#and society never taught men to be affectionate with their kids in that way so everything he does is so Intentional

[br1ghtestlight]

btw. if you even care

[vintage-miseries]

Team Angry-Stupid-Loudmouth

#squad:  who's friends with who? what are the squad dynamics like?

Elrick: E’s friendly with the older crowd. He’s good mates with Wallace and Fredrik, they go to the gym together. He’s also good mates with Lucius and drags the poor old sod out for camping trips.

Luke: Luke can be friends with anyone, its up to the other person to tolerate him. It goes without saying that Colin is his ride or die for life. He also gets on well with Wallace and Fredrik, and has a “working relationship” with Lucius.

Kash: Kash is another individual who could get on with anyone, you just have to be the right sort of person to enjoy his company. Bishop will be his best mate for life, though in any AU in which he comes into contact with people he and Lukan have a good relationship.

microscope:  zoom in -- describe the little, insignificant details about an OC.

Elrick: Dude actually has really nice eyes, proper green in good lighting, like sunlight through ferns. He also has fairly soft hair.

Luke: Luke has the ghost of freckles on his nose, though his complexion makes them hard to see. He’s got early laugh lines creeping in at the corner of his eyes and just the faintest tinge of red in his curls.

Kash: Green eyes touched with gold at the center, cat-like and curved. Thin lips that fork into a grin. Wild, fire-colored hair that never seems to be under his control.

fragrance:  what do your OCs smell like?

Elrick: Tobacco, Old Spice, hair product, cedar-scented cologne

Luke: cloves, marijuana, shea butter, warm earth, sunlight warmed clothing

Kash: Rain, sage, oleander, fire-smoke, sea-salted ocean air

photo album:  describe one of your OCs' favorite memories.

Elrick: The first night that Logan came to stay, when he couldn’t stand his parents any longer. They ordered pizza and played nintendo in the loft and they shared that first, clumsy kiss.

Luke: Luke would count any warm, summery memory as a good one. He particularly enjoys the memory of the first summer he spent as Colin’s friend, sitting on a beach in Hastings smoking bowls as the sun set and telling stories over dinner of fish and chips.

Kash: I feel Kash’s life is too long to pick out particular memories, though I feel the time he convinced Bishop to become highway men for a while was probably worth a couple of good laughs, especially given their supernatural capabilities.

wardrobe:  what's your OC(s) style like? 

Elrick: E’s a t-shirts and jeans kind of guy. Every now and then he spices things up with a jacket, but really he can’t be fucked about fashion, and tends to wear what’s most convenient.

Luke: Luke likes a plaid top, coupled with hiking boots, graphic t’s and a beanie. Whatever’s comfiest for an impromptu hike, as he tends to enjoy random walks. He’s less a fan of dodging through underbrush to avoid the cops but in those situations his gear is idyllic as well.

Kash: Kash likes a lot of black. Black jeans/trousers, boots, shirts, and a leather jacket when the weather calls for it. He’ll wear other colours as well, but he’s truly adopted the goth aesthetic, or well - he adopted it about four hundred years ago and never gave it up.

lightning:  who's the most impulsive character? and who is their impulse control?

Elrick: E’s not impulsive unless it comes to jokes. Sometimes he can’t help himself and says something a little risque.

Luke: Luke can be impulsive, often due to his ADD.

Kash: Kash’s middle name is Impulsive, or Brash, or sometimes Just-plain-stupid. He loves to take unnecessary risks for the hell of it, just because he can and because the mayhem is usually worth it. Usually.

ufo:  identity! what are some key identifying qualities or traits of your OC(s)? how to they identify in regards to gender/sexuality? 

Elrick: Arrogant - Funny - Hangry - Fuck-knows-Sexuality

Luke: Kind - Excitable - Addict - Asexual

Kash: Rash - Funny - Annoying - Bisexual

love note:  who likes who? crushes? relationships? are they mutual or unrequited?

Elrick: E’s had only a few crushes in his life. He liked Annie, but that fell through when he fell for his boy.

Luke: Luke likes people, but couldn’t be fucked for sex or a relationship, really. He likes a cuddle, and he’d marry Colin for the marital benefits if Colin wanted to, but really he’s just here to have fun.

Kash: Kash’ll fuck anyone he finds interesting, though when it comes to love, well, there’s only one person who he’s ever truly loved, and he has a hard time admitting it.

poison:  vices/bad habits? what are they? how do they affect your OC?

Elrick: Elrick has a substance abuse problem, whether it be alcohol or harder chemicals, he’s always struggled. At the very least, he’s always going to have a slight drinking problem. He also bites his nails.

Luke: Luke doesn’t think it’s possible to be addicted to marijuana - luke is incorrect.

Kash: Kash thrives on mischief and mayhem, and will always go to irritating lengths to make things difficult for other people as well as himself. He’s also a chronic liar and incredibly vain.

compass:  who's the moral compass? in general: what are your OCs' morality like? do they have high morals, or not? are their morals self imposed, or do they base their morals on religion/family/influence of others?

Elrick: E’s generally a nice guy though every once in a while he can experience a moment of anger or aggression, though these are usually righteously-based. His mum taught him to be a good bloke, his brothers and sisters kept him humble.

Luke: Luke is, by society’s standards, technically a criminal. By his own and anyone who knows him he’s a generally stand up guy who goes out of his way to help people.

Kash: Kash can be as sweet as honey when he wants to be, or as cruel and vindictive as possible if it suits him. Being an ancient supernatural creature, perhaps his scale for morals is a tad different from ours, or perhaps not.

track & field:  which (if any) of your OCs are athletic? what sports to they play? which of your OCs would go HARD in P.E.?

Elrick: E’s the kid playing dodgeball to maim. He really enjoyed gym and was always fairly good at it, though he never tried out for teams or made any effort if he wasn’t particularly interested.

Luke: Luke, when he actually attended school, did not really enjoy gym.

Kash: Kash did not, nor has he ever attended a school. He doesn’t know what sports are.

conspiracy theory:  what are your OC's beliefs? are they skeptics or do they believe easily? who acts on blind faith? who needs to see to believe?

Elrick: E will always be a skeptic, he takes after his father in that respect. He’d need to see something in order to believe it real.

Luke: Luke loves a good ghost/ufo/cryptid story. He fully believes in all of them, and absorbs conspiracy media like water

Kash: Kash, who hails from a land of fae-folk, monsters, and supernatural beings, does not believe in aliens but feels ghosts deserve more representation.

spellbook:  are any of your OC(s) supernatural? if so, what are they/what are their abilities?

Elrick: E has been every creature variant under the sun, but never as anything other than a one-off AU. Sorry E, you’re just human.

Luke: Though seperate entities, Luke did spawn from my Hell-spawn Azelgore, a multi-limbed salamander creature from the third circle of hell. He’s also, on occasion, the same looking creature but actually the Loch Ness Monster, so there’s that.

Kash: Kash is the Cat Sìth, a Scottish creature of Myth said to haunt the Highlands. His abilities include taking human form, charming people, foresight by augury, and shared astral projection. He’s also a witch capable of various old world spells and potions.

contact:  how does your OC(s) feel about touch/physical contact? are they affectionate? if so, how do they display affection to others?

Elrick: E’s actually very into physical affection. He enjoys a cuddle, a fuck, whatever. He’s not too touchy with mates, but Logan gets the brunt of his P.D.A.’S

Luke: Luke loves a hug, and doesn’t mind a cuddle every once in a while.

Kash: Kash is very selective about the people he touches. He wouldn’t enjoy just anyone coming in for a cuddle, but loves a touchy romp with Bargheist.

interiors:   describe your OC(s) bedroom/home/or a place they consider "theirs". what's in it? do certain items have a special significance to your OC?

Elrick: Oh man, this boy doesn’t do interior design. Their bedroom is tan, he’s got a mirror, a bed, a dresser, and a tv. He’s got a well worn but comfortable green couch out in the livingroom that he’s particularly fond of. Logan thinks it’s gross.

Luke: Luke’s whole house is his safe space. He’s maxed it out with plants and art. If there’s a free space on the wall it’s only because he’s not bought a frame yet. Or he’s broken one and needs to replace it. It’s a weird, yet beautiful little boho space. He’s also got a hammock indoors so..

Kash: Kash’s abode is a little octagon out on the Cornwall coast. The ceiling is hung with dozens upon dozens of bottles, wind chimes, and assorted peculiarities. He also has a fair collection of bones, antique books, and pretty seashells that he leaves out on display. His reputation as a ‘witch’ in the local town sends him a good bit of business during the summer months, where he hawks his augury skills to unsuspecting humans.

hobby:  what do they love? what captivates them? what are their passions?

Elrick: E loves simple moments, beer shared around a campfire, the breathlessness upon reaching the top of a mountain climb, BBQ’s in the summer, an exhausted cuddle at the end of a long day, shared grins, hard fucks, and falling asleep against one another

Luke: Luke’s passions are laughter, good food, and plants. He loves the smell that comes off of a hundred sun-drenched plants after he waters them, and loves the bloom of flowers that accompanies happy cacti. He loves the bursts of laughter that accompany a smoke-up, and he loves the sleepy giggles of a come-down.

Kash: Kash will always be an enigma, even to himself. His wants and desires are always far more complicated than they seem, and he never makes things easy. He loves starlit walks and abandoned places. He loves sushi and hard spirits, forbidden knowledge and chasing the impossible, magic, and forgotten things.

psyche:  what's their head space like? do they have any mental illnesses? how do they process difficult or emotional situations? what are their coping mechanisms?

Elrick: E’s coping mechanism has always been a good, quiet drink alone. He broods best that way. He gets through difficult situations by being bullheaded and stubborn.

Luke: Luke laughs himself through shit. He copes by either falling through it, or by having a mental breakdown and then realizing it wasn’t that bad afterwards. If all else fails he’ll have a smoke-up and try to ignore the situation.

Kash: Kash will use every bit of magic at his disposal to get around issues, and if that doesn’t work, he’ll pack up and move away for a while. He’s good at running from his problems, and does it fairly often.

chess board:  who is the most logical? or the schemer/planner?

Elrick: E’s not ... he’s stubborn and pessimistic but he’s a natural follower, happy to let someone come up with the plan if he can enforce it. He’s the bodyguard type.

Luke: Luke isn’t so much a schemer as he is just one bad idea away from prison. He’s impulsive sometimes and tends to think of the pros before ever thinking about the cons, and sometimes this gets him in trouble.

Kash: Kash is a bona fide schemer and a dreamer, but not much of a planner. He’ll come up with an idea fair enough, but he never seems to have a back up if shit goes tits up, and it usually seems to.

shooting star:  if your OC(s) could have one wish what would it be?

Elrick: He’d wish himself free of the three years they spent apart, and wish himself clean.

Luke: Luke would wish natural intoxicants were legal the world over, or like, for world peace.

Kash: Honestly? He’d wish himself more powerful tbh.

[green-eyeddragonfanfiction]

The Way I Do: Chapter 1

Summary: You, Natalia, Pietro, and Wanda accompany high chief Nick Fritigern and a few other leaders (including your father) to the Roman capital of Byzantium to ask for asylum from their Emperor, Augustus Pierce. You explore the city, but run into trouble almost immediately only to be saved by a mysterious man. Warnings: None as of yet Word Count: ~4,232 A/N: For @killmongerdreams‘ song roulette writing challenge.

