Erica Rivera

writer, editor, artist 🏳️‍⚧️

length: 48 words

a dandelion dropping

petals until all there is

is core.

a sunflower spinning

so fast its petals

rise and fall like snow.

a forest rushed with wind,

a tornado made of

pines.

a planet always spins:

turns, but no

returns.

a song that repeats.

a song

that repeats.

length: 4 images

This piece was published in Issue 3 of manywor(l)ds in February 2024.

content/trigger warning: depiction of psychosis from the perspective of someone who is always experiencing psychosis, just like you do















self-portrait

colors stream across a brown background streaked with vertical white; fire at top-right, fenced by black lines. at top: text, "would you endure." at bottom: sideways cut-out of a text on surviving nuclear war.

colors stream across a brown background streaked with vertical white; fire at top-right, fenced by black lines. at top: text, “would you endure.” at bottom: sideways cut-out of a text on surviving nuclear war.















river

blues, greens, purples, flow out of and into red suns. black lines like a bar graph across the bottom-right.

blues, greens, purples, flow out of and into red suns. black lines like a bar graph across the bottom half.















essay

colors are meaningless. only words matter. many are cut off but one can read: "exposure," "fallout," "surface," "earth," "elements," "beta," "skin," "X-rays," "shields," and "radioactivity."

colors are meaningless. only words matter. many are cut off but one can read: “exposure,” “fallout,” “surface,” “earth,” “elements,” “beta,” “skin,” “X-rays,” “shields,” and “radioactivity.”















i don't who i am

the first image but upside-down. the black lines stacked like a kid's toy. text is meaningless. colors flow in different directions; to and from where is anybody's guess.

the first image but upside-down. the black lines stacked like a kid's toy. text is meaningless. colors flow in different directions; to and from where is anybody's guess.















length: 28 words

do you write from within a place?

you write from within a place.

you write from

with

in a place.

you write.

from within a place

you,

write.

length: 1,380 words

Note: I write the first version of this poem and put it up and afterwards feel happy. This does not feel right; the poem is too joyous, too friendly. I mean, I don't want to be a melodramatic buzzkill; that's why I edited the Art, Strike! submission guidelines so that they, as the poem says, “speak from a place of love and care / instead of a place of fear and shame.” But something is not right about this poem; as I say elsewhere, “although we all deserve joy and care and pleasure, we do not all deserve free will, starting with those who have denied free will to others.” I think the poem as originally written had too much free will, a free will I am trying to relinquish, not hold on to. I say all this because I take a five-minute nap a little while after writing it and have a terrible vision (referenced in this poem) that comes nowhere close to the intensity and horror of the third vision described in “Inca(r)n(t)ation,” but is certainly a future I do not want to see come alive. 

Immediately I start revising this poem and adding to it to clarify my intentions and ensure I am speaking from the heart and not from the excited butterflies in my stomach. The edits are good: they include adding lines like “and power,” or “without perpetuating all the toxic shit / we've been told to internalize / and accept.” But even still, something is off. As I reference in the poem, I write and edit often while I shower, and I realize while showering before coming back to the poem today, February 12, 2023, the morning after I wrote/improvised the poem, that I must add this note as a preface. This, of course, makes this poem a living document as well, which will change and grow as I change and grow, as Art, Strike!, as the poem discusses, rapidly, so rapidly, changes and grows, too.

Second note: Later, I realize what it is. The poem is not militant enough. All this talk of radical transparency and accountability is important and critical so we do not in our modern movements repeat the interpersonal abuses and violences that tore the movements of our ancestors apart. But it is, in many ways, simply talk. I am bitten quite aggressively by a dog who I know and love because he is going blind and mistakes my finger for a treat. The pain is, for a split-second, searing. I know that this happens because I must prepare for pain; in many ways, we must all always be preparing for pain. When I say that we who have been harmed must define accountability, that accountability may include violence against and pain for those who have harmed us. Hammurabi's “an eye for an eye” is inappropriate because, well, you may have taken my eye, but if you don't need or use your eyes, what good is you losing yours as accountability? “An eye for the appropriate equivalent of an eye” might have been a better way to phrase it. For the accountability work I have still to do, I am acutely aware that someone I have harmed may define accountability in a way that causes me (physical) pain, that requires me to be on the receiving end of violence. Let's not pretend this can't be just or justice. I have a history of being violent and abusive and whatever the people who I have harmed decide is the appropriate equivalent of an eye, I must not only allow them to take, but do so without fear or hesitation; I must embrace accountability. Otherwise, if they see fear in my eyes, if they sense my hesitation, they may opt for mercy, and this will be further violence I inflict upon them. The tax on the human soul for committing violence, or even considering it, even if it is the violence of justice, can only be mitigated if the violence is consensual. I must radically consent to the violence of justice, or else it is no justice at all. The unexpected bite of the dog is preparation for this. I must learn to embrace pain, because beyond the interpersonal work of accountability, there is and will be a need for enduring other kinds of pain. Nation-states and corporations and institutions relish distributing it, concentrating it, obliterating lives and communities with it. Abolition is neither neat nor comfortable for anyone involved. Our best chance at some kind of success is to learn to navigate pain as part of the violence of justice, so that when we are forced to navigate the violence of oppression as part of our battles against forces far more violent than we can ever be to one another, we do not fear or hesitate. We act; we do what is absolutely necessary to get from here to liberation.

Third note: Do I still fetishize pain? Do I still worship punishment? Do I still hate myself enough to invite violence upon myself, even if I dress my vicious, gnarly desire in the rhetoric of justice and liberation? Do I misunderstand militancy? Do I misunderstand abolition? Do I see like a state? Do I embody carcerality? Do I still hate? Do I still hate enough to hurt? Do I still hate enough to hurt the people who hurt me and call that justice and liberation? Do I know how to love? Do I know how to love myself? Do I know how to love myself enough to bear witness to my transformation into something completely unrecognizable, completely unfamiliar, soon completely unrecognizable and unfamiliar to everyone who has ever known me? Do I trust that this is happening? Do I trust that I am here right now? Do I believe that I am writing this? Do I deserve free will? Do I know what it's like to have it? Do I deserve anything? Do I know what it's like to have anything? Do I know what free will is? Do I know what it means to be human? Do I know who I am? Do I even want to? Do you?

Fourth note: I am not a good enough writer yet. Here is writing by someone who is. “The real distinction between carceral logic and liberatory accountability is that one process violently strips someone of their humanity and agency, while the other demands that people who do harm take full command of their humanity and agency to atone for that harm and become better members of the community in the process. The carceral system says: 'You are a criminal and you deserve to be subject to constant harm and control because of it.' Liberatory accountability says: 'You are a person who chose to do harm, we believe in your capacity to choose to face the consequences of that harm and do what you can to repair it.'” I don't know what I know but I know I will spend every second thinking and listening and reading and learning until maybe someday I do. Because I can, because I have to, because I want us both and all to can and have and want to.

Fifth note: Another day, another vision. Another note, this one short. 

Abolish abuse, abolish power, which are two ways of saying the same thing. Make space for kindness, make space for care, make space for community and solidarity and accountability and justice, which are just a few of many ways of saying the same thing.

Sixth note: 2 march. is there such a thing as a waking vision? to see a vision and reality at the same time? is that what clairvoyance really is?

Seventh note: another play, another prison. pain sucks. is that really so hard to say?? is it hard to say because it isn't true?? is it hard to say because it is??

Eighth note: midnight, March third. Discern.

Ninth note: 2:45 AM, 19 March. No vision. (Well, visions since, just no vision right now.) Is it really so hard to say I hate myself? Is it really so hard to say I should? Is it hard to say because it requires sacrifice? Is it hard to say because it doesn't? Is it ableist to call my visions visions? Especially if the truth is that they have nothing to do with sight?

Tenth note: three hours after the ninth note, sometime in between for a split second i thought about writing an anti-theory anti-manifesto and then i realized i knew better. also why doesn't this piece have a content/trigger warning? why, doesn't this piece have a content/trigger warning?

























orbicular is the word on the TV at the gas station.

orbicular: like or resembling a sphere.

orbicular, a word i don't know taught to me by an image on screen for all of 20 seconds on a TV at the gas station. i would have missed the definition if i hadn't stayed in the car after leaving my father’s in order to send some e-mails regarding mistakes i made in my role as an editor for Art, Strike!, if i hadn’t taken a moment to weep, in part because i know the mistakes that i made may have caused people harm, but also because i am feeling more capable of seeing and addressing the harm that i cause, the mistakes that i make. there is still fear, there is always fear, but not the fear that rhymes with fight-or-flight, instead the fear that rhymes with just and right.

i would have missed the definition if i hadn't stayed in the car after pulling into the gas station to make edits on the pages on my personal website to clarify my intentions, to make our editing process more accessible, to speak from a place of love and care instead of a place of fear and shame. i made these choices in order to begin a process of addressing the mistakes i have made, and in return, i was given the definition of the word orbicular.

