America, You Sexy Bitch (15 page)

 

Michael:
We’re going to spend the next couple of days with Meghan’s buddy who lives in Austin, a film critic turned screenwriter who has promised to show us a good time. His name’s Cargill, and I am dismayed to learn that he and Meghan met, of all places, on Twitter. I thought I was her only Twitter friend. I don’t know if Cargill is his first name or his last name or just a made-up name that sounds cool. Cargill. It is the kind of name somebody from Austin should have. Hopefully the image lives up to the name.

Cargill does not disappoint. When we descend the escalator to baggage claim at the airport, there he is, bearded and rumpled and gravel voiced. He looks like a younger version of The Dude from
The Big Lebowski.

“You made it,” he rasps when he sees Meghan, who squeals and throws her arms around him. They immediately begin chirping about people I don’t know, including his wife, Jessica, who was going to meet us but is feeling a little sick. It’s just as well since there’s
not enough room in Cargill’s crummy little beater for the four of us
and
Meghan’s luggage.

Meghan is traveling with the heaviest suitcase in the history of heavy suitcases. It is
Flintstones-
heavy and enormous. A good-sized person could live in that suitcase. I’ve seen smaller Japanese hotel rooms. Before we left, she was bemoaning all the stuff she had to leave behind. I have no idea what she could have possibly left behind because to my eye, she brought
everything.
Everything in the whole world.

We shove ourselves into the car and head to Cargill’s. As unlikely as it seems based on his Dude-ish appearance, Cargill is actually a Republican, a “philosophical Republican rather than an ideological Republican,” descended from a long line of military men.

“I’m the eldest son of an eldest son of an eldest son going back seven generations,” he says, speaking of his family’s tradition of service. The fact that he never served seems to weigh on him a bit and he relates a heart-to-heart conversation he had with his father, a twenty-six-year air force veteran, as they drove to the airport one dawn.

“It’s like five-thirty in the morning, you know, and I say to him, ‘We never talked about this, but I know you’re disappointed that I never joined the military.’

“And he said, ‘I’m not disappointed that you never joined the military. If we’re disappointed in you at all, it’s that you never became a stand-up comedian.’”

There would be a lot fewer books written about hard-assed military fathers if more of them were like Cargill’s dad.

 

Meghan:
I travel so much I have accumulated friends all over the country. One of my most favorite parts of visiting Austin is getting to spend time with my friends Cargill and Jessica. It’s a little embarrassing to admit how many friends I have made over Twitter, but there are quite a few in my life. One of my followers became so adamant that I start following Cargill, that I just had to tweet him. Cargill’s real name is Christopher Robert Cargill, but I have never
heard anyone else call him anything but Cargill. I started following Cargill on Twitter, and it was only a few days before he started following me, after he saw my appearance on
The Colbert Report
. I guess our friendship was just meant to be.

Cargill is a screenwriter and movie critic for the website Ain’t It Cool News, which has a cultlike following of movie nerds. We immediately started tweeting each other about our favorite science fiction movies, and eventually, after finding out that he was happily married to his gorgeous high school sweetheart, I started asking him for dating advice. We are both insomniacs, and I started coming back from bad dates and venting my frustration to him over direct message. He started giving me relationship advice and still, to this day, I solicit it from him. We also bonded over our mutual frustration with the more conservative side of the Republican Party. Like me, Cargill is frustrated with the way many of its philosophies have been hijacked by special interests.

The thing I love most about Cargill is that he really is who he is. He’s a film nerd and sci-fi geek who loves his wife, loves Austin, and is also just living the American Dream. I have since become friends with his lovely wife, Jessica, and find her to be equally, if not more, charming. I often joke that if there were ever some huge political scandal in my life—the worst kind of scandal that I could fathom—I would go to Texas and live in Cargill and Jessica’s guest room until things blew over. That’s the kind of friends I have. I have been lucky in my life to attract genuine friends, even over Twitter.

