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thephantomofthe-internet · 5 years ago

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Midnight at the Pick n’ Save

Billy Hargrove x Reader

Word Count: 5,491

Warnings: underage drinking, swearing, police mention (is that weird?)

Author’s note: Is this any good? I don’t know but I like it. Lemme know if it sucks though, I’ll make a note.

Tag List: @hotstuffhargrove @carolimedanvers @casaharrington @thechickvic @alex--awesome--22 @lilmissperfectlyimperfect @hipsmcgee @ashescilev @so-not-hotmess @balladblood

There wasn’t much to do in Hawkins on weekends, especially during summer break. You could spend the day at the mall, go the pool or the movies, maybe drive out of town to the lake. The fourth of July carnival was the biggest thing the town could look forward to. Maybe someone would throw a party if their parents went out of town or someone’s older brother would buy them a keg from a couple towns over, which would get hoisted into the forest to party out there. That was the extent of excitement the town could muster.

And so, if you had a car and a few friends, cruising was an optimal night time activity. With your music turned up on the stereo and your windows pulled down, the wind whipping your hair around you and your friend’s hair, you could look over your tiny town without much care, laughing and talking with your friends. It was a simple thing, but on a good night it was fun. You could find out a lot from driving around. You always found somebody out at night, and they could tell you about a party a town over or a rumour freshly founded or even just where some cooler people were hanging out.

That Saturday, you’d planned to go cruising with your friends. It was careful procedure. You had to do your makeup and your hair and choose clothes that, when combined, made you look effortlessly cool and hot while still be casual. It was Stacy’s turn to drive, so you had all evening to prepare yourself. Now, this wasn’t exactly an intense procedure, it wasn’t prom or anything. There was no intense grooming pattern. You took down your ratty perm from the low ponytail you’d had it in all day and fluffed it up a bit. You touched up your makeup from earlier in the day, choosing a purple lip gloss, just for fun. You changed into your favourite jeans and a clean, sweat free tee shirt. You grabbed your jean jacket, even though it was probably unnecessary for the humid night. You were last on the pickup list, living on the more diverse side of the town. That wasn’t a problem though, since Stacy would force Tina and Heather to sit in the very back since it wouldn’t be ideal to shove your ass in the backseat while someone else begrudgingly held the front seat.

The sound of Stacy’s horn blaring through your open window signalled your rush downstairs, pulling your purse off the railing, shoving your feet into your shoes, and rushing out the door before your mother could even say goodbye.

Stacy had the windows rolled all the way down and the roof down on her mother’s cherry red convertible. Tina and Heather were lounging in the back, the latter who was pouting dramatically in the far right seat, behind the driver. You popped open the door and slid inside.

“What’s the plan, girls? Anything happening?” you asked with a giddy grin, slamming the door behind you.

“Haven’t heard anything yet but there’s hope. According to Macy, Andy Withers’ parents are out of town. He’ll probably have a few friends over, which’ll turn into something to check out.” Tina explained from the back, tossing her right arm over the back of the white leather seat.

“I don’t care where we go, as long as I get five minutes alone with Billy. Gimme five minutes and he’s mine.” Heather added from her own seat.

“You’re still into that guy?” You asked, turning to Stacy who rolled her eyes and nodded. Heather had been into the new guy since she started working with him at the public pool. She’d spent the whole school year scoffing at his attempts to charm anything with tits, herself included. But the second she started spending her afternoons with him shirtless and sweaty, all bets were off. Heather had fallen lusty head over lusty heels for the guy. And Billy Hargrove didn’t give a rat’s ass about her. He didn’t give her the time of day, he barely acknowledged her outside of work. But whatever he was doing at work was enough for her to embarrass herself over him consistently.

Asking anything about Billy was a bad idea. You had just made a fatal error.

“Uh, obviously Y/N, I mean have you seen the guy?” Heather asked dramatically.

“Yeah I have I-” it didn’t matter what you said; Heather was going to talk over you. Like right now.

“He’s soooo fucking hot! I mean his abs and his arms and his cute little butt and his fucking smile? Have you seen his smile? I swear that man was crafted by the devil himself! God, what I wouldn’t give for just a piece of him, just a night! With him breathing in my ear and grunting in his gravelly voice oh my god! I could die and go to heaven right now!” Heather rambled, her head falling onto the back seat, long brown hair blowing up in the wind and heavily made up eyes squeezed tight, a giddy smile scrunching up her face.

You looked to Stacy, whose face had pulled into a grimace. “Ugh, Heather, can you reign in your hormones, the whole car’s gonna stink like fish if you keep this up.” She groaned, causing Tina grimace herself.

“Ew, Stace, do you have to be so nasty?” she cried, sliding his lime green tinted sunglasses up onto the top of her head. Heather reached up and smacked Stacy upside the head.

“Hey! No hitting the driver! Do you want me to crash this thing?!?” Stacy yelled, whipping around to sneer at Heather, who was giggling evilly from her seat, hands coming up to cover her mouth.

“Hey, no fighting you two.” You turned to Heather “We’ll keep an eye out for Hargrove and” you turned back to the front of the car “Tina will keep her out of your hair.” Heather gasped and Tina groaned, both utterly defeated and annoyed judging by their expressions in the rear view mirror.

Hawkins wasn’t exactly lively, but at night everything had a certain charm. When everything was a bit quieter and the lightening bugs were out, the stars flashing above you and the warm glow of the streetlights guiding your weaving way through town, you could almost call the tiny town beautiful. You shut your eyes, leaning your head against the back of your seat, letting the warm air brush your face and pull your hair into the air. It was a beautiful night, you almost didn’t want to find anything to do, this was sufficient for you.

Of course, when you’re least interesting in it, something decided to go down.

Stacy pulled up to the intersection on Main Street and the loud screams and clatter of another car full of teenagers pulled up next to yours. You peaked over, your eyes catching the annoyed look of Steve Harrington. His car was filled with the awful mix of Carol, Tommy H, Macy Clarke, and Mikey Wilson, all clambering to be the most annoying couple in the car.

“What’s happening?” Stacy called with a giggle, waving to Macy, who’d abandoned your little group to pal around with Mikey months ago. You secretly suspected he’d knock her up, since his dislike of condoms was known throughout the school and he’d knocked up two other girls. The big ‘A’ was a staple of being in any sort of relationship with that guy, even being his lab partner could end up with a girl at the clinic in Carmel, wondering how Mikey had gotten the money for the procedure. For now, Macy seemed happy, but you wondered how long it would last.

“Andy Withers’ brother bought him a keg! Apparently Billy’s gonna beat his keg record and anyone who challenges him! Free beer and Andy’s brother’s got his plug in, weed too!” Carol called, unlatching her lips from Tommy’s neck long enough to explain the night’s excitement.

“Harrington’s gonna beat that fucker’s record!” Mikey called, slapping the beleaguered driver’s shoulder. Steve winced, although you suspected it wasn’t from the smack Mikey had given him.

You had, unintentionally, been his first rebound after his disastrous breakup with Nancy Wheeler, an intense and intensely awkward few weeks of dating that ended with him dumping you to chase after Stacy for the rest of the year. You had taken a chance on the heartbroken kid, who in turn promised not to hurt you. And then he went around and made you hate him in one swift move. You could’ve killed the kid, luckily Stacy shoved him off at every advance and assured you that he wasn’t worth the effort.

The glare you were shooting him could’ve killed a man. It should’ve killed him. You suspected it slowly was.

“See you guys there!” Stacy called as the light turned green and Steve shot off like a bullet. Stacy was quick to follow, much to the rest of the car’s delight. You weren’t super excited to be heading to some shitty party that the cops would break up in an hour. Heather would find her way to the front of the crowd to watch Hargrove sweat and drool all over the keg and then waste beer to assert his masculinity, and then like clockwork, he’d ignore her and she’d spend the rest of the night whining about it. Stacy and Tina would find some guys to glom onto and you’d be left in the corner, nursing a beer, stuck at that dumb party until the cops showed, and then you drive your drunk friends’ home.

What a great night.

Even worse, stupid Andy Withers lived like, five minutes from where you were, so you didn’t even have time to convince your dumb friends to turn back. Stacy parked a bit down the road, for the safety of her mother’s expensive car, and you began the short trek to his house, following the blasting music.

“Alright ladies, let’s split up and find some fun, we meet at the car when the cops come, anyone not there gets left behind. Y/N has the keys.” Stacy handed you the keys by their lucky rabbit’s foot keychain and you pocketed them. Stacy’s tight denim skirt had no pockets and the others weren’t trusted to drive stick shift.

Stacy and Tina paired off, probably spotting the Gardner twins, Zach and Matt, who they’d been desperate to get with all year, something about wanting to compare and see if they truly were identical. Heather rushed out to the backyard, to find the keg and hopefully Billy.

For some reason, you decided to follow Heather. Something about that scene sounded more intriguing than sitting in the living room, watching people dry hump. Watching Hargrove kick Harrington’s ass at something would be pretty fun.

Except, when you got outside, Harrington was in the air and people were screaming. “Come on buddy, you’ve almost got him!” you heard Tommy H scream, holding up half of his body. You furrowed your brow, finding Heather in the crowd and taking up the spot next to her. Steve tapped out a few seconds later, right as the crowd cheered wildly. He must have beat Billy’s record, not that you knew what it was.

“You tied him man, you didn’t beat him.” Mikey said as Steve’s feet hit the ground. Steve nodded, breathing hard as he stepped back, gesturing to Billy to take the place in front of the keg.

“Come on Hargrove you can beat him.” Tommy cried, pushing Billy into position. The ladies of the crowd cheered wildly and, with a shrug, Billy slapped the keg and Tommy and Mikey lifted Billy up by his ankles. The crowd started counting out the seconds as he lasted thirty, forty, fifty seconds, then a minute. According to Heather, to beat the record he still had another forty seconds to go to meet the record. And by the looks of him, Billy was already giving in.

“Come on Hargrove!” you screamed, turning everyone’s attention on to you, including Billy, who made a noise of confusion. You found his eyes as he lifted his head slightly. You mouthed ‘drink up bitch’ at him, giving a small nod.

“Thirty-eight, thirty-nine, one forty! Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three, forty-four, forty-five-” the crowd called. Billy slapped the can and Tommy and Mikey dropped him. He spit out a massive mouthful of cheap beer, slapping his chest as the crowd cheered. Steve slinked away and Heather ran to congratulate him. You took that as your cue to wander back inside. You shoved your hands in your pockets, starting your quest for the singular drink you were gonna be able to have since you were going to have to drive the whole team home. Winding your way into the kitchen and into the fridge, you found a can of diet Tab, not exactly your poison but it would to the trick to keep you occupied while you waited for the cops to show. You grabbed a red plastic cup and poured the drink in, pausing as it fizzed to hold the cup over the sink and then tossing the can away, heading back into living room to watch the scene go down. Someone was blasting Prince in the room and its rug had turned into a dance floor for horny teens. You watched the crowds grind and rock against one another with a bored expression, crossing your arms over your chest, taking occasional sips from your plastic cup, trying not to cringe at the awful taste.

