Join an average Joe as he journeys to the very seats of the nation's power -- literally. Can he talk his own bottom into the throne of a Supreme Court justice? The Pentagon perch of the secretary of defense?
By T. M Shine
Sunday, October 19, 2008
"Michael started the process of picking out a new chair about three weeks ago. And normally I wouldn't care, but he promised me his old one. It's way better . . . I really want it."
-- Pam, in "The Office"
Ted Daniel, special assistant to the House of Representatives sergeant-at-arms, drops the velvet rope, and I am on the third of six steps to the top of the rostrum when he states quite clearly, "You can do anything you want but sit in it."
Sit is all I want to do, but I come armed with a million "Antiques Roadshow" questions to camouflage my intentions: What type of wood is the chair made of? Hickory? Brass or copper nails? Has it been reupholstered since the Eisenhower administration?
My knees sink into the royal blue carpet as I go down on all fours to scope out a date or manufacturer on the base of the chair. I am wriggling on my back, squirming, gazing up at the undercarriage as if I am trying to peer up a woman's skirt. In a week's time, I have become a chair pervert.
And, for a CP, this is Mount Everest -- the roost of the speaker of the House. You know it well. The parliamentarian throne from which one can sit and make faces behind the president of the United States of America during the State of the Union address.
I have not sought this high and sacred ground lightly. I am on a quest to sit in the puffy, grandiose chairs of our nation's leaders, and I have prepared myself with discipline and dedication. I even checked with La-Z-Boy, the experts in quality and comfort, and right now the adamant words of the company's product manager of upholstery, Penny Eudy, are pounding in my ears: "Every chair needs the sit test!"
So, to come this far and not sit in this statuesque seat of supremacy is akin to getting a private viewing of van Gogh's "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" with the only caveat being that you have to keep your eyes shut. It's like having Sarah Brightman show up at your karaoke club just as the surly bartender pulls the plug on the microphone.
Ted, as would anyone whose title includes both "sergeant" and "arms," can sense my frustration. He gives me that wary eye, and rightfully so. I'm getting used to it. We all know this town is just "Gossip Girl" with bow ties, so my reputation is preceding me: I'm "the guy who wants to sit in people's chairs."
Melinda Smith, a Senate curator, has even begun referring to my requests as "seatings," and the House curator, Farar Elliott, just left a message on my cellphone that began with: "Chairs ... I've got chairs on the brain. I've got chairs coming out of my ears ..." and ended with a shout, "Seats of power!" as if it were the long-lost rallying call of our founding fathers or, at the very least, the Thundercats.
Even with this bit of bizarre buzz swirling, those receiving my requests still express puzzlement. "You want to what? Why?"
But surely they know. The entire government revolves around chairs and sitting: "The chairperson..." "The court is sitting ... " Two sitting senators are competing for the Oval Office. It's all about the chair. Our political jargon is based on the language of the bent knee and sunken butt. Candidates don't run for a job or a position; they run for a seat. And that leaves the rest of us, who will never have a fundraiser or make a stump speech, with a bad case of seat envy. Is there anyone who hasn't been channel-surfing and stopped at C-SPAN3 just long enough to exclaim, "Look at that smug SOB sitting in that big, bloated chair"?
Most of us can't even sit at our own dinner tables with any sense of control. But maybe if we had a chair like that one. What does it feel like, even if only for an instant?
On a quest such as this, there are so many questions inadvertently answered that we don't even have time for them all. Are members of the House allowed to eat Philly cheese steaks in the chairs? (No, but they can have cough drops.) Can we buy a replica of, say, the VP's presiding officer Senate chair to break out for special occasions like we do with dining-room-table extenders at Thanksgiving? (Yes, call me for details.) Is there truly a guy named Willie who drives around in a van and details all the wing-backed leather-upholstered chairs in Congress? (God, I hope so.)
But the only question I really want answered is: Can I sit in your chair? Can I hop in the saddle and share that sensation of soft cushioning and hard decisions?
* * *
"The furniture and architecture we surround ourselves with is how we represent ourselves, how we show what we aspire to in a particular time and place. That's why we built a dome so high it reaches into the sky."
-- Farar Elliott, U.S. House of Representatives curator
It is Day One of the Chair Quest, and I am in the upper gallery of the House chamber -- the rafters, the cheap seats. I've been tagged onto a small tour group visiting the Capitol -- "Just go in with them" -- that is being guided by a freckle-faced congressional staffer. Members of my group, which I think is from Atlanta, are full of questions.
"How many stars are there around the ceiling?" a young girl asks.
"I don't know; let's count them," the guide says excitedly.