Masterlist // Prologue // Next Chapter

Chief Nick nodded. “Well put. See to it you study well. It may save your life. You’ll need to be able to pass this information on to others as well. I won’t have us walking into the Roman empire blind.”

At this, all three of you nodded in agreement. “We will, sir.” Even Pietro nodded diligently.

“Good. The delegation leaves for Byzantium in three days. And you’re all coming with me.”

Wanda blanched and even Pietro looked a little taken aback, though he recovered quickly. Natalia looked grave and you… you felt anxiety and anger course through your veins in equal measure.

“As you say, sir.”

The next two days saw you, Pietro, and Wanda cooped up in your house being tutored mercilessly by Natalia. You knew a little of Roman culture, and what you did know didn’t endear them to you in the least. As it turned out, learning about their society didn’t really paint them in a better light in your eyes. They were still as despicable as before, except now you knew the many layers of despicable.

The third day was spent packing, although Natalia still somehow found room to school the three of you on marriage customs.

“Cum manu,” Natalia said, popping into the doorway of your room. You jumped at her sudden appearance and turned to glare at her, but she only stared at you expectantly.

You sighed. “When the wife is placed under legal control of the husband in marriage.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Sine manu?”

You crossed your arms and stared at her. “When the wife is still under legal control of her father even after marriage.”

She shot you a satisfied smile and scampered away, likely going to grill Wanda or Pietro next.

You didn’t see her again until all of your things were loaded on the wagon and you’d already finished putting the cart harness on your horse.

“Plebeians!” she said, head popping up over your horse’s back. You jumped and so did your horse and you glared at the redhead.

“Stop doing that!” you chastised. “You’re going to give Holden a heart attack. He’s too old for your shenanigans.”

Natalia looked contrite and patted the old horse affectionately. “Sorry, old boy. I didn’t mean it,” she said fondly as she picked at the knots in his mane.

You rolled your eyes at her fussing. “Plebeians are people who live in the Roman Empire but don’t have citizenship. By Roman legal perspective, they don’t exist. They have no rights. To work, they must sign away their lives and everything they own would henceforth be owned by the family that signed them.”

Natalia nodded, giving you a smile before she scampered off again.

“We’re leaving soon, you know! Have you even packed yet?” you called after her.

She merely waved off your concerns and you sighed in exasperation. To your dismay you saw that she’d managed to weave at least five braids into his mane in the short amount of time she’d been standing there. You groaned and set to work on undoing them before they became dreads.

The loud whinny from Holden clued you into the approaching person before the sound of hooves did. You looked up from your bag, head swiveling in search of the newcomer.

You grinned when you spotted Clinton turn down the road, his old plow horse Darius following dutifully behind him. That horse loved him so much he didn’t even need a lead.

The moment Darius heard Holden’s cry, he returned it, earning a chuckle from Clinton. “Go get him, then,” Clinton said, waving the old gelding on. He immediately trotted over to the two of you, and Holden met him halfway.

You smiled at Clinton as he walked over, chuckling as the two old men immediately began grooming each other. “It’s like they never see each other,” you said by way of greeting.

“It’s been at least a week,” Clinton joked, earning a soft chuckle from you. “I trust Natalia’s been teaching you about Roman culture?” he asked, just a hint of his fatherly tone sneaking in. Having a wife and kids had really changed him and you sometimes felt like you were one of his own kids, although you were certainly too old to be one.

You sighed and nodded. “She’s taught us everything but the language. We’re to learn as much as we can on the way over.”

Clinton nodded knowingly. “She was always better with Latin than I was. Dunno where she learned all of it. I shouldn’t be surprised, though. Natalia’s always been a quick study. Absorbs information like a sponge.”

You glanced at him. You’d forgotten he’d fought in the war, too. Natalia had this dangerous air about her that never really allowed you to forget she could snap your neck in an instant, but Clinton was unassuming in that he only appeared to be a happily married father of three.

It was sometimes easy to forget that he could shoot you in the eye from a hundred yards or more.

“Wanda reminds me a lot of her. She’s grown up to be such a nice, intelligent young woman,” you said with a smile.

Clinton, however, groaned. “Oh please don’t tell me Fritigern’s dragging the twins along.”

You laughed out loud, having nearly forgotten about the playfully antagonistic relationship between Clinton and Pietro. “Oh, they’re coming with us, all right.”

As if on cue, Pietro appeared beside you. “Grandpa Clinton! Nice to see your old joints let you out of bed today,” he said mischievously, devilish grin on his face.

You stifled a chuckle behind your hand. When Clinton put on a matching smirk, you knew you were in for more than you’d bargained for. “It was a little tough to get out of bed today, actually. My wife always gives me very enthusiastic, amorous goodbyes,” he said suggestively.

“Oh gosh!” you exclaimed, clapping your hands over your ears. You didn’t need to hear this. Not from your brothers.

“What are you talking about? I loved many women last night and I’m just fine,” Pietro said with a smirk. “Seems like you’re just getting old, Clint.”

Clinton, however, only smiled victoriously. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that lovemaking isn’t a race, Piet? No wonder none of the women in town want to marry you.”

Pietro opened his mouth to respond, but you cut him off. “Please, please, please stop this conversation right now. I can’t take it,” you said despairingly. No matter how hard you mashed your hands to your ears, you heard their words anyway.

Clint and Pietro took one look at your face and dissolved into laughter. You glared at the both of them and smacked them on their forearms. They kept laughing, however, and a moment or so later you joined them.

Natalia and Wanda joined you a few minutes later, closely followed by Chief Nick Fritigern, your father, and two other village leaders.

Not fifteen minutes later you were on the road. Clint drove the carriage while you, Pietro, Natalia, and Wanda studied in the back, smashed in with all of the luggage and food. The chief and the other leaders rode on their best horses, Fritigern up front and center.

The trip to Byzantium took days and by the time you arrived in the capital you fiercely missed sleeping indoors. The river crossing had been particularly grueling, but all of you, your horses, and your equipment made it through it unscathed. The countryside passed slowly and you only stopped for a short while in each village you passed. The locals were surprised to see “barbarians” down this far southeast, but seemed eager to trade with you anyway. The kids (especially the young boys) seemed enamored by your group. You supposed they’d probably never seen your clan’s clothing before. You probably looked as strangely dressed to them as they did to you.

The closer to the sea you traveled the warmer it got and you eventually found yourself shrugging out of your furs. It felt wrong to be without that layer, yet it was freeing in a way.

When the capital finally rolled into sight, you couldn’t help but stare. Even from this far away, the buildings looked huge. They were red clay and brick and stone and looked far larger than anything your tribe had ever built. Wanda and Pietro stared at it, heads peeking around Clinton who merely chuckled at their star-struck expressions. The road sloped gently downward towards the city and from this high up you had a stunning view of the sea which glimmered like many-faceted jewels in the sunlight.

You turned to Natalia and pointed to the sprawling city barely a mile down the road. “That... that’s Byzantium?” you said, hardly daring to believe your eyes. Surely thousands of people lived there. How did humans ever create such a marvel?

Natalia smiled and nodded with a chuckle. “Rome is just as beautiful. Perhaps we can visit there later, if all goes according to plan today?” she said, mischief sparking in her eyes.

You turned to stare at the city, eyes wide with childlike wonderment. “I can’t even imagine another city like this... It’s amazing that there’s even one...” you whispered. Beside you, Wanda nodded in agreement. Even Pietro nodded for a moment before he remembered he was supposed to hate the place. He tried to scowl determinedly, but it kept slipping off his face when he saw something new and interesting as you neared the city gates. Natalia stifled a laugh in her palm at his rapidly changing facial expressions and even you had to tear your eyes away from the quickly increasing number of buildings to smile at him.

Eventually the tall city gates loomed in front of you. A couple of city guards glared at you from under their heavy, feathered helmets. One stepped forward, though he nearly stumbled over his own two feet. If you weren’t mistaken, he was drunk.

“What’s your business in Byzantium, barbarians?” he slurred, sneering down his nose at you.

Just like that, the magic of the city faded, ruined by one bigoted idiot.

You shouldn’t have been surprised that Nick spoke perfect Latin, but you still couldn’t help an eyebrow raise when he responded politely, valiantly ignoring the guard’s frankly offensive demeanor. “I’m Nicholas Fritigern of the Thervingi tribe of the Dniester River. We’re here to petition your Emperor. We’ve brought gifts for his majesty in the hopes that he’ll hear our pleas.”

Even though Nick sounded nothing but cordial and humble, you and everyone else from your tribe knew he was swearing in his head. Bending to another ruler, even in words, pained him greatly.

The guard scoffed. “Let’s see it, then. These ‘gifts’,” he said. It was clear he thought anything you offered wouldn’t be worthy of his Emperor.

He moved to walk towards the cart, but Nick’s hand on his shoulder stopped him in his tracks. He narrowed his good eye at the guard and the man visibly paled. “My gifts are not for ordinary men’s eyes, soldier. Would you truly belittle your Emperor by claiming yourself as worthy as he? Are you that audacious?” he asked challengingly.

The soldier gazed up at him, slack-jawed. Nick raised an eyebrow expectantly and the man quickly shook his head so violently his helm would have come flying off if not for the chin strap.

Nick smiled (it was a predatory thing that would have frightened the man if he’d been more cognizant). “Good. Now, if you’d be so kind as to open the gates?” Fritigern said, finally releasing the man’s shoulder.

He nodded furiously and scrambled back to the gate. “Open it up! They’re clear!” he called to the men on the ramparts. One startled awake and looked around for the danger, only to let out a sigh when he realized it was his fellow guard making a nuisance of himself. They leaned over the wall, stared at their fellow guard, then at your group. They shrugged and, a second later, began turning the great wheel that controlled the metal gate. It rose slowly and after a moment Nick urged his horse onward, the rest of you following closely behind him. As you passed below the great archway, your awe from earlier returned tenfold. People bustled about on stone streets. The buildings had two floors and some had roofs and ceilings so high you had to crane your neck to see the top. Back home, your largest most opulent buildings were your churches and even then they couldn’t hold a candle to even the most basic building here. People stared at you as you passed and you knew enough Latin by now to recognize that most of what they said was not complementary. Eventually your party came to a stop in a market row.

Nick pulled his horse around and Clinton and Natalia immediately looked to him, awaiting instruction.

“Natalia, Clinton, the other leaders, and I will go the palace. I don’t know if Emperor Pierce will be willing to talk today, but I’d like to spend as little time here as possible, so we’re starting immediately. While we’re gone, I want you three-” he pointed to you, Wanda, and Pietro, “-to run the stall. Trade what you can... but do your best to collect information, too. Play the stupid barbarian card. They’ll tell you everything. People like to talk when they think they’re smarter than you,” he said. 

“Is that why you never stop talking, chief?” Natalia asked playfully.

You, Wanda, and Pietro clammed up at the jab, but Clinton was biting back a laugh. You would never talk to the chief like that, but Natalia was a special case. She was practically raised by the man.

Nick rolled his eyes as he hopped off his horse and handed Wanda the lead. “Let’s go, Romanova. You too, Barton. We have things to do.”

Natalia and Clinton hopped off the cart and you dug through the bag in the back until you found the one with the gifts for the Emperor. You hefted it over the side to Clinton’s waiting arms. He never ceased to amaze you as he shrugged it over his shoulder with ease.

