When the Republicans Return to Mars

Hester leaped into the living room of her apartment and closed the door quickly, locked the deadbolt, and leaned her back against the door, as though to keep a swarm of demons from rushing into the room. She looked around at the comforts of home: the fireplace covered with little pictures of fairies, the large Gandhi and Susan B. Anthony posters, the row of frames without pictures, the bright and sparkly fabric draped over just about every surface, the furniture acquired from many dumpster dives, the potted plants and her vivid paintings, some unfinished, scattered throughout the room, and the tall bookcases overflowing with books.

“May I become a Buddha, so that I can save the world from Republicans,” Hester said with her eyes closed. When a furry flank rubbed against her leg, she opened her eyes and followed the purring cat toward the couch. She called, “Hi, honey, I’m home!” She calculated that at least one of her two roommates would be home at this hour on this day.

“Welcome!” Jemal called back in a singsong voice from the kitchen. He was probably concocting some gourmet recipe that he’d invented on the spur of the moment. Hester went for the couch that was trying to be a sari, draped herself across it and its many blue, purple, and orange cushions, and grabbed a book that lay on the hardwood floor. It was Riane Eisler’s The Chalice and the Blade. She was about to start reading, when Jemal entered the room wearing a hot pink apron and said, “So how was the family gathering?” He was tall and svelte and had perfect cheekbones, large eyes, and a waist-length weave.

“A traumatic ordeal, just like family gatherings always all,” Hester said, covering her eyes. “I think the purpose of relatives is to drive you to suicide. To prevent you from reaching the tiniest portion of your full potential, let alone your full potential. To spitefully bate you into murdering them just so you end up in jail. The possibilities are endless and all very bad.”

“Yes, well, remember my parents kicked me out of the house when I came out of the closet,” Jemal said, sitting on the other end of the couch. “I’m thinking out of the closet and out of the house all in one week is overkill.”

“Sounds like something my relatives would do. Oh you wouldn’t believe what Uncle NRA said this time. He was going on and on, absolutely fuming about my cousin who has the smarts to be banished out in California—anyway, he was going on about how she sends e-mails that, horrors, expose the evils of his precious worshipful weirdo politicians. Absolutely livid! Of course, it wouldn’t do for him to get news that isn’t from, like, the Fox so-called news.” Jemal shuddered dramatically. As a theater costumer, he knew how to be dramatic.

“It’s no wonder I never see your local relatives in our apartment,” he said.

“Oh, they wouldn’t dare set foot in this apartment! I’ve mentioned you to some of them, and the very idea that I have a roommate who’s black, male, and gay is enough for them to go into convulsions! So please, don’t every move out!” They both laughed at this, and Jemal untied and pulled off his apron and wiped his hands on it, as if it were a towel.

“Well, you’ll be happy to know that they’re all being blasted off to Mars next week,” he said cheerfully, hopping up from the couch and clapping.

“Who what?”

“All the Republicans! We’ve got a fleet of spaceships built to go to Mars, and they’re taking them back to their home planet! Of course they don’t know that—they think it’s a pleasure cruise.”

Hester laughed and said, “I’ve never known you to read tabloids.”

“No, this ain’t a tabloid!” Jemal said with a wave of his hand, as he walked over to the fireplace and leaned his back against it before explaining animatedly with many hand gestures. “You see, scientists have discovered that humanoid life used to be on Mars, and that what we now called Republicans are the direct descendants of that life form!”

“Really? I never thought of them as particularly human-like myself.”

“You tell me. Anyway, they’re to be blasted off next Friday at around six in the evening. It’ll be on TV—I heard that a group of nonpartisan and very non-Republican newscasters who are actually, like, competent—“

“You mean, they know how to cite their sources instead of pretending like they have sources for a bunch of made-up shit?”

“Yeah, yeah! They’ll go to the TV and radio news stations, which of course will be deserted without Republicans there, and they’ll be keeping the public updated. That’s also when the whole thing will be disclosed.”

“Then how do you know about it already?”

“Well, you know Jimmy, the scene designer I’ve been scening, I mean seeing, he has an uncle who’s an aeronaut and knows all about it. It’s mostly hush-hush, of course, since nobody wants the Republicans to know what’s really happening.”

“So, like, the scientists have lied to the Republicans?”

“Yeah, figure why not? It’s nothing compared to how much they’ve been lying all these years.”

“Sure. Just think: no more family reunions! No more homophobic relatives accusing me of being gay just because I’m not married to some butch creep and I’m not a white male supremacist—“

“—not to mention because you have two queer roommates,” Jemal added.

“Oh, yeah, that. No more nasty relatives making snide ignorant comments about everything I say and do and about my entire lifestyle! No more biting my head off completely out of the blue!” Hester said.

