#also this old lady told me i looked like a rock star from the 80s and ngl that was the gender euphoria i needed
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What a difference a few days makes~
New glasses on Saturday, new hair on Tuesday 💜☺️
Today was super gloomy and overcast so I'm looking hella dusky on the Tuesday (today) shot, but idk I'm into it lol. The journey to ash blonde is long and arduous but sooo worth it ahh 😩
Bonus silly shirt I bought today that reminded me of a particular goofus
It's a crop top I mean COME ON 😩🥴
#the face of kay#kay's personal#god it feels so good to get all that hair off my freaking face its so hot here 🫠🫠🫠#also this old lady told me i looked like a rock star from the 80s and ngl that was the gender euphoria i needed#and now im pumped to finish Greyson's portrait and get his shit back in working order 😤#it's true what they say- sometimes you just need a good makeover 💜#also the crop top i just laugh every time i look down 🤣 i dont even like puns but idk this one and the Boots with the Fleur one get me
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The best songs of the 1970s
“What started out as a joke has turned into a disaster!” - Stu Nahan, Rocky IV
So my employment has me in my car a lot, which means I’m listening to the radio a lot. If I’m not listening to a podcast or baseball game through my phone I also have SiriusXM, which of course has a plethora of musical options. I gravitate to the 70s and 80s channels because, well, of course I do.
Something else about me you may or may not know is that I love ranking things. I have a Note on my phone I’m regularly accessing that is nothing but different types of rankings.
Thus, you can imagine my excitement when the 70s on 7 station announced a listener-voted Top 700 Songs of the 70s countdown over Labor Day weekend. It was a fun listen. They went through it twice over the four day weekend, and I was laboring much so I heard much.
It prompted me to think: What are my top seventy songs of the 70s? Surely I wasn’t going to come up with a top 700. After all, some in that list were real stinkers. But seventy? No problem. And indeed, it wasn’t hard to come up with that many songs. The hard part was narrowing it down. And once I did, there were still so many songs on my list I had enough for more lists, so I expanded it to 140, then 210, and... well...
I’m about to give you the authoritative list of the 350 best songs of the 1970s. I originally put out a Top 70 list on Facebook a few weeks ago. Much that of that list remains the same, with a few changes. But now there is much more. I’ve divided these into five “volumes” of seventy songs. They are my picks, but I welcome your feedback, because what’s a good set of rankings without debate and discussion.
Vol. 1 (1–70)
Chicago - “25 or 6 to 4”
Billy Joel - “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant”
The Doobie Brothers - “What a Fool Believes”
Queen - “Bohemian Rhapsody”
Boston - “More Than a Feeling”
Elton John & Kiki Dee - “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”
Gerry Rafferty - “Baker Street”
ABBA - “Waterloo”
Don McLean - “American Pie”
The Eagles - “Take It to the Limit”
Fleetwood Mac - “The Chain”
Lynyrd Skynyrd - “Free Bird”
Billy Joel - “Until the Night”
Looking Glass - “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)”
Stevie Wonder - “Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours”
Elton John - “Philadelphia Freedom”
The Bee Gees - “Stayin’ Alive”
The Knack - “My Sharona”
Derek & The Dominos - “Layla”
Chicago - “Just You ’N’ Me”
The Emotions - “Best of My Love”
Jefferson Starship - “Miracles”
Aerosmith - “Dream On”
Joe Cocker - “You Are So Beautiful”
The Who - “Won’t Get Fooled Again”
Carly Simon - “You’re So Vain”
Electric Light Orchestra - “Livin’ Thing”
The Rolling Stones - “Beast of Burden”
Queen - “We Will Rock You / We Are the Champions”
Billy Joel - “My Life”
Journey - “Lights”
Toto - “Hold the Line”
Michael Jackson - “Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough”
Pilot - “Magic”
Bruce Springsteen - “Born to Run”
Led Zeppelin - “Stairway to Heaven”
Styx - “Babe”
Stevie Wonder - “Sir Duke”
Orleans - “Still the One”
Samantha Sang - “Emotion”
Foreigner - “Feels Like the First Time”
ABBA - “Dancing Queen”
The Four Seasons - “December, 1963 (Oh What a Night)”
Marvin Gaye - “Trouble Man”
The Spinners - “Rubberband Man”
Kansas - “Carry On Wayward Son”
The Jackson 5 - “I Want You Back”
Chicago - “If You Leave Me Now”
Bill Withers - “Ain’t No Sunshine”
Earth, Wind, & Fire - “Shining Star”
Olivia Newton-John & John Travolta - “You’re the One That I Want”
Yvonne Ellman - “If I Can’t Have You”
Fleetwood Mac - “Don’t Stop”
Billy Joel - “Just the Way You Are”
The Eagles - “I Can’t Tell You Why”
Free - “All Right Now”
Kenny Rogers - “The Gambler”
The Bee Gees - “Night Fever”
Player - “Baby Come Back”
The Ides of March - “Vehicle”
David Bowie - “Starman”
The Five Stairsteps - “O-O-H Child”
Carole King - “I Feel the Earth Move”
Elton John - “My Father’s Gun”
Jefferson Starship - “Jane”
Stevie Wonder - “Higher Ground”
Electric Light Orchestra - “Mr. Blue Sky”
Seals & Croft - “Summer Breeze”
The Temptations - “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone”
Chicago - “Old Days”
——
Vol. 2 (71–140)
The Who - “Baba O’Riley”
The Eagles - “Hotel California”
Billy Joel - “Prelude/Angry Young Man”
Aerosmith - “Walk This Way”
The Four Seasons - “Who Loves You”
Gerry Rafferty - “Right Down the Line”
Chicago - “Make Me Smile”
The Bee Gees - “Too Much Heaven”
Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band - “Old Time Rock and Roll”
Elton John - “Your Song”
Earth, Wind, & Fire - “September”
Queen - “Somebody to Love”
Paul McCartney & Wings - “Live and Let Die”
The Village People - “Y.M.C.A.”
James Taylor - “Fire and Rain”
Led Zeppelin - “Whole Lotta Love”
The Spinners - “Could It Be I’m Falling in Love”
Three Dog Night - “Joy to the World”
Jim Croce - “I Got a Name”
Billy Joel - “Stiletto”
The Jackson 5 - “ABC”
Styx - “Come Sail Away”
Dobie Gray - “Drift Away”
Ozark Mountain Daredevils - “Jackie Blue”
Stevie Wonder - “I Wish”
Credence Clearwater Revival - “Up Around the Bend”
The Hollies - “Long Cool Woman (In a Black Dress)”
Daryl Hall & John Oates - “Rich Girl”
Elton John - “Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting)”
KISS - “Rock and Roll All Nite”
Fleetwood Mac - “Go Your Own Way”
Carl Douglas - “Kung Fu Fighting”
Steve Miller Band - “Jet Airliner”
Chicago - “Saturday in the Park”
Led Zeppelin - “Immigrant Song”
The Beatles - “Let It Be”
Three Dog Night - “An Old Fashioned Love Song”
Bad Company - “Can’t Get Enough”
Grand Funk Railroad - “We’re an American Band”
The Bee Gees - “More Than a Woman”
The Charlie Daniels Band - “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”
The Doobie Brothers - “Listen to the Music”
Black Sabbath - “Iron Man”
Chic - “Good Times”
Billy Joel - “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)”
Harry Chapin - “Cat’s in the Cradle”
The Bay City Rollers - “Saturday Night”
Elton John - Bennie and the Jets”
K.C. & The Sunshine Band - “That’s the Way (I Like It)”
Lynyrd Skynyrd - “Sweet Home Alabama”
Carole King - “It’s Too Late”
The O’Jays - “Love Train”
Billy Joel - “Piano Man”
Foreigner - “Double Vision”
Chicago - “Feelin’ Stronger Every Day”
Peaches & Herb - “Reunited”
Deep Purple - “Smoke on the Water”
Wild Cherry - “Play That Funky Music”
Marvin Gaye - “I Want You”
Orleans - “Dance With Me”
Earth, Wind, & Fire - “After the Love Has Gone”
Van Halen - “Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love”
Paul McCartney & Wings - “My Love”
Little River Band - “Lonesome Loser”
Stevie Wonder - “Isn’t She Lovely?”
Steely Dan - “Reelin’ in the Years”
Cheap Trick - “Surrender”
The Sugarhill Gang - “Rapper’s Delight”
Maxine Nightingale - “Right Back Where We Started From”
The Who - “Who Are You”
——
Vol. 3 (141–210)
Gloria Gaynor - “I Will Survive”
Led Zeppelin - “Kashmir”
Chicago - “Baby, What a Big Surprise”
Sister Sledge - “We Are Family”
Jackson Browne - “Running on Empty”
Olivia Newton John - “Hopelessly Devoted to You”
Vicki Sue Robinson - “Turn the Beat Around”
Billy Joel - “Big Shot”
Starland Vocal Band - “Afternoon Delight”
Rupert Holmes - “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)”
Queen - “Don’t Stop Me Now”
Andrea True Connection - “More More More”
The Guess Who - “American Woman”
The Doobie Brothers - “Black Water”
Paul McCartney & Wings - “Band on the Run”
Stevie Wonder - “Superstition”
Elton John - “Someone Saved My Life Tonight”
James Taylor - “Your Smiling Face”
The Rolling Stones - “Miss You”
Chicago - “Beginnings”
Bachman-Turner Overdrive - “Let It Ride”
Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band - “We’ve Got Tonight”
Styx - “Lady”
Three Dog Night - “Mama Told Me (Not to Come)”
Journey - “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’”
Foreigner - “Cold As Ice”
10cc - “I’m Not in Love”
Credence Clearwater Revival - “Have You Ever Seen the Rain”
K.C. & The Sunshine Band - “Get Down Tonight”
Billy Joel - “Summer Highland Falls”
The Delfonics - “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)”
Electric Light Orchestra - “Don’t Bring Me Down”
The Bee Gees - “How Deep Is Your Love”
Ike & Tina Turner - “Proud Mary”
Elton John - “Levon”
The Doobie Brothers - “Long Train Runnin’”
Seals & Croft - “Diamond Girl”
Redbone - “Come and Get Your Love”
Kenny Loggins - “This Is It”
Manfred Mann’s Earth Band - “Blinded By the Light”
Roberta Flack - “Killing Me Softly With His Song”
Paul McCartney & Wings - “With a Little Luck”
The Bellamy Brothers - “Let Your Love Flow”
The Carpenters - “Superstar”
Blue Oyster Cult - “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper”
Stevie Wonder - “You Are the Sunshine of My Life”
Eddie Money - “Baby Hold On”
Ted Nugent - “Cat Scratch Fever”
The Eagles - “Best of My Love”
The Four Tops - “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’ve Got)”
Chicago - “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?
Chairmen of the Board - “Give Me Just a Little More Time”
The Cars - “Just What I Needed”
Queen - “You’re My Best Friend”
Thelma Houston - “Don’t Leave Me This Way”
Heart - “Barracuda”
Isaac Hayes - “Theme from Shaft”
Daryl Hall & John Oates - “She’s Gone”
Rod Stewart - “You’re in My Heart (The Final Acclaim)”
Billy Joel - “She’s Got a Way”
The Hues Corporation - “Rock the Boat”
Steve Miller Band - “Fly Like an Eagle”
Thin Lizzy - “Jailbreak”
Supertramp - “Give a Little Bit”
Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes - “If You Don’t Know Me By Now”
America - “Sister Golden Hair”
Pure Prairie League - “Amie”
The Temptations - “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)”
Prince - “I Wanna Be Your Lover”
Van Halen - “Eruption / You Really Got Me”
——
Vol. 4 (211–280)
Led Zeppelin - “When the Levee Breaks”
The Clash - “London Calling”
Chicago - “(I’ve Been) Searchin’ So Long”
KISS - “Detroit Rock City”
Bobby Womack - “Across 110th Street”
Bad Company - “Feel Like Makin’ Love”
Billy Joel - “I’ve Loved These Days”
Jim Croce - “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown”
Aerosmith - “Sweet Emotion”
Ace - “How Long”
James Taylor - “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)”
The Chi-Lites - “Oh Girl”
Frank Mills - “Music Box Dancer”
Amii Stewart - “Knock on Wood”
ABBA - “Take a Chance on Me”
Grand Funk Railroad - “Some Kind of Wonderful”
Elton John - “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”
Fleetwood Mac - “Dreams”
The Sweet - “Fox on the Run”
Herb Alpert - “Rise”
The Eagles - “The Long Run”
K.C. & The Sunshine Band - “Boogie Shoes”
Marvin Gaye - “What’s Going On”
Todd Rundgren - “Hello, It’s Me”
Black Sabbath - “Paranoid”
Paul McCartney - “Maybe I’m Amazed”
The Rolling Stones - “It’s Only Rock and Roll (But I Like It)”
Boston - “Don’t Look Back”
Billy Joel - “Streetlife Serenader”
Journey - “Wheel in the Sky”
Poco - “Crazy Love”
Blondie - “Heart of Glass”
James Gang - “Funk #49”
Kansas - “Dust in the Wind”
Kenny Loggins & Stevie Nicks - “Whenever I Call You ‘Friend’”
Steely Dan - “Do It Again”
Natalie Cole “This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)”
Billy Preston - “Outa-Space”
Boz Skaggs - “Lido Shuffle”
Leo Sayer - “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing”
Alicia Bridges - “I Love the Nightlife (Disco ‘Round)”
10cc - “The Things We Do For Love”
America - “Ventura Highway”
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - “Tears of a Clown”
Donna Summer - “Hot Stuff”
Edgar Winter Group - “Free Ride”
Chicago - “Wishing You Were Here”
The Jackson 5 - “The Love You Save”
Carly Simon - “Nobody Does It Better”
Parliament - “Flashlight”
T. Rex - “Bang a Gong (Get It On)”
Ohio Players - “Love Rollercoaster”
Chuck Mangione - “Feels So Good”
Jackson Browne - “Doctor My Eyes”
The Eagles - “Take It Easy”
The Ramones - “Blitzkrieg Bop”
Seals & Croft - “Get Closer”
Queen - “Killer Queen”
Carol Douglas - “Doctor’s Orders”
Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band - “Her Strut”
Billy Joel - “Vienna”
Average White Band - “Pick Up the Pieces”
James Taylor - “Handy Man”
Thin Lizzy - “The Boys Are Back in Town”
Walter Murphy - “A Fifth of Beethoven”
Three Dog Night - “Shambala”
The Three Degrees - “When Will I See You Again”
Jim Croce - “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim”
The Commodores - “Machine Gun”
Led Zeppelin - “The Song Remains the Same”
——
Vol. 5 (281–350)
Bachman-Turner Overdrive - “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet”
Billy Joel - “Miami 2017 (I’ve Seen The Lights Go Out On Broadway)”
Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band - “Still the Same”
Al Green - “Let’s Stay Together”
ABBA - “S.O.S.”
The Cars - “Let’s Go”
Ted Nugent - “Stranglehold”
Elton John - “Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going To Be A Long Long Time)”
Styx - “Renegade”
Eddie Rabbitt - “Every Which Way But Loose”
Alice Cooper - “No More Mr. Nice Guy”
Daryl Hall & John Oates - “Sara Smile”
Chicago - “Lowdown”
Love Unlimited Orchestra - “Love’s Theme”
Rod Stewart - “Maggie May”
Paul Simon - “Slip, Slidin’ Away”
Robert Palmer - “Bad Case of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor)”
MFSB - “The Sound of Philadelphia”
Ambrosia - “How Much I Feel”
Electric Light Orchestra - “Evil Woman”
Bruce Springsteen - “Thunder Road”
ZZ Top - “La Grange”
Gino Vannelli - “I Just Wanna Stop”
Gilbert O’Sullivan - “Alone Again (Naturally)”
Fleetwood Mac - “Say You Love Me”
The Doobie Brothers - “Rockin’ Down the Highway”
Golden Earring - “Radar Love”
Ram Jam - “Black Betty”
The Eagles - “One of These Nights”
Meco - “Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band”
Billy Joel - “Honesty”
The Bee Gees - “Tragedy”
Queen - “Stone Cold Crazy”
Chic - “Everybody Dance”
Bread - “Everything I Own”
Olivia Newton John - “A Little More Love”
The Trammps - “Disco Inferno”
Neil Sedaka - “Laughter in the Rain”
Marvin Gaye - “Got to Give It Up”
B.J. Thomas - “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”
The Village People - “In the Navy”
King Harvest - “Dancing in the Moonlight”
Ohio Players - “Fire”
Nicolette Larson - “Lotta Love”
Main Ingredient - “Everybody Plays the Fool”
Barry White - “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe”
The Kinks - “Everybody’s A Star”
Michael Jackson - “Ben”
Elton John - “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”
Dionne Warwick & The Spinners - “Then Came You”
Nazareth - “Love Hurts”
Eric Carmen - “All By Myself”
Foreigner - “Hot Blooded”
Bobby Caldwell - “What You Won’t Do For Love”
Foghat - “Slow Ride”
Andy Kim - “Rock Me Gently”
Cheryl Lynn - “Got to Be Real”
Captain & Tennille - “Love Will Keep Us Together”
The Miracles - “Love Machine”
Blondie - “One Way or Another”
Elvin Bishop - “Fooled Around and Fell in Love”
Leo Sayer - “When I Need You”
Little River Band - “Reminiscing”
Hudson Brothers - “So You Are A Star”
Exile - “Kiss You All Over”
Mountain - “Mississippi Queen”
Heat Wave - “Groove Line”
Sugarloaf - “Don’t Call Us (We’ll Call You)”
Hot Butter - “Popcorn”
ABBA - “Mamma Mia”
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yknow how i go on about not having listened to the solo albums? it’s nat day. i listened to nat. liveblog below
-spooooky ghoooooost
-you know technically this is my first & only 100% complete & utter blind tally hall experience + liveblog. everything else has been an album i've already heard or variations thereupon
-alright well this doesn't sound like tally hall
-hi rob
-boy man this is poppy but it sure is rob's voice singing
-"he don't wanna lose" damn is that a tally hall reference????????/ /j
-this ghost sounds pretty damn relatable
-still sounds like something i'd hear on the radio (derogatory (affectionate))
-does this one have a music video? i'll have to get to those eventually won't i
-oooh funky pronoun shenanigans one of my favorite types of shenanigans
-what baby did rob pick up off the street to provide these backing vocals
-white star??? is that a dw reference???? /j it'd be almost relevant by the time this came out
-i don't know anything about imagine dragons but this reminds me of them
-this is an 80's-ass fadeout
-oh so he's namedropping every track here? just planting the words old bike right in the first verse
-wahoo audio channel shenanigans
-oh there's the hum biddy biddys i heard about
-this is distinctly much less like bicycle race (queen) than i was expecting
-then again i mostly know bicycle race (queen) from lemon demon's cover of it so.
-this does indeed sound like the hawaii part ii of rob cantor
-classic acoustic guitar use. minimal percussion
-nevermind there's the drums & rock guitar everything's changed
-now it sounds like some actual tally hall stuff
-whomst
-guest vocals? i should've seen them coming but didn't expect any in this song at least
-oh there's that lyric. i've seen it plenty of times & always had to imagine what it sounded like
-this in fact indeed giving me 1985 vibes
-is that the year rob was born? it'd be near then at least
[following that comment was an exchange between me & june about birthdays. it told me rob’s born in 1983 but ross was born in 1985 so maybe rob made a tribute to his old bandmate. who knose <3]
-those drums. those synths. he's really going for the 80s alright
-i feel like i'm gradually forgetting this is an album by rob cantor, yellow tie of tally hall
-see, hawaii part ii was produced to the point of feeling unfeasible & unintended for live performances. but this album hits a middle ground where it's like, if this were done by anyone other than rob cantor of tally hall, it could be done live, but it's just rob cantor, not of tally hall, making an album himself, so i just know nothing about this would ever be done live. it's an interesting effect
-this album needs more tmbg influence
-this sounds less like going purple than i was expecting, which can apply to both the whole album & this song right here
-i recognize that voice from hawaii part ii
-i think? i need to check the credits
-stephanie? no not her. the lady from black rainbows?
