#the guy gave me 200 money and told me to go buy stuff and i got myself an axe and nothing else 💀 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

waitingformyfavoritesongs · 2 years ago

Text

13 Friday Jan u ary 2023 8:04 pm pdt

I’ve had a lot of stomachache and PAIN and diarrhea that smells like vinegar. If you ever used vinegar, you will probably experience some stuff deteriorated because of it... 😭😱😞😖🥵😤it gives me a lot of fear. He is 😖😭😖😭😖😭😖😭🥵😤🥵😤 really destroying me. I have no real reason to believe that it’s for any other purpose than to kill me. A lot of times my throat has been dry especially the last 2 years. He is making me drink 🍺 it I believe. Like a doll 🧸. A puppet. I believe that is how he has been breaking down my bones 🦴. Was that usher? Sang so many ways to love you ... break you down.. oh my gosh I’m so inlove you make me wanna say oh oh oh oh. Didn’t realize until last year how demonic it sounds. Incubus and him are friends, right? On the voice together? 8:13 pm pdt. I almost have no moment now. I used to hold it and procrastinate going to the bathroom 🚽. It’s been continuously coming many times this week. I had a small break when I moved a few days ago to a worse location, same place though. 8:17 pm pdt

8:40 pm pdt I’m afraid 😱 of my new location. Too much high powered fast velocity stuff acidic pee not feng shway. 8:43 pm pdt. Incubus I heard likes to fake out a lot. incubus has probably made my whole life complicated and difficult to make and keep friends, even with relatives. He made me think 💭 I did the worse things in the world 🌎 and deserving of condemnation? Suicide crossed my mind several times. I was too scared 😱 though to follow through. That I would do it wrong. I had tried to prepare for in case something happened to me: I tried to minimize paper 📄 and I scanned a lot. And ironically I think I lost all of it??? When I ran away more than a year ago. But now we moved back in with relatives and it’s difficult again. Movers basically swindled us these last 2 times we moved. I have already told my mom that the furniture 🪑 needs to be moved first. It didn’t happen. Everything is disorderly and furniture is piled on top of the other. I caught 4 movers, 2 on each occasion doing bad stuff: moving light weight empty containers instead of the furniture 🪑. I talked as kindly as I could to him telling him he needs to move the heavy stuff, and the previous movers did a similar thing and even moved my shoes 👟 so I had no shoes 👟 to wear and had to borrow from my aunt. My mom and aunt let them off the hook 🪝 and my mom paid $1000 the previous time which they charged us a lot for a moving truck 🛻 we didn’t need because we only moved downstairs 😑. I think it would have been nice if the movers could have had a procedure that helps all their clients such as moving furniture 🪑 first. I literally am living in a fire 🔥 and earthquake 🌍 hazard now. We have away a dining table and a tall ikea hermes? Dresser to them without seeing what happened in the new apartment. 9:01 pm pdt my aunt and cousin moved first days ago but seem to be too busy with work to help much. It would have been nice if cousin helped more than pack a few boxes 📦, we probably could have gave her more money 💰 if she helped more. I don’t know 🤷🏻‍♀️ her well unfortunately bcz relationships have always been difficult for me - probably bcz of my Saint Lucia /chavah/Jesus/ apocalypse desolation curse. Please read previous posts. 9:06 pm pdt. I guess in this life Adam is the new god and divorced eve bcz the previous god said eve is bad bcz she ate his fruit without his permission. So instead of sharing the consequences and being kicked out of eden, he divorced eve. 9:09 pm pdt

so much for in sickness and I’m health through thick and thin. I also bought a guitar 🎸 from a white guy prob in his mid 40s married and lived in a 2 story house in scotts valley . I paid $600 for it stupidly. I looked it up a few years ago, not BEFORE buying it, and found out it’s only worth $200. I relied on my mother’s boyfriend at the time he found it on Craigslist and I trusted him with everything. And then he tried to get me to spend more money 💰 on it at a store 🏬 that makes it’s own guitars 🎸. He also looked like a white guy. I used to think white guys were so attractive and wanted to date them. I have not yet met one to fall in love with. I’ve fallen for a half white guy, at least once, maybe 2 times the same guy, but we didn’t survive an argument? He was usually hard to get, too, but whenever we hung out I 98% ? Of the time enjoyed his company even (pain 😖🥵😤😭 hot acidic in flesh front again ) though we never kissed or did anything sexual with each other and I used to believe that he would eventually be my man. But there always seemed to be some other woman 👩🏻 more worth his time Bcz he didn’t make many plans with me ahead of time. Whenever it seemed he was pushing me away he said stuff like someday “you will have blonde babies” he said something like that. And when my first real boyfriend broke up 🆙 with me he said something like “you will meet a handsome blonde guy soon.” I think that’s what I recall. These 2 guys know each other and we all went to the same high school 🏫. Weird similar themes. Both these guys are half Asian half white, but both have brown eyes and black hair. 9:25 pm pdt.

