Love in the Time of Climate Change (20 page)

“You know the most frightening thing New Yorkers say they're dealing with post-Sandy?”

“I'm quite sure you'll tell me,” I replied, sitting down and fixing myself a bowl of cereal.

“No fresh water?” Jesse said. “No way—they've got alcohol. No food? Christ, they can stand to lose a few pounds. Apartment under water? You're kidding! Maybe that's what will finally get rid of the cockroaches. Whatever! They're New Yorkers. They'll deal. But there is one thing, one thing, that is absolutely intolerable. Unbearable. Unfuckingthinkable! They can't charge their goddamn cell phones! No electricity. No juice. No cell phones. Anything but this! Anything! The poor fools are going nuts. Charge-pocalypse!”

He laughed that maniacal laugh again.

Whoa, I thought, an epiphany appearing right over the cornflakes. Wait just a minute here.… Could this be the marketing tool we were desperately searching for? The prosthetic popping-out-eyeball had finally come home to roost!

I could visualize the propaganda piece. Cameras rolling. Terrifying footage of Sandy ravaging the coastline. Devastation and destruction everywhere. A person straight out of an ad for anti-depression meds sitting on ruined rubble, knee-high in flood water, gnashing his teeth, weeping, clutching his cell phone to his broken heart.

Morgan Freeman's deep, somber voice-over.

“Climate Change. Higher seas. Shifting shorelines. No texting. That's right—no texting! Tell Congress and the president to act now!”

Whatever it takes.

S
ANDY OR NO
S
ANDY
, it was Halloween, which meant party time. Every year, Taylor—a guy who lives down the street from us—puts on an unbelievable costume party. He must have money—he renovated this old beat-up Victorian and now it's absolutely gorgeous, open and spacious and party central. It's got peculiar rooms with odd corners and slanted ceilings, walk-in closets as big as my bedroom, a wrap-around porch to die for. He has a backyard with those weird Japanese lantern things on poles that illuminate the trees and the winding garden terrace in a creepy kind of way. It's a perfect place to celebrate Halloween.

Dress-up is mandatory and folks take the party seriously. Some prepare their outfits months in advance.

A few Halloweens ago, at the height of the fright-night frenzy, two guys came in all decked out as cops. They were impeccably dressed in spotless uniforms with name tags, night sticks, handcuffs, the whole works. They looked straight from the precinct.

The booze was flowing, joints being passed every which way. The two announce in a very loud voice that vehicles
were blocking driveways and towing would commence immediately.

Everyone laughed.

“Dude,” one partier said, toking away and passing a J to one of the “cops.” “You two are fucking awesome.”

The whole room froze as the cops pulled out their badges.

“Dude,” one of the cops replied. “Move your car or it's fucking history.” Then they turned and left.

It was a great party.

This year Jesse, Dustin (a good neighbor—not the creepy guy with the inflatable ghost), and I went dressed as a threesome. I took an oversized black trash bag, cut out holes for my arms, and then padded it with crumpled up newspapers to make me plump and puffy. On the front I had taped a huge letter C made out of white cardboard. I painted my hands and face black and completed my outfit with black pants and black shoes. I looked somewhat like a black overstuffed M and M, only with the letter C.

Jesse and Dustin did the same with white trash bags, white pants, and white shoes. Dustin, who is African American, painted his face white. We had decided to mix it up a little.

The other difference between us was that they had big black letter O's taped onto their baggy white outfits.

Off we sauntered down the street to the happening, quite pleased with ourselves.

“Who the hell are you supposed to be?” said Taylor the host, spilling his wine all over my shoe, as our threesome entered. He was dressed as Gandalf the Gray—pointy cap, sorcerer's staff, long flowing beard, and all.

“The scariest thing you can think of!” I shouted, striving to be heard over the deafening din of dance music.

“What?” Taylor screamed, spilling more wine, this time all over my C.

“CO
₂
—we're CO
₂
!”

“C O what?”

“CO
₂
. Carbon dioxide—we're the greenhouse gasses! Scary or what! Get it?”

“What?” he shouted, spilling even more, this time all over himself.

Christ, what were we thinking? Pairing The Issue with Halloween may not have been such an awesome idea after all. It seemed immediately apparent that the political nature of our outfits would most likely be grossly underappreciated.

Nonetheless the party was wonderful, a frightening frenzy of dead brides, zombie ninja warriors, stunningly beautiful wood elves, drag vampire prom queens, and two Cap'n Crunch cereal boxes (yes, there were two! Ah! Costume faux pas!) among a host of others. The closest anyone else had come to being intellectual about their outfit was an elderly woman who wore only her slip and a sign that said “Freudian” draped around her breasts. Perfect.

A couple of pumpkin brews and a shared joint and I was pleasantly spooked. Alcohol being an evil drug, I hardly ever drank, but there was something oddly appealing, and a little bit scary, about pumpkin in a beer.

Self-conscious, awkward spaz that I am, I was usually not one to dance, but it was impossible not to get caught up in the buzz of the evening. Twirling, gyrating, and flopping around, I was able to rise above self and not obsess about looking the fool. Everyone else clearly was doing the same.

Try as we might, it was hard for the three of us to stick together. The place was packed. In addition, we were having severe costume issues. Dustin's O kept falling off. During one of his patented old-school disco moves Jesse had ripped open his outfit and crashed into one of the Japanese lanterns, and now his newspaper stuffing was poking out of his trash bag.

