The Fortunes of Virtue

Synopsis: A postmodern family full of postmodern values experiences an educational and unfortunate afternoon. The family represents the logical conclusion of their ideas if held consistently.  

            If you looked inside the medium sized brick house at the beginning of the street you would find two little girls named Dawn and Dusk.

Dawn Martell-Fairfield-Huxley-Grossman-Antwerp-Buldock-McCleary-Graefenburg-Puzo-Thoraline-Sanchez-Kutcher-Cashburn-Williams-Rubin-Baczkowski-Rigatti-Mumford and her twin sister Dusk Martell-Fairfield-Huxley-Grossman-Antwerp-Buldock-McCleary-Graefenburg-Puzo-Thoraline-Sanchez-Kutcher-Cashburn-Williams-Rubin-Baczkowski-Rigatti-Mumford came from a long lineage of families so progressive or so rich they refused to use the age old custom of sticking dad’s last name on the family and leaving it at that. No, the Martell-Fairfield-Huxley-Grossman-Antwerp-Buldock-McCleary-Graefenburg-Puzo-Thoraline-Sanchez-Kutcher-Cashburn-Williams-Rubin-Baczkowski-Rigatti-Mumford family, like the Martell-Fairfield-Huxley-Grossman-Antwerp-Buldock-McCleary-Graefenburg-Puzo-Thoraline and Sanchez-Kutcher-Cashburn-Williams-Rubin-Baczkowski-Rigatti-Mumford families before them, and the families before those, took up the tradition of hyphenating their last names, a simple combination of mom’s and dad’s last names. When many generations do this, the surname becomes an outrageous mark of shame and horror that no child can endure for long. But endurance is no factor in the perpetuation of familial ties, as any person with eons of progressive values in their blood will tell you. The child will learn its name in due time. The teachers will set aside a minute at the beginning of roll call to pronounce it in its entirety. The world will learn to bend over to accommodate such large surnames, because to do otherwise would be thought rude.

It was a mild September afternoon when Dawn and Dusk heard their mother calling them from the bedroom.

“Girls, please come in here.”

Dawn got off the floor and Dusk got off the couch and they skipped to the end of the hall where mother’s bedroom door stood wide open.

“Come in, girls.”

They walked in, and the door shut behind them. There was dad. He was naked, holding a cup of black coffee. They looked at mother, and she was naked, too, sitting on the bed, sipping  from her mug of black coffee. Dawn and Dusk were also naked. This was fine, because the Martell-Fairfield-Huxley-Grossman-Antwerp-Buldock-McCleary-Graefenburg-Puzo-Thoraline-Sanchez-Kutcher-Cashburn-Williams-Rubin-Baczkowski-Rigatti-Mumford family lived in a nudist colony. When clothing is optional, hardly any will choose to wear it. When it is forbidden, only iconoclasts and troublemakers wear it.

            “Girls,” said father, “your mother and I think it’s time we teach you about the birds and the bees.”

            Dawn was very much in love with birds, and Dusk, as the tiny red bumps on her hands and face would testify, was crazy about bees, even though father always said to keep a safe distance from the beehive he kept in the back yard. The girls were excited.

            Father sat on the bed beside mother, and the two embraced in the nude, shameless and sensual, aggressive but with great understanding for the other’s boundaries.

            “But we won’t be talking about animals today,” said mother. “Although!... “ and she trailed off for a moment of thought, until saying, mostly to herself, “we could use animals to illustrate some points we mightn’t be able to make so easily.”

            “Look at your bodies,” said father. “And look at ours. We’re all naked. Do you remember why your mother and I have ruled against clothing in this household?”

            Dawn spoke with a voice beyond  her years: “To liberate the natural beauty of our essence, to remove the chains of social status, to free ourselves from society’s enslaving gender binary, and to avoid accidental cultural ap… apron… apricot…”

            “Appropriation,” said mother.

           “To avoid unintentional cultural appropriation,” said father. “Yes. Very good, Dawn. Now, Dusk—can you tell me what clothing is?”

Dusk, too, spoke with the voice of an aged and indoctrinated woman, not that of a tender youth: “Clothing is a social and cultural construct that serves as the white patriarchy’s foremost means of oppressing women and minorities and the lower class. Clothing is the widest used material social construct in our society today, which manufactures inequality among the classes and races and genders. Its utility as protection against the elements is no coincidence, but a convenient feature, because this is a lure for the masses to force upon them the shackles of clothing, to trick them into purchasing and wearing symbols of segregation and class and oppression produced by suffering, starving sweatshop workers chained to burning stoves, unpaid for their labor. Once the clothes are on, the person has submitted to the rank and file of conformity in society’s master plan. The rich wear their purple and yellow cloaks and shark-tooth necklaces, while the poor wear their dingy gray washcloths and sweat socks. Clothes are social identifiers: stigmas for the poor, trophies for the rich. They deepen the crevice that divides the classes.

“Furthermore, they are cultural and ethnic devices that signify the differences among peoples and heritages. To wear clothing is to scream adherence to a culture and a people, it is to accept slavery to the system. As clothing styles evolve, these cultural aspects intertwine, and before long everyone is oppressed by white men in the tower, because cultures are appropriated for use by others, and all the meaningful attributes of a culture’s dress is diluted by its being worn by people not belonging to that culture. This is the definition of oppression, and it happens every day, most commonly with clothing and music and art and anything that you can hear or see. Clothes are the chains, motivation, and rationale for genocide and oppression.”

“Beautiful,” said mother, with a wetness appearing in her proud eyes as she sipped her coffee.

“You girls are so bright,” said father. “There’s another reason we don’t wear clothes in this household, and it has to do with what your mother and I are about to teach you.”

At this point it should be noted that the nudist colony earlier mentioned is not a colony in the literal or widely understood meaning of the word, for this colony was limited only to the Martell-Fairfield-Huxley-Grossman-Antwerp-Buldock-McCleary-Graefenburg-Puzo-Thoraline-Sanchez-Kutcher-Cashburn-Williams-Rubin-Baczkowski-Rigatti-Mumford household, imposed upon all inhabitants by mother and father, carrying down a long line of values bestowed upon each by preceding generations.

Dawn and Dusk glanced at each other with smiling anticipation.

Mother finished her coffee and stood up from the bed, propping one foot on the bed, with the front of her body facing the girls.

“When you see the naked human form, you see immediately the beauty inherent to all people. You see these, my breasts, which, in olden times, were carved in stone to preserve for all time the limitless grandeur of the woman’s blessing. This, the vagina, is the key to sex, and is where we will start our explanation.

