#California National Guard
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#youtube#militarytraining#2024#combat readiness#army reserve#national defense#strength training#California National Guard#United States#mental toughness#California#endurance#special forces#military training#teamwork#Ultimate Warrior Challenge#combat simulation#tactical training#military competition.#physical fitness#armed forces#obstacle course
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The first civilian prisoners arrived at the Federal prison on Alcatraz Island on August 11, 1934.
#first civilian prisoners#arrived#Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary#San Francisco#United States Penitentiary Alcatraz Island#California#11 August 1934#USA#interior#exterior#original photography#summer 2017#travel#vacation#landmark#tourist attraction#prison cell#guard tower#Main Cellhouse#Golden Gate National Recreation Area#90th anniversary#US history#museum#architecture#cityscape
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Video: Weekly News Recap 6/13
Status: Public but hard to find imo and experience
Link: Weekly News Recap 6/13 - YouTube
Date Posted: June 13th 2020
#wttt#wttsh#welcome to the table#welcome to the statehouse#daily screenshot#wttt gov#wttt california#wttt dc#wttt national guard#wttt army#wttt 3rd amendment#wttt 3A#bookmark this one guys i've seen ppl have trouble finding this one/lh/nf#i've seen this ship too/pos#but i like maryguard/lh#but anyway he/pos
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P-51D Mustangs of the Utah, California, and Nevada ANGs in 1948– all part of the 144th FG
#P-51#Mustang#Vintage photo#Air National Guard#Utah#California#Nevada#ANG#Fighter plane#Three ship#Formation#Flying
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Hello WTTTbr, I've been having thoughts about Maryland's hair and so I will share them with y'all >:)
This man has some long, wavy hair under that bucket hat. I just know it, he told me (/j). Between 2B or 2C kind of wavy hair.
It makes California jealous everytime Mary shows up with a thick, loose braid. He loves the hair so much but he hates the fact that Maryland is the one who got it and not him, he's stuck at 1c at best.
That man's hair smells like Ocean Breeze simply because he couldn't find any Old Bay Scent Shampoo anywhere (/j)
National Guard LOVES playing with MD's hair. He loves feeling his hands going through the strands of hair and he loves the feeling he gets whenever he notices Mary relaxing in his touch. It specially helps him through PTSD episodes and flashbacks.
Mary was forced to cut and keep his hair short during the colonization and he cried almost every night until he could finally re-grow his hair back.
Maryland is one of the only 2 states Oklahoma trusts with the care of his own hair. The other one is New Mexico. They all bond once a month to try and comb each other's hairs and trying out new hairstyles.
^ I headcanon Oklahoma and New Mexico to also have longish hair. New Mexico's reaches his upper back, while Oklahoma's reaches below his waist. Maryland's is slightly above his hips.
This is all folks, I hope y'all have a good unspecified period of time >:)
#wttt headcanons#wttt maryland#wttt national guard#wttt oklahoma#wttt new mexico#wttt california#wttt#wttsh#welcome to the table#welcome to the statehouse#this man has some real beautiful hair#yall gotta believe me man
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California National Guard by The National Guard Via Flickr: A U.S. Air Force C-130J assigned to the 115th Airlift Squadron lands at an improvised dirt runway during an exercise at Fort Hunter Liggett, California, September 8, 2023. The exercise, also known as Crisis Beach II, was a multi-day exercise to evaluate the 146th Airlift Wing's ability to deploy, adapt, and survive in a contested environment. Airmen participating implemented many skill sets shared from other career fields to demonstrate their ability to execute the Agile Combat Employment (ACE) model, highlighting their proactive and reactive operational strategies under simulated threat timelines in order to increase survivability while generating combat power. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Michelle Ulber)
#Air National Guard#C-130J#ational Guard#146th Airlift Wing#146AW#HollywoodGuardForever#California Air National Guard#LRS#Fort Hunter Liggett#California#United States#national guard#NG#national#guard#guardsman#guardsmen#soldier#soldiers#airmen#airman#u.s.#army#air#force#united#states#america#USA#military
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LA 1992, California Army National Guard 49th Military Police Brigade Impression.
#LA 1992#California Army National Guard 49th Military Police Brigade Impression.#reenactment#military#1990s style#la riots
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#migrants#colombian migrants#colombia#migrant smugglers#mexican national guard#us border#tecate#baja california#mexico
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by Lincoln Brown
Beckett Law, a religious freedom advocacy group, has taken up the cause of three Jewish students at UCLA. The students claim that in the wake of the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, they faced mounting antisemitism, which included barring them from access to areas of the campus. The students are also represented by Clement & Murphy, PLLC.
In the lawsuit, Frankel v. The Regents of the University of California, the plaintiffs claim that pro-Hamas/anti-Israel protesters set up barricades on the Los Angeles campus, effectively creating a "Jewish Exclusion Zone." Beckett Law states that after creating the encampment, protesters not only constructed barriers but also linked arms to prevent Jewish students from accessing the most popular areas on campus. They also imposed an ideological test, and those whose views were deemed to be sufficiently anti-Israel were issued wristbands and allowed to pass unmolested through the "checkpoints."
