Chapter One: Hope Takes Des Moines
Available Chapters: Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, Chapter Eight, Chapter Nine, Chapter Ten, Chapter Eleven, Chapter Twelve, Chapter Thirteen
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IOWA CAUCUS
Obama 38%
Edwards 36%
Clinton 29%
Richardson 2%
Maybe Caroline Stevens would not have thrown her life away if Barack Obama hadn’t won the Iowa Democratic Caucuses. On the other hand, she would be the first to say that the life she tossed away like a fast food wrapper slam-dunked into a waste can would never have been as thrilling as the one she has now. Caroline was one of the real Obama Girls, true believers, devoted to the man (and his wife), the cause and the campaign. Don’t confuse our hard-working campaign girls with that “actress/model” Obama Girl on You Tube singing embarrassing love songs to a man she doesn‘t know to promote her own bikini-clad body. No cynicism in our girl, beautiful shapely Caroline of the shining blue eyes holding a sign with the word “HOPE” on it that night in Des Moines. She was the creamy-skinned blonde babe in the front-page photo the Chicago Tribune ran with the cut line:
“Jubilant Obama staff carried "Hope" aloft as they danced and chanted on their way from their campaign headquarters to a massive celebration party at the Hyvee Hall in Des Moines.”
Caroline believed that Obama would lead us to the “race-less society” where the first thing we notice about one another is not the color of our skin. The guy behind her in the conga line was a study in subdued, dignified jubilation. But the first thing she noticed about the incomparable Reggie Williams, was definitely the color of his skin, rich, deep, dark brown the color of chocolate that you wanted to devour.
Caroline, Baby Girl, you can’t ever deny it to me. I was standing beside you when Reggie walked into the new campaign headquarters on the eleventh floor at 233 North Michigan Avenue in Chicago the first Monday in October 2007. He hadn’t cut off his dreads yet and they swayed, long and thick, against his shoulders as he walked. Hip Hop star, somebody whispered. I didn’t turn around to see who said that. Standing beside Caroline, I felt her temperature rise along with mine. Our fantasies were jumping out of our heads and co-mingling and cross-pollinating. His dreads were pouring like a fountain over our naked bodies. That skin. Dense, luxurious, like velvet. That walk. Confident, assured, a model’s walk without the arrogance. He was wearing tailored jeans, the crispest, whitest shirt and a black blazer, vintage and cashmere, basically the working uniform of journalists and paid campaign staffers everywhere--but taken to a higher level. Brilliant, inspired. (Caroline loved cashmere. While she considered herself one of the people, she hadn’t traded her cashmere sweaters for the wash-and-tumble dry wardrobe of the typical campaign worker.) When he stopped in a pool of sunlight, turned, looked in our direction and smiled, everyone in that room knew where this was headed. His dark eyes lapped at her ivory skin while her blue eyes licked his chocolate. The race-less society? I don’t think so. They connected through their skins.
“He’s not gay, Thomas,” she whispered to me.
Caroline, I knew that. A boy can fantasize, can’t he?
“You’re engaged,” I reminded her; and she had the good grace to blush--or maybe that was just heat infusing her cheeks. As they disengaged eyes and he resumed following his office tour guide, I added, “He’s not my type anyway. You know I only stand up for underwear models.”
She laughed. That was our joke about my current sex life: masturbating to the gorgeous black male model in the Calvin Klein underwear ad. I was in a dry spell. It’s tough being young, gay and urban without the abs of steel. I would do better in Paris or Greenwich Village in the 50s when effete artists and intellectuals were taken seriously--or anyway taken carnally.
“And you are engaged,” I repeated when she failed to say he wasn’t her type either--but she was a white girl who’d never crossed the color line so technically speaking, he wasn’t her type aside from his ability to rearrange her molecules in across-the-room-eye contact.
I was in the Chicago office watching CNN when Caroline and Reggie appeared on screen carrying Hope aloft in Des Moines. Wolf Blitzer was giddy.
“And I just want to let our viewers know that there were 220,000 Democrats who showed up at these caucuses -- that's a record -- and 114,000 Republicans or so who showed up. I think that's a record for the Republicans. A lot more Democrats participated in these caucuses in Iowa, though, than Republicans.”
“Millennial voters!” Chloe shouted from behind me. Young people aged eighteen to twenty-nine, Millennial voters, who had failed to show up in previous elections had made their presence felt in Iowa. They were one of our key demographics. “Are you gnashing your teeth in frustration at not being there?“ she asked.
“Not so much.” I gave it the studied casual shrug. Chloe, our own Sex Girl, petite and curvy, was probably sorry she‘d passed on the trip. What better opportunity for hot sex with a co-worker, any co-worker, than a victory party? But volunteers like Chloe and me had real jobs and couldn‘t afford to give 24/7 to the campaign. I teach photography at Chicago Art Institute and do a fair amount of freelance work. Chloe was finishing her Ph.D. in political science and interning with the campaign. “I got the photos I wanted traveling the state with Barack.”
“Enough of them too?” Chloe asked, nodding her head in the direction of the TV screen where Caroline and Reggie were among the campaign staff on stage awaiting the triumphant arrival of Barack and Michelle. As she studied them, she ran one finger down her throat to the top of her cleavage, nearly always showing to good advantage as it was that day framed by a fine Merino wool black V-neck sweater. “They are so nauseating.”