While everyone is counting, I slip in a question about the chairs on the floor.
"How do I get down there?"
Still counting stars, she points to the stairs, and I get up.
"Oh, no, you can't go down there!" The freckles on her face begin to close in as she squints suspiciously. Frankly, I think of making a mad dash, but the climate is just too tense. Flinty-eyed guards holding automatic rifles dot the Capitol steps in a Code Orange stance. They look to me like they'd have no problem shooting a field-tripping sixth-grader for getting out of line, let alone a guy with a sit list of chairs from the Supreme Court to the War Room sticking out of his pocket.
"It's very rare that anyone gets to sit down there," the guide says.
But I can plainly see a family of five stretched out in several of the seats. One boy, wearing a bright green jersey, has his leg flopped over the arm of a chair like he's in his family room, waiting for Dad to pop in a DVD of "Drillbit Taylor."
"Who are they?" I ask. "Who gets permission to go down there?"
Even the little girl recounting the stars for the third time looks down over the railing, and asks, "Yeah, who are those people?"
"As far as I know, it's people who have done favors for a member of Congress or lobbyists ... people like that."
I don't know about lobbying, but I can do favors like nobody's business. Need a hand with that? It comes naturally to me. The thing is, those chairs can obviously be had, and I will have one. But first I have to make it over to the Supreme Court for the public lecture at 1:30 p.m.
* * *
"A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?"
-- Albert Einstein
The nine empty chairs lined up behind the winged bench in the Supreme Court are ominous, to say the least.
They make me recall my time as a juror on a murder trial. We were deliberating into the night and at one point found ourselves unattended in the dark, empty courtroom. A few giddy jurors hopped in the witness chair to do good imitations of bad murder witnesses, while I opted to climb into the judge's chair and soak it in. A day later, our verdict ended up being so atrocious that the judge slipped out of his robe and cornered us before we could get out of the building.
"What the heck were you thinking?" he asked. Maybe if we'd all had plush, high-backed judicial chairs three or four feet off the ground our thought process would have been more elevated.
Well, here were some of the most elevated fanny-rests in the world, a tantalizing few feet away. The courtroom is packed with tourists, and a docent is racing through an entertaining history of the bench, throwing in little asides about Honduran mahogany and how the nine judges can't all have gavels or it would be like a wild game of Whac-a-Mole up there.
I wait for a breath, raise my hand and ask if, before we adjourn, I could sit in one of the justices' chairs?
"No," the docent replies, quicker than I did the last time someone asked if I wanted a United Way contribution taken directly out of my paycheck.
"But I will tell you the chairs are made right here in the basement," he says. "And they're all identical. Basically, they just go up and down. And some have a little reclinability. A couple of the justices like to recline."
My guess is that Roberts and Breyer are the recliners, but that's the last thing on my mind as I race to the basement in search of a lone carpenter hammering out the next batch of Supreme Court chairs. Maybe he'd let me sit in one, even if it's just in the skeletal stage -- all wood and no upholstery.
There's not so much as the sound of a screw turning downstairs, but I hear the sizzle of a deep fryer and discover the well-hidden Supreme Court Cafe and the best $2.75 BLT I've ever come across. I don't care where you work in the District, it's worth climbing every one of the 10,000 steps out front.
* * *
"I am, I said, to no one there. And no one heard at all, not even the chair."
-- Neil Diamond
Live free or die.
I'm roaming the halls of the Senate office buildings looking for a senator from the great state of New Hampshire. Every time I check with a Senate staff member, I get a dumbfounded look and: "So, you want to actually sit in the senator's chair? In the Senate chamber? I don't know if that can be done."
"Can we find out?"
"I don't know."
But New Hampshire . . . If you have the motto "Live free or die," I don't think you can say: "Oooo, sitting in a chair. I'd better check the rule book."
Meanwhile, I'm trying to work every angle along the way. I hit John McCain's office because I think it will give him an opportunity to show his fun side. No go. Turns out, everybody gets to show his fun side on "The Daily Show" or "Ellen" for eight minutes, and then, I guess, they've met their sense-of-humor quota for the year.
The office of Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa is the most deceptive. A carnival-size popcorn cart is popping just inside the doorway. His office seems so inviting, but now the smell of popcorn and rejection will forever be intertwined in my nasal subconscious.
At the farthest corner on the seventh floor of the Hart Senate Office Building, I dead-end into Alaska, the closest thing to New Hampshire I can find (cold mountains, rugged individualism, moose-kebab-loving governors).
"Sit in the actual chair?" Michael Brumas, Sen. Lisa Murkowski's communications director, asks. "I think senators need special permission to bring a fellow on the floor."
