Zipporah 🇺🇸🇬🇧🇮🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

In America they told me the football game starts at 1 PM. I arrived at 1 PM. I was five hours late. The parking lot was already a city. A man had built a living room beside his truck. Not metaphorically. He had a couch. A television. A chandelier powered by a generator the size of a small horse. He was grilling enough meat to feed a village, and when I walked past he said, "You hungry?" I said I had not been invited. He looked at me the way you look at someone who has apologized for breathing. "Brother," he said. "You're here. That's the invitation." He handed me a plate. It was not a small plate. The brisket hung over the edges like a man sleeping in a bed he has outgrown. I ate it standing beside a stranger's couch in a parking lot in October, and it was among the finest meals of my life. A woman across the row had a tent, a smoker, a speaker system, and a flag so large it could have sheltered a family of five beneath it. She had been here since 6 AM. The game had not started. The game, I began to realize, was not the point. I asked the man what time he would go inside the stadium. He said, "Depends." I asked on what. He said, "On whether the ribs are done." I want to be clear. He had a ticket. He had driven four hours. He had assembled a small civilization from the back of a pickup truck. And he was considering not going to the game. Because the ribs were not ready. In Japan we tailgate nothing. We do not build living rooms in parking lots. We do not grill for strangers. We sit quietly on trains and think about whether we remembered to bow at the right angle. I have since attended eleven tailgates. I have never once cared who won the game. Nobody has. The game is inside the stadium. America is in the parking lot.

I spent time inside a “trans help” group posing as a minor who needed to hide everything from my parents. The adults in the group did not pause. They did not redirect me to a doctor. They did not suggest telling a parent. They gave me sourcing instructions, supplier links, and workflows for obtaining DIY hormones discreetly. Adults, coaching a child on how to medically transition behind their parents’ backs. I will be exposing this network in the coming days.

THIS

Tell me I’m wrong 🧐

Tell it to me straight… How many of you think the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump?

@mattvanswol Watched it happen in real time

📣👇👇

Never forget this epic thread.

The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” -Psalm 14:1

The flyovers will continue until morale improves.

"A Government big enough to give you everything you want, is also big enough to take everything you have" Thomas Jefferson

If you don't think we have a math crisis in America, just watch a 17 year old working as a cashier trying to make change when the register isn't working.

Celebrating a woman for choosing abortion because it was "best for her" is like celebrating a father walking out on his kids because it was "best for him"

Unpopular opinion but I am going to say it. Women shouldn’t be in positions of power. Liberal women are the reason why our society has decayed so much. I said what I said.

Fact Check: True

having a flag for what kind of sex you like is kind of weird and retarded, actually

In Texas they told me to stop at Buc-ee's for gas. I have been to shrines. I have stood in temples that took two hundred years to build. I was not prepared for the gas station. There were one hundred and twenty fuel pumps. I counted them because I did not believe them. A man beside me was filling a truck the size of my first apartment, and he was not filling it because it was empty. He was filling it because he was here, and here is where a man fills things. Inside was a hall so vast I lost the horizon. A wall of jerky. A wall of fudge I did not know the country produced. A brisket sandwich handed to me by a man in a beaver costume. And I want to be clear, the beaver is not a mascot. The beaver is a saint. The people speak of him the way my grandmother spoke of the mountain behind her house. And the bathrooms. I had been warned about the bathrooms and I had dismissed the warning as the pride of a loud people. I was wrong to dismiss it. The bathrooms are famous across the whole state and they have earned it. I have slept in worse hotels. I nearly bowed upon entering. A janitor was polishing the floor with the devotion of a man tending a garden he loved, and when I thanked him he said "welcome in," which I have since learned is what Texas says instead of hello, and also instead of I am glad you exist. I went in for gas. I was inside for ninety minutes. I came out with fudge, a shirt printed with a joke I do not fully understand, forty dollars of jerky, and a feeling I can only describe as having been to church. I did not need any of it. I needed all of it. I have walked through the great cathedrals of the old world. I lit no candle there. I lit no candle at Buc-ee's either. But I did fill the truck. And I understand now that in Texas, this is the same thing.

In Texas a man told me he was fixin' to eat. He did not eat. He continued to sit. He continued to talk. Twenty minutes later he was still, by his own account, fixin' to eat. I asked what "fixin' to" means. He said, "It means I'm fixin' to." I asked when he would eat. He said, "Soon." He did not eat that day. I was there. I watched. So I began collecting evidence. I kept a list. I am not embarrassed about the list. I have now heard "fixin' to" used before: eating. Leaving. Arriving. Calling someone. Not calling someone. Buying a truck. Selling a truck. Fixing something. Not fixing something. Thinking about fixing something at some point in the general future. A woman at a gas station told me she was fixin' to pump gas. She was already pumping gas. I did not point this out. I understood, in that moment, that "fixin' to" is not about the future. It is about the announcement. You do not do the thing. You declare the thing. The declaration is the thing. In Japan we have a word, "yoroshiku," which is said before an action to ask for the goodwill of everyone involved. I thought this was similar. It is not similar. Yoroshiku is a request. Fixin' to is a weather report about your own soul. I began using it. Carefully at first, the way a man handles a borrowed sword. I told a waitress I was fixin' to order. She said, "Take your time, hon." She was not rushing me. She understood. In Texas, being fixin' to something is a state of being. It does not require follow-through. I told a police officer, who had stopped me for going forty in a thirty-five, that I was fixin' to slow down. He looked at me for a long moment. He looked at my face. He looked at the road ahead. Then he said, "Well, alright then," and let me go. I wish to be extremely clear that I am not claiming those two events are related. I am also not claiming they are unrelated. A man at a hardware store asked what brought me to Texas. I told him I was fixin' to find out. He put his hand on my shoulder like I had said something wise. He said, "That's the only right answer, partner." I have been in Texas nine days. I have not finished a single thing I said I would do. Nobody has minded. I have started saying it in other states. It does not work in other states. In New York a man behind me in line asked if I was ordering. I said I was fixin' to. He said, "So order." I miss Texas. I said it in a diner in Ohio. A woman looked up from her coffee, tilted her head, and said, "Are you fixin' to, or are you gonna?" I said, "Ma'am, I do not know yet." She was quiet for a moment. She looked at me the way a grandmother looks at a slow but well-meaning child. Then she said, "Then you're fixin' to. Sit down, hon. I'll get you coffee." She was from Amarillo. I did not ask how I knew. I knew because she knew. I understand it now. You do not have to be in Texas to be in Texas. You just have to be fixin' to.