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illfoandillfie · 4 years ago

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Easy As A-B-C

Pairing: Professor!Gwilym Lee x Reader

Summery: Professor Lee is getting sick of marking papers, you offer an alternative. One where he doesn't need to think at all.

Warnings: SMUT (18+), unprotected sex, bimbofication (without hypnosis), oral sex (m and f receiving), hand job, light dom/sub dynamic, dom!reader, sub!Gwil, overstimulation, maybe a little bit of hair pulling

Words: 4,537

A/N: This was massively massively inspired by my love @dracoladon and her Drarry fic Lucid (seriously, go read it because she’s a much better writer than me and also sex dumb Draco is hhhhhhh). Reading it made me want to write more himbo fics but without all the hypnosis stuff thats in my Future Management series. Then I got talking to @peachydeacon about himbo!Rog which led to talking about himbo!Gwil and this fic is the result of our discussion lmao. It was also partly inspired by a post on a porn blog that popped up on my dash but I can’t link to that because tumblrs dumb.

Also, it is a professor gwil fic but set after reader has graduated so it’s all above board lmao

Blurb Advent: Day 24

Taglist: @vee-ndetta @atomic-watermelon @kellypenac @labessieisallama @deakyclicks @jennyggggrrr @drowseoftaylor @hannafuckingsucks @i-cant-hangout-im-drumming @queenmylovely @ilovequeenmorethanyou @johndeaconshands @borhapbois @stardust-galaxies @cherries-n-rocknroll @rogersslave @scorpiogemini

Gwilym looked unreasonably hot while he was grading papers, his brow knitted, wearing a look of serious concentration made all the more noticeable by the reading glasses sliding down his nose. His loose tie and the undone top buttons of his business shirt lent him a casually dishevelled air, and that wasn’t even mentioning the way he absentmindedly twisted his pen between his fingers as he read and reread sentences he was struggling to understand, occasionally pausing to underline something or write a note in the margins. It all painted a very sexy image, the kind of serious sexy only a professor could achieve, though this sexiness was nowhere near new. You’d found his manner oddly arousing even when he’d been your professor. Of course, that had been a few years ago and well before you’d had your chance encounter in the local second hand bookstore that led you to ask him out. He’d stuttered out something about never having even thought of you as more than his student and “really I feel almost as if I’ll get in trouble for the conversation as soon as I get back to campus.” But the awkwardness soon changed when you confessed to having had a minor crush on him back in the day and having since hoped to run into him. He seemed more open to the idea of dinner with you after that and, if you were being honest, more cocky too, but cocky in a decidedly dignified and charming way. Anyway, one thing led to another and now here you were somewhere close to a year and half later and you were struggling not to stare at Gwil as he graded papers and looked professor-ally disarrayed and hot.

You knew it was something to do with the Romantic era poets that the students had to write about because he’d read a question out to you earlier to get your opinion of if it was confusingly worded. “No, I don’t think so,” “Then why in god’s name do none of my students get it?” he looked about ready to hit his head against the desk until he passed out but he returned to the topmost paper with a sigh and ruffled hair from where he’d run his hand through it. That’s when you’d started trying not to stare. A tall order when all you could think about was dragging Gwil to the bedroom and ravishing him enough to make him forget all about John Keats and poetry and the English language itself. Not that that was exactly hard. No, Gwilym had a tendency to get a little dazed and confused when you really gave it to him. Sex drunk you’d decided to call it. A transformation that you quite delighted in witnessing and causing. Gwil was sharp as a tack usually, always ready with some obscure fact or quote from literature. It was part of what made him such a good teacher, his memory for all things bookish, as well as his approachable (if a little stern) demeanour and his determination to get the best from his students. But it wasn’t hard to shut down his brain, cloud his memory and entirely befuddle him. One time you’d snuck into the bathroom at the restaurant you’d gone to for dinner and poor Gwilym had become so spaced out he’d spilt half a glass of wine in his lap and then walked into the glass door as you left, even with you leading him by the hand. You supposed that what they said about great power and responsibility was true. All the same, it was a fun power to wield and you knew that, with the right sort of attention, you could have Gwilym babbling incomprehensible gibberish with no memory of what a poem even was, which was surely something he’d appreciate right about now.