Yeah, a fellow; I've always thought of myself as a fellow. That's what this really is, allowing a fellow -- Everyman -- the opportunity to plop down in a seat of power.
"It sounds like something that you'd have to check with the sergeant-at-arms office about."
I don't like the sound of that.
"So, you're basically looking for a senator to volunteer to let you sit in their seat," he says, as if he's figuring out a puzzle. "I've only been in this position for a week," Michael says politely. I understand. His first week on the job he can't be giving out free tickets to ride in the senator's seat. Even new workers at Quiznos wait until the third week before they start handing out free "Mmm, toasty" sandwiches to their friends.
Every doorway offers up new excuses, and I'm beyond reason now. I'm just racing up and down the halls of the Russell Senate Office Building, stopping at any opening. It is the snack-size bags of Virginia salted peanuts in a basket by the fireplace that first attract me to Sen. Jim Webb's office, where communications director Jessica Smith is willing to take on the challenge. "Hmmm, very few people have floor privileges," she says.
"But ... I really don't see why it's a big deal," I say. "I saw people on the House floor."
"Oh, they're much looser over there," she says, with a tone that sort of insinuates: Open your eyes. The House is Wal-Mart, and the Senate is Target. Get used to it.
"I'm not saying it's impossible, but it may be," Jessica says. "Oh, I know who would know: the lady in the cloakroom. Harry Reid used to even ask her how to get bills passed. What's her name?"
I allow myself a satisfied smile. In just a few short doorways, I've taken my last hope out of the hands of the sergeant-at-arms and placed it squarely in the capable paws of what's-her-name in the cloakroom.
"Lou-Lou. Is that her name?" Jessica yells out to other staffers in the office. "I'm going to be embarrassed. I bet I'm not even close on her name. It's one of those types of names though."
"Maybe it's Deirdre," I say.
"Lula!" someone shouts from the back.
"That's it: Lula," Jessica says. "We have to find Lula."
Lula ... in the cloakroom ... with the answers.
Webb's staff is on it, but quickly discovers Lula is no longer in the cloakroom. She's been promoted. Everyone is happy she got a better position -- she really deserved it -- but no one knows a last name or exactly where she has landed in her ascent.
I call Sen. Harry Reid's office. Certainly, he would know where Lula is.
His personal voice mail picks up. No use getting into the Lula thing, so I get right to the point. I am so tired of explaining myself. "I want to sit in your chair," I blurt out.
He does not return the call.
I finally reach someone who can't give me Lula's number but can pass on a message. Within minutes, I am in contact with Lula Johnson Davis, now Democratic secretary for the majority of the Senate.
"You can't. Period," Lula says.
"But ... "
"Senators only. You're not going to get that privilege. Not unless you're elected senator. Sorry, Terry."
For anyone who always thought the blow of bad news would be softened if the messenger's name was Lula, it is not. In some ways, it's worse.
Way No. 1: "So, are you also going to be sitting in the chair of a Supreme Court justice?" Lula asks.
"Well ... I was going to try."
"I don't see it."
Damn.
* * *
"Would those of you in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry."
-- John Lennon
Lincoln, he knows a thing or two about sitting, doesn't he? It's the pose he's stuck with. Others get marbleized gallantly bucking up on a horse or charging a hill, sword drawn, but Abe's just a-sittin' there -- in the biggest, baddest chair in the land.
I gained a little distance from Lula's "no way" proclamation when I started trudging away from the Capitol toward this memorial. I am fed up with skulking around and begging for a seat. Leaving those shiny, overbuffed halls of the Capitol building is a relief. It's dusk. A storm is blotching the sky, and it makes for a gloriously messy trek along the dirt path beside the Reflecting Pool. Geese droppings cover the walkway, and gnats swarm up from the high grass.
From a distance, Abe is always in the shadows behind a curtain of pillars, but he looms larger every time I see him. In scale, nothing disappoints in this town. A tourist rarely says, "Pfft, that Washington Monument looks so much bigger on TV," or, while gazing at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, exclaims, "Oh, that's not so many names." Abe is a 19-by-19-foot block of huge, and I always turn to him when I am fed up with my people.
Everything else in this world of ours is getting bent, but not the sitting rules of government officials. My tax money goes into these chairs, too, you know. Over the years, I've certainly paid for some portion of those Senate chairs, at least a brass nail or two. And, if no one is going to give a tack about that, how about just making a small exception? There's always an exception, isn't there? As a rule, doctors don't like people showing up unannounced, but if it's a 28-year-old bleached-blond pharmaceutical rep sitting cross-legged at the end of the examining table, they might make an exception.