By contrast, Beckett law says that Jewish students were harassed and even assaulted. Law student Yitzchok Frankel was forced to find other ways to reach his classes because his route was blocked by the exclusion zone. Sophomore Joshua Ghayoum could not attend classes or study sessions because of the zone and the antisemitic activities on campus. Additionally, he was forced to listen to chants of "death to the Jews" and "death to Israel." Eden Shemuelian had trouble getting to her final exams because of the zones and had to listen to the vitriol from the encampment as she tried to study. These, said Beckett Law, are just three examples of the problems faced by Jewish students at UCLA.
Mark Rienzi, president and CEO of Becket, stated:
If masked agitators had excluded any other marginalized group at UCLA, Governor Newsom rightly would have sent in the National Guard immediately. But UCLA instead caved to the anti-Semitic activists and allowed its Jewish students to be segregated from the heart of their own campus. That is a profound and illegal failure of leadership. This is America in 2024—not Germany in 1939. It is disgusting that an elite American university would let itself devolve into a hotbed of antisemitism. UCLA’s administration should have to answer for allowing the Jew Exclusion Zone and promise that Jews will never again be segregated on campus.
The suit notes:
Defendants have deprived Plaintiffs of the free exercise and enjoyment of religion without discrimination or preference, as secured by the California Constitution, through a policy and practice that treats Plaintiffs differently than similarly situated non-Jewish individuals because Plaintiffs are Jewish.
Defendants furthered no legitimate or compelling state interest by engaging in this conduct.
Defendants failed to tailor their actions narrowly to serve any such interest.
As a result of Defendants’ actions, Plaintiffs have been injured by losing access to educational opportunities, losing access to library and classroom facilities, losing in-person learning opportunities, losing the ability to prepare for exams, being denied equal participation in the life of the university, suffering emotional and physical stress that has diverted time, attention, and focus from study, and by other harms.
In addition to seeking compensation for damages, the primary goal of the lawsuit is to hold the leadership of the University of California accountable and ensure that such a situation never arises again.
As usual, "never again" is here and now. The fact that these "students" take a great deal of pride in slinging the term "Nazi" at anyone with which they disagree yet use tactics that echo those of the Third Reich is ironic and chilling. But their savage nature can be attributed, at least in part, to those who educated them.
Given that, one must ask if the regents of the University of California were merely caving to mob pressure. Did they turn a blind eye to the madness out of fear or because of the optics? Ideally, there should be nothing wrong with discussing the war and even debating whether or not Israel's response to the Hamas attack has been proportionate.
The regents, president, vice-president, and chancellors never stopped to think, "Gee, it seems to be getting awfully brownshirty around here." And if they did, they were too cowardly or indoctrinated to say a word.
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#california#army#national#guard#ch-47#chinook#crewmember#aviator#aviation#49ers#fly#over#flyover#passenger#bay#helmet#cool#light#face#mask#flickr
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#youtube#militarytraining#usmilitary#Firefighting resources#Retardant#Wildfire control#Airborne firefighting#Fire management#Emergency response#Firefighting support#Firefighting tactics#Firefighting operations#Wildfire#California ANG#Fire suppression#Aviation#Aerial firefighting#Fire prevention#Firefighting aircraft#Air National Guard#Aircraft operations#Firefighting missions#C-130J
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Student debt also largely didn’t exist in America before the Reagan Revolution. It was created by Republicans here in the 1980s — intentionally — and if we can overcome Republican opposition, we can intentionally end it here and join the rest of the world in once again benefiting from an educated populace. Forty years on from the Reagan Revolution, student debt has crippled three generations of young Americans: over 44 million people carry the burden, totaling a $2+ trillion drag on our economy that benefits nobody except the banks earning interest on the debt and the politicians they pay off. But that doesn’t begin to describe the damage student debt has done to America since Reagan, in his first year as governor of California, ended free tuition at the University of California and cut state aid to that college system by 20 percent across-the-board. After having destroyed low income Californians’ ability to get a college education in the 1970s, Reagan then took his anti-education program national as president in 1981. When asked why he’d taken a meat-axe to higher education and was pricing college out of the reach of most Americans, he said, much like Ted Cruz might today, that college students were “too liberal” and America “should not subsidize intellectual curiosity.” It was the 1980s version of today’s “war on woke”: Reagan hated college students. On May 1, 1970, Governor Reagan announced that students protesting the Vietnam war across America were “brats,” “freaks” and “cowardly fascists,” adding, as The New York Times noted at the time: “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with. No more appeasement!” Four days later four were dead at Kent State, having been murdered by National Guard riflemen using live ammunition against anti-war protesters. Before Reagan became president, states paid 65 percent of the costs of colleges, and federal aid covered another 15 or so percent, leaving students to cover the remaining 20 percent with their tuition payments. It’s why when I attended college in the late 1960s — before Reagan — I could pay my tuition working a weekend job as a DJ at a local radio station and washing dishes at Bob’s Big Boy restaurant on Trowbridge Road in East Lansing.
