JOHN HIGGINS / I HAVE XED MYSELF FROM YOUR WORLD
Senseless violence is the only voice we have, Charlie says.
Mike Donaldo’s funeral, his parents standing at the closed coffin, showing no remorse, daring me to criticise them.
Driving out to the desert in Charlie’s D―, the arena of protest. The city shrinks behind us.
A B― K― is the last stop for 50 miles, a cash crop; after that, hazy canyons and sand.
Charlie says his music is too radical and dangerous, and that’s why they won’t pick it up.
Mike, our V―d lips tasting of each other, telling me he doesn’t want to be anything.
Democracy is an illusion. Civic duty perpetuates a smokescreen.
Juliet bow to the audience of middle-school parents. Bow, bow, the applause at its peak then dying; bow desperately, hear that crescendo again.
Artists can only be successful if they pander to political taste.
Serving Charlie pie, Charlie looks like exactly what should disgust me; his clammy fingers on my wrist: “you don’t belong in this world.”
Sal asking me to lift up my top and show my piercing, and I’m looking at Trixie, his 19-year-old girlfriend, who is pretending not to hear, overfilling a coffee cup.
Sal spills out of the trunk, a rag in his mouth, the gun in Charlie’s hand. Birds pass overhead. We must look tiny.
Politics is inherently capitalistic
D― Q― manager watches from the office as I say it, uniform choking me, the coffeecup of coins in her trembling hands: “I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
Diane pointing herself out in a G― employee photo, a quote above her testifying to the trans-inclusive workplace. She never worked at G―
Sal looks at me and begs but I am not in his world anymore. Diane spreads her kimono over the hood. We are beyond all this.
so when people say their art is political they are really saying it is capitalistic,
Diane sliding off the hood, Charlie asking us to stand together over Sal’s twitching body. The sky is purple.
and to fight back using the arsenal of the established regime is to assimilate.
Standing at the diner’s back door with Charlie, waiting for Sal to emerge. Nervous but Charlie has it all figured out.
and as Charlie plays, Diane dances in the middle of the room. I look in Charlie’s eyes. I see myself, and I know Charlie, I know Charlie, he has it all figured out, and he can bring us beyond all this.
Playing a mom in a N― commercial because, with my B-cup and flat stomach, I look nothing like a mother.
After Mike’s suicide, people move from pity to tutting disapproval, why would he waste his life?, Mike’s body taken from the water and placed in the earth.
Diane gurgling blood, bits of Sal’s skull in the sand, Charlie raising the gun again, aiming at me.
The desert around us is littered with the victims of protest, and I am thinking as I fall, this is not protest, this is
John Higgins is an Irish writer. His work has been featured in Crannog, Honest Ulsterman, Storgy, and more. He has been shortlisted for the 2019 Scribble Short Fiction Prize and the 2020 Mairtin Crawford Short Story Award.