10:54 pm pdt time goes by fast 💨 everyday... when did I do scanning of my documents ? I did it I think 🤔 2014? Or 2015? Until early 2017? And I think I was thinking 🤔 about suicide 2015? And I was watching Inuyasha on Hulu while feeling like my life was over. Some people even commit suicide over grades I heard many years ago? I really believe that there is no heaven, now. (Gurgle? 😞) 10:59 pm pdt. I’ve always had pain in my life since I was a kid 👧 from scratching myself in my sleep making myself bloody 🩸 and scabbed up 🆙 up and down both legs 🦵 and arms when I was 6 or 7 years old, irritable bowels, and chronic eczema from 7/8 years old forward, and then this chronic bone 🦴 and muscle and flesh and eyeballs 👀 pain from ≈July/august 2017; and also occasional? pain (including whole body pain at least once) from 3 seasons of running 🏃🏻‍♀️ sports in high school 🏫 and whole body aches that made it difficult to move and breathe 🧘🏻‍♀️ December? 2014, I think I also remember feeling like an old person in probably 2013? And after my parents separated my mom once commented that I look 👀 like a sick old woman 👵 and she said I should get a hair cut 💇🏻‍♂️. When I was very young maybe 6 or 7 years old my grandma 👵 on my dads side took my hair and with her fingers she made a snip snip gesture and said snip snip. I’m not close to any of my relatives. Even the ones we had visited many times in SoCal. 11:11 pm pdt I heard this evening something about ecstasy, interesting. I cannot see maryka’s Instagram anymore. My mom canceled the home 🏠 internet. and she blocked my friend on Instagram. 11:14 pm pdt.

12:15 am pdt 14 Jan u ary 2023 Saturday

(12:27/8 am pdt note 📝 for 12:15 spiky sharp acidic pain in anus when was in bathroom 🚽 )

incubus is faking us out as apocalypse pestilence and faking us out again as if it is not???? Incubus does not like. He got back what he wanted from us. He swindled us out of our strength by making us wait. He will never let us have a happy life. 12:18 am pdt he has no intentions of anything resolving. He probably only has intentions of letting cases become cold 🥶 and unsolved. And innocent men will die in prison. Some innocent men live half their life time in prison before found innocent??? Some men who rape and murdered women with children 👶 say about themselves that they are good people???? How do we (pain 😖😭😤😫😩) know what is true? They confuse me. I don’t know if I can even believe in myself bcz they mess with me all my life. Even football 🏈 players are strong 💪? And wear helmets ⛑? But still! Are very affected by body collisions in the sport. I read once that we are still very affected by concussions and maybe 🤔 they said (gurgling a minute ago 😞bad signs 🪧) 12:28 am pdt unfailing love of god .... kings will forfeit? Their crowns 😭🤕 surrender their crowns. 🎹 I was advised to give up 🆙 the case against the incubus and Sierra Lamar stuff in consequence goes with surrendering to incubus. Bcz incubus is bad and powerful like god and Merlin 🧙‍♂️ king of kings = lord/god? A happy king 🤴 he is. 😑😵 12:33 am pdt Jesus is king 🤴 Jesus is lord Jesus is worthy= stuff found online and then n songs. (Gurgling 😞) 12:34 am pdt expect only weakening and death ☠️ bcz Godzilla incubus is a double crosser. Crossing a line is double crossing your wife. Et cetera. My own family won’t 👂 hear me out when I talk about stuff related to incubus like back in 2015 one-of my cousins started talking online to a guy she didn’t know. They were on webcam but he was sorta hiding himself behind a hat 🧢. I wrote a letter trying to tell her some of my experience of chatting online with guys you don’t know and at least 1 out of 2 was a liar 🤥. Please read previous posts? I might have to write more here. 12:40 am pdt both my cousin and aunt deleted my letter without reading 📖 it. I suspected incubus sent them vibes ? To delete it. 12:41 am pdt 12:56 am pdt I sent it via Facebook.

2:03 am pdt I am completely in the dark, out of the loop 🔁 , not part of the incubus’ plan. This diarrhea is non stop 🛑.😖😭😞 clan not plan. 2:05 am pdt

2:21 am pdt incubus will use the softness of your heart ♥️ to lie to you. He is cunning and conniving? His lies have no boundaries. It’s a trap 🪤. 2:22 am pdt

2:24 am pdt in the apocalypse the whore of Babylon falls. He will rob me of my legs 🦵. 2:25 am pdt he has been giving signs 🪧.