 

Michael:
Maybe it’s the military thing that binds Meghan and Cargill, or maybe it’s just the fact that he’s a really good time in a nerdy kind of way. He and Jessica just returned from Convergence, a sci-fi convention in Minneapolis. They go every year. I’ve never really understood the appeal of sci-fi conventions. He says there are panels all day “on everything from your favorite science fiction show to comedy to fantasy literature.” And then at night, “They give out alcohol and you just wander from theme party to theme party and it’s just getting drunk, having crazy times, and then
going to your room, having sex, coming down, getting more drunk, and then you wake up somewhere.” Well, I guess when you put it that way, I can maybe understand the appeal.

“Do you dress in costume?” I ask. Keep in mind this is a man in his late thirties.

“Yeah, I usually take a costume every year.”

I love this guy.

We go to their home to meet up with Jess. It’s a small ranch house, decorated with movie posters and memorabilia everywhere. Jess is an adorable brunette, her voice a little gravelly from whatever small ailment she has. We sit around their living room and shoot the shit.

“Show them your office,” says Jess.

Cargill opens a door and we enter Nerd Paradise. There are hundreds, or possibly thousands, of small lead figurines from the roleplaying game Warhammer 40000, which I think is like Dungeons & Dragons except it takes place in the future. But it’s basically the same thing: a bunch of dudes (and I am going to make a wild assumption here that it’s almost all dudes) sitting around rolling dice, smoking pot, and killing Orcs.

Cargill’s Warhammer dudes fill every surface area of the office. Inside the closet are even more. He has assembled a tiny army here, thousands of creatures of every conceivable form. It is the dorkiest thing I have ever seen.

If it sounds like I am making fun of this, I am, but only a little. I played D&D as a kid, and my own father was into painting lead figurines. I remember him huddled over a giant magnifying glass with a tiny paintbrush trying to get a wizard’s robe the perfect shade of periwinkle. Cargill also has a giant magnifying glass. Seeing it almost makes me tear up with nostalgia.

 

Meghan:
The first time I ever really hung out in Austin was with Cargill and Jessica for an event called Butt-Numb-A-Thon, a twenty-four-hour film festival where the attendees watch consecutive movies hand picked by the “Head Geek,” Harry Knowles. Let
me tell you, the tickets are hard to get and you have to be invited and approved by Harry, but if you get the chance, go. It was one of the most fun times I have ever had, especially watching movies. My dirty little secret part of myself (actually, there is nothing dirty or little about it) is that underneath it all I am a huge nerd. I love sci-fi and horror movies, video games, everything. I apparently passed the “geek/nerd” test by Cargill when I told him
District 9
was my favorite movie from 2009.

I’m so happy to be in this house of old friends with my new friends that everything starts to feel like it’s back in balance. Although I think Michael is hilarious and pretty much feel like I had to pass the Michael Ian Black seminar while preparing to go on the road with him, I’ll admit that I don’t always get his snarky humor. A few cracks he’s made along the way about me being a rich girl and my father being old, I have to assume is just his way of showing weird affection for me as a friend, even though I don’t really find personal jabs of this nature to be funny at all. It’s probably our biggest obstacle so far, my not really knowing if Michael is joking or being serious. Like most comedians (or at least the few I have known), so much is shielded with humor that I find myself asking Stephie if Michael is laughing at me or with me. But now, here, with Cargill and Jessica, I feel relaxed and safe, as though they’ll be able to soak up some of my self-consciousness with their more affable brand of humor.

 

Michael:
There is a certain kind of American who just does not give a shit what the world thinks. They do what they do, and if anybody has a problem with that, they can go take a flying fuck. It feels like a quintessentially American attitude, and Cargill and Jess have it in spades. They like what they like—movies, sci-fi, karaoke, good eats—and they have created a life for themselves here in Austin that allows them to do what they like and be left alone.

This is one of the common threads among the people we meet on the road; they just want to be left alone. Not isolated, not separate and apart from their communities. But they want to preserve the
freedom to live their lives however they see fit with as little interference as possible. It was true for Jackie out on the ranch, and the entrepreneurs we met in Vegas, true (I assume) for Omar the Anarchist, and now here it is again in the form of Mr. and Mrs. Cargill. And it’s true for me. It is a classically Republican philosophy: self-reliance, individualism, freedom. Yet Cargill is reluctant to call himself a Republican, at least as it’s currently defined.

