#humble yourself motherfucker

[jossambird]

Kind of funny how toxic Twit is and how some people will think theyre better and shit because they have more ‘followers’.

Watch me go dark on Twitter again real quick LMAO.

[bambi-slxt]

easily overstimulated gf:

✨a very long concept✨

at first, matt thought you didn't like to be touched.

he would brush his knuckles against your cheek and you would flinch away, he would hold your hand and you could only hold his back for so long before you had to let go, he would try to comb his fingers through your hair and your skin would shiver.

so it came as a complete and total surprise when, one night, he came home late to find you in his bed, rubbing yourself, struggling to orgasm.

the door opened and your face was bathed in leftover light from the kitchen down the hall, and the hum of the washer became a half-tick louder. your hand stilled underneath his covers and your cheeks turned beet red.

before he could speak, you said, "matty...can you close the door?"

his face unreadable, he did as you asked. it snicked shut behind him, leaving the room only dimly lit by his monitor's screensaver.

you knew he'd seen. there was no getting out of this one. looking at his face, you gulped and realized you were going to explain yourself, so help him god.

"i c-...i can't..."

"can't what," he lilted. motherfucker was teasing you.

"...don't make me say itttt..."

matt's lips quirked up into a small smile. "say what? you're not making any sense, sweetheart."

"i-i need y-you to-"

he stepped closer to you, his head slightly tilted as his brain put all the pieces together. "you're gonna have to tell me, darlin'..."

unable to stand the mounting pressure in your tummy anymore, you finally find your voice out of pure desperation. "matt...please touch me."

he's on you in an instant, and all of matt's questions about your inconsistencies are suddenly answered. you didn't hate his touch - quite the opposite.

as his fingertips ghosted over your sides, your back arched with the overwashing feeling. when his lips whispered over yours, a moan rolled from the back of your throat and coated his tongue. it tasted delicious, in matt's humble opinion.

he steadied himself by bracing his forearm on the bed next to your face, his grin self-satisfied and smug as matt stroked the lines of your body all the way down to your heat, paying special attention to the stripe of skin right below your stomach.

your oh-so-sensitive nerves lit with fire under his touch and he barely gave you a moment to breathe before his index finger swiped slowly up your slit, gathering all the pleasure that he'd caused and the leftover juices you'd created from earlier.

your chest clenched as matt's ministrations sent tingles sparking all through your body, and your mouth dropped open into a lust-filled whimper.

matt's head cocked to the side as he continued to move his finger up and down the center of your folds, almost mirroring your expressions. "mhm...there we go...oh, i know, baby, i'm just the worst...awww..."

he hadn't even touched your clit yet, and you could already feel the knots pulling taut in your core. his lips brushed over your cheek as he nibbled your skin, blowing warm air over your ear as his arm stretched and flexed above your chest and down your torso.

you felt his hair, soft and slightly curled at the tips, feathering over your forehead as matt spoke gently into your brain. "give it to me," he murmured, finally dragging his soaked fingers up to your clit.

matt's eyes held yours in a vice-grip-gaze, his fingertips pressing deliciously on your bud of nerves. "i want it," he said, "cum for me, pretty girl. cum all over my hand, make a mess on my bed."

the knot snapped and with a gasp, your chest arched into him and your eyes flew shut, hips bucking into his palm. he held your kitty firmly in his hand, fingers never ceasing, hovering over your body while you rode your high, a whimpering, sensitive wreck.

"good girl...good girl, there she is...easy...come back to earth, there you go..."

his palm had flattened over your pussy and matt thought that the feeling of your heart beat, the twitching aftershocks, and the creaming wetness of your orgasm was the best thing he had ever felt.

"you okay?"

"...yeah..."

"promise?" he asked, settling up onto his side and flattening the fly-aways back to your head.

your eyes blinked slowly, blissed-out and still in the clouds. "promise. thank you matty...oh my god, thank you."

"don't thank me just yet."

"wh-"

matt rested his forehead against yours, and the next words out of his mouth made your toes curl.

"wanna feel you, sweetheart..." he mumbled, sinking his hips down to graze against yours, his hard-on painfully pressed on your folds. "wanna feel you around me 'til you milk me dry."

and if that wasn't the most heavenly thing you'd ever heard, you didn't know what was. your legs shot up to meet across his back, heels digging into his skin to bring him closer to you as he rutted his pelvis into you.

"fuck, baby...oh shit..."

you whined for him, your voice high and close to his ear. matt groaned and shoved his nose to your neck, taking hold of your skin between his teeth and sucking - hard.

you reached up with your arms and tugged at his sweats, yanking them down over the slight curve of his ass, pawing at the hem of his boxers. he continued his marking of your flesh, almost growling at your body's responses to him.

your universe had shrunken to this moment, this person, this room, this bed. your world was no bigger then the man above you.

matt kicked his way out of his sweats just enough to yank his underwear down and pull his cock out. "'m sorry, baby, i can't wait," he panted, running his cock-head along your slit. "jesus fuck."

"pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease-"

"you want this?" matt's voice lay softly in the air above you, punctured by your continued begging.

"yesmattypleasenowiwantitiwantitiw-"

with a half-smile and a slow roll of his hips, matt pressed the tip of his cock through your folds, the pressure warm and wet and wonderful for both of you.

his slit practically wept pre-cum, and matt, trembling above you, dipped his head and kissed you. in the same moment, he slid himself into you full hilt, slow, steady, unrelenting.

you finished the second he bottomed out inside of you, whimpering your apologies while his eyes rolled back into his head because god you clenched around him so good-

"it's okay baby, seriously, i love it," he murmured, keeping his hips still while you quivered down from your high, brushing hair from your face. "it's how you are. and i love you."

your face scrunched into a pout as your thighs, still shaking, settled somewhat around his waist.

"hey baby?"

"y-yes?"

"can i start moving now?"

request to be on the taglist under this post right here

tags: @pinksturniolo @malirosee @st7rnioioss @nonat-111 @cindylcuwho @evie-sturns @h3arts4harry @fanficsbymia @dazednmatthews @sturniolo-rat @mattsmad @sturniolo04 @bellasturn @blahbel668 @yomamaslays4lyfe @stasiesturn @pleasantlycrazyworld @ariqolyx @wh0resstuff @krissy4gov @coochiedestroyer1 @madisturn @mattspolitank @sturnsxplr-25 @xtravrgnoliveoil @raysmayhem-72 @sturnpooks @certifiedstarrr @melanch0lybby @freshloveforthefit @xoxo4chrisss @stunza @meerkatzthings  @zivall @sturniolopepsi @that1fangirll @wh0schl0 @sharksworldd @mattscoquette @chrisslutx @sturnzsblog @sturniologals @quaxkingshs @certifiedstarrr @solarsturniolo

[syoddeye]

reading recs

received an anon the other day that requested fic recs of all ratings, here's a big list of some of my favorites! definitely not exhaustive, definitely forgot people, and i am so sorry in advance for that. please mind the tags on these fics.

SNAFU by @adnauseum11

I've posted about SNAFU before. This is one of my comfort series. Excellent characterization of a retired John Price, navigating a relationship with one of his oldest friends.

Heavy Weighs the Crown by @sentientcave

Newer series, very yummy so far. I love Charlie's characterization of the 141 in this universe, and their writing is delectable.

Rugby AU by @sentientcave

Another banger from Charlie. Reader Ripper is also yummy. Something to snack on. To quote: "I don't know anything about Rugby tbh this is just vibes and thots. Something somethin elaborate rituals."

Nobody by @391780

My gateway fic into Nikto. Without giving anything away, every chapter sends me into a short spiral. The most recent chapters have done heinous (affectionate) things to my brain.

Ursa Major by @the-californicationist

Have you ever been to Alaska? Ever wanted to visit? Honestly, read this fic and let Cali transport you there. Her ability to set the scene and bring it to life is un-fucking-matched. Doc (Reader) is a smart, confident reader-insert that feels like a real person.

Binders and Boyfriends by @pfhwrittes

Trans 141 and Trans Reader supremacy. Another comfort series from the wonderful Parker. Everything listed here is wonderful, but I have a major soft spot for P's Gaz-centric works.

Housemate!Gaz by @pfhwrittes

First, in this house, we hate Reader's roommate. Second, we are Widget fans. Third, could you fucking imagine opening the door and your new roommate was Kyle motherfucking Garrick? I'd faint.

Call of The Jurassic by @stuffireadandenjoy

Another newer series that put me on the edge of my seat. When I first saw that Tats was giving us my favorite fellas and putting them in Jurassic Park, ooooooh, I knew we were going to be spoiled rotten.

Wrong Number Right Day by @stuffireadandenjoy

"Kyle gets a wrong number text but decides to be a little generous that day." Reader's living the dream. Text Kyle Garrick and get cash money for rent? Very excited for more of this.

Price of Pegging by @gemmahale

Pegging and John Price. I could stop there, but I won't. Gemma nails the depiction of a submissive Captain Price. She also captures the dynamic of a couple trying something new extremely well, that gave me some fluffy feelings.

All of Gemma’s WIPs by @gemmahale

I've had the absolute privilege to read some previews of Gemma's work and the WORK and the DETAIL and the CHARACTERS are chef's kiss. Delicious. It's so difficult to pick just one. I love the Feywilds. Useful Girl. Call of the Wild. Do yourself a favor and spend some time in the tags.

Offer Me His Hunger by @kaadaaan

Something about a 141-er and a single mom that's gonna do it for me every time. In Offer Me His Hunger, it's Johnny, and Reader has no idea what she's in for. Jesus Christ, Kadan writes one of my favorite Johnnys, and really nails that obsessive and calculating streak.

The Space in Between by @391780

You will laugh, you will cry, you will love and hate mafia boss!John Price. Reader crosses paths with John and the 141, and gets caught in their wake. Early writes some of the best Reader characters of all time, and this one's no different. This story will get under your skin so fast, in the best way.

The Arrangement by @391780

Speaking of Early, this is THE gateway drug to her work, in my humble opinion. One of the first COD fics I ever read and converted me into being a Price girlie. Sugar Daddy Price x a cute, smart, and fucking funny Reader. Also one of my favorite characterizations of Simon of all time.

Club 141 by @greatstormcat

BDSM and the 141 make a Sy very happy. Reader starts off with a fake ass dom and is quickly properly introduced to BDSM culture with the fellas. Really solid group dynamics. Make sure you read that Price x Ghost post for a good fucking time.

Lamb to the Slaughter by @ohbo-ohno

Probably one of my favorite Ghoap fics of all time. The way my jaw was on the floor for the majority of this should've sent me to the emergency room. It's brutal, it's horrifying, and fuck me running, I loved it, start to finish.

The Pit by @peachesofteal

First, the nightmare of getting into an accident in the winter. Second, having Ghost and Soap find you. Oh boy, The Pit is peak Ghoap manipulation. When I got to the end, I just sat in silence. Stunned. It was amazing.

Eyes Wide, Tongue Tied by tippytulip (if you're on here, pls lmk!)

Another early COD fic for me. A thrill ride with a whip-smart Reader AND it's set in the Midwest. Those are two ways into my heart. The relationship between Reader and Price isn't an easy one, and he gives her a dozen and a half reasons to dislike him. Another ride of a fic, with great action scenes and group dynamics.

Trapper, Keeper by @tinypandacakes

A König fic that makes me screech no less than ten times per chapter. Panda writes a fucking scary König and it blows my mind. So much of it is subtle and manipulative, with few outright (so far, it's ongoing!) examples. I get a knot in my stomach every time I read and I LOVE IT.

DOG by Danceofthesevenveils

Another König fic that features a pathetic loser König, who is also one of the scariest motherfuckers I've ever read. The use of text messages underscores the creepy vibes, and a great vehicle for the Reader x König dynamic early on.

Desire Paths by @ceilidho

Manipulative best friend Johnny, you are iconic to me. Ceilidh writes some of the best nasty Johnny fic out there, but Desire Paths has my heart. Another ending that had me gasping.

Take Me Home, Country Road by @ceilidho

Cowboy Price, take me awayyyyyy. A fantastic Western AU focused on a Reader with a secret and a Sheriff Price that'll make you sit up straighter. Ceilidh captures John's voice so clearly, I can hear it when I read. That porch scene is seared into my brain in the best way.

Tender is the Flesh by @crashtestbunny

Do you like scary Simon? Do you like feeling unsettling and turned on? *slams table* Do I have the fic for you! Connie's butcher!Simon makes my blood run both hot and cold. "Oh she’s a stunner." lives in my head rent free. Also the apron tie bit.

Pornstar!AU by @shotmrmiller

Warning, if you don't smoke, you might start after reading Toni's porn AU. I love this depiction of Ghost, his control and his care. AND there's a threesome bit with Ghost x Reader x Price. It's what dreams are made of.

[literallyroselacroix]

Sorry for the thirty minute yap sessions guys this is the last one, I just wanted to talk about how David acts like he’s so smart but he’s actually really fucking stupid. Like he contributes nothing, not during the first trial, and not the second one either. “Teruko we know you killed Xan—“ please shut the fuck up sir. Also, he acts like he was being slick, like we’ve BEEN knowing that your ass was fake, bro didn’t even try to hide it. Like in the prologue, when he thought that nobody was around he was like “heh….this is so fucking stupid…” and then he got jumpscared by Teruko. HOW THE FUCK DID HE NOT SEE HER ANYWAY HELP? And then in the chapter two trial he’s really shit at lying, like motherfucker if you’re going to pretend you’re the murderer at least do it right 💀 or take a page out of Teruko’s book and defend yourself without just saying “I’m not the murderer” bcs obviously no one’s going to believe you if that’s your only defense. Like Jesus Christ this man is so annoying, he needs to be humbled SO BADLY.

[shinynewboots]

Just a Taste (Adam x fem!reader)

AN: Hello friends! I, like many, have fallen victim to Hazbin Hotel and I am so happy to be here. I could not resist writing about Heaven's favorite misogynist! This was written within 30 minutes in a blur and like my second time writing smut so I hope you enjoy! Probably a bit different of an ending than you would expect but I guarantee Adam has his own religious/morality-based trauma he's got to work through.

1.2k words

Warnings: 18+, Minors DNI, light smut, dubious consent, fingering, porn without plot, Adam being a misogynist, not proofread

Part 2

You were a sinner. A sinner sentenced to Hell for petty crimes, but a sinner nonetheless. Since the days of the latest extermination, Hell had found itself in a somewhat of a peace. The angels had been slain and driven off for a while at least and Adam, the First Man and Leader of the exterminators, had been killed (allegedly, it had been by a one-eyed maid with a proclivity for stabbing).

However, you knew this information was not alleged as you had seen Adam since his death. Not many knew he had reanimated into Hell as a sinner, as he had attempted to keep a low profile. You had not seen him in all high angelic glory, but you had imagined he likely looked similar before his untimely demise.

You had found him hidden out in an abandoned building, a crazed look of disbelief in his eye similar to other sinners who had first descended into Hell. There was a denial many sinners held, yourself included, about how you had ended up in this place. What had been your final sin to tip the scales towards damnation?

You had decided to take pity on the unknown sinner at the time and offered for him to stay at your humble apartment. He made his identity known quite soon after meeting. He wasn't what you expected; he was a dick. He was also very broody. Had he been this broody and dickish as an angel?

You could not deny that he was handsome, even as a sinner. His hair was thick and brown, constantly in a state of effortless shag. His eyes were a piercing gold color that betrayed his heavenly roots. The only thing that seemed to have changed were the black horns that protruded from his head.

"This fucking sucks," He muttered. He seemed to be in one of his moods again.

"What is it this time?" You asked, choosing to humor him in his misery.

"Same old shit, Y/N. I can't believe I got stuck with all these motherfuckers stupid enough to get stuck in hell."

"Motherfuckers, huh?" You deadpanned, joining him as he sat on the couch. Adam looked you over and shook his head.

"Except you, you're kind of okay I guess."

"Kind of okay, asshole?"

Adam shrugged.

"You know you don't have to stay here," You offered, anger rising in your throat.

"And go where, Y/N? I stick out like a sore thumb and most overlords are just salivating at the chance to kill me again."

"The Hotel the Princess has, the one that rehabilitates Sinners?"

Adam rolled his eyes. "No fucking way, those bitches are the reason I'm even stuck here in the first place."

You shrugged back at him. "Then it sounds like you better stop complaining."

He narrowed his golden eyes and turned to face you head-on on the couch. "Or what?"

You rolled your eyes and moved to leave the couch. You were stopped by a clawed hand grabbing onto your wrist, pulling you back down into Adam's lap.

"What the fuck," You growled, trying to free yourself from his grip. His hand grew tighter around your wrist while the other grabbed your chin and pulled you closer to him.

He stared at you, his golden eyes aflame with something you could not recognize.

"Might as well get a taste if I'm already in hell," He whispered, covering his mouth with yours. Your eyes widened, the situation taking an unexpected turn. His kiss was soft, softer than you had expected him capable of. It was almost hesitant. As if your lips were a new terrain that he must scout, lest there be dangers in his path. His hand that had held your wrist now found itself tangled in your hair.

You wondered how long it had been since he had kissed someone.

Adam grew confident in the kiss and thus grew more hungry. His eager lips consumed yours and you felt his tongue force its way into her mouth, exploring most tantalizingly. His free hand found its way around your waist, pulling your body close to his. A fire burned in your belly as you felt a soft moan escape your lips.  

Your confidence grew as you snaked an arm around his neck and pulled him closer. He almost grinned into your mouth, his deep breathing utterly intoxicating.

"Fuck," He groaned, biting at your lip with his sharpened canines. You felt blood hit your mouth, which was quickly licked away by Adam, who looked at you as though he were sampling the finest heavenly wines. You could feel wetness seeping from your cunt, thoroughly turned on by the twist in tonight's events.

Adam grabbed your body and pulled him on top of you so that you now straddled him. You could feel his erection through his robes, which seemed to twitch with every movement.

"Nothing to say ,Y/N?" He asked as he licked up the bone of jaw until he managed to reach your ear. He licked at the lobe for a few seconds before deciding to take a bite.

"Fuck," You hissed, the sting of the bite shocking you. He chuckled, the sound deep in your ears. What was happening? How did this even happen? First, he had been his usual asshole self and now this?

You felt yourself involuntarily buck your hips against his straining member, the sensation deliciously hitting you. Adam groaned and moved a hand so that it now rested over the heat of your core. His thumb found your clit through your pants and rubbed teasing circles over the area. You could feel the warm wetness of arousal soaking your pants.

"Adam," You exhaled, your control of the situation non-existent. He froze, pulling back his hands from your body as though he had been burned by fire. He stared at you with wide eyes.

"What in the fuck, bitch?"

"Adam?" You questioned, too stunned to acknowledge the slur. You still straddled him and could feel his cock pulsate against your core. His eyes were alight with rage. Unsure, you quickly jumped off from him.

His face had a mixed emotion of rage and... fear? A sheen of sweat had made its way onto his brow and he looked a bit like a child whose hand had been caught in the cookie jar.

"You tempted me," He let out, his breath quickening. You tilted your head in confusion.

"What? You kissed me," You bit out. The fucking audacity. He seemed to not hear you as he shook his head.

"Every day I stay here, the harder it is to stay on the path," He muttered, rising from the couch in a panic. His wings furled around him like a security blanket.

"Adam what are you talking about?" You asked, louder this time. He seemed to look right through you as he ran his hands through his hair. Hesitantly, you reached out and placed your hand on his wing. He froze, golden eyes looking at your hand.

"Don't fucking touch me." He exclaimed, pulling away from you. He left the room in a panic, his wings wrapping around him tighter as he left. You were soon left alone in your apartment hot, bothered, and wondering what in actual heaven was wrong with Heaven's golden boy.

Worst of all, in spite of all the slurs and rude names, you could not help but pity the fallen angel. However skewed his moral code might have been, he still seemed to have one. Maybe you were just one more thing in a long line of sins that he had committed.

What in the fuck was wrong with you?

[princessleechan]

"You're the Man" Profiles #1

Masterlist

⚽synopsis: After your university cut your soccer team to prioritize the men’s team, it’s natural you have a falling out with your then soccer-star-player boyfriend and impersonate your twin brother at the rival university to play on their men’s team. Wait, it’s not? Oh well.

