#golf shirts sale

[susoriginals]

SAlE 90% OFF Vintage Gray Polo Shirt Colours Alexander Julian Mens Medium Deadstock New Old Stock 32 Dollar Original Tag on SALE $1.20

[grannyandgrandpascreations]

Official Member Cool Aunts Club Distressed Flannel Shirt

One-of-a-kind bleached "Official Member Cool Aunts Club" high quality, affordable button down, two pocket distressed flannel shirt.

If your size is showing sold out, reach out to use to see if we have received a shipment of products in, due to the availability of items during this holiday season, we receive our products in daily.

No two shirts will ever be exactly alike so please aware and embrace the differences. All shirts are carefully curated, hand-dyed, and re-purposed so that each shirt is going to be different from the next in terms of color and plaid print.

SIZING: These shirts vary, many are unisex and come in men's sizing. They can be worn by both men & women. Ordering your normal t-shirt size is recommended for a regular fit. Going 1 size up works well for a baggy/oversized fit. Women's or Children's Specific sizing will be noted on the photo/variation options selected.

FABRIC: All these shirts are made of cotton or a cotton/poly blend. Measurements and thickness vary slightly by brand.

COLORS: Each flannel is unique, and no two shirts are going to look exactly alike. Colors are sent at random. Because the colors often change throughout the bleaching process, I cannot take specific color requests for these shirts.

CONDITION: All of our flannel shirts are brand new and washed twiced.

Care instructions: Turn item inside out, machine wash cold, no bleach, no softener. Do not dry clean. Do not iron. Air dry is recommended.

Due to different picture lighting settings the actual color might vary a bit from the pictures.

Current Turnaround Time due to upcoming Holidays - 1-5 Business Days. While we always use priority shipping options, once shipped we cannot guarantee delivery due to the backlog current being experienced USPS/UPS/FedEx. If you have a strict deadline, please message me when ordering so that I can note any rush requests. Ownership of packages turned over to USPS transfers to the Buyer. We are not responsible for lost, held, damaged packages or delayed packages, once your package(s) leaves our Shop it is completely out of our control. Thank you for understanding!

WEDDINGS: We do take custom orders for weddings! If you are interested in ordering a large group of shirts, please message me directly to set up a custom order. It is recommended that wedding orders be placed at least 2 months in advance so that we have enough time to create, ship, and exchange any shirts that do not fit.

Thank you for visiting Granny & Grandpa's Custom Creations, we truly appreciate your support of small businesses. We also personalize our products, please reach out to us with any personalizing any of our products, additional fee's may apply.

Please visit www.grannygrandpascustomcreations.com to view more products.

LET’S GET SOCIAL & BE FRIENDS! Like, Tag & Follow us for Our new Creations, Inspiration & Giveaways!

website/ www.grannygrandpascustomcreations.com/shop

facebook.com/ https://www.facebook.com/GrandpaHandmadecreations/

instagram.com/ https://www.instagram.com/grannyandgrandpacustomcreation/

goimagine.com/ https://goimagine.com/granny-and-grandpas-custom-creations/

#grannygrandpascustomcreations #distressedflannelshirt #flannel #granny #supportsmallbusiness #shopsmallbusiness

One-of-a-kind bleached "Official Member Cool Aunts Club" high quality, affordable button down, two pocket distressed flannel shirt.

If your size is showing sold out, reach out to use to see if we have received a shipment of products in, due to the availability of items during this holiday season, we receive our products in daily.

No two shirts will ever be exactly alike so please aware and embrace the differences. All shirts are carefully curated, hand-dyed, and re-purposed so that each shirt is going to be different from the next in terms of color and plaid print.

SIZING: These shirts vary, many are unisex and come in men's sizing. They can be worn by both men & women. Ordering your normal t-shirt size is recommended for a regular fit. Going 1 size up works well for a baggy/oversized fit. Women's or Children's Specific sizing will be noted on the photo/variation options selected.

FABRIC: All these shirts are made of cotton or a cotton/poly blend. Measurements and thickness vary slightly by brand.

COLORS: Each flannel is unique, and no two shirts are going to look exactly alike. Colors are sent at random. Because the colors often change throughout the bleaching process, I cannot take specific color requests for these shirts.

CONDITION: All of our flannel shirts are brand new and washed twiced.

Care instructions: Turn item inside out, machine wash cold, no bleach, no softener. Do not dry clean. Do not iron. Air dry is recommended.

Due to different picture lighting settings the actual color might vary a bit from the pictures.

Current Turnaround Time due to upcoming Holidays - 1-5 Business Days. While we always use priority shipping options, once shipped we cannot guarantee delivery due to the backlog current being experienced USPS/UPS/FedEx. If you have a strict deadline, please message me when ordering so that I can note any rush requests. Ownership of packages turned over to USPS transfers to the Buyer. We are not responsible for lost, held, damaged packages or delayed packages, once your package(s) leaves our Shop it is completely out of our control. Thank you for understanding!

WEDDINGS: We do take custom orders for weddings! If you are interested in ordering a large group of shirts, please message me directly to set up a custom order. It is recommended that wedding orders be placed at least 2 months in advance so that we have enough time to create, ship, and exchange any shirts that do not fit.

Thank you for visiting Granny & Grandpa's Custom Creations, we truly appreciate your support of small businesses. We also personalize our products, please reach out to us with any personalizing any of our products, additional fee's may apply.

Please visit www.grannygrandpascustomcreations.com to view more products.

LET’S GET SOCIAL & BE FRIENDS! Like, Tag & Follow us for Our new Creations, Inspiration & Giveaways!

website/ www.grannygrandpascustomcreations.com/shop

facebook.com/ https://www.facebook.com/GrandpaHandmadecreations/

instagram.com/ https://www.instagram.com/grannyandgrandpacustomcreation/

goimagine.com/ https://goimagine.com/granny-and-grandpas-custom-creations/

#grannygrandpascustomcreations #distressedflannelshirt #flannel #granny #supportsmallbusiness #shopsmallbusiness

[evermoredeluxe]

How Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Took Over the Entire World

By Chris Willman

By Alissa Gao for Variety

On the morning that Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” is about to begin a three-night stand in Dublin, the older gentleman taking charge of my passport at airport customs has clearly had his fill of Swifties, probably processing them by the hundreds already today. When I reveal myself to be one too — despite being arguably the wrong gender, inarguably old and lacking a telltale “Lover” mascara star over my right eye — his disdain is palpable. Suddenly, I’m getting way more screening questions than anyone not on a watch list should. “What do you like about her?” he sneers, peering up over specs.

This is probably the wrong time for me to point out Swift’s Irish heritage, or to assert that she is this generation’s James Joyce. (The original king of the Easter eggs, right?) I wouldn’t really go that far — I’m only on record as doing my best to certify her as this century’s Beatles. Trying to figure out how to answer him, the past 18 years of extolling Swift in print flash before my eyes. I end up murmuring the bare minimum: “Um, her songwriting.” This seems to disturb him further. He snaps back: “Aren’t they all the same song” — a slight pause, and I know what’s coming next — “about her breakups?” Then, abruptly, he stamps me through, sparing me a detour to Interpol for more grilling.

In the cab into town, the driver is blasting a local talk-radio personality sharing his dismay about the fans of an awful superstar taking over his country. The host reads an email sent in from a hater who says, “A year ago, when tickets went on sale, my partner and I made a reservation to take our kids out of the country this Friday morning. … Thank you for creating a safe space with your show.” I start to wonder if Swift might have met her match at the Cliffs of Moher.

But from my drop-off forward, the next three days are like living in a Swift-topia. The mile and a half to Aviva Stadium each night is like Disneyland when it shuts its doors early for an affinity group. Whether stopping in the pubs or walking through the charming neighborhood of Victorian brick homes adjoining the fancy new stadium, there’s that warm feeling of people who are united by one quality: They are all super in touch with their feelings — or else they wouldn’t be Swift fans. And they all are happy to stop on the street or over pints to talk about poetical expression. (Well, except for the occasional taciturn, invariably straight young male who has signified his supportive-plus-one status by wearing a jersey bearing the name of Swift’s Super Bowl beau, Travis Kelce.)

So it is that I end up chatting with a middle-aged gay man in a sequin-covered shirt whose female companion whispers to me, while he steps away to trade friendship bracelets with a 10-year-old girl and her mum, that Swift’s music just helped him through a difficult breakup. The girl then runs off to trade her homemade bracelets with a pair of high-helmeted Dublin policemen loaded up to their own elbows with friendship swag — unexpected accessories for long arms of the law.

All the stories about American Swifties swarming overseas to catch “The Eras Tour” turn out to be true: You couldn’t swing a neon golf club around here without hitting a Yank. Approximately one out of every five fans I approach is visiting from the States — and the jubilation they’re feeling about the night’s impending concert is compounded by the fact that nearly all of them financed a European vacation and a concert ticket for roughly the same amount they would have paid on a secondary ticketing site for a typical four-figure ticket to one of last year’s predatorily repriced U.S. shows.

Remember the venerable stereotype of the Ugly Americans, brusquely trampling over refined Europeans in their travels? Thanks to Taylor Swift, who has a gift for laying out global welcome mats, this is the summer of the Spangly American.

At the stadium on night one, just down the row from me are a group of millennials from New Jersey, several in glam unitards inspired by the “Lover” or “1989” portions of the career-spanning show and looking like they were costumed by Swift’s own designer, with fake jewel-encrusted microphones to match. I ask how many hours went into perfecting these nearly pro-grade outfits.

“About 80 hours for mine,” says Megan McLaughlin. “Hers probably longer,” she adds, nodding toward one of her sisters, Margo Steinberg. “She knows all the glues and the best gems.” Indeed, confirms Steinberg, “I was working on mine since January. And, yes, I did quit my job to finish it!” She adds, when I ask if she cares to share any secrets to a particularly good look, “You have to use the B-7000 glue.” (A third sister, Amelia McLaughlin, admits she resorted to buying her spangly dress off Etsy — “I was doing a PhD, but I had to match these girls’ enthusiasm” — while a fourth, Carolyn McLaughlin, skipped the glitter and went for a red dress that matches Swift’s from the “I Bet You Think About Me” video.)

Certainly, there is an element of cosplay to many of the fans’ outfits. Some have seen footage of the new segment Swift added to the tour beginning in April 2024 — devoted to her most recent album, the 31-song “Tortured Poets Department” — and have managed to manufacture gowns that look like they’re made of paper and feature lyric excerpts printed on them in script, à la Swift’s custom-made Vivienne Westwood dress. I meet a group of American women who became friends as literature majors in college who have “Tortured Poets”-themed outfits, one duplicating the Westwood dress and the other with handmade printouts of the latest album’s lyrics pinned all over her black dress, as if she were literally pulling pages out of Swift’s playbook.

