But I can’t escape the exchange that easily. Darryl is holding the phone out to me now. I peer at the photo on the phone. The picture features a little girl, maybe three or four years old. Pale green ‘wings’ peek out from behind a tangle of light brown ringlets, on which a plastic-y looking tiara perches. She has a plastic wand clutched in a plump fist and, beneath a fluffy, lime-green tutu, her chubby legs are planted solidly on the sidewalk in front of a modest ranch house. She’s grinning so hard, and her cheeks are so chubby, that her eyes are little crescents. I think maybe it’s good enough to get play on the internet as a funny kid pic.
I snort out a laugh. “That’s awesome.”
“Right!?” says Darryl, laughing too. “I wanted to post it on Facebook, but Kathy wouldn’t let me—she’s worried Riley will get teased about it. Christ, it’s not like she’s in school yet.” He turns the phone back to gaze at the picture again. “Oh, my God, she’s so funny. Look how proud she is of her tutu—kills me every time I look at it. God, that kid is a joy.”
Corey takes this as a sign that the small talk is over and gets down to business.
“Darryl’s a born-again Republican, aren’t you, Darryl? Darryl’s parents are Republicans. Darryl himself voted for Obama before he backed Trump. A born-again Republican, filled with a convert’s zeal.”
“Really?” I ask, peering at Darryl through the gloom of the bar. “You voted for Obama?”
“Twice,” says Darryl flatly. “Not once, but twice. What do they say, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice . . . ‘Hope?’ ‘Change?’ Banks got bailouts and what did working folks get? Trade deals that sent jobs overseas.”
Darryl’s tone teeters between rueful and disgusted, not so much with Obama, but with himself.
I have to bite my tongue to keep from defending Obama’s decision to bail out the banks in order to avert a full-fledged depression, or to prevent myself from talking about how trade deals grow the economy and level the international playing field on labor and environmental practices.
“What convinced you that Trump would be better?” I ask. “Was it the economic issues? Jobs?”
Darryl thinks about it for a moment.
“It was a lot of things. Growing the economy, immigration, security. He’s a straight talker, and when he talked about manufacturing jobs, he was talking about me. I’m a welder, for Murdock, off 99, past Salida. It’s a solid job, but it’s not like we’ve seen much in the way of growth or raises. If anything, we’re more worried about cuts. Even before Trump took office, he was mixing it up with companies like Carrier, that plant in Indiana that threatened to move jobs to Mexico.”
So here he is, the Trump voter I defended to Imogen. I suppress a smile when I imagine telling Imogen that at my very first Republican grassroots, belly-of-the-beast event, I’ve met what she calls the ‘mythical working-class, white, male Obama-Obama-Trump voter.’ Live and in the flesh, the man who simply wants to know that politicians are aware of his struggles, are going to try to do something about jobs for working folks.
“Of course,” says Corey, “Trump can’t do it alone. We need to make sure he has folks to work with in Congress. That’s why I’m here, it’s why Iz is here, supporting Congressman Mike Reed. Iz is making an investment in the race. But he’s going to need some help at his PAC. He’s going to need an assistant treasurer.”
Darryl seems amenable; he’s nodding along as Corey talks. I’m a little surprised that Corey is suggesting this without talking to me first. It’s not clear how being a welder qualifies anyone to be an assistant treasurer. When Darryl excuses himself to hit the restroom, Corey elaborates on Darryl’s qualifications.
“None of the work is more complicated than balancing your checkbook, which the software does anyway. Anybody who can hunt and peck letters and numbers on a keyboard could do it. But Darryl has a secret weapon. He’s known Mike Reed since high school. Mike is the one who talked Darryl back into the Republican fold. Since we’re going independent expenditure and can’t coordinate with the Reed campaign, Darryl can be our stealth walkie-talkie.”
Corey collects his change from the top of the bar, saying, “It won’t cost a lot. Darryl’d probably do it for free, but you need him on the paperwork so he can cut checks and do the filings. A day, max two days a week.”