“Good luck,” you told them all with a small smile, earning a smile from Natalia and Clinton and a scoff from Nick.

“You don’t need luck, (Y/N). You have me,” he said with a smirk before turning and walking towards the palace, which stood above the other buildings in both height and opulence at the top of the hill by the sea.

“Stay safe!” Natasha said with a smile before turning and jogging to catch up to Nick.

Clinton was walking away, but kept turning around to yell reminders at you. “Watch out for pickpockets! Don’t fall for scams! Oh, and stick together! Don’t get captured by slavers, we don’t have the money to buy you back!” he joked, though you knew there was a vein of seriousness in that warning.

You rolled your eyes. “Go, Clinton! Or you’re going to be left behind!” you yelled, smile on your lips.

The moment they were out of sight you turned to the twins, excited expression on your face. “I’m going exploring! Stay here, don’t get kidnapped or murdered, all right?” you said as you jumped out of the cart, startling a few citizens that had stopped to stare at the oddities in their marketplace.

“Wait, I wanted to explore! (Y/N)!” Pietro called after you, frown on his face. Wanda didn’t say anything, but you could tell she wanted to, too.

“Too slow for once, Pietro! I won’t be long, though! Make sure you tie the horses up correctly, or we’ll have to walk home!” you said cheerily over your shoulder before you disappeared around the corner.

Everywhere you went you attracted stares in your odd clothes, but you paid them almost no mind. There were statues everywhere. The stonework on buildings was so intricate you were sure you could stare at it for an hour and still find something new about it by the sixtieth minute. The streets were wide, allowing carts to pass each other with ease. There were so many people you could hardly comprehend it. How did they all live like this, packed together like peas in a pod? You supposed that it wouldn’t be that difficult if the food was brought to you.

But how did these people even get the money to buy their food? Did they make things? Create art? You supposed a lot of them had to be fishermen, judging by the copious amount of boats in the harbor.

You’d never been on a boat before and quickly added it to the list of things you wanted to do while you were here.

You rounded the corner with a huge smile, only for it to slip off your face at the sight before you.

People of all color, shapes, sex, and sizes stood on top of a raised platform, their bodies weighed down by chains. The expressions in their faces ranged from fearful to resigned to absolutely empty. They were all naked as the day they were born, greased up to make them look even more appealing to potential buyers.

You’d walked into the slave market. You watch in horror as a young boy- no older than 18- was brought forward. The slave auctioneer showed him off almost like was a prized cattle and you fought the urge to vomit.

How had you been blinded by stone and artwork? This empire of lies was where Fritigern sought aid? This place, where they sold people like pieces of meat?

You turned to run back the way you’d come, but ran smack into a wall.

You stumbled backward a step or two with a yelp, hand flying up to rub your nose and forehead tenderly. You looked up at what you’d run into, only to freeze.

Not a wall, a man.

One with a sword and dangerous, dark dead eyes that held no light.

“My my, what have we here? A little barbarian girl, all alone? Isn’t that a shame,” he murmured dangerously, taking a predatory step towards you that had you scrambling backwards. The two men next to him grinned wickedly and you suddenly knew you were in trouble.

Why hadn’t you just listened to Clinton? You should have stayed with Wanda and Pietro. Going off into a city alone was stupid. These weren’t your people. They couldn’t be trusted.

“What do you say, sweet thing? Would you like to make me a very rich man?” he asked silkily, taking another step towards you that nearly had you letting out a squeak of fear. It all became clear in an instant: This man was a slaver.

“Away!” you hissed, wishing you’d learned more Latin.

There man raised an eyebrow and the grin turned feral. “Oh, and she speaks Latin, too! Someone will pay a hefty price for a bitch like that!” He lunged for you but you’d already turned on your heel and ran. You didn’t know where you were headed, but as far as you were concerned, the only thing that mattered was putting as much distance between you and the slaver as possible.

You heard the man and his two fiendish friends running after you. “No, you idiots! This one’s mine! I love the chase!” he yelled, causing a shiver to run down your spine and your feet to pick up speed.

You tried to weave in and out of people, but you simply weren’t used to the sheer weight of this many people pressing down around you. The only thing you had going for you was that he was much larger and therefore had slightly more difficulty pushing through the crowds.

You turned a corner onto a less busy street and ran down at it, only to run face-first into a person for the second time that day. Two strong hands caught your arms, preventing you from falling straight down onto your butt.

“Whoa there, slow down! What’s the rush?” came a deep masculine voice.

You looked up and felt your breath leave you in a whoosh. Gorgeous blue-grey eyes stared down at you, and you could just barely see a glimmer of white teeth behind a sinfully attractive crooked smile.

“There you are,” came a slimy voice from behind you, snapping you out of your sudden daze.

You squeaked and hid behind the man, chest heaving as your pulse raced. “Please, help. He want hurt me,” you whispered in broken Latin, clutching at the back of the man’s shirt. He glanced over his shoulder at you, expression unreadable for a moment before he turned to glare at the other man who was stalking towards you, hardly sparing the man in front of you a glance.

“That’s far enough, cretin,” your savior said, voice low and threatening.

The man’s head swiveled, gaze locking onto the man, the smile faltering for only a moment. “My name’s Rumlow. Maybe you’ve heard of me? I saw her first. She’s mine,” he said, causing another shiver to run down your spine.

“Leave now, slaver. This is your last warning,” the man said, tone calm and collected but with a promise of danger that scared you nearly as much as the other man did.

“Oh yeah? And who are you to boss me around like that, sir? She’s not a citizen. She has no rights. The gothi are fair game!” he argued.

The man closed the distance between them and, though you couldn’t see his face, he must have looked absolutely murderous because Rumlow froze in his tracks, eyes widening in fear.

The man only placed a hand on his shoulder and leaned in, whispering so quietly in his ear that you had no hope of hearing his words.

Rumlow’s face fell and he sunk in such a low bow his nose practically brushed the street. “Sorry, sir! My mistake! I’ll leave at once! I beg your pardon!” he sputtered. You watched in shock as the man sprinted away and around the corner, not even chancing a glance over his shoulder.

You stared at the man as he slowly turned around, face impassive. The warmth that you’d seen at the beginning of your encounter had vanished.

“Th-thank you,” you murmured shyly in halting Latin, not quite sure where to begin on how to thank someone for saving you from slavery.

“Did you come here alone, Visigothi?” he asked, tone cold.

You frowned and straightened your back, suddenly on edge. “No... friends, family. Here. What ‘Visigothi���?” you said, racking your brain in attempt to communicate in his tongue.

He turned his back on you and began to walk away. “You are Visigothi, Visigothi. Go back to your people before Byzantium swallows you whole, barbarian.”

You frowned and, before you knew what you were doing, you lunged forward and grabbed his hand, tugging him to a halt.

He froze, staring over his shoulder at you. You didn’t know what had urged you to stop him, but something in you refused to let him go. Something about him drew you to him like a moth to the flame.

“Want thank you. What name?” you asked hesitantly, eyes wide and beseeching. 

You weren’t sure if you imagined it or not, but it seemed like his eyes softened just a bit and he turned to face you. “You don’t need to thank me... and my name is James,” he said, lip tilting up just a fraction at the corner.

You smiled widely at him, happy to see even a tiny chip in his ice cold armor. You weren’t sure what had brought it on, but after seeing what he could be like, you hated this iciness with a passion. “Thank you, James. Saved me. Owe you,” you said with a sincere smile.

Your breath hitched when he took a step forward and raised his hand as though to cup your cheek. You stared up into those endless blue eyes and felt your heart beat hard in your chest. Yes, you thought. Just a little bit closer and-

But then his hand froze just inches from your face and curled into a fist which promptly dropped to his side, the warm look in his eyes vanishing in an instant, only to be replaced by stone cold indifference. He tugged his hand from yours and your heart nearly broke when he turned and walked away. “Go home, Visigothi... and don’t come back.”

You wanted to run after him, but your feet refused to move. Your legs felt like jelly after running all over town (and likely because of James) and even standing was a struggle. You watched him until he made it to the corner, eyes widening in surprise when he looked back at you. His expression was hard to read from this distance, but you thought you might have seen sorrow or regret there. But then he turned and walked away, leaving you an emotional wreck in his wake.

You wanted to curl into a ball and cry, but the fear of being discovered by Rumlow- without James to protect you this time- spurned your tired feet forward and, using the palace and waterfront as guidance points, you worked your way back towards Wanda and Pietro.

Next Chapter

If you’d like to be tagged in this series, like this post! Sorry, but responses to this post asking to be tagged will be ignored, so send me an ask or like one of the taglist posts!

[curtisandlewis]

A Guide to The Playhouse

The Playhouse is a fic of my own creation and my baby. It originated from my need to write about the parties that Jerry, Tony, and Janet revolved their lives around that occurred at the building in Jerry's backyard affectionately named The Playhouse. As I sat down to plot this epic story that spanned from 1948 to 1953 relationships developed complexity, conflict was practically handed to me, and I got the gift of writing scene after scene of Jerry with Tony. They're not my OTP but are my biggest obsession. However, I am completely changing the storyline.

I knew from the start the "The Playhouse" would not be a fairytale. The relationships are complex and can be unhealthy and abusive. Mental illness, trauma, sex addiction, abuse of drugs and alcohol all contribute to risky and abusive behaviors. BDSM is also at the core of the story both being practiced in safe and dangerous ways. I thought it would be sufficient just include warnings at the beginning of each chapter as I do for any of my fics that can be "problematic" but I now realize the twenty or so thousand words I have written are not just "problematic" but can be harmful especially to anyone like me. I have written this guide to explain why I wrote those words and hopefully reverse any damage they have done.  

To anyone that read what I wrote and got the impression that certain sexual acts were more taboo or wrong than others, I am truly sorry. That is a fucked up way to live. I wouldn’t wish anyone to have shame for who they are or what they want in a consensual sexual relationship. Think about the sex you enjoy, without shame or restriction. Read the sex scenes that entertain you the most. Write the kind of sex you want to see in the world and is the most fun for you to write. Choose to masturbate and explore your body in the ways you want. Or choose not to touch yourself. Have sex in any way you and your partner/partners desire and consent to. Or choose not to have sex at all. It is your decision to make. That is your right as a person who is in charge of their own body. Please learn from my mistakes. 

I just want to make it clear that the film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey came out in February 9, 2015. I had no idea about the book until I saw the trailer for the movie. The first chapter of "The Playhouse" was published May 17, 2014, and I had been writing and planning several months before that. I have never read Fifty Shades of Grey and I only saw the first half hour (I couldn't make it to the sex scenes) of the movie in 2016. After I saw Christian Grey say the infamous line, "I don't make love. I fuck. Hard." I worried that Tony was similar to Christian Grey and that his relationship with Jerry was similar to the one in the movie. However, I NEVER presented their sexual relationship as a love story to be watched on Valentine's day. It may be that the two stories have nothing in common but I obsessively worried that they were and that I wrote something deeply problematic.

In March of 2015, I wrote a spin off of "The Playhouse" about the first time Tony humps Jerry (their fave activity). After I wrote it I felt like I had done something wrong. Not too long after something bad happened to a member of my family. I believed by writing the words in that story I had caused the bad thing because I was being punished. I now know I have OCD and this is how OCD works against you. It makes you believe you caused something when there is no logical way you could have caused it to happen. This is why "The Playhouse" has not been updated in over two years. I can look back now and realize the reason why I felt like I had done something wrong is that the characters were acting in a way that was wrong to who they were. I had projected my anxiety and shame onto them.

