Come and Knock on My Door

She sounded like a cop knocking on the door before I knew who it was. I live on the third floor of a walk up on the edge of downtown, just inside the north ward. We don’t get a lot of strollers. It’s a small flat, and you can see the door from the couch while laying on it. I had spent a lot of time on that couch, coming out of the pandemic. The knock on the door was the first time she had got me off the couch, but not the last. I got up and cleaned some detritus off my shirt, not because it was dirty but to shake myself into focus. I’d been reading the English language translation of the memoirs of Albania’s long-time communist leader and dozed off with the mid-autumn wind blowing over me so soothingly after coming in through the open window to the fire escape. No one knocks without texting first. Solicitors don’t really get in the building. There’s a buzzer downstairs but I was convinced it didn’t work. I’ve seen friends of neighbors use it to get buzzed in, but I’ve also seen my own friends downstairs texting furiously because the door didn’t open when they buzzed me. The buzzer in my unit doesn’t work even if the buzzers in the other units do. I remember having this thought as I looked from the door to the window into the fire escape, absently wondering if it really were cops at my door and if I should scram. I’d done nothing wrong, but prisons are full of people like that. They didn’t knock again or yell, so I went over to look through the peep hole, and that’s where her whole face hit me with that fish eye lens. What could I do but open the door?

Kendra Badger was a lot taller in person, I’m a few inches north of six feet so its hard for me to tell, but she had to be at least five foot nine or ten. There was a man standing behind her, holding a large briefcase or valise. Later I would learn that this was Greg, her constituent services staffer. I called him her bag man because of the bag, which always had something different in it, from appetizers, honest to goodness appetizers, to zit removal cream. It’s hard to explain where the flame of passion comes from. Humans are passionate for and about a lot of things. We talk about losing our passion and finding it, about not letting our passions control us. About directing our passions, cultivating them. We don’t talk about passion that knocks us in the head after metastasizing in our subconscious. Seeing Kendra Badger in person should have made me angry but she caught me as if in an out of body experience. The knock on the door jarring me back to reality, to the threshold of my dwelling where the outside world, out of all the people in it, spit out Kendra Baker and Greg the bag man in front of my door.

-What do you want? I blurted out.

-I’m Councilwoman Kendra Badger, and I’m—

-I know who you are, I snarled back, primed to get past the formalities. Isn’t it a little late for door knocking? That’s usually, you know, before the election. I know that I said that part fast and out of breath by the way she smirked when she made eye contact with me. And what’s worse, she was ready with a come back.

-When’s the last time you voted?, she asked me.

-I don’t vote, I responded, walking right into her little trap. She didn’t pounce then, she let me keep going: Electoral politics are just mass media entertainment, I rattled off, meant to divide people and distract them from their class enemies.

-Right, sure, she said in a tone that seemed so half-hearted it couldn’t even be called dismissive. So, You [and here she called me by my name, which I’ll replace with You or U because I don’t want to share my real name here, obviously, because of the sensitive nature of our relationship—remember, it’s not just a disaster for Kendra if we were outed, it would be one for me too, even though I am not a fascist, and maybe by the end of this story she won't be one either], tell me, if you don’t even vote, why would you expect anyone to come campaigning at your door?

Her quip caught me off guard all over again. Who was this woman really? She didn’t let me interrupt again, continuing: But now I won, without your vote, which it sounds like wasn’t on the table anyway. So I represent you in the city council, as much as any other, legal, resident of this Ward. I assume you know what a Ward is?

Now she was being condescending. I’m dismissive of electoral politics, not ignorant of it, I wanted to say. Instead I found myself interrogating the passionate way I felt so negatively about her.

-This is the north ward, I blurted out like I had half a brain.

Her smile said very good, but she only responded with right.

-So why are you here? I asked, addressing myself as much as her, addressing us together from my out of body experience.

-Introducing myself to the residents I represent now, and inviting you to an open house at our ward office, she added, turning around to pull a flyer out of the valise Greg was holding. It’s a community event, she added. We’ve got a big city but it’s got a small town vibe, she went on. I knew what that dog whistle meant, who’s welcome and who isn’t in a small town. But I nodded along. I want to introduce our residents to our office and my staff. I’m big on community—

-You’re a fascist, I shot back.

She sighed. Everybody’s a fascist now. I just say what I mean. Do you read Ge---- Or----?

I thought to myself, she is a total joke. Yeah, I responded, mentioning his most famous dystopian title.

-Not exactly. She mentioned his essay on politics and the English language. Sloppy thoughts, sloppy language. Sloppy language, sloppy thought. You people throw words around to mean someone who’s ideas you don’t like.

-You people?

-You know very well what I mean. I could call you a communist if I assume you’re someone who’s ideas I don’t like.

-Well, I am.

She paused. She asked, with the democratic socialists?

-Progressive labor, I responded.

I don’t know why I told her that. I hadn’t been active in years and it wasn’t the kind of organization that encouraged advertising membership. I could tell in her eyes she’d heard of us, of them.

-You know, I’m not a fascist most of all because I’m interested in hearing different opinions, even if I call them retarded. I want the community to work together for the benefit of the whole, and I know traditional values keep that together.

I was ready to gag in my throat, and then she smiled again.

-What I’m saying, she went on, is that you ought to come to our open house. I’m interested in hearing what you have to say, what you believe. Who knows, when I’m done laughing maybe there’s even something useful in it.

She handed me the paper and turned to walk away. Okay, see you there, I said reflexively.