2:29 am pdt we are all connected in a circle ⭕️? A hoop ? That never ends?? 🎶🎼🎵There’s probably an end. Dominos?? There’s a very loud thunderous sound been going all night. I cannot believe no one has complained. It’s the second? Time I heard 👂 it. It’s eerie and frightening. Everything and everyone is strange. God is a grater? Beer is good??? People are crazy. 🎶🎼🎵. Gurgling 😞2:35 am pdt

2:44 am pdt incubus wants me scared 😱 of everything. And doesn’t like it when I write ✍️ type or talk. He makes me feel guilt about everything. He gave signs 🪧 he might throw a car 🚗 at me, make a train �� derail if I ride it, but he’s eating 🍽 away at all the hard materials in my bones 🦴 with vinegar and fire 🔥... lake of fire 🔥. I’m not 23, (but sumner is???) and I’m probably in the verge of spontaneous combustion woe is me 🎵🎼🎶😞 hans Christian Anderson?? Little mermaid 🧜‍♀️. Anderson elementary school 🏫. Everything has been decided before conception. Aries ♈️ ram 🐏 = Japanese 🇯🇵 “r” pronunciation like “L”. Sacrificial lamb 🐑 of Abel. Anne ? Or Anna? Was virgin Mary’s mother’s name I learned last year I think 🤔. My mom’s name is Annabel. And virtu is part of my grandmas maiden name. A lot of psychology to keep me quiet? 🤐 or to keep other sacrificial lambs quiet and complacent? As they weaken. Song of Christians Jesus is defender of the weak. 🎶🎼🎵😞 my middle name is my mom’s maiden name which is like nature’s bathtub 🛁. 2:54 am pdt in the apocalypse it tricks you into thinking rams will be saved when they aren’t. In my dads old dictionary it says goats 🐐 mean lecherous man 👨. Today it means greatest of all time. So I’ve been tricked. And so have many others. 2:56 am pdt god is incubus to Virgin Mary . Incubus is lecherous rapist murderer pestilence. God likes things the way they are, status quo. He prefers white peoples over Philippinos and Asians, but he needs only some of them. During COVID disproportionately??? More philippinos have died in California??? Was it? Sam Diego article. 2:59 am pdt incubus does not prefer Filipino but he will use them so he will make them pay 💰 high prices for concert tickets 🎫 probably when they are still relatively third world 🌎 country? Last time I went you still have to bring your own toilet paper 🧻 with you even at the nice new mall, and he will tell them sweet NOTHINGS. 3:01 am pdt

3:07 am pdt I don’t know much about the Philippines 🇵🇭 they have a lot more conveniences now, but it still in some way retains a sort of third world 🌎 feel? There a lot of dirt roads still, maybe shacks? I’m not sure now. More reading 📖 to do if this diarrhea ever stops. I’m pushing my luck now. 3:10 am pdt haughty? unfortunately?. 😞 3:10 am pdt

3:31 am pdt 3:33 am pdt he did it again to the time. Skipped a minute. Please read previous posts and watch his music videos. You will see why I believe this. 3:34 am pdt

3:37 am pdt can a rose 🌹 rose 🥀 by any other name smell 👃 Hana as sweet? ... Juliet is in the east, and Juliet is the sun 🌞 ouch hot 🥵 don’t want to be the sun ☀️ 😭😰 Susanna ... su... close. I can not trust anyone yet I’m typing 💬 all this. 3:41 ehi = pee. Everything is a con I don’t like it 😭😖😭 3:42 am pdt too big = water 💦. 3:43 am pdt gurgled 🥺😞😖😭 it won’t stop! 🛑 3:43 am pdt 3:45 am pdt god = pain.

3:52 am pdt I feel sorrow. I have had a lonely bitter painful life. It will never get better, I will never be well. If I do have a biological child s/he will probably be sacrificed very soon. I anticipate nothing good from those fiends. 3:54 am pdt 3:56 am pdt that or they have actors pretending. They are always pretending. I hate it. Making me believe this then trying to make me believe that. I’m tired. Extremely disappointed that I feel it the sorrow. 😭. I at some point in my life I was afraid to be alone like dad. So I tried too hard to like som people. Some people I think I start liking them and then my feelings changed to the point of feeling sick 🤒🤕😵 when I try to like them again. 4:01 am pdt

4:43 4:44 am pdt also bcz of all my problems I rarely wear makeup 💄. So maroon 5 sugar is not a romantic song 🎵 for me. 4:45 am pdt in the beginning I think incubus tried to trick me , 2017, and sorta when it came out with the music video bcz my dads bday is around the day that’s printed at the beginning of the music video gurgled I’m doomed. I’m not okay! Either. 😵 4:47 am pdt

