New York City On The Day After The Apocalypse

It’s the day after Trump’s election, and it’s eerily quiet in NYC. No one knows quite what to make of last night’s event. Has the apocalypse really arrived, or was it all just a bad dream? The streets are nearly empty, everybody in such a state of shock they’re afraid to venture out. Who knows what’s lurking out there? Violence? Chaos? Racial Warfare? It’s just too much to contemplate, so it’s easier to curl up on the couch and watch the post-mortem coverage on cable news.

I am going through a personal crisis of my own. Despite the absolute horrificness of Trump and his campaign, I couldn’t bring myself to pull the lever for Hillary. I’ve been following the Clinton’s since Bill’s election in ‘92, and in my view they’ve been destroying the Democratic Party for 25 years now with their centrism, cynicism, and lack of convictions. So I just couldn’t go for the Hillster, and I ended up pulling the lever for Stein. I really didn’t know much about the good doctor, other than that she was extremely progressive but a little kooky on a couple of key issues.

I even had an existential crisis at 3 in the morning on the night before the election. I woke up in a panic, wracked with confusion over whether to vote for Hillary or Stein. In my mind I had been planning to suck it up and vote Clinton, just on the very off chance that New York State actually mattered to the results. But everyone knew Clinton would sweep her adopted home state, so there wasn’t much conflict for me really. I knew Clinton would win New York, I just didn’t know if I could live with myself if I voted Stein and Trump actually pulled off a miracle and came back to win the national election after being so down in the polls. We can thank James Comey and his late October letter to Congress announcing the FBI’s reopening of an investigation into Clinton’s emails for the sudden tightening of the race. New York wouldn’t have mattered anyway, but my conscience would suffer.

So that 3 AM morning I googled the latest list of aggregated New York State polls, and the consensus was Hillary would win by 20 plus points. So I decided to say screw it and go Stein, my hatred of the Clinton’s outweighing the tiny risk factor that Trump might actually defy the pollsters and win the national election.

I arrived at my polling place in a local elementary school on 30th Avenue in Astoria, Queens, around 11AM. It wasn’t too crowded, and I was quickly shown to a polling booth. I scanned the ballot, and Clinton, Stein, Trump and Gary Johnson’s names blazed out at me. On my walk over to the polling place I had begun to have 2nd thoughts about my plan to vote for Stein, and had pretty much decided to vote for Clinton. But now, faced with the ultimate choice, all of the Clintons’ treachery flashed before my eyes. So I thrust my penned finger forward with a racing heart and filled in the oval for Stein. A deal with the devil, maybe, and the risk of an apocalypse, but my conscience would be free.

That night I watched the election results with two friends in my living room in Queens. As state by state went red across the network’s blaring digital map, a sense of dread filled the air. We joked around and made small talk, inevitably followed by nagging comments about the fact that this couldn’t really happen, it was still early and everything would be ok.

We had a few drinks, ate some Turkey chili, and prayed, is basically what we did. But by the time 11:14 rolled around and Trump won North Carolina, making his national victory appear inevitable, he collective air was sucked entirely out of the room. Tamar said her goodbyes, followed by Mitch, and I was left to contemplate the misery of my fate. Clinton had indeed won New York by 22 points, so my Stein vote hadn’t mattered, but Trump had won the whole enchilada. The end days had arrived.

So at 7 AM on the morning after the election, I find myself getting stoned while trying desperately to rewind the previous night or somehow process the horror of it all and simultaneously making a 6 egg omelette. I get creative with the omelette and add Turkey, two cheeses, and four kinds of peppers, and it comes out great. I wolf it down, unsure what to do next. Stay home and watch more election coverage? I’d rather drink Drano slowly and wretch to death.

I decide to take a walk to Astoria Park, the local gem we Astorians have hidden away in a far corner of northwest Queens. It’s about a twenty minute walk, so I pack some water, a protein bar and a banana, and I stop at the local Dunkin Donuts to pick up an iced coffee.

It’s only 7:20 so I don’t expect many people to be out anyway, but the streets are nearly empty. I’m stoned, and I’m listening to Spotify top 40 as I walk. Despite the weed, the half dozen egg omelette, and all the music I can listen to, I still can’t push aside the creeping image of Trump raising his right hand in victory on the podium on election night.

I get to the park around 7:40 and it’s almost completely silent. A couple of dog walkers idle by, heads bowed in contemplation, horror, or I don’t know what, but no one is making eye contact.

This is the thing. Astoria is a very diverse, mixed neighborhood with people from all over the world. It was originally a Greek and Italian enclave, but then over time waves of folks from the Balkans, Latin America, the Middle East and South Asia arrived. There’s also an African-American population, but they’re mostly tucked away in isolated housing projects. So it’s safe to say that most of the immigrants from Latin America, the Middle East, and South Asia either couldn’t vote or, if they could, definitely didn’t vote for Trump. The Balkan folks could go either way. But Vinny from Italy and Kostas from Greece, well they may just have gone for Trump, what with old world values and all that.

In fact, in the primaries, Astoria went for Bernie over Hillary by a narrow margin, so maybe I’m overstating the case. But there are definitely significant pockets of Trump support in my ‘hood.

All this iced coffee and water has made me need to take a leak, so I head over to the seedy bathroom by the running track in the park. I enter the bathroom and sidle up to a dirty stall. It’s a small bathroom and thankfully I’m the only one in here. As I’m relieving myself I hear a rustle outside the doorway. The front door is permanently open in this particular bathroom, but the toilets and stalls are tucked away from view. I crane my neck a little and catch a visual of what might be a person just beyond my vantage point. Another noise, this time louder, more of a scream it sounds like.

All of a sudden a medium-sized black man in his 20’s appears in front of the doorway. He hovers in place. I crane my neck to look at him while I’m peeing, and he stares back at me. The tension in the air is palpable. I’m high, and I’m distraught over Trump’s election.  He’s probably distraught too, and he also has no idea whether I actually voted for the man who virtually declared war on him and his race.

Our eyes lock for another half second, and I brace myself for whatever comes next. I’m so fucked up at this point that I’m ready to fight this guy if he makes a move toward me, but I’d rather give him a pound and talk about what a nightmare this is and what a scumbag Trump is.

Finally he looks away, steps back half a pace, and stares at me one more time. We lock eyes, and he now gives me what seems to be a melancholy look, as if saying that everything has just changed, and things between he and I are will be forever different from now on.  Then he turns and walks away, out of my viewpoint and gone forever. I return to my piss, finishing the act, my heart pounding about as fast as it’s ever pounded.

What the hell just happened? Were we on the verge of our own personal race war? Was it clash of the titans in a local bathroom in Queens? I’m in shock, but what I want more than anything is to get out of the confines of this dingy pisser.

I exit the bathroom, head for the benches around the track and crash wildly into a seat, out of breath and out of mind. I pray to myself that what just took place was a hallucination, maybe the pot was a little too strong. But in my heart I know it was real.  And this scares the shit out of me. Because if it was real, what does that mean for the future of my neighborhood, my borough, my city, and the nation at large? I think it means that history has just ended, and the four horsemen will be arriving soon to take us all away. I hope that I’m wrong, but deep down I know that our worst nightmare has just become reality.

God help us all.

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