Ben seized on it. “Well, let me tell you about an extraordinary bill we want your state senator—Senator Janus—to support.” He handed out pamphlets to the group as well as some nearby people who’d stopped to listen, caught up in the spectacle. Ben was significantly taller than the average Comic-Con attendee, and bright blue from head to foot. With his deep, booming voice, he was certainly attracting attention.
“It’s a bill that would replace all of Texas’s public vehicles—city buses, cop cars, fire trucks—with electric versions. Do you know how much good that would do for the planet? It would make Texas a world leader in environmental policy, which I’m sure is a sentence you never thought you’d hear.
“And I know you can see that hefty price tag—” all of the people listening to Ben widened their eyes at the four-billion-dollar figure in the pamphlet “—but look at the next number. After some up-front costs to build infrastructure, the savings on gas and antipollution measures alone would more than make up for it. And who can put a price tag on the health of the planet?”
I was impressed. Ben actually sounded like he cared about the bill, and hadn’t just glommed on to it as the ideal way to spite me.
“It’s about time we did something like this,” said a young man in the back, who was dressed as some sort of menacing cartoon octopus I didn’t recognize. “But how do we get Janus to support it?”
“I’m glad you asked.” Ben spun to me, his whole face lit with excitement that this was going well.
I stepped to his side, a cool, suave political operative in my sleek black suit. “We’d love your signatures on this petition urging Senator Janus to help pass the bill.” I passed the clipboard and pen to the man who’d asked. “And on the back of your pamphlet, you’ll find Senator Janus’s social handles as well as his phone and email. Flooding his office with support is the single most important thing you can do.”
My heart swelled as heads nodded and people passed the clipboard from hand to hand. Chewbacca passed to a Ninja Turtle, who passed to Spider-Man.
This was really happening. My bill—mybaby—was coming to life.
Ben and I grinned at each other. And then, emboldened by his success, Ben called out, “With our powers combined, wecansave the planet!”
There was a fragile line you had to walk when courting certain young men, which I’d learned during my phase dating drug dealers who were really into anime, and then again with jam-band fanatics. It was a careful balance between trying just hard enough and maintaining indifferent authenticity.
The crowd around us exchanged dubious looks, the petition-passing slowing to a halt.
Spider-Man squinted at the guy beside him. “That’s, like, a misquote from the show, right?”
I caught the octopus cartoon guy’s eyes and shook my head at Ben. “Someone loves the environment a littletoo much. Nerd, am I right?”
The guy nodded gravely, a tentacle flopping over his forehead.
Ben managed to blush red under the blue.
Sacrifice made and balance restored, the petition started moving again.
“There has to be thousands of signatures here,” Ben said in amazement, riffling through the pages.
I clicked my phone dark and slid it into my bag under the table at the Green Machine booth. “Wendy says there’s already a big uptick in traffic to the website, and Twitter posts tagging Janus. By all metrics, day one is a success.”
All week Ben and I had plotted campaign strategy from our separate offices, arguing via increasingly unprofessional emails, then texts, then phone calls over how much in-person outreach we needed versus digital ad buys versus broadcast. He’d been in the camp of maximum face time, and I’d argued it was all about a good creative ad. Each of us had been so stubborn that we’d ended up with both—no compromise.
But now that we’d spent the day here, plugging the bill to actual people and hearing their responses, I had to admit there was a certain magic to in-person campaigning. It seemed to really drive engagement and you got a little bit of opinion research as an added bonus. I’d never admit it to him, but I would remember this for my next Ben-less campaign.
It wasn’t bad to work with Ben in person, either, truth be told. But that was surely chalked up to the fun of torturing him while being able to see his face.
“A solid 80 percent of those signatures are from women with Captain Planet fetishes,” I said. “I’m pretty sure we talked to every woman at this convention.”
We’d wandered for a few hours, drawing a crowd of followers who wanted Ben to say lines from the TV show and pose for pictures—which we’d obviously and shamelessly traded for petition signatures. The ratio of men to women in our following had quickly skewed toward women. Even after we’d retired to our booth, Ben proved just as much of a draw sitting in a fold-up chair, groaning about his back, as when he’d been posing.
I patted his head. His hair was stiff with temporary dye. “I credit your blue washboard abs.”
He scratched at a flake of paint on his face. “I’ve never been this itchy in my life. I think my balls are on fire.”
“Ew, did you paint yourballs?”
The lights flashed in the convention center, signaling it was time to wrap up and head out.
Ben raised a triumphant fist. “I made it.” He stood and started tearing the skirt off the table. “So...”
“So, what?”
