![]() It was my sister now, who after a long string of emojis that suggested she was terrifically excited, explained that Pence’s presence in the audience had heightened the impact of the play immeasurably there was a palpable alertness in the crowd, a sense she had that the entire audience and even the actors on the stage were hearing the performance through Pence’s ears, so that each line-and I happened to know my sister knew each line by heart-took on new resonance and that the most resonant lines, Immigrants get the job done, for example, or Oceans rise, empires fall, caused such voluble eruptions of feeling that the actors had to pause and wait for quiet before they could resume and that finally the cast had come out to address Pence directly as he left the room, a video of which address my sister attached for the rest of us to see and that she had never so acutely felt the strength of a crowd accrue to her, a gay teenager with blue hair that she had never been quite so proud, that she had never experienced pride as such a visceral phenomenon, felt it swell inside her and tingle on the surface of her skin. And so I sat there watching the flames until my phone began to buzz again. The log I’d just added to the fire had burnt to embers by the time further news came, and in the interval I’d been unable to focus on the pages I was reading-the opening chapter of Cloud Atlas, which concerns the racism that underlies even the best of white men’s intentions-for more than a few minutes at a time the very thought of Pence sitting erect in his seat, surrounded by Secret Service agents and body-men, with his tiny face affixed implacably to his weird head, sent specifically, as I could guess, to ruin everyone’s good time, worked me back into a helpless, debilitating furor. This was the latest in a thread of texts that included my entire family-my mom and sister, my dad, a brother in Brooklyn, another in Alaska-that had been the chief means of communication among us for a number years, and that since the election had been a more or less unceasing volley of rage, fear, and despair. I had already packed my bags for New York, had loaded the car and was ready to leave first thing in the morning, had made a fire to sit beside with a book until bed with the modest hope of a few hours peace of mind, when a frenzied series of text messages from my mother arrived in all caps, announcing that she was seeing Hamilton with my 13-year-old sister, and that she would have more to say after intermission but that Mike Pence was in attendance and the audience was raising hell.
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