It’s been hard to concentrate. All week. Monday I couldn’t write, so I assuaged some guilt and manned the phones for Obama for six hours. Tuesday I couldn’t write, think or do anything — except vote, then plan for the big evening.

Our dear friends Nick and Tory were coming for dinner plus the big show afterward. Carol was cooking, so I prepared too in my own way. I wrote up a list of the five TV channels I’d be surfing. I went over my state-by-state predictions (Obama 354, McCain 184 — pretty good, Frank!). I set out three bottles of whiskey, just in case.

Now it’s Wednesday, the Big Day + 1, and again, I can’t concentrate. Phone calls. Emails. Visits. Exultations. Condolences with my Republican friends. (Sure I have Republican friends. Every Democrat needs them, or how else will we ever struggle out of the Bushes? My advice to Democrats: Go befriend a Republican or two.)

The emails today have been especially interesting. Because I’m too distracted to compose much of an email myself, I’m sharing two others I received. The first is from my cousin Maura Judkis, a Web producer at U.S. News & World Report and recent George Washington University graduate. The second is from … one of those Republican friends of mine.

In case you didn’t make it out onto the street last night, in case you aren’t 22 any more, in case you don’t have the whole future shimmering before you, well … here’s Maura, to tell you what you missed:

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This is what it’s like to be in D.C. on election night. As I write this, at 4:24 a.m., having just returned home, I can still hear a few car horns blaring. At our neighborhood bar for the first wave of results, and as the fries and pitchers of beer come to our table, we toast nervously to early returns from D.C., Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Illinois. But with each state CNN calls, we grow bolder. “I’m going to cry when he gives his winning speech.” “If he gives his winning speech.” We knock on wood. We clink our glasses. We turn to the TV at the sound of CNN’s dramatic prediction percussion, and yell at it when they show a hologram of will.i.am instead. “CNN is such a tease.”

We care about nothing more than Ohio and Virginia. And they come, with sizeable margins - first one, then the other. At exactly 11 p.m., it’s all over. And that’s when everyone takes to the streets. Bodies stream towards U Street, the most historic black neighborhood in D.C. Someone sets off fireworks about 40 feet away. At the intersection of 14th and U, people young and old dance around a drum circle. Kids climb to the top of traffic lights, trees, anything with a view. Cars, honking at first in frustration, resign to the fact that they aren’t going anywhere, and honk to the beat of “O-BA-MA.” Someone produces a giant American flag out of nowhere, and runs through the crowd with a conga line forming behind. Another guy wears a banana costume. Our president-elect - though at this point, I have not yet thought of him as this - starts his speech, and we can’t get to a TV, because all of the bars are full. Cars park in the middle of the street, open their windows, and turn the radio broadcast of the speech up to full volume for everyone to hear. “Yes we did.” It starts to pour.

We’d left our umbrellas behind in the excitement. Makeup smudges around my eyes, and water drips down my back. A friend and I head down the street to the first bar that has any space to breathe – 3 blocks later, on a street full of bars, we arrive. A drink to dry off. The place start to close. We walk down 16th street to the sound of honking horns. Everyone high-fives everyone. I drop my friend off – she’s tired, and it’s 2:30 a.m., so on my own, I follow the sound of screaming. It leads me back to 16th street, and I enter a parade of hundreds walking down the middle of the street. We join thousands at the White House, screaming and dancing and singing in Lafayette Park. “Na-na-na-na hey-hey-hey, goodbye!” “Pack it up!” “We are the champions!” If I can hear it from my apartment six blocks away, Bush can certainly hear it from within. Did it disrupt his sleep, his peace of mind?

I watch the Secret Service snipers patrol the roof. A stranger inexplicably asks for a picture with me. A hipster on a vintage bike holds up his handmade victory sign, but the marker has started to run in the rain. Colleagues join me, and the mass starts to move. Up 15th, across K, down 13th to Pennsylvania Avenue, and then – yes, we’re walking to the Capitol, drums beating and photographers in everyone’s faces, and drivers still laying on their horns. We meet a British guy who is in D.C. on holiday to the America for the first time. “So we’re going to the White House, then?” “No, this is the Capitol.” “There’s not a bloody bar open this late?” The rain has stopped, and we’ve walked two miles. They climb a statue – the umpteenth thing to have been climbed tonight, and they are starting to run out of chants. The lessening crowd looks behind at the Capitol dome, ahead towards the Washington Monument, and down from the statue, and the phrase on the tip of everyone’s tongue, but that no one has dared to say, is “this is all, at last, ours.”

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And now this, from my Republican friend. She is not merely Republican; she is PASSIONATE — a true member of the “base”. She not only opposed a Democratic victory, the prospect actually seemed to frighten her. Yet read this lovely, gracious message, which I reprint in its entirety:

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To all of you!

I am thinking of you. What a night! There is hope that we will be led by a charismatic, inspirational Commander in Chief. It is wonderful to see so many around the world thrilled at the results, tearful and so very joyful. Joy to the entire world! — Laurie

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If, as I believe, today is the first day of something really really new, then let’s all us … Democrats and Republicans, blacks and whites, young and old, gay and straight, Christians and Jews and Muslims and Mormons and Rastafarians and hard-shell Baptists too … paste on a big American smile (whether we mean it or not), and see can we take this thing seriously for once in our lives.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com