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zankivich · 6 years ago

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Teacher’s Pet: A College AU Chapter 8

This chapter is super long, but I couldn't find a better place to end it so like.... hope you enjoy long shit? If you’re enjoying the story so far let me know. If it sucks also let me know. If you wanna be added to the tag list let me know. Basically just let me know. :)

And there’s smut if that’s a thing you need to be warned of....

Also TW: homophobia/slur

Chapter 8

*Shawn’s point of view*

When he woke up she was already awake, quietly scrolling through her phone while he slept. He stretched and cracked his bones with a yawn before shuffling over to her side of the bed and squishing himself into her space. She simply moved to accommodate his large body, allowing him to lay his head upon her chest, which happened to be the softest thing he’d ever laid his head on in his whole life. He had grown so used to sleeping beside her that their three or so days of “fighting” had been sleepless and angsty. It was awful.

“What are you doin’?” He mumbled watching her instagram feed one picture at a time.

She smirked. “Not watching you sleep like some creeper, unlike others I know.”

“Very funny.” He grinned peering over at her. “Anyone ever tell you you’re really beautiful in the morning.”

She snorted and it was so cute, he wanted to die.

“Eye boogers and all huh? You’ll be happy to know you look like a rolling stone cover regardless. And yes it is as frustrating as you might think.”

He chuckled watching her for a few minutes. He knew he could have watched her forever, but there were definitely better ways to utilize their time.

“So are you attached to the whole instagram scrolling thing, or could I persuade you to do something else?”

She raised an eyebrow at him already throwing her phone onto the nightstand.

“What did you have in mind, sir?”

He rolled over on top of her pulling her body close to his through the sheets. They quickly got to kissing and biting at each other working themselves into a frenzy. This time everything in his being was telling him to take it slow, to give himself fully and entirely to her. When she wrapped her legs around his back and breathed his name in his ear like a prayer, he found himself getting lost in her body, in her voice, in her soul. He delved deep into her and liked everything that he saw. It was beautiful to be with her, to exist in-between her thighs where it felt like he belonged. It was more than just sex, it felt like completion, like an evolution was taking place. He grabbed onto her hips driving himself home over and over again, not with the goal of just an orgasm, but with the goal of letting her know that he was fully and entirely her’s in every way.

It was a completely different experience in a culture that told men to dominate women and make them theirs. How could he not want every part of himself to belong to her, when she made him feel this way? She had given him something so entirely precious and important. He didn’t want anything but for her to see his love and his heart on a silver platter if she needed. Not out of competition, or masculinity, or anything other than that he loved her terribly.

He had gotten completely lost in the moment when it came. She was pulling him deeper into her, sucking at his neck, and moaning the most incredible things in his ear. He’d been building to something really special for the both of them, when his phone began to ring and their bubble was miraculously popped.

“Don’t you dare answer that.” She gasped legs tightening around him.

“Wait, wait,” He mumbled breathlessly, digging through the messy sheets. “Just let me see who it is.”

“I hate you so fucking much right now.”

He shuffled around causing tiny moans and groans form each of them as they were still connected. When he finally got to the phone his whole world sank, because she most definitely was not going to be happy.

“You’re gonna hate me even more, but it’s my mom and I have to take it. She gets pissed when I don’t answer.”

His girlfriend was incredulous. “You are literally impaling me right now! I am sure Mama Mendes would understand.”

“I mean I would’ve called it something much more romantic like making love, or literally anything else other than something synonymous with stabbing you!”

She chuckled, but was otherwise unmoved.

“I’m sorry I’m not poetic enough for you, Shawn.”

“It’s not about being poetic, but I’d like to think we’re doing something kinda beautiful over here! At least more beautiful than ‘impaling’. Impaling you? I’m trying to create a moment over here, and that’s the best you could come up with?” He huffed.

“Look, what do you say we give each other a couple of orgasms, and then I’ll go cook breakfast while you call your mom back and tell her you were studying or whatever you good Christian boys do.”

He sighed. “I’m not Christian...Not practicing anyway.”

“Shawn...I love you but please fuck me before my vagina shrivels up from this conversation.”

Ultimately, his mom would always be there, but his girlfriend might very well kill him. So, he let the phone ring and dove back under the covers, his girlfriend already grabbing at his ass and moving him back to the position that was sure to get her where she needed to go. It was wonderful to watch her when it happened. Her nose got really red and her chest would grow flush. She always tried to cover her mouth to keep the sound in, and he would just as quickly move her hand and intertwine their fingers because he loved the way that she sounded. She would pull incessantly at his hair until it was just the right side of painful and shove her face into his neck to try to mask the loudest of the sounds when her orgasm would hit. Sometimes she would scream into his skin and he could actually feel the vibrations of her passion. If he wasn’t already on the edge, that was sure to get him there. His fingers dug into her ass, holding her against him as he emptied into the condom. They could both barely breathe after, collapsing in a sweaty, tangled heap as if they’d destroyed each other.

“At what point do we win an award for that?” He huffed ten minutes later, kissing her cheek as he shuffled out of bed to dispose of the condom.

She laughed following him into the bathroom to shower

“I think somewhere between orgasm three and four.” She suggested. “I’ll make sure to get you a trophy asap.”

She had tied her hair in a bun and moved past him to step into the shower after stopping to use the bathroom. He could see her through the door and there really wasn’t ever a moment when she wasn’t the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. She caught him staring as she was soaping herself up and smiled at him through the glass.

“I thought you needed to call your mother?” She asked innocently.

He, however was already stepping into the shower behind her.

“My mom would want me to be clean, first.”

It was another hour before he even made it to his phone, and that was only because she finally left to go cook breakfast giving his hormones some time to calm down. He opted for a facetime thinking it would make up for the missed call. His mom picked up on the first ring, which really wasn’t a good sign if you knew his mom.

“Shawn, how nice of you to pick up!”

He winced. “Yea… Sorry Mom, I was in the shower when you called.”

“I called you over an hour ago, Shawn. What kind of showers are you taking in California? Aren’t you all supposed to be in the middle of a drought.”

He couldn’t help but chuckle. His mom was the coolest in the world, but she worried endlessly about him being in a different country from her for undergrad. She was insistent on him living him in Pickering again as soon as he was finished, and he’d yet to have the heart to tell her his plan was to hopefully move to Toronto instead. There was also a potential plan to stay in Cali for another year to do the music thing, which had been seeming a lot stronger given his current relationship.

“I’m sorry, okay? I’m calling now. How are things? Aaliyah and Dad okay?”

“Everything’s fine here. Your sister is taking three AP classes, and she’s doing wonderful in all of them. Your father is fine. He’s working overtime to make sure he can get the time off for your performance. We’re all doing great, sweetie.”

“That’s great. I miss you guys, so much.” He grinned. “Can’t wait for you to hear the new music.”

“Yea? You’re inspired out there, aye?”

He smiled a smile that had only started appearing on his face that semester, and for a very specific reason.

“I am. I think I’m creating the best stuff I’ve ever made.”

“Hmmm.”

That was a sound his mom made only in times when he was about to get chewed out. He only recognized it because the look on her face wasn’t much better to boot. There wasn’t even a chance to do damage control before she was confronting him.

“That’s not your bedroom. I should I know, I bought your sheets after all.”

