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hockeylvr59 · 5 years ago

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Life Changes Part 8 || Paul Bissonnette

Summary: It’s crazy how quickly your life can change...one minute you’re a struggling personal injury lawyer and the next you’re working for one of the hottest sports podcasts to supplement your income. A new job and the end of a long-term relationship was just the beginning for Leigh Thompson when it comes to life changes. Thankfully she has the one and only Paul Bissonnette at her side to help her handle them all.

Authors Note: Woooo!!! I finally got past my writer’s block and cranked this part out. I had been stuck on it for the past month and now we can move onto some more fun stuff but I needed to establish some connections and such here first for down the road.

Requested: [ ] yes [x] no Word Count: 2,654

Warnings: none really, some alcohol consumption (on Paul’s part)

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“If nothing ever changed there’d be no butterflies.”

It was a short drive from the hotel to the Mandalay Bay Events Center. Though Paul’s fingers were entwined with mine during the drive, even his touch couldn’t quell the anxiety I felt as the limo slowed to a halt and the door opened. Paul carefully helped me out of the vehicle and his hand rested low on my back as we started toward the red carpet. The moment we stepped onto the red carpet, however, my anxiety reached its peak and I felt my body freeze in terror. The second Paul saw the look on my face he murmured for Brie to take me inside and that they would meet us there.

By the time the guys rejoined us, Brie had managed to get a glass of water into my hands and she was assuring me that everything was okay. Deep down I knew that we had breezed by the media so quickly and casually that the odds of anyone talking about us were slim. At the same time, I felt guilty that I couldn’t handle the few minutes of formalities of being Paul’s date without feeling like I was going to have a panic attack.

Paul’s arm rested along the curve of my lower back when he approached and he rubbed up and down soothingly.

“Sorry that took so long ladies.” He declared like he wasn’t at all fazed by what had happened. Opening my mouth to try and apologize, I was immediately silenced as he leaned down to whisper in my ear. “Don’t. You’re fine. I get it...the media is a lot.” My second attempt at apologizing was also shut down when he declared out loud that we should head down to the floor and take our seats.

Though he hadn’t said it, I knew Paul was trying to get me to forget about the red carpet so that it didn’t dampen the rest of the evening. After all, we still had the awards themselves as well as the after-party ahead of us. As we made our way to our seats, Paul occasionally stopped to talk to someone he knew, taking a moment to introduce me as his favorite business manager and date for the evening to each person. The more introductions we got through with no one even noticing my baby bump, the more relaxed I became at the thought that maybe it wasn’t as noticeable as I feared. As Paul had assured me through his texts when he invited me, even if it was noticeable, now that we were mostly away from the media, no one seemed likely to bring it up.

Settled into my seat next to Paul as the awards started I couldn’t help but feel my natural smile returning, the forced smile I had plastered on in the car slowly leaving my face. The first trophy presented was the Calder and it was no surprise when Elias Pettersson was announced as the winner. He’d had such a stellar season and it was really cool getting to see someone so young experience their first career award knowing that it was likely to be the first of many.

Next came the Lady Byng award, and I couldn’t help the laugh that spilled out of me when Aleksander Barkov commented on there being more fans from Finland than from Florida present. It was a classic hockey chirp and I peeked over at Paul to find that he was looking over at me, a lazy grin on his face.

The GM of the year award was given to Don Sweeney from the Bruins and I felt Paul squeeze my hand a little tighter as he talked about his premature sons being his inspiration in his acceptance speech. The moment was heavy for me personally and it was clear that it was for Paul as well by the change in his breathing. As soon as Jason Zucker finished his speech for the King Clancy Award, Paul and Whit moved to slip backstage to prepare for their presentation and Brie slid over a few chairs to sit next to me.

The Norris was given to Mark Giordano of the Calgary Flames and I smiled as he thanked his wife and kids for always putting a smile on his face after a rough night. Hockey is about family after all and it’s always nice to see more of the behind the scenes people get the credit they deserve. Following the presentation of the Norris, Auston Matthews was named as the cover athlete for NHL20 and I couldn’t help but cringe at the fact that he had sweat through his suit.

Paul and Whit presented the Masterton Trophy, and knowing the struggles that Paul had with depression toward the end of his own career it seemed fitting. The award was given to Robin Lehner and his quote on the fact that being mentally ill doesn’t mean you’re mentally weak stuck with me because it was something that could apply to all of us at times. I could see Paul almost getting emotional on stage and it made it hard for me to fight back my own hormonal tears.