⚽pairing: afab!reader x ot13 (??? Member)

⚽genre: humor, romance, crack, eventual smut

⚽series tags: MDNI, she’s the man au, revenge au???, cross dressing!reader, reader identifies anything but male, sports au, queer themes, university au, love-whatever the fuck kind of shape, tags will vary per chapter

⚽Tag list: @90s-belladonna @the-boy-meets-evil @lirtha97 @hipsdofangirl @justineasian @kwanisms @multi-kpop-fanfics @pantumin @wooahaeproductions @mayashu @shuasdraftsalt @lone-lone-ranger @headlockimnida @horanghaezone @haolistic @porridgesblog @jeonjungkaka @luchiet @salmisu @ujimatchaaa @skzdesi @cheoliehansolie @vlbii @myghobi @sisterofsomeone @joonsytip @gyublues @alltheshineofthestars-blog @randomworker @isabellah29 @savgogh @too-many-kpop-hubands @kotarousproperty @shingsoluvely @kamabokogonpachro @mxnhoeuwu @skittlez-area512 @seccdlurv @softycheol @chisskaa @mochiteez @theyluvfrankocean @lllucere @xyren1 @thomawifey

Y/n (reader): Sporty soccer babe with a shitty boyfriend (now ex) that finds supporting their soccer career as productive as watching paint dry. So, their take on revenge is joining the rival soccer team to prove only to him, but yourself, and any misogynist piece of shit that men aren’t the only guys that can play soccer like Beckham. You just needed an in on this team, a cover to join. Luckily, you had one numbnut brother who couldn’t care less about being around on his college campus and just so happens to be getting out of town.

Yeonam: Twin brother of Y/n. Uncannily similar looking to his sibling. Same height, similar build (besides the obvious breasts), but could not be more different from them. While you are the athlete, he’s the musician and typical rebel child with big dreams and a one-way ticket to Japan to perform with his rock band. He just needs someone to cover him while he does that.

Seokmin : ex-boyfriend to our main character. Plays soccer like a champion besides that one time that rival player hit his balls so hard with the soccer ball it made him cry and pee in pain for a month. Thinks he loves his then partner, but not enough to respect them as a fellow athlete or human being. Needs to be put in his place to learn the world does not revolve around him.

Mingyu: striker/center forward of his soccer team. Knows his way around a ball but not his way around his feelings for a pretty girl with eyes that sparkle like the night sky. Although he’s super conventionally attractive and sculpted like a motherfucking statue in a museum, he remains a humble and all round nice guy. He is confused though about why his new roommate looks like someone who belongs in anywhere but a soccer field.

Melli: Yeonam’s girlfriend and debutant, prettiest poison you’ve ever seen.  She’s as pretty as she is nasty. Someone who thinks things should come easy to her and has never been told no in her life. Yeonam may be her boyfriend but that doesn’t mean she’ll change her attitude around you, even if you’re his twin. She has a way of getting what wants and nothing is too big getting in her way. She’ll grind it under her feet into sand.

Chae: Local campus cutie that’s confident in who she is and sees something in our main character. Something different about him, how sweet he is, how unlike the other guys he is. There’s a gentle masculinity she can’t comprehend and has to know–no, has to have. She must have this man, but why doesn’t he want her like everyone else? She knows she’s pretty enough, she knows she’s smart enough, she knows she's desirable enough. What will it take to have his attention?

[analogwriting]

Beer Pong

Killer x gn!reader word count: 3.3k a/n: this idea came to me while i was obliterated and playing beer pong. the only thing i could think of was how much i wanted killer to rail me. also disclaimer, i'm actually ASS at beer pong lmfao. also also, only one version of this one bc it doesn't quite go that far whoops

“C’mon! Who else wants to challenge the undefeated champ of beer pong?” Your voice was loud enough for people to hear over the thumping music of the party that you and your brother were hosting. 

It was the same every year. The two of you would host an end of the year party and invite all of your friends, have them invite their friends who invited their friends and so on. It was one of the biggest parties of the year every year. It’s been a tradition at this point for about five or six years.

“I think you’ve officially defeated everyone, Bigs.” Your younger brother, Kid, chimed as he walked into the room you were in. This was also the same every year. Those who have been to the parties before knew how ruthless you were at beer pong. Some of them never tried challenging you again, some would practice throughout the year just to take you on again. Newcomers also challenged you. However, no one was able to beat you for the past three years.

You huffed, folding your arms. “That’s so lame!” How much you drank didn’t affect your ability to win either. You were somewhat sloshed and still crushing everyone at the party.

“I’ll challenge them,” you heard a deep voice come from behind you. The room you were in had several different entrances. You looked behind you, seeing the finest piece of man you’ve ever laid your eyes upon. Motherfucker took your breath away - almost. You blinked.

“Killer! You made it!” You turned, seeing your brother walking over to him to greet him. You watched in confusion for a moment. The hell kind of name was that? 

“Bigs, this is Killer, he’s one of the new teachers for one of my mechanics classes.” You blinked, nodding at him, still stunned by how unbelievably hot he was. 

“Killer, this is my older sibling, y/n.” Killer offered a small wave with a lazy smile that made your heart skip a beat and your body warm up. “‘S a pleasure. Heard a lot about you.”

You glared at your brother for a moment who shot his hands up in defense. “All good things, I promise.”

“Bullshit.”

He cackled, putting his hands back down. “You’re right.”

You felt your eye twitch, but you kept yourself in check. You looked to Killer. “You said you wanted to take on the challenge?” you mused, a devious glint in your eye as a grin spread across your face. You were going to absolutely obliterate him.

Killer matched your grin. “Absolutely. I’ve heard about your skills, so I figured I’d test the waters. I play a lot myself, actually.” He shrugged.

Kid spoke up. “They’re undefeated, so I’d proceed with caution.” Without looking away from you, Killer nodded. “No need. I think it’ll be fine.”

Now, who the hell did he think he was? He really had that much confidence that he thought he was going to beat you? Genuinely? You narrowed your eyes at him. You weren’t going to admit it, but his cockiness was insanely hot. Too bad you were about to humble the shit out of him. Nothing excited you more than being able to crush the dreams of the hopeful.

“Then take your place at the other side of the table.” You gestured.

He did as instructed and the game began. You started off strong, immediately sinking the first one. He tossed his ball and it bounced off one of them. “Oo, too bad. Sure it’s just a warm up, right?” you mused, grinning.

He just shrugged, sharing your grin. He didn’t seem to be worried at all in the slightest. 

You decided to give him a fair shot, purposefully missing some to keep the game going. Some of his that spun around the inside of the cup, you could’ve pulled in time but you let sink. 

“Stop doing that,” Killer said, folding his arms and narrowing his eyes at you as you missed another shot.

“Doing what?” You blinked. There was no way he caught on that easily. He’d never seen you play before, so how the hell would he know?

“You know what you’re doing.” You narrowed your eyes at him, putting a hand on your hip. “If that’s the way you want to be - fine. Don’t cry when I obliterate you.” You were pissed now. Who the hell did he think he was?

It wasn’t long before you knocked out most of his cups and he’d only gotten one or two of yours. He was about to toss when he paused. “What do I get if I win?” he asked, a mischievous look in his eyes.

You blinked, looking at the table. There was no way in hell this man was winning. It’d be a miracle. “If you somehow manage to make it back and win - I’ll give you the best head you’ve ever had,” you snorted, rolling your eyes. 

“I could’ve went my whole life without hearing that,” Kid chimed from the sidelines, making a face. You just looked at him. “Sorry not sorry. Maybe you shouldn’t be in here with the grown ups then.”

“You’re only four years older than me, Bigs, so shut up.” You both were in your twenties, but it was your duty as the older sibling to always hang it above his head that you were, in fact, older.

You just snorted, rolling your eyes before you heard a ball sink into one of your cups. You blinked, looking to Killer across the table. Lucky shot. “You should be focused on me,” he said, a glint of something wild in his eyes. It made your heart race with excitement. “You want head that bad?”

“Okay, I’m out.” Kid threw his hands up, heading out of the room and you just laughed, but you didn’t take your eyes off the man across the table from you.

Killer just shrugged, the corner of his mouth curling a bit. “Maybe.” You didn’t know what he was playing, but it excited you.

Honestly, you weren’t sure how it happened, but next thing you knew, you both only had one cup left. He had been able to distract you during your throws to make you miss, pulled out your ball as it spun in the cup, and sink every single one of his ping pong balls into the cups. People had started gathering, watching as you desperately tried to save face. You had no idea what was going on. You’d never been smoked like this before.

“Were you fucking toying with me this whole time?” you said, feeling your eye twitch as you glared at the man before you. He just grinned, shrugging. “I did say that I play too.”

With that, he sank his ball into your cup. This was your last chance - redemption. If you made it into his cup, you’d be safe and the both of you would go another round. You took a deep breath, not looking at him. You knew if you did, you’d fuck up and end up missing your shot.

You went to throw but heard him make a noise, drawing your attention to him. He looked at you, winking and licking his lips right as you threw the ball. As you predicted, you fucking missed, costing you the game. The room was silent for a moment, distant conversations heard in others rooms and music thumping.

Then it erupted into cheers. “That was the greatest game I’ve ever watched!”

“Holy shit, I can’t believe they lost!”

“Finally! Someone who was able to knock them down a peg!”

“Was kind of hoping they would win. It’s weird having a different reigning champ now.”

The conversations and cheers blurred together as you just stared at the cup across from you. You couldn’t fucking believe you just lost. Three years and you’ve never lost. Not once. Ever since you started playing, you were just fucking good at it. And now that was all over.

You didn’t even process that Killer had moved from his spot until you felt someone hoist you over their shoulder. You were yanked back into reality as you were lifted into the air. “What the hell?!” You noticed that it was Killer who had tossed you over his shoulder.

“I believe someone owes me ‘the best head I’ve ever had’,” he mused as he started carrying you towards the staircase that led to the bedrooms upstairs. This motherfucker had been planning this all along and you couldn’t believe you fell for it - hook, line, and sinker. Fuck.

Dammit. You just had to say that, didn’t you? You grumbled. As you were carried, various people whistled and cheered. “Yeah! Get it, newbie!”

“Gotta pay up, y/n!” 

“Taking your spoils from victory, huh?” 

You covered your face with your hands, feeling your entire body heat up with embarrassment. You couldn’t fucking believe this. And now everyone knew what was going to happen next and you couldn’t function. You just had to open your big mouth. God, you were never living this down. This was like the walk of shame only before the shag not after.

You heard him enter a room and close the door before setting you down gently. You still had your face hidden, unable to look at him.

“Y/n?” You were silent, not wanting to say anything. You were beyond embarrassed at this point. You felt his hands on yours, trying to pull your hands away. You kept them firm against your face and you heard him sigh, his breath dancing across your skin.

“Y/n, I’m not going to make you do anything. That was all for show.”

“Bullshit.” You finally removed your hands from your face, narrowing your eyes at him. “I’m sure you want nothing more than to put the mouthy brat in thei-” You stopped, noticing the concerned look on his face.

You blinked, processing. Oh, he was serious. You shook your head, pulling your hands away and pushing him towards the bed.

“Nah, I keep my word. So, you best get ready for the best blow job you’ve ever had.” He stumbled, plopping onto the edge of the bed in surprise. It took him a moment to catch up before he snorted. “I mean, I’m not going to say no to a free blow job, but we’ll see if it’s the best.”

You narrowed your eyes at him. He was using your competitiveness against you and it was working. How the fuck did he already have you figured out? You know what? What the fuck ever. You were going to give him the time of his life and make him beg for more.

You dropped to your knees right before the bed and in between his legs. “You know just how to get under my skin,” you grumbled.

“It’s not hard.” 

You just stopped for a moment, hands on his pants. “I will absolutely rip your dick off.” He just stuck his hands up with a snort. “I fold. I’d like to keep my dick. Besides, how am I supposed to rail you otherwise?”

You blinked several times. Oh? “You think you’re gonna rail me, huh?” He just grinned and you narrowed your eyes. You didn’t know what fucking game he was playing but you were about to bite his entire dick off if he kept it up.

You made quick work of his pants, undoing the buttons and pulling him out. Your eyes widened slightly. Jesus fuck, he was huge. Possibly the biggest you’ve been with. That thing could tear you in half probably. You could feel your own body heat up, it only made you more excited.

With as hard as he was, you were sure he’s been hard for a while now. “Beer pong your version of foreplay?” you mused, pressing a kiss to the base of his cock. He let out a hiss through his teeth, leaning back on his hands. “Not really,” he ground out. If these minimal touches were enough to make him act like that, you weren’t sure he was going to last long at all.

You began to slide your hand up and down the length of his cock, earning a small groan from him. “Not really? Then what was it then?” A smug smile spread across your face as you dragged your palm over his tip before running your hand back down again. You could already see his chest heaving. He was already struggling.

“Probably something to do with the really cute hot head across from me,” he ground out. You gasped as he called you a ‘hot head’, squeezing the base of his cock, causing him to growl slightly as he tilted his head back. Oh, you liked that noise.

“A hot head, huh?” Was he wrong? No, but you weren’t about to let him just call you that. You let go of him, standing up. “I believe I told you to stop playing these games, Killer,” you mused, turning and acting like you were about to leave when you felt him grab your wrist, pulling you into his lap.

You gasped, feeling your face set ablaze. His lips pressed against your neck as your back pressed against his chest. You went to pull away but his arms wrapped around your middle, pulling you in close. “Don’t be like that,” he cooed against you. You felt a shiver down your spine, your heart about to jump out of his chest. “I won’t do it again, I promise.” You had a small feeling he knew exactly what game you were playing, but he was going along with it. Probably seeing if you’d stick to your bit.

You swallowed hard, trying to keep yourself in check and trying to keep your attitude the same. You cleared your throat. “F-Fine.” You were trying hard to keep yourself together and not fling yourself at him.

“I’ll let it slide. This is your last chance.” You were fighting to keep your breathing even as you felt him smile against your skin. God fucking dammit. He was impossible.

You pulled away from him again and he let you go this time as you dropped between his knees once more. Your face felt like it was on fire as you suddenly wondered if you reacted exactly how he had planned. Was he some evil mastermind? No, it wasn’t that.

Jesus fuck could your mind just shut up. It wasn’t that deep.

You took his cock in your hand once more, feeling it twitch with excitement. You looked up as he licked his lips, watching you. Again, your face felt like it was on fire under his intense stare but you shrugged it off, pressing your lips to the tip. You felt his body shift as he leaned back on his hands once more, slowly melting as you began to run your tongue down the side of his shaft.

One of his hands found its way into your hair, tugging at it slightly as you began to slide the entirety of his cock into your mouth. The deeper you took him - the harder he pulled, making you moan around him. The sudden vibration caused him to buck his hips, shoving himself down your throat rather suddenly. 

Luckily for you, you didn’t really have a gag reflex, so you mostly just widened your eyes in surprise as you suddenly felt your throat stretch and your nose press against him. Fuck, you could probably reach your own climax just from giving him a blow job at this rate.

You slowly pulled off of him, making him groan lowly. You quickly found a rhythm and pace, beginning to bob your head and work his cock like the pro you were. This wasn’t your first rodeo sucking dick, but it surely was the biggest.

You just prayed you didn’t end up with lockjaw due to his size. That would be a nightmare; not to mention you’d die of embarrassment.

It wasn’t long before you felt Killer begin to roll his hips, pressing him further down your throat each time. “Fuck,” he breathed, panting heavily at this point. Honestly, he was lasting longer than you thought he would. You thought he would’ve finished the first time you shoved him down your throat, but he was still going.

With how much he was twitching and throbbing, you knew he didn’t have much longer anymore.

The hand in your hair suddenly grabbed you a bit rougher, keeping you in place slightly. Your eyes widened as you knew exactly what he was going to do next, so you relaxed your jaw and gripped his thighs as you braced yourself. His hips started thrusting much rougher now as he fucked the shit out of your throat. 

You definitely were gonna feel that in the morning. Not that you cared because honestly, this was the best time you’ve had in a while. Shit, you might have to keep him around.

Your eyes rolled to the back of your head as you felt your own body heating up more and more. A coil was forming in your stomach, tightening with each thrust as you held onto his hips for dear life. Were you really going to finish just from this?

Part of you hoped that he wouldn’t be tapped out after this so you could keep going.

The man’s hips suddenly stopped as he shoved himself deep down your throat, releasing fully inside of you. It was enough to send you over the edge, moaning against him as you came yourself, making a mess of the pants you were wearing. Fuck.

Killer slowly pulled out of you, you carefully making sure you swallowed every bit of semen that he gave you as he did so. Once he was pulled out, you gasped for air. Both of you were panting; your head spinning rapidly, your body buzzing. Fuck, you hadn’t felt this good in a long time.

You felt him pull you up, kissing you hard and sloppy. Instantly, you wrapped your arms around his neck, kissing him back, and moaned into him. 

After a few minutes of a hard make out session, he pulled away from you. Both of you were still panting, but a little less so than before. “You still have it in you to keep going?”

You looked at him with surprise, but excitement. You had hoped he’d have enough juice to keep going. “Mm, maybe. How’d I do? Best you’ve ever had?”

“Gonna have to start calling you Sloppenheimer with how bomb that head was.”

You stopped, looking at him with an unreadable expression. Then you stood up, throwing your hands up. “Okay, I’m out.” Just as your brother had done earlier.

Killer laughed. “Wait, no!” 

“No! Absolutely not! I can’t believe you said that!” You felt as he grabbed you around the waist pulling you back into bed. “That’s the dorkiest and dumbest thing I’ve ever heard!” you shrieked as he pinned you beneath him. You pouted up at him.

“You’re right. You’re right. I’m sorry. Should’ve saved that line for later.” He grinned, looking down at you. “You actually should never had said it because that was so lame.”

He just smiled at you. “You win. That was the best head I’ve ever had. Gonna have to keep you around,” he mused. You rolled your eyes.

“Oh, shut up and just fuck me already.” 

Killer just grinned, kissing you hard. You knew you were going to be in for a long night. And he was right, you were probably gonna have to keep him around.

[the-goya-jerker]

portrait of ross in la?

Oh, I do not feel comfortable rating this one or searching for any eroticism in it.

This is a piece of art inspired by the death of Ross Laycock, the lover of artist Felix Gonzalez Torres, during the AIDS crisis.

Ideally this piece is 175lbs of candy (corresponding to an average body weight of an adult man). Throughout the day, pieces are taken and taken. Like Ross, it wastes away, and viewers are left with the anticipation of loss.

This piece genuinely makes me feel like my heart has been ripped from my chest. I want to wail with grief when I think about it too long.

Instead of a review, I humbly offer up, for your elucidation and viewing pleasure, relevant works.

Check out the others works of Felix Gonzalez Torres, they're very moving.

Electric Fan (Feel It Motherfuckers): Only Unclaimed Item from the Stephen Earabino Estate by John S. Boskovich, a thematically similar piece of art. It also brings me to tears when I see it.

Let the Record Show by Sarah Schulman, which is based on...

The ACT UP Oral History Project, a project that seeks to preserve the history of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power and their activism through the AIDS Crisis.

United in Anger a film by Jim Hubbard, a documentary on ACT UP

If plays or films are more your style, I recommend Angels in America by Tony Kushner. My favorite version is the 2003 TV series from HBO. It stars Justin Kirk, and it is genuinely uplifting and gut wrenching all at once.

If anyone else has pieces of art they suggest, please, feel free to reblog with them! I think art is one of the best ways sometimes to engage with historical atrocities like this. Whether that art is fictionalized or factual, it connects us like nothing else.

Let yourself learn about this and let yourself feel things about this.

