jehovah's witnessing for gay marriage

Somehow I got roped into canvassing door to door to protect the Cleveland Domestic Partnership Registry. I know that sounds like the most terrifying thing ever for an avoidant but I was under the impression that I wouldn't have to do it alone (they said we would do it with partners) and I figured I could do it with Cara. As it turns out, we had to do it with someone who's canvassed before, and your "partner" is just the person who does the other side of your street. At that point I wanted to run out of the room but they'd already paired me off with somebody and running away would have called more attention to myself then marching to my doom.

It was awkward at first but the guy, David, that I got paired with was really nice. He was like my parents' age or a little younger and he kept asking me about school, but we'd also seen some of the same movies and we bonded over trying to actually find where the houses were supposed to be. He also had a whole bunch of extra clothes in his car and he bundled me all up in them because he said I looked cold.

The street was in Little Italy, which has a lot of Case Western students and a lot of older, extremely Catholic Italians. The first apartment we did together and didn't get the people we expected to be there (we had a list of registered voters), but instead two students. We did the whole spiel on them anyways and they were really nice and supportive of our cause, but neither of them were actually registered to vote in Cleveland. After that we had to split up and do opposite sides of the street, and at the next like 12 houses I went to no one answered the door.

Finally I got to a house that had huge cross and a faded Cleveland Indians sticker on the door...and I associate both religious people and sports fans with homophobia so that house worried me but I banged on the door anyways. Somebody yelled something from inside but didn't come to the door. I waited a little bit because I didn't want someone to come out as I was leaving and think I was playing ding-dong-ditch or something. Just as I was about to give up hope a guy poked his head out of another door on the porch and told me the other door didn't open. The guy was wearing boxers and a wife beater and looked kind of annoyed but I went ahead and tried to say my speech, stuttering and mixing up a bunch of the words but hopefully getting my point across. As it turns out he said he always votes in favor of gay marriage...at least I think he did. The thought crossed my mind afterwords that he might have had the impression that I was campaigning to have the issue put on the ballot so the registry could be revoked. The whole thing was kind of a blur but I'm pretty sure he was on our side though. I could tell he was kind of annoyed but I still had to ask him if he felt strongly enough that he would donate time or money to the cause, which he didn't. I was supposed to get his phone number anyways but I was to scared to ask, I didn't want to bother him anymore. I thanked him like six times which was really embarrassing overkill.

After that I tried a few more houses but no one else answered. It was freezing and my knuckles hurt so fortunately it was time to go back to Arabica and discuss how it went. Most people hadn't had too much luck either with people being home so I guess my experience was pretty average. I signed up to call more volunteers tomorrow night to see if they can do the next canvassing session (I can't because I'll be in France!) Normally the phone scares me more than talking to people in person, but at least I'll be able to read off of a script, and we'll only be calling people who already said that they want to volunteer at some point. I kind of want to canvass again too sometime just because it was kind of disappointing (and relieving!) that nobody was home. Maybe I can practice my speech some more until then....