“Who left you all alone over here?” a husky voice breathed in your ear. You leaned back, snapping your head around to meet the eye of Billy Hargrove. He was looking you over with this look-you couldn’t explain it. His eyes were on fire and his tongue had lapped out of his mouth, running over his lower lip. He looked at you as though you were the coldest drink in the hottest desert and he was about to lap you up.

It made your stomach turn.

“Nobody leaves me anywhere. I chose to be here.” You huffed, turning your attention back to the crowd in front of you. You found Tina and Stacy, who had indeed found The Gardner twins and had somehow gotten them to dance. Well, to stand there while the two grinded into them as the twins grinned like fools down at them.

“Is that right?” Billy grinned, leaning into the space you’d made between you.

“That’s right.” You replied. Stacy caught your eye and pulled away from whichever Gardner twin she’d chosen, saying something to him before bounding over to you.

“Hey, so me and Tina are gonna leave with Zach and Matty, can you make sure Heather gets home alright?” she asked, bouncing in her white New Balance’s.

“Heather can handle herself; I’ll tell her what’s happening. She’ll get home alright.” You reached into your pocket, pulling out the keys “Here, get those guys outta here before the cops bust this shit.” You said, jingling the keys in front of her face. Stacy grabbed the keys with a cheeky grin, nodding before rushing off towards the boys and Tina.

As if on cue, Andy Withers busted into the living room, screaming at the top of his lungs as someone cut out the music “The cops are coming!”

Everyone ran in different directions. Tina and Stacy grabbed the twins and busted out the back door through the kitchen, abandoning you and Heather as expected. You’d lost Heather after going inside and away from the keg, so the only hope of finding her was to get outside and hopefully meet her somewhere by the car.

“Well, good luck!” you said quickly, nodding to Billy before making a break for it, rushing the back door and hopping the fence. You cut between the houses and onto the sidewalk as the police van, sirens blaring, pulled up in front of the house and two annoyed looking cops climbed out. You caught sight of the bearded Officer Hopper, who you were already in shit with. You rushed off towards the red convertible, looking around frantically for Heather.

But Heather wasn’t here. Tina and Stacy rushed to the car. “Don’t be a drag, Y/N.” Tina whined, shoving you out of the way as they got in. You could’ve killed her. She was such a bitch sometimes. You found your balance again, making a break down the sidewalk, running as fast as you could.

The rumble of an engine pulling up to you startled you and you turned to see the blue Camaro and Billy Hargrove waving you over. “Get in, Y/N!” he called. You weren’t going to argue with fucking Hopper on your path and a yearlong grounding in store when your mother found out where you were. You got in without question. Billy sped off before you could even pretend to put on a seatbelt, heading as far away from the scene as possible.

“You know my name?” you blurted over the wind rushing through the open windows. You could’ve jumped out of the moving car right then and there. He looked at you like you were crazy.

“Yeah, course I do.” He replied simply.

You hadn’t realized that he had even noticed you before that night. Stacy, Tina, and Heather stole the spotlight most of the time. Stacy was the pretty popular one who boys adored, Tina always threw the year’s biggest rager, and Heather knew everything about everyone. You were just…their plus one most of the time. Sure, you brought the music and the quippy jokes, you held the sleepovers during the summers off and bought the ice cream when someone got dumped, but you weren’t the focus to outsiders. Your friends adored you, but the rest of Hawkins? They tended to forget that you existed. Even your parents forgot about you.

Billy dropped his speed significantly once you were away from the party, which was a bit of a disappointment to you. You’d just started to enjoy the ride. He seemed to be looking for something. You assumed it was a place to drop you off.

“You can just drop me at the Pick n’ Save.” You said softly, pointing out the spinning sign, illuminated under a dozen streetlamps. Billy grunted, pulling into the parking lot. You climbed out, mumbling a quick thank you, and made your way over to the curb. You expected him to speed off again, but he didn’t. Instead he watched you for a moment before parking his car and stepping out.

“What are you doing?” he asked incredulously.

You shrugged “Whenever we go to these stupid parties, it’s our rule that if we get separated we meet here. I never found Heather, so I have to wait to see if she shows up here.” You explained, taking a seat on the cold cement curb.

“What happens when she doesn’t show?”

“Then I go home. Heather’s a big girl, but if I don’t wait she’ll never let me here the end of it.” you replied, letting out a deep sigh through your nose.

Billy nodded, pulling his pack of cigarettes from the breast pocket of his red silk shirt, mostly unbuttoned and its short sleeves rolled up even higher. He pulled one from the pack and lit it, offer you one. You took it, even though you only smoked at parties, and lit it off the end of Billy’s, tagging a long drag.

“Safety only matters when I’m not there waiting…” you muttered on the exhale.

“You just gonna sit here, on the cold ass ground, waiting for someone who might show up?” Billy asked. You nodded. He nodded back dumbly, turning and heading to his car. You assumed he was leaving, but he pushing himself onto the hood of his car and slapped the spot next to him, motioning you over. You did as he asked, because you didn’t want a standoff to ensue with him.

“You don’t have to wait here with me.” You said, standing in front of him, crossing your arms over your chest.

“I’m not gonna leave you here alone. Don’t need shit on my conscious if you get hurt.” He replied, smacking the spot again. You pushed yourself onto the hood, pulling your knees up to your chest and wrapping your arms around them.

“So…what’s up with Tina and Stacy?” Billy asked.

“Huh?”

“The Gardner twins?” his voice was full of disgust. It made you laugh a little bit. His reaction wasn’t exactly far off: the twins were some of the worst people in Hawkins. They were crude and cruel, insensitive and just plain stupid.

“Oh I don’t know…they’ve had this thing about them since Tina’s Halloween thing…they want to know how identical, identical twins are. The Gardner’s are the only identical twins who fit their standards: boys and our age.” You explained, focusing on the moths hovering around the lights outside the building.

“Jesus…that’s fucking stupid.” Billy muttered, looking over to you. You looked so wide eyed and a little scared, it was cute.

“At least it’s a goal. And they achieved it. Better than some people...” You shrugged, turning to meet Billy’s eye. He looked embarrassed and turned away quickly. You turned away too, out of principle.

“What about Heather?” he asked.

“What do you mean what about Heather?” you countered, furrowing your brow.

“What’s her deal?” he replied.

“How do you not know?” Billy shrugged. “She’s been chasing after you all summer.”

Billy scowled “Oh yeah, I know about that. But why? She already got Harrington, isn’t that enough?”

“What?”

“You didn’t hear? After Harrington got dumped, he dated some girl for a bit, and then Heather jumped in. They got caught doing it in the locker room. Then he moved on to Tracey Knowles.” He told you.

You didn’t know what to say. Heather didn’t. She knew. She didn’t even really like him. She wouldn’t do that to you…

She totally would.

“That bitch…” you muttered to yourself.

“Huh?”

“I was the first girl. I was dating Steve after he got his ass dumped. And Heather fucked him. She fucked him for no fucking reason. I could kill her.” You cried, smacking the hood of his car violently.

Billy let out a low whistle “Wow…what a bitch…”

You nodded “Always has been.” Then, something dawned on you. “And now, she wants a full set. Why only have boned one of the most popular guys in school when you can have both?” you bit bitterly.

“You think?”

“I know. She’s a collector, just like Tina and Stacy. Just another notch on her lipstick case.” You replied.

“Damn…” he muttered. He almost looked offended, which was not your intended goal, but it was certainly shocking. Billy Hargrove never showed any emotions other than anger, annoyance, or vague amusement. He wasn’t shocked or hurt by anything. You guessed, that was until now.

“I mean…it’s a genuine want. If I have to hear about how hot you are one more time I’m gonna kill the girl.” You chuckled awkwardly, rubbing your covered arms as if you were cold.

“Yeah I don’t like her.” Billy said coldly.

“Oh.” You replied “Well then never mind.” You knocked the ash off the end of your cigarette, taking one final drag before dropping the butt off the side of the car, to burn out on the pavement.

“I’m not part of a matching set.” He added, equally bitter as before.

“I get it. Sorry I brought it up.” You replied defensibly.

You both went silent for a moment as Billy cooled down again. He spoke first. Maybe you were too quiet for him.

“It was a cool party, though, right up until the feds showed up. Andy knows how to throw a good party.” Billy commented into the dead air. You looked at him, completely bemused for a moment, unsure as to whether or not he’d truly fed into his ego or if he just didn’t know.

“Andy Withers parties suck.” You replied, eying him over to try to figure out how drunk he was. He looked distressingly sober.

“On what planet?!? Everybody was there!” Billy countered with a laugh.

“Everyone was there because you were there. If you weren’t nobody would go except for a crowd of wannabes. They always get shut down so fast that they aren’t worth getting caught for.” You explained with a smirk.

“Yeah?” Billy said with a growing look of satisfaction.

“Yeah.”

Billy grinned, leaning back onto his windshield. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.” He said, pulling a second cigarette out of the pack, tossing the butt he’d been holding between his teeth at the farthest streetlight. “I mean that’s almost the teen dream.”

“What’s missing?” you asked, looking down at him. You’d let go of your legs, letting them dangle over the hood and you leaned back on your palms, stretching your back.

“The girl.” He smirked, looking you over with the girl.

“Oh yeah? Who’s your dream girl? And don’t pull any of that shit where you try to get me to sleep with you by saying it’s me. That won’t happen.” You asked, lulling your head to the side to look him over.

“Lemme think then.” He said, leaving a massive pause as his face pulled into a firm line, squinting his eyes as though the process was taking some serious effort. It probably was: Billy had slept a majority of the population in Hawkins, it was even rumoured that he was sleeping with someone’s mom, although nobody could decide who it was.

“Samantha Baker.” He finally said quietly.

“Who?” you asked, thinking it over thoroughly. There was only one Samantha in your grade, Samantha White, who was the only punk left at Hawkins High. But the name sounded so familiar to you, you couldn’t place it at first.

And then it hit you like a freight train.

“Wait. Like Molly Ringwald’s character in 16 candles?!?” you cried, eyes going wide as the full moon hanging above you. Billy nodded far too confidently for what he had admitted and you couldn’t help from laughing your ass off.

His dream girl wasn’t a porn star or a rock star or even a Playboy bunny. It was sixteen year old Molly Ringwald. It didn’t make sense to you at all.

“Seriously? Why?” you asked, utterly shocked.

Billy shrugged, his confidence draining significantly. “I don’t really know I just…she really digs that guy, Jack or whatever, I like a girl who really likes me.” He said.

That made too much sense.

Your smile turned to a knowing smirk. “So, you like a girl who has no other personality or interests other than you?”

Billy’s expression soured “You don’t get it.” he mumbled.

