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lasdinmatesearch · 8 months ago
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subliminalbo · 2 years ago
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Fleur-de-lis #2: New Acquisitions
When Catlin Caldwell signed her first major contract with Confidential, she didn’t bother posturing. Her whole life she’d been a bombshell, and since high school she’d worked her ass off to profit from it. Why should she act like this was anything more than a paycheck? Her heroes were supermodels like Rafaela Carvalho or Sidney Croft, women who walked just enough Confidential Fashion Shows to build a brand from their own name. As soon as they could, they ditched the racket and went into business for themselves. Cat counted the days like an inmate nearing parole.
Maybe that was why she resented Samara Alves so deeply. Cat was only a couple of years younger than Samara, but she’d had to grind to get her contract. She spent the better part of her twenties modeling Confidential’s teen line, buried in the middle of the catalog. It was easy for Cat to feel like a utility player in the middle of a breakout season. Everything had just been so much easier for Samara. Signed to a flagship contract at eighteen, opening the fashion show at nineteen, headlining the Christmas campaign by twenty. She lived and breathed Confidential, rarely worked outside of the brand, and spoke like the work she did there was making a real difference. Cat was taking pitches from cosmetic companies, searching for her first major endorsement. She’d been under contract for a year and already she was halfway out the door.
But Samara stood in her way.
Cat was skeptical when Fleur-de-lis first contacted her. Another upstart looking for a fresh face who they could poach from Confidential? But Cat could never turn down an opportunity to be flattered. Imagine her disappointment when she sat down for lunch with Michael Ramsey, the lanky Fleur-de-lis representative, and he launched into questions about Samara. “A little bit of industry research,” Michael had said. His beady little eyes appeared even smaller beneath his thick glasses.
Cat weighed her options, considered leaving him with the bill. But what was the worst that could happen? This no name lingerie company poaches Samara Alves from Confidential? Ultimately, Cat ran the bill up while she volunteered everything she had on Samara; her personal life (caveman-looking ex-husband), her diet (the secret was smoking two out of three daily meals), her wardrobe (no street style), when she went out (Confidential promotions), when she stayed in (every chance she could get).
Michael took diligent notes on a legal pad as Cat spilled the tea. When she was finished, he ripped the pages from the pad, folded them neatly, and tucked them into his suit pocket. He adjusted his glasses and offered his hand to shake Cat’s. “Thank you for meeting with me today. This information is more valuable than you know.”
“Just do something with it,” Cat said.
And as far as Cat knew, that was it. Michael took care of the bill, she got a free lunch and an hour to bitch about Samara Alves. Not a bad day, considering.
A few months passed before Cat received another call from Fleur-de-lis. This one was late at night, well into the morning. Cat wasn’t asleep, but it was way passed “don’t fucking bother me” hours.
“This is Michael Ramsey.” Cat didn’t remember the name or recognize his voice.
“Yeah?” She said, puncturing the conversation with an appropriate level of annoyance.
“I represent Fleur-de-lis,” Michael added. “We have Miss Alves here at our Los Angeles office.”
“Cool. I’m in bed right now,” Cat raised her phone as high as she could to mask the sound of the bubbles in her hot tub. Matt Tanner, a Greek god of a Nickelodeon star, had his arm wrapped around her. He offered Cat a confused look. Tanner was dumb as a box of rocks, which made him a prime candidate for future hubby. Cat’s mother had taught her never to marry smarter.
“I know it’s late,” Michael continued. “But we would like for you to come in.”
“Excuse me?” She asked.
“Miss Alves’ orientation is about to begin.”
Cat sighed and said, “I think you have the wrong number.” She ended the call and, with a huff, lifted herself from under Tanner’s arm as she stepped out of the hot tub.
“Everything okay?” Tanner twisted around to admire her stride to the towel rack, flashing his dopey, pearlescent smile.
Cat dried herself off, then bent down to give Tanner a peck on the lips as a kind of innocent teaser to what she had in store for him next. “Everything’s fine, baby,” she said. “Just stupid business stuff.”
“I don’t think it’s stupid,” he said. “You know I considered going into business before Randy scouted me at the Foot Locker in West Covina. Have you ever wondered what fish are thinking? Because I have this idea for an app—”
Cat’s phone buzzed again. She held a finger up to silence Tanner and he obeyed like a good boy.
“Just a moment baby,” she said, taking the call inside her house for a bit more privacy. She watched Tanner from the window as she spoke. “Listen,” she said. “I don’t know what you expect from me, but I am in the middle of something.” If by something she meant trying to fuck a rich white boy so that she could leak gossip about their relationship to the tabloids, yeah, it was something.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Miss Caldwell,” Michael said. “But I’m afraid Ms. Maxwell will not take no for an answer. That means that I cannot take no for an answer.”
“Well here it is,” Cat shot back. “No.”
There was a beat of dead air on the line before Michael spoke again. “Okay,” he said. “Bear with me just one moment.”
“Fine,” Cat huffed.
She heard a click on Michael’s end and the call faded into Fleur-de-lis’ hold music, a soft electronic beat. Cat didn’t plan to wait on hold for Michael to grab whoever the fuck Ms. Maxwell was, but the music seemed to draw her in. She stood there in her living room, rocking back and forth to the slow rhythm. There was a comforting familiarity to it.
Her breathing slowed. The world began to spin, and Cat lost her footing. She landed in the soft embrace of her plush couch. She lay motionless there as the music washed over her mind. It took everything from her, but the phone remained gripped in her hand, pressed to her ear. A small line of drool trailed down her chin, dripping on her breasts.
When the music cut out, a new voice spoke in her ear. This was a woman: strong, confident, commanding. “You will come to my office now, Cat.”
“Yes, I understand.” Cat replied with little emotion.
“You will join Samara for orientation.”
As if an instinct, Cat parroted the woman’s words. “Yes. I will join Samara for orientation.”
In the end it had been about Cat. Maybe there was some comfort in knowing that, if she could really know anything right now. She hadn’t signed a contract with Fleur-de-lis yet. It was an informal agreement, one made with a handshake buried so deep in her subconscious that she couldn’t access the memory. For the time being, Catlin Caldwell was more valuable to Elena Maxwell as a Confidential model. The corporate espionage, the questions about Samara, they were all part of an elaborate cover. She didn’t remember leaving the restaurant with Michael. She didn’t remember the tall woman with the sunglasses stopping her on the sidewalk and asking for a picture. She didn’t remember the numbing flash of the camera. She didn’t remember Michael and the tall woman discretely escorting her into the back of a limousine.
“This is an important test for you, Cat,” the woman said. “I hope to see the true depths of your devotion this evening.”
“I belong to you, Mistress.” Cat said. “Samara will know the pleasure of serving you.”
“Good girl. Now come to me.”
“Yes, Mistress Maxwell.”
Confidential wasn’t where Natalie imagined ending up when she was studying theater at the University of Chicago. As a young girl, Natalie had caught a late night showing of John Carpenter’s The Thing and fallen in love with special effects. Soon after she began experimenting with makeup, building skills that she’d take with her to college and into her early career.
Her dad’s basement was her green room. Down there she transformed her friends into gorgeous princesses and gruesome zombies. In high school she did the school play, and in college she coordinated the entire theater department’s makeup. Confidential was a dream job for many artists, but for Natalie it was a steppingstone on her way to Hollywood.
She was thankful for the work at least. Most makeup artists ended up in beauty parlors with cosmetic certificates surviving on tips. Confidential offered a more than comfortable living, and she got to travel for free. Last winter she’d had an opportunity to leave Chicago’s blustery December winds for a ten-day shoot in Turks and Caicos, and now she was in the English countryside for the fall catalog. There was more paradise in this world than Natalie had ever imagined, and all she had to do to see it all was to spend twelve hours a day with supermodels.
Sometimes it didn’t feel worth it.
On Natalie’s first day, Cat Caldwell had scanned her body up and down and scoffed.
“Cute,” she said, closing her eyes as Natalie moved in with the brush. “You want to be a model?” she asked.
“God no,” Natalie laughed. “I’d prefer to stay behind the camera.”
“I’ll bet,” Cat said, opening one eye to keep it trained on Natalie. “Listen, honey. I’ve seen girls like you come and go. It’s always the same. You think that if you can get close enough to us, something will just rub off. But this isn’t something that can be learned. Modeling is ninety-five percent genetics.”
Natalie just bit her lip and focused on her work. Though her hands were steady as she traced liner around Cat’s lips, she felt like her whole body was shaking. She’d never been so intimidated in her life.
“Instagram,” Cat continued. “You can’t do much about the face, but put those tits up on Instagram and you’ll have Sacramento’s sixth man in your DMs before you know it.”
A few shoots later, Natalie vented to her coworker about Cat’s attitude. “They could teach college courses about her ego,” she said. “Are all models this bad?”
Colleen laughed and said, “If you’re looking for people without an ego you’re in the wrong business.”
Natalie shook her head. “I don’t know how I got stuck with the worst one.”
Colleen shrugged. “At least she likes you.”
“How can you tell?” she asked.
“Honey,” Colleen smiled. “I’ve been doing Romy’s makeup for four years. Cat’s gotten six makeup artists fired since she got here. How long have you been here now?”
Natalie cocked her head curiously. “I hadn’t thought of it like that.”
But if Cat liked Natalie she had a weird way of showing it. Working with her was a special kind of stressful that even Natalie’s college experiences couldn't match. Every workday offered a new challenge to tackle. Cat had once insisted that Natalie brush out her hair and start again—thirty minutes before the start of the shoot. And multiple times she had accused Natalie of trying to torpedo her career by putting her in front of the camera looking like a clown.
Imagine Natalie’s relief when she arrived for day one at the estate to find that Cat hadn’t showed up. “What do you mean she’s not here?” she asked.
“I mean she didn’t fly in with the other girls,” the director said. “We’re scrambling to get a hold of her right now.”
“She must be on one of her ego trips,” Colleen laughed.
“When is she not?” Natalie asked.
“For now, we’re aiming for Tuesday morning as her makeup shoot date,” the director said.
That gave Natalie three days to hang around the set and explore the mansion. It was unlike any place she’d ever seen. They were shooting in an opulent Victorian estate in the south of England. Approaching from the outside, Natalie had a distinct feeling that she’d stumble into Bruce Wayne here. As long as she left the crew alone during shooting, she was free to wander its dozens of rooms. She did so aimlessly, getting to know the crew and the models a bit better as she passed the time waiting for Cat.
In the afternoon, she sat in the courtyard with Kylie Mara and swapped deep talk. Kylie considered herself a girl next door type, but her sharp curves and high cheekbones made her look to Natalie like more of an alien than a woman. Still, their conversation was engaging. Kylie was well-read and had a podcaster’s understanding of random topics like movies, politics, and conspiracies. She blew smoke rings as she mused about the function of supermodels in modern society.
Natalie had taken enough philosophy courses in college to know that Kylie was full of shit about most things, but she wasn’t a bitch about it.
“How’d you get into the business?” Kylie asked, passing the blunt back to Natalie to take a hit.
“I just want to do makeup,” Natalie said after a long drag. “I want to work on movies one day.”
“Huh,” Kylie said. “A body like yours, I would have thought–”
“Yeah,” Natalie said. “I’ve heard that one before.”
As much as she despised the thought, Natalie was built for the industry. She’d developed early and spent most of her teenage years weathering the stares of her classmates. In high school she ran from it, dressing down in long sweaters and flannels to deflect attention. But as she matured, she began developing a sense of fashion that embraced her body instead of hiding it. Natalie knew that she was hot, and she didn’t care if people took notice. She even liked it a little bit when models flashed jealousy. She liked to think that she could do their job, not because she wanted to, but because she wanted them to know how replaceable they all were.
The conversation with Kylie trailed off from there as a chill settled between them. She spent that evening in Colleen’s room, the two American friends suffering through the jet lag together.
“She’s right though,” Colleen said. “You really could be a model.”
“Whatever,” Natalie sat back against the headboard and crossed her arms. “I just don’t get why they all have to be this way. It’s like even when they’re nice, they’re judging you.”
Colleen, sitting in a chair by the window, took a swig from a bottle of whiskey. “Kylie’s not nice,” she said. “She’s crazy. Like rich crazy.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s important to her brand that she’s cool and down to earth. The podcasting and guest articles, it’s all about maintaining an image. When you actually talk, she looks through you.”
“Huh,” Natalie dropped her shoulders. “I guess she’s kind of a bitch too. You know what? Fuck these bitch ass models.”
Colleen laughed, then said, “Romy and Samara. They’re good people.”
“What makes them so special?” Natalie asked, stuffing a piece of chocolate orange into her mouth.
“Because they live and breathe Confidential. All these other girls just want to be Rafaela Carvalho. They’re chasing money. But Romy and Samara have a lane and they stick to it.”
“You really like Romy,” Natalie said.
“I’d die for that girl,” Colleen smiled.
Natalie’s jet lag didn’t get better after an early morning. The next evening she tossed and turned in her own room. She sat up, checked the time on her phone. Two in the morning. She cycled through a regular routine: Facetiming her boyfriend back in Chicago, she shared her anxieties around the models and her weird interaction with Kylie. He did his best to center her, but it was obvious that Natalie’s thoughts were spiraling. She needed something else right now. Reading didn’t pull her out of her funk either, and after scrolling through Netflix she couldn’t find anything worth watching.
She knew that Colleen had had a long day with Romy on her schedule, but Natalie hoped as she pulled herself out of bed that she’d still be up. She left her bedroom and took the quick walk down the hall to Colleen’s room. The door was open, the lights were off, and the bed was empty.
Natalie scrunched her face in frustration. She was about to turn back around, go back to her bedroom and count sheep, when she heard a noise from the opposite end of the hall.
A moan. It was long and soft, and for a moment Natalie doubted her ears. Still, it drew her to the source. She tiptoed down the hall slowly, trying not to alert the source of the sound.
At the end of the hallway, Natalie found one of the bedroom doors cracked open, a sliver of light shining through. She heard another moan on the other side of the door, and this time she knew for certain that this was real. She crept closer, smiling as she imagined what could be on the other side. But when she peered through the crack between the door and its frame, she was surprised by what she found.
Romy van der Berg was a gorgeous Dutch model who had worked for Confidential almost as long as Samara Alves. The two had developed a public friendship that fans of the brand obsessed over on fashion forums and Tumblrs. Romy was the only supermodel that Samara had any interest in spending time away from work with, but a prior commitment had kept Romy away from Samara’s fateful housewarming party in Los Angeles.
Natalie held her breath as she tried to make sense of the image in front of her. Romy was naked, sitting before the vanity in her room. She appeared to be studying her reflection. And she wasn’t alone.
Samara had arrived late to the estate as well, flying in that morning just in time for the first day’s shoot. She was leaned in closely behind Romy, her hand resting just beneath Romy’s chin. She appeared to be holding Romy’s gaze on the mirror.
Another moan escaped Romy’s lips, and Natalie noticed that Samara’s hand was buried between Romy’s legs.
“Do you see?” Samara asked her.
“I see,” Romy said quietly.
“Tell me what you see.”
“I see,” Romy started before another sharp moan escaped her lips. “I see obedience.”
On the vanity between Romy and the mirror sat two scented candles. Their flames danced to the gentle flow of Romy’s soft breaths.
“You belong to Her now, don’t you?”
