What if you could step outside your front door and watch a car wreck whenever you wanted? He's 16, new driver, pushing the gas, doesn't see the parked car because one of his lights is out, and he's been up too long. Sixteen, and she's thrown through the windshield; and she's pushed through that safety glass, and she's lying on the hood with her throat cut, scalp pulled back, her watch isn't timed to the beat of her fading pulse.
And you're out in your lawn chair, sipping on iced lemonade, big green melamine bowl of hot buttered popcorn, and you snuck out a box of Dots. You hear him coming around the corner, and you hear him hit the gas. Watch out for the...
Oh, but isn't it great? The squeal of the tires, the chest thumping crush of metal into metal, the boom of the windshield as her silken body is thrown out onto the smashed hood, the gurgle of blood from her pumping heart. He's unconscious, his phone's thrown out into the street. Almost sent a text, "Be there in a co..."
Or not. Or you don't like watching life taken. What if you're not that kind of person? What if you were the one to grab your hair and scream, "Stop!" but...
But he couldn't hear you? And what if you called his parents an hour prior, and they weren't there? And what if you texted his sister, and she was too busy playing Pokemon at the Sculpture Garden? And his grandma's phone's battery's dead. And his teachers are too busy racking their brains between a bullshit curriculum and real-life lessons. And his ball coach is in the locker room fucking boys. And the cheerleader's living her first big weekend in college, suddenly stuck in a room without an open door, and the quarterback, Jason Voorhees, just ripped off his hockey mask, and is about to rip off her shirt and she pushes him away, and she can't say no, because he laced her drink. It's consent when she can't scream. Gonna tell the boys back home he made it with someone's sister, and her life will never be the same.
And with some kind of sweet naivety, you wonder what will happen when that car comes around that corner...and you find yourself pulled up in a lawn chair shooting the breeze. Tires squeal, gas is hit.
It's one thing to jump on a really good bandwagon against a guy like Trump, but as long as you're watching the show, you're part of the audience. What happens in November doesn't fix what's happening now. And people like me have been trying to call your parents, and we've been calling your sister, and we've been calling your grandma; and we've had coffee with your teachers, and we've arrested your coach, and we're doing everything we can to heal you after your rape...
But goddamnit, if you keep falling in on yourself, America, you're just going to end up in a 16 year old's car, headed right for a windshield. And all your friends are going to be in their front yards watching, laughing, and shouting, "YOLO!"