#I will go off about this every time a photo of a moron tourist in Iceland crosses my path

[thegreenmeridian]

“Coast guard rescuer” nah the Coast Guard are paid.

Her rescuers were a fully volunteer search and rescue team. The SAR’s primary role in our society is pulling moronic tourists out of situations like this, where there’s multiple signs up saying “you will die if you go past this point” but uwu you need a cool photo for social media so you have to ignore it. If this is where I think it is, there are SO many signs telling you not to do this, in multiple languages. Plus usually a few park rangers trying their best to spot anyone dumb enough to do this. Occasionally a guy in a food truck in the car park debating if it’s worth getting a mouthful of abuse for saying “hey it’s really dangerous, maybe don’t try that.”

Cannot possibly overemphasise how extremely fucking tired we all are of you people coming to this island and putting our search and rescue guys in danger for your instagram photos. I know multiple guys who’ve had the traumatic experience of hauling a corpse off a mountain or out of the sea.

I’ve laid awake at night listening to a helicopter going to the mountain nearby, wondering if they’re going for the tourist I personally tried and failed to convince of the danger of climbing that thing. They were, and it was a body retrieval. And I had to look the SAR lads in the eye the next morning, wondering if I could have been more persuasive. Wondering how I’d have been able to apologise to their families if they’d died trying to collect that hiker’s body.

Really just. This isn’t funny. This is the selfish idiocy we’re all dealing with on a very regular basis when you people come en masse to this country and treat it like winter Disneyland without a solitary shit for either the ecosystem or the people that live here, and most of us are at the point of thinking you should be on the hook for the cost of rescue/corpse retrieval. A fair few are at the point of thinking we shouldn’t haul you idiots out of situations of your own making at all.

POOR GRANDMA!!!

[charlietheepicwriter7]

Hey, Little Songbird

Chapter 3 - AO3

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The place Dupain-Cheng took him to was a small bakery not far from the school. Stepping inside, the smell of fresh baked bread assaulted his nose. In the display case, dozens of macaroons in all colors lined parchment paper next to croissants and cream-stuffed pastries. Felix expected Dupain-Cheng to get in line to order; instead, the girl skipped the line, approaching the woman at the register directly. "Hi, Maman," Dupain-Cheng greeted. 

Felix wanted to scoff as he watched mother and daughter hug. Of course, she'd take him to her family bakery! She wouldn't be able to afford any of the places his pallet was used to. But... despite his first instinct, the establishment did have a rather... warm feel to it, further embellished y the downpour outside. And the food did look impeccable. Not his usual fare, certainly, but one day off his diet wouldn't hurt him. 

"Welcome home, Marinette," her mother greeted. Her eyes met his and furrowed with confusion before her expression smoothed out. "Who's your friend? He's never dropped by before." 

So she could tell him and Adrien apart. Good. 

"Ah! Maman, this is -" 

"Felix Graham de Vanily," Felix cut in smoothly, smiling charmingly. "I'm new in class and your daughter has been kind enough to help me gain my barrings at Fransis-Depoint. It's a pleasure to meet you, Mme. Cheng." He bowed at the waist, eyes lowered. He wanted to make a good impression - 

"It's nice to to meet you too, Felix," Mme. Cheng nodded, seemingly amused. "Why don't you two grab something from the back and eat upstairs." She glanced at the line, which had only grown in number since they arrived. "It seems like it's about to get full down here."

"Thanks, Maman." Dupain-Cheng pressed a kiss to her mother's cheek. "Come on, back here."

Felix followed her behind the counter and into the kitchen beyond where an extremely large man, presumably her father, was icing a particularly tall wedding cake. "Hey, Dad! Felix and I are just grabbing some food before going upstairs."

The father smiled, surprisingly calm about his daughter arriving with a strange boy in his shop. "Go right ahead! There's some fresh chicken salad and cold cuts in the fridge if either of  you want them."

They each loaded up their plates, but when Dupain-Cheng started to ascend the stairs, Felix hesitated. He looked back at M. Dupain. "Sir... Forgive me, but how do I pay for this?" Father and daughter exchanged a shocked glance. "I didn't get a chance to properly observe the menu, so otherwise I'd-"

"Don't worry about it!" M. Dupain laughed. "No friend of Marinette has to pay! Consider it the 'friends and family' discount." 

Felix frowned. He didn't really consider them friends yet; acquaintances, yes, but not friends. Though, if the quality of his classmates refused to improve, she might end up being the only person he could stand talking to on a regular basis. "Sir, I must insist-"

"They're not going to let you pay, trust me," Dupain-Cheng said. "You're not the first person to try, nor are you going to be the last. Just come on." She went upstairs and Felix reluctantly followed. He wasn't used to other people doing favors for him. Usually people wanted favors, thinking he'd be naive enough to allow them to ride off the Graham de Vanily family coat tails. Felix never allowed that mentality to stick around him long; no one had ever been stupid enough to try more than once. 

The familial part of the home looked nothing like the elegant, cold entry hall of his family's manor, nor did the connecting living room resemble any parlor or sitting room that he's ever been in. It looked well-used, lacking the meticulous housekeeping that the maids kept, with a blanket crumpled up on the couch and a video game console pushed to the side, like someone had finished playing in a hurry. He could see into the open kitchen from the living room and noticed that although it looked clean, there were dishes stacked in the skin. Was this how commoners lived? Clearly despite their beloved establishment, the Dupain-Chengs weren't nearly as well off as some of the other members of their school, like himself, Adrien, and Chloe. So how did they attend? The tuition was rather costly; did she get in on scholarship? 

Of course, Felix had enough sense not to ask her about her family's financial status.  Things simply weren't done in polite society, and while Felix often didn't feel the need to follow those unspoken rules, there was no need to insult someone in their own home. 

Dupain-Cheng sat on the couch while Felix took the love seat nearby, sitting gingerly upon it as though it could bite him. Despite the home being so banal, Felix found himself... liking it. It was warm, much like how the bakery below was warm, with a lingering sense of comfort radiating from every square centimeter of the home. He found himself sinking into the plush of the chair without meaning to. 

To distract his mind, he tucked into lunch, only to find his meal delicious. He paused after a single mouthful. Somehow, the simple meal was able to rival those made by the professional chefs in his family's employ. Good work deserves to be complimented, so Felix told Dupain-Cheng so and she flushed. "T-Thanks. I'm sure my parents appreciate it," she said with a cough, having swallowed some of her food wrong. "Would you like to go over where we are in the curriculum now?"

"Yes, that would be quite useful."

She showed him her notes for their classes and just as he thought, he was already ahead in most subjects. The only exception was literature, but only because his school had focused more on British authors than French. Still, it wouldn't take for him to catch up. But there was still one thing about the day that bothered him and since Dupain-Cheng volunteered her service, he asked, "I am unsure if this falls under you assisting me around the school, but could you explain what that Lila girl was trying to do today?"

Dupain-Cheng set down her utensils and exhaled heavily. "What has she lied about this time?"

"Apparently I pushed her after a greeting. Which is odd because I had no idea she existed before class." Not that Felix really cared. But saying he pushed her was a step too far; he has far more subtly than direct physical assault. At least be clever when you try to slander him!

"Huh, so she's directly attacking you already? That's weird, I could have sworn she'd make up some lie about forgiving you and promising to help you meet your favorite celebrity if you promised to be nice."

He scoffed, but Dupain-Cheng made no similar noise. Like... she was serious. Oh God, she was serious. "Are you telling me people actually believe that swill?" 

"Most of our class, Mme Bustier, and our principal. Fortunately she hasn't started working on making the people in other classes believe her yet, but there are a handful there too." It seemed as though speaking about it unleashed a dam inside the girl. "And it doesn't make any sense because most of her lies can be disproven with either an internet search or a phone call! She claimed that she saved Jagged Stone's cat from an airplane, but was there any media coverage from it? None at all! She claims to go on all these expensive vacations, but either her photos got damaged on the way back or she just shows the class stock images of generic tourist stuff. And the volunteer work! Sure, I can understand charities not advertising who their workers are, but all you'd have to do is call them and every charity she's mentioned ends up saying that a Lila Rossi never worked with their organization. I just... I don't understand how they can keep falling for this stuff! None of them even bother to consider that she could be lying!" Her chest heaved after her rant, but she looked relieved, like she'd finally been able to get it off her chest. "They... none of them even think that I'm telling the truth," she continued in a small voice. "They all think that poorly of me."

Their... classmates, as much as Felix hated to admit any relation to those morons, had really done a number on her. He found empathy to be distasteful, especially with his plan to become a ruthless business man later in life, but he could help but pity her. Not that he'd ever admit it. Perhaps he could change the subject? Or at least lighten the mood. 

"I'm going to be surrounded by idiots then. Lovely." She shot him a hurt look. "Well, not you. Obviously. Though seeing past such a clear liar isn't really a point towards you as it is a negative three against the others."

"You rate people on a point scale?" Her eyes were starting to lighten, brighten. 

"Only when I need to inform others of how lowly I consider them." He sniffed haughtily. 

"Does that mean you think better of me than them?" she teased, a small smile lifting the corners of her mouth.

"No need to get a big head now; it's not that you're better, but rather that you're less awful." He smirked in return, hopefully letting her know that he was returning her tease. At least, he thought that's what he was doing. He never really understood how to communicate with his peers in a fashion that reflected well on him. 

"I'm pretty sure that's the definition of better though." 

"Well, if you're so desperate to claim the title, you could always prove it." Felix folded his hands under his chin. "Prove that you, Marinette Dupain-Cheng, are worthy of my time."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm not sure if I want it now."

He frowned in disappointment, but inside he was triumphant. "Truly a shame; and here I wanted to get to know the real Dupain-Cheng... But alas I fear that knowledge will forever be out of reach." 

"Who says 'alas' anymore?"

"Well!" he huffed, "Just because you're unused to refined vocabulary doesn't mean you have to insult me, Mademoiselle!"

The verbal sparring went back and forth for a while and as rapier wit battled rapier wit, Felix found it hard to keep a smile off his face.

Taglist: @graduatedmelon @novicevoice @dur55 @kris-pines04 @18-fandoms-unite-08 @moonlightstar64 @bee-a-garbage-shipper @sol-o-shade @kittyotakunoir666 @tinyterror333 @allieoftheenemy @marichat00 @xgxmxtx

[arxaris]

Reincarnation AU drabble

*Related to my gladiator fic

Thanks @let-me-wander for this adorable idea and that last little bit with Kirishima that I absolutely had to include ❤️

* * *

“Let’s go on a graduation trip, Katsuki!” Kirishima said, his stupid pretty eyes shining bright. “I wanna see other parts of the world before we start working!”

“That’s dumb,” Bakugou growled out. “We should be training, moron.”

“Pleeeeease, Kat? It’ll be fun, I swear!” He pleaded.

Bakugou, the masochist that he was, had grumbled out a reluctant agreement. And that’s how he ended up in Rome, waiting in line to tour the Colosseum with his best friend.

His best friend, who also happened to be the love of his life.

A fact that was seriously complicating the ‘fun’ Kirishima had promised him.

Well, sort of. He was still having a good time, because how could he not be? Having Kirishima all to himself, being the only one graced with the sight of his eyes lighting up and his mouth hanging ajar as they took in the beautiful ruins and sculptures and fountains of Rome, getting to share bottles of wine with him over dinner and watch his cheeks turn the prettiest shade of pink as they neared the bottom.

However, along with all that came the obscene way he ate his gelato, licking it straight from his hand as it dripped in the Roman sun; the soft moans he would let out at the first bite of every delicious meal; the private budget rooms that never had a second bed; and the fact that Kirishima slept near naked, apparently determined to kill him as he fell on top of the covers in only his boxer briefs.

Yeah, Bakugou was dying, and it had nothing to do with the July heat.

He jumped at a pressure on his forearm. Kirishima, grabbing onto him unnecessarily to get his attention, as always. Add that to the list of reasons Bakugou was certainly going to die an early death.

