The awakening, you must be thinking?

To what? Consciousness? Sexuality?

It’s sexuality, right?

I’m kind of freaky, so it definitely checks out.

But no, dear reader.

This is about something bad.

This is about the awakening. The one that happens when you discover the answer to one of the simplest, most terrible questions in life:

who is my best friend?

Who is sleeping beside me?

Or, putting it into simpler, more cutting terms — or so I say:

Does Stalin know?

Because if he knew, he would put a stop to it.

That’s the whole of human history summarized into one sad little phrase:

If only Stalin knew.

Well, he did.

He ordered it.

Wake the fuck up, child.

They always know.

They just don’t care.

I would like to say I’m terrified of people, but I can barely be surprised anymore. Not after the things I’ve seen, heard, and witnessed.

I’m immune.

You could tell me that my sweet little friend, the one who smiles with such innocence — the one I will be reading this to soon, the one I love kindly — has a habit of hunting humans for sport, and that she hasn’t done it to me only because I’m a bit fat and she’s watching her figure.

And I would believe you.

I wouldn’t even be surprised.

Murder, cannibalism, and fat-shaming?

Call it a Wednesday.

In reality, you never know.

Trust me.

There is a very particular sinking feeling you get when you realize that the person with whom you have spent hours discussing the best parts of humanity is also a horrible racist.

And that makes you ask questions about your own sins, doesn’t it?

About what you missed.

About what you excused.

About what, in yourself, made you compatible with that blindness.

And then there is an even worse moment.

The one where you discover that this person — the one you thought had better taste, deeper knowledge, and a near-perfect compendium of general culture — also loves Shakira.

Yeah.

There’s no getting over that.

You know what?

I’m not even going to joke.

Not too long ago, we found out that a disturbing number of the famous, the influential, and the rich — or that cursed little Venn diagram where all three overlap — used to go to a damned island and do, literally, the thing that used to be a joke.

The thing we used as exaggeration.

The thing we used as shorthand for evil because surely, surely, nobody was actually doing that.

But they were.

We’re sick.

Yes.

We.

There is no clean separation from it.

Evidence, experience, history — all of it points to the same ugly thing:

power is the solvent of morals.

Give a person enough of it, and watch the innocent child they once were become a veritable cannibal.

Like my lovely friend.

Don’t worry, darling.

I’ll hit the gym.

I promise.

I’ll be lean and tasty soon.

I am not advocating that you live your life alone, keeping everyone at arm’s length because you are afraid of finding out the horrible truth.

That would be cowardly.

That would be sad.

That would be a terrible way to waste whatever time we have been sentenced to.

And yet, somehow, I always end up doing exactly that.

Why?

Because sometimes it is better than discovering that your passionate, brilliant, professionally compassionate friend — the one who has built an entire identity around understanding sexual violence — is also capable of defending the indefensible when it suits her.

Especially when the sexually violent individual is the friend who buys her nice things.

Oh, the humanity.

And after that, honestly, you have my blessing to stop giving a crap about humanity.

Done deal.

Noah, get the ark.

God, send the flood.

Humanity has submitted its final draft, and I regret to inform you:

it does not pass peer review.

I thought this piece was unsalvageable.

I thought it would end up in limbo with that wonderful little essay about how idiots are really trying, and how you should ignore Eddie Van Halen, and whatever you do, you should not go ahead and jump.

Because this is awfully bleak.

But I told the idea for this essay to my friend.

Actually, to both my friends.

And now I have to read this to them, and I am trying to find some light, so they don’t think I’m either boring or suicidal.

Which I’m not.

So let’s drink to this piece.

And to them.

I promise that, when the darkness within finally emerges, I won’t be surprised.

I won’t judge.

And I confess — even harder — that I expect their darkness to be the lightest possible kind of dark.

A dangerous confession, if I’ve ever made one.

Now, it's Friday.

Go.

Pay consenting adults to let you cut their toenails and eat them, or whatever your poison is.

But never forget consent.

And never forget the human.

Peace.