Lost
A rough week, stretching years into future and past.
Eight years ago, I wake myself up twice in the night. First at about 2, with Hillary winning, then again at 5, with Trump all but confirmed. My lecturer at the time, an expert in contemporary American politics, had recently told us, Don’t worry, there’s no serious chance he’s getting in. And I had no clue, none at all, but I didn’t like how certain he was.
Four years ago, low and barely employed, I wake up at home. Somehow it’s even more unreal to see him lose. From the start, there seemed to be something inevitable about him. Yet there are people with pride flags dancing in DC streets. With that, and the news of the Covid vaccines around the same time, there is the eerie sensation of good news. BBC News, heartening from start to finish, like a fever dream from a different time. Is this how my parents felt when they were young, and the Berlin Wall was falling? Is this how my grandparents felt when they were young, and the war-stricken world was suddenly at their feet?
Last Tuesday, I wake with the cold light at 6 and stare at the phone lying on the bookshelf opposite — deliberately out of reach. I want to know, but Eden is draped across my back, so I drift into an hour or two of strange election dreams, first Kamala, then Trump. I wake again to Eden in a dressing gown. I’m trying to muster the nerve to see who won, I say, but she has her phone in her pocket. She grimaces.
Besides the five minutes of Trump’s victory speech that I watch through smudged eyes that morning, I steer clear of it. The ceaseless, churning coverage. I stick to the job hunt. Ten months in the future, I am a graduate sustainability consultant for a built environment company. Two months in the future, I am a copywriter for the National Trust. Today, another double-vibration on my phone, and those futures are lost.
Thirty-six years ago, my dad is offered a job at a major pharmaceutical company straight out of uni, along with a group of his PhD friends. Another friend finds a job which might interest his girlfriend, but she is away on holiday, so he sends the company a copy of his girlfriend’s CV. She gets an interview without knowing it exists.
Throughout this week, the political blame game is in full swing. Misogynists? Racists? Latinos? Young Black men? Biden choosing to run? Kamala being a distant, uninspiring politician of the sort batch-produced from elite coastal universities, oven-ready for government? Well, all of the above. But demographics are easy answers. If only we’d had better messaging geared to young Black men, we might’ve pulled it off. Far more that people are scared — they recognise that the future is less bright than the past. Far more that they’re angry — the liberal elite took their money and then looked down on them. And Trump is so fun — the embodiment of American hedonism, chanting easy slogans with a cheeseburger in hand, saying whatever you want to hear, claiming you can have your cake and eat it too, making the joke and getting away with it, and most importantly, pissing off the uppity fuckers you hate. For once, you don’t have to lose.
Last week, another dreaded double-vibration. The news is not so much good as it is a relief — Waterstones. Saving my bank account every time I quit my job with no coherent plan for the future. Six years ago, I walk into a different Waterstones and talk to a girl with cheekbones you can see across the room. Here and now, she gives me a hug which is a strange mix of congratulation and consolation. It works for now, one of us says. Low and barely employed, still. But your past is a collection of hands and structures to fall back upon, and they can catch you when you fall.
Fifteen years ago, history lessons on the third floor of C-block. Pink carpets, PowerPoint presentations made with painstaking care. A vivid memory. Our teacher, young and fancied by the other boys, asks rhetorically, So, why have I started the lesson with the fable of the straw that broke the camel’s back? And I ruin her entire lesson: Because Hitler invaded Poland, and that meant we declared war, so it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Just because I can. Because being one of the smart ones has not taught me any wisdom whatsoever. And nobody even criticises me for it. Shamelessness is its own super power.
The thing history lessons breezed over is that fascists are often democratically elected — welcomed with open arms, right up until the moment the atrocities start, and sometimes long after that. Trump gains power with every outrage — more in 2020 than 2016, more in 2024 than 2020. Shamelessness is its own super power.
Two days ago, I shut my laptop in a cafe when it closes at 4pm. I have written nothing good. That night, I scroll through climate activist instagrams, checking their age, comparing to mine. Checking their age, comparing to mine. The next day I wake up and change nothing.
Today, I’m reading an online edition of The Atlantic — Eden bought me a subscription for my birthday. But included in my subscription is access to every issue ever published. After I finish October 2024, I scroll to the bottom of the page. Suddenly, I’m in 2020. Covid, Biden, George Floyd. I scroll again — 2009, Why Obama is So Important. In the letters page, there is joyous disbelief, and a subtle rush jolts through my stomach. I go back further. 1999 and the millennium bug, Tony Blair meeting Bill Clinton, youthful and vibrant, egotists, yes, but capable, knowledgeable. An article on Al Gore and climate change, a distant concept, just another puzzle to solve. Reviews of Fight Club and The Matrix — their main fear is that this bland safety and security might go on forever! I flick back further, to peace in Northern Ireland and the reunificiation of Germany, a great upswelling of relief that the pressures of the twentieth century are relieved. And then I’m there amid those pressures, reading through the ’80s and ’70s, and they don’t seem so bad: The Atlantic covers show skyscrapers in Shanghai and advancements in medicine, while the adverts speak of new technologies and more holidays and a consumer paradise just around the corner. Until suddenly, it’s 2.05 the next morning, and I’m knee deep in the July/August 1967 edition, the Civil Rights Movement resurgent, people on the streets protesting Vietnam, reading a 16-page article about why fiction is dying. I am happier than I’ve been in weeks, lost in other times.
Twenty-eight years in the past, my grandparents meet for only the second time. There’s a picture of them all looking down at their grandson, the first grandchild on either side of the family. Beaming. Their lives, finances, futures seem secure. A lot of love in that room. And yet still, a weight of expectation that I never want to squander.
Ten years in the future, my wife comes upstairs to find me and my daughter, asleep, a bedtime storybook splayed open between us. Hard to know which one of us dropped off first — both of us equally tired, equally sure that our world will still be there in the morning.