-i'm blanking on her fuckin name it's on the tip of my tongue
-madison?? alison??? no alison hanna is from another song god what is her name
-yeah madi diaz thanks june
-i don't even know if that's actually her that's just who she sounds like
-what's interesting about this song is (just like hawaii part ii) tally hall didn't do duets very much but this actually sounds like one
-i promise i won't do hawaii part ii comparisons the whole way through it's just what comes to mind
-good god madi has some good range those are high fuckin notes
-OH GOD
-this is faster than i was expecting
-wow okay. this is no longer a jh song alright
-sounds like some terraria synths in here. they could actually be in terarria for all i know
-this is the song they've been putting on all these villain playlists?? i couldn't think of a less villainous song if i tried
-oh thank god the tambourine is back i've been starved for it
-i wouldn’t know, i go on even though
-oh this is the one with that really wild music video isn't it. good old acoustic guitar
-i can actually picture this one on a tally hall album. he's being kinda silly with the percussion but the vocals at least. hm
-honestly what intrigues me most is how it's nothing like the asteroid musical pieces + going purple. those are all i knew of rob's solo stuff until now & i'm not picking up on many similarities. oh and the shia labeoufs/christian bale
-damn he's doing the vocal filters again
-i keep thinking i'm hearing zubin somewhere in the background- wait no that's my cat at the door now
-how many shrimps do you have to eat
-alright now this one's just silly. congrats to it for making me laugh
-if that's real whistling in the background there it's just gotta be bora i know this
-if that's real accordion in the background then it's surely also bora
-this sounds damn near like nonsensical spanish- i thought la telanovela was after this? /j
-he just pulled out all the stops for this album. everywhere.
-you know i kinda thought of extreme vibrato/reverb as a joe thing but i'm really hearing a shit ton of it here so maybe it's a rob thing too. or maybe i should listen to jhjh before i make any conclusions
-who. who's this? i absolutely don't recognize this guest singer. not from hawaii part ii presumably then
-if i can say one thing about this album it's that it's absolutely living up to its cover
-so what does this have to do with telanovelas. i watched que hora es in 9th grade spanish i know what they're like /hj
-oh this is the one about that guy who isn't actually dead. epic
-now this sounds more like the solo viral pieces of his
-i'm pretty sure laughter is the intended reaction to have here so good on rob for achieving that- wait it's over?
-oh. guess he was taking more influence from tmbg than i thought
-let your mother know is the song i've heard absolutely nothing from other people about. and now. i suppose i can't blame them
-oh you know what my complaint about this album is? it's very little like lemon demon. too many mundane 2nd person ballads, not enough 3rd or 1st person stuff about absolutely nothing
-also from a musical standpoint he doesn't make things stand out super well. it feels a tab bit sanded down. like there are bits in the vocals & instrumentals that feel like they're meant to be a big change, but there's no notable emotional shift in the tone
-ayyyyy this is the one andrew worked on!
-yeah fuck with the tonality of it mess shit up go ham
-i mean if you're going to include flute in a rock album you've got to make it worth it
-i've not heard that song but i think this is meant to be the spiritual opposite to special by jh
-you know what i want from this song? andrdew vocals. it can do whatever it wants i just want to hear my man sing
-definitely bora's whistling no way it's anything else
-showing off your vocal range there mr cantor?
-oh hey this is the one that makes my friends cry
-i've not listened to songs about girls but this is reminding me of it anyway
-this feels like audio taken from a music video that had sfx added to the original song
-like bro. you can let your lyrics stand for themselves. you don't need to dangle me on a rope from a bridge over a highway
-i mean he might as well end the album this way. he might as well.
-ending thoughts, i guess. rob does what he does well but i think he ought to be doing something slightly different
also look at this yt comment i found on the comprehension amalgamation upload
#in conclusion: i don't really remember any of the songs i just listened to other than perfect because technically#ive already heard the celebrity impressions version. it was better because andrew sang <3 /hj#tally hall#loolin liveblogs#tis i#that comment on the album living up to its cover is me comparing the quality of the songs to a fried chicken wing#not a trampoline#god. now all the tags i've written in hall/comp posts about having not listened to a single solo album will be outdated#oh well i knew it was going to happen eventually#to the world and back again
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QUEER YA READS happy pride month here’s a list of lots of queer YA books!!
- The Henna Wars- Abida Jaigirdar When Nishat comes out to her parents, they say she can be anyone she wants—as long as she isn’t herself. Because Muslim girls aren’t lesbians. Nishat doesn’t want to hide who she is, but she also doesn’t want to lose her relationship with her family. And her life only gets harder once a childhood friend walks back into her life. Flávia is beautiful and charismatic and Nishat falls for her instantly. Amidst sabotage and school stress, their lives get more tangled—but Nishat can’t quite get rid of her crush on Flávia, and realizes there might be more to her than she realized
- Red, White and Royal Blue- Casey Mcquinston First Son Alex Claremont-Diaz is the closest thing to a prince this side of the Atlantic. With his intrepid sister and the Veep’s genius granddaughter, they’re the White House Trio, a beautiful millennial marketing strategy for his mother, President Ellen Claremont. International socialite duties do have downsides—namely, when photos of a confrontation with his longtime nemesis Prince Henry at a royal wedding leak to the tabloids and threaten American/British relations.
- You should see me in a crown- Leah Johnson Liz Lighty has always believed she's too black, too poor, too awkward to shine in her small, rich, prom-obsessed midwestern town. But it's okay -- Liz has a plan that will get her out of Campbell, Indiana, forever: attend the uber-elite Pennington College, play in their world-famous orchestra, and become a doctor.But when the financial aid she was counting on unexpectedly falls through, Liz's plans come crashing down . . . until she's reminded of her school's scholarship for prom king and queen
- Tell me How you Really Feel- Aminah Mae Safi Sana Khan is a cheerleader and a straight A student. She's the classic (somewhat obnoxious) overachiever determined to win.Rachel Recht is a wannabe director who's obsesssed with movies and ready to make her own masterpiece. As she's casting her senior film project, she knows she's found the perfect lead - Sana.There's only one problem. Rachel hates Sana. Rachel was the first girl Sana ever asked out, but Rachel thought it was a cruel prank and has detested Sana ever since.
- Like a love story- Abdi Nazemian It's 1989 in New York City, and for three teens, the world is changing.
- I Wish You All the Best- Mason Deaver At turns heartbreaking and joyous, I Wish You All the Best is both a celebration of life, friendship, and love, and a shining example of hope in the face of adversity.
- The Falling in Love Montage- Ciara Smyth Saoirse doesn’t believe in love at first sight or happy endings. If they were real, her mother would still be able to remember her name and not in a care home with early onset dementia. A condition that Saoirse may one day turn out to have inherited. So she’s not looking for a relationship. She doesn’t see the point in igniting any romantic sparks if she’s bound to burn out. But after a chance encounter at an end-of-term house party, Saoirse is about to break her own rules. For a girl with one blue freckle, an irresistible sense of mischief, and a passion for rom-coms.
- The Fascinators- Andrew Eliopulos Living in a small town where magic is frowned upon, Sam needs his friends James and Delia—and their time together in their school's magic club—to see him through to graduation.But as soon as senior year starts, little cracks in their group begin to show. Sam may or may not be in love with James. Delia is growing more frustrated with their amateur magic club. And James reveals that he got mixed up with some sketchy magickers over the summer, putting a target on all their backs.
- The Dark Tide- Alicia Jaskina The Wicked Deep meets A Curse So Dark and Lonely in this gripping, dark fairy-tale fantasy about two girls who must choose between saving themselves, each other, or their sinking island city
- Summer of Salt – Katrina Leno Georgina Fernweh waits with growing impatience for the tingle of magic in her fingers—magic that has been passed down through every woman in her family. Her twin sister, Mary, already shows an ability to defy gravity. But with their eighteenth birthday looming at the end of this summer, Georgina fears her gift will never come.
- Sawkill Girls- Claire Legrand Marion: the new girl. Awkward and plain, steady and dependable. Weighed down by tragedy and hungry for love she’s sure she’ll never find. Zoey: the pariah. Luckless and lonely, hurting but hiding it. Aching with grief and dreaming of vanished girls. Maybe she’s broken—or maybe everyone else is. Val: the queen bee. Gorgeous and privileged, ruthless and regal. Words like silk and eyes like knives, a heart made of secrets and a mouth full of lies.
- The Priory of the Orange Tree- Samantha Shannon A world divided. A queendom without an heir. An ancient enemy awakens. The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction – but assassins are getting closer to her door. Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic. Across the dark sea, Tané has trained to be a dragonrider since she was a child, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.
- I was Born for this- Alice Oseman For Angel Rahimi, life is only about one thing: The Ark – a pop-rock trio of teenage boys who are currently taking the world by storm. Being part of The Ark’s fandom has given her everything – her friendships, her dreams, her place in the world. Jimmy Kaga-Ricci owes everything to The Ark too. He’s their frontman – and playing in a band is all he’s ever dreamed of doing. It’s just a shame that recently everything in his life seems to have turned into a bit of a nightmare.
- Summer Bird Blue Akemi Dawn Bowman- Bowman’s sophomore novel follows Rumi, a young musician plagued with grief and survivor’s guilt after her younger sister is killed in a car crash. Her mother sends her to liver with her aunt in Hawaii, and is also now mourning the loss of the music she would create with her sister and is unable to recapture her passion. As she navigates her loss, and feelings of abandonment from her mother, Rumi is also starting new relationships with neighbors, one a cute, easygoing surfer boy, and the other a irascible 80-year-old crankypants, while also becoming comfortable with her aromantic and asexual feelings.An immersive aromantic, asexual journey through grief and understanding.
- Felix Ever after- Kacen Callender a novel about a transgender teen grappling with identity and self-discovery while falling in love for the first time.
- The Stars and The Blackness Between Them - Junauda Petrus Audre and Mabel, Black girls who find romance just in time for everything to fall even further apart.
- By any means necessary- Candice Montgomery By Any Means Neccesary dives into the intersection of race and sexuality through the lens of its main character, Torrey, a gay Black college student.
- Her Royal Highness -Rachel Hawkins- When Millie Quint discovers her best friend-turned-girlfriend has been kissing someone else, she decides to get as far away from her as possible – by going to boarding school on the opposite side of the globe. The only issue? Millie’s new roomate is the actual princess of Scotland.
- Tash Hearts Tolstoy - Kathryn Omsbee, Natasha Zelenka (Tash), is a serious fangirl of Leo Tolstoy and a rising YouTube star with her webseries Unhappy Families, a modern-day adaptation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and Vlog, Tea with Tash. When a famous vlogger gives a shout out to the series, it goes viral. Now she, along with the cast and crew, are finding what it means to be a hit sensation and are managing the adoration, and the trolls, coming their way. Tash, a romantic asexual, has had a long time crush on the hit vlogger star Thom, who, as her online popular grows, so does Thom’s attention. Amidst the fame and romance, Tash is also dealing with her older sister creating distance, her parents announcing a new sibling on the way, college applications, the impending end of the series, and the big “What’s next.”An asexual romantic comedy coming of age.
- Full Disclosure- Camryn Garratt Camryn Garrett’s debut novel follows a Black, HIV-positive teen as she explores her first romantic relationship. There are few books that discuss what it’s like to live with HIV, especially those that are light, relatable, and told through the lens of a young Black girl.
- The Black Flamingo- Dean Atta Atta pens a coming-of-age story about a boy accepting his identity as a mixed-race gay teen, but then finds a place where he belongs as a drag artist named The Black Flamingo.
- Juniper Leaves- Jaz Joyner Kinky-haired Juniper Bray used to believe in magic, until she lost her best friend: her grandmother. Now this 15-year-old shy girl is headed to her father's research trip on a farm hundreds of miles away, with a family she barely knows and the opposite of a best friend, her new arch nemesis, Bree Mckinney. As if she wasn't miserable enough. Little does she know the next few months Juniper will discover magical powers she never knew she had, get a crush on a girl she never knew she'd like and well, quite frankly, save the world.
- Crier’s War - Nina Varela ‘In a world where humans are dominated by superior Automae, one human girl called Ayla takes the role of handmaiden to the Automae Lady Crier in order to help the human rebellion. But to Ayla’s horror, she finds herself falling for Crier.’
- Queen of Coin and Whispers Helen Corcoran -When a teenage queen inherits her uncle’s bankrupt kingdom, she brings with her a new spymaster – a girl who only accepted the role to avenge her murdered father. But faced with enemies at every turn, the two learn to rely on no one but each other . . . though it may bring their downfall.
- Huntress- Malinda Lo – Ill fortune has befallen the land, and two girls have been tasked with the mission of setting things right. As Kaede and Taisin journey to the city of the Fairy Queen, adventure and romance awaits.
- This Song Is (Not) for You - Laura Nowlin- This is not your usual love triangle. Ramona has been in love with her best friend and bandmate Sam for a long time, Sam has also been in love Ramona. When Tom joins the band, he completes them. Now Ramona is starting to have feelings for Tom, and those feelings are reciprocated. Tom is a romantic asexual, whose asexuality is fully explored
- Seven Tears at High Tide- C.B. Lee – After Kevin Luong drops, yup, seven tears into the sea, he ends up rescuing a boy from the waters. It’s love at first sight for Morgan who, unknown to Kevin, is a Selkie.
- Loveless -Alice Oseman- (out on the 9th July!!) Georgia has never been in love, never kissed anyone, never even had a crush – but as a fanfic-obsessed romantic she’s sure she’ll find her person one day.As she starts university with her best friends, Pip and Jason, in a whole new town far from home, Georgia’s ready to find romance, and with her outgoing roommate on her side and a place in the Shakespeare Society, her ‘teenage dream’ is in sight. But when her romance plan wreaks havoc amongst her friends, Georgia ends up in her own comedy of errors, and she starts to question why love seems so easy for other people but not for her. With new terms thrown at her – asexual, aromantic – Georgia is more uncertain about her feelings than ever.
- The Last Beginning- Lauren James- (you probably need to read the next together first which I HIGHLY recommend) Sixteen years ago, after a scandal that rocked the world, teenagers Katherine and Matthew vanished without a trace. Now Clove Sutcliffe is determined to find her long lost relatives.But where do you start looking for a couple who seem to have been reincarnated at every key moment in history? Who were Kate and Matt? Why were they born again and again? And who is the mysterious Ella, who keeps appearing at every turn in Clove's investigation? For Clove, there is a mystery to solve in the past and a love to find in the future, and failure could cost the world everything.
#i think i did a good job at finding alot of diverse ones and with different sexualites etc represented#i haven't read all of these but i've read some!#queer ya masterlist#book blogging#pride reads#queer books#lgbtq boo#lgbtq reads#ya books
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What is a Honeybear?
Read on ao3
When Steve and Bucky move into the house on Vine St., they were greeted by their neighbor that lived two houses down. He was a short brunette that definitely worked with his hands, Steve notes.
“Welcome to the neighborhood!” The man greets. “I’m Tony. I live two houses down. Do you need any help unpacking?”
Steve isn’t sure why, but his voice has stopped working. Bucky steps in, holding out a hand to shake. “Hi, I’m Bucky Barnes and this is my brother, Steve Rogers. We would appreciate the help.”
Tony helps them carry their last truckload of boxes into the house. By the time the last box has been set down, the three of them are laughing and talking aa if they were all old friends. Tony orders pizza from “the best pizza place in town.” When they’re finished, he tells them he has to go.
“He’s kind of cute,” Steve remarks as he and Bucky watch Tony leave.
“He is,” Bucky agrees. “Go for it.”
“I dunno. I would have to make sure he is interested. I don’t want to make our first welcoming neighbor uncomfortable with us.” Steve nudges Bucky’s shoulder. “When is Sam going to be here?”
Sam arrives about twenty minutes later, and the three of them unpack until Bucky decides he is done for the night and drags Sam to bed. Steve checks his phone and sends a quick text off to Sharon about their neighbor before he decides to follow Bucky’s example. It was a long day, and he is exhausted.
Steve keeps Sharon updated on Tony. She had broken up with him two years ago when she realized that she just wasn’t into men. Steve had had a self-realization not too long after that he liked men just as much as he liked women. Six months later, Sharon was dating their friend Maria, and she and Steve had remained friendly. Now he texts her about any new options he’s found. She’s on a long business trip at the moment and is unable to visit.
Tony hangs around a lot. Even though he owns three cars, he lives alone with a few robots, which he has named oddly. He has a DUM-E, a BUTTERFINGERS, and a U. Steve thinks he has another one, or else he names his cars because he knows he’s heard “Platypus” and “honeybear” a few times. It’s a little odd, but Steve finds it endearing. The man drinks more than his healthy share of coffee and somehow manages to injure himself on the dumbest things. If Tony lived with someone, Steve would be afraid that he’s covering up abuse. Tony is a genius – you should see (or hear) the AI that he coded and installed in his home – but he is also so dumb sometimes. He can work out long division in his head, but he has no idea why drinking orange juice right after brushing his teeth is a bad idea. Steve knows he’s smitten, and it has only been a month since they’ve moved in. Sam and Bucky think it’s hilarious and that he should just ask Tony out, but Steve is unsure.
They have had other neighbors welcome them to the neighborhood. Most of them have something to say about Tony, mostly disapproving.
Old Mrs. Oakley tells them that he gets big deliveries and floods the air with exhaust from “those big trucks.” She often wonders why he doesn’t just get them delivered to a warehouse. Steve does wonder if he works from home. He doesn’t know if he’s ever seen Tony leave to go to work.
Janice Teller brings them an apple pie that is a “secret family recipe.” She openly flirts with Steve even though he knows she has a husband and four kids. She tells Steve and Bucky that Tony is a sex addict. There are always people going in and out of his house. Steve has noticed that two read-headed women visit him a lot. Maybe he’s in a polyamorous relationship and really digs redheads.
Mr. Everton, who lives next door to Tony, complains about the noise. Apparently, Tony keeps late hours and blares classic rock and 80’s metal. Bucky just smirks and says he likes Tony’s style.
Karen Packer stops past weekly to catch them up on the latest gossip. When Bucky – to Steve’s mortification – asks if Tony is single, she leans in and tells them, “I hear he’s pansexual or something like that. What is that – attracted to skillets?” And she laughs at own very annoying joke. “Any way, whatever that means. But honestly?” Somehow, she leans in even further. “I don’t know. I think he’s more of a playboy. There have been several people who keep coming back. He did have a black – I mean, African American, I’m sorry – man living with him for a while, but he’s never around anymore. Man probably drove him away what with all his oddities. He must be a lot to deal with.” Steve wants to strangle this woman, so he lets Bucky handle her.
Jessica is a recluse who lives next door to Steve and Bucky. She’s a PI who has a home office. She’s obnoxious and mean to any who approach her, save Tony. To be honest, she is mean and obnoxious to him as well, but it’s a different tone. He returns it, and she gives a hint of a smile. Tony tells Steve and Bucky that they are drinking buddies.
Most people seem to leave Tony alone, and he does likewise. Steve wonders why, then, does Tony seem to knock on their door at 3am because he can’t sleep and needs someone to whom he can talk? They learn that Tony has nightmares from a traumatic experience, and he hates fire, the cold, and closed, dark spaces.
+++++++++++++++
Somewhere around the two-month mark of their new home, Bucky hears a knock on the back door. This is odd because their back door opens to a fenced-in yard. He opens it to find Tony in sweatpants and a flannel that he is quickly trying to button. Bucky catches some scar tissue across his chest.
“Can I help you?” He asks amusedly.
“Yes. I need you to hide me.” Tony pants. “I have someone at my house who is violating a restraining order.”
“Do you want me to call the cops?”
“No. No cops. I’m trying to stay out of the spotlight, not because of anything illegal, but because I used to be famous and I don’t want to be anymore. And she’s a stalker. She didn’t see me, so I don’t know if it’s just a lead she got, or if she really knows I’m here. Do you mind if I stay here until she leaves?” Tony asks.
“Sure. No problem. Want me to get rid of her?” Bucky asks. He knows his glare and prosthetic arm scare a lot of people.
Tony shrugs. “You can try, but she’s pretty persistent.”
Bucky and Steve look out the window blinds. There is a gorgeous woman standing at Tony’s door. After she knocks and rings the doorbell a few times, she stands on the walk, waiting. Bucky opens his door and walks over to Tony’s. “Hi! Can I help you? I don’t think they’re home at the moment.”
“Oh, hi.” The woman says her voice like a syrup. “I’m just looking for Tony. Does he live here?”
Bucky stares at her quizzically. “Tony? I don’t know any Tony’s. You have the wrong house.”
“Are you sure? I was told he lives here.” She starts to get a little pissy.
“Nope. The people who live here are Adam and Julia Batcher. I believe they are both at work.”
“Then who’s car is that?” The lady points at the old Toyota Corolla out front of the house.
Bucky shrugs. “Car broke down about a year ago. Adam bought a new one, but this was his first car, so he doesn’t want to get rid of it.”
“If you’re lying to me,” She threatens, eyes narrowed, “I can make your life miserable.”
