#but hey. its a fucking party. were at coachella

[yatgb]

Honestly all tilting aside. Happy grandfest guys. No matter who wins having fun is what matters and i hope you have fun :D

[iwantitiwriteit]

Slow Burn: Act I - Part 3

The Secret Session

Pairing: Chris Evans x Famous!Reader

Summary: There’s a secret audience member at your acoustic show.

Warnings: Profanity

Notes: Before you dive in, get in the zone with the moodboard + music specially curated to go with this part! Full of acoustic jams by a couple of my favorite artists. Read the previous part here.

The calm before the storm. That’s what the time before a performance is like for you. You politely demand minimal talking of anyone in the room, unable to help getting lost in thought before a show, often reflecting on the last couple years. Today is no different.

Honey, your song is on the radio!

Oh ‘cos you’re ‘famous’ now, you think you’re hot shit?

It’s not like you don’t have the money.

5 weeks at number 1 and counting!

I can’t believe how naive you’re being.

I can’t believe how jealous you’re being.

And the award goes to…

You won!

I thought you’d be happy for me.

I can’t do this anymore...

“So… that hangover of yours must be serious.” 

You bring your eyesight from its fixed spot on the floor in front of you to look at Jimi. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you’re so lost in your thoughts, you didn’t hear me say ‘pancakes’.”

You whip your head around like a madwoman. “Pancakes?! Where?”

“Down girl. There are none. You fiend.”

“Then why mention it? Getting my hopes up like that…”

“‘Cos they’d go reeeealllly good with this obviously expensive, gourmet coffee someone named ‘CE’ sent you.”

“What?” You rush over to Jimi’s side and take the note from her hand.

“Mmhmm... cryptic ass note too. But I’m gonna guess not to you.” 

Roses are red, coffee is brown. Boston’s known for tea parties, and I for putting my foot in my mouth. Forgive me? -CE 

‘Brown’ and ‘mouth’? What a way with words, this guy. He really went through the trouble, though…

“Wanna tell me what you got up to last night? As your manager, I should know.” Jimi tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at you. 

You cringed at the thought of recounting last night’s events. “Not really.” Throwing the note over your shoulder, you began inspecting the extravagant bouquet. “And I’m not hungover by the way. Just feeling— ugh, you know how I get before shows.”

“Nuh uh, sis. Now I’m pulling best friend rank. Hungover or not, you crept ya ass back into the hotel room close to 3 am KNOWING you had a show the next day, get sent coffee and flowers with cheesy apology notes by obviously rich randos, and on TOP OF IT ALL, are about to be away from me for what? 3 months?”

“4 months,” you reluctantly corrected her.

“4 MONTHS! And you REALLY THINK you’re not about to tell me what the hell happened last night? What do you think this is— Pretty Little Liars? Bitch, spill.” Jimi’s right…  manager AND best friend. She deserves the tea… Why’d I give her this much power?

“Well…” Jimi takes a seat as you pace around, beginning to tell her about meeting Chris the night before.

“Chris Evans, Chris Evans? Like Chris motherfucking Evans?”

“Girl, yes!” you confirm.

You tell her about your stupid, potentially offensive joke.

“Ooooff. I’m not surprised, though, that’s on brand for you.”

“Ugh, I know— hey!”

You tell her how Anthony and Scott were obviously trying to set you up, and how Anthony was not helping the awkwardness you already established.

“Why, though??”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

You tell her how things eventually turned around, you and Chris caught a little vibe, and that you were so sure he was flirting with you. How genuine he seemed, and how dreamy his eyes were, and—

“Wait a min—”

“Let me finish!”

Finally, you told her how you’d accidentally read Anthony’s text chain with Chris, and saw what Chris really thought of you.

“Well, damn.”

“I’m saying!” You breathe out exasperatedly as you sit down in front Jimi, leaning your head on her knee.“It's not that I thought we’d ride off into the sunset together or anything, but I just thought I’d read him as genuine. I don’t know… with all that’s happened the last few months, my judgment could really use a win.”

“Oh honey, I know. But what did I tell you? You—”

“We’re ready for you!” Saved by the stage manager.

“Looks like your stern talking to is gonna have to wait until after the meet and greet.”

“Immediately after. Have fun out there hun. Snatch some wigs!”

——————————————————————————

You didn’t see it, but last night Chris saw you enter the party. His breath hitched at the sight of you, dressed in all white, hair like a kinky-curly halo around your head. An actual angel. Somewhat dressed down from the other ladies in the party, but clearly confident and comfortable in your own skin, made you stand out to him. His mesmerization was interrupted by voices calling out in the distance. It was a couple of the younger actor boys, and he watched you chat with them.

Chris looked away when his phone dinged indicating he received a text. It was from Mackie, asking if he was ok. Can I catch a break? He exchanged texts, but wanted to return his gaze so badly to the sneakered beauty that caught his eye. When he looked up, you were gone, and he panicked a little. He finally found you outside on the rooftop patio, dancing provocatively… with Scott?

Chris made his way over to you, Scott, and Mackie. He admired the way you talked expressively about who-knows-what, but your animated faces amused him. When he got to you all, introductions were made; you’re an actress, soon making your film debut alongside his brother and friend. He tries to make small talk with you, but somehow finds himself being joked on for his own film debut, and he’s slightly returned to his sullen mood. I’m not in the mood for this. It’s always too good to be true, huh?

Alone with you at the bar, though, something happens, you change his mind— or rather confirm and further his initial intrigue. The two of you talk, laugh, and dance with each other for the better part of the evening, often catching yourselves gazing smittenly at the beautiful stranger opposite of you. He thinks that you're funny, smart, and confidently awkward. Chris appreciates your realness and was never more glad he came out despite his previously funky mood.

Unfourtunately, there was another change, a sour one. You’d seen Chris’ blind judgments of you. FuuuuUUUUUUcccckkk. He’d sent those texts before he’d even met you, ignorant to you being the musician that his brother and friend were trying to set him up with— they’d done a good job of making sure of that after he expressed his disinterest. But you didn’t know that, and believed that what he texted was truly what he thought of you after enjoying each other’s company all night.

Chris was embarrassed to say the least. He went to the bathroom to hide his shame. I finally, FINALLY hit it off with someone, and possibly blew it because I just HAD to choose this ONE time to be colorful in my word choice. I gotta make this right.

 As quickly as he could, he’d gotten together a demonstration of remorse: a beautiful bouquet of roses and some gourmet coffee, a call back to the quips you shared last night, sent to your green room. He wasn’t sure what to say on the note, but remembering how much of a jokester you are, he went the cheesy, comical route, and prayed it went over well. Chris could’ve left it at that, but no, my curiosity had to get the best of me. 

Just like you hadn’t seen him watching you last night, you hadn’t seen him watching you today. Today, however, he’s not the only one watching you. This isn’t qualified as stalking, is it? God, I hope not. Appropriately anxious and tucked in the furthest corner of the small, but packed venue, clad in a baseball cap, hoodie, and sunglasses, Chris heavily reconsidered his spur of the moment decision of coming to see your acoustic performance. Any chance of leaving was now gone as the lights dimmed and the presenter came on stage.

“In the last 2 years following the release of her debut album, today’s artist has taken music by storm! She’s had a #1 song in the country for 10 consecutive weeks— graced the covers of Rolling Stone and Vogue— top-billed major music festivals like Lollapalooza and Coachella. She’s even cleaned up at the Grammys this year and then gave the most talked about performance.”  Damn… do I really live under a rock? “iHeartRadio, give a warm welcome to…” 

Applause erupted as you joined your band on stage, taking your spot behind the microphone. You greeted the crowd with a shy smile and introduced the first song. “This… is ‘Stroke’.” The crowd erupts again around Chris, all in on what’s in store, leaving him the only one in the room unsure of what to expect.

Chris is mesmerized by your voice and amused by your quirky dance moves. But he feels conflicted, knowing that similar moves were done with him last night on the dance floor. When you danced together, it had felt like the two of you were in your own little world, but seeing you onstage sharing some of that with an entire audience made him feel a little… insignificant.

Your lyrics are smart, raw and moving and the instrumentation is captivating even in its stripped back state. Chris doesn’t think he’s ever heard music like yours before. He’s surprised by the subtly aggressive and sexual nature of it, considering how awkward and goofy and cute you were with him. However, he loves watching your outright confidence, your assertiveness, in action on stage. Wow, she’s fucking amazing!

“... thank y’all! Um… this next one is a cover of a song I’m sure you know and love.” The guitarist starts the iconic riff of Aaliyah’s ‘Are You That Somebody?’. Chris is taken back to hearing this song at many parties in his younger years where he mindlessly *and drunkenly* danced to the upbeat production. But hearing you sing it today, a little slower and a lot more vulnerable, the lyrics hit him differently.

“Oh boy, see I’m trusting you with my heart, my soul

I probably shouldn’t let you but if I

If I let you know

You can’t tell nobody, I’m talkin’ ‘bout nobody

I hope you’re responsible

Boy I gotta watch my back, 'Cause I’m not just anybody”

He’s reminded of your comments last night.

“Don’t you ever feel like you can’t tell people’s intentions? Like, you can’t tell if someone wants to be around you for you or… for what they think they’ll get in return. It’s just easier to stay in your own, comfortable bubble sometimes. I don’t know…”

She probably thinks I was trying to take advantage of her. God, I’m so stupid sometimes!

At the end of the set, there’s a round of deserving applause and cheers for you, and you beam at the crowd, thanking them. Chris can’t help but feel strangely proud of you; he barely knows you, but can tell you love what you do and give your all to it. He admires that.

When the lights come up and the presenter joins you on stage, Chris takes that opportunity to slip out early so as not to be caught in the rush of everyone leaving, risking him getting recognized. He gets his phone out to let his driver know he’s coming down and to meet him around the corner, hoping this will keep them from tipping off paparazzi. He then opens his music app to download all your music. It’s official: I’m a fan.

——————————————————————————

“Alright everybody, if you have tickets for the meet and greet… “ the presenter gives announcements as you leave the stage. Being the attentive performer you are, you noticed a tall, enigmatic audience member leave early. Normally you would’ve gently called them out, but something stopped you. A familiarity of the figure, the stature, the walk.

Your breath catches in your throat at the thought of who it could be. You start towards the green room to prepare for the meet and greet, although your swirling thoughts cause you to make little to no strides in that direction. What if it is Chris? Why would he come today? Was he really sorry? Or was he just bored and looking for a good laugh?

Adrenaline rushes you and you head in the direction of where the figure had gone. You scan the room and spot them, stomp up behind them, ready to have some words.

“Hey! HEY!” You reach and yank their hoodie off, “WHAT’D YOU THINK OF THE show…” your voice trails off at the sight of a toupee hanging in the pulled down hood, and the figure turns around. Shit. 

“¡¿Qué mierda estás haciendo?!” The Spanish speaking stranger is loud, bald, and clearly pissed.

“Lo siento,” you offer with a sheepish smile and shrug, then turn on your heels and scurry off, slightly embarrassed by the scene you’d caused.

“What the hell was that?” Jimi asked with wide eyes. “Not what I meant when I said ‘snatch some wigs’!” 

“I thought that was Chris…”

“You thought an extremely famous, A-list actor, who barely flirted with you last night, and clearly doesn’t think very highly of you, risked pestering paps and mobbing fans to go out of his way to come to your set today?”

“Well, when you put it like that…”

“And if it was? What were you gonna do?”

“I… didn’t think that far.”

“You didn’t think at all. Listen, I get that you’re hurt—“

“I’m not hurt! Ok… That’s not me. I don’t get hurt.”

Jimi sighs, softening her eyes and speaks at you with tough love and concern. “Whatever it is you’re feeling, you can’t let him or any other industry guy get in your head like this. Your career’s finally taking off like you wanted, and your personal life is less in shambles than it was a while ago. If you want everything to continue going in the right direction, you gotta get focused! You’ve got a movie role to slay! And many more amazing opportunities waiting for you after that because you made it all happen. I want you to remember that this next chapter is about focusing on what’s right for you, professionally and personally. Do NOT bring in the bullshit from the last chapter.”

It’s your turn to sigh. “But, I—“

“Aht-aht! No excuses. Are we clear?” You simply nod because there’s not much you can say. All you can do is mentally make a promise to yourself to not let any guy get you besides yourself, that you will be willing and ready for great things to happen to you. Jimi’s right… again! Dammit, I hate when she’s right.

Part 4

[tiesandtea]

Suede fell out of bed into Britpop and Britpop controversy about Blur and bisexuality and who was doing what to who in what direction, but between episodes of public drama was glammy rock ‘n’ roll in the most classic English tradition. After years off duty, Suede is substantially re-united (without Bernard) and active and playing their first stateside gig at Coachella. 

An interview with Brett Anderson by Chris Ziegler. L.A. Record, 15 April 2011.

How did Suede and Metallica ever get together for all-night rock sessions? Brett Anderson: Our press agent sorta said, ‘Hey, Kirk Hammett is a big fan— should we get you together?’ So we went out to San Francisco to Kirk’s place and spent a lot of time being a bit naughty and playing songs in his basement. He had a studio—a little bit of a jamming room. I remember running through ‘Metal Mickey,’ we did a bit of T. Rex—we were off our faces, anyway. He’s a nice chap!

Kirk said he was struck by how normal you were and how you didn’t spank your buttocks once. I should have spanked my buttocks. He was probably very disappointed. ‘This can’t be the real Brett Anderson. He’s not spanking his buttocks.’

What Crass lyric is so close to the front of your mind at all times that you can sing it to me right this second? ‘Do they owe us a living? Of course they fucking do!’ I love Crass. Feeding of the 5,000 was one of my favorite records growing up. I love that record. I love all the artwork. Talking about bands that draw you into a world—Crass really created their world, and it was a really confrontational, intelligent, political world. I really responded to it as a young teenager.

What part of the Crass ethos do you hold most dear? I don’t live on a commune in Essex. But it opened my eyes—if it’s done right—how powerful political music can be. I never wrote overtly political music, but I did write music that dealt with not like party politics, but themes of poverty and alienation and I used that in songs—that was possibly inspired by Crass.

How was Suede a political band? Dealing with the politics of life. Setting our songs in a real social context. I never wanted to be a writer who waved flags for a political party, but listening to the songs you can tell I was brought up as a member of the working-class, and you can tell the songs have a very strong left-wing bias.

You said you felt there hasn’t been a definitive genre of music invented in the U.K. in the last decade, and that you feel music is meant more to placate than provoke now. Why? I do very much feel that’s the state of things. I can’t see that the last decade has created its own genre, which is a terrible shame for that generation. Not to say there hasn’t been great music. There’s amazing music! I love discovering new bands and there’s a great wave of new bands. But the biggest cultural development of the last like ten years was computer technology. It wasn’t anything to do with art and music, and that’s a shame. Even in the 90s, we had dance music—definitely a 90s genre. Maybe people have become too knowing. There’s too much of a structured sense of what’s cool and what isn’t, and that comes from magazines constantly publishing lists which contain the same five Beatles albums and this kind of thing. There’s this constant pressure to comply with this very sort of rigid set of accepted rock albums. So bands are too afraid to go outside those reference points. I sense this real fear in the music industry. A lot of it is because the industry has become a lot more corporate. People won’t take risks anymore. In the early 90s—that’s the only time I can talk about because that’s when I started—magazines were putting unusual bands on the cover. Magazines put Suede on covers before anyone had ever heard of us. Commercially, that was very ill-advised—but at least it suggested they had a sense of purpose. Now I get the sense people only back who they think are gonna win, regardless of if they actually think it’s any good or not. They will back who they think are the winners, and they will write good reviews for the bands they think are gonna sell lots of records whether they like them or not, and I think that’s a fucking terrible way to be. People are too afraid of not being cool? Or getting it wrong? No one’s willing to get it wrong. No one’s willing to stick their neck out and become a hated figure. No one’s got that kind of confidence. Everyone’s too willing to comply. It’s a terrible thing. But things go in cycles, don’t they? Maybe it’ll move into another period where people are taking chances.