He peered back at the still messy sheets he’d destroyed with his girlfriend just hours prior, and his tongue began to dry in his throat.

“Y--Yea. You know, about that--”

“Oh save it, Shawn. Your father already told me, what you refused to call and tell me yourself, sir. You’re in love. You’ve fallen in love, and weren’t going to tell me of all people?”

He rolled his eyes playfully. “Mom I was going to tell you. I would never keep something like that from you. I’ve just been a little preoccupied with classes, and performing, and you know I booked a gig at an even bigger venue for the same week you guys here. I thought you and dad could come and see it.”

“I will not be distracted from the issue at hand, Shawn! I want to meet her.”

His mom never yelled and that somehow only made it worse, because her voice just sounded disappointed instead.

“I’d love for you to meet her!”

“Wonderful, go get her.”

His life flashed before his eyes of him as a vision of him introducing his mother to his girlfriend while she was dressed in nothing but one of his hoodies played out. Not likely.

“Mom. I’m not introducing you guys through facetime. You can meet her when you come to town. And please don’t… you know, scare her? She’s important.”

His mom huffed at him. “What am I, a monster? I’m not gonna scare the girl, I just wanna meet her.”

“Woman.”

“Excuse me?”

“She’s a woman. Not a girl. You probably wouldn’t say you wanna meet the boy, you’d say man. Girl is like… it just shapes the way we view women in comparison with men, so it’s cooler if we say women ya know?” He smiled sheepishly. “Feminism class, remember?”

“Well good for you. Maybe that class can teach you to call your mother every now and again.”

He laughed knowing that all was forgiven. His mom could never stay mad at him for long. By the time he got off the phone, not before promising to call again sometime that week, everything was okay again. In two weeks his family would be in town, and they knew him better than anyone. He had known that this relationship had made him happier than he’d been in years, maybe since he’d discovered music could actually help his mental state. But, now the people who had seen him before, would get to see him after. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that they would adore her, but his fear was that they would see just how hopelessly gone he was. No one had ever had that kind of power over him, and he figured it was better that she know before his mother, who very much would, brought it up.

In the kitchen, she was listening to music on the speaker and bobbing her head while she was frying bacon in a pan. He wormed his arms around her waist from behind dropping a kiss on her shoulder and on her neck as she cooked.

“Sorry, I don’t have any Canadian bacon. Hope this is good enough.” She grinned.

He smirked. “I think I’ll manage. Can we talk for a minute?”

“Sure. Everything okay?”

“Yea, everything’s great.” He released her body sliding up onto the counter space instead. “Just never got to talk about last night, with the ‘I love you’ thing.”

“Oh...Well you don’t have to say anything more. You didn’t even have to say it back really.” She shrugged awkwardly.

He peered over at her as she tried to pretend her bacon was super interesting.

“I get that you’re not super comfortable with the whole feelings talk, but I am. And if you give me a chance I think I could make you comfortable with it too.”

She looked up at him with a smile. “Alright, give it your best shot, superstar.”

He smiled back at her, his whole heart feeling big and warm when she was in his line of vision. The words came tumbling out of him without fail, because how could he not want this woman to know how he felt?

“Well what I wanted to say last night was . . . I don’t think I’ve ever been in love before. Which means I’ve never had my heart broken, but I’ve also never given myself fully to someone. And what I would’ve told you whether we had the fight or not, or whether you said you loved me first is that...I don’t know how to give you anything less than all that I am. It’s not conscious, it’s not an effort at all. I just want you in every way and I want to satisfy every need and want you could ever have. I guess I just--I’m really into you. I’m in love with you, and I don’t think I could stand for that not to be on the table, just in case you don’t feel the same.”

She seemed to stare through him again, leaving him feeling naked and exposed before her eyes. His heart was truly in his hand, gaping wound and all. She could either take it and nurture it, or stomp on it. And that was the scariest thing he’d ever experienced in his whole life. But he’d rather die than not let her know how he felt.

She moved the bacon off of the burner, turning the stove off and stepping in between his legs. Hers hands trailed up his bare arms and up to his neck holding his face in her hands. When she kissed him, it was sweet and soft, soulful like she was feeding him with her lips. She placed her hand upon her chest as if to heal the nonexistent wound.

“I’m not gonna hurt you, Shawn.” She murmured. “And if I was poetic at all, I would tell you I’ve been with a lot of shitty people in my life. And maybe I loved some of them, and maybe I didn’t, but I’ve never had this with anyone else. I love that you like the gym even if I have never wanted to go somewhere less in my life.”

He chuckled far aware of her aversion to exercise outside of the bedroom, but found himself softening at her words as he slid his hands lovingly along her waist..

“ And I love that you hum in your sleep, and this one fucking curl that always falls in your face, and I love that you take care of me. No one ever has. Maybe I’ve never let anyone. But, I’m in okay? All in. And you never have to wonder if you’re in deeper because I’m right here with you. Always.”

He smiled, his arms and legs coming to wrap around her. He held her in his arms and kissed the living daylights out of her, his tongue feeling like heaven in her mouth. There weren’t words to thank her, so they just stood there instead, food growing cold as they got lost in one another. It was kind of perfect.

* * *

“Alright guys can anyone tell me anything about the difference between second wave and third wave feminism?”

He raised his hand, only because for once he actually knew the answer. The good thing about dating the TA was you got lots of practice outside of class….although what you were practicing differed greatly.

“Shawn.” She said professionally, because they were professional in the classroom dammit.

“Well second wave started in the sixties right? So it was during the civil rights movement and lot of it was about getting women out of the home and expanding their roles in society. That’s where the fight for equal pay in the workforce comes from. And then third wave is kind of like broader isn’t it? It was less focused on any one specific thing and more on just getting people to talk about feminism.”

“Yea, that’s a really great start. Thank you, Shawn.” She smiled only slightly cheeky. “Third wave gets kind of hard for people to define because it was such a broad way of looking at feminism. It really began to question our notions of gender and the roles we take on because of it. So this is where we get a very liberative movement of reclaiming whether that be with high heels and lipstick and very ultra-feminine things, as well as women who were saying that they wanted to remain in the home with their children and that that wasn’t inherently anti-feminist at all. But the reason why third-wave is slightly more progressive, though I would argue not nearly progressive enough in the most mainstream of circles is because we’ve started to focus on feminism for everyone. Whereas feminism began as something white, wealthy women typically only got to partake in, now trans women get to be part of that conversation. Black women and other women of color, and poor women, and women who are differently abled, are all slowly getting their seat at the table. You no longer can have a conversation about the wage gap without noticing, that white women are going to make ten, fifteen cents on the dollar of women of color. If your feminism doesn’t include women of all shapes and colors and socioeconomic statuses, you’re not doing it correctly.”

Listening to her talk was like a symphony sometimes. He’d never been a huge fan of lectures, his mind always tending to wander. But, she forced you to be engaged in a way that no one ever had. She was so easy to understand, and she made it feel like you weren’t a fucking idiot if you didn’t know something. She was passionate about everything that she taught, and therefore he couldn’t not want to learn every single thing she had to give. It was his favorite class of the entire semester, not because it was her, but because of who she was as a person.

Class eventually dismissed and as he was gathering his things together one of the guys who barely ever showed up to class felt it was his time to come up and be an asshole.