Art, Strike! is growing and changing faster than i can even fathom. just this weekend, suddenly i am not “editor of Art, Strike!” but “editor for Art, Strike!”

suddenly, i am one of three staff members, at least three so far, and the other two members of Art, Strike! are two of the most incredible people i have ever met. i am going to make mistakes in my job, we are going to make mistakes in our jobs, our collaborators are going to make mistakes in their jobs. but what else can we do but be open and honest about our mistakes? open and honest about how to address them? willing to make space for those we have harmed to be open and honest about their definitions of accountability? so that maybe we can be a critical part of the urgent work of abolishing abuse, and power, and patriarchy, and cisheterosexism, and racial capitalism, and settler colonialism, and all the many other things that desperately need abolishing?

the truth is there is no “perfect”

the truth is there is no Art, Strike!

there are only writers and artists and editors and publishers who don't know what to do, don't know what to do, don't know what to do. i don't know what to do either, but we all know that things cannot go on as they have for so long.

i write this poem in my head as i drive, i write everything in my head as i drive or shower or cook or eat or edit. i edit everything in my head as i drive and shower and cook and eat and write. then all i need is to be in front of a keyboard for a few minutes, or hours, and i can write what i’ve technically already written. i hear the phrase “performance novel” recently and i think, well, that’s how i write: like a performance, like improvisation, very much like jazz.

improvisation scares some musicians, i think, because how can they possibly know what to play next if they don't have the sheet music dictating, sitting right in front of them? improvisation isn’t about knowing what to play next. it’s about being so in sync with the people and world and music around, there's only one note you can possibly play next. it’s not about making it up as you go, it’s about being so clairvoyant the next note comes to you as though a vision.

all of my writing is improvisational and that is how i feel i can keep it coming from the heart, messy and loving and strange and real. Art, Strike! wants us all to have the time and space and resources and support to be messy and loving and strange and real and to be able to make mistakes in the process without perpetuating all the toxic shit we've been told to internalize and accept.

when a musician makes a mistake in the process of improvisation, who can really tell? well, the musician, of course, and their fellow musicians, and if you listen closely, you can tell too, because your body will react before your words do, and if we can love our bodies enough to hear their pains and their pleasures, we can notice the mistakes we inevitably make, and then hear ourselves play different and better notes, bringing the band back together into some kind of harmony.

i make several mistakes in the course of writing this poem, mistakes so bad that when i close my eyes for a few minutes of sleep, i have an awful vision that must not come to pass. i reopen this piece for editing and change, add, change, until i feel it is good for now. good for now is not enough (it is not good forever, a good that cannot be until we are so radically transparent with each other that our flags lean into easy anything) but then nothing is bad forever. not as long as we can still find time to be kind to ourselves even when this feels impossible, or to be cruel to ourselves, as cruel as it takes, or maybe cruel as in theatre of cruelty, if that is what will wake us all up and make us want to finally pursue radical transparency, or at least seek out the time and space and resources and support that can allow us to be radically transparent with each other.

i make a mistake not telling my father i am technically taking something for my high blood pressure but i call him once i get home, after getting home from his, and explain how grateful i am they understand why i made that mistake and that if i can share about my experiences, good and bad, regarding what he and his wife have been considering. they say yes and although it is late and they are tired, they want to hear, and they explain that, yes, it was heading toward egoism but that they are so glad i have found people with whom i feel comfortable (and who i can help by) sharing about something so personal like my health, like the people in the old magazines who know that they're sisters and pride themselves on being good to their siblings.

there are infinite contradictions in this poem, in this world, in Art, Strike!, in every edge and every curve so that, technically, nothing can ever be quite exactly orbicular. there are infinite contradictions because perhaps to be at all is to hold two opposing ideas in your head at the exact same time.

there is no Art, Strike!

there is only Art, Strike!

there are only writers and artists and editors and publishers who don’t know what to do

there are only writers and artists and editors and publishers who know exactly what to do

i am a fat disabled neurodivergent queer genderfluid trans obsessive crazy clairvoyant new asexual marroncita anarchist woman with a history of being violent and abusive and a future that has yet to be written though i will not allow it to include any more violence or abuse, the cycle has to stop.

i am more and/or less (than) a human, being.

(after i finish improvising this poem in my head and right before i sit down in front of a keyboard to type it, for the first time i walk up the three flights of stairs to my apartment by choice. climbing stairs has been difficult for me my entire life because i walk on the tips of my toes, yet another learned behavior that keeps me small and quiet. this time, i distribute my weight across the lengths of my feet, and suddenly, the climb isn't so difficult.)

























suddenly, the climb isn't so difficult.

























length: 2,014 words

#fiction

content warning/trigger warning: discussions of mental health, excessive usage of the words “crazy” and “insane”

















Darkness.

Soft lights fade up on stage. Bright spotlight turns on suddenly, center of the circular stage. Into the spotlight steps a masked woman, facing the audience. From a spot on the ground in front of her a small hole opens up and a microphone rises, slowly then more quickly, until it is just a few centimeters directly in front of her mouth. She speaks.

“One.”

Then:

“Crazy. Crazy. Crazy. Crazy insane. Insane. Insane. Insane. Crazy insane.”

She pauses, then says:

“Two.”

Then:

“Crazy. Crazy? Insane. Crazy. Crazy insane. Crazy insane. Crazy insane? Crazy crazy. Crazy crazy crazy. Insane. Insane.”

Quietly, she says:

“Crazy.”

Then at a louder volume:

“Crazy insane. Insane, crazy. Insane. Crazy insane crazy insane crazy insane.”

A beat, then:

“Crazy.”

Another pause, then she says:

“Three.”

Then:

“Insane. Unsane. Insane. Unsane. Crazy? Insane. Unsane. Crazy unsane. Crazy insane? Crazy insane.”

More quietly, almost a whisper:

“Insane. Crazy.”

Then, louder again:

“Crazy insane, crazy unsane, uncrazy and sane. Crazy. Insane. Unsane.”

Another pause, then:

“Four.”

And:

“Crazy insane.”

Quietly:

“Crazy insane?”

Loudly:

“Crazy insane. Crazy insane. Crazy insane.”

Beat, then:

“Five.”

And:

“Insane: crazy. Crazy? Insane. Insane. Insane! Crazy, crazy insane, crazy crazy insane. Crazy crazy crazy. In crazy? Insane crazy. In crazy insane. In crazy sane. In crazy sane. I’m crazy sane.

Crazy.”

Then:

“Six.”

Then:

“Crazy crazy craze. Insane craze. Crazy insane craze. Crazy insane crave. Craving crazy craze. Grazing crazy craze. Insane. Insane, crazy, crave. Craving craze. Crazy craving craze crazing crazies. Insane. Crazy. Crazy to crave. Crazy to graze. Crazy to grave. Grazing to craze. Creasing to craze. Insane. Crazy. Crazier craze to crave crazing when crazier crazes have grazed our graves far more crazily. Insane. Insane crazy. In some crazy. Insane; crazy.”

And:

“Seven.”

And:

“Crazy graze. Crazy grave. Grazy grays. Crazy crave. Crazy insane. Crazy insane. Crazy in grave. Crazy engraved. Crazy in graves, crazy in grays, crazy in gays. Crazy in gaze. Crazy I gave. Crazy I slayed. Crazy I spate. Crazy I saved. Crazy I say. Crazy I stay. Crazy insane. Crazy engrayed. Crazy engayed. Crazy and saved. Crazy in grains. Crazy in gray. Crazy in gay. Crazy in gape. Crazy in gains. Crazy insane. Crazy insane. Crazy instay.”

No beat, right to:

“Eight.”

And:

“Crazy insane is crazy to say. Crazy insane is crazy to say. Crazy to stay. Crazy too staid. Crazy too stained. Crazy too, say? Crazy crazy: crazy two,” then quietly: “Stay.” Then, “Crazy insane. Crazy insane. Crazy in spades. Crazy and spayed. Crazy in spates. Crazy in paints. Crazy in pain. Crazy in pain. Crazy in pain, crazy is pain, crazy insane. Crazy insane! Crazy insane. Crazy is safe. Crazy is saved. Crazy and straight. Crazy and gay. Crazy and slain. Crazy is pain. Crazy is pay. Crazy enpained. Crazy insane.”

Quicker:

“Nine.”

Quicker:

“Crazy enslained, crazy explained, crazy insane, crazy explained, crazy crazy crazy insane, crazy, explain, crazy, inplain, crazy is plain,” quieter but with no pause, “Crazy is plain,” then loud again, louder than even before, “Crazy is pain?! But crazy explains, and crazy ends pain, but crazy is pay, and payzy is crane, so crany is zane, crazy in zane, crazy is zane, cazey is rain, razey is crane, crazy insane, crazy in rain—kay, see? Insane. Creasy insane, greasy insane, grainy in grain, razor engrained, really quite crazy insane,” now she’s practically shouting, “Ten, crazy: explain! Crazy is sane, crazy in sane is crazy insane, crazy in crazy insane is in crazy sane crazy craze, crazy in crazy sane insane is in insane crazy sane craze! Sine?! Cosine! Crazy and signed! Crazy cosigned! Crazy cocaine, crazy insane, crazy go sane, crazy gets cane, crazy to crave insane crazy craze! Crazy crazy crazy insane!!!” almost screamed, and then a long inhale, and then, in a quiet whisper:

“Crazy explained.”

And:

“Crazy end pain.”

And she’s done.

Lights dim, rousing applause from the audience, and when the lights come up again the mic has disappeared back into the stage and the masked woman is modestly bowing.

“Wow, just… wow,” says the host who is walking onstage towards her now. “Let’s give it up for Erica Rivera, ladies and gentlemen!” And the crowd continues to go wild until almost all at once their applause disappears. “Breathtaking,” the host says, “takes my breath away every. Time.” And the masked woman, who is not allowed to talk anymore, nods quickly to indicate her emphatic approval.

“Ladies and gentlemen, let’s give it up one more time for last season’s winner, your next great American artist, Erica Rivera!” And the applause comes in and goes out once again, more quickly this time. “Now for those at home who missed last season,” boos from the crowd, “ah, yes, I know, I know, back when we were on streaming-service-that-shall-not-be-named,” laughter from the crowd, “and we didn’t have asbig of an audience, many of you may not have had the privilege of seeing Erica’s incredible performance of ‘Crazy/Insane’—is it crazy slash insane or crazy comma insane, love?” and the masked woman holds up her right hand with one finger up to indicate the first. “Ah, yes, crazy slash insane, one of the most memorable moments of last season’s quarterfinals, when you crawled your way back from Exile Island with that heartrending performance… that you composed with only thirty fleeting minutes in your Artist’s Hourglass! Incredible. Absolutely incredible. Took me right back to filming that episode, truly one of the highlights of my job.” The masked woman nods so emphatically it looks like her mask might fall off. “Now, let’s hear from our judges… although I have a feeling I know what they might say…” and the host, a very tall blonde white woman, giggles a little, mischievously.

“Well, yes, you took the words right out my mouth,” says the first judge, almost annoyed, “and Erica, you took the words out of mine as well. I remember seeing you on Exile Island furiously scribbling down words on paper instead of, as your competitors did, choosing a genre more… adequate for the time limit, like dance or sculpture, and I thought, this girl’s writing her ticket home. And then you stood in front of us and bared your soul, and, my love, tonight you have done it again, proved to everyone here and everyone watching that you are the next great American artist. Bravo. Brava. Bravissimo,” and he makes a chef’s kiss gesture with his hand and puckered lips. Applause, applause, applause.

“And Marie?” asks the host coyly. “Did Erica do it for you tonight again?”