It’s the devotion to lyrics, even more than glitter, that is most impressive about the bespoke outfits fans have concocted for the occasion. There are scores and scores of Swifties wearing homemade T-shirts — sometimes singular, sometimes matching with a friend, like walking Burma-Shave signs. Some of the messages are obvious, like the dozens of laddies wearing “It’s me, hi, I’m the husband/boyfriend/father, it’s me” shirts. (Bet that seemed really original at one time.) But a lot of them refer to more obscure songs or stanzas, as if every nearby street or stadium loge section is full of human Easter eggs, begging to be unpacked. It’s hard to think of any other superstar in the history of stadium tours who could have inspired as much fan-crafted clothing rooted in the power of words.

Combos of middle-aged mothers and their teen or 20-something daughters abound; some of them have seized on Swift’s mentions of her own mother, Andrea, to come up with their T-shirt ideas. On Lansdowne Road, I talk to a mum whose red-on-black shirt says, “Had to listen to all this drama,” accompanied by a daughter bearing the legend, “And here’s to my mama.” (This is a reference to Swift’s song “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.”)

Later, in a stadium Guinness line, I chat up a pair of thirsty locals, the daughter’s shirt reading “I call my mom, she said …,” with the mom’s shirt completing the thought: “It was for the best.” (Damn it, I had to Google to recall that’s from a “1989” Vault track that came out last year.) I ask the daughter if she had to explain to her mom what she was wearing. “She’s 52,” she replies. “I don’t think she knows.”

Age is really no guarantor of not getting it — the popular #SwiftieOver50 hashtag on X proves that. Although outnumbered, plenty of older people are unaccompanied by a minor, or by anyone who has been a minor in the past 20 years. I approach a middle-aged couple, Jean Sebastian Conley and Natasha Gagne, again bidden by their matching shirts — “Who’s Taylor Swift?” and “Who’s Travis Kelce?” They turn out to be French Canadians who found their 206-euro SRO tickets to be a steal compared with the extravagant resale prices they briefly considered back home after being shut out of the initial on-sale. I ask what attracted them to Swift since, unlike so many others here, they didn’t grow up with her.

“I really fell in love with her with the ‘Folklore’ album,” Conley says, referring to her low-key Grammy-winning album recorded during the early months of the pandemic. “I think different audiences and older audiences found her through that and ‘Evermore’ because they were more singer-songwriter, a little bit rougher indie music, and that’s what we like most. So that’s how I got hooked.” For her part, Gagne says, “I like everything she represents. And when she redid all her masters, that’s where I thought she was a lady boss.”

It’s a reminder that, for however many mini-narratives Swift packs into the three hours and 20 minutes of an “Eras” show, there are really four or five years of backstory that feed into the audience’s shared awareness. When she sings the ominous ballad “My Tears Ricochet,” accompanied by a coven of stone-faced dancers, at least some fans will understand it as a distant reflection of her very public feelings about the men she considers her business bêtes noires, Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta, who bought and sold (respectively) the rights to her first six albums, spawning much vitriol as well as four “Taylor’s Version” rerecorded albums to date.

When the dancers put their grins back on, Swift plays an ebullient excerpt of a very recent “Poets” bonus track, “So High School,” which every person in the crowd will know is inspired by Kelce. There are some breakup songs of recent vintage too — yes, Mr. Customs Man! — like “The Smallest Man in the World,” which may or may not have cost Matty Healy, the 1975 frontman and former Swift paramour, a night of sleep.

The whole tour is themed around not just the newer records but the rerecordings that have made every older album in her catalog feel improbably fresh. It was, quite possibly, the single most baller move in the history of the record industry … and led to the career-retrospective concept for what is already unquestionably the biggest tour in the history of popular music.

Any discussion of the charms of fandom isn’t meant to forestall discussion of “The Eras Tour” as big business. The numbers are fuzzy because Swift’s camp does not release grosses from her shows, unlike nearly every other artist at the stadium or arena level. Even when the tour wraps after 20 months on Dec. 8 in Vancouver, it seems likely those numbers will continue to be guarded with a zeal on par with the government of North Korea’s. Many industry experts believe the gross will approach or even surpass $2 billion.

What is known for certain — even without a confirmation from Swift World — is that she broke the all-time tour-gross figure when she hit the $1 billion mark, whenever exactly that might have been. The two trade publications that specialize in the touring industry have slightly differing estimates: Billboard calculated a cumulative gross of approximately $900 million when she took a break at the end of 2023, figuring that she would crack $1 billion shortly into the tour’s resumption in April, while Pollstar estimated that she had passed $1 billion by the conclusion of last year. Any way you guesstimate it, Swift took less than a year to break the previous record of $939.1 million, which Elton John grossed with his “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour across nearly three years of shows.

One source close to the production said early in the “Eras Tour” era that her average gross each night is $14 million. Others believe that is a highly conservative estimate, with a possible total that on at least some nights edges closer to $17 million. One remarkable aspect is that this does not include the revenue from any inflated resale tickets — which, as anyone who has tried to get tickets through Vivid Seats or StubHub knows, mostly have gone for several times their face value. It was little publicized, but Swift had “dynamic pricing” turned off for her ticket sales, possibly to avoid the controversies Bruce Springsteen encountered when the face value on some of his tickets leaped to the four-figure range upon their first sale. Swift left money on the table by not participating in the scalping of her own tickets, which had an average price of around $230 and topped out at $499, excepting VIP packages, which zenithed at $899 — all well short of what some other superstars ask nowadays. Of course, neither Argentina nor anyone at Wembley Stadium ahead of Swift’s opening night performance in June will be crying for her when she’s in reach of $2 billion without the resale inflation … not to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars in merch.

(This is extraordinary also because Swift hasn’t done any press to promote the tour, except for when she was selected as Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in December. But she doesn’t need to — the tour is constantly being celebrated on social media with every outfit change. And it’s also become so huge, it’s featured more A-list sightings than the Oscars, from Julia Roberts to Tom Cruise to Stevie Nicks, who had the surprise song “You’re on Your Own, Kid” dedicated to her in Dublin.)

Benson Boone, whose “Beautiful Things” is the most-streamed song of 2024 in the U.S. and the world, says he felt dwarfed when performing as the opening act at one of Swift’s seven shows at London’s Wembley Stadium. He has forever committed to memory the exact attendance figure he was given for the night: “89,497,” he says. “Just her stage alone is bigger than anything I’ve ever seen — 300 feet of it!” he says. “I took in every moment. It was cool for me to experience another artist’s world and learn from it. I want to work that hard and be the captain of my ship.”

Although it’s maddening to a media that likes official box office reports and can’t get them, it’s easy to see the wisdom in not flaunting those figures if you’re a superstar artist who counts on being seen as relatable. Swift certainly is proud of breaking records — she posted a tweet when “The Tortured Poets Department” spent its first 12 weeks at No. 1 on the album chart, one of only three albums in history to do so. But she’d rather count fan impressions than dollars. By the same token, she doesn’t publicize or confirm acts of generosity that leak out, like the sizable food-bank donations she makes in every city she tours, or the $100,000 bonuses that the tour’s 50 truck drivers reportedly got for Christmas.

An addendum to all this is how the “Eras Tour” film — released last fall, less than halfway through the actual tour — grossed just over $180 million domestically and $261 million globally, beating the records set by Justin Bieber’s concert film in the U.S. and Michael Jackson’s globally. Massive big-screen spoilers only heightened, rather than diminished, resale demand for the shows yet to come on the 152-date tour and helped precipitate the movement among Americans to head overseas, to make up for the supply found sorely lacking at home.

“She is the torchbearer for the live industry,” says Andy Gensler, editor of Pollstar. “It’s nothing we’ve ever seen before, and it’ll be a long time before we see it again. Her timing was exquisite: The pandemic created this yearning and hunger for live entertainment like nothing else in our history, so she couldn’t have picked a better time to go out.” Pollstar called last year a “historic golden age” for touring, as the top 100 global tours collectively surpassed $9 billion — up 46% from 2022 — with Swift obviously contributing a significant chunk of that total. (This year, the trade reports that overall tour attendance is down, with flat grosses, representing a slight reckoning for the live industry that, obviously, isn’t impacting “Eras.”)

“What my partners and I talk a lot about is how it’s one thing to have a big tour in North America. It’s another thing to have an equally big tour wherever you are in the world and to do doubles and triples in these markets,” says Bernie Cahill, an Activist founding partner and manager of acts including the Grateful Dead and the Lumineers. “It’s an anomaly. It’s not normal. And don’t forget, you’re going into what I call asymmetric venues, which are venues that are not really built for music; these are venues that are built for football games or soccer games and can be very challenging to do music. And they get it right every time — Louis Messina [Swift’s tour promoter since her earliest days] and his team are world-class.” But for all that globe-trotting, he notes, “there are some artists that you see do a show and you know they don’t even know what city they’re in. I always feel like Taylor knows exactly where she is. She has a relationship with that city or that market and those fans and she’s connected to them in ways that are very authentic, that you can’t fake.”

The one big snafu in the rollout of “The Eras Tour” occurred in November 2022 when the Ticketmaster system melted down after too many North American dates went on sale at once, causing thousands of fans to experience long delays. The on-sale broke the all-time record for tickets sold in a single day at 2 million, but it also nearly broke the world’s largest ticketing platform. Swift herself was Teflon in this situation, as the blame fell on a ticketing system not capable of handling so much of the Swift-loving world at once. And although most of the problems people have with Ticketmaster are different from what fans faced in the “Eras Tour” debacle — mainly, hidden fees and monopolistic practices — it could have big legislative consequences anyway. Dean Budnick, co-author of “Ticket Masters: The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped,” believes that the Swift hullabaloo was the main catalyst for Congress enacting reform. “There’s no question that perhaps there’s gonna be some meaningful change in ticketing as a result of what people experienced with that on-sale.”

That sense Cahill spoke about of the singer making it clear to an audience she knows exactly where she’s at is in full force in Dublin. Swift introduces the “Folklore”/”Evermore” segment by suggesting that she had a spiritual locale in mind when she started writing that more intimate material, locked in during the first part of the pandemic. “It keeps me up at night all year long: Which era is the most Irish?” she half-jokes to the crowd. “I’m gonna make a case for it being ‘Folklore’ … This album’s imaginary world had a whole aesthetic — like I lived in this cabin in a really green, nature-y, moss-covered landscape. You see where I’m going?… Another thing that I think makes it more Irish than the other eras is, ‘Folklore’ was all about storytelling. And I know you hear this a lot, but you guys are naturally gifted storytellers, right?”

