“Incidentally, what exactly does the press mean when it refers to ‘the white vote’?”
 — No, seriously, Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal wants to know.

We keep forgetting to say congratulations to the 1,139,562 right-wing weirdos and/or dupes and/or Reason mag enthusiasts who voted for Gary Johnson! The pro-privatization, anti-union, anti-”Obamacare,” only technically pro-abortion, Roger Stone-supported and Koch Brothers-associated gun nut and totally obvious spoiler candidate tried selling sex and sexy Libertarianism, to the tune of a not terrible turnout. Unfortunately, any look at his associates makes Reason’s endorsement of “the best-qualified presidential candidate in the race” seem pitiful, but don’t worry: we’ll be doing this again in 2016, as the party tries desperately to garner 5% of the vote. “Gary Johnson 2016” already has 82 likes on Facebook, so you know it’s on.

Drunk Nate Silver strolling around a casino, whispering “you’re on a roll” in strangers’ ears

— John Herrman (@jwherrman) November 8, 2012

This one could get fun.

Here’s something for Nate Silver to work on, now that the election is over and he won the New York Times World Cup of Poker: What should we make of the fact (!) that 68% of Republicans believe that actual demons routinely “possess” humans here on Earth? How is that going to trend or lean or whatever, during the next election cycle, or after a bold demon marketing attack on America?

Public Policy Polling did a “lighthearted” Halloween survey last week (PDF), and the results should not make you too relaxed about the next four years, or the Thousand Year Reign of Satan, or anything really. When more than two-thirds of the GOP electorate admit to believing in demonic possession as a real thing, it’s probably time to either a) Use this to the nation’s advantage, or b) Just accept that Obama is going to talk about God every day, forever, to prevent 40 million people from taking up arms against the devil ghosts.

In other polling news, Fordham University’s Center for Electoral Politics and Democracy did a poll of the polls, and these are the most accurate pollsters for the 2012 election, in order of … most accurate. Not terribly surprising, unless you’re one of those people who spent the past week complaining about, uh, Nate Silver:

1. Daily Kos/SEIU/PPP*

3. YouGov*

4. Ipsos/Reuters*

5. Purple Strategies

6. NBC/WSJ

6. CBS/NYT

6. YouGov/Economist

9. UPI/CVOTER

10. IBD/TIPP

11. Angus-Reid*

12. ABC/WP*

13. Pew Research*

13. Hartford Courant/UConn*

15. CNN/ORC

15. Monmouth/SurveyUSA

15. Politico/GWU/Battleground

15. FOX News

15. Washington Times/JZ Analytics

15. Newsmax/JZ Analytics

15. American Research Group

15. Gravis Marketing

23. Democracy Corps (D)*

24. Rasmussen

24. Gallup

26. NPR

27. National Journal*

28. AP/GfK

It is kind of surprising that Rasmussen isn’t dead last, although 24 of 28 is hardly a confidence booster …. especially with NPR, National Journal and AP taking the bottom three spots. In 2016, polls will be totally illegal! Obama promised that on Election Night, during his rousing speech against the demons.

“A tightening of the waistband hardly counts as a crisis in a region where so many have endured actual devastation…. Still, the extra pounds provided evidence of a disaster-psychology mind-set that took hold during Sandy: in times of crisis, New Yorkers discovered, food fills an emotional need, not just a physical one.”
 — Next time, there will be people eating people. Seems reasonable.

Wow! Excellent! So Kendrick Lamar, a young rapper from Compton who Dr. Dre signed to Aftermath/Interscope Records last year, recently released an album called good kid, m.A.A.d. city that has had much of the hip-hop community arguing about whether it is the best rap album of the year or the best rap album of all-time. I mean, it is really good. I’ve been listening to it a lot and it puts me in the mind of A Tribe Called Quest’s first album and OutKast’s second album. But apparently it could have been even better. Kendrick was reported to have recorded music with Lady Gaga earlier this year, but due to an unfortunate, all-too-standard industry snafu, none of the material was included on the final version of the album. Well, last night, Lady Gaga released a video she made of the version of the second song on Kendrick’s album, “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe,” upon which she does appear. And it is great. Hooray for Lady Gaga! Hooray for Kendrick Lamar!

