Star Spangled brat

August’s cloven hoof has touched down on the scalding asphalt, as we begin our long walk into autumn. The last of summer. Not in LA, of course. Summer begins now. Angelenos have until at least October to be mummified in their hot cars. Your air conditioning cannot save you. But for the rest of this country, summer’s death rattle blares like an emergency siren. If a shadeless shopping mall parking lot at 2 PM was a month, it would be August. The election emails are already endless. Three months out and we are in the throes of political ergot, once again. Methy pleas for money and apocalyptic ultimatums fill up your gmail until you want to drop your phone into a well. One candidate is the fall of America, the other is not. The other is good. The other is brat. Give her money. Swear yourself to her. Witness the glory and the horror. Be filled with awe. Lay down your life. Through her, you can be brat. You can be whole. I will vote for her but I want a dyke for president.

I just wanted to say that. It felt right. In reality, though, I would love it. A dyke for president. My president is a dyke. The efficiency, the steely corniness. Exacting her agenda of solid dinner plans. The country isn’t ready to be functional. It’s not ready to be proficient. For now, we’ll get brat. The truth is, anyone who wants to be president is not brat. They are fundamentally rotten. But, like every other time, there are no other options. So Vice President Harris must be brat. The less bad of the other two: facelift pawpaw in a sleeping cap and dry-drunk nana with a martyr complex. We will watch the lesser bad candidate do some good and lie a lot and disappoint us like every president before her. The time honored American tradition. I was relieved when Biden dropped out, and felt a pang of hope. I still do, I guess.

Though I’m already a little wary of “weird.” I just saw the Harris campaign include a dril tweet in a statement about Trump’s useless, soupy press conference this afternoon. There is a thing as too much brat. One can be too brat. One can be too online. One can fly too close to the sun. I’m sure in the long-run it won’t matter. People are ultimately more sick of chaos than they are an overly-savvy social media presence. I believe Kamala will win. I will vote for her. I wish we didn’t have to donate to politicians. They should donate to all of us. Donate to me, in specific. Give me money. I won’t spend it on anything dangerous. I am past that. I just celebrated my eighth year of sobriety on Sunday, you see. I am a responsible faggot. Responsible faggots are brat, too. I can still shake my bussy and tits. I can death drop for Kamala. I can werk for my inalienable rights.

And so began my eighth year of not being a dumb ass drunk bitch. My eighth year of not being a cokey slut whore. My eighth year of not wetting my bed three times a week or not sleeping for 72 hours. I turned 8 on Sunday and felt sad for exactly an hour. Not sad because I miss the party. I never want to go back. I know if I go back, I will die. I do miss the newness of early sobriety.

When I was first sober and would walk into Panera at lunch during work, still self-conscious of the two black eyes and a broken nose from my last night of drinking, everything looked nuclear bright. Everything felt thrilling. I couldn’t believe I wasn’t strung out or fast forwarding through my work day so I could race home to Williamsburg to buy my nightly wine at one of the two liquor stores I went to on the same block. One was bougie and the other was a florescent liquor den that looked an AutoZone —its Russian owners would smoke cigarettes inside. I’d alternate between these two places every other night of the work week so they didn’t judge me for coming in too much. Although I’d usually just end up going to the Russian one because I once had a limp 5 am threesome inside a literal storage unit in Bushwick with the cashier at the fancier option. I didn’t want to look him in the eye as I bought post-work boxed merlot each night. Active addiction is ambient humiliation.

But on my sober anniversary on Sunday, I felt sad because time is too fast. Time is terrifying and sneering. Nearly a decade dug out of the earth, though, and my days are older and happier and more boring than I could ever imagine. Boring isn’t monotony. Boring isn’t stale. Boring is brat. Kamala is boring, which means Kamala is, in fact, brat, which means I am brat. I think my brain is dying. I don’t need a freshwater amoeba to swim up my nose and into my skull for that to happen. I just need to stay online.