‘Hey, can I join your polycule? It’s urgent.’
Gas was expensive, so I naturally expected the Death to America Party to do well in the midterms. But as I read the coverage about the states that we had assumed to be reliably red, I realize that the numbers are worse than I had feared.
I start rummaging frantically through my drawers to find a vaccination card, then I remember I never even got the Covid jab. I worry: How will I prove to everyone that I’m a good progressive who shouldn’t be sent to the guillotine?
I decide to text my ugly friend from high school, since she now has blue hair and lives in Colorado. “Hey, can I join your polycule? It’s urgent,” I write. As I wait for her/their/xier response, I send an email to Planned Parenthood, asking whether it is possible to get an abortion without ever being pregnant; I receive an automated reply with a link to receive free hormones and a lobotomy at the middle school during its next Drag Story Hour. Then I update my email signature to include my pronouns, and I am sure to set the font color to glittering rainbow. Beneath that, I write “FREE PALESTINE.”
I am briefly distracted from giving myself a face piercing when my roommate returns with our dinner. Rather forcefully, I remind her about the mandatory landlord acknowledgement that must be performed before anyone can enter our unit. Thankfully, she complies. I grow depressed as I unwrap the food, realizing that we both unthinkingly ordered a forbidden bacon cheeseburger. “Inshallah, abracadabra,” I tell her solemnly, “We have to throw everything out and learn how to make spiritually vegan shawarma.” Then, the two of us start updating our social media pages to prove we are socialists. “TIME TO SUBPOENA THE ORANGE FASCIST,” my roommate posts to celebrate the dictator’s stunning loss. She starts painting a watercolor “NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL” sign for our front window, obviously in the colors of the Mexican flag to show solidarity. I change my Instagram account so that I’m identifiable only by my middle name, Yasmine, and my bio now says “Love not hate” with a hammer and sickle emoji. For the rest of the hour, I repost infographics about how we need to arrest everyone who voted Republican.
Before we both head out to the college’s catered victory party to celebrate the socialist revolution, where half the women have a Louis Vuitton bag, I decide to take a restorative herbal Earl Grey bath. As I am waiting for the running water to turn hot, I change my LinkedIn page so that my current position says “anti-seasonal yogi.” The certificate section now clarifies that I have done 200 hours of humane lion-taming training, and the education section includes a degree in “The History of Clowning” from Oberlin. Advertisements appear on the homepage, and I register for the “Vagina: A Cartographer’s Nightmare or Dream?” session at an upcoming “DECOLONIZE YOUR PUSSY POWER” conference. Once the bath is ready and it is time to undress, I think about how I have to stop taking Ozempic, get on Lexapro, and gain about 20 pounds. Oh, I should also get some tattoos. Maybe a giant hydra between my shoulder blades, with Michelle Obama as one head and Mamdani as the other? When I’m trying to relax in the bath, I think about possible crowdfunded, anti-ICE performance art installations that I could coordinate to help uplift Latinx voices. Should the cast be all non-binary unhoused people?
As I’m putting on my pink shirt with a low neckline that says “I AM JANE DOE,” a realization hits me: I don’t actually have to make many changes to be perceived as a raging progressive. I am female, and given that 61 percent of women voted for Democrats, everyone will just assume I’m a leftist that supports mothers who kill their toddlers. Hooray! As I walk to the party, I contemplate what I should tell people who ask what I’m working on for my dissertation. Anti-oppressive beekeeping? Decolonizing coffee-bean farming? Best practices to degender orgasms? Liberating granola from corporate control? I’ll have to pick one.