“The vagina and the breasts of women have been sexualized throughout history. That means they’re seen as objects of lustful desire, not as the functional sculptures of flesh they are meant to be. Heterosexual men have treated the female body as a playground of ritual abuse since the  beginning of time. Since you are girls, you won’t be driven to the same extremes of perversion and sexuality that men have been. But you’re still at risk for developing unhealthy ideas about sexual attraction that your father and I want to nip in the bud before it even starts. This is the other reason we maintain a constant nudity in this house—so you never associate the naked human form, male or female, with sexual desire or attraction. Sexual attraction is artificially produced in people by the mass media. It isn’t natural or normal. The enlightened stance on such a thing is that one should be drawn to a person through more esoteric avenues.”

Father stood too, also finished with his coffee, and showed his penis to the girls, explaining that throughout history it had been a symbol of perversity and power and male dominance, and that modern philosophers and intellectuals had unanimously (with a small interruption by mother to explain the meaning of “unanimously”) agreed that this was a shame, and that the penis must undergo a drastic change in image to neutralize the portrayal of horrific ideas and deeds evident in history. Revisionism would be of prime importance to the blossoming generation, the generation of Dawn and Dusk, to bestow upon the world a fresh and sensitive interpretation of history from the eyes of its life-bearers. In this revisionism, explained mother, the importance of the vagina would become evident. The symbol of the abyss, the mysterious dwelling, the chasm from which all life bursts forth, would be heralded in as the thing of central importance, while the phallic horror that is the penis would dwindle in its cultural and historical significance, attributing to each owner of such a tool a permanent sense of  guilt and responsibility for ages of atrocity and devastation.

Dawn and Dusk weren’t sure what to make of this, but they could tell by the tone in their parents’ voices it was probably a good thing.

“These talks usually start,” said father, “with the parents saying, “when a man and a woman love each other very much…” But that’s problematic right from the beginning.”

“What does “problematic” mean?” mother asked the girls.

“Something that causes a problem,” said Dawn, confident in her answer.

But mom and dad looked unimpressed.

“Dusk,” said father. “Do you know?”

Like a poem, the words came out of her mouth in a flashing rhythm of postmodern beauty: “Something’s problematic when it goes against the narrative of progressive ideals, primarily those of feminism and social justice. Problematic things reinforce assertions of the status quo and repeat narratives that perpetuate rape culture, violence against women, objectification of women, assumptions about women, appeals to sexuality, and run on homophobia, racism, sexism, ableism, fat shaming, while diverting attention away from the inherent privilege of the straight white cis-gendered male. Words are a social and linguistic construct that have a long history of overt male privilege, and are used every day as ideological reinforcement of Western dogma.”

“Absolutely brilliant,” said father. “You’ve really impressed your mother and me.” He looked to mother to gauge if his assessment was right, which it seemed to be, according to the twinkle in her eyes.

Dusk blushed, and Dawn looked down to where her shoes would have been if she were wearing them; her feet. She stared at her feet. Shame cast its shadow over her.

“What amazing daughters we have,” said mother, as she grinned at father.

He said: “One has to learn, at some point, to be able to look upon the words of others as always containing some slight offense, some tasteless element, some abhorrent notion that needs to be met with admonitions and hostility. Even when words might seem harmless and benign on the surface, girls, a wise ear and a keen intellect will always detect a subtext of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and other forms of oppression. Without fail. Even if the speaker didn’t know they intended such blatant hate with their words, because it was too deeply rooted in their psyche. Picking up on this is important. It’s psychological, it’s sociological. It’s a skill one learns through years of honing and practice, but it can be done. Your mother and I will teach you. You will look stupid and unenlightened as adults if you aren’t able to be offended at the words of others, even if it’s on behalf of someone else. True sensitivity and enrichment of self means taking offense for those who can’t be bothered to be offended.”

Noticing he’d once more trailed off on a tangent, but a highly important tangent that needed to be mentioned, father returned to the topic of sex: “What I’m getting at is that it’s problematic when parents start talking about sex with their children under the assumption of gender binaries and heterosexual orientations. It ingrains the stupid idea in the children’s mind right from the start that there is a preferred mode of reproduction and love, forever skewing their idea of healthy sexual relations.”

“And we are very much against putting ignorant or stupid ideas in our children’s heads,” said mother. She adjusted her propped up leg to keep it from going numb as father nodded in agreement.

“So, unlike the patriarchy’s social engineers who use triggering language to explain sex,” and father emphasized his use of the word “triggering” to drive the point home that words alone are enough to paralyze, weaken, and render helpless any and all beings unfortunate enough to be exposed to the ideas they symbolize, “your mother and I will engage in a positive, equality-driven discourse with the two of you about the nature of sex.”

And it was right about here, at father’s use of the word “nature” that mother was reminded of a quote she’d once heard and had shared freely with friends, and had taken on as an icon of self-confirmation, which she repeated here:

“Remember, girls. Reality has a well known liberal bias. Henceforth we shall refer to it as the more accurate term of progressivism, because liberalism has some problematic associations.”

“Haha! Yes,” chimed in father, his penis flopping about as he darted up and down, left and right, animated by his enthusiasm for educating the youth. “This is a well known quote about a well known truth about the nature of reality. Let me tell you what it means. There are two warring parties in politics right now…”

Dawn and Dusk exchanged glances once more, unsure if they should be memorizing the information thrown their way. It was too much, too fast. It usually went like this, but slower, and with more organization, and with frequent repetition. Dawn worried it wouldn’t be repeated in as much detail, and she’d be left to her own devices to learn the truths of the world and recite them back to her parents like a well trained robot. Dusk, however, was confident this wouldn’t be the last time she heard any of this. She’d have ample opportunity to learn and study and rehearse.

“They’re called Liberals and Conservatives,” father continued.

“You’ve heard about these before, girls,” said mother. "When you hear the word liberal, please think "progressive", so that you get the right idea."

