Talia had seen bins such as these throughout every corner of her town lately. Bins that urged residents to recycle their unwanted clothing, shoes and other assorted bric-a-brac. (The bric-a-brac, of course, had a special bin of its own, separate from the clothes and shoes.) Although she had been faintly aware that such “options” for disposal had existed for some time now, she couldn’t specifically pinpoint the exact time when her own town had started to implement so many of these bins. But she did take it as a sign of how intensely the capitalist overlords were putting the responsibility/burden of “saving the planet” onto the “everyperson’s” shoulders. Talia was wise to their game. These bins ultimately had nothing to do with saving the planet, but rather, ensuring that the wheels of capitalism would continue to grind. This achieved by making the average Joe (or Josephina) feel as though not only were they doing nothing wrong by participating in this system, but that they were actually helping to ensure it would “sustain” itself by being “conscientious” enough to “recycle.”

But that was the whole trap, the whole vicious cycle of the capitalist scheme. Never-ending and unstoppable. That is, of course, until the Earth as humans knew it stopped. Ceased to exist entirely. Because it could no longer sustain them, who made such a great effort to sustain capitalism. This done by such hollow acts as shoving the rags they once called clothes into some random bin. With Talia herself being susceptible to “the cause.” Something she blamed on the not-so-subliminal effect of seeing one of these goddamn bins somewhere in her town every day. Until, finally, the power of suggestion got to her. Which is how and why she found herself standing in the middle of her room—or rather, the one she shared with her boyfriend—with mounds upon mounds of clothes around her. It was basically like the scene in Clueless where Cher Horowitz tears through her entire closet in search of her “most capable-looking outfit” for her driver’s test, the crux of which hinges on the famous “white collarless shirt from Fred Segal.” And yeah, Talia did have some clothes from that now defunct store on Melrose as well. Which she would never in a million years give away. Not just because they were essentially priceless items at this point, but because they most assuredly didn’t fall under the category of “fast fashion,” ergo they didn’t fall under the category of “disposable” at all. Indeed, to Talia, they were irreplaceable. Never to be replicated because of how non-mass produced they were. How “bespoke,” as it were. This because all the pieces Talia had purchased from there were acquired long before any brand licensing rights were given to another entity. So obviously, Talia would never put something of this caliber in any “giveaway pile.” Especially now that Fred Segal was closed.

As she reflected on the prized stature of her Fred Segal articles, homing in on each of them like Robocop, her eye was then caught on some of the other gems in her collection. Over the many years that Talia had spent scrounging the vintage shops of Paris, she had stumbled upon some truly enviable finds—archival Chanel, Dior, Givenchy, Mugler and Gaultier. The type of garments that people would pay top euro for. But, again, Talia wouldn’t dream of getting rid of these items in any way, shape or form—whether selling or “donating” (a.k.a. giving them away). Even if, like Cher H. in Clueless (because Clueless is always the applicable reference), she was suddenly compelled to perform a barrage of “good deeds.” Namely, helping with the “Pismo Beach disaster” by giving up some of her best clothes and wares. Prompting her father, Mel, to comment of her hauling a pair of skis out of their house, “I don’t think they need your skis.” Cher replies in earnest, “Some people lost all their belongings. Don’t you think that includes athletic equipment?” In other words, just because a person is “unhoused” or “less fortunate” doesn’t mean they don’t deserve high-quality things. But Talia, in her heart of hearts (or lack thereof), could never surrender something like her vintage JPG corset (though, sadly, it didn’t have a bullet bra attached). No matter how “bad” she felt for others in general or how whimsically “charitable” she might have felt on some specific day. Short of a gun to her head, nothing was going to sway Talia to shove these fashion delicacies into the bin.

In fact, after hours of scrounging and sifting, the only items that Talia could settle on dispensing with were an off-white long-sleeve shirt with visible sweat stains in the armpits, a pair of Gloria Vanderbilt jeans with a broken zipper and a sweatshirt bearing the generic team name “Tigers” on it in a varsity letter font. Not exactly a grand “haul” worth taking to her nearest bin. And yet, that’s precisely what she did, making a production of the affair by putting each one into an individual black plastic bag and placing them in the trunk of her car. As if she couldn’t just walk the twenty minutes it would take her to get to the “destination” in question. But Talia was too impatient (read: lazy) to engage with such a walk. So instead, she drove five minutes “down the road,” as it is said, to execute her “good,” “environmentally-friendly” deed even as she did something that was patently bad for Mother Nature’s health and well-being: spray Her with carbon emissions. It was as if Adam Smith, “father” of capitalism, was laughing from the great beyond at this sort of dichotomy—trying to spare Mother Nature some of capitalism’s ills while, at the same time, only adding to them. It was an ouroboros of destruction intermittently hiding behind false notions of “repair” that would only go on and on and on until someone—multiple someones, really—in influential positions of power miraculously decided they no longer saw a need (well, more of a want) to keep profiting.

Alas, it would be more likely that Mother Nature made herself “unprofitable” to the rich human. This by doing what Sue Sylvester would describe as “creat[ing] an environment that is so toxic, no one will want to be a part of that club.” The “club,” in this scenario, being Earth itself. Making all those non-rich humans pay for what the rich had done, while brainwashing them all to the extent that even someone like Talia was trying to “make a difference” by offering three articles of clothing to the proverbial bin. What choice did Mother N really have at this juncture? What choice other than to become so inhospitable for humankind that it just finally died off, like the dinosaurs? To be sure, just like the dinosaurs (and the ancient Romans, for that matter), perhaps all “preeminent” species are due their comeuppance for having reigned “supreme” for so long. And there was no denying that humans had already done far more damage in their modern form—which had only been in existence for about two hundred thousand years—than the dinosaurs ever did during their far more robust stint on Earth (about 165 million years) as the dominant species.

None of this occurred to Talia at all as she approached the bin, finding a spot to park along the curb near it so that she could deposit the scant few things that had taken her hours to decide on. Another Sunday wasted, she supposed. But she could never do an activity like this when her boyfriend was actually around. He would be too likely to say something discouraging or snarky. Which, indeed, he proceeded to do when he caught her in flagrante delicto in front of the bin as he was walking back from the train station, clocking her three basically empty bags that she intended as a pitiful offering to the recycle gods. He smirked as he observed her from afar, picking up the pace so that he could speak to her as she was still “in the act.” Not just so that he could make her feel stupid, but so that he could get to her in time to interrupt her from what she was doing and explain that it was actually a stipulation of donating to the bin that one needed to fill each sack with a minimum of ten pounds.

But by the time he got close enough to say something, she had already tossed every so-called bag in, thereby only adding to the thanklessness of whoever’s job it was to empty the receptacle and deal with her violation of the one rule of donating. As the two discussed her faux pas on the way back to their apartment (with Talia now obviously giving him a ride in her car), she dismissed his critiques of her ability to do anything selfless without fucking it up, telling him, “They should just feel lucky I even bothered to give them anything.” To which her boyfriend retorted, “You’re so white.” Talia began to decelerate as they got closer to their apartment. As she pulled over to parallel park, then turned the ignition off, Talia looked over at her boyfriend, cool as a cucumber, and said, “So be it.”

Roughly three days later, when the clothing and shoes collector came to empty the bin that Talia had so carelessly (while assuming herself to be endlessly thoughtful) unfurled her shit into, she was immediately struck by Talia’s specific disregard for the rules and regulations of the bin, thinking to herself, Why the fuck would someone even bother putting this in here? Did they really need so desperately to “feel good” about themselves? Pausing in the midst of properly condensing Talia’s items into someone else’s correctly deposited bag, she thought, Musta been a white bitch.