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roseonhissleeve · 8 years ago

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Kiwi: Part One

A little impromptu mini-series based in Jamaica during the writing/recording of Harry’s new album. Enjoy. xo

The music in the bar was pounding as the sounds of the Caribbean flowed through the humid air. It was a small establishment, one that could probably only accommodate for two hundred people at most. It definitely wasn’t a tourist place; most of those were on the other side of the island with the copious amounts of resorts and hotels that offered travellers sanctuary.

Harry wasn’t there to vacation, though. He was there to write and record his new album.

The bar, “Pipo’s Shack”, was about a ten minute walk from the recording studio that Harry had been working in for the past little bit. It had been a productive couple of days; he’d spent the first night there having a few beers and getting to know his team better. After all, they were going to be working together until this thing was done, so they might as well be comfortable with one another. They all got along splendidly, and the handful of songs they’d managed to bang out so far were promising, but not quite right yet. After a couple of days of straight work, Harry decided that he needed a night off to himself.

When he walked into Pipo’s, he immediately fell in love with the atmosphere. It wasn’t like one of the high-maintenance Hollywood nightclubs that he’d had all too much experience with; there was a small sitting area and a bar, but other than that it was really just a dance floor and a stage. People were swaying to the sounds of the live music and laughing over drinks. There were neon signs decorating the walls, and the wall behind the stage displayed posters of bands and artists he didn’t recognize that he could only assume had played there previously. He felt the bass pounding in his body, and he took a seat at the bar and was looking up at the menu when he heard it.

“Hey, asshole!” A strong female voice announced, and he didn’t even have time to look behind him when he felt a cold sensation running down the back of his head and to his shoulders. He could only assume (and hope) that it was a glass of water, and he immediately stood up and turned around to look at whoever was behind him, his shoulders shrugging instinctively in response to the coldness running down his back.

“What the hell,” he protested, his brows furrowed with more confusion than anger as he looked up at the perpetrator.

Her eyes were the same shade of blue as the sky back home. That’s the first thing he noticed. As soon as he made eye contact with her he saw her facial expression shift from one of anger, to confusion, and then she just looked absolutely mortified. Surely enough, there was an empty pitcher in her hand that must have contained the water that was splashed down his back moments ago.

“OH FUCK,” she exhaled, covering her face with her free hand and hiding her features. There was a part of him that wanted to protest, wanted to see more of her and look in her eyes again, but it was overshadowed by the slight annoyance he felt at the water dripping down the back of his neck.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, I thought you were someone else, I’m so sorry, oh my god,” she began to ramble, her features twisting with guilt as she set the pitcher on the bar.

Well, she was certainly a firecracker.

She reached into the front of her apron and grabbed a clean towel, offering it out to him. Her teeth sunk into her lower lip nervously, and she was now rocking slightly on her heels. She could barely stand still, and he was starting to wonder if this was just a part of her personality.

“I’m so sorry,” she repeated.

“Did he at least deserve it?” Harry asked gruffly, grabbing onto the towel she offered him and using it to dry off the back of his neck. Honestly, the wetness of his t-shirt felt kind of nice in the burning heat he’d experienced all day, and there was no harm done.

“Without a doubt,” she said, offering a small apologetic smile. It wasn’t until then that he let himself properly get a look at the rest of her face; she had olive skin, and her lips were the color of a flower blooming in the Spring. There was a pen stuck in her hair, probably from the lunch shift earlier that day and her eyes looked tired yet full of life. She had short hair in the shape of a Pixie cut that framed her face and made her look soft yet strong at the exact same time.

“Can’t say I blame yeh, then,” he replied with a lop-sided smile. Her lip twitched a bit with surprise; she was expecting him to be furious, but this was going way better than she thought it would.

“Pick a drink, on the house. My apology to you. Doesn’t even have to be on the menu,” she offered, walking around to her position behind the bar and leaning onto her elbows once she was in front of him.

“Oh no worries, yeh don’t have to do that,” he protested, the towel draped across the back of his neck.