The Selke was awarded to O’Reilly and the Jack Adams to Trotz while we waited for the guys to return to their seats, Brie sliding back to her own after sending me a smile and squeezing my hand gently. As Paul settled back in beside me I felt the baby shift, a soft flutter followed by pressure against my bladder. Thankfully the show was more than halfway over and while I wished the baby would shift off of my bladder it wasn’t something I couldn’t handle.

Any thoughts of my bladder were quickly silenced as a discussion about Anderson Whitehouse’s prior meeting with Carey Price was brought up as the next segment for the NHL Fan Choice Feel Good Moment. I remembered having cried the first time I saw it and it was clear that I was going to cry again as tears filled my eyes when Anderson was brought onto the stage and the presenter cued up a video from Carey Price himself.

“Carey is here.” I leaned over and whispered to Biz who looked at me like I was crazy until the man himself appeared on the stage to surprise his biggest fan. The second the two embraced the tears poured and Paul had to reach over with his pocket square in an attempt to prevent me from completely ruining my makeup. At the same time, he was openly crying as well and my heart panged once more knowing that this was affecting him as much as it did me. Men not being afraid of showing emotion was something I loved and was clearly just another factor that drew me to appreciate Paul as a coworker and friend. As the whole audience gave them a standing ovation, Paul’s hand drifted once more to my back rubbing gently.

The Vezina, Messier, and Willie O’Ree awards were some of the last of the night and as each was presented, my growing need to use the bathroom lingered in the back of my mind, slowly becoming more urgent.

It wasn’t at all surprising that Nikita Kucherov won both the Hart and Ted Lindsay trophies for MVP after the season he’d had and I laughed softly as Paul whispered that they were working on scoring him for an interview at some point. As the award show concluded, we lingered in our seats for a moment before Paul moved to track down more people to talk to. He was such an extrovert that it honestly made me cringe sometimes and as he engaged himself in another conversation I moved to steal Brie from Ryan.

“I need to use the bathroom asap. Come find it with me?” I requested. With Ryan aware of where we were, the two of us headed off and by the time I finished using the bathroom given the bump and the dress, Ryan had texted that the guys were waiting for us in the lobby so that we could head to the after-party.

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By the time we got through Vegas traffic to the after-party, music was already playing on the rooftop bar, alcohol was flowing, and trays of food were being passed around. Leaving me with Ryan and Brie, Paul went to grab drinks for the four of us and when he returned he passed me a cup murmuring that I should just trust him. There was never a doubt that I trusted him so while I had expected to be drinking water all night, I tried the drink Paul had provided and immediately I was hooked as a sweet fruity tang hit my tongue. Chatting with Ryan and Brie for a few minutes about the awards, it wasn’t long until someone approached to chat with the guys. For almost an hour I just stood, tucked into Paul’s side as he chatted with various players about the podcast, hockey, and any shared histories.

Eventually though, my back started to ache and my feet hurt. I didn’t want to interrupt so I didn’t say anything at first, but eventually, Paul leaned down to whisper in my ear that I should go sit on one of the many couches for a bit and just rest. Nodding, I sent him a soft smile before bowing out of the conversation and heading across the room toward an unoccupied couch.

I’d been just people watching for about ten or fifteen minutes when another woman approached.

“Mind if I join you?” She questioned and after assuring her she could my brain finally pieced together who it was that had joined me. Vero Fleury. While Flower hadn’t been nominated for any awards tonight, clearly they had decided to take advantage of their residence in Vegas to come hang out with friends and enjoy the party the NHL put on.

Though I knew who she was, she introduced herself after a moment.

“Leigh Thompson,” I replied. “I’m here with Biz.” I clarified knowing that she was probably wondering how I made my way into a private party.

“Biz’s date...how’d you get wrapped into that?” She teased and I laughed in response knowing that question was beyond accurate.

“I’m the business manager for the podcast and he knows I owe him,” I responded my tone light. “I just don’t owe him enough to endure a sore back and achy feet the entire night,” I added, causing her to laugh softly. For a moment I could feel her eyes on me and she shifted a bit closer so she didn’t have to speak as loudly.

“I remember those days.” She murmured. “It’s all so worth it though.” She assured me and realizing that she had noticed my bump I nodded.

“I sure hope so. Because this little one is wreaking havoc on my body already.” I replied. “Don’t get me wrong...I love them. But single parenthood is hard.” For just a moment I let my hand brush over my bump before resting it at my side again.

“I can only imagine.” Vero murmured and instead of dwelling on that she pulled her phone out of her clutch, opening it to pictures of her girls and their newborn son. For the next little bit, I chatted with her about what to expect with a newborn, the joys and hardships that being a parent brought. I mentioned having to figure out how to make a nursery look like a nursery without being able to paint or hang more than a few things on the walls and Vero immediately jumped into suggestions.