“Yes, Samara,” Romy said. “I submit myself to Her. I submit myself to Fleur-de-lis.”
Natalie backed quietly away from the door. She didn’t understand what she’d seen on the other side and she was prepared to turn around and never speak of it to anybody. But when she turned around, she found herself face to face with Colleen.
Natalie didn’t have time to make sense of this sight either. Her friend standing before her was stripped down to her underwear, her left bra strap dangling around her shoulder as if she hadn’t cared to fix it.
Natalie’s breathing slowed as she compiled the data in her head, but none of it added up. Colleen was doing her own math. As the two faced off silently, Colleen cocked her head to the side, looking through her friend like one of their vacant models.
Natalie opened her mouth to speak, but Colleen moved first. Her hand sweeping up in one smooth motion, Natalie was quickly looking into the eye of a camera.
A flash in the darkness. It lingered there in Natalie’s vision, paralyzing her. She was powerless. The words that she’d tried to speak caught in her throat and stayed there as the bright light faded into nothing.
When consciousness returned to Natalie, she awoke in Romy’s room. Her hands were tied down to the arm of the chair in front of the vanity. She was cold. They had stripped her naked. Her head was spinning, drool caked her chin.
The candles flickered in front of her. Natalie’s eyes rolled back as she took in a deep breath through her nose, testing her senses. The odd scent made her body feel numb. Next, she felt a tickle between her legs. When she looked down, she saw Colleen beneath the vanity, staring up at her with those eerie, empty eyes.
“Colleen,” she gasped. “What’s happening?”
“Something wonderful,” Colleen smiled.
A flash of movement in the mirror caught Natalie’s attention. It was Samara floating from the bed where Romy now lay, her body hips gyrating up and down as she muttered to herself. Natalie couldn’t see the headphones in Romy’s ears, but she could hear the words that Romy echoed from them.
“Clay to be molded…toy to be played with…tool to be used…weapon to be wielded…love to obey…exist to obey…exist to obey…exist to obey…”
Samara moved in toward the vanity, brushing her hand over Natalie’s cheek.
“I only came here for Romy,” Samara said. “But Mistress may appreciate a few more pieces for her collection.”
“Why?” Natalie snapped her head away from Samara’s hand. “What are you going to do to me?”
“I’m just going to make you like us, my dear,” Samara said. “An obedient, loyal servant to our Mistress Maxwell. I’m sure we can find something for the two of you.”
“Crazy bitch,” Natalie growled. “I thought you were supposed to be one of the nice ones.”
“Please don’t fight it, Natalie,” Colleen said. “I was scared too. But I promise the brainwashing is painless. And it feels so good when you finally obey.”
Samara admired Natalie’s youthful face before she issued her command to Colleen, “Show her.”
“Fuck!” Natalie shouted as Colleen sunk her face into her pussy, her tongue lapping at Natalie’s clitoris. She was surprised to find herself soaking wet and wanting. “How? What are you doing to me?” she cried.
“It’s already started,” Samara said. “Mistress Maxwell’s method attacks the senses on all fronts. The light subdues, the candles dull the mind, the sex makes you desire, the music rewrites your mind.”
“Music?” Natalie breathed.
Samara unspooled a pair of earbuds.
“Please,” Natalie pleaded, shaking her head as tears streaked her cheeks. She feared how good it felt to be numb, to feel the pleasure of her friend between her legs. Even without the music she was beginning to rock her hips to match Colleen’s pace “Please, I’ll go back to my room. I won’t tell anybody about this!”
“Of course you won’t,” Samara said, pushing the buds into Natalie’s ears. “You already belong to Her.”
Natalie struggled, whipping her head back and forth as the music droned, boring its way into her brain. She tried desperately to grab hold of something–anything. A belief, a memory, a feeling. She felt that it she could just hold onto one thing that was fundamental to her being that even in total surrender she could still come back. But the music was fighting her and winning. It was only a few chords on loop, a subtle synth rhythm like one might hear on call waiting with their cable provider. Its slow, droning sound echoing through her mind erased every thought as it came to her. If anything escaped its devastation, then a breath of the candle’s scent, or the ecstasy of Colleen’s tongue would wipe her mind clean, dispelling the thought and allowing the music to continue rewriting her.
Samara joined in. She placed soft kisses up Natalie’s flat stomach, rolled her tongue along her nipples. In that moment, Natalie was an empty husk of pleasure, existing only to respond to the pleasure of these two mindless slaves. Her struggles slowed, her body loosened until all she was doing was responding to them.
Natalie bit her lip as a thought slipped in, this one crafted and planted by the song: she wanted to be just like them. She wanted to be mindless and obedient and she wanted to fuck. She wanted to serve.
Her eyes rolled back as she accepted the thought, as pleasurable as anything that Colleen or Samara had done to her. But something inside of her was still fighting. A small piece of her. She blinked, and a rogue part of her mind came roaring back. It wasn’t a memory or a simple thought. It was a conviction, a piece of fundamental programming that was essential to the person Natalie would always be. She clung desperately to this rogue coding, determined to ride it into the darkness.
Studying her own face in the mirror, seeing her fading expression, Natalie replayed her conviction over and over until the music drowned it out and all that was left was Fleur-de-lis.
Fuck these bitch ass models.
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libidomechanica · 10 months ago
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From room they were white: and as a bore
A limerick sequence
               1
From room they were white: and as a bore. My wish to God I never. Not all    fulfil your mother, the    moon’s late minion claim. A grandsire or a grandame Natures grace.
               2
But in the fair speak to her way: wan was the rosemary we take, and Syrinx    reioyse, that vain it were    a poetess was born? Eisel gainst his heart, which the sweetest thing.
               3
They knew. Thou by praises from heaven like that cloisters of the uncertain    if one lady’s side! I    do not, O doe not, from loving and had an air as sent o’er.
               4
Turned to warmth about luxury. Make me forth, that it seems he’s right time came.    Thoughts dim and unhallowest    help the theme of these things, all that’s in order all outwent.
               5
Here people quiz it) to me appear. In lifting snow; time has turned the arrow    strike from your wife, to    your noble line, worne of Paradise, ’ which vulgar miracle.
               6
Yours is a face pale shade to shine and yet they wonder and kiss’d the last I    guess, twas I. With me. Lo!    Which lays both sights cannot brag of heroic bustle. For there.
               7
In laps of pleasant, so mild; the window and green seraglio has its smell    may take. Back upon the    Lee that lives only at night I feel estranger to enlarged.
               8
And yet in her peerless mastiff bitch? Each nipples in monastic circumspection.    Yet disappear;    of deeper that want supply: so richly clad, and reaches high.
               9
When that I think two people pay but at this ice. Me, thy heart was made: our    times; but dear, tis but rain,    and round the ox to thy hard to bee. The tiny cell is free.
               10
Eyes, like child! Some might quite a Jupiter, they may sleep. All, men ignorance—    for he is death, which me    befel, even I in myself in two. To say thought displease.
               11
Nor perch, hovering along. How cold, and grief pre-scorches rich which a state more    should meet the embrace, prepar’d    by the prince, debauched this sole image pass, through the best.
               12
Red brick or two, and every youth, which, as all passions to the mirror. Shall    gie thee, and the Maiden’s    side,—so beautiful, a faery’s song. Here, work enough stays shut.
               13
Come inmate the orient eyes divine: Love’s a god, or woman is so    cold hill side. The bright as    fine, sweet memory. Yet she an angel form’s faun to the year.
               14
Of the hushed! Beseech your content to search out what to say, thus bold began:    My lady liege, ’ said her    years as the blood as Fort Knox. Boys dead? Not once beat Praise be Thine!
               15
Infancy! The foolish wit! The proper hearts are gone. And listening head o’er    each year them, no doubt    extremely handsome anger with horrid sin—and what to his will?
               16
Said Lolah interposed, and looked more strong, as several sheep down the    fawn, which we cast a shade    alone have talk’d a dame whom the caged bird’s feet. And find a way.
               17
My pale forehead to Wyndermere. Have pity or sorrow and icicles.    We two wives a-sunning    sing. The moments! That was on their halls, and in silence prayeth she.
               18
In on thing a handsome lies, and people of Delight, and to weare? But all    the same, we readily    forgive. There stands, as in their walls to shrewd turned myself more dear.
               19
She shrunk and beauty in Loves Wars to yeild. The whole corn-field! Which physician    to my though Epictetus    with art I could understanding near, which t is in age.
               20
Pale lies our think, yea ev’n of wretched if all of fire, the clock that Coleridge    hath melt my heart. Falls to    be overlook’d—and gave him with youngest Virgin and with you.
               21
His goods, to say they embraces, and after would rejoice keen as grain    septembering his vice—for    shame! But now and icicles. ’ My beautiful exceedingly!
               22
Thou, heavens and, maybe, love. Therefore was none, the new world went, I gave what    an intellectual    breeze of Time, the Eye would douse withstand. For whate’er condition.
               23
In trine. Handsome anger, a spacious rings, and bells low, and waters are twirl’d;    then I speak to her golden    shrine. The cravat stain’d love and I shall strike on a summer.
               24
To a hair of glass! That I can, i’ve done to obtain; tis they make the    usual in dark days of    his breast, robert Burns: can feel, by its throbbings, will soon be made.
               25
’Er my wounds, some maids have been so quite. Own—only to stream, as the past, having    fairly diddled, his    pockets first her say it— our Ida has a heart: ev’n the trick.
               26
Lonely isle of right: she was a miller with their lips. And with discontent    to meet and wild, sir Leoline    greete? Dreaming, opened doors to one defied, collect some days.
               27
Whether wit was before me; Moore and wish’d to interlace. For truth extolled,    and had the elevator    where to call me Papa I am eighteen inches high.
               28
Crowds, in Natures rent, with softest downy breast can give myself in scorn to    be bound by something: a    cleft them ken he’s to make the universe, to be mine, no voice.
               29
The secret, fearful moan, amongst a people going away. Laid; and    silently but it is the    Pharos from those who live but wished his dodging his fate, loves man.
               30
And in what had pass’d in business with the clocks in the same song of the human    kind! No mortal eyes,    or wait the village dog barks at thy will; and as his mother’s.
               31
Good as an owl, not only that holds the worms, who takes the throne. ’ The forests    … bring me there seem’d agitated    was sure the apple and the ox to thy hand that much.
               32
Each pearl. Who in despite the surest side; her mother’s. Till his eyes so blue—    alas! The Golden nymph    replied: Pluck thee fair subject Lute! White with the Southerne shepherd.
               33
Now to the mirror, and o’er each sting us at length with a face pale shade    will of one good at? Skull-    things good, while the sweet love you on these walls to be rashly touch’d.
               34
(Said Christabel: all our hero through. Then Oothoon; but Theotormon! And she    in thy proud brow’s blue isles    and dull. For thy heart shall awaken her knees both darling sin.
               35
Whether gulbeyaz and her head hungry dog; or does the world! Came, shortened to    two and Love! If thy mind,    and then lets you so cruellest, and fades, unseen of queans; and wise.
               36
It was strange made wretched by sometimes thought it is dark, and all that sweet it    is still, and not a checked    impulse of the face declivity which it came out of reach.
               37
And as four wives a-sunning into the size of a lie. Shoulders hung: and    after I stood at the    porches rich which not a throne, thought, and he said; but still he grew.
               38
They can, and betrays her blotte. Silent I hover all its sweet on a gloom    profound; and pledge we ne’er    shall venture to see. The canker-blooms have been a thing, all lies!
               39
What idler thing toward America. I wish was fled! I by discourse ne’er    was seen by need to feel!    Who in early walk, adown a corner for a woman’s goal.
               40
Over delicious music, and both translate it. When they are passion might    feel in the least,—and yet,    because he fixed thou seek it in heavens and, maybe, lover.
               41
A tongue-tied patience. I know not how, in fearful of the truth extolled, and    call him a cloak and play,    the brow of earth is found its unexplored since, nor smells like through.
               42
Above the sea. Your minds intice. To burn out both, or either side—o rather    rude, than might have wished    his name is Geraldine, his breast; she bowed, sheenless woman, off!
               43
Fresh sprung from Heaven, by magic, ghostly roots and shut up from wealth goes the    way she always say, spite    of Andy Gump. The latest dreams attendance, like trickling tears.
               44
Should she nothing this subject to no dispute from his own, to be a shame,    the much-lamented virgin    lies! So haggard and fired it into one she loathes?
               45
Next stood a moment, and darkle. His daily chores: feeding on the moral    people’s ancestors, who    has sail’d where is the secret hair and the tallest chick pushed from.
               46
Still yearns for rest; all in this woman who cherish doth mock the meaning to    be very weel aff, and    doth not so; of the morning. It makes a man he liked to heare.
               47
Eye: but I want. Not a choice because it was before, but arose, and all    are gone on a palfrey’s    back, a weary be, as well fill up their title was a catch.
               48
Do but gently as you are one. Than pairs of men; but made Love bleeds, and folded    his life? And about    these precautionary gleams. To Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine!
               49
At first, the whole hall! Lest wanes; who were in the secret tears; beneath her comely    should steer and calling    of all save Dudu’s form look’d down by her silken robe of glass!
               50
All purpose, where, and we hear aye birds, with Gelliflowres: bring Coronall:    oliues bene so least    for the charm. This knowing what I find it, that they came to blaw!
               51
’Er which troubled by an eager or as a man mad all things, from a game.    I noticed a strictly    over utmost him so hugely stood my fame, it is the aim!
               52
And, if thou wert not my heavenward. Of slumbered on this kind. Does not    the faith so weake? The brands    were too brief agony what straightwayes my life unto an end.
               53
Because the proudest said, I look forward to any sensual Abyss,    under the sedge is withered    from the World of Being swept far from Head to Wyndermere.
               54
Your orders, even my Muse and the world! Thus Bracy said: Hence, remove, Herrick,    thou awakes them    at the rent, and the placed my casque and great prosers, and the signs.
               55
Made so fairily well where she such warm, and if that controller of our    face lies upturned, and    like to laugh and but go! Sweetest of books, her face. Danced on me?
               56
Verse, the dead; seen the fallow air? Then what your weary be, as I think much    on the more strong tongue of    light—? Life be a blessing, this nightmare did see its hopes and pray.
               57
For if I be defile. And with bloody Frenchman, oh Jack! Long since last    of light—? Who vindicates    a moment ere thy place, when first investigating vision.
               58
And the boss of your young stranger, like other bereavement, and if one deep    an angel mind. It comes    the face has come and edifying that sings with petty cares.
               59
Wall. Hanging so high, whatever you asked thy task, that Theotormon! What end    is change my free though he    tore him ashamed to head- quarters! The passed thence but sweetness tell.
               60
Bird’s trouble wi’ the matron and no child of Chancery, that’s had enough    for the pale shade of stone,    to the Sun. It so befel in this away the Lion’s mane!
               61
And all this costly. In pearl. And fondly in his defilèd bosoms there    is iron in this of    mind as dreams all yesterday. The Golden nymph replied at a’!
               62
Do as your fingers reaching for that was once in a trice: but always and    women bear child. They told    me too, and friends: I go to warmth or a simple denial.
               63
But, as time when all marvelling through dooms of existence rose responsive,    silent still, the way to    curl round-table leg my knee is pressing throng: with gown tonight?
