Now they're interesting, but the REAL star of the show is one of his villains, John Doe the Generic Man, who's this guy in a stark white suit with flat pink unshaded, untextured skin with no features or anything who talks like chatGPT and has black text over his face that explains what he's feeling at the moment. That guy is fucking fascinating.

A husband and wife eat a bland dinner together in a dimly-lit kitchen. They don't speak or look at each other. The meal: a pathetic Salisbury steak.

Cut to their bedroom at night. The wife lays sleeping in the bed while in the background the husband is putting on her dress, pantyhose, pearl necklace, heels, makeup, and a wig. When he's done he quietly leaves the room. The wife opens her eyes as soon as she's sure he's gone.

Now we're in a seedy dive bar. A small crowd of mustachioed men wearing leather jackets, black boots, and sunglasses sip beers and puff cigarettes while the "show" unfolds. Camera pans down, then pans to the side. Between the black boots we see the husband on his hands and knees, greedily eating a Chipotle Chorizo Burrito Bowl with Cilantro Lime Rice from a plastic dog bowl on the floor. His makeup is ruined, face smeared with sour cream and hot sauce.

A man steps forward. The husband looks up, and his expression changes to that of a deer in the headlights. Cut to reveal that the "man" standing before the husband is none other than his wife, in elaborate drag as a Tom of Finland biker, false mustache and officer cap and all. She smiles warmly, and nods. The husband smiles too, and resumes his meal.

Megillus in Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans, 2nd century CE

In the 2nd century CE, the Roman author Lucian wrote an account of a threesome between two women - Leaena and Demonassa - and Demonassa’s trans-masculine husband, Megillus. His work provides incredible insight into ideas about gender and sexuality in the Roman era.

2tbsp of peanut butter. a splash of rice vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, maple syrup. some chili flakes, some sesame seeds. a splash of water to thin it out. now you put in your noodles (cooled!!!! boiled and rinsed so they’re cold!!) and then some chopped up cucumber or carrot or avocado or cabbage or any crunchy vegetable. i just used cucumber

It may be lonely. Certainly painful. It’ll take time. We’ve got time. That of course is an unpopular utterance these days. Instant coffee is the hallmark of current rhetoric. But we do have time. We’d better take the time to fashion revolutionary selves, revolutionary lives, revolutionary relationships.

In the face of exploitation, dispossession, pervasive injustice, state violence, war and climate breakdown, time might seem like the last thing many people have. Focusing on individual well-being can seem paltry, luxurious or even decadent in the face of the dangers unevenly threatening communities around the world, but revolutionary selves are needed to make revolution. The urgency of revolution conflicts with the patience required to perform spade work or to fashion a self. It is exhausting! Bambara perceived that the urgent demands of political struggles will never be met if time isn’t taken to fashion revolutionary selves. Such fashioning is not a process of creation ex nihilo; it requires ongoing and collective processes of reflection, care and healing. Indeed, as Akwugo Emejulu suggested in the wake of the George Floyd rebellions in 2020, exhaustion itself ‘is a praxis’ and can be a ground for forging solidarity: ‘If you’re tired of the way things are that means you understand that things can be different. Through a haze of exhaustion, you glimpse another world.’]