I am the Proletariat

Sitting at my laptop I’m surrounded by several pairs of knitting needles, yarn, buttons, ribbon, beer, dark chocolate with hazelnuts, and a pair of oft-worn silicone bra inserts; it’s a fair collage of my current state. I bought the inserts for an especially horrid bridesmaid dress, that even with modest alteration I couldn’t fill out, and at the prompting of friends have made them a regular part of my civilian persona. I’ll wear them tomorrow when I make the drive to Santa Barbara to meet my Senator from Illinois. He’s having a rally. I’ve voted for him a couple of times, bought his book but never read it, and am excited to see him in the flesh even though I’m not convinced he should be my president. My traveling companions are two of the most unlikely women I could think of -- one is a disaffected misanthrope who, now that she is out of the Navy, works in the tool rental room at Home Depot where she’s having problems because the men who work there think her mouth is a little too foul. And then there’s her partner in crime -- a loud, alcoholic, and sexually promiscuous woman who wears full makeup, including a heavy helping of bronzer, to work every day. Unlike a casting call, full makeup is suspect in a construction battalion. But they’re both excited to go, and that excites me, because I deeply wish that more people were involved in the political process.

My husband has no faith in the proletariat, a view he shares with most of our founding fathers, men who were astonishing minds, and so I curb my reservation when he rattles off his diatribe on inequality (to be fair, he calls it realism). He wishes only the intelligentsia were allowed to vote and waxes poetic for a philosopher king. I suspect that owning a pair of oft-worn silicone bra inserts might exclude a woman from the intelligentsia. It’s just a hunch.

Because I believe that being human makes us equal, and because I know that drawing an honest line around bra inserts, or anything else, is impossible, I want every eligible person in this country to vote.

Tomorrow should be fun: good weather, great city, a young and handsome presidential candidate, and the company of two naturally busty women who have never voted.