“When did you even see that movie?”

His body curled away from you, suddenly turning very shy, which was not an expected bit of behaviour from the macho tough guy of Hawkins. “I took in a double feature at the Hawke with Carol.”

That didn’t make sense.

“When did you go out with Carol? Her and Tommy are the item of Hawkins High, they only break up once a semester-” then it hit you.

“Was it when Tommy had mono? Or when they broke up because Carol found out who he got mono from?” you asked. You felt like you were on Jeopardy, about win the Daily Double, excitement coursed through your veins.

Billy held up two fingers, signally that the second answer was correct. He cleared his throat before explaining himself “Tommy promised to take her and then they broke up and she was moping around so I said I would take her if we saw something I wanted to see too…”

“So you willing took Carol to see a romantic comedy?”

Billy nodded. You were very surprised. This was a very new side of Billy that you would have never in a million years expected to find underneath the sneering asshole who sped around town.

“Well aren’t you a sweetheart?” you laughed as Billy pulled a pouty, embarrassed and annoyed look.

“Don’t go spreading it around, I have a reputation to uphold.” He puffed out his chest with pride.

“Yeah sure.” You giggled, crossing an ‘x’ over your heart and holding up your right hand, a silent and solemn swear to not tell anyone.

“What about you? Who’s your dream guy?” he asked, pushing himself up onto one elbow, looking you over the same way you did to him.

“Oh I don’t know…I don’t really have one. I mean every girl likes Jake Ryan… I guess him.” You replied. You honestly didn’t have an answer. Heather’s latest dream guy was Bender from The Breakfast Club, Tina liked Tom Cruise, and Stacy weirdly adored Jay Gatsby. But you never really had a definitive answer. Jake Ryan was the closest thing you had.

“Who?”

“The guy from 16 Candles, you called him Jack.”

“Why him?” Billy scrunched up his face in disgust.

“Hm…because…well he’s hot for one thing.” Billy rolled his eyes at that comment, but you continued anyway “And because he really wants to be loved. He sees Samantha and, even though he knows almost nothing about her, he likes her. I guess I like him because he will see you when nobody else does.” You explained, more to yourself than to him.

Billy nodded and you believed, for the first time in the whole conversation, that he was actually listening. “So, you want a guy who does the bare minimum?” He replied coldly.

“Better than what I get from most guys. I’m usually forgotten in favour of Tina or Stacy.” That sounded more pathetic than you wanted to, but you didn’t try to take it back.

Billy let your words hang in the air, unsure of what to do with them. That was a bit too heavy for him to tackle, he didn’t know how. He’d be lying if he said he’d noticed you before tonight. But you caught his eye at the party and he intended to hold onto you for awhile longer, even if all he had was your attention and nothing else.

You chuckled to yourself, a thought coming to your mind “You know…if you want a girl to adore you and nothing else…Heather is that.” Billy looked to you with a scowl. You pressed on “She loses her personality with whatever guy she’s going with and assimilates to what they like. She’s like a chameleon or something. It’s really weird.”

“That makes Harrington Ryan or whatever.” Billy countered, leaning in closer with a cocky smirk that you found more charming than discomforting.

“Any reasoning beyond you trying to piss me off?” you asked, matching his expression.

“He wants exactly what that guy wanted. A serious relationship or whatever. The guy acts like he wants casual shit now, but everyone knows that he’s looking for a girl like his ex to settle down with.” He explained vaguely, gesturing off into the distance. “He’s like that guy but clueless.”

You scrunched up your mouth, humming an annoyed tune. “That’s…distressingly accurate.” You admitted, sighing softly “Maybe I don’t know what I want…”

“I know what I want.” Billy said.

“Yeah?” you asked, watching the lightening bugs begin to swirl around the car. You hadn’t noticed how dark it had gotten and how late it must have been. You’d definitely missed your curfew. But being grounded didn’t really matter to you now.

“I wanna kiss you.” You hadn’t realized how close he was until his hot breath fanned your neck once again.

You giggled softly “I’m not gonna hook up with you, Hargrove, I don’t even know you.”

“I didn’t ask for that…all I asked for was a kiss…” he was looking down at you through his lashes and his eyes were so blue. “All I want is a kiss…” And when he leaned down to kiss you, you didn’t pull away. Maybe you were bored or lonely or simply horny, maybe you were mad at Heather for treating you like shit, or maybe it was because Billy Hargrove was quite possibly the prettiest boy you’d ever met, but the kiss was the best you’d had thus far. You didn’t believe in the whole electricity, fireworks thing everybody else seemed to feel from kissing someone. But this was damn close. You didn’t want it to end. Neither of you did.

“Y/N you fucking bitch! I can’t believe you!” the shrill scream made you pull away.

Heather made it after all.

“Oh go screw Harrington again.” You yelled back, rolling your eyes at her stunned and angry face. You pulled Billy back in for another kiss with a smirk, which he didn’t pull away from.

Sure, it was petty. But being petty with Billy’s lips attached to yours didn’t feel too bad.

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pixieungerstories · 6 years ago

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Housemates - 1

I’m going to be running a promotion about these guys on Patreon and if nothing else, go check out the inspiration board that goes with this chapter. If I try to post it, Tumblr doesn’t let my post go up. This is the current $1+ novel, it releases one new chapter a week, but I have two other novels running just now too.

WANTED:

Housekeeper wanted for a species diverse household. Duties include planning, shopping for, preparing and cleaning up after the evening meal as well as light housekeeping in common areas only. Payment includes: room and board and as a small salary. Perfect for a student attending Local University. Campus is just a short walk out the front door and across Hyde Park. Residents would provide a security escort to and from evening classes, if required. Contact Bazur at 555-2972 for more information.

“How are you going to get this past your mom?” Jenn demanded.

Vinny sighed, put down her coffee and leaned back in her chair. They were in the coffee shop in the student union building. It was nice. Its was summer, so the fireplace wasn’t running, but the coffee was better than at the Starbucks across the street. She stared at the vaulted ceiling and carded her fingers through her long, chestnut brown hair. Then she sat up, put on her professional face and said, “It’s simple logistics. Chem 403 requires a night lab. It runs from 7:30 until 10:30. While the busses as still technically running, it is down to slow service so-”

“It’s going to take you two hours to get home.” Jenn finished.

Vinny nodded, “I can’t even get on the bus until almost eleven. Plus I have a transfer in a bad part of downtown at 11:30 where I have to wait twenty minutes for the next bus to come. Then I don’t get home until 1:00am and I have to be back at The U for Math 476 at 8am. I can’t afford a car. Hell, I can’t afford school if I lose my scholarship. I certainly can’t afford to get a place closer to campus. This is perfect.”

“Depending on how much house work there is.” Jenn pointed out. “Some people are total slobs.”

Vinny nodded. “But I won’t know that until I go for an interview and find out.”

“Assuming you get an interview.” Jenn looked hard at her friend. “You already applied, didn’t you?”

Vinny gave a head wiggle/shoulder shrug and grinned a tight lipped smile.

Jenn pushed her glasses further up her freckle covered nose as grinned back. “Have you told your mom?”

Vinny’s smile faded. “There isn’t any point. If I don’t get the job or the house is a disaster, or if the people are creepy, then I just don’t say anything and we… try to come up with a different plan. Fall term doesn’t start for two months, so if it doesn’t work out, I have a little time.”

Jenn nodded, slowly. “That’s fair. But what happens if you turn up for your interview and it’s a pack of werewolves and they eat you?”

Vinny gasped, “Jenn that is so speciesist!”

Jenn shook her head, “OK, then, what if you turn up and it’s a bunch of human men who are rapists and ax murderers? The point is, how are you going to be safe?”

Vinny’s grin turned conspiratorial, “You could come with me to the interview. That way you would know where I was and could call the cops if I’m not out in twenty minutes. Or if you hear screaming.”

Jenn narrowed her eyes. “When is the interview?”

Vinny looked at the clock, “In about an hour. But it is just across the park so we have time to finish our coffees.”

“Vinny!”

“Look, I already walked past the place. It’s one of those big houses on University boulevard. The really pricey one’s facing the park. The is even a park bench basically right across the street from it. “I’ll buy you a fritter and a tea to go and you can hang out and snapchat how you are a good friend while I have my interview. It’ll be fine.”

“Ugh. Fine.”

—-

It was an imposing three story, red brick manor. It was across the street from the park, which meant it must have million dollar views. Plus the university area was pricier to start with. The whole building was intimidating.

Jenn whistled, “Well, you know whoever lives there can afford to hire a maid.”

Vinny nodded. She took a deep breath. “Wish me luck!” she said, before striding confidently across the street and ringing the doorbell.

The man who answered the door was somewhere over six feet tall. The way he filler out his jeans and t-shirt suggested he had a serious gym habit. He was also a gargoyle. His skin was a light cement grey and he was taking the phrase chiselled features to a whole new level.

Vinny blinked, but recovered quickly, “Are you Mr Bazur? I’m Vinny. I’m here for my interview.” She held out her hand.

He hesitated, then carefully shook it. His skin was more leathery than Vinny was expecting. She also knew that gargoyles, by preference don’t wear clothing. There was no need. Their hide was impervious to the elements. He was dressed for her comfort, not his. That was something to think about.

“Come in. I’ll show you around first, then if you have any questions, we can go from there.”

Vinny nodded and stepped into an entryway that was like something out of an old Hollywood movie. There was patterned carpet, a good sized foyer with a circle table, then a grand wooden staircase leading up towards a landing with a big bay window. There was wainscotting. There was decorative pillars. None of it was new, it looked like a well cared for antique. The took the doorway to the right. “This is the dining room. We actually eat here. There are six of us, you would be number seven.”

To the left of that was a set of pocket doors that opened to a pantry with a sink that they walked through to the kitchen. It was, old but clean. There was a gas range and a farmhouse sink with a built in porcelain drainboard. “The job includes planning and cooking supper. We are on our own for other meals.”

“Any special diets?”

Baruz froze. “Tristan is a vegetarian, Derick is … not. They are both raw foodies, so they will give you a list when you are grocery shopping. Other than that, they will take care of themselves. As for the rest of us, you cook, we will eat.”

“Tell me about Tristan and Derick.”

Bazur sighed. “Tristan is a minotaur, Derick is a werewolf.”

Vinny nodded slowly. “Are there any humans in this house at all?”

“You would be the first.”

“Oh.” She thought about that. “What is the grocery budget like?”

“$1000 a week, which sounds like lots, but we are big eaters.”

“What are you expecting the workload to be like? The ad said it would be a good job for a student, but you are already talking about an hour and a half a day to prepare food, and wash up afterwards.”

“We have a rotation for dishes.”

Vinny frowned. “And does that work? Because I don’t want to be ready to start supper and find out I have to either chase down whoever didn’t clean up or wash them myself before I start the next meal.”