I want to be the exception, but I think I could invoke the English charm of the Geico gecko and still not get into that Senate seat.
Abe's permanent expression could only be described as "pensive" on a good day, and I'm sure that's the way my mug must look to the tourists scurrying in from the rain. This place offers good shelter, and this is probably a fine time for another personal chair story: On Saturdays when I was growing up, my dad would often take my brothers and me with him to work, where we would roll several office chairs out to the adjacent empty factory, spray the wheels with oil, then race over acres of assembly-line concrete as if it were the Bonneville Salt Flats.
After admiring the perfect chair-racing sheen on the floors of the Capitol halls, I was relating this story to a young Senate worker I'll call "Oh" because he immediately said, "Oh, I've skateboarded through these halls late at night." And when I mentioned my struggle to get on the Senate floor, he responded, "Oh, I've sat in Obama's seat." Oh didn't seem the braggart type, just matter-of-fact, like any low-ranking employee taking advantage of whatever his work environment has to offer.
After closing time at Sports Authority, a clerk in the hunting department might pick up a crossbow and fire a few arrows at the plastic deer in Aisle 6 for kicks. Here, you get to skateboard on miles of 1860 flooring and play historical musical chairs. No doubt we've all sat in the boss's chair while he or she was in Nantucket attending the third wedding of a college roommate. It's just that most of our bosses aren't, say, a candidate for president of the United States.
So, I'm nowhere, but in that monument to the man who persevered in the face of setback after setback, I am trying to stay positive. Then I see it: On loops of chain at the base of this monument's bookended throne, small signs dangle that read, "No Sitting."
I flee outside. The steps are slick and dark from the downpour, and my feet are killing me from the walk. I sit down in the drizzle just as a young girl in a flimsy Mount Vernon poncho and yellow sneakers reaches the top step. She pulls the hood down, turns to her friend and says: "Okay, you were right. This is cool."
Yes, it is. This adventure may have started as a lark, but now, as I catch a glimpse of Lincoln's boots out of the corner of my eye, the act of sitting in a person's chair, even for a brief moment, seems extremely noble -- the equivalent of walking a mile in someone's shoes.
Once more, I pull out the sit list. It's damp and the ink running, but I can still see that there are plenty of other chairs to conquer.
* * *
"America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair."
-- Arnold Toynbee
Pick a chair, any chair.
Senate Associate Curator Melinda Smith has deftly smuggled me into the usually off-limits "President's Room" in the Capitol. You know the "formal" living room your parents never let you sit in? The room is kind of like that, multiplied by 1,000. And now is my chance to sink right down. I pass on the Turkish couches and choose one of the plush single chairs by the fireplace.
I have only recently discovered that once a person lowers himself into a chair, his surroundings take on a whole different aura. Odd details reveal themselves, and in this 1859 design, it is as if everything falls in on top of you. If Marie Antoinette had a talk show -- and I believe she did in the Sofia Coppola film -- this would be her greenroom. Tassels dangle from furnishings the color of radioactive red apples, and kaleidoscopic frescoes swirl from wall to ceiling as if they were blasted fully formed out of a double-pump Super Soaker. In the 1870s, newspaper columnist Mary Clemmer Ames perfectly described the sensation of this room: "There is not one quiet hue on which the tired sight may rest."
Still, I feel totally at ease in this deep-tufted parlor chair. There's a certain mystery connected to where we rest our bones, isn't there? Chairs are built for contemplation. We know exactly where we sat the moment we decided to leave our spouse, make a career change or bet the youngest child's college fund on a Redskins game. At least I do. But those kinds of decisions seem so trivial here, as I look toward the fireplace and ponder who might have sat here before me, mind racing toward the much bigger questions that affect us all.
What must it feel like to make decisions from a chair with real weight and history behind it?
Since 1933, the room has rarely been used for business between the president and the Senate, but, immediately after a presidential inauguration, it has become tradition for the new president to stop by here and sign a piece of legislation. As my eyes quickly scan the surreal surroundings, I realize all I have to do is sit in every chair in the room, and I'll be covered. I will have sat in a chair used by past, present and future presidents.
"Oh, there is a special chair for the president that's only brought out for certain occasions," Melinda says.
She says she may be able to let me visit it in storage, and I act calm, like, "That would be nice." But my mind is racing to the thought that even if it has to happen in a closet in the Capitol's cellar, being able to beat Obama or McCain to that chair could be my legacy.
Melinda seems to be the only person who really understands my passion. We can talk swivels like some guys talk about the Red Sox. So I ask her if she, too, wants to sit in all these great chairs. "Absolutely," she says. "You want to know: How does it feel? The pieces can talk to you. By sitting in them and interacting with them, the furniture can talk to you."
