I’ve been sitting on this story for a while and wanted to eventually share it here. [CW: References to Homophobia] This is a story about the only self- described communist I’ve met in my life so far.
A few years ago after my job I got to know a number of workers on the shift, including the old inventory man, who recently retired this year. Me, being without friends to talk about the stuff that I studied in college (history mainly), got to chatting with him about what I learned in university. Unlike most people I speak to, he got some of the references to historical figures and current events, revealing a person who took great pride in his own self taught schooling. We particularly connected when I referenced reading about the historiographers tracing developments in writing on the Caribbean back through historians such as Eric Williams, who was well known to him when he was growing up in the Caribbean during the 60s. He had an old tattered copy of Capitalism and Slavery at home that he took great pride in owning. I initially got the impression from talking about history with him that he had strong left vibes inspired by the anti colonial movements of the mid 20th century, especially when he talked about his disdain for the French under de Gaulle continuing to meddle in African affairs down to the present. However, I just assumed he would describe himself in the vein of being some sort of left-liberal, I did not expect the moment I’m going to describe to you all.
One day when we are all doing our jobs, we get into the usual sort of conversation about history and politics. I think the conversation veered towards universal health care or something, I can’t remember exactly. He then steers the conversation towards the Cuban healthcare system, and then the conversation climaxes with him basically shouting/proclaiming to me in earshot of anyone who’ll listen, “I am a Communist, and Fidel Castro is my childhood hero!” This surprised me as I tend to avoid the c word in public but he brought it up himself. It wasn't every day someone shouted at you that they're a communist. He then told me it was his dream to travel to Cuba and receive an education there when he was young but his parents made him study in America instead. We had some further conversations like this about the state of American hegemony. The point being here was I had never met a self-described communist before and never expected to given the conservative area of the country I live in.
However, it was in my conversations with him that I also discovered his religiosity and the homophobia that it fueled. This first showed up in our conversations about history, where he took great interest in the chronology of the near east during the Iron Age because of his religion. But, it was in conversing with another coworker (someone who I trust and I’m out to now), that I discovered the extent of his homophobia. She told me she noticed a tendency in him to be particularly belligerent with any young people who worked here in the past that he perceived to be queer, to the point that he had to be warned by the supervisor. It was in discovering this that I understood I could not consider him a comrade and resolved to not to get into any conversation that might draw any homophobic ire. We kept talking at times but, for the most part we spoke less because of a change in schedules. He retired a couple of months after I found all that out, and that was the last I ever saw of him.
Idk, I was a bit excited at first that I might have found a person who I could call a comrade irl but he had major religious brain worms that I didn’t want to get into.
c/doomer