Appearing here Wednesdays, Turning The Screw provides existential crisis counseling for the faint of heart. “Worthless knick-knacks for emotional kleptomaniacs!”

Hi Polly.

I have bored all my friends and therapist with this issue, so I guess it’s your turn now. I am a happily (you know, mainly) married female in my late 30s — with two small kids. Life is pretty ducky — I love and like my husband, like my job, and find my kids totally adorable, amazing, and exhausting/exasperating in equal parts. I have the same problems as everyone else in my demo: aging parents; financial woes (live in a major city where the livin’ ain’t cheap), although not a lack of security by any means; never enough downtime; and… I don’t know, a bathroom that won’t clean itself? Nothing too dramatic. Recently, though, I found out that my ex-boyfriend died suddenly and unexpectedly. We had not been in touch in about eight years, since we broke up, right before I met my husband. The relationship was… well, it was one of those drama-filled doozies that involve HOURS of phone calls with girlfriends describing the pain and heartbreak and arguments and utter terribleness of it all. I am happy and relieved and grateful not to be with him (or any of my other former maniacs) — and to be in a stable relationship with a man who really knows and loves me — in a way that my ex(es) never did or probably could. However! There is something emotionally compelling (and yes, I admit, also totally crippling) about dating a maniac. Mainly, you are pretty miserable but when you are happy… God, you are really high. So, I’m having this bit of existential angst — that is somewhat about the fact that I never had any closure (and I know, closure is kind of a made-up thing) with my ex but also about the fact that I will never again have those dramatic, romantic highs — or do any of the crazy, fun, ultimately destructive crap I did in my youth. Do I just need to be slapped and reminded that I am extremely lucky to have the life I have? Go ahead, slap me.

Can’t Go Back

Dear CGB,

You know how incredible water tastes when you’re dehydrated? That’s a little bit like the youthful high you’re talking about. Sure, you remember this incredible rush of good feeling, but you don’t remember how dependent that feeling was on dying of thirst the rest of the time. Dramatic, romantic highs tend to come when a) you’re falling in love but you’re not sure if the other person loves you as much as you love him/her yet, or b) you’re in a relationship with someone who’s ambivalent or merely biding his/her time until something better comes along, or c) you’re with a maniac. Unfortunately, b) and c) tend to mimic a in a way that can get confusing.

So you focus on that one magical night, in the middle of a sea of terrible nights, where he held your hand and treated you like a person and you drank too much and that awesome song was playing and you imagined, in that moment, that you two were destined to be together forever, and your whole life might be this good. Lucky for you, your whole life turned out even better than that, it just doesn’t feel like it because you’ve become acclimated to love the way you used to be acclimated to suffering. Those highs you miss are the sorts of highs that occur in a life mostly made up of lows.

That said, I’m not going to berate you for being an ingrate. We all hear about how spoiled we are all the fucking time, without any consideration for the fact that our economy (and our culture) are constructed around instilling discontent. We are encouraged from a young age to update and upgrade every aspect of our lives constantly. We navigate a world in which satisfaction with what you already have is encountered as something akin to madness. Not being able to appreciate what you have isn’t some rare affliction, it’s our shared cultural sickness.

You shouldn’t feel ashamed or guilty over any of this. Your ex died, and now that chapter of your life feels lost to you. What you miss isn’t the highs, exactly, it’s the feeling of possibility you once had. Now you know how your story ends up, and maybe it feels like you’re going to spend the rest of your life doing exactly what you’re doing now.

Without knowing much about how you spend your time, the best I can do is tell you to take the nostalgic drama you’ve generated around this guy’s death and refocus it somewhere else. As real as this phase may feel to you, you’re sort of kicking up dust into a storm when you could just as easily use your energy to improve your life in some way. Something inside you isn’t being served very well by your current, comfortable habits. Describing your life as “pretty ducky” hints at a kind of flaccid, toothless, Ned Flanders way of thinking about yourself. Maybe even your imagination is being crippled by these chumpy, harried-parent ways of thinking. Maybe you’ve fallen into the habit of only talking to your husband about concrete tasks, instead of describing some of the free-floating longing that haunts you.