Eventually, Marc-Andre came over to join her and after pushing back my star-struck expression, he chatted about his son and daughters before diving into some stories I could use against Paul if I ever needed them. It wasn’t long before I was laughing with the two of them and had lost track of time. It had been nearly an hour since I had sat down before Paul appeared beside me, his brown eyes just a little glassy from the alcohol he’d consumed so far.

With Paul insisting that there was someone he wanted to introduce me to, I was pulled away from the couch...but not before exchanging cell info with Vero who had insisted that I reach out if I had any questions or just needed someone else to talk to about everything that was rapidly changing in my life. She added that she would send me product suggestions and ideas for the nursery once she was home and had more time to check some things out. I was absolutely interested in whatever advice she had to give because it had been almost two decades since my mom had my sisters and having a baby was certainly different now than it had been then.

With Paul’s guiding hand on my back again, any unease I’d been feeling from being by myself vanished. Crossing the room, Paul immediately butted his way into a conversation.

“Sid...this is who I wanted you to meet.” He declared and instantly a flush crossed my cheeks as I realized that I was now standing in front of the first player I’d ever had a crush on. “Sid. This is our business manager Leigh. She’s a lifelong pens fan.” A million different thoughts flooded through my body, the first of which being that I needed to kill Paul for not giving a girl some warning. Instead, though I did my best to compose myself, reaching out a hand to shake Sid’s outstretched one.

Sid was gracious as always, immediately inquiring about how I’d picked the pens as a team and after responding that it was just kind of what happens when you’re born in Pittsburgh he laughed and nodded, his familiar giggles even better in person than they are on video. Pausing, I commented on how I needed to thank him because it was his being drafted that had gotten me through some of the hardest times in my life and while the rest of the conversation was honestly a bit of a blur, at the end of it, Paul insisted that I take a picture with Sid for posterity's sake.

Sid was subsequently pulled away and immediately I leaned into Paul’s chest, trying to quell the rapid beating of my heart.

“I hate you. Give a girl some warning next time.” I mumbled, causing Paul to laugh.

“Do you hate me too much to dance with me?” He inquired, his gaze soft as he looked down at me. The song had just switched to something slow and without even really thinking about it, my hand accepted Paul’s extended one letting him lead me out to the dance floor.

Swaying softly, his hands fell to my waist and mine drifted to link behind his neck.

“Did you have fun tonight?” He questioned softly. Nodding in response, I bit back a yawn. “Good I’m glad.” He added. “Thank you for tonight. I know this isn’t really your scene but it means the world to me that you agreed to come.” We danced until the song came to a close and after talking with a few more people Paul asked if I was ready to head out.

Back at the hotel, Paul helped me with the zipper on my dress before disappearing into the bathroom to change from his suit. After changing, we readied for bed in a comfortable silence and then slid into bed together, Paul’s arms wrapping back around me, his hands stroking over my belly until my eyes couldn’t stay open any longer. Even more so than before, I felt safe, warm, and cared about while cuddled against his 6’2” frame. It was a feeling that was welcome but terrifying all at the same time.

Chapter 8 Social Media:

#paul bissonnette #paul bissonnette imagine #arizona coyotes imagine #arizona coyotes #nhl imagine #nhl imagines #hockey imagine #hockey imagines #former player #former player imagine #014.1 #gif courtesy of dougiesflow

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biofunmy · 5 years ago

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How The 2010s Crystalized Women’s Anger

Amanda Edwards / FilmMagic

NEW DELHI, India — As a woman in my twenties who grew up in India — a country where abuse of women has been described as the biggest human rights violation on Earth — the SlutWalks of 2011 were, frankly, bewildering.

Every day of our lives, women like me were taught to go over a mental checklist of ways to avoid getting raped. The list had become second nature, so deeply, seamlessly internalized that the doorbell only had to ring, and my mother and I, hanging out in our home, watching TV, or maybe making dinner, would first reach for a scarf to throw over our bodies before we answered the door. At my high school, where uniforms were mandatory, girls were asked to kneel on the ground, so the teachers could check if our skirts were long enough. If they didn’t touch the ground, they were too short, and a particularly terrifying teacher would rip open the hem of our skirts, those frayed edges marking us for the rest of the school day. There were a million ways to dress like a slut if you were a girl (there were no such codes for boys) — our white shirts could be “too transparent” if the cotton had worn thin from frequent washing or if we wore colored bras inside instead of white or “skin”-colored ones.