Everybody except Chloe, me and our friend Kanesha adored Reggie--and maybe that was partly because we missed the old Caroline, who, though naďve enough to be a heroine in a black and white movie about sacrificing on the home front during World War II, could still make the occasional sharp observation and biting comment. Before Reggie, the four of us were a copasetic circle. Reggie changed the dynamics--and turned Caroline into Little Miss Perpetual Sunshine. I halfway expected her to burst into song during staff meetings.
“I am so sick of hearing how charming he is,” Chloe said, glowering at the screen.
“He works hard,“ I said, my usual lackluster defense of him. He was putting in eighteen hour and more days on the campaign but so was every paid staff worker and some of the volunteers.
“One thing I have to hand him,“ I added grudgingly. “He’s no power grabber.“ So many people who work on campaigns are building their resumes for their future careers in D.C. “He is generous in giving credit. Last week I heard him tell Barack that Kanesha made the university initiative in Iowa come together; and I know he put as much into that as she did.“
“Yeah.” She picked at a tiny piece of dried skin around a fingernail. Chloe has small, perfect hands with long fingers, the type my mother calls “lady fingers.” She keeps her nails impeccably manicured, short, rounded and polished clear or very pale pink. “And he opens doors for women. I still don’t trust him.”
Born to a single teen mother and raised in a Harlem housing project, Reggie looked after his younger brother who was enrolled at Northwestern. We didn’t know much else about Reggie, like if he and his brother had the same father. White people hate to ask black people a question like that. We did wonder who was picking up the tab for Northwestern.
“I finally met the little brother Gary,“ Chloe said. “He stopped by here this afternoon to pick up some brochures for the campus.“
“And?“ I prodded. “Is he hot? Did you ask him if he’s on scholarship? Who‘s his daddy?”
“He looks a lot like Reggie--shorter, still has the dreads-- but not as hot. It struck me that he must copy Reggie’s mannerisms because he has them all, walk, voice inflections, the way he folds his arms across his chest when he is standing.“ She smiled. “I’ll bet little brother listens to Reggie as closely as everyone here does.“
Chicagoans may deny it, but we do defer to those who have lived and worked in Manhattan. Generally, everyone deferred to Reggie. It was subtle, but we did defer. Whatever the staff thought about the Caroline/Reggie thing--and it was Personal Topic A--they didn’t hold Reggie accountable for Caroline’s shamelessly throwing herself at him, even sometimes (or so some of us thought) when her Evan was around.
“I didn’t photograph them,” I replied straight-faced; and she smacked my arm. Chloe works out and her little firm biceps can deliver a solid jocular punch.
“It’s the ‘we’ talk that bothers me the most,” she said, turning her glossed lips into a moue of distaste.
Yes, the “we” talk. If Caroline/and/Reggie didn’t hit your nausea spot with the hand holding, arm rubbing, shoulder massaging and general cuddling--they would surely do it with the “we” talk. “We think.” “We are going.” “We are doing.” “We like.” “We don’t like.” Yet Caroline swore that they were “just friends” and friends without benefits at that. Nobody else believed her, but I did. We’d been the closest of friends for ten years, since we met in a photography class at Belleville Area College, BAC, the summer after high school graduation. Caroline drove from her home in Clayton, one of the two oldest suburbs of St. Louis, across the Mississippi River to BAC because her aunt’s friend taught the class. I liked Caroline immediately. She had a broad warm smile, a good sense of herself, her abilities and assets from writing skills to outstanding long legs. For example, she knew exactly where she was in that class: not good, but not bad either. She wore sandals all summer; and I never saw a chip in her peachy-nude toenail polish. Over the years, I grew to love her.
I still love Caroline, but I realized I’d had enough of them in Harlem in December.
On that first glorious October day, Caroline suggested we take Reggie out for a welcome-to-the-staff drink. The three of us hung out together for a few months. It bothered me that he always let her pick up the check with her AmEx cards (one courtesy of Daddy, the other, Evan) while I tossed down the cash for my share of the bill. (“Oh, he’s a brother,” Kanesha said derisively. “White men pay. Black men expect to be paid for. Why do you think we‘re all looking for Oreos like Barack?”) Increasingly, I felt uncomfortable in my perceived role as their chaperone. I maxed out on their company when we all went to New York for a weekend combining business with pleasure, an art show opening and a meeting with the New York campaign staff.
Sitting in a booth across from them at Mo-Bay’s restaurant on 125th Street (where giant Christmas tree ornaments hang from the ceiling year-round) in Harlem, Reggie’s and Bill Clinton’s ’hood, I realized: These two are smug, judgmental idealists and hypocrites who are exploiting the white men in Caroline‘s life. She was wearing Evan’s engagement ring while Reggie held her in his arms, cradling the upper part of her body and blowing kisses onto her long, slender neck.
Are you two doing it? I asked them; and they were insulted, offended, bordering on outraged. Hypocrites. I would have celebrated their love if they’d confessed it. Caroline is a great gal. Would I begrudge her true lust? We thought you understood us, she said. Yeah. Better than you understood yourselves. This is a special relationship. Having sex would make it less special, he said. Check, please. I tossed down some cash and went out by myself to walk around Harlem where there are a lot more white people now than when Reggie was born there. I believed them about the sex. In an odd way, that made me feel worse about them.
