When they go low, We go to hell

“…I think candidate Morris would benefit from some time out in the real world. No one is out to get the bLack populace like he leads his followers to believe. He’s done nothing but inflate the facts and fear monger-“

“This is bullshit!” Themba exploded as he spanked a stack of papers, scattering them across the small greenroom. The rumble of the still filling arena kept the room from falling into complete silence, but the tension made those thin walls feel soundproof.

“How many times do I have to fucking prove myself?” He seethed. “I bet if I shucked and jived they’d be singing my fuckin’ praises…” He took a deep breath, his heavy shoulders rising and falling.

His outburst had startled me frozen, but right when he took a second to breathe, I rushed to mute the TV hoping nothing else would send him into a fit of righteous anger before his husband got back.

“I hate it here,” he sighed rubbing his hands along the sides of his clean shaven face. “They’re turning my own words against me now. Like they’re not even writing their own bars,” he complained.

“I’d like to show them old wrinkly alabastards what fear really looks like,” I threatened off the record.

“MMTCH,” Themba smacked his lips. “And what would you do? Use Talk-no-jutsu?”

“Okay, but that’s literally your job tho,” I roasted. “Professional ass, Debate team ass, Hokage ass-“

Just then, my angel returned. Malcolm, Themba’s husband, had come to take the emotional time bomb that was pre-stage Themba out of my overstimulated hands.

“What is going on in here?” Adesanya worried while picking up some of the paper off the floor. “I leave to feed my wonderful child, and the lil fuckers raging when I get back?” He sighed. “You let him watch the news again didn’t you?”

“He was getting stir crazy!” I whined. “He made me turn it on,” I pouted.

This long nigga had been getting me in trouble since we met. It was a Monday morning, mind you it had to have been like 7 am or something crazy, and they had an entire class of newly enrolled kindergartners in one room. When I tell you it was so loud in there I wanted to level the whole gymnasium— I digress. Themba had the bright idea of deciding he was going to pick the kids in his class. Like he literally stood his little ass up and went “I’d like do pick my own class. How many kids can I pick?” And the principal went “You get 14 classmates.” And bro STARTED PICKING THEM. He picked me third, then he never left me alone again.

Malcolm guided a can of Bingo Bango into Themba’s tense hands and ordered “No more news. You know they’re trying to get you out of character, and I for one, won’t let you go out like that,” he softened. “Focus on the people that matter, and follow the water,” he smiled while cupping Themba’s weary face.

“That’s right,” I cosigned.

“And you, little one,” Ade scolded with his hands on his hips. The stoic version of Ade was my least favorite to be on the receiving end of. “Did you send me on a dummy mission on a campaign show day, just to get me out the dressing room?”

“Maybe,” I whispered in confession. “But you was tryna have my boy on stage lookin’ like Uncle Bobby, and I couldn’t let that slide, Unc!” I reasoned.

Themba and Malcolm started to review the show as I stepped out the room into the busy hallway just backstage at the second stop on Themba’s presidential campaign tour. The security guards I’d greet as I headed to the back entrance to get some air were all recruited personally by Themba from an organization called the Asantewaa that he’d partnered with very early on. They called themselves the “Neo Black Panthers” which gained Adesanya’s full support, him being a former Panther himself. Malcolm however seemed to have some reservations, as did I. It felt too convenient for this group to form and make themselves known right when Themba was beginning to raise concerns for his safety, but we always “followed the water” as Themba would say.

When Chicago’s waning spring breeze licked my skin, a shiver radiated through my pampered bones. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d stepped into the cold without a coat, but now, as I faced the shadows of the setting sun from between tall buildings, my mind seemed to clear. As if I’d taken a dip into an ice bath, I welcomed the cold and took a deep breath of the foreign air.

We had an early start beginning our tour a year before the competitors would even be decided with the intent of visiting every city with a black majority and every indigenous reservation that would allow us entry. We started our tour with a hometown show in Detroit before this Chicago show, and we’d follow a trail through Cleveland before hitting the East coast and heading South. Somehow, even though we’d only made two stops, Themba was already catching strays in the media, even without a vote counted in his favor.

