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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Get back at red America -- with kinky sex, pretentious French movies and a hasty divorce.
Nov 11, 2004 | OK, it's worse than we thought. It's not just post-election blues. It's full-on, why-am-I-even-here depression. Who knew that last week's 48-hour cycle of hope, premature celebration and crushing defeat would have aftershocks that reverberated so far?
At first it was just exhaustion and the damaging psychological reversals of Tuesday's demoralizing polling-results debacle. We were left sore and nauseated, as if we'd taken a baseball bat to the belly. But it didn't get better after a good night's sleep. Next came rage -- at friends, family, entire states, individuals we've never met. If I could have burned Rudy Giuliani in effigy, I would have. This blinding, electric fury was at least an embrace of something vivid and alive, before the inevitable turn to existential despair. It wasn't about politics anymore. It was about life: There is no hope, no belief. Everyone and everything lets you down. There's been crying -- so much crying. At work and on the street and on subway platforms and at my friend's 30th birthday party on Saturday night at a swank private club. Just little rivulets of tears falling down the faces of people I don't know to be easy weepers. So common that no one even remarks on it anymore.
So yeah, it all sucks, elementally. We lost. We don't have anything to look forward to. We have been defeated, by our own country, by ourselves. We gave everything we had, just like our parents told us to do, and it wasn't enough. The Enlightenment is being rolled back before our eyes. We can't get a firm enough grip to hold it in place. We're dying. We're all going to die ...
So the question is: How do we pull ourselves out of this tailspin? How do we keep ourselves from the rabbit hole of despair and paralysis that will eventually smother us? How do we get ourselves out of bed in the morning?
There have been lots of suggestions already -- "Go see 'Ocean's 12'!" "Join the ACLU!" "Volunteer!" -- that are all very well and good. Yes, yes, yes, by all means, join the ACLU. But what about bringing back the pleasure? We -- whether we are in red states or blue -- need joy, ecstasy, or at least distraction, to keep us off the ledge and maybe even irritate the evangelicals at the same time. Below are some ideas for how we -- the losers, the sinners -- can throw off our comforters and scramble back to the land of the living, reclaiming whatever remains of our country, our day, our way of life -- before we're all rounded up and shot.
1) Have extremely deviant sex. Sadly, unlike the blackout, or the aftermath of Sept. 11, the post-election period doesn't seem to be bringing us much post-election sex. Where the fear and recovery from those events were about unity and embracing life, starting anew, and at the very least, getting lucky, post-election depression has thrown a soggy blanket over our libidos. We feel isolated and alienated from each other, defeated. Our eagerness to bring new life into this world has abated, and with it, the confidence that should we accidentally bring new life into this world, we might not be able to get rid of it.
But we have got to get over that. Holing up alone and abstaining from nooky is letting the terrorists -- and the abstinence advocates -- win! Plus, what better way to annoy the family values brigade than having really kinky sex. Make like Toni Bentley and celebrate your right to sodomy, now legal in all 50 states, though, let's be honest, probably not for long! Take a page from Paris Hilton's book and flip on a camera. Distribute it on the Internet, tell your friends. Feel free to dress as your favorite Bush twin.
2) Get a divorce. No, seriously. Even if you don't need one. It's a way to show your solidarity with your homo brethren, who in 11 states are about to lose whatever partnership benefits -- you know, like health insurance -- they've managed to scrape together for themselves. Besides, if you're straight, you can live safe in the knowledge that you can always remarry -- again and again, to as many different straight people of the opposite sex as you desire -- later. Meanwhile, if you and your partner are still getting it on, you'll be upping the rates of sex outside of marriage.
