#and then every time i use a bus there's a passed out heroin addict with a needle in their arm sitting next to me

[a-god-in-ruins-rises]

free public transportation is a goal. but more important than free is /good/. in order to justify public transportation we need people to use it.

but right now a lot of public transport is plagued by the homeless, drug addicts, and thugs.

public transport should require a small fee and be /heavily/ policed. the fare should be subsidized by the state. we want the fare to be small enough to entice passengers but we want it to be non-zero so as to keep out the homeless. fare dodging should be punished harshly and swiftly. if fare is just a couple bucks and the fine for dodging is $50 people are going to be incentivized to just pay the fare.

also would love to see more citizen volunteer organizations like the “guardian angels” to help with the policing.

[hotchrocket-archive]

Cracked

Moreid (sorta)

Rating: T - M

Word Count: 1321 

Note: This takes place after Gideon left and before Rossi came 

Read on Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28139622?view_adult=true

---------

It was cold for Virginia. 

Even during the winter it rarely surpassed 20 degrees, but today you could see icicles forming on the dead limbs of trees and hardened tears on every person that came and went past the small diner on third. 

He let his head hang for a moment, letting the blood in his body rush down, warming his frostbitten skin. Closing his eyes, he laughed. 

How the hell did his life end up this way? 

Spencer Reid, a child prodigy with the brightest of futures, who blew away all his teachers, who got into the FBI even with all odds against him, was now nothing more than a junkie fucking strangers for his next fix. 

---------

He arrived home at around one in the morning and immediately passed out on the couch. His customer had not been the most gentle and he knew he had some tearing he had to treat. However, he was just too tired and could do it in the morning, it’s not like he had anywhere to be. Not since Hotch invited him up to his office and told him oh so carefully that he was too much of a liability. 

Hotch was such a strong man, the kind of man you were supposed to be. Not like Spencer, no, not at all like Spencer. But in that second, ever so briefly, on that rainy October day, Spencer swore he could tears in Hotch’s eyes. 

He remembers how Hotch walked him out of the office. How right before they reached the exit, Garcia grabbed Spencer and hugged him like her life depended on it. 

“You’re gonna get better Spencer. Alright? You’re gonna get better then come back and my team of crime fighters can be reunited. Ok baby? You’re gonna get better for me”  

Spencer said nothing. He glanced up to JJ and Emily who were up on the walkway above the bullpen, trying their best to distance themself from the reality of the situation. 

That Spencer Reid, the little innocent Spencer Reid. The Spencer Reid who didn’t know what Twilight was, had just been fired because of a heroin addiction. 

As the metal doors shut and Spencer stood in that elevator for what he knew would be the last time, he tried to not think about his friends ex-coworkers, but more importantly, he tried to not think about Derek, and how he couldn’t even be bothered to show up to see him one last time. 

The things he would do to see him one last time. 

---------

Spencer crouched down on the toilet, awkwardly trying to rub healing cream on his rear. His bathroom was a mess, you could hardly see the chipped black and white tile underneath all the dirty clothes and spilled makeup. He had about an hour to kill before it got dark again and he could go back out searching for clients. He needed about five hundred more if he wanted to keep the power on this month, and another three hundred if he wanted to get the good stuff this week. 

That should do it 

Letting out a placated sigh, Spencer slid off the toilet and stood up to leave the tiny room, but not before catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror. 

He was skinny, skinnier than usual. His ribs were showing and his once pale skin was marred with bruises from unsatisfied customers. Cracked pink nail polish lay on his nails accompanying the dried purple glitter on his eyelids. 

Spencer took a quick breath, attempting to stop the warm droplets forming in his eyes. 

Derek was right 

Spencer grabbed a jacket and jeans before running out of his shoebox apartment, slamming the door behind him. 

---------

He teetered at the end of the sidewalk, seeing how long he could stay balanced. Just like when he was a little kid, dreaming about being a tightrope walker. When he was a little kid, before everything fell apart. 

A dark car pulled up taking him out of his thoughts, and before he knew it he was grabbing the roof, “Hey you up for something?”

“Why else would I be in this crap neighborhood?” 

“Three hundred for full out, One fifty for head.” 

“I’ll give you two-fifty for full, now get in.” 

“Deal.” 

Spencer jumped onto the leather seats and shut the door before looking over to his newest partner. The man looked exactly like Derek. 

---------

They arrived at the motel a couple of minutes later, checking in and getting a small room. They walked in and immediately the man shoved Spencer onto the cheap mattress. 

“Hey! You ever heard of foreplay.” Spencer remarked sarcastically. 

“Shut up and take off your pants.”

“Getting right into things I see.” 

“I have no interest in wooing a whore.” 

He may have had the physique of Derek but his eyes weren’t soft like his. When he looked into them he didn’t see the man who would pet his hair when he had a bad day or talk to him when he was feeling down. All he saw was the man who left when he told him he loved him. 

A finger probed at his hole, lubed with nothing but generic lotion from the bathroom and Spencer imagined it was Derek’s finger. That Derek’s finger was currently the one entering him, not a random man’s he met twenty minutes ago. That when he told Derek that he was his world, that he laid him down on satin sheets and made love to him, instead of telling him that he was only saying these things because he was sick. 

Soon, he felt the man’s cock slowly work itself inside him and Spencer gasped. He wished he didn’t enjoy this. He wasn’t supposed to enjoy this. He was supposed to be doing this with the man he loved. He was supposed to be doing this with Derek. 

Derek wasn’t supposed to leave. 

“Where the hell have you been?!” Derek shouted from across the hotel room. They had been on a case in Minnesota. A man had been on a rampage killing little boys. 

“I went to interview the witness.” 

“And you didn’t get back until eleven pm?”

“Yes, Morgan. Not that it is any of your bus..busi...business,” Spencer slurred “but Mrs. Gregory and I had a very long and helpful talk.” 

“Really Spencer?!” Derek walked closer to where Spencer was lying on the bed, “Because I called Mrs. Gregory and she said you left around seven so do you want to tell me what’s going on.” 

“No.” Spencer popped the syllables with his tongue, laughing to himself about Derek’s reaction.

“Well you know what? I think you’re high right now. Actually–scratch that. I know you’re high, and let me tell you. Everyone knows you are too. I’m the only reason why Hotch hasn’t fired you yet, because I keep on standing up for you dammit!” Derek yelled at Spencer, tears falling from his chocolate orbs. 

Spencer suddenly sprang off the bed, “Derek. Please don’t do this. I can’t lose my job. It’s all I have! Please Derek! Please!” 

“I can’t keep protecting you anymore, you need help. I thought you would fight this but I was wrong. You need help, pretty boy.” 

“I love you Derek! You don’t understand! I love you!” 

Derek sighed, “You know? I used to really think you did, but I think I was blindsided by all the love I had for you. I used to want to be in a relationship with you someday, but now I see you can’t care about anyone but yourself.”

“Derek that’s not true! Derek come back!” 

Derek shut the door. Two days later Spencer gathered his things from his desk and drove away from Quantico for the last time. 

---------

The man threw out his condom, grabbed his briefcase and left.   

Spencer stayed lying down naked on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

The cracked, broken ceiling. 

[songisforyou]

Now We Sit in Your Car, and Our Love Is a Ghost (5/8)

I keep playing on repeat / the same set of memories / I’m in the passenger seat / and you are there next to me. 

The first boy I date is one I learn to care for on a twenty-four hour drive to Colorado, and on seven-hour drives to and from Kentucky. I don’t think I am ever in love with him, but I learn to love asking him questions in the bubble of the front seat, the night flashing by outside. Inside that bubble, there are no secrets, nothing is too stupid to say, everything we say is full of meaning, and I get to choose the music for hours on end.

I like the way the hours slip away when they’re ours / and I like the way the highway waves goodbye behind the car.

I remember the boy distinctly drenched in the gold of sunrise on the drive back, crossing state after state until the sunrise becomes a sunset and we finally find home in the middle of the night. I sit next to him, trying to memorize his profile, wondering if he sees me the way I see him: beautiful. Wondering if he sees me the way I see him: in great detail, observing the angle of his wrist, one hand holding the bottom of the steering wheel, the way he sings along quietly when I pick the right song. 

I know you like wide open spaces / and long horizon lines. / The sun sets in the rearview mirror, we’re / almost out of time. 

I write songs about him. They are songs about cars, about sitting next to the driver. Of course Lorde, too, falls in love in a car, and the car serves as the vehicle to convey her love story. 

The journey starts in Pure Heroine. In Pure Heroine, “400 Lux,” Lorde sings, “you pick me up and take me home again / head out the window again,” and the chorus calls to mind endless cookie-cutter blocks passing by in the suburbs, the roads “where the houses don’t change / where we can talk like there’s something to say.” She captures the magic of feeling important, of how the car can turn the trivial into the essential, the mundane into the meaningful, providing the closest thing to freedom that she can find in suburbia. 

The final track of the album, “A World Alone,” opens “That slow-burn wait while it gets dark / bruising the sun. / I feel grown-up with you in your car. / I know it’s dumb.”  I think of this stanza all the time. I play it on almost every car ride when the sunset begins giving way to dusk. The sentiment is the same as in “400 Lux,” where the car becomes a place where we are important. We can fall in love because we can talk to each other here, and in this car, we inhabit a world alone. Maybe it’s stupid. It’s almost unbearably tender, the simple music behind the words, the lone notes, the space around them, the gradient of soft color against the car, the lump in my throat. Maybe I look back one day and think that the things I said were trivial, not as profound as I thought, that I was just a kid—but it doesn’t matter. In those moments, we believe in what we say to each other. We hear each other.  

Lorde doesn’t have a driver’s license (to this day). Like me, she is always in the passenger seat, never alone, never an independent traveler, always existing in relation. In his car, she must have felt like an adult. I wonder if she wanted to reach over the seat and touch his face, if she kept looking at him when he was looking at the road, drinking him in, waiting for his eyes to flicker toward her and back to the street, if she sang harmony along with the radio and wondered if he thought her voice was pretty (it’s unconventional, a low, alto growl, but it becomes addictive, works its way into the heart of the listener)—if she did all the same things I did, craved the same things I craved, worried, like I worried, that she was making too much of these moments. Is it stupid?

In Melodrama, we hear the aftereffects of the love, the memory of it. The two songs that mention his car are “Hard Feelings” and “Supercut,” a song about the end and a song about remembering the beginning after the end has come.  

In the first, she writes “now we sit in your car / and our love is a ghost.” I swallow these words on long car rides with my ex, when we are in the same group for weekend climbing trips. In the second, the ghost is explored. A supercut is a montage, and Lorde’s is one that cuts together “all the magic we gave off / All the love we had and lost.” In her head, the same moments replay — “In your car, the radio up / In your car, the radio up.” The line repeats itself like the memories, abruptly cutting back, somewhere between supercut and short-circuit. “We keep trying to talk about us / I’m someone you maybe might love.” The song calls back to “400 Lux” and “A World Alone,” a beautiful representation of the way we remember our relationships, our habit of recalling the best parts, of getting lost in nostalgia, finding ourselves wrapped up by the ribbons that tie us to the people we loved.

The love is remembered in one car; the post-breakup recovery in another. “Liability,” one of the most vulnerable, heart-wrenching songs on Melodrama, expresses Lorde’s attempt to come to terms with her breakup, opening with “Baby really hurt me / crying in the taxi / he don’t want to know me.” She is no longer welcome in his car. He doesn’t want to know her (“he,” not “you,” a far cry from the intimacy they shared). Instead, we imagine, he has put her in a cab. A stranger drives her home. Similarly, the entire album begins with “I do my makeup in / Somebody else’s car. / We order different drinks / At the same bar.” We know from this line that she is going to the same place as he is, but she can’t go there with him. She has to take someone else’s car. To begin the album this way is to emphasize the excruciating awareness Lorde has of their parallel paths and the distance between them.

The recovery, in the end, requires finding a new way to move through the world. “I ride the subway, read the signs,” she sings in the second verse of “Writer in the Dark.” In real life, while writing the album, she “took lots of subway rides, auditioning rough mixes of songs on cheap earbuds, which helped give her a sense of how the music would sound in daily life.” The subway is independent, solitary. It enables her to focus on her work. It doesn’t require her to dedicate her attention to the person next to her, the way conversation in the car does. It might be something like her new life, the one where she faces thousands of strangers every night instead of facing the specific person she once loved from the passenger seat. On the subway, in the stadium, she is always on display yet perhaps often unseen, unknown. She has emerged from the privacy of a love affair (in his car) and the privacy of her own heartbreak (in another car) into the individual-yet-communal and decidedly-unromantic experience of public transit. Perhaps it reminds the girl she used to be, when she wrote, “we ride the bus with our knees pulled in” (“Buzzcut Season”) or “we count our dollars on the train to the party” (“Team”), before the complications of the relationship took over. But perhaps it is different — now, there is no mention of anyone else with her. The independence is more complete, if bittersweet.  

I take the train from school back to my city. I’ve never driven anywhere alone, since I didn’t get my driver’s licence until a week before I returned to school for senior year, where I don’t have a car. Sometimes I remember the bubble of my ex-boyfriend’s car, but I also think of the way I can put in my headphones on the train and just sit with my own thoughts. It’s a lonely release, a haunted freedom.

[betterdaysareatoenailaway]

An Ode to Payphones

    “Mommy, what’s that?”       I looked. A child was glaring suspiciously at the payphone I’d been using moments before. He looked to be six or seven-years old, so it shouldn’t have been surprising that he’d never seen or noticed a public telephone before, but still. The question, and the palpable disgust in his voice, made me feel old.      “That’s a payphone, honey.”      “What’s it for?”      The mother cast an apprehensive look my way. We were on the platform at Spadina station and she’d seen me on the phone, plugging my ear against the shattering noise of a subway pulling in, making arrangements to meet my heroin dealer John at our usual spot at Main and Danforth. I would have to call him again when I got there, either from one of the four payphones inside Main Street station or on one of the two phones outside the church at Danforth. The phones inside Main Station must have all been routed through one line, because they either all worked, or none did.

    As for the two phones outside the church at Main and Danforth, typically one was broken, but they both worked when I went to check them for this article, a miracle perhaps attributable to the Second Coming of Christ on the roof.

     There have been long spells throughout my life as an addict during which I’ve had no mobile phone. Every spare cent went to heroin. The longest such spell was nearly a year. Several spanned three or four months. So it’s safe to say I know the payphones of Toronto as well as anybody else.      One of my old heroin dealers lived near Roncesvalles and Howard Park, where a non-Bell phone sat outside the Meridian Bank on the northeast corner, crooked and somehow wounded looking.

     There’s no trace of it now, but I know there used to be one just north, on the other side of the street where Dundas splits eastward from Roncesvalles. I used to use it all the time. Luckily, there’s another one not twenty steps east, a Bell, just outside the bus stop east of the Starbucks at Dundas and Roncesvalles. I’ve fed that phone a lot of Loonies, cursing its curious inability to recognize nickels or dimes.

     My Roncesvalles dealer was notoriously unreliable, so I often found myself having to take the College car all the way across the city to its eastern terminus at Main Station. While waiting on that corner for John I would commiserate with my fellow drug users, many of whom lacked phones themselves.      The most popular complaint I heard was how hard it was getting to find a public phone. Apparently some neighbourhoods in Toronto are payphone deserts. You can walk for twenty minutes in any direction and not find one.       So I’m going to see how many phones there are within a five minute radius of my apartment. My guess would be at least eight. Maybe ten. I’m about to get evicted, but I’ve lived in Kensington Market at Nassau and Bellevue since February 2017, which is a veritable payphone oasis. It’s too cold to go out tonight, so I’m going to take a virtual tour of my neighbourhood and take screenshots of every phone I find from Google Street View. Yes, the photos look pretty lo-fi but my whole life is lo-fi, so sue me.      Here’s a no-name one just north of Dundas on Bathurst: 

Here’s one just south of Oxford on Augusta: 

There are two Bell phones just outside Nirvana, across from Sneaky Dee’s:

There’s one outside the church one block east of Bathurst at Lippincot and College:

Here’s another no-name phone one block west of Spadina on the south side of College: 

And here’s a bank of payphones outside the internet cafe at Spadina and College:

     All three of the above phones never work at the same time, and some days you’re lucky to find one operational. (Incidentally, if someone ever reads this post a century from now, or maybe I mean a decade, or maybe I mean reads this post at all, I wonder how quaint the term “payphones outside the internet cafe” will seem.)      Here’s one more non-Bell phone, just to the west of the Scotiabank on the northwest corner of Dundas and Spadina. This phone has great personal significance for me, for a reason I can’t get into. Let’s just say I made a phone call on it during a very memorable moment in my life:

     For those of you not counting, that’s ten phones all within a five minute walk of my apartment in Kensington. There are another three are in the lobby of Toronto Western Hospital, for thirteen total. Thirteen is a lot more than I expected. Especially in 2020. And I’m sure I’m missing a few. Maybe payphones aren’t as endangered as they seem. In fact, as I was taking the photograph at the top of this post, a woman came over to me and asked, “are you using the phone?”     So they definitely still serve a purpose. They wouldn’t still be there if nobody was using them. A capitalist venture like Bell doesn’t keep phones around because the CEO is nostalgic. I’m kind of relieved at how many there still are, and how vital they still seem to be.       Still, I have mixed feelings toward payphones. They annoy me, but I also like them for reasons I can’t explain. I like invisible infrastructure. Nobody notices payphones. Ask yourself where the nearest payphone is. Do you even know? They may be forgotten or disliked, but they’re dependable, standing tall at their lonely outposts through sleet and rain, day and night, as we cuddle up with our smartphones in the warmth of our homes. We’ve left payphones out in the cold and most of us don’t even miss them.      I have a mobile phone now, but I still miss payphones. Or maybe I miss the days when they were a normal way to communicate, phone books slung around their waists, swinging on a chain. (Some time in the last decade, phone companies must have got tired of replacing the books nobody ever used and just got rid of them entirely. I guess they figured we could look up the numbers we need on...our mobile phones?)      Yes, there’s a definite note of nostalgia among people who still use payphones. We’re all bitter about the great price jump of 2007, when calls went from twenty-five cents to fifty, an increase of one-hundred percent. If you’re of my generation, old enough to remember life before the internet, then you know that payphones are sad remainders of the technology we grew up with, a visible reminder of the 90s. It’s my firm belief that everybody suffers from chronic temporal sickness for the decade they grew up in. I can imagine a day when they only exist in museums and photographs. Maybe I’ll go to watch the last phone get decommissioned. Maybe I’ll only love payphones once I can never use one again, like the Once-ler becoming an environmentalist only after hearing the “thwack” that felled the last Truffula tree in Dr. Suess’ The Lorax.      I feel this way even though payphones are often more a hassle than a convenience. I once spent half an hour outside the Eaton Centre on Queen Street waiting for a woman to finish her conversation, only to find the phone broken when she finally hung up. Her wild gesticulations should have tipped me off that she’d been screaming at a phantom, but I was too dopesick to notice.        There were and are other cons to payphone usage. It wasn’t always easy to come up with the necessary exact change. Or sometimes you’d have exact change but the phone wouldn’t recognize one of your coins. For whatever reason, payphones have a really hard time reading dimes. Many times I’ve had just enough to make one call but the phone won’t cooperate and I’ve had to throw myself at the mercy of a local convenience store owner or random bystander. Maybe “can I use your phone?” was an innocuous question back in the day, but nowadays people immediately suspect you for asking and they really, really do not want to loan you their phone. I don’t blame them. Our phones contain our entire lives. It’s not the same as handing someone a few quarters.       Despite all the long list of cons, there remains among my fellow payphone users a keen sense of loss. We’re all grieving something indefinable, something that went away with the advent of mobile phones. And I’m not leading up to a gripe about “kids these days on their phones.” As an avid reader, I usually bury my nose in a book when I’m on transit, so I don’t beseech people to “live in the moment” when they’re sitting on a bus. Being a passenger on the TTC for the thousandth time isn’t something that requires one’s undivided attention. I only get annoyed when I see some guy – and it’s always a guy – staggering down the sidewalk with his eyes glued to his phone, walking into people. Or walking into traffic. The feelings of wistfulness among payphone users grows more acute as the years roll on and more and more public telephones are yanked from their moorings, never to return. The sense of loss sometimes manifests itself in the passing down of legend.      When I first heard the story, it was that there exists somewhere in the city of Toronto a payphone that still makes calls for a quarter. I was convinced it was the one just east of University on Dundas, south side of the street, just east of the Royal Bank. It just looks so fucking furtive. Like it’s hiding from the tourist hordes at Yonge and Dundas square, tucked around that corner:

     I went to check that phone for this article but it doesn’t work at all, much less for half price.      In an apt game of telephone about telephones, the legend grew. Only a few months after I first heard the Legend of the Half-Price Payphone, the story had morphed into a unicorn payphone that makes calls for free. People were arguing over which one it could be, though admittedly nobody had ever found it. It was like the leprechaun’s pot of gold.      “It’s the one outside the mall at Kingston and Midland. The one with the Scotiabank!”      “Naw it’s the payphone at Warden Station! Next to the donut shop!”      “It’s the one at Yonge and Charles!”      “What? They took that one out before 9/11.”      “It’s the one in Yorkdale near the GO Station!”      “Seriously bro. Pre-9/11. You’re memory is fucked, bro.”      “My cousin’s in the Hell’s Angels. He can sell you a burner for $5. Why use a payphone when you can get a…”       “No one cares about your cousin, Dwight.”      “Pre-9/11 bro. Seriously. Yonge and Charles? Christ!”       And on and on and on, into the night.       I have a mobile phone now and it’s hard to imagine I’ll ever go back.       The final straw came when I had to go up to Muskoka one summer for four days to work on a cottage. I missed my partner so much by the third day that I walked up and down the length of the lake, looking for a payphone. I probably had a better chance of spotting a lion, but there was no way I was going back to that cottage without talking to my wife. I missed her too fucking much.       At the end of the lake I spotted a house with the garage door wide open. Inside the garage there was a workbench, a fridge, and all sorts of tools. On a hunch, I quietly made my way up the gravel driveway. There wasn’t a human being in sight. Inside the garage, I spotted a wall-mounted phone, and called my wife. She didn’t answer but I left her a message. As I was leaving it I heard footsteps and before I could make myself scarce an elderly lady came around the corner and stared at me. She obviously lived there.       “Um. I was just…leaving,” I said, hanging up the phone and sheepishly skipping back to the main road as fast as I could. The woman frowned after me, watching me go.       A little further down the road I saw an electrician working on a house and asked to use his phone. He said yes and I finally got through to my wife. But I couldn’t talk long or say what I wanted to say because the electrician was staring at me, so I determined right there and then to get and keep a fucking phone of my own. And that’s what I did. I sometimes pay my bill late and find myself cast backward into the land of payphones and useless dimes, but for the most part I’ve joined the 21st century.      As for that mother and her child, the mother did her best, to her credit.              “Some people…can’t afford cell phones,” she informed her son, who looked bored already. “Or else they can’t get coverage on the subway, so they use one of these. Or in emergencies, they work for emergencies.”       “What kind of person can’t afford a phone?” the child brayed incredulously.       The mother looked embarrassed. I wasn’t. Let her stupid kid hate payphones and poor people. Most people do.      I rarely use payphones now but I still get a small shiver of curiosity when I pass one I haven’t seen before, wondering if it’s the legendary free one. The unicorn. The white whale of public telephones. So I check. And I hear “please insert fifty cents” from the robotic lady voice that rules payphone land.      Then I move on.

[gwaciechang]

Love Run (4/10?)

“Welcome to my table, bring your hunger”

Yes, I know that line’s from The Horror and the Wild. Deal with it.

Once again, trigger warnings for Bobby Hayes’ life and everything involved in it. This chapter also involves a character with OCD whose rituals lead to an argument with the POV character, the discovery that an addict is keeping drugs in a recovering addict’s living space (a brief line that will be discussed later), and a heavy discussion of the POV character’s past drug abuse and recovery. Read at your own risk below the cut.

“Home sweet home,” you breathe a sigh of relief. Behind you, Bobby is tense and unhappy. That doesn’t change when he steps inside. You wince when you notice the mess. God, why didn’t you clean up before?

Well, missing the bus, making a friend, and killing a hitman might have had something to do with it. You shake yourself out of the memory before it can overwhelm you. You're literally too tired to have a panic attack, how sad is that?

You start scrubbing the dishes you left from breakfast that last morning into the sink. The handle falls off the mug, and you curse. That had been your favorite, too, because it’s the only one your ex didn’t give you when you two moved into this place. The only glue you have in the house is a children’s gluestick that couldn’t hold two pieces of paper together, assuming you could even find it. You resign yourself to a trip to the store. Bobby would probably insist on his own set of dishes anyway, and you do’'t blame him, you're the one who let this place become a sty, after all.

“D-do you mind if I help?” Bobby asks shyly.

“No, of course not. Just, um, just let me know where you put things later, and, uh, try to keep similar things in the same place. That’s dish soap in the handsoap dispenser next to the faucet, by the way. I have a gallon jug of dish soap under the sink next to the trashcan that I refill it with, it’s just easier.” When you realize you’re babbling, you shut your mouth with a click.

“That's smart,” Bobby’s smile is pained. “That’s normal person smart.”

“Normal?” you hold up your hands, which are still covered by his gloves.

Oddly enough, this actually makes him smile, and he gets to washing the dishes with his bare hands, even though it means having to touch four-day-old egg, or whatever that yellow crusty thing is. You go to your bedroom and try to organize your clothes, or at least get them off the floor. And that’s when you realize.

“Shit!”

“What is it?”

You poke your head out to say, “I don’t have a couch, and there’s only one bed.”

His face is grim and he fidgets when he says, “If you don’t mind, I could take a spare blanket and sleep on the floor.”

”I can’t let you sleep on the floor, Bobby, shit.” You take out your thickest blanket anyway, and go to the gaming room your ex set up to dump on the reclining chair. “I’ve fallen asleep here before,” you lie, you’d never used this room before. Bobby’s not paying attention, he’s too busy staring at your ex’s computer.

Right, he’s a fucking computer expert, and your ex, for all his uselessness, was very much into getting the latest technology for League of Warcraft or whatever it was he played.

“Yes, it is most likely whatever model of computer you’re thinking of. I don’t know exactly, since I’ve never used it,” you roll eyes and busy yourself with trying to figure out how to get the reclining chair to actually recline.

“I thought you said you’ve fallen asleep here before.”

Ah shit, you need to be more careful. “Um, yeah,” you hide your face carefully. “When my ex would fall asleep here, I’d usually come join him.” That actually isn’t a lie. “I hate sleeping by myself in that big bed.”

Bobby makes a sound, and for a second your heart beats fast with the hope he’s going to offer to sleep in the bed with you. But then he opens his mouth. “Have you considered getting a large stuffed animal?”

The idea is appealing. You hadn’t held a stuffed animal even close to your size since you were maybe five, but you’d be damned if you let Bobby knew that.

“I will throw this chair at you,” you threaten.

He honest-to-god smirks. “You can’t even lift it.”

You do your best and succeed at tipping the chair over right into the window. The headrest smashes into the blinds and starts to go through the glass as well, but Bobby catches it at the last second and very carefully tips it back.

“Well, fuck,” you say, examining the crack in the glass.

“I don’t usually sleep at night,” Bobby says suddenly. His fingers are tapping that nervous pattern against his elbows again. “We could take turns sleeping in the bed?”

“Actually, that might be a good idea,” you remember what Harry said. “One of us should be on alert, just in case somebody tries to break down my door, too.”

Bobby tenses at the reminder, and his eyes flick toward the door like somebody’s about to jump out right now. “I will,” he promises, rubbing the sores on his arms. “I won’t let anything happen to you. I can stay awake for a long time.”

“Well, so can I,” you think ruefully of being so high on meth you wouldn’t even realize a week passed by until the high ran out and you crashed, starving, hallucinating, for days.

“Don’t take anything, please. Don’t take anything that’ll keep you awake, and I promise I won’t take anything,” Bobby’s eyes are fierce.

“I won’t,” you promise. “I’d rather die. I’m not joking, I’d rather die.”

He gets closer to you, one inch at a time. “Well, don’t do that either,” he lays a reluctant hand on your shoulder.

“I think I’ve done a pretty good job of not doing that,” you try to force some levity into the situation. “Now come on, you barely have any clothes, and my groceries have probably gone bad.”

It turns out to be a mistake, because you forgot it was Friday and not Monday, and the shop is crowded.

“I don’t need anything,” Bobby says sullenly. He flinches every time someone brushes past him.

“Is it because the police took your money? That’s fine. I can afford it for a couple days,” you walk in front of him so you’ll deal with the crowd and he can avoid people in your wake. You also fail at trying not to think about work. You’re missing almost a week’s worth of income, and you don’t even know if Bobby has a job.

“No, I brought the box. I don’t like it here. It’s too loud.”

“Okay, let’s go home, and then you can make a list for me of things you need, and I’ll get it,” you start to turn him to the exit.

“No,” he takes your hand. “I’m not leaving you alone.” Does he realize he’s humming to his usual six beats?

That gives you an idea. “Here,” you take his gloves off and hold them under his face so he can see them.

“They’re yours,” he still doesn’t meet your eyes. “They keep you from scratching.”

“I’m not scratching, they worked. Now put them on.”

He does, and with his hands covered, he doesn’t stop tapping, but nor is he flinching when people pass by him. You’re not arrogant enough to believe it’s because you’re holding his hand now.

He closes all the blinds once you get home, then opens them to close them again.

You leave him to it, opening up the refrigerator door to toss the rotten carrots and a bag of things that could be kiwis or apples out. The cherries are a little soft, but they look edible, and so do the wrinkly oranges, so you put the green bananas in between them to help them ripen faster.

“I’ll do it,” Bobby yanks the groceries out of your hands and starts rearranging your food.

“Can you leave the fruit where it is? I want the bananas to ripen faster.”

“You could’ve just bought ripe bananas,” he says.

“Yes, but I don’t eat them that fast,” you try to keep your temper in check.

He takes the bag of cherries. “These are old.”

“They’re still good,” you argue, trying to keep him from throwing them out.

“They’re old,” he insists.

“You’re not the one who’s eating them!” your voice is getting higher now.

“I don’t want them in the refrigerator. They get old and they become breeding grounds for bacteria.”

“It’s my refrigerator!”

He throws the cherries at you before storming out of the room, and you just barely catch them. He’s tapping his fingers so hard against the wall that you’re afraid he'll break them.

“Bobby-”

“SHUT UP! STOP TALKING!” he screams. His eyes are clenched shut and he’s doubled over. You wonder if his injuries are still bothering him, and all your anger drains out.

You drop the cherries behind the bananas so they’re hidden from view. “I’ll leave the groceries to put away how you want,” you say as you walk off to your room. You close the door quietly to avoid disturbing his rituals, turn around, and find his box at the top of his dresser.

You know this is invasive, but you need to know. You of all people know how tentative the hold on sobriety is, and if someone has hard drugs that you know is triggering for you, you have to protect yourself. Still, knowing that doesn’t make you feel any less awful to start singing Bonnie Tyler again to hide the sounds of you opening the box.

Well, that’s a lot of cash and not a lot of heroin, maybe. You can’t smell it like this, but you know what it looks like.

You leave everything where it is and close the box in favor of something you can control: sorting the laundry. That’s how Bobby finds you, and he lets out a little sigh of relief when he sees his box hasn’t been disturbed.

“There was so much noise,” he says harshly, and then he winces.

“I understand,” you try to reassure him. “Your life just got turned upside down, you lost your apartment, you’re in a whole new living situation with another person, your life is in danger by people you don’t know, and shopping in big crowds can be stressful. You’re trying to get your control back.”

“So are you,” Bobby insists. “You’ve got a new roommate, that roommate’s reminding you of the worst time of your life, and you’ve still got nightmares of that man you killed for me. I should let you have your comfort food, it’s not my comfort food.”

“Which is why I put the cherries somewhere harder to see,” you say. “And if there’s anything else I can do, let me know, alright? We can compromise as long as we talk to each other.” You take tentative steps toward him. “Thank you for being honest with me. Thank you for not hiding or getting high to avoid having this conversation.”

“You shouldn’t be proud. I'm just doing something you’ve been doing for years.”

“Well, too bad, because it's my feelings and I get to feel whatever I want,” you say, standing up. “Now, I’m going to make myself some food. Coming?”

He does, like you hoped. Honestly, that boy needs some meat on his bones.

“What do you like?” you ask, getting your cooking utensils out and leaving the doors open so he can rearrange them the way he likes. He’s doing you a favor, really, you don’t have any organizational system for most of your kitchen.

“I want to know how to make your favorite.”

You can’t help yourself from clutching your chest. “Lu mian it is,” you say, taking out the yellow bean sprouts from the fridge so you could snap the roots off. “Could you take the shredded beef out of the freezer and put it in the microwave to thaw?”

He obeys immediately, the sweetheart.

“Great. Now get me the big metal bowl and a plate from the dishwasher. The bowl’s on the top shelf, the plates are on the bottom, and you can organize it however you like after that.”

“Okay, you see that big three-layered pot in the corner? Take the top two pots off, fill the bottom pot about halfway with water, and then put it on any of the stoves and turn the heat to medium.”

The water turns on, then off, and the pot clinks against the stovepot. Only once.

“What else?”

“Get a porcelain bowl from the dishwasher, top shelf. And then you see the sauces next to the stove? One of them says ‘light soy sauce.’ Pour about a tablespoon of it into a bowl. When you're done with that, there's garlic in the fridge in the same place you keep your butter in your refrigerator. Dice five or six. The cutting board is next to the sink. Then mix the garlic in with the sauce, and when the beef’s thawed, pour it into the bowl and mix it again.”

The microwave dings, and he pours the beef into the bowl. “Like this?” he asks.

“Exactly, perfect.”

Is that a blush?

“Alright, what’s next?” he asks when he finishes.

“Next? Next you listen to me thank you for following my directions perfectly.”

Bobby blushes. He’s so beautiful.

“Is the water boiling yet?” you ask as you wash the sprouts.

“Um, it’s getting close, it’s bubbling.”

“Okay, take two chunks of noodles out of the freezer and put them on the plate. 30 seconds in the microwave should thaw them out enough for you to separate them.” The microwave dings right as you pour the water out of the sprouts. You leave the sprouts next to the sink, separate the top two pots, and walk up to Bobby as he takes out the noodles. “Okay, do exactly as I do,” you say, taking one chunk of noodle from him to unravel into one of the pots. He, of course, follows your instructions perfectly and his pot is much neater than yours, the show-off.

“The water’s boiling," he says, looking at the stove.

“Perfect,” you put your pot over his and put them over the pot already on the stove. Then you grab a pot and pour about two tablespoons of vegetable oil into it, and crank it up to high. “Okay, pour the beef and garlic in here,” you point.

He’s already brushed the mixture into the pot by the time you realize you didn’t give him the spatula, so rinse it out quickly before stirring the mixture with it. Steam hisses, and you roll up your sleeves.

That was a mistake.

You cover the scars as soon as you can, but Bobby is already horrified.

“It’s not that bad,” you focus on making sure the garlic doesn’t stick to the pot. “They were uglier before they healed,” you try to joke.

Bobby rolls up his sleeves, too, so you can see his bruised injection sites. He makes eye contact the whole time, daring you to call yourself ugly again. You nod in acquiescence, and he takes over stirring for you. “How long do I do this for?” he asks.