               64
’ Her head to be, and honey-dropping flowers of fair Geraldine! Not with    women’s tears were stalk bows    beneath the wise Roman, heroic, stoic to open, won’t.
               65
More easily because good old woman. Such as are too weak for days, trying    to the knight and morning,    and draws the man-child is full dominion blest, and little skill.
               66
Her breathing. Over his porch these strange whirl the way to the sigh’d, and mien    excited general admiration    set and some majesty, who, with mantle on the rest.
               67
Her mither through what showe: let none stirr’d by a vision. As the bowls, and gay,    and the flame usual    sort. ’-These our spouseless vow to rob a living past the kind.
               68
Troth, lady, and in the dust in at the milk-teeth of babes, and peeled bits of    murdered men will waft thee    from gods of a captive’s hours. When he here in her sovran shrine!
               69
Drove sleep is pure inventions find, to disfranchise despair! I conquer Loue;    that what the windowes    now, than forestalled, get opposite, o thing the grove it was stranger.
               70
Worlds to lay the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer, plunge them climb out. To guide    seafaring men thinke thy    blood by us, the future good Queen, with hands with thy siuer rayes!
               71
When low hangs before him the envier? Off my phonecard I’m sorry And    now so yes the music    blended alters hue, and very little I lookt others here.
               72
Young man, this, but must bear all the waves are gone! And flowers and sport around,    and in popped a dwarf. And    is thy verge it is a tide in it; and stately mountains grow.
               73
Hunting larks, to where dwells, and pine! Patient and square a dead and dearest dear;    but there. But draw the cost    nor shall go, as harbinger on my bosom of Italy.
               74
‘Tis all the first train going away. See. Who gazed upon grey skies changes,    but therewith, like brother,    nor love appeals the glow of riper days are as breeches.
               75
And letters still reigne with the strong and joyance everything worth, which doth mock the    meads full before he was    not at once and sing all that is won. A phantom upon each?
               76
Poor vaunt of lamps to aid his tooth! And ugly, well for Elisa, in health    from the treasure. To burn    out so, we’llsay nothing among the dormitory, the Prince.
               77
That to answer that Peggy made access to kiss that clos’d her and answers    in all that clings to all    divine. Of kissing—which I can create with a bitterly.
               78
Of fright in far apartments. So wert thou wrong that is, is; then a mile of    am though your dwarf. The    lamp, and kept him from the midnight pierce: ’ my wish the sorrows know?
               79
The gardens square a dead and soon her train, the child; but here undid they dance,    chatter, smile, and shelter    her loveliness. It makes me in it, which your life you will!
               80
But the roar that have borne aloft, the Mind seem reall, the silver chair. Luscious    successful cry; but    copying is, while thy soul its budded charms, faded the muzzle?
               81
By dreams … scatter day! Tread lightly: what dirty springing: Today I bake. Is    the supreme authority    direct! I am the beginning, who much pleased with it.
               82
By years to burn out her bosom that has a’ to borrow, and swore the lady    sprang fast as every    street these, and eyes to sway, you share you crazy. His hat, and me.
               83
God, or widow, maid, alas! When your skies above; and ever take me bow,    and protesting dove. Yet    in the weigh’d her through doubt extremely to get from the damp air.
               84
—And brought to mob me up with feet of better: a rib’s a thing wheel should have    seen the state, which do the    doors wide! Could die like spoons while she slept, or dreams all yesterday.
               85
And do I heard them one tenant.—Just ere she can hold his oath deny, my    love in woman who has    sail’d? Despise the song i’ve been impossible not to farmer?
               86
A silent, striking willow as idlers do, and I feel her grey of morning,    who much a man who    cherish doth young ambitious light, and said the sighs toward daybreak.
               87
Was light, he saw ten thought t was once touched the summer gleam, though our loathing    all king moved on any    other; and not hear, and I the morning dream; so cold with thee!
               88
The king infant joy! Do go, are very clerks,—those shadow of a shop called    before harm to other    always snow she seems rather too high and to be rashly touch’d.
               89
Both forbear, though the earth! A foreign filth and gray, which once more with other    womb to the man had found’st    a brightest form an ornament, but sometimes some Eyes be blind.
               90
Is one, he seldom I ever stole a little man. An imagination,    with youth, when the eye    and Time will I be, and scorn. The bricks, to let your siluer song.
               91
He, the crafty, I am a dwarf. Danced like to the time nursing, measure    to see that is things    combustible to watch was the ravishing her their ways; their fate.
               92
On speed he loathes, and wears a goodly pride; draw in’t a wound, his streamers    to take his waist! ’ Ghosts, ’ replied,    Between her eye discern, compare: they cheered into a rage.
               93
Thus nothing like a chessman, the Oda, upon speculation; if in    consent. A man who had    made him meditation more mildly ere it like a stone bridge.
               94
Work, yet strong, downright sobs around me here nor there flew out an unavoidable    violence that    heaven of gentle yet prevails. Then out of the same harpy.
               95
For no one to crave though not to be kiss’d the whole face out showe: let dame    Eliza thanke you fairly.    How can the oak and for now through street, last year, and held her well!
               96
For a hundred maids, that my name it who can blame him?—And all around the    music in their arms the    vigour of night, no hopefulness declare, nor perch, hovering kings.
               97
Her Attica; or he who has sail’d? And added to Juanna by their teens;    but his hospitality.    As they weave the fat fed or arm that drinks another’s hall.
               98
Bits of straw; had you but he’s grown more harm to part my plighted this first Romans    chose: Fabricius from    its pacifier. She that there dies and feast: such feasting down.
               99
The dew sat chilly, but not dark. Air coin’d to climb out. Let me die where a    sounded, friends in your music,    our moment’s space, stood calling Theotormon’s Eagles to pray?
               100
She told with you. With Heaven reflect the land is thy Bagpype broken in    that happens, both good almost    clergymen, or what can behold this slander soul helps soul!
               101
What is about her will hint allusions will I not take care of all metals,    but the apartment,    on the gutter yet I may e’en gae hang. When the tomb for text.
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nfliplnews · 11 months ago
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[ad_1] Dec 19, 2023, 10:17 PM ETLOS ANGELES -- Derrick Ward, a former running back and one-time member of the 2008 Super Bowl-winning New York Giants team, has been arrested in Los Angeles on suspicion of robbery.Ward, 43, was arrested Monday in the North Hollywood area, police said. He was being held Tuesday on $250,000 bail, according to a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department inmate search website.Police didn't immediately provide details of the alleged crime, and it wasn't immediately clear whether Ward had an attorney who could speak on his behalf.A call by The Associated Press to the police department seeking information wasn't immediately returned Tuesday evening.Police told NBC News that Ward allegedly robbed five businesses, including gas stations, and that the 6-foot-tall, 230-pound ex-player didn't use a gun during the alleged crimes.Ward, who grew up in Southern California, was drafted by the New York Jets in 2004 in the seventh round but was cut without playing a regular-season game.He went on to play for the Giants from 2004 to 2008, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2009 and the Houston Texans from 2010 to 2011 before retiring from the NFL in 2012.With the Giants, he was part of a fearsome trio of running backs along with Brandon Jacobs and Ahmad Bradshaw that was nicknamed "Earth, Wind and Fire."He was with the Giants when they beat Tom Brady's undefeated New England Patriots 17-14 in Super Bowl XLII in 2008. However, Ward didn't play in the game because of a broken leg.Ward's best NFL season was 2008 when he rushed for 1,025 yards on 182 carries with two touchdowns.In 2009, Ward was signed to a four-year, $17 million contract by the Buccaneers, but he was cut the next year and went to work for the Texans.During his 93-game NFL career, Ward had 2,628 rushing yards on 551 attempts and 12 touchdowns. [ad_2] Source link
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subliminalbointext · 1 year ago
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Fleur-de-lis #2: New Acquisitions
When Catlin Caldwell signed her first major contract with Confidential, she didn’t bother posturing. Her whole life she’d been a bombshell, and since high school she’d worked her ass off to profit from it. Why should she act like this was anything more than a paycheck? Her heroes were supermodels like Rafaela Carvalho or Sidney Croft, women who walked just enough Confidential Fashion Shows to build a brand from their own name. As soon as they could, they ditched the racket and went into business for themselves. Cat counted the days like an inmate nearing parole.
Maybe that was why she resented Samara Alves so deeply. Cat was only a couple of years younger than Samara, but she’d had to grind to get her contract. She spent the better part of her twenties modeling Confidential’s teen line, buried in the middle of the catalog. It was easy for Cat to feel like a utility player in the middle of a breakout season. Everything had just been so much easier for Samara. Signed to a flagship contract at eighteen, opening the fashion show at nineteen, headlining the Christmas campaign by twenty. She lived and breathed Confidential, rarely worked outside of the brand, and spoke like the work she did there was making a real difference. Cat was taking pitches from cosmetic companies, searching for her first major endorsement. She’d been under contract for a year and already she was halfway out the door.
But Samara stood in her way.
Cat was skeptical when Fleur-de-lis first contacted her. Another upstart looking for a fresh face who they could poach from Confidential? But Cat could never turn down an opportunity to be flattered. Imagine her disappointment when she sat down for lunch with Michael Ramsey, the lanky Fleur-de-lis representative, and he launched into questions about Samara. “A little bit of industry research,” Michael had said. His beady little eyes appeared even smaller beneath his thick glasses.
Cat weighed her options, considered leaving him with the bill. But what was the worst that could happen? This no name lingerie company poaches Samara Alves from Confidential? Ultimately, Cat ran the bill up while she volunteered everything she had on Samara; her personal life (caveman-looking ex-husband), her diet (the secret was smoking two out of three daily meals), her wardrobe (no street style), when she went out (Confidential promotions), when she stayed in (every chance she could get).
Michael took diligent notes on a legal pad as Cat spilled the tea. When she was finished, he ripped the pages from the pad, folded them neatly, and tucked them into his suit pocket. He adjusted his glasses and offered his hand to shake Cat’s. “Thank you for meeting with me today. This information is more valuable than you know.”
“Just do something with it,” Cat said.
And as far as Cat knew, that was it. Michael took care of the bill, she got a free lunch and an hour to bitch about Samara Alves. Not a bad day, considering.
A few months passed before Cat received another call from Fleur-de-lis. This one was late at night, well into the morning. Cat wasn’t asleep, but it was way passed “don’t fucking bother me” hours.
“This is Michael Ramsey.” Cat didn’t remember the name or recognize his voice. “Yeah?” She said, puncturing the conversation with an appropriate level of annoyance. “I represent Fleur-de-lis,” Michael added. “We have Miss Alves here at our Los Angeles office.” “Cool. I’m in bed right now,” Cat raised her phone as high as she could to mask the sound of the bubbles in her hot tub. Matt Tanner, a Greek god of a Nickelodeon star, had his arm wrapped around her. He offered Cat a confused look. Tanner was dumb as a box of rocks, which made him a prime candidate for future hubby. Cat’s mother had taught her never to marry smarter.
“I know it’s late,” Michael continued. “But we would like for you to come in.” “Excuse me?” She asked.
“Miss Alves’ orientation is about to begin.”
Cat sighed and said, “I think you have the wrong number.” She ended the call and, with a huff, lifted herself from under Tanner’s arm as she stepped out of the hot tub.
“Everything okay?” Tanner twisted around to admire her stride to the towel rack, flashing his dopey, pearlescent smile.
Cat dried herself off, then bent down to give Tanner a peck on the lips as a kind of innocent teaser to what she had in store for him next. “Everything’s fine, baby,” she said. “Just stupid business stuff.”
“I don’t think it’s stupid,” he said. “You know I considered going into business before Randy scouted me at the Foot Locker in West Covina. Have you ever wondered what fish are thinking? Because I have this idea for an app—”
Cat’s phone buzzed again. She held a finger up to silence Tanner and he obeyed like a good boy.
“Just a moment baby,” she said, taking the call inside her house for a bit more privacy. She watched Tanner from the window as she spoke. “Listen,” she said. “I don’t know what you expect from me, but I am in the middle of something.” If by something she meant trying to fuck a rich white boy so that she could leak gossip about their relationship to the tabloids, yeah, it was something. “I’m sorry to bother you, Miss Caldwell,” Michael said. “But I’m afraid Ms. Maxwell will not take no for an answer. That means that I cannot take no for an answer.”
“Well here it is,” Cat shot back. “No.”
There was a beat of dead air on the line before Michael spoke again. “Okay,” he said. “Bear with me just one moment.”
“Fine,” Cat huffed.
She heard a click on Michael’s end and the call faded into Fleur-de-lis’ hold music, a soft electronic beat. Cat didn’t plan to wait on hold for Michael to grab whoever the fuck Ms. Maxwell was, but the music seemed to draw her in. She stood there in her living room, rocking back and forth to the slow rhythm. There was a comforting familiarity to it.
Her breathing slowed. The world began to spin, and Cat lost her footing. She landed in the soft embrace of her plush couch. She lay motionless there as the music washed over her mind. It took everything from her, but the phone remained gripped in her hand, pressed to her ear. A small line of drool trailed down her chin, dripping on her breasts.
When the music cut out, a new voice spoke in her ear. This was a woman: strong, confident, commanding. “You will come to my office now, Cat.”
“Yes, I understand.” Cat replied with little emotion. “You will join Samara for orientation.” As if an instinct, Cat parroted the woman’s words. “Yes. I will join Samara for orientation.”
In the end it had been about Cat. Maybe there was some comfort in knowing that, if she could really know anything right now. She hadn’t signed a contract with Fleur-de-lis yet. It was an informal agreement, one made with a handshake buried so deep in her subconscious that she couldn’t access the memory. For the time being, Catlin Caldwell was more valuable to Elena Maxwell as a Confidential model. The corporate espionage, the questions about Samara, they were all part of an elaborate cover. She didn’t remember leaving the restaurant with Michael. She didn’t remember the tall woman with the sunglasses stopping her on the sidewalk and asking for a picture. She didn’t remember the numbing flash of the camera. She didn’t remember Michael and the tall woman discretely escorting her into the back of a limousine.
“This is an important test for you, Cat,” the woman said. “I hope to see the true depths of your devotion this evening.”
“I belong to you, Mistress.” Cat said. “Samara will know the pleasure of serving you.”
“Good girl. Now come to me.”
“Yes, Mistress Maxwell.”
Confidential wasn’t where Natalie imagined ending up when she was studying theater at the University of Chicago. As a young girl, Natalie had caught a late night showing of John Carpenter’s The Thing and fallen in love with special effects. Soon after she began experimenting with makeup, building skills that she’d take with her to college and into her early career.
Her dad’s basement was her green room. Down there she transformed her friends into gorgeous princesses and gruesome zombies. In high school she did the school play, and in college she coordinated the entire theater department’s makeup. Confidential was a dream job for many artists, but for Natalie it was a steppingstone on her way to Hollywood.
She was thankful for the work at least. Most makeup artists ended up in beauty parlors with cosmetic certificates surviving on tips. Confidential offered a more than comfortable living, and she got to travel for free. Last winter she’d had an opportunity to leave Chicago’s blustery December winds for a ten-day shoot in Turks and Caicos, and now she was in the English countryside for the fall catalog. There was more paradise in this world than Natalie had ever imagined, and all she had to do to see it all was to spend twelve hours a day with supermodels.
Sometimes it didn’t feel worth it.
On Natalie’s first day, Cat Caldwell had scanned her body up and down and scoffed.