The real reason Republicans oppose efforts to cancel student debt - Raw Story
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U.S. Coast Guard Birthday
Show your support for the brave men and women of the US Coast Guard who put their lives on the line to save ours, from fishing boats accidents to hurricanes.
US Coast Guard Birthday honors the courageous work of coast guards. When Hurricane Katrina struck the Atlantic coast of the United States in 2005, the US Coast Guards saved over 33,500 lives, an estimated 24,000 of these were rescued from peril in severely dangerous conditions. And that just scratches the surface of the important work that these brave men and women do. So get excited, because it is time to celebrate the US Coast Guard Birthday!
History of US Coast Guard Birthday
The history of the coast guard in the United States can be traced back to the year 1790 when it was established by the first Congress who allowed Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton to combat smuggling and tariff evaders with his fleet of ten ships. Originally called the Revenue Marine Service, or Revenue Cutter Service, the service was combined in 1915 with the US Lifesaving Service to become the Coast Guard.
During times of peace, the US Coast Guard acts as part of the Department of Homeland Security and then becomes part of the Department of Defense in times of war. Now, with more than 230 years of history, this important entity offers a great deal of support through navigation, port security, environmental protection and wartime readiness.
In the United States, there are thousands of events nation-wide for people to get involved in and show their support. In the UK, although not directly associated with HM Coast Guard, the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) is a charity organization with the sole aim of rescuing those in distress at sea. They launch over 6500 times a year, and have saved over 134,000 lives since their founding. Pakistan Coast Guard Day is celebrated on September 8.
So bake a cake, throw a party and get appropriately excited about celebrating and enjoying the US Coast Guard Birthday this summer!
How to Celebrate US Coast Guard Birthday
Have a blast with the observance of celebration of this important day. Join in on a wide variety of activities for the US Coast Guard Birthday, including some of these:
Throw a US Coast Guard Birthday Party
Those who have been members of the coast guard, who have benefited from the work of the coast guard, or even those who just appreciate it can celebrate by doing what people often do for birthdays – throw a party! Just like any party, the US Coast Guard Birthday deserves festive decorations such as balloons and streamers, some good music, a gathering of friends and, of course, a big cake!
Make it a coast guard themed party by decorating with boats, anchors and all sorts of sea-themed ideas, as well as employing the American flag and the US Coast Guard flag. The snacks can also be of a maritime theme, with a cake made in the shape of a ship, cookies decorated like life preservers, and even a bowl full of individually wrapped Life Savers candies! Don’t forget to play the US Coast Guard Theme Song in the background, “Semper Paratus”.
Learn More About the US Coast Guard
The US Coast Guard Birthday celebration is a great motivation to learn a bit more about this important service. Do a bit of online research, check out some books from the local library, or head on over to the National Coast Guard Museum in New London, Connecticut.
Make a US Coast Guard Birthday Playlist
Have loads of fun celebrating the US Coast Guard Birthday with music! Create a playlist that includes maritime and coastal themed songs, getting started with some of these tunes:
Beyond the Sea by Bobby Darin (1959)
(Sittin’ on the) Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding (1967)
If I Had a Boat by Lyle Lovett (1987)
Banana Boat (Day-O) by Harry Belafonte (1956)
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#Morro Bay#Eureka#Pacific Ocean#California#Newfoundland#Canada#CCGS Sir Wilfrid Grenfell#Canadian Coast Guard#CCGS Placentia Hope#St. John's#Atlantic Ocean#National Naval Aviation Museum#Pensacola#Florida#original photography#ship#helicopter#Boston#Massachusetts#U.S. Coast Guard Barque Eagle#Charlotte Amalie#St. Thomas#USVI#San Francisco#US Coast Guard Birthday#NationalCoastGuardDay#4 August
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1968 [Chapter 6: Athena, Goddess Of Wisdom]
Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.
Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.
Word Count: 5.2k
Let me know if you’d like to be tagged! 🥰
💜 All of my writing can be found HERE! 💜
Here at the midway point in our journey—like Dante stumbling upon the gates of the Inferno—would it be the right moment to review what’s at stake? Let’s begin.
It’s the end of August. The delegates of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago officially vote to name Aemond the party’s presidential candidate. His ascension is aided by 10,000 antiwar demonstrators who flood into the city and threaten to set it ablaze if Hubert Humphrey is chosen instead. At the end—in his death rattle—Humphrey begs to be Aemond’s running mate, one last humiliation he cannot resist. Humphrey is denied. Eugene McCarthy, dignity intact, boards a commercial flight to his home state of Minnesota without looking back.
Aemond selects U.S. Ambassador to France, Sargent Shriver, to be his vice president. Shriver is a Kennedy by marriage—his wife, JFK’s younger sister Eunice, just founded the Special Olympics—and has previously headed the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Peace Corps, and the Chicago Board of Education. He also served as the architect of the president’s “War on Poverty” before distancing himself from the imploding Johnson administration. Shriver is not a concession to fence-sitting moderates or Southern Dixiecrats, but an embodiment of Aemond’s commitment to unapologetic progressivism. Richard Nixon spends the weekend campaigning in his native California, a gold vein of votes like the mines settlers rushed to in 1848. George Wallace announces that he will run as an Independent. Racists everywhere rejoice.