“Come on, the line’s moving,” he said excitedly.

They made their way through security and were finally set free to explore. Kirishima flitted around excitedly, as he always did, while Bakugou made his way methodically out to the fighting area on the first floor, taking in the giant arches of the outer wall, only half of it left standing, a ghost of its original grandeur.

In addition to his jumbled feelings about his friend, Bakugou had been plagued by a sense of unease all morning, since the Colosseum came into view. The disintegration of such an amazing structure made his heart ache for reasons he couldn’t explain, the holes in the exterior stone and the crumbling bricks causing his vision to blink red in anger.

He rounded the corner and the arena came into his sights. Or, what was left of it anyway. The floor of the stage had given way, revealing the maze of the cellars beneath it and leaving only a reconstructed sliver of the sandy fighting ground in its place. Bakugou’s fists clenched at his sides.

Who let this happen? He thought in outrage. It used to be so beautiful.

Bakugou stopped in his slow stroll around the perimeter of the pit.

What?

He shook his head to clear the strange thought away and resumed his step. Lifting his camera, he snapped picture after picture to distract himself from his odd emotional response, from his very personal-feeling offense at the destruction of the amphitheatre. He hardly flinched when an arm wrapped around his shoulder.

“Isn’t this crazy?!” Kirishima said, voice bubbling with excitement and wonder. “This place feels alive, ya know? Man, I wish we could spar in the pit!” He laughed.

Maybe everyone had strong feelings towards the place, then. Important history and all.

“I’m gonna go find the entrance to the arena!” Kirishima exclaimed, pointing towards the reconstructed semicircle of stage. And then he was off again, running around the edge of the stage and away from Bakugou.

Normally, Bakugou might have followed him, but as he looked around, he felt himself more drawn to the second level. He wanted to see how the pit would’ve looked from above, what the spectators would have seen.

Bakugou meandered up the stairs to the second level, finding himself in a small museum exhibit that curved its way around the part of the outer wall that was still standing. The pieces were showcased in chronological order. He enjoyed the first part, from the Roman Empire, immensely. He must have stood in front of the bits of engraved stone, seat markers for the upper class’s reserved spots, for five full minutes, staring and taking photos.

The fractured stone that said ‘Caesa-’ sent chills down his spine. He didn’t even know which Emperor it belonged to, as the name itself had broken apart from its title long ago. Perhaps, he supposed, it was simply knowing that such an important figure had sat directly under the engraving that made him react so strongly to it.

When Bakugou reached the end of the Roman Empire era, however, and the exhibit began to focus on what had happened to the Colosseum since Ancient Rome’s fall, he found that he couldn’t continue to read. The harvesting of lead and iron for Catholic construction, later troops using the structure as fucking target practice. He was shaking with anger by the time he jerked away from the text display. He practically ran through the rest of the exhibit, heaving a sigh of relief when he burst into the interior and back into the sun.

Bakugou walked robotically along the railed path, but he felt himself relaxing quickly as he took in the view of the pit. Frankly, it was beautiful, even with the metal scaffolding and most of the floor missing. The curved walls, lined with their beautiful arches, made him feel oddly safe and protected for housing an arena where countless people were brutally murdered.

Bakugou reached a terrace that stretched out over the pit, and his breath caught in his throat. He turned into it and beelined toward the edge.

Was this where the Emperor himself would have sat, watching the games from a marble throne as his servants fanned him with palms, Bakugou wondered. Was this the spot from which he would have pardoned injured gladiators from fighting, or have them put to death, based on the whims of the crowd? Connecting with his people through the enjoyment of theatrical bloodshed?

Bakugou threw himself at the flimsy railing when he reached it, leaning over it and feeling it shake beneath him. The couple taking photos next to him shot him annoyed glances, but he couldn’t care less. His heart was beating hard in his chest, his eyes scanning the pit, frantic, searching.

Braids, he thought manically. Braids. Where are his braids?

And then Bakugou found him, a giant smile on his face as he play-fought with a pair of kids, no older than seven or eight, using plastic swords from the gift shop. Bakugou’s heart swelled in his chest, and none of it was correct because these were children and Kirishima’s braids were nowhere to be seen and he wasn’t supposed to be wearing a shirt, only his arms were ever armored, but he looked so happy that Bakugou couldn’t bring himself to care.

Gods, he loved him.

His heart ached in his chest; he wanted to tell people, but he couldn’t.

Bakugou shook his head to dispel the odd thoughts; of course he couldn’t tell people, Kirishima himself didn’t even know.

Kirishima fell to the ground in a dramatic fake death, laughing all the while, and Bakugou’s head felt like it was splitting. Anger and joy, past and present, he was seeing and feeling double, pain lancing through him like a spear at the image of Kirishima on the ground while he reveled in his happiness all the same. Bakugou clung to the railing for dear life.

Kirishima, still lying on the ground, handed the plastic swords back to the kids and said his goodbyes with a smile. Then he pushed himself back up and looked around. He seemed like he was searching for something, too.

And when his eyes landed on Bakugou’s face, it was clear as day that he’d found it. A smile stretched over his features and he raised a hand to the sky, waving openly at him.

Bakugou’s heart stopped. His breathing stopped. Time itself must have stopped. One second he was watching his friend waving cheerfully at him, the next an image of him, standing dirty and bloodstained and victorious in that same spot, raising a fist to salute him.

His smile was no longer carefree, but determined, brave, and feral.

Bakugou hurried to throw a fist up as he returned his grin with the same intensity.

And as fast as it happened, it was over, leaving Bakugou hanging over the railing with a raised arm for no apparent reason. The tourist couple scurried away from him as he lowered his hand slowly. He would feel like an absolute idiot, if only Kirishima weren’t blinking up at him, fist still in the air, looking dazed and confused.

Bakugou wasn’t exactly sure where his courage came from, but he suddenly hopped down from the railing and started running from the remains of the Emperor’s box. To find Kirishima.

To tell him.

Kirishima was his, and it was about damn time that he knew it.

He met him halfway up the stairs, and Bakugou felt as surprised as Kirishima looked as he heard himself blurt out a confession with all the confidence in the world.

However, Bakugou’s nerves barely had time to kick in before he was being met with such an adorable and uncharacteristically shy smile that his heart threatened to burst out of his chest.

* * *

When their allotted time was up, Bakugou and Kirishima left the Colosseum hand-in-hand, both still unable to hide their happiness. They strolled down the Piazza del Colosseo, talking and walking, no real destination in mind.

“God,” Kirishima sighed. “I’m so happy we don’t have to hide our relationship anymore.”

Bakugou’s brows knit together in confusion.

“Hah? The fuck are you talking about?”

Kirishima stopped in his tracks, looking as confused as Bakugou felt. He blinked at Bakugou, and then laughter bubbled up out of his throat.

“I have no idea,” he said. “Sorry, today’s been a little weird for me.”

Bakugou squeezed his hand even as he called him a moron. He could certainly empathize with that.

[my-miraculous-headcanons]

Social Media and Chat Noir are definitely Best Friends and nothing can convince me otherwise.

A condensed list of Things Chat Noir Has Shown Us Through Social Media:

   • Selfies with street performers he just so happened to see during patrols

   • Selfies in general of him making the grossest duck face he possibly can in front of couples and tourists, who are all just trying to mind their own business

   • Videos of him narrating what random alley cats are doing, because he’s a self-proclaimed cat whisperer and needs everyone to know (he doesn’t actually speak cat, he’s bullshitting you)

   • A vine series where the camera is pointed directly at Ladybug’s face as he starts naming off random green-eyed, blond celebrities, claiming them to be his secret identity, and catching all of Ladybug’s reactions. Her reactions become increasingly angrier as the series goes on. (The series ends when Chat claims to be Adrien Agreste and she straight up screams so loudly he drops the camera)

   • A video of him with street clothes over his suit and big ass sunglasses over his mask, arm over certified civilian Marinette Dupain-Cheng’s shoulders, who is also wearing big ass sunglasses. They’re drinking smoothies and shit-talking fashion designers very loudly. Marinette says she loves Gabriel Agreste’s work but she’d punch him in the face bc he needs an attitude adjustment. Chat chokes on his smoothie

   • An interview he does with Alya except he’s wearing a fake mustache the entire time and doing an unexpectedly amazing job at keeping a straight face.

   • Posts of him complaining about how people throw away perfectly good cardboard boxes and how truly offended he is like are you joking—

   • Posts of him gushing over how much he loves Ladybug and wow he’s definitely going to be embarrassed by those 5 years from now

   • Selfies of him in a group of Chat Noir cosplayers, the last selfie featuring the look on their faces as they check their social media and realise holy fuck that’s the real Chat Noir aND HE’S POSTING PICS OF US

   • An hour long video of him explaining why Physics Is Awesome and you should love it too. He somehow does this while cramming puns in almost every single sentence. How does he not get tired

   • A list of his personal anime recommendations, most of them unsurprisingly featuring cats in one way or another. His favourite movie is The Cat Returns

   • An ungodly amount of puns revolving around him being bi

   • An interrupted alley cat video where Marinette calls him over to her balcony and drags him inside because she wants to turn it into a makeup video. He ends up with black lipstick, flawless contouring, and beautiful eyeliner. He comes back for another video because “I really rocked the black lipstick”

   • Unintelligible posts he made while accidentally high on catnip

   • A picture, taken by a kid who found his baton, of him tangled up in a poor old woman’s ball of yarn she was using to knit a scarf. Thankfully she seems amused and not ready to beat him with her purse

   • A vine of him absentmindedly pushing things off the edge of counters, buildings, and desks, filmed by Ladybug herself without his knowledge. He’s always smiling evilly after the act

   • Badly photoshopped pictures he’s made with his and Ladybug’s faces pasted onto infamous movie covers

   • That One Time He Was On A Talk Show And Was Permanently Banned

   • A cute video of him responding to fan questions from a livestream.

   • “I do not pose all the time I don’t know what gave you that ide—” suddenly glitter falls from nowhere, he’s giving his most powerful smoulder, body draped over a gargoyle. Ladybug is staring at him from above, unimpressed

   • Videos of him antagonizing and shit-talking Hawkmoth. Akumas start targeting him viciously and he mentions in a video how fucking amazing it is that his greatest enemy is actually following him on social media, he’s laughing

   • Selfies he’s taken with elderly ladies he’s found around Paris, all of which have captions along the lines of “I met a gorgeous woman today!” or “this young lady was gracious enough to give this tomcat the pleasure of a photo in her presence!”

   • A post of him cursing out catnip and how much he hated that his friends are now drinking tea made out of the stuff like she just had to like gardening, she just had to plant catnip, she just had to share the tea with her friends, he just had to have the worst luck in the world—

   • Memes. All the memes. He likes to bring the oldest ones back, knowing full well just how horrible they are.

   • A video of him reacting to a video of people complimenting him. He’s bright red by the end of the video. (Obviously Nino, Marinette, and Alya are included. Nino and Marinette are the most enthusiastic ones out of the whole lot)

   • “Why are you so active with social media, Chat Noir? Most superhero stories don’t go that way.” “Well, I want everyone to know that I am an idiot. An imbecile. A complete and utter moron. It’s reassuring that you are all fully aware of that fact, yet still trust the fate of the city in my paws. Which, to be fair, is a dumb move on your part as well, Paris. We are all buffoons, apparently.”

Feel free to add to the list in any way you can

[davidfostercomedyblog]

My Trip to Paris: A Review

Like any typical heterosexual male the idea of engagement photos seemed as appealing to me as that of a fantasy football league might to most heterosexual women. Nevertheless, I am happily engaged to the latter, and in cliché fashion conceded to said photo shoot, and have never been so grateful for a decision.

It was a week before our European vacation, and our (French) photographer asked us: “Where will you be staying when you go to Paris?”

“We got a hotel in Nice, Airbnb in Paris.”

