Charlie and I

A man in a white shirt sits down, addressing a throng of a few thousand people in Utah. A man in a black shirt takes position on a roof. With a single twitch of the finger, their lives will be entwined, even though they will never meet: Charlie Kirk, the man in the white shirt, a white shirt that says ‘Freedom’, and Tyler Robinson, who wears a black shirt with the American flag.

The finger twitches. The man in the white shirt jerks back. A bullet has gone through his neck. He is rushed to hospital by his security team, but it is too late. A life is now cut short. The man in the black shirt jumps off the roof, and he runs. The MLB and the NFL hold moments of silence for the man who bled out on a university campus, blood staining the grout of the pavement, as his supporters call him a warrior for Christian free speech.

A manhunt begins. The news goes viral. Front page of every newspaper. The man in the white shirt has been shot. He’s dead. Everyone’s upset. Charlie just wanted to debate, you know! Charlie was the voice of a generation! His white t-shirt covered in blood, ripped apart, the last shirt he put on, the shirt he died in, the last shirt his children saw their father in, the shirt that said Freedom! Charlie only wanted freedom! Charlie didn’t want freedom for me, that’s what I think as I read yet another article on a horrific murder, all carefully dancing around what Charlie Kirk actually believed.

A man is dead. He was killed for his beliefs. Good riddance, say a group of people dedicated to dancing on the graves of anyone they deem subhuman and worthy of derision - which happens to be anyone who disagrees with them, like Charlie and I.

The say it’s fine to celebrate murder, because Charlie Kirk said such horrible things. and, anyway, have you not seen what is happening in Gaza? Why should they care about the man in the white shirt, they ask. He stood for everything they’re against! So what if he was killed for his beliefs! Fuck around and find out, they say, as they mock his mourners for mourning.

I worry because I know they treat people like me no better. Like Charlie, they think I should get over my lesbianism and accept a male-bodied person with penis as a potential life partner. They, too, think womanhood is dresses and submission to men. They just use more words to justify their hate. They see it as Charlie and I, I see it as Charlie and them, united against people like me.

I respect Charlie more than them, because at least Charlie was honest in his bigotry.

The man in the white shirt is flown home in a coffin to Arizona in Air Force Two. The government lowers flags to half mast. The president mourns a man who he says simply just wanted to debate. The liberal press gears up. In a ghoulish manner, they try to remind us that Charlie Kirk was an irredeemable white supremacist bigot transphobe. He will forever be all of those things to them, because he is dead, and can no longer change his views.

Was Charlie Kirk a irredeemable bigoted man? Who knows. I certainly know I read a different Bible growing up to Charlie Kirk, because apart from anything, we were reading different translations entirely, and he’s a Protestant. With that background however, comes my hope that no one is irredeemable. Even George Wallace turned it around. Judge not, lest ye be judged..

There’s a manhunt. Pictures are released of the killer. He’s on a roof, he fires, he runs, he’s wearing a black t-shirt from a veterans group, the FBI ask for assistance. Do you know this man? The world watches. Someone close makes the phone call, and a mugshot appears in doomscrolls around the world. A man in his early 20s stares blankly at a camera, life already over, every breath now a mere formality;

Why did the man in the black shirt shoot the man in the white shirt? There are only bullet cases engraved with childish beliefs about anti-fascism to serve as an explanation. The man in the white shirt claimed to be for freedom and debate while comparing me to a heroin addict, the man on the roof claimed to be for the oppressed while belonging to a group of people that wear black shirts and black boots and break up the political meetings they don’t like with violence- meetings I go to. The man in the white shirt, at least, never did that, even he did think Satanists don’t deserve free speech because they’re demonic.

The man in the black shirt, and the man in the white shirt represent two extremes. The yin to another’s yang, two ends of a political horseshoe, a symptom of a West where the only truth is now only that number go up, no matter the social costs. Housing? Number go up. College? Number go up. Wages? Number stay the same.

It didn’t used to be like this.

Newspapers publish articles about baby deserts, about how full-grown adults can no longer afford to be full-grown adults. The only future for you and your children is wage slavery, and perhaps you can buy a four-billion dollar starter home with your retirement, once you’ve finished paying off someone else’s mortgage. If this is your future, do you really have a future to throw away when you gun a man down on a New York street?

The man in the white shirt chose to advocate for his views peacefully.

The man in the black shirt chose a firearm.

Did it have to be this way? No. Should it be this way? Never.

Now the man in a white shirt is a martyr for his cause. The hagiographies have already started, as has the praise from popular figures. To me, his views were wholly objectionable - he thought my loving relationship with a woman is morally and functionally the same as the one a heroin addict has with heroin. I worry about the mainstreaming of his views, because I only just got my rights. I don’t want to lose them.

Charlie Kirk spoke about freedom. and he said he stood for it. But did he mean it? We’ll never know. I don’t think he meant it for people like me, but now, and forever, we can only judge Kirk by his works and words.

Because he is dead, and a dead man can’t speak. He cannot change his mind. He cannot repent. He cannot be proven wrong, or proven right. Charlie and I can never debate.

He can only fossilize into memory. He is forever thirty-one, he is forever the man in the white shirt who saw his end come unexpectedly mid-question and he is forever the father that died when his children were young.

The man in the black shirt thought he was fighting for the oppressed, but now a man is dead and a martyr to his ideology. We can only judge Tyler Robinson by his works. Will he forever be the man in the black shirt, defined by an (alleged) monstrous act?