#so this conjures up summer vibes to me. but that is not gonna be universal

[bird-bureau]

More perfume samples coming in the mail soon (yippee) but! I got a travel size of Gucci Flora Gorgeous Jasmine from my mom today as a gift. Tried it on before a shower so I can only speak for the opening, but I've loved the opening ever since I tested it in-store one time. It reminds me of the tart green floral smell of iced jasmine green tea, fresh and light. It has an airiness to it, too, and is pleasantly citrus-y. A lot of reviews state that it dries down a bit more soapy and vintage than it opens. Don't doubt it but I'll have to test it for myself

[boymeetsweevil]

Watch Yourself

Grouping: Reader x Hoseok

Word Count: ~7770

Warnings/Themes: Peeping Tom-ish/Voyeurism, Hoseok is a closetexhibitionist, (and apparently so it OC) public sex, fingering, so much boob stuff, penetrative sex, too much talk centered around Hob’s hands, this is basically just pwp guys that second p is questionable

Summary: It starts with an invitation from your ex. It ends with Hoseok’s hands down your pants in said ex’s kitchen.

Part of the Masterlist for Group 2 of the @btssmutclub Summer Project

tagging: @jeoneric @betysotelo18

There is something utterly sad about visiting the tiny local strip mall before 11am on a Saturday. Sadder yet is the fact that you are there by yourself, with no friend in sight. Said friend was supposed to come with you for moral support and to give his valued opinion on the swim wear you were there to buy. But, of course, something had to go wrong. Wonho, your fashion student friend, called you this morning to tell you that he pulled a muscle in his groin at the gym that same day and sent you a Snapchat of him in the campus clinic with an ice pack as proof.

As you pay for your tea for the morning from a small kiosk, you take in the fact that even the old ladies power walking around the floors of the mall and the elementary schoolers running to the arcade have their friends with them. You make a mental note to guilt trip Wonho a little bit when you see him next. Which will probably be at the pool party that necessitated this outing in the first place.

When you started attending your university, you came in with a high school sweetheart of sorts. Your ex had been one of the kindest guys you knew, albeit a little insecure. You thought he’d grow out of it, you were sure of it. But once he got accepted into his frat of choice after much ass-kissing, he changed. You endured it for 3 years too long before finally getting fed up in the middle of fall semester of your senior year. Since then, it had been smooth sailing, but also radio silence on your ex’s end.

It’s now the summer following your graduation and this invitation to his pool party seems to be coming from nowhere. Your friend Irene bluntly suggested it wasn’t because he really wanted you back in his life, but because he wanted to show off his new girlfriend to his old girlfriend. Your other friend, Monica, showed you the new girlfriend’s picture. She was pretty, into horses, and did charity on the weekends.

(1 week prior)

“She seems nice,” you sniffed at the image on Monica’s screen before cutting into your pancakes from your favorite brunch spot. They were a little too thick this time and the force of your cutting shook the little table you were all seated at.

“Her style is a little 2008,” Wonho commented as he scrolled through the pictures on the girl’s account. “I didn’t think people still did the tunic and black cropped leggings thing anymore.”

Irene pinned him with a dirty look. “Lots of people still do that. I do that.”

“Yeah, you do,” he frowned disapprovingly.

You and Monica watched Irene and Wonho bicker about statement belts for a moment before she turned to you abruptly, shoving the phone back in your face like a bad omen.

“You know you have to go to that pool party, right?”

“Uh, yeah. We said we were all thinking of going, right?”

“I mean, maybe. But you specifically need to go.”

“Why?”

“Because you need to show him that you’re onto him and that he made a huge mistake losing you.”

“But I don’t care about him anymore,” you said innocently through a bite of eggs.

‘It’s the principle of the thing,” she sighed. “Your bathing suit has to be amazing, none of this—this,” she waved her hands in the air as if trying to conjure up the right phrase, “monochromatic one-piece mess.”

“What’s wrong with my one-piece?”

“It doesn’t do any favors for your body.”

“Wait a second, I—”

“It’s true,” Wonho turned to you, eyes so serious they make you lose train of thought. “You have a great silhouette and you rarely do it justice.”

“Yeah,” Irene chimed in and gestured to your hoodie, “I’ve been meaning to ask you why you have so many of those...shirts.”

“For comfort, maybe? You guys ever heard of that?”

The three of them blinked owlishly at you before Monica reached out to pat your hand. “It’s okay, sweetie. You’ll figure this bathing suit thing out.”

You follow the various signs hanging down from the mall ceiling telling you the names of various shops and start browsing.

With your friend’s voices in your head, you try not to rely on your basic instincts too much and instead go to the stores you’ve heard Monica praise or seen Wonho shop at when buying clothes as birthday presents. You pass by one store you know all of your friends would approve of. But it positively reeks of sophistication and trendiness, so you circle the entire floor before eventually after coming back empty from the other stores. This one boutique has dim and flattering lighting and there’s an expensive smelling perfume wafting around the place when you push through the front door.

Instantly you get the urge to turn and walk out. All the other people in the store look like they walked out of fashion catalogs themselves. Even the employees refolding garments and waiting at the cash register are all perfectly proportioned, symmetrical, and statuesque. You thank the universe that you chose a neutral outfit: dark jeans Wonho bought for you after taking your measurements with painstaking care and a plain black tank top to beat the heat.

You consider sending a text to the group chat to ask for help when you enter the swimsuit section, but your pride and stubbornness rule that option out. So you just pick a bunch of swimsuits you think would look good on you and head over to the changing room. The attendant there is organizing the rack of returned garments and has his back to you when you enter the changing room hallway.

“How many items,” the attendant asks.

“It looks like I have 3,” you mutter after counting.

“Be right with you.”

You spend the time he takes to finish grouping items to take in his appearance.The back of his head and his voice are oddly familiar.

“Um, this might be a weird question, but are you Hoseok? Jung Hoseok?”

“I thought that was your voice.” The man in front of you turns and nods, a shy, but brilliant grin creeping onto his face. “Long time no see.”

“Yeah, it’s good to see you.”

Jung Hoseok had been one of your ex-boyfriend’s frat brothers and former “friend”. If there was no one closer around, your ex would hang out with Hoseok and a bunch of other guys not in his inner circle. And when there were closer guys around, you ex would ignore you. So you’d talk with Hoseok. He kept you company many a night when your boyfriend was nowhere to be found and you were alone at the frat parties you were only attending out of girlfriend loyalty.

From what you remember, Hoseok was an architecture and dance double major. He always had good jokes, good weed, and a flirty vibe about him. You’re a little ashamed to admit that you flirted back despite the fact that you were often around him as someone else’s date. But it never progressed into anything more. Not even after you broke up with your ex and were attending the parties to spite him briefly after the break up.

Hoseok would smoke you out and crowd you into the kitchen corner while you passed a blunt back and forth, exchanging banter and heated glances but nothing more. You spent more nights than you’re willing to confess to thinking about the comfortable press of his hand on the small of your back.

Now, he still looks the same as he did half a year ago, but with the addition of a golden tan from the part of the summer that’s already passed. He looks good in his impeccably white t-shirt and uniform slacks with his artfully tousled hair. Among the other model-like employees he fits right in. It’s a little unfair.

“You enjoying your summer,” he asks while giving you the perfunctory little card with a number 3 on it before leading you through a hall of changing rooms.

“Sort of. I moved into a new apartment with one of my friends, and we just finished getting settled. I’m gonna start teaching in the fall.”

“Teaching, huh? Whereabouts?” Hoseok selects one of the large fitting rooms all the way in the back. The ones that can fit packs of friends who are very invested in the outfit picking process.

“You know the Montessori school out by the northern part of the city?” He nods in recognition. “It’s that one.”

He lets out a low whistle at the mention of the small private elementary school that all the city’s most wealthy inhabitants bring their children to. “Sounds like it’ll be a good move, then. You’re living the dream, huh?”

“Yeah,” you duck your head modestly as you linger in front of the changing room door. “What about you? Are you here for the summer?”

“For the summer,” he confirms, “Then I’m moving into the city too. Near the Big Hit park to work with a firm there.”

“Are you gonna be interning?”

“I’m gonna be leading a project with my own design, actually.”

“Oh, Hoseok, that’s great! It’s really early in the game too. You’re going places.”

“Yeah, its—” he stops to look around the area and takes a reluctant step back. You realize then just how close you two were standing to each other. “I don’t want to hold you up if you’ve got friends waiting on you to pick something out.”

“Oh, you’re good. I came here by myself. My friends were supposed to help me get something, but they all...got busy.” You roll your eyes.

Hoseok returns to his station and continues organizing his area once more, but raises his voice so it carries to you. “That sucks. I’ve had stuff like that happen a few times.”

When you don’t immediately respond, he figures you’re busy changing. Almost instantly his thoughts gravitate towards your swimsuit choice, wondering what you picked out. Are you a fan of string bikinis or athletic cuts? His ears subconsciously strain for the rustling of clothes before he cuts the wandering thoughts short. He leaves to go get some extra work from his supervisor and give you privacy.

