Make America Gracious Again

This story is a deleted chapter from my upcoming novel, Desolation E-Girl. You can pre-order it on Amazon, Not A Cult, and Barnes and Noble. Releasing in September 2026.

Today, Cadier and I went to visit a local Shambhala elder named Ginny. A couple of nights ago, Cadier was at the grocery store when he noticed that a decrepit old woman with a hunchback, cane, and one tooth locked herself out of her car in the parking lot. None of the 90 IQ half-retarded grocery store employees offered to help her, and everyone else in the parking lot was ignoring her aimless wandering around and pleading for help. It’s devastating to me that a little old white lady with a cane is considered to be a tainted evil sinner to the Liberal Millennials, yet the homeless vagrant begging in front of the grocery store with his body contorted into obscure positions as if engaging in a practice of Fentanyl Acrobatics is in need of “care, resources, and empathy.” Liberal Millennials would Narcan a homeless zombie back to life nine times after giving him free needles to shoot up with before they help a little old lady carry her groceries out to her minivan. Liberal Millennials are the Great Upholders of Cyclical Hell. They can’t get enough of the cycle of death and rebirth plagued upon this Earth, dirtied by lower vibrations of humanity every passing century. There are no oat milk lattes and Chipotle Burrito Bowls in Nirvana after all. So the great wheel turns.

Ginny lives down the street from Cadier and I. We walk there, without our phones. We knock on her door and greet her. She is frail, hunchbacked, and has one tooth. Her voice is shaking in that elderly confused tone yet she seems happy to see us. She lives alone in this house. She has a giant mutt that barks at us loudly. We walk into her doorway and her house smells like wet dog. I can’t stand the smell of wet dog.

As we’re walking through her house, we’re looking at the photos that adorn her walls. She has photos everywhere. She also has dozens of bookshelves, books stacked all the way to the ceiling, books in piles in the corners of the room. There’s clutter everywhere, a dirty carpet and couches with dog hair all over them, but it’s a beautiful adobe desert home with optimal mid-afternoon lighting.

Cadier and I ask her about some of the photos on the wall from a trip she took to Nicaragua in the 1980’s. They are moving photographs. There is one of a dilapidated hut with a little girl in a poofy white dress standing in the doorway that stands out to me. The photo looks like it could be in a museum. I ask Ginny, “were you a photographer?” “No… I wasn’t a photographer, but I enjoyed taking photos, and was really good at it…” I tell her that I enjoy taking photos too, using film cameras. Ginny thinks I said “phone cameras” because her hearing isn’t the best, and says “I’ve never used a phone camera. But I prefer 35 millimeter.” I correct myself and tell her that I also use 35mm. FILM CAMERAS. She looks away, uninterested, and doesn’t acknowledge my comment.

Another photograph on the wall was a giant, blown-up portrait of an attractive man on a train car wearing a cowboy hat. She says that’s Don, her late husband. Don died ten years ago and she has been living alone in her house with all of their things ever since. Ginny says that Don was the Great Love of her Life. She tells us this at least five times before we leave. She says that she misses him so much. Don and Ginny had a ten-year age gap. Ginny was his high school student and he was her teacher, that’s how they met. They were married for sixty years. Don was a professional violinist and Ginny said he used to play beautiful classical music on the CD player in the house, but she can’t figure out how to work the CD player and misses listening to his classical music.

Cadier walks over to the CD player and fumbles around with it a bit. It’s coated in layers of a decade of dust. To focus on fixing it, Cadier turns off the TV that is playing on full volume. After 5 minutes, he gets the CD player working. “Ginny, I fixed the CD player for you. The reason why it wasn’t working is because it was unplugged. And the CD was inserted upside-down.”

“Upside-down? Really?” Ginny looks at him with wide eyes.

Cadier says it logically makes sense that Ginny would put the CD in upside-down, because that’s how you’d play records. Ginny’s knowledge of playing music hasn’t been updated since the time of record players. Ginny smiles real big as we listen to Chopin Nocturnes in her living room. I’m glad that Cadier and I could come over and get her CD player working.

Ginny and I sit down in the living room. She says that she likes that we came over to ask her about the photographs on her walls. She says that she thinks she has had an interesting life that is worth sharing with strangers. She points to her children in some of the photographs and tells us about them. They have their own lives now, one of her sons married a woman from the Ukraine and dropped off the face of the planet and doesn’t call her anymore. Her daughter lives down in The Underworld and doesn’t come by often either. I would rather never have children than to have them abandon me in the last chapter of my life. I realize I’m kind of doing this to my own parents, running off to Shambhala while leaving them in a Midwest cornfield. I make a gesture of repentance silently.

Ginny points to the piles of mail, books, and clutter in her living room and says that she’s been trying to work through organizing the piles. She says that it’s a lot to keep up with, that all of her furniture and her book cases are dusty and that she can’t clean like she used to. I offer to come over and help her clean sometime, because I enjoy cleaning. I say that it is like a hobby to me, cleaning. Ginny looks at me uncomfortably, and says, “I like living alone and being alone. I don’t like other people coming and going too often.” I’m starting to think Ginny doesn’t like me. Maybe I won’t offer to help the elderly anymore. Maybe they don’t want help, maybe they just want someone to reminisce about the Great Love of Their Lives with.

Ginny owes Cadier $100 from the other day in the grocery store parking lot when he had to call a locksmith to unlock her car. She says she’s been holding onto the five $20 bills ever since, but she’s lost them now. Cadier said it’s fine, to not worry about the money and to call him again when she finds the money. Before leaving, we go through her VHS collection and ask to borrow a VHS on Tibet. I say that this is a synchronicity, because I have been researching Tibet a lot lately and that I should probably travel to Tibet soon. We take the Tibet VHS outside and say goodbye. Two bumper stickers adorn her old minivan parked sideways in the gravel driveway: MAKE AMERICA GRACIOUS AGAIN. STOP NUCLEAR WAR NOW.

I look over at Cadier as we walk back up the street. “What nuclear war?”

He shrugs.

I don’t know.

Nobody does.