The Three Speeches of Lauren Ryder (May-ish, 2011. Issue 28.)
Lauren realized she was the only person sitting alone at the wedding. She sipped from a travel coffee mug, hoping that caffeine would help her to pay attention. The priest continued to speak about the joy of matrimony without a single inflection. A car alarm went off outside. Lauren felt a raincloud passing over Upper Manhattan.
The priest practically mumbled, "If anyone has any objection to why these two should not be united in holy matrimony, let them speak now or forever hold their peace."
"I do!" Lauren said jumping to her feet.
"WTF!" Her sister snapped from under her veil.
"I got something to say." The church went silent. People shifted in their seats. Lauren realized how bizarre she looked in her teal bridesmaid dress.
"Don't get me wrong, everything is cool. All of you and you two together... it's all right. But we shouldn't be here... we're children. I mean... seriously...getting married, having matching furniture, health insurance, stable employment. We can't do that! We're too young, we have so much more life to live before any of this happens."
"Lauren, you're turning 30 this year!" her sister yelled.
"Well... yeah but... you know. What's next - children, home ownership, cars?"
"Yeah, that's the plan," her brother-in-law said, making finger quotes around the word plan.
"The plan scares me!" she yelled. "You were supposed to help these years go slow."
"But Lauren... this is life... going forward and junk," her sister replied softly.
"I have no job, no health insurance, no boyfriend, I live with our parents, and I'm the older sister. I'm not ready for this!"
"You know, this day really isn't about you. It's my special day... it's my wedding."
"I think I'd feel better if I was at least trying to get a job," Lauren concluded. "But what can I do with a sociology degree?"
People shifted in the pews waiting for the moment to pass. Some scratched their heads and tried to avoid contemplating Lauren's words. Although some of her contemporaries were feeling the same inside, no one else in the church had the gall to say it.
Finally, Lauren's mother stood up, and this singular, swift movement cued Lauren in to the mistake she had made. Her mother gave her a look that she'd been seeing throughout childhood. Lauren hightailed it to the back of the church and ran out the door.
She exploded onto 126th street and noticed what a beautiful morning it was and how crowded the streets were with people enjoying the late August weather. It was perfect for a Harlem wedding.
Inside the church was still silent. The groom's parents in the front row wondered if Lauren would overly influence her sister. The priest broke the silence.
"Maybe I should..."
"Yeah," Lauren's sister said.
"From the top?"
"It's better that way," she exhaled. "Take two, people!"
"Dearly beloved..."
Lauren decided to run the length of Manhattan ending only at City Hall. She felt the need to burn some of the energy and anxiety weddings produced. For any bystander Lauren's presents must have been odd; she was in a bridesmaid gown running down Broadway drinking a coffee. She didn't care how she looked.
Her mind cleared of all the clutter as she made her way through Manhattan. Lauren realized her central problem was unemployment. It was her own fault, she could have worked as a secretary or in some call center, but she sincerely did not want to do that. She really didn't know what she wanted.
As her sister and brother-in-law were declared man and wife Lauren arrived at the gate of City Hall. She was tired and placed her hands on her knees as she inhaled deeply. She put her coffee cup on the ground. A policeman from the entrance of City Hall approached her.
"Are you OK?" the policeman asked her.
"I need a job."
"Basement, third door on the left."
"I'm sweaty."
"Go through security, then take the first staircase to the basement, and it's the third door on the left. It should be open. You know, there's no need to dress like that to register to run for city council."
Soon she found herself in a small, unceremonious room in the basement of City Hall. There was a group of people all seeking candidacy for city council. Lauren was discouraged because the line was twenty deep. She waited for about half a minute before she realized that the line to run for mayor was empty.
She walked up to the cashier at the mayoral booth. "Um... do I have to pay cash, or can I plastic this thing?"
The cashier looked up from her cell phone. "Psh... yeah."
