Misuses of Charismatic Privilege: The Violent Pressure of Personality

after Privilege of Being by Robert Haas A tipping point of too many are talking harshly. Down below, demon-dead in the unstirred inferno and perdition of animal thirsting are coiling one another's tails in response. They are honeyed vermillion and covered in trim the texture of hot picamar. They espy up all the time at the graceless rapture— it must sound to them like cold butter dancing across a cast iron skillet. Then one voice—she is about to shout— takes the man's rigid hand and says, listen to me, and he does. Or is it the man caressing loose the gravelly noose of anger? Anyway, they do, they listen to each other: two minds with matured mediums, hungry to be heard, to be fed by the frisson of recognition, their skin sizzling with it— brutal words turned into kindness by well-intended touches, and the gossiping, nosy dead are derelict and growing deaf. They hate it. They scream a chivvy about injustice that breaks no skin, but frays the veil between what's bone and broth— a warning, a dirge, a hiss of envy worse than silence.