#I’ve been trying to get a recording of it for months to no avail :/

[n0thingbutlov3]

need you now

in which an impulsive voicemail leads to some secrets being spilled.

pairing: spencer reid x fem!reader. warnings/tags: angst (sorry i’m incapable of being nice lol) hurt/comfort tho!! lil bit of fluff too because i AM capable of being nice, alcohol consumption as a coping mechanism (i’m literally just a girl…) spencer and reader are broken up :( but they’re still sooo in love and it’s soo obvious so it’s fine!! (also it kind of gets fixed at the end-ish. you’ll see *evil smirk*) reader cries a lot (real) spencer is a cutie (as always) spencer and reader sleep together…no like literally, not in a funny business way, some swearing, no use of y/n!!! wc: 3k a/n: hihihi!! so this is my first fan fiction i’ve wrote and completed ever (gulp) it’s also my first time publishing one (gulp) my writing could definitely be better and so could my grammar tbh but i HOPE if you choose to read you’ll enjoy…feedback is always appreciated (plsplspls) also like requests?? if anyone’s into that—id love to write more but inspo is difficult sometimes. if there’s any spelling mistakes im sorry, eye am very tired!! it’s 5am *eye twitching* okay i’m going to sleep, gootbye IF U SAW ME EDITING THIS 5 TIMES NO U DIDNT (i’m bad at tumblr ok..)

“Hi. This is Doctor Spencer Reid. I’m not available right now, but leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can…”

His tinny voice cut off to make way for the signature beep of the beginning of a voicemail recording.

You could hang up now—you should hang up now, save yourself some dignity and go drown your sorrows in alcohol like a normal person instead of calling your ex-boyfriend.

You should, but your mouth was opening before your finger could reach the hang-up button, and…and it was a losing battle from the moment you clicked on Spencer’s icon.

“Uh—hi, it’s…it’s me.” You huffed out a sad laugh.

“So, um, I…I tried calling, but you didn’t answer so…” The static buzz of silence hummed through your ear, just inches from where you held your phone with a shaky grip. “maybe you’re on a case or out with friends, or someone else—“ You let the implication hang in the air—the thought of Spencer potentially being in a relationship bringing a lump to your throat.

You swallowed it down.

“I just…I just had an unbelievably shitty day, Spence.” You sniffed, wiping the moisture that had escaped from your eye with your sweater sleeve. “I know you’ve never read A Series of Unfortunate Events but I think I’d give those kids a run for their money.” You tried to laugh but it came out as more of a sob.

You inhaled shakily, trying to collect yourself and remember why on earth you thought it would be a good idea to call Spencer when you’d been broken up for months. Hell, you hadn’t heard from him at all since you had parted ways—except from the odd text about returning each others’ things. It was obvious he had moved on, and here you were, filling up his voicemail with blubbering messages and making references to adolescent books.

“God, sorry about this.” You breathed out a watery chuckle. “I just…didn’t want to be alone, I guess. But that’s-um-not your problem anymore, so I’m—I’m sorry. Have a nice night.” Your voice cracked and you hung up before you could start weeping down the line. You didn’t need to look even more pathetic.

You pulled your phone away from your ear, looking down at his contact photo through blurred vision. He was smiling—not the tight, closed lip smile he gave other people, but a full, bright smile that had his dimples showing. One of your hands was wrapped loosely around his neck and the other was holding your phone just far enough away to capture both of your smiles. Your head was rested on top of his shoulder, tilted just slightly to the left so your temple was brushing against his.

It felt like looking at a vintage photograph—you knew those people and their happiness existed at some point in time, but it wasn’t tangible; you couldn’t verify it was real.

When you were with Spencer, you never doubted how real it was. All you had to was look at him across the room and he’d flash you a smile identical to the one in that photo and you’d just…know.

It felt like forever ago now that you’d been on the receiving end of that grin and it killed you. So much so that before you could consider the repercussions, you were trudging through to your kitchen and grabbing the bottle of whiskey that sat unopened in your cabinet. It had been a present—from Rossi, actually. When Spencer had first introduced you to the team, the older man had given it to you as something of a welcome gift. Of course, he couldn’t have known you weren’t much of a drinker, and since you wanted to make a good impression (and because you were sure it had cost more than all the alcohol you had consumed in your life combined) you accepted it—deciding to save it for a rainy day.

You think this qualified.

You grabbed the bottle, a glass, and padded back through to your living room, slumping onto your couch. You filled your glass up a little less than halfway before gulping it down, enjoying the burn in your throat—it was better than the constant thickness.

You poured yourself another glass before turning on the TV. You weren’t sure what was playing—it didn’t really matter anyway, your vision was already being obscured by tears again.

You thought the pounding was in your head at first—serves you right for drinking half a bottle of whiskey. Only, it wasn’t, because moments later the pounding subsided and instead, your apartment door was opening, casting your pitch-black living room in a yellow glow which temporarily blinded you.

You squeezed your eyes shut, your mind hazy—again, serves you right for drinking half a bottle of whiskey. Someone was calling your name, but there was too much sensory input for you to make out who.

You certainly hoped it wasn’t a paramedic—maybe your neighbour had heard you sobbing for the last four hours and decided you needed a wellness check. Then there were hands on your face, and that had you flicking your eyes open, because you recognised those hands—impossibly soft, with a callus on his trigger finger being the only thing to mar them. Spencer.

“Spencer?” You slurred.

He sighed in exasperation (or relief) and tucked a stray strand of hair behind your ear.

“Are you alright? You weren’t answering your phone, I thought…” He trailed off, worry evident in his voice.

You sat up then, trying to compose yourself even though the room was spinning. Fucking whiskey. You rubbed your eyes haphazardly, blinking until you could finally see.

You should’ve stayed bleary-eyed. Because nothing could prepare you for the way your breath hitched when you finally saw him. After months of not seeing each other, Spencer was here, sitting on your couch, and he was looking at you like you were something fragile, and—God, you needed another drink. You turned away from him, reaching for the neck of the bottle as you spoke.

“I’m fine.”

Before you could lift it up, Spencer gently pried your hand away from the bottle with his own, and then slid it across the coffee table with his other.

“You’re drunk. No more of that, please.” His tone wasn’t unkind, but he left no room to argue. You probably would’ve objected anyway, if it weren’t for the way he kept his hand clasped around yours, rubbing soothing circles into your pulse point almost absentmindedly.

You glanced up to him—to stop yourself from staring at your hand in his and how natural it felt, more than anything—but that proved to be a mistake too, because he looked just as beautiful as thirty seconds prior and it felt just as natural for him to be sitting next to you on your sofa, but it wasn’t natural anymore.

“How did you get in?”

“My key.”

“Oh.”

Right. The key that he still had because you refused to meet up with him to let him return it. He tried for weeks to contact you, but you ignored him, because getting the key back meant things were finally over. You supposed he could return it now—maybe that’s why he came in the first place.

“Why did you come?” You asked, your voice impossibly small.

“You called.” He replied—as though he was talking about something as simple as the weather. You call and I come.

You searched in his eyes for any sign of a lie, but of course, there was none. He was being completely genuine—as always. You were the awful ex-girlfriend who left concerning voicemails on his phone and had him travelling to your apartment in the middle of the night only for him to look completely okay with the situation—like there was nothing he’d rather be doing than making sure you were safe.

You couldn’t help the way tears sprung to your eyes or your lip began to tremble as you lolled your head back onto the couch, pulling your gaze away from his.

“Angel, what’s wrong?”

You liked to consider yourself to be a strong person. You had been through things in your life that were objectively worse than your breakup with Spencer, but something about the gentleness of his tone and the way he had let one of his many (past) petnames for you slip had your throat tightening and you ducked your head into your one hand—the other still seized by Spencer’s—to try and muffle a sob.

“Hey,” He trailed his hand that was wrapped around yours up your arm, all the way to your shoulder blade before lightly guiding you towards him. You don’t have enough energy in you to fight his magnetic pull, so you shuffle over until you can bury your head into his shirt. You inhale his scent; vanilla, neroli, and so him it makes you ache.

Stopping your tears is futile—you’d know, they’d barely ceased all night—so you just let them fall, seeping into Spencer’s tie as he rubs one hand softly up and down your back, the other cradling the crown of your head.

His breathing is quiet and slow—the exact opposite of yours—and you try to imitate it—forcing air into your lungs. When your sobbing has turned to shaky breathing and the occasional sniffle, he speaks up.

“Do you want to talk?”

Talk about what? About what had happened today—what had led you to calling him? Talk about how for the last few months, he had been the only person you had wanted to call?

“No.” You hated how pitiful you sounded.

“Okay.”

Spencer didn’t say anything else for a minute—your synchronised breathing being the only thing to stop the room from falling into dead silence.

“You need to rehydrate.” He murmured, smoothing down your hair.

You hummed into him, in no hurry to unwrap yourself from his body. You probably wouldn’t get to be this close to him again, after all.

He moved both of his hands to your biceps, pulling you back slightly so you could look at him. He knitted his brows together in a silent plea which had you rolling your eyes petulantly, your lashes still damp from tears.

“Fine.” You peeled yourself off of him, pushing yourself into a standing position. Horrible mistake. You were still incredibly drunk, turns out, and everything was spinning a little bit and come to think of it, you were also nauseous and—

“Careful, lovely.” Spencer placed his hand firmly on the small of your back, keeping you upright.

and—actually, you were fine now.

He stood too, moving his hand just slightly over to your waist so he could guide you to the kitchen. When he knew you could stand upright—even if you were relying mostly on the counter behind you—he grabbed a glass from your cabinet, moving around effortlessly to pour you some water. The sight was so domestic you almost wanted to cry again. Maybe in some alternate timeline, where you and him could’ve worked, this would be an every day thing—minus the drunk sobbing part, of course.

He handed you the glass of water, watching as you took a few sips. He raised an eyebrow, nodding his head slowly.

“Whole thing, please.”

You let out an exasperated (affectionate) sigh and gulped the rest of it down, setting it on the counter behind you.

“Happy?”

“Very.”

You smirked, trailing your gaze down his body. He was still in his work clothes which, at the very least, meant he wasn’t on a date before he came here. He always changed before dates—well, for you, anyway. You wondered if he had been on any dates since the breakup—you certainly hadn’t. It had been long enough now that it wouldn’t be weird for you to start seeing other people—but you didn’t want to. You weren’t sure you’d ever want to, to be completely honest.

The more you thought about it, the more the whole thing seemed stupid. You didn’t want anyone else, you wanted Spencer. You had tried to get over him but if tonight was any indication—it clearly wasn’t working. You can’t even remember why you broke up in the first place—it all seemed so insignificant now. No amount of pain you had ever experienced in your relationship had come close to that of living without him.

You met his eyes once more and it was like he could see the question brewing. He tried to stop you, calling your name in a quiet warning, but you ignored him.

“Why did we break up?”

He frowned, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth with his tongue in that maddening way he did.

“I—you know why—“

“No, but I don’t! I know things were difficult sometimes but that doesn’t mean it didn’t work. It worked—we worked.” Your eyes were stinging again.

Spencer pressed his index and middle finger into his eye, furrowing his brows.

“I know, I know we worked, angel—but you were sad all the time, remember? I was gone so often and it wasn’t good for you.” His true emotions were indecipherable but his tone was soft, and you wished you could be as calm about this as him. Did he just not care as much as you did?

“But It’s—It’s worse now—“ You choked out, tears falling freely now. “I was sad when you were gone, but you always came back—you don’t come back anymore.”

Spencer removed his hand from his face, flexing it at his side like he was uncertain what to do with himself before taking a stride towards you. He brought a hand to your face, wiping the tears from under your eyes delicately—like you were made of porcelain.

“Listen, sweetheart—alcohol affects your ability to regulate your emotions and I know right now it might feel worse but that doesn’t mean it always—“

“Spencer, stop! It’s not the fucking alcohol, I miss you! I miss you all of the time! Even—even when I’m having a good day—I still want you—and especially when I—when I have a bad day—“ You choked out through heaving breaths.

“Breathe.” He urges, cupping your cheek. And you’re so, so angry, and sad, and tired that you have no choice but to shut up and listen to him. When you’ve adequately calmed down, he moves his hand to your jaw, tilting your head up to look at him.

“I don’t think we should talk about this tonight but I—“ You open your mouth to protest.

“I promise we can talk about it tomorrow when you’re sober—if you still want to.”

Your lip trembles of its own volition and you frown.

“Of course I want to.”

“Okay,”

“Okay.”

He gives your eyes a final wipe before he’s—rather unexpectedly—pulling you into a hug. You all but melt into him, your head finding its home in his sternum and your arms wrapping around his middle. He tilts his head down, kissing the top of your head—and you’re certain you can’t let this go again. You will chain him down before Spencer leaves this apartment again.

Everything is wordless from there—mostly because you’re so, so exhausted that even talking seems like too difficult a task. Spencer helps you find something more comfortable to change into and you pull out an old t-shirt of his and a pair of plaid pyjama pants you had kept here for him. I guess your keeping them ‘just in case you needed them in the future’ had come in handy, after all.

As you washed your face, Spencer snuck through to the kitchen, refilling your water and grabbing two aspirin in a not-so-subtle attempt to help the inevitable hangover you were going to have in the morning.

You caught him placing them on your bedside table and mock gasped.

“Trying to drug me in my sleep so you can make a run for it in the night?”

He grinned lazily—exhaustion creeping up on him as well.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

You smiled, flopping yourself onto your bed rather ungraciously. Spencer looked at you like you were something fascinating before biting his lip, clearly deep in thought.

“What?” You let out a self-effacing little chuckle.

“I was just…wondering…if you’d like me to sleep on the couch?”

You probably should’ve been more careful in your facial expressions considering you were still broken up but your thoughts about that offer were obvious.

“No, stay.” Stay in your bed, in your apartment—stay anywhere that was close to you.

Maybe you were coming on a little too strong.

“Unless you want to, I mean—“

“No, no—I’ll stay.” Forever, preferably.

He walked around to the other side of your bed—as he had done so many times before—and sat down, pulling the covers over his legs. You mirrored his movements before flicking your bedside lamp out, turning to face him.

You were a little thankful you were so out of it, because this had the potential to be very awkward otherwise. Spencer shuffled down so that he was at eye level with you, turning to face you as well.

You just stared for a moment, committing him to memory. The moonlight had a way of highlighting all the high points of his face, and the twinkle in his eyes, and—God, you were so glad the moon existed and that Spencer was in your bed that you couldn’t help but giggle.

“What?” Spencer laughed along with you, even though he had no idea what was so funny.

“Nothing. You’re pretty.”

“You’re drunk. Go to sleep.”

“Don’t wanna.”

“Why?”

“Scared you’ll be gone when I wake up—like I made it all up.”

Spencer’s smile faded then, and he looked at you with something that seemed so much like the one thing you had been willing yourself to stop doing the whole time that you’d been broken up, that it almost took your breath away.

“I won’t. I promised, didn’t I?”

You nodded.

“So there’s nothing to worry about. Now get some sleep, lovely.”

You smiled, feeling Spencer’s hand inching towards yours. He intertwined them and gave yours a squeeze.

“Just in case you make a run for it in the night.”

You chuckled, your eyelids fluttering shut. Yeah, you could make it work.

part two!

[0-n-1-x]

sooooo, I was up late and had an idea. What if Damian Wayne and you were so good at keeping the whole dating thing a secret that you had to try to convince his family that you guys were actually dating?

this is a little drabble i wrote very late at night/ slight crack fic

love this idea !! damian would def do the most if he wanted to keep it a secret

link to my masterlist <33

After months of carefully sneaking around, you and Damian decide it’s time to come clean to his family. But when you sit down at Wayne Manor with Bruce, Alfred, and the rest of the family to announce, "Damian and I are dating," their reactions are pure skepticism. Bruce raises an eyebrow, Tim stifles a laugh, and even Alfred, in his dry British manner, politely expresses his doubt.

“I think you’ll have to try harder than that. Damian? Dating? I’ve never even seen any evidence.” his father muttered, continuing his work on some digital file.

Tim might be the most vocal, launching into his usual detective mode. “If you’re dating, how come there’s no sign of it? No phone records, no public outings, no paparazzi shots. You two are way too clean for a public relationship.”

You and Damian exchange a look—your efforts to avoid detection were a little too effective.