“Oh, you better make sure they have air conditioning,” she informed us. “Most Parisians don’t have A/C’s. The units are considered ‘unsightly.’”

Umm… seriously?

The forecast for our upcoming trip was to reach record highs in temperature. Not record highs for July or our particular dates. Record highs. It was going to be 109… degrees! The hottest two days in the history of Paris, on which we’d scheduled a walk to the Louvre, then down the Seine River, and up the gabillion steps of Sacre Couer, at the end of which I’d implicitly scheduled a good night’s sleep, which would be impossible without air conditioning.

I reviewed our booking on Airbnb, and sure enough there was no A/C. When I emailed our would-be host to confirm this preposterous notion she responded: “I have a great fan though.”

Good for you.

Our late cancellation was the happiest we’ve ever been to eat $240. We had a hideous air conditioner in our otherwise lovely, entirely red suede hotel room in Villa Opera Drouotin Montmartre. There was red everywhere. Red wallpaper, red blankets, even a 360 red velvet seat in the red lobby. But it was cool, literally. It was the greatest continental breakfast we’ve ever had in our lives, and we were happy.

The first thing I noticed upon arrival at the airport was the urinals. I’ve never seen bulls’ eyes of such small diameter. Do the French have better aim?

Second was the plethora of friendly assistants at the train station, all of them fluent in English, all eagerly awaiting the opportunity to help even the most dumbfounded of tourists, which pin-pointedly described us. Can you imagine such an experience with a New York MTA worker? They look at you like instead of “Excuse me,” you opened with a derogatory slur and are requesting they literally carry you on their back to your desired destination. Paris: 1. NYC: 0

Next we sat on the train, which was faster and cleaner than New York’s, though that goes without saying, as every train on the planet, I imagine including those of third world countries, is much cleaner than New York’s. Paris: 2. NYC: 0.

We sat next to college kids, two French and one British, who were making fun of American tourists’ stereotypical ideas of Paris being this ���romantic town, where everyone just gets cheese and wine and a baguette and eats it all on the streets.” When we got off the train I swear to God all I kept seeing were locals walking along the sidewalk eating baguettes or sitting at outdoor restaurants drinking wine and smoking cigarettes.

Baguettes were everywhere. I saw old men walking along the street chewing away at them, sometimes plain, others with ham and/or cheese stuffed inside. I saw young girls with grocery bags full of baguettes, others with just the one long one they’d need for that evening, way too large to fit in the designer pocketbook held in their other arm. Older women, young men, apparently poor people, rich people, black, white and Hispanic people (just kidding, there’s no Hispanics in Europe) – it seemed everyone had a baguette. I digress.

We weren’t sure if the cliché college kid pontifications were for our benefit, but I chose not to respond, a) becausewe weren’t sure, b) engaging in philosophical debate with college kids makes as much sense as engaging in confrontation with the schizophrenic homeless guy on the 6 train, and c) I was so jetlagged that they probably could have spread brie cheese all over my face and put their cigarette butts out in the mush and I would have let it slide. Whoever can get more than a few hours sleep on those red eyes are as gifted in my mind as Michael Jordan or David Blaine. Finally, the kids’ insults were at “Americans,” which I don’t identify as anyway. We’re New Yorkers - not Americans. There’s a difference.

We were two hours early for check-in, so decided to maximize our tourist time by taking the 20-minute walk from Montmartre to Sacre Couer.

Jesus, was it hot. It was 105 degrees. The walk was perpetually uphill and when we finally arrived there were more staircases than in the MTA’s latest atrocity, the 86thSt. Q train. What a moronic architectural disgrace that is.

We bought water from a local store and the lady didn’t even offer us a plastic bag. None of the stores did for entire whole trip. They all had them behind the counter if you needed, but I never saw anyone take one. Paris: 3. NYC: 0.

I could feel sunburn setting in. I took off my long sleeve shirt and threw it over my head to protect myself. The Asian tourists kept their umbrellas up for protection (though when do they not?), and the Italians were next to naked (though when are they not?). The heat was inescapable. It felt like the temperature was climbing along with us up the steps. Instead of a church, it was as if we were making the pilgrimage in Egypt. We had to take regular breaks and be mindful to breathe and stay hydrated, and constantly remind ourselves: “This is vacation, we’re having fun. This is fun. It’s vacation. This is… this is… this hot as fucking hell. Let’s take a lap around this church and go home.”

Sacre Couer is gorgeous: Incredible view of the city outside, and even better art inside. A local came over and requested I remove my hat, and I wasn’t sure whether my Americanism or Judaism was more apparent. We put hats on intentionally in our place of worship.

Finally checked in the hotel, we passed out for two hours in the coolest bedroom in Paris and woke up rejuvenated. We had dinner reservations at Derriereat 19:30, which was the earliest possible reservation because 19:30 is what time Derriere opens, which is just about the fanciest thing I’ve ever heard of.

Our table wasn’t even ready yet, but the maitre’d was friendly.

“Please, have a seat, we’ll get you a glass of wine and let you know when the kitchen’s open.”

Lovely!

Even my fiancée, who is rouge-exclusive, opted for white because of the climate, and it was the best white wine either of us had ever tasted in our pathetic American lives. Pouilly Fumé, crisp, minerally, dry and perfect and it was 6 euro, half what it would be back home.

We waited and waited, watched a few other parties get ushered into the restaurant ahead of us, and wondered if we should say something. I got up to remind the host of our presence, and he was flamboyantly sweet, super pleasant and matter-of-factly excited to seat us.

Ahh, Europe. Is it possible for a constant intake of alcohol, tobacco, bread and cheese to be physiologically offset by a complete lack of urgency and adherence to time?

When we finally got inside we found an adorable, almost hipstery chic spot that had apparently been someone’s home converted into a restaurant. We each sat in our own cushiony love seat across from one another in a spread out living room/library/game room as an active ping pong table was set about three feet behind my head.

Our waiter, Tyler, was from Canada, hence boasted the perfect hybrid of debonair French style with a western work ethic. We were relieved that he spoke English, but soon discovered so does 90% of the country. Tyler was jovial and handsome and encouraging of our order choices. The duck was insane – the best we’d ever had – the braised beef with zucchini was even better.

“Fuck you,” my fiancée kept exclaiming at how blown away she was by the food. I was happy we were able to show the local Parisians how New Yorkers applaud quality – by cursing it out.

We could have returned the knives, as the meats would have fallen off their bones with even the side of the same soup spoon we used to eat the best Gazpacho I’d ever tasted. With dinner we had the best rouge in the house for only 14 Euro per glass, and as a reward Tyler and the sommelier came over and insisted we all do a shot of rum. We were adequately buzzed with bellies full of beef… and bread. The whole experience was magnefique.

We followed Tyler’s recommendations for the night (we would have followed Tyler into the gates of Hell), on to cocktails at The Little Red Door, and although neither my fiancée nor I are very much into cocktails you couldn’t help but trust in the elitist mixology menu. Drinks were fantastic. We ended up yukking it up with some gay New Yorkers coincidentally seated next to us on the couch, mostly over how superior the culture everywhere else in the world is to America, with the exception of New York – one of my favorite topics of conversation.

We walked the mile home because time flies while walking through any city. We stopped twice for some nightcaps and allowed the city lights to fuel our way. Although New York is the “city that never sleeps” Paris is apparently the city that always eats. 1:00 in the morning on a Wednesday night and it seemed almost every restaurant with outdoor seating was not only open, but practically filled with locals literally and figuratively chewing the fat. Any potential for jet lag and heat exhaustion had been instantly healed by meat and alcohol, but still we were spent, and a had a long next day ahead planned.

It’s possible I was woo’d by the air conditioning as I’m not much of a museum guy, but the Louvrewas great, definitely our favorite tourist attraction of the trip. We’d bought tickets beforehand and it took about 60 seconds to enter. Almost everyone there was quite pleasant, though the best part was the security guards at the Mona Lisa who were anything but. Groups of us at a time were being yelled at for not moving fast enough – like waiting on line to view the classic piece of art was a local crime and we owed a cowering apology while running and ducking for cover. They could have been instantly beamed to the central bookings jail in downtown Brooklyn and not missed a beat. One of them was the first white guy I’d seen in France with that pathologically rosy facial complexion that screamed alcohol, hypertension and New Jersey; and although it was clearly his job there to be an asshole we believed it to be a case of chicken or the egg.

I’d love to tell you it was beautiful, that Monawas beautiful and a magical experience of tourism, but I don’t think I ever got a good look. It was pure chaos, herded into a swarm of fellow tourists, and one of the only contexts where typical Asian good manners actually fell by the wayside as they refused to be denied the perfect photographs. Spun into confusion and shitted out the other side of the room we much preferred the rest of the less popular parts of the museum.

Before leaving my fiancée insisted on taking pics by the Pyramid outside and I… I just cannot tell you how hot it was. There were other people out suffering as well, but most were huddled in the shade, massaging their skulls with frozen water bottles and drinking from another. We muscled through it, took photos with fake smiles, feigning joy or even comfort so that everyone on social media could see that we had fun at the Louvre. Indoors we did. Outdoors was about survival.

Next door we passed by the other popular museum, D’Orsay (What is this, the museum district?), and fiancée asked if I wanted to go in. As I generally visit one museum per decade at home, my rule overseas is one per trip.

We walked along the Seine River,which was beautiful and I imagined on any day under 109 degrees would have been crowded with other cute couples cut from similar cloths. They’d be eating cheese and baguettes, as everyone had instructed us to do, but ours was a different kind of trip, and I’d surely have jumped into the river before sitting along it with quickly melting brie. There were benches where I could picture us sitting, but even the mental effort of creating said picture was burning calories at an alarming pace. We passed through the Tuileries Garden, got a croque monsieur and more gazpacho.

On the way home I bought a suit for our wedding! It wasn’t the plan, but hey… we’re just some hot shot New Yorkers flying by the seat of our pants in Paris. Beautiful pants as it were, as I never thought I could make such a baller move.

Of course going into the store was wifey’s suggestion, but I went along with it. “Should we go in and see if they have any nice suits?” she asked.

“We should go in and see if they have any nice air conditioning.”

They did.

And before we knew it we were whisked away into the back room as if we had a reservation for two. Everyone there’s faces were beautiful and their outfits even more beautiful. I felt a bit underdressed in my Marcus Camby Knicks’ throwback jersey (while sweating like Patrick Ewing) and my crooked Yankees cap, but before I knew it I was Julia Roberts with Roy Orbison blasting in my head, as one of the most charming men on the planet, Tomas, put together ensemble after ensemble, creating his own Mona Lisa out of me.

Me, the sweaty asshole who just walked in the door in his gym clothes. Instead of angry security guards yelling at us, Tomas took his time with me, like a true gentleman, never allowing me to put any of the jackets on myself. His assistant brought us bottles of water and suddenly I began to suspect I was on a hidden camera show and Richard Gere was going to come out of the back room and ignore my sexual advances.

One fabulous suit I tried on was apparently made of some high-quality but more delicate fabric that Tomas warned me of: “A suit like this – you can only wear this to work maybe two or three times a week… otherwise it will not last.”

Two or three times a week? Who the fuck does this guy think I am? I’m sorry, Tomas, I love you, but in case you haven’t heard it’s only about 1% of the professions in New York these days that even require a suit at work… and those guys can afford enough suits to wear them two or three times a year. I’m not worried about it.

After about an hour of trial and error, mixing and matching and texting photos across the pond to Mom and others for feedback, finally we came to a unanimous decision. Tomas even threw in the pink tie from his own personal stash, and when we said Au revoirI could feel that none of us really wanted to. What we really wanted was to buy four more suits, then two giant homes in New York and Paris respectively where we could all live out the rest of our years together as the most stylish commune of love. Unfortunately that’s not how life works. But I found more than my wedding suit in the Paris SuitSupply. I found one of my favorite people, one of my fondest memories from the trip, and finally, a hell of a deal! Weeks later my (Jewish) fiancée did her research and discovered after the conversion rate I’d gotten a $1000 suit for almost half the cost. Paris: 4. NYC: 0.

