Not Just Another Election Day
November 4th, 2008.
Previously…
The past few months were a bit of a blur. Everything tied into everything else. Work dominated a lot of the time, but there was room in the middle for some kind of fun. Well, at least a little less than some.
I went to Phoenix and hung out with Super Jenn twice, which was enjoyable. If that city weren't so hot (literally), I'd seriously consider moving there. The people were fantastic, there was plenty to do, and let's face it, it's just a very beautiful city. I was there for work, where a lot of the unraveling and chaos began to surface-but it wouldn't rear its ugly head in till much later. Imagine a snowball atop a hill.
Red and I took a trip out to Las Vegas to see Cher in concert, and to gamble a bit. I won a nice purse of cash, drank a bacon martini in a definitive dive bar, and got hit on by a really entertaining cougar. The Cher show was brilliant. And yes, I sang along whenever she asked the crowd to. Las Vegas is another place that warrants another visit in the near future. And we barely even left the hotel, which was hilarious.
Upon my return from that trip, things at work began to get dicey. We were on a deadline crunch and there were developments that I definitely didn't particularly like. But I kept mum and kept on chugging away, pretending that the snowball rolling down the hill towards me wasn't there.
I didn't have much of a personal life, and nights were spent at the bar after work. There I was, a guy in a suit with a jack and coke in one hand, and a pool cue in the other. Sure, I didn't have the energy to do anything worthwhile. And any energy that I had left after dealing with the tumult at work was devoted to "me" time. I just wanted to get away and forget about everything else. To stop worrying about other people. I was never a selfish person growing up, but when I had nothing else or no one else to fall back on, I just wanted to make myself happy.
The people I played pool with and had a drink with knew me barely, and still do. I was just the guy who happened to be there. And that was fine, because I didn't have time to know any of them. I just wanted the pleasure of not being crammed in an office in which several factions were preparing for some kind of dramatic conflagration. It was that simple. I wasn't happy anymore, and I just took from where I could.
If that made me an unapologetic hedonistic, egotistical, irreverent scoundrel when I wasn't in the office, then that's the way things were. The snowball was still very high on the hill, but it was rolling and getting even bigger.
Last week we succeeded in our big to do project at work. And it was a bit of controlled chaos. I still don't know how we managed to survive that with our jobs intact. The last month I didn't sleep (and still can't apparently, being up at 4 in the bloody morning blogging) much. I still don't. My body would rebel against me and steal sleep at the strangest hours. I came home from work one day and plopped on the couch to watch the news at 6pm. I passed out and woke up at 4am the next day, unable to fall asleep again. So I just went to work at 6am.
And now…
Election Day! I woke up pretty early for work, as usual. And the strange thing that while I did sometimes show up to work between 7 and 9am, it was mostly closer to 9. That was only because I couldn't stand the whole process of waking up. The routine of it all-because the only outcome was something I dreaded every day…a day in office, my personal torture chamber, full of the surreal and the absurd. But today was different. I had to be at work early so I could leave early and watch the election results. Pine Street was going to have an election watch party. And, even though I had late doubts about how everything would go down, I pretty much knew that Barack Obama was going to win. The universe begged for it.
I survived work and got home, put on my Obama-Biden t shirt and headed downtown. There was a bigger crowd than usual at the bar, but I still luckily found my usual seat at the end of the bar. There was no music in the bar, just the voice of the multiple talking heads pontificating about how 'close' the race was going to be. Man, could these news people sell their horse race all the way to the end.
Everyone talked about what would happen. Everyone had their predictions. I told Red that it was probably going to be a little more lopsided than everyone thought. The only thing on my mind was Florida, my kooky little state with a more than legendary Election Day history than most states. Everyone was waiting for basically 7:30pm, when the results start trickling in.
We all sat glued to the television as Virginia was called. That's when I knew something was going on. That history was going to be made. If one looked around the bar at the many faces watching television, they would've seen a very diverse crowd of all types of people from all walks of life. This is probably what it was like during the moon landing. Even as impressive as that feat was a generation ago, this was much bigger-it had a massive message to us and to the rest of the world.
At this point I hadn't mentioned John McCain yet. As a political junkie, I paid close attention to the race, through the primaries, Hillary and Barack's long slog to the Democratic nomination, and the stratospheric rise and meteoric fall of the woefully inadequate and willfully ignorant Sarah Palin. McCain had a shot at winning, but that opportunity evaporated when he picked Palin, amongst a wild series of oddball moves on his part (some of which was akin to watching a reality show). When I first hear her speak at the Republican National Convention, I was horrified. She literally frightened me that someone so intellectually incurious (even more so than Bush) could be that close to the big chair of the presidency. And while no one would admit it, they probably had the same reservations about her preparedness that I did, if even to a lesser degree.
The results came pouring in, as we continued to watch. Obama won Florida. I just sat there surprised and shocked. At 11pm, the race was called for him. The whole place was jubilant, not a dry eye in the house-mine included. Everyone passed along high-fives and hugs and, in some cases, kisses. I've been on the planet a very short period of time. Yet while I thought a lot of things in America were possible, I never thought that a half black-half white guy with a funny name and unusual background would ever get this far. And I mean, with a middle name of Hussein amidst a populace who erroneously believed (and still believe) that he is a Muslim? Only in America. Seriously. Only in America.
We all watched Obama's victory speech. Some of us held hands, and cheered as he spoke. It was just one of those transcendent moments in time, when one feel the tug of history on their hearts and minds. We did it. I had the biggest smile on my face, and for once all in universe was right-even for just that instant.
I called my family, my mum. They were estatic, excited, and some of my friends that I called were still crying over the phone over the symbolic victory that occurred. I got invited to Dragon Room, where I headed off. Walking down the street, I got random hugs from complete strangers. I wondered what that was about, and then I looked down-still had on the Obama-Biden t shirt. And I was still smiling.
I met up with my mates at Dragon Room (which was really, really crowded), where I even got free drinks because of my t shirt (good times, because nothing in the universe is better than free). We talked about how amazed we were, about how hopeful we were, and danced into the night. I had the next day off (preemptive post-election recovery day, I take that day after off every 4 years).
It wasn't over yet, those disastrous Bush years. Those 8 years of despair, war, and now an economy whose gears were nearly ground to a halt due to the greed of a privileged few. But there was a new day coming. I had ordered a t shirt online in anticipation of the day Barack Obama would take office. It arrived a week or so before the election, and I didn't even open the package (much less even look at it-it was at my parents' place), just in case I was wrong. As I went to sleep I thought about how I could finally open that package and wear the t shirt with pride. What did the t shirt say? 1/20/09: The End of an Error. Indeed, truer words were never spoken.
Next: A look back at the Vegas trip. Cougars, swimming pools, Cher, dive bars, and come on, bacon martinis! Life doesn't get better than that.
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