On the morning of the US election, I am lying on a mat at the gym, talking to the trainer about my shoulder. “I can’t really do anything,” I say. “Even, like, putting on a shirt.” I haven’t been to the gym for weeks because of the pain. I haven’t really got any business being here now. I just needed a new place to complain.
The trainer tells me to straighten my arm and make a fist with my thumb tucked inside it. At his bidding I rotate my wrist forward, but it doesn’t go very far. I wince.
“That’s bad,” he says. I feel a sudden, horrible sensation in my shoulder, like a cello string being plucked.
“Yeeh!” I say.
“Uh-oh,” the trainer says. I turn my wrist back, and then gently forward again.
“No,” I say. “It actually feels better.” I bring my hand across my chest to the opposite shoulder, farther than I’ve been able to reach in a month.
“Your eyes look weird,” he says.
“I’m cured,” I say. “Whatever happens, this is already the best day ever.”
The next morning at seven I am lying in bed staring at the ceiling with the radio blaring, as it has been all night. I slept fitfully from about 3am onwards, but not so much that I’ve missed any of the terrible news from America.
My wife suddenly sits upright and turns the radio off.
“I mean, what the actual fuck?” she says.
At times like these I’m obliged to represent the whole of America and its stupidity, but I don’t answer. My wife leaves the room, returning fully dressed a few minutes later.
“I have to go,” she says. “Will you walk the dog?” I don’t say anything, but I think: whatever. Who cares? We’re all done for.
“Are you ever going to speak again?” she says. I don’t say anything.
“Are you still in denial?” she says. I remain silent, but I think: denial’s great. Why are people always so quick to move on from denial?
After I hear the front door shut I get out of bed and go stare into the mirror. There are black circles under my eyes, which are hollow and vacant. I lift my left arm out to the side and over my head, like the sweeping second hand of a clock. It feels amazing.
The next evening I am booked to go on a radio programme. Because I’m American, the election result was always going to be a topic, and although I don’t usually plan these things, I had known what I was going to say for weeks. I was going to say, “Phew!”
Now I have nothing to say. On the tube ride there I can feel my denial curdling into anger. Over someone’s shoulder I see a newspaper headline about the election outcome representing two fingers up to the sneering liberal media elite. Don’t be stupid, I think. I’m a member of the sneering liberal media elite. We’re all fine.
When I get on the radio I decide to exhaust some of my anger talking about how they’ve changed the shape of Toblerone bars, even though I don’t really care.
Afterwards I find I’ve already passed from anger into bargaining: as I walk back to the tube in the dark I find myself trying to think of ways to make the election unhappen. Would I go back to having that terrible pain in my shoulder if it meant I could live in a reality where Donald Trump lost?
I reach up into the air, and out to the side, and across my chest, and I think: it’s a good thing it doesn’t work that way.
