#BUT THIS HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG I LOVE!!! I LOVE THIS FUCKING NOVEL!!! I REFUSE TO WATCH THE MOVIE BUT I MIGHT DRAW THEM!!!

[the-gayest-show]

Im lowkey obsessed with my novel im reading for English class

House of Sand and Fog is the most interesting fucking shit I've ever been forced to study

(I'm only read more-ing this bc I'm gonna mention sex explicitly for a few sentences so that's ur trigger warning)

Also spoiler warning if u wanna check out this cool book (I've not watched the movie and I am afraid I'd hate it so I won't do that)

Every single character is messed up (and somehow I'm really liking Colonel Behrani as a character I'm sorry the way his POV shit is worded is like dreaming to me) and everyone's stupid

The only downside is that they keep describing all the sex had between Kathy Nicolo and Lester in *detail*. Like girl i do NOTTTTT need to know who came into who. I DONT CARE THAT SHE THRUST INTO YOU DEEP INSIDE LESTER!!!! I DONT CARE WHO CAME INTO WHO!!!! THIS HAS YET TO BE PLOT RELEVANTTTTTTTTTT

That is the singular thing I dont like but otherwise I need to put Kathy and Behrani in a cage and study their reactions to each other. This novel is already achieving that but damn.

Lester (police guy) is for some reason written in 3rd person as opposed to Behrani's and Kathy's perspectives being 1st person, which is a cool decision.

As I'm reading atm shit is HEATIN up. Kathy attempts overdose and suicide in the same night. Lester shows up to the Colonel's house (where all this suicide shit is going down) and thinks they're up to no good. Threats are fired. People eat dinner in partial fear. It's so fucking interesting.

I swear I've been procrastinating reading until the assigned pages for the week this whole March break but then i decide to pick it up and suddenly I'm sitting here mouth agape at the events of this fucking purple book. (The cover is purple you see)

Yeah no i get why Oprah supposedly picked this book and why this was a finalist for a book award and why they call it a bestseller (usually i don't believe them but for this one i might just believe it). The plot is insane. The characters? They're soooooooooooo fucked up (/pos) and once I pick it up i can't put it down and then suddenly I already reached the reading benchmark.

[bereft-of-frogs]

I hope I have appeased whatever ocean spirit possessed me this summer. Here is the final list of everything I read/watched/listened to/played/etc over the last several months while my entire personality became about the ocean. (Almost - planning on watching Deep Star Six (1989) after I finish writing this post and making dinner!)

The Deep, Nick Cutter | Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield | “Fear of Depths” + “Fear of Big Things Underwater”, Jacob Geller | Into the Drowning Deep, Mira Grant | Underwater (2020) | r/thalassophobia + r/submechanophobia | The Deep House (2021) | 47 Meters Down (2017) + 47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019) | The Toilers of the Sea, Victor Hugo (trans. James Hogarth) | Dark Water, Koji Suzuki (trans. Glynne Walley) | “Fear of the Deep”, Nexpo | Sea Fever (2019) | The Abyss (1989) | Open Water (2003) | From Below, Darcy Coates | Love, Death + Robots, “Bad Traveling” | “The Fog Horn”, Ray Bradbury + “A Descent into the Maelstrom”, Edgar Allen Poe (collected in Stories of the Sea ed. Diana Secker Tesdell) | Subnautica (2018) | Breaking Surface (2020) | They Came From the Ocean, Boris Bacic | The Cave (2005) | Sphere, Michael Crichton + its 1997 adaptation | “Thalassophobia”, Solar Sands | Whalefall, Daniel Kraus | Sanctum (2011) | The Rift (1990) | Leviathan (1989) | Sand, Salt, Blood: An Anthology of Sea Horror, ed. Elle Turpitt | 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne (trans. Mendor T. Brunetti) | Moby-Dick, Herman Melville

So that's 12 books (including 2 anthologies), 13 films, 4 video essays, 2 short stories, 2 subreddits, 1 game, and 1 TV episode.

