At Aetna in Middletown, Connecticut, they had cake for everyone’s birthday and every day was someone’s birthday. A bigass building in a maze of parking lots and looping drives off Interstate 91. Thousands of employees. Of course it was someone’s birthday. There was a fucking cake shop right outside the cafeteria for the express purpose of selling cakes to people in order to celebrate their coworkers’ birthdays. The manager would go down there, maybe an executive assistant. Order up a chocolate or vanilla cake and pick a color frosting. Personalize it please. Then at some point the work team would gather in one of the very many conference rooms and declare surprise to the birthday boy or girl, here’s your fucking cake, look at this beautiful cake. I can’t believe you got me a cake! Then we’d each get a slice on a wobbly Dixie plate and plastic-fork the mealy sponge and too-sweet vanilla creme into our unhungry gullets, everyone, everyone on the work team, even temps like me. Every single fucking day. Cake. Like it or not. You could not refuse the cake. To say no would be an affront to the celebrated one of course, but even worse to everybody else, all who dutifully choked down a wedge of angel food at ten fifteen in the morning on a Tuesday. It’d be a bigger violation of the place itself, not just this corporation that benevolently made this space within which we may toil and magically deposited funds into our banks on a semimonthly basis but the society, the structure, the institution, America in the fullness of reality and dreams. We were the army of  the nauseated, the reluctantly obese. On the verge of ecstasy and diabetes.

Late at night while washing dishes I had an insight that the Grateful Dead’s peak years of cultural influence were not the ‘60s but the ‘80s.

When I got into the Dead I thought I was late to the party. The ‘60s had happened, the ‘70s too. Jerry fat and gray. I wasn’t around for the Acid Tests, the Be-In. The Fillmore, the Carousel, the Avalon. What could it have been like to go to a concert on a Tuesday night, get dosed by Bear and wind up naked in the park, not lost and despairing but with a dozen kindred souls, all laughing ecstatically, scrutinizing the straight world as it awoke to go to work and not giving a fuck except about the universe? This happened, I know. But not to me.

Shows seemed to occur on the fly yet were promoted—and so memorialized—by gloriously psychedelic posters. Cost a buck to get in, maybe five or maybe nothing. For years this band had played in parks, on the street, on campuses, all the while revolution in the air. I know—I saw the pictures in the books. How I wished I was there. All the clothes were cooler. The hair. Everything was happening and nothing was predictable. You could probably go right up there and sit on that stage if you wanted, by the tangle of cables and the speakers with the tie-dye grilles.

When their audience got bigger the Dead responded in kind: a sound system three stories tall, shows that lasted hours and hours, long weird Dark Stars. Egypt on a lark. I missed all that, too. Now the band seemed diminished, constrained; endlessly touring the hockey arenas of the United States, subject to regulations as to when to stop. Set lists, though still varied and unique, had acquired a creeping formality: some songs were openers, some closers; there were first-set songs and second-set songs and everybody knew the encores. The weirdest music all tidied up and filed away in the middle of the second set. There were tendencies for certain sequences. Tendencies for sequences of sequences. Ronald Reagan was president; nothing was happening and everything was predictable.

I got it on good authority that Jerry was a junkie and I thought, my God. The darkness of it. The coldness. In my naive head all filled with flowers it seemed like a betrayal.

But the music was still there. Jerry bent at the neck, playing furious triplets in dorian mode. The drummers never hitting anything at once. Or on the one. Phil. There was a careening, dangerous quality to the music—dangerous in the sense of something big that’s falling over—that could be quite compelling if you were so inclined. And quite not if not, which kind of proves the point. Turns out the formality provided a context, a foil. The deviations, the surprises, they meant more than mere chaos ever could.

In fact the Dead were never more powerful and influential. They reached many, many more people than they had before. If you were a kid in Pittsburgh, or St. Louis, or Santa Fe, you went to the Dead show when it came to town. Like it or not. There weren’t a lot of kicks to be had in this country in 1983. No Instagram and nothing on TV. If you wanted to do anything interesting you’d better see the Grateful Dead.

