#The Old Guard prompts for ts

[skaruresonic]

Am like, so effing tired of people being so dismissive about the funny animal franchise that they resort to reducing it down every time I make a point about a thing that is destroying logic. I do not care about the answer these people give me, because I'm being told to eat the turd and to 'like eating the turd'.

Please, I'm a much better connoisseur than what that person thinks.

It's so baffling. I cannot imagine any of Half-Life's old guard pulling a "it's just a Valve game, why do you care."

Or pulling a similar stunt with anyone who used to frequent Silent Hill Heaven. Holy shit, some of those guys dropped rhetoric on you like it was an orbital strike. You'd better have crossed your Ts and dotted your Is before you made a new thread, because chances were you were about to get schooled. And we're talking about a canon full of vagaries that was already open to interpretation.

They did NOT tolerate cross-pollination of any kind. Movie Silent Hill content stayed firmly in the Movie Silent Hill subsection, as it should be. I wish Sonic followed in its stead.

Also, if folks really don't care enough about Sonic lore to think it's worth discussing, why pipe up to say others shouldn't care, either? Uh, I care because I'm a fan? And I can talk about anything I want on my blog?

No idea what it is about Sonic that prompts this response other than fandom's insecurity.

[hauntedfalcon]

So, random question that just occurred to me randomly -- what are your thoughts on Nile getting to finally pick out her own clothes when she's shopping in London? Who's with her? What's that day like?

Melly. I love. that you and Laurel both sent these. before the group watch was even over 😂

@knoepfchen I just. sldjflsjflsjf how totally random right (I love you guys)

- - -

“What sizes are we looking for?” Nile asks as they get into town.

Joe says, “Well, you wore Andy’s jeans. Seven and a half shoes. Mostly mediums, she likes room to move. Nicky’s a thirty thirty-two, ten and a half, mediums and larges. I’m the same but thirty-two thirty-four, and--”

His teeth clack together. He wears the same wounded look Nile saw on his face in the lab yesterday. She wishes she had some way to distract him, but until they know each other better, the best she can do is not press.

“They might offer to buy this off me,” she says, tugging on the hem of the Parliament T-shirt she dug out of the cache of musty clothes at the Juliet safehouse.

“Out of the question,” Joe says immediately. “I won’t part with it. God, I remember that night…” This, too, is something he can’t share with her, but at least his expression is wistful now.

A little bell over the door chimes as they walk into the shop. Joe nods to the cashier and moves down the racks against the wall, and when Nile realizes he’s casing the perimeter she does the same on the opposite side. They’re the only customers, first thing on a Monday morning.

Something catches her eye at the back: a cream wool blend varsity jacket. Just the right weight for the damp English springtime. Conscious of the staleness of what she’s already wearing, Nile waits to try it on until she has a full outfit in hand, complete with sneakers that actually fit her.

She regards herself in the mirror in one of the tiny dressing rooms. Is there something new in her eyes? It feels like there should be some spark or depth that sets her apart from other people, after what she’s been through the last three days. All she sees is a tired woman with crispy braids. She needs to do something about that, next.

The outfit is cute, though. Colorful, unlike everything in the safehouse cache. Maybe it’s a bad idea to attract attention in that way, but right now it feels like the only form of expression available to her. She puts the pieces back on their hangers and brings them out where Joe waits with an overburdened trolley. “I guess I shouldn’t get too attached, huh?” she says under her breath as she adds to the pile.

“Depends,” Joe says. “Are you gonna let me see?”

Nile coolly regards his arched brows. “I will if you will,” she says, tilting her chin at the other dressing room.

His first round is an eight out of ten, only because the pants have too many zippers to be taken seriously. Joe doesn’t hold the docked score against her; he rates her a ten and says she should definitely get attached. Nile rolls her eyes at him and picks a totally impractical sundress off the rack.

Joe comes out for the next round in a plaid sweater vest over a polo shirt, and in the third he accidentally selects a pair of jeans sized for Nicky, which look like highwaters on him.

Nile takes some of the clothes meant for Andy. They feel all wrong before she’s even finished dressing, so she lifts the mood by digging her phone out of the old jeans and turning it on in airplane mode. The battery is at thirty-two percent. This will be worth running it down a little.

With the speaker at max volume, she does a slow shuffle out of the dressing room to “Pink + White”.

Joe sidles into view with his back to her, turns around gracefully with fingerguns at the ready, and doubles over in helpless laughter at the sight of her black tank and black jeans.

Oh yeah. Worth it.

Nile’s face hurts from grinning when they finally get to the register. There’s a pair of hoop earrings in the jewelry case and the cashier gets them out when she asks. They’ll do nicely.

The counter vanishes beneath strata of jackets, a dozen jeans and athletic pants, twenty T-shirts, button-ups and sweaters for layering, assorted pairs of shoes and sunglasses, several backpacks, and a spacious duffel.

Nile starts to pay for her share with the money that was already in the back pocket of the jeans when she got them out of the safehouse cache, but Joe presses her hand away and covers it all from a bigger wad of cash than hers. They must have even more squirreled away at the safehouse.

There’s a laundromat the next block over, and when two loads are done and the clothes are packed up once more they get pizza for a late lunch, plus extras to bring back, and in the restroom Nile puts on a clean outfit she chose for herself, still warm from the dryer.

She scopes herself again in the restroom mirror. If there is a profound difference, it’s that the woman in the mirror isn’t a Marine. Not quite, not anymore, despite the tags that still hang by her heart. “Soldier” doesn’t feel like the right word either.

She’s got people she can trust to help her figure out what the right word is, even if it changes depending on the century.

Joe brightens as she comes out of the bathroom. “How’s it feel?” he asks.

“It’s a good start,” Nile says, and Joe smiles broadly at her.

[news4dzhozhar]

Gov. Ralph S. Northam on Wednesday signed a bill that abolished the death penalty in Virginia, making it the first Southern state and the 23rd overall to end capital punishment amid rising opposition to the practice.

Before signing the bill, Mr. Northam pointed to Virginia’s 413-year history of capital punishment, during which it executed more than 1,300 inmates, more than any other state. He also noted racial disparities in the use of the death penalty: During the 20th century, he said, 296 of the 377 inmates Virginia executed for murder — or about 79 percent — were Black.

“Ending the death penalty comes down to one fundamental question, one question: Is it fair?” Mr. Northam said after he completed a tour of the state’s execution chamber. “For the state to apply this ultimate, final punishment, the answer needs to be yes. Fair means that it is applied equally to anyone, no matter who they are. And fair means that we get it right, that the person punished for the crime did the crime.”

“But,” he added, “we all know that the death penalty cannot meet those criteria.”

The bill’s signing comes as President Biden faces pressure from members of his own party to commute the sentences of the remaining inmates on federal death row. It also follows a spate of executions carried out by the Trump administration that renewed calls from the left to abolish capital punishment.

In its final months, the administration executed 13 inmates, more than a fifth of the prisoners that the Bureau of Prisons considered to be on death row. The inauguration of Mr. Biden — who promised during the campaign to work to end federal capital punishment — almost certainly marked the end of that string of executions.

But what Mr. Biden plans to do with the remaining condemned inmates remains unclear. It is also uncertain how he will handle the cases in which the Justice Department has advocated the death penalty, such as that of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers. His new attorney general, Merrick B. Garland, has also expressed concerns about the death penalty.

If Virginia is any indication, Republican support for abolishing capital punishment at the federal level is unlikely. The move has been criticized by some in the party who resent the compassion shown for perpetrators of heinous crimes. During a hearing in the Virginia House of Delegates last month, Delegate Robert B. Bell, a Republican, noted that two people watched the debate over the death penalty with “rapt attention”: Anthony Juniper and Thomas A. Porter, the last two men on Virginia’s death row.

Both were convicted of grisly murders. Mr. Porter shot a police officer in the head three times in October 2005, killing him and stealing his service pistol before fleeing in a Jeep. Mr. Juniper committed a quadruple murder in 2004, during which he shot a 2-year-old in her mother’s arms four times and her 4-year-old sister, along with their mother and uncle.

The inmates’ cheering “could metaphorically be heard at the grave sites of those five crime victims,” Mr. Bell said during the hearing. “We have five dead Virginians that are not, that this bill will make sure that their killers do not receive justice.”

The bill, which the Virginia House and Senate passed last month, stipulates that the sentences of the remaining death row inmates be converted to life in prison without eligibility for parole. The inmates will also not qualify for good conduct allowance, sentence credits or conditional release. Where there were once dozens of prisoners on the state’s death row, now there will be none. The last man to be put to death by the state was William Morva, an escaped prisoner who killed an unarmed hospital security guard and a corporal participating in his manhunt. He was executed in 2017.

On Wednesday, State Senator Scott Surovell, a Democrat, visited the execution chamber for the first time since the early 1990s, when he toured the facility as a governor’s fellow. The gurney was new, Mr. Surovell said, adding that the same wooden chair remained but that there were also at least two digital clocks on the white walls that he did not recall.

One hundred and two prisoners were executed in that chamber since its opening in 1991, according to the governor’s office. Mr. Surovell, who introduced the legislation in the Senate, said the gurney and the chair should be displayed in a museum.

“People are going to be looking at them going, ‘What in the world were those people thinking doing that?’” he said. He compared Virginia’s historical use of the death penalty to the Trump administration’s spasm of executions in its final months.

Todd C. Peppers, a professor at Roanoke College who has written extensively about the death penalty in Virginia, said the Supreme Court had long served as a more significant check on the state’s use of the death penalty than any change in public opinion. In 2000, the state executed a man who was 17 when he murdered his girlfriend’s parents. About five years later, the Supreme Court ruled that the execution of those who were minors at the time of their crimes was unconstitutional. Additionally, a case out of Virginia prompted the Supreme Court in 2002 to abolish the death penalty for those with intellectual disabilities.

“It’s a long, bloody history, and it’s astonishing that a state like Virginia, a former Confederate state, a state that so enthusiastically embraced the death penalty, is abolishing it,” Mr. Peppers said. “I never thought I’d see this.”

[elareine]

#22 with jaydick? for the prompt thing

It’s just one of these days. By the time Jason drags himself home, he wants nothing more than to go to sleep and never wake up. He knows better, though, so he goes and makes himself some tea instead.

It smells good—no perfume, just green tea and jasmine, delicate and earthy. Jason takes a sip. The bitterness on his tongue almost washes away the one in his throat. It’s enough to get him moving again, out of the kitchen into the living room.

Grabbing a book, he settles down on the couch and sets about getting comfortable. He tried a weighted blanket, once. Not a great idea, it turned out. Those fleecy, lightweight things, that insulated heat insanely well, worked much better when he felt like this.  

He moves the pillow a bit so it’s arranged casually under his arm; it doesn’t look like he’s hugging it, but he is.

When he’s ready, Agatha Christie greets him like an old friend. At least that’s something. No matter how down he is, he can always read.

It works, kind of. He’s not settled, not really, not at all, but it’s enough distraction and comfort that the world seems far away—until his phone beeps.

Dick.

Hey babe

Most days, Jason would weigh up having to endure the Titans against getting to pull Dick into his lap in front of them. Today, just the suggestion makes his skin itch like it’s trying to peel off.

Jason knows that he should explain. Dick would get this shit if anyone would.

Nah, think I’ll stay in. Have fun!!

He doesn’t want to drag Dick down.

Even as he’s sure he’s doing the right thing, though, he waits anxiously for the answer. Will this be the point that Dick calls it quits? Jason’s kinda failing at this boyfriend thing they’re playing at, he knows. It’s been two months, and they’ve been on as many dates.

Maybe it is the final straw. Dick doesn’t reply.

It was always temporary, Jason, he tells himself. You knew that.

It’s harder to focus on the book all of a sudden. Jason keeps having to re-read paragraphs he’s read a million times before. He barely makes it through a chapter before the front door opens.

Jason freezes, caught off guard. By the time Dick pokes his head inside, he has halfway convinced himself that Dick just wants to grab something before heading out, and is ready to play cheerful-but-grumpy for the five minutes that’ll take.

Dick… is waving a plastic bag filled with containers at him?

“Hey,” he smiles, “I brought take-out. Wanna eat now or later?”

Jason is a bit too thrown to compute what’s happening, but he does know he’s not going to be able to stomach anything right now. He doesn’t know if he can stomach the smell if Dick eats, actually, but it’s not like he can say that. “No, thank you.”

Dick nods and disappears for a moment before coming back sans food. He gently takes the pillow away and squeezes into the space it leaves behind, right into Jason’s arms. He’s warm and firm and almost too much for Jason to handle right now.

After an affectionate kiss that lands somewhere on his jaw, Dick tells him: “Thank you for providing me with an excuse for begging off.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Nah.” Dick wiggles a bit until his head is resting against Jason’s shoulder comfortably. “This is nice. It’s been a shit day.”

“Tell me about it?”

Dick likes a bit of chatter to come down, Jason knows, and he likes listening to it. He’s not really required to add anything, but after a bit finds that he wants to. It’s almost… easy.

“…and then Slade, of course, has to split us up and try to get me alone.”

“You should do something about that,” Jason teased him gently. “Get him on the stalker registry or something.”

Dick laughs. “Oh god, he is.” He keeps chuckling for longer than the joke warranted. Jason lets him ride it out; Dick sounds like he needs it.  

When silence returns, another kiss is pressed against Jason’s neck. “You make me so happy.” Dick’s voice is soft, almost shy, like he’s telling a secret.

And Jason? He doesn’t feel right. Not yet. But he does feel better.

Thank you for the prompt! I’m still taking them from this list.

[paigenotblank]

Accidentally Ours (5/7)

Pairing: Tenth Doctor x Rose Tyler

Rating: Teen

Written for a prompt for Ten x Rose kid fic/family fic where they adopt kids left orphans that they meet on their travels / and also a prompt for Ten x Rose with a mix of adopted and biological kids (@tinyconfusion​). Tagging @doctorroseprompts​ and @timepetalscollective​ which I think both had those prompts.

Trope: Accidental Baby Acquisition

Warnings: Kid Fic/ Baby Fic/ Pregnancy Fic

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5 / Chapter 6 / Chapter 7

AO3 / TS

Melody celebrated another birthday, and another, and then another, with no sign of the future Doctor.

The day after Melody’s 4th birthday, the Doctor took his family on a picnic to Aessith, a beautiful planet where faeries existed. Well, they weren't faeries exactly, but the inhabitants were petite humanoids with colorful skin tones that matched a set of gossamer wings. And if his daughter thought they were faeries, like from her favorite book, who was the Doctor to burst her bubble? Rose usually said, ‘the first in line,’ but not today. Not on her birthday trip.

