#also oh my god Roz my girl look at you becoming a part of the island

[bobertbilliams]

They grow up so fast 🌱

[thepointoftheneedle]

Fragment

I’m really enjoying the fragments (and I freaked myself out with that word count thing so I’m taking some time off from writing....note to self -NEVER look at the stats page.). Anyway I keep trying to write this little soulmate thing but, without me intending it, it always becomes an academic paper on the philosophy of colour perception.  And I can’t imagine anybody but me is interested in that!

Below the cut anyway....(I guess this should have been for Friday but what the heck...)

His eyes fluttered open as he awakened but, feeling the warmth of the sleeping girl by his side, he closed them tightly.  He wanted them to have this experience together.  Nothing would ever be the same for them again.  It was a special moment for a couple and he wanted it to be perfect.  He had installed the app on his phone so he fumbled for it, knocking some loose papers from the nightstand and cursing gently.  She mumbled and stirred so he put his hand over her eyes.  “What the hell J?  What’re you doing?”  

“I’m opening up ‘Soul Truth.’  We can look together.”

“Oh J, no, don’t do that,” she moaned softly, beseechingly.

“Ssh, don’t worry.  It’ll be great.”  He kissed her gently, voice-activated the app and removed his hand from her eyes.  She was looking at him, not the screen so he gently turned her head and looked down as she did.  The screen was a uniform blue.  His stomach lurched.  It must be a glitch.  “Wait, wait a second,” he muttered, clicking the app closed and reopening it.  Solid blue.  He looked at her and saw the sadness in her beautiful dark eyes.  Sadness but not surprise.  

She reached out a hand and stroked his cheek softly, “Hey, I’m sorry J.  I didn’t want to disappoint you but I already knew.  I just didn’t feel it last night.”

“Jeez Rox, I’m so sorry.  I can do better, you just have to tell me what I did wrong.  I know I can be what you want. I thought you’d…I thought I felt you...”

“I did, Jughead, of course I did.  Listen.  It was great.  You were great.  So tender and kind.  It was beautiful and I really had a good time but it wasn’t…I don’t know.  It wasn’t whatever soul mates have.  You’ve heard Fangs talk about it.  It’s next level.  Transcendent.  What we had was great sex, but it was just great sex.  No angelic chorus.  You had to feel that?” She was normally tough and streetwise but now her voice was gentle, trying not to hurt him.  There was a painful lump in his throat.

“I thought it was transcendent, you were anyway. I think I’m falling in love with you Roxie.”  His voice was quavering.  He was ashamed of his weakness.  “It has to be a mistake. It’s the app.  It has to be.”  Abruptly he was up and heading down the hallway before she could say another word.  “Fangs, “ he yelled.  “You in there?” He stood waiting, shivering, in his boxers, while disgruntled groaning emanated from the room, until eventually the door opened a crack and Fangs peered out at him.

“Jones, the building better be on fire.  We didn’t get in til four.  What time is it?”

“Just after eight.  Look, is this broken?”

Fangs looked at the proffered screen blearily then a small smile appeared on his face.  “Aww cute bunny.”  Jughead snatched the screen back and swiped up.  An image appeared in his visible spectrum of a cartoon bunny rabbit holding out a carrot.  The legend underneath read “I wuv you.” 

“Uggh, why don’t they have something with a bit of gravitas?  Shit.  Fuck it!”  Jug turned around just as Fangs understood the situation.  

“Oh my god Jughead!  Did you and Rosaline finally do the do? Oh shit…you can’t see that can you? Oh Christ man, I’m so sorry.” 

Jug swallowed down his disappointment, just like he had been swallowing down his anger and sorrow and guilt and sadness for most of his life and shrugged at Fangs.  “No biggie.  Apparently I’m destined to die alone.  Whatever.”  He stalked off back to his own room only to find Roxie already getting dressed. “Roz, shit, can’t we talk about this?  Don’t go. Maybe it’ll happen later, perhaps it’s not always instant?”

Her voice was low and mournful when she spoke. “J I really care about you, you’re my good friend, but we’re both searching for something that we’re never going to be able to give each other. Let’s just take some time apart.  Maybe in a few months we’ll be able to go back to being pals again.  I’m really sorry that you’re disappointed.”  With that she was gone in a whisk of magenta hair and Cabotine perfume.

