“it happened to me: / I dated a white anarchist / who made me do all the dishes / while he crowdfunded his trip to Rojava”

Hokyoung Kim for BuzzFeed News

follow him in yr best light you were still

extremely wasteful: smeared yr secretions everywhere & showed parts of you nonconsensually: are you still trying to get people to talk about you? will you sleep over in this economy? i will smash anything with you long as i am correctly quoted: “rn my life is v nicely 2/3 marxism- leninism & the living struggle & 1/3 reading my horoscope at 2am, thinking about my love life” there’s plenty that can’t be said & yes yes I know visibility is a trap yes yes I know everyone here is vibrating through some truly ugly notes yes yes ok yup I have never uttered a thought to someone who hadn’t already thought it: yes sure it is easiest to mock the sincere: war is corny & revolution threatens irony, still I want my soft sockets touched & refuse to give birth heartlessly: I won’t budge on wanting love: human touch: not everything has to be profitable

“open letter to my facebook friends who voted for Jill Stein: unfriend me now, I don’t care if we’ve known each other for ten years! delete me from your friend list!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” at this point my life is very nicely 2/3 wishing I were dead and 1/3 wishing I was never born tbh your problems won’t go away just bc you finally acknowledged yr own longstanding depression: the survivor mentality never worked for me but then again I haven’t lived thru much: “it happened to me: I dated a white anarchist who made me do all the dishes while he crowdfunded his trip to Rojava”

sigh:: another white boy fight club: all the world’s pain is not enough raw material for them to feel something: “it’s actually insanely good to hurt bad people” what’s the difference between looking for a bar fight & looking for someone to liberate after reading about Democratic Confederalism? I’m not sure but the first dood overdosed after getting into the Whitney the second guy got clean and found someone to profile him:: sigh:: these bros would sooner tape their own suicide than fail to leave a legacy no man has ever been remembered for doing what their mothers did for them: feeding the hungry without credit: “war changes u… two weeks ago I was an idealist… now all I desire is Wi-FI good enough for 30 seconds of Bang Bus”

the socialist dream means Rolling Stone will never write about the women waiting at home: me and my friends can’t wait to be a footnote* our whole lives condensed into a line* it’s no wonder some lumpenproletariat got so tired of browsing Tumblr they joined the Kurdish militia* there’s even an economy of Iraqi cabbies who wait for white guys to land* “I think I’m a famous leftist now”* “did one of you make a wiki page for me”* I know this type better than I know myself* all the world’s tragedies a stage to put his ideals into action* all the pain in the universe raw material for his Nihilist Pornography* Anarchist Puppet Show* Camgirl Intifada* Neo Dadaist Vision of Hentai Morphology* Tentacle Necronumen* Futanari Dentata***

Fanservice: no matter what is happening

no matter who is mourning no matter where the droughts may be no matter which island is being slowly submerged underwater no matter which union leader was assassinated in broad daylight no matter which community has come together to mourn the endless dead he still manages to make it about himself he’s into YPG women who carry rifles by their butts in his RPG past he killed a lot of strippers he’s one of the rare few who have come back ~virtually~ ~*untouched*~ the innocent slain needs him alive the army needs him alive the unnamed dead need him alive the Reddit users need him alive everywhere he goes a Kurdish fighter steps first denying him the right to fear anything he came all the way to Syria to care about something for *once* and still the wretched of the world bend over backwards to die before him

what’s it like to have so many people invested in your existence? those of us who knew him in NY & SF are stuck archiving footage of him snorting ketamine with neo Marxists who don’t like it when you critique their anti-capitalist critique of prostitution within the framework of shameless anti-feminist-settler-colonialism— I mean, okay… no one likes to hear that! the real struggle as defined by an ex-junkie beta male missing a core… I thought literally everyone knew fight club was really about brad pitt desiring edward norton… like these two men burned so much for each other they had to keep making excuses to touch… it’s absolutely true some white guys would rather fight ISIS… than be called a racist online! anyone else nodding like yup yup yup yup? anyone else vomited in daddy’s lap and forgot to share it with their fans?

you must really live for the state of emergency: “we are here at home”: I don’t think everything happens out there on the streets: who u used to be vs who u have become: carrying the banner of any idea: reparations, restorative justice, prison abolition: “I dwell in possibility”: abandoning yr family to take up arms somehow becomes beyond reproach: so much is the opposite of glory; that’s why the women in my family tested the lowest for morality: 1973 was not good to us: cancer in your 12th house means your “secret sorrow” is hot + buried but what passes as flirtation online doesn’t work analog: the same white guy whose facebook posts I screenshot lectures me on how my people really lived under Mao: “did you actually fall for that rightest propaganda?” I don’t know exactly but I know I don’t wanna drive across town to barter ingredients for your cruelty-free dinner

okay maybe I am consumed by rage and inflict it on the people around me! but I swear his beliefs are genuinely suspect why is it always around dinner-time that his interest in the no-work movement kicks in? “you only work as much as is needed—no one is coerced!” suddenly the new world order flashed before my eyes—my people naturally (free of coercion!) took up cooking, serving, & cleaning without complaint and your people took to feasting with a clean conscience— “all of this given voluntarily! each one takes according to need! offers according to want!” well life is rich and wanting to be someone is very different from worrying abt the mothers of the world who have given birth to men who literally cannot feel— even in death even in fame even when we beg them to worry about something other than how they might die having done nothing worth noting

Note: This piece was originally written for and performed at Symphony Space's Selected Shorts: Flash Fiction event in partnership with BuzzFeed Books.



Lenny