The classroom evoked in me the image of an upside-down ice cream cone sliced neatly down the middle. A middle-age scoop of female professor stood at the pinnacle. Her short-cropped pink hair, puffy like strawberry ice cream on top, bounced as she gestured enthusiastically. Her name was Olivia White, Miss Olivia White. She sported a voluminous dress that seemed as though she had slaughtered a tent to assemble it. I supposed it didn’t matter what she wore as there was no one at home to comment on her fashion ability but her cat Daisy whom she had proudly told the class she had named after Daisy from Great Gatsby and was her, and I quote, “beautiful little fool.” Desks, sprinkled with students as colorful as their professor, climbed and spread out from her position on the floor up to two large doors.
“In Twelfth Night, Malvolio seeks to win Lady Olivia’s heart by wearing yellow stockings cross-gartered due to the influence of a certain letter penned by one of Olivia’s servants. What is the significance of this? Ben,” Miss White asked.
I pulled my shoulder length blonde hair into a ponytail at the nape of my neck before reaching into the pocket of my white button-down shirt, neatly tucked into black dress pants, and fumbling out a battered copy of Twelfth Night that had obviously seen more than one owner. That hair had been my sole act of defiance against my conservative upbringing prior to getting away for college. My next act of defiance would shake the foundations of the nation. This included who I was about to vote for.
I raised my hand stretching to get the kinks out of my back. My pewter bracelet, featuring the greatest revolutionaries of history from Karl Marx to Che Guevara, fell from my wrist to nearly halfway down my forearm. We had had them commissioned by a local artist together, Maria, Toby, and I, as a pact of friendship. Maria was the sassy Latino woman who always knew how to act in this day and age. Toby or Tobias was one of the few African Americans on campus to constantly remind me of my privilege. They were my teachers. Their friendship was a possibility that I could change myself. The bracelet remained my prize possession, proof I belonged in their club, proof of the birth of a multicultural society in which everyone had a say. Miss White clucked at me.
“Cross-gartering means to wear garters crossed across the leg to help hold up the stocking. Malvolio is a Puritan and sporting such a gaudy color as yellow—” I said.
“He wanted to fit in the with upper crust, so he wore something stupid and ended up looking like an idiot,” Maria said. She sat down in the seat next to mine, dropping her books onto the floor. Her pewter bracelet, a perfect copy of my own, hit the desk with a loud clink, threatening to dislodge one of the revolutionaries’ heads from its mooring.
She had a habit of being late for class and interrupting what always appeared to be the male students. I didn’t mind as I understood her reasons. It was the woman’s time to talk. Did I believe that? I tried to. Maria informed me, and I tried to educate myself. That was the purpose of our friendship, for me at least, cross-cultural and gender education. She only treated me badly when I did something wrong after all. Was I using her for her knowledge? Yes. But only to become a better person than my parents and especially my good for nothing uneducated brother.
“Please raise your hand before you speak, Maria. I’m not saying this to be mean, but I want to make sure everyone, including our normally quieter students, gets a chance to talk. Go ahead and finish Ben.”
“Oh, I’m done,” I said.
“Poor Malvolio. He is the butt of the joke in the whole play. Well, no one feels bad for the Puritans, do they?” Miss White asked.
The whole class but myself laughed. The way my family lived left them nearly as bad as Puritans. I recalled the crosses that covered our little house that my family of three generations, myself, my brother, my mother, and my grandmother, shared. Face red, I looked around, seeking commiseration and finding none, laughed along with the rest.
Miss White glanced at the clock behind her. “We will pick this up next time. You’re dismissed. Don’t forget to vote. Today is election day. Polling hours…”
I tucked my copy of Twelfth Night and pen back in my shirt pocket and climbed up to the entrance doors. I opened a door and held it open for Maria, but she batted my arm aside and took her place at the door to hold it for the other students. I held my arm up in the air awkwardly. I forgot. It wasn’t my place to do anything for a woman. These old habits from my upbringing, that I sought to excise, kept cropping up no matter how I tried to educate myself out of my ignorance. My ignorance overwhelmed me at times. Maria helped me with her words and gestures. She was my ever patient informant.