In the changing room, you’re having a bit of trouble. The first suit is nearly on, but won’t zip past your bust like it's supposed to. You underestimate your strength as you try to force the zipper up and end up ripping the tab off the little sliding bit. You let out a quiet curse before resolving to buy the suit since you broke it. Perhaps it was your fault for thinking you could fit into a size you normally never wear, though it looked like it would fit you when you draped it over your torso earlier. Unfortunately for you, there weren’t any larger sizes either.

Pulling the tag hanging off the side of the suit, you check the price curiously only to find that the suit bandeau is heinously expensive on its own. You have no idea how much the bottoms cost, but you’re fairly certain they’re sold separately. You panic at the thought of having to pay so much for the suit and fumble with the sliding body of the zipper again, trying to get the top off of you, but it won’t budge.

“Hello?” Your voice rings out with uncertainty. You’d heard footsteps leaving the fitting room area earlier, but you didn’t hear them return.

When you get only silence as a reply, you open the door to your changing stall and poke your head out. You’re about to tip toe out to hopefully flag down one of the women working in the front of the store when Hoseok walks back into the fitting room area. He’s busy with whatever is on his phone and doesn’t seem to see you at first. You curse to yourself, hoping he doesn’t see you. To keep an eye on him, you start to walk backwards towards your changing room, but your bare feet squeak loudly against the polished wooden floor.

He looks toward you in that moment to chase the sound. His hand holding his phone drops and eyes linger on your form for longer than could be considered merely professional appraisal and his head turns quickly once he realizes this. Inside his chest, his heart is flutters at the after image of you behind his eyelids. You look good. Really good. While he might think a broken zipper would ruin the look, the fact that the bandeau is only half zipped and straining to contain your breasts makes you look like a classic pinup.

It takes a conscious effort to stray from mentally retracing the path that your curves made in the suit. The voluptuous flare of your hips and shapely legs both grab his attention even more than the bright candy apple red fabric of the suit. He turns abruptly, about to act as though he’s needed in the stock room when your voice sounds out, embarrassed.

“Hoseok?”

“Yeah?” His voice cracks a little, suddenly flustered, and he covers it best he can with a low cough. “What’s up?”

“I’m really sorry but,” you avert your eyes as you walk forward. “I think I broke this suit.”

“Huh?” Your exposed skin looks soft in the gentle lighting of the hallway, and somehow the sight of it is loud enough to muffle your confession. “You broke something?”

“It’s the zipper on the top. I was gonna buy it since I broke it. But the suit is, like, a million dollars. Is there...any chance you can give me a friends and family discount?”

“Oh.” He jumps at the chance to go back to being a helpful professional person again. “That’s okay. I’ll just tell my boss that it broke off in handling. We just put those out today.”

Your eyes go round with hope. “I don’t have to buy it?”

“Nah,” he waves away your offer, eyes now glued to his own shoes. “I got it.”

“Really?” Your face lights up beautifully, relief softening your features. “That’s amazing, thank you.”

He watches for a brief moment while you go back into the changing room. Surprisingly—or perhaps unsurprisingly, with the way his day is going—your ass is amazing, if the way the suit stretches in an almost heart over the cheeks. His throat is suddenly very dry and he nearly downs the entire water bottle he keeps near his station. Hoseok is only allowed a few moments of silence to recover.

“Hey, um, do you...do you think you could come here?”

Faltering in his steps, he walks back down the hallway with a rising sense of suspicion. He’s not sure what will come next, but he knows deep in his gut it’ll be odd and possibly enough to get him fired. Still, he stands in front of the door with uncertainty roiling in his belly.

“What’s up?”

“Come in,” is all you say in a muted hiss.

His hand is sweating when he turns the knob leading into the changing room. He tries to open it cautiously, give himself enough time to peer in and give you time to cover anything you don’t want him to see. But you merely yank him in by the collar and shut the door quickly before locking it. At his wide-eyed, nervous expression you quickly move to make things less awkward.

“Sorry,” you toss over your shoulder while testing the door knob. “I know this is weird, but I can’t get the suit off. It’s too tight to pull over my head and the zipper won’t budge no matter how hard I pull on it. Can you...help?”

Hoseok can only nod in response with nerves halting his tongue. He approaches you slowly, making sure nothing he’s doing seems threatening. Or overly enthusiastic. You’re pressed against the door with your back to the exit and it doesn’t take long for him to close the distance between you two. You’re careful to keep your breathing light so as not to draw extra attention to your chest despite the fact that Hoseok is now eyeballing it like its a complicated puzzle.

“I think the only way to get it off is to just brute force the zipper,” he says after a while.

“Okay.”

You wet your lips nervously and let out a shaky breath that you pray he’ll ignore.

“You might wanna, um, hold your...” he gestures vaguely at your ample cleavage. “So they don’t fall out if we get the top to open.”

Gingerly you cup your breasts to hold the fabric covering them together like he suggested. Hoseok brushes your fingers when he finally attempts to pull the zipper down for the first time. He mutters a quick apology and tries as best he can not to graze you again with his knuckles as his hand shakes. The other hand is behind his back, tightly fisted in effort to maintain his cool. From your vantage point, you can actually see his hand and the way the veins in his arm flash by looking at the mirror on the changing room wall.

A few more harsh tugs gets the zipper’s sliding body down the chain about halfway, but it’s not enough to get the straps of the suit off your arms.

“Maybe you should use two hands,” you hedge. He nods and holds the sides in one hand and the zipper with the other.

Hoseok lets out a steady breath before pulling the zipper down as hard as he can without ripping the suit. He can maybe fib to his boss about the zipper coming off, but not the top ripping in two. Luckily, the zipper stutters open wide enough for you to be able to slip it off now. The only problem is that you forgot to keep a firm grip on the halves of the top and your breasts almost spill completely out of the top.

You stand there, still holding your top up, and chance a look up at Hoseok. He’s gazing down at your chest but senses your gaze and locks eyes with you then. Something in the air between you changes, shifts, clicks. There’s an electricity that you can practically feel crackling under your skin and you take a step forward without thinking. Hoseok’s eyes fall closed as you approach, lashes fanning out prettily across the apples of his cheeks. Before you can chicken out, you ghost your lips over his slack mouth. It’s only a fleeting moment, but you still feel a jolt of something from the contact that has you letting out a small gasp.

Hoseok leans in to touch his forehead to yours almost as if he’s about to initiate another kiss, but a woman’s voice rings through the changing room area, letting him know that they need him to help his supervisor comb through the main part of the store and reset all the displays. Something about all the normal folders and floor monitors being out on their lunch break.

“Yeah, I’ll be out in a minute. Just trying something on,” he lies.

He peers down at you again with a look that’s more subdued but still smoldering, eyes hooded dreamily, smoothing tingling palms against his work pants. Your cheeks heat up with the intensity of his stare, but you back away. The atmosphere isn’t quite the same after having the tenuous balance disrupted by his coworker. With your back against the door and so much of you still bared to him, you suddenly feel so vulnerable. Part of you is scared because that does something to your insides. Tying them up with excitement.

“I should go,” you sigh as he backs up.

He looks like he wants to say something, but stops himself. He slides back out while you’re collecting your actual clothes. When you finish changing, you shuffle passed Hoseok and purchase the expensive broken bathing suit with a grimace.

A few days later, Hoseok is in the main part of the store replacing some items that were knocked over by a careless customer when a coworker comes over and taps him on the shoulder.

“What’s up, man?”

“There’s a customer here who wants you to start a dressing room for her. She wants a selection of bathing suits, too.”

“Cool,” Hoseok hands the employee the clothes he was dealing with. “She say what size?”

The guy relays the size information to him and with that Hoseok makes his way to the bathing suit section to pick out a variety of styles in the right size. With his arms laden with different pieces, he heads back into the changing room area. It’s empty but that’s not unusual at this day and time. It was the store owner’s idea to make it so there weren’t ever that many employees working a shift at a time to give off a minimalist, unbothered vibe.

“Miss,” he calls out to the customer, looking for a sign of the woman by looking for her feet in the cracks of the stall doors. “I have some pieces for you to try. I’ll be right outside in case you don’t want anything or you want a different color. Or if you want to check out as well. I can ring you up.”

“Thanks,” your voice sounds from behind the final door of the hallway. You push open the door to reveal your face.

Hoseok’s cheeks bloom rosy from behind the tiny mountain of bathing suits he gathered unwittingly for you. A strong wave of deja vu washes over him as he’s taken back to the last time he saw you here. The memory of the (almost) kiss is still fresh in his mind like it was yesterday because, at this point, he’s replayed it in his mind dozens of times. A couple of those replays involved the tissue box and bottle of lotion he keeps by his bed. During those times the moment was stretched out and embellished thanks to his industrious imagination.

“I’ll take some of those,” you say with arms reaching to a portion of the suits. “You said you’d be nearby?”

“Yeah,” he breathes.

“Good.”