5:11 am pdt this vinegar they keep putting in me is probably not good for all parts of the body. I anticipate dying soon 🔜. 5:12 am pdt

5:12 am pdt there was a time in my life I really wanted a best friend. Someone once kept telling me we were best friends but I could not consistently reciprocate the feelings. When she said it though I don’t think we hung out that much. I m not sure if she was being honest anymore at that time. She had a lot of friends. There was one woman she seemed very affectionate 🤗 to and she seemed to reciprocate without being lesbians but close? I guess? A lot of best friends are probably like that without crossing that line. And then she found a new woman 👩🏻 to hang out with, then that friend of hers confided in me and another that she felt she was being shut out and what she should do. All I could think of saying was maybe it is time to hang out with more people. 😬😵 feelings are fickle. Unfortunately. And later on the other woman told me that she Had started dating that woman. So essentially, she probably was being shut out, a third wheeler she became. 5:20 am pdt.

5:45 am pdt b4 that woman tried her new lesbian relationship, we had both expressed interest in the same guy. We at the time 5:56 am pdt

5:58 am pdt I don’t trust a lot of people now . I don’t trust people I don’t know 🤷🏻‍♀️ and that’s basically everyone now. Trust is earned. 😞 sometimes I want to trust but if I see something feel something experienced something then, you know. Maybe 🤔 my flaw was I trusted the wrong people too easily. 6:01 am pdt continued: we didn’t tell one another to back off. But I didn’t exactly stand in her way if she wanted to take a picture with him, I let her, we took turns. Then she says she wants to do an artsy company with another guy 😭 and that’s how I ended up 🆙 with Sagittarius ♐️ incubus’ friend Scott (gurgled). 6:04 am pdt

6:21 am pdt I told her we had s*x (gurgled & heard 👂) 6:23 #3

10:25 pm pdt god enlightens who he wants to enlighten. God gives strength to who he wants. God gives and takes away. Nothing is impossible with god. If you know, you know. Sometimes? You don’t know until it’s too late. A lot of movies/tv shows back in the day used to have stuff in it such as a line that sounded like “now that I’ve told now I have to kill you” #3 gurgle 😵 10:29 pm pdt

0 notes

sarahlynnirl · 4 years ago

Text

Losing my best friend - Sugar Daddy culture is not empowering

I finally feel strong enough to talk about this and hopefully get some love, support, and reassurance from other women who agree that this is fucked up. I’ve never been “terfy on main” before so here goes. (TW child abuse + SA but no graphic descriptions of SA)

My mother is a narcissist who financially and emotionally abused my father and myself, with some additional physical abuse of me, for as long as I can remember. My dad made plenty of money but my mom controlled it all and made sure it didn’t go towards anything for me beyond the bare minimum required not to look obviously guilty of child abuse and neglect. I met Kiara (not her real name) when I was a junior in highschool and she was a freshman. Her mom was a single Korean woman doing her best to support Kiara and her 2 sisters while also running a Korean restaurant. My first jobs were a summer camp counselor and fitting room attendant at Forever 21. I would spend the last scraps of my paycheck making sure Kiara was able to order a full meal when our friends went out to dinner, buying her little gifts, and generally trying to keep us both as happy and healthy as possible.

When Kiara graduated highschool her mom drove her into Koreatown New Jersey, got her a room in the apartment of an acquaintance, and basically left her to fend for herself. Kiara spoke barely any Korean. She began working at a Korean salon where she met Ariana (not her real name). She had a NY cosmetology license, not an NJ one, while Ariana was an illegal immigrant from Korea so they were both overworked, underpaid, forced to work overtime, paid under minimum wage, and deprived of their tips. They couldn’t report or complain about this since they were both working illegally.

Kiara had to pay rent for the one room she occupied despite her land lady yelling at her, walking into her room while she slept, banning her from having friends over, and reporting to her mom if she spoke to a guy on the phone or a guy dropped her off. I was working at a restaurant in my college town on top of my classes and doing my best to keep surprising her with little gifts, but neither of us had enough disposable income to afford to visit each other. This was really difficult for me as she was my favorite person in the world and I was used to spending every second with her when we both lived in upstate NY. Ariana got them both to start using SeekingArrangement for one time meet ups with Sugar Daddies where they were paid anywhere from $200-2000 for sex. “The first time I ever did it I walked out of the hotel and just screamed because I was so disgusted and I was thinking about his wrinkly skin touching mine and all I wanted to do was get in the shower and scrub it off but I had $1000 cash in my hand for a couple hours of work which was so crazy and kinda made it all worth it ya know?” - Ariana to me

