Wide Awake Now, page 12
There were still about two hours to go before Stein would speak, so there was no focus to the crowd, no direction that we all faced. From above we’d look like a gigantic mass, but under a microscope we’d be divided into our own cells, talking and eager with anticipation.
Once again, it felt like history. But this time our piece was even bigger.
Our group had managed for the most part to stay together. Virgil, Flora, and Mrs. Everett were fueling themselves on stories from the past, stopping every now and then to compare aches and pains. Sue kept largely to himself, searching the crowd around us from his singular place within it, considering each face before moving on to the next. A few feet away, Gus had planted himself and Glen on an old sheet he’d brought, and was regaling him with tales of his own misadventures.
“…and then—no lie whatsoever—I found myself on the shore, drip-dry nude, and I thought to myself, Only a fool like myself would break up with a vengemeister before going skinny-dipping. I never got the clothes back, and had to borrow this cape from a noodle of a seven-year-old in order to make my way home. You wouldn’t believe the major-wrong tan line I got that day. I can be such a void when it comes to boy issues.”
“Aw, don’t be so self-deprecating,” Glen said, clearly charmed instead of alarmed.
“If I don’t deprecate myself, who will?” Gus asked playfully.
“How ’bout I appricate you instead?” Glen offered.
“I’m ultra open to apprication.”
A kiss immediately followed.
A long kiss.
An epically long kiss.
“They’re going to need some oxygen when that’s over,” Mira observed from the side.
But neither Mira nor Jimmy nor I could really criticize—we’d all been like that, even if we might not have been quite so public about it. I had one of those momentary fantasies—one of those imagination side trips that last a little longer than a hope but a little shorter than a daydream—that Jimmy would lean into me now, whisper something snide and sexy like, Hey, darlin’, how ’bout you and I appricate each other, too? and lead me into the same kind of kiss.
But Jimmy didn’t seem to be paying too close attention to what was happening with Gus. I felt, in fact, that his attention was still back on the gauntlet we’d walked, stuck in the jeers and provocations that had been hurled at us.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Just moody, I guess. I know it’s not really in accord with God’s love, but I seriously wanted to go nuclear back there. I know it’s a free country, but nobody should say those things. For whatever reason. Somebody needs to tell them that.”
“Do you really think they’d listen?”
“No. But it would make me feel better, I guess. To know I didn’t just let them get away with it.”
“They only get away with it if we let it get to us.”
“Not really, Dunc. I mean, think about their kids. They’re going to teach them to be just like them. How do you stop that?”
“By getting the world around the kids in better shape, I guess,” I said. “I mean, if everyone was just like their parents, your dad would be just like your grandparents, and you’d be just like them, too. Which, I’m happy to report, isn’t the case. I would have a really, really hard time making out with your grandparents.”
Jimmy smiled slyly. “I’m sure they’ll be relieved to hear that.” Then he sighed. “It’s bad enough that they’re saying those things, and that politicians are encouraging them to say those things. They make us the enemy so they can keep those people’s votes, even if they’re always stealing money from them to give to rich people. That makes me even madder, you know? Hating us is just part of the game. But it comes at a real cost. And the politicians who stoke the flames, they don’t care about the cost. They don’t care about dead queer kids or hurt queer kids at all. Maybe that’s what I’d like to tell those people with the signs. I don’t think it would make a difference in the moment, but maybe later on, they’d realize we’re not the enemy. We belong to God just as much as they do.”
I nodded, unsure of what else there was to say. It felt like a trap had been set—we couldn’t not talk about it, but the more we talked about it, the more we were letting them define our day.
Next to us, Mira said, “Hey, take a look at this!” and showed us the latest news on their phone.
* * *
—
Olivia Butler is the fourth Kansas election official to resign in protest of the governor’s recount, and the ninth person directly involved in the elections to allege tampering on the governor’s part.
“What’s happening is politics, plain and simple. The governor promised his party the state, and he’s doing everything he can to deliver it.”
The governor’s spokesman has labeled Butler as a Stein supporter whose own motives are political.
“That’s just not true,” Butler says. “I actually voted for the governor in the last election. But never again. What he’s doing is wrong.”
* * *
—
“Isn’t this enough?” Mira asked. “I mean, how can anyone believe him now?”
Jimmy laughed. “It’ll take much more than that,” he said. “Why let a few inconvenient truths get in the way of your lie?”
“It doesn’t matter what you or I believe,” Virgil said. “It’s about what they can get away with. That, I’m afraid, is the ultimate measure of a person: how they act when they’re wrong but know they can get away with it anyway. Now, I have no doubt that the governor and everyone else on his side think they’re doing the right thing. I’m sure they’ve managed to justify it in their minds. But the more people know they’re wrong, the harder it will be to ignore it. The question is: When it’s perfectly clear that they’re up to no good, what will they do?”
“But Governor Nicols isn’t a total pawn, is he?” Mira asked. “I mean, he actually has a pretty good record in pushing for universal health care in Kansas, and he spoke out against insurrectionists when he campaigned last year.”