Rose stretched out on the blanket and gave the Doctor a kiss. “Thank you for this. It’s gorgeous here.”

“Mmm. Yeah, it is. It’s a shame that in a hundred years the planet is mostly destroyed by a civil war.”

Melody clambered over them both and threw her arms around the Doctor’s neck. “Thank you, Daddy! When will we get to see the faeries?”

“Anything for my best girl. And, erm…” The Doctor looked around the empty park. “We’ll go into town to meet some locals after you finish eating your lunch.”

Rose wrapped her arms around the both of them and smirked. “I thought I was your best girl?”

The Doctor swallowed heavily and he darted a glance between Rose and Melody. “Oh, well, ah…”

Melody laughed and rolled her eyes. “Don’t be silly, Mummy. You’re not a girl.”

“I’m not? Well then, what am I?”

“You’re a grown up.”

The Doctor and Rose both laughed at her logic. “That’s true. My mistake.”

“Oh! Mummy, Daddy, look faeries! Can I go say, ‘hi?’” She pointed to spot over his shoulder and he turned to see an Aessithian man and woman walking along the footpath with a small toddler between them. The other family waved at them.

“I don’t see why not, but come straight back. No wandering off.”

“Okay.” She kissed each of her parents before scrambling off the blanket to introduce herself to the faery family.

The Doctor wrapped his arms around Rose and tugged her onto his lap. He growled in her ear, “You’re my best grown up,” and dropped kisses along her neck.

Rose giggled but let her head fall to the side to give him easier access. “Shut up. I was jus’ teasin.’”

“Always trying to get a rise out of me.” He pulled her more firmly onto his lap and ground himself against her bum. “But the secret’s out - it doesn’t take much.”

She patted the side of his face. “Was never much of a secret, dear. And behave yourself, we’re about to have company.”

The Doctor snapped his head toward a rapidly approaching Melody, who was dragging along her new friends, and pasted a bright smile on his face. “Hello.” He helped Rose up and then stood beside her with his hand extended. “I’m the Doctor and this is my wife, Rose. I see you’ve met our daughter, Melody.”

The other man, a lovely shade of lavender, returned the handshake. “It is a pleasure, sir. I am Oswald, King of Aessinth.”

“Oh!” Rose quickly curtsied, knowing from experience that it was better safe than sorry when it came to royalty.

“No need for that, my dear. We don’t stand on ceremony.” The Queen reached out a pale blue hand to Rose, who was struck by the shining beauty of the other woman’s sapphire hair and matching eyes. She stood straight and proud, though only reached Rose’s shoulder.

King Oswald, who stood at about the same height as Rose, introduced his family, “My wife, Queen Arabella, and our precious daughter, Princess Clarabelle.”

The toddler rounded out the look of her family with her pink candy floss complexion, magenta hair and sparkling emerald green eyes.

“It’s lovely to meet you. I was jus’ telling my husband that you have a beautiful planet.”

“Thank you. It’s not often we get off worlders anymore.”

“Really? But it’s so beautiful here. I’d think that you’d have loads of tourists.”

“We used to, but with the current political climate and our planet’s threat level at critical,” the king’s eyes narrowed slightly, “it is very unusual to see families visit at all.”

The Doctor and Rose looked nervously at each other and down to Melody. Rose pulled her closer to her side. The Doctor tugged at his ear. “Oh, er, I hadn’t realized. Not always the best at checking alerts before setting off on a trip.”

“You should really take your family and go.” The king eyes skittered around the clearing before whispering to the Doctor, “It’s not safe.”

Rose pointed to the princess. “Surely it can’t be that bad if you have your daughter out for a stroll?”

“It’s not by-” The king glanced over his shoulder, at a guard Rose hadn’t noticed before, and pasted on a false smile. “It is our duty to carry on normally for the sake of the people.”

When she examined the faces of the king and queen, she could clearly see signs of stress. “Yes, of course.” Nodding she began to clean up their picnic.

The Doctor picked up Melody into his arms. “Right, well, thank you for the warning. We wish you the best, but we’ll leave directly.”

The king and queen smiled brittlely and tightened their hold on their daughter’s hands. “It’s for the best, but please come back for a visit after all this passes.”

“We certainly will. Melody’s quiet enamored of it here.”

The Aessinthians smiled a genuine smile at that and looked in fondness at the outgoing little girl. “The girls can have a tea party.”

“Yes. Thanks again and it was lovely to meet you all.”

The Doctor grabbed Rose’s hand. “I’m so sorry. I checked that I had the right coordinates. I should have triple checked.”

“It’s fine, no harm done. We’ll just be more care-”

They had just approached the park’s exit when a blast rang out followed by a blood curdling scream. The Doctor knocked his family to the ground and threw himself on top of them while scanning the park.

Rose struggled to pull herself from under him.

“Rose, don’t look.”

“What happened?”

“The...the king…”

“Is he…?” Rose craned her neck to see.

The Doctor panted harshly in her ear. “Don’t look! We have to get Melody back to the TARDIS.”

“But what about the queen and Clarabelle? We have to help them.”

They heard a wail and a scream from the queen, “NO! NO, DON’T. PLEASE...SHE’S JUST A BABY. HELP! PLEASE!”

“Doctor, we have to help them.”

The Doctor’s eyes were wild. “Rose, please. I need you both safe.”

Rose firmly pressed her lips to the Doctor’s. “I’ll take Melody to the TARDIS, but see if there’s anything you can do for them.”

He sighed in relief and nodded. “Thank you.”

“Be careful though, yeah?”

“Always. You too.”

They shared another quick kiss, before Rose got to her feet with their daughter and briskly but cautiously made her way back to the TARDIS.

--

Rose was pacing back and forth in front of the time rotor and chewing on her thumbnail. She debated going out after the Doctor, but they had a rule about leaving Melody alone in the timeship. Not that she liked leaving the Doctor alone when she knew there were bad people with weapons around either.

Five more minutes. I’ll give him five more minutes an’ then I’m goin’ after him.

She’d made three more circuits of the console room when the Doctor burst through the door clutching Clarabelle. Rose rushed over to him and he handed her the toddler.

“What ha- Where’s the queen?”

The Doctor paused briefly in his race around the console, features hardening, before shaking his head and continuing dematerialization.

When they were safely in the vortex, he collapsed on the jumpseat. He had his head in his hands, elbows on his knees, and was breathing harshly. Rose sat down next to him, shifting Clarabelle in her arms so that she could rub the Doctor’s back. He didn’t often let people see him like this, didn’t often allow himself to break down like this, and Rose loved him even more that he trusted her enough with his heartsbreak.

“I...She…” He took a deep breath and met Rose’s gaze. “She begged me to take her and Clarabelle with us. I set off a smoke bomb. Got us all out of there and a bit of a head start. We were nearly here, when the rebels caught up to us. She gave herself up to them as a distraction so that I could get Clarabelle away.”

“What’s the plan?”

“Plan?”

“To rescue her.”

“Rose, she’s-” He glanced at Clarabelle. “I promised her, we’d take care of Clarabelle as if she was our own.”

Rose’s hand flew to her mouth and she clenched the young girl closer.

“I know it’s a big decision and we didn’t discuss it, but-”

“Of course, we will. There’s no question. I just...I can’t imagine. The poor darling, losing both her parents, and so young. How do we even…”

“We love her, like we did with Melody. That’s all we can do. All any parent can do.”

Rose nodded. “We’ll have to restrict our travel to planets that’ll be accepting of her species. Oh god, Mum!”

“I’ll make her a shimmer for when we visit Earth and other xenophobic planets.”

“A shimmer?”

“It’s a sort of cloaking device. It’s used all over the galaxy by aliens trying to integrate into populations different from their own.” He studied her. “When she’s wearing it, people’ll see only a human toddler with dark hair and doe eyes, round little cheeks and a button nose. Her true form’ll be hidden.”

“Mum’s gonna freak.”

“Why? She’s been hounding us for another grandkid for ages.”

Rose rested her head on his shoulder and chuckled. “I don’t think adopting a faery princess was exactly what she had in mind.”

“Jackie’ll love her.”

“She will.” Rose stood and turned to the Doctor. “C’mon. We should explain what we can to Melody and set up her old cot for Clarabelle. I think both girls will enjoy the company.”

He wrapped his arms around Rose and their newest daughter. “I love you, Rose, so much. I don’t tell you nearly enough.”

His words and the love she could see shining in his eyes, brought tears to her own. “It’s all the more special when you do.”

--

Melody and Clara were jumping up and down, completely unable to contain their excitement. “Hurry up, Nana!”

Jackie, the last one out of their little group, pulled the door to the flat closed behind her. “I’m coming. I’m coming. You girls ready?”

Melody and Clara nodded with huge smiles on their faces. “Yes!”

The girls had been begging their parents to go trick or treating for weeks, and they’d finally agreed to visit Jackie for Halloween.

The Doctor had on his usual brown striped pinstripe suit, but Rose in the spirit of the holiday got dressed up in the pink satin 50’s dress she’d worn back when they met the Wire. Rose snagged Clara’s hand and trick or treat basket before she had a chance to run off. “Melody, no runnin’. We’re going all together.”

Melody turned and tapped her foot. “But you guys are so slow.”

Rose raised an eyebrow at the 6-year old. “We don’t have to go at all.”

“Sorry, Mummy.” She sheepishly walked over and took Clara’s other hand.

Jackie glanced nervously at Clara who was without a shimmer for the first time on Earth, not counting the few times she’d been without in the safety of Jackie’s flat. “An’ it’s safe for her to be like that?”

The Doctor looked down at his little Aessithian princess in all her pink glory. “Safest night of the year for it. She looks like any other 4-year old in fancy dress.”

“Bloody good costume. She’s not gonna fly off is she?”

The Doctor rolled his eyes at his mother-in-law. “When have you ever seen Clara fly? Her wings are vestigial.”

“What?”

“Non-functioning. They just look beautiful. Don’t they darling?” He tickled Clara’s ribs causing her to giggle.

Melody dropped her sister’s hand and knocked on the first of Jackie’s neighbor’s doors. She was vibrating with excitement waiting for it to open.

A short, thin woman in 6-inch heels and leopard print, from head to toe, answered the door.

“Trick or Treat!” Melody called out and glanced meaningfully at Clara.

“Trick or treat!” Clara held up her little jack-o-lantern bucket.

“Oh, and who do we have here? Is that Melody Tyler from next door?”

“Yes, Mrs. Clarke. And Clara.”

Mrs. Clarke’s eyes widened as she looked at the tiny faery. “That’s a lovely costume, dear.”

“I’m a faery princess.”

“I can see that. And you, Melody? What are you dressed as?”

Melody glanced down at her outfit and up at Mrs. Clarke, giving her the look that her mother normally described as ‘dribbled on your shirt.’ “I’m dressed as a human.”

“Didn’t you want to dress up for Halloween?”

“But I am dressed up. I’m not normally a h-” Rose nudged her and cleared her throat. “I mean, I’m dressed like my favorite character from Harry Potter. Hermione. She’s also a human.” Melody gave the older woman her best smile and threw in a few eyelash flutters.

Oh, she learned that from Rose. The Doctor choked on his laugh and turned it into a cough.

Mrs. Clarke darted a glance from Melody to the Doctor and frowned. “Oh. Okay.”

Melody’s eyes brightened. “See my scarf? It’s in Gryffindor colors because Hermione is a Gryffindor.”

“I thought she was a human?”

“She is. Gryffindor is just the name of the House she’s in at her school.”

“Ah.” Mrs. Clarke smiled at that.

Melody ran her eyes up and down the neighbor. “Why’re you dressed like a Hydraxian marpletorp?”

The other woman’s smile drooped. “A what?”

Rose covered Melody’s mouth with her hand. “It’s just a character from a tv show she watches.”

She looked down at her outfit. “I’m supposed to be Peg Bundy.”

The Doctor nodded. “Oh, yes. Molto bene. You look just like...like, er, Meg, ah, Peg Bundy. Well done.” He turned to Rose. “Is Peg Bundy a Hydraxian marpletorp because really the resemblance is uncanny?”

“Doctor.”

Melody, still with Rose’s hand over her mouth, lifted her plastic bucket once again toward Mrs. Clarke, Clara following suit. The woman deposited chocolates in both girls’ pumpkins and closed the door mumbling to herself.

The girls turned to their mother. “Look, Mummy, chocolate. Trick or treating is brilliant!”

Rose rubbed the back of her neck and gave a small smile to both her daughters.

Jackie stood gaping at her daughter. “Blimey, Rose. An’ that was just the first one.”

“It’s gonna be a long night.” With a shake of her head, Rose took the hands of both girls and headed for the next door down the corridor.

--

By the time Melody was seven, Rose had stopped fretting everyday about the future. That's not to say that on rare occasions, when all was quiet and she was alone with her thoughts, she didn’t sometimes think about the fact that the future Doctor still hadn’t returned for Melody. But with two rambunctious children and a husband that rarely slept, those quiet times were far and few between. She didn't know if it was worse to think he wouldn't be coming back for her and the implications of that or to think that each day they spent with Melody was one day closer to the unknown end of their time together. She’d become very adept at taking each day as it came and making sure her family never felt anything but secure in her love for them.

Rose reached up to put another bauble on the tree.

“Rose, should you be doing that?”

She rolled her eyes at her mother. “I'm barely three months gone, I think I can handle decorating a Christmas tree.”

“Himself should really be helping you instead of just lazing about.”

The Doctor was spread out across the floor of Jackie’s lounge wearing a bejeweled plastic princess crown and coloring with Clarabelle.

“Mum, he’s keeping Clara occupied, which is a much harder job.”

Jackie crossed her arms looking unconvinced.

The Doctor winked at Rose and offered Clara a different colored crayon. Rose shook her head fondly and went back to decorating.

“Nana, why do you look different in all these pictures?”

Jackie crossed over to were Melody was seated at the table looking through photo albums of Rose’s childhood. “Wha’s that, sweetheart?”

She flipped through pictures of Rose and Jackie at different ages and pointed out the differences. “See, Nan, you don't look the same in these two pictures.”

Jackie smiled. “Well, in that one, see that’s your mummy I’m holding, it was right after she was born and I was only 20. But this other one was your mummy’s 18th birthday. I’m older in that photo, but I don’t look too different from now, do I? Still, I look good for bein’ a gran twice over.”

Jackie sucked her stomach in and Rose laughed. Jackie scolded, “Hush you. You’ll see one day.”

“Stop it. You still look great, Mum.”

The Doctor looked up from his coloring and grinned. “You’ve got good genes, Jackie.”

She shook her head at the Doctor, but was pleased all the same.

“But Mummy and Daddy still look the same from when I was little.”