Top 5 (in no particular order)

Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield -- beautiful, both in the descriptions of the deep sea and in its depictions of grief. Florence Welch blurbed it and Florence + the Machine takes 3 spots on the playlist so this definitely set the vibes of the summer.

Whalefall, Daniel Kraus -- reminded me of NOPE (2022) and that's a high compliment. It's also about grief but the kind of grief where there should have been a reckoning, and you'll never get that closure. Truly excellent, honestly I still have the library book because I'm not ready to give it back.

Sea Fever (2019) -- obviously owes a lot of its plot to the 1989 slate of ocean horror films coming out that were in imitation of Alien (1979) and attempting to preempt James Cameron's The Abyss (1989), in that it's about a creature from the deep that possesses the crew of a fishing trawler off the west coast of Ireland...but a moody atmosphere, gorgeous cinematography, and mythological inspiration just makes this a good watch.

"Fear of Depths", Jacob Geller -- honestly all the youtube videos on this list are worth it but I'm highlighting this one because I just love it when youtubers go on field trips. Like yes Jacob go stand in that cave and read your script for our entertainment and edification, yesss

The Toilers of the Sea, Victor Hugo -- ok the thing about Hugo is that his novels often carry social messaging - about poverty, class, the nature of justice, investment in cultural hegemony - and Toilers' thematic messaging is just: what the fuck are you doing in the ocean why are you going in there, don't you see how fucked up the ocean is, leave it alone- (...perhaps a more relevant text for billionaires than Les Misérables? XD) Ok, I'm mostly kidding but truly his depictions of the sea are some of my favorite bits of Hugo prose, I really think this book is underrated in the anglophone world.

Please feel free to ask me for more reviews of the other works on the list and I can give more thoughts! For now I'll just say that I had a lot of fun with the cheesy 80s/90s movies (the later ones don't quite carry the same charm but were still pretty fun even if they weren't 'good'), the books are pretty solid with the exception of They Came From the Ocean by Boris Bacic, which is my only 'do not recommend' on the list. (It wasn't well written, didn't use the setting very effectively, and got weirdly homophobic towards the end in a way that was impossible to tease out from a character decision and made me feel kind of weird?) There is also a smaller, slightly less cohesive list for the second part of this series but it gives away the thematic shift so I'll stick to ocean horror for now. This was an interesting summer. I guess I should probably...read something other than ocean horror now. XD

letterboxd film list | playlist on spotify

Bonus:

Books on (or…near in one case) the beach

[novelconcepts]

fic: something to hang on to

When Jamie buys a camera, she isn’t really thinking about it. They’re driving through Virginia, stopped off at a little gas station; Dani’s outside filling the rental Jeep, which puts Jamie on snack-duty. At the counter, she spots a display of disposable cameras and, almost without thinking, adds one to the pile of sugar and caffeine. It isn’t a plan. Isn’t for any particular reason. 

Dani, pawing through the plastic bag of their spoils, raises it from a mess of M&Ms and Pringles and says, “You like photography?” She asks it the way she asks everything, like every little detail she learns about Jamie is another brand-new color added to the shine of the world. Jamie shrugs. 

“Never was much for it, but this brave new land is pretty enough. Don’t mind keeping track of it for later.”

It’s more than that, she thinks as Dani raises the viewfinder to her eye and clicks a photo of Jamie behind the wheel, one hand steering, the other stretching across the center console to rest on Dani’s knee. I almost lost you once, Poppins. Wouldn’t have had anything but my own memory to remember you by. This...this will help. 

Later, much later, years later, Jamie will look back on that moment as one of her wisest. Later, on a bed she can no longer sleep in, holding a thick album between shaking hands, she’ll think some of the most important choices you ever make are split-second recklessness. A camera, tossed in at the last second. A habit, built on nothing more than needing Dani’s smile immortalized. 

Open the album. Take a breath. Flip the page. 

***

A photo: Dani sprawled on a red-and-white beach towel, chin propped on folded arms, gazing out away from the camera as though she has no idea anyone is watching.