I was immediately skeptical and a little grossed out but Kiara genuinely seemed happier. She was buying new clothes for herself, ordering food to the apartment when she was hungry, and taking trips into NYC to have fun with Ariana and her friends. By the beginning of the summer of 2019, Kiara had found the Sugar Daddy who she would establish a long term agreement with and who ultimately ended up completely supporting her. I’m not going to say his name here but if people want to know it just ask, I am willing to share. He moved her into a much nicer much bigger apartment with Ariana as her roommate. He paid for me to fly up and visit her, and all of our activities during this vacation. I’m so sorry I’m so sorry I’m so sorry. I wish I shoved the money back in her hand before it was too late, I wish I worked harder and longer hours and got us an apartment in Florida and paid both of our rent. I’m so fucking sorry I didn’t listen to my instincts and allowed her to brush off my concerns. It was the most freedom we had ever had, I ran around NYC by myself while she was at work, and my ex took the bus to NJ from upstate NY and joined us for a few days. I feel so selfish but I also didn’t know how bad things would get.

One night Kiara and I went to NYC for dinner with her SD and she took the bus back to the apartment because she had to work early the next morning. It made sense for me to stay in the city because I was supposed to visit my friend at NYU the next morning. In the Uber to his apartment alone with him he was drunk and high and I very clearly looked scared shitless. At this point she was 19 (but she had looked that way since age 17 and I doubt he would have minded if she was lying about her age), I was 21 and he was 44. He seemed offended by my discomfort and was basically like “jeez relax I’m not gonna touch you, I really care about Kiara I think she’s so amazing, just go to the guest room and sleep, make a left to walk to NYU when you wake up.” I peaced the fuck out of there early the next morning.

After that summer Kiara and Ariana quit their jobs at the Korean salon and sugaring became their sole incomes. Ariana was still doing one time meet ups, not nearly as financially stable as Kiara, and got herself into a lot of credit card debt that to my knowledge she’s still in. At this point Kiara was flying down and staying with me in Florida so often that people at my college thought she went there too. I also wasn’t working at this point because college had gotten harder and my ex was fucking up my mental health real bad. He had given me a coke problem and Kiara sending me “grocery money” was enabling me to continue. I wasn’t honest with her about where all the money was going. During Halloween week we didn’t know that she couldn’t just snort molly (MDMA) with the frequency I was doing coke, she ODed, my guy best friend took us to the ER, it was so fucking scary, she got IV fluids for 2 hours and made a full recovery, she stopped doing molly, I kept doing coke. I’m so sorry :(

In November her SD paid for us to take a trip to Cancun Mexico. He was with us for the first part of the trip and this is where things started to get really bad. He tried to be my friend and act the way a boyfriend of my best friend who was my age would, but it was creepy and wrong and I was so uncomfortable. He asked about my drug use in a way that was gross and shamey and basically him seeing me as the “coke whore” stereotype...while continuing to buy me more coke. He also brought and gave us ecstasy pills. He asked really invasive questions about my relationship with my ex, why I stayed, my sex life, etc. It felt like an uncle asking me these questions, I did NOT wanna talk about any of this with him. But from what I did say it was very clear to someone with 44 years of life experience that I had an abusive mother, an addictive personality, and was in an unhealthy relationship. He offered to set me up with an SD friend of his looking for a sugar baby. I of course declined because I always knew this was a boundary I wasn’t willing to cross. No matter how bad my addictions got I would NOT give up that piece of myself in return for money.

In this part of Mexico, drugs that were only given with a prescription in the US were available over the counter. Kiara and I got a little box of 1mg Xanax with my money. My ex had given us Xanax a couple times in NY and we had fun with it, but at this point in time we did NOT have a problem with it. We had bought one bar, broken it in half, and each took half one night of Halloween week and called it “xanpires”, but this wasn’t something we were scripted or buying regularly from plugs. We went to dinner with her SD, we got up to go to the bathroom, and she immediately slipped and hit the ground. I was like woah did you take one of the xans and forget? Because we were supposed to tell each other if we were taking one so we could look out for each other. I was never mad at her! I never wanted money from her! I was just a little concerned, and once I determined that she was safe we thought it was kinda funny that she had taken a xan without realizing and started joking around about it. Her SD of course didn’t understand how a 19 year old and 21 year old girl joke with each other because he was a creepy old man, decided that we were “arguing”, and got up from the restaurant, walked across the street, bought a 90 count bottle of 2mg xans and gave it to me. This was honestly the most irresponsible way someone has ever treated me in my life, and this is coming from someone with an abusive and neglectful parent. Google “benzo withdrawal” if you’re not familiar with it.