It only took a few influential stoners to go at first, then next time ‘round there’d be a horde: younger siblings, someone’s preppy girlfriend and all her friends, jocks who got drunk in the parking lot. And this cycle of influence was a machine: for years the band played up and down the East Coast every spring and fall, through the middle of the country every summer and on the West Coast all the other time. It would be difficult to not go to a Grateful Dead concert.

And everyone took acid. Didn’t matter if they liked the band or not. Many did, but for sure many didn’t. I remember the scene at the Springfield Civic Center in the spring of ‘86. I went with my Deadhead friend Bill like always but there were lots of others from our school. Being a devotee I hoped pridefully that they’d get it, that their minds would be blown by the music. Of course they didn’t give a fuck—except maybe one or two that did. There was always the one or two. But most of them were there because it was there, man. I recall watching a friend, a popular kid whose tastes ran toward the Hooters and Crowded House. He roamed past circles of dancing hippies, bemused, while his best friend sat nearby, cradling his LSD-exploded head between his knees. What the fuck were they doing there? Wrong question. How the fuck could they not be there?

The Dead in fact instilled in the American adolescent a reflex for taking psychedelic drugs and going to the coliseum, maybe telling off a cop or two, then finding their way home Gonzo-style to put the pieces back together. Wake up late for school and mumble at their moms. Kids began to do this at every show—not just the Dead. When Iron Maiden came to town, same thing. Clapton, same thing. The Police, Def Leppard, Bad Company. Didn’t fucking matter. No matter the music, no matter the culture it was intended to represent, when performers looked out from the stage they saw thousands of dosed-out teenagers whose perceptions and reactions could not be relied upon too well. The Acid Test continued.

This was the true influence of the Grateful Dead, and their legacy too.

Sitting at work, I watched them take down the Stars and Bars in South Carolina today. Who were they, National Guard I guess. The fussy ritual—the elaborate rolling and folding, one soldier stepping stiffly closer to the other—was incongruous. Really, a mob shoulda just clambered up the pole and tore it down. Just the other day they shot at it, anyway. “USA, USA!” the crowd chanted, just like they did when we killed Bin Laden. One more symbol of terror vanquished.

You’ve done nothing wrong. A vehicle follows you. A man with a gun gets out and chases you, shouting. He does not seem to have any official authority but he acts as though he does. You try to escape, but he’s got you cornered. As you cry out for help he shoots you dead. When they arrive, the police do not arrest him.

Is this Kafka, Orwell, or Florida? It is certainly a vision of thuggish, oppressive dystopia. Isn’t this exactly the sort of nightmare that gun-loving Tea Partiers are constantly warning us about?

I was browsing the chocolate on my online grocery store when I found a new product: unwrapped mini Reese's peanut butter cups. That's right America. We're now officially too lazy  to unwrap our peanut butter cups.

There's an undercurrent of disenchantment, bitterness and regret in middle class American life that's not present in Europe or elsewhere. This is attributable to the "American Dream" and all its derivations and perversions. We have high hopes here. High aspirations. What that means, of course, is that many - perhaps most - of us will be disappointed. In Europe, they may take to the streets, they may or may not extract what they desire from their authorities, but when they put up their feet for tea (or wine, or beer) they are largely content. Here we seethe through an evening's reality TV until our senses are sufficiently numbed to drift into fitful slumber. I am also certain that this, combined with our fetishization of guns (maybe the two are related) is why we experience gone-postal massacres with a regularity you could set your watch to. The Land of Opportunity is necessarily also the Land of Failure.

America: the country that loves guns and hates profanity.

I thought I'd hate "Avatar" but I liked it slightly better than that. Sure it was hokey and stupid and formulaic. But I appreciated the savagery of its attack on American militarism and imperialism, the notion that we're essentially entitled to the world's riches and we can run roughshod over other countries, races and species to feed our greedy maws.