They’re with Henry and the kids--the first time they’ve seen the Wingrave family since the events at the house, and, though they don’t know it, one of the last times they’ll see them all together--in Florida. It’s strange, Jamie reflects, watching Miles chase Flora across an endless strip of sand. Strange how much world can fit into one country. England was green, rolling with hill and fog and haunted by things older than any of them can imagine. Florida feels...young, somehow. Too warm, too bright, too perfect on a Saturday afternoon. 

She’s hugging her knees, seated on a blanket with Dani sitting just an inch further away than she’d like. It’s the safe thing, the smart thing, but she misses her--misses the way they sit in hotel rooms and empty bars, knees touching, pinkies overlapping. Dani, in a sundress that matches the blue of her right eye, is laughing as Miles grabs Flora around the middle and tries with all his ten-year-old strength to hoist her off the ground. 

“Miles,” Henry calls, his voice laden with the anxiety of a man who has only just begun learning how to parent. “Miles, be careful--”

“They’re all right,” Jamie interrupts, tossing a handful of warm sand toward Henry’s precarious perch on a plastic chair. "Have you been wound this tight the whole fucking time?”

He looks pained. “You’ll excuse me for never having raised two children before. They’ve been a bit...”

“Precocious?” Dani suggests brightly. 

“Demonic?” Jamie says at the same time. Henry sighs. 

“Adventurous, shall we say, to meet in the middle.”

“They haven’t been...” Dani’s smiling, the way Jamie has grown accustomed to over the last few months: a beautiful smile that never entirely reaches her eyes. It’s the way she smiles when she thinks she needs to wear a mask of stability, when she needs everyone to think she’s doing all right. 

Henry frowns. “Haven’t been what?”

Dani shrugs, looking uncomfortable. “Scared? Having nightmares? I don’t know...”

She’s asking-not-asking about that night, like she told Jamie she wasn’t going to do. They don’t need me bringing it up, she’d said back at the hotel, holding tight to Jamie in a way that said she very much needed to talk about this against her own will. They deserve to just live their lives. 

Henry looks puzzled. “Strange, but no. No nightmares. Flora had a few at the very start, before we left London, but...no. Not since arriving here.”

Dani nods like this is all she wants to hear, and rubs her cheek with one slightly-sunburnt hand, the moment passing into obscurity as Flora shrieks and Miles trips directly into an oncoming wave. It’s all good here, all sunshine and ease of temper, and Jamie watches Henry stand. Brush off shorts that look truly insane set against his pale legs. Go awkward-jogging into the surf to lift a giggling Flora heavenward. 

“They make a fine little family,” she says, pitching her voice so only Dani can hear. Dani nods. There’s a tightness to her mouth that says she’s only half here, only half able to let the sun bake away the shadows. Jamie touches her ankle lightly, wishing they were somewhere less requiring of distance. 

“I’m all right,” Dani says. Not a lie of intent, at least, though Jamie suspects it’s more that she wants to be all right. She watches Dani roll onto her front, eyes on the endless ocean, the children tumbling around in its gentle grasp, the man doing his best to keep up. 

Could watch her forever, Jamie thinks, knowing it’s far too early to say something so catastrophically huge. She’s been having these thoughts more and more, wild notions of turning this brand-new adventure with Dani into a lifetime event. It turns a key somewhere deep within her chest, some far-off engine making a deep rumbling sound that sends her tripping toward a very real, very powerful feeling of terror. 

Her hand slips toward the bag of sunscreen, paperback novels, sliced oranges. A camera, small and yellow and used mainly in moments like this one, emerges. Dani never notices as she brings it to her eye, frames Dani’s blonde ponytail and sun-pink skin, snaps a photo. 

Later, when the pictures are developed and spread out across a hotel bedspread, shots of Miles with an orange-peel grin and Flora standing before a monster of a sandcastle intercut with Dani’s far-off pensive expression, Dani will touch the print. Lingeringly, fingers trembling just the slightest bit.

