Bins and I have accepted an invitation to watch the all-important first Presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the home of our neighbour, DingDong. Her boyfriend, Jiggs the Indian pizza delivery guy, lives in the flat opposite hers. He has been pestering us to join them in front of DingDong’s fancy new TV for the event. “It’ll be big fun,” he tells us. “We will enjoy.” What he really means is that American politics put him to sleep, but if we’re there, at least he’ll be able to share his masala popcorn with us as we watch.

I haven’t wanted to see it at all. However brilliant Hillary is and however much she prepares, weird things might happen. I don’t want to have to watch her being brought to her knees. There she is, 68 years old, recovering from pneumonia, so bright, so spunky and yet the forces of negativity raining down on her are like a hail of arrows in a Chinese fight-movie. What must it be like to wake up every day to the relentless attacks on her character, her appearance, her health? I don’t want to imagine. I just want it to be over, with her in the White House and all the doubts and the whining behind her.

Bins claims he doesn’t want to be on his own with Jiggs and DingDong. “I’m scared of her,” he says. “Her nails are too long. Her neckline is too low. And she’s a Republican. But if you’re there, she will be more quiet.” I very much doubt this, but I agree to go along, for the sake of solidarity. Her apartment is slightly smaller than mine. It’s stuffed from floor to ceiling with soft toys in brilliant day-glo colours. All her furniture is equally soft-sided and furry. The television is the only hard-edged item in the room.

The debate’s about to begin. DingDong says, “The problem with That Woman is I just can’t trust her. You know? She’s just so slick. Such a know-it-all. It’s like she’s just not real.” According to her, she’s voting for Trump because he “talks like us. Like me. He’s really smart, but he knows how to talk like ordinary people.” I don’t want to point out that DingDong is far from ordinary: she has blue hair, she works as an exotic dancer in a club and her ancestry, according to her, is part Latina, part grizzly bear. Nevertheless, “I’m one of the little people. I like a guy who talks in short sentences,” she says. “Someone I can understand.”

Then Hillary walks onto the screen. She’s wearing a flash-bang RED victory suit. Her hair is a crisp golden helmet. Her smile is a Valkyrie’s battle cry. For the next hour and a half, she just stands there, behind her lectern and pounds her blustering, sniffling opponent right into the ground. She doesn’t so much as raise her voice. By the end of it, I’m almost feeling sorry for the millionaire with the missing tax records. He’s so pathetic. Even DingDong has to admit he messed up. “I’ll still vote for him though,” she says. “Just to be kind.”

Manjula Padmanabhan , author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

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