Lonely in America

Atul Gawande's disturbing article about solitary confinement in the New Yorker got me thinking. Our tendency to fling prisoners into the hole is like our health care system or our gun violence or our pitiable public transportation - it's one of the many things that distinguish us from countries with which we ought to have a lot more in common. It's tempting to trace these characteristics to some innate aspect of our national identity, some dubious tendency in our nature. These conclusions are sometimes facile and reductionistic, but they often have the ring of truth: We value greed on the personal and corporate level. We distrust government. We've internalized Manifest Destiny; we view big cars, big houses and Big Macs as our due. We have rebel souls and pioneer hearts, blah blah blah. All the familiar claptrap, sure, but it's hard to dismiss when you're honest about it.

Here's what I think about solitary confinement: it's the perverse underside of American individualism. Throughout our history we've celebrated self-reliance, self-determination, and indeed selfishness. The self-made man. But just as there are self-made men there must be self-destroyed men, for America is a zero-sum game. Every winner demands a mirror loser; every gain is someone else's loss. And as we exalt the individual, so must we debase him. This is American hell: not a hot, dark pit where you toil with your fellow damned but a cold, fluorescent-lit cell where you spend eternity idle and alone.

Solitary confinement is a parody of American values, an ironic punishment. Inherent in our application of it is an unconscious rebuke of the culture that promotes it–that's why it's perverse. If solitude is such exquisite torture for someone behind bars, what is it for someone in a gilded cage? Add this to our list of selfish traits: self-destructive.

Allentown

We were told to park at the international headquarters of Mack Trucks on Mack Boulevard. This was across the street from the UAW hall where the Obama campaign had set up tables in the parking lot, which in fact was only half-filled. We later learned that this was by design: They wanted people driving by to think that volunteers might still be needed, and so be tempted to stop and lend a hand. And so we found a space behind a row of gleaming new Mack tractors, and it felt good and fitting to have this brand - powerful, workmanlike, essentially American - quietly on our side.

There was a big bulldog on the wall of the headquarters and it lit up at night.

At the volunteer station there were hundreds of sandwiches in boxes on a table: ham and cheese, turkey and cheese, roast beef and cheese. Shrinkwrapped twelve-packs of bottled water. The utilitarian in abundance. Victuals, like those of a well-supplied resistance movement in wartime. I took a turkey sandwich and, along with about a dozen others, almost unthinkingly gravitated toward one of the organizers, a heavyset man named John. He thanked us and told us what we were out there to do: Get people to vote. We know we have the vote here, we know the polls support us. All we have to do is make sure people vote. And what if we see McCain supporters, or McCain volunteers? We don't want any arguments, we don't want any fights. Tell them have a nice day. Remember: This is their sad day. No need to make it worse.

They armed us with flyers and doorhangers and a map with our territory marked in Hi-Liter, and we went back across Mack and up the hill to the car. Our destination was a street of decrepit, broken-down rowhouses with peeling paint and cracks in the floors of porches. We saw two older white men and asked them what we'd been asked to ask everyone: Did you vote? Their manner was dismissive and ambiguous: It was unclear whether they had voted, or whether they were going to. One of them said, "I always vote." They seemed to support Obama, but maybe not. They were union guys, working guys. Lifelong Democrats. They indicated that everyone in the neighborhood was voting Obama. "Big surprise," one said, rolling his eyes. I knew at that moment that this was not strictly a poor white neighborhood.

For two hours we knocked on doors, then went back to get more maps and knocked for three hours more. Often there was no one home when we knocked, or maybe they didn't want to answer. Can't really blame them I suppose. Once I knocked on a screen door and could see straight down a debris-strewn hallway and into the kitchen, where a figure stood facing the other way. I knocked again. The figure remained, impassive, for a few more seconds then walked out of my sight at that deliberate pace with which we all move when we're in our homes and we know that we're alone.

"There's someone in there and they're ignoring me," I said to Sara, who was at the neighboring door.

"C'est la vie," she said.

Sometimes maybe the place was abandoned or condemned. Sometimes it was hard to say. I hesitated to knock on one door because it was so starkly forbidding that I was certain no one had lived there for months or maybe years. But it opened and a black face peered at me from the darkness.

"Did you vote?"

"Oh yes! Obama!"

Again and again, people told us they had already voted for Obama, or were about to go out and vote for Obama, or were waiting for their wives or boyfriends to get back home so they could both go vote for Obama. The day took on an air of celebration. People hooted at us from their cars, from across the street:

"Obama!"