“Cute,” she said, closing her eyes as Natalie moved in with the brush. “You want to be a model?” she asked.
“God no,” Natalie laughed. “I’d prefer to stay behind the camera.”
“I’ll bet,” Cat said, opening one eye to keep it trained on Natalie. “Listen, honey. I’ve seen girls like you come and go. It’s always the same. You think that if you can get close enough to us, something will just rub off. But this isn’t something that can be learned. Modeling is ninety-five percent genetics.”
Natalie just bit her lip and focused on her work. Though her hands were steady as she traced liner around Cat’s lips, she felt like her whole body was shaking. She’d never been so intimidated in her life.
“Instagram,” Cat continued. “You can’t do much about the face, but put those tits up on Instagram and you’ll have Sacramento’s sixth man in your DMs before you know it.”
A few shoots later, Natalie vented to her coworker about Cat’s attitude. “They could teach college courses about her ego,” she said. “Are all models this bad?”
Colleen laughed and said, “If you’re looking for people without an ego you’re in the wrong business.”
Natalie shook her head. “I don’t know how I got stuck with the worst one.” Colleen shrugged. “At least she likes you.” “How can you tell?” she asked. “Honey,” Colleen smiled. “I’ve been doing Romy’s makeup for four years. Cat’s gotten six makeup artists fired since she got here. How long have you been here now?” Natalie cocked her head curiously. “I hadn’t thought of it like that.”
But if Cat liked Natalie she had a weird way of showing it. Working with her was a special kind of stressful that even Natalie’s college experiences couldn’t match. Every workday offered a new challenge to tackle. Cat had once insisted that Natalie brush out her hair and start again—thirty minutes before the start of the shoot. And multiple times she had accused Natalie of trying to torpedo her career by putting her in front of the camera looking like a clown.
Imagine Natalie’s relief when she arrived for day one at the estate to find that Cat hadn’t showed up. “What do you mean she’s not here?” she asked.
“I mean she didn’t fly in with the other girls,” the director said. “We’re scrambling to get a hold of her right now.” “She must be on one of her ego trips,” Colleen laughed. “When is she not?” Natalie asked. “For now, we’re aiming for Tuesday morning as her makeup shoot date,” the director said.
That gave Natalie three days to hang around the set and explore the mansion. It was unlike any place she’d ever seen. They were shooting in an opulent Victorian estate in the south of England. Approaching from the outside, Natalie had a distinct feeling that she’d stumble into Bruce Wayne here. As long as she left the crew alone during shooting, she was free to wander its dozens of rooms. She did so aimlessly, getting to know the crew and the models a bit better as she passed the time waiting for Cat.
In the afternoon, she sat in the courtyard with Kylie Mara and swapped deep talk. Kylie considered herself a girl next door type, but her sharp curves and high cheekbones made her look to Natalie like more of an alien than a woman. Still, their conversation was engaging. Kylie was well-read and had a podcaster’s understanding of random topics like movies, politics, and conspiracies. She blew smoke rings as she mused about the function of supermodels in modern society.
Natalie had taken enough philosophy courses in college to know that Kylie was full of shit about most things, but she wasn’t a bitch about it.
“How’d you get into the business?” Kylie asked, passing the blunt back to Natalie to take a hit.
“I just want to do makeup,” Natalie said after a long drag. “I want to work on movies one day.”
“Huh,” Kylie said. “A body like yours, I would have thought–” “Yeah,” Natalie said. “I’ve heard that one before.”
As much as she despised the thought, Natalie was built for the industry. She’d developed early and spent most of her teenage years weathering the stares of her classmates. In high school she ran from it, dressing down in long sweaters and flannels to deflect attention. But as she matured, she began developing a sense of fashion that embraced her body instead of hiding it. Natalie knew that she was hot, and she didn’t care if people took notice. She even liked it a little bit when models flashed jealousy. She liked to think that she could do their job, not because she wanted to, but because she wanted them to know how replaceable they all were.
The conversation with Kylie trailed off from there as a chill settled between them. She spent that evening in Colleen’s room, the two American friends suffering through the jet lag together.
“She’s right though,” Colleen said. “You really could be a model.” “Whatever,” Natalie sat back against the headboard and crossed her arms. “I just don’t get why they all have to be this way. It’s like even when they’re nice, they’re judging you.”
Colleen, sitting in a chair by the window, took a swig from a bottle of whiskey. “Kylie’s not nice,” she said. “She’s crazy. Like rich crazy.” “What do you mean?” “I mean it’s important to her brand that she’s cool and down to earth. The podcasting and guest articles, it’s all about maintaining an image. When you actually talk, she looks through you.”
“Huh,” Natalie dropped her shoulders. “I guess she’s kind of a bitch too. You know what? Fuck these bitch ass models.” Colleen laughed, then said, “Romy and Samara. They’re good people.” “What makes them so special?” Natalie asked, stuffing a piece of chocolate orange into her mouth. “Because they live and breathe Confidential. All these other girls just want to be Rafaela Carvalho. They’re chasing money. But Romy and Samara have a lane and they stick to it.” “You really like Romy,” Natalie said. “I’d die for that girl,” Colleen smiled.
Natalie’s jet lag didn’t get better after an early morning. The next evening she tossed and turned in her own room. She sat up, checked the time on her phone. Two in the morning. She cycled through a regular routine: Facetiming her boyfriend back in Chicago, she shared her anxieties around the models and her weird interaction with Kylie. He did his best to center her, but it was obvious that Natalie’s thoughts were spiraling. She needed something else right now. Reading didn’t pull her out of her funk either, and after scrolling through Netflix she couldn’t find anything worth watching.
She knew that Colleen had had a long day with Romy on her schedule, but Natalie hoped as she pulled herself out of bed that she’d still be up. She left her bedroom and took the quick walk down the hall to Colleen’s room. The door was open, the lights were off, and the bed was empty.
Natalie scrunched her face in frustration. She was about to turn back around, go back to her bedroom and count sheep, when she heard a noise from the opposite end of the hall.
A moan. It was long and soft, and for a moment Natalie doubted her ears. Still, it drew her to the source. She tiptoed down the hall slowly, trying not to alert the source of the sound.
At the end of the hallway, Natalie found one of the bedroom doors cracked open, a sliver of light shining through. She heard another moan on the other side of the door, and this time she knew for certain that this was real. She crept closer, smiling as she imagined what could be on the other side. But when she peered through the crack between the door and its frame, she was surprised by what she found.
Romy van der Berg was a gorgeous Dutch model who had worked for Confidential almost as long as Samara Alves. The two had developed a public friendship that fans of the brand obsessed over on fashion forums and Tumblrs. Romy was the only supermodel that Samara had any interest in spending time away from work with, but a prior commitment had kept Romy away from Samara’s fateful housewarming party in Los Angeles.
Natalie held her breath as she tried to make sense of the image in front of her. Romy was naked, sitting before the vanity in her room. She appeared to be studying her reflection. And she wasn’t alone.
Samara had arrived late to the estate as well, flying in that morning just in time for the first day’s shoot. She was leaned in closely behind Romy, her hand resting just beneath Romy’s chin. She appeared to be holding Romy’s gaze on the mirror.
Another moan escaped Romy’s lips, and Natalie noticed that Samara’s hand was buried between Romy’s legs.
“Do you see?” Samara asked her. “I see,” Romy said quietly. “Tell me what you see.” “I see,” Romy started before another sharp moan escaped her lips. “I see obedience.”
On the vanity between Romy and the mirror sat two scented candles. Their flames danced to the gentle flow of Romy’s soft breaths.
“You belong to Her now, don’t you?” “Yes, Samara,” Romy said. “I submit myself to Her. I submit myself to Fleur-de-lis.”
Natalie backed quietly away from the door. She didn’t understand what she’d seen on the other side and she was prepared to turn around and never speak of it to anybody. But when she turned around, she found herself face to face with Colleen.
Natalie didn’t have time to make sense of this sight either. Her friend standing before her was stripped down to her underwear, her left bra strap dangling around her shoulder as if she hadn’t cared to fix it.
Natalie’s breathing slowed as she compiled the data in her head, but none of it added up. Colleen was doing her own math. As the two faced off silently, Colleen cocked her head to the side, looking through her friend like one of their vacant models.
Natalie opened her mouth to speak, but Colleen moved first. Her hand sweeping up in one smooth motion, Natalie was quickly looking into the eye of a camera.
A flash in the darkness. It lingered there in Natalie’s vision, paralyzing her. She was powerless. The words that she’d tried to speak caught in her throat and stayed there as the bright light faded into nothing.
When consciousness returned to Natalie, she awoke in Romy’s room. Her hands were tied down to the arm of the chair in front of the vanity. She was cold. They had stripped her naked. Her head was spinning, drool caked her chin.
The candles flickered in front of her. Natalie’s eyes rolled back as she took in a deep breath through her nose, testing her senses. The odd scent made her body feel numb. Next, she felt a tickle between her legs. When she looked down, she saw Colleen beneath the vanity, staring up at her with those eerie, empty eyes.
“Colleen,” she gasped. “What’s happening?” “Something wonderful,” Colleen smiled.
A flash of movement in the mirror caught Natalie’s attention. It was Samara floating from the bed where Romy now lay, her body hips gyrating up and down as she muttered to herself. Natalie couldn’t see the headphones in Romy’s ears, but she could hear the words that Romy echoed from them.
“Clay to be molded…toy to be played with…tool to be used…weapon to be wielded…love to obey…exist to obey…exist to obey…exist to obey…”
Samara moved in toward the vanity, brushing her hand over Natalie’s cheek.
“I only came here for Romy,” Samara said. “But Mistress may appreciate a few more pieces for her collection.”
“Why?” Natalie snapped her head away from Samara’s hand. “What are you going to do to me?”
“I’m just going to make you like us, my dear,” Samara said. “An obedient, loyal servant to our Mistress Maxwell. I’m sure we can find something for the two of you.”
“Crazy bitch,” Natalie growled. “I thought you were supposed to be one of the nice ones.”
“Please don’t fight it, Natalie,” Colleen said. “I was scared too. But I promise the brainwashing is painless. And it feels so good when you finally obey.”
Samara admired Natalie’s youthful face before she issued her command to Colleen, “Show her.”
“Fuck!” Natalie shouted as Colleen sunk her face into her pussy, her tongue lapping at Natalie’s clitoris. She was surprised to find herself soaking wet and wanting. “How? What are you doing to me?” she cried.
“It’s already started,” Samara said. “Mistress Maxwell’s method attacks the senses on all fronts. The light subdues, the candles dull the mind, the sex makes you desire, the music rewrites your mind.”
“Music?” Natalie breathed.
Samara unspooled a pair of earbuds.
“Please,” Natalie pleaded, shaking her head as tears streaked her cheeks. She feared how good it felt to be numb, to feel the pleasure of her friend between her legs. Even without the music she was beginning to rock her hips to match Colleen’s pace “Please, I’ll go back to my room. I won’t tell anybody about this!”
“Of course you won’t,” Samara said, pushing the buds into Natalie’s ears. “You already belong to Her.”
Natalie struggled, whipping her head back and forth as the music droned, boring its way into her brain. She tried desperately to grab hold of something–anything. A belief, a memory, a feeling. She felt that it she could just hold onto one thing that was fundamental to her being that even in total surrender she could still come back. But the music was fighting her and winning. It was only a few chords on loop, a subtle synth rhythm like one might hear on call waiting with their cable provider. Its slow, droning sound echoing through her mind erased every thought as it came to her. If anything escaped its devastation, then a breath of the candle’s scent, or the ecstasy of Colleen’s tongue would wipe her mind clean, dispelling the thought and allowing the music to continue rewriting her.
Samara joined in. She placed soft kisses up Natalie’s flat stomach, rolled her tongue along her nipples. In that moment, Natalie was an empty husk of pleasure, existing only to respond to the pleasure of these two mindless slaves. Her struggles slowed, her body loosened until all she was doing was responding to them.
Natalie bit her lip as a thought slipped in, this one crafted and planted by the song: she wanted to be just like them. She wanted to be mindless and obedient and she wanted to fuck. She wanted to serve.
Her eyes rolled back as she accepted the thought, as pleasurable as anything that Colleen or Samara had done to her. But something inside of her was still fighting. A small piece of her. She blinked, and a rogue part of her mind came roaring back. It wasn’t a memory or a simple thought. It was a conviction, a piece of fundamental programming that was essential to the person Natalie would always be. She clung desperately to this rogue coding, determined to ride it into the darkness.
Studying her own face in the mirror, seeing her fading expression, Natalie replayed her conviction over and over until the music drowned it out and all that was left was Fleur-de-lis.
Fuck these bitch ass models.
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inmatelocator12-blog · 5 years ago
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bailsbondca · 5 years ago
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girlactionfigure · 4 years ago
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Conductor of Dachau
Gave the musicians a reason to live
Herbert Zipper was a conductor and composer who founded a secret orchestra at Dachau, and wrote a song that became an anthem for death camp inmates.
Born in 1904 to an affluent Jewish family in Vienna, Herbert was a musical prodigy who studied at the prestigious Vienna Music Academy with the great composer Richard Strauss. He found employment as a conductor and composer for cabaret shows.
Germany annexed Austria in 1938 and immediately started persecuting Jewish citizens. Herbert was arrested that year and sent by the SS to Dachau, where he became a “horse,” pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with heavy rocks for 12 hours a day. One of the most talented composers in Europe was doing the work of an animal.
Herbert was not the only music man in Dachau. All the Jewish members of the Munich Philharmonic – comprising most of the orchestra – were also incarcerated there. Herbert enlisted the other musicians in an audacious, even insane, plan. They would make instruments and create an orchestra, right there at Dachau.
How could anybody create musical instruments in a concentration camp? They combed the camp for discarded pieces of wood and metal and fashioned eleven primitive yet functional instruments. At least one guard helped the musicians; Herbert requested a piece of wire for a string instrument, and later found it under his pillow.
Herbert’s Dachau orchestra performed concerts for the other inmates every Sunday, in an outhouse. It’s hard to imagine the experience of listening to sublime music in a filthy environment, while knowing they could be all killed for their participation. Herbert said that the concerts were not for entertainment, but rather to bring purpose and even a bit of normalcy back to their lives.
Noted playwright Jura Soyfer, an old friend of Herbert’s from his cabaret days, was also at Dachau. Together they wrote “Dachaulied” (Dachau song), with Herbert composing the haunting music in his head and Jura penning the sad, sardonic lyrics inspired by the concentration camp motto “Work will make you free.” They thought that writing the song would help them maintain some dignity in an atmosphere of constant humiliation and demonization. Herbert deliberately made the song difficult to learn, so that his fellow inmates would have to use all of their concentration and thereby mentally escape from their horrific surroundings. Amazingly, the Nazis never discovered the secret orchestra.
At the end of 1938, Herbert and Jura were transferred to Buchenwald where they taught other inmates the Dachau song. Soon after, Jura died of typhus at age 26, and Herbert lovingly prepared his body for burial. At this time Hitler hadn’t yet began to implement his “Final Solution” to kill all the Jews, which started in 1941. Herbert’s father Emil was in London, desperately trying to get a visa for Herbert and his two brothers to escape Austria. Miraculously, Emil was able to secure his sons’ release from Buchenwald, and they joined him in Paris on March 16, 1939.