He sat on his bed and stared into space.  He’d been so sure.  She was a dear friend, she understood him, laughing at the same things, enjoying the same movies.  There was never any stress or conflict with her.  It was easy. She indulged his bad moods and cajoled him out of sulks with food and silly jokes.  He knew enough to leave her well alone when she was getting into one of her rages.  Then gradually, as they worked together on the documentary project, he found himself wanting to touch her hair, wanting to hold her tiny body against his in a protective embrace, wanting to make her feel good with his touches.  She’d seemed uncertain but he’d persevered, wooed her really.  Then finally, excited and giddy after the showcase where their documentary project had taken first place she’d kissed him and whispered, “Do you want to go back to your place?”  He’d been so happy as they’d crunched back to his apartment through the first snow of the winter.  He’d wondered if it might happen when they finished the film.  While sex tended to be the main way that a soul bond was revealed, a lot of soul mates actually bonded on completion of some other kind of shared project.  It hadn’t happened then but he’d been so sure that, if they made love, it would click and the missing shade would be revealed to them.  And then it hadn’t happened.

The app was pretty new.  Before the advent of the smart phone, folks would have a painting or a poster in their homes.  To those who were not matched it would look like an ordinary scene but once a soul bond was formed, the missing colour in the spectrum was revealed, and the soul mates could read the message in the image.  It was a little like a magic eye poster.  You looked at it for a moment or two and then the missing colour reconciled itself into words or an image.  Originally they had some gnomic inspirational quotation.   The one in the trailer he grew up in had, his mom said, had the Rolling Stone’s lyric, “You can't always get what you want but if you try sometime you find you get what you need.” Ironically FP and Gladys had been neither what the other wanted nor what they needed.  Later it would turn out that FP had lied when he stood in front of that poster and told the innocent, love-struck young girl, wrapped in the sheet from his bed, that he saw it  for the first time too. Actually he’d already bonded with someone else, someone who had no intention of getting tied up with a guy in a gang from the wrong side of the tracks.  He must have thought it was his lucky day, a second chance for happiness, when the beautiful girl he’d been romancing excitedly admitted that she could see the colour for the first time.  He’d nodded enthusiastically, said, “Yeah, me too,” and whisked her away to a world of damp trailers, drunken arguments and angry guys repossessing their truck, or the tv, or the kids’ toys.  She’d stayed because she believed he was her soul mate.  She thought she had no other options until, in a drunken rage, he’d revealed that it had always been a lie. She snatched up her daughter and left him.  And left the boy too, unwilling to take a kid who looked so much like the man she had been fool enough to trust and who had ruined her life with his lies.

The fact that scumbags with no moral scruples lied about this shit had led to the development of checking apps like Soul Truth, “the truth, the soul truth and nothing but the truth” according to the tag line.  You both looked at the screen and noted down what you saw, then swiped up and the image was revealed in ordinary unbonded colours.  It made it harder for predators and perverts to take advantage of young innocents while their good sense was overwhelmed by romantic dreams.  It also revealed that about ten percent of bonds were unreciprocated like Jughead’s parents, one of the couple bonded and the other didn’t.  Those couples had to decide if they would make that work, aware that one was more invested than the other, or if it was better to simply part, the bonded still feeling that desperate pull to their mate even decades later. Jug guessed he should be relieved that he hadn’t seen the colour that morning since, clearly, Roz was just not that into him.

He’d been sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the rug like that for thirty minutes when Fangs tapped softly on the door.  “Not now,” he snapped but Fangs ignored him and pushed open the door.

“Ok Jug.  I know you’re upset but it just means you haven’t found her yet.  She’s still out there and if you go into one of your epic sulks you’ve got less chance of meeting her.  What classes have you got today?”

“Nothing I can’t cancel.  Everyone’s cramming for Finals.  I was supposed to meet the princess to go over the final layout for the literary magazine.  She can do it on her own.  She’ll like that better anyway.” 

Now Kevin joined his boyfriend in the room, both of them making him feel self indulgent and guilty with their solicitousness.  “You shouldn’t shut yourself away and mope, Jughead.  Go and edit like a champ and then come by the theatre for us and we’ll go for burgers. We’re striking the set but we can take a break.  Our treat.  What do you say?”

Jughead pondered for a moment.  Nothing was going to change if he sat here, the princess would  be unbearable if he blew her off, and burgers on someone else’s tab were his favourite kind of burgers, so he grudgingly allowed himself to be persuaded.  