“I am expecting the workload to be about two and a half to three hours a day. If we are more work than that, we will have a meeting and you can share a list of chores that you need us to do. We all do our own laundry. Housekeeping would be cleaning the bathrooms, vacuuming and washing the floors, dusting, and organizing dinner.”

“Ok. Tidying where?”

“The common areas.” Bazur replied. “We are each responsible for our own rooms.”

“And I get a room in the house?”

“You get half the third floor. There is a private bathroom up there. It would be yours exclusively.”

Vinny thought about that. “Let’s see the rest of the house.”

The kitchen opened on to the back entry way, which had a door on each side. The first opened onto a beautiful backyard. “Tristan is in charge of landscaping.”

Heading back inside, Bazur pointed to the opposite door, “That goes to the basement. It isn’t finished. You don’t have to worry about that, but I will show it to you if you want.”

“Maybe next time.”

The last door opened into a TV room. There were three large couches, a HUGE TV and a collections of gaming systems. The coffee table was clean, but there were drink rings.

“How long did it take you to clean before the interview?”

Bazur coughed. “A while. But everyone is responsible for their own mess, you just need to vacuum around it.”

The next room has a fireplace, a set of french doors leading outside, one of which had been modified to include a doggie door. It also had a futon and a dresser. “This is Derick’s room. He’s the only one of us who lives on the main floor. He’s a werewolf.”

“The raw foodie who isn’t the vegetarian?” Vinny suggested. Bazur nodded and kept moving.

The last corner of the house had a library/ music room, complete with a grand piano. “We don’t really use this room, except to walk through to the TV room. You don’t have to worry about it. Want to see upstairs?”

Vinny nodded. As they climbed the stairs, Bazur explained, “You don’t have to do anything with any of the bed rooms, so this floor is just vacuuming the hallways.” He opened the first door to show a room with a bunch of plants, a display case full of trophies, and a mattress of on the floor. “This is Tristan’s room. He was a professional on the rodeo circuit.”

Vinny felt her eyebrows go up. “Wow… um…. Not many people would admit to that.”

Bazur shrugged. “You would find out anyway, if you google his name.”

Vinny wondered how she would explain to her mom that one of the guys was a minotaur retired from the rodeo circuit when that was basically code for bull riding porn.

Bazur continued. “He doesn’t really like to talk about it. He’s a little shy.” Vinny choked at that. “So if you don’t bring it up, he won’t either,” Bazur continued, ignoring Vinny’s faux pas.

“Right! Next room is Dren’s. He’s gelatinous.” Again, no bed, this time it was a clawfoot bathtub that didn’t appear to be connected to anything. There was a wooden chair. Everything was hard surfaces, including the exposed floorboards.

Bazur closed the door and opened the next one. This was even more empty, it looked like something out of a haunted house. There were spiderwebs everywhere. “Thea is a Drider.”

The following room was the most normal looking. No dresser, but a desk and chair. An armchair near the window with a floor lamp for when it was dark. There were a stack of books on a side table next to the chair. And a lovely, antique wooden bed with a patchwork quilt. Bazur looked around, “Oh! Sorry, Kevin. I didn’t know you were home! This is Vinny. She’s interviewing for the housekeeping job.”

Vinny looked around the room and didn’t see anyone. “Um, hi?” There wasn’t any response.

“Sorry, Kevin doesn’t always have the best manners.” Bazur closed the door.

Vinny whispered, “Bogeyman, right? He was under the bed?”

Bazur made a face like he was trying not to laugh. “Mimic. He was the bed.”

“Oh.” Vinny felt like her brain had shorted out and she was running on autopilot. She barely registered the next room being a large bathroom that was probably a converted bedroom. It had a floor drain, a huge tub and a walk in shower.

The last bedroom was on the other side of the staircase from Tristan’s room was also a corner room facing out to the back yard. This one had been decorated in military memorabilia. “This is Kogan’s room. He’s a semi retired Marine. He works for a security firm.”

Vinny nodded, and waited.

Bazur sighed. “He’s an orc.”

Vinny considered all of this. “So… six men living in one building. How much porn had to get taken down/put away before I arrived?”

Two doors down, Kevin burst out laughing. Bazur looked uncomfortable. “Some. But everyone keeps it in their own rooms.”

“Only one bathroom so far. How does that work?”

“Um… there is another one on the main floor that we skipped.”

“That bad?”

“No! Not too messy. It’s just, um, where we hid the porn.”

“Ah.” Vinny was quiet for a moment while she tried to digest all of that. Bazur was looking nervous. “How many people have you interviewed so far?”

“Fifteen.”

“How many left before they saw their room?”

“Ten.”

“What about the other five?”

“One didn’t pass the criminal record check. Two stopped returning my calls, one actually started but was so unpleasant about the level of diversity that we had to let him go.”

Vinny was slightly surprised at the male pronoun there.

“And the other two?”

“One left after the meet and greet due to… Kevin’s lack of manners. One started sexually harassing Tristan.”

Vinny nodded slowing. “You keep talking about Kevin being rude. What did he do to the one he ran off?”

“He was a chair and she sat on him.”

“Oh.”

Vinny’s mind was racing. She wanted to know if that was an ongoing issue in the house. And who was going to be the person who would walk her home from night classes. And what kind of porn was hiding in the downstairs bathroom. Although, maybe she didn’t want to know. And she was completely torn between wanting to go home and google Tristan and never, ever wanting to know that about her prospective employer. She realized she hadn’t said anything in long enough that she was being rude.

“Let’s go see the top floor,” she announced.

The top floor was basically the attic. The room at the front of the house had a balcony. It was the biggest bedroom so far. It had been somewhat divided into zones. There was a bookcase and a desk in an inside corner, the sleeping zone was next to a fireplace and separated from the small area with a weight bench, yoga mat and free weights. It was Bazur’s.

Out of his room and around the corner there was a reasonably sized bathroom that smelled faintly of bleach. “This will be your bathroom if you take the job. It was mine, but I’ll be sharing the main floor one. We all agreed it wasn’t fair to … um, make you share with us.”

The last room was hers. The ceilings were vaulted. There were huge closets under the eves. She had a gas fireplace, and hardwood floors and huge windows looking out over the gardens. There were heavy velvet drapes that ran across the whole wall where the windows were looking like old fashioned theatre curtains. She experimented pulling them closed. They slid easily and completely darkened the room.

Bazur coughed. “Yeah. This room faces east, so the curtains keep you from having light in your eyes at dawn. Also, there is a bit of a draft in the winter. They help with that at night too.” He pointed to the radiator. “Hot water heat comes all the way up to here, and you can use the fireplace if you need extra heat.”

“That is an awful lot of stairs to get furniture up.”

Bazur stopped looking so dejected. “We would all help. It won’t be a problem,” he assured her.

Vinny went over and sat on the window sill. “Assuming you offer me the job, what is the salary?”

“Um… We thought that at max it would be three hours a day, times, thirty days in a month, is 90 hours, approximately. Call it $15 an hour, would be $1350 less room and board would be… oh… $500?”

Vinny swallowed. “Is that a question?”

“It’s nearly double minimum wages,” Bazur said defensively.

Vinny nodded. “My math is - my folks are currently covering room and board. I have a weekend job, that gives me time to study during the week. It doesn’t sound like I will have much time for that with this job. My current take home is a bit more but I would need to take a cab across town to get home from my night twice a week. Plus, whatever you say about the idea that you will eat what I cook, you have three different diets I would need to cater to and the fridge is pretty small. I bet I would need to shop for groceries every second day.”

“Why don’t you come for dinner on Friday? You can meet everyone and we can talk logistics?”

Vinny sighed. “I may be twenty three, but I also still need to convince my Italian Catholic mother that this is a good idea.”

Bazur nodded. “Kogan can take care of that. He’s Catholic, he’s in security so he has the stats on crime rates for women waiting for cabs and buses on campus after dark. He’s… mature enough to put her at ease and promise to drive you to mass every Sunday if she wants.”

Vinny nodded slowly. “I don’t have a problem with Tristan’s last job but-”

“You can honestly say he is a landscaper. Unless your mom was heavy into rodeo three years ago, she won’t know.”

Vinny considered this. “Do you want to just cut to the chase about the salary, or are we going to dance around first?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

Vinny shook her head. “You said $500 like it was a question, which would suggest you are willing to negotiate. It’s close enough to $600 that we could back and forth for a while, but you have six people living here and I would bet that your target price point is everyone chipping in a hundred dollars a month not to have to cook or scrub the toilets.”

Bazur chuckled. “Yeah. So, six hundred a month, if you pass the meeting everyone test and if we all get the nod from meeting your mom?”

“Ok. Just don’t let her sit on Kevin.”

#exophilia #terato #monster boyfriend #eventual poly #gargoyles #minotaur #drider #slime #werewolf #mimic #orc #co-ed

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cas-backwards-tie · 7 years ago

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Could I get a batboys ship please? I'm 5'10 with mixed/ tan skin and long dark brown curly hair, dark brown eyes. I like making bad puns or dirty jokes, video games, movies and food, especially mexican and indian food. I get insecure when I see couples or just about my personality or my body. I'm introverted if not antisocial, I get sarcastic with my close friends. trustworthy, loyal, caring reliable when moral support is needed. I'm slightly depressed but no one ever notices. Ty!!

You sound absolutely stunning by the way, and I want you to know that.

I ship you with Dick Grayson!

When Dick first saw you, he had to do a double take due to your features… you’re absolutely gorgeous and with your long dark curls blowing in the summer breeze, he was sure that he was watching one of those shampoo commercials or something!

Once Dick took you out on your first date, it wasn’t until you slipped and made a bad pun, quickly apologizing and looking down at your lap, blushing, did Dick really become awed by you. Dick was the master of bad puns, and so if he couldn’t comeback from that and throw one right back at you, he’d be damned. Dick of course surprised you by starting to loosen up and show his silly side, making bad puns and using the cheesiest pick-up lines. You honestly didn’t expect this when you’d originally met him, as official Officer Grayson of course, but you were pleasantly surprised and shocked at how such a dork could become a very serious cop.

Dick was surprised when you guys were watching movies and someone had something, which apparently reminded you of a dirty joke. Dick didn’t know you could be so dirty, as you have such a cute, innocent face, so this was an interesting change and he knew that if you ever got the chance to meet Jason… well… let’s just hope he can keep you from that (he’d be super jealous bc he just knew you’d hit if off with him). Dick was never really into video games before he met you, but you’d ultimately exposed him to a much more diverse set of games than his younger brothers played, which happened to get him hooked. You guys would play video games together, taking turns and going through the stories as if it was simply (it basically is) an interactive movie.

Dick knows of your insecurities, whether it’s the way you feel when you see couples, or how you feel about your personality and body. Dick tries to help with your insecurity of couples, by of course, making sure to give you a little PDA, whether it’s holding hands or pulling you closer to him as you both walk, Dick tries to support you in anyway he can.

