#that's why i need to memorize some radicals. just a couple hundred should do the trick

[coquelicoq]

i haven't even tried to take a nap. i've just been staring at lists of hanzi radicals for hours, thinking to myself, wow, this would be a lot easier if you just memorized some hanzi radicals.

[hecallsmehischild]

(TLDR) I sewed three patches on this couch two days ago.

Today I watched one of the high school graduation ceremonies taking place across the country. I was surprised at how many bitter and resentful responses I had to swallow down as the video rolled on. I can’t put my finger one hundred percent on why, but I think it had a great deal to do with the emphasis on success and making a huge impact, and the laying of this expectation on the shoulders of those who were graduating.

I graduated from an earlier iteration of this particular high school. What I treasure most were the memories I made with friends there, and the good teachers I encountered. I graduated with a 3.7 GPA and two AP classes (Psych and English) from a private college prep Christian high school. Despite how reserved I tended to be, I somehow won “Most Memorable” in the yearbook, and anyone who took English with me knew how much I loved to write. It was pretty obvious I was going to succeed in my... goals? Eh, we’ll figure out goals later, because anyway I was pretty sure to be a total success wherever I chose to go.

Goals. Be a writer, right? Some degree in Creative Writing, maybe land a job as an editor at a publishing house? Right? That’s what’s supposed to happen? I guess? I went two states away to go to a college that offered better financial aid and had a good Creative Writing program... what, I should have asked, even constitutes a good Creative Writing program?

The next two years watched me slowly flush my 3.7 down the toilet. Granted, it would have helped if I understood that I was contending with Bipolar 2, and not just Depression, but I don’t think that would have changed enough to save me. I had no idea what being an adult looked like. I didn’t understand the "units” I was supposed to accrue at college (they somehow landed in the “abstract” section of my brain). I’m supposed to shape my own course, now? How does that work? But I didn’t even have the language for my confusion and everyone seemed to KNOW these things. And then, out of nowhere, something would happen in a class and my brain would throw up an utter blockade against the idea of ever returning to class A, X, or C ever again because I fell asleep too often/couldn’t face the peer review board/didn’t understand what the hell they were trying to teach me/couldn’t MAKE myself finish that 8 page paper that should have been a cakewalk for someone like me.

I failed. I utterly and completely failed, as my classmates continued on toward their bright, shiny college degrees and plans for Masters.

In a Christian High School, one of the extra expectations laid on you is that you go out and do great things for the Kingdom of God. I am so divided about this statement, because I have to believe it is handed out with good intentions, but I believe it misses something very important about the very Kingdom it wants to represent. By coupling this with graduation and talk about success and “dreaming big” and all those grand speeches, it makes representing God out to be exclusively a grand endeavor, with a whole string of unspoken footnotes attached. Your ministry must be notable, your actions seen and discussed (as favorably as possible), you must emulate Jesus (but only in the aspects of his excellence, not his counter-authoritarianism or radical table-flipping if-you-please), you must be sure to leave your mark on this world so you can hear those oh so coveted words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Live a good life, waste no time ever, always strive for above and beyond, don’t be controversial, don’t struggle for too long in life, try to have a good marriage and family and don’t embarrass us too much. Take what I say, here, with a grain of salt, this is the jaded observation of a slightly embittered graduate of a class of ‘07.

You know. My parents have been in ministry almost all my life. Thirty years, and nearly all of those years, their tiny ministry has not been able to pay them full salary. Thirty years of striving and strife, shattering into a thousand pieces over and over and slowly re-knitting each time. Thirty years of trying to walk in Jesus’ footsteps and stumbling every step of the way. Thirty years, and I’d still wager most people don’t know about Improbable People Ministries or A Tour of Roses the way they know names like Joyce Meyer or Billy Graham. (I’m not, here, knocking those people. I’m pulling up a comparison of names to make a point) That they aren’t as well known isn’t what galls me. What galls me is that there’s some unspoken criteria that if they aren’t that universally known, then what’s it worth to God and His Kingdom?

And I turn and I look at me. Two days ago I sewed three patches onto a couch. We ripped it during the move, two years back. I didn’t have any confidence in my sewing skills because, well, I don’t really sew. Every now and then, we’d make the rips worse, and comment about either patching it up or replacing the couch. And I thought, I’ve done so many other things in this house that I didn’t think I could do, maybe I could do this. So I picked out a fabric with birds all over it, to nest among the flowers on the couch. I got two yards, much more than I needed because I had no idea what mistakes I might make. I cut out approximately the right size and shape, plugged in an audiobook, and got to work. Roughly two and a half hours later, I’d done the thing. A professional reupholstery person definitely would have done it better, but I fixed it. I put my touch on it, and now my husband will smile every time he looks at the couch, and it will quit ripping whenever we lean back.

Where am I going with this whole couch bit? Well. I think sometimes God does his work through big names, like Billy Graham or Mother Theresa, and in that way He reaches a lot of people. But I submit that success and visibility and        I M P A C T       is not the only way it works. These days, I go sit and talk with the one neighbor I have energy to visit. I sweep and mop the floor. I push for one more fix to the house, or get adventurous and try to fix it myself. I make fresh meals at home, sometimes with cookies or bread. I hug my husband and chase him around the house (or get chased). I write fanfiction. I make pretty and silly things. I read books, to myself and aloud to others. When I’m struggling, I’m trying more often than not to STOP myself from thrashing to get things done, so that I can pass through the period of depression or downswing with fewer internal lacerations.

Some people will shoot for the stars and land there and do great and grand things. And that is well and good. But the Kingdom of God is not limited to those things. I don’t know what He has for me in the future, but for now I tend to what is at hand; myself, my husband, and this house. And I think that this is work He has given me to do right now. It is a small thing, but it is my thing, and it is not lessened by the fact that it’s for a very limited number of people. And the marvelous thing is that while this work is good for those around me, it also is stretching and teaching me new ways relating to the world. This “small” work is also healing me. And that, in turn, overflows back onto the people around me.

I reiterate: I sewed three patches on this couch. It’s a ridiculously tiny thing in the grand scheme of things. As is assembling a cabinet, or replacing a toilet seat, or learning how to paint a wall. But I took YEARS to come out from under the belief that my decisions were always going to end in disaster, or that I was riding everyone else’s wake because I couldn’t own my life choices. I’m still horribly afraid of screwing up in some areas, but that fear is lessening its grip on my life one area at a time. I think I will be flailing through life my whole life long, and they don’t talk about that in graduation speeches because they want to send you off feeling super confident. But I wanna say, to any fellow flailers who may not feel all that confident, or who had that confidence shattered, you aren’t less.