“Only one side belongs to—what shall we call it—reality as it is. Progressives. Progressivism, as it is known, is based firmly in reality, breaking down the illusions of falsity perpetuated by outdated modes of thinking, while conservatality is based hugely in the erroneous zone of falsity. There’s a third side you’ll unfortunately be exposed to if you venture too far from the fray, which is worse even than the conservatality side. There’s no name for this side, which goes to show you how unimportant and yet menacing it truly is. This side, if you can even call it a side, and not  just a hodgepodge of unorganized thinking, believes in notions so far removed from reality that even conservatives have a hard time buying into them. This whimsical group, although group is not the right label, since they don’t have the strong bonds of ideology holding them together, is an enemy of progressives and conservatives alike because they will frequently try to paint up both sides as being the same thing, saying we both need to be brought to our knees and held responsible for things we don’t see as being our fault. This makes us look as bad as the conservatives, which we aren’t. It isn’t true. While this kind of thinking hasn’t yet become taboo or restricted by harsher censorship laws and thought controlling policies, it’s likely even the conservatives will take our side in order to crush the… Ah, girls, you can see I’ve gotten sidetracked. Back to the point. Your mother and I have taught you plenty about liberality and conservatality. Can you give us examples of how reality has a well known progressive bias?”

Dawn, eager to impress mother and father with her ability to recite fantastical truths and phenomenal axioms, blurted out the first thing to come to mind, recalling the emphasis mother and father had always put on the importance of evolution:

“Survival of the fittest! The strong devour the weak! Like when we learned about evolutionary—”

“Oh, no, Dawn, I think that’s a very conservative kind of concept,” said father. “Not a progressive ideal at all. Dusk?”

Dusk answered: “Equality among all human beings, weak or strong, big or small, poor or rich, Eastern or Western.”

“Marvelous answer!” yelled mother.

“How about another one?” asked father.

Dawn recalled the word ‘diversity’ being thrown around by mother and father on a fairly regular basis, and was aware it had positive connotations. She remembered another use of the word on television, before mother and father had restricted television viewing to feminist-friendly shows that reinforced the postmodern ideological framework they nurtured for the girls. It had something to do with birds. The diversity of birds. Yes, that would work.

“Birds,” said Dawn, “are a diverse kind of animal!”

Mother looked at father, father looked at mother, then mother looked at Dawn.

“Well, honey,” she said. “You’re partially right. I mean, they are diverse. And that’s certainly a good, firm, progressive thing.”

“But,” said father, “there’s a dark side to that diversity. Birds are spread out and somewhat segregated. While you might see a few species in the same area, you notice most species socialize only with themselves. Cardinals don’t mate with blue jays, sparrows don’t mate with eagles, hawks don’t socialize with vultures. They don’t even share birdseed if it’s too much of a hassle. This is segregation, not integration. And integration is the  progressive thing. The way birds behave is very conservative. They live totally against the laws of progressivality.”

“Think of the truths of progressivality,” said mother. “If you want to find progressivality in reality, you have to know what to look for. Try again, honey!”

Dawn, by now carefully stepping her way through the mine-field of things she’d learned to associate with left handed ideology, trying not to throw in the wrong part to present it as right handed ideology, or worse, said: “The blind can’t see, and are at a physical disadvantage compared with those who can.”

Mother cringed and father tried to be soft in his response:

“Mmm, I’m afraid that’s also a pretty conservative thing you’re looking at, honey. You have to take it a step further and implement government regulation and social programs set up to help the blind. Like what nature does. That’s reality.”

Dusk took the rebound, and delivered a slam-dunk:

“I got it! Evolution and climate change!”

“Yes, YES!” shouted mother, about to lose her balance. “Both are part of reality, and both are things progressives have been championing for years. Both scientifically demonstrated to be true.”

Although Dawn had latched onto the idea of evolution in her first response, she failed to deliver. She made the common mistake of forgetting to portray which aspect of evolution was in line with progressive ideology. The fact that evolution was real—that was enough to be considered a victory. Not the fact that the strong devoured the weak. Dusk would come to learn, in the years ahead, that such a concept was very much contrary to correct values and enlightened progressive ethics. When one wanted to find the progressive bias of reality, like any other bias of reality, one would have to learn where to look, find what to show off and what to ignore.

“Science, girls!” said father. “We like to look at science. That’s where we see the progressive bias of reality is strongest. That’s where we see progressivality at its finest, championed highest and loudest, and most evocatively. Let’s look at it some more, alright? Where does one look to confirm that reality has a progressive bias?”

Thinking hard back to the lessons her parents taught her, and finding it harder and harder to differentiate between what they told her to remember and recite, and what they said to ignore and bury, Dawn second guessed herself into a whirlpool of self-doubt, and offered up:

“Men and women are born…”

Mother’s eyes got wide. Father’s toothy grin became a smirk.

“They are born with… One has a penis, the other a vagina. And men are… stronger than women? But…”

“Dawn!” shouted mother.

“No, Dawn,” said father. “Once again you’re spewing things that have nothing to do with progressive values. Don’t you remember what your sister just said? Everyone is equal, no matter what. Equality is a progressive value. That’s reality. Equality is reality. A flower is equal to an oak tree. A cat is equal to a butterfly. Maybe not on the outside, but in ways that transcend the outside. Dawn, you’re good at math. This can’t be hard for you. You’ve seen the math. Equality. It’s right there. Equality is reality.”

Dawn slumped her head in defeat. “But you said we should look at science to--”

“You have to look at science the right way,” said father. “I should have mentioned that science still tends to be a very problematic discipline, owing mostly to its dark history of opposing postmodern deconstructionalist thought. You see, honey, science… and I shouldn’t have been so quick to say science is on our side, because it’s not. Not always. Only when it supports—ah, what I’m trying to say is that the objectivism in science is invalid because of the inherent racism and sexism and classism that science, that it more or less, that it often times, you will notice, it harbors. But you have to know how to find it. You won’t see it unless you’re looking for it. And to do that takes a certain kind of, a special way of, you know, looking at things. To deconstruct it through proper, uh… it all goes back to the linguistic constructs that white privilege…”

But as father found himself tangled in the dense labyrinth of enlightened postmodernist thought, his other daughter, with a gift for knowing the right answers to the right questions, blurted out with:

“Bees, Dad! Bees!”

“Yes! Dusk! Yes, yes, yes!” Father was very excited, and instantly abandoned his previous train of thought to hop onto a new one. “You’re right! And of course you would be, as we know you love bees so very much, just like me. As you girls remember me telling you, bees are a perfect representation of how reality has a progressive bias. Bees are nature’s magnificent example of communism. In the hive, all worker bees are equal, all drones are equal. They share everything, they take no more than they need to survive, and each understands her or his role in the community. This is basic Marxism. The bees knew it before Marx! Each bee looks out for the hive by performing the role it was born to perform, never to deviate from that path, having naturally evolved to this higher minded kind of behavior that humanity has only imagined. No bee stands out from another, all are uniform and concerned with the well being of the society, knowing good and well it is best to save individuality for honey-soaked dreams and the daily trip into the flower patch.”