Dick will often ask what he can do to help, knowing that despite how much he tells you how beautiful and lovely you are, you won’t truly believe it until you, yourself feel that way. Dick has his own insecurities, but truthfully, he’s never had too many insecurities about his body, and if he did, they didn’t last for very long.

Your relationship becomes a little strained when attending galas, and often times it’s come to the mutual decision that if you want to go, you’ll go, if you don’t, then Dick will go without you. Dick is a public figure, and therefore needs to keep up an appearance. Of course people know that you and Dick are together, but when he shows up to galas alone people start to question things. Dick is a faithful man however, and he loves you too much to do anything rash, impulsive or stupid when it comes to messing up your relationship.

Dick knows and sees your struggles, and he understands, after talking with some friends about it, that you’re depressed… at least, all the symptoms are there. But you couldn’t be depressed, could you? I mean, Dick always sees you smile and tries to make you laugh all the time… surely you weren’t depressed.

Nevertheless Dick approached you about this topic, leading to a very emotional, heavy night. Dick reassures you that he’ll always be here for you, and may not understand exactly what you’re going through, but if there’s anything that can do. Anything at all, then he wants you to tell him. Dick loves you, and he cherishes you more than he thinks you’ll ever realize… Dick wants you to be happy, and if he doesn’t do everything in his power to try and make that happen, then so help him.

With Dick, you realize that things maybe aren’t as hard as they seem… and, well… it seems like he really does care, so maybe you have a real shot at this. A real shot at happiness, at life, at your dreams. With Dick’s constant reassurance you try to return the favor, loving to spoil him as much as he loves to spoil you. You both can butt heads sometimes because you both think each other deserves the world and you’re gonna try damn hard to give it to them… but neither of you think that’s really a bad problem to have.

Thank you so much for celebrating 1K Followers with me!

#ship #dick grayson #nightwing #1K Follower Celebration

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dalishious · 7 years ago

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i've noticed that when white people make characters of colour, they almost always give them very narrow noses and light eyes and it really annoys me. ofc, i know that some poc do have narrow noses and light eyes, but the majority do not, and it just seems like digital brownface/blackface: another way of claiming inclusiveness while still adhering to white standards of beauty. can i ask what you think?

The Ambiguously Brown trope?

An Ambiguously Brown character is a character who is definitely not white, but is very difficult to pin down beyond that.

Example: Ezra Bridger from Star Wars Rebels. There is a very strong argument that he’s Jewish (I mean, his name is Ezra, and his parents were Ephraim and Mira...) But the creators will probably never actually clarify anything beyond him just not being white, because “Oh no, he’s Jewish, but he’s not Jewish, because this is a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, you get me?” Which personally I am really tired of this cop-out. It’s literally the definition of “you can’t have your cake and eat it too.”BioWare themselves do this.

But the specific part of this trope I think you’re meaning (and correct me if I’m wrong) is when you could swear the character was designed to be white, then just had their skin painted a darker colour?

Like you said, there is no small box of appearance that POC fit into; like, for starters it is an umbrella term, but even if we were to narrow it down to just a specific group, the same applies. Contrary to popular belief, white people do not have the monopoly on light coloured hair and light coloured eyes, (but it isn’t as common for sure) and the western world’s standards for beautiful facial features. But I do think a lot of times people create their characters with such physical traits because they want their characters to be beautiful, and only see said traits as beautiful, instead of beautifying diversity... If that makes any sense the way I’m wording it. (I will say that the character creator’s limitations should be taken into account, but not a complete excuse.)I would encourage people to branch out more, but at the same time there is a concern people would step into racist caricature territory. Something to consider would be looking at some real life people and taking them into account. Also this is something worth reading and keeping in mind.

#Anonymous #ask

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synuniverse-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Seven Deadly S.Y.N.s

Welcome to our Inaugural post. Instead of giving you a run of the mill Top 10 list of sneakers we love or we think are the best of all time, we decided to bring you a little bit of a different list. It’s the Seven Deadly S.Y.Ns (Sh*t You Need). That’s right, the Pride, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, and Envy of sneakers, from us to you! We hope you enjoy our thoughts. Leave comments either way, chime in with your own thoughts and stay tuned for more S.Y.N

Pride: (n) a high or inordinate opinion of one’s own dignity, importance, merit, or superiority, whether as cherished in the mind or as displayed in bearing, conduct.

*In your collection what sneaker do you look at, wear with, or talk about with supreme pride?

Eric Says: For me it is most of my collection but the pair that rises to the top of my list is my Jordan XI Concords (2011) release. They aren’t even my favorite kicks of all-time but I worked hard to cop and they’re so clean, a true dress up and dress down shoe.

The Cop: On December 21, 2011 I definitely called in late to work in order to stand outside of NIKETOWN NYC on 57th Street. So here I am standing outside on a 65 degree December day waiting for a ticket, A TICKET, that would then allow me to get the sneakers I desired two days later at midnight (this process is dated at this point). After two hours of waiting, by myself, they gave me my ticket (#152) and wasn’t I just the happiest twenty-eight year old sneaker enthusiast going. I then proceeded to skip my happy ass to work with only one worry in the world: losing that damn ticket in my wallet. Thirty-six hours later on December 22nd with a light drizzle and significantly colder temperature, I waited on a line shortly before midnight until they called #152. As the NIKETOWN employee mumbled my number and asked for my I.D blood rushed to my head and my eyes widened but not because it was my turn to get my box but because I had to secure my route to the train station. I wanted no parts of the dudes that did not wait on a single line but wanted a pair of Concords as bad as the rest of us. Needless to say when I got home and opened that box with its many layers of beauty and removed the sneaker it was everything (the smell, the look, my feelings) I thought it was going to be it was. I have only worn this shoe six times since that day and didn’t even put them on my feet until June of 2012. Each time proud as hell with every single step. That was a lot about one shoe but I think you get the point.

Eian Says: I would have to say for me the “De La Soul” SB Dunk Highs are by far the cream of the crop.

The Cop: Ha! I can remember this day like it was right around the corner. It was Fall 2005; I was 19 with no job and my mother’s credit card. This was before the crazy hype of Nike SB’s and most people that wore them were skaters. I remember the first store I went to for this cop was Blades on 86th street which is no longer there. They were sold out within 30 minutes, but I knew someone that had the scoop, that DQM (Dave’s Quality Meat) on Great Jones Street had them as well. I called my mom and we made a deal, some may say it was the deal that I sold my soul for but it was worth it. I did all house chores for about three months, an agonizing time that I will never regret because to this day the De La Soul High is my holy grail.

Lust: a passionate or overmastering desire or craving (usually followed by for):

Eric Says: SWEET CHRISTMAS! (Luke Cage reference) Jordan 3s Black Cement are easily the pair of kicks that I lust for. I DO NOT own them, I wasn’t even a fan of 3s until one of my brothers copped the “True Blues” for me. On my feet the 3s are pure beauty which is not easy to say when you wear a size 13 shoe. I now own several pairs of 3s but the Black Cement 3s are not one of them. They are just perfection--they’re also known as “THE” shoe that started it all. Every time I see them on the street (which is rare at this point) I turn into an ogling, clumsy-tourist like New York City pedestrian #SorryNotSorry.

Eian Says: Clean as clean can get: Jordan XI Concord. From the bottom up you have the clear ice sole followed by the white midsole attached to the ever so famous signature black patent leather. Now I’m not old enough to ever own the OG’s but i was lucky enough to get these on Christmas of 2011 as a gift from my other half. I can say it’s been six plus years since I’ve owned them and i have not worn them outside yet. I’m not proud to say it but i have not found the right (perfect) time to wear them. Now I’ve tried them on tons of times with my outfit on, ready to leave the house. Once I take a look in the mirror my heart and soul won’t allow me to walk out the door. This is a sad reality of living in New York City and taking public transportation; you just don’t want to risk the beauty of this sneaker.

Gluttony: Overcompensation to the point of waste but as we know, nothing thought out and loved that is added to your collection is waste.

Eric Says: Vans SK8-Hi Originals (White on White). Now I know you are probably asking, how the hell did a pair of skating sneakers make any parts of my list but even more, how did it make the category of gluttony? Three reasons: 1. Price Point - In a world of $200 sneakers you cannot beat a clean, classic, all-around stylish pair of sneakers for $65. That is how much it will cost you to add these kicks to your collection. At $65 why would I not own three or more pairs? Some folks build a whole collection on Vans alone. 2. Color - Now this is significant. When I was a kid my mom always said we needed two pairs of sneakers for the summer: a colorful pair and a white pair. I have never abandoned this school of thought and every summer I make sure I have a pair of white on white sneakers. The problem with white on white is that they are hard to keep fresh which leads me to my final reason. 3. Wearability and personal attitude - The White on White SK8-Hi can be worn with shorts, jeans, khakis, chinos, hell even with a suit if you want. Combine this with the fact that when I fall in love with a shoe I will wear that shoe until the soles come off (a pair of brown loafers in my closet can attest to this point). That is exactly why I will continue to buy the Vans SK8-Hi Original (White on White) over and over again.

Eian Says: This is very weird because I would also have to go with Vans SK8-Hi original (Black/White). My reasoning is a bit different, these are great sneakers for the everyday Harley rider as myself. Not only are they bad ass but you can also get them dirty and messy and they’ll still look cool. I have about 10 to 15 pairs of the SK8-Hi but the black/white are hands down the go to colorway. The best part about the Vans for me is that I’ve worn them with a suit and I’ve worn them with jeans or shorts. They can be labeled as one of the most diverse sneakers in my collection.

Greed: excessive or rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions.

*What sneaker do you or would you have multiple pairs of in your collection? Multiple colorways of the shoe are allowed.

Eric Says: Jordan 1s High. My, my, my, what a dope sneaker! Just a clean and classic kick. I actually feel like the Jordan 1 High is a Chelsea boot or Chukka disguised as a basketball sneaker. With a very similar feel to the Nike Dunk High (they could be cousins) the Jordan 1 High provides a certain nostalgia that is addicting. Get a pair and feel the power. Or not and that’s cool too.

Eian Says: Classic!!! There is so much to say about the Nike Foamposite 1. Not only is Penny Hardaway one of my favorite NBA players but I think he has one of the best signature sneakers in the game other than Jordan. It’s something about the Foamposite 1’s that always does it for me. Not every colorway but the Royal blues can’t be beat. They are clean on your feet and comfortable at the same time. Now one of my favorite things about the sneaker is that they will never EVER crease, which means they will last forever.

Sloth: habitual disinclination to exertion; indolence; laziness. Basically the sneaker you couldn’t care less about.

Eric Says: Maison Margiela or any designer sneaker that costs well over $300. This will be short because really I don’t care. I want to be clear, I am in no way criticizing these sneakers, the companies that make them, or the folks that buy and wear them. I just have absolutely no interest in spending $595 (at least) on sneakers. I want no parts in being exclusive in that way. Enjoy if you must.

