I'm a Fan: A Novel

by Sheena Patel

my ribs are bruised from sobbing

She advocates for change but only through the respected, formal channels like voting for the neoliberal Democratic candidate rather than supporting community groups in the margins as I think she is of the belief power has to remain in the hands of those who were born to wield it. Though she believes herself to be on the more Marxist side of the political spectrum, her imagination cannot actually stretch beyond the centre left.

The comments under this post all express urgent, alarmed concern for the sacrificed dishcloth and I think white people are wild for how they will have an acute empathy for anything bar actual melanated human beings.

I fantasise and fall in love with a version of him I’m not sure exists outside of my imagination. He is constantly failing in comparison to this person I know he could be. If he could only stop being exactly who he is, we could be happy.

I am performing all the time, performing being myself, what is myself, who is me.

normalise saying, for a yt person, after complimenting yt people

I think this is how I love the man I want to be with, doing what he says for the remote promise of treats and being tolerated because of how much I love him.

That’s really when you should be thinking about getting out. When you start getting jealous of a dog.

There is no space for expansive and evolving creativity, only insecurity and homogeny are fostered where straight men uphold one another through a homoerotic bond, or are complicit through silence.

No matter how much some say they respect women, each man, even the ‘good ones’, benefit from women’s low expectations of them as control is exerted via a climate of instability, fear and violence.