You blinked yourself from your reverie as, finally, Gwil set his glasses aside and rose from his seat, groaning as he stretched out the stiffness in his back. He rolled his neck back and forth, your eyes following, before letting his shoulders drop and moving to sit next to you on the couch. “I can’t do it anymore, I can’t read another word about Byron or I’ll loose it.” He sighed, draping an arm around your shoulders and leaning into your neck. “Byron? I remember that assignment. Everyone hated you for it,” His breath was warm against your skin as he spoke, sending a tingle down your spine, “Well if this year’s lot is anything to go by, the feeling was probably mutual,” “Mmm, I remember one girl saying she was going to shove her copy of Don Juan up your arse if she didn’t pass,” He lifted his head again and laughed, “And yet my rectum remains Byron fee and no other injuries befell me, so either I taught you enough to get by or you were all a bunch of cowards,” “Bit of both probably. And why would this year’s be any different, huh?” “I don’t know, you haven’t read any of their attempts at cohesive analysis. Some of them are just throwing out terms like allusion and anapestic and personification all willy-nilly, clearly without properly understanding them. ” “I think you’re being too harsh on them. They’re first years after all and it’s not always easy to understand all that poncy poetical bullshit. Plus, you know it all already so of course everyone else seems stupid to you,” “Maybe,” he conceded, though it seemed to take some effort. “Honestly, someone should put you in their position, see how well you go with it,” “Yeah? And who would do something like that?” Gwilym laughed as you shifted to straddle his lap, accepting the kiss you offered, “You?” “Maybe I will. Spell personification for me,” “You know it’s not high school English, right. We don’t do pop quizzes on spelling and grammar.” “I know you don’t, but this is my subject and I’m testing spelling. Besides,” you let your hand drop between you, brushing lightly over the front of his pants, “I promise it’ll be fun.” Gwil gave a half-hearted eye roll, “P-E-R-S-O-N-I-F-I-C-A-T-I-O-N, personification. D’you want me to use it in a sentence too?” You knew he’d get it right. Gwil always had been good at spelling off the top of his head which you supposed was a side effect of all his reading and the years devoted to the written word. But it was still a little annoying. Mostly because he was being a bit of a tool about the whole thing, but it didn’t help that you’d grown quite wet thinking about how you’d like to have him, like to turn him into the fucked out airhead you’d seen before. You shook your head and tutted at him as if he got it wrong. “No, that’s definitely it. I’ve just read it about a hundred times, I know I’m right. P-E-R-S-O-N-I-F-I-C-A-T-I-O-N,” he spelt it faster that time, trying to prove that you were wrong. “Try allusion for me,” “A-L-L-U-S-I-O-N,” Right again. You sighed as if you were disappointed. Gwilym raised his eyebrows but said nothing. “What about caesura?” “C-E-A-S-U-R-A,” The mistake was an easy one to make, two letters flipped around the wrong way, and you could tell he knew it was wrong as soon as he’d said it. He was surprised when you leant forward to kiss him again, cupping his jaw with one hand as you dropped the other and slowly pulled down the zip on his work pants. “But I fucked up,” he said softly, eyes still closed as you pulled away a few centimetres. You just smiled as you thought of a new word, “Anapestic,” It was another word Gwil had mentioned as seeing in his student’s essays so you knew it would be fresh in his mind and he proved as much when he spelt it, “A-N-A-P-E-S-T-I-C,” He was right of course, so you tutted and pulled your hand away from his crotch, grabbing his chin with your other and forcing him to look at you, “You can do better than that.” His features shifted at the sudden loss of contact, the look of concentration returned once more. If anything, your much closer proximity to the expression made him seem all the more hot but you resisted the urge to give in and drag him to the bedroom, curious if he’d catch onto your little game now and, equally so, to see if he’d play along, “Try Onomatopoeia.” A longer word gave him more chances to get things wrong but would his pride and his brain allow that? Apparently so. “O-N-O-M-” Gwil paused and thought for a second, his eyes narrowed as his looked at you, “O-N-O-M-A-T-O-P-I-A,” the last three letters were said with such deliberate diction that you knew he’d figured it out. “Good boy,” you said, letting your hands slip inside his undone pants to massage his dick. His hips jolted at the contact and he let his hands fall to your arse, squeezing. “What about, dactyl?” His reply was instant, unthinking, and totally correct, “D-A-C-T-Y-L,” You clicked your tongue condescendingly as you once again removed your hands from him. “Fuck,” “Well that’s what happens when you get things wrong, honey, and such an easy one too,” “I didn’t get it wro- fine, give me another,” You smiled, unable to hide how delighted you were that he was interested in following your rules, even if it was just his competitive streak rearing its head to show that he could out smart you, “Assonance,” Gwilym spelt the word slowly and carefully, making sure to only say one ‘s’ and to leave off the ‘e’. And you made sure to reward him for it, shuffling backwards on his lap so you could shimmy his pants down his thighs and wrap your hand around his cock. He raised an eyebrow at you but otherwise made no comment as he leant back in his seat to enjoy the attention. “Romanticism,” Once again Gwilym was careful with his spelling, intentionally replacing the ‘c’ with a double ‘s’ but that was the kind of behaviour you wanted to encourage so you kept stroking him off, twisting your wrist, dragging your thumb over his flushed tip. It must have felt good with the way he was sighing, shifting his shoulders as if to move his whole body closer to yours. “So clever baby, what about,” you paused, dredging up memories of poetry analysis and the words you used to have burned into your brain but which you’d not had much use for recently, “Enjambment” “Ummm, E-N,” Gwil hummed as you leant over him and let a trail of spit drip onto his cock, using your hand to spread it over his length, “Enjamb-ment, uh, E-N-J-A- no E, no A, M-E-N-T,” You leant into his ear and spoke softly, “That’s right, being so good for me, so clever. What should I do next though? Ride you? Or maybe suck you off? Or just keep doing this?” “Uh,” Gwilym shook his head a little as if to clear it, “mouth? Please?” “Of course, baby. If you can spell dissonance for me.” You were quietly confident that he’d get the spelling wrong, already noticing the first sign of his impending brainlessness, extra filler words where he’d normally not need them. It was funny though, usually he wouldn’t reach that stage until he was much closer to nutting. “D-I-S” he rushed through the first three letters and then stopped, biting his lip, “T-um, A-N-E-N-C-E.” You were sure the errors in that word were less intentional than the previous few and, as promised, slipped off his lap and settled yourself between his legs, pulling his pants off so he could spread them wider for you. You held eye contact as you let your tongue trail along the underside of his cock, tracing along a vein, though you couldn’t help but smile as he groaned above you. “Can you spell Decasyllable for me?” you asked before closing your lips around the head of his cock. “What? Oh, um, D-E-C-K- fuck,” he broke off as you swirled your tongue around his tip. “Fuck’s not a letter, baby,” you sank down on him again, bobbing a little lower. “I know, um, Deck-syllable, D-E-C-K-A-S-Y-B-L-E, I think. Is that right?” In answer you hummed and took him a little deeper, pushing his shirt up towards his chest. Gwilym took the hint and pulled it off before he grabbed your hair, leaning his head against the back of the couch. For a moment you just focused on sucking him off, listening to his shallow breathing and whiny groans. But you weren’t finished with your game yet.

“Epigraph?” you asked before bobbing down on him again, pushing yourself to take him deeper still. Gwilym remained silent as you gagged and pulled back from him again to breath freely. “Well?” “What did you say?” “Epigraph. Can you spell that?” He nodded as you resumed your bobbing, his hand grabbing at your hair, “E-P-P-E-G-R-A-F-F.” You hummed around him and his hips bucked up, pushing him further down your throat for a second. “No, don’t stop,” he whined under his breath as once again you let him fall from between your lips. “Sorry baby,” you wrapped your hand around his base and switched back to jerking him off, “you’re so hard though and I know you want to earn your orgasm like a good boy,” Gwilym nodded. “Okay, so spell meter,” “M- oh, I don’t know,” “You do know, baby, you just gotta try. Meter,” He scrunched his face up in thought, “M-E-E-T-R,” “See, I said you knew it, and you did it so well!” Gwilym gave you a dopey smile, looking proud at your praise, “I did?” His mouth dropped open with the movement of your hand. “Of course baby! You got it completely right because you’re so clever. What about sonnet, do you think you can do that one for me?” He nodded enthusiastically, “S-N-E-T,” “Very good! Okay, three more and I’ll let you cum,” “Okay!” “Okay, what about,” you thought for a moment, watching your hand pumping over his shaft as you trailed your fingernails lightly over his thigh, “Spell rhyme,” “Ummm,” Gwilym bit his lip in thought, soft grunting noises rising in his throat in time with your strokes. “It’s a bit of a tricky one,” “Yeah.” “And it’s hard to concentrate isn’t it?” “Mmhmm, so hard to con-ten-tate,” he thought for a little longer as you slowed your hand, “rrr- R-I-M,” “So clever baby! Okay canto,” “Oh! Ummm,” Gwilym pouted and whined as you unexpectedly drew the tip of your tongue around his head, “I don’ know,” “No?” He shook his head, eyebrows furrowed. “Okay what about, poem?” Gwilym seemed to have reached the last dregs of his knowledge, grunting in frustration as he shook his head again.” “You sure you don’t know?” He bucked his hips up into your hand as he shook his head again. “Alright, I’ll give you an easy one then. Spell your name for me, spell Gwilym,” Gwil’s eyes lit up at the suggestion but his face quickly slipped into a frown again, the expression getting more pronounced with every passing second he didn’t say anything. He sought out your face, his eyes brimming with frustrated tears, “I don’t…” his fists balled up as he looked to you for help. “You don’t remember?” He shook his head once more, a tear shaking loose and rolling down his cheek, “you said it was easy.” “It’s okay if you don’t know,” “Really?” he sniffled. “Of course it’s okay. You’re not supposed to know things.” “I’m not?” “Awww, of course not baby. That’s why I’m here, to know things, and you’re just here to make me happy.” Gwilym sighed and leaned back against the couch, smiling again. “Do you want to give it a try for me?” “Umm,” he whined as you slowed your strokes “It would make me very happy,” “Okay, umm…G? L? ummmm, M?” “You’re so clever, baby!” Gwilym giggled proudly and grinned at you as you adjusted your grip on his cock. “You’re my good, smart boy, aren’t you baby?” “Mmhmm,” he bucked his hips towards you as you took him into your mouth again. “Feels go-od,” he mumbled, almost panting with how close he was. You dragged the hand that rested on his thigh up to cup his balls as you sucked on his tip until he moaned and came, spilling his seed over your tongue.