When is the last time you suffered Stendhal syndrome? At the Musee d’Orsay in Paris. I was looking at the Toulouse-Lautrecs, which were absolutely amazing. I’ve never been a huge fan of Toulouse-Lautrec before, but seeing the paintings in the flesh—as it were—is just so amazingly powerful. They’re so beautifully observed. I’m not sure if I actually experienced Stendhal syndrome, but I’ve read about it and it’s an extreme reaction to beauty—that’s the closest I can imagine it to be.

What’s it actually feel like? Like drinking too much coffee. Slightly restless euphoria. Or maybe I’m getting it confused with actually drinking too much coffee. I’m a huge fan of art . I spend a lot of time in galleries and that’s my favorite period of art as well—the post-Impressionists. Paul Gauguin and those artists. I love all the medieval painters as well. People like Bruegel and Cranach and Holbein. There’s something incredibly primitive about it—Bruegel’s ‘Return of the Hunters’ is so atmospheric. What I really like about Holbein is he’s such an amazing draftsman and a great observer of human features. He could completely capture a person. You’re looking at someone who lived 500 years ago but it could be someone passing you on the street. They’re so real. I love that about Holbein’s paintings.

Did you want to try and observe things that carefully in Suede songs? It’s difficult in the framework of pop music. It isn’t a very subtle medium. It doesn’t have as much as fiction or fine art. You’re in a very rigid structure—melody and rhyme and rhythm and those things are constricting you. I don’t think pop writers can ever take it to that depth of observation. But what pop writers can do is engage at an emotional level that other artists can’t do. The pop song, when done right, is incredibly powerful. That’s partly to do with the simplicity as well. Truth in music is incredibly important, but artifice can be incred- ibly important as well—that’s something I’ve done quite consciously. Lots of the songs I’ve written for Suede have been deliberately superficial but perversely enough there’s a kind of truth in that. A sketch is powerful because you fill in the missing pieces. You fill in the framework yourself. If it’s too full, there’s no space for you to interpret it.

Francis Bacon said, ‘The job of the artist is to deepen the mystery.’ Absolutely. One of the most important quotes ever about creativity. Something I’ve learned through mistakes over the years is it shouldn’t be too clear what you’re doing. Sometimes the sketch is so powerful because of the room for interpretation. As soon as you know what something is about, it somehow kills the mystery. And mystery is so important in music. That allows the song to have life beyond what it was intended for. When a writer’s writing, they have a very specific thing in mind, but they don’t know about the life of the listener. The listener applies his life to the music and there’s a new interpretation. That’s why a good song has so much power. It reaches into people’s lives. But to do that, there needs to be a sense of mystery. I’ve always tried to do that with detail. There’s this whole thing with great songwriters saying songs should be universal, but I actually think songs should be opposite—strangely specific and set in a place to make them real. I mean, still allow space for interpretation.

You said once that Suede writes about the used condom, not the beautiful bed. That kind of detail? That’s not my favorite quote I ever said—but it keeps coming back. It must resonate with people’s vision of what the band is about. It’s quite a crass way of saying it, but I suppose it’s got some sort of truth. I always wanted to document the sort of grubby side of life. I didn’t want to talk in rock cliché. ‘Baby, I love you!’ clichés. I wanted to sing about the world I saw around me, and the world I saw around me was the used condom. It was the dusty street, the flickering TV. It was that use of detail and the fact I was born in the U.K. that made me write about the U.K. in detail, and it became distorted into the cliché of what became Britpop later—but it was never this nationalistic, jingoistic intention. It was just a desire to write about the world I saw around me.

Did you have to feel like you were living a Suede song to write a Suede song? I don’t feel I deliberately changed my lifestyle. But I didn’t rein myself in. I felt justified in writing what I was writing—the right thing to do for my artistic vision was live the lifestyle I was singing about, but it’s kind of a chicken-and-egg thing. I was living that, obviously. But you can’t live that lifestyle forever and wanna remain alive. Things have to change. I championed—well, I documented it, and then you realize that what you’re documenting is quite harmful.

Did you think you were going to end up on a prison ship like Dan Treacy? Well, toward the end of the 90s, things started getting quite dark. Life was definitely changing. I thought, ‘Well, maybe we need to veer away from something.’ I always feel I’m slightly on dodgy ground when people talk about this whole concept of the artist as a damaged character—it’s such a powerful cliché that people really wanna believe in, and I think there’s so much great art made through clarity and sobriety. The damaged artist casts a huge shadow people sometimes can’t see beyond. Me personally, as an artist now I feel much more in control of my art. Much more driven. Certainly more than I did ten years ago. But people need to believe in that sort of figure.

Jason Pierce said he started Spacemen 3 because of people like Roky Erickson and Alex Chilton—that he felt he could do what they did because they were flawed and not professional and perfect. It’s the ultimate DIY ethic, isn’t it? The ultimate punk thing? Saying it doesn’t matter how incapable or damaged or all these pejorative adjectives you wanna apply—not you can still create art, but it almost makes your art more interesting or valid or gives it an edge you wouldn’t have if you weren’t damaged? Someone like Ian Dury—the ‘cripple as artist.’ It gives the audience a fascination, I think.

You said you were making music to find community in a fucked-up world. Did you ever find that community? It’s always a search for some sort of community, isn’t it? There’s a line from one of the old songs, ‘New Generation.’ ‘We take the pills to find each other.’ A search for human … ownership or whatever. I don’t know. It’s strange to say because I’ve always conducted my career and Suede’s career almost as outsiders. I’ve never felt accepted by the music industry. I still don’t. I’ve never felt part of any sort of gang, and I never really wanted to be part of any gang. The only gang I’m part of is this weird disparate group of non-members—the ‘others’—and I’m quite happy in that role as well. I don’t jealously look at other people’s lives and wish I could be like that. I don’t have that search for community I used to have— maybe I realized the reality of things.

Does that mean it’s not out there? That it was never there? Can bands create these communities anymore? That’s the definition of a decent band. They create a community. When I answered your question, it was in a personal sense. Whether I’ve found a community. But hopefully Suede as a band created a community. That was one of our real intentions—I loved bands like the Smiths who had this world you went into, with the sleeves and the reference points. You very much immersed yourself. I wanted Suede to have that sense as well. Almost a strong Suede way of being. The Suede army, as someone once said.

If you didn’t find community, what did you find? It made my life. It gave me all those things we were talking about earlier. It gave me everything. Gave me purpose in life. I wouldn’t ever advise anyone to do what I did! I’ve been incredibly lucky in my career. 99 percent of people who go into music won’t be as lucky. It is a lot to do with luck! The fact I’ve met Bernard Butler—little things! I might never have met him, and we never would have written those songs and Suede would have been a very different band. I never just say, ‘This is what you should do!’ I was just confident and stupid enough to do what I did, and it just sort of worked! But some of the decisions I made—they were pretty rash!

Is it necessary to commit totally to being creative to be good at being creative? To jump in with no safety net? Absolutely. You’ve gotta let yourself out there. I didn’t even have an instrument to fall back on! ‘I believe I got enough of a voice to say something interesting, and I’m gonna do it.’ Confidence verging on stupidity that happened to pay off!

Does pop music defend the brave and stupid? I think so. You have to push it as far as it’ll go. Part of the reason the public loves pop music so much is the drama of the story. You have people who have no idea about the drama and just wanna listen to Phil Collins records and that’s fine, but there’s a whole other group of people that love the back story—how it’s made and why people fall out and fall in love. It’s almost treating the world of music like you’re watching a soap opera and people love that.

Why do people fall in love? Probably some sort of chemical function. I don’t wanna be unromantic about it but it fulfills a necessary function for the human race.

[dreams-madeof-strawberrylemonade]

Blue

Request: HERE A/N: I simply just love this so much and I think I speak on the behalf of all of us when I say I NEED A JOSH IN MY LIFE, OKAY THANK U. @onevisionliz​ this is for you and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do :) Comments and critiques are welcome. Word count: 1.7 K Warnings: a little bit of language, nothing too bad

Gif by @peacelovekiszka​, found here, on Tumblr. To be added to the permanent taglist, DM me or leave an ask!

Fanfiction Masterlist

You couldn’t believe that you had to spend another winter holiday in that town. You were so damn bored that you actually agreed to take the family’s dog for a walk in the freezing cold outside. It wasn’t that kind of cold with fluffy snow that gets your fingertips slightly itchy. It was the cold in which your nose was running all the time and your eyes were stinging, on the permanent verge of watering. It was actually kind of difficult to breathe without a scarf covering your face.

So you were fully armored, ready to go outside in the cold. You were worried about the poor dog, though. You were wearing a scarf, gloves, hat, winter jacket, but the dog? Only its fur. The owners – your best friend’s parents – assured you that the dog was a winter breed (Husky, to be more exact) and it was used to this cold, and even to worse conditions, so you didn’t need to worry about it.

You stepped out and a cold shiver ran through your body. The dog – Blue was his name (because of its marvelous blue eyes) – ran ahead of you, excited to go for a walk. Walking with Blue didn’t mean that you had him on a leash, only that you walked along with him. He has been trained this way. The owners only needed to make sure that he didn’t run away while on walks.

You felt your phone vibrate in the pocket of your jeans and you quickly pulled it out and took off one of your gloves to scan the fingerprint. You stopped in the middle of the frozen sidewalk to check the text message that you’ve received. You quickly shrugged it off though, considering it was from a group chat you were in.

Only ten seconds were enough for Blue to disappear from your sight. You looked to your left and right. “Blue!” you shout, hoping that he’d come back to you, but all the shouting was in vain. As an answer, you received only the defiant silence of the cold streets.

You ran down the street, following the faint paw prints in the frozen snow of a dirty white.

“Hey, have you seen a Husky running down this way by any chance?” you gasp for air as you finally meet the first soul on the street since you started the run after Blue. The cold air stung your throat and your lungs.

“Yeah, just ran here like thirty seconds ago,” the boy you asked answered you. “Better get him fast, he was following a cat.”

“God…” you moan angry at yourself for letting Blue out of your sight.

“There a problem?” asked another boy, peeking his head from behind the front door.  You looked at him and squinted your eyes. Seemed so familiar, but you couldn’t put your finger on it.

“Her dog is chasing a cat and she needs to catch it,” the boy from outside answered and put his long hair in a ponytail. “Baby brother, this is your time to shine. Go catch it,” he laughed at the one behind the door.

“Shut up. You’re younger by five minutes and as a matter of fact, I can catch him. Just wait and see,” the one inside answers, fixing the fluffy hair on his head. Before he could answer anything else, his eyes widened and sprinted in the street.

“I’m Jake by the way and he’s Josh. Likes to show off with anything he can,” the boy spoke, looking at his brother running on the cold streets, only in a t-shirt and something that looked like sweatpants.

“Josh…” you whisper to yourself and then it dawned on you. You met him that summer, at Coachella, at an after party and before the festival ended, you had spent every single evening with him. Your best friend got you there, thanks to the fact that she was very good friends with one of the brothers. You remembered then that they play in a band and that they are three brothers.

It was a warm summer night, with the stars shining bright on the pitch black sky. You and your best friend just managed to get to an after party, backstage at Coachella. She was greeting the four boys that got the passes for the two of you, while you waited in the corner, feeling kind of left out.

“Hey, I’m Josh,” one of the boys approached you and shook your hand.

“I’m Y/N, nice to meet you,” you smile.

You couldn’t help but notice the fluffy hair on Josh’s head and the small pass around his neck which said in capital letters PERFORMER. GRETA VAN FLEET. ALL ACCESS.

“You’ve already played your set?”

“Yep, and now it’s time for some well-earned relaxation,” he laughed, revealing a set of perfect white teeth. You had to admit, his smile was contagious, making you smile as well.

You had spent all that night with Josh, until the sun was shyly rising over the desert filled with people having fun and partying. In the morning, Josh even came with you all the way to the bungalow you had rented with your friend for the whole period of the festival.

“See you in the evening honey,” Josh smiled with tired eyes. He approached you and planted a tiny and shy kiss on your cheek, before waving you goodbye.

That was only the first evening of the festival. In the days that came, you and Josh got considerably closer and you could feel the tension in the air between you. You fell for him, even though you proposed yourself not to, since you’d never meet again and you’d be heartbroken.

In the day before each of you went your separate ways, Josh kissed you as the sun came up on the sky.

“God, that dog of yours is fucking fast…” Josh panted as he walked back to the house with Blue next to him. Blue was wiggling his tail and looking at you with a “sorry” look on his face.

“Thank you, Josh,” you spoke and in that moment, on Josh’s face you could’ve seen at least 6 different emotions coming one after the other.

“Y/N?” he asked unsure. Jake was still there and with a little ooh, he left inside, leaving the two of you alone.

“Who would’ve guessed,” you shrugged with a dumb smile on your face. Your feelings for him only returned, even though you’d hoped that time would bury them away.

“So nice to see you here, but how come you’re here? Didn’t you say you’re from Ann Arbor?” surprise all over his face. “Fuck, sorry, sorry, come inside, it’s freezing outside and bring him with you.”

You looked at Blue and nodded. You were thankful for warmth of Josh’s place and for his invitations. Awkward tension was now between you, so you weren’t planning on staying too long.

Inside, Blue laid down on the wooden floor in the living room, while you were still standing in the doorway, taking off your scarf.

“Y/N, before anything else, I wanted to say that I didn’t know that you come around here, if I would, I would’ve asked you in summer to –“ Josh started but abruptly stopped.

“No, it’s alright, really. I don’t live in Frankenmuth, I just come here for the holidays with my friend and sometimes during summer,” you shrug your shoulders, trying to cover the tint of your cheeks.

“Come on, have a seat,” Josh motioned towards the couch. “Can I make you something to drink? Tea? Coffee? Some hot chocolate?”

He was as sweet as you remembered. “Some coffee maybe, thank you.”

You join Josh into the kitchen, looking around the room. The whole place was so cozy.

“I would’ve asked you if you wanted to be together. It’s a little silly at first sight, you know, falling for somebody in a couple of days, but I feel like we’ve known each other for ages,” Josh sighed as he took out a cup from the cupboard.

In that moment, it felt like an old flame between you two has been lit up.

Josh put on the kettle, preparing two cups of coffee. You were silently looking at him, like trying to let all that information and all those old feelings with new opportunities sink in. Silence was between you the whole time while Josh prepared the coffee.

Once with the cup in your hands and Josh with his, Josh led the way to the living room, sitting on the couch and putting the cup on the small glass table in front of him. You followed his example and you just looked at him. He was really beautiful and the small part of his soul that you had the pleasure to see was just as beautiful.

