You’re either gay or in the CIA

Writing at its best has a sort of alchemical quality. You take experiences and transmute them into something of a higher order. You discover and amplify their meaning.

That is why I find the following story so strange. I’m not sure what it means.

It starts with a man, a boater, probably mentally ill, very right wing, potentially violent. It also involves his friend, a young woman from Austin, also very right wing and extraordinarily annoying. And a boat party.

It took place last weekend on a catamaran docked on a beautiful stretch of river right in downtown Fort Lauderdale. Locals rumbled back and forth on their power boats blasting awful hip hop and cock rock into the night. Spring breakers howled from booze barges. Ten of us sat around a table on a spacious catamaran drinking jungle juice spiked with rum fresh from the Bahamas.

The host was an intelligent man, a doctor. We were in a conversation about where I’ll live after my boating stint. I said I’m thinking of moving to Austin, that I think there’s going to be a confluence of people interested in alternative governance there. I mentioned I’m a libertarian and trying to get away from extreme partisan environments. He said he use to be libertarian, until he realized libertarians are childish because they don’t care about domestic manufacturing. Decent point.

He went on to explain that he used to live next to a town in Virginia that produced most of the cloth used in the US. Then the company and the textile machines were sold to an Indian enterprise and shipped away along with all the jobs and the town was decimated.

He asked what I would do about that. I said first of all I’m very sorry for all the losses that town experienced. He cut me off. “Are you a politician?” he asked. He wasn’t joking.

I laughed and made it very clear that I’m not a politician. “In an advanced economy like the US, we’re never going to weave much cloth,” I said.

He asked what happens to all the people whose job it was. I asked him if he knew what a luddite was.

“Yeah,” he said, “it’s an insult.”

You get the idea. Drunk conversation. Typical party stuff. Everyone proceeding to get drunker and chain smoking like cigarettes were about to be made illegal.

A girl on the couch who would turn out to be one of the most annoying people I’d ever met spoke up. “‘Libertarian? I used to be a libertarian. But now after all this Covid shit I’m seriously fucking right-wing” she slurred. “And I fucking hate Austin now. I can’t stand it.” I asked her why. “All the fucking New Yorkers and Californians everywhere.”

“So where you from?” She asked.

I told her New York and California.

“You can’t fucking be from two places” she pointed out.

“I was born in California but lived in New York the last eight years.”

The thing about truly annoying people is that they bring something out of you that makes you want to annoy them more. There’s a natural, instinctual urge to turn the screw on them. Take this girl, who was bringing it on herself, as you can tell. She is simultaneously showing me her buttons and insulting me. What does she think I’m going to do?

“Okay, so what’s your schtick?” she asks.

“I don’t have one.”

“You don’t do anything? Everyone does something.’”

“Yeah, but I don’t think I have a schtick.”

“So what do you do?” she drilled.

“I help cities run civic engagement programs.” I looked into her droopy, drunken, bovine eyes. I could see the tiny gears behind them scanning for something to be offended about. So I obliged her.

“I’m thinking of doing it…” I said looking her dead in the eye with a smarmy grin and a little cocked up eyebrow. “ …in Austin.”

That’s all I had to say.

“Wait what the fuck? You think you can….”

I looked away smiling as if I didn’t know she had started to reply and casually began listening to another conversation. Of course I suspected this would make her blow her top — but isn’t this what she wanted? She wanted the offense. I feel some part of her was communicating: make me stew in my own juices. In the background she continued to rail, though I’m not sure to who “I can’t believe.. so fucking mad right now..did you hear he said..” etc.

I doubt anyone was listening.

At this point I should have realized that there were some mental health issues on the boat. Alas, they weren’t the only drunk ones.

Seated next to Miss Austin was her husband, a large, sluggish man, lethargic from alcohol or lots of practice tuning out. They probably had a symbiotic relationship in his situation. I looked at him. “I was told there would be weed at this party.”

Without much acknowledgement he started digging around in his backpack.

This concludes part 1. I’ll wrap the story up tomorrow.