“Poor Evan,” Chloe interjected into my thoughts.
She was calling him Evan and not The Fiancé, the label she had attached to him. I guessed that Chloe planned to offer consolation to Caroline’s neglected man at the appropriate time--and that was likely going to be sooner rather than later. A tall, dark and handsome young tax attorney from a prominent Philadelphia WASP family, Evan Templeton was probably the man of her secret dreams, the man whose class and last name would lift her out of her ethnic origins. Chloe Petrofsky was the daughter of South Orange, New Jersey hippie parents--Mom a New Age therapist, Dad a storefront lawyer in Newark, winner of Pro Bono Lawyer of the Year citations--who had experimented with every sexual twist including polyamory, swinging, BDSM and group sex and then gone on talk shows as “lifestyle guests” to talk about it all. Chloe would surely renounce her casual sex ways and end up in a conservative, monogamous marriage. What else could she do to rebel?
“I had pink hair in high school,” she told us when Caroline and I had taken her out for a welcome-to-the-staff drink. “I got tattoos and multiple piercings. Nose. So many holes in my ears I was up into the cartilage. Lip. Tongue. Nobody said a word. It was like: You make your own decisions. I casually said I was thinking about getting a clitoral piercing. My mother said to me: Do a little research on that. Maybe there is a high incidence of infections. I was sixteen years old. And my mother’s best effort at saving me was: Do a little research on that.”
She didn’t get the clitoral piercing, removed the rest of her metal and let the holes heal shut. Only the tongue piercing left a scar. When the holes were closed, she took her mother’s gold Master Card to Manhattan where she had her fading pink hair turned into an expensive honey blonde Upper East Side bob, the style she maintains. Honey blonde complements her light brown eyes. And she bought clothes from The Gap and J Crew. (I winced at that part. And I am happy to say that she now buys good basics on sale augmented by designer clothes gently used that she picks up at thrift shops on her trips home to New York City. Chicago‘s thrift shops are no match for Manhattan’s.)
“My parents would have allowed voluntary genital mutilation,” she said--and that led Caroline into the story of her own mother’s two years in Africa as a volunteer doctor where, of course, she saw first hand the suffering of women who had been cut as little girls. “There is something very wrong with a mother who won’t protect her daughter’s genitals,” Chloe pronounced--and who could disagree with her? Certainly not Caroline. They bonded for life that day.
I would say that 75% of the staff, paid and especially volunteers, come from families with some history of public service or political idealism. Not me. My family was not exactly racist but not exactly uncomfortable with the idea that great-grandfather was in the Klan. The family did turn Republican after Johnson pushed through the Civil Rights and Voting Acts through Congress, but my mother was very pleasant to the first black family that moved into our neighborhood. There was no white flight in Fairview Heights, Illinois where I grew up.
“Do you think Reggie has the big black dick?” Chloe asked.
“I think he has a black dig. Big? Who knows?”
“My mother banged a lot of black dick in the eighties. She thought it was the politically correct thing to do, but she doesn’t really like black men.”
I put an arm around her and said, “You poor kid.” And I couldn’t resist asking: “Did Mom say if they were all big dicks?”
“She said they were not,” Chloe said, giggling happily like a school girl. “And that was most disappointing.”
On CNN, Caroline and Reggie were obscured by the Obamas. In the room behind us, a crowd of volunteers was forming. Wolf Blitzer said, “Take a look at this picture you're seeing right now. There he is, the winner of the Democratic caucuses in -- in Iowa, Barack Obama, walking in with his daughters, Michelle Obama, his wife. He's getting ready to address his supporters.”
Our chests were expanding with the sweet air of victory. We looked at our man with renewed respect and appreciation. The people had validated our choice. The silence was broken by the inevitable chatter about travel plans. Somewhere in the back of the room a callow-voiced lad said, “She thinks I’ll be in New Hampshire tomorrow night but I won’t.” We all knew what he meant: There was a girl who thought she was hooking up with him the next night and he found amusement--at a time like this!--in letting everyone else know he wasn’t. In silent reprimand, no one responded. Barack Obama was ready to speak. Did we value his words more highly tonight because he had been validated by the people?
In the days leading up to the Caucuses, we began to believe that Barack would win--as opposed to believing that he could or should win with only the institutionalized racism of the American (in this case, white Iowan) public potentially standing in his way. Almost everyone involved in a campaign has their Come To Jesus moment when they morph into a revival tent witness standing up and going on down to the altar of the candidate. We all commit to that candidate in the most intensely personal and spiritually meaningful way. Generally, the spiritual high wears off faster than fog burns off Lakefront Drive in the morning. (Think about it: If you truly believe in the power of your god, would your resort to dirty tricks to put him over--and isn‘t politics all about dirty tricks to put one candidate over another?) On a bad day, the bubbles of cynicism in our collective optimism make the whole team look like a botched wallpaper job attempting to hide structural flaws. But our bad days were few and fewer.
Barack brought tears to the eyes of white people. He inspired volunteerism in college students who hadn’t been political since our parents’ day. (And who are they kidding? Ending the war was about saving their own asses. Would they have organized protest marches if there had been no draft?) Through the lens, I watched him connect with old church ladies and young mothers. He was real. Everyone walked away from him knowing that he was.