From here on out there will be liberal use of sex terms and discussion of sex  

What you need to know: I have anxiety writing anal sexual stimulation or anal sex due to many toxic beliefs and stigmas I internalized over the years. To avoid writing these scenes I made Dean's character believe due to his internalized homophobia that it was wrong for a man to penetrate another man or be penetrated by any gender even if in masturbation. Since the age of sixteen, Jerry has had curiosity about being penetrated. Tony has wanted to top Jerry since Jerry's sixteenth birthday (the fic that sparked my OCD) that is six years starting from chapter one of the story. To again, avoid having to write any penetrative scenes I had to write Dean being emotionally abusive and using shame and threats to control Jerry's sexual behavior. All of this because I as a writer did not realize I could just not fucking write anal sex scenes. I thought if I wrote a bunch of dry humping scenes you would think I was weird so instead, I wrote horribly abusive relationships...

Quick History lesson, since the medieval times it was believed evil for a man to be penetrated because he was in a passive role that was reserved for women. Men that were penetrated were put to death while women who had sex with women without penetration were encouraged to do so for their health. These toxic beliefs are deep within history and still exist in society.

Allow me to get a little bit personal. I’ve always had anxiety writing anal sex scenes. I’ve written it very rarely in the past ten years that I have been writing sex scenes. I wrote mostly oral sex because it was less "homosexual" than anal sex. (I had a lot of internalized crap I was dealing with). Even though it’s absolutely possible for two men to have a sexual relationship and never have anal sex, I thought it would be too weird for Dean and Jerry to be having sex for six years and never try it. Also as a writer, I enjoy writing them being physically intimate but not having sex. That word I see in fanfiction tags: frottage (such a weird word). You know the act of two men rubbing up against each other. It just offers so many more options than manual sex or oral sex ever could. THE FACT YOU DON’T HAVE TO TAKE YOUR CLOTHES OFF. How convenient is that? But I never saw it as the main option for sexual gratification. It was always presented as either foreplay or the only option because the characters couldn’t have sex. What made me feel weirder is that I enjoyed writing “humping” scenes (also a strange word) This is “frottage” but front to back instead of front to front. All of the advantages of anal sex without any of the problems. It required no prep. Whoever is on top can do it as hard and fast as they want and not hurt their partner. Likewise, to show intimacy it can be done in a gentle and romantic way, maybe even being left for special occasions like anniversaries. It’s also very easy for Tony and Jerry to take turns being top and Jerry doesn’t always have to be in the passive submissive role. Speaking of submissive it’s also easy to incorporate BDSM without it becoming too intense. Have you read those stories where the guy bleeds? You know what I mean. I didn’t want Jerry to bleed. And if he did I didn’t want it to be sexy. I wanted it to show that his sex addiction was getting out of hand or their BDSM relationship was becoming reckless. They can do it again, and again, and again. It wouldn’t put nearly the amount of strain on Jerry’s body that intercourse would. And of course, if you read “The Playhouse” you know that I use it an awful lot in group sex situations and to show just how fucking possessive Dean can be. As you can see there were a lot of positives to writing scenes in this way but that didn’t stop me from feeling weird about it. I probably read only one scene like that in my life. Before that, I saw it only a few times in movies and it made me go hmmm. I felt it was something that wasn’t really talked about or done. It wasn’t presented as an alternative to sex or even an option. I thought if I were to write the scenes I wanted to, people who read them would say, “Why don’t they just fuck already? What the fuck am I reading? This is so weird.”

I projected all of my toxicity onto Jerry. It started out simple enough I heard a lot of jokes as a kid that went, you must have known your husband was “gay” because he liked your finger up his ass. Because all women that enjoy receiving oral sex are “lesbian” right? (I hope you saw the sarcasm in that) Then I noticed there weren’t a lot of heterosexual married couples in movies having non vaginal intercourse. Sometimes you could see the couple in the “doggystyle” position but the wife was still being penetrated in her vagina. When I saw the other form of intercourse it was gay men or people not in love. I think that had a lasting effect on me. But what was worse is that I watched a movie with a BDSM theme. The woman worked as a dominatrix (hated her job btw) and her male partner confessed to her that he liked to be penetrated and dominated. Her reaction was so verbally abusive it was disgusting. Instead of thinking you are a horribly abusive person and he needs to leave you I internalized it as oh I guess it’s really not okay for men to want that. I have struggled with internalized homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia. I have dealt with it all. I just didn’t have the tools back then to see things as they are. An abusive woman who had a very illogical view of the world and a media that didn’t have the imagination or the knowledge of what sexual relationships could be.

These are the general reasons why I wrote: "The Playhouse" with such problematic themes and why I have decided to no longer continue those themes.

The lesson I learned from this was to not project my toxic shit onto my characters and make them act in ways that are not authentic to who they are. I give myself the permission to write what makes me happy and fulfilled.

DEAN: What you need to know: Dean has internalized homophobia due to childhood trauma. He was taught if a man is penetrated by a person of any gender they will instantly become homosexual and not a man.

As a young boy Dean was told by his mother don't be a f...well, I'm sure you can guess what she said. All his life he was reprimanded (sometimes with hitting) for behavior that was too "homosexual" Behaviors like, crying, telling someone he loved them and showing emotion. As he got older his so called friends just made his internalized homophobia worse. He was terrified that he wasn't masculine enough and that he had to be a man like they said or else be nothing. Along the way Dean was taught the rules, he lives his life by:

A man never says "I love you" even to his own family

A man never ever says "I love you" to another man

A man never lets anyone see him cry or be emotional

A man must keep people at a distance

A man has sex with women and has sex often

A man has a wife and children and whatever he can get on the side

A man can do "guy stuff" with other guys as a form of bonding or just a quick way to get off.

A man does not suck cock

A man can get his cock sucked by another man and be secure in his manhood because he is in the active "manly" role

A man must never ever under any circumstance be penetrated by anyone even himself. A man must not fantasize or actively desire to be penetrated otherwise he is a homosexual and will no longer be a man. He will be nothing.

That is the reasoning for Dean's problematic and abusive behavior towards Jerry. He tries to control Jerry's sexual behavior and desires because if Jerry were to be homosexual Dean would have to end their sexual relationship (He could never think of ending their friendship). 

The truth is that in real life during the time Dean was growing up this was NOT the belief. It was believed a man could have anal sex with another man as long as he was the one doing the penetrating. This meant he was in the active "male" role. It was actually preferred to penetrate a feminine homosexual man because they were believed to not be men and to be a third gender. Jerry is bisexual, not homosexual but close enough to be a PERFECT candidate. The only worry Dean would have is hurting his pally that first time. They could happily fuck for the whole ten years of their partnership and Dean would think of himself as nothing but the picture of masculine heterosexuality.

and of course

YOU CAN ABSOLUTELY HAVE ANY KIND OF SEX YOU WANT AND MOST CERTAINLY MASTURBATE IN THE WAY MOST PLEASURABLE TO YOU WITHOUT AFFECTING YOUR SEXUALITY JUST AS LONG AS YOU DON’T CAUSE HARM TO YOURSELF OR OTHERS.

What you need to know: Dean is emotionally and at times verbally abusive to Jerry and arguably to his wife Betty as well.

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

Life Story Part 70

I quickly grew accustomed to living at Maria's, and for the most part, even though I had been psychologically enslaved, I managed to grow and develop as a person at Maria's. Perhaps slave is a bit strong. Slave implies physical restraint. There was technically no physical restraint. But that household would have fallen to bits without me, and it was hard to say no considering there was nothing else for me to turn to. Going to either parent's house seemed like a terrible chance to take at the moment. I had a little bit of freedom at Maria's in the off chance that I was not babysitting, which was seldom. Maria had me feeling pure guilt over anything I did wrong. It was funny, because she herself was not a perfect housekeeper, but she made sure that I did a perfect job. I was the one who cooked, did the dishes, scrubbed the floors and toilets, do the laundry, and anything else that needed doing. Any sort of sense of structure or discipline came from me. Maria worked or slept or watched romantic comedies, and if she was home her children acted atrociously, breaking things, attacking one another, making it impossible for anything to go smoothly. And I just tried to ignore them when Maria and her kids were being toxic. It was hard sometimes, but I had to hold back.

This had been the first time in my life that I adhered to a structure. I've often been known to be terribly lazy for one and for two I think generally, excluding specific situations, it's more important for people to keep in touch with their own wants and inner workings than it is to follow some societal clock. But at Maria's, I just sort of fell into it. Perhaps having been out of school for so many years with nothing meaningful to take up my time, I needed that structure. I had few belongings, three shirts, two pairs of pants, and about forty paperbacks that I read through vigorously. I woke up each morning and did a certain range of chores. By around noon I would sit down and play Innocent Life Harvest Moon for three hours and then I would get up and start dinner. The kids were picky, so I essentially had to cook two-four separate dinners for each of them. After dinner I mopped the floors and did the dishes and got the kids ready for bed. Then I would read until I was tired.

Some days the Mormons would come and talk to the kids. They talked to me a bit – but they looked taken aback and hurt when they discovered I didn't really believe in a conceivable knowable benevolent God with a human essence, so they mostly left me alone, hoping I might catch their drift second hand.

Kurt Vonnegut became my new favorite. His ideas were easy for me to grasp, easy for me to relate to and he was/is probably the funniest writer I know of. I feel like I owed Kurt Vonnegut direct thanks for helping me cope with a difficult life with a smile on my face. He taught me how to laugh at my own expense, and to avoid the temptation of taking myself too seriously, and that life is fleeting. His wrote about dark things at this sociological perspective of seeing society for the first time, and finding great humor in it all. And he didn't intentionally write in a way that was difficult to understand like many writers do – which is ultimately why I think he became so popular. This isn't to say that a word-heavy book isn't worthy of getting through, but I often times feel like there are writers who intentionally try to make their novel seem deep by being wordy to make up for hollow characters that represent very little. If Kurt Vonnegut's characters were hollow, they represented something and had a clear – if not bizarre purpose. Everyone in his book lead you to some perfect representative of ideas from life. I feel like writers who try too hard to be obscure and impersonal, and yet wordy, end up failing to convey a real feeling to most of their audience. I feel like it makes for very detached reading and causes people to lose interest. Of course, there are exceptions. Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood' was a great example of a novel that was pain-stakingly thorough and articulate to every minute detail and at the very same time succeeded in pulling you very deeply in.

I would sometimes make Maria read one  of Kurt Vonnegut's humorous short stories from Welcome to the Monkeyhouse, only to watch her face contort in confusion. She had no idea what she was reading.

I eventually discovered that the apartment units that I was now living in had a computer lab that anyone could use. It was in a very weird side building. I found it extremely satisfying to sneak in late at night and have the empty lab all to myself. I certainly spent a lot of time in the computer labs, which were almost always empty and had an eerie vibe to them at times, the way empty buildings with long government building lights and carpeting can sometimes have. There was a table in the middle, with a stack of Jehovah's Witness Watchtower magazines, which I began collecting for fun. I liked looking at the depictions of heaven on earth, of families of different races all walking among African carnivores affectionately – the men all wearing Hawaiian or polo shirts. I couldn't ��help but wonder if the artist or whoever's idea this was harbored a secret wish to snuggle with lions and feel safe – Jesus coming back being the only way for their dream to come true, not that I could blame someone – I wish lions were snugly and safe, but it seemed to be such a common theme in the art that I felt this key element of heaven on earth was centering itself around.