At the same time, knowing of my determination to get into a Senate seat, she says: "I like that you have to jump through hoops to do it. That's as it should be."
After trudging up and down several hallways and crossing the line where the tile beneath us ages several decades, Melinda looks both ways, delicately unclips a velvet rope and takes out a small set of keys. With the shortest steps I will take today, I am in the Old Senate Chamber that was used between 1810 and 1859, staring directly at what is noted on my sit list as simply "that canopied number."
To be honest, I wasn't really sure where this chair, which I also referred to as "the Queen Latifah model," was located, but I had seen pictures of it, an extreme throne surrounded by extravagant crimson drapery held up by the talons of a gilded eagle -- otherworldly. Back in the day, it was the seat for the VP or presiding officer of the Senate.
Melinda tucks away her keys to the kingdom; I pull out $15, flash it her way and ask if I can sit in the canopied chair so the furniture can have the opportunity to talk to me. As she shakes her head in firm refusal, I look down at the bills and see the five is on the outside. I would have sworn that earlier I had shuffled the 10 to the front in case I found myself in this exact situation.
"I think of myself as a protector, not an opportunist," Melinda says.
Still, I will forever curse myself for not having the 10 on the outside.
* * *
"You can do anything you want but sit in it."
-- Ted Daniel, special assistant to the House of Representatives sergeant-at-arms
Okay, I can work around that.
I am having my way with the speaker of the House chair. I am standing behind it, massaging its shoulders. I am on my belly beneath it, searching its limbs for the heads of warrior chieftains in the wood grain, just as I used to do with the paneling in the family den when I was 9. I am twirling it like the trophy wife of my best friend on New Year's Eve. It is doing 360s -- perfect doughnuts -- probably for the first time in 50 years. I am hovering over its padded saddle as if it were a truck stop toilet seat.
But no touchdown.
The phrase "sit test" echoes in my head as I clumsily try to gauge the chair's comfort factor with the palms of my hands. I press down on the seat and find it extremely stiff, barely broken in. The leather is so taut that I question if the chair has been reupholstered recently.
"No, and it's not an issue of comfort," Ted says. "When a person works their way up to this chair, it wouldn't matter if it was an old barber's chair."
How cool would that be?
I am not easily awed. In my time on this planet, I have sat in a captain's chair at the kitchen table on Willie Nelson's tour bus, but I still find this to be the Holy Grail of chairs.
As I'm taking this model in from so many angles, I suddenly realize I am standing where the president does during the State of the Union address. I turn around, grab the worn wood of the lectern and gaze out at my lack of constituents.
"That's a tough job, standing there," Ted says. Yeah, but I immediately turn back to the chair, admiring the altitude it has on the president. Picture if you were in the third grade and your seat were behind the teacher's and about as high as the top of the blackboard.
"A person in that position has to wield a great deal of authority and wield it well," says House curator Farar Elliott. "The chair is a part of that. It telegraphs that authority. The size and design support that power both literally and figuratively."
I scale back up the rostrum, take a position level with Speaker Nancy Pelosi's viewpoint and stare down at where the back of the president's head would be.
Make face.
Later in the day, I run into Oh. "Oh," he says, "I've sat in the speaker's chair. No big deal."
* * *
"I had three chairs in my house: one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society."
-- Henry David Thoreau
Ted sits down beside me at the base of the House rostrum. "Think of what it takes just to get into one of these seats," he says.
My first thought is, "I know for sure it's more than $15," but it quickly dawns on me that he's referring to the tenacity of elected officials. We get up, slip out a side door and are quickly in the sergeant-at-arms offices. Ted makes an abrupt turn and directs me into the empty office of his boss, Sergeant-at-Arms Wilson Livingood.
"The chair is called the Member's Chair," Ted says, pointing behind Livingood's desk. "It's the same as the one all the members of Congress get. Comes in blue or black; that's it."
This one is black and quite regal, square with modern, chunky cushioning. Add a drink holder and mini-fridge, and it could double as the new gamer chair Gilbert Arenas is probably having custom-built to play Madden NFL 09.
"Can I sit in it?" I ask.
"I guess, before he gets back."
"I really like the feel of it," I say. I think it complements my form and physique.
"Really? I don't think it's that comfortable," Ted says. Apparently he's given it a test drive.
I grip the arms as if I'm clutching a meager consolation prize, but "The Member" still feels like a breakthrough, especially after I quickly slip out of it just as Livingood strolls back into the offices.
Ted looks over his shoulder and says, "Just in time."