When I was a 25-year-old reporter, I went to ask a group of young girls who lived in a slum in Govandi, Mumbai, what their checklist looked like. What did paranoia look like in a place where thin corrugated sheets of steel were all that stood between the girls and their neighbors, adult men, leering boys?

Fourteen-year-old Nafisa told me she made sure she texted her friend Neelu before she left home. Neelu carried red chili powder with her everywhere she went in case she needed to throw it in the eyes of a potential attacker. Annu made sure her water bottle was always full so that she had something heavy to hit a potential molester with. Pinki had stopped wearing glass bangles once she turned 11 — because her mother told her that if someone grabbed her wrists, they would break and injure her, slowing her down as she ran from her attackers. Neena had stopped wearing her hair down because it attracted too much attention. At 15, most of them avoided going outdoors unless it was absolutely necessary, and when they did, they were usually accompanied by an older male from the family. A lot of the older girls carried small knives in their bags but were unsure if they’d be able to use them when the time came.

Some girls who wore hijabs said they did not feel any safer: “They want to find out what is underneath,” Nafisa said.

If adulthood was the steady accumulation of survival skills — a realization of one’s own power and its limitations — womanhood, for as long as I’d known it, appeared to be about developing a sixth sense that warned you when you were in a specific kind of danger from a man. But the news we read every day, of women abducted, burnt, raped, killed, appeared to be filled with women whose sixth sense had let them down.

Dibyangshu Sarkar / Getty Images

A SlutWalk in Kolkata in 2012.

The comment that sparked the first SlutWalk, leading to gatherings across 200 cities and 40 countries, didn’t even seem particularly surprising to me. A police officer in Toronto had said to a group of students: “I’ve been told I’m not supposed to say this, however, women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.” It was the kind of thing that ministers, judges, police officers, holy men, and celebrities constantly repeated across the world.

But as the protests began to go viral, we dissected the SlutWalks avidly, over Facebook posts and IRL, in quiet, thrilled tones with other women. When Indian women held their own version of the SlutWalk — the Besharmi Morcha, or the March of Shamelessness — we cheered them on. But privately, I wondered if the entire project of reclaiming a pejorative word was counterintuitive. Did we really need to normalize the word “slut,” or the behavior associated with it, when there was so much else at stake — especially in a country where women struggled for basic rights?

And then there was the question of inclusivity, posed in the open letter from black women to SlutWalk organizers: Who can afford to reclaim the word “slut”? Who are the women whose bodies are always already considered sexualized and without agency by the patriarchy, and did the marches have space for sex workers? Trans women? Dalit women? Were the SlutWalks about provocation or about language? Were they only for the rights of privileged white women? Could we ever change the power imbalance that routinely blamed women for inviting sexual assault just by walking down a street?

In 2012, the conversation turned dark and urgent in India, when the gang rape and murder of a young woman in New Delhi sent tens of thousands of women marching on the streets. Overnight, our fear had birthed an inchoate rage — against the culture of shame, against the constant policing of our bodies and clothes and words and movement. We wanted more than just the right to be safe, we wanted the right to roam the streets and hang out in public and take risks and have fun like any man, without fear of assault. We demanded justice; we also demanded joy. And for a moment, it seemed as though something might really change.

The next year, the world changed so much that it became unrecognizable to me. I was sexually assaulted, not by a stranger on a dark street corner, but by a person I had known and trusted for many years. I testified in court against him and felt as though I had set my entire life on fire. I lost my job, moved cities, moved back in with my mother. Scores of people and professional opportunities disappeared from my life. (The accused denies any wrongdoing.)

From the depths of my nightmare, SlutWalk, even with its problems, represented a spectacle of sex-positivity. It felt like a world of color and hope that I would never inhabit again. People from a range of genders and ages were still gathering in Spain, South Africa, India, and Pakistan, marching in the streets wearing school uniforms, office clothes, lace and leather, nuns’ habits, fishnets, and denim — flashing skin, drumming, dancing, holding babies and signs, and sharing stories of rape and assault and trauma and songs and jokes.

Meanwhile, I was called a slut all the time, by people close to the man who abused me, his lawyers, others who had never met me but were convinced I had lied — by strangers on the internet. I became less interested in reclaiming words and dissecting them. I was tired and suicidal, and I wanted to focus on being something more than, other than, separate from what happened to me and my body. The SlutWalks were described as the most successful feminist action of the last two decades. What good was any of it going to do?