“That’s because you see them everyday. And it doesn’t help that your father seems to only own one suit.”

“Oi! I own more than one suit. Is it my fault that I look smashing in this one?”

Jackie rolled her eyes.

The Doctor waggled his eyebrows at his wife. “Rose thinks it’s foxy.”

Jackie held up her hand. “Stop right there.”

Melody went back to studying the photographs before turning back to Jackie. “Nana, when was this one taken? I don't remember it.”

Melody handed Jackie the photo she’d taken of Rose and the Doctor at Christmas dinner right after he’d regenerated. They were leaning into each other both wearing paper crowns and had huge smiles on their faces.

A small smiled tugged at Jackie’s lips. It was obvious how in love they were even then. The idiots.

Jackie handed Melody back the photograph. “That was before you came along. Your mum and dad’s first Christmas together.”

“Second.”

Jackie frowned at the Doctor. “Second?”

“Yup, back when I was big ears and leather, I took Rose to Cardiff at Christmas to see Charles Dickens. So technically that was our first Christmas together.”

“Charles Dickens?” Jackie’s jaw dropped.

Rose called out from her spot by the tree. “He meant to take me to Venice. We only accidentally landed in Cardiff and it was pure luck that Charles Dickens was there at the same time. ‘Side’s, Doctor, it was Christmas Eve, so I'm not sure it counts.”

“Oi! Of course it counts. It was 12:05 Christmas morning when we got back to the TARDIS.”

Rose gave the Doctor a tongue touched smile. “If you say so.”

Melody tugged on Jackie’s arm, her brow creased with concentration. “What’s wrong now, sweetheart?”

“How many years ago was this? I’m seven and a half now, and you said I wasn’t born yet. So how long ago was it?”

Jackie thought for a second before replying, “Next week it’ll be exactly eight years ago.”

Melody held up the photo and looked between it and her mother now. Jackie leaned over Melody’s shoulder and did the same.

“Can I see that, Melly?”

The little girl handed Jackie the photo.

Jackie walked over to Rose and held it up right next to her. Her gasp had the Doctor scrambling up off the ground. “Rose. You-” Jackie couldn’t get the words out and instead waved the photo at her daughter.

Rose took the picture from her mother. “What’s wrong?”

“You haven’t aged a bit since you started traveling with this one.” She poked the Doctor in the chest.

“What now?” He leaned over Rose’s shoulder.

“Look at the picture of the both of you from eight years ago.”

“Okay?”

“Rose still looks exactly like she did when she was 20. She’s nearly 29 and she don’t look a day out of her teens. And don’t ‘good genes’ me this time.”

The Doctor’s brow furrowed as he studied the picture. He looked up with panic in his eyes. “Medbay. Now.”

He slapped the photo back into Jackie’s hands.

“Mum, watch the girls for a mo.’”

Jackie watched wide-eyed as the Doctor pulled Rose toward the TARDIS.

--

“Say something.”

The Doctor could barely look her in the eye and when he did she was hit with a wave of guilt so strong he couldn't hide it over their bond. “I’m so sorry.”

“Why’re you sorry?”

“I never wanted you to…”

“What?”

“Losing everyone you love. You live as long as me, and-”

Rose hopped off the exam table and knelt in front of him. “I won’t be losing everyone I love.”

“Your mum-”

“I lost my dad when I was a baby. And as for Mum, yeah, I don’t want to think about it, but humans are generally expected to outlive their parents.”

“Not by millennia. And...the kids.”

Rose bit her lip and nodded. “That is gonna be hard. We’ll get through it together, though, yeah?”

His eyes still avoided her, but he nodded. “Yeah.”

“The girls are gonna want to go off at some point and have their own lives. Maybe…” She licked her lips. “...Maybe we could stretch out visits to get more time with them. And we’ll make every moment we do have with them count.”

Finally a small smile pulled at his lips. “Yeah. Yes.”

“It’s not all bad, right?”

The Doctor saw the worry on Rose’s face and he pulled her into his arms. “Course not. I get you for a lot longer than I ever let myself hope.”

“I promised you my forever, and now I get to keep it with yours.” She nuzzled into the crook of his neck. “You’re stuck with me.”

He giggled bubbled free. “Stuck with you, Rose Tyler, that’s not so bad.” He kissed her on the forehead. I love you. He stood and offered her a hand. “C’mon. Let’s get back to the girls.”

Rose chewed her thumbnail. “What am I gonna tell Mum?”

“She already knows or at least suspects. You saw her out there” He rubbed his jaw. “‘Sides it doesn’t matter what we say, I’m still gonna get a slap out of it.”

[the-end-of-art]

Still this persistent urge to want to die

Why Should You Be One Too? by Spencer Reece in Granta

I was eighteen when the drinking started. It was 1981, and I was heading off into the Maine woods, under the huge deep green pines, to attend Bowdoin College. Behind me, in the dark living room in Minneapolis, my parents sat with their wine glasses like a queen and king overseeing a fading empire. I was shy and reserved, a reader, a Reece. I was far from the sad Southern town of my father’s family and the tattered, run-down north end of Hartford where my mother’s Lithuanian immigrant family had landed. My parents had invested much in me. They had, in my mother’s words, ‘jumped class’, and they banked now on an even greater success: me.

Pimples grew from my temples. I looked like I was about to rut and grow antlers. I was turning into a man who loved men, or at least a man who loved men and women, but men more. But I did not know how to be that kind of person in the world.

At the time no one really used the word ‘gay’ – not that I remember – only the clinical ‘homosexual’, which carried undertones of a disease that electric shock might undo. Only later in the decade some of the American states would begin to repeal their anti-sodomy laws. Homosexuality would be removed from the American Psychiatric Association’s list of mental disorders. But not yet.

Libidinous impulses surged inside of me. When I arrived in Brunswick Maine, the small town that houses Bowdoin College, I found my way into an old independent drugstore with high ceilings, creaking wood floors and no mirrors. It stocked Playgirl. There I discovered the golden buttocks of naked blonde farm boys who lolled on haystacks in barns in Louisiana. I couldn’t bring myself to buy a copy, because that would be admitting that I was homosexual to another person, the shopkeeper, so instead I shoplifted. I would buy extra tubes of toothpaste to make up for my theft. I wedged the glossy magazine against my midriff and my body throbbed against it with expectation. I would take the magazine like an animal with kill in its teeth back to a bathroom in the Economics building where I masturbated in a cave of shame – my body shaking like a washing machine. Then would come the horror and revulsion that would course through every fiber of my body. I’d throw the magazine away. I would pray to die.

I wanted to be like all the other boys. I wanted to be a part of something. I did not want to be different. And so I drank. I attended fraternity parties and drank Cape Coders, gin and tonics, kegs of beer. I found that with the aid of liquor I could chat with girls like every other boy around me. I could dance with them.

My first drink brought me to life. My soul opened in a way I had only experienced with poems and books up to that point. I doubt I would have used the word ‘soul’ then, but that part of me that was not flesh was alert and looking for clues. Booze, like poems, unlatched that. The next drink went down flawlessly. The ice, the charge, created an alchemical click inside. There was another drink and another. Suddenly everything that had been stuck was greased. I wasn’t bad after all. Liquor flowed through me and I leaned into my new nerve.

*

I sat hung-over in the back row of a course called ‘Religious Poets’. My brain felt like an aborted fetus pickled in the jar of my skull. The class met in the oldest building on campus, filled with crooked staircases and tiny fireplaces. On the syllabus were just three poets: TS Eliot, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Elizabeth Bishop. Much discussion revolved around the fact that Bishop wasn’t religious like the other two. So why, our provocative professor slyly queried, had she presented her this way to us?

Our professor was a bohemian Jewish intellectual who dressed in tweed skirts and LL Bean boots, her wild hair looking like it hadn’t been combed since Woodstock. I never gave her an answer then. I mainly stared at the floor in class. But I did like the clarity of the poems. I was doing the reading, and it helped that the font of Bishop’s poems had been made larger, which I assumed was done because she had written fewer poems than most. There were religious allusions, but the whole tenor of her work was secular. There were no traces of the homosexuality or the alcoholism that our professor kept gingerly referencing. She told us Bishop had an exotic lover in Brazil named Lota. The class laughed. Homosexuality was always cause for a good laugh. Maybe, the professor coaxed us, Bishop had faith in poetry, in the clarity and accuracy she strove for there, and could that serve as a kind of religion to her, a way of navigating the world?

We studied her poem, ‘Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance,’ which ends:

Everything only connected by ‘and’ and ‘and.’

Open the book. (The gilt rubs off the edges

of the pages and pollinates the fingertips.)

Open the heavy book. Why couldn’t we have seen

this old Nativity while we were at it?

—the dark ajar, the rocks breaking with light,

an undisturbed, unbreathing flame,

colorless, sparkles, freely fed on straw,

and, lulled within, a family of pets,

—and looked and looked our infant sight away.

She seemed to be coming at faith sideways, acknowledging it out of the corner of her eye, the nativity scene reduced to ‘a family of pets’, which I loved. This felt perfectly natural to me.

Through the prism of this poem, I recognized my stalled life: I’d read my way through much turmoil. Reading had always been my escape hatch. Now, in college, much of life – the fraternity parties, the dating, my parents drinking, my drinking – confounded me. So I didn’t need to be prompted more than twice to ‘Open the book’ and ‘pollinate’ my fingertips.

I joined the literary magazine staff, and began trying to write my own poems. I would type them out on a manual typewriter and then cross out the lines. It was like painting more than writing, I suppose, just mixing colors. Something in the action of saying and erasing, saying and erasing, gave me solace, and perhaps a deeper solace even than reading. This private, useless act aided me immensely. I was often drinking, whole bottles of wine now, sometimes a bottle of Vodka, the steel clarity of that clear liquid giving me some semblance of peace as I barricaded myself against my impulses. The call of the drink increased, and it began, quickly, to overtake the poetry, until I gave up writing altogether – my ‘infant sight’ shrinking, becoming jaundiced.

*

Though my writing dissipated, I kept reading Bishop. The amber and umber leaves fell across the window panes and blew against the Andrew Wyeth houses. Students started dating one another, but I dated no one. I remained alone with Bishop. Her poems had a slow, burning effect on me, unlike the immediacy I was used to from reading Sylvia Plath in high school. I was drawn to Bishop’s sound and rhythm first, before I captured her meanings.

One element of that sound was something you might call ‘Yankee’. I associated that term with the Northeast, where my mother’s people came from and where I was now enrolled in college. The Yankee diction meant: keep a distance from your neighbors, recall Robert Frost’s stone fences, allow people space, keep your guard up. Yankee meant Anglo-Saxon. Yankee meant houses on Cape Cod and Harvard legacies and trust funds. My mother wanted to be part of it. She liked the Yankee mentality even though she was Lithuanian, the child of immigrants. She wanted to assimilate. She wanted to pass. My mother would always say, ‘We are private people, Spencer.’ She repeated this phrase about privacy to me like a chant, and during my weekly calls home I could imagine her shaking her head like Katherine Hepburn all the way back in Minnesota. Privacy manifested itself in her muteness over anything personal: the screaming inside our living room was never to be mentioned outside the home, or even really to her. Certainly I was never to ask her about why she had once slid down a wall in tears. I was taught that people would respect repression more than confession. Because of my mother I associated privacy with dignity. Bishop’s poems supported this private way of living.

Bishop said proudly that she believed in closets and more closets. She said that she wished the confessional poets would keep their revelations to themselves. Her poems built pressure and force through strenuous evasion. Her silences riveted me: she seemed to be all about what she wasn’t saying, which neatly encapsulated what I knew growing up. And the way I was living now.

I read and reread ‘Crusoe in England,’ where Bishop writes of sad, lonely Robinson Crusoe and his famous encounter with Friday:

Just when I thought I couldn’t stand it

another minute longer, Friday came.

(Accounts of that have everything all wrong.)

Friday was nice.

Friday was nice, and we were friends.

If only he had been a woman!

I wanted to propagate my kind,

and so did he, I think, poor boy.

He’d pet the baby goats sometimes,

and race with them, or carry one around.

—Pretty to watch; he had a pretty body.

There it was – the pretty body, pretty to watch. Out in the open. Was describing gay male attraction a way of keeping some distance from her lesbianism? Coyly she kept it all private, and yet she managed to write about it even so. As soon as I had what amounted to a sexuality I started throwing my voice like this, forcing my listener to focus on anything but me. When I saw this poem I knew exactly what Bishop was doing. She loved to track the mind in action. And here with her repetitions of Friday being nice (has nice ever been used better in a poem?) I saw a mind hesitating to say the truth the way my own mind hesitated when I felt attracted to men and said I wasn’t. ‘Pretty to watch; he had a pretty body.’ I saw that line as a mumble, exactly the way I would have mumbled it to myself as I woke from my bed, having had another wet dream about my muscular, hairy roommate. I lived under a tyranny of watching, of being drawn to pretty bodies that the world told me were the wrong gender.

Bishop became a manual for me as I entered college. The poems had friendly, unobtrusive sounds such as:

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.

The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove

and the child draws another inscrutable house.

I appreciated her plain chant. These words didn’t make demands on me. I knew that child drawing inscrutable houses. I was that child. I knew how to plant tears rather than shed them openly.

I went beyond the assigned poems and read more, read what scant biographical information I could. I learned that despite all the prodding from fellow poets May Swenson and Adrienne Rich, Bishop couldn’t bring herself to publish about her lesbian self. What she left was a set of poems that held back and that drew me in. Slowly.

In adapting her life to her gay self, Bishop never had to contend with parental disappointment. By the time she was six her father had died and her mother had gone to a mental asylum. Bishop never saw her mother again. In her sixties, she received a prize from a university in Nova Scotia. She sat on the stage. Over the heads of the audience, across the street, was the mental hospital where her mother had died when she was twenty-three. Over the decade since her mother’s death, Bishop had tried to find out more about her mother, but it proved challenging. No one knows if she managed to find out much. The clinical records state: she threw her clothes out the window, she ate plaster from the walls, she sat unspeaking for days. Whatever Bishop learned she didn’t discuss it. Bishop said that she didn’t dote on the fact she had a classically horrible childhood. She was like my mother that way, not wanting to draw attention to what makes us vulnerable. My mother always said, ‘Everyone has tragedy, you don’t need to go looking for it.’

A few years before her death, Bishop said to a former student, Millie Nash, that maybe she’d been better off without a mother. She hadn’t had to deal with a mother. Her early independence did give her a certain freedom with her sexuality. In the 1950s and 1960s, still such a repressed time for homosexuals, she lived her private life as she pleased, with many lesbian affairs. She tried to regulate her binge drinking as best she could.

