trouble of
chivalrously beating up a guy –
or flat-out
attempting to break your
arm over his head –
you should break
your arm over his
head. Or something.
What’s a pacifist
to do when someone
stands up for you
like that; when some-
one is such a
sweetheart? We must really
love liking one
another. “I really like you.”
“I really like you,
too.” Or something. With
your proclamation
you probably placed your
hand neither firmly
nor gently on the cheek
of my ass. I dramatically squeezed my face
and attempted a
show of shock with “You’re
crazy!” There are moth-eaten ways in which
we do love each
other without trust. Everyone
here is a
hustler. Trust is not an option. Like?
Love? It is not reduction to call these words
quite inevitably
“relative” (as they say). Who
took whose whatever
is one of the very few
possible headlines
you might find in the morn-
ing, or whatever
time you read (if you do, in-
deed, read). The
other main topic is bedbugs.
This one took up an
entire ‘resident’s monthly’
A couple of weeks
ago. It was the only one
I have attended thus
far, and likely will re-
main so. It is advised to maintain an unidenti-
fiable sexuality. Doing this eliminates a good
portion of deleterious
attitude. So, for ex-
ample, when a sexuality
clue to the contrary
happens to be
dropped during casual convers-
ation, especially
among three or more people
at once, there is a
great risk of torture and/
or death. To
reiterate, it’s of grave import to
remain straight,
even if you happen, on occasion,
to feel
otherwise. Keep in mind that anyone
you pass in the shelter
hallway or at the cafeteria,
anyone casually walking
by your bunk bed of a morn-
ing or evening, will
(most often silently) be taking tabs.
The mental notes
are easy enough that one can be
entirely comfortable
with them within very short
measure(“Normal,
normal, he’s okay, normal, he’s
straight, this guy
must not be because I’ve yet to
reach a clear
conclusion, normal, normal, gay” etc.)
Other words can be
substituted for the word “gay,”
but whichever your
choice, it is imperative that ones
jaw is squarely
clinched, teeth nearly grinding into a
powder on the
tongue and lower lip, whether tabulating
aloud or silently. Just bear in mind that tabulation is
always of the utmost
import. After completely missing
my hero break his
arm over the bigot’s head, defending
the existence of
myself and of my particular sexuality,
I didn’t feel very
normal; not very straight at all. And
me, an utter
pacifist. “That’s some chivalry,” I say,
directly to my hero’s
broken arm. “Well, it’s only
two thousand dingledy-dings
for fuck’s sake,” the
arm’s face replies –
a face which, as if only just
noticing it, is so much
more beautiful than
I’d
ever previously imagined it to be.