“Yeah, I’m hearing you!”

“No more invasions! No more us and them mentality, no more making enemies of the rest of the world! No more trying to take away what rights we’ve acquired so far! No more destroying the enviroment!”

“Yeah, we won’t be living in the Evil Empire anymore! And it won’t be long before we even have universal health care, just like a first world country!”

“We have so got to throw a party next week.”

2
On the following Friday, Hester looked around the living room and tried to think of some last minute decorating before the party. Jemal had picked up books and magazines that previously lay scattered on the floor and table, and he had swept the hardwood floor and dusted the mantle, which a long strip of patchwork Indian fabric now covered, and which in turn a row of candles in various sizes and colors covered. Cherise, her other roommate, had strung little white lights around the room. Hester couldn’t remember a time when the apartment looked so good, at least as long as nobody took a peak at her messy bedroom. She jumped when she heard a knock at the door.

Hester got up and threw the door open. On the landing stood a bunch of friends she and her roommates had invited. “Hey, glad you could come!” she said, stepping out of the way and waving the guests into the room. As if they had planned to show up at the same time, ten people came through the door. Hester closed it and sensed someone standing in the doorway between the dining room and the living room; she looked, and it turned out to be her roommate Cherise, a stout blonde woman in her late twenties wearing a vivid orange tunic trimmed with beads and conch shells. She was barefoot, and Hester suspected the tunic was the only thing she was wearing.

After the initial greetings, most of the crowd trooped into the dining room and placed their dishes on the table, which was now covered with an orange and purple tablecloth.

“OK, I’ve come up with a fab name for the band,” Cherise said.

“What is it?” Trudy, a young woman with purple spiked hair asked.

“Groovy Fat Grrrls,” Cherise said.

“Cool!” five people said simultaneously.

Soon everyone was settled in the living room, on couch, chairs, and floor, with heaping plates and full glasses, cups, and mugs, everyone chattering away and sensing a buzzing anticipation of something wonderful.

“I think we should have the TV on,” Jemal said, “so we can keep updated on the news. I mean, about the transportation to Mars and all that.”

“Good idea,” Hester said, getting up from the couch.

“Where’s the TV?” someone asked. “I didn’t know you had one.” Without answering, Hester went to a table in a far corner and lifted the scrap of fabric from the box on top of it, to reveal a fifteen-inch TV.

“Unveil the monument!” Trudy said. Hester leaned over and, after looking at the TV and trying to ground herself and remember how it worked, she pushed the on button and found a station with a news program.

“This is the first time I’ve turned on the TV in years,” Hester said. “I’d forgotten where the dial was.”

“It’s not a dial anymore, it’s a button,” Cherise said.

“Oh, yeah.”

Hester returned to the couch, and meanwhile, on the TV, everyone saw a fleet of flying saucers in midair, gradually getting smaller in the blue sky. A disembodied female voice was speaking.

“According to IASA authorities, the Mars Mission is so far going smoothly,” the woman’s voice said. She proceeded to say how far up in the air the spaceships had reached. Soon there was a view of a newsroom, where two reporters were female and one male. The same voice, the dark woman on the right, who looked to be in her forties, said, “According to the scientists who arranged this expedition, the Republicans think that they’re going on a pleasure cruise, but they don’t realize that in fact the spaceships are not designed to return to planet Earth.” The living room was full of cheers in response to that. In a moment, they were again looking at the blue sky on the TV, and the spaceships had become the tiniest of dots.

Cherise stood up, tapped her glass with a spoon, broke the glass, and said, “I think we should have some speeches!”

“And a poetry reading!” Speranza said.

“No microphone, so you have to speak loudly!” Somebody muted the TV, and everyone forgot about it for the time being.

Cherise walked up to the fireplace and stood centered in front of it, melodramatically wiping false tears from her eyes. “I am so happy to be here with you all today,” she said, sniffing. “This is a great honor and a privilege. The reason we decided to have a party today is because we are at last freed of the Republicans who have been terrorizing our country and the entire world, the Republicans who have turned the United States into an international laughing stock and disgrace, the Republicans who have attempted to ruin the world. They ruined Mars long ago, and they’ve been trying to do it here, and came close to succeeding. But that dark horrible age is over, and we are FREE AT LAST!” Everyone cheered and clapped, people laughed and danced and whistled and called for an encore. Much merriment was made. Cherise went back to her place and cleaned up the broken glass at last, while everyone munched and drank and chatted excitedly.

“OK, who wants to go next?” Jemal asked.

“Hester does!” a couple of people said.

“Gee, thanks,” Hester said and added with dripping sarcasm, “Because you know I’m such a great speaker.” She nonetheless placed her plate on an end table and walked up to the fireplace, where she stood as Cherise had but not with so much confidence. She leaned her back against the mantle, jumped slightly as she could feel a candle falling over, and then stood up and clasped her hands together behind her back. Then she began her impromptu speech.

