Ben and I late Saturday night before going out to the Mayan

We got together at Lam's place after work on Election Night for Chinese food, in a mood of cautious optimism tinged with anxiety. Already, Ohio and Florida returns showed Bush a couple of percentage points ahead. But Democratic officials sounded optimistic, claiming that the heavily Democratic areas hadn't been counted yet, and that Pennsylvania was already in the bag. But as we finished our food, and drifted into the living room, we all began to get more and more nervous. And by nine-thirty, at a time when we'd all hoped to be going over to the Abbey to celebrate, it began to be more and more clear that there would likely bo nothing to celebrate.

By the time Ben and I got home, the news was more and more certain, and a feeling of complete, flat despondency came over me. Nothing in the public realm had ever left me feeling this way, except for the aftermath of 9/11. And meaning no disrespect to those who lost friends and relatives on that day, in my view, the coming of a second Bush term is much more damaging to America than 9/11. It's the worst disaster of the century, in my view. It will leave us, in four years, with a huge debt, a shattered welfare state, a hostile Muslim world, alienated allies, a corrupted environment, further erosions of civil rights, a furiously conservative Supreme Court, and, perhaps worst, a country with a huge cultural gulf between the red states, and the blue.

It's that last point that scares me the most. It seems inconceivable how anybody could vote for Bush with their full conscience active. How can people fail to see that his entire administration has the only domestic goal of making rich people richer and destroying government? How can people not see that Bush conceals this caustic agenda behind a smoke-screen of holier-than-thou fake morality? My complete inability to understand how more than 50% of Americans cannot see this, makes me realize how very different the two Americas are: that there's a divide that cannot be healed. So I take it very personally that Bush was voted back into office: it's a personal rejection of my ideals, my way of seeing public life, my values. And that's what left me feeling not only sad and depressed, but also marginalized and sick, and worried about living in a country whose majority opinion is so alien to mine.

I didn't feel, right then, that I'd be able to feel anything but those feelings for quite a while. But when I got home, the dogs were so glad to see us, and were dancing around in the funniest way, that I broke out in laughter. And although I nonetheless went to bed with Ben feeling still depressed, I'm realizing that I can live with the knowledge of the coming four years.

Yesterday morning, still both feeling rather blue, we packed and took off to the airport for our five day trip to Washington D.C. Ben was presenting an NIH Study Section, and I was coming along for a free ride. Over the weekend we'll stay with my ex boyfriend, Shaun. Right now I'm working in the Starbucks just next to the Results Gym, on U street, not too far from Dupont Circle. There's plenty of color still left in the leaves, so it looks like we'll see some pretty Fall scenery while we're here; that is assuming that it stops raining first. I'm looking forward to Ben and Shaun, the only two guys I've ever loved, meeting each other over dinner tonight, and then we'll all go to the Green Lantern, where, on Thursday nights, you get free drinks if you take your shirt off. Should be a fun night, and boy, we need some fun right now.