Adrenalin in the Voter Booth

A confession: I haven't voted in years. Not due to apathy, or lack of viable candidates. It's that I live in a state that always votes Democratic in major elections, and I've backed major Democratic candidates for the past while (if I'd liked a Republican, I'd have voted, to register my protest). As for local offices, I prefer to see them careen back and forth, one side compensating for the excesses of the other, and that will happen naturally without me.

The nation's leftward demographic shift has suited me pretty well for the most part (since the Republicans dropped into the abyss a while ago), but I'm not inclined to push my weight into it. There will come a time when the pendulum overswings, as it always does, so it's time to coast, not accelerate. I think of my non-voting as an act of engine braking.

But this morning I put on a button-down shirt and belt (after two years creating an ambitious project, having invested everything I've got into making it true and lovable and shiny, I've been slumping around in sweatshirt and droopy corduroys) and headed to my local polling place.

I strode into the booth and I shoved the lever down hard for Hillary Clinton. In my imagination, the click was a crash - alarming, even deafening. I Michael Bayed the motherfucker. And I voted straight down the Dem line, because anyone running on a ticket beneath that guy is too shameless to earn my vote.

I've proudly pushed my weight into this one, contributing to a foregone conclusion. For once, I've fully signed on.


Full disclosure: the preceding account was heightened for dramatic effect. Actually, they gave me a paper ballot and felt-tip marker. But I darkened that circle with absolutely savage intensity.

News flash: my car will survive!