November Happened Again

When Trump was elected the first time, back in 2016, I was working on a contract with the CDC. That day was one of the strangest of my life, with scientist co-workers streaming in and out of my cube asking me questions about my family. I was one of the few in my division from a white working class background, and had been vocal in my discussions with my fellow liberal co-workers earlier in the year about how hard it was to talk to my relatives about fascism and populism and just everything around the 2016 election. So as Hillary started to lose, my cube became a gathering place for scientists struck dumb in disbelief. All their questions boiled down to "But Why?" and all my answers boiled down to "Because Bitches". After the 2016 election I sewed dozens of pussy hats from two colors of pink fleece and the whole family marched. We helped occupy the Atlanta airport terminal in support of the legal immigrants the President blocked from entering the country. We donated to the causes of refugee camps and freeing children at the border. I watched in horror as the CDC was cut, and cut again, and my contract wasn't renewed in January of 2018. We sold our condo on Dekalb Avenue that Spring, and went rental for the first time while I had my income cut in half to go work for the public library. I told myself it was because I was fighting for literacy and the city of Atlanta, but honestly, with thousands of workers all with the same skill set let go from similar federal jobs, the public library was what I could get. Eight years later, as I have only just begun to recover from the economic devestation that the pandemic shut down brought to our family, I am too exhausted to be emotional about what happened this November. What little political fight I had left in me was beaten out by my work with Stop Cop City. I've got no energy to attend any kind of local action, let alone march in DC like I did with friends in Spring of 2002. I don't think political protest matters anymore anyway. A life of protest gained me nothing but moral high ground in retrospect, the ability to just say "Well, I TRIED to do something." The system is so broken that nothing I could ever do will matter to anyone but myself and my loved ones. All I can do is get my girls out of the Southeast. Then maybe I'll be able to escape to better healthcare and opportunities myself. The husband and I tried to get our oldest out of the country to university all of last year, and though she was accepted to schools in Canada and Ireland we could afford none of them. It has been my greatest comfort the last week that our oldest ended up in Maine, a blue state surrounded by other blue states with Canada at her back. Within two years I will launch my youngest westward or northward as well. One of the men I'm dating - a white presenting Cuban man who ended up in Atlanta after a Florida hurricane - one of the first, but not the last climate change refugees I'll love in my life - texted me after the election that he was conserving his emotional energy after the election this week. I wanted to do that too, but my husband and others around me wanted me to be upset, and I admit that at times I let them get to me, and I took on a little of that depression and gried. Honestly though I grieved for the loss of law and liberalism last year. I gave the last of that energy away in the summer of 2023 trying to Stop Cop City. I have nothing left to give, politically, and even if I did feel like doing something I couldn't. I left the libary a few months ago for a contract job that I absolutely can not risk. The pay from this new job is what I need for myself and my daughters to escape to better shores. I'm just focused on getting us out now. I don't want to be on your mailing list. I'm not sewing you a hat this time. I'm not going to buy a gun or sign your petition or ride with you to the new action site. I'm staring down the barrel of 50 with three decades of protest behind me, and I'm sorry to say: I don't think there's anything you or I can do but vote, and we did that already. Just move, especially if you're a woman. Because Bitches.

Watching Blondie Dance on Valentine's Day

On Valentine’s Day I finally went to the Clermont Lounge. A friend and I went early, just around 8pm, and so the basement bar only had two other patrons beside us as I ordered an Atlanta Hard Cider. Blondie, the woman I should have met a long time ago, started the night's dancing. I've lived within walking distance for over two decades, but this was my first time watching her work.

It’s not like I hate bars, though my father was an alcoholic. It’s not like I don’t know how to tip performers, because I’ve been a fan of live drag since I was a teen. It’s not like I’m averse to basement venues or that I haven’t been walking around city streets in less than reputable areas my whole life. I didn’t go because I think I was avoiding Blondie, who didn’t know I existed and wouldn’t care if she never met me.

After my friend and I had been at the bar a bit, Blondie came over to the digital music box that the dancers program, which was behind where my friend and I were sitting. I said hi, and then “You don’t know me, but one of your old room mates, Danny Mixon, was my mother’s first cousin.”

Blondie stopped, and we locked eyes for just a moment. In that moment things shifted inside my head. Neither the famous dancer or I said anything for a beat, a beat that was full of thoughts about mental illness, families biological and chosen, the history of housing on Ponce de Leon Avenue, and a lot of other things about Atlanta. It occurred to me then just how fucking mean my mother’s family could be, and that maybe if I had been raised right, I would have met this woman sooner.

Then Blondie said “Oh, that Danny. We used to fuck sometimes.”

“I’m sorry he’s gone.” I said, and asked to hug her, and she said Ok, so I did.

