4: Georgia

I work for the United States Census Bureau. Not collecting surveys, though – that part hasn’t even started yet – I just drive this crazy van around.

B calls it the “Censusmobile.” He’s the other driver – one stupid motherfucker. It’s just the two of us, so we trade off: one person driving, the other talking to HQ or updating the blog. They call us “regional road tour staff members.” B calls us the “C-Mob.”

“Yo nigger,” he said the first morning we met in the parking lot outside the regional office, “what up?”

“What the fuck did you just call me?” I said.


Today we’re in Atlanta, our “home base.” We should’ve been here last week for the MLK parade, but National was, so we got sent to Florida.

“Can you believe that shit?” B said when the schedule was announced. “They are fucking committed to keeping the Black Man down.”

“They” can mean a lot of things, but I’m the black “man” B is talking about.

It could be worse. Bitch. Dyke. I get those a lot. At least B hasn’t tried to rape me yet.


“Fucking bitch!” B yells as some car cuts us off. He guns the engine, tries to ride its tail. I close my eyes and count 1, 2, 3.  “Let me drive,” I say.

B hadn’t wanted me behind the wheel at first, but he got used to it real quick. “You’re not my boss,” I told him, “and I’m not your little Miss Daisy.”

This time he turns the radio on; punches preset one. It’s some sports game – 2nd or 3rd quarter, 56 to 78. The speakers blare the station break. “Radio 790,” it goes, “The Sports Zone.” I can still hear it even when I put my headphones on.

It could be worse. At least it isn’t Sweet Home Alabama or Georgia on my Mind.


B’s fresh out of the Army, and “they” must have thought it was a great idea to have a veteran on the “team.” But it turns out cruising to Birmingham is a little different from driving through Baghdad.

He freaked the fuck out the first morning, swerving to avoid some harmless piece of trash. Now he mostly tries to hide how scared he is by shouting his head off.

He’s only told me one story from Iraq. Someone had ordered a crate of soccer balls to give to the local kids, but the thing they needed to inflate them never showed.

“They” said to give them out anyway, so B dumped them during the next patrol, watched the kids sort of kicking the prune-shaped things in the dirt as his truck rolled away. When B drove back through that evening, the kids threw rocks.


B and I fooled around a little the first weekend. Hooked-up, or whatever. We were drunk and staying at a shitty motel in Waycross, Georgia – where 1, 23, 4, 520, 38, 82, and 84 all come together. The sort of place with skanky girls hanging out in the lobby; with dingy rooms and plastic wrapped around the beds.

B hasn’t really talked much in the van since then; just puts the radio on. “Cincinnati 14, New York 24,” it goes. “Dallas 34, Philadelphia 14.” Just a lot of numbers I don’t give a damn about.

It could be worse. At least we didn’t really fuck, so it didn’t count, he said.


The more I think about it, politics is only a team sport in a facile sense. Ultimately it’s one state against all the others, and keep score is what the USCB does.

Sometimes for fun the other “teams” make up new slogans and send them out in email blasts. “The Census: Where everybody counts!” and “We all add up to something!” They eat that shit up. Not us.
   
“Can you believe this shit?” B said on the second day, when we were setting up outside a shopping mall around three o’clock. “It’s like they decided to advertise for fucking taxes.”



Matt and Jennifer are the worst – the National team driving “Mail it Back,” a fancy trailer towed by a pick-up truck. All-American, blond and blue – B calls them douchebots 1 and 2.

“Great to meet you!” Jen said at the launch. Matt smiled and shook my hand, then tried to do some kind of man hug to B. That ended poorly.

Matt was on the floor, holding his nose. One drop of blood fell, then two, then it all just started to come out in a rush. Rob, the director, looked over from his photo-shoot, posed next this racecar, number 16, sponsored by 3M and Census 2010.

I grabbed B’s arm. “Come on B, Let’s get out of here.”

“Fucking cunts,” B said, “both of ‘em,”


B says firing him would be a PR disaster, and maybe he’s right for once. We’re supposed to be observers and nothing else – to be “refs,” to continue the metaphor. The last thing “they” want is to call attention to the census-takers, to give away the game qua game, as such.

Our van is called “Representation.” Anyone can look it up online, but our names aren’t listed. Anyone can look through the pictures in the “Portrait of America,” but they won’t see us.

It’s snowing again. I got used to it at college – in Connecticut, before I left – but it still looks wrong down here. AJ parks us outside of Fi0360 just as school is letting out. A pack of kidergartners toddles by, a noisy blur of jackets, hats, and mittens. 1 2 3 4 5.