An Excerpt From the New York Times and Going Rogue

West Liberty High School, Iowa

Most teachers had given up on the lot of them. The bad ones. The kids who fall between the cracks into the awesome, Great Divide. Great Divides are everywhere. It was about learning to debate.

How dare you tell us to kill ourselves. We’re righteous snowflakes.

You are not righteous. You are not Snowflakes. You are stupid and hopeless. I am wasting my time with you.

He’s trying to get us to fight with him. With ideas and no fists.

I like fists.

He would. Jordan. Jordan. Jordan.

The bad kid (Jordan) who said he likes fists was the one adolescent I seemed able to engage. Momentarily.

“Cocksucker.”

I said.

Now, they were getting loud. Agitated. Just call them names. 

Fuck the neighbors.

There is no hope and you should all kill yourselves. I said it again.

I’m not doing to kill myself, Tim. Not for you, anyway.

He said. He would choose to live just to spite me. Idiot.

How many times, Jordan. have you tried to hang yourself, and I threw out the gun you had hidden in a backpack.

You have no right to go through my stuff.

Fuck me, Jordan.

I said.

I would. I’ve tried. But you won’t fuck with us. I’m a good fuck, Tim, but you don’t want to go there. I could pull your fucking strings.

It will never happen.

I said.

What will it take to get you to fuck me.

Jordan said.

We would have to be the last two human beings on the planet, and I would definitely regret it.

They all laughed.

What do you mean by hope.

Jordan asked.

Jordan, why are you here.

It isn’t to write stupid shit in the New York Times.

I do not take the bait. I had been doing this for too long.

The New York Times hates you.

I do not remember who said it.

True. But it keeps me writing. And if I couldn’t write, I would hang myself. I am not here to teach you. And I am not here to keep you alive. I am here to fuck with your heads.

They do not exactly raise their little hands to speak.

I will debate you, Tim.

I forget who said it. I have dementia.

About what.

Why you should fuck me.

More laughter.

Okay. Why should I fuck you.

Because we find ourselves through sex.

And drugs.

I forget who said drugs.

You cannot get them to talk about drugs. It’s like wringing water from a rock.

But they will take you on in an argument.

The gig on finding themselves through sexual relationships had been a topic I had tried to pull from them for months.

No cigar.

Until that moment.

Then, they dove into it.

It was like that time I had slept in abandoned builing alone. It was not unlike breathing in a darkened vacuum deep into your lungs. I enjoy being alone. But not in a blanet on a cold and filthy floor.

All it took was to tell some kid who was crashing in another room – who I did not know – that I would give him a ride on my dirt bike as long as his destination was home. As his prize.

His tits were sugar.

There was no divide. Everything is sex. His parents were shocked to see him. They were so happy. I cannot explain happy because as a writer I do not know how.

Did I want to see his room.

I did. It smelled like he did. Aromatic leaves.

There were no divides between us. He put his medodious tongue inside my mouth so filled with songs.

I’ve never done anything like this in my room.

He said.

Take me away on your dirt bike.

Show me the kid who doesn’t want to ride a dirt bike.

No. Take me away inside your room.

There was no floor we would sleep on. Divides fall. Until they don’t

The New York Times

Portland, Oregon

We were in bed again. Andrew went into the hotel bathroom and came out with my pills.

Why don’t you write about something nice. Like…

Like.

What.

Hearts and flowers. Then, he laughed.

Andrew is easily provoked. Then, he gets angry with himself. I am writing about the Great Divide. Oregon is perfect.

There was a silence in the Benson Hotel room.

What’s the Great Divide.

It’s what we are going to participate in today. A riot.

Oh.

He said.

I do not know how riots and sex are connected. Or why. All I know is that they are. After a riot, all you want to do is fuck.

You can take a teenager to social politics, but you cannot make them drink.

Can we have sex first.

Yes.

I said.

“Deep divides within the party.” The divides are deeper, more deadly, and far more intransigent than anyone could have seen in any crystal ball. We are still dealing with the divides that the southenors I know well still call the War Between the States. Or that last unpleasantness. 700,000 lives and history on the backs of men. Lip service to the end of slavery. Lip service is ephemeral. We still have slaves. Prisons are plantations. Poverty is still a shack in North Carolina. And minimum wage won’t pay for a mint julep. But the North did not win. School books are filled with lies. The North became the South, and the South became the South. We still murder our runaway slaves even if running away from cops with guns will get you shot in the back by our courageous defenders of democracy and capitalism. You can be executed over a phony dollar bill. Strangled in the street, and no one is backing down. Those of us in Antifa did, indeed, flex some muscle over the injunction that right and white wing terrorists claim is their destiny to rule and hang from trees (the photographs of “the noose”) anyone who does not agree with them. You can still be strangled by America. You can still be blindfolded in front of a firing squad. You can be poisoned on a gurney for the death fetish of observant America. Exactly what has changed in America. Income inequality. Inequality in general. What does America stand for. Inequality. What does America mean. Inequality. Why are we here. To accumulate. To sleep in the arms of another human being with their own deep divides, their own fear and loneliness. And bedrooms.