One of the really stupid things about getting older and having a family is that you get pegged as this kind of non-person that’s incapable of the wildness or the vulnerability that’s so celebrated in young maniacs. It’s dehumanizing, really, to be typecast as a supporting character, an extra, when in fact your body is still (relatively) young and your soul is still hungry and your mind is still crowded with lush, wicked insanity. It’s a pity to fall into a life that doesn’t do justice to the incredible richness and variability and beauty of your interior world. Something about this guy’s death taps into that world, which is fine and understandable. Now it’s time to put that event (and the past that goes with it) behind you, and find other ways to access and express the breadth and depth of your psyche. As your very small kids get slightly bigger, this will get much easier, but in the meantime, consider making some changes. Read better books, go out without your kids more, reconnect with old friends, go see a movie alone, and generally give yourself more permission to dress and act the way you want, rather than always acting loyal and grateful and circumspect the way mothers of small children ought to (because if they don’t, who the fuck else will?).

Just because you’re no longer a self-destructive maniac doesn’t mean you don’t have any needs at all anymore. Almost every single mother I know could stand to hear this once a day, so I’ll tell you the same thing: The current cultural standard for mothers is absurdly undermining, diminishing and demeaning. Bring your needs into the mix more often. Everyone around you — your kids, your husband, your aging parents, your friends — will benefit from your insistence on serving yourself and honoring the richness of who you are a little more. You don’t have to choose to be either a maniac or a dull parent. There are a million interesting colors in between.

Polly

Dear Polly,

I blame all this on my current (soon to be ex) girlfriend. I volunteer at a local food pantry. One day my girlfriend came to pick me up. On the way home she happened to ask me about a coworker who came looking for me while she was there. My antenna immediately went up, because one thing I know for certain, when my girlfriend talks in that way, she knows the other woman is interested in me. She would make the perfect wingman, you know, if we weren’t already involved.

My normal rule is never mess around with people you’re working with. And in my general cluelessness, I had no idea this woman had me on her radar. Unfortunately for my far too easily influenced mind, I cannot stop thinking about this woman now. All she was before was someone I worked with, now she’s become a major obsession, to the point of a little bit of cyber-stalking. As I’ve gotten to know her more, I’m finding out she’s just about perfect fit for me in ways that my current (soon to be ex) girlfriend is definitely not. I further compounded all this stupidity by scheduling a lunch with this woman. It was supposed to be to celebrate her new promotion, and we were supposed to be chaperoned by another coworker. The other guy ‘forgot’ and I was stuck taking the woman to lunch by my lonesome. Well, three hours later we were still there talking. And everything I’d found out about her was just the tip of the iceberg. She really is my perfect partner. Many of the same interests. Same tastes in music. We could have spent another three hours talking about music alone.

My problem (other than being in a 15-year relationship) is, how much do I tell this woman (she knows I have a girlfriend) about my now enormous and growing feelings for her without coming off as a complete douche?

p.s. Nothing beyond a friendly hug between us, so far.

Perplexed

Dear Perplexed,

You will probably come off like a complete douche no matter what you do, since you are, in fact, a complete douche. I mean, come on. Your big fucking question is “How do I tell this new woman how I feel?” Talk about putting the cart before the horse. And what can we possibly make of your disingenuous kvetching over the fact that this new crush is all your (soon to be ex) girlfriend’s fault? Do you seriously think that she’s to blame (or to thank) for this whole stupid mess, a stupid mess that you’re obviously incredibly excited about? Have you been making her solely responsible for your emotional experiences for the past 15 years? Because if that’s the case, it really is time to break up. You’ll be doing her an enormous favor, trust me.

It’s pretty telling that you haven’t described your (soon to be ex) girlfriend at all, beyond the fact that she’s perceptive enough to know when a woman seems interested in you (or, alternately, paranoid enough to think that every attractive woman is into you). You suggest that she’s less of a fit for you than this other woman is. I guess I could surmise that she doesn’t like the same music that you like? And this other woman does, so she’s way better?

