The Idiot

This Morning, No 72

On Wednesday morning, I stood in the shower crying. I cry easily and often, mostly about things outside myself. I’ve mentioned it before, my pride in being part of the Openly Sobbing Community, but those tears usually surface as a reaction to some sort of joy, a witnessing of immense beauty, or being briefly and euphorically present. The tears in the shower, cordoned off by the linen curtain, were not those kinds of tears. They involuntarily started leaking out of my eyes and merging with shampoo suds while thinking about chicken wings and tater tots.

That was what Marcellus Williams, the man who was executed in Missouri on Tuesday, ate for his final meal at his request. The death penalty is barbaric, and no human or government should have the right to take the life of another person, whether that person is innocent or not. And what makes someone innocent even? And what makes innocence the end all be all? And how do we factor in, or not, the systems that led to that person being penalized for the structure of a culture, that led someone to commit a crime, in the first place? A crime that, in this specific case, there is “no forensic evidence that ties Williams to the murder.”¹

What knocked me out was the order - chicken wings and tater tots. The most convivial request. These dishes are meant to come in baskets, to be shared amongst friends, maybe at a bar with a game on in the background. This order connotes relaxation after a long work week, a dignity that Marcellus Williams had revoked from him twenty-three years ago. Through what I’ve learned about Marcellus and his connection to his spirituality, I am sure there was a certain level of peace he was enshrouded in, in his last moments. He wrote in his final statement “All praise be to Allah in every situation!!!” My friend

Noha Beshir

, in her piece below

Witness

wrote beautifully about the strength and connection to his core faith, that Williams invoked in his final statement. But I wonder, no matter how solid he was in his belief in the God of his own understanding, if it would have been nice to share those chicken wings and tater tots with a friend or two. I wonder if he was able to request a sauce with the wings, because everything is better with sauce. I wonder what that sauce would have been, or what it was. I wonder who cooked those wings and fried those tots for him. What does that feel like to know you are cooking someone’s last meal? I wonder if they knew that was what they were cooking. I wonder if the tater tots he ate were like the ones I used to eat at the VI, the bar/restaurant we would go to in college. Of course they tasted the same because they all come frozen, likely from one big tater tot overlord. Those tots have also brought me comfort in uncomfortable times - the crunchy, rough exterior giving way to salty, yielding potato mush.

Each week on this earth is a practice in benevolent disassociation. Maybe that’s the wrong way to put it. What I mean is that there is no way for me at least, to actually take in all the suffering I witness in a day. From our apartment to the Farmer’s Market, I encounter countless people who are mentally unwell, or people who smell like they haven’t been able to access a shower in weeks. I counted recently on one trip from 145^th to 14^th street four separate immigrant mother’s with children strapped to their backs selling candy bars on the train. And that was just in the car that I was on. Or the general malaise many people seem to walk around the world with. Or a few nights back walking home from work and seeing someone eating dinner in their car. I peered into the backseat and saw a pillow and blanket. Their car was their home. And this is not just part and parcel of living in a city. The news, the ongoing violence in the Middle East, the genocide, the fact that there are more guns than people in the United States. I will never get over that. I am famously optimistic, to a delusional extent, but something about the chicken wings and the tater tots broke me this week. Which I think is a good thing. We need to break. Apathy will be the death of us.

We have 36 days until the election. I’m doing one action a week for the Harris/Walz campaign. Not because I think electing Kamala Harris will deliver us into a new paradigm where this type of suffering won’t exist. More so because I know it will create an environment where we can keep attempting for something better than what we currently have. Last night I was phone banking, something I tend to enjoy mostly because I like people. I like learning what they are worried about in their lives, what is bringing them joy, what they were cooking before I called and interrupted them. I devoted an hour to it last night, and about halfway through I reached a man named Michael. Michael with an 801 area code.

“Hi, my name is Gracie Gardner, calling with the Democrats…” Before I could even get to the survey questions, who are you voting for, do you have a voting plan, Michael interrupted me and said: “You. Are. An. Idiot.” And hung up.

Whoa, Michael.

