Martyr!

by Kaveh Akbar

If I died trying to kill a genocidal dictator tomorrow, the news wouldn’t say a leftist American made a measured and principled sacrifice for the good of his species. The news would say an Iranian terrorist attempted a state assassination.”

Cyrus’s holey shoes were flaunting something too: his authenticity, his class antipathy, his allegiance to the proletariat—it was all right there at his feet, waving like two ratty flags. Yes, they were ratty flags made by a billion-dollar shoe company, but there was no ethical consumption under late capitalism and sometimes, Cyrus figured, one had to pick one’s battles. He tried not to think too much about these contradictions.

Cyrus believed a hyper-focus on occasions for gratitude would make his eventual death more poignant, more valuable. When a sad-sack who hated life killed themselves, what were they really giving up? The life they hated? Far more meaningful, thought Cyrus, to lift yourself out of a life you enjoyed—the tea still warm, the honey still sweet. That was real sacrifice. That meant something.

So much of his psychic bandwidth was taken up with conflicting thoughts about political prepositions. The morality of almond milk. The ethics of yoga. The politics of sonnets. There was nothing in his life that wasn’t contaminated by what he mostly mindlessly called “late capitalism.” He hated it, like everyone was supposed to. But it was a hate that made nothing happen.

I am poor, unmarried. I didn’t finish high school, just screwed around in the countryside for a few years working where I could, chasing girls. This means I am expendable, a “zero soldier.” Zero education, zero special skills, zero responsibilities outside of my country. There is an expression: “If a zero soldier has to use a grenade to escape with their life, they shouldn’t waste the grenade.”

“Expendable” may seem a bad word to use to describe your own life, except I actually find it liberating. The way it vents away all pressure to become. How it asks only that you be.

Cyrus was ideologically opposed to, and constitutionally incapable of, turning down free alcohol.

Chattering away in that cab—about astrology, British punk music, jungle cats, Greek gods—this is what she was like: a pinwheel of stars. Lightning under a fingernail.

Martyr. I want to scream it in an airport. I want to die killing the president. Ours and everyone’s. I want them all to have been right to fear me. Right to have killed my mother, to have ruined my father. I want to be worthy of the great terror my existence inspires.

“I mean what I said. This ‘poor little orphan boy with nothing tethering him to this world’ shit.” Zee looked sharply at Cyrus. “You know I have your cum on my chest, right? Like, right now this second? While you opine about how nobody will care if you kill yourself?”

“You have no idea how selfish you can be,” Zee continued.

“Cyrus, for months, every song I’ve listened to has been directly about me. About my life. And my stupid fucking life with you. Every flower has been blooming straight into my fucking face. Do you know what that is? It’s like being insane. Like the fucking pigeons are speaking to me. Have you ever felt that? Do you have any idea what I’m even talking about?”

But all he could think was “inside my heart is a little man with a broken heart.”

The man at the lobby desk was wearing a nametag that said “Hua”—instead of saying “How was your stay” Hua asked, “Did you make anything cool while you were here?” which caught Cyrus off guard. It was the sort of stock query this genre of corporately hip Brooklyn businesses traded in. Not a bad question, even, but damned by its context.

If the mortal sin of the suicide is greed, to hoard stillness and calm for yourself while dispersing your riotous internal pain among all those who survive you, then the mortal sin of the martyr must be pride, the vanity, the hubris to believe not only that your death could mean more than your living, but that your death could mean more than death itself—which, because it is inevitable, means nothing.

For a drunk, there’s nothing but drink. There was nothing in my life that wasn’t predicated on getting drunk—either getting fucked up itself or getting money to get fucked up by working or slinging this drug for that drug or that drug for cash. Getting sober means having to figure out how to spend twenty-four hours a day. It means building an entirely new personality, learning how to move your face, your fingers. It meant learning how to eat, how to speak among people and walk and fuck and worse than any of that, learning how to just sit still.