"Obama baby!"

"Obama, Obama, Obama!"

A big, gruff, white biker type: Already voted, Obama. A white kid, dressed black in a bandanna, gold chain and oversize jeans: Obama. A middle-aged Hispanic couple: Just came back from voting Obama.

We met a fat, young white guy in a death metal T-shirt, arms covered in tattoos. He wanted Obama pins so I gave him mine. He'd voted but we urged him to tell other people to vote, his friends, anyone. A small woman who barely spoke English walked up and asked for directions to the polls and he told her.

We chatted with a middle-aged black woman who had just come back from voting.

"He better win. If he don' win there's gonna be..."

"Riots?"

"There's gonna be riots, that's for sure."

"I think he's gonna win."

"I sure do hope so, I sure hope so. Thing is, somebody's gonna try to, you know, go after him."

"I know. I think, I really think he's going to be well protected."

"I sure do hope so."

As people walked by she shouted out, "You vote yet, honey?"

"Obama!"

A white woman told us she wasn't registered to vote and seemed particularly jaded about this particular cycle. I tried to make the case for Obama anyway, lamely alluding to his tax breaks for the middle class.

"He's working for middle class people, working people," I said. I was afraid to say the word "poor."

"Middle class people? What about poor people like me?"

"Poor people too!"

She mentioned that she's a nurse and all her black coworkers are voting for Obama. Her eyes rolled like the other man's. She was a bit begrudging, almost like she didn't want black people to get a president. That somehow they'd capitalize on the situation and live the Life of Riley, undeservedly. Then her daughter and her daughter's friend came down the street and suddenly she brightened:

"My little girl loves Barack! She and her friend, they made T-shirts of him and wore 'em to school!"

She was glowing with pride, evidently immune to irony. I took a picture of her daughter (who, interestingly, looks a bit Hispanic) and one of her daughter's friend in their homemade Obama T-shirts, each one covered with the signatures of dozens of other kids like them.

The American people have passed their test.

George W. Bush Is Willy Loman

An article in the Washington Post about Bush's disheartened lackeys made me realize that he's a sad fucking Willy Loman figure, bewildered that he's not liked, idiotically uncomprehending of his toxic affect upon the world, an all-American tragic figure.

Nothin' Against the Man

I spent the end of the afternoon calling voters in battleground states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia. A disconcertingly large percentage of the numbers were out of service - either connecting to that future-robot woman's "I'm sorry, the number you are calling..." message or ringing for a while then abruptly shifting to shrieking electronic noise. Where did they get these fucking numbers? Are these the numbers from 2004?

Still others went to voice mail. Two giggling roommates reciting each word of their message in alternation before saying "Bye!" in giddy unison. An elderly woman in Ohio reciting hers in a singsongy near rap: "When-you-hear-the-beep, you-know-what-to-do..."

And a few answered. I dialed the number of a 29-year-old male in Ohio and a woman picked up, and cooly asked me who was calling. I explained that I was a volunteer for the Barack Obama Campaign for Change, and that I just wanted to talk about the election for a couple minutes, blah blah blah.

"He's deceased," she said.

"Oh? I'm very, very sorry to hear that. I..."

"He already voted, though. For Obama."

"Oh?"

"Yup. But now he's deceased."

"Really? OK. I... I'm sorry for your loss."

"Thank you."

"Goodbye."

"Goodbye."

Overwhelmingly, the people I spoke to were planning on voting, or already had voted, for Obama. Every person I spoke to in Ohio, in fact, had voted early for Obama. Dayton, mostly. Some were cheerful telling me this, some were terse and annoyed. But it was Obama, Obama, Obama. Finally, in West Virginia, I heard something different. An older-sounding woman picked up and I asked her for the male name on my list. Who is this? I gave her my spiel from the script.

"He's not here, and you wouldn't want to talk to him, believe me."

"We're happy to talk to anyone."

"Ha!"

"OK. Do you know who he supports in the el..."

"Lemme tell you, it's not gonna be that one."