Later on, Swift will cement the local connection by playing, as a “secret” surprise acoustic song, “Sweet Nothing.” She doesn’t have to give the crowd any explanation for that: From the first notes, Irish Swifties will immediately recall that the lyrics reference to the coastal town of Wicklow. The real cherry on top of the show for locals at any international Eras Tour stop, though, comes with a customized moment each night during “We Are Never Getting Back Together” when the spotlight is put on backing dancer Kameron Saunders for a couple of seconds, as he blurts out something locally appropriate, and cheeky. One night in Dublin, it’s the Irish catchphrase “the neck of ye!”; on another, he yells out “pog mo thoin,” meaning “kiss my ass!”; the massive, knowing laugh that inside joke gets makes it clear this isn’t entirely an audience of American tourists after all.

But the basic theatrics and emotional currents remain consistent from show to show. If Swift is surprisingly reticent to make her “Eras Tour” numbers public, that may be, in part, her desire to keep the focus primarily on a personal fan connection. Music industry veterans are taken aback by Swift’s ability to be giant and intimate onstage. “She’s a master marketer of herself — and she is not afraid to be vulnerable to her fans,” says Michele Bernstein, who runs a consultancy that works with stars like Drake. Bernstein could almost be quoting the lyrics of “Mastermind,” where Swift describes herself in almost comically omniscient terms, then dives into a bridge about how no one would play with her as a little girl.

People like my guardian of the customs gate may complain about Swift’s songs centering on her romantic splits, but that subject matter magnifies her own insecurities and weaknesses, expressed in genuinely eccentric wordplay, in ways that keep the audience in thrall to someone they perceive as a humble underdog as well as a veritable cage fighter. She could do a $10 billion tour someday and still keep the crowd enraptured by how she measures up to, or rallies to exceed, the smallest man — or men, or Kardashians — in the world.

This plays out in the “Eras” show in all sorts of symbolic ways, like the new segment in the “Tortured Poets” section where she seems to have fainted from the vapors of failed romance. Dancers in tuxedos try to revive her while a swing version of “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” plays over the PA. A pair of women dressed as nurses fit her with what looks like a majorette’s uniform — or, with all its off-white stripes, is it really meant to resemble a straitjacket? The resemblance is probably not coincidental. Swift fans know there’s nothing like a mad woman.

The most exhilarating moment that has been added to the show this year has her gliding down the ramp on a platform, appearing to anyone at floor level like she is levitating like the witch she makes herself out to be in “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” Taylor Swift: She was Agatha all along!

Yes, there is much to unpack. But in Dublin and in every other city where “Eras” has alighted, there is also pure inspiration for those who maybe haven’t always felt like they’ve had a voice, whether it’s her LGBTQ+ fan base or, well, women. It’s a modern transmutation of Beatlemania in which Swift manages to be all four Fabs, and a mirror, as well as object, of that gaze. You don’t have to be a woman to experience the explosion of pure female joy that takes place on a mass scale at an “Eras” gig, but for men, it doesn’t hurt to have a healthy sense of where you might sit on the female spectrum.

Outside Aviva Stadium, two young Londoners have formed their own two-woman straight-gay alliance: One is wearing a shirt with the hand- drawn words “You’re obsessive and crazy,” and the other’s shirt has the phrase “You’re gay,” each with an arrow pointing to the other. This echoes the original lyrics to Swift’s 2006 oldie “Picture to Burn,” which was rerecorded after some were offended by “gay” as a possible teen epithet. “I am obsessive and crazy, and she is gay,” laughs Zoe Gibson, pointing to her friend, India Day. “We want to bring back the original lyrics. We never found them homophobic — we want to reclaim it.” Day adds, “We’ve listened to her since we were 4 years old, so obviously there’s the nostalgia factor. But for me, she speaks on quite a lot of issues like gay rights and feminism, and all of her songs perfectly sum up the experience of being a woman.”

Some of the shirts are apropos for Pride Month. Seeing a boy of no older than 15 or 16 wearing a homemade “But Daddy I Love Him” shirt (the title of a “Tortured Poets” fan favorite), it’s easy to imagine some courage was required to don that apparel. Along the same lines, I spot any number of women making their own statement in shirts with the modified exclamation “But Daddy I Love Her.”

Gay or straight, 6 years old or 60-something, female or just female-allied, the crowd inside gets its sway on early in the show, with the arrival of the gentle, waltz-time “Lover.” It’s not one of the big set-pieces of this nonstop Broadway-style production — the spotlight is just on Swift and her acoustic guitar — but it might be the one where the entire audience feels like it’s at a four-minute campfire. No wicked witchiness here, just winsomeness.

Down on the floor, I’m seeing what amounts to a Taylor Swift mosh pit: gangs of two or three or five young women, ignoring the fact that Swift herself is just yards away from them on the ramp. They’re singing and acting out every last line to each other, as if the superstar isn’t even towering right over them. A waste of their euros? Hardly. Swift will capture their full attention again as the show proceeds, but in the moment, she isn’t just a superstar — she might be the world’s greatest community organizer.

[fanfictilltheend]

As promised (since I'm late sorry 😭) Snippet 5 of ❤️‍🔥Violent Heart❤️‍🔥 aka stepdad!mechanic!convict!joel x afab!reader fic

I SWEAR I WROTE THIS BEFORE HE WORE THIS OUTFIT ON GOD I LITERALLY SPOKE IT INTO EXISTENCE YOU CAN THANK ME BELOW 👇

Warnings: Nothing crazy just joel admiration and dressing him up 😍

Context: Joel is Y/N's ex step-father. He just got out of prison for killing David and Y/N (age 20) takes Joel shopping for a new wardrobe.

HERE IS A LINK TO A MASTERLIST OF VIolent Heart STUFF TO TIDE YOU OVER

You take Joel shopping. At his insistence it is nothing fancy, just the local department store. That doesn’t stop you from dressing Joel up in ridiculous outfits of your choosing. You make him try on a hawaiian shirt, some golf polos like your dad liked to wear, a pinstripe suit and he lets you because saying no to you has never been in his vocabulary. He acts grumpy on the outside, but you can tell he is amused. You know in the end you’ll just end up buying every flannel shirt and jeans combo they have in the store, but it’s just fun anyway. You watch the fabric hug his torso, his tummy, the slight bulge at his waist. At one point he comes out shirtless and you try very hard not to swoon as you stare at the hair lining his chest and his adorable little tummy that you for some reason have the urge to bite. The band of his Hanes boxers sticks up past his jeans and he looks so good. He even lets out a genuine smile. The middle-aged sales attendant who is helping you even takes a good look at him which makes the butterflies inside you swarm possessively. 

Finally you make him try on a proper white-collared button-down shirt and black dress pants with matching black shoes and he looks so good you’re actually at a loss for words when he asks you what you think. They hug the curves and lines and planes of his body so nicely. All you can do is ask him to put on a black tie to match and he does at your behest following some customary griping that he would never wear such a monkey suit in the first place. The effect that a fully dressed up Joel has on you is not one to be reckoned with. He might as well be wearing the mens version of lingerie for how it makes you throb and ache between your legs. He looks like a force of nature, commanding and tall. It makes you weak. All you say is,

“Looking good, old-timer.”

He snorts.

HERE IS A LINK TO A MASTERLIST OF VIolent Heart STUFF TO TIDE YOU OVER

[roosterforme]

Just Desserts | Rooster x Reader

Summary: Rooster only has eyes for his girlfriend and her baked goods. 

Warnings: Fluffy Smut

Length: 2000 words

Pairing: Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw x Female Reader

Based on this fun request from an anonymous friend!

This was written to accompany my series Is It Working For You? but it can be read on its own!

Check my masterlist.

Early Saturday morning, Bradley went out to play a round of golf with some of the guys. He had left you sleeping in bed, just pressing a soft kiss to your forehead before he left. He had promised you he would return around lunchtime and spend the rest of the day and the entire night with you. 

He was getting close to his next deployment, and he had initially scoffed at the idea of forfeiting even a few hours of your day off together, but you had got on him about being more social. So he accepted the golfing invitation from Bob, Hangman and Coyote.

Turns out you were a genius, because he ended up having a great time playing golf, kicking back a few 'breakfast' beers and hanging out. Bob was the only good golfer in the bunch, so it didn't really matter that Bradley lost a few balls along the way and that he had to fudge his score on the 15th hole. 

And now he was heading back home to you. When he unlocked the door and stepped inside, he audibly groaned. "Smells so good in here," he mumbled, taking in the sight before him. You were in the kitchen, wearing your I Love Meat apron that he bought for you randomly one day when he saw it. And you were surrounded by cupcakes, muffins, pies and brownies. One of your perfectly curated playlists was playing on your phone next to a stack of cookbooks. 

Then it clicked. You had mentioned you needed time to work on things for the Navy's bake sale with the San Diego Children's Hospital. Apparently you volunteered for this fundraiser every year, and Bradley had promised you weeks ago that he would be your personal taste tester. 

"I'm back, and I'm ready to work!" Bradley said as he kicked off his golf shoes and headed into the kitchen. "Give me stuff to sample."

"Hey, Roo. Did you have fun?" you asked, and he wrapped his arms gently around your waist from behind. He kissed the side of your neck as you unwrapped some sticks of butter. He thought you looked extra cute in your sweatpants and tee shirt with your hair piled on top of your head. And there was a smudge of flour on your cheek that he really wanted to take some time to kiss away. 

You always made him feel like this. He couldn't figure out if he was more horny or more loved up. He wanted to romance you and tear your clothing to shreds at the same time. It was very confusing and oftentimes overwhelming, but he usually just went along with it.

"Yeah, golf was fun. Thanks for making me go," he whispered next to your ear. He didn't want to distract you too much, since you seemed to have a lot of baking to finish. "Can I help at all, Baby Girl? I know how to separate eggs now, remember? Or I'm more than willing to sample what you've made."

With a grin, you turned in his arms slightly and kissed his lips. "Want to try one of the brownies for me?" you asked, nodding your head toward a tray cooling on the island. 

"Yep." He cut himself a large square and took a bite. Of course it was perfect. "So good, it brings tears to my eyes, Sweetheart," he mumbled around another bite. 

"Good. Now try a blueberry muffin," you instructed him as you set two beautiful looking pies in the oven. 

