At the moment, I'm trapped inside of a taxi, the taxi is trapped inside a gridlock of traffic, and all of the traffic is trapped in the Lincoln Tunnel heading into New York City. After two frigidly cold winter months in Iowa, I am returning to my home, the Yang campaign headquarters. I also have an apartment here in New York City, but after spending the last 797 days working full-time on Andrew Yang's campaign for president, I could hardly tell you where it is. The 2020 Iowa Caucus was two nights ago, and somewhere outside of this tube, the world is collectively freaking out because we still don't know who won the caucus.
I would like to know the caucus results as well, but my mind is racing frantically due to a separate crisis of my own, one that feels much worse than dying in the Lincoln Tunnel.
I look down at my phone and re-read the email I had received moments before I lost signal entering the tunnel, "I regret to inform you that the campaign no longer needs your services. We appreciate all that you have done. This is not an easy decision. Please call for more information when you are at home."
I want to vomit.
How can they have the audacity to let me go? I look out the window of the taxi into the prison-gray tube. I shake my head, trying to play it cool while my mind is screaming.
This campaign is me! I built this thing!
My body tenses up, and I begin to sweat.
Abdul, the taxi driver, eyes me.
"Bad traffic day, yeah?" he says, shaking his head.
"Yeah … really bad traffic," I respond.
"We'll get you home. Fast!"
"Great."
I decide to reroute Abdul from the campaign HQ to my actual home, an apartment I now hardly know. After Abdul drops me off, I hike up the six flights of stairs to a door with a rusty 25 on it. I'm completely out of breath and standing in a hallway I haven't seen since I left for Iowa, full of hope and eagerness. I pause for a moment while I hold my two duffel bags. It feels like I never left, and the entire trip to Iowa feels like a day-dream. If that's true, Yang could still have that meteoric rise at the last moment. "We're going to peak at the right time," he always said.
But it's not December, it's February, and by the looks of it, Yang was smashed in the caucus. So, what happened to peaking at the right time?
When I open the door to my apartment, I'm immediately bum-rushed by Scooter. Scooter is my roommate's senile and mostly-deaf terrier that begins rabidly barking at me so loudly I begin to hear my blood flowing with rage. The dog has been accidentally trained to bark until he's given a treat, but my hands are full, so he is going ape shit.
"Wow, can you believe the caucus disaster? Seems like Yang didn't do too well!" My 67-year-old, Craigslist roommate named Craig shouts over his dog's now hoarse and mouth-foaming barking.
I look at Craig as I struggle immensely with my bags through our 10 foot by 10-foot living room. All I want to say is, god, will you throw just throw a fucking biscuit as this menace?
Instead, I say, "Heh, yeah."
Craig, who is also mostly deaf, probably doesn't even hear my quip over crazy Scooter. The truth is, Scooter isn't the dog's real name, but he acts like an ass all the time, so I spitefully only refer to him as Scooter.
As I stumble through the living room, Craig stares with his mouth slightly open as he wonders into the distance. I continue to struggle.
Craig has prepared another thought.
"You know, too bad! It's really too bad! But he never really had a chance, anyway!"
I reach the kitchen. Two more steps I'm in my room. I don't respond. What is there to say? He had a chance.
The next thing I know, I am sitting down at my desk, and the phone is ringing. I'm calling one of our top executives. After the third ring, a voice.
"Hello?"
"Why am I getting fired?"
The phone line sits silent.
After a long pause, the voice responds with a sigh, "It's over, man."
"What do you mean?"
"Unless Yang pulls off an upset in New Hampshire, there's no path to the nomination. The math isn't there. Most of the staff is gone. It's not just you. Don't take it personally."
I sit back in my chair, taking in the words. I feel a whirlwind of emotion. Why would we concede? How can we give up? Were we not the campaign of improbabilities and magic?
"I don't really know what to say…" I respond.
"It's been one hell of a ride, brother."
Then he hangs up.
I find myself relieved for a moment. I no longer have to face the shame of explaining to my family and friends why I was out after two and a half years of putting my life on the line for the campaign. I relish in the relief.
Then I came to an idea that scares me silly. What if Yang does well in New Hampshire? What happens to me then?