Lauren Ryder's campaign was unknown until the mayoral debate. The debate was a poorly produced event. Set-up consisted only of some chairs that looked like they belonged in a library on a small stage. All of the cameras from the New York television stations were there. Lauren figured it would be important to show up, although she had prepared nothing in advance.
She sat on a stage with two "legit" candidates and a bunch of other yahoos that all wanted to be mayor. She wore the same bridesmaid's gown from the wedding and sipped from the same reusable coffee cup. Even the yahoos thought she was a little odd.
Lauren's campaign was only a few weeks old, and she had not yet figured out how to run for election. She received enough signatures to put her name on the ballot by setting up a table on the corner of 86th street and Lexington and handing out free newspapers in exchange for signatures. She wasn't sure if it was legal, and she didn't care.
Finally, the moderator of the debate asked Lauren for her opening statement. He reminded her of the priest at his sister's wedding - bored by the process. His eyes drooped, he read from index cards, and generally looked like he couldn't wait to get out of there. She felt that same frustration and confusion she felt at the wedding.
The "legit" politicians had just finished speaking of how they were going to make people's lives better, create more jobs, and life would be more affordable with less taxes. All of this with the usual religious overtones, manufactured inflections, red ties, pressed suits, perfectly coiffed hair and bald clean-shaven faces. Lauren was the only person on stage drinking coffee.
She parted her lips to speak, and even Lauren was surprised at what came out.
"I'm running for mayor because I need a job, and a good job... you know with insurance, vacation and all the rest of it. I have a bachelor's degree in sociology from a state school, and I still live with my parents. That's all the qualifications I have.
"Up here, they will tell you they can make things better, but you know what? They can't. The rent is too damn high, there's a bank where all our memories used to be, people are getting poorer, Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens are getting more dangerous, and the neighborhoods that aren't in disorder cost too much. The city's crumbling, and we all know it!
"These legit politicians will not create more jobs, they will not lower taxes, spend less money, and they will not make the world a better place. Our lives are not going to get better in the future; they're going to get worse. These guys are lying to you as if you were children. You are not children, you are adults. I am an adult... sort of. Everyone my age is not going to do better than our parents. Is gas, food or rent cheaper than it was ten years ago? All the things they say they can do - they just can't. Next time someone who is running for office speaks to you, just yell back, 'I am not a child!' Because if you honestly believe them... you deserve what you get.
"I'm just a girl trying to get a job and move out of my parent's place... and into Gracie Mansion. Vote for me. I'm probably just like a lot of you out there." She smiled as a red light illuminated, indicating her two minutes were up. She fell back into her seat and took a swig from her coffee cup. She had told the truth; she finally said what she had known since the day she graduated from college.
The other candidates sat still, staring at Lauren in disbelief. The moderator looked at the yahoo candidate sitting next to Lauren, who subsequently walked off the stage, giving up his campaign in that moment.
"I'm sorry... excuse me... But that makes so much sense to me," the moderator blurted out. He suddenly realized that he had spoken out of turn and that this was the only emotion he had ever felt moderating a debate. One of the "legit" politicians raised his eyebrow and another opened his mouth to retort. Before he could speak, a woman in the auditorium yelled, "I am not a child!" And then an older man from the other side of the crowd repeated, "I am not a child." Then everybody, including the moderator, turned on the politicians.
Lauren stood up as people kept yelling. They started to cheer her. Without saying a word, she threw her arms up in the air and had a moment. The scene soon became pandemonium as the crowd took to the streets tearing down campaign posters.
As the video of her speech spread, the city got angrier at the seasoned politicians. As the election date moved closer, Lauren's message didn't wane; the people's rebellion was maintaining. Lauren knew that her speech was a spark that so many people of the unemployed generation were feeling. She figured she'd ride the wave in order to at least get a job.
