Why We Fight Trump, Pt. I

Brass tacks. The dust of neoliberalism.

Psyched for my 401k. The jacket cost $410.

In 2003, I excitedly approached Mike Albo on our stoop in Brooklyn. Mike is my forever friend, collaborator, and coauthor. We met in 1988, when we were 18, and in 2003 we’d been platonic roommates in Brooklyn for ages. My purpose was to tell him how excited I was to be getting married and starting work at the New York Times.

My Times benefits, I told him, would cover both me and my husband!

I went on: When I was ready to have my first child, I would have built up some vacation time I could use to extend my maternity leave.

Then when I had my second child, like clockwork, I would also have more vacation days. With my excellent newspaper-guild healthcare, I went on, I’d be able to spend time…and by then my husband would have a job with benefits…and my 401k…and—

I really was excited.

Mike is an unreconstructed New York City artist who would live on ramen and box wine and share a squat with raccoons if it meant he could still write Jean Genet sex-odyssey novels and love poems to Stormin’ Norman Schwartzkopf. He listened with a darkening curiosity as I spoke of the full bourgeois fantasia with actual zeal.

“I’ll retire in my 60s! Then, when I can withdraw my retirement money without penalty, maybe we’ll even be able to afford a condo in the country somewhere!”

“Wow,” he said flatly. He looked closely into my complexion as if trying to find a trace of the weird problem-drinking poet I had once been in college.

“Dare to dream,” he said.