When comedians Billy Eichner and Will Ferrell took to the streets in a video released last week representing “loud white men for Kamala Harris“, I was delighted. I was even happier when three women they approached had similar answers to slightly different versions of the same question: “Would you have sex with a Trump voter?” The answers were, in order, “absolutely not”, “no!” and “(vomiting sound).”

You see, reader, I’ve been there—in fact, literally, geographically there, faced with the same question, in the bed of (someone who turned out to be) a Donald Trump voter. I had only myself to blame, because there had been signs. I guess somewhere in the back of my brain I said, I prefer not to know.

It was 2020, autumn. Like everyone else in New York, I was a nervous wreck. Every day had the same soundtrack: Governor Andrew Cuomo’s voice telling me how many people had died the day before, sirens, the 7pm catharsis/clash of pots and pans. As November 3rd, election day, crept closer, the noise on the streets and the noise in my head bled into one cacophonous splash of fuuuuuuck. A pandemic and the possibility of a second Trump term? I couldn’t stand it. You deserve something beautifulI told myself.

I forgot how I got back in touch, but a guy I slept with and slept with for years – usually with long absent stretches – resurfaced. I asked him if he followed the COVID-19 rules as strictly as I did, and when he said yes, I decided he was something beautiful that I deserved.

This man and I had met on a dating site years ago. It became obvious that we were not compatible for many reasons. But as incompatible as we were ideologically, we were very compatible chemistry-o-logic. I was also comfortable with him. My body’s protection and discomfort with strangers have made me cautious when it comes to sleeping around – it has no moral charge for me; strangers just don’t rev my engine that way – so it was always nice in the background. It was like I had it on layaway.

You see, I have a history of terrible people. I’ve dated all kinds of narcissists, idiots, morons and misogynists. (Occasionally, I would hit a Grand Slam and achieve all of the above in one person.) I buried my head in the sand when the men I was attracted to showed signs of extreme anger; I looked away when guys said things I wouldn’t have tolerated in friends but tolerated in objects of my affection because I really, really wanted to get my face off their bad faces .

Over the years we’ve known each other, Layaway Man had occasionally waved a red flag. We met before the 2016 election and we knew he didn’t like Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. He said something vague about probably voting for Gary Johnson and I must have dissociated because I kept seeing it. Once he was very aggressive with someone sitting too close to him on the subway while we were commuting after one of our nights together and it scared me. He also posted a photo on his Instagram of an apparently homeless man sleeping on the subway, which I thought was unnecessarily cruel – maybe Patrick Bateman, or even Trumpian. (Yes, I just put them in order of scariness.)

He tended to complain a lot in the way straight white men do more and more these days. He was, in many ways, the diametric opposite of the type of people I value. It didn’t matter, I told myself, because I wasn’t trying to date him; I just tried to bone it.

This kind of character vivisection is just not up to me. I am and always have been a proud liberal. I treat my body like a (fuel efficient) car and wear my political beliefs like bumper stickers to bring people who are like me together and push away (and agitate) those who are which are not.

I grew up with parents who boycotted or abstained from many things for many reasons, from Nestlé TO Chanel. As an adult, I have become a staunch supporter of it cancels (or rather “consequences”) cultureremoving people for all sorts of misdeeds, whether they be mere political difference or o mistake once which to me showed an ingrained moral deficiency. For a long time I was unforgiving in a way that I now find a little too rigid, nihilistic and needlessly exhausting. (One of my most delightful recent surprises has been seeing people I thought would forever be on my list of misunderstandings – Paris Hilton, Eminem— are revealed to have grown into inspiring, benevolent adults who are, it seems, people who have made mistakes and reckoned with them, or at least some of them. Other people—Mel Gibson, Harvey Weinstein, anyone who attended Donald Trump’s recent Madison Square Garden rally, on stage or in the audience—have almost zero chance of ever redeeming themselves.)

At Layaway Man’s Bushwick apartment in the fall of 2020, we got down to business as usual, and it was fun as usual. Then I kind of… took a break. (We’re in our 40s, not 20s.) He asked if I wanted to check out his YouTube channel. “Not really” is what I thought, but “sure” is what I said, because I’m a life-long pleaser. I pulled my panties down and when I moved to get the rest of my clothes he motioned me not to. Now, in addition to watching a vlog I’m not interested in, I was going to do it while feeling like I was on a French beach. Fantastic.

Honestly, I don’t remember what the specific video was about. All I know is that it consisted of a snarky, derisive, sexist on-camera comment about Kamala Harris, who wasn’t even the Democratic nominee. He (the naked man sitting next to me, not the video projection I was forced to endure) looked at me and looked like a small child proud of what he had brought to the show… he says.

In a way, I felt he was trying to impress me. In another, I felt he was baiting me. Our pairing was always incongruous – I had a more successful career and I could tell it bothered him, and he often made snide remarks about the nice apartment I lived in alone while he was in a cramped triple with roommates – but it was the first time i felt he was trying to set me up.

I finally asked, “You’re not voting for Donald Trump, are you?” A smile spread across his face. He shrugged sheepishly, pursed his lips as if to say, “I don’t know, maybe, maybe,” meaning definitely, yes, he voted for Donald Trump. Flirt? He thought it was flirty? Was this the ideological equivalent of hair pulling on the playground (or in the bedroom)?

At the time, I didn’t understand how we had ever tolerated each other long enough to match findoutside that we had chemistry. “I can’t have sex with someone who votes for Donald Trump,” I heard myself say, and the next thing I knew I was picking up my Isabel Marant dress off the floor. He looked stunned and in a way I was too. But I knew on a cellular level, before the words were even formed, that I could not knowingly let a Trump supporter touch me.

As I threw pieces of clothing over my body, I heard myself mumbling other things like “You’re super cool” and “Take care, good luck!” (With what? Oh my God, Carla, stop talking.) He protested dejectedly—”I’m not here yet”—and I said, “Oops, sorry, Uber’s here, I’ve got to run!” I went down the stairs of his building and never saw him again.

I was proud of my body, which had chosen ‘flight’ out of all the available options (and I suspect a bit of ‘stag’ – because, again, people pleasers). I told the story to anyone who would listen, waving it around as proof of my commitment to democracy, feminism, and humanity. (His holding back his orgasm wasn’t intentional, but it gave me a little sadistic thrill.)

Of course, deciding to sleep with him (or not sleep with him) based on how he voted was relatively low stakes for me. I’m a light-skinned, cis-femme, self-supporting Jewish woman from New York, so unlike many others, this man and his ideals posed no real threat to me. (My Jewishness is something I can hide, though I don’t. I do the opposite, draping myself in a Mr. T level of Jewish-themed jewelry.) His presence didn’t call mine into question, because live in a relational relationship. safety, unlike people who are marginalized and targeted, such as those in the transgender and black communities. Revealing Layaway Man’s voting intentions was a real killer – but it was my inherent privilege that kept me from needing to know sooner.

In a post – Jan. 6 world, I won’t make that mistake again. Like those women on the street with Billy Eichner and Will Ferrell, I can tell you, “Absolutely not, ew, (vomiting) – I would not have sex with a Trump voter.” And I mean it. Instead, I’m hoping to run into a guy who gives me the feelings in my body Layaway Man once did, but the feelings in my heart and brain that only a Kamala supporter could.

Our bodies are battlefields, now more than ever, and gaining access to mine has always been a privilege to be earned. Now I have an even stricter door policy, one based on do no harm. If my body is a wonderland you want to experience, then even to be considered for entry, you’d better vote to protect all bodies. Otherwise, you may not ride. These are the rules.

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