The Cocktail Party

On the personal and the political

I’m sweaty. I’m wearing black. I’ve got my jacket wrapped around my hips and my keffiyeh has practically melted off my head. My friend and I are scanning the block for somewhere to buy water. Where’s the nearest Circle K? The protest hasn’t fully ended, but the crowd has already thinned by half and the sun is busy etching scorching patterns onto my bare thighs. We squeeze past people peeling off into cafés, pulling out their phones, already switching gears like a car ready to park itself. I’m ranting — low and sharp — about the group that started gossiping about someone’s deadbeat ex halfway through the march. I see people like that at every protest.

I mutter something bitchily under my breath, and my friend scoffs. There’s blood being spilled in real time. I don’t get how people can slip so easily back into themselves — into brunch, shopping and well-lit Instagram stories. I’m still full of the weight of it all. I’m bloated, nauseous. Is my IBS acting up again? Fuck. And that’s the thing: for me, the protest doesn’t end when the crowd disperses. It can’t. It never has.

I put my phone in my pocket once we finally arrive at a Circle K, which feels like an oasis. I see two girls from the protest and make my way past them.

“I don’t switch off my politics when I switch off my phone after posting an infographic.” my friend preaches, snarkily, to the choir.

He’s right. I don’t switch off my politics. I live them — in my body, in my shame, in the things I say yes to and the things I refuse.

I take my politics personally because the personal and the political are not distinct.

Not only are they not mutually exclusive - they are inherently entangled in the most passionate, raw, and sexy affair.

“The du jour definition of ‘politics’ is bourgeoise,” I scoff in response. It is suddenly as though we are at a cocktail party, surely not a Circle K.

My mind is buzzing as one’s mind does after the first sip of a lavish and dark espresso martini. It, politics, is categorised, and so cast away, as a sort of elite realm, that politicians are entirely engaged in and citizens only tangentially so. I'm going to cast my ballot after spending somewhere between a minute and a few days thinking about it, and return back to my routine. I mock them. But routine is possession. I mock them again, though I am no better.

“And every citizen is as integral, as inherently connected to, and as important to the seemingly abstract notion of "politics" as a politician is!”

My friend is thoroughly impressed by my conviction. We each take a sip of an all too expensive Evian bottle, relieved at last.

I don’t want to engage with politics the way we’ve been taught to — like it’s a job for someone else. I don’t want to intellectualise it, vote once, and call it a day. I want to live it. I want it to be visible — in the way I speak, the way I dress, the way I walk through a city, alone, at night, and refuse to shrink.

Living shame-free as a woman in this world is a kind of protest. This society shackles shame to the darkest corners of our subconscious. As women, we’re taught to feel guilty just for existing in our bodies — for wanting, for being wanted, for being loud, for taking up space. And living shamelessly is thirsty work. You might never quite get rid of the one in your head telling you you’re not being ladylike, that you’re showing too much skin, that you’re too much. But you can, at the very least, tell it to fuck off.

I’ve learned to let my arm hair spike up without apology. To say what I mean, bluntly and proudly. To not feel bad when people are uncomfortable with how much space I take up — intellectually, emotionally, physically. That’s what I mean when I say I live my politics. Even my shamelessness is political.

We are out on the street now. “What they don’t get is,” I begin again, waving the Evian bottle in the air as I speak, “none of it stops after a rally!”

The anger doesn’t stop, the passion doesn’t stop, the drive doesn’t stop. None of it should stop, at least. Despite being, in the technical sense, a) a social gathering, b) an event that brings like-minded people together, and c) roaring with passion — rallies are no cocktail party after which one can simply resume normal life. It should never be that way — not the least during war. Not the least during a genocide. We are so disconnected from one another, so engrossed in our own, deeply personal lives that protests are seen (much like a cocktail party) as a departure from mundane reality. The time of the month or year, during which one engages with their community in a sweltering hurricane of passion on the basis of shared views.

I believe that everybody should want to improve their community. I believe we all need to be there for one another. That our lives are not just our own, and that solidarity is a commitment not a word. I believe every single action we take means something. Even the tiniest ones. The things we buy. The way we speak. The things we let slide. All of it matters.

I believe, like Sartre did, that we must view everything in any given context from the perspective of the most oppressed. That is the only way to live ethically. That is the only way to love. I don’t believe in God, but I do believe we are burdened — blessed — with an inherent purpose. A responsibility to one another. A duty to try.