Night. A downtown corner. A unicorn. White coat, gold horn, smaller than most ponies--the size of a small wolf or deer. A carnival barker--or is he a pimp?--roars "Yoooonicorrrn! Just $300 an hour!"

"Just"? Sounds pretty steep to me. And the unicorn looks miserable. I'm not so sure she even gets a cut. Treated like a slave. Is this even legal? But he's so loud and open, her suffering's so obvious! He must feel quite safe--some right-wing judge ruled she's an animal, or he bought off the local cops, or maybe they just don't care. They never did about human girls getting enslaved and pimped after all.

To me she is sexy, both her body and the glow of her magic. An attraction so strong that if she were out on this corner alone, I'd gladly pay her. I can't criticize prostitution if it's truly a free choice. But this isn't. I can't subsidize slavery!

Or... maybe she's rented out for healing, not sex? Unicorns are, traditionally, powerful healers. A mere touch of that horn can work miracles. Only... can you force an enslaved unicorn to heal not skewer?

Either way, I feel frustrated and helpless. She needs rescue, but the big guy's mocking eye tells me he's seen do-gooders try it before.

I'm so pulled toward her! But he's in the way. Barker, businessman, capitalist... pimp.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Unicorn caught and bridled: like a sordid parody of the medieval Unicorn Tapestries.
• Exploitation, prostitution, magic: Just read Wen Spencer's story collection Project Elfhome. In one long tale, Olivia, a teen who escapes a Kansas cult treating her as a sex slave, gets trapped in a city under siege. Reduced to streetwalking--sex in alleys, just to eat. Desperate, she takes a wild risk--marries an elf-warrior no one else will touch, for he has severe PTSD after near-fatal torture. Even if he heals, his culture's drastically different. Still, she's choosing for once. Commits to him and makes it work.
• Olivia as a unicorn: well, unicorns traditionally meant healing and magic; and for me magic's not a fantasy trope! I come from a family with second sight, and experience ESP regularly firsthand. So I have to read this scene as:
• Unicorn in chains: my intuition, ESP, and possibly healing too, are chained and exploited by a sleazy profiteer. Inside me? I'm not so sure. Not while besieged by the Trump administration! As he does his best to end my healthcare and voter rights, crash the economy, and betray our allies around the world.
• My frustration toward business-sleaze is something half America shares. And yet the dream's encouraging in a subtle way. I am, we are, capable of magic--though late capitalism does its worst to limit, channel and exploit it! Chains our desires, and, mostly, our talents too. But they are there. And those tears prove... we never settled for slavery.

TWO YEARS LATER

Now, deep in the Covid pandemic, that pimp profiting off healing magic seems rather pointed. Trump's other policies (like betraying the Kurds in northern Syria) killed hundreds or at most a few thousand, no more than Obama; but his Covid policy killed hundreds of thousands.

Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.
Karl Marx, 1848

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