“Can I?” Josh whispered, scooting closer to you.

You just hum affirmatively. Your eyes flutter closed in the moment Josh’s lips touched yours, as if telling you how much he missed having you with him.

After the kiss, you smiled, feeling happier than ever and hugged him tight.

“Won’t you stay for a little while?” Josh pleaded, holding your hand and kissing him.

You nod and text your friend, telling her that you’re going to come later home and that Blue is with you. In the instant you pressed send, you powered off your phone.

Josh spread on the couch a white blanket and he pulled you to his chest and covered the two of you with the blanket. He turned on Netflix and browsed for a movie, asking you for your opinion on whatever he found interesting.

“Dude, I wanted to watch Netflix,” his brother, Jake, protested from the stairs as he saw the two of you.

“Fuck off, go watch it on your phone,” Josh answered and put his tongue out. He was acting like a five year old, but you loved that.

You just cuddled closer to Josh, while playing with his hair and watching Netflix for the rest of the afternoon. You knew in that moment that you have found a special someone who was honest and who shared the same feelings for you as you did for him.

Tags: @myownparadise96​, @satans-helper​, @jeordinevankiszka​, @littlegeekwonder​, @songbirdkisses​, @pomegranatecurses​, @umbriellethenightfall​, @freeeshavacadoo​, @karrotkate​, @mountainofthesunn​

[jeffxwittek]

Love At First Beer | Todd X Reader

A/N: This is my first Todd imagine and I hope you guys like it...idk what else to say besides let me know what you think!! Request: being friends w natalie and she introduces you to the vlog squad at coachella and you end up hooking up w todd -anonymous Summary: You meet Todd during Coachella weekend and the two of you hit it off. Warnings: drinking, sex (implied)

—————

You feel like you’ve been driving forever as you pull up to the house the rest of Natalie’s friends were staying at. You had known Natalie for a while, yet never had a chance to meet her friends. She thought Coachella weekend would be a perfect time for everyone to meet you. You reluctantly agreed and now you’re finding yourself nervously shaking while getting out of your car. You send Natalie a quick just parked text and make your way to the front door.

Before you have a chance to knock, Natalie swings the door open. “Y/N! You’re here!” She has a beer in hand, a sight you don’t usually see.

“Hey, Nat! Sorry I’m late. Work was a bitch with letting me leave early.” You step into the house and throw your bag into the corner.

“C’mon. Let me introduce you to everyone!” Natalie grabs your hand and drags you through the house to the backyard where people are jumping into the pool, running with water guns, and playing beer pong. Not the surrounding you usually see Natalie in. She’s always calm and reserved when you two are together.

She takes you over to the lawn where you see a shaggy haired boy in all black, camera in hand, filming two other guys chugging Coronas. “This is David, Todd, and Zane.”

“Hey. I’m Y/N.” You say as David turns around and points the camera in your face.

“Hi! Wanna join?” David asks enthusiastically.

“Uh, yeah, sure. Why not.” You grab a beer off the table next to you and pop it open stepping in front of the camera next to the two other boys.

“1, 2, 3, GO!” David yells as you all start chugging the beers as fast as possible.

You’re the first to finish and drop your bottle to the grass and look over to the others finishing up the last of their beers.

Zane looks at you with shocked eyes. “Woah! How’d you do that? I’m supposed to be the beer champ.”

“Beginners luck?” You shrug your shoulders as Todd flips his hair and makes eye contact with you for the first time. Maybe it was the fact you just chugged a beer on an empty stomach, spent God knows how long in the car, or it could be that you were just completely in awe of the beauty standing in front of you, but you suddenly became speechless as Todd smiles at you.

“Beginners luck looks good on you,” Todd says reaching his hand out to you. “I’m Todd.”

You reach to shake his hand and open your mouth, but no words come out. Natalie jumps behind you putting her hands on your shoulder. “She’s Y/N and she’s just a little shy.”

“DAVE! COME LOOK AT THIS!” You hear someone yell as the boys run off together.

You turn around to Natalie with flushed cheeks. “Oh. My. God. He’s beautiful.” You turn over your shoulder and see Todd leaning against David looking at his camera.

“Todd?” Natalie perks up with a smile. “I knew it!”

“Knew what?!”

“That you would like him!”

“Like him? I don’t know him!” You get slightly defensive. “I just think he’s attractive,” you say calmly.

Natalie rolls her eyes and loops her arm with yours. “Whatever. Let’s just get you another drink.” — A couple hours later a party bus pulls up in front of the house and David calls for everyone to get in. “COME ON GUYS! Jack said SeatGeek has a VIP tent and we need to go!” Camera in hand again, David films everyone climbing into the bus while you’re putting your shoes on and checking you have everything in your bag.

Natalie pops her head through the door. “You coming?”

You look up and give her a half smile. “Be right out.” You pick up your stuff and make your way to the bus and find yourself looking around for a place to sit. You see Natalie is already sitting with Joe and Jason.

“Y/N!” You look over to see Todd with his hand up. “Over here.”

You walk over to Todd and sit down next to him. “Hey.”

“You chugged that beer like a pro earlier by the way. I’ve never seen a girl take back a drink like that.” He says looking at you impressed.

“Thank you for the kudos. I guess going to a party school for college had its perks.” You open your bag. “Speaking of party schools,” you say pulling a flask out. “The one thing I learned from college was to never leave home without one of these.”

“Ah. My kind of girl. May I?” He says gestures towards the flask.

You hand it to him happily. “Go ahead.” You watch him take a sip and laugh when he gags.

“Okay. I did not peg you for a vodka girl at first sight,” he scoffs handing the flask back to you.

“You mean Natalie didn’t tell you I was full of surprises?” You joke putting the flask back in your bag.

“She mentioned looks, brains, and wit but seemed to have left that small detail,” he jokes.

You can’t help but blush over his comment and look over to Natalie who is smiling at the two of you connecting. You two talk for the rest of the the ride not realizing that you’ve pulled up to the venue.

You suddenly see a hand come and smack Todd against the head. “What the fuck, Scott?” Todd touches the side of his head. “I was having a conversation.”

“Let’s go liquor up,” Scott says walking off the bus.“I guess we’ll finish this later?” Todd asks.

“Sounds like a plan,” you smile at him getting off the bus to find Natalie and tell her about talking with Todd. “Girl. Why didn’t you tell me about him sooner? He’s amazing!”

“Todd? Amazing? Yea, he’s good looking. But amazing? Might be a stretch,” Natalie laughs.

“No, Nat. He’s smart and funny and he even laughed at my lame jokes that you don’t even laugh at. Like genuinely laughed at them.”

“Even you’re whale joke?”

“Yes. Even my whale joke.” You roll your eyes. “Let’s just go to the tent.” — Later in the tent you’re walking by yourself and see Todd talking with David, Jeff, and Jason. You stop and sit quietly at a nearby table and listen in on if he says anything about you while you pretend to be on your phone.

“Guys, really. She even has this little toy whale in her bag and has this bit where she pretends to to look for something and then pulls it out and says ‘whale, whale, what do we have here?’” He laughs at the thought of the bit you did earlier on the party bus.

Jeff hits him on the arm. “C’mon, dude. You’re saying all this over a toy whale?”

“Give it a rest, Jeff. Todd’s in loooooooove,” David mocks Todd.

“Oh shut up, losers. I’m not in love. She’s just kind of cool,” Todd says pushing his friends playfully.

You can’t help but blush to yourself as you listen in on their conversation.

Hours pass and you find yourself alone again sitting on a bench outside the tent hoping you magically find cell service. You see someone sit beside you and look up to see Todd holding two beers. “Two beers?” You question. “Someone is getting alcohol happy.”

He hands one to you. “Ones for you. Thought you could use a refreshment.”

“Thank you, Todd.” You grab the beer from his hand. “Cheers.”

“Cheers to what?”

“To—,” you think for a moment. “New friends.”

“To new friends,” Todd repeats as you clink bottles and start drinking. — Drinks later, you find yourself stumbling back into the rental house with your arms wrapped around Todd. You can’t remember seeing anyone perform at the festival, but you remember a lot of drinks and little food being put into your body. Todd walks you down the hall into his bedroom and lays you down on the bed.

“You wanna sleep in here tonight, Y/N?” He asks helping you take your shoes off.

You prop up leaning back on your arms and look at him through glossy alcohol eyes. “If you want me to.”

He sits down next to you on the bed and pushes some hair behind your ear. “I’d like that. We can talk more.”

It’s silent for a couple seconds before your drunken thoughts become vocal. “Kiss me.”

“What?” Todd looks taken aback by those words.

“Kiss me.” You sit up straighter. “We’ve been hanging out and talking all day. We wouldn’t have done that if there wasn’t some connection here.” You shrug your shoulders. “I may be drunk, but I’m not so drunk that I’m blind to what’s happening here. Even Natalie caught onto something on the bus earlier. If I’m wrong then tell me so I can leave and not waste my—”

Todd’s lips crash into yours mid-rant and you can taste the mixture of beer, tequila, and the vodka from your flask mix together in passionate kiss.

Todd pulls away and whispers, “Wanna know a secret?”

“Sure.”

“I wasn’t going to come this weekend, but Natalie told me that you were coming and showed me a picture. I knew I had to meet you.”

“Well, I’m glad you decided to come.” You lean in to give Todd another kiss and he wraps his hands around your waist pulling you close to him.

“I’m glad I came too.” He kisses your neck and you let out a light sigh. “Oh, you like neck kisses?”

“I mean, I don’t hate them,” you joke.

“Then, what about this?” He starts kissing your jaw and makes his way down your neck to your collar bone.

You let out a laugh and pull away. “As much as I do enjoy that, I can’t. Natalie obviously wanted us to meet, but I don’t think she wants this to happen.”

“Look,” Todd sighs and let’s go of you. “Y/N. If you really don’t want to do this, that’s fine. But please don’t let Natalie be the person to stop you from doing something. Like you said, she wanted us to meet. She’s probably expecting this to happen.”

You roll your eyes knowing that Todd is right. “Fine. Let’s do this.” You pull your shirt off and look at Todd’s shocked face. “What? You wanted to do this.”

“I just—,” Todd rubs his eyes. “You’re beautiful, Y/N. From the moment I saw a picture I’ve thought so and now you’re here.”

“You’re right. I am here. So let’s get to know each other more.” You move to sit on his lap and start kissing him. He moves back on the bed and lays down pulling you on top of him. You tug his shirt off and he does the same with your skirt. Soon enough clothes are strewn around the room and you and Todd are laying in bed both staring at the ceiling.

“Wow,” is the only word that has come out of Todd’s mouth.

“Good wow or bad wow?” you turn your head to look at him.

“Great wow. An amazing wow,” he says looking at you.

You let out a laugh and crawl out of the bed to go check your phone to see if you have a text from Natalie.

Girl! We can all hear you!

You turn to look at Todd. “Well, I guess they know what we just did.”

Todd grabs the pillow from behind his head and holds it over his face. “Fuck. They’re gonna mock me for the rest of the weekend.”

You jump back onto the bed and pull the pillow away from Todd. “That’s okay. Natalie will mock me too.” You give Todd a kiss and grab his hand pulling him up. “Now let’s get out there and deal with the mockery together. Deal?”

Todd sighs and looks at you with bright eyes. “Fine. Deal.” He points a finger at you. “But if Natalie doesn’t make fun of you I’m coming back in here to hide.”

You laugh and get up to grab the clothes from around the room throwing Todd’s at him. “Fine. But that’s the only reason you’re coming back in here. Let’s go!”

[kalluun-patangaroa]

SUEDE: SLIGHTLY RESTLESS EUPHORIA

April 15th, 2011 

Illustration by Amber Halford

Suede fell out of bed into Britpop and Britpop controversy about Blur and bisexuality and who was doing what to who in what direction, but between episodes of public drama was glammy rock ‘n’ roll in the most classic English tradition. After years off duty, Suede is substantially re-united (without Bernard) and active and playing their first stateside gig at Coachella. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

How did Suede and Metallica ever get together for all-night rock sessions?

Brett Anderson (vocals): Our press agent sorta said, ‘Hey, Kirk Hammett is a big fan— should we get you together?’ So we went out to San Francisco to Kirk’s place and spent a lot of time being a bit naughty and playing songs in his basement. He had a studio—a little bit of a jamming room. I remember running through ‘Metal Mickey,’ we did a bit of T. Rex—we were off our faces, anyway. He’s a nice chap!

Kirk said he was struck by how normal you were and how you didn’t spank your buttocks once.

I should have spanked my buttocks. He was probably very disappointed. ‘This can’t be the real Brett Anderson. He’s not spanking his buttocks.’

What Crass lyric is so close to the front of your mind at all times that you can sing it to me right this second?

‘Do they owe us a living? Of course they fucking do!’ I love Crass. Feeding of the 5,000 was one of my favorite records growing up. I love that record. I love all the artwork. Talking about bands that draw you into a world—Crass really created their world, and it was a really confrontational, intelligent, political world. I really responded to it as a young teenager.

What part of the Crass ethos do you hold most dear?

I don’t live on a commune in Essex. But it opened my eyes—if it’s done right—how powerful political music can be. I never wrote overtly political music, but I did write music that dealt with not like party politics, but themes of poverty and alienation and I used that in songs—that was possibly inspired by Crass.

How was Suede a political band?

Dealing with the politics of life. Setting our songs in a real social context. I never wanted to be a writer who waved flags for a political party, but listening to the songs you can tell I was brought up as a member of the working-class, and you can tell the songs have a very strong left-wing bias.

You said you felt there hasn’t been a definitive genre of music invented in the U.K. in the last decade, and that you feel music is meant more to placate than provoke now. Why?

I do very much feel that’s the state of things. I can’t see that the last decade has created its own genre, which is a terrible shame for that generation. Not to say there hasn’t been great music. There’s amazing music! I love discovering new bands and there’s a great wave of new bands. But the biggest cultural development of the last like ten years was computer technology. It wasn’t anything to do with art and music, and that’s a shame. Even in the 90s, we had dance music—definitely a 90s genre. Maybe people have become too knowing. There’s too much of a structured sense of what’s cool and what isn’t, and that comes from magazines constantly publishing lists which contain the same five Beatles albums and this kind of thing. There’s this constant pressure to comply with this very sort of rigid set of accepted rock albums. So bands are too afraid to go outside those reference points. I sense this real fear in the music industry. A lot of it is because the industry has become a lot more corporate. People won’t take risks anymore. In the early 90s—that’s the only time I can talk about because that’s when I started—magazines were putting unusual bands on the cover. Magazines put Suede on covers before anyone had ever heard of us. Commercially, that was very ill-advised—but at least it suggested they had a sense of purpose. Now I get the sense people only back who they think are gonna win, regardless of if they actually think it’s any good or not. They will back who they think are the winners, and they will write good reviews for the bands they think are gonna sell lots of records whether they like them or not, and I think that’s a fucking terrible way to be. People are too afraid of not being cool? Or getting it wrong? No one’s willing to get it wrong. No one’s willing to stick their neck out and become a hated figure. No one’s got that kind of confidence. Everyone’s too willing to comply. It’s a terrible thing. But things go in cycles, don’t they? Maybe it’ll move into another period where people are taking chances.

