One Mom Mans the Phone Banks                                              

Last night I dreamed about Barack Obama again.  As usual I was caressing his ears, we were hiding from his campaign team, making out under desks, exchanging pent-up gazes from across the situation room. A warm haze of desire flooded my sleeping body, and I woke as if surfacing from a deep bath. 

The Barack dreams have been recurring since October- unabashedly erotic, hushed with scandal, driven by his irresistible lust for me.  Still I wonder if they’re really about him.  “That’s happens when a handsome, virile man runs for president,” my husband said when I confessed.  “The whole campaign gets charged with sexual energy.”

This was certainly true at the Democratic HQ downtown where I volunteered for the campaign making phone calls in the weeks leading up to the election.  I would dash in there at 5 o’clock after my husband got home from work to relieve me of my two little girls, ages 1 and 3.  Like Clark Kent in the phone booth, I left behind my day-identity as a grubby stay-at-home mom in stretch-pants, and emerged into the political night in tight denim, silk blouse, lip gloss, and the will to make as many calls as possible in 90 minutes. 

I kept my laser-like focus as the young and ridiculously cute local organizer handed me my cell phone and script for the night.  Eric Peterson had a mop of light brown hair hanging in his hazel eyes, faint stubble on his chin, and a soft-spoken excitement to his manner.  He wore thin tee shirts and low-slung jeans and was completely unaware of his effect on the local Mom population. 

My friend Jenna had warned me about him after working the phone banks the week before.  “He’s almost too adorable to look in the eye,” she said.  She deemed him her “crush,” even after she discovered through conversational deduction that he was all of 23 years old- well over a decade younger than both of us. 

Shameful?  No, simply innocent and fun… A little extra motivation to drive downtown and start dialing up perfect strangers in swing states to persuade them to vote for Barack.

I prided myself in playing it cool around Eric.  I was all business in the HQ, handing in my completed call-sheets and dashing off with blank ones, just another busy worker bee in the buzzing campaign hive.  The presence of an earnest cute guy did not lower my productivity.   After three years staying home with babies, I loved being crammed together with other adults working on a common cause.  I loved the night energy of the HQ, the low passionate voices on cell phones, the palpable presence of Eric Peterson pacing the back room, in charge of us all.  Was he aware of me out there in my jeans, dialing as fast as I could?

In the last days leading up to the election I went to phone bank every evening.  I was humming with adrenaline and felt part of something larger than myself.  Something beyond the personal dramas of pregnancy and childrearing that had consumed and isolated me, even as my disillusion with the current political administration grew. 

At the phone bank I believed I was making a difference, and maybe it was just the power of the campaign slogan, but maybe I actually did.  I made over 200 phone calls into Pennsylvania for the Get Out The Vote Effort, informing voters of their local polling places, asking senior citizens if they needed voting help, leaving scores of messages polite yet emphatic. 

When Pennsylvania went blue on election night, I shouted with triumph in my living room.  Exhausted with a sick and sleepless baby, I fought the urge to drive downtown and find the Obama crew, these virtual strangers who knew nothing of my other life.  I stayed awake till I was sure of victory, meeting Barack’s eyes on the TV screen.  How was Eric celebrating this momentous night?  Did he let loose and yell, bear-hug the volunteers, guzzle champagne and dance in the Samba party drumming the streets? 

As I slipped under the sheets and sank into the dark of my marriage bed, I prayed for another dream about Barack.  My body remembered the illicit thrill of him looking me up and down, steady and deliberate.  My hands traced the shape of his prominent ears, my mouth tasted the salt skin just above his shirt collar.  “Yes… Yes… Yes… we can,” I whispered, arching my back beneath the quilt.  

But when you long for a certain dream, it will not come to you.  I slept that night in a well of darkness and woke to watch Obama’s victory speech on You Tube, crying with the masses in Chicago, my children milling around my legs. 

“Maybe your Obama dreams are about change,” said my husband.  “After all, that’s his platform.”   He could be right.  Maybe making love with Barack represents my desire for change, a path to reclaim my old energy and spark.  I used to be quite a go-getter before the babies came, back in my vixen days. Now I stand at the sink and fantasize I can transform myself into a new woman who Gets Things Done. 

Imagine how many concrete and important tasks Barack Obama completes every hour.  Now consider how little I actually accomplish in any given day in my Sisiphyean life.  The circular routines of childcare muddle my brain-dressing them, undressing them, changing diapers, cleaning potty mess, cooking mac-n-cheese, wiping smushed stuff off the floor.  Where has my potential for productivity gone?  What am I contributing to an economy in crisis?

But perhaps the dreams are pure and simply about desire.  I’ve always had compassion for Monica Lewinsky.  She wasn’t the brightest bulb, but how could she resist the focused lust of the President, his desire for her so powerful that he would risk everything to have her? 

I met Bill Clinton once after my college graduation, stood in a receiving line of two hundred people to shake his hand.  For 45 seconds, he clasped my hand in both of his and looked straight into my eyes with his baby blues, fixated on my presence.  For 45 seconds, we were the only two people in the room.  If he had turned that magnet gaze on me in private, what would I have done?

And let’s be honest, Barack is much hotter than Bill.  Tall and fit with long limbs, he exudes a sexual charisma descended from African kings.  Add to that the wide smile, the clear eyes, the mocha skin, the ears…  To be Obama’s chosen one under cover of night- you can’t blame my unconscious for creating that fantasy.    

Barack is also a powerful archetype, a near-messianic figure of hope.  We believe in him, and we want to live through him.  He inspires a cynicism-free passion in people, even those who have never trusted a politician in their lives. “I LOVE HIM,” a normally-restrained Mom friend told me over a beer, “He’s the first president I want to hang on my wall and look at.” 

Now that he is officially our leader, we can look at his face all the time, on every front page, TV channel, and news website.  I wonder if we will tire of gazing at Obama after four years of his omnipresence.

I never did see Eric Peterson again.  On November 6^th he must have packed up and left town, moving on to some community organizer post, maybe traveling for a few months through Southeast Asia before his next job.  I remember one night back at the phone bank when I was talking to Eric and a few other volunteers about the latest poll findings.  He was animated and intense, worried that McCain was gaining a last minute edge. “This happened in 2000 and 2004,” he said.  “It’s the Democratic curse.”  I wanted to make an intelligent comment, but I was too distracted by his boyish scent. 

Then I dropped my pen and we both bent down to pick it up, our fingers brushing, an electric current running up my arm.  I might have been in high school Chem lab, tingling at proximity to the hot soccer captain who was unaware of my existence.  I looked at Eric for a moment, lowered my eyes, and walked slowly back to my calling station, swaying my hips imperceptibly.  I tucked my hair behind one ear, crossed my denim-clad legs, and punched in another number.

(written 12/2008)

Tags:   2008 presidential election · Barack Obama · campaign · desire · Dreams · phone bankNo Comments