Zack joined a MySpace. I would often times go there to listen to it and to listen to a few of his personal demos on his page. But lately I noticed when I snuck over to his MySpace to spy, he for some reason had decided to grow a beard – a very dirty looking one. And that former twinkle in his eyes that I remembered so well, it wasn't there in the pictures. I couldn't help but notice that he really seemed to be somewhat transformed into someone else – very hillbilly whereas before he had been very Sonic Youth. He quoted Kid Rock, and he made a comment in all caps that pertained to Jesus and Hell – and dare I say it, it made absolutely no sense to me in any way and had I not suspended my judgment for his sake I would have admitted to myself that it was incredibly dumb. Surely the Zack I knew was still there somewhere. I really didn't understand. I was confused, and besides myself. I even wondered if he had somehow made those statements and grew that dirty beard as a joke? But I let it go. Obviously, I knew that there was a lot more to Zack as a person then a few pictures on MySpace and people were allowed to go through stages. Who was I to judge him, looking at my own self? It was shallow and silly for me to expect someone else to not change, someone I never even talked to no less. I guess I had just harbored this fantasy that Zack would be different. He would become more driven intellectually, and by his poetry and a certain ere of individualism more like me I guess. I had hoped he wouldn't culturally conform to the hillbilly culture of the town we both grew up in. I was becoming more comfortable with a more lucid understanding of gender as well. Of course, this isn't to say that I wanted to see Zack embrace being highly effeminate, which he wasn't. But there is a sort of complexity and openness that I always hope men will do more to embrace, but often times won't because they are afraid they would be seen as feminine. I had become more accustomed to the idea of men being vulnerable and complex, but perhaps it was due to the sort of music I liked, like Bright Eyes. I was hoping Zack, more than anything would be swayed by my thinking about him, and as crazy as it sounds, I would search his page to see some minute indication that he cared about me till, or that I had left some kind of mark of my existence etched into his soul in some way that could be seen. But there never was much.

One day in the computer lab, this young guy about my age came in and sat down two computers away, which instantly made me absurdly nervous. He instantly struck up a conversation with me in this incredibly cordial upbeat manner. He didn't seem to judge me at all, or see me a someone who shouldn't be talked to which I found strange. He was very nice, and I wasn't used to that obviously. So as soon as he started speaking to me, I started having extreme inner conflict. He immediately asked me if I liked music, and I reluctantly told him I did. I felt like there had to be some sort of joke revolving around him talking to me. He wanted to tell me about how much he had come to love Van Morrison, which at the time I didn't know too much about. He started telling me that he had a band and they were continuously getting warnings from the landlord for practicing and they were just in the next building over. He told me about how much he loved The Stooges, as well as a bunch of other older bands. Obviously I loved The Stooges as well, but I was afraid to tell him so for some reason. In self defense I guess, I painted him in my mind that he was a creep, and I wanted to mock him for his interests and ambitions and his appearance, which there was nothing wrong with. Mind you, I didn't actually utter anything mean to him or about him to anyone else. It was just this wave of anxious frustration that suddenly came upon me. Eventually I sort of shut down emotionally and the conversation died. I think he printed out some sheets of tablature and left.

Later that night, I heard his band playing a few units down in the distance, or at least I am fairly certain it was his band. It had that eerie far away vibe to it. They were actually extremely good. I would have listened to them if I had a cd. They sounded a bit like The Kinks, had elements of The Stooges and elements of The Velvet Underground. It was late at night when I heard them play, and listening to them play reminded me that I had once had goals not unlike him. I felt this strange longing to go where the music was coming from, and this sadness and knowing that something very cool was happening, and I was on the other side of that thing. Perhaps what I resented about this nice young stranger was that he was ambitious and vulnerable and passionate about what he loved, and I had become everything opposite to that. It's hard to look back and blame myself at all, I mean, look where I was? But I had let my ambitions die because I was too afraid to take steps, both due to an underlying extremely low sense of self worth, an innate shyness and fear of being misunderstood, which would have been inevitable for me obviously – but it would have been failure that I would have had to push myself through anyway to succeed, and the underlying knowing that even if I did try to do something cool or stand out, my family would knock me down to size immediately. Besides, my function was mostly to babysit. I couldn't even think about doing things that I had no money for. And in order to just get by I had to turn myself to stone. If I let myself feel things now, I was afraid it would have sent me over the edge.

If I was then who I am now, I would have carried out the conversation to see where it would lead, as awkwardly as it made me feel or however long I stumbled in my words. I would have befriended this person, at least initially until I found a good reason to not be friends. It would have been fun if nothing else, an adventure of sorts, and possibly I could have made long lasting new friends that way. This person with very similar interests in me who seemed caring enough to want to make a connection with me, a complete and total stranger had just walked up to me and talked to me, and it felt to some degree that I may have disregarded an opportunity that the universe had somehow provided. But I just wasn't capable of speaking up or feeling comfortable enough in my own skin then. And it all happened too quick for me to reach that conclusion in that moment had I been able to process it. I really questioned myself for the next few months about how and why I became so mean in my thoughts when he had been so friendly towards me. It struck me that perhaps I had been so saturated in the casually judgmental and discourteous chaotic environment of my own family for several years by then, that it was beginning to seep through my castle walls a bit and I was beginning to embody that ugliness even as I did everything I could to see myself as an orphan excluded from the influence of my family and upbringing. The thought of that was quite disturbing to me.

Maria's house could pick up about four channels. I would sometimes watch them just for the sake of it, or listen to the television from the other room when I was doing the dishes. I remember hearing this very clear and charismatic voice one evening coming from the television in the other room. It was Barack Obama, campaigning for presidency. I didn't know that this was necessarily political. For the few years I had been out of school, my thoughts had been more about self preservation and self analysis, and fantasy. I did feel a very strong sense that I liked this guy coming from a place of having zero political agenda or knowledge. I had no idea who he was or even what he looked like. He didn't talk with the same rhetoric and empty sanitized voice that you might typically hear from one of the Bush's.

I would sometimes try to write to Sarah about bigger things beyond our life, mostly my ideas about how I thought the world should run. Sarah had taken a job as a cook in a very busy and very rudimentary kitchen in a restaurant called The Red Rooster. They didn't have a professional flattop of anything like that. They had the same kind of kitchen stove you would use in a household and some of the burners were broken. Which, if you have ever worked in a kitchen you will know is akin to abuse towards your workers in the restaurant industry. She would have to fill forty orders herself, and she worked six days out of the week. It was interesting to hear how hard Sarah was getting beaten up by her job, mostly because Sarah had never been a fast-paced person, she hadn't enjoyed holding positions of responsibility either in her personal life or professional. She didn't enjoy any kind of pain or sacrifice. And she had essentially been thrust into a work environment that was hell on earth for her, and it was changing her a lot, much like the military changes people. Certain weaknesses and avoidant attributes in Sarah were being chiseled away. She was becoming far more leaderly than I could have imagined, and far more bold. She didn't have as much time to write or to question why she was working, or what her living in Texas had even been for. She was just working or sleeping, and was constantly overheated and sweaty. I would try to write her my ideas about class warfare and the type of slavery that we both lived in and suppressed technology and any other ideas I had, many of them being a somewhat well meaning and idealistic, albeit confused version and mixture of socialism and libertarianism. Sarah didn't really want to think about this stuff though. She was so caught up in working and not emotionally letting herself think about why she was doing anything anymore that me trying to put things into some sociological perspective was not well received.

Allison came to visit me for much of the time that I stayed in Moscow. Allison had sort of woken up into a stage of early adulthood where we could suddenly relate with one another again. She and I became even better friends that summer. I felt less and less like her older sister and more like her good friend, though we were clearly still very much sisters. Being as we came from the same place and had the same genetics, it was actually very easy for us to relate to one another. Allison was very much fresh air to me. She was generally enthusiastic, very optimistic and excited about studying the interrelatedness between people and their dramatic encounters. Allison's favorite things were InuYasha and Naruto, and she had started creating her own manga story, much like I had at her age. We spent a long time talking about anime characters and with my knowledge of character building in books and movies, I was able to give her insight on how to create a more original story for her characters who I helped her develop into having more depth, while still giving her room to put her own spin on her own inner universe. When she came to visit, her and Jasmine would go into the computer lab and watch InuYasha until the sun rose again. I never watched it with them, but I became very accustomed to the dubbed American voices crying out during battle scenes for some sliver of a jewel shard or demon related thing, and I can still hear the faint cries of 'KIKIO! When I think about it.

What I couldn't quite grasp was why she loved Twilight so much. It was trying to be supportive, but it seemed like every young girl or woman and their mother had read these books, which seemed even on the surface, totally banal. Allison would talk on and on about the characters from this book series and their relations with one another. I tried asking questions about aspects that didn't add up to me. For one, the main character seemed to have no defining personality characteristics. Bella just seemed really vacant. I didn't really get it. I had the same criticism of the series that a million and a half other people had so a great deal of my ideas about Twilight aren't exactly original content. And honestly, I didn't like Harry Potter either, and many people adored the Harry Potter series so I took into account that I might have been too harsh in my criticisms. Most of the times, I just shut my brain off while Allison went on and on about Twilight. Allison would talk on and on in support of team Jacob, and I just knew when to insert the right 'mmmhmm's. She didn't seem to think I was ignoring her and I know that the Allison of today would endorse my decision to ignore most of what she talked about repeatedly. I even tried to read the books myself. I got through thirty percent of the first book, but the moment that the vampires all started to play baseball, I just couldn't.

Sometimes Maria would randomly pay me. Once a fifty, another a one hundred and once when she got her taxes back two-hundred dollars. I blew this money to enjoy my time with Allison. I would tread in the summer with Allison up this several mile meandering bike path to Hastings to buy books and hang out there drinking the coffee. It was all day walk to and back and it left me breathless. I sometimes would walk by the old alternative school, not to be a creep exactly but to see myself in a different perspective of being on the outside of that school, where somewhere in that building Mike was tutoring on the finer points of southern gothic fiction, or teaching his students about the rise of the Mongols. On the outside there was me, basically looking and feeling like a street person who was worlds now separated from that other world. People who saw me walking around looked at me like I was a bum. The girls my age always seemed so much prettier than me, so much more well kept. I wondered what I even was sometimes. I didn't feel like I demographically belonged anywhere.

I read Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck, which I really appreciated the complex characters who seemingly seemed simplistic. What I appreciated about that short novel was the fact that high quality drama can and does take place with every walk of life, and at the same time, I was all very funny. The characters were simultaneously simplistic and would sometimes contemplate philosophy in a very real way without realizing. And I thought this was a beautiful notion and holds more truth to it. Complex ideas are not isolated to only the educated and rich. This stuff effects the poor just as much, even more so in some ways. Cinematic operas and romances of a lifetime take place in dingy bars in run down parts of town, in poorhouses, in trailer parks and huts and villages. Hollywood would have you believe that certain feelings and ideas are only explored in middle to upper class society. I read the book to Allison and sometimes just for fun, we would walk around with a jug of diet green tea in a big jug (the Arizona kind with the geisha on the front). And we would pretend that we were drinking the wine they drank all the time in Tortilla Flat. We would occasionally visit all-night gas stations and buy big liters of soda and talk until the sun came up.