Closeted, alienated, drinking – I found myself aligning with all of this in Bishop. But Bishop hadn’t dealt with the disappointment of a mother. I was at a sorry crossroads with mine, the bittersweet separation perhaps all mothers and sons have, where I seemed to disappoint her and she disappointed me, in the way we all sooner or later disappoint each other. That disappointment churned in my head and stomach every phone call home. I was growing unexplainable to her. I gave vague answers to all her questions. There set in a rift and a cliff. She’d ask if I had a girlfriend. Sometimes when she called me her words slurred. I read more.

*

As the first term closed, we read ‘In The Waiting Room’:

But I felt: you are an I,

you are an Elizabeth,

you are one of them.

Why should you be one, too?

I scarcely dared to look

to see what it was I was.

I gave a sidelong glance

��I couldn’t look any higher—

at shadowy gray knees,

trousers and skirts and boots

and different pairs of hands

lying under the lamps.

I knew that nothing stranger

had ever happened, that nothing

stranger could ever happen.

In the poem, a child Elizabeth shyly tries to take in the pendulous breasts of the naked African women in a National Graphic. As I read this poem, I knew the shame creeping into the poem, the way it felt to be a child a little too fascinated with the same sex. Now, at eighteen years old, I could scarcely look in a mirror, much less a magazine. If I was what I thought I was, what Bishop thought she was, then I needed to murder me. The thought kept coming, with the plodding, simple logic of Bishop’s three beat tri-meter lines. The more I repressed those naked men, the more they appeared. But if I killed the person I could kill the sex.

I looked out through the white-trimmed window in my dorm room. The window had six panes on top and six on the bottom. There was nothing more to say. Pine cones near the window swung like corpses.

*

The term ended. My suitcases were packed so I could spend Christmas with my family. Up and down the hallways of Moore Hall students planned, exchanged presents, laughed on the phone with their parents, waving plane tickets. It was night. I walked out the front door and went to the graveyard. I took a bottle of Southern Comfort with me, and a bottle of sleeping pills, and I emptied them both into my mouth. I lingered in the snow with the graves. I passed out. As my cure started to take effect some muscle inside of me reacted. Some voice said, ‘Get up!’ I took myself to the infirmary, dizzy, told the nurses I was sick, went into the toilet and vomited all that I had swallowed.

The next day I went home for Christmas break. I’d rarely changed my clothes the whole first term. I had razor cuts on my wrists, which I kept covered with the torn, stained sleeves of the one sweatshirt I wore. The sweatshirt had the name of my prep school, Breck, in faded letters, and had bleach and food stains on it. A widening chasm had grown up between my mother’s emotional world and mine: her attention was divided between a series of real estate interests and the pressing need to buy decorations for the tree. As a small boy we’d been close confidantes – now we struggled. She sensed something was wrong. I’d become monosyllabic. She must have felt helpless. What could she do?

One night I went out with old high-school friends to a movie, and my mother read my diary. She confronted me, sobbing, when I returned, but it wasn’t the suicidal thoughts that had brought her to tears.

‘Are you a homosexual?’ she asked. Her tone was filled with disgust, and hatred. Or was it love cloaked in fear?

‘No,’ I said.

‘They tie each other up in Greenwich Village and have anal sex,’ she screamed. She looked like she was watching a horror film. She didn’t know what to do with me. I didn’t know what to do with me. My father said nothing. I thought he had pity for me but I wasn’t sure. His silence widened the space between us. I wanted to disappear.

In the hopes of fixing me, we as a family agreed I would see a psychologist when I returned to Bowdoin. There was the idea in the air that if I really did think I was homosexual, a psychologist might be able to talk me out of it. I was like a puppy that just needed to be trained. There was hope in my mother’s voice now. Although I still denied the charge of homosexual, I was hopeful too. Maybe I could be changed. Maybe I could be like everyone else. Maybe.

*

The college psychologist was from Argentina, in his mid-fifties, but still as dashingly handsome as a bullfighter. He had a fairly heavy accent and mispronounced words and forgot others, which, considering our topic of conversation, added a heightened level of comedy to our sessions. I sensed that he wasn’t understanding everything I was saying. We sat in a little room in the infirmary, mostly taken up with his bicycle and various bicycle parts.

My heart sank about one minute into our first meeting when I realized I wasn’t going to say the word ‘gay’ or ‘homosexual’, and neither was he. There was no book in his office resembling anything that might be helpful. We were going to pretend like my homosexuality didn’t exist.

Our conversation was laughably leaden. We were like two very bad actors in a college play.

‘How you?’ he would say.

‘Fine,’ I would respond, my body language hopelessly awkward and robotic.

‘Your mother had spoken to me and said you try to attempt suicide.’

‘Yes.’

‘How are you now?’

‘Fine.’

‘Do you want to commit suicide now?’

‘No.’

‘Good.’

This was the caveman-like level of our communication. The sessions were completely useless.

In a year or two everyone would start dying of AIDS. But we didn’t know that in his office. What we knew was silence, elaborate and subtle and vast. What I knew was an avalanche of shame. He was married to one of the tenured professors on the psychology faculty and I began to suspect this job had been given to her handsome husband as a sort of compensation: something to keep him busy between his bicycle races.

Instead of curing my homosexuality our sessions seemed to provoke it. I found myself drawn to his dark skin, deep black Latin eyes and muscular build – especially the lower half of his body, those thighs and buttocks tightly encased in his pants as if with shrink-wrap. I had to repress the attraction every time I looked at him. This wasn’t how The Bell Jar had gone. There, Esther Green, Sylvia Plath’s stand-in, had returned to Smith after her dramatic suicide attempt triumphantly. In her real life Plath resurrected herself nicely, galvanized to embrace a new life in college with her dyed-blonde pageboy bob. They wrote her up in the newspapers. My suicide attempt had generated no star treatment. I failed my classes first term. To the college I was an embarrassment. I was going backwards. Drinking called me.

The psychologist kept telling me to enjoy my life. His hands were full of grease and chains. He had started working on his bicycle during our sessions, and as he worked he would hardly look at me. Something Bishop once wrote to her physician, Any Baumann, began to haunt me: ‘I feel some sort of cycle settling in.’ So it was going with me, a cycle of drinking to get through the days. After our sessions I would go back to my room and pour myself a glass of wine to blot out what I’d been feeling: the attraction, the unspoken homosexuality.

James Merrill said Bishop was always impersonating an ordinary woman. Her years were spent carrying out those impersonations: Vassar girl, a woman smiling with perfectly manicured nails, then wrapped in furs like a Scarsdale matron, later a woman with blue eye-shadow in a light blue pantsuit. I too was eager to be somebody who could pass. I was now doing my best to curb my theatrical gestures. Intellectually I constructed a genuine interest in girls. Sometimes it worked. When it did not, which happened more often than not, I felt I did not want to linger much longer on the planet.

I told my parents I was better, and they seemed to believe me. I seemed to believe it too. I stopped seeing the psychologist soon after we started our sessions, having decided the answer to my problem lay in drink rather than therapy, but I would still see him zooming around the campus on his bike. I would still have to repress my fantasies about the two of us naked. I began to drink more and more heavily to cope, and it took a toll. I found myself unable to make it into the classroom. I was going down some dark tunnel. I kept lurching into fumbled romances with women, pushing myself towards normalcy, but I was so drunk they became nurses instead of lovers.

In a moment of sobriety in the dining hall at Coles Tower, someone said Wesleyan was the most liberal of the schools in the Northeast. I thought that if I changed schools, I might change too.

*

My junior and senior year were spent at Wesleyan. I rented a small room in a wooden clapboard house with three other students across from a little liquor store called Sunshine Farms.

Every night I walked through the door of Sunshine Farms and the owner said hello a little too knowingly.

‘I will have four bottles of the white wine,’ I said, and felt the same guilt I used to feel when I shoplifted Playgirl.

These wine bottles were Italian, had a colorful label on them like lovely Florentine stationery: green and rose squiggles with some gold strewn throughout. When my housemate, Laura, moved in at the beginning of the year, her parents had bought her one of these bottles to celebrate. Two or three nights in, I drank everything in the house, including Laura’s bottle. The next morning I left her a note: ‘Dear Laura, I am so sorry for drinking the bottle that your parents gave you. As soon as Sunshine Farms opens I will replace it.’ And I did.

Laura never drank that bottle. I did, every night. About a month later, I decided to stop writing her notes and bought a case of bottles instead. Then I drank the case. I must have replaced Laura’s bottle at least one hundred times.

I had found myself a girlfriend. Maybe I could add to the happy world of heterosexuality after all, and leave my parents pleased, or so I hoped. K and I met at a party in one of the many dark tunnels that connected the dormitories at Wesleyan. She was kind and smart, the two qualities I love most. I thought all my problems would be solved if I drank my way through the sex with her. I bet myself I could do it. And maybe I would enjoy it too. I was not un-attracted to her. And I figured the drinking would kill or subdue the part of my brain packed full of gay desire.

K studied classics and looked almost exactly like Patti Smith. She would translate Catullus until dawn. She was willowy with smudged mascara that gave her a raccoon look. Night after night in her bed we explored, aided by my inebriation. The record needle skipped on a song by the British band The The, singing This is the day your life will surely change. In a dirty crumbling student house with the paint coming off the ceiling – This is the day – I drank enough to kill an ox.

One morning I woke in K’s bed blinded, and she had to take me to the hospital. Somehow in my drinking I had managed to rip my corneas. ‘Have you been drinking?’ the doctor asked. I said, ‘No, not much,’ yet even I could smell the pungent acrid tang of alcohol pushing through my pores.

After a week of healing my eyesight restored, and I managed to make it to the library. I went to the room where they kept the records and played the voice of Robert Lowell, Bishop’s best literary friend. Lowell read ‘Skunk Hour,’ which he had dedicated to her. I grimaced when he got to the part about the fairy decorator:

And now our fairy

decorator brightens his shop for fall;

his fishnet’s filled with orange cork,

orange, his cobbler’s bench and awl;

there is no money in his work,

he’d rather marry.

No money, a pathetic effeminate sales clerk: now that, emphatically, I did not want to become.

My life at that time was a series of evenings in which I was carried out of parties and thrown into bushes. In the early evening I would suddenly fall down on the dance floor to the tune of the Go-Gos singing brightly, or the Smiths at one of their sarcastic dirges.

People started telling me not to call them back. People stopped inviting me to parties. People said: ‘I saw you.’ And I would have to wonder what it was they saw. ‘I have a red light that goes on and tells me to stop,’ my mother told me over the telephone, talking about the drinking. Red light. Where was my red light? Never had such a light. Only green. I did not mention anything about girlfriends or the poems I scribbled. The list of subjects we did not discuss always seemed to be lengthening. What had happened to us?

One night I drank all of Laura’s wine bottles, and suddenly I was in the street in front of Sunshine Farms. My blue terry-cloth bathrobe was half off, mud on my naked body. I’d dyed my hair white like Billy Idol. Mascara dripped from my eyes. I had a cigarette in my hand. My self-hate and repression had gone mad. I exploded out in my drunkenness now with an aggressive flamboyance, more auto-da-fé than drag queen. I dared anyone to stop me. My tongue grew vicious. I was Lear’s fool breaking down the fourth wall. I ran pell-mell into the audience.

‘We are going to have to take you in. This is the tenth time the neighbors have complained about the noise here,’ said the policeman.

Crapulous thing, I said something unintelligible.

‘Listen, the neighbors have called again, we’ve received three calls a week from them.’

A record skipped from the bedroom above –Marianne Faithful singing ‘What Have You Done for Beauty’s Sake.’

The officer gave me a fine and retreated. I’d drunk my way through the dark night and now the dawn began to push its tints into every little thing. The silverware shone; the telephones gleamed; the mirrors glinted; the windows flashed. The sun rose and I belonged nowhere. The little house in front of me looked forlorn. I trudged up the stairs as my roommates woke to their studies, and I recalled the night in pieces: naked, the yellow Sunshine Farms sign, the terrible thought that I would need to apologise to Laura again, replace her bottles, and what on earth was it I’d said? K, who had been keeping pace with my drinking and still managing to keep her classics grades high, had begun to step back into the shadows. I was alone with all this in my bedroom. The lawnmowers would soon start. Paperboys were throwing papers onto doorsteps. Birds rang in the trees. I had a set of crossed out poems next to the typewriter. How would I ever enter this world?

The phone rang. The receiver shook a little in its cradle and the noise jangled me as if I had launched myself into a circus ride. The sky was full of colors already and I was drained of them. It was my aunt from Tennessee. My aunt who never called me. I held the receiver with one hand. In the other was the tattered fine I’d been given for disturbing the peace.

‘Spencer, how are you?’ There was a pause, maybe she was smoking. Her Southern accent expanded the syllables so they dripped like candlewax.

‘What is it?’ I said.

‘John Steven is dead,’ she said, and perhaps she herself was surprised to hear herself say this news so plainly, so flatly. There are certain sets of words that change and rearrange the world. And those four words certainly did that. John Steven, my cousin, my kin, the same age as me, had been having trouble with his drinking too. That much I knew. Someone had wanted to get him into treatment. His storyline tumbled through my mind from pieces of telephone conversations I’d had over the years. We hadn’t seen each other much.

‘What are you saying?’ I asked. My bed was still wet with last night’s urine and vomit. I was sweating. I shook.

‘We don’t know. Grandpa Reece is very upset as you can imagine. Your Aunt Pattie is beside herself, and your Uncle . . . Well –’

‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘What happened to John?’

‘He was in a bar, down there in Florida. His sister Kathy said he saw somethin’ he wasn’t supposed to see. I don’t know what. He – well they – well, some men I guess took him to the river down there in Saint Augustine. He’d started drinking again and his sister has small children and she said he couldn’t stay there if he drank and I guess he drank and then, well. He went to this bar I guess and they drowned him. Aunt Pattie is beside herself. Your Uncle George had trouble identifying the body. They think the police are involved somehow. They don’t know who did it. They don’t know.’

Her Southern accent carried the sadness of the American South as I had always imagined it: the slow way the hours passed, the relatives gone mad with drink, the long ballad of surrender. Slowly my aunt’s words came into that morning and took dominion over time – the seconds, the minutes. In the Connecticut air, the birds flew through car exhaust.

*

The murder went unsolved. Thirty years later a relative told me in passing that John might have been gay-bashed. This casual off-hand speculation shocked me. I’d never considered that when Mary Sue was on the phone with me in Middletown. I’m fairly certain the word ‘gay-bashed’ was something we never said in 1984. John had been undetectably gay, rough and tough, unlike me.