You kept working your hand along his length, even after you’d pulled your mouth from him. “Was that a good orgasm baby? Did it make you feel good?” He nodded, pouting a little as you kept wanking him, “good oggsam,” It took all your effort not to laugh at that, biting on the inside of your cheek to keep from letting so much as a chuckle slip. Very few things delighted you as much as when Gwil forgot how to talk properly. “You know,” you said as you finally let his cock free, “sometimes when people have orgasms they feel euphoric. Do you feel euphoric?” “Mmhmm, you-porik.” “Clever boy. Do you want to help me feel euphoric?” “How?” “With your mouth,” “Oh! Okay!” You braced yourself against his knees as you stood, leaning forward to give Gwil a small kiss on the lips. He closed his eyes and smiled up at you contentedly as you shimmied out of your own clothes, dropping them all to the floor. “You going to let me lie down?” you asked, tapping Gwil on the shoulder. He looked around confusedly for a moment before his eyes settled on you, growing wider as he realised how naked you were. Without warning he surged forward, his hands grabbing your arse as he nuzzled his face in the valley between your breasts. If it were up to Gwil he would have stayed there all day but you had need for him elsewhere so you yanked his head back by his hair, earning a small noise of displeasure. “Don’t complain, baby. You want to make me feel euphoric, right?” “Mmhmm,” he hummed earnestly. “And how do you think you could do that?” “I don’t know,” “Maybe, cunnilingus?” “cun-un-un-un-gus,” “Exactly,” you directed his gaze down to your pussy, failing to hide your amused grin. But he was too far gone to notice, happily slipping to his knees in front of you. Telling him to wait for a second, you climbed onto the couch and spread your legs, beckoning him between them once you were comfortable.

He hadn’t been able to say the word but that didn’t mean he wasn’t skilled at the act. A string of soft hums and throaty sounds rose to your lips as he licked your cunt, the scratchy sensation of his beard only amplifying the soft, wet, warmth of his tongue. “Can you, oh, can you spell poem for me baby?” Gwilym hummed and then started naming letters, his mouth still pressed against your cunt as if he didn’t realise he couldn’t talk and suck at the same time. You didn’t bother to stop him when he said too many letters or correct him when all of them were wrong. You just let his breath wash over you, his tongue flicking against your clit with each new letter, eliciting longer moans and sighs from you. “Fuck Gwil,” you panted, “keep going,” “Keep going,” he repeated, his voice muffled as he dragged his tongue all the way down your slit and then back up again, making you whine. You jolted when he reached your clit again and pressed against his head, keeping him close to you, your other hand trailing up your chest to tweak your nipples and knead your breasts. Occasionally you’d give him an instruction – “faster please,” or “do that again,” or “fuck Gwil, right there,” – and he’d repeat the words back to you, softened and often a little slurred together or mispronounced, before doing as he was asked, drawing you closer to release. He was pleased whenever another groan or mewl slipped from your lips, responding to them with sounds of his own as if he were savouring a particularly delicious meal. It seemed he’d taken what you’d said about making you happy to heart, though some of his whines might have had more to do with his cock, hard again and straining to be touched as his attention remained focused on you. “I’m c-lose ba-by,” you grunted as Gwilym pressed his mouth to your lower lips, as if to give you a soft chaste kiss, only to begin shaking his head side to side, rubbing his face against your cunt. “loase,” he muttered to himself, trailing his tongue back up to your clit, making you grind your hips up into him. It was impossible to keep your mouth shut in the face of such a feeling, wantonly moaning as you felt your orgasm bubbling to the surface. Gwilym hummed against you in response to a particularly loud moan which managed to be your undoing, your knees trying to clamp shut around his head as he continued to suck at your clit.

When you calmed enough to let go of his hair and loosen your thighs from around his ears, Gwilym looked up at you. His face was shiny and wet but he seemed to have regained some of his usual awareness. His eyes weren’t quite as vacant and his smile less dopey than it had been. “Feel good?” he asked, sounding almost normal except for a slight lightness in his tone. “Very good baby,” you leaned forward and kissed him full on the lips, tasting yourself as he opened his mouth and accepted your tongue. Slowly you dropped your hand between you, finding his cock again, not quite done with your brainless toy. He grunted against your lips and bucked into your hand as you stopped his return to sense. “Isn’t this fun?” you said softly as you pulled back, holding Gwil by the chin to stop him from trying to follow. “Yeah, fun,” a smile slowly tugging at his lips, “what is?” “Not needing to think, baby,” “Oh! Yes,” he laughed. “You’re too pretty to have a brain anyway, aren’t you? Much better off letting it leak out of your head,” “Mmhmm, much,” “And do you know what good, dumb boys get?” “No?” “They get fucked. Would you like that?” “Yes yes yes,” “Alright, lie back for me,” you chuckled, giving his cock a final stroke. Gwilym settled on the carpet on his back, grinning as you straddled his lap. Silently he held out his hand, all but two of his fingers folded against his palm. “No, I don’t need your fingers sweetie,” you said, giving the tips of his two fingers a light kiss, “as dextrous as they are and as much as I enjoy them, I think I’m okay skipping straight to your cock,” He nodded, letting you place his hand down on the floor again. You watched his face as you slowly sank down onto him, once again the picture of cunt drunk bliss with glazed eyes and his lip between his teeth. He smiled as you leaned down to kiss him, rolling your hips against his slowly. As you tongues entwined again, Gwilym framed your waist with his hands, slowly dragging them up your sides and onto your chest. He cupped each of your breasts in one of his palms, squeezing softly as you rocked forward and back. “Better than Byron isn’t this?” you asked, pushing yourself up a bit, but not so far you couldn’t kiss him again. “Wha’s Byron?” You laughed, “Y’know I think this might be the dumbest I’ve seen you. Can’t believe all it took was a rigged spelling test. He obviously didn’t understand, staring blankly back at you.

