Last week Shaelyn leaned over during Marine Biology and asked if my mother and I would like to help register voters in Nevada.
"It will probably be boring," she warned. I said yes because it sounded interesting. And it was, well...interesting.
I'm sorry because I'm sure tons of people disagree with me, but I hate Las Vegas. I hate it. Every single time I turned my head there was a strip club or an advertisement with women, naked except for stars covering their...well, you know. And there were tiny cards with these nude girls, cards which were thrust into your hand regardless of whether you wanted them, cards that covered the ground so you couldn't even see the pavement. Anywhere. Whipped cream in inappropriate places. Cute little red cherries. Whatever.
And the men were disgusting. Shaelyn and I, who had been walking in front of our moms so as not to be seen with them, slowly drifted back into their orbit as grown men–men who were probably husbands, fathers and yes, even grandfathers–let their eyes roll across us, making disgusting suggestions, grabbing for our arms. And we just wanted out. We just wanted Los Angeles again.
"Dayumn..." one man, cross-eyed and carrying a case of beer, crows at me. "Look at that girl!"
I am not even old enough to vote.
That was night. Day had been even worse.
It was hot and we were tired, already grumpy from waking up at six in the morning and sitting in a car for five hours. We arrived at America Coming Together, located in a garage under a strip mall with buzzing fans (no air conditioning), three or four large plastic buckets full of soda and ice and at least a dozen boxes of Krispy Kremes. Walls were plastered with signs such as Buck Fush! There were rosy-cheeked people who had flown in for the weekend from New Hampshire, Oregon, and Wisconsin. Just for this.
And it got me excited. Maybe we could make a difference.
So, armed with our clipboards, complete with the addresses of registered Democrats, local maps, black pens and all the registering papers required, we set out to change America.
The first door that opened belonged to a shirtless man with a pigeon on his shoulder, tattoos covering both his arms, teeth missing. Shaelyn and I looked at our script and then back at this man. Whoa. But he was already registered, voting for Kerry. Good.
Second door and third door belonged to empty houses with broken windows and doors boarded up. Throughout the day we would be confronted with these unkempt homes, weeds shooting up towards the sky, broken toys lying like defeated bodies on the ground, abandoned.
We have doors opened by kids no older than eight. These little creatures, mostly paired up, squeak open the door, faces crushed together, informing us they were home alone, that their parents were working; didn't know which candidate they were leaning to or when they were coming home.
My favorite houses looked cute at first. They were decorated with tiny gnomes and furry bears and plastic flamingos which beamed up at us with sweet, innocent features. Wind chimes blew soft music through the air, everything looked welcoming. But this friendly mirage faded once the doors opened, exposing angry, weather-beaten faces who wanted nothing to do with us. Wire separated us from them, cut through our smiles like knives.
One man, a self-confessed four time felon, offering us some beef jerky from a bag as he opened the door, said that if he could he would vote for Bush because "The only person who doesn't like George Dubya is Osama Bin Laden."
So by the time we were done walking down what felt like a hot eternity but were probably around six blocks, knocking on all the doors the ACT assigned us, we were dead. Just totally depressed and angry. We hadn't registered anybody, but 13 people were voting for Kerry maybe and three angry women with hard mouths were definitely voting for Bush, and the rest of the 40 houses either nobody answered or nobody cared about who won or they were convicted felons and could not vote.
One person told me about the candidates: They're all the same. It doesn't matter.
I wanted to argue that it did, but their faces told me they didn't want to hear it, especially from me. Who was I to lecture them? Some 16-year-old girl from Malibu High School, wearing designer jeans and a tank top. What did I know about their lives? And after that day I realized, I knew nothing. These houses with broken windows and sun bleached, dead grass and shirtless kids running after an ice-cream truck that didn't want to stop. I had never been exposed to it, not really, neither had Shaelyn.