“What reason do I have to lie to you?” Bucky makes himself look upset. “I just wanted to help you. But if you want to threaten me, I will have to ask you to leave. We all stick together here, and no one will be happy that you just threatened an ex-soldier who lost his arm on a tour.” He knows his death glare is showing now.
The woman gulps. “I am so sorry. I will be on my way. Thank you for your service.” She hops in her car and drives away.
Bucky scrubs a hand over his face and mutters, “Bitch.”
Tony is awestruck when Bucky returns. “You got her to leave in five minutes. Can I hire you as my bodyguard?” He gushes. “Sunset Bain didn’t know what hit her.” He stays at their house the rest of the day and has one of his redhead friends go home with him in case Sunset is watching.
Tony introduces his friend as Natasha, the second-scariest person he knows. She shakes their hands but looks at them suspiciously. When he leaves, he hugs both Steve and Bucky and thanks them profusely.
Tony starts to hang out with Steve, Bucky, and Sam most days now. He’ll buy expensive steaks and just take them to their house and say he’s providing dinner. They have a weekly movie night, and Tony is a James Bond and Star Wars junkie, so he fits right in. He indulges and feeds Bucky’s conspiracy-fueled brain. Many a night is spent arguing about the moon landing or whether aliens are real, etc. Steve feels that Tony is fitting in so well to his friend group. He can’t wait for Sharon to meet him because he knows they will hit off well.
Steve still hasn’t made his move for two reasons. One, Tony has never seemed too interested in Steve. He flirts with Steve, but he also flirts with Bucky and Sam. Two, he thinks Tony is dating Natasha. They seem awfully close.
Tony seems to be getting happier and happier. He keeps referencing something about “one more month" or “three weeks" and so on. It has something to do with “Honeybear" the car being home to stay. Steve guesses he’s finally made the last payment on his car or something.
+++++++
The day finally comes that Tony has been referring to. Steve is curious to see why today is so special. But Tony just goes about his day like normal.
Steve complains to Bucky when he sees him out working on the Corolla in short shorts and a black wife beater. “It’s like he wants me to see him. The grease stains are so hot. Ugh. I just want to ask him out.”
“Ask who out?” Maria asks, walking in the door with Sharon.
“Tony. Look at him. Isn’t he hot?” Steve sighs.
Sharon looks out the window, and her eyes get big. “No, you better not ask him out!” She growls.
Natasha's car pulls up. Tony rolls out from under the car immediately, and his face brightens. Steve sighs dejectedly. Of course, they’re dating. He looks away.
“Keep watching,” Sharon advises.
An African American man in an army uniform jumps out of the car, and Tony’s face beams. He embraces the man tightly and pulls him into a filthy kiss. Steve’s face forms an ‘O', and Sharon laughs, “Yes, that is why you shouldn’t ask him out.”
“You-you know him?” Bucky asks.
“Yes, he’s my ‘cousin' Tony. My aunt Peggy and his dad were friends. Rhodes is his husband.”
“Why did he never bring up his husband?” Steve questions.
Maria snorts, “Has he mentioned Sugarbear, Honeybear, Sourpatch, Cabbagepatch, Platypus, or anything like that? Tony uses nicknames for those he loves.”
“Yea, I have gotten a lot of Cyborg names,” Bucky says thoughtfully. “And he calls Sam ‘Birdie’ a lot. Steve, doesn’t he call you the ‘great wall of justice’ or ‘Cap'?”
“…And here are Steve and Bucky,” Tony walks up with Rhodes. “Steve, Bucky, I would like you to meet my husband, my honeybear, my sour patch, my lover, and my Rhodey, James Rhodes. Rhodey, this is Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes.”
“Call me Rhodey or Jim,” Rhodey sticks out his hand. “This one thinks James is a stupid name. It’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard tons about you guys.”
“Nice to meet you as well.” Steve replies.
Tony claps his hands. “Ok great! Introductions are made. I hate to kiss and run, but Rhodey just got back from a long deployment. I hope you understand we will need a lot of alone time.” He grins as Steve blushes. “Please excuse us.” Tony all but drags Rhodey out of the house. Seeing Sharon, he pauses, “Hey cuz. Wait you guys know each other?”
Rhodey rolls his eyes and proceeds to pull Tony out of the house, “I thought we needed alone time.”
Steve heaves a sigh of relief once the couple makes it to their door.
“That’s why,” Sharon says. “However, have you met Nat? She might be a good choice for you.”
Steve groans.
#ironhusbands#winterfalcon#13hill#steve rogers#tony stark#bucky barnes#sam wilson#james rhodes#natasha romanov#sharon carter#maria hill#pining#unrequited love#tony is a dummy#but we love him#TONY NOT EVERYONE KNOWS YOU CALL YOUR HUSBAND HONEYBEAR OR PLATYPUS#MAKE SURE THEY KNOW YOU HAVE A HUSBAND#ALSO#go get some
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i LOVE all this bad boy matteo content but now im starting to miss bad boy david🥺
did someone say… bad boy david?
more bad boy david
-it comes up when david is spray painting a the back wall of a building that looks like no one has even spoken about since the late 80′s. he’s doing some sort of design with geometric lines and colors that matteo doesn’t quite understand but that david says will all make sense when he’s done, and matteo is sitting off on a rock behind him, smoking a joint, and watching the way david’s muscles move in his shoulders while also pretending that he isn’t watching at all. they’re talking, casually, but not really about anything important, so david is kind of shocked looking back on it, and realizing where it goes.
-i told my mom about you, matteo says, somewhat lethargically and almost like he wasn’t planning on saying it at all right after david finishes telling him a story that he heard through laura about their cousin who lives in switzerland. and david just hums at that with his pace in his line faltering to a stop before he continues, because while he’s completely consumed by where this conversation is headed, he doesn’t want matteo to think that just by mentioning his mother, he’s got david wrapped up in a head spin, thinking about what kind of impression he could possibly leave. matteo doesn’t say anything after that, and david asks, what did you tell her? because he’s a little bit of a glutton for punishment when it comes to matteo. that i met a boy named david who acts like everyone’s robin hood and wears his heart on his sleeve but refuses to admit it.
-somehow, david ends up agreeing to meeting matteo’s mother on what’s supposed to be a dreary sunday afternoon when he’s halfway through painting a lonely figure in a city without another soul in sight and thinks that maybe this wasn’t the most appropriate painting to do right now.
-david tries to stay out of fights all week because he doesn’t want to meet matteo’s sweet christian mother who goes to church every week and sings in the choir, the lady who listens to old show tunes on the radio while dancing around the house with a broom in her hand like she was born to be a star, the very one that held matteo’s hand when he had to get stitches in his knee when he was ten and told him a story of dragons and kings and pirates to keep his mind off the needle, when he’s got bloody knuckles and a nose that’s mangled and swollen. he manages it, manages to not start anything or let anything be started with him all week, even though it seems like the universe was trying particularly hard to piss him off the entire time.
-he calls laura from the bathroom the morning of and asks her what kind of shirt do you wear to meet your boyfriend’s mother for the first time, and she tells him to wear something simply and plain after laughing at the way he sounds so obviously anxious.
-matteo and him walk hand and hand into a little cafe where matteo’s mom is sitting neatly in a booth in the back already with a cup of tea for herself and two hot chocolates for them. matteo smiles a smile that david has never seen and has since associated only with his mama, and hugs her for fifteen whole seconds when they get back to her. david uses the time to try and catch his breath, ignoring the way he wants to throw himself out the window.
-david is quiet most of the afternoon. he let’s the two of them chat and catch up while nodding along and keeping track of names he’s never heard out of matteo’s mouth, though they curl around his tongue like they belong to someone important once, and he answers every question that she asks with a polite smile. he tells her that he wants to work in film, and that he lives with his sister, and that he first met matteo at a club meeting but didn’t start talking to him for a few weeks after.
-when matteo goes to put the cups up by the counter, matteo’s mom asks innocently if david loves her son. she looks at him with kind eyes and a gentle smile that is so sincere and so unquestionably adoring that it makes david stop for a second, and replay the question in his head, even though she’s waiting for him to answer. and then he says, yes, simply and completely because there isn’t any other way to answer that question. her eyes get even warmer, and she nods her head a little. i thought so, she says and pats his hand. he loves you, too. he hasn’t told me yet, but a mother can tell.
-two weeks later, as they’re laying in bed together, matteo is telling some story from his childhood in a quiet whisper that has david leaning closer into him, enraptured by it, and he mentions his dad for probably only the second or third time since they’ve known each other. do you talk to your father? david asks once he’s done because he just thought about it, how matteo never really talks about him, but that he knows he’s alive somewhere that must be far away. not often, no, matteo says like he’s spilling one of his secrets. we don’t like each other very much right now. and david wants to ask why, why that is, that they don’t like each other, but he has a sinking suspicion it has something to do with him.
-i don’t really talk to mine either, david says, just to fill the silence.
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I Know The Way There [John Lennon] - Part 2
~~Lydia makes her way to her dad's cafe to help out when he gives her a good piece of advice~~
Part One
Song Inspo
Word Count: 1298
{Also, the cafe name came from my friend Brandon, he wanted me to tell y’all.}
One of the great parts of living in such a big, weird, city is that you don't look that crazy taking a bus in full glam-rock clothes at 9 am. You do still get weird looks from old ladies, but it's not too bad.
I do realize that I could just jump to the places I need to go to, but there are a few problems with it.
1) It's not exactly the most conspicuous thing to just pop out of nowhere in the middle of a crowded city 2) It does quite a number on the body to do multiple times in a row And finally...
3) You don't get the lovely experience of little kids asking to touch your jacket spikes.
So I tend to just take the bus when I need to go somewhere. Driving in Seattle is a nightmare and I don't even have a license. You'd think with the ability to time travel I could find the time to go get my license, but honestly, the real problem isn't time. It's the lack of ability to pass a driver's test. My dad always gets on my ass about it.
Henry Tyler is a great man and an even better father. He and my mother always tried to give me the best in life. Even if they didn't mean to have me, they cherished me with every fiber of their being. See, my parents never tried to have kids; when my mother was younger she had been told she could probably never have kids due to an illness she had. My parents were fairly old when they had me and had already settled down into a life without kids. They owned a cafe, had a cute little apartment, and they thought their dogs were enough; having never considered adopting. But, like many things in life, something unexpected happened and my mother had me. While both my parents were excited, my dad was ecstatic; something he'd never thought he'd feel about a child.
Even more unexpected was that I'd have the abilities I do. They were extremely freak at first; when I started teleporting as a toddler. In the beginning, they thought I was just moving around the house really fast until they found me in very strange places. Like inside the dryer, or on top of the bookcases. My mother believed it to be a gift from the universe, that I was a gift from the universe. She relished every second she had with me.
When I get to me stop, I swing myself out of my seat and off the bus, making quick pace down the street.
The Ballard neighborhood is much prettier than Seattle proper. I mean, nothing against downtown, but I hate towering buildings and the smell of piss everywhere. Also, this is where I grew up. The area is full of breweries and therefore, hipsters. It's a quaint area and looking out over the water from the locks is a real sight to behold.
As I turn around the corner my dad's cafe comes into view. The building is brick and very old as is most of the Ballard area. There are two metal tables out front on either side of the door with beautiful white and yellow striped umbrellas. At one table sits a couple enjoying an early morning cup of coffee before heading off to start their days. On the glass in the front of the cafe is a cute drawing of a coffee mug with the words, "Terrains De Repos" printed in cursive.
I push open the door and am greeted with the smell of freshly ground coffee and baked goods. Slow music plays softly in the background.
"Dad!" I call out, "I'm here to help set up for tonight."
The morning sun shines through the glass onto the checkered floor tiles. In the front windows of the shop, on either side, are counters with four bar stools. On the right wall is an old sofa with colorful pillows set out. Next to it is a couple of comfy armchairs. The coffee table in front is covered in old copies of Rolling Stone. Across from this sitting area is another, this one with several bean bag chairs on top of a bright orange rug from the 70s. Against the brick wall is a record player with several wood cartons of vinyl under it.
Moving further back into the cafe there is an elevated platform on the left wall. On it, there is a small music setup, with two guitars, one electric, and the other acoustic; as well as a couple of amps and a microphone. There are a few tables against the wall opposite the makeshift stage. The walls are covered in old photos and posters. Some from my parents' escapades and some from my own.
Then, there's the counter. It stretches across the back wall ending just before a hallway. Half of it has a pastry case full of wonderful goodies. There sits a vintage cash register on one end. Next to the register is a tip jar labeled "LSD Fund" and a bell. Behind the counter are all of the coffee machines and other accouterments of the trade. On the Back wall is a photo of my mom smiling brightly.
Just as I reach to ring the bell on the counter, my dad comes out from behind the bead curtain leading to the kitchen.
"Hey there kiddo," He says with a smile, "Didn't think you'd be here so early."
"Well, I got in earlier than I thought I would," I hop onto the counter.
"You sure don't look like it. You doing okay?" He asks with that fatherly concern of his.
"I'm fine. Just a little hungover is all." I say with a sigh.
"The 80s will do that to a person," He starts pouring a cup of tea for me. "but to me, this seems like more than a hangover. I can see it in your eyes pumpkin."
"I'm just having a hard time finding inspiration for my music." He hands me my cup and I look into the brown liquid.
"You've never had that problem before." He looks concerned, "Has something changed?"
"It's just- It's that I've been all sorts of wonderful places. I keep going to all these places hoping that I'll find something that drives me to make real music. I've met so many people, but no one has made me really feel something authentic." I look up from my cup of tea, "I want to have something like you did with mom. I've realized I'm nowhere near that. And for some reason, I can't see it in the future."
"Maybe your love isn't waiting for you in your future, maybe your love is somewhere unexpected." His eyes are soft when I meet them.
"I just don't know how that would work. If it's someone in the past, wouldn't they already be here?" I ask
"How would I know, you're the time wizard." He shrugs at me. Walking over to put a recond on. "This one goes out to a one Miss Tyler."
I hop off the counter and skip over to him as the iconic beginning song of Rubber Soul starts to play. And as those first notes play I start to dance, and my dad sings the opening to me.
"Asked a girl what she wanted to be She said, 'baby, can't you see I want to be famous, a star on the screen But you can do something in-between'"
When the chorus builds I grab the microphone of the stage and sing back to him.
"Baby, you can drive my car Yes, I'm gonna be a star Baby, you can drive my car And maybe I'll love you"
#john lennon fanfiction#time travel au#John Lennon#slow burn#slowburn#Ringo Starr#George Harrison#paul mccartney#beatles fanfiction#the beatles#Beatles#beatles fanfic#time travel#IKTWT
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The Jenny Lewis Experience
The New York Times July 24, 2014
A version of this article appears in print on July 27, 2014, Page 18 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: The Jenny Lewis Experience.
By Jeff Himmelman
“They’d put the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on,” Jenny Lewis said. We were sitting in a restaurant in Laurel Canyon, not far from her home, and she was describing her early childhood with parents who made their living performing as an itinerant Sonny-and-Cher-style lounge act called Love’s Way. “We lived in hotels,” she said. “My sister and I, they would just keep us in the hotel room, and they’d go down and play.” When Lewis was born in 1976, her parents were doing a stand at the Sands. They split up when she was 3, and her mother — herself the daughter of a dancer and a vaudeville performer — took Jenny and her sister to Van Nuys, in the San Fernando Valley, where she worked as a waitress and struggled to keep her family afloat. “We were on welfare,” Lewis said, before describing the day their fortunes changed, when an agent picked young Jenny out of a crowd at her preschool. “I think mostly because I was a redhead,” she said. “And I was a weird little kid, a weird little tomboy.”
She soon landed her first commercial, for Jell-O, and came under the wing of Iris Burton, an eminent children’s agent who represented River and Joaquin Phoenix and Fred Savage. Lewis started working steadily in commercials, television (“The Golden Girls,” “Growing Pains,” “Mr. Belvedere”) and film (“The Wizard,” “Troop Beverly Hills,” “Pleasantville”), living the surreal and somewhat communal life of a child star in the ‘80s. She spent her days being tutored on set and her evenings at places like Alphy’s Soda Pop Club in Hollywood, which catered exclusively to kids in the industry. At a party there when Lewis was 10, the actor Corey Haim handed her a cassette tape with Run-D.M.C. on one side and the Beastie Boys on the other. “There have been a couple of cassette tapes that have changed my life,” she said, “and that was the first one” — the tape that got her hooked on hip-hop, which eventually led her to songwriting.
I asked Lewis when she first fully realized the role she played in her family, the depth of their dependence on her. “Eight years old,” she said. “I remember the moment. That’s a pretty big thing for a kid to realize. And I remember the power in that.” By the time she was 14 or 15, with nobody to answer to, she could be as wild as she liked as long as she showed up to work and hit her marks. “I was up for it, honestly,” she said. “I loved the work and I loved the people, and it kind of prepped me for what I do now.”
What Lewis does now, the music she makes, is hard to characterize. She is often compared with Joni Mitchell and Emmylou Harris, and there is a kind of timelessness to the way she writes and sings. But the throwback stuff doesn’t quite capture her. Among some music fans — including many other well-known musicians — Lewis is considered a kind of indie goddess, a stylish performer who defies genre and salts her songs with a sly and off-kilter intelligence. Her first band, Rilo Kiley, signed a major-label deal with Warner Bros. Records in 2005; her first side project, the Postal Service, led by Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie, sold more than a million copies of its debut; and she has released two well-received solo records since then. Next week, she will release a third, “The Voyager,” her first solo effort in six years. It has been a battle to get it out. Among other things, she has dealt with the death of her father, writer’s block and bouts of insomnia so severe and debilitating that she said they left her almost unable to function for nearly two years.
You’d never guess that from meeting her, though. She talks like a true child of L.A. — the “bro"s and “dude"s flow freely, without affectation — and her go-to traveling costume is a vintage Adidas track suit, Adidas shell-top sneakers and, on the day I first met her, hot-pink lipstick and oversize sunglasses. She lives with her longtime boyfriend and collaborator, the musician Johnathan Rice, up a long canyon road in the hills that separate the San Fernando Valley from downtown Los Angeles. Her house (called “Mint Chip” for its brown-and-light-green exterior) is set into the hillside, looking out over a ravine. There is a rehearsal space with a drum kit, a P.A. and some vintage gear, an old piano in the living room and a vinyl edition of James Taylor’s “Sweet Baby James” propped up beside the fireplace. Beyond the small pool in the back yard there’s a windowed gazebo that Rice uses as his songwriting space. Whatever you are imagining of the California light and the laid-back lifestyle: yes.
Historically, nearby Laurel Canyon has been synonymous with a certain kind of lush ‘60s acoustic-and-multipart-harmony sound, but Lewis’s musical roots spring from the ‘90s and the smart indie rock of Elliott Smith and Pavement. When she was 20 or so, her acting career wasn’t where she wanted it to be, and she saw that she needed to make a change. “I was the best friend,” she said. “I was the friend, forever. I wanted the big, juicy roles, and they didn’t come to me.” (She read for the part of Bunny in the Coen brothers’ film “The Big Lebowski,” for one, but didn’t get it.) She had known Blake Sennett, another former child actor, since she was 17, and they began writing together and eventually formed Rilo Kiley.
She and Sennett dated and broke up and kept playing together. The relationship was always fraught (Gibbard remembers Lewis screaming at Sennett over the phone during the first Postal Service tour), but Lewis said it gave her the confidence she needed to become a real songwriter. “Through my partnership with Blake, I found a voice within myself that I didn’t know I had,” she said. “It sounds kind of cheesy, but I figured out who I was.” From the first lines of the first song on Rilo Kiley’s debut record, a track called “Go Ahead,” you can hear the DNA of the musician Lewis has become nearly 15 years later — a floating, distinct voice, an unpredictable melody, a wryly subverted rhyme.
The link between songwriting and autobiography is a tantalizing but tenuous one, and Lewis prefers to preserve as much mystery as she can. But she affirms that she has never written anything more personal than “Better Son/Daughter,” one of the strongest tracks off Rilo Kiley’s second record, “The Execution of All Things.” The song is about waking up in the morning and being unable to open your eyes or get out of bed: “And your mother’s still calling you, insane and high/Swearing it’s different this time.” Eventually it opens into an anthem of wounded fortitude, the kind you can imagine cars full of young women screaming along to. The actress Anne Hathaway, one of Lewis’s close friends, told me that she still turns to that song whenever she’s struggling. “It’s become almost like a prayer,” she said.