What he did understand was that you were moving further away from him and he whined as you pushed yourself to sit higher again, bracing your hands on his chest as you used your knees to raise and lower yourself. It still wasn’t enough though so you shifted again before too long, placing a hand behind you to grab Gwil’s leg. You leant back on it changing the angle of Gwilym’s cock, and felt his hands drop from your chest, no longer able to reach as easily. They came to rest on your leg, his fingertips digging into your skin as you rode him, keening as you felt the start of your orgasm building in the pit of your stomach. “Fuck Gwil, fill me so well, feels so good,” “My dex-ik-tus cock?” You couldn’t help but laugh, taken by surprise at his misunderstanding and mispronunciation of dextrous, but you nodded in agreement too, repeating your sentiments about how good it felt. “Wanna make me feel even better?” “How?” You sat forward again and reached for his hand, pulling it to your clit. Gwilym took the hint, messily rubbing as you bounced on his cock, but his whines and moans only grew as you rode him. “You’re close?” “Mmhmm,” You were on the verge of asking if he could hold it when he came with a groan, pulsing inside you. But you didn’t stop. “I’m close too, baby, so I’m gonna keep fucking you, okay?” He nodded, eyes fixed on you. “Good boy.” You panted, grabbing his wrist to hold his hand at your clit and adjusting your rhythm. Each time you sank back down onto him you did it harder, slamming his cock into you as deep as you could manage, groaning with each one. Your orgasm was frustratingly close but Gwilym was becoming steadily more sensitive as his subsided, wincing more with each of your thrusts. The winces turned to whimpers which turned to whines as you whispered that you were so close. “Almost baby, almost,” “Please. Hur’s,” “Nearly, just. One. More,” you threw your head back with a moan as you finally found your release, Gwil whining when you pulsed around him, a fresh tear running from the corner of his eye onto the carpet as he squirmed under you.

“Sorry, baby,” you said softly as you carefully dismounted him. He hummed as you kissed him again, leaving an extra kiss against the tip of his nose. “Did so well, such a good boy for me,” “Yeah?” “Mmhmm, so good,” He gave you a slightly watery smile and let you pull him into a cuddle, sighing contentedly when you brushed your fingers through his hair. You stayed like that for a while, knowing that later you’d regret lying on the floor for so long but unable to find the energy to move or the willpower to tell Gwilym you had to let him go. He gradually lost the fucked out expression, becoming more aware of his surroundings and more capable of clear speech. “How are you feeling?” you asked when you realised he’d blinked away the last of his sex drunk vacancy. “Better than before. Little tired but much more relaxed and very satisfied. And, before you ask, yes that’s satisfied and yes I can spell it if you want,” “I believe you.”

#my writing #my fics #smut fic #gwilym lee x reader #gwilym lee smut #gwilym lee imagine #this has been half written in my drafts for much too long now #but im very happy to be able to finally post it!#just got one more thing to write for this advent countdown #which i'll try and knock off after i get back from church #so that its ready to go in the morning #anyway #hope ya'll like this #i might kind of love writing pretty dumb boys #blurb advent 2020

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artsninspo · 5 years ago

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NerdBae - Part III

Tre smiles seeing all the girls in his home in the living room like it’s a beauty parlour. He’d missed it more than anything. There was a time when they were all they had in the world. His dad hadn’t been in his life much. His mom had struggled. He’d tried to help out when he could. Then Gina and Elle had become friends and she spent so many days at their house. Then Nina his mom and Jo, Elles mom got close. They were their own little village, thick as thieves.

“I have a surprise for you ladies” he charms getting a loving look from his mother.

“I hope mine is the nicest big brother” Gina chimes and Tre hands each of them a letter addressed to them. They all open them in silence and Elles eyes are the first to his in shock before the screaming starts from Gina.

“Baby, I cant take this” his mother says with a trembling hand and a lightening heart beat.

“Yes mom you can” he reasons.

“Tre, you might need this” Jo adds.

“I don’t and there’s not a single lie there on that paper” he explains causing the mothers to blink in disbelief.

“Thank you” Gina squeals squeezing him tight.

“You’re welcome” he kisses his sisters cheek happy to see her happy.

“A hundred grand a year after taxes for being family, shit Tre!” Gina smiles jumping for joy.

“Just accept it, you’ve worked hard enough momma and momma Joe. I’m in a position to help now - let me.” Tre explains too good to be true.

“What about when you want to start your own family, you’re going to need” the selfless women continue.

“Mom, haven’t I always been dependable? Trust me when I say this is safe, it’s fully legal, it’s not even fully what you deserve but I won’t accept any of you not accepting it” Tre puts his foot down. Elle sits in utter shock still unable to move.

“Baby” his mother says and the water works start from both of them - years worth of weights off of their shoulders. He tries staying strong as they hug him but the tears fall. They didn’t have to do anything anymore, except for live their life and answer his phone calls to make 100k after taxes each year. Everyone’s dream job and a long time coming for the mothers that did everything to be there for heir kids. They’d become best friends through their daughters and had been the only people to make him feel like he was good enough.

The hysteria dies and Jo looks at Elle holding the letter with shock still in her eyes - the only person who hadn’t shed a tear.

“Tre” she sighs having read the letter through. There were other perks, other ridiculously thoughtful perks.

“If I start crying, it’ll be very ugly” she swallows feeling overwhelmed and emotional but the tears roll in like a storm as she walks into his arms genuinely appreciative. She’d always been a sweetheart. She wanted nothing more than to unburden her mother and herself and Tre just swoops in with pure intentions to save the day. It turns into a group hug and seeing them happy makes him feel like he’s won the Nobel piece prize.

————

Jo had always been an early riser, she never had a son but she loved Tre like he was her own. He was shy and introverted but he loved talking the load off. They bonded over making breakfast.

“Morning Angel” she smiles and he gives her a coffee starting on his morning smoothie before smelling one of her world famous omelette.

“Morning Ma, you don’t have to” he smiles.

“You’re still my angel and I’m here - so I might as well” she justifies handing him the plate. There’s nothing for him to do but smile accept the dish. “You got Ellie to show emotion, she’s been pretty distant and bogged up lately” Jo comments.

“You know she loves you”

“I was too hard on her” Jo reasons.

“She’s strong, she can take care of herself, she’s doing well” Tre reasons hoping to ease Jo’s worry. The kids never told their mothers their dilemmas or pains. They’d always been their emotional support team.

“She loved that boy a lot, I just can’t imagine him not breaking her heart. I know he did and none of us got to be there for her through it” Jo shrugs feeling guilty. “I wish she liked good men, kind men, men like you Tre” Jo says scrambling the eggs and starting on French toast making the six burner stove her bitch.

“She’s here with us again, as far as I can tell she’s good, all we have to do is love her. She loves us.” Tre says sitting to eat.

“And we love you kiddo” Jo smiles. “Need me to iron your shirt and tie for the party tonight?”

“Ma I’m good” Tre kisses her cheek.

———

It took the village, the mothers had got Elle into her gown, perfected her elegant hairstyle and Gina and Elle co created her make up look. It felt like too much when she looked in the mirror seeing nothing less than the glamour of a sixties starlet.

“Don’t let any of those sleazy bozos touch my best friend, disrespect by best friend or make her have to put the pause on pretty to defend you okay” Gina instructs Tre running the lint roller down his suit one last time.

“No ones doing anything to Elle” he tells Gina wearing a serious expression and making his sister smirk.