Like a doting assistant, Hoseok leans on the wall outside your stall, eyes pitching across all parts of the room to occupy his thoughts and time. His gaze bounces from the opposite end of the hallway where his post is normally, to the other stalls, to the mirror lining the wall adjacent to him. There he sees his reflection as well as a reflection of all the stalls. Small movement in the mirror catches his eye, a quick flash of skin. With a hesitant look back at your stall, he realizes the door is cracked. Just enough for him to catch a glimpse of bare arm. A sliver of the mirror inside, through which he swears he sees you looking back at him.

He whips his head back to stare down the hallway, biting harshly on his tongue when the rustling of clothes stops and the sound of the door’s hinge gives a prolonged creak.

“Hoseok?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you give me that green one you have there and I’ll give this one back to you?”

“Oh,” he blinks. Surprised but relieved at the fact that you didn’t tear him a new one for being a peeping Tom. “S-sure.”

He looks away as best he can while handing you the suit you asked for before waiting patiently for you to remove and return the first one you tried. He wants to say something to you, ask about the other day and why you left so abruptly. Why you bought the suit that he said he would take care of. But all of that gets dashed away when his eyes wander instinctively back to your stall and the door is now half closed at best.

With the door angled like this, he can see your reflection perfectly from where he’s standing. You’d be naked if it weren’t for the delicate pair of underwear you’re wearing to safely try on the suits according to store policy. Hoseok can’t drag his eyes away from the sight of you examining the hunter green string bikini’s intricate tie system before attempting to put it on. The green bottoms lovingly hug the curves of your hips but leave little to the imagination with the way they’re bunched up. You skim your index fingers under the elastic of the bottoms to snap them back into place and cover more of your ass. He mourns the change in the view briefly before migrating up the slope of your bare back up to the loose strings dangling from the bikini top.

“Can you help me with this,” you give him a pout that he can’t say no to.

Suddenly he’s scrambling into the changing stall to put the clothes he was holding down on the small bench inside. He comes up behind you and recalls the intended weaving before deftly knotting the strings together in the right place. The end result is a pretty lattice pattern that contrasts with the simple triangles covering your breasts in the front. You test the support and bounce a little, cupping your chest lightly before letting out a pleased hum at Hoseok’s handiwork.

“What do you think?”

He gulps. “It’s, uh, it’s nice.”

“Just nice?” Your voice comes off as coy. You know you look better than nice, but inside you’re fighting the urge to gnaw at your lip self-consciously.

You knew that you were making a big gamble the moment you decided to request Hoseok as your personal shopper not even an hour ago. But ever since you rushed out of the shop a few days prior, the only thing you could think about was Hoseok. Hoseok and the way he looked at you. The way his palms trembled subtly as he reached for you that other day in the stall. The need was palpable and radiated from him like summer heat off dark concrete. It had been a long time since something like this made your breath hitch, and this was the mere memory alone. The memory itself was simultaneously addicting and not enough. So here you are, acting like you were filming a bad porno so you could chase that fleeting moment from last time. His supervisor wouldn’t be able to get you to back down this time even if she was banging on the stall door.

“I like it,” he mumbles quietly after some time.

“Me too. I’ll take it.” Your eyes meet his in the mirror and you watch his expression carefully. “Help me take it off?”

His mouth drops open just a bit. It’s such a small gesture that you might have missed if every instinct in you wasn’t curled tight with giddy lust. His fingers are feather-light against the skin of  your back as he loosens the binds he just did. All the while his gaze never leaves yours in the mirror. Almost as if he’s trying to communicate with you. You give a miniscule nod and then he’s giving the final tug.

The bikini top slithers down your front into a cool, smooth pile of ribbon at your feet. You’re bare like the other day, but your back is almost proudly straight this time and you fall back against him easily.

His hand comes up to lay on your shoulder. The weight is bureaucratic and safe enough that for a second you’re expecting a rebuff.

“Are you sure you wanna do this here?” The tip of his nose skims gently near your temple. Your breath hitches in anticipation. “Because once you say the word, we’re doing this. And I’m not closing that fucking door. I wanna see you backup all that strutting around you’ve been doing.”

You nod again. A shaky breath leaves you and you reach a hand back to creep up his front, fingers grazing collar and tugging needy. He takes a few steps forward, forcing you to stumble forward as well, before placing both hands on your hips. His hands push into the plush skin exposed there as if to test your solidness. The grip is warm and firm as he pushes your hips out until you have to lean forward and brace both hands on the full-length mirror on the changing room wall for balance.

“I don’t want you looking around all distracted at the door. Only look in the mirror. I want you to watch yourself and watch me with you. Okay?”

“Okay,” you sigh.

With that, he tugs down the bikini bottoms to reveal the underwear you had underneath. While you step out of the swimsuit bottoms and kick them to the side, he slides his hand down the front of your panties. The pads of his fingers part your folds easily with no resistance thanks to the copious amount of arousal already there.

“I’ve been thinking about how the other day would have played out if I never left for two days now,” you explain.

“You been touching yourself to it?”

“Yes,” your breath hitches when he swipes over your clit roughly.

“Me too.”

He nuzzles into the crook of your neck. The sweetness of the gesture contrasts starkly with the obscene wet noises coming from where he plays with your wet center. It's not loud enough to compete with the music playing through the store. And definitely not enough to grab anyone’s if they were seated at Hoseok’s post at the end of the hallway. But you still have to fight the instinct to look back at the half open door of the changing stall to make sure no one will catch you.

“You paying attention?”

Your eyes refocus on the reflection in the mirror and zero in on the way Hoseok’s hand barely fits in your underwear. Still, his middle and ring fingers are obscured by the front of your underwear and all you can really see is the way his hand movements speed up. A second later the tightness of the figure eights he rubs into you registers in your core and the wave of pleasure that hits has your knees buckling slightly. Luckily you’re already holding onto something—the mirror.

The slick noises coming from your center get louder as more arousal leaks onto Hoseok’s rapidly moving fingers. In the mirror, you can see that his brow is furrowed in concentration, or perhaps subtly dialed back lust. Meanwhile, his mouth hangs open slightly in silent, sympathetic moans. He must sense your gaze on his face because he looks up then and locks eyes with you in the mirror.

“It feels good,” you whine out the last syllable when he flirts with your entrance for the first time. Already, you’re clenching around a phantom something, eager for things to speed up.

“That’s good.”

His response sounds nonchalant, but you can feel his hardness nudging against your ass if you push back enough. He’s careful to keep it away from you, though, so he can focus on you. It’s not exactly attention that you’re used to after so many years with your ex, but you welcome it all the same. Hoseok is attentive and competitive in the way that he seeks the things that accidentally draw moans from your parted lips. Soon enough, your arms are shaking from a combination of the effort of holding yourself up against the mirror and your first orgasm’s approach.

Hoseok is now grinding the heel of his other palm into your clit, fingertips pistoning against one spongy area of your walls after seeing the way you had you stuttering and your hands sliding a bit against the glass. The first hand wandered up your torso some time ago. He meandered a path along the soft valley of your stomach before coming to cup your breast. With your arousal still shining dully on his fingers, he tweaks your nipple until it draws up and out. Testing various pressures and grips, he finds a perfect rhythm of rolling and pinching that makes you clench around his other hand. His fingers are elegant and long, but not quite thick enough even in a pair. It drives you slightly crazy and you instinctively push your hips back to grind harder against him, mewling shamelessly.

“Please,” your plea comes out crumpled from in between ragged breaths. “I want you.”

“Hmm?” The sharp curl of Hoseok’s smile appears in the mirror. It matches the mean humor that sneaks in to his cooing tone. “You wanna be full?

You nod, cheeks warming from the begging. “I want your dick.”

“Someone’s greedy,” he pulls his fingers out, marveling at the squelching sound the motion makes. “Don’t want to get off on just fingers, huh? You wanna be stuffed full in the middle of this changing room where anyone could walk in and see you.”

You can only moan in affirmation as Hoseok finally tugs down his own bottoms and kicks them to the side. Your eyes take in his muscled legs, landing appreciatively on the line on his thighs where his tan stops and his shorts must have protected his skin from the sun one day. Hoseok spins the two of you then, while you’re lost in thought about how one of his thighs would feel between yours.

With your back against the wall, Hoseok nods to himself like he’s satisfied with his work and begins laying soft, wet kisses against the skin of your throat. He pulls back only to slowly peel off his work shirt, teasing you with the slow exposure of his equally toned torso. You have a nice view of the way back muscles flex under smooth skin now that he’s facing away from the mirror.

“Watch yourself carefully this time,” he warns you with a hand on your chin to direct your gaze to his momentarily.

When he’s sure you’re watching your reflection obediently, he returns to your breasts. He really does think they’re a work of art. So he recites a soundless sonnet to them, tongue flitting against each twin peak with ardor. Your skin becomes almost blotchy in the heat of your moment. Heeding Hoseok’s words, you take in your appearance.

With a heaving chest and parted lips, you look wanton to say the least. Your eyes are at half mast and fighting against the pleasure Hoseok’s plucking fingers bring. Then you see him reaching down to grasp himself before turning to smirk at the mirror, almost as if he’s giving another audience you weren’t aware of, a show.