And the second judge nearly screams, “She!!! Sure!!! Damn!!! Did!!!” and, exaggeratedly, she stands up and gives the masked woman another, short round of applause, accompanied by a little celebratory jig. Sitting down, and more quietly, she continues: “She surely damn-diddle-dee did. I mean, wow. Erica. I remember that night like it was yesterday and, you know, I hate to agree with Jésus here,” light, brief ribbing between judge number one and judge number two, “but, yes, that night, I was sure you were going home, I mean, we could see what you and Dawn and Blu were doing and Blu, I mean, Blu is an incredible sculptor, and Dawn an incredible dancer, and we could see a little of what you were doing and I thought, ‘What is this girl thinking?!’ but then you came out and absolutely. Destroyed. That. Stage. With. Your. Words. I could not believe it. That—and those of you who want to compete next season, pay damn close attention—that, that! Is how you get off Exile Island. Soul-baring. Truly soul-baring. I love you, girl,” and another little bit of exaggerated applause from her.

“Thank you, Marie, we all love it when an artist does it for you,” and Marie, whose mic has been turned off, can nevertheless be heard screaming, “Do it for me, baby!!!” and the host laughs and the masked woman laughs (ostensibly, all we can see is her body shaking as though in laughter) and the judges laugh and then things get serious because the host says, “Now Yousef.”

“Yes,” the third judge says.

“Yousef, are you going to be nice tonight?” the host asks with a mock frown.

“Not. A. Chance,” and the audience boos, loudly. “Oh, yeah, boo me, boooooo me all you want, you’ll never be able to boo me harder than you booed me that night when I voted for Blu, who, by the way, just last month received a MacArthur ‘genius’ grant,” applause and whooping from the audience, “so I’d like to think my judgment isn’t too far off,” laughter from all involved, “but we’re here to talk about Erica, who, as you all know, I did vote for in the final vote during the finale, unlike, ahem, some people,” and Marie, again off-mic but still audible, screams, “Well, you wouldn’t have been able to vote for her in the finale if we hadn’t gotten her off of Exile Island!!!” and judges one and two share a laugh that the camera cuts to just for a moment, “but, well, I have to tell you, Erica, now that you are here again,” and he says this with complete sincerity: “Mea culpa. Mea culpa, my friend. You proved tonight, just as you did last season, why you are worthy of the title of the next great American artist and I couldn’t be more impressed,” and the camera cuts back to the masked woman and the host so the host can lead the masked woman off-stage and bring this season's remaining contestants up for the final group challenge, but judge number three wants to add something else so the camera cuts back to him so he can say:

“I just have to say something about that performance, because I didn’t get to say it last season, because I wouldn’t have known to say it last season. Erica, you and I have spoken several times since last season’s finale and you talked to me about the piece, and about the criticism I gave you the night of the quarterfinals, and I have to say this or I wouldn’t feel right… Erica, you were right. Can I talk a little about what you said to me,” and the masked woman, after the shortest beat, nods emphatically. “Now, you told me that the poem was inspired by an encounter you had, long before you even auditioned for the show, with, if I remember correctly, a sensitivity reader?” The masked woman nods again emphatically. “Well. Ladies and gentlemen, according to Erica, the sensitivity reader had told her, after reading the manuscript of her first novel, not to use the words ‘crazy’ or ‘insane’ because they were quote-unquote stigmatizing,” boos from the crowd, louder than any of the boos so far, “and you, Erica, as someone who struggles with her mental health, were inspired, in that moment, at the end of your rope with only thirty minutes in your Hourglass, to meet the theme of the quarterfinals, ‘Taboo,’ with a very personal, very intimate, very abstract exploration of what it means to struggle with mental health, and Erica, sweetheart, I need to say this: Congratulations, truly congratulations,” aww’s and applause from the crowd as judge number three begins to tear up, “I truly misunderstood you last season and I am so grateful and humbled to be in front of you again—for me to be in front of you—and get to tell you that you really are, to me, the next great American artist. You nailed it, you nailed me, you nailed that work to the wall with no apologies and that makes me want to be a better artist,” and, “Isn’t that what this show is all about, ladies and gentlemen?!” and big, long whoops—loud whooping cheers, and adoring screams, and loving shouts—and one more long round of applause from the crowd, from the host, from Jésus, Marie, and Yousef, applause, applause, applause—applause that feels, to the woman in the mask, like it will never fucking stop.

















length: 3,349 words

content/trigger warnings: graphic depictions of violence, suicide, and the physiological effects of medically transitioning, discussions of violence, abuse, a parent being violent towards and abusing their child, forced detransition, suicide, torture, imprisonment, psychosis, murder, settler colonialism, and death, written from the perspective of someone with a history of being violent and abusive

note: there is a glitch with the footnotes. if you click the return arrows that follow each footnote (they look like this: ↩︎), or if you click the numbers in brackets that indicate a footnote, it will take you to the very first set of footnotes instead of where you're trying to go. i apologize, i will fix this asap. in the meantime, please avoid clicking the return arrows (↩︎) that follow each footnote, as well as the numbers in brackets that indicate footnotes.

Secondary note: I fear that writing this and making it public will be, in some strange and/or indirect way, the catalyst for the creation of the harm I describe below, rather than its antidote. If this turns out to be the case, however, I cannot consider it (wholly?) my fault (and, of course, this work describes some kind of plan around how to mitigate/address that). Let us be done with blaming ourselves for the decision-making and actions of people who violently abuse us and/or co-opt/distort our work. They, and they alone, must be held responsible for the harm they choose to perpetrate. Of course, institutions, structures, and systems (e.g., racial capitalism, cisheterosexism, patriarchy, settler colonialism) play a role in this. But you cannot hold an institution, structure, or system accountable. You can only—and must—destroy it.

Final note: I have replaced the word “evil” in this piece with the word “harm,” and I have replaced the word “righteous” with the word “just.” I do this after re-reading a discussion of these words/concepts in “learning good consent,” and I feel I am reading/understanding it for the first time. To speak in terms of evil and righteousness is, I think, part of the problem of pervasive violence and abuse, especially sexual violence and sexual abuse. I am disclaiming this here to make clear that, as with all that I write, this piece is also a living document that will grow and change as I grow and change.

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(I was wrong; now I know that art has a purpose, now I know what that purpose is.)

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Many people, throughout my life, tell me they think I am clairvoyant.

I laugh when they say this; I reply: “Hell, I wish.” Underneath the laughter, there is fear because I know that they are right.

My first vision comes when I am nine years old, shortly after the first time I try to commit suicide (with a fucking butter knife; I suppose I have always been melodramatic). I am in the backseat of my parents' car and all I can see is a man in a jail cell, and then a courtroom, saying the words I am speaking as a child to my parents. He is pleading insanity and convincing those around him to be lenient with their punishment by using his visions of my life (quite literally co-opting my life/story) as proof that he is too sick to be judged. I speak and in my vision he speaks what I speak too, and at that age I assume this is an older me, past and future entangled. I also believe it possible that I, a nine-year-old, am a hallucination, and that the man from the future is hallucinating me. That I am not real: I am merely his vision.

My second vision comes when I am in eleventh grade (16 years old). I am asked for the first time to write a short story for class, and I tell the story of a 16-year-old girl who has visions of the future because of the violence and abuse she endures at the hands of her father. At the end of the story, she shares her most recent vision: her own murder. She decides, while taking the SAT (during which, according to her vision, her murder will occur), to kill herself before she can be killed, so determined is she to change her fate, and she stabs herself in the eye with a No. 2 pencil until the graphite finds its way into the depths of her brain.

My teacher leaves a note at the top: “Please see me.” I see her and her concern and I assure her it is fiction. I suspect that it is not. I see the girl from the future as vividly as I saw the man from the future seven years prior, and I experience what she experiences just as vividly too. The story lingers in my mind for years after that, then just as quickly vanishes.

The third vision comes yesterday, and now I have had enough visions to understand, although a full day-and-a-half passes before I finally do. This third vision I experience completely firsthand: I have been kidnapped by an isolated sect of anarchists who torture me as punishment for doing Art, Strike! all wrong. The torture is endless; it involves, among other things, being confronted by those who I have hurt and facing how I hurt them. I try to escape too often, and the torture intensifies each time. I am allowed to wander around their compound freely, but I am a pariah: spat upon, ridiculed, kicked and beaten, often naked, always in pain.

The sect has something of a leader; no one calls her this, or even treats her like one, but you can tell that she is different. She exacts upon me the most brutal of the tortures; in fact, I am sure she is the one who designs it all. The place where I am being tortured is utopia, so everyone around me is full of life and love, except for her, who is always stoic. Even when she smiles, she is stoic. (I can, after I awaken from the vision, remember everyone's faces except hers, although I remember enough to know that it is different from mine. It is certainly not mine.)

Eventually, the torture culminates in brainwashing; they break my psyche down into bits and reassemble them as they see fit. Once more I am naked before them as they chant with just glee, with absolute hatred (what they chant I can barely process; this is how totally they have broken me).

My transformation is complete; they have purged the world of my harm.

This is the end of the vision: everyone chanting and cheerful I have been defeated. Except for the woman whose face I cannot fully see. She sits in a large armchair and simply stares. I think I see her smile. I do know her from somewhere. Then I wake up.

For some time (hours), I am terrified. This is the first vision of mine that I know is a vision; the others I always suspected were visions, but of this one I am certain. I am certain that this vision is my future. I am certain that there is something deeply wrong with Art, Strike! and that I am fated to be tortured for it. I am certain of this because I have already made mistakes and it has only been a week; I am certain because I am not allowed to make mistakes and yet nevertheless I have made them. Then those hours pass and I remain just as certain about all of this, but all at once my fear is gone. I accept my fate, even as I know I will struggle against it by ensuring there is not and never will be anything deeply wrong with Art, Strike!, even if I end up in the same place anyways.

What else could I possibly do?

I keep telling myself not to parse the vision further. I want to know why I am suddenly so certain it is a vision, why I am more sure than ever that I am clairvoyant; I have wanted my whole life to figure everything out, but this I think deserves more respect. Nevertheless, my mind races until I remember the other visions: the ones I suspected were visions, the ones which I know now were. And immediately I read the story they tell.

The main character in the short story is the man from the future's child, my grand-daughter; the man from the future is her father, my son. I cannot and will never have children so this is metaphorical. What I mean is I give birth to him, and he does the same for her.

How I give birth to him is this.

Art, Strike! has an endpoint and it is less than a year from now.[1] I have baked the end of Art, Strike! into the beginning (like a good novel; like a good play) because the only way to guarantee something never even begins to move towards becoming an industrial complex is to end it before it can start. We will look back in a year's time and ask, “What was Art, Strike!?” and we will put extra emphasis on the word “was.”