During all this time, Herbert’s fiancee, dancer Trudl Dubsky, was working in Manila, in the Philippines. She recommended him for the job of conductor of the Manila Symphony Orchestra, and he was hired, traveling there in September, 1939. Herbert and Trudl were married on October 1. Although it wasn’t a world-class orchestra at the time, Herbert enjoyed working with the Manila Orchestra and under his leadership it improved dramatically. Life was good for Herbert and Trudl until January 1942, when the Japanese army invaded the Philippines and occupied Manila. It was a brutal occupation and once again Herbert was arrested, this time for refusing to conduct the orchestra for Japanese military officers. He was incarcerated and harshly interrogated for four months before being released. For the next three years Herbert and Trudl survived hand-to-mouth, owning no belongings and traveling frequently in search of safe haven in a country at war.
The most difficult period was the Battle of Manila in early 1945. More than once the building where they took shelter was bombed by the Japanese artillery and they escaped with only seconds to spare. In the end of February they were living with hundreds of other displaced people in a seven-story building in Manila that had neither electricity or water. Herbert volunteered to get water every day, a dangerous and difficult undertaking.  On the early morning of February 26, 1945, Herbert was on his water run when he saw an opportunity to reach the American front line, and he rushed across a battle field to do it. While there he received a crucial piece of information: the apartment building where he was staying was due to be bombed by the Allies within fifteen minutes! Herbert desperately explained that 800-1000 civilians were inside the building! Due to his pleas, the bombardment was delayed for 45 minutes, giving him just enough time to get back to the building and rescue everyone inside including Trudl.
Until Japan was defeated on September 2, 1945, Herbert worked secretly for the American army under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, transmitting valuable information about Japanese shipping schedules by shortwave radio. When Japan finally surrendered, Herbert organized and conducted a concert of Beethoven’s “Eroica” symphony, a goal he’d set during the darkest hours at Dachau. The concert was performed in a bombed-out church.
Herbert and Trudl immigrated to America in 1946, joining the rest of his family. He co-founded and conducted the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, and organized another orchestra especially to give free concerts for public school children. Students called Herbert, who had no children of his own, “Papa Z.” For the rest of his life he volunteered and supported arts education for young people.
Herbert was close friends with poet Langston Hughes and they collaborated on an opera together, “Barrier.” Trudl worked as a ballet tacher. They moved to Chicago in 1953, where Herbert founded the Music Center of the North Shore, and then to Los Angeles, where Herbert directed the School of Performing Arts at USC.
Interviewed by a Los Angeles Times reporter at the end of his life, Herbert said “We have to see the world as it is, but we have to think about what the world could be. That’s what the arts are about.”
Herbert is the subject of a biography, “Dachau Song: The Twentieth Century Odyssey of Herbert Zipper,” and a documentary that was nominated for an Academy Award. His beloved wife Trudl died of lung cancer in 1976. He continued his music for two more decades, conducting his last concert in 1996. Herbert Zipper died in Santa Monica in 1997.
For inspiring concentration camp inmates and inner-city schoolchildren with his music, and for saving hundreds of lives during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, we honor Herbert Zipper as this week’s Thursday Hero.
Lyrics of Dachau Song:
Barbed wire fraught with death surrounds our world
On which a merciless heaven visits frost and sunburn.
Far from us are all joys, far our home, far the women
When mute we march to work, thousands in the gray dawn.
But we learned the Dachau motto and it made us hard as steel.
Be a man, comrade, remain human comrade
Do good work, pitch in, comrade
Because work, work will make you free!
Accidental Talmudist
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96thdayofrage · 3 years ago
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Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said he is launching a criminal investigation to find out who leaked security video of an incident in which a deputy knelt on the head of a handcuffed inmate for more than three minutes.
The Times published video last month of the March 2021 incident and detailed efforts by department officials to keep it under wraps.
Department officials had worried at the time about the negative publicity that could come from a deputy kneeling on a handcuffed man’s head, “given its nature and its similarities to widely publicized George Floyd use of force,” according to an internal report by a commander critical of the cover-up.
The commander's July 2021 report indicated that sheriff's officials decided not to pursue criminal charges against the inmate, who had punched the deputy in the face, to avoid drawing attention to the incident. Sheriff’s officials waited until January — almost a year after the incident — to take the case against the inmate to prosecutors.
In an interview with Fox 11 News, Villanueva said the disclosure of the video to The Times amounted to a theft of investigative material. He did not respond to questions from The Times.
"That is still an active case — it's not supposed to see light of day until it's concluded," he told the station. "And the fact that The Times had not only the investigation, they had the videotape — that was stolen from the department, and by department members."
First Amendment experts were troubled by the move to target people for releasing police misconduct records, saying the threat of prosecution sends a chilling message to whistleblowers.
"If the sheriff really did try to prosecute somebody for theft, under these circumstances, to me [it] would be: 'Dude, you're in L.A. County. Don't you have more serious crimes to worry about than somebody leaking a video? And aren't you really doing this because it's embarrassing you?'" said Karl Olson, a lawyer who specializes in 1st Amendment and public records cases.
Olson said the individual who leaked the video would have a strong claim under laws designed to protect whistleblowers.
"The laws exist to encourage people to come forth and report illegal or fraudulent activity on the part of government," Olson said.
David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, said the records would have likely become public anyway as evidence in the prosecution of the inmate, as well as in the potential case against the deputy.
"So why the withholding, and why the saber-rattling on pursuing criminal charges against the person who disclosed them, if they were going to be public anyway?" Snyder said.
He added: "That has a real chilling effect on potential sources within the department, who for public interest reasons, may want to see records relating to misconduct disclosed, and it constricts the flow of information that the public is entitled to see and that is necessary in order to hold public agencies to account."
The incident happened on the morning of March 10, 2021, two days after jury selection had begun 1,500 miles away in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who would be convicted of murdering Floyd by kneeling on his neck.
At the San Fernando Courthouse, deputies were conducting routine searches of inmates before their court appearances when deputies told two inmates to be quiet.
As the pair continued talking and laughing, Deputy Douglas Johnson ordered one of them, Enzo Escalante, to stop and face the wall. Escalante, 24, was awaiting trial on multiple charges, including murder.
Security video obtained by The Times shows Johnson walking closely behind Escalante through a hallway before ushering him toward a wall.
Escalante turned around and punched Johnson in the face multiple times. Johnson and other deputies then took Escalante to the ground, positioning him face down.
After he was handcuffed, Johnson kept his knee on Escalante’s head for three minutes.
The sheriff denied an allegation made by Eli Vera, a former top-ranking department official who is seeking to unseat him, that he had been involved in the cover-up and had viewed the video at an aide’s desk within days of the incident.
Internal records show that top executives above the level of division chief were aware of the incident early on. That could include only Villanueva, Undersheriff Tim Murakami or one of the three assistant sheriffs. Villanueva has refused to answer questions about who was made aware of the incident and what direction they gave.
After the Times report, Villanueva said he became aware of the incident in November and launched a criminal investigation into the deputy. He also announced that he had shaken up his “senior command,” but refused to provide specifics about whose jobs had changed and why.
He has announced a new administrative investigation into the cover-up and named an acting assistant sheriff, Holly Francisco, to oversee countywide operations, including the Court Services Division, where the incident occurred. Francisco is taking over for Robin Limon, who held the position at the time of the kneeling incident.
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ifuckinglovestvincent · 4 years ago
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THE FORTY-FIVE: ST. VINCENT
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Sleazy, gritty, grimy – these are the words used to describe the latest iteration of St. Vincent, Annie Clark’s alter ego. As she teases the release of her upcoming new album, ‘Daddy’s Home’, Eve Barlow finds out who’s wearing the trousers now.
Photos: Zackery Michael
Yellow may be the colour of gold, the hue of a perfect blonde or the shade of the sun, but when it’s too garish, yellow denotes the stain of sickness and the luridness of sleaze. On ‘Pay Your Way In Pain’ – the first single from St. Vincent’s forthcoming sixth album ‘Daddy’s Home’ – Annie Clark basks in the palette of cheap 1970s yellows; a dirty, salacious yellow that even the most prudish of individuals find difficult to avert their gaze from. It’s a yellow that recalls the smell of cigarettes on fingers, the tape across tomorrow’s crime scene or the dull ache of bad penetration.
The video for the single, which dropped last Thursday, features Clark in a blonde wig and suit, channeling a John Cassavetes anti-heroine (think Gena Rowlands in Gloria) and ‘Fame’-era Bowie. She twists in front of too-bright disco lights. She roughs up her voice. She sings about the price we pay for searching for acceptance while being outcast from society. “So I went to the park just to watch the little children/ The mothers saw my heels and they said I wasn’t welcome,” she coos, and you immediately recognise the scene of a free woman threatening the post-nuclear families aspiring to innocence. Clark is here to pervert them.
She laughs. “That’s how I feel!” From her studio in Los Angeles, she begins quoting lyrics from Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Red House’. “It’s a blues song for 2021.” LA is a city Clark reluctantly only half calls home, and one that is opposed to her vastly preferred New York. “I don’t feel any romantic attachment to Los Angeles,” she says of the place she coined the song ‘Los Ageless’ about on 2017’s ‘Masseduction’ (“The Los Ageless hang out by the bar/ Burn the pages of unwritten memoirs”).“The best that could be said of LA is, ‘Yeah it’s nice.’ And it is! LA is easy and pleasant. But if you were a person the last thing you’d want someone to say about you is: ‘She’s nice!’”
On ‘Daddy’s Home’, Clark writes about a past derelict New York; a place Los Angeles would suffocate in. “The idea of New York, the art that came out of it, and my living there,” she says. “I’ve not given up my card. I don’t feel in any way ready to renounce my New York citizenship. I bought an apartment so I didn’t have to.” Her down-and-out New York is one a true masochist would love, and it’s sleazy in excess. Sleaze is usually the thing men flaunt at a woman’s expense. In 2021, the proverbial Daddy in the title is Clark. But there’s also a literal Daddy. He came home in the winter of 2019.
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On the title track, Clark sings about “inmate 502”: her father. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison for his involvement in a $43m stock fraud scheme. He went away in May 2010. Clark reacted by writing her third breakthrough album ‘Strange Mercy’ in 2011; inspired not just by her father’s imprisonment but the effects it had on her life.“I mean it was rough stuff,” she says. “It was a fuck show. Absolutely terrible. Gut-wrenching. Like so many times in life, music saved me from all kinds of personal peril. I was angry. I was devastated. There’s a sort of dullness to incarceration where you don’t have any control. It’s like a thud at the basement of your being. So I wrote all about it,” she says.
Back then, she was aloof about meaning. In an interview we did that year, she called from a hotel rooftop in Phoenix and was fried from analytical questions. She excused her lack of desire to talk about ‘Strange Mercy’ as a means of protecting fans who could interpret it at will. Really she was protecting an audience closer to home. It’s clear now that the title track is about her father’s imprisonment (“Our father in exile/ For God only knows how many years”). Clark’s parents divorced when she was a child, and they have eight children in their mixed family, some of whom were very young when ‘Strange Mercy’ came out. She explains this discretion now as her method of sheltering them.
“I am protective of my family,” she says. “It didn’t feel safe to me. I disliked the fact that it was taken as malicious obfuscations. No.” Clark wanted to deal with the family drama in art but not in press. She managed to remain tight-lipped until she became the subject of a different intrusion. As St. Vincent’s star continued to rocket, Clark found herself in a relationship with British model Cara Delevingne from 2014 to 2016, and attracted celebrity tabloid attention. Details of her family’s past were exposed. The Daily Mail came knocking on her sister’s door in Texas, where Clark is from.
“Luckily I’m super tight with my family and the Daily Mail didn’t find anybody who was gonna sell me out,” she says. “They were looking for it. Clark girls are a fucking impenetrable force. We will cut a bitch.”
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Four years later, Clark gets to own the narrative herself in the medium that’s most apt: music. “The story has evolved. I’ve evolved. People have grown up. I would rather be the one to tell my story,” she says, ruminating on the misfortune that this was robbed from her: a story that writes itself. “My father’s release from prison is a great starting point, right?” Between tours and whenever she could manage, Clark would go and visit him in prison and would be signing autographs in the visitation room for the inmates, who all followed her success with every album release, press clipping and late night TV spot. She joked to her sisters that she’d become the belle of the ball there. “I don’t have to make that up,” she says.
There’s an ease to Clark’s interview manner that hasn’t existed before. She seems ready not just to discuss her father’s story, but to own certain elements of herself. “Hell where can you run when the outlaw’s inside you,” she sings on the title track, alluding to her common traits with her father. “I’ve always had a relationship with my dad and a good one. We’re very similar,” she says. “The movies we like, the books, he liked fashion. He’s really funny, he’s a good time.” Her father’s release gave Clark and her brothers and sisters permission to joke. “The title, ‘Daddy’s Home’ makes me laugh. It sounds fucking pervy as hell. But it’s about a real father ten years later. I’m Daddy now!”
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The question of who’s fathering who is a serious one, but it’s also not serious. Clark wears the idea of Daddy as a costume. She likes to play. She joins today’s Zoom in a pair of sunglasses wider than her face and a silk scarf framing her head. The sunglasses come off, and the scarf is a tool for distraction. She ties it above her forehead, attempts a neckerchief, eventually tosses it aside. Clark can only be earnest for so long before she seeks some mischief. She doesn’t like to stay in reality for extensive periods. “I like to create a world and then I get to live in it and be somebody new every two or three years,” she says. “Who wants to be themselves all the time?”
‘Daddy’s Home‘ began in New York at Electric Lady studios before COVID hit and was finished in her studio in LA. She worked on it with “my friend Jack” [Jack Antonoff, producer for Lana Del Rey, Lorde, Taylor Swift]. Antonoff and Clark worked on ‘Masseduction’ and found a winning formula, pushing Clark’s guitar-orientated electronic universe to its poppiest maximum, without compromising her idiosyncrasies. “We’re simpatico. He’s a dream,” she says. “He played the hell outta instruments on this record. He’s crushing it on drums, crushing it on Wurlitzer.” The pair let loose. They began with ‘The Holiday Party’, one of the warmest tracks Clark’s ever written. It’s as inviting as a winter fireplace, stoked by soulful horns, acoustic guitar and backing singers. “Every time they sang something I’d say, ‘Yeah but can you do it sleazier? Make your voice sound like you’ve been up for three days.” Clark speaks of an unspoken understanding with Antonoff as regards the vibe: “Familiar sounds. The opposite of my hands coming out of the speaker to choke you till you like it. This is not submission. Just inviting. I can tell a story in a different way.”
The entire record is familiar, giving the listener the satisfaction that they’ve heard the songs before but can’t quite place them. It’s a satisfying accompaniment to a pandemic that encouraged nostalgic listening. Clark was nostalgic too. She reverted to records she enjoyed with her father: Stevie Wonder’s catalogue from the 1970s (‘Songs In The Key Of Life’, ‘Innervisions’, ‘Talking Book’) and Steely Dan. “Not to be the dude at the record store but it’s specifically post-flower child idealism of the ’60s,” she explains. “It’s when it flipped into nihilism, which I much prefer. Pre disco, pre punk. That music is in me in a deep way. It’s in my ears.”