I fucked up a bit with a Pennsylvania McCain supporter. She let me get through most of my spiel: Pennsylvania's gonna be real important in this election, I'd just like to ask a couple of questions if I can. Finally, I asked her who she was supporting.

"John McCain."

She said this in such an emphatic way that there was really nothing else to say. And in fact, there was nothing else to say in the script either, except "thank you" and "goodbye." But there she was on the other end of the line, awaiting words.

"OK, there you go. Well... Have a really great evening and..."

"Thank you."

"And, uh... good luck."

Just before I hung up I heard her on the other end of the line, in a tone of aghast outrage:

"Good luck?!?"

My most remarkable call was with a man in West Virginia, maybe 50 or so. He spoke in a mountain drawl and was a bit animated from the start, which made me afraid things might go bad. But it actually went something like this:

"Now listen, I ain't got nothin' against that man. Obama. Ain't got nothin' against him, ya hear?"

"Yup, that's great."

"I think I'm leaning a little bit to McCain."

I'd been wary, but I was surprised and encouraged by the words "leaning a little bit." I decided to depart recklessly from the script.

"Why is it that you feel that way?"

"Well, listen. I been hearin' this thing of how Barack Obama's gonna spread the wealth. And that is one thing I... That is one thing I cannot stand for. That is the one thing, I do not like that. Ain't got nothin' against the man."

"You know though, John McCain believes in exactly the same system of taxation that Obama was describing. That's the same system McCain believes in."

"Yeah I know, I know, but it's them words, ya know? Them words, spread the wealth."

"You think it's a poor choice of words."

"Yeah! Exactly. It's a poor choice of words. But it don't got nothin' to do with the man in any way! I been listenin' to him and he's intelligent, I like what he says mostly. Listen. I been a lifelong Democrat. But I voted for Bush in 2000 and in 2004. I voted for Bush in 2000 'cause Gore wanted to take my guns away, and ya see, I'm a hunter..."

"You know that Barack Obama specifically does not want to take guns away from hunters..."

"Yeah, I know that. I know that. Now, I did not vote for Kerry 'cause I hated Kerry. Hated the man. But then Bush wasn't so good neither."

"Exactly."

"Listen, some of my friends, they called me racist. I ain't no racist. But some of my friends, they called me racist 'cause in the primary, they asked me who I was votin' for, I said Hillary. Now, they accuse me of racism. I tell them, if I'd a voted for him they woulda accused me of sexism."

"That's a very, very good point."

"It don't matter to me what color you are or what gender you are."

"That's great, it's really great to hear that."

"It's just that if he means to take my money that I make and spread it around, I can't take that."

"You know that with Obama as president, you'd get a tax cut if you make less than $200,000 a year, right? And John McCain would be giving his tax cut to rich people. Obama's going to help working people keep more of their money."

"Yeah, I heard about that."

"And health care - he's going to save every family $2,500 on health care by fighting the insurance companies."

"Yeah, that's good."

"If you look at the issues, you can see how much more he can help people. See, the thing about a choice of words is that it's been a long campaign, and lots of things have been said, so sometimes someone uses a poor choice of words. Happens to everybody. But you gotta look past the words sometimes to see what the actual policies are all about. See who cares about the issues that are most important to you and to your loved ones."

"I know whatcha mean. I got nothin' against the man, nothin' against the man. I ain't decided about the whole thing, that's the truth."

"Is there anything else about Obama that you have questions about?"

"This one other thing, ya know, this thing I been hearin' that if Obama is elected it'll be him an' Pelosi an' whatshisname, uh, Henry, uh..."

"Harry Reid."

"Yeah, all of them together, that it ain't good for the country because they get to spread the money around anyway they like. But I dunno..."

"Yeah, I don't think it's like that. I think John McCain kind of feels like he's up against the ropes right now, and every day he tries saying something different, and that's because he doesn't have anything good to say to people about policies and what he would actually do."

"Yeah, I suppose it's like that, yeah. I dunno. I'm thinkin' 'bout it. I dunno what I'm gonna do."

"This has been a really great conversation, and it sounds like you're still thinking about things, and that's great."

