Back Taxes: Long Summers and Undecided Voters

I'm not proud of it. After a 3-month hiatus from TLS I come back with a weeks old essay that barely cracks one thousand words. And it's not even very good. It was to be published elsewhere, but to my knowledge that elsewhere didn't come to be. So here it is.

And yes, this is two posts in a row that revolve around being in-line at a fast food restaurant. Welcome to my weekday afternoons.

But I'm coming back. I've been practicing with a blindfold on, Purple Rain playing backwards on Vinyl, drawn blinds with whale oil lamps burning, and yellow sponges of soaked in vodka strapped to my head. Working not my craft, but my dexterity. Now I'm going to start seeing if that will translate onto my craft.

Right? You're just going to have to trust me one more time. But in the meantime:


A row of six people walked out of a dollar-theatre matinee showing of The Artist in the first 45-seconds. They left in complete silence. It was either a matter of simple confusion, or some sort of hyper-complex experimental piece of social art. I couldn’t tell. People in all corners of the darkened theater starting nervously laughing at this early exit; themselves not seeming entirely sure of what they were getting themselves into in the next ninety-minutes, but just that it would be something.

The south, the pure heat, strange craziness and wicked variations of dark alcohol, a lack of contemporary history, endangered animals being devoured by large snakes in shallow simmering swamps, low-flying planes and empty malls: the Modern American Collective. Call centers filled with bachelor’s degrees.

After the movie I stopped off at a local Taco Bell hoping to get many, many, cheap crunchy tacos. Good ones. The place was lined almost out the door with fast-food craving aficionados. The crowd created a sort of bizarre inverse drive-thru effect that made the small building seem packed and almost frantic for taco meat. People were standing a little to close to one and other; lots of coughing and feet shuffling. The little Bell crew worked furiously to satisfy, but it was somewhat in vain, there was only so much they could really do to keep up.

Finally, I was a single-person away from the register. I sent out a mass text from my phone, checked a few basketball scores, scrolled around a bit more, and became slowly frustrated when it dawned on me again that I didn’t have a smart phone. The basketball scores were just the characters on my keypad.

And after looking up from all that I realized I hadn’t moved. The petite brunette in front of me flat did not know what she wanted. Scarier yet, she wasn’t even sure what was on the menu. Behind me, the gasps from exasperated American’s started to shake and catcall.

“Do the burritos come with a side of chips?” she almost whispered.

The cashier looked over his shoulder at the bright purple taco menu with a mix of pure confusion and bewilderment.

“Which burrito?” he asked. With a true genuine nature and, I felt, deeply heartfelt manner (hey what can I say, after you watch The Artist, much like after taking a strange psychoactive drug, your personality and connection to things becomes a bit different).

“Never mind,” she quickly waved him off, “Do you have anything organic?”

At this I almost cringed. I looked over my shoulder to make sure no one behind me was unsheathing swords or polishing brass knuckles. But the line looked drained behind me of any energy, it was like they’d given up their dreams and fallen into a stasis of pure hope. No one looked all too likely to invest in an argument.

“Organic….” He pivoted his pear shaped head around to face the big bright menu again.

I took a chance on my instincts, on the knowledge gained from living in one place for so long, on my deep gambler’s need for political knowledge. I craned my head slightly around the brunettes shoulder, like a pale-skinny Velociraptor, and asked: “Who are you voting for?”

She swung around, finally connected back to reality, her mouth wide and incredulous.

“That’s none of your damned business,” she snapped.

“Organic…” He searched still.

I raised an eyebrow. Give me something to work with.

“But, I’m very firmly undecided at this point, thank you very much.”

Of course. My suspicions were now confirmed; I’d stumbled onto one. The rare, highly sought after, and mildly confused: The Undecided swing-state voter. Standing right before me, blending into a crowd but sticking out just enough to be noticed by the clever political junky. She had no idea the great power many thought she had, and probably even less of an idea of how much money was being spent in making that undecided a counted ballot by some potentially corrupt small town city official. Looking outside the concave windows I thought I saw the images of blood-thirsty donkeys and elephants clawing at glass, trying awkwardly to just get at her.

Undecided about what? Perhaps everything. Even tacos.

If there’s one thing that American’s should be able to count as an easy question to answer, it’s which political team of mercenaries we tend to favor. And if neither, simple logical apathy. What’s there still to be waffling over between Democrats and Republicans? The game doesn’t change, and the players only seem to.

Politics are easy, real problems are hard. That’s why we have politics. It gives us something to be sure about.

The brunette walked briskly out of the fast-food joint having ordered nothing, and, I think, seriously disturbed. The cashier missed her strutting out, perhaps proud that she’d turned down another man asking her to choose between a red pill and a blue one. And as he slowly turned back from the menu, having been unable to find anything ending in a C and starting with an O, he found me standing in front of him, and looked relieved.

“It’s going to be a long summer my friend, and an even longer fall,” I said.

And at this his slight smile became a quick frown (not another one). But I didn’t let him hang on that ledge for long, it wasn’t why I’d come here, and I’d already gotten the intelligence I’d wanted.

“Can I get seven crunchy tacos, and go heavy on the meat, kimosabe.”