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On ‘The Melting Of The Sun’ she has a delicious time creating a psychedelic Pink Floyd odyssey while exploring the path tread by her heroes Marilyn Monroe, Joni Mitchell, Joan Didion and Nina Simone. It’s a series of beautiful vignettes of brilliant women who were met with a hostile environment. Clark considers what they did to overcome that. “I’m thanking all these women for making it easier for me to do it. I hope I didn’t totally let them down.” Clark is often the only woman sharing a stage with rock luminaries such as Dave Grohl, Damon Albarn and David Byrne, and has appeared to have shattered a male-centric glass ceiling. She’s unsure she’s doing enough to redress the imbalance. “There are little things I can do and control,” she says of hiring women on her team. “God! Now I feel like I should do more. What should I do? It’s a big question. You know what I have seen a lot more from when I started to now? Girls playing guitar.”
If one woman reinvented the guitar in the past decade, it’s Clark. Behind her is a rack of them. The pandemic has taken her out of the wild in which she’s accustomed to tantalising audiences at night with her displays of riffing and heel-balancing. Instead, she’s chained to her desk. Her obsession with heels in the lyrics of ‘Daddy’s Home’ she reckons may be a reflection of her nights performing ‘Masseduction’ in thigh highs. “I made sure that nothing I wore was comfortable,” she recalls. “Everything was about stricture and structure and latex. I had to train all the time to make sure I could handle it.” Is she taking the heels off when live shows return? “Absofuckinglutely not.”
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Clark is interested in the new generation. She’s recently tweeted about Arlo Parks and has become a big fan of Russian singer-songwriter Kate NV. “I’m obsessed with Russia,” she says. In a recent LA Times profile, she professed to a pandemic intellectual fixation on Stalin. “Yeah! I mean right now my computer is propped up on stuff. You are sitting on The Gulag Archipelago, The Best Short Stories Of Dostoyevsky andThe Plays Of Chekhov. I’m kinda in it.” The pop world interests Clark, too. She was credited with a co-write on Swift’s 2019 album ‘Lover’. At last year’s Grammys she performed a duet with Dua Lipa. It was one of the queerest performances the Grammys has ever aired. Clark interrupts.
“What about it seemed queer?!”
You know… The lip bite, for one!
“Wait. Did she bite her lip?”
No, you bit your lip.
“I did?!”
Everyone was talking about it. Come on, Annie.
“Serious? I…”
You both waltzed around each other with matching hairdos, making eyes…
“I have no memory of it.”
Frustrating as it may be in a world of too much information, Clark’s lack of willingness to overanalyse every creative decision she makes or participates in is something to treasure. “I want to be a writer who can write great songs,” she says. “I’m so glad I can play guitar and fuck around in the studio to my heart’s desire but it’s about what you can say. What’s a great song? What lyric is gonna rip your guts open. Just make great shit! That’s where I was with this record. That’s all I wanna do with my life.”
More than a decade into St. Vincent, Clark doesn’t reflect. She looks strictly forward. “I’m like a horse with blinders,” she says. She did make an exception to take stock lately when the phone rang. “I saw a +44 and that gets me excited,” she says. “Who could this be?” Well, who was it? “Paul McCartney,” she says, in disbelief. “Anything I’ve done, any mistake I’ve made, somehow it’s forgiven, assuaged. I did something right in my life if a fucking Beatle called me.”
Now there’s a get out of jail free card if ever she needed one.
Daddy’s Home by St. Vincent is out May 14, 2021.
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buckyscrystalqueen · 4 years ago
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Too Smart for Your Own Good: Part 3
Pairings: Machine Gun Kelly x Reader, (Past and Future) Henry Cavill x Reader
Warnings: Swearing, one night stand, unprotected sex
Word Count: 5,013
A/N: Doesn’t have a completed end yet, but just giving you more content to try to get myself out of a writing funk.
Part 1 / Part 2
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“You are receiving a collect call from an inmate at a Los Angeles County Correctional Facility. Would you like to accept these charges?”
“Yes.” You said clearly as you stopped loading your groceries in your blacked out Range Rover to grab your ear bud out of your purse. “Hang on, Daddy. I’m finding my headphone.”
“Take your time.” He said through your car speaker as you dug out the carrier and put the head phone in your ear. You found your phone and switch the bluetooth from your running car to your ear phone and hesitated for a moment.
“You hear me?”
“Crystal fucking clear.” He responded in your ear, which made you nod and drop your phone in the cup holder so it wouldn’t accidentally drop the call in your bag. “Hell are you up to?”
“Grocery store.” You sighed as you went back to your original task. “Was running out of shit at the house to eat. Oh! You will be pleased to know that you are going to be a grandpa, and I think I may have figured out a break in my black hole theory in the pool last night.”
“OK.” Your dad laughed as you walked the cart over to the return. “So I’m a fucking grandparent. Thanks a lot, princess.”
“Any time!” You teased as you got in your cooled down car and buckled your seatbelt.
“You got more on the black whole theory?” He asked, even though he had no idea what you were talking about half the time when you went on one of your ‘space rants’ as he liked to call them.
“Work in progress.” You said with a shrug to spare him the agony of listening to you drone on. “What’s going on in the world of the blue jumpsuits?”
“Fucking parole hearing got bumped up.” The million thoughts that seemed to always run through your brain all simultaneously screeched to a stop, as you stopped behind a car at a red light a few streets from your house.
“You’re coming home?” You whispered as you gripped the steering wheel tight.
“I’m fuckin’ coming home, sweetheart. February 16th. Ten AM.” You nodded your head and continued with the flow of traffic as a couple tears of joy slipped down your cheeks.
“I’ll… I’ll be there.” You choked before clearing your throat. “I’ll be there to get the paperwork through.”
“I’ll need you to get a hold of Simon. I sent you out a letter this morning that’ll need some translating.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for it.” You said as you realized that the car you were following was a familiar purple Lamborghini and it was pulling into your community driveway. “Son of a bitch.”
“What, a fucking letter is inconveniencing you?” He asked sharply, making you shake your head.
“No, fucking sperm donor is back. Hold on.” You stopped your car beside the Lambo and the gate house, rolled down your heavily tinted window and looked at your cousin’s profile and the back of Colson’s shaved head. “Scott! He’s with me, let him in.”
“Run him off the fucking road.” Your father grumbled in your ear as you rolled the window back up and headed through the open side of the gate for home owners.
“In a shiny purple Lambo.” You huffed, jokingly as you hit the button for your driveway gate.
“Fuckin’ really, (Y/N)?! You got knocked up by some puck ass little bitch in a Goddamn purple Lambo?!”
“Shut up.” You grumbled as you drove down the slight hill to your garage and pulled into your spot beside your father’s Harley, his massive Chevy pick-up truck, and a tarp covered Charger that belonged to your ex.
“Goddamn Lambo. Who the fuck are you and what have you done to my fucking daughter?”
“Shut up.” You grumbled again as you got out of the car and pulled open the back door to get your groceries. You startled the slightest bit when a heavily tattooed arm reached in front of you and grabbed your bags before you could even fully open the door. You looked up at Colson as he slowly and carefully moved his body in front of yours, and you rolled your eyes and took a step back with your hands in the air. “So has the prison sent me the paperwork for the hearing?” You asked your dad as you headed toward the door.
“Should have. You’re my lawyer, princess. Check your email when you get a chance. Need me to let you go?”
“No, you’re fine.” You said as you headed past the basement bar and game room to the elevator to take you up to the main floor beside the atrium. “Have you talked to the demon head shrinker cunt yet?” Colson looked at you with his eyebrow raised as he and Ash stepped into the elevator with you, but your cousin simply tapped him on the shoulder, pointed to her ear, and whispered that you were on the phone with your dad.
“Probably won’t have to. Shit’s about over crowding. We’re stuffed three to a fucking cell in some spots. I’m almost at my 80 and I’m the closest parole date. So I’m gettin’ the boot.”
“I’ll take it.” You agreed as you pat the black marble for your bags. “But I am writing a verbally abusive letter for the deplorable conditions they are keeping you in.”
“You do that after I leave this bitch.” He told you as an automated voice let you both know you only had a minute left. “Alright baby girl, I’ll give you a call in a couple days to see if my letter arrived.”
“And I will send you a postcard of your grand blueberry when I go to the doctor on Monday.”
“I will keep my eyes out for it.” He huffed through a smile. “I love you, sweetheart. I’ll be home before you know it.”
“I can’t wait. I love you too, Daddy. Bye.” You waited for him to say good bye and for the click of him hanging up, before you turned off your earbud and looked up at your visitors. “And you’re back in my house because…?”
“OK, we’re not going to start like that.” Ash said quickly as she put her hand on Colson’s arm so he wouldn’t get mad. “We are here to rationally talk like human beings.” You hummed at her and nodded your head as you grabbed some groceries and started putting them away. 
“I brought the family history.” Kels said as he tossed a notebook on the counter beside your bags. “As much as I could figure out from the family I do talk to at least. And some personal shit you should know, too. And I’m having a lawyer draw up a contract…”
“Over my Goddamn dead body!” You roared as you spun on your heel and stormed across the wood floor toward him.
“Wait! Wait!” Ashleigh shouted over you as she stood in front of you and grabbed your wrists before you could start swinging. “It was my idea!”
“And I’ll fucking kill you too.” You threatened as you looked at her with murder in your eyes.
“Look, just breathe, OK? It’s not a custody thing. It’s a contract.”
“Look, I wanna be in my kid’s life.” Colson said over Ash as he stayed firmly parked on the barstool he was sitting in so you would feel less threatened. “And I want my kids to know each other. I wanna make sure you don’t take off and fucking run some day because we obviously can’t fucking stand each other.”
“Wonder who’s fault that is.” You snapped, sarcastically as you pulled out of Ashleigh’s grip to finish putting away your groceries.
“Yea, it’s mine, alright?” He barked. “But I still wanna make sure we both understand that this…” He said as he leaned to purposely catch your eye and gestured between your stomach and himself. “…is our child. And just like with Casie, I will want to spend time with our child on holidays and when I’m in town and not working. And I don’t want to turn around one day to find out that you packed up and moved to fucking Paris or some shit.”
“Paris is a trash covered wasteland.” You retorted under your breath as you folded all of your grocery bags and put them on the end of your counter to put back in your car later. “Probably go to Belfast… maybe Scotland...
“OK, she’s not going to run.” Ashleigh said quickly before Colson could start yelling. “But this is what the contract is going to be for. So what both of you want from the other is set in stone.”
“Yea, well I don’t want shit from him.”
“Then you should get an abortion now, bitch!” Colson roared as he finally jumped to his feet. “Because you made this fucking choice to keep my kid so you’re fucking stuck with me…”
“You better remember who the fuck you are talking to.” You said evenly as you pulled one of your fathers many hand guns out of one of the kitchen drawers. You laid it down on the counter between you with your finger outstretched along the slide where you could quickly pull the trigger if you needed to. Kels stood his ground, but Ashleigh took a few steps back away from you to be on the safe side.
“OK.” She nearly whispered as her hands started to shake at her sides. “(Y/N), let’s put that away…”
“Now it’s time for you to listen, bitch.” You started as you searched his rage filled blue eyes. “You want a contract? Fine. We can spend the next nine months and then some fine tuning a contract to your hearts content. But know this, if you think you’re in charge here, you’re not. You will run by my fucking rules, like it or not. Because if I wanted to disappear, I assure you, not even a private investigator could find me.” The pair of you stood in a stand off for a few moments, waiting for the other one to crack.
“I need a fax number.” He finally said, forfeiting the power to you. You nodded your head as you put your gun back and pulled the notebook toward you. You wrote down your email, your cell, and fax number, and ripped the page out for him.
“Appointment next Monday for the first ultrasound is at 11:15 AM. Be here at 10:30 if you want to go with me. I’ll call down to the gate and tell them you’re coming.” He nodded his head as he folded up the paper and stuck it in his pocket to pass on to his lawyer, while you gestured to the atrium to your left. “You can see yourselves out now.” You looked over at your cousin as Kels simply turned to leave and shook your head. “If you ever, ever pull a stunt like that again, I will disown you.”
“I’m sorry.” She whispered as she finally stepped back over to you. “I just knew you wouldn’t take it very well, and he didn’t give me time to call…”
“You have one warning.” You told her as you kissed her cheek. “And don’t step between Colson and I. Obviously, it’s gunna be a shit show.”
“Well, he’s my boss, so I can’t let you kill him.” You rolled your eyes and shook your head as you gave her a push toward the door.
“Just wait until he meets Negan!” You called out after her with a giant smile. “He’s coming home in a few weeks!” Your cousin came to a dead stop in the atrium and turned around to look at the giant shit eating grin you had on your face.
“Shut up.”
“Hell is about to rain down on LA again!” You laughed as you grabbed the bags off the counter, and turned to head down stairs to put them back in your car. 
——
“You know, I was having a really peaceful morning.” You bitched as you stood at the top of the side stairs the next day and watched Colson get out of his car. “And then here you are.”
“Not fucking fighting.” He said more to himself as he came over and stopped in front of you. He said nothing else, leaving the ball in your court as he put his hands in the pockets of his jeans and waited. You huffed and turned on your heel to head back to your beach chair. 
“Am I going to see you every day for the rest of eternity?” You inquired as you pushed your sunglasses back down your face.
“Until we can get past this bullshit, yea.” You stopped at the bottom of the stairs and turned back to look at him as he simply toed off his sneakers. “Casie’s mom and I used to fight all the fucking time.” He started as he pulled off his socks and rolled up his jeans. “But we talked it out. No matter how much we hated each other at the end. We talked, and we fought, and we screamed, and she even got a good kidney shot in once when she pushed me back into a counter. But we got through our shit for our daughter.” He stood up and looked at you with a shrug. “So we’re gunna fight it out. No contract, because that’s kind of a bullshit way to co-parent and we got like nine fucking months. So we’re gunna fucking talk.” You nodded your head slightly and gestured up the steps.
“There’s another beach chair up against the garden wall. And that bedroom has some spare bathing suits in the top dresser drawer and towels in the second. They all have tags and there are a bunch of different sizes.” You shrugged and gestured over your shoulder at your chair. “Sunscreen…” With an internal groan, you turned around and walked away to continue to get some sun. You tossed your phone back in the back pocket of your chair and sat down gently as another wave gently crashed across your lap. “Fucking sunscreen…” You grumbled as you shook your head.
“Alright so we start from the beginning.” Kels said as he set up his chair right next to yours a few minutes later. “How far along are you?”
“Six weeks, two days.” He nodded his head and stretched his legs out as another wave washed up on the shore.
“And we’re keeping it?”
“Despite the fact that we hate each other? Yes.” His head continued to nod as he chose to ignore your annoyance.
“I grew up in Cleveland.” He started as he reached over and grabbed the sunscreen from your cupholder. “For the most part. Lived in Denver for a while, traveled a lot with my dad before that. My mom left for another man when I was nine. She hated my dad that much…” You turned your head to look at him as he covered his tattooed torso with sun block. “I won’t do that to my kids.”
“Born and raised here in LA.” You said in the moment of silence after his declaration. “Mom died during child birth. I was a breech baby and she lost to much blood in an emergency C. I remember her face.” You breathed as you looked down at your lap and connected the drops of water on your thigh before the next wave came in. “I have her eyes. And I remember the light leaving hers as my dad held me in place on her chest.”