Then my friend and I left, with generous extra tips on the bar. It was barely after nine, and more people were coming into the bar, but I’ve never been a late-night person, and neither are most of my friends. You could say my early bedtime was another reason why I never made it to the Clermont, but that would just be another excuse. We took a picture by the sign on the outside back wall of the hotel, but I didn’t post it to social media, because that would somehow be telling on myself. I’m not ashamed that I went to the Clermont on Valentine’s Day, or ashamed that I went there without my husband. I’m ashamed that it took me so long to go at all, and that I was forty-seven before I was really able to understand Danny, who died years ago. I meant to go to his funeral, but smashed my elbow less than two days before, and missed even his cremation dealing with my own shit. The metal pins I carry in my left arm from that accident hurt less than the knowledge that I couldn’t be there for the end of a man I met in person maybe a dozen times, but who in the back of my mind lurked as the key to a lot of truths about myself.

As we climbed in the car, my friend and I were giggling about the couples now walking into the Claremont for Valentine’s dates. He turned to me as we buckled in and said “Wow, so your mom’s cousin used to really be roommates with Blondie, and they used to…?” and he waggled his eyebrows.

“The most surprising thing about that interaction was finding out that Danny Mixon ever fucked a woman.” I said, shaking my head. “I had no idea, but honestly, I never really knew him. He lived in that big building on the corner of North Highland and Ponce, which used to be just for those who were disabled, or who went in and out of the mental hospital, or those who had AIDs in the early 90’s, because no one in Atlanta would rent to someone who had AIDs.”

“Oh.” said my friend, because what else do you say when your fun night gets brought down suddenly.

I turned the conversation light again, discussing the performance of both Blondie and the other dancer on that night, who was amazing but whose name we missed. The two of us moved on with the evening, a little buzzed and a little proud of ourselves for Doing The Local Thing That Ususally Just Tourists Do, stupid boring middle-aged people finally supporting the art in our own backyard.

When I got home much later, the teens who don’t date because they’re Gen Z were asleep, but the husband was up. He’d have his own Valentine’s adventure with friends in a few days, driving all the way out to Gwinnett to see the belly dancers at Imperial Fez, because COVID kicked that restaurant out of the city somehow in a way I still don’t understand. The husband asked politely how my night was as I went about showering and thinking and trying to make all the newly clicked puzzle pieces of Atlanta and my family fit properly in my mind.

“It was a good night.” was all I could manage. “I don’t know why I never went to the Clermont before. It’s just a few blocks from here. You should take R-.”

I hugged the husband then, and meant it in a way I haven't in a long time. I've been angry with him for nearly two years because of so many things that happened during the quarantine. The next morning I realized I wasn’t really mad at the husband anymore. I’m not entirely sure why - maybe it was just time, maybe it was talking to Blondie finally, maybe it was knowing that all the things my family never talked about properly decades ago were able to be sorted for me at last as I prepare to close out the second quarter of my life. We all have to take accountability, finally, for how we behave during a plague. My mother's family handled the fallout of the plague of the late 80's and early 90's terribly. I need to handle my own reponses to the last plague with more care.

Backdated for January

I have a tradition in the current job of working through the December holidays and then taking the week of MLK day off. The celebration of the local hero is such in Atlanta that not much work gets done that week anyway, with kid having the day off school and free public service projects being performed. This year the planned time off backfired on me, as the week coincided with my annual bout of sinusitis, through which there’s nothing I can much do but lay about the house and nurse myself through headaches and gross drainage. The sinusitis was especially worse this year as it not only isolated me during a week when I had hoped to do things outside the house, but that it coincided with a spike in COVID transmissions in the city.

Although I know it’s irrational and magical thinking, I panicked about having sinusitis and hearing the COVID news. After all, this is how it happened four years ago: I got a sinus infection that took me out of my routines of swimming and social interactions, and by the time I was well again the city was shut down, and the cascade of events that ruined my finances began. That’s not going to happen this time, and even if it does, I’m not living in a fixer-upper house that will crush me. The upside to owning absolutely nothing of value means that I have almost nothing to lose.

The job search continues, despite an emergency cost of living increase at my current job, because I have seen the real cost of college for my daughters now. I want everything for both of them, and it would be selfish to say they can’t have the opportunities they’ve earned in school because I want to keep a job I like despite criminally low pay. We had planned to give them both about 60k, but the youngest spent her college savings account on a private middle school, and my savings for the oldest flew out the window when her dad was unemployed or underemployed for eighteen months. She's applying to scholarships like mad, and even getting some of those, but nothing seems like it will be enough, even as I know we’ll muddle through somehow. I just have to get another job, and that’s all there is to it.

Expenses seem still to increase, even though the news says things are leveling off. My beloved rental eBikes doubled in cost to ride. I don’t feel like I’m making headway on the debt. And that was January, swimming as hard as I could just to keep my head above water. Maybe February, with the slight emergency increase in income and the tax return money at the end will be less stressful.