As I head to bed, my soul tosses and turns into emotional conflict. I selfishly can't bear the thought of Yang pulling off the unprecedented in New Hampshire, tearing his way to victory while I sit at home. The idea of this scenario wrenches my stomach into knots. It brings back to me painful images of my past as the outcast and the undeserving teen.
Surely, I say to myself, the campaign will bring me back. I repeat the thought to myself over and over again like I am counting sheep.
***
"Alright, everyone, today is the day!!" Mario is an early-bird because, of course, he is. He's sitting up straight and full of life with a Cheshire cat-like smile which makes me laugh because he's sitting under the kitchen sink. We're all too broke to afford New York City AirBnB's, but Victoria's friend let us stay with her in Brooklyn. Boy, did we underestimate the "coziness," as New Yorkers define it, of the housing. Mario and I slept on the tile floor of a kitchen that's smaller than most suburban bathrooms, while Victoria and her friend shared a twin bed.
This morning, like most admittedly, I'm slow to wake up. But this time, I have a real excuse – I was up all night nauseous thinking about today. New York City? Venture for America? I'm praying I don't say anything dumb.
Mario, Victoria, and I are all outfitted in our best startup uniforms – a blazer, solid color tees, jeans, and brown boots. Our plan is to take the subway into the city, hours before our meeting, where we'll hang out over some coffee.
The whole way into Manhattan, I'm ogling not at the city, but at the fact that I'm on a week-long trip with Mario and Victoria. Mario and Victoria are two of the smartest people I know in our Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) undergraduate business school. Last summer I was lucky enough to get a way-out-of-my-league dream internship with Victoria, and because Victoria thought I was fun and motivated, her words convinced Mario that I wasn't an idiot anymore.
You see, when I got to college, I had one goal and one goal only: to dominate the social scene. I had lacked friends and social acceptance in previous years, so I think my brain thought hoarding friends would fill the giant hole of insecurity I had in me. Of course, that's not how it works. But no one knows that at age nineteen.
In my first two years of college, I was rather unproductive. I joined a fraternity, became the president of said fraternity, and then ensuingly spent 60 hours a week organizing social events and parties. I had a 2.6 GPA at the time, and as some would describe, I was "a big douche." Becoming president gave me an overwhelming abundance of what I was craving – social acceptance – so by the end of my presidential term, my subconscious mind was beating down the door to my conscious mind with a message, "being popular didn't make us happy, sir; it's time to try something else." That something else became “changing the world” through startups.
Mario is someone I first met during my "douche phase," as we'll call it. Mario is an Italian guy from rural Virginia which makes for a rare intersection of cultures. Mario had dabbled in the fraternity world but quickly turned right around from it. Smart guy, like I said. He has brown hair, always wears a suit jacket, and could hold a conversation with a brick wall. He's known around the business school as one of the most promising students for his stellar grades but even more so for his networking. Some people joke he networked his way into an internship with Carmax years ago by talking to one of those wacky-waving-inflatable-flailing-tube-men out front. Ever since I started getting my life together and Victoria happened to reconnect us, Mario's been like one of my main sherpas guiding me towards books and business wisdom.
"It's great to have you both here," Mario says to Zhina and me over coffee, "Especially you, Frawley; I thought you were a lost cause. I mean, dude. I had to convince you to read a book!" They laugh confidently. I laugh nervously.
"Yeah, this is so exciting!!" Victoria screams, bouncing up and down in her seat. Victoria is about 5'1" with long, crazy curly, brown hair and an attitude to match. At any given moment of any given day, you can be sure that Victoria is exploding with energy and a waterfall of ideas somewhere on planet earth.
"This is where it all begins, guys," Mario says, "today we meet the Head of Recruitment for Venture for America. Then in a few months, once we get interviewed, we'll all be admitted as fellows, off to spend our two years in entrepreneurship training. And then! We change the world!"
"Ahh!!!!" Victoria's face is strained, bulging with veins popping from her temple like the Michael McGee meme.
"Yeah, well, thanks for putting together this trip," I say to Mario.
