The Twilight Last Gleaming

on being American right-this-second, and having been American for some time before that

Around 2002, I joined a massive band of queer marchers in Iowa City, where I was in college at the time. We sang “Goin’ to the Chapel” as we walked to City Hall, where same-sex couples were going to attempt to get married. I don’t remember the name of the city official tasked with turning away, but she was in tears. “You’re all so beautiful,” she said. “I wish, I wish, I wish I could.”

By April of 2009, I was in Austin, but I couldn’t have been closer to the day that gay marriage was ruled legal in Iowa. I performed a spoken-word piece that night where I put my all into bringing that experience to the audience, so that they could join me in levitating about the number of gay Star Trek weddings that were about to proliferate in Iowa.

Iowa City was also where I did my first erotica reading. It was something of a queer mecca in the heartland, and that’s why it was such a shock when the state went red.

Two years ago, a friend of mine raising two kids with his wife in Des Moines told me he’s considering moving because the racism in the state had gotten out of control, the atmosphere chronically hostile. When the Selzer poll predicted that we’re getting Iowa back, I wanted to feel relief, but I’m still cautious.

I felt jittery but not panicked in 2016. I was living in Boston, and on the way to the polls on Election Night, my nerves compelled me to call out, “Anybody else feelin’ nervous tonight?” There were nods, murmurs, a few chuckles. We simply didn’t think that bigoted blowhard could win.

I’ve always had reservations about Hilary Clinton. I voted for her, sure as anyone that she had it in the bag, but I didn’t feel what a lot of the Democrats around me insisted I should be feeling. If there’s one woman alive who’s never represented me or the core values I grew up with, it’s definitely Mrs. Rodham Clinton, and I felt not only excluded from the feminist conversation but insulted by the implication that if I didn’t balls-out adore her, I must hate democracy. A resounding angry voiced blamed her loss on American voters and their lack of loyalty or devotion, when by all rights, that anger should have gone to the political establishment.

This time around, however, I’m without any sympathy or compassion for eligible American voters who feel they must sit this one out. Doing so is not a statement against imperial violence: it will usher in imperial violence with a quickness. America has never been a just nation, but it has always had potential. We can build on that potential or destroy it: those are our options.

Kamala Harris should be more specific about what she plans to do: her policies are something of a wavery question-mark and that’s not ideal. But Trump has been very forthright about what he plans to do, and the people he’s dedicated to keeping in his pocket pose an unprecedented danger.

It’s Election Night: Why am I writing this now? Well, I teach tomorrow morning, and no matter what happens, college students have to walk out of my class having learned something from me, something that’s not, “Here’s what happens when a certain stripe of crazy English instructor has a meltdown in your largely-Conservative-Christian classroom.” I would cancel class tomorrow, but I have to be out of town next week, and our schedule was already thrown off when I caught the Virus of Sustained Doom. My students are working on their second-to-last major project of the semester. We need the time.

The day after George W. got elected for the second time, our Film Theory professor took the lecture hall stage and said, “I thought I was going to be able to get up here and thank your generation for saving us. I was planning to let class out early and we could all go to [artsy cinema-major-approved bar] to celebrate. Instead I have to get up here and talk about Surrealism in Film, and that is the most absurd thing I have ever had to do in my career.”

At 21, I loved her for that. A conservative student raised his hand and respectfully stated that he didn’t think that was appropriate, that this wasn’t the time or the place for those views, which could alienate some students. Afterward, I heard another film instructor say, “Of course this is the place! If not here, where?”

No one reprimanded this professor for saying the sort of thing that, back then, we expected a film professor to say.

I shudder to think what would happen, though, if I uttered any such words tomorrow morning. I hope I won’t have to fight the urge, because she’ll win, and if anyone wants to talk about the election and has any interest in my beliefs, I can talk about ways in which she’s not my ideal candidate. She is, however, and has always been, someone I’ll be honored to call Madam President. Uttering the phrase will feel like a Moment in a way that Hilary has never excited for me. I’ve done everything I could from here. (One might even argue that moving from her locked-in blue-as-it-gets home state to the Republican-happy swing state of Georgia is, itself, a form of taking one for the nation.)

If Georgia goes blue tonight, I’ll stop talking about the Golden Gate Bridge and I’ll drop my new obsession with the Zodiac Killer that I’ve picked up in part because of how much I miss the San Francisco/NorCal scenery. I’ll stop complaining about how ALL the good food is in Atlanta and we’re in the middle of nowhere. I will fall to my knees every time I eat a peach. I might even say, “Nice truck!” to someone and really try to mean it.

My neighbors, who flew a giant Thin Blue Line flag when they moved in and accompanied it with a Trump sign shortly thereafter, are having a party right now. The music and laughter is loud. Maybe we all wish we could be as relaxed tonight as they appear to be. Maybe—

I don’t even know what my hypotheticals are anymore. The crickets have gotten louder and I’m going to imagine that they’re intentionally drowning out the noise. Their song will be here no matter what.

The second Taco Bell to ever open in the US. With mine own eyes did I see this living history.