There’s not much warning. There’s only the gentle nudge of his knees tapping your already lax ones apart before he’s hitching one of your legs over his slender hips. In his grasp, the head of his erection runs along the length of your center. He’s hot and swollen against you, smearing precum on your folds on his journey to your entrance.

“You’re so wet,” he bites out with the same soft incredulity as a curse. His head pops up so he can pin you with a pleading look, almost like he can’t believe you’re you. “What if someone saw you like this? All spread open and dripping for me.”

“Maybe I—ah—wouldn’t mind.” You watch your own hand come up to thread through the soft hair at the nape of his neck. You tug gently on it like its a lifeline as he lines himself up, excitement bubbling up in your stomach. “Mmh, fuck.”

He takes his time bottoming out to make sure you have time to see your expression evolve as you encounter every ridge and swell of him. The stretch has your eyes rolling back, but you don’t let yourself close them. Instead you take in the way your breasts bounce now that Hoseok has begun pumping into you experimentally. The force of his thrusts causes the walls of the changing stall to rattle loudly and for a fraction of a second you worry someone—a customer or another employee seeking assistance with something—might hear the noise and try to see what the source was.

But then your leg is lifted a bit higher and the angle changes. Suddenly he’s going deeper, stretching you slightly more, all the while your clit is bombarded with the brush of his pelvis with every stroke. The leg you have on the ground shakes from the intense bolt of pleasure and you let out a desperate moan.

“Hoseok, oh my god, I’m—you feel so good,” you do the best you can to keep your voice low.

“I can’t hear you. Louder.”

“I said you feel good.”

“Where?”

“In-inside me. I can feel all of you and I’m so...you stretch me out so good,” you pant out.

“Are you close?” His teeth are gritted with the effort it takes to push back his own oncoming orgasm. “Shit.”

“Yeah, I just need—”

Before you can finish, Hoseok is tapping lightly on your lips, pulling the bottom one from between your teeth. You open up and take his thumb and suck it. Once he’s sure its wet enough, he lingers for a few beats to enjoy the feeling of your tongue lapping at him. Then he’s collecting his hand back with a pop and snakes it down between your two writhing bodies. The effect of his spit-slick finger against your clit while he continues to plow into you is instant. It’s just the thing you needed to really kick things into overdrive. Soon you’re chasing the glorious feeling by bringing him in impossibly closer with two hands on his petite ass and by flexing the thigh you had holding his hips in place. In this position, he’s too constricted to really move in and out, so he adapts and begins a rough, circular grind.

The moans you let out are high and breathy, inappropriately loud, and your eyes dart back to your reflection just in time to see your pornographic expression. Hoseok seems to enjoy it too as he leans in to nuzzle at your forehead before cupping your face in one hand and bringing you in to kiss you sweetly. You’re not sure how he manages to make sweet the amount of tongue he’s using, but it works and you sigh dreamily against his lips.

Your orgasm surges through you again when he surprises you and sucks on your tongue. He pulls back then and watches with awe coloring his face. Or perhaps it's the fluorescents and the light sheen of sweat. Either way, the sight of you has him pulsing inside your already convulsing walls. With quick reflexes, he’s pulling out and replacing his dick with three fingers. He strokes himself—slowly to stay hard but not to bring himself to climax just yet—and watches you come down from your high.

When you’re done, you let your leg flop down from its perch on his hip bone. You’re a little wobbly from holding the pose for so long and you fall to your feet gracelessly, not thinking about how disgusting the floors may be. It’s then that you’re able to really look at Hoseok’s dick for the first time when you’re basically at eye level with it.

“Where do you wanna come?” Your eyes look impossibly large from where he’s standing and for a moment he almost answers ‘your face’ before your cleavage grabs his attention.

He mumbles then, ducking his head as his cheeks flush prettily.

“What?”

“...On your tits,” he gulps, not sure of your response.

You merely cross your arms under your breasts to lift them. A disbelieving little laugh leaves him before he’s kneeling down in front of you. The angle is a little awkward, but it’s better than it was when he was standing. He reaches out then and rubs fondly at the area where your shoulder and neck meet with one hand while pumping himself with the other.

It doesn’t take long. Hoseok’s been rock hard since he realized the changing room door wasn’t closed and the fact that you just agreed to let him come on your boobs almost made him swallow his tongue. They’re really something, he thinks to himself. They look soft and he knows if he stuck his face in between them, they’d smell good too if your perfume from the other day when you walked by him is any indication. They’re the perfect size, too. His hips stutter in their rhythm as he thinks about all the other things he could be doing to them. He could be fucking them while you hold them for him. Or, If you let him, he’d spend hours just lapping at them until they were sensitive enough to have you squealing under him. He bites down on his tongue and speeds up his strokes while imagining nipping at you, sucking bruises into the warm skin of your chest.

“I’m—now,” he chokes out before spilling over your breasts. His eyes closed momentarily when the high first hit him, but he opens them quickly enough to see one of the last spurts shoot out and paint a nipple white. “Fuck, that’s hot.”

He collapses into his own pile of exhausted limbs in front of you and grabs at the boxers he was wearing earlier. Like a switch has been flipped, the environment changes. It’s not exactly awkward but everything feels fragile and tentative all of the sudden.

Leaning forward, his wipes the remnants of his release off your chest. The two of you make shy eye contact a few times while he’s in your personal space. He hesitates a bit before leaning closer to slot his lips over yours. The kiss is heated, but not overly passionate. A simmer. Soon he’s wiping his hands before tossing away the soiled underwear and gingerly cupping your face in both his warm hands. He kisses you so thoroughly, so well that you end up unconsciously chasing his lips once he pulls away.

“Good?” He chuckles when you finally open your eyes. You’re not sure when you closed them.

“It was alright,” you sniff. “But I think you might have to do that again some time, ‘cause I’m not 100% sure.” He grins and swipes a thumb over your cheek.

“Name a time and a place and I’m there.”

“What about Saturday at 2,” you blurt out.

“Oh, uh, that’s very specific—”

“Sorry! I’ve been meaning to ask you if you wanted to go to this...thing with me. It’s a party at my ex’s house and I thought it might be less painful if,” you trail off, suddenly embarrassed at your speediness. You don’t even know if Hoseok wants anything more than hookups and here you are asking him to be your plus one to a pool party.

“It’s specific, but I’m free. Should I bring my swimsuit?” Your answering smile is infectious and he can’t help but kiss at it briefly.

“Of course. I’m bringing mine,” you mumble between his lips. “I gotta pay for it first.”

“You’re really wearing the green one?”

“Yeah. It’s my color and it makes my boobs look nice.”

“True,” he nods seriously. “Come on. Let’s get dressed and I’ll ring you up.”

While you’re clothed and at the register, you fight to ignore the knowing stares of a few of the other people working on the floor. Hoseok seems unphased by their looks and actually seems to be glowing. He hums and smiles to himself while carefully folding and wrapping your bathing suit in some tissue paper. When he turns the little monitor around for your to pay with your card, he’s still humming to himself.

“I get off for the day in half and hour,” he blurts out while you sign for the bathing suit.

“Is that so,” you humor him and raise an intrigued looking eyebrow.

“Yeah, so, uh...” The girl who’s behind the counter with Hoseok and had been collecting hangers snorts to herself at Hoseok’s sudden shy disposition. “If you’re gonna be around, I can show you the best place to eat in the food court. If you’re hungry, I mean.”

You pretend to mull it over while putting your card back in your wallet. “Alright. But I don’t eat mall pizza.”

“Hoseok,” you hiss as he presses himself against your backside while you search your ex’s kitchen for more plastic cups. “Someone will see us.”

“I don’t care,” he grinds against you, displacing your bottoms enough to expose the entire left globe of your ass. “I hope someone does. I hope he does.”

You turn around then, hoping to disrupt his fun, but he just brings both his hands to cup your breasts. The little green triangles do little to protect your modesty and, if anything, made his hands itch even more to touch you. He squeezes them in his hands, and when you don’t say anything, he pushes the material up and over them. Like he expected, your nipples are hard and have been since he started eye-fucking you earlier from across the pool.

“You’re insane,” you gasp. Partly because you’re functionally topless when any one of the partygoers, including your friends, could come around the corner in search of ice. And partly because Hoseok has latched onto one of your breasts and is now suckling at one nipple. “It’s like you—oh—want to get caught.”

He pulls off just long enough to speak. “Why should I care if anyone sees me making you feel good.”

“You know, in hindsight, I should have realized you have a thing about public sex.”

“You really should have. I gave you all the signs.” He has enough manners to shift so he’s covering you should anyone walk into the kitchen. His hand slides into your bathing suit bottoms, fingers immediately getting coated with your slick. “But it feels like you might be a little exhibitionist yourself.”

The sound of Monica and Irene laughing in the next room has your whole body tensing up with nerves, but it also has you sucking his fingers deeper into your center. Footsteps of more people who probably want a break from the sun enter the room, some sounding dangerously close.

“Oh god,” your head falls forward onto his shoulder as the wet sounds of your pussy get louder as he massages your clit. “Hoseok, we’re gonna get kicked out.”

“Not if you’re quiet.” He starts kissing your cheek, making a path to your mouth. “I’ll take care of you, baby.”