“Why this one?”

Because I loved you more than words could capture, Jamie will know it’s far too early to say. It’d be reckless. It’d be testing the bounds of something still fragile, still one-day-at-a-time hopeful. 

“Why not?” she’ll say, and tuck the photo safely back into its sleeve. 

***

A photo: Jamie and Dani, backs to the freshly painted Leafling sign, standing carefully apart with shoulders back and a small bouquet of flowers clutched in Dani’s hands.

They keep to themselves, mainly, but some of the nearby shopkeepers have been kind as The Leafling goes from mad late-night concept to brick-and-mortar reality. They bring welcome-to-the-block plants and casseroles that are mostly-edible, and Dani accepts each one with true Midwestern courtesy. Jamie leans back, watches the art of neighborly behavior being painted before her eyes: older women who compliment Dani on her earrings, young men bullied into helping move heavy boxes into storage by their mothers. Dani, in the middle of it all, wearing a soft pastel sweater and a smile that has finally remembered its own strength. 

She wasn’t sure how this would go, if Jamie’s honest about it. She’s been telling Dani not to worry for weeks, telling Dani they don’t need to know much about a business to run this one. I grow, you arrange, we make out like bandits with all the nice Americans who value pretty things. It’ll be perfect, Poppins. She’s been saying it, and she thinks she even believes her own words most of the time, but there have been dreams. Anxiety running its red thread through her sleep, telling her she has no skill in this arena, no education to speak of, no idea how to survive in American business while hiding her relationship with her “business partner”. 

The day the shop finally opens, Jamie has been saying “it’s going to be great” for so long, she almost surprises herself by rushing into the bathroom and vomiting into the toilet. Dani, expression warm and just the tiniest bit teasing, leans against the doorframe.

“You all right?”

“Perfect,” Jamie gasps, staggering to the sink and thrusting a toothbrush into her mouth. “Jus’ great.”

“Too late to turn back now,” Dani points out. “What would we do with all the business cards?”

Jamie groans, spitting mint foam and rinsing out her mouth. “You could show just the slightest bit less glee, Poppins. I’ve just run us into a brick wall of imminent failure.”

Dani laughs, coming up behind her to hug her tight around the middle. “We should probably at least unlock the doors for the first time before you decide it’s time to shutter them again.”

She’s good today, Jamie senses--not the fake-good where she tries her best to pretend she isn’t listening for some deep-down movement Jamie can’t register, but truly happy. Her body is relaxed, her hands certain as she tips Jamie’s cheek and kisses her calm. 

“How,” Jamie gasps when they break, “are you not out of your bloody mind right now?”

Dani shrugs. “It’s like the first day of school. Spend all summer planning and worrying, but now it’s happening. Just gotta jump in.”

There are already people waiting when they arrive, to Jamie’s mingled horror and delight. Most of them are their fellow shopkeepers, waiting with the brilliant smiles of people who have already lived this particular nightmare themselves, and just want to pay forward the relief of customers actually turning up. They’re kind, these people--they don’t know Jamie in the least, don’t have the first idea what shadows lurk behind Dani’s eyes, but they take their hands, squeeze, and congratulate them all the same. Jamie thinks they even mean it, most of them. Americans are complicated, boisterous, scandalous people--but they can have such heart. 

One woman, old enough to be Jamie’s grandmother, presses a bouquet of peonies against Dani’s chest. “For luck,” she says croakily, patting Dani’s cheek like she’s known her since Dani was three feet tall. “Dry ‘em, hang ‘em somewhere in the back. Remember we’re all rooting for you.”

“Rooting,” a man who owns a nearby pizzeria hoots. “Good one, Carol!”

Jamie almost rolls her eyes, but Dani is beaming. When the others make flapping get in front of the sign gestures, they can’t help but obey, standing with a perfectly-maintained half-person between their shoulders. She wants so badly to reach over, to take Dani’s hand, to kiss her with all the terror and relief she’d never known she could feel at once. Instead, she smiles as professionally as she knows how for the camera someone produces. It’s enough.