“That’s not the only beautiful thing about bees,” said mother, lying down on the bed. “Who do the bees work for? They work to provide for the queen bee, the mother of  them all. You hear that? Not a king bee, but a queen bee. The bee hive is a matriarchy, unlike the world we live in, which we need not remind you is a patriarchy.”

“Equality,” said Dusk.

“YES!” mother and father shouted simultaneously.

After a few more words on how bees, and to a lesser extent, ants, fully embodied the values of communism and were, in fact, the endpoint of Marx’s and Engels’ philosophy, father was ready to return to a talk only related to bees by name; the subject of the birds and the bees.

“So let us tell you about sex without any problematic language,” he said.

Mother stood again, and father approached her.

“Sometimes,” started mother, “when a human being who may or may not identify as a male or female, or who may find themselves gender-fluid or genderqueer or transgender, feels a certain mutual attraction to another human being whose identity may be any permutation of gender sets as well—although they understand gender is a social construct and is therefore to be ridiculed and dismissed, but must also, for reasons we can’t get into right now, simultaneously be championed in the context of identity politics—there can be feelings of love between the two.”

“And even instances in which love is absent,” said father, “non-physical sexual attraction devoid of class and power can still exist, causing each to experience a rise in heart rate and a boost in mood. Likely even a desire to make physical contact, which, startling as it sounds at first, will be dealt with in a wholly safe and stimulating way. If both members of this relationship identify their feelings to one another through a non-threatening, fully consensual mode of mutual understanding, be it spoken word, sign language, or written document, there will sometimes follow what is known as sex.”

The girls made mental notes of this, but only in a vague, nondescript sort of way.

“There are many ways sex manifests itself,” said mother. She and father detailed the endless ways in which gender-fluid, genderqueer, non-cis people could engage in sexual conduct, with vivid sexual examples played out in loud and sweaty action before the girls’ eyes, with careful reminders that when this happened between a cis-gendered man and a cis-gendered woman, as mother and father were, the dynamics were totally different.

Breathing heavily, father slid himself out of mother, who moaned and bit her lip, eyes still shut tight, clasping the bed sheets.

“Now, girls…” he took a moment to catch his breath. “The sexual conduct between a heteronormative-assuming cismale and a heteronormatiive-assuming cisfemale is what most parents limit their children’s sexual education to. And that’s an unforgivable shame. That’s why we’ve left it for last, so as to not overly emphasize any one of these modes of sexual conduct as preferable or correct, and to intentionally diminish the artificial privilege associated with the heteronormative sexual orientation.”

“Equality,” said Dusk.

“Like reality,” said mother, in a deep moan. She let out a tiny rose-smelling fart that brought a smile to every face, and the family savored the scent as it added a certain charm to the ambiance of the room.

Father patted mother on the shoulder with a respectful sweaty palm, and continued:

“This is the most dangerous form of sexual intercourse, for it is where one hundred percent of rapes happen. In order not to horrify your pretty little heads, we won’t tell you too much about rape. Not until you turn ten. Just remember what we’ve already told you about it, and keep it in the back of your minds as we explain as delicately as we can the major points of heteronormative sex.”

Mother sat up straight and tilted her coffee cup into her mouth, only to find it empty.

“Being girls, you are potential victims of rape, something you must always keep in mind. Remember what we said last week about kidnapping?”

Dawn and Dusk gave wide-eyed nods.

“Rape is a much higher level than kidnapping. It is worse than murder and death.”

The girls weren’t enjoying this talk as much as they’d thought they would.

“The correct, and we do mean only correct way to have heteronormative sex,” said mother, coming out of her breathless post-sexual haze, “is for the man to receive full and authorized consent from the woman that will withstand all scrutiny. Consent, girls, means the proof and validation of one’s willingness to engage in any form of sexual conduct.”

“It is best,”  said father, “for the man to get this consent in writing, with a witness, and to have available a means for applying a sobriety test to the woman in order to ride with utmost caution and certainty into the sexual realm. A sobriety test is not yet legally mandatory,” and he eyed his wife, who showed equal contempt for the lack of laws protecting future victims of consensual alcohol-related sexual regret. “Only after every confirmation and a third or fourth check is made to authorize the consent on behalf of the woman to sexual intercourse, and a  series of tests of her agency and decision making abilities have been run, much like what one might do to a child of your age, may the man respectfully allow the woman to undress herself. Not following this procedure closely will frequently result in a rape. This, girls, is where you may find it difficult to follow.”

“As you remember the children at your school, before we started homeschooling you,” said mother, “most people wear clothes, either unaware of the oppressive and imperialistic nature inherent to them, or fully embracing the hatred that clothes exude. It is only when these two people are clothed that the removal of clothing is considered an important step of sex. But always, and I do mean always, remove your clothing by yourself. The man is not to touch you in any way unless you give him full permission to do so. And he may only touch the parts of your body you have explicitly told him to touch. Otherwise, at best it’s molestation. At worst, it’s rape.”

Something Dawn and Dusk’s mother said above deserves a brief moment of elaboration, for it only serves to further illuminate the savory and high-minded character of the parents. Two years prior to this bedroom episode so artistically rendered before you by the writer, Dawn and Dusk were enrolled at the public elementary school less than a mile from home. One afternoon at recess a young boy contorted his fingers in such a way that his hand took on the shape of a gun. He aimed his hand at Dawn while they played Cowboys and Native Americans (a game the girls hadn’t yet come to understand the problematic and oppressive nature of, so they played it with no harrowing guilt in their hearts, which is the wrong way to play it), and pretended to fire at her, making gun-blast noises. Needless to say, this act caused an uproar when mother and father heard about it that evening when Dawn recounted her day. The next morning mother was on the phone with the Principal, father was on the phone with a lawyer, and soon they were consulting child psychologists to tend to Dawn’s psychological damage. When the boy at school was not severely enough reprimanded (he was suspended from school for a week, a penalty not harsh enough to appease Mr. Martell-Fairfield-Huxley-Grossman-Antwerp-Buldock-McCleary-Graefenburg-Puzo-Thoraline and his wife Mrs. Sanchez-Kutcher-Cashburn-Williams-Rubin-Baczkowski-Rigatti-Mumford), Dawn and Dusk’s parents raised Hell with the school board, and called for stronger gun control all the way up to the governor, who was pleased to hear from the diligent parents. But when nothing more could be done, the parents had no choice but to remove their daughters from the fountain of conservative policy and negligence that was the public school system. For two years now, the girls have enjoyed all the luxuries of homeschooling, and have learned far more than the conservative concentration camp known as public school ever bothered to teach them. But let us return to the bedroom, as we learn more about sex. Recall that mother had just mentioned rape:

“Your mother raises an important point,” said father. “Rape. Most heteronormative sex is rape, because it has always been this way through history, with the barbaric and power-hungry man fulfilling his dark fantasy of control and oppression over the silent beauty that is woman.”