“I insist,” she replied, her lips parting to reveal a grin. It was the first time throughout the entire encounter that she didn’t look at least slightly pissed off, and something told him that she wasn’t the kind of girl you wanted to mess around with.

“If yeh say so,” he gave in, glancing up at the menu for a moment. “Hm, can you make a kiwi cocktail?”

“Yes I can,” she said, immediately turning her attention to making the drink. She grabbed a couple of kiwis in her hands and a knife, and he could read the concentration on her face.

“M’name is Harry,” he interrupted, causing her to giggle a little.

“I know who you are,” she explained, looking up at him with a slight flutter of her eyelashes before looking back down as she sliced the kiwis into quarters and dropped them into the blender. “Calliope. Or just Cal.”

“Well, s’nice to meet you. Y’know, now that I’m dry-ish,” he teased, grabbing the towel off of his shoulders and sliding it to her over the bar. Cal grabbed it and slung it over her own shoulder, holding the lid down on the blender as she mixed his cocktail while her lips formed a playful smirk.

“If it makes you feel any better, you’re probably the prettiest man I’ve ever gotten wet,” she uttered cheekily, causing his eyes to widen a little bit. She giggled at the expression and quickly poured his cocktail into a glass, sliding it across the counter. “It’s on the house, Harry. Enjoy.”

With that she was off to attend to some girls sitting on the other end of the bar. He hadn’t noticed how packed the place had gotten since he’d walked in, and despite himself, he felt disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to talk to her any longer.

Something told him that he was going to like this place.

She knew that Harry was watching her.

It wasn’t in the creepy way that she was used to, though. Usually guys (like the one who that pitcher of water was really meant for) who were interested in her would sit at the bar with their scotch or rum and shamelessly look at her as she served drinks for the night.

But this one was different. Cal busied herself with the people who were crowding the bar for their next drink; she couldn’t let herself get distracted by a cute boy. But every once in a while she would let her gaze roam the bar and search for him, and when she’d find him she’d be surprised to see that he was looking right at her. He would keep her gaze for a moment before smirking and looking away, taking a sip of his drink.

The cheeky bastard.

People came and left. She knew the regulars and made their drinks without asking, and in the brief breaks she got between the rushes she would wipe down the bar and get ready for the next group of drunk young adults who were keen on getting even more drunk. It was a routine at this point for her; she’d been on this island for about a month now, and she was damn good at her job. She knew she was.

“What does a guy have to do to get a drink around here?”

Calliope looked up and saw Harry’s shit-eating grin in front of her, causing her to roll her eyes playfully as she leaned forward against the bar. She briefly glanced around to make sure that there weren’t any waiting customers before speaking.

“It was about time you came back, Kiwi. I’ve been wondering when you were gonna stop lurking from afar,” she teased, grabbing a couple of kiwis in her hand and starting to prepare what she had a feeling would be his signature drink.

“I wasn’t lurking,” he argued with that same cheeky ass grin, the one where one corner of his mouth was tilted just a bit higher than the other and there was a sparkle in his eye.

“Of course you weren’t, that would make you creepy,” she bantered, flashing him a wide grin with a playful wink as she began to blend the ingredients of his drink in the blender.

“First yeh throw a pitcher of water at me and then yeh call me creepy…do yeh get any repeat customers at this place?” He teased, and she exhaled an exaggerated gasp at his comment while reaching into her apron to grab her dish towel and toss it at him.

“Don’t mess with me, Kiwi, I’ll kick your ass outta this place myself,” she threatened, setting his drink down on the bar in front of him and reaching to grab one of the mini umbrellas that they kept behind the bar for cocktails and margaritas.

“Why haven’t yeh, then?” He asked, eyebrows raising slightly.

“Because you’re pretty to look at,” Cal grinned, reaching across the bar to tuck the little cocktail umbrella in his hair so that it could rest behind his ear. He giggled and shook his head, taking a sip of his cocktail.