Damian grows more frustrated by the minute. He’s usually calm and composed, but the fact that his family thinks he’s lying gets under his skin. "Do I need to prove it to you? This is absurd.". He had tried to tell Dick and Jason in the training room, to no avail

Dick chimed in with a laugh as he sent another punch towards the second oldest, "Come on, Damian. No offense, but you’re not exactly the relationship type. It's not that we don't want to believe you, but this sounds a little... far-fetched."

Jason joined the banter with, "Wait, does this mean someone can actually tolerate you?"

At this point, you and Damian realize you’ll have to convince them through some carefully chosen stories. You mention times you and Damian spent together, romantic gestures he’s made that are so Damian. Like the time he stealthily followed you on a dangerous outing to make sure you were safe, or when he read you passages from classical literature because he knows you love books.

Still, the family isn't buying it. They demand more 'concrete' evidence, so you end up showing the saved texts, or even a picture or two that you’ve been hiding from everyone else (to Damian's dismay). It’s only then that they start considering it might be real.

Tim still puzzled, asks for more details because he can’t wrap his mind around how you kept everything under wraps so flawlessly, even through his skills.

[cherryrikis]

BETTER LUCK TOMORROW - two ! case file

pairing : nishimura riki x reader

synopsis : after being in the wrong place at the wrong time, you (as well as your friends), were framed for the death of your brother and disappearance of your boyfriend. you all had no hope. no job, no money, none of you were even allowed to graduate. at least, until a stubborn kid on a dance scholarship suddenly acts as your savior, riki helps clear your name all for the sake of a school project.

this episode contains the following : 0.7k wc, statistics of ppl going missing but idk if it’s accurate, talking about bodies (once), mention of killing/death

previous | masterlist | next

[2024.9.30 - y.j choi / m.j kim interview : contacts #3 & #4]

contacted list : s.y kwon (1), j.y sim (2), y.j choi (3), m.j kim (4)

RIKI : are you okay with this interview being recorded and transcribed, especially in the event of these audio clips possibly being publicized?

YEONJUN : yes, i don’t mind.

MINJAE : [nods]

JUNGWON : minjae, sir. we’re gonna need you to verbally agree into the mic.

MINJAE : yeah. i’m fine with it.

RIKI : how did you feel about being assigned to the lee-park case?

YEONJUN : it was kind of a big break for me. if i solved, or, partook in solving this case, i would’ve been given better assignments and more opportunities. i kinda had a bad reputation for accidentally letting minor criminals go, but this really got the department to trust me more. i just wanted the respect, that’s all.

RIKI : minjae?

MINJAE : obviously because of the strike at the city hospital, they were short on paramedics. officers have to know medical basics, so we had a lot of our team volunteering at the ED. i was supposed to be one of them. but then your friend killed your other two friends, and we were so short staffed that they gave this crazy case to the departments rookies. i wanted no part in this, but i did feel satisfied after lee was brought down.

YEONJUN : [speaking to minjae] [inaudible]

MINJAE : [speaking to yeonjun] [quietly] don’t tell me to leave high school drama in the past. you didn’t even know why [inaudible] — between me and that group.

JUNGWON : can we bring the discussion back into the group, please?

MINJAE : i’m done here. don’t think i’m not watching you two, especially since you’re still going to school with my sister.

MINJAE : [he gets up and leaves the room]

JUNGWON : yeonjun, are you still available to answer more questions?

YEONJUN : of course, but just a few. we’re supposed to be expecting a big call in about an hour. sorry about minjae by the way. i know he has something against your friends, but im not sure what he has against you two specifically.

RIKI : all good. but, this is something i’ve been meaning to ask. why was jay’s body never found?

YEONJUN : yeah, uh.. the thing about that. jay park was a very unique case. heeseung lee, he was found dead within the first two weeks. only 3% of people stay missing for over a week, with much less chances of being found dead. that alone already had the department spooked. but jay.. 1% of people stay missing for over a month. yet jay was never found. ever.

YEONJUN : over a year after we first received the call, we had to legally declare him as dead. we just didn’t have the resources to keep looking for him. you know how bad crime is in los angeles.. but, i tried. he was so young, i wanted to keep looking. but the department couldn’t afford to.

RIKI : i’ll have to ask you about that part off the record. but, just one last question while i still have you. i notice you kept checking your walkie. why was heeseung’s cause of death never publicized?

YEONJUN : i.. i don’t..

YEONJUN : [sudden distinct noise via walkie talkie, calling his name]

YEONJUN : ah shit. this is the call we’ve been waiting for. i’m really sorry about that last question, but i’ll try to get back to you on that! [he reassures before rushing out the room]

JUNGWON : alone again.

RIKI : wait. do you remember the rules the teacher gave us?

JUNGWON : yeah, why?

RIKI : and you know how she said under no circumstances should we contact any families directly involved?

JUNGWON : you can’t be serious, riki. we are not talking to yn. i don’t get why you’re so obsessed with proving her innocent.

RIKI : because there’s no way it was her. i know yn, she couldn’t even kill a spider. you really think she’d kill her own brother and boyfriend? she loved jay and you know it.

JUNGWON : it’s always the ones you least expect it to be, you know how it is. maybe we didn’t know her as well as we thought.

RIKI : you may not want to talk to her, but i do and will. if you don’t want to help me then so be it. but when i’m done with her, i’ll contact sunghoon —

[ 8:23 of 8:23 recording ]

taglist ! @jiiyen @prettiestgirlontheplanet @hannicorpse @wonsboo @murazbae @stilesks @soobinbunnie5 @blvengene @r1kification @gyuvision @goldenmellow @ariluvssssss100 @who-tf-soddhi @mmurazz @jaemified @strawberrieswithchocolateo3o @heartheejake @hoonsdrnkdzd @wonkixo @yangjungwonnie @tya0

[love-toxin]

Ellie what the fUCK ARE YOU DOING

Camboy Leon? Huh?? You’re gonna drop that and not elaborate? Didn’t realize you were such a PRUDE /j

I would pay so much money to see this guy’s onlyfans, it’s not even funny anymore

(It’s worth noting that I’ve been having an absolute existential crisis every time I think about dick. Leon’s dick would probably cure all of my chronic illness; both mental and physical)

stands over you menacingly :) camboy leon you shall have teehee <3 dare me to expand this into a full fic ehe

(cws: camboy!leon, masturbation, voyeurism, piercings, pining, work crushes)

Leon who works with you at the DSO and, for a special agent, seems pretty neutral. he's stoic but has that dry sense of humour you love, puffing out teasing comments here and there whenever he has the chance. he's admired by everyone but never has any girls on his arm, never dates, never does more than purse his lips in secrecy when the guys boast about their sexual exploits. but even so, his tight-lipped response to anything like that gives him more charm–up until people finally start letting it go in favour of bigger, juicier gossip. but you never do, because even though you're just an intern, you can only dream of what it would be like to have a man like Leon. scratch that, you really just want Leon, because he's the whole package in your eyes even though you can't imagine him ever even sparing you a glance.

but one day, months after the Graham rescue mission, your night gets a little….lonely. Leon's been the talk of the office for weeks since he got back, with everyone swapping stories about his exploits and feeding you so much delicious fodder for your wildest fantasies about your work crush–and one day, hoping to try and pry him off of your mind, you click around the web for a bit until you stumble across an explorer page for a new, adult website.

obviously the curiosity gets to you when you spot the directory of public users, each and every one offering "services" for interested viewers–and you scroll through it for quite a while, searching through the names and checking out a few clips until you come across one that really catches your eye.

blondie.scott → new video available!

his profile photo is cute–it's just a cropped photo of his fingers throwing up a peace sign, although it's positioned over his lap where you can clearly see a dark, thick outline in his light-coloured sweatpants. clicking over to his video list, you've got an impressive library to peek through of free videos he offers, with only a few at the top being locked behind a subscriber paywall. the first one you click on looks pretty tame, but even so it has you sweating as the video buffers and you nearly end up shutting it off completely.

but because you're just too curious, you wait for it to start. and when it does, you get an eyeful of this smooth-chested, rough-voiced, absolute adonis of a man touching himself while the camera records it all from the neck down. he grips his cock with tight, long strokes that feel so needy–and it's pretty too, thick and ruddy at the tip and always glistening as he rubs his precum up and down the shaft, occasionally swirling his thumb round the slit to draw a buck from his hips and a groan out of his throat. being shirtless as he does it with his boxers tucked up underneath his hips, your mouth goes dry at the sight of two shiny barbells of silver nestled by each of his plush nipples. piercings. whoever this guy is, he's bold. and he's just….to die for, c'mon. and you can't even get the image of him cumming out of your mind, the raspy whines as he cusses up a storm and the frantic twitches of his cock while it spurts rope after rope all over his hand…your sleep is restless that night, because every time you close your eyes you can only see that handsome stranger fucking his hand like you wish you could get fucked. it's been so long you feel like a virgin at this point.

after that first video, you're hooked. before you know it, you've made a habit of watching this blondie guy's videos and you look forward to cracking open your browser at the end of a long day, especially when things get extra hectic at the DSO. often you're stuck at your desk for long stretches of time then, and after awhile it becomes so routine you slip up a bit and watch some of his clips when you're left alone in the office, drowning in a sea of paperwork when it's late enough at night that nobody else would even consider coming by. it's pretty easy to cover up, but even still some of his videos just rile you up so much you end up leaving a wet, sticky spot in your chair that you're forced to scrub off before your coworkers come in the next morning.

that doesn't mean the site is erased from your computer, though. it doesn't mean it's not accessible just because you've got a passcode to unlock your desktop. and if a certain somebody–who knows your birthday and has a bit of a thing for you–were to take a peek and see what you've been busy watching…well, he'll be quite pleased that you've got such good taste. and maybe he'll make a video just for you, just to hint that he knows your little secret just like you know his.

[kscheibles]

e la vita ch. 1

content warnings: f! reader, drug mentions, drinking, emetophobia, bisexuality (homophobes and biphobes begone I will block u so fast)

word count: 3.8k

I didn’t want to be in Italy this summer.

That makes me sound ungrateful or something, but it’s the truth. Three months ago, I had planned to stay in Brooklyn with Claire all summer long. Hosting dinner parties, eating greasy breakfast sandwiches, dancing to old $1 records in our cramped apartment, picnicking in Prospect Park, and being totally, delusionally in love.

That was before things went south, she stopped trying and left me with more rent than I could possibly pay in the city. When Christina had first mentioned that a group of her friends was headed to Italy for the summer, I’d dismissed the possibility of going with them. Not only did I dread cohabitating with her wealthy, influencer friends who seemed to deal only in clout, I thought I’d be otherwise engaged. Weeks later, I’d gone back to her groveling, asking if I could sleep on the pull-out couch in Nina’s family villa for the summer. Luckily, the sofa was still available.

Now I sit at a wrought iron table – lease broken and all of my belongings sold to wealthy Manhattanites – in the warm yellow light of the Lombard sunset. Around me are chatty, outgoing girls, each more beautiful than the last. They gab about clubs and brands and boys. In the sea of Botox and iPhones, I cling to Christina like a life buoy. I push my tortellini around my plate to make it look like I have an interest in food, but I really don’t. I’m jet-lagged and uncomfortable. And even if that wasn’t the case, I’ve barely eaten since the breakup, relying on oat lattes and dirty water dogs to keep me alive.

“Try the pasta,” Christina jabs, “trust me, you’ll have a lot more fun this summer if you lean in.” I break the shell open with my fork revealing succulent ricotta curds and bright green spinach. The filing swims in a sauce of brown butter and fragrant tarragon but doesn’t affect me as it should. Nothing does anymore. The group’s conversation interrupts my train of thought.

“They’ve come every summer since the nineties, same as us,” says Nina, smirking at the girl to her left. “Hottest little accents you’ve ever heard, I’ll tell you that much.”

“Who is she talking about?” I whisper to Christina.

“The boys in the other house,” she says, “the one you see on your way up here.” Nina’s family’s home is at a higher altitude than the rest of the city, necessitating a laborious hike to the bottom to actually do anything while in town. I’m sure that they’d been sold on the privacy of the location, but its impracticality left me wanting. The only other villa nearby sat at the base of the lush green hills before the road disappeared into winding dirt.

Another girl chimes in, “I saw them last year at a dinner in the city. They’re cute, too,” she coos. 

“I kissed George the summer I turned fifteen,” brags Nina and the whole table breaks into oohs and aahs. I usually have a shut-up-unless-spoken-to policy at group dinners, but I know Christitna is right. If I don’t lean in then the credit card debt I’d amassed to buy my plane ticket and the back problems I'm sure to contract from sleeping on a pull-out couch for a whole summer will have been for naught. Think of it as an acting exercise, I tell myself, a performance of the girl who is totally not hung up on her ex and excited for a fun summer with her friends. 

“I’m sorry,” I interrupt, “who are these guys?”

“They’re in a band,” says Nina.

“Like a real one?” I ask. Years of living in New York have taught me that all bands are not, in fact, real ones. Nina laughs.

“You’re funny,” she muses, “yes, a real one. They’re like famous. We’ll go over eventually, they throw the best parties you can find around here. Get real drugs, too. Not just liters upon liters of Aperol, not that I mind that either.”

With my question sufficiently answered, I return quietly to my pasta, cutting each shell into impossibly smaller pieces until it’s rabbit food that will glide down my throat and do the hard job of nourishing me without any work on my part.

–

After dinner, I tuck into the pull-out couch in the villa’s spacious living room. The lack of A/C and the balmy summer air make it impossible to enjoy the luxurious wool blankets Nina’s family no doubt splurged on. I allow myself to eavesdrop on the elated sounds coming from upstairs: women confiding in each other, commiserating about their troubles, and shrieking excitedly at each other's successes.

I first try to doze off at 10:15, hoping that an early night will be exactly what I need and I’ll wake up refreshed and on Italian time. After an hour of staring at the popcorn ceilings and trying to suppress my crippling fear of missing out, I’ve tired my mind out enough to begin slipping toward sleep. I have fewer and fewer thoughts until I’m jolted by a hip-hop bassline. It resonates through the trundle bed and rebounds off my ribs, cozying itself into my heart. As I begin to come to, I recognize the chords of a house track that used to play at the girl bar Claire and I frequented in Green Point. The melody is warm and familiar and undeniably annoying. How loud must the music be for it to affect me so acutely even as I’m a few kilometers away from them? 

I decide I’m pissed – and yes I decided. I’m freshly single, broke, jet-lagged, and fucking pissed at those entitled rich assholes. I slide my sandals on and head out down the hill in my sleep clothes.

-

I step outside onto the winding dirt road that leads the way to the boys’ home. The night is dark, lit by stars much brighter than I’m used to seeing in Brooklyn. I tilt my head back to look at them, trying to identify the big dipper. After a few seconds, I’m dizzy. I shake myself and trudge ahead, almost lulled into submission by the constant chirping of cicadas and the sweet fragrance of orange blossom that wafts off the bushes. 

With each step I take towards the boys’ villa (what were their names again? Nina said one was called George), the music, electronic and fast-paced, becomes louder. 

When I first knock on the faded wood door, I’m quite sure no one has heard me. I stand outside for a few minutes, contemplating whether I should knock again or cut my losses and return up the hill. I decide I may as well disrupt their party as some kind of karmic retribution for keeping me awake even as I’m exhausted from a transatlantic flight. I raise my fist and rap harshly at the door. A moment later, it flies open, revealing a curly-haired boy. Well, not boy, I decide as I inspect his features – lines decorate his forehead, and gray peeks out at me from within a ringlet that hangs over his eyes. He gives me a once over and can immediately tell I’m not here for the party. 

“Can I help you?” he asks, annoyed. His accent lilts and falls over the words. All of a sudden, I feel insecure in my braless and plaid pajama-clad state. He’s beautiful – and exasperated by me. I double down on my own annoyance. 

“Would you mind turning the music down?” I ask, still cordial, “I’m staying at the house up the way and I can’t get to sleep.”

The guy in front of me purses his lips and considers me for a moment. I feel itchy and uncomfortable. He’s looking at me like he can see through my clothes, to my soft hips and painted toes and peaked nipples. 

“Let me show you around, gorgeous,” he smiles, “then maybe you won’t mind so much.” He grabs my wrist and yanks me into the party. A warmth covers me as I cross the threshold into the villa. The inside of the home smells like college: cheap weed, sweet sticky mixers, and sweat. My sandals stick slightly to the floor, reminding me that I really shouldn’t be here right now. Like the alcohol that’s been spilled on the ground is some great cosmic interference to convince me to go home and get the rest I ought to. 

Suddenly, a big hand falls on the shoulder of the boy who’s pulling me by my limbs.