Later, tapping a finger against the print the photographer drops on their counter, Jamie says, “Look like I want to pass out.”

Dani glances toward the window, takes note of the empty street, presses a quick kiss to her cheek. “I’d have caught you.”

***

A photo: Jamie, sitting just behind Dani on a plush couch, arm wrapped around her waist, cheek pressed to flyaway blonde hair. Dani, grinning her widest, cheesiest grin, leaning back like she knows there is no world in which Jamie would ever let her fall.

There are parties, occasionally--usually thrown by other under-the-radar couples they get along with well enough for drinks, not so much that they truly build relationships. They like the quiet life, the two-person road trips, the easy silence after a long day. But, sometimes, life is grand and big and loud, and on those nights, they venture out into the world.

There are a pair of men maybe five years their senior who have been together for “a decade”, if you ask Mike, “a century”, if it’s Paul telling the tale. They’re good people, and their home is a safe space Jamie doesn’t anticipate finding. 

Friends are hard, she thinks. Always were, but they’re so much harder once you’ve lost a couple.

Still: when Mike and Paul are set to celebrate a round ten years together (”An eternity,” Paul clarifies, leaning against the Leafling counter to invite them over), they go. Dani wants to, and it’s good seeing Dani want things like this. It’s been almost a year together, almost a year of exploring the map and one another, and Dani’s been getting softer around the edges, less prone to jumping at shadows. The Dani Clayton of a year ago wouldn’t want to attend parties, lest the beast inside leap while her guard is lowered; the Dani Clayton of tonight is holding up a dark green dress, brow furrowed. 

“Too much?”

Jamie hums a moment to buy herself time. “Depends.”

“On?”

“Whether you’d like to actually leave the house tonight.” Jamie wiggles her eyebrows, buttoning a black shirt and searching for a good pair of suspenders. Dani laughs. 

“I think you can keep your hands to yourself for a few hours.”

“You,” Jamie points out, sidling up behind her and kissing her neck, “have always had entirely too much faith in me, Poppins.”

Dani is, however, a woman of her word when it comes to accepting social invitations, and soon they’re sitting on an exceptionally soft couch in an exceptionally loud living room. Jamie glances around, reading the environment, registering the two women holding hands by the coffee table, the men dancing near the kitchen, the way even the male-female pairs seem not to see anything odd. Mike and Paul have been doing this a long time. This is as safe a space as their own home. 

She likes the way Dani relaxes, a little more with every drink tucked into her hand, a little more with a lit cigarette pulled from Jamie’s, a little more still when Mike nudges her and mutters, “Your girl looks good tonight, Clayton.”

She likes, most of all, the way Dani doesn’t flinch away when a Polaroid comes out. These are good people, brave people, smart people. If there are photos taken tonight, they will be pressed straight into the hands of their subjects, gifted away before the chemicals have even processed. 

Dani presses back against her, seated on her lap, laughing at some joke Jamie hasn’t really been paying attention to. She’s too busy watching Dani’s profile, the way her head tips back when she’s really laughing, too hard to care what she looks like. Too busy reveling in how it feels to hold Dani in a setting so much more public than usual, her fingers stroking the soft material of Dani’s dress, her body burning and the most comfortable it’s ever been. 

Later, with the Polaroid on the nightstand, the green dress on the floor, and a sheet tucked up against the fall chill, Dani says, “We should do that more.”

Jamie chuckles against her shoulder, kissing a patch of freckles. “This?”

“Yes.” Dani wriggles a little, giggling. “But also that.” She’s gesturing to the photo, propped between a lamp and copy of some old Shirley Jackson novel. “It was nice, wasn’t it? Not...”

“Hiding,” Jamie supplies. Dani makes a humming noise soft in her throat. 

“I like not hiding you.”

***

A photo: Dani, eyes dark with a smolder only Jamie ever sees, a cigarette between her lips, hair loose around her shoulders. 

