A New Dawn

VAGINAL STATUS: Blessed
The line at Central Library was around the block when I joined it at 7 a.m. and it looked like America. All kinda folks, Baltimore is indeed multi-layered and everyone represented. I felt like I was waiting in line for a ride at Kennywood I was so EXCITED. The girl in front of me was voting for the first time, she was 19. I tried to get her to bounce up and down about it like me, but she chose a dignified restraint.

I wanted to cackle and cry. Looking at those people, America – old folks and people in wheelchairs and gay boys and suits and young moms with kids in tow and lots of people in scrubs and middle aged women in a sensible hat for warmth. And wrinkled brown grandfathers who have seen Presidents come and gone since the Depression, grinning ear to ear at the chance to vote for a Black man for the very first time long overdue. And all of us, the urban heart of blue-state Maryland, had come to the altar from our warm beds, called to petition for this one very special man.

Yep, I think Barack Obama is pretty much an American Jesus.

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I’m sure he has personal flaws we’ll hear about in 30 years, and I know he can’t get his whole agenda accomplished. I think he will inevitably disappoint me. His platform does not measure itself by my radical agenda. He has assumed my vote, and can afford to take me for granted – Duh, I’m a queer feminist with most of my work history inside abortion clinics. If my people are not so far left that they see voting as playing into the government’s evil plan to placate us, we reliably vote Dems.

But every time I see him on TV I well up with the deep, dear promise of my patriotic childhood, old soldiers beaming and firetrucks tossing candy in the Memorial Day parade. He makes me dream and trust, two indulgent confections I swore I’d never fall for again after the terrible day when the Court chose Bush, the bitter anguish when we chose him again all on our own. I wasn’t right for more than a year after 2004, none of us were.

But he’s charmed me, I believe in him. Tears rolling down my cheeks while he tells me the story of America I’ve so longed to hear. The kernel of decency I believe is still aching to swell within us; he is the champion for it. He makes me think this time is History, this time is different, and this is THE MOMENT when we finally rise. I said a little spell to help him out when I pushed the button.

He HAS to win. It’s impossible that he won’t win. I know I said impossible before, and I was kicked in the stomach for it. But please, Please. Please, America, the Universe, the Goddess and all the ancestors, please Xenu and Jehovah and Allah and the first star I see tonight, please Electoral College and youth voters and poor country white folks and the wasted souls we have lost in this war, PLEASE.

Please let him win.