  1. I do not believe that anything in this paragraph, including this sentence, should be up to me. I don't think that anything about Art, Strike! should really be up to me, at least not me alone. I have many ideas about the future of Art, Strike! but I sense they may be the least interesting ideas about Art, Strike! currently in existence. I hope that, soon, the ideas of others about Art, Strike! become realities just as mine have, at least so far. Art, Strike! is not and never will be “mine.” It is, as much as this is possible, everybody else's. ↩︎

But fools believe in resurrection.

The man I give birth to is a man who I believe has yet to be born. His parents (right now, perhaps) are in the process of making the love that will spawn him. And he will grow and begin to have visions and they will be of me. You see, we are entangled. I do not know exactly why or how, but I have my theories. He will have visions of me and then find my work; he will uncover the history of Art, Strike! and the story of Erica Rivera and the similarities between his life and mine will lead him to think himself my metaphorical son and he will feel obligated to 1) transition and 2) resurrect Art, Strike!.

He will not, as I do, feel like he would rather be tortured for eternity than allow Art, Strike! to cause anyone harm. He will resurrect Art, Strike! and it will be at least half of the horsemen of the apocalypse. He will be jailed at some point for the violence he unleashes, perhaps for that which he unleashes on his child, the girl from the future.

I believed that my third vision was about me because the person being tortured is a man who is told he will never be allowed to transition in order to escape accountability, a man whose torturers forcibly detransition him, as part of their torture. [REDACTED].

But something nags at me as I examine this; one of the people he's harmed and forced to face in my vision says her grandfather unleashed violence upon her family members because of what the man did, because the man has brown hair and so do the family members her grandfather abuses and this is just how her grandfather's pain and violence manifest but that all of this is his fault.

And yet I do not have brown hair. (I suppose you could argue I have very, very dark brown hair, but the truth is that my hair is black.)

This single detail produces another, very brief, fourth and final vision: the man from the future imprisoned, being broken out, and for a moment believing himself free, until he realizes who his liberators are and how they have liberated him from his prison in order to hold him captive in their own.

And now I have the whole story.

There is a man who has likely not yet been born who will unleash terrible suffering upon the world. He will do this by resurrecting Art, Strike! many years, perhaps decades, after its endpoint. He will think himself good and just, although he will be a violent abuser, and he will justify his behavior by saying, “Well, Erica had a history of being violent and abusive.”

I have a history of being violent and abusive. I am not still a violent abuser.[1] I have the capacity to be violent and abusive, just as we all do. But the responsibility upon my shoulders is so heavy and so delicate that there is no room for mistakes, even as I make several in just my first week. These mistakes, I hope and believe, are not wholly irreversible, as my past mistakes always were. My mistakes are nevertheless always decisions I make, for which I must atone, and my recognition of them as mistakes, and my attempts to address their fallout, help ensure that I will not make a single mistake more, or else I will humbly sharpen the knives for those who wish to cut me into pieces.[2]

  1. I believe and understand this internally. I cannot and must not expect anyone else to believe or understand this until there is enough mutual trust between us for them to feel secure that this is true. It is possible that some may never believe or understand this; this, I accept and will always respect. ↩︎

  2. This final sentence, to me, re-reading it a day after writing it, smacks too much of martyrdom. I will certainly make more mistakes, and as I know now that the pressure of perfection kills, I must not make yet another mistake by expecting that 1) I must never make another mistake again, and 2) I will never make another mistake again. Someone wise tells me mistakes are inevitable, and I want to resist this because it feels too generous, but that is the point: to be generous when it is impossible to be generous, to be kind when it is impossible to be kind. Mistakes are inevitable, and it is not my duty to sharpen knives or encourage violence against me; it is my duty to, as I say in the sentence preceding, recognize my mistakes as best I can, atone for them as best I can, and address their fallout as best I can. The word “humbly” comes into this as the humility of knowing that, even with these best of intentions, I may never be capable of understanding the size or scope or number of my mistakes, and this is something that I must recognize and atone for and address as well, in my every word and with my every action. ↩︎

But the man from the future will not understand this; he will read my words and understand only what he wants to.

All abuse is violent, but not all violence is abuse. The violence of self-defense is just; the violence of killing or maiming one's abuser is just; the violence of colonized against colonizer is just. Nevertheless, all violence has a price, a tax on the human soul. If there is room in utopia for people with a history of being violent, it is as accomplices to killers and maimers of abusers, as supporters of teachers of self-defense, as friends to those waging war on the people who refuse to relinquish power.[1]

  1. After an important conversation with someone I know and care about, I edit this sentence to add the words “accomplices to,” “supporters of,” and “friends to.” Without this nuance, this piece centers me and my desires and emotions too much (although I know, technically, it is “about” me). Nevertheless, I must make clear that it is not my job to kill or maim the abusers of others, for that may not be the justice those who have been harmed desire. Nor can anyone feel safe being taught self-defense, an intimate and sacred practice, by someone with a history of being violent and abusive. And, finally, I cannot lead or wage war on people who refuse to reliquish power because I still have and hold power and have not yet fully relinquished it. I work to do this every day, most recently by changing my profile on Chill Subs so that, instead of it saying I am “editor of Art, Strike!,” it now reads: “Erica Rivera (she/her) / editor for Art, Strike!” (emphasis added). ↩︎

It is as designers of torture for those who dare to resurrect the dead.

The woman from the future is me. I cannot see her face because I cannot yet see my own; estrogen will soon course through my body and change everything about me. My testicles will be removed and after that my penis; my breasts will swell with sweetness, my hips and thighs with fat. The tone of my voice will soften; the touch of my fingers too. Eventually, I will look like her, the stoic woman who is somewhat of a leader although she would be the first to call for the abolition of such ideas. She will be the first to say that everyone around her leads her, that she long ago relinquished free will because although everyone deserves joy and care and pleasure, not everyone deserves free will, starting with those who have histories of denying free will to others.[1] The woman from the future has a history of being violent and abusive but she has learned from that history and developed a particular set of skills, perhaps the kind that can lead to some kind of liberation, or at the very least, gesture at it. She has visions and they are mine. My vision requires me to endure from the perspective of the man in the future the torture she will exact upon him because this is the only way to ensure the torture she exacts is just.

  1. For updates on my thinking around this, please read my poem titled, “orbicular” at https://www.riveraerica.com/orbicular/ ↩︎

The truth is that everyone is clairvoyant. Those who already know this know also that its source is trauma; trauma is the catalyst for clairvoyance. This is because clairvoyance is the same as hyperempathy; a better word for it may be hypersensitivity. Clairvoyants are sensitive to everything: the tiniest twitches, the most invisible winds. If you allow yourself to feel enough, you will have visions too.

The man from the future has brown hair and a daughter, who will be the first person he harms. I can tell you more about him because the visions described here are not the only ones I have had. I have had hundreds, maybe thousands, of visions, almost all of which are chronicled in the art and writing I have produced since childhood, almost none of which is published or public. Much of it has been destroyed, but lives on in my head.

If I need to find him, I can. If I need to find him, I will. If I need to make his nightmares real, then they will be the realest.

The truth is that visions are never certain. They may come to pass, or they may not, and that is largely up to us. The truth is that art has one function: not to chronicle visions, but to change them, if that is needed. To make real different futures.

This is a work of art, a piece of writing. In creating it, I hope to change the futures in my visions before they come to pass. After all is said and done with Art, Strike!, this is the part of my contribution to it that I will ensure persists for all eternity.

This is a warning.

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(I was right; Joan of Arc, as I have always suspected, did not do what she did simply because she thought it just; she did it, as well, because she feared beyond words the angels who delivered her visions.)[1]

  1. I am not Joan of Arc, but I am adding her to the list of people I pray to before or during every meal. ↩︎

















Beauty can be frightening, but it is nevertheless, still and always, beauty.

















length: 42 words

content/trigger warning: discussion of death, afterlife

everything in existence

is a collaboration

between those who are here

and those who are not.

this means that

everyone who has ever lived

(everything that has ever been,

everything that ever could be,

everything that ever could have been)

is here,

with us,

all of the time.

length: 2,026 words

#fiction

content/trigger warnings: discussions of death, grief, child trafficking, and adoption, written by someone who is not an adoptee

















The plot was, indeed, very ridiculous.

It did not make Erica laugh or smile, but it did let her wander into a silly fictional world where people got caught in terrifyingly perilous situations and then escaped like it was nothing—a decent enough recipe for fleeting, escapist popcorn. Watching it, at first, had felt like a chore, as she tried to unstick her mind from the walls around her, and drag it into the silly fictional world with its nonsensical rules and neat resolutions. But eventually, finally, she gave in and got lost in it—peeled her anxiety down like it had been stuck up with tape, let it fall in slow motion like a loose leaf fluttering down and away from its tree.

The movie was at about the halfway point: the main character was trying to escape a safehouse swarmed by armed mercenaries, sent by her employers to catch and/or kill her, while talking to her employers over a wireless communicator as they dropped hints that the conspiracy she was uncovering was real—that her employers, whom she had, since birth, believed were her parents, did not birth/raise her, but had instead taken her from those who had birthed/raised her, a group of enigmatic celebrity historians that she had been tasked with capturing at the beginning of the film, setting the rest of the events of the movie in motion.

(Indeed, very ridiculous.)

But everyone, Erica thought, at some point wonders if they’re adopted, and that was what had drawn her into the film: the idea that relationships between individuals in a family can exemplify (or clarify) how history makes itself felt in every present action and dynamic—that the past wasn’t even past, as someone whose name she couldn’t remember had written in a book she’d long ago skimmed.

But the revelation dawning on the main character—that the historians had been telling the truth when, shortly after she'd captured them (at a Hollywood premiere, because, of course, the main character’s public-facing identity was that of a cherished A-list movie star), they had cryptically intimated she was their blood kin, fated to become their new leader—crept towards Erica with tendrils that threatened to brush away her own thoughts and aggressively reweave them until they were the size and shape of the main character in the film.

Erica had never asked her parents if she was adopted, and she’d never really felt the need to look into it (her birth certificate seemed authentic, she had her mother’s nose, her father’s eyes, etc.) but she was so different from them in so many ways—in every way that was not physical, she'd always felt—that she too, like many, felt called out to by the questions that haunt a diasporic world. Who am I, really? How easy would it have been for everyone to have lied to me about it? How little did I care, to not have tried harder to find out? How much do I even care now? And what would answers really change—about anything, if anything?