When we got outside it was still 109 degrees. We went home and hosed down in preparation for another night on the town…

Bofingerfor dinner: An apparently pork forward venue that seemed to specialize in shellfish and sauerkraut dishes. I’d never had to de-shell my own snails before, and if you would have told me at any point in life I would twice in one day feel like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman I would have at least figured one of the two would involve prostituting myself on Hollywood Blvd. Thankfully, none of the “slippery little suckers” went flying across the room into any waiters’ hands. A now experienced acupuncturist I figured I could successfully navigate this previously foreign task and eventually I was right (although two of them were stuck super deep inside and I resorted to simply brutally cracking them open). Absolutely drowned in the plate’s bath of garlic and oil they were delicious!  

The chilled cream of asparagus soup with mascarpone was the best I’ve ever had in my life. I understand this superlative is beginning to sound like a broken record, but hey, we’re discussing food and wine in Paris. It isn’t like I’m telling you I heard the greatest hip hop song of my life there.

Unfortunately the sauerkraut dish was anti-climactic in taste, overwhelming in size. A beast of a platter, and we figured the reason the runner brought burners to light underneath it must have been because no one could possibly finish this plate in less than three hours. Most of my family has hefty appetites and within my family I am generally the one most derided for overeating; but my fiancée and I couldn’t even make a visible dent in the dish. We left full sausages just hangin’ and neither of us even broached the monstrous pork knuckle that looked like too much to tangle with. What was most fascinating was the gentleman next to us ordered the same dish, had it arrive after ours, and absolutely demolished it before we’d thrown in our towel. “Was he overweight?” you ask.Absolutely not, he was handsome and slim, fit. This is Wonderland.

We had nowhere to take our leftovers, but figured better to gamble on running into a homeless person then just throw it out. We saw some poor man seated on the train station floor on our way to Latin Quarters, and bestowed him with what I assume was the best meal he’d had in years.

We passed by Notre Dame, and I felt kind of like an asshole - like the tourists in NYC taking pictures in front of Ground Zero before the new tower was built: Odd locational tone for a photo opp.

Latin Quarters sucked. Think Bleecker Street meets Time Square, and in case you thought bro-douchery didn’t exist outside of America think again. Lots of pubs and sports bars, novelty shops and loud partyers, and you could skip it. A friend of us warned it would be like this but was worth seeing once. Another friend told us of a cocktail bar there on the Holiday Inn rooftop, from which you could see the whole city. Sounds lovely!We passed by only to be told the roof was closed as a result of the heat. Night Deux was a bit of a letdown.

The next day was a more of the same, only to reinforce a lesson that as New Yorkers we should have already known: Avoid tourist traps. The elevator at the Eiffel Towerwas broken which greatly appeased my fiancee’s terrific fear of heights, however I’m still awaiting my refund for the aloof purchase. Champs Elysseswas… ehhhh… like Fifth Avenue meets Soho, but not even the nooks and cranny side streets of old Soho of the 1990’s – more like vomit-up-your-ass chain retail, Broadway Soho of 2019. My fiancée got to take some nice pics of that other humongous fuckin’ old thing, but besides that the marathon distance walking through the desert level heat was beginning to wear on me… and by this time my neurology had shifted to a degree of alcohol dependency which is not my norm. It was time to call it a day and begin the night.

We closed more similarly to how we opened, in a more cultured reverence for gluttony in a local spot we’d been recommended that happened to be right down the block from our red suede hotel room.

Le Bouillon Chartierdidn’t take reservations and had not one, but two lines wrapped on to the sidewalk of mostly locals waiting to get in. We wondered, with gratitude, why our wait was only about ten minutes, and were inadvertently given our answer once inside. It was packed and fast-paced, pretty noisy, though not much to look at. It had the gritty feel of Katz’s Deli or Barney Greengrass and the waiters were curt and void of pleasantries. Ahhh… we felt right at home.

The most expensive bottle of wine on the menu was 23 euro. And it was great! The prices of everything were dirt cheap – like fast food cheap - which only partially explained the line around the block. The duck confit was excellent, as was the whole sea bass (I felt I needed something just a touch lighter than incessant pork and red meat), and I think the whole meal with the full bottle of wine came out to 58 euro. I think it was during this meal that my fiancée began suggesting another “quick trip back” next month. “We can just come for a few nights and eat in places like this!”

We closed the night as we had every other, with drinks on the sidewalk at Café Le Brebant, which faced out on to the corner of the main strip, Poissonniere Blvd., constantly serving us a nice hybrid of the authentic Paris experience with familiar comfort of New York. Also, constantly serving us lovely wines until the early morning hours, though I always closed with a nice, cold IPA in a chilled glass, as I now suffer from alcoholism. The servers were still mostly God-awful and we always had to walk over to place orders, but they were all pleasant and we rationalized it was worth it to be absolved of gratuity.

The next day we took the train seven hours to Nice. It should have been six but Mercury was retrograde and shit was fucked. Nice was OK. Glad we did it – would never do it again. It’s a beach town, which in spite of its historically fancy reputation means the same thing it does anywhere in the world: More plastic surgery, less culture and nuance. Saw some boobs on the beach, but as is customarily the case, none of the boobs you wish to.

The water was beautiful but the rocks were painful and expensive. We had to buy special mats and shoes in order for the beach experience to be at all relaxing and I highly doubt I’ll ever use either again. From now on I’m sand exclusive.

We saw a great band one night, coincidentally named Bofinger, and had one amazing meal at Terres de Truffes, which translates as Truffle Land where they (predictably) put truffles on everything! White truffles over burrata cheese and sundried tomatoes as a “caprese,” summer truffles on the lamb confit and black truffles littered across the porcini mushroom ravioli! We downed a bottle of our new fave, the Margaux, and finished with the crème brulee with truffle infused caramel drizzle. It was fucked. Up.Suddenly we suspected maybe there was reason to come back to Nice after all. That was until my fiancée searched and found the spot had another location in Paris. So like, why ever go to Miami for a restaurant that exists in NYC?

To exhaust a cliché, we loved Paris. Who wouldn’t? Who doesn’t? I’ve literally never heard a negative report. It’s like New York but with its own twist and flare, and without our recently vampired cultural extraction by transplants only to be replaced with the vapidity of chain stores and pharmacies that once were implicitly prohibited from the once greatest city in the world.

It took me a full week to recover from the neurological storm of jet lag and alcohol withdrawal, though having to spend double the price for half the quality wine eventually ensured my sobriety. Sadly the same can be said for our food quality… even in New York! It’s an awful shame the farming practices our government permits in this country, and in my opinion reason enough to kneel for the Star Spangled Banner should you feel indifferent around the racial issues. Never say never, though I still doubt I could ever make a home across the pond, as I just don’t think anywhere in the world can offer the vibe of New York, nor our diversity. It’s possible that Paris and many other cities may come close in cultural diversity, though never in variety of style, subcultures and psychology. This was my one critique from an admittedly brief first visit – that Paris appears a bit more of a one-trick pony than NYC. In fairness, where doesn’t? They probably do their one trick better than anywhere in the world but it’s just not New York. The weekend after I came home I went out to dinner at Kyklades Greek restaurant in Astoria, then took the train uptown to the EPMD concert in the park in the South Bronx, where my boy, Ed and I were two of seven white people of the 800-1000 there. We watched the legends and devoured some dope, authentic Jamaican food for 8 euro (J/K, it was $10). Afterwards we got drunk at a bar by Yankee Stadium and watched the Yanks beat Boston. The next morning my fiancée and I had the best bagels, lox and cream cheese in town at the Upper West Side institution, Barney Greengrass. Our city is dirtier, as is our food. Our leader is dumber, our drinks are pricier. Still it’s always nice to come home.

[prongsno]

Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant (The Castle Of Sleeping Beauty)

based off an anon prompt / Sirius has lost his little brother, Regulus, in Disneyland Paris. (2492 words) read on ao3

“They’re going to kill me.”

“I’m sure whatever you’ve done isn’t that bad.”

Sirius rolls his eyes down the phone, making a face at the ever so calm and collected voice of James Potter. He bites his lip, looking behind him again. He’s getting worried, and Sirius Black is hardly ever worried.

“I’ve lost Reg.”

“Lost? Like misplaced? You can’t find him?”

“No, lost as in the other lost. Of course I mean that you moron.”

James is silent for a second. “But, aren’t you in Paris?”

“Yes.”

“In Disneyland?”

Sirius closes his eyes for a second. “Yes.”

“And you’ve just lost your seven year old baby brother?”

Somehow, James has the ability to make things sound ten thousand times worse. Sirius groans, and turns around again, scanning the crowds as if little Regulus will just pop out behind someone.

He’s standing slap, bang in the middle of the pathway right in front of Sleeping Beauty’s palace. Of all places, it would be in one of the busiest parts of the theme park that he loses his brother.

“Go ask a security guard or something, maybe they’ll put an announcement in for him.”

“Mum would find out, they’d want me to call her.”

“Then just ask people around you. You’re fluent, surely someone must have seen him. I would stay and talk but mum’s got me looking after the dinner. Let me know how it goes.”

“A fat load of help you are, I’m not getting you any macaroons now.”

But James has already hung up and Sirius has no choice but to let out an aggravated groan and throw the phone into his pocket. The entrance to the castle is heaving, and he keeps getting pushed around, people send him dirty looks as he takes up the space.

He needs to find Reg. And fast. Before anything happens.

He used to hate travelling to France every year to see his relatives, with a burning passion. But he supposes now, with flipping Mickey ears on his head and Regulus’s Daffy Duck backpack on his shoulders, that being pretty much fluent in the language does have its uses.

He starts off by asking random people who pass by. Have you seen a young boy, with matching mickey ears and a mickey mouse top?

He even gets out his phone, pointing helplessly to the photo they took only minutes before the little scoundrel ran off.

No one seems to have seen him.

One person does say yes, and Sirius has a few seconds of heart pounding relief before he realises that the person has no idea what he’s saying and doesn’t understand French. He asks in English, but they don’t understand that either and so he walks off feeling worse than he did before.

He asks a group of American tourists, who are deeply apologetic and then ask him if he’s from London.

Every person, to his left and right, he asks.

It becomes almost second nature to him, speaking in French and asking, rather politely but also forcefully, if they’ve seen his brother.

He’s always expecting a ‘no’, and so he’s already setting himself up for the bitter disappointment when he taps the girl in front of him, shoves his phone in her face and asks her the same question in French he’s been asking for what feels like a lifetime.

“Er, Jay swiss desu-lay. But, par-lay voo Ang-lay?”

He blinks. The girl stares back.

He’s never heard someone butcher the French language quite like her, it’s actually an achievement and for a second he’s absolutely shocked for words. Then, despite the turmoil he’s been putting himself through and the nerves that are still wrecking at his gut, he laughs.

The poor girls stares at him in horror.

“I’m so sorry,” she cries, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I have no idea what you just said. Desu-lay.”

“It’s okay.”

She looks relieved, but now extremely embarrassed. “You’re English.”

“I am.” For a second, when he stares into her eyes, he forgets everything. He clears his throat and fiddles with the zip on his leather jacket (Regulus had rolled his eyes when Sirius had put it on this morning, saying it looked like he was in the Mafia). “So are you?”

She’s staring back, mouth half open in a daze. Then she blinks and nods her head and tucks her hair back behind her ear.

“Err yeah. English. That’s me.”

She’s got pretty eyes, and the sweetest face he’s ever seen.

God, what’s wrong with him all of a sudden?

He’s never been speechless, James says all the time that he could talk the hind legs off a donkey. So why, in front of this girl he’s literally never seen before, has he suddenly lost all ability to speak?