Nights spent home with Dani, nights where there are no groceries to pick up, no accounting to be done, no errands waiting to be noticed, are Jamie’s absolute favorite thing in the world. There’s just something about this sense of home they’ve been building together, this sense of locked door and secured window and no one else invited to partake that gets Jamie the way nothing else does. 

Especially Dani. Dani at home is less reserved, less careful. With every month that passes quietly, no sign of anything but her own mind, Dani gets a little less tight. A little less prone to gazing off into the middle distance. A little less likely to disappear from an otherwise-normal conversation, emerging several minutes later like she’s pulling herself out of a dream.

And, some nights, she’s not just here--she’s utterly present, every atom of her tuned to Jamie like they have no need of space between them, no need of separation. These nights, the nights where Dani strides into the room on a mission, are Jamie’s favorite of all. 

“Why,” Dani says, leaning back in a kitchen chair with legs spread and head tilted to exhale smoke toward the ceiling, “are you looking at me like that?”

“Me?” Jamie teases. “You’re the one gazing at me like I’m some terribly interesting new buffet.”

She’s half-joking, but there’s something about the way Dani looks at her on this very particular sort of night, with every line of her body tuned toward Jamie’s, that makes her feel a stupid kind of brave. A reckless kind of excitement unwinds outward, until her fingertips itch to grab at Dani’s hair, her knees weak with the desire to pull Dani close. 

She’s doing it now, smoking that cigarette with all the languid energy of a woman perfectly at home, watching Jamie with a faint smirk playing around her lips. No one else sees that smirk, Jamie understands, and it makes her a little faint every time she thinks it. To have something of Dani, some integral comfortable part of Dani that belongs solely to their apartment, their life together, is still a good fortune Jamie can’t entirely parse out. 

Her hand moves toward the camera, small and plastic and containing some of the best memories of Dani she desperately needs to keep. Dani lets her snap off a shot, shakes her head when Jamie lowers the camera.

“That’s going to be one of yours.”

She says it every time Jamie tries to capture the white-hot energy of this kind of evening. Dani doesn’t like to see herself through this particular lens, gets fidgety and embarrassed at the sight of her own face etched with such a confident hunger. Jamie asked the first time if Dani wanted her to stop taking the photos altogether, and Dani had shaken her head.

“I don’t mind. But they’re yours, okay?”

She sets the camera aside, moving to take the cigarette out of Dani’s hand, taking a long drag and dropping it in an ashtray. The rest doesn’t need anything in the way--no lens, no embarrassment, nothing but the way Dani’s mouth opens beneath hers, hands already roaming. The rest is not Jamie’s, but theirs, a joint ownership of soft moans and soft skin and soft assurances that this is still, always, home. 

Later, with Dani asleep, one hand thrown loosely over Jamie’s hip, Jamie will look at the photos that are hers and hers alone. Dani, mouth wet and swollen from a night spent confined to their bedroom around their anniversary. Dani, grinning and half-asleep, glancing over her shoulder to coax Jamie into putting the camera down, joining her among the blankets. Dani, smoke-haze around her face, wine glass in her hand, looking just past the camera at Jamie’s own desire. 

Dani’s choice to share a life with her, Dani’s decision to share every inch of herself with Jamie, is more than Jamie feels anyone deserves. 

***

A photo: Dani in front of the Eiffel Tower, sunglasses on, arms spread wide.

A photo: Dani kneeling at the Grand Canyon, gesturing bewilderment at the sheer scope of the place.

A photo: Dani standing before the alleged largest ball of twine in the world, looking rather like she regrets letting Jamie pick the destination this time.

They travel until Dani can’t stomach it anymore, can’t take the uncertainty of unknown roads and unmapped hotel beds--but, first, years of travel. Years of postcards and rental cars, of Jamie turning maps upside down and Dani being shockingly savvy in small-town situations. 