When is the last time you suffered Stendhal syndrome?

At the Musee d’Orsay in Paris. I was looking at the Toulouse-Lautrecs, which were absolutely amazing. I’ve never been a huge fan of Toulouse-Lautrec before, but seeing the paintings in the flesh—as it were—is just so amazingly powerful. They’re so beautifully observed. I’m not sure if I actually experienced Stendhal syndrome, but I’ve read about it and it’s an extreme reaction to beauty—that’s the closest I can imagine it to be.

What’s it actually feel like?

Like drinking too much coffee. Slightly restless euphoria. Or maybe I’m getting it confused with actually drinking too much coffee. I’m a huge fan of art . I spend a lot of time in galleries and that’s my favorite period of art as well—the post-Impressionists. Paul Gauguin and those artists. I love all the medieval painters as well. People like Bruegel and Cranach and Holbein. There’s something incredibly primitive about it—Bruegel’s ‘Return of the Hunters’ is so atmospheric. What I really like about Holbein is he’s such an amazing draftsman and a great observer of human features. He could completely capture a person. You’re looking at someone who lived 500 years ago but it could be someone passing you on the street. They’re so real. I love that about Holbein’s paintings.

Did you want to try and observe things that carefully in Suede songs?

It’s difficult in the framework of pop music. It isn’t a very subtle medium. It doesn’t have as much as fiction or fine art. You’re in a very rigid structure—melody and rhyme and rhythm and those things are constricting you. I don’t think pop writers can ever take it to that depth of observation. But what pop writers can do is engage at an emotional level that other artists can’t do. The pop song, when done right, is incredibly powerful. That’s partly to do with the simplicity as well. Truth in music is incredibly important, but artifice can be incred- ibly important as well—that’s something I’ve done quite consciously. Lots of the songs I’ve written for Suede have been deliberately superficial but perversely enough there’s a kind of truth in that. A sketch is powerful because you fill in the missing pieces. You fill in the framework yourself. If it’s too full, there’s no space for you to interpret it.

Francis Bacon said, ‘The job of the artist is to deepen the mystery.’

Absolutely. One of the most important quotes ever about creativity. Something I’ve learned through mistakes over the years is it shouldn’t be too clear what you’re doing. Sometimes the sketch is so powerful because of the room for interpretation. As soon as you know what something is about, it somehow kills the mystery. And mystery is so important in music. That allows the song to have life beyond what it was intended for. When a writer’s writing, they have a very specific thing in mind, but they don’t know about the life of the listener. The listener applies his life to the music and there’s a new interpretation. That’s why a good song has so much power. It reaches into people’s lives. But to do that, there needs to be a sense of mystery. I’ve always tried to do that with detail. There’s this whole thing with great songwriters saying songs should be universal, but I actually think songs should be opposite—strangely specific and set in a place to make them real. I mean, still allow space for interpretation.

You said once that Suede writes about the used condom, not the beautiful bed. That kind of detail?

That’s not my favorite quote I ever said—but it keeps coming back. It must resonate with people’s vision of what the band is about. It’s quite a crass way of saying it, but I suppose it’s got some sort of truth. I always wanted to document the sort of grubby side of life. I didn’t want to talk in rock cliché. ‘Baby, I love you!’ clichés. I wanted to sing about the world I saw around me, and the world I saw around me was the used condom. It was the dusty street, the flickering TV. It was that use of detail and the fact I was born in the U.K. that made me write about the U.K. in detail, and it became distorted into the cliché of what became Britpop later—but it was never this nationalistic, jingoistic intention. It was just a desire to write about the world I saw around me.

Did you have to feel like you were living a Suede song to write a Suede song?

I don’t feel I deliberately changed my lifestyle. But I didn’t rein myself in. I felt justified in writing what I was writing—the right thing to do for my artistic vision was live the lifestyle I was singing about, but it’s kind of a chicken-and-egg thing. I was living that, obviously. But you can’t live that lifestyle forever and wanna remain alive. Things have to change. I championed—well, I documented it, and then you realize that what you’re documenting is quite harmful.

Did you think you were going to end up on a prison ship like Dan Treacy?

Well, toward the end of the 90s, things started getting quite dark. Life was definitely changing. I thought, ‘Well, maybe we need to veer away from something.’ I always feel I’m slightly on dodgy ground when people talk about this whole concept of the artist as a damaged character—it’s such a powerful cliché that people really wanna believe in, and I think there’s so much great art made through clarity and sobriety. The damaged artist casts a huge shadow people sometimes can’t see beyond. Me personally, as an artist now I feel much more in control of my art. Much more driven. Certainly more than I did ten years ago. But people need to believe in that sort of figure.

Jason Pierce said he started Spacemen 3 because of people like Roky Erickson and Alex Chilton—that he felt he could do what they did because they were flawed and not professional and perfect.

It’s the ultimate DIY ethic, isn’t it? The ultimate punk thing? Saying it doesn’t matter how incapable or damaged or all these pejorative adjectives you wanna apply—not you can still create art, but it almost makes your art more interesting or valid or gives it an edge you wouldn’t have if you weren’t damaged? Someone like Ian Dury—the ‘cripple as artist.’ It gives the audience a fascination, I think.

You said you were making music to find community in a fucked-up world. Did you ever find that community?

It’s always a search for some sort of community, isn’t it? There’s a line from one of the old songs, ‘New Generation.’ ‘We take the pills to find each other.’ A search for human … ownership or whatever. I don’t know. It’s strange to say because I’ve always conducted my career and Suede’s career almost as outsiders. I’ve never felt accepted by the music industry. I still don’t. I’ve never felt part of any sort of gang, and I never really wanted to be part of any gang. The only gang I’m part of is this weird disparate group of non-members—the ‘others’—and I’m quite happy in that role as well. I don’t jealously look at other people’s lives and wish I could be like that. I don’t have that search for community I used to have— maybe I realized the reality of things.

Does that mean it’s not out there? That it was never there? Can bands create these communities anymore?

That’s the definition of a decent band. They create a community. When I answered your question, it was in a personal sense. Whether I’ve found a community. But hopefully Suede as a band created a community. That was one of our real intentions—I loved bands like the Smiths who had this world you went into, with the sleeves and the reference points. You very much immersed yourself. I wanted Suede to have that sense as well. Almost a strong Suede way of being. The Suede army, as someone once said.

If you didn’t find community, what did you find?

It made my life. It gave me all those things we were talking about earlier. It gave me everything. Gave me purpose in life. I wouldn’t ever advise anyone to do what I did! I’ve been incredibly lucky in my career. 99 percent of people who go into music won’t be as lucky. It is a lot to do with luck! The fact I’ve met Bernard Butler—little things! I might never have met him, and we never would have written those songs and Suede would have been a very different band. I never just say, ‘This is what you should do!’ I was just confident and stupid enough to do what I did, and it just sort of worked! But some of the decisions I made—they were pretty rash!

Is it necessary to commit totally to being creative to be good at being creative? To jump in with no safety net?

Absolutely. You’ve gotta let yourself out there. I didn’t even have an instrument to fall back on! ‘I believe I got enough of a voice to say something interesting, and I’m gonna do it.’ Confidence verging on stupidity that happened to pay off!

Does pop music defend the brave and stupid?

I think so. You have to push it as far as it’ll go. Part of the reason the public loves pop music so much is the drama of the story. You have people who have no idea about the drama and just wanna listen to Phil Collins records and that’s fine, but there’s a whole other group of people that love the back story—how it’s made and why people fall out and fall in love. It’s almost treating the world of music like you’re watching a soap opera and people love that.

Why do people fall in love?

Probably some sort of chemical function. I don’t wanna be unromantic about it but it fulfills a necessary function for the human race.

L.A. Record (US Magazine), April 2011

[astarryon]

Just Drive!

Pairings: Peter Parker x High school!Reader

Warnings: None

Summary: In which Peter Parker, a boy you’ve literally gone to school with for nine years, apparently thinks you don’t possess basic logic.

A/N: Okay, so this one was actually such a joy to write! As someone who recently graduated high school, I guess you could say this was a bit of a love letter to senior prom, which was arguably one of the best nights of my life to date. Plus, Peter Parker is an adorable boy and everything about him just demanded a fluffy one shot. I’m not very used to writing stories that aren’t about Bucky, but I’m super happy with how this one came out! I hope you enjoy, and if there are any questions or comments, feel free to shoot them my way!

Masterlist

Requested by @johnmulaneyslut

— 

Realistically, Peter knew there was a first time for everything. It was just how the world worked. Humans made contact with the moon for the first time in the 1960s — unless you believed that the moon landing was an inside job, which Peter wholeheartedly did. Beyoncé had been the first black woman to headline Coachella, which Peter knew because MJ had insisted he and Ned stay the night at her house so that the three of them could have a viewing party of the livestream. Peter had complained at first, but had quickly found that there was a reason people referred to Beyoncé as a queen, and had promptly downloaded her three most recent albums. Aunt May kept talking about how Peter was shortly going to become her first kid to graduate from high school, and Peter never did have the heart to point out that he was her only kid. The big smile she got whenever she brought it up was enough to make Peter let the technicality slide.

So, yeah, Peter was pretty familiar with the fact of firsts.

The one first he hadn’t expected to come to pass, though, was running out of his web fluid while being actively pursued. Peter knew his supply had been running low, but he could’ve sworn that he had at least a week’s worth left. Earlier that morning he might have been willing to bet money on it, even.

He’d found out the hard way that he had been horribly wrong.

Saturday mornings were free range crime fighting days. Mr. Stark had told Peter that if he could commit to going to school and keeping his grades up, then the weekends were his to fight crime with as he pleased, and so Peter had agreed. His GPA was up, much to May’s delight, and petty crimes were down, much to Peter’s satisfaction. Spiderman was now getting as much media love as Captain America — before Steve had become a war criminal, that is.

He’d been out in the mid morning sun, creeping around the rooftops of Queens and surveying the scenes below. Nothing much was out of the ordinary as far as he had noticed, and so Peter was free to bask in the sun, its rays shining down on his suit and lending him a pleasant sense of warmth. If it stayed slow like this, breakfast might be his next pursuit. Peter had been awful about eating in the mornings lately, and today he was particularly hungry. Crepes sounded good; he could really go for a crepe, in fact.

“Hey, Karen?” he inquired, dragging out the ‘a’ in the AI’s name. Absentmindedly, he used a foot to kick rubble from the edge of the rooftop, watching as it hurtled towards the ground.

“Yes, Peter?”

“Can you tell me if there are any restaurants that sell crepes around here? Or maybe—“

“Hey, stop!” a high pitched voice called from the streets below. Searching for the source of the distress, Peter scanned around until he saw the form of a white haired, elderly woman. “Someone help! That man took my purse!”

“Okay, scratch that, Karen,” Peter corrected, already flinging himself over the ledge of the building. His left arm extended, shooting webs out and lifting him through the air as he pursued the man running down the street. Peter was thankful for the action on what was otherwise a horribly slow day, but the motive of the crimes never failed to baffle him. Stealing from an old woman? Seriously? Some people had zero boundaries.

He made quick work of stopping him, allowing his body to arc through the air and crash down on the offender, Peter’s momentum sending the both of them tumbling over the rubble. Peter’s suit, thankfully, protected him from the scratches and bruises which might have resulted, ultimately saving him from the freak out May would’ve had once she caught sight of them. The guy Peter had taken down, however, hadn’t had the luxury of a full body suit made of Stark tech, and so he was bound to be a bit more... irate. Peter wasn’t about to concern himself with that, though. He’d be out of here in thirty seconds or less.

“I’ll take that,” he told the guy, yanking the woman’s purse from the man’s hands. “You know, I’m willing to bet your mother wouldn’t be very proud to know you’re stealing from old ladies.”

“I’ll kill you, you fucking son of a bitch,” the guy hissed, trying to reclaim the breath that the impact of Peter’s body had knocked from his chest.

“Mouthy,” Peter taunted, letting out a low whistle. He used his web shooters to send the purse flying backwards, attaching it to the brick wall which was just beside the woman, failing to notice the stringy quality of the substance which was indicative of the fact that he was running on reserves. Peter raised his hand in a farewell wave as the old lady called out her thanks. “Sorry to say you aren’t gonna get the chance, bud,” he aimed back at the criminal. Then, raising his hand to the sky, Peter directed his wrist toward a tall building and fired his webs.

Six feet of silk released before detaching from Peter’s suit and falling to the ground like a cut ribbon.

“Uh,” Peter started, ignoring the sense of panic in his chest. No need to freak out yet, right? This could totally just be some weird fluke. “Karen? Can you switch my web shooter setting to normal? Kind of have places to be that don’t involve salty criminals.”

“Web shooter liquid has been depleted, Peter,” Karen informed him. “No webs can be formed without an immediate refill.”

Okay. So maybe he was a little justified in freaking out.

“Why didn’t you tell me how low I was?” Peter demanded, slowly backing away from where the purse snatcher was now beginning to stand. The guy was eyeing Peter like he was an easy target — which he kind of was, thanks to the loss of his main mode of transportation.

“I did recommend you switch canisters this morning.”

“Karen, can you do me a favor and not sound so smug right now?”

The purse snatcher lunged at Peter, narrowly missing, and Peter broke into a full on sprint, pushing the guy as he ran passed him and surveying the area, looking for an out. The street wasn’t overly busy for a Saturday morning. In fact, there were only a few other people out to witness the current spectacle, but that did nothing to reassure Peter. The guy chasing after him had been willing to rob an old lady in broad daylight; god only knew what he was capable of doing to a teenager in a superhero suit.

Peter wasn’t much for swearing, but this was an absolute bitch of a bad situation to be in.

“Shall I alert Mr. Stark to the trouble?” Karen asked, pulling Tony’s contact information into the corner of Peter’s field of view.

“Absolutely not!” he screeched, turning to look over his shoulder for a moment. The man was still in hot pursuit, seeming to barely be out of breath. Determined, wasn’t he? “Just... let me think for a sec!”

He couldn’t keep running like this. His lungs already felt like they were burning, and Peter had never been much for long distances anyway. His web shooters were out of fluid, so his normal out wasn’t an option. No way would he be able to match up with this guy in a fist fight at the moment, not with how scattered his brain was with adrenaline. So what could he do? What could he come up with that wasn’t going to get him murdered?

Mercifully, the answer appeared just a few feet ahead of him in the form of a light blue Prius, parking by the curb at the end of the street.

—

“So can you come dress shopping with us today?” Davina asked you, her voice filtering through the speakers in your car. You thought on the question, debating as you made a smooth right turn onto the next street. “Or would it be better for us to wait until this weekend so we can all go together?”

“Honestly D, I’m not even sure I want to go,” you admitted. Prom was cool and all, and you loved watching your classmates and friends make fools of themselves on the dance floor, but you just weren’t feeling it this year. Which was a damn shame, considering the theme was particularly kick ass and all your friends who had graduated the year previous had taken to social media to express their discontent with their senior prom theme in comparison. “You know I’m all for partying, but I just... I don’t know. It’s in a week and a half and I haven’t even bought my ticket.”

Davina wasn’t exactly the correct person to say this to. You may have liked school dances and football games, but Davina loved them. They were essentially your best friend’s way of life, given she was president of the school spirit committee. She set up the decorations, coordinated fundraisers, and essentially worked her ass off in order to give everyone an amazing senior year. You admired her for her ambitions and her will to provide a great experience for everyone, and you were curious as to where the drive for it all came from.