After the debate, Lauren decided it would be a good idea to avoid her parents since she had never bothered to tell them she was running for mayor. She took her unpaid credit card and rented a flatbed eighteen-wheeler and drove it throughout the boroughs of New York making campaign speeches. She'd slowly roll into a neighborhood in the Bronx or Brooklyn, honk the loud truck horn, and give a speech from the flatbed trailer. At nights, she would sleep in it to avoid seeing her parents. She'd often ask members of her constituency for a shower and toilet.
The major political parties could not draw funds to their campaigns, and without money, they all just faded into obscurity. The order of life was dissipating, people were not showing up to work in record numbers, members of Lauren's unemployed generation stopped applying for jobs, trains slowed down, sanitation was slow. American logic eventually kicked in, and the civilians forgot about the politicians and immediately turned on the banks. No one ever bothered to explain why riots would ignite in front of banks... but no one really had to.
The police felt disobliged to stop rioters. Banks foreclosed on policemen as well as ordinary citizens. Bankers and stockbrokers fled the city, and refugee tents were set up by the Red Cross in Yonkers, New Jersey and Connecticut.
Needless to say, Lauren Ryder became the youngest mayor of New York City. On election night, a bank on Fordham Road was burned down after she was announced the victor; then four more were vandalized. Lauren gave a press conference from her truck in front of a flaming ATM on the Grand Concourse.
In the interim period after the election, people from around the country stopped visiting New York. The city's borders were patrolled by state troopers who checked the comings and goings of its citizens – just in case they intended to spread discontent.
Three days before her inauguration, she held a press conference, which she insisted must interrupt regularly scheduled programming for all stations. The press was expecting a big speech. Instead, Lauren took the podium and asked, "Will all New Yorkers converge on Wall Street or at your favorite neighborhood bank for my inauguration." She didn't take questions and went back to her truck and refilled her silver coffee cup on the way out.
The day of the inauguration was tense. By this time, New York had been isolated from the greater United States of America. There was talk of the National Guard coming to unseat Lauren Ryder. Then the sound of a large truck horn broke the unease, and Lauren stepped out in her bridesmaid gown carrying a freshly refilled coffee cup.
She walked through the crowd to the podium to be sworn in. The last remaining active judge in the city, who helped torch a fast-food restaurant, waited to swear her in. She stood at the wooden podium that was specially for the mayor, waiting microphones came to her lips.
"I'm not one for speeches. I've said the words that I was placed on this earth to say. So this will be my first and last address to the public as mayor. Right now across the five boroughs, trucks have pulled up to popular intersections. These trucks are filled with crowbars and pick axes. I paid for all of this with my own credit card and will not repay my balance."
As she said this, trucks filled with tools and hands to distribute them arrived in front of banks in Harlem, Washington Heights Brownesville, Mott Haven, Soundview and other poorer areas of the metropolis.
"These are for you... the people of New York City." Volunteers handed out axes and crowbars to members of the crowd gathered at the inauguration site.
"I've said it before and I'll say it again; things will not get better for our generation. So... let's tear this place apart. That's my final speech. LET'S TEAR THIS PLACE APART!!!!!!" She immediately was handed a crowbar and started destroying the inauguration podium. People cheered her on. Then all over New York, banks, insurance offices, and investment companies started to be crowbarred. Explosions were heard coming from the Bronx, and billows of black smoke were seen in the air.
As shrapnel and debris flew in all directions, Lauren Ryder saw her mother and father in the crowd. She looked a little to the left and saw her sister and new husband. None of them held any demolition tools. She smiled at the sight of them. It was the first time she had seen them since the wedding.
"Mom! Dad! I finally found a job!" She cupped her two hands and ran her fingers across her face and through her hair. She felt a layer of New York City's sooty perspiration being wiped away. She walked through the billowing riot towards her family. She had a big smile on her face. The sun ran straight down the street as if to illuminate Lauren. She walked closer and closer to her family. She raised her face towards the sun.
"I finally found a job." she repeated. "I finally found a job." |