Kilroy Was Here

I suppose the story should start with how Kilroy came back from the war. That is, it’s not like Kilroy was patriotic or anything. Least of all for the undeveloped Amerikan suburb that is Canadia. Hell, first chance he got, Kilroy shucked his Canadian drabs a little ways past Omaha beach and switched them out for snazzy Nazi kicks. Kilroy got a taste for genocide, having convinced the Jerry’s he was one of them and wound up as a guard at Treblinka. Toward the end there, a runaway Jew clobbered Kilroy over the head with a large and heavy rock as some 200 unhappy campers made a break for it. It was then that Kilroy ditched the Death’s Head drabs and conned his way back across Europe, resuming his Canadian identity in time to convince the allies that the Jerry’s had nabbed his ass in France. Suffice it to say, by the time the war was over, Kilroy landed safely home in Canada, and from there found himself a job in the U.S. It was aboard the 20th Century Limited, a swanky steam locomotive that zipped from New York to Chicago and back, that Ayn Rand noticed the blonde, lanky brakeman. Stirred by his efficiency, his competence, his joie de vivre, Rand asked him just what his name was. Kilroy panicked and in that panic spat out “eh- John… Galt.” Well anyway, I’m sure you can put two and two together.

After a brief stint as a Parisian cop circa 1961, that is, in October of that year where Kilroy had a lark hog-tying and chucking Algerians into the currents of the Seine, we now smash-cut our way into the 1970’s. Pinochet’s Chile, godblessit, when reds fell from the sky like birds caught in a wind turbine. Kilroy, the only gringo to party with the Chicago Boys, can you believe it? A ghost-writer on “El Ladrillo,” the hulking blueprint for comprehensive capitalism, Kilroy never failed to remind people how he was Augusto’s favorite. After lending his services to Jorge Vidella and the people of Argentina, and, while at it, ecstatically diving headlong into Operation Condor, Kilroy Clem left South America a better place than when he found it and caught a plane back to the U.S.

Kilroy’s further resume includes a brief employ at IBM, where, in 1980, he was among the first to point out the impending Millennium problem, or as it’s more popularly dubbed, ‘Y2K’. On March 30th, 1981, Kilroy dove and took a bullet for Ronald Reagan moments after John Hinckley opened fire as the Amerikan president stepped outside a Hilton in Washington. Suffice it to say, Reagan personally put Kilroy on secret service detail, and Clem became a personal confidant to the president shortly thereafter. It must also be noted, however, that not only was Kilroy a close friend to John Hinckley – having met Hinckley at a dingy Manhattan movie theater where both had gone to see Taxi Driver when the film first opened, but that Kilroy himself planted the idea in Hinckley’s head that the best way to catch the attention of the lovely Jodie Foster was for Hinckley to pump a few slugs into Reagan. But of course, Saint Ronnie and the boys never got a whiff of that detail.

We’ll round out the ’80’s with two minorly interesting episodes: how Kilroy spent a couple days in early June kicking ass at Tiananmen square – let me tell you, you’ve never seen a round-eye look so scrumptious in Chinese army fatigues – only to get his own ass kicked on the way back from the party. What happened was, Kilroy was riding atop the last tank in a column of tanks, faced backward with his legs dangling from the turret, when the convoy comes to a stop. Wanting to see just what the hell was the matter, Kilroy marched to the front of the column only to find a Chinaman holding a pair of grocery bags in either hand. This guy, he was just standing in the middle of the pedestrian crossing like a goddam deer in headlights. Kilroy took a few steps forward, only to be met with a flying shoe to the face. The Chinaman, now only wearing his other shoe, dropped his groceries and tore his white shirt clean in half. Kilroy was caught off-guard with how ripped this guy was, and for the first time Kilroy felt fear. The second shoe bonked him right on the nose and Kilroy hauled ass. The Chinaman picked up one of the fallen shoes and nipping Kilroy’s heals, got a few good whacks upside the round-eye’s head. The tanks started up and receded down the street behind them.