We went to a different hotel, and Kiara and I both took xans and blacked out. I passed out on the guest bed, while Kiara was awake but in a conscious blackout. I woke up on the couch on the balcony (which was fine, it was comfy and I saw the sunrise over the beach. The gross part was that meant her SD had picked me up, put his hands on my body while I was unconscious and carried me out there). I remembered that at one point I had woken up, wanted to go to the bathroom or get something from inside, caught a glimpse of what I thought was them having sex, and went back outside. I mentioned it to Kiara and she had no memory of it whatsoever, she thought all she had done was gone to sleep. She was rightfully pissed the fuck off that her SD had taken advantage and done things with her while she was blacked, screamed at him, he gave us a half ass apology, and bought us more stuff (buying our silence). He finally flew home and we got to enjoy the trip with just each other, but I was careless with the dosage of a drug called tramadol, and I ODed with my head in her lap...I’m sorry. When I woke up I was hallucinating, hearing voices, crying hysterically and terrified. Kiara called my ex who asked how many mg I took, told us I was 100mg short of the amount that would require medical attention, made me laugh, and told me to go to sleep. I recognize how scary and unfair to her this was and I really do take responsibility for my actions. The day I was supposed to leave I did ecstasy, hooked up with a guy from Canada, and tried to skip my flight. She was mad because like yeah what the fuck. She got me on the flight, the ecstasy comedown hit, and there’s pictures of me crying in the airport because I hated when we fought.

I was supposed to stop in Miami, then fly back to my college town but while in Miami I texted my granny that I was “sad and really didn’t feel good and could she and my uncle visit me at the airport and bring my uncles dog?”. Her parenting instincts went off that something was very wrong, made me skip the flight, picked me up from the airport and took me to her house where I immediately threw up and ran an extremely high fever that night. She said it was one of the scariest nights of her life and she kept checking on me to see if I needed to go to the hospital. She drove me back to my college town where my guy best friend took me to the ER and it came out that Kiaras SD, in addition to giving me drugs, had also allowed me to drink Mexican tap water throughout the entire trip. I was treated for that + given chlamydia meds just in case since I’d had unprotected sex in a foreign country. I was fine, promised to do better, Kiara forgave me, things started to go back to normal. Except I had begun taking Xanax daily to deal with the anxiety of the illness...and she had a trip to Bali planned.

During that trip things managed to get even worse. She was there with her SD and another Korean friend and her SD was pressuring her and guilting her into sex, isolating her from her friend, going through her phone, and becoming extremely aggressive. She would call me crying and having panic attacks and I would walk out of class to try to comfort her over FaceTime. She did not have panic attacks before this trip. She begged to go home early because something was very wrong but he said it was a waste of money and kept her in Bali until the planned end of the trip. I think it was almost a month. She sent me a recording she secretly took of him screaming at her and her saying “don’t touch me, don’t grab me like that, leave me alone”. When she got back to the US I was begging her to stop. I was so worried for her safety. I said the money wasn’t worth it, we’ll get jobs, please just stop. I’m pretty sure he read those messages. We also had a suspicion that he had installed spyware on her phone but were never able to prove it. At this point I also reached out to my dad for help and his response was basically “I don’t care, not my problem, focus on school”. I reached out to my granny who absolutely cared, but her response was “I’m sorry but I can’t afford to support her, I have to focus on taking care of you, if she won’t stop this you’ll have to stop being friends with her”.

I went home to New York for winter break, suffered through my first round of Xanax withdrawal and was truly trying to get better but my ex manipulated his was back in my life and got me addicted again....but now this bottle of 90 had run out. I went back to my college town, got scripted, and was copping street bars when my script inevitably ran out early. What comes next is blurry for obvious reasons. We moved to the town in Florida my granny lived in and got an apartment together. The female friends she made in our town (my current home) she got most of them into sugaring and using SeekingArrangement. Things deteriorated super fast at this point. I was struggling hard, failing my online classes, and eventually got completely financially cut off by my parents. My granny was paying my half of the rent and my puppy’s vet bills but I was too embarrassed to admit I couldn’t afford groceries. Kiara was pressuring me hard to go on SeekingArrangement but I still refused. I would sit on the floor of the bathroom in a towel after I showered and just cry because the steam made me nauseous and dizzy since I wasn’t eating.

I met my current boyfriend and something just started to click: I didn’t wanna live like this anymore. The mom of a friend from this town who also refuses to sugar landed me an interview at the gym I currently work at, I fought for the job, and I got it. Now I knew I didn’t wanna be completely fucked up all the time anymore but I was still doing enough Xanax to keep me out of withdrawal. The 2mg that had blacked me out at the beginning were now just barely enough to keep me functional. Kiara and I were fighting frequently and bad by this time. She and her partner in sugaring, Mena (not her real name but pretty close to it, fuck this bitch fr) were expecting me to keep how they made their money a secret....from friends and guys that I saw every single day. They both very obviously did not work and were flexing new cars, designer clothes, and cash all over their social media. Kiara thought she could cover her ass by saying she dealt drugs but it was also obvious that she wasn’t putting the time into that to come up with the amount of money she had. The only one dealing drugs was me, and not enough to do anything flashy, just enough that in addition to my work money I was usually getting enough to eat. But there were still some times when the previous weeks paycheck had run out and I was having my first meal of the day at 3pm after someone had bought adderall from me. We had our serious serious fight where she threw my stuff in the lawn and I lived with my current boyfriend full time for about a couple weeks since my bedroom at my granny’s was getting refloored when this happened.