“Until the meat turns brown,” you say, grabbing the bowl of sprouts. “Move over, I'm going pour this in.”

“Do I mix it in?” he asks. You’re so close to him that you can feel his warmth.

“Yes,” you squeak with a dry mouth. You don’t want to move. “A little more than that,” you say, peering at the pot. “A little more,” and technically this is good enough, but you don’t want to move. “A little more.”

The dry hiss of the noddle pot tells you that it needs more water, snapping you out of your stupor.

“Take the top two pots off,” you say, filling the metal bowl with water to pour into the bottom pot. Then you take the top pot off and put it on the bottom pot. “Now put yours on top of mine.” Man, you would love to say that in a different context.

When the noodles are done, you mix them into the meat and sprouts, and then you both sit down to enjoy your meal. Neither of you have rolled down your sleeves.

“I can’t remember when the noise really started getting to me,” Bobby says suddenly. “I remember the first time I lost my tooth, I kept counting my teeth. I don’t think anybody knew what I was doing yet. And then I had to do more and more. At some point, whenever I went out, I had to count all the trees, and if they weren’t in six, I couldn’t go to where I need unless I counted enough trees to fit six. So I stopped going out, things were just too scary. I broke my fingers one day, to try to keep myself from counting, and the doctor gave me Valium. It made me feel like I was floating, and when it wore off, I had to feel it again. When I’m on heroin, the world isn’t so scary anymore. But the noise always gets through again.”

You reach halfway across the table and lay your open hand down. “When I was thirteen, one of my friends had expired pills they let me take, because I was tired all the time and I didn’t know why. And I still don’t know. I just had to keep taking more and more of it to just stay awake, and then I started mixing other amphetamines. And then when I was fifteen, one of the people I used to buy from said he had something better than expired pills. He gave me crystal meth. He told me he’d inherited this mansion from his uncle, and it was full of the stuff. It was probably just an abandoned building, but it was always full of people using everything he sold.”

Bobby’s eyes are wet, but they’re looking right at yours, and he takes your hand. “How did you stop?”

You chuckle. “Honestly, my sister. My entire family stopped talking to me after they found out I was a tweaker. And one day, when I was too tired to care how much I took, I ended up having a heart attack. I still don’t know how she found me, but she did, and she called an ambulance and kept me alive until it got there. When I woke up, she was next to my hospital bed. She didn’t speak to me, but she locked me in her apartment while fluids poured out of me from both ends, and you have to really love somebody to do that while they’re screaming about how much they hate you.”

Bobby swallows. “Does your family talk to you now?”

“Yeah, eventually. It took a while to get my dad to come around. But having Chloe around to vouch for me really helped,” your eyes are blurring. You rub the tears away roughly, but they’re soon replaced by many more.

Bobby lifts his fingers and wipes them away.

“Thanks,” you say into your noodles.

“I’m sorry you were alone,” he says with way too much feeling.

“Well, once you get past the ‘Holy shit I almost died’ thing, you stop being so scared of things that aren't likely to kill you right this second,” you try to smile. It feels wrong on your face.

Your ex’s chair squeaks when Bobby stands up. You’re not sure what he's doing as he walks around the table, but his face is determined, so you don't say anything as he opens his arms and covers you in a hug.

[purplenarwhal19]

COSMIC DANCER

so, here’s a v short story I wrote for class about the importance of exploration. two of the songs that are excerpted in my story I found through @basic-banshee ‘s fanfic Rebel Rebel which is one the best (probably the best) fanfics ever.

Also I don’t know how to do the cutoff thingy so it’s gonna be a long post 🤷‍♀️ so sorry

....

enjoy, I guess? 💕

COSMIC DANCER

Over the radio, a gentle guitar played, followed by T. Rex’s smooth and repetitive lyrics. I sighed, bliss. We were driving on a California road in our rusty tour bus. Sitting in our narrow duffel bag with my costars, with bemused smiles plastered across our faces. Cool air conditioning blew a soft breeze. We listened to beautiful, alternative music, an epic soundtrack for our journey. This was the life of a performer. A true actress.

It was the summer of 1971. I was an actress and dancer on the television and stage show, Desi Dance. We were a children’s show that taught people all about India’s rich culture and history. Dance, art, poetry, music, and food offered just a peek into Indian tradition. We had been performing and touring for six years, but it felt like we started the show yesterday.

“I danced myself right out the womb

Is it strange to dance so soon?”(1)

The guitar solo came into full sound with the backing vocals. It created a powerful feeling that filled my whole body with true hope and strength.

All my life I had danced. It was my escape, my passion, and my love. It felt like that was what I was made for. Reading also brought escape, when the pressure of being an actress became too much. Reciting poetry for my castmates or singing a song that was stuck in my head was so relaxing and freeing. The lyrics are what spoke to me about music, and while I had quite a large vocabulary, there were often times when I didn’t know what a word meant.

“Beraham, what is a womb?” I questioned the boy next to me, clad in loose fitting turquoise pants with gold embroidery.

“I don’t know, Shrishti,” Beraham said plainly.

Beraham and I both sat there, still enjoying it, yet dumbfounded. Curiosity, a crimson rash that we needed to itch, in that unreachable spot on your back. This infection spread throughout the whole cast, leaving all of us with that same itch.

Maybe I could ask my movement director when we get to the venue… I thought as I drifted off, wrapped up in the comfort of music and friendship.

The year was 1973. In the dressing room, now with a smaller cast, we were practicing lines and getting ready to film. I had been groomed with brushes, painted with makeup and had been dressed in the most gorgeous fabrics. My lengha was brilliant magenta with intricate canary yellow details, and paired with a simple sequinned pearly white top. I loved these days, dressing up, feeling beautiful like a royal queen.

To the left of me, a record player played a Paul Simon favourite, setting our moods to the upbeat song.

“The mother and child reunion

Is only a motion away

Oh, the mother and child reunion

Is only a moment away”(2)

A familiar feeling of confusion washed over me. Why is the reunion so important? Why were the mother and child separated? Who are they?

Who is my mother?

Where is she?

Everyone has a mother. Our director, our manager, our movement director, the children in the audience; everyone except me and my fellow actors.

Everyone except me.

I tried to close my perfectly designed eyes, to block out the image of my unfortunate life, but my body refused to listen to my command. Blinking wasn’t even in my control.

I felt so overwhelmed. I had no identity. Who am I? This was a question from too deep in my heart for me to bear.

It was too much. I wanted to leave, I had to get up. I willed my thin, stick-like legs to stand up, pushing, using all the strength I had, just to leave the room.

Nothing happened.

I tried again, hoping for something, some sign of my own independence.

Nothing.

My body wasn’t mine. My will, myself, I could not control it. My life wasn’t mine.

I looked around at my colleagues, chatting, laughing, and totally unaware of their inability to be free. Bound to our employers who dictate and orchestrate our every move.

“Oh, little darling of mine

I can’t for the life of me

Remember a sadder day

I know they say let it be

But it just don’t work out that way”(2)

Paul Simon was right, I still can’t remember a sadder day than that one. My life had changed forever.

As years passed, I began to feel emptier and emptier, resenting my profession, and hating my life. Those years also happened to be our most successful, as a show. The success changed everything. Our bosses got sloppy; high on the fame, as well as their drugs of choice.

Most notably, Arjun, our stage director, became addicted to heroin. It was a horrid sight to witness him become a shell of the person he used to be. It reminded me exactly of that sad, sad Velvet Underground song.

“Heroin, be the death of me

Heroin, it’s my wife and it’s my life

Because a mainline into my vein

Leads to a center in my head

And then I’m better off than dead”(3)

It broke my heart to see him like this. I couldn’t understand how he could inject a toxin into his body by choice. How he could slowly kill himself one high after another.

By then, I had realized that I wasn’t human. I was something else, like them, yet different; stronger, yet weaker.

I spoke with my closest companions, Beraham, Jaidev, and Mitali. They were as confused as I was the day I realized I entered this world without anyone, without a mother. They too began life motherless.

The directors, started our show with shining faces, and now were graying and worn out. We kept the same expressions over the years, never seeing a wrinkle appear, never feeling an ache or pain, never feeling or looking our age.

We hadn’t aged in the past 20 years. We were to be used, like the puppets we were, forever.

“What can we do?” Mitali questioned, urgency overtaking her usual calm nature.

“Nothing,” Jaidev said. “It’s hopeless…”

“I want you to know deep in the cell of my heart

I really want to go

There is another world… a better world

Well, there must be…”(4)

I felt like the Smiths were reading my mind; I wanted another world, a better world, and I hoped with all my heart and soul that there would be one.

This was the lowest depth of our depression. We considered “ending it all”, whatever that meant.

Most of the time our directors listened to nonsense music filled with empty, happy thoughts that had less meaning than my life. When we listened to the melancholy music of Miles Davis, Billie Holiday and Chet Baker, that our bosses listened to so rarely, it felt reassuring: someone else suffered as we did.

Determined to solve this problem, I decided to speak with the director about our conditions. I had heard the humans refer to us as “puppets”, inanimate objects who could only recite lines, made only of felt, and paint. This sounded as bad as any slur that I’d heard before. They pushed and shoved us around, threw us in crowded duffel bags. This had to stop. We needed to break away from the chains the humans bound us in.

“Today we will close our show with an excerpt from Keralan poet, Kamala Surayya. “I am sinner, I am saint— I’m sorry. I can’t do this,” I paused, taking a moment to think of the right words.

“I cannot read the words of a woman who has lived and loved, while I am kept here, held captive by you humans!” I angrily burst, far less eloquent than I had imagined, emotion overtaking my composed mask.

My face turned a deep scarlet shade of red, reminiscent of tamaatar; something that had never happened before. The camera people, directors, and executives stood in place, too shocked to move or speak, the puppet that they had manipulated for so many years had finally taken control and spoken back.

Divya, a camera person, pale and shocked, stuttered, “W-what is happening?” She glanced around nervously at the other people in the room to see if they saw the same thing.

“Divya, you aren’t hallucinating. This is very real. My costars and I are conscious beings; we may not be able to move like you humans, but we deserve the same treatment as you. We have thoughts and feelings, hopes and dreams. The way you speak about us is degrading. The way you touch and move us is disrespectful. We deserve respect and our thoughts and opinions are as valid as yours,” I spoke with a dignified tone. “The cast and I would like to have a meeting with all of you to discuss our treatment.”

Wide eyed, the crew, obediently agreed and took us to our cramped dressing room. The room was painted a pale yellow with a cheap elephant decal on the wall that was torn and peeling on the edges. This tiny room barely housed all thirteen of us cast members. With all of the behind the scenes crew in our room, we were packed in tight, like sardines in a tin.

“We have called this meeting today to negotiate our rights and responsibilities within this community,” Mitali serenely began. “Our citizenship within our show needs to include us as full members with equal rights and consideration. We understand that your use of us has immense benefits for you, with few benefits for us.”

“You make significant profits from our labor. Your wage is even plentiful enough for you, Arjun, to fund your addiction.” Jaidev scoffed.

With a quivering chin, Arjun begged, “What can we do to fix our mistakes?”

Beraham blustered, “ We want a change in your behaviour!”

“We cannot move on our own, so we expect help and kindness. When you have moved us in the past, even just five minutes ago, you throw around our bodies, like the inanimate objects you believe us to be. We want to go outside and see the world. We want more space in our dressing room, and we expect some real answers about who and what we are,” I demanded.

Afters some discussions we learned that we were the descendants of Saraswati, the Goddess of wisdom and art. The movement directors, who were called “puppeteers”, had no idea that we could do more than just read prepared lines, until we had all travelled to America. This was too far away from the Pundita, that had given them the divine puppets that we were. They could not receive guidance. They had no idea as to what we were capable of, or how to teach us.

That Pundita was my mother.  Her name was Tavni, and I was given a picture of her.

She had a golden, caramel complexion, with large eyes and hazel pupils. She had a smile that lit up a whole room and round, rosy cheeks.

I noticed the similarities in our appearances, the way she had crafted me to look so much like her.

I had found my identity.

Learning all of this information brought a new sensation to my eyes; something burning and prickly, and a wet droplet traveling down my cheek. I was crying! This feeling brought a warm emotion of relief, of content and of closure.

Soon after these discoveries, I realized that I loved my job. Even though the past years had been rough, this was what I was meant to do. If conditions improved, I would truly be happy.

I was going to do what my mother created me for. Dancing and performing, bringing India to the whole world and teaching about our glorious culture. I would do just that.

“I danced myself into the tomb

I danced myself into the tomb

Is it strange to dance so soon?

I danced myself into the tomb…”(1)

THE END

~

SONGS REFERENCED:

(1) Cosmic Dancer, T. Rex, 1971

(2) Mother and Child Reunion, Paul Simon, 1972

(3) Heroin, The Velvet Underground, 1967

(4) Asleep, The Smiths, 1987

[sheepsandcattle]

Chapter 21

Jules is stood in the doorway with his arms folded, fingers tapping his bicep nervously as he watches the display before him. Even given the circumstance, he’s the palest in the room by far.

There’s a puddle of sick and blood on the floor and Curly doesn’t look to see which of the two is dripping from his wrist, but he has a pretty good idea as he presses his fingers down and back against Oscar’s tongue again, who only sputters this time.

Pulling himself away from Oscar’s dresser, where he’d been frowning at a pile of mysterious pills, Dean leaves his investigation in favour of returning to help Curly hold him up.

“Come on, love,” Curls mumbles, struggling with his other arm to pull him up from the ground.

“Try—”

“Fuck off, Jules. You bloody-well try.” When he gets no response, Curly glares over his shoulder. “He needs an ambulance for Christ sake.”

Dean adds, “and pressure for the head wound. Towels,” as he waves Jules away

Jules finally kicks into action, leaving the room but calling, “he doesn’t have health insurance,” as he runs to the bathroom.

Curls is muttering swear words under his breath when Oscar finally finds the strength to push himself onto his elbows, just as he gags around Curly’s hand again.

He’s not sure how long it’s been since Oz took whatever he took. It’s been ten minutes since Jules claims to have heard the crash from his room; five since Dean drove Curly home and thought it best to check Oscar was alright and found him on the floor beside his bed with a small pool of blood collecting near his temple where he’d decked it on his bedframe.

“Here,” Jules is holding out a towel in each hand.

Dean snatches one and lays it over the mess already on the floor beneath them, then says, “his head,” because Jules is in some kind of trance, just looking over to Curly for help like he honestly expects him to hold him straight, shove his fingers down his throat and tend to his head wound all at the same time.

“What did he take,” Dean’s asking. “There’s two types of pills on the dresser.”

“Oz?” Curly pulls his hand from his mouth (glad for the excuse) and slaps the side of his face. “Mate, what have you had?”

At first, he just groans, then coughs. He must be coming to terms with things because he tries to lean away from Jules’ hand, which presses the towel to his head.

“Oscar,” he tries again.

“Jus…” He breathes. “Jus’ some pills. I d’know.”

“What did you sell him, Jules?” Dean’s looking at him with a fury Curly’s never seen in him before as Jules blinks back, eyes wide. Curly feels daft for never having suspected that Jules was the person to supply them. “You think we’re stupid? What were the pills?”

And Jules doesn’t even try to lie now that Dean’s being so direct. He says, “I- I don’t know… Some Oxy and… I think some Zoloft, but that was last week, I don’t—”

“Zoloft? How the fuck’re you even getting- And why sell it to Oscar? Oscar doesn’t take pills, he—”

Curly just lets them bicker, wiping his hand on the towel on the ground as Oscar tries to mumble something but ends up coking instead.

“You’re not finished,” Curls tells him, using both arms now to keep him steady. “Just get the rest up, mate. Get rid.”

Oscar shakes his head, then winces when the wound on his head moves against the towel in Jules’ hand, who’s too busy snapping back at Dean to realise. Curls bats Jules’ hand away to take over the role and lets Oscar move shakily into a seated position instead.

“He fucking asked for them!” Curly tries to ignore Jules going on, but every time he opens his mouth to speak, the bloke shouts over him.

Dean says, “so what? You know, you’ve got this amazing ability to just say ‘no.’ He’s on enough shit, he doesn’t need to start mixing pills with it too.”

“He wasn’t mixing anything, he-“

“Well, clearly he bloody has,” Curly cuts in. “You’re such a cunt sometimes, Jules. Why can’t you ever just say no? Look at him!”

And he does. Jules goes quiet as his eyes dart over his friend’s face; his wet shirt; the damp soaking through the towel on the floor and the red through the one against his head. He looks white, his whole face all gaunt and glistening except his eyes that look swollen and raw. He’s shivering but sweating, and he looks around at his friends because they’ve all gone quiet, waiting for some reassurance that he’s okay.

“I was trying to get off it.” He gulps, wiping his mouth. “I thought the pills would…”

Nobody cuts in – not even an ‘I told you’ from Jules – they just wait as he looks between them, then at the ground, only to find the sight of his own sick and blood on the floor more embarrassing than having to look his mates in the eye as he says “it just gets too much sometimes. And I ache and everything’s overwhelming and I can’t think or move, a-and I just.” He shakes his head, finished.

“A’right, mate.” Curly nods as he squeezes his shoulder, and looks up see Dean panting, gritting his teeth and biting his tongue. “Dean, can you wet us a towel?”

Up until now, it’s been Dean giving the instructions -says he knows what he’s doing; his brother’s a doctor- but he must know just as well as Curly that he needs to take himself out, because he nods without any argument and stands, leaving the room with one last parting glare to the back of Jules’ head. Jules doesn’t see it – too busy finally using some initiative and helping Curly help Oscar up and onto the edge of the bed, where he sits with his elbows on his knees, breathing deeply as he stares at the ground.

Jules’ voice is so small as he says, “I’m so sorry,” sounding shaken when he adds, “I thought I was helping, I. I thought I was finally being a decent fucking friend – figured a couple pills’d be better than heroin.”