“I believe we have great potentials just around the corner,” Hester said. “We will begin really seriously working on disarmament and the dismantling of nuclear weapons, and perhaps the Pentagon itself will be out of business soon. The nation will no longer spend more than half its income on the military, but will instead embark on a new, beautiful era in which we celebrate diversity and work toward compassionate discussion and diplomacy. We will discuss things with other lands and strive to understand differences, rather than try to blow them up like a bunch of fascist penis-worshipping assholes.” Cheers and whistles followed this. “Well, so much for the academic tone I was aiming at. Anyway, I see World Peace coming, the end of Patriarchy, a beautiful egalitarian world that values art and love and happiness and says farewell to dominance and violence.”

“Here, here!” Trudy said, clapping. Everyone else clapped and cheered and whistled.

“You go, girl!” Jas, the sculptor, said, raising her fork in a sort of salute. Hester curtseyed and sat back down.

“Any more pretzels?” Seth, the ballet dancer, asked. Zack, the mime, shrugged gracefully, raising his hands with palms up.

Suddenly there was a loud banging on the front door. The party became silent for a second, while Hester stared at the door with a clear case of bad vibes coming on.

“Did we invite anyone else?” Jemal asked.

“Yeah, Wendy and Michael, but they couldn’t make it,” Hester said.

“I usually work Friday nights, too, but I couldn’t miss this party,” Trudy said.

“Who says they were working? I think they went to Neverland,” Cherise said.

Hester sighed, got up, and opened the door. The neighbor who lived directly below stood in the doorway wearing an ugly pink terrycloth robe and with curlers in her brown hair. She was tall and skinny and seemed to loom over Hester. She had a horrible scowl on her homely, horse-like face. One of the cats came along and sniffed at her feet and rubbed against her legs, but the neighbor stood very still and kept her feet together, as if she didn’t want to make contact with the friendly cat. She yelled and screamed something that to Hester was incomprehensive, something about noise, of which she was certainly making a lot. She went on like that for several minutes, and Hester just stood, holding the doorknob, and staring with her mouth wide open in shock. She didn’t understand what was happening—she just knew she was shaking uncontrollably and felt utter aversion. However, during this tirade, she was vaguely aware of someone coming up from behind her and gently pushing her aside. It was Cherise, who walked up to this neighbor and gave her a hard slap across the face.

“Bugger off, weirdo!” she said. The weirdo in question huffed and huffed but couldn’t blow the apartment down. She scowled again and marched off down the stairs. Hester slammed the door shut as loudly as she could and clicked the bolt.

“What the fuck was that?” she asked in almost a whisper.

“A singing telegram?” Maybelle, the opera singer, said.

“Oh, I thought it was a ritual dance,” Speranza, the Irish dancer, said.

“Um, that would be our wonderful neighbor,” Cherise said.

“How insane,” Hester said. She was still trembling all over from shock.

“It’s—what? Eight thirty? She’s screaming about our noise level at eight thirty on a Friday night,” Trudy said.

“Jemal,” Cherise said, “has this neighbor ever mentioned to you that she has weird hours?”

“Nope.”

“Me neither,” Hester said. “What a freak.”

Jemal, who stood beside the couch holding a try of party mix, said, “Yeah, that reminds me. I figured out why Ginger has been locked in the basement a few times.”

“Ginger?” Trudy asked.

“That’s the cat,” Cherise explained.

“That weirdo neighbor has been locking her up,” Jemal said. “She’s a cat hater, and I kind of think she has a vendetta against us. Think we’d better stop letting Ginger wander the back steps.”

“Insane,” Hester said, and she let out a slow and shaky breath. She was so glad this happened in front of many witnesses; even though part of her believed she had to do everything herself, another part of her was comforted by the support of friends. She thought of the Republicans on their way to Mars, and then thought of the neighbor, and a new idea occurred to her. “Do you think this psycho neighbor is a—“

“Oh, I don’t know about her politics,” Jemal said, as if he could read her mind.

“You know, it’s amazing how many so-called females are actually stupid white men trapped in women’s bodies. In other words, not all Republicans are male,” Cherise said.

“Yeah, just look at some of my nasty relatives,” Hester said, recalling the horrific family reunion she had endured just last week.

“Most people have a few, but you got the prize,” Cherise said, patting Hester’s shoulder.

“Yeah, but about this neighbor. Do you think they could have, er, missed a few?” Hester said, conjuring in her mind’s eye the image of the spaceships in the bright blue sky. Everyone became dead silent as they stared at her.

“Ah, fuck,” Cherise said.