hitler loves eating flesh. He especially enjoys burgers made with polar bear meat. He hates polar bears. That’s why he wants to melt the North Pole. Before he’s done, Santa will be balancing one-footed on a melting block of ice in the middle of a boiling Arctic Sea.”

I blinked at this.

“I bet Trump-Hitler gives his followers lots and lots of polar bear meat,” David insisted. “Maybe, even some baby seal sliders, too. What else are those university Nazis up to? They must be plotting some kind of genocide. The Old Nazis did.”

“You’re right. They keep chanting something about eliminating their enemy from the mountains to the sea.”

“They must mean from the Catskills to the Hudson,” David said, nodding his head knowingly. “The Nazi monsters!”

By now, with careful steps, I had gotten to the door. I handed David the babka, wine, and black and white cookie. He dropped the can of creamed corn to take them.

“Oh,” I said, “I forgot. I wanted to give you a loaf of marble rye, too. I know a bakery where I can get one fresh from the oven. I’ll just pop out and be back in a minute.”

David’s eyes brightened. “I’d love a slice of marble rye with soup. I got some great soup from a lovely guy who makes it downtown. They call him ‘The Nutsie Soup Guy’ Because he’s a little bit nuts. But his soup is really good.”

With trembling fingers, I undid the bolts on David’s door.

“Hurry back,” David called. “We can eat soup and chat about my favorite topic aside from Trump-Hitler — things that people don’t notice. You ever notice that people’s number one fear is public speaking? Number two is death. This means to the average person, like you, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”

I thought if I kept him talking, maybe he wouldn’t bean me with a can.

“I never noticed that, but I think I’d prefer to stay out of a casket and say my piece. And wasn’t that observation one of Jerry’s bits?”

“I was the puppet master. He was the puppet.”

“Of course.”

“Hey,” David demanded, “is that a Tesla you’re driving? A Nazi car? If it is, wait a minute. I want to key it.”

“No, it’s not,” I called over my shoulder as I ran. “It’s a Volkswagen Rabbit.” And with that, I woke from my nightmare.

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