She reaches out, fingers fluttering against his. He sucks in a breath, he hates people touching him, but with her it’s different somehow? Her hand is warm, and oddly comforting. She takes the phone gently from him, and stares at the photo of Regulus that’s still up on the screen.

“Is this your brother?”

He nods. “Um, yeah. Regulus. I can’t find him.”

He realises with a jolt that they’re standing oddly close together. Her shoulders brush against his chest, she’s a head shorter than him at least, and he can smell the faintest hint of strawberries. What is going on?

“I haven’t seen him, I’m so sorry.” She hands the phone back to him, hands brushing against his again. He’s blushing like a little kid as she pulls her eyes away from his.

Suddenly someone is waving something in his face. “A rose! A rose for you and your girlfriend?”

Sirius takes a step back, jumping at the sudden sound and trips up over the girl’s feet. She stumbles and he has to reach out to grab hold of her shoulder, pulling her back with a grunt as she hits his chest.

“Oh, we’re not -” He starts, words failing when the flower vendor winks at them. He immediately lets go of her shoulder, and the girl is blushing as she takes a step away from him.

“Don’t deny it! You two have such chemistry!” The man, who’s holding a large bucket full of roses, doesn’t look like he’s going to leave unless he’s got a euro in his hand and suddenly he starts monologuing in French about how much the two of them look like they’re in love.

Sirius takes out his wallet immediately, slaps two euros into the man’s hand and takes the rose. Merci’s are exchanged and the flower vendor goes off to look for his next victims.  

“I’m Sirius,” he says, groaning in his head at the complete cliched feel of this whole situation. He numbly hands the rose to her and she takes it with a grin. He’s such an idiot.

“Mary.”

Mary twirls the rose between her fingers, a bashful looking smile on her lips like she’s never been given a flower before. “Thank you, it’s lovely.”

He’s smiling again, like a fool, when his phone starts ringing.

“Mother!” He tries putting on his happiest, I-haven’t-lost-my-brother voice and glances wearily in Mary’s direction. She gives him the thumbs up and it’s strange how she can reassure him so easily. “Yeah, Reg is having loads of fun! You want to talk to him? He’s err, he’s currently on a ride. Yeah. He didn’t want me to go with him, said I’d be too embarrassing. I’ll give you a call back when he’s done. Okay. Bye!”

“She is going to kill me!” He throws his phone rather murderously into Reg’s Daffy Duck bag, and grabs at his hair in mild panic.

“Do you remember where you saw him last?” Her voice sends a shiver up his spine.

“Sleeping Beauty’s castle. I turned away for a second and the little rascal had run off.”

Mary nods her head, rearranges the strap of her bag and sets off walking.

“You don’t have to come, sorry. I shouldn’t have made it your problem too-”

She shakes her head and continues to speed walk past the crowds of people. He has to jog a little to catch up and, when he’s matching her pace, slides her a curious gaze.

“You’re in Disneyland Paris, and you’d rather help a stranger find his little brother than go around on rides? Aren’t you with anyone?”

She smooths her hair back again, dodging out of the way just in time as a group of excited kids barge past them. “I was. Till the knob broke up with me, just as we were about to go on The Little Mermaid.”

“Ouch. That’s low. What a dick.” Then, because he has no idea what else to say, and because he’s extremely aware of her hand brushing against his as they push through the crowds, he apologises.

She laughs, saying he has nothing to be sorry for and he knows because it’s such a pet-peeve of his when people say sorry for something they didn’t do and have no power over anything in the situation.

“I’ve made up my mind, Sirius,” she says, the name rolling off her tongue as if they’ve known each other far longer than just ten minutes. “I might not be much help, but I’m going to help any way I can.”

He thinks, in the least creepiest way possible, he might love her, just a little bit.

Finally they make it back to the castle, where countless couples stand and pose for selfies, sharing kisses and candy-floss alike.

It’s packed, he overhears a group of Parisian teenagers squealing because they’ve just caught a glimpse of Gaston up ahead, and suddenly a whole swarm of giddy fans are rushing past in the hopes of finding him. People are pushing everywhere and he’s not even thinking straight as he grabs hold of Mary’s hand so he can’t lose her in the crowd.

She seems to have the same idea because their fingers meet halfway, immediately latching onto one another for dear life.

He tries to ignore the fluttery feeling in his gut, tries to ignore the fact that he’s still wearing the blasted Mickey ears that Reg forced him to wear and that he, more than likely, looks ridiculous and stupid rather than cool and sophisticated.

But all that matters is that she’s clinging onto him for dear life as the pair of them are swept into the castle.

He barely gave the castle a second glance before, when he was panicking and running around in a daze trying to find Reg. And now, with Mary by his side, their hands locked together, he realises it showcases Princess Aurora and Prince Philip's fairy tale love story.

There’s a flash of a camera, lightning up the darkened room for a second before it vanishes. The crowd’s already been and gone now, in the distance someone yells ‘Gaston!’ and there’s a cheer, but the castle’s not swarming as it once was.

A kid screams in excitement and demands to see the dragon and Sirius, who is getting sweaty palms drops Mary’s hand as casually as he can. It’s too dark in the room to tell, but he thinks he sees her flex her hand, rubbing her thumb against the inside of her fingers.

He shivers.

She stops right by the stained glass windows, the light streaming through and making her face shine with different colours. He looks around the room, forcing himself to stare at something else that’s not her.

“Do you remember anything he said? Something that would help you know where he’s gone?”

He shakes his head at her question, he honestly cannot remember anymore. It’s been almost an hour, he is officially the worst big brother in the world.

“He was just too damn excited about everything. The castle, the dragon. Seeing Goofy. I checked my phone for one second and then he was nowhere.”

“Did you see her?”

“What?”

She smiles. “The dragon. Maleficent. Did you both go to see it?”

He lets out a breath, his lungs are aching. “No.”

They’re grabbing each other’s hands again, racing off towards The Dragon’s Lair. It’s so dark underneath the castle and the two of them take out their phones, activating the torch. He gives Mary a nod and she follows close behind him as he yells out a panicked ‘Reg!’.

A group of five give him a funny look, but Sirius doesn’t care. He barges past them, looking in all of the nooks and crannies where a small boy of seven could fit.

“You don’t have to yell out my name!”

His mouth burns and he lets out a gasp as he turns. There Reg is, leaning against the rails like some model who’s waiting for an assistant to hand him a mocha-decaf-latte with extra cream.

“You little monster!” Sirius grabs him by his top and then pulls him close to give him a tight squeeze. “Where the hell did you run off to?”

Regulus pulls away after a few seconds, finding it highly embarrassing that his older brother is hugging him. “I told you I wanted to see the dragon,” he answers rather calmly.

Sirius blinks. “You’ve been here for the past hour?”

“Yes.” Regulus rolls his eyes. The boy glances towards Mary, who stands a little behind them. “Who’s that?”

“This is Mary-”

“Is she your girlfriend?” Regulus nods, with a wide grin, towards the rose that Mary’s still holding between her fingers. “Sirius’s got a crush. Sirius bought a rose.” The little scoundrel laughs and tugs at his backpack that still hangs from Sirius’s shoulders. He’s glad to get rid of the damn thing, and practically throws it into Regulus’s arms.

“Come on then,” Reg says once he’s reunited with his bag. “I want some candy-floss.” He turns towards the exit and Sirius, who is never letting his younger brother out of his sight again, tugs at Mary’s hand.

“Thank you so much,” he says as they pass the dragon and head towards the exit. “You’re actually a lifesaver.”

Mary laughs, grinning at the hyper sight of Regulus who dances and chants ‘candy-floss’. “He’s adorable. I’m so glad you found him.”

“You found him. I honestly cannot thank you enough.” He scratches his neck, takes off the mickey ears and runs a hand through his hair. “Er, so what were you planning on doing now?”

She shrugs. “Nothing now that my arse of an ex has gone. You?”

“Just going around with Reg.” He swallows hard. “You could, um - you’re welcome to join us. If you wanted to, I mean. I could treat you to a coffee. As a thank you.”

“That’s code for a date,” Regulus pops his head from under Sirius’s arms, giving Mary a grin that’s so similar to his brother’s. “He’s asking you out.”

She smiles, and Sirius feels like he’s floating. “I guess my answer is yes, then.”

[chaletnz]

Notable Amsterdam Cycling Incidents

Every day on a bike in Amsterdam is a challenge. The mornings are not so bad for me, I cycle to work at about 5.30am when there is nobody else on the road and I make the most of the long stretches to practice riding with no hands on the handlebars (a skill I decided to learn here as soon as I realised my Dutch was a no go). But in the afternoons and evenings when I have finished work and need to get myself home I am battling cars, trams, other cyclists, mopeds and most annoyingly, pedestrians. Cars and trucks are actually the easiest obstacles because they are generally bound to follow separate lanes, signs and traffic lights, and if they get stuck in a jam on a narrow street then they just have to wait right where they are. Mopeds are often driven by lazy idiots but they will usually just go around you because they don't want to waste their precious time. Other cyclists are all thinking the same as each other "let's not crash into some moron", so we avoid each other, try to time our gaps, slow down, speed up, turn or do whatever it takes to avoid collision. Children have not developed this mindset yet and will unpredictably do as they wish. Pedestrians are the worst. They walk down the middle of a narrow street in groups of 5, they stop abruptly to take a photo, they walk out to cross the road without a glance, they give you attitude for ringing your bell when they're the ones walking in the bike lane dragging their huge suitcase while the footpath remains empty. And while they're right in your way, all the time, they're blowing smoke in your face from their first legal joint and shrieking excitably waving around their selfie stick. There are also the few pesky wildcard obstacles like a tram that may be hurtling toward you ringing its bell, or a drawbridge that is up and means that you need to wait unless you're Evil Kinevil and want to attempt a canal jump. I avoid biking in the central city any more than to and from work because it's always so congested with obnoxious pedestrians but I thought I would write about some incidents I've had on my bike since moving to Amsterdam in late 2016. 1. Prinsengracht I was riding my usual route home and just two minutes leaving work I was biking down the usually quiet Prinsengracht at around 3pm. I was biking behind a man in a business suit who was talking on the phone. He was going too slowly so I was looking to overtake him but some tourists were walking as a group of 3 a little further down the street meaning I couldn't get fully past him. I decided to wait until we had passed the tourists, as we approached them I looked over my shoulder quickly to check no one else was behind me. A second later I tried to brake hard as this guy just stopped his bike in the road directly alongside the tourists. I couldn't turn or I'd have hit them so I hit his back tyre instead and he started yelling at me as he was on the phone. I called him a moron and biked off. 2. Jacques Veltmanstraat Mere metres from my apartment, I was almost home and riding down another quiet road in the middle of the afternoon. I watched it unfold before me as a silver car on the opposite side of the road reversed and then did a U turn right in front of me. I'd been a bit further back but I figured they'd seen me as they'd pulled right out in front of me. I carried on biking as they very slowly drove down the street, all their attention on waving goodbye to their friends on the other side of the road. No indicator, but a sharp turn to the right - the same way I was going luckily - and I had to turn even more sharply up onto the footpath as their car left me no room on the road. The guy had the nerve to actually yell at me like I was somehow in the wrong. So I made sure he got a lot of F-bombs and the fingers as I biked away. 3. Vondelpark To set the scene, it was Kings Day drawing to a close and I was riding home. The path in the park was a little busier than normal, and featured added obstacles such as rubbish bins and trucks to contend with. I was biking behind a guy who was all over the road and going very slowly (drunk I'd say), I decided I'd pass him and chose my moment. I waited for a small girl to ride narrowly out of the path of the oncoming cyclists and into our path, stop, then move. I went left to go around drunk guy, girl moved to reveal brother stopped in the middle of the road, I gave extra space in front of him to clear him, he began moving, I gave more space, he moved faster, too late to swerve to behind him as drunk guy was there, tried to graze between the boy and a tree but the boy didn't look and didn't stop, rode straight into my tyre. I didn't move at all and he fell off onto the ground and started crying. I felt bad so I stopped and went back to check if he was okay but his parents assured me he was fine and not worry. They'd seen the whole thing and saw that obviously he'd just ridden directly across the road into everyone's path, I was quickly ushered to continue home by the embarrassed parents. I've had many close shaves, near misses and road rage incidences but these three events are the main ones that stick out in my mind. There was another time when some tourists were walking across the bike lane of the Vondelpark entrance right as the light was green for everyone to cross the street. I timed my gap so perfectly, I slithered through at speed between the end of one suitcase and the next person walking obliviously through cycle traffic. As I passed through the guy gasped and then was shouting out to his friends how shocked he was that no one stopped to let him cross first. He would soon learn that the bicycle always has the right of way! Even at a pedestrian crossing.