Phase III of the Tet Offensive is underway in Vietnam; 700 American soldiers have been killed this month alone. Riots break out in military prisons where the U.S. Army is keeping their deserters. The North Vietnamese refuse to allow Pope Paul VI to visit Hanoi on a peace mission. President Johnson calls both Aemond and Nixon to personally inform them of this latest evidence of the communists’ unwillingness to negotiate in good faith. Daeron and John McCain remain in Hỏa Lò Prison. The draft swallows men like the titan Cronus devoured his own children.
In Eastern Europe, the Russians are crushing pro-democracy protests in the largest military operation since World War II as half a million troops roll into Czechoslovakia. In Caswell County, North Carolina, the last remaining segregated school district in the nation is ordered by a federal judge to integrate after years of stalling. On the Fangataufa Atoll in the South Pacific, France becomes the fifth nation to successfully explode a hydrogen bomb. In Mexico City, 300,000 students gather to protest the authoritarian regime of President Diaz Ordaz. In Guatemala, American ambassador John Gordon Mein is murdered by a Marxist guerilla organization called the Rebel Armed Forces. In Columbus, Ohio, nine guards are held hostage during a prison riot; after 30 hours, they’re rescued by a SWAT team.
The latest issue of Life magazine brings worldwide attention to catastrophic industrial pollution in the Great Lakes. The first successful multiorgan transplant is carried out at Houston Methodist Hospital. The Beatles release Hey Jude, the best-selling single of 1968 in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada. NASA’s Apollo lunar landing program plans to launch a crewed shuttle next year, just in time to fulfill John F. Kennedy’s 1962 promise to put a man on the moon “before the end of the decade.” If this is successful, the United States will win the Space Race and prove the superiority of capitalism. If it fails, the martyred astronauts will join all the other ghosts of this apocalyptic age, an epoch born under bad stars.
The night sky glows with the ancient debris of the Aurigid meteor shower. From down here on Earth, Jupiter is a radiant white gleam, visible with the naked eye and admired since humans were making cave paintings and Stonehenge. But Io is a mystery. With a telescope, she becomes a dust mote entrapped by Jupiter’s gravity; to the casual observer, she doesn’t exist at all.
~~~~~~~~~~
What was it like, that very first time? It’s strange to remember. You’re both different people now.
It’s May, 1966. You and Aemond are engaged, due to be married in three short weeks, and if you get pregnant then it’s no harm, no foul. In reality, it will end up taking you over a year to conceive, but no one knows that yet; you are living in the liminal space between what you imagine your life will be and the cold blade of the truth. Aemond has brought you to Asteria for the weekend, an increasingly common occurrence. The Targaryens—minus one, that holdout prodigal son, always glowering from behind swigs of rum and clouds of smoke—have already begun to treat you like a member of the family. The flock of Alopekis yap excitedly and lick your shins. Eudoxia learns your favorite snacks so she can have them ready when you arrive.
One night Aemond takes your hand and leads you to Helaena’s garden, darkness turned to twilight in the artificial luminance of the main house. You can hear distant voices, chatter and laughter, and the Beatles’ Rubber Soul spinning on the record player in the living room like a black hole, gravity that not even light can escape when it is wrenched over the event horizon.
You’re giggling as Aemond pulls you along, faster and faster, weaving through pathways lined with roses and sunflowers and butterfly bushes. Your high heels sink into soft, fertile earth; the air in your lungs is cool and infinite. “Where are we going?”
And Aemond grins back at you as he replies: “To Olympus.”
In the circle of hedges guarded by thirteen gods of stone, Aemond unzips your modest pink sundress and slips your heels off your feet, kneeling like he’s proposing to you again. When you are bare and secretless, he draws you down onto the grass and opens you, claims you, fills you to the brim as the crystalline water of the fountain patters and Zeus hurls his lightning bolts, an eternal storm, unending war. It’s intense in a way it never was with your first boyfriend, a sweet polite boy who talked about feminist theory and followed his enlightened conscience all the way to Vietnam. This isn’t just a pleasant way to pass a Friday night, something to look forward to between differential equations textbooks and calculus proofs. With Aemond it’s a ritual; it’s something so overpowering it almost scares you.
“Aphrodite,” Aemond murmurs against your throat, and when you try to get on top he stops you, pins you to the ground, thrusts hard and deep, and you try not to moan too loudly as you surrender, his weight on you like a prophesy. This is how he wants you. This is where you belong.
Has someone ever stitched you to their side, pushing the needle through your skin again and again as the fabric latticework takes shape, until their blood spills into your veins and your antibodies can no longer tell the difference? He makes you think you’ve forgotten who you were before. He makes you want to believe in things the world taught you were myths.
But that was over two years ago. Now Aemond is not your spellbinding almost-stranger of a fiancé—shrouded in just the right amount of mystery—but your husband, the father of your dead child, the presidential candidate. You miss when he was a mirage. You miss what it felt like to get high on the idea of him, each taste a hit, each touch a rush of toxins to the bloodstream.