By January 20th he was concerned by my Xanax problem and wanted me to seriously try to stop. At the time I started tapering because I wanted the girlfriend title but I’m forever grateful for him giving me a reason, even if it was a shallow one, because I just needed to START. We tried to reconcile once, despite boyfriend and guy best friend begging me not to, and of course the same problems reappeared, we had another serious fight and haven’t spoken since.

Now the fog is clearing and today I’m 96 days clean of xanax, 16 days clean of all benzos, and 19 days clean of gabapentin (what was keeping me from having a seizure while quitting benzos). But it’s hard because being out of the fog means feeling all of my emotions, even the really bad ones. This past week I’ve been waking up and crying sitting in front of my mirror trying to put my makeup on for work and it just drips right off and I have to start over. She was my best friend for 8 years. My favorite person. My partner in life. I loved her more than anyone.

My boyfriend and guy best friend are pretty uncomfortable when they hear someone express an opinion of me that’s “Kiara’s side of the story” and I don’t correct it. Both of them saw exactly how bad it got near the very end and don’t get why I don’t defend myself more or tell people about her letting my dog eat dab (THC) wax while she was supposed to be watching her and having to be rushed to the animal hospital TWO separate times. (She’s a Pomeranian and the highly concentrated THC was super dangerous to her tiny little body). Yelling at me and giving me the silent treatment because less than 48 hours after my SA she expected me to drive her to a hair appointment in Miami and I woke up late and didn’t get her there on time with traffic. Me begging her to be there for me when it felt like everything was falling apart and I self harmed for the first time and her leaving me to go on a vacation to Orlando with a girl we didn’t even really like. Me not wanting to sleep in the apartment alone after my SA and her not letting me sleep in her bed anymore, her and Mena just dumping me at the neighbor’s so they could continue to sugar, party, and see guys our age at night (this sounds super awful but neighbors roommate —> current boyfriend. He kept me safe until I felt better, was really sweet and careful, and I was the one to make the first move). There’s more but I really don’t like talking about it, after the abuse she went through and I assume is still going through, I expect her to be pretty damaged and not have it in her to treat people right all the time. Not exposing every bad thing she’s ever done to all our mutual friends and acquaintances is kind of my last gift to her.

I also admit that sugaring wasn’t responsible for everything that went wrong. Loving an addict is difficult and exhausting and I went through it myself with my ex. I was also out bi and she was “probably straight, maybe a little bi-curious” in her words. But when she was drunk or on Xanax she’d kiss me first...we had done more than kiss but only during 3somes with a guy. I don’t know, I think I loved her more than I was supposed to and some of the stuff she’d say made me think she saw me in a way she really didn’t. When we first moved to this town I had a thing with a girl and expected it to be no big deal but things here were different than up north. I got called the d slur for the first time by someone who wasn’t joking. It was like getting slapped I was so shocked and hurt, I truly didn’t think that happened anymore. I think she saw what happened to me and kinda closed off that part of herself because she didn’t wanna experience that herself. She stopped making out with me at bars and parties after that and it made me sad and maybe a little jealous. But I really do blame her SD for basically “breaking her”, for handing me that first bottle of free Xanax, for a lot of other little things that I can’t possibly include because this is already way too long. This is my first time even saying this much. Feel free to add your own experiences or thoughts on this or anything you’d like. [I’m prepared to get death threats or called a SWERF or whatever but I don’t care, now that I started talking about this I’m not going to stop.]

#terf safe #terfs please touch #terfs please interact #radfem #radical feminists please touch #radical feminst #radical feminism #terf #swerfs please interact #swerf #anti prostitution #addiction #recovery #terfs do touch #sugardadddy

73 notes · View notes

sorry-i-ship-drarry · 3 years ago

Text

37. You're my home, draco

" well that's not my problem harry, is it ? If you can't fucking do one thing on your own that's your damn fault " draco yelled from across the kitchen at harry who was standing in the middle of the living room looking agitated

" I do things on my own. It's that you are the one who keeps thing's in the house, not me and if you're not responsible enough for it just say it " harry yelled back.

