Loopy Lou writes:

Good evening, James.

Was bookmarking your site some weeks ago. Almost all short pieces, but much of interest, many very entertaining.

Tonight, I was trying to find the Fred Reed Exchanges Souls with Maureen O'Dowd article again, it seems to have vanished.

Wanted to posting the link the next time Ron Unz posts an F. Reed article, thought others may not find it funny (I did), but Fred himself would probably not seeing the humour (last part a little stomach-churning for me, too, but am liking black, not as in pigmentation, humour).

Crazy piece.

Trying to find it again also led me to Fred's original anti-Dowd article, also fun to reading.

Thx. and regards.

“Here is my writer challenge: Fred Reed and Maureen Dowd exchange souls for a day.”

-Ishmael

The following account has been adapted from Fred Reed's unpublished posthumous autobiography. To the extent that Fred's signature wit and curmudgeon edge seems subdued in this recollection of his harrowing encounters in the streets of a famously violent American city, please keep in mind that the manuscript in our possession was dictated from a hospice bed.

Despite the vile and disturbing nature of the hopelessly Rightist monologue, the unrepentant Reed's prejudiced account does shed light on Ms. Dowd's trials, her current condition, and her inestimable value as iconic spokesperson for our cause.

-Emil Rubio, Editor-and-chief, American New Left Quarterly

I had been invited to the Urban League Forum on Race Relations and Gender Solutions to debate Maureen Dowd. Imagine having such a thing scrawled on our press pass, and imagine further attending such a congress of fools. Alas, here I lay, having paid the fool's price for knowing folly. Methinks the perfumed wind was spat into one time too many.

The thing was held in Baltimore in a graffitied tent on the sight of Freddie Gray's arrest—a memorial to his service to the low IQ community!

There I am, sitting one seat over from Maureen Dowd as she snipes at me about my being an example of the unnecessary nature of men—proof of my own gender's obsolescence! As you can imagine I turned her acrimonious words back upon her—and then—it boggles the mind. Among the many matrons and gay wall flowers of this event was the representative form the twenty-two person Haitian community in Baltimore, Mamaloi something-or-another. Having been assigned as our moderator and seemingly taken aback by the venom of our exchange, she placed a brown hand on each of our heads and said, "You two mus' live a day as da udda ta trewally undastan."

I felt ill immediately. Then this obese black woman placed a woman's hand mirror in my hand and in Maureen's.

"What a ridiculous womanly appeal for attention," I thought. Since I had the mirror in my hand, I looked down, as a reflex I suppose. And what I saw I saw with binocular vision. My blind eye was cured! But it was no longer my eye. I was looking down into a mirror that contained the face of Maureen Dowd!

And worst of all, to my right, an old man was screaming hoarsely into the mirror that he held. I turned and saw myself, looking into a mirror with an expression of horror, as if my face had melted, and clawing at my good eye. This was just insane, "a magic trick using the power of suggestion backed by poor diction," I thought. I shook my head to clear it, and not only saw my dyed hair flap around, but felt its light length bounce against my soft pale neck!

I was stricken with two horrific notions at once. First, I was somehow wedged into the body of this vaginaocracy advocate. Second and most troubling was the thought that within 24 hours I would be back in the body of Fred Reed, the white man shrieking like a psychotic woman in a city of savages!

This latter notion made me angry. But the anger did not take hold. My body—no, her body—clung to that anger and melted it into fear, fear of rejection and ridicule. And so I fled, running in my pumps until I turned an ankle, kicked off the stupid footwear and made for the tent flap. With news photographers crowding around my screeching physical form I—in Maureen's body—managed to duck out without somehow being accosted by my—her!—minions.

I ran, and ran, an entire two blocks, and could not help to think into her body, "I suppose this would provide you with evidence that women should serve in combat."

I ran on, hating the vulnerable body I was trapped within, but—redact this, would you—kind of impressed with how perky my tits were. The broad has to be at least fifty after all. It boggles the mind.