[thatweirdguyinthebushes]

she kisses me in her parents bedroom and says SOLILOQUIZE THIS, MOTHERFUCKER, like a threat, like a promise, like she’s saying, TURN THIS INTO POETRY AND I’LL KILL YOU or maybe TURN THIS INTO POETRY AND I’LL LOVE YOU EVEN MORE. i can never tell what she means when she kisses me like that.

she says THE STRETCH MARKS ON YOUR INNER THIGHS LOOK LIKE THE SURFACE OF MARS I say, «baby, i’ve got no idea what that means.» she says IT MEANS WE’RE THE UNIVERSE LOOKING DOWN AT ITSELF and I LIKE YOU EVEN MORE WHEN YOU’RE DRUNK AND UNSATISFIED and IF YOU WANT TO BE EUROPA I’LL BE JUPITER AND YOU CAN JUST STAY IN MY ORBIT FOREVER.

i say «tell me we’re dead and i’ll love you even more» and she tells me STOP QUOTING OTHER POETS WHEN YOU TELL ME YOU LOVE ME and i say «i’ve never been more than quotes from other poets, if you didn’t want that, why are you still kissing me?» and she says WHY DO YOU ALWAYS EXPECT ME TO KNOW THE ANSWERS TO YOUR PROBLEMS?

we kiss in her parents bedroom and she says WHAT DO YOU WANT, BABY? and i say «i want you to kill me in the middle of sex so i can die feeling good.» for a second, she’s quiet, and then she says WHAT? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? and i try to say i’ve never know love without violence or maybe i’m scared of dying scared or maybe when they told me that abraham’s love for isaac was the reason for the sacrifice, i didnt understand that he was being asked to kill in spite of that love, not for it. and instead i say «nothing i say means anything. that’s why i’m a poet.»

we sit outside while i smoke and i say «i watched hacksaw ridge yesterday, and it was the craziest thing, because i thought they were exaggerating the story, but it turns out it was actually even weirder.» and she says I WISH YOU TALKED ABOUT YOURSELF MORE. and it sounds too real, so i pretend i dont hear it.

we are kissing in her parents bedroom when i grab a handful of fat, blood-full bedbugs and say «‘how long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? let my people go, so that they may worship me’.» and she says I WISH YOU TALKED ABOUT YOURSELF MORE and i say «i am talking about myself»

we are standing at the bus stop waiting for the bus to come and she says MY DAD ALWAYS TOLD ME TO NEVER TRUST AN ADDICT and i ask «do you really want me to write your dialogue in all capitals even though no one can see it?» and she says I NEVER ASKED YOU TO DO THAT.

we eat dinner together and she says I LIKE WHEN YOU DRINK AND DON’T TAKE YOUR MEDICINE AND ACT LIKE A FUCKING CRAZY PERSON and i say «no, you don’t, i’m a bad acid trip dressed like a boyfriend.» and she says WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME IT WAS GOING TO START RAINING? and i say «i thought it’d be more romantic if we didnt have an umbrella.»

we sit like distant planets and she says STOP QUOTING OTHER POETS WHEN YOU TELL ME YOU LOVE ME and i say «i dont know how» and she says STOP USING MY NAME TO TALK TO YOURSELF and then, finally quiet, i dont like it when you use me to justify your own self hatred. stop putting mean words in my mouth. and i say, «i am talking about myself.» and she says, baby, I know — that’s the problem.

[michaelpaul7]

Of course you didn't because why would he. This from the guy who lies about everything including lying about everything. You know you think as you get older you would start to hold yourself accountable and be a little humble. Not this fucking guy, holy fuck this motherfucker is a waste of space. I remember listening to Howard Stern back in the day before he went on SiriusXm and he would have Trump on and I always thought to myself wow this guy is a fucking asshole. He has no redeeming qualities at all.

[dairyminki]

Inked By Fate - TWO

↬ pairing/s: park seonghwa x fem!reader, choi san x fem!reader ↬ genre: soulmate!au, racers!ateez, rivalry, angst, romance, fluff, pining ↬warning/s: lots of profanities, illegal racing ↬wc: 3.6k ↬a/n: early update (this is where the fun starts)! bcos i might be busy next week hehet. this wasn't proof-read so i'm sorry for the errors if there are. i would also love to hear your thoughts abt the story so far, thanxx!

*reblogs and feedbacks are much appreciated!

・・・・・★

Waking up to the smell of cooked eggs and bacons, you quickly sat up on your bed, brows furrowed.

Is your sense of smell fooling around with you?

Someone's definitely cooking in the kitchen. But who could it be?

Oh no.

What if it's an intruder - making itself at home knowing that you were dead asleep?

If the person sees my tattoos, will that be enough to scare them?

With that thought in mind, you went out of the comfort of your bed and slipped into your fuzzy slippers, praying that whoever was inside your apartment was someone your own size, who you can actually fight, or you'll be dead meat.

On your way, you took the baseball bat that was placed just in front of your room's door. But when you see who was moving inside the kitchen whilst humming to a song, you halt in your steps. It was a guy.

Should I hit him now? or should I wait when he turns around so I could hit him right in the face?

With your hand still raised together with the baseball bat in the air, the person turns around, nearly dropping the plate of newly cooked baconstrips when he flinches.

"Motherfucker, you scared me!"

"Yeosang?!" You exclaimed in disbelief. You stared him up and down. Oh, so that's why you didn't recognize his back like you always would, he's got his hair dyed again - this time it's light ash blonde.

"Yesss, it's me! Now, if you could just...lower that bat down...please?" Yeosang asks gently, not wanting to anger you further because of his sudden appearance inside your humble abode.

"Oh, right. Sorry." You smiled sheepishly. You put back the bat to its original place, then came back to the kitchen to join the latter for breakfast.

He didn't burn the kitchen this time. Wow, Jia must've rubbed off her cooking skills on him.

You wait for Yeosang to fill your plate with food, before you straighten up on your seat, arms-crossed.

"Now, why are you here dear brother?"

Yeosang looks up from his plate, raising his perfectly sculpted eyebrow at you. "What? I can't visit my own sister now?"

You scoffed at this. "Sure. But just so you know, this is so out of the blue, Kang Yeosang. If I remember clearly, I haven't seen your face for like what? Two years? So why now?" This time, it was your turn to raise an eyebrow at him, suspicious at his sudden actions.

Yeosang continues munching on his food first, before he places down his fork, sighing. "Okay, okay. You got me!"

With a triumphant smile, you leaned on the table, your elbow rested on top as you propped your chin on your palm.

"Jia told you, didn't she?" You muse, looking at him dead in the eye, which sooner turned into a staring battle between the two of you.

Of course, Yeosang lost.

"Ugh, she told me not to tell you this though. But you're a smart bitch so I guess it's not my fault." He shrugs, but you know yourself that your brother's going to have a scolding from his girlfriend later.

Yes, Jia is Yeosang's girlfriend. What a small world right?

"Well, thank you dipshit." You fire back, grinning, but he just rolled his eyes at you. And then he turns serious.

"Also, to answer your question, yes, Jia told me." He says, eyes now looking solemn. "But seriously? Eight tattoos in a week? What is your soulmate? A masochist?" Yeosang huffs, to which you just glared at.

"Yeo, my soulmate doesn't know." You said sharply. Wanting to prove a point to him.

"Sure, they don't. But that doesn't change the fact that you're always in pain because of that piece of shit."

"Yeo, tone down your language!" You hiss.

"Fine!" He exclaims.

Soon the table was filled with a tense silence, neither of you chose to look at each other, blood boiling because of different reasons.

You know that Yeosang is just protective of you, his only sister, his only family left. But it doesn't mean he can go around and curse your soulmate like that, your soulmate is still your other half.

"Alright, I'm sorry Y/N." Yeosang breaks the silence first. Your brother isn't really one who is fond of doing apologies first, given his high-walled ego. So you just nod.

"Look at me, though." Yeosang pleads, and without looking, you know he's already sporting that pouty face of his.

Imagining him looking silly, far from his usual cold and cocky facade, you break into a smile.

"Now, that's what I like." You heard him say and when you looked at him he was already smiling at you.

"Okay, so as I was saying, Jia told me about your sufferings, and it pains her to always see you like that, so..."

"So?" You repeat, raising one of your brows.

"She asked me to convince you to take a break from the flower shop first."

"Break? You know I can't do that, Yeo." You pout, just imagining how boring your life will be if you'll just spend the rest of the following days inside your apartment, probably just repeating the same routine. Wake up, eat, sleep, and repeat.

Working in the flower shop was the only thing that you looked forward to, and now you're asked to take a break?

Was it because you accidentally forgot to wear a shirt that was long enough to cover your tattoos? Did it scare a customer and they end up telling Jia about it?

Before you knew it, you were already overthinking, luckily though, Yeosang was quick to notice it and eventually snapped you out of it.

"Y/N, Jia has the purest intentions, believe me. You didn't do anything wrong, okay? We just want what's best for you." Yeosang reassures you, stroking your cheek gently. You leaned into his touch, nodding your head.

"Alright, I'll take a break..."

"Good. Then you better be ready tomorrow because I'm picking you up." He states, making you move away from him to look at him in the face.

"And where exactly are you taking me?"

"Weren't you curious about where I work? I'm bringing you there tomorrow." Yeosang smirks.

You don't know why, but you feel like this will be a bad idea, but at the same time, you were kind of excited?

"Yeosang?" You say, uneasiness slowly creeping into your system.

"Relax, it's nothing that illegal-well, who am I kidding? Of course it's illegal - anyway, I assure you it'll be fun!" He chuckles, relishing in the idea of finally bringing you to see his world.

But say what - did he just say illegal?!

"Kang Yeosang I swear-"

"Oh trust me, you'll love it dear sister."

・・・・・★

"You work at a club?" You turn to your brother who's behind the steering wheel of his red chevrolet camaro.

Yeosang merely shakes his head, then the car slows down, his side of the window rolls down, and the next thing you knew, he was talking to a buff guy, who seems like a bouncer to you.

You see the buff guy throw you a look before he tells you to reach out your hand.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Just reach out your hand, Y/N." Yeosang tells you, and you do oblige, because the guy outside the window is scaring the shit out of you already.

The guy straps a leather band on your wrist, and just like that, he was out of your sight, and the camaro was rolling back on its wheels.

Although confused, your mouth opens in awe when you realize you weren't headed for the luxurious club. Instead, a passageway opens just at the side and Yeosang has led the car through it.

So now you're like inside of a tunnel, a tunnel that felt endless as Yeosang drove. But then you see it.

The lights.

And then you hear noises.

And that's when you see the big silver ass of a sign.

KQ-STRIP

"Y-Yeosang?" You mutter, your eyes never leaving the sign.

"Hmm?"

"Where are we?"

You hear your brother chuckle before you look at him, only to see him wearing that devious of a smirk on his face.

"Welcome to the world of underground racing, sister."

・・・・・★

When Yeosang said his job is illegal, you totally didn't expect to find yourself standing inside the walls of an underground racing facility.

Seriously? Illegal speed racing?? This is what he does for a living? Can you even consider it as a job, when it's more of like a dangerous hobby?

Still, you know your brother gets paid tons for this shit, seeing how the place looks so unrealistically expensive, so you're just gonna shut your mouth like the good sister you are.

"Does Jia know?" Is the first thing you asked him when the two of you walked further into the venue where you could already see the racing track and the expensive looking cars all scattered around.

"Of course she does. You know that I could never lie to that woman."

"You've got a point there." You say and then you let your eyes wander around.

The place was filled with people, either walking inside the area, or up in the bleachers. Some were even holding huge placards with what you presume were the racers' names. The place was humongous, lots of varying lights brightened up the race track.

Are you perhaps...dreaming?

Because there's no way something like this exists? And you only knew of it like, now??

Where on earth was Yeosang wandering that made him able to discover this place?

"If you've got questions, go ask now." Yeosang tells you.

You have lots of questions in mind, but you don't know what or how to start. This information for just one night is too overwhelming, it almost made you speechless.

"Have the authorities found out about this place? Or like, did you get arrested once?"

You admit this place might be considered close to utopia for some, but you can't also deny the fact that this, whatever this shit your brother is doing is illegal. Not to mention, the potential harm it can cause to everyone involved with it. To think he managed to bring you here...in his world...should you be scared?

Yeosang did say he wanted you to take a break and that he wanted what's best for you. So is this the solution to that? When this whole thing is close to giving you anxiety? That any minute now, a police might barge into the place and then-

"Kang Y/N!" Yeosang spoke with so much power in his voice that it was enough to bring you back to reality.

"You're doing it again, you're overthinking." He says, gently this time.

Yeosang moves closer, gripping his hands on both sides of your shoulders, looking you in the eye. "I promise you, you need not worry. I wouldn't bring my precious sister here if I knew it wasn't safe enough for her."

"Endangering you is the last thing I would ever do." Yeosang tells you, and it was enough of a reassurance.

Right, when has Yeosang ever broken your trust? Never. Though the two of you fight like cats and dogs every single damn time. But yes, you trust him.

"Plus, not to brag, but our higher officials have never ever slipped even once. The reason why KQ-STRIP has been underground for almost a decade." At that he's back to his cocky self, and you had every urge to roll your eyes at him, but you don't.

At a distance, you hear screeching tire noises, and then three cars; green, blue, and orange come into view, pulling up beside your brother's red camaro.

"Ah, speaking of them devils. They're here." Yeosang clasps his hands. You turn to him, puzzled, but he just loops his arm with yours and drags you with him to the three newly arrived vibrant looking cars.

At that moment, the three drivers went out, and you had to suck in a breath. The first one was tall with black hair, he had soft facial features but he screamed manly, nonetheless.

Meanwhile, the owner of the green car had light brown hair, slicked back, and had dark glasses on. Just like the first, he was tall.

Lastly, the owner of the blue car steps out, and unlike the two towers, he was smaller, even a tad smaller than your brother.

Despite his height though, he displayed the same cockiness as Yeosang and had platinum blonde hair, with some fringes dropping to his forehead.

They were gorgeous alright.

As if Yeosang knew what you were thinking, he nudged you ever so lightly.

"They're my friends, and no you're not hitting on any of them."

"I wasn't planning to." You grit your teeth. They're gorgeous, yes, you give them that. But you're loyal to your soulmate alright?

"Well, well, who do we have here?" The short one says, examining you up and down.

Tonight you wore a black leather jacket just like your brother and the rest of these guys. Yeosang told you it's a part of the dress code.

"Hongjoong hyung, this is my sister, Kang Y/N."

"Sister you say? She's pretty!" The one with the black hair exclaims, then he sends you a warm smile, enough to make your insides all fluttery.

"And hot!" The one with the glasses adds, whistling. Of course, you had to look away to hide the blush on your cheeks. "Well, thank you." You say quietly.

"Mingi, I didn't bring her here for you to hit on." Yeosang glares at the taller man.

"Alright, alright. Geez, I was just merely giving her a compliment." Mingi defends himself, and when he catches you looking at him, he sends you a wink.

And now, the other tall male was hitting him, telling him to tone down his flirty antics.

Then you hear someone cough.

"I'm sorry about them, they can be pretty handful sometimes. Anyway, I'm Kim Hongjoong." The blonde introduces himself, and offers his gloved hand in front of you.

You were about to accept his hand when another hand came into sight, pushing the former away.

"And I'm Yunho, Jeong Yunho!" He says, catching you off guard.

"It's nice to meet you, Yunho." You say, chuckling, as you shook his hand.

"The disrespect." Hongjoong mutters at the side, but then he turns to your brother.

"Why bring her this time, Sang?" He questions.

"Dunno. Just thought this would be a perfect place for her to have her break and distract her for the time being. Plus, she would be able to see her handsome brother at work." Yeosang says, winking at you.

"Ooh, ooh! Does that mean you'll bring her the following nights too?" Mingi chirps in, looking expectantly at your brother.

"Well, I guess? If she ends up liking it here. Then why not?" Yeosang shrugs.

Then as if something in you shifted, your focus wasn't on their conversation anymore, your system feeling like it's burning with anticipation and excitement...?

Because just at that moment, three other cars entered the scene, all black in color.

And when the first car door opens, revealing a tall man, clad in all black from head to toe, your breath hitches and you can't find it in you to look away. Even when his eyes met yours for a brief second and then turned his back.

You tug your brother's sleeve, whispering, "Yeosang...who is that?"

"Oh. That's...that's Park Seonghwa. And he's someone you shouldn't go near to Y/N."

・・・・・★

"Why?"

"Because he's the King, the King of the tracks. And he shouldn't be messed with." Yeosang supplies, and then Yunho suddenly appears behind you two, saying, "But you can mess with his two friends, they're nice and funny! On a second thought- no, they could break your heart if you get too attached with them."

"Also Inferno is our rival, therefore they're not a friend, but a foe." It was Hongjoong who spoke this time.

Inferno?

"What do you mean by Infer-" Before you could even finish your sentence, Yeosang cuts you off, grabbing a hold of your wrist. "That's enough info for the night, so why don't we just go and-"

"Elysium, my friends!" A voice cuts through the air, halting you and your brother in your tracks.

"Piece of shit." Yeosang grumbles under his breath, and the two of you turn around only to see three males clad in black approaching you and Yeosang's friend group.

The way they carried themselves screams confidence with a slight arrogance in their steps.

The guy in the middle was smiling and the other on his left was smirking, his gaze falling on your figure, while the one on the right- the tall man you saw earlier- Park Seonghwa - was wearing a blank face, stray strands of his midnight black hair fell on the other side of his face.

Then your wrist begins to itch. When you look at it, it's exactly on your soulmate mark.

"Oh, and who is this?" The same high-pitched voice speaks, and you look up to see the three of them looking at you while Yeosang was glaring at them, his hand still gripping your other wrist tightly.

"None of your damn business." Yeosang says through gritted teeth, making the latter laugh.

"You're so funny Kang. I haven't even done anything, yet." He says much to his amusement on seeing your brother steaming in anger.

"What's your business, Inferno?" Hongjoong speaks up this time, his voice calm and collected, as well as his face, so unlike your brother who's close to bursting.

You know Yeosang is protective, but not this protective. Then that just means that Inferno guys are really bad, bad.

"What's her name? Is she Yeosang's sister?" The same guy speaks, shamelessly checking you up and down. He's really talking like you're not here, huh? How rude. You're starting to not like him already.

So you speak up.

"That's right, I am. Got any problem with that?" You raise an eyebrow at him as you step forward, crossing your arms.

"Ooh, feisty." You hear Mingi say from the side, but Yunho was quick to shush him.

The guy in front of you laughs, and that's when you notice that his hair's colored half black and then blonde underneath at the back. What a bold choice of color, and it seems like his personality is too.

"You're just like your brother. But oh gosh, where are my manners? My name is Jung Wooyoung, and you are?" Wooyoung offers his hand in front of you, like a gentleman.

"I'm Kang Y/N."

"It's nice to meet you Y/N-ie." He says, catching you off guard. So you're on a nickname basis now? This guy is surely something.

Then he turns to the others behind him and introduces them.

"This guy here is-"

"I'm Choi San." The guy with the black hair and striking green streaks steps forward and kisses the back of your hand.

You hear Yeosang gasp. "Oh you did not jus-" Hongjoong and the others calmed him down, holding him in place, while Choi San merely smirks. Then he goes back to his place.

Wooyoung laughs again, then turns to the almost stone-cold like person on his other side.

His face was void of any emotions.

And you don't like it.

"This is our Seonghwa-hyung." Wooyoung introduces him. The said male just looks at you for a brief second, nodding his head in acknowledgement and says nothing.

While the others showed interest in you, he didn't. And it sparked up an unknown flame inside of you.

You're suddenly irritated.

So you turn your back and walk away.

"Hey, wait up!" Yeosang says, trying to catch up with you.

His friends followed suit. Mingi, questioning you first. "Why'd you walk away, angel?"

You don't answer him though. Instead, you ask, "When's the race starting Yeo? I'm about to get bored just walking around here." And talking to some jerk, who doesn't give a fuck about your existence.

Why are you so pressed anyway? Why are you so worked up over Seonghwa not giving you even the slightest interest?

Also what a perfect timing for your wrist to itch - the cherry on top, to your flaming annoyance.

"How about you three, including Mingi, go find seats, while me and Yunho go get ready for tonight's match?" Hongjoong proposes. And so the five of you separate.

・・・・・★

The race was already starting, one of the competitors being; Hongjoong and Yunho from Elysium; which you just found out to be the name of Yeosang's gang, and Wooyoung and Seonghwa from Inferno.