Maria waved the lagging Miss White through before letting the door shut. I slowly lowered my arm, balling my hand into a fist, and followed Maria as she turned to go. I was angry. I shouldn’t be angry at so simple a thing, but I was. I was ever the student, never the teacher. Didn’t I have things to teach too? Maria was in a position of power above me because I allowed it. These were the feelings I needed to get into check, check my privilege. I failed every time. Was it a deeper flaw than my upbringing, something coded into my DNA, my original sin of race and gender? Or were these feelings valid? I shuddered to think that I would never belong in this brave new world. My brother was alone in the world. I didn’t want to end up like him.
Chaos flooded the hall. On one side, left, stood the supporters of Mr. Blue Tie, making themselves known with posters of their man, a handsome fellow that always wore a blue tie to distinguish himself from his opponent. On the right, stood the supporters of Mr. Red Tie, also handsome with a winning smile. Other than the color of their ties, I couldn’t tell them apart as they didn’t have any distinguishing features. They were both blandly perfect.
I caught sight of a familiar figure making his way through the crowd, giving the finger to Mr. Red Tie’s supporters as he passed. An even more battered copy of Twelfth Night in his hands, at twenty-six, Toby was nearly bald wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt that read, “Utopia for all.” This was Mr. Blue Tie’s slogan. Toby had been in the army before coming to college to learn to hate all the military complex stood for. The country had already gotten all it wanted out of him, squeezed him dry. He often tried to refill himself with alcohol. It didn’t work.
“We are going to pick up the supplies,” Toby said.
“Sounds stupendous. I will—” I said.
“You will wait outside in the hall,” Maria said. I let Maria take the lead. The trio walked down the hall.
A phone rang. The noise emanated from the same pocket containing my copy of Twelfth Night.
“I have to take this,” I said.
“You sure?” Toby asked.
I hesitated a moment before saying, “Yes.”
“We want to catch the next bus. If we miss it, this will be a mark against you, Ben.”
Toby and Maria followed a throng of students into a room at the end of the hall decorated with headshots of various revolutionaries from history. I had accidentally wandered into that room on my first day of classes thinking I could better educate myself on various aspects of revolution and multiculturalism. I had an interest in the subjects. I wanted to be a progressive person not a backward conservative, and in order to progress, I believed that revolution was necessary. Maria had blocked my path. She informed me that it was a safe space for minorities on campus, and I had inadvertently created an unsafe environment by my presence. I might not have gotten into that room, but I waited there every day for Toby and Maria after that thinking I could get them to educate me on the etiquette of a non-minority on campus. They happily did so. The gist of it was I had to follow them not lead. They informed; I listened. Being a good listener was the most important thing I had learned. I didn’t think this was a bad thing, but I still wanted more. I shouldn’t, but I did.
I stood looking at that room, phone ringing in my hand. The room’s contents forever closed to me. I entered the bathroom before hitting the green button on my phone.
“Jack, I fail to see the importance of this constant interference. I don’t have time,” I said.
“Oh, little brother. You will have to make time. Mom says you didn’t come Sunday,” Jack said.
“I cannot be expected to take Mother to church every Sunday. I have homework and… other responsibilities here. I’m learning so much even from the students.” On the stall door I read a conversation scribbled hastily in permanent marker between supporters of Mr. Blue Tie and Mr. Red Tie. I made out, “Utopia for all” and “Everyone has their own idea of Utopia, so there will never be a single one fit for everyone. One size does not fit all.” The reds spouted such nonsense. Everyone could be made to cooperate eventually. I believed human differences ultimately very small, insignificant.
“I wonder what you are learning if it makes you break your promises. You promised me you’d catch a bus home on the weekend. That was our deal. I help you pay for school, and you come home on the weekends.”
“I loathe being stuck in the middle of nowhere with only you and your people for company. They lack imagination. They lack big ideas. It’s so stifling. It’s like being put back into a box after I’ve broken free. Not to mention who you and mom are voting for. It is an embarrassment. If my peers knew the kind of people I associated with, I’d be a pariah. The reds don’t have any redeeming qualities.”