Oz shakes his head. “I was looking for a high. Wasn’t thinking straight.” He’s slurring and Curly’s not quite sure what does that; the pills or the exhaustion or nausea. “I knew how many I was taking; just couldn’t stop. Not your fault”

For a moment, curly thinks about taking the pills from the dresser and flushing them, but Oscar’s not an idiot; he learns from his mistakes. The last thing he wants to do after forcing him to yosh on his bedroom floor is patronise him.

His two flatmates continue to talk and, when Dean returns to the room, Curly takes the wet towel and swaps it out with the dry one Oscar’s been holding to his head before he stands and nods towards the door.

“We’ll give you a minute,” he offers, because he’s never heard Jules sound so sincere and being here feels a bit intrusive. If Dean wants to argue, he refrains – just follows him out of the room.

When they’ve passed through the living room and into the bathroom, Curly says, “the cut on his head looks bad,” as he washes his hands (and arms) in the sink. “What should we do?”

“I’ll take a look at it, maybe call Simon, but I think the blood’s making it look worse than it is. We need to get him hydrated and I’ll check for signs of a concussion and—”

“How do you know all of this,” he cuts in. “I feel like if my brother was a doctor, I still wouldn’t know how to look for a concussion.”

Dean chuckles. “Yeah well, you didn’t grow up with Jordan.”

The image of a young Jordan giving Dean the run-around brings a smile to both their faces. Jeff had once said that J had toned down over the years and Curly can’t even imagine the kinds of hell he reeked back then.

“Or his mom,” Dean then adds, under his breath and after a long pause, as if he knows it’s something he shouldn’t be sharing, but just can’t help himself.

“She was an addict, wasn’t she?” Curly doesn’t and probably shouldn’t know much more than that. His mom was an addict; that’s really all he’s been told.

“Is an addict.”

“Right, right. He mentioned it.”

Dean shrugs. “He plays it down. I had more calls from Jordan in my Junior year than I can remember, panicking about his mom – where she was or—” he gestures somewhere out of the room. “If she’d overdosed. Simon and I were back there every few weeks because she was either passed out or puking some ungodly substance.”

It’s not quite so easy to picture him like that. When Curls was off his face in the club, J was so calm, like he had no reason to worry. Perhaps because he’d seen worse, or because he knows what it all means now, after years of seeing it first-hand. Maybe he was just tired of seeing it.

Even after Jordan had told him he’d seen it all, Curls never really let himself think about what that meant. He never really thought about Jordan in that place… And being younger than he is now and left to just deal with it? It doesn’t feel so passive when he hears about it from an outsider like Dean’s point-of-view.

“He won’t tell you Curls,” he says as he holds his own hands under the tap now, “but that shit—” Shakes his head. “—You don’t want him to see you like that. It’s not fair, alright? He might despise it, but he’s got the guilty conscious of a saint if he likes you enough. Explains why he still sees her.”

Wiping his hands on his jeans (no towels left in here – all covered in Oscar’s… Everything) Curly nods, not quite sure how to respond to that. He’s pretty sure Dean has no idea what he’s doing to him, but Curly’s suddenly got this overwhelming need to apologise.

“Anyway, we should probably check that head wound in case I’m wrong.”

In the end, Dean’s pretty happy with the cut on Oz’s head, but says he’ll bring his brother back tomorrow to be sure. He tells Jules “make yourself scarce,” and, before he goes, he turns to him and offers a hand.

“I can forgive you - not that it matters what I think,” he tells him as they shake on it. “But this is it for me, okay? I’m done with you.” When the man frowns, Dean adds, “we are not friends, Jules,” to make himself clear.

Jules just nods.

***

A few days later, he’s on the bus with Jordan, on their way to a beer garden that they know will be too cold to commit to. They were meant to go on Tuesday but Curly found it hard to pull himself away from Oscar after what had happened just the day before.

When he told Jordan about it that night, he’d expected him to be pissed off (at Jules, more so than anyone else) but was surprised to hear his voice turn soft over the phone; whatever movement he was making stilling as he asked, “are you okay?”

They’re sat near the back, laughing among themselves, when a nest of thin, knotted hair stumbles onto the bus a few stops from where they get off. The woman is scrawny as anything and, when she speaks to the driver she’s almost shouting, completely unaware of it but loud enough to raise heads and silence the rest of the bus. She wobbles down the centre aisle once she’s paid, dragging behind her a young girl with that same blonde hair, albeit less of a tangled state.

She says, “sit there,” when they reach two empty seats, waiting for the girl to take the window space before she occupies the one near the aisle. Then she digs into her pocket and ducks to roll a fag with shaky hands.

Jordan scoffs, and Curly glances his way to find him glaring at the back of the woman’s head. He reaches to place a hand on his knee, which brings the man’s attention back to him.

J glances down at the hand on his leg, and Curly’s pretty sure he doesn’t even realise he’d scoffed in the first place as Jordan hooks an arm over his shoulder like it’s him that’s not happy. “You okay?”

Curls just nods, although J’s eyes are already back on the woman and her kid.

[aliciameade]

Baby - Ch. 14

Title: Baby Author: aliciameade Rating: *** M *** Pairing: Stephanie Smothers/Emily Nelson Summary:  That tearful kiss shared between Stephanie and Emily wasn't their first—and it certainly wasn't their last.

(Chapter 1)

Also on AO3

(You can buy me a ko-fi if you want to!)

“When is she supposed to get here?”

“Whenever she decides to show up...if she even remembers what day it is. What the hell are you wearing?”

Stephanie looks down at her choice of clothing: black jeans and a generic black hooded sweatshirt and black work boots. “It’s utilitarian.”

“‘Utilitarian’?”

“Yes,” Stephanie says as she finishes descending the stairs in Emily’s home and stuffs her gloves in her pocket. “These are low-shedding fabrics. But I bought everything cash from the thrift store so even if they do find a fiber, it will be a dead end.” She stops to tuck a small bag into Emily’s suitcase and then joins her in the kitchen to accept one of the two martinis Emily’s holding. “What shall we toast?”

There’s a knife on the counter and she eyes it for a moment. Emily was using it to carve their twists.

“I think we toast to freedom.” Emily’s dressed more normally, though there’s no three-piece suit today. She’s in navy slacks and a gray turtleneck and loafers—not heels. She’ll be traveling tonight and has dressed for stylish comfort.

“To freedom,” Stephanie says with a nod as they lift their glasses to drink. They finish the drinks in one go.

Emily is packed; a surreptitious selection of clothing that no one will ever notice absent from her closet packed in a new suitcase, also purchased in cash. She’ll be ducking out the back door at dusk, walking to the bus station, and taking the Greyhound into New York to catch a flight. Stephanie will be waiting at her home for his Friday sleepover when Sean drops off Nicky and Miles after the movie Emily sent them to, a plan to shield Nicky from the trauma of walking into his house and seeing his mother dead.

“I realize it’s a little late to ask this, but should I be concerned about how readily you planned to commit first-degree murder?” Emily asks as she lifts Stephanie’s empty glass from her hand.

Stephanie expects it to be refilled but instead, the glasses are immediately washed and returned to the freezer as if they’d never been used. “Just don’t cheat on me and you have nothing to worry about,” Stephanie says with a teasing tone.

Maybe I’m the one who should be worried, Stephanie hears flit through her head. She did come up with quite the plot to off Emily’s twin sister and has felt very little remorse about it. Faith is a waste of space from how Emily’s described her; a hopeless addict who’s nothing but a drain on the system and those who attempt to care for her out of obligation. It began with frustration that Emily wasn’t hers and hers alone and in a matter of minutes, her brain lept from, “How can we be together?” to “Faith has to die.” She knows it’s not normal.

As readily as Stephane had suggested it, Emily had agreed to it. Emily had no hesitations about the proposed murder of her own sister. Stephanie can still feel the multiple orgasms she’d been given immediately thereafter.

The memory makes her shiver and she steps around the island to meet Emily and pulls her down into a kiss.

She knows she shouldn’t be turned on right now; murder shouldn’t be sexy but this murder means she’s one very big step closer to her Happily Ever After with Emily. No more Faith, no more Sean; just Emily, Miles, and Nicky and a new life as a real family.

It feels like a honeymoon and it hasn’t even begun yet.

She’s reaching to unbutton Emily’s pants to take her right there and then in the kitchen one last time before they part for what could be weeks—they’ve been trying to make up for the upcoming separation for the past month—when there’s an irregular and impatient knock on the door.

“Showtime,” Emily says as she buttons her pants and kisses Stephanie soundly one more time. “I love you.”

The adrenaline that kicks in is unlike anything she’s ever felt. “I love you, too.”

She steps into the kitchen pantry to wait out of sight until Emily gives her the signal. She leaves the door ajar so she can still see and hear; her curiosity about Emily’s twin sister (and their plan) demands it.

She hears Emily’s footsteps fade into the click of the front door opening.

“Holy shit. We got a Rockefeller in the family!”

Stephanie’s almost startled; it sounds just like Emily if Emily had smoked two packs a day for half her life.

“You wish,” Emily’s smoother voice replies and there’s an extended silence until two pairs of footsteps, Emily’s clicking loafers and a heavy scuff of boots.

“You look like shit. You’re using again.”

Stephanie sees Emily pass the kitchen toward the living room and when she slows her pace, Stephanie jumps. Faith is a mirror image of Emily; she feels like she’s seeing double but the differences between them are evident. If Faith sounds like she’s smoked two packs a day she looks like she’s smoked three, on top of alcohol, heroin, meth and any other vice Stephanie can think of.

“You could stop trying to fix me. Save us both the disappointment.” Faith is dressed in ripped leggings, a tee with some kind of logo on it, and a military-style jacket. She flops onto the middle of Emily’s sprawling white couch and drapes her arms along the back of it like she owns the place. She’s grinning as she says the words, bad teeth and pasty skin.

Emily remains standing and though she appears relaxed, Stephanie can see the tension along the back of her neck. “If I wasn’t perpetually disappointed in you, what else would I do to fill my time?”

Faith smacks her gum and gestures at the room they’re in. “If I were you—and I practically am, right?—I’d be day-drinking and fucking my hot husband. Am I right? Did I nail it?”

Emily looks at the ground for a second and nods as she scratches her nose. “You got me.”

“Where is the hot piece of ass anyway, huh? At the bank getting my cash? Hope they give your kid a lollipop.”

Emily’s back straightens as she lifts her head; Stephanie knows she wants to tell Faith to never speak of Nicky again but that’s not the game they’re playing now. “And then they’re picking up pizza for dinner. Ham and pineapple still your favorite?”

“You fucking know it.” Faith pats her stomach and then her hand slides down until it clutches rudely between her legs. “Wanna trade places when he gets home? I haven’t had a good fuck in weeks.”

Stephanie has to bite the inside of her cheek at the crassness and the irony.

Faith has no idea that’s exactly what’s going to happen. Minus the sleeping with Sean part.

“Maybe next time. I’ll get you a drink. What do you want? Water? Apple juice?” Emily’s walking toward the kitchen and makes eye contact with Stephanie. She seems calm as she moves on and Stephanie hears glassware clinking on the countertop.

“Fuck you,” Faith says with a snort and a hoarse laugh. “I know you got a full bar. Gimme a whiskey. You got whiskey, don’t you?”

“I have whiskey.” The sound of a cork popping out of a glass bottle follows and then Emily passes the cracked door again, a tumbler of amber liquid in her hand which she hands to Faith. Then she sits down next to her, on the far side of the couch to force Faith to turn toward her and away from the kitchen (and Stephanie).

“Your support of my sobriety is outstanding,” Faith says before she drinks half of it.

Stephanie can tell it pains Emily; she knows Emily did support her numerous attempts—self-imposed or otherwise—at sobriety and it can’t have been easy putting alcohol into her hand.

“It’s a special occasion, isn’t it?” Emily smiles at her sister. “Figured out what you’re going to do with the money yet? I’m dying to know.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna go to Iceland.”

Emily’s surprise is genuine. “Iceland?”

“Yeah, man. I’m gonna get fucking blasted and watch the Northern Lights.” Faith laughs as she says it and Stephanie can’t help but compare it to the laugh of the stoner burn-outs she remembers from high school. “Gonna be the best goddamn trip I’ve ever taken. Get it? Trip?”

The surprise fades to chagrin and Emily’s jaw sets firmly. “Good to know you have big plans for my money.”

“Yeah. I’m gonna go on, like, a world tour. Try the best smack every country has to offer. Gotta get over to Afghanistan and try that shit right from the source.”

Faith shares her plan to travel the world to shoot up in the way one talks of a wine tour of Italy to sample the best of the regions. Tuscany Merlot, Piedmont Moscato, Lombardy Chardonnay, Afghan opium. Stephanie can see on Emily’s face that she still wishes she could do something to help her. She’s disappointed in her sister’s weakness. Maybe she’s disappointed in her own failure to save her.

The disappointment leaves Emily’s eyes, though, and Stephanie sees them grow cold.

“I tried to help you. So many times. And this is how you repay me? You’re going to take everything I have and shoot it up?”

“Oh, boo fucking hoo. Are you going to cry about it? I know you don’t want me around.”

“I always wanted you around. You’re the one who left me. You always leave. You take and you take and you take and then you leave. You’re a fucking plague.” Emily’s hand lifts; it’s on its way to her hair but it stops at the neck of her shirt and she tugs on it.

The signal.

Adrenaline kicks in again. She’s run through this innumerable times in her head. She and Emily even rehearsed it so Stephanie would know how it would feel.

She puts on her gloves and her fingers tighten around the thin nylon rope in her hand.

Their final rehearsal this week had led to Stephanie taking Emily roughly from behind, rope around her neck just tight enough to be on the side of pleasure, not pain.

She pushes that sinful memory away; she has to execute it for real now. There’s no room for error. All or nothing. Her heart pounds in her ears and her palms sweat inside her leather gloves as she creeps out of the pantry. Faith is oblivious to her presence or advance. Emily has her locked in an argument that keeps moving blame for things from one sister to the other. Stephanie doesn’t hear the words; it’s just a loud hum as she steps closer. One foot after the other, light steps so Faith doesn’t hear her approach. Their rehearsal taught them to make sure the shade was drawn over the window immediately behind Emily so there would be no reflection of Stephanie’s sneak attack.

The blue nylon rope hangs between her hands, looped around her palms, then her wrists so she has enough leverage. Emily does a good job of keeping Faith engaged and distracted; she gives away no clues that something is about to happen. Not once do her eyes flit toward Stephanie even as she comes to a stop behind Faith.

Her thumbs run over the twisted braiding of the fibers in her hands as she double-checks the length she’s given herself: not too short, not too long. She hesitates; she wants to give Emily a chance to say goodbye.

Emily senses her pause and cuts into Faith’s argument. “Thank you.”

It catches Faith off-guard. “Thank you? For what?”

“For giving me my new life.”

Stephanie can see tears in Emily’s eyes when she says it and it makes her act quickly. She has to or she’ll second-guess herself. She can’t hesitate again. Faith could turn and see her. She could lose her nerve. Everything they’ve planned could fall apart in an instant if she doesn’t—

A flick of her wrists, a foot pressing into the arm of the couch, a pull, another loop around the neck to cinch it and another pull.

It’s more difficult than practicing on Emily had been; Emily didn’t fight back. Stephanie didn’t strangle her.

Faith is not small and Stephanie is not big; her leverage against the couch is the only thing that keeps Faith from struggling enough to get to her feet; if she manages that, it will be over and they’ll have to take drastic, more violent measures to make sure she doesn’t escape.

Emily watches her do it. Watches her struggle as Stephanie’s arms burn from the strain as she tightens the rope another inch.

As the struggle starts to wane Emily moves closer. She rests her hands on Faith’s legs and presses to stop them from kicking. She shushes her. She whispers something about winning a canoe race and the gasping gurgle of her fight for oxygen abruptly stops with a crack of the hyoid bone with one final tug on the lead end of the rope.

Stephanie feels faint. The tunnel vision closes in and the floor seems to slip from under her feet and she’s sure she’s about to hit the floor (wherever it flew off to) when arms catch her.

“Steph, baby, breathe.”

Emily’s perfume acts like smelling salts and she gasps for her own much-needed oxygen. Her vision is still blurry but she can feel Emily holding her close, can feel the kisses she’s peppering on the top of her head. She manages to lift her chin and her oxygen is immediately cut off by Emily kissing her.

And kissing her.

And kissing her.

She kisses her until Stephanie wonders if they’re going to have sex while Faith’s dead body sits on the couch.

She cringes internally at how aroused she is and blames it on the adrenaline and not the murder itself, though the number of times she’s had to tell herself that such a thing isn’t a turn-on tells her that...maybe it is. And maybe it is for Emily, too.

“We need to move, baby,” Emily whispers against her lips and Stephanie knows time is of the essence.

They separate and Stephanie pretends not to notice Emily wiping tears off her cheeks as she turns away to grab the stack of her own clothes left waiting on the counter for this purpose.

“Get her boots. I’ll get her jacket and shirt,” Emily says as she tosses the clothes on the floor next to where Stephanie kneels to untie and yank off Faith’s heavy, worn-out boots and shove them in a waiting duffle bag. Unwashed socks go next followed by the jacket and tee Emily hands her. The leggings are last to go before they redress her in one of Emily’s blouses and pair of trousers.

Emily combs out Faith’s hair to tie it into one of her signature twists, one last effort to make her look less like Faith McLanden and more like Emily Nelson as Stephanie stuffs the rope into the bag with Faith’s clothes. She watches Emily secure Faith’s hair with a clip and then yank the large sapphire wedding ring off her finger to slip it onto Faith’s.

They’re banking on Sean’s grief that the subtle differences between them will go unnoticed. That he’ll refuse an autopsy when the cause of death is so obvious. That the medical examiner won’t conduct a full-body examination and toxicology which could lead to suspicion.

