People push their way out of a bus that stops in front of the shopping arcade and set off in search of either the dinosaur museum or squalor. They’ve read about the criminality in Rochdale, minors have been forced into prostitution by foreigners. Now they stand here in the pedestrian zone with the unsure look people get in unfamiliar surroundings. Removed from their environment, they suddenly feel it. They feel how vulnerable they are. It’s quickly destroyed, that sense of one’s own importance, in a knife attack or a spray of puke far from home. They realize they aren’t in a foreign land, the people, and now they spot Don and put on forced smiles. There’s a minority, you have to conjure up an open expression on your face.

The art enthusiasts, the lefties, the well-meaning people who still had occupations, could no longer keep themselves together when they encountered a Black person or other sort of minority; they tripped over themselves, shat their pants for fear of using the wrong terminology. What did you call Inuit and Roma and Sinti these days, and which form is correct for someone apparently transitioning genders, and are you still allowed to say missus? Refugee was still acceptable. The collective joy in chattering as well as humor had given way to a great uptightness, and people were once again busy regulating themselves and making their lives hell. On the streets and online. From which Monty Python had disappeared. In order to make room for a few billion hate posts, as if something had been suppressed for years with all the supposedly democratic governments and the privileges granted to even the most absurd minorities. Unisex bathrooms and gender studies—and then

Finally the long-pent-up exploded, the suppressed burst out of individuals who as a result finally labeled themselves with malice, contempt, and hatred. These sentiments crawled out of the net and into the streets, became knife attacks, brawls, acid attacks on women. The slaughter of dogs. Imported dogs. All dogs except English dogs. Rochdale became unpleasant, too. Ever more people armed themselves, there were fights daily. Gays didn’t dare go out on the street after dark, same for women. But this was only on the edges, on the outskirts of the world, which was lurching into a new phase of repulsiveness. Sure, everyone was doing better. In Ethiopia babies were no longer eaten by locusts, but the world had very few places left to dream about anymore. Places where you could enjoy watching the sun set over the sea and feel an all-encompassing love, they barely existed anymore. In this strange era. When everyone seemed to have been left to sink or swim, everyone competed against everyone else to try to somehow survive.

When

Don

Went home after school, it was