“As you saw,” said mother, “when your father and I were just moments ago engaged in sexual congress, he put his penis, which became offensively erect, right into my vagina, which became wet and welcoming. But this wet and welcoming aspect does not, in any instance, imply enjoyment or anything of the sort. For countless aeons this act has perpetuated the rape culture that continues to this day, with the man violating the body of the woman as though she is only a hole to use and destroy, to fill with the seed of fruition, to leave in a puddle of dirt water as she gives birth to new life.”

Dawn saw an opportunity to impress, and went for it:

“Nature is rape culture. Like reality. Like a progressive bias.”

Her sentences were barely fully realized thoughts, but the fragments of ideation were clear to mother and father.

“No! Honey, no.” Father seemed upset. “Our darling flower petal, our light in darkness, sweet Dawn… that, my dear, is rape. And reality, as we told you, has a progressive, mostly left-leaning bias. Rape is, quite frankly, a conservative quality. It's true you could equate rape with liberalism in its traditional sense. Think of liberalism in its progressive sense. This isn't welcoming to rape.”

Father went into a brief speech about the relationship between conservative ideals and the symbolic and literal instances of rape throughout history, and, through some subversive and backdoor reasoning, he linked the two together so artistically that neither Dawn nor Dusk questioned his conclusions. Who could? He was soon able to pull his storm cloud of words back around to the subject of heteronormative sex, which was not a considerable feat given the obviously hand-in-hand relationship between heterosexuality and rape.

“While the man watches the woman undress, he is free to remove his clothing as well, his own symbols of cultural oppression falling to the floor. But unlike the woman, who, once naked, is free and vibrant, and a standing symbol of spirit and victimhood and constant struggle, the man, once naked, once he has removed his clothing, is no better off. He is now naked, and where his oppressive clothing once stood, now stands his naked body, the flagrant image of rape and privilege and war, which is enough to strike fear into any and all well reasoned sensitive people.”

Mother was visibly flustered. Or maybe she was still recovering from sex. Dawn and Dusk had so many questions to ask they didn’t know how to start, and so, knowing father would be going on for quite a while longer, they didn’t bother.

“Now they’re naked, these two heterosexual cisgendered human beings. And the woman, if she is at all knowledgeable about human history and has taken even just a couple semesters of Women’s Studies courses, is afraid. She’s afraid of domination and control, of her own self worth being reduced to the squeaking, screaming, sweating bulk of bones that all women are reduced to in the throes of heteronormative sex, for this man before her, this man whom, for some period of time, she’s trusted and felt affection for. And she should feel that way, by which I mean afraid, not trustworthy, because this dynamic is a power struggle right away.

“Traditionally this scenario is rape personified. The man, without further consent past this point, assumes it is his right and his privilege to touch the woman, to take her to the bed, to fondle and caress her private parts, to stimulate her sensitive spots, and to penetrate her with his penis while splashing his tongue all across her body.”

Father pointed to his own penis, which dripped with white love.

“But girls, we’re not teaching you the traditional way. We aim to deliver you from the traditions of the world, the conservative status quo, the dangers of rape culture entirely. We will only educate you in proper sex as it should be conducted. So I will continue. Once the two are standing naked before each other, the woman may give the man permission to touch her, or to touch himself. She may touch him as a counterbalance to the power play that’s unfolding around them. It is at this point that the two may do any number of sexual things, so long as consent has been given, and, more importantly, has been proved in writing or recording or other means,  documenting that she is neither intoxicated or confused or nervous or unsure or suffering self-esteem problems, body image issues, or any other hindrance that will otherwise remove without the shadow of a doubt all traces of consent and turn the spectacle instantly into rape. If the man has penetrated the woman, he is under unwritten oath to listen carefully for the cease-and-desist command that may come from the woman at any time, so it is best he spend no great effort trying to enjoy himself or find pleasure in the act—although he will, for he derives great pleasure in dominating a woman, such are his tribal instincts and his rapist nature. The call for quits can come whenever she realizes this is not what she wants, and if, as soon as she shouts it, he has not removed himself from her body and retreated to the other side of the room, and has not apologized, and has not abided by the contract between them, he has committed rape. And that is a felony.”

Dawn and Dusk, for what must have been the hundredth time, looked at each other in hopes of finding answers in the questioning eyes of the other. But only answerless gazes were exchanged. Dusk could think of a few genius points that would again drop mom’s jaw in pride, and blow up dad’s eyes in adoration, but she wasn’t sure if the time was right to speak. Father was on a kick.

“As you saw your father penetrate my anus,” said mother, “you no doubt understood that to be the traditional form of sex among homosexual males, which we wished to present to you in all its beauty. And when I flipped your father over and drove this into his butt,” she presented the long yellow dildo from under the sheets, giving the girls their first eyeful of the thing, “that was to show you the way a man looks when he has been conquered. It is a look the two of you will know well in the years to come. It is also common for some to use dildos and strap-ons, which are simply dildos a woman may attach to herself, in homosexual sex between women.”

Father was up and strutting around by the window, smoking a cigarette.

“We believe it’s important,” he started, staring into the yard, “for you girls to know about sex and culture. Different cultures have differing customs pertaining to sex, and this is something that is absolutely fascinating to study. But as you are both well informed on the problematic nature of cultural appropriation, we cannot risk educating you on cultural aspects of sex or love right now.”

“Why not?” asked Dawn.

“Because,” said mother, “without having a book in front of us and having a person of that culture present to conduct our speech, we run the risk of saying something offensive, pronouncing a word the wrong way, forgetting minor details relevant to the culture’s history, wrongly categorizing people by statistical criteria, inaccurately conveying a complex idea, being insensitive to the latest ideas of that culture, or reinforcing cultural stereotypes, even if unintentionally, which would negatively influence the two of you in ways neither of you would notice until you’re committing hate crimes and telling offensive jokes at recess.”