A few of us, like Carolyn, even naively assumed that winning a 97% pure white state would put to rest the question: Is a black man electable as President of the United States? Race is the primary great American story--and “race’ is reduced to the simplistic terms, black or white. (Thanks to the leaders of the Puritan Repression--sex is the second American story. )
We were waiting to hear our man but Wolf Blitzer felt compelled to speak on until the cheers died down. The banner behind the Obamas read: “Change We Can Believe In.”
“They are so pumped up. They are so excited over what happened tonight. Barack Obama, a young man, in his mid-40s, has now won the Iowa caucuses. And he's about to speak to supporters and get ready for the next contest in five days in New Hampshire, where the polls show it's very, very tight right now.”
“ Kanesha called again while you were out getting dinner,” Chloe whispered.
“And?” I raised my eyebrows.
“The pro-Hillary bloggers are already out there with the rumor that Barack is a secret Muslim, sworn to uphold the Koran.”
“Oy,” I whispered back.
We’d seen that one coming. The Muslim rumor had been floated in Barack’s Senate campaign. Barack had attended a Muslim school as a child, but he was baptized as a Christian and attended black Christian churches. In fact, our issue was keeping his militant Afro-centrist pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr., out of the public eye. The good people of Illinois, pragmatic Midwesterners that they are, had shrugged off the implication that he was secretly a Muslim. But who knew how that rumor would play on a national scale? “Remember the Swift Boat” is the 21st Century version of “Remember the Alamo.”
“Caroline and Reggie did it in the back of the campaign bus,” she said in a barely discernable whisper. I raised my eyebrows. “Heard in the act by reputable source.” Eyebrows up again. “Kanesha herself.”
If Kanesha Bradley said they had, they had. Oh, hell. For any other couple, a victory night tryst would hardly be an indication of serious intent. Caroline and Reggie were not any other couple.
Wolf, the giddy, spoke once again:
“Right now, with 98 percent of the vote officially counted, he's got 38 percent to John Edwards' 30, Hillary Clinton's 29 percent.
Barack Obama is about to speak -- and we're going to want to listen in very, very closely to hear what he has to say, just as we listened closely to Mike Huckabee, who's the Republican winner.
Let's get ready to listen to the junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama.”
In the back of our room I heard someone say Muslim rumor. A handful of people went back to their cubicles before Barack began to speak. Mentally, I took names. With our first big success, we had moved into the next mode: paranoid about being spied upon. Campaigns sometimes dropped spies into their rival’s organizations; and the Clintons were reputedly known to play that game. According to Reggie, who had interned in the President’s Harlem office and worked on Hillary’s Senate campaign before becoming disillusioned with both Clintons--we couldn’t do a lot to protect ourselves against spies.
“We need volunteers and they can’t really be vetted,” he explained. “It’s like protecting yourself against terrorism in a free society. You can only do so much.”
More likely than falling victim to a spy, he said, was the insider betrayal: full disclosure of classified information via “drink and tell” or “kiss and tell” or what happens when a campaign worker is wined and dined (or more) by a reporter (or blogger) eager for fresh details. And more likely than that--political death by bloggers. Rumors, lies and innuendoes become larger than life on the Internet. A candidate may refute the story on the national news but it can’t be killed on the Internet. In fact, it can morph into a monster of many tentacles like the one that strangled Kerry.
Finally, Barack was speaking:
Barack was finished speaking when I realized that Evan was in the back of the room. He waved and extended the gesture to brush back that piece of dark brown hair that always fell over his forehead. I nudged Chloe whose eyes lit up. We made our way to him. Was it my imagination or did his eyes light up at the sight of her too? (Her nipples were clearly erect, but then again, they usually are.) After hugs all around, Evan said, “Hey, I had to come over here and celebrate with you guys!”
As Chloe went in for the second hug, he added, “I’m riding out to O’Hare with you. I know you have work to do on the ride back, but I’ll lean back and nap. I just want to surprise Caroline tonight.”
“She will be surprised!” Chloe said, beaming enthusiastically, barely able to contain her amusement.
I knew why she was so amused. Our Caroline would never be able to pull off walking from the embrace of her lover into the arms of her fiancé. She had one of those faces that could not tell a lie--unless, of course, she was only lying to herself.
Copyright © 2008 by Carla Dickens. All rights reserved. Please do not re-publish the entirety of this chapter or novel without the prior written consent of E-Reads.
DISCLAIMER
This is a work of fiction that takes place during the Democratic Primary and Presidential Campaign of 2008. With the exception of casual references to certain living public persons, places, and events, and of speeches, news commentaries or statements that are public record, all characters, names and places used in The Faithful are fictitious. Any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The work contains adult themes, language and content and describes sexual situations.
