Everything Is So Political by Sandra McIntyre

at six, so that’s what we’re assuming. But you know.”
    â€œAnd when they get here?”
    â€œWhat do we do?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œBOMMMMBS AWAAAAAAYYYYYYYY!” Ethan yells into the empty night to the laughter of his friends.
    The hours pass with steady conversation, cigarettes, and random outbursts of laughter and song.
    Now 3 AM. Now 4 AM. Now 5 AM.
    At 5:30 no one is there to start the generators to heat the makeshift shelters. No Strike Captain arrives at 5:45 to assure the pickets are properly posted. At 6 am, no one is there. The group waits quietly, each person where he has hidden his balloons. At 6:15, no one is there. At 6:30, the terminal is empty.
    â€œEthan?” someone calls, hoping for some guidance, some insight.
    â€œWell, I suppose one benefit of being a union member is you get weekends off. Ahem—BOMMMMMMBS AWAAAAAAAAYYYYY!” Ethan cries.
    In the absence of striking bus drivers, the group splits into chaos, hurling water balloons at each other, in every direction.
    With the water balloons running out, Ethan begins handing out stencils and cans of spray paint. They checker the empty parking lot with innumerable images of Theodore Kelley and Ben Gilson: playing basketball, sharing a giant donair, on a bicycle built for two, in a parody of Millet’s Angelus.
    Miles is unsure what it all means, but he is sure they are doing something . Ethan himself is spraying a giant pair of lips on the side entrance to the Dartmouth Sportsplex. Brick-by-brick, the dripping black lips take shape on the wall.
    All over the parking lot, everything is signed: stARTaKISS, stARTaKISS, stARTaKISS!
    March 7
    Miles is quite ill after a long weekend. He hardly slept, spent too much time in wet socks, and drank too much. The possibility of a Dalhousie Faculty strike seems to have come and gone. Obsessed with the transit strike, he has fallen behind academically. In bed with the delirium of a low-grade fever, he embraces certain fantasies sexual and political. He keeps a pen and notebook in his bed to write poems like this one:
    Still breathing.
    Giggle goggle google stop tickling me.
    Ize getz over my sickiez someday.
    Don’t kick my fucking cat.
    Hey fuck off do you know how sick I am?
    Whatever. Go back to bed.
    Don’t count on the strike btw-
    Better be a strike. Paper due. Know nothing about Uganda.
    Like the idea of a Rain Chief. Epo iso.
    Daniel Denver, epo iso?
    Daniel Denver, iso Thug.
    Daniel Denver, too fat fer donuts.
    Daniel/Theodore/Ben
    play their fiddles
    all the way to citadel hill.
    March 11
    Sunday afternoon Miles feels normal again. At about 3 pm an alert lights up his phone, a message from the University:
    The Government of Nova Scotia has granted permanent solvency relief to University Pension Plans. This will result in welcome relief from onerous solvency payments, and allowed both negotiating teams to arrive at a new collective agreement. Classes will continue as scheduled on Monday.
    Great , Miles thinks. Daniel Denver, or whoever it is, can sprinkle pixie dust on the pension issue so that the elite university doesn’t lose any students to Toronto, or wherever, but I still have no way of getting anywhere.
    At 11pm, after doing hours of shoddy research for a paper that will in fact be due in class tomorrow , Miles wanders the Internet. He stumbles from one goofy photo to another. He watches grainy videos of Johnny Cash from the seventies. Then he types in “hal” and waits for the history to reveal his most visited website of the last few weeks: halifaxonstrike.com . A plain white background with over a half dozen boxes containing news articles relating to whatever union is considering a work-stoppage. Under the banner that tauntingly reads Only 246 days until the next municipal election. Be careful how you vote… one box says “METRO TRANSIT- TENTATIVE AGREEMENT ANNOUNCED!”
    He is sceptical. He imagines an evil marionette-master