Erica knew it was grief talking. Mostly her parents', but also her own, a little, sure—it wasn’t like she'd known her grandparents well; her parents had kept them at arm’s length, which had only bothered her as a child (back when everyone called her Eric, back when they thought she was a boy) because classmates would come back from summer breaks to regale their friend group with stories of weird houses and stinky foods, stories set in faraway places with bizarre customs and new smells and funny-looking people, and she’d talk about summer camp or cruise liners and she couldn’t help, even at that age, feeling like her stories weren’t up to par. But as she’d aged, she’d understood that her parents’ relationships with their parents were far more complicated than she dared try to understand: that there was an unspeakable universe of pain there that, she wondered, might have been what drew her father to her mother, and the reverse (i.e., shared trauma, one of the most perilous bonds two people can forge).

Erica’s parents had grown up only children, and they had always felt like only children. Sometimes she wondered if she’d even been conceived on purpose. There'd always been something in their voices—something far more perceptible after the deaths of their parents—that told her they pitied her: that they were glad they were only children because it meant there were no other children like them, and that they regretted, at least a little, that they had ended up echoing the same (restrained) ambition of their parents, instead of downsizing their bloodline over a generation from one child to zero.

Erica loved her parents; her parents had done a fine job of raising her, she’d always felt, especially when compared to the parents of her peers, and that this didn’t necessarily make them good parents, but that it also didn’t mean they had been badparents. Fine as opposed to perfect. Reserved; insular. Very internal. Very connected to each other but not much else. Not even her. They had never once complained about how often she spent her time away from them, how she'd rarely been home when she lived in their home and rarely was alone with them for longer than a meal and always pursued whatever she had been interested as passionately as she could even when that had taken time—so, so much time—away from them.

She had grown up feeling like an assignment, one lasting 18 years and that, afterwards, all there was for them to do was to die (and watch those around them do the same).

I have grown up
 an assignment: 18 years, timed. time's up, so pencils down, now please just rest in peace.

She had written the poem in college for an assignment about family, and rarely returned to the theme in her work since, though she recognized that that had been when her mind had first birthed the question of adoption—first as fear, then as fantasy—a fear, and then fantasy, that had vanished just as suddenly in a matter of months, around the time she’d started dating women.

In the movie, adoption for the main character was fear, not fantasy. After narrowly escaping the safehouse, she found refuge in what had once been a bustling movie theater, now hollowed out into living quarters for a few dozen people with nowhere else to go. Attempting to blend in as a drifter obviously failed; moments passed before she was recognized, and then moments more before she recognized the people recognizing her. The movie theater’s residents were mostly movie actors/actresses the main character had once reveled in seeing onscreen, the skillful way they'd controlled their bodies and emotions being part of why she had chosen—when given the choice by her parents/“parents”/employers at 16—her public-facing identity to be one of an actress. The actors/actresses explained the choice had not been a choice, as it had not been a choice for them, either: they too had been employed by her employers, raised by them as their children, and been told, just as she had, at 16, that they could give exactly half of themselves to any career of their choosing, and that—because of how their parents/“parents”/employers had taken them to movie after movie, weekend after weekend, and because these future actors/actresses had also reveled in seeing people skillfully control their bodies and emotions—they had, like her, chosen to live publicly as actors/actresses, until they'd aged out of A-list roles and their employers had discarded them as easily as the entertainment industry had. They'd been told that, were they ever to try to work again, they would be killed, and it was only then that the actors/actresses—each during different years, and under different circumstances, but always in the same way—had begun to suspect they had no idea where they really came from. They'd each felt that parents would not discard their children so easily, without remorse, as though their familial bond had been a simple financial transaction. And the main character shared her own story and their sympathetic reactions made her more sure than ever that the historians had been telling the truth.

The main character, through burning, infernal wails, vocalized her angst and anger about having captured and delivered so many targets to her employer as their agent (“their hunter, their wolf-dog,” the actress playing the main character whispered so bitterly the dialogue almost didn’t seem totally weird) without question. The truth obliterated everything she thought she knew about herself. Everything. Every act was suddenly poisoned. Every part of her wasn’t real.

After the ex-actors/ex-actresses finished comforting her, they told her their plan. They'd assembled a small army, and, later that evening, would be breaking into the city’s Hall of Records, in an attempt to, as they put it, “give everyone a clean slate,” by which they meant destroy the building, on a semi-suicide mission, and at this point, the plot of the movie had become so convoluted that Erica lowered the volume and opened the movie’s Wikipedia page (the movie kept playing in the bottom-left corner of her phone, picture-in-picture) to figure out who the hell had greenlit this movie and why.

Of course.

It was based on a video game.

And Erica read about the video game the movie was based on and found the plot was more or less the same, except with a few even more ridiculous missions/storylines, which had been (thankfully) cut from the film.

In the movie, the main character was agreeing to join the ex-actors and ex-actresses on their semi-suicide mission and then marching with their army towards the Hall of Records, their horde framed moodily by torrential rain from a nasty thunderstorm that—overwhelmingly melodramatically—included multiple lightning strikes landing near and around them, with not one of the tragic soldiers flinching even a little, so resolute in their mission they each seemed to be.

And the main character, too.

Erica considered turning the movie off at that point; there seemed, to her, to be power in that. She found it distasteful, of course, that the multibillion-dollar blockbuster was exploiting the trauma of adoption so grotesquely, centering a conventionally attractive light-skinned celebutante as though it were people who looked like her who had to navigate these questions in real life, and that, in order to make the conspiracy questionable but plausible, had made her parents/“parents”/employers a dark-skinned man and a light-skinned woman, and the cult of historians claiming her as their own a group of light-skinned, ethnically ambiguous characters played by a group of light-skinned, ethnically ambiguous actors/actresses, when the reality was that it was always lily-white parents/“parents” who felt most entitled to baskets of (light-skinned, ethnically ambiguous) children. Erica didn’t believe she was adopted so it wasn’t her struggle, per se, but she knew the movie was ridiculous in this way, too. She imagined the climax of the movie would be a confrontation between the main character’s parents/“parents”/employers and the cult of historians, and the main character would be forced to choose, and the decision would be torturous because it would involve accepting she'd been a victim of trafficking, and that she had almost delivered the people who had actually birthed/raised her to the people who had stolen/trafficked her.

It was just so fucking ridiculous. If Erica had been the main character, she would have left the narrative altogether and used her wealth to buy some really, really good therapy. (Maybe, like, some ketamine treatments, or something.)

But it was a movie and everything in movies gets resolved with violence and that was why Erica felt she was ready to turn the movie off.

Instead, she left the movie playing on her phone but turned her phone upside down and turned the volume down to the lowest possible setting without muting it altogether, and then turned herself upside down too, and quickly fell asleep.

















length: 7,849 words

content/trigger warnings: discussions of mass shootings, mental illness, transphobia, sexual fetishes (bondage, feces, and vomit), addiction (pornography), violence, and abuse, written by someone with a history of being violent and abusive

note: there is a glitch with the footnotes. if you click the return arrows that follow each footnote (they look like this: ↩︎), or if you click the numbers in brackets that indicate a footnote, it will take you to the very first set of footnotes instead of where you're trying to go. i apologize, i will fix this asap. in the meantime, please avoid clicking the return arrows (↩︎) that follow each footnote, as well as the numbers in brackets that indicate footnotes.

final note: this essay is a living document that will change and grow over the course of my lifetime as i change and grow over the course of my lifetime, because accountability work for people with histories of being violent and abusive is a lifelong, ongoing process. the essay as it is presented here was written in january 2023; anytime i add anything longer than a few words, i will update this sentence accordingly. 

i am unsure whether this is the right thing to do or say here, but if it turns out not to be, i will change this note accordingly as well: if you have any questions about my ongoing accountability work, especially if you have a history of being violent and abusive and are unsure how to begin your own accountability work, please feel free to contact me at work AT RiveraErica DOT com. i am not a professional, but i am willing to share what i have learned, or at least point you towards other kinds of resources.

one resource is “learning good consent,” which is available as a free PDF online, but which is also available for purchase from multiple presses and distros. if you want help finding it, or would like to me to assist you with purchasing it, please let me know and i will help as best i can. 

“learning good consent” is only one resource of many, but it is a start, and although not all abuse or violence is inherently sexual in nature, much of it is, and the text offers important information to anyone who has harmed others in any way.

this final note is repeated at the end of the essay, in the final footnote.

I fear writing this essay. I drive away from home after writing some of it and all I can think is that if someone were to break into my apartment, crack the password to my computer, and read my most recently opened file, it would be this document and they would realize they had broken into the apartment of a trans person, and then maybe they would decide, transphobically (paradoxically), to stick around until I got back so they could hurt and/or kill someone who their world has deemed okay to hurt and/or kill.

But this isn’t exactly true. I fear this because I fear that whoever would be breaking into my home would be someone I have wronged, and I have wronged many people, and that they would see this—this essay, my transition—as an attempt to escape accountability (like Junot Díaz in the essay that I read years back[1] and think, “Damn, Jesus,” and then the articles about his history of being violent and abusive come out[2][3] and I think, in a very different way, “Damn, Jesus,” and then put sticky notes over his cover blurbs on my books because I never want to think about him again, except that thinking about what he did is one of the reasons I choose to try to write this essay in the first place), and that, if they weren’t ready to hurt and/or kill me when they broke in, this would push them over the edge.

  1. “The Silence: The Legacy of Childhood Trauma,” by Junot Díaz, published in The New Yorker, 2018. ↩︎

  2. “Junot Díaz Steps Down as Pulitzer Chairman Following Abuse Allegations,” by Lena Wilson, published in Slate, 2018. ↩︎

  3. “Pulitzer winner Junot Díaz has been accused of forcibly kissing a woman and berating 2 others,” by Constance Grady, published in Vox, 2018. ↩︎

But this isn’t exactly true, either. I fear the above because I fear that I am still the kind of person who would break into the home of someone who once wronged me and then decide to hurt and/or kill them because they, in their most recently opened file, wrote about hurting me and also about being trans, as an attempt to escape accountability (like Junot Díaz), and that, if I hadn’t been ready to hurt and/or kill them when I broke in, this would push me over the edge.

I am not going to write about the people I’ve hurt and how I hurt them in this piece of writing or any other, unless that piece of writing is addressed to them and for them, and not for an audience. I have already done some of this accountability work, most of it verbal—conversation, dialogue—and though there is still much of this to do, it will not be done here. Writing meant for an audience—for a public—is not where you confess your sins because it would be another, second violation, and one perhaps crueler than the first. You may have wronged people in ways you regret, or been wronged by people in ways you wish they would regret (more); feel free to use your imagination. This essay is not about me, and actually, the first thing I think about this essay after I drive away from home, after writing some of it, is that I need to take myself out of it. I struggle against this; I want to be in it, I think I’m supposed to be part of it.