While my timing is impeccable, I refocus on the highest court in the land and its nine high chairs.
"I don't know. The courtroom is under construction right now," Kathy Arberg, the Supreme Court's public information officer, says in reply to my phoned request to get up-close and personal with one of the chairs.
As I prepare for another rejection, I imagine the construction workers behind closed doors taking turns spinning in the chairs and aiming their camera phones. "Hey, put my toolbox in Justice Roberts's chair. I'll put a photo on eBay to back up the claim: My toolbox sat on the Supreme Court."
"I guess maybe we could bring one out into the hallway," Kathy says.
Now we're talkin'. Wheel it out among the people. "But let me check with the marshal first," she adds.
Oh, that's not a good idea, I want to say, but the phone conversation abruptly ends, and she is gone. I can't think of a single time in my life where checking with the marshal worked out in my favor. And what kind of marshal? A fire marshal? You know they're sticklers. If you have a poker table in your basement, it has to be three feet from the oil furnace.
When I was previously in the Supreme Court building, I had been wondering if actual judgments were being made in these chairs. For all we know, justices may reach the boldest conclusions fidgeting in a bright blue plastic bucket chair at Jiffy Lube, simultaneously contemplating why a 10-minute oil change actually takes 43 minutes.
But Justice Antonin Scalia has said that he does often make up his mind during oral arguments while sitting in his chair, so the furniture is very much a part of the process, a cushioned collaborator.
And it does not disappoint. I'm going to have to rewire my synaptic response to the word "marshal" because this one obviously gave the okay: A single chair has been rolled across the hallway and is now sitting in an empty room, a few days and 100 feet removed from handing down decisions on inmates at Guantanamo and handguns on the streets of Washington.
When the chair is taken out of its grand surroundings, you'd think the first impression would be: It's just a chair. But that's not the case at all. That darn dais blocks out just how magnificent the chair is -- galactic, solid black, with sweeping leather and airy cloth fortified by mahogany. It smells great. It smells like the absolute best BLT you've ever encountered.
As I circle the chair, I notice a handful of courthouse workers have filed into the room. I take out the clandestine dressmaker's tape measure (made entirely of plastic to slip through security check points) I've been carrying around to size up my subjects. "A yard of back," I say, and they all seem pleased.
Proud.
"So, they make these babies in the basement?" I ask.
Kathy is a tad perplexed. "No, that was a long time ago. Several years."
"Is this Honduran mahogany?"
"Honduran? Where did you hear that? I guess it could be. I can check."
"It does sound better," I say.
Everyone in the room agrees. A gold nameplate is affixed to the back of the chair. The owner is Justice Samuel Alito. It will always belong to him. When a justice retires, the chair is presented as a parting gift, Kathy says.
Kathy notices a nick on one of the arms. It's deep and makes me wonder how a government judicial chair could have incurred such damage. Midnight geriatric murderball? A couple of the other court employees step up, rubbing their fingers across the nick. It is hard to decipher if they are concerned about the injured mahogany or are just taking the only opportunity they may ever have to touch the throne of a Supreme Court justice -- fellow groupies of inanimate objects of power.
I do not ask permission. I get up off my knees and climb into Justice Alito's chair. Not requesting "a seating" is my new MO because it leaves little room for the word no. "It's the sit test. La-Z-Boy recommends it," I say as I lean back in Supreme comfort.
Lula should see me now.
* * *
"You struck me as a man who wouldn't want to waste a chair."
-- Hit man Carson Wells, in "No Country for Old Men"
"No, no. I get it -- the energy crisis,the Iraq situation -- it can all wait. You want to sit in the senator's chair," says Eric Kleiman, communications director for Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana.
Eric was kind enough to send the senator a memo: GUY WANTS TO SIT IN YOUR CHAIR.
"And the senator turned it over and checked 'Yes,' " Eric says gleefully.
It was when I was frantically popping into every office in the Russell Senate Office Building that I first explained my plight to Bayh's staff, and there was a bit of a mix-up about whether I wanted to sit in the senator's office chair or on the Senate floor. Unfortunately, the check-off was being interpreted as applying only to the office model. And here I am. I was thinking that if I feigned interest in Bayh's office chair and didn't break anything, maybe I'd get an invite to the real chair. But now that I'm actually saddled up, I have no regrets. Truthfully, a senator's office chair gets a lot more use than the one on the Senate floor. Don't most senators just watch the proceedings on C-SPAN?
The arms are plush. There's a grand-motherly hand-stitched pillow -- "Evan, may you always have a cushion in your races" -- perfect for back support.
"Not that he needs it," Eric explains. "The senator has great posture."