Outside whatever veiled references she makes in her music, Lewis doesn’t talk much about her mother. She acknowledged that it was a “difficult relationship” and that she didn’t have a “traditional upbringing,” but that was about it. At one point, I referred to a report in The Boston Globe in 1992, when Lewis was 16, noting that she owned a house in Sherman Oaks and a townhouse in North Hollywood. “We lost all of that,” she said, with a blankness I hadn’t seen from her before. I asked her why. “We just lost ‘em,” she said. “I achieved a lot as a child, I supported my family, but in the end we lost it all.”
In 2004, Rilo Kiley toured with Coldplay, but Lewis was still scraping by, living in a small apartment in Silver Lake with an Iranian rockabilly musician she found on Craigslist. In her bedroom, when she wasn’t on tour, she wrote the songs that would become “Rabbit Fur Coat,” her first solo record. The idea for it came from Conor Oberst, the songwriter (also known as the frontman of Bright Eyes) who helped form Saddle Creek Records, which had put out “The Execution of All Things.” “I encouraged her,” Oberst told me. “You know, why don’t you step away from this thing that is obviously causing you a lot of distress and make a record on your own?” Sennett had already made a solo record, which upset Lewis. “I was so jealous if someone else got Blake’s musical attention,” she told me. “I was shattered by it.” She made “Rabbit Fur Coat,” she said, in part to prove that “I can do it too on my own — I don’t need you.”
The songs on “Rabbit Fur Coat” are ethereal and haunted, rooted in deep Southern and gospel-inflected melodic traditions. On the record’s title track, Lewis’s lyrics again invite comparison with her family life:
Let’s move ahead 20 years, shall we? She was waitressing on welfare, we were living in the valley A lady says to my ma, “You treat your girl as your spouse You can live in a mansion house.”
And so we did, and I became a hundred-thousand-dollar kid . . . But I’m not bitter about it I’ve packed up my things and let them have at it And the fortune faded, as fortunes often do And so did that mansion house
Where my ma is now, I don’t know She was living in her car, I was living on the road And I hear she’s putting stuff up her nose . . .
After the record was done, Lewis went on tour with Rilo Kiley. When the band played the Showbox in Seattle in 2005, Gibbard picked her up after sound check. They’d become friends during the Postal Service tour a few years earlier. As they drove around in Gibbard’s car, Lewis played the new songs for him. “I just remember, all hyperbole aside, being completely blown away,” Gibbard said. “It was undoubtedly the best thing that she had done.” The press shared Gibbard’s reaction, and Lewis got more attention on her own than Rilo Kiley had ever gotten as a band. “Everything was so easy for the first time,” she said. “It just unfolded so naturally. And then going out on the road and touring was the most fun I’ve ever had on tour. There was no tension for the first time.” Rilo Kiley would put out one more record, but it soon became clear that it would be their last.
“I want to show you something,” Lewis said. We were talking in her kitchen about her second solo release, “Acid Tongue,” which she recorded over three weeks in 2008 at the legendary Sound City Studios in Van Nuys. The record had a bunch of special guests on it — Elvis Costello, Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes — but the most meaningful one was Lewis’s dad, who died in 2010. In the living room, she pointed out a glass vitrine on top of the piano that held one of her father’s chromatic bass harmonicas. Before the “Acid Tongue” sessions, she hadn’t spoken to her father in years, but she felt comfortable enough with the musical family she had created around her — Rilo Kiley’s drummer, Jason Boesel; Johnathan Rice; some other musicians from the Laurel Canyon set — that she thought she could handle having him around. He played on the track “Jack Killed Mom,” and the reunion helped Lewis forgive him for leaving the family all those years ago. “He was playing lounges in Alaska,” Lewis said of when she tracked him down and asked him to play on the album. “That’s why I never saw him. It was not a malicious thing. My dad was a savant. He never drove a car, he never had a bank account,” she said. “I don’t even know if he realized that he wasn’t around, you know? I think he was just playing his gigs, trying to make a living.”
“Acid Tongue” was also a step toward recording everything all at once, live, to an analog tape machine — instead of in pieces to a computer. It’s a process that Lewis has developed a devotion to, and one that the songwriter and producer Ryan Adams would push to an extreme on “The Voyager.” (After “Acid Tongue,” Lewis and Rice released “I’m Having Fun Now” in 2010, an underrated duo record that failed to get the kind of traction they hoped for.) For the last few years, Lewis had been sitting on many of the songs that would make up “The Voyager,” battling insomnia and struggling to get them down. She ran into Adams in Los Angeles and told him she had some songs she was working on, and he invited her to come by his studio, Pax-Am, on the Sunset Strip. She played a few of the tunes for him on her acoustic guitar.
��My dad was a savant,’ Lewis said. ‘He never drove a car, he never had a bank account. I don’t even know if he realized that he wasn’t around, you know?’
“My initial impression was there were some really minimal but necessary things that had to happen,” Adams told me. “I could tell that she had sat with them a little too long.” (Lewis agrees: “I was like: ‘Dude, go for it. Help me.’ ”) On the first song that they worked on together, “She’s Not Me,” they changed the key to relax Lewis’s voice, and then Adams and his production partner, Mike Viola, strapped on electric guitars and rolled through the full song, three times, with Lewis playing and singing live with a backing band. Adams pronounced the track finished for the time being and said they would move on, without even listening back to what they’d done. “For Jenny, revisionism wouldn’t have worked,” Adams said. “The version she would play on the couch in the control room, we would just stand there, like, ‘Wow, this is classic songwriting.’ Every time. So that was sort of my mission. How do we get an ‘unmind’ vibe here and then go back later and look at these beautiful raw takes and just splash a little bit of watercolor on them.” Lewis ended up recording the bulk of the record with Adams over 10 days. (She worked on the single, “Just One of the Guys,” separately with Beck before she and Adams went into the studio together.)
“The Voyager” is an older and more direct record than her previous two. Her characters are still drinking and doing blow and cheating on each other, but there is a kind of weariness to it all. One line in particular has caught the early attention of some of her many female fans, during the bridge of “Just One of the Guys”: “There’s only one difference between you and me/When I look at myself all I can see/I’m just another lady without a baby.” She has been hesitant to acknowledge what that line specifically means to her. “I wanted to communicate some very basic things,” she told me, without saying what they were. She was already starting to regret having talked about some of her other struggles while making the record, including open discussion of the insomnia that plagued her. “Now everyone’s asking me about insomnia, which I’m terrified is going to happen to me again,” she said. “You can’t think about it too much, and everyone’s asking me about it, and I’m like, ‘I’m fine, I’m fine.’ But, [expletive], am I not going to get to sleep again?” You could hear the fear in her voice. “It’s my fault for putting it out there,” she said.
The video for “Just One of the Guys,” which got more than a million views in its first 24 hours online, was made with the actresses (and Lewis’s friends) Anne Hathaway, Brie Larson, Kristen Stewart and Tennessee Thomas. It’s an entertaining video, part Robert Palmer, part Beastie Boys, with the women spending half the time playing a sleek female backing band and then switching into male roles, clowning around in Lewis-inspired Adidas track suits and fake mustaches. Lewis, as herself, holds up a positive pregnancy test, to which Lewis-in-drag-and-fake-goatee responds, “It’s not [expletive] mine.” When she gets to the “just another lady without a baby” line, she smiles at the camera and then dances. It’s a house of mirrors, a romp through emotionally treacherous terrain.
When I visited Lewis in June, she and Rice (she calls him “Rico”) showed me an early cut of the video in the bedroom of their house, with Lewis calling out “bra shot” whenever we caught a glimpse of her cleavage. Driving down the hill toward dinner later, we got to talking, if somewhat obliquely, about the expectations of her female fans and the sexuality that is inseparable from who she is and the music she makes. She didn’t like to talk about feminism, she said, and in particular the trend of women criticizing one another for not being feminist enough: “What does it matter what I think of Lana Del Rey?” In the months before the release of “The Voyager,” Lewis has taken to wearing airbrushed suits for her live shows, rather than the sexier get-ups she used to wear onstage; she has said she feels “androgynous” these days and wants her costume to reflect that. But not always. As we made our way down the ravine, she told a story about the day President Obama came to visit a compound not far from Mint Chip. She wanted to go out for a run, but a Secret Service member stopped her and told her she needed an ID if she wanted to get back through the security cordon. “I was like, ‘Dude, I’m wearing short shorts,’ ” Lewis said. " ‘You’ll remember me.’ ”
After recording and touring mostly with men in the early days, Lewis now consistently seeks out women for her band and even tried to put together an all-female crew for the “Just One of the Guys” video, which she also directed. She said her desire to work largely with women was a response to the dissolution of her relationship with her mom. “The more I surround myself with women, the easier it is to reconcile my past in a way.” It seems to be serving a kind of psychic need, to replace the female relationship that once dominated her life with a kind of surrogate family of her choosing, a family that has stood behind her through the struggles of the last few years.
“I’m happy to see her making records,” Beck told me. “I just feel like music needs her. It needs someone doing what she’s doing. She’s got a special voice, as a writer, and then as a musician. She’s this great combination of so many things.” Conor Oberst shares that view, describing Lewis as one of the most important songwriters and performers in contemporary music. “Go see her play,” Oberst said. “Because we should all feel lucky to be around while she’s doing her magic.”
On a night in early June, at a sold-out show at the 9:30 Club in Washington, Lewis had her magic all lined up and ready to go. Backstage, she was relaxed, joking with her band and casually doing her makeup in the mirror on the wall. Just before show time, one band member disappeared, but Lewis was unperturbed. “It’s O.K.,” she said with a smile when he showed up, apologizing, just as they were about to go on. “You made it!” She took a sip of red wine out of a plastic cup and then walked up the steps to the stage.
‘I just feel like music needs her,’ Beck said. ‘It needs someone doing what she’s doing. She’s got a special voice, as a writer, and then as a musician.’
To watch Lewis perform live is to understand what Beck and Oberst and other musicians admire in her. “She turns into this other person on stage,” Gibbard said, “this unbelievably powerful performer” — and it’s true. Lewis is both a natural and a pro. Throughout the night, she had big middle-aged guys and teenage girls — “teeny little chickens,” as she called them later — singing along to every word. During the encore, Lewis sang the ballad “Acid Tongue” accompanied only by her acoustic guitar and the rest of her band grouped around a microphone behind her. “To be lonely is a habit,” Lewis sang, her voice ringing out in the near-silent room, “like smoking or taking drugs, and I’ve quit them both. . . . " The audience and her band belted along with her as she finished the line: “But man was it rough.”
It was one of those lovely moments you hope for in live music, when everything in the room connects. But it was also a kind of emblem of where Lewis has been and of where she is now. She has overcome all kinds of obstacles to get here, often with great style, but it hasn’t always been pretty. Whatever demons stole her sleep for these last few years, they’ve surely been with her forever, in one form or another. But they are also what gives such depth and soul to what she does. “I’m not looking for a cure,” Lewis sang, and as she stood in the spotlight at the 9:30 Club, nobody there would have thought she needed one.
#publication: the new york times#album: the voyager#year: 2014#mention: parent's band#mention: living in hotels#mention: mother#mention: child acting#mention: childhood#mention: insomnia#person: johnathan rice#person: blake sennett#song: better son/daughter#person: conor oberst#album: rabbit fur coat#mention: welfare#mention: childhood house#song: and that's how i choose#mention: father#mention: alaska#song: just one of the guys#mention: hypochondria#person: ben gibbard#person: beck
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Eye of the Storm, Ch. 1
So, I'm going to take the plunge into something multichapter. I'm not sure where it will end up, and I'm not sure how long it will be, but I'll keep going as long as I can (but no regular publishing schedule). It's going to be AU-ish, with Robert single, but with as much as of the legit Zeppelin timeline in place as possible. It's starting in 1976, after his car accident, right before the release of Presence. And it brings back Maggie, of San Diego beach fic fame. 😁
Thank you, as always, to @firethatgrewsolow for your expert advice, guidance, and review. Thank you also to @starchild0985 for your encouragement for me to just do it. And thanks to @callmethehunter for the Maggie character idea to begin with.
No smut in at least the first 2 parts, but we'll get there.
Thank you. Please send positive vibes--I am a bit nervous about my ability to pull off a bigger story. ❤️❤️❤️
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Robert was enjoying himself at one of his favorite places besides the stage: the soccer field. He smiled as he watched the LA Aztecs thwart another Dallas Tornado goal attempt at 80 minutes into the match. He had to admit it wasn't as exciting as being at a Wolverhampton game, but it would do. Few people in America got feverishly passionate about soccer like his countrymen and women. This was especially so in LA, the playground of starlets and rock stars, most of whom thrived on nocturnal indulgences rather than daylight spectating.
He swept his hair out of his face for the umpteenth time. The wind meant that Old Man Winter, as gentle as he was in The Golden State, was not ready to retreat. Robert was glad he'd brought his leather jacket with him from Benji's car; his black, long-sleeved tee wasn't enough to ward off the coolness of the air. He had to laugh at the thought that the weather could be considered chilly, having survived much worse winters across the pond.
It was a few weeks shy of spring, a few weeks before he'd be thrust back into the spotlight with the release of the seventh album. He was proud that the band was still standing. During their forced hiatus there had been an influx of raw, hungry, minimalist groups openly mocking bands that reveled in grandiose musical ideas on grandiose stages, and Zeppelin was not immune to these kinds of attacks. But being in the studio a few months prior in front of a microphone felt like home, even if he was still on the mend.
Just like his pride in the band's resilience, he was thankful to be on his feet unaided, a couple months removed from the confines of a wheelchair or leg brace. He was also extremely thankful that his fall in the studio, during a moment of excitement, didn't cause another injury and another setback. He wouldn't have wanted to let the band or himself down in that way.
He shifted his attention back to the game. He refused to sit while soaking in the sun and the sport, the camaraderie with his friends, and the feeling of being alive and well. He also was enjoying being off duty, as Robert Anthony, rather than the Golden God. He would enjoy that feeling while it lasted; it never lasted long.
He had been scanning the crowd periodically as, in addition to the game, he was looking to score a lineup for a passionate match in his bedroom. It seemed a bust, because the few women present were tightly clinging to their significant others. But then he saw a familiar face, and he couldn't help but smile.
Maggie.
He hadn't seen her in about a year, though she lived a road trip away. And now he realized that had been a mistake. With too much on his mind after his accident, instead of reconnecting, he felt it safer to conjure up the memory of her body on their first night together. He remembered fondly how she lay underneath him in San Diego, slightly dusted with sand, as the world spun in a haze of tequila and the ocean waves rolled incessantly a few yards behind them. He also frequently thought of seeing her the following year at Kezar. Bonzo joked that she was the second bird who felt the clutch of his hand that day. It was an apt description, because Robert couldn't keep his hands off of her. After that reunion, he stole as much time as he could to visit her in San Diego or spirit her away to LA, whenever the band was camped in its American home base. Their relationship was free-flowing and undefined, but fueled with enough passion for it to bloom whenever they got together. He hoped they could pick right back up.
He watched her approach the stands, alone, and he took that as a positive sign. “Maggie, love!” he exclaimed. He raised a hand and waved; his cuff bracelet was almost in danger of flying off in his excitement. The gesture bordered on absurdity, as if she wouldn't be able identify a tall, otherworldly attractive man, one with whom she'd had many happy memories, who also just happened to be a household name. He grimaced at his overeagerness. But if his convalescence in Malibu told him anything, it was that cabin fever was possible in paradise. He wasn't quite ready to engage in tour life, but he was ready to be the prowling, pouncing lion again, not the broken man who was the receiver of TLC, even though the women were very lovely and very willing. He craved a fun fling, or more, with the right woman. The sight of Maggie gave him hope that he would get his wish.
She looked his way. Her mouth went wide, but her face soon settled on delight.
“Robert!” she squealed when she reached him. “What are the odds? How are you?” She threw her arms around his neck.
His spirited bear hug lifted her petite body from the ground before he initiated a kiss, one that successfully conveyed how much he missed her.
“Much better,” he said, putting her down and smiling some more.
“That's right, your accident! You're lucky to be alive!”
“I'm also lucky to be walking without a limp or anything… Some of the specialists had their doubts, but I never gave up.”
“That sounds like you. You look great,” she said, appreciating every inch of him from his hair, which was bigger than usual due to the vicious wind, to the red Converse sneakers on his feet.
“So do you.” He realized nothing had changed: her dark, wavy hair still grew past her shoulders, her smile still warmed his heart, and her curves, swathed in jeans and a thin sweater under an open peacoat, still called to his primal core.
He brushed her wind-blown hair out of her eyes. It was a futile gesture, because there was no shortage of wind. But when his hand came to rest on her cheek, it did accomplish what Robert ultimately wanted: a tender connection.
Maggie closed her eyes to savor the feel of his large hand. Robert beamed at the thought of how much she seemed to have missed it.
She greeted Benji, whom she had met at Kezar Stadium, and introduced herself to the rest of Robert's friends.
“Can I get you something? A hot dog? A beer?” Robert asked Maggie.
“I'm OK, thanks.” She turned to watch the play on the field.
“No worries. If you have time, maybe we can stop somewhere after the game?”
“I'd like that.”
Robert picked up his beer and took a sip. “So, what brings you up here, love?”
“I actually live in LA now. The band, we were signed, and we released our first album last month. We've been doing a bunch of LA gigs and are gearing up for a short tour in the summer. And we're going to open for Santana on a couple of dates this fall!”
“How wonderful! The time of year will be perfect for your tour. No risk of an icy car crash death, as when we first hit America…”
“I'm definitely glad for that! And you'll have to tell me that story another time. How frightening! So, I think I've read that you all have a new album coming out soon?” Maggie asked.
“In a few weeks’ time.” Robert sighed.
“Not excited?”
“I'm glad we recorded again, and it was really amazing that the album came together so quickly, but I have been enjoying the slow pace of our time off. I've missed the stage, but the circus that forms up around us, night after night? It's been good to have some distance from that, you know?” He watched LA race down the field and score a goal. He pumped his fist in the air and cheered.
“Lifelong soccer fan? Here by yourself?” he asked, changing the subject.
“I am,” Maggie said. My father got us kids interested in soccer, and we all played in the neighborhood. My one brother was supposed to be here with me today, but he's a bit under the weather.”
“Rough and tumble tomboy past, then?” Robert took another sip of beer.
“I did have more boy friends than girl friends growing up. It led to lots of crazy adventures, but it also gave me the confidence to lead the band and deal with trashy men in the industry...”
“I bet you've come across tons of them already.”
“Tons,” she said with a roll of her eyes.
“Well, if I know you, you've reduced them to damn near tears at the end, yeah? I know you don't take shit from anyone.”
“Thankfully we have a manager now, so I can step out of that role, but yes, I have fought for what we deserve.” She grinned proudly. “My band is my life and my family. I can't keep quiet when things seem to be going wrong for us.”
“That's my girl!” Robert leaned in closer to Maggie. “I also remember that you're a lady who knows what she wants and doesn't stop until she's satisfied,” he whispered in her ear before nipping her earlobe. A hungry smile spread across his face as he contemplated her fiery spirit.
“And that has not changed,” she said, turning and looking into his eyes.
She placed a hand on his chest as he tilted her face and kissed her slowly.
Robert marveled at his eagerness to consider leaving the match early, to spend some alone time with Maggie. This was new behavior, and it spoke volumes about the importance he had placed on her.
With only a handful of regulation minutes left, and LA comfortably ahead, he decided to break with tradition. For her.
“I think we know how this is going to go…” He put on his sunglasses and zipped up his jacket.
“The game, or our time together?” Maggie asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Ah!” Robert ran a hand through his hair. “I meant the game,” he said with a chuckle. “But--”
“--I'm teasing you. I'm sure both of your thoughts are spot-on. In fact, I'm counting on it.”
“One catch, though, Maggie dear: you'd need to drive, as I'm still at the mercy of Mr. Lefevre, here, for getting around. LA traffic is too much work too soon for my delicate bones, I'm afraid.”
“At my mercy… I like the sound of that, even if you left out the detail of me being your chauffeur…”
“You'll forgive an invalid lad and be gentle, won't you, love?” His sweet gaze became more seductive the longer their eyes connected.
She sighed, remembering how Robert could charm his way out of anything, and how willing she had been to let him do it. “Sure, if that's what you really want…”
“For now, anyway,” Robert countered.
With a warm smile, Maggie linked her arm with Robert's. The two of them said goodbye to his friends and headed to Maggie's car.