The girls understood. This afternoon, like many afternoons before it, had opened their eyes to the infinite reach of worldly ideas. They saw the wisdom of tenured scholars materialize in bold clouds of truth that rained pellets of reality and knowledge upon their naked bodies. Undaunted by the evil thread of clothing’s oppressive grip, the girls absorbed the hailstorm of rock-solid reasoning, the cold-as-ice logic, and relished the titillation of droplets of smartness pouring over them.

“I want to know about that stuff, though,” said Dawn.

“I wish we could teach you, honey,” said mother. “But it’s treading into dangerous territory when a person starts talking about cultures that are not their own, like I said. The best place to learn about that sort of thing is in a safe space, where things can be discussed in a mild environment with not too many ideas and viewpoints flying about.”

“What’s a safe space?” asked Dusk.

“Safe spaces,” said father, “originally started as zones free of intolerance. That was all fine and well at first, but it wasn’t really enough. Even when you don’t tolerate intolerance, there’s still an unsettling amount of viewpoints that can fly about. And since viewpoints are the number one danger to ideological purity, they need to be controlled. Or removed. So now the idea of safe space has been extended to control for these unwelcome elements. A safe space nowadays is a place where you can’t say anything that someone might not like. And it’s one of the most important facets of the progressive infrastructure. The often stressful atmosphere of challenging, difficult, and deceptively “thought-provoking” conversations is eradicated to leave only a whisper-room for sensitive people. Without the safe space, it’s unlikely your mother and I would have ever met.”

“I love safe spaces!” said Dusk. “No one can hurt my feelings inside them, right?”

“Absolutely right!” said father. “No matter who you are or what you do or what you think, you won’t be challenged or scrutinized or asked to validate your actions or claims with anything. Emotions speak first and last. That’s it. And anything that might set those emotions uneasy is unacceptable in the safe space. The best part is that you can designate any space as a safe space, and immediately make your surroundings a fortress of intolerance. Intolerance of derision, that is.”

“So I can’t tell Dusk to stop bringing bees into our bedroom?” asked Dawn.

“Not if you’re in a safe space, no,” said mother. “And your bedroom is a safe space.”

“But,” interjected father, “if Dusk’s bees are bothering you and affecting your emotions, then you’re fine to tell her about them. In a safe space, no one should hurt the other’s feelings.”

“But,” said mother, “if Dawn telling Dusk not to bring bees into the room hurts Dusk’s feelings, then Dawn has violated the safe space code of conduct, and has hurt someone else by voicing her thoughts.”

“This is true,” said father, stumped by this lofty and perplexing moral dilemma.  “But there’s always an answer for this kind of thing. I don’t have time to go into it now; we’re already off track. Let’s get back to sex.”

“Can you keep people out of safe spaces?” asked Dusk.

“That’s a good question,” said mother. “And the answer is: it depends on who they are. There are rules for safe spaces, all of which follow the most important rule, which is that everything said or expressed is subject to censorship if it doesn’t meet a list of criteria.”

“The criteria is pretty specific,” said father, “ and everyone in the safe space understands it. The people kicked out of the space are people who engage in problematic language, mostly. I want to make it clear we don’t judge people based on actions, behaviors, habits, lifestyles, race, personal decisions, personality traits, or anything else. The only thing we judge people on in the safe space is the things they say. It’s like what we’ve always taught you, girls, that people aren’t defined by their actions or choices or behaviors, but by their words. And this is no more evident than in the safe space. It’s not a place to criticize anything.”

“There’s another way one can accurately judge people,” said mother. “It has nothing to do with words or actions, but the collective to which they belong.”

“That’s right!” said father. “Think back to the bees. Their aversion to individuality is their strongest suit, and that’s the aspect modern day social justice strives to replicate. Individuality is fine for holidays or vacations, but the very idea of individuality raises some red flags right away. In social justice, we like to think in terms of collectives. We don’t evaluate people on their individual traits or characteristics or experiences or histories, but on the traits of their collective.”

Mother said: “For instance, if you see a white cis-male walking down the street, you know he belongs to the following collectives: White, Straight, Man. Each of these collectives have their traits defined in Social Justice, and you can use these traits to quickly and easily assess the person you see walking down the street. No need to know him personally, or to know his life experience. Right away you know he has privilege, he has power, he has everything you don’t. He benefits from the existence of the patriarchy, and is an enemy. He is your oppressor. It’s unlikely you’ll ever hear him apologize, because he closes his eyes to the way he, by virtue of his collective, oppresses you. By the same token, if you see a proud strong woman of color rolling along in a wheel chair, you know the collectives she belongs to: Color, Maybe not Straight, Woman, Handicapped. You know the attributes of these collectives. No privilege, constant oppression, suffering from the imperialist regime of the patriarchy.”

Dawn thought this sounded like something her parents had taught her about almost a year ago. Racism. So she asked:

“Is this racism?”

“No, dear,” said mother. “Racism is entirely different, I’m afraid. Racism is systemic. That’s a core tenet we’ve tried to teach you. You can’t be racist against a person unless that racism is systemic, and the system actively opposes them. Same goes for sexism and other isms. This is why we go by collectivism, not individuality. Individuality poses immediate problems. Problematic problems. If we are to judge by individuality, it removes the ease of evaluating a privileged person based on their collective’s status. And by extension, we as individuals become burdened with taking responsibility for our actions and our mindsets. The same is not true of collectivism. The less privileged you are, the less personal responsibility you have for your actions and choices. Judging a person by their collective is not racist or sexist if their collective has a high privilege score.”

“But,” said Dawn, “if you say the white person and the black person--”

“Person of color,” said father.

“If you say the white person and the person of color are identified as part of their collectives, which is another way of saying race or sex, doesn’t that--”

“Racism is when you say anything about a minority,” said Dusk. “A minority being someone not part of the imperialist ruling class. The ruling collective, I mean.”

Mother clapped her hands, and father nodded.

“Very good, honey,” they said.

“Ruling class, ruling collective,” father said, “they are one in the same. Because class is another collective by which we can assess someone’s traits. Collectives each come with an empirically derived number of privilege points. As you know, White and Male both hold the highest number of privilege points, with Straight a very close second. A person is evaluated by their number of privilege points. The general rule of thumb is that the higher number of privilege points one has, the worse that person is.”

Dawn tried to ask her question again, but was interrupted by mother.

“And what are some other collectives we’ve taught you about?”

“Fat people,” said Dawn, optimistic she would impress.

“People of size, you mean,” said father.

“Gay people,” she tried.

“People of sexuality, Dawn,” said father.