As I squirm around in the seat, the leather has all the right squeaks, and the carriage creaks in harmony. The furniture is talking to me.
"Bayh knows how to break in a chair," I say.
"He will occasionally put his feet up," Eric says.
It sounds like an invitation, but I must decline in hopes that later, when they hold a staff meeting to discuss whether to allow me on the Senate floor, Eric will argue my case: "Boss, I have to be honest. When you were out of town I gave him the okay to put his feet up on your desk, and he perished the thought. I think we can trust him. He's all class. A1 Steak Sauce. Top shelf."
"What color is this upholstery?" I ask.
"I don't know, burnt umber," Eric says.
"Is umber a color?"
"How 'bout a light mocha?"
"Good enough."
I glance at the photos of the senator's twins on his desk. Fine-lookin' boys. (Later, when I question Bayh about the rule disallowing guests from sitting in Senate seats, he told me unequivocally: "My twin 12-year-olds think it should be changed.")
Sinking deeper into the chair, I start to unload my grievances about getting on the Senate floor, and Eric and other members of Bayh's staff, Cody Lundquist and Kinsey Kiriako are showing a decent amount of sympathy.
"I thought if I could just get down in the Senate chamber I could sneak into a seat, no big deal," I say.
"The police will be down there," Kinsey says.
Kinsey thinks he may have some contacts to get me close to the chairs, but we all agree it's best to go through the senator first. I look up and smile because I suddenly realize Eric and Kinsey are sitting in the two chairs at the front of the desk as if we're having a real meeting and I am in the driver's seat.
"I like this," I say. "It's like we're conspiring about how to get me on the Senate floor."
"No, no one's conspiring," Eric says quickly.
I lean back and give a little of my spiel about how the scale of things does not disappoint in this town. But then Kinsey mentions that the size of the Oval Office is kind of a letdown.
"And the War Room," Eric chimes in. "You know, you expect a WAR ROOM! But, eh."
Cross War Room and Oval Office off my sit list. Especially since White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore already told me, "I don't see it happening."
"Did you know the senators can buy their chairs when they leave office?" I ask. "I just found that out."
"I'd never heard that," Eric replies.
Yeah, and it irks me that those chairs are guarded like the crown jewels, but 18 months from now some cat named Kaiser Roll will be tossing a hairball up on it or a Wisconsin senator's brother-in-law might be nodding off in one while trying to stay awake for the last suitcase on "Deal or No Deal."
Even the Bayh twins give me a look like, "That's just not right, man."
"And then there's the Senate Cabinet Shop, where they actually build all the chairs, which is supposed to be over by Postal Square," I continue. "So, I figure I go over there and sit in a prototype or whatever, but the sergeant-at-arms says, 'No way.' "
"They really won't let you where they make the chairs?" Eric asks. "What is up with that?"
Cody says he thinks they're making some chairs right underneath the Senate buildings. "I've seen un-upholstered furniture down there."
"Maybe I could just sort of look lost down there and stumble right in," I say.
I get looks all around that say, "We believe you could pull it off."
We're all up out of our chairs now, and Eric has taken out the Senate directory and is writing names and numbers he's finding for furniture departments and supervisors on a slew of Post-its. I don't dare say the word "conspiring" again, but I'll be darned if we aren't all conspiring to get me into the Secret Senate Cabinet Shop.
We shake hands, and before I go, Eric wants to show me his chair. "OfficeMax," he says, standing over it. It's a pretty sweet black pleather number. Apparently, he had a problem with his government-issue model.
"It kept ripping my pants," he says.
Another staff member is sitting in the same type of chair nearby, and Eric points to the part he allegedly kept shredding his trousers on.
"I don't see how that could happen," I say.
"I don't see how he could do that, either," the staff member currently sitting in the chair says. And as long as I'm checking it out, she shows me how she can make the government-issued chair bounce. "My feet don't even touch the ground," she says.
It is while she is in mid-bounce that I feel validated in this endeavor. Chairs are important.
To everyone.
P.S. An informal canvassing of recently retired senators reveals that the generous staff of Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader from the great state of South Dakota, purchased his Senate chair ("I think they paid $150 for it"), presented it to him as a gift, and ... "He keeps it at home in his study," says Jody Bennett, his ... "I kind of call myself his chief of staff, but I don't have any staff."
Bob Graham, former senator from Florida, wasn't as lucky. "I didn't know you could purchase the chair. I definitely would have bought mine," Graham says. "I don't think they purposely kept it a secret from me, but I certainly never got an e-mail that said, 'Chairs for sale!' "
* * *
"There's an empty spot I've always had inside me. I tried to fill it with family, religion, community service, but those were dead ends! I think this chair is the answer."