“Hey Mendes, do you find that being a bitch makes your period last longer, or does it kind of even out what with you just being a bitch all the time?” He asked.

Shawn sighed, knowing there was nothing he could say to make this dickhead actually understand how fucking lame he was. Guys like him just wanted to feel heard.

“Does that work for you, bro? Being a complete jackass? Is that really getting you where you wanna go in life?”

Frat boy scoffed. “This class is bullshit and you’re a pussy for being into it.”

“Yes because there’s nothing women find less attractive than respecting them.” Shawn grinned. “Totally makes me a pussy.”

Frat boy got angry taking a step closer. “Look here faggot if you--”

“Hey!”

They both turned to see his girlfriend with the most pissed off expression he’d ever seen on her face. She was wearing a band t-shirt they’d bought together thrift shopping with these long wide legged pants that made her look all edgy but teachery. She was so fucking cute. Jesus.

“Day one in this class we read through a non-discrimination policy that says we will respect and be kind to everyone. And that does not include fucking slurs that are the antithesis of everything this course is based on. Get the fuck out of my classroom before I have you kicked out of this course.”

It was maybe the hottest thing he’d ever seen in his whole life. And he’d seen her naked. Frat boy stormed out of the classroom leaving only them behind, and he couldn’t just not put his hands on her when she was all brimstone and sex.

“The fucking nerve of that asshole.” She muttered as he wrapped his arms around her immediately kissing at her neck.

“You’re so fucking sexy when you’re angry at someone that isn’t me.” He whimpered.

“I hate that word. That word is fucking disgusting, and people shouldn’t feel comfortable enough to use it in any setting.”

He nodded rubbing her arms soothingly. “You’re right. Better it be me who isn’t affected by it, than someone who could’ve been. Right?”

She sighed peering up at him until she released all of the anger from her system.

“Right. You’re right. Doesn’t make it fucking okay, though.”

He wrapped her up in his arms kissing at her forehead and cheeks until she smiled.

“Don’t let it ruin your day though. Are we still having lunch in your office?”

“Yes, but it needs to actually be lunch this time Shawn! I have meetings all day after this, I can’t be starving because you can’t keep it in your pants.”

He held up his hands in surrender. “Hey, I’ll be good! I promise!”

*Twenty minutes later*

“Don’t fucking pull my hair, Shawn!” She gasped in between moans. “I’ve got to look presentable.”

“I’m trying babe. Shit, you feel amazing.”

He had her bent over her desk, hands on her hips as she threw her ass back at him with every thrust of his hips. It was doing wonders for how deep he could get inside of her and thus was reflecting well on her general comments on the act.

“Oh my god.” She mumbled her arms collapsing so that she was leaning on her arms against the desk thus pushing her hips further into the air. “Baby, fuck me please.”

Her voice was innocent and sickeningly sweet and it made his spine straighten as he leaned up onto his toes and rammed into her from behind. They were trying desperately to be quiet, and her moans turned silent as he began to hit the perfect spot. There was a mirror against the opposite wall that let them make eye contact, and her eyes rolled back in her head when he wrapped one hand around the back of her neck and pulled her deeper against him desperate and needy. This was quickly becoming his second favorite position in the world, and when she tightened up around him, he might have just seen stars.

“Fuck don’t do that you’ll make me cum.” He huffed hiding his face in her neck.

She reached back behind their bodies and grabbed his hip pulling him against her body.

“I want it. Give it to me.” She whimpered. “Please, Shawn?”

There is only so much a man can take.

She pulled orgasms out of him like Dumbledore pulled memories out of his own fucking head. And he never had the time to feel embarassed about coming too quick because it seemed to be her goal, the little vixen, always trying to kill him with every tightening of her muscles. When he came he held her whole entire body from behind in an attempt to not explode across the whole entire room. Her chest was heaving, face red and sated, as she collapsed against the desk once again. He quickly joined her after pitching the condom, barely having the strength to collapse in the chair and pull her onto his lap.

“Did you cum?” He asked skimming his nose along the side of her face as their bodies cooled.

Her eyes widened. “No, I’m not gonna start shooting all over my office like a sprinkler, thank you very much. I work here.”

“What? Babe you can’t just not cum! What the fuck am I even here for, if you’re not orgasming?”

“Women all over the world are fucking mediocre men and not having orgasms. I can take one for the team.” She shrugged.

He shook his head quickly dislodging her from his lap as he stood up.

“Shawn this is not that big of a deal.”

“Yes it is! Babe I have to make you cum.” He explained. “An eye for an eye. Reciprocation. All of that. How could you let me cum, and not expect the same back.”

“Sweetie, I hear you, and I really love this feminist approach you’re taking to our love making, and if it wouldn’t get me fired I’d probably give you extra credit. However, I am choosing not to orgasm for fear of soaking the entire place down. I still very much enjoy your penis inside of me and I’ve had a great time. It’s not you, it’s me.”

“Funny. She’s being funny.” He muttered pulling his jeans back up his hips.

She giggled reaching for her pants.

“You gotta admit it’s a little funny.”

He rolled his eyes at her and went about grabbing his things.

“Are you really upset with me right now?” She asked as he prepared to leave.

He threw his backpack over his shoulder nearing the door.

“I’m not upset I just don’t understand why you won’t let me make you cum!” He huffed. “I’m kind of good at it. It’s one of my favorite pastimes.”

They stood there in a tense silence only for a knock to arrive on the door and suck all off the air out of the room.

“Shit.” She gasped pulling her pants with a fierceness.

Shawn remained stuck as his girlfriend quickly materialized a bottle of febreeze out of nowhere and began viciously spraying the room down with it. He could only unfreeze when he noticed the magnitude of the spray.

“So you can squirt febreeze everywhere, but god forbid I make you cum.” He mumbled.

She moved past him socking him in the chest enough to really fucking hurt.

“Get your shit together and try to look like we didn’t just have sex!” She whispered. “We will talk about this at home.”

“Whatever.” He muttered arms crossed like an aggravated child.

There was another knock on the door, and she smoothed quickly at her outfit tugging at her curls before yanking open the door in the least suspicious manner they could manage. On the other side of the door was none other than Frat Boy himself. Maybe the worst person in the world to be on the other side of the door.

“Roger. How can I help you?” She asked quickly trying to keep her voice under control.

He looked over at Shawn with an unimpressed look in his eyes refusing to talk like the fucking baby he was.

“Don’t mind me, I was just leaving. Thanks for the help, teach.” He mumbled sliding his hand protectively against the small of her back as he passed.

She’d have hit him again if she could.

* * *

“Are Mom and Dad driving you crazy?” He asked moving through the kitchen to locate a snack.

His sister Aaliyah was on facetime and they had been catching up on loads for the past hour after he’d finished his paper for abnormal psych.

“They’re not so bad. Mom is over planning for the trip to visit you. She’s already packed and repacked three times.” She chuckled.

“She’ll be fine once she sees I’m not dead. I’ve been in school for four years, you’d think she’d get used to it by now.”

“Not exactly. She wants me to go to go school in Ontario so I can commute and stay home. Especially now that you’ve hidden your girlfriend from her, I think she thinks you’re gonna elope and run away.”

