Anna Khachiyan





This following is an excerpt of a text-slash-DM exchange between Anna, a hostess-turned-podcaster living in New York, and "Daddy," a self-described "pleb artist" in town from Berlin. The exchange begins shortly after Anna and Daddy meet for the first time at 169 Bar in Dimes Square and embark on a journey of abjection, debauchery and neoliberal critique. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.



Saturday, January 13



DADDY:

Ugh, nothing like waking up digging through the pockets looking for a single for The Post and they're all crumpled up or rolled into tubes



ANNA:

Who reads newspapers in 2018 lol



DADDY:

Post is great. Never really considered it a newspaper tho More like train ride entertainment plus funny signifier to have peeking out of coat pocket



ANNA:

I've fallen and I can't get out of bed DADDY:

Two parental lineages of genocidal trauma... I'm back in bed thinking about dying + your mouth



ANNA:

I can't really think rn except as to exactly how I want you to take me first



DADDY:

I could just make out for hours, you're the first one for me who makes making out seem like a tragedy of generational historical proportions, and even four years of analysis at three days a week ultimately can't keep me from finding that highly arousing





Saturday, January 19



ANNA:The problem with all these overgrown manboy skate wiggers is not so much that they have an age-inappropriate aesthetic or lack discipline, but that they habitually, as a matter of course, default on their duties



Anyway, to be bound by duty is basically démodé now, in our age of vacant, ironic nihilism and craven, unseemly individualism, but (1) it's the only way to live ethically, more or less and (2) it's the only way to be truly radical anymore.



DADDY:

You have a point with the immigration trauma -- it binds me to so many things, psychologically and geographically, that are at total odds with my social experience here in New York, or the experience of friends who come here as glorified art tourists and have no relation to this place outside of a professional one. In our time, it does indeed seem bizarre to many to be a man whose obligations are not entirely dictated by selfish desires and career. But it touches me deeply that we understand each other on this point as it is one that is the source of many anxieties and internal conflicts for me. I am old school, and have an ingrained welfare mentality -- from those days when our furniture came from the dump, and my dad worked that gaming job. Meaning that in my formative years, speaking from a Freudian perspective, the only thing to hold your head high about was how you treated those around you... plus that communal obligation -- don't know if you experienced it yourself -- but that inter-community friendship and support among us Russians was where it was at.



ANNA:

The way to be radically at peace with yourself, in my mind, is to resurrect those old school communitarian values that are spit upon by the whole neoliberal consensus but for which everyone desperately yearns, while obviously discarding the obsolete, oppressive remnants of the old way.



But this, of course, this is much easier said than done.



Wednesday, January 24



DADDY:

Riga is beautiful. If you want, we can go to the Jewish cemetery there



ANNA:

Wow, I am so aroused



DADDY:

I would genuinely want to pull down your panties and slide into you from behind in a Jewish cemetery in Riga. It would be triumphant and life-affirming



Friday, February 16



ANNA:

You know, It finally dawned on me why I hate my boss. She abides by etiquette but has no manners. Which is to say, she panders to even the most repugnant of customers because her livelihood depends on it, but she's routinely rude and dismissive to the staff because it makes her feel powerful and in control.



That's where the matter of our shared heritage bugs me. As an immigrant, you should've been raised to understand the following fact: real power is extending the same courtesies to everyone regardless of their stature unless they show you otherwise. In other words, it's saying yes when you can say no, not saying no when you can say yes.



DADDY:

I would agree except to say that I think this is the difference between a benevolent relationship to power and a narcissistic one. Your boss is weak and acts like a petit bourgeois, haranguing those below her because she is above them by such a narrow margin that her power rests on constantly asserting it.



Benevolence implies a certain standing created through true class distinction -- it means you are not embroiled in the petty differences between yourself and your neighbor or your colleague or your friend, as you are floating in those lofty heights above them.



Friday, March 9



ANNA:

I was at Clando ln, thought of you



While I was taking a leak in the bathroom where we did the nose beers



DADDY:

Oh man I wish I could teleport back to that time



Start making out right then and there



Although you puking before you blew me was a really nice touch



Friday, April 20



ANNA:

I mean, are the Balenciaga people smart?



