three worlds, one day

I woke up this morning in New Jersey, spent a lazy half hour reviewing my dreams, thinking about a story I am working on, and generally drifting in and out of reality. I took a shower. I read the front section of the New York Times. It was too hot to read in the greenhouse, where my grandparents usually eat dinner, an airy glass room off the study with wicker chairs and two passionflowers currently on the vine.

Near the end of the front section, my grandmother came in and we discussed the use of her car. With a little negotiation about how she would complete her errands, she agreed that I could use it to come to Philadelphia if I wanted to. I checked on housing: I have a place to stay tonight and tomorrow, at the least. Nothing was holding me back. So I packed a bag, and I drove to Philadelphia.

The second world was the Obama state office. This is not the office that people can walk into – or the one I originally walked into. This is the serious office where the serious business of running the Pennsylvania campaign goes on; that is, it is the office where everyone is very very stressed out and has a Blackberry. I am being overdramatic – there are lots of young, cool people – but it felt very different from the environment I have been in, or even from a work environment in California. Everyone just has too much to do and not enough time or brains to do it – which is why I am here. So I stayed until 10 pm and then snuck off (my boss, the Youth Vote coordinator, just emailed me at 12:30).

I got half-lost on the way home and called my host for directions. He directed me home but added that he was going to see some Brazilian music that was on my way if I was interested. I was feeling exhausted and wound up, and I thought: a drink and some music might be nice. The music was upstairs in a bar – an Ethiopian restaurant was downstairs. The upstairs space was tiny, with the musicians crammed into a corner, a little bar, and four or five tables. There were probably fewer than 30 people in the room total. It was dark and the walls were painted dark pinkish red, with white Christmas lights and funny signs hung around them. The people looked like those I would encounter in the Mission (in San Francisco): a collection of overgrown beards and skinny jeans, thrift store dresses and funky earrings. I squeezed into the back, by the fan, and watched the white twenty-something musicians sway and shimmy and sing. My host showed up a little later, and knew everyone at the bar, but made a point of chatting with me and introducing me around.

This host is a friend of a friend, and they (there are three roommates) have an extra room in their house – filled almost completely with a double bed. I am staying here for a few days at least, and he said that I could make this my home base though they had other people coming once in a while and I might have to shift around. He left me a public transit map, and a schedule of events at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival (he is a photographer, and obviously embedded in the indie art scene). I think I will like to be here, swinging between the intensity of the campaign and the different intensity of a new city, a new place to explore.

not my kind of picnic

I just returned from the beach club, where I had “a picnic” with my grandparents and their friends. We sat ten at a long table, with a white tablecloth, place settings, candles, and a flower centerpiece. I guess it is a picnic because we were outside? (Though we were in a gazebo, with a roof.)

My favorite of my grandparents friends, sensing my slight discomfort with the situation, told me a story about a tennis player who was transgendered, and around the age of 40 had a sex change operation (male to female). The people at my grandparents’ beach club (which is very old and exclusive and takes 8-10 years to get into) thought that this tennis player had changed her sex because she wanted to be able to keep playing tennis at a high level, which she could do as a woman but not as a man.

I have no words to respond to a story like that. Who are these people, and what are they thinking? Are they thinking at all?

Later in the evening, which was marked by much political back-and-forth between the Obama fans and the Republicans (started up again anytime someone asked me what I am doing right now), the Olympics came up. Someone said they don’t like watching beach volleyball, and then a woman sitting across the table from me said “They’re like lesbians, all over each other! Ugh!” She gave a delicate shudder. Another woman beside her said, “The paper was full of homosexuals today!” I felt sick, the way I did years ago when I went to a Baptist church and the minister preached tolerance, except for gays and people who had abortions. But I didn’t say anything.

These are my grandparents’ friends, and we were in a public place – a place where probably lots of people hold the same views. It was certainly polite to sit there and stay silent, and several people noted my bitten tongue, which I suppose is a form of protest, to not laugh, to sit and stare in shock and horror. Or maybe it was just the coward’s way. I am so used to being around people who think like me that I don’t know how to talk to people who shudder at the thought of gay people. I don’t know where the line is; what is condoning bigotry by staying silent, and what is just getting along and picking my battles?

It’s all well and good to go to the tennis club, and the beach club, and take a boat ride, and stay out all night with rich pretty young things from elite colleges, drinking and talking and flirting, as long as you remember that’s not all there is. This is a fantasy world, and like any fantasy it has its dark side: prejudice, willful ignorance, high walls that protect it by keeping out people who, unlike me, would have the courage to say something.

they say san francisco is strange

I always forget how otherworldly my grandparents’ house is. Not just their house: their whole lives. I went to the tennis club today to watch a tournament between students from Yale, Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge. (And when I say “the tennis club” I mean one of the oldest lawn tennis and cricket clubs in the United States.) Whites (white clothes that is) are required on all courts. All of the spectators under thirty (there weren’t many) were elaborately pretty and well-dressed. Whenever I spoke about the campaign to any of my grandmother’s friends, my grandmother reminded me to keep my voice down, because we were in enemy territory. In short: I have left an urban land of hipsters and hippies for a suburban land of wealthy WASPs.

The weather is glorious here though: seventy-eight degrees, low humidity, blue skies forever. I wish this was the beginning of my vacation rather than two months in – it’s a perfect place to rest and relax. As it is, I am ready to find myself some occupation. I emailed the New Jersey Obama field director, and hope he will tell me where to go. When the subject of my volunteer-search comes up, my grandmother reels off a list of people who have some connection to the campaign, however tenuous. It just takes time to contact these people, and everyone is busy, and will get back to me later. I am trying to hold in my impatience. There is work to be done, somewhere nearby. I’ll find it.

if only I could see the future

So the reason I am in New Jersey at the moment, instead of, say, on Monday, is that I was trying to go to a Camp Obama training session, which I was told would put me on track for a campaign job. The training was Friday and Saturday, and I signed up too late – but wasn’t sure that I was too late until after I had booked my ticket. Now I am here, untrained.

Tonight, just when I was about to go to bed, I received an email from the Obama campaign inviting me to Camp Obama… in California. They are now holding fifteen or so of these trainings, on the West Coast. Argh. If you go to a training, they then send you to a swing state. So I applied, anyway – I guess nowadays flying across the country is no big deal – but I feel very silly. Every step I take seems to be in the wrong direction these days.

In other encouraging news, a friend of a friend sent me a long email about where I should apply for campaign jobs, including possibly Florida (their offices opened late because of the primary issues). I submitted a resume to the national campaign also, just in case they are randomly hiring (which apparently does happen). Fingers crossed something works out.

EDIT: I almost forgot – Biden looks like the VP (still no text message though! boo Obama campaign!) I am OK with this choice though not super excited. I think Biden balances out Obama’s inexperience with foreign policy/McCain’s experience. I also think that Biden is good at attacking Republicans (remember how he dismantled Giuliani with the “noun, verb, and 9/11″ thing?) Both of those are good things. But he is a little conservative in other ways for my tastes, and he has a tendency to say really stupid things. So I am OK but not ecstatic. That’s fine – I was ecstatic when Barack won the nomination, and one super exciting person on the ticket is enough.