He laughed. “She tell you about that? I’m gonna need you to be on my side this weekend. The recital is stressful enough, I don’t need mom scaring off the girl I’m in love with.”

“Ooooooooo, in love huh?!” She teased. “Are you sitting in a tree, and k-i-s-s-i-n-g-ing?!”

“Hilarious.” He answered dryly. “You’ll love her when you meet her. She’s getting her masters in human sexuality. She’s like the smartest, most woke person ever. Don’t tell her I said it though, she hates that word.”

“I’ll try to keep it to myself… Is it serious, or whatever?”

He peered over at the facetime for the first time in a while having been preparing himself a sandwich.

“Yea, I think so. It’s more serious than anything I’ve ever done before.” He shrugged, cheeks warming.

“So when you graduate...would you like, not come back to Canada?”

Only his sister could ask questions that would leave him floundering and and flustered. She would of course ask him questions that he didn’t have answers to.

“I don’t know, yet. We haven’t really talked about it. She gets a little spooked by talking about feelings.”

“Mom would shit her pants if you stayed in California.” She hinted.

He sighed. “Yes, Aaliyah; I’m aware.”

“On the bright side, if you mess up this massively, I will only further my reign as the golden child!”

Best little sister ever.

“Alright punk. Text me when you guys get to the airport, aye? I’m gonna be there to pick you up.”

He heard the front door open and smiled knowing that she was home and was coming to him, and no one else.

“Yea, yea, we’ll keep you posted.”

“Love you.”

“Love you too.”

He closed the phone after his sister had faded away and turned as the light of his life twirled into the room. Or walked. Whatever.

“Who do you love?” She asked in loo of greeting.

He wrapped his arms around her waist pulling her in for a kiss.

“Hey. How was Fratboy dickbag?” He smirked.

She rolled her eyes. “We’re lucky he didn’t fucking hear anything. No more quickies in the office. That’s a line we never should have crossed. The guy’s weird though, he kept looking at me like a predator. I’m almost positive he doesn’t understand the line of consent.”

“Did he do something to you?” He asked standing up straighter automatically.

She smiled. “No. I’m okay. Which reminds me, who was it that you love again?”

“Besides you? My sister. She was catching me up on the Canadian drama, and my mom’s never ending packing.”

“Ahh.Yes. Parents. Family... Fun.”

He grinned. “Your enthusiasm is genuinely astounding.”

“I don’t have a good history of first impressions. I’m a generally awkward human with the mouth of a truck driver. I don’t want you to be surprised when your Canadian mother hates me.” She mumbled.

“Why does the Canadian matter?”

“Because you guys could get hit by a car and you would apologize to the driver, and take them out to lunch. I’m American, Shawn. We blame the world for our problems and take it out on everyone else. We’re kind of the worst.” She explained.

He chuckled kissing her nose in reassurance.

“They’re gonna love you. Because I love you. They’re the least judgemental people in the world, and when my mom sees the way you take care of me, she’ll want to be your best friend.”

She pouted up at him and it was so cute he wanted to die.

“I’m not exactly doing your laundry and cleaning your room. I wouldn’t call myself housewife material.”

“Exactly. But when I’m anxious you get me to focus on just one thing. And you breathe with me until I’m better. And when I’ve played the same chord for the thousandth time and finally get it right you smile at me like I’ve cured cancer. And when you’re with me, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. You take care of me in all of the ways that matter.”

She rolled her eyes sticking her chin out him like a child before a smile eventually broke through.

“Besides. I’ve done more laundry since we’ve been together than I have in my whole life. She’ll probably think you’re magic.”

“You musicians and your poetic words.” She huffed. “You’ll be the death of me.”

“But I’ll make it worth your while.” He promised kissing her chastly.

“Yea?”

“Yea...beginning with finishing what we started earlier.”

He dropped to his knees smoothly, hooking his fingers into her pants and taking them with him to the floor.

“Here?! In the kitchen?!” She gasped.

“What like we haven’t before?” He asked peering up at her with innocent eyes. “C’mon. Please?”

She huffed as he tugged at her underwear, quickly pulling them down to her ankles before settling her fingers possessively in his hair the way that he liked.

“Fuckin’ boy scout. Continue.”

He chuckled, hands grabbing at her hips as he absolutely dug in.

***

“Babe you’re sweating.” He smirked her hands slick in his own.

She groaned beating her head into his chest.

“Maybe I’ll die before they get here. Maybe that God person everyone’s always talking about will do me a solid and just take me out.”

“Even God gets to be gender neutral, aye?” He grinned kissing her hair.

She beamed up at him. “I have taught you so well. How could anyone fire me for sleeping with you, you’re practically a scholar.”

“I appreciate the sentiment. Just a heads up I didn’t tell my parents about that.”

“Well thank fuck for that. I can imagine how many strikes that would be against me.”

They waited at LAX armed with Canadian flags and everything to welcome Shawn’s family. Despite how nervous she was, Shawn couldn’t have been more excited for his family and girlfriend to meet. His family meant the world to him. She meant the world to him. It only made sense for those two worlds to collide.

When the time finally came, and he spotted his mom with her too many suitcases, his dad and little sister slowly trailing behind, there was an excitement within him that he couldn’t explain. He loved his family endlessly and any time he got to see them was truly something special. His mom spotted him and flew into his arms squeezing him tightly, like he’d been off at war. His father clapped him on the back following it up with a bear hug, while his sister hugged him around the waist. He kissed and greeted them all, only noticing that his girlfriend was nowhere to be seen when they were all standing in front of him. She was still very much in the spot where he’d left her.

“Hey, come here.” He murmured softly reaching for her hand and pulling her into the fray.

He didn’t let go of her hand, just in case she needed that, and by the way she intertwined their fingers he had a feeling that she did.

“Family this is y/n.” He smiled staring at her with all of the adoration that he felt inside. “Y/n, this is family.”

She had wore a black dress that day with a white collar and a wide, skater skirt that went down to her knees--something about being presentable for his mom--and she messed with the skirt of it anxiously as she smiled.

“Hi. We’re very excited to have you here. It’s really wonderful to meet you all. Shawn talks a lot about you.”

He quickly took over wanting to give her the opportunity to lay low and take it all in.

“We figured we could go to lunch before you guys go to the hotel.”

“Yes please. Airplane food is horrible.” His sister sighed.

“Perfect. Let’s go!”

He grabbed for his mom’s bags, sliding one over his shoulder and pulling her suitcases. He watched as his girlfriend politely asked his father and little sister if she could carry their bags. His dad looked at her like she wasn’t speaking english and his sister seemed more than amused with the situation. When she insisted on carrying his bag, he was sure his father was going to say something ignorant and the whole world would come crashing down before they ever made it to the restaurant. But he instead gave her the bag and linked hands with his mom as they walked instead. Crisis averted.

His parents had rented a car for the week and it was an SUV, big enough to carry the luggage that his mother thought was necessary. They drove to the asian bistro he’d taken her to for their first lunch date, and got a big table outside for everyone to sit at. His father pulled the chair out for his mother, something he’d always done, and he gave him a strange look when he didn’t do the same. His parents were wonderfully accepting people, but there seemed to be a generational gap in terms of what the expectations were in relationships. He had a feeling his dad would talk to him about it later.