[slowpocalypsecooking]

the top 8 tracks on folklore from least to most embarrassing to enjoy

Hi I’m Anthony Fantano and welcome to the needle drop. I don’t know if he says that, because I don’t watch him—if I wanted to listen to a repulsive white man talk about music, I could just go on a date. (just kidding, covid!)

Forgoing any further introduction, here are the top eight tracks from Taylor Swift’s new album, low-caps “folklore,” ranked from least embarrassing to most embarrassing to enjoy, according to me. The whole album is 16 tracks long, but I’m only doing the most noteworthy half because 16 is too many. You’re welcome for that decision.

Methodology: To get on this list, songs had to be both embarrassing and enjoyable. There will be natural fluctuation between tracks, but as we go down the list, assume that the songs are getting increasingly better to listen to and worse to think about, like this:

The rankings:

8. cardigan

This is a song about feeling at times like an unloved trash bag, as we all do, and then being warmly reminded that you matter because you are in fact someone’s fallback. The hook goes:

and when i felt like i was an old cardigan under someone’s bed you put me on and said i was your favorite.

Beyond reveling in this pathetic status, this song serves as an admission that the speaker a. uses the word “cardigan” and b. thinks of those bland, preppy sweaters as a comforting thing to wear. In a cooler universe, this song would be called “flannel.” It is just okay to listen to.

7. mad woman

This song has big Ophelia vibes, big Handmaid’s Tale vibes, big “daughter of the witches you couldn’t burn” vibes. One of the verses contains the line “and women like hunting witches too,” because, hey, woman-on-woman misogyny is bad, didn’t you know. Strong reminder that if being called crazy is the worst form of oppression you’ve experienced, you still have it pretty good. Sometimes sounds decent, sometimes too croony.

6. invisible string

This one uses a pretty lazy, commonplace device: She opens couplets within verses by just naming colors, and uses these to create a simple repetitive structure for introducing random, useless details:

green was the color of the grass where i used to read at centennial park i used to think i would meet somebody there teal was the color of your shirt when you were sixteen at the yogurt shop you used to work at to make a little money

Sure this device is tired, but that’s only the surface of what’s embarrassing here. More embarrassing is the image I’ve conjured of a teal-shirted teenage boy smiling through his braces behind the toppings station at one of those blindingly lit American-kawaii froyo stores. I don’t know who needs to hear this but don’t fuck the froyo boy. Song is pretty catchy.

5. illicit affairs

Title says it all here: This song is about how thrilling and fun and ultimately horrible it is to be involved in a romantic situation you’re not supposed to be in, and how that forbidden sheen can get you totally enthralled with a crappy garbage man. Not a whole lot going on below the surface. This song is both very enjoyable and very embarrassing because it is very relatable.

4. seven

We are back to the aggressive levels of white woman previously seen in “mad woman,” only the case has gotten much more severe. Here’s this song’s final chorus:

Sweet tea in the summer Cross my heart, won’t tell no other And though I can't recall your face I still got love for you Pack your dolls and a sweater We'll move to India forever Passed down like folk songs Our love lasts so long

Okay let’s just skate past the part where a presumed adult is telling a fellow adult (I sure hope!) to bring their dolls when they run away together. That in itself is too big a can of worms to crack open. What I want to talk about is the line “We’ll move to India forever,” which pretty obviously uses an Orientalist fantasy of India as some nebulous, ethereal image of the East. Real people don’t live there; it’s the exotic dreamland where sweet-tea drinking southern belles bring their adult toys when they elope. This song is very catchy.

3. betty

Let me start by saying that now that we’re in the top three, all of the remaining songs are vying for the #1 slot. I could very easily see this and the next as the  Most Embarrassing to Enjoy. But “betty” is clocking in at number three today.

This is a song about a teenage romance gone bad, in which a speaker named James (who is “only seventeen, I don’t know anything”) has cheated on a girlfriend (Betty) and is now considering showing up at her party, begging for forgiveness, and hoping for a kiss in the garden. We get the backstory in the bridge:

I was walking home on broken cobblestones Just thinking of you when she pulled up like A figment of my worst intentions She said "James, get in, let's drive" Those days turned into nights Slept next to her, but I dreamt of you all summer long

First of all, “figment” of “intentions” is not really a phrase? But secondly, and more importantly: Excited bloggers all over the internet have posted a smattering of theories detailing why this song is Taylor Swift’s coded revelation that she actually maybe fucks girls, too, y’know, and hey, maybe the object of this song is the supermodel Karlie Kloss, whose middle name is Elizabeth. Apparently Taylor Swift is named after James Taylor, so she could be James, or at the very least James could be a woman. I’m going to allow for the possibility that the speaker “James” is a woman, because why not; it does not change the narrative. But said narrative doesn’t make sense: who is this woman pulling up next to James and picking them up on the cobblestone? Did James really spend all summer with her, and if so, why? James is only seventeen by the time they get back to ask Betty’s forgiveness, so like, where the hell are James’s parents? Do they not care that their child has gone off for the whole summer with a person I can only picture as a cheetah-print-and-goggles-wearing divorcee driving a convertible?

Furthermore, the Karlie Kloss/Taylor Swift fan theories are gross for the simple reason that these two tall skinny white women look pretty much exactly the same. What is it with the internet’s obsession with wanting practically identical people to hook up? There might be an incest thing going on there that you guys could stand to reflect on. And on the more cynical conspiracy-theorizing side, couldn’t this just be some convenient queerbaiting? Didn’t Taylor Swift get criticized for appropriating gay rhetoric and imagery for “You Need to Calm Down,” like, 20 minutes ago? If she were going to come out, wouldn’t it have been an ideal moment to do so when she was under fire for that? I’m not saying all celebrities are shallow opportunists, but, you know, maybe.

This song is infectious. You will need to lobotomize me to get it out of my head.

2. exile

I know I originally said this was gonna be number one but I lied. It is pretty rough, though. This track features Bon Iver, and it’s not the high-pitched sad boy of “Skinny Love” renown. This Bon Iver is deep-voiced and country, like Bon Iver playing Tim McGraw in an uncomfortable SNL parody. Also, the whole song is centered around the tired and overused metaphor that a person is a place, and the person the speaker is pining after is home, and the speaker is in exile because they can’t go home to the person they love. It’s a heartache-ballad, cry-sing in your car, absolute jam.

1. the last great american dynasty

I really tried not to let this be number one. I really didn’t want it to be, which is precisely why it is. This was the track that first alerted me to the entire album’s release, because Ed Markey supporters on Twitter seized on it and decided it was about the downfall of the Kennedy family. It is not. The opening verse goes:

Rebekah rode up on the afternoon train, it was sunny Her saltbox house on the coast took her mind off St. Louis Bill was the heir to the Standard Oil name and money And the town said, "How did a middle-class divorcée do it?" The wedding was charming, if a little gauche There's only so far new money goes They picked out a home and called it "Holiday House"

This is very obviously about a real couple, Rebekah and William (Bill) Hale Harkness, who had a real mansion in Rhode Island that they called “Holiday House.” The Harkness name is on basically every building in Connecticut and a lot of the Northeast because Stephen Harkness, Bill Hale Harkness’s great uncle, was a founder of Standard Oil along with John D. Rockefeller. In 2013, Taylor Swift bought the property known as “Holiday House,” as she says in the song:

Fifty years is a long time Holiday House sat quietly on that beach Free of women with madness, their men and bad habits And then it was bought by me

The cool, fun, left-ish internet reading of this song is that it’s a revolutionary tale about toppling class hierarchy—getting a hold of wealth and bringing the institution that created it to its knees by… “fill[ing] the pool with champagne”? How much would that amount of champagne even cost? This is not a song about revolution. Taylor Swift didn’t storm into the Standard Oil house and burn it down or take it over; she bought it. It is not a song about destabilizing the ruling class. It’s a song about joining it.

It absolutely fucking slaps, unfortunately.

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior 9/10/21 - MALIGNANT, THE CARD COUNTER, TIFF 2021, LANGUAGE LESSONS, THE ALPINIST, EVERYBODY’S TALKING ABOUT JAMIE, FAUCI, and More!

Before we get to this week’s releases-- and there are a lot of them, though not necessarily wide releases -- I probably should mention that the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is beginning this week up North across the board. I was unable to go in person, more due to the money than any worries about COVID. (Honestly, I have no idea what’s going on at the border right now between America and Canada, but I figured I better wait it out before attending TIFF in person… until I can actually afford it.)

This year’s TIFF offers a lot of premieres, most of them taking place in physical theaters in Toronto, such as Edgar Wright’s, Last Night in Soho, (which just premiered in Venice) and Universal’s musical, Dear Evan Hansen, as well as David Gordon Green’s horror sequel, Halloween Kills (which also just played in Venice oddly). Other movies playing TIFF include Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, and The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, both which star Benedict Cumberbatch. Mihael Peace's Encounter, starring Riz Ahmed and Octavia Spencer, and docs like Julia (as in "Child") and Attica. There’s even a doc about the Canadian rock band, Triumph! (I’m looking forward to that one.) Antoine Fuqua’s remake of the German film, The Guilty, starring TIFF regular Jake Gyllenhaal, will have its premiere, and many, many more. Too many to watch, let alone write about, but I’ll try to review a few of these over at Below the Line and maybe some here. (There are also lots of movies that premiered at Cannes in July that will play at TIFF, and some of those will also play at New York Film Festival later this month, which is where I’ll see them.)

