Remembering to Return Our Videotapes

Author: Brandon Adamson

My earliest familiarity with the work of Bret Easton Ellis was sometime in 1999. I was getting a lap dance from a stripper “named” Juliet at The Body Shop in West Hollywood(we aren’t exactly SWERFs here on the AltLeft.) The stripper told me I reminded her of the main character from American Psycho…not the handsome and future Dark Knight actor, Christian Bale mind you but the actual character from the story. I don’t recall what creepy shit I must have been muttering in her ear, but I was an edgy, young, narcissistic loner exploring Los Angeles at the time. Her sensing that there was something darker lurking beneath my third rate hipster aesthetic was probably correct.

Don’t ever assume sex workers are stupid by the way. Many of them make poor life choices and are not traditionally well educated, but they are cunning and know how to survive. Their existence up close and personal with the seedier elements of society exposes them to certain truths which Ivy League graduates are naively oblivious to. If you don’t believe me, just start searching through escort ads on Backpage and notice how many hundreds of them explicitly say “No Black Men.” People often talk about how communism is often romanticized among bougie western hipsters who never had to live under it, while those who lived in communist countries suffered and were often trying to escape. The same can be said of diversity, which people idealize from the safety of their gated communities in Vermont and gentrified Portland neighborhoods, while working class whites don’t have the luxury of entertaining bullshit fantasies about what living in a multicultural society is actually like.

One time in Las Vegas I asked a cab driver what he thought about the idea of someone moving to Vegas. In a thick accent, the origins of which I could not place(possibly Russian,) he told me “It is very cutthroat. If you are an honest guy forget it. You will never make it here. If you are a hooker, pimp, thief, you will do all right.”

Where was I going with this anyway? Ah yes, I brought up Bret Easton Ellis, because he has been making some politically incorrect waves of the AltLeft variety recently. A lot of people have long suspected Ellis of being a closeted reactionary. Though someone as sexually depraved and anti-corporate culture would probably never be at ease on the right. I suspect that more than anything Ellis is just a another fellow Gen Xer who doesn’t buy into the PC bullshit and recognizes the perverse way in which it is stifling creativity and free thought. It’s the tracks where Tumblr Intersectionalists and billionaire corporate CEOs race together . “All aboard the pathological altruism and opportunistic corporatism express!” Bret Easton Ellis has made clear he is not hopping on that train. Neither should anyone else who values the ability to see things clearly and articulate their observations about the world in any honest and meaningful way. The pressure to conform to the social justice industrial complex is driving young hipster cubicle jockeys of the nouveau corporate world to a sort of “double life” crisis… the private madness of living a lie while knowing the truth.

“Yeah, sorry. I would attend that #BlackLivesMatter rally and candlelight vigil for Tyrone with you after work, but I just remembered I have to return some videotapes…”