His mother was kind enough to wait until they’d placed their orders before turning her stare to the two of them. He’d been whispering a joke in her ear about something that happened in class the week before, and when she finally smiled for him he’d tried to contain himself but ended up kissing her cheek anyway. Her cheeks reddened and it felt good to not be the only red faced person at the table.

“So, y/n, we’ve heard so little about you. Tell us about yourself.”

He sent his mom a look that begged her not to embarrass him, but she couldn’t have cared less.

“Well uh I’m getting my master’s in human sexuality. I’m originally from a small town in Indiana, but I moved here specifically for my program. My research is on how mental health affects Trans Women differently, more drastically actually. I’m specifically looking at trans women of color and trying to see how the intersections of race and gender negatively impact mental health due to societal forces and not personal ones? So, I’m not really all that interesting because that’s really all that I do, besides being a TA.” She shrugged.

“She’s completely underselling right now. She’s working with some of the top people in her field. She’s definitely going to get published when she’s done with her research. Everything she’s doing is incredible, and our master’s program only accepts like five people anyway. She was asked to come before she even finished undergrad.” He boasted.

She rolled her eyes at him, hating nothing more in the world than when he talked about all of the things he loved about her, which was frequent. He was just happy he could finally tell the people that mattered most about the woman that mattered most.

“You must be doing really good work then.” His mom smiled reassuringly.

“Yea, well, I just really have to do my part in elevating the voices that we purposely don’t listen to. And that’s a responsibility I don’t take lightly. It’s what matters most to me in the world, so I--I try.”

He could tell that she was getting worked up talking about it, and knowing how uncomfortable feelings made her, he threaded their fingers together under the table in reassurance.

His sister, bless her, began to talk about her AP english course, and how the class had rallied to get a more diverse offering of books than the ones from dead, white guys with too many extensive metaphors. His girlfriend didn’t take this lightly and smiled warmly at every word that she offered. Just as he expected, they immediately began talk back and forth about the things that they knew and the experiences they’d had. His mom seemed to be more than satisfied with everything she heard and they were left to have a wonderful lunch.

By the end of the meal, you couldn't even tell it was their first meeting. Whether she knew so or not, his girlfriend was kind and sweet and funny as all hell fitting in perfectly with his goofy wondrous family. When they were walking back to the car he pulled her close to him, a few steps behind his family, his arm around her shoulder.

“Okay?” He asked simply.

She smiled up at him and nodded.

“Okay.”

tag list:

@nevermindmisha

@alltoowhalee13 @glader-groupa-sub8

#Shawn Mendes #Shawn Mendes Imagine #Shawn Mendes fic #Shawn Mendes fanic #Shawn Mendes fan fiction #Shawn Mendes au #Shawn Mendes college au #shawn mendes x reader #shawn mendes imagine #shawn mendes fluff #Shawn Mendes fanfic #Shawn Mendes series #Shawn Mendes smut #shawn mendes x you #Shawn Mendes x y/n #Shawn Mendes x female reader

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thedesperatehousehusband · 6 years ago

Text

It’s Gonna Be May

May. May. May. She is a wild and crazy gal. And she is zipping by.

But there are a couple of constants regardless of crazy schedules, travel, work insanity and general bullshit.

Mother’s Day. My mom’s birthday. Juan’s birthday. Upfronts. The Indy 500.

Happy Birthday and Mother’s Day to Phyl. This year both were the same day.

Juan attended the Upfronts this year. He loved it. Truly one of the coolest things. We are beginning to watch pilots. Does it say we are getting older when we are excited about shows on CBS?? For the past few years, we have coupled Upfronts with an NYC theater weekend to commemorate Juan’s birthday. These things always coincide. So we try to take advantage of that.

We took a vacation day on the Friday before Upfronts and then went bananas. We shopped until we dropped. We did very bad very good things at a place that sounds like Susan Lucci. Without the Susan. And replace the L for G. Shoes are our babies.

Then we began our theatrical endeavors. On Friday night we saw Tootsie. There’s a new musical version featuring Santino Fontana as Tootsie. We looooove us some Santino. The show is really quite delightful. The time has been updated to a more modern day and some aspects of the plot have been modernized but the story is generally the gist of the movie of same name starring Mr. Dustin Hoffman. We laughed a lot. Highly recommend. It’s a fun romp and something the whole family can enjoy.

On Saturday we enjoyed a classic. Roundabout Theater Company is currently staging a revival of Kiss Me Kate at Studio 54. It features Kelli O’Hara. We loooooove us some Kelli O’Hara. Revivals are interesting. Some are staged very classicall. As originally concepted. While others are reimagined and reengineered. This particular version is a big ass classic. Choreography, orchestra, set, cast. It’s a big honkin’ Broadway show. It’s fun. There’s great music. I’d like to sup, y’all. Potentially with my baby tonight, y’all. It’s too darn hot, y’all. Plus Kelli O’Hara. She’s butter. She can come to the Cabaret whenever she’d like. Please and thank you.

Then on Sunday we saw something special. Something truly original. It’s called Hadestown. So basically the mythological tale of going to hell. Orpheus, Persephone, Hades, Eurydice and Hermes. But set in a New Orleans jazz club with a full jazz score and orchestra. My god. Juan and I were both so moved. It’s really very powerful. The ensemble is absolutely incredible and the Muses are basically narrators in three-part harmony. My god. It’s just cool. Incredibly original. The set is nuts. The lighting is amazing. The singing is so very good. My god. Andre De Shields (Google it....) plays Hermes. He is a gahtdamn living legend. He is nearly gahtdamn 80 years old and he still got it all. The singing, the dancing. He owns the stage. But the rest of the cast is right on time. Eva Noblezada is incredible. Reeve Carney is great and is making up for that Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark fucking bullshit nonsense. Amber Gray is the real deal. We loved her in Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet. And the man who played Hades is a man named Patrick Page. He has the deepest bass voice I’ve ever heard. (That’s what she said.) I cannot stop gushing about this show. I don’t know if it will tour. It’s possibly a commercial stretch but I would just love for people to experience this wonderful show.

And now we are at the end of May. Memorial Day weekend. The weekend when the masses descend upon Indianapolis. Allegedly the best strippers from Vegas and NYC are flown in to entertain the high rollers. That may or may not be true but what is true is we are getting the fuck out of Indy. We’ve done this race thing a couple of times and it’s just too much. I know many of you love May at the track. Too much gen pop. Too much MAGA. I don’t need it. I prefer May in Cali so we are off to visit Mr. Martin Robert Kator. We are going to whoop it up in Monterey, Pebble Beach and Carmel-By-The-Sea. Which sounds fancy AF. It’s going to be an awesome weekend of Pacific Ocean highjinks. Beer, wine, good food, good fun and an aquarium. Bring it.

But for real...how is it the end of May? It is unclear where 2019 has gone. We will just keep on living our best lives. That’s really all we can do.