“So,” he said once he’d set his drink down on the bar, sporting the little accessory proudly. “What’s your drink of choice?”

“Screwdrivers,” she answered, absently arranging the straws in their container so that she had something to do. Her parents used to always tease her because she could never sit still as a child, and always needed something to do. It was something that had followed her through to her adulthood.

“Boring,” he commented, taking another sip of his drink.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Kiwi, that my drink choice does not live up to your mighty expectations,” she laughed, shaking her head and running her fingers through her short hair briefly. He laughed with her, and she noticed how his nose crinkled a little bit and the dimple on his left cheek appeared every time he smiled.

That’s when she knew he was going to be trouble.

“Just assumed that since you know all these fancy drinks you’d enjoy one o’them,” he reasoned.

“Rule number one, buddy. Don’t make assumptions,” she said, looking up at him with a smile.

Calliope talked with him the rest of the night, mostly light banter and idle chit chat. Every so often she would have to leave to serve more drinks or clean up a spill, but for the most part she was able to linger around Harry and talk to him. She enjoyed the company more than she led on, and he was a charismatic motherfucker. No wonder he was a rockstar.

At the end of the night when it was time to close, he stayed to help her clean up.

“You really don’t have to do this, y’know,” she repeated for the fifth time as she lifted up a stool and stacked it on the bar.

“Yeh said that already,” he laughed, repeating her motions and placing the final stool on the bar. She watched him turn around to look at the dance floor. It was completely empty, with no traces of it having been as busy as it was.

“Lonely, isn’t it?” She said softly, leaning against the bar as she looked out into the space that looked so much smaller suddenly.

“What?”

“How everything can turn so quiet all of a sudden,” she murmured, exhaling a soft sigh. There was definitely something behind her words that she wasn’t explaining, but that was something for another day.

“It’s kinda peaceful,” he commented.

“Mm, maybe,” she said, flashing him a smile. “I’ve never been much of a fan of silence.”

They looked at each other for a long moment, both suddenly acutely aware of how close they were standing to one another. She drew in a slow breath, clearing her throat suddenly before walking around the bar to grab the set of keys she had to lock the place up.

“Alright Kiwi, let’s blow this popsicle stand.”

He followed her out of the bar and waited patiently as she locked the door behind her, his hands tucked into his pockets. There was a light breeze that blew threw the trees and broke through the humidity, and he was suddenly self-conscious of how untamed his hair must have looked.

“Can I walk yeh home?” He offered, flashing a small smile as he shoved his hands in his pockets.

“Mm, I don’t think so,” Cal shook her head with a playful glimmer in her eye, although she could tell that her response caught him off-guard a little bit. “You could be a serial killer. Waiting to find out where I live so that you can come back two days later and scalp me. Nuh uh, I am not going anywhere with you unless it is in plain daylight with plenty of witnesses, Kiwi dear.”

He snorted softly and felt the need to point out that they’d been alone in the bar for half an hour now, but he decided against it. She had said no - for some reason she just wasn’t comfortable or into him walking her home tonight, and that was enough reason for him.

“Have a good night,” he said with a chuckle, his green eyes so soft that it almost made her change her mind. Almost.

“See you around, Harry,” she flashed him one last smile before beginning her walk down the beach. He could hear her humming from the distance, and it took him a few moments to realize that he still had a smile plastered to his face.

He reached to grab the little paper umbrella from behind his ear and looked down at it, twirling it between his fingers as he exhaled a breath. He didn’t come here to meet anybody, he came here to focus on his music and he was still determined to do that.

But he was definitely coming back here tomorrow.

Kiwi: Part Two

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lit102 · 7 years ago

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I loved this book when I first read it 3 1/2 years ago. I found it deliciously creepy, gripping, humanistic (I guess) and... baffling. How could someone who wrote a whole book about the power of empathy be homophobic? (This was just after the Ender’s Game movie came out and people were boycotting it so the subject of his homophobia was in the air.)