Just as I had feared, our message was clearly getting lost in the shuffle.

Wardrobe malfunctions aside, we were having a fabulous time. And then, at about 11:00 p.m. I walked out into the garden to see Jesse, his arm around the waist of a dazzling sunflower, nuzzling her stalk.

My face dropped. Damn! What was he thinking? I was pissed. He had shown every sign of being seriously attracted to the new lust of his, Sarah the nurse. They were beyond outings and into official dates. He had even brought her home and prepared the only meal he could cook with any sort of creativity and gusto—macaroni and cheese. He had been talking about her nonstop since the apple non-picking. Every night it was Sarah this, and Sarah that. Evidently she could do no wrong, and I was beginning to think, and hope, that she might actually be The One.

I was really happy for him. I liked her. She was smart. She was cute. She was doing good work. She had gone on the march on Mt. Tom with us. She cared about The Issue.

And it seemed pretty obvious to me that she liked him. As screwed up as he was—Christ, as we all were—he really was a great guy.

And he clearly worshipped her.

And now, here he was, flirting away with a goddamn sunflower! Jesus Christ! He was too old for this shit.

I angrily pulled him aside.

“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“You know what I'm talking about! I don't care if you're loaded or not—stop it! Now!”

Jesse gave me weird look.

“You're being a total and complete moron,” I continued, “and you know it. Think what you're doing! Think about it!” I gave him a shake, and more of his insides fell out onto the floor.

“Believe me,” he said. “I am. And I think I'm actually going to get lucky tonight! Finally, after weeks, she says she wants to photosynthesize! With me! With me! Can you believe it? How can I refuse?”

“Weeks?” I yelled. I was really pissed now. “Christ, you just met her! How can you do this? What about …”

“Hi Casey!” the sunflower said, sauntering up and slipping her hand into Jesse's. As she pulled her petals away to kiss him, there emerged, in all of its radiant glory, the flowery face of Sarah.

“Yes!” I said, giving them both a huge, Halloweeny hug.

“I am so glad to see you. Photosynthesize away, my friends. Photosynthesize away! You have my blessing.” I did the sign of the cross over both of them.

Sarah gave me an embarrassed look and then they both laughed and walked toward the door, hand in hand, snuggling and giggling, Jesse dribbling a trail of newspaper stuffing behind him.

It was really quite cute.

Dustin and I punted and morphed into carbon monoxide (CO). Still scary, still deadly, but not exactly The Issue.

Closer to midnight, Dustin hooked up with an extremely cute vampire/werewolf hybrid sort of thing and I was left, as always, standing awkwardly alone in the corner, a single C, a quite high atom of carbon.

“Isn't carbon, like, good?” Vampire/Werewolf's friend asked as I attempted to explain the origin of my outfit. She was a totally hot petunia with purple lacey petals cascading over her breasts and fanciful papier-mâché leaves sprouting from her gorgeous rear. Not quite as stunning as the sunflower, but pretty damn close. Just as I launched into a mini-lecture on the heat-trapping properties of carbon dioxide, Gollum (of
Lord of the Rings
fame) swept in.

“There you are, my precious!” he hissed, sweeping
her off her feet and carrying her to the dance floor as she laughed and shrieked.

Note to self: Halloween parties—not always the best opportunity to educate the world and change the course of human history.

I wove my way home and lay awake most of the night, smiling, listening to Jesse blissfully photosynthesizing with his lovely flower and daring to imagine the possibility of next Halloween doing the same with one of my own.

A
FTER WHAT SEEMED LIKE AN ETERNITY
, the first Tuesday of November, Election Day 2012, finally arrived. If the presidential drama had continued even a day longer, I would have lost it. After one more “Vote or else!” soapbox rant to my classes, I voted at the high school and then staggered home, anxious as hell, and wolfed down way too much pizza. It was leftover from the weekend and the pepperoni had a greenish tinge which I didn't happen to notice till the very last piece.

Truth be told, I hadn't felt particularly well for weeks. The possibility of a Republican victory, of Mitt Romney becoming the next president of the United States, was way too much to stomach. It seemed inconceivable that anyone with a shred of a brain would contemplate voting for Mister Moneybags from the Monopoly Game, the rancid face of capitalism gone sour, a man whose vision of the future was so 1950-ish. But the scary thing, what made my intestines twist themselves into tangled knots, was that even with the voting public on our side, electoral chicaery
in several swing states combined with an unfavorable ruling from the Supreme Court could certainly throw the election to the Republicans, just as it had with George W. Bush. Anything was possible.

Jesse had gone out to dinner with Sarah, his sister Clara, and her sister's boyfriend, a getting-to-know-you introduction to Sarah. I was already on the second joint when they waltzed in the door, elated and energized, Sarah and his sister arm in arm.

“It's in the bag!” Jesse shouted. “Exit polling looks fab. Mitt's going down! Any news in the last few minutes?”

I was happy to see that dinner had gone well.

They all sat down, transfixed, in front of the blaring TV. Jesse grabbed the remote and immediately began obsessively coverage surfing.

“That son-of-a-bitch Romney!” Clara said, wrestling the remote from her brother. “That prick. That fucking asshole! Sorry about my language, sweetie.” She gave Sarah a peck on the cheek. “Something you're just going to have to get used to.”