What happened to him that night? Was the bar dark? How did the men grab John? Had he said something? Had he touched someone? Did he yearn for love that night the way we all yearn for love? Had the men said something? I began to see it and what I saw I can’t unsee.

The men yanked John. They ripped out his beautiful hair in patches. They punched him in the stomach. They held him down. They kicked him in the head. They broke his fingers. They broke his ribs. They broke his legs. They broke his teeth. They grunted. They spit. They laughed. They dragged the body, and the body picked up trash and thorns and burrs. The laughter of the men mixed with the sound of the wind moving the leaves in the sassafras trees. Dirt was on John. He pleaded. Gravel was shoved into his eyelids. He had sand in his throat. Blood came out of his ears. They held his beautiful head under the mucky water until John screamed no more, until the last mercurial orb of oxygen bubbled out from his lips. The men walked away. The corpse floated. The world went on. The men went on.

*

After John’s death my drinking worsened. I would drink three or four drinks before I went to parties so it could seem like I was only drinking as much as everyone else at the party. I started drinking after the party too, with a sense of release that I wasn’t being watched or monitored. I drank Scotch ‘neat’, now, just ice. I could drink an entire bottle of the stuff. The side effect of this was that my stomach was so full of acid the following morning that I couldn’t keep food down. I grew thin and my face bloated. When I was drunk I was dramatic and gleeful, unlike my shy self. This was fun for others to watch, but at other moments I skittered into disasters: I fell down stairs, I picked a fight with a friend over something I couldn’t remember afterwards, I babbled incoherently into phones to people who would cut the calls short and leave me talking to a dead line. Bishop said to her psychiatrist, Ruth Foster: ‘If only I didn’t feel I were that dreadful thing an alcoholic.’ Her dread matched mine.

Sometimes the drinking did work. On those nights it was like nuclear energy – all the lights went on. I kept drinking, trying to get back to that magically connecting moment, but it happened less and less often. And at the center of my drinking now swirled the bloated body of John. I kept thinking about his drinking, where that had led him. Uncle George said he couldn’t recognize him. The body was purple, swollen up. He could only recognize him through his teeth. Aunt Pattie had started seeing him in grocery stores. She said that he was speaking to her through the birds.

The drinks I took led me into a kind of hell. All the charming phrases and flirty behavior diminished. More often than not I ended up ignored.

One night the beautiful white Congregational Church stared down at me from the top of the green. Strict prim traditional Yankee New England was all around me. I went to a fraternity party at Chi Psi, and I could barely stand. The men in the fraternity were muscular and beautiful in their polo shirts. The place had an animal stench of sweat mixed with sweet colognes, and K was in the library reading Horace. I smoked a cigarette with a gesture more Bette Davis than Gary Merrill, lingering too long in my leering look at one of the men. The young fraternity brother had biceps like a cougar’s haunches, his chest was large, and erect nipples could be seen through the tight shirt like nails sticking out from a hunk of wood. I salivated.

‘God damn faggot,’ he said when he caught my look. He came over and punched me in the face. He and his cohort with all their horse-muscle threw me out onto the lawn, and my body lay splayed out much as John’s must have been. The town spun. I couldn’t speak to anyone about what had happened, not even K. Muteness deepened in me as my cheekbone stung from the bruise I woke up to the next day.

Even if I was at the most bohemian liberal college in the world it still could not undo the level of self-hate that mixed in with each neat Scotch I threw back.

*

The one creative writing class I took at Wesleyan was taught by Annie Dillard. She was already an acclaimed nature writer, pregnant for the first time, close to forty, hair dyed Marilyn Monroe blonde. She chain-smoked Merits. I was amazed by this woman. We all were. She’d won the Pulitzer for her Thoreau-like book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She radiated intelligence like an electrical storm. Gave off wisdom like heat. Her wit whipped around that room like a cyclone and we almost had to hold our notebooks down.

Between classes, I slyly went to the Olin Library on campus and found her work in the stacks. I read:

It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time – or even knew selflessness or courage or literature – but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.

She bowled me over. Her verbs! And how she ended that sentence ‘never a less’. The text sparkled in the stacks. The idea, too, of something ‘holy’ whispered to me, although the idea of religion still felt completely remote to me then. Of all the creative writing teachers on the planet, this one landed in front of me like a space probe.

At the time creative writing wasn’t held up as a major in undergraduate programs. Not knowing where to place us, the university gave our class a room in the chemistry department. Perched between Bunsen burners, Dillard sat in front of us like a Greek goddess. We brought in poems like offerings.

More and more I longed to be a writer. How to get there? In those classes a new determination began to stir within me. Where that came from I wasn’t sure. Some kind of self-awareness had sparked. Dillard seemed to believe in me too, although I wasn’t sure what that was based on. All I knew was that I was sitting before a woman who had accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. That was my absolute.

I desperately wanted to communicate something true on paper, something about the way my life swung between buttoned-up repressions and drunken outbursts. I tried valiantly to stay on top of our assignments despite my drinking. Even though the class met in the afternoons I sometimes had trouble getting there, and when I did I smelled as rank as a sticky bar room floor. My favorite assignment, which we did weekly, was to type out the poems of the poets we liked so we could feel the words go through us and onto the paper. I felt that if I kept typing Bishop’s poems some of her brilliance might rub off on me.

Then I read some more of Dillard’s writing. On Christmas break her memoir, American Childhood, came out. The sentences and paragraphs practically burnished. Like Bishop’s Yankee sensibility, the memoir steered clear of anything shameful. Keep your guard up, the book seemed to say. I followed her example, and kept trying to write.

By a miracle I graduated from Wesleyan in 1985. I felt a perfect failure, and the night of my graduation I drank to black out, and remember now only brief glimpses of things: a set of dark green trees, a person pulling me out of a ditch, making out with a man or a woman, I can’t be sure which, pulling the fire alarm in someone’s dormitory, hitting my head on a rock, waking up with a scab and blood caked on my cheek. No, The Bell Jar this was not. No Mademoiselle scholarship. No Fulbright to Cambridge. No poems in the New Yorker. No typing my thesis on Dostoevsky while on the roof of my dorm to improve my tan.

I didn’t know what to do next. I had applied to a graduate program in England to study the poems of George Herbert, but there was a fear in me. How long could I keep bluffing my way through classes? The way I drank I was fortunate if my academic work was mediocre. What good was it to study? Would they ever take me? And why was there still this persistent urge to want to die?

I applied too to the Breadloaf Writers Conference. Dillard encouraged me, and wrote me a letter of recommendation. I was accepted. Before I left Dillard puffed on her cigarette and said: ‘Spencer, if you want to write, and I hope you will, study something else.’ This last zen koan of hers seeded in me the confidence that would keep me writing, wherever I went.

*

When I arrived at Breadloaf I was struck by a woman standing in the lobby – blonde, tall, young, smart – a Piero della Francesca angel, attentive, listening, glittering with a golden aura, coming with some bright news. Maybe because most of the people were older, or because of the somewhat mischievous glint in her eye, I found her irresistible. I immediately introduced myself. She said her name was Katherine Buechner: quickly, I learned she was the daughter of Frederick Buechner, a theologian and writer of religious books I’d heard of rather than read. We were fast friends.

She was twenty-seven, and contemplating being a minister. A woman considering being a minister in those days was novel and brave. I admired her for it. I wondered for the first time about ministry, about what that word exactly meant. She told me Howard Nemerov, who was her instructor there, had called her ‘another one of those smart-ass Bennington girls.’ Her head titled back as she said this, in a kind of, well, Yankee way – deprecatory and convivial at once. I tried to mimic the gesture.

Most of Breadloaf I spent with Katherine. We became inseparable, together through the barn dances and evenings in the old rockers rolling in the twilight breeze and the cocktail hours and conversations with casual references to where Robert Frost did this or that, where Carson McCullers had sat, what Anne Sexton had done. Through it all Katherine was not drinking. This struck me. As did the way she never said much about it. She just did not do it.

One night I got separated from her, as drinkers often separate themselves out from sober people. I got so drunk that I woke up at a desk where I seemed to be writing a poem, only to find I was not in my room but a stranger’s. I don’t remember if it was a man or a woman. I don’t remember what they said. I had to be escorted back to my room – or did I stumble there myself? When I got up the next morning I was horrified. In the long breakfast room at a long table, my eyes all puffed up under dark sunglasses, I said to Katherine: ‘Why don’t you drink?’ My headache was intense. My eyes felt like they were being unscrewed from my head. I kept glancing up, worried I would run across someone from the night before.

‘It was a problem for me,’ Katherine said. Her tone was casual.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked. The clock with the painted face and roman numerals clicked behind us. Dust increased on the court cupboard with the inlaid ash and maple wood.

‘Just couldn’t stop once I started,’ she said.

We moved to the lobby. The writers had gone off to workshops and we skipped our appointments to poke and prod poems like lab animals. We sat in two tattered armchairs where hundreds of other writers must have sat, the butterscotch upholstery molted onto the small of our backs. I thought of what Bishop had said about her drinking: it ‘had to stop’ followed by her hopeful statement, ‘It can be done.’ Aspiring writers passed us, talking about workshops and agents.

‘Now I go to meetings,’ Katherine told me. It all seemed so simple. Tall spruce darkened in the distance, hayfields deepened to orange, speckled with little bits of brown. Fresh mountain water sluiced through the dolomite and granite rocks. Fall was coming, things were rolling up, things were being put away, vegetables canned, hay bales picked up.

‘You really don’t drink anymore? And it’s okay?’ I asked. I was thinking of my parents drinking every night in their living room, how the drinks mounted and mounted and I watched, mute. How necessary it all seemed. Then I pushed that thought away.

She smiled at me with mysterious welcome. I wasn’t ready to stop drinking, but her example held me. Some bright news on that Vermont mountaintop had been declared, and I had noted it.

*

Later that year I was living in a thirty-three-story high-rise in Minneapolis. My parents were nearby, and I was visiting them regularly, despite my sexuality remaining awkwardly off topic. They emptied countless wine glasses and spoke about the Republican party with droning tedium. When I visited their living room, bottles would come and go. I drank with them one night: we sounded like we were underwater. We got maudlin, laughed, held our heads up, but I felt some deep portentous and ominous layer of dread. Would this be how my life would go? My brother disappeared from the room.

He had told me he had begun to measure our parents’ intake by marking the bottles with his pencil, because he didn’t believe what they said they were drinking measured up with what they were actually drinking. My father’s words slurred one or two drinks in. Five or six drinks in my mother was yelling.

‘You’re chicken shit!’ she’d say to my father. Her hair was frosted and she’d put on weight. What had happened to their enthusiasm? What had happened to the woman I knew who laughed like a hyena in her leather pantsuits and turquoise jewelry? I missed her. What happened to their joy in singing along with the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show? Still, they always trundled off to bed together, waking up to work and busy themselves and read and then repeat – the same evening all over again. My mother never laughed in a carefree manner anymore. My father looked defeated. I kept what I saw to myself and tried to unsee it. This erasure of former affability happened fast. I didn’t want to connect it with what was happening to me. Meanwhile, they paid my rent.

Miraculously (and that is the right word), I was accepted for the MA on Herbert at the University of York – Herbert was one of Bishop’s favorites: I love imagining her getting up from her chair and dancing to samba records in Brazil, maybe a little tipsy, while in her purse were her lipsticks, cigarettes, a fifth of Gin, and her marked-up paperback of Herbert. It was a brand new MA, so I figured the professors must have mercifully overlooked my spotty college academic records, the grades that looked like a fever chart. It was another chance.

In the year before I went to England I tried out various jobs. Each one ended a week later: I would call in sick, unable to return, my whole body aching. I’d smell like garbage left out too long in a hot kitchen. I soured with Scotch and beer sweat. I was a telephone answerer, a stage manager, a substitute teacher, a volunteer with the mentally handicapped.

My apartment was on the top floor. The elevator, the carpeted hall, the freshly painted walls, the modern windows – all this was lost on me. I drank alone every night. I woke up to weird, unexplainable bruises. I canceled appointments. I threw bottles down the long garbage shoot before the evening’s drinking began as a way to stop myself from drinking too much. I wandered out to the liquor stores and replaced what I’d thrown out. I staggered through the streets.

In modern Minneapolis, with all its clean sidewalks and cool glass buildings, there was a gay bar called the Saloon on Hennepin Avenue. Neon lassoes decorated the walls and the walls were constructed like stables. I would stumble in late at night, once the drinking had started. The songs of Annie Lennox and Boy George and Bronski Beat played through the darkness, ‘Karma Chameleon’ and ‘Missionary Man’ and ‘Smalltown Boy’. I danced by myself. I hoped to connect with a man. I swerved. The men made space around me. The alcohol altered me, made me presentable, or so I thought. I did incredible dance moves, more seizure than Baryshnikov. I claimed I was alive and available. Cry boy cry. Then I fell down. I wet my pants. I vomited in a sort of burp that became a liquid the consistency of pudding. I wiped it away with my hand. The bouncers would help me up, and out. I lurched. I careened home alone.

My revulsion with myself accelerated. I ignored the mirror in the bathroom of the apartment. When I looked into it Lowell’s quote about the ‘fairy decorator’ haunted me. Shame ate me. If anyone commented on the possibility of my being gay I flipped into a rabid attack, or sunk into a glum stupor that would last for hours. Sometimes the only way I could navigate socially was to stop speaking to people that questioned me.

I called Katherine. I didn’t know what else to do. My soiled clothes were in the washing machine, my head throbbed. I was ready to try anything. I asked her about AA.

‘What do they do at those meetings?’

‘Talk,’ Katherine said.

She made it sound easy. Why then was sobriety so elusive to me? I was frightened of going. Bishop had been exposed to AA, but it never took. What if it didn’t take for me? Then what?

But Katherine encouraged me. I decided, after some time, that I would try. I dressed up, wore a pocket square in my sports jacket – an attempt to pass as affluently cozy and secure. I looked out the apartment window from thirty-three floors up, thinking of all the days blurred with hangovers, sending half-finished bottles whistling down the metallic garbage shoot. Cool, white stone, the Basilica of St Mary’s sat on the Minneapolis cityscape like a sundial. I needed repair.

The meeting was in a skyscraper downtown called the Piper Jaffrey building, sixty or so floors of sparkling blue glass. In a boardroom, at lunch hour, I found a group of alcoholics. A woman named Mary appeared. Who was she? A housewife? A businesswoman? I can’t recall now. She walked into the meeting as I was sitting down with coffee in a Styrofoam cup. She came to my side and said, ‘Glad to have you here.’ Her touch was genuine, soft, unlike what I had grown used to in bars. I raised my hand when they asked if there were any newcomers.