I can’t think of a reason not to take on Darryl. Temperamentally, Darryl reminds me a bit of myself, not given to outbursts, just trying to get by and get things done. He’s also the living incarnation of the Obama-Obama-Trump voter, or the O-O-T voter, as I’ve come to think of them. Darryl can be my test case, my guinea pig.
10
Wanking in Public
Friday, August 3rd, 95 days until the midterms
“Jesus, Iz. You’re such a wanker.”
“What!?” I shoot her a look.
Imogen is perched on a barstool at the raised end of the kitchen island in Woodside, eating tuna poke on taro chips with the delicacy of a cat. It’s a gloriously summery evening. Imogen is comfy in cutoffs and ratty T-shirt. All the windows are open, drawing the scent of the surrounding pines and redwoods into the kitchen on the occasional breeze.
Needless to say, ‘wanker’ is not at all the response I expect. What I expect is concern and sympathy given the dangers of my anthropological foray into the wilds of the Central Valley’s right wing. Also, gratitude for stopping off at Bianchini’s on the way home to get groceries. Instead I get ridicule as she stuffs herself on my famously excellent tuna poke while I laboriously whip up lacquered chicken.
“You don’t drive a Tesla because it’s environmentally responsible.” Her tone is dismissive. “If environmental impact drove your car-buying decisions, you would have owned a Prius instead of a Beamer before the Tesla. But you wouldn’t be caught dead in a Prius, then or now. You own a Tesla because it’s the Bay Area’s preferred automotive status symbol—it’s the new Porsche. The truth is, if there was ever any risk you were gonna get beat up, it was for driving a fancy-pants car, for flaunting your wealth, which is basically wanking in public.”
I know I told Imogen that I don’t want to be the kind of Silicon Valley wanker who takes himself so seriously that he doesn’t know when he’s stroking himself. I know I said she should call me out when I’m at risk of wanking. That doesn’t mean that I have to enjoy it when she actually calls me out or that she should enjoy it so much.
“Oh, don’t be so crabby, Isaiah! It’s not that I don’t get it. I mean, look at me. I could have gotten a Volt.” She pauses to scrunch her face into a look of horror. “But who are we kidding: my Mini is soooo much prettier. And I get around forty m.p.g. when I’m not riding the gas pedal . . .”
She gets up to turn on the electric kettle for tea. To change the subject, I tell her about Darryl.
“Anyway. Despite your skepticism, at my first grassroots meeting I met an O-O-T voter. A guy named Darryl. And guess why he voted for Trump?”
“His name was Darryl? Perfect. Or almost perfect. Darryl Junior would have been even better. I bet he likes Nascar.”
I shoot her an irritated glance but let it go. “Anyway, he said the reason he voted for Trump was jobs, was economic.”
“Ha! You sure you didn’t lead the witness? Say something like, ‘It was jobs, right? Jobs was the reason you voted for Trump, right Darryl?’ ‘Uh, yeah, that’s right, Mr. Whitman, it was . . . jobs.’”
I try to run the conversation at the Branding Iron back in my head, but I can’t actually remember, and so I opt for offense over defense. “You think I can’t conduct an unbiased interview?”
“You work in biotech—you sure as shit should be able to conduct an unbiased interview. My question was, did you?”
“As far as is natural, given it was a conversational setting,” I say stiffly.
Back at her perch on the kitchen island, Imogen pauses with a poke-laden chip halfway to her mouth and flashes a triumphant and profoundly irritating grin.
“So I take it your Darryl wasn�
�t the sharpest tool in the shed, given he thought he was getting a mining job in Modesto based on Donald Trump’s detailed plans to put the nation back to work in that dream job, coal mining.”
“Okay, that’s just bigoted. Darryl is pretty smart. He pointed out a methodological error in the voter fraud presentation at the Tea Party event.”
“Well, if the boy’s not stupid, I guess that leaves dishonest,” she says. “After all, jobs was just the reason he gave for voting for Trump, which is not necessarily the reason he actually voted for Trump.”
“Oh, instead we should take your wild suppositions about the vote of a man you’ve never even met and are clearly biased against? At some point, you have to take a man at his word.”
“Well, by that token, Donald Trump had the biggest inauguration crowd ever! He won the biggest popular vote victory ever!”