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Chapter One
Hope Takes Des Moines
Hope Takes Des Moines
IOWA CAUCUS
Obama 38%
Edwards 36%
Clinton 29%
Richardson 2%
Maybe Caroline Stevens would not have thrown her life away if Barack Obama hadn’t won the Iowa Democratic Caucuses. On the other hand, she would be the first to say that the life she tossed away like a fast food wrapper slam-dunked into a waste can would never have been as thrilling as the one she has now. Caroline was one of the real Obama Girls, true believers, devoted to the man (and his wife), the cause and the campaign. Don’t confuse our hard-working campaign girls with that “actress/model” Obama Girl on You Tube singing embarrassing love songs to a man she doesn‘t know to promote her own bikini-clad body. No cynicism in our girl, beautiful shapely Caroline of the shining blue eyes holding a sign with the word “HOPE” on it that night in Des Moines. She was the creamy-skinned blonde babe in the front-page photo the Chicago Tribune ran with the cut line:
“Jubilant Obama staff carried "Hope" aloft as they danced and chanted on their way from their campaign headquarters to a massive celebration party at the Hyvee Hall in Des Moines.”
Caroline believed that Obama would lead us to the “race-less society” where the first thing we notice about one another is not the color of our skin. The guy behind her in the conga line was a study in subdued, dignified jubilation. But the first thing she noticed about the incomparable Reggie Williams, was definitely the color of his skin, rich, deep, dark brown the color of chocolate that you wanted to devour.
Caroline, Baby Girl, you can’t ever deny it to me. I was standing beside you when Reggie walked into the new campaign headquarters on the eleventh floor at 233 North Michigan Avenue in Chicago the first Monday in October 2007. He hadn’t cut off his dreads yet and they swayed, long and thick, against his shoulders as he walked. Hip Hop star, somebody whispered. I didn’t turn around to see who said that. Standing beside Caroline, I felt her temperature rise along with mine. Our fantasies were jumping out of our heads and co-mingling and cross-pollinating. His dreads were pouring like a fountain over our naked bodies. That skin. Dense, luxurious, like velvet. That walk. Confident, assured, a model’s walk without the arrogance. He was wearing tailored jeans, the crispest, whitest shirt and a black blazer, vintage and cashmere, basically the working uniform of journalists and paid campaign staffers everywhere--but taken to a higher level. Brilliant, inspired. (Caroline loved cashmere. While she considered herself one of the people, she hadn’t traded her cashmere sweaters for the wash-and-tumble dry wardrobe of the typical campaign worker.) When he stopped in a pool of sunlight, turned, looked in our direction and smiled, everyone in that room knew where this was headed. His dark eyes lapped at her ivory skin while her blue eyes licked his chocolate. The race-less society? I don’t think so. They connected through their skins.
“He’s not gay, Thomas,” she whispered to me.
Caroline, I knew that. A boy can fantasize, can’t he?
“You’re engaged,” I reminded her; and she had the good grace to blush--or maybe that was just heat infusing her cheeks. As they disengaged eyes and he resumed following his office tour guide, I added, “He’s not my type anyway. You know I only stand up for underwear models.”
She laughed. That was our joke about my current sex life: masturbating to the gorgeous black male model in the Calvin Klein underwear ad. I was in a dry spell. It’s tough being young, gay and urban without the abs of steel. I would do better in Paris or Greenwich Village in the 50s when effete artists and intellectuals were taken seriously--or anyway taken carnally.
“And you are engaged,” I repeated when she failed to say he wasn’t her type either--but she was a white girl who’d never crossed the color line so technically speaking, he wasn’t her type aside from his ability to rearrange her molecules in across-the-room-eye contact.
I was in the Chicago office watching CNN when Caroline and Reggie appeared on screen carrying Hope aloft in Des Moines. Wolf Blitzer was giddy.
“And I just want to let our viewers know that there were 220,000 Democrats who showed up at these caucuses -- that's a record -- and 114,000 Republicans or so who showed up. I think that's a record for the Republicans. A lot more Democrats participated in these caucuses in Iowa, though, than Republicans.”
“Millennial voters!” Chloe shouted from behind me. Young people aged eighteen to twenty-nine, Millennial voters, who had failed to show up in previous elections had made their presence felt in Iowa. They were one of our key demographics. “Are you gnashing your teeth in frustration at not being there?“ she asked.
“Not so much.” I gave it the studied casual shrug. Chloe, our own Sex Girl, petite and curvy, was probably sorry she‘d passed on the trip. What better opportunity for hot sex with a co-worker, any co-worker, than a victory party? But volunteers like Chloe and me had real jobs and couldn‘t afford to give 24/7 to the campaign. I teach photography at Chicago Art Institute and do a fair amount of freelance work. Chloe was finishing her Ph.D. in political science and interning with the campaign. “I got the photos I wanted traveling the state with Barack.”
“Enough of them too?” Chloe asked, nodding her head in the direction of the TV screen where Caroline and Reggie were among the campaign staff on stage awaiting the triumphant arrival of Barack and Michelle. As she studied them, she ran one finger down her throat to the top of her cleavage, nearly always showing to good advantage as it was that day framed by a fine Merino wool black V-neck sweater. “They are so nauseating.”
Everybody except Chloe, me and our friend Kanesha adored Reggie--and maybe that was partly because we missed the old Caroline, who, though naďve enough to be a heroine in a black and white movie about sacrificing on the home front during World War II, could still make the occasional sharp observation and biting comment. Before Reggie, the four of us were a copasetic circle. Reggie changed the dynamics--and turned Caroline into Little Miss Perpetual Sunshine. I halfway expected her to burst into song during staff meetings.
“I am so sick of hearing how charming he is,” Chloe said, glowering at the screen.
