Neal Pollack Meets Prince Howard

VANITIES

THE WORLD’S GREATEST LIVING WRITER

WHAT YOU THINK OF HOWARD DEAN, WHAT HOWARD Dean thinks of himself, how the media portray Howard Dean, and what Howard Dean is really like are four entities so separate and distinct that if they were in the same room they would probably spend an hour dissembling on minor details of public policy, sneering at one another’s accusations, until you didn’t know what they really thought and didn’t really care. Then there is the real Howard Dean, the one who was photographed table-dancing at Bungalow 8 last weekend, who proudly admits that in December, when he should have been campaigning in Iowa, he spent a week on St. Barts with Ginuwine and, as he puts it, “ 100 caramel-colored bitches,” and who recently made an amateur pornographic video with two wideeyed 19-year-old volunteers from Evergreen College in Washington. “I am so over running for president of the United States,” he says, batting his eyes coquettishly. “I want to get drunk.” He means now.

Yet somehow, now, in early January, Howard Dean remains the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for president, even if many in his party claim he’s too liberal and too angry to beat George W. Bush. “Whatever,” he says, hardly touching his wasabi-and-juniper-flecked grouper cake in a private booth at Flush, his favorite West Hollywood restaurant. “Bush is lame.”

His cell phone rings. It’s his campaign manager, Joe Trippi.

“Wazzzup, slut?” he shouts, then listens for a few seconds. “Screw the unions, bitch!” he says. “I’m going out!”

He hangs up.

“I am not flying coach to Des Moines,” he says.

In the past week alone, Howard Dean has attended the closing party for Deformity (a freak-show-themed nightclub in Hell’s Kitchen), the Vice Magazine All-Girl Pabst Blue Ribbon Wrestling Extravaganza, Kid Rock’s surprise Bar Mitzvah, and, in what he admits was too much even for him, seven Saturdaynight birthday parties at seven different hotels in Miami Beach. “I was so wasted,” he says.

Tonight, after a long day of candidates’ forums, interviews with “horrible” TV newspeople, and shaking hands with voters that he describes as “disgusting but sweet,” Dean is ready for a big night. We get into his bright-red convertible, and, despite the fact that he’s already had a half-dozen martinis, he insists on driving. The whole time, his cell phone doesn’t stop ringing. Ashton Kutcher calls twice to ask for directions. “One time,” Dean says, “when I was campaigning in North Dakota, I couldn’t get cell-phone service, and I thought I was going to die. But then I thought, Fuck it, who cares? I’m in North Dakota, which has, like, three electoral votes.”

His first stop is a nightclub called Crust. Inside is the usual odd mix that Howard attracts wherever he goes: members of the hot Albuquerque indie-pop band the Shins, some actors from Smallville and The O.C., Stephon Marbury, the girl from that movie, California state treasurer Phil Angelides, and Tara Reid, who runs up to Dean and sticks her tongue in his mouth.

They slide into a booth together, along with a guy in a suit who identifies himself as Dean’s California campaign manager.

“Howard,” he says, “we’ve got to prepare you for the debate tomorrow.”

“Debates are so Nancy,” Dean says. “Nancy” is a catchall insult for Dean. It can mean anything from out-of-date to badly dressed to gay, though he swears he’s not bigoted and is, in fact, “totally bisexual.”

“Do you like my shirt?” asks Tara Reid.

Her shirt is gold-sheened and reads, in silver cursive letters on the front, “Gang Bang.”

“Take it off,” Dean says. “You have awesome tits!”

He dashes off to the bathroom and returns a half-hour later. His eyes are red-rimmed. A thin trickle of blood runs out of his left nostril.

“Oh my god!” he says. “I love this song!”

The after-party is at the pool house of the parents of the drummer of red-hot party band Ima Robot, whom Dean calls a “very sweet guy,” and it’s cool because he gives Dean all-hours access to the hot tub. “Rock ’n’ roll,” Dean says. “A man’s gotta live.”

Much, much later, Howard squints as the sun begins to peep through a window.

“I don’t want to be ‘Howard Dean’ anymore,” he says sincerely. “What is that? Who cares? So I’m the former governor of Vermont and possibly the next Democratic nominee for president. It was Joe Trippi’s idea, not mine. Screw the Internet. I just want to be Howard.”

His cell phone rings. It’s Trippi. Dean is scheduled to attend a fund-raising breakfast in half an hour.

“Do I have to?” he says.

Apparently, he does. He surveys the human wreckage of another night out with Howard Dean.

“It stinks in here,” he says, chugging a Red Bull. Then, apropos of nothing, he says: “I hate breakfast.”