I had never experienced such pain as this, running barefoot up this wicked street, and experienced—righteously you might say—firsthand that women do not have higher pain tolerance than men. I ran until there was not a white in sight. I halted, thinking that I was ruined—that Fred Reed's future had been ruined, turned into the laughing stock of America, all because the fiendish hussy who owned this body was unable to deal with being a wrinkled one-eyed old man for even a moment.

Inspired by a bus rolling down the street in excess of the speed limit, I thought to myself, Vengefully, "I'll take her with me."

I sprinted and then wilted as I neared the path of the oncoming bus, hopelessly married in my psyche to this artificial bansai tree of a body. I cowered in a half crouch, my smooth-shaven knees knocking together below the hem of my skirt.

I then realized that I was stuck in this woman's body as more than a prisoner, but as a feeling—God forgive me—yearning portion of her being. Our biology intrudes—like now.

I was momentarily overcome by her haughty bearing and walked as dignified as I might in my stocking feet, past four black thugs crowded about a stone porch. They stopped speaking and looked at—at her!

She—no, me dam it—became aware of a tingling warmth in her/my clit, a tightening sensation in the groin, and a yearning to be filled appeared as wetness between her legs. I felt certain that if I looked down, I would see hard nipples pushing at her—my—blouse, betraying her—yes, her, all her—desire.

"You whore," I thought. "You desire to be used by those savages. Why those four fools probably offer a broad spectrum STD—

"Oh, yes," I thought. "I'll offer her body up to these animals. But she is still a white woman. Where is your conscience? Besides, I would experience it too—no!"

But, inexplicably, and most whorishly, when I felt her nipples pressing against the snobbish attire I walked up to the leering men, all in their twenties, and offered myself using words that I do not wish recorded for posterity. I can still recall the wetted urge to be grappled into submission and inseminated, the yearning to be accepted as their property, the mad desire to be their play thing—and they laughed!

Her very body recoiled from the rejection—wanted only to be owned. a part of me thought, "Where is a dirty biker when you need him!"

With every minute I was becoming her, and was having increasing difficulty dealing with the urge to surrender and be owned by the wretched world around me!

The smallest of the men quipped, "You be fine enough fo an ole white lady with no booty—but cho need ta leave."

The one that seemed to have some intelligence stepped over and handed her a card and said, "I'll get with you later. Fo now you need to bounce."

The big muscular one simply smacked his lips in disgust and the one who might have been said to look like a respectable negro said, "Miss, you need to leave."

I was—she was—physically angry from the rejection. So I harnessed this to my half-cocked—no pun intended—plan for getting Ms. Dowd raped and stepped up to the men and snarled, "You know you boys all want this."

The articulate one answered, "Be that as it may, you do not understand."

Just then the unpainted door opened and a black ghetto queen emerged from it, stepping thunderously down the five concrete steps. "This is it," thinks I!

To hell with being stuck in Maureen Dowd's body during her rape, when I can enjoy the ride while she gets punished in a fashion that will not represent the fulfillment of her deepest fantasy.

The black woman, a head taller and thrice her girth, wearing a tube top and cut off jean shorts 16 sizes too small, with hooped, six-inch earrings dangling to her broad shoulders, put one hand on her hip, put the index finger of the other hand in Maureen's face and said, "Bitch watchyo doin' 'roun ma mens?"

In the best moment of her life the hand that penned Are Men Necessary reached out and yanked one of those hooped earrings loose from its fleshy mooring. No sooner had I—Maureen Dowd with a memory of being a man—pulled the fake bangle back to that hated breast as the earlobe separated into two hanging gyro strips, the big brown fist that could have belonged to a heavyweight boxer crashed into that sanctimonious mouth, forever removing the teeth therein.

No, I do not regret Miss Dowd's handicapped status. I just wish it had not given rise to her current fame as the first handicapped female presidential candidate!

Unfortunately the hospice personnel were not able to revive Mister Reed so that he might have finished his account. Ms. Dowd, for her part, has written three books about her day long transmigration experience. The subject of our next piece on her candidacy will be Ms. Dowd's bestseller Shawndrea's Blessing: Parkinson's Syndrome, Being Fred Reed, and My Political Awakening.