I know... that I’m speaking as a Christian, here. And that not all of you reading this are. And that’s ok, I’m not here to change you. But whether you are or not, I wanna say that the way I’ve seen God work in my life and my family’s lives is that nothing is wasted. Small things we never would have deemed important became lynchpins down the line. Areas of our lives metaphorically burned to ashes are in continual process of bearing unruly wildflowers. And I believe He sees all those small things in your lives, too.

The other day I sewed three patches on a couch. And healed a tiny bit more. And brought a fraction more peace and joy and laughter to our surroundings. And that is one facet of the Kingdom of God.

[kaoruyogi]

How to Win Wars and Influence Nobles (Ch. 25)

Rating: E for Explicit/NSFW Content! 

Check it out on AO3!

You’d think a video game lawyer could just drop into a pseudo-medieval universe filled with magic and demons and be totally okay with it, right?

Nah.

In the wake of her brother, Spencer’s, disappearance, Belle dropped into Thedas with luggage, but without a clue. After a brief but memorable panic attack, she resolved to be the best goddamn lawyer Thedas had ever seen. Even if she was the only goddamn lawyer Thedas had ever seen. And even if that obstinate asshole, Cullen, wouldn’t stop giving her the side-eye every time she walked into a room…Or every time he walked into a room with her in it…Or every time they walked into a room together…Or–Fuck it. You get it.

Chapter 25: What the Fuck Now?

Cullen’s newness to the world was like a second infancy. It was adorable and impatient, sweet and frustrating. He had questions about everything in their first month of living in Orange County. He asked Belle some questions she didn’t have answers to, and he asked her some questions that didn’t really have answers. The fecundity of his imagination was boundless. It was impressive, and it was exhausting.

She showed him how to use the internet on her laptop early on. She watched him do what she had done when she first got to Thedas. Research. He clicked and clicked and clicked, treading dozens of varied informational pathways a day, drinking up knowledge like a man in an oasis surrounded by a million miles of desert in every direction. She supposed he was a man lost in the desert, really. In the back of her mind, she worried he would reach the point of knowing more about the world than she did.

Cullen began by educating himself on the topics that interested him the most. He started with war. The long-documented history of tens of thousands of battles took his pouring over for nearly a week. Faster than Belle could have consumed all that information. At one point, however, the geographical proportions of the world popped onto the screen alongside the current global population. The size of Earth and the amount of people on it put him in a state for two hours. His brow furrowed and unfurrowed, and he paced around their suite’s living room trying to reason it out.

“These numbers cannot possibly be correct. How can there be that many people in this world? Nearly eight billion?” he said, distracting Belle from her neglected Tumblr feed for the fifth time since his pacing began.

She let her wrist go limp as she flicked her attention to him, knocking her phone into her bare ankle. She groaned, and half sighed her reply. “Dude, I dunno. A combination of the spread of mass religious beliefs that advocate copious reproduction, improvements in medical science to stop people from dying from literally everything, and really shitty birth control methodologies up until the past couple decades. You could have Googled that.”

Cullen glowered down at her. “I apologize that it is not yet my first instinct to beg answers to my questions from a machine.” His tone was razor sharp.

Belle set her jaw hard. So did Cullen. Several brutal seconds into their tiny standoff, she relented. She shut her eyes and inhaled. The cool, conditioned air buzzed in through her nose and blew out through her pursed lips. When she opened her eyes, much of Cullen’s ire had melted into a complicated kind of remorse.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“So am I.” He brushed his hand across her shoulder before returning to whatever dark corner of the internet he’d found in his endless clicking. A passing gesture of love stretched thin by proximity and inactivity.

Cullen’s click-click-clicking lead him next to history. He told Belle he intended to focus on the history of her nation, but she suspected, after seeing images of several very steepley, thousand-year-old-looking churches splashed across her 4K laptop screen, that he had wandered well past the United States. Those same steepley, thousand-year-old-looking churches dragged him into religion. She knew he’d discovered the sordid and bloody history of Judaism when, following a dispersion of disgusted grunts, he sat on the couch beside her and swept her into his arms. He clutched her tight, wondering aloud how her people seemed so happy after all they went through. She thought to bring up the elves, but decided against it when he buried his nose in her hair.

Religion lead back to war, as it so often did. Belle watched as Cullen found himself at a loss for what to read. He thought he’d exhausted the contents of the entire internet. She pressed her lips together to bite back a giggle at the sight of his mild distress. But the next day’s malaise, coupled with a rapid response by hotel security to his courtyard palm-tree-dummy training session, brought him back up to their room with questions about physical maintenance. He asked Belle first. She put a hand on her soft gut and reminded him that she was the last person he should be asking about exercise. She ate another Cheeto, and he took to the internet once more. When she woke the following morning, she found him with a towel draped over his shoulder preparing to shower after lifting weights and jogging in the hotel gym while she slept. He was settling in alright, she reckoned.

Eisiminger called them to his office after two weeks of radio silence. He told them that there was no record of any radical group calling themselves “the Inquisition” in any database in any country. Belle said that of course there wasn’t. Why would there be? What kind of sense would that make? She spouted off about shell corporations and airspace rights and that movie, “The Village,” and Eisiminger leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. She didn’t have to feign her anger when she told him that what she and Cullen experienced was real. It was real, and it was painful. The bit about the pain was no lie, either. The anguish of being ripped away from the people she’d grown to call family, not to mention her actual brother, clawed and gnawed at her with incessant persistence. Cullen corroborated her every word.

When she ran out of steam and all she could do was sit and seethe, Eisiminger apologized. He didn’t apologize for his occasionally suspicious glances or his sporadically accusatory tone. She didn’t expect him to apologize for that. That was behavior she would hope for in a detective, had she presented him a real crime to solve. Instead, he apologized for the lack of progress on her case. He told her that, with no leads and nothing more on which to follow up, he was going to have to put her case in the “inactive” file. She put on a dramatic show of anger to hide her relief, tearing up and scowling, demanding something more be done. Eisiminger apologized again, and Cullen put on his own dramatic show of comforting her. Eisiminger went on to recommend that Cullen apply for a U-visa if he planned on remaining in the country, and handed him a form. Belle knew full well that the single form was insufficient, and said as much before she and Cullen stormed out of the Homicide Bureau’s offices. She wept real tears when they got into her little blue car.

On the third week, Belle sent her parents home to Washington. They protested for hours before and during dinner at the little Italian restaurant in Downtown Brea that was always too busy. Cullen sat at the outer edge of the booth and faced the door while they ate and argued, still hypervigilant, still nervous. Belle was too, if she was honest. They both jumped when someone dropped a plate. He reached for his absent sword. Everyone cheered at the waiter. Belle’s hand trembled until Cullen took it in his under the table. Her father narrowed his eyes at her in a silent question, and she answered him with a near imperceptible shake of her head.