It all sounds a little bit shallow, frankly. And it sounds like you’re someone who fears change, hence the 15-year relationship (despite obvious ambivalence) AND the determination to make sure a new relationship is waiting for you before you end the current one. I know, I know. Shit happens. Let’s just take a leap of faith and imagine that your coworker is your true soulmate. Even so, it’s really bad form, leaping from one stone to the next, rather than wading into the deep end, after all these years, to see how well you can swim on your own.

If you find out the new woman doesn’t want you, will you stay with your current girlfriend? And if so: Why the fuck would you do that, when you’re obviously anxious to move on? You’re referring to your 15-year-relationship as a “problem,” and you’re already calling your girlfriend your ex! For fuck’s sake, end it already! Staying with someone primarily out of fear of being alone is a big mistake. It doesn’t save you from loneliness so much as make your life with someone else far lonelier than being alone ever could be.

Your (soon to be ex) girlfriend has had your back for a long time. You owe her a chance to talk this whole thing through without having another woman waiting in the wings.

So, first, break up. Then, see how being alone feels. Mourn the loss of your relationship. As you do this, you can get to know your coworker better, as a friend. Maybe she really is your dream girl. Or maybe she’s just someone with similar interests and musical tastes. Either way, once you know her a little better, this big moment of truth where you reveal your feelings isn’t going to feel quite so dangerous and intense and difficult to navigate. But for that to happen, you have to behave honorably first, and deal with this important, historically significant figure in your life in a way that demonstrates respect for the years you’ve spent together. It’s hard to make a happy beginning in the middle of a haphazard, insensitive ending.

And seriously? Grow up. Stop telling charming, self-deprecating stories about yourself that consistently let you off the hook for acting like an abject fuckwiener. You’re too old to blame other people for your circumstances anymore. Take responsibility for your situation and expect a little more from yourself. You’ll feel a lot better about yourself once you do. Then maybe you won’t feel quite so afraid of being alone anymore. Because it’s much more satisfying to spend time alone with an honorable, thoughtful person than it is with a complete douche.

Polly

Do you have a bad head, or just bad habits? Write to Polly and find out!

Previously: Ask Polly: I Can’t Stop Procrastinating!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl’s existential advice columnist. She’s also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Photo by Mike Schmid.

★★ Low but powerful sun. The first light bounced into the living room of the otherwise dark apartment in such concentrated form that it seemed at first, through the doorway, as if a floor lamp had been accidentally left on overnight. A third-quarter moon stood high overhead in a clear morning sky. On the way up the fire escape, in the afternoon, hard, slanting golden light came through the wires of the fence like a strobe. From somewhere among the roofs nearby, a column of white steam went up, vertically at first, then drifting sharply south.

While everything stopped here in America to watch the alleged nail-biter, or what the TV told us would be a nail-biter, how did the rest of the world react?

• “Today’s table topics: Egypt’s constitution-to-be, a proposed restaurant and shop curfew, the need for interior ministry reform. The U.S. presidential election? Not on the menu. ‘We’ve got more than enough to worry about with Morsi,’ the 42-year-old Somaya says, roughly chopping a bundle of molokheya, bitter greens common in the Egyptian kitchen. ‘I didn’t even know about the U.S. election, and I don’t care. Whoever wins won’t make a difference to us.’”

• “I confess to forgetting repeatedly about the US elections today. I was reporting on a mass hunger strike by some 700 prisoners demanding Kurdish education and court rights and an end to the isolation of PKK rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, serving a life sentence on an island jail. It is Day 55. They are surviving on sugar water and liquid vitamins.”

• “Islamabad woke to news of an Obama victory with an unimpressed yawn…. ‘The main thing people care about is the drone strikes,’ said a TV cameraman, setting up his gear outside the residence of the US embassy’s chargé d’affaires. ‘We all know that will not change whoever is in power.’”

Plus dispatches from South Africa, Hong Kong, Dubai, Jakarta and more.

by Janet Potter

5:45 The 146 bus dropped me off in front of Soldier Field and I started walking across empty parking lots, heading toward McCormick Place. It was raining and dark and the lights of election headquarters served as my guide. I thought about dwelling in that metaphor for a while, but I was in too much of a hurry to get inside.

