OBAMA WON

Eight hours ago when I voted and it was still light out, I felt gloom and apprehension. Despite what Obama supporters here in NYC said about being ahead in the polls, I wasn't going to be disappointed when McCain somehow won. I pictured the apocalyptic doom and riots in the streets when McCain was declared winner due to voting fuck-ups and schemes that skewed votes (another Florida) and I would stand above them all, saying well I knew it would happen. When I went to my polling station and was ready to cast my ballot (oddly at 3:30pm I went right in. I know some people waited hours to vote), the attendant who pulled the curtain discovered that the person who voted right before me had not completed the process. In NY that means pulling the red lever to the right, throwing the switches for the ballot, then pulling the lever to the left. Their vote then did not count. That's when I thought, shit, I could have voted twice. I imagined sniffing out extra opportunities to vote, like when you scan pay phones and video poker machines for coins in the slot return. The sneaky, shifty way with hands hitched in pockets you look for extra money, because fuck, it's there, shifty and there for someone so why not you. Like America. Like I'm not accustomed to going with the grain. To celebrating with an entire city, state, country. And yet by 9pm, it took that long, but I could see that in fact, Obama was going to win and we would not be fucked this time. Millions of us on the left suddenly being right, rights upheld, righteous action, right on!

For one evening and maybe one day, I can believe in Americans. This is a miracle.