While driving, I think about how to write it without referencing myself; I don’t have the writing in front of me so I can’t come up with an answer, and also I am trying to be more present, and also I do not want to die in a car accident on the fucking 210 (101? Iconic. 10? Trash. 405? Cute, ish. But the 210? Who even are you?) because I was thinking too hard about a fucking essay. I don’t want to think about artists anymore, I don’t want to think about Antonin Artaud or Nella Larsen or Gertrude Stein or Junot Díaz or Wilhelm Richard Wagner or Vincent Van Gogh or Samuel R. Delany or Octavia E. Butler, or Royal Robertson or Ralph Ellison or Ursula LeGuin or Joan Didion or adrienne maree brown or Kathy Acker or John Fante or Mike Davis or Pedro Iniguez or David Sedaris or Joshua Whitehead or Jackie Ess or Sarah Waters or Park Chan-wook or Bret Easton Ellis or Michael Chabon or Judy Juanita or Seth Rosenfeld or Cory Doctorow or fucking [REDACTED]. I am so tired of thinking about artists, I know exactly how much space they have taken up in my head for so many years and I regret every moment I spent thinking about them instead of the real human beings around me whom I actually care about. I don’t care about artists, frauds, farcical lives lived out trying to paper over one’s flaws with whatever passes for genius at that current moment. Caring about artists and frauds and farces is what, among other things, caused, among other things, me to ignore my so-obvious transness for so fucking long. I don’t want to read any more of their works than I already have in order to write this essay, I don’t want to immerse myself in their archives, I don’t want to trace their histories or read their biographies or critically fabulate about them or anyone else. I don’t want to do any more research. Isn’t this enough? Isn’t what I’m writing enough?Is the work that research reflects really so much more valuable than the work I am doing to write these sentences? Will a few footnotes make the difference between you taking this seriously or not?

But now I am trying to be different again. Genius. Above research. Exempted, because greatness. Not needing to follow the rules because I transcend them.

Fucking gross.

I will do the research because it is asked of me. I will cite because it is a posted requisite. I am special the way Barney the Dinosaur tells you you are special. I am not special the way artists think they are special. I am learning to reach out to all the ones who came before me[1], without trying, with all my might, to be them.

  1. Side note: did you know you can buy a drawing of Royal Robertson’s on eBay for $450 for which the description reads, without a trace of irony, “Very good/perfect, considering the artist's outsider life and environment” (“REDUCED!!! PROPHET ROYAL ROBERTSON Black Outsider Drawing/Last Day Baby-Lon,” posted by user “artistvoodoo” on eBay, 2021)? I learned that today, and, now, so have you, and maybe some other time we’ll discuss the white man who co-opted Royal Robertson’s story. ↩︎

They did not, I think, particularly want to be who they were, either.

*

I already hate this essay. It is already too much: tired, played out. You hurt people and you still want to make art and you have complicated feelings about this. Boo fucking hoo. So let’s talk about something I don’t hate: Parable of the Sower.

[Side note: If this writing seems good or different, I think I should make clear that this writing doesn’t seem good or different to the people I know and care about. The people I know and care about are not enmeshed in the literary world; they read pop fiction when they read, or else get their literature from TV in the form of adaptations. I think this is fucking wonderful. I have to tell someone I know and care about time and time again how fucking lucky they are to not have the entirety of the Western canon kicking around in their head, that their memories aren’t packed with centuries (millennia?) of colonial art. I still make the mistake, anyways, when they ask me for a reading list because they want to get inspiration for their own writing, of not putting the cool, fun writers first. I think, “Well, to appreciate the cool, fun writers, you need a little context,” so I start them off with Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, and The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin, and The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals by Samuel R. Delany. This is a mistake, one I don’t realize until much later after their reading list has been reshuffled so many times that they’re bouncing back and forth between a dozen novels and a dozen more anthologies. I have them read Joan Didion’s The White Album and adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism and Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School (it should be noted that I hand them each book alongside a thorough and comprehensive trigger/content warning) and Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower and John Fante’s Ask the Dust and Samuel R. Delany’s Heavenly Breakfast and Ecology of Fear by Mike Davis (a writer they already know and love) and they want to write funny queer shit so I give them When You Are Engulfed in Flamesby David Sedaris (other funny queer shit on the reading list that I should’ve started them off with instead includes: Joshua Whitehead’s Jonny Appleseed because the possibilities seem infinite for them when I tell them autofiction is, like, its whole own genre, kind of, and super super hot right now, kind of; Jackie Ess’s Darryl because who wouldn’t want to read a novel about a white—genderqueer?—cuck; and Sarah Waters’s Fingersmith which I don’t imagine is particularly funny but we both laugh out loud at Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden—in part because it is a patriarchally cheesy take on violence and abuse, in part because it is horrifying yet fun, and this may be two different ways of saying the same thing—and The Handmaiden is adapted from Fingersmith, which also, I think, is a fucking hilarious title, in part because it sounds like the job title of a locksmith but for fingers—???—or maybe a nice, neat way of describing critical fabulation: it fingers myth) and they want to write dark academia so I give them Bret Easton Ellis’s Less Than Zero (there is an entire section on the reading list relating to dark academia that includes: Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue because his block is one of my old haunts; Judy Juanita’s Virgin Soul because her school is another one of my old haunts; Seth Rosenfeld’s Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power because that school is yet another old haunt; and Cory Doctorow’s Attack Surface because, I don’t know, I’m trying to break up the heavy shit with some YA even though often I feel like YA shit is, like, the heaviest, and also not enough of us confront the reality that the City of Oakland almost built a Domain Awareness Center that would’ve made Keith B. Alexander cream his fucking pants[1][2]] and they get as hooked on Ellis’s nasty bullshit as I did at 18 and that is when I realize my mistake. Whenever they read any of the books I recommend, after they read, they come to me and ask me if writing nasty bullshit is really all it takes to be an acclaimed author, and I tell them, yes: “Yes! That is why I am introducing you to these writers and their work, so you can see how impotent and boring all their silly little books are, so you never again feel intimidated by the idea of writing or publishing or being a working author.”

  1. “Domain Awareness Center,” article on localwiki, last updated 2015. ↩︎

  2. “How the Fight to Stop Oakland's Domain Awareness Center Laid the Groundwork for the Oakland Privacy Commission,” by Brian Hofer, published on the American Civil Liberties Union NorCal website, 2016. ↩︎

But as I watch them get sucked into Less Than Zero harder and faster than they have been by any book so far, and even harder and faster than the first (Invisible Man), I realize that they should have felt intimidated by the idea of writing or publishing or being a working author. They need to feel intimidated by the idea of writing or publishing or being a working author. We all need to feel intimidated by this. Whether we articulate it in so many words or not, fear—I think—is one of the emotions we must pay attention to most when we feel it, even if our instinct or training tells us to brush it away. I think fear—heart racing, palms sweating, gut churning, anxiety peaking—is our body’s way of telling us we are (at least internally) as far from homeostasis as possible. It is, quite often, in my experience, the best idea to move away from what is causing that fear, not towards it. (I am unsure whether the 26-year-old man who prevents the violence in Alhambra, which I will describe below, would agree; he says, in an interview on Good Morning America, “Courage is not the absence of fear,”[1] and I know I sure as hell fucking agree with him.)

  1. “Man who disarmed Monterey Park shooter speaks out: 'Something came over me,'” interview between ABC News's Robin Roberts and Brandon Tsay, 2023. ↩︎

The expression is “face your fear,” but I believe you can face something without needing to move towards it. You can confront it without needing to be inside it. You can untangle it without needing to be all tangled up with it first. (Anyone who’s ever unpacked Christmas lights will tell you: if, in addition to untangling the lights, you were also at its center—the wires wrapped around your limbs and appendages as though you were the goddamn Christmas tree—this would not make untangling the lights any easier. Anyone who’s had good therapy will tell you what I’m talking about, too.)

The publishing industry is irreparably broken (which is true of every industry, of course). There is no amount of money or labor or innovation that will fix its problems. I have to write this essay before I can get paid for it, and there is no guarantee that I will ever be paid for it. What the fuck kind of deal is that?! What the fuck kind of a deal. Is. That. So fear it, please. Fear this industry. Flee, if you are so inclined. It is not a bad idea. The person aforementioned went out of town before I could tell them this in person, but I will tell them when they return:

Fuck writing.

Fuck art.

If this writing seems good or different, it is because I am operating from these positions. I hate almost all writing I read, almost all art I see; I have never read a book I can claim to have truly enjoyed; the writing I do like is almost always written on walls with graffiti, or scrawled in pen inside zines of which only five copies were published, or in lyrics to songs by anonymous musicians. The writing I like reading is libelous, about people I hate, and so literally illegal. The book I like most is the most boring book you’ve ever read, with the shittiest, most Microsoft WordArt book cover in history—riddled with typos, the only copy hidden behind a stack of cookbooks in a used bookstore that’s about to shut down.

I wish more published writers were willing to say this out loud. I wish more working artists were willing to say that we as a species have never produced more art than in this very moment, and that all of it is so, so, so, so fucking bad.

Except for, maybe, Parable of the Sower.]

There is pretty much only one novel that can be written and be, like, actually good, and Octavia E. Butler wrote it. I mean, she wrote over and over in her notebooks like a madwoman that she was going to write The First and Last and Only Novel[1] (I’m paraphrasing) and she absolutely did.

  1. “Behold Octavia Butler’s Motivational Notes to Self,” by Ayun Halliday, published in Open Culture, 2020. ↩︎

I live in Robledo, which is to say a fictional town that most people would call Pasadena. (There is an idea of a Pasadena, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real Pasadena, only Robledo, a walled city thinking itself immune from what surrounds it, and though you can walk its cold streets and you can shake its mayor’s hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense that life in Pasadena is comparable to life in any other awful little segregated town choked by its proximate metropolis: Pasadena simply is not there.)

