Kamalanomenon
More than a cruel BRAT summer
Knee deep in the passenger seat, and you're eating me out. Is it casual now? --Chappell Roan, “Casual,” 2023
We fight for a future where we defend our most fundamental freedoms: the freedom to vote — (applause); the freedom to be safe from gun violence — (applause); the freedom to love who you love openly and with pride — (applause); and the freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body not having her government tell her what to do. (Applause.) So. — Kamala Harris, August 6, 2024, Philadelphia
In this essay, I set out to combine the queer girl pop music revolution of summer 2024 and the Harris Walz campaign. Good luck, babe.
How did I, a middle-aged straight cis white lady, end up walking down a Brooklyn street in late June 2024, trying not to sing aloud to a song about twenty-something gals engaging in cunnilingus? And how did this song make me hope against hope, happy? And how is that related to seeing Kamala Harris and Tim Walz rally in my hometown of Philadelphia earlier this week? The key word is one Walz used when speaking to the crowd of over 12,000 people on Tuesday in Philly: joy.
“Thank you, Madam Vice President, for the trust you put in me, but maybe more so, thank you for bringing back the joy.” It was his first sentence as the candidate. Harris had just spent twenty minutes extolling Walz’s virtues, reminding the crowd of her prosecutorial bona fides, and being gloriously full of what my dear friend Alissa Quart calls the “off-kilter authenticity” of our first Gen X candidate.
I have one child, August, a thirteen-year-old who is nonbinary, queer, and uses they/them pronouns. Before Harris entered the presidential race a few short weeks ago, I was terrified for August, as well as the thousands (millions?) of other kids who don’t fit the Republican Project 2025-ish idea of normal.
I have found it difficult to write about my child’s gender and sexuality. This will be the first time. Previously, I’ve been scared to the point that I usually write about August in text-only documents or Apple Notes, and I had to do a global search on this computer to find my prior work.
Here’s a short precis: August came out early to their dad, Danny, and me. They were eight, and we were in residence at a summer camp for aspiring classical composers in bucolic New Hampshire. Danny, who is a composer, taught there for two seasons, and in the way of freelancers who don’t get a regular income, we’d sublet our Brooklyn apartment and moved our kid to the woods for free housing and fresh air.
No one in the family likes the woods or fresh air, but that wasn’t the point. Rural New Hampshire is a weird place (I use this word in its new political sense). The state’s motto, “Live Free or Die,” meant we saw White Power tattoos at the local pool and ate fresh blackberries at the local overpriced farm-to-table general store. Volvos and pickup trucks, used books and gun shops. However, the camp, for students from around twelve to eighteen, was musically rigorous and an oasis for these wonderfully nerdy kids, with a nearby swimmable lake and many grand pianos.
August’s choice of this as a time and place to come out was a beautiful example of child logic. As a family, we’d become close with several of the kids at the camp, who also happened to be gay and gender-queer. August saw these kids, a few years older, not even quite babysitter-age, and thought, as they told me later, “That’s me.”
Crucially, August didn’t know--and it was kind of right before it got to be such an issue--that the world was so hostile to queer children. Would they have come out so easily knowing that they’d soon become a right-wing target? I’ll never know. But Danny and I immediately agreed on a) radical acceptance of our child no matter what, and b) that we would expose them to as little hatred and demagogic posturing about their identity as possible. The radical acceptance part was pretty easy. The camp of queer teens watching kept us from messing up the name/pronoun changes too much. And, while August’s identity was and still is a very big deal (someday I will write about this in more detail, but I think I’m still not ready), we had all the usual parenting and life issues to work on. Danny was in the middle of a serious illness (he’s healthy now, thank Dog), we had a fascist president, and there was about to be a global pandemic. Meanwhile, August was going into fourth grade.
Where do Chappell Roan and Kamala Harris fit into all this?
Cut back to me in June, walking the streets of Brooklyn with my over-the-ear headphones on, wearing a vintage printed dress, attempting not to sing aloud to “Casual.” I was the worst caricature of a middle-aged mom. If August saw me, they’d be so embarrassed they would die. But listening to this music made me feel August was in less danger. It was before Biden withdrew from the race, and I was trying to square a second Trump presidency. Danny and I had already had many late-night conversations about what we would need to do regarding this country’s lethal bifurcation when it comes queer kids. Yes, we live in “safe” Brooklyn, which supposedly also comes with a sort of constant and general rainbow flag screen-saver backdrop. But what if Biden lost, and suddenly we were in one of the “bad” states?
Cut to a month later, August 6, and I was sitting in section 119 at Temple University’s Liacouras Center, waiting for Kamala Harris to take the stage. I Amtraked from New York that morning to go to the rally with my cousin Lily. Lily’s father is my dad’s younger brother. Though they’re only five years apart, Lily is sixteen years younger than me. I’m an X-er--like Kamala!--and she’s a Millenial. She’s also a newlywed and a new homeowner in the Fairmount neighborhood in our hometown. We were raised close to our other cousins (their father is the eldest of the three brothers), and we all have a sibling-ish intimacy. I was psyched to be going to the rally with her.
We’d RSVP’d several days earlier, receiving instructions to arrive at the site around 2 pm with photo ID, a bag no “larger than a clutch,” in “business casual attire.” (We are two Jewish girls; there were many texts regarding which tiny bags we’d bring and Lily’s jumpsuit versus my skirt-and-blouse combo.) It was hot with the kind of humidity that made a rain shower more of a sponge wringing out on us from the gray North Philly sky.