-- Homer Simpson
The message on my cellphone was garbled. It sounded official -- short and concise -- yet at first I think the caller is talking about "pecan pie."
On the 12th listen, "pecan pie" becomes "Pentagon," and "secrets of the damned" resolves into "secretary of defense." The most significant line of the message is: "I think we can make this happen while the secretary is away."
Yes! While the boss is away.
I am on my best behavior, because at the Pentagon, even the receptionists stand 6-foot-3, weigh 240 pounds and wear camouflage.
It takes 1 million steps to reach anywhere in the Pentagon, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Geoff Morrell is sort of scoffing at my pilgrimage as he escorts me through the hallways. "So, all you're focusing on is the chair? I don't get it. Aren't most chairs just the typical ergonomic office chairs these days?"
I accuse him of making my endeavor sound boring, and he just sort of makes a face. "Well, what about the desks?" he asks. "I think the desk was originally Grant's."
I immediately think Lou Grant, but once my mind flips to Ulysses, I'm very intrigued. "It's quite ornate," Geoff says. "So, you would write about the desk?"
OMG! He was selling the chair short, but he was not selling the desk long. Gleaming of walnut and butternut, with burled veneer panels and more fake drawers than a 1981 waterbed pedestal, it is immense and magnificent. "Maybe I will switch to desks," I whisper.
With his eyes on his shiny shoes, Geoff immediately starts measuring the desk by stepping off feet around its perimeter. "Seven, eight . . . Five feet by 10 feet," he says as he lifts his head, grinning.
Man, and this is the first time I do not feel awkward taking out my tape measure. I measure the chair and do a double take. The desk really is throwing off the scale of things because this chair has an inch on the Supreme Court thrones. I drop to the ground to see if I can find the manufacturer's name on the undercarriage. I'm twisting to read the label -- burgundy ... wingback ... executiv ... Hon ... Hon.com.
"It's a Hon," I mumble. I can't believe Geoff was playing down "The Hon." I zoom in on the wheels, which are buffed like the brass belt buckle of a major general. My palms are flat on the floor when it dawns on me that I'm on a lengthy sheet of Plexiglas. The son of a gun has Plexiglas beneath his chair so he can rip around the office, racing from task to task, not a second lost. When the country is in crisis, he will be commandeering the fastest chair on Earth. I like this guy's style. What's his name again, Gates?
"If you came when Rumsfeld was here, there'd be no chair," Geoff says.
"He didn't have a chair?"
"Nope. Stood at a drafting table. And then, to follow suit, everybody in the building was getting drafting tables. When I first got here, there was a drafting table in my office. I got rid of it."
Moral of story: Never trust a man without a chair.
I gaze up at Geoff as if to say we can continue this conversation while I take my rightful position in the saddle of The Hon.
This is the pinnacle. I don't know where this chair hunt ends exactly -- as late as yesterday, I was tipped off that a senator or representative from Virginia has a chair made out of a stump in his office. "They call it 'The Stump,' " my informant said -- but I do know when a man on a quest is peaking.
Unlike my Supreme Court garden spot, here I am in the actual perch of power. I spread my arms as if I could grip the ends of the desk -- impossible for any mere mortal -- and end up clawing at the edges to pull the chair into position. It's amazing how easily I adapt to Plexiglas. Imagine if my brothers and I had laid out 110 yards of the stuff in the factory. We may have broken the sound barrier in a generic 1972 Murray office chair.
The great expanse of this desk was reportedly used by Gen. John Joseph Pershing, commander-in-chief of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I. A portrait of Grant hangs on the wall dead ahead, and over my shoulder I am flanked by door-size paintings of generals Eisenhower and Marshall hovering above a command central of computers.
Remember what I said about how the view of a room radically changes once you plop yourself into a chair? I glance up at the ceiling, and there, Wall Street-style, is a stretch of blazing red digital clock readings from several time zones -- Baghdad,Kabul, Tokyo, Coney Island. I look at Geoff. Boring, my butt.
Yes, this is it. Make no mistake, this is how decisions are made. This is where it happens, under Ulysses S. Grant's watchful eye, with 37 inches of back, a desk the size of a $4,400-a-month New York City apartment and a chair that slides on Plexiglas.
The country is at Code Orange; it is 23:00 in Islamabad; I am sitting in the burgundy high-back chair of the secretary of defense of the United States of America, and now I understand.
Once you have a really good seat, you'd be a fool to give it up.
T.M. Shine is frequent contributor to the Magazine. He blogs at tmshine.blogspot.com and can be reached at tmshine@msn.com.
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