“Make it count Tre, who knows what could happen? Besides I’m sure if your first crush is beloved by your family, cleans up nice and takes care of you; that adds brownie points” Gina says casually getting a grimace. Elle wasn’t Tre’s first crush. He loved her growing up and thought she was sweet.

“We both know my first crush-‘

“Sometimes you’re very stupid” Gina huffs adjusting his tie clip. “Go on you’re going to be late.

Elle smiles looking Tre over as he gets into the car taking them to the event. “You look spiffy” she compliments as he looks her over.

“You look perfect” he compliments honestly.

“Thanks, don’t make my head bigger” Elle laughs

Casual conversation sustains the car ride there before they walk out hand in hand to the busy event hall. People were everywhere coupled with suggestively dressed servers and the whole nine yards. What overwhelmed Elle even more was how much everyone seemed to like and respect Tre. Husbands and their wives wore genuine smiles inviting them to dinner telling stories that absolutely sounded like him. How he’d swooped in and saved them stress, time and money by helping them solve a problem. Elle watched as he worked the floor expertly, she saw the longing looks from other women and watched people throw themselves in-front of him to make their elevator pitches.

“Who’s this beauty” a man says coming up casually.

“Don’t even look at her like that Rob, this is Elle” Tre mutters making the mans eyes widen.

“You didn’t say she was a smokestack” Rob says candidly making Elle smile as Tre pulls out her seat to begin the dinner and innovation ceremony.

“Elle this is rob my best friend, Rob this is Elle”

“Pleasure” Rob smiles looking her over with unspoken words in his eyes, before looking up at his friend.

The night goes extremely well even when they come across the three guys from the mall. Their company is powerful but they’re the minority in terms of people who are assholes to Tre. He helps Elle into the limo only to be socked in his shoulder the moment he’s buckled in.

“Ouch, Elle what was that for?” He holds the assaulted region, concern in his eyes.

“For playing me like a fool Tre” Elle smiles annoyed and amused. “You didn’t need me there everyone loves you there. You let me believe they were jealous bullies when they’re jealous cause your the man to be” Elle huffs shaking her head pleasantly surprised.

“So you hit me?” Tre asks.

“Yes!” Elle chuckles folding her arms still a little shocked. “Honestly can’t take you and all your surprises” she admits making him smile. He takes her chin like he had time and time again all night placing a respectful kiss on her cheek. He pulls back to look at her and it feels like theres a force keeping them together before they both smile at the same time embracing each other.

“I’m sorry for keeping things from you, I just wanted to make the most of the situation”

“You’re forgiven but I’m done giving you all the compliments and all that because I see you know you’re that guy - still you allow everyone to act like you’re timid. Especially Gina” Elle reasons making Tre laugh.

“I get insecure like everyone else Ellie and I don’t do anything for Gina that I don’t want to do, or anyone else for that matter. I don’t like conflict and nothing makes me happier than seeing you all happy.” He admits honestly .

Tre was genuinely taken a back by Elles decorum. She looked like a million bucks and definitely belonged in another age with her glamorous charm that almost felt old Hollywood with her full figure and million dollar smile. He’d never seen her be so soft. It wasn’t that she was hard but there was never an instance where she wasn’t a strong and assertive woman that stood her ground and now she was the complete opposite silencing all his critics and competitors with her charm. He’d been told several time by elder veterans in the field to lock her down with a ring in only an hour at the party.

“Thank you for coming and making me look good”

“No problem sweetie” Elle teases making him smile before tickling him playfully.

“Behave” he laughs finally able to restrain her gently.

“Okay” she concedes.

“We haven’t really talked about how you been, you and your mom have been a little awkward” Tre reasons.

“You mean about Cam and I ending? That was a year ago now”

“No one knows what happened”

“Gina does”

“Yeah but you have blood pacts” he exaggerates.

“We’re having a good night Cameron is the last person I want to talk about. Its humiliating” Elle admits.

“You should know you don’t have to hide anything from me” he says and Elle sighs pulling away from him.

“I thought Cam and I were good, he had this new concept a love storyboard in eleven pieces. It came with an accompanying poetry book with a painting on one page and its poem beside it. He was sleeping with his child’s mother still, and it was all about her and I was just there to get his career off the ground and his artistic muse but not his inspiration.” Elle sighs shaking her head. “I embarrassed myself with a ver bad reaction and spent the night in jail. He didn’t press charges and I’ve moved on” Elle shrugs.

“Cant imagine a man sleeping around on you?” Tre says. “I’m sorry that happened”

“Could’ve been worse Tre. Had I have been really in love with him - who knows what would’ve happened. He wrote a letter after he realized I wouldn’t talk to him. He said he did it to provoke me and because I wasn’t doing what a woman should in a relationship” Elle smiles.

Tre swallows in shock, it’s not what he expected. Not at all. He’d met Cameron and didn’t like him but he didn’t think he’d be stupid ugh to mistreat a women like Elle.

“I’m sorry he hurt you” he says making Elle smile.

“He wasn’t enough of a man for you anyways. You deserve much better” Tre affirms making Elle smile. “You should go for guys like me, until you’re ready for that stay single. You’ve been through enough - these muscles might come with higher testosterone would you want me getting my ass kicked for defending you?” He asks making her laugh.

“Even if a lion hasn’t killed in the wild before, it’s still a lion with all its programming. There’s a reason you weren’t getting beat up and you’re good at football - that’s why people don’t play with you” Elle explains honestly leaning back on his shoulder.

“Forget the five star restaurant let’s go home, get moms and Gina and lets go bowling like one times. As a family” Elle suggests.

“Nah, you’re still my girlfriend for the next few hours” Tre says chuckling a little. “Besides you gotta talk to your momma when you get back so you need the liquid courage.”

A/N: Hows NerdBae doing? Are we impressed? Are we surprised? And it seems like everyone is rooting for them, do we think he’s gonna get the girl?

_________

@bugngiz @lifelover4u @l-auteuse @notsomellowmushroom @princessasaani @heavensangelxo @bakarilennox

@tastingmellow @chaneajoyyy @thehomierobbstark @jad3djay @thickemadame @doublesidedscoobysnacks @aanairb @hooliemooliedonutshawp

@quietstorm-73 @thememoireeofme @tip222u @amelatonin @cherrystainedlipsbaby @keiva1000 @highlifeflylife

@queenflaws @uzumaki-rebellion @cutewylie @twistedcharismaaa @xo-goldengirl @lostennyc

#Trevante Rhodes #nerdbae #masterlist #trevante rhodes x reader #trevanterhodesimagine #trevante x black reader #trevante

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whatisitnowforfuckssake · 6 years ago

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Am I weird for being different? Im a 15 year old girl. Ive been watching anime for about 6 years. Im into death metal, rock, and rap. not pop and dubstep like normal people. I tend to be an outcast because i like anime and i've never had a boyfriend, unlike my "friends". Some 13 year olds at my school are pregnant and have done drugs.I cant ever seem to find someone who likes the same things as me. I like to dress in black and my hair is very short and some people call me emo.

