These are the text messages I sent my wife Rachelle on Monday:
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Me: Yep.
Me: Dropped Jones off at daycare and am now at the polling station getting ready to cast my vote for mayor!
Me: No.
Me: Mayor McCheese is not on the ballot.
Me: It is a shame. Not only is he VERY experienced, but he’s also delicious.
Me: I agree, we do underestimate taste when it comes to appraising our candidates.
Me: I think Doug Ford would have been a buttery mayor, like wagyu beef.
Me: John Tory? The current mayor? Beef jerky.
Me: He looks creepy. Desiccated and plastic, like if you bred a dry roasted peanut with a Ken doll. Looks like somebody from Blue Rodeo who suddenly got really, really old!
Me: No.
Me: No, that’s not a “dig” at Jim Cuddy.
Me: All I’m saying is that his opponent, Jennifer Keesmaat, has aged pretty well.
Me: What?
Me: Look, all I mean is that she looks as good now as she did 15 years ago. Let’s smash the patriarchy and vote for her!!
Me: Oh.
Me: Well, when you put it like that I guess it does sound a bit like I’m going to smash the patriarchy by voting for a woman I think has aged well.
Me: And you think that’s wrong?
Me: Okay.
Me: Well, in my defence I knew JK back in the day.
Me: Didn’t I tell you?
Me: But look, I also like her transit plan. Very smart. And let me assure you, she’s more than just another pretty face! You should vote for The Keezer!
Me: A nickname I had for her.
Me: Oh, that was so long ago.
Me: Lava Life, I think.
Me: We only went out on one date.
Me: Went to Maine for a long weekend.
Me: Yeah, I guess it was a three day date.
Me: What did we do?
Me: Well, she’s a HUGE Stephen King fan so we went on a tour of his house in Bangor.
Otherwise, we just drank some wine, walked the beaches, talked policy. Stuff like that.
Me: Hunh!
Me: Hadn’t thought about that, but yeah, Stephen King’s house is my screen saver.
Me: Look, I hadn’t even met you yet!
Me: Rest assured, if you were running for mayor I would vote for you!
Me: You would organize the hell out of this city!
Me: You really would.
Me: And I LOVE the idea of making Toronto a Sanctuary City for all the lost animals of the world.
Me: You would be a way better mayor than JK.
Me: I would be a Russian bot for you.
Me: I would lie to congress for you.
Me: You wouldn’t believe how many laws I would break for you political ambition!!
Me: People would be screaming at me every goddamn time I tried to eat out. You can bet your bottom dollar on that.
Me: It’s true. You are the fire with which I burn. You have all of me, my love, you always have and always will.
Me: Yes.
Me: Absolutely. You have my word.
Me: I will change my screen saver.
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Trump, even attired that way, commanded the subway like a stern and punctual marshall at a luxury golf course, and people knew not to mess with him.
Normally he would never think to take the subway, as it is a filthy and vulgar mode of transportation, but today he wanted filthy and vulgar. His legs spread out expansively, taking up at least two seats, he looked down at his most recent text from Melania and smiled:
“I am to poo you,” it read.
Melania’s English wasn’t very good, but Donald knew exactly what she meant.
It was their beautiful night together.
Every year on the anniversary on their first sex, Donald bought a fast food restaurant in the New York area, fired everybody, and then made Melania work the counter. This year, it was a Dairy Queen, and Donald, disguised as the Burger King, was going to come in and order Melania off the menu and then make her his fast food sex slave for the night.
It was a great tradition, and they both loved it very much.
As Donald sat there on the subway thinking about whether he should purchase and then and torture some of the homeless and desperate as part of fast food sex slave night, a woman approached him.
“The Burger King?” she said.
“You look low rent,” the Burger Trump retorted, “and let me tell you,” he continued, “I would rather be a king than some low rent subway hen.”
The low rent woman had full lips.
“Subway hen?”
Donald ignored her, Tweeting a threat to France.
The low rent woman looked closely at his fingers, as if figuring something out.
