11/7, 11:30am—Austin TX, Burnet Road

I meant to write this yesterday after lunch, but I couldn’t really focus enough to do it. I remember Election Night 2016 very well, but I don’t usually spend the day of a midterm frantically refreshing my Twitter feed waiting for any update, even though I know there are hours to go before the polls close. I don’t normally do that when election results are coming in for a special election in Alabama either, though, or when the off-year state ballots are being cast in Virginia. These are interesting times, and yesterday was too stressful a day for me to know what to write.

So I went to the Olive Garden for an early lunch with my friend and frequent reporting partner Jessica, which ended up being a vaguely celebratory one because a story we had worked on for several months ended up being published that morning. (The story is not a pleasant one; feel free to not read it right now.) Writing about unpleasant subjects, you need to take your victories where you can, and so we went for pasta.

We tried to avoid talking about the election, at least for a while. I don’t know what it was like for her, but for me, not talking about it was like a challenge I gave myself. “Can we talk about literally anything else for a little while? Let’s find out!” When the server came, we each ordered the salad, and Jessica was puzzled by the multiple menus, which are extremely confusing—I only ever need the Never-Ending Pasta menu, but I’ve never understood why there are three different pamphlets, each with different entree options, to sort through before one can place their order. We told her to return in a few moments, and she settled on the angel hair with marinara sauce and sauteed shrimp. I asked for cavatappi with five-cheese marinara and crispy chicken, but I was jealous of her shrimp—a topping choice that isn’t on the never-ending menu, but which I’d enjoy a lot if it were.

Eventually, we did get onto the subject of the election. I had decided to invite a small group of people to my house to watch the results, mostly because I didn’t really want to spend an evening by myself refreshing twitter on the couch, sweating through my anxiety. It wasn’t a party—I don’t think election night parties are a good idea anymore, if you are not entirely neutral regarding who wins (and I don’t believe those people exist)—I thought of it more as a support group, a chance to refresh twitter on the couch while also being around other people who are doing the same thing. Jessica, who has a family, told me she probably wouldn’t be able to come. Her reasons for it were different from the reasons a few other people gave me—most of the other people who declined did so because they didn’t want to watch, they didn’t feel up to being social, they did want to sweat through their anxieties alone. It made sense to me. I might not have gone to anyone else’s house to watch, but I was able to host people in my own, which made it easier.

Election Night 2016 is a very clear memory for me, to the point where I remember some very specific things very well. One thing I remember is a photograph—I can’t find it now—of two young white men in red MAGA hats as the results came in. They look young—I almost called them “boys”—and I remember their faces, which were rapturous with disbelief, almost tearful. In my recollection of the photo, they’re holding each other, as though they could barely stand because of the joy they were experiencing. And I’ve thought back to that photo a lot over the past two years, to wonder: what did they think they had won? What, specifically, brought them such joy in that photo? What future were they awaiting?

I don’t think I possess the capacity for that kind of reaction. For me, the best I can feel in response to election results is the same sort of feeling you get when you pee in a swimming pool—relief, certainly, and some satisfaction, but tinged with other emotions, too.

Last night felt like that, too. Anyone in my line of work who claims otherwise should not be trusted. It is impossible to be a mere observer of a political environment in which leaders target you specifically, and not just that, but target the causes that your work is built upon—the idea that truth matters, that there’s such a thing as truth, that there’s a difference between a person who lies to you all the time and a person who does not, that it is worth asking people questions and writing down what they say so that we can better make sense of the world. I don’t trust anyone who pretends that they are but humble chroniclers of the decisions of their fellow citizens in the current environment. It all matters too much, and the existence of the press itself is on the ballot.

So when the results indicated well for that, I had that pee-in-the-pool feeling. I didn’t feel great! I couldn’t imagine the rapture of those dudes in the MAGA hats hugging each other as they anticipated the world to come. But I felt a little better about things that had been making me feel terrible.

Jessica wasn’t there for that, but she was at the Olive Garden several hours beforehand. The server brought our meal out quickly—I’m not there during lunch hours often, but they have an express-lunch policy, which was convenient, as I had another appointment at one o’clock. We’re in the Pasta Pass home stretch now—it expires in two weeks—and I was glad to have another satisfying bowl full of chicken and sauce and noodles in front of me.

We talked some about specific races—I was more bullish on Beto O’Rourke than she was, a prediction that didn’t come true—and I asked for a refill, a portion of fettucine alfredo with grilled chicken. Regular readers of the newsletter know that I have a no-alfredo-sauce rule during pasta season, but I didn’t really violate it; the second serving wasn’t for me, it was for my friend Katherine, who would be arriving the next day to dog-sit while I went to Los Angeles for a brief trip. Kat’s HBO Access pilot is holding its premiere at the Landmark Theater on Wednesday, and I wanted to be there. She knows Dio well, and I trust her to take care of him while he continues recovering. I feel a sharper sense of relief that the dog is okay than I feel about almost anything, and I wanted to offer something extra to thank her for being available to care for him while I’m away. Pasta, of course, seemed like an appropriate offering.

I’m hopeful that 2019 will be a better year than 2018 has been, and however I finally end up celebrating that, I would not be surprised to see it accompanied by red sauce, either.