“Disabled people,” she said.

“People of the wheel, honey,” said father.

“Handicapable is also acceptable,” said mother. “But when it comes to normalized standards of privilege, one could say the whole world is handicapped except for the straight white male collective, which suggests a broad handicapping policy needs to be put in place to level the playing field.”

Father nodded in agreement, and said:

“But let’s get back to—what were we talking about? Oh, safe spaces.”

Dawn could see there was no time and no room for her question. Every new idea shared with her spawned a swarm of thoughts she didn’t know how to form, and questions she didn’t know how to ask. Unbeknownst to her, she was witnessing for the first time the glorious implementation of safe space policy. Her question, if she had been allowed to ask it, would have been problematic. And that’s no fun for anyone.

“Do they only let good people into the safe space?” Dawn asked instead.

“Oh yes,” said father. “The safe space is safe specifically because it is exclusively run by, and open to, good people. The people operating a safe space are expert judges of character, if that isn’t evident by your mother and I having met there so many years ago.”

There was great laughter in the bedroom as all rejoiced in the splendor that was father’s joke.

“And it’s by the very same criteria that we have taught to you girls,” said mother, “that the safe space experts verify if people are good and are welcome in the space. Primarily by the merits of the collectives to which a person belongs, and secondarily by the words the person chooses to use in public and private matters.”

“Can my friends come to the safe space?” Dawn said.

Mother took a moment to reflect on Dawn’s friends, who her daughter hadn’t been allowed to associate with for some weeks due to mother and father finding certain toxic characteristics in each.

“Well, honey,” mother began, “this is something your father and I have talked a lot about the last few days. Your friends, and I know you love them, possess some unflattering traits that we don’t like you running around with.”

“To be more clear, honey,” said father, noticing his daughter’s sudden distraught look, “it’s their parents we’ve found problematic. But kids are an immediate outcome of parental guidance, which indicates to us your friends might not be all they’re cracked up to be.”

Dawn’s heart felt as though it broke. She sat on the floor while her parents explained the important secrets of her friends’ parents.

“Jeremy’s parents seemed to us fine on our first meeting,” said mother, “what with both of them being staunch anti-gun activists, and their relationship being interracial and not marked by any noticeable patriarchal leanings. But as we talked longer, we came to find they had never donated to Planned Parenthood, which was a red flag. Jeremy’s mother even said they had considered abortion when she was pregnant with Jeremy, but decided against it at the last minute. This suggests a problematic, and to be quite honest, a triggering submissiveness to Republican and conservative values.”

“Your friend Samantha,” said father, “is a charming girl, if I am to understand female is the gender she has chosen for herself, which was never made clear by her parents when we asked how they went about avoiding the traditional gender binary roles when raising Samantha. They looked at us like we were nuts. And that was discomforting since we found so much common ground when discussing our support for the new Thin Person Handicapping Tax that passed a few months earlier. There are good points and bad points to everyone.”

“I know Rachel is your best friend,” said mother, “but her father, who speaks up for women’s rights and gay rights, has never been clear on his stance for programs designed to advance minorities or the disabled. We suspect this is because he doesn’t feel too strongly about minorities and disabled people. And her mother, unbelievable as it is, your father heard her using gendered slurs in conversation.”

“It’s true,” said father, closing his eyes as he nodded, cigarette still between his lips.

“Erin doesn’t even have a mother,” said mother. “She died when Erin was young, and Erin has been raised by her father alone, ever since. We don’t even have to tell you how uncomfortable this makes us, Dawn. Your father saw Erin’s father walk into an adult bookstore just yesterday. The man is a pervert, probably a pedophile, definitely a rapist, and really, it’s beyond question that he has an oppressivistic nature.”

“And although we’ve never met Anna’s parents,” said father, “we are sure they are horrible people, because Anna is a problematic nuisance of a child. That’s why we sent her home the last time she was over here.”

“She’s putting poisonous ideas in your head,” said mother. “When she began criticizing feminism, as if feminism wasn’t above criticism, that was a tactic to hurt you as a person, and to discredit us as parents.”

Father said, “You have to understand, dear, that the arguments she was using were called straw-feminists. We’ve taught you about this before. It’s when someone comes up with a judgment or critique of feminism and says things that you just know aren’t true, based on how you feel about them. If someone says something critical of feminism or social justice, you find whatever it is they’re criticizing it and you point out to them that it’s not true, or it’s a misrepresentation. It doesn’t matter what it is. You go on your gut. If they’re criticizing what you feel in your gut to be true, you blast them to pieces. Whatever they’re thinking, they’re thinking wrong, because if they were thinking right, they wouldn’t criticize it. Since correctness is so obviously on our side, you can consider anyone who opposes us or criticizes us as already defeated. They’re using straw-feminist arguments, which is a fallacy.”

“Another great way to counter something like that,” said mother, “is with the No True Feminist argument, which is a veritable victory for anyone who is sharp enough to use it. It gets right to the core of their argument. If what they’re criticizing seems extreme and absurd, it’s clearly not a tenet of feminism or social justice. So you pull out the No True Feminist line, which basically states that no true feminist or social justice warrior would ever say or condone or practice such radical and extreme things. And by extension, you can say that anyone who does say or condone such things is not part of our movement, removing yourself of any responsibility or association with that kind of person, which cleanses you and shows that you’re in it for the right reasons.”

“This is how you should have handled Anna,” said father. “But you didn’t. And that’s why you’re not allowed to see her ever again. I can only imagine how awful her parents are, if she spews things like that.”

These words flew at Dawn like eggs at a farm party. They hit her hard and left her feeling ashamed.

“You’ll find new friends,” mother said, standing to join father by the window.

“But I want my old friends,” Dawn said under her breath.

“That’s out of the question, dear,” said mother. “You think long and hard about the lessons your father and I teach you, and you’ll understand the danger in associating with toxic people like your friends.”

“OK.” Dawn pouted for a moment, knowing never to talk back to her parents. “Is there going to be a test? I don’t think I can remember everything you guys have said.”

Father laughed. “Honey, that’s fine. There will of course be a test, like there always is, but your mother and I have written up plenty pages of notes for you and your sister to study. We don’t expect you to know everything the moment you hear it.”

“We’re not both “guys,” honey,” said mother. “Your father may be a guy, but I am a woman, Dawn. You know better than to use gendered nouns to address people who don’t belong to the Male collective.”

“Alright, let’s get this talk back to sex!” said father as he lit a cigarette for mother.