By the time we got into the basketball stadium, we’d made friends on line, especially with the fellow in checkered chef pants and an Institute of Culinary Arts smock. A 42-year-old Black dad from Camden, New Jersey, he was back in school to learn new technology for running a kitchen but had cut out of school early so he could hear Harris’s plans for “urban renewal.” He was also, at least when we first landed on the line together, an undecided voter (where was the Times? Both Sides alert!).
By the time we approached the entrance two hours later, he was wearing a Kamala button—“for my daughter.” I hope my offer to “weaponize my Karen power for good” to get him into the venue without the proper RSVP helped his decision. (Lily later told me she worried I would get arrested and planned to “abandon” me if so. The Golds have a history of politically motivated arrests, and she was not gonna miss the rally if I decided to pull a family stunt.)
As of Tuesday morning, we’d known Harris would introduce Tim Walz as her running mate and that she’d received enough delegate votes to be the “official” candidate. Therefore, this would be an inherently significant event. We also hoped for some of the star power from her rally in Atlanta earlier in the week. Jill Scott, maybe? The Roots? Gritty? Danny, who was bummed not to come along but on childcare duty at home, wistfully guessed Obama might speak. It already seemed more like a concert than a political rally; we even had light-up wristbands that flashed red, white, and blue in synch.
Instead of musical guests, we got both of Pennsylvania’s senators. John Fetterman ambled to the podium in his usual shorts and a t-shirt, announced he was a Steelers fan, and laughed when people booed. They cheered louder when he said, “I work with J. D. Vance, and I am here to confirm he is a seriously weird dude.” In a way, the lack of glamorous celebrities made it feel even more Philly (but seriously, Questlove, we needed a more inspired DJ—they were spinning Motown instead of Philly Soul!). Philly loves a team vibe where we can holler and boo. We were ready to climb greased poles and get out the vote.
Next, Governor Josh Shapiro, who was the frontrunner for VP until earlier that morning, jogged out. Lily said, “He’s been friend-zoned, and now he has to go to her wedding!”
Even so, Shapiro embraced his role as hype man, shouting, “We remember it was Donald Trump who ripped away the freedom of American women to make decisions about their own bodies.”
The crowd yelled and stomped their feet in the loudest response of the afternoon thus far. I have been struggling to explain how this collective noise on the subject of women’s bodily autonomy felt. The best I can come up with: freedom and relief. As much as I’ve marched and chanted about abortion, this was more listening than screaming. It was also shocking, but even more so, when Shapiro culminated his speech with the line, “As Maya Angelou said…” The crowd intoned the full quote back at him, “When they tell you who they are, believe them.”
A few minutes after Shapiro left the stage, we heard the first notes of Beyonce’s “Freedom.” Harris strutted on stage, dark blue suit, pearls, Chuck Taylors, and all, with Tim Walz waving behind her. Dayenu—that would have been enough—but there was more. This whole crowd, and these elected men, they, we, had all assembled for the first Black female candidate for president of the United States. Her VP pick, who at least physically resembles (old white dude) politics as usual, metaphorically trotted behind her carrying her regulation tiny purse.
The audience roared for two minutes before Kamala could speak. The sound people had to cycle through the lead-in for “Freedom” three times.
It’s been such a fast transition from Biden, whose presidency has been shockingly effective and (especially of late) un-effervescent. Biden’s speeches have helped me feel hopeful, especially in the depths of the pandemic, but rarely inspired. Pundits are saying the feeling in Philly was reminiscent of the early Obama days. Obama’s oratory gave me chills and made me teary. But on Tuesday my arms didn’t goosebump, and my eyes stayed clear.
The thrill was in Kamala’s clarity, wit, and familiarity when she said, “I know Donald Trump’s type.” Most of my friends are also women in their fifties. We’ve had to push and slog, and by now—it’s a cliche because it’s true—we have run out of fucks to give. And that is liberating and powerful. It’s animal. We are sick of feeling suffocated, survivalists, Nightbitches. Listening to Kamala speak, I felt done.
Or, to turn the frown upside-down, I felt joy.
Okay, I have to step back for a minute because I wanted to write about Tuesday’s rally AND the lesbian pop girlies AND August (my child, not the month). How do I connect them all? As a writing teacher, I force my students to do an exercise when working with two texts to keep from falling back on “compare/contrast” writing and come up with their own ideas. My exercise is for them to fill in the blanks of this sentence, “When I read tk author writing X, it makes me think of other tk author writing Y because…” The kids hate this until they (some of them) get it. The prompt forces connection, which is the beginning of critical thinking.
I’m making myself do my own exercise here because while I’m intuiting the connection, I’m struggling with writing it. When I heard Kamala Harris say, “We are the underdogs in this race, but we have the momentum, and I know exactly what we are up against,” it reminded me of Chappell Roan singing, “My kink is watching you ruin your life, you losing your mind,” because Harris’s kink seems to be Trump’s karma. And I want the woman who might be able to protect my child’s future to feel that gust of pleasure at watching him suffer and squirm.
The kids are calling Kamala “BRAT” because she is a carnivorous underdog for this man who wants to hurt women, girls, femmes, queers, kids, brown people, all the people who’ve been catcalled, attacked, misogynoir-ed, denied fundamental rights, and even killed. Summer 2024 was already about the girls getting it and having a blast. Kamala has stepped into her power like Chappell in Lady Liberty drag, burning her way out of a wormy apple at the Governer’s Ball. Or, as my August would say, “She ate.” I’m still hungry.