#robert plant#led zeppelin#70s#1970s#1976#classic rock#fanfic#fan fiction#writing#robert plant fan fiction#robert plant fanfic#led zeppelin fan fiction#writers#fiction#led zeppelin fanfic#writer#led zeppelin fan fic#fan fic#my writing#robert plant fan fic#fanfic writing#fan fic writing#led zeppelin fanfics#fanfics#robert plant fanfics#fan fiction writing#brownskinsugarplumlibrary
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music asks!
FAVORITES 1. what are your favorite bands? Lord Of The Lost, Porcupine Tree, Nightmare, Frost*, newer: Scarlet Dorn 2. what are your favorite singers? Lady Gaga, Steven Wilson, Zia, Lorde, newer: Down To Eden 3. what are your favorite albums? Thornstar by Lord Of The Lost, In Absentia by Porcupine Tree, To The Bone and Transience by Steven Wilson 4. what are your favorite songs? Six Feet Underground by Lord Of The Lost, Trains by Porcupine Tree, What I’ve Done, In The End and Numb by Linkin Park, My Demons and Ricochet by Starset, From The Flame by Leprous, Lovesongs (They Kill Me) by Cinema Bizarre, Would It Matter by Skillet, Hyperventilate, Experiments in Mass Appeal and Snowman by Frost* 5. what do you think the best popular song of the year is so far? I honestly don’t know. 6. which genres of music do you tend to like the best? Prog, Metal and any heavy stuff (not including “brutal” Death Metal - on a daily basis), Indie, Alternative, Soundtracks 7. what is the best concert you’ve ever been to? Either the Steven Wilson To The Bone Tour concert(s) in Hamburg 2018, or the Lord Of The Lost MEGA tour concert in Munich 2016 8. song of the year? My personal songs of the year (not released in 2019) at the moment: Kiss Me by Rob Vischer, While This Way by Árstíðir .2: 2019 still has to deliver! 9. album of the year? See 8.2 10. what are the best songs your parents have gotten you into? Anything by Keane, Evanescence, Depeche Mode,... 11. how did you first find out about your favorite band/singer? My own, like, nothing I inherited from my parents, favorite band was probably Cinema Bizarre and I found them through their first single being played 24/7 on Viva. 12. when/where do you first remember having heard your favorite song? I don’t remember anymore, sadly. I first heard Trains on a train station. 13. about how many times have you listened to your favorite song? I have absolutely no idea, any number I’d name would be too low. 14. if someone asks you what music they should check out, what are your go-to recommendations? I always assume my taste in music is nothing most people would care to listen to, but I’d say everyone should check out Steven Wilson(’s projects) at least once. And I’d promote my favourites in Lord Of The Lost till I die.
NOSTALGIA 15. what songs give you the most nostalgia? Anything by Evanescence, Keane, 80s music in general, The Corrs, Kylie Minogue, HIM... 16. what kinds of music were you raised on? Mostly 80s stuff, some rock, much pop, my mother brought some jazz as well, unfortunately. 17. what are your favorite songs that have ever been popular? See 15., probably :D I love almost every song by Gaga, I’d say she’s definitely popular! 18. who were your favorite musicians as a kid? I adopted my parent’s favorites, mostly The Corrs, specifically their drummer Caroline. Eisblume. Cinema Bizarre. Though that was already in my teens. 19. how did you feel about music as a kid? Music is and has always been my love and a great hobby. 20. what was your first concert? if you haven’t been to one, what do you want your first concert to be? I was six years old and I remember my dad telling me to say I’m seven so the security would let us in. It was The Corrs and I think it was either in the Hanns-Martin-Schleyer-Halle in Stuttgart, or in the Olympiahalle Munich. We went to several concerts in that year. (So that’s where I got that from!)
PERFORMANCE 21. how do live performances, whether they’re from your friends or professionals, tend to make you feel? Like in another dimension. 22. singing in the shower or singing in the car? I don’t drive, so, rather in the shower. But mostly at my desktop, extremely loudly. 23. if you were to become a musician, what kind of musician would you be? I am a pianist/multi-instrumentalist, but I think I’d never want to be a professional. 24. if you could pick one instrument to learn how to play, what would it be? If improving on the piano doesn’t count, like, learn something completely new, I’d say, maybe the harp, the cello (though I tried it some years ago). 25. what is your singing voice like? what singers do you remind yourself of? I don’t have a super special singing voice (I’m told otherwise), but I hit all the notes thanks to my trained hearing. I don’t really remind myself of someone particular, but I can make my voice sound like different singers like Scarlet Dorn, Lorde or the singer of a band, I just discovered, Trees Of Eternity. 26. have you ever been involved in any music programs? which ones and for how long? I have been member of my music school’s programme/ensemble. 27. which instruments do you know how to play? what’s your skill level? I’ve been playing the piano for 13 years, if I’d kept up the hard work I put in it until 2016, I’d be rather high-skilled, I started to play the guitar some years ago, but I was never really sufficiently active. I also began playing drums and even cello, but due to price and neighbours I couldn’t continue. I am an autodidact singer and I can play the bodhran. 28. if you took music lessons as a kid, are you glad you did? if not, do you wish you had? I am glad I took piano lessons, but I wish I had started taking guitar lessons sooner. I’d be much better by now and I also adored my teacher as a person. He kinda reminds me of my actual mentor now.
SOUNDTRACKS 29. how do you feel about video game soundtracks? I love video game soundtracks. 30. what soundtracks do you enjoy listening to the most? It changes from time to time, but at the moment I love the Mass Effect: Andromeda soundtrack and also the Dragon Age soundtracks, as well as most of the Marvel movies’, Ghibli movies’ and Game Of Thrones’. 31. which soundtracks do you think are objectively the best (or what are some that you think deserve appreciation)? I’d say check out Trevor Morris, Joe Hisaishi and Ramin Djawadi and you’re on the right scent. 32. how do you feel about musicals? I absolutely love musicals and used to visit some as often as I could with my aunt. 33. do you have any favorite composers, including classical ones? See 31, as for classical ones, I love Rachmaninov, Bach and Chopin. 34. are there any soundtracks or kinds of soundtracks that you just can’t stand? Can’t think of any at the moment. 35. what are your favorite songs/soundtracks from movies? I stared to obsess with Under Stars by AURORA from the ME: Andromeda credits, I love the Misty Mountains, The Marvel Avengers theme and the Harry Potter soundtrack, actually I can’t possibly remember everything to write it down.
LYRICS 36. what are some songs whose lyrics you relate to? Ou, that’s a personal one. There are many. But to name a few: Would It Matter by Skillet, Covered In Gold and Walls Of Utopia by Oh Fyo!, Don’t Hate Me and Prodigal by Porcupine Tree, Pariah and Hand Cannot Erase by Steven Wilson, No Me No You by Frost*, almost everything by Scarlet Dorn as well as Black Halo and most of all Cut Me Out by Lord Of The Lost 37. pick a song and analyse its lyrics. Can’t do, shouldn’t do, probably. 38. which songs do you think have the best lyrics? There’s just SO many. 39. what are some songs whose lyrics you think most people just don’t get? Six Feet Underground by Lord Of The Lost, not your typical love songTM, Harmony Korine by Steven Wilson, also so much by Steven Wilson. 40. are there any musicians whose lyrics you particularly tend to like? Steven Wilson. Next! :D 41. do you prefer songs that have good melodies or songs that have good lyrics? Good melodies, generally. But once I got hooked on by the sound I live for good lyrics.
CHALLENGES 42. name five songs you like that were released in the 90s. Join Me In Death by HIM, Walking In My Shoes by Depeche Mode, Rosier by Luna Sea, Viva Forever by Spice Girls, Enter Sandman by Metallica 43. name five songs you like that were released at least 50 years ago. I could name you some classical compositions... 44. write a parody of at least a verse of any song you’d like. Reign, reign on me, reign on me, reign on me. Reign, wash away, triangles and tears, blur all your plot and reign on me. 45. name 5 songs you can’t stand. Despacito, Despacito, Despacito,... 46. look at your country’s song charts, listen to the first unfamiliar song you can find, and share your opinion on it. I didn’t know and didn’t like any of the first eight I looked at. That’s how much I love chart music! 47. turn a song lyric into a pickup line. Until the end of night... (listen to Blood For Blood by Lord Of The Lost. I won’t explain any further.) 48. name the last 5 songs you listened to. While This Way by Árstíðir, Loreley by Lord Of The Lost, Ten Feet High by Andrea Corr, a song I mixed and mastered, Sinking Ships by Trees Of Eternity
RANDOM 49. what are your favorite album covers? In Absentia by Porcupine Tree, Thornstar by Lord Of The Lost, Hand Cannot Erase by Steven Wilson, Resist by Within Temptation, Milliontown by Frost* ... 50. any cover versions that you think are better than the original? I mostly like the cover version and the original. 51. how often do you listen to music? 24/7 52. do you collect vinyls? if so, what have been your best finds? I do have some by Lord Of The Lost and Steven Wilson. 53. if you could meet any musician you’d like, who would it be? Steven Wilson. By faaaar. 54. how do you feel about classical music? I love classical music. 55. would you ever want to have a career in music? I am, in fact, an aspiring audio engineer. 56. if you had a stage name, what would it be? My stage name for audio productions and art is nadzumi. 57. on a scale of 1 to 10, how important is music to you? 11. 58. how do you feel about rap music? Don’t like it. Only a few songs. I like Eminem. And I found the influence in Linkin Park very interesting. But I’d rather stay away. 59. what do you think the best “era” for music was? I’d say the 80s, some of the 90s and now, because there’s such a diversity, everyone will find something they can love. 60. how has music affected you as a person? I’d say I am music. (Music has affected everything.) Feel free to ask away any number if you want me to answer it in more detail!
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Bughead Family Discord Member Spotlight
This week the spotlight is on Cat ( @shibbycat ), our newest admin! Click the read more link below to get to know our member!
Spotlight by Mila, @jughead-jones | Graphic by Katie, @betty-cooper
Cat | @shibbycat
Name: Cat
Age: I’m old enough to own a Sega Genesis bought in a store the year it was released, and yes. I still play it.
Location: Northern Italy for the time being, but I’m prone to moving quite bit.
Any other languages aside from English people can contact you in?: I can do some conversational Spanish, and I can have Eric (my husband) tell me what you’re saying in Russian.
Favourite Riverdale characters and ships?: What gave you the impression that I like Riverdale or its ships? JK. Shockingly, I’m all about that Bughead. ALL about it. I care about most of the characters & their successes/failures… with Betty, Jughead, Veronica & Cheryl in the lead.
Favourite moments from S1 & S2?: Wow. Talk about a Sophie’s Choice. Here goes nothing. I legit yelled at my screen during The Look in 1x02, “omG. IT’S HAPPENING.” My childhood ship was exhumed. Best day. The dynamic between Jughead & FP in 1x07 rang particularly true to me. I also took away that Jughead talks about Jellybean like she’s his kid, not his sister. It guts me every single time. The end bit where Betty & Jughead walk away together really demonstrated how close they already were as a couple. Bonus for that being the scene where it clicks with Archie his two best friends were 5000% together, & their friendships was never going to be the same. It’s a small moment but I love it. Picking one thing from Season 2??? Co-Presidents. The absolute equality in their relationship was so perfectly on point here for me. The support and respect for one another was on display in blinking neon lights. WAIT. The hospital scene. I can’t leave it off. Jughead “I’ll never stop loving you” Jones almost gets murdered & only feels bad about not being there for Betty. All that matters to Betty is Jughead getting better. Plus, down-the-face kisses. I can’t with these two.
What are your hopes for S3?: I’m really hoping to see more of a focus on the friendships. I want to see them all work together in general & specifically, to defeat Hiram. We got to see an entire season of Hiram doing nothing but succeeding in his various nefarious causes & successfully pitting Bughead/Varchie against one another. Seeing his takedown at the hands of those whose lives & relationships he thought destroyed as they’re instead working together? Yes. Very yes. I’m of course beyond stoked for the Bughead Detective Agency & them working/growing together in their relationship & lives. Some actual fun times would be great to see. Yano, ones that don’t end in someone getting murdered or going to jail.
Other fandoms you’re into?: Besides Riverdale, I only exist in lurker status (thanks anxiety!) for fandoms, but I lurk(ed) super hard in Harry Potter (Except that I’ve totally written terrible HP fic. Really happy no one’s going to read this to know that), Reylo, Doctor Who, & Sherlock.
What are some of your favourite movies/TV?: Besides the obvious, just about everything Disney touches owns my pocketbook, dedication & continued attention. Parks & Rec, The Office (both UK & US), Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gilmore Girls, Doctor Who, Star Trek: TNG, & Sherlock are all shows I can watch on repeat. I’m not even going to start on non-Disney movies, because I’ll be here all day.
Favourite books?: This is literally the most difficult question to answer, because books are life. I’m going to keep it brief & say “Harry Potter.” They changed my life, they saved my life, & they’re always there to welcome me home.
Favourite bands/musicians?: Favorites are so hard. I like a little something from most genres of music, but I can never turn off classic Elton John, BSB (I had full plans to marry Kevin as an 11 year old), Linkin Park, John Williams, Lady GaGa, Guns n Roses, The Killers, or Queen. Big picture wise, I’m particularly attached to Classic Rock, practically anything 80s, late 90s/early 2000s pop (I still know all the choreo to Bye Bye Bye & Oops... I Did It Again), The Great American Songbook, classical music, popular songs converted classical arrangements, and I’m a sucker for 1960s/70s R&B/soul. Long story short, I make a lot of playlists.
If you could live in any fictional world which one would you choose and why?: Harry Potter for sure. Wands which choose you. Broomsticks which get released like new car models. Owls which deliver mail anywhere. Portkeys/Apparating/Brooms/Floo powder making travel dirt cheap/free. Butterbeer & Pumpkin Juice. If it’s not clear, I’m really into Harry Potter. OH. I also did a HP LARP a few years ago in a Polish castle, & it was the greatest thing EVER.
Favourite food?: Oh food. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Seriously. I travel around just to eat. Limiting to one kind? Mexican food. I could eat it everyday.
Favourite season?: Fall/winter. First of all, I like to wear a GRIP of layers. I’m also a big fan of being lazy & putting a beanie on over my unstyled (often unbrushed) hair. I’m also VERY into Halloween & Christmas. I decorate for both with gusto. Christmas goes up in my house the same day it does at Disneyland: 10 November. I’m also obsessed with Christmas Markets. So many quality Halloween/Christmas films too! I have an entire list of mandatory watches every year.
Favourite plant?: Really large sunflowers with the dark red/deep orange petals. Their seeds also demonstrate the Fibonacci sequence, and I’m a human who believes math is the most beautiful thing in the entire world.
Favourite scent?: There’s something magical smelling about old books for me. I also really enjoy the way rain smells on dry pavement when it first starts falling.
Favourite colour?: It’s been purple ever since I learned how the Phoenicians made it when I was 9.
Favourite animal?: Cats. All kinds & sizes...except Sphynxes. & unicorns. Are you a night owl, an early bird, or a vampire?: Night owl/early bird. The insomnia is strong with this one.
Place you want to visit?: I’ve been lucky enough to check a lot of places off my “must see” list, but Madagascar is still a life goal. OH! & to visit every single Disney park around the world.
Do you have pets? If you do, tell us a little about them: Ah! Something I LOVE talking about. I have 3 incredibly spoiled cat children who want to cuddle all the time. That’s right. Cat loves cats. They’re all rescues, Maine Coons, and little characters to be sure. Their names are Dorcas, Knick Knack, & Elmo. We’ve had Dorky for 10 years and Elmo & Knick Knack for 9 years. Knick Knack likes to walk on a leash & paws at the door for his walk. Dorcas plays fetch with toy mice, and Elmo likes to cuddle so hard Eric is genuinely worried I’ll be suffocated by his snuggles.
Tell us a little about yourself?: My grandma once told me that I’ve always known exactly who I am, even as a child, and I’ve let that sense-of-self guide me (not always to greatness mind you) every day. I’m an introvert with fairly crippling anxiety & depression, and I simply don’t care who knows it. If me being upfront about it can help anyone, I’m happy to do it. I’m hypercritical of myself & what I put out into the world. Being frank, honest, and sarcastic are how I say “hello,” but I’m also a firm believer in “don’t say something rude just to say something rude.” Tact is key. Encouraging people to find their own happiness & fulfillment in life are things which bring me joy. Likewise, I’d do pretty much anything for a friend, & if there’s something I can do to help them/help someone in their journey to find happiness in life, I want to do it. Uuuummm, I laugh so hard I cry a lot, and my eyeliner runs. It always makes people think I’ve been crying for real & filled with emotions. It’s awkward. I guess I’m creative? I like woodworking, pyrography, crafting, and making nerd stuff through those mediums.
Fun or weird fact about you?: I entered my wedding reception to “The Imperial March.” It’s safe to say I’ve been a wee bit obsessed with Star Wars for longer than my Sega Genesis is old.
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This is the ninth instalment of Bughead Family’s Member Spotlight series. Each week, a member’s url is selected through a randomizer and they will be featured in a spotlight post. In order to participate, please join the Bughead Discord (more information found here). Thank you.
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Decline 45th High School Reunion
I cannot attend the reunion for reasons cited below but rest assured that my spirit will be there.
I remember attending 9th grade home room in the fall of 1969 as a skinny 14 year old not knowing what my future will be at East Paterson High School. Well I am 63 years old and the results are nearly in.
I had just finished 8 years at St. Anne's Parochial School. I had a good friend named George Wolfe who had dated Rhonda Frattolillo. He attended Fair Lawn High School so I felt lost in the new environment.
Growing up on 18th Avenue I had also known Tommy Moriarty. I spoke to a childhood friend the other day. She told me about the passing of Tommy who died at the age of 62. Tommy had down syndrome. He lived with his rather large family on 16th Avenue. My memory is hazy but some of the details of my childhood have stayed with me. We grew up together for the period of roughly 1965-1968. Many hours were spent sleigh riding on the small hill located near Tommy's house on 16th Avenue. One day my family's dog ran out the door and it seemed like at least 20 children including Tommy tried to catch him. Pepper ran into the woods near the Garfield Water Works. Eventually despite the snow and other dangers Pepper was returned. I asked my Mom about Tommy being different and at the time the term retarded was used. My Mom who was generally soft spoken told me that God made all children in his likeness. Soon after this I was standing on top of 16th Avenue hill waiting to sleigh down it. Tommy was there and asked me if I was his friend. We rode down the hill on the sleigh together. Rest in peace Tommy.
At East Paterson High School I remember being called to Dr Varese the Principal's office in 1972. I was nervous but he congratulated me on receiving a New Jersey State Scholarship. I believe my father who was a Veteran of World War II at Pearl Harbor had something to do with it. I did not serve in the military the draft had ended when I became eligible. Besides I had seen enough fighting outside the third wing of the high school to realize that it was just plain stupid.
I was interested in sports especially baseball throughout my high school years. I am enclosing a picture of my high school jacket. I was too nervous to ask any girls to the proms but if I had the nerve I would have asked Roberta Fisher. Please hug her for me at the reunion. She is a good friend and a wonderful lady. I remember wrestling with you and realizing that you were a skilled wrestler. I remember playing one on one Basketball with Tony Zappala and losing but I was not intimidated by his New Jersey All State superior skills. I remember pitching my first inning in Varsity baseball and realizing that my 80 MPH fastball was not enough to win a ticket to the Major Leagues. But I loved the competition and had some meager success to build on.
After high school I attended College and continued to play baseball. In 1974 I pitched a three hitter against the 11th ranked community college in the nation putting our team in first place. I remember Dennis Walling hitting a double off me in the first inning. When I walked back to the bench my coach told me he was a really good hitter and somehow I got him out the next three times I faced him. Walling went on to have a Hall of fame career in the major leagues. But my ego grew really large that day. I wanted to pitch the 2nd game of the doubleheader but the coach thought otherwise.
In 1974 I heard Paul McCartney’s Band on the Run and my life was changed. If you are ever in a bad mood play this song and you will know what I mean.
In 1976 I dated the first love of my life named Linda Lane. Her father was a wealthy businessman from Paterson New Jersey. Linda attended College in Pennsylvania. I remember driving down to see her and wondering what the future holds for me. In 1977 I proposed to Linda at Valley Forge State Park. She said yes if we could resolve our religious differences. This was true love only encumbered by my Roman Catholic faith vs. her born again Christian beliefs despite the fact that her father was Jewish and her mother was Roman Catholic.
