memoir

content/trigger warning: discussions of parental abuse, intimate partner violence, police/state violence, poverty, neurodivergence, white supremacy, abuse, written by someone with a history of being violent and abusive

I used to be the children of artists. Failed artists. Shut out of an industry that wouldn't have them. Couldn't take them. Said no. The story went that my mother sang, wrote poetry. An LP somewhere (really, a casette tape); how many copies? 1? 2? 5? And notebooks filled with poetry, brimming with poetry, spilling out and into life with poetry. I've never heard her sing but I can tell you the poetry is good. Good like the poetry of an abuser; good until it leaks out into life when it becomes violence and hate (my mother would say the same about her mother, so don't worry, everyone gets about equally fucked over in this telling). My father (the one who lives; the one by blood) a musician; a poet, too. He wore eyeliner and suffered. She liked weed and suffered. They were poor with artistic aspirations, and then they stopped aspiring, and then they weren't so poor. By the time I was conscious, they weren't so poor, and eyeliner became suits and guitars became banks and notebooks became McDonald's (I always wanted McDonald's) and songs soured. Became sirens. Violence. Abuse. Boo hoo. I barely care; I don't expect anyone else to. My parents are strangers to me, strangers tethered to me my whole life for no discernible reason; I've been told by plenty (mostly whites) to let them go, cut them off (even leave them alone), even get a restraining order. Valid. Knock at the door. Guns galore. Imminent death. They each probably should have died a hundred times over; we also have that in common. The part I didn't understand (because it was easier to think them holy; because it was easier to think me holy) is that they didn't want art, love art, care about art. That's not a virtue on its own: hating (or being indifferent to) art. The context. Their context is they wanted power. They were powerless people. Powerless people understand power through its presence and its absence: my twentysomething father's roommate refuses to leave the house without a suit (presence), my mother cannot abide loneliness (absence), my father lives on tips as a waiter (absence), my mother agrees to marry my father (presence). I don't blame them for wanting power; the powerless understand absence is suffering and presence is supposedly not, which is true, except for artists. There are people who make art for fun or for pay or for whatever, and that's fine (we call them solosexuals). There are people who make art because they have to (we call that neurodivergence). My parents were the latter, and when they discovered they couldn't be white enough to survive (on) that (despite desperately trying), they settled for fun or pay or whatever. Doing whatever. Living whatever. And their lives became the silly dramas they might have been spinning as lyrics or story. Yet pepper (paper) a little power here or there and you don't get conflict resolution; you get the same shit with higher stakes. Cars and houses and estates and catalogs to fight over; probably more kids to abuse; probably more spouses to traumatize. They wanted power, full stop. If they'd been capable of being gods, they would have accepted those roles with glee. In their small (and pitiful, if I can be so ungenerous) ways, they still think themselves gods. My mother [REDACTED]. My father [REDACTED]. For this, they are despicable. I felt responsible, for many years, for minimizing their blast radii. I still feel responsible but now I know what that responsibility means. It means minimizing my own blast radius. My only long-term goal is to [REDACTED]. This is a debt I must repay. To repay it is to set an example (for them): live your dreams instead of manifesting nightmares. My plan is to start a literary agency, then a publishing house. I already started a magazine. I am building a career. I say this and I'm disgusted, because somewhere in there is the blueprint for an industrial complex. I can make it out if I squint hard enough (I'm so tired of squinting). I threw away Euphorium because I knew where it led; I sat on it because I felt it could lead somewhere else if I gave it time. I will not build a career. I will not sell this house today. I will abolish myself if I have to; I would rather die the most painful death than see anything I create create also harm. I will start a literary agency and I will be an anti-agent the way Art, Strike! is an anti-press. I don't know what that looks like because I can't know what that looks like because I will not and cannot do it alone. We will start a publishing house and we will be an anti-publisher and I can't even begin to articulate what that looks like but we will know it when we see it. We. My parents wanted power; my parents wanted power each. They were (still are) always so deep inside their own heads; they can't get out, they can't see past the boundaries of their own bodies. Abolish borders, abolish walls. Demolish borders; unimagine walls. Four walls. Cell walls. Scene walls. These are not just words. This is a life. I am anti-my mother, I am anti-my father, which is to say: I am anti-anti-anti-anti. I don't contain multitudes; I'm plural. Or nothing. And I'll come out about that soon enough. Probably alongside you. As we. Nous.