You like cars, you're okay with watching races, but tonight, you just can't help but keep sending glares on the innocent race track, plus your wrist was still itching for who knows what reason.

So you decided to excuse yourself and told Yeosang that you'll go to the comfort room, and thank god you were good with directions cause you immediately found it.

After doing your business and washing your hands, you head out, only to squeak when you find a familiar male leaning by the doorway.

"San?" You say, unsure, because he had his head hung low. But when he looks up, it indeed is him.

"Oh, I see, you're finished." Unlike his smirk earlier, he's sporting a dimpled smile.

"Yes…? But what are you doing here?" You ask, looking at him and then at the sign on top of you that clearly says 'female'.

"Waiting for you of course. What else?"

Okay? He's very straightforward.

"But why?"

He removes himself from the wall and faces you, both of his hands placed inside of his pockets.

He leans in up to a point where it was almost uncomfortable, but surprisingly it wasn't uncomfortable for you in the slightest. In fact you even close your eyes.

Then he speaks, his breath hovering over your lips, his fingers brushing away some of the fringes from your face.

"If I asked you to go on a late night drive with me, would you go?"

You opened your eyes and found yourself staring back in his dark brown eyes, so deep that it made you weak.

And when your knees gave up on you, San was quick to hold you by the waist and steady you.

After a few seconds, you mutter in a soft voice, "Yes, I'd go with you."

・・・・・★

taglist: @rockstarsanie @purple-bell @huachengsbestie01 @ellelabelle @annacroft23114 @sallymurda @http-gyu

↬ IBF MASTERLIST ↬ ATEEZ MASTERLIST

[klanceogies]

klance existing in a space war is soooo good cause they're the most selfless motherfuckers on this entire fucking universe ever. they would die for who they love in a heartbeat it's not even funny.

like imagine there is a life or death situation, one of them has to stay behind to buy the other time to escape and give them a chance of survival. they would both turn to each other and would tell the other that they're the one staying. they argue and it's desperate and messy and they've never been more terrified in their lives, but mostly for the other. in marriage they say until death do us part but they've been this devoted much much earlier. after fighting gor years in an ingergalactic war, they've accepted that they might die at any moment, during any mission, in any planet. but trying to accept the other dying is just soul crushing. because he's too good to die and if there is anyone who deserves to live is him. and they both have this train of thought until then. until they're face to face with the unevitable.

(more under cut this cause it was just a ramble and then i ended up kinda going insane????)

they're both determined to stay. when lance realizes that keith won't budge, and he is probably the most stubborn person in the universe, he says "fine." keith is relieved for a split second, but lance isn't done, "but i'm staying with you." and he has this look on his face. it's the same look he gets when they're entering on the battlefield for a serious mission. it's the same look he gets when tasked with shooting a tricky target. it's pure determination.

keith's gaze snaps back to lance's face, brows furrowed. "what? no! you're not- just one of us can be saved. voltron needs five people. you have to go, lance. you have to live."

""voltron needs five people"" lance scoffs. "this isn't a math problem, keith! you, out of everyone in this universe should know this. and if this is all about saving the universe or whatever then you are the one who should go! you're objectively the best pilot, the best soldier, the best leader to put an end to all of this. voltron needs you. the universe needs you."

"i'm not-"

"but i know you. i know you're going to dismiss everything i just said because you're stupidly humble when you're not trying one-up me. and i know that you're not changing your mind no matter what i say. so if you already decided to be so goddamn stupid and stubborn then i'm not leaving you behind either! i just can't leave you behind." then, quieter, "i don't think i could live with myself if i did."

keith shakes his head. he scoffs and blinks back tears, with a disbelieving, desperate smile on his face. he thinks he is losing his mind. "lance, this isn't logical. you-"

"since when do you even try being logical before doing something?!"

keith grits his teeth together. this isn't how this is supposed to end. how they're supposed to end. "since there was the chance of you surviving this to go back home alive and well and see your family and you're not taking it!"

lance inhales sharply. speechless, the first tear falls.

keith sighs, "i don't have anyone to go back to, lance. you do. you can go and move on and live and be happy."

"move on," lance repeats flatly. it's his turn to look at keith with confusion, as if he had grown a second head. "after leaving you behind," he asks, more like a statement.

"one day!" keith holds lance's shoulder, in a motion as to shake him awake. he needs lance to believe this. "one day so much time will have passed that i'm just gonna be a funny memory of some guy who was old annoying rival-teammate."

lance keeps looking at him. he shakes his head, almost imperceptibly. his cheeks are painted with tears. keith seizes his opportunity.

"please," his voice cracks. "please lance, if you can't do it for yourself do it for your family."

keith is suddenly plunged into the frozen waters of guilt with the thought that he was the one to cause the pain that is painted on lance's face.

"you're an idiot to think i could ever move on from this."

*from you* goes unsaid. it is spoken through lance's warm lips on his.

keith doesn't close his eyes; it's over before he can even register it. the slight taste of blood and salty tears and the feel of bitten but soft lips. lance's hand cradles his face as his eyes scan over his face, as if to keep it in memory. keith is left stunned, speechless.

"goodbye, keith," lance mutters.

keith looks at him. really looks at him. he opens his mouth, with so much to say and nothing at all. he hopes his eyes show how much he means, how much he feels. his only reassurance is lance's last small smile. it's fond and bittersweet.

suddenly, laser shots can be heard in the distance, and lance's hand falls from his cheek. keith snaps out of his trance as lance walks away hurriedly. he's wiping his face with the back of one hand, readjusting the grip on his bayard with the other. keith still looks at the empty hallway long after lance has turned the corner.

once again, keith is alone, with the shots getting louder and louder with every tick. lance left, and keith is going to die, and keith didn't tell him he loves him. he doesn't know if saying it would change something. if he would stay. maybe out of pity. maybe out of fear that keith is only doing this because he is blinded by love or something stupid. maybe out of love too.

for the first time since they've gotten into this ridiculous situation, keith allows himself to cry. it's silent, and it isn't messy, however. there still is one last mission to complete. perhaps, he thinks, the most important mission of his life.

he squeezes his eyes together. then, he picks up his bayard and leaves the hiding spot. with a deep breath, he rises his shield and channels all the anger that built up inside of him. he hates the galra, even if he is one of them himself. he hates the galaxy garrisson officials and all the people who underestimated him. he hates voltron for choosing his friends and taking them away from their families. he hates this stupid war for taking everything from so many. he hates the stupid empire for making lance choose.

he starts walking to the opposite side of the corridor and into the darkness.

that's it i feel like i just passed out and when i woke up i had written this monstrosity even though i have never written like ever. this was supposed to be just a ramble so yeah it's messy but idc i just had to share my demons.

i also wrote this:

"and this is when lance is selfish. he is so goddamn selfish because he turns around." so yeah. lance goes back. and they survive this unlikely situation and get together and kiss yes because in my mind klance can never have a sad ending ever in the world so

[six-white-venus]

MY FAVORITE WORD EVER

rot

OR!!

gone

you find my corpse on a bright summer morning.

you break into my freezing cabin with a raised eyebrow. unphased. curious. then, a slow smile appears. i am immediately wary.

it has been years since i’ve had visitors in my humble abode and i like it that way. the cold keeps me safe. my body rots like a bruise swells; slow, painful, with withering purples and blues. it stretches the time of my body in this land into an endless limbo that i clutch with my cold, dead hands. my heart is still and i am numb, have been so for a long, long time. i am safe.

you find my corpse on a summer morning and stomp into my home/hell with eyes ablaze and teeth flashing and if i was alive, my heart would’ve seized at the sight. you lug my body to my backyard, unflinching. the sun burns my skin and everything hurts and i want to kick and scream and thrash in your hold because you idiot, you stupid motherfucker, don’t you know the rot sets in faster when life is around?

but dead men don’t scream, don’t move. you drop me on the grass with heaving breaths and all i could do is burn while the cicadas sing of my second demise. then, you start talking.

you tell me about your day and ask me about mine and barrel on when all you’re met with is silence. you tell me of the sky, the wind, and your favourite sundress. you must be insane. out of your fucking mind. don’t you see this rotting vessel of mine? my unseeing gaze and blue lips and cracking skin? don’t you smell the rot, the death? you surely do. then why aren’t you running? no, stop. stop moving closer. you madman, leave me in this wretched place. the warmth of your touch will only make me fester, don’t you see?

but you stay. you tell me how the crisp apple bursts into a delightful sweetness when you sink your teeth into it and pull my head to your lap. you tell me about your mom’s cooking and let my cold seep into your skin. my mouth is sewn shut and you are holding me so gently and i want to scream for mercy, for an ounce of cruelty. give me back my home, you villain. give me back my hell.

ice melts. the heat thaws my flesh and the rot digs into my body with its talons unsheathed and merciless. you pitch a tent next to my body and spend your nights here. night after night, i listen to the lull of your heart and watch the rise and fall of your chest as my body breaks itself down from inside out. i am warm.

and you, stubborn, baffling, ethereal you; you stay. the next day and all the days after that. the stench is getting unbearable now. i can see it in your eyes, in every ragged breath of yours. a corpse will remain a corpse no matter how much it is loved. there are only so many stories you can tell without gagging at the sight of this monstrosity. the sun always sets. stories end. love lives where life does. your kindness never did have a place between my blackened teeth and diseased heart, my dear.

but you come back with a gentle brush of lips against my decaying forehead. your hand cradles my rotten head. my sweet warmth, there you are. won’t you leave?

you won’t, right?

you dig my grave all by yourself. six feet deep, seven feet tall because you want me to be comfortable. what a useless gesture. i learn love feels like the glow of the moon and feather soft touches and a grave dug with bare hands.  you lift me in your arms, careful not to jostle me too much, lest i fall apart. kindness feels like a siren’s lullaby and i can feel my eyes droop. it’s dangerous and so very beautiful.

things are different in my new home. numbness feels so far away. there is life thrumming in my veins and eating away at my flesh. you bring me flowers everyday- chrysanthemums, dandelions and tulips- you tell me they remind you of me. how foolish. how very wonderful.

soon, i will bloom into all the flowers you can dream of from this very earth you laid me in. soon, i will rise, petals unfurling, laugh booming. i will weave myself in your braids and take root in your chest and spread down to the very tips of your fingers. my darling, my sun, my rose; i promise i will find you on a bright summer morning.

[caltropspress]

AN ITINERARY FOR NON-PLACES: billy woods & Kenny Segal's Maps

We on a world tour with Muhammad, my man; going each and every place with the mic in their hand.

—Trugoy the Dove, ATCQ's "Award Tour" (1993)

Perhaps you will persuade him to relate something of his past. Perhaps there is one among you who can induce him to bring out his old travel-diaries; who knows? 

—Rainer Maria Rilke, The Journey of My Other Self (1930)

Now when I was a little chap, I had a passion for maps.

—Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899)

Maps won’t work here.

—Aesop Rock, “Rabies” (2016)

1.

You arrive with certain expectations. You arrive with Edward Said quotes queued up in your mind, knowing “what on a map was a blank space was inhabited by natives.” As such, you equip yourself with “map and compass, gat and cutlass” (“U-Boats”), keen to trouble Orientalist notions. Don’t get it twisted as you mark twain: there are flare-ups. On “Hangman,” we hear of “Hindu kush, a Sikh surrounded by Thuggers,” a modernist nod to August Schoefft’s early-19th century painting. We hear of “flying carpets out this motherfucker.” It’s a whole-new, brave-new world. “The room smelled like Marrakech,” woods reports on “FaceTime,” and George Orwell’s “Marrakech” (1939) happens over the mind’s transom. Orwell depicts colonial subjects who, in the imperial imagination, are nothing more than “undifferentiated brown stuff”—each figure what Said calls “an atom in a vast collectivity.” So, yes, you can skirt “on the edge of Magellan maps” (“Wonderful World”), or take a cue from Mike Ladd and rip to shreds Universalis Cosmographia by Sebastian Münster, that lying bastard, but—like Dylan on “My Back Pages”—woods is riding “on flaming roads using ideas as [his] maps.” We’ll meet on edges soon, he says—probably the “lists of names, pages and pages” he’s hoarding on “Soft Landing”—but the impulse here should amount to more than freeing political dissidents from cages. On Aethiopes, woods clocked nautical miles, but now he’s on a world tour redeeming his frequent flyers. You’ll find nothing quite as unrepentant as cannibal tours here, though there are horrors and hors d'oeuvres aplenty. These Orientalist postulates are somewheres, but Maps is concerned with nowheres.

2.  SUBS & COMPONENTS

Yeah, I’m leaving tomorrow, but I got time today. woods begins “Kenwood Speakers” by speaking his words of departure like John Denver, only he spares us the sentiment. “Leaving on a jet plane—” Denver sings, “don’t know when I'll be back again. / I hate to go.” woods is at worst eager and at best aloof about his own leaving. V. S. Naipaul’s Ralph Singh from The Mimic Men, meanwhile, goes further, stating bluntly: “I am not coming back.”

Maps—like Dante’s Inferno, like Plato’s cave—is where all people come to know themselves. The album is billy woods’ itinerarium mentis—his journey of the mind—a [hero’s] journey into the center of the [real] earth. One-dimensional MCs can’t handle that. The undertaking requires steadfast digging into the so[u/i]l of one’s self. Another turn of the screw, gyring deeper, despite how much the torture/[tour]ture might hurt. We feel the pangs right along with him, do we not?

Guess who’s coming to dinner on “Kenwood Speakers”? Some born sinner, the opposite of a winner—but not a sardine in his line of sight. Only Deleuze and Guattari lines of flight—escape routes to deterritorialize your whole plane of immanence. The night before woods departs on a pilgrim’s progress, his body and being go surface-to-air—Habyarimana on an economy flight. Or John Denver even, who was watching time and space cross his path as his Rutan Long-EZ plane nose-dived into Monterey Bay. Knock the plane out of the sky and woods sparks his own personal gentrifier genocide.

This is where your humble essayist springs a gentrification quote on dat azz. Say, David Harvey quoting Lenin quoting Cecil Rhodes—that would be apropos. Some “Accumulation by Dispossession” shit; some spatio-temporal fixes shit. But bleary-eyed theorizing would diminish what woods does with his terse, yet totalizing, imagistic lines. I’m gonna sit this one out and leave it to the gentrifiers themselves to tell it. (Catch me like “Lenin lying in state” [“Warmachines”]; or, as we hear on “NYC Tapwater”: “I lie down like V.I. Lenin.”)

3.

The title “Kenwood Speakers,” of course, is a portmanteau of their names [Kenny Segal + billy woods]—the blending of sound and style of [e]strange[d] bedfellows: woods as an observant Ishmael to Kenny Segal’s affable Queequeg. woods listens to Kenny Segal’s beats like Ishmael opens up to Queequeg’s tattoos—his cannibal body [of work] a “book of nomad inscription,” according to Pierre Joris. The “port” of this portmanteau is a haven, a hush harbor. “The port would fain give succor,” Melville writes, “...in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that’s kind to our mortalities.” Portmanteau as leather luggage, too—filled with Kenny’s circuit-bent Omnichord, his pedals, his SP-404, his “weird little children’s toys turned into live beat-machine things” (in woods’ words). woods calls him “nuts,” but so too was Glenn Branca. Forget jazzmatazz, Kenny’s brand of jazzmaskronk incorporates No Wavy horns and angular guitar strokes put to the orbital sander. Bring the sinuosity. Tonal plexus, to perfection. Counterpane production steez: combining elements unmethodically in sun and shade; beats stuffed with corncobs or broken crockery. Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian. Bones litter the beach, gnawed.

4.  A MINIMALIST HOMEBOY WHO KNOWS HIS BEATS

The opening clicks on “Kenwood Speakers” are the clicking of a gas stove before the burner crowns with blue flame (...blue flame like the oven, woods says on “Rapper Weed”). And we can trace the sonic sum of his drum thump and drum pattern to LL Cool J’s “I Can’t Live Without My Radio,” another ode to electroacoustic transducers. The Rubin-produced banger gets audiophiliacs amped—woofers wallop and tweeters twitch. Move forward in time to “Fantastic Damage,” where El-P introduces a boom-bap that veers cement-crush. He leaves “ruthless rounds of radio dust” in his wake—“cranial mush.” Bigger, deffer, fitter, happier, more productive. 

In the liner notes for Radio (1985), Nelson George calls LL a “talkologist,” which we can apply to woods, too. “After-market speakers in the Saturn,” he raps, and his whip is his own personal universe, evidently. He’s a brother from another Lonely Planet. Fodor’s on the dashboard; Baedeker in the backpack. From Plainfield to Compton: Swing down, sweet chariot, stop, and let him ride dirty in a lemon (hell yeah): “Beater but they can’t catch it.” The engine clunks and clatters just as the beat breaks down after the first verse—a beat transition/deconstruction not heard since DJ Shadow’s work on “Latyrx.” Kenny Segal’s music is all Chords and Discords, like the Letters to the Editor section of DownBeat magazine. Noizy Meditations like that L.O.N.S. joint T.I.M.E. (“cover my tracks with backronyms”). Fair to say Kenny Segal could pull a broad sword from a hoarded synthesizer, word to Aes Rizzle.

5.

LL’s radio appeared to ward off gentrifiers by design, destabilizing the ground beneath their feet: “My JVC vibrates the concrete.” He was “terrorizing [his] neighbors with the heavy bass.” True to Duke Bootee and Melle Mel, the impoverished city is like a jungle sometimes—“the rats is madness”—and the superpredators sport Brooks Brothers suits. woods is watching the blue-eyed soulless ones encroach, the “blue-eyed White Walkers in King’s Landing.” They march on the miry Slough of Despond. He’s not trying to leave the neighborhood empty-handed, so he infiltrates. He finagles and ingratiates himself into a “dinner party with the neighbors, / Their apartment’s renovated”—no longer a “crumbling mansion.” He eats their food ravenously, wolfishly. With each morsel, he’s seeking the beloved community, or so they’d like to believe.

As they dine, woods “turn[s] the music up incrementally,” and you’ve got to imagine it’s some PMRC fare—Ice-T’s “You Played Yourself” or the like. Something equal parts catch-wreck and (w)reckoning. Or maybe the song is “Kenwood Speakers” itself. And it’s a sort of Jordan Davis reversal at work. woods as Lord Baelish with the “mischievous lies.” He’s Claudius with a cup of poison. The whole ear of gentrified Bed-Stuy serpent-stung, rankly (and thankfully) abused. woods goes full Ying Yang Twins and “whisper[s] in the host’s ear all night,” hexing him, slow-releasing Paraquat into his supple mind as he sups. (That’s what’s up.) We’ve seen him in this capacity before, like when he whispered to his own dull knife-sheared shadow on “houthi.” The hushed hemlock woods administers to the “host’s ear” collapses into what woods “hear[s]” later—that “they found [the host] in the morning [with the] hose run from the exhaust pipe.” A well-thumbed copy of White Fragility left behind on his nightstand. woods reveals himself to be Samwell Tarly with the black dragonglass dagger. “Wreathed in gas—I’m a carburetor,” woods raps, contrasting his smoky satisfaction with the carbon monoxide car killing. He sees the Wicket Gate blurry in the distance—and it bears a helluva resemblance to an airport gate.

6.  SPACE IS THE NON-PLACE

Much has been hastily made of the narrative structure of Maps—eager listeners figuring wussdaplan and blueprint to the realms ’n realities that the album presents. But order—beginnings [departures] and endings [arrivals]—isn’t important; movement is. Better find out, before your time’s out, what the flux? Think Inspectah Deck’s “alive on arrival”; disregard Puff Daddy’s “mess around be D.O.A., be on your way” (but heed his fugacious “ain’t enough time here”). Non-narrative acceptance will allow us to revel in what Nathaniel Mackey calls “the rickety, imperfect fit between word and world.”