I broke up with Linda and decided to take my 1968 Chevy Nova (I had rebuilt the engine in the snow of the 1977 winter) and move to California. I lost the opportunity for inherited wealth for the California dream by humming the Beach boys songs of the 60's as my friend Lamont and I drove to Long Beach California. I also had an Accounting degree from William Paterson College and $5,000.00. I planned to retire by age 40 with $100,000.00. I remember saying that I had no intention of reading another book until I have some fun. While we looked for apartments I found one but when Lamont turned up to sign the papers it was rented. I found another and made sure Lamont was not there to sign papers. There are bigots apparently all of the country. I really hate bigots.
In late 1978 I met a California girl with a golden smile named Laura Lambert that has graced my life for 40 years. That year I also met Ron Beaman from Nebraska. We have been friends all these years which I consider myself lucky. The next 8 years were spent living in a two bedroom apartment one block from the beach playing basketball with about 40 friends every weekend. I owned a small accounting business.
In 1980 I cried when John Lennon died.
In 1986, Laura and I bought our first piece of Real Estate, a one bedroom condo. It was a bit intimidating. By 2008 we bought/sold over 100 properties, so much for being nervous.
In the late 80’s I met the first of two attorneys that I am also friends with. Gene Goldman is a good attorney whose only deficiency is being weak in billable hours. I believe his calming disposition helped me in dealing with homeowners associations.
By 1994 Laura and I had accumulated 10 pieces of real estate and I had obtained real estate Brokers licenses in California and Nevada. My first real estate sale was to a single mom. She cried when I gave her the keys and I did too when I received a check for $2,200.00 for about 4 hours of work. It seemed so easy. At the loan signing her parents apologized for her being gay. I did not know what to say to the assholes. I wanted the deal to go through so I kept my mouth shut. In 1996 my daughter Rhiannon was born (named after the Fleetwood Mac song of 1977).
In 2002 I attended two concerts, Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen in Las Vegas. This makes up for not seeing Bruce Springsteen at Mr. D’s on the corner of Market Street and Midland Avenue. I realized that Paul McCartney and the Beatles were God’s gift to mankind. How lucky were we to experience this?
By 2004 I had a million dollars in the bank and 8 properties. I would go down to the Las Vegas courthouse to buy foreclosures. One property I did not have any information on started bidding at $30,000. I knew the people bidding were attorneys who regularly bought so when the bidding reached $400,000 I started chirping in. I bought it sight unseen for $425,000.00. As I paid the lady one of the attorneys said he was upset and wanted it. I drove my Lexus quickly to the property which was in a gated community. It was a fixer upper that I hoped to sell $575,000.00 and make $30,000.00 on. Well in 4 months after remodeling the price had soared to $675,000.00. I had made $100,000.00 on a house bought sight unseen. My ego grew again.
In 2005 at Christmas time I walked into Wells Fargo Bank in Henderson Nevada with my daughter Rhiannon and asked the teller how much the Wells Fargo Stuffed Stagecoach was. She responded by giving it to my daughter telling her that I was their biggest customer. My ego expanded again.
In 2006 Laura and I met Lon and Mary Searle and their fine family. They are mormons that have great values. Of course we do not agree on Joseph Smith.
By 2008 my material wealth had diminished considerably but luck would have it I found out that my ancestors arrived at Jamestown Virginia in 1629 and I was the 12th generation. I decided to take Laura and Rhiannon and move to Williamsburg Virginia. There was no stopping my love for United States History which began reading about Ethan Allen and the Green mountain Boys at St. Anne's in 2nd grade. Sure Kennedy was shot that same year but if the truth be known it wasn't Oswald who did it. There was a severe recession on except I did not notice it because of my families history unfolded before my eyes. I found the original family cemetery and plantation and a historical figure named Dred Scott who did not have his birthplace recognized. I fixed that in a couple of years by connecting two documents 40 years and 700 miles apart. Isn’t history grand?
In 2009 I met Richard Lincoln Francis, clerk of the Southampton County Court in Virginia. He is descended from Abraham Lincoln and I consider him a good friend who is qualified to be President of the United States. He is my East coast attorney, we have had more fun than should be allowed. To give you an example we had a trial over a Hines lucky rock that rivals the OJ Simpson trial of the century. I have taught Rick the 8 things to drive a golf ball successfully. He is a terrible student who has a tendency to make phone calls while teeing off. I believe this violates some rules.
Since moving to Williamsburg Virginia I have written five books. My disdain for reading that occurred after college was over. The second book involving the research to discover Dred Scott's birthplace is being converted into a movie. It is entitled Walk With You, the story of Dred Scott and the Blow Family of Virginia. It is about 8 children 6 white and 2 black that grew up and bonded together to take on the President and Chief Justice of the United States. I have met Hollywood stars including Ed Asner. My time is currently possessed in seeing this venture is completed to fruition.
My life has been blessed by God and living in the greatest country in the world. I have lived the American dream which consists of association with all ethnic groups. My first twenty two years living in New Jersey were great. My next twenty three years in California were better. My next 8 years in Henderson Nevada were living the dream. The next 5 years in Williamsburg were amazing. And the last few years touring the United States with Laura are the best ever. Opportunities if you use education to advance yourself. If these members of our class are among the living: Robert Motta, Robert Hurley, and Joseph Lasica, please give them my best.
Our democracy is currently under attack by a greedy lying moron who has no business occupying the world's beacon of freedom head office. This will change soon. If any of the morons who voted for this clown have issue I will be happy to meet them outside the 3rd wing at EPHS and give them a taste of true Democracy from someone who has lived it. I have had only two fights in my life. I am undefeated and plan to stay that way.
Warmest Regards,
Jeffrey Allen Hines
Class of 1973
#walkwithyou
#neveragain
#bluewave2018
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i've been thinking a lot about your mouth /honey & smoke - m.h. x OFC story
Lucy's POV.
Time was slipping through my fingers as I indulged my extra time into an easy read of by Jane Austen looking over at the red lit alarm clock on my night stand, reading a quarter to five. I sighed to myself, fickled with emotions about what to expect tonight.
Of course it would be fun, for being someone who enjoyed space, old TV series and over read books. I was a sucker for live performances. Every weekend back in New York, I'd find myself with good friends sneaking our ways to the city to night clubs with local bands. Just for the hell of being apart of the city life.
This time being different as it was going to be Matty and the boys of all people performing. Kinda turning the tables on him trying to get to know me so well and allow me to venture him now. Even though our escapades of walking me home was something I'd hold so close. I smiled just thinking about it.
I rose from my bed and retreated to the door that held different types of styles for different occasions and different days. I was becoming friends with my closet, never had I ever had so many outfit changes. I found myself in a spaghetti strap dark teal flowy top, my black high waisted jeans and my chucks. Complimenting it all with a green army jacket and tying my hair up into a little bun with my bangs hanging loose.
I decided to go an extra step, refreshing my playlist before grabbing my makeup bag out of drawer and sitting pretzel leg in front of my mirror. Nothing too much, just some liner, mascara, and a little shade to my prominent rouge lips. I sat there admiring, taken back on my sudden outbursts of deciding to go out, looking pretty and then soon going to be hanging out in a place that served possibilities among the drinks they poured.
It was also going to be a semi-date with a boy. Something that I hadn't been on in the past year. So I feel a little rusty from my past endeavors.
I found my eyes trailing back to the red numbers, reading 5:50pm indicating that time had too much energy on it's hands. Grabbing my bag and turning everything off,I headed down to the common ground where Abby was watching some silly reality show close to the Kardashians but a British version and Liz was concentrated on her school work.
"Lulu! How are you?" Abby greeted as I sat next to her on the pale green sofa. Unwinding in the little bits of time I had to kill. Abby always had an interest in my well-being as she was majoring in psychology. I didn't mind her pry, I found a comfort in it. Liz had joined in when I began talking my Woman Studies class and how she found Professor Mullen to be just as cool as I. Coming to conclusion that we all three had a successful week of first time classes.
I was in the middle of talking about the lame book I was going to take a flight into on Sunday when the doorbell had rang. Liz and Abby had looked at each other, trying to figure out if someone had invited company over. I stood up from the sofa,
"That's for me. If I'm not out too long. Pizza and The Office?" I smiled before walking towards the door and greeting Matty.
"Hey you." I smiled, my eyes automatically landing to his wild curled mane. His black leather jacket lounging over his frame, complimenting the light blue button down. Trailing down to his signature holy black jeans and a pair of black boots. His impeccable style beyond compared to the slight comfortable standards of mine.
"Ready?" He asked, before I shut the door behind me.
-------------------------------------------------------
Matty's POV.
I rang the doorbell of the little green house on the block.
"Hey you." She greeted, closing the door behind her. Her little smile shining, and she looked good tonight.
Green was a color made for her, complimenting her hair, her eyes, everything. And what topped it all was the beat up chucks, a little punk rock princess in disguise.
"Ready?" I asked, she nodded and we headed down the walkway. Opening the door to my '88 BMW.
Our steady breathing filling in the spaces that were silent between us. Glancing at her as she glanced out the window, bobbing her head to the 80's tunes that I had burned onto a CD an hour before.
We had arrived at the pub, the boys were going to meet her for the first time. Making it official that she wasn't going anywhere yet. The place was pretty packed, Mickey was struggling with an overflow of ordered drinks as George was in the back getting ready for our gig.
With her hand in mine, I made our way to the backstage. Seeing Ross first, who was hitting a blunt. "Matty boy, where have you been?" He asked, before I brought Lucy into view.
"This is Lucy. Lucy, this is my mate Ross." Her pretty smile, so friendly as she put her hand out to shake his. Ross taken back that I was even introducing her, it was like a rare gem kind of event.
I then brought her into the dressing room the two others were, glued to their phones. Breaking entry as their heads shot up. George peering a smile because he was the only who knew that she was different for me from the rest.
She was just this intriguing puzzle piece placed into my drowned out life style. Right off the bat taking me by surprise that she hadn't slept with me yet. Taking me into a big hall of surprises when she got along with the boys, even laughing at jokes Ross told and we made him feel good about. I sat on the sofa, watching her at a close distance as she talked old tunes with George and cute dogs with Adam.
"On in five!" Celia, the barmaid had announced peering from the hall.
++
I walked back into the crowd of regulars with Lucy, buying her a drink and standing against stage, her eyes batting as she sipped and talked. Before I had jumped onto the stage, leaving her front and center. The boys joined me once they had gotten in gear near George's drum set. Agreeing on the first song of the night, the boys beginning the measures of Chocolate.
"Welcome to the party, we're The 1975" I yelled into the crowd.
The gig was a weekly ritual, we were the house band. Same people, different day. Familiar faces ranging and staggering the place.
"Hey now call it a split 'cause you know that you will Oh you bite your friends like chocolate!"
I couldn't help focusing on the sway from her, a sway that was ricocheting from the sounds of our band. As it progressed each song we played. Dancing away, with her cup in her hand.
++
My vision was becoming obviated from the bottle wine between the boys and I. Everything becoming a blur, the crowd still going and the night was coming down blissfully.
The boys, Lucy and I retreated to the bar. George's boss giving us drinks on the house and talking about whatever. My eyes were focused on Lucy who joined in most of the time, but her eyes danced around the room.
An idea had popped in my head, I had a little bit of money to spend, not that she was like that or anything. But it was far better than this, Lucy looked at me. Smiling shyly, blush erupting lightly against her cheeks.
I motioned my head to the door at her, curious if she was in. She nodded, before excusing herself to head to the ladies room. I sat waiting a few when a pair of arms wrapped around my neck.
"Matthew." Her devious voice greeted.
With a body so familiar that had laid upon my sheets till early morning risings. Her heart shaped tattoo on her hand. Her name was nowhere near my lips. Just the hazy memory of an encounter that went down the list with the others.
--------------------------------------------
Lucy's POV.
Matty and the boys were so good tonight, especially Matty. He was so into the crowd, making sure all was good and that everyone was on their feet. Not a soul was sitting just a dance party all night long.
I had gotten really acquainted with the boys too, they were all so nice and humble. Explaining the reasons behind why Matty was friends with them in the first place. They never let you miss a moment, reeling you in even if you were a pass buyer.
But things were beginning to get calm and Matty wanted to embark on other plans. Excusing myself first to freshen up.
The poorly lit restroom had definitely lots of story held. The one florescent light flickering as I reapplied my lipstick that was washed from my rum and coke. My eyes trailing to the faded lettering against the mirror reading 'Rita was here.' with a big heart around it. As I held the rouge stick to my lips steadily. Smacking my lips together for coverage before throwing it back into my bag and taking one last look.
I stepped back into the crowd. Making my way through them till I reached bar and this immediate knot in my throat tightened like a noose.
The brunette was flirty, her finger twirling one of Matty's curls. As she stood tall enough where her laced white bra began playing peek-a-boo through the side of her shirt. I expected this, the first time I ever laid eyes on him he had girls clinging to him. Which I couldn't blame because I happened to be one from a distance.
Feeling baffled as she babbled on about whatever, as he just lightly smiled. His eyes trailing around from her to other things till they landed on me. They trailed back to her as his long fingers wrapped around her hand playing with his nest. Rising from the stool and excusing himself as she looked on to him till her eyes met the direction he was heading.
Heading towards me.
"Ready, Blue?" He asked before his hand was in mine as he pushed through the crowd until we had reached the brisk air of the night.
++
Matty took control, leading us on the outskirts of town to a liquor store nearby. One by one, walking down the aisle till Matty picked up a bottle of red wine. He led us to a little park shortly after covered in trees and greenery that was pair with a little lake. We sat on the grass, splitting the wine between us and just talking... about anything to everything.
Our laughs and giggles combining with the ruffle of the trees that towered. It was dark enough that we laid out underneath the stars, so many of them that I had trouble counting. The questions kept rolling, both answering them one after the other. Getting a better view of this boy that had helped me out of the pool.
I rested my head against his arm, just caught up in the moment. Caught up in everything happening.
"So, what about this one?" I pointed to the tattoo that was embedded on his chest. Playing peek-a-boo behind his button down. He trailed over at me, "It's for my Nana, Annie. She meant a lot to me." He replied, knowing the feeling all too well. Matty propped his head on his hand, peering down at me now. I was making an abstract piece of art in his eyes with his brown ones against mine. "What?" I asked, he always chuckled when I questioned why he stared so long.
"Why do you question why I stare?" He asked, the boy with the 100 questions.
"Why do you stare so much?" I retorted.
He just chuckled louder, looking away a second before coming back again. "I don't think you're going to make it easy."
I raised my eyebrow, "For?" I asked.
"To get to know you." He replied, "You're hard to read." I just smirked, "That's why I'm a writer.. Keep you on your toes." He just smiled, "Touché Blue, touché."
Matty looked everywhere from my eyes, to my blouse till his chestnut eyes met the curve of my lips. My eyes watching him as his eyes watched my lips part, his free hand landing on my cheek. His calloused thumb running over my bottom lip. Hesitant as he took his bottom lip between his teeth.
I had a feeling where this was going. I wanted it to go there. I wanted those lips to waltz against mine. But the girl at the bar lingered across my mind. How she practically fell to Matty's feet, like the rest of them from the party and wherever he stepped.
Was I one of those girls? Did I want to be one of those girls?
Matty was something else, honestly admitting and I couldn't blame anyone who found him intriguing like I. I knew he wasn't new to the game, the boy wore his experiences like the way he wore his leather jacket. I was just uneasy at becoming something he was used to instead of a new experience like he was for me.
A few curls began to fall into his face as he began to lower himself, inches away from my mouth. An abundance of thoughts running through my mind, all too familiar from moments before. Unsure if my reflex would act fast like those thoughts did. Beginning to feel his hot breath that almost warmed me from the autumn air. I slightly placed my hand to his lowering chest, his once closed eyes now a shade of dark brown. Asking for answers as they trailed my face, almost piercing it.
"I-I'm sorry." I felt my chest sinking, unsure if I made the right decision. If I had pushed him away before he got any closer. His eyes still trailing, "For?"
I sighed with the feeling of embarrassment rushing in, dreading the words about to spill from my oozing mouth. "I don't want to be one of them." Closing my eyes to hide from his reaction.
When I opened them back up, he was still propped on his hand, his lips curled into a soft smirk that graced his face.
"Trust me." He paused, "You're not one of them. Not in the slightest."
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ot13; the ways you said "i love you"
feat: reader x seventeen
genre: marshmallow fluff, random au with each member
word count: 6283
summary: the thirteen ways seventeen shows how much they care about you
rated p for terrible puns and tastefully executed profanity
Hoshi, “Cheer up, baby!”
The room was stifling hot, like a piping cup of tea that refused to cool despite the open windows and the cross-breeze provided by the fan and open door. Handwritten notes with meticulously color-coded titling and highlighting were sticking to the backs of your arms as they were intricately arranged like a table mat over your desk.
“Are you done yet?”
You felt your fingers twitch in irritation, the spasm causing a fine red line to streak between what was the molecular formula for one of your polysaccharides. “Hosh, I have an exam tomorrow.” you tried to respond as levelly as possible, careful not to snap at him because he’s the only one who’s stood to deal with your nearly crisped mind all day.
“I’m sorry, sugar.” he was laying upside-down on your small mattress, his bare legs stretched over your wall and his sleeveless arms spread apart on the unmade sheets. His head was tilted towards the back of yours. “I’m like TT just thinking about how stressed out you are.”
Using all your willpower to not turn around and cuddle the hell out of your boyfriend, you started to scribble intelligible formulas onto your notebook. “Really, Twice references?”
“Ooh ah ah ah,” Hoshi tsked, and your heard the soft pat pat his marigold yellow tube socks made against your posters. “You should’ve expected it when I knock knocked on your door this morning.”
This time you had to bite your pen to hide the giggle that was quickly bubbling its way to your lips. Swiveling around in your chair, you tried not to ignore the fact that Hoshi’s eyes lit up like summer stars at having a view of you that wasn’t your hunched over back. “And what, are you trying to send me a signal or something?” you played along, finally throwing your pen behind to god-knows-where on your desk.
Like a jack-in-the-box, Hoshi popped off from your bed and kneeled over your sitting form, his fingers padding across your bare thighs enthusiastically. Now that you’ve finally reciprocated his terribly arranged puns, it was time to put his plan in action. “Yes! I think there’s some ice cream in the freezer downstairs. I’ll go get something for us, I think it’s about time you take a break.” he got up slowly, but not before pressing a warm kiss to your forehead. Not uncomfortably warm like the weather, but the kind of warm that spread to your fingers and toes and made you feel all fuzzy and safe. “In the meantime, cheer up baby! You’re going to kill this exam, I promise.”
“Okay,” you caved in, bringing a thumb to pinch the apple of his reddened cheeks. If anything concerned Hoshi, you didn’t have to think about it twice.
Seungcheol, “You’re my favorite pain in the ass.”
“I’m dying. This is it. This is how I go.”
“Sweetheart, we’re almost up the mountain. We can’t stop now.” he smiled encouragingly at your pouting face.
You kept your butt firmly glued on the large rock you plopped on, crossing your arms. “I told you that I didn’t wanna go hiking.” your shrugged. “I don’t know why you pushed me to do it.”
Seungcheol gave you a frown on his own, plopping his backpack on the ground. He ran a hand through his dark locks, unconsciously accentuating his broad shoulders and biceps that were clearly seen through his dri-fit muscle tee. Normally this would urge you to make a comment that Seungcheol had been working out well and the results were definitely paying off, but it made you feel even more conscious of how different you two were. He was always up for new challenges and keeping a strict workout regimen, while you enjoyed the comfort of your own home huddled under the blankets with your favorite pint of ice cream.
Your legs felt like they were on fire, combined with the sun and humidity that decided to graze your day like a balm that refused to unstick to your skin. There were already a couple scrapes and bruises that were already tended to by Seungcheol, due to the fact that you tripped a couple times because you weren’t used to walking at such an incline.
Seungcheol’s eyes suddenly brightened, reflective of the afternoon sun as he bent down to your level. “Get on my back, I’ll carry you up the mountain.” he said, reaching blindly for your hands.
“What? That’s crazy! I’m heavy as hell.” you cried, pushing yourself farther up the rock.
“No you’re not. C’mon, if you get on you get to see the beautiful view, and I get my back workout for the day. Everyone wins.”
“I don’t know, Cheol.” you frowned, already feeling the guilt creep up on you.
”Please?” he gave you the signature puppy eyes, twiddling his fingers so you’d fall onto his back.
Mulling it over for a few seconds, you sighed, understanding that Seungcheol would be here all day if you didn’t make a decision soon. Curse the combined efforts of your stubborn personality and weak legs. Reaching over to put his backpack over your shoulders, you slowly gripped his back. You felt his hands scoop under your thighs, hauling you up and farther away from the dirt path. Resting your head between his neck you mumbled, “I’m sorry I’m such a pain in the ass.” you muttered embarrassingly, rubbing your blushing face against his shoulder.