Not long after, he capitulated. He caved first, as she suspected he might. He tried to bring Ilana around by reminding her that they should probably get ready for Belle and Cullen to move north, because Belle was a shoo-in for that job at Microsoft, of course. Fear and discomfort passed over Ilana’s face for a moment. She said something in a voice so soft that the discordant eaters around them drowned it before it could reach Belle’s ears.

Belle’s father nodded, and Ilana swayed with the cadence of his hand running up and down her back. “We’re only a few hours away if he comes back.”

Ilana’s eyes went watery, but she nodded too. Belle and Cullen shared a communicative glance. It was time to tell her parents why Spencer wasn’t there, why she and Cullen were so jumpy, why he needed a U-visa.

She sat her parents on the sofa in their suite after dinner. Unwelcome news was always taken best when surrounded by the comfort of one’s own belongings. Cullen sat in the chair next to Ilana, and Belle stood. She was accustomed to making presentations, and standing gave her a feeling of control over what was about to happen.

“I’m going to start telling you what I have to tell you in a second,” she said. “But first, I need to know that both of you know I’m not crazy. I’ve never exhibited signs of any mental illness that would alter my perceptions of reality, right?”

“Right,” said her father.

“Of course not,” said Ilana.

“Okay. Dad, you’re an engineer, and I know you’re not that kind of engineer, but what do you know about wormholes?”

He cocked his head. “Not a whole lot. The bit with the hole in the folded piece of paper is about it.”

Belle let out an irked little noise. She paced in front of the lifeless black television. Two steps left, two steps right. “So—and again, I swear I’m not crazy—what I told the police—what I told you—is about half true. Spencer and I were in a place called Thedas, and Cullen really does come from there, but—” The words caught in her throat, causing a strangled squeak. “Thedas isn’t anywhere on Earth.”

“What?” said Ilana.

“It sounds insane. It sounds one hundred percent batshit cuckoo coco-nuts, I know. But I was waiting for an Uber outside my apartment to take me to the airport, and this green hole thing that I can only assume was a wormhole or something like that just appeared on the sidewalk and sucked me up. Just sucked me and my bags right up.” Belle pantomimed with her hand, flicking her wrist and closing her splayed fingers. “And when I woke up, I was someplace else. The geography of the land was different than here, and the seasons were different from here, and I didn’t just stay in one place while I was there. We,” she said as she gestured between herself and Cullen, “rode halfway across the continent on horseback and in carriages. We would have hit some modern civilization by then, right? Then, one random day, another wormhole thing just poofed into existence in front of me and Cullen and ate us both.”

“Wormholes?” said Ilana. The blankness in her tone welled up anxiety in Belle’s chest. Her flowy T-shirt felt three sizes too small.

“Yeah. Wormholes. That’s why Spencer isn’t here, why he didn’t come back too. They were just these blips. Opened and closed.”

“My confirmation of what she says cannot mean much to you, such as things are,” said Cullen, “but everything she says is true. In Thedas, we call these wormholes ‘rifts.’ Spencer fell out of a rift about three months before Belle did, but that’s how both of them arrived in Thedas. And it’s how Belle and I were taken from Thedas to arrive here.”

Belle’s father cleaved the long silence that followed before it grew too great to bear. “So Spencer…” He stopped, searching for the words, searching for the question to which he might even begin to put words.

“Spencer’s alive and well. He’s actually pretty happy there. He met someone.”

“My sister, Rosalie.”

Ilana wore confused horror like a mask over her usually happy face. Belle’s father opened and closed his mouth like a fish drowning in air. She hadn’t planned this, she realized. Hadn’t done it right. Predict, prepare, preempt. She forgot to follow her mantra, and now she was ruining her parents’ lives. They were sitting in front of her trying to figure out if they should commit her. Slap her in the loony bin with the rest of the crazies. Deport Cullen to nowhere or hold him in ICE lockup on indefinite detention because they would never, ever figure out his country of origin.

Belle stood in the prison of her anxiety, spinning out into oblivion. Then her father asked, “Why you?”

“Huh?”

“Why you? And why Spencer? I mean, I love you, and don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but neither of you are that special.”

Belle laughed. It was a delirious thing, and it burst out of her without warning. She wasn’t helping the case for her sanity. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “No one there knew either. And it’s not like I can run around asking proper astrophysicists why without sounding bananas crazy.”

“Okay,” said Ilana. “I believe you.” Determination had replaced the mask of confused horror. Determination and certainty.

“Me too,” said Belle’s father.

“Really?” said Belle.

“Yeah. And, honestly, it’s more plausible than human trafficking.”

“Why?”

“You really think you, of all people, would get kidnapped and escape and come back here without telling every single person you talked to some crazy story about how you punched at least one guy in the face?”

“Or stabbed one to death,” said Belle.

Her father gave her the side eye. “Or stabbed one to death.”

Her parents flew back to Washington two days later.

Four weeks after Belle and Cullen’s unceremonious landing in Orange County, she had her Skype interview with the council of counselors for Microsoft. Vic’s friend, Josh, sat between two women, and across from one woman and one man. They were friendly, and they asked her all the questions Josh told her they would ask when she’d spoken to him on the phone three weeks earlier. She felt as prepared as she could have been, having spent a year without any technology just before interviewing for one of the largest tech companies in the world. She offered a few quips, and the council of counselors laughed just the right amount.

Cullen sat on the sofa two feet away and watched the entire process. After almost an hour and forty-five minutes of back and forth, the council of counselors muted their end of the conversation to deliberate. Belle watched their mouths move, but they were too far from the camera, their mannerisms too subdued for her to make out what any of them said. She reached for Cullen’s hand out of view of her webcam. The warmth of his calluses on her palm and her fingertips reminded her that she had been battle-hardened. She had been through so much worse than waiting for a few lawyers to decide whether she was skilled enough to work for them. She had been stabbed, for Christ’s sake. Twice.

The council of counselors unmuted their microphone, and Alicia, the woman sitting across the conference table from Josh, told Belle that Josh and the other two women were going to be stepping out for the duration of the conversation. Belle said her farewells, and Josh winked toward the camera on his way through the metal doorframe.

When the door to the conference room closed, Alicia folded her hands in front of her and smiled. “Okay, so let’s talk relo expenses. If you have a down payment, we’d like to help you with moving costs and closing.”