[avonhaughton]

Troy’s Blues

When I left Baltimore for my first year of college, there weren’t many reasons left to get my hands sticky, so I didn’t eat any mangoes. It seemed pointless. In fact, I didn’t crave anything particularly sweet or spicy.

Toward the end of my first September away,  craving familiarity more than sweets, I went to the grocery store closest to my dormitory and picked up a plastic package labeled  “sweet mango slices” in hopes of eating them with the fork that the cashier put in my bag before I got a chance to ask. I had no utensils of my own in my room, so I was thankful for the assumption on the cashier’s part. I walked back with the white ‘thank you’ bag tucked under my arm, fearing ridicule from anyone knew what was inside. Oddly I felt embarrassed of the man I was becoming. The man who eats his mango with a fork, forgetting what he comes from. A man who doesn’t get his fingers and face dirty with the flesh of a fruit that marked a good pause or ending on a warm day. Half way through this story, staring at my fidgeting eyebrows, wrinkled and squirming like two confused caterpillars, Troy bit his bottom lip so hard to keep himself from laughing, that I thought he would piss himself or prick his lip.

“Yo, shut up.”

“No, for real,” I said, nearly begging him to let me finish. I knew it was a crisis and I knew if I didn’t fix it by the end this summer, then I was going to end up like one of those black news reporters whose photos the black student union would ceremoniously throw chicken bones at. Their hairlines always looked like they didn’t live near a black barbershop and they talked like if you asked them where they came from, they would say something as strange and as vague as “New England.”

“Yo, the white boys you live wit talk like that. Like, trip about what kinda mangos you get and—“

“It’s not the type of mangos… I just felt like I was losing…”. I acted like I needed to find words, but I knew exactly what I’d lost my first year away at school. What my roommates tried to help me preserve by quoting as much Jay-Z as they could. Their disposition when they dropped me off at a Black Student Union meeting with self-congratulatory smiles like overzealous preschool parents or when they bought me an energy drink so I could study after trying to embrace my inner King protesting with the BSU. I thought I should find an internship for this summer. In fact, I had two lined up thanks to a black professor who was always looking out. I flaked at the last minute and made my way home on the first train I could get.

When I got off of the train in Baltimore, I could smell seawater and Old Bay seasoning and the festering wounds of the former heroin capital like some tourist who was all caught up on every season of The Wire. In fact, he owned the DVD collection. In fact, the kind of stranger I’d become skipped out on a mildly French summer of making copies for a sleazy but respectable essayist in Montreal just to feed his perverse obsession with Baltimore. June had just begun to be its true self, and it was too hot for the plastic seat covers we sat on, but the blunt never burned as smooth if we didn’t roll it on Troy’s grandmother’s coffee table. We decided that when we turned thirteen. A joke turned tradition turned law. Ms. Anne could smell the weed, but she let it go the very day she found out where it came from. By then, we were fifteen, and she let it go because “Troy did much worse,” she said with the kind of old Jamaican lady frown that could make you accept her words as facts and question no further. Once Ms. Anne saw that it was me kneeling next to her coffee table, breaking up weed with the kind of focus she’d seen me recite bible verses with I think she changed her mind about weed. The adults around me decided for me that I wasn’t much of a risk taker before I even had the chance to take risks and they stuck to it. I was too frozen to move or even speak. Troy shrugged when I asked if she was home. The idea of getting into trouble made me tremble with the kind of fear that makes a marijuana high a crippling two hours of misplaced paranoia. The kind of high that makes you scrub the kitchen floor and light every candle and decorative candle around the house because of the fear of smelling like the spliff we smoked outside and three blocks away for that matter. I did this every day when I got home from school until Troy told me to stop because it made no sense. That kind of balance made me feel like I had a purpose. I felt like a needed part of a machine. We had nothing to worry about. Not that day at least. I’d been known from that early, risk-free age to keep Troy on “the straight and narrow.” This meant that weed was no longer weed but a textbook and I some kind of teacher and Troy a star student is what Ms. Anne must’ve thought as she made her way up the stairs mumbling something about there being more curry chicken on the stove and another thing about heating up the rice and peas in the fridge. I missed home. Like any city, there was something in even the name that you couldn’t get anywhere else. I even say it differently now. I mean, I’ve always said it differently, but it only gets brought to your attention when white people from your college town try to correct you.

“You mean Bal’more.”

“I mean, yeah, If you’re white.”

“What?”, Asked Sarah politely but prying. Not like the Sarah from my French class. She never stuck her neck out in curiosity, so she gave the impression that she knew everything already. And I believed her. Shit, I believed every person confident enough to fake some confidence in my first year of college. That is until finals came around anyway. This Sarah was one of those Sarahs who came to college with the knowledge that the world owed her its submission. She demanded this submission when speaking to anyone. Any international student who had intimate details about a city she’d be visiting that coming summer. For any minority who dared to call themselves a minority in her presence. To any man taller than her and lighter than a latte stained t-shirt. For she was a woman. And since she was white, this womanhood was the happy medium between advantage and disadvantage that she could wave in just about anyone’s face to help her win an argument about privilege or oppression or missionary work. And yes, yes she would waste this potential at the end of her second year by spending her allowance on wholesale t-shirts and cotton balls and paint so her and the other Sarahs and the Melissas and the Rachels could make t-shirts with vaginas on them to protest male superiority on campus perpetuated by athletes and tenured professors.

“I said yeah if you’re white.”

To which she replied “Wait… Isn’t that…”, hesitant with her voice resting at a high enough pitch so that if the statement that was to follow were wrong, she could make it seem as if she weren’t seriously asking in the first place. A high enough pitch so that she could easily make the case that you’re overreacting and on top of that little too loud. Then when the conversation lent itself to dreaded talk of systematic this and inherent that, she could tell you that victimizing one’s self is what keeps one oppressed and not necessarily an oppressor.

“Nothing,” I said with my eyes to her expensive leather sneakers. The ones on which she’d written the word feminist on the toe. “Different people say it different,“ I said with the kind of deference that came along with the fear that a mob of Sarahs would convince everyone that I was a buck and a brute if my volume grew any higher than a whimper.

“Oh. I guess,” Sarah said, knowing she’d won. And she had. And I kept my eyes to her shoes until they were out of the elevator door and out of my sight. And just as the door closed I’d found exactly what I needed to say and even the courage to say it. I wanted to tell her about segregation and white flight and anatomy and how all of these things have their way with vernacular. I wanted to tell her to mind her white ass business with that all-consuming voice that Troy had, but that wasn’t my voice. I was losing my grip on a foundation that I’d never really gotten comfortable standing on back in Baltimore. Sarah has a lineage at this school. She has a photo of her great great grandmother. She’s seen her great grandmother’s diary entries and has her father’s family crest tattooed on her left calf. She had forgotten I even existed by the time I was back in my room finishing the rest of my processed mango with my left eye swelling with some strange, regretful tear. Feeling like I let down my race. Like I wasn’t looking out for them the way they looked out for me. Like Professor Dickens looked out for me. Like Troy looked out for me. I couldn’t help but think and think again that Troy would be much better off in college than I. He, like Sarah, had a sturdy and unintimidated foundation that every college needs. Hard opinions against others. Troy had a sneaker collection, the origins of hip-hop memorized, a stab wound and the perfect recipe for jerk chicken. He’d taken the nature and the nurture and turned it all into love and eloquence with the kind of beauty that people paint pictures with. When he spoke, he demanded fear. The kind of biblical fear that I always doubted until he spoke. When Moses came down from the mountain to speak, I bet he had a voice like Troy’s. Never demanding, but enlightening. It filled the air with the energy it didn’t know it needed. The kind of vibrato that could make the blind see. If he told you he was president, you’d believe him. If he told you he was a lawyer, a diplomat, or a ghostwriter for the pope you just might go along with it. No one dared to call him intelligent or eloquent or charming. Those were insults shoved in his face by welfare administrators, judges at juvenile courts and a fast food employer or two— some people who allowed themselves for one moronic second to think that he didn’t know himself. And even then, he snickered and told them that he got his diploma from the school of hard knocks. Dated and reductive, yes, but it worked for everyone like music when they heard him say it. And for the smallest moment, they wished their kids or perhaps they themselves could have gone to school there. They wished that Troy could be their professor. They wished that the plight that plagued the black men they knew could be reversed with that kind of education. I wished it too. I knew my SAT scores were just a result of being able to memorize well. And my vocabulary the same. The format in which I wrote essays were as marginalized as my mind, and that blandness would never get me the same education that Troy had.

I was just kind. The kind of kind that I hoped would get me past the campus police without having to flash my ID. I mean, no one ever flashed their ID’s, but the officers, especially one “Smith” would swallow his good morning smile just as I approached the arc at the southern entrance of the main campus. He would stroll out of his booth sideways to not tempt his pronounced hips. He would keep his gaze on something inside the booth to let one or two more students pass by seemingly unnoticed, but just as I approached he would gesture his trembling, pink hand for me to stop. Some mornings I was lucky enough to only have to flash my ID card and keep walking, but most mornings, especially when I looked like I was in a rush, he would pull the card from my fingers and give us both a good look just to be safe. And I still smiled. The same half smile I gave professors when they met eyes with me in hopes that I could permit them to read the word “nigger” aloud if needed. As if they wouldn’t do it anyway. The same smile I gave one of the Sarah’s when she asked me for the third time if I could sell her weed. The kind of ashamed and embarrassed half smile that Troy would never give. He, like Sarah, the security guard, and this President Obama photo on Troy’s grandma’s living room wall owed the world nothing. While my mind was outside of the living room, I must’ve settled into some sad, desperate kind of look while staring at a photo of the kind of man that felt like a myth. Troy slid forward against the plastic seat covers with a change in tone. Moses came down from the mountain just for a second to speak to a child or a mouse to say “Yo, you can have a mango every day this summer if you want.”

“It’s not even that serious,” I said, lifting my gaze from the large unframed photo of a stately Barack Obama. I relaxed in the chair to give Troy a very untrue reminder that I was his equal and that I’d only come back this summer to share our throne once more. I was no shadow. The independence I’d assumed during my school year should tell him that. But it didn’t. In fact, he didn’t even see my rebellious gesture. It was Friday and we were on the same plastic seat covers that we sat on most weekends since we were eleven. And I thought, just for a second or maybe for that entire summer that I was still eleven.

“Bet— Let’s go,” he said with a breath of excitement as he pearled the third blunt and tucked it behind his ear. The other two were in the Newport box next to those bad habits that severed us. That started when we turned fifteen, but we never talked about it. I went to a church retreat with my mom for a weekend, and when I got back, Troy said something about boosting his high and the next thing I knew he had an orange end between his lips. Oddly enough, I felt smaller. Furthermore, he looked beautiful and made cigarettes look no less than he.

