epilogue: top-voted comment

50 49
by @KateTheVampireSlayer

I’m one of the people whose life is narrated

in the OP’s story, without our consent.

Because it’s all weird and abbreviated

and has fucked-up opinions on what it all meant

I want to provide some context and closure.

Laura, who wrote it, lost her composure

(that’s right, Laure, I’m posting your name!

You don’t just get to pour out shame

on everyone else and not even mention

yourself. I won’t let you hide underneath

an alias. The author is Laura Reith!

I know she secretly wants the attention.)

and disappeared. She didn’t say

like, “Hey guys, I’m going,” she just ran away.

So then super quickly, folks started freaking

out, and posting, like, “Is Laura dead?

Has anyone seen her?” Now, we weren’t speaking

for reasons which you will know if you’ve read

her story, but still, of course, I was shattered.

This girl was my friend, my sister, she mattered

to me. I mean, I was really afraid.

And then it turned out we were all being played.

She wasn’t in trouble, it was just that she’d ghosted.

She’d left her apartment, cancelled her cell,

but she was in England, alive and well.

Twelve months later she turned up and posted

this fic, I guess it took her a year to write:

the longest flounce post in the history of spite.

And anger is valid, and I’m totally aware of

the work of Dworkin and hooks and Lorde,

but listen, for real, it is also unfair of

Laura to make this grand and broad

critique of marginalized people trying

to support each other, basically denying

that solidarity is even possible at all,

by focusing in on something so small.

She’s so involved in this personal vendetta

she refuses to pay attention to the good

in people, or just to our sisterhood.

I understand that what happened upset her,

and I’m not saying everything went well,

but there are sides to this story she just doesn’t tell.

Listen, I also enjoy disaster

movies. Dante’s Peak is dope.

But Pierce Brosnan running faster

than lava-dude, that inspires hope,

even if it tells us that hope is located

in the superpowers of an exaggerated

straight white hero, when really it lies

in community, and in social ties,

and in justice, the root of all resistance.

Call me a post-post-structuralist

but even if justice doesn’t exist

we have to believe in its existence

if we want our communities to survive.

So what if the story was: we’re still alive?

I personally know that we’re all surviving.

Bette is still living at the same address

which means her business must be thriving.

Keiko is kind of an art-world success:

she was just in this swanky group exhibition

of new trans artists called “Phase Transition”

in Bushwick somewhere. Proserpina’s dick

is conquering the internet in a porno flick

about Elagabalus. Day is still hated

widely, and still isn’t making amends,

but even with her, at least she has friends:

her Twitter account’s been validated.

Aashvi and I, I guess I should say,

are having a baby. She’s due any day.

We can’t believe it. We’re both delighted.

And again, it sucks that Laura is sad,

and I’m sorry I wasn’t more foresighted,

but it’s not the case that everything’s bad

just because we’re no longer dating.

There’s this idea circulating

that care is somehow a scarce resource,

especially for girls like us, and of course

half the world fucking hates us,

feminists, Christians, the government too,

but care’s not a substance. It’s an action we do.

I think that Laura underestimates us:

we survived the events she describes above.

We’re all still here, still ready to love.