I also read Lady Chatterley's lover. What drew me to this book was the front cover of this particular copy they were selling at Hastings that was a bit more expensive but the front cover was like a comic book sort of with the main characters lying in bed and from what I remember, discussing how their forbidden sexual meet ups were very interrelated to class warfare and the bourgeois. It was hilarious as it was intriguing and worth throwing a twenty dollar bill at. The books itself is a bit dry, but overall, when you get into the thick of it, it was actually pretty good. I think books in general are very interesting on how they reflect, narrate and follow the main characters and how they base the books. Sometimes you live deeply inside the narrator's mind. Sometimes you hear their recollections in a shallow way, and sometimes it's like they aren't really attached to their body at all, and they tell you only bits and pieces of what is happening around them and how they are feeling. D.H. Lawrence was likely a misogynistic ass (so many male writers of his time were), but at the same time he reflected on his main female character, Constance, in a way that expressed her as having a certain needs and desires and feelings about herself and the world around her individual from what men perceived her and her role in society. I thought it was very interesting that this book gave Constance some individuality, though in the end she did just switch from one man to the next. As for the things about the books that caused it to be banned. It was mostly softcore porn scenes where they intertwined flowers in one another's pubic hair and other rather innocent gestures that I am sure the people of the time thought was beyond vile.

When Roxanne and Jeremy received their tax money that year, they decided to of course spend it on all the meth and coke and pills and alcohol they could get their hands on, but also go on a camping trip with their drugs on hand. They bought a bunch of camping gear as well, and told Allison and David to come with, that it would be a lot of fun. Not realizing what this was going to look like for them, they went along. The trip would take about three days, and the camp grounds were about ten miles out of town. The offer had been extended to me as well, but I had to babysit. Initially I felt left out a little bit, though later I was incredibly relieved I didn't have to go. This is how the trip went, according to how I remember it. Of course, it's second hand so some of the events and specific details might be slightly off.

This trip soon became a nightmare to everyone minus Roxanne and Jeremy. Roxanne and Jeremy took all the blankets and had their own tent and kept Meliah who was a toddler by now, with them. Everybody else had to share a tent. This meant Roxanne's four kids and Allison and David had to somehow stuff themselves into a tent and sleep in it, which of course nobody fit. There wasn't enough blankets to go around. Jeremy and Roxanne were mostly interested in drinking and doing drugs. Most of the snacks and drinks they did buy went for Roxanne and Jeremy. There were no rules anymore, save what Jeremy had to say. By day one, all of the kids were starving and thirsty, Allison and David being included. Jeremy had Sagen and Roxanne massaging his feet in his hair at all times, and he tried to force Allison to fan him. There was clearly something very sexually inappropriate about the way he made his stepdaughter and tried to force Allison to do this for him.

Allison is a much more forward person than me, and she never did get enough credit for her depth. People have always seen her as chatty and sometimes superficial in her interests and didn't care to see her hardcore leadership potential or her ability to read the situations she was in. David, having no rules began to instantly take to a very Lord of the Flies approach and started acting horrendous, randomly deciding to side with Roxanne and Jeremy. He started calling Allison a slut, a cunt, and a bitch whenever he could. He had this look of stressed confusion on his face. I think attacking Allison was his way of feeling like he was in control. Jeremy and Roxanne were completely out of it drunk for much of the time, and would come back to the tent screaming hysterically at one another in a frightening manner. At one point another camper punched Jeremy in the face. By day two there was no more water for the kids, and Jeremy refused to go into town to buy anymore or share any of the supply that he had. Allison was very headstrong in this situation. She shared what she had with the kids, and demanded that Jeremy do something, but he wouldn't of course. Jeremy started making comments about how he was going to fuck Allison. It was beyond disgusting and had I been there I would have lost it. He said it in front of Roxanne who did nothing, and the kids. Allison called him a disgusting ugly pervert and that she couldn't wait till he went back to prison. Which enraged him and she could tell by the look in his eyes that he wanted to beat her to death. Allison is a very brave person.

David was desperate too, but given the situation he had pretty much lost his mind completely, either because he felt he was free to act out as he wanted, or because he too was starving and thirsty. In any case, the entire camp by the end of day two was totally hostile to Allison, as though she was now the cause of sleeping cold at night, and the shortage of basic food and water. Everyone was mosquito bitten and sunburned. There was no way for my siblings to get a hold of our father. It was far too out in the middle of nowhere for reception to work, and besides nobody had a cellphone anyway. Some neighboring campers who were also sort of lousy human beings, but at least willing to act like human beings, gave Allison and the kids what they could for water. They looked very concerned about the camp and though didn't quite want to ruin their own camping experience by calling the police or at least getting a hold of my father, they did seem to be considering it. It felt like something really bad was going to happen even to people who weren't directly involved.

David started acting out aggressively to Allison. They were by the lake, and when Allison refused to listen to him about something or other, and he decided to attack her. He started screaming in psychotic rage that he was going to murder Allison, and he began to chase her. Visions of Lord of the Flies come to mind so hard. Allison had to run for her life exhausted starved and thirsty. She ran for miles until David didn't chase her anymore, and she was exhausted. She decided she had to get out of there. Jeremy and Roxanne were acting as though they were going to tie her up or something, and David promised to bludgeon Allison to death or drown her. Eventually, she saw their van coming down the road, and she hid behind some bushes. They were screaming her name, and they looked raving mad. When she could, she started heading to the small store again. She had about three dollars, and when she eventually got there she asked to use their phone, but they refused. So she bought something to drink and she siphoned it down in one setting. She sat down, so exhausted she couldn't move anymore.

Jeremy and Roxanne eventually drove up to her, and when she refused to get into the van, they grabbed her by her arms and legs and shoved her back in against her will, David being a key helper. Everyone was telling Allison she was crazy and that she had ran away for nothing and that they had all been very nice to her. Jeremy seemed to still be fuming about how she had called him a gross pervert. He wanted some kind of revenge. But my father was supposed to pick Allison up that very same day, in fact they could have left Allison there to wait for him. They dragged her back to the camp and forced her to stay put. Jeremy acted as though he didn't now want to let Allison go back to our dad, as though he wanted to extract some additional revenge upon her. She started getting the feeling that he wanted to rape her.

In the end though, they delivered Allison and David back to my father at the appointed time and place. Allison was shaking and delusionally frustrated by this time and fatigued, and as soon as she saw my father she ran up to him crying and held onto him like a small child. Roxanne gave some half ass remark about how there had been problems and then drove away. David looked confused and frightened, so much like the boys at the end of Lord of the Flies once they had gotten themselves into that fervor. He made some mental pact with himself that the entire thing had never happened. Allison told my father about all of it. He believed it and though he knew he would never be letting Roxanne take any of his children again, he at the same time was up to his eyeballs stressed about trying to set up the pedicure shop with Trish, who was already losing interest in their relationship and was making notions that he should now just give her the shop.

When I heard about Allison's nightmare camping trip and heard about the extent that everyone had basically gotten to, I decided I never wanted to see Jeremy Frye again. I would never visit. It was too much. I would still talk to Roxanne and her kids, but if Jeremy was present I didn't want to be around. I started thinking it might be best if Roxanne lost her kids. I hated to think that, but given just how horrific things had gone to, I didn't know that there was any way I could see it differently. I wanted Roxanne to get clean and leave Jeremy, but if she wasn't going to do that immediately, I thought it would be for the best if she lost her kids. Jody was a shitty father and not my favorite person, but I didn't really worry about him killing anyone. I began talking to my mom about calling CPS on Roxanne and Jeremy. My mother is not a great person, but somewhere in her chaotic little brain, she had boundaries. She certainly didn't want to see any of her grandchildren violently murdered, or Roxanne for that matter. Roxanne and Jeremy had recently gotten into another low income apartment, and we both agreed to see what happened next.

As for David, I just didn't feel like I could trust him anymore. I felt like there were two David's. One of them I knew and the other I didn't at all. When things were good with David, they were very good. He was considerate, thoughtful careful about being fair, and smiling and happy. And then he wasn't any of those things. He was violent and wanted to really hurt you. He must have been tackling some intense emotional issues. He went farther than I ever went when I had been messed up at his age. But I did see the comparisons between him and I and I had to take it into consideration. Cruel and sadistic human behavior gets a little more confusing when you exclude the notion that someone is a sociopath. But as for day to day living, I no longer trusted David. I believed that he was capable of extreme violence and believing his own lies. I wanted him to get help, but as I have mentioned, neither one of my parents were willing to face what was happening to him to get him the help he needed. This left me in a state where I had to distance myself from him and stop seeing him as someone I could trust. I feared for Allison whenever she was alone with him. You never knew when he might snap. And once at Maria's house, he ended up shoving Allison down and trying to choke her in front of Maria's kids when I happened to not be there one day. When Allison told me stuff like this, I could feel these chills of instant rage go across my skin.

I was very attached to Maria's kids. I could tell that the kids really needed me. And yet, I felt like I had to go. I didn't feel very free and the fact that I was so relied upon was making me feel even more trapped. I tried to talk to Maria about it, but she started screaming and crying when I did that. I asked her to ask the Mormon church if they knew someone who could help. It was difficult, but they found a woman who was willing to stay at Maria's house overnight to watch the kids. She had a license and was trained by the state to babysit, so it would have been relatively cheap for Maria to pay this woman. But Maria said no. The reason that Maria refused this woman's rare and generous position to help Maria and be employed in the process was because this woman was black, and Maria is a racist and she didn't want her children to be 'exposed'. Which soured things for me, and my compassion for Maria's situation went south. Maria was in no position to be choosy, but apparently she would rather lose her home and let her life fall apart than have a black person working in her home with her kids. I fucking hate racism, and a part of me didn't want to see Maria at all after that. If her kids hadn't have been involved, I might have quit then and there.

I tried once again to tell her I was done. I had worked for about four or five months at her place. She refused to acknowledge my resignation however and pretended that it never had occurred, and I felt weird about just leaving the kids. I had brought so much stability to their lives. Ian wasn't getting any better, but I never suspected he really would. I loved little Chantelle. Jasmine and I had always been close. During my summer at Maria's, I had watched just about every episode of Little House on the Prairie, the theme song blasting in my psyche as I write this. JT was kind of an odd little boy, but I liked him well enough and had to be treated a special way as he seemed to be having some developmental issues. But Maria was taking advantage of me, like she does everyone around her. Eventually, my father agreed to tell her for me. I knew she would see my father as a position of authority, and since she didn't respect the authority I had over myself, I had him do it. Maria got the picture then. I told her I would babysit for one more month for her, just to give her some extra time. She'd already had plenty of time, and hadn't had any problems turning someone away already, so I wasn't going to be any easier on her than I had to be. Naturally, she lost her mind on me. She told me I was the reason her dreams never would come true, that I had ruined her life. She then walked to the window, and looked out forlorn, and lamented her future in a way that I coyly noted was contrived and meant to convey some theatrical sadness.