Bradley ate a muffin in three bites and moaned. "Delicious, Baby Girl. Can I try a cupcake?"

"Sure, they're cinnamon spice with cream cheese frosting," you said, but he'd already eaten half of one. And now you were mixing ingredients in a bowl with a wooden spoon, kind of dancing along to the music playing, and Bradley really couldn't help himself. 

He stood behind you and kissed your neck again, letting his hands come to rest on your hips. "And what about this? Can I try a sample? It looks so pretty, I'd love to eat it."

You giggled and then gasped as Bradley slid his hands to the front of your hips, in between your sweatpants and your apron. He rubbed himself against your butt and you moaned, "What are you doing, Roo?"

He grinned into your hair and kissed your ear. "I heard you like meat."

You burst out laughing, and he was so happy he had bought you that apron. He loved making you laugh, and tried to make it a daily priority. 

"I like your meat," you whispered, still laughing. 

"Think you can take a little break, Sweetheart?" Bradley untied your sweatpants and slipped his hand inside the elastic band, caressing the soft skin of your belly. You tipped your head back against his shoulder as he drew little circles with his fingertips next to your belly button. 

He let his fingers trail lower until they toyed with the top of your underwear. Your phone started playing I Only Have Eyes for You, and Bradley sang along.

'My love must be a kind of blind love,

I can't see anyone but you.'

You whimpered and spun in his arms so you were facing him. Now his fingers were kneading into your lower back. You looked up at him, and he was struck by the expression of desire on your face. 

'Are the stars out tonight?

I don't know if it's cloudy or bright. 

I only have eyes for you.'

"Bradley," you moaned, wrapping your arms around his neck and pulling him down to kiss you. You and he drifted slowly around between the kitchen counter and the island, dancing to the song. Your languid kisses were making him dizzy. The lazy way you moved him around the kitchen and the softness of your sighs was mixing with the sweet smell of baked goods. 

Everything took on a hazy quality as Bradley untied your apron and tossed it gently aside. "I love you," he whispered before claiming your mouth again. Your fingers tangled gently in his hair, pulling softly on his scalp; Bradley was practically panting at your touch. He wrapped his arms around your waist until you were flush against the front of him. When his mind registered that you weren't wearing a bra, he groaned. He gazed down at you between kisses. A different song started playing, but his brain couldn't tell what it was. He couldn't focus on anything but you. 

He watched your tongue flick out of your mouth, and you licked his chin and then his lower lip, and soon he was devouring you, pulling your lip between his teeth and nibbling. "Good enough to eat," he murmured as you pulled his golf shirt over his head.

You giggled as you ran your hands over his bare shoulders and chest. "I agree," you whispered, placing open mouthed kisses just below his collarbones before licking the scars on the side of his neck. Bradley's head tipped back as your fingers connected with the button of his golf pants, and when you guided them down his legs along with his boxer briefs, he had to bite his lip. You were placing gentle kisses to his thighs and along the length of his erection.

He hauled you up to your feet and wrapped his arms around you, backing you up against the counter. "God, Baby GIrl, you feel better than anything." He kissed you hard as your legs tangled with his, and he held you upright, delving his tongue into your mouth. 

Bradley was dimly aware that you were pulling your shirt over your head, and he watched some strands of your hair fall around your face. You were gorgeous like this, your eyelids half closed as you bit your lip and looked up at him. He shook his head slowly, taking it all in. 

When he guided your sweats and your underwear off, he wrapped his hands around the backs of your thighs and lifted you up, setting you gently on the edge of the counter. Your hands immediately went to his chest, and you yelped, but he wasn't going to drop you. Then you welcomed his lips back to yours as you scooted to the edge. Bradley could feel the warm wetness of your opening pressing against his length when you spread your legs open for him. He adjusted himself so you were perfectly lined up, and he wrapped your arms around his neck before wrapping his hands around your waist. 

He kissed you gently, reverently as he pushed himself inside you. You sighed into his mouth and he moved in a slow, steady rhythm, in time with the sweet melody playing from your phone. He would remember this moment when he was deployed; he'd play it over and over again. Knowing he could come back home to this, to you, made everything okay. 

You ran the tip of your nose along his cheek, kissing him there and whispering his name. Your voice spurred his movements, and he pushed himself into you harder and harder without picking up the pace. He watched your breasts bounce each time he bottomed out, and you tipped your head back, guiding his lips to your neck. He sucked on your soft skin, biting you and nuzzling against you. Then he soothed you with his mustache and his tongue. He only wanted to make you feel good. 

He could feel you starting to squeeze him, so he slid his knuckles back and forth along your belly before settling his fingers on your clit. He gathered some of your wetness and teased you closer to coming. When he wrapped his other arm around your back and pulled you hard onto his length, you cried out, your voice breaking on his name.

Unable to control himself, he fucked into you with faster strokes, nearing his own end as you wrapped your legs around him, riding him to completion. Once you were both panting, and he was just thrusting his cum further into you as his thrusts slowed down, Bradley realized that the kitchen timer was going off.

"Sweetheart, what's the timer for?" he rasped next to your ear, nuzzling against you. He didn't want to pull out of you yet, but he needed to in order to reach the timer. He fumbled with it, distracted as his cum dripped from your pretty pussy and onto the counter. 

"Umm," you hummed, biting your lip and running your hands through your very messy hair. "I ummm... the pies? I think I put pies in the oven?"

Bradley nodded and shoved your oven mitts onto his hands, he carefully pulled both pies out, setting them down gently on the stove burners. He turned to you, and you winced when you saw them. They both had slightly burned edges and very dark tops. 

"I'll still eat them!" Bradley offered when he saw your face. "And I'll love them!"

You cradled your head in your hands and laughed. "This is because you're never quick, Bradley."

"Okay, okay," he said in mock-defense, tossing the mitts onto the counter. "You can complain about a lot of things when it comes to me, but do not complain about that, Baby Girl."

"It was merely an observation, Roo. Not a complaint," you said, giggling as he wrapped his arms around you and kissed you senseless. 

Then after you cleaned up, he helped you bake two new pies while he ate one of the burned ones directly out of the pie pan with a fork. 

--------------------------------

*sigh* Thanks anonymous friend, I really loved writing this one!

@hotch-meeeeeuppppp

@swthxrry

@yaboid19

@mak-32

@miles-rooster

@solacestyles

@avoirlecoupdefoudre

@daisyhollyxox

@grxnde-dwt

@callsigndiamond

@harper1666

@throwinsauce

@beebslebobs

@awesomebooklover17

@wintercap89

@whosyourgnomie4

@rosesinmars

@blog-name6996

@bcon24

@wishfulwithwine

@backinwonderl4nd

@babybloomer

@monte-carlando

@tetragonia

@gingerbreadandpaper

@emptyloverofmine

@apparently-sunshine

@chaoticassidy

@missmirandafe

@thedroneranger

@changlingkhat

@callsign-echo

@sugarcoated-lame

@callsign-jupiter

@avada-kedavra-bitch-187

@marantha

@averyhotchner

@katiebby04

@andycanbeemotional

@abaker74

@heli991113

@k-k0129

@eunoia-sys

@noz4a2

@tallyovie

@shanimallina87

@teddyluvs2sing

@cherrycola27

@ccbb2222

@bradshawsbitch

@lilyevanswhore

@o-the-o-grim-o-reaper-o

[beautouslysandy]

New Feelings

Chp.1 Rafe Cameron x Fem!Reader

By-Sandy

Warnings: Just language and not proofread

Word Count: 1,698

Note- I have been binging OBX and I have been wanting to write a Rafe Cameron x Reader for awhile even though there is an plenty of them in this comment, hahaha. Enjoy!

______________________________________________

______________________________________________

You were looking outside the window of the car with gloom. Your family and you are moving to the Outer Banks, you heard it’s pretty there but it didn’t matter. You were leaving your friends and home in New York. Your dad was humming along to a song playing on the radio while your mom was reading a new book, she never gets car sick, your younger brother Jamie who was only 8 was crashing his Transformers together as if they were fighting. Your golden lab, Lulu, was in between you and Jamie as a couple of your boxes were in the trunk of your dad’s SUV. There were two big moving trucks behind you guys, following you to your new home. Your dad says that an old friend of his lives here, coincidentally the house a few blocks down from said friend was for sale and your parents bought.

“We’re here!” Your dad said loudly as the car pulled up to a big beach house, it was gorgeous and huge. Your dad was smiling and your mom kissed him on the cheek. “WOAH!” Jamie yelled with astonishment as he got out of the car. You got out in your jean shorts and yellow shirt that had a white outline of the Statue of Liberty on it. Your h/c hair was down and blowing in the wind. You were wearing white retro gas station sunglasses covering your gorgeous e/c eyes. You walked into the large house, Jamie already had rushed in to pick a room. “I got the best room! Y/n, it has a cool window! I gave you the one with the big closet for all your girly things!” Jamie exclaimed with a grin, his left front tooth was missing. You smiled back and playfully said “Thanks, squirt.” You headed up to the room Jamie didn’t chose, opening the weirdly tall door to reveal a generously sized room with a large window seat looking out into the ocean and a few small windows here and there. You walked into the bathroom which was also generously sized which then attached to it was a walk-in closet.

You squealed, at home there wasn’t this much room. The houses are pricey so you didn’t get as much space. •••• A few hours have pasted and everything in your new room was set, your mom said that you guys can get stuff for the window seat in a couple of days. You we’re in a sundress and your hair was styled how you most liked it. You had a touch of makeup not to much, you preferred a more natural look like your mom. You had your favorite sandals on, you headed downstairs. Your dads old friend had invited you guys over for dinner, your mom mentioned that he had two kids around my age. You pulled up to the house and it was a bit larger then yours but had similarities.

As your parents knocked on the door your brother Jamie was behind you, he was wearing cargo shorts and a white golf shirt. He was a bit shy around strangers but once he got to know them he could be a real spitfire. “Brandon, how is it going man!” A masculine voice called as the door opened. Your dad chuckled and said “Ward! It’s good all good! How about you?” Your parents walked into the door as if it were their second home, you and Jamie slowly walked into the unfamiliar house. “Hi! I am Sarah!” A song like voice greeted

You turned to see a tan girl with beach wavy blond hair. She had a warm smile, she was wearing denim shorts and a white crop top.

“Hello, I am Y/n!” You replied with a smile, you felt your brother move from behind your figure. “I am Jamie..”He said with a sheepish smile.