There are always some nerves doing these types of things; canvassing, phone banking, putting yourself out there. A few weekends back my mom and I were canvassing for a local race in Upstate New York. The first house we went to had a Halloween skeleton outside it, sitting on an Adirondack chair, with its middle fingers upturned and a no trespassing sign. We decided to skip that one. You can take hints, albeit silently judgmental certainly, from a person’s home. Are the curtains drawn? Is there anything that makes this place feel welcoming? Like a literal welcome mat, a tended to flower box, or embarrassing but cheerful seasonal tchotchkes. You ready yourself in some way by taking cues from the environment. And if you are not meant to be there, you can also read that in body language very quickly. Mostly though, once you are a human being standing in front of another human being, more often than not, a dynamic of kindness and reciprocity can be cultivated. At least that’s been my experience most of the time. I was once run out of a town in Ohio while canvassing for Obama by an armed man - a story for another time.

The anonymity of a phone call makes it so that there are very little repercussions, in fact none, since you can just hang up before someone can respond. Other than this Substack which you have to opt into to read, I have very little reach online, so I don’t experience anonymous hatred, or close-range cruelty ever really. So, it was a bit shocking to hear someone call me an idiot, and with some real venom behind it. It doesn’t happen every day. Though it was clear this man was wounded and cowardly, it still stung.

The next person I called was Melissa. When I saw her name pop up on the Dialer software, I was a relieved. A woman, I thought, would likely be more kind. If we got talking, I could maybe even share with her what had just happened to expel some of the energy out of me. The ding of the dialer tone meant she had answered, so I began my spiel (intentionally attempting to sound unrehearsed): “Hi, It’s Gracie, calling on behalf of the Harris/Walz campaign. Do you have a minute to chat tonight about your voting plan?” To which she said, “Not if you’re a Democrat I don’t” and hung up.

I am a lot of things, one of which happens to be a democrat. She employed the word democrat like a curse word, minimizing me as only that. The tone was so demeaning. It silenced me. Not like she was waiting for me to say anything back.  

I sat there in the solitude of our living room, feeling slightly diminished. Without even opening the door to our apartment, the sanctuary of our home had been invaded by a swell of negativity, and it was only 6:35pm. I had committed to doing this until 7pm. I paused the calls and sat there. Rather than immediately attempt to make myself feel better, I closed my eyes and let myself really feel how bad those calls had made me feel (and the countless others who had simply just hung up on me immediately, which I don’t necessarily blame them for). Particularly the venomous, violent tone that the man used to call me an idiot. I let it wash over me until it dissipated, which took about ninety seconds.

I carried on for twenty-five slightly unpleasant minutes and stopped calling right at 7pm. That was all I could handle for the evening. I closed my computer, lit candles and started cooking us pasta. I danced around a little and asked the negative energy to make its way out, because I’m that girl. Then I stood in the center of our living room and at the center of my little life and felt so much gratitude that there is no world in which I would call a stranger on the phone an idiot. I felt for this man and this woman too who had so much pent-up anger in them, that they would quickly spew it on to a stranger on the phone. It really is cowardly, but I understand why. It is not easy to exist right now, most people feel unsupported and unsafe. The delicate balance of our ecosystem is threatened and shifting beneath our feet. It was something to feel though, in those split seconds on the phone with them, how quickly they made me feel small. Their anger did feel overpowering to me at first. But once I let it in, I realized that the energy they thrust upon me, was theirs, not mine. It felt cheap, like fast food. Like they had gotten their hit of adrenaline by lashing out, but it would sustain nothing, it would give life to nothing, other than more of the same of that energy or exhaustion.

I wonder if these people know that they too, are going to die, and that is no way to live. I wonder if these people know that their fate is my fate, and I want the best for them. I wonder what these people like to read, if they have the same breakfast every day, or if they also like shitty reality TV dating shows. I wonder if these people, like me are excited that it is soup season again. I wonder if these people have enough money this month to pay their bills. I wonder if these people have so much money that they are concerned about tax cuts to the wealthy. I wonder how that man got to where he is in life, to call me, a person who he knows nothing about, an idiot. I wonder how we got here as a country. I wonder when the leaves on the tree outside our window will turn fully yellow. I wonder what will happen in November. I wonder if the tree will have dropped its leaves by election day. I wonder if I took too much Advil this week. I wonder what my grandmother would think about our cat, it would be her 100^th birthday today, and she loved her cat Cookie. I wonder if this is the last week of tomatoes at the market. I wonder where we’ll be this time next year. I wonder. I’m not sure. Who knows.

Dispatched from the desk of Gracie Gardner

1. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-09-29/marcellus-williams-death-penalty-execution-murder-conviction-robin-abcarian