Obligatory Parasite is a text and installation created for the gallery O Armário (the closet). The text Obligatory Parasite describes the encounter between passengers on a bus trip from the countryside to the city and the role of empathy in contemporary life. It talks to multiple situations involving the responsibility of one person regarding the affect of a stranger. One of the passengers (let’s call him X) suffers from some form of mental retardation and creates discomfort - havoc even - among the passengers of the bus. During the conversation that unfolds between the two passengers, X confesses his homoerotic desires, that he is mocked in school by other kids, but that he can pay (he shows a couple of coins in hand). The limits of desire, the protocols for manifestation of desire, but also, the normalization of desire become a central part of the conversation, and the focus point of the text. Desire, appears in this situation as obligatory parasite (a parasite that fully develops inside the host and cannot live without it), fully dominating an existence that in this case, finds already so much adversity.