“The reds tell the harsh truth of things while the blues always lie. Friends that abandon you for your beliefs are not friends. You should be able to see things from multiple perspectives little brother.” The conversation was an old one. Ben didn’t know how to get Jack to see his side. Did Jack want him to be a complete pariah to the majority of the students in the school? The blues outnumbered the reds generally. Of course, Jack was a loner, so he didn’t care.
“Aren’t you done yet?” Toby asked. I shook. Had he heard anything? I hung up and put the ringer on silent before tucking away my phone and following Toby out into the hall. “Thought you fell in. Let’s go. The bus won’t wait.” I breathed a sigh of relief. My secret was safe.
The walk to the bus consisted of more jabs between the red and blue teams on campus. Thankfully, no major fights broke out. The bus ride took place in comfortable silence. The polling place came up on our right, a small tan building that didn’t seem like it could house our small group let alone the entire county.
The sun shone intermittently, slipping behind scattered gray clouds. I stopped as Maria did, falling behind the crowd of twenty students. I watched Toby shake himself into a black trench coat, covering up the campaign slogan on his shirt. Maria ran ahead and pulled open the door of the polling place to let their small crowd through.
I yanked the curtain of red, white, and blue shut behind me. Blessed with my own small space, my secret space, I sighed. A ballot and a ball point pen rested on a blue table. I picked up the pen, turning over the ballot. Eagerly, I filled in Mr. Blue Tie’s section.
The pen slipped, fine ball point going right into the blue vein on my right wrist. Blood seeped out, smearing on the voting form. I ripped off a piece of my shirt and bound the wound, trying in vain to clean the blood off my ballot. Covering the red spot with my hand, I left the booth and slipped my ballot into the receptacle with the others.
* * *
A bell jangled lightly as I stumbled out of the doorway of a corner street bar to step on a piece pumpkin. More six-day-old Halloween decorations rotted underneath the window behind me. Toby followed closely after, grabbing my arm to steady me.
“Is this the first time you’ve had a drink?” Toby asked. “You need to keep it together. We have a lot of stops to make today if we want to get our man elected.”
“Hmm? No! Well… maybe.” I pulled my arm free and stumbled away from him, Twelfth Night tumbling out of my shirt pocket.
I bent to pick it up, but Toby kicked it out of my reach.
“I have an idea. Old authors are out of style. The canon should be changed.” Toby threw his copy of Twelfth Night to join mine on the ground. My classmates in the crowd of students followed suit.
The motley group of college students then looked at me, still bent over as if to pick up my copy, expectantly. Boxes of assorted costuming gear in their hands, they watched. I wilted and straightened. Everyone clapped then turned, myself forgotten, to climb into the waiting bus.
“Here,” Toby said. He untucked my shirt and handed me a black trench coat which I quickly slipped on. “There. Much better. Let’s go. Time for the second stop of the day.”
I followed, pausing with one foot on the step to look back at the pile of books, mine alone off to the right, close to a bench. A light rain misted down, and I pulled myself into the bus.
* * *
The acoustic guitar twanged a mournful note as the musician finished his song. He hopped off the stool, taking a deep bow as the crowd clapped. Men in blue rushed the stool off the stage, replacing it with a podium. Mr. Blue Tie walked up the ramp, carefully, so his leather soled shoes wouldn’t slip and adjusted the microphone attached to the podium. The teleprompter clicked as it turned on.
“Utopia for all,” Mr. Blue Tie said. At the back of the room, a chorus of, “boos” drown out his next words. A crowd of people in red waved signs with the word, “Utopia” crossed off in red. I shook my head. I stood with a crowd of blue shirts close to the podium. Mr. Blue Tie turned up the microphone and continued his speech. “Change is a necessity in our multicultural society—”
“He is a great orator, isn’t he?” I asked, turning to face the man next to me, dressed all in bright yellow he looked as though the missing sun outside had been trapped indoors by human hands. He had on a name tag with only one word printed in black marker, “Jack.” I stared at the nametag. He wasn’t my brother. My brother was not a red haired, middle-aged man dressed all in yellow like the sun. However, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was some resemblance.
“Yeah, I just came for the concert,” the man in yellow, the other Jack, said.
“Don’t you want to listen to his rhetoric?”