Feeling the satisfied smile in his voice he replied proudly, “You’re my favorite pain the ass.”
Chan, “After you, m’lady.”
“Give me some credit here. You may be the best at dancing,” you gestured to the open wooden floor of your living space with the tables pushed aside, “But I absolutely kill it at video games.”
The single most attractive thing about Chan was definitely his confidence. The way his eyes narrowed at the challenge, whether it was a race to the shower or finishing up your schoolwork, Chan was always ready to one-up. But you weren’t having that today, not when he’s in your home playing your console.
The Dance Dance Revolution mat was spread evenly in front of the television, used previously on expert mode to BTS’ “Fire”. There was a sizable dent in the soft plastic, due to both of you fitting your bodies on the mat to buttonsmash during the breakdown.
You could feel Chan’s body heat radiate like a furnace, kissing your skin and burning through the thin fabric of your t-shirt. Chan was like a fountain, grabbing the napkins from your take-out lunch and dabbing underneath his oakwood bangs. His smile was infallible through his melting form on the couch, the diamond whites doing nothing to control the adrenaline pumping your heart into overdrive.
“That’s just because you have good hand-eye coordination, if you really had a dance off with me your legs would be crying in jealousy because I’m so good.” he reasoned smugly.
“I wouldn’t even have a dance off with you to begin with.” you snapped playfully, picking up another clean napkin to pat the beads of sweat by his collarbones. “No way would I be feeding into your ego. Besides. I’m the one that just beat your high score.” you added with a proud smirk, nudging his jelly-like figure on the couch to show your initials emblazoned on the screen.
His eyes subconsciously narrowed at that, and any notice of him melting on the couch ten minutes ago had evaporated. Instead his body was firm and defiant as he sat up to learn teasingly over you, his face inches from yours. “You won’t be gloating about your high score after this next round, babe.” he said lowly, noses touching and his hot breath fanning your already flushed face.
The little growl in his endearment was almost intimidating, if it not were the fact that it was a lazy Monday afternoon and you were equally dressed only in long t-shirts and underwear.
“Is that a challenge?” you raised a brow, eyes darting to the blinking video game that was awaiting their next song. “Watch and learn, Chan. Watch and learn.”
Laying back in his seat, he threw a lazy smile to the DDR mat. “After you, m’lady.” he said with a grandiose flourish of his hands, awaiting your next move.
Seungkwan, “You better eat.”
Some random Heize song was playing from the restaurant speakers, filling the room with aesthetic indie music. Of course Seungkwan felt the need to harmonize along with the singer, his voice permeating throughout the eatery like a second skin.
“Are you trying to get yourself noticed?” you asked lightly, drumming your fingers against the countertop as you gave him an imploring look.
Seungkwan shrugged coolly, a small smile playing on the tip of his tongue. “Well, I kinda do and I kinda don’t. Like, I wanna get noticed because my voice deserves to be noticed, but I also do wanna have this date uninterrupted.”
“Then may I kindly suggest that you shut up?”
“You shut up. My voice is beautiful.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t.” you huffed with a pout, reaching over the squeeze his hand. “Your voice is beautiful, just not when we’re trying to avoid Dispatch.”
“True.” he nodded, adjusting closer in the booth to place both his hands over yours.
At that moment Seungkwan’s meal arrived, an old lady dressed like an 80s American in a poodle skirt swinging around their table like it was her roller rink. She placed a large burger on Seungkwan’s side with a heaping side of fries, swiss cheese oozing from every corner of the plate.
With a kind thank you that would give any mother a run for their money, Seungkwan proceeded to cut the burger into tiny pieces. You twirled the straw of your ice water around as you focused on the window facing the streets, pretending not to notice how delicious that burger looked. You were still waiting on your grilled chicken salad, as per your new trainer’s instructions, but it definitely did not compare to the decadence of a classic American lunch.
“Hey.” you could practically feel his glare laser through your backside.
“Hm?” you replied absentmindedly, clinking the ice together with your straw.
“You better eat.” you could feel the challenge in his voice, daring you to argue back.
“I will.” you replied with a routine wave of your hand, turning back to look at Seungkwan straight in his almond brown eyes. Just for good measure, you puffed your cheeks and bloated your lips in a frown, trying to look convincing. “Don’t worry about me, Boo.”
With a straight face he started cutting his burger furiously, the metal grating against the plate as he kept his eyes on you. “I don’t care how adorable you look doing that. You worry me no matter what. And you’re going to share this burger with me, and we’ll have the salad after and pretend we’re healthy human beings.” he stabbed his fork into the meat and buttered bread, pressing it to your lips. “You’re even prettier when you’re on a full stomach.”
Swallowing the silly grin you opened your mouth, letting him feed you. It was probably the magic of your boyfriend’s words, but it was very well the most delicious burger you had in a long while.
Minghao, “Just because.”
You don’t know how you ended up on the Ferris wheel with Minghao, your cart and the quickly setting sun in complete sync as they made their respective ways to the top and to its set, but you weren’t complaining at all.
Minghao was a contrast of sorts, the type that would meet with his friends on his longboard like rain and routine. He’d give nothing but warm hugs and diamond smiles to his friends, and then give you a blank stare and a minimal nod of acknowledgement whenever you two were alone.
He was the epitome of hard to get, and it frustrated you to no end. You decided that getting him to talk to you was moot, if it wasn’t so obvious to him that you were interested in being more than just friends you’d be holding a sign in neon green screaming “I think I like you, jerk!”
But here you were, holding a stuffed bunny in your arms as the ferris wheel floated higher and higher from the ground. It was unceremoniously shoved in your grasp when you were saying how much you wanted it on your stroll down the game booth. Minghao appeared after five minutes of him leaving to “get a drink of water” with a petal pink oversized bunny in his lithe arms. You didn’t even realize Minghao had left until he showed up with his lips jutted in a semi-grimace, leaving you mildly dumbfounded.
Every little creak and squeak of the metal and plastic ride was felt under your feet, which only frazzled you further because of the close distance between you and Minghao. It wasn’t a very spacious carriage, it only held pairs, and conveniently so Minghao was the odd number out of his party of twelve other friends. Not that you were complaining, not when his thigh was touching yours as you went higher and higher, his hand on his knee ticking along his mental clock.
“So, why’d ya do it?” you finally ask, clutching the stuffed bunny closer to your chest.
“Hm?” he peeled his hand from his jeans, oh-so-casually lifting it so it would reach the back of your seat rest. He needed to stretch his arms, the carriage was tight, you reasoned mildly.
“You won me the bunny I wanted. I didn’t even know you could shoot a BB gun.” you added with a playful smirk, curling your fingers around the soft cotton of the prize.
“Yeah.” he bobbed his head, his milk chocolate bangs bouncing against the wind. “Well, you just use your dominant eye to find through the viewfinder at the distant object higher than the actual—”
“Minghao,” you gave him a stern look, using the arm of your bunny to smack him lightly on the side. “I’m asking why you took a shot for me, not how you shoot.”
“Oh,” he swallowed, his cheeks shaded in a pink blotch. “Just because.”
“Because?”
“Because I wanted to.” his arm still hadn’t left from over you, the forces of gravity have been weighing said arm further and further across your very shoulders. “Isn’t that a good enough excuse?”
You looked up through your lashes, feigning innocence. “I guess. Then can I kiss you?”
His face was now practically oozing embarrassment, previous bad-boy-fake-hard-to-get persona was melting like a snow-cone on the Fourth of July. “Wait, what?” if it were possible, he would’ve backed all the way up against the walls of the carriage. “I—mean, yeah. Wait, really? Why?”
You shrugged, tilting your head against the position of his moistened lips. “To thank you. The sun is setting prettily and like you said, just because.”
Vernon, “Your skin’s like the inside of a toasted marshmallow.” (aka Vernon’s loopy as shit after getting his wisdom teeth removed)
“I’m sorry, but do you mind taking the backroads home?” you asked in your most temperate, kind voice to your cab driver. “It’s quicker and I’ll tell you the directions, ah. There—past that restaurant, please turn left. Then you just have to go straight until you see the white complex.”
Despite the fact that the AC is on in the tiny convertible, you still felt uncomfortable with sweat sticking your hair to your neck and over a hundred and fifty pounds of muscle feeling like dead weight on your lap.
A little part of you wished you had smushed your pride when you could three hours ago when Junhui offered to come with you to the dentist while Vernon was getting his wisdom teeth removed. At least then you’d have an extra person to help you carry away your inebriated boyfriend. You remember how Vernon scoffed when you told him the anesthesia might make him a little silly and annoying—”Psh. Babe I got this.”
“’Re we—are we swimmin’ or somethin’?” His voice sounded like it was blocked off by a balloon, swollen and sore. Vernon must have gotten dizzier after trying to lug him in the cab, you had no idea how much pain relief the doctors gave him, but it was certainly enough for him to come out walking like a toddler. “I feel like poo.” he whined.
“You are a poo.”
“Meh mouf hurts.” he complained some more, throwing an arm over his head where the sunlight was hitting his eyes.
“Then I’d suggest that you stop talking.”
He groaned into your lap, his wet lips tickling your thigh as he pressed his face into them like a pillow. “Damn. Your skin’s like the inside of a toasted marshmallow.” he sighed contentedly into your skin, nuzzling his swollen cheeks against the milky soft skin. “All warm n’ fluffy.”
You chuckled at his random confession, a hand automatically going to pat his dampened bangs off his forehead. “Thanks?”
“See, Mr. Taxi driver?” Vernon gurgled drunkenly, holding a hand out to beckon their driver. “This person, righ’ hur’,” his pointer finger jutted against your chin, “Is da love of my life. They carryin’ mah loopy ass all the way home and play with my hair and it feels really freakin’ good almost as good as that one time—”
“Vern, please shut up.” you snorted, tugging on a strand of his hair. “I love you too, but only if you stay quiet the rest of the ride.”
“See? And they’re demanding. That’s hot. This person righ’ here, they lit.” and Vernon promptly passes out, and you could’ve sworn you could feel his drool start to coat your thighs.
With a heavy sigh, you play with his hair some more and wonder how much effort it would take to lug Vernon up all those stairs when you got home. He may be a mess, but he’s your mess.
Wonwoo, “How am I not sick of you yet?”
“To be fair, the soundtrack of Hercules is on another level. I understand when you want to belt out “I won’t say I’m in love” because you’re totally in denial but it’s been a couple days and there’s other movies to sing from.” Wonwoo tipped down the fat novel he’d been carrying around this past week, barely a couple chapters in because he was taking his time. His legs were sprawled across the couch, propped up by a mountain of throw pillows and fresh laundry that never got to their drawers.
“Are you trying to crush my dreams?” you bristled playfully, pausing the beloved film with a snap of your remote.
“You have dreams, darling? I thought I was your dream.” he pushed his metal-rimmed glasses up to the bridge of his nose, sending you a smile that could be deemed half-cute if it wasn’t for the fact that he was trying to be cheeky with you when you were in your happy place.
“Go to hell.”
“Ah-ah, that’s not the Disney mentality.” Wonwoo smirked, lifting his book once more and effectively shutting himself out of the living room.
On lazy days like this, it was normal for you two to bask in each other’s presence. You didn’t have to be having full-out conversation or go buy a fancy dinner to feel like you’ve spent quality time together. Lowering the volume of the television, you padded over in your socks behind the couch, hovering over Wonwoo’s shoulder. His scent wasn’t anything special or fancy, fresh laundry detergent and bar soap, but something about it on him made it feel all the more comforting.
“Wonwoo.” you play-whispered, resting your chin on his shoulder.
He ignored you, taking a full five seconds before flipping the page, the crinkle of paper painfully loud in the tiny apartment.
“Wonwoo,” you sang, “Do you wanna build a snowman?”
“Don’t you dare continue.” he tilts his head at you feigning sternness. “Really, Frozen Fever?”
“It’s a beautiful movie about unconventional love.” you huffed, biting his shoulder for a split second before your hands automatically wove themselves around his shoulders. “Can I sit with you?”
“And read?”
“And then watch Frozen?” you tried hopefully, batting your lashes.
With a groan, he bookmarked his book and threw it across the couch, deciding that the book had no place for the kind of afternoon you wanted to have. Sliding the pillows and clothes aside, he opened a place between his legs. “How am I not sick of you yet?” he teased with an upturn of his lips, urging you onto his lap.
The couch felt plenty more comfortable when it was the two of you squishing yourselves in the plush cotton. You felt his nose nuzzle between your neck and collarbone, the warm material of his sweater weaving around your waist and lips pressing smiles into your bare skin.
“Because some people are just worth melting for.”
Joshua, “Stay warm.”
The checklist for a good night’s rest included the new quilt you got from Target fresh from the dryer, lavender scented candles diffusing the small bedroom, and finally a frayed mauve sweater that Joshua accidentally left in your laundry basket last time he came over. The only thing that was missing however, was Joshua himself.
“Are you sure you’re not mad?” Joshua’s speakerphone voice asked worriedly, his furrowed gaze looking at you from his own iPhone. His forehead was glazed with fresh sweat, the tips of his chocolate bangs bunched up together due to the moisture.
“Not my fault you’re well on your way to be a successful multi-million music artist.” you teased, “With a red Chevrolet.”
“I’m just an idol practicing without a second of sleep. The usual.” he muttered, his cranberry blush viewable through the small phone screen. “Did the electric guy fix the heating?”
“No.” you sighed with a pout, “I don’t know how cold Alaska is, but it sure as hell feels like it.”
“Oh.” he frowned, the cupid’s bow of his petal pink lips stuck in a prominent pout. “I wish I could be there and cuddle with you.” There were loud whoops and hollers (the painfully distinct YEAHHHHH BOIIIIII GET ‘EMMMMMM coming from none other than Hansol Vernon Chwe) from his side of the call. “Guys, quiet.” he threw you an apologetic smile. “Stay warm, okay? Good night.”
You managed a wispy “sweet dreams” before the call ended. Melting into the covers you stretched your neck to blow your candle out, and tugged Joshua’s sweater closer to your nose to envelop yourself in his clean laundry scent.
It wasn’t until the wee hours of five A.M. when your covers were spilling off the bed and the sun was threatening to peel through the curtained navy sky that Joshua slipped in your apartment undetected. He hoped you didn’t mind that he hadn’t showered before coming, he took the first cab he saw the millisecond they were dismissed. Seeing your face was well worth it, calm but glowing like fireflies in the middle of the night. A delicate, tired smile took over his features as he dumped his bag on top your desk chair and threw off his outer clothes. He shivered at the rush of cold air, hopping in the bed’s empty space and immediately picking up the fallen comforter. Tucking you both in, he made sure that the soft blankets were up to your chin so there was no way you’d be freezing tonight with both him and the sheets in bed.
Brushing a stray baby hair from your forehead, his eyes fluttered like feathers and his warm murmur of “Surprise, I’m home.” echoed throughout your bedroom.
Seokmin, “I’m keeping you.”
The only thing left to do, was feel.
It was the rain and routine of your brain, acting out of your own volition. Chemicals fired off appropriately, like clockwork. Epinephrine, norepinephrine, serotonin. Seokmin didn’t even have to touch you, just one, deep look and you were a goner. It was a little embarrassing, but your feelings were nothing but candid for the person in front of you.
Bewildered, and aggravated, you felt your palm being dampened by the arylide yellow of the highlighter. You glared at the awful color bleeding your skin, proceeding to rub harder and probably making the ink bleed deeper into your flesh.
“Oh, that sucks.” Seokmin reached for your palm like it was his, running his long fingers over the open skin of your hand. “I’ll go find some napkins.” And he gave you that sweet, gummy smile of reassurance, even though it was only ink, before pushing his chair and walking out.
Your eyes couldn’t help but follow him throughout the coffee shop, unable to hide your smile as you watched him ask the cashier for napkins, specifying that the napkins needed to be slightly damp because you were too caught up in your homework to notice that your highlighter was faulty. He returned not a moment later, kneeling on the floor and his hand automatically flying back to rub the yellow ink out of your skin. The cold water of the napkin simmered against the heat of your skin, and you couldn’t help but focus on the way his dark eyelashes curled around his crinkled eyes as he hummed to himself.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he blurted, snapping his head up to look at you.
You reeled your head back, looking affronted. “I’m not looking at you like anything.”
“I can feel when someone stares at me. Admit it,” he said smugly, “Say it. You love me!”
“You love me, Seokmin.” you said with a neutral face, pushing his face away with your pointer finger. No way were you going to say it out loud.
He easily obliged, satisfied that the napkin cleaned off most of the ink. “It’s okay if you can’t say it yet. Just like I can feel you staring at me, I can feel your feelings.” his hands lingered over yours, taking the utmost care as his gentle grip swiped against the pads of your fingers.
You felt your heart starting to pump faster, your face warming, and the cafe melting into the background as you focused on nothing but Seokmin. The effect he had on you was addicting.
“Until you say it,” he laughed, returning to his seat. “I’m keeping you. And even after that, I’m still keeping you.”
“Wonderful.” you snorted, picking out a new highlighter. “We’ll be together a long time then. Now, quiz me.”
As you watch him pick out a notebook of his own, you felt the familiar chemicals wrack your form. He sends you an energetic smile, urging you to study along. You smiled back, letting yourself feel. Epinephrine, norepinephrine, serotonin.
Jeonghan, “Stay there, I’m getting you.”
Jeonghan routinely kept his phone on “do not disturb” during the night, because for obvious reasons he did not want to be disturbed. He found sweet solace in rest, the cool side of the pillow and a warm lavender air freshener and he was at peace.
He was nearly sure he kept it on “do not disturb” but he couldn’t ignore the fact that his phone still picked up notifications like a homing beacon, white light shining from the cellphone grasped in his loose grip when he fell asleep hours ago.
Biting back a few curses from the bright light going through his eyelids, he moved to flip his phone over, half tempted to hurl it over the bed stand. It wasn’t until his eyelashes fluttered to check the time that he realized he had missed over five consecutive calls, all from you.
You sometimes called when you were pulling all nighters studying, sometimes freaking out, sometimes on the verge of tears.
Blindly swiping to answer, he moaned into the receiver. “Mmpmh?”
“Honey? Hannie!” your voice was a little watery, probably because he was too tired to bother concentrating.
“Baby, whatever you’re doing I’m sure it’s fine.” he proceeded on, wanting to get through your nightly routine as quickly as possible. “You’re strong and intelligent, one exam isn’t going to kill you.”
“Hannie,” you whined louder, and suddenly he was conscious of the way the wind altered your voice. “I’m lost! We were drinking and now I’m at the park because Minhee left me for some fratguy and it’s freezing out.”
Cold air rushing to his face, he pulled away from the warm blanket and held the phone close to his ear. “What? Did you drink a lot? Which park?”
“Mhm, I don’t know which one. Everything’s a little hazy. But there’s a café still open.” your voice sounded sluggish, and it worried him to no end. It was easy enough to sober up to the sound of your voice, even moreso when you were potentially in danger.
“Go to the café and stay warm. Send me the location.” he was throwing on a jacket and pulling your favorite hoodie over his arm, slipping on his ducky slippers. He cursed under his breath as his bare knee bumped into his nightstand looking for his keys, willing his body to wake up faster.
“Thank you,” you said softly, sounding stable, and maybe a little nervous. “My phone’s gonna die, but I’m scared. Come fast, okay? I’m really sorry.”
“It’s alright. Stay there, I’m getting you.”
“And Hannie?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
His phone beeped once, alerting the early end of their call. Feeling his cheeks heat with warmth against the frigid air, Jeonghan’s pearl smile appeared in the midst of the night.
Jun, “I tolerate you.”
Popping another piece of Yu Xiang tofu in his mouth he licked his lips, the pink flesh wiping off a stray scarlet pepper flake. “Can’t handle the spice, sugar?”
Sending him a glare equally hot, you smacked your wooden chopsticks down on the table and furiously uncapped your bottle of water. Your body felt molten hot and your face was probably just as melted, sweat beginning to form at your hairline. The water was liquid heaven, evaporating down your throat like the way liquid simmers on a pan.
“Go to hell.”
“We’re already here.” He gestured to the wide array of Chinese dishes, all varying in levels of spice and saltiness. Jun wanted to have a dinner dedicated to sharing all his home cuisines, but you were more than ready to tap out. “Welcome to hell, would you like to try the hot and sour glass noodles or the fish soup next?” he had on the perkiest face, a smug smile plastered on his golden tan complexion as he pushed another steaming plate on your side of the table.