Seven weeks after your emergency c-section, you are healing. Your belly no longer aches, your bleeding stops, you can rejoin the living in this last gasp of summer. Ludwika takes you shopping and you pick out new swimsuits; you’ve gone up a size since the baby, and it shows no signs of vanishing. In the fitting room, Ludwika chain-smokes Camel cigarettes and claps when you show her each outfit, ordering you to spin around, telling you that there’s nothing like Oleg Cassini back in Poland. You plan to buy three swimsuits. Ludwika insists you get five. She pays with Otto’s American Express.
That afternoon at home in your blue bedroom, you get changed to join the rest of the family down by the pool, your first swim since Ari was born. You choose Ludwika’s favorite: a dreamy turquoise two-piece with flowing transparent fabric that drapes your midsection. You can still see the dark vertical line of where the doctors stitched you closed. Now you and Aemond match; he got his scar on the floor of the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, you earned yours at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. There are gold chains on your wrist and looped around your neck. Warm sunlight and ocean wind pours in through the open windows.
Aemond appears in the doorway and you turn to show him, proud of how you’ve pulled yourself together, how this past year hasn’t put you in an asylum. His right eye catches on your scar and stays there for a long time. Then at last he says: “You don’t have something else to wear?”
~~~~~~~~~~
It’s Labor Day, and Asteria has been descended upon by guests invited to celebrate Aemond’s nomination. The dining room table is overflowing with champagne, Agiorgitiko wine, platters of mini spanakopitas, lamb gyros, pita bread with hummus and tzatziki, feta cheese and cured meats, grilled octopus, baklava, and kourabiethes. Eudoxia is rushing around sweeping up crumbs and shooing tipsy visitors away from antique vases shipped here from Greece. Aemond’s celebrity endorsers include Sammy Davis Jr., Sonny and Cher, Andy Williams, Bobby Darin, Warren Beatty, Shirley MacLaine, Claudine Longet, and a number of politicians; but the most notable attendee is President Lyndon Baines Johnson, shadowed by Secret Service agents. He won’t be making any surprise appearances on the campaign trail for Aemond—in the present political climate, he would be more of a liability than an asset—but he has travelled to Long Beach Island tonight to offer his well-wishes. From the record player thrums Jimi Hendrix’s All Along The Watchtower.
When you finish getting ready and arrive downstairs, you spot Aegon: slouching in a velvet chair over a century old, hair shagging in his eyes, sipping something out of a chipped mug he clasps with both hands, flirting with a bubbly early-twenties campaign staffer. Aegon smiles and waves when he sees you. You wave back. And you think: When did he become the person I look for when I walk into a room?
Now Aemond is beside you in a blue suit—beaming, confident, his glass eye in place, a hand resting on your waist—and Aegon isn’t smiling anymore. He takes a gulp of what is almost certainly straight rum from his mug and returns his attention to the campaign staffer, his lady of the hour. You picture him undressing her on his shag carpet and feel disorienting, violent envy like a bullet.
Viserys is already fast asleep upstairs, but the rest of the family is out en masse to charm the invitees and pose for photographs. Alicent, Helaena, and Mimi—trying very hard to act sober, blinking too often—are chit-chatting with the other political wives. Otto is complaining about something to Criston; Criston is pretending to listen as he stares at Alicent. Ludwika is smoking her Camels and talking to several young journalists who are ogling her, enraptured. Fosco and Sargent Shriver are entertaining a group of guests with a boisterous, lighthearted debate on the merits of Italian versus French cuisine, though they agree that both are superior to Greek. The nannies have brought the eight children to be paraded around before bedtime. All Cosmo wants to do is clutch your hand and “help” you navigate around the living room, warning you not to step on the small, weaving Alopekis. When Mimi attempts to steal her youngest son away, he ignores her, and as she begins to make a scene you rebuke her with a harsh glare. Mimi retreats meekly. She has never argued with you, not once in over two years. You speak for Aemond, and Aemond is a god.
As the children are herded off to their beds by the nannies, Bobby Kennedy—presently serving as a New York senator despite residing primarily on his family’s compound in Massachusetts—approaches to congratulate Aemond. His wife Ethel is a tiny, nasally, scrappy but not terribly bright woman, five months pregnant with her eleventh child, and you have to get away from her like a hand pulled from a hot stove.
“You know, I was considering running,” Bobby says to Aemond, chuckling, good-natured. “But when I saw you get in the race, I thought better of it! Maybe I’ll give it a go in ’76, huh?”
“Hey, kid, what a tough year you’ve had,” Ethel tells you, patting your forearm. You can’t tear your eyes from her small belly. She has ten living children already. I couldn’t keep one. What kind of sense does that make? “We’re real sorry for your trouble, aren’t we, Bobby?”
Now he is nodding somberly. “We are. We sure are. We’ve been praying for you both.”