“He works hard,“ I said, my usual lackluster defense of him. He was putting in eighteen hour and more days on the campaign but so was every paid staff worker and some of the volunteers.
“One thing I have to hand him,“ I added grudgingly. “He’s no power grabber.“ So many people who work on campaigns are building their resumes for their future careers in D.C. “He is generous in giving credit. Last week I heard him tell Barack that Kanesha made the university initiative in Iowa come together; and I know he put as much into that as she did.“
“Yeah.” She picked at a tiny piece of dried skin around a fingernail. Chloe has small, perfect hands with long fingers, the type my mother calls “lady fingers.” She keeps her nails impeccably manicured, short, rounded and polished clear or very pale pink. “And he opens doors for women. I still don’t trust him.”
Born to a single teen mother and raised in a Harlem housing project, Reggie looked after his younger brother who was enrolled at Northwestern. We didn’t know much else about Reggie, like if he and his brother had the same father. White people hate to ask black people a question like that. We did wonder who was picking up the tab for Northwestern.
“I finally met the little brother Gary,“ Chloe said. “He stopped by here this afternoon to pick up some brochures for the campus.“
“And?“ I prodded. “Is he hot? Did you ask him if he’s on scholarship? Who‘s his daddy?”
“He looks a lot like Reggie--shorter, still has the dreads-- but not as hot. It struck me that he must copy Reggie’s mannerisms because he has them all, walk, voice inflections, the way he folds his arms across his chest when he is standing.“ She smiled. “I’ll bet little brother listens to Reggie as closely as everyone here does.“
Chicagoans may deny it, but we do defer to those who have lived and worked in Manhattan. Generally, everyone deferred to Reggie. It was subtle, but we did defer. Whatever the staff thought about the Caroline/Reggie thing--and it was Personal Topic A--they didn’t hold Reggie accountable for Caroline’s shamelessly throwing herself at him, even sometimes (or so some of us thought) when her Evan was around.
“I didn’t photograph them,” I replied straight-faced; and she smacked my arm. Chloe works out and her little firm biceps can deliver a solid jocular punch.
“It’s the ‘we’ talk that bothers me the most,” she said, turning her glossed lips into a moue of distaste.
Yes, the “we” talk. If Caroline/and/Reggie didn’t hit your nausea spot with the hand holding, arm rubbing, shoulder massaging and general cuddling--they would surely do it with the “we” talk. “We think.” “We are going.” “We are doing.” “We like.” “We don’t like.” Yet Caroline swore that they were “just friends” and friends without benefits at that. Nobody else believed her, but I did. We’d been the closest of friends for ten years, since we met in a photography class at Belleville Area College, BAC, the summer after high school graduation. Caroline drove from her home in Clayton, one of the two oldest suburbs of St. Louis, across the Mississippi River to BAC because her aunt’s friend taught the class. I liked Caroline immediately. She had a broad warm smile, a good sense of herself, her abilities and assets from writing skills to outstanding long legs. For example, she knew exactly where she was in that class: not good, but not bad either. She wore sandals all summer; and I never saw a chip in her peachy-nude toenail polish. Over the years, I grew to love her.
I still love Caroline, but I realized I’d had enough of them in Harlem in December.
On that first glorious October day, Caroline suggested we take Reggie out for a welcome-to-the-staff drink. The three of us hung out together for a few months. It bothered me that he always let her pick up the check with her AmEx cards (one courtesy of Daddy, the other, Evan) while I tossed down the cash for my share of the bill. (“Oh, he’s a brother,” Kanesha said derisively. “White men pay. Black men expect to be paid for. Why do you think we‘re all looking for Oreos like Barack?”) Increasingly, I felt uncomfortable in my perceived role as their chaperone. I maxed out on their company when we all went to New York for a weekend combining business with pleasure, an art show opening and a meeting with the New York campaign staff.
Sitting in a booth across from them at Mo-Bay’s restaurant on 125th Street (where giant Christmas tree ornaments hang from the ceiling year-round) in Harlem, Reggie’s and Bill Clinton’s ’hood, I realized: These two are smug, judgmental idealists and hypocrites who are exploiting the white men in Caroline‘s life. She was wearing Evan’s engagement ring while Reggie held her in his arms, cradling the upper part of her body and blowing kisses onto her long, slender neck.
Are you two doing it? I asked them; and they were insulted, offended, bordering on outraged. Hypocrites. I would have celebrated their love if they’d confessed it. Caroline is a great gal. Would I begrudge her true lust? We thought you understood us, she said. Yeah. Better than you understood yourselves. This is a special relationship. Having sex would make it less special, he said. Check, please. I tossed down some cash and went out by myself to walk around Harlem where there are a lot more white people now than when Reggie was born there. I believed them about the sex. In an odd way, that made me feel worse about them.
“Poor Evan,” Chloe interjected into my thoughts.
She was calling him Evan and not The Fiancé, the label she had attached to him. I guessed that Chloe planned to offer consolation to Caroline’s neglected man at the appropriate time--and that was likely going to be sooner rather than later. A tall, dark and handsome young tax attorney from a prominent Philadelphia WASP family, Evan Templeton was probably the man of her secret dreams, the man whose class and last name would lift her out of her ethnic origins. Chloe Petrofsky was the daughter of South Orange, New Jersey hippie parents--Mom a New Age therapist, Dad a storefront lawyer in Newark, winner of Pro Bono Lawyer of the Year citations--who had experimented with every sexual twist including polyamory, swinging, BDSM and group sex and then gone on talk shows as “lifestyle guests” to talk about it all. Chloe would surely renounce her casual sex ways and end up in a conservative, monogamous marriage. What else could she do to rebel?
