ELECTION FRIGHT

A city on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

- Rachel Handler

IT WAS THE WEEK BEFORE the election in New York City, and the vibes were acrid. It hadn't rained in 32 days. There was a fascist rally at Madison Square Garden mere weeks before Mariah Carey's annual Christmas show. Everyone was acting more insane than usual and seemed to be ambiently mad at one another; even Zoë Kravitz and Channing Tatum folded under the pressure, abruptly breaking up. On the subway, a man told me unprompted that my shoes (normal boots) were indicative of the failings of women in general. It's true that all American elections are unhappy in their own way, but this one has felt particularly miserable, what with the naked and gleeful encroaching authoritarianism, the open threats of postelection violence, the ongoing American-backed war on Gaza, the lack of a coherent or even mutually agreed-upon reality, and Joe Biden chomping on the leg of a baby dressed as a chicken.

Personally, I had been unintentionally dissociated for months, trapped in a deep fog that allowed me to avoid all of my feelings and accidentally wander into traffic sometimes, which is a maladaptive coping mechanism I picked up as a child, not to brag. I knew that this was not the most healthy or civically responsible way to handle the otherwise stifling existential doom that lay over the country like a thick blanket as we all waited to see whether the stupidest version of autocracy would come to pass (again). I wondered how other New Yorkers were coping. What were they doing to stave off not only totalitarianism but also their own death drive? I decided to spend the final days before November 5 asking New Yorkers about their private anxieties and accordant strategies, running around the city After Hours style and calling up anyone who would talk to me, which turned out to be a truly random sampling as nobody actually liked talking about this.