He's seated on a campus bench, waiting for his other half. Like normal human beings, he’s glued on his phone screen. The message, of course, is that he’s not a loser as his attention is being fought for by the phone.
Him: (murmurs indistinctly) Black men can’t be oppressive to black women… They don’t have systems that would foster that… white men do (pauses to reflect) Meh! But they’re intra-racial injustices against women…
Inner Him: Knock knock!
Him: (decides to play along) Erm… who’s there?
Inner Him: It’s the Inner You, dumbass. You created me. Made me a person. I can talk.
Him: That’s not how the joke goes, but… what do you want?
Inner Him: (excitedly) A chat. Is that so much to ask for?
Him: (staring at his phone) Yeah. I’, in the middle of something important.
Inner Him: (a bit angered) What? Reading tweets? Nothing new there. Just basic knowledge repeated ad nauseam with the expectation that somehow they’ll turn profound. Bleugh!
Him: You’re just hating.
Inner Him: No, stating as it is. “Oh, look how woke I am. I can use ‘hetero normative cisgendered bias’ in a sentence!” “Trump is a racist, sexist, ableist bigot that can never be the president!” It’s always a performance.
Him: How do you even know all that?
Inner Him: (sighs) I’m you, one way or another. You created me, and like god and his creations, in your own image.
Him: Okay. First it’s never a performance. These are people who just want to make a difference, and they have social media for that. Second, why the negative energy? Chill, bro.
Inner Him: Make a difference, huh. These are people deeply drawn into the call-out culture. All they do is lash at anyone they deem morally corrupt. They have the 140 character limit for that. Oh, I hear they do something they call threads these days. Anyway, it’s hard to tell if these guys have a genuine political commitment to change things for the better or they’re just being fans.
Him: They had that Congolese singer face the law for assaulting one of his female dancers. Ha! In your face! Explain that away.
Inner Him: (pauses for a while) That’s one way of looking at it. Or, we could say that the guys who witnessed the actual assault reported the matter. Did the heavy lifting. Your horde of online activists were left to do what they do best – call out. You know, with overly used phrases like “person X is a racist who shouldn’t be in our country”.
Him: (clearly irked) Are you implying calling out people who do bad things isn’t one way of fighting the evils they perpetrate?
Inner Him: Nope. I’m just saying that’s only a step. There are further steps to be made. And stopping at one of them doesn’t help much as much as we’d like to think. One could say that we have Trump as the US president because of such. Liberals spent the better part of the campaigns mocking Trump and his supporters. Time which they would have otherwise spent debunking Trump’s myth about Moslems being terrorists or his immigration rants that would turn into policies. Instead, we had them glued on their phone screens, typing away patronizing sentiments towards Trump supporters. That, as far as it goes, is my theory.
Him: (reaches out for his cigarette pack and a lighter, then lights one) Are you by any chance anti-liberal?
Inner Him: Yes, and so should you. You label yourself anarchist, after all. Not that I’m against liberal values. Far from that. In fact, most of values overlap. We both think oppression is a bad thing. The difference, however, is that libs just happen to rant about it. My ilk, on the other hand, are doing something about it. We plan and stage insurrections. We fight all power structures that put us in chains. We fight capitalism. We fight the state. Libs make exceptions. They don’t fight capitalism because, after all, most of them fall under the middle class threshold. Fighting capitalism would mean taking something from them. Libs don’t want to be a part of any insurrection. And if they are, all they do is vilifying those who choose non-pacifist tactics. Look at their passionate hatred towards the Black bloc. In other words, they put themselves on a pedestal.
Him: Wow! Impressive. Proudhon would have been proud of you.
Inner Him: I’m more of a Kropotkin guy. Proudhon, other than his criticism of private property, was by and large a douche. Guy was sexist. He fought systems of oppression but couldn’t patriarchy.
Him: Okay. Enough of the politics already. I’m waiting for my significant other and I just want to be in the mood when they arrive.
Inner Him: (clears throat) Do you love him?
Him: (acting surprised) What? Of course I do.
Inner Him: (long pause)
Him: What? Okay. A bit ambivalent about that. They are transgender. I’ve never dated one. So, it’s basically trial-and-error kinda thing. Wait, is referring to them as “they” even correct? I mean, they’ve never fully identified with genderqueer. And they switched from woman to man…
Inner Him: You said you loved them. How can you not know such an important detail about them? HE really doesn’t care about pronouns. Oh, he’s never had se—
Him: (abruptly cuts Inner Him) All right. Now that’s you swimming in territorial waters. Let’s not get there.
Inner Him (locks eyes with Him) You’re scared of his silicon dick. Hahaha! What happened to your liberal values on sex? You know, about gender being a non-issue. About there being sheds of grey when it comes to gender and sexuality. See, that’s the problem. You hold views, mostly good, but you can’t live them. Ian loves you, but you don’t really, owing to the fact that he has a silicon dick, and his suggestions about you being the bottom. You’re straight, but you want to identify with the non-straight. Now, you’re facing dissonance of sorts. All you have Ian do is spend the better part of your being proving that he’s worthy of your love. Obviously, fake love.
Him: (clearly provoked) I’m not facing an identity crisis, if that’s what you’re implying. You say something else and I’ll fuck you up! Inner Him: (laughs) Will you? Full disclosure, I’m only an extension of you. Your creation. You say you like Mr. Robot, although you think it ripped off Fight Club. I’m like Mr. Robot to Elliot. You might want to think about how it would look like if you beat the shit outta me.
Him: You’re not even real. Shut up! Inner Him: No. You shut up. I’m your gauge. Your guardian. I made it my responsibility to always bring you back to normal whenever you go off the rails. That’s exactly what I’m doing right now. You’re wasting someone else’s time, yours too. You don’t love him, he’s just one of your experiments. The truth is bound to come up, eventually. But there’s a chance. Break up. Save him.
Him: (plugs in earphone) I’m not listening to you. Not anymore.
Inner Him: (unplugs Him’s earphone) Damn it, Him! You have to listen. You –
Ian: (walks in on ‘them’, holding two Cuppa coffee) Hey! What’s up? Introspection or what? You seem to be talking to yourself.
Him: Honey, we’re breaking up.
Ian: (smiling) Okay. Oh, wait. What?!
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