Less than half an hour later, Belle was e-signing an employment contract. She started sobbing halfway through the at-will provisions, and Cullen took her up in his embrace. She clung to his powerful forearms as they wreathed around her neck and shoulders. His galvanizing presence reminded her how lucky she was to have him. She loved him so much it was like a stone in her stomach. The certainty that she could provide for them was an indispensable boon, a small but sturdy umbrella in the torrent of fucked up shit raining down on them every day.

But their relationship wasn’t all peaches and light. As time passed, as Belle wrapped up the task of un-disappearing, as she met with everyone she needed to meet, and as she waited for her parents’ video tours of prospective houses, she and Cullen began to go stir crazy. They played a dangerous waiting game that threatened to rend them from one another by exposure. Between them, they managed no more than an hour or so apart each day. He had his burgeoning workout routine, and she had the odd friend with whom to eat lunch and avoid chatting about her disappearance. The other twenty-three hours of the day, they were locked in their suite, alone, bored, and bickering over tiny annoyances.

Sex helped. It staved off the ennui and frustration, and it tethered them to one another in a way that felt natural, unforced. It was also almost the only exercise Belle got in the absence of her daily need to walk up and down five thousand flights of stairs.

During their refractory periods, or their post-argument periods, or really any period not occupied by a solid fuck or something solidly fucked, they watched movies and TV shows and listened to music. Cullen had over thirty years of catching up to do on the media that helped form Belle’s personality, and she was more than happy to use it as an excuse to ease the occasional tension. They situated themselves on the couch, her ankles always crossed over his thighs, and dug into their respective snacks—that douchenozzle nibbled on apples and strawberries while she stuffed her face with Doritos and chocolate—before she hit play.

Cullen’s opinions, as in most cases, formed quickly. He liked John Wayne. He disliked Alfred Hitchcock. He said he thought RomComs were feckless, but Belle caught the worry on his face when it seemed like the main characters wouldn’t end up together. He scoffed when she pointed out that he practically was Mr. Darcy. She laughed so hard when he and Matthew Macfayden made the exact same sound in unison that she had to pause the movie with Keira Knightley’s eyes half closed. Cullen conceded.

When it came to music, he surprised her. He favored classical and neo-classical composers, which she anticipated. He grimaced at most EDM, though he tolerated ambient electronica, and he slammed her laptop shut when she started playing her favorite death metal track, which was to be expected. But he asked her to play more of her indie and alternative music, like Ray LaMontagne and Feist and Fleet Foxes, he loved the blues, and he latched onto jazz singers like Billie Holiday. Belle should have known that he would be contrary and old fashioned, even in a different world.

She glanced up at him once, a few minutes after telling her realtor to make an offer on a four-bedroom house with granite countertops in the kitchen and a plum tree in the backyard. He sat at the desk in front of her laptop with his chin resting on his fist. “God Bless the Child” emanated from the speakers as his eyes scanned over some half-visible article about the Yukon gold rush. She watched him for a moment. He squinted and craned his neck toward the screen, and he sighed when he returned to his resting position.

As she watched him, for the first time in more than a month, she didn’t think, well, what the fuck now. For the first time in more than a month, she thought that maybe their lives weren’t ruined. For the first time in more than a month, she thought there might be a future for them that didn’t exist in the past.

He smiled when he caught her staring.

*****

“Just breathe.”

“I am breathing.”

“Yeah, but do it slower.”

Cullen glowered. “Was there no other way to get to Washington?”

“I am not driving for nineteen and a half hours in a rental car. Maybe someday, in our own car, for fun and shit, but I’m not doing it just to move.”

Boong, boong. Flight attendants, please prepare for takeoff.

Cullen jumped at the announcement and squeezed Belle’s hand so tight her fingers began to tingle. His other hand clutched the armrest near the open window. The too-close Orange County morning sun glared rabid on the tarmac outside the thick plexiglass. She wondered if he knew how much she had to love him to give him the window seat.

“Do you need a Valium?” said the leathery woman in the aisle seat. “Or a Xanax? I’ve got both.”

Belle smiled her sweet, phony smile. “Nooo, thaaanks,” she said in the way only someone from Southern California could say it. “He’ll be okay. It’s just his first time flying.”

“This is unnatural,” said Cullen through his teeth.

The leathery woman giggled and reached across Belle’s lap to touch Cullen’s thigh. Belle made an ugly face in her shock and repugnance. The goddamn nerve of some fucking people.

“It’s science, honey. Perfectly natural.”

Belle cleared her throat and nudged the woman’s arm. They shared another phony smile as the leathery woman withdrew to her own space. She set about the task of ignoring everyone around her by putting in earbuds and starting “BIG” on the little screen stuck to the seat in front of her.

Belle shook her head, turning her attention back to her terrified…boyfriend still didn’t sound right. Cullen stared out the small window. The jets on the wings just behind them whirred to raucous life. She couldn’t feel her fingertips anymore. “Do you want to close the window?”

“What?”

“Do you want to see everything, or do you want to close the window?”

“I want,” he said between shallow breaths. “I want to see.”

“Okay.”

Everything began to rattle as the Airbus lurched down the runway. Cullen’s chest heaved. He had to be getting dizzy. The plane sped up until everything outside became a blur of soiled beige and shiny black. He gasped when the aircraft lifted off the ground, and the rattling all around them stopped. Her fingertips started to burn.

He leaned his forehead against the mottled plastic window frame and watched the ground recede. His breathing slowed amid the awe that spread over his face. His mouth hung open, and his grip on Belle’s fingers loosened. The pins and needles set in as the blood poured back into her digits. The plane flew west on its takeoff flightpath, and the wide blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean stretched out beneath them. Cullen looked out ahead, and said, “I have never seen so much.”

“So much what?” asked Belle.

“Everything.”

For the whole hour of their flight, he stared out that window and held Belle’s hand. She watched him watch the deserts fade into mountains, and the mountains blossom into forests. “You were right,” he said when the Pacific Northwest clouds shrouded the earth.

“About?”

“The clouds. It’s like a sea of cotton. And I have never seen sky so blue.”

When they began their descent, Cullen watched the rain part around the wing behind them. Belle explained that they were going so fast they cut through the air and the rain. She helped him pop his ears as the earth came into view once more in shades of gray, blue, and green. She endured the pins and needles in her fingers a second time when they went wheels down.

SeaTac was a much larger airport than the local one from which they’d departed. The volume of people was larger too. Belle rushed them through the terminals to avoid allowing Cullen enough time to become overwhelmed by the crowd. Once they reached the baggage claim, he scowled at the chute until their luggage appeared, both bags flipping end over end. He lifted them off the conveyor belt with enviable ease. Belle saw a few people watch him do it, and watch him for a little too long thereafter.