At a stoplight, I noticed a bus stop I stood at every day to get to school, but I couldn’t see myself standing there because the wall of the building behind the bus stop had been repainted. It was blue now. A blue that someone must have thought of as promising or even soothing. I thought I missed the color of the bare bricks that were there before, but that wasn’t it at all. I thought the whole city would freeze while I was away. To know that the foundation that I wanted a second chance with was growing into something else on its own was frightening. I had to have been breathing as loud as I was thinking, but the music was even louder. The base rippled through the passenger seat and dared my rib cage to stop itself from vibrating. That, sixty miles per hour mixed with the West Baltimore wind made me feel, for a moment, like that one faded memory of me at the bus stop was nothing compared to what I knew I’d preserved. For another few seconds, I took it all in. The smell of horses, a loud voice or two, and the anticipatory hum of dirt bikes a few blocks away. Maybe this summer would give me a second chance.

I heard a bell as I opened the grocery store door and knew that there would be a smile to greet me soon after. Mr. Winston, a Jamaican man, now 72 smiled so big I thought he had to be looking at someone behind me, so I checked. He wasn’t. This man knew my entire family. He knew some family that I didn’t know was my family. To my knowledge, he knew every Jamaican in Baltimore. I went to school with his grandchildren when I was younger, and his middle son was my barber. My family went to his daughter’s annual cookout every summer, and my cousin took her daughter to prom. My mom and grandmother had come to his grocery store for cooking essentials since before my mother had thoughts of any children besides herself. When she did, and I came along, I would rush into the store and run straight up to him. He’d pick me up and sit me on the countertop next to the register and make me feel like I had some of the most fascinating toys in the world. In fact, he could make my toys better. He could animate any dinosaur, ready any car for a race and make Batman Man sound better than the TV. The show was always so grand that my excitement slid me to the edge of the countertop, but he would be sure slide me back before I could fall, making sure not to miss a beat in his performance.  Before I knew it, my mother had set out her ackee, callaloo, breadfruit, and pumpkin on the counter and was ready to go. But I  wasn’t, and they both knew it. So, Mr. Wints would fill one of my pockets with Pocas, the other with Tamarind balls, my left hand with a mango and Batman in my right. He would pat me on the head and tell me to be good until next time. Then next time came, and the next and soon enough, my toys became electronic, and he’d look at them with a forged elderly confusion he knew would make me laugh. When I got a cell phone, he asked me how many girls’ numbers I had, and I’d laugh at that too, also wondering why the number was so easy to guess. One day, I brought a girl into his store. I had to pick up some Saltfish for my grandmother before what I thought was a date. He was a little quieter this day. He knew I was nervous. Sasha knew too. I was almost too shy around her. Saying her name felt like a performance, and I didn’t want to open my mouth too much, so I just settled for Sash. She did too. The next time I came in the store, Mr. Wints asked about her, but I couldn’t tell him that I leaned in for a kiss and didn’t get one. Or that what I thought was a date was just me being an excuse for her to hang out with Troy. Her parents hated him. They hated his cologne and his audacious walk. Everything about him that she loved. I told Mr. Wints she was fine, and she was. He knew though, even though he asked two more times after that just to be sure. Just to let me know that he was there to talk if I wanted to. Since we were nine and would ride our bikes to his store, Mr. Wints would find the perfect moment while Troy had his head tucked far enough into a refrigerator to say, “Andrew” in that Jamaican way that sounds like Ahn-Joo. “Nuh let dat bwoy de keep step pon yuh toes, y’know” with his index finger pointed and head tilted and forehead wrinkles furrowed in a way that lets one know that his elder is serious and won’t be taken as any less.

“I won’t,” I said with the kind of quickness and chuckle that could put an end to any conversation, no matter how serious.

“Mr. Wints”, said Troy as the bell on the door rang again. Mr. Wints was still holding my hand in that way that older men have the license to do. I saw new wrinkles on his face. Two that weren’t there before I left. They were near his left eye, curving downward in a way that lead me to look at his mouth which had acquired a new sadness. I worked up the will, for the first time it seemed, to hold his hand like he held mine. I remembered a phone call from three months ago that I made to my mother. She was in a car, driving to Annette Winston’s funeral. She said she told me the week before that she died, but I couldn’t remember. I remember the conversation being quick since it was no longer appropriate to talk about what I called for in the first place. But there I was, getting a glimpse of why my elders held my hand for so long. I looked back at the new wrinkles and then to his eyes, but couldn’t find the words. With a new maturity, I brought my other hand to meet his as well to say thank you, and I’m sorry and everything else a man like Mr. Wints deserved, but I couldn’t open my mouth. I could feel words swelling; Meaning swelling. I knew that the man who helped shape my imagination expected more of me. I felt my eyelids swell with just what needed to be said, and just as these words were about to release themselves from a different kind of mouth,

“You looking good Mr. Wints. You look like you my age. I gotta watch my girl around you” Troy said. And Mr. Wints laughed like he hadn’t in days. Like he needed it. For a moment he was our age. I even thought I saw the new wrinkles doubt themselves. I know I did. I even thought I only imagined the sadness around his mouth. “You got more of the mangoes I got yesterday?”. Mr. Wints pointed toward the guinep, and the grapes and Troy followed.

He asked me about school and my grades and other things. Each question making me feel like I was taking a step away from him and him, me. He was the very man who tried to explain the key to happiness to me. He made my bad days feel not so bad with the story of how he lost the small finger on his left hand. “Under those. Under that box.” He said to Troy. Then he went on to say something to Troy about a boy who was shot. They both knew, and I didn’t. Troy said something about downtown and his father and Mr. Wints nodded and agreed. They laughed. I wondered if I smelled different. I thought my face must’ve changed or I must’ve looked different because they talked over me like a stranger. Not in the way that I’d always been, but like a visitor.

“How’s Sasha?”, I heard.

“She’s good.”

“Good. Back in school?”

“It’s summertime.”

“Mmm.”

“She good though. I’m good too.”

“You always good.”

“Yeah, you know me,“ said Troy, finishing the conversation, putting two mangoes and a cola champagne on the countertop. No charge for the mangoes and only $1 for the soda. Maybe things hadn’t changed as much as I thought.

   "Be good til next time,” said Mr. Wints, holding the side of my head the way he held my hand, paying close attention to my ear with his thumb.

“Yes, sir,” I said with the kind of respect I reserved for very few. He patted Troy on his shoulder.

“Why you keepin’ Andrew here so long?”

“Me? He wanted to come!”

“Keep unu self outta trouble this summer.”

“Always”, said Troy. And we left.

Soon enough, we were smoking our first two blunts of the summer on the hood of Troy’s car. At this moment, we felt invincible. I’d gotten something back. The weed in college was of better quality, but it didn’t feel the same. The company wasn’t the same. The air wasn’t the same. The shared end of this blunt didn’t taste like my roommate’s breath. Miller High Life and Twizzlers. I didn’t have a paper due the next day, and I didn’t feel like an outsider. There was comfort in the music we played and the rustling black plastic bag with the promise of two mangoes. We always smoked at the very top of this hill where you could see a decent amount of the city. We called it the top of the world because it sounded good, but we knew better. Troy’s cell phone rang, and he answered. I heard a resonant, musical voice on the other end and could feel my stomach turn as if it wanted to see it’s own tail. It was Sasha.

     "We at the smoke spot, babe,” said Troy, ashing his blunt. Babe played in my head again once or twice. This was new. For a second, I reconsidered who was on the other end of the phone. Not Sasha. She wouldn’t entertain pet names. Especially a pet name that was only a shortened version of another pet name. When I left, Sasha was done with Troy. I saw her square up to him and punch him in the face the night of our high school graduation after he grabbed her butt in front of some friends. She stood over him with a face full of tears and the tassel from her cap caught behind her ear and dared him to ruin her future. She was over him. In fact, we talked every day during our first month apart, and she was dating a girl we knew named Tianna. Sasha is the kind of person that can’t surprise you. When she fixes her car, nurses you to health or punches a man twice her size in the face. She’s a big personality paired with a mind that could put almost anyone to shame. She was bigger than babe. Babe was another part of that world that was created in my absence, but I knew at the very mention that our introduction was well on its way.

“Bet. Make a right then park in that lot,” he said, hanging up the phone with no proper goodbye. Suddenly, the grass beneath Troy’s car was lit and so was his car’s interior. It was the kind of light that was made for exposure. Made for finding things. Just as I noticed my shoulder lighting up the same way, I turned to look, and the lights went out. A car door shut and I heard the jangling keys and keychains with the cadence of the ones I walked to the bus stop almost every day of my last two years in high school. I looked into the darkness for what I knew was the parking lot to see a small silhouette step off of the concrete and onto the moonlit grass.

“Look at him,” she said, making her way up the hill. Before she reached me, I could already smell her house and her perfume and the gum she chewed. “Drew,” she said with the kind of honor that made me feel like some sort of giant. And she was the only person who called me Drew. This started when I called her Sash. The only difference was that we all knew that I was no Drew. A Drew was smooth and grounded. An Andrew was not so much that, but something else. She hugged my neck and head and kissed me above the ear. I snickered and hugged back with one arm around her waist. “You high?” she asked, pushing my head with three fingers and sliding onto the hood of the car in between Troy and me.

Until she asked, I didn’t know I was, but I was. And the view was pretty like it’d never been before. And though I could barely see Sasha, I knew she was just the same. Troy was quiet though, then we were all quiet, so I knew something was brewing. We weren’t fifteen anymore, and this made my heart beat in a way that made me feel it in my throat and fingertips. I tapped my fingers on my hands too keep myself busy, not wanting the weed to get the best of me. I thought I was going to cry for a second and then laughed aloud at the thought, drawing unnecessary attention to myself. And with this new attention, I thought Sash and Troy could hear me breathing, and I didn’t want to disturb them, so I turned my head away. I placed my hand on the windshield and my head on my hand to soothe myself, and I was fine. Sasha let out some smoke and then whispered something to Troy. They both laughed, and I wanted to turn around to see if they were laughing at me, but I didn’t, and of course, they weren’t. Then I thought that maybe I was still fifteen and they had grown up and left me behind. I thought about myself in Montreal this summer with a new pair of glasses with thicker frames. I thought about my French and how it could complement those newer, thicker frames. Maybe it was a mistake to turn down an internship. I only wore contacts because I thought, oddly enough, glasses were for confident people, and thin metal frames were for cowards who couldn’t pick a side. Contact lenses were for conformists, and there I was. I thought about how confident I’d look at St. Joseph’s Oratory. I imagined that I’d look so knowledgeable that people would come up to me and ask me to explain things to them. And I would. Wrong or not and they would believe me because I had that kind of confidence and these new glasses.

I was woken up from Montreal by the sound of parting lips. The sound itself spiraled me down into some kind of prepubescent shock. To a time where kissing was some kind of scandal. A place where, if I looked, I would turn into stone or something harder; An adult. With this misplaced embarrassment and a desperate need for a crutch, I reached into the noisy, black plastic bag for a mango. A mango and two napkins. Though we never remembered to ask, Mr. Wints would always leave enough napkins in the bag for us. The mango was just soft enough. And holding it in my hand reassured my body that I remembered how to eat it. I even remembered how to hold the napkin carefully in between my ring and small finger for easier access.  I used my teeth to break the skin and pulled the skin back with my fingers. I ate the flesh from the top and peeled the rest of the skin as I worked my way down. Less mess. The parting lips seemed to have taken a rest. Either that or my own parting lips had drowned out theirs with a different kind of kiss. I kissed the summer and the sweetness of assurance. With these people and this fruit and this view, I knew I had a history and thus, a future.

I could only tell that I was at the core of the mango when the hairlike flesh became too hard to pull and the flavor was a different kind of sweet. It wasn’t until then that I realized my eyes were closed. Troy and Sasha were in the car. When I turned around, they had a look on their faces that resembled guilt with traces of apology. I wiped my hands clean of that look and the mango juice too. Things were good.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” said Troy while we shook hands with one thunderous clap and a quick clasp. Something we’d committed to muscle memory. Something that my time away couldn’t steal from me. “We’ll get another mango or something so you can stop cryin’ and shit.”