“I had pink hair in high school,” she told us when Caroline and I had taken her out for a welcome-to-the-staff drink. “I got tattoos and multiple piercings. Nose. So many holes in my ears I was up into the cartilage. Lip. Tongue. Nobody said a word. It was like: You make your own decisions. I casually said I was thinking about getting a clitoral piercing. My mother said to me: Do a little research on that. Maybe there is a high incidence of infections. I was sixteen years old. And my mother’s best effort at saving me was: Do a little research on that.”
She didn’t get the clitoral piercing, removed the rest of her metal and let the holes heal shut. Only the tongue piercing left a scar. When the holes were closed, she took her mother’s gold Master Card to Manhattan where she had her fading pink hair turned into an expensive honey blonde Upper East Side bob, the style she maintains. Honey blonde complements her light brown eyes. And she bought clothes from The Gap and J Crew. (I winced at that part. And I am happy to say that she now buys good basics on sale augmented by designer clothes gently used that she picks up at thrift shops on her trips home to New York City. Chicago‘s thrift shops are no match for Manhattan’s.)
“My parents would have allowed voluntary genital mutilation,” she said--and that led Caroline into the story of her own mother’s two years in Africa as a volunteer doctor where, of course, she saw first hand the suffering of women who had been cut as little girls. “There is something very wrong with a mother who won’t protect her daughter’s genitals,” Chloe pronounced--and who could disagree with her? Certainly not Caroline. They bonded for life that day.
I would say that 75% of the staff, paid and especially volunteers, come from families with some history of public service or political idealism. Not me. My family was not exactly racist but not exactly uncomfortable with the idea that great-grandfather was in the Klan. The family did turn Republican after Johnson pushed through the Civil Rights and Voting Acts through Congress, but my mother was very pleasant to the first black family that moved into our neighborhood. There was no white flight in Fairview Heights, Illinois where I grew up.
“Do you think Reggie has the big black dick?” Chloe asked.
“I think he has a black dig. Big? Who knows?”
“My mother banged a lot of black dick in the eighties. She thought it was the politically correct thing to do, but she doesn’t really like black men.”
I put an arm around her and said, “You poor kid.” And I couldn’t resist asking: “Did Mom say if they were all big dicks?”
“She said they were not,” Chloe said, giggling happily like a school girl. “And that was most disappointing.”
On CNN, Caroline and Reggie were obscured by the Obamas. In the room behind us, a crowd of volunteers was forming. Wolf Blitzer said, “Take a look at this picture you're seeing right now. There he is, the winner of the Democratic caucuses in -- in Iowa, Barack Obama, walking in with his daughters, Michelle Obama, his wife. He's getting ready to address his supporters.”
Our chests were expanding with the sweet air of victory. We looked at our man with renewed respect and appreciation. The people had validated our choice. The silence was broken by the inevitable chatter about travel plans. Somewhere in the back of the room a callow-voiced lad said, “She thinks I’ll be in New Hampshire tomorrow night but I won’t.” We all knew what he meant: There was a girl who thought she was hooking up with him the next night and he found amusement--at a time like this!--in letting everyone else know he wasn’t. In silent reprimand, no one responded. Barack Obama was ready to speak. Did we value his words more highly tonight because he had been validated by the people?
In the days leading up to the Caucuses, we began to believe that Barack would win--as opposed to believing that he could or should win with only the institutionalized racism of the American (in this case, white Iowan) public potentially standing in his way. Almost everyone involved in a campaign has their Come To Jesus moment when they morph into a revival tent witness standing up and going on down to the altar of the candidate. We all commit to that candidate in the most intensely personal and spiritually meaningful way. Generally, the spiritual high wears off faster than fog burns off Lakefront Drive in the morning. (Think about it: If you truly believe in the power of your god, would your resort to dirty tricks to put him over--and isn‘t politics all about dirty tricks to put one candidate over another?) On a bad day, the bubbles of cynicism in our collective optimism make the whole team look like a botched wallpaper job attempting to hide structural flaws. But our bad days were few and fewer.
Barack brought tears to the eyes of white people. He inspired volunteerism in college students who hadn’t been political since our parents’ day. (And who are they kidding? Ending the war was about saving their own asses. Would they have organized protest marches if there had been no draft?) Through the lens, I watched him connect with old church ladies and young mothers. He was real. Everyone walked away from him knowing that he was.
A few of us, like Carolyn, even naively assumed that winning a 97% pure white state would put to rest the question: Is a black man electable as President of the United States? Race is the primary great American story--and “race’ is reduced to the simplistic terms, black or white. (Thanks to the leaders of the Puritan Repression--sex is the second American story. )
We were waiting to hear our man but Wolf Blitzer felt compelled to speak on until the cheers died down. The banner behind the Obamas read: “Change We Can Believe In.”
“They are so pumped up. They are so excited over what happened tonight. Barack Obama, a young man, in his mid-40s, has now won the Iowa caucuses. And he's about to speak to supporters and get ready for the next contest in five days in New Hampshire, where the polls show it's very, very tight right now.”