A movie that I���ve been looking forward to for quite some time and is finally seeing the light of day is James Wan’s return to horror, MALIGNANT (Warner Bros.). Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll have a chance to see this before Friday, which is a bit of a bummer, but I’ll look forward to seeing it with the common people in a theater. Because I’m looking forward to this movie so much, I haven’t even watched the latest trailer, so I really don’t know too much about it, which may be for the better.

Of course, you know Wan’s name from some of the most successful horror franchises of the past two decades, starting with Saw in 2004. After a few movies that didn’t do quite so well, Wan reteamed with his Saw collaborator Leigh Whannell for Insidious in 2010, which also did very well and created a similarly successful franchise. (Whannell would go on to direct the third movie in the series, the respectable sci-fi thriller Upgrade, and then he directed 2020’s The Invisible Man for Universal, which was also a substantial hit.) Meanwhile Wan went on to direct The Conjuring in 2013 and its 2016 sequel, The Conjuring 2, based on the true case files of supernatural investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, played by regular Wan collaborator Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga. Both of those “Conjuring” movies opened with $40 million+, and you guessed it, they also led to hugely successful franchises for Warner Bros with spin-offs galore.

Although Wan has been making big studio mega-blockbusters like Furious 7 and Aquaman in recent years -- and he’s hard at work on a sequel to the latter -- Malignant is his return to horror after a whole five years, which certainly is exciting for horror fans and those who love Wan’s style of horror particularly.

One thing that’s become fairly obvious from writing about box office over the past couple decades is that horror movies are rarely sold on the names of their stars, although Wan has a fine lead in the form of Annabelle Wallis, who just so happened to have starred in the 2014 The Conjuring prequel called Annabelle, which did quite well. (No, she did not play the title doll Annabelle, if you haven't seen it.) And that’s about it. The fact that Wan can do whatever he wants these days, and he decides to return to the horror genre without stacking the deck with all sorts of name actor, is pretty impressive. Even Saw had bigger names actors like Carey Elwes and Danny Glover!

Although I don’t know much about Malignant, it’s definitely giving me vibes of Sam Raimi’s Drag Me To Hell, the horror master’s return to horror after making three “Spider-Man” movies. Although it’s well-loved by horror fans, it ended up opening with just $15.8 million in the summer of 2009. That’s a little daunting when you figure that Malignant is opening in September and in the second weekend of a huge blockbuster like Marvel’s Shang-Chi.

But there’s something else that’s been bugging me, as excited as I am to see the movie. I’ve been doing this a long time, and Warner Bros. has become almost legendary for screening all their movies in advance… every single one. I can maybe think of two examples of movies that didn’t get advance critics screenings. Malignant is screening for critics but only on Thursday night with an embargo Thursday at 10pm. That is not the move of a studio confident in a movie they’re releasing. Maybe it’s to avoid spoilers or maybe it’s ‘cause Malignant returns Wan to the craziness of the Insidious movies rather than the more commercial and mainstream horror of The Conjuring movies. I don’t know, cause I haven’t seen it, but I'm still gonna go see it on Friday night, ‘cause I like James and want to fully support his movie.

But that adds another layer of foreboding to the horror movie that will also be on HBO Max Friday, and it’ll be so easy for the curious to just hit “play” on their remote to watch it that way, which is what I think most people will do. Because of this, I’m struggling to find a way that Malignant makes more than $13 million, taking quite a distant second place to Shang-Chi in its second weekend.

Opening in roughly 500 theaters Friday is Paul Schrader’s THE CARD COUNTER (Focus Features), which stars Oscar Isaac as former prison inmate and professional gambler, “William Tell,” who drives around the casino circuit making money by playing blackjack and poker. He meets two people on his journey that changes the course of his path, the first being Tye Sheridan’s Cirk (Yes, with a “C”), a young man whose father ended up killing himself after serving time in military prison for crimes at Abu Ghraib. Tiffany Haddish plays La Lina, a woman who sees Will’s talent playing cards and wants to put him in her stable of players. The relationship between these three characters is what keeps the movie interesting even when there are only a few minor dramatic fireworks.

If there’s any doubt that Schrader, a significant Hollywood player in the ‘70s and ‘80s, is firing on all cylinders then The Card Counter confirms that 2017’s First Reformed was no fluke, as Schrader remains valid and important well into his 70s. Like First Reformed, this film features an undeniably solid performance from Isaac, who plays such a subdued character, an enigma who every so often truly explodes.

Sheridan's sheepish Cirk seems like an odd choice in road companion, although Haddish proves to be quite a counter (pun intended) to Isaac, as she seems far more comfortable in Will's world. Trying to understand Will and what he sees in Cirk and why he joins the World Poker Tour circuit despite wanting to remain anonymous is what keeps The Card Counter so invigorating. (One odd thing is that despite the title and the opening which literally teaches the viewer how to count cards while playing Blackjack, in most of the movie he’s actually playing poker.)

Folks who enjoy poker movies and the intricacies of Vegas and the gambling community in general should really enjoy The Card Counter for that aspect alone, but then there's the past of the main character, which ties into Abu Ghraib and the horrors of the tortures committed there. Some might feel that two decades after 9/11 isn't the best time to bring those crimes back to the forefront, but Schrader ably explores what it must have been like for the military torturers after they were convicted.

Few screenwriters and filmmakers could pull off what Schrader does in terms of combining these elements, as the story weaves itself through these very different worlds. Frequent Schrader collaborator, Willem Dafoe, takes on a smaller but still significant role as “Gordo,” Will’s commanding officer who trained him to torture. Even so, one of my favorite moments is a scene in a diner where Will performs a card trick for Cirk that would make the late Ricky Jay proud just adds to one's enjoyment.

I will say that I wasn’t as thrilled by the movie’s last ten minutes, as it feels like Schrader ran out of steam in terms of how to resolve all the pieces of a puzzle, leaving a couple pieces out before completion. Regardless, The Card Counter is a constantly compelling film that keeps you invested in the different characters’ behavior as things happen to and around them.

As far as box office, The Card Counter isn't getting a very wide release but with so many movies in the top 10 quickly dropping away leaving movies like Shang-Chi at the top, it should leave room for Schrader's film to inch its way into the top 10 and maybe even the top 5!

A movie I’m unlikely to see and know very little… okay… nothing… about is the faith-based SHOW ME THE FATHER (Sony/AFFIRM Films), which will open in about 1,000 theaters on Friday. Okay, fine, you twisted my arm, and I looked it up. This is a new documentary about fatherhood from the Kendrick Brothers, the duo behind faith-based hits like War Room, Courageous, and Fireproof. I've seen none of those movies, though I know all of them exceeded expectations, but this is also a doc, and those rarely do as well at the box office. I wish I could give you a definitive number for this, but something makes me think it won’t make more than $2 million, even if the religious right seem less worried about COVID and vaccines and wearing masks in movie theaters than everyone else. Expect it to end up in the bottom of the Top 10 with lots of confused movie writers not knowing what it is.

Kristen Bell and Kirby Howell-Baptiste (who have appeared both on The Good Place and in Veronica Mars together) co-star in the comedy QUEENPINS (STXfilms), which is being released straight to Cinemark Theaters on Friday and then it will be on Paramount+ on Sept. 30.

In the movie, based on a true story, Bell plays Connie Kominski, a suburban Phoenix housewife who thrills to saving money with coupons, hatches a scheme with her best friend JoJo (Howell-Baptiste) to sell coupons via mail, not realizing that what they’re doing is illegal as they rack up millions of dollars. Unfortunately, they have Paul Walter Hauser’s Loss Prevention Manager Ken Miller on their tail, and he teams with postal inspector Simon Kilmurry (Vince Vaughn) to try to catch them women trying to scam the supermarkets.

This movie, written and directed by Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly, actually is based on a true story, but it took me a little while to get into it, and it definitely had its ups and downs. The first thing one has to get past is the fact that this is essentially a heist film that involves illicit coupons, and at first, Connie writing letters of complaint to companies comes across a bit like a Greenberg for middle-aged women. (Note: that film's star, Ben Stiller is one of the movie's exec. producers.) On the other hand, Kristen Bell tends to be great in this kind of role and you can tell she's worked with Ms. Howell-Baptiste from their organic chemistry as best friends. Joel McHale has a tougher time fitting in as Connie's husband Rick, but that actually works in this case. (A little trivia fact: McHale, Howell-Baptiste and Natalie Morales, whose directorial debut is reviewed below, all appeared in BenDavid Grabinski's Happily, as did Stephen Root, who has a small role in Queenpins.)

