The Millennial Ch. 1 (18+)

                Three months had passed and the canvassers were out en masse in Helvetica Springs, a small Midwestern oasis complete with a middling university. They walked cheerfully from door to door, or at the very least carrying the appearance of cheer--campaign staffers of all parties instructed their workers to smile and speak with a positive inflection. There is a power in pleasantness; most people fear it, afraid they might upset something fragile. This fear allows the canvassers an opening. A most terrifying event for an introvert or recluse is a rung doorbell followed by a smile.

                It was a Saturday, and a sunny one at that. These two factors had the effect of an increased number of college students willing to walk the neighborhoods. David Mason was one of these students, though as it was June, his studying was temporarily in stasis. His flip-flops flopped as he walked along the sun-baked streets. He passed a group of children playing with hula hoops, wondering at the significance of this device having survived the existence of electronic entertainment. No buttons or switches to push or pull. No triggers or bumpers or joysticks. Just a molded piece of plastic tubing gyrated around the waist.

                Nearly two weeks had passed since Hillary Clinton suspended her presidential campaign, meaning that the fullest of all Democratic Party resources could be spent on electing the nation’s first black president. David and his friend Heather had been all over the neighborhood signing up potential voters. Most were friendly, a few didn’t answer, and only one person, a man of about sixty years, had given them any trouble. Temporarily confused as to their intentions, he issued a threat of buckshot before they told him they were only there to register him as a voter.

                “I’m already registered,” he said before nodding and gently shutting the door.

----

                At the end of a small alley were Jeremy and Russ, the last two of the impenetrable foursome. Russ, sloppily dressed in his favorite jersey, towered over the skinny Jeremy, who wore a striped tank top. David and Heather waved to them, but they seemed oblivious to their motions, scowling as they tromped past tattered newspaper pages and shattered beer bottles. The gloom felt wholly appropriate to the alley setting, though David had yet to discover what exactly it was that had set it so fittingly. Jeremy began to crumple registration forms and throw them at dumpsters, mumbling nonsense to the non-existent. Russ walked behind shaking his head.

                Jeremy stopped in front of David and dropped the remaining forms at his feet. “Why are people so fucking blind?”

                “How so?” David asked.

                “Not literally, that’s for sure. A person who is blind in literal terms is hardly aggravating. I could imagine fewer things on this earth less antagonizing.”

                “Then figuratively?”

                “Yes, but there are many different ways to interpret figurative blindness. This type is infuriating.”

                “What happened, Jeremy?”

                “We knocked on the wrong door,” Russ said, picking up the forms from the ground. The alley smelled of burnt rubber and a hint of gasoline. Russ took care to step over a small cloudy stream pouring from an overflowing dumpster. Heather scratched at her sunburned shoulder.

                “I’m guessing you don’t mean you went to the wrong address.”

                “No,” Russ said. “It was the correct address. It was the wrong door.”

                “She seemed nice at first,” Jeremy went on, “but we quickly saw she wasn’t exactly on our side. I tried to tell her we were there to register voters no matter the party. She wouldn’t listen. I rather like the type of person who will slam the door in your face if they don’t want to listen, but she was most certainly not that. She was an anti-listener. A person who won’t simply not listen, but rambles on aimlessly, listening to anything but what she might be asked to listen to. She gave us a lesson in life, fed us bitter truths from a rusty spoon. We stood there and took it. Stood there for a good ten minutes. But you know me, David; I’m weak. I’m weak and stupid and so I struck back. Tried to call her out in a quest for some ridiculous bloated glory.”

                “What did you say?”

                “Oh, only something about her not voting for him because he’s black. And you know what she said?”

                “Let me guess. Something like: How dare you? I have black friends.”

                “That’s a good guess, David, and one that might have made me smile later on when I was overdosing on pomposity back in my room. It would have been the answer for those who write stories about their racist uncles or about suburban housewives. It would be the answer to further prove that the whole crux of hidden racial tension in America rests on the shoulders of a legion of black friends. It is laughable. Yet her answer involved no black friends, or co-workers, or--if to make the situation even more unbearably ironic--no black housemaids. If she had had these things, it would have been inconsequential to her real response. No, David, she did not say she had black friends. Instead she pointed to her wedding ring, pulled out her purse and showed us pictures of her family. Her black husband Darrell and her beautiful black daughter Lydia. And in a series of swift, wordless motions--the seemingly only wordless thing she had to say the whole time--she disproved my stupid notion that she was simply racist.”

                “What did you do?”

                “I apologized. Profusely. I told her it was a stupid thing to say and that she was certainly right that not everyone voting against Obama was racist and that she had opened my eyes and that I would never assume such a ridiculous thing again. She nodded, looking pleased. I thought she had accepted my apology.”

                “Except…?”

                “She looked at me, and as though it were a simple good-bye, said, ‘I don’t have to time to stand here any longer and listen to a silly little faggot.’”

                “She did not,” Heather said.

                Russ nodded. “Oh, she did. Then she slammed the door.”

                “She could have done it ten minutes earlier and I would have liked her the more for it,” Jeremy said. “Now I’m a wreck. There’s a reason I find misanthropy so appealing.”

                “Stop being silly,” David said.

                “A silly little faggot?”

                David sighed. “You and me both, Jeremy. Let’s stop this talk and get some lunch. It’s too nice a day to talk about such depressing things.”

                “You can’t talk about depressing things on sunny days?”

                “Not today, anyway.”

                “Well, look at those clouds coming in,” Jeremy argued. “They look ominous.”

                “I think they’re actually cumulonimbus,” Russ said.

                Jeremy was gloating. “They’ll be here soon enough. And when they are, I’m going to continue my depressing talk.”

