I was raised Christian Orthodox, which meant a set of foundational beliefs in God, the afterlife, morality, and the accompanying rituals and traditions to retain the faith. At some point in my teens I no longer had any faith in Christianity as the golden source of meaning, and perhaps I never really did. It was more of an obligation I had to endure until I developed the wherewithal to question religious beliefs and practices. As a teen, I recall saying I was spiritual but not religious, which basically meant I wanted to continue having a sense of existential meaning without any formal ritualized tradition (but more on that later). By the time I was an undergrad, a philosophy professor completely wiped away any remnants of faith I had and replaced it with cold skeptical rationalism. As a result, I put my time and commitment into academia because it sharpened my critical thinking skills, and to be honest, knowledge was seductive. 

Chet Banks, or Chedda Money if you knew him in high school, or Chee-Easy now on social, is standing in line at Starbucks. His morning routine. Got that pin-stripe blue suit with the tapered legs, but he skipped the gym for a few weeks so his belt’s strugglin’. Sure he could take it down a notch, but that would be taking an “L” and Chet’s not about it. Plus it reminds him he’s got to get back to his gym routine. The coffee’s on his mind now. It excites him knowing that black bitter fuel will jump-start his nerves. He’s got that anxiety, but he likes it that way. It’s more energy. And more is more. No sugar for him. He’s good to himself like that. He hates routine, but can’t help falling into it. Two cups in the morning, first shit at half past nine, two more by ten, and five shits total before noon. Thinks of the office and how he had promised himself he’d never end up in one. “That’s what happens when you get married,” he rationalizes. He checks his watch and calculates how much time he’s got left to wait in line before he’s late. A minor panic. Now he’s irritable and inhales deep. His belt wails in agony. He’s never late, but he always gets anxious about it. Never late, mate–that’s his motto. “Can’t let yourself down like that, bro!” He shouts mentally. The coffee arrives just in time to prevent a panic attack.

My local watering hole resonates with soft jazz and the voices of strangers in live conversation. The windows facing the street are steamy from the fight between the desperate internal air conditioner and the humid end of July outside. A little summer rain begins to break the heat and the windows start to clear up. There’s something about this place. Brick walls. Old wood. A nostalgic nod to the 70s. Even the bartender curls her hair to suit the lost period. It’s hard to say exactly why I like it. Maybe it’s that I stumbled upon it as it just opened when I was still slinging cocktails down the street. Maybe it’s the fond memories of drunken nights fucking in both bathrooms downstairs with former coworkers and clients. Or, maybe it’s that this bar isn’t flashy, it’s close, and convenient. After all, I am a creature of habit.

I never thought isolation would be real. It was a thing we were groomed for as millennials. Nearly every film and book fetishized this post-apocalyptic theme, this dystopian future. It was bred in us and we almost wanted it to happen—just to see what it’d be like for real. I know I wanted to feel something different than the same old. At first, it was kind of nice to slow down.

I spent a large part of my adult life in serial monogamous relationships that had their ups and downs but these relationships generally amplified my anxiety and reduced my autonomy until I felt inhibited and diminished. After each painful breakup, there was that fresh breath of freedom, which generally exhausted itself into sexual hedonism and culminated in loneliness. This cycle repeated itself through various partners and even a marriage until my romantic self and slut self coalesced. For the last six years, I have been polyamorous and navigated several relationship styles, landing on relationship anarchy (see relationship anarchy manifesto) as the most compatible with my sense of autonomy and anticapitalism. However, being recently solo again has given me the opportunity to reassess even relationship anarchy. For me, relationship anarchy is necessary, but it may not be sufficient.

“Fucking money man,” Arthur said derisively, as he and Levi approached the shuttle bay. “You know this whole thing was just to tempt us. They didn’t even need me here. But it’s like, hey bring your co-author too, we’ll take care of it. Just to show you how much fucking money they have to throw around. Seduce you a little to get you to work for them,” Arthur continued. Levi had a satisfied smirk, “Are you upset they didn’t offer you a job?”

As we float along through the neoliberal flux there is a soundtrack playing to emphasize the collective disposition. It’s an eerie opus of foreboding doom with light overtones to suggest the possibility for resolve, but ultimately leaving the mood uncertain. The pauses in the oeuvre leave space to breathe and process but this is the most uncomfortable part. Without the emotional surrogate of the rhythm and melody we hardly know what to feel, it’s chaotic, and disjointed, with incoherent internal dialogue too nerve-racking to decipher. Anything is better. Noise. A jackhammer. The soothing calm of a raging thunderstorm. Traffic. Alarms. A bustling coffee shop. Any sound to fill the scape of an alienated being in a confusing world.

The last time I remember feeling a sense of joy and meaning was during early 2020 in the eye of the storm, with the eerie calm of the pandemic offering respite from the grind of capitalism. I saw people come together, sing to one another from Italian balconies, share love and respect for frontline workers, and begin to form a political group consciousness around labour, universal basic income, and housing…And then it all fell apart. Conspiracies began to emerge about COVID-19, political polarization intensified, protests rightfully raged, and ruptures happened in every aspect of life, from work, to family, to friends, and naturally in our mental health. 

It was another scorching day outside the ventilated zones. Alex was watching the broadcast through the opaque heat on one of the billboard monitors. The eerie countdown had been perpetually enshrined in the right-hand corner ever since the world found out it was ending. Alex had become cynical, often questioning why people even bothered to continue following the news. By now, everyone was aware of the situation, and at least there was some relief in finally understanding what all the plagues were about. The only reason to keep updated was to prepare for another disaster but it had been months since anything catastrophic had happened. Most people believed they just had to wait out the timer.

…where I was a ghost taken to another planet by a god, together with others. I think they were my friends, or at least we knew each other, but oddly, I was not me. My body looked like the ghost of someone else, unfamiliar, some unknown person who had had a different life. Nonetheless, in this dream, this was me and my conscious experience and I didn’t feel like I was someone else. Not until I woke up.