Red Pill

by Hari Kunzru

  Crostini. Salads. Cheeseboard. Beer and wine chilling in the refrigerator. We are ready. Here I am, at the kitchen counter, watching tiny strings of bubbles rise up in my glass. I’ve got this. On the couch, my distracted wife flips between channels on the TV and checks social media feeds on her phone, caught up in an excitement that I do not share. It is Tuesday, November 8, 2016. Election night. Historic, says the TV. A historic choice. The therapist advised me to insulate myself from politics, but the warning wasn’t really necessary. For months, I have been trying, as far as possible, to avoid thinking about this election. Not that I’m indifferent to the result. Far from it. Though I have tried, with some success, to remain ignorant of the specifics, to avoid the daily cut and thrust of comment and debate, everyone around me is obsessed. Even if I could ignore the conversations, the headlines on the newspapers at the bodega, I could hardly fail to notice the tension in the air, a general anxiety that has nothing to do with my mental state.

  Still, I want tonight to be a success. Nina and I have decorated the living room with streamers and balloons. There are hats and whistles, a festival of patriotic red, white and blue. Rei said it wasn’t necessary, but I can tell she’s pleased. She would have liked to go to the big Democratic Party gathering at the Javits Center, to celebrate Hillary Clinton’s win. A lot of people she knows are there, and she was invited, but it wasn’t something that I’d be “safe” at, too much excitement, too much stimulation, and though I told her I’d be perfectly happy if she went without me, she said she’d rather be with her family. This, as the TV says a second time in as many minutes, is a historic night, and she wants to be with her daughter, or at least in the house where her daughter is sleeping, to wake up with her daughter tomorrow morning into a world where the most powerful person on the planet is a woman. I agree with her, it’s long overdue, and it doesn’t seem useful to voice my reservations about Clinton, to make the kind of remark I might have made last year or the year before, to use the words baggage or neoliberal, or say, as I did once at a dinner party, that “she’s just the mask that established power is wearing right now,” because it’s obvious that her opponent is worse in almost every conceivable way, malevolent, vicious and unstable. He is a gate, a portal through which all manner of monsters could step into our living room. The status quo, bad as it is, looks better than the alternative. Rei and I have always differed on the subject of electoral politics. She says I use cynicism as an excuse to do nothing. I say—well, it doesn’t matter what I say, or used to say. Now, I say nothing. Now I just want to help her in whatever way I can.

  Instead of attending the party at the Javits Center, we settled on the idea of inviting a few friends over to savor the results of her hard work. Rei has worked very hard indeed for Clinton, organizing fundraising events—talks, dinners, even a comedy night (not usually her kind of thing) attended by the vice chair of the campaign, a glamorous Pakistani-American woman who attempted to look as if she were having fun, despite the cruel headlines in that day’s tabloids about her unfaithful congressman husband. I attended none of these. My role in the Clinton campaign has been mostly childcare-related, pushing Nina on the swings while Rei and her friends stood at the entrance to the park, registering voters. We have a sign in our window, and another one in the corner of the room, attached to a wooden pole, as if we’re about to go on a march. On Rei’s laptop, obscuring the glowing Apple logo, are stickers saying Nasty Woman and I’m With Her. If her candidate wins tonight, as everyone expects, it will be because of tens of thousands of women like Rei, practical and determined, not too proud to spend afternoons sending email blasts or hovering about the farmer’s market with a clipboard.

