Carrie and the Campaign Pot House

I’m on a bit of cognitive overload right now and I’ve been having a lot of thoughts about how national media—or even just new Mainers—talk about Maine politics.

They talk as if they get it.

There is a lot of money in being confident when talking about senate races. There are clicks and views and likes for that sort of assertive “THIS IS HOW MAINE IS” or “THIS IS HOW MAINERS THINK.” Or “THIS IS WHY THIS CANDIDATE WILL WIN IN MAINE BECAUSE I KNOW MAINERS.”

I’m not a real Mainer. I’ve only been here since college. And though my family was here for centuries, my grandparents moved away. So, I don’t ever think I count as a real Maine person. I’m just someone who is lucky enough to live here.

I’m sure, though, that I don’t ever speak for all Mainers or even all people in my town or even all people on my street.

The issue, I think, is that we journalists/writers/pundits want to present an entire state as a monolith of thought, as one big demographic, and ignore all the nuance that can happen in thought and action just when you walk down the street.

I see this a lot as a reporter too, watching local government respond to just a few voices in the room—the voices that write the letters or have time to go to the meetings. Then, as reporters, we amplify those voices because they are the ones who spoke, but often they don’t represent all the nuance and thought of a town or its people.

It always worries me because I worry about whose stories get told.

A lot of you know that I was once a city councilor and then I had a failing bid for the Maine State House of Representatives.

I was a horrible politician. I felt intrusive knocking on doors. I was not efficient when listening to people’s stories. I’d stay too long and not get to other doors.

But it was amazing because it let me see how different one home was from another, how a couple could have entirely different thoughts about things.

The other party said I was too soft to deal with the mean realities of politics. (Not the other candidate. His party. He was nice and we are friends.) and so on.

As those of you who read CARRIE AND THE CAMPAIGN PENIS and CARRIE AND THE CAMPAIGN PSYCHO might remember, part of being a candidate for political office involves knocking on doors.

Shaun, my husband, did doors when he ran for the Warrant Committee in our town a couple years ago.

Normally, when you do doors, you take someone with you. To be safe.

Shaun laughed at me when I told him this.

He went alone.

And I made him read this story.

But I think it helps when you think about politics and pundits and people saying that this is how a state is.

No one story—no one data point—tells you how a state is.

A few years ago, Joe Pat (we gave him a hillbilly name because his dad is a doctor and we like the irony) is driving me around in his old Saab. The first house we go to is a modified trailer, slightly off this hoity-toity (for our area) dirt road called Pioneer Farm Way.

I go up to the door. I knock.
A roundish kind of guy opens the door. 
I say who I am.

He’s all, “Hey … Cool. I don’t live here. I’m just Joe’s caretaker… .I mean … dude … caregiver.”

And I’m all, “Cool. Can you give this to him and tell him to call me if he—”

From this back hall comes a froggish voice, “Let her in.”

Caretaker/caregiver guy gets panic look. “Um …”

“Dude,” the phantom voice says, “let her in.”

This guy who is soooooo tan that he’s like beef jerky rolls his wheelchair into the front part of the trailer. He’s only wearing tiny khaki shorts. Really. Really. Really. Tiny.

He winks at me and says, “Come on back.”

I do.

I follow him down this long, long hallway.

Everything starts smelling pretty interesting, but I’m not really registering it because there are all these sounds of people scurrying around. It’s like I’m in the Boogie Nights movie or something. There is fake wood paneling everywhere and that smell.… That smell that I can’t quite place.

Half-naked guy wheels himself to the head of this big table. There’s a teen sitting there. Caretaker/giver sits down.

Half-naked khaki guy goes, “Sit down. You mind if I smoke?”

“Sure. It’s your house.” I look right in his eyes and do NOT look down because he is half-naked and I am repressed and from New Hampshire. Those two don’t always go together.

He smiles and picks up a cigarette. I realize it is not the regular kind of cigarette. It is pot. I look next to me and there is this gigantic box (like 3 x 3) full of special cigarettes. There’s got to be like 500 in there. Then I look on the other side of him and realize that the ginormous bag of plant matter is not catnip.

Nope.

Definitely not catnip. It is weed. This is when marijuana was still illegal in Maine.