We did. We ate a mango almost every day that summer. We went to barbecues and smoked and watched too much TV. We laughed at people. Something you can’t do within the confines of my college campus unless it’s popular opinion or at mutually hated politicians or something along that line. Not here though. We watched a man lean to one side in slow motion and spring back to standing just before his ear touched his ankle. Troy laughed, and so did I. I felt bad at first, but no one was looking so neither was I. We ate more jerk chicken that summer than I ever have. And we drank too. Whatever our favorite rappers drank, we would bring a bottle of with us to any house party we were going to that weekend. We pulled up to a house next to two or three abandoned ones, heralded by the illustrious voices of our choice. One night for Bun B and another for Project Pat, all to announce our arrival. We walked into a yard through a broken fence to see groups of guys who seemed to all look alike when I was as drunk as I was. They were quiet or smoking or laughing. We stepped around to get through the front door. By the time Troy found a place on the couch, I was staring at a cat who looked unpleasantly familiar with it all. The New Balance, the bandanas with the clouds and the names. The Strong sense of distrust that could be seen on the face or every person there. I snickered and took a seat on the arm of the sofa, watching the cat, knowing she was expecting something. I went to the kitchen to get ice and saw two girls I knew from high school. They asked how I was and about college and I responded with what was expected and them too. After I got the ice, one of them and a guy she was with said something about how college ain’t for everybody, and I agreed because they were right. I didn’t think it was for me. I thought it was more for someone like Troy. Up until we were about thirteen, I cheated off of every math test we took together. He always had the right answer and never needed to study. He was one of those people who applied math to real-world stuff because he knew real-world stuff and how important these figures were. I could only see as far as the end of this page and the next report card. He was a problem solver and a thinker, and I was all worry. Fear of failure had propelled me to get good grades, and I was so good at letting fear be my guide that I did get good grades, so it was fine. I poured pineapple juice into the cup and laughed. I saw more people I knew and made small talk around the talk they made which only concerned the world that’d been built beyond me and in my absence. I felt the gap between me and whatever I was searching for that summer widen with every conversation and every private moment between others. I got to about the last swig in my cup when I heard shut the fuck up swell through the living room and into the kitchen where I was standing. Thinking almost nothing of it, I chewed on the ice I’d been waiting to enjoy. Two thumps and one crash later, the entire party was thrusted on to the front porch to watch a fight. Almost too drunk to keep my eyes open, I held myself up on a handrail. I heard a scream that was oddly familiar. I looked down, then up again and thought everyone had switched faces with the person next to them. I lost sight of Troy and forgot what he was wearing. The night was so dark in a way where the two guys fighting could’ve even been him. The girl screamed again and when I turned to look back at her someone else gasped, and just then, I could see his face, the guy in the green shirt. For the brief second that he was held in the air, I could see a face I’d known. Then many faces I’ve known. Every time his face passed the streetlight’s glare, he looked like someone else I knew. At that moment, any guy I knew could’ve been him. I thought I saw myself, then Troy and a few others. I went to school with them or church, or they knew my cousin, or we were friends, but before I could decide, he was slammed on his head so hard that everyone watching could feel it for him. The young girl shouted No! No… and after two light taps on my back I was trampled by the dispersing crowd running off of the porch and out of the yard. I held on to the handrail and tried to stand up, but couldn’t. When I could feel my feet again and could look up, the guy with the green shirt was lying in the grass. He’d been stabbed in the throat. The girl who was screaming was dragged away by her friends. She tried to fight them off, but they were saving her from the kind of night that the entire stampede was rushing to avoid. By this time, I thought my hands were cemented to the handrail and my eyes glued to the reflection of the streetlight against the blood hand knife. There wasn’t enough light for me to see his face, but I knew. The girl who was dragged off by her friends knew too. I heard so many car doors shut and so many feet run and they knew too.

Yo. Yo! I heard from Troy, running out of the house past me and through the gate, not even thinking to look at the grass. It wasn’t until then that I heard sirens and no shock could’ve made me stick around past that. To stay and hear that sound grow louder was to ask for something else. We rushed to the car and said nothing. Troy said something about the whole thing being crazy, and we never brought it up after that. Oddly enough, I thought about Sarah. I knew she would have plenty to say. She’d talk the whole way home and weeks after that. She would have stayed until the police came because she could. Sirens didn’t tell her to run; they told her that help was on the way. She would tell Rachel and Rachel Imogen, and they would be sure to congratulate her for her bravery and heroism. However, for us, this wasn’t our first Friday night like this, and it wouldn’t be our last. After the stampede settled and the sun came up, word got back to us that the guy in the green shirt was Kenny. I did know him. Troy did too. He’d stolen my bike when I was nine, and Troy stole it back. Troy fought him at a park, and he broke his finger. I didn’t hear much more about him until that night, and even then I couldn’t tell him apart from the faces that all seemed to look like one.

The summer was sweaty. I thought about Montreal every day. At times, I forgot about college and my roommates and what I came back home to find. My agenda, as perverse and planned as it was, never saw the light of day. By the time I realized my dream had been deferred, it was my last day in Baltimore. I heard a bell as I opened the grocery store door and knew that there would be a smile to greet me soon after, but there wasn’t. Karen, Mr. Winston’s daughter, was standing at the counter. She wasn’t smiling either.

“He’s not feeling too good today,” she said with a carefully crafted American accent. “He’ll be back tomorrow.” And of course he would. Until that day, I’d never walked through those doors and not seen him standing there. The man never missed a day of work. Even in the world that had been constructed in my absence, Mr. Wints was there to sell me a mango every day. Even if I wasn’t there, the knowledge that he was there was the kind of assurance that brought me back to Baltimore for the summer. “Since you leave today, I’ll just tell him you stopped by, hear? You boys be good. Especially you, Troy”. She handed us the bag of the mangoes, and we left. The wind in West Baltimore was a bit cooler that night, and we didn’t play the music as loud as usual. In fact, Troy and I didn’t speak much after I put my bags in the trunk. When we got to the gas station, I was already halfway through my mango when I realized a new church had been built across the street. I’d been here all summer and didn’t notice it standing alone over what had been an empty lot since I was born. I reached in the black bag for napkins, but there weren’t any in there. I opened the glove compartment hoping to see some, but I didn’t at first. I pushed past an envelope or two and some loose papers and pulled out a gun of all things. I looked at it as if it would tun into something else. I even thought that it could be fake, but the weight was my assurance. It was as heavy as about four mangos. I pushed past the envelope and papers to put the gun where I found it. And looked straight ahead, forgetting to breathe after every few breaths.

“Here go some napkins. Wipe your nasty ass hands nigga”, said Troy, laughing and placing a pile of napkins in my lap. I was still staring ahead, but looked back at him and tried to laugh too, but by then he was already looking at the handle on the glove compartment which had a piece of mango flesh and a juice stain in the shape of my thumb on it. He didn’t look back at me. He just started the car and drove. Drove for what felt like hours. The album we played ended, and the silence grew so thick between us that I felt myself pressed against the window. I weighed my options and decided to say something. My train didn’t leave until 2 am and it was only 11 now. It didn’t seem like we were headed to meet Sasha anymore either. I thought about Montreal again and how much easier making copies and coffee and small talk in French would have been than asking Troy a simple question.

“Yo, if you got something to say just go ahead.”

“That’s yours?”

“Is it in my car?”

“Yeah, I ju—“

“Yo, what’s your problem?”, Asked Troy with the kind of conviction that could make any question sound like it deserved an answer, but this one didn’t really. It was just a gun. My uncles had guns, Troy’s father had a gun, but this was different. The guilt on Troy’s face told me that. The conviction in his questioning and the din of this silence confirmed it. This wasn’t about my problem at all, and it wasn’t until this very moment that I noticed how Troy’s eyes had changed or that he was a lot quieter this summer or that he would go missing for more significant portions of time than usual. There was more to the world that was constructed in my absence than I wanted to believe. I was looking at the face of a man who now walked like he had secrets. A man who, whether I wanted to believe it or not, had now gotten a taste of the disservice the world had dealt him the day he was born. Then I remembered the conviction that coated the question of what my problem was wasn’t for me, but who Troy thought I was. And who I thought I was. In fact, I did have a problem. Since I got off of the train in Baltimore that very first day, I hadn’t thought twice about any person besides myself. And the look on Troy’s face let me see just how much I’d missed. I only feared the world that was constructed in my absence because I wasn’t growing as fast. I acted like mangoes could cure my ignorance. I showed up like some kind of pilgrim and forgot to be a friend and a brother the entire time.

By the time I was able to look up from my lap, we were parked near the train station. I knew it was the perfect time to tell Troy how much he meant to me and the rest of the world. How I remembered that, at his father’s funeral, Troy and I sat right next to each other. We were six years old, and I barely knew what death was, yet I held my face in both hands and cried the whole time. I cried because I saw everyone else cry and that scared me. The only person who didn’t cry was Troy. In fact, he was sure to make his way to everyone with a hug and a kiss if necessary. Troy, unlike myself, had lent himself to the world and he should know how valiant he was from then until now. To always take care of the world he lived in, and the people in it was a virtue I’d worked my way around. The gun didn’t belong to Troy, but to the circumstance he was shoved into. The gun and the problem was handed to Troy by those we can’t see but fear. Those who wrote the books on who college was for and who convinced the world that my conformist attitude was a sign of intelligence. At this point and most points, Troy was the most intelligent person in the room. This kind of intelligence struck fear in those around him and led them to reduce him to lesser titles like arrogant and troublesome. Troy was even smarter than those who wrote the books and tossed him the gun, but the world had never let him see that. They never wanted him to believe that. I needed to let Troy know what we all knew, but by then I was standing outside of the car with my bags in my hands, and he had driven off.

On the train back to school, I didn’t know that I’d be returning to Baltimore less than one week later for Troy’s funeral. It rained the whole time too. Sitting in the middle section, far away from what I didn’t want to believe was a casket, I looked around for the boy who would walk around to give everyone hugs and a kiss when necessary, but he wasn’t there. He wasn’t there, and we all knew that we’d taken part in making sure of it whether we wanted to believe it or not. That’s what the funeral was for. We wasted a gift because we were too afraid of what good could come of it. I heard screaming again, but it was a different girl this time. Maybe Troy’s sister. I had my eyes glued to my lap and my fists clinched just about the whole time. The preacher’s idea of consolation was rambling about how we need to get guns and drugs off the streets and how “Brother Troy’s ascension is God’s call for our action, ” but we weren’t convinced. We all came that day to see just how much we’d messed up. I looked over at Sasha who was mindlessly rubbing her belly and looked away immediately. I closed my eyes as tight as I could hoping to wake up in a lecture hall where I could hide or in Montreal behind the thickest frames I could find, but I was still here and still taunted by what I could’ve said that night.

“We asked brother Andrew if he could give a few words today and he did. Very few words like always, but from his heart. Amen?” said the preacher as he pulled up a crumpled piece of paper. I slipped out of the door and stood outside of the church for what felt like hours. I was by an open window and could hear the preacher reading.

A city once opened its gates to receive a gift; A giant horse made of wood. The city celebrated and marveled and eventually took time to rest, leaving its gift at its center. In the night, while everyone slept, men came climbing out of the horse. They opened the city’s gates to let more men in, and they burnt it to the ground. This is the story of the fall of Troy, a city we all knew. I, like most of us, spent some time wondering where I fit into this story— What kind of part I took in the destruction. Maybe the horse; A silent symbol of peace who doesn’t even know that it holds the kind of power that leads a city to its death. Maybe I was the city’s gates who are meant to protect it but will open up to any promise of peace. I could be one of the city’s people, too steeped in celebration to take a closer look at this strange gift. In many ways, it doesn’t matter what part I played. Destruction doesn’t come from one hand. As assuring as it is to have something to blame, every part of this city that was meant to uphold it played a part in its downfall.

Avon Haughton

2017