Another man, a stockbroker with red suspenders, turned to me. ‘Here, you might need this.’ He handed me a big blue book, a manual about the size of Bishop’s Complete Poems. On the wall was a large placard made of a shiny material like those maps they rolled down in geography class in high school. The paper crinkled and cracked. Twelve steps were outlined in boldface. God mentioned more than a few times. This did not repel me immediately. My associations with religion were fairly calming: my prep school, although Episcopal, had more Jews in it than Episcopalians, but I had never minded the prayers. My agnostic parents had always encouraged me to investigate. I wondered if this might be a cult. But if the embarrassment would stop, I was willing. My eyes darted. I questioned.

AA was a kind of family, people related through suffering and joy, and I was adopted immediately. People asked for my phone number and took it down. No one had done that in a while. When I could look at people I caught a glint of something close to pure glee mixed with a non-judgmental love. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen such a look. They wanted me. When was the last time someone wanted me?

Church before church, a glimpse of heaven, I stood in AA with my cup of coffee – jobless, jittery, handkerchiefed. In that AA huddle, I thought again of my cousin John. His face surfaced in the fluorescence of that first meeting, as I contemplated stopping, actually stopping. I heard his voice. I saw his bloated corpse floating down the river. I heard the plash and retreat of the men after they’d finished killing him.

A Bishop poem came to me. ‘Little Exercise.’

Now the storm goes away again in a series

Of small, badly lit battle-scenes,

Each in ‘another part of the field.’

Think of someone sleeping in the bottom of a rowboat

Tied to a mangrove root or the pile of a bridge;

Think of him as uninjured, barely disturbed.

I wanted to imagine John in that boat, barely disturbed. But it was impossible. He was dead. Now I, inexplicably, was in the boat. Saved, somehow, for the moment.

*

I was managing to stay sober. I stopped smoking. The air grew clearer. I began waking each morning without headaches, and I could now remember what had happened the night before. Embarrassment left me. There was a hint with my AA members, who were indeed a diverse lot – ex-cons, librarians, cops, secretaries, every color and sexual persuasion – that the awfulness of drinking was going to be replaced by cheerfulness. My world was expanding, moving out from the fixed world of books. My fingers were now ‘pollinated’ with coffee grinds, and often I had medallions for lengths of sobriety in my palms. Maybe my self-loathing would dissipate too. But sober or not, I was indelibly gay. That desire rooted in my groin, heart and cortex. That still shamed me.

I began wondering about Bishop’s apparent ease with the sexuality she kept off stage. She said to Lowell once, ‘I never met a woman I couldn’t make.’ Maybe it was her orphan status that allowed her to so easily live out her desire. Maybe the drink gave her confidence. It hadn’t helped me that way. Bishop always said how shy she was, but apparently she wasn’t when it came to sex. I, too, was shy. And without the booze, at least for the moment, I became shier. Without my drinks, sex, there in Minneapolis, with AIDS coming onto the scene, vexed me. How on earth could I approach it without first blacking out? With me, blackouts did not lead to sex, it led to passing out, to vomit. I’d been a dirty, ignored celibate who pissed on himself, and was attended to only by police.

I felt there, in AA, in land-locked Minneapolis, I was in an incomprehensible sea. The waves of voices, the coffee cups like buoy bells, the strange mystery of it. What would my life be like now that I did not have the ability to immerse myself in drink? I hoped AA might save me. And if I couldn’t make a go of AA, I felt then that I would need to take myself out of life once and for. Why sexuality continued to confound me I did not know. I did not know either why sobriety suddenly started burning in me there in Minneapolis. I still don’t know. I might never know.

*

Bishop died in 1979 from a cerebral aneurysm. Her young lover, Alice Methfessel, discovered her in her Lewis Wharf apartment in Boston’s North End when she went to pick her up for a dinner party. Alice was 36, Elizabeth 68. The last poem Bishop published in the New Yorker came posthumously. It was entitled ‘Sonnet’:

        Caught – the bubble

in the spirit-level,

a creature divided;

and the compass needle

wobbling and wavering,

undecided.

Freed – the broken

thermometer’s mercury

running away;

and the rainbow-bird

from the narrow bevel

of the empty mirror,

flying wherever

it feels like, gay!

I read the poem again there in my apartment in Minneapolis as I gathered my belongings, preparing to leave for England. The poem surprised me, and surprise I’ve come to see is the reaction I treasure most in poetry.

That narrow poem on a broken thermometer extended its hand to me, welcomed me, just as Katherine had at Breadloaf, as the AA members had in the skyscraper. She ended on that word, ‘gay’ with a ‘rainbow-bird’ above it. The prominence of the word ‘gay’ was finally creeping into the margins of the world. As I readied my steamer trunk and the Minneapolis skyscrapers glittered in the afternoon, San Francisco had adopted the rainbow flag for the gay community.

The sonnet had only two sentences, and each began with a past participle rather than a subject, emphasizing two actions, caught and freed, the way a bird can be, and the way any gay person can be, caught by society’s admonishing rules, but freed by the knowledge that they can be loved as they are. To be authentic then, a gay person had to break convention the way Bishop broke the sonnet.

I was beginning to feel my way to freedom. I placed Bishop’s poems gently into the steamer trunk. I tapped the cover the way one might tap the shoulder of an old friend. How on earth had she managed to balance her drinking with writing such lasting poems? What will, what despair, what exertion did she have to keep at bay to do what she did? The AA meetings had given me a way out of my daily embarrassment, of being a drunk, and maybe, just maybe, there would be more to life for me. Bishop’s poetry gave me something that I hadn’t found before. A space to breathe. A stance – the art moving through her, rather than about her – that would give me space to live and figure my way into a sexual life where I could claim to be ‘what it was I was’, the way I was starting to claim my sobriety.

This essay is an extract from a longer work, The Little Entrance: Devotions, an autobiography that contrapuntally is infused with the lives and poems of seven poets.

(https://granta.com/why-should-you-be-one-too/)

Article on Katherine Buechner Arthaud: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2017/11/06/listen-way-god-listens#

Older Spencer Reece interview I was revisiting: https://blackbird.vcu.edu/v4n2/features/reece_s_040506/reece_s_text.htm

[gadgetgirl71]

Top Ten Tuesday 15 September 2020

Welcome to this weeks Top Ten Tuesday. Originally created by The Broke & The Bookish, which is now hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. Each week it features a book or literary themed category. This weeks prompt is:

Cover Freebie:

(choose your own topic, centred on book covers or cover art)

So I have chosen to list my favourite MC (Motorcycle Club) Covers.

Baker (The Devil’s Disciples MC #1) by Scott Hildreth

ANDY: I got a job next door to a tattooed biker named Baker. He was an outlaw, a criminal, a biker, a bad boy, and a thief. I should have run as far and fast as I could. Instead, on the day we met, I let him have his way with me. I couldn’t help myself. His intensity and swagger lured me, but it was the crazy sex that kept me coming back, day after day.

His sordid ways scared me, but I simply couldn’t stay away…

BAKER: When she moved in next door, I knew I was in trouble. She was sexy. She was irresistible. She had spunk. She was also the manager of a bank my MC robbed six months prior. She didn’t recognize me, because we wore masks during the robbery. If she ever found out who I really was, there would be hell to pay.

It would be nothing like the hell I’d be living in if my MC found out I was fucking her.

We’d issued an order to kill her on sight. She was off-limits if anyone ever was.

So far, the men in the MC hadn’t seen her. But, I couldn’t keep her hidden forever.

Beyond Reckless (Lost kings MC #8) by Autumn Jones Lake

Marcel “Teller” Whelan, Treasurer of the Lost Kings MC, has always been two things—honest and responsible. At ten years old, he was already taking care of his baby sister. At eighteen, he patched into the Lost Kings MC and took a major role in shaping the club’s future. Three years ago, he thought he’d met the perfect woman, only to have her reject everything he is—a Lost King. One bullet is a lifetime supply. Now, after an accident that left a girl dead and Teller almost crippled, he’s struggling through the darkest time in his life. His niece, sister, and Lost Kings MC family are the only things holding him together, but his reckless actions are bound to drive everyone away. Then, in the most unlikely place, he crosses paths with her again. The woman he once thought might be his perfect match. Love soothes our inner demons. Sparks fly for both of them. She’s the ride-or-die woman he needs, able to calm his many demons and bring the light back into his life. But she has a secret—one that forces him to lie to his brothers. In chaos we trust. When Teller’s brothers find out who he’s falling in love with, it will create a storm of chaos for the Lost Kings MC. But if there’s one thing Teller’s turbulent life has taught him, it’s that sometimes love is worth the chaos. Beyond Reckless is the 8th book in the popular Lost Kings MC series, but can be read as a standalone.

Big (Satan’ Fury MC #6) by L Wilder

How much would you risk to save the one you love? From NYT and USA Today Bestselling Author L. Wilder comes book six in the Satan’s Fury Series, a standalone MC romance.

Big: I don’t use a knife or a gun to get the guy I’m after. I find that my weapon of choice has a much longer, more crippling effect. With just a few keystrokes, I can have him scrambling for his life. I’ll take everything he’s ever worked for, everything he’s ever loved, and I’ll destroy it. That’s what I do.

My brothers don’t ask questions. They don’t want to know what I do behind the closed door. They know I bring results, and that’s all that matters. It’s my job to protect the club, and nothing is going to stand in my way–not even Josie Carmichael.

The girl with the tantalizing curves and emerald green eyes is an unexpected threat, but a threat nonetheless. It’s my job to take her down, but there’s just one hitch. I can’t get the smart-mouthed beauty out of my head. She’s trouble. The kind of trouble that would turn my whole world upside down, but I don’t give a damn. I want her.

Josie Carmichael will be mine, even if that means I’ve got to break her first.

Big is book six of the Satan’s Fury MC series. This book is a full-length standalone novel that’s intended for mature audiences due to the explicit language and violence. Reader discretion is advised.

Bull (Kings of Mayhem MC #6) by Penny Dee

She could be the end of me BULL: I lost my wife on a rainy night almost two decades ago. Since then, my heart has been a barren wasteland. It only knows love for family and the club. And for revenge. Then I meet Taylor and I know I’m doomed. Because she’s everything I didn’t know I wanted. Everything I’ve denied myself for years. But my club is about to storm headfirst into a war and I can’t afford the distraction. Yet I can’t get her out of my head. We both say we’re not interested. But we are both liars. TAYLOR: For years we’ve been running from my past. My kid brother and me. Hiding in the shadows. Now we have a chance for a new life in a new town … far, far away from trouble. I crave freedom and a quiet, simple life for us both. The last thing I expect is to fall for the enigmatic biker king, Michael “Bull” Western. He is magnificent. White-hot and scorching. With the touch of an angel and eyes of the devil. He could be the love of my life. But I have a secret. A very big secret indeed … Bull is book six in the Kings of Mayhem MC series. For mature readers 18+.

Claiming Mine (Unforgiven Riders MC #1) by Amy Davies

Sex, secrets and motorbikes.

When Ana starts working in a small but quaint café, after running from her old life, she never expects to be surrounded by sexy as sin men… Little does she realise they belong to the local motorcycle club. She’s had more than enough of controlling alphas in her life, but can she keep away from them?

Ace is the Sergeant-at-Arms of the Unforgiven Riders and yet another controlling alpha. He sees Ana’s reluctance to him, but Ace always gets his own way, and he wants Ana. Will Ace be able to prove his feelings for her and break down the walls of protection Ana has built around her heart? Can she let him in?

When secrets of Ana’s past are revealed and her life is threatened, it’s Ace’s job to save her. But will he be too late? Will Ace still want her when he finds out about her past?

Compass (Valiant MC #1) by Mary B Moore

Piper: When Hunter left, he cut me out of his life with no explanation. I sent him letters, but each time they were returned back to me. I had no choice but to raise my son alone and move on with life. I love being a mother, but every day I miss the other half of my soul.

Hunter: Four years ago, I joined the Marines. What I did for my country changed me. I saw my buddies, men that I’d fought alongside return home and set up their lives. Seeing them settling down, I took a risk and returned home to the woman that I’d left behind.

War changes a man. A majority of our military come home scarred inside and struggle to return to the civilian world. Learning from my friends in Piersville, I’ve established an MC called Valiant. Our training and military contacts will help assist the government with tackling the ongoing issues of human, drug, and arms trafficking along North and South America. Those responsible are like the mythical Hydra – cut off one head and two replace it.

I’m willing to fight that war, but more importantly, I’m going to fight the battle to get Piper back and become a father to my son.

Link’d Up (Dead Presidents MC #1) by Harley Stone

President Tyler “Link” Lincoln of the Dead Presidents MC, runs a club dedicated to helping military vets readjust to society. When his sergeant at arms is arrested for the attempted murder of a prominent Seattle figure, Link’s search for a lawyer brave enough to fight for justice leads him to an alluring defence attorney with a bleeding heart and a steel backbone.

This isn’t the first time Emily Stafford’s commitment to defending the falsely accused has put her in harm’s way. Smart, cautious, and independent, she knows how to defend herself. At least, she did until she joined forces with one sexy, overbearing, tattooed MC president.

Flames run hot as Link and Emily seek shelter in the club’s converted fire station, working against the clock to uncover the truth and save a somewhat innocent man.

18+ for language and sexual situations…

Primal Howl (Primal Howlers MC #1) by Piper Davenport

Orion: I’m the oldest son of MC royalty. My father founded the Primal Howlers and he expects me to wear his patch one day. The problem is, I don’t know if that’s what I want. Lately, I couldn’t give two sh*ts about anything.

Until her.

Raquel: I moved to Monument, Colorado to write my thesis and get some much-needed distance from my overbearing family. What I didn’t expect was to find is myself hung up on a biker who appears to have nothing to lose.

I, however, have everything to lose and I’m worried Orion just might be my downfall.

Stitch (Satan’s Fury MC #2) by L Wilder

From New York Times and USA Today Best Selling author L Wilder

Stitch: As the club Enforcer, Stitch is the man chosen to protect the club. There are no limits to his brutality, no lines drawn in the sand. The club is his life, and he’ll do whatever it takes to keep his brothers safe.

He’s a man who keeps to himself, guarding the walls that he secured so long ago. Then, one moment, one chance meeting, changes everything.

Wren: Life for Wren and her son, Wyatt, isn’t exactly easy. Yet, Wren faces each day with determination and courage. Wyatt is her joy and motivation; for him, she will find a way to make their lives better, even when obstacles are continually thrown in her path. The last thing she needs is another complication, but what is life without complications?

Stitch appears when they need him the most, protecting them when no one else can. Wren can’t understand it. She should feel threatened by his bulging muscles and menacing tattoos, but she’s somehow able to see past the mysterious biker to the man inside. She is drawn to him for reasons she can’t even begin to comprehend. All she knows is that her body craves his touch.