"Oh yeah! I'll be thinkin' 'bout it, that's for sure. I won't know what I'm gonna do until I'm right up there in that booth."

"You've got a few days to think about everything, and, you know, obviously, on Tuesday, I hope you make the decision for Obama."

"You know what, I think I'm leaning in that direction."

The All-American Witch Hunt

The increasing venom of crowds at McCain-Palin rallies indicates that a certain segment of the population has taken the innuendo and slanderous accusations of unscrupulous Republican campaign strategists completely literally. In other words, they believe that Obama is a Muslim terrorist. They imagine that through some strange and cruel chain of events, the evil "other" represented by 9/11 hijackers and by Osama bin Laden is now incarnate in the Democratic nominee for president of the United States. Many of these people already hold some form or other of Biblical apocalypse fantasy alive in their imaginations, so it is not hard for them to believe that God is testing, or Satan is tempting, the good people of our country in this election as some necessary step in a process that also includes the breakdown of our civilization (i.e., economy), a war with heathens in the Middle East, the End of Days (global warming?) and the Rapture. Considering this point of view, it's not terribly difficult to understand why some people consider Obama's identity as the Antichrist to be a matter of fact beyond any question whatsoever. So it's even sort of poignant when, for example, a woman tells McCain how terrified she is of Obama because he "is an Arab." She really believes Obama is an Arab and is terrified that the United States will be ruled by an Arab terrorist. It's easy for us - the "reality-based community" - to dismiss a lot of the Republican lies and smears about Obama as laughable and obviously untrue. Of course, that's what they are. But the mistake we're making is to trust that while some are laughing and others are keeping a straight face, everyone is in on the joke. That even if McCain supporters want to believe them or pretend that they're true, they must know they're lies. The chilling fact is that many people believe them wholeheartedly, sincerely. They are terrified to the core of their souls that Barack Obama, an Islamist terrorist, will be elected president. "Kill him!" "Off with his head!" they scream. This election is an all-American witch hunt. That's what we're up against.

Saw "The Filth and the Fury," a movie that sneaks up on you and has you finding yourself thinking, How can I further the cause of rock 'n' roll and combat oppression and conformity in every little thing I do each day? An oddly sad movie, what with the tender moments between Sid and Johnny, staring rapturously out the window of their bus to nowhere at the ceaseless scenery of garish and tragic America. And as always, the dirty din of the electric guitar, delirious, ecstatic. It's curious how good it sounds bad, and how much better it sounds worse. There were recordings of their raucous, early rehearsals. Awful, awful, awful, and yet great, great, great. And at that infamous last show, with Steve Jones playing those two idiotic chords over and over and over, when there was just no use, when it was all long ago gone, when it already seemed like it all had been a dream, and been distilled into a black, bitter pill of a bad joke. That's when it sounded best.

There's a special sound people make when they speak with their mouths full of steak. A honking, adenoidal sound. Almost choking. Drowning in meat.

In France the premise is that human desires can and should be satisfied, day after day. Desire itself is never extravagant, nor viewed as indulgent or vain, but rather rational and manageable. Not so in the U.S. "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" was written by a Briton but it's a distinctly American sentiment, inspired by similarly titled American blues. In fact it is a reaction to America: In the midst of this bounty, this ludicrous and hideous embarrassment of riches, I am lost, paralyzed, frustrated. A man comes on the radio, and he's telling me more and more. But the French would answer that song with: Of course you can be satisfied. Have a good meal - three courses. Not too much. Enough. Have wine, just enough to begin to get drunk - the happiest period in the span of intoxication. Plus you get a coffee at the end. Then go home and fuck your wife. Or your mistress. We know, and it's OK. Buy her some lingerie from one of those hundred shops on the boulevard. Satisfied? Of course you are. And tomorrow you get to do it all over again. To reenact and ritually refute the myth of desire.

But America is the land of the all-you-can-eat. Implicit in that very proposition is the idea that satisfaction is elusive, distant, perhaps nonexistent. Satisfaction? Who knows. Keep eating. And of course when we follow the American program we cannot be satisfied. The all-you-can-eat leads you directly from hunger to nauseous, uncomfortable fullness without a pause. There is no satisfaction. You are left with a vague sense that you should eat more to really get your money's worth, trumped by the fact of your strained, distended stomach.