  The doorbell rings, and Rei springs up to answer it. By the time we’ve poured drinks for the first arrivals, a couple who live on the block (Liz is in advertising, Carla works for an environmental nonprofit), in walk Femi and Zoe, carrying two bottles of champagne. Together we make chitchat. The atmosphere is optimistic and upbeat. I busy myself fetching and carrying, pouring drinks and offering snacks so that Rei has time to talk. Most of our guests have been following the minutiae of the election, and there’s a lot of discussion of swing states and battlegrounds and exit polls, all the usual arcana. Everyone is very nice to me, very natural and relaxed. They all ask, how are you, with the slight emphasis on the verb. How are you? Meaning: are you still insane? Godwin arrives, and as Rei is kissing him hello, she shoots me a quick glance, as if she’s trying to gauge what I think of their intimacy. He’s brought a new girlfriend with him, someone neither of us know. Like him, Xu is a photographer. She looks to be in her late twenties, which is to say about two decades younger, and she’s startlingly beautiful. I catch Rei watching her, but I don’t detect jealousy, more a wry amusement. Godwin is bouncing back nicely from his divorce. Well, says the TV, my best guess is five points.

  We settle in. One or two people gamely put on the hats. When the first results are called, Rei is busy discussing the 2000 Florida recount with her friend Sunita, whose brother is a reporter for one of the cable networks. This means that she’s getting text messages about various inside-track stuff, and whenever she reads one of them out, there’s a little lull in conversation as everyone leans forward to hear what it says. Trump takes Indiana and Kentucky. Vermont goes for Clinton. Can you imagine, says someone, after all this it’ll finally be over. There’s a murmur of agreement. Doesn’t it feel like the campaign has gone on forever?

  I find a lot of excuses to leave the room. I peer in at Nina, sprawled on her bed. I check there’s enough toilet paper in the bathroom, that the scented candle on the shelf above the toilet is still burning. Though I’m not drinking, I make it my mission to ensure that everyone’s glasses are topped up at all times. The volume of conversation rises. Jokes are made and received with raucous laughter. More Eastern states are called, the races going as expected. Alabama and West Virginia for Trump. Delaware and Connecticut for Clinton. Florida is too close to call.

  You know, says Godwin, his wife used to date a guy I know from downtown. He swears the rumors about her are totally true. On TV, the panel of experts is discussing the contest like a horse race, remaining studiously neutral, examining fancy digital charts. Well, says someone else, whatever happens, he’s probably going to contest the result. He’s not the type to be a good loser. There’s a big cheer as Clinton wins New York state by twenty-nine points. That’s what I’m talking about, says Liz. I’d be happier if that was Florida, points out her wife. Sunita’s husband, who I haven’t met before, asks me what I do. I joke that I create antiviral content. I’m not just unpopular, I say. I’m actively antipopular. Rei gives me a sharp look. I am displaying an excess of personality. Those are some big Trump numbers in Texas, says the TV. No surprise there.

  There’s a lull. People have drunk quite a lot, and there’s nothing definitive on the TV, no real news. They make conversation about personal things, jobs, an art exhibit that’s on in Chelsea. I’m looking forward to that new show, says someone. Spear of Destiny. It’s the same guy who did Blue Lives. I can’t get into that stuff, says someone else. All the pointy ears and stupid wizard names. We’re all suddenly remembering how late we’ll have to stay up before it’s time for the real action. It’s a Tuesday. People have jobs, sitters to pay. Sunita gets another bulletin from her brother. He’s hearing that the Clinton campaign is disappointed by some of the numbers. As Ohio goes, so goes the country, says the TV. Voters here have correctly picked every president of these United States since 1964.

  At 10:30, Ohio is called for Trump and for the first time our friends seem nervous. We say things to reassure each other, make lists of states that have yet to be called. You have anything stronger than this, asks Godwin, looking sourly at a half-empty glass of rosé. I bring him a bottle of Scotch, a bowl of ice. He pats my shoulder. It’s good to see you, he says. It really is. The math is hard, says the TV. Irrespective of who wins, this will be a historic n
ight.

  Femi and Zoe get up to leave. I’ve got kind of a headache, says Zoe, by way of an excuse. She and Rei embrace. I go to get their coats from our bedroom. It’s cool and dark and I have a strong desire to stay in there, to burrow into the pile of coats and make a nest, or better still, to go right through like a child in a story, to disappear into the land of Narnia, where it’s easy to tell right from wrong, and if you’re brave and noble you will prevail. From the other room, I hear the TV. If you can get the Latino vote on your side, it says. If you can get the black vote, the minorities.