“Matty!” says the man. I can make out enough to see that he’s tall and devastatingly handsome. 

“George!” the boy – Matty, I remind myself – drops my hand and fully embraces the bigger guy. “Was just showing…” he nods at me to introduce myself.

“Y/n.”

“Around,” Matty finishes. George gives me a once over.

“Did she just roll out of bed? Or get released from prison?”

“Y/n came to ask us to keep the noise down,” Matty declares with fake sincerity, “Not a partier, are ya love?”

“Under the right circumstances, I can be,” I retort. Matty and George’s eyebrows raise in amusement, faces breaking out in smiles. That sounded much more cunning in my head. Now I feel like a toy they’re playing with, winding me up to see what noises I make. It feels infantilizing. I’m uncomfortable, crawling in my skin; pride battered and desperate to go home as soon as it doesn’t look like I’m running away from a fight of my own picking. “I’d better be going actually,” I assert.

Matty puckers his bottom lip in an exaggerated pout. “I’ll show you out, princess.” It’s a sweet nickname but it tastes bitter out of his mouth. He seems to twist everything good and make it unbearable. I resent him for it. I trudge in front of Matty towards the door with steadfast focus. As I cross the threshold, I turn to meet his gaze.

“Thanks for nothing,” I say calmly. Matty breaks into a devilishly smug grin. His eyebrows tilt a little and his lips reveal a few crooked teeth at the bottom of his mouth.

“My pleasure, darlin’,” he says. I scoff and turn on my heels, leaving Matty in the dust.

–

The scent of freshly chopped garlic fills the kitchen as I stand in an assembly line of young women with cutting boards and chefs knives, each diligently chopping an ingredient for the bruschetta. 

In front of me is a bunch of basil, perfectly fresh and green. I gently remove the leaves from the stem and create a pile in the middle of my board. It reminds me of when I would be tasked with raking the leaves as a kid. Too distracted by my childish whims, I would create more work for myself by piling the leaves on top of each other and taking a grandiose dive into them before scooping them up into a trash bag and discarding them. Each leaf was like a piece of confetti, a celebration of the season and of youth. Now I do these things to prove to myself that I’m young and that I can still conjure up that imaginative, playful nature if I try hard enough. 

As I rock my knife back and forth over the soft leaves, Christina asks me where I was the night before. 

“I came out around eleven to invite you upstairs, but I couldn’t find you,” she says.

Embarrassed, I train my eyes to the task at hand. This is not the group to look like a tattle-tale in front of. Actually, there’s very few groups in which that would fly. My penchant for playing God and divvying out karmic consequences to everyone whose path I cross is a part of my nature I’m not particularly fond of. I’m not keen to share it, especially around people who are still making up their minds about me. Despite my steadfast beliefs and borderline-outlandish behaviors, I maintain a fervent desire to be liked. It’s pathetic. 

“I stepped out for some air,” I murmur.

“Really?” she nudges, “Because I didn’t see you on the porch.”

I turn my basil bunch 90 degrees in a flourish, beginning to chop it lengthwise. 

“Fine, I couldn’t sleep because of the music,” I spit.

“And…” Christina has always been too good at getting me to reveal my true feelings. She goads me torturously until it’s easier to say what I’m thinking than to conceal it.

“And I went to ask them to turn the music down,” I finish, “There, are you happy?”

“Very,” she smiles. 

I pick up the chopped basil, letting the pieces float through my fingers and deciding I need to chop them smaller, still. I whack at the pile haphazardly, ruining the lovely squares I meticulously crafted earlier. 

“They didn’t turn it down, if you were wondering,” I pant, “Pricks.” Christina chuckles to herself.

“No one ever does.”

–

The music of the club is omnipresent as I enter hand in hand with Christina. On my feet are heels too high to be comfortable, but the perfect lift to accentuate my calves. As soon as I cross the threshold, I drag Christina to the bartender, ordering two negronis. We idle by the bar for a moment and I take in my surroundings, savoring the bitter aftertaste of my drink and the waltz of the lights that flicker and cover the dancefloor with reverie. I listen to the synths and flourishes of the melody that envelop my senses. I hadn’t expected to like the music, but the DJ is spinning disco and it just feels right: the cold Italian aperitif, the funky basslines, and the tranquil nighttime air. I almost wish I’d left my phone at home. Nights like these aren’t compatible with phones anyway. The atmosphere feels like a relic of a bygone era, full of free love and intoxication. 

Nina and a friend of hers find Christina and me at the bar and run up to us with inebriated bravado. “You guys made it!” she squeals. Little does she know we were pre-gaming at the villa in anticipation of this exact moment. I couldn’t handle Nina while sober tonight, that much I was absolutely sure of. It also didn’t help that I was alone – for the first time in several years – in a romantic foreign country without the girl whom I still loved. As unhealthy as it was, alcohol made that reality hurt a bit less. Nina grabs my hands and leads Christina and me away from the bar. 

“I need to introduce you to the DJs!” Nina exclaims. I glance at Christina to communicate that no, I’m not particularly enthused at the prospect of meeting some Eurotrash guy whose head is shaved and whose torso is covered in Gucci logos. She returns the glance, silently begging me to behave. I relent.

Nina leads us around the side of the floor to some kind of dark stairwell. Rationally, I should be scared of being kidnapped but my drunken stupor inspires more carelessness than I would usually indulge in. I watch the sway of Christina’s hips and follow her like a lost puppy. Finally, we reach the top and the DJ deck is revealed. It’s shadowy and hazy. To the left is a corner booth with a straight couple making out in a way that really ought to be illegal in public. Past the lookout, laser lights flicker and sweep across the dancefloor, catching on the artificial fog and filling the air with psychedelic color. My eyes fall on the backs of two figures at the DJ booth, smoke rising above their heads. I can make out that one has headphones on and is faffing with the turntable while the other has their hands in the air and the small, flickering glow of a lit cigarette dancing around their figure. I’m dragged towards them by Nina who throws an arm around each of their necks in greeting. As soon as the one with the cig turns around, I catch his eyes.

It’s Matty. Selfish, arrogant Matty. I nod my head and flatten my mouth in a kind of recognition. The room is spinning from the alcohol and my skin is buzzing with discomfort. The bass of the music resonates in my ribs, teaching my heart how to beat. My mouth tastes salty and my knees feel weak. 

I’m running to the corner where I can see a bin. Tears prick at my eyes and my hair sticks to my sweaty forehead as I swiftly empty the contents of my stomach into the small trash can. I kneel on the rough carpet and brace myself on either side of the bin with my hands. Between heaves, I lift my head to shake my hair off the back of my neck. The cool air feels grounding, but I’m soon back with my head in the can. I feel a hand on the back of my head, wrangling my frizzy hair off of my shoulders. I gasp, looking back for the sisterly comfort of Christina’s bottomless, cerulean eyes. Instead, I find a pair of brown, honey-flecked irises: Matty’s. I’m reeling too severely to be upset or confused; I’m just grateful when he uses his free hand to sweep my damp bangs out of my face and nods at me.

“Go on,” he encourages, “better out than in.”

I bury my head in the bucket again. 

“Atta girl,” Matty coos in my ear. I can almost notice his hand rubbing circles on my back. Even when I’m quite sure I’m finished, I keep my head down for a moment savoring the last few seconds that I don’t have to look Matty in the eyes. Curse him for helping me. I wouldn’t know how to interact with him under normal circumstances, much less when he’s been nice to me – and watched me unceremoniously blow chunks into a bin.

“You feel better?” he asks. I lift my head tentatively, still scared another wave of nausea will hit me. 

“I think so, yeah,” I mumble. Matty searches my eyes for any warning sign that I’m still sick.

“Have you got a hair tie?” I instinctually fish in my jeans pocket for one, handing it to him. Slowly, he corrals my locks into a ponytail and secures it, fingers grazing the tops of my ears and making me shiver. I sit back against the wall with my legs splayed out in front of me, knees visibly carpet burnt from my previous position. Matty flops down beside me. He reaches out to touch the red, irritated skin. 

“You don’t need a doctor or something, do you?” he asks.

“I’m fine,” I hiss when he applies a little pressure to my knee and shake his hands off me, “Why are you being nice to me?”

“When have I not been nice?”

“You wouldn’t turn the music down the other night,” I state. He smiles at me, eyes scrunching up until his pupils are totally obscured. 

“No one ever turns the music down,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Plus,” he adds, “I thought you were a buzzkill. Now I can see that’s not the case, sweetheart.”

“I can usually handle my drink better than this,” I protest, “And I’m also usually not a buzzkill.”

“I guess I don’t know anything about you, then,” he acquiesces, thinking for a moment, “Do you want to start over?”

“Sure, I’d like that,” I nod, smiling tipsily.

“So what’s caused you to be sick tonight?” Matty asks, leaning his head back against the wall. His hair is curled up in perfect ringlets and his skin glows golden even in the dim club light. He looks at me carefully, like his stare could hurt me. It could, I suppose. 

“Alcohol?” I say it like that should be obvious. His face wrinkles up again in a laugh I can vaguely identify as something that’s my fault. He looks pretty. I realize I want to make him do it again and again forever. I want to see the crinkles that grow at the sides of his eyes and the curl of his upper lip that reveals his boyishly crooked teeth.

“I figured as much. Anything in particular that drove you to drink?” I frown for a second, trying to remember. 

“My ex,” I say quietly.

“What’d he do?”

“Nothing,” I shake my head, “that’s the problem. She didn’t do anything.”

“When was that?”

“Two months ago?” My god, it’s already been two months.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs,  “that’s still fresh.” I shrug.

“It’s alright I guess. You just feel a little betrayed when someone stops trying. I thought that was the whole point of…” I trail off, gesticulating aimlessly with my hands, “love or whatever. To keep trying.”

“I get it,” he utters. 

“People stop trying with rockstars, too?” I tease. He smiles.

“How did you know that I’m a musician?”

“Well, first of all, I said rockstar–”

“Which I chose to ignore because it was sarcastic.” I roll my eyes.

“And second of all, the girls I’m staying with told me,” I finish. He nods in understanding.

“Well yeah,” he sighs pensively, “people stop trying with everybody. Even rockstars. If I’ve learnt anything in my life, it’s that giving up usually has more to do with them than it does with you.”

“You’re probably right, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less,” I argue.

“Nothing does. You just have to let it hurt for a while.”

We’re both quiet for a second. I catch a couple of bars of an Earth, Wind, and Fire song and hum along, content with the silence. I let my head fall onto Matty’s shoulder and he immediately turns his head to look at me.

“Oh fuck, sorry. Is this okay?” I ask, hand flying to my mouth “I know I just puked.”

“It’s okay,” he says, “I just didn’t think you would want to.”

“I want to,” I kiss his shoulder through the cotton of his white button-up shirt. He watches me the whole time as though he can’t quite compute what’s happening. Then he snaps back to his regular confident state.

“Let me know if you ever want to deal with your girlf– ex without drinking your feelings away…” he trails off, mouth meeting the crown of my head, “I’d love to show you around here sometime.”

“Okay,” I mumble, the alcohol, tiredness, and emotions beginning to get the better of me and coax me toward sleep.

“Okay?”

“Yeah, I’d like that.” Matty grabs my hand from my lap and wraps it in his two larger ones, caressing my thumb and humming into my ear.

–

a/n: the next bit is written, but I am still writing the end. smut soon! x

[theslightestbitofahint]

My experience today with a therapist that was actually helpful:

As I’ve been writing about here and there on this site, I’ve been in consistent, extreme pain for over two months. I’ve been trying to access pain management medication while awaiting various appointments and have been continually denied.

Talking to my therapist about my upcoming appointment with pain management, she had me explain to her what I have been saying to providers so she could get an idea of why they may be reacting the way they are.

She suggested telling them what I told her, and ADDING how the pain has been impacting my quality of life.

I’ve been assuming that explaining the nature, severity, and frequency of pain would/should be enough for providers to be able to see how it would be hard to concentrate, communicate, move, and basically exist. But she said that giving them real examples of how the pain is preventing me from participating in life and the impacts on my functioning and mental health can give them more concrete reasoning for WHY I would benefit from medication. She said that proving I’m participating in the healing process by showing up for appointments, taking the medications that I have been prescribed to no avail, and actively advocating for things that I need to move things forward other than medication may help them to see that I’m not just trying to magically make the pain disappear, but instead trying to increase my quality of life in the meantime.

So I’m preparing a list of examples and I’m gonna be looking for ways I haven’t thought of yet that I’m being impacted to add them to the list between now and my appointment in a week.

Hopefully it will work, and if not, they’ll at least have a record of me saying what I’ve been experiencing. And that may help the other people who can’t prescribe but have been trying to help me have some more backing when advocating on my behalf.

[paullicino]

Six Years - On PTSD and Choosing Life

Content warning: This essay very frankly discusses mental health, trauma, gaslighting and suicide. It also links to discussions of abuse and sexual assault.

If you are experiencing thoughts of suicide, know that you are not alone and help is available to you or anyone who might need it, such as the Samaritans, the Suicide Prevention Hotline, or this list of other crisis hotlines and this list of international support resources.

This was reposted from my Patreon.

There are blue skies today. The sun bounces off the mirrored windows of a skyscraper downtown. It cuts straight across my balcony and shines onto my wall. A few blocks away, the staff of my favourite café will share their latest gossip with me, as they always like to do, and maybe later tonight I will make good food and play games with friends until unwise times in the morning. Isn’t life full of wonderful things?

You can find them everywhere. And I certainly do. Sometimes I’ve found them in the intimate, up-close details of a famous oil painting, between the notes of a new song heard by chance, even in the rustling at the bottom of a dumpster, which becomes chittering and then fur and a tail and then direct eye contact with a tiny criminal whose only felony was hunger. I’ve found them amongst perfectly crafted sentences that capture thoughts and feelings and hold them forever on the page, in the silence of the impossibly wild mountain wilderness a thousand miles from home, in the first moments that I’ve taken someone’s hand and watched the gaudy lights of some forgettable venue play across the lines and the shapes of their face.

That’s so many wonderful things to live for. And I can get overdramatically passionate about the tiniest, silliest little details.

I’ve been trying to write this for a long time. I had three significant dreams during that period. In the most recent, I had moved into a dark and barren basement, with most of my possessions still in boxes. Some old friends from long ago came knocking. They pressed their faces against the small windows and tried to force the ageing door. “Where did you go?” they kept asking, their voices entering through every crack. “What happened?”

Six years ago this month I destroyed my suicide note. I burned it on a rainy August night and watched it curl into a tiny, helpless twisting of ashes and charred plastic that no longer had any power or purpose. The note was inside of a ziploc bag, a choice I’d made to ensure its integrity and survival against any of the several different plans I’d made to end my life, and this had melted into black strands of hair-like debris that reached up to nothing. One or two of my handwritten words remained half legible in this mess and tried to reach beyond the flames, to share their intent with the world, but they would never again mean anything to anyone.

I made videos of the burning and took a few pictures, a sort of ritual of recording, then I told a close friend what I’d just done, and then, for a very long time, I set the image as the wallpaper on my phone. It would be an ever-present reminder to me of my choice to stay alive. It was supposed to help me feel strong, though the truth is that I rarely did. It was the worst, most harrowing and most damaging period of my life and with help, honesty, insight, therapy, time and invaluable connection with others who have either seen the same things that I have or had comparable experiences, I managed to fumble and fight my way through it all. But I will never be the same. Six years is a long time and I am still profoundly affected by so much. I am still trying to understand things. I am still trying to figure myself out, to make sense of my identity, my situation, my experiences. To work out where I went and what happened. And I am still trying to move on.

These words are something about that ongoing experience, that work in progress, and about the dual significance of a span of six years. It is not so much about causes or causers, but instead about consequences and changes, and that’s for three reasons.

The first is because what happens after and as a result of trauma is so enduring and significant, perhaps even the most significant consideration of all, and it’s how we find ourselves discussing things like spans of six years or, for some people, far longer. I want to try to explain some of that sort of intensity and that sort of timescale.

The second is because it’s my hope that this is the most helpful way for me to talk about all this, the most illustrative to other people, the most constructive. I could have chosen many approaches, some which I believe might have been more harmful and destructive, and I don’t generally want to be a punitive or destructive person. Ultimately I think this is the most positive and productive approach.

The third is because I’m still not ready to unpack many things, as so much is still ongoing. I am not at the end of this, not out of the woods, and I think I need to know that I’ve reached the end of whatever journey I’m on before I can return to the start.