“Y/n, seriously? I’ve been reminding you every day for like a month! It’s not because you don’t have a date, is it?”

You rolled your eyes, thankful she wasn’t present to see. “No, Davina, I just—“

“Because you know you could ask anyone you wanted and they would probably say yes, right? You’re a fucking catch.”

“That’s what you keep saying,” you sighed. Swinging a left, you drove to the end of the street and parked, trying to figure out the best way to tell your friend that you really just weren’t feeling prom this year. Maybe it was a subject saved for another day. “Listen, D, I have to go inside and get to my dentist appointment, okay? I’ll text you after and let you know about dress shopping for sure.”

Moot point; you knew she wasn’t going to take you bailing out of prom for an answer.

Davina said goodbye and you hung up the phone, twisting your keys in the ignition so that the car turned off and unbuckling your seatbelt. It was such a beautiful morning, sunlight streaming through the windows of your car. Shame that you had to spend the best parts of it in a dentist chair; by the time you finished, the streets were sure to be filled with families and laughing children, adding a noisier element to the otherwise peaceful part of town.

Just as you had twisted to open your door and exit the car, your passenger side door was thrown open and slammed shut in under a second, a body wrapped in red and blue having been deposited into your passenger seat. For a moment you said nothing, looking up and taking a second to process the person beside you, the insect like eyes of their mask staring right back at you.

And then you screamed. Loud.

“Look, I’m really sorry,” their voice filtered through the mask, slightly high pitched and out of breath. He reached across you as he spoke, pulling your keys from your fist and inserting them into the ignition before harshly starting your car. The engine sputtered to life, the familiar hum of your vehicle now present beneath your legs. “But this is an emergency and I don’t have a lot of time to explain, so just drive, okay?”

You continued to stare and couldn’t form words, opting to just scream again. Normally you weren’t so jumpy and scatterbrained, but what could be expected of you in this moment? Somebody dressed as Spiderman was essentially carjacking you.

They placed a hand on your shoulder, shaking you hard. “Y/n! Fucking drive, okay? Drive!” That last exclamation was punctuated by someone slamming their body into the passenger door of your car. From what you could see of the offender, they were a large, middle aged man, and they possessed the unmistakable light of malice in their eyes. Your fight or flight response kicked into overdrive, and without even really being conscious of your actions, you reached down to shift your car into drive, stomping on the gas pedal and shooting your car forward, tires squealing against the pavement as you peeled out of your parking spot.

Okay. So, no dentist appointment for you today after all.

Fake Spiderman owed you a teeth cleaning appointment.

“Thank you,” he sighed, his masked head leaning back and hitting the head rest in relief. You couldn’t see his facial expression, but you imagined it was reflective of his voice. “Man, that guy was not happy with me.”

“Wait a second,” you started, trying to stare at the man — the boy — beside you while simultaneously keeping an eye on the road, still totally unwilling to stop the car lest that man catch up with you guys. That voice. You knew that voice, had heard it a million times in AP US History. “Fucking— Peter Parker? What the fuck are you doing running around Queens in a shitty Party City Halloween costume?”

Though his face was obscured, it was easy to picture the look of offense present there. “Okay, you don’t have to be mean, alright? Mr. Stark spent a lot of time making—“ He cut himself off in a panic. “Wait, how do you know who I am? I thought—“ Once again, he cut himself off. This time around, he attempted to deepen the tenor of his voice. “I mean... who, who’s Peter Parker? I don’t know a Peter Parker.”

“Oh, fuck off,” you threw at him, the right turn you made a little harsher than expected. Thank god the streets weren’t busy this morning. “You called me by my name and we’ve literally been going to school together since we were eight. You really think I’m not gonna recognize your voice just because you’re wearing a shitty mask?”

“It’s not shitty!” he insisted, reaching up to pull the mask from his head in order to shoot you a dirty look. You recognized the kind, brown eyes which peered at you, the messy hair which was usually a little more styled. His cheeks were flushed, a testament to how out of breath he had been before jumping into your car. “This whole suit is made of Stark tech! It’s, like, the smart phone of super suits. I really am Spiderman!”

“Whatever you say, Peter Parker,” you chuckled, rolling your eyes and focusing back on the road. Davina would flip if she knew what was happening right now; not because Peter himself was in your car, but just because Peter was in your car and happened to be a guy. “If you’re really Spiderman then prove it. Show me those web things you use to get around town.”

Peter’s cheeks suddenly flushed even redder, and you were slightly taken aback with how cute the sight was. “I’m kind of out of those right now. It’s why, uh, it’s why I had to ask you for a ride.”

“A likely story,” you scoffed, unable to help the tiny smile which resulted. Practically nine years of school together and Peter Parker remained the same sweet, shy boy as always. “And this is more along the lines of kidnapping, if anything.”

“It was an emergency,” Peter defended himself, directing his gaze over his shoulder. You knew he was looking for the guy he’d been running from, and you also knew that he wouldn’t find him; you’d turned far too many corners for the guy to have kept up at this point, unless he had super speed abilities. Once he was satisfied with what he saw, Peter turned back to you, offering a smile which made him look like a happy puppy. “Um, so... how’d you do on that history exam last week?”

You couldn’t help the laugh which escaped you, allowing it to roll through your chest. This whole situation was just so comical. The craziest thing was, you were pretty sure you’d had weirder experiences with Peter Parker. “Got a solid C, dude. Swanson’s a bitch when it comes to grading. I swear I never get anything over an 85 on his assignments.”

“Oh,” Peter responded, reaching a hand up to scratch at his neck. “Well I could tutor you, if you ever wanted. I know we only have a few more months left in the year, but finals are gonna come up pretty quick.”

“I might actually take you up on that,” you told him, shrugging a shoulder to yourself. It was no secret that Peter was smart. He was just shy of having top grades of the senior class, second only to Michelle Jones. “So...” Why was it so hard to find topics to converse about while you drove? Was it because you hadn’t been expecting company? Was it because your fight or flight response was still acting up? Was it because you hadn’t had a real conversation with Peter in a couple of months, now? Your previous conversation with Davina echoed in your mind, giving you the perfect topic to fill the silence. “You, um, you excited for prom?”

Surprisingly, Peter’s face became indifferent, and he used a blue and red shrouded hand to rake through his hair. “As much as anyone else, I guess. I’m kind of thinking about not going, but May would throw the biggest fit if I skipped out on senior prom. She says making memories is real important, or whatever.”

Huh. You’d been told the same thing by Davina a little over a million times.

“Well, you could ask someone,” you suggested, internally rolling your eyes at yourself. Hadn’t that been what your best friend had suggested to you? And hadn’t you wanted to make it clear to her that a date wasn’t going to make you want to go to prom any more than you already did? “You’re really good friends with Michelle, right? She’d probably say yes if you asked her to go as friends or something.” You’d seen the two of them around in the hallways plenty of times, always tipping their heads together like fiends toiling away at some master plan.

“Nah,” Peter responded, “Ned asked MJ forever ago. Some kind of pact the two of them have. I’d just be third wheeling it if I did end up going. Prom’s in a week and a half, and pretty much everyone has a date by now.”

You laughed to yourself, shaking your head and guiding your car back onto the main road. Not that you had realized it previously, but this was the route to Peter’s house; you must’ve started on it once you’d realized who had dive bombed your car. “Not everyone, Peter Parker.”

He gave you a strange look, arching a brow up out of curiosity. “Why do you keep calling me that?”

“What, your name?”

“My full name,” he pointed out. “That’s like the third time you’ve called me Peter Parker.”

You shrugged, not having realized what you had been doing but unwilling to admit this to Peter’s face. Not that he could judge much; he was the one running around in a fake Spiderman costume, after all. “Keeps you on your toes, I guess.”

“Sure,” he laughed. “And did you say that you didn’t have a date to prom yet?”

“Not in so many words,” you told him. “But, uh, yeah. No date for me. I’m not really sure I’m going to prom either.” And somehow? Admitting this to Peter didn’t automatically make you feel embarrassed, as it had when you’d dared to speak the same words to Davina. When had Peter become such an easy person to talk to?

Peter only smiled, suddenly and pointedly gazing out the passenger window. “Weird. I figured Flash would have talked your ear off asking you to go with him.”

You were unable to help the snort Peter’s words dragged out of you. “As if. Flash is sweet, I guess, but he’s... not really my type.”

“And, just out of curiosity,” Peter mused, seeming to have found the courage to look back at you. Same goofy smile as always; charming, really. Had been since the third grade. “What exactly is your type?”

You blinked a couple times, trying to contain your amusement. “I’m sorry, but if you’re trying to make a pass at me, you might wanna wait until you’re not sitting in my car wearing a Halloween costume.”

“This is a real— you know what? Forget it.” For a moment you were worried you had offended him, but a sideways glance told you Peter’s mind seemed to be working a mile a minute. He looked amused, looked like he had a secret he wanted to tell you but wasn’t sure if he should. Eventually he let it go, glancing at you and making your heart flutter a bit in your chest before gesturing to the windshield. “Next street’s mine, in case you didn’t remember. Just, be careful when you make the turn; there’s roadwork ahead.”

And before you could even use common sense to stop yourself, you were already saying, “Uh, yeah, I sure hope it does.”

This reference won you a hearty laugh, one which seemed impossibly too big to have come from the slight boy beside you. “Amazing,” he breathed in between fits of laughter. Funny; Peter laughed like you were the funniest person in the entire world, though he was sure to have head the reference a million times before. “You’re amazing.”

“And you’re just saying that,” you told him, pulling up to the curb outside his apartment building. You put your car in park, twisting your keys in the ignition and looking over to Peter once you were no longer obligated to be conscious of your surroundings. “If I ask why that guy was chasing you through the streets, are you gonna tell me the truth?”

He shrugged a shoulder, toying with his mask down in his lap. Was it just you, or did Peter seem a little more nervous now that he had your full attention? “I was stopping him from robbing an old lady. He tried to steal her purse, and I made sure that didn’t happen. Because I’m—“

“Spiderman, right, got it.” If Peter wanted to stick with his story, you supposed it was all you could do to play along. “Whatever you say.”

“You don’t wanna believe me, that’s fine,” Peter offered. “Keeps my secret identity protected anyway. God knows I do not need Mr. Stark breathing down my neck about endangering civilians.” He paused for a few minutes, unsure of what to say next, and he still wouldn’t look at you directly. You weren’t exactly naive as to why; you were pretty, and Peter thought so. It wasn’t you being vain, it was just a fact. The blush on his cheeks was the same one that appeared each time he glanced your way in class, each time he supplied you with a pencil to borrow. “Anyways, thanks for helping me out back there. Don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t been around to save my ass.”

You shook your head and shrugged a shoulder. “Only cost me a dentist appointment, so no sweat. I’m sure you’ll figure out some way to make it up to me.”

Peter gave you a nod, and another nervous laugh. “Yeah, that, um... yeah. I’ll think of something. So, uh, I’ll— I’ll see you in Swanson’s class?”

“See you in Swanson’s, Peter Parker,” you affirmed. You stared after him as he gave you a wave, then climbed out of your car, carefully closing your passenger door behind him and making his way towards the door of his apartment building.

Just as you were about to turn your car back on, your phone buzzed with a text message alert. Leaning down to pick it up, you saw Davina’s name appear on the screen. You could’ve sworn you had just hung up the phone on her; had it really already been a half an hour?

So is dress shopping a go, or should Elle and I wait until this weekend for you?

Well...

Peter Parker.

What the hell?

Scrambling to open your door, you did your best to quickly stand, calling out to the boy you’d just said goodbye to. “Hey! Peter Parker!”

Peter whirled around, having just made contact with the door to his building. Abandoning it, he walked a few feet back towards you, just so you the both of you wouldn’t have to yell back and forth quite as much. “Yeah, Y/n?”

You threw your hands up in the air, your smile wide and perhaps a bit flirtatious. “I was dropping all these hints and you were really just gonna take off on me before asking me to prom? Seriously? It’s the least you could do for getting in the way of my dental health, don’t you think?”

For a few minutes, Peter stared at you blankly, seeming genuinely confused. For the second highest grades at Midtown, Peter was just a bit dense, wasn’t he? “Oh, you...” He came closer, until he was stood just a foot or two away. Now you had the chance to take in his entire suit, and while you had originally thought it was a fake... the more you stared at Peter, the realer his suit looked. Well, Spiderman or Fake Spiderman, there would be time to deduce that later. Right now, your priorities were set in a bit of a different motion. “Well, I mean, did you— did you want to go to prom? With me?”

Had you been inclined to go to prom previously? Not really. Now that Peter Parker had quite literally dropped into your car and the possibility of going with a sweet boy stood? Well, now you were a little more interested.

“I would love to,” you told him, smiling knowingly. Was this how flirting worked? Would Peter Parker even know? “You still have my number, right? From that time we did that group project together a few months ago?”

“R-right,” Peter told you, nodding once before smiling widely. “Yeah! So, um. I’ll text you? MJ and Ned were thinking of going out to dinner, so maybe we can all just pick a place together and double date it? Or, if you wanted to go by ourselves we could do that, too? And I don’t, um, I don’t have a car, but I could ask May to borrow hers for the night? I bet she wouldn’t mind, but—“

“We have a week to figure it out,” you laughed, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder. His suit definitely didn’t feel as Party City as you thought it would. “But, yeah, going to dinner with Ned and MJ sounds like loads of fun. Saves me from having to deal with Davina’s asshole boyfriend anyway. And we’re, um. I’m about to go dress shopping, so I’ll text you what color I end up picking so you can coordinate, okay?”

Peter’s smile only grew wider and brighter. “That’s great, yeah! So I’ll, uh, I’ll see you around, then? Like... not just in Swanson’s class?”

You nodded, climbing back into your car. “See you around, Peter Parker.” You started the engine, your car humming to life. Peter was still staring at you, seeming absolutely dumbfounded at what had just taken place. Looking at him just then, so excited and unsure, you couldn’t pass up the opportunity to roll down your window and say, “And as for the corsage, I like lilies! You forget that and you’ll have to find yourself another date.”

“Noted,” he laughed. He waved again, this time for the last time, and hurried back to his apartment building, slipping through the door and out of your sight. Smiling to yourself and unable to completely comprehend just what this morning had thrown at you, you reached down to grasp your phone, typing out a message to Davina before buckling your seatbelt and driving off and toward the mall.

Looks like I have a date to prom after all. Dress shopping is a go.

—

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[brattywriters-anonymous]

A Rose In Harlem

OC x Erik Story

Based on Teyana Taylor's VII & KTSE.

Warnings: Sneaky Bitch in the cut! Drug use. Drunkenness. Jealous Erik! Jealous Syd! A whole bunch of jealousy! Which leads me to the title of

CHAPTER 4: ENVY.