I didn't feel like our trip had been a success, but our moms had better luck. They had almost given up when they spotted an attractive black woman walking her three kids around this one long block. After waiting for 10 minutes to see what house she would enter (I think this is called stalking) they politely knocked on her door. When she answered, she had a lit cigarette in one hand and was shooing her children away with the other. She told them she wasn't even sure who was running for President. Oh, and she was naked. After they talked to her for awhile, assuring her that they too were mothers of three and my mom was also a single mom, they told her they had come all the way from Los Angeles because this election was so important and Nevada was a swing state. After a half hour of discussion, Keisha, still naked, thought she probably would vote for Kerry but only after asking if he would cover her utilities. They said no, probably not.
At 5 p.m., when all 60 of us volunteers from America Coming Together got together for pizza later in the garage to be debriefed and to total our numbers, we had registered at least 30 new voters that afternoon. Out of a total 1,500 houses we visited, we had been able to actually talk to 150, 94 of whom said they would vote for Kerry. So it was a success.
Unfortunately we weren't done.
Shaelyn's mom is focused. Susan is an eye surgeon so I guess focus is good. Her family is originally from Burma so she takes democracy seriously and Susan views voting as a privilege.
Our mothers start talking to the ACT people for Nevada and the next thing Shaelyn and I know we are driving in through chain-link hurricane fencing where a guy with his nose half gone is checking whether or not we can enter. They drop a name and we are in. It's a shelter, the last resort of last resorts.
Susan asks the chaplain if they can register the women.
"If you can find them." The chaplain says. " The women over there will have a problem because they can only stay for seven days." She is pointing out to a caged-in playground where six or seven women are sitting on the picnic tables, smoking.
My mom and Susan approach the ladies on the picnic tables just as the red sun is going down on the edge of the eaves of the steel gray roof. White sand is blowing at their feet. Two of the ladies leave as soon as our moms start talking. Eventually two agree to register. Susan helps a painfully thin black woman fill out the form. My mom is trying to help a battered looking redhead. Both are probably in their early 20s but right now they look over 50. Suddenly the mood changes, something crackles, you can feel this nasty current buzzing about, as if lightning is about to strike. The redhead abruptly goes inside leaving her unfinished registration form on the table.
I can't believe it. My mom doesn't get it and when she does she tries to apologize but they won't take it.
"How dare you say something like that to her," a very young woman, who is drying her long wet hair, says. Susan explains to the chaplain that we are new at this. Asks her what we should have said. The chaplain says she doesn't know. It's a hard situation because they can't get mail there after seven days and how else are they going to get their ballot? My mom was just following the instructions the ACT coordinator had given us back in the garage that morning. What to do if the person doesn't have an address? Just ask them for their street corner.
We had to leave then. An angry mob was gathering.
Shaelyn and I woke up the next morning begging to get out, and while our mothers waited for a long time at Denny's for a phone call from Bill Moyer they consoled themselves by registering Elvis. The casino gave them a free photo of this event (we declined to be featured) and then we drove about 10 minutes before we sat in a traffic jam for four hours, since they had closed down the freeway.
A helicopter began to land and suddenly tons of people started frantically getting out of their cars, armed with cameras, taking pictures jubilantly, climbing on fire trucks to get a better look at the stretcher. Shaelyn and I ran out into this chaos as the helicopter was lifting, my mother wouldn't let me go until I prayed for whoever was hurt. She was disgusted by it all. Meanwhile Shaelyn's mom was trying to get through the throng of onlookers to offer her help since she had been an emergency room physician before becoming an eye surgeon.
The only pictures I have from our wonderful trip is of Shaelyn and me, hair flying everywhere, arms around one another, with a helicopter lifting up off the 15, and another with an empty freeway behind us. Viva Las Vegas.
On the ride home we watched the Emmys on my minuscule portable TV in sleeping bags, and waved goodbye to the blinking neon lights of Nevada. I've never been so glad to get back to Hollywood.