“Nice to meet you guys!” She said throwing her arm around hers, your brother took your hand as she steered you guys toward the kitchen. There was a average yet tall sized teenage boy, his hair was buzzed which you typically didn’t like on guys but it suited his cold and tan face. He made eye contact with you and then looked at Sarah and scoffed. “Who are ypu?” He said bluntly almost accusingly looking back at you.

You felt Jamie’s grip tighten on your hand “I am Y/n! Nice to meet you.” You said holding out your hand with a smile. “Rafe.” He stated not shaking your hand. You cleared your throat and retracted your hand to your side. “Rafe, be nicer.” Sarah scolded.

Jamie started snickering, you looked at him with a grin. He was starting to warm up to these new people around this new unfamiliar place.

“What’s so funny?” Rafe said with a glare towards Jamie. Jamie started laughing loudly which softened to a giggle. He was very tall for his age around 4’7 he gets his height genes from your dad who is 6’5. Jamie whispered in your ear, “He looks so pissed off that it makes me angry just looking at him.” He snickered

You giggled and tucked a loose hair behind your ear. Rafe got a bit of butterflies, the light of the sun rays were beaming perfectly on you and you were wearing a gorgeous sundress that complimented your physique perfectly. Your hair looked almost surreal. Your laugh was so soft yet full of joy, your beautiful smile made his heart stop.

“I don’t understand.” Sarah and Rafe siad at the same time and then glared at eachother. This sent you and your little brother over the roof. ••• Everyone was sitting at the table. Ward was sitting at the head and your dad was at the other end. Your mom was next to your dad. Jamie was next to you, across from y’all’s mother and you were across from Rafe who was next to his father and sister. “So, Y/n, where did you say you were applying to university?” Ward asked as he cut into his steak. “Oh um, Oxford…Havard” You began and Rafe choked on his water and Sarah stared at you with disbelief. You continued “Yale, Stanford and uh…”

“A university in Scotland…right?” Your dad said looking at you proudly.

“I forgot the name of it…”You said with a shrug.

“Any of them accepted you?” Ward asked with shock and looked at your dad.

“All of them expect Yale.” Your dad said for you with a proud smile. “We are very proud of, Y/n!” Your mother gleamed as she gave you one of her motherly smiles.

“Yeah Yeah we get it Y/n’s the golden child.” Jamie said playfully with a smirk. “Jameson…”Your mother said warningly

“Sorry.” He said with a snicker.

“Camile, he is just playing. Rafe, how about you?” Your dad said with a grin.

“I-“ He began.

“He is being very selective.” Ward said coldly.

“I was very selective too, Rafe. It’s completely normal.” Your mother said comforting sensing some tension, she even gave him one of her maternal smiles. That’s the thing you love about your mother, she is so kind to others.

Rafe looked at your mom with a soft smile. “Sarah your 16?” Your dad asked.

She nodded with a smile. “Remember that kid from that boarding school?” Your dad said with a smirk looking at Ward. Your parents grew up here.

“Ah. Yes. If I remember he had a thing for Camile.” Ward replied chuckling at the old memory.

“Oh my god not the guy you told me about…” You said laughing.

Your mother snickered and your dad scolded.

“He was such an ass.” Your dad said scoffing.

“Brandon!” Your mother said hitting his arm.

“Sorry.” He said with a smirk, the same as your younger brother Jamie.

After everyone finished, Ward and your parents left to get drinks at the local bar. Your mom dropped Jamie off at your new house for bed and because he wanted to watch Transformers. Sarah was bringing her friends over. You were sitting on the porch looking out into the ocean when a slightly familiar voice said. “So your a big shot with the colleges?”

You turned to see Rafe heading towards you and sitting down next to you. “It’s because of my parents. Not me.” You said with a sigh.

“What do your parents do?” He asked

“They work for the government. It’s why we had to move here.” You said looking at him with a soft smile.

“Ah.” He said as if he understood. You looked out back at the ocean. Rafe looked at you in awe, you were making him feel feeling he wasn’t supposed to be feeling. “So, why are you being so selective with your schools?” You asked looking him in the eyes to find him already looking at you, you blushed slightly.

“Just…” He began and his eyes turned sad.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about, I mean you only just let me three hours ago.” You said with a sympathetic smile. He looked at you shocked to be on the receiving end of such kind and supportive words. He was began to say something but was interrupted by loud voices entering to porch. “My man!” A loud slightly annoying voice called as he slapped Rafe on the head. “What the hell, Top?” Rafe said annoyed

Someone car whistle then said “Damn who is this beautiful young lady, we have here?” You blushed out of embarrassment, “I better be going, see you around Rafe. Tell Sarah I will see here tomorrow.” You said with a bright smile, you locked eyes with him but quickly looked away when a guy walked up to you saying “Can I have your number, m’lady?” “Kelce.” Rafe said coldly.

You giggle slightly and said “Maybe another time, Kelce.” you winked and walked away saying one last time “Bye, Rafe!” Rafe felt this pit in his stomach, after you left. Kelce was blushing and in awe. Rafe might of punched Kelce in the face. He didn’t know what was coming over him but all he knew was that you were making him have feeling he was never had.

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

I haven’t read this section of Feeding Habits in probably 3 years & tell me how I wrote ALLLL of this before I watched Hannibal

The confessional smells rank, like rotting paper and expired cologne, its corners seedy with overuse. Scratches mar the fabric he rests his elbows on, like someone clawed into it while reliving their sins, track marks on the floor from a rainy day. He can’t imagine anyone else but him in this small box, caged in by the lattice, mumbling incoherent sins to the priest he hasn’t even committed. Stealing a set of glass eyeballs from a garage sale. Forgetting his wedding anniversary. Missing Easter Sunday mass to go whale watching. He doesn’t sign himself at the right times or speak at the right times or thank the priest at the right times. He lies when he’s asked if he’s lied since his last confession. He mentions nothing of drinking with Anya, of not saving the sheep or the bunnies even though he knew the outcome of their lives without finishing the program. Of being a wicked child, of knowing wicked children, of not knowing the difference between wickedness and innocence, and which one he learned first. He says his name is Luka. He works at a law firm. He’s married to a Harriet, a seamstress or a stock broker or an antiques trader—he doesn’t know. He likes golfing, parcheesi, drinking martinis on yachts. He’s never overindulged, he’s loyal to his woman, he wants three kids and a house with finished floors and no neighbours. He’s a good father, a gentle father, a careful father, no wickedness, just an empty shell of goodness, like a father should be. His father is retired, and visits him on weekends—they play checkers, paint birdhouses, keep a distance but toast with spirits he can’t pronounce. Everything is good—it’s all good, all good. That’s not a sin, the priest should say but they laugh—it’s good to be good. Children are good, marriage is good, fathers are good, everything an iteration of good. By the time his confession is over and he’s well on his way out of the church mumbling I am heartily sorry, he believes his lies are true—he’s absolved into someone new, Luka married to Harriet, three kids, an empty shell, dreamily stumbling through a house with finished floors that’s actually just the sidewalk until a woman passing by with two small children has to help him sit on the curb.

She asks if he needs something to drink, if he needs someone to call, and emerges with a half-empty bottle of sparkling water and a cell phone. She asks what’s wrong with his eye, and he doesn’t know what’s wrong with anything—with eyes, with children, with sins, with confessions, with baptisms, with orange juice, with madeleines, with wickedness, with practicing how long he can breathe underwater because he knows it’s possible just like walking on it.

One of the children, hair pulled into two plaits secured with pearlescent butterflies, pokes at her mother and asks if he’s crazy. Her mother shushes her at the same time her older sister shows him a cool trick she learned with a toy convertible. Its wheels whir. Lonan gasps. The girl says, “Even crazy people think I’m gifted,” and wheels the car again. People stop to watch. Church bells gong an elegy he’s sure he’s heard before. The woman’s sparkling water dribbles from his mouth and dampens his dress shirt. Sun eclipses his face and eats at his throat like a parasite, like it knows all the unclean things about him, a watcher, an eyeball, a scorching little thing that bullets through his neck like the tooth of a wolf. The woman shushes her children and asks if he’s got a health problem, a drug problem, any problem, and he could say yes to all three but instead keeps repeating I am heartily sorry, I am heartily sorry. And when she does call someone, no one he knows, he leans against the cool pavement, cranes his neck to the sky, and parts his lips so the sunlight fills his mouth.

[shafaqmum]

("Golf Lover: The Art of the Swing" Premium T-Shirt for Sale by Colorful-Garden gönderdi) #GolfLover, #GolfLife, #GolfAddict, #GolfPassion, #TeeTime, #GolfCourse, #GolfCommunity, #GolfSwing, #Golfing, #GolfingLife, #GolfDay, #GolfStyle, #GolfIsLife, #GolfObsessed, #GolfNation, #GolfVibes, #GolfingAround, #GolfDreams, #GolfJourney, #GolfAddiction

[ramblingcecimonster]

On the Train to Success

The night sky turns gray with the ache of dawn and I watch a tired young couple pass a cup of coffee and a lit cigarette back and forth on their postage stamp scrap of a porch that looks like the gentlest of breezes could detach it from their trailer. We don’t make eye contact or anything, but something about their expressions, in the split second before the train rambles speedily down the track, is familiar to me. I can imagine a colicky baby finally sleeping or a sick toddler whose fever finally broke, a pile of bills, a car that needs gas, an empty fridge. I know what white trash looks like, what “trying our best,” “secondhand furniture,” “buy one get one free sale,” “too much month at the end of our money” look like. Sure, we wear it like pride: hard-working folks, trying our best, willing to bend over backwards for our neighbors. Wearing dusty shoes and worn-out jeans and fixing whatever just broke until it literally cain’t be fixed no more. But it’s a tired existence. Hungry. Worn.

