Inauguration

It is 3:30 in the morning on January 20th, 2009 and I'm standing in the basement of a townhouse in Washington, DC trying to figure out how I'm going to get down my fifth shot of vodka. I have been awake for approximately one hour. According to my phone, it is 18 degrees outside. Also according to my phone, it "feels" like it is 9 degrees outside. I don't know what either of these temperatures actually feels like because everytime my phone tells me the temperature it immediately follows that up by telling me that I should feel like its another temperature. This in turn causes the whole idea of describing temperature through numbers to become muddled in my head. For a second I think maybe that's the point. I know it's the point of the vodka.

If we were to walk outside right now, I suspect that Shawn would be much warmer than me because he is much better than me at drinking large quantities of vodka. I suspect Andrea will be as warm as me; I'm a little bit better at drinking vodka than her, but her coat looks like it weighs more than she does. I suspect Blake would be somewhat warmer than me, not necessarily because of his superior drinking prowess, but because being cold just doesn't seem to bother him as much. That's Blake for you. I am wearing four shirts, three pairs of socks, two pairs of pants, and a hat. I take my fifth shot of vodka. It's not so bad.

I am so concerned with finding ways to manage my perception of my own temperature because in fifteen minutes I will leave this townhouse, walk 2 miles to the National Mall and then stand shivering for the next eight hours. I will do this because today Barack Obama is going to be inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States and I suspect that this moment will be an extremely important one to history generally and to me personally and that this feeling of importance will only be heightened by the fact that I was there in person. At noon, all of my suspicions will prove to be correct, but noon is still eight hours away and there's a lot of time to fill between then and now.

The clock finally reaches 3:45 and the four of us make sure we have everything that we need. Blankets, Nutri-Grain bars, beef jerky, excedrine, five hour energy drinks, magazines, water, and phones. It's all there and we're ready. We pour whatever vodka we have left into two dixie cups, grab our bags, and head out the door. It's not too cold.

What happens over the next few hours is a blur. We walk toward our destination, the 7th street entrance to the mall. When we get there, the line to get in already stretches two blocks away. We wait. We meet people. We talk to them about the weather. We dance with them and sing with them. An hour of waiting passes and we finally reach the gate. It is closed due to overcrowding.We find a way in anyway.

It is six in the morning and dark and the mall is crowded but not overcrowded. We walk east and find an open spot near the Air and Space Museum. We spread out a blanket and sit down on it, claiming our territory. We have two more blankets to use among four people, so we all huddle together underneath them. It's cold, but it's not so bad.

People start to fill in around us and one of them is a tall black guy in a red jumpsuit selling handwarmers. We buy several. I put one in each glove and then put one in my hat. It feels good. The handwarmer salesman decides to hover around our little makeshift camp. As more and more standing people fill in tight around us, we remain lying down. This creates a clearing that allows the handwarmer guy to get people to notice him and to conduct his transactions easier and cleaner. Some people get upset because we are taking up too much space, but the handwarmer guy quiets them. Every minute or so he shouts out "Handwarmers, five dollars!"; a mantra for the four of us that lulls us in and out of sleep. It's not so cold.

We remain lying, huddled together in this way until the sun comes up and we rise to find ourselves beset on all sides by a million, maybe more. We eat Nutri-Grain bars and drink water and take Excedrine in hopes of ameliorating a hangover that never comes. We have a good view of the capital building and the dais in front of it, but we are much too far away to make out any of the actual people standing on it. This is OK. We have just about the best spot you can hope for without actually having tickets.

Volunteers start handing out little American flags as Sunday's concert from the Lincoln Memorial plays on the jumbotrons. It is clear that some people think this concert is live and they start cheering and clapping and singing and dancing. Most people know that the concert isn't live, but many of them start cheering and dancing anyway, just to stay warm. This seems like a good idea to Shawn and I, so we join in. I look over at Andrea. She looks small and cold, but she smiles and never once complains. Blake is still sitting on the ground, eating Nutri-Grain bars like he thinks they might run away from him. He doesn't look all that cold either.

As the sun shines, everyone begins to talk to each other more and warm up a little. A black elementary school teacher from Atlanta comes up to our group and asks us to write down what this day means to us in a notebook. She sees the University of Georgia hat that I'm wearing and tells me that her daughter is a freshman there. I tell her that I bet her daughter is having the time of her life and the teacher replies to me in the affirmative. These are how the conversations will go throughout the day. A seventy-two year old black woman comes up to Shawn and Andrea and asks how tall Shawn is. He tells her that he is six foot-four and the woman tells Shawn that her son is six foot six and plays basketball. Shawn says that he is too uncoordinated to play basketball and the woman laughs. As she leaves to walk closer to the capital building, Shawn turns to me and says that he likes talking to the older black people the best because you can immediately tell that this moment means so much to them and because they are so very joyful. I agree with him.

When you are a white person at the inauguration of the first black President, sometimes you feel a little out of place. You feel like maybe this is someone else's moment and you're here to co-opt it for yourself. Your happiness at the moment feels less authentic and less valid and maybe it starts to make you feel a little bit guilty for moving in and reveling in it so much. But you need only talk to people like that seventy-two year old woman to know that people like her are just as eager to transmit their joy to you as you are to ingest it from them and vice versa. It is clear that the moment is for everyone; it just means different things to different people. The school teacher from before knew this and she knew that we knew it too. She asked us to write in her notebook because, more than anything, she wanted to make sure that her students back home would know this. And they will.

Ten o'clock finally comes and a choir assembles on the dais and begins singing. Audience members start filling in the seats below the podium. As famous people walk in, their images are shown on the jumbotrons. Huge cheers for Jay and Beyonce and Oprah. Shawn and I clap for John Cusack. Political figures begin to fill in the seats behind the podium. The crowd erupts for Colin Powell. Big cheers for John Kerry, John Lewis, Barney Frank, and Al Gore. The Supreme Court Justices begin to file in and they are followed by the ex-Presidents. Thunder meets the Carters and Clintons. Everyone is seated and the formal proceedings begin. Dick Cheney is brought out in a wheelchair. He is quiet and his eyes look downward. Nobody boos him. George W. Bush follows and is met with some boos, but not nearly what I expected.

You've all seen what happened next, so I won't rehash it for you here. Joe and Barack are sworn in and the 44th President gives his speech. It is of course a wonderful speech, at times moving, but not overly so. More than anything, it is appropriate. There will be times in the months and years ahead for words that will be carved into monuments, but not today. Now is the time for sober recognition and respect for the work that lies ahead.

About halfway through the speech, I saw out of the corner of my eye a tall black guy in a red jumpsuit, the handwarmer salesman from earlier. All the handwarmers had pretty much died out by now, but he didn't look very cold and I wasn't either. He turned and saw me and we smiled at each other for a second before turning back to watch the rest of the speech. As our President closed with the story of Valley Forge, it was especially poignant for those of us who had spent the past eight hours waiting in the cold for him. We felt like he was talking directly to us, and he was, but he was talking directly to everyone else in the world too because that's what he does.

The speech ended and we listened to the poem and the benediction and then we all started making our way out of the mall. We left together not necessarily fundamentally changed, but secure in the knowledge that even in our coldest times, we can warm each other up. Whether it's drinking together, laying next to each other, talking to each other, singing and dancing with each other, listening to a speech together, or just exchanging a knowing smile, we can warm each other up if we decide that we want to. And if I learned one thing from the whole experience, it's that if you need to know the temperature, don't ask your phone, ask the guy next to you. The former will give you numbers, but only the latter can tell you how it feels.