These photos, more than any other, feel like they have to be taken for someone else’s idea of posterity, and Jamie feels a little strange, at first. Dani’s already seen much of Europe by the time they meet, and has no photos whatsoever to show for it. Jamie, who started turning up in photos for the first time as an adult, says, “It’ll be good to show ‘em off,” while never quite bringing herself to the edge of an unspoken follow-up question: to whom, exactly? It isn’t as though she and Dani are having children, isn’t as though there will be grandkids tottering around down the line to tune out their stories. Who, exactly, are these mementos for?

Dani is far too kind, far too pragmatic, to put the question to her. Dani only poses, grins, lets Jamie take all the pictures she wants, and then--camera tucked safely away once more--grabs Jamie’s hands and leads her into living it: the food, the outdoor markets, the snowstorms, the sun-kissed hikes. As the years go by, Jamie takes more and more photos, never quite able to explain to herself why it’s so critical. Never quite able to look away when Dani finally covers the lens with one hand and brings her close, kissing her like it’s the first time. 

They stop looking at these photos together, after a while. Stop trying so hard to go back, as the days grow shorter and the exhaustion begins to steal the warmth from Dani’s smile. At first, it’s about moving forward--always one foot in front of the other. At first, every photo taken is set aside as a gift to another life. And then, finally, it’s about the moment they’re in, nothing more. Jamie sets the camera on a shelf. Refuses to look at Dani through any barrier but her own two eyes. Dani doesn’t like the snap-click of the camera anymore, anyway--each time, she flinches, like Jamie is about to show her a glimpse of whatever horror she’s been seeing in the mirror. 

I only see you, Jamie promises, the ache in her chest so great, she’s sure it will swallow them both. But Dani can’t bring herself to look. Can’t bring herself, just in case Jamie is wrong. 

Later--so much later, with eyes stinging and arms empty--she flips through the album and remembers Spain, California, Minnesota, Greece. Later, she finds Dani sticking her tongue out, spinning like a deranged nun out of musical, sitting quietly in a cafe with a small cup of coffee warming her hands. Dani, stiff-shouldered and trying not to laugh as Jamie made faces the one time they ever ventured back to Iowa. Dani, hair blowing back into her face, arms looped around Jamie at a terrifying, exhilarating first Pride parade. 

And, in the back, the photos of Dani as only Jamie knew her. The sly grin a second before pinning Jamie to the couch. The sweet surprise from Jamie coming home early with dinner. Shot after shot of no make-up, or smudged eyeliner, or ruined lipstick, of Dani in pajamas on Christmas, or Dani in bed after a shower, or Dani laughing herself silly at nothing Jamie can remember now. 

They’re all here, and they’re all Dani--all of Dani Jamie’s got left now--and still, they’re wrong. They sit, plastic and unyielding, beneath flimsy protective sheets, and they don’t laugh like Dani, don’t breathe out against her skin like Dani, don’t smell like Dani’s shampoo or swear like Dani tripping over a shoe in the dark or look at her with that solid, palpable love like Dani did and should still and never will again. 

Jamie sits, album in her lap, staring down at Dani with paint smudged on her cheek and their then-new bedroom behind her, and suddenly can’t remember how to breathe. Had she known? Somewhere in the back of her mind that day in a gas station, picking up a little yellow disposable camera, had she known that one day, this would be all she had left of Dani? Surely not. Surely, she hadn’t believed it would go this way, all the way back then. Surely, it was one day at a time, and we’ll have time, and any day with you, Poppins. 

Had she known? No. No, of course she hadn’t.

And yet, the idea of not having these in front of her--the idea of Dani’s face slowly, surely, washing away over time as Jamie fails to find her in a world so uncompromisingly cruel...

She touches a shot of Dani with her left hand covering her mouth, her ring gleaming gold against her smile, the day the state had legalized civil unions. Dani as gold as sunshine, in one of the last truly clean moments, before old ghost stories dug rotting fingers into their life. Her vision grays, her head suddenly too heavy to hold up. 

She hadn’t known. But she’s glad. She’s glad she has, at least, this much to hang on to.