“He sounds just as racist as the people he says he’s against. What are we supposed to believe?” Spouted one reporter. “He’s dividing communities!” Agreed another.

“If I sounded as racist as they did, I’d already be winning this election,” Themba argued once in an interview that would never see broadcast, but would hold the record for fastest political video to reach a million views on Tweeta, before the apps disgraceful fall into obscurity.

“Um, Excuse me,” Julia, Themba’s campaign promoter timidly chirped as she stepped outside beside me, the cold air seeming ignorable against her milky white arms. “Is future president Morris going to be okay for the speech tonight?” She wrung her hands together nervously as if she were rubbing in the most inefficient hand sanitizer. “I heard some commotion coming from his dressing room earlier.”

“That was just him and his husbands pre-show ritual, you don’t want to go in there,” I joked, but she looked absolutely horrified. I wanted to push my luck, but I know her sheltered ass would tell a tabloid thinking she was talking to a bystander. “I didn’t mean that,” I clarified quickly. “He’s a little stressed out about his public image at the moment, so maybe his promoter should come up with some new ideas to spread the word,” I winked.

“I’m on it! I’ll do what I can!” She stammered before stumbling back into the building with her heels clacking down the hallway. I expected her to release a supercut of Themba taking gasping breaths before the day was out.

As the bright orange light of the setting sun painted the city, I wondered if all this felt worth it for Themba. If the constant watching out the corner of his eye was worth the change he claimed he’d make in this country. Did he seriously want to live his life surrounded by security guards? The constant threat of an extremist taking his life seemed to loom over his head like a dark cloud that grew darker and closer to suffocating him each time he stood at a podium.

The miasma of death seemed to seep from under his closed dressing room door as I stood in front of it. The heavy door peeled open to an eerie silence that wrapped its strong hands around my throat as I stepped through the threshold to where Malcolm had guided him into a chair. Themba’s glossy eyes were glued to the ticking analog clock on the furthest wall as if his watching it would make time stop.

After his almost textbook perfect speech, we decided we’d change course so we could experience Mardi Gras, which was the best decision Themba’s ever made. Malcolm, forever the mental health advocate, was the reason we ended up delaying the Atlanta show after single-handedly corralling us into a three-week vacation and we were so spiritually drained by the time we got there, we slept through the first two and ate most of the third. Thankfully the people of Nola welcomed us like family. We were fed and clothed anew before we headed out for another successful event.

So many people from Detroit were in Atlanta it felt like a second hometown show, complete with the hustles that crowded the busy sidewalks as the line poured into the large stadium.

“What up doe?” Themba smirked into the microphone, causing the Detroit section to shout out as loud as they could. He laughed as he calmed them down, waving his large Yaoi hands and talking into the microphone from the podium. “I did have a speech prepared for y’all, but I know y’all watched it on YouTube already. Can I sit and talk wi’ch’all?” He grabbed a handheld mic and sat a the edge of the stage with his long legs dangling.

What was supposed to be a tense message to the masses to inform them of his stances and to get their votes on his side ended up being al open floor conversation between Themba and a full stadium of people. As he spoke, the stadium went silent, except for the anecdotes shouted from the rafters every once in a while.

“Now, my daddy was a Panther, so you know how I feel about them discharge donkeys,” Themba started, earning a laugh from the crowd. “I’ve honestly been worried about how to get enough of them on my side to win,” he confided in the large crowd. “Think we could scare the liberals into thinking it’s anti-black to not vote for me?” He joked, but the crowd didn’t laugh with him. They seemed to be in thought as they exchanged glances amongst themselves.

Backstage, Adesanya had a sickeningly evil grin on his face, as if he would form the smear campaign himself. Malcolm signed, knowing the inevitable. And me? I was already drafting my TacTic POV posts for the next week.

“Are y’all considering it?!” Themba worried.

Within a week, there were articles from black journalists stating that not voting for Themba was indeed racist in and of itself, and that boosted the momentum that he needed to get on the debate floor of the national convention.