I was asking myself this question earlier



DADDY:

See, I'm not sure. I also don't think that whole paradigm is particularly long-lasting



I don't know what smart is but I think it's different from being able to trend forecast or get ahead of the curve in terms of playing the weak spots off of existing models



Which is essentially what Balenciaga does, at least to some extent -- cause as far as I can tell with my limited fashion ed, the clothes themselves are not revolutionary



But the way they throw into stark relief what's wack in existing models is interesting



ANNA:

What they are doing is not so much telling you what to want but how to want



So, in that sense, it's "revolutionary"



But in a material sense -- and my weakness is that I mainly understand the world in material rather than conceptual terms -- they are merely the middleman that has inserted himself into an existing transaction to collect a rent, which I guess is peak neoliberalism, so in that sense, there is nothing revolutionary about them



And they basically lay bare the abstractions of finance and administration -- pardon the media theory-speak -- for the consumer in this flattering but also sadistic way



Previously, the sadism was (mostly gay) designers humiliating the female form



Today, the sadism is (mostly gay) designers humiliating the feminine or effeminate psyche of both genders



DADDY:

That's what I mean, it's like one of those brilliant, insightful, lucky -- whatever you want to call it -- moments when one catches the glitch in the system and lays it bare, full of contradictions and all... but that just so quickly slides into bad parody or trolling if one is not careful...



Maybe by that I just mean it's not weird enough



ANNA:

I look at these people and think they get it -- they share the same disgust and contempt for human folly



But then I think nah, you are probably giving them too much credit



Wednesday, April 18



ANNA:

First thing's first, as promised, the porn



Naomi Russell, nice Jewish girl from a rabbinical family, great ass, sucks dick and takes it up the ass like a real champ, my new fav



DADDY:

I realize not only have I seen that particular porn you sent but I am also very familiar with her work



Right up my alley bb



Thursday, April 19



DADDY:

I'm in a real getaway mood, want to get my knob slobbed and drink on the beach



Want to go to Majorca?



This text exchange makes me think of that scene when Tony Soprano is driving around and he hears this song on WCBS FM, the oldies station... Oh Girl by the Chi-Lites... And then he gets all nostalgic for his Russian girlfriend and goes over to see her and she's fucking that loser congressman or senator or whatever and he beats him with a belt



ANNA:

I love that scene!



DADDY:

Lol I am in the mood to beat someone with a belt right now



Sunday, May 6



ANNA:

The art was wack.



And everyone was like, you know, a Eurostyle clubland sex pervert in tiny glasses or one of these identity politics trauma cases



Naturally, I hate myself for the feelings of ire they elicit in me



DADDY:

I hear you three hundred percent, I always have the same reaction and then the same counter-reaction -- to hate myself for reacting in the first place and for being weak



But I think the key is to not take it seriously



Most of these people cycle through the art world like trends and in five years they are gone and replaced by a younger crop. And the ones who stick around really stick around and are then kind of interesting by default.



Saturday, May 5



DADDY:

I miss you a lot today. I think I have too much work to do and also I'm a bit of an irresponsible and immature prick when it comes to handling it so I'm just tired and kind of fucked up, plus all the emotional stuff, which I am not good at discussing.



You are my person.



Your holes belong to me.



ANNA:

I never miss you more than when I'm hanging out with other people, especially art people, or as it were, people we now have in common



I hate their shamelessness and wish we could eviscerate them together



DADDY:

'Tis true. Nothing would make me happier and filled with more cheer than taking the piss and then having a good violent fuck



ANNA:

Taking the piss, then taking my ass



DADDY:

Fill your ass with cum and make you lick it up Naomi-style



ANNA:

I should've said, when this loser asked how I knew you, that I am Property of Daddy



DADDY:

And then be like "wink wink" lol



ANNA:

I narcissistically identify with her beautifully abject selflessness in worshipping the cock



DADDY:

It makes me violently aroused to imagine you calmly letting those words out of your mouth in the face of these wankers



ANNA:#MeToo



DADDY:

You are my Naomi. But better.



ANNA:

Not infected with the bug lol



Everything Naomi does in the movies I want to do with you



DADDY:

That's the plan. You will be lapping up cum out of a glass bowl before you know it



Monday, May 7



DADDY:

I realize that on some fundamental level my severe immigrant trauma has made me infinitely attracted to mundane social spaces where the less fortunate congregate to consume



ANNA:



Elevating the mundane



This is my interest too -- neorealism



