Introspection, Ink-stained Skin

📅 late September of 2019

〚ᴄᴡ ғᴏʀ ɴᴏɴsᴘᴇᴄɪғɪᴄ ᴍᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴs ᴏғ ᴍᴀss sʜᴏᴏᴛɪɴɢs ᴀɴᴅ ɴᴀᴢɪsᴍ〛

September. "B⬛RN D⬛WN Y⬛⬛R SCH⬛⬛L" was out. It was done. Kato wasn’t sure if to the rest of the band it felt like ‘just another album,’ or if maybe they mostly felt relieved to be done with it and how controlling he’d been during its production—he knew he had been. For him, though…? It was the culmination of nearly a decade of writing, an album he’d wanted to do from the start—with songs on it that now were over nine years old: He’d been writing some of the lyrics it held when he was 15. He appreciated the others letting him have his passion project, and being so patient with him throughout the entire process, which had run long. It’d been half-intended to come out in April but hadn't been quite done, then...so. September it was.

Publishing it, though, however much an accomplishment and a relief—had wound up with the world feeling just slightly off-kilter. It could have been a side effect of the...anniversary’s proximity, of course—but there was something there, too, with the album: Some of the songs on it were ones he’d started writing when he was still planning to pull the trigger. Putting that writing and the rage within it to bed, in some way, had—it seemed—left Kato directionless. He’d dug some of his old shirts out for the release shows, knowing that wearing his Columbiner memorabilia would set people off and there was no such thing as bad press—but he felt slightly unnerved when he caught sight of himself in the mirror in them; looking like a much younger and hollower man. They’d ended up in a neglected pile beside his desk, and were still there when Teagan ducked into his room a couple weeks after the album drop. 

“Hey, Kato. Tonight—” she started out, only to stop short, her brisk greeting cut off by the curl of her lip upon catching sight of the white ‘NATURAL SELECTION’ shirt at the top of the pile beside Kato’s desk. He’d turned from dropping a cigarette butt into his desktop ashtray at her greeting, and she narrowed her eyes up at him, distaste clear in her expression.
“You never fail to be unpleasant,” she hissed, sweeping her arm out to gesture from the shirt on the floor to the collection of Columbine photos decorating the wall; a ‘memorial’ of sorts that had hung there so long Kato had stopped really seeing it. Teagan, clearly, still did.
“How do you make peace with that? Look at your friends! How are you still idolizing a nazi? How do you still have his nazism tattooed on you?!” Teagan asked scathingly, gesturing to the right half of Kato’s chest—where, beneath his shirt, they both knew he had “Kill Mankind” inked into his skin in Eric Harris’s handwriting. She’d seen it over the summer, and his recital of its roots hadn’t impressed her then, either.
“Eric wasnt a real nazi, it was all for image and shit,” Kato said defensively, crossing his arms. “He just wanted to piss people off. I wouldn’t—I’m not espousing—”
“Do you know what to call nazism as an aesthetic choice?” Teagan interrupted, “Nazism. Fascism without ‘real’ political conviction is still idealization of fascism! A nazi is a nazi is a nazi.”
“So are you calling me a nazi?” Kato asked, tapping a finger to his chest.
Teagan fell abruptly silent and just stared up at him. The anger in her eyes was still present but had become tempered by some sudden apprehension, and Kato recoiled internally when he placed its origin: He was a white man standing almost a half foot taller than her. He was in a position of power, both socio-political and physical. And she was afraid of the reaction her response could be met with.

“I—I’m actually asking,” he stammered. He was careful to soften his voice, and uncrossed his arms, feeling deeply unsettled. “If you say yes, or—or some parallel to yes—that just tells me how fucking wrong I’ve gone, I think.”
Teagan blinked.
“I dont think you’re a Nazi-nazi,” she said rather slowly, “But you’re justifying the behavior and I do think that’s disgusting. You’ve got to understand how awful—and downright scary—it is to see someone like you, hear someone like you—again, with the friends you have...still defending the way that boy presented himself.”
Kato opened his mouth and then closed it again. He thought about all the photocopied images of Eric’s journal he’d seen; about the entry he’d lifted that handwriting from hailing the Nazis, about it maybe only being a few pages away from all those ballpoint-pen swastikas. The concept made him slightly nauseous.
“I...I’m not saying his ‘Heil Hitler’ shit was okay. Literally nothing he became known for was okay,” Kato said. He shifted his weight awkwardly. “...I suppose it’s not a defense to say I have his handwriting tattooed on me for the ‘right’ wrong reason.”
“No, it’s not a defense. And all of the reasons are wrong, Kato. How do you justify it to yourself?” Teagan asked. She looked something near pitying and Kato averted his eyes to mull it over. There was a deep sense of discomfort that came with realizing how flimsy it all felt, even within his own head.

“...I don’t,” he eventually said, rather softly, “I don’t justify it.” He tried to meet Teagan’s eyes but failed to hold her gaze. “I used to, I guess—I had to to get it. I think I wanted it on me when I was younger because it felt like power. To hate people. Not—not in a white power way. Just…‘Mankind.’ And it felt like it was an identity, too, like, to be callous and angry and aggressive enough to have branded myself with that; ‘KILL MANKIND’...And then I guess it felt like power to piss people off, you know? Like...like this. To horrify people, disgust them, to be the fucking lunatic with Columbine tattoos.”
“That’s not power,” Teagan said, raising her eyebrows.
“No, I know. I know. I’m there, Tea.” Kato’s voice was soft and pensive, regretful at its edges and uncanny as hell even to his own ear. Startled, he quickly straightened up and tried to recapture something like a casual tone. “Anyway, uh—what did you come in to ask me about?”
Teagan gave him a split-second’s worth of a searching look before letting it drop.
“I wasn't asking, I was telling,” she said briskly, returning to their ‘normal,’ much to Kato’s relief. “We’re doing a karaoke night tonight.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Kato frowned.
“Athena, me, Chey—since it was his idea, of course—Anarchy, Seth, Aetos, Jazz, and you.” Teagan counted everyone off on her fingers while Kato furrowed his brow in confusion.
“Seth agreed to karaoke?”
“He’s also being told.” Teagan offered him an impassive shrug. “It’s at 8,” she said, giving Kato one last analytical look before turning and vanishing down the hall.

A beat passed after she disappeared from his doorway before Kato shook himself off, feeling out-of-sorts all over again. Still halfway to reeling and lost in thought, he walked up to the collage of Columbine photographs hanging over his desk and reached out to unstick the ‘Eric Harris Is God’ printout from the wall. Absently, he stared at the blu-tack stain it left behind, and ran his thumb over his tattooed chest.