The Sheila Variations

Love in a time of constitutional crisis

Here's something I wrote last year on the blog. I've unearthed it to work on it again, off-line. It strikes me that there's a good story in here somewhere - even though it happened to me in real life.

Thought I'd share it - for those of you who are new to my blog.

The recount and the doppelganger
Or: Love in a Time of Constitutional Crisis.

I just started a book this morning on Thomas Jefferson's "second revolution" - the revolution of the 1800 Presidential election. The triumph of the "Republicans" over the "Federalists", the crisis of the electoral process, the glitches discovered (eventually corrected by an amendment to the Constitution), the fear of "factions" at that time. I figure this book might give me some needed perspective in this time of overflowing inter-party hatred - that I, personally, find so disgusting. Federalists were convinced that if Thomas Jefferson became President, he would institute atheism as the state religion, he would ask Napoleon to invade America, and basically no one's daughters would be safe. The vitriolic editorials of the day somehow managed to mention the "chastity" of women being threatened, in an undefined way, by the prospect of a Jefferson presidency.

Somehow, through reading this, I'm reminded of "the endless recount" - which now seems like it belongs to a world that has long passed away. November 2000. I think of that time with baffled interest. How can anyone have known what was coming? It seems so innocent now. The recount that went on forever ... It became a joke. Pregnant chads, hanging chads ... what's a chad? The footage of people in flourescent-lit bleak rooms, staring at hanging chads ... I remember a hilarious SNL sketch, with Darrell Hammond (brilliant man) playing a ponderous Al Gore, bitching about how confusing the ballots were in Florida. One of the lines was something like: "There was one poor lady who was so confused by the ballot, that she ended up mailing hers to Barbra Streisand..."

Those limbo days seem so so long ago to me, almost as though they happened in another generation.

Here's a personal story from my life, from the time of the recount. My story doesn't really have to do with the re-count. The recount is just the context. I've been trying to write about this one night from my life for a while now - so I thought I'd give it a shot here:

Every time I think of "the recount" I think of a birthday party I went to in the middle of the whole thing, a party which, in retrospect, I kind of wish I hadn't gone to. The "recount" was on everyone's minds. The days dragged on and on and on in this unbelievable way, we were without a leader. It was quite an odd sensation.

On November 9 or 10 - something like that - I went to a birthday party for a dear friend of mine, held at a photographers studio in Soho. I hadn't wanted to go. I had had a bad day, and wasn't feeling social. But I went anyway. I remember worrying about my eye makeup, because I felt it didn't conceal that I had been crying. Finally, I just thought: Oh well, what the hell, I've been crying, big whup. I'm going to this party AS IS. It was my friend Allison's birthday, and many dear friends would be in attendance. So I hauled ass down to Soho, feeling like a wraith, like I was transparent. I often feel that way after a big long cry. Not in a party mood.

The recount was everywhere you looked. It was in the air.

The moment I walked into the party, though, I relaxed. The lights were dim, people milled about, mellow, friendly, Allison was cooking a feast in the kitchen, and the white cyclorama of the studio was in shadow with little tea lights all around the edge. Beautiful. Poetry in Soho. A long table had been set up in the middle of the room, with wine, and plates set ... the smell of the feast filling the space. Friends old and new were there. And there were some strangers as well.

And - I don't really know how else to say it - but I had a love-at-first-sight thing happen that night. Out of the blue. If you had asked me, as I took the subway downtown, wearing sunglasses to hide my puffy eyes, "Do you think you could find love tonight?" I would have looked at you like you were speaking some ancient Druid dialect or something. And then, lo and behold: Love. At. First. Sight. It wasn't one-sided, it was reciprocal , which - I don't believe has ever happened to me before in my life. I already knew of this guy but hadn't ever met him, and the second I laid eyes on him, I felt a thud. Literally. An "uh-oh" thud.

He had wanted to meet me. We had emailed back and forth a bit, because of our mutual friends, and also I was on this daily poetry newsletter he edited, something I really enjoyed. He had seemed like a cool person, but the second we shook hands, I thought: Okay. Put a fork in me. I'm done.