“You’re right,” Virgil said. “There’s some good in his record. But right now, he has to be under enormous pressure from his party. So often it comes down to whether a politician can put the principle of politics over their own personal ambitions. That’s the central dilemma of all political life. Some rise to it better than others.”
There was a cheer from the front of the crowd, like an echo before the noise, which caused those of us farther away to pay attention. Thinking we were in the back of the rally, I turned around and found that, no, we weren’t in the back at all—more and more people had arrived, and now the crowd was spilling out in every direction behind us. Speakers and screens had been set up all around town, and most of us had our phones out, too, to see what was going on up front. The speeches had begun, with politicians and movie stars and musicians and authors coming up for their minute of spotlight to say that Stein was and would be the next President of the United States. We were here, they vowed, to make sure of it.
Being in such a large group of people, I had a weird flashback to the pandemic, that lost year or so when there wasn’t any way to be united like this. And watching, after George Floyd was murdered, as people risked their health to be united anyway. Because being united mattered more. Because change needed to happen.
After the ninth or tenth speech, the cheering became a little more distracted. Maybe we were too busy taking in the situation to fully be a part of it. While Mira talked to Jimmy, Virgil, Elwood, and Sue, I noticed that Keisha and Sara had strayed from our group. I looked around and finally found them having a heated conversation about a hundred feet away from us, just in front of a group of dog lovers holding leashes and Pugs for Stein banners. Both Keisha and Sara were crying and, from what I could tell, Sara was trying to argue Keisha out of what she was saying. It was unclear whether or not her arguments were working. But what was clear—shockingly clear—was that whatever they’d done wasn’t just a stupid fling. Sara really cared about Keisha, to the point of pain.
Sara tried to come forward, to wrap Keisha back up in her arms, to embrace the conversation into being over. But Keisha shook her head, pulled back, said something else that made Sara step away and reply with something that clearly wasn’t as pleading as before. Keisha rallied, pointing, telling Sara to go. And Sara did. She said one last thing to Keisha, then picked up her bag and pushed into the crowd, disappearing in a matter of seconds. Keisha just stood there, looking like a buoy in an empty lake.
Nobody else from our group had noticed. They were too busy paying attention to one another or to the speeches. I could have gone to Flora or Janna or Mandy, told them what had happened and asked them to check in with Keisha. But for some reason I felt I needed to go there myself, to finally talk to her, to see what I could do to make things better—or, if not better, at least bearable.
It was funny—I’d never really thought of myself as Keisha’s friend or as Mira’s friend. I’d thought of myself as Keisha-and-Mira’s friend, because I’d always thought of them together. Now that they weren’t, I hardly knew where I was.
When I got over to Keisha and said hey, she took one look at me and actually laughed.
“Damn,” she said, “I thought I was the one who was supposed to be miserable.”
She only found it funny for about three seconds, though. Then she was back inside herself, and I was somewhere else.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“I’d say it’s pretty gone.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
“I have a lot of wants right now. That might be in there somewhere. You’re brave for coming to talk to me, you know.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m the bad guy. There always has to be a bad guy.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. It wasn’t exactly wrong. But it didn’t feel exactly right, either.
She continued through my silence.
“I’ll give you some advice, Dunc. Whatever you do, try not to fall in love with two people at the same time. While it’s happening, you’re haunted by knowing it’s never gonna work out. And then it doesn’t work out.”
I tried to imagine being in love with someone else at the same time as being in love with Jimmy. But I couldn’t, and told Keisha that.
“Believe me, I thought it was impossible, too,” she said. “It wasn’t like I was looking. I was more than happy with Mira. But then I met Sara and there was just this charge. I didn’t choose for it to happen—it was there, and the only choice I had was to deny it or admit it. And I couldn’t even manage denial. It would be like trying to say I don’t hear you to someone screaming in your ear. I know it won’t make sense to you, and I’m pretty sure it won’t make sense to Mira, either, but it wasn’t either/or—it wasn’t like I had to fall out of love with Mira in order to fall for Sara. Yeah, those were supposed to be the rules—but feelings don’t follow rules. Guilt does. Fear does. But attraction? No way.”
“So you and Sara hooked up,” I said.
“Not right away. But yeah. We couldn’t stop it. Because we didn’t want to.”
I knew it was simplistic of me, but when I tried to put myself in the whole picture, I was sure that there was no way I’d ever be able to play Sara’s or Keisha’s role. No, I would always be Mira. As much as I hated to admit it—and would never have said it to him—while I was pretty comfortable in thinking that Jimmy would never cheat on me, I also knew that if one of us was ever going to do it, it was going to be him. So maybe that’s why I found myself unable to tell Keisha I understood what she was saying.
“So you lied,” I told her instead. It didn’t sound judgmental at first, and it wasn’t meant to be. I was just continuing the story she was telling. “You went off with Sara while Mira was oblivious. I have no idea if it’s better or worse that you were in love with both of them—that’ll probably hurt Mira even more. But whatever the case, you weren’t honest. And then you go and make out with Sara in the back of our bus? You had to know you’d get caught. You had to know that Mira wouldn’t stand for it. No matter how much you might still love her.”