Queenpins eventually falls into a steadier pace with the introduction of Hauser's character and then bringing Vaughn into the mix, although the two of them have very little interaction with the two female leads, as the film instead cuts between the two duos. Hauser essentially seems to be playing a jokier version of Richard Jewell here, constantly trying to get more involved in the case and wanting to be deputized by Vaughn. The two of them work well together, and there's only one unfortunate scene involving… it's too disgusting to mention, but it's where the film needlessly delves into gross-out humor, and that's also where it falters.

As much as the law in this movie act like buffoons, the two ladies don't seem very much smarter, doing idiotic things like buying Lamborghinis and guns in order to "clean” the illicit money from the coupon-selling scam. Because of that, Queenpins gets sillier and sillier and feels less like any sort of possible true story as it goes along. The movie basically comes across like a less skilled version of Butter, but in that case, it was a movie that shouldn't have worked but did. In this case, it's the exact opposite.

Cinemark Theaters only has about 331 theaters across America, including a lot in Texas, California, and Ohio, but honestly, I don't think awareness is high enough for Queenpins for it to make much of a mark, but even if it makes less than a million, it could theoretically break into the top 10 this weekend, but I think it will fall just short.

The movies above are the only ones that may be going even remotely wide, so because of that, this weekend’s box office will look something like this with Shang-Chi remaining #1 with relative ease, Malignant taking a distant second, and Candyman and Free Guy fighting it out for #3.

1. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Marvel/Disney) - $33.5 million -56%

2. Malignant (Warner Bros.) - $13.6 million N/A

3. Candyman (Universal) - $4.8 million -53%

4. Free Guy (20th Century/Disney) - $4.5 million -42%

5. The Card Counter (Focus) - $2.2 million N/A

6. Jungle Cruise (Walt Disney Pictures) - $2.1 million -48%

7. Paw Patrol: The Movie (Paramount) - $2 million -50%

8. Show Me the Father (Sony/AFFIRM) - $2 million N/A

9. Don’t Breathe 2 (Sony/Screen Gems) - $2 million -30%

10. Respect (MGM) - $600,000 -57%

--- Queenpins (STXfilms) - $445,000 N/A

It was tough to pick a “Chosen One” this week, because there are a few decent films, but I had to go with Natalie Morales’ directorial debut, LANGUAGE LESSONS (Shout! Studios!), which she co-wrote and co-stars in with Mark Duplass. I saw it at SXSW back in March, and I loved it just as much a second time around, due to the simplicity of the premise and just how much Morales and her co-star do using similar Zoom technology we’ve all been using for the past 18 months. Duplass plays wealthy Californian Adam, whose husband buys him a series of Spanish lessons, given over Zoom by Morales’ character Cariño, who lives in Costa Rica.

You might think after over a year of mostly communicating with family and friends via Zoom, we’d be so sick of it that a movie that uses that as a conceit would be absolutely horrible, but maybe that’s why it’s easier to connect with what Morales and Duplass were attempting with this terrific piece of work. How these two people from different backgrounds interact begins slowly as might be the case while getting online language lessons from a new teacher. As they become more comfortable with each other, there’s more playfulness, as they begin to open up to each other. (Adam's Spanish teacher definitely has a dark side that comes out as things go along.)

I’m not sure if there was a lot of improvisation involved with the script as with some of the films Duplass did with the wonderful Lynn Shelton, but however they put this film together, it works in a similar way where it’s charming and funny, even during some of the more emotional moments. Because Duplass’ character is declared as gay fairly on, there's none of the attempts at making this some sort of meet-cute romance, as may have been the case with a studio movie. There's also never anything lascivious or creepy about their relationship, which makes some of the moments a little confounding, but ultimately, it all pays off.

Even though there’s a certain aspect of the movie that makes you want it to be kept organic and authentic-feeling, there is some gentle scoring by Gaby Moren that’s kept far behind the dialogue that does add something subliminal to the film.

Language Lessons is absolutely delightful -- definitely one of my favorite films of the year -- maybe because it thrives on its own simplicity by just having two actors doing what they do best.

Another great movie coming out in select theaters Friday is EVERYBODY’S TALKING ABOUT JAMIE (Amazon), starring Max Harwood as Jamie New, a fairly normal gay 16-year-old from Sheffield, England… other than the fact that he wants to be a drag queen. His mother Margaret (Sarah Lancashire) supports him, as does his best friend Pritti (Lauren Patel) but Jamie risks the ridicule and mocking and bullying of his entire Year 11 class as he proclaims his desire to attend prom in drag. This is the feature debut by Jonathan Butterell, a choreographer who directed the original stageplay.

I honestly wasn't really sure what to expect when I went to a theater to see this with a real audience. For one thing, I had no idea it was a musical. I had seen Max on some morning show talking about the movie and how it was based on the true story of Jamie Campbell, a British teen who wanted to be a drag queen, but I don’t remember him saying anything about singing or dancing. And the music and performances are all terrific, including all the young actors playing Jamie’s schoolmates, who have more than a few spectacular numbers to show off their own skills. (They’re kind of like the Greek chorus for the film.)

Harwood is exceedingly likeable, which is why he can carry this film, but it’s then an even bigger joy when Richard E. Grant shows up in a mentor role, as former drag queen “Loco Channel.” Grant has proven countless times he can do anything, and though his singing voice takes some adjusting to, it also leads to two absolutely amazing moments. Same with Lauren Patel and Sarah Lancashire, who each have numbers that would bring down the house on a Broadway stage but just gets the tears flowing as you’re watching on the screen. Sharon Horgan, who was just in the recent drama Together, plays more of the antagonist role as Jamie’s disapproving teacher, and her one number does not show that singing is one of her talents. (She does okay, and gets through it, at least.)

That aside, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is a truly wonderful musical (and movie), one that took me quite by surprise, since I wasn't expecting something a bit more "Free to Be You and Me” (look it up). In fact, Harwood shines, and the cast around him does as well; the fact this musical was able to bring out so many emotions from me offers proof positive that it's a true winner.

Jamie is opening in select theaters this Friday, and then it will stream on Amazon Prime Video starting Sept. 17. I recommend going out and seeing it in a theater if it’s playing near you; it’s a real crowdpleaser, for sure.

Also launching on Amazon this Friday is the series, THE VOYEURS (Amazon), starring the terrific Sidney Sweeney (who many will know from Mike White’s The White Lotus on HBO Max) and Justice Smith as a young couple who move into a loft apartment in Downtown Montreal after which they become interested in the sex life of their neighbors across the street (played by Ben Hardy and Natash Liu Bordizzo).

I’ve really been looking forward to the action-thriller KATE (Netflix), starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who I love, so sue me. It also stars Woody Harrelson, who I’m also a fan of. Directed by Cedric Nicholas-Troyan (The Huntsman: Winter’s War), it has Winstead playing Kate, a kick-ass assassin who has 24 hours to get revenge on the man who tries to kill her, eventually teaming with the daughter of one of her targets. Harrelson plays her handler.

The fact that this movie, starring one of my favorite actresses playing an assassin and doing a bit more action than we've seen from Winstead in a while (Birds of Prey being an exception), comes so soon after The Protégé with Maggie Q may only be a coincidence, but whoever is making these movies clearly knows what I'm all about. This one also has a very tiny sci-fi angle as well, and much of it is set in Tokyo, so it has both those things going for it, too.

Is this Winstead's best role or movie? No, probably not, but it does show her versatility, the fact that she can do something like Scott Pilgrim and other types of genre, but also do serious drama, and this is much stronger a venture into a Japanese yakuza thriller by a Westerner than last week's Yakuza Princess. Much of that comes down to Winstead and Harrelson, who do a much better job selling even the weaker dialogue, because you can tell they're both taking it very seriously. Like Yakuza Princess (and Kill Bill, a model for both of them) Nicholas-Troyan leans heavily on his soundtrack and on some of the more stylish visuals, but at least this one offers other things beyond the constantly-circling camera in certain scenes.

Let's face it that watching Winstead taking part in some pretty impressive and violent fight and stunt sequences would probably be more than enough for me to enjoy this even, if there are moments that rip-off Kill Bill so obviously but again, better than other similar rip-offs. Eventually, Kate gets sidled with a young teen girl, Ani (Miku Martineau), the daughter of one of her victims, and that does take away from the "sole assassin” aspect but does give it more of the feel of The Professional. Maybe that would work better if Martineau didn’t seem much older than the teenager she was meant to be playing, which might be due to the fact that she swears more than Samuel L. Jackson. In some ways, Ani offers something more akin to Black Widow with a third act twist that few will see coming.

Ultimately, the movie works well as an action movie, if not slightly marred by its overuse of clichés. It probably will come as no surprise that I prefer seeing action movies like this on the biggest screen possible in a theater, and in fact, this did get a nominal theatrical run last week before streaming on Netflix Friday. Winstead's badassery does wonders at making sure that fans of her and the genre won't be disappointed by its few flaws.

Also hitting Netflix this week (today, in fact) is the doc BLOOD BROTHERS: MALCOLM X & MUHAMMAD ALI (Netflix), which has a fairly self-explanatory title. I haven't seen it yet.

