Catapult Elizabeth Koch Into The Sun

I don't know if Elizabeth Koch would fashion herself a personal essayist, but she has certainly dabbled in the form. In an 11-part essay published in Smith Magazine in 2007, the billionaire's daughter who describes herself as "apolitical" wrote about a trip she took to Japan with her boyfriend at the time, Todd. The essay opens with her and Todd buying candy-flavored drinks from a vending machine. They buy eight, take a sip from each, and then discard them on top of a mailbox, where Koch includes the following exchange. "Just line them up on top of the machine," I say. "Maybe a homeless person will find them." We look around. No sign of a homeless person. "What do you think they do with their homeless people here?" "They probably hide them wherever they hide the trash," Todd says. I laugh, and try to take his arm, but he rips it away from me. It is probably unsurprising that this is what Koch presumes passes for affectionate banter between her and Todd. Much of the essay appears to be a direct transcript between Koch and Todd, in which she quotes him saying "It's just up here" and "Huh." The two get into a fight after Koch buys Todd an expensive pair of headphones—a reminder to both of her unfathomable net worth—after which Todd walks away. Koch then wanders the streets and sees two Japanese people with albinism. "Their skin is pinkish and their hair is white and their bodies are lumpy, and I wonder what it would be like to be stripped of tone and color in a city where most everyone looks the same," Koch writes, before deciding to photograph the people—the photo appears in the body of the essay—so that she and Todd can talk about them later. She laments her privilege and its terrible, burdensome baggage. "I'm angry that those girls on the playground in sixth grade called me a rich bitch when they knew nothing about me except my last name," Koch writes, patently unaware that she is proving their thesis correct.

Read it at Defector ↗

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