I didn’t mean to make her cry, but whatever my intention, Keisha ended up falling apart again. The people with pugs—who were keeping a distance so carefully that you had to know they were listening to every word—didn’t make any move to comfort her, so ironically that role was left to me, the person whose words had hurt her in the first place.
“Look,” I said, “I’m sorry. I know you feel bad. I was just saying…”
Keisha rubbed her eyes, then waved the rest of my sentence away. “Don’t,” she said. “I didn’t really expect you to understand. You and Jimmy aren’t there yet. You’re still honeymooning. Mira and I couldn’t compete with that.”
“What are you talking about? You guys were the model. That’s one of the reasons this is so upsetting. I’m struggling all the time when it comes to me and Jimmy. But you and Mira—that was easy.”
“You are not struggling with Jimmy.”
“Are you kidding? I am constantly struggling. There are all these times when he’s so great and I’m just…okay. I know he loves me and I know I love him, but for some reason I have to be the one who feels it more. I can be standing right beside him and still be missing him, because if he isn’t entirely there with me I feel that emptiness. He doesn’t, but I do. And now—well, now he’s started to wonder how long it will last and I’m afraid I’m going to start to feel like I’m borrowing him, that eventually I’ll have to give him back. I’ll disappoint him too much and it’ll be over.”
I stopped there, feeling I should never have started. Why was I telling Keisha all this?
“The best you can do is try to make it work,” Keisha said. “But that’s no guarantee it’ll work. If you and Jimmy don’t talk about it, you should. Although right now I know I’m not the one who should be giving any advice.”
As she said this, the crowd roared—Alice Martinez would be coming on in a matter of minutes, followed by Stein.
“It’s going to be okay,” I told Keisha.
“On one level, I know that,” she said. “It’s just not going to be okay in any way I once wanted it to be.”
“Come on—let’s get back to the group.”
The true rally was about to begin.
seventeen
It was like a standing-only concert when the main act is about to appear—everybody pressing forward, closing up all the empty spaces. Keisha tried to tell me I was wrong about me and Jimmy, but most of her words got lost as we wound our way through the crowd in order to get back to our group. I managed to ask her where Sara had gone, and she told me she’d decided to spend the rest of the rally with her college friends.
When we got back, Jimmy shot me a look to ask where I’d been, then saw Keisha behind me and had his answer. Since Jimmy was standing close to Mira, Keisha peeled off and headed toward Gus and the triplets while I went back to where I’d been before. Other people pushed and prodded around us, trying to get nearer to the front, stepping over people’s blankets and bags to get there. Something about all the movement and the closeness of it started to make me nervous. It was, I guess, another side effect of the reign of fear, when crowds were made to seem like dangerous things, vulnerable to the actions of a single person with a weapon and a willingness to use it. If isolation meant safety, then this was a high, high risk. We’d been taught to never trust strangers. Fear thy neighbor was what the deniers both practiced and preached.
I looked over to Elwood, who also seemed a little uneasy in the sudden press of bodies. I found myself rallying to lean over to him and say that everybody would settle soon enough.
“I’ve never been out of my county before,” he said. “So this is…a lot.”
I felt a body press against me from behind. Then the arms came wrapping around me again—the bracelet on one wrist, the watch on the other. I leaned back against Jimmy’s chest, felt his breath against my ear, felt his unshaved chin gripple my neck. I tried to relax. I couldn’t—not fully. But I tried.
“Ready?” he asked. Then, in a knowing whisper, he added, “Let’s throw some tea overboard.”
* * *
—
When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the Boston Tea Party. We didn’t live near Boston, but that didn’t matter. From the moment Mrs. Coolidge first mentioned it in my third-grade class, I was hooked.
We were talking about the causes of the American Revolution, and Mrs. Coolidge was listing them on the board.
Taxation Without Representation.
The Boston Tea Party.
The Coercive Acts.
The Boston Massacre.
…and so forth. I know the word massacre is the one that should have caused my eight-year-old mind to perk up, but it was the phrase tea party that truly lit up my thoughts. I imagined it as a sort of birthday party where tea was served, and wondered how it had led to a big war. Had someone important not been invited? Was the host not happy with their presents?
When I got home, I decided to act it out with my stuffed animals. The British officers were penguins, the American revolutionaries were dogs. They were all getting together to celebrate Betsy Ross’s birthday, and she had decided to serve her special tea. (Betsy was played by Spotty, a beagle; I knew by then that I was a little too old to be referring to stuffed animals by their first names, but since I’d already given them their names when I was younger, I didn’t see how I could suddenly stop using them now.) The party started with utmost civility, with everyone speaking in very clipped British accents. But then King George spilled some of his tea onto Thomas Jefferson. TJ leaped up, yelling that he’d been burned. Other British soldiers, thinking they had to follow their king, started pouring their cups of tea on the colonists. Ben Franklin had tea poured in his eye, and Paul Revere’s tail was dunked. Betsy Ross went off to cry in a corner—she hadn’t even had a chance to open her presents!—while George Washington charged in and started throwing tea back on the British. Since they were penguins, they were particularly scalded by this attack—and suddenly the whole tide of the revolution had turned.