It's an existence I don’t know from childhood. It’s not how I grew up. I grew up with polo shirts and golf sweaters and country clubs and new cars and back-to-school shopping at the LL Bean. We never went to the Walmart. We never cussed or ate day old food or had holes in our shoes. I didn’t know what a factory looked like, but I went on vacation twice a year. I grew up with angry parents who absolutely knew better. (Some folks ain’t got resources, they’re just doing what’s always been done, raising their babies up the way they were raised, with no knowledge that giving your kid soda in a baby bottle or sending them out for a switch really ain’t what to do. They don’t necessarily know not to expose their kids to drugs or alcohol or driving without a license or whatever else it was that my folks looked down their noses at. If their kids went to bed without dinner, it was because there weren’t money for dinner, not because their kids did something wrong. They aren’t bad people, they ain’t bad parents, and they love their kids. They just ain’t got no money and they don’t know better than the only life they’ve ever known. My parents weren’t those kind of parents.) They knew better than to starve their teenager or to keep their fourth grader up all night as punishment. They knew better than to punish any expression of emotion with psychiatric medications and trips to a private psychiatric hospital. They knew better than to keep me isolated, gaslit, and terrified. But they did it anyway. In our ivory tower, silver spoon world, as long as you wore the “right” clothes and said the “right” words, if your parents went to church on Sundays and volunteered their time and had you in youth soccer or Boy Scouts and were good enough at lying, nobody questioned everything. I learned not to trust the cops not because my parents’ car insurance expired 4 months ago or whatever else it is that law enforcement likes to punish poor folks for because they’re poor. I learned not to trust cops because when I ran away from home after being spat on and getting kicked in the head at 14 years old for taking food from the pantry because I was starving, the cop wanted to know why a kid from such a nice home and such a nice family would run away like that. Because my parents labeled me the problem, a liar, and not to be trusted, so I knew nothing I said would be believed or even matter. I watched my abusers lie straight to the police officer’s face, and knew in that moment that the whole system was a sham.

But I was nonetheless raised to believe that poor people were somehow a problem, that they were morally deficient. So imagine my surprise when the family that came to my rescue when I got summarily kicked out at 16 by the suburban couple from hell was a truck driver and a high school teacher. Poor, tired, with lines on their faces and miles and miles on their shoes. My new mama worried loudly. It was no secret that she worried about every last one of her babies – about our grades, our futures, our relationships, our emotional states. We are the same person, and the older I get the more I open my mouth and the words I find leaving my throat are just TL. Mama G with a little more therapy under the belt and far more colorful hair tendencies. She taught high school English at a military boarding school, so she knows a thing or two about angry teenagers and how to navigate the emotional hell of abandoned children. I knew her first, recognized her as safe first. With her black pencil skirts and schoolmarm bun, standing stock still at my track meets because sometimes all you need is someone who is there. She cooked like a maestro, picked out nail polish colors, introduced me to Patrick Swayze, drank cheap beer, and watched baseball in a way that involved far more screaming than I was used to. She loved summer nights and all her babies and hated the cold and the fact that her husband smoked.

But my daddy is a different breed of human. Quietly there. There’s a quote in one of my favorite books, about a young girl’s adoptive father. “Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man’s gentleness, his thereness. The girl knew from the outset that Hans Huberman would always appear midscream, and he would not leave” (Markus Zusak, The Book Thief). I was a hurt, angry, insomniac teenager. I was lost and lonely and broken. And when I woke up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, he was there in the living room, watching some horrible made-for-tv action movie or crime drama. We watched most of Criminal Minds together in that quiet living room. We didn’t speak, but sometimes we’d go do the grocery shopping at Walmart at the crack of dawn before anyone else in the house was awake, me in my superhero pajamas and him in his cargo pants and t-shirt – the same outfit he’s worn nearly every day of my entire life. We’d stop for sweet tea at the McDonald’s on the way home. I helped him fix the cars and he existed. A phone call away. He called me Missy and I called him Dude. He spoke my language, the language of broken and angry and abandoned teenager. His there-ness, his appearance on the other end of my phone in the middle of every panicked scream assured me that as bad as it got sometimes, it would never be as bad as it once was. He told me with a laugh that he was born white trash, and he’d die white trash, and there wasn’t a lot he could do about it in the meantime. He budgeted and scrapped and saved nails and screws and stripped wire. He worried quietly.

A friend of mine joked, when I was fresh out of college and trying desperately to figure out how to actually be a human person who understood relationships and emotions and how to live in a world that terrified the shit out of me, that I was like Athena. That one morning, Craig had woken up with a headache to beat the band, and then I popped out of his skull, fully formed, angry, and ready for war. I was on a battlefield against the world, against myself, against anyone who might try to hurt me. Some days, I wonder if Zeus ever worried about Athena the way I know my daddy worried about me. Did Zeus ever wonder what his tired, angry daughter might be like if he had been given the time to raise her up the way she ought to have been raised? To channel that righteous furious energy into something beautiful, like the drums or boxing or who-knows-what. To tell his brilliant, decisive, strategic daughter that it was okay to take a deep breath and trust the world a little. Did Zeus ever worry that it was too late for all that? That his war-torn daughter was already too covered in her own blood to be able to take a full breath and wash it all clean.

Because I know Craig worried about me. I know he still does. I know the face of world-worn, tired parents on a middle-of-nowhere back porch drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes they meant to quit 10 years ago is familiar. It’s familiar the same way “Hey Missy, whatcha doin’?” is familiar, the same way the smell of old spice and Marlboros on the coat you wear to go haul the dog back inside because it’s the one closest to the door and it’s 10pm and it’s January is familiar. He worries about this child born of fury and fear might tumble headlong into something, eyes closed, head first, can’t lose, that they can’t find their way out of. That maybe my heart won’t stop beating a little too fast, that the drumbeat I run to is just a little too off step, that one day someone will try to convince me I didn’t deserve to be free. He won’t ever really say, but when you’ve spent hours in silence with someone while you were learning to be a human person, you learn to read their expression, their voice. The way they pretend not to cry on the day of your college graduation or on the day you drive away from their house with a U-Haul holding all of your worldly possessions attached to your Jeep on the way to California. The way they know you’re having a panic attack over the phone before you’ve even said anything, they way their voice catches just a little bit when you tell them you got into the PhD program. The way their eyes change just a little when you start talking about your something and they tell every store they deliver to how smart and wonderful their kid is.

So, when I saw that dawn-tired young couple, and imagined them a child and a sea of bills to pay, on a train on my way to a conference where I’m presenting twice, I may not have known them, but I recognized them. I recognized them in the way my daddy looks at the sky to ponder the weather while he’s rebuilding the deck after my mama fell through, in the way he checks the route and the road conditions and the name of the hotel and asks what day I’m presenting when I head to a conference in a city he’s never been to do, to do things he hardly ever imagined possible. I recognized them in the dreams they have for their hypothetical, imaginary child. I recognized them in the way you can’t pretend you don’t have an accent, but you read the etiquette books and know all the right things to say and read and research relentlessly and watch your child accomplish things that you – and they – never thought were possible. I recognized them in the way the smoke curled but never took away the worry; the way some things just line your face a little more every year and when it’s four in the morning on a foggy fall morning and your kid is just doing the best they can, the only thing you have left to do is smoke and drink your coffee and hope you did enough. Worry the way I’m sure Zeus never did, but the way that I know Craig always will, that it won’t be enough, that being there, perpetually and permanently there won’t be enough.

But to me, to me and for my tired and worrying and world-worn parents, for that young couple outside my train window and all the trailer trash, poor, working class parents out there doing your best to put one foot in front of the other and make it to the end of the month without running out of money… some things are as lasting as the moon and the tides, and one of those is the act of not leaving. Of being there, of worrying the way Zeus never did, of doing the best with what you have to make sure that your kids – even, and perhaps especially, the angry, hurt, and terrified ones – know that you are there. That you will not leave them. That they are worth the world.

[tripthelightfandomtastic]

Not so Wild Wednesday, but I want to go to Bass Pro Shop with Sam and look at the fish

I HAVE THE SOUTHERN URGE TO TAKE ALL FOUR OF THEM TO BASS PRO SHOP.

They'd all stand their watching the fish for forever. Jake would be climbing all over the boats they have for sale, talking about which one he'd want. Taking them all to the laser gun range to shoot the fake animals that pop up. Buying fudge!!! Getting Danny some new hats and golf wear, they'd all probably get some sort of t-shirt. Josh and Sam just keep talking about how ginormous the place is and all the taxidermy. We'd probably get some camping stuff for an upcoming trip too. Overall, I think they'd go nuts.

[fashionofemmacdwatson]

Playing Golf | Mexico | March 2023

Emma wore a RXL Golf Tailored Fit Mesh Striped Sleeveless Polo Shirt (on sale for $47.97 at PGA Tour Superstore).

📸: Alex Watson via Instagram

[grannyandgrandpascreations]

Official Member Cool Aunts Club Distressed Flannel Shirt

One-of-a-kind bleached "Official Member Cool Aunts Club" high quality, affordable button down, two pocket distressed flannel shirt.

If your size is showing sold out, reach out to use to see if we have received a shipment of products in, due to the availability of items during this holiday season, we receive our products in daily.

No two shirts will ever be exactly alike so please aware and embrace the differences. All shirts are carefully curated, hand-dyed, and re-purposed so that each shirt is going to be different from the next in terms of color and plaid print.

SIZING: These shirts vary, many are unisex and come in men's sizing. They can be worn by both men & women. Ordering your normal t-shirt size is recommended for a regular fit. Going 1 size up works well for a baggy/oversized fit. Women's or Children's Specific sizing will be noted on the photo/variation options selected.

FABRIC: All these shirts are made of cotton or a cotton/poly blend. Measurements and thickness vary slightly by brand.

COLORS: Each flannel is unique, and no two shirts are going to look exactly alike. Colors are sent at random. Because the colors often change throughout the bleaching process, I cannot take specific color requests for these shirts.

CONDITION: All of our flannel shirts are brand new and washed twiced.

Care instructions: Turn item inside out, machine wash cold, no bleach, no softener. Do not dry clean. Do not iron. Air dry is recommended.

Due to different picture lighting settings the actual color might vary a bit from the pictures.

Current Turnaround Time due to upcoming Holidays - 1-5 Business Days. While we always use priority shipping options, once shipped we cannot guarantee delivery due to the backlog current being experienced USPS/UPS/FedEx. If you have a strict deadline, please message me when ordering so that I can note any rush requests. Ownership of packages turned over to USPS transfers to the Buyer. We are not responsible for lost, held, damaged packages or delayed packages, once your package(s) leaves our Shop it is completely out of our control. Thank you for understanding!

WEDDINGS: We do take custom orders for weddings! If you are interested in ordering a large group of shirts, please message me directly to set up a custom order. It is recommended that wedding orders be placed at least 2 months in advance so that we have enough time to create, ship, and exchange any shirts that do not fit.

Thank you for visiting Granny & Grandpa's Custom Creations, we truly appreciate your support of small businesses. We also personalize our products, please reach out to us with any personalizing any of our products, additional fee's may apply.

Please visit www.grannygrandpascustomcreations.com to view more products.

