October4

False start.

Civic Center Station in San Francisco is a sea of fluorescent spandex. I’ve lived a year in this city, this October, but am unprepared for the swarm of aquamarine and hot pink swathed twenty-somethings with peace signs painted on their cheeks. A love-in, I learn, after I’m safely ensconced in a pub with a beer in my hand. A love-in parade with loud, loud music.

I was supposed to visit Obama’s local HQ for the first time today but the parade disoriented me, and my cell phone went mysteriously dead. “You have to call people for Obama on your cell phone?” My boyfriend complains.

I order a second beer and sit with a notebook on my knee, feeling happy but a little guilty to have escaped so easily. Phone banking for a political campaign? Yergh. But then I find myself scribbling “lipstick + pig = fascism²” over and over in my notebook.

A twenty-two year old Iranian poet with beautiful eyes and teeth sits down beside me. We chat, and he tells me he has written a poem about John McCain winning the election, and dropping bombs on Iran. He ends the epic with himself and his father in a sedan driving towards New York City where they can be safe.

“Do you ever pray?” I ask, overwhelmed at the thought of being young and Iranian in America today.

“No, I’m an atheist. But I miss prayer the most.” He’s gives me a detailed list of his favorite atheist writers, all of whom I’ve now forgotten. And tells me that he can’t pretend to believe in God anymore when he doesn’t. It would be intellectually dishonest to pretend otherwise. “Why, do you—or I mean, you do?”

“For an Obama win.”

“Yeah, me too,” he laughs and then pauses, seriously. “In the sense that I’m hoping for him to win. I think Obama will bomb Iran too, but at least he will talk to Ahmenijhad first. ”

October 5

Mavericky. Feeling everything but mavericky.

Eight calls before a live person answers. Destination New Mexico. I get only as far as “I’m a volunteer for Obama’s campaign,” when he jumps in. “Actually, I’d like to see if I can convince you not to vote for Obama,” the man speaks forcefully. “You know why? Because he’ll be dangerous for the country.”

On the walls above us are paper banners hand drawn with markers. Change the world. Inclusion. Empowerment. Community. A black and white version of the Shepard Fairey “Progress” Obama poster that I like, even if it does always remind a person of the Onion headline, “Obama practices looking-off-into-future pose.”

“Can I try to convince you not to vote for him?” The man insists. “I don’t think that’s possible,” I say, “but you have a nice day, anyway.” Just began and am already sweating.

A woman sitting near me, Diane, smiles with the benign encouragement of a zen master. Only 30 names left on my list. I dial again.

Women outnumber men in the room around 4:1. “We believe that he’s the candidate for us. What’s your greatest concern about him?” says a woman at the end of the table with a “Clinton supporters for Obama” button pinned just below her left clavicle. “Oh, too many to list? Well I’m sorry to hear that. I hope you’ll change your mind before November 4.”

Las Cruces is not such an easy sale. Only four people on the first list say they will support Obama in November, and only one promises to vote early. No one seems interested in the Obama Vote for Change parade. While no one hangs up on me, two people, including the first man, are hostile toward Obama, and one man is hostile toward me for calling on a cell phone.

I wander into the snack room for comfort. There’s a table with open bags of popcorn, two kinds of cheese dip, crackers, red grapes, chocolate cookies, chocolate in pumpkin foils and candy corn. I pour myself a glass of juice and look around. If these are America's elitists, we might be in trouble. Everyone looks like they’ve picked out a really stylish outfit from the salvation army—as I do. I grew up in a Republican household in a Republican church that Jerry Falwell would have felt comfortable visiting. But since discovering my true identity after a quiz in Time Magazine when I was 17, an thanks to an inherent belief that health care should be universal and abortion an option, I feel more at home with women in the Democratic party, women less likely to wear makeup or uncomfortable shoes. And women who also, how to put it, don't have such a look of Gogol’s dead souls in their eyes as, say, Ann Coulter or flinty Cindy McCain.

I return to my seat with a second list. A guy in his thirties glances at me. “Have you done this before?” I ask.  He shakes his head. “You know it’s desperate when I’m here.”

On a wall, someone has also created a challenges list for callers, including, I’m disappointed Hillary didn’t win, and Obama is a muslim next to which someone has written, so what does Jeremiah Wright mean to you?

My second list has people outside the suburbs, in places like Turkey Trot Lane, or “50 yards from post office" and the results are more encouraging. I speak to a woman who says she lives in a village, and all are voting for Obama. “A woman downtown took the lids of sprite bottles and she put Obama’s picture in them, and made them into earrings. Now everybody’s wearing them.” Outside of Taos, a disabled woman whose address indicates that she lives in a trailer park tells me that she’s voting early. With an accent the Palins would call rouge cou she chants, "it's time for a change. It's time for a change!"

I want to reach through the phone and kiss her blessed head.

October 8

These days the radio sounds like a cruel omnipotent narrator. "One in four species is endangered." Stop. Oh stop, all-knowing impassive-voiced bearer of bad news, stop.

I bring cookies. On the challenges list someone has scribbled in a new one. Obama is a terrorist.

This time someone hangs up on me. But another woman who says she is on a respirator says that yes, she's voting early and wouldn't dream of forgetting.

Women only seem to outnumber men 2 or 3:1. Another volunteers says she spoke to a 95 year old woman (another list had ages) who told her, "I can't remember his name, but I'm voting for the black man. The black one."

I've learned to tread cautiously before giving my speech, "are you an Obama supporter?"

This time eleven enthusiastic early voters live on my list. My most interesting conversation is with a Nader supporter who tells me McCain is a proud decendent of Robert the Bruce which turns out to be bunk.

On my way out I overhear a woman who looks a little like Estelle Getty tell a younger woman, "a few phone calls a day keeps John McCain away."

I want to be hopeful. I do feel hopeful. Yet on the way home, no longer the omnipotent narrator, but an ugly fairy tale toad keeps whispering, "this sucker could go down."