Hearts & minds,
or, The Man in Black.
I spent the bitter month of February, 1992, dressed entirely in black and canvassing door-to-door for MassPIRG. I was dressing entirely in black because I was finally starting to get over having been crushingly dumped the summer before: the sort of break-up where you find yourself on your figurative knees saying something like I love you so much that if you need me to leave I will. —Later, I found a cheery Mexican restaurant and drank too much cheap beer and staggered home singing Waterboys songs at the top of my lungs. I swore off love earnestly and loudly to whomever would listen. Now I was dressing entirely in black. How else was I to reclaim my dignity?
And I was canvassing door-to-door for MassPIRG because I hadn’t had a job in half a year. I was living in a two-bedroom apartment under a cliff in the middle of western Massachusetts nowhere with three close friends (we got up to six total for a bit there), spending entirely too much time hanging out at the UMass Science Fiction Society’s library cum offices—this despite the fact that I was in no wise a student. For a while there, I was trying to perfect my Florentine fencing with a couple lengths of PVC pipe wrapped in foam insulation and duct tape; when I went home for the holidays, I took my brother to the plumbing supply shop so we could make a pair of fresh swords and hack away at each other in the backyard. I have no idea what my parents thought of the whole situation. I spent the rest of that dour vacation hacking away on an old typewriter at a story that still hasn’t gone anywhere, patiently ignoring the doubtlessly good advice they were trying to drill through my skull.
One day after I got back I was musing aloud in the USFS library about jobs and money and the getting thereof. Someone (and I can’t recall who, but I don’t think it was the skinny guy who said he was ex-Special Forces and that we shouldn’t wake him unexpectedly if he dozed off, since he couldn’t be held responsible for what his trained reflexes would do) told me about this guy that this guy he knew knew, who could hook me up with a Situation: I’d get a car key and a piece of paper with two addresses on it in the mail. I’d then go to the first address, somewhere in Greenfield, or Northampton, say, and I’d use the key to open the door of the car I’d find parked there. I’d drive it (scrupulously under the speed limit) to the second address, in an outer borough of New York City, say, where I’d park it, take a manila envelope out of the glove compartment, put the key in its place, lock the doors, and walk away, not looking back. There’d be a sheaf of grubby bills in that envelope: enough for dinner in a restaurant and a night in a crappy hotel before training back up to Massachusetts for another work-free month or so. Until the next car key arrived in the mail. Und so weiter.
Somebody else (and I’m pretty sure it was the cute girl who was into filmmaking and pot, which is how I later came to realize that pot does absolutely nothing for me—nor her, neither, but that’s another story) told me about MassPIRG. You know: the bottle bill? Putting the people back into politics? Ralph Nader’s baby?
I ended up at MassPIRG. They were renting a room up on the second floor of an old open-court motel that had been refitted as a strip-mall, there above the pawn shop where I’d already sold my bass guitar to make rent (no great loss; I’d never made it past Peter Gunn), and they were looking for door-to-door canvassers (they’re always looking for door-to-door canvassers), so I signed up. I had a pulse, so I had a provisional job: canvassers had a couple days out on the sidewalks to make the cut. The PIRG wanted a return on their investment, you know? And I made the cut, so I had a job, my first in six months.
Which I promptly muffed.
I’d like to think when you tot it all up that I raised more money than I cost in wages, though I was goose-egging at an alarming rate toward the end, there. (So maybe if you added in overhead..?) And much as it’s easy to laugh nowadays at the follies of lovelorn drop-out me kicking my way through ice-crusted snowdrifts from one suburban Springfield door to the next in my black boots and black jeans and black turtleneck and my long black coat, it doesn’t change the fact that at the time it all hurt in some deep and ineluctable way that made knocking on strangers’ doors and telling them about such eminently worthy causes as the Reduce Reuse Recycle and Polluter Pays initiatives, asking if such public service weren’t worth twenty, forty, seventy-five bucks, all much harder than it had to be.
And there were those annoying get-to-know-you team-building goal-congruencing exercises! Oy. We had to play them every day before hitting the streets for some godawful reason (then, turnover was high): “If you could be any color, which would it be, and why?” “What’s the best thing that happened to you this week?” “What do you see yourself doing five years from now?” —Gah. I turned in my clipboard after four or five weeks and went back to sulking, thankyouverymuch.
But not before the New Hampshire primaries.
In 1992, Ralph Nader put himself up as a write-in candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in the New Hampshire primaries—to make some noise, test the waters, provide an alternative, scare up a soapbox, shake things up. Nobody was thrilled with front-runner Tsongas, but none of the other Democrats seemed ready to call for the all-out revolution needed to undo the 12-year Reagan-Bush interregnum. We wanted fire; we wanted bellies; we wanted motherfuckers up against the wall. We got genteel bupkes. —Hell, Barry put himself up as a write-in from over the border in his UMass Daily Collegian comic strip and got, like, a dozen votes. Discontent was in the air. (Then again, maybe not: Mickey Mouse never actively campaigns and he regularly gets written in, so what do I know?)
So, on that fateful day, when it came time for the get-to-know-you stuff before we got in the car and drove to Springfield to hit the sidewalks (which time, it should be noted, we didn’t get paid for), whoever-it-was who was in charge of congruencing our goals eschewed the usual Barbara Walters group interview for a rousing Nader sales pitch: he’s the guy who invented PIRGs! He saved us from Detroit! He’s running a campaign against corporate interests, for the people of this country, and he needs volunteers! We were asked to sign up for a slot on the bus to go up to New Hampshire and knock on more doors to help get the word out.
Well. I didn’t sign up for a slot on the bus. And I was miffed when he dropped out of the race after posting disappointing returns in New Hampshire. But when the Massachusetts primary rolled around, I wrote him in. And by early November, it was clear Clinton was going to hammer Bush for Massachusetts’ electoral votes, and Clinton was a slick-talking centrist who damn skippy wasn’t going to be putting anybody up against any walls. So I had no qualms about writing in Nader for president again.
(Of course I voted for Nader! I was a whiny pampered guiltily liberal ivory-towered at-loose-ends young white man! Weren’t you paying attention?)
Pity you weren't around for our PVC duels. At least, I don't think you were. Oh, those were the days.
Go on, kick yourself, you whiny white liberal. At least you learned how to vote.
Maybe.
Well, I guess this leaves me the last person I know on the entire Western seaboard whose still thinking about voting for Nader.
Oh, well... Someone has to show all you mature responsible adults how not to behave. :p
Warning: Don't go read Ralph's latest at Common Dreams. You might start wavering again.
Kisses,
Ex-OSPIRG canvasser, 1988.
Well, no, Amy, I'm not thinking of voting for Nader. But I'm not done yet, either. So hold your horses and save your kisses; it'll mean so much more after the encore.
Horses ? [scratches head] If this is your way of saying that you're going to the demo on 10/3, good. You can keep Varro company. I'm staying at home to dig up weeds, since I couldn't order my "Spoiler" shirt in time to wear it downtown. :p
Why?