Eian Says: Nike Air force 1 (sorry S.Y.N.ners), I know these are like the mecca of sneakers but for me I guess living in NYC has destroyed my image of the Nike Air Force 1. Growing up in the city this was a must have sneaker and I’ve had my fair share of AF1’s. This is where the name icy whites comes from. When these sneakers are fresh they are fresh, but once they get a scuff or the famous crease they go from a ten to a five real quick.

Wrath: Uncontrolled rage or hatred

Eric Says: Adidas and/or Kanye West. Sorry, I could not pick a specific pair or style here. My issue is truly with the company/designer. The lack of accessibility for any pair of Yeezys in spite of ‘Ye citing that as being one of the reasons he left Nike. The sneaker silhouette is cool and I would definitely like a pair in my collection but I’m past standing in lines and I’m not paying the outrageous resale ticket price. So until Kanye/Adidas make these kicks more accessible I will continue to rage red every time a different pair of Yeezys is released.

Eian Says: Don’t hate me for this but the Adidas NMD and all other sneakers that contain the sock. I have wide feet so I can’t wear any of them. I remember the first time I went to cop a pair of KD6’s Aunt Pearl. Once i had them in my hand I knew something was wrong, the sneaker didn’t look right and seemed to be too small. I tried to squeeze the life out of my feet just to make them fit in that damn sock. I had to try on a whole size bigger just for my wide foot to slide in, and that’s not even the big foot (because you know everyone has that one foot that’s bigger than the other). This is the same issue I have with every single sneaker that has the sock.

Envy: a feeling of discontent or covetousness with regard to another’s advantages, success, possessions, etc.

Eric Says: Olympic 7s OG. This is the kick that started it all for me. In the summer of 1992 we were privileged to watch the greatest basketball team ever assembled tear the world basketball scene apart. It was also the summer my mom brought home the greatest pair of shoes that I have had the pleasure of wearing, the Jordan 7 Olympics. I was not a Jordan fan. I didn’t care too much about sneakers (I was nine) but opening that box, smelling the sweet aroma of new sneakers, and unwrapping each sneaker from the soft tissue paper used to protect the sneaker from all known dangers, I knew in that moment I was going to love sneakers forever. That was the beginning. I need to return these to my collection.

Eian Says: Air Total Max Uptempo: It was 1997 and I was twelve and I was with my uncle and cousin coming from the Gauchos gym (NY youth basketball at its finest) after basketball practice. We went to the mall to grab some lunch and stopped at Foot Locker on the way out. Once I laid my eyes on them I knew I had to have them, but of course, at twelve years old, I could never afford them. At that time I would never even ask my parents for them because the price was so high. I remember seeing kids older than me with them on and it killed me inside every time. I’m still on the lookout for them to this day. i know they retroed them circa 2009 but I missed out once again.

* We are both very excited about this blog, not just as creators but also as lovers of the culture, and we look forward to interacting with folks and continuing to share our thoughts and ideas with you all. Please come along on this journey with us as we look to explore and grow.*

#sneakers #nike #adidas #vans off the wall #streetwear #mensstyle #kicks #SYNners

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lordraveondagooseofdolallytap · 5 years ago

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CAR TALK

(I assert my ownership to this work and to the photograph. David Kitchen)

We only had a weekend.

Dad’s ashes had been in the airing cupboard for near on sixteen years, ever since November 1999. My elder brother, Jack and I had talked about tipping them over the cliff at Whitby, but he always had something else on, then mum got poorly and so we decided to wait for her remains and do them both together. She died in 2013, but then there were still more delays. Jack was dragging his feet and I knew why. This was one of those ‘Doing ones duty’ things that he resented. If I pushed him he’d just get snarly, and accuse me of “putting heavy stuff on him”. So I placed mum in the airing cupboard next to dad. Another two years went by and one day I just said out loud to myself, “This is 2015. Dads been waiting fifteen years and mum’s been hanging around for two years already. This is not right”. So next pub quiz night I told Jack, “Listen, I’m taking both lots of ashes up north on the last weekend in August: the Bank Holiday one. Are you coming?”

“Okay Septic” (that’s what he always called me. I had a bad boil when I was seven, and I got the name then), we’d best go in your car. Mines got no MOT or insurance”.

We settled on taking the ashes to Otley and Whitby. Half of each in both. No argument or surliness at any point from him. I thought maybe this would be alright.

Strictly speaking, it was the beauty spot, ‘Surprise View’, not the town, Otley that would be our first stop. A spectacular promontory on the escarpment that dominates the town and valley. A place with great rocks that kids imagine as castles, blasting winds and rough bike riding. You could stand there like Olympian Gods looking down on the course of the River Wharfe and the eye-shaped town of Otley. This was where mum, dad, me, Jack and our middle brother Mike, walked out to on a Sunday afternoon for picnics. The ashes were left here in memory of potted meat sandwiches and oranges and Penguin chocolate biscuits eaten on an itchy army blanket. Lemon Barley Water, ready diluted in a bottle or tea from a thermos to swill it down. I would go off exploring, and Jack would sneak off for a smoke. There were ten years between us. Sometimes I’d be allowed to bring a friend along but normally it was just me and him. And of course our Mike, the middle brother who I keep forgetting. He has been gone so long.

Jack and I put our heads together and took a selfie to mark the occasion of the depositing of the ashes. I had never been so physically close to him. Our temples touching. Both of us looking a bit toothy. I could smell the mustiness of his clothes. Then we walked back twenty yards to a drystone wall. Lifted a capstone and poured half of each lot of ashes into a space. The streams of gravelly material came together and cascaded down through gaps ‘tween stones. We were quite jaunty. Cracking little jokes and puns. Jack with a head like Lenin. Slimmer and more compact than me. He still had some muscle on his frame at age sixty-eight. Me, well over six foot and carrying surplus weight. If I lifted my head to reduce the jowls I could look like Mussolini. Not that I wanted to.

We got in my car and drove the eighty-odd miles to Whitby on the coast, unpacked at the Resolution Hotel and I went out to walk around the harbour. Whitby was the place for the more discerning day tripper and weekend B&B stayer back in the 1960s. Family worries about money as ever but less tat than Brid or Scarborough and more seafront, salt air, harbour, history. Cliffs, and views as well.

Jack was going into the new town to have a look at something I “would not be interested in”. He would say these things like I did not see through his crap, and it was not like he had to keep up any pretence. It was simple. He needed to top up. He was now calling himself a sober alcoholic. That had been his big announcement a few weeks earlier when I called in one Sunday morning with a gift of Bourneville chocolate, on my way back from seeing a woman in Kings Lynn. “What do you think Septic? Is that a sustainable compromise?”

I laughed. “At sixty-eight, you’ve sidestepped the big, early killers. You are now on the ten-year plateau where, whatever you’ve got, they can keep you alive for a bit. There are a lot of worse things to be than a steady-state alcoholic”. He was 68 and looked better than me at 58. “The time in front is still a lot less than the time behind us, but let’s be like the cowboys and keep riding till we fall!” He said I was too fat to get on a horse, so we settled on mopeds. Big ones.

Relations between him and me had been tetchy since our mam died. She’d had dementia and I had been doing a 400-mile round trip one weekend a month for ten years to see her and take care of whatever needed to be done. Jack said he was grateful but he could not do the same, he would find it too upsetting. That enraged me. I told him it was as a cop-out, and because of that name-calling and another fall out we had in Spain, we were on poor terms. Then one day when I was talking to myself again, I said, “Me and Jack were the last two standing out of the five of us that started out. He was not going to change and neither was I. We were much the same in our heads, any difference, just a consequence of birth order, the times and…what was going on around us”.

He was the only person who knew things from back then and I was the same for him. So I thought sod it and I got on the phone and said “we've got a pub quiz in town Sunday evening. Our team are short on somebody good on sport and 1960s pop. Do you want to come over and give it a go? You can sleep overnight on my couch”.

I heard a couple of coughs on the line and then the mock leery grin reflected in his voice as he said, “Well it depends on how you behave don’t it.”

I told him “snap”, and we were sorted.

He became a stalwart of the team and things got better between us. I noted how fast he could down a bottle of my wine between getting in from the pub and going to sleep. I sometimes stayed up and had a glass but could see that made him worried. He was relying on the full bottle so I tried to make sure there was at least an extra half a bottle or some cans of beer in the house.

He got along well with our team. Half of us did not properly know the other half and Jack, in his easy social way, made a bridge. People livened up and laughed a lot and we started winning. They liked his stories and his Paul Newman style as he liked to think of it. A couple of times I spotted the signs that he was close to popping. It never took much. The others didn’t see it but I did. Some folk need a lot to set them off, Jack only needed a look. Maybe the bar-staff had served a man wearing smarter clothes ahead of him or some people I knew across the room were laughing as he walked back from the bar. That could be enough to inflame the chip on his shoulder and that would end with him decking somebody. Old man or not he could still do it but he held himself in check…just. This was Jack, the human volcano man I had known all my life. I worried about bringing him into my circle of friends, because of these risks, but I did it anyway.

Jack was always in trouble as a kid and his teens. A lot of it, in the beginning, was chapel related stuff and that got him a bad name, quickly. It was like he wanted to be ‘The Great Transgressor’. Do the most shocking and disrespectful things. He’d had sex across the chapel alter with one of Dusty Springfield’s girlfriends. That was when he was around nineteen but the tendencies for havoc went back to his infancy. He’d thrown a stone through a window before he could walk. That’s what mum always said. Jack’s delinquency was what we always seemed to be talking about. Dad would walk in from work, look at mums face and say “What’s our Jack been up to now”? It was that predictable.

Her answers were incredibly diverse but this one time she said “Seems he’s been stealing money off the chapel collection plate. They’ve had enough and are kicking him out the cubs He’d volunteered to do the upstairs collection but then put half of it in his pocket as he came back down”. The bugger had been nicking money meant for the little children in Nyasaland.

That came on top of nicking Bob-a-Job money, so he was ‘drummed out’ as they used to say. Never any shame. If anything it was a badge of honour and the girls liked it even then. Transgressor is the word. He carried it like a badge.

Our dad, an ex-boxer and the most moral of men would hit out. He punched Jack clear across the length of our front room one Christmas Day. I said that the fight had spoilt our Christmas but mum said not to exaggerate. Despite the brusque talk, she was soft for Jack, her firstborn. Always had a smile on her face when he was in the house.

And that sort of summed Jack up. An apostate from any kind of set up, no matter how worthy or sacred. A natural Anarchists and he made people smile. Not a weekend poser Anarchist or one positioned in academia but still drawing his paycheck from the state. No, Jack rebelled against everything. It was just in him. His ‘default’ as they say nowadays.