A lot of human psychology can be summarised by two opposing forces: we are self-determining rational agents who insist on forging independent identities while simultaneously being a social species who necessarily must mitigate various parts of our (physical and mental) selves in order to fit into a group, or be seen as part of various cultural, political or social movements. This works on the smallest micro level of your individual decision-making and the macro level of wars between countries. The conflict between these two forces causes a lot of problems in the human mind.

So:

1. There are no “normal people”.

Everyone has some thoughts or desires or qualities that separate him from the majority of humans. Some of them choose to not make these differences known publicly, and others might not even be aware that it counts as a difference.

2. Wanting to be “normal” is boring.

In other words, aiming to achieve membership of the non-existent “normal people” is boring. There’s nothing “wrong” with wanting to be normal. Some people who are thrust into very exciting (or unpleasant) situations crave boring lives, and that’s fine too. But it’s still boring.

3. You are not alone.

It sounds trite, but no matter how crazy you think you are, there’s always someone crazier than you. And no matter what kind of “weird” stuff you’re into, there is someone out there who loves all that stuff and more. In your particular case, lots of people like anime and lots of girls your age don’t have boyfriends.

I’m a 42-year-old white guy living in Ireland. I think the greatest television show ever made (possibly) is a Canadian show called The Newsroom. Not the American show with Jeff Daniels; a different, smaller show that CBC put on their network in the 1990s. No one I have ever met (including a few Canadians!) has ever heard of it.

I am still convinced that there are other people in the world who have not only seen it, but think it’s as great as it obviously is. The point of this bit is to let you know that sometimes the search continues, and that’s fine too.

4. Put your hair any way you like.

Listen to whatever music you like. No one who matters will care. No one who matters will care.

5. Go to college.

I’m trying not to sound elitist here, but when you go to college, you will meet all sorts of different people and be exposed to all sorts of different ideas and you’ll probably feel a lot more at home. Because universities are full of “individuals”, they tend to be a lot less judgy than small towns in Kentucky. I had some shameful opinions about homosexuals and even Protestants (!) before I went to university. Also, you’ll get an “education” or whatever.

6. Engage creatively with the world.

Learn music, get into a band, make some noise in someone’s garage. Learn to draw, figure out how those animation programs work and make your own anime.

“I can’t do that."

YES YOU CAN!

Write some stories, poems, song lyrics. You are a 15-year-old girl! You are supposed to be full of passion and energy and you’re in that bracket of human who might be the only bracket to ever really "get” what love means. (If you don’t love like a 15-year-old girl, you’re doing it wrong.) Take all that passion and energy and make something! Then share it, on Facebook, on YouTube, on tumblr, look everyone, this is what I did!

I AM FUCKING AMAZING!

What did you do today, 15-year-old girl?

“I wrote a poem, a broke an amp, I made up an entire world of people living in post-apocalyptic Tokyo and here is what it looks like. I AM FUCKING AMAZING!”

Yes you are, 15-year-old girl. I will reluctantly concede that you are fucking amazing.

#weird #art #creativity

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smokeybrandcompositions · 5 years ago

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Blackjack

I’m blacker than the ace of spades, man. I love our skin tone. I love our swag. I love everything about being black, culturally. We are the most influential and imitated culture, worldwide, and at the same time, the most aggressively hated. When i was in high school, i asked a bigot who was a huge fan of Busta Rhymes how he could be such a hypocrite and he told me, i sh*t you not, “Love the sinner not the sin.” Being black was a sin to this motherf*cker but, since he liked our music, he compartmentalized our identity into something more palatable to his ignorant senses. He separated Busta’s art from Busta, himself, which i can’t even understand. Beethoven was black. You’re telling me his Fifth is any less a triumph of sound because of his moorish beginnings? I find it odd how people can just write off your ethnic identity when you don’t fit into the box they want.

My dad was one of the blackest motherf*ckers i have ever met but what does that mean? Yes, he was loud. Yes, he was intimidating. Yes, he was a petty criminal and drug addict. But he was more than that. He was also a brilliant mechanic and gifted athlete. He was amazing when it came to problem solving and often weeded out solutions most people couldn’t even see. Pops grew up in a single-parent home, in the ghettos of San Francisco during the 60s and 70s. He was a goon, that caricature you see in old black gangster movies like Juice. My dad was a ghetto stereotype and the polar opposite of my mother. My mom grew up in a two parent, upper-middle class, household as a kid. She didn’t see the world the same way my father saw it. She acquired a completely different set of skills, skills so alien to him, personally, he simply couldn’t reconcile my mother to his cultural experiences. To him, my mom was one of the “whitest” black people he had ever met.

Therein lies the question; What does it mean to be black? My father equated blackness to the ghetto gangster archetype popularized by rap music and what not, but my mother disagreed. She felt that blackness was more than that. She understood there were more facets, nuance, to the identity of our people. In the macro sense, i agree with that. We are man. We can be more. But, ultimately, even among ourselves, we make these superficial judgments over stupid sh*t all the time. I don’t think my mom is “white”. I think she’s naive. I think my pops thought that, too, but he couldn’t articulate it as eloquently. I think my dad was too stubborn or afraid to broaden his perspective about our culture, probably stemming from the trauma of losing his father at such a young age. My Grandpa died when my dad was five or six. Grandpap was a gangster. He was a pimp. He was a low level criminal, everything my father equated to “blackness.” I think he held on to that image as a means to hold on to his father and it became his overall worldview. When my father died, my sister kind of did the same thing. I didn’t because f*ck that guy. My dad and i hated each other. We were very clear on that.

Speaking of Me, i am blacker than the ace of spades. I mentioned that earlier. I, too, and this is probably because i am my father’s son in SO many uncomfortable ways, am very intimidating. I am wildly athletic, particularly in American football. I love hoop and Rap music, i hate cops and authority, and i have a healthy, organic, lust for big butts. I cannot lie. I grew up in the ghetto and, when need be, can become extremely, cartoonishly, hood. I have an unassailable pride in exactly who the f*ck i am and very aggressively protect myself from others less-than-sterling opinions of themselves. Now, all of that said, i hate fried foods, i f*cking love math and physics, i don’t care for watermelon, I'm not really a Democrat, and i don’t lust after white women. The love of my life, who we’ll get too in a minute, is Black, Mexican, French, and Native. I am stunningly intelligent and tend to live inside my head because most people are exhausting to me. The last time i was tested, i had an IQ of 154. Being smarter than most people you meat, just loving the process of learning in general, is something that is shunned with in the discussion of “being black.” If you’ve followed me for some time, or just give a cursory look at this blog, you can probably tell i am total and complete weeb. My Geek Card is punched and official. I play the sh*t out of video games and have since i was a Wee Smokey. Actually, I've been all of these things since i was extremely young. It’s funny because my two favorite genres of games to play are JRPG and f*cking NBA 2K. That little tidbit is a microcosm of who i am.