And as we navigate that imperfect fit, dwell in the non-. Dwell in the non-, in the non-, in the non-. “An airport is nowhere,” W. S. Merwin writes, “which is not something / generally noticed.” Merwin’s poem (“Neither Here Nor There”) typifies ideas explored in Marc Augé’s Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity (1992). Augé analyzes the meaning of transient spaces in our fast-paced, globalized society. He sets places (rooted, concrete, community-rich locations—where “saplings bend” but don’t break) against spaces (abstract locations of the mind—“I live in my mind,” as woods said on “Asylum”). We spend an immoderate amount of time in a multiplication of “non-places,” which Augé sees as “installations needed for the accelerated circulation of passengers and goods”—airports, hotels, interchanges, high-speed roads. This is the world woods knows all too well on Maps. Whether he’s taking a “$300 Uber to a show” role-playing as Future in a Maybach, smoking a spliff that “could probably jump your car battery,” exploring “Johannesburg in a Ford Explorer,” or manifesting “Jimmy Wopo draped over his steering wheel,” woods inhabits the image of the non-place. Makes sense for someone who claims to be “from where every car foreign and [they] drive ’em on empty,” dwelling in disconnectedness. Your head is throbbing and I ain’t said shit yet—the next movement is by air.

7.

woods takes in the view from his plane window. “Space,” Augé writes, “stems in effect from a double movement: the traveller’s movement, of course, but also a parallel movement of the landscapes which he catches only in partial glimpses.” On “Soft Landing,” woods sees with new sight: “From up here the lakes is puddles, / The land unfold brown and green—it’s a quiet puzzle.” woods pieces the partial glimpses together into something cohesive and captivating—“a series of ‘snapshots’ piled hurriedly into his memory and, literally, recomposed in the account he gives of them,” in Augé’s words.

“But the book is written before being read,” Augé adds, and let’s exchange “book” with album and “read” with heard. “[I]t passes through different places before becoming one itself: like the journey, the narrative that describes it traverses a number of places.” For woods, these places include a pop-in with Aesop Rock in Portland, Oregon, a visit to the Alchemist’s lab in Los Angeles, and a late-night stop at Steel Tipped Dove’s apartment in Brooklyn. He takes up residence at Kenny Segal’s L.A. home and traipses around Japan, Brussels, Amsterdam, and Germany. Augé:

This plurality of places, the demands it makes on the powers of observation and description (the impossibility of seeing everything or saying everything), and the resulting feeling of “disorientation”...cause a break or discontinuity between the spectator-traveller and the space of the landscape he is contemplating or rushing through. This prevents him from perceiving it as a place, from being fully present in it, even though he may try to fill the gap with comprehensive and detailed information out of guidebooks.

woods has discussed the “mental and physical spaces that type of travel and touring put[s] [him] in.” His documentation of his movement through non-places is the least he can do to keep from entropying: “I was writing in hotels, and Airbnbs, and airports, and sometimes at home.” For us though, his audience, woods is no longer hiding places; he’s exposing places.

8.  LIKE, “I JUST FLEW INTO THE CITY—WHAT’S UP WITH YOU?”

We hear “hero’s journey” and immediately inch toward Ithaca and Homeric hexameter, but Gilgamesh should be our guidepost, not that man-of-many-ways Odysseus. Our guidepost is woods’ “Gilgamesh”—a relationship song of stunted growth and stasis. “Got a call out the blue,” he starts, but with Maps, the call is to us and it’s a clarion call. The name Gilgamesh rings out, and it sounds like “rattling medals.” On Maps, it sounds like a “chain banged [on] glass ceilings,” an echo of Prodigy’s piece banging on glass tables. We heard the vibrations on “houthi”—that “change on plexiglass” jingle. I’m impressed by the resonance. The message doesn’t “sound weak coming out the speakers” like it did on “Gilgamesh.” The marginal upgrade is Kenwood speakers—no puttering set of Polks.

woods is arguing for a new paradigm—he didn’t need his paradigm to shift like the rest of us did. He read the daily briefings and was familiar with what-goes-around-comes-around logic. He wasn’t caught lacking on 9/11—we were. He’d been rapping along with Biggie (Blow up like the World Trade…). He coveted his promo copy of The Coup’s Party Music with Boots holding the detonator on the cover. He was looking at the city like jihadis in the cockpit. When it comes to artistic representations, like my homie D.O.C., no one has done 9/11 better than billy woods. Noreaga adopted the personage of Manuel Noriega; Intelligent Hoodlum was reborn as Tragedy Khadafi; woods takes on the mantle of Osama bin Laden—green army field jacket over white robe. 

On “Gilgamesh,” he’s “left thinking like Osama in Khartoum” when his ex splits, “gone at first light, connecting flight—she made the plane.” Vindictiveness aside, woods should know her airport visit alone will be a hellish experience. Punishment enough. Subjected to TSA screens and pat downs while touring the globe, find woods “excessively mean-mugging” as the metal detector wand grazes his testicles. “Airports and aircraft, big stores and railway stations have always been a favoured target for attacks,” writes Augé, “doubtless for reasons of efficiency…. But another reason might be that…those pursuing new socializations and localizations can see non-places only as a negation of their ideal.” woods’ 9/11 bars may startle us, but they disabuse us of our bliss.

9.

GO flat out at top speed across curve of earth is the only way.

—Pierre Joris, A Nomad Poetics (2003)

The earth is a sphere.

—“Houdini”

All this perpetual movement, this implacable globetrotting, these abrupt shifts in location—it makes for a nomad poetics, as poet Pierre Joris puts it. woods is a “NOET,” where “NO stands for play [and] ET stands for et cetera, the always ongoing process, the no closure.” Joris describes how polylingualism is a nomadic trait that is capable of “moving through languages, cultures, terrains, times without stopping.” So woods drags us from witnessing Yemeni traders off the coast of Mozambique (“The Doldrums”) to Dien Bien Phu (“Baby Steps”) in less than twelve months. He slips into Jamaican patois and amuses us with his limited Spanish (Muchos problemas if you don’t have it for the plug…). In “The Schooner Flight,” Derek Walcott says, “either I’m nobody, or I’m a nation.” woods would remix: I’m nobodies and nations.

“[I]f it is all flux, all nomad wandering” for the NOET, “when & how to write,” Joris asks. “How not to stop & yet do the poem?” The nomadic poem—like the songs that make up Maps—is a “poasis, a poem-oasis, i.e., a stop in the moving along.” In Sufi poetry, this is known as the mawqif, which Joris defines as “the pause, the stop-over, the rest, the stay of the wanderer between two moments of movement.” The layover, in woods’ words. A moment of “movement-in-rest, of movement on another plane or plateau, between today’s & tomorrow’s lines of flight.” Recording “Rapper Weed” in Kenny Segal’s studio in L.A., for example.

Nomad poetics encompass a political component. Joris isn’t blind to the realities of “a historical era where cheap air flight has made at least the White World into summer travelers, sun-seekers, tourist-nomads, i.e., fake nomads, or really not nomads at all, while a large part of poor Third World people are constrained to turn themselves into forced labor exilees or at best transhumance-ing workers, transients that have been ‘transported’ as the term was used in the slave trade.”

The triangulation of “sugar, molasses, rum”—it’s a strangulation. There’s trouble with travel. Travel as forced relocation. Travel as travails, as toil—or, worse—as tripaliare (Vulgar Latin for “torture”). From your book I took a page, bell hooks—who writes in Black Looks (1992) of being accosted, detained, and interrogated by white officials while in an Italian airport, and another time being strip searched at an airport in France, suspected of ties to terrorism in both cases. “[T]o travel is to encounter the terrorizing force of white supremacy,” she writes. Augé writes about how “the user of the non-place is always required to prove his innocence,” but for bell hooks, a Black woman, “there is no comfort that makes the terrorism disappear.” Who is Augé to judge how she terror manages?

“Goin’ places that I’ve never been, / Seein’ things that I may never see again,” Willie Nelson sings, impatient for a return to the road. His is a romanticized perspective; with feelings of dissociation, woods offers a no-man-ticized one, more akin to Atmosphere’s “Travel” from 2000: “We travel like the blood that surrounds your brain”—pressure builds and aneurysms flutter under cranial walls. The itinerary looks blurry, the ink faded from sun, folds, and creases. “The engagements are booked through the end of the world,” croons They Might Be Giants’ John Linnell, “so we’ll meet at the end of the tour.” [Open Mike Eagle nods approvingly.]

10.  HEAVY AIRPLAY ALL DAY WITH A NINA SIMONE CHORUS

On “Soft Landing,” Kenny Segal introduces guitar to drums and they converse in a dissonant cadence. In the words of Cecil Taylor, they consist of “regular and irregular measurements, of coexisting bodies of sound.” woods takes flight and the sound of the plane lifting off the tarmac is a welcome relief, like blasts from Michael Nyman’s Decay Music (1976). “Birds flying high,” woods sorta-sings, and he follows their migratory patterns. Just get him the fuck outta dodge. He’s a budding ornithologist with his head in the loud clouds. We hear him mention “birds-of-paradise in the menagerie” and “midnight ravens” alike. The exotic and the demonic—he studies them all, binoculars to his peepers. 

“Before we take off, I call Mom and say, I love you,” woods raps. He’s taken a note from Quelle Chris who advised, “Call your folks while they still livin’.” woods’ mother antipodal to his ex who he texts upon landing with a significantly less felicitous message—one feminine figure signals ascent; the other, descent. The in-betweenness of the experience—limbic and liminal all at once, exemplified by woods with his “head in the loud clouds [and] both feet on the fucking pavement.” woods invariably finds himself in the in-betweenness, the purgatorio of his life’s purpose: be it from “Rolling Loud to Shakespeare in the Park” or his own nature documentary “narrated by an Attenborough [but] over the instrumental to ‘Keep It Thoro.’”

“You believe in [the airport],” Merwin writes:

while you are there because you are there and sometimes you may even feel happy to be that far on your way to somewhere 

You know how I feel? woods feels the altitude sickness, his ears popping. But once that subsides, he feels suspended in time and space. Sun in the sky. Breeze driftin’ on. Only gotta fear a flock of geese in the aircraft engines, what with no savior Sully to guide the passengers to safety. At long last, he feels free from the fetters of his life down below. He’s [re]set for a soft landing. 

11.

Look out, honey, ’cause I’m using technology,

Ain’t got time to make no apology.

—The Stooges, “Search and Destroy”

There’s a duality on Maps: two selves—one who longs to travel; the other who longs to return home. Calypso after the show, but FaceTime calls with the kids at the breakadawn. On “FaceTime,” though, home is the last place. Home is where the heart gave out. What woods takes with him on the flight are the repercussions, the health complications. Quarrels crammed in the carry-on. Relationship woes on the wing:

You flyin’ easyJet—Bratislava, Utrecht, Something felt off before I even left, So when I saw the missed calls, I knew what was next. Didn’t have to open the text.

woods delineates a communication breakdown. He initially tries to distance himself by using the second-person, but moments later he’s allowed himself to be drawn back in. He notes the “missed calls” and uses every shred of self-discipline to not “open the text.” The patterns, he reminds himself, are nothing new. He may be unnerved by “flyin’ easyJet,” but the awareness that “something felt off before [he] even left” feels good—a familiarity. The consonance of “felt off before I even left” provides him the lift he needs. No matter the angle he looks at it [“felt” or “left,” anagrammatically satisfying—he can sit with his feelings or leave them all behind], he’s floating above the rubble of the relationship.

Not for lack of trying. They did “couples therapy on Zoom, [but] it’s a train wreck.” The Celestial Railroad derails and they burn off the vinyl chloride toxic spillage. The evacuation zone is 30 kilometers wide. woods is a sucker—falls for it every time. Okay, okay, okay: not every time. He’s become adept at having his “evil eye ward off hex, though—FaceTime declined.” He goes full Last Tango in Paris on the enchantress, displacing his frustrations on a crowd of innocent civilians: “Butter wouldn’t melt, I gave ’em margarine.” Echoes of Tony Soprano after Carmela informs him that’s she’s filing for divorce: “The only reason you have anything is ’cause of my fucking sweat, and you knew every step of the way exactly how it works. But you walk around that fucking mansion in your $500 shoes and your diamond rings, and you act like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth.” If we’re talking socialization mediated by screens, this is some real prestige drama—really real, son.

Ce grand malheur, de ne pouvoir être seul.

With so much drama in the relationship, woods retreats further. He loses himself at a gig. Afterwards, he writes at his desk in a hotel room in Tucson as he hears “dubstep drift in the window.” Partiers, “some half, some overdressed,” make their way through the halls, “checkin’ they phones” as the “bass shake[s] the walls.” woods is removed from it all: “I’m smoking alone in a cardigan, thinking of home.” In non-places, Augé insists, you can find yourself “alone, but one of many.” Once more unto the breach, he goes “back down to the bar again” only to witness an “afterparty packed like Parliament,” and who can really say whether it’s the funkiness of George Clinton or Margaret Thatcher, but the masses are pressed “ass cheeks and cheekbones”—baby got bacchanalia. woods, for his part, is “looking like the help or someone who just wandered in.” He’s an outsider amongst the “animal pelts,” “chunky rings, clunky shoes, [and] lots of ink.” Out of place, out of sight, out of mind, out-of-body experience. He’s Poe’s eagle-eyed protagonist in “The Man of the Crowd” (1840), “observing the promiscuous company in the room.” He marks the “dense and continuous tides of population,” “their aggregate relations,” and he “regard[s] with minute interest the innumerable varieties of figure, dress, air, gate, visage, and expression of countenance.” Despite all of that distraction, by the end of the song woods has only moved the pen six inches. “Really,” he says, regaining our trust, her trust, “I’m just waiting for my phone to ping”—emphasis on waiting. “I’m thinking ’bout you when I’m supposed to be thinking ’bout other things.”

12.

A stay in L.A., L.A., big city of dreams, but everything in L.A. is overpriced. Avaricious sonsabitches “bloated with gout, / Sores weeping, doubled-over, chest heaving from chasing clout,” shelling out “six Gs an ounce.” woods went from genuflecting at the weed price to oof. He’s a savvy consumer, but Los Angeles, as Mike Davis writes in City of Quartz (1990), is “a stand-in for capitalism in general.” He continues: “The ultimate world-historical significance—and oddity—of Los Angeles is that it has come to play the double role of utopia and dystopia for advanced capitalism. The same place, as Brecht noted, symbolized both heaven and hell. Correspondingly, it is the essential destination on the itinerary of any late twentieth-century intellectual, who must eventually come to take a peep and render some opinion on whether ‘Los Angeles Brings It All Together’ (official slogan) or is, rather, the nightmare at the terminus of American history (as depicted in noir).” woods excavates the future in Los Angeles, such as Davis’s subtitle goes, where the “Nike store on Fairfax” is absent of inventory, where one’s commodified state of being includes “monogrammed tube[s],” “crushed velvet,” and other offscourings of “colorful packaging.” None of which is of much interest to billy woods, a man who has “learn[ed] to toss the dregs.” This place, he knows, is a cemetery. He rests his riveted gaze on the “whole entourage on the couch buried in they phones.” You heard right: buried in they phones—their absence-presence of screen staring, their doom-scrolling a Tibetan Book of the Dead written in real time, a bardo of blue light. Mike Davis is quick to remind us: “Pío Pico, the last governor of Mexican California and once the richest man in [Los Angeles], was buried in a pauper’s grave.” “When it’s my time,” woods raps, “no need to pass the hat.” No GoFundMe campaign necessary to cover the costs of a champagne crepe-lined casket. “Just throw me in when the fire good and crackling,” he implores. My my, hey hey—it’s better to burn out than to fade away. Send him up in smoke just the same as so much of his precious time on earth. “Bury me in a borrowed suit,” woods advised his mortician on Earl Sweatshirt’s “Tabula Rasa.”

13.

Jet-lag is the cousin of Death. On “Bad Dreams Are Only Dreams,” woods grows weary as his transient life becomes a trance-ient life. “I can’t quite grab the new me,” he raps, brainfogged as he passes through time zones like skipping stones. His “old self [is] dozing in an aisle seat” on an Emirates flight. Forget about his girl back home, now he’s divorced from himself. Augé:

When an international flight crosses Saudi Arabia, the hostess announces that during the overflight the drinking of alcohol will be forbidden in the aircraft. This signifies the intrusion of territory into space. Land = society = nation = culture = religion: the equation of anthropological place, fleetingly inscribed in space. Returning after an hour or so to the nonplace of space, escaping from the totalitarian constraints of place, will be just like a return to something resembling freedom. 

woods has split the self, drawn-and-quartered it. He’s his own chain gang. On the side of the road where his “brain [is] exposed to the elements.” If we “lift [his] skull-top off delicate,” we see it’s “wider than the Sky,” as Emily Dickinson similized it. Worst of all, it’s infected by devils who’ve no regard for the fragile “bone china chafing dish” that holds the brain. “Absent-minded,” woods raps—he’s absent of his mind. And that might be an error, as criminal-minded might more accurately reflect his present status of “break[ing] time like bricks.” “Thoughts is cinder blocks,” but all I can see is woods breaking rocks in the hot sun. When he soundclashes, he fights the law. In his cell watching Shogun Assassin for the umpteenth time, but he’s also come into possession of a VHS copy of Can Dialectics Break Bricks? (1973). Flyin’ easyJet: Hong Kong to Paris. How different is monotonous prison labor from the toil of travel? Luggage heft; cramped legs; numb ass. woods needs rest and recovery, but “alarm clocks break spells.” He’s living in his own private Gitmo. Enhanced interrogation has him walking the witch. TSA sleep-deprives him to extract intel, to elicit a confession. His Self is reduced to geologic bits. He’s “crashed out,” Flight 93 style, as he becomes a plane making impact with the ground in Shanksville, PA and disintegrates. “Search for my own black box in the hills,” he raps, wanting to recover his own voice, his own data. Just as he said on “Red Dust,” “it’d be wise” to retrieve it. But what he finds amongst the strewn debris is a “black Rubik’s cube,” impenetrably scrambled.

This nightmare scenario has woods like the rappers he described on Armand Hammer’s “Aubergine”: “Tired, / Inertia the only thing keep ’em moving, / Glassy-eyed.” woods is a survivor of the crash, of sorts—his “parachute twisted and snarled.” You can’t put a price on a good night’s sleep, even if it’s a “king’s ransom.” But woods is “half ’sleep with the halo, dead on his feet,” so maybe it’s too little, too late. He wanders zombified, inactive, unconscious. He’s trying to get right for today; he’s “not swimming in tomorrows” like on “Babylon by Bus.” His death grip on reality is only as firm as his grip on surreality, as we heard from his appearance on Infinite Disease’s “Anomalady”:

After a while, you don't remember the crowds or venues,  just the hotel rooms. ¿Tu tienes WiFi? It's just me in a stocking cap, watching TV The city dead out the window, still not even sleepy Sleep deprivation, the days keep leaking Life on the screen, light the dark like a beacon

woods the amnesiac—he “don’t remember the crowds or venues.” If only he could repress the meaningless hotel rooms instead. Alive ain’t always living in non-places (just ask Quelle Chris), especially when it’s mediated by technology: WiFi passwords, TV, his phone. Somehow he survives; it’s the city that’s dead.

14.  FBI AGENTS NARROW THEY EYES

When you turn the knob on “Blue Smoke,” you trick yourself into believing you’re rehearsing with Ornette. We feel inner circle. We feel privy. But Max Roach might also be in the audience, like he was at the Five Spot in 1959, waiting for Ornette to step offstage so he could duff him up, which he did. The FBI had a dossier on Roach, just as they did for so many other Black cultural icons. COINTELPRO with the hyper-acuity. ELUCID forewarned: Fifty people at a rap show—one’s an informant. Police came to billy woods’ show on Known Unknowns, an album which has moments that jive with the claustrophonic and paranoisey sounds of Hiding Places. To avoid any confusion, I’ll pass the mic to media god Marshall McLuhan:

We now have the means to keep everybody under surveillance…. This has become one of the main occupations of mankind—just watching other people and keeping a record of their goings-on. Invading privacy—in fact, just ignoring it. Everybody has become porous…. When you’re on the telephone, or on radio, or on TV, you don’t have a physical body. You’re just an image on the air…. You’re a discarnate being. You have a very different relation to the world around you. And this, I think, has been one of the big effects of the electric age. It has deprived people, really, of their private identity.

