The
last bottle of the night is brashly opened, and somehow Paw-Paw and I
are the only ones left to finish it off in the kitchen of his cozy
home. It's the old man's 91st birthday, and the whole
family has gone home or to sleep after a surprisingly raucous event.
I am full of a love and admiration for my family's commanding patriarch, who I've never seen
so brazenly happy and drunk. Paw-Paw is known for his harsh reserve,
but tonight he showed a loving openness that surprised everyone,
probably my father most of all. Paw-Paw even shared a few stories,
revealing new glimpses of the man so famously austere that it's long
been a family joke. Impressed with this new side of him, and
fortified with a night of heavy consumption, I finally ask him about
the part of his life that has always been a mystery. “Paw-Paw,” I
say:“What was it like, escaping the revolution? How did you make it
out alive?” He doesn't push the question away. Instead, he seems to
take a long, sorrowful gaze into
the past, and then speaks in a low, trembling voice, allowing himself
to return to that faraway land, reliving the events that changed his
life forever.
“It
was heavy vendetta season and all the internet teenagers had unboxed
their grudges. An intersectional signal came down through secret
astrology channels one grim black history month, and the Second Civil
War began overnight like an infidel Christmas. Antifa super-soldiers
hopped up on hormone therapy went door-to-door distributing male
birth control and zines full of mean illustrations of police. The sky
glowed like a bell hooks young adult novel about natural hair as male
bathrooms were neutralized and white nationalists were forced to
invest in public education. The welfare hegemony invaded every
household, decimating our prisoner population down to North Korean
levels and bankrupting the mom-and-pop payday loan industry.
Afro-futurist neo-soul oozed out of music-sharing apps for an army of
voluntary eunuchs who combed rural areas, annulling marriages and
confiscating dip tobacco. Eager terrorists streamed through open
borders and flooded the restaurant industry, driving hot dog shops
and ranch dressing factories into the sea. Planned Parenthood
militias dripping in almond milk verbally forced people to correct
their pronouns and bargain with unions. Newly treated drug addicts
and veterans with mental health issues roamed public housing lucidly,
openly discussing reparations for slavery and voting rights for U.S.
territories.
In
the stunned days of the after-shock, a new cultural ministry oversaw
the dissolution of valuable internet debate that had previously
bloomed in YouTube comment sections and multiplayer online games.
Judges were replaced by legalized sex workers who banned
abstinence-only education and punished the senders of unsolicited
dick pics with mandatory Gender Studies degrees. Our mass
surveillance system was converted overnight into a voluntary live-cam
network of ethical porn.
The
history books were scrubbed clean of white contributions to Southern
cooking and hip hop, and a new national anthem was introduced: a
mashup of smug Rachel Maddow slam poetry to a chorus of
overly-supportive drag show toasting. Petroleum languished in
abandonment underneath animal sanctuaries and our fast food
infrastructure was mowed down to make way for a national public
transit system. The market was chained to feelings and sci-fi novels
were mandated to involve themes of nature conservation and diversity.
Children of the rich could no longer inherit more than a million
dollars apiece.
I
was one of the legion of sad, under-appreciated men driven savagely
into therapy and listening skills reeducation camps by a cabal of
spontaneous street-theater agitators. We were held in a massive
earthship biotecture facility and served vegan meals and homemade
tinctures. I saw my friends and neighbors lined up against symbolic
walls and made to repeat 'climate change is man-made' before being
shot full of vaccines and de-gentrifying agents. At night, trembling
in our hammocks, we could hear the rustle of giant homemade puppets
labeled with obvious, overwrought metaphors. Each day sex nerds with
anime hair and pretentious glasses reviewed the facility to select
prisoners of war for their polycules.
I
escaped during an engrossing indigenous history lecture and fled into
the foothills, my gender identity barely intact and a few meager
possessions wrapped in a Confederate flag. I was fortunate enough to
find a small border village with a Catholic church, and they put me
in touch with allies that still existed for people like me. The
church had access to an old system of escape routes they had
established in the 1940's, through which I was smuggled into South
America and granted asylum in compliance with international law.
Eventually I immigrated here and met your Mee-Maw. But that's another
story. For now, just know I thank God every day for being able to
escape that hell and make a new life.”
I still think of my Paw-Paw's story when I have to work an extra
triple shift as an enforcer in the uranium mines or donate more bone
marrow to the children of the God-King . When I see my fellow
countrymen suggest institutional robbery of our most important
castes, or insult our economic system with senseless controls, I
wonder if they've lost sight of history. When agitators call eating a
“right” or ask about punishing sodomy with a penalty weaker than
death, I wonder if they have any idea what it's really like to live
in the less fortunate parts of the world. This country may not be
perfect, but it gives us innumerable freedoms which we seem to take
for granted without a second thought. We must never lose track of the
fragility of liberty we hold so dear, or how quickly a state can turn
rotten and deranged. I know my Paw-Paw never did.