#blessed

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kevindomingowrites-blog · 7 years ago

Text

Blog #10 ^_^

My name is Kevin and I am your friend ^_^ Hello hello! Welcome to blog number ten! Wow, my tenth blog already, definitely a milestone. Ten is one of my favorite numbers one reason being because I was born on the tenth of May lol. But yeah, welcome to blog number 10! My family came back from their trip to Cali and it’s back to the living hell again. It was so peaceful when I was by myself (sob) and now they’re back to ruin everything (pout). Oh well, I did manage to get A LOT of things done while they were gone. I cleaned the entire house, I went to the gym, but most importantly I got a large amount of writing done. I’ll be honest, before I had the house all to myself my writing was getting pretty rough. I was experiencing writers block and had little motivation of writing. I would only get a few hundred words in for that week. Then I was all alone in my house and I swear I felt utter peace and serenity. The first day was a bit tough because I found out that day that one of my good friends in high school just past away. I’m not going to get any further into that. But the next day I had a writers orgy haha! I spent a more than a few hours writing and got well over three thousand words in. I was able to finish an AWESOME fighting scene, introduced new characters, and finished a whole entire chapter. It was just a fantastic day for writing and the wheels were definitely turning for me. Now I’m even more fired up to continue my writing and develop my story. If you ever experience writers block, one of the coolest ways to overcome that is a change in scenery/setting/environment. Try changing which room you usually work in. Go outside and get some writing done there. Isolate yourself from people so your mind can naturally flow and get some writing done. Change is a great thing, don’t be afraid of it. Go try out new things. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, then try something else. No harm done. You’ll never know unless you give it a try. I’m so excited to get some more writing done and hopefully the book will be ready for publishing soon (I’m not even halfway done lol). I’m hoping to self publish the book before November to December so make sure to follow my social media accounts to know when that’s coming. Trust me, you don’t want to miss it! On that note, be sure to check out my website (link in bio) to read the first two chapters of my upcoming sci-fi & fantasy book and three part series, “Seeds of the Stars”, if you like extraterrestrials, action, superpowers, romance, and stuff. I’m also will be doing a live stream sometime soon the following week. I’ll be answering questions, talk about my book, and other things so make sure to watch out for that. That’s all I have for you guys today. Thanks for stopping by and all the support you guys and gals have given me and as always, my name is Kevin and I am your friend ^_^ Namaste

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flauntpage · 7 years ago

Text

Skater Jagger Eaton is Already a Star, But Can He Hang in the Streets?

Encinitas Skate Plaza looks like a parody of Southern California. It's the kind of place where a boombox is always playing early 2000s Offspring singles, where shirtless dads are forever weaving through crowds of shirtless teens, and where, at any given moment, a helmeted eight-year-old stands on the brink and prepares, for the first time, to drop herself down the cement walls of a never-functional pool that's twice as deep as she is tall.

Poods, as locals refer to the park, is a 13,000-square-foot slab of grey and orange concrete planes and waves and ledges, pierced by flatbars and stairways to nowhere, and surrounded by a parking lot, a soccer field, and a few palm trees that don't provide any shade. Show up most days around noon and there's a decent chance you'll notice one skateboarder, Jagger Eaton, standing out slightly from the rest. It's not that he's doing bigger tricks, necessarily, nor anything especially complicated. And it's not that he literally stands out—he just hit 5'7''.

There's just something almost effortless about the way he cruises around the park. There's an ease in the way he pops his board out of a ramp, the smile as he bails, the pat on the back he gives to check on the well-being of whoever he just slammed into at the bottom of an eight-stair rail. When Jagger does a run of tricks through the park, other skaters stop whatever they're doing, watch, and ask their friends if they saw that.

Demian Becerra/Holy Mountain

Though he still has to, as he puts it, "finesse" his way into R-rated movies, Jagger has already taken the top spot at many of the major contests open to amateur skateboarders; this year alone he's won the Phx Am and two gold medals at the X Games, in Amateur Street and Amateur Park. But as the website Quartersnacks often notes, we're in the "everyone is good" era of skateboarding: "Anyone (well, anyone who's good) can nollie flip a fourteen-stair nowadays or switch crook a gnarly rail, but it will be the behind the scenes videos that help us decide where our allegiances with various athletes stand." Jagger might have more contest wins, but there are dozens of other kids who are just as eager to make a name for themselves, who can do (most of) the same tricks and who would like to go pro in his place. For now what really separates Jagger from other 16-year-old skate phenoms—and, presumably, the reason VICE Sports sent me to San Diego to talk to him—is that he is also a TV star.

Jagger Eaton's Mega Life was a Rob Dyrdek-produced reality show that premiered on Nickelodeon late last year. During the show's 20 episodes, Jagger, family, and friends travel around the country partaking in "mega" adventures—outdoor activities like shark diving, jousting, heli-boarding, and playing beach volleyball with the U.S. women's beach volleyball team. The show gets its name from the mega ramp (also the subject of episode 17), an approximately 60-foot skate jump that Jagger has been riding since he was a child. It was on this ramp, when he was 11, that he captured his first major headlines by becoming the youngest-ever X Games competitor. While even Jagger will admit that there are times when he cringes to hear his younger voice—"I'm like, how do people even watch these videos?"—the show is more entertaining than you'd expect a Nickelodeon reality show to be. He possesses a boundless enthusiasm—evident in the way he uses G-rated swears like "gosh" and "heck" to intensify the "unreal"-ness of an activity—that makes me wish I could recapture that pre-cynical YA worldview wherein it's possible to be passionate about things like ziplining.

Demian Becerra/Holy Mountain

Since Mega Life ended, Jagger and his brother Jett, 18, have moved from their hometown of Mesa, Arizona, to Encinitas, a suburb in the North County section of San Diego that's been an epicenter of the skateboarding world since the '80s. When I met him at Poods, he was setting up a new board (he goes through one every three or four days, about the same rate as shoes) and eating a plastic cup of Fruity Pebbles. With his sunspots and striped Stussy shirt, he looked like a quintessential California teen—Zonie or not.

"I wouldn't say my life is the typical 16-year-old life," Jagger admits. "I mean I'm living out in Cali by myself. I took my GED so I basically dropped out and graduated. I'm stoked where I'm at." There was a time when having a TV show meant someone was definitely a celebrity, but, thanks to the internet's destruction of what was left of the monoculture, it's easier than ever to be huge in some circles and totally unknown in others. When I ask Jagger if he feels like he's famous, he seems to have a pretty accurate gauge on things. "I get recognized at skateparks and sometimes at, like, grocery stores, but mostly I just focus on what I need to do. I never think of myself like I'm some sort of celebrity. [Having the show] was super cool and I'm stoked to have a following off it, but I don't think I'm famous at all. I hang out with my family and my friends."

When I follow up with a similar, slightly more pointed question—"You're a 16-year-old living a state away from your parents, with 163,000 Instagram followers, many of whom are girls posting emojis about how cute they think you are. You never get into trouble?"—Jagger tells me that, "Me and my brother both have career goals that we want to accomplish. We're not playing heehaw with the fuck-around gang." And, partially because skateboarding has been his entire life since he was five and partially because he tells me he says he spends time listening to self-help audiobooks like Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I believe him. Though, when pressed, he admits to sending the occasional DM. "It's always important to make new friends," he laughs, but adds, "I don't ever let it get to my head. I'm just stoked to have some fans and some people who like me."