On “NYC Tapwater,” woods takes a stab-your-brain-with-your-nose-bone attempt at mentoring the youngins: “No need for stop-and-frisk, it’s cameras everywhere, / They got your IG feed, / Come scoop kids after they do the deed.” Mass surveillance should have you shook. woods spies the “big-ass satellite dish pointed at the sky,” on “Blue Smoke.” woods fucks with the frequencies frequently, sabotaging the alphabet boys with “so much tape hiss.” These aren’t just some plainclothes cops with iPads in Missoula, Montana. These are FBI agents that “narrow they eyes, / Frustrated, asking to be reassigned” because woods is giving them nada. “Been on this n-word for months,” they concede, “I think it’s all just rhymes.” Yep, rhymes like dimes. Talk about a most strange game, but woods knows he “shouldn’t be surprised.” Know that you’ll be scrutinized. He threatens that he better not “catch you unsupervised”—from the Latin super [“over”] + videre [“to see”], which = overseer. You know that sound—it’s the sound of da police. Same as you heard at the conclusion of “Police Came to My Show.” KRS-One offered a likkle truth and implored you to open up your eye. An exercise, from the Teacher:

Take the word overseer, like a sample, Repeat it very quickly in a crew, for example: Overseer, overseer, overseer, overseer— Office, officer, officer, officer.

No wonder woods guards himself with galvanized steel security fencing. In a non-place like an airport, writes Augé, “the passenger accedes to his anonymity only when he has given proof of his identity.” Mom showed him where she keeps the passport hidden, and he retrieves it when necessary. Similar rules apply to others. “Anyone wanna be in my life gotta sign several waivers,” he raps strictly on “Babylon by Bus.”

15.  

I traveled among unknown men.

—William Wordsworth (1799)

I asked, “Is the mask for the killer or the crowd?"

—Armand Hammer’s “Sadderday”

What is known and unknown (in a Rumsfeldian sense); what is seen and unseen (in a Lord Quasian sense)? You can obfuscate the message. You can adjust the pitch of your voice. Augé explains how the “spatial overabundance [of non-places] works like a decoy.” Hiding places are everywhere, but they’re especially easy to access while on tour. A person “entering the space of non-place is relieved of his usual determinants,” writes Augé. “He becomes no more than what he does or experiences in the role of passenger…. Subjected to a gentle form of possession, to which he surrenders himself.” The rep grows bigger, ELUCID raps on “As The Crow Flies,” but not so big and unwieldy that woods can’t shuffle through a non-place without being recognized by adoring fans. He settles into what Augé refers to as “the passive joys of identity-loss.”

“Just picture me sittin’ with a pen in a cloud of smoke,” woods says on “Baby Steps.” He asks us to envision him in a rather peculiar scenario, one in which he’s taking notes on a performance while concealing his own presence (despite seeking “to determine if [your live set’s] a hoax”). The performer is a “glowed up” Weird Sister, “looking like she covered in gold dust.” woods deduces she “must not have re-upped her Lexapro,” but her glamorous appearance plays against woods’ own guardedness. You don’t just let anyone in. woods is privileged, though, as the performer “pulled [him] aside [and] explained she was just doing a bit.” One is inclined to consider whether this is all a projection on a screen. Or, put differently: Is this performative or praxis? Either way, woods was like, Oh. And not since his ex-wife’s reaction to learning “where [he] stashed it” has a response hit so heavy (“She paused, then she said, OK”). woods’ whole life feels stashed—brown-bagged or cardboard-boxed. A secret sharer, he’s not.

It’s' places no one knows who you are,

It’s faces we never wore.

—“Agriculture”

Would woods be able to distinguish a DOOMposter from the real thing—a cheap, bumbling replica from the genuine article? “Over time,” woods raps, “symbols eclipse the things they symbolize.” The mask becomes not a means to maintain privacy but a phenomenon itself—a mass-marketed one, at that. Just ask the MF DOOM estate. DOOM masks created and sold by both authorized and unauthorized retailers proliferate. Etsy shops stay busy predicting their posthumous profit margins [see: DEATHFAME]. MF DOOM likened his “imposters” to characters. “[W]ho I choose to put as the character is up to me,” he said. “When you come to a DOOM show…[you’ve] come to hear the show and come to hear the music. To see me? Y’all don’t even know who I am! Technology makes it possible for me to still do music and not have to be any particular place…. [I]f you’re coming to a DOOM show, don’t expect to see me, expect to hear me or hear the music that I present.” It sounds like DOOM is eternally wandering one of Augé’s non-places as one of McLuhan’s “discarnate beings.”

woods has been Camouflaging himself since at least 2003. Like Poe, he is the man of the crowd, and “[i]t will be in vain to follow: for I shall learn no more of him.” On “Soundcheck,” he asks the venue to “kill the lights,” just as he does every show, murdering the audience’s hope of eye contact, of facial recognition. Even if they manage the right angle and a “Nikon flash,” woods’ “face is the mask.” As he walks through the uncanny valleys of the shadows, you “develop the photograph but [find] something just wasn’t right.” President Kongi did not like to be photographed, and you heard Pac screamin’, spittin’ at the paparazzi. At the merch table, woods places his hand in front of his face for fan photo ops [or are they photo opps?]—a strange paradox of acquiescence [woods stops resisting the photo request, in cop parlance] and a gesture of refusal. “It’s GWAR when I’m off-stage,” he tells us on “The Layover.” The mask evolves over time. DOOM went from pantyhose, to a silver-sprayed Darth Maul mask, to a faceplate from a Gladiator helmet (the latter two prototypes thanks to the ingenuity of KEO). Oderus Urungus went from a papier-mâché helmet to a latex-horned extreme.

The proximal distance between woods’ and his audience inches ever close—close, that is, but not too close. No Next-level poke coming through-ness. A double portion of protection for him and his psychic health. He doesn’t want to make it hard for himself. “My shell, mechanical,” he quotes a trusted source in a world full of leakers, snitches, and finks. But for all the attention (achtung baby!) paid to woods’ face/non-face, more eyes should be devoted to retina-scanning his verse. woods’ “love language [is] an obscure dialect,” but his delivery veils his technical prowess. woods raps with a cup-runneth-over flow where words spill over the edge of the bar, past the four, combined with conversational cadence and syntax. 

Examine the second verse of “FaceTime.” woods’ sound devices and internal rhyming are in service to his theme, providing hand-holding to the listener as they walk the patterns together. The verse begins simple enough with a nursery rhyme sequence (“oboes…clarinet”; “rainbows…wept”) but almost immediately complexifies when the garbled /r/ begins to dominate with “Marrakech.” The alliterative /d/ [“dubstep drift in the window—I sit at my desk”] drags us to the “party outside,” away from our sanctuary of solitude. And the contraction of “Playboi Carti” leads to even more intense and immediate “partyin’” in the halls. woods brings us into the noise alongside him, even if we didn’t receive a formal invitation. The tumult of the scene is communicated through woods’ irregular pattern of internal and end-rhyme. “Phones,” “alone,” “home,” “cone,” and “blown” angle through the crowd, bumping and grinding against the dominate /r/ of “cardigan,” “origin,” “bar again,” “Parliament,” “parted,” “margarine,” “wandered in,” and “order” (or disorder, if I may). The sonorant pairing of “halls” &“walls” (destabilized by bass shakes); the triad of “melt,” “help,” & “pelts”; the trading of “chunky” & “clunky”; the bevy of /nk/ & /ng/ words (rings, ink, drink, ping, thinking, things, sink)—nothing saves us from the discomfiting experience described in the verse. We are subject to the final /r/ pairing of “tread water.” We’re exhausted by that point, and we drown.

Which way ought we go from here? Doesn’t much matter which way we go. 

16.  ODE ON INDOLENCE

“Soundcheck” is a reclamation of dignity. woods repeats his negative declaration (“I will not be at soundcheck”) four times throughout his verse, emphatically. Not since Bartleby have we heard such a vehement refusal. “I would prefer not to,” the scrivener says. woods’ refusal would make Paul Lafargue proud. It’s an unusual illusion that makes an MC believe he must puppet perform a phantom set for an audience of one, all in the name of amplification. It’s not that complicated. Organized Konfusion dealt with this shit in ’97. On “Soundman,” they summed it up nicely: If it ain’t loud enough, we tell the soundman turn that shit up, up, up. Tek and Steele embraced a more threatening approach. Exit the soundclash and enter the venue for a moment. Boom bye bye to a sound bwoy head. (Wiretap sound like Buju Banton, don’t it?) They demand a Sound [Man] Bureill.

woods craves his pre-show isolation: “I will not be in the green room if it’s too lit.” Are we talking incandescence or excitement? Either way, he wants none of it. Dah shinin’ of a spotlight in his face is not his style. His autonomy is the only item on his rider: “I reserve the right.” And that means no irksome obligations like soundcheck or backstage dawdling. He prefers to take in the town, a “local greasy spoon or Szechuan establishment,” maybe the Courtyard Marriott bathroom where he can “[blow] marijuana through the vents.” God-level expertise when it comes to that habit. We know from “No Hard Feelings” how he “towel[s] the door.”

He “might watch the sun set over your city from a parapet or a park bench.” woods considers the lilies and how they grow—they toil not, so why should he? We’ve seen him sitting there. We might’ve mistaken him for one of those Park Bench People that Freestyle Fellowship clued us into in 1993. “I see an old man sittin’ on a park bench,” Myka 9 sang, someone “lookin’ in the skies.” Might’ve been woods. “You’re thinkin’ ’bout your kids,” Myka said, “...’bout your girl, / You’re thinkin’ of all the things you did, / You see the children play.” woods wishes he was pushing his own baby on the swing, but he’s got to wait for that. 

Time’s not lost completely. He will not be at soundcheck, but he will be timely for the show. You won’t find him “wakin’ up on a park bench a bum” (“The Doldrums”). “Headlamps splash squatter tents on my way to the venue,” woods raps, “—they wave me in.” Who exactly? The squatters or the show promoter? Who would he be more comfortable with? “I’m smiling like I’m not,” he says from the stage, spurning the coon caricature so many Black performers have thrust upon them by the public. woods won’t dance a jig, won’t step and fetch it. Not even when it’s time to get paid. “After the curtains, I sit for a while before I go get the check,” he explains. He turns merch tables on the promoter; makes him wait. Work slowdown. The pay is small, so take your time and buck them all, as the Wobblies used to say. Every live show forget the lyric, huh?—probably intentional. Don’t give them what they want. Withhold your labor. Set your terms.

17.  THE CONQUEST OF BREAD

                                                         …For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

—Wendell Berry 

If woods can’t escape the commotion of the show, he’ll wander even farther off. On “Agriculture,” he moves beyond space and time. If “Paraquat” argued “Anno Domini, it’s no before, it’s only after,” then “Agriculture” reassesses and finds there’s only before. “Nothing in the thought bubble,” woods mentioned on “Soft Landing,” which leads us to this meditation, this reverie of the before. Before what—the Fall? Christ? Facial recognition software? Tour? “Before history [History…], I made fire in the cave,” he raps on “The Layover.” A time before connotes premodern, Arcadian. “Agriculture” strings together a sequence of befores, each more lyrical than the prior (“lyrical” not in a Biggie “lyrical lyricist flowin’ lyrics out my larynx” sense, but in a Coleridge & Wordsworth way). woods wakes “before the sunrise,” even before nature awakens fully, “before sparrow cry from thistle.” He notes “the kettle boil before it whistle,” holding space in the quiet intensity. The personified night “fight before it die” and, consequently, the “sky bleed purple,” battered and bruised. woods leads us to a place (in stark contrast to a non-place) that knows him from “before [his] hands been dirty” with corruption—a place “before [he] could grasp time,” somewhere embryonic. He welcomes us to his Walden, to an unspoiled place “without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies.” Here, the time is “before we had new names”—names like william woods, like F. Porter, like Madziwanyika. A time “before we was new in our own eyes”—before the mirror stage or interpellation.

To get there, woods has to travel to “parts unknown.” He’s only “at home when the road’s not paved.” He only asks for a “little piece of yard” where a “couple goats graze.” Sustainable living. Living that sustains. With a name like backwoodz, why wouldn’t the escape route point to the wilds? He retreats into the peace of wild things, as Wendell Berry calls it. There, woods can focus on [re]productivity. John McPhee, who has always had to balance teaching and writing, refers to his perennial phases as “crop rotations.” In the rural setting depicted on “Agriculture,” there are places enough for woods to push his plow. He retreats not out of complacency but out of a restorative need. He’s an ol’ dirty bastard, “squatting in the soil with a fistful.” CAN YOU DIG IT?! He channels Cyrus. He channels Kaczynski (and writes as much as him, too). “Agriculture” has a subtitle: Industrial Society and Its Future. “[T]echnology exacerbates the effects of crowding because it puts increased disruptive powers in people’s hands,” Kaczynski writes, staring at the whole entourage on the couch buried in they phones.

woods “used to plot on the come-up, plot on [his] brothers,” but now he lends care to his garden plot and “get[s] the tomatoes cropping sideways.” His idyll, exhilarating. He’s “stooped in the coop, gathering eggs” for breakfast, and, later, he “traded some to the neighbor for fresh bread.” The song seems mixed with Kropotkin on the console, a mutuality and self-sufficiency at work. He’d had this vision since forever. On Armand Hammer’s “Resin,” woods remixes the Jack and the Beanstalk fairytale. He plucks “one seed” from “out the pound”—transfixed by its “shiny and round” appearance, its seemingly enchanted qualities—and imagines a day where he’d “move away [and] put it in the ground.” “Ten years later,” though, the seed is “still in [his] drawer, rattling around—angrily.” (At least he didn’t end up with his bones ground to meal to make a giant’s bread, heh.)

“Agriculture” appears to be an illusion, a phantasy, at most a reprieve—a weekend upstate or a vacation in the old country. “I say I’m at peace, but it’s still that same dread,” woods laments, admitting his living off the fatta the lan’ is a temporary arrangement, a refueling on a road trip. “It’s hard to live when before you was dead,” and he finds the afterlife a troubling funk. But he’s in the now, he’s in the now, he’s in the now (as ELUCID is wont to say), and he sees “land on either side of the car.” That won’t suffice when he’s back in the city. He’s better off just getting blunted on reality.

18.

I was high all day, I escaped, goes the refrain on “Houdini.” From the spliff that woods lifts and inhales, he’s able to exhale the yellow smoke of buddha through righteous steps. No mask necessary; this is the vanishing act. To be ghost, to be Ghost.[1] The final “I escaped” of the refrain vanishes into the ether. Houdini was more an escape artist than a smoke and mirrors magician, of course. Others “working with mirrors,” but woods “disappears—[he] was never there.” Kenny Segal contrives a ¾ time signature so that woods can remove himself, waltzing past the typical regulations of time. “Day off,” he says at the top, though Armand Hammer’s “No Days Off” offered up the “sorcerer’s apprentice” gig. Doesn’t seem so appealing at the moment.

The green thumbing that had the tomatoes cropping sideways on “Agriculture” transforms OG into “fresh papaya” or another strain which has a taste that reminds woods of “Jamaican oranges that look like limes.” Where I’m from, you don’t see fireflies, he says. The pastoral escape again—he’s grounding himself (in both the ecotherapy sense and bringing that plane back down to terra firma). woods barefoot soaking up the Earth’s electrons [You don’t have to believe it]. But the tranquility turns quick as he “walk[s] into the forest filled with fear” and “hears something lumbering near.” But it’s just his mind playing tricks on him. It was all a dream—he “woke up sudden in armchair” (a money-green leather armchair, maybe). “Yo, you good to drive?”—and we’re buckling up, back to movement again.

19.

The wait is over, the wait is over, biddy-bye-bye [to the rhythm of BDP’s “The Bridge Is Over,” please]. woods and ShrapKnel scheme to lively up themselves like Marley and the Wailers on “Babylon by Bus,” but they’re touring ingloriously. “Cold open, slow to focus, cameras pan to a freeway,” PremRock directs. His cinematic pacing on par with Pasolini. The wait prevails—stasis. woods “sat on his gate for hours, pissing in a bottle.” Reminds him of the spider hole, probably, when “the job was to sit there all day and press ‘refresh’.”

On “Waiting Around,” he not only waits but wanders. For all his depersonalization on tour, woods counters the feeling by personifying the night again. She’s “young,” of course—full of opportunity—and he “watch[es] her move, spinning like vinyl jumping out the groove.” Graceful but with a smidgen of volatility. He personifies night, just as he does time, to keep him company. Later, he finds human companionship in the form of an actual woman. She’s an expatriate with “perfect teeth,” “5’3” [and] thick as congee porridge.” They smoke “outside in the darkness of the eve,” but she rejects his advances—even his offer to hop in his Horse & Carriage. woods sees defeat through the eyes and mind of Killa Cam. She kisses his cheek and bids him adieu. The ice melts but the champagne still cold. No hard feelings, right?

woods wanders Amsterdam like he’s done many times before. “I miss having nothing to lose,” he says, like back when he was twenty-two and ain’t had nothing but “twenty-two hundred in [his] shoe.” He feels like Jay-Z on “22 Two’s”: I been around this block too many times. Too true, Shawn Cart[ograph]er. woods reads the city with a stoner squint, a subtle wink, with whimsy. He cuts-up corners and avenues like Burroughs riding the Nova Express and disregards the grid like Max Heath. Or, put another way, woods embraces his instinctive travels and paths of rhythm. His verses break the grid too, what with their end-stops and enjambments that jar and jerk the listener as woods weaves through heavy foot traffic. He’s a herbaliser urban planner, dropping “a science of relations and ambiences,” what the Situationists called psychogeography. (Sorry ahead of time for not sparing you the Hallmark Guy Debord.) Each foreign city, for woods, is a Psycho Realm.

History has known men like woods, flâneurs flitting through throngs. “The crowd is his domain,” Baudelaire explained in “The Painter of Modern Life” (1863), just “as the air is that of the birds.” Birds flyin’ high—you know how I feel. “For the perfect flâneur,” Baudelaire writes,

for the passionate observer, it is an immense joy to take up one’s dwelling among the multitude, amidst undulation, movement, the fugitive, the infinite. To be absent from home and yet feel oneself everywhere at home; to view the world, to be at the heart of the world, and yet hidden from the world, such are some of the last pleasures of those independent spirits, passionate and impartial, that language can only inadequately define.

But for woods (who told us he was a dandy on “King Tubby”), language does seem to adequately define what he sees and feels, right down to the “cobblestoned streets” beneath his feet. Time seems to pass exponentially—those cobblestones are Old Testament old, from the Annals of the Former World. woods, we know, vacillates between dwelling at “the heart of the world” and remaining “hidden from [it].” Through woods’ songs—especially on Maps—he functions as “a mirror…a kaleidoscope endowed with consciousness which, with its every movement, conveys the multiplicity of life.” woods presents himself narratively as a first-person “I,” but he is an “I” that is “insatiable in his appetite for the ‘not-I.’” I is another. I is an Other. 

Debord and his Situationist posse (the Lettrist International Clik, for the people), encouraged citizens to embrace the dérive, to take a bizarre ride II the pharcyde, to “drop their relations…and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.” I jet propel at a rate that complicate their mental state, Bootie Brown rapped, but woods complicates his own mental state with his sauntering. The dérive can last any amount of time—minutes between meetings with distributors, Zoom podcast interviews, and press junkets. Pit stops between downtown bars and uptown bars. Middle-of-nowhere gas stations. You notice everything on the dérive—it’s an entropy of experience, but the gravitational pull of the flâneur pulls it all back together. woods looks to avail himself of these “Situations” (as the Situationists intended)—like the Native Tongues sought to create “Scenarios”—moments where he can shuffle off the alienation and spectacles of his Daily Operations.

20.

