Running for Home - 15. October 7, 2021

October 7, 2021




Okay, so I’ve been too busy with teaching lately to bother journaling. Not that I’m particularly consistent in the first place, but at least I write something mildly substantial when I do. Anyway, the lack of journaling has only been exacerbated by the fact that I’ve been getting opinion gigs from the Times and the Post again. I might even manage to snag a gig for The Atlantic if things go well. That would be fucking spectacular.

So what’s changed, you might ask? Well, the Purity movement down in the South has been growing in strength again and they are causing a huge stir. First it was just the typical anti-mutant riots, but now we are starting to see race riots mixing in. I’m completely serious. Fucking race riots, this day in age. Apparently 'purity' now means only white non-mutant mouth-breathers deserve to live in God's grace and the rest are assigned to hell and might as well be sent their as quickly as possible. People are reacting in total disbelief. The media has been having a 24-hour field day. They keep pretending like this is a sudden change, but the signs have been there. Racial and religious profiling has been on the rise with the cops and Homeland Security for years. Incarceration rates for blacks and Hispanics are through the roof compared to whites, and then there’s the preponderance of cops shooting unarmed black men at a much greater rate than the same for whites – even compared to armed white criminals. The question now becomes whether or not this is the beginning of a modern civil rights movement on par with what happened in the 1950's and 60's.

It’s a perfect opportunity for the rags to draw on my mutant perspective, since my name’s already out there for their readers attached to a Third Way ideology since I’ve seen things from both of the other sides. Christ, I’m still having a hard time processing that this is happening, that the bigots are still so idiotic. It’s some pretty crazy shit going down, and the X-men have hauled ass down there a few times to help keep things under control.

I hate saying this, but some of this shit has started bothering me. Not the anti-mutant bullshit, that’s the same old tired story. It’s watching Piotr, JP, and Rachel going out with the main X-team, and now Jubes, Dani, Doug and Xi’an too when shit’s been bad enough that they need extra manpower. It’s weird. It’s making me feel like I’ve gone soft, and… I have moments, sometimes, when I feel like I should be there with them. Especially on the missions when Bobby goes with them. I don’t know. It must just be my old rivalry with him boiling inside when I find out he’s going with them. Sometimes I feel like I have something to prove, to show everyone how much better and in control I’ve become, how useful and reliable I can be, and that I can be just as much of a fucking hero as any of the rest of them. Especially Boyscout Bobby.

Fuck him, though. He’s irrelevant.

It’s so fucking stupid. I’m starting to feel like I could have actual friends again. I’m serious about this. I haven’t had… Jesus Christ, I haven’t really had a true, good set of friends since I ditched this place for the Brotherhood. Sure, I had comrades with them and again with Freedom Force, and those kids I hung out with sometimes in my last year at UCLA, but other than Dom it just wasn’t the same. I know I’ve said this before, but sometimes I wonder whether Dom was part of the reason I never really made friends, both in the Brotherhood and after we got our pardons. Motherfucker.

But I’m being completely serious here when I say that Piotr, JP, Jubes, Xi’an, Rachel and I have kind of crystalized into this corny, dysfunctional group. We hang out. We bitch about our students and drink together. We’ve gone out to the bar, gone into the city, and done other random shit together. Sometimes Dani, Sam, Doug, and Jim join in too. We make plans.

We make plans, for God’s sake!

Sometimes I have these moments where it hits me and I feel so out of my depth that I almost panic about what’s really happening. I feel like it’s all going to come crashing down at any minute. I don’t deserve this, any of this. I’m a fuck up and a loser and I don’t understand how I got here. All of this, all of my life, it’s bound to go to hell in a hand basket at a moment’s notice and I’m going to be left with nothing once again. That, or they are going to finally realize the truth – that I’m a piece of shit that’s not worth having around.

Whatever. Time to shut up about that shit and stop being a loser who can’t handle maybe even the slightest hope that he has a life. As if that’s even possible.

Anyway, back on topic:

I’ve had the genius idea to take advantage of the situation down south as a teachable thing. I’ve got my Lit students reading the graphic novel ‘Stuck Rubber Baby’. It’s about a gay guy coming of age down in ‘Clayfield’ - a thinly veiled recreation of Birmingham, Alabama - during the Civil Rights movement. It’s an amazing witnessing of all the craziness that went down from the perspective of a white gay male who sided with the blacks. No, not just witnessing it but actually taking part in it, civil disobedience and all. It’s some good shit. They seem to be responding to it well, other than a couple fucktards in class complaining that they don’t want to read about the more gay relationship-y situations. Surprisingly, Julian isn’t one of them. I think he knows that if he steps too far out of line now, he won’t like what happens as a result. His behaviour has improved in my class, but thinking about how I got that to happen still makes me cringe. After all these years, I'm still no better than my parents. I was such an idiot.