ME AND MAYOR PETE

• Published in: Subtropics 2021-03 (30-31), p.82-243
• Main Author: Massey, Drew
• Format: Magazinearticle
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aging; Buttigieg, Pete; LGBTQ people; Politics
• ISSN: 1559-0704; 2471-4526

The party faithful-those who know all the congressional districts of Massachusetts and the intricacies of Middlesex County electoral politics; those who know that money alone doesn t open as many doors as one might imagine-alighted upon one another in a language I didn t speak, songbirds in the tree of retail politics, chirping over the aging foam-and-polyester seats. Whatever energy he had committed to such physical discipline was long since spent, leaving only a dull fatigue that the cameras failed to capture but that lent the gathering an air of intrusion, as if he had been dragged from his house unwillingly, a reluctant hero for twenty-ñrst-century America. Mayor Pete may have gone on to employ other gay men in their late thirties, but I imagine few of them introduced themselves as obviously unemployed fans extolling their passion for spreadsheets. Who but the truly gifted politician could see his way from what surely felt like a quixotic run for Indiana state treasurer in his late twenties, to the mayorship of what one website has called the 109th most boring city in Indiana, to a barely legal bid to become the youngest president in American history?