Dirtbag: Essays

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If you want your small town to get some ink in the Times, you should do something that would infuriate Sarah Lawrence students. If you want to socially engineer a loving and responsible masculinity, men themselves must become thoroughly optional.

I asked how the seeming frigidity of the #MeToo moment, let alone the alleged epidemic of uterus removals, sits alongside modern feminism’s ‘sex positive’ celebration of polyamory, pansexuality and sex workers. ‘It’s because these people would rather negotiate sex than actually have it… They don’t want to take responsibility’, says Khachiyan. ‘That’s why nerds love this stuff’, says Frost. ‘It’s huge in Silicon Valley. They like games and rules. These are people who consider themselves leftists but probably don’t like anything about socialism except the gulags.’ He could be very charming and funny. He could also be very irresponsible, negligent, abusive, and downright mean. He was not fit for the task of fatherhood, not for me or for any of my biological siblings or step-siblings. Gospel Half-Truths Chapo Trap House has been called the leftwing alternative to Breitbart – a subversive, humorous and politics-focused new media presence that has attracted a devoted following on both sides of the Atlantic. Bret Easton Ellis said there could never be the great Millennial novel – we’ll see. I haven’t read that Sally Rooney book that everybody’s writing about’, Khachiyan says, referring to the Irish author’s breakthrough novel, Normal People, which focuses on a millennial relationship. Frost adds that she read the book ‘with the intent of savaging it’, because ‘all the Guardian feminists like her’, but found ‘there was a lot of good shit in there’. ‘I think the women who like it don’t understand why they do… women today aren’t allowed to want a traditional relationship’, she says. Khachiyan adds: ‘Which is what most people since the dawn of time have wanted… There’s nothing reactionary about wanting a boyfriend!’ Another recent favourite author among Guardian feminists is Kristen Roupenian, whose short story, ‘Cat Person’, went viral. The story is about a young woman who realises – slightly too late in the day – that the sexual encounter she is about to embark on is not what she wants. When the man finally realises he has been rejected, he lashes out. ‘ Guardian feminists liked it because it “proved” men are trash because the man called her a whore at the end’, says Khachiyan. ‘Actually what it showed is that men can be sad and pathetic’, adds Frost.It’s a perfect scene: the ruthless capitalist bellowing the reality of the world to a hysterical showbiz crusader who heretofore imagined himself a virtuous evangelist, never once considering his own insignificance in the face of market forces. And when it comes to journalism, committed capitalists are always better materialists than the liberals. And that’s why I read FT. Sure, they’re rooting for the other team, but at least they know the game. The narrative isn’t itself so interesting’, she argues, but it shows ‘the willful failure of the Democratic Party. Again and again, they fall on their face. There’s some kind of Freudian, masochistic thing they have where they get off on publicly humiliating themselves.’

Frost and Khachiyan have a Marxist understanding of race. ‘We invented race to justify exploitation’, says Frost. ‘Splitting people on the basis of race was used to morally justify slavery… Racial discourse was created after hyper-exploitation.’ But ever since, argues Frost, ‘When we tried to not be racist, we ended up using the same framework’, which today also lives on in identitarian form. ‘All “race” is, is that some people don’t sunburn. That’s the entirety of racial difference.’ I believe my father has failed a total count of five biological children, along with the five different mothers of those children. I could not count the number of children whose mothers he married or moved in with. I know two of my half-siblings, but most were well before my time. One, an older brother, I met for the first time about five years ago. He is a very good person, friendly and kind, but I avoid him because he has my father’s face. A previously unknown half-sister reached out to me recently on social media. I have not responded.She was a miracle to me, but when she was eight years old I had to leave her daytimes with the woman downstairs to whom she was no miracle at all, for I worked or looked for work and for Emily’s father, who “could no longer endure” (he wrote in his goodbye note) sharing want with us.