Octavia fucking nails Robledo (to the fucking ground, then dances and pisses all over it; I love it). Come visit. It’s exactly the same as it was then and as it is in the book. Unspeakable violence happens here (mostly at its margins) literally every day. Hours before I write this in my cute Robledo apartment, twelve miles south of me (in Monterey Park) is the location of the deadliest mass shooting since Uvalde, which (for reference, in case you’ve lost track) is the deadliest mass shooting since Buffalo, which (for reference, in case you’ve lost track) is the deadliest mass shooting since El Paso, which (for reference, in case you’ve lost track) is the deadliest mass shooting since Parkland, which (for reference, in case you’ve lost track) is the deadliest mass shooting since Paradise, which (for reference, in case you’ve lost track) is the deadliest mass shooting since Pulse, which (for reference, in case you’ve lost track) is the deadliest mass shooting since San Bernardino, which is a straight shot (ugh) down the 210 (ugh).

The news says he (the Monterey Park shooter) tried to pull off a second mass shooting three miles north of the first, in Alhambra, but was disarmed by the aforementioned 26-year-old man[1], and I wonder whether, if this hadn’t happened, the shooter would have headed another three miles north and shot up a place near where CalTech meets the Huntington Library, which is where Octavia E. Butler’s archives live and are accessible to the public (I drive past it all the time but have only gone once since moving here; it is, like all museums/archives/estates, a very chilling place); and if he’d gone four for four and travelled yet another three miles north, he might have killed me in my home.

  1. “Man seen as hero grabbed gun from Monterey Park shooter: ‘I needed to take this weapon,’” by Richard Winton and Julia Wick, published in the Los Angeles Times, 2023. ↩︎

But then to lump all of the aforementioned acts of unspeakable violence together threatens to elide their very important differences—this shooter was an Asian (American?) man, his victims were Asian American people, the locations he targeted were predominantly patronized by Asian American customers, in a predominantly Asian American city, during the city’s Lunar New Year festival (also, he was fucking 72???)—but then the truth is that all unspeakable violence is more or less the same, handcrafted from hatred and pain and entitlement and a vicious desire for vengeance (I’m not really sure human beings are capable of killing without this last one). We hurt the people we know. We hurt the people we know how to hurt hardest because it is an opportunity to inflict maximum pain. We hurt the people we know in order to hurt ourselves, although I always wish we would cut out the middlemen and just hurt ourselves to begin (and end) with. But we have a name for this—the “suicide epidemic”—and the fact that we separate it from other acts of unspeakable violence (and then lump them together to elide their very important differences) is also part of the problem, of course. I was not, in all likelihood—even if I ran directly into the shooter and called him all sorts of ugly, cruel names—going to be murdered (by him). And I cannot, of course, say that I ever hurt others in order to hurt myself. I hurt others in order to hurt others, and in order to hurt myself. The first part is the most important one (the only important one?), but the (small, very small) second part is revealing, too. I think if guns were designed only to shoot backwards, at the gun holder, we wouldn’t have mass shootings, just more suicides. I think if you plucked every mass shooter in history out of their timeline right before they committed unspeakable violence and locked them up in tiny rooms, they wouldn’t try to escape; they’d bang their heads against the walls until they bled, and died. Most people in solitary confinement only do this when they feel they have no other choice. I think violent, abusive people are violent and abusive towards whatever is front of them, or whomever they know best, and that, if they’re the only target available, they’ll cut their own damn (dick/head)s off. Guns (knives, fists, weapons, words) make it possible to skip the part where you realize you are the one who deserves to suffer most, for being willing to inflict violence on others; violence is the BetterHelp of suffering. A shortcut; a displacer. And you cannot pluck a mass shooter out of their timeline, even hypothetically, because we cannot know—we cannot know—whether they will be a mass shooter until they (mass) shoot. We cannot know—we cannot know—until someone is violent whether they will be violent. A history of violence is an excellent predictor. Being white and/or a man are excellent predictors. Being skinny and/or cis and/or able-bodied and/or “neurotypical” are excellent predictors, too. Plotting violence and executing every part of that plot right up to the actual violence is also an excellent predictor that, yes, this person (or people) will follow through with that violence.

But prediction is not predestination. To assume that nothing can be done between the moment of deciding and the moment of doing is to throw one’s hands up in the air and say, “Well, thoughts and fucking prayers.” There is a study (that we needed a fucking study to prove this is one of the many good arguments, I think, for abolishing academia) that shows that, like, giving a stranger a muffin for no reason is, like, more valuable to them, emotionally, than, like, money, or whatever. I don’t know, you can read the footnote, something about how kindness, in small moments, like, matters.[1](More like money, at every moment, matters; I don’t know why they couldn’t have given people cash instead of muffins.) I know that this sounds like the worst possible fucking solution to gun violence ever—be nice!!!!—but it may be the one of the few solutions most of us have access to, as individuals, short of truly radical revolution. [Side note: As I edit this document a day after beginning to write it, I bounce back and forth between it and the news which is saying someone—another Asian (American?) man, another old man, 67 years old—has killed 7 people in Half Moon Bay, the first four victims being killed (for reference, in case you’ve lost track) about 11 miles southwest of the offices I worked out of the last time I had a full-time job, not too far south of San Francisco; the shooter and victims are, as far as I can tell, all farmworkers and this makes me want to print as many copies of this essay as I can and paper myself over with them and then light them on fire because I don’t know how else I am meant to respond to this, except that this oversaturation of violence is the oversaturation of violence everyone with even a little less power than I has known every moment of their entire lives, so maybe I should shut the fucking fuck up. I don’t even really know where to place this side note but I feel it is important to (side) note, and here is as good a place as any (that’s how shooters seem to see the world, anyways, I guess).] Truly radical revolution is absolutely necessary (like, literally, right now) so please don’t misunderstand me; but so/too many of us are so disconnected from a path towards that truly radical revolution that, sometimes, all we can do that is truly/radically revolutionary, on a day-to-day basis, is—if we have any kind of power whatsoever, or even if we think we do not—to be kind when it feels absolutely impossible to do so. It is rich, of course, for a person with a history of violence to be telling people to be kind to people on the verge of committing violence. Really, I am talking to myself. Really, it is that I understood too late that it is easier to be kind to others when you are kind to yourself. That being kind to yourself is not a prerequisite for being kind to others—in fact, being kind to others is literally kind of the onlyrequisite for, like, being worthy of being alive, generally—but that being kind to yourself makes being kind to others easier, especially during the moments when it feels impossible. God, now I sound like “This is Water,” and that shit makes me want to fucking puke (and not in the hot, fetish-y way; just kidding, I have a scat fetish but I’m not a total freak; just kidding, I know people with puke fetishes and I get it, it’s, like, intense, and real, and intense, and, like, that’s real, so, like, I promise wholeheartedly, no ill will towards puke fetishists from my end) so let me just wrap this part up already. My point is that in The OA, which is a hell of a mixed bag (largely because it is a white woman’s co-optation of Octavia E. Butler’s story—or Lauren Olamina’s?), a group of students prevent a mass shooting by distracting the shooter, for just a few minutes, with a synchronized dance[2]. The dance is so bizarre and surreal that the shooter is literally stunned, and though the show and that episode and its climax are all, like, so fucking cringe—because, one would hope, the beauty that is human life would be stunning enough to prevent violence, though it rarely ever (or never) is—the idea is that something as bizarre and surreal as a group of high-schoolers from disparate social and economic networks, plus one of their teachers, dancing in perfect sync (for, like, 90 seconds, tops) can counter, perhaps, something as bizarre and surreal as a mass shooting. (That someone might try to learn this dance and dance it at a mass shooter during a mass shooting is one of the many good arguments, I think, for abolishing television.) The idea, in the show, is that to be kind when it is impossible to be kind is just as bizarre and surreal as violence itself. That when the main character in Everything Everywhere All at Once (also mixed bag; also so cringe, but only because it should have been a short story or novel—as a televisualized narrative, the execution is too cute, too shiny, too polished, and inter/generational trauma/abuse should not be made cute or shiny or polished—although if Stephanie Hsu doesn’t win an Oscar for playing the person who should have been the main character of the film—and I fucking dare you to tell me that’s youth talking [Side note: Oof, I scared myselfthere, italics can be quite violent]—I will never watch any movie, ever, again) tells the white tax-lady Karen (whom she hates) that she loves her, and means it[3], it makes possible some of the most fun and intimate and interesting parts of the movie (which, spoiler alert, involve lesbians with hot-dog fingers[4], or whatever).

  1. “The Unexpected Power of Random Acts of Kindness,” by Catherine Pearson, published in the New York Times, 2022. ↩︎

  2. “The OA – 1x08 Finale | The End Song – Finalsound | Netflix,” posted by user “DeaDiiTV” on YouTube, 2016. ↩︎

  3. “Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) – Kung Fu Master Evelyn [½] | HD,” posted by user “Theodore” on YouTube, 2022. ↩︎

  4. “Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) – Evelyn Comforts Mrs. Deirdre | HD,” posted by user “Theodore” on YouTube, 2022. ↩︎

I have rehearsed what I would say to a mass shooter if confronted with one a million times; I rehearse it every time I am in a public place; it is, briefly, just a summary of Heroes by Franco Berardi:

“Your pain is valid.

But you cannot—you must not—express it this way.

I hate you.

I love you.

Let’s do something else.”

I want to tell you to kill the shooter. I want to tell you to carry a gun to kill the shooter with, or to arm yourself with self-defense training and learn how to spot and disarm or take down a potential shooter with hands and fists, like the 26-year-old in Alhambra, or improvised weaponry if nothing else, or to travel in groups or with security anywhere you might feel threatened (which is, like, everywhere, probably). None of these are bad ideas. I think they might also be good ones. I also want to tell you to lock/round up—in some ethical (?) way; abolish prisons, 1312, etc., etc.—everyone with a history of violence (which includes me), before they(/we) can be violent again, or maybe even just kill them(/us), neither of which are bad ideas, either, I think. But then this might give you a history of violence, and then people might decide to kill you, too, and I think they would be wrong to do that, but maybe you might feel that they would be right, so before it even gets that far, I think it would be good to tell people something else, too.

No one should ever have to beg for humanity or autonomy or respect. Let us be done with begging for mercy from abusers, from people with histories of violence, from crazed (American?) gunmen.

There are far better ways to die.

I only know what I will say the day the gun is pointed at me. I can only pray there will be time, between the moment I start talking and the moment he shoots me, for someone to do something else.

Consider me a distraction. Consider me bait. Consider me a bizarre, surreal, synchronized dance than can stun, only temporarily, but that maybe that will be all the time you will need to get away, or call for help, or take him down. I am not a physically strong person but I do know how to just keep talking, and if one’s ability to communicate cannot, at the very least, avert a mass shooting, then maybe one should just shut up and stay silent.