Can Stitch let his guard down and allow these two strangers into his heart? Can Wren see beyond the scars of her past long enough to let him in, or will her fear drive him away?

** This book is intended for readers 18 years or older due to bad language, violence, and explicit sex scenes.

Stitch is a standalone romance, but you may also be interested in reading Maverick: Satan’s Fury MC #1.

The Diary of Bink Cummings Vol #2 by Bink Cummings

Note: Must Read The Diary of Bink Cummings Vol 1, previously.

When changing life’s course you never consider what twisted curve-ball fate might dump in your lap. Growing up in the MC, then gaining my own personal independence was not only a curse, it was a blessing. So when I decided to say fu*k my past and embraced my future, away from the only place I called home, I tried to re-invent myself, by becoming the woman I am today. Until one day, fate reared its ugly head, forcing me to return to the place I ran from. The place where I had no choice but to face HIM. And hide the biggest secret of my life as I wallowed in silent fear, of the insurmountable repercussions it would evoke when anyone found out the truth.

Steamy Adult romance Warning: Contains Mature scenarios, and mass quantities of profanity. For Ages 18+

-This is not a Standalone.

I’m sure that some of the men on these covers are the same person! What do you think?

*** This majority of these books are intended for readers 18 years or older due to bad language, violence, and explicit sex scenes. ***

Until next Tuesday

#BikerErotica, #BikerRomance, #Bikers, #JustForFun, #MC, #MC-Erotica, #MCRomance, #Top Ten Tuesday, #TopTenTuesday, #TTT

[hoeratius]

'We find her, we tell her to stop all this, she lies low until people have forgotten about her. We continue as we always have.’

'That’s your plan?' I ask. 'Andy, this isn’t like when I died. She’s an international celebrity. If she disappears…’

‘I smuggled you out of an army base,’ Andy says with a shrug. ‘Two bodyguards are nothing.’

Prompt: the newest immortal is an annoying celebrity and especially Andy is DONE with them.

[imagineclaireandjamie]

Flood my Mornings: Service

Notes from Mod Bonnie:

This story takes place in an AU in which Jamie travels through the stones two years after Culloden and finds Claire and his child in 1950 Boston.

See all past installments via Bonnie’s Master List

Previous installment:  Thanks (Thanksgiving and Bree’s Birthday)

Late November, 1950

[CEBF]

“Bath time, little smudge!”

Bree squealed and, like a shot, went barreling toward the bathroom. Turning two years old seemed to have turned on a tap of perpetual energy from on high: energy to throw tantrums, energy to hate going to bed, energy to form VERY strong opinions about what she did and did not plan to eat, and so on, and so forth for all time. 

However, she had also decided she loved baths, and by the time I arrived at the tub myself, she was already standing on the bathmat, triumphantly nude and brimming with expectation with her toys in hand. I laughed and kissed the top of her head. “One minute, you goofy girl.” 

I poked my head briefly into the living room. “Do you want bath duty or bedtime duty tonight?”

“I’ll take bed, if it’s all the same to you, Sassenach,” Jamie said, looking up from the rolltop. “I’d like to get the rest of the bills paid and ready for tomorrow’s Post.”

“Fine by me,“ I said, taking the chance to stretch my back, already thinking of plopping into bed as soon as humanly possible. “Thank you for handling those, sweetheart.”

“’Course,” he said with feeling, rising and kissing my forehead. “How are ye feeling?” 

“Pretty well, at the moment,” I said, pleasantly surprised, now that I thought about it. “Like death, this morning, but I haven’t vomited once since lunch!” 

“Victory, indeed,” he grinned, kissing me, long and sweetly. 

“MaMAAAA?” bellowed Bree, her voice bouncing ghoulishly around the bathroom walls. “Come’on do insee’pyder, please!”

“I’m being summoned,” I murmured against his lips. 

“Go,” he whispered. “Heaven forbid ‘insee’pyder’ have to wait.” 

“Oh,” I called when I was halfway back down the corridor, “I think the electric bill came today. It’s on the counter by the phone with the rest of today’s mail.”

“Thank you, mo ghraidh,” he called back. 

Tub filled, baby inserted, bubbles abundant, I knelt beside the tub and swirled my hands in the warm water. Bree beamed up at me, ready: “GO! Insee’pyder, Mama!”

“Alright,” I said dramatically, reaching for the green plastic sandbox bucket and scooping up water as I sang: “Theeeeeeee ITS-Y-bit-sy spiiiiiider went UP the water spout ….”

I raised the bucket theatrically. “Down came the raaaaaain AND—”

The payload released on, “WASHED the spider out,” dousing Bree with warm, soapy water. 

Fizzy giggles emerged through the waterfall pouring down her scrunched-up face as I sang on. “Out came the suuuun and dried up all the rain, and the ITS-Y-bit-sy spiiiiider went UP the spout—?”

“—AGAIN!!!” Bree finished, knowing the drill and LOVING it.

We had just finished washing the shampoo-spider from her hair and ANOTHER rendition was demanded, when Jamie’s voice came from the doorway. “Sassenach?” 

“Yes, darling?” I said absently, reaching for the bar of soap Bree had just knocked into the water. 

“What is the ‘selective service?’”

My blood froze absolutely cold. I whirled on my knees to gape at him, praying that it was a newspaper clipping in his hand, or one of his library books, or—

But it was a letter bearing the words ‘Department of Defense’ across the top. The truth was written on his face, the tightness of his voice, the rigid set of his jaw. “Tis the forced conscription for the war in the east, aye?”

“Jamie—” I staggered to my feet, praying in blind panic. Please, God, no. “Jamie—Please tell me—you haven’t been—?”

“To Mr. James Fraser,” he read, 

“According to our records, you have not yet registered with the Selective Service, as is required of all permanent residents of the United States. 

Please report no later than December 15th, 1950 to the enlistment station named below for registration, or risk revocation of your residency status with the Department of Immigration. 

Sincerely…”

Jamie trailed off, his face a mask of control I hadn’t seen in many years. The sight terrified me to my core—his face of duty, of danger, of great burdens to be borne.  

My hands were shaking as I reached for the letter, as I scanned it wildly for some salvation. “But you’re—you’re not even a citizen! They can’t just force you to go off and fight in their wars!”

“Apparently they can,” he said stiffly. “’All permanent residents,’ it says.”

“Jesus…” There was no way out. “Jesus—fucking—”

“FUN-KING!” Bree squeaked from the tub, sounding immensely pleased. Normally, that would have incited riotous laughter, then stern admonishment and promises between Jamie and I to guard our words more carefully. But we barely noticed. 

My blood pounded so loudly in my ears I could barely hear myself blurting, "We could go to Canada." 

He cocked his head in question. “They dinna fight wars there?”

I gave a jerking shrug. “They don’t usually start them, at least.”

“That’s the coward’s way,” he whispered, his face still stone. “I canna just run.”

“And why not?” I demanded, my voice treacherously close to both tears and shouting.

“Why can I no’ take the coward’s way?” The mask wavered, showing his scorn. “Christ, Claire, do ye no’ ken me at all?” 

“And do YOU not know me?” I shouted. “Do you not have the faintest idea what it DID to me to—” It took only the cracking of my voice for the panic to overtake me completely in wracking sobs as my hands went feral. “ —to let you go to your death? For a cause you—shouldn’t even have been dragged into in the first place?? I w—” I choked. I was mere inches from his face, but I could barely see him through the tears. I wrenched a breath from my throat. “—WON’T, do it—again—do you—hear m—?”

Jamie suddenly snatched me hard against him, his voice a cracked moan of despair through his own sobs. “I know, mo chridhe...I know....”

I buried my face in his chest, and could only croak, “Jamie—”

He tried to say something, but couldn’t get a word out. 

We clung to one another with every ounce of strength, swaying and weeping for a long time, until —

“I’m scairt of this, Sassenach.” 

His breath was hot and gasping in my hair. “God, I—dinna want any part of it.... The thought of leaving ye....the—” He let out a sob, and I could feel his tears against my temple, the resonance of his words in my chest. “—Christ, the bairns—” 

He buried his face in my shoulder. “I’m so scairt, Claire.”

“What’s you scairt, Daddy?”

We turned to see Bree standing in the tub, still naked as you please, looking up, stricken.

With a small sound that broke my heart, Jamie released me and crossed to the tub. He lifted his daughter up into his arms and pressed her against his chest, not seeming to notice that his shirt was instantly soaked.

“Daddy? What’s you scairt?” she repeated. 

I had to clamp my hand over my mouth. He clutched her tighter, rocking her, focusing his entire being on love of her. 

“Use-r words, Daddy.” 

Despite everything, he choked out a laugh at that. 

“I’m scairt,” he answered hoarsely after a moment, “of having to leave you and Mama, a chuisle.”  

“Oh…” 

I came and wrapped my arms around them both, trying so very hard not to slip into panic. This—this was my home, these three people I held—That it might be ripped from—

“Dinna leave though’kay?” Bree demanded, glaring sternly at him. “Okayyyy, Daddy?”

“Okay?” I seconded in a feeble whisper.

He let out another weak, broken laugh and leaned down to kiss us both. I could feel his chest shuddering with the sobs he was suppressing. 

The words were in Gaelic, breathtakingly quiet, and he repeated them over and over.

 "I won’t...I won't.”

When he drew back a long, long time later, his eyes were dry. “Now,” he said, kissing Bree and wrapping a towel around her shivering back, “let’s get ye ready for bed, wee cub. Which storybook shall we have, tonight?”

[JF]

Jamie resolved never to let Claire or Brianna see his fear of this ever again. 

“I’ll go tomorrow to register my name,” he said firmly to Claire as he held her in their bed that night, “but it willna come to anything, Sassenach.” There are millions of folk they’ll call up before me.” 

“You don’t — ” 

“Dinna fash, mo nighean donn,” he crooned, kissing and soothing away her fears. “I’m staying right here—We’ll no’ be parted—I’m right here—”

But he lay awake far into the night and most nights to follow, praying with all his soul.

Please, God….

Please….

Dinna take me from them.

Please….

Please…..

[more to come]

From the prompts: 

@dlouise2016​ said: This may not be appropriate for FMM but in response to your request for Jamie “firsts” & since he is only about 27-28, there was a military draft going on at the time for the Cold War & the Korean War. Since Jamie was certainly a warrior, he must have some strong feelings about war & Claire definitely would with her WWII experience  

@chechzooo suggested: Staying out of the draft

[hauntedfalcon]

tog fic prompt: anything with an outsider pov

The man in the blazer and turtleneck walks up to Sophie's counter and says, "I'd like to speak to your manager."

Sophie, still bent over an inventory list that has way too many red lines struck through it, says, "I would love to make that happen for you, sir, but she's not answering her phone today."

He nods like he was expecting this. "She wasn't here last evening...?"

"No," Sophie laughs bitterly. "That was also me."

"Ah. Then I'd like to talk to you, if you have a moment."

It's clear from his soft spoken demeanor that this is not about a defective air fryer, and from his lack of visible identification that he's not press or police. A secret shopper, maybe, or someone from corporate. Whatever he needs is probably beyond Sophie's ability to grant, but that's on goddamn Janine for staying home this morning.

In any case, it's a conversation they can't have on the sales floor. The shortest route to the break room is through the crockery aisle, which is roped off. Sophie steps over the barrier and leads him past where the heavy-dutiest carpet cleaning solution they sell has had no effect on the bloodstain.

"None of your people were injured?" the man checks.

Your people. He makes it sound like he's one general talking to another. She's going to start thinking of her coworkers as her people from now on. Especially Kelsey and Mitch, since they were also on shift to witness some kind of... assassin grudge match Killing Eve shit. She can't help but feel like they bonded. "Everybody's fine," she says, unlocking the break room for him.

The man sets a pocketbook on the table, and unbuttons his blazer as he sits. Sophie tosses the inventory list down and drops into her seat with a sigh. The man asks, "Do you have a total on the damages?"

"So far, seventy-five grand in merchandise. But the insurance people haven't come out to look at the building yet."

"Right. And the fire started due to..."

"A jar of goose fat." At his stare, she adds, "Ignited with a crème brûlée torch."

The man's genteel masque slips an inch and he pinches the bridge of his nose. "Was this before or after the window was broken?"

"After. One of them got me and my coworkers out that way once the fire started spreading."

"Which one, out of curiosity?"

"Tall-ish? Curly hair, nice eyes. He was the one who left that bloodstain." Too much blood, in Sophie's un-medical opinion, for someone to get back up and immediately corral three people through a broken window.

The man nods. "And you don't have security on staff."

Only loss prevention, and only on high-traffic days. "Sir, this is a Williams-Sonoma."

Composing himself, the man opens his pocketbook and starts writing with a pen that looks somehow both expensive and completely unremarkable. "Right," he says, tearing out a check and handing it to her. "That should be at least what insurance will estimate."

The check is made out to corporate, issued from Copal Restoration. Sophie reads what's in the dollars field, and coughs.

"Now, miss," the man continues, starting on a fresh check, "I'd like you to think of a number that would be sufficient compensation for never mentioning this incident to anyone else again. Press or civilian, in person, or otherwise. Reddit, Twitter, what have you. And that number should take into account any therapy treatments to process the trauma of this experience, even if you don't believe you'll need it at this time."

It certainly wasn't an ordinary closing shift, and she did take a while to fall asleep last night, but she hasn't started looking for a shrink. If anything, she's still impressed that one of the women--the cute one with the bomber jacket--threw a meat cleaver so hard it lodged in the display of Dutch ovens.

"Am I supposed to sign an NDA?" Sophie sneers.

"I'm the only one signing here," he says with a reassuring fake smile.

"Okay," Sophie says slowly. And then she says a number. Worst case scenario, the check will bounce.

He does not bat an eyelash. He writes the number down, and leaves the "Pay to the order of" field blank, and he hands her the check. "How many of your coworkers were in the store last night?"

Sophie can't seem to find her voice, so she holds up two fingers. He writes two more blank checks and hands them to her. "Miss, thank you very much for your time, and please accept my sincerest apologies on behalf of my people. I can promise you it will not happen again. Not as long as I'm around, anyway."

Sophie only nods as he puts his pocketbook away and walks out.

come by the store, she texts Kelsey and Mitch when her hands stop shaking.

fuck no, Kelsey (rightly) says.

I don't want you to clock in. someone dropped something off for you guys and you should come get it right now. before the banks close

brt, Mitch says.

hey, Sophie adds after a moment's consideration, do you guys want to go to that new axe-throwing bar tonight?

