{"id":765041,"date":"2024-11-29T08:00:40","date_gmt":"2024-11-29T08:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gaytimes.com\/?p=765041"},"modified":"2024-11-29T15:57:17","modified_gmt":"2024-11-29T15:57:17","slug":"election-anxiety-u-haul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gaytimes.com\/love-sex\/election-anxiety-u-haul\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-election anxiety is making me want to u-haul \u2013 and I’m not the only one"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Sometimes you just need to intertwine yourself in silence with a (very hot) warm body and ignore the world burning around you for a few hours while your cells regenerate.”<\/span><\/p>\n

WORDS ANYA SCHULMAN<\/strong>
\nCOVER IMAGE ‘VENUS AND CUPID’ (1626) BY ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI<\/strong><\/p>\n

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This may come as a shock to some of you (I\u2019m pretty sure it is glaringly obvious), but I am American. On 5 November I worked at my local polling place from five in the morning to half ten at night, and started refreshing my phone at seven in the evening to see a worst case scenario unfold. I immediately left to do tequila shots with my new friend, co-election inspector general Angela, as a familiar feeling of dread sunk in.\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

Angela told me not to look at my phone, and tried to distract me with a story of an encounter in the aughts with the actor who played Smith Jerrod on Sex and The City<\/em>\u00a0as I waited for the person I\u2019ve recently been seeing to show up. Mercifully, she was nearby, and is much taller than me, so is a good person to sink into when everything feels wrong. We walked back to mine, holding hands, and tried to hang onto the shrinking feeling that maybe, just maybe, the next four years would be better, safer, for queer people and the world at large.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t looking good but we still went to bed hopeful. At six in the morning, we somehow woke up without an alarm, and the girl I\u2019ve been seeing for a month just said, \u201cI\u2019m so sorry.\u201d That was how I found out my broken, broken country had elected a convicted felon<\/a> to lead it.<\/span><\/p>\n

We hid under the covers for a few hours. \u2018If Kamala had won, we definitely would have had sex this morning,\u201d I said. “I thought the same thing,\u201d she said. I instantly thought of the episode of <\/a><\/span>Broad City<\/span><\/i> where Ilana can\u2019t have an orgasm because of the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. \u201cWill we ever feel horny again?\u201d I asked her. \u201cI don\u2019t think so,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

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A post shared by GAY TIMES (@gaytimes)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n