Eight hours later, when we said good-bye to each other, he said to me, when he hugged me, "Where the HELL have you been all my life?"

It was like meeting my long-lost twin brother. Or - no, that's not quite right, because there was a huge attraction between us (which would have been inappropriate, obviously, if we were related.) Okay, so if he wasn't my twin, he was definitely a doppelganger of some kind. We understood each other immediately. We were cutting each other off, finishing each other's sentences, racing to get to the finish line - we were reading each other's minds within 15 minutes of saying Hi. I'm talking about similarity of psychology, soul, intellect .... I felt: Huh. This is my twin in some way. (A very dangerous sensation. Turn back! Go back!! YOU HAVE NO TWIN BROTHER, SHEILA!! It's an illusion!)

But it was a love-at-first-sight thing, what can you do. Not rational. I am not talking about lust. Want to be clear. Although I was very attracted to him. When I say LOVE, I mean LOVE. Weird. Over the course of the party - which lasted until 4:30 in the morning - it was like we had a full-blown relationship: we were introduced, we got to know each other, we found things we had in common, we segued into deep conversations, at one point we had an argument - a bit of a disagreement, we also had a tender moment - sweet and poignant - a moment of recognition, we took a walk at 3 am through the streets of Soho and we discussed religion and our childhoods, and at one point I made him laugh so hard that he fell into a crumpled heap on the floor. We went through all the different phases of a relationship in an 8 hour period. We were on fast-forward.

Within 2 hours of shaking hands, we had become inseparable. He sought me out. He initiated a Trivial Pursuit game. Nobody could beat us. We were a monolithic force of trivia knowledge. Allison emailed me sarcastically the next day: "Yeah, it was really fun playing Trivial Pursuit with 2 walking fucking encyclopedias."

The theme of the night was the recount.

It became a running joke. Anytime anyone disagreed with him about anything (even the music selection, whatever), he would murmur, "I want a recount."

I went into the kitchen to get myself some more wine. I came back and I guess he had been expecting that I would re-fill his glass too. (See? It was Insta-Intimacy) He saw my re-fill and got irritated: "What - nothing for me?" I said: "Oh shit, did you want more wine?" He shouted, "I want a recount!"

He described having a phone conversation with a good friend from England, and the English friend was scorning America, and saying, "God, your system is so antiquated." My doppelganger screamed into the phone, "We're antiquated? You have a fucking QUEEN!"

I got home that morning at 6 am, dawn filling the sky, delirious from lack of sleep, much wine, and love at first sight. I signed on briefly to check my emails before I went to bed, and he had already emailed me. The subject line was: "I want a recount."

We laughed until we cried about "chads". "Who knew that one day we would not only know what chads are, but we would have vehement opinions about chads."

After dinner, a charades game broke out on the candlelit cyclorama. About 10 of us started the game, and we played charades for, no lie, 4 hours. One guy actually left the party, went to another party, and returned 2 and a half hours later, to find us all still playing. He was like, "Wow. You guys are ... you're kind of losers, actually."

We played as hard as if we were little children. We were all completely lost in the game. Unself-conscious. Free.

One guy in our crowd went to the corner deli for more cigarettes and he returned to the party with 2 hot Dutch girls he had met in line at the deli. It was hysterical, and kind of like a porn movie moment. They were 2 hot Dutch girls with alluring accents, perky breasts, and skimpy clothes, strolling into an established group of friends. And there were TWO of them. I remember all of the guys at the party, sprawled about on the cyclorama playing charades, stood up when the 2 Dutch hotties arrived. Up they all went, ready and eager to shake hands.

But what was even funnier, and more beautiful - and all of a piece with this special night: the Dutch hotties joined the charades marathon. They were GREAT. They didn't judge us, or sit around being bored and Euro-trashy. They threw themselves into the game whole-heartedly. There was one of them, hot, in leather pants, acting out Alien for the shrieking crowd. Here she was, visiting America for the first time, visiting New York City for the first time. She randomly got invited to a cool party down the street ... and what are all the partygoers doing? Playing charades. Ha ha ... but they completely got into the game. When I finally left to go home, the Dutch girls and I all embraced like mad, as though we were new best friends.