Upon rereading it, I’m appalled that I ever found it any of those things. This is a profoundly, nauseatingly narcissistic book; the lip service it pays to the power of empathy is actually worship of its protagonist, Ender Wiggin, and through him its author, Card himself. A quick summary: The world of Lusitania, largely Portuguese and Catholic (black Portuguese, specifically, which I bring up because he skirts around race in the weirdest way when he’s not being outright racist), is home to a small human colony and the first sentient alien species discovered since the Buggers (I cannot believe they are called the Buggers, the Buggers!) were exterminated three thousand years ago: the porquinhos, or piggies. The piggies are small bipeds with porcine faces (thus the nickname), separated from humans by a high fence that causes unbearable agony on contact (someone compares it to your fingers being filed off). This is supposed to protect them from cultural contamination, but it’s actually as much—or more—meant for humans, who fear what they don’t understand. The only humans who are allowed contact with the piggies—xenologers, or alien scholars—must try to learn as much about the piggies as they can while revealing as little of themselves as possible: they can’t even ask the questions they’re most want answered, for fear that they’ll give something of themselves away. This policy backfires tragically when the beloved xenologer Pipo is tortured to death by the piggies, and the young orphaned biologist Novinha, who loved him as a father, sends out a call for the nearest Speaker for the Dead — which happens, of course, to be none other than Ender Wiggin himself.

Ender and his kind play the role of secular priests, who investigate and then “speak” peoples’ lives, warts and all. They “[hold] as their only doctrine that good or evil exist entirely in human motive, and not at all in the act” (35), a doctrine of which I am deeply suspicious but that undergirds the whole book. Ender is the original speaker: three thousand years ago, he wrote a book called The Hive Queen and the Hegemon that spoke the Buggers’ death and taught humanity that they were worth mourning. Now, he wanders the worlds, just thirty-five years old because of the way space flight works, seeking a home for the last living Bugger hive queen and an end to the guilt that eats him up inside: guilt for the xenocide that made him the universe’s most hated man. When he hears that the piggies have tortured a human to death, he knows he must answer Novinha’s call. (He’s also attracted to her even though she’s twelve or thirteen years old, but whatever.) This is his chance to make peace between human and alien — to earn redemption for the role he played in the human/alien war that left all but one alien dead. So off he goes to Lusitania. When he arrives — two weeks later for him and like twenty years later for the colony — Novinha is grown, freshly widowed by a physically abusive man, and consumed by a secret guilt of her own; her household is tearing itself apart from the inside; and the piggies have murdered Pipo’s son and successor, Libo. It’s Ender’s job to make sense of all this in time to prevent intergalactic war and — most importantly — to redeem himself.

Rereading this, I realized what a blatant author surrogate Ender is. Not only he is literally a writer, his book is powerful enough to literally become the piggies’ religion. His word is God. He’s also flawless. Yes, he murdered countless aliens, and he’s wracked with guilt, but his redemption feels inevitable from the start — and not only that, the one surviving Bugger forgives him, because she understands his motives in slaughtering her species. Motives, as we know, are all that matter in the moral universe Card has created, and because we know Ender’s, he’s also redeemed in the reader’s eyes; his guilt is nothing more than a narrative hoop for him to jump through. (Not only that, he makes the hoops; as Speaker for the Dead, he first acts as his own accuser, then as his own judge, ruling — unsurprisingly — his favor.) Moreover, most of the characters worship him. Some literally. The AI Jane — the most ancient, knowledgeable, and powerful being in the known universe — refers unironically to his “genius” (62): “his genius — or his curse was his ability to conceive events as someone else saw them” (65). In other words, he has... empathy. Something that most humans have (and something that women have more of than men, I might add). However, in Ender, empathy is almost supernatural; it gives him the godlike ability to know (“no, not guess, to know” [65]) people without even speaking to or spending time with them. (“It was as if he were so familiar with the human mind that he could see, right on your face, the desires so deep, the truths so well-disguised that you didn’t even know yourself that you had them in you” [234–35].) Just like the author knows his characters. He can also make them worship him — again, some of them literally. Ender’s sister Valentine refers breathlessly to her brother’s “brilliant understanding of human nature” (75). His nieces and nephews think of him as “something of a savior, or a prophet, or at least a martyr” (82). Novinha’s feral children fall in love with him — as does, of course, Novinha herself (“his eyes were seductive with understanding. Perigoso, she thought. He is dangerous, he is beautiful, I could drown in his understanding” [129]. Gag me). Jane, the AI, is bored by literally every other human in the universe (”when she tried to observe other human lives to pass the time, she became annoyed with their emptiness and lack of purpose” [175]). Take this appalling passage:

Through his eyes [Jane] no longer saw humans as scurrying ants. She took part in his effort to find order and meaning in their lives. She suspected that in fact there was no meaning, that by telling his stories when he spoke people’s lives, he was actually creating order where there had been none before. But it didn’t matter if it was fabrication; it became true when he spoke it, and in the process he ordered the universe for her as well. He taught her what it meant to be alive. (175)

And the piggies, though they reject Christian scripture, turn The Hive Queen and the Hegemon into their bible. It’s like... jaw-droppingly blatant, isn’t it? Even when characters hate him, they elevate him, like the Bishop who claims he’s “as dangerous as Satan” (298).

Card’s message in Speaker for the Dead is clear: “When you really know somebody, you can’t hate them” (370). For him, to know is to love, whether you’re knowing the alien who tortured your father to death or the husband who beat you for years or the man who slaughtered your entire species.

[W]hen it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you understand what people really want, you can’t hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can’t hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart. (370)

The problem is, he’s created a story in which this must be true. The piggies who tortured Libo to death didn’t know they were torturing him; they thought they were giving him their highest honor. Ender was a child when he slaughtered the Buggers, and he thought it was them or us, that he was dooming humanity if he didn’t. Card makes empathy easy, uncomplicated, for his characters and the reader, and in this way robs it of all its power: he makes it the simplest and most obvious choice. That’s because this book isn’t truly about empathy at all: it’s about deifying himself in fictional form.

Stray observations:

Because Novinha blames herself for Pipo and Libo’s death, she endures her husband’s physical abuse as a form of punishment (“It’s no more than I deserve” [125]). The Bishop sanctions this as her “penance” for adultery later on. Foul.

Most of the Lustanians are supposedly black, but none of the characters are described as black (except Bishop Peregrino, whose face had “a pinkish tinge under the deep brown of his skin” [155], which to me seems like a profound misunderstanding of how dark skin works?), and Novinha’s hair reads as a white woman’s hair to me, or at least not a black woman’s, though I guess he’s not explicit about it. Oh and also, Ender is lily-white, startlingly white, in a way that evokes unsavory white savior imagery. (When he’s speaking Novinha’s husband’s death, in front of a huge crowd, “his white skin made him look sickly compared to the thousand shades of brown of the Lusos. Ghostly” [257].) He’s also compared to Pizarro.

The colony is very conservative, which Card actually celebrates: “If there were no powerful advocate of orthodoxy, the community would inevitably disintegrate. A powerful orthodoxy is annoying, but essential to the community” (158). Etc. Marriage and monogamy are highly valued.

The piggies are super sexist. Theirs is supposedly a matriarchal society, in which the females have all the power, but in fact they get pregnant, give birth, and are eaten by their babies in their own infancy. The matriarchs are sterile, which is why they survive to adulthood. When a character suggests helping the fertile females survive as well, Ender replies “To do what? They can’t bear more children, can they? They can’t compete with the males to become fathers, can they? What are they for?” (325). A female named Shouter supposedly rules the tribe, but a male named Human is Ender’s ambassador; he — again, a male — is the most important piggy in this story. Piggy society is a misogynistic man’s idea of matriarchy — on other words, not a matriarchy at all.

#speaker for the dead #orson scott card #read in 2017 #books in 2017

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