*

[Side note: The news re-runs an article on what to do during a mass shooting[1] and it is the same three things I have learned in so many violence readiness seminars, at so many schools and workplaces.

  1. “How do you survive a mass shooting? We asked experts for advice,” by Madalyn Amato, published in the Los Angeles Times, 2022. ↩︎

1. Run

It is, quite often, in my experience, the best idea to move away from what is causing that fear, not towards it.

2. Hide

You can face something without needing to move towards it. You can confront it without needing to be inside it. You can untangle it without needing to be all tangled up with it first.

3. Fight

From the article:

We’re talking about literally fighting for your life right here, so anything can become a defensible weapon, doesn’t matter if it’s a book, a chair… When people think ‘fight’ and ‘a weapon,’ it doesn’t necessarily have to be a knife or a firearm. It can just be something, anything that you can turn into a weapon and can be used to help defend your life.

From this article:

Consider me a bizarre, surreal, synchronized dance than can stun, only temporarily, but that maybe that will be all the time you will need to get away, or call for help, or take him down. I am not a physically strong person but I do know how to just keep talking.

The news article adds, for good measure:

Once you’ve decided to fight… it’s much more effective to coordinate an attack with other people. The main goal of an attack should be to disarm and “destroy” the target.

Coordinated destruction. A discussion for another essay.]

*

It requires, I think, almost hyperempathy to speak this coldly and unfeelingly about violence, or maybe just a history of being violent and abusive, which may be two different ways of saying the same thing. 

Taylor Bankole says he thinks it wouldn’t be so bad if everyone was hyperempathic (hyperempathetic?); Lauren Olamina, obviously, disagrees. Sometimes things go over my head and it goes over my head, until I read the questions in the Reading Group Guide in the back of my paperback Parable of the Sower, that Lauren Olamina does not “have” hyperempathy. Her mirror neurons aren’t hypersensitive, as I (with my one undergraduate semester’s worth of neuroscience) had imagined. She is psychotic (or whatever): she suffers from a delusion that manifests psychosomatically as pain.

Lauren Olamina says[1]:

  1. Parable of the Sower, by Octavia E. Butler, 1993; page 278 in the 2019 paperback edition. ↩︎

“The worst of it is, if you got hurt, I might not be able to help you. I might be as crippled by your injury—by your pain, I mean—as you are.”

Taylor Bankole replies[1]:

  1. Parable of the Sower, by Octavia E. Butler, 1993; page 278 in the 2019 paperback edition. ↩︎

“I suspect you’d find a way.”

Octavia Butler adds[1]:

  1. Parable of the Sower, by Octavia E. Butler, 1993; page 278 in the 2019 paperback edition. ↩︎

He smiled a little.

Lauren Olamina can turn off her condition whenever she wants (as much as someone who is psychotic can turn off their delusions whenever they want). I have experienced psychosis so I know what delusions feel like: I have experienced the delusion of believing I am God; I have experienced the delusion of believing I am Jesus Christ, reincarnated; I have experienced the delusion of believing I know more than anyone else in the history of the universe; I have experienced the delusion of believing I am the only living being with consciousness in the universe. (These delusions don’t ever really “go away,” you just learn to paper over them with better, healthier delusions: I’m normal, I’m just a person, I don’t really know much at all, everyone around me is alive and conscious and real as fuck.)

I have also experienced the delusion of hyperempathy.

When I was a child, I would say “ow” when someone else would get hurt. Often I would say “ow” when I would almost hurt myself, from the vivid, visceral experience of imagining the pain I almost endured. I watched movies and saw people get hurt and winced not the wince of sympathy but the wince of literal pain.

Then I started to fuck and I experienced the orgasms of other people just by watching them. Later I learn this has a word—compersion—and I revel in it. I watch two people who genuinely care about each other kissing and I feel I am being kissed, too. I watch a man tie up another man at a gay bar and I can feel the ropes around my limbs and crotch, tugging and pulling and turning me on. I develop, on and off again, an addiction to pornography because the Internet is a catalog of sexual experiences to watch and replicate like clones, in my brain. I watch two people fall in love and I feel I am a part of that love, too.

This is a delusion.

There is another word for it, less optimistic than compersion.

Co-optation.

Lauren Olamina is—like all messiahs (geniuses, visionaries)—selfish and self-involved. My pain is suddenly your pain? I’m hurt and suddenly you’re hurt too? What the fuck kind of a deal is that?!?

What the fuck kind of a deal. Is. That.

There is another word for it, less optimistic than co-optation.

Abuse.

*

Octavia E. Butler wanted everything.

Octavia E. Butler deserved everything: the world, the universe, justice, life.

At every turn, in ugly fucking Robledo, she was denied even a taste. There is so much rage and a vicious desire for vengeance, in (all of) her writing. I can feel it when I read her, coursing through my veins as though it is hers, like drugs from a needle. I am not a Black woman but I am a transgender woman and I do not live in her Robledo but I live in my Robledo and I know exactly how much there is to hate and despise and want to destroy here. I can run my fingers over the walls of Robledo even though they aren’t real. I see Lauren Olamina somewhere between CalTech and the Huntington Library and I know she is a year and a half away from her fifteenth birthday. And I worry. I worry because sometimes I wonder if someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew our 45th president read Parable of the Talents (as a joke? as a gag? to see from the other side? because they thought themselves her?) and somewhere along that trail of people “Make America Great Again” became MAGA. An identity was forged, the way red-pilling was co-opted and abused by people for whom The Matrix was “not meant.” But when we publish, we cannot choose who engages with our work, except that we absolutely can, we absolutely can. We can. You can. Just don’t publish with a (traditional) publisher! Publish it yourself; bind the book with your own two hands, or better yet, have a friend help you. A lover. A partner. A family member. Have them be the only other person allowed to read it. Or have them get to choose who else gets to read it. Distribute it at, like, your local library, or your church, or, like, your PTA meeting? I don’t know where people go or what they do these days. A bar? (A bar would be an excellent place to distribute literature that you can pretty much guarantee almost no one will ever read.)

I think Octavia E. Butler wouldn’t have died tragically if she had just distributed a few hand-bound copies of Parable of the Sower at a bar. If she had handed them out like a street preacher, which she pretty much was—the first street preacher to get a MacArthur grant, which is to say, like all street preachers, a genius (a visionary, a messiah, selfish and self-involved). And I don’t mean “died tragically,” as in “died from a fall in front of her home,” but “died tragically” as in “died trying to finish a series of six books she had planned in which she could, she imagined, accurately tell the story she set out to tell[1], which is that if you write Parable of the Sower—if you sic Parable of the Sower (i.e., Earthseed) on the world—you must atone for it, by writing Parable of the Talents, which clarifies your intention, and Parable of the Whatever, which papers over your mistakes in the first two, and Parable of the Fucking Suck My Dick, which sets the record straight about the first three, and so on, and so forth, because otherwise you will get midway through the third book and realize that the only way to tell the story justly is to obliterate everything you have written in the preceding books because the preceding books were a means to an end but the story that follows from that means to an end is the most horrible future for humanity you can possibly imagine, which means that if you thought that writing the first book was going to help anyone or yourself, you were absolutely wrong, because what you ended up doing was inaugurating the future you wanted to prevent because to imagine a future—especially out of so much rage and vicious desire for vengeance—is to, more or less, make it real and this means that you are Lauren Olamina and Lauren Olamina was wrong, so, so very, very wrong, and this is too much to bear so you read a vampire novel by Anne Rice to distract yourself and think, well, I could do this, so you do it, and you kind of hate it, and it feels like pulling teeth—the exact quote is, I think, something like ‘I had to relearn how to write,’[2] or whatever—and you publish it and people like it, but not you, because you’re not even sure you like yourself anymore, and you think that you could have made the same amount of money you got from the MacArthur grant by working for, like, a decade or so as, like, a real estate agent or something, selling homes to incoming Robledo residents with your niche being maybe, like, wealthier people of color because, well, you’re a Black woman who grew up in the city, so why wouldn’t people trust you, and that doing this—enabling the kind of family Lauren Olamina grew up in to move into and feel comfortable in Robledo—would have been at least as ethically fraught as being a writer but at least, on a day to day basis, would probably not have been as painful or arduous; realizing all this and then dying from a fall in front of your home before you can explain yourself, and repent.”

  1. ““There’s Nothing New / Under The Sun, / But There Are New Suns”: Recovering Octavia E. Butler’s Lost Parables,” by Gerry Canavan, published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, 2014. ↩︎

  2. Octavia E. Butler: Kindred, Fledgling, Collected Stories, by Octavia E. Butler, edited by Gerry Canavan, 2019. From the chronological timeline of Octavia Butler's life in the back of the book. ↩︎

That kind of “died tragically.”

The data says the best-selling book of all time is the Bible.

I imagine that, by the end of the next century (or the one after that), if books (or humans) still exist, Parable of the Sower will take its place.

Parable of the Sower is a bible; it is, quite literally, the Bible.

Octavia E. Butler set one task before herself: write the first and last and only novel, because it was the best and most violent way to exact vengeance upon everyone who ever believed she would be nothing, be forgotten, be anything but genius.

She succeeded.

And now we live in her world.

*

(Octavia E. Butler, your pain is valid.

But you cannot—you must not—express it this way.

Octavia E. Butler, I hate you.

Octavia E. Butler, I love you.)

Let’s talk about something else.[1]

  1. final note: this essay is a living document that will change and grow over the course of my lifetime as i change and grow over the course of my lifetime, because accountability work for people with histories of being violent and abusive is a lifelong, ongoing process. the essay as it is presented here was written in january 2023; anytime i add anything longer than a few words, i will update this sentence accordingly. i am unsure whether this is the right thing to do or say here, but if it turns out not to be, i will change this note accordingly as well: if you have any questions about my ongoing accountability work, especially if you have a history of being violent and abusive and are unsure how to begin your own accountability work, please feel free to contact me at Work AT RiveraErica DOT com. i am not a professional, but i am willing to share some of what i have learned, or at least point you towards professionals or other kinds of resources. one resource is “learning good consent,” which is available as a free PDF online, but which is also available for purchase from multiple presses and distros. if you want help finding it, or would like to me to assist you with purchasing it, please let me know and i will help as best i can. “learning good consent” is only one resource of many, but it is a start, and although not all abuse or violence is inherently sexual in nature, much of it is, and the text offers important information to anyone who feels they may have harmed others in any way. ↩︎