Every day I walk on Pugh St. past the corner where I was assaulted one October night. Helplessly wrapped in the orange mesh of a safety fence by a few drunk and roused young men, I was called a faggot and pushed into the ground. Nearby there are two Trump signs. One is a big flag in the second-floor window of a house on the east side of the street and in the first floor of that house there is a poster of Bill Cosby. The other sign is up (north) the street a little bit in a first floor window of a house on the west side of the street. I am consistently irritated by the presence of these big signs in my community and what they represent, and I cannot help but conflate them with the senseless, albeit not physically harmful violence I was subjected to by the men who attacked me. That was a moment where their privilege and power brimmed over with the help of alcohol and they felt they could exercise some of that drunken power by fucking with me. And they did, and it will continue to happen to people who are less privileged and less strong than me and it will be in the form of crimes that are far more disgusting and irreparable than name-calling and pushing into the ground, which equates to little more than middle-school bullying. I can't stop thinking about it all as we collectively anticipate the inauguration of Trump, a conniving, greedy dolt who has used his power to physically and verbally assault women, instill xenophobic fears into the minds of anyone with a TV or internet connection, promote racism, steal money and, in two days, become the President of the United States of America.
I let the cold morning breeze crystallize in my face as my heart stretches. Sometimes I feel like I'm losing my mind, bending under various internal and external pressures, but I have it pretty good. I think my generation exists in extremes: extremely funny, extremely sad, extreme drinking, extremely high etc. Granted not everyone is like this but maybe we are, collectively, helplessly trapped in the hyper-acceleration that comes from being digital natives. I can't keep my eye from the news for a couple reasons. One, because it is only a tap or swipe away. Two, because I have this insatiable desire to know what is next when everything feels unpredictable. I think that is human.
Today Trump tweeted that NBC News is "FAKE NEWS". Some, like the admirable Nite Jewel, have suggested we completely avoid reading his tweets as a form of protest. But it is like an unthinkable train-wreck occuring directly before our eyes: it becomes damn-near impossible to look away. And when we do look, we see our leader denouncing things we thought were real, things we thought were human, as fake and inhuman. It must all be some grand ruse I guess. But the man is so baffling and frustrating that it results in a great buildup of emotion and confusion inside our bodies. I made this blog to let some of those feelings out.
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