Vote or I will kill you bitch.

I remember back in 2004 celebrities got out of control with the voting thing. Paris Hilton wore a t-shirt that said, “Vote or Die.” It turned out the dizzy socialite wasn’t registered and didn’t keep up her promise. She didn’t die. Instead she got herself arrested for drunk driving a couple years later.

I admit, I’ve never voted. I meant to vote back in 2000 but I figured Bush was going to win since I lived in a red state. It really didn’t matter if I voted anyway. I lived in Texas, a historical red state. They say every vote counts, but it doesn’t. If you are a democrat and live in a red state, you might as well stay home unless you feel as if you can get enough blue people to go out and vote and change the color of the state.

After the Al Gore vs. Bush crap, I vowed to never vote. I knew that every vote didn’t count. It wasn’t a popular election but some crazy crap. It was recounts and people with too much power stealing the election. I hated the 2000 election. It stressed me the fuck out and I didn’t even vote that year.

I’ve lied. I told people I voted so they would leave me the hell alone. I told people I cared because they would think I was a decent person. I’m not. I told people I voted like I tell the people when I’m selected for Jury Duty I’m mentally insane and can’t possible be of good judgment. The mental insane excuse never worked for me. They usually want papers or a Doctor’s note. I don’t like being patriotic. I didn’t like back in elementary and middle school when you were forced to stand in front of the American flag and salute it. I don’t know the pledge of allegiance. I don’t know all the words to “God bless America” or the national Anthem. I guess in Sarah Palin’s eyes that would make me anti-American. I thought the point of being American was that I didn’t need to know that crap, it’s not like we live in Nazi, Germany. It’s not like Sadam Hussein is going to shot me in the head if I don’t tap dance the national anthem on cue. It’s ridiculous. I thought being American gave me the right to not give a fuck. I thought it was in the constitution that I could not give a fuck unless I’m drafted for the army. Americans are rude when they go abroad. Americans don’t care about anybody else but Americans. We don’t care about anyone else’s religions, history, unless it’s American. But I guess 911 changed everything. It was the first time I realized I could die just simply for being American. I grew up with the notion that America was the greatest country on the planet or in the Universe. I was completely blissfully ignorant of how the rest of the world hated us.

On 911 I woke up with the worse hangover. I was living in Chicago. I went out that Monday night to a bar called Biology were drag queens performed and they served cheap drinks. I had way too many cheap drinks that night. I woke up that morning about an hour late to work. I desperately tried to come up with an excuse to call in. Before I could pick up the phone my roommate ran into the room and demanded I turn on the television. He said it was important. It was when the first plane crashed into the towers. And then thirty minutes later the second plane crashed into the towers. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing with my own eyes. I thought it was fake. It looked fake. I couldn’t process it. I didn’t call into work that day. I just sat in front of the television and just watched. I wanted answers. I wanted to know what was happening. It seemed as if the world was coming to an end.

I never thought just living in America people would want to kill me. I thought I was safe. I thought the world loved American and worshiped our flag. As a black man I only figured I had to fear crooked cops and racist states like Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. I figured if I stayed out of those states and not drove through them during the night I be safe. I knew America had racist issues, and my life could be in jeopardy because I was black, gay, if I traveled down the wrong road in America. But all that changed on 911. The terrorist I’d known my entire life, the at home terrorists, the ones that march in their KKK outfits during Martin Luther King Day, they were suddenly my terrorists. I knew those terrorists. I felt safe with those terrorists. The new terrorists, I didn’t know. The new terrorists crossed the ocean to come kill me. I didn’t know why. I thought damn as a black gay person, that’s all I needed was more people wanting to kill me. So I became American. It was pounded in my heart. It was pounded in my heart like being black and gay was pounded in my heart. It was how I was born.

I started to care about America. I guess I wanted to be safe again. It was my only home. I didn’t want to move. I had new fascination with the American flag. I always thought people who paraded the American flag were a bunch of hillbillies. I always looked at the American flag liked I looked at the Confederate flag. It had too much blood on it. It had too much of my blood on it. It had too much of my ancestors blood on it. And that’s how I look at the red states. A place drowning in my ancestors blood.

But things have changed. I look at Obama running for President and it’s nothing I ever thought could happen. I never thought he would make it passed the primaries. I always feared a black president because I knew he would be assassinated. I told my grandmother when I was five years old that I wanted to be the president of the United States when I grew up and she cried. She said they would only kill me.

I’m going to vote this year, and I mean it. I guess I’m voting because I now live in a blue state. I hate to think what the lines are going to be like on Election Day. I once waited fourteen hours to see the Star Wars movie. I don’t even like Star Wars. I guess I can stand in line to elect Obama.

I just want the election to be over with. In the meantime. I decided to stop watching television and just focus on babies, kittens, and puppies. I want to focus on things that make me happy. I just want to laugh. I also want to feel American.

Just in case you forgot.

The Star-Spangled Banner
—Francis Scott Key, 1814
O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight,O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there.O say, does that star-spangled banner yet waveO'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore dimly seen thro' the mists of the deep,Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream:'Tis the star-spangled banner: O, long may it waveO'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
And where is that band who so vauntingly sworeThat the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,A home and a country should leave us no more?Their blood has wash'd out their foul footsteps' pollution.No refuge could save the hireling and slaveFrom the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth waveO'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
O thus be it ever when free-men shall standBetween their lov'd home and the war's desolation;Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued landPraise the Pow'r that hath made and preserv'd us a nation!Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,And this be our motto: “In God is our trust!”And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall waveO'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag reads as follows:
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands: one Nation under God, indivisible, With Liberty and Justice for all."
Lastly, the negro anthem:
Lift every voice and sing,
'Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on 'til victory is won.
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast'ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
'Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.