There is, allegedly, a power in choosing how your own story is told. So I’m choosing to tell it this way and, I hope, with the awareness that any exercise of power requires consideration and responsibility.

Six years is a long time, and while I’ve been trying to write and rewrite this thing for months, those months still pale in comparison to more than half a decade. A lot has changed in six years, and yet I also wish some things weren’t still the same, that I would have been able to make more progress, that I would have been able to create more distance.

Because, while I am six years from that burning note, from that summer rain, in my memory and my mind it doesn’t work like that. I still find myself beside that moment in time, like I could open the door to the next room and once again be right there.

---

Writing this has been very difficult. Writing is supposed to be one of the things that I am best at, and in the past words used to spill out of me so regularly that I wrote a tri-weekly diary, but I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that my relationship to writing has changed. It’s not just that this is a difficult topic. It’s that words don’t come as easily or as fluidly as they once did, making it much easier, all too appealing, to simply not push myself. To avoid things entirely.

But I wanted to write this, in part, because it would be another act of not giving up. I wanted to show myself what I could do, what I still can do, and that, even if I’m changed, I’m still stubborn enough to fumble and fight my way through.

---

I want you to imagine a house. It can be any kind of house, that part isn’t important. What is important is that the house is your home and you have lived there for a very, very long time. It is comfortable. It is safe. It is so intimately familiar that it is a part of your identity. Perhaps you grew up there, or you raised a family there, or you retired there. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s your home and that everyone knows you live there.

Next, imagine that you have a terrible day. The worst day. And at the end of this terrible, terrible day, on a bleak and dusky evening, you expect at least to be able to come back to your house, your home. You take the same route back to the same address, where you see the same building stood before you and open the same front door, ready for the comfort of a place you’ve made your own.

You enter this space that you’ve known for so long and you notice something is wrong. The first clue is something small, perhaps a lamp missing from its usual spot, or you collide with furniture moved somewhere unexpected. You feel for a light switch that is now on a different wall. You stumble on the stairs as you make your way to a bed that is hard and unwelcoming. In the morning, the light from the window is not only a different shape, but cast in the opposite direction.

The changes stop being so subtle. After you notice that a carpet is suddenly faded and pale, you open a closet to find it is twice as deep. Some of your possessions are missing. The spare room no longer has a skylight. The kitchen is a different colour, with different appliances, with no back door, half the size it once was because the walls have been moved. There are new rooms whose arrival and contents are both equally inexplicable. Your most cozy corner is now cold and uncomfortable. You must relearn the entire layout, from bathroom to basement, because moving around the way you once would only causes you to stub your toes, to trip, even to fall.

Your friends don’t understand why you no longer enjoy going back to your house, your home. They don’t understand why you screamed at the different closet, why the sunlight on the wall makes you nervous. Being in your own home now hurts and scares you. How can you possibly relax here? But this is still your same house, at your same address, the one that everybody knows. You can’t argue that it isn’t. And if you invite a friend inside, after ranting about everything that is different, they ask “Why did you change all this? It’s so much worse.”

What can you even say in return? “I didn’t”? That shit’s insane.

But that is how it feels, like I live in a house that isn’t my home. Sometimes I don’t recognise myself. Sometimes, on the worst days, I don’t know who I am any more.

“Where did you go?” ask the voices, entering through every crack. “What happened?”

---

Last summer, a man came roaring down my street in his flawless luxury emerald convertible. I remember him well. He had dark sunglasses and a tan suit jacket and a hairstyle slick with oil, like he was being a parody of a rich man from an eighties film. He surged through the stop sign right in front of me and I let him know what I thought of his public display of privilege and indifference.

“Go a little faster, you cunt,” I yelled. “Maybe you can hit a kid.”

He swivelled his head, looked back over his shoulder and stared straight at me.

He also slowed down.

It was then that I realised the volume I must have used to project myself, over the noise of his engine and toward a driver already continuing down the street, meant a few of my neighbours had likely heard me too.

I’m not sure I cared.

I used to be a more modest and deferential person, and often that is still the case. But often it is not. I have less patience. I have less fear. And I have less trust.

The fear thing is great. Last autumn I walked across a narrow, quivering suspension bridge with no care for the drop below. Later, I found another far narrower, far smaller one and, all by myself, alone in the woods sixteen kilometres up a trail, I jumped up and down on the thing until it shook and swung.

I used to be terrified of heights.

My sense of fear isn’t gone. But it’s both so much more manageable and also, quite often, a thrill. It’s taken me a while to realise that I increasingly seek out things that are exciting, risky or extremely stimulating. I am frank with strangers. I am quick to make decisions. I am keen to try new things.

It doesn’t sound so bad, does it? That’s because it isn’t. Not all change is bad and not every consequence of my experience has been negative. Slowly, gradually, I am learning to appreciate a few of the changes, to lean into them. While one part of me feels sad that I’m less trusting than I used to be, another part of me sees this as more practical. I’m far quicker to drop something or someone like a rock the moment I sense things that I don’t like, and my sense for such things is certainly sharper than it used to be. Am I always right? I don’t know about that. Perhaps some people have been casualties of an overabundance of caution. Or paranoia.

That might just be the new cost of doing business.

---

It was some time in early 2020, while talking with my GP and taking some evaluations, that we began to look at my behaviour more closely. A year before, I’d talked extensively with a therapist about anxiety and about a growing sense of discomfort and distrust. I had far less patience, particularly for those who pushed boundaries, violated or were exploitative, often regardless of whether these things even involved or affected me. Anything that felt uncomfortably familiar, whether it was something I saw in a film, caught on the news or heard about on social media, could ruin my day. I would become jumpy, irritable, scared, or simply unable to do much beyond lie down and try everything I could to banish the feeling that my chest was being crushed. This might take hours. One evening, an ex found me curled up on the floor, ashamed of my own sadness. On another evening, a routine trip to see an exciting film turned into a sleepless night of panic and distress.

I began taking tests and found myself either dismissing the results or retaking them over and over in an attempt to get different answers. The outcomes kept telling me I had the symptoms of PTSD. This was far too dramatic a result and there had already been enough drama in my life already. I myself was too much drama.

Anyway, I thought, having the symptoms isn’t the same as having.

Sometimes I think about how, during some of my most difficult moments, the toughest weeks and months that I didn’t really know how I was going to get through, I made a lot of haphazard decisions motivated by panic and fear and ignorance, by doing my best to improvise and cope and adapt. Some things worked out. Some things did not. Probably the deciding factor there was luck and I’m not really sure I can look back with any wisdom or insight.

I didn’t always know what to do, what to say, who to trust, or how much to trust, how to respond to new information and changing situations, or what in holy hell might ever work out. My response to all of this was to keep secrets or to be cagey, to avoid places and people, to suddenly and liberally cut others off through a mix of ghosting, avoidance and outright blocking, or to occasionally have three-day long anxiety spikes in which I remained highly activated, oversensitive and endlessly insecure. During one of these, someone teasingly pushed me to take part in something that I didn’t want to, something that wasn’t even a big deal, and I was so close to breaking down that I had to almost run from my friends and find a quiet place to catch my breath, all the emotions in my body somehow pinched into a single point somewhere in my gut. During another, a laptop accidentally nudged half an inch sent me into panic mode, manifesting a feeling like a blade of ice slicing straight through my pulmonary artery.

These sorts of responses and behaviours would happen even in spite of all the various combinations of therapy and medication and support I was cycling my way through. I don’t feel proud of how I handled many of these things. I would love to be able to say that I handle them so much better now, with the aid of wisdom and insight. Perhaps sometimes I do.

Sometimes I have simply made terrible decisions and, looking back, I am still not sure how I might have ever done any different. I am lucky that the vast, vast majority of those decisions didn’t fuck things up further.

---

It’s a magnificent day as I write this. The world is jade and azure and gold. The sky is exquisitely, flawlessly blue. Every leaf is rich with the gloss of summer. The sun is setting into the sparkling sea beside a succession of fading distant mountain ridges, each hazier than the last, the furthest so indistinct it looks almost like mist, a ghost of an idea two thousand metres tall. Container ships the size of city blocks sleep in the bay, their hulls traced and wrinkled with rust from a lifetime of global migration. As the growing shadows of slowly swaying trees reach their way toward me, the last light of the day glides over the ground, over the grass and even over my body itself, like spilled wine gushing from a glass. It colours everything the sweet shade of nostalgia. The air is gently warm and the grass is soft beneath me.

I love days like this. They are one of the reasons why I moved here, why I put so much time and effort and energy into relocating halfway around the world. Into building the life that I wanted, piece by piece.

And I love so many of those pieces. I love my little apartment, with the balcony that I always wanted, with its ragtag assortment of secondhand furniture collected one item at a time, with its shelves tucked in here or squeezed in there, never quite tidy enough to look presentable. I love my walkable neighbourhood, with its shops and cafés and cats that follow me from block to block, or critters that peer out from between bushes in the rustling dusk. I love how low cloud creeps in to cover the tips of the skyscrapers downtown, or how the jagged outline of mountains shape the horizon in almost every direction. I love trying to make things, especially with other people, and the reward of being creative, of being silly or being funny. I love all the things I’ve learned to cook, or the ways I can warm myself up on a cold day, or the late nights I can so often indulge, with no care for what might come tomorrow.

I have so much to be grateful for and so much to be proud of. So much here. So much now.

Pretty soon, the sunset will transform the whole sky into a gradient of colour. Someone somewhere will be playing guitar on the beach, and maybe they’ll be good. Stars will appear in the sky, above the familiar urban zodiac traced out by the city lights of apartment buildings. If I stay up late again, the dawn sky will turn the royal blue of an emperor’s cloak. And then all of this will happen again.

I have so much to be grateful for. So much to appreciate.

---

A few weeks ago I had my first nightmare in some time. They still happen. The specifics matter less than the broad themes. Deception. Gaslighting. Manipulation. Boundary violation. All of it in plain sight, yet still unseen, making me feel like I’m helpless, like I’m crazy, like I have no hope of ever being believed.

I thought about it all day. The situations, the faces and the fears. This is the way it’s always been and once one of these nightmares visits you, it stays for a while. It’s like a small stain, an odour that gets into your clothes, the stink of cigarettes after a party the evening before.

Can you wash out a stain? Sometimes. With the right substances, with the correct regimen. And with some aggressive, persistent scrubbing.

One summer night years ago an ex woke me up because I had been thrashing about in my sleep. I had worried her by rolling around and muttering like a madman. Was I having a nightmare, she asked, and it wasn’t just that I was, but that I had them all the time. Every week, at least, each leaving that same gross feeling of violation and abuse. The anxiety medication that I had been prescribed was helping me sleep more, but it also seemed to make my dreams more vivid and profound. It was either that or barely being able to sleep at all, woken by the slightest of noises, up before the crack of dawn because some unresolved tension in my body overpowered all tiredness and fatigue. Even with medication, the smallest of things could still turn me into a nervous wreck, and one night I cried cross-legged on my bed as I explained to my ex not just that I had interpreted a few of her utterly inconsequential actions as a sign she wanted to leave me, but also that I might always be like this. Forever.

The nightmares began a few months after I burned my note. It was right after I opened up to another friend about what was going on in my life, and their response was to tell me about something else that had happened, the full story of an event from another six years before, from distant 2012.

It’s not my tale to tell, but six years is a long time to not know the full story of something. A long time to be deceived, to find out you’ve been lied to by someone you trust and that your ignorance has affected many decisions that you’ve made. Again, I am lucky that the vast, vast majority of those decisions didn’t fuck things up further. But some did.

Six years. It hit me then how long it can take for people to feel able to talk about something, as well as continue to be affected by it. How far the ripples travel and who they touch. And now, here I am, with my own six years.

That discovery was one of several experiences that transformed me into that person having three-day long anxiety spikes, remaining highly activated, oversensitive and endlessly insecure. That person thrashing about in his sleep. That person yelling “You cunt,” down his street.

---

I’ve written before about my physical health and my relationship to my body. I was anxious about things being wrong with it long before I had thorough examinations and validating diagnoses, but as part of those treatments I wrote about, a trio of doctors warned me about how stress was worsening every condition and symptom I experienced. Stress was ruining my health. I was having so many migraines that my GP sent me for an MRI that revealed how those migraines were changing the white matter in my brain.

I would have to do something about this.

Those doctors would help me do something about this, as would other professionals, and their help was invaluable. This would be impossible to tackle alone.

Sometimes I think about people I’ve heard say such things as “It’s not your responsibility to fix someone else,” and, while I don’t disagree, doesn’t such a phrase also imply it’s surely somebody’s responsibility, in this society that we all share, built from things that help us support one another?

Otherwise we’d be suggesting that people fix themselves.

Sometimes I think about people I’ve heard tell others, or themselves, or sometimes the world via the spontaneous and sneeze-like broadcasts of social media “It’s on you to fix your shit,” and I wonder if that’s where that sentence should terminate, if that’s exactly how it should be phrased, if those are really the words that everyone, or anyone, needs to hear.

Because sometimes I also think of another clumsy analogy I once put together. It’s a scenario in which I describe a pedestrian struck by a car, perhaps one driven by a rich cunt with dark sunglasses and a tan suit jacket, perhaps even one that has mounted the curb or surged into a crossing. The pedestrian is knocked down, maybe immobile from the pain and injury that comes from a broken pelvis or fractured leg. An ambulance is summoned, a customised vehicle equipped to transport them to a hospital. In that hospital, that specialised medical facility, a team of trained experts will use skills and equipment to triage and manage, to analyse the pedestrian’s injuries, to provide relief and to chart a course toward recovery. There will be x-rays, there will be drugs, there may well be physiotherapy. I doubt at any point that the person lying in the street would be told, by someone coming upon the scene, “It’s on you to fix your shit.”

No. Not any more than they’d be expected to walk to the hospital, to interpret their x-rays or to prescribe their own medication. Indeed, if they attempted any of these things themselves I wouldn’t be surprised if someone along the way communicated to them some more polite version of “What the holy fucking fuck do you think you’re doing?” and “You’re in no state to do this yourself, let alone know what you need,” and “Fucking hell. You’re at your most vulnerable right now. Fuuuck.”

Hopefully.

Once, many years ago, I knew someone who broke their pelvis. It takes months to recover, maybe a year or more for a limp to fully disappear. And it requires all kinds of help and oversight. It worked out. Doctors and medical professionals can be remarkable.

I have read a lot of books and papers over the last six years. I have listened to a lot of podcasts and interviews. I have been recommended a lot of material by therapists, by friends, by fellow PTSD sufferers. One well-known trauma expert I was pointed toward is Canadian psychologist Dr. Gabor Maté. And he says this:

”Everybody is born needing help.”

He means that it’s a fundamental element of the human experience.

---

Sometimes I go running and sometimes I go to the gym. The reasons I do this are complex, ranging from wanting to be healthier, to wanting to feel better about my body and how it behaves, to feeling like I am making progress with something. That last one is particularly important, because I’m doing something where I’m objectively able to recognise change.

When I run, an app tells me how far I ran and how long it took. I can’t disagree with the app, because it’s entirely objective, and so when I have a bad day, feel terrible and wonder what the point of anything is, the app still shows me that I achieved a reasonable or even an improved time.

It wasn’t always like this. I was bad at these things. I run better than I used to. I perform better at the gym than I used to. I have the metrics to prove it, and while I’m not a particularly dedicated or regular person with my exercise, I still keep at it and I still see improvements.

Whatever it is I’m doing, these apps and their statistics all offer me the same, very simple analysis:

“You’re doing better.”

I motivate myself to run, to go to the gym, to go on twenty-five kilometre hikes over difficult terrain, but I don’t do these things without some kind of help that comes from either expert resources, advice or training.

I don’t exist in a vacuum. None of us do.

---

Help is important because it offers things like perspective and expertise and informed advice. And don’t all of those things sound so extremely important?

How about we imagine that our immobilised pedestrian wasn’t collected by an ambulance. Let’s imagine instead that the driver of the car that hit them stepped out of their vehicle, shook their head, put their hands on their hips and said “Look what you’ve done.”

And then “It’s okay, I know what’s best for you,” before carrying the inert person into their car and driving away. Perhaps even unseen. No witnesses.

If such a thing happened, in this society that we all share, with that person at their most vulnerable, who is responsible then? Who is responsible for what happens next? Who is responsible when that pedestrian, forever limping, says things like “It was my fault, I shouldn’t have been walking there,” or “I should have been looking out,” or “I should have been more visible,” and so on?