An hour later he was in the midst of a heated argument with the princess about his perfectly legitimate decision to kill a terrible poem about the fall which she, inexplicably, had marked for an already overcrowded page four.  “You can’t just take things out without consultation Forsythe.  We’re an editorial committee, we make decisions together.  It’s supposed to be a collaboration.”

“What, you want to keep this pile of third grade horseshit do you? And you’re just calling me that to make me mad. Don’t think I don’t know.”

“I didn’t say that.  It’s terrible.  It obviously has to go.  But you can’t just do it unilaterally. And you can’t call me Princess and not expect me to retaliate.  You know my name.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake Princess... sorry, my humblest apologies, for fuck’s sake Betty.  What the hell are we arguing about if we both think it’s bad and needs to go? And why is it even in here in the first place?”

“It’s in there because we were waiting on your egregiously late piece of sub Lovecraftian geek porn.  I was filling space.  Since you finally got your ass in gear we don’t need it anymore. So spike it.”  She had this way of making him feel like he lost, even when he won an argument.  It was infuriating.

They worked on pagination for another couple of hours with surprisingly little conflict, and then he wrote kickers for a few of the longer submissions, hoping to tempt the reader to give a story a chance.  She made sure the submissions were correctly attributed and that the running heads and page numbers and folios were in place.  Finally it seemed that they were done.  He clicked back to the front page, checked the position of the artwork and the masthead and looked over at her with a questioning expression to see if she was satisfied. She nodded her approval and, at last, under the words “Joint Editors”, he typed "Betty Cooper & Jughead Jones.”    As he clicked ‘save’ something shifted in his field of vision.  He was alarmed, pushing back from the desk and looking around, meeting her startled eyes.  Her green eyes, which weren’t green anymore.  He couldn’t describe what colour they were, there were no words.

“What just happened?” she whispered, obviously badly frightened.  

“Does…does anything look different to you?” he replied, hesitantly, reaching for his phone.

“Yes, everything.  What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure. Look at this.” He pulled up the app.  On the screen he could see, without difficulty, a cartoon cat, Pusheen maybe, its paws deep in some dough.  The caption read “I knead you.” As he read the words in his head, she said them aloud. “Fuuuuck,” he murmured.  “I think we’re soulmates, Princess.”

[lookingglasstheatre]

1. What are you listening to right now? “Kill V. Maim” by Grimes

2. What song makes you sad? I have a whole playlist called “I Used to Know You, But Now We’re Strangers” composed entirely of songs that remind me of exes or old friends I’m not longer in contact with..

“Gimme Danger” by The Stooges is a big one, along with “Everlong” by The Foo Fighters, which both remind me of very specific relationships. But, my pick for this is “Farther” by Third Eye Blind.. it could apply to a lot of different people..

“And I think about you dying years from now never having known who you are […] All I think about is waiting and all the people we are fading into Farther from you every day..” - “Farther” Third Eye Blind

3. What is the most annoying song in the world? Songs aren’t usually annoying to me unless they’re overplayed. I don’t know, no song is annoying me at the moment. Maybe that song “We Are Young” by fun. I’m not even sure it’s annoying, I just hate it.

4. Your all time favorite band? The Birthday Massacre, probably. That would be the most unique pick. Or Elliott Smith, if that counts.

5. Your newly discovered band is? The Regrettes. It’s amazing to me that Lydia Night is like 16 years old. I hope those kids keep killing it. Good luck to them.

6. Best female voice? Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star has an amazing voice. I wish I sounded even a little bit like her.

7. Best male voice? So, I don’t think he’s the best.. but holy shit, Ville Valo from HIM has a sexy voice. It’s so sexy as to almost make you forget how cheesy HIM lyrics are. Almost.

8. Music type you find yourself listening to most? Pop music, probably.. and shitty punk rock, lol.

9. What do you listen to, to hype you up? Depends on what I’m getting hyped up for. “Bubblegum Bitch” by Marina and The Diamonds for going out and looking pretty. All of Enema of the Sate by Blink-182 for energy in the morning. Kanye for working out. Aesthetic Perfection when I’m about to hit up a goth club, hah.

10. What do you listen to when you want to calm down? Belle and Sebastian, Slowdive, Radiohead, Lana Del Rey

11. Last gig/concert you went to? My friend’s band, Sleepsnack.

12. Band you find yourself listening to the most right now? My taste shifts once the weather gets warm so; Blink-182, Fountains of Wayne, Sufer Blood, Wavves, Third Eye Blind, My Chem’s Danger Days record.