The hairstyle and designer clothes on Faith’s lifeless body do make her look more like Emily than when she’d arrived. It’s enough to spook Stephanie and she finishes her clean-up quickly. She needs to dump the evidence, get home and take a shower to ensure nothing of Faith remains on her, wait for Sean to drop off Nicky and Miles, and then wait for the inevitable phone call.

As far as Sean knows, Stephanie’s picking up the kids so Emily can have the house to herself. Another day of needing to “reset.” He’ll come home in a few hours to find his wife strangled in a seemingly random home invasion. They’ve already opened drawers and closets and cabinets and rifled through them haphazardly as though a burglar had been searching for loot. Most of the damage was done upstairs in the master bedroom, Emily’s jewelry collection having been ransacked. It’s all in a small drawstring bag sitting with Emily’s clothes in the bag waiting to leave with her for the bus station. The valuables will be sold here and there for Emily to live off of while she waits for Stephanie to join her.

They meet by the back door once everything is as it should be.

“So that’s it, then,” Stephanie says as she glances at Faith’s body. There still seems to be terror on her face and it’s haunting. “I’m a murderer. First-degree. And you’re my accomplice.”

“It was a crime of passion, baby. We had to do it to be together.”

For a split-second, Stephanie thinks there surely were dozens of different, legal ways they could have accomplished that but there was no going back now. “I’m going to miss you so much,” she says instead of what she was just thinking.

“Me, too, baby. Come here,” Emily says as she pulls Stephanie into an embrace. They stay that way for a moment and then share one final kiss before wordlessly agreeing it’s time to go. She’ll be sneaking through the hedge to walk to her car parked a few blocks away.

Stephanie takes one final glance at the house; she knows she’ll return to it. She’ll have to as she goes through the motions of mourning Emily’s untimely death.

She notices Emily doesn’t look back.

~ ~

~ ~

(Chapter 15)

[harrisonstories]

RTE Radio 2 Ireland - BP Fallon interview with George Harrison (18 Oct. 1987)

Photo by: Brian Roylance, Genesis Publications

This is an interview I’ve edited and uploaded to youtube because it’s quite long, and it was in two parts, so I’ve combined them together. You’ll notice at about 14:52 there’s a slight jump in the conversation which is where the second part begins. 

I really love this interview. It’s one of - if not my favourite interview he ever did. I strongly suggest you give it a listen. Similarly to the Swedish Fan Club Tape, George is extremely calm and open, and Irish DJ BP Fallon asks refreshing questions. BP Fallon has himself had an interesting life, and at one point worked at Apple for Derek Taylor (You can also see him miming the bass in the Instant Karma Top of the Pops video). I’m guessing this related to why George felt relaxed. I hope you enjoy it.

Below I’ve included the written version of this interview by BP Fallon for The Sunday Tribune. It has some information not available in the audio (not sure if it simply wasn’t recorded, or if there’s another version which includes the full conversation):

"Sometimes it feels like another world, another life, some previous incarnation," George Harrison says. "I view it a bit through a haze but, y'know, people don't ever stop talking about it so it's hard to got too much distance between myself and The Beatles." 

George Harrison doesn't mind that, not anymore. "I used to," he admits. "I used to not like it at all. I wanted to be free of it. Now I've learned to live with it. And also, don't forget, there was a period when The Beatles split up and there were all kind of court cases and bad vibes and stuff and that left a bad taste in the mouth for a while but after the years it's all cleared up, everybody's friends again." 

He's sitting in a little office in the house owned by his company Handmade Films, just off Cadogan Square in Knightsbridge in London, a few streets behind Harrods. Fourty-four-years old this man is, he has a bit of a beard and his shortish hair is swept back and there are new lines on his face. He drinks coffee and smokes ciggies and when you sit talking to the geezer you can't help but feel warmth for him. 

As one of John, Paul, George And Ringo, The Fab Four, as a member of the most popular, the most inventive, the most influential rock group of all time, he has gone through one of the strangest trips ever. They were Gods once, The Beatles. And sitting here now, George Harrison comes across as a normal bloke.

He was born in Liverpool, the fourth child of Harold and Louse Harrison. George's father was a bus driver - before that, he had been a ship's steward on the White Star Line for ten years and from one of his travels in America had returned with an old wind-up gramophone and records by bluesman and yodeller Jimmie Rodgers and country singer Hank Williams. Young George was smitten. He listened to skiffle, people like Lonnie Donegan and songs about the Rock Island Line. And then he heard Elvis Presley singing Hearbreak Hotel. "It came out of somebody's radio," George Harrison says, gazing out the window at the autumn light fading behind the trees, "and it lodged itself in the back of my head. It's been there ever since." 

At the age of 13, for £3, he bought his first guitar. Two years later, Paul McCartney introduced George to his friend John Lennon (George - "this snotty-nosed kid" as Lennon recalled). George joined John and Paul in their skiffle group The Quarreymen. In 1962, when George was 19, John, Paul, George and their new drummer Ringo Starr made their first record together. It was a fresh-sounding bluesey pop record called Love Me Do and they now called themselves The Beatles.

They changed the world, these four Scouse moptops making new noises and singing about wanting to hold your hand and about walruses and about revolution and all you need is love. 

And for eight years The Beatles were bigger than Jesus.

For a while, The Beatles - at very least by example - endorsed smoking dope and taking LSD. John, Paul and George were each busted at least once for breaking the cannabis laws. "A lot of the stuff that happened..." - and then George brings himself up to the present tense - that happens, it's just like when Prohibition was on. If they make a big deal about stuff it becomes bigger than it actually is. In moderation... you have to have moderation in everything. The worst drug of all is alcohol... it actually kills more people then heroin." He says he was fortunate as a kid to see a film about the trumpet player Chet Baker, about Baker's heroin addiction, "and that and maybe something else made me aware that this thing was just too much. 

"Of course, the other things, the psychedelic drugs, are much different because they don't put your body in a stupour, they sort of..." and now he's laughing... "they sort of catapult you out into the universe. It's a totally different perspective." Then his voice is serious again. "These things obviously can be very dangerous too. I'd hate to have some right now because I don't think I could handle it. It just gives you too many things to think about all at once."

Love and peace went out the bathroom window when The Beatles split in 1970, with Paul McCartney publicly announcing he had left. George says he realised The Beatles weren't shaking a couple of years before that. "Everyone was just getting all uptight with each other. The new wives were coming in and, y'know, living under the piano and there was no privacy anymore for us as far as the group was concerned in what was normally the only privacy we ever had, the four of us when we got into a studio. And we'd just grown away from each other. One time or another every one of us left that group before we finally stopped." 

George left during the making of what would be Let It Be. Ringo left another time "and went on holiday, and John was always wanting to leave and Paul too. You know, it was too much pressure and we'd been through those years. It was just too much.”

He emphasises that the remaining three Beatles are good pals, now. "Paul and I went through a shaky period but we're okay, now. All the old aggravations have passed a long time ago. There's no reason not to be friends."

By 1971 George Harrison was the most successful solo Beatle, with his triple album All Things Must Pass and the enormous hit My Sweet Lord. Four years later his single Ding Dong Ding Dong - a record even worse than McCartney's Mary Had A Little Lamb - was the first release by a solo Beatle to fail to enter the charts. Several years later a court ordered him to pay £260,000 damages for plagiarising the Chiffons' song he's So Fine with My Sweet Lord. That Harrison had modeled My Sweet Lord on another song, the gospel Oh Happy Day by the Edwin Hawkins Singers, was bad enough. That he had to pay the money to his former manager Allen Klein - "a looney who didn't take care of business" George describes him now- because Klein had scooped up the publishing of He's So Fine... that rubbed salt into the wound. 

His career and also his marriage to his first wife Patti Boyd were in pieces. Patti had gone to live with George's close pal Eric Clapton, who had written Layla about his best friend's wife. George started drinking heavily, contracting a serious liver complaint that his friends feared might be the end of him. 

George's chum Eric Idle had found it impossible to raise the necessary finance to make the Monty Python film Life Of Brian, so George chipped in with half the required money, £2,250,000. It turned out to be one of the best investments George had ever made, reaping a profit of more than £30,000,000. Since then, Harrison and his film company Handmade Films have scored with another Monty Python film The Meaning Of Life - banned in Ireland - and delivered films like Time Bandits and Mona Lisa as well as Shanghai Express, a disaster for its stars Sean Penn and Madonna and its producer Harrison. But what the heck. George isn't short of a few shekels.

In 1978, George married Olivia Trinidad Arias, a 27-year-old who had been born in Mexico and had been working as a secretary in A&M Records in Los Angeles. George's health had been desperate. He was fading away. Olivia contacted the Chinese acupuncturist Dr. Zion Yu and within weeks of treatment George had regained his energy and his spirit. 

They have a nine-year-old son named Dhani - the Indian for wealthy - and the other day he asked his father to make him up a cassette of Chuck Berry songs. After George appeared at the Prince's Trust concert in London five months ago with Ringo, Eric Clapton and Elton John, Dhani came backstage. George had sung his own Beatle compositions While My Guitar Gently Weeps and Here Comes The Sun. "I asked him 'What did you think?' and he said 'Uh, you were alright Dad, but why didn't you do Chuck Berry songs like Roll Over Beethoven and Johnny Be Good and Rock'n'Roll Music?'" 

He has a new LP out any day now, his first in five years. It's called Cloud Nine. "Have you heard the album?" he asks solicitously. "No? I'll see if someone's got a copy." George Harrison wanders off, and returns with a young woman who says "It's a bootleg I taped from the CD." George flips the cassette into the music system and spins it through, looking for a specific track. "I think you might like this one," he says in his dry Liverpudlian drawl, settling himself into another chair as he watches for reactions. 

Ringo's drums with cellos straight from Lennon's I Am The Walrus lead into George singing with fondness for former Beatle times. It's a track that could fit on a Beatle record and it's called When We Was Fab. "Fab... but it's all over now baby blue" George sings, and at the end there's sitar sounds like George cosmicing out on Sgt. Pepper. It's... well, fab.

When John Lennon was murdered in 1980, George Harrison didn't suddenly lock himself away from the world in his Gothic mansion. Near the riverside town of Henley-On-Thames, this bizarre 70-roomed palace called Friar Park was remodeled a century ago by the eccentric Sir Frankie Crisp and is set in 33 acres of parkland with three lakes with secret stepping stones so one can appear to walk on water, underground caves linked by a river and a reproduction of the Alps that includes a perfect 100 foot high replica of the Matterhorn. George was already in hiding.

"I was already trying to hold onto some sort of privacy. I think everyone needs to have a bit of space, y'know. I mean, if you were just being mobbed and on the TV and that all your life you just turn into a loony, and long before John got shot I was already just digging in the garden, planting trees and just trying not to go on television, just having a bit of peace. 

"But what it did, it affected me probably like anyone who loved John and who grew up with him and his music. And it was a very sad thing and, um, it didn't make me feel..." Harrison's voice trails off, and for a moment his eyes look away and he's lost in private thoughts. He looks back. " It made me wonder about ever gettin' into situations where there's fans, although at the time you can't blame fans for that. There's one loony in every crowd, I suppose. But I go on living normally. I don't panic unnecessarily."

There was talk that for Live Aid Paul, George, Ringo and Julian Lennon might let it Beatle together, but George dismisses any idea of reunions. "I don't think we'll play together. The Beatles certainly can't play again and I think it's best left as it is, y'know." 

Long before Live Aid, George Harrison's Concerts For Bangladesh raised £45,000,000 for the starving. He didn't appear at Live Aid but says if he'd known more about it "maybe I would have done it but they did alright without me." George talks at length about the planet, his concerns about destruction. Last year he participated in an anti-nuclear rally in Trafalgar Square, and he's a member of the ecological organisation Greenpeace. "I love those people because they go out and actually do it. I mean, if it wasn't me that's the kind of thing I'd like to be, out there on a ship getting harpooned by Russians and Japanese."

At the turn of the Seventies, George became a benefactor to the Hare Krishna movement. He not only made records with them and talked about them publicly but also forked out a quarter of a million pounds to buy them a 15-room Elizabethan mansion with 17 acres of land. 

Since then, George's friend His Divine Grace Guru Bhaktivechanta Swami, the leader and founder of the International Society For Krishna Consciousness, who was 77 when they met, has died. George feels that some of the remaining Krishnas have at times abused his patronage, and he cites letters from people who wrote saying that they were hassled at airports by devotees using Harrison's name. 

Nevertheless, he still subscribes to "the Swami's ancient Vedic way of having God consciousness. The technique of chanting, just like the monks and Christians, they do it too really but it's just using beads and chanting these ancient mantras... they do have great affect. I wouldn't knock them at all. I am always a bit dubious about organisations and since the swami died it does seem to be chaotic, with all kinds of guys thinking they're the gurus. To me, it's not important to be a guru, it's more important just to be, to learn humility." And George still chants. "I've still got my bag of beads and they're really groovy now, all polished up."

Is he a happy chap? "Yeah, I'm okay. Sometimes I get depressed. It's a constant battle, isn't it? You have to consciously make an effort to be happy and considering everything, I've come along quite nicely. There's always room for improvement but, um, I have a laugh and I feel quite good about things." He believes in reincarnation. "The only reason we're actually in these bodies is to learn and develop love of God and liberate our souls from this round and round, the Memphis Blues." He reckons he'll come back again. "Well," he says laughing, "by the look of things I'll probably have to... but I'd like to give it a pass one of these incarnations!"

And, George Harrison, what would you like to be remembered for? 

He pauses. "I don't know... I don't know." And then he smiles and looks you directly in the eyes and you see the face of a man still searching, still looking to extend his gentle vision for all time. He'd like to be remembered, he finally says, "just as somebody who's not bad, not that bad”... 

"That'll do, yeah."

Fair play to you, George.

[amidthedust]

Alarm; pt2

There are days when it was my fault.

There are days where the sickest parts of me

Tell me I am worse than my rapists.

Nightmares ring in the lowest days, always,

The first lit torch in a line of unlit torches,

There is always an alarm.

There are always signs, before the walls all cave in.

Nights where I wake up and can only breathe,

Nights where I think my breathing is part of the nightmare,

Nights where I wake up more aware than ever

That I am not supposed to be breathing,

Prayer to any God or Goddess or Diety that might still be awake

To tear air from my lungs and light from the room,

Warmth from my body, memories from my skull,

Life from my heart,

Because, fuck,

I am worst than my rapists.

What kind of monster

Turns someone into a rapist?

What kind of monster can

Create demons out of simple honest men

With words and truth alone?

What kind of monster would rather there be

More monsters in the world,

Than keep fire and sulfur and acid in its lungs?

Four is supposed to be a lucky number,

So sometimes I think about that, about how funny it is

That four different people claimed my body against my will,

For 16 years, four by four, shouldnt that be so fucking lucky?

That four different people who never knew about each other

Could all see in me flesh to be claimed and kept and dirtied,

And I tried so hard to be clean, again,

Tried so hard to remove whatever label in my skin

Marked me as for sale, or as free for the taking,

Scrubbed my skin raw,

Tried to bleed the sickness out of me,

Threw up till I saw blood when it didnt fucking work,

But never stopped feeling sick,

Never got the sickness out of me,

Couldnt ever get any of it out of me.

Almost four years after the last time I saw any of them in person,

I still get scared, sometimes.

If 4 of 7 of the close male family members I ever knew

Would claim their right to skin I never thought I'd need to protect from them.

Doesnt it make sense, then, for me to fear the majority?

I get scared on the bus, sometimes,

I cant walk into crowds at the grocery store, sometimes,

I cant grab a fucking onion because a strange man is standing in front of the onions and fuck, the odds arent in his favor,

I wouldnt want him to be turned into an assailant,

Into an attacker,

Into a rapist.

When they teach you rape, if they teach you rape,

They tell you to run, kick, fight, yell, scream, mace, call for help,

Say no,

Get out of the alley way, but,

I have never been molested or raped in a place I wouldnt ever have to go back to.

They dont tell you about the shutting down,

Or how the alarms start sounding like you're under water,

How that turns into feeling like you're under water,

How hard it is to scream, or yell, or fucking say no

When the waters in your throat and you forget how to speak,

When it's your father raping you,

The no should be implied, and you know it is,

Which means no means nothing, wouldnt mean anything but-

More danger, or pain, or threats,

You dont want to make him angry, do you?

You already turned him into a monster, haven't you?-

Which means nobody has taught you what to say

Which means you drown, and you fucking drown,

And you can feel digging, somewhere, and you imagine someday

You'll bury yourself in a swamp, somewhere,

Preserve your body and all of its damaged dirt,

Because you know you, or some important part of you,

Has already died, right?

Will always be trapped, preserved in that moment, anyway, wont it?

Maybe someday, some scientist in some lab

Will find your body,

Will see the mud caught in your throat,

The mud that choked and suffocated and killed and maybe

Theyll break through it, and some scream, or some No,

Will finally get out of you, and maybe

They will cry for you, as hard as you will learn to, someday.

Or maybe theyll break through the mud in your ears and all that will escape is the moment;

The sound of ringing alarms and a whispered

"You know we're gone past that now."

There are days when it is my fault.

There are days when I look in the mirror and see a monster,

See mad scientist,

See a creature who creates rapists in weak men

After all, they are only doing what weak men do, arent they?

There are days when it is my fault,

There are days

When I look in the mirror and see Little Girl.

Little girl is still named Ariel, and hasn't ever liked that, much,

Wont tell you her middle name because shes been trained

To hate her mother enough to hate that part of herself.

But she loves to swim, and loves her brother,

Someday she's gonna go to Penn state, you know.

Someday she's gonna be a forensic scientist, you know.

She really wants to learn how to skateboard, someday.

Shes already been hurt by 3, but 4 is such a lucky number,

Isnt it? I survived 3, but still know 4 was the number that

Finally Fucking killed me.

There are days when Ariel looks up at me and I want to warn her;

I want to tell her to fucking Run.