On that late August Sunday, after a good breakfast, we set off on our main business. I was left carrying the two brown plastic containers that looked like old fashioned sweet jars, in an Aldi carrier bag. We dabbed the ashes around everywhere: in the ornamental gardens at Whitby’s West Cliff, digging the stuff in with an old dessert spoon. There is some of mum and dad next to the famous James Cook whale jawbone arch. A woman from a tea and coffee shack saw what we were doing but said nothing. Then we cut around the harbour, found the lane and climbed the hundred steps to the Parish Church and Abbey. Jack and I sat on the bench at the far end of the graveyard and imagined our parents doing the same in their courting days, then we tipped some of their remains over the cliff and then placed the rest around the back of the bench. I called it guerrilla gardening. Felt like an offering.

The old gravestones around us were draped in a low hanging mist. Just the tops showing. We posed about a bit and he took some black and white photos. He had once had an exhibition at Halifax Piece Hall. The man could take good pictures. He had an eye for it. Did his own developing as well. Lots of unfulfilled talents. That’s what I was thinking.

Lunchtime Sunday, we had fish and chips with the skin still on, in a place over the bridge on the lane to the abbey. Then climbed in my car and set off back to Norfolk. Our job is done. They had given us no instructions but we had done our best for mum and dad. Jack and I wanted to get ahead of the late afternoon traffic. The road across the moors to the A64 and A1 jammed up at Malton and Pickering on summer weekends and bank holidays. An hour’s head start could make all the difference.

But everyone had the same idea and within half an hour we were moving at a snail’s pace through Pickering. Jack had been quiet, smoking rollups and looking pensively out the window. He chuckled for no perceptible reason and said, “Me and the old lass from next door have got a plan. We’re on the case. She is on her own as well, came down from Leeds, that’s how we got talking. Her big adventure had been to get herself to Norfolk and work in the land army during the war. Met her husband and settled. They had no kids. He died thirty year ago and all she does now is catch the bus into Kings Lynn once a week for a walk around and fresh fruit and veg. Anyway, we have this plan. We are both worried about dying on our own and not be found for weeks, so one or t’other of us knock on the others door each morning to make sure we have survived the night. I shout through the door, “Are you still alive and she shouts back yes, and how about you”. Bloody hell you have to do ‘summat’ to keep from cracking up about it all. They keep all this stuff at the end well-hidden don’t they?”

“It’s the cost of having a life Jack”, I say. “You get to live but then you have to do a deal with dying”.

He won’t ever take anything off me and say “that’s right”, Instead its

“Yep. Whatever, I've not given up on finding another woman, Septic. Don’t want to end my days without a woman. A fit lass with attitude, maybe ten years or fifteen years younger than me. I just need a plan to get Viagra on an NHS prescription”.

I knew he had been seeing a woman all the way over at Billericay. He had been scoring the Viagra off me because his doctor told him straight, if he could walk 800 hundred kilometres on the Camino Santiago de Compostela trek in Spain, then he could get an erection without tablets. I was paying an absolute fortune for mine but he would make it sound like an emergency when he called in. The Billericay woman got men off the internet like you might order stuff off Amazon. There was another one. A vet from near Dereham what did the same. They wanted results. It was an entirely different world. No compassion.

We got singing the Ian Drury song about Billericay (Rickie). Jack fancied he looked like Drury, maybe not but he could do the Essex spiel. That lifted our mood. I reached over in the backseat and pulled out a Sharron Shannon CD from a deep cat tray I kept my in-car music in. There were three tracks I knew he would like, ‘Galway Girl’, a folkie version of ‘Man of Constant Sorrow’ and ‘Say You Love Me’ by her and Dessie O Halloran (old man, lived-in face, breaking voice, Seen it and done it. If you are old that’s the kind of old we want to be).

We did some car seat dancing. Sitting but jigging. Then Jack did his impersonation of Joe Cocker at Woodstock singing Hey Jude, arms sweeping over between us. Then we went quiet again.

There was three of us, brothers, like I've said. On the surface of things it looked like the middle one, Neil was brightest because he had passed the 11+ and gone to Grammar School (and later art college) but mum said “Jack was the brightest but the times were not right for him after the war, the upper schools were not yet built and there were not enough proper teachers to cater for all the kids. Jack did not get the chances that he ought to have done and your dad was very hard on him. Always knocking him around. He never had patience. Jack was no saint but your dad was always at him. He worried about Jack’s character you see, there was something in him he did not like. Like smelling milk that’s going off or something like a feeling of foreboding. That’s what your dad called it”.

The road cleared after Pickering but slowed again at Malton. I figured once past there we’d be okay, as that was the A64 proper, where it’s a dual carriageway. Instead, it was all stop-go as before, it was time for some initiative, a turn off ahead for the A19 had to be better than crawling along till we reached the A1 which might be just as bad. I was right, the switch got us on the move at last, and at the M18 in no time. Then onto the A1 just north of Doncaster, a great corner cut out of Yorkshire and a lot of time made up. At this pace, I’d have us both back in Norfolk between six and seven. We were cruising at speed.

I asked him about going back and walking the Camino Frances trek across northern Spain: the ancient Christian pilgrimage way now mostly adopted by new-age types, creaky hippies, and old Commie Atheists like Jack. This would be the eighth time he’d done the super long-distance walk. Staying in cheap hostels along the way. Ending up at the Cathedral in Santiago and then walking the extra bit to the hippy beach at Finisterre, the end of the world.

“Septic, I’m like those pathetic men that I took the piss out, the ones I figured had nothing else in their lives but to keep walking the Camino, again and again. It’s all I think about. Just a day or two of being back home, and I’m on the Camino Forums handing out advice to the newbies and thinking of the next trip. I will tell you what I heard. Some poor souls have fallen through the net of life so badly they live at the derelict crematorium just below the headland at Finisterre and sleep in the steel draws the bodies were kept in? I don’t want to end up like that. Reminds me of The Little Lost Boys in Peter Pan. I guess a lot of them came out to do the Camino and never went home again. I've met a few that fit that bill. One was the son of a general. He freaked me out no end”.

My brother had been out to Spain the previous April to do the long walk but got a call from his daughter, her baby was due and she wanted him around. It was a boy and would get named after him and our dad. He had got straight on a bus to Santiago and flown home, going directly to his daughter's house in London and had been around for the birth of little Jack. I like that.

Now almost in September, he would be setting off to Spain to finish off what he had started. “All the ‘I should be doing something with my life’, feeling that hangs on me all the time goes away when I’m doing the walk. At home, our Neil’s picture on my PC tells me to get on and do something with my life. On the walk I've got direction every day, I just have to get from A to B, enjoy what’s around me and be social. I’m not like you Septic, I’m an easy mixer and there’s always a chance of a woman. They like me. I like them. It’s like plugging back into life”.

Then he starts fretting about wine. We are on the A17 by now and will be at his house inside ninety minutes. There’s got to be a bottle for the evening and he has no money. He sees a petrol station with a grocery section, on the roundabout at Holdingham and wants to stop here in case the store in his village is shut. We pull in and right at that moment there is an almighty crash and then another one out on the road. People from the forecourt stand on a grass bank. A little out of site but about four hundred yards down the road we had been about to enter, there has been a serious crash. Probably three cars. Maybe more. We go into the shop, get the wine, tobacco, milk, and Cornish pasties. By then sirens are coming over on the wind, police and ambulance are on their way. Jack speaks to an Indian man who has walked in, it’s looking serious. He tells us people are helping. Still in the hearing of our informant, Jack says, “See Septic, close call, stopping for wine has probably saved our lives”. That annoyed me but he may well be right.

More ambulances arrive. Jack and I stand with the other rubbernecks on the grass bank. He smokes, Barriers are going up, and stern-faced policemen are shutting off the A17 and putting up diversion signs in the direction of Sleaford. My ex-jailbird brother is trying to tell me how the top brass in the police make money out of deaths in car accidents and the individual coppers get a buzz out of it all. He can be so full of paranoid shit when confronted by people behaving with decency. It somehow offends him. He sneers and can be hard to like at such times.

We wait till the traffic is flowing and follow the diversion into Sleaford. My big brother is somebody you could drop down anywhere and he would have a story of some kind to tell about it. I am not saying the stories are true in the literal sense, but they make up part of the myth he weaves, and do have some honesty about them. He tells the one about when he was Booking Secretary for a working man’s club in Hebden Bridge. He booked in an unknown called Mick Hucknall as a support act for a big gala event they are having much later in the year. By the time the date comes around Hucknall and Simply Red are big in the charts and the gig is sold out and some more. Everyone’s waiting and then turns on him when the star does not arrive. I believe something like that happened but in Jack’s telling the big-name kept changing. One time it was Jimmy Cliff and another Desmond Dekker but it was still a good story with a core of truth.

“Oh bloody hell Septic, Don’t everything happen if you wait long. I've not been here since the summer of 1979. It’s Sleaford. Great times. It was when I left Pat and the kids and took off with our social worker who I’d been having it off with. Her name was Denise, and that Debbie Harry song, Denis- Denis was the one we played in her car. Well she did not hang about for long and I ended up here because a mate had got work doing reservations, I mean renovations on a farm, owned by a cokey, dope-smoking Lord who had just inherited it all from his dad. Lots of us turned up in the end. It became a kind of hippy republic but this guy didn't mind. Some were taking the piss but altogether it was good. We worked and partied all summer. Some worked on the farm, me and Irish George did up the cottages, fixed the outbuildings and then did some driving as well. George met a local woman and they ended up staying together. He went from freak to meek in a week…get it? The cow bullied him into it. We all met up for my fiftieth in that pub across there. By then he had been working twenty years in a cardboard box factory around here somewhere. Got to be a foreman. She left him and went back to college, they had no kids but he kept on doing it. The cardboard boxes. Said it was too late to start over again, I thought the man had some balls but…you know…he hadn’t really”.

Of course, I’d heard that story before and seen the photo of him and Irish George looking feral in ragged jeans, torn jerseys and unkempt Hendrix hair. You could almost smell the body odour and dope on them. He was right about George though. How could the man have done that?

Storytelling was always competitive between Jack and me. We would jump in on each other’s tales, outbidding each other on outlandish twists and shocking endings, but today I was content to just listen. Let these life songs flow over me. He told the one about ending up on a farm commune run by the Workers Revolutionary Party on Dartmoor or somewhere similar. There was preparation of sorts for the glorious day when history would be upended. Jack had been told there would be a chance to practice with guns, but it turned out there was only one rusty pistol. An Irish lass had been back home for her father’s funeral. Returning to the farm she left his ashes in their vase on the table and went for a nap. Some dope head had come in and mistaken the remains for the gravel you give to chickens. It helps them in some way. Anyway, the dads remains got sprinkled all over the yard and the chickens had it all, The Irish girl freaked out and went hysterical. Well, you would...wouldn’t you?”

