The Whiteout

I live in a very populated area of Houston, Texas just west of the Galleria. In case you are unfamiliar with Houston, the Galleria is a gargantuan mall that is known for drawing people from all over the world, who, it would appear, can't resist our overpriced crap. If you were into demographics this would be your part of town. We've got it all around here. In fact, this apartment complex alone is an international, intercultural, and interracial wonderland. Whenever I go for a walk around the (massive) property I encounter Africans, the Hungarians downstairs, Latinos, Caribbeans, and that damn French guy.

Okay, there's no French guy.

Also cross-represented is damn near the entire economic strata. There are the ubiquitous homeless, there are folks like us - the working poor as they say, there are whatever is left of the middle class, the measurably affluent, and then there are the folks like George Bush senior. Yeah, that douchenozzle lives here too.

So we just had a little election, maybe you've heard about it. I don't know. I guess people are talking about it.

Maybe you yourself live under a rock. If so, let me just let you know that here in Texas we loves us some GOP action. If it's right of center then buddy bring it on.

We have brought you such moral stalwarts like Karl Rove and Tom Delay and of course, George Bush (lesser and greater). We pack a right-wing wallop and we are proud of it.

Dandy.

Unfortunately for Texas, this was not her year at the polls. John McCain got bitchslapped this go-round.

Thing is, you'd never know it if you were to measure the pulse of American presidential politics from the polling station at which I waited in line to vote last Tuesday.

Those same sons-of-bitches I wrote about the other day were out at Briargrove Elementary in full force.

As I entered the school I came face to face with a huge line. While it may be true that only 40% of Texas voters went to the polls, it was clear that nobody told the yup-monsters in line to stay home.

It took us a solid hour to make our way into the polling room. Usually that would be just fine with me. I am not too civic minded; voting pretty much does it for me. Plus, I sort of get a little moved whenever I go and vote. I don't know why. In the last several elections I have either voted for Obama or Ralph Nader or whoever it was that ran Green the last presidential election. So my voting record has been a wee shoddy.

Yeah, Obama won, but he sure as fuck didn't win Texas. And as for those other jokers, none of them ever had a snowball's chance in hell of winning; so basically for me voting is kind of like pissing in the wind.

Whatever. I still get tingly inside when I do it.

This time it was sort of different.

This time I was going into the polls knowing that the guy I was voting for was going to win the whole deal. I knew that this was an historic election and I was acutely aware of its importance as I stood there.

The line wound its way around the front entrance to the school, and as this was happening the last students to arrive were filtering in. This little boy strode in, maybe Indian, and loudly asks the general throng, “Wow, what are all these people doing here”?

No one says a word for a moment, maybe out of surprise, but more likely out of a desire for anonymity from our fellow line-waiters. Finally I and one other woman responded almost in unison. “Voting.”

“Oh yeah,” he said, “I hope everyone votes for Barack Obama, I would love that.”

There are a couple snickers, mine included.

And then the woman directly behind me says, “Oh great, another brainwashing.”

Loudly.

To a fucking elementary student.

Now this whore is on my radar.

Look, if you don't know about me yet because, I don't know, your head is totally up your ass, or you were Google-ing “scrotum” or whatever and somehow landed here by accident it might help you to know that I hate people.

Yeah, I'm a grade-A misanthrope. You may have read about us in college. During your frat-boy youth, your beer-bong haze, your cheerleading pompom practices, your pleated skirt tennis lessons, perhaps you heard about the people who fucking hate people.

I'm one of them.

So it doesn't take a lot to tip my repulsion of humanity over the edge, and that goes especially for public places like lines.

At that point I am no longer relishing those rare moments when I am not not ashamed to be American (or human for that matter), I am now focused entirely on how I will make it through the line without gut punching this satanic minion in her kidneys. I am no longer flush with patriotic duty, I am now engorged with a bloodlust.

Joining Ilsa the She-Wolf in line is her tragically stupid eunuch of a husband and her catastrophically-cursed poor little daughter named Sarah-Kate.

Jesus H. Christ in a chicken basket how I fucking loathe hyphenated first names.
Why, for the love of god, why, would you think your kid needs two first names? Is this little homunculus twice as wonderful as the rest of us? Or wait, I know this one... Or, is it that you are a pompous white snob with a chip on her should as big as her sense of entitlement?

“Ding!”

We have a winner!!

For the remaining 45 minutes it becomes like the Bataan Death March for me as I endure this woman as she regales all of us poor bastards around her with tales of her daughter's wonderfulness.

And for all her snide talk of brainwashing she is quick to let us all know who her daughter voted for in her school's mock election.

Once the woman finds out the guy in front of me looks Hispanic she immediately has her daughter recite her 1 to 10s in Spanish.

Oh joy! The little white girl is already being used to patronize brown people! And all before her first ballet lesson!

Then it hits me.

This is the election that belongs to the brown people. And for all the years that I rubbed shoulders with the progeny of pathetic wastes of life like this woman and her soon to be Hitler Youth daughter, come January, this terrible, terrible woman and her crushing ugliness will finally be in the minority.

National pride restored I enter the booth, punch in my little number, and proceed to side with the underestimated brown man who will forever change what it means to be American for us all.

And best of all, it comes to me like a freight train of glee. This woman, this woman who is desperate to hold on to all that has cornered her in her little world of shame, is now in the minority.

Let freedom ring.

And fuck you, lady.

Hope you enjoyed the ride, now, step aside and shut up.