Run, dont look back, dont trip, dont tell anyone where you're going, dont tell anyone who you are;

There are days where I think

If I could just reach hard enough into the mirror,

I could put my hands around her throat,

And save her,

Like she couldn't save us, back then.

Stop her from creating Rapists of Rapists,

Save her, and save me, and save us,

Save everyone who has ever known us Hurt,

Known us Damaged Goods,

Waste of Time,

Too Much Trouble.

There are days when it is my fault.

Someday, I know, really,

That I'll have to forgive her,

Me.

She was so small, then.

But there are days when the only things I still

Have in common with her are as follows;

I love to swim, I love my brother,

I want to learn to skateboard, someday,

And

The trauma.

Sometimes I wonder if she did die.

If she did save herself, at the expense of dying and leaving me

Behind.

I cannot bring myself to hold that against her.

Someday I hope I can forgive her, me;

My father would still be a rapist if I had never talked about it,

The only difference would be that maybe my brother

Could have forgiven me for leaving, if I never had;

If I'd told him the lies they passed on about drugs and drinking

Were true.

That I was an addict and I ran away to do heroine like my mom.

I hope someday I can forgive myself

For telling the truth,

And creating rapists.

Everyone likes a happy ending,

Logan has always loved superhero stories,

And beating addiction

Sounds better than seeing a rapist in your own father.

There are days when it is my fault.

When it is all my fault, every moment of it,

Every hand on my body, every finger inside me,

Every nightmare and stolen inhale,

Every tear and "I'm sorry" and "dont touch me"

Every unpurchased fucking onion;

It's all my fault.

I still have the shirt I was wearing the first time it was my father.

A tattered greenday shirt, worn, faded, just a t shirt.

Sometimes when I get caught up

Thinking it as his fault that he raped me,

I put it on, and remember silence,

Remember fear, failure, weakness, smallness,

Remember Ariel thinking it wasnt really happening,

Being too afraid of pre established violence to react.

It was my fault, today.

At least,

Today I feel like it was my fault.

But I'm wearing my shirt, and its smaller on me than it was,

Then.

I'm trying to focus in that, instead.

How small she was.

[comebeonetwothree]

Blog #6: Coast to Coast

6/29/2021

The homeland of the rich, the famous, and the homeless junkies of Los Angeles, California will always have my heart.

With my first near death experience, I have come to see life in a new light… YOLO!

Remember that term? Yah, it was one of those fads that had meaning to it but no longer holds a place in fashion... thank god.

Everything on this coast is slow, even the way people talk is dragged out. No one J-walks here. They seriously wait for that little white man to pop up on the cross walks before walking, even if there is not a car in sight.

Yet everyone here has a serious addition to coffee.

Hangovers are even more dragged because everyone is so uber healthy here, they straight up do not have greasy food.

I made the mistake of ordering an egg and cheese, knowing it’ll only be a disappointment compared to a New York BEC. It was beyond disappointing, especially being hungover as fuck.

Everyone here is stoned all the time and have been for years. I truly believe the whole city moves so slow because everyone is high all the time.

No wonder they can survive with the shitty food- they are too high to realize.

They do have some fire weed here, so it makes sense, but damn… they are so slow and ditsy.

There is so much art here, from music, to painting, to theater, to creativity, everyone comes here with a dream. Some make their dreams come true, others end up addicted to crack, but everyone originally came here in hopes of making something of themselves.

That energy runs through the streets, it is so lively and so filled with hope. It is truly an inspiring place to live.

Who

Who have you become…

The people on the west coast are just genuinely nicer. We had a conversation that consisted of outrageous hand gestures with a random man in his car.

He had blocked an intersection accidently so I couldn’t make a left turn, where he then proceeded to see me raging about it and trying to mouth to us how sorry he was. We straight up had a conversation with this guy and were joking around while waiting for the light. We left mouthing, “We are from New Yorkk, move outta the way” as a joke, and he just understood and left us with a peace sign.

There is a surplus of homelessness here, and it is sad to see but also so interesting to watch them set up communities on the sides of highways and all along the beach.

There is never just one homeless dude posted up under a cardboard box. It’s always 15+ people posting up together in nice ass tents they probably stole or making cardboard houses with tarps for extra coverage.

They get super creative with their homelessness; it is fascinating to watch.

This one guy was zipping down the road in what looked like a decked-out bike, with high handlebars and a motor. He was moving with traffic and was looking cool while doing it.

As he got closer, we realized his get-up was made from an ironing board he bent into a seat, a plastic crate holding up the ironing board to a lime scooter he probably stole a month prior. Topping it off, he added tall handlebars for that 70s badass look. That man mastered one man’s trash, into another man’s treasure.

The saddest part is knowing majority of them came out here looking for their big break and got so hooked on drugs, they could never make it farther then that last $10 in their pocket for drugs.

On the other hand, some of these people have money to their names, but choose this lifestyle.

They really enjoy the life of nothing. This one woman was offered a job and a home, and she politely turned it down because this was her home. She loved the community around her and wouldn’t trade it for any material. What a way of life.

My family was so generous to let us three, stay with them here in Venice Beach. My Uncle Greg is my mom’s brother. He moved out here with his family to further his comedic career. Unfortunately, that meant I couldn’t see my cousins often.

My cousin Owen is a year younger than me and in the same grade as my brother. My other cousin Jojo is four years younger but grew up so fast. I always said the water in California was cracked out, because she always appeared older than my brother and I.

Since COVID I hadn’t been able to see them in two years, so I was so excited to hang out with them.

Jojo just graduated high school, so she is finally old enough to do drugs with!!

We also got to meet up with our friend Izzy from Oneonta. She is living out here for the summer with her sister. What a life.

Izzy is thriving here with her job at this night club and is living in her sister’s cute ass apartment in Echo Park. She has the total LA vibe and even knows all the local spots to hang. Shout out to you for sneaking us into a random hotel’s rooftop pool! Confidence never gets questioned.

We love meeting up with friends from school, it makes the trip feel more homie.

What

What’s hanging dude…

Joshua Tree National Park was something out of another planet. It seriously looked like Jurassic Park and a dinosaur should be appearing at any second.

It was very different from anything we had ever seen before, but it was still a desert and was hot as fuck.

We did some gorgeous hikes through all the massively large, rounded rocks that somehow were placed on top of each other ages ago.

The trees that are all around are Joshua Trees, also considered Trees of Life.

This means they produce a way of life for other creatures at all stages of its growing/dying process.

While in beginning stages of its life, Yucca moths use the trees pollen to lay their eggs in and produce pollen scatter, creating more trees. When the trees are gown, the caterpillars use the tree for habitats and provides food sourcing for a lot of other desert species. When the tree dies, the bark is used to create habitats for humans and used to wove baskets and other materials.

These trees look like a palm tree and a cactus went to TOWN together.

Los Angeles is the other city of dreams. It is not comparable to New York City besides the homelessness and the traffic.

The Ocean really makes the whole city’s surfer aesthetic. Everyone, even the rich and famous, dress like they are in last weeks outfit.

The style is so different from New York. People really don’t dress to impress but spend half their life savings on their wardrobe.

Visiting my family here has always been the ideal way to do this city, since they take us to all the local shops, and we do fun activities like surfing. It’s not just another tour bus showing us where Kurt Cobain shot up some heroin for the first time.

They also show us the best food joints. We got these sushi balls, and it was the greatest -post beach snack- imaginable. A little hit of the wax pen and a bite of this ball is comparable to an orgasm.

Where

Where are all the famous people…

Joshua Tree was so beautiful, it is a place I will be re-visiting, considering we were only there for one night.

Los Angeles is where I have always wanted to live, ever since a young girl. Whenever we would come out here to visit my uncle, he would take us to the coolest places, and we would meet the coolest people.

One year I was here on my birthday, and his buddy stopped over to say hi, when I came downstairs in was Zach Galifianakis chilling there with a $20 bill and my name on it as a birthday gift.

You could imagine my teenage self shitting a tiny bit in my pants as he handed me $20… However, in my head I was thinking, “I know you’re rich, give me more you cheap fuck.”

This year for graduation I only got a phone call from him… how rude.

My Uncle is a popular comedian, if you know him you know him, but if you don’t, he is very irrelevant to you.

When we arrived, he took us out to a show he was preforming at in West Hollywood, featuring other comedians you might know or might also be very irrelevant, including Bill Burr, Anthony Jeselnik, Pete Holmes and Beth Stelling.

It was a cool venue, and a fun time. My favorite part was being called out for attempted DUI’s in every state we have been in due to my funneling addiction, thanks Uncle Greg, that was supposed to be a secret.

After the show he dropped us off at this bar that his friends said was the “it” spot. When we walked in, the bar itself was perfect, expect it was populated by older rich men trying to find their next sugar baby.

We had some contenders, but they were asking for too much… No, I don’t want to go back to your house and sneak past your wife and kids as we dart to your hot tub.

When

When will we leave…

When we first got to LA we had full intensions of staying only four nights and getting out of my family’s hair, but then plans fell through.

Because I love it here so much, we decided to stay!!

Just kidding, I wish we could stay longer… One day I’ll move out here though.

COVID restrictions are back at it again, ruining our plans of going Yosemite. They are the only National Park that requires a whole ass separate pass just to enter the park, on top of the $30 day pass we already have.

The only reason our route was heading inland California was to see that park. So, we did a little digging and decided to just send it up all the way up the coast and do the legendary Pacific Coast Highway.

This is what we originally wanted to do before we found out about Yosemite. Guess we will have to come back to see the park, aw shucks!

Why

Why can’t I afford this…

California is fucking expensive; I can see why the population of homelessness is so high… Even gas is $1.00 more than it is back in New York.

And for Why? They are on a coast, it’s not like the desert where there is a gas station every 100 miles.

They know people here have the money, so they overprice literally everything. A fucking water bottle is $7.00. Sorry didn’t realize paying for survival would be this expensive.

The older man at the bar loved to throw the fact he had money around (as do most people with money around here). He kept saying he works on wall street, but wall street is literally a street in New York City.

He just wanted to flex he works in finances and has a hot tub, okay we get it you have a small dick.

How

How we almost died…

This is my favorite part of the last week, but also the most traumatizing.

So, have you ever heard of cowboy camping?

Well, neither had we until our friend that had just camped in Joshua Tree told us about it and how legendary it was in that specific spot.

Cowboy camping: you don’t pitch your tent, you just post up with your sleeping bags under the stars.

Since Joshua Tree is known for their stars, we thought fuck it, we are here for less than 12 hours, the weather is perfect let’s do it.

That night was a full moon, and it was a killer sunset (all pun intended). We cooked up a nice rice bowl for dinner and then laid in our sleeping bags watching the stars.

The moon was almost too bright, it was taking away from the illumination of the stars, but it was legendary because I’ve never seen such a big and bright moon before.

But you know what they say about the full moons, it brings out the crazies. And in our case, coyote crazies.

After drifting off to sleep under the peaceful star and moon lit sky, I was rudely woken up to really loud growling and whimpering.

It was not something that was off in the distance, it was right next to us… barebone in the wild.

I quickly and quietly turned over to grab my bear spray that I keep next to me when camping. I started thinking, “Alright this is the only thing keeping me from getting mauled by whatever the fuck is next to me.”

Not knowing what we were dealing with, I slowly popped my head up hoping the animal didn’t catch my movement… I saw about 5 feet in front of us was a pack of about 10 coyotes, running around chasing animals.

We happen to be the center of their circle and were surrounded by their pack. Thankfully their attention was diverted to our asshole neighbor’s whose food was left out. Thanks for that.

We just laid their paralyzed in fear of death. As we laid there, I saw two shooting stars and wished for life… Shoutout to those shooting stars.

We tried to stay as quiet as possible, so we didn’t become their next victim. Maya was not having it though and couldn’t stop shaking. There was a moment when her shaking was so loud, and I could see a coyote right next to us, so I had to hold her body so it would stop moving.

We laid there for about 20 minutes until the noises stopped… then we booked it for the car. We slept in the car until the sun rose.

As the sun was rising all the coyotes simultaneously howled for the rest of the pack to meet up and disappear before daylight. That was one of those, “holy shit that was the coolest most terrifying moments of my life”, moments.

We left the next morning as fast as possible, running on no sleep and fear… we headed for the city. I had never been more grateful to be in a city.

[redditnosleep]

A is for Addiction

by lifeisstrangemetoo. Trigger warning for graphic violence and drug use.

The day I met Annie was the day fate threw me under the bus.

She was standing outside of a head shop in the Midwestern US in the freezing rain. She looked as if she’d once been pretty, but the skin of her face had hollowed and shrunken around the bones into the unmistakable mask of a habitual drug-user. I stood under the overhang of the shop and held my hand out, letting a few drops of the icy rain splatter across my palm.

“If you just stay outside in the rain you’re gonna get pneumonia.” I said.

The movement of her lips was barely perceptible in the neon red glow of the shop’s lights as she responded: “That’s the plan.”

“There are quicker ways to kill yourself,” I said.

“I don’t want to kill myself,” she replied. “I just want to go to the hospital.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Pain meds.”

“You get pain meds for pneumonia?”

“Codeine cough syrup if I’m coughing blood,” she said. “Maybe better if I’m lucky enough to deflate a lung.”

I handed her a cigarette.

“That should help you get pneumonia,” I said.

She moved under the shop’s overhang with me and pulled a lighter out from her soaked jacket.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Nobody gives anything away for free. Especially not to girls and especially not to girls like me. If you want me to suck your dick for oxy you’re barking up the wrong tree. I’d rather just get pneumonia.”

“I don’t have any oxy,” I said flatly.

“Well we’ve got that in common, at least.”

She took a long drag and eyed me up and down.

“What’s your poison?” she asked.

I pulled out the little purple baggie containing the ‘synthetic weed’ I’d purchased from the shop.

“Are you retarded?” she scoffed. “That shit is toxic.”

“More toxic than pneumonia?”

She clicked her tongue.

“You want some better shit?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I’m up for it,” I replied.

“Good,” She said. “You’re buying, and I get twenty percent for introducing you.”

I shrugged again.

"You can drive,” she said. “I don’t have a car.”

After we got the heroin Annie insisted on following me back to my place to make sure I didn’t, in her words, “nod out and die like a bitch.” She also invited a friend, Darren, to come along with one of his ‘girlfriends’, and before I knew it, I was part of a smoke circle. They were the closest thing I’d ever had to real friends. Alone we were just some loser drug-addicts, but together we were the only people who truly understood what a cruel place the world was. We were fully disillusioned; it was us against the normal people.

But any group is only as stable as its foundation, and we were one hell of an unstable foundation.

The first clue that something wrong was happening was when we all started waking up with cuts and bruises. Every night Darren, Annie and I would black out, and the next morning we’d be beat to shit.

After a week we looked like a museum exhibit on the life cycle of bruises. First there’s purple, then a sickly yellow, and finally they fade away into nothing, but not before three or four more have cropped up in their place.

Of course, we couldn’t stop using. A couple of times I tried to cut back, but nobody else seemed to care, so I just let it slide. We looked worse and worse day by day.

Gram by gram.

Then Darren’s 'girlfriends’ started disappearing. Every night we’d pass out as four and wake up as three. I told myself they were just prostitutes bailing out on three wasters that they couldn’t squeeze any more money out of. I’m not sure I ever really believed it though.

I soon found out the truth was much worse.

It was one of those shitty Saturday mornings that aren’t good for anything except getting high when I rolled up to the head shop to find my regular brand of synthetic weed had gone, and in its place was something called Rainbow Road. The cashier assured me that it was just as good, but later that night I’d realize it was way weaker–weak enough for me to keep my wits about me that night.

I was slumped down in the smoke circle with my eyes barely open when Annie slithered up to me.

”Ok, he’s out,” she said to someone behind her. She pulled a pill bottle out and rattled a single white pill into her palm with one hand, before slipping it between my lips. She tilted my head up and slid her hand over my mouth, gripping my throat with the other hand and massaging it. I felt a powerful urge to swallow, but I managed to slip the pill under my tongue before I did.

“It’s down,” Annie said. “Is the bitch out?”

“Yep,” Darren answered. “Let’s get her naked.”

Darren and Annie began stripping the clothes from the unconscious woman like dogs stripping meat from a bone.

When they had finished, Darren reached into his pants and began to fondle himself.

“Damn,” he said, “this one looks too good to waste. Think she’s got AIDS?”

Annie clicked her tongue.

“You never learn, do you?” she said. “You really want your DNA all over that bitch?”

“Naw, I guess not,” he said. “We’re gonna clean her anyway, though, what’s the harm?”

“Just keep it in your pants,” Annie replied. “You’ll have plenty of money to buy yourself a whore later.”

“Yeah, but whores fight back,” said Darren.

“Whatever,” Annie said. “Just help me pep him up.”

Darren withdrew his crack pipe from one of the deep pockets in his tattered jeans. He loaded it up and held the lighter underneath, taking in a deep draw. But he didn’t inhale–instead he blew it directly into my face. I tried not to cough as the acrid smoke filled my nose and throat. It didn’t smell like just crack in the pipe though–it smelled like Darren had mixed it in with PCP.

“Hit him again,” Annie said.

Darren hit my face with the smoke again, and I couldn’t help but inhale some. My face began to experience a familiar floating sensation as Darren hit me three more times.

“Good, now get him up,” Annie said.

Darren seized me by the armpits and yanked me to my feet. I thought about running for a flash of a second, but a mixture of morbid curiosity and fear kept me rooted to the spot.

“I still don’t get how this works,” Darren said.

“I told you,” Annie said. “It’s scopo-something. The zombie drug. They use it on people in Africa all the time.”

“Whatever,” Darren replied. “I wasn’t really asking.”

He walked over and reached inside his bag, pulling out a brand new Macbook computer. He opened it up and fidgeted around for a moment before stepping away to reveal a shining green light above the monitor, which was pointed at the naked girl whose name I’d forgotten. The camera was on.