“Presidential candidate, Themba Morris, has been causing havoc at every stop on his campaign tour,” a newscaster started. “… Being met by the national guard at several states and having to gain clearance to enter, he’d managed to stop in every major heavily black city on the nation on his self-proclaimed ‘paper-bag-test tour’…”

“It should be ‘National Guard shows up to terrorize the only pro-black candidate with guns, even after knowing his bus was unarmed’, but it would never be that,” Themba complained while munching on pistachios and pacing around the hotel room we’d rented in Oakland partway through the long tour. It seemed like every TV I turned on was mentioning something about Themba, to the point I got tired of seeing him in real life, and opted to spending my time with Adesanya. “That one is always getting into trouble,” He’d sigh. “At least he always manages to find the right kind of trouble.” His pride would only grow brighter as he watched Themba campaign from city to city. After partnering with the Asantewaa, Themba came into contact with the people who ran a black only social media app called Blkem, and began to post his upcoming tour stops there, a move that would severely boost the numbers of the small app and cement his claim to the black popular vote. It wasn’t long before I found myself doom scrolling through the mountain of uplifting messages on Themba’s campaign page. I ended up having to baby-proof Themba’s phone so he couldn’t read the BluTube comments on his live streams, but some of the hate still managed to trickle through, especially when the media tried to use super cuts from his events to paint him as anti-capitalist, which was always funny to me, because he was. He was the biggest socialist in the room, both figuratively and literally. Tall ass bitch.

“It seems candidate Themba has turned to desperation, making his campaign speeches publicly viewable with subtitles and a large wheelchair section at each event…” one of the idiotic news casters droned on from their teleprompter.

“Suddenly I’m desperate for wanting to be accessible?” Themba laughed. “They’ll really say anything out here.”

“Better than the guy that offered to hang you if you lost,” Malcolm growled while cuddling Themba and gently scratching his shaved head. “I wish I coulda been standing outside when they fired his ass,” he grumbled with an evil grin. “I bet his face was priceless.”

“I mailed him a ‘sorry for your loss’ card,” Adesanya grinned while filing his nails across the room.

“Of course you did,” I laughed while giving him a high five. “+35 dad points.”

After out brief vacation in Oakland, hanging out with Iniko and Durand who happened to be in town (which felt like a fever dream; we bought local weed and got high enough for it to carry over for the next three stops, I swear), we packed up and prepared to head into Indigenous territory.

This was the only leg of the tour Themba was concerned about. He had no idea how he’d be received outside of black spaces, especially with his campaign. By the time our weird route landed in the heart of New Mexico, we knew what was up. Instead of the traditional campaign stop we were used to, Themba had us immerse ourselves in the culture of whichever tribe we were visiting while we were in their home. We learned bits of new languages, tried tons of new food, and left with cultural outfits and trinkets we could barely name. Most importantly, we learned of their struggles to survive under the current administration and learned how we could help.

“What if I told you I wanted to give your land back to you?” Themba asked a Cree leader further into the tour.

“I’d say we’ve heard that promise before, and I wouldn’t believe you,” the chief answered honestly.

“That’s real,” Themba sighed. “What if I said I wanted to dissolve this cursed country, and I need your help to properly divide what’s left?”

“Then I’d help you light the fires of liberation and bless the earth with the ashes.”

With even more gifts and alliances in tow, and after almost two full years of campaigning, our bus finally passed under the beautiful “Welcome to Michigan” sign I’d been desperate to see since we left. I ached to run into my parent’s loving arms and let time melt the stress I carried in my shoulders. I knew I needed to savor the moment before we were on tour again and fighting our way through enemy lines to see our own people as the fated voting day neared.

The crisp spring breeze of Detroit at once reminded me I was home, and of my allergies as a series of sneezes threatened to rip my damn nose off my shit. I quickly put on a face mask and walked the short distance from Themba’s home across the street to mine. I’d need plenty of rest, something told me I’d be going without for a little while. Maybe even longer.