LET’S GET SOCIAL & BE FRIENDS! Like, Tag & Follow us for Our new Creations, Inspiration & Giveaways!

website/ www.grannygrandpascustomcreations.com/shop

facebook.com/ https://www.facebook.com/GrandpaHandmadecreations/

instagram.com/ https://www.instagram.com/grannyandgrandpacustomcreation/

goimagine.com/ https://goimagine.com/granny-and-grandpas-custom-creations/

#grannygrandpascustomcreations #distressedflannelshirt #flannel #granny #supportsmallbusiness #shopsmallbusiness

One-of-a-kind bleached "Official Member Cool Aunts Club" high quality, affordable button down, two pocket distressed flannel shirt.

If your size is showing sold out, reach out to use to see if we have received a shipment of products in, due to the availability of items during this holiday season, we receive our products in daily.

No two shirts will ever be exactly alike so please aware and embrace the differences. All shirts are carefully curated, hand-dyed, and re-purposed so that each shirt is going to be different from the next in terms of color and plaid print.

SIZING: These shirts vary, many are unisex and come in men's sizing. They can be worn by both men & women. Ordering your normal t-shirt size is recommended for a regular fit. Going 1 size up works well for a baggy/oversized fit. Women's or Children's Specific sizing will be noted on the photo/variation options selected.

FABRIC: All these shirts are made of cotton or a cotton/poly blend. Measurements and thickness vary slightly by brand.

COLORS: Each flannel is unique, and no two shirts are going to look exactly alike. Colors are sent at random. Because the colors often change throughout the bleaching process, I cannot take specific color requests for these shirts.

CONDITION: All of our flannel shirts are brand new and washed twiced.

Care instructions: Turn item inside out, machine wash cold, no bleach, no softener. Do not dry clean. Do not iron. Air dry is recommended.

Due to different picture lighting settings the actual color might vary a bit from the pictures.

Current Turnaround Time due to upcoming Holidays - 1-5 Business Days. While we always use priority shipping options, once shipped we cannot guarantee delivery due to the backlog current being experienced USPS/UPS/FedEx. If you have a strict deadline, please message me when ordering so that I can note any rush requests. Ownership of packages turned over to USPS transfers to the Buyer. We are not responsible for lost, held, damaged packages or delayed packages, once your package(s) leaves our Shop it is completely out of our control. Thank you for understanding!

WEDDINGS: We do take custom orders for weddings! If you are interested in ordering a large group of shirts, please message me directly to set up a custom order. It is recommended that wedding orders be placed at least 2 months in advance so that we have enough time to create, ship, and exchange any shirts that do not fit.

Thank you for visiting Granny & Grandpa's Custom Creations, we truly appreciate your support of small businesses. We also personalize our products, please reach out to us with any personalizing any of our products, additional fee's may apply.

Please visit www.grannygrandpascustomcreations.com to view more products.

LET’S GET SOCIAL & BE FRIENDS! Like, Tag & Follow us for Our new Creations, Inspiration & Giveaways!

website/ www.grannygrandpascustomcreations.com/shop

facebook.com/ https://www.facebook.com/GrandpaHandmadecreations/

instagram.com/ https://www.instagram.com/grannyandgrandpacustomcreation/

goimagine.com/ https://goimagine.com/granny-and-grandpas-custom-creations/

#grannygrandpascustomcreations #distressedflannelshirt #flannel #granny #supportsmallbusiness #shopsmallbusiness

[sonosvegliato]

i love ur fics they changed my life like genuinely shaped my way of thinking. grief and love go hand in hand and so does violence. love you

I told my clone yesterday I wasn't going to get on tumblr for a while because my spirit animal is unfortunately Karen but like a 2000's Karen who wears golf shirts and rolled up khakis and doesn't understand how phones work and gets mad at them for it and then I woke up this morning to this in my inbox and now I wanna put all my bake sale energy into showering you with love here have a virtual bake sale brownie and a lifetime supply of sprinkle cookies

Seriously though. Thanks. 🤟✌️🤟

[lickstynine]

Just wanted to pop in with a thanks to everyone who's offered sympathy in the past two weeks. It's been hard and surreal, but we've had some good times going through Dad's old stuff, and at the big yard sale, we sold his golf clubs to a guy who also loved dad's favorite TV show and bought two shirts from it.

I've been trying to do little stuff to connect with him and keep his memory alive. Later think I may hop on my computer later and play the video game I used to "help" him play as a kid.

It's not gonna be normal for a long time, but I think I'm gonna be okay.

[sugarlove-01]

The Cruelty

Ok this is my story of DwayneXReaderXDavid based in Santa Carla with my own character. I loved the Lost Boys! Always have and always will. They were my favorite characters so I had to write a story about both of them.

Be warned: this isn't a happy fic, this is fanfiction that is based on obsession, stalking, murder, abuse, and death. Some themes are triggering, so be warned.

But it's also a love story.

Prologue:

If you know one of these. You know them all.

You’re born.

You live.

You die.

There you go, life sucks.         

Chapter 1:

Your POV:

Monday, June 13th

9:13 in the Morning

“Mom, can I go down to the beach? And the carnival, please?” I asked.

“Yea, sure. Go out. Explore,” replied my mom.

“Ok, thanks. And I moved in all my stuff to my room.”

“Did you take out all the boxes?”

“Yea. I brought in your purse, too. You forgot it in the truck again.”

“Ok thanks. On your way back, can you bring back some milk?”

“For cereal?”

“No, for Oreo cookies this evening… And cereal tomorrow.”

“Ok. I’ll be back…”

            I walked out of the house. Noting to myself to go to the gas station later this evening for milk. My mother, calling a few friends on the phone, talking about a book club. I rolled down my sleeves. Got my green jacket and my brown shoes on. The weatherman predicted a cloudy day in Santa Carla. Maybe a few winds. Going to the shed, I got out my bike. Unlocked the chain and peddled off.

            Not much has been happening in Santa Carla. Not for the past week that I’ve been here. The moving trucks weren’t needed anymore and my mother had all the help she could get from my father. My father was sleeping on the couch infront of the TV when  had left. He always looked so restless ever since we moved. Maybe it was the exhaustion of moving, or he missed our old house as much as I did.

            As I rode, I passed Tom on the way down the road. He was taking out the trash. He was a neighbor, the one who first greeted us when we moved in. He always took out the trash at 8:15 in the morning, every day. He worked at a hot dog stand near the carnival. He was, in truth, an artist actually. When we first met, I promised him I’d try one of his hotdogs when I went down to check it out.

            I rode out of the neighborhood and down the road. Down the road I looked around. Two men were hanging out at a gas station. One man with dreadlocks was looking at a magazine with a plastic bag in his hand. The other was reading a newspaper. The both of them stood next to a bulletin board that had paper fliers on it. Fliers for concerts, yard sales, puppies, and lost children.

            I got to the pier. The beach looked occupied and warm, with trash all around it. But there were a few men with trash bags picking everything up. I attached my bike to the railings that had bubblegum underneath it. There was strange people here who looked at you and snickered. It seemed they had a thousand piercings and a thousand tattoos and with many different hair styles. They were wild kids.

“So this is Santa Carla….”

            I chained up my bike. With money in my pocket I got in and looked everywhere for something or anything interesting. And there was many in fact. Clowns juggled. Boys danced on cardboard. Cotton candy stands and other sweets were open. Men tried to talk you into buying lotions and cellphone chargers. Even shops for mini golf and leather jackets. Souvenir shops. Tobacco shops. And others.

            I passed my way by, not bothering the roller coaster or other carnival rides. So I walked around the carnival in a circle. There was a drink stand and I decided to buy a pretzel. The cashier inside wore a red and white shirt. He went to get my order. I waited. There was women in bathing suits eating at the tables and shirtless men who watched them. They looked at me sometimes, but didn’t bother.

            The man in red and white came back with my pretzel and a napkin. He asked me for anything else, I said no. When I finished my fingers were buttery and tasted of salt. I went looking for a trash can. At the corner of the stand I found a trashcan, and I 6 men there. One man held a boom box over his shoulder. One man whistled at me, wearing a red spiked dog collar with high eyebrows. I threw away the napkin.

“Hey sweety…” He clicked his tongue.

            I looked at him. And his friend chuckled. I kept walking. Soon I found myself looking in a comic book store. A man and a woman were behind the counter, looking as if asleep. They wore black glasses. I paid no attention. But there were two boys. They packed comics out of a box, placing them on shelves, and organizing them. I didn’t mind comics. What I loved most was the art work and the action.

            Later that evening, I began looking for a hotdog stand. I didn’t have breakfast this morning. But it wasn’t just any hotdog stand. It was where my neighbor worked, Tom. He said I could come right over if I wanted. I found it. It had yellow and green neon lights with a picture of a hotdog man. Tom was there, at the counter in a white and red worker outfit and waiting for someone to approach. And I did.

“Hey Tom…!” I smiled.

“Oh hey! How ya doin, girl? Likin‘ Santa Carla? Or hatin’ it already?”

“It’s ok. I’m just looking around.”

“Ok, cool. You want anything to eat? And guess what’s on the menu!? Hotdogs!”

“Like, omg, no way! I would never have guessed....” I laughed.

            The menu was awesome. There was hotdogs on there that I didn’t know existed. Tom worked with a smile and made my small dinner. A hot dog, french fries, an ice-cream bar and a Coke. The Coke came in a glass bottle with a straw for it. Tom talked to me more and said there were seats I could sit on with umbrellas and eat. Where no one could bother me. And when he’s off, he could walk me home.

            I was glad, because that man with the spiked collar creeped me out. It was exciting to be here. There wasn’t much to do. I watch wild kids run with shopping carts, playing duel. Men flirting with women. The security guards watching the boys with spiked hair and alcohol. The tattoo people get more tattoos in stands. The people with piercings get more piercings. And kids dancing to heavy metal on the street.

            Rolling down my sleeves, I went to the beach. That was where it was most hectic. A lot of people were sunbathing and surfing and making sand castles and digging big holes on the beach. A bunch of seagulls were flying over picking up small stranded Dorito ships and Cheetos. Even dogs were on the beach, trying to steal a snack or two from their owners or from strangers. But they were just playful.

            It wasn’t later until I went across the Boardwalk watching men in black and white juggle random objects and others host magic shows. Near there I found a Videotape store. The best selection in Santa Carla, and perhaps I could agree. The shop was covered with neon lights, fliers of lost children, and a weird smell around it and with a white dog at the entrance. There was even posters in the corner.

            Finally after a long day at the carnival, I made my way back home. Tom said that he could meet me at the gas station. Tom knew that this the streets could be dangerous. It was a long day. I approached the gas station. The bulletin board seemed to have been added more pictures of children and other people who were lost. That was the thing I noticed most about this new home of mine. All the fliers.