Aemond is thanking them, sounding touched but entirely collected. You manage some hurried response and then excuse yourself. Your hands are shaking as you cross the room, not really seeing it. You walk right into Lady Bird Johnson. She takes pity on you; she seems to perceive how rattled you are. “Oh Lyndon, look, it’s just who we were hoping to speak to! The next first lady of the United States. And how beautiful you are, just radiant. How do you keep your hair so perfect? That glamorous updo. You never have a single strand out of place.” Lady Bird lays a palm tenderly on your bare shoulder. She has an unusual, angular face, but a wise sort of compassion that only comes from suffering. Her husband is an unrepentant serial cheater. “I’ll make you a list of everything you need to know about the White House. All the quirks of the property, and the hidden gems too!”
“You’re so kind. We’ll see what happens in November…”
“Good evening, ma’am,” President Johnson says, smiling warmly. He’s an ugly man, but there’s something hypnotic that lives inside him and shines through his eyes like the blaze of a lighthouse. He pulls you in through the dark, through the storm; he promises you answers to questions you haven’t thought of yet. LBJ is 6’4 and known for bullying his political adversaries with the so-called “Johnson Treatment”; he leans in and makes rapid-fire demands until they forget he’s not allowed to hit them. “I have to tell you frankly, I don’t envy anyone who inherits that den of rattlesnakes in Washington D.C.”
“Lyndon, don’t frighten her,” Lady Bird scolds fondly.
“Everyone thinks they know what to do about Vietnam,” LBJ plods onwards. “But it’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t clusterfuck. If you keep fighting, they call you a murderer. But if you pull the troops out and South Vietnam falls to the communists, every single man lost was for nothing, and you think the families will stand for that? Their kid in a body bag, or his legs blown off, or his brain scrambled? There’s no easy answer. It’s a goddamn bitch of a quagmire.”
Lady Bird offers you a sympathetic smirk. Sorry about all this unpleasantness, she means. When he gets himself worked up, I can’t stop him. But you find yourself feeling sorry for President Johnson. It will be difficult for him to learn how to fade into disgraced obscurity after once being so omnipotent, so beloved. Reinvention hurts like hell: fevers raging, bones mending, healing flesh that itches so ferociously you want to claw it off.
LBJ gives Lady Bird a look, quick but meaningful. She acquiesces. This has happened a thousand times before. “It was so nice talking to you, dear,” she tells you, then crosses the living room to pay her respects to Alicent.
The president steps closer, looming, towering. The Johnson Treatment?? you think, but no; he isn’t trying to intimidate you. He’s just curious.
“Do you know what Aemond’s plan is for ‘Nam?” LBJ asks, eyes urgent, voice low. “I’m sure he has one. He’s sworn to end the draft as soon as he gets into office, but how is he going to make sure the South Vietnamese can fend off the North themselves? We’re trying to train the bastards, but if we left they’d fold in months. It would be the first war the U.S. ever lost. Does he understand that?”
“He doesn’t really discuss it with me.” That’s true; you know his policies, but only because they are a constant subject of conversation within the family, something you all breathe like oxygen.
“We can’t let Nixon win,” LBJ continues. “It’s mass suicide to leave the country in his hands. The man can’t hold his liquor anymore, getting robbed by Kennedy in ’60 broke something in him. He gets sloshed and shoves his aids around, makes up conspiracies in his head. He’s a paranoid little prick. He’ll surveille the American people. He’ll launch a nuke at Moscow.”
You honestly don’t know what he expects you to say. “I’ll pass the message along to Aemond.”
“People love you, Mrs. Targaryen.” LBJ watching you closely. “Believe it or not, they used to love me too. But I still remember how to play the game. You’re the only reason Aemond is leading the polls in Florida. You can get him other states too. Jack needed Jackie. Aemond needs you. And you’ve had tragedies, and that’s a damn shame. But don’t you miss an opportunity. You take every disappointment, every fucked up cruelty of life and find a way to make it work for you. You pin it to your chest like a goddamn medal. Every single scar makes you look more mortal to those people going to the ballot box in November. You want them to be able to see themselves in you. It helps the mansions and the millions go down smoother.”
“President Johnson!” Aegon says as he saunters over, huge mocking grin. He thumps a closed fist against the Texan’s broad chest; the Secret Service agents standing ten feet away observe this sternly. “How thoughtful of you to be here, taking time out of your busy schedule, squeezing us in between war crimes.”
“The mayor of Trenton,” LBJ jabs.
“The butcher of Saigon.”
Now the president is no longer amused. “You’ve never accomplished anything in your whole damn life, son. Your obituary will be the size of a postage stamp. I’m looking forward to reading it someday soon.” He leaves, rejoining Lady Bird at the opposite end of the room.
You frown at Aegon, disapproving. You’re dressed in a sparkling, royal blue gown that Aemond chose. “That was unnecessary.”
Aegon is wearing an ill-fitting green shirt—half the buttons undone—khaki pants, and tan moccasins. “I just did you a favor.”
“What happened to your new girlfriend? Shouldn’t she be getting railed in your basement right now? Did she have a prior commitment? Did she have a spelling test to study for? Those can be tricky, such complex words. Juvenile. Inappropriate. Infidelity.”