Suddenly, the subway came to a screeching halt. Everything went dark and Donald fell to the floor, his Burger King head spilling off and his phone skittering out of his pocket! When he looked up, he and the subway hen, also on the floor, were facing one another, their lips just inches apart– something unspoken burning between them now.
“You’re Donald Trump,” she whispered, “I knew I recognized those tiny, orange fingers!”
The stranger’s breasts heaved upon the filthy, seductive floor of the subway. He stared at the woman and she stared back, their breath hot and real.
Trump inched toward her and she inched toward him.
At that moment Donald’s phone began to ring, picking up an audible message from Melania, “Donald, it is your Queen Dairy, I have customer, and child wants me to make curl with ice cream that I cannot make. Tell her we close? Give her money? I stand by you, my man, even if ice cream disgusting. I still poo you, my king.”
Donald swept the phone away with certainty, like a Commander-In-Chief. And then the lights came on and the subway started up again. The low rent woman got up and dusted herself off and walked away, shivering, “This is the weirdest, fucking grossest day of my life,” she muttered to herself.
“Rosebud, “Donald Trump mouthed, “Rosebud.”
You could count me amongst the latter.
The first three words of the eulogy were, “Friends, Romans, Countryman,” and the emotional performance was so rehearsed and needy, so over-wrought with technique, that it completely turned me off. His slight lisp made him enunciate each word with greater force, and the stresses felt unnatural, built for manipulation rather than a natural expression of feeling and sentiment.
It was as if as a child of celebrity, he craved the burning light of fame, and that there was no circumstance, even that of his father’s funeral, in which he would not step into the light of another life. He just seemed to enjoy this day in the spotlight more than was appropriate, you know?
So I was a hater, dismissing him as a “high school drama teacher,” and lumping him in with Ben Mulroney, host of a breezy celebrity news show, whom I saw as another shallow, attention-seeking child of a Prime Minister.
It was easy enough to resent Trudeau his ready-made celebrity. He was good looking, naturally charismatic, had the touch of aristocracy, and people seemed as desperate to make a star of him as he seemed as desperate to become one.
Of course, we are admonished to be kind, for everybody we meet is fighting a hard battle. That Trudeau grew up wealthy and famous is true, but he also grew up in the toxic, corrosive glare of fame. His mother, suffering from mental health issues, was often absent, luridly splashed across papers and viciously mocked,
while his father was doing the nation’s business. It must have been lonely and strange for young Justin, and then he lost his beloved brother, one of the few people on the planet who might understand. Surviving this upbringing intact is actually entirely heroic, a testimony to character rather than a “free ride”.
Throughout the campaign, throughout Trudeau’s life, he was made light of. People challenged his intellect, although it was never exactly clear why, they condescended to him by calling him by his first name and sneered at his hair, as if trying to feminize him, as if they were schoolyard bullies calling him “a girl.” As if that was an insult.
Justin Trudeau took it. He did not get bitter, he did not change or become angry, he remained the same optimistic, essentially happy and earnest person that he had always seemed to be, and he continued.
A few weeks ago during the Munk debate on foreign affairs, something the girlish and daft Trudeau was presumed to know nothing about, somebody was riding Trudeau for one of his father’s policies, again, imperiously, as if lecturing a child. And as this was taking place, Trudeau let his back stiffen just a bit and interrupted him. As if taking a step forward somehow, he asserted that he was proud to be his father’s son, and that he hoped to continue to build on the Canada that his father helped create. He was not furious or panicky. He was simply sure of himself.
And in this moment something changed. All the flimsy, lazy insults were unmasked, all the sniping and juvenile attack ads fell away.
And there, without embellishment, stood a man, a man of some substance who could not be so mocked. Trudeau, once again, for the millionth time, perhaps, was proving he was above and beyond this petty mewling. He was in a different grade than the men attacking him. He was not aligning himself with the Ford Brothers to get votes.
Trudeau was more than we had expected, not less. He has proven himself in ways we can’t even begin to understand, and we should trust in him and his decency, pushing the baser, cynical fabrications aside.
Don’t be scared to vote for Justin Trudeau. He deserves our respect and support, so, so much more than those he is running against. I am proud of him, and I cannot say that about any of the other leaders.
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