Pizza and Totalitarianism at Bethany Beach

Although I don’t see Gus and Stella often, maybe once or twice a year, when they arrive my brain registers them instantly, as if they were my parents. Gus and Stella are a couple who saved my life in 2018. I just saw them at a summer kick-off pool party. It brought it all back.

It was September of 2018. I was at Bethany Beach. I’d driven down there to escape the collection of lawyers, “journalists,” oppo-researchers, outright criminals and politicians who tried to kill me in 2018. In September of that year Brett Kavanaugh, a high school friend, was nominated for the Supreme Court. In an attempt to take him down, the left came after me. They tried to attach us at the hip, accused Brett and me of drugging girls, gang rape, fights on boats in Rhode Island, and general debauchery.

After the fake stories hit in mid-September, I left Washington and decamped for the beach. This was a planned hit, and I had to regroup. Some in the leftist media interpreted this as a flight or, as ridiculous Sen. Dick Durbin put it, “Mark Judge hiding out in a beach house in Bethany Beach, Delaware.” The truth is, it was a strategic retreat that would—hopefully—be followed by a counterstrike. They’d planned the hit for weeks. It would take me years and a lot of research to return fire.

The beach house, a beautiful three-story place on Ocean View Parkway, was just a couple of blocks from the ocean. I’d spent summers as a kid and teenager on the Eastern Shore, and provided some solace. However, I wouldn’t be alone. The house’s owner, a friend and bartender named Rick, told me when I was driving down that there would be two other people in the house.

Gus and Stella.

They were a couple, Gus a funny, bald and muscular Greek whose family owned a successful DC restaurant, Stella a pretty Italian with blonde hair who worked rehabilitating prisoners in Virginia. They’re tough and faithful people who believe in God. “Don’t worry about anything,” Rick told me on the phone as I drove over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. “Gus will fuck up anything that comes after you.”

In fact, Gus didn’t really know who I was—or what was going on. People who work in restaurants or at manual labor don’t really follow the bullshit political games of Washington. Gus, wearing shorts and a t-shirt, pulled up with Stella, pretty in camouflage army shorts and a white wife beater t-shirt. They came into the house, and found me, a person, as Gus now always reminds me, “who was losing his shit.” I was being hunted and thought I was about to lose my life.

The next day, Gus and Stella brought me out of the back bedroom and onto the front porch. The view was of the entire street, so everyone could see us. Gus then announced he was going to get us a pizza. When he got to Grotto’s he looked up at the TV, and I was on it. Or rather, there was a picture of me there with the anchors talking about my “flight to the beach” and my past with Kavanaugh. Furthermore, there were people sitting at the bar arguing about me.

“I know who you are now,” Gus said when he got back, flashing a broad grin. They told me not to worry. I did go out once, only to quickly get some groceries. I was instantly recognized and retreated to the house.

For several days, Gus and Stella babysat me. Stella offered empathy and pizza and the caring of an Italian mother, and Gus threatened to end “any asshole reporter” who showed up at the door. They were like Tom Bombadil and Goldberry from The Lord of the Rings. They knew I had the Ring, they didn’t care about power or the Ring, and I was safe while I was under their care.

There were only a couple of breaches. One was a Washington Post reporter who arrived and caught me outside. I told him I’d walk with him and talk to him off the record. I told him the entire thing was bullshit. It was a political hit. He ignored what I said and they ran a dumb fake story—including spying on the contents of my car.

The second breach was more sinister. Gus and Stella were out and it was late. I was alone in the room at the back of the house. Suddenly, there were loud knocks at the front door to the house.

The Stasi had found me.

The place was dark, so I just sat there waiting. They knocked several more times. Then, silence. The next day it was time to head back to the swamp—D.C. It had rained and my car had gotten stuck in the mud and I called AAA. Gus still reminds me of that—“The devil had you by the ankles.”

Last week I was at the annual summer kick-off pool party in Maryland, thrown by bartender Rick. We were all kicking back, swimming and having fun when I looked up to see them arriving—Gus and Stella. Even years later I found myself getting emotional. We remembered our experience and talked about the nature of good and evil.

“There’s evil in this world,” Stella said. “You just have to have faith to get through it." Faith, and a large Greek who’s ready to pound any reporter who comes through the door.