“You know what he brags about?” Aegon says, meaning LBJ. “That he’s fucked more women by accident than John F. Kennedy ever did on purpose.”
“That sounds…logistically challenging.”
“He’s a lech. He’s a freak. He tells everyone on Capitol Hill how big his cock is. He takes it out and swings it around during meetings.”
“And that’s all far less than admirable, but he’s not going to do something like that around me.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he’s not an idiot,” you say impatiently. “He was perfectly civil. And I was getting interesting advice.”
Aegon rolls his eyes, exasperated. “Yeah, okay, I’m sorry I crashed your cute little pep talk with Lyndon Johnson, the most hated man on the planet.”
“I guess you can’t stop Aemond from touching me, so you have to terrorize LBJ instead.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Aegon hisses, and his venom stuns you. And now you’re both trapped: you loosed the arrow, he proved you hit the mark. He’s flushing a deep, mortified red. Your guts are twisting with remorse.
“Aegon, wait, I didn’t mean—”
He whirls and storms off, shoving his way through the crowd. People glare at him as they clutch their glasses and plates, sighing in that What else do you expect from the worthless son? sort of way. You’re still gaping blankly at the place where Aegon stood when Aemond finds you, snakes a hand around the back of your neck, and whispers through the painstakingly-arranged wisps of hair that fall around your ear: “Follow me.”
It’s not a question. It’s a command. You trail him through the living room, into the foyer, and through the front door, not knowing what he wants. Outside the moon is a sliver; the light from the main house makes the stars hard to see. “Aemond, you’ll never believe the conversation I just had with LBJ. He really unloaded, I think the stress is driving him insane. I have to tell you what he said about—”
“Later.” And this is jarring; Aemond doesn’t put anything before strategy. He grabs your hand as he turns into Helaena’s garden, and only then do you understand what he wants. Instinctively, your legs lock up and your feet stop moving. Aemond tugs you onward. He wants it to be like the very first time. He intends to start over with you, the dawning of a new age in the dead of night.
Hidden in the circle of hedges, he takes your face roughly in his hands and kisses you, drinks you down like a vampire, consumes you like wildfire. But your skull echoes with panic. I don’t want him touching me. I don’t want another child with him. “Aemond…”
He doesn’t hear you, or acts like he doesn’t, or mistakes it for a murmur of desire, or chooses to believe it is. He has you down on the grass under the vengeful gaze of Zeus, the fountain splashing, the sounds of the house a low foreign drone. He yanks off your panties, but he doesn’t want you naked like he always did before. He pushes the hem of your shimmering cobalt gown up to your hips and unbuckles his trousers. And you realize as he’s touching you, as he’s easing himself into you: He doesn’t want to have to look at my scar.
You can’t ignore him, you can’t pretend it’s not happening. He’s too big for that. It’s a biting fullness that demands to be felt. So you kiss him back, and knot your fingers in his short hair like you used to, and try to remember the things you always said to him before. And when Aemond is too absorbed to notice, you look away from him, from the statue of Zeus, and peer up into the stone face of Athena instead: the goddess who never married and who knows the answer to every question.
“I love you,” Aemond says when it’s over, marveling at the slopes of your face in the dim ethereal light. “Everything will be right again soon. Everything will be perfect.”
You conjure up a smile and nod like you believe him.
“What did LBJ say?”
“Can I tell you later tonight? After the party, maybe? I just need a few minutes.”
“Of course.” And now Aemond pretends to be patient. He buckles his belt and returns to the main house, his blood coursing with the possibilities only you can make real, his skin damp with your sweat.
For a while—ten minutes, twenty minutes—you lie there on the cool grass wondering what it was like for all those mortals and nymphs, being pinned down by Zeus and then having Hera try to kill them afterwards, raising ill-fated reviled bastards they couldn’t help but love. What is heaven if the realm of the immortals is so cruel? Why does the god of justice seem so immune to it?
When at last you rise and walk back towards the house, you find Mimi at the edge of the garden. She’s on her knees and retching into a rose bush; she’s cut her face on the thorns, but she hasn’t noticed yet. She’s groaning; she seems lost.
You reach for her, gripping her bony shoulders. “Mimi, here, let’s get you upstairs…”
“No,” she blubbers, tears streaming down her scratched cheeks. “Just go away. Leave me.”
“Mimi—”
“No!” she roars, a mournful hemorrhage as she slaps your hands until you release her.
“You don’t have to be this way,” you tell her, distraught. “You can give up drinking. We’ll help you, me and Fosco and Ludwika. You can start over. You can be healthy and present again, you can live a real life.”
Mimi stares up at you, her grey eyes glassy and bloodshot but with a vicious, piercing honesty. “My husband hates me. My kids don’t know I exist. What the hell do I have to be sober for?”
You weren’t expecting this. You don’t know what to say. “We can help make the world better.”
“The world would be better without me in it.”
Then Mimi curls up on the grass under the rose bush, and stays there until you return with Fosco to drag her upstairs to her empty bed.
