When 420 Failed Me During That First Debate
Pride Weekend at the end of the world again
I was literally writhing on the carpet in Lorraine’s apartment. To watch Trump spew nonstop lies, and Biden just… so feeble. Underwhelming. My inner child was screaming,
January 6th!
Just say January 6th!
Point at him.
And say it over and over again.
I kept huffing and puffing on my weed pen.
It was like a swarm of red ants, crawling in through my ears and masticating my brain. A black sea of dread spreading through my body.
At one point I looked at Lorraine on the sofa, and I thought about trying to start sex with him. It’s never even come close to happening in twenty years of friendship. But, Thursday night — I really contemplated it. I needed to create something even more monumentally awkward so I could get my mind off what was happening on TV.
Do you like sucking dick, I asked Lorraine.
Amadeus answered for him.
We’ve had this discussion before, Miss Jen.
At your birthday!
I have zero recollection. None, whatsoever.
Did he say yes or no?
They started cackling.
And then they starting calling me, Hey, Joe Biden!
How does someone like me (latter Gen-X, politically engaged, homosexual, immigrant POC) process a debate like that with our democracy on the line?
While I was convulsing and praying for an exorcism, Amadeus (she’s a smart, pretty, Mexican American Millennial in tech — when I first met her she hung around exclusively with gay men; but she doesn’t do much gay stuff after her biological countdown started) was laughing and cracking jokes during the debate.
All countries go through this, she said ever-so-nonchalantly. She was talking about the end of our democracy. It just hasn’t happened to America yet.
She shrugged. Two old White men deciding the future of America.
I’m not going to allow it to affect my mental health.
Unlike Amadeus, I care. I care a lot. Honestly, I don’t know how I’m going deal with my mental health for the next four months. Every presidential election since Obama ’08, I’ve trekked to Nevada on my own time and meager funds. Either to get out the vote or monitor the polling stations to protect the right to vote. I am a grateful and blessed as an immigrant.
Call it my American dream: You will not die on my watch.
Anyhow, that soul shattering debate Thursday night marked the official start of my Pride weekend.
I had less than 24 hours to transition into the opposite mindset. I had no choice. I paid a pretty penny for my choice of pride parties.
At the Electroluxx party on Friday night, with over two thousand gay men in attendance, Lorraine remarked: you might be the only one here on just weed.
[That’s not technically true, by the way. Around midnight, I took a quarter of Adderall. I wanted to stay at the party a little bit longer.]
But Mary Jane lost a lot of her mojo for me after that Debate. I couldn’t shake the looming death of America off of me.
In college, I took a course on Modern Chinese Literature, a movement that began with the rise of World War 2. The novels and stories we read took place when China fell from its lofty heights as “The Center of the Universe.” It wasn’t able to adapt and evolve quickly enough with modernity. The writers of the era shared a common ethos: 救亡圖存.
Translation: Save our country from death; plot survival.
After that debate, I wondered: how did the writers and artists of that era live their lives with such impending doom on the horizon? How did they stay optimistic — how did they laugh, and eat, and drink merrily, and keep on writing, and falling in love — when the mere act of hope must have been torture?
Maybe that’s why, subconsciously, I missed my Pride party Saturday night. I went to the wrong place — on the opposite side of town. I may be smoking too much weed. Or maybe I really am turning into Joe Biden. Anyhow, I came home dejected.
That’s when I began writing this piece. I plonked myself down on my burgundy writing chaise.
And it hit me: I am a character in a literary novel. One that begins with, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. We are witnessing a tragedy of epic proportions. Take a deep breath, people. You know what’s going to happen?
We’re all going to die. Eventually.
The next day was Pride Sunday.
For the past couple of years, my Sundays start off with Lindy in the Park, a free weekly dance party in Golden Gate Park. Amongst the regulars, I usually dance with my fellow homosexuals (and a couple of cool straight guys), but mostly, as a cisgendered male in a heteronormative world, I dance with women.
And that’s OK.
The point is, I Dance.
When did gay men stop dancing? Did dancing die with the death of disco?
Girl…
I may be turning into Joe Biden.
My soul doesn’t belong in this era.
Yet, I am so of this era. All that transgressive stuff I did in college during the 90’s but never thought would become reality — concepts like gender and sexual fluidity — all of that is happening now. (Truth be told, there was a part of me that never really believed it was possible. I am truly blessed to see the Promised Land.) And I remind myself: I am a part of the wave that made this happen.
Yes, me. Eddie Jen. I see how far we’ve come. Me — and America. I remind myself of how I have suffered to become who I am today: childhood bullying, a failed business, financial bankruptcy, and cancer.
I’ve also biked deep, deep, into the playa at Burning Man. This is the deep wisdom I brought back:
There is no one who can pull off a glittering, sequined, one shouldered, asymmetrical minidress for the Muggle world better than me.
So on Pride Sunday, I took a deep bong hit.
And I put on that dress. I strapped on a pair of heels, slung a clear vinyl purse over my shoulder, and ventured out to Lindy in the Park. A flamboyant crossdresser out in Golden Gate Park at eleven am on a Sunday. It reminded me of the day in elementary school when I got on the bus wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt over even louder Hawaiian shorts with a neon purple backpack, only to find out once I got to school that the look was too much. I was stuck going through an entire day with the kids ridiculing me. The memory of it traumatized me for years.
But, years later, that experience would give me something funny to write about.
I am not afraid.
You know what Modernity is?
It’s the shattering of the fairytale that “they lived happily ever after.”
Change is coming beyond our control. No one has the answers.
For me, I’m not looking to Mollie, Connie, or Ketamina — any of the queens favored by my people to reach Destination: Joy. I just don’t vibe with influencers who force me to feel a certain way.
I am Yellow and mellow. Miss Mary Jane is my ride or die. She merely shows me what Dorothy saw when she opened that door from a world of black and white, but Mary Jane doesn’t force me through it. I have to cross that threshold myself. It’s up to me: how I dress myself; how I conjure up my inner chutzpah to meet this magical time of being alive.
A bong hit pushes myself a little further.
As a writer.
For Me.
For America.
For to write is to be optimistic. When we put our thoughts down into words and then cut them up into sentences, life becomes bearable. When we place a period, we say, this thought ends here. I will begin a new sentence. I will put on that one shoulder asymmetrical metallic dress.
Mary Jane is still my bestie. She holds my hands and says, girl, you got this.
You’re not afraid.
And together, we will save America.
