I have recurring anxiety dreams. In the anxiety dream I have most often, my teeth start to get loose, and in my dream, it’s the weekend, so I can’t go to the dentist, so I find one of my old retainers and put it in, hoping that the retainer will keep my teeth in until Monday, and I try not to fiddle with my tongue so that the teeth will stay in, but they start coming out anyway one by one, and I save all the teeth so that the dentist can put them back in later, but I keep losing the teeth that have already fallen out and blood is pouring down my chin and my friends all scream “oh my god her face is caving in” and then I wake up. I have that dream at least once a month, and while I hate it, my brain knows that it’s an anxiety dream, so it doesn’t bother me that much anymore (and nothing beats the sweet relief of coming to and finding all of my teeth intact). The second most frequent anxiety dream involves me losing my balance and falling down a lot, and I try to play it off and act normal like I just stumbled or whatever, but people stare at me, and I have to hold onto walls, and usually I also need to get somewhere or find someone by a certain time, but since I can’t walk straight, I can’t get where I need to go. Again, though, my brain knows that it’s an anxiety dream, so it doesn’t freak me out overly. But the third variety of anxiety dream really gets to me. It only visits my unconscious two or three times a year, fortunately, but it’s the most frustrating of the three. In the dream, I’ve discovered some sort of grievous wrong done me, and the perpetrator of the wrong laughs it off and tells me to get bent or something, and I get angrier and angrier until I pitch a fit and start yelling but I can’t yell. I take big gulps of air, and I can feel my throat tighten the way it does when I yell, but only a whisper comes out. I keep trying, my forehead throbbing, the cords in my neck tensed up, but I can’t make a sound. I can only manage a sad little wheeze. It’s terrifying. It’s infuriating. And it’s very close to the way I feel when I go into the voting booth and pull the curtain.

I can understand that a lot of people don’t see the point of voting, but I have to vote. Every year, I have to go into the booth, and every year, I have to vote the straight Democratic ticket, because I have to protect my right to choose. I’d love to throw up my hands and say all dramatically that it doesn’t matter anyway, that all politicians suck, that not voting constitutes a form of protest, but I don’t have that luxury. I don’t have the luxury of staying home and painting my nails while I watch the returns come in, because I have a uterus, and it’s the contention of more than a few people in our fine land that I don’t have the right to decide what goes on in said uterus – that if I get raped, and the seed of the sub-human who took me by force makes its way my uterus, and the seed finds an egg hanging out there and hooks up with the egg, I then must give birth to the unholy spawn of a violent union. That I serve only as a host, a vessel, a pod. That I would, should, must, will make a mother because, physically, I can. The idea that grown-ups can think such a thing about other grown-ups is terrifying and infuriating, but the fact that I have to vote for Democrats whether I like it or not – that the conservative right, in addition to wanting to cut off my right to choose my reproductive destiny, has effectively shut down my right to choose the best candidate as well – fucking pisses me off. Still, I’ve got no choice. I’ve got to get up and get dressed and walk over to Norman Thomas High School and sign in and march into the booth and click over every single goddamn ballot cutter next to every single goddamn Democratic candidate’s name, because I’ve got no other option.

I’ve gotten really tired of playing defense with my vote. I’ve gotten really tired of feeling compelled to vote for the various chumps the Democrats trot out year after year, of seeing my vote tied to the donkey’s tail, of knowing in my heart that a vote for the Democrat probably means a vote for more taxation, and that the taxes will go towards mediocre, poorly-run programs that cost far more than they should and don’t do nearly enough to address whatever problem they allege to solve by generating yet more federal paperwork. But do I have a choice? No. No, I don’t. I don’t believe that we should make the lives of single mothers more complicated. I don’t believe that we should pass judgment on gay and lesbian folks who have the cheek to fall in love. I don’t believe that we should yank the rug out from under inner-city-rehabilitation programs and arts grants in order to pay for yet another fighter plane that will fly over yet another country whose problems have nothing to do with us and cause yet another “America is a big old bully” debate on the world stage. And I don’t believe that we should kill people who killed other people, because it’s too expensive, and it’s not an effective crime deterrent, and it’s barbaric. So I vote Democrat. It’s depressing, voting to contain politicians I find actively abhorrent instead of using my ballot to espouse a cause I believe in. But the politicians don’t really believe in anything, either, except in getting elected. It’s dispiriting to vote against things all the time instead of for them. But, again, I don’t feel like I have a choice.

So I’ll vote against Bush. Bush truly scares me. The man is, simply put, a moron. The sheer number of people put to death in Texas during his tenure runs completely contrary to the idea of a civilized society (and don’t give me that “the governor can only issue a stay” crap, either). Even if I bought the compassionate-conservatism line, which I do not, I cannot imagine electing a man whose lips move when he reads to the highest office in the land. I’d love to vote for Nader, but I can’t, because he takes votes away from Gore, and I don’t care if Gore wins, as long as Bush loses and takes his entitled ass back to Texas to wait for Daddy to buy him a chain of dry cleaners while Gore…reinvents the Internet or something.

I’ll vote against Rick Lazio, too, although it kills me to have to vote for Hillary, because I hate her. She’s got no experience, I don’t believe a word out of her mouth, the American people have footed the bill for her campaign, and she’s a self-righteous carpetbagger. But Lazio has run his own campaign based on the four things I’ve listed above. I can’t name one issue that he stands for, except for – no, I can’t name one. A quick visit to his campaign site confused me even further, since his positions on education, Medicare protection, and environmental preservation sound remarkably similar to those of the average liberal. I’ve got no problem with the guy running just so that New York State GOPs would have someone, anyone, to throw up against Hillary and her gag-inducing listening tour. Hell, I’d have run against her myself. But Lazio’s whole breast-cancer initiative, like D’Amato’s before him, smacks of ingratiation to get the female vote, and he’s probably pro-life, so I can’t vote for him.

And I hate it. I hate feeling like my vote reduces me to one part of my body. I hate having to pray that the Republicans don’t gain too many seats in Congress, or that liberal judges don’t retire from the Supreme Court – and when I say that I pray for those things not to happen, I mean it. And most of all, I hate not having the option of registering a vote of no confidence. I go to the polls every year. Even when I don’t really know the candidates or their issues, I go, and I vote, and I’d like the option of pulling a no-confidence lever. I’d like to tell the candidates that I showed up to vote, found them both hideously unworthy, and chose “none of the above.” I imagine that a lot of people who don’t vote now because they don’t see what purpose it serves – and I don’t blame them – would come out just to let the system know that they think it sucks. Maybe that would shake the system up a little bit. Maybe candidates would pick their own platforms instead of hewing quite so close to their party’s line. But at the very least, it would make us citizens feel more like we had a real voice, and less like trying to scream and not making a sound.

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