A lot of accidents and injuries and collisions and whatnot can be traumatic, scary, confusing. “How do I make sense of this?” asks that person, whether carried away alone in a car, or surrounded by doctors in the emergency room, or anywhere else they may happen to find themselves. “How do I deal with this?” And who might be around them at that moment to help answer such things?

And what will they say?

Perhaps you know someone who was, metaphorically, struck by such a car, before being then carried away by a driver with all sorts of ideas about what’s best, and who later blamed themselves for everything that happened. I don’t know.

I do know how important it was to receive the right help from the right people.

---

It’s hard to know exactly what to do. You may respond to your trauma with a desire for revenge, retribution or restoration. You may not have the insight or the time or the means to do anything much at all. There is the ideal of what could or should happen when harm has been caused, but there is also the uncomfortable reality of how such things actually play out, of how long justice can take, of who is granted credibility, of how complex social dynamics can quickly become, of how awkwardly and uncomfortably people can react when they discover something they would rather not have, or that they have been misled, or so much more. We’ve all seen such things play out secondhand and firsthand.

I have had six years to consider the most helpful way to respond, the most constructive, the most positive and productive. I am still considering. I don’t have much in the way of answers or advice there.

Sometimes I think about the anonymous Broken Teapot essay, with all it has to say about the complexity of dealing with abuse dynamics, of harm happening within a group or community, about social consequences. It was written over a decade ago now, but it remains a very relevant piece of writing that brings up all sorts of considerations around responsibility, about trying to come to terms with trauma and abuse, and about how people might try to use systems or processes to try to solve things in unhelpful ways or even for their own ends.

People can have a lot of opinions about how to handle trauma, how to respond to abuse and how to leap into some sort of process of justice or accountability or reparation or even plain old revenge. So many opinions.

It’s exhausting.

Back in 2020 I tried to write something about all these complications and considerations that I was going to title The Calculus of Abuse. Like much else, it rots in my drafts folder.

Sometimes I think about how many of the ways that we push people to address both their trauma and the things or people that have caused their trauma only makes things worse. I am sceptical about the practicality, value and effectiveness of processes of justice, reparation and accountability. I think a lot of people believe that they will fix things, that they will be fair, that they will spotlight situations and systems and people that cause harm. That, in this cold and unflinching exposure, justice will be done and books will be closed on long and difficult stories.

And I think that’s because we see this happen now and then. Sometimes it happens very publicly. It seems to at least occasionally all work out.

Sometimes I think about friends who were excluded from social circles because they spoke up about something creepy or problematic, because it mattered less what actions or behaviour someone had demonstrated, even what could be proven, and much more who was more popular, or that the status quo be maintained, or that applecarts not be upset. I think about how different people share or don’t share their traumas and their experiences, what they include and what they leave out. I think about people who weren’t believed, people who were misrepresented, people who were shut down. I think about people who spent so long trying to get a handle on their trauma that any thing or person they might want to stand up to already had so much time to prepare, to seed the ground, to dig in, to get a head start. And I even think about the capacity people have to improve, to feel regret, to move forward as better humans. It’s a potential that I hope exists in us all and the writer Kai Cheng Thom seems to agree, saying that even those who cause harm themselves need help to “exit harmful behaviour patterns.”

Sometimes I think about what a friend of mine said about abusive people just being "regular people with very limited tools." And that’s not so different from a child. Doesn’t that make you feel sad?

I think about all of these things because how could you not? How could you not worry about how taking action to address a terrible thing would, in fact, only make that terrible thing even worse?

There is a paper by the American psychiatrist Judith Lewis Herman called Justice From the Victim’s Perspective that touches on how many processes and pushes toward addressing abuse and trauma can be retraumatising, without any guarantee they will lead to a meaningful outcome or significant change. It touches on how legal processes and systems can be manipulated to further harm and harass those seeking redress, or how disparities of power and status and money can immediately put the damaged and disadvantaged people who try this on the back foot. It touches on difficulties presented by such things as burden of proof, especially combined with the challenge of a memory minced by traumatic events. How does someone demonstrate and prove trauma, or gaslighting, or manipulation, or anything else?

It also talks about how not everybody seeks such things as justice, restitution, revenge, or not always in the ways that we think, and for a multitude of reasons. These can vary from worrying they won’t be believed or that the process will serve them, to wanting to move on, to the idea that it may be pointless, as some “offenders are empathetically disabled… not capable of a meaningful apology, so they can never provide anything to victims that would be useful.”

Both this and the Broken Teapot essay also feature people examining how they themselves have handled abuse and trauma. I think this is probably the most difficult part of many years of therapy, reading and reflection. Sure, it sucks to have been harmed by an event, a situation, a person or a system, but at some point you also start asking yourself difficult questions like “How do I avoid something like this again?” and “Did I do anything that made this worse?” and “Was I codependent, did I enable someone or did I perpetuate something with my reactions or my responses?”

“Abuse dynamics aren’t so simple,” says the Broken Teapot essay, at one small but very important moment, not long after “I was not solely ‘a victim’. Is anyone?” And, after all those years of therapy, reading and reflection, I’ve come to believe that abusive people and systems gain at least some of their power from how you interact with and respond to them. If we were, all of us, perhaps better informed, we might understand, avoid or escape so many difficult things so much sooner.

And while both the Broken Teapot essay and Justice From the Victim’s Perspective talk a lot about sexual assault, their considerations and their examinations of consequence are more broadly applicable. This reflects how I find myself relating to so many stories of trauma and abuse, regardless of what the specifics of any incidents might be. It’s because I recognise the same things in the subsequent developments, reactions and outcomes, much like I might recognise the same chord pattern in different songs. I see people trying to understand their own changing behaviours, trying to articulate why they won’t do a particular thing or go to a particular place any more, trying to both explain and understand how their body or their health has been affected. The specifics don’t need to be the same for so many of the consequences to be. And I recognise and am much more attuned to recognising those consequences.

Both these pieces of writing are also very good at illustrating one of the most important things that you can learn about trauma, and that is, whatever happens or whatever choices you make, things can never be put back in the box.

Trauma is never erased.

---

Here’s what I think is another of the most important things we can learn about trauma, which is that people are generally very bad at dealing with it and are even worse at dealing with it if they are unsupported. And even if they have all the support in the world, they are probably still going to make bad choices, self-sabotage, lose perspective and do things they regret.

They will probably be foolish, be confused and be likely to make choices that could hurt other people. They may not have great insight or work against their own best interests. That doesn’t mean that they get a free pass. It doesn’t mean we are obliged to simply accept these behaviours. But I think these are realistic expectations that we should have.

In his pioneering book The Body Keeps the Score, the psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk writes that many trauma responses are “irrational and largely outside people's control,” coming from people who are “rarely in touch with the origins of their alienation.” An awful lot of the book is about helping such people to find ways past this, rather than disregarding them or pushing them away, even though this will be difficult. I don’t remember anything in the book that comes close to “It’s on you to fix your shit.”

---

While one part of me wishes many things had not happened, feeling both weaker and sadder, another part of me acknowledges that I have gained new skills and strengths. And one of the best things about what I’ve gained is that all this doesn’t just help me, but can also be applied to help others.

That’s a good thing.

I’m a tiny bit wiser than I used to be. A lot of reading and talking to experts and digesting all sorts of media leaves its mark. It’s not just that I know a little more about myself and my experiences, it’s that I can now better recognise parallels to those experiences in other people’s situations, behaviours and pasts. I anticipate slightly better, seeing problems further ahead, and I have a stronger sense of what I need to drop or to avoid.

I’m doing better.

---

I don’t have much that I can write here in terms of the specifics of therapy. I would describe a lot of the process of unpacking and analysing the causes of my PTSD as being extremely painful, like trying to both tidy up and then reassemble broken glass with your bare hands. The things that brought about your PTSD are shameful and harrowing. Their analysis can also be, through a process that can variously be sad, scary, frustrating, educational, validating and empowering. It takes a long time and requires expert assistance, which means the help you need can be a somewhat scarce resource and very, very expensive.

You pay for your trauma for a very long time.

---

I discovered one of the most beautiful sounds in the world some time after 2016, some unknown amount of time after I moved into this apartment of mine, with its balcony and its skyscraper views. I don’t remember now when I first heard it, but it’s been years now and I still adore it whenever it happens. It’s small and subtle and can happen at almost any time of night or day. It’s a sound that makes me think of safety and independence, of making my own space and then occupying it. Of security and stability.

I really, really appreciate security and stability. Much as I increasingly seek out change and crave new experiences or opportunities, these things feel so much better if I can enjoy them with the understanding that I have some sort of foundation under me. Something solid. No matter how small or how far away. Some place of safety.

The sound happens when it’s raining. Whatever metal it is that rings my balcony is hollow, so that when rainfall strikes it, it responds with a kind of subtle but sonorous singing. This ringing isn’t the specific sound I’m talking about, though. That sound is slightly different, something that rises above this other background arrangement.

When a particularly large drop of water hits my balcony railing, it gives a flat, gentle ping of appreciation. The background patter of the other raindrops will continue and then, again, after some irregular interval, presumably as water has collected from the balcony above into a particularly large drop, the ping will sound again.

I heard it one morning this spring, months ago now, right after I woke up and not long after I had started writing all this. I lay there in bed on a day the colour of slate and cigarette smoke and I thought about how the world is made up of so many beautiful, tiny things. Ping, goes one of them, and maybe nobody else on the planet notices or cares. But I try to remind myself of this and how my life is full of so many other probably stupid little things that I like, that I love. Don’t lose these things, I try to tell myself. Don’t forget about them and don’t forget to notice them when they happen. You gave yourself so many more of them when you chose to stay alive.

You get a lot of time to think on days the colour of slate and cigarette smoke.

---

You’ll notice I say “sometimes I think about” a lot here, when reflecting on less positive things, and you might consider this a writing device or a cheap hook or some other writer’s cheat. It partly is, but it’s also a truth. I do think about these things, and so many other things, very often. I think about one or another of them almost all of the time. I find it very hard not to think, to turn my brain off, and the unfortunate truth is that it reminds me about things to do with my trauma almost every day. It has done so for six years now and, as we’ve already established, six years is a long time.

Evenings can be the most difficult time. While I’ve always had a flippant attitude toward sleep schedules, I never used to have trouble going to bed. Some nights my brain will never switch off. My memory is overflowing. It doesn’t matter if I’m tired, it makes no difference if I’m exhausted. The rules around sleep are different now and I think I’m still trying to relearn them.

One therapist described the traumatised mind as like an overflowing wastepaper basket full of difficult memories that are constantly falling out. Any new addition can cause one or many of them to spill and scatter. Time and therapy can help to more properly sort them and make space for other, new things.

What a good analogy.

Occasionally, there might be a suggestion of ADHD sent my way. I can understand why things would look that way and a lot has been said by people more experienced than I about how ADHD and PTSD can seem similar. I think if ADHD had ever been the case some mental health professional or other member of the medical community that I’ve dealt with would have spotted this by now. But no. I’m distracted by some memory or flashback. I’m avoidant, or I’m in need of some thrill or stimulation. I might be full of nervous energy or unusually, intensely focused on something because it feels so good to be thinking about something I enjoy.

And sometimes things are bounding out of that wastepaper basket like clowns out of a clown car. I can feel like I've lost a lot of control over my mind and it's all I can do to rein it in. Some days I have coping strategies and some days I'm sick of it and wish I didn't need to have to cope.

And so I keep myself busy with the stimulation and the novelty that I crave. With people. With events. With runs, with the gym and with twenty-five kilometre hikes. Whatever it takes, whenever I can. It’s not ideal. I’m still figuring out what I need. I don’t always get the balance right. Sometimes unexpected things make me very emotional, either very sad or very frustrated, and I rarely know in advance what might do that. Sometimes I sleep less than four hours a night. Sometimes I want to be alone. Sometimes I desperately need company. I probably seem very strange.

But, let’s not forget, in the past I would lose whole days. For hours, my chest would feel like it was being crushed. I might be found curled up on the floor, ashamed of my own sadness. The nightmares would come every week. So things have clearly, obviously, demonstrably improved.

I’m doing better.

---

I still suck at writing. I don’t know how to fix that yet. I still very regularly feel like there is a gulf between me and so many other people, even my friends. I still have outsize reactions to irrelevant, immaterial things. I still lack confidence in my own personal calibration. "Many traumatised people find themselves chronically out of sync with the people around them,” writes Bessel van der Kolk. Yeah.

Toward the end of its six season existence there is an episode of BoJack Horseman where an actor reacts angrily to some improvisation and unexpected physical contact that happens during filming. Her colleagues are confused as to why she does this, and perhaps she doesn’t understand herself, but we the audience know that this a response to a physical assault by the titular character some time before. She never finds out, but this leads to her missing out on perhaps the biggest opportunity of her life, after a director discreetly describes her as erratic.

There is no further development with this plotline, no resolution to be had. Nobody finds out why she is like this, nor wants to, nor sets things on a new, better course. I try to remind myself that this sort of thing can be happening all the time, to try and grant people some grace and compassion, but also I try to remind myself that this is me. I have my versions of this behaviour. Maybe fewer than I used to, but still. I can be erratic and I have to face the consequences of that, as well as minimise it as much as I can.

I recently stopped buying fresh fruit from my local store because they would repeatedly put mouldy, furry produce on display. The last time I discovered this, I was holding up a box of ostensibly shiny, blood-red strawberries to once again discover the mass of fuzz hidden underneath. Food is expensive enough as it is, I thought, and it doesn’t also need to be garbage. Too late, the look on the face of the customer standing next to me clued me in to how vocal I’d been with my three-word expression of disgust and displeasure.

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

---

You’ve read a little about my first dream, about old friends. You’ve read a little about my second dream, the nightmare. Here comes my third, from earlier this summer.

I dreamt that I was trying to get home again. I was confused about where I was, trying to remember a route through unfamiliar Vancouver alleys. It was evening, not yet dark, but the time between when you lose the long shadows cast by the last of the sunlight and begin to wear the rich, jewelled canvas of the stars. None of  the people I stopped and spoke to knew the streets I named. None of the alleyways I walked down took me in familiar directions.

I never found my way home, but I never stopped trying. Perhaps this does indeed mean I haven’t reached the end of whatever journey I’m on, that I can’t yet return to the start. I think it’s both practical and pragmatic for me to accept that the next six years might still present me with many challenges. That I will have bad, directionless days. That sometimes I’m going to fuck up and fall short.

I woke up to another bright, warm summer’s day, far later than I meant to, and I made myself a fine cup of coffee and a rich breakfast that I would be foolish not to enjoy.

Sometimes I think about suicide. Those thoughts haven’t left me yet and I’m not sure they ever will. Sometimes they arrive strong and loud and insistent, from out of nowhere and with all the power of a thunderbolt in a storm. Sometimes I want to be a shining example of how to conquer PTSD and sometimes I'm so sad I can’t get out of bed and sometimes I am just pissed off and angry. Each day is still different. But tomorrow I will wake up and perhaps I will think to myself “There are blue skies today,” or perhaps I will hear ping, or perhaps I won’t need anything at all to feel great. And perhaps there will be some undeniable sign in the day’s events, in my behaviour, even in the world around me, that demonstrates to me how much I’ve improved.

Each day is still different and today the glib part of my personality says “I sure hope you’ve improved, it’s been six years! That’s six years of painful PTSD examination, therapy, medication, reading, research, specialist appointments, many thousands of dollars spent and a god damn MRI of your weird and messed up brain.” And am I being disrespectfully flippant of my own experiences when I add that having an MRI of my brain was, at least, kind of cool?

Because another part of my personality wants to remind me I’m wiser, braver and maybe even a little more able to help others, people who I will remind myself can’t be expected to fix their own shit alone. People who shouldn’t be pushed aside, in this society that we all share.

And I don’t regret calling that cunt a cunt.

It’s been six years and each day is still different and this morning, when I pause to ask myself how I’m doing, I find I have the most simple of answers.

It’s three words.

“I’m doing better.”

[omegaremix]

July Vintage.