She had to stop him when he tried to unzip his bag to check on his sword and armor—he wouldn’t let her ship it ahead. It had been difficult enough explaining the blade and plate to TSA when they checked in. They didn’t need to be detained on their way out.

It was raining when they exited the terminal. Belle suppressed a grin at Cullen’s tentative mastery of sliding glass doors. He put his hand out from under the awning to feel the rain on his skin, and he looked at her with a kind of satisfaction. “Rain is the same everywhere,” he said.

She smiled. “Did you think it was going to come up from the ground?” He shook his head and kissed her forehead.

Her father picked them up in his green SUV a few minutes later. He told them he would have been there faster if anyone knew how to drive in this fucking airport. Belle let Cullen ride shotgun to avoid his carsickness.

“So, Cullen, how was your first flight?”

“Harrowing.”

“Ha,” said Belle.

They stopped at the car dealership on the way to her parents’ house. Cullen told her he wanted to ride home with her father, and she gave him a dubious look before he closed his door and they went on ahead. She verified the car on the lot was the car she ordered. It was bigger, bluer, and sportier than her last vehicle, which she’d sold in Orange County to make their move easier. She made her down payment, signed the paperwork, and followed a few miles behind her men. By the time she reached her parents’ house, her things had been unloaded from the SUV. She parked in the driveway beside it and went into the house.

“Belle? Is that you?” said Ilana’s voice from the kitchen.

“Nope. Just a murderer, here to do some murderin’. Don’t mind me.” Belle hung her raincoat on the rack near the door. “How many people do you guys give your keys to?”

“Oh, anyone who will take one, really.” Ilana’s voice grew closer as Belle followed it into the kitchen. “Dad just goes to the park sometimes and hands them out to vagrants. You know, in case they feel like robbing us blind or relieving us of our lives while we sleep.”

Belle laughed and hugged her stepmother. “I bet they appreciate that. No one likes a house that’s hard to burglarize. And murder is so much harder when the door’s locked.”

“It’s good to see you, sweetie. How’s your new car?”

“Fast.” An oddly familiar scent filled the warm kitchen and Belle’s nostrils. She sniffed the air. “What are you cooking?”

Ilana beamed. “Well, I did some Googling, and I found some recipes that I thought might make Cullen feel more at home. I decided on roasted mutton, potatoes, and root veggies. It’s weird, but I realized I’ve never cooked a parsnip before.”

Belle’s mouth watered. A year and a half ago, the thought of roasted mutton, potatoes, and root veggies would have sounded okay. Just okay. Never as amazing as it sounded that day. Despite being in her parents’ house, a place that was a second home for so many years, the food in the oven would be the first thing in a long time to give both her and Cullen even a fraction of that kind of comfort.

“Where is he, anyway?”

“Your dad took him into the garage to make sure his sword and armor made it through the flight okay. That’s so weird to say.”

“I know. Believe me, I know.”

Belle made for the door leading out to the garage. In front of the door, a heap of red Rubbermaid tubs marked “Camping” blocked her view of most of the room. “—t kind of steel is this? A few of the machinists I used to work with would be really into this craftsmanship,” said her father. The soft ping ping of a knuckle rapping against metal punctuated his remarks.

“It’s silverite. Steel armor is ill suited against enchanted weapons or magic. Templars are given silverite armor after completing their initiation. I was used to it, so I commissioned a modified version of that it upon joining the Inquisition.”

Belle rounded the Rubbermaids to see Cullen kneeling on a moving blanket on the floor with his armor spread out piecemeal. Her father sat on a tool bench. He was hunched over with a touch of awe on his face, running his fingers over the Templar insignia on one of Cullen’s bracers. “We don’t have silverite here. I wonder what the chemical composition of this stuff is.”

“Everything all in one piece?” said Belle, drawing their attention away from the armor.

Cullen stood. “It seems to be. It’s difficult to know for certain, but I don’t want to strike it without any way to repair it.”

“It’s pretty cool,” said Belle’s father.

“Did you boys have a nice ride home?”

“Yup. How’s your new car? You want to take me for a ride later? Maybe let me—I don’t know—drive it?” Her father gave her a signature Dolan family shit-eating grin.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Belle. “God, so desperate.”

Her father stood with a guttural groan. His pain had gotten worse while she was gone. She wished Eudora could have fixed his back too. He patted the spot between her shoulder blades where her tattoo proclaimed, “A Man Chooses,” in strong black ink. She hugged his waist. Cullen watched with a wistful look, a small smirk curling his lips and crinkling his scar.

Belle took her father out in her new car, as promised. They went to an empty school parking lot so he could do slippery donuts on the wet asphalt. They cackled together as the tires squealed and he cranked the steering wheel to the right, then to the left. She had missed him.

During their drive back to the house, she asked him what he and Cullen talked about after they left her at the dealership. He said, “Stuff.”

She struggled not to cry at dinner. Her backward nostalgia hit her like a truck the moment the first forkful hit her tongue. Her eyes burned, and her vision blurred. She could just make out Cullen hoovering the meal like it was his first, or his last. The flavors stoked memories of the early moments of their tenuous friendship, of dinners with Sera and Dorian and Bull, of lunches with Max and Josie and the visiting nobility, of Spencer. She barely maintained the wherewithal to tell Ilana that the food was delicious.

Her dreams were fitful that night. Barbarous and bathed in green. Her friends and her brother died and came back over and over, each death more heinous than the last. She tried to intervene. She screamed, she battled against the weight of her feet, and she called out to them to flee. Not one of them recognized her. Not one of them listened. They just died. Again and again, they died.

She and Cullen went to their new house the next morning. It was sunny. They met the realtor and the escrow agent for their first and final walkthrough before signing the closing documents. Everything was as Belle imagined. The bedrooms were large and clean. The master bathroom had a shower that was separate from the tub. The tan granite countertops in the kitchen gleamed. The plum tree in the backyard clung onto its last few leaves, each one the color of Cullen’s eyes.

Sparks didn’t fly when she signed the closing documents and handed over the cashier’s check. The heavens didn’t open, and the angels didn’t sing. It was all rather anticlimactic for the accomplishment of such a lofty goal. Her pen just scratched across some papers, and a stranger just took tens of thousands of her dollars with little more than a tepid “Congratulations.” He handed her the keys and a copy of the paperwork, and he and the realtor left.

Belle and Cullen stayed behind in the silence of their new home. He’d knocked on and jiggled a few things during their walkthrough, no doubt testing the flimsy modern craftsmanship. What wouldn’t seem flimsy after living in a place as staunch and fortified as Skyhold? But in the new silence, he just stared at the high living room ceiling.

“What do you think of it?” said Belle.

“It is…different.”

“Different than what?”