Erik's face began to heat up with anger at the sight of Syeda and the maintenance man. He continued smoking as his eyes searched for Grant. He found him in the back of the kitchen beside the back door talking to some woman. He barged his way through the thick crowd of party goers and as he walked past the kitchen he gave Syd and her plus one a look of disdain. "Aye, Grant. Lemme get a eighth." He requested, handing Grant two twenties. He needed to calm down and the Henny was not a culprit for that mission. Grant dug around in his pocket for the weed and pulled out a pre-weighed pack and gave it to Erik. "Here man. Just give me a dub. You look like you need it right now. Wassup witchu?"He let out a full sigh before he answered, "Nothin. I'm good. Thanks. You got some more backwoods?" The mystery woman spoke up, "I do." Erik's face changed as soon as he looked up at her. She was no Syeda, but she was bad all the same. 

Brown skin that would give Coca a run for its money. She was about 5'7" with a curly top knot bun. "I'm Gina, just call me G." "Erik." They exchanged pleasantries and shook hands. Syeda is witnessing their exchange and she scoffed as she took the last sip of her straight liquor as if it was a shot. Yasin followed suit, thinking she was trying to out drink him. "Damn babe. You took that shot and didn't even blink." He laughed as he pulled her from behind, hugging her by her waist. She smiled in their direction with purpose. "Yeah. I guess I needed this." she then moved her head up to look at Yasin. He took that opportunity to kiss her forehead. Erik accepted G's pack of backwoods and clinched his jaw again after seeing Syd and Mr. Plumber's exchange. "Wanna go outside?" He motioned his head towards the back yard. "Yes, Erik. We can do that." She flashed a smile at him. She had a gap that Erik immediately took to. 'It's actually cute on her' he thought.

Syd sucked her teeth as the DJ switched the record up to "Bandz A Make Her Dance" she asked Yasin, "Hey boo, you wanna dance?" She didn't wait for his reply. She pulled his arm as he followed her into the living room.

--

Erik began choking on the blunt, "Wait, you did what?" G patted his back and chuckled at him. "I thought I could go to the top of the Empire state building and smoke a couple ls. so I did. Until security was called after I got done with the first one." He hadn't laughed so hard since his Navy days, back before he went off to college. "I had to run down 102 flights of steps with Security on my ass! I don't regret it though." She admitted, grabbing the blunt that Erik was offering. He liked the fact that she was daring. While they were rolling to match, she talked about how she took a leap of faith to pursue her modeling career moving from Houston to New York after her parents passed away in a drunk driving accident. Erik exchanged the similar experience of losing his father and mother when he was younger. They seemed to form a slight bond over their bold interests and their painful losses. They were both only children, they even complimented each other's rolling styles. "Yeah, this is hittin. You good at this. How long you been smoking?" G leaned back in awe of the query, "Shiiiiiiiiit I'm twenty-six, It is my birthday by the way." He interrupted, "Oh, well happy birthday beautiful." Her smile spread from ear to ear. "Oh, Thank you. Anyway- I'm twenty-six. I've been smoking since I was fifteen. So about eleven years." She took another drag as he lit the blunt he rolled. "So what about you?" He exhaled the smoke and did some calculating with his free hand. He'd only taken up smoking when he went back to MIT for his doctorate in Engineering. Even though a eighteen year old Navy enlisted Stevens would laugh if he saw his twenty-seven year old self toking like Wiz Khalifa, he used the flower to decompress. Especially before his dissertation. He smirked and rebutted, "Only four years." G gasped, "Really? I'm surprised. I mean, you being from Cali and all." He kept the same smirk at the way she pronounced Cali with that southern accent. He really liked that. "I wasn't a fan of weed in my younger days. I enlisted in the Navy as soon as I graduated High School. When I got out and went to college, my view became more lenient; and by the time I went to school to get my doctorate, I dove head first in the weed. That shit was stressful." Gina marveled at the small background story he gave her. "Wow. Doctorate. So you're a doctor?" he passed his blunt to her, and rejected what was left of hers. "I am. Kind of. Engineering Doctor." She busted out laughing. Her laughter instigated his as they were enjoying each other's company.

--

"Front then he coming your way, let the semi dump-dump then he coming your way. Dump when the bad man come, my yute don't ramp wit me/Coupe full of bad hoes, they all wanna come with me./You got a coupe with a sad ho cause she wanna come with me. Shabba!"

Syd wined her body to the bass line of the beat as Yasin joined her movements behind her. The party was singing along with A$AP Ferg, you could've sworn he was in attendance. They'd been dancing for four songs now, and Syd started getting tired. She stopped and rose up from her bent position. "Wooo. I'm drained." Sin nodded. "I feel you. It is hot out here. You wanna go outside?" He pointed at the same back door she saw Erik and whatshername go out of. She agreed, out of curiosity. They make strides to the back of the party. As Sin opened the door for Syd to walk out, Erik and whatsherface were walking in. Laughing as if Eddie Murphy was outside doing a comedy show and smelling louder than Coachella. Syd rolled her eyes and tried to avoid making eye contact. Erik quickly shut that down. "Syd." He always said her name so effortlessly and it immediately stopped her in her tracks as she turned around. "Erik? Hey. What's up?" He took a quick glance at Yasin and looked back at her, "Chillin. Zig finally showing me a good time and shit." He glanced back over at Yasin, who was giving him a smug look. "You?" Syd flipped her hair so she could rub the back of her neck, "I needed to get out of the house. Work is getting hectic."

Ironically, Yasin and G both cleared their throats at the same time at their counterpart's rudeness. Syd looked over at Sin apologetically, "I'm sorry. Sin, this is Erik. My neighbor's cousin. Erik, this is Yasin." Neither one of them felt the need to shake hands they just gave each other a domineering stare. Erik broke it and looked at Gina and her impatient body language, "This is Gina. We just met but she's cool." Gina reached her hand out to Syd. Syd leaned back far enough for Erik and Sin to notice, but Gina didn't. She reluctantly took her hand and shook it, "Syeda." She quickly let her hand go and walked to the end of the deck. Erik's mouth hung open at the crude behavior that Syd was displaying. 'She acting like she didn't bring fix-a-toilet to the party.' he scoffed aloud at the inner thought.

Yasin shook her hand, trying to deescalate the awkward situation, "Hey, I'm Yasin. It was getting hot in there and she needs some fresh air." Erik side eyed Syd, "Yeah. I'm sure. Well you enjoy your night Syd." Syd shooed him off. "Yeah. You too." The door closed and Yasin let out a long breath as the tension levels decreased. "Wow. Uh. You okay? You seem upset." Syd still looking ahead toward the back yard, she shook her head. "I'm not upset. I'm good." She managed a fake smile and took his hand. "Are you okay?" Yasin scratched his forehead in confusion. "I was okay until all of that happened. That was awkward as hell, ma. You two hook up or somethin'?" Syd rolled her eyes at the suggestion, "Hell no. I practically don't know him. I'm just hot and irritated that's all." "Okay babygirl. lets get you cooled down." He found a lawn chair and scooted it up to her so she could sit down. 

--

30 Minutes later

Yasin and Syd were becoming more acquainted. They exchanged stories about Ramadan failures. Syd loves food too much to not eat during the day. "Islam is about patience. Even in our shortcomings. I got up to thirteen days this year. I'll aim for thirty next year and see how far Allah takes me." "Wow. I never thought of it that way." She always beat herself up about not following her religion as diligently as her parents did, her life was too hectic to not eat during Ramadan, she was almost always working on Fridays so she couldn't go to the Mosque. She prayed about two to three times a day on average instead of five. Syd looked at the sky, hoping in that moment that she was making her parents somewhat proud. Yasin felt her mood change. The door opened, they both looked back to see Nina. She leaned against the deck and lit a blunt. "This party is gettin' a lil too lit." She said, exhaling smoke. Syd cosigned, "I feel you girl." Nina took another drag and motion the blunt to her left, at Syd. She accepted it. "I knew you smoked!" Yasin laughed at their dialogue. "I thought I smelled weed when I walked in your place." Syd took a long drag. "First of all, fuck both of you! Secondly, Yes. I smoke. Sue me!" They all laughed as Syd motioned the blunt to Sin. He reluctantly accepted. Nina calmed down, "Nah, but for real though, Syd. I got a friend that would be perfect for your shoots. She just moved here from Houston and she's looking for some modeling gigs." Syd hummed loudly, "YES! I need one more girl. That'll be perfect. Just bring her through to the shoot. Myles sent you the info right?" Syd knew the answer but she was confirming. "Yeah he did. That guy is on it. Sent it the day after the meeting." "Girl, Myles is a Godsend. I'd lose my mind if I didn't have him by my side." Yasin cleared his throat, unfamiliar with the male name being mention. "Babe, that's my assistant." he palmed his face, "My bad. I'm sorry. Damn I'm not tryna come off as the jealous type." She gave him a peck and reclined back in her chair. "It's okay."

🌹

[anotherfiveyears]

31: All My Love

*March 2002, Arlington, Virginia*

Dave hung up the phone and sauntered into the studio, ignoring everyone as he plugged his guitar into the amp and fiddled with the pedals at his feet, just waiting for Taylor to do or say something. He had been baiting him for almost a week at rehearsals, knowing that Taylor was beyond annoyed with him for delaying the album so many times.

They were finally back in Virginia, which was another source of contention with Taylor. He had wanted to leave LA months ago and start session work, but Dave refused to go until Anna was ready. He had kept Anna and Taylor away from each other, fearing Taylor would reveal that she was the reason the album was stalling and he just knew that would make Anna go home too soon. It wasn't until she mentioned missing her parents that he knew she could handle going back, but even then he wanted her to take things slowly.

Taylor didn't understand why Dave was so eager to put Anna's needs above the band's when they weren't even a couple, but Dave didn't consider that his problem. Besides, when he wasn't with Anna, he was out in the desert with Josh working on the new Queens album and loving every second of it. He had forgotten how much he loved being a drummer and Anna had found a certain kind of therapy in surfing, so there was no hurry on either of their parts to race back to Virginia just because Taylor was getting antsy.  Winter had come and gone, now Spring was winding down and they were only just beginning to hash out some potential singles for the record.

Chris shifted awkwardly on his feet, his eyes darting from Taylor to Dave to Nate and then back to Taylor again before he finally took a deep breath. "Hey, I can cut the tension in here with a fucking knife. What the fuck is going on?"

Dave kept his eyes down at his pedals, but widely smirked at Chris's remark. "I think Taylor used baking soda to cut..."

"What the fuck did you say?" Taylor hopped off the stool and kicked it backward, sending it crashing to the concrete floor with a deafening clatter.

"I said-" Dave spun around to confront him, only to watch Nate and Chris drop their guitars and head for the door.

"What is your fucking problem?" Taylor screamed in his face. "We finally get a chance to rehearse and you act like a fucking dick!"

"I'm a dick? You're the one breathing down my neck all the fucking time! I can't even get through a fucking phone call without you pounding on the fucking window!"

"That was Josh on the phone, wasn't it?" Taylor spat and Dave almost laughed at how much he sounded like a jealous girlfriend. "You spend all your time with them and every other second is spent with Anna while-"

"Don't you fucking dare, Hawkins," he warned with as much venom as he could muster. "She just went through-"

"And I didn't? Did you not just sit in some dingy fucking hospital room with me for weeks on end? Do you not realize that this is what's going to keep me out of the shit, Dave?" Taylor stepped back and waved his arm towards the instruments laid randomly around the room. "All I want to do is work, man. I want something steady in my life that I can look forward to so I don't have the urge to go back."

It was only then that Dave felt like maybe he had been wrong. Maybe he had put Taylor further back on the priority list than he deserved to be. "We can finish these sessions, but I'm already committed to Queens," he said honestly. There was no getting out of drumming on the album or the tour now.

Taylor nodded, his eyes never leaving Dave's. "No, man. That's cool. Once we finish the gigs, I'm out. I need something dependable."

Dave felt his heart sink and his blood boil all at the same time. Fucking drummers. "Great."

"Yep."

*

Dave stormed through the front door, slamming it behind him so hard that the pictures on the wall rattled loudly. Scooter's paws eagerly tapping on the hardwood floors greeted him, but when he came around the corner he took one look at Dave and slid to a stop, clumsily turning around so he could retreat back to Anna. Even the dog couldn't stand to be around him now.

Hurling his keys on to the kitchen counter, he began to search through the cabinets."Anna! Where's the fucking whiskey?"

The silence that greeted him sent him into a fury, slamming one cabinet door so hard that it splintered the wood away from its hinges

"David."

Her calm voice did nothing to sedate him."What?!" he yelled, only then feeling bad for taking everything out on her and looked over his shoulder to see her patiently holding the bottle he was looking for. They held each other's stare for a moment before she retrieved a glass from the cabinet beside her and poured him a drink, sliding across the countertop and into his hand. She waited until he had downed it, then pulled out the barstools for them to sit on along with another glass for herself. They sat together in silence, drinking half the bottle between them before he was ready to speak.

"Taylor quit."

The color drained from Anna's face and she took a long sip. "Why?"

Dave just shook his head, too scared to tell her the truth. If she knew Taylor was pissed about all the time he spent with her, she would leave again.

"Why, David?" she repeated.

"He's jealous! He's pissed that I'm working with Josh and not spending all my time with him and the band and the record and... He's just way out of fucking line."

"Is he?"

"What?" he set his empty glass in front of him and looked at her in surprise.

"You're asking a lot of them, David. Of Taylor and Chris and Nate. You wander off to party with Josh and company and now you're asking them to sit on their hands for who knows how long until you're done earning money for another group? How fair is that?"

"They knew that when they signed up for this gig," he spat at her. "They fucking knew I was in demand as a drummer."

"Good," she said sweetly and stood up from her seat. "Then you'll have no problems drumming in your own band now, cause you're sure as hell not going to find someone like Taylor before Coachella."

*April 2002, Indio, California*

"Would you just go talk to him?" Anna shoved him a little on the shoulder when he spotted Taylor's blonde hair in the crowd just outside the RV they had rented for the weekend.

"I don't wanna," he said petulantly, making Anna roll her eyes.

"Fine," she stepped around him and wrenched open the window. "Hey, Hawkins!" she screamed, waving when he spun around at the sound of her voice. "Get in here!"

"Goddamnit, Anna," Dave groaned and retreated back to the bedroom to try and think of what he could possibly say to fix this.

"Anna Banana!" Taylor yelled and bounced up the steps into the RV, throwing his arms around her in a tight hug. "I never see you anymore! Dave keeps you locked away like some..." He trailed off when Dave stepped out of the bedroom and let Anna go.

She stood between them, carefully gauging the tension before deciding they probably wouldn't exchange blows if she left. "Well, I'm gonna go catch The Vines. You two have fun!"

"How's she doing?" Taylor asked once she was gone and flopped down into a bench seat.

Dave slid into the booth across from him and leaned onto his elbows. "She's okay. She has her moments, but she's back to being Anna again."

"She's not wearing her ring... You guys make it official yet?"

"Nope," Dave sighed. "Still roomies."

"Aw, she'll get there, man," Taylor offered. "Just give her a little more time."

Dave nodded and began to fidget, scratching at a stain on the Formica table between them.

"So, how's Josh?" Taylor suddenly asked, making Dave groan.

"Come on, T. Let's not do this."

"I'm just asking as a friend, man! I miss that... us... being friends."

Dave's stare went from the table top to Taylor's face, thinking the conversation might be easier than he expected. "Yeah, me too," he started, then spoke quickly before he lost the nerve. "Look, T... I'm sorry. About the album and putting you guys off and all that shit I said in the studio... I was an asshole."

Taylor sat silently, then raised his eyebrows and waved his hand to get him to continue.