~~~~~~~~~~
The next afternoon, you’re lying on a lounge chair by the pool. Tomorrow the family will leave Asteria and embark upon a vigorous campaign schedule that will continue, with very few breaks, until Election Day on Tuesday, November 5th. The children are splashing and shrieking in the pool with Fosco, but you aren’t looking at them. You’re staring across the sun-drenched emerald lawn at the Atlantic Ocean. You’re envisioning all the bones and splinters of sunken ships that must litter the silt of the abyss; you’re thinking that it’s a graveyard with no headstones, no memory. Your swimsuit is a red one-piece. Your eyes are shielded by large black Ray Bans aviator sunglasses. Your gaze flicks up to the cloudless blue sky, where all the stars and planets are invisible.
Jupiter has nearly a hundred moons; the largest four were discovered by Galileo in 1610. Europa is a smooth white cosmic marble with a crust of ice, beautiful, immaculate. Ganymede, the largest moon in our solar system and the only satellite with its own magnetic field, is rumored to have a vast underground saltwater ocean that may contain life. Callisto is dark and indomitable, riddled with impact craters; because of her dynamic atmosphere and location beyond Jupiter’s radiation belts, she is considered the best location for possible future crewed missions to the Jovian system. But Io is a wasteland. She has no water and no oxygen. Her only children are 400 active volcanoes, sulfur plumes and lava flows, mountains of silicate rock higher than Mount Everest, cataclysmic earthquakes as her crust slips around on a mantle of magma. Her daily radiation levels are 36 times the lethal limit for humans. If Hades had a home in our corner of the galaxy, it would be Io. She glows ruby and gold with barren apocalyptic fury. You can feel yourself turning poisonous like she is. You can feel your skin splitting open as the lava spills out.
Aegon trots out of the house—red swim trunks, cheap red plastic sunglasses, no shirt, a beach towel slung around his neck, flip flops—and kicks your chair. “Get up. We’re going sailing.”
“I don’t want to talk to anybody.”
“Great, because I’m not asking you to talk. I’m telling you to get in my boat.”
You don’t reply. You don’t think you can without your voice cracking. Aegon crouches down beside your chair and pushes your sunglasses up into your Brigitte Bardot-inspired hair so he can see your face. Your eyes are pink, wet, desperately sad. Deep troubled grooves appear in his forehead as he studies you. Gently, wordlessly, he pats your cheek twice and lowers your sunglasses back over your eyes. Then he stands up again and offers you his hand.
“Let’s go,” Aegon says, softly this time. You take his hand and follow him down to the boathouse.
Five vessels are currently kept there. Aegon’s sailboat is a 25-foot Wianno Senior sloop, just roomy enough for a few passengers. He’s had it since long before you married into the Targaryen family. It is white with hand-painted gold accents; the name Sunfyre adorns the stern. He unmoors the boat, pushes it out into the open water, and raises the sails.
You glide eastbound over the glittering crests of waves, slowly at first, then faster as the sails catch the wind. Aegon has one hand on the rudder, the other grasping the ropes. And the farther you get from shore, the smaller Asteria seems, and the Targaryen family, and the presidential election, and the United States itself. Now all that exists is this boat: you, Aegon, the squawking gulls, the school of mackerel, the ocean. The sun beats down; the breeze rips strands of your hair free. The battery-powered record player is blasting White Room by Cream. When you are far enough from land that no journalists would be able to get a photo, Aegon takes two joints and his Zippo out of the pocket of his swim trunks. He puts both joints between his lips, lights them, and passes you one. Then he stretches out beside you on the deck, gazing up at the September sky.
You ask as your muscles unravel and your thoughts turn light and easy to share: “Why did you bring me out here?”
“So you can drown yourself,” Aegon says, and you both laugh. “Nah. I used to go sailing all the time when I was a teenager. It always made me feel better. It was the only place where I could really be alone.”
You consider the math. “Wow. You haven’t been a teenager since before I was in kindergarten.”
“It’s weird to think about. You don’t seem that young.”
“Thanks, I guess. You don’t seem that old.”
“Maybe we’re meeting in the middle.” He inhales deeply and then exhales in a rush of smoke. “What do you think, should I get an earring?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“It might shock Otto so bad it kills him.”
“I’ll get two.” And then Aegon says: “It’s not cool for you to mock me.”
You are dismayed; you didn’t mean to hurt him. “I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you were. You were mocking me. You mocked me about the receipt under my ashtray, and then you mocked me again last night. I’m up for a lot of things, but I can’t handle that. Okay?”
“Okay.” You turn your head so you can see him: shaggy blonde hair, stubble, perpetual sunburn, the softness of his belly and his chest, flesh you long to vanish into like rain through parched earth. “Aegon?”
He looks over at you. “Io?”
“I don’t want Aemond to touch me either.”
He’s surprised; not by what you feel, but because you’ve said it aloud, a treason like Prometheus giving mankind the gift of fire. “What are we gonna do about it?”
If you were the goddess of wisdom, maybe you’d know.
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If there’s ever another fallout game I want it to be set in central California solely because I personally think it would be cathartic to see the national guard base that ruined a bunch of conversations in my life with their fighter jets with a big nuclear crater in the middle of it
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