“Not particularly.”
“I’m an English student, so his rhetoric fascinates me.”
“All these politicians say the same things just in different ways. They are great speakers alright. They can gab with the best of them. Assuming they have others writing their speeches.”
“No. They don’t. They can’t. That’s mighty ignorant of you!”
“Ignorant? Well, boy, you little English majors can look forward to getting a job doing so. Let me go.” I looked down. I was gripping the man’s sleeve so tightly it looked about to rip off. I let go.
“Sorry.”
The man in yellow, the other Jack, walked away. I looked around. I stood alone. A man in a red shirt grabbed me and pushed me toward a bathroom.
“Here. Put this on,” the man in red said. He handed me a silk pink dress. “And take your hair down.”
“I’m not with—” I said.
I hesitated, looking desperately around for anyone in blue, but I saw nothing but a sea of red. I had been about to say, “you” but stopped. Men and women all in red looked at me. I feared to start a fight. I was not capable in that department. Thankfully, I wasn’t dressed in blue. They couldn’t know who I voted for.
I shook, took the dress, and let down my hair. I stayed in the bathroom and minutes passed. I peeked out the door. Other unlucky sods came my way, change of clothes in hand, and I shut the bathroom door and hurried back into a stall. They waited for me and the others like unmoving sentinels. I undressed, setting folded white shirt and black pants onto the toilet seat. The dress felt cold against my skin. I kept the trench coat, dropping my phone into one of its small pockets. I guessed it didn’t matter which group I was with as the reds were planning on doing the same thing we were. I was going to get my man elected.
“Here. For the road,” the man in red said. He handed me a mystery pill. I stared at the pill. The crowd in red stared at me. Maria and Toby had abandoned me. I had abandoned my brother and mother. What had I abandoned them for? This? Was this the important thing I had to do? I had had enough. In an act of defiance, I threw the pill to the ground. The man in red picked it up, and another grabbed me from behind. He forced my teeth open with his finger and shoved the pill in before dumping water down my throat from a water bottle. I tried to hit the man holding me, but my swing went wide. I landed face first on the ground as he let go. The sound of laughter surrounded me on all sides. I croaked a plea for security, but no one came to my aid. They pulled me up and dragged me to a green bus with gum encrusted seats.
Gray clouds covered the whole sky. Rain poured. Thunder roared. I nearly hit the seat in front of me as the bus careened into a parking lot at yet another polling place. The drug, whatever it was, calmed me yet seemed to speed up time. A man in red grabbed me roughly and pulled off my trench coat, sending me headfirst into the rain in a dress without protection. He thrust a driver’s license into my hand. It pictured a young blonde girl. I considered calling for security again, but I feared I would be caught for voter fraud.
Dirt encrusted the booth. The privacy screen hung limply, red, white, and blue, ripped right down the middle. I tried to fill in the circle for Mr. Blue Tie with black ink, but ink flowed outside the circle.
* * *
Red and blue lights danced across the stage. But for those lights, blackness engulfed the room. The noise of the drums beat out that of the thunder outside. Fire shot out from the stage. Someone or something growled. I tried to run, dress not allowing a full running stride. I ripped it in two and ran. It appeared to my imagination as if some black fire breathing dragon chased me down the length of the concert hall.
All sound ceased. The lights above me winked on. Smoke made the light seem dimmer than it really was, yet I winced, covering my eyes. They watered. The dragon disappeared. A single microphone and podium, carried by men in red, made their way out onto the stage. Mr. Red Tie came out. Concert over, most of the crowd disbursed before Mr. Red Tie could utter a single word. The only sound I could hear was that of the teleprompter clicking.
A man in blue, no one I recognized, came up to me, handing me a pile of clothes, yellow stockings peeking out of a mustard yellow dress. Another man in blue handed me a pill. As the crowd grew around me, I feared reprisal despite being on their side politically, so I took the pill and the dress.
* * *
Throngs of people in red and blue crowded the little bar I had been at earlier with Toby and Maria. A fight broke out between a man in blue and a woman in red. I raised my hand, waving away the men in red and blue pressing drinks on me. I sagged, rubbing my face with my hands. My head throbbed. The world still blurred like some impressionistic painting, but it was slowly coming back into focus.