Perhaps it’s time to change the subject. Again.
“What are we doing about housing in Modesto? I think we need to find an apartment, a short-term rental.”
We’ve been roommates for over a year, since we got the house in Woodside. I would never tell Imogen, but the reason I suggested we share a place was to help her out. We both beat the odds after ending up in the foster care system when our mom died. I got adopted, a rarity for a teenage foster kid, by the Whitmans and headed off to Stanford after high school. Imogen had three foster families in three years but still managed to maintain an A average and to ace the SATs. She won a full scholarship to Columbia. But that hasn’t translated into smooth sailing for Imogen. When things went sideways at Kaplan and Stone, living together was a way to subsidize Imogen without it being too obvious. I think we’ve both been a little surprised at how well it’s worked out.
“Are you crazy? You’re undercover! You can’t be seen with me! I’m a visibly non-white person.”
Now her attention is on her little cast-iron teapot as she fills it from the electric kettle. She’s making rooibos tea, from the earthy, tobacco-y smell of it. We’re heading out to Modesto in the morning. Imogen’s monogrammed leather weekender is already packed and ready by the back door. She took a daytrip out to interview with the Delgado campaign and scout out Modesto, but this will be her first overnighter in the Central Valley. I’ve booked us into the Best Western again, the best I could do.
“Modesto is a city of over 200,000 people, Imogen. It’s not like we’re going to just run into folks from the campaigns.”
“A metro area of 200,000 is not a community of 200,000,” says Imogen.
She places the top on the teapot. While she waits for the tea to steep, she looks across at me. The chicken is in the oven, and I’ve opened up my laptop at the raised section of the kitchen island to surf apartment listings in Modesto.
“The only people you know in Modesto are active on the Reed campaign. Those volunteers, like voters, will be whiter, more educated, and richer than Modesto, on average. You’re more likely to shop, eat, and drink at the same places. Those folks aren’t shopping at the supermercados or the Grocery Outlet. I’ll lay you money that sooner rather than later you’ll run into them at Sprouts Farmers Market, Dewdrop Restaurant, or some other gentrified spot downtown.”
“That’s more of an argument not to eat out together than not to get an apartment together. Even assuming we both get back to the Bay Area for the better part of each week, it means spending half of our time over the next couple months living out of a suitcase. And that fancy leather bag of yours isn’t going to be resting on a luggage rack at the Four Seasons. There is no Four Seasons in Modesto, and no Peninsula or Westin either. Best case we’re talking Comfort Inn or Best Western. You’re not getting a decent cappuccino from Best Western’s room service, if it even has room service.”
That gives her pause. Imogen does not function without her morning cappuccino; she can’t even form complete sentences. From the look on her face, I can tell she’s about to cave.
“Man. I think we’re gonna regret this,” she says.
But it doesn’t stop her from taking the barstool beside me to help me choose an apartment.
We send emails to a handful of places, but our first choice is a modest two-bedroom in a complex called Cypress Woods on San Clemente Avenue, on the northern edge of Modesto. We choose it because it’s accessible to Route 99 for quick escapes back to the Bay Area, and because it has nearly a hundred units, so we hope we’ll be largely ignored. It feels like the sort of place you’d get put up during relocation if you’re Fortune 500 middle management. Granite on the countertops but carpet, not hardwood, on the floor. No matter: it will give us a place to stick an espresso machine so we don’t have to go out in search of cappuccino every morning.
Now I’m happy. (To be honest, I have been a little nervous about going undercover in red territory without backup.)
11
What’s in a Name
Saturday, August 25th, 73 days until the midterms
We’re more or less moved into the apartment in Cypress Woods. We’ve minimally furnished it with a combination of old stuff we’d stashed in one of the outbuildings in Woodside, filled in with stuff from Ikea. We spent about as much money on an espresso machine as on everything else combined. It’s ugly but serviceable.
As is traditional after a move, we dine on pizza and beer. I’m sprawled on the couch recycled from Imogen’s old apartment, feet propped on our new $24.99 Ikea coffee table, with my laptop balanced on my lap while Imogen pops open a couple beers.