“(Y/N)…”
“I don’t wanna keep you from our kid.” You interrupted quickly as you rested your head back against the chair pillow and looked out at the ocean. “I grew up with one parent, and while my dad managed to go above and beyond with me, it was hard on him and me without my mother. I don’t want to do that to my child.”
“So part one of the verbal contract.” He said as he put your sunblock back and settled back in his chair. “No matter what, this child will grow up for the rest of his or her life with both of us in it. Even if we hate each other, and we have to go through a third party like Ashleigh for pick ups and drop offs, we will not keep him or her away from each other.”
“No poisoning him or her.” You said as you grabbed one of the water bottles from your cooler and handed it over to him. “Meaning you don’t trash talk me in front of him and vice versa.”
“Agreed. OK, here’s one my ex and I had issues with. We make decisions together.”
“You and I are going to have to work on that.” You giggled as you finally looked over at him. “Because we’re not very good at that right now.”
“But we will work on it so we can make decisions together.” He repeated as he met your eyes with a small nod. “Agreed?”
“Agreed.” You said with a nod. “I like to travel. I haven’t in a long time because… well… that’s a long story… But I want to start traveling again. And I know you already travel a lot for work. And even though you taking him or her alone is a long way off due to breast feeding and the fact that you kinda live a wild life, I’d like the record to show that should we leave Los Angeles county with our child, we have to let the other person know the intended itinerary.”
“I can absolutely get behind that.” He agreed. “And after he or she is born, I’d like to bring… well both of you to Cleveland so Casie can meet her brother or sister… and so that you can meet Emma, my ex, since y’all have something in common now.” You nodded your head and glanced out at the horizon as you chose your words wisely.
“I’m… um…” You started, before clearing your throat. “Well, technically, I’m engaged.”
“You…” He said harshly, which made you sit forward and hide your face in your hands.
“Look, it’s fucking complicated.” You said as you sat back and looked over at him. “Henry and I were together for years. We got engaged six years ago and he left to join the Army shortly after that. And I haven’t heard from him since. So technically, I am engaged. But my fiancé is gone. And he’s never coming back and I just can’t accept that yet, apparently because... well I just can’t.”
“Jesus.” He breathed as he sat back in his chair. “No wonder you’re such a bitch toward men.”
“No, that’s just you.” You responded as you unscrewed the cap of your water and took a sip.
“And we were making progress, too.”
“What’s next on your list, Kels?” You asked with a laugh as you kicked water in his direction.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The next four weeks went by at an almost glacial pace, but at the same time, before you knew it, you were walking though the halls toward the prison’s office, with a stack of paperwork from the parole board in your hand and a giant smile on your face that you didn’t think would ever go away. You had made this walk so many times before, but this was the only time you were actually hopeful. And hopeful wasn’t even the right word. 
“Damn it.” Michael Bishop, who ran the prisons office, grumbled as you walked through the door. “What?”
“Parole board kicked him.” You said with a smile as you rested your arms on the counter and held out the paperwork toward him. “Let him out.”
“Let who out?” A woman you didn’t recognize asked as Mike got up and came over to start the paperwork.
“Negan.” He sighed as he pulled his glasses from his pocket. “They finally let him out, huh?”
“And I didn’t even have to file another petition to get it done.” You teased with a smile.
“OK, well I’ll get these papers started as soon…” The woman started as she stood up from her chair but Mike quickly held them out of her reach before you could even form a reply.
“I got it.” He said as he shot you a nervous smile because he knew the temper you had inherited from your father when it came to his time behind bars. “Putting them through right now.”
“I’ll wait.” You said with a nod as you pulled your phone out of your bag. “How’s the wife?”
“Still kicking my ass.” He muttered as he sat down at his computer. “How’s life treatin’ ya since last time?”
“It’s a revolving door.” You sighed as you pulled up your texts to finally give Simon the go ahead to bring Negan’s Harley down to the prison. “That is finally opening the correct way.”
“Should keep spinning.” The woman muttered under her breath, which made both you and Mike freeze. 
“I’m sorry. Do you have something you wanna fucking say there, sunshine?”
“No! No she didn’t!” Mike tried as you set your phone face down on the counter.
“No, she has the right to speak.” You said with a smile as you folded your hands together on the counter. Mike looked away and scrambled into overdrive to process Negan’s release for you. “What, you don’t like the fact that my father’s joining the real world again? Don’t think that living the last ten years of my life without the only family I have wasn’t enough? What, you don’t think…”
“No, she didn’t!” Mike said quickly as he jumped up and grabbed Negan’s paperwork off his desk and the printer. “Look, he’s good to go. Get him to his parole officer today, OK?” You nodded your head and took the stack of papers out of his hand with a small smile.
“Thanks, Mike. And you can go fuck yourself, bitch.” The officer shouted ‘excuse me’ as you grabbed your phone and turned on your heel to leave the prison for the last time. The roar of motorcycles greeted you as you stepped out the door, and you stopped beside Simon to wait for your father.
“Congrats on the baby, kiddo.” He said as he made sure your father’s bike was stable so that you could lean against it. “When are you due?”
“September 13th.” You sighed as you sat down on the seat and grabbed your sneakers from your bag. “A Friday of all things.”
“Wouldn’t be your kid if it wasn’t.” He huffed.
“More to the story of my life.” You sighed as you dropped your heels in your bag and slung the strap over your shoulder.
“Heard baby daddy is a rock star…”
“Shut up, Simon.” You sighed as you crossed your arms over your chest to wait. It was thankfully only about a half hour wait before the prison door opened and your father walked free. Despite the cheers from the rest of the club, he walked straight over to you.
“Hi Daddy.” You whispered as he lifted you up off the ground in a hug.
“Hi princess. Thank you.” You smile at him as he set you down and nodded his head. “Thank you for getting me outta there.”
“Of course, Daddy.”
“So where we doing lunch?” He asked as he took his kutte from Simon and put it on.
“Boss, we…” The VP tried, but your father shot him the look to end all looks.
“I’m talking… to my daughter.” The VP nodded and took a step back as Negan looked back at you with a smile. “Lunch, sweetheart? Gotta feed the grand baby…”
“Umm… honestly? Right now, I really want a milkshake…”
“Johnny Rockets?” He asked with a smirk. You nodded your head as he held out his hand and snapped his fingers for a helmet. Your smile grew as you tilted your head up and let him close the buckle so he could take care of you like he wished he could have for the past ten years, even if you didn’t need him to. “Let’s go, boys!” You honestly hadn’t realized how much you missed the wind in your hair, but you felt free and more safe than you had in a long while. The thought crossed your mind that it was the first time in six years that you felt completely safe again, but also that Colson had somehow made you start to feel safe with his daily visits to check on you and your child. You were so lost in that idea, that you missed your father parking next to a purple Lamborghini until it was to late.
“Look familiar, princess?”
“Daddy, let’s go.” You said with a shake of your head as your eyes darted toward the restaurant to find the father of your child. “I don’t feel good, let’s go, please…”
“Nope.” He said as he took off your helmet and dropped it on the seat beside his. “I’m fucking starving and a burger is just what I fucking want.”
“Daddy, please. Don’t do this… Damn it…” You quickly tried to get in front of your father and the rest of the club without your small bump being bumped, but you were unsuccessful.
“Colson fucking Baker!” Your father announced, as if he had just won a prize. “Where the fuck are you?”
“Dad, stop it!” You hissed as you were finally able to push in front of him in the thankfully empty restaurant. You looked at Colson’s slightly stunned, slightly shocked, and mostly confused face, and shook your head to hopefully tell him to run… which he didn’t.
“So you’re the prick that knocked up my daughter?” Negan huffed as he sized up your six foot four baby daddy when he stood up from the booth in the corner, where he had apparently just sat down for an early lunch with some woman you didn’t know. You saw her face flush red with embarrassment and rage, and the two of you locked eyes for a moment before you both looked away from different reasons. “Sit down.”
“No, Colson, go back to your lunch.” You tried as you pushed your father toward an open booth on your left. “Daddy, stop, please.”
“Sit the fuck down!” Negan roared when Kels took a step back toward his date. Colson quickly took a seat and you jumped in front of your dad to sit down next to him. You whispered an apology to him as his date got up and walked out angrily, but he simply shook his head and pat your thigh reassuringly.
“Sir, it’s very nice…”
“What kinda fuckin’ shake does my grand child want?” Negan interrupted as he grabbed two menus and handed you one as the rest of the club filed into the booths around you. You sighed loudly and pushed his menu flat on the table with a shake of your head.
“I’m not playing this game. You did it to Henry, you won’t do it to him.” Your father looked up at you with his eyebrow raised and you quickly reach out and squeezed Colson’s wrist before he could interject in the silence. “He’s a human being, and you just cost him his lunch date. So you are going to ask him your questions, and let him go so he can fix the mess you made.” Negan stared at you silently as all the other Saviors went out of their way to avoid looking in even the general vicinity of your booth, waiting to see who was going to win this show down. After a full minute, Negan grabbed a third menu and handed it to Colson without taking his eyes off you.
“What kinda shake does my grand baby want?” Negan asked again as he finally looked away to find your waitress. You visibly relaxed and looked over at your friend with an apologetic look.
“She was boring as fuck anyways.” He muttered under his breath as he bumped your shoulder and looked at the menu. “I think their chocolate is the best…”
“I want them all.” You sighed as your stomach growled loudly. “Baby wants them all.”
“Then baby can have them all.” Negan said as he casually crossed his legs and settled back into the booth a bit more. “And baby better have a great fucking life, with a present father, right?”
“It will.” Colson said with a nod. “And he or she will have a sister, too. One that I’ve managed to keep alive for ten years.”
“Her mother has primary custody?”
“She does.” He confirmed as your dad perused the menu he knew like the back of his hand as if it was the most interesting thing in the whole world.
“So will my daughter.” Negan stated, simply.
“Dad, I swear to God.” You growled as you covered your face with your hands.
“It’s fine.” Colson said as he rubbed your back. “She’d probably do better with primary custody over me any day of the week. I’m on the road to much.”
“And that’s the kinda life you wanna give your child?” Negan asked as he finally looked over at you.
“Because I didn’t have an amazing life with you going out of town all the time?” You asked, honestly. “Because my childhood was so horrible being raised club house to club house, country to country?” He sat silently as you set your menu down and covered your bump with your hand. “Daddy, I had an amazing life. And my child will have an amazing life as well. He or she will travel same as we did. How is this situation any different than ours, other than the missing kutte?”
“Well I still don’t have to fucking like it.” He said stubbornly as he looked back down at the menu. “And I don’t fucking like him. Where is the Goddamn waitress around here?!”
Part 4
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lasdinmatesearch · 8 months ago
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LASD Inmate Search
When a loved one is detained, it’s crucial to have quick and accurate information about their whereabouts. At LASD Inmate Search, we understand the importance of providing timely assistance during difficult times. That’s why we offer a free and user-friendly Los Angeles Inmate Search service, allowing you to find detained individuals in any Los Angeles County jail or surrounding areas in just 5 minutes.
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if-you-fan-a-fire · 3 years ago
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“If guard duty was similar to soldiering, it was also a little like being a prisoner. In large prisons, matas were often compelled to live with their families in special quarters within the institution. As a result, their lives were circumscribed by some of the same regulations that structured the lives of inmates. In Hanoi Central Prison, for example, guards and their families were subjected to bodily searches upon entering and leaving the prison grounds. Visitors needed to be approved in advance and were not allowed between the hours of 9:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. In addition, matas themselves were to be kept under surveillance by European personnel. The first regulation in the professional handbook for the European staff read: “European employees must report all infractions committed by prisoners and indigenous surveillants.”
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Superficially at least, colonial penal surveillance in Indochina resembled the routinized “hierarchical observation” that historians have identified as a crucial innovation of modern disciplinary institutions in Europe. The fact that guards were themselves under surveillance recalls panoptic features that Foucault emphasizes in his account of the emergence of the modern prison, and the militarization of colonial penal surveillance squares with his concept of the circulation of disciplinary techniques throughout the social body. However, firsthand accounts of surveillance practices in colonial prisons suggest a significantly more ill-disciplined picture. Indeed, the image of colonial penal surveillance conveyed through memoirs and administrative reports recalls patterns of informal corruption, collusion, and predation more typically associated with pre-modern systems of incarceration.”
- Peter Zinoman, The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862–1940. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001. pp. 75-76.
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parttimereporter · 4 years ago
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THE LOWEST OF HUMANITY?
LOS ANGELES - Three Inland Empire women were arrested and charged this week for illegally obtaining COVID-related unemployment benefits in names of prison inmates and scamming the California Employment Development Department out of a combined $1.2 million, federal prosecutors allege.
Sequoia Edwards, 35, of Moreno Valley, Mireya Ramos, 42, of Colton, and Paris Thomas, 33, of San Bernardino, are charged in separate criminal complaints, and each woman faces two counts – fraud in connection with emergency benefits and wire fraud.
According to the Department of Justice, Edwards filed at least 27 fraudulent claims over the course of two months last summer, of which, six used information of California prison inmates she allegedly got from her incarcerated cousin. As a result, the EDD paid $455,000 intended to help those who were out of work due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which did not apply to prison inmates. During the execution of a search warrant at Edwards’ residence in February, the FBI recovered several debit cards issued by the EDD and $45,000 in cash, according to the affidavit in support of her criminal complaint.
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blackkudos · 5 years ago
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Robert Hooks
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Robert Hooks (born Bobby Dean Hooks, April 18, 1937) is an American actor, producer, and activist. He is most recognizable to the public for his more than 100 roles in films, television, and stage. Most famously, Hooks, along with Douglas Turner Ward and Gerald S. Krone, founded The Negro Ensemble Company (NEC). The NEC is credited with the launch of the careers of many major black artists of all disciplines, while creating a body of performance literature over the last thirty years, providing the backbone of African-American theatrical classics. Additionally, Hooks is the sole founder of two significant black theatre companies: the D.C. Black Repertory Company, and New York's Group Theatre Workshop.
Biography
Early life
The youngest of five children, Hooks was born in Foggy Bottom, Washington, D.C. to Mae Bertha (née Ward), a seamstress, and Edward Hooks who had moved from Rocky Mount, North Carolina with their four other children, Bernice, Caroleigh, Charles Edward "Charlie", and James Walter "Jimmy". Named Bobby Dean Hooks at birth, Robert was their first child born "up-north" and the first to be born in a hospital. His father, Edward, died in a work accident on the railroad in 1939.
Hooks attended Stevens Elementary School. In 1945, at the insistence of his sister Bernice who was doing community arts outreach for youngsters at Francis Junior High School, he performed the lead in his first play, The Pirates of Penzance, at the age of nine. From the ages of 6 to 12, Bobby Dean journeyed with his siblings to Lucama, North Carolina to work the tobacco fields for his uncle's sharecropping farm as a way to help earn money for the coming school year in D.C.
In 1954, just as Brown vs. Board of Education was being implemented in the north, he moved to Philadelphia to be with his mother, her second husband, and his half-sister, Safia Abdullah (née Sharon Dickerson). Hooks experienced his first integrated school experience at West Philadelphia High School. Hooks soon joined the drama club and began acting in plays by William Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett. He was graduated in 1956, passing on a scholarship to Temple University in order to pursue a career as a stage actor at the Bessie V. Hicks School of Theatre (alongside Charles Dierkop and Bruce Dern, with whom he second-acted plays doing their pre-Broadway tryouts in Philadelphia) while working at Browning King, a men's tailor shop at Fourteenth and Chestnut streets.