[murdocksassassin]

I LIKE BOOKS MORE THAN I LIKE PEOPLE

tagged by: @jayhsis  /tagging: @edourado @rayxahlia @significantowl @asherlevinia and anyone else who wants to do this.

1. Which book has been on your shelves the longest? I have had at least one copy each of The Great Gatsby, Jane Eyre, and The Hobbit on my shelf for like twenty years.

2. What is your current read, your last read and the book you’ll read next?

Current read: Your Baby’s First Year Week by Week by Galde Curtis MD... Pretty much the title says it all on this. 

Last read: Bringing up Bebe by Pamela Drucker About the differing parenting philosphies between French and American parents as told by an American ex-pat. It’s actually more interesting than it sounds. 

Next Read: Not 100% sure yet. probably another parenting or baby book... that shit has taken over my life. 

3. Which book does everyone like and you hated? Anything by Stephen King. I can’t get into his style and the whole horror genre isn’t my thing in general... Also A Song of Fire and Ice Series. 

4. Which book do you keep telling yourself you’ll read, but you probably won’t? Pride and Prejudice I like Jane Austen but I have seen about three versions of this story in movie format by now and never read the book. I feel like I SHOULD read it but just never have.

5. Which book are you saving for “retirement?” Don’t really save books for things. I have been known to read my plane reading before the flight if I don’t buy it like about 10 minutes before. 

6. Last page: read it first or wait till the end? Definitely wait. I hate spoilers

7. Acknowledgements: waste of ink and paper or interesting aside? i rarely ever read them.

8. Which book character would you switch places with? Honestly, don’t know. Probably some quirky romance character who finds true love and complete happiness--because fuck drama and suspense. I am too old for that shit. 

9. Do you have a book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time)? The Iliad. My cousin who is like 20 years older than me gave me a copy when I was 12 because I was complaining about how stupid and immature most of the books in the YA section were and I wanted to read something “harder.” I don’t think he ever expected me to finish it but I did in like two weeks and we have been book buddies ever since. (He also gave me my first copy of The Great Gatsby)  

10. Name a book you acquired in some interesting way. I had a random lady on my bus give me a copy Stardust by Neil Gaiman because I told her I liked that particular cover of the book. It was really funny because she had literally just finished it as I made the comment and said she hated the book--even though it is a favorite of mine--and just handed it to me.

11. Have you ever given away a book for a special reason to a special person? I only give books (specifically) novels to friends and family that are really close to me. Books are almost like friends themselves so when I give away a book that I like it is usually because I love that person. 

12. Which book has been with you to the most places? 

Probably my beat to shit copy of Jane Eyre. I have moved probably a dozen times and it always makes the box of keepers when I pack. 

13. Any “required reading” you hated in high school that wasn’t so bad ten years later?. Not really. I mostly hate the same books now that I did then. The Scarlet Letter is still shit.

14. What is the strangest item you’ve ever found in a book? A coupon for Taster’s Choice Coffee from 1976. It was a voucher that my grandma had gotten from the company in the mail and never used that she stuck in one of her cookbooks. We got a good laugh when we found it.

15. Used or brand new? Either. I like used to be eco and budget friendly but sometimes that’s not possible. 

16. Stephen King: Literary genius or opiate of the masses? MEH! I get the appeal, but he’s not for me. I like the ideas in his books but not the execution.

17. Have you ever seen a movie you liked better than the book? The Cider House Rules and Legends of the Fall

18. Conversely, which book should NEVER have been introduced to celluloid? The House of Sand and Fog.... 

19. Have you ever read a book that’s made you hungry, cookbooks being excluded from this question? YES! I can’t remember the title right now but there was a part of a book that I read not too long ago where the main character was making chocolate chip cookies and my pregnant ass got a serious craving from it.

20. Who is the person whose book advice you’ll always take? The same cousin who gave me The Iliad. We have been swapping books for over twenty years now. We don’t always like the same ones but we always have a good chat about them after.