“I’m a philosophical Republican rather than an ideological Republican,” he says, complaining about the state of his party. “It’s really frustrating when they’re fiscal
radicals
who are like, ‘No, we’re not budging on taxes.’ That’s actually a very radical fiscal policy. Fiscal conservatism is actually about balancing the budget and figuring out how to pay for everything.”

He says there’s nobody in the Republican field he likes and that “at this point, I’m probably going to vote for the president right now.”

Yet he would never call himself a Democrat.

Almost nobody wants to own the label “Democrat.” That’s another thing I’m learning. Even I, the “liberal” on this trip, have a hard time saying I am one. Because I don’t know what the Dems stand for. It’s easy with the Republicans. Whether you agree with them or not, at least they are ideologically consistent. So ideologically consistent, in fact, that nobody is pure enough for them. I think that’s what Cargill means when he says he is a “philosophical” Republican, as opposed to an “ideological” one. Philosophy implies reason. Ideology, as applied to the current political scene, implies rigidity. Like Meghan and me, and nearly everybody else we meet, Cargill is sick of political rigidity.

But enough about politics, and on to drunken karaoke.

First up is a big meal at Casa Chapala, a Tex-Mex joint in a nearby strip mall. “Don’t let the location fool you,” Cargill warns. I don’t. It’s amazing. I order the Mexican thing with the stuff in it. Delicious. As we are leaving, Jess and Cargill point out the photo of President Bush the Younger on the wall. As it turns out, President Obama also has eaten here, but there’s no photo of him.

 

Meghan:
Cargill and I are really on the same page with things. For as long as I can remember, he has referred to himself as a “philosophical” Republican versus an “ideological” one. I refer to myself as a progressive Republican and have even been harassed by Glenn Beck for, you know, being a bastard mutation in the original Republican “ideologue” design. This is the thing, and I’ll say it as often as I have to: I really do identify myself as a Republican, and I firmly believe in the core ideals on which the party is based.

One of my bona fides that many people outside of the Republican circle haven’t heard is that my mother was pregnant with me at the 1984 Republican Convention in Dallas, where President Reagan accepted the nomination from our party. It’s my most badass Republican street cred, and I have attended every single Republican Convention since.

I flat-out love everything about it: the converging of the best—and, yes, worst—minds of the Republican Party in one happy room. No one’s there to talk smack about our platform; they’re all there because they believe in what we stand for, with passion and commitment, without a bunch of nitpicking naysayers attacking our vision for including diverse opinions. I’m not naive; I know that there are also bad apples on some branches who are there seeking their own power and glory, but from where I’m usually standing I have a treetop view of all the good that can be done when people with conviction work together for America. Until you are on that convention floor, talking to people from every corner of America, you cannot begin to understand just how beautiful the spirit in that room really is. Television cannot do it justice, trust me. It is a
party
, of the very best possible kind. Yes, even better than Vegas—unless, of course, it’s being held in Vegas.

Unfortunately, Republican politics really started getting more radicalized in the last eight years. I want to live in a Big Tent Party, and I believe we should be reaching out to younger voters by finding flexibility within the platform. I have never thought being a Democrat was cool, and anyone who believes in big government doesn’t really understand what big government means. On a philosophical
and cultural level I connect to the Republican Party, and there is no scenario where I could fathom myself ever voting for a Democrat, or joining another party. Yes, even in instances where the party would lean more conservative. I am a moderate Republican and I am more comfortable with a little sway more conservative than liberal.

While we are eating, the issue of Michael’s and my cultural differences over our party alignments flares up once again. I start to see that much of our arguments tie back to cultural rather than political differences of opinion. As stereotypical as it may sound, I think that being a Democrat implies being a pacifist: someone who is out of touch with the rest of America, or more specifically someone who compromises to the point where they end up with little of what they started out with. Being a Democrat, in my experience, doesn’t mean “ride or die,” or fight until the end. It means “Anybody gone into Whole Foods and seen the price of arugula?” another one of my favorite President Obama quotes. Michael’s arguments to the contrary don’t sway me in the least, but I’m happy to have this conversation as many times as it takes for him to see my point. I know there are lots of naysayers about my specific “brand” of Republican, but I have found that those types of Republicans are living in fear of the changing world we live in. The face of America is changing and the Republican Party needs to start evolving, not giving up the basic principles this party was founded on and stands for.