Over that last month, Maria stopped buying me food as punishment for my departure, and I lost twelve pounds. Allison would come to visit, and I would share one small box of riceroni with her a day, which I didn't mind doing because I truly enjoyed her company. I didn't know what life would bring me next. I guess I just felt this sense that none of this stuff could last forever. One evening, after Maria had taken part in this very immature back and forth with Ian in which they all threw shoes at one another (it was embarrassing seeing Maria getting drawn into this childish exchange), Maria told me she didn't want her kids anymore and she was going to find a way to get rid of them. I didn't know if she was to be taken seriously or not. I just listened and said nothing. But it really stuck with me.

Eventually, I got out of Maria's. My father helped me move out of there. Roxanne was gone from the house now, so I figured I could resume my life at my mother's for whatever that was worth. I was told however, that David kind of ran the show now, and if I lived there I would have to steer clear of him. My mother told me that, and so did Allison. It seemed strange to me that a twelve year old boy 'ran the show', and I mostly dismissed it, though I knew it was definitely true. As for steering clear of him, I already did that.

I stayed in Kendrick for a few days at my father's that late summer/early fall. I decided to take an evening stroll downtown for some exercise. Just as I was turning the corner of the sidewalk below my house I bumped into Jason. For those who don't know or remember, Jason had been one of my friends in high school. He had gotten kicked out for drugs and theft. And when I had been a lot younger, Jason had meant a lot to me. I had seen him around off and on since high school, as he occasionally did work for Sarah's mom in her garden area. I also happened to know that he has stolen my father's kayak from his property the year before, which ended up being found down the creak somewhere downstream. Jason had probably stolen it while drunk in an attempt to have some kind of fun boating experience that went terribly no doubt once he got in the boat and found it was not capable of getting through shallow rapids and he just abandoned it and waded out.

I had known Jason had been doing drugs like meth. But from what I had heard, he had been doing a lot better. He was on probation again and his girlfriend helped him stay relatively clean – minus marijuana of course. The moment Jason saw me he came up to me and gave me a warm heartfelt hug. His eyes were gleeful, and he was so genuinely stoked and very glad to see me. It was strange being in the presence of someone who was that happy to see me. He laughed at everything I said, and wanted me to tell him all about what I had been up to. He told me I looked happier than I had in school. This might have been in part because I was now blonde rather than dark haired, but even with all the fatalistic depression I felt, I guess nothing really had compared to the misery of being fourteen in the Kendrick high school, when I had been too young to reflect on what I was feeling and why. I had learned to smile more, perhaps even in self defense against what life threw at me. We talked for about ten minutes before Jason told me he had a bowl of weed he couldn't wait to smoke with his girlfriend, and he went on up the hill.

I never saw Jason again. He blew his brains out four months later. Nobody knew if it was a suicide or not. On one hand, he had been at times morbidly depressed, even in the times I knew him he had acted out and said very suicidal thoughts that he had. Everyone knew he was a risk. And he had just gotten in a fight with his girlfriend. On the other hand, it didn't seem like it was done on purpose entirely. He was in the yard messing with his rifle, drunk, and perhaps it had been loaded and he had not realized it as he made the fatal error of pulling the trigger. Either story seems equally plausible, but considering he was in front of both his girlfriend and Tammy (my father's local ex)'s now ten year old son Troy out in the front yard, it seems to me like it might have been more of an accident.

In any case, after Sarah called me up with the bad news, I cried myself to sleep. Jason had once been a friend that I valued very much. It seemed weird to me that he had died. I didn't end up going to his funeral. His funeral was filled with a lot of locals who had always hated him and whom he had always hated. It seemed really phony and put on because he died when he was twenty-two so everyone felt incensed to see themselves in the story somehow. I didn't want to go to something like that. Instead I took a walk.

PART 69 - https://tinyurl.com/yb7d8van

PART 68 - https://tinyurl.com/y8faedzp

PART 67 - https://tinyurl.com/y9lfdsop

PART 66 - https://tinyurl.com/y87dzx7z

PART 65 - https://tinyurl.com/yb22o6rv

PART 64 - https://tinyurl.com/y98zxljs

PART 63 - https://tinyurl.com/ybosu235

PART 62 - https://tinyurl.com/ybjrvccn

PART 61 - https://tinyurl.com/ybm99k8o

My Life Story in Chapters, PARTS 1-60 (this link below will lead you to a list of all the chapters i have written thus far). 

http://aleatoryalarmalligator.tumblr.com/post/168782771574/life-story-sections-1-60     

[alittleroseandhoneyblog-blog]

Biden will be Biden?  Just an opinion-based off facts!

“Bite your tongue and watch what you say”

“If you don’t have anything nice to say – then don’t say anything at all”

Or my favorite “be nice” which really means be tolerant and accommodating and if we are brutally honest with ourselves it means “doing whatever we have to do to keep the peace” I heard it growing up a million times “don’t ruffle feathers, Jenna” but to me it all meant the same “don’t be so darn assertive, vociferous, opinionated and loud”

How many times have we stopped ourselves from really saying what is on our minds because we fear our voice is not worth being heard? Why are we so afraid to tell someone they are doing something wrong or to change their behavior? Reality is, we just don’t think our opinions matter, unless we come with some sort of title like CEO, Vice President or “Owner”.  

I have been so guilty of “minding my manners” of being the “nice girl” - I was always so consumed with how the “judges” saw me – I always wanted to be known as the girl who is easy going, approachable and friendly but with that came a girl who was afraid to simply just be herself - I blogged about it last week – how some way or another we were always looking for validation – living for someone else’s gain…. And how we become watered down filtered versions of ourselves to fit society, but let me tell you something – there is no right way to live your life, there are no answers, no “life for dummies”, no one else who can live the life you’re living better then you and so when choosing your battles remember that you are the one who has to live with the consequences of the decisions we make, even the hard ones that almost break us.  

I read a quote today that said “the power of owning our own stories, even the difficult ones is that we get to write the ending” - how fucking true is that and as I was reading that I was listening to CNN and  happen to hear a broadcast about how Lucy Flores has come out with an article  regarding allegations of inappropriate behavior from Vice President Biden, I sat there listening to her story, my eyes were glued to the TV so proud as a women and someone who experienced sexual harassment myself, that she has come out to say “he has a problem that is clearly not being addressed”  and from what I am seeing more and more women are beginning to stand up for themselves regarding sexual harassment for example Harry Weinstein, Jian Ghomeshi, Kevin spacey, Connor McGregor, Brett Kavanaugh have all faced national headlines- in fact 263 powerful men (CEOs, actors, politicians) have been accused of sexual harassment since 2017 and I stand in awe because that conversation has started to change and everything little girls are being taught about biting their tongues and not saying anything out of turn is changing –

Flores said in an interview “I would be lying if I said I didn’t carefully consider all of this before deciding to speak, but hearing Bidens potential candidacy for president discussed without much talk about his troubling past as it relates to women became to much to keep bottled up any longer” –

I am still trying to understand this, this has been happening for years but because this man has the potential to become president NOW the conversation is worth having?

Now it is worth warning the public –

Now, it’s a problem?

NO, it was a problem prior too him considering running for president-

Flores went on to say that although people were aware of his disgusting behavior it was not being taken seriously from the perspective of the women on the receiving end of that power dynamic and I just can’t imagine that there was never a time where someone said to him “Mr. Vice President, you should probably stop doing that, you should probably stop touching women in that way, you should probably keep your hands to yourself”  but she made a valid point when she said “there is no clear path for what to do when a powerful man crosses the line, and that in politics you shrug it off, smile for the cameras and get back to the task of trying to win your race”- However even outside of politics I think this is a reality for most women! It certainly was for me and the more I read this article, the more I could understand where she was coming from and why it had taken her until he considered running for presidency (2020) to speak up - She felt because he was her superior she didn’t have a voice, stating that she didn’t have the language or the outlet to talk about what happened.  “Who do you tell? What do you say? Is it enough of a transgression if a man touches and kisses you without consent, but doesn’t rise to the level of what most people consider sexual assault?” – she did what most women do when faced with these situations she moved on with her life with this nagging at her everyday - knowing full well that if it happened to her, then it was happening to other people as well- she even went on to say it was never about his intentions in that moment but women on the receiving end, it wasn’t the first time where he had acted inappropriately – but he claims he was not aware of his actions when It has been noted that his behavior has been seen as completely inappropriate towards women - there were photos of him kissing the senators wife on the lips, pictures of him getting close to young girls, nuzzling the neck of the defense secretary’s wife- dude…you have had articles written about your “open secret” but yet you were not aware, Biden has used his position of power as a reason to be exempt from the rules and even when he went from being every bodies favorite uncle to creepy uncle Joe it came with an implied level of acceptance that is NOW worth talking about.  

The fact is, this process is not an easy process – the emotions you go through daily, the demons you fight – replaying the scenario in your head over and over until it almost seems like normal behavior, you almost validate their actions.  I  have allowed someone to make me question myself, wondering if I was doing the right thing, I argued with myself daily if what he did was really that terrible or if people were even going to understand how it actually affected me mentally,  At first you think “she just wants attention” and then you hear them all try to justify someone else’s behavior,  “so what, he only asked to see her naked!” and then there is “Do you really want to put yourself out there?” “he has more money than you, more resources to fight you” “are you sure you didn’t misunderstand” or recently my favorite “it’s not that big of a deal, it happens all the time” add on to the fear that my credibility would be attacked leaving me vulnerable and second guessing my decision and it almost becomes easier to live in silence then it does with everyone else’s opinions looming over you! But now, looking back a year and speaking from my own experience I didn’t speak up out of fear of retaliation, fear of being told I was wrong, I know the power of patriarchy -I know what men can do when they are angry. 

Now I have people digging into my Instagram and social media accounts pulling up photos as if that excused his behavior, using my confidence to discredit me.  I am a smart young women, I went to college but I was still manipulated and coned into allowing this behavior to happen not even having the strength to stop it and you can’t help but wonder if it was your fault, I think I was guilty of telling myself that because of the way I look it was just expected that people just treat me that way- and I justified it.  But the shame is not mine to hold- and what Flores did was take the power away from the predator and placed it back on the victim.  

And now, the Vice President is on live TV making jokes about receiving consent from people before he so much as shakes their hands…it isn’t funny, and you look like an insensitive jerk.  Biden has referred to his mannerisms as “affection and handshakes”

What in the actual fuck…  “affection and handshakes” …. Here is an Idea

Don’t be affectionate with someone that

1.       Doesn’t see it coming or

2.       Doesn’t welcome it… women were taught to learn their boundaries at a young age, at what age did we teach men or have we not yet?

He has been quoted saying “I have offered countless handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection, support and comfort” but doesn’t believe he has acted inappropriately. He went on to say that if it is suggested he did so, that he would listen respectfully- but that it was never his intention (although I give the man credit for making it a point to listen)  but the fact is that man had the audacity to put his hands on someone else- whether he felt she was willing or not, he was in a position of power that he never should have abused….(sound familiar) even as her superior he worked for her and in that moment- as his employee her needs should have far exceeded his own personal needs as a man.

So, Flores is now being called BOLD for coming forward…

“BOLD”

Are you kidding me?...

That was brave, authentic and powerful- that was more than just bold…that was probably one of the hardest fucking things she had to do- to face the public and admit that she felt enough shame to keep that to herself for as long as she did out of fear of what people might say or if people will even believe her.   Because when we teach our children, especially our girls to be “nice” instead of self-aware, which means self-directed, self-governed, self-boundaried, we teach them that it is more important to tolerate dysfunctional behavior than it is to be true to oneself and stand up.  

