“I like being a lawyer,” he said to me. “But my real passion is politics. What I’ve always wanted to do is run for office one day.”
I propped myself up on my elbow and looked at him, feeling giddy. “Really?” I asked. Everything about him was proving to be so different, so much more interesting than anyone I’d ever been with and this was one more thing to add to my list of Amazing Things About Matt. (Of course, to be fair, everything about him delighted me at that point — he could’ve told me he wanted to be a clown and I would’ve found it charming.)
“What office?” I asked him.
“It depends. Maybe I’d run for Congress, or a state senate seat, and then who knows? It’s something I’ve always wanted. I just feel like it’s what I’m supposed to do.”
“That’s amazing,” I said. “I think you’d be so great at that.”
The thing is, as I said that to him, I didn’t really think it would ever happen. Even when he told me later that he’d never smoked pot (Never! Not once!) because he didn’t want it to be something that could come back to hurt him or that he’d bought the domain names for MatthewKelly.com and MattforMaryland.com, I still didn’t fully believe it was something he intended to do.
And it wasn’t because I didn’t think Matt was smart or talented enough, because I absolutely did. But that same day, I told Matt how I wanted to write novels, big, thick books that swept you away, the kind that made people miss their stop on the subway. And I assumed that our dreams were the same — something fun to imagine, fantasies to pass the time.
I don’t mean to be a pessimist — it’s just, how often do you hear people say, “I’d love to write” or “I think I’d be happiest teaching high school history”? People say all kinds of things — they want to work in the Peace Corps or write Hallmark cards for a living. It doesn’t mean anything. Or that’s what I thought, anyway.
—
Then, in the fall of 2007, Matt started talking about how unfulfilled he was at work, how he’d talked to his friend Kevin, from college, who’d joined the Obama campaign and couldn’t stop thinking about it. “I feel like I’m wasting my time at the firm,” he said, “when I could be doing something so much more important.” Originally, I chalked it up to a bad few months at work — Matt was close to becoming a senior associate and working crazy hours. But then I noticed that he was spending a lot of time looking at Kevin’s Facebook page, clicking through the pictures of Obama’s events, studying each one closely. He began making phone calls to everyone he knew working in politics, scheduling lunches and drinks with friends, acquaintances, family connections, anyone he thought might be able to help him.
His eagerness reminded me of the way my girlfriends would act at the end of an especially slothful weekend, when we’d eaten cheeseburgers and chips and drunk ourselves silly. We’d all be disgusted with ourselves, swearing to change our ways, scrubbing the apartment, eating salads, and signing up for classes at the gym. That’s how Matt acted, his eyes bright and frantic, like he’d just gotten out of prison. “I’ve wasted so much time,” he kept saying. “I should’ve done this years ago.”
A friend of a friend introduced Matt to the New York finance director for Obama’s campaign, and he was offered a job. “I told her I’d do anything,” he said. “I don’t care if I’m answering phones.”
“Is that what you’re going to be doing?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even.
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “She said she’d train me, that I could learn on the job. I got lucky — they really need people. Most of the experienced people are with Hillary and Edwards, but they’re willing to let me learn.”
“Wow,” I said.
“If I really want to run for office,” he said, “I need to see how it works. Get some experience. See a campaign like this up close.”
Matt’s pay cut was pretty severe, but he said he wasn’t worried about money, and so I tried not to be either. We’d have to dip into a little of our savings, and his parents had already offered to help out if needed. “They know this is a once in a lifetime opportunity,” he said. “I feel so lucky.”
“That’s great,” I said. And I meant it. Of course I did. I wanted him to be happy. What kind of wife would I have been otherwise?
—
I don’t know what would’ve happened if Obama had never run, if Matt hadn’t joined that specific campaign. Would he have found his way into politics eventually? Maybe. Probably. But maybe not. There was something different about Obama, something almost magical about that campaign. Each day, Matt went to work in a small office with just a few co-workers. Sometimes he called people and asked for money, which he called “dialing for dollars.” Sometimes he worked on spreadsheets all day, entering names of the people who were donating or attending an event. He started helping hosts put together fund-raisers, gaining more confidence with each one. I waited for him to complain — even just a little — about the menial parts of his job, but he never did. He was working long hours, going to events at night, and still he was energized, came home talking about his job, telling me every last detail as we lay in bed, pulsing with excitement, filled with hope.
He wasn’t the only one, obviously. At that point, it felt like everyone in New York (in the whole country, really) was swept up in this campaign — there was a fervor, a rising, a sense of urgency. We all felt that something big was happening, that a change was just around the corner.
I’ve never been all that interested in politics. I vote, of course. I’m informed about the presidential candidates. (Admittedly, much more since meeting Matt.) But when Matt told me about volunteering for Senate campaigns in college and joining the Young Democrats, I couldn’t relate. None of my friends in college were political. Sure, Colleen (and a few other girls) dressed up as Monica Lewinsky for Halloween freshman year, wore blue dresses and carried plastic cigars around, but we never had serious conversations about impeachment, or anything else beyond Colleen’s acute and often repeated observation about the whole situation, where she’d shake her head and ask, “Wouldn’t you just die if your parents knew you gave the president a blow job?”
But in 2008, politics was all we talked about. At bars, we had heated discussions and spent hours imagining the horror if McCain won. My mild-mannered mother called Sarah Palin a dimwit, which was so out of character and shocking that she may as well have called her a cunt. Something had shifted in the country, and Matt was in the middle of it — not just an observer, but a part of this great big movement. At some point over the year, he began referring to the campaign as “We,” and it stung whenever he said it, like he was purposely trying to separate himself from me, pointing out that he was a part of something I wasn’t.
—
I got laid off four days before the election — it was Halloween and Matt was already in Chicago. The fund-raising was done in mid-October — there was a lag time between when the money was raised and when it was finally ready to be spent — so Matt didn’t have anything else to do in New York and he’d gone to Chicago to help out there. (Which was good, because he would’ve gone crazy at home.) When I finally reached him that day, to tell him I’d lost my job, he was at campaign headquarters and it was so loud that it sounded like he was at a sporting event. He said everything right and was sympathetic and calming. But still, what I really wanted was for him to be there with me.
“I’m supposed to go out with the girls tonight,” I told him. “We were planning to dress up as Starbucks workers. Colleen got the costumes and everything.”