It is done. 

It started with the anxiousness of all my life's experience combined; fear of authority, fear of inevitable submission to invalid authority, fear of being inescapably singled out for specific abuse by said invalid authority.  Fear that my suffering will become another's entertainment, as once upon a time.  I had planned to be there at 8:00 AM to confound the designs of would be 'challengers' to my vote's validity.  I planned to bring water, several small bottles of Poland Springs in my courier's bag so that I could provide a safety-sealed sip to a waning voting-line companion, tired and ready to give up, on the verge of abandoning her vote to go send the baby-sitter home because she can't afford to pay him for another hour.  I would have helped her stay, no matter who she wanted to win.  The vote is the important thing; the right to vote is sacred.  At least it is in my puny little terrified world. 

And I planned to bring Power Bars.  I hate them, but they are handy little conglomerations of sugar and protein, no doubt modeled after some military invention with a silly acronym.  Also, I intended to bring evidence that city hall had acknowledged my registration as a democrat this year, changed from unenrolled previously.  Along with that letter, I planned to have my MoveOn.org voter survival card, which provides lots of hotline numbers I could call when all the nasty brownshirts who populate my dark imaginings confront me with everything from, "You are not eligible to vote," to, "What is THAT outfit supposed to be?  Halloween is over, honey." 

I had planned to be there at 8:00 AM.  I got there just before 5:00 PM.  Try as I might, I just do not fit into this world the way I should—the way, it appears to me, that everybody else does.  I made a valiant effort to get out the door by 4:00 PM—hardly the early-morning emergence I had fantasized—bringing with me my collected anxieties, and all the bravery I could muster.  No Gunga-Din water, no combat-theater sustenance.  I had just my fears and hopes, under three sweatshirts, and I went out the door.  Then I discovered my bike's front tire was flatter than an Ashcroft high note. 

Back inside.  It'll be five before I get there.  Take the rim off the bike.  Everybody's going to be getting out of work, and descending on my polling place, the grammer school down the street.  It is never lit or even occupied at night, but now it is swarming with annoyed adults, pinched between the stones of their committments, night-time invaders into the domain of children.  (Phew!)  Take the tire off the rim.  I wonder if they can tell us all to go home at 8:00 PM when the polls close.  I've always been told the polls stay open until everybody votes, but today is different.  Today, the powers that be seem to want us not to vote, in addition to their usual desire that we be afraid.  I liberated the tube from its entrapment within my bald, almost fabric-showing front tire and got it half inflated.  I'll have to check my bag, just to make sure nothing in it can be construed as a weapon.  The camera?  ...yeah, they'd probably consider me taking pictures of a ruckus at the polls an act of terrorism.  Then, with the distended tube near my face, I scanned it, inch by inch, until the sensitive skin on my face detected a tiny jet of air. 

With three sweatchirts still on, and sweating profusely, I reassembled the freshly repaired tube, tire, and rim; I checked to make sure it would stay fixed for at least a bit, and then I placed it on the bike. 

Once rolling, the air felt impossibly good; it was cool and fresh and I coasted almost all the way to the school.  Thjere's one thing worse than being frazzled and rushed—looking frazzled and rushed.  With the coolness, I relaxed a bit, but I was prepared to wait. 

There was no line.  None.  There were five people; three were poll-workers, one person was voting, and another was on his way out.  The first poll worker seemed different in some regard, like the little girl in Wings of Desire with the coke-bottle lenses and braces on her legs.  Innocent.  Pure.  His glasses were not so thick, and I couldn't see his legs.  But his breathing was not effortless, it was troubled in a way, and his speaking seemed to be achieved only with concentration, and careful deliberateness.  His movements were slightly palsied, as he ever-so-carefully placed a check mark next to my name, and gave me a ballot.  I could have kissed him, just for being there, for devoting a few hours to this tedious, magical process.  I later considered going back, and walking in like a man with a bomb, and walking up to him just to say, "Thank you.  For being here and making this magic work, thank you." 

I voted.  No chads.  No rigged electronic touch screens.  A precious paper ballot and a black felt-tip pen; the simplicity of wisdom.  Another poll worker checked-off my name as I was leaving, a nice lady, somebody's mother.  The third poll worker was in his late sixties, retired, maybe ex-military.  He was supervising the ballot box, a motorized gizmo that sucks in ballots, the way vending machines suck in dollar bills, apparently reading and tabulating it at the same time. 

It was over.  There was nothing left, no memento, no reciept—God! how we flood the earth with reciepts for other incidents which pale in comparison.  If I had bought a can of beans, I'd have a receipt.  I cast my vote in an election I don't trust, the outcome of which will be momentous, more than any other thing I have ever participated in, and I stood there staring at the slot that just devoured my ballot, and nothing remained.  I must have looked a little stunned to retired-military-man because he gave me a funny look, as if to say, "Are you OK?"  I turned away before I cried. 

As I rode down the street afterward, it seemed the world was hushed, quiet and, for a moment, gentle.  I beheld all things differently—the meditative jogger; the sullen college freshman crossing the street alone; the man with the briefcase, enroute yet absent; and even the loud punk-girls, fighting on the sidewalk.  I had been, for a moment, in touch with something outside my safe little cell of an apartment, outside my isolated life.  I had been touched with wonder and awe and dread.