Any producer, vinylist, or sample searcher will tell you that collecting is a never-ending habit. One recommendation leads to another and before you know it it’s off to the races to scour the racks for some obscure or ever-elusive finds. Of course, you could also stumble upon some groups where diggers are more than happy to give their finds to you. That was the case with Vinyle Archeology: Crate-Digging & Excavation. I’ve shopped for jazz / fusion, soul, and R&B vinyl since the turn of the millennium for the return ritual of keeping in touch with myself through the music. It’s visiting a world I’ve bypassed and have been chasing to fully connect since. Vinyle Archeology took it to the next level. Their diggers have introduced me to uncharted territory while keeping the theme and aesthetic that I’ve longed for and enjoyed through discovery. More than six months after founding Omega WUSB in Winter 2013, I had the idea to give back more of this sampling, vinyl, and crate-digging culture where available, and see if it would change my listeners as our hip-hop dee-jays did to me at the turn of the millennium. Those stories are very rare if anyone makes them. It seems like I’m the only one I know who does. Though Vinyle Archeology, I found things that went deeper, divergent, and more obscure; all while keeping the spirit that these vinyl finds had me connected to. Brazilian jazz. French jazz. Japanese pink records and Israeli finds. African funk. Prog-rock. De Wolfe, Themes International, Bruton. Religious music. Space rock. The overlooked, the under-rated, and all that’s released that we never knew existed. This was it.

My first finds of this calibre? James Mason, Geoffrey Stoner, Sunburst, and Tarika Blue to start. Never heard of them until now. All artists should’ve been bigger names but for what reason didn’t. Now they’re given a second chance in the eyes of collectors and producers. (A Band Called) Death, however, did get a real second chance and now they’re in the history books. You never heard of Manzel, not by any shot, but you certainly heard of their drum break sampled for Cypress Hill’s “How I Could Just Kill A Man”. Almost unknowns in Smoke, Mighty Ryeders, Arawak, and Cortex. I never heard of them until Vinyle Archeologie. Have you? I never heard of Frank Ricotti and Francis Monkman either until I came across the Bruton music library compilations. Some really good bullseyes in T.S.U. Tornadoes and Chick Carlton & Mesmeriah whom not many people know about. Sounds from Mort Garson’s “Walk In Space” and a true oddball from Dick Hyman, “Give It Up Or Turn It Loose”, are timestamps of even a specific time gone and written. 7”’s and 45’s no one knew even existed until now. Then The Blackbyrds and Herbie Hancock, maybe even Flora Purim, are all-too-familiar names people know about. What do they all have in common? They’re connected to my Brooklyn youth, no matter how obvious or nebulous, that connects me to this very day. Find any record in a certain era, no matter how similar or disparate it is from the others around it, and they’ll share that certain quality, note, or feel that equates to a time and place that’s I’m still trying to grasp. To this day, I’m treading and discovering uncharted territory that people once visited before but have left for good. Only a few days after joining Vinyle Archologie, I had enough finds to assemble what would be its’ first bonus broadcast of its’ kind during Omega WUSB’s Year One. While it’s unfolding, these finds would also help paint another picture of a very specific moment of time not long ago.

**********

July was one of the most pivotal months for both Cath- and I after three months of seeing each other. Our second chance became a reality for both of us. The night before we met after six years of absence (April Fool’s Day) she confessed that she made the wrong decision. She confessed that she should’ve chosen me all along instead of some random stranger who ended up becoming her first boyfriend. He was the one who got her drunk, introduced her to heroin, took her V-card, and ended up spending the night with her. He was one of the reasons why I didn’t see her for six years. Whether she could’ve avoided her addiction is up for debate. Some say she choose to get involved. Others say it was in her waiting to be unlocked. Who knows if I could’ve swayed her from signing an opiate contract with a full needle. I am only one person out of many who could’ve influenced her otherwise and every day I tried like a greyhound chasing that electric rabbit lure. But here we were now. After all of her arrests, blown plans, strange encounters, revenge-fucking and one-night-stands who bailed out on her, she’s here with me again.

Cath- and I decided on a locale to go to and Babylon Town Hall Park it was. I never been there but I assumed it was closer to her jealous boyfriend Smith’s house in Massapequa. It’s a sweltering July day. Hot, stifling mid-Eighties. Hazy, overcast, blinding white skies and unbearable humidity. Wednesday was heavily distorted and everyone was dying like dogs. I eventually pulled up right beside Cath- with our windows down and heard her say “hi” to me in a dull sullen manner. She was feeling down as usual. What else is new?

We got out of our cars and started walking around to shoot the shit since we last met. We veered off the beaten path and ended up getting lost in-between the town hall buildings with no one around and encountered the outdoor benches and tables, commenting on how sweltry the evening air was. Cath’s silly playful self layed down flat on the table, never offering a moment of pause during our conversations. Then her phone rang…

It was Smith. He’s at his neighborhood 7-11 and saw an underage girl all slutted up as he waited in line for his snacks. He was so shocked by what he saw that he had to call Cath- to tell her the news. Wow, you don’t say, Smith? I was so relieved that he didn’t call her up about how infuriated he was when I bought her tickets to see Nine Inch Nails with me or how he assumed that she was with me to fuck me. He knew who I was and I never met him. I wouldn’t allow my presence to be near any fucking minus sign. She didn’t tell him who she was really with though. That was a good five minutes lost for nothing. I shook my head and told her not to pick up the phone again. But that’s the power of mere mentions. Cath- was real thirsty. Who wouldn’t in this insufferable weather? We left the park and drove to the 7-11 a mile west on the highway for some drinks. A mind trick if Smith ever invoked one on us. We loaded up on some of that sweet stuff as she asked me how tall I was. What prompted her to ask was beyond me. “Five-five-and-a-half” I said. She had the idea of turning around and putting her back against mine, put her hand on her head, then mine, and proceeded to trade notes. “Five-six!” No surprise. She told the entire world this on her social media account once up on a time. We set our ice drinks up on the counter. I ponied up the receipt for both of us and we left. We drove back to the park and stayed for good this time.

Cath- wore her white woven dress with matching white stockings like I’ve seen her weeks prior. A blue-and-white-laced bra strap slipped out of sync with her dress and off her shoulder. It was enough of a nuisance that she kindly asked me to help put it back on with all the respect in the world for her. Good thing that was taken care of. Her phone rings again. It’s Smith again for fuck’s sake. I told her not to pick it up but she did it anyway. This time he wasn’t outraged about another random underage’s dress code. It’s about a fix he’s setting up for the both of them. She has her side to me while she asked a bevy of questions. “Who’s delivering?”, “How much?”, “When’s it getting there?”, “What time you want me there?” That’s another ten minutes of me standing there while she inquired about another batch to save her from those disgusting withdrawals. The day wasn’t getting any cooler by any means and I wasn’t getting any younger, but the phone’s down. We finally had the moment to sit.

Cath and I sat next to each other, her to the left of me, on a metal grated bench doing what we did best; talking, asking, listening to each other to the fullest of our abilities. Good news: we each make progress finding second jobs. Cath- nabbed both a position at a hamburger place and an office-supply store because she was weary of being jobless and broke and was scratching to move on with her life. I got my foot into a big-box electronics store while the other still stalled at food service. It took me five years to finally get an out and my manager was absolutely livid to see me go. I was super fortunate that for those five dreadful years that not one of my co-workers or his son’s friends happened to discover her through stalking my Facebook and tossing her name around the boy’s club like the wind-up merchants that they were. She knew all too well of the crayons, finger-painting, and building-block free-for-alls that I dealt for so long.

I noticed that two or three times our hands brushed up against each other’s with no objection or notice as we still kept the discussion going. We continued shuffling categories and traded questions for answers; answers that should’ve been easy solutions to what had become a crippling difficult situation for Cath- to untangle. It veered towards herself as usual: how she felt like garbage for the last eight years of her life with all of the wasted potential she’s thrown out, the unusual predicaments she found herself in and the results bestowed. She was still conflicted even though she was making moves. She was still without money. Her ma’ simplified everything to a nice and clean compartmental image for all who inquired to protect her family image. Dad showed tough love denying her tax refund checks and dishing daily personal attacks towards her in an attempt for her to wake up. Not I. There was nothing sanitized and Disney’ed about her addiction. No need for name-calling, criticism, belittling, or forcing the obvious. I heard it all. I seen the worst she’s posted. I understood, even if it was hard to take.

She stood up, stretched a little from being sore of sitting, then proceeded to walk a few feet towards the water. I slowly got up and trailed her while she was talking to me about her recent down moment. She stepped up on the rocks at the edge of the water where several other patrons stood. I stepped up and stood next to her. I put my arm around her waist and she leaned into me. Time slowed down.

I consoled her as she stood silent, listening to the encouragement I’d gave her. All the families and siblings of two, three, and four were pre-occupying themselves chit-chatting with each other, running around while they admired the water beside us. For a few minutes, we brought ourselves down to a personal hushed level. I didn’t know what she was thinking other than stopping to realize that maybe this was the moment she needed.

We came down from standing on the rocks and slowly walked back to the bench. We both sat back down together and leaned into each other. My arm once again around Cath- as we both held hands. Time stood still. We were in our own world unaffected by the voices of families and their small excited children playing together, the cheers from the coaches and the impact of aluminum bats coming from the field as the orange sun descended down the gray skies. Only the two of us mattered now. All her eyes could do was look down while we spoke as she took in the moment.

All the cards were on the table. For the next 45 minutes we opened up to each other. Our first time meeting each other on that freezing cold day in Lake Grove. Why I chose not to move on away from her after she disclosed her struggles to me. When she first rejected me over a night of ice cream. Our spring day taking the train to New York City and back. The meaning and symbolism of Diamond-suited playing cards. All that we messaged each other over the last three months we now said in person. She wanted to hear it. She had to hear it. The close, caring contact. The compassion, time, and proper attention and respect she needed, wanted, deserved. These were things Smith never gave her. She shared it now with someone rational. Someone reasonable to hear her out. As it always had, is, and should be. All without judgment. While we spoke about finding time to see each other in-between both of us working two jobs or our next stage of plans towards her recovery, I mentioned that I had two dreams of her. Once I was in a classroom that was held in the second floor in a small house in the Hamptons. During our mid-break, I stepped out to the upstairs balcony to find her there, smoking a cigarette without a care in the world while going over what the fuck our professor taught us. The second was when I came home from working at a Huntington clothing store but stopped by at a bakery the size of a very small Chinese takeout that was open at midnight. I brought something home to my old house in Brentwood, went straight downstairs to find the entire basement stuffed with stacks and stacks and bundles of old donated clothes from the opposite side of the wall coming in. Cath- was sleeping in five layers of thick blankets on an old red felt couch I used to have in reality, with whatever narrow space there was left to navigate as I greeted her with a box of cookies. But the most important questions I had to ask were if Smith knew about us, what would he say? Did he know about how close we were? How would I have to confront him not if, but when, there’d were any issues raised between us? And how would ma-, dad, and her sis- Cheree receive the news that we were becoming something? I wouldn’t know, at least not yet, because Smith was calling. That’s fucking it.

Cath- got up to excuse herself to take the call. No arguing or yelling this time, but he had her attention for a good ten minutes again as I sat there impatiently waiting for her to hang up, preferably in mid-conversation. I was itching to resume the evening with her. I got up arms folded, walked up behind her with an impatient mood in my eyes and pressed her to end the call, which she finally did ten minute later. She turned to me in an apologetic manner and said sorry to me for interrupting our zen to take his phone call as she hugged me hard for a good 30 seconds. By then it was 8:15 PM. The orange sun was getting dimmer and the voices around us started to wind down. So was our day. We finished up our conversation as we walked back to our cars to end the night.

She hugged me one last time and thanked me for seeing her again before giving me a light kiss on the lips goodbye, a nice touch to end the night. I promised I’d call her when I got home. We got in our cars and drove our separate ways home.

All I could think about during the drive home was how Wednesday unfolded. How could a straight-edge person like myself who has never smoked a single cigarette, who’s never downed any alcohol, or done any illicit drugs sought out to be with someone like Cath- who’s done it all? She’s abused her body in ways I never would…someone who’s cut herself, abused pills, got blacked-out drunk, suffered from anorexia and bi-polarity, and was wasting her true potential on heroin while she gave herself away to some of Long Island’s undeserving scum of the Earth who never deserved to put their grubby hands on her; all because of a poor social life in high-school that never panned out? Simple: I only sought the good in her while acknowledging the bad. From the moment I learned she was hurting herself, I stayed. I never backed down. They say you shouldn’t fall into someone with a labyrinth of problems, nor you should save them. But what was I to do? Leave her behind? That’s what anyone else would do. Not me. I hung in there because I seen and experienced something different from her than anyone else I met at this point. When the ones closest to me are in such dire straits, I help them out as much as I could.

I drove east through Route 27A thinking that my relationship with her was now a lock. For once in my life here was someone whom I really wanted to be with, not the long line of pitiful arms-down-to-their-sides undesirables who wanted me that I had absolutely no interest in. Not Molina who forcefully kept pushing her gifts and i.l.y.’s on me that I didn’t want, or Melissa who kept guilting me with meaningless conversations that went nowhere and makeshift “friends forever” greeting-card moments that I had to take part of or else.

**********

“Hope I didn’t freak you out.”

Cath-’s message waited for me once I arrived home. I should’ve asked her that. We didn’t plan on what we just had. She was concerned that the unexpected would be a wrench that would cost us everything, but her slight uncertainty asked anyway. That ended right after our war of re-assurance that we were on the right path. We both felt the same for each other.

“I was always afraid to pursue anything because I didn’t want to lose our friendship. You are definitely someone I don’t want to ever lose. What we already have I’d never want to ruin and I want to work to make it the best it can be. I think it’s rare what we have you can’t get it all the time and I don’t want to throw it away. You’ve always been there and not many guys I’ve been around respect my views or opinions. I love that the most.”

There’s moments where some people see the clarity and appreciation through the distorted drug hazes, pop, and smoke from years of substance abuse. It took a lot, but Cath- grasped it. Our moment was the zenith that stood out above all the other objects in the sky. It was a lot of time and work to get here, but here’s the results we knew we wanted. I now had ten straight days of work to contend with in-between two jobs, but we’re going to make the time and effort to make it happen. I couldn’t wait to see her again.

**********

Monday midnight was approaching. Kim of Purple Starlight asked me to take over her three-hour slot. It was the first of countless Sunday / Monday slots I’d vacate and still do to this day. We were still broadcasting at the old WUSB studios housed into the old Union building which was erected in the md-Sixties. Both spaces retained the original feel and architecture of the era without much change. A true relic of its’ time. Original egg-crate ceilings and that text-book smell of old books pressed of Helvetica titles. Solid-color embossed signs that haven’t been replaced since then. Thick doors, unpainted walls, old non-functioning call boxes with black Otis elevator buttons, and push-button locks still installed on our studio doors. Through out the journey I could smell the apple-cinnamon scent-of-the-month aerating the stairs up from Lord knows where it transcended but forever reminds me of this specific time of doing those three-hour bonus broadcasts.

The studio itself was never an equivalent angel itself. Our Dymo-labeled boards were made in the same era as the building. Switches broken. The original foam on the walls has decayed. Disused reel-to-reel machines. Non-functioning square-foot cut-outs where the turntables used to be with non-working solid-color buttons. The carpet was atrocious-looking and hasn’t been replaced since the Seventies. Elbow microphones out of operation. Random finds of single-spindled cassette cartridges, non-working solid-state PCBs, and flat-boxes of blank reel-to-reel tapes with disued reel-to-reel machines all over. A small production space no more than six-by-six feet used to be a news booth but housed a stack of old Scotch reels, a musty stack of outdated papers, and a wide dot-matrix printer. All this was the perfect setting of what I was about to play for the next three hours.

These jazz / fusion cuts played on that Monday and discovered via Vinyle Archeologie master these moments like pressing plants master their vinyl with the music they press on. Who knows if any of the sounds I showcased on that overnight were played before within these walls of the old studios; vintage equipment intact, even. But any reach of these finds makes it feel like it all happened yesterday. It’s 2020. Cath- is no longer in my life but the music sure is. Very much so. That July Wednesday which I’ll always remember is brought up as much as the finds I go back to. The sounds born from a totally distant time which defined an era it sprung from can also define new ones and personal memories decades into the future, at least for me personally.