The rally was being held in Hall D, a cement space the size of an airplane hangar. The guests hadn’t been let in yet, so I had a chance to see the event stage across the empty hall. The press area was opposite the stage. National broadcasters had the best view, positioned on reserved riser space directly facing the stage. Beside that was another first-come first-serve riser whose occupants included an incredible-looking Italian broadcaster. In fact, with TV anchors everywhere, almost everyone was good-looking. Everywhere I went I had an ongoing, vague feeling of recognizing almost 80% of the people I saw, but that was probably only because they were uniformly good-looking in a way that made them seem instantly familiar.

I wandered around trying to find the optimal space for someone without riser space. It turned out this didn’t exist, and the press weren’t allowed on the convention floor at all. We were essentially stuck behind the risers. I commiserated with some local reporters, and we decided to sneak out into the crowd once the place filled up.

6:15 I spot some excitement. A crowd of news cameras surrounded a professorial man I didn’t recognize. I edged as close as I could and overheard him say the words “voter suppression” and smile knowingly before he was whisked away by an aide.

All the people that did not reserve riser space were walking around grumbling about our lack of ability to see anything or anybody. A man watching CNN on his iPod pointed out to a colleague that he didn’t “come to Chicago to watch fucking TV.” A crowd gathered at one of the exits to the press area and pelted a member of the event staff with questions about why we weren’t being allowed to see anything. He was sympathetic but demanded that everyone “respect the protocols in place.” To back it up, he threw out a few mentions of “the Secret Service.” This had a subduing effect.

6:40 The professorial man made another stop for questions from the press. It was Dick Durbin! I was duly embarrassed to have not recognized a man I’ve voted for. My niche in the crowd around him, as the least intimidating person not carrying heavy equipment, was to identify the Senator for the foreign journalists. “Durbin,” I said, “DURBIN. DUR.BIN.”

I convinced a volunteer to let me stand in front of the risers for a minute “just to look around.” An English reporter with a spiky shock of white hair and a great accent was trying to negotiate with another volunteer.

“Can I stand here during the event?”
“No, this is reserved for people with riser space to walk through.”
“But I’m a writer, I just want to stand here with my notebook out of the way.”
“If you don’t have riser space you have to stay behind.”
“I can’t see anything back there.”
“You can feel the energy.”
“I don’t want to feel the energy, I want to see his face when he wins.”
“You will be able to feel the energy.”

7:00 Hoping that the press isolation policy would be overturned in time, I headed downstairs to the food court. I grabbed a slice of pizza and watched Wolf Blitzer on the monitors. I was standing next to the entrance for a walled-off area reserved for “WH Travelling Press.”

The first crop of polls officially closed and Wolf called Connecticut, Delaware, D.C., Illinois (big cheer), Maryland, Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island. It was fun down here; there was a big crowd around the monitors and everyone was excited and busy. “Maybe I should just stay down here and watch TV,” I grumped to myself, but returned upstairs anyway.

In the interim, a small pen beside the general riser had been opened up for miscellaneous press to stand in. I spotted the pals I’d made earlier and join them there. It’s full of local reporters and foreign camera crews. It turned out that I was going to be standing in this pen for the next six hours. As a silver lining, the hot Italian broadcaster was stationed on the riser four feet away.

The people with “Special Guest” distinction file past us onto the main floor. On the other side of their path was another pen for what I guess were Less Special Guests. The reporters yelled questions across at them and stopped as many of the Special Guests as possible. A lot of the questions revolved around election night 2008 at Grant Park. Were you there? How is this different? Several guests found themselves explaining to the press the difference between being inside and being outside. One seemingly agenda-driven French reporter beside me kept asking people, “This is less magic, no? Less passion?”

Over the loudspeakers country music played, inexplicably.

7:30 The jumbotrons in the hall played CNN on mute, with the audio cutting in any time there was a new projection. Every once in a while the crowd would start to cheer and we would all strain forward to see what state had just been called. Two-thirds of the times they were cheering because CNN has cut to a shot of the hall. Over the next few hours, I learned to differentiate between a projection cheer and a there’s-the-camera cheer.