----

                Enter Pynchon’s Diner, a small greasy spoon where even the salads aren’t good for you. The four chose a booth over a table: all hamburgers, one with fries, one with chips, one with mozzarella sticks, the last with onion rings. They split the sides into piles of four, a tangled mess of flurried arms, and quickly they swapped one for another until each had four separate sides.

                Heather sighed when she finished her food. She had eaten only half her hamburger and many of her sides remained untouched. “We’re addicted to this, you know,” she said, “in a very literal sense. Additives. Sweeteners. The dopamine fix.”

                Jeremy picked up one of his onion rings and put his eye to the hole. “Imagine how fat we would be now if there were onion rings a thousand years ago.”

                Heather continued, “Not to mention the marketing we’re susceptible to. We tend to eat with jingles in our heads: the sonorous names, the three-tone melodies. They speak to us and tell us to return when we have need for them again. Awesome blossom. Potato olé. How could one not want to eat something called a potato olé? It is a fiesta simply to pronounce its name; what wonderful ecstasy might come with the physicality of eating it?”

                Jeremy took a bite of burger and chewed it on the side of his mouth while he spoke, “Maybe it wouldn’t make a difference. There were onions back then and surely there was butter. Some bread coating wouldn’t likely change anything if the caloric content remains the same. And besides, even if there were onion rings a thousand years ago, there remains the issue of distribution. Only those in power would likely have access and the lower classes would be deprived of the delicious golden ring.”

                “From childhood we are conditioned to eat this stuff. To us back then, golden arches didn’t signify food; it meant a playland. It meant a pit of plastic balls, a series of plastic tunnels, a swift plastic slide.”

                “But theoretically, if we are considering that the onion ring is itself a product of those who value speed-based cooking, in order for it to exist a thousand years ago all the cultural structures and technological advances that the onion ring necessitates would be in place then, too. They would be readily accessible and cheap.”

                “It meant a shiny plastic toy in a bright red box. We were Pavlov’s dogs salivating to a world of cheap plastic.”

                “In that case, we’d have to look to a thousand years from now to find out how fat we would be at this very moment.”

                A waitress came by and refilled their coffee. Russ munched on the rest of Heather’s fries.

                David gathered money from everyone and paid at the register. On the counter was a sign for what was called a Batter Platter. It showed a platter filled with several fried food items, unidentifiable save for a short list of the platter’s contents: cheese curds, deep-fried mushrooms, jalapeno poppers, cocktail wieners, miniature Snickers bars, sliced-up Twinkie segments. How they had missed such an offering was a mystery. Underneath the image was written in a cursive font Get the Batter Platter or you’ll be madder! Surely they would be reciting this mantra the next time they came to the diner, eating their Batter Platter in self-loathing silence.

----

                David and Heather said goodbye and good luck to Russ and Jeremy, who they hoped would have a slur-free remainder of the day. Only three more hours and they were done. The canvassing had been Heather’s idea, one they hadn’t originally supported. Only after a great deal of persuasive argumentation and passive-aggressive maneuvering did Heather succeed in her cause. That morning the four went to party headquarters for a briefing. The wall held several posters, one the iconic Shepard Fairey print complete with the inspirational HOPE aligning its bottom. Below it, taped sloppily, was a simple yard sign: staring back was the red and white horizon and blue background. The group, who from the beginning had supported the candidate with a foreign-sounding name, had been told to proceed with caution, especially when encountering the demographic of women aged 35-50. Hillary was out.

                At the time, David whispered to Heather how sexist he thought this was, but she just shrugged. “The game of politics has always been inherently sexist…or racist, or homophobic, or whichever qualifier you might add to the list,” she said. “Politicians and the press know this. And so they speak in demographics. Demographics aren’t offensive; they’re sterile. Demographics allow us all to say what everyone is thinking, but is afraid to say. A politician would be foolish to state that blacks vote for Barack Obama because he’s black. Instead their demographic favors him because they identify with him. The language of politics is the language of sidestepping. It is the language of unending deference. Nothing is what you say it is, unless, of course, it is what you say it is. Even then, it has the potential of not being what you said.”

                But the political world to them had become something different. To them, it was absurd to think that a black man could never be elected president. Such welcome absurdity was the legacy of those civil rights heroes they had only read about in textbooks. To them, the possibility of a black president was not unprecedented, not miraculous by any means. As for himself, David was not one prone to large miracles but found solace in the smallest of observances. He would likely scoff at a majestic show of fireworks thundering across the sky, which had little, if any, intimate proximity to him or his life. Instead he might find the sparks of a solderer’s torch falling gently to the earth more extraordinary in effect and appearance than a blast of any magnitude.

                The two continued the task of registering voters, knocking on doors, getting that knot in their stomach the few seconds before the door opened. David wondered what impressions those people had when they opened their door to him and Heather. He could pass for a ragged straight boy with plaid shorts and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt. The typical college bum. But some of the answerers gave Heather strange looks. Her style wasn’t unique, but it was uncommon enough to stick out in their small city. She sported a beret and wore long skirts. Her hair was bright red, her skin was freckled and fair, and she always wore dark red lipstick.

                Heather was a self-proclaimed feminist, but was foremost an optimist and apparent hope-monger. She reconciled the fact she had supported a man over a woman by convincing herself that he held more potential, more hope. She tried to suppress in her mind the idea that race played any role in her support, but the specter kept revealing itself. It would haunt her at inopportune moments: during a speech or while handing out bumper stickers. It troubled her as she brushed her teeth or mailed a letter or microwaved soup. Was she racist? To vote for someone based upon their race, surely that was wrong. But she was not voting for her race. Could it be racist if they were not the same race? The best tactic of forgetting the whole issue, of course, was to continue to suppress. Suppress any notion within herself of such possible motives. And for the love of God, never admit such a thing publicly.