It was that kind of night. A magical night of convergence when you make new best friends. When you feel like you belong, when you feel like whoever you are is just perfect. There is no need to change, to feel insecure. Just show up. As yourself. People will LOVE you.

At 4:30 am, the party finally broke up.

My doppelganger and I didn't want to say good-bye. It was a very odd thing. Love at first sight. An odd thing.

I do NOT recommend it.

But, to quote What's Up Doc: "Listen, kiddo, you can't fight a tidal wave."

There was nothing that could stop that tsunami, nothing.

So he and I hugged, as though we were filming a scene from Reds or something.

"You have got to keep in touch with me..." he said into my hair, as he hugged me. "I won't be able to stand it."

"Me neither. No worries. I'll be in touch." (I'm thinking: Dude, you are not gonna be able to get rid of me. Look out.)

We parted. It was difficult, man. Difficult to let him go. It was still dark out. I walked to the Path station to go home. The city at that hour is just as busy as it is at mid-day, but the energy is completely different. People seem blurry, more on the edge, the defenses are down, you see all kinds of strange things. Everyone's tired, or drunk, or desperate.

The Path station was quiet, echoey, and filled with drowsy bleary waiting people. I sat against a column and closed my eyes. Some people slept, some looked like they were asleep standing up. People curled up on the floor, using their knapsacks as pillows, there was an exhausted drained feeling in the air. It was 5 am on a Saturday night. Time to go home, and go to bed.

I felt delirious with the need for sleep. My skin felt pale and flushed at the same time. My eyes kept falling shut. And yet at the same time, my mind was buzzing with electric current, excitement. My heart was full to bursting and I felt so happy that it scared me.

I lay there, in the Path station, on the tiled floor, curled up against a column, my mind filled with images from the last 8 hours ... my heart throbbing against my ribcage ... a smile on my lips ... I couldn't keep the smile off! I remember that: lying there, smiling like an idiot.

I had no idea what would happen with my doppelganger. And at that point, it didn't matter. It was enough just to have met him. I don't meet many people I like. Or, no, that's not true. I meet plenty of people I like, but I don't meet many people where I feel sparks like that. Those sparks were out of control. It was intellectual, it was spiritual - it was an entire 3-dimensional chemical reaction to another human being, and it was exhilarating.

I laughed out loud remembering our argument. He had called me on one of my comments, and I defended myself. As though we had had the same fight 4000 times before. It was that comfortable. Hard to believe that I had only met him 8 hours before. Incomprehensible.

And as I lay there, half in and half out of sleep, suddenly head over heels in love, but kind of un-worried about all of it (the worry would come later), I overheard a guy in a sleepy group over to my right say, tiredly, randomly, a propos of nothing:

"Do we have a President yet?"

He didn't particularly care about the outcome. He said it in the tone of "Did you pick up the dry-cleaning today?"

And suddenly - hearing his tired bored voice saying those particular words - I had this strange feeling inside, almost like a telescope opening, and backing way up - there was a feeling of impact, of scope - and I thought: "I will never forget this night."

It had the feeling of something historic, and yet also - there was the beauty of the guy's tone. The comedic possibility of being so bored in the middle of a constitutional crisis. "Do we have a President yet?" He might as well have been yawning in the middle of the sentence. We all kind of felt that way, at that point. And instead of being disheartened by the fact that he was bored, I found it oddly beautiful.

I don't know why I suddenly loved the whole world in that moment but I did. I felt a piercing sense of love for the entire world, and I felt intensely glad to be alive. I felt glad that I had lived long enough to meet my doppelganger. I felt a weird painful LOVE for everybody. It hurt. Of course it hurt. There are a lot of damn people in the world, and one can't love them all! But for about 20 minutes, in that echoing 5 a.m. Path station, I did.

I remember lying against the column, and pressing down my hand over my heart, grinning from ear to ear, with crazy happy tears welling up in my eyes.

Posted by sheila