When i was in high school, i was considered hood as f*ck. I fought everyone i could, conditioned with the football team, skipped class at every opportunity, and dated a Brazilian chick for two years. That was the outward Me, the Me people assume i am. I cannot deny that version, that perception, is a part of who i am but i am so much more than that. The thing is, i skipped class to get home in time and watch Transformers: Robots in Disguise. My lady at the time and i met because of the poetry i had written in my spare time. Yes, i used to write poems. I was published a few times actually. She and i bonded over our mutual love for The Red Hot Chili Peppers and No Doubt. Bro, The Killers are my all-time favorite band. Mr. Brightside and Read My Mind are classics i know by heart. I conditioned with the football team but i only ever played my Freshman year. I don;t care for the sport at all. On the surface, the superficial, public perception of who i am, makes me as black as night. But who i am, totally, one could make the argument i am nowhere near negro. I find that contradiction fascinating.

As i stated above, my lady is a cadre of cultures but the two that stand out most are her Mexican and Black roots. Cats can mistake her for either but she usually gets Black. Like my mother and father before me, my lady and i grew up on the extreme opposite ends of the scale. I was a Dirty Ghetto Kid and she grew up rich. Yeah, i landed me a rich girl, what of it? I went to a school that had metal detectors at every entrance and she went to f*cking finishing school. I had no idea there were so many forks until i met her. I turned sixteen with no jail time, beating several not-so-flattering statistics. She had a Quinceanera and attended debutante balls. My lady, of course, had her own issues, things i have no way of properly understanding outside of a theoretical assumption. For all intents and purposes, because of her upbringing, because of the way she carries herself, she’d be considered “white.” The thing is, she can give MY hood a run for it’s money but the way she portrays that side of her, is way more palatable than how i do it. If I'm a blunt object, she’s a precision edge.

She didn’t grow up in an environment where masculinity was paramount and you absolutely had to destroy a motherf*cker if they pressed your manhood. She never had to interact with the streets so the street code was academic to her. She didn’t approach problem solving with physical intimidation and aggressive threats like i learned. I literally got my license after failing the driver’s test for a rolling stop, by punking out my instructor into signing my forms. That sh*t works for me. My lady is five-foot-nothing. She ain’t intimidating anyone. Her solution to this solution problem was to outsmart everyone. She is one of the quickest, most intellectually agile, people i have ever met. She can debate anything until they are literally, physically, exhausted. Our first real conversation was an argument over who the better character in DBZ, Vegeta or Gohan. I had to concede to her. I lost that debate. Me. That NEVER happens. I don’t lose arguments. I immediately fell in love. I’ve watched my lady bring grown men to tears after verbally undressing them. She’s that intense and i just kind of fanboy when she does it. But, according to the Laws of Blackness, that’s not how you do things. You gotta get in there and posture as hard as f*ck until you come to blows. Like Walruses.

There is no satisfactory way to conclude this exploratory essay into what defines blackness. There cant be. Being black is as fluid as the ocean and just as deep. My little sister is Desi, smart as a whip, and pulls in six figures a year. She has two degrees and is in school for a third in math just because she enjoys the process of learning, like me. She’s incredibly shy. bordering on agoraphobic, but let a motherf*cker test me or anyone she loves. She because the blackest motherf*cker i have ever seen since my pops and it’s adorable. She’s not even anywhere near black. Not a drop of the Afros in her lineage. Does that mean “being Black” is simply a state of mind? Is it just a catch-all standard of media perpetuated stereotypes? Does any of this sh*t even matter? No. No it doesn’t. Look, i got two kid brothers that i raised because my parents weren’t real good at parenting. One has grown up to be an Uncle Tom with next to no self worth. The other is a nomadic, pot-smoking, emo Skaterboi. Both of them will mash you if pressed. Both of them can recite Pi to the thirteenth number. Both of them love hoop and hate cops, just like me. Both of them game hard, the Hippie Skaterboi is actually a pro LoL player, and they both love anime. Most of that is my influence on their world but does that disqualify their blackness? Does my Weeby Nerdom which rubbed off during their development, make them any less black? No! F*cking no, of course not! This sh*t is stupid and I'm tired of talking about it.

There is no such thing as “being a bad black person” or “being a white black person.” That sh*t is dumb. Black folks are black. We define ourselves. Sure, a real good indicator is our skin tone and the way society treats us but, underneath that surface bullsh*t, we are so much more. I love Spider-Man, Godzilla, and Transformers. I love Rap, Nuwave, hip-hop, Grand Ol’ Oprey, classical orchestra, Post Punk, ska, retro wave, and so many more music genres. I am an NBA historian but know next to nothing about the NFL. I just don’t care. I’m a massive fan of Cyberpunk claims but absolutely hate anything Tyler Perry or budget Black cinema. Neon Genesis Evangelion is my all-time favorite anime and Hannibal is arguably the greatest show to ever air on US televisions. Star Wars hold a special place in my heart, along with Doctor Who, Batman, Dragon Ball Z, and Luther. I grew up in the ghetto, lived in the rich suburbs, and stay downtown. My first car was a 65 Mustang Coupe, then a Ford Probe, followed by 91 Accord. I've driven a 350Z since 2014. I held a nine to five job for probably a decade but now write professionally. I am l of this but, before any of that, i am blacker than the ace of spades.

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smokeybrand · 5 years ago

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Blackjack

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caredogstips · 8 years ago

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Ann Patchett:’ If writers are to survive we must take responsibility for ourselves and our manufacture’

The author explores buying her own bookstore, the bequest of divorce and referring to herself in the third person

In the windowpane above Ann Patchetts desk is a small steel and enamel sign that reads: What good shall I do this day? This simple dictum is the engine of Patchetts world, both on the sheet and off. In the Orange prizewinning Bel Canto , comradeship, ardour and productivity bloom among terrorists and captives; in 2011 s artful State of Wonder , a sensible research scientist faces not just the serpents and other frights of the Amazonian jungle, but the dragon of her former medical lecturer.

I have been shown so much kindness in “peoples lives”, so for me to write volumes about good, species parties seems totally natural, Patchett tells. When “theyre saying”, Oh its too nice, its naive, I just think: who killed your mother?

It infringes a literary inhibition to write fiction that hints parties might be fundamentally good. For the 52 -year-old Patchett, however, the real taboo was writing about their own families. Commonwealth , her seventh romance, publicized this week, encompasses 50 years and two pedigrees, the Cousinses and the Keatings, whose common fate is set in motion at a gin-soaked christening defendant where Albert Cousins caresses Beverley Keating.

Today, the very best that Patchett will do involves picking up a columnist from Nashvilles airport and devoting her whole daytime to zipping around township in her little silver Prius, testifying mentioned journalist her world-wide. Even if she hadnt published an paper, The Mercies, about her schooling with the Sisters of Mercy, you might guess that Patchett had been raised by nuns. She excretes that sleeves-rolled, get-on-with it ability, paired with the clarity and occasional brutality of true-blue righteousness. To watch her in action is to hear the Mother Abbess from The Sound of Music sing, Climb Evry Mountain. Patchett climbs every mountain, but she will also croak an occasional, and deliciously un-nun-like, fuck!