As one might expect, Mario organized this trip. He's been interning with Venture for America (VFA) since we were freshmen, so he's basically a shoo-in for their fellowship program. Victoria also has great credentials and smarts, so that just leaves me as the real imposter. Since stepping away from fraternity life, however, I've been reading books at what I've called "a voracious speed for snails" – 11-year-old slow but ferociously consistent. Mario is the one who turned me onto startups and entrepreneurship in a big way during our Junior year, and he's the first person I told when I realized I wanted to "change the world." Venture for America is just for you, he said.
I never believed I had a shot for Venture for America, given that they only admit about 200 kids a year from mostly elite Ivy League schools, but Mario got me to rightly believe I should try. I had a good comeback kid story, he said, and as long as I rounded the fraternity stuff up to sound like we did wholesome community work, it might actually help. “Talk about that philanthropy event,” he’d say.
Whatever the case, I've been obsessed with VFA ever since – like, stare at the website every day and fantasize about meeting the other fellows type obsessed. What Mario really got me to believe was that I could belong in a community of smart people. I had never felt that in my life. I was never really conscious of it, but I've felt dumb since I was a teen and this has helped me realize I deserve more. VFA would let me train alongside some of the smartest people in the world which is what excites me most. I feel behind in life and I need someone to take a chance on me so I can prove to the world that I belong. I am hoping it will be Venture for America.
Mario, Victoria, and I all applied to VFA few weeks ago. After the three of us applied, Mario organized a meeting for us all with Sarah, the Head of Recruitment. Even though we went to school in Richmond, Mario told her that we “happen to be in town.” Once Sarah agreed to a meeting, we drove up to meet her.
We're at an unmarked door in Chelsea Manhattan, which is the supposed entrance to the VFA offices. Mario calmly rings the bell. A nervous energy is palpable in the air behind him. Victoria is not-so-quietly repeating oh-my-god-oh-my-god-oh-my-god. On the outside, I'm keeping my cool, but on the inside, I'm about to vomit.
The door pops open, and up a staircase, we go. Sarah greets us in the lobby. The VFA headquarters is modest, with nearly 40 employees. It would be uneventful to most, but I feel like I've stepped foot into a wonderland. As Sarah leads us past the various employees, I can feel my heart begin to race. Am I walking weirdly? Oh god, now I'm definitely walking weirdly! What if one of them tells Sarah I walk weirdly? What if I get rejected for my walk?
"Hey all," Sarah says as she pulls up some chairs for us at a conference table, "it's so great to have you visit!"
"Oh yeah, of course! We're really happy to be here. I haven't been to the headquarters in years," says Mario.
The conversation continues, we make small talk, and I'm lost among the anxiety inside my head. I'm smiling and nodding, so at least I look presentable. Victoria is a word cannon spilling her life's vision on Sarah. I say nothing, which makes me worry, which makes it harder to say something.
Sarah interrupts the conversation, "One moment everyone, I have a surprise for you all," she jumps up and leaves the conference room.
"Yo, dog, Frawley, you gotta shoot your shot, brother," Mario says.
"I know, know, I'm just really enjoying this conversation. But I'll say something."
As soon as I finish my thought, I look up into the doorway, and trailing behind Sarah, is … oh my god … is that Andrew Yang? It's Andrew Yang! CEO and founder of Venture for America! Yang looks sharp and spry. He's wearing a suit with no tie. He's got a buzz cut. When I look at him, I swear I can feel a mystical aura.
"Hey guys," Mr. Yang says coolly, "it's great to have you all here."
Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.
" This was incredible timing!" Sarah says, "Yang was supposed to be in a meeting, but it ended early, so I thought I'd bring him by to say hi!"
"Mr. Yang. It's an honor. I think I speak for all of us when I say you're doing incredible work. It's an inspiration." Mario says.
"Yeah!" Victoria and I chirp.
"These three are applying for the program," Sarah begins, "you probably know Mario, but these two are Victoria and Andrew."
"Gosh, well, thanks guys for believing in me and Venture for America. I'm looking forward to our future work together. It was great meeting you."
"Bye!!" we all shout in unison as Victoria's eyes nearly bulge out of her face onto the table.