It’s past time I filed my PAC’s incorporation papers, but to file the papers, I need to give my sham PAC a name. I start scrolling through PAC listings online to get a sense of naming conventions. Maybe something hyper-patriotic? Red White and Blue PAC already exists.
Imogen plops down beside me, handing me a beer. “Whatcha doin’?”
“I need to name my PAC. Something innocuous. All the generically patriotic names are already taken. Huh, look at that. Did you know there are multiple Black Republican PACs?”
“So, you’re thinking White Republican PAC might work?”
“I don’t like the sound of that. Anyway, neither white nor Republican is true.”
Imogen leans forward, so that she can look into my face.
“Wait. You, who have lived for over a decade as a closeted mixed-race person passing as a white person, are worried about misrepresenting yourself as white?”
I jerk back. “I’m not closeted! I never told anybody I was white. Never. They assumed.”
“Iz, closeted gay guys didn’t typically affirmatively claim they were straight—that would look suspicious. They just let folks assume they were straight. It’s called lying by omission. You let them assume you’re white.”
“I’m not responsible for peoples’ assumptions, Imogen. And I fail to see how it’s anybody’s business what my race or ethnicity is. Anyway, white Republican sounds boring. And redundant.”
She’s looking at me, deciding whether or not to let the down-low race thing go.
“Yeah, if you’re gonna double down, I’d say really push it.”
She’s gonna let it go; she’s moving on.
“Like, Melanin-Challenged People for White Power? Or maybe White Men on Top? It’s simple, it’s literal. It also sounds like a lame sexual reference, which feels appropriately Trumpian.”
I try to imagine running these by Corey. Would he try to come up with a politic response? Try to politely steer me towards a more inoffensive name? I can’t quite imagine Corey pulling off polite. It’s a big part of the guy’s entertainment value, and he is entertaining.
“Whiteness Über Alles?” I suggest.
This earns me a smile as Imogen gets back up and starts breaking down the cardboard moving boxes. We’ll need them again in a couple months, so she’s just slicing through the tape, flattening them out, and stashing them in the big closet in the hallway.
Her voice carries from the hallway. “How ’bout: Whiteness First, Whiteness Forever? WFWF sounds like a wrestling fed
eration—that sounds like your target demographic . . .”
Ooh. I kinda like that.
She pops her head around the corner from the hallway, eyeing me with bright eyes, and says, “Oh, wait, I’ve got it!”
“What?”
“Whitman for Whiteness!”
I guess she wasn’t letting it go after all. Imogen can be such a little shit.
My last name is a bit of a sore point, lasting evidence of a difficult period in our childhood. We were born five minutes apart as Isaiah Matteo Sinclair Jr. and Imogen Beatrice Sinclair. We were fifteen and Dad was long gone when Mom died. We ended up in the foster care system, and I was adopted by Hank and Irene Whitman. When the adoption went through, I became Isaiah Matteo Whitman. Imogen and I didn’t see much of each other during those high school years and really only reconnected when we both ended up on the East Coast for grad school. While we’ve largely put it behind us, the name, as I said, remains a bit of a sore point for Imogen. I think it’s past time she got over it.
“This isn’t a joke, Imogen,” I say.
Imogen stares at me with pursed lips and knitted eyebrows. “Iz, I’m not joking when I say I think it’s time you gave up on whiteness.”
Yeah. I’m not interested in having this conversation again and, clearly, Imogen is not going to be any help. I grab my laptop and beer and brush past her on my way to my bedroom.
Imogen’s voice follows me. “Aw, c’mon, Iz.”
I shut the door to shut her out. Sprawled on the bed, I continue the search.
I think America First might be promising. After all, the original America First group was a bunch of Nazi sympathizers who tried to keep America out of World War II. It feels appropriately a bridge too far, as the cover name for my efforts. But it turns out it isn’t a bridge too far; there are already three America First PACs.
I think Real Americans PAC might do the trick. Looks like it’s available. I type up a quick mission statement, declaring Real Americans Political Action Committee to be a nonpartisan group committed to a bunch of buzzwords that mean nothing, like bipartisanship and accountability.
Rules of Resistance Page 4
