Accidental Boyfriend

by Rebecca Schoenkopf

A year ago this morning, I floated to work smiling at everyone I met, and everyone I met smiled back. I knew the feeling wouldn’t last—“This too shall pass,” one of my Jewish grandmothers would have said, but I was walking eight feet tall and puffed up with possibility. My people—my nation—had been too smart this time to actually listen to Dick Cheney without pointing and laughing; the country managing to pull its head out of its ass seemed absolutely miraculous. My elation had everything to do with the righting of the universe, and (despite the OC artists who used to waggishly track my sex life or lack thereof by the relative kindness or bile of my art reviews) nothing to do with the Election Night sexin’ I’d done like I was cool.

I sat in my tiny but sunlit office for the rest of the day, watching and rewatching the president-elect’s valedictory speech, sobbing, crying, weeping with joy. I’m sure I did at least an hour’s worth of work that day: writing the table of contents, proofing something maybe, but the rest of the time I just smiled and cried. Like Condoleezza Rice. She was smiling and crying like a crazy person. She was smiling and crying like me.

I didn’t go into my art director’s office all day, because I didn’t want him to feel sexually harassed just because he’d accidentally, in a fever of Election Night hopeandchange, slept with the boss. (Me! I was the boss! Aw yeah.) I didn’t want to be creepy, like Michael Douglas or Bob Packwood. I stayed far, far away. By the end of November I’d left our paper amid an emotional sturm und drang, and three months after that it folded. And we were there for each other, and what we’d have done otherwise I can’t even fathom.

A year later, he’s not only still around, which is fairly shocking, but he’s actually my boyfriend (though under “but why do we need a label?” duress). He comes over just about every day and we whine and mope about being still unemployed, about our underachieving if someone hasn’t given us an external deadline (and sometimes even then), about what terrible losers we are. I’ve been looking into food stamps, but I still have too much money saved. Man, food stamps sound awesome. Also, unemployment would have been great, if I’d been fired instead of being so smart as to quit.

When I whine and mope, he listens and commiserates and rubs my shoulders. When he whines and mopes, I yell at him that we have nothing to complain about; hey man, it’s not Darfur! We do free things, like walk to the post office or walk around downtown. I get mad if he doesn’t take me to restaurants often enough, and then I yell at him if I reach for the bill and he lets me. Nobody should date me, ever.

The country changed a year ago, and no matter what happens next—no matter who goes nuts or what blows up, because someone and something always will—we’re on a steady course for the better. There will be jobs again someday, despite the fact that President Obama didn’t listen to Paul Krugman and make the stimulus bigger. (Obama made it smaller than it needed to be in order to be all bipartisan, in exchange for a grand total of zero Republican votes. But bipartisanism without Republican votes is pretty much his thing.) So far things seem to be getting less worse more slowly (huh? I don’t know!), and at least they seem to have followed the First Rule of Ivins: when you’re in a hole, stop digging.

Here’s a change for you: when Obama goes all mealy-Rahm-centrist, he actually wraps his mealy Rahmish centrism in the language of liberalism! Perhaps you watched his health care speech: it was moderate pragmatism, but he sounded like a risen Dorothy Day! I was laughing with pleasure—imagine, trying to get credit in this country for being more liberal than you are!—and I was immediately swayed to the mushy middle. It will get better. I know that. Tra la, tomorrow is another day, and whatever Pollyanna’s Forrest Gumpish retarded-optimist catchphrase was, which I forget it now though as a nine-year-old I’d quote it to my mom, and oh, she’d get so mad!

We’re getting better, is my point (especially if you’re Wall Street), and as our economy changes, if you’re one of the ones hurt in Schumpeter’s “creative destruction,” well, hopefully you have another unemployment extension. If you’re me, just grab your sweetheart and cuddle up. It helps keep you warm till you find you a job and can turn on the heat.

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