It was a slow crawl through Sleaford but then we joined the A15 and got moving, switched to the A52 and drove through Bicker to find the A17 at Swineshead. Jack telling it all the way like he was doing a valedictory. Like the song, “A poet…a pilgrim and a problem”. A rambling glorious shambles of a life but still a man never satisfied. What would be the point of that? The links were loosening. He was swinging back and forth across decades and places. Selling joints to Phil Lynott, being raided by Irish Special Branch in 72. Walking in Pomerania, travelling on a supplies ferry inside of the Arctic Circle. Alcohol withdrawal whilst sleeping out on the deck. More walking. Rome to Spain, teenager stuff in Danzig, note pad in a pocket. The times in London with our brother, Mike: making up for our artist brother’s lack of social skills and lying to a girl it was Mike who had bought the Faces album for her birthday. Another Irish girl, a sexual athlete and a lover of country music. The times in jail. No false stuff this time. The last sentence had scared him. Playing Nina Simone at our mother’s funeral and the lady minister dancing in the pulpit. Working the lump around the building sites all through the late sixties. The illegality of a type that made money harder than working. Jail again. Being chased out of Bradford and blacklisted in all the pubs.

The fistfights with our dad. He said none of that mattered. Our father was the real thing, an awesome man. “Septic, the bugger left me upwards of thirty thousand. I've tried but just cannot spend it. Given it all to the grandkids. Having it around was like being rubbed wrong way up with sandpaper”.

Motoring through the fens proper now. The shrinking land three feet below the road and stretching, as flat as spirit level can prove, to the horizon. Sun low in the sky. I have not spoken much for an hour. We are on the A134, at a roundabout just outside of Stoke Ferry. He tells me to turn off and join the Methwold road. ”You’ve got to feel this septic. Put your foot down, the road follows every lump, bump and slant. It does not make sense. Put your foot down and you will feel it. Throws you about like the Waltzer” My car rocked and bounced and it felt like I had no control

I ask him, “why Spain again?” He tries telling me again about the difference between a Human Doing and a Human Being. “I am not having that one, Jack. That’s what caused our big bust up at Santa Domingo when I kicked you out the car in the rain next to that cemetery”.

He coughed on his smoke, rattled a bit then came back at me with the story about my rough wedding and the fistfight at the reception. I counter with the one about him crawling silently over my bedroom floor, like a commando, early one morning, intent on nicking pocket money from my trouser pocket. I was eight and in awe so let him have the money. I don’t mention the awe.

The rhythm of his speech slowed, and it felt like a change of gear you might make coming up to a tight corner. He talked about being kicked out of Greece in the 1960s by the Fascist Colonels Junta because he and a load of other hippy types were all living in a cave on some island. It had taken a police baton charge to get them out and how the British government had been forced to repatriate him and how they then put a stamp all across his passport saying “SUBJECT NOT TO TRAVEL”

“Well they were wrong Septic, weren’t they?” That’s what he said, exactly. A look over in my direction, a grin and then those last words.

He looked a little like Paul Newman.

https://youtu.be/ZxKqWiIZseA?list=RDZxKqWiIZseA

#life stories #creative writing #Short Story #brothers

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neferdede · 8 years ago

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH: "Through Woke Eyes From Different Sides" Pt. 1

February 1st, 2017

Written By: Desiree Dossen

Greetings and warm salutations to all of my fellow readers. Welcome to those if it is your first time joining us here at StylistaInMind.com. Here we style everything from sole to crown and discuss culture InConversation. On today's agenda have a special for those of you who have been waiting for some new content. My great friend and I are introducing a month long discussion, throughout the month of February. We will be discussing Culture, Identity, and Awareness. These are topics that are dear to me and I am excited to share with you somehtings that were once sensitive but have matured since then. We will discuss childhood stories of colorism from different perspectives. Check Out Chelsea Krieger's take on being a mixed race child in this American Society in which we live. Visit LifesSentence.com

Each week we will deliver a new topic and a new discussion, feel free to comment and share your own experiences below to keep the dialogue afloat. Enjoy Pt. 1 below.

Black History month is about representation and highlighting history that was made yet also acknowledging the change that is created daily within our community. Often times we go through life harboring various experiences without expressing them in order to find peace or to heal properly. One thing I believe in is instilling wisdom and positive affirmations into a child from a tender age. So that when they grow up they can have respect for themselves and others they interact with. Let's get into it....

To begin, I hope I can add some taste to this topic as my story may not be as profound as Chelsea's. However I find beauty in being brown and chocolate in which oftentimes is super sweet. Yet society has deemed this earth skin tone color of mine something I should not embrace. In subliminal regard, Well too late, I love me and all parts of me even if the "beauty standard" is of a "European" look. Firstly, My perspective comes from a cultural standpoint rather than just black and white. I Am of African descent, born in the states but 1st generation American child of Liberian immigrants. I am the alternative. I embrace my uniqueness in all aspects from skin tone to style to mindset. Diversity is key in the language we speak. The mass majority may think they are the only race, superior to those they claim to be minority. In opposition the mass minority equates to the majority. Sadly, what I was surrounded by in Grade school could be far from the truth. But here's my truth. Giving insight to my childhood. I have a passion for cultures and connecting the underlying truths between each culture. The hidden facts the colonizers tried to suppress I enjoy digging up and bringing them to light. My family left the inner city of Newark, NJ to give their girls better opportunity at life. Raised in Old bridge in which some would claim is predominately white. I barely saw that. I lived in an apartment complex where my neighbors were Indian, Pakistani, Afghani, Asian, Hispanic, and African immigrants. All descendants of somewhere from somewhere other than here. Listen, I love cultures, to see the pride one carries in a traditional dress or costume is beautiful. But when I would get to elementary school no more than 20 mins away. There was a divide. I became the only black girl in my classes. I became that black girl that carried the fat asses they stereotyped. I became that black girl that would cry lonely at night because I had no friends. Til this day I believe me not being the "typical black girl" they wanted to stereotype, I became the alternative. I had one friend from kindergarten until I don't know when because she found her white friends now she could blend. That's the thing I'll always stand out. I'll always be making noise or causing a scene even if I don't utter a sound. Uncomfortable but proud. I didn't realize it then but I understand now. It all makes sense the whys turned into how's. You see I'm "A CUltural Mesh," the fusion of cultures makes me feel joyous when I know I can connect with another bredren and sistren. You are a product of your environment they say. The environment I was in allowed me to be open and welcoming to others from all walks of life. That same friend I had in grade school, was an offspring of an Italian father and Korean mother. I'm not quite sure if she knew it then but her cultures meshed so well together I would say. Somehow, she would be classified as a white girl. Caucasian she would check off, because she had the European features and silky hair. The only thing they may question was her slightly olive complexion.

Contrary to belief, it's interesting how I thought her ethnic identity was beautiful, as I would hide my African Pride. I would lie in class when they would ask me to state my middle name. I couldn't let them know what Manaweh means it's, not Ann, Sarah, Mary, or Lee. Therefore I would be a product of my own contradictions. When I was home I embraced my love for Liberia and the reading rainbow outside my home. Yet, when I entered the playground I would shy away from exposing my real heritage. As in school they didn't teach us anything good about our history or better yet the truth. My own parents turned to be Americanized leaving us blinded from both sides. We couldn't recognize our beauty because our parents spoke diffeent dialects. They didn't want friction to collide, so that's why my sisters and I would use common names like Monica and Keisha to disguise what lies between the lines.

Moreover, I stated I was lonely and that was right. I was always shy and sensitive. I thought Briana and I would be friends forever but in fifth grade her neighborhood friends would be her partners in crime. Softball and family outings I was not part of that. I was familiar with riding bikes, staying up late to the scent of cassava leaf cooking in the kitchen, and my older sisters sneaking in and out. Sleeping in a two bedroom home that my seven member family plus one outgrew. I moved to a neighboring town where diversity in cultures were no longer evident. The story of black and white arises.... You know how in school they teach the civil rights movement. You learn about the blacks living beneath the train tracks and the whites above the tracks. Well this town I moved to, Cliffwood, NJ was just like that. This is where I became aware that, "girl you are black and your Africaness does not matter here." Majority of the African Americans in one small town separated from life outside of the scene. This was my first time enduring so much brown all at once. I became even more introverted because I didn't sound or dress like them. The culture I know is different. Aside from Liberian roots they say I spoke "white." I would stay quiet but have sleepless nights. Jordan's, fanny packs, skinny jeans, north face anoraks. I didn't have that. I was wearing thrifted, Walmart, Kmart, and sometimes target goods. Did I have it good? Or have I now entered a miniature hood? No this is obviously not the hood. Everyone lives in well kept houses with two or more stories. Crime is evident but cannot be seen in plain sight. It's quiet during the day and night. Welcome to a suburban hood where everyone was cousins. Small town girl with big city dreams began during these years. My family moved around quite a lot. Yet we would always end up in a suburban location. We are not like the other black families and I was always happy to go home. The kids at school would make fun and make me feel uncomfortable. Unfamiliar settings caused pain. I don't know why I would get nervous sitting in a lunch room that had more black people than I expected. Still not enough compared to the whites. Again I would stand out. I was always too white to be black and too black to be white. In reality I was just being me and I am a Liberian-American who dislikes categories.

However in Matawan, the African American kids would stick together. It was familiar for them, they were like family. A family I wasn't apart of. I didn't want to be like them. I wanted to be me. Free in my own reality. However I wished I could feel inclusive sometimes rather than just being exclusive. In middle school we would walk in large groups. Walks from school, in the direction of Guisti park we would get light, some would even fight. Bruno's was the hotspot for us colored kids. It all felt like a scene from a movie. There would be days police cars would drive by slow. Watching us, a large group of middle school kids, all black, "What could they be up to?" By mass numbers we would walk everywhere when I got comfortable, started making "friends" and they knew who my older sister was they started to form a "trust." Annoying how everyone knew me as Sebrena's little sister but somehow I started to blend and pretend like I was like them. Still felt uncomfortable In my own skin. I started to mind my own business and just be me. Say it loud I'm black and I'm proud, I discovered during my tumblr days. Yeah the times of Mike Brown, the times when black Tumblr and twitter unified. These were my teachers, I had Know insight or knowledge of the cruelty that really occurred. The thing is that yes I was raised to love all cultures and all individuals regardless of race I would embrace. But I was blinded to the harshness blacks faced because of where I was placed. In Old Bridge, NJ the suburbs not much action would occur. Unless the events of racial profiling and cops patrolling your neighborhood would be considered a blur. I was too young to even recollect or understand a painted image of colorism. To note, Newark was where my parents settled first and that's where my current partner is from. "The hood." "Bricks City" they call it. Because the streets is rough out there and nothing can break it down. It's a strong city that sands unified regardless of what negativity is portrayed. So my love for cultures sounds pretty and nice but the strife and pain people of color faced everyday in a nearby city it was all invincible to me.

To Be Continued....

Stay Tuned For Pt. 2 Coming Soon Check Back Next Week Thanks for reading. Hope you all enjoyed and got a little insight of my life.

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