"That is unreal! I had no idea we'd get to see him. Wow. Sarah!! You've done too much!" Mario says to Sarah smiling a huge smile that is evidently glued to his face.
"I'm glad you all enjoyed that. That was definitely special. He's very busy."
As the conversation begins flowing again, the intoxicating rush of Yang's worldly presence has me feeling invulnerable and included. I've come all this way. It's time to take my shot.
"Yeah, I, you know," I begin poetically, "it's really great that you all let all of us 'applyees' come up to the office like this."
Mario's smile melts away. The group stares at me in confusion.
"... you mean, applicant?" Sarah asks sweetly in her most earnest attempt to not imply the question she is surely thinking, 'Did you just blow in from stupid town?'
Everyone laughs. I try to smile, and hide the caving in of my soul, "Yeah, applicant!"
My stoic exterior is no match for this level of humiliation. I turn red like the color of a tomato, immediately perspiring entire droplets.
"Wow, that was so great!" Victoria says, skipping down the sidewalks of Manhattan after our meeting. Mario is twirling. I am shuffling with empty, vacant, distant eyes.
"Hey, don't worry about it. Sarah is super chill. Just be thankful Yang wasn't in there. That's the last guy you want to sound like an idiot in front of," Mario says.
"Gee, thanks," I say.
"What do you guys say we check out New York City?" Victoria shouts, already sprinting to check out New York City.
Our trio races through the concrete jungle like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. We gorge on a nice lunch we can't afford. We grab the balls of the Wall Street Bull. We take selfies with the Freedom Tower. We ride a tour bus through town. We run through Central Park and throw bread to the pigeons. Then as we are walking down 5th Avenue, we see it, right there on our left.
"Oh my god. It's Trump Tower!" Mario shouts, laughing.
The tall, beautiful, skyscraping building illuminated in gold carries a powerful essence.
"Trump for President?" Victoria jokes. We laugh out loud exhaustively.
We wander inside and explore the building. We ride down "the escalator." I wave like the Queen of England as we go down. We all laugh.
In the magnificent marble lobby, we see a booth set up selling Trump merchandise.
"Oh my god," I say, "I kind of want one of these hats..."
"Dude, you're crazy!!" Shouts Mario.
We stand at the booth laughing. None of us know anything about politics, especially me, but we agree Trump's a joke and the hat is stupid. But … I still want it. If anything, maybe that is why I want it. I want to look stupid, I want to look edgy, and I want all of society to know I'm not going to fit in their little box of who I'm supposed to be.
I grew up a little outside of Washington D.C., in Fairfax County, which makes for plenty of irony given my life's political apathy. In many ways, Fairfax county is the American dream. Everyone gets a nice little sliver of land, a garage for their junk, and a 45-minute commute to their boring 9-5 office job for the government. As a kid, I felt a lot of subconscious pressure to fit into the perfect suburban image. No one talks about the pressures, but everyone knows it's there. I came to call it the suburban checklist, you know – honor roll student, star athlete, business degree in college, get married, safe job, golden retriever, kids, start over.
For a whole lot of reasons I still don't fully understand, I never bought into this picture-perfect, 'Norman Rockwell' life. Since I was 10 or 11, I began to vigilantly disavow from the checklist, and fight, and kick, and twist in every possible way to throw a wrench in what I thought the world wanted me to be. I was on the conveyor belt to normalcy, and I wanted nothing to do with it.
"I'm gonna do it," I say earnestly to Mario and Victoria, "It's kinda funny."
"Whaaaat! Okay, well geez, I'm gonna get one too!" Victoria says.
"Okay, this is a terrible idea, but fuck it, I'm in," says Mario.
"Ahhh, oh my god. I love it!" I shout.
I buy a white hat with blue letters. Mario and Victoria also pick white. Mario gets one with gold lettering.
With our new Trump hats, I'm smiling ear to ear, and I've forgotten all about my VFA snafu.
When we head back to school, I wear the hat, trolling for laughs, all week. Since it's September 2015 and Trump and his hat are mostly an uncovered, irrelevant joke, me and the hat make it those full seven days in the heart of Richmond, Virginia, without a single scene of uproar. Trump's candidacy is nothing more than that of a Kanye West candidacy.