Cullen shifted on his feet. His movement was silent on the new carpet. “Since I was a boy, I thought I would live and die in a Circle or a Chantry House. That was the only way a Templar could honorably leave the Order. After joining the Inquisition, I did not have the luxury of time to consider what I might do if by some miracle I survived, let alone if we won. But I suppose I believed that, should I ever have a home of my own, I might have at least a hand in building it. This is simply…beyond my expectation.”

Belle laid down on the living room carpet. She sprawled out beneath the skylight, letting the muted warmth of the sun soak into her pale skin. She closed her eyes and breathed deep the lemon cleaner-scented air. “Well, we got a good deal. Cause I’m a Tom Slick, hotshot motherfucker who gets good deals. That’s what I do.” She smiled.

Cullen chuckled his three low chuckles. “I suppose it is.”

The sound of socks shuffling on carpet got loud and close, then the sound of someone laying down rustled up beside her. The weight of Cullen’s head came to rest on her stomach. She carded her fingers through his hair. They laid together in the sun puddle for a quiet minute or a quiet hour or a quiet day before she said, “You know, most of my furniture is old, hand-me-down crap. We need new stuff. So, if you want, you can still have a hand in putting this home together.”

Cullen wrapped his hand around her wrist and removed her hand from his hair. She frowned. He kissed the back of her hand, then pressed her palm to his chest. His heart beat a steady rhythm under her touch. Thuh-thump, thuh-thump, thuh-thump. She opened her eyes, and the sunlight bleached her vision.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Anytime.”

*****

[epacer]

Classmates

Kathy Najimy, Class of 1975

Kathy Najimy on fighting for equality, “Hocus Pocus,” and performing with the American Pops Orchestra

Kathy Najimy enjoys playing games. Literally.

“For about three years, when I was living in San Diego,” she says of her early days trying to break into show business, “I paid the rent by going on Wheel of Fortune, Family Feud, and The $10,000 Pyramid.”

Years later, of course, Najimy, beloved for her roles as Sister Mary Patrick in Sister Act, part of a trio of witch siblings in Hocus Pocus, and as Peggy Hill in Mike Judge’s stunning, astonishingly heartfelt animated sitcom King of the Hill, appears on game shows as a celebrity star. Her favorite is Pyramid, which she calls “a brilliantly designed” game show, as winning it relies on talent. “There’s not a lot of luck,” she says. “It’s heaven for me. Any time that they call me up to go do the $100,000 Pyramid — especially because I get to be around the really, really cute Michael Strahan — I say ‘Yes!'”

If game shows are Najimy’s preferred form of celebrity leisure, then activism is her driving lifeforce. A card-carrying, outspoken feminist (she’s pals with Gloria Steinem, who officiated her marriage to musician Dan Finnerty in 1998), Najimy has been aligned with nearly every liberal rights organization in modern history, from PETA and Planned Parenthood to HRC and PFLAG. Her passion for what she feels is right and good and just flows naturally and abundantly from her, and she speaks of change and justice with a ferocious, emphatic charge.

“I have been a feminist since I was 14 years old,” she says over the course of two phone conversations. “And feminism dedicates itself to the equality and respect of all people.”

Najimy will appear as a special guest at this Saturday’s American Pops Orchestra concert, “I Am What I Am: The Music of Jerry Herman,” alongside Paige Davis of Trading Spaces, Broadway star Mauricio Martinez (see page 32), RuPaul’s Drag Race contender Alexis Michelle, Tracy Lynn Olivera, and Paul Roeckell, and was surprised when she got the call to appear.

“My agent got the request,” she says. “They said, ‘Does Kathy happen to be free on this weekend.’ And I was. And other than what’s going on there right now with the administration, I love Washington, D.C. I said, ‘Listen you guys, despite what you think from a couple of old movies that I used to do, where I kind of pretend comedy sing, I don’t really sing.’ And they said, ‘It’s okay, don’t worry. We’ll make it work.’ They were just so adorable and so persistent and convincing that I said sure. I think it will be really fun.”

“It’s so funny,” says APO’s founder and conductor, Luke Frazier. “She walked into the first rehearsal and said, ‘I’m not really a singer. I’m more of a talk-singer.’ We get done with rehearsal. I’m like, ‘No, Kathy. You can actually sing.’ She’s just very modest about it.”

Frazier has chosen a few special numbers for Najimy — among them one of Herman’s greatest chestnuts: “Hello, Dolly!” She’ll also sing “Bosom Buddies,” a raucous duet from Mame, with Davis and “The Man in the Moon” from the same show.

“So many of Jerry Herman’s female leads are truly larger than life,” says Frazier. “They all have an element of comedy, but there’s a lot of depth to them. Kathy has played so many roles where she shows off not only her comedic side, but as a person, there’s so much depth in the causes she cares about. Since she spends so much of her time on activism, it’s kind of that great duality. She brings so much to the roles.”

For her part, Najimy is thrilled to be a part of Saturday’s APO event. Each of APO’s shows are unique to their one evening, hand-crafted by Frazier to be eclectic, entertaining, musically invigorating, and fully adventurous. All the performers have a moment in the spotlight, culminating in a powerful all-hands-on-deck finale, and each APO show is calculated to evoke a wide range of emotional responses — from boisterous laughter to some serious heartstring-tugging.

“Every single APO show is original,” says Frazier. “We create them. They’ve never been done before. They’re never performed again. It’s one night. It’s a special event. That’s what makes us unique.”

Najimy, for her part, is up for the challenge. “I did a lot of musicals growing up — I did a lot in community theater,” she says. “I sung badly on purpose in Sister Act. And I sang backup for Bette in Hocus Pocus. But none of it was solo performer singing.”

Najimy, whose current projects include producing a documentary exploring why more than 50% of white women voted for Donald Trump, plans to incorporate some of her ideologies into the evening, but she won’t go into specifics. “I have about three songs,” she says, “and before each song, I’m going to talk a little bit about — not in a serious way — just where we are, that we’re in D.C., and how close we are to the haunted house. And also how much women have come forward and made strides in the [House] last year, which is really heartening.

“Of course,” she adds, “I would have liked for us to take the Senate as well.”

METRO WEEKLY: You are a well-known, amazing advocate for many issues, but specifically, with regard to the LGBTQ community, you took a stance for us as a celebrity long before many others. You were one of the first. And I think that’s remarkable. You didn’t have to do that. So the obvious question is, why?