“Let me breathe,” you whined, reaching for another bottle of water under the kitchen table. “I can’t tolerate spicy that well.”
He pouted, giving you that carefully calculated jut of his lips that gave a run for any puppy’s kibble. “But I tolerate you.” he gushed, puffing out his cheeks and letting his cacao eyes linger to an unidentifiable part of the room.
“Oh, so now you’re trying to be cute about it.” you replied tartly, picking at a slice of tofu with your chopsticks.
“Not trying, succeeding.”
There was a cringe-worthy skrtt of the metal stool hitting the wood, and you watched with piqued interest as Jun bumbled over the oven. You didn’t even realize that the oven was on warm, never mind that Jun had somehow found time to bake while you were together all day. But out of the metal contraption he brandished a chocolate cake, smoothed over with a thin coat of fudge ganache.
Once he placed it in the middle of your table, you squinted your eyes at the scarlet dust that on top of the cake. “Is this cayenne pepper?” you asked with a hand on your chest, feeling betrayed.
“Only for decoration.” he promised, stabbing his fork in the middle corner to feed you a piece. “Gotta save the sweet stuff for my sweetest.” he winked, splotching some chocolate pudding on your lips.
Mingyu, “We make a good team.”
Kim Mingyu never gets nervous. Never ever ever. Not when he had to share his senior project in high school to the rest of his batchmates, not when he had to tell his siblings that their pet fish had tragically died from serious head trauma when he changed the bowls. But when he had to consider you, all the nervousness he should’ve felt eons before resurface like a tidal wave, all in the form of your mere presence.
He has a bad habit of biting the inside of his cheeks as he watches you work, looking adorable and wonderful and just being you. It’s as if he’s trying to swallow all the impulsive words he wants to tell you whenever he hangs out with you: I think you’re beautiful, I think you’re amazing, I think I love—
“What do you think about this color?”
Blinking out of his reverie, he looks at the glossy paint swatch you’re waving in front of his eyes, a periwinkle blue with a muted purple undertone. You’re grinning at him, probably amused that he zoned out more than once this afternoon. “Uh, it looks nice.” he said, forcing his mouth to operate coherently. “It’s a really peaceful shade, very serene. I think a lot of customers would enjoy coming to a place in such a good atmosphere.”
It seemed to be the right response, because your smile lit up like Christmas day, and you marked your paint swatch with a white marker to approve that little detail. “I wouldn’t be able to finish this contracting project without you, Mingyu.” you said gratefully, putting a pile of unwanted paint swatches in a manila envelope.
“We make a good team.” he said, his smile coming just as naturally. He wanted to say more, tell you that this building job wouldn’t be done without your hard work, and he was just your little support system who happened to know how to call the right people and give you comfort when you felt a little too stressed.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you.” you confessed, reaching over your bench to squeeze his shoulder. You were ecstatic about this project, and the fire in your eyes made a subconscious promise that everything would go well. Pulling out your phone you said, “I’m going to call one of the contractors, okay? Thank you thank you so much!”
And before he could even stutter out an “okay” you reached over to kiss his tanned cheek, your scent practically engulfing him and your sweet lips marking his skin like the most delicate of burns. You were already outside talking on your phone by the time he realized that you had kissed him like it was nothing, and yet he felt like he was on Cloud 999.
“I’m so whipped.” he muttered to himself, a dreamy smile melting on his face as he watched you on your phone, looking determined to succeed in the project you two did together.
Jihoon, ”Whatever makes you happy.”
You’ve only been dating each other for a couple months, but every time Jihoon saw you it was like a breath of fresh air in a crowded market, the way a sauna opens your pores and lets you feel like a whole new person. It made him sick to admit it out loud, so he kept those thoughts to himself, reserving these exclusive feelings to be shared to no one, not even you. Even the “L” word was still a bit strong to admit, as much as it felt that way.
He felt a little silly as he over prepared for your date, especially when he arrived an hour early to your apartment only for you to text on his ride there that you had caught a stomach bug and you were in no mood to go out. Nevertheless you let him in, insisting that he should go and wear your sweats and oversized shirts and stay with you the rest of the evening.
Politely declining, he stayed on the couch while you fetched a large blanket, throwing it over both your bodies. You assured that you weren’t going to throw up anytime soon, as long as you didn’t eat anything too heavy.
“Jihoon,” you said, feeling apologetic as you pressed yourself against his outstretched arm. “I’m sorry about our date. We can reschedule soon, and there’s leftover pasta in the oven if you want me to heat it up.”
“It’s okay,” he insisted with a warm smile, pulling you closer against his body. “I’m just glad we can spend time together.”
“Even if it’s comforting me in my tiny couch while I feel like a wet noodle?”
He chuckled, a pale hand reaching to push back your loose baby hairs. “Whatever makes you happy, I’m willing to do.” he promised.
You curled yourself closer to his arms like a little kitten, your nose drifting to the open collar of his buttondown. “Mm,” you murmured, your eyes fluttering shut. “Is that a new cologne? It smells nice.”
He choked out a small “yeah” as you continued to get closer to him, feeling a liquid hot blush spread through every inch of his skin.
“But you must be so stuffy under those clothes. Can we go to the bed, there’s a television in there and we can watch movies. You can change and stuff. If that’s okay with you, Jihoonie.” you added reassuringly, stifling a yawn as you continued to melt in his arms.
The thought of wearing your clothes and sleeping in your bed was ultimately terrifying, but simultaneously exciting. Especially because you were curling up to him like catnip, he can only imagine how much more comfortable it would be in a mattress that smelled just like you, with more than enough room for the both of them. “Would that make you happy?” he asked with a secretive smile, playing with the stray ends of your ponytail.
“It would make me the happiest person in the world.” you giggled tiredly.
“Okay, sounds good to me.”
#seventeen#seventeen scenarios#svtcreations#kkreationsnet#seventeen fic#vernon#jihoon#woozi#seokmin#dk#scoups#joshua#minghao#jun#seungkwan#jeonghan#wonwoo#mingyu#kpop#kpop fic#kpop scenarios#dino
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Dubov's Last Jump-off pt 3
Saturday afternoon, we found out the club couldn’t (or wouldn’t) accommodate our third night. Dubov had to pay us, of course. Mo was looking at other venues, possibly for tonite, realistically for the coming week. He asked our availability. Once we all responded, possibilities quickly evaporated. That weekend passed and more days after.
After waiting a week, I texted Mo about money. Hours later, he replied:
“High paint he otter eyes or sue didn’t cut anything”
At the gigs, I watched Mo use his phone; its screen at his nose, glasses mid way between forehead and hairline. He looked down precipitously, grumbled, grumbled again, then pressed send. What usually came through was a ransom note clipped from Beckett. He never corrected these puzzles until one of us asked. Here, a fully translated version of our exchange:
“I paid the other guys, you sure you didn’t get anything.”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“Did you send your invoice to Julie.”
“Yes”
“I’ll call them”
“is there anything I can do to expedite this?”
“Chris, I’m not your employer”
“Right”(!)
“There’s a rehearsal tonite, will you be there”
“I didn’t know about a rehearsal. Where and when?”
“Still working on a place. Maybe 7?” (3 hours from now)
“Tough for me”
“No worries. If you go, you’ll be paid of course”
“Ok”
“No worries. I’ll get back to you”
Now, I was enrolled in the Godot payment plan. Dubov was looking at spending four lifetimes in more chains than Issac Hayes ever wore. I just wanted to get my money.
Weeks later, Mo Bedbug went live.
“Bears ash oh Friday”
Mo called in a favor with some Long Islanders. We had a show Friday. I lobbied for travel money.
Any evening rush hour on the LIE (a highway, not an enormous falsehood) was a parking lot. Friday rush was tailgating minus libations. I pressed him for my other money in the bargain.
“I paid Pianist with Venmo. Do you have Venmo.”
(I send my Venmo)
“This is will be easy, I didn’t know you had Venmo.”
“Ok”(I offered twice before)
“I’ll see you Friday my place"
Mo balked at travel money, though. Arranging an Uber from his place and promising we'd miss rush hour. To get to Mo's, I took the bus, two of them. It cost me way more than the fare. Flushing Avenue, Shabbat imminent, was a sightseeing tour: high school kids, restaurant workers, construction crews. So many people boarding, I couldn’t see nor hear my stop and had to walk an extra half-mile.
Turning onto Mo’s street, a familiar Bushwick tableau appeared. A massive pit, surrounded on three sides by green plywood. Graffiti tags and band decals fading under the shrouds of old posters. At the curb, a ziggurat of garbage-strewn ten-foot pipes and a marooned RV, black spray paint scrawled over its siding and vents, windows cracked and stuffed with wads of insulation, front seats piled to the ceiling with bundled magazines and crumpled newsprint.
On the next block, I found Mo's address stenciled on the brick wall of a old factory. Drummer stood away from its entrance smoking and scrolling his phone. He looked up.
"Man, I texted him like 10 minutes ago."
"No answer?"
"He said he’s coming right down"
"I’ve been giving him progress reports. F***ing bus was crawling."
The building’s entrance, a glass and brushed steel module, sat cheek by jowl with a battered freight elevator. After a text reminder and more waiting, the freight elevator doors parted vertically. Mo let the canvas strap swing overhead.
"This way" he said, glancing over his shoulder at the gleaming foyer before pulling the strap down. The elevator enclosure, a hypoxic chamber of fuel vapors and sawdust, led darkly to a huge steel door. Mo punched a code and pulled the handle. Inside, a newly carpeted hallway, filled with tarps, drywall, paint cans and the potent smell of sandalwood.
"They’re still doing work....as you can see. My place is cool, though.”
"Where’s Keys (the new pianist)?"
"He’s here. Been here a while. Working on the music."
"You have a piano?"
"Uh, I have kind of a studio. Not for recording, but you know, instruments and stuff."
Mo had room for those instruments and plenty more. His walls sprouted art in every medium and material: paintings on wood, metal, plastic jugs, shards of glass; sculptures of bottle caps, cardboard, styrofoam; violent, erotic black and white photos fetishizing punk style and concert posters from Downtown’s acme.
I stooped to gawk at an undulating video in a KFC bucket.
“That’s from my gallery. I used to have a gallery. When it closed I moved everything here. Well, not everything, but…you know.”
Keys sat on a leather couch. He was a kid, maybe twenty-five. I was his grandfather. That messed me up. Before excusing himself, Mo pulled me an espresso from a fancy Italian machine. I packed sandwiches and coffee, but the extra shot was welcome. From a closed door, medicinal-grade weed wafted. We were a full hour behind schedule.
Out on the street, waiting for the Uber, Mo nodded at the construction site and listing RV, saying in his mumblecore voice,
"That’s my girlfriend’s art project.... I mean, ex-girlfriend. "
"The RV? She did THAT?"
"Yeah....Well, her friends... they did it together. I don’t know who did which part"
(There were ‘parts’?)
"How long has it been there?"
"Uh....nine months. Wait...yeah. We broke up six months ago. She was living in it for a while."
"Living in it? You’re kidding. Was that part of the project?"
He chuckled. "Yeah...I don’t know."
"We’re still friends" he said, mostly to tumbling litter in the street.
Inside the Uber, Mo continued: “the realtor told me this was east Williamsburg, but it’s not, it's Bushwick. I don’t care what they call it, of course. I don’t mind living in Bushwick. It’s easier to have a car here.”
“You have a car?”
“Not now. Had to get rid of it. Wasn’t right for this neighborhood”
“Wasn’t right?”
“it was an Audi R8. Midlife crisis car. These streets are so bad, I kept having to get it fixed.”
Driving due east, the winter sun behind us pooled on the shiny road. We careened through four lane traffic. Ahead, break lights fanned out, ruby droplets cascading off a humpback’s tail.
Drummer and Keys talked through the set, then volleyed gossip about mutual friends.
When the radio spun an artist he knew personally, Mo turned around and apropos-ed a story, interrupting the other guys. In the 80s, he produced videos for many fledgling stars. It was a new medium for him and Pop music. A few of his clients soared from Downtown digs to world domination. Mo didn’t stay on for their ascent, though. He also worked on an early Dubov-produced movie until the boss’s relentless cost-cutting and hostility wore him down. While he rambled, a vape pen did plenty of its own talking.
Tonight’s venue, a redux of a famous Long Island rock room, now tucked in the basement of a new boutique North Shore Inn. That building, a block-size Cape Cod, dropped like Dorothy’s whirling farmhouse at an angle to the tony commercial strip.
We had a seriously low pressure slot, opening for a veteran blues band. Ten white guys from three generations; a solid outfit with a long history playing sincere, tasty covers. Always simpatico, Karolina added "Stormy Monday" to our set list. Due to the short notice, we lost Pianist, our stellar MD, and Trumpet wasn’t available. Pruned to prototypical stripper band: saxophone, piano and drums. Not without some irony..
When the ladies hit “Uptown Funk", shimmying and signifying, the audience, almost all sixty year-old white dudes with the occasional spouse, started hooting and whistling. T and A wasn’t on the bill, but it still satisfied. Margherita did her canned steps for ”Too Darn Hot". Karolina was confident and sold her songs. Keys somehow kept the basslines and harmonies together. I completely missed the famous trumpet intro to “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy". The ladies jumped in undaunted. The Male Gaze kept the show alight until we exited, dodging the headliner's B3, Leslie and vintage amps.
The ladies were pros now and we repaired to the underground parking lot to celebrate. The girls in jeans and hoodies, band in our "gangster suits". While she waited for Keys to blaze up. Margherita asked me,
“Did you have fun?”
"Sure, I always have fun" I told her. What counts as honesty when the entire premise of an act is fakery?
"Great" she said, tracking down the joint.
A couple hits and we went back inside, sitting down near the jacked-open exit door. The blues band’s horn section looked on wearily as the front man sang verses fashioned by tougher men for harsher times. From our seats, we saw Mo sweep through the green room doorway, his long canvas coat and scarf swinging. He pivoted at the closest table and exchanged with the owner, a grizzled man with a barely legal date. Their conversation rearranged chairs and sent the men striding out of the club, proving there actually were blues to be had everyday.
When Mo and dance partner failed to return, we headed upstairs and onto the porch, where patio furniture gleamed under blinding lights. At the foot of the wooden steps, livery cars glided in and out of the glare. After a flurry of texts, the ladies gathered their garment bags and kissed us goodbye. A black SUV, indistinguishable from the others, stopped and a rear window opened. Inside, Dubov’s face, like crumpled paper, if paper were milled from lipids and dusted with ash. "Good job guys" he said, voice level and hoarse. We thanked him. The ladies got in on the far side, Dubov’s window closed and the car drove off.
************************************************************************************
After dropping him at the factory, Mo left the meter running on our Uber so the band could get home. On the way, we speculated about Dubov’s eventual prison sentence, Mo’s fee and when "the New Yorkers" might book their first Bar Mitzvah.
The driver, a Bengali, navigated without commenting on our post-mortems, confirming and re-confirming each address for his app. I was last on the circuit. Once we were alone, I asked the driver about his night. His answers were brief and courteous. As we waited at a light, he turned his head toward me. "Excuse me, one question. Have you ever been to Las Vegas?"
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Kenny Rogers, Actor, Country Music Icon, Dead at 81
Actor-singer Kenny Rogers, the smooth, Grammy-winning balladeer who spanned jazz, folk, country and pop with such hits as “Lucille,” “Lady” and “Islands in the Stream” and embraced his persona as “The Gambler” on record and on TV, died Friday night. He was 81.
He died at home in Sandy Springs, Georgia, representative Keith Hagan told The Associated Press. He was under hospice care and died of natural causes, Hagan said.
The Houston-born performer with the husky voice and silver beard sold tens of millions of records, won three Grammys and was the star of TV movies based on “The Gambler” and other songs, making him a superstar in the ’70s and ’80s. Rogers thrived for some 60 yearsbefore retired from touring in 2017 at age 79. Despite his crossover success, he always preferred to be thought of as a country singer.
“You either do what everyone else is doing and you do it better, or you do what no one else is doing and you don’t invite comparison,” Rogers told The Associated Press in 2015. “And I chose that way because I could never be better than Johnny Cash or Willie or Waylon at what they did. So I found something that I could do that didn’t invite comparison to them. And I think people thought it was my desire to change country music. But that was never my issue.”
“Kenny was one of those artists who transcended beyond one format and geographic borders,” says Sarah Trahern, chief executive officer of the Country Music Association. “He was a global superstar who helped introduce country music to audiences all around the world.”
Rogers was a five-time CMA Award winner, as well as the recipient of the CMA’s Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013, the same year he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. He received 10 awards from the Academy of Country Music. He sold more than 47 million records in the United States alone, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.
A true rags-to-riches story, Rogers was raised in public housing in Houston Heights with seven siblings. As a 20-year-old, he had a gold single called “That Crazy Feeling,” under the name Kenneth Rogers, but when that early success stalled, he joined a jazz group, the Bobby Doyle Trio, as a standup bass player.
But his breakthrough came when he was asked to join the New Christy Minstrels, a folk group, in 1966. The band reformed as First Edition and scored a pop hit with the psychedelic song, “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In).” Rogers and First Edition mixed country-rock and folk on songs like “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town,” a story of a Vietnam veteran begging his girlfriend to stay.
After the group broke up in 1974, Rogers started his solo career and found a big hit with the sad country ballad “Lucille,” in 1977, which crossed over to the pop charts and earned Rogers his first Grammy. Suddenly the star, Rogers added hit after hit for more than a decade.
“The Gambler,” the Grammy-winning story song penned by Don Schlitz, came out in 1978 and became his signature song with a signature refrain: “You gotta know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.” The song spawned a hit TV movie of the same name and several more sequels featuring Rogers as professional gambler Brady Hawkes, and led to a lengthy side career for Rogers as a TV actor and host of several TV specials.
Other hits included “You Decorated My Life,” “Every Time Two Fools Collide” with Dottie West, “Don’t Fall In Love with a Dreamer” with Kim Carnes, and “Coward of the County.” One of his biggest successes was “Lady,” written by Lionel Richie, a chart topper for six weeks straight in 1980. Richie said in a 2017 interview with the AP that he often didn’t finish songs until he had already pitched them, which was the case for “Lady.”
“In the beginning, the song was called, ‘Baby,’” Richie said. “And because when I first sat with him, for the first 30 minutes, all he talked about was he just got married to a real lady. A country guy like him is married to a lady. So, he said, ‘By the way, what’s the name of the song?’” Richie replies: “Lady.”
Over the years, Rogers worked often with female duet partners, most memorably, Dolly Parton. The two were paired at the suggestion of the Bee Gees’ Barry Gibb, who wrote “Islands in the Stream.”
“Barry was producing an album on me and he gave me this song,” Rogers told the AP in 2017. “And I went and learned it and went into the studio and sang it for four days. And I finally looked at him and said, ‘Barry, I don’t even like this song anymore.’ And he said, ‘You know what we need? We need Dolly Parton.’ I thought, ‘Man, that guy is a visionary.’”
Coincidentally, Parton was actually in the same recording studio in Los Angeles when the idea came up.
“From the moment she marched into that room, that song never sounded the same,” Rogers said. “It took on a whole new spirit.”
The two singers toured together, including in Australia and New Zealand in 1984 and 1987, and were featured in a HBO concert special. Over the years the two would continue to record together, including their last duet, “You Can’t Make Old Friends,” which was released in 2013. Parton reprised “Islands in the Stream” with Rogers during his all-star retirement concert held in Nashville in October 2017.
Rogers invested his time and money in a lot of other endeavors over his career, including a passion for photography that led to several books, as well as an autobiography, “Making It With Music.” He had a chain of restaurants called Kenny Rogers Roasters and was a partner behind a riverboat in Branson, Missouri. He was also involved in numerous charitable causes, among them the Red Cross and MusiCares, and was part of the all-star “We are the World” recording for famine relief.
By the ’90s, his ability to chart hits had waned, although he still remained a popular live entertainer with regular touring. Still he was an inventive businessman and never stopped trying to find his way back onto the charts.
At the age of 61, Rogers had a brief comeback on the country charts in 2000 with a hit song “Buy Me A Rose,” thanks to his other favorite medium, television. Producers of the series “Touched By An Angel” wanted him to appear in an episode, and one of his managers suggested the episode be based on his latest single. That cross-promotional event earned him his first No. 1 country song in 13 years.
Rogers is survived by his wife, Wanda, and his sons Justin, Jordan, Chris and Kenny Jr., as well as two brothers, a sister and grandchildren, nieces and nephews, his representative said. The family is planning a private service “out of concern for the national COVID-19 emergency,” a statement posted early Saturday read. A public memorial will be held at a later date.
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