What do you do when the bookstores in your hometown all shut down? If youre Patchett, you open one yourself. In 2011, she founded Parnassus Books, an idyll in a shopping plaza, with her business marriage, Karen Hayes. She has since become a rallying spokesperson for independent bookstores.

I feel that writers are treated like orchids: they keep us in the hothouse, they cloud the americans and attend to our every motivation, but if this system is going to work, if we are going to survive, we need to come out of the hothouse and take responsibility for ourselves and for the health of the industry.

She takes a firm line. When customers visit the bookstore and keep telling her Amazon is cheaper: Im like, You cannot come in, soak up what we have, talk to the staff, get recommendations, then go home and buy the book on Amazon. If you do, I will hunt you down and smack-dab you guys later. Somehow, she lends with a smiling, Ann Patchett can say that in a way that your regular bookstore owned cant.

She leads the way to the offices at the back, where young women work with puppies at their hoofs and on their laps. One of the salesclerks pokes her president around the door and tells Patchett that theres an Australian fan here who would really like to meet her.

All right, here “theres going”, and Patchett psyches out to the storey to signal four replicas for her love. Later, she tells me that when people tell her how much they cherish her notebooks, Im smiling, and Im grateful, but I almost dont know what theyre speak about. Its so far away, and what I am thinking at that moment, is: I hope I am cooking my face in a way that I seem hired and grateful.

She and her husband, the surgeon Karl Vandevender, talking here Ann Patchett in the third largest being, as do her friends and peers at the bookstore. Theyll reply: Oh, we need Ann Patchett for something, and Ill run: Ill see if I can conjure her up. Ann Patchett, she reads definitively, is the label. Ive got to employed that away at the end of the day.

All of her tales, she explains, are the same floor: a group of parties are thrown together and must forge connections to survive. Ive been writing the same journal my whole life that youre in one family, and all of a sudden, youre in another family and its not your option and you cant get off. Eventually, she expected herself: I wonder if I wrote the storey that Im so carefully not writing, if I might be free of it?

As soon as she began working on Commonwealth , the story of her own parents divorce and her precede life with stepsiblings, she announced her intentions to her family. Thats brave, I say.

Yeah, it is. It was also really smart. She told them: I dont want to cut off a part of my life any more. I dont wishes to not have access to my own experience because I dont want to set anybody out. I want to be able to grow. And, I find, until I get this done, Im not going to grow. And everybody supposed: You lead, girl!

Patchett concedes that, until this stage, shed been very self-congratulatory over not having written a volume about their own families, which seemed like the strong, easy thing to do. Then she read an paper by Jonathan Franzen in which he insisted that the novelist has to do what intimidates him “the worlds largest” and, for him, that had been writing about his family. When I speak that, I thoughts: oh , good-for-nothing would scare me more. I would happily razz down the Amazon in a canoe and is being dealt with serpents[ as she did to study State of Wonder ] rather than face my family.

In the entitle paper of her 2013 non-fiction collect, This Is the Story of a Joyous Wedding , she details the lineage of divorce in her own family, including her own at the age of 25, and her eventual matrimony to Vandevender. There is a sense in that paper, which moves in steady, clear-eyed increments, of a columnist willing herself into facing and articulating hard truths, of which this is paramount: Divorce is the history lesson, that circumstance that must be remembered in order not to be repeated. Divorce is the rock upon which this faith is built.

She remembers sweat swarming down her appearance as she wrote it, while she experienced the distinct sensation that she was sitting in the middle of the road in the dark, with a legal pad, contemplation: Im going to get squashed by a truck.

She writes candidly, for example, that she, her sister and their stepsiblings werent the products of our mothers joyous wedlocks: “were in” the flotsam of their divorces. In Commonwealth , that flotsam is the intense little tribe of the six Cousins and Keating babes, each of whom corresponds to her own stepsiblings.

Its like chess fragments, she tells, as she explains that each persona stood in for a real family member. In this mode, it was very easy for me to keep track of everyone over 50 years. And genuinely, I committed everybody a high quality of life, by a very large margin. The parties in the book somehow represented my dearest desires for all the people.

Its dedicated to Mike Glasscock, her half-brother, reimagined here as Albie, a very young, whom the others find so annoying that they narcotic him with Benadryl to induce him sleep for hours. Years afterwards, as a bicycle messenger and recovering heroin user, Albie chances upon a romance called Commonwealth by a writer announced Leo Posen. He realises it is about two pedigrees, his own, about the inestimable burden of their lives: the occupation, the houses, the friendships, the marriages, the children, as if all the things theyd craved and worked for had cemented the impossibility of any kind of merriment. He wonders: Isnt that what everyone wants, just for a moment to be unencumbered?

Its surely my greedy lust, Patchett laughs. Franny, whom the nun had led to believe that God granted preference to people who did things the hard way, is a cocktail waitress when she first fulfils the famous novelist Posen.( Who wants to have a novel about a novelist? Patchett groan. But thats the way it turned out .) He becomes so drunk that she must help him up to his hotel chamber, where he has only enough time left to ask for one more advantage, which Franny thought was the deepest difference between women and men. Eventually, that dynamic is enlarged in incidents established in the Hamptons, Long Island, where Franny spots herself expected to single-handedly acquire dinner and liquors for changing hordes of Posens clients. Theyre some of the funniest of the book.

You wanna talk about which part of this volume is autobiographical? Patchett reads. That fraction. How exhausting it is, as the status of women, to always be the one who has to do the meat and change the bunks. No topic how enlightened, how much of a feminist I am, I am still doing all of it.[ With] every journal I conceive: well, if this ones actually successful, maybe I wont “re going to have to” acquire dinner any more, she laughs. Perhaps Ill finally is how to not do this any more, because its my fault. Its is not simply gender, but the 12 years of Catholic school and being trained to be a good servant. I believe in this, I truly believe that the greatest event you can do is to serve.

Oh, if I could free-spoken myself from the autocracy of good deeds, she mocklaments. Oh, there used to be no stopping me. I could be Tolstoy without good deeds. I has actually be something.

Over lunch she tells me that she read a Charles Bukowski poem that morning that aims those who/ replace/ know/ this secret :/ there isnt/ one. Its abide with her, perhaps because writing, more than any other art formation, is susceptible to regulations, premier among other issues being to write every day.

Dont you think guys are the ones that always say that? she adds. Im not sure Ive heard a woman say you have to write every day. Theyre too busy obligating dinner. I go through extended periods of time when I dont write, and Im fine. Writing is an amazing situate to hide, to go into the rabbit defect and pull the trap door down over your premier. I want to have time in my life when I dont have that cover.

She also insists that there are things that are a lot more important than me writing a novel. For illustration: If person told, OK, you can either write five more great novels, or you are able to made to ensure that the people who work in bookstores have health insurance and have some home to depart if they need assistance because theyre transgressed. At this stage I might certainly go for the very best. Nothing fuels the good of “the worlds” like gaiety, and the thing that sees me feel really alive is figuring out how I can startle other beings into doing good.

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