Calypso(44)

Two. A month before the election, a man picks me up at the Philadelphia airport and takes me to Red Bank, New Jersey, for a show. We get to talking and I learn that his name is Michael. He is white and fifty-five and used to work for Pathmark, a supermarket chain that went bankrupt and closed the last of its branches in 2015. I ask some general questions and learn that grocery stores make the bulk of their money on junk food. “The highest markup, though, is on spices—seventy-six percent!” Michael says, adding that the most frequently stolen items are razor blades, baby formula, and big jugs of laundry detergent, which seem like they’d be pretty hard to shoplift. I mean, those things have gotten huge, like gas cans.

“Nowadays people walk out with the whole cart,” Michael says. “Roll out the door saying, ‘Just try to stop me!’”

It’s rare for a hired driver to overtly discuss politics, and rarer still for him or her to introduce the topic. They will sometimes skirt around it, though. We pass a TRUMP sign on the road, and Michael acknowledges it, saying sourly, “I just feel that for guys like us, white guys our age, if we need any help—housing or food stamps or whatever—it’s the back of the line. You know what I mean?”

Well, isn’t that sort of where the line forms? I think. Michael is in a group I’ve been hearing a lot about lately. White men who, following eight years of a black president, feel forgotten.

How exactly did Obama neglect you? I want to ask but don’t. Instead I change the subject to lines in general. “I didn’t wait more than a few minutes to check in for my flight this morning,” I say cheerfully, not adding that I’m Executive Platinum on American, so never have to wait for anything. When I do have to wait, I’m appalled.



Three. I donate a thousand dollars to the Hillary for President campaign, and within what seems like minutes I get an email from them saying, in effect, “That’s great, but can we have more?” Her organization is by no means unique in this regard. Everyone I donate to acts the same way, and I wind up unsubscribing from their emails and resenting them.



Four. I talk to a longtime friend of the family, who tells me with great authority that Hillary Clinton is a member of the Illuminati and that she and her husband have killed scores of people, including children, whom they also sexually molested.

“You’re kidding, right?” I say.

He’s not, and within minutes words are shooting from his mouth like water from a fire hose. It’s hard to catch them all, but I do grab hold of “You think it’s a coincidence that Prince was murdered on Queen Elizabeth’s birthday?”

“Who said that he was murdered?” I ask.

“Oh please,” this person says. “You honestly believe he died of an ‘accidental drug overdose’?”

The guy speaks to me like I’m an idiot.

“And the queen had him killed…why, exactly?” I ask. “Because his name was Prince?”

I later look at one of the websites this person relies upon for information. On it, an anonymous source close to the royal family—a “palace insider”—reports hearing the queen saying to another Illuminati member at a tea party that before the year ends three more world-famous musicians must die.

None of the websites my friend looks at say anything bad about Donald Trump. Rather, he is hailed as a man of peace. The ones they hate are George Soros, of course, and surprisingly Bill Gates, who has murdered more innocents than even the Clintons, apparently. My friend gets almost feverish when he talks about these people and the way they’re all connected: Queen Elizabeth leads to Jay-Z leads to the Centers for Disease Control leads to the faked Sandy Hook shooting and the way the government staged 9/11.

I want to laugh. Then I want him to laugh and say, “Just kidding!” But he honestly believes all this and is frustrated that I won’t believe it as well. “Wake up!” he says.



Five. An article in the New York Times suggests that Trump should run with the Hamburglar, and I think, Hey, that’s my line.



Six. On election night I am in Portland, Oregon. At the start of the evening I feel confident, but come dinnertime I start to get nervous. I eat alone in the fancy hotel restaurant, watching the waiters and waitresses for clues that I am worrying over nothing. “Any news?” I keep asking, taking it for granted that, like me, they voted for Clinton. They have ironic tattoos and know about wine. Who else could they have been for? I think.

Back in the room I turn on the radio and look at the electoral map online. I go to bed, reach for my iPad. Shut my eyes, reach for my iPad. When the election is called for Trump, I lie there, unable to sleep. In the middle of the night I go to the fitness center and watch the little TV embedded in my elliptical machine. The news had been telling me for months that Clinton was a shoo-in. Now they want me to listen as they soul-search and determine how they got it so wrong. “Fuck you,” I say to the little screen.

An hour later I take a bath and get back into bed. Staring at the ceiling, wide-awake, I suddenly think of Cher and realize that what I’m feeling, she’s feeling as well. So are millions of other people, of course: Hugh, my sisters, all my friends except for the conspiracy theorist. Oddly, it’s this woman I’ve never met or even seen in person who brings me comfort. The next morning I wander the city in a daze, my eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, thinking, I’m not alone. I’ve got