I stared at the bartender. A yellow shirt and pants came into focus. It was the same man in yellow from Mr. Blue Tie’s concert. What was his name? Jack, Jack was his name. He had lost the nametag. He looked at me, a light of recognition lighting up his eyes.
“Fancy meeting you here. You look a little worse for wear. What happened?” the man in yellow, the other Jack asked.
“I was pursued by a fire breathing dragon,” I growled.
“A what now? Do you need the police?” He leaned over the bar to look at my wet dress.
“Look, I’m sorry about before. I shouldn’t have said that to you.”
“Water under the bridge.”
“I mean it.”
The television changed channels back and forth from Mr. Blue Tie to Mr. Red Tie. Jack looked up at the screen and frowned.
“You know. Why doesn’t public high school teach rhetoric?” the other Jack asked.
“Some do,” I said.
“Mine didn’t. And what about philosophy? Or the classics in Greek and Latin? This is the basis for the rational secular world, but so little is taught.”
“That was the Western world. It is the global world now. There isn’t any point in pushing Greek over say Japanese.”
“Yet, I’m nothing like these politicians. To be like them. To speak like them. It isn’t taught. It’s in the small things, the nuance. Differences in culture are rarely taught. Even small differences between say rural and city culture make a big difference in communication ability.”
“There is no rural culture. It’s an empty no man’s land. Devoid of sophisticated learned culture. They have all been left behind. Ha! Left behind indeed like something out their precious gospel. Trust me I know from personal experience.”
“There is a culture there. You have to change yourself to fit into a culture. Yes, even you. Is that insincere or smart? These politicians do it all the time. Do you lose sight of your individual self and your roots by doing this?”
“My roots are shallow. I loathe it. I want to change my self to be more cultured, more worldly not less.” A beer sat half a foot from my hand. I reached for it. Growling, I knocked it over. Drowning my sorrows in drugs and alcohol had led me here. It wouldn’t do to continue.
“Yet it isn’t taught.” The other jack calmly wiped up the spilled beer with an old, tattered rag.
“It could be.”
“You’d need to teach all sides including those that are detestable. Understanding multiple perspectives and comparing and contrasting them all is key. This is just my opinion of course.”
“Multiple perspectives… you sound like my—” I opened my eyes wide. I stared at the man in yellow, the other Jack. I backed up off the bar stool and ran out the door. I had discovered their similarity. It was in their ideas.
Yellow stockings falling down, I stumbled out of the bar, stepping on rotten pieces of pumpkin before landing face first in a puddle. I heard from the bar behind me that Mr. Blue Tie had won. The people in blue cheered while the people in red booed. The man in yellow, the other Jack, sighed. I lifted my head from the puddle to get a breath and to look at the now soggy pile of Twelfth Night copies lying right where they were left so long ago. I reached for one separated from the pack, smaller than the others, an older edition. I opened it to the first page with a message carefully scrawled in black ink, “To my little brother. You are the light of the world. I know you’re going to go farther than any of us! Good luck.”
“I don’t want to be alone,” I said.
The mist and fog retreating from my eyes, I sat up, cradling the book in my right hand, blue veins popping, visible in the cold air. Red blood visible through the makeshift bandage, I grabbed my knees and curled into a ball to await the next bus as a few stragglers from Mr. Blue Tie’s campaign passed, holding signs emblazoned with one word, “Utopia.” Toby and Maria followed the crowd. I got up and took a step forward but stopped mid-stride before tucking the book into the pocket of my mustard yellow dress.
Multiple perspectives, eh? Perhaps I could be both conservative and revolutionary in my own way. It sounded moronic as they were opposites. But I was a fool. I laughed out loud. A few stragglers looked at me strangely. They probably thought I was mad. Perhaps, I was mad. It was a mad world. Perhaps there were more and deeper differences between people that could not ever be resolved. I could not follow Maria and Toby. They had their own paths, their own stories. The only one I could write was my own, and it wouldn’t be what anyone expected. I walked away alone, revolutionary bracelet clinking softly as I nearly marched into the night, not sure of my destination, arms swinging wildly.
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