The second, and frankly slightly more interesting chapter that we’ll close the ’80’s on, happened five months after that. You see, it was November by then. As party spokesman, Günther Schabowski was winging his way through a press conference. Electoral reforms, blah blah, press reforms, blah blah, new travel regulations through Checkpoint Charlie, blah blah. Speaking of, as we near the close of the conference, a hand goes up. A reporter asks a question or other about the newly drafted travel laws. Bumbling his way through an answer, Schabowski brought up a note he’d been given and skimming said note, stated how a newly drafted regulation now allowed that anyone was free to cross the border from East to West. Blah blah. When pressed on what that meant, that is to say, when’s this draft take effect? Schabowski paused, just as confused as the reporters. A few seconds' hesitation and Schabowski replies with, "As far as I know, it takes effect immediately, without delay."

With Krauts moshing by the wall, no one thought to ask just who the hell slipped that little note to Krenz before Krenz handed it off to Schabowski…

Kilroy. Kilroy didn’t age. He looked to be in his late twenties now the same as he had looked when he first came to by the side of a road outside Medicine Hat all those decades prior. Much of the ’90’s Kilroy spent partying with Jefferson Epstein and Ronald Stump, forging a lifelong friendship with both. When not drowning in Jeff’s leftover muff, Kilroy Clem helped beloved cult leader Shoko Asahara import a Russian attack chopper into Japan, and of course, as you can guess, Kilroy pointed out to Shoko how the air was too fresh and how the Japanese people could use more sarin in their lungs. Of lesser interest, Kilroy, marksman that he is, popped off the two shots that injured two and killed one at Ruby Ridge in 1992, and fired the first shot at Waco eight months later. Kilroy also supplied the coke that Andy Dick gave to Brynn Hartmann, and to other notable celebrities it would be rather tedious to mention.

2001 passed uneventfully until it didn’t. Slumped in a deck chair just blocks from the World Trade Center, Kilroy had front-row seats to the greatest show on earth. Ze Plane ! Ze Plane! See, after the ’93 bombing turned into a fiasco, Osama Bin-What’s-His-Face had nearly thrown in the towel when it came to the World Trade Center. But no, not Kilroy. After a rousing locker-room speech, the A-rabs got back out there and gave it their all.

Yes, one must imagine Kilroy happy, but one must also imagine Kilroy heartbroken. He outlived many dear friends. Pen pals with Charlie Manson and Ted Kaczynski, their deaths marked a period of long mourning in Kilroy’s otherwise sunny L.A. home. Most devastating, though, was when the aforementioned Jeff Epstein taught himself how to dance the Spandau ballet in a Manhattan jail cell.

Kilroy, not only Jeff’s personal pilot but a close confidant, later remembered the last summer he spent with the late financier. It was on Jeff’s personal island, small but swanky; Jeff, always the charming Gatsby-esque host, and Kilroy puttering about as though he were Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Talented Mr. Ripley, for some reason. Kilroy recounted an especially intimate moment, the two of them in a small private theater with a glass partition in front. Behind the glass was a small room for the entertainment. Kilroy watched Jeff watching this blonde chick act out the part of Nastasja Kinski in the 1984 film Paris, Texas. Pink sweater and everything. “Jeff, how’s the peeping?” Jeff turned to look over his shoulder at Kilroy. “I can still see him there,” Kilroy told us. Jeff, that deliciously mischevious smile like a naughty cat getting away with something. Kilroy, raising a drink in hand. “Jeff,” he repeated, “how’s the peeping? JeffreyJeffreyJeffreyJeffreeey…”

The last night there, everyone’s having a great time, the best time, and there’s Kilroy and Jeff, both jiggling around each other on the outdoor dance floor, set to Queen’s “Under Pressure.” Actually, to hear Kilroy tell it, the moment sounds suspiciously like the father-daughter dance at the end of the 2022 film Aftersun.

…And then, the party ended.

Besides all these things, and other things too - masterminding Ronald Stump’s 2016 presidential campaign, then forcing Stump to seek re-election despite Stump’s protests. When Joe the Bread Loaf, so named, as we all know, because he’s a sliced loaf of bread, when Joe wiggled out a win in 2020, Kilroy’s strategy was deny, deny, deny. Chugging champaign from a safe location one January morning after the election, Kilroy said to Stump, “And what rough beast, its hour come at last, slouches towards Bethleham to be born?” Or something gay like that. Stump responded with a racial slur followed by more champaign - that’s almost as interesting as the time Kilroy found a penny on the ground. One side was really, very shiny while the other side was scratched up and oxidized. That penny was, like, really out there, man.

And these were but a few fleeting moments of happiness in the one must suppose kind of long, and certainly storied biography of Kilroy Clem.