"... and I don't want you to quit. I really don't, but I have to finish this shit with Queens."

"Fuck, dude," Taylor whined and put his head in his hands.

"Dude, just... it would mean a lot to me if you'd watch the set tonight. We'll have a good time tonight, play the gig tomorrow and we can just... be done."

Taylor sighed deeply and threw his head back into the wood veneer wall behind him. "Yeah, okay," he said quietly.

*

That night, Dave channeled every ounce of anger and frustration he had accumulated in the past few months and threw it into the kit, earning a surprised glance from Josh during the opener and then an excited smile when the desert crowd exploded in front of them. The entire set was flawless and fun, and he was just beginning to think it wouldn't be so hard to break up the Foo Fighters when he saw Anna and Taylor at stage left, both of them grinning and nodding along to the music. The anger suddenly dissipated and he began to play because he loved it, not because he had something to prove.

During the party backstage, he felt the familiar buzz of the music industry discovering fresh meat and managed to corner Josh long enough to break the news that he wouldn't return for a second album.

"Is it Taylor? He's fucking pissed, isn't he," Josh asked and took a drag of his cigarette.

"Yeah," Dave sighed and ran his hand through his sweat soaked hair. "He's struggling."

"Don't worry about it, man," Josh shrugged and Dave thought maybe he was being sarcastic. It just couldn't be that easy.

"What?"

"Man, you did me a fucking favor by playing even one song on my record. If you gotta go, you go. We can get a session guy in for the rest of the tour."

Dave stared at him for a long moment, stunned at how chill he was about the entire thing, then almost tackled him to the dirt in a hug.

"You gotta promise me we'll doing something in the future, though," Josh said through his laugh. "Maybe we can score a Beatle or one of the guys from Queen."

"Yeah, I'd love that," Dave nodded and let him go. "But let's get one of the guys from Zeppelin."

They both laughed at how impossible that sounded and wandered back into the party.

*

When he and Anna finally made it back to the RV, he groaned and began to throw back the cushions around the table so he could turn it into the bed he had slept in the night before, but Anna pulled him upright.

"No," she said firmly and spun him around by the shoulders to shove him down the narrow hallway towards the bedroom. "You had a hell of a night and have an even bigger day tomorrow. You take the bed."

He fell forward onto the mattress, his voice muffled by the blankets, "I have to take a shower first."

"Do those six bottles of water you dumped over yourself during the set not count?" she laughed and began to pull off his shoes. "Taylor kept singing the Flashdance song."

Once his shoes were off, he rolled onto his back. "Did he say anything else? Did he like the set?"

She shot him a questioning look and pulled a towel out of a cabinet to throw at him. "He told you he loved it, David."

"Yeah, but that was to my face. I want to know what he really thinks."

"I think he honestly loved it. He knew the songs, sang a little and even air drummed along with you," she giggled a little at the memory. "He's got a great voice! Do you need help with your shirt?"

Dave smiled up at her, thrilled that Taylor had like the set. "Yeah, my arms are useless right now."

"'Kay, sit up," she straddled his knees and grabbed the hem of his shirt, pulling it up and over his head and then huffed when he got tangled in the sleeves. "You gotta work with me, David!"

"I'm trying!" he whined, then laughed when she swore in frustration.

Once he was free of the fabric, she tossed it aside and sat back on his knees to glare at him, but when his hands went to her hips the mood shifted from light to something very different. The music from the main stage drifted through the open window and Anna smiled down at him when she recognized Siouxsie and the Banshee.

"Just like old times, huh," she said softly and rested her hands on his shoulders.

He stared at her, wondering if he would have made it through the stress and anxiety of the weekend without her. "I'm really happy you're here, Annie."

"Me too," she whispered and leaned into him, kissing him softly at first before pulling away.

"Anna...," he started, searching her face for any clue as to what she was feeling but she only looked worried.

"Can we do this?" she asked, then shook her head a little realizing it was a stupid question. "I mean, do you still want... me?" The last word came out as a shy squeak and she looked down to hide her red cheeks.

He ducked as much as he could to see her face and squeezed his hands over her hips. "I never stopped wanting this, Annie. Not for a moment."

Her eyes snapped back to his and filled with tears, though he had seen enough of her tears in the past six months to know these were different. These weren't tears of anguish and anger, they were tears of relief. She pulled him to her and kissed him again, leaning into him until he was laying back on the mattress. He slid his hands from her hips underneath her loose t-shirt to unclip her bra, but couldn't find the clip... or a bra for that matter. He whined against her lips, in actual physical pain from wanting her so badly and she took mercy by quickly unbuckling his belt and slipping her hand down the front of his camo cargo shorts.

"Fuck, Anna," he moaned when her fingers brushed against him but they both froze when they heard the RV door swing open.

"Dave? It's Taylor!"

In one swift move, he sat up while Anna rolled off of him and onto the floor, laying perfectly still in the tiny space between the bed and the wall.

"Whoa, you okay, man?" Taylor asked from the bedroom door, unable to see Anna from where he was standing.

"Yeah, just tired from the set," Dave said quickly and leaned forward to hide any evidence that Anna had just been all over him. Cold showers, a kick in the nuts, that time Gus forgot a towel and wandered around in front of everyone totally naked, he thought, eventually calming himself down enough to stand and actually listen to what Taylor was saying.

"... you were really great up there, man. Can we... you know... talk?"

"Yeah... let me just grab a shirt and we can take a walk." Dave casually walked back into the bedroom while Taylor waited. He pulled a shirt out of his suitcase and felt Anna's hand around his ankle, looking down at her as she silently laughed from the carpet. Dropping to his knees, he covered Anna's body with his own. "I'll be right back," he breathed. "Don't go anywhere." She nodded and kissed him, making him hop up as fast as he could before he had to focus on Gus's naked ass again to kill yet another Anna-induced hard-on.

Taylor frowned when Dave shut the bedroom door behind him. "Hey, where's Anna? I thought she came back here with you."

"She wanted to catch the Siouxsie set," Dave offered. "She's been a big fan since she was a kid."

*

"Anna...," Dave sang her name softly into the dark motorhome but stumbled up the steps and onto the carpeted floor with a loud thud. "Ow! Shit!"

He heard her grumble and the bed squeak when she turned over, but she was still after that. Goddamnit, he thought. Of course she fell asleep.

He and Taylor had walked around the entire backstage area at least five times before they finally came to the conclusion that they would readdress Taylor quitting after the gig tomorrow, but regardless of the outcome they would still remain friends. With the last huge stress off his shoulders, he crawled down the narrow hallway to the back room and up onto the bed.

"Annie...," he whispered, tasting pure tequila on his own breath. Jesus, how many shots did we do? he thought.

"David?" she stirred and rolled onto her back. "Hey, kitten. How'd it go?" she gave him a sleepy smile and sat up a little, revealing her black push up bra.

"Is that for me, Annie?" he asked, reaching out to hook his finger under the shoulder strap.

"David...," she laughed and ran her fingers through his hair once he crawled close enough.  "You're drunk!"

"Only a little," he frowned, worried she might not want to fool around with him anymore, but she pulled his face to hers and kissed him deeply, then giggled when he scrambled under the covers with her.

There was no way he would have said it sober, but the tequila swimming around in his blood thought it was the perfect comment to end the evening. "When are you gonna be ready to marry me and start on those eight kids?"

She hummed a little laugh against his chest then stretched against him so she could kiss his throat.

"Give me another five years, kitten."

[ifuckinglovestvincent]

St. Vincent Is Telling You Everything

“I told you more than I would tell my own mother.”

September 10, 2017, 10:34 a.m. By Laura Snapes | BuzzFeed Contributor Reporting From New York, New York Annie Clark was reconfiguring some older material for her upcoming tour when she realized how alien it felt to play it. She could adapt the arrangements to her harsher new sound — the sleazy, acid aesthetic of Masseduction, her upcoming fifth solo record as St. Vincent — but the writing’s proggy complexity was cockblocking the emotion. “In so many ways, I thought I was being completely transparent and brave in every record, only to realize that they are very oblique,” Clark told BuzzFeed News. She cackled and looked delighted. “Who knew! I had no idea.” Clark is much too self-aware for this to be completely true. But the difference between her polite, guarded Texan past and confrontational present is colossal. When I first interviewed Clark in 2009, she nervously pressed her pendant against her lips and face, leaving a red lipstick pox on her insane cheekbones. By 2014’s St. Vincent, Clark’s public persona would be imperious. But these days, she’s a playful freak who revels in showing the tightness of her grip, a disposition aided by long, straight eyebrows that dance like Memphis squiggles. In late July, she appeared in the lobby of New York City’s Marlton Hotel, her temporary home during the making of Masseduction. She had come from pilates — which she likes because it makes her sing better and “come a lot harder” — and disappeared to change out of her leopard-print gym shorts. When I mentioned a recent paparazzi photo of her looking like a sexy detective in another skintight leopard-patterned getup, she asked twice, with predatory delight, whether I’d looked at her camel toe. (No! Okay, maybe!) The only time her control slipped was when the hotel’s stereo started playing “Who,” a knotty song from the album she made with David Byrne, and she shriveled like a salted snail at hearing her own voice. Self-possession like hers is often interpreted as pretentious, or pathological. But over time, the confidence that the younger, anxious Clark had to fake has become bracingly real. You can hear it in Masseduction, a record of pop fluidity and queer possibility. It’s the best thing she’s ever done, and there are no bad St. Vincent records. It’s partly harsh, heady, erotic synth-pop visions steered by her diamond-sharp guitar, and while Clark has written plenty of ballads, there have never been any as brutal and gorgeous as these. Its lurch between apocalypse and ecstasy mirrors how it felt to be kicked in the head by the past couple years. In a way, Clark was right about the obscurity of her past work, filled with archetypes and distanced observations — emotions through a stained-glass window. If not a clear pane, then Masseduction is at least a peep show on heartache, fucking, addiction, destitution, and suicide. And her relatively new life as a very public figure, thanks to relationships with Cara Delevingne and Kristen Stewart, gives it an extra frisson. Tabloids will rush to find the former, the famed British supermodel, on an album littered with wasted bodies, especially on “Young Lover,” where Clark finds someone overdosed in the bathtub. She recounts the night with terror but also arrestingly ugly indignation. “Oh, so what / Your mother did a number / So I get gloves of rubber / To clean up the spill,” she sneers. “Scenario has to rhyme, babe,” is all Clark said about its veracity. She was bemused at being asked to explain the lyrics. To her, this record is butt-naked. “I told you everything,” she stressed. “I told you more than I would tell my own mother. It’s right there.”

Annie Clark Nedda Afsari Masseduction started out with three tenets: It would feature programmed beats and pedal steel guitar, and examine power and seduction. “What does power look like, who wields it, how do they wield it — emotionally, sexually, financially?” Clark ticked off her fingers. The album was properly born over a creative first-date dinner with Jack Antonoff, the Bleachers frontman who also recently produced and wrote with Lorde and Taylor Swift. Clark was looking for a teammate; they told each other everything that was going wrong in their lives and decided that total oblivion was the only way out of their heads. “It wasn’t, ‘Hey, let’s make a record together, that’ll be fun,’” Antonoff told me. “It was, ‘Let’s absolutely go all the way and find the absolute best thing that exists here,’ which is really the only way to work on things.” That grit is Clark’s MO. Until recently, she claimed to have taken approximately 36 hours off in between returning from touring 2011’s Strange Mercy and starting work on 2014’s St. Vincent. The concerts for the latter were bonkers, starting the run as avant-garde, meticulously choreographed deconstructions of a traditional rock show, and ending it with exorcisms that entailed Clark crumpling down a 10-foot pink plywood pyramid like a drunken horse. She often stole objects from the crowd: a pair of crutches, someone’s dinner. The spectacle of her murdering the thing she’d trained for was addictive.

St. Vincent during the 2015 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. Frazer Harrison / Getty Images “Touring became a blood sport for me. I mean, I was born with a whip anyway, and touring became this self-flagellating exercise,” she said, clenching her jaw and lashing each shoulder with an imaginary strap. “And I was seeking that kind of physical exhaustion; I was seeking the pain.” She doesn’t know why, and she’s okay not knowing why, though eventually she did accept that her relationship to touring was a form of delirium. On the new album’s “Sugarboy,” a dystopian, post-Moroder disco banger, she describes herself as a “casualty hanging on from the balcony.” (She literally climbed rafters in some theaters, kicking away security guards.) This hysteria is one of the reasons she considers Masseduction her saddest record. “I lost my mind, I lost people, I gained people, I stopped touring,” Clark said of that period between 2014 and 2017. “It was just a lot of a lot, you know.” After the St. Vincent tour dates ended, Clark had to learn to construct and value life away from the road — she had been on tour since age 16, when she worked as an assistant for her aunt and uncle’s jazz group. “And I still love that,” she said of touring, “but it’s more like a component of my life now rather than…my life.” Back home she indulged in a “period of bacchanalia,” and briefly got into self-medicating, an experience she turned into the lunatic track “Pills”: Imagine the Stepford Wives lost in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory (Kamasi Washington guests on saxophone; Delevingne sings on the chorus). She’s transfixed by the forces that can swallow us — “You know, drugs, sex, and rock ‘n’ roll,” she winked. “So corny. Kill me! Kill me dead!” Though sometimes she uses those themes to dress up more mundane relationship dynamics. “Savior” explores the unhealthiness of mutual projection through a funny S&M parable involving nurses and nuns and our tediously prosaic concepts of kink: “You put me in a teacher’s little denim skirt,” Clark moans on the song. “Ruler and desk so I can make it hurt / But I keep you on your best behavior / Honey, I can’t be your savior.” The album’s self-destructive dynamic comes out on the title track — “I can’t turn off what turns me on,” she wails over twisted guitar — and her protagonists never stop annihilating each other for their own benefit, whether for carnal kicks, or for the mothers who “milk their young” in the song “Los Ageless.”

The album cover for Masseduction. Loma Vista Recordings And then there’s the heartbreaking “Happy Birthday Johnny,” which sounds like a snowflake but crushes like an anvil. It calls back to the title track of her 2007 debut Marry Me, about “John” who’s “a rock with a heart like a socket I can plug into at will”; and to “Prince Johnny,” the decadent downtown royal from St. Vincent. She said she feels compassion and hopelessness for his self-destruction, but can’t judge because she’s just like him. Maybe he’s also a cipher for the way humans use each other — Clark flatly refused to talk about him. “One thing I have learned in six records and 10 years is that I’m not obliged to answer any questions — a lesson I more or less only recently learned.” She stared into the bar, fixing a grim expression through her orange aviators. “Next question.” At any rate, the song is a whole story. Once conspirators, her and Johnny’s literal fire-starting days are behind them, and now he lives on the street, calling up Clark at New Year’s for “dough to get something to eat.” She demurs, and he calls her a queenly miser who’s sold out for fame. “But if they only knew the real version of me / Only you know the secrets, the swamp, and the fear,” she pleads. It is deeply tragic, being shamed — perhaps rightly — by the person who once understood your shame. Antonoff theorized that she’s mourning a past on the record. On the forthcoming Fear the Future Tour (named after a new song, and to resemble a Jenny Holzer maxim), Clark said she probably won’t be flinging herself around stages as much because “I think I’m emotionally throwing myself around a lot more.”

