I never knew I was sleeping with someone that voted for Donald Trump until a couple of weeks after the 2016 election. Dee and I had been an ‘item’ more or less for 5 years and we never did figure politics as part of the attraction. We just knew we both loved to bike and swim and head to the beach at random times. Both had irregular schedules that let us meet during week days and both needed the affection and intimacy that drew us together.
It turned out that politics was what pulled us apart.
Being 25 years older than her seemed the least of our problems. She was drop dead gorgeous when really young and age enhanced her looks for me. What had been very small breasts on a tallish, athletic, small boned young woman become kinda voluptuous boobies when they began to drop as she aged. Her flaxen hair cascaded over shoulders built up from hours of Yoga and swimming; her larger thighs bespoke more of biking muscles than flab and her pale blue eyes distracted you from noticing her mounting wrinkles. Even her grey hair streaks were camouflage by her sun bleached coif.
For a pot bellied aging lefty like me, Dee was heaven sent. True we had to be very careful about sex ’cause Dee could still get pregnant, but that wasn’t much of an issue. Half the time my borderline diabetes gave me hit or miss performance and Dee never did find ecstasy with the dirt bag losers that were drawn like flies to her beauty. She wasn’t exactly frigid but the joys of sex had always eluded her. So in terms of sex it was a pretty good match — she didn’t want it in and I couldn’t get it up.
We shared lots more interesting intimacy than the old ‘in and out’. She is an exhibitionist who loved getting naked in front of an audience and I was always willing to watch — and that extended to showers together, sleeping in the buff together ( especially at wake up time) and even bathroom stuff (which did weird me out a little, at first). I even bought this little cot mattress that fit along her bed so we could fondle each other side by side in a harmless fashion. Not getting overly excited, but feeling kinda nasty and dreamy all the same.
It was the sort of magical LA street romance of convenience made possible by biking back and forth across LA from downtown (where I live) to West LA (where Dee lives). I became her cut-rate sugar daddy and she became my younger paramour by default. We did all kinds of low-cost outings together like the Hollywood Bowl, or a trip to Hansen Dam or late night Karaoke and drinks. But our real love was getting high on pot. And that happened as soon as her eyes met mine. I paid for most everything but not in an overt way — it was always Dee’s intention to even the financial score but I knew she never could.
Dee was trapped in the gig economy ever since the world renowned Yoga studio she had worked for went bust. Dee had been a teacher/admin supervisor for a wacky Yoga franchise operation for a number of years that was a convenient bike ride away from her over priced West LA apt.
When the company closed its doors, she never was able to pay her bills and was forced to rely on her parents for help. I buying her dinner or taking her to a movie was a thrill she appreciated as something outside of her budget. I did not expect anything back for my largesse. Dee was extremely independent and willful and hated to take anything from anyone. It’s all part of that Republican thing about being a ‘rugged individual’ and never taking a hand out. I accepted her party affiliation as just another eccentricity.
As 2016 advanced towards the election, I noticed Dee was watching some strange stuff on You Tube. Alex Jones, “Lies from the Mainstream Media” , and lots of hate stuff about Hillary and the “Deep State” were on the I-pad I lent her and I wondered what it was all about. Truth is I never much cared about her politics. I was more into our physical activities but it was interesting that she was such a strong Trump devote. She loved his grand plans to disrupt the establishments. I only later realized how much all of that fed into her resentments about being left-behind by a tricky economy that was very unforgiving.
I had all the ‘baby boomer’ advantages in terms of career opportunities, investments and benefits of marriage. This meant that I led a comfortable middle-class existence afforded by good health and fortune. Dee was not nearly as lucky and it gave her a radically different perspective on the economy and everyday life. The Bogard/Becall movie “To Have and Have Not” summed up our relationship and how politics came to interfere with our bliss. (For Bogart it was the French Resistance in that 1944 movie.)
My whole world is made up of progressive friends working to cure the World’s ills like climate change and abuse of women or LBGT discrimination. My friends bike as much to make an environmental statement as to get cross town. We were all shocked out of complacency by Trump’s win.
The big question was ‘Who the hell voted for Trump?’ Only folks in the ‘fly over’ States my liberal friends and I concluded. Wrong. Dee told me she did. It caused me to shutter and deny it was true. I couldn’t tell my friends. I avoided them and started living this weird ‘closeted’ life style where we stopped socializing with others.
Her revelation cast a whole new light on everything. I hadn’t thought of myself as a ‘pussy grabber’ in the Trump mode. I had noticed that nasty old white guys gave me a big wink when Dee and I loaded our bikes on the bus and scrambled aboard, but I missed the Trump effect until Dee started advertising for Q-Anon on her bike basket. Then, those old white guys started up conversations with us and called us ‘fellow patriots’. It threw our whole relationship into a weird narrative that gave me motion sickness.
If she’s a Trumpster, I must be a wannabe ‘pussy grabber’ -’cause that’s the sort of women who hang with those sort of guys. I just couldn’t face my friends, the world or even my reflection in the mirror knowing that about myself. Finally came that day when I had to send that ‘Dear Dee’ e-mail. I sent her the lyrics from Cole Porter — Just One of Those Things song and lamented about us having to part. It was a bittersweet parting.
I guess even love is polarized in the era of Donald Trump.
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