Demian Becerra/Holy Mountain

Jagger has more contest wins and TV appearances than the average 16-year-old skater, and he's sponsored by core brands like Plan B, Independent, and Bones. But, even among skaters, he's not a household name. To change this, he's spent the last few months filming a video part—basically a highlight reel of a skater's most impressive tricks, set to music (Jagger is hoping that the licensing fee for Parliament's "Flashlight" isn't too expensive)—which he believes will show people that his skating stands on its own. "I have about two minutes of footage right now, I just need to film another minute and a half." He says he plans to submit it to Thrasher, the magazine-turned-website so influential it's known as the "skate bible." He feels confident they'll accept it. (Thrasher owner Tony Vitello told me that they've expressed interest in distributing a video part but nothing is set in stone. "He's obviously a good skater," he says, but their involvement "would most likely start towards the end of the project.")

"Me and my brother both have career goals that we want to accomplish. We're not playing heehaw with the fuck-around gang."

Most days, he and his friends skate at Poods for a few hours, break for lunch, then head out to spots around town filming tricks. This goes on until it gets dark, unless they're filming with lights, in which case they can stay out all night. (High-level skateboarders spend an inordinate amount of time on schoolyards and grocery store loading docks.), His crew can fluctuate, from his brother Jett and other locals to fellow Plan B riders like Chris Joslin and Trevor McCLung, and SK8 Mafia's Wes Kremer. San Diego is something of a skate mecca, so he's managed to make a big impression on legends like Danny Way, who says, "Jagger has one of the most diverse skill sets and is one of the future legends of this next generation of young rippers."

Demian Becerra/Holy Mountain

There's a foundational paradox in skate culture: It's an industry that runs on advertising—the major websites and magazines are basically trade publications, and anything critical about brands is extremely rare—while priding itself on being anti-establishment. Jagger has the commercial side down, but, with his Nickelodeon show, he's anything but counter-culture. Jagger has heard his share of criticism, but says he doesn't care. "[Jagger Eaton's Mega Life] was one of the coolest experiences of my life and I don't really give a shit what anybody says about it. I would never want to take it back. I had so much fun doing it. I got to meet so many cool people. It was just completely worth it." Despite its underdog mentality, skateboarding has long been a dominant force in pop culture. It shapes everything from entertainment (Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Rob Dyrdek's empire, the stylings of Spike Jonze and Harmony Korine) to fashion (skateboarders, once responsible for the tight jeans resurgence, are to blame for the half-decade-long high-waters with Vans Old Skools trend). It would almost be weirder if a super-talented 16-year-old skater didn't have his own Nickelodeon show.

One might think Jagger's contest wins would silence the commenters, but skateboarders are probably even more suspicious of the X Games than of Nickelodeon. Traditional sports (and some purists even bristle at the thought of skating as a "sport") revolve around winning, but success in skateboarding has largely been about getting enough children to buy shoes with your name on them. Being cool is more important than being the best—among skaters, the word style is as common as it is vague—which is part of why so many look down on contests. Jagger knows he has to prove he's more than just a good contest skater, because skating in a contest is fundamentally different from skating in the street, and street skating is what dominates coverage on the skateboarding internet. Contests require an automaton-like ability to manage a series of tricks in a row without falling, so skaters default to things they know they can do. On the street, a skater has infinite chances, not ninety-second runs; it's about pushing yourself rather than beating others. This is why Jagger feels like he has to show his worth with a video.

Demian Becerra/Holy Mountain

Watching him tell our photographer which lens and angle will work best for a given shot, it's clear Jagger possesses a level of professionalism unknown to most teens, let alone teen skaters. He has a pretty solid idea of how to bring his plans to fruition, which is good, because he has a lot of plans. Right now, these include filming a street part with skateboarding's foremost cinematographer Ty Evans, turning pro before he's 18, and, most pressingly, getting his driver's license. Three years from now, skateboarding will make its Olympic debut. When I asked Jagger what he thinks of the possibility of skating in the Olympics, he tells me that "I would love to compete for my country." It's true that the name "Jagger Eaton" seems almost designed to appear on a chyron, but he'll be competing against dozens of the world's best skateboarders for just a handful of slots on Team USA. Plus, even the qualifying events for the games are years away. When you're 16, anything seems possible and everything can change in just a few months. Right now, he says, "I just have to prove I can hang in the streets."

Skater Jagger Eaton is Already a Star, But Can He Hang in the Streets? published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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amtushinfosolutionspage · 7 years ago

Text

Skater Jagger Eaton is Already a Star, But Can He Hang in the Streets?

Encinitas Skate Plaza looks like a parody of Southern California. It’s the kind of place where a boombox is always playing early 2000s Offspring singles, where shirtless dads are forever weaving through crowds of shirtless teens, and where, at any given moment, a helmeted eight-year-old stands on the brink and prepares, for the first time, to drop herself down the cement walls of a never-functional pool that’s twice as deep as she is tall.

Poods, as locals refer to the park, is a 13,000-square-foot slab of grey and orange concrete planes and waves and ledges, pierced by flatbars and stairways to nowhere, and surrounded by a parking lot, a soccer field, and a few palm trees that don’t provide any shade. Show up most days around noon and there’s a decent chance you’ll notice one skateboarder, Jagger Eaton, standing out slightly from the rest. It’s not that he’s doing bigger tricks, necessarily, nor anything especially complicated. And it’s not that he literally stands out—he just hit 5’7”.

There’s just something almost effortless about the way he cruises around the park. There’s an ease in the way he pops his board out of a ramp, the smile as he bails, the pat on the back he gives to check on the well-being of whoever he just slammed into at the bottom of an eight-stair rail. When Jagger does a run of tricks through the park, other skaters stop whatever they’re doing, watch, and ask their friends if they saw that.

Demian Becerra/Holy Mountain

Though he still has to, as he puts it, “finesse” his way into R-rated movies, Jagger has already taken the top spot at many of the major contests open to amateur skateboarders; this year alone he’s won the Phx Am and two gold medals at the X Games, in Amateur Street and Amateur Park. But as the website Quartersnacks often notes, we’re in the “everyone is good” era of skateboarding: “Anyone (well, anyone who’s good) can nollie flip a fourteen-stair nowadays or switch crook a gnarly rail, but it will be the behind the scenes videos that help us decide where our allegiances with various athletes stand.” Jagger might have more contest wins, but there are dozens of other kids who are just as eager to make a name for themselves, who can do (most of) the same tricks and who would like to go pro in his place. For now what really separates Jagger from other 16-year-old skate phenoms—and, presumably, the reason VICE Sports sent me to San Diego to talk to him—is that he is also a TV star.

Jagger Eaton’s Mega Life was a Rob Dyrdek-produced reality show that premiered on Nickelodeon late last year. During the show’s 20 episodes, Jagger, family, and friends travel around the country partaking in “mega” adventures—outdoor activities like shark diving, jousting, heli-boarding, and playing beach volleyball with the U.S. women’s beach volleyball team. The show gets its name from the mega ramp (also the subject of episode 17), an approximately 60-foot skate jump that Jagger has been riding since he was a child. It was on this ramp, when he was 11, that he captured his first major headlines by becoming the youngest-ever X Games competitor. While even Jagger will admit that there are times when he cringes to hear his younger voice—”I’m like, how do people even watch these videos?”—the show is more entertaining than you’d expect a Nickelodeon reality show to be. He possesses a boundless enthusiasm—evident in the way he uses G-rated swears like “gosh” and “heck” to intensify the “unreal”-ness of an activity—that makes me wish I could recapture that pre-cynical YA worldview wherein it’s possible to be passionate about things like ziplining.