13. Most hated band? I don’t listen to music I hate unless it’s inflicted upon me by other people against my will. So I’m not good with naming bands I don’t like. As far as bands I hate for personal or political reasons.. I hate ANY band that harasses or condones the harassment of women or minorities.

14. Song that makes you think? “Romeo’s Distress” by Christian Death. It’s such a great fucking track, but I want to believe that it’s anti-white supremacist, instead of the other way around… I have read the lyrics over and over trying to figure out if Roz Williams was actually just racist. I want to believe it was written mostly for the shock value and ultimately a song just telling a story and issuing a kind of warning.. but who knows for sure.. [sigh]

15. Band that you think the world should love as much as you do? I’m always kind of surprised more people I meet aren’t more familiar with Sneaker Pimps or IAMX’s early records. Chris Corner is kind of a hero of mine.

16. Coolest music video? Marilyn Manson’s “The Beautiful People” and the video for Death Cab for Cutie’s “Title and Registration.” “All I Full of Love” by Bjork. There are probably a bunch more I’m forgetting. All Grimes music videos.

17. Music video with the most watch? This question is phrased weirdly. But if you’re asking what music video I’ve watched the most… Malice Mizer’s “Illuminati.” Definitely. LOL. Along with Velvet Eden’s “SAD MASK.” Oh god, KALM flailing around in awful CG fire is what I LIVE for.

18. What do you play/would you play in the bedroom to spice things up? Souvlaki by Slowdive. With candles lit, after smoking together.

19. Ever been in a mosh pit? No. I would die. Look at the fucking size of me. I am a delicate doll.

20. Are you in a band? Nope. Someone start an all-girl Ramones and/or Blink-182 cover band with me.

21. Ever dated a musician? “Dated” would be kind of a strong word for it, but I had an ongoing casual thing with a guitarist in a band.

22. Do you wish yourself that you were a musician? Yes, but only because I wish I were any good at playing one of the myriad of instruments I’ve tried to learn. I wouldn’t want to be famous though.

23. Best all chick band you know of? Sleater-Kinney.

24. Last song that you heard on the radio/cd…etc…? I haven’t listened to the radio in a long, long time. I haven’t bought a CD in many years. If you’re counting any kind of physical media, I’m spinning an LP on my turntable right now; it’s Blink-182’s Enema of The State and “Anthem” just finished playing.

32. What do you think of Classical music? Eh, I can understand why some people find it boring. My mother was a classical pianist and I grew up listening to a lot of classical music. I just developed a taste for it after many years, I guess.

33. What do you think of Country music? It reminds me of growing up in Texas. There will always be at least one or two country songs I like - a lot of which reminds me of middle school dances and crying in the bathroom alone because my crush didn’t like me back. And everyone likes at least one Johnny Cash song.

34. What do you think of metal? I like it. I can only take so much screaming, to be honest.. but some bands I really love can be classified as metal.

35. Last BIG band that you saw live? Blink-182.

36. Are you a groupie? Nope.

37. Do you listen to music in foreign languages? I used to listen to a LOT of J-Rock. I also listen to music in Korean, German, Romanian, and French.

38. What famous musician would you like to “spend the night with”!?

Woman; Lauren Mayberry of Chvrches. She’s a great front woman and so, so cute.

Man; I’d say Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, but I feel weird about it because he’s also married to another super-crush of mine; Lindsey from Mindless Self Indulgence… so maybe Elliott Smith when he was still alive. I get a strong impression that he respected women.

39. Worst concert moment? Any time someone drunkenly falls all over me and/or hits me. It always seems to happen. Also when I saw Kaya live with my sister there was a guy trying to hit on her the entire time and I felt really bad that I didn’t exactly notice until we were out of the show.

40. Funny concert moment? When I went to see Marina and The Diamonds there was a guy next to me with his boyfriend and right in front of us was a woman with her teenage son. At some point they lit up a joint and offered some to the mom (who honestly looked kind of square) and she and them got high together. It was pretty amusing watching them chill together.

41. Sad concert moment? I went to see IAMX with a boyfriend, who I loved very much, but he didn’t really know the band. A few rows back, my ex (who I had just recently broken up with) was there with a coworker. I was sad we’d gotten to a point where we couldn’t go together or hang out anymore because we have really similar taste in music and that concert was amazing and I was sad not to be able to hang out with him during it.

