I was feeling pretty calm today when I woke up. I listened to one of my favorite musicians, Michael Hoppe and tried to forget what happened four years ago and what is about to happen in a few weeks. I had things under control. I was Zen.
ML heard my music on her way to the ranch house and knocked on my patio door.
“Come on in,” I yelled as I looked for my phone to turn down the music.
“You do realize what today is,” ML said. Her voice can sound critical even when she is being pleasant.
“What’s today?” I said with a wink.
She nodded, not accepting my challenge. “Wanna go to the coffee shop and get a latte?”
“You hate lattes. You think they’re for wimps.”
“True, but look at who I’m asking to join me.”
I laughed, waving my middle finger at her, and let the screen door slam behind me as I followed her to her car.
Since the election, I have been vocal about the benefits of pretending, ignoring, and avoiding. ML can testify to that. And I have meant everything I have said. But it turns out I’m not good at pretending. I’m not good at wearing blinders.
When I was a young woman I reveled in the fact that I lived in DC where people marched in the streets every week protesting some injustice or another. It made me feel alive and connected to my fellow Americans. And although my teams were rarely successful—we never got the ERA passed, or abortion rights, or gay rights— I always felt proud, strong, and part of a huge benevolent tribe.
Today I feel totally disconnected. I don’t understand how my fellow Americans could have willingly, knowingly opened the door of a nursery to a child molester. WTF?
The approaching inauguration is like waiting for a major surgery date to arrive. And the deep embarrassment, shame really, I feel is because the surgery I’m waiting for requires me to be awake, and naked, and spayed. I don’t think I’m overstating this despite the fact that every election feels like the American voter gets a say in gay life; my life. Will they vote for our families to be whole or not? Do they still want our marriages to be valid or not? Will our voices be heard or will they be silenced, again, buried under a wave of regressive policies?
But this election—this transition, is different. We’re not the only low-hanging fruit. The lives of an entire race of people are in play. An entire religion too--in fact several. And of course, an entire gender is being returned to subservience. This time, instead of looking into a future of possibilities, we’re watching progress unravel. Violence seems to be brewing just under the surface of millions of voices.
“The incoming presidency looms like a noose,” ML started after wrinkling her nose at the foam inside a paper cup. She is not a fan of coffee in paper. “The uncertainty is suffocating. It feels like standing on the edge of a cliff, bracing for a storm you know is coming but there's no way out.”
I think I’m gonna go find those blinders I foolishly put down.