Rilke surveys the city in The Journey of My Other Self (1930) and catalogs what he sees—a parallel to woods’ journey to his other self: his performing self in juxtaposition to his personal self. Rilke walks along Rue Toullier in Paris, pondering: “People come here, then, to live? I should rather have thought they came here to die.” He sniffs an “odour [that] began to rise from the street…a smell of iodoform, the grease of pommes frites, and fear.” He might be smelling woods’ dinner: “ginger root, mussels, and pomme frites.” The “jaundiced moon” above woods matches the “greenish complexion” of a baby “in a perambulator standing on the pavement” not far from Rilke. “How much such a little moon can do!” Rilke cries. “There are days when everything about us is lucent and ethereal, scarcely outlined in the luminous atmosphere and yet distinct.” The moon seems to spotlight everything the world has to offer. “The nearest objects take on the tone of distance, are remote and merely displayed from afar, not given to us,” Rilke writes. And woods responds by grasping for “poems just out of reach.” Nothing is insignificant or superfluous.

“The fatal thing about these acted poems,” though, Rilke writes:

was that they continually added to and extended themselves, growing to tens of thousands of verses, so that ultimately the time in them was the actual time; somewhat as if one were to make a globe on the scale of the earth. The concave stage, beneath which was hell and above which the level of Paradise was represented by a balcony of unrailed scaffolding fixed to a pillar, only helped to weaken the illusion. For this century had indeed made both heaven and hell terrestrial.

billy woods paces that “concave stage.” His oeuvre has grown “to tens of thousands of verses” that provide us with his vision of the world. He passes a “Congolese concierge” who has fallen “fast asleep” as he returns to his “big, lonely suite.” “From the tiny balcony,” woods raps with an air of confession, “I watched my planes leave.” He’s scorned, forlorn—like Marilyn Buck’s poem “Waiting” (1989), woods “sit[s] wrapped / wrapped in a cool / breeze of assumed indifference.”

21. 

Vivez sans temps mort.

Aesop Rock’s anxiety kept him from touring early in his career, and he’s been cool to the idea ever since. “Not a piece of me is drawn to the theater,” he admits on “Waiting Around,” preferring the cloistered process of “recording songs in [his] bedroom.” He forgoes any “alternate venue” for his art. Ultimately, he “wasn’t comfortable ever” on stage—he just “can’t fuck with the premise” of formally presenting such inward-looking works (his “sons and [his] daughters”) to the outside world, face-first and face-forward.

woods knows, as well, that touring isn’t always a spiritually or financially profitable business. Remember what he told us on “checkpoints”: “Best tour advice I ever got: You’re better off beatin’ your dick.” Not just a tip on avoiding dalliances—a call to curtail impulse and instead self-stimulate on Seaman’s furniture—but a [cock-]hard truth about the economic cost of blundering across the country. Like Prodigy, woods’ll tour the album but only for more sales. He’s willing to do that now, but it was less enticing when he was playing to a crowd of two plainclothes cops.

That said, woods—unlike Aesop—finds value in the journey itself, in spite of merch sales and gas budget deficits. “We have a world of pleasure to win,” Raoul Vaneigm proclaimed in The Revolution of Everyday Life, “and nothing to lose but boredom.” The travel necessitated by touring disrupts your quotidian existence, your humdrum homelife, but the disruption that is the road life can grow tiresome just the same. “Nothing moving,” Vaneigm writes, “only dead time passing.” woods finds Time “holed up somewhere it didn’t have to move.” Touring cuts both ways—you’ll be bored stiff like the Timeless EP, or your experience will prove timeless like Bored Stiff in ’97. When he’s in Amsterdam, he watches In Bruges (or is he in Bruges—the compass stays confused) because he’s got “time to kill”—so that’s a time-kill, not a time-thrill. Sometimes the day gently passes; sometimes time is flattened. Which is which? You gon’ feel it in the rhythm and the pattern, or the “Pattern and Rhythm,” the penultimate chapter in E. M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel. woods' “room had a view,” dummy.

22.

Nothing but dumb luck when you’re unstuck in time. On “The Layover,” we learn woods “already knew the options was lose/lose, / Baby, that’s nothing new.” Fucking forget “the sun set in the desert, red glow, redness in the West” for a second. Look to No Country For Old Men, instead. Anton Chigurh pulls a coin from his pocket (no “safe full of Euros” for him). Carla Jean Moss calls heads but the coin flips and lands tails. Carla Jean is helpless, vexed. “Every moment in your life is a turning and every one a choosing,” Chigurh tells her. “Somewhere you made a choice. All followed to this. The accounting is scrupulous. The shape is drawn. No line can be erased…. A person’s path through the world seldom changes and even more seldom will it change abruptly. And the shape of your path was visible from the beginning.” This the type of shit that’ll make Baby Jessica jump in the well again. We’re all “looking up at a circle of blue.” We’re all alone in the spider hole, but I suppose that’s the best part.

Like Armand Hammer’s “Topsy” from the WHT LBL album, “The Layover” includes a paratactic chorus that functions more as an appendix to the song. Full of alliterative phrases (light/lantern; shovel/spade; O’Shea/ofays/obey; posse/Parkway), metonymic references (Deion Sanders; O’Shea Jackson), musical/literary allusions (LL Cool J; Dorian Gray), and downright eerie similarities (“giant panda”/“giant obey”; “Gray”/”grave”; “other way”/“Parkway”)—if these choruses are hooks they’re shepherd’s crooks intended to snare ideas from one’s consciousness. That, or snaring us out of the spider hole, the well, our bad luck.

23.

woods stabilizes himself with his pen; centers himself with his pad. “More delicate than the historians’ are the map-makers’ colors,” Elizabeth Bishop says in her poem “The Map” (1946). In a letter, Bishop said, “I always like to feel exactly where I am geographically all the time, on the map.” She roots[/routes] herself against the threat of non-places. woods gets his mind right with “aromatherapy in the stu’ with lavender diffused in the booth” (“Rapper Weed”). Poe’s protagonist from “The Man of the Crowd” knew how to soothe the burn of a world in flames: “I derived positive pleasure even from many of the legitimate sources of pain. I felt a calm but inquisitive interest in every thing.” woods’ sure-footedness stems from his understanding of “the true nature of this world, in its staggering beauty and its infinite horrors,” as he put it in an interview late last year. He’s able to articulate that which is ineffable, likely because he “take[s] care of these words—Munchausen by proxy” (“Babylon by Bus”). Whispering sweet-nothings to his “ailing” children—manipulating them to serve his vision. For the MC whose “love language is an obscure dialect,” Pierre Joris reminds us “all languages are foreign.” We’re all living in a chaos-world, so “why should one have to write in the mummy/daddy language, why should that oedipal choice be the only possible or legitimate one?” woods works conscientiously, but he also guesses as he goes, filling in the blanks: “Paper and pencil—I wrote the verse like hangman.” Inspiration flits and stutter-steps on a hunt: It was always just a question of when. The duppy stalks, blowing “an ill wind in the trees.” woods is “running routes, trees, and patterns”—juking jumbees and stiff-arming the grimmest of reapers. They’re always pursuing, no matter where you move. “Time and the land are one” John Ashbery writes. In Bonnie Costello’s Shifting Ground (2003), she describes how Ashbery explores the “relationship of mind to environment and the play between temporal and spatial awareness.” He achieves this through disappearing paths and slippery topography, shifts in scale and perspective, and subversions of narrative sequence. As concerns woods: check, check, check, and [mic] check. His writing goes hither and yon.

24.  EVERYBODY COOKING

Came home, like, “There’s no recipes left!"

—“checkpoints”

By now, we know woods’ passion for grilling is akin to Nabakov’s lepidoptery—a hobby that enriches his art. The empirical aspects of cooking mingle with his transformative vision. Or, as woods boasts, You know I’m working the fire. As far as lyrics go, what woods spits leaves us salivating. He leaves us hungrier than Common in ’97 (he was a self-proclaimed “verbal vegetarian” anyway, limiting his menu). On Maps, woods’ travels are charged with food, from fine dining to stops “at a Costco in the Midwest with a pocketful of small bills folded like tacos.” Even his currency is cuisine.

woods rips recipe raps to counter the empty calories offered at airports. Merwin explained that “you sit there in the smell / of what passes for food.” Instead, feel the comfort of a home-cooked meal. On “Kenwood Speakers,” woods is Cold Lampin’ with [the] Flavor of  his host’s “skate wing, brown butter, and capers, / Sprigs of thyme, heavy pours of natural wine.” On “Gilgamesh,” he served up the class: “Stiff drinks, / …garnish the parsley.” His epicure bars extend to “Soft Landing,” where there’s “conch fritters crispin’ in the kitchen,” and on “Blue Smoke,” where the culinary poetics peak with an elaborate spread: “The pork belly was brined, braised, then deep-fried, / Fresh mint, Thai basil, pickled watermelon rind, / Julienned scallions and other alliums, gave the pepper mill one grind.” In Amsterdam, he indulges in a feast fit for President Kongi: “Grassy gin winning over sweet vermouth, / Framboise, ginger root, / Mussels and pomme frites, confit leeks.”

Meals upon meals upon meals. woods is out to lunch like Dolphy—he slows time and slow cooks. Unless he’s suspending his gastronomics for a detour through the dark side of the all-American meal. The velocity of tour life sometimes necessitates fast food: “The burgers was In-N-Out.” Budgeting time and consumption is a perilous path. Cee-Lo Green on “Soul Food” issued a Surgeon General’s Warning: “Fast food got me sick, / Them crackers think they slick.” Catch woods at an all-night diner with Cage and Camu at the counter—a chopped-and-screwed Nighthawks painted by Edward [Hip-]Hopper who, in his own words, “unconsciously...paint[ed] the loneliness of a large city.” No one reminded him that bad dreams are only dreams. Mark Fisher saw the scene for what it was: a [def] “juxtaposition of the café with the cosmos.”

Your time is your own, only when it’s not. Joy James speaks of “time theft,” the “loss of leisure to recover from fatigue and violence.” Not stolen moments but moments stolen from you. You stare at the time zone clocks on the wall of the airport and mumble woods’ lyrics from “Babylon by Bus”: I knew the time was borrowed. Borrowed or stolen? woods communes with DOOM/doom. “Living off borrowed time, the clock tick faster,” expanding and contracting like accordion bellows. It’s as if every hot minute after History Will Absolve Me is borrowed. Before history, he made fire in the cave. Dante’s descent into hell follows a clockwise spiral [the Flavor Flav clock still—(still!)—spins centrifugal]

25.  FROM THIS WORLD TO THAT WHICH IS TO COME

This is the end, as it’s always been. We spend time and money, money and time. The currency is mortality, or tempmortality. Method Man might “bust shots at Big Ben like we got time to kill,” but we’re in Bruges, and Ken drops warning coins from the belfry before leaping to his death, splat in the market square. That’s the Protect Ya Neck jump-off, for those wondering. Coldcocked by the clocktower.

We’re there but not there. Masked and unmasked. Time out of joint and intimately passing a joint in the cypher. Playing for crowds and playing with your kids. Aesop might refuse to tour, sticking to his quasi-reclusive career turn, or he may someday perform on his own terms. His own terminology in the terms of service, in the airport terminal. Terminus means the end. “I’m trying to live in the moment like death row,” woods raps on “FaceTime.” That’s the death row of last meals and last words, the Live from Death Row of Mumia Abu-Jamal; however, it’s also the Death Row of Suge Knight, of a record label that had its moment and then didn’t, done in by deserters, failed distribution deals, and bankruptcy.[2]

Who better to invoke than the Notorious B.I.G. to prove the point of tempmortality? woods has drawn from the well of Big Poppa’s precarity punchlines before. Where Big insisted rappers shouldn’t be mad because “UPS is hiring,” woods responds with a post-’08 collapse sentiment: “My advice: don’t stop rhymin’—UPS not hiring.” Just common sense for a recessionary gap. Death curves at every turn, so never take shit for granted. woods could be freelancing, writing rap reviews for a pittance. That being said, he’s “Ready to die, it’s no biggie” (“FaceTime”). He’s already “lived a couple lives” so he’s prepared to “go ahead and slide” into that good night. Somebody’s gotta die—if he goes, he goes. Insouciance is the order of the day. Walking with a panther, he tallies his “nine lives” and wonders like those devilish Yakubs “how many [he] already used.” B.I.G. appears everywhere on Maps, suggesting to woods that “maybe suicidal thoughts [is] the everyday struggle.” “Gimme the loot,” woods raps on “Baby Steps,” determined to get his—“it’s a museum.” Repatriate artifacts? Don’t soften the language. Gimme mine, ELUCID screams. 

woods has been around the world and ay ya ya, he’s been playa-hated (“Don’t forget: God’s a hater”). Mo Money Moor Problems—a wider audience translates to a wider world. But he can brag and meditate on mortality both. “Big jar when they donate my brain,” he says, and the organ transplant moves at a hash jar tempo. Bourdainian flourishes of “spicy chili oil—let that bad boy marinate” (Bad Boy, huh?). Sometimes we track time through the dates on “posthumous YouTube views”; other times we can only rely on “the lonely big tree like a sundial.” To the…tick-tock, ya don’t stop. To the…tick-tock, ya don’t quit.

“In all candor,” woods raps on the chorus of “The Layover,” “I got one foot in your grave.” He glosses over racist connotations and instead weaponizes farm tools: “I still call a shovel a spade.” Shades of the gravediggaz in Hamlet’s courtyard. woods has wielded the weapon before, on “Gilgamesh”: “Merrily dug his own grave, whistling as he shoveled.” Tarafah, the nomad-poet & free Bedouin, satirized the king and thus “dug his grave with his tongue.” To bring back Orwell’s “Marrakech,” if only for a moment: “They arise out of the earth, they sweat and starve for a few years, and then they sink back into the nameless mounds of the graveyard and nobody notices that they are gone. And even the graves themselves soon fade back into the soil.” 

Survival rate fluctuates like the market. Even Bourdain chose the rope in Hotel Chambard in Kaysersberg. “I don’t go to sleep—I tread water ’til I sink,” woods reveals on “FaceTime.” The waves never let up, but you got to keep ya head up, keep your head above water. Like Trugoy rapped, We’re all in tune with doom.

26.  A HEAD NӒDDA’S JOURNEY

Hing, hang, hung—see what the hangman done.

—“Sadderday”

Chokehold slowly closed the airway.

—“Dettol”

On “Hangman,” thoughts are hijacked by grisly Afro-Gothic visions. The head nodding of the listener turns to oxygen deprivation. Cold dead grip on the larynx. The neck compresses closer to unconsciousness, another stifled breath closer to death. To cease that “heart beat in [the] jugular.” woods raps as if he’s being hanged, and he makes a spectacle of it. The wheeze of the long /e/ sounds within the lines (“Matisse”; “teeth”; “deep”; “beat”; “peaks”; “Sikh”; “sheet”; “sleep”) and the choke of the short /u/ sounds within the end-rhymes (“colors”; “lovers”; “jugular”; “rugged”; “thuggers”; “fucker”)—we’re listening to the hangman’s tune. The tightening of the iron fist on the throat, garroted; the Iron Galaxy expanding but feeling like shrinking the way it pulls taut. The rope creaks as it tightens. 

As woods loses consciousness, he “hovers outside [him]self.” My shell, mechanical—he survives as he cites a familiar phrase and slips into a new rhyme pattern. He gargles back to life with hardcore consonance (the /g/ and /c/ takeover) and predominant l-sounds (“manageable”; “tangible”; “manacles”) to smooth the earlier ruggedness, but it’s still a bumpy ride. “People paralyzed by the lies they tell theyself,” but not him. He’s still moving and knows the “count right,” though he reaches for tangibility as a spirit roams beyond his grasp. Gotta stay on it, as “any day could be the day they frog-march you in manacles.”

The rhymes and rhyme schemes of the first verse attack, but the long /oo/ digraph pattern sustained through the second verse stabilizes (“undo”; “Rubik’s”; “cube”; “cartoons”; “booth”; “cocoon”; “moons”; “room”; “unamused”; “truth”; “stu’”; “fumes”; “shrooms”; “proof”; “vroom”; “womb”; “spoons”). The sequence produces a mesmerizing drone. Somewhere between Ginsberg’s OM or AUM (“AU opens the gates of heaven. The humming M closes the gates of hell. AUM is a long sigh; 5 minutes intense total concentration initiates cosmic vibrations”) and the monoliths & dimensions of Sunn O))). woods sings a Song of Experience that outmaneuvers protégés with wit and wisdom. He becomes the haunting presence of the chorus, the ominous and malevolent duppy. He’s gonna “keep it real with you”—that old platitude, yes, but really—the past can’t be undone, it’s a “black Rubik’s cube.” He knows; he’s been in the “booth like cocoon[/Cocoon],” a butterfly transforming into a shabazz palace, a butterfly pimped. Youngbloods can’t relate to a film allusion from before they were twinkles in their mothers’ uteri. woods somersaults “in a dead womb.” If woods records in a Silkk casing, Augé knows why: “In one form or another, ranging from the misery of refugee camps to the cosseted luxury of five-star hotels, some experience of non-place…is today an essential component of all social existence. Hency the very particular and ultimately paradoxical character of…the fashion for ‘cocooning’, retreating into the self.”

“Dig two graves…one for them, one for you,” woods drones on. We’re leveled by Kenny Segal’s menacing foghorn blast. It’s a motif heard throughout The Microphones’ The Glow Pt. 2 (released 9/11/01) with Phil Elverum crediting the first season of Twin Peaks for the idea. (Incidentally, you can hear it at the beginning of The Microphones’ “Map.”) Segal’s foghorn (in reality, a pitched-down trombone) shows up inconsistently throughout “Hangman,” heightening our trepidation, racking our nerves.

Size it up. On “Hangman,” woods admits that “payback always inexact, but [he] be squinting over measuring spoons” like T. S. Eliot’s Prufrock busy “measur[ing] out [his] life with coffee spoons.” The dreaded hangman and his moribund quantifications bleed and reverberate like King Tubby’s fingers on the Fisher Dynamic Space Expander. One look all it take to take they measurements.

27.  THE EXECUTIONER’S FACE IS ALWAYS WELL HIDDEN

woods’ brand of [afro-]pessimism leaves Frank B. Wilderson III in a state of bewilderment. Though we’re left with few illusions on Maps (“People don’t want the truth; they want me to tell ’em grandma went to heaven” would be one such example), nothing matches the protracted decline he sets forth on “Year Zero.” “I quit lookin’ for solutions,” woods opens, signaling the twilight of the gods. If he can’t summon the strength, where does that leave us? It’s underground hip-hop, gentleman. The gods will not save you. woods manages to tell us how it is without falling into despair (note the chuckling at the end of “Rapper Weed”), but his ruthless critique often leaves us laughless. I feel mirth at his gift of gab, but I’m indignant when I page through the briefings he throws down on my desk.

woods acts in accordance with Franco Berardi’s prompting, opting to employ a “dyst-irony” [dystopian irony], “the language of autonomy.” The pervasive /n/ phoneme within the verse (“lookin’”; “solutions”; “end hunchbacked in front”; “minds”; “Edison”; “weapon”; etc.)—the motherfucking alveolar nasal produced as woods raps through gritted teeth—slides homophonically into “end,” a succession of ’em, as though he’s John the Revelator humming end end end end end. Feels like a “tumor pressing on [our] brain.” Eschatological-hop for the ’2-3. Things look bad, real bad. Stupid people rule the land, we buy a pistol and learn how to use it, and our “taxes pay police brutality settlements.” There’s “quicksand [in] every direction, so go ahead and step on in.” That sinking feeling is unavoidable. “There is no bad luck in the world but white folks,” Baby Suggs says in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and so we crouch down in front of 124 Bluestone Road with our finger on the trigger. 

Technology won’t save us either. Tesla and Edison’s “great minds” fall short (their ilk might actually be the “worstest of men”). “Apes stood and walked into the future” only to “end hunchbacked in front the computer.” March of regress. Sooner or later they red-pill and rabbit-hole themselves into the comments section of extremist YouTube channels. Shitposters leaving links to their live-stream on 8chan. “Sooner or later it’s gon’ be two unrelated active shooters”—aspiring genocidaires—“same place, same time.” In Heroes: Mass Murder and Suicide (2015), Berardi argues that active shooters possess “the psychopathology of human beings exposed to electronic hyper-simulation during their formative years, the special fragility of the first generation to grow up in the virtual age.” These killers “learn more vocabulary from a machine than from their mothers”—in [m]other words, “the dissociation of language learning from the bodily affective experience.” (woods isn’t one of them; he’s sure to “call Mom and say, I love you.”) These killers don’t know people, having only lived a “virtualization of the experience of the other.”