I have never seen so much weed, not even when I was reporting on drug busts and the Hancock County Drug Enforcement Agency would have press conferences and spread it all out on a folding table and stand proudly around it.

There is more pot there than press-release-worthy levels of cannabis.

Half-naked guy inhales. He inhales a lot. He tells me that he has MS, so it’s legal for him to grow. (It’s now legal for all adults in Maine to smoke actually).

“I can do this.” He puffs out at me.

I decide it does not smell quite as bad as I thought. I also decided I would like processed cheese and maybe pizza and maybe crackers and a vanilla shake.

Half-naked guy adds, “I’m on disability and disability doesn’t pay much, you know.”

“I know.”

People scurry in back rooms. Someone giggles.

Half-naked guy says, “So, you know that it doesn’t pay enough to survive on. It’s legal for me to grow ’cause of the MS.”

I stare at his eyes. They are red, but happy.

Half-naked guy says, “I’ve got a lot of friends who stop by, you know. They stop by.…”

Me (finally getting it), “OH!”

Half-naked guy smiles really big and says, “You can stop by if you want. You don’t have to partake, but I can tell, you and me, we’re on the same wavelength, you know.”

This is possibly true because I am one of those people that drunk and high people insist is drunk and high when I am in fact completely sober. My brain is just wired that way. This is also possibly true because I know what it’s like to try to survive, to live with something broken (for me it’s my brain), to shelter in a car, in a falling-down roof apartment.

We all try so hard to survive.

Half-naked guy then tells me a massive list of reporters, cops, teachers, etc, who come by and ‘visit’ him. 

He tells me names!!!! People’s names! They could be summonsed or arrested or something (back then because let me stress again it was totally illegal) and he tells me their names and I know all of them. All. Of. Them. If I was an evil politician, I could blackmail people. I am not an evil politician. This is possibly why I was so bad at being a politician, actually.

Anyways, it takes him a long, long time to say a sentence. All this time pot smell is sticking to my hair and clothes. The caretaker/giver guy and teen boy keep getting up and leaving and coming back. Half-naked man keeps smoking and rolling, smoking and rolling.

And me? I am suddenly getting the munchies even more. It’s not just about processed cheese and pizza and vanilla shakes now. I want samosas and all things potato, and I have the urge to say, “Dude … Man … I just love you, dude. And your MS totally sucks, but man … I love you.”

I manage to resist the urge, but just barely.

So, my chaperone and keeper, Joe Pat realizes that I’ve been gone a long while and he comes in. They bring him back to me. Joe Pat looks like he is in Heaven. He can’t stop smiling.

Half-naked guy looks up at Joe Pat and says, “You want a toke?”

Joe Pat blushes and goes, “No. No, man. I’m good.”

I get ready to leave and half-naked pot man makes a fist for me. We touch fists. And he goes, I am dead serious, he goes, “Pot for Peace, Carrie. Pot for Peace.”

Joe Pat and I get back into his Saab and Joe Pat is grabbing the steering wheel, not really saying words but just sort of all manic energy before he finally says, “Holy sh–t! That was amazing. Did you see all that? I’ve never seen so much pot in my life. And I’m a drummer.” 

I start cracking up. I can’t stop. 

Joe Pat backs out of the driveway and says, “You have a contact high, Carrie, don’t you? Oh, crap. *Will is going to kill me. Do you still want to do doors?”

I hold out my hair. “Does my hair smell?”

He sniffs in. “Hell yeah.”

I nod, think (which takes a long time because apparently my processing is off from my contact high), and say, “Yeah, I better do doors. I’ll just tell people I went to a pot house.”

So that’s what I do. Overall, it was one of the most mellow doors night I’ve had, but no, I wasn’t very efficient and possibly talked way too much about the pot house, healthcare, and why my hair smelled.

Yes. Another reason why I didn’t win. I have a hard time holding things back.

*Will was my campaign manager. I still feel badly about that. He tried so hard.

But that’s kind of the point, I think. People who don’t live here, who don’t talk to people who are from here, don’t really have the full experience of Maine or its voters or the nuances of its people.

We are not a monolith and that lack of uniformity of thought isn’t a bad thing. It’s actually pretty cool.

I usually send these emails twice a week.

*My WRITE BETTER NOW posts also come one to two times a week if you sign up for them, too, which you should.

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