Demian Becerra/Holy Mountain

Since Mega Life ended, Jagger and his brother Jett, 18, have moved from their hometown of Mesa, Arizona, to Encinitas, a suburb in the North County section of San Diego that’s been an epicenter of the skateboarding world since the ’80s. When I met him at Poods, he was setting up a new board (he goes through one every three or four days, about the same rate as shoes) and eating a plastic cup of Fruity Pebbles. With his sunspots and striped Stussy shirt, he looked like a quintessential California teen—Zonie or not.

“I wouldn’t say my life is the typical 16-year-old life,” Jagger admits. “I mean I’m living out in Cali by myself. I took my GED so I basically dropped out and graduated. I’m stoked where I’m at.” There was a time when having a TV show meant someone was definitely a celebrity, but, thanks to the internet’s destruction of what was left of the monoculture, it’s easier than ever to be huge in some circles and totally unknown in others. When I ask Jagger if he feels like he’s famous, he seems to have a pretty accurate gauge on things. “I get recognized at skateparks and sometimes at, like, grocery stores, but mostly I just focus on what I need to do. I never think of myself like I’m some sort of celebrity. [Having the show] was super cool and I’m stoked to have a following off it, but I don’t think I’m famous at all. I hang out with my family and my friends.”

When I follow up with a similar, slightly more pointed question—”You’re a 16-year-old living a state away from your parents, with 163,000 Instagram followers, many of whom are girls posting emojis about how cute they think you are. You never get into trouble?”—Jagger tells me that, “Me and my brother both have career goals that we want to accomplish. We’re not playing heehaw with the fuck-around gang.” And, partially because skateboarding has been his entire life since he was five and partially because he tells me he says he spends time listening to self-help audiobooks like Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I believe him. Though, when pressed, he admits to sending the occasional DM. “It’s always important to make new friends,” he laughs, but adds, “I don’t ever let it get to my head. I’m just stoked to have some fans and some people who like me.”

Demian Becerra/Holy Mountain

Jagger has more contest wins and TV appearances than the average 16-year-old skater, and he’s sponsored by core brands like Plan B, Independent, and Bones. But, even among skaters, he’s not a household name. To change this, he’s spent the last few months filming a video part—basically a highlight reel of a skater’s most impressive tricks, set to music (Jagger is hoping that the licensing fee for Parliament’s “Flashlight” isn’t too expensive)—which he believes will show people that his skating stands on its own. “I have about two minutes of footage right now, I just need to film another minute and a half.” He says he plans to submit it to Thrasher, the magazine-turned-website so influential it’s known as the “skate bible.” He feels confident they’ll accept it. (Thrasher owner Tony Vitello told me that they’ve expressed interest in distributing a video part but nothing is set in stone. “He’s obviously a good skater,” he says, but their involvement “would most likely start towards the end of the project.”)

“Me and my brother both have career goals that we want to accomplish. We’re not playing heehaw with the fuck-around gang.”

Most days, he and his friends skate at Poods for a few hours, break for lunch, then head out to spots around town filming tricks. This goes on until it gets dark, unless they’re filming with lights, in which case they can stay out all night. (High-level skateboarders spend an inordinate amount of time on schoolyards and grocery store loading docks.), His crew can fluctuate, from his brother Jett and other locals to fellow Plan B riders like Chris Joslin and Trevor McCLung, and SK8 Mafia’s Wes Kremer. San Diego is something of a skate mecca, so he’s managed to make a big impression on legends like Danny Way, who says, “Jagger has one of the most diverse skill sets and is one of the future legends of this next generation of young rippers.”

Demian Becerra/Holy Mountain

There’s a foundational paradox in skate culture: It’s an industry that runs on advertising—the major websites and magazines are basically trade publications, and anything critical about brands is extremely rare—while priding itself on being anti-establishment. Jagger has the commercial side down, but, with his Nickelodeon show, he’s anything but counter-culture. Jagger has heard his share of criticism, but says he doesn’t care. “[Jagger Eaton’s Mega Life] was one of the coolest experiences of my life and I don’t really give a shit what anybody says about it. I would never want to take it back. I had so much fun doing it. I got to meet so many cool people. It was just completely worth it.” Despite its underdog mentality, skateboarding has long been a dominant force in pop culture. It shapes everything from entertainment (Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Rob Dyrdek’s empire, the stylings of Spike Jonze and Harmony Korine) to fashion (skateboarders, once responsible for the tight jeans resurgence, are to blame for the half-decade-long high-waters with Vans Old Skools trend). It would almost be weirder if a super-talented 16-year-old skater didn’t have his own Nickelodeon show.

One might think Jagger’s contest wins would silence the commenters, but skateboarders are probably even more suspicious of the X Games than of Nickelodeon. Traditional sports (and some purists even bristle at the thought of skating as a “sport”) revolve around winning, but success in skateboarding has largely been about getting enough children to buy shoes with your name on them. Being cool is more important than being the best—among skaters, the word style is as common as it is vague—which is part of why so many look down on contests. Jagger knows he has to prove he’s more than just a good contest skater, because skating in a contest is fundamentally different from skating in the street, and street skating is what dominates coverage on the skateboarding internet. Contests require an automaton-like ability to manage a series of tricks in a row without falling, so skaters default to things they know they can do. On the street, a skater has infinite chances, not ninety-second runs; it’s about pushing yourself rather than beating others. This is why Jagger feels like he has to show his worth with a video.

Demian Becerra/Holy Mountain

Watching him tell our photographer which lens and angle will work best for a given shot, it’s clear Jagger possesses a level of professionalism unknown to most teens, let alone teen skaters. He has a pretty solid idea of how to bring his plans to fruition, which is good, because he has a lot of plans. Right now, these include filming a street part with skateboarding’s foremost cinematographer Ty Evans, turning pro before he’s 18, and, most pressingly, getting his driver’s license. Three years from now, skateboarding will make its Olympic debut. When I asked Jagger what he thinks of the possibility of skating in the Olympics, he tells me that “I would love to compete for my country.” It’s true that the name “Jagger Eaton” seems almost designed to appear on a chyron, but he’ll be competing against dozens of the world’s best skateboarders for just a handful of slots on Team USA. Plus, even the qualifying events for the games are years away. When you’re 16, anything seems possible and everything can change in just a few months. Right now, he says, “I just have to prove I can hang in the streets.”

Skater Jagger Eaton is Already a Star, But Can He Hang in the Streets? syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6

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flauntpage · 7 years ago

Text

Skater Jagger Eaton is Already a Star, But Can He Hang in the Streets?

Demian Becerra/Holy Mountain

"Me and my brother both have career goals that we want to accomplish. We're not playing heehaw with the fuck-around gang."

Demian Becerra/Holy Mountain

Skater Jagger Eaton is Already a Star, But Can He Hang in the Streets? published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

0 notes

flauntpage · 7 years ago

Text

Skater Jagger Eaton is Already a Star, But Can He Hang in the Streets?

Demian Becerra/Holy Mountain

"Me and my brother both have career goals that we want to accomplish. We're not playing heehaw with the fuck-around gang."

Demian Becerra/Holy Mountain

Skater Jagger Eaton is Already a Star, But Can He Hang in the Streets? published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

0 notes