There was another riser (inevitably) directly between our pen and the podium. Friends texted to see if I was having fun; I texted back that I was not going to be able to see the stage.

8:00 The wi-fi wasn’t working, and nobody was getting reception. A few of the guys around me were supposed to be live-tweeting or live-blogging and they’re pretty stressed. We oscillated from staring ineffectually at our phones and talking to the passing guests. Older black ladies in sequined Obama shirts were the most likely to get stopped for pictures and questions. A woman, spotting me taking her picture, yelled, “Lady! Lady! I’ve got Michelle on my dress!” as she fanned out her skirt for me to see. Standing about five feet away from me behind another barrier, she was one of my favorites in the crowd, and we made a lot of meaningful eye contact throughout the night as big results came in.

People gamely cheered for the projections like you do for first quarter two-pointers. Texas going red got an enormous, sustained boo.

CNN cut in to announce the results for Michigan, New York, and New Jersey. For the first time, the crowd went really, truly wild. And it finally struck me that this night was going to be awesome. My heart got fluttery and I had an impulse to call my brother.

CNN faded out and they started playing the first installment of “Road to November,” essentially an Obama highlight reel. This first part has a lot of the greats — Obama killing the fly, playing basketball, singing “Let’s Stay Together,” talking about his daughters,” announcing the death of bin Laden. There was even a clip of Hillary Clinton at the ’08 convention calling for Obama’s nomination. I wrote down, “went from boring to magical.”

8:20 The second installment of “Road to November” was Michelle-heavy. And in general, there was no shortage of Michelle footage all night. One of the screens cycled between photos of Barack, Joe Biden, and Michelle in almost equal turns. Notably absent from “Road to November”: Mitt Romney.

A rumor went around that Charlie Crist was going to come by. He never materialized, but someone in the pen claimed to have seen him in the bathroom.

8:30 Wisconsin gets the second biggest cheer of the night so far. A girl in front of me had given up on the pen and left. I maneuvered my way into the vacant space, making an enemy of a cameraman. From my new spot I found I had a keyhole view, through two women seated on a riser in front of us, of the podium. I could see the podium!

8:45–9:30 A man walked by shouting “Organized labor for Obama! Carpenters! Carpenters!” There was a shot in the latest section of the highlight reel of Obama looking tired backstage at a rally, and then jogging gamely onto the stage when he was announced. For some reason it made me unspeakably sad to watch. As more special guests filed by, I wondered if Michelle’s eyebrow stylist was here. I read an article about her in 2008. Half the people filing past looked like really stoked volunteers, one-quarter looked like politically engaged seniors, one quarter looked smug. A woman from the West Side of Chicago wearing a bedazzled Obama sweatshirt and hat covered with campaign buttons declined to disclose her age to the press pen. She admitted that she’s “65+” then “over 70.” Stopping to have her picture taken, a girl in red skinny jeans, a blazer, and a bowtie crossed her legs and leaned slightly back to be photographed the way starlets do. I’d never seen anyone do that before in real life. Standing next to me, on the other side of the barrier, were two youngish women assigned to check every guest’s credentials. I’d now heard them say “Special Guests?” at least 8,000 times. They were ruthless and amazing. When the wi-fi cut in for a minute and I discovered that Todd Akin had lost. I felt like everyone should know, so I shouted the news to a few people around me and got some thumbs ups. The hot Italian newscaster was doing vocal exercises. A man wanted to leave the Special Guest area; he told security he’s “trying to find a place that’s quiet!” Not a rally, dude. We were all waiting for Ohio, Florida, or Virginia to project. I wondered if the English reporter found a place to feel the energy.

9:40 On the stage, someone — Bill Edwards — led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance. Bishop Vashti McKenzie did the Invocation. I spotted five people standing off to themselves holding hands.

10:00 The waiting crowd counted down along with Wolf Blitzer’s west coast poll closing clock. California, Hawaii, and Washington are called. “Let’s Stay Together” began to play.

10:10 Governor Pat Quinn walked by.

