BrightestYoungThings: Day #2: Working-Class AZZ

"I'm a steel-driving man," insisted the sweaty young buck on top of me. We had retired to a back room of Garfield Art Works, Pittsburgh's premier venue for the consumption of indie rock music, and, without exchanging names, disrobed to explore the delights of the flesh. As my hapless bandmates busied themselves packing up various cymbal stands and guitar pedals, this Steel City stud offered a poignant, pointed crash course in proletarian politics.

"Oh, John Henry, John Henry!" I panted. A line of sweat ran down my furrowed brow. "You really excel at mining my ore."

"I'm a hard worker," the stud insisted, gasping for breath "I'm gonna show you how I work overtime."

"Oh," I moaned. "Don't take advantage of me. I'm a card-carrying union member."

"I'm about to radicalize you, Norma Rae," my beau replied, the tendons of his muscular neck straining as our bodies surged together. "I'm gonna protect you from those Pinkerton thugs, but you'll have to pay, baby."

"You're the Che Guevara of Pittsburgh!" I gasped. I turned around and ran my fingers down my man's chiseled six-pack. "Oooh, you're really fomenting revolution down there," I cried.

"I'm a member of the revolutionary vanguard," this rough trade exclaimed. He grabbed my hips with rough, work-leathered hands. "Can you feel my rigid ideology?" he demanded.

"Oooh!" I exclaimed. My knees buckled. "I can feel the spirits of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao in your every thrust. You're really exploiting my surplus-value!"

"Don't move, don't move!" the buck exclaimed. "Here comes my five-year plan! I'm about to unleash some new rhetoric!"

Suddenly, my working-class macho man shrank away. The two-man revolution we had made - the coalition we had built, the indocrinations we had actuated, the socialist paradise we had struggled for - had come to naught.

"Wait," I said. "What happened?" I turned to face the truth. "Is it me?"

"No," my lover replied. He sighed and pulled on his pants. "My message has been co-opted."

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