Where Were You?

As the polls closed on the East Coast, it was 11pm in Buenos Aires, and I was savoring the last bites of leftover flank steak, with eggplant and zucchini from the my preferred Peruvian produce vendor, a squat white-haired man who gets red onions special for me and sets up shop in the doorway of the Korean grocer´s ("el Chino," to my roommates) at the corner of Lacroze and Delgado. My roommate Leandro had a Jethro Tull album (that was not Aqualung) playing at a low blast from the next room. Alone at the kitchen table, a desk salvaged from the street and refurbished by my roommate Vero, I pretended for a moment that I would not eat all of the bread I had bought from the Confitería Iris, where a thin red-haired bread lady always asks how my studies are going and laughs when I do not know the name of a single one of the innumerable sweets stacked high on the counters. I killed the last of the bread along with the bottom half of a bottle of Callia Syrah-Malbec, which sells for 12 pesos at El Chino. The wine was still decent, though opened five days ago, on Halloween (I had sworn off drinking following my debaucherous debut as Freddy Mercury, and just Tuesday morning shaved my mustache, a lasting disgusting relic).

The water heater above the sink growled as I scrubbed our primitive toasting apparatus, for use on the stove, and I winked at the multichrome Warhol-esque images of Che Guevara and Marilyn Monroe stuck above the drying rack.

The computer moved slowly. Clicking on counties led to listless loading times, heightening my hopeful anxiety. The map turned blue. Slowly. Slowly. Turned. Blue. We expected this would happen, but these percentages and graphs and cautious network calls added up to something momentous, something with momentum. Rapt eyes glued to eight open internet pages, I tried to explain to Leandro and Vero what this could mean, but it was too big. I did not realize it when the Tull album ended, and Leandro looked up from his book to request that I skip back to the beginning.

They called Ohio. Luke's status message, posted from the UAW hall in Taylor, MI, read "it's too close to call... in Arizona." McCain aids had already said it would take a miracle. Obama climbed over 200, and I needed a breather.

The eased nerves, the wine, the steak, the sticky relentless humidity. I was drowsy, almost resigned to sleep before the election was called. I laid down, my guitar on my chest, waiting. waiting.

I twitched, strumming my guitar loudly, my subconscious ringing the doorbell, reminding me that this date was worth my attention. Worth being awake. Reticent, I closed my eyes again.

and then, it happened. My Election Moment.

Through the night's heavy haze,

through my open window, a sound

first scratchy and mumbled, but

approaching, ever clearer

an old radio, a car window rolled down,

one single audible phrase as it screamed by my room

a phrase inspiring true American fist pumps,

its energy as American as the Miller Light those fist pumps so often spill:

"Don´t stop

...


Beliieeeevin"


The car vanished. I walked to the computer, refreshed, and saw that Barack Obama had been elected President of the United States of America. A Journey, indeed...

.................


"Barack and Roll" T-shirt on, I climbed into a cab headed to Puerto Madero and mentioned to the cabby that Obama had won. The driver was most interested in discussing Argentine politics, specifically the situation of insecurity that he feels is the most important issue facing the country (in my conversations, crime is by far the number one thing Argentines are concerned about and wish their government would better address.) For fifteen minutes he talked about how he is afraid every night that he may not return to see his wife and children. He wanted an empathetic ear, and that's what I gave him. I like to think we elected Barack Obama because he will lend that same ear.

I arrived at the party, at a club on the docks, around 2:15am. Things were just getting going. The graduating class of law students at my university, Torcuato Di Tella, were throwing the party, and the 17 graduating women were identifiable in their (skimpy) police outfits. The five graduating men had unsurprisingly failed to hold up their end of the bargain, as they were not dressed like narcotraficantes. I had four cans of Quilmes, danced through the sweat rings, and hugged a lot of people.
As the bartenders locked up and left the club, I sat on the lawn with a bottle of water, discussing in half-sentences what a great night this was with my compañeros from the law school. I hitched a ride back to my neighborhood with some of them, and I heard Oasis and an Alanis Morissette dance remix on the radio. Squished beside me was the daughter of a former "guvernator" of a northwest Argentine province, who had been named after Petunia. Not the flower, the girlfriend of Porky the Pig. I live in an acid dream.

I opened up my computer once more and fetched a corner of bread that had escaped my fiendish gluttony hours earlier. Obama was over 300 in the EC now, and I sought out the speeches. First, McCain's gracious speech, emotional as much for its textual calls for unity as for the tone, a noted contrast from the stiff rancor which seemed to define him in recent weeks. Next, I read Obama's humble victory speech, and as the sky slowly lit up the heavy air, I took deep breaths, realizing in some small part what a journey it had been for him; and for us; and how far we all have to go.

I cried. And I fell asleep in my chair, an open jar of peanut butter at my feet.