“You’re out of frame,” he said to Annie. “We’re live on the site now.”

Annie slid up to me again, standing on her tiptoes and whispering in my ear.

“You see that girl, Danny?” she said. “That’s a bad, bad, girl. You remember what we do to bad, bad, girls, right? We beat them, Danny. We beat them until there’s nothing left. Beat the bitch, Danny. Beat her to death.”

My heart was yammering wildly in my ears. My mind was screaming at my feet to run, but they wouldn’t cooperate.

My hesitation was noted. Soon Annie was hissing in my ear again, flicking spit with every word.

“What the fuck are you doing, Danny?” she said. “That girl’s a BAD GIRL. You need to KILL HER, Danny.”

I still couldn’t move.

Darren crossed over to the two of us, striding in a great arc to make sure he stayed out of frame of the camera.

“What the fuck’s wrong with him?” he whispered in Annie’s ear.

“Maybe he needs another dose,” Annie said, rummaging in her pockets for the bottle. As she did so I became aware of something. The pill I had been hiding under my tongue had crumbled into powder, and while I had been concerned with what was going on with Annie and Darren, it was being absorbed into my bloodstream.

Any pillhead will tell you that sublingual administration is much faster than oral. I began to feel my consciousness slipping away, dissolving into nothingness. I slipped the remains of the pill into my cheek, but it was too late.

I was dimly aware of a blind rage as I started towards the naked woman.

I awoke the next morning to find that we had once again awoken as three. I never mentioned anything about it to Annie and Darren, instead I mixed rat poison in with their heroin and left after they nodded out and died like bitches.

As for the girls, I never said anything about it to the police. I took the laptop, which wasn’t even password protected, and deleted the videos, all twenty-six of them, before throwing it in the lake. I’ve since cleaned up and become an English teacher. But sometimes I still wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, wondering if there’s still copies of those videos floating around on the internet somewhere.

I hope I never find out.

[lubbuthedigitalnomad]

THE PROCESS

Howdy from Kathmandu! I hope you are happy and healthy. Is life going well where you are? If you have time and inclination, please answer.

Schools here are open again. The children and teachers all wear masks. Restrictions have loosened a bit to allow just a few more tourists into Nepal. This minimal increase in traffic is not enough to fix all the serious economic problems, but it is a bit of an improvement for many of the local businesses.

This week’s 1000 words are from the book Fearless Puppy On American Road. They are ostensibly about the process of hitchhiking. I have hitchhiked so much that it has become my metaphor for life. I hope you enjoy the metaphor.

A human mind works best when trained to be coherent, clear-sighted, and capable of self-organization while also being creatively free range. It is a very serious advantage to have a cohesive partnership going on between intelligent thought, creative process, and productive action. Otherwise, your thoughts and life can end up like so many positively inspired political and environmental efforts do — nobly motivated, fueled with great dedication, and a joy to be involved with — but not altogether coherently coordinated enough to reach the great level of success that such noble motivations deserve. It seems that great intentions and strong effort can’t get the job done themselves. A successful process has to be mastered and implemented.

Please be well and stay well. Love, Tenzin

p.s. If you find the reading at all enjoyable, please — it literally takes only seconds — click one or more or all of the highlighted backlinks following this paragraph. This simple process is completely without risk, cost, or difficulty. All it does is bring you to the site that is highlighted. Each click is a big help in pushing Fearless Puppy up in the Google rankings. Whether you browse the sites or close the windows immediately, your help has been delivered. Thank you!

FEARLESS PUPPY WEBSITE BLOG

FEARLESS PUPPY ON AMERICAN ROAD/AMAZON PAGE

REINCARNATION THROUGH COMMON SENSE/AMAZON PAGE

FEARLESS WEBSITE

THE PROCESS

There is a process to hitchhiking. Much of what holds true for the hitchhiking process often holds true for other parts of life as well.

First, you’ve got to decide that you want to get somewhere other than where you are. Then you have to raise the energy and determination to actually leave your present location. All trips start with a determination that’s serious enough to get you off your butt and moving. You might have a very specific destination in mind or it could just be a direction. Regardless of the destination, you will probably have to overcome some stagnation, lethargy, patterned behavior, and also risk some stability, in order to get anywhere.

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.” Frank Zappa

After that, you have to pack what you’ll need. It’s always best to reach a balance in packing. Obvious essentials such as flashlight, towel, toothbrush, toothpaste, emergency food and water need to be included. But you may have to walk miles in rough weather from a place you get stuck in. The difference between a thirty-pound pack and an eighty-pound pack could end up being the difference between comfort or exhaustion/heat stroke/frostbite and even death. But then again, so could a half-pound sweater that you thought unnecessary and left behind. Pack wisely.

You’ll also want a map. Other folks have been to the places you want to get to and have traveled in the directions you want to go. Maps exist for nearly every piece of road in the world. They all use universal symbols. No matter where you are from or what language you speak, everyone knows that a bigger dot means a bigger city and that a thicker line connotes a major highway. You can journey uninformed in unfamiliar territory, if you like. You can even make your own trail or road through wilderness. Folks used to do it all the time in the olden days. Folks used to suffer much greater hardships and die younger back then too. Luckily, many of those people made maps of the roads they built or discovered. Reading those maps can save us modern folk a lot of time, energy, and disaster. A map can help you to live longer and more comfortably than people did in the olden days.

It is best to start a long hitchhiking trip from the on-ramp of a highway. Don’t stand right out on the highway itself. There are good reasons why this is illegal. It is not only dangerous for the hitchhiker, but also for the highway traffic. The chance of getting crushed into eternity by a seventy mile per hour vehicle paying strict attention to its own process is a lot greater on the highway itself than on the entrance ramp. Any driver entering a ramp at twenty-five miles per hour is going to be immediately aware that you are on the shoulder looking for a ride. That driver will have a greater ability to pull over without killing you, his or her own passengers, or the folks in other vehicles than a seventy mile per hour highway car would.

Get to the highway or main road as quickly and easily as possible. Standing on a barely traveled road in a rural area where the drivers are unfamiliar with you might last long enough for you to become vulture food. Hitching on a main city street is usually unproductive and can be dangerous as well. The highway or main road is probably close enough to where you wake up so that you can get a ride from a friend, take a local bus, or even walk to it.

Once you are wisely packed and on an entrance ramp to a main road, you’re going to need patience. You can be properly packed and intelligently discriminating about which cars you get into. That’s brilliant. But it does not change the fact that on some days you will get passed by hundreds of cars and have to wait several hours before anyone stops to pick you up. And it doesn’t change the fact that a driver who initially seems like fun may turn into a downer, or danger, after a half hour’s acquaintance.

Most of the time good luck will favor you. It will most often be a good person that will bother to pull their car over to help a stranger. You still have to be vigilant, discriminating, and patient — full time. That way you’re prepared for anything.

Prepared does not mean paranoid or even afraid. It means aware. Have fun! Traveling should be a joyful process. If you think every car pulling over for you will have an axe-murderer driving it, you should take the bus. (Unfortunately, your odds of meeting that axe-murderer won’t drop much on the bus.)

If you live through many years of hitchhiking, you will eventually get what is called “a feel for the road.” You’ll have better instincts for the best times to be on which roads, what sort of equipment to carry, whose car to not get into, and so on. Rides will seem to come more easily. This is still no time to let your humbly positive attitude or awareness fall asleep.

Whether you are novice or adept at all this, neither human driver nor divine force owes you a ride — nor are either under your control. Be pleasant and grateful to the person that finally does stop for you. It is not your benevolent host’s fault if you have been standing in freezing rain for two hours.

At its best, hitchhiking is a joint venture where you and your hosts benefit each other. In such instances, taking the ride can be a joy. If you’re not grateful, if you are arrogant, or if you are not aware of each situation you get into — any ride can certainly be otherwise.

I hope it is obvious to you that these procedures can apply to any number of life’s processes besides hitchhiking.

Pick a place you want to get to.

Prepare wisely and diligently.

Read a map.

Hit the road comfortably, but with your eyes open.

Have fun. If you aren’t having fun, you may be doing something wrong. Stop. Figure out what it is. Fix it. Get back on the road.

p.s. No matter how far you have gone down the wrong road, turn back.

About the Author

Doug “Ten” Rose may be the biggest smartass as well as one of the most entertaining survivors of the hitchhiking adventurers that used to cover America’s highways. He is the author of the books Fearless Puppy on American Road and Reincarnation Through Common Sense, has survived heroin addiction and death, and is a graduate of over a hundred thousand miles of travel without ever driving a car, owning a phone, or having a bank account.

Ten Rose and his work are a vibrant part of the present and future as well as an essential remnant of a vanishing breed.

Follow him on Facebook, Doug Ten Rose

Travel Adventure Books can be an excellent gift to your friends and family, buy from Amazon.com

Many thanks to our wonderful friends at the Pema Boutique Hotel for their help and support.

The books Fearless Puppy On American Road and Reincarnation Through Common Sense by this same author are also available through Amazon or the Fearless Puppy website, where there are sample chapters from those books. Entertaining TV/radio interviews with and newspaper articles about the author are also available there. There is no charge for anything but the complete books! All author profits from book sales will be donated to help sponsor an increase in the number of wisdom professionals on Earth, beginning with but certainly not limited to Buddhist monks and nuns.

If you missed the Introduction to the new book that will be titled Temple Dog Soldier, or would like to see several chapters of it that are available for free online, go to the Puppy website Blog section. This is a book in progress. You will be reading it as it is being created! Just like you, I don’t know what the next chapter is going to be about until it is written. As the Intro will tell you, this is a totally true story — and probably the only book ever written by and about a corpse journeying completely around the world!

[newstfionline]

Wednesday, February 3, 2021

As virus cuts class time, teachers have to leave out lessons (AP) English teachers are deciding which books to skip. History teachers are condensing units. Science teachers are often doing without experiments entirely. With instruction time reduced as much as half by the coronavirus pandemic, many of the nation’s middle school and high school teachers have given up on covering all the material normally included in their classes and instead are cutting lessons. Certain topics must be taught because they will appear on exit exams or Advanced Placement tests. But teachers are largely on their own to make difficult choices—what to prioritize and what to sacrifice to the pandemic. School day schedules have been compressed to deal with the challenges of social distancing and remote learning. The pace of instruction has also been slowed by the need to cover subjects that were skipped following the school shutdowns last spring and by students’ virus-related distractions and the difficulty in addressing both online and in-person audiences.

Winter storm wallops Mid-Atlantic, Northeast with more than two feet of snow (Washington Post) A historic winter storm continues to affect the Mid-Atlantic states and the Northeast with heavy snow, strong winds and coastal flooding. The storm brought travel to a standstill in the New York City area on Monday. In northern New Jersey, parts of New York State, eastern Pennsylvania, and much of southern New England, snow fell Monday at rates of up to three inches per hour, quickly overwhelming crews trying to clear roadways. At least 17.2 inches of snow fell in New York City’s Central Park, with the possibility of an inch or two of additional snowfall on Tuesday. This put this storm just shy of the city’s top 10 list of all-time heaviest snowstorms. Montague, N.J. picked up more than twice that, with 33.2 inches. Newton, N.J., was not far behind, at 32 inches. Some of the heaviest snow will fall Tuesday in northern New England, including Maine, where one to two feet is forecast.

The decline of coastal superstar cities (The Atlantic) Beyond anecdotal accounts of bankers fleeing Manhattan and tech workers saying sayonara to the Bay Area, we have loads of private data to back up the story that superstar cities are in trouble. According to U-Haul’s annual review, California lost more people to out-migration than any other state in 2020, and the five largest states in the Northeast—New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Maryland—joined California in the top 10 losers. Rents have fallen fastest in “pricey coastal cities,” including San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Boston, and New York City, according to Apartment List. These migration trends could spell long-term trouble for cities such as San Francisco and New York, where municipal services rely on property taxes, sales taxes, and urban-transit revenue. Absent federal intervention, “the financial situation that nearly every transit agency in America is in will certainly lead to significant service cuts, which inevitably lead to terrible spirals,” Sarah Feinberg, the interim president of the New York City Transit Authority, told me. “Service reductions are bad for commuters, devastating for essential workers, and detrimental to the economy.” If people leave New York—and newcomers don’t immediately take their place—that will reduce the city’s subway and bus revenue, which will lead to service cuts; that will make New York a harder place to live, so more people will leave the city; transit revenue will be reduced further, and on we go.

Oregon decriminalizes some drug use (Los Angeles Times) Police in Oregon can no longer arrest someone for possession of small amounts of heroin, methamphetamine, LSD, oxycodone and other drugs as a ballot measure that decriminalized them took effect on Monday. Instead, those found in possession would face a $100 fine or a health assessment that could lead to addiction counseling. Backers of the ballot measure, which Oregon voters passed by a wide margin in November, hailed it as a revolutionary move for the United States.

Biden tries to show US as democracy beacon post-Capitol riot (AP) Less than two weeks in office, President Joe Biden is facing two critical tests of whether the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol has damaged America’s standing as a beacon for democracy. Protests in Russia and a military coup in Myanmar come as American credibility on the world stage has plummeted after last month’s storming of the Capitol. That adds to the weight on Biden as he seeks to fulfill a campaign pledge to dramatically reposition the U.S. as a global leader following four years of a Trump foreign policy driven by an “America First” mantra. Biden’s top diplomat, Antony Blinken, acknowledged the difficulty. “I think there’s no doubt that the attack on our own democracy on Jan. 6 creates an even greater challenge for us to be carrying the banner of democracy and freedom and human rights around the world because, for sure, people in other countries are saying to us, ‘Well, why don’t you look at yourselves first?’” the secretary of state said in an interview with NBC News.

Many Peruvians ignore new virus lockdown orders (AP) Peru began what was supposed to be a severe lockdown Sunday to combat surging COVID-19, but the order was widely ignored in the nation’s capital. President Francisco Sagasti went on television urging Peruvians “to make an extra effort to contain the growing wave of infections and deaths.” His government told people in the capital and nine other regions to limit trips outside the home to 60 minutes and it closed churches, gymnasiums, museums, libraries and other institutions. But marketplaces were crowded. Even some bus drivers ignored mandatory face mask rules. Seventy percent of Peruvians have no income if they stay home. The government says it will give $165 each to 4 million families—but only after the two-week quarantine. Hundreds of people crowded bus stations in Lima to head for less-restricted rural regions before terminals close later this week. Flights from Brazil and Europe have been cancelled.

Moscow court orders Kremlin foe Navalny to prison (AP) A Moscow court on Tuesday ordered Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny to more than 2 1/2 years in prison on charges that he violated the terms of his probation while he was recuperating in Germany from nerve-agent poisoning. Navalny, who is the most prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, had earlier denounced the proceedings as a vain attempt by the Kremlin to scare millions of Russians into submission. The prison sentence stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that he has rejected as fabricated. The 44-year-old Navalny was arrested Jan. 17 upon returning from his five-month convalescence in Germany from the attack, which he has blamed on the Kremlin.

Not just Navalny: economic pain also behind Russian protests (Reuters) The trigger for some of the biggest protests to sweep Russia in years was the arrest of opposition politician and Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who was detained on his return to the country last month after surviving poisoning by a nerve agent. The anger runs deeper, however, and some protesters, young and old, say they have also taken to the streets to vent their frustration over declining living standards and the perceived gap between a small, wealthy elite and ordinary people. Real incomes fell 3.5% last year, unemployment is at its highest since 2011 and the economy in 2020, hit hard by the pandemic, is estimated to have suffered its sharpest contraction in 11 years. Disenchantment over inequality was targeted by Navalny in a YouTube video, released shortly after his detention and viewed more than 106 million times, which showcased a 100 billion-rouble ($1.31 billion) palace complex in southern Russia. Navalny alleged its ultimate owner was President Vladimir Putin, an allegation the Kremlin denies. Since then Putin’s former judo sparring partner has said he owned it.

Journalism crackdown rather than crackdown on Delhi police (CJR) Nine journalists in India are facing criminal charges after they reported that police shot and killed a farmer during protests in Delhi last week; officials say the farmer died in an accident, but photographic evidence and a postmortem report suggest he was, indeed, fatally shot. Yesterday, Twitter bowed to legal demands from India’s government and blocked the accounts of prominent critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Twitter later reinstated the accounts, citing free speech.

Citizens in Myanmar protest coup with noise barrage (AP) Scores of people in Myanmar’s largest city honked car horns and banged on pots and pans on Tuesday evening in the first known public resistance to the coup led a day earlier by the country’s military. What was initially planned to take place for just a few minutes extended to more than a quarter hour in several neighborhoods of Yangon. Shouts could be heard wishing detained leader Aung San Suu Kyi good health and calling for freedom. “Beating a drum in Myanmar culture is like we are kicking out the devils,” said one participant who declined to give his name for fear of reprisals.

China’s Top Diplomat Warns Biden Against Meddling in Hong Kong, Xinjiang (WSJ) China’s top diplomat warned the U.S. not to cross a “red line” as President Biden signals continuity with the previous administration on hot-button issues including Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Yang Jiechi on Tuesday Beijing time emphasized the potential for a healthy U.S.-China relationship on public health, trade and climate, echoing recent language from leader Xi Jinping. But he left limited room for negotiation on issues such as human rights, the coronavirus response and what he called U.S. interference in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang. “These issues concern China’s core interests, national dignity, as well as the sensitivities of its 1.4 billion people,” Mr. Yang said in a video address to the National Committee on United States-China Relations in New York. “They constitute a red line which must not be crossed.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken had in an interview that aired hours earlier on MSNBC criticized China for having broken its promises on Hong Kong’s autonomy and handling of the Covid-19 outbreak with a lack of transparency.