42. Best local act you can think of? King Woman is originally from this area, I think.

43. If you were a musical instrument what would you be? Vocalist. I suck at everything else. In a perfect world I’d be the guitarist or keys.

44. Do you listen to the radio? Honestly, no, and I haven’t since grade school, really.

45. Do you watch music TV? I don’t have cable.

46. Do you follow the music charts, like the top 40? I did in grade school, but I haven’t really paid attention to music charts since then.

47. Have you meet any famous musicians? Met Kaya at an autograph session at Anime USA. It was at the peak of my Kaya obsession. He told me I was pretty. It was awesome.

48. Are any of your friends/family/etc. musicians? My mom was a piano teacher. My dad is basically tone deaf, haha.

49. Song that best describes your feelings right now? “I Really Like You” by Carly Rae Jepson.

50. Song that describes your life? The ENTIRE record Froot by Marina And the Diamonds. ESPECIALLY “I’m a Ruin” “Blue” and “Forget” and “Weeds”.. and “Immortal” Yeah, I can’t pick just one song… The whole record. Just listen to the whole thing and you’ll understand me, haha. Which I realize, does not paint me in a very flattering light.. but it’s accurate.

“Gimme love, gimme dreams, gimme a good self esteem” -Blue

“Cause I have lived my life in debt I’ve spent my days in deep regret Yeah, I’ve been living in the red But I wanna forgive and forget” -Forget

“I miss all of my exes They’re the only ones that know me And God knows that sex is A way to feel a bit, a little bit less lonely Yeah, I tried to keep it covered up Yeah, I thought I cut him at the root But now I think my time is up Cause he keeps growing back Like weeds” - Weeds

51. Do you know the names of all the band members that you listen to? Not even remotely. There are some exceptions, but for the most part, no.

52. Does a musician’s physical attractiveness play a part? A part in what? I think it plays a role in how popular they become. As far as it playing a role in how much I like them, I appreciate bands with a strong aesthetic, but it’s hardly necessary. Some of my favorite bands I wouldn’t even be able to recognize if I saw a photo of.

53. What famous musician do you want to marry? I don’t think someone’s musical output is a good way to gauge their marriageability..

54. Favourite movie soundtrack? The Scott Pilgrim vs The World OST.

55. Any musician pet hates? Any time musicians are arrogant enough to insult other musician’s work just for their own credibility. Like, you’re not cool for hating pop music, my dude. >_>

56. What do your parents listen to? My mother listens to mostly classical music, my dad likes James Taylor and Joni Mitchell

57. What are you listening to right NOW? Private Affair by The Virgins. I fucking love this song.

58. Do you wear band etc T-shirts? I hate wearing band t-shirts with a fiery passion of a thousand suns with VERY rare exceptions.

59. What do you think of people who do? I’m usually pretty.. not into those people. Like, hate is a strong word… but I’m really into fashion. Band t-shirts are like a really lazy way of expressing yourself to me. And they’re almost always printed on really boxy, non-soft material. Everyone wants to fight me on this.. I just don’t care for them.

60. What music sub-culture do you feel like you belong to? None? I always dressed too goth to really feel like I belong in the punk scene even though that was primarily what I was listening to in high school. I guess goth, but I don’t get along with or have much in common with most of the generic goths I know and I listen to too much pop for them. Is the indie-synthpop scene a thing..?

61. What song is stuck in your head right now? The theme song to Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

62. Do you sing in the shower? When I was a kid I would drag my giant boom box in the the bathroom with me and listen to it while taking a bath; mostly audiobooks, but sometimes music. I usually didn’t sing along though.

63. If so, what? If not, why not? Not sure? I sing in the car a lot. If music is on and I know the words and I’m alone, I’m singing.

66. How important is your partners taste in music to you? I’m really open about music, so whatever they are into I’ll probably get into as well. If we already share a taste in music we can discover more together, which is really fun. As long as they don’t HATE my music, it’s fine.

67. Hanson moves in next door to you, do you go introduce yourself, or do you arrange to beat them up? I’d probably just update my facebook status like, “Hanson lives next door to me. So, there’s that.” And invite them to my next barbecue.

68. Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll, you dig? Yes, sometimes, and yes.

69. Do you cook to music? Sometimes, I no longer have speakers right next to the kitchen.

70. Do you sing in the toilet? Nah.