Why I Went to Las Vegas and Ended Up "Stalking" Keisha
By Cassandra Wiseman
When I was the same age that my oldest son is now, my mom decided that I was big enough to walk down to the local Post Office to buy stamps, and usually around closing time–this inevitably meant standing in long lines. This is how I spent part of my thirteenth year, passing time studying the Wanted notices displayed on the walls of a Federal Building.
In the Post Office in those days, both charges of passing bad checks and solicitation defied my imagination. Mixed in with the bank robbers and murderers were local boys wanted for dodging the draft. I think they must have used high school year book pictures for this because, unlike the other gritty and grim photographs displayed, these felons were posed smiling sweetly, shaggy-haired like David Cassidy and wearing nice suits.
I think it was last November that someone in my yoga class mentioned to me that the Selective Service System had put out a call for volunteers to fill up the draft boards. I regret that somehow I didn't get around to signing up. I think it has something to do with being a working single mother of three.
My Republican girlfriend sent me the e-mail from the urban myth debunkers. They felt it was highly unlikely that there would be a draft coming any time soon. So it has recently given me pause that despite stressing on CBS and other news programs I watch that they have received no requests from the Pentagon to proceed, the Selective Service has in fact already in place a special system to register and draft health care personnel ages 20 to 44 in more than 60 specialties to be called upon in crisis. The Selective Service has further stated publicly that if Congress authorizes it, they are capable at this time of conducting a targeted draft of linguists and computer specialists.
My Republican friend further assured me that it was in fact the Democrats who had proposed the draft bills both in Congress and the Senate. It is true, a Democrat, Rep. Charles Rangel, who won the Bronze Star and Purple Heart in Korea, had sponsored a draft bill. It is also true he did this before Dubya launched his war on Iraq. And I agree with Rangel's motives. Not everyone has a rich and well-connected daddy to get them into the Texas Air National Guard.
It probably has a lot to do with the vague memories I have of having my favorite TV programs interrupted by two guys wearing American Flag lapel pins turning a lottery tumbler and reading out from the slips of paper that won.
"If you were born on January 21, 1954," they'd say to the camera, "You have 30 days to report to your local Selective Service bureau."
Or maybe it was the memories of writing to my favorite cousin every week during his two tours of duty in Vietnam. Or that his son just got back from serving a tour in Iraq even though he is a hemophiliac and couldn't get his hands on body armor in Babylon.
A couple of weeks ago President Bush went to Las Vegas and told the National Guard Conventioneers that "What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas." Susan and I were thinking as concerned mothers that what happens in Vegas and consequently in Nevada might decide the next American administrators.
Anyway, whatever the reasons a subconscious has for doing impetuous and reckless random things I said yes when Jessie asked me if I wanted to do a mother/daughter trip to Vegas. It is, after all, one of the battleground states this year. Only 366 votes kept New Mexico blue for Gore last time around and more than 5,000 new residents arrive in Clark County each month, so it seemed like a good idea at the time.
It was quixotic. It wasn't completely thought out. Susan and I abandoned the door-to-door stuff in this particular middle class neighborhood after an incident near Tashkent Street. We met up with a registered Democrat as he was getting out of his car. He looked bemused when we asked if he was planning to vote in this very important election.
"Yes," he said while taking off his jacket.
"Which candidate are you leaning toward?" Susan asks.
"I don't know," he replied shyly as he removes a massive black leather utility belt from his waist. "Who is running?"
Susan starts to talk about Kerry.
"No," he said, "I'm definitely not voting for him." It was at this point that I ceased to care who he was voting for: I was too focused on the several polished and impressive revolver handles and some flashy knives sticking out of his holsters.
And what happened at the Mission was a terrible faux pas. But just today I was reading an article in a Palm Beach newspaper (another kind of important state). The article stated that an Elvis impersonator posing for photographs on the Vegas Strip volunteered the following: "John Kerry's gotta win for President, people, you hear me. Take it from me, Elvis Presley, vote for John Kerry. Thank you very much."
I can't help but wonder if he was the one Susan and I registered that morning.
And I am proud that we did this in front of our daughters.
Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President.
–President Theodore Roosevelt