One Case, Total Lockdown (NYT) One case. One young security guard at a quarantine hotel who tested positive for the coronavirus and experienced minor symptoms. That was all it took for Perth, Australia’s fourth-largest city, to snap into a complete lockdown on Sunday. One case and now two million people are staying home for at least the next five days. One case and now the top state leader, Mark McGowan, who is facing an election next month, is calling on his constituents to sacrifice for each other and the nation. “This is a very serious situation,” he said on Sunday as he reported the case, the first one the state of Western Australia had found outside quarantine in almost 10 months. “Each and every one of us has to do everything we personally can to stop the spread in the community.” The speed and severity of the response may be unthinkable to people in the United States or Europe, where far larger outbreaks have often been met with half measures. But to Australians, it looked familiar. Ask Australians about the approach, and they might just shrug. They’ve gotten used to a routine of short-term pain for collective gain.

56 homes lost, more threatened in Australian wildfire (AP) An out-of-control wildfire burning northeast of the Australian west coast city of Perth has destroyed at least 56 homes and was threatening more Tuesday, with many residents across the region told it is too late to leave. The 7,000-hectare (17,000-acre) blaze, which has a 80-kilometer (50-mile) perimeter, began on Monday and raged through the night near the town of Wooroloo, with the shires of Mundaring, Chittering, Northam, and the city of Swan affected. The losses were expected to grow as teams continued their damage assessments.

Iran’s new rocket (WSJ) Iran tested a new rocket yesterday with improved technology that could be used in its missile program, its latest attempt to raise the stakes for the Biden administration ahead of potential negotiations over a new nuclear deal. The new rocket, named Zuljanah, was developed under a government-backed program to send civilian satellites into orbit 310 miles above ground, according to a spokesman for the Iranian Defense Ministry’s Space Department. The technology is easily transferable to Iran’s military missile program run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, experts say.

[ratface666]

Hey. You dont have to answer this...but why did you get "fuck heroin" tattood? Are you a recovering addict or you just lost friends? Like i said though, please only answer if you want.

Someone I loved very much was lost to heroin multiple times.I met him when we were kids, in elementary School in 2003. We were best friends all throughout middle school and high school. The first time I lost him to heroin was in 2012. We went from having weed sessions every night at 2am after I got off work, to him ignoring me and becoming flakier and more distant. At the time, I couldn’t understand why my best friend was phasing me out. I didn’t see or hear from him for two long years, till I encountered him on a bus, looking unlike himself and on his way to pick up. Shortly after the encounter, I received a letter from him in rehab, telling me how much he loved me and how important getting sober was to him.He was out of rehab six months later, and we became inseparable again. We were both sober, motivated, and in love. We went to meetings together, supported each other, and spent almost every spare second together. A year into our relationship, we began plans to move in together. Unfortunately that didn’t happen, because he relapsed. He turned into a different person… Someone who was paranoid and untrusting…. Who was short tempered and illogical… I knew what he was doing but he would always deny it and I couldn’t catch him in the act.He started convincing himself that I was cheating on him. He’d follow me to the gym to make sure that’s where I was going, he’d park down the street from my house and wait for my car to go anywhere, he’d drive by my work to make sure I was there, sometimes he’d wait outside and ask my coworkers about me and scare the shit out of them. One time he and I went over to my friend’s house for a game night, and he went to the bathroom for twenty minutes, not knowing that we could hear him smoking foilies through the door five feet away from us.I eventually had to leave him, feeling helpless to the situation and unable to cope with the repercussions of his addiction. He kept trying to get sober again… I would go with him to get Suboxone and I’d stay with him through withdrawals… But it never lasted long and it made me heartbroken to watch him relapse again and again and again, no matter how hard I tried or what terrible behavior I stood by him through… Because I knew it wasn’t him that was behaving so poorly, it was what addiction and heroin had turned his brain into. But eventually it was too much, and I couldn’t watch the person he had become hurt me so much anymore.After we broke up, I distanced myself from him. Friends from high school and other kids from my hometown would call me to tell me that he had been hanging out at the circle k by my work, and asked everyone I knew who came in if they knew anything about where I was or what I was doing. I would get the notifications multiple times a week, from acquaintances that I hadnt talked to in years, worried about James in the state they saw him in, and worried about me since he was asking about me so incessantly.A year and a half passes. After I moved downtown I began looking for him in the face of every addict on the street or on the bus… Part of me hoped one of them would be him and maybe I could help him…but part of me was terrified to see how far he had sunk. I began wishing that I would never have to see him like that. I almost wished he were dead so that I at least knew where he was and didn’t lose my shit every time I saw a junkie passed out on the side of the street that I’d convince myself were him.I started training for management at a store on Cap Hill when I got a call from one of my very good friends from high school. She told me that she was so sorry about James… I didn’t know what she was talking about since I had to block him in my social media accounts… But I had an idea.He was comatose from an overdose. Completely braindead. Not expected to recover. His parents took him off life support shortly after doctors advised them to do so. He died November 14, 2016. I tattooed FUCK HEROIN into my leg the day I went home from work after hearing the news.I loved James very much for many years. It was a death I’ll never fully recover from. I still see his face all the time downtown but I have to remind myself that it couldn’t possibly be him.

Sorry to give you a whole essay here, but that's the story of how I lost the love of my life to heroin, over and over again. That's the story of James, someone who was very smart, very talented, extremely funny and so caring and attentive... He was one of the greatest people I've ever encountered and he deserves to have his story told. The world should know what addiction did to him.I miss him. There has yet to be a day where he doesn't cross my mind. I've finally stopped crying nightly at the thought of him. I know the pain will never stop but I keep his memory alive... I have to.

[kmp78]

JL Article from WSJ, I´m copy pasting it here as per request because apparently the actual link is being a bitch.

The link is : https://www.wsj.com/articles/hanging-out-with-jared-leto-1504791535?mod=e2twmag

WHEN JARED LETO’S people say the plan is to meet “at Jared’s base,” I assume it’s a jet-setter’s figure of speech—as in, last month he was rock climbing in Menorca, next month he’s at Fashion Week in Milan, but Los Angeles is his base. But no—they mean an actual base: a decommissioned Air Force station tucked into the hills near Laurel Canyon, built during World War II to warn of incoming Japanese planes. The 100,000-square-foot compound, which Leto has called home since 2015, features 4-foot-thick concrete blast walls, a nuclear fallout shelter and a genuine air-traffic-control tower; it’s slightly absurd that it exists 10 minutes from the Sunset Strip, much less that someone lives in it.

On the other hand, if anyone’s going to inhabit a top-secret Cold War compound in the heart of Los Angeles, it’s probably Jared Leto.

Leto has a long history of outlandishness, whether it’s waxing his body and shedding more than 30 pounds to portray a transgender AIDS patient in Dallas Buyers Club, or sending his castmates condoms and a live rat while playing the Joker in last year’s Suicide Squad. Beneath the theatrics, he’s an industrious quintuple-threat: Oscar-winning actor, stadium-filling rock star (with his band, Thirty Seconds to Mars), digital-media entrepreneur, burgeoning fashion icon and—as if you don’t hate him enough already—successful tech investor, whose long list of winning bets includes Uber, Snapchat, Spotify and Airbnb. “I joke sometimes that I get more done on a movie set than I do when I’m off,” he says, “because I’m not as distracted.”

We’d originally planned to go for a hike today—Leto’s a big hiker—but it’s sweltering in L.A., 94 in the shade, and he’s been dealing with some back problems, so instead we’re hanging in his backyard, a shady xeriscape with a sadly neglected pool. To relieve his back, Leto is sitting cross-legged on the ground, dressed in a white Gucci T-shirt, green Gucci jogging pants (from the women’s collection) and a pair of worn-out gray Ugg slippers. His hair is its natural shade of chestnut, and his beard has achieved 1840s-prospector length. He also has the best posture I’ve ever seen. At 45, he looks almost exactly as he did nearly 25 years ago, when he first became famous playing the angsty heartthrob Jordan Catalano on My So-Called Life.

“I call him Babyface,” says his friend Alessandro Michele, creative director at Gucci. “He is timeless—it is almost impossible to give him age. If Visconti were still alive, he would love to work with Jared.”

Last night Leto was up late in the studio, working on his band’s next album. He woke around 9 a.m.—no alarm, as usual—and enjoyed his standard breakfast of muesli and almond milk, then spent some time tending to his back—heat, ice; meditation. But leisurely appearances aside, “it’s actually a super-busy time,” Leto says. In a few days he’s flying to Kazakhstan for a concert with the band; then he’ll start getting ready to promote his new film, Blade Runner 2049—the much-anticipated sequel to the dystopian 1982 sci-fi classic, in which Harrison Ford played an L.A. cop hunting down rogue androids.

Leto still remembers the first time he saw the original on VHS. “It was one of those films I just connected with,” he says. “I’ve watched it every couple of years.” In the sequel, he has what he calls “a small part” as a character named Niander Wallace, who creates said androids, known in the Blade Runneruniverse as “replicants.”

Denis Villeneuve, the director of the new film, says the inspiration for Leto’s character was David Bowie. “I needed a very charismatic, magnetic presence, someone with the aura of a rock star,” Villeneuve says. “But I also needed a great actor, because the lines he had to say were quite Shakespearean.” The character is also blind, and true to form, Leto—who once hung out with homeless junkies in Manhattan’s East Village to portray a heroin addict in Requiem for a Dream—dove in head-first. “We all heard stories about Jared, how he transforms into the characters,” Villeneuve says. “But even this didn’t prepare me for what was to come.”

Not content to simply act blind, Leto decided to become blind, ordering customized contact lenses that made his eyes totally opaque. “He entered the room, and he could not see at all,” Villeneuve recalls. “He was walking with an assistant, very slowly. It was like seeing Jesus walking into a temple. Everybody became super silent, and there was a kind of sacred moment. Everyone was in awe. It was so beautiful and powerful—I was moved to tears. And that was just a camera test!”

Leto stayed blind for the entire shoot, guided around set and never laying eyes on the rest of the cast. “That, for me, was insane,” Villeneuve says. “But he really created something. Every time Jared came on set, it was a boost of energy, tension and excitement.” (For his part, Leto says, he “didn’t dive as deep down the rabbit hole as maybe I’ve done before, but I stayed really focused.” Of course, he didn’t delude himself that he was actually blind. “I’m crazy,” he says, “but I’m not insane.”)

As he sits here in his garden, it’s easy to see the commitment that Leto can summon. He’s incredibly calm and still, with no extraneous movements, like some lizardlike desert creature conserving energy in the heat. He listens intently, with laserlike eye contact, and he barely seems to blink. (Says Michele, “I call him a monk sometimes, because he’s so concentrated.”) With his ageless physicality and otherworldliness, he could almost be a replicant himself.

Villeneuve agrees. “He has a kind of eternal youth syndrome. But the thing I love about Jared is that he’s really at peace with himself. He’s a perfectionist. And like all rock stars, he has a bit of narcissism. But it’s a narcissism that I can deal with.”

WE’VE BEEN TALKING a while when Leto hops up and starts doing a little shake. I tell him to feel free to walk around or stretch if he needs to. “No,” he says. “I was getting covered with ants. I’m going to make them work a little harder.”

We retreat inside the safety of the base, where Leto offers to take me on a tour. Although he moved in a couple of years ago, the place remains a work in progress, with dingy floor tiles, scuffed white paint and the distinct odor of midcentury bureaucracy lingering in the halls. “I’m going to redo it at some point,” Leto says, “make it nice. But I’m kind of just camping out.”

We start in his bedroom.“It’s fancy,” Leto warns. But he opens the door to reveal a glorified walk-in closet, maybe 200 square feet, with small windows, a loveseat and a mattress sitting right on the floor. “It’s amazing,” Leto says, smiling. “When it comes down to it, you don’t need very much.” The only hint of luxury is a portable clothes rack that holds what looks like a small fortune in high-end apparel—most of it from his friend Michele at Gucci.

Recently Leto has become the label’s face, both officially and unofficially, starring in a fragrance campaign and often rocking ensembles in public taken straight from the runway. The infatuation runs both ways: “I’ve been inspired by him many times,” Michele says. “The way he puts gym pants with crazy hats or something—it’s beautiful. He says, ‘I don’t care about fashion,’ but it’s not true. He’s like the most fashionable gypsy you can imagine.”

Leto seems amused that he’s become a style icon—“There was a period a decade ago when I wore Hare Krishna clothes”—but he does admit to getting bolder and more confident with age. “When I was younger I was like, ‘Give me something black,’ ” he says. “But now I love color. You know how you see old guys wearing loud Hawaiian shirts? If I walk off the bus, and the crew starts laughing, I know I put the right thing on.”

We proceed deeper into the bowels of the house, passing large metal tins labeled SURVIVAL CRACKERS (“I haven’t opened them yet”) and a few doors marked USAF TOP SECRET. After World War II ended, the base became a military film studio, churning out propaganda films hosted by the likes of Jimmy Stewart. “There are so many crazy rumors about this place,” Leto says. “Everything from ‘Part of the moon landing was filmed here’ to ‘They used to keep prisoners downstairs.’ They had laboratories. They were doing all kinds of God-knows-what.” He is clearly enamored by this.

In one of the building’s subbasements, we pass Leto’s home gym (with photos of Schwarzenegger and Bruce Lee) and then the garage where he keeps his vintage Ford Bronco—a metallic-blue beast with orange flames down the side, a birthday gift from his brother, Shannon. “He was like, ‘You can get it repainted,’ ” Leto says, “and I was like, ‘No way, man!’ I used to have a little Tonka truck that looked just like that.” The Letos grew up poor, on food stamps in Louisiana, with a hippie single mom who encouraged them to follow their artistic dreams. Leto studied film and photography at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan before dropping out and moving to L.A. in hopes of becoming a director. He started acting, and a few years later talked Shannon into moving out to start a band.

Next we walk through a hangarlike storage room Leto calls “the warehouse,” full of Thirty Seconds to Mars’s road cases and gear, and from there emerge onto the base’s old soundstage, which Leto has repurposed as a recording studio and rehearsal space. “We had an acoustician come by, and he said we have the same reverb as Abbey Road,” Leto says. “Isn’t that wild?” In the control room, an engineer is going over mixes from last night’s session, tweaking the vocal tracks for the band’s new single (“Walk on Water,” released in August). “I’d say we’re 80 percent done,” Leto says of the album. He smiles: “But I’ve been saying that for two years.”

Back upstairs, Leto starts to grow a bit bored. “I can show you more, but it’s really big,” he says. “It just keeps going and going and going.” He knows it’s kind of silly for a bachelor pad. “But it works for me,” he says. “I can do creative stuff here, I can live here. And I don’t have to sit in traffic.”

There’s one last oddity he wants to point out: a skylight in the middle of the floor that peers down into a small enclosure, maybe 8 feet square, with no discernible doors. It looks suspiciously like a dungeon. “Weird, right?” says Leto, grinning. He slips into a pitch-perfect impression of Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs: “Put the lotion in the basket!” he booms, cracking up. I point out that at least the skylight unlatches from the inside, leaving open the possibility of escape. “Yeah,” he says, “but you’d have to get up there first”—a sheer 10-foot climb with no holds. He smiles deviously. “Give ’em just enough hope to keep ’em alive.”

IT’S NEARING TIME for Leto to say goodbye: His next appointment is already waiting, some people from a tech giant. At the moment, Leto is looking for a buyer for his digital streaming platform, VyRT, a company he started in 2011 to live-stream his band’s concerts. That was his second foray into the tech world; previously he had launched a digital-marketing company called the Hive, and over the past decade has become a serious tech investor, backing more than 50 startups including Uber, Snapchat, Reddit, Spotify, Slack and Nest.

“He’s very different from the normal cats from Hollywood and L.A. I see playing around the Valley,” says Nest co-founder Tony Fadell, whose company Leto invested in three years before it was acquired by Google for $3.2 billion, in 2014. (Leto didn’t disclose the size of his investment, but Fadell says for “an individual, it was a significant amount of money.”) “A lot of people from that world say, ‘My manager’s gonna take care of it, my agent’s gonna take care of it’—they don’t worry about the details,” Fadell adds. “And a lot of people are meddlers or know-it-alls who want to lead from the bench. That was not his thing. Jared is very curious, very detail-oriented; he really gets involved, and he really understands. He only added value.”

“I was actually really impressed,” says Stewart Butterfield, a co-founder of Slack, which Leto invested in in 2014. “Jared gave a lot of feedback, and all of it was very practical, specific, concrete feedback about usability and improving the platform. He found the right balance,” Butterfield adds, “between persistent and irritating.”

When it comes to his investing philosophy, Leto says, “I like to learn. So if I can be involved in a company that teaches me something, I’m happy.” There are also a few deals he passed on and still kicks himself over. “Oh, my God, are you kidding?” Leto says. “There are some doozies. I can’t [talk about it]—I’ll have to call a therapist.”

All these side hustles aside, Leto’s not giving up his day job anytime soon. He’s attached to play Andy Warhol in an upcoming biopic written by Terence Winter (The Wolf of Wall Street), and he’ll soon be directing his first feature, a police thriller called 77 with a script by L.A. noir legend James Ellroy. Leto—a devoted rock climber who sometimes posts his best ascents to Instagram along with a monkey emoji—has previously directed a documentary series on America’s national parks called Great Wide Open as well as several music videos.

“Always when you are around Jared Leto, you are in Jared Leto’s theater,” Denis Villeneuve says. “It’s like a play—you become a character. But he’s having fun with it, and he brings you in his game. You just fall in love with him.”

If there’s one thing Leto hasn’t done but would like to, it’s a comedy. Sadly, no one ever asks. “I might not be at the top of the list for, like, a funny dude,” he says. “But if someone is dying or suffering greatly, I’ll get a call.” He laughs ruefully. “I got calls about [playing] Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, David Koresh and Jim Jones, all within two weeks. I’m not doing them,” he adds, “but I thought for a second, ‘Oh, my God, I should do them all.’ Just put them together like a Criterion Collection box set. And then retire.”