It wasn’t until 2017, when women first began to speak publicly and loudly about Harvey Weinstein and the things they said he had done, that the fog of the past few years started to clear: For some of us, the SlutWalks had been our first moment of articulating collective rage.

For women, particularly those who were in our twenties or younger when this decade began, our only point of reference for women’s rage had been photographs from the anti-rape movements of the ’60s and ’70s, or marches called “Take Back the Night” — women occupying city streets at hours when decent women were supposed to be safe at home. Some of us knew about feminist theory, the first wave and the second and the third, still more of us knew that no matter where we were, our rights were precarious. Many of us now had opportunities our grandmothers could only dream of, but we were marching for the same old shit. Our bodies were still our first battlegrounds.

The next billion people — including women — who are learning about the power of collective action on the internet are from places like India, China, South Africa, Brazil, and the Middle East. These women have grown up in worlds where public spaces are fraught with danger and private spaces are frequently regarded with shame. As a teenage girl in Pakistan learns a new language of sexual freedom and identity online, she is also learning to navigate the murky waters of digital abuse that a woman lawmaker in the US is punished for. The cautionary tales of trolling, doxing, being targeted with rape threats, having intimate photographs posted online for all to gawk at, being morphed onto naked bodies on a random porn site all exist. But so do the possibilities of forming solidarities, joining protests beyond geographical confines, allowing more women than ever before to have a voice — and to listen in. The measure of successful feminist action, I learned this decade, has never been only about changing laws, governments, or workplace policies. Anger itself is clarifying, because it changes us, the people who participate in it, by giving us ways of seeing: seeing ourselves as part of a collective, seeing through patterns of abuse, seeing as in witnessing each other’s lives and stories.

In this decade, we have seen women’s rage move front and center — it is the subject of books and films and television shows. Beyoncé feels it, so does Greta Thunberg — a 16-year-old climate activist who only recently was told by the president of the US to seek anger management.

But, in workplaces, in courtrooms, at universities, on red carpets and during election campaigns, women are still expected to articulate that anger in the most bloodless way possible, in order to seem rational, likable, electable, and believable.

Hindustan Times / Getty Images

Students protest in Mumbai on Dec. 3, 2019.

Carefully contained anger has a role to play in history. Over the years, we’ve watched Anita Hill testifying against Clarence Thomas to an all-male, all-white jury that dismissed her account of being harassed at work. We read the letter that Chanel Miller read out to Brock Turner — a man who sexually assaulted her, but served only three months in prison. We witnessed Christine Blasey Ford’s restrained terror when she was forced to face the man who she said sexually assaulted her. We listened to Nadia Murad, as she described with every shred of dignity she could muster the ethnic cleansing, genocide, and rape of Yazidis — and then again, when Yazidi women were made to confront their rapists on the news.

It is telling that the backlash against the #MeToo movement, in the form of defamation and libel and aggressive defense lawyers, has sought to drag women back to the courtroom: a space they did not trust with the trauma of their abuse in the first place, a place where they are treated as though they cannot be credible witnesses to their own truths.

Yet women’s rage is still unruly: It frustrates all attempts to contain it, shocks, confuses, and provokes. And its unruliness is productive. What else can explain the fact that women are still gathering and marching together across the world? That a day after Donald Trump — a man who was recorded on tape bragging about sexually assaulting women — was confirmed as president of the USA, women held the largest protest in American history? This year, women declared a feminist emergency across 250 cities and towns in Spain, after years of gang rape acquittals, domestic violence, and murders, despite being called “psychopathic feminazis.” In Argentina, the murder of teenage girls, abortion rights, and widespread harassment sparked #NiUnaMenos (Not One Less Woman, Not One More Death) — mass strikes in 2015 which spread across Peru, Bolivia, Uruguay, and El Salvador, and most recently Chile, where this year, a street protest has turned into a feminist anthem performed across Istanbul and Latin America. In South Korea, over 40,000 women protested an epidemic of spy cameras in dressing rooms, unleashing the largest women-only strike in the country’s history. And in India, women came together to form a 385-mile-long human wall against hundreds of years of patriarchy that illegally restricts their entry into a Hindu temple.

It’s 2019, and everything is both terrible and fine. If you feel tired, inhale, exhale, drink some water, and take a break. But remember, even this form of self-care is a luxury for 785 million people on this planet who lack access to clean water, and hours spent looking for water locks women across the world in a cycle of poverty and abuse. In China, polluted air is being linked to an increased risk of miscarriages; in India, Pakistan, Sydney, and California, a deep breath can be hazardous.

Meanwhile, that thing we all need more of — time — is marching on, and so must we. ●

Sahred From Source link World News

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