A still from St. Vincent’s “New York” music video. Alex Da Carte In late July, Tiffany & Co. announced Clark as one of the faces of its fall advertising campaign. Diamonds and waspy Americana are a weirdly prim contrast to the freaky propaganda aesthetic that Clark is calling “manic panic” — the Masseduction album cover is a photo of a nice ass in a leopard-print thong bodysuit. But like any savvy propagandist, Clark’s image will be everywhere this year. Having directed a short film, The Birthday Party, as part of the horror anthology XX, she’s now due to direct a feature-length, female-led adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray. (“The most rich text I have ever read: transgression, modernity, society, repressed queerness.”) There’s also a multimedia performance as part of October’s Red Bull Music Academy in Los Angeles, and an upcoming art exhibition in New York. A coffee table book. Essays. (She calls art “a fountain of youth” that’s given her everything and everyone in her life, hence her urge to make everything.) And that’s just the exposure she has control over. Celebrities like to pretend that their success is the result of some cosmic fluke, but Clark has said quite openly that the best part of becoming more famous thanks to her love life is “just getting the opportunity to do more work in different fields,” which nobody ever admits! (Though her 2015 Grammy for Best Alternative Album and overwhelming critical acclaim probably helped, too.)

St. Vincent, Zoe Kravitz, and Zosia Mamet at the Tiffany & Co.-presented Whitney Biennial VIP Opening in March 2017 in New York. Mike Coppola / Getty Images One of Clark’s best-known songs, 2014’s “Digital Witness,” is about social media voyeurism. “I wonder if, in the future, privacy will be something that only the 1 percent can afford,” she told Rolling Stone that year, which now seems beautifully naive. From the second she and Delevingne were spotted together at the 2015 BRIT Awards, the UK’s pervy yet ever-scandalized tabloid media went nuts that their hottest young model was dating a woman, and pursued them so staunchly that the couple once took revenge by firing water pistols at the paparazzi. “She really is so famous!” Clark said of Delevingne, feigning hammy disbelief at the attention they received. “That shouldn’t have been shocking to me, but it was shocking to me in the sense that she’s such a sweet, really, deeply kind, unspoiled person. She has more compassion in her little finger than—” She waved her hand around her torso with a grim laugh. (The pair reportedly split last fall, but Clark would only say they were “never not close.”) Clark’s self-assurance helped her to perceive the tabloid aggression and celebrity weirdness as baffling rather than distorting. She was too classy to run with my suggestion that attending that Taylor Swift 4th of July party must’ve been an interesting anthropological study. “That was, I think, in the midst of a game of Celebrity,” she said of a photo of her wearing the same stars ’n’ stripes onesie as Gigi Hadid, Karlie Kloss, and Ruby Rose. She took a long pause. “I was very bad at it!”

From left: Cara Delevingne and Annie Clark Schiller Graphics But she was disturbed by dangerous high-speed car chases from paparazzi in pursuit of photos of the couple; she thinks the gossip industrial complex relates to a wider societal disparity. “The biggest problem was that the value system of it is all based on aspiration,” she said with genuine concern. “It’s wealth aspiration, fame aspiration. But if the government, if the world was just generally a more compassionate, empathetic place, people wouldn’t be aspiring to…that. They would be more fulfilled with their own lives if the wealth gap in general wasn’t so insane.” Admittedly, it was hard not to want to look at them, in matching sharp suits and laser-cut Burberry, queering the archetype of the male rock star dating the young supermodel, watching the context around an established artist mutate in front of you. There is the kind of halfway-benign personal invasion where paparazzi follow you and your girlfriend around an airport. But then there is the kind where the never-not-creepy Daily Mail doorsteps your older sister at home in Texas and calls up your well-meaning uncle to sandbag him into revealing that your father went to prison in 2010 for participating in multimillion-dollar stock fraud. Although it is grotesque to treat the paper’s muckraking as a puzzle piece, it did illuminate part of the story behind Strange Mercy, which Clark had — understandably — only ever vaguely attributed to an overwhelming period of loss. “Suitcase of cash in the back of my stick shift,” she sang on “Year of the Tiger.” “I had to be the best of the bourgeoisie / Now my kingdom for a cup of coffee.” (She cowrote the song with her mother, Sharon, who split from Clark’s father when she was three.) “Everybody has their personal tragedies and their crosses to bear,” Clark said in a clipped tone. She calls her father’s 12-year prison sentence “a horrible tragedy. On so many different levels. So absolutely heartbreaking.” She — an adult — could handle it. But her younger half- and stepsiblings on her father’s side are still teenagers. “And I specifically would never talk about that or have ever mentioned that in a myriad of questions about Strange Mercy because it seems like an incredible betrayal of my family. But most specifically, my youngest siblings who are innocent children. They were kiddos.” She described the Daily Mail story as “faux concern,” and reiterated that the paper couldn’t find any dirt on her, no matter how outrageously they tried. “I’m not ashamed of my family,” she said. Then I asked her whether her father going to prison had spun her own moral compass, or made her reconsider any values of right and wrong that he may have instilled in her. She was momentarily confused, and then let rip a massive, absurd, demonstrative laugh. She kept going. “I love my father,” she said eventually, still tickled. “I love my father very much, as any child loves their parent. He’s very intelligent and erudite and a good writer and incredibly well read, and those are all things that I value and I’m glad that he instilled in me.” She paused, and kept on laughing. In the run-up to announcing Masseduction, Clark was Instagramming absurdist junket-styled videos, in which she wears a hot pink skirt and a transparent rubber top the color of ash, and takes questions from an off-screen interviewer. Her answers were scripted by the musician and comedian Carrie Brownstein, who is also her ex-girlfriend. One video poses the question of whether Annie Clark and St. Vincent are the same person. She pauses to consider. “Honestly, you’d have to ask her.” What’s it like being a woman in music? “Good question,” she muses, as the camera zooms to her black and yellow fingernails, which spell out “FUCK OFFF.” These films might factor into her upcoming tour, but the answers were also written for journalists. Earlier in July, in London, Clark found alternative ways to conduct interviews for hours at a time. She invited some female journalists to get massages with her (too weird with men, even though she was face-down on the table the whole time, avoiding eye contact). Other writers were invited into a 10-by-10-foot pink wooden box that was constructed in a North London studio especially for the occasion. Her interrogators had to duck through a low door to enter the blacklit space. “Not full-on crawl, because that’s a little heavy-handed,” she clarified. Inside, she looped a pedal steel recording and lit a Diptyque candle that struggled to mask the paint fumes.

St. Vincent / Via Instagram If anyone asked her an obvious question — like where the name St. Vincent came from — she planned to play prerecorded answers and “check my email, or stretch, or zone out for a second,” she said, sounding almost disappointed that she didn’t get a chance to enact her schemes. She insisted she wasn’t being antagonistic. But sitting opposite Annie Clark for two hours is often intimidating enough without the added fear that she’s about to make fun of you to your face: It is a gigantic power play! “Oh, deeply so,” she said, affecting a wryly elegant tone. “But then also not at all because I was the insane person stuck in a box for eight hours!” If critics and fans are bored of this sort of thing — see Arcade Fire’s recent album campaign — they are clearly not as tired as the artists who have to smile politely at writers who don’t know how to use Google. Plus, Arcade Fire’s hijinks felt cynical; Clark’s feels like a rejection of the idea that women artists are meant to be relatable, having endured a career’s worth of inane juxtapositions between her pretty face and gnarly shredding like it means anything. The point, she said, was that putting ourselves in a totally different, slightly strange context can produce interesting results. (She and I were meant to do Pilates together — before an oversold class spared me the indignity.) Why not make everything thoughtful and curated? If the stakes are already high, why not aim even higher and put yourself in extreme circumstances to see what happens? If Clark has done two things for the cerebral indie-rock world that she’s long outstripped, it’s teach about sex (thank god), and expose its low-risk complacency for a con.

Nedda Afsari Of course, in some people’s eyes, this makes her a phony, a manipulator. Earlier this year, legendary cultural critic Greil Marcus wrote an admirably dim-witted column for Pitchfork where he compared Clark to the slippery Father John Misty, aka Josh Tillman, claiming that they “perform as artists of such pretentiousness you couldn’t possibly figure out how to talk to them. … There’s no way to address a saint: To be a saint you have to be dead … Such characters allow themselves to appear as if touched by God, which is what they’re selling, and laugh at you if you’re so square not to know who they really are: to join their club.” If Marcus had read any of the million interviews that Clark is parodying in her high-concept clips, he would know the name is rooted in humiliation and squalor — the hospital where Dylan Thomas died — rather than divine aspiration. “And I have never, nor would I ever, put the kind of trapdoors and booby traps in my music to make the listener feel dumb,” Clark told me in response to Marcus’s theories. “I have enough hubris not to kill myself, but I actually have such a deep respect for the listener that I have never tried to pander. Songs and arrangements were complex and convoluted at times, but they were sincere attempts at connecting.” She hoped there will be no mistaking her intent with her new record, which “is so first-person and sad.” But if anyone does, she knows it’s not her job to correct them.

A still from the “New York” music video. Alex Da Carte A still from the “New York” music video. If you want to use Masseduction as a treasure map, then this is what it tells us about Annie Clark’s personal life. She experienced a complicated kind of heartbreak. Sometimes that makes her crazy and neurotic: “I won’t cry wolf in the kitchen,” she swears on woozy opener “Hang on Me,” but threatens to jump off her roof “just to punish you” on the vengeful, cracked opera of “Smoking Section,” the last song. Sometimes a mental safety net stretches out when she might otherwise get hurt. “Slip my hand from your hand / Leave you dancing with a ghost,” she sings on “Slow Disco,” the most tender song she’s ever written. “Don’t it beat a slow dance to death?” a forlorn and disembodied voice repeats as it fades out. Her world is changing, and that’s unsettling. “Too few of our old crew left on Astor,” she sings on “New York,” a song about lost heroes. On “Fear the Future,” she belts the title as the song reaches a pyrotechnic cataclysm that sounds like a truckload of fireworks being dumped inside a volcano. But if you respond in kind to Clark’s vulnerability, then these are the more meaningful revelations that we can take from Masseduction into our lives: Relatability is a crock, and sincerity doesn’t take a single form. “I refuse to seem less threatening, if that’s how I’m perceived,” said Clark. “Ultimate freedom is not caring whether you are liked, because you are making something you really love and believe in.” On Masseduction Clark tells us that all the good forms of desire — love, sex, art — are self-destructive. But at their best, they create just that little bit more than they consume, and can eventually alchemize anxiety into total power.

[ashamone]

016 | Lost in the Sauce: NYFW isn’t dead… Yet

The NYFW Spring/Summer 2018 shows are over and I’m snug in my bed in LA. After a few rants to friends, I've decided to give a little opinion piece.

Disclaimer: I don't want to be a “pc blogger.” I want to give you 100% of my real thoughts, so here it goes. My When. Where. Why. How questions on why NYFW is lost in the sauce.

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When.

When did magazine editors start liking everything? This whole week I wondered if any editors were going to critic collections. I saw nothing. The few disagreeing post I saw only showed up when a brand’s integrity was questioned and a culture was being exploited. It was almost as if they were worried about politics rather than clothes. 

Opinions rarely are showcased in the fashion world amongst todays social media editors. You like everything. You dislike nothing. When readers turn away, instead of going back to the drawing boards and becoming innovative, magazines go completely digital. You can tell me that “we are in a completely digital age” but this excuse doesn't hold up when artist such as Frank Ocean can sell out zines in the matter of minutes. What are you doing to push the magazine narrative? Why should your readers stay?

Where. 

Where is the fashion week spirit? I’ve been going fashion week since I was 16. At 23, I remember past NYFW being defined by the hustle and bustle of  jumping from train to train, taxi to taxi, the intense research for shows and hoping maybe just maybe they need seat fillers. That was when there wasn’t enough time to get to a show let alone have a outfit change. Now everything is about advertising. Quick question: How is it that all the shows are separate in location but major shows have enough time allotted to get “every important influencer” in their front row seat with matching branded looks? How come we can check each Instagram from blogger to magazine and everyone is at the same show? Are Ubers really that fast in the city or is this a advertising thing?

Why.

Bloggers. I have a love hate relationship with bloggers. Maybe it is because I have to categorize myself as one. Maybe because I feel like blogging has taken the fashion world into depths of saturation that we can't dig ourselves out of. Here’s a question for discussion: Why do bloggers have teams? Why do bloggers have interns? I understand blogging has become a multi-million dollar business and everyone needs a little help sometimes. But when does your voice as a blogger become you, your intern, your photographer, your assistant, and etc? It’s like going to see a rap concert and there are 10 people on stage hyping the main guy up. If you look at Instagram it’s blogging is all about the “Boyfriends, Money, Clothes, Boyfriend, Money, Clothes” * Jay-z Voice* You’re being sold a package. At first bloggers only had photographers, but now there are entourages and sometimes even stylist. We want to see your personality. We want to see you for you. At this point I honestly feel like agencies could just find an attractive girl or guy, give them a team and wah-lah a new influencer. They do that for Youtuber's. If J.Cole can go platinum with no features, I’m pretty sure you can tackle fashion week with a photographer and a calendar.

Skipping models because I’m skipping models. 

Designers. I don’t have much to say about you. Putting celebrities or Instagram models in your show will not make the clothes look better. Yes you will get more clicks and make money off of advertising but then what? In the long run, designers are spending more money making the show look good online than worrying about garment design, sorting fabric and having a product that people want to buy. If thats the case, just throw afterparties with presentations. Save some money.

OPINION.

Who the fuck came up with corporate street style? Paid looks? No one knows what I’m talking about? I had this thought 2 seasons ago that magazine editors give photographers a list of looks and brands to purposely shoot. I had a photographer tell me “Streetstyle Photographers are photographing looks that show personality. Looks with layers. Looks following the trends.” Bull shit. I seen New York construction workers and Nanny’s in Soho with more personality than most of the people on the “Best Dressed List.” Goodbye are the days where Bill Cunningham, R.I.P., showed us what street style really was.  Humans of New York & New York Nico are the closest thing to Bill Cunningham that we got. They show you real life. Style. Originality.

Honestly I’d rather have seen Cardi B in FashionNova than 1/2 of the current influencers  showcased  as “street style looks” you find on Vogue. 

How.

I don't know how to fix NYFW but I know that LA isn’t it guys. Sorry to kill some dreams. Fast fashion has created the narrative and instead of us progressing we have become the lesser of the fashion weeks. We aren’t creating trends, we are following them. To those of us paying attention to the decline ,I don't know what we are all looking for but we want something new. 

I said this before and I will say this again. NYFW has turned into Clout Fest. It’s the fashion worlds version of Coachella. For $1799 a day you can get a “first row ticket” to be apart of the in-crowd. It’s Accessible. You pay to show. You pay to sit. There needs to be a new theme, a new objective. 

As Jim Carrey said,”It’s meaningless.”

We have to find the meaning again. I know my opinion is just one of many but Hey thats ok. NYFW needs to get back to its New York State of Mind. Bring back Fashion Night Out. Ignore the need to be popular. Create an opportunity to showcase the home grown talent as well as talent from overseas. Stop outsourcing everything. Stop advertising nothing but after parties. Get back to the clothes.

-Asha Moné