[hauntedfalcon]

nile & joe + "fire"

The others keep promising her she'll get used to sleeping out under the stars. It hasn't happened yet.

The fire is low, but every now and then it still sends sparks up to cross the dome of stars like meteorites in reverse. It's too many stars, without any light pollution to drown them out, and this is not a night when Nile wants a reminder of her smallness.

The last thing she needs is to feel like she's going to be spun off the surface of the earth into that void.

All she hears is the pop of the fire, Andy and Nicky's steady breath, and the creek of pines in the cold breeze.

Joe has the first watch tonight. He tilts his head when Nile gets up and gathers her sleeping bag around her, but he doesn't look back, so the fire won't leave an afterimage on his vision. Nile walks the quiet way she's learned, over the last couple years, to move silently over rough ground even in her heaviest boots.

She hesitates a moment behind Joe. He nods, so Nile sits down with her back against his, and gathers her sleeping bag up over her chest. She watches the orange logs break down. "Do you ever forget?" she asks. She feels him shift just a little. "What century it is, I mean."

He makes a hmm sound she feels on the other side of his ribs. "The less we bring with us, the closer it feels to the old days. You don't need as much as you think to survive."

She's got a sleeping bag rated for twenty below zero, a weatherproof jacket, combat boots, a high-capacity rucksack with all kinds of molle attachments plus a water bladder, a pair of stun batons, a Ka-Bar, a Glock, a windproof lighter, a portable water filter, and a burner phone.

She could walk out of camp alone and without any of it, and walk out of the woods alive later, though it wouldn't be pleasant.

There was a time when fire was the only key to humanity's survival. Where there was fire, there was civilization. At the root of everything, maybe that's still true. They've made things awful complicated though.

The warmth of the fire and the warmth of him at her back are finally settling her restlessness. Breathing in time with him helps--gravity feels a little extra heavy now. As one of the logs dissolves in golden sparks, Nile lets her eyes slip closed.

"Wake me up when it's my turn," she says.

"I will," he promises.

[hauntedfalcon]

fic prompt: in the future (couple hundred years or more) Nile and Quynh (lets presume that she rejoins the team in the next movie) go to find a new immortal

"Did you dream of it, when Andy came to find me?"

Quỳnh, in the midst of the lander's pre-flight checklist, cracks a smile. "We will not be shooting anyone in the head today," she says.

"No we won't," Nile sighs. They have time to be gentle to the new one, in delivering them to this life. Things aren't quiet by any means, which is why Joe and Nicky and Booker are staying with the ship. But no one is actively hunting them down for the moment.

And Nile and Quỳnh are not Andy. They both have plenty to grieve, but they don't carry it alone out of some misplaced responsibility to protect the others.

"When she found me," Quỳnh starts. She's quiet for the countdown to uncoupling, then she tries again as the lander detaches. "When we found Yusuf and Nicolò, we had dreamed of them for years. It was like coming home. There was so much they had already accepted and worked through together. I'm sure they struggled more than I saw, but they made it look easy."

"And when she found you?" Nile says, because long ago, Quỳnh made Nile promise that she would help her face these things.

Quỳnh is silent until gravity takes hold of the lander. "I did not make anything easy for her."

Nile laughs aloud.

There are more people scattered across the solar system than there are left on Earth now, but the new one didn't die on a colony or a station. Maybe it's Earth itself that grants them this gift. Maybe their feet must be planted on the soil or the sand in order to rise again.

From the flashes in their dreams and some cross-referencing with their Terran contact, they determined that the new one is in the NT Underground. Their first death was excruciating, crushed under stone in a collapsed tunnel. And then they got right back up and kept fighting. Every time she dreams, Nile feels their fear, their confusion, their loneliness, and the force of their will.

She checks their trajectory on the screen, then cranes her neck to look out the tiny window. "It's so weird to be back here. There's more ocean than I remember."

"Yes," Quỳnh says in a faraway voice.

They put down outside Alice Springs and start making their inquiries. The locals don't warm to outsiders, and there is no one more outside than the two of them--but Quỳnh has a way of winning the trust of dangerous and frightened people.

That evening they are escorted through limestone chambers to a dim and smokey room, where a figure is surrounded by... well, the first word that comes to Nile's mind, based on body language alone, is disciples. All the other people here are oriented toward the new one, waiting for whatever they'll say next.

A freedom fighter who can't die would look an awful lot like a savior.

But whoever they were before, they were not a leader, and they haven’t had the time Nile has to grow into the role. They shrink from the deference their associates show them now. "Can you give us the room?" they ask with an attempt at authority. The others slip away quietly.

When it's just the three of them, Nile sits on the edge of a supply crate and says, "My name is Nile. This is Quỳnh. How should we call you?"

"Gotjan, for now." Their chin stays jutted, lips tight. Gotjan is plump, and richly brown as the earth, with a head of loose curls faded by sun at the ends. Maybe a handful of years older than Nile was at her first death.

"Pronouns?" Quỳnh prompts.

"She. You?"

"Same," Nile says.

"Whatever works," Quỳnh says.

For an instant it looks like Gotjan might smile, but she steels herself again. "Why have you come here?"

"To meet you," Nile says as Quỳnh takes a handheld cutter from her bag. "The dreams are how we find each other."

The cutter sparks. Quỳnh sears a line across her palm without a whimper, and holds it up as it heals.

Gotjan's eyes go wide. "Who's we?" she breathes.

"You, me, Quỳnh, and those three men you've been dreaming of, back on our ship. They're waiting for you to join us."

"Six," Gotjan says. "There are six of us?" She lets out an incredulous laugh. "Do you know what we could accomplish with six of us?"

Nile hears that we for what it is: the Underground. She knows perfectly well what six of them can accomplish.

Gently she says, "We aren't running missions on Earth, for the time being. It got a little too hot for us." They need to wait out a few overhauls of physical media, until all the records of what they did in Vancouver forty years ago pass out of memory. "But there are a lot of ways to help a cause."

"From space?" Gotjan takes a step back. "No. I'm not leaving. I lost everything--those bastards took everything from me, and I finally have a chance to do something about it."

This is something Nile expected from the conviction she felt in the dreams, though it's novel to her. When Nile was new, she had only begun to realize how much she didn't believe in what she had fought for.

She says, "Have you ever killed anyone?"

Gotjan swallows. Yeah, that's what Nile thought.

"We're not here to force you to do anything," she soothes. "If you want us to go without you, we will, and Joe and Nicky and Booker will keep dreaming of you. We'll know if you're in trouble and we'll always come back. But before you make that decision, you need to think about whether staying will do the Underground any good. If you're captured, they can kill you and kill you, and your mind will crack eventually, and that's when they'll get secrets out of you that will lead to the deaths of people you love."

She can see from the shadow that passes across Gotjan's eyes and the way she slants her face away from them that she is thinking about it.

But before Gotjan can answer, Quỳnh says, "No."

Nile gives her a vexed look, which she ignores. She always picks the most inconvenient fucking times to go off script.

"No," Quỳnh says again, "we won't leave you behind. None of us should ever be alone. If you stay, we will stay and fight beside you to whatever end. If you run from us, we will follow. You can hate us for it, but we won't be moved."

Her voice is a thread reaching back thousands of years. It raises the hairs on Nile's arms. Gotjan stares at her with a fire in her eyes. It isn't gentle, but maybe in this moment, in her solitude, it's what she needs to hear.

Quỳnh says, "You don't yet know the depth of what you have gained. Come with us and we will show you."

Nile waits for the cavern to stop ringing from Quỳnh's fervor. Then she clears her throat. "We also have an ungodly amount of money to fund the Underground in your absence."

All the way up out of the gravity well, Gotjan has questions. They do their best to answer them.

Nile watches her face when the lander pivots to reattach to the ship, and Earth is visible once more through the window. There is an ache in Gotjan's dark eyes. It's the barest she's allowed herself to be in their presence.

"I never planned to leave," she whispers. "I know the work is better up here, but... that's our land."

"That is a connection you will always have," Quỳnh promises her.

A freedom fighter who can't die and who leaves to live in the sky will, in another century or so, look an awful lot like a folk hero.

"How long are you staying off Earth?"

Nile says, "Two, maybe three more generations."

"Generations," Gotjan echoes. "What are you, twenty?"

The Freeman babyface strikes again. "I'm four hundred and twelve," Nile says lightly. "Next Thursday."

"The fuck," Gotjan says, turning to stare at her. "When do you stop keeping track?"

"About five centuries ago," Quỳnh supplies.

Gotjan lifts her head to look at Quỳnh, but she doesn't ask the logical next question. Not yet, anyway.

The Andromache's docking clamps embrace the lander. Nile leads the way through her beloved corridors, moving slower than usual so Gotjan can get used to the magnetic boots.

Nile hears them while she's still outside the galley, cursing in Italian and French, with a frantic he didn't mean it for spice.

She stops at the door and glances at Quỳnh, on the other side of Gotjan. The oldest, and the newest. Quỳnh gives her a tiny, prized smile.

"Gentlemen," Nile says as the door slides open, and a trio of anything but gentlemen straighten up from a pantomime brawl as dinner bubbles in the cooker. Some things never change.

And some things do. Nile says, "This is Gotjan."

[hauntedfalcon]

Nicky and Nile and faith (or music, or both?)

It's not exactly a cathedral.

Nile has been in her share of those, on six continents now. Also mosques and synagogues and meeting houses and temples. Anywhere God resides, because she spends enough time in places where He doesn't.

After a while, she realized what she was after wasn't the grandeur of His presence. It was the familiar comfort of aunties who knew her from when she was in diapers, threadbare cushions on the pews, and songs she could sing in her sleep.

She has that still, every time she goes home. She's probably never going to spend enough time in any other place to recapture that feeling, and that's all right. When she was a child she understood as a child.

Her God does exist; she needs no architecture to contain Him. No sermons or homilies to explain Him.

But observing a ritual on a Sunday... she expects she will always have time for that.

The sun plays hide and seek through the trunks of pine and spruce and the occasional beech tree. It's a cool, clear morning, the start of a beautiful day. As they cross a stream, Nicky reaches back to offer his hand, and Nile takes it. The stepping stones are wet and mossy.

They haven't had breakfast, or even coffee--they want to come to this hungry.

They climb up a ridge and find a small outcropping with a view that feels right. The trees thin out here on the western slope, and Nile recognizes rowan with new buds on their branches.

Down in the valley there are still shreds of fog. A fox springs up from tall grass to ambush a vole. At the far edge of the field a little cottage, no bigger than the safehouse they left behind an hour ago, sends up puffs of smoke from its chimney.

This time next week, she will look down on a different landscape.

Nile sits cross-legged on the rock shelf and gets water from her pack. After a swig, they both begin to arrange their offerings. "Easter's coming up," she says.

"Mm," Nicky agrees. "Will you go home?"

"Maybe." She usually does. Her families have met, but when Nile spends holidays in Chicago, she makes that trip on her own.

But on Good Friday, she will have been immortal for exactly eleven years. The number of years, increasingly, doesn't mean anything. The dates do. She wants to be near them all this Easter.

She says, "You want to come with?"

He glances at her. Nile doesn't look away.

"You know I'm not one much for church," says Nicky, who has gone with her every time she tried someplace new, and quietly understood every time it wasn't what she was looking for.

"Only because you haven't been to mine," Nile answers sweetly.

Instead of answering, Nicky turns his attention to splitting the host into quarters. Nile won't press; he'll give it real thought before he decides.

She wouldn't recognize what faith looked like to him a thousand years ago. And he has rejected much of it in the centuries since, for influencing men like him to do harm. That left him with having a heart that's known and motives that are weighed.

It was only after years together that they sorted through the things they agreed on and figured something out that covers the most important pieces for both of them. Something that bridges then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice, and this is my body which is given up for you.

But she's pretty sure he'd like her church's emphasis on it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. That, and the music.

Nicky puts a segment of the host in her hand, baked that morning of equal parts flour and water. He pours sweet red wine into a cup and takes his serving first: his due, of course, for blessing it.

Nile trades him one earbud for the cup, and after she finishes her portion, she starts the song she selected. They sit until it's done, and a while after, until the sun is high and it's time to go home.

For a little while, it is well with her soul.

[hauntedfalcon]

For prompts? Quynh and Nile: bonding?

“Five hundred years, huh?” Nile says. “That’s a lot to catch up on.”

Nursing her hot chocolate, Quỳnh says, “I’m familiar with Wikipedia.”

God, she’s frosty. Nile doesn’t begrudge her, of course. She’s been through more than anyone ever should. It’s just too easy to feel like she has no common ground with this woman--they have to build it all themselves, one flagstone at a time, and Quỳnh isn’t always enthusiastic about that labor. She always holds back a little, to protect herself.

They’ve got time, though.

Team movie night seems like a good start. It will be just the two of them tonight. They rolled in first to get the safehouse ready; the others took different routes and will arrive over the next twelve hours.

Quỳnh didn’t argue when Andy sent her with Nile. She didn’t say anything at all, or indicate that she had feelings on the matter. Now she’s on the sofa with a quilt wrapped tight around her like a shield. Nile will not get an arm slung casually around her the way Andy does, won’t be pulled close to lean on a chest or shoulder like Joe and Nicky do. She hadn’t noticed how much she’s come to rely on that contact after a job, until now that she has to spend time with someone who does not volunteer it.

“Sure,” Nile says, putting her feet (in her fuzziest socks) up on the coffee table. She pulls up their media server on the flat screen TV. “But I bet Wikipedia hasn’t introduced you to Octavia Spencer.”

Quỳnh squints suspiciously at the preview screen and synopsis. “This isn’t… historical.”

“Nope,” Nile agrees. It isn’t lighthearted, either. Introducing Quỳnh only to the rosiest cultural advances of the last five centuries feels somehow disingenuous. There is something to be said for cathartic tragedy, stories about sacrifice, fairy tales of blood and bullets, grit without gratuitousness. Nile presses play.

She can’t say when it happens, but at some point in the next two hours and six minutes, Quỳnh notices her shivering and extends one corner of the quilt to Nile. That’s something at least.

As the credits roll, Quỳnh takes a deep breath in and says, “How would you like to help me destroy the billionaire class?”

Nile is still choked up over Tanya’s death scene and that last shot that stretches on and on into a hope-filled future, but she musters a laugh. Like she doesn’t already have a head start on destroying the billionaire class. “Baby steps, okay?”

Quỳnh smiles sweetly at her. Nile smiles back.

Another flagstone settles into place.

[hauntedfalcon]

TOG prompts are open! anon is on. fills will be short and sweet and I’ll start on them this evening. you all know what I write and what I don’t write *fingerguns*

[hauntedfalcon]

collected prompt fills are now on AO3!