Where does this insatiable American hunger come from? There was perhaps a backlash against hyper-abstemious Puritanism. And then the credo of eminent domain - all-you-can-eat writ huge, territorial. But it mostly comes from the very model of the so-called American Dream. You can do anything. How much can you do? More. How far can you go? Further. How much is enough? Nothing is ever enough. Satisfaction is anathema.

French society is calculated to satisfy desire, where American society is calculated to inflame desire. In America the carrot is on the stick; in France the carrot is in the hand.

I returned home from Rocky's with PC. It was a decent night; we won the drunken Irish trivia contest and discussed sickening American jingoism in his mother's car up Mad. I sank into the faux Eames and switched between CNN and ESPN. The oblivious, fickle manner in which CNN will transition from a story of deep tragedy and disaster to one of mundane, idiotic human interest – cute pets, let's say – is debilitatingly surreal, disturbing and depressing. This is saying something. It's exceedingly bad, utterly symptomatic of the American condition of the early 21st century and a key to why we are reviled as a society and deserve to be reviled.

The Gates are going up in the park, earnest men and women of all ages wearing their Christo & Jeanne Claude vests and hoisting and steadying frighteningly heavy poles. Like the intrepid settlers of the Old West. Building a home or a work of art, but really an abstract barrier against chaos.

It's going to be incredible, the Gates, I already know it. The saffron color is utterly surprising against the wet gray trees and sky. It evokes candy, sun, pleasure, comic books. And the incongruously happy hue of industrial machinery sometimes: bulldozers, backhoes and cherry pickers. It unites the worlds of childish sensual delight and grim adult labor.

At least it will, I think.

At way past eleven a silhouette in the all-night grocery store, reaching to the shelf.

Went out with C. and her ex from Hungary. He's a heavyset man with red hair in a pony tail who speaks very quietly and hesitantly and smokes Camels nearly all the time. There were times when he was trying to say something and C. would lean over to him, lean in a little, and grin, sort of taunting him or cajoling him, spit it out. I was kind of manic and generally dissatisfied. We were at the Knitting Factory to see Luna, a good band but it was kind of a mistake. They play droning, soporific indie rock. The kind of music that, on a Thursday night for Christ's sake, makes you feel like a little kid with your parents in a museum or something, rocking back and forth on your cramped feet with your jacket on.

The lead singer said he'd played with Tuli Kupferberg of the Fugs recently and Tuli said, "The war against Iraq will be very short but the war against America will be very, very long." No one really reacted to this. Should we applaud? Yes? No? Wait. The singer broke the pause by saying, "That's what he said!" and there were some relieved guffaws. 

I'd been thinking, in the rain on the way to the club, walking the footbridge over Varick, scared by the soaking-wet corrugated metal steps. I thought, this is the age of the American Empire. We've had the British Empire, the Spanish, the French, the Austro-Hungarian, the Ottoman, the Chinese, the Greek, the this, the that. Now for better or worse it's the age of the American Empire. And the trouble is, an empire is never good. It may think itself well-meaning, aligned with God, a defender of justice – was this not the British imperial view? – but it can't be. By virtue of its power and its dominion over others it is immediately corrupt.

But beautiful too. And doomed.

She winced a bit. "The things you do for fun in India you can't do here. I don't know, I read," she said. She ate tortilla chips in tiny bites. Sometimes a piece would crumble off and fall in her downy drink and she would pluck it out and pop it in her mouth. "I see how people live on television," she said, "and it's very different from life in India. I wonder what it would be like to live like that. I think I would like to try."

"But life on television isn't like real life," I said.

She looked across the room for a moment. "People going out to bars and drinking, and laughing, and doing things like playing pool," she said. "I think I would like someone to show me what that is like."

And I realized she was right: life in America is like life on TV. She was describing my life, and it had more in common with a beer commercial than with anyone's life in India. And I also realized what she really wanted from a man, an American man, and I realized I could give it to her if I wanted but I knew that I didn't and it was sad.