Donald Trump's Last Stand

Just after one in the afternoon, I arrived at the The Rugby Club in the CBD. Nervous, I explained to the bouncer that I had come as a journalist, not a supporter. It was a funny joke: Donald Trump wasn't going to win, but here I was at his biggest public election party in Australia.

Even in retrospect, the party was kinda funny: caught off-guard by the result, it was titled Donald Trump's Last Stand. The room was small, and half-full of misfits; Mark Latham, Cameron Ross, Rowan Dean and Bronwyn Bishop were all there. Sitting and watching the Fox News election coverage, I got into a conversation with a Trump supporter. He was friendly, and explained to me that he liked Trump because he was the anti-establishment candidate. A crowd of people behind us shouted and clapped, and a woman ran up. Trump just got ahead in the betting market!

At half past two, It occurred to me that Trump could win, but I didn't take it to be fact. I circled around the stupid, boring party, getting drunk off the bar tab (which consisted entirely of light beer) and trying to fill up on the food available (elaborate fruit platters and virtually nothing else). I approached a journalist from The Huffington Post, whose ironic floral button-up made him stand out. Nah he won't win ... I mean, if Trump gets Florida, then it's game on. I left for university. Twenty minutes later, Trump got Florida.

At half past three I walked into Manning; outside it was raining, and inside it was packed. The crowd was noisy and emotional and divided. As much as half of the audience was Trump supporters, the mystery of their existence as usual impenetrable due to their culture of surreal, groundless irony. The rest were divided infinitely more times: Hillary supporters, ALP members, anarchists, communists, unaligned people, all occupying the same space and time, hopelessly lost and distressed. Antony Green has called the election for Trump!

When I was fifteen, I went to a friend's 18^th. It was one of the first times I actually got drunk: I was in a country I didn't know with people I didn't know well but they were loving and kind, and there was dancing in a barn in the country, and it was wonderful. Until suddenly, someone fell onto the ground in an epileptic fit; he recovered briefly but then he was down again, quivering, spasming, salivating ruthlessly on the floor, while all his friends could do was sit around him in a circle, call an ambulance, check his breathing, hold hands and sing. It was the first time I'd seen anything like that in my life. I walked out into the night, drunk and on my own; I cried and I screamed.