            Peddling towards the gas station, I went inside. There were more fliers of lost children, and a security guard with a mustache. Going inside, I looked for the milk and a newspaper. It was only 8:15 in the evening, but I felt it was time to turn in. And I was tired. And plus my mother probably waited long enough for the milk. The newspaper was for me. Tom was already inside, and we both walked home from there.

David’s POV:

Monday, June 13th

6:30 in the Evening

            As soon as the boys woke from their sleep, they were hungry. Their fangs showing and their eyes fiery and ghoulish. So they found more Surf Nazis, laying around on the beach far from any civilization to hear them scream. So it was perfect. They tore them apart and drank their blood. The Boys were cheerful that night. They threw their bodies into the fire, sizzling. Their skin, cooked, crispy, and curled. They were dead and drained and gone. The boys were satisfied as they howled in laughter. Paul, Marko, and Dwayne were in high spirit tonight.

            David laughed as well. They discarded the bodies, and soon they had to meet up with Max. David lead the way, flying towards the pier. He was well rested to go the Boardwalk and look for her. Yes, dear reader, he’s looking for someone. She must be walking around at this time. David knew that this girl was out and about. Walking about, vulnerable and open. She was new. It was not long ago when David saw her, but it was an accident. Less than a week ago. And that’s when the wheels of fate began to turn. For better or for worse, he didn’t know.

            A walk down memory lane, he remembered when he first looked at her. The sighting was an accident. David thought that she was Star, but was wrong. She had straight hair, different colored eyes. She wore different clothing, not like the gypsy wardrobe Star had for herself. By the look on her face, she didn’t really know Santa Carla or its people. In a way, David, thought it was adorable how she looked so lost and vulnerable to everyone and everything. She was so polite, that even if she ran into a wall she would excuse herself. Prey.

“Hey, yo! Hey! Where ya goin’ David!? I thought we were all goin’ out together, dude?” Marko called out.

“Where’s he goin? It’s not even 8:00 and he’s already ditching us for…. some chicks that he’s either gonna bang or eat!” Paul grinned.

“I don’t have to baby sit you guys all night. Make your way on your own…”

“Aw, come on David. This is the 5th night that you’ve ditched us for god knows what. The hell is goin on? Where the hell do you go buddy?”

            David closed his eyes, gained back his patience, and gripped his bike handle hard. Gripping that bike handle was great restraint on his part. They others mounted their bikes and began their engines.

“Why the hell would he--- Oh nevermind,” Dwayne looked away.

“Oh god. Would you all shutup? I’m goin my own way… See you guys back at the cave…” David seated his motorcycle.

“What? We’re not good ‘nough for you? You leavin us for someone else?” Marko joked.

“Oh, David, is that true? I thought we all had something special!” Paul put the back of his hand on his forehead, swaying backwards.

“Get outta here!” Marko pushed Paul and laughed with him.

            David started his bike and sped off. Leaving his brothers in the dust. Paul and Marko had stupid smiles on their faces.

“Wow, he just chucked it didn’t he?”

“David has no time for us anymore, huh?”

“Just hit it and quit it…”

“Always been my motto…” Paul nodded his head.

Dwayne’s POV:

Monday, June 13th

7:00 in the evening

            The three boys drove off their own way. Their leader flying away to wherever he was gong. The boys didn’t really mind, so they flew off to the carnival. Going off to the Boardwalk, where they dominated all the other gangs in sight. Dwayne looked back, thinking where David really went. It would be easy to ditch Paul and Marko, since they were geeky losers. Something was up, and he didn’t like the fact that David was being mysterious and suspicious. David didn’t have the leader-like qualities like he used to, and that was something that couldn‘t be tolerated. So the boys walked, talking about going to the Videostore. But the quiet one of the group had other plans.

“I’m out,” Dwayne started to walk away, going to find David.

“Hey, whoa there. Where you are going?” asked Marko. Paul noticed and turned to him.

“What’s it to ya?” Dwayne groaned and turned towards Paul and Marko.

“It’s David and now you? What the hell is goin’ on?” asked Paul.

            Damn, Dwayne thought they wouldn’t notice him leaving. Paul was on his right side and on his left side, Dwayne was sandwiched in between them. Being irritated by their very presence.

“None of your damn business! Just drop it.” Dwayne rolled his eyes.

“Ya know, this is the first time this has happened. We’re separating.” Marko pointed out.

“What are you? A lost puppy? We don’t need to be together all the time!”

“Just pointing it out, man! Just wondering where the hell he is!”

“Who?”

“David! That’s who! Ya know!? The one that keeps ditching us for the past 5 days!”

“Shit, man. Maybe you two are the reason he leaves in the first place, damn it!”

“Oh, Dwayne! That was cold!”

“Shut up and get outta my way! Shut your mouth and move it!”

“Ok! Ok! You don’t need to snap, man! Damn, Dwayne! Just chill! Just chill!”

“Well, ya know what I--”

“Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Can’t you see you’re tearing this family apart!?” Paul gasped and put both his fisted hands on his face with his knees bent towards eachother. What a joker.

“Drama Queen…” Dwayne whispered. Paul noticed.

“Hey, I heard that!”

“Good! It was meant to be heard!” Dwayne called back, leaving them alone.

            So the silent one of the bunch left, and searched for their fearless leader. He walked through the crowds, people looked at him but only saw him as a bored and peculiar man. Some looked at him as a very serious and dangerous man, that could out-silence the dead. Of course the boys had a reputation around Santa Carla. Maybe some people knew his name. Even the other gangs on the beach feared him and his brothers, and try to keep to themselves.

            After walking around for about 20 minutes, Dwayne sat down, lifted his knee to his chest and sighed. The seat was oddly comfortable and clean. No bubblegum or spray paint. Yellow and green neon lights glowed on him. He looked up to see a picture of a hotdog man. A really stupid thing. Dwayne looked at the man at the cashier, dressed in red and white. Maybe Dwayne should tip him in the tip jar. He decided yes, because that guys life as a hotdog man sucks. Then he saw the customer.

            Her long hair. Her jaw line. Her nose. Her ears. Her brown shoes and green jacket. Her hands. In a way, when he first saw her, she looked like Star. But he was mistaken. She was…pretty. She was ordering a hotdog from the worker in red and white. Then something caught his attention. The smell of hotdogs and mustard didn’t catch his nose, but it was her shirt or jacket.

            Dwayne looked at her face, and she didn’t have any wrinkles or any evidence that she did any drinking or drugs. She looked clean. Healthy. But she smelled like cigarettes, alcohol, and… blood. He could obviously see that she wasn’t a vampire or anything. He knew it was all on her jacket. Was that jacket hers? Did she drop it, let it get trampled on by bleeding crack heads, and then wear it again?

            But it was familiar. And he knew it, but couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Then she came over and sat down on the tables and began eating. For some reason, he was intrigued by her. She looked… normal. More normal than anyone here in this whole damn place. She didn’t notice that he was sitting near her. But she just ate, and sat there, and just…looked cute. She looked deep. Real. Like a book with no ending. And soon after a quick 5 minutes, she finished and began walking again.

            He saw her once. But decided to leave it be. He searched for David again. But never found him. Near midnight or so, Dwayne feasted on a lone homeless man before finding his way back to his group. Paul and Marko only wasted their time chasing cats and talking about Max and the Videostore and getting Thorn a spiky collar. Near the time of morning, they hid their bikes, flew back to their cave, hung themselves upside down, and by that time Dwayne had forgotten all about the girl.

David’s POV:

Monday, June 13th

7:05 in the Evening

            She was at the hotdog stand with Tom. Talking. Tom was her neighbor down from her house. From the distance David was, she seemed comforted by Tom. Of course David knew that he was the only friend that she knew. In the crowd all alone, she seemed to be so out of place and awkward. People passed by, and he was delighted that he easily blended in. He transformed himself into a hunter. Teaching himself patience and strength to keep his distance and learn everything. Not telling the boys.

            The hunter that hadn’t made his move yet. He would attack soon, but not just yet. He had to have some sort of tactical plan to get close to her. A gameplan. He had to expand his grounds and know everything about her. And so he did, not telling the boys. After he first saw her a week ago, he followed her home. He saw her parents. They looked like any other couple, looking out for their loved one and all that crap. Enough of them. Around town, she didn’t really have a routine, but just wandered.

            The hard thing was that he slept all day, and knew she was out and about all day. The other hard thing was that she retired too early in the evening for him to see her. So instead he watched her from inside her home sometimes. Her parents obviously looked very delicious, and it was all due to the smell in their veins. She was definitely new in Santa Carla. She moved from Washington. Why she moved, he didn’t know. He learned some small things about her as he continually watched her every move.

            She liked to help her mother with the garden up front, watch her dad cut out magazine pictures and paste them on paper, she loved to see movies every weekend all by herself, talk with Tom in his front yard about Santa Carla and it’s people, her favorite snack were smores, she liked to arrange her room differently each day, she liked to talk with her friends on the phone, play with her hair, watch television and listen to the radio at the same time, and sit in her room and do nothing. She was fascinating.

            So for the rest of the evening, he followed. Keeping his hands in his pockets. Soon he followed her to the gas station where she was suppose to meet Tom and he could walk her home from there. She walked in after looking at the bulletin board. David walked up and entered the gas station himself. The girl didn’t notice him. David walked past the magazines and refreshments to the small shelf of cigarettes and lighters. Tom looked up and smiled as he looked at her. And…David didn’t like Tom.

            David knew that if he tried to get near the girl, then Tom would interfere. For example, if David attacked, then Tom would get in the way. He would be reported and leave an entire mess and have a search party or something. And plus, Max said to keep a low profile. Plus, Tom seemed to be the only reason that the girl left her house and go to the pier in the first place. So…David knew that the damn bastard had to live.

            So Tom and the girl stood in line. Tom’s shoulder was in contact with hers, and David didn’t know if it was a public display of affection. Tom didn’t have anything to purchase, but she had milk and a newspaper. Tom offered to carry her things, but she refused him. David stood right behind them, waiting with them in line. David noticed that every once in awhile, Tom would look over at her and smile. And she would look back and smile, hugging the milk closer. Squeezing the newspaper a little.

            Slowly, but cautiously, David raised his hand and made a small trace down her jacket. Touching her. His glove made a line down her back. David’s been doing this for the past week, and she had never noticed. Putting a small, tiny, teeny fraction of his scent on her. The cashier rang in their stuff, and put the milk and newspaper in a brown paper bag. The girl said to Tom that the milk was for Oreo cookies and cereal, and Tom nodded and smiled at her again. After they left, David purchased his stuff.