KATHY NAJIMY: Well, I’ll tell you. I’m a feminist. And as a feminist, I believe in equal rights, equality, and justice for all people. So when there is a community of people who are being treated less than citizens because of who they love, that makes no sense to me. I believe everybody has the ability to love anybody. And I feel like there’s a spectrum between one and a hundred and we all fit somewhere there. Love is love, you know? And I believe that with all my heart. So I thought it was very unjust when I was a young activist in the ’70s and ’80s that anybody would be persecuted. That made no sense to me. I was happy to — and honored — to help any way that I could.

Also, in the ’80s, I was in college when the AIDS epidemic came to light. I’ve been sort of an ambassador for people with AIDS for many, many years. AIDS is the only disease where the people who have it are persecuted. If you have any other major disease, you’re surrounded by love and doctors wanting to help. People with AIDS not only had found themselves with a life-threatening disease, but also with no support. And that broke my heart.

MW: It’s different now, though.

NAJIMY: Different, yes. But when we needed it not to be different, it wasn’t. I mean, there’s a lot of people living healthy lives with HIV/AIDS now, thank goodness, but we lost way too many for no reason other than homophobia and hate.

MW: Did you at all worry at all about what your outspokenness, especially in the early years, might do to your career?

NAJIMY: Oh, it certainly has harmed my career, but I don’t care at all. I am an activist and human person first. Business is not everything, it’s not my life. There were certainly people — agents and such — who said if you speak out about this, then these people won’t cast you. And I said I respect their choice not to cast me. That is their choice and that’s fine. I don’t wish to be cast by them. And I respect my choice to be an advocate and to speak out and do one of the things in my life that is most precious to me.

Certainly, there have been studios that have asked me not to talk about radical notions. It’s their right to ask me and my right to decide to. You should hear some of the requirements they make. But isn’t it great to be a troublemaker? [Laughs.] It’s so sexy! I love it.

MW: You’re definitely my kind of troublemaker. We live in a country founded on different points of view. Yet, I often find myself feeling the opposing point of view is wrong.

NAJIMY: Yeah, but I respect their right to say it. I fight for their right to say what I don’t believe in. I don’t fight for their right to legislate against human conditions and human choices. But freedom of speech is freedom of speech, and we all don’t have the same opinions.

MW: I look over your career and think how marvelous it’s been so far. One of my favorite shows you did was King of the Hill. Peggy Hill was just such a rich, full-bodied animated character, largely through your interpretation of her. The show poked fun at conservative values, but not in a mean way — it was more instructive. Mike Judge found a way to appeal to both liberals and conservatives and provide insights.

NAJIMY: I’ve got to tell you — I’ve been on a lot of jobs and my thirteen seasons on King of the Hill were among my favorite. It’s really hard to find integrity like that. Every single Monday on our doorstep came a script that was just so funny and so relevant and so brave. I loved the writing on King of the Hill. I also liked that it was very collaborative — we weren’t separate from the writers. We were all at the table read together. We all got to put in our point of view. It was very respectful of the actors and what we wanted to bring to the characters. There was no preciousness about anything. And, to tell the truth, the greatest part is that there was no hair, no makeup, no line memorizing, no 6 a.m. calls. No wardrobe fittings. You just showed up for a couple of hours and recorded. It’s something I’m so proud of — I love King of the Hill. Every moment of it was just a joy and I’m a complainer, so there you go.

Najimy

MW: One of your biggest hits was Hocus Pocus, which just celebrated its 25th Anniversary. Disney made a big deal about it. Can you briefly talk about your experience making it?

NAJIMY: I’ve made 30 films, and you never know which ones are going to stick, which ones are going to become really popular. You just sort of make them. So the experience of it was only very singular to me because I had been a huge fan — like a crazy sycophant fan — of Bette Midler’s growing up.

I had all of her posters. I had all of her records. I had several incidents where I would run backstage at the Hollywood Bowl with guards running after me, and opening all the rooms until I found her in the room. I had one where I found where she lived in New York, when I visited New York in the ’70s, and left a message with her housekeeper. I even had one where I sang to her.

MW: That’s something.

NAJIMY: Well, I worked for a singing telegram company in San Diego. So my boyfriend at the time, Greg Barnes, who is now a big fancy Broadway costume designer, had designed costumes for a junior theater’s Alice in Wonderland. He gave me the “I’m late, I’m late” bunny costume. We took the bus up the Hollywood Bowl where Bette was performing and I pretended to the officials that I had a singing telegram for her after the show. But it really was just from me.

So, I hopped backstage, and in all these pseudo-celebrities were in Bette’s room surrounding her. And I sang a song and handed her the telegram that said, “From Kathy.” And she said, “Kathy? Kathy who?” And I said, “I don’t know, but I love you, too!” And I hopped out and fainted.

So for all of those experiences, plus more that we can’t go into today, getting a call from Jeffrey Katzenberg, after I did Sister Act, who said, “I want to offer you a role in a movie called Hocus Pocus to play Bette Midler’s sister” — that was really a full fate turnaround. An interesting highlight of my life.

MW: Did you ever reveal to Bette that the singing bunny was you?

NAJIMY: I didn’t want to freak her out, so I would slowly let her know things. Like, “Oh, you wore those shoes in Chicago in March of ’78. No, no, you didn’t sing that at that concert. You sang this other song.” She would always sort of look at me side-eyed until one day I said, “Remember that girl who ran backstage and got pulled off by the guards?” And she said, “Yes.” I go, “And then, remember that bunny?” And she said, “Yes.” I said, “Well, I’m the bunny.”

MW: What did she say?

NAJIMY: I think it was just a very slow sort of like, “Oh God, I’m making a movie with a crazy person” into very good castmates and friends.

MW: What was it like working with her?

NAJIMY: It was great. She’s tough and she knows what she wants, and so am I, and there was a lot involved in Hocus Pocus. There was dancing and singing and children and animals, and I mean, it was just flying, it was a lot, but it didn’t do well the first weekend. It didn’t do well at all. It just took years and years, and slowly started building an audience, generation after generation.

MW: And now it’s a phenomenon.

NAJIMY: Who knew?

MW: I will often ask this question of straight actors we speak with: Do you remember the first time someone came out to you, and what was your response?

NAJIMY: You know, I think one reason that I am effortlessly an ally of the gay community, besides my political views, is that in community theater, you’re usually surrounded by a lot of gay men. Those were the guys I hung out with, those were my friends. So being a part of the gay community was seamless for me. All my friends came out to me. In fact, straight married men now will come out to me. I’m a gay magnet. People who want to be gay will come out to me.

Also, I have to say something about being straight-identified by being married — I do believe that there is a spectrum. A lot of people don’t agree, but I believe there’s a spectrum between one and a hundred. And I don’t believe anybody is anything. I believe we have the ability to love who we choose, when we choose, and how we choose. And so, I think sometimes, straight people have to act straighter than they are because they’re afraid of political homophobia. And gay people need to be really rooted in gayness because it’s been taken away for so long. When something is beyond your reach, and then it is in your reach, you really root down hard.