Flora Purim “Angels”

James Mason “I Want Your Love”

Chick Carlton & Mesmeriah “One More Time With Feeling”

(A Band Called) DeathSpiritual Mental Physical

T.S.U. Tornadoes “Got To Get You Through”

Tarika Blue “Dreamflower”

Blackbyrds, The “Love Is Love”

Grover Washington, Jr. “Black Frost”

Los Chobros “El Sonido Cano Roto”

Frank Ricotti “Vibes”

Rufus Harley “Crack”

Smoke “Shelda”

Geoffrey Stoner “Bend Your Head Low”

Manzel “Midnight Theme”

Minnie Riperton “Les Fleur”

Scope “Big Ferro”

Joe Simon “It Be’s That Way Sometimes”

Jacky Giordano “Train”

Mighty Ryeders “Evil Vibrations”

Francis Monkman “Getting Ready”

Herbie Hancock “Butterfly”

Big Barney “The Whole Darn Thing”

Joachim Sherylee “Iceberg”

Arawak “Accadde A Bali”

Sunburst “Mysterious Vibes”

Tom Scott “Shadows”

Black Merda “Cynthy Ruth”

Benoit Hutin & Joachim Sherylee “Spot”

Cortex “Huit Octobre”

Dick Hyman “Give It Up Or Turn It Loose”

Mort Garson “Walking In Space”

[worstjourney]

End-of-2023 Update

I forgot to crosspost my November update from Patreon (in my defence, I was in Norway and then ill) so here is a mashup of November and December, wrapping up 2023 in one convenient post.

Book Stuff

I have finished an outline for the three remaining books of the series. This pass is just making very basic decisions about what gets included and what doesn’t, and roughly shaping the narrative so that I have a basic road map in place before getting creative. Cherry’s 600-page brick is actually quite lean when approached with this lens; I’m trying to let him make a lot of these decisions for me, but sometimes our priorities don’t really align and I’ve had to bring in other sources. Once this bullet-point list is done, then I go back over each section with my storytelling brain turned on, and go into greater narrative detail, so that when I write a script I only have to think about making a good script, and not structural matters. It’s a slow process, but it’s rewarding to feel that, after many months of chasing the whirlwind, I’m finally making forward progress on bringing books into the world.

Events

At the end of November, I made my first-ever trip to Oslo to speak at the 11th annual Roald Amundsen Memorial Lectures, a weekend of intense polar nerdery at the Fram Museum. Other speakers included scientists, explorers, filmmakers and musicians, all unified by a love of polar history, as well as a recreation of the celebratory dinner given for Amundsen on his successful return from the South Pole in 1912. It was a spectacularly good time, and highly recommended to anyone who might be inclined to go to that sort of thing in future. I will have to go back sometime to give the Fram Museum more dedicated attention, as the talks took up most of my time there and I hardly got to explore.

In December, I was supposed to have been a historical guest on a Zoom panel discussing Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antarctica, which started life as the score to the 1948 film Scott of the Antarctic.  However, too many of us were ill on the scheduled date, so it was deferred to January 15th. I will share the link, when it becomes available, over on Patreon; should a publicly-accessible recording be produced, I will share that here. The panel also includes Polar historiographer Anne Strathie, who will be bringing her expertise on Herbert Ponting and his photographs in particular, and two experts from the States, who will be approaching the material from a biographical and musical perspective, respectively.

An online event which did come off was being one half of the second keynote of Terror Camp, an online gathering that mashes up a fan convention and academic conference. The esteemed nonfiction-writer-turned-novelist Francis Spufford and I talked about writing Polar history, from two very different perspectives. It was excellent fun and seemed to have been received well; I don’t know if the recording is available to those who weren’t registered in advance for the event, but if you’re desperate to see it, it may be worth asking.

Media

I came back from Norway with a stack of books and one DVD. Being ill through the greater part of December gave me a chance to start tackling them, and I’ve written a bit about some of them on December’s Patreon Update, because there wasn’t much else to write. Feel free to nip over there if you’re curious; the post is, like all Updates, open to the public.

If you’d like to hear the guys you mostly only see in photos, you may appreciate this fine programme from the vaults of Radio New Zealand: https://www.ngataonga.org.nz/search-use-collection/search/28712/ It’s RNZ’s take on the 50th anniversary of the Expedition, including many clips from the parallel BBC programme for which my beloved tapes of Sir Charles Wright were recorded. This show also contains a good deal from Tom Clissold, who was living in New Zealand by then, and T. Griffith Taylor.  Many thanks to the intrepid Allegra Rosenberg for finding this and bringing it to my attention.

Also hot off Allegra’s desk is the followup to Antarctic Lovebirds, looking at further communications between Atkinson and Pennell, and their lives post-Expedition.  I challenge anyone not to be a little bit in love with these guys.

On Patreon

I’ve started doing themed months on Patreon. November’s theme was Scott’s Ponies, and saw the following posts (currently available to Patrons only):

Equine Studies

The Backstory of Scott’s Ponies

A Guide to Scott’s Ponies

The theme for December’s posts was Writing, which included:

The Art of Adaptation

The Master Timeline, Again

Understanding the Characters

The Shape Of The Rest Of The Series

There was also a secret post for the Paper Money tier, who get bonus behind-the-scenes features. The Writing theme will probably spill over into January a bit, but with one or two more visually-oriented posts if I can manage it.

If you want to see what Patreon is like without committing to anything, you can sign up for a week’s free trial at almost any tier, and read as much as you can cram in your eyeballs in that time. You can also subscribe directly to the Free tier and you will get Updates like this, as well as any posts that get made public. Of course, if you feel moved to toss a little cash into the potato pot to support the creation of these graphic novels, that is greatly appreciated, and you get weekly posts in return.

–––––––––

2023 is a mixed year to look back on.  On one hand, I did a lot of things; on the other, I made vastly less progress than expected.  I think, primarily, I underestimated how much time and energy the publicity rounds would demand; I thought I could juggle that stuff with getting the research in order, and it turns out, I really could not.  I think I know better now what sort of events are worth it and which aren’t, but whether I’ll be allowed to act on that knowledge in future, I don’t know.  Even excluding the bookselling business, it felt like every time I had a span of work time, something would come up that would keep me from working – December’s illnesses being the latest example, but in a long string of unforeseen somethings that had to be accommodated.  I don’t remember this happening when I had a “real” job, and I’m not sure why.  2024 isn’t looking much better in this regard: I already know that January, February, probably May-ish, and possibly September are compromised.  I need to figure out how to use these as bookends to keep me focused between times, rather than letting them be derailing distractions.  (Any advice here is gratefully accepted.) But I have at least got the ball rolling on writing, so as long as I keep chipping away on that, I ought to inch forward … and once the writing is done, the drawing, which is the fun part!

[captainofthenautilus]

snake update! (at last)

So! I joined my university’s reptile physiology research lab a few months ago (it’s been really cool and fun and fulfilling so far but that’s a separate post). And one day, my professor (/faculty advisor/interim dean/whatever the appropriate title is idk. everyone just calls her by her first name anyway) sends this message in the lab groupme:

[image id: a screenshot from June 8, 2023 at 1:40pm where the name and profile picture of the sender have been redacted for privacy and replaced with the word “Professor.” There is an image of a normal morph ball python in its enclosure, followed by a message that reads, “Baby ball python available. Free, comes with cage. This is a 20+ year commitment. Who wants it?” end id]

as far as I see it, the story is that a kid (~17yo) got the snake, but couldn’t keep it since his dad’s lease specified no pets 😔 so the family reached out to my advisor to try and rehome it.

now see, I love snakes, but I don’t know as much about ball pythons as I do about corn snakes (I was researching snake care and doing all the planning for Ophelia for *years* before I actually got her, which is what led me to being so passionate about herpetology in the first place), so I was hesitant to volunteer, especially on such short notice.

I didn’t want to make an impulsive decision and regret it later, so I messaged a whole bunch of people (including my girlfriend, my mom, my housemates, several online friends, and other people in the lab), but everyone I talked to about it encouraged me to get the snake, citing the fact that I already have experience with keeping snakes (I’ve had Ophelia since October) and that I actually had the capacity to take it in (other people wanted to, but couldn’t due to circumstance).

so I volunteered.

[image id: a screenshot from June 8, 2023 at 3:08pm where the name and profile picture of the sender have been redacted for privacy and replaced with the word “Me” with a message that reads “I’ll take him!” end id]

I had also volunteered to go to an outreach event with my advisor just a few days later, so we stopped by after the event to pick up the tank and I was able to bring her home! the tank fits perfectly on my desk right next to Ophelia.

[image id: two glass terrariums placed next to each other on a large desk. end id]

I had assumed it was a male since that’s how other people were referring to it, but based on the length of it’s tail I think it’s a female. I also tried the “popping” method and didn’t see any hemipenes, but I’m not too experienced with that so I could be wrong. All this to say, I originally named her Horatio, but the name didn’t really stick.

(for the record, I’m not against giving a female snake the name of a male character, gender is a social construct and the snake literally would not care, but she just didn’t seem like a Horatio. I did the same thing with Ophelia when I first got her.)

this is already a long post, so I’ll cut to the chase.

Behold, Gertrude!

[image id: two pictures of the same normal morph ball python from the image at the beginning of the post, this time being held by OP. In the first picture, the snake is resting, curled up in the palm of OP’s hand. In the second picture, the snake is in a more active position and is climbing around OP’s wrist and lower arm. end id]

[anachrosims]

EMERGENCY COMMISSIONS

Well, it’s about that time again.

My rent went up and I’ve been doing everything I can to slash my budget. I’m still behind this month and I need to make rent and have enough for groceries the week after next. In short, I need $175-200 by Monday, 03/06, or I will be in arears and at risk of being evicted (late payments are an additional $100 and I would like to avoid that).

Proof etc is under the cut at the bottom of the post.

If you like what I do and can pitch in anything, you can DM me for my Paypal, or you can donate or subscribe to:

- My KoFi / My Patreon

If you would like to commission something, here’s what I’m willing and able to do this weekend:

(THIS IS ALL FOR TS4)

((ALL PRICES ARE IN $ USD))

* * *

LOTS (COMMUNITY & RESIDENTIAL)

Small lots (max. 30x30) are $12 Large lots (35x35 - 64x) are $20 You can choose to let me include CC or you can choose to have me avoid CC. The price is the same either way since CC is not what is being commissioned in this instance.

SIMS

Sim Household (2-4 Sim family) - $6 Large Household (5-8 Sim family) - $8 (These numbers include cats and/or dogs.) You can choose to let me include CC or you can choose to have me avoid CC. The price is the same either way since CC is not what is being commissioned in this instance.

PORTRAITS

1 Sim - 4 portraits on 1 mesh of your choice! - $7 (One frame color for all four, or 4 of the same in different color swatches.) (Additional frame colors cost $2 each per set.) (That means if you want the same portraits in gold AND black frames, just tack on $2 USD) 2 Sims - 2 portraits of each sim, totalling 4 - $12- For couples, there will be 1 portrait of each sim, and 2 of them as a couple, equalling 4 - $13

OBJECT RECOLORS

RUGS:  15 swatches, basegame mesh - $6 25 swatches - $12 30 swatches - $15 FURNITURE/DECOR/ETC (EA MESHES) $5 per object, you’ll get 8 swatches for each one $20 for 5-6 objects

POSES

5 CUSTOM POSES - $10 10 CUSTOM POSES - $20 15-20 CUSTOM POSES - $25 NOTE: I do not know how to do poses with accessories as of yet so I will not be doing those for commissions at this time.

HOW TO SIGN UP FOR COMMISSIONS:

If one or more of these interest you, PLEASE send me a direct message with the item name, and specifics on what you’d like.

PLEASE SEND THE MESSAGE ON PATREON.  FILL OUT THE FOLLOWING FORM AND SEND IT TO ME VIA PATREON:

YOUR NAME OR ONLINE HANDLE:

YOUR EMAIL: (optional)

YOUR BLOG: (optional but preferred)

COMMISSION TYPE WANTED: Portrait/Poses/Lot/Etc

DETAILS: Include the lot size, architectural style, or number of sims for portraits and what kind of color of frame you want, if you want it on an EA mesh or a CC mesh, quantities, etc. PLEASE fill this out, as it really helps my workflow. The more details you provide, the better! Though please try to remain concise.

INTENDED PAYMENT METHOD: Please tell me whether you want to pay via Paypal, Patreon custom donation, or KoFi. I do NOT need your payment information, I only want it on record which site you want to pay through and what name it will be under to make keeping track of things easier. I will NEVER give out your personal information to anyone. (In fact, you can use an online handle via Paypal or KoFi. That’s fine! I just need to keep track of who paid where, when, etc.)

All commissions will be uploaded and available to the public after 2 weeks of early access.

For examples of my work, please see the ts4cc & "my cc” tags, @anachrosims​ or on Patreon.

I have tried to make my prices fair. I am open to feedback regarding this issue, from both the public and my patrons. x

Bank balance.

Rent.

[muddyorbsblr]

monthly wrap-up :: may 2023

Welcome to smth I’m gonna try this month: a wrap-up! I’ll be giving you all a lil recap of the fics I’ve read & written over the last month and hopefully this will get me to actually chip away at my TBR and get y’all on some non-Loki/Tom stories that I occasionally do read 🫡

Everything under the cut

Loki x Reader

Don't Be Shy by @lokisgoodgirl

The way that shy Loki being nervous about not satisfying Agent Y/N has me running around in circles in my living room I can't 🫠🫡

Hostile F*cks: Public Relations by @lokisgoodgirl

A perfect epilogue to this series that was a masterclass of holding your emotions hostage and giving the best payoff. And the fencing pants got a return cameo?? This had me giggling and squeeing and the second the fencing pants came out to play…running laps once again 🫠

An Interesting Theory by @infinitystoner

Completely obsessed with the dynamic between Loki & Reader in this piece. And the ending with Loki deciding that he needs more "data" to "confirm the hypothesis"? I see you, Mischief 😏🫠

The Prince is Dead by @lokisgoodgirl

The beginning had me all teary eyed and ready to fight; the end had me filled with hope and chortling at the tasteful dick joke. LGG really do be a master at holding our emotions hostage with a satisfying payoff at the end 🥹 I live in fear thinking what she could be capable of if she ups and decides to make a piece of just pure angst 😳👀

A Gentlemen's Agreement by @lokisgoodgirl

This had me having some good reminiscing moments of back when I was a Steve girly for a few months in 2015 and also deciding that Bucky's a second simp subject. Distant second, but a second nonetheless. The fact that there's even a second got me doing the Blinking Man at myself--

She is Beauty, She is Grace, She Will Stab You in the Face by @clandestineloki

The adorable dynamic between them when he caught her and saved her from tripping?? Her singing Hamilton without a care in the world? Their whole exchange in the jet after she offed 3 henchmen for hurting her mans?? I love them, your honor.

A Lesson on Behaving by @multifandom-worlds

Reader edging Loki and "suffering" the consequences? With a brief cameo from besties Nat & Wanda trying (and failing hilariously because Reader tried to go and get a snack) to hide her from said consequences? Sign me up and don't expect to be able to contact me for the next few hours because I need to recover from the smut 🥵🫠

Tom Hiddleston x Reader

Under Your Spell by @holdmytesseract

A Model AU where Reader's a photographer and she's been hired to do an underwear shoot for Calvin Klein…and Tom's tatted and pierced and--and--*melts on the spot* 🫠 Head empty all thots…that is all 😮‍💨

Bucky Barnes x Reader

shouldn't have gone by @imyourbratzdoll

This had me clutching at my heart going "why would he do this to Reader what the hell"…like no joke I needed a good few mins to start breathing right and not in the fun I just read toe curling smut way. I mean in the "If I try now I might start crying" way 🥲

Ari Levinson x Reader

Like a Broken Record by @howdoyousleep3

Ari with a plus size reader making her feel so empowered & beautiful in bed? The “I’m keeping you” vibe?! This had me 100% completely deceased when I read it while I was out doing groceries (bc y’all know me I should know better than to read smut in public but I never do and I might never will lol).

self-conscious ask by @imyourbratzdoll

This one hit me so close to home and honestly where can I get a boyfriend like this I would very much appreciate one 🥺💖

Give Me One More by @saiyanprincessswanie

This character + this trope = Ally dead in the water. Thank you and goodnight I am not available for comment at this time 🫡

Natasha Romanoff x Reader

Fall Kiss by @animnerd

Besties becoming lovers after months apart and having some fluffy wholesome fun on a pile of leaves before having their first kiss? Lemme melt in my spot real quick aaaaaa

Clark Kent/Superman x Reader

It Got Worse by @hannibals-favourite-meal

Clark being a soft lil simp for his fiance while her brother Bruce has a hilarious mix of "I'm happy their happy" and "Why did I ever set them up" is such an adorable dynamic and I need more 🥹

Loki x Reader

rules of conduct: the checkout queue

Thomas Sharpe x Reader

the final Lady Sharpe part 2: a risky endeavor

[zonotrichia-albicollis]

Giant personal vent time

This guy stole somewhere between 3 to 6 MILLION dollars from my grandmother by conning my great aunt into signing over her estate and medical & financial power of attorney to him literally on her death bed

I and my aunt have been working basically a whole second job the last 3 months trying to get together a legal case to go after this guy. And now my grandma wants to drop it. And no one else has standing so what the fuck can we do.