10:13 With Oregon projected, CNN called the election for Obama. The monitors stayed muted, but Obama’s face loomed large on all the screens while the crowd cheered. “Recognize, Romney, recognize!” a lady kept shouting nearby. The air was full of fist pumps. I was transfixed by a guy, probably in his early 20s, in a suit with boyish hair. He reminded me of Cary from “The Good Wife.” He ran around hugging everyone and doing jump/fist-pump combo. From his badge I could tell he was a campaign staffer or intern, and I wondered what his year had been like. His enthusiasm felt different than everyone else’s, his happiness palpably more personal. The volunteers handed out American flags for people to wave for the cameras. A few people managed to jump the barrier between the non-special and Special Guests sections. A “four more years” chant went up, lasting for a minute or so. The pen was quiet and busy. We all cheered when the announcement was made but then set to scribbling and filming and recording. It felt like being inside a phone booth at a party.

10:30 — Midnight The atmosphere settled back down to general merriment. I witnessed many, many bro hugs between volunteers. My spot at the front of the pen grew more precarious as people crowded towards the front in anticipation of Obama’s appearance. At one point I shifted my weight and it angered press representatives from three nations. Vivica A. Fox walked by shouting “Boom!” The remaining state projections received varying notice.

More and more people wearing badges that say “Election HQ Staff” filed in from wherever they’d watched the results. They seemed like they hadn’t come down from tension mountain yet. One woman, when asked for her credentials, pointed at a gold lapel pin she was wearing and kept walking. When she passed again later I saw that it was a golden White House pin. One of Obama’s friends from Chicago’s Trinity United Methodist Church of Christ stopped by and told us the president was “honest and lovable.”

11:55 The appearance of Mitt Romney on the screen raised cheers, which then settled into boos. His line about the perils of partisan bickering got a big laugh. Having avoided television coverage of the campaign, this was the first extended speech I’d watched Romney give. I admitted to myself, now that it was safe to do so, that he looked presidential.

After the feed from Romney’s rally faded out, curtains parted behind the stage to reveal people seated on risers who were cheering and waving something white (flags? handkerchiefs?). They would later serve as a backdrop for Obama’s victory speech, but at that point they just stood there cheering and waving for the better part of 30 minutes like a really extended free-throw distraction. My neighbor in the pen and I looked at each other in bewilderment. The hot Italian broadcaster was going strong. “Let’s Stay Together” began to play for the fourth or fifth time. Somewhere during the course of the evening I started to hate that song.

12:30 The reporter to my left and I confessed to each other that we were really bored. We heard that no one was allowed to leave the building until after the speech. We wondered to each other what the Obama family might be doing. She guessed high fives. Vivica A. Fox walked by again and I lazily wrote “Vivica” on my notepad.

James Taylor’s “Your Smiling Face” started to play. When I heard the lines: “Whenever I see your smiling face, I have to smile myself” and saw an image of the president on one of the screens, I got a little teary.

12:40 “Ladies and gentleman, the President of the United States, his wife Michelle, and their family.”

The crowd went absolutely bonkers. Waving American flags flew out of people’s hands. My mind ping-ponged between wanting to write everything down, getting my recorder out of my pocket, and just wanting to watch. I wanted to see Obama with my own eyes. My keyhole view kept coming and going as the crowd undulated. “Am I blocking your view?” I asked the lady behind me as I contorted myself. “VIEW??” she said.

As the crowd settled down, I locked onto my view. For about two-thirds of his speech I was watching him, from maybe 100 yards away, through a tiny aperture in the crowd. I was trying to pay attention, but mostly I just looked at him: I got the president in my sight-line and I stared at him. I saw him lift his left hand, state the introductory clause of a sentence, and put it back down on the podium. I saw him lift his head and tilt it slightly to the side between sentences, or during applause. I started crying when he ran through the list that ended with “able or disabled, gay or straight.”

My friend Alex texted me, “Are you somewhere awesome?”

I texted back, “I’m looking at the president.”

Janet Potter is a staff writer for The Millions and blogs about presidential biographies at At Times Dull. Follow her @sojanetpotter.