“When a heteronormative couple have sex,” said mother, holding the fire between her lips, exhaling smoke with every word, “what can sometimes happen is that a baby is formed inside the cis-woman. We won’t go into the science of how babies are made. We’ll save that for another time.  But that’s where you girls came from. You were conceived through consensual heteronormative sexual intercourse…”

Mother’s words faded away under Dawn’s preoccupation with the overbearing stress of the afternoon. On her final vestige of childhood confidence and happiness, she was at a breaking point. Her sister had one-upped her at every turn, her parents were ashamed of her exuberant stupidity, and now her entire social life was taken from her in one quick clap. To top it off, the information overload of the day was beginning to take its toll. If she didn’t spit out something insightful and intelligent regarding this conversation soon, she’d forever be number two in the household of equality. She’d be the laughing stock of her twin sister. She’d hate herself. She’d never learn the ways of the world. She’d be lost. She’d be shamed by the parents who conceived her through consensual heteronormative sexual intercourse. She’d be… But wait.

Consensual intercourse. Father went on about that for some time. He made it clear what counted as consent and how its parameters were defined. He and mother often drove the point home that rape culture was widespread and hard to notice, but that right below everything, it was throbbing like a rape wand. Quickly, she thought back on everything that had happened that afternoon. No. Goodness, no. There was no way around it. Dawn, in a sudden spasm of horror, was hit with a realization that shook the earth beneath her.

“What is it, darling?” asked mother, noticing the look on her daughter’s face.

Dawn stood up and looked at mother and father as they blew smoke into the room. Tears blurred her vision, and she looked at her sister, who was slapping the yellow dildo against the bed.

“M-mommy…” said Dawn. “Daddy…”

“Honey, speak  up,” father said in a puff of smoke.

“You said that you need consent to have hero-to-mormon sex.”

“Heteronormative,” said mother.

Dawn nodded. “Mommy, you have to give daddy your consent in words and in writing and in a recording. And he has to ask you for it without touching you or looking at you.” She wiped the tears as they fell down her cheeks.

Mother and father looked at each other.

“But,” Dawn continued, “daddy never asked you. The whole time we watched he never asked you, and you never wrote your consent. So… so, does this mean…”

Dusk dropped the dildo and shot a look at her parents. Her face wrinkled into a pre-cry crunch.

“Did daddy…” Dawn couldn’t go on. Her sobs overtook her.

“My… god…” Mother collapsed, and father grabbed her at the arm to steady her, but she pulled away. “Let go of me, you…!”

Father’s eyes went wide as mother crawled away from him, toward the bed.

“You… what?” asked father, with sweat matting his hair to his head.

“You…RAPIST!” shouted mother.

Those who were not already crying burst into tears, and the room became a mess of victims curling into balls of dismay. Mother, so mercilessly hit with the realization that she had just been raped, shook with revulsion and panic. Father fell to his knees and punched himself in the head, aghast at his own bestial ways, ashamed of the unexplained animal desire that threw him into passion’s damp nest and forced him to commit acts of unspeakable horror on his wife.

“I don’t know what I… I’m so sorry,” he cried. But it was useless. The deed was done. Rape culture had won.

“Girls, call the police,” said mother. She ran from the room holding the girls’ hands and kicked the bedroom door closed behind her. Father was alone, balled up on the floor like a man whose world had just caught fire and fallen into the abyss. A life devoted to promoting only the soundest of philosophies and the virtues of social justice had come to this. It had to be a nightmare. This couldn’t be real. Rape? My own wife? In front of my daughters? No, he thought. Impossible. But it was possible. Soon he heard the police sirens outside. A knock at the front door. Voices of men in the hallway.

Deep down, buried below his swirling fog of postmodernist rumination, stacked under his belief in vaguely defined concepts like social constructivism and deconstructionism, and leveled right beneath his adherence to the tenets of social justice, father knew Pandora’s box lied forever on its side, unlocked, its hinges broken, waiting to burst. In ways that had long ago seemed logical, but had only faded into clouds of memory as new ideas took their place, he understood that such a sequence of events as occurred today could occur anywhere, at any time, to anyone, and make a devil out of a good person. But god, it was fun while it lasted, wasn’t it? Is it not fun to be perpetually outraged? Is it not a natural high to take offense? Does it not give one a rush to seek out the most malicious interpretation of life and reality? Is it not a source of self-assuredness to claim the moral highground over legions you consider below you due to ignorance? And would it not be burdensome to take time out from this wellspring of grandeur to reflect on the unfortunate side effects of such visions of self perfection? To others who hadn’t achieved father’s current state of high-minded far left progressive thought, the outcome of this philosophy was always obvious, horrifying, dangerous, a slippery slope of rancid illogic. But when one is so high in the clouds of social awareness and brilliance it can be hard to look down and understand the destination of an ideology one has devoted ones life and energy to. Father looked down now. He saw the choices of his life and philosophy converging on this one inevitable point; the one point where he could only become the victimizer, the oppressor, the purely savage evil that he devoted his life to destroying. His holier-than-all crusade against tangential offshoots of vice had landed him in the only position possible, due to the ideological monster his words and thoughts gave life to. And all from one potent seed of ideation. The idea that all people have some basic value and ought to be treated as such, can, when finding itself planted in the right kind of person, at the right angle and with the right kind of dirt, mutate its way into the hostile, virulent, radical form that manifested itself in father, mother, and legions of others. It mutates until it no longer resembles the seed it was born from, and the plague-like arms and tentacles that grow from it are as far removed from the basic idea of human worth as possible. There was nothing left to do. Father had only one option. He stood to his feet with his arms raised before him, submissive, ready for the handcuffs. The door to the bedroom flew open.

With a click, the cuffs were on. They were cold against his skin, too tight for his blood. The police led father out of the house against the backdrop of crying girls and crying mother, who were huddled together on the couch. Father looked at them as he exited the home, and his tears fell from him like liberty falls from the mouths of slaves, like prosperity falls from the hands of women, like opportunity falls from the reach of minorities, like riches fall from the fingers of the disabled. The path of tears followed him on his inglorious, naked march out into the cool September afternoon. As he approached the police car he knew he deserved everything about to come to him. Somewhere along the line he had fucked up. He didn’t check his privilege. He didn’t check his animal desire. He got carried away with the lust for power, and in his wake he left ruined lives, the scarred memories of victims who would never recover. He hoped for rehabilitation. He knew he would lose everything. He knew his family would cast him aside. And that, he realized with a hopeful smile, would be justice.

The End