MW: It’s more relevant today with the current administration. It’s scary.

NAJIMY: I’m scared. I’m scared-scared. The loss of Democracy is earth-shattering.

MW: But what do we do? How do we wake up from this? I’m looking to you for all the answers.

NAJIMY: I’ll tell you exactly what I think we should do. I think the reason that Trump is the President — God, I’ve never said that sentence before, that’s eerie — I think that the reason he won is because the Democratic Party and the Liberals were split. And I think we lost a lot with the anti-Hillary people. I was a Hillary devotee — I was actually a speaker for her. I would go and speak where she couldn’t. That was such an honor.

But I feel like the split, which I think is because of misogyny, led to Donald Trump’s win. I think whoever wins the Democratic nomination, whoever it is, we must wholeheartedly rally around that person. We must forget our differences of who our favorites were, because now this is serious business. Donald Trump is President. We can’t pussyfoot around anymore. We can’t go, “Oh, I don’t like him or I don’t like her.” Too f-ing bad. We have Donald Trump. That’s our alternative.

I was at the Tribeca Film Festival’s events and someone asked who do you want and I went, “Whoever is going to be the candidate, that’s who I want.” And that’s who we all should want. We have to all want the same person — any sort of a compassionate thinking person. Or else we’ll have another four years of Trump. So, you know, I’m going to rally around 100 percent, heart and soul, with whomever wins the nomination.

Now, I know who I would like to be nominated, but if that doesn’t happen, I’m not going to split the vote. I’m not going to not vote. I’ll just support that person, because we don’t have a choice anymore. We’re losing our rights — women are losing their right to reproductive choice. There’s many states in the middle of the country where there are no reproductive rights now. It’s happening. It’s real.

MW: It’s horrible.

NAJIMY: Oh, it’s horrible racism. It’s horrible misogyny. It’s horrible homophobia. It’s horrible everything. It’s anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-any kind of a brain. It’s really bad. And lives are being lost and Trump is making decisions that will affect our children’s children. There won’t be a planet. So, whoever is the nominee, that’s who I’m going to wave my flag for. Anybody but him.

MW: Who would be on your dream ticket, though? We’ve got so many amazing choices out there now. It’s an amazing field in many respects.

NAJIMY: Who would I pick? Well, I want Hillary. But if I can’t have Hillary, I love Kamala Harris. But honestly, it doesn’t matter to me. Anybody but Trump.

God, it’s so hard, because I don’t know enough yet. Honestly, I’m not being coy because, obviously, I say what I think, but I haven’t quite heard enough to claim my stake yet. I would love for it to be a woman. It’s time for it to be a woman, but I want whoever will win.

MW: You’re currently producing a documentary about the 53% of white women who voted for Trump in 2016.

NAJIMY: I am. At the end of this month, we’re going to do our first three days [of shooting]. They’re the most important equation in the nightmare of the last two years. We can’t dismiss them — they’re either women who voted for Obama, or didn’t vote at all, who, in 2016, voted for Donald Trump. So we need to honor them and find out why and what, and understand it, so it doesn’t happen again.

MW: It is a very perplexing statistic. We’re all like, “How could any woman vote for him?”

NAJIMY: Every one of us producers [of the documentary] has a different theory. My theory is that it is because of self-misogyny. When you’re taught that you’re not worthy — that you’re not worth as much [as men] — it seeps into your great-grandmother, and then down to your grandmother, and less to your mother, and less to you, but it’s still there. And if you think you aren’t worth as much, you’re not going to vote for someone that you think isn’t worthy.

Other people think differently. Gloria [Steinem] thinks it’s because they vote the party line of their husband. I mean, we all have a different idea. The truth is that none of us can put words in their mouth. We need to really find out and ask them and understand, so that we can move past this crazy nightmare.

MW: I want to bring it back to activism. What is the importance of activism to you and why should we all remain vigilant?

NAJIMY: There have always been activists and nonactivists, but at this point, there really is no choice. We know that, every day, we’re waking up, and not only are opinions changing, but laws are changing — laws that govern us and our daughters and sons. If you have any interest in the future beyond a year from now, just with climate change….

I mean, I’m so inspired by today’s high school students. This one girl that had just gotten an award here in New York said, “I take every Friday off and go sit in front of the UN.” And they said, “Do your parents mind that you aren’t going to school that day?” And she said, “No, they understand. If I’m not an activist today, I won’t have a future.”

The kinds of adjustments that are being made that affect our whole lives are devastating changes. I understand that everybody’s different. I don’t require everybody to be the same, but what I do require is that you open the paper and look on the internet and turn on the news, and see how, every single day, this isn’t just happening. It was planned, and it is dangerous, and we are going to find ourselves in the same position as in The Handmaid’s Tale.

Things are going to change in a way that you can’t imagine, because we’re ignoring and saying, “Well, I’m not a political person,” or, “It doesn’t affect me,” or, “It’s too hard.” And I get that it’s too hard. It’s too hard for me. I get that it’s scary. It’s too scary for me. Nobody wants to do this. We all thought it would be Hillary, and we’d be swimming in a lake and having picnics. But it’s real and it affects everyone, you and your kids, your nieces, your nephews, and just the future in general, people you’re not even related to. It’s the future of humanity. Democracy is being systemically [dismantled]. All the bolts are being loosened, all of them.

We can’t be sure what they’re finding out about Donald Trump. We don’t know how he got to be president. I mean, how many presidents have had 17,000 investigations about them being crooked? I mean, there was Nixon, and a couple more, and certainly, first of all, I don’t care what presidents have affairs with who. That’s a personal choice between them and their wife or their husband. That is none of my business, and I don’t judge somebody on what they do in their personal life. I judge them on how they protect and rule our country and sisterhood and brotherhood with the world, and this administration, more than any other administration — and there’s been some pretty sad ones — is boasting about the illegal-ness of their affairs. I mean, you can’t not pay attention this time.

MW: I have to bring up one final thing before you go. You made a guest appearance at Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend here in 2009. What do you remember about that experience?

NAJIMY: I remember that I was a little bit surprised about how very, very polite and well behaved every single person at that whole event was. I thought they were the sweetest, kindest, most considerate people. Not that I didn’t think they would be, but like it was very peaceful. It wasn’t very raucous, you know what I mean? Everyone was just really nice. The reason I was in D.C. was for the Obama Inauguration. And the excitement was in the air, you know? And then, of course, I went home with a couple of leather queens.

*Reposted interview article from the Metro Weekly by Randy Shulman on May 16, 2019