  Femi and Zoe go home. So do our neighbors, the environmentalist and the copywriter. I don’t have a good feeling about this, says Sunita. Godwin is drinking steadily, staring at the TV as if he can alter it by force of will. Xu is in the corridor making a phone call. Her voice sounds shaky. Just after eleven, North Carolina is called for the Republicans. Trump’s path to the White House has suddenly become a lot clearer, says the TV. I look around at the faces of people who are beginning to face the possibility that the picture of the world they had a few hours ago, a picture based on their occupation of something called the center ground, may not be accurate. I take no pleasure in this. It’s not like I’m jumping up and down saying, I told you so. But I find that I’m not surprised, that it feels like a continuation of all the other things that have happened to me this year, as if the thoughts I’ve been trying to avoid are clothing themselves in flesh. On TV, a guest is asked about Clinton’s weaknesses. She’s just not likable, he says. She has so much baggage.

  I go back into the bedroom and push the coats to one side and lie down on our bed. Outside I can hear sirens sweeping down the street. Something’s on fire. Someone’s hurt. Someone’s been shot. Outside in the city, bad things are happening. Amazing to say, but apart from a few sessions trying vainly to clear my email inbox and dealing with my bank, I haven’t been on the internet since I was in Paris. Now I open my laptop and go on one of the far-right message boards where I used to look for Starhemberg posts. It’s a frenzy of memes and exultation, pictures of Trump with laser eyes, wrestlers and robots and Pokémon and superheroes and sarcastic cartoon frogs emitting rays and force fields, representations of energy, usually captioned with some version of the phrase GOD EMPEROR TAKE MY POWER! Some of the users are playing a game, or something that’s not quite a game, making predictions that will “come true” if the nine-digit post numbers end with double or triple digits. IF DUBS TRUMP WINS WITH 88%. Lots of Nazi references, the fourteen words, racist caricatures, animations of Trump cut with Gundam and anime racing sequences, mostly set to a Eurobeat song with the lyrics “Gas gas gas.” Many of the posters appear to believe semi-sincerely that they are bringing a Trump presidency into being with “meme magic,” the occult power of their content leaking out into the offline world. In the middle of all the anons, I see what I was expecting. A little animation of a spear, rising up in front of an icy landscape. A new power rises in the North. The post is signed Ernst Heim Berg.

  I close the laptop. From the living room, the TV says he used to call his opponents in the primaries by a number of names, and that seems to have resonated with a lot of folks. As I go back in, Rei looks round at me, and I see tears in her eyes. She is so beautiful. I would do anything for her. I go over and stand behind the armchair where she’s sitting, fretfully twisting a paper napkin. She reaches back and takes my hand. I want to say something conventionally comforting, something like “it’ll be fine” or “trust me,” but I can’t, because I don’t want to lie, so I hold her hand, the feeling growing that somehow I bear responsibility for this, that I am the channel, the medium through which this toxic waste is flowing.

  It’s not that I’m important or special, just that up until now there have been two tracks or timelines: the one that Rei and this little group of our friends live on, in which the future is predictable, an extrapolation from the past, a steady progression in which we are gradually turning into our own mothers and fathers, men and women who make plans and save for retirement, who go to our kids’ schools and participate in parent-teacher conferences, our adult bodies too big for the child-size furniture. Then there’s the second track, the occult track on which all this normality is a paper screen over something bloody and atavistic that is rising up out of history to meet us. I am the ragged membrane, the porous barrier between the two. Somehow, through me, through my negligence, the second track has contaminated the first. My madness, the madness for which I’ve been medicated and therapized and involuntarily detained, is about to become everyone’s madness. The proof of my sanity, my fitness to exist in the ordinary timeline of parent-teacher conferences and 401(k)s, was an acceptance that the two streams must never cross, that it was my job to keep them separate. I have not done that. Now all our throats are bared to the knife.