It’s not just the extremists, though. At even the “first sign of trouble, motherfuckers shimmy right out that human skin.” This world is never home, will never be home. Everything “home” is gone, homie. Time to tabula rasa that shit, wholesale. Everything for sale except for…nah, ev-ery-thing. “Kids,” woods says—and he’s addressing not only his young audience but other whippersnapper rappers and his own children, too—“you and your friends gon’ have to start again, / It’s nothing you can do with us—we’re fucked.” He repeats how fucked we are, for choral emphasis. We “poison everything we touch.” The wild jungle out the speaker “withered and died.” That bitter cassava on the tongue. The poisonwood bible that we thumb. Burn it down with us inside. Burn it to the ground. Make sure we don’t survive. “So what can be done when nothing can be done?” Berardi asks,

I think that ironic autonomy is the answer…. Politicians call on us to take part in their political concerns, economists call on us to be responsible, to work more, to go shopping, to stimulate the market. Priests call on us to have faith. If you follow these inveiglements to participate, to be responsible—you are trapped. Do not take part in the game, do not expect any solution from politics, do not be attached to things, do not hope.

If the gods are fucking you, you find a way to fuck them back.

28.

I do hate to be chucked in the dark aboard a strange ship. I wonder where they keep their fresh water.

—Joseph Conrad, The Rescue (1920)

“Everything is landscape,” Ashbery declares in The Double Dream of Spring. Go ahead and think rustic, but he includes “...the great urban centers… / …at the center of which / We live our lives, made up of a great quantity of isolated instants.” “I miss this place,” woods longingly raps on “NYC Tapwater,” only to undercut the thought, “—’til I’m back.” “Long face to match,” he says, just as he looked on ELUCID’s “Nostrand”: “Every day I walk past people begging to live, / Every day I walk past the living dead.” The quotidian is calamitous. And now even his “cats are strays.” He surveys the rest of the scene, from the inconsiderate bus driver, to the “new panhandler outside the store,” to the “young boy going through each bag of grabba like it’s raw silk cloth.” Time passes and doesn’t. Kenny Segal’s sloomy beat speaks volumes. Nothing ever happens ’til it do. Find woods in the doldrums. Baby, he’s got the bends. Where does he go from here? He’s been alone on an aeroplane, falling asleep against the windowpane. His blood thickens—he needs to be rejuvenated, needs an infusion, needs his drip feed on, needs a beat. He diagnoses himself: You lack the minerals and vitamins. He prescribes himself “one sip of New York City tapwater.”

A few weeks later, he sees the old panhandler “outside Kennedy Fried, grinding his jaw.” Ironically, “he ain’t recognize [woods] at all,” which we assume would please our camera-shy guy, but he seems to yearn for the recognition from this necropolitan wanderer, at least in this instance. He’s jet-lagged again, not quite grabbing the new version of himself. “Slipp[ing] in the bar at last call” probably won’t help the dissociation. The words are coming out all weird.

“I’m home, but my mind be wandering off.” So, what does he do in the second verse?—he hides in plain sight, of course. “Sometimes I don’t tell anyone I’m back around,” he confesses—he “just lay low.” woods the misanthrope. After all, it’s “the cat [that] miss [him] the most—purring loud on [his] lap.” Home is where the hard plastics are, so woods contemplates with his “fingers steepled, / wondering if [he] really need all this stuff.” Nobody ever really did it for the love, he claimed on “The Doldrums.” So when O.C. raps he’d “rather be broke and have a whole lot of respect,” woods is dubious. He hides. “Through the peephole,” creeping, dropping eaves, he “see[s] new people going up and down the stairs.” He’s a kindred spirit to Aesop Rock on his fire escape with the 6B panorama: A universe of brick buildings slightly off-balance. woods sees “new buildings just appear” out of nowhere. 

He sequesters himself in his apartment, but eventually ventures out again. He gives us a tour, keeping a body count, as Ice-T yowls, THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD! He spots celebrities, clothing boutiques, and corporate weed everywhere. On “Gilgamesh,” he saw the “whole neighborhood on stage,” even as he navigated a “two-block radius, at best.” His territory, small as it is in scale, is invaded. He gets dewy-eyed about “that ’08 Sour Diesel,” but not before “Death in a top hat dance[s] a jig in the street.” Antonius Block doing the wop, popping and locking down the block.

Gilgamesh returns to Uruk fearful “[h]is people would not share / The sorrow that he knew,” and he was right—they didn’t. “He looked at the walls, / Awed at the heights / His people had achieved / And for a moment—just a moment— / All that lay behind him / Passed from view.” On “Gilgamesh,” woods finds it “increasingly clear these walls is fucking closing in.” He’s back at the dinner table in that renovated apartment of his gentrifying neighbors. “Last year I pretended to care, / Right now, can’t spare the oxygen,” he raps, exasperated. But he can spare the exhaust fumes. He puts his “feet up on the Ottoman Empire” for some rest and respite and reveries of his own imperial conquests. 

“NYC Tapwater,” like “Kenwood Speakers” earlier, is Delivered Under the Similitude of a Dream [dreams is dangerous]. The City of Destruction you flee might not be Celestial but it’s sufficient enough. Home is never how you left it yet also is. Aphorisms fail us. You can’t go home again—sure. We follow woods on the “last car on the last train” on the Last Exit to Brooklyn. Home again, home again, jiggety-jig. “To market, to market, to buy a fat pig.” (The pork belly was brined, braised, then deep-fried…) In her 1965 poem “Questions of Travel,” Elizabeth Bishop writes:

Think of the long trip home. Should we have stayed at home and thought of here? Where should we be today?

People pin religious hope on travel, but—as Bishop once said elsewhere—the first person you meet when you get off the plane is yourself. Emerson said much the same, even discouraging travel (“The soul is no traveler; the wise man stays at home”). Everything you need is within you, he argued—you create the hallowed place, and then the place helps create you. In “Self-Reliance,” he considers traveling to Naples to become “intoxicated with beauty, and lose [his] sadness,” but he ultimately thinks better of searching for cheap flights on Expedia. “I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples,” he writes, “and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.” It all reeks of jet fuel.[3]

29.  NOSTOS

...in the world of supermodernity people are always, and never, at home.

—Augé

ELUCID opens “As The Crow Flies” straddling two simultaneous realities: home and away, near and far, physically present and mentally absent. He’s always, actively elsewhere. “I’m just cleaning up my kitchen,” he raps, as if to convince us of his domestic bliss, of the virtue of routine. “Emptying the fridge, bleaching counters, sweeping corners, / I be in my drawers aligning my silverware in order,” he says—his list of chores, implausibly, a flex. Soon, though, he’ll be “tripping through coordinates.” Tripping is operative—some altitude-induced delirium as he’s “10k and rising.” Surrealism is his point-of-view, recall (“Flummox”). His “baggage on the carousel loop” is the symbol on which to meditate. He’s “rooted” but “roam[s] free.” Presence and absence. Lost and found. Accustomed and unclaimed. The course he charts is in the form of an infinite loop. Augé writes of the Kafkaesque trappings of corporate-controlled travel: “Airline company magazines advertise hotels that advertise the airline companies…they outline a world of consumption.” The literature of non-places. You think you’re getting somewhere, but you’re not. “Everywhere and nowhere,” woods recently said. He, like ELUCID, is a real nowhere man and Everyman and all in one fell loop.

On “Soft Landing,” woods references a “brief, sweet moment” in which there’s “nothing in the thought bubble.” His final, concise verse on Maps, for all intents, is that fleeting instant. “All narrative goes back to infancy,” according to Augé. On “Baby Steps,” woods talks of “breasts out for the feeding,” which is a profane practice when he’s “feeling vulgar.” “Large areolas,” he lusts, “bite like I’m teething.” Not exactly the sacred act of nursing between madonna and child.

But that was earlier. On “As The Crow Flies,” woods is present. He concentrates upon his child with colostrum closeness and sees the journey has already begun, has always been. Drawing on Michel de Certeau, Augé writes that the “gleeful and silent experience of infancy is that of the first journey, of birth as the primal experience of differentiation, of the recognition of the self as self and as other, repeated later in the experiences of walking as the first use of space.” For all his expressions of misanthropy, an antinatalist woods is not.

“I’m in the park with the baby on the swing,” woods raps. This isn’t a reminiscence of park jams where your man gets shot for his sheep coat, though. He’s not evoking Kool Herc’s soundsystem in a jam-packed Cedar Park. If anything, we fixate on the mesmerizing motion of the swing—the symbolic push away of the parent and the insistent return of the child—a prodigal child where the only currency is glee. The child is thrust into oscillatory motion when typically we think of the father setting forth. A spirit quest under the guise of stepping out for a pack of cigarettes. But here, woods pushes his son farther along—fatheralong, for John Edgar Wideman. A preparatory speech on the pendulum swing of time. Feel-it-in-the-pit-of-the-stomach pain—a queasiness, an uneasiness. The child swings high, swings low. (Higher up, higher up, higher, the child calls like ELUCID from a storage closet stacked high with Betamax tapes—heart-wrenching home videos.) woods considers and counters Jay-Z’s image of leaving condoms on Nas’ baby seat. woods’ verse is not Supa Ugly but Supa Beautiful.

As woods sends his son into the stratosphere, it “hits [him] crazy: anything at all could happen to him.” We learned on ELUCID’s “Mangosteen” that woods’ hard shell [mechanical] only cracks when his baby gurgle, but as his son calculates risks and seeks to reap rewards, he fights the urge to tell the child: Don’t let me catch you intrepid. I mean, “he been climbing higher and higher on the jungle gym” (higher up! higher!), endangering bones and hazarding bruises. It’s like a jungle sometimes, you know, and it makes a father wonder how his child keeps from going under. The time goes so quick, another parent says, as you watch him “running faster, sometimes pushing other kids.” We shudder at the violence, innate as it seems, and struggle to navigate their dysregulated emotions as well as our own: “Tear-streaked apologies, balled fists—it’s a trip.” What he sees in the child’s behavior feels all too familiar—his own lachrymose regrets of being away—tripping. In Giovanni’s Room, Baldwin warns: “You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you can never go back.”

“It’s a trip that this is something we did,” woods reflects, acknowledging the presence of his baby’s mother for the first time. For Vincent Descombes, “The character is at home when he is at ease in the rhetoric of the people with whom he shares life.” As such, woods turns to the mother and “kiss[es] her on the lips.” The tender moment answers the stress heard about on “Soft Landing”: “It ruins the whole day when my baby-mother mad at me.” Here, home, things are set right. The ebb and flow of their relationship, the warp and weft of Penelope’s loom, settles into serenity. 

Time moves differently, exponentially, when you have children. “I watch him grow,” woods says, as if his son is doing so right before his eyes. Conceptualizing the multiplying of his son’s cells inevitably forces the gaze inward. woods is “wondering how long [he] got to live.” The last of his mortality raps on Maps, “As The Crow Flies” lands woods at the site of his final resting place, his thoughts dwelling on the immutable certainty of death. The Child is father of the Man, and the son—in all his vitality—raises the volume on the tick and the tock of the clock’s pendulum. For woods, it swings from bliss to bleak. Each split second a split atom—catastrophic. “Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors,” Poe writes—they “die with despair of heart and convulsion of throat.” Or pleurisy, like Wordsworth. Or nine bullets, like Big L. So you should pump this shit like they do in the future. woods is in possession of a plan to protect his neck and his legacy, in case. We heard it on Earl Sweatshirt’s “Tabula Rasa”: “Give my babies my rhyme books, but tell ’em, Do you.”

billy woods’ final words on Maps are a final exercise in approximation. They are against idealism; they enact that which is approximate. It is a verse composed of imperfect rhymes—close, but not quite. They point to good-enough parenting (word to Winnicott). Imperfect rhymes for imperfect lives. woods tells it slant. Like ELUCID—not fully in the kitchen, not wholly in Arizona for the show. Planting his feet in the Pacific and washing his face in the Atlantic. We sense the not-quiteness in woods’ sequence of slant rhymes:

swing | him | gym | kids | trip | did | lips | live

These end-rhymes are joined by the internal assonance of short-i sounds—a doubling-up; an overcompensation for when everything don’t always go according to plan, man.

[in] ~ swing | [anything] ~ him | [been] ~ gym | [pushing] ~ kids | [fists] ~ trip | [this] ~ did | [kiss] ~ lips | [him] ~ live

woods’ final words are short-lived, ephemeral as a push on the playground. While he wonders how long he got to live, his brief verse ends abruptly—oddly, after the seventh bar he falls silent—signaling a sooner-than-thought demise. That gnawing fear: a premature death. Time is of the essence, so he rather not waste words. He crouches at eye-level to tell his children what they need to hear before he’s gone (Western Education is forbidden, et al.). On tour, billy woods’ tendency is the same, ending songs in his set suddenly during shows. It’s on to the next performance, the next city, the next life.

Footnotes:

[1] “to be ghost” [disappear]; “to be Ghost” [face]

[2] woods has dabbled in these hip-hop double entendres before. “It’s walls topped with broken glass—I’ll show you slum village,” for example (from “No Hard Feelings”).

[3] Robert Leder, an executive at SMW Trading Company, was in his office on the 85th floor of the North Tower when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the building. “The whole office reeked of jet fuel,” he recalls.

Images:

“Alexander the Great in his griffin-powered flying chariot,” Roman d’Alexandre, 1444-1445 (detail) | “Cosmographia” (1544) by Sebastian Münster | LL Cool J, Radio album cover, 1985 (detail) | “It Shoots Further Than He Dreams,” John F. Knott (March 1918) | “Truck transporting people between the Republic of China and Libya,” Raymond Depardon (1978) | Capone-N-Noreaga, “L.A., L.A.” music video, 1996 (screenshot) | Frontispiece from Matthew Hopkins’ The Discovery of Witches (1647) | Can Dialectics Break Bricks?, dir. René Vienet, 1973 (screenshot) | Frontispiece from Matthew Hopkins’ The Discovery of Witches (1647) | Konrad Kyeser, Bellifortis, Clm 30150, Tafel 21, Blatt 91V (detail) | The Seventh Seal, dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1957 (screenshot) | Guy Debord, Guide Pychogéographique de Paris (1957) | Vivez sans temps mort, Paris graffiti (1968) | “Engraving of Croatian mathematician Faust Vrančić jumping from a tower with a parachute,” Italy (1617) | John Bunyan, “A Plan of the Road From the City of Destruction to the Celestial City,” adapted to The Pilgrim’s Progress (1821) | Joos van Cleve, The Holy Family (ca. 1512-13) | “Alexander the Great in his griffin-powered flying chariot,” Roman d'Alexandre, 1444-1445 (detail)

[petitelepus]

MTMTE Megatron witnessing his human pet get into a fight with some other pet? She claims that they started it

"Control your pet!" The owner of the other human shouted at Megatron as they held the young and bruised female human in their arms like they were made of porcelain, but you call bullshit, she hit like a motherfucking boxer.

Megatron nodded humbly, "I'm sorr-!"

"Bullshit, you ain't sorry because I'm not!" You shouted over him and gave the other woman a middle finger.

The other owner was cursing under their breath as they turned and left, leaving you and Megatron alone. The Autobot looked at you and frowned, "Why were you fighting with that other human?"

"She started it!" You defended yourself, "She called you names! Saying you're a monster and that you should die! She started it and I simply ended it!"

"By punching and pulling their hair?"

"Why are you so mad at me?" You crossed your arms angrily, "I was just defending you!"

"I don't need you to defend me. Not when everything they say is true." Megatron frowned as he looked away from you, ashamed of himself.

You were still angry, but you couldn't stay mad at your own owner. You sighed as you reached forward and petted his hand, gaining his attention back.

"Hey, you are important to me and I protect those I care for. Fiercely even as some may say." You said with a small smile.

Megatron stared at you for a moment before smiling a little and nodding, "Yes, you could be a good gladiator."

"Heck, who says I can't be one now?" You laughed and it made the old Autobot smile, "Come, let's go treat that eye of yours before it turns black."

"You should see that other bitch!" You laughed as you let Megatron pick you up and while heading towards medbay you told him excitedly how you showed that other bitch her place.

[aria-ashryver]

[excerpt] CH 17 - In Bloom; A Respite

sharing an excerpt from Starlight's CH17 for 🌸Self Love Day! 🌸 (I was going to share an excerpt from CH21 (Gabe's bday fluff) bc that's my comfort chapter, but I just wanted to share the whole thing and then it wouldn't be an excerpt any more aklasjsdk).

The moment it finally dawns on Cas that he is in love with Luca includes what might be one of my top 10 fav lines from this fic:

"Cas's destruction was absolute and beautiful."

I'm really proud of this story. Seeing Cas and Gabriel and Luca grow in their love for each other fills me with a truly precious kind of joy, and it deeply humbles me any time someone reads my writing. I hope it might bring you guys some joy too 💕

(Warnings for language!)

Luca yelled something in grumpy Scottish Gaelic from where he lay on the bed.

Cas smirked. He didn’t know what the words were, exactly, but he’d spent enough time with New Kid to know when he was swearing a blue streak.

‘You’re such a tease!’

‘I said I was doing my hair!’ Cas laughed, wanting to roll around in their banter like a cat in warm sunlight.

How long had it been since he’d thought about living with someone? About sharing his life with someone? The casual, easy intimacy of it all? Cas found himself wondering about the way you could talk to each other about nothing, incidental things, unimportant things, and somehow those conversations were the ones that would change your life.

Somewhere between “don’t forget to pick up some milk” and “have you seen my phone charger?” was I miss you when you’re gone and the sound of your voice is the first thing I want to hear when I wake up in the morning.

What would it be like to wake up every day knowing Luca was there by his side?

Cas dumped lightening powder into his mixing bowl, his movements jerky with a sudden, quiet panic, because what the actual fuck? He was meant to be teasing New Kid, not… experiencing feelings.

More feelings!

Enough with the feelings!

Fucking shit balls what the hell fucking motherfuck.

Cas scowled at himself in the mirror. He uncapped a bottle of developer from the medicine cabinet —he’d done this often enough that he could eyeball the measurements by now— and began to mix up the bleach.

Fortunately, by way of some furious mixing, Cas had succeeded in wrangling his… feelings, ew… by the time Luca kicked off their shoes and padded into the bathroom again.

You’re a fucking Venandi, Cas thought. You don’t take any shit and you’re a badass, powerful vampire. You don’t need to rely on anyone besides yourself, and you sure as shit don’t have any weaknesses!

Luca wound his arms around Cas’s waist and pressed a kiss between his shoulder blades and Cas knew he was lying to himself. That little fucker unravelled all his defences with the lightest of touches. With caressing dancer’s hands and lips made of love. Luca slipped right in and, without even trying, shattered every wall that Cas had ever built around his heart.

Cas turned in the circle of Luca’s arms. For a moment, he just looked at them. Then, dipping his head, he gently brought their mouths together. Luca’s kiss tasted of home. Cas’s destruction was absolute and beautiful.

Pulling back, this wondrous, new thing a hopeful, flickering light in his chest, he peered down at Luca, still clutching the mixing bowl in one hand, the brush in the other. He cleared his throat with a brusque cough.

‘Sit the fuck down and stop being a pain in the ass!’

Luca laughed, and the sound was starlight. They hopped up on the bathroom counter beside the sink, finding a space between the jumble of toothpaste tubes, eyeliner, and old bottles of cologne.

‘Go ahead,’ they said with a carefree wave. ‘I’ll be good. I’ll just sit here and keep you company. I like spending time with you, Cas.’

Cas wondered if it was possible to experience feelings to the point where your heart actually fucking exploded.

He was starting to think it might be.

you can find the full fic on AO3! Please note, the longfic overall has an Explicit rating and a number of tags for content and trigger warnings. It is a poly fic featuring m!Cas x m!Gabe x non-binary MC Luca 💖

Happy Self Love Day, and thank you again to @choicesfandomappreciation for your ongoing hard work in hosting (and being all-round excellent) 😊

Tagging @choicesficwriterscreations too bc why not!