A movie that people who liked the Oscar-winning Free Solo will also want to check out is Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen’s THE ALPINIST (Red Bull Media/Roadside Attractions/Universal), a documentary about the 23-year-old solo mountain climber Marc-André Leclerc, whose amazing climbs were counterbalanced by his elusive behavior that kept him mostly under the radar for so many years.

This is a very different movie from Free Solo, though. That was about Alex Honnold's determination to make one singular climb, while Leclerc was already making just as many impressive climbs at a younger age. It's pretty obvious that Leclerc was destined to climb even bigger rock faces as Mortimer (whose previous film, The Dawn Wall, was sadly overlooked with all the push behind Free Solo) and Rosen finally catch up with him.

I don't really want to say too much more about the film or Leclerc, since it's best to learn about him through the movie and the amazing interviews compiled by the filmmaking duo. There's a good reason why mountain climbing continues to be of interest to the casual non-climbers like myself. Great films like The Alpinist find ways to glorify these amazing climbers without glossing over how dangerous mountain climbing can be as a sport or hobby.

The Alpinist had a Fathom Event on Tuesday night, but it will also be getting a moderately wide release in theaters through Roadside this Friday as well. You can read my interviews with the filmmakers over at Below the Line, too. Also, I mentioned another Universal doc, Under the Volcano, a few weeks back, and I have an interview with those filmmakers over at Below the Line, as well.

Another doc of note out this week is FAUCI (NatGeo Documentary/Magnolia) from directors John Hoffman and Janet Tobias, which looks at the life and career of NIH Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, but it doesn't deal with the last year and a half where Fauci's main focus was fighting COVID. No, this goes back to earlier in his career, to when he started at NIH, meeting, working with and eventually marrying his wife, Dr. Christine Grady. (Nope, I had no idea he was married either.)

More importantly, the movie follows Fauci's role in the discovery of HIV and AIDs and the conflicts between the government and protest groups like ACT UP who didn't think Fauci and the government did enough to help the gay community fight against AIDS and certainly not fast enough to make a difference.

Hoffman and Tobias’ doc has a fantastic interview with Fauci at its core that sometimes gets a little cutesy, but also allows him to talk candidly about his efforts in fighting disease, including the efforts to help fight Ebola in Africa where it was so debilitating for those who couldn't afford medicine that the USA had to step in.

But AIDS is really the crux of the film's exploration of Fauci's past achievements (and partial failures), and watching a younger Fauci talking to the AIDS activists in a rousing speech is one of the highlights, as is watching the present-day Fauci tearing up while talking about an AIDS patient who died.

I’ve always had a bit of a skewed perspective on epidemiologists and infectious disease doctors due to a few incidents when I was fighting cancer, and Fauci has annoyed me for the good part of the year by being so wishy-washy and negative towards movie theaters (which led to a full-year of closings in NYC with no major super-spreader cases since they reopened). But this documentary definitely helped change my mind about Fauci, maybe because the general public really never had a chance to meet or know him or his work before COVID hit.

Fauci is quite a fantastic doc in terms of shining the spotlight on a needlessly controversial figure who has been politicized despite having held his position through six administrations. I would definitely point someone to this doc if they still feel negatively towards the country’s top epidemiologist. It helps to humanize Fauci much like the RBG doc did for the late Supreme Court Justice.

Seriously, there are so many movies this week that there’s no way I’m gonna review everything, but you can read about a few of them below.

A music doc hitting New York on Friday and then opening in L.A. on Sept. 17 is Tom Surgals's FIRE MUSIC: The Story of Free Jazz (Submarine Deluxe), exec. produced by Nels Cline and Thurston Moore (who happens to be playing his first NYC show in a couple years this Sunday). It covers the free jazz movement of the '60s and '70s that produced the likes of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, and John Coltrane. The movie features archival footage from the '60s jazz scene and interviews with key players, including critic Gary Giddins. I'm not going to review this, but it's pretty good, because I definitely had a phase when I was really into this type of jazz, basically all-improvisational with less structure than the jazz that uses charts and such. I know that a lot of people hate or misunderstand the musical style but it's quite stirring, as is Surgal's film. I do feel you'll already have to be a fan of the musical genre to enjoy the movie, though.

Hitting Apple TV+ on Friday is the filmed version of the Broadway musical, COME FROM AWAY (Apple TV+) -- similar to last year’s Hamilton and David Byrne’s American Utopia -- which is being released on the streamer to coincide with the 20th anniversary of 9/11, since the musical is loosely based on the events. It was filmed earlier this year, 14 months into the pandemic that shut down Broadway with a fully-masked audience watching Broadway’s first live performance since the shut-down. This is one of the MANY musicals on Broadway that I’ve never gotten around to seeing but it involves a town in Newfoundland, Canada where a plane lands on 9/11 as they’ve been diverted following the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

Claire Lewins’ doc THE WONDERFUL: STORIES FROM THE SPACE STATION (Dog Star Films/Universal Home Entertainment) features footage from the International Space Station and interviews with the astronauts who have been involved with the extraordinary space project. I hope to watch this over the weekend, but it sounds like my kind of movie.

Already on Apple TV+ (it debuted Tuesday!) is Bailie Walsh’s BEING JAMES BOND, a documentary about Daniel Craig’s run as 007 over the past decade plus, which you can rent for FREE on Apple, so go do that!

On Monday, FX and FX on Hulu will debut the first few episodes of Y THE LAST MAN, the new series based on the Vertigo comic series by Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra that I absolutely loved. Set in a world where every single male human and animal has died, it stars Ben Schnetzer (Pride, Warcraft) as Yorick, who is -- you guessed it-- the last man on earth. He’s also an escape artist/magician, trying to survive with his pet capuchin monkey, Ampersand, as he goes across country trying to find his girlfriend Beth who left for Australia before the event. It also stars Diane Lane (as Yorick’s mother, who becomes the President), Olivia Thirlby (as his sister Hero), Ashley Romans (as Agent 355), Missi Pyle, and lots of other actresses (because all the men are dead). I’m slowly making my way through the series, and I like what I've seen so far, but the first three episodes will premiere on Monday.

A few other movies, a couple that I’ve seen, which I just don’t have time to review…

Nicholas Cage stars in Sion Sono's PRISONERS OF THE GHOSTLAND (RLJEfilms), which opens at the IFC Center this Friday. He plays a bank robber who is sprung from jail by Bill Moseley's "Governor" whose adopted granddaughter (Sofia Boutella) has gone missing. Cage's character is allowed to go free to find her, but he's put in a suit that will self-destruct in three days if he doesn't return. So it's kind of like The Suicide Squad, and though it has an interesting cast (including Nick Cassavetes, who also appears in Queenpins this week), I don't remember liking this much at Sundance earlier this year. (I actually don't thnk I got through the movie.)

John Pollono adapts his own stageplay SMALL ENGINE REPAIR (Vertical) to the screen with John Bernthal and Shea Whigham playing life-long friends Terrance and Packie with Pollono’s Frank, who are overly protective of Terrance’s teen daughter, Crystal (Ciaro Bravo). A chance encounter turns into a night that spins out of control as the friends have to make a tough decision about how to resolve the situation. I was pretty mixed on this movie even though Bernthal and Whigham continue to be great in everything they do. (I just think Whigham's recent movie, The Gateway, was better.)

Hitting the horror-streaming network Shudder (I have a subscription, because I’m a fan) on Thursday is Ruth Platt’s MARTYR’S LANE, a ghost story about a 10-year-old girl named Leah (Kiera Thompson) who lives in an old house with her family but whose mother has grown distant. At night, she’s visited by a guest who challenges Leah in exchange for more information about the house and her family.

Saul Williams stars and writes the score for Charles Officer’s AKILLA’S ESCAPE (Vertical), a crime noir about an urban child soldier set in Toronto and New York with Williams playing Akilla, a 40-year-old with a covert cannabis operation that goes legit. As he’s ready to cash out, he’s robbed by a group of masked youths. Akilla captures one of them, a mute 15-year-old named Sheppard that is associated with the Jamaican crime syndicate founded by his grandfather.

Jonah Feingold’s DATING & NEW YORK (IFC Films), which premiered at the Tribeca Festival a few months back, stars Francesca Reale (Stranger Things) and Jaboukie Young-White (The Daily Show) as Wendy and Milo, two Millennials who are thrown together at the worst time in their lives for romance, as they meet on an app called Meet Cute, have a first date, and then ghost each other before being thrown back together into an unconventional romance. I’m usually a fan of the rom-com genre, and I often can even withstand one that takes place in New York City and uses my town in a completely unrealistic way to show how romance can flourish here. (*koff*BULLSHIT*koff*) But then you throw in the M-word (Millennials), and this grouchy old man could barely get through this movie, though I’m not even remotely surprised it premiered at Tribeca. It seems very much like a Tribeca movie, and yes, that was meant in a pejorative way as the former “Film” festival has lost its way over the years. I’m half-kidding, the movie is entertaining enough, and I’m sure younger people will enjoy it more than I did.

A few other films I didn't get to this week…

DOGS (Dekanalog) AZOR (MUBI) BAD CANDY (Dread)

That’s it for this week. Do we have any new movies next week? I think Clint Eastwood has Cry Macho