Biography of X

by Catherine Lacey

I had to abandon that safe inertia in order for my life to become recognizable as my life.

This is one of the darker, less contested realities of authoritarian governments—that the human animal is a meek thing, easily manipulated. No one wants to admit that they, too, might live quite happily in a simulation, in a simulacrum of life. No one wants to believe that they are, at heart, more interested in comfort than in truth.

A suggestion becomes a precept, becomes a rule, a law. We wanted to free women from dominance, but we couldn’t dominate them out of being dominated … The agenda eats its own tail.”