“ Kanesha called again while you were out getting dinner,” Chloe whispered.
“And?” I raised my eyebrows.
“The pro-Hillary bloggers are already out there with the rumor that Barack is a secret Muslim, sworn to uphold the Koran.”
“Oy,” I whispered back.
We’d seen that one coming. The Muslim rumor had been floated in Barack’s Senate campaign. Barack had attended a Muslim school as a child, but he was baptized as a Christian and attended black Christian churches. In fact, our issue was keeping his militant Afro-centrist pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr., out of the public eye. The good people of Illinois, pragmatic Midwesterners that they are, had shrugged off the implication that he was secretly a Muslim. But who knew how that rumor would play on a national scale? “Remember the Swift Boat” is the 21st Century version of “Remember the Alamo.”
“Caroline and Reggie did it in the back of the campaign bus,” she said in a barely discernable whisper. I raised my eyebrows. “Heard in the act by reputable source.” Eyebrows up again. “Kanesha herself.”
If Kanesha Bradley said they had, they had. Oh, hell. For any other couple, a victory night tryst would hardly be an indication of serious intent. Caroline and Reggie were not any other couple.
Wolf, the giddy, spoke once again:
“Right now, with 98 percent of the vote officially counted, he's got 38 percent to John Edwards' 30, Hillary Clinton's 29 percent.
Barack Obama is about to speak -- and we're going to want to listen in very, very closely to hear what he has to say, just as we listened closely to Mike Huckabee, who's the Republican winner.
Let's get ready to listen to the junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama.”
In the back of our room I heard someone say Muslim rumor. A handful of people went back to their cubicles before Barack began to speak. Mentally, I took names. With our first big success, we had moved into the next mode: paranoid about being spied upon. Campaigns sometimes dropped spies into their rival’s organizations; and the Clintons were reputedly known to play that game. According to Reggie, who had interned in the President’s Harlem office and worked on Hillary’s Senate campaign before becoming disillusioned with both Clintons--we couldn’t do a lot to protect ourselves against spies.
“We need volunteers and they can’t really be vetted,” he explained. “It’s like protecting yourself against terrorism in a free society. You can only do so much.”
More likely than falling victim to a spy, he said, was the insider betrayal: full disclosure of classified information via “drink and tell” or “kiss and tell” or what happens when a campaign worker is wined and dined (or more) by a reporter (or blogger) eager for fresh details. And more likely than that--political death by bloggers. Rumors, lies and innuendoes become larger than life on the Internet. A candidate may refute the story on the national news but it can’t be killed on the Internet. In fact, it can morph into a monster of many tentacles like the one that strangled Kerry.
Finally, Barack was speaking:
Thank you, Iowa.Barack and Michelle, campaign strategist David Axelrod and campaign manager David Piouffe were leaving for New Hampshire after this speech. But Caroline, Reggie and Kanesha were catching a ride back to Chicago that night on a private jet some people were claiming it was “rumored to be, maybe possibly, Oprah‘s.” In Chicago, the Oprah connection rumors abound. Chloe and I were meeting that plane so we could catch them up on what they’d missed in the office. My phone vibrated, announcing a text message. I pulled it out of my pocket and read Kanesha’s brief message: “Can‘t wait to see you 2! These 2 are 2 much!” Chloe glanced over at it and grinned.
You know, they said this day would never come.
They said our sights were set too high.
They said this country was too divided; too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose.
But on this January night - at this defining moment in history - you have done what the cynics said we couldn't do. You have done what the state of New Hampshire can do in five days. You have done what America can do in this New Year, 2008. In lines that stretched around schools and churches; in small towns and big cities; you came together as Democrats, Republicans and Independents to stand up and say that we are one nation; we are one people; and our time for change has come…
Barack was finished speaking when I realized that Evan was in the back of the room. He waved and extended the gesture to brush back that piece of dark brown hair that always fell over his forehead. I nudged Chloe whose eyes lit up. We made our way to him. Was it my imagination or did his eyes light up at the sight of her too? (Her nipples were clearly erect, but then again, they usually are.) After hugs all around, Evan said, “Hey, I had to come over here and celebrate with you guys!”
As Chloe went in for the second hug, he added, “I’m riding out to O’Hare with you. I know you have work to do on the ride back, but I’ll lean back and nap. I just want to surprise Caroline tonight.”
“She will be surprised!” Chloe said, beaming enthusiastically, barely able to contain her amusement.
I knew why she was so amused. Our Caroline would never be able to pull off walking from the embrace of her lover into the arms of her fiancé. She had one of those faces that could not tell a lie--unless, of course, she was only lying to herself.
To Be Continued Next Week!
Copyright © 2008 by Carla Dickens. All rights reserved. Please do not re-publish the entirety of this chapter or novel without the prior written consent of E-Reads.
DISCLAIMER
This is a work of fiction that takes place during the Democratic Primary and Presidential Campaign of 2008. With the exception of casual references to certain living public persons, places, and events, and of speeches, news commentaries or statements that are public record, all characters, names and places used in The Faithful are fictitious. Any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The work contains adult themes, language and content and describes sexual situations.
Labels: Barack Obama, Carla Dickens, Romance, Serial, The Faithful
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