This man has absolutely done this to other ppl before, there is no doubt in my mind. I’ve seen his property records for just what’s publicly available in my county and it’s sketchy as hell. I am never going to get over this but there’s nothing I can do.

Gonna put like a million more thoughts in the tags because I’m losing my fucking mind.

[umlewis]

Every Traveler Needs to Try Lewis Hamilton's Hotel Hacks [part 2/2]

The F1 driver has mastered the art of resetting his body clock and getting comfortable on the road.

Lewis Hamilton first stepped into the Mercedes-AMG Petronas car over a decade ago. Before his signing, Mercedes was struggling to produce as a team, but with the young, cunning Brit behind the wheel, things changed. Since then, Hamilton has scored the record for most wins, pole finishes, and podium finishes in the most competitive motorsport in the world. No matter how gifted the athlete, leading the pack like that doesn’t come solely through natural ability, and the driver has found a formula for success that follows him across the globe. Men’s Journal spoke with Hamilton on how he prepares to drive circuits he’s never seen before at speeds over 200 miles per hour, his favorite cross-training activities, and the travel routines that keep him at the front of the pack.

Speaking on that, how do you train leading up to and during a Formula 1 season? I love to run, so that’s one of my favorite ways to exercise and stay on point during the season. If I can get a good 40 or 50K in during the week, I’m in a good place. That’s on top of the regular workouts I’m doing in the gym. I never had a trainer when I was younger, but when I got to Formula 1 I started working with a trainer who was primarily a physio. His program had me doing a lot of cardio and swimming. That was because back in the day we had to maintain a weight of 68kg [150lbs], which made it difficult to maintain any muscle. They changed those rules and now you can be heavier, so these days I sit around 74 or 75kg [163 or 165lbs]. That’s great because in my own free time I love to lift weights and get after it. I’ll go to an underground gym in Los Angeles with my friend Miles Chamley-Watson, who's also an Olympic fencer for some intense sessions. He's very slender and tall, which is great for his sport, but means I definitely got him beat when it comes to the pullups. The only problem is after one or two good sessions I’ve usually put on too much and have to ease back. Any unexpected cross-training that helps on the track? During the winter months I do a lot of cross-country skiing and hiking. I also love to surf, which usually turns mostly into me swimming because I don’t surf that well. That’s what I’ll be doing ahead of Vegas, getting into the ocean on a board before I’m back on the track. I see you're a fan of ice baths. How do you think cold plunging helps you recover? I do a lot of ice baths, or cryotherapy if it’s available, for recovery. That’s been a game-changer for me. There's barely any suspension in our cars. I don’t know if people understand the toll your back and arms are taking. There’s a lot of pressure going through your lower back, knees, and ankles during a race. The lower body is very tense. Getting in the cold for a good three minutes really helps bring down the body temperature and resets you mentally. Those are even more crucial on the race weekends, before or after the race sessions. I used to save the cold plunges until we got back home, but this past year we've brought them behind the garage. I’m so hot when I get out of the car, and there’s no shower where we are. I’m heading to engineering soaked with sweat. They’ve become such a big part of my regime that I‘ll bring a cold plunge into the hotel room when I can. That and a little coffee are the best way to start a race day.

[roarandrainbow]

Hi friends! I write about and make TTRPGs as Truant Disposition Games. It’s an amateur passion project I’ve been doing for the last few months, and today, RIGHT NOW, my first game, Source Code, is available for download.

It’s an explorative single-player journaling game where you play as a sentient automaton on its last legs in a land recovering from near-extinction, trying to care for yourself and the world around you as best as you can before you meet your end.

Roll dice to move through an interconnected web of narrative prompts, recording your journey along the way. Explore a post-post-apocalyptic world of your own creation, meet new friends and allies, upgrade yourself and your capabilities, and fight or succumb to your programming.

You can sign up as a patron at Patreon.com/truantdispositiongames to get instant access to the complete edition, or pay-what-you-can for the base game through the digital storefront at https://www.patreon.com/posts/truant-games-79517166.

Pick it up, lemme know what you think, tell a friend, or at the very least GAWP at this cover art???

[a-vast-horizon]

In early 1990, research continued into both the Backrooms as a whole and Daniel Fenton’s unique abilities, but an exploratory mission revealed that ASYNC personnel were not the only ones that had found their way into the Backrooms.

Fandoms: Danny Phantom, The Backrooms (Kane Pixels)

[Read Previous stories here first!]

~

Testing log: Experiment KV31-DP002

Participants: Daniel Fenton, Simone Richards

Research goal: Expanding on the results from Experiment KV31-DP001, determine the limits of Fenton’s control over his phasing ability and whether he can trigger his phasing at will.

Experiment procedures: Fenton and Dr. Richards will conduct a series of trials in ASYNC experimental labs in an attempt to prompt Fenton to phase. Fenton will attempt to intentionally trigger his phasing ability when prompted by Dr. Richards. In addition, Dr. Richards will attempt to trigger Fenton‘s phasing ability with a variety of stimuli including loud noises, disorienting visuals, and other input.

—

Recording of experiment: The following is a transcript of various trials conducted as part of the experiment, each labeled with the date and trial number. Full video recordings of the trials are available upon request.

[Trial 1: January 3, 1990]

[11:21:34] Daniel Fenton, speaking: Are you sure this is a good idea?

Simone Richards, speaking: We need to know what you’re capable of, Danny. 

Fenton, nervous: But what if, once I start doing it, it keeps happening?

Richards: You’ve gained remarkable control over unwanted phasing in just a few months. I don’t think you’re going to lose that progress if you phase intentionally. If your phasing ability is like a muscle, then using it regularly, in the ways you want to, gives you more control over it.

[Fenton laughs.]

Fenton, jovial: I’ve never really been one for working out, Doc.

Richards, speaking: Still. We’re all on untread ground here, Danny, but we want to help you figure this out.

Fenton, speaking: Right, right, I know. 

Richards, speaking: Whenever you’re ready.

Fenton takes a deep breath and is silent for several seconds.

[11:25:17] Fenton, speaking: Okay. I’m ready.

Richards nods. Fenton closes his eyes, apparently concentrating. 

[11:31:46] Fenton, speaking: I’ve got nothing.

Richards, speaking: You said before it felt like a sneeze; is there anything you can do to imitate the feeling?

Fenton, sarcastic: Right, let me just imitate falling through the floor. 

Richards, speaking: No need to be upset. I don’t have the same understanding of how it feels as you do. But we did have some theories about how to prompt the response, if you’re alright with me trying them.

[Fenton sighs.]

Fenton, speaking: Yeah, whatever, let’s get it over w—

[11:33:07] Richards interrupts Fenton by clapping her hands together a few inches behind his head, creating a loud noise and startling him. Fenton reacts with alarm, stumbling forwards, and falls through the floor. Daniel was retrieved from the Backrooms 20 minutes later.

— 

[Trial 2, January 7, 1990]

[14:37:23] Simone Richards, speaking: Are you still mad at me?

Fenton, speaking: Yes.

Richards, speaking: I am sorry for startling you, but you have to admit it gives us some valuable data. If your phasing triggers in response to being startled or in an attempt to avoid perceived danger, it’s important to avoid situations where those circumstances might come up. And that might give you an edge for triggering the phase intentionally.

[Fenton sighs.]

Fenton, speaking: I guess you have a point.

Richards, speaking: Now, I want to see if we can distinguish whether the phase response is triggered by fear or being startled.

Fenton, speaking: They’re kind of the same thing, aren’t they?

Richards, speaking: Not necessarily. Being startled does typically lead to some temporary fear, but you can have a fear response without being startled—maybe if you know you have a test coming up that you didn’t study for. Hmm, on that note, it may also be worth testing if stress could have an effect.

Fenton, speaking: So, what, you’re gonna have me watch a horror movie and see if I phase?

Richards, speaking: Possibly. For today I thought we’d try to focus on the startle reflex, and see if we can test it with the element of fear more removed.

Richards opens her briefcase and pulls out several items, which she sets on the table: empty balloons, a pincushion, party poppers, and some popping rubber toys.

Richards, speaking: I’ll let you see it coming this time, so it shouldn’t be as frightening as last time, but hopefully enough to startle you.

[14:42:17] Richards inverts one of the popping toys and sets it on the table.

Fenton, speaking: I don’t think this is going to work.

[14:42:51] The toy reverts to its original state and pops up into the air. Fenton jumps slightly, but does not phase.

Richards, speaking: Okay, that’s a good sign.

Fenton, dubious: It is? How?

Richards, speaking: Well, it means you’re not going to be phasing at every slammed door or dropped plate. It would be pretty hard to get you back out into the world if that was the case.

[Fenton pauses, looking down.]

Fenton, muttering: Right. Because they’re definitely going to let me out.

Richards, speaking: Danny, I do want to help you get out of here and back to your life. We just need to make sure it’s going to be safe first, for you and everyone else, and that means understanding your new abilities. 

Fenton, muttering: I know.

Richards, speaking: Are you ready to continue?

[Fenton nods.]

[14:45:06] Richards uses a small air pump to fill a balloon and holds it above the table, in Fenton’s line of sight. She picks up a pin and holds it behind the balloon, where Fenton cannot see. After several seconds, she uses the pin to pop the balloon. Fenton jumps but does not phase.

Richards, excited: Oh, excellent! Did you feel the impulse to phase at all during that?

Fenton, speaking: A little, right when it popped, I think, but then it died back down right after.

Richards nods, reaching for the party popper. She holds it above the table, letting Fenton see it. About a minute later, she activates it, and confetti shoots out. Fenton has no apparent reaction.

[14:49:02] Richards, speaking: How was that?

Fenton, speaking: There was a little impulse, but it was tiny. 

Richards nods.

Richards, speaking: It’s a small data set, but it’s looking like just being startled isn’t enough to trigger a phase impulse. We can run some tests with isolated fear responses next.

Fenton, excited: Does that mean horror movies?

Richards, amused: It might. You seem awfully attached to the idea.

Fenton, speaking: My parents never let me watch that kind of stuff. If I’m gonna be stuck here, I might as well get something out of it.

[Richards chuckles.]

Richards, speaking: I’ll see what I can do, then.

—

[Trial 3, January 20th, 1990]

Daniel Fenton was shown a variety of horror movies while his response was carefully monitored. At certain points throughout the movie, Dr. Simone Richards asked him about his impulse to phase.

For the sake of brevity, results are consolidated below. The entire 6-hour recording is available upon request.

Film 1: The Shining

Results: Fenton did not phase throughout the movie, though did report heightened impulse to phase during latter portions of the movie, specifically during Jack’s rampage. Fenton described the impulse as “not very strong, but I can’t quite get rid of it either. Sort of like being in bed and having the feeling I left my bike outside, and I can’t stop thinking about it until I check.” Fenton jumped and appeared nervous at several points throughout the movie, largely coinciding with periods of high tension in the movie, and reported higher impulse to phase during these moments. 

A rest period was given after the movie, and after twenty-three minutes, Fenton reported that the impulse had subsided to normal levels and testing continued.

Film 2: Jaws: The Revenge

Results: Fenton did not phase, and reported that his impulse to phase did not deviate from normal levels throughout the film. He did not appear to be significantly scared or unnerved by the movie. 

A break of fifteen minutes was given before starting the third film.

Film 3: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

Results: Fenton seemed frightened throughout most of the movie, and reported a strong impulse to phase throughout, especially during scenes of high tension in the film. Dr. Richards suggested ending the trial early 40 minutes into the film, but Fenton protested this and insisted on continuing. At one hour and thirteen minutes into the movie, Fenton startled at an onscreen jumpscare and phased through his seat and the floor.

Fenton was recovered from the Backrooms twelve minutes later and the trial ended for the day. 

–

Conclusion: Initial results suggest that Fenton’s impulse to phase is triggered by a combination of fear and being startled rather than by either element on their own. Protocol for researchers working with Daniel Fenton has been updated to include announcing one’s presence to avoid startling him when possible. 

This also provides a potential avenue for testing whether Fenton can phase intentionally, which could further open possible testing into whether he can phase out of the Backrooms as well as into them. The logistics of such an experiment are complicated, since it is impossible to determine where in the world Fenton might emerge, but once he has sufficient control of phasing into the Backrooms, it may be more feasible. Experiment design discussion is ongoing.

~

On February 3, 1990, a team of researchers mapping out the Backrooms found what appeared to be a human corpse. Autopsy found that the corpse was infected with a mutated strain of hay bacillus bacteria, very similar or identical to the strain found in samples from Daniel Fenton.

It is not yet known whether the bacteria was the cause of death. Until there is conclusive evidence that the bacteria is not lethal, quarantine measures on Daniel Fenton have been revised to be more rigorous. All tests relating to Fenton’s phasing ability have been suspended to minimize recontamination risk, and he has been instructed to resist phasing as much as possible. 

Fenton has also been started on a course of antibiotics as was initially advised following his accident.

~

On the morning of February 9, 1990, Daniel Fenton was discovered unresponsive in his room. Initial evaluation found he had a fever of 101.4 Fahrenheit, and he was quickly taken to the facility’s medical department. However, before significant care could be administered, Fenton phased through the floor. Unlike in previous incidents, where Fenton has phased through furniture, the medical cot and IV stand also phased with him, as though a section of the floor became momentarily intangible.

Search began in earnest to recover Fenton before his illness became fatal, but no trace of him was found, and it was considered unlikely he could navigate back to the threshold in his current state. Regular patrols continued to keep a lookout for Fenton in case of a time distortion involved with his phase, but exploratory search missions were called off after 3 days.

On February 21st, 1990, Fenton approached one of the regular patrols on foot, disheveled but in apparently good health. Fenton was quickly taken to medical and given a full checkup, where he was found to be fully recovered from his fever. 

Fenton was interviewed about his experience from his cot in the medical department once his condition was determined to be stable. Interview log follows.

—

Simone Richards: Well, you’ve certainly given everyone a scare this time.

Daniel Fenton: Hi, Doc. How long’s it been this time?

Richards: Eleven days. Do you know how long it was on your end?

Fenton shakes his head.

Fenton: All I can remember at the start is blurry. I remember falling in, but after that it’s just flashes of yellow for a while, whenever I managed to wake up. Then I know it was a few days where I could stay awake, but felt like trash, before I could get up and make it back.

Richards: And how long did it take you to make it back?

Fenton: That was a couple days too, I think. Hard to tell since it’s not like there’s nighttime in there, but I was way farther out than I’ve ever been before. 

Richards appears lost in thought for just over a minute.

Richards: Overall, this seems to be a much more intense phase than those you’ve had in the past. Unfortunately, without more testing, I’m not sure what might have brought it on, your illness or the length of time since your last phase. For that matter, we don’t know what caused your illness; that and the intense phase might have both been the result of resisting your phase impulse for such a prolonged time.

Fenton: What, so I have to phase now?

Richards: I’m not sure. Like I said, it’ll take some additional testing to know for sure. But whatever it is, we’ll figure it out and find some way to keep it from happening again.

—

Following the incident, Daniel Fenton was given two weeks to recover without restrictions, and phased three times. At the end of the two weeks, when Fenton was apparently back in good health, the strict restriction on phasing was reinstated and Fenton was put under close watch. Fenton successfully went without phasing for three weeks, with the only negative side effects reported being more frequent phase impulses and difficulty concentrating. At no point did Fenton develop a fever, become unresponsive, or fall ill in any way, suggesting that disuse of his abilities was not the cause of his illness. This leaves the other significant change in Fenton’s care over the weeks preceding the incident, the course of antibiotics he was placed on, as the most likely cause.

While the exact nature of Daniel Fenton’s bacterial infection is unknown, the fact that this episode was preceded by consistent antibiotic administration suggests that the bacteria may now be essential for Fenton’s continued health. Moving forward, antibiotics are not to be administered to Fenton unless absolutely essential, and his current infection level should be treated as a healthy baseline for him. Research into the nature of the bacteria to determine its infectiousness and potential harm is now top priority; until conclusive results are determined, quarantine procedures for Daniel Fenton are to be strengthened.

[Read on AO3 and follow the series if you have an account!]