ya vote'

For years, I have been absentee-voting back to my home state of the big MD, but when I got my new California driver's license in September, I figured it was finally time to change my registration -- after all, I haven't really lived in Maryland for almost 9 years. Per my new California voter status, I went to my (very sketchy!) designated polling place yesterday and filled out the little arrows. I was jealous to hear that in New York, they actually got to pull down those old-fashioned red levers. Small matters: I got two "Ya vote'!" stickers -- that's how much California cares! -- and promptly put one on my coat and one on my teaching bag. (I was on the way to that university where I teach.) When I got there and asked my classes if they had voted, I was met with a blankness rivaled only by those moments when I ask them a question about the reading they were supposed to have done. Total. Blankness. Voting. What's. That.

At night, Laura W. invited me to the Obama supporters gathering in San Francisco. There were a lot, a lot, a lot of Obama supporters in this room, including people I knew from my marathon training, and my new friend Kate from work with her fiance, and a couple of people I went on terrible dates with more than a year ago. (I was sure because we were all wearing name tags, which more than once provided an "Is that...? Aaaaand yes it is" experience.) I was wiped out from five hours of commuting and almost as many hours of teaching, but somehow managed to stay alert long enough to drink two gin & tonics and watch Obama not-win California.

"It just amazes me," said Laura's friend Josh, "how much of a divide there is between northern and southern California."

"Yeah, we never had that in Maryland," I said. 

"Well, it's not really big enough to have a northern and southern division," he pointed out.

"True. Mostly we've got They Who Produce Crabs versus They Who Do Not Produce Crabs."

"Oh, I'm sure everybody's producing crabs in one way or another," he said.

"You're right," I realized. Laura's friend Josh: the great political unifier.

Today I went for a haircut. I went to the place I'd gone in September, the hipster hairerie where I'd explicitly asked not to look like a hipster, and my request had been met. Feeling confident from last time's experience, I didn't feel the need to say anything this time. Now I look like a hipster. I have seriously weird hair and look like I might bust an emo pose at any time, or else burst out in a chorus of "Notorious." It does not look bad, per se, but not befitting of someone who until recently was absentee-voting to Maryland.

Another item from this haircut: The very nice haircutting girl tried to sell me her bike. She took me out in back into this shed to show it to me. 

"Nice bike," I said. It was a brand-new bike; anyone could see that, even a bike novice like me. "Why do you want to sell it?"

"A couple of months ago I got dumped, and I got it into my head that I wanted to be a Mission hipster biker chick," she said. "So I bought this, and then I realized I just kind of hate riding bikes. You know how it is when you get dumped."

I supposed I did know and then also I did not know, for a variety of reasons.

I could not imagine something like getting dumped leading me to decide to become a type of person, particularly such a dubious type.  

It was like Laura said last night at the Obama event, when we were writing out our name tags. We had joked about writing fake names on there: Elouise, Mariette. But when we got up to the table we ended up writing our own names just the same.

"I guess," said Laura, "in the end I can't be anything other than what I am."