  At 11:30 Trump wins Florida and our party turns into the Masque of the Red Death. This can’t be happening, says Sunita. This is a fucking nightmare. And one by one dropped the revelers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. We look around at each other, most of us more or less drunk, our stomachs bloated by salty party food. This is not a good place, not now. It is not helpful for us to be together. One by one, each couple calls a car. Everyone wants to be at home, in their own space, near their children. They want to process this event by crawling into bed and poring over the internet and trying to work out what a Trump presidency means for people like us, the unreal Americans, the ones who the new president and his supporters hate most of all. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

  Finally Rei and I are left alone in the wreckage. We move around like a pair of zombies, clearing up plates and glasses. As I rinse them and fill the dishwasher, Trump takes Utah, then Iowa. The TV is showing images from the Clinton campaign party in New York, the camera focused on women, on the worried faces of women, women holding their hands over their mouths, touching their fingertips to their foreheads. There are a few halfhearted chants of Hi-la-ry, snatches of uplifting pop songs from the convention center sound system. “Don’t Stop Believin’.” “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” Already, the shitposters on the message boards are grabbing images of crying Democrats. We drink your salty tears.

  Rei and I haven’t said a word to each other. There is nothing to say. We work in concert, methodically clearing up the debris, putting the waste into bags, removing all trace of this evening, of our hopes for this evening, the timeline that we hoped we were on. Together, we go in and check on Nina. We spend a long time looking at her, her little chest rising and falling, the tangle of hair obscuring her face.

  At 1:30 a.m. Trump takes Pennsylvania, making his lead virtually unassailable. He is now at 264 electoral votes and ahead in Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona, any of which will make him president. We lie in bed looking at our phones. There is a strange shift between us, as if the balance has altered, that in some way I have become the realist and she the utopian. Talk to me, says Rei. Tell me something.

  “Like what?”

  “Something true.”

  “I love you.”

  She stiffens, then relaxes, molding herself into my embrace.

  I ask her, “Do you believe me?”

  “I have to believe you. You’re who I have.”

  At 2:30 a.m. we are still awake, our phones two glowing rectangles in the darkened room. Trump takes Wisconsin, the ten electoral votes putting him over the 270 threshold. A few minutes later, Clinton calls him to concede. Somewhere on the internet I find a stream of a victory party, a group of raucous men on a stage wearing red MAGA hats. Polo shirts, beards, tattooed sleeves, open bottles of champagne. They are chanting and singing, pushing each other around as if they’re in a mosh pit. At the back, a phone pressed to his ear, smiling as he watc
hes the jostling and singing, is Anton.

  Maybe I am one of the last people in history who will feel the things I do. Maybe everything I hoped about the world, and hoped to bring about in it, is doomed to fail. Instead of learning useful things, I have filled my brain with obsolete philosophies, ideas with no more purchase or veracity than the four humors or spontaneous generation. I could say I regret it all, the useless information, but what would be the point? It’s too late now. These are the elements that make me who I am. Even if I am absurd, and instead of reading novels and philosophy books I should have learned to code or short-sell or strip and rebuild an AR-15, I still have the love I feel for Rei and Nina. That love has never wavered, even when I worried that I was no good for them, and ought to stay far away. Though men like Edgar may point out that the constriction I feel in my throat when I see my wife, or the pang of pride I experience when I watch my child mastering some new skill is just the expression of neurochemicals in my brain, though my intuitions about reality are likely false and I may be a disembodied organ floating in a vat or a point in the state space of some cosmic simulation, still you’ll have to burn that love out of me before I will relinquish it. What Anton and his capering friends in their red hats call realism—the truth that they think they understand—is just the cynical operation of power.