Journal: Names at the Disco. Saturday, March 25th, 2017.

We’re standing on the train tracks out back of Logan’s warehouse, he’s opened it up to the night and everybody’s dancing, spilling out into the grass.  Costumes, party cups, pretty lights.   
“What’s your name again?” this guy says.
We’d been introduced earlier, and I didn’t actually feel like talking anymore, it was so beautiful and clear and starry- so I said one of those things you say to try to end a conversation.  “Names don’t matter,” I said.
He turns at me, interested.  “Oh, so we’re there, huh?”
I’m a bitch with a bone.  “No, you don’t understand what I mean.  They don’t matter; names are a social construct.  To organize people.  But names aren't any more real than societies themselves.  Civilization, legislation, the idea of time.  None of these things are real, consequential.  I mean, we can call a mountain a mountain.  That doesn’t mean it actually is a mountain.  Right?  You don’t need a name if you know who someone is.”
“Whoa,” the guy says to Logan.  “She’s on the good drugs.”
In a long white wig and white rubber cat suit, and unable to resist a storyline.
“The beautiful thing about rationalization,” I said, pleased with myself now, sweeping my cup of champagne around, “you can rationalize absolutely anything!”
“I don’t know man,” Logan said to the guy, “she’s a writer.”
“Wish me luck, man,” the guy said.
“Fft, I’m married, it isn’t like that.”
“But we do need to organize people,” the guy said, ”or we can’t have a society.  And society’s been pretty good, overall.- I mean-”
“Has it?  I think America’s falling into decadence.  I think we’re a failed experiment.  Culture as an idea is lovely, but the majority of people, I think they’d be happier in migratory hunting societies.”
“Well, I just want to help animals, anyway,” he said.
“But it’s funny, right?  How we feel empathy for animals because we think, oh, they’re innocent, they’re subject to the predations of man-”
“Yeah!”
“But for so much of humanity, it’s exactly the same thing.  People are innocent all over, too.  They suffer to the predations of those at the top.  Everybody needs help, don’t they?”
“I guess, man,” he said- not realizing, I realize only now, the reason why we do need names.

Also why, maybe, sometimes you just answer the fucking question.