The contempt capitalists held for the poor had become institutionalized. Homeless, unemployed, those with disabilities, the sick, the feeble had to fulfill painstaking, incomprehensible, idiotic bureaucratic requirements just to receive a minimal sum that barely kept their vital functions going. The unusable part of society could lose all assistance because of small technical errors, and then they were just stuck. In their rancid gaffs with no electricity or heat or food. And who helped them then? The Christians helped them then, people who got their serotonin fix by dedicating themselves to the preservation of those unworthy of preservation.

Don started to hate almost everything around her. The police who patted down every kid, every day, who lived in social housing.

Out of habit, for fun, or just because they could. The children had to stand in rows, empty their pockets, pull down their pants, put their hands on their heads. Something about power or respect meant that probably one or two million kids grew up knowing with all certainty that they were not protected by the state.

The police virtually never found any drugs or weapons, because, after all, what kind of children would be so stupid as to carry suspicious things when they knew they were being surveilled. Weapons were stored in empty old factories. Same with the drugs.

Don hated. The worn-out looking people at the agencies who treated her mother as if she was just too lazy and stupid to keep her life in order; she hated the public housing authority’s maintenance man who barred children from doing anything, from running, talking, laughing, breathing. She hated her father—

Whose influence on the upbringing of his children was negligible. Occasionally he sent money. Rarely, actually. But when it happened, Mother always gave a long speech about the goodness of this man, she said she’d be lost without him, then she cried. What Don had learned was: women took care of all the never-ending, practical, unpleasant things that were necessary in life. They stood in line at agencies, dragged their children to doctors’ offices, and disappeared into their apartments to take care of other women’s duties until they eventually became mentally ill, which in their circles always meant depression, which in their circles always meant: Mother laid in bed, cried, and didn’t get up anymore. Women didn’t accomplish the extraordinary. Extraordinary accomplishments were male things. Interesting activities emanated from men. They stood beneath streetlamps, listened to music, smoked, drank, dealt drugs. Boys made the cool music. Back then there were still no women in the grime scene who were important. Who were as threateningly angry and loud as the men.

Men annoyed

PETER

DIAGNOSIS: psychologically peculiar

RISK FACTOR: unestablished

SEXUALITY: heterosexual, maybe

IQ: unclear

ETHNICITY: white, referred to as Caucasian, right?

FAMILIAL CONNECTIONS: no siblings