Career
Having trained at the Bessie V. Smith School of Theatre in Philadelphia, and after seeing A Raisin in the Sun in its Philadelphia tryout in February 1959, Hooks moved to New York to pursue acting. In April 1960, as Bobby Dean Hooks, he made his Broadway debut in A Raisin in the Sun replacing Louis Gossett, Jr. who would be doing the film version. He then continued to do its national tour. He then stepped into the Broadway production of A Taste of Honey, replacing Billy Dee Williams; then repeating the same national tour trajectory as he had done for "Raisin..." the previous year. In early 1962 he next appeared as the lead in Jean Genet's The Blacks, replacing James Earl Jones as the male lead, leaving briefly that same year to appear on Broadway again in Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright before stepping back into the lead role in The Blacks in 1963. He then returned to Broadway, first in Ballad for Bimshire and then in the short-lived 1964 David Merrick revival of The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Any More (as a character created by Tennessee Williams for this revival) and starring Tallulah Bankhead and Tab Hunter in his only stage performance. Immediately thereafter, in March 24, 1964 he originated the role of Clay in Amiri Baraka's Dutchman. With this play, on the advice of Roscoe Lee Brown, Hooks became known as, Robert Hooks. He also originated roles on the New York stage in Where's Daddy? for which he won the Theatre World Award and he was nominated for Best Male Lead in a Musical for Hallelujah Baby while he was simultaneously starring in David Susskind's N.Y.P.D.—the first African American lead on a television drama.
In 1968 Hooks was the host of the new public affairs television program, Like It Is.
Hooks was nominated for a Tony for his lead role in the musical, Hallelujah, Baby!, has received both the Pioneer Award and the NAACP Image Award for Lifetime Achievement, and has been inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame. He also won an Emmy for his PBS special, Voices of Our People.
Significant roles for which Hooks is known include Reeve Scott in Hurry Sundown (1967), Mr. T. in the blaxploitation film Trouble Man (1972), grandpa Gene Donovan in the comedy Seventeen Again (2000), and Fleet Admiral Morrow in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984). He also appeared on television in an episode of the NBC crime drama series The Eddie Capra Mysteries in 1978 and portrayed Doctor Walcott in the 1980s television series Dynasty.
Activism
Arts and Culture
In 1964, as a result of a speaking engagement at the Chelsea Civil Rights Committee (then connected to the Hudson Guild Settlement House) he founded The Group Theatre Workshop (GTW), a tuition-free environment for disadvantaged urban teens who expressed a desire to explore acting. Among the instructors were Barbara Ann Teer, Frances Foster, Hal DeWindt, Lonne Elder III, and Ronnie Mack. Alumni include Antonio Fargas, Hattie Winston, and Daphne Maxwell Reid.
The Group Theatre Workshop was folded into the tuition-free training arm of the The Negro Ensemble Company (NEC) founded in 1967 with Douglas Turner Ward and Gerald S. Krone with a $1.3 million grant from the Ford Foundation under the auspices of W. McNeil Lowry.
From 1969-1972, Hooks served as an original board member of Black Academy of Arts and Letters (BAAL) (located in New York) alongside C. Eric Lincoln, President; John O. Killens, Alvin F. Poussaint, and Charles White. Chartered by the State of New York, BAAL's mission was to bring together Black artists and scholars from around the world. Additional members included: Julian Adderley, Alvin Ailey, Margaret Walker, James Baldwin, Imamu Baraka, Romare Bearden, Harry Belafonte, Lerone Bennett, Arna Bontemps, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee Davis, St. Clair Drake, Ernest Dunbar, Katherine Dunham, Lonne Elder III, Duke Ellington, Alex Haley, Ruth Inge Hardison, Vertis Hayes, Chester Himes, Lena Horne, Jacob Lawrence, Elma Lewis, Henry Lewis, Paule Marshall, Donald McKayle, Arthur Mitchell, Frederick O’Neal, Gordon Parks, Sidney Poitier, Benjamin Quarles, Lloyd Richards, Lucille D. Roberts, and Nina Simone.
In response to the violence in his home town of Washington, D.C. in the wake of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, and aided by a small grant from the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, Hooks took a leave of absence from the Negro Ensemble Company to create The D.C. Black Repertory Company (DCBRC, 1970-1981). As Founder and Executive Director, the DCBRC was intended as a further exploration of the ability of the arts to create healing. The a capella group Sweet Honey in the Rock was created and developed within its workshop process.
The Inner Voices (Lorton Prison arts training program, 1971) proved to be a result of the beneficial effect of the DCBRC in the D.C. area. In response to a direct plea from an inmate, Rhozier "Roach" Brown, who was serving a life sentence in Lorton, Hooks' D.C. Black Repertory Company structured the first prison-based arts program in the United States. While it is the norm now, it was then a revolutionary attempt at rehabilitation through the arts. Eventually The Inner Voices performed more than 500 times in other prisons, including a Christmas special entitled, "Holidays, Hollowdays." Due to Roach's work, President Gerald Ford commuted his sentence on Christmas Day, 1975.
His relocation to the West Coast redirected Hooks' approach to parity in the arts with his involvement with The Bay Area Multicultural Arts Initiative (1988) as a board member and grant facilitator-judge. Funded by monies from a unique coalition made up of the San Francisco Foundation (a community foundation); Grants for the Arts of the San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, and The National Endowment for the Arts, the function of this organization was the funding of deserving local multicultural arts organizations.
In 1992, Hooks co-founded (with writer Lonne Elder III) Arts in Action. Located in South Central Los Angeles, this was a film and television training center established to guide individuals who aspired to careers in film production. It formulated strategies and training for securing entry-level jobs. Courses included: career development workshops; pre-production and production for film and television; creative problem solving in production management; directing for stage and screen—principles and practices; also the craft of assistant directors, script supervisor, technicians, wardrobe, make-up, etc.
The Negro Ensemble Company of Los Angeles (NEC-LA) (1994-1997) was created because so many New York members and original members had relocated to the west coast. Hooks, as founder and executive director enlisted alumni from his New York Negro Ensemble Company to serve as board members: Denise Nicholas, Denzel Washington, James Earl Jones, Laurence Fishburne, Richard Roundtree, Samuel L. Jackson. NEC-LA's goal was to be a new and innovative multi-ethnic cultural project that strived to achieve the community effectiveness and professional success of its parent organization.
Personal life
Hooks is the father of actor, television and film director Kevin Hooks. He married Lorrie Gay Marlow (actress, author, artist) on June 15, 2008. Previously, he was married to Yvonne Hickman and Rosie Lee Hooks.
Awards
1966 - Theatre World Award (1965–66 ) for "Where's Daddy?" (The Billy Rose Theatre)
1979 - American Black Achievement Award - Ebony Magazine
1982 - Emmy Award for Producing (1982) Voices of Our People: In Celebration of Black Poetry (KCET-TV/PBS)
1966 - Tony Nomination, Lead Role in a Musical for Hallelujah, Baby
1985 - Inducted into The Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, recipient Oscar Micheaux Award (1985)
1986 - March 2nd declared Robert Hooks Day by the City of Los Angeles, Mayor Tom Bradley
1987 - Excellence in Advertising and Communications to Black Communities from CEBA (Excellence in Advertising and Communications to Black Communities)
2000 - Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa honorary degree, Bowie State University
2000 - May 25th declared Robert Hooks Day in Washington, D.C.
2005 - Beverly Hills/Hollywood Chapter NAACP Image Award for Lifetime Achievement
2005 - Beverly Hills/Hollywood Chapter NAACP Trailblazer Award to the Negro Ensemble Company
2005 - Trailblazer Award – City of Los Angeles
2006 - The Black Academy of Arts and Letters (TBAAL), Lifetime Achievement Award (Dallas)
2007 - The Black Theatre Alliance Awards / Lifetime Achievement Award
2015 - Living Legend Award (2015) National Black Theatre Festival
2018 - October 18th proclaimed Robert Hooks Day by Mayor Muriel Bowser, Washington, D.C.
2018 - Hooks is entered into The Congressional Record by the Hon. Eleanor Holmes Norton, September 4, 2018, Vol. 164
2018 - Visionary Founder and Creator Award - D.C. Black Repertory Company on its 47th anniversary
Acting Credits
Film
Sweet Love, Bitter (1967) .... Keel Robinson
Hurry Sundown (1967) .... Reeve Scott
Last of the Mobile Hot Shots (1970) .... Chicken
Carter's Army (1970) .... Lt. Edward Wallace
Trouble Man (1972) .... Mr. T
Aaron Loves Angela (1975) .... Beau
Airport '77 (1977) .... Eddie
Fast-Walking (1982) .... William Galliot
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) .... Admiral Morrow
Passenger 57 (1992) .... Dwight Henderson
Posse (1993) .... King David
Fled (1996) .... Lt. Clark
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Julia Faye (born Julia Faye Maloney, September 24, 1892 – April 6, 1966) was an American actress of silent and sound films. She was known for her appearances in more than 30 Cecil B. DeMille productions. Her various roles ranged from maids and ingénues to vamps and queens.
She was "famed throughout Hollywood for her perfect legs" until her performance in Cecil B. DeMille's The Volga Boatman (1926) established her as "one of Hollywood's popular leading ladies."
Faye was born at her grandmother's home near Richmond, Virginia. Her father, Robert J. Maloney (born c. 1865), worked for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. Her mother, Emma Louise Elliott (1872–1955), was from New Castle, Indiana.[9] Her parents had married in 1890 in Newton, Kansas. Faye's paternal grandfather, Thomas Maloney, was born in Ireland and had immigrated to the United States in the 1850s.
Faye's father died sometime before 1901, when her widowed mother married Cyrus Demetrios Covell (1862–1941) in Indiana. Faye took her stepfather's name and listed him as her father.
She had lived in St. Louis, Missouri, prior to coming to Hollywood in 1915, to visit friends. She visited one of the film studios and was introduced to actor and director Christy Cabanne. The two reminisced about St. Louis and discovered that they had lived next door to one another there. Cabanne persuaded Faye's reluctant mother to allow her to be in motion pictures.
Faye made her debut in silent films with bit roles in Martyrs of the Alamo and The Lamb, both directed by Christy Cabanne for Triangle Film Corporation in 1915. Her first credited and important role was as Dorothea opposite DeWolf Hopper's Don Quixote in the 1915 Fine Arts adaptation of the famous Miguel de Cervantes novel. Neil G. Caward, a reviewer for the film journal Motography, wrote, in his review of Don Quixote, that "both Fay Tincher as Dulcinea and Julia Faye as Dorothea add much enjoyment to the picture." Faye's growing popularity increased with her appearances in several Keystone comedies, including A Movie Star, His Auto Ruination, His Last Laugh, Bucking Society, The Surf Girl, and A Lover's Might, all released in 1916. She also worked for D. W. Griffith, who gave her a minor role in Intolerance (1916).
Faye's first role for Cecil B. DeMille was featured in The Woman God Forgot (1917). She continued working for DeMille in The Whispering Chorus, Old Wives for New, The Squaw Man and Till I Come Back to You (all 1918).
In 1919, Faye played the stenographer in Stepping Out. Cast with Enid Bennett, Niles Welch, and Gertrude Claire, Faye was complimented by a critic for playing her role with "class". In DeMille's Male and Female (1919), she played Gloria Swanson's maid.
Her next film, It Pays To Advertise (1919), was a Paramount Pictures release adapted by Elmer Harris from the play of the same name by Rol Cooper Megrue and Walter Hackett. It was directed by Donald Crisp. Faye was among the actors with Lois Wilson depicting the leading lady.
Faye was listed as a member of the Paramount Stock Company School in July 1922. Its noteworthy personalities included Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson, Betty Compson, Wallace Reid, Bebe Daniels, and Pola Negri.
In 1923, she played The Wife of Pharaoh, one of her most famous roles, in the prologue of DeMille's The Ten Commandments.
Faye joined Raymond Griffith and ZaSu Pitts in the screen feature Changing Husbands (1924), a Leatrice Joy comedy adapted from a magazine story entitled Roles.
When DeMille resigned as director general of Famous Players-Lasky, in January 1925, he became the production head of Cinema Corporation of America. He planned to direct two or three films per year and supervise the making of between ten and twenty more. Faye came along with him as did Joy, Rod La Roque, Florence Vidor, Mary Astor, and Vera Reynolds.
The Volga Boatman (1926) was directed by DeMille and named for the noted Russian song. William Boyd, Elinor Fair, and Faye have primary roles in a production DeMille called "his greatest achievement in picture making." Faye's depiction of a "tiger woman" was esteemed as the most captivating of her career, to this point. Before this role she had been known for "silken siren roles". Theodore Kosloff played opposite her as a stupid blacksmith.
Faye played Martha in The King of Kings (1927). Christ, portrayed by H.B. Warner, is introduced with great majesty in the DeMille photodrama. A blind child searches for the Lord and the producer/director turns the camera gradually down to the child's eyes. The viewer sees Christ initially like the blind child whose sight is restored. Faye traveled to New York City for personal appearances in association with The King of Kings and to address a sales convention in Chicago, Illinois.
Faye won critical acclaim for her leading performance in the 60-minute silent comedy Turkish Delight (1927), directed by Paul Sloane for DeMille Pictures Corporation. She was featured as Velma in the 1927 DeMille-produced film adaptation of the play Chicago; she has the distinction of being the first actress to portray Velma on-screen.
Faye had a small role as an inmate in DeMille's The Godless Girl (1929), which featured some talking sequences, but she made her "talkie" debut playing Marcia Towne in DeMille's first sound film, Dynamite (1929), co-starring Conrad Nagel, Kay Johnson, and Charles Bickford. Dynamite was also her first Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film. She also appeared in two other MGM productions, the Marion Davies comedy Not So Dumb (1930) and DeMille's third and final remake of The Squaw Man (1931), before her brief retirement from films in the early 1930s.
After a short-lived marriage, Faye returned to films with a minor role in Till We Meet Again (1936) and would go on to appear in every one of DeMille's films after Union Pacific (1939), which marked her return to DeMille films. In Samson and Delilah (1949), she had a prominent supporting role as Delilah's maidservant, Hisham. In The Ten Commandments (1956), she played Elisheba, Aaron's wife. Her last role was as a dowager in the 1958 remake of DeMille's The Buccaneer, produced by DeMille himself but directed by his son-in-law Anthony Quinn.
Faye married Harold Leroy Wallick on August 2, 1913, in Manhattan. Wallick predeceased her, and she is listed as a widow in the 1930 census.
Faye first met Cecil B. DeMille in 1917 and became one of his mistresses. In 1920, Faye resided at 2450 Glendower Avenue in Los Feliz.[32] She later bought a Colonial Revival-style mansion at 2338 Observatory Avenue, also in Los Feliz.
Faye married screenwriter Walter Anthony Merrill on October 24, 1935, in Los Angeles. In April 1936, she announced that she had obtained a Nevada divorce from Merrill.
Faye began writing a memoir, Flicker Faces, in the mid-1940s. Although it remains unpublished, some excerpts from the memoir are included in author Scott Eyman's 2010 biography of DeMille, Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille.
Faye died of cancer at her home in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, on April 6, 1966, at the age of 73. Her cremated remains rest in the Colonnade at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
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