I speak from experience, I allowed things to happen and just chalked it up to a man being a man…I accepted it as normal behavior, that in some way I asked for it- but then you hear other people talk about their experiences and you realize that simply being pretty or attractive is not an open invitation… being told to use your body to book fitness consultations or gym memberships is not ok, its actually demeaning – yes we are guilty of using the phrase “sex sells’ but at what cost… so someone can “accidently” grab your ass as they walk by – let me remind you incase you have forgotten having someone put their hands on you for any reason without consent, is not okay….and if you are an employee that is experiencing those things please don’t wait for your boss to become the president to speak up – you have a voice and I can assure you that once you use it, you will feel empowered. Little girls do not have to be taught to bite their tongues or play nice, we do not need to be taught to share – we should be taught to be warriors, lionesses – powerful as all hell!

To all the people who stand up and speak out, you are teaching people how to treat you and you should not be ashamed of that.

She ended her article by saying that she understands that Biden has not officially broken any laws, but that the transgression that society deems minor (or doesn’t even see as transgressions) often feel considerable to the person on the receiving end. That imbalance of power and attention is the whole point- and the whole problem!  It is a direct response to that arrogance and bullying and that show of power that says – we won’t be silence!

So I want to leave you with this thought- just because you don’t believe that you have done anything considerably wrong doesn’t mean that the context of it wasn’t taken a different way by the person on the receiving end, and maybe if your behavior was owned and apologized and possibly changed you wouldn’t be in in trouble with the very people you are trying to impress.

[petrichorate]

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay: Thoughts

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (Elena Ferrante)

My notes on the first two books from this series: My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name

In Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Elena and Lila are adults—they’ve both experienced family life, while the same themes of turbulent relationships and societal uprising run throughout the novel. For some reason, I didn’t feel as connected to Elena in this book (I’ve never really felt a connection with Lila). It might have been because I haven’t gotten to that point in life yet—marriage, children seem far off—but I suspect more deeply that Elena’s personality has diverged more and more from her character in the first two books. 

Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading about Italy (especially since Elena moved to Florence), and here are some passaged that were particularly striking to me—especially the second to last quote about disguising the naturalness of the body for men:

Elena, using language as a kind of shield in a society she has escaped: “As soon as I got off the train, I moved cautiously in the places where I had grown up, always careful to speak in dialect, as if to indicate I am one of yours, don’t hurt me.”

Elena, on the irrationality of extracting emotional states from academic performance: “Studying was considered a ploy used by the smartest kids to avoid hard work. How can I explain to this woman—I thought—that from the age of six I’ve been a slave to letters and numbers, that my mood depends on the success of their combinations, that the joy of having done well is rare, unstable, that it lasts an hour, an afternoon, a night?”

On feelings for women versus feelings for men:  “I admired her, there were no women who stood out in that chaos. The young heroes who faced the violence of the reactions at their own peril were called Rudi Dutschke, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, and, as in war films where there were only men, it was hard to feel part of it; you could only love them, adapt their thoughts to your brain, feel pity for their fate.”

On the transient nature of relationships with men: “‘A male, apart from the mad moments when you love him and he enters you, always remains outside. So afterward, when you no longer love him, it bothers you just to think that you once wanted him. He liked me, I liked him, the end. It happens to me many times a day—I’m attracted to someone. That doesn’t happen to you? It lasts a short time, then it passes. Only the child remains, he’s part of you; the father, on the other hand, was a stranger and goes back to being a stranger.”

Elena, on achieving grand things but still feeling subdued by others’ ordinary achievements: “I feel like the knight in an ancient romance as, wrapped in his shining armor, after performing a thousand astonishing feats throughout the world, he meets a ragged, starving herdsman, who, never leaving his pasture, subdues and controls horrible beasts with his bare hands, and with prodigious courage.”

Elena, on her work defining her state of life, and losing the streak of greatness: “So the things I wrote had no energy, they were merely demonstrations of my formal skill, flourishes lacking substance. Once, having written an article, I had Pietro read it before dictating it to the editorial office. He said: ‘It’s empty.’ ‘In what sense?’ ‘It’s just words.’ I felt offended, and dictated it just the same. It wasn’t published. And from then on, with a certain embarrassment, both the local and the national editorial offices began to reject my texts, citing problems of space. I suffered, I felt that everything that up to a short time earlier I had taken as an unquestioned condition of life and work was rapidly collapsing around me, as if violently jolted from inaccessible depths. I read just to keep my eyes on a book or a newspaper, but it was as if I had stopped at the signs and no longer had access to the meanings.”

On feeling proud of your journey but at the same time only expressing anger and no pride in regards to inequality: “I suspected, in those moments, that the words he had shouted before (shut up, you speak in clichés) hadn’t been an accidental loss of temper but indicated that in general he didn’t consider me capable of a serious discussion. It exasperated me, depressed me, my rancor increased, especially because I myself knew that I wavered between contradictory feelings whose essence could be summed up like this: it was inequality that made school laborious for some (me, for example), and almost a game for others (Pietro, for example); on the other hand, inequality or not, one had to study, and do well, in fact very well—I was proud of my journey, of the intelligence I had demonstrated, and I refused to believe that my labor had been in vain, if in certain ways obtuse. And yet, for obscure reasons, with Pietro I gave expression only to the injustice of inequality. I said to him: You act as if all your students were the same, but it’s not like that, it’s a form of sadism to insist on the same results from kids who haven’t had the same opportunities.”

On Pietro’s insecurity and demand for affectionate, supportive attention: “I was his wife, an educated wife, and he expected me to pay close attention when he spoke to me about politics, about his studies, about the new book he was working on, filled with anxiety, wearing himself out, but the attention had to be affectionate; he didn’t want opinions, especially if they caused doubts. It was as if he were thinking out loud, explaining to himself.”

On being born with everything: “‘As a girl I would have liked to be like you.’ ‘Why? You think it’s nice to be born with everything all ready-made for you?’ ‘Well, you don’t have to work so hard.’ ‘You’re wrong—the truth is that it seems like everything’s been done already and you’ve got no good reason to do anything. All you feel is the guilt of what you are and that you don’t deserve it.’ ‘Better that than to feel the guilt of failure.’”

Elena, on intellectually supporting one stance but wavering when it approaches her own family: “Only in the elevator did I realize that my entire self had in a sense slid backward. What would have seemed to me acceptable in Milan or Florence—a woman’s freedom to dispose of her own body and her own desires, living with someone outside of marriage—there in the neighborhood seemed inconceivable: at stake was my sister’s future, I couldn’t control myself.”

On comfortableness with people who you feel are lesser:  “And all while Pietro, with that capacity of his for feeling at ease with people he considered inferior, was already saying, without consulting me, that he would very much like to visit the center in Acerra and he wanted to hear about it from Lila, who had sat down again.”

Elena, on the absurdity and irrational urge to "camouflage” herself completely for men: “In recent years I had begun to be interested in fashion, to educate my taste under Adele’s guidance, and now I enjoyed dressing up. But sometimes—especially when I had dressed not only to make a good impression in general but for a man—preparing myself (this was the word) seemed to me to have something ridiculous about it. All that struggle, all that time spent camouflaging myself when I could be doing something else. The colors that suited me, the ones that didn’t, the styles that made me look thinner, those that made me fatter, the cut that flattered me, the one that didn’t. A lengthy, costly preparation. Reducing myself to a table set for the sexual appetite of the male, to a well-cooked dish to make his mouth water. And then the anguish of not succeeding, of not seeming pretty, of not managing to conceal with skill the vulgarity of the flesh with its moods and odors and imperfections. But I had done it. I had done it also for Nino, recently. I had wanted to show him that I was different, that I had achieved a refinement of my own, that I was no longer the girl at Lila’s wedding, the student at the party of Professor Galiani’s children, and not even the inexperienced author of a single book, as I must have appeared in Milan. But now, enough. He had brought his wife and I was angry, it seemed to me a mean thing. I hated competing in looks with another woman, especially under the gaze of a man, and I suffered at the thought of finding myself in the same place with the beautiful girl I had seen in the photograph, it made me sick to my stomach. She would size me up, study every detail with the pride of a woman of Via Tasso taught since birth to attend to her body; then, at the end of the evening, alone with her husband, she would criticize me with cruel lucidity.”

On the hazy origins of money, no matter how it is obtained: “I thought of how many hidden turns money takes before high salaries and lavish fees. I remembered the boys from the neighborhood who were paid by the day unloading smuggled goods, cutting trees in the parks, working at the construction sites. I thought of Antonio, Pasquale, Enzo. Ever since they were boys they had been scrambling for a few lire here, a few there to survive. Engineers, architects, lawyers, banks were another thing, but their money came, if through a thousand filters, from the same shady business, the same destruction, a few crumbs had even mutated into tips for my father and had contributed to allowing me an education. What therefore was the threshold beyond which bad money became good and vice versa?”

[edivupage]

The Secret to Raising a Confident Boy

As parents, we start building our kids’ confidence from the day they’re born. This is an extremely important task, because confident children grow up to be happy and successful adults.

Instilling confidence in kids is all about demonstrating that they are valued, loved, and accepted, as well as providing your child with opportunities to feel capable and competent.

When it comes to raising confident boys, it’s also important to allow your son to be who he is, even if that means he doesn’t fit society’s perception of a “manly” male.

Below, we’ll share four simple tips to help you raise a confident boy.

Teach Him to Express and Manage Emotions

The societal stereotype that men shouldn’t be sensitive or “boys don’t cry” is actually harmful to young boys.

When boys are taught to bury their emotions, or are scolded when they do express these emotions, they begin to think that their feelings don’t matter. And if their feelings aren’t valued, it seems logical to believe that they aren’t valued either.

Teach your son that all emotions, even negative ones, are okay to feel. Listen to his feelings and help him process them in a healthy way.

Encourage His Interests

Feeling accepted is vital to a child’s confidence, so encourage your son’s interests, whatever they may be.

If you dreamed of your son becoming an NBA All-Star, and he loves chess instead, don’t express disappointment. Be supportive and encouraging, and go to your son’s chess matches with the same enthusiasm you would have expressed for his basketball games.

Your son will feel loved and accepted, which will shape him into a confident and happy individual.

Demonstrate Unconditional Love

It’s inevitable: sometimes our kids make mistakes and bad choices. When your son does this, be sure that you take the opportunity to demonstrate unconditional love.

Make it clear that while you dislike his choices, you will never dislike him. Separate your child’s negative actions from who he is as a person, and direct all criticism at his choices rather than at his identity. For example, say, “I’m disappointed that you didn’t study for your test,” instead of, “Why are you so lazy?”

Kids believe the messages that they hear about themselves, so be sure that your son knows he is special, valued, and loved, regardless of the mistakes he makes.

Be Physically Affectionate

Kids need physical affection from their parents in order to feel the love and sense of belonging that builds confidence.

Unfortunately, young boys sometimes don’t get enough physical affection, especially from their fathers. Even if it feels strange to you at first, try to hug your son every day. Put your arm around him, tousle his hair, and tell him you love him. These small gestures are far more powerful than you realize.

Conclusion

To raise a confident boy, don’t fall into societal norms like withholding affection or discouraging him from showing emotion.

Demonstrate clearly that he is a loved and valued individual, and he will one day grow into a confident young man.

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