Furiously draco stomped out of the kitchen " responsible? So this is your house when it's about the house lease and paper's and suddenly when it comes to keeping thing's, it's mine. When was the last time you were responsible enough to keep things in the right place on your own? If for once you could fold your own clothes or do your own laundry or maybe just not fucking throw things anywhere you want to, so I'd pick up then maybe, Maybe for once you wouldn't have to ask me where your shit is !! It's not just my own responsibilities " draco yelled at harry face talking off the apron off his waist

" you know what you are right, I'll do my damn shit on my own Because you're fucking irresponsible with whatever you do. After all why would you understand the load of work I have to do each day, going after the bad guys.. if even for one day you'd go things I do then you'd understand where I'm coming from But if this is the way it's going to be, you do your own shit and I'll do mine "harry sneered back

" work ? You're saying as if I don't do work? I teach at least 6 classes in a day, check almost 200 copies, sit with a bunch of teachers who are much more older than me, clean the mess of the potions students make, don't you dare compare our work! Just because your work requires more strength or power or maybe responsibility, doesn't mean I don't do shit "

" draco, you're a damn teacher. I am a goddamn auror. I put my life on line everyday so I can make money for us-"

" and you're not the only man making money in this house. I earn only 200 galleons less than you do and that's not even a huge deal so stop making it seem as if you're the man of the House or that you are doing a great deal for me because let me be honest, the only thing you do for me is creating problems and fighting, that's it " draco yelled and stormed out of the house before harry could've yelled back further.

Harry groaned loudly shutting off the house and storming away himself to get away from the horrors the place held. Both of them Only returned much later after midnight at the same time and went to bed immediately without saying even a single word. And the next morning, draco left the house much more earlier than he was supposed to, leaving a note that he'd be at Hogwarts for at least a week as per the requirements by the school board to finish off with the heavy work left pending. At first harry was Happy seeing the note, thinking to himself that the house would be Empty after so Long.

But he was wrong.

At night when he came back to a messed up home, no cooked meal, he felt slightly furious and almost called out to draco but realised quickly that he wasn't home. Not dropping much thought over it, cleaned up the place, freshened up and decided to order food instead of cooking. But 4 days in, harry found himself much more tired and in desperation to just see Draco. The thing was harry knew why draco was staying an entire week at school, he knew his husband very well, he would never leave any pending work but just the realisation that draco needed a break from harry and the house, he found it saddening on a lonely night.

" so what'd he say last before he left ?" Ron asked as they chatting up about their Harry's current problems with marriage over brunch away from work for sometime

" something about him earning not significantly less than me and how I'm irresponsible and creating problems. I'm just tired Ron, lately all we do is fight. You wouldn't believe, just last week we were fighting about changing a wallpaper and you'd expect that it got resolved but it didn't. We didn't talk and that was it. It just- I don't know- like the whole marriage thing really work out for us " harry replied sadly

Ron looked at harry understandingly.." I understand you harry but I don't think he's entirely wrong-"

" so you also think I'm irresponsible-"

" Merlin, don't get your knickers in twist. All I'm saying maybe he isn't wrong. You've fought with me quite often too lately but we're friends harry, but it's different with him, he's your husband. He needs you and you can't possibly deny that you've been nice to people lately. When was the last time you bought Hermione flowers or told her she looked not a today older than she is or the last time you called Ginny about her games or take neville, when did you even call him last to see how he's doing ? The thing is Harry you've been so work involved that you've barely acknowledged the people around you. Remember 2 months after you got married and you told me marrying draco was the best thing you did, what happened to that ?"

Harry's face drew upset, knowing that Ron was in fact right. He'd been so into himself that he had barely made time for the rest of them " I don't know Ron. I just feel like maybe it's all getting out of hands. Like my plates full maybe-"

" like you need a break?"

Harry nodded.

" look Hermione and me have known you the longest and she haven't seen you in so long but she knows somethings up. We know you harry, we understand how you get when you're stressed or angry even but this, this isn't who you are. After everything you've been through and go through each day we understand you but to me you'll always be the harry potter who broke his glasses like a million times in school yet refused to buy new one's because you liked them or the harry potter who hung me by my feet or the harry potter who'd die than leave his friends " ron gave harry the most perfect smile for the situation.

Harry sighed " what am I doing wrong Ron ?"

" you've forgotten who you are and a little maybe the people around you or you're probably letting something eat you alive.. whatever it is harry, do something about it or it'll be too late to fix things" and by that harry knew he meant draco.

Harry nodded at Ron, thinking about what he'd do next to remind his husband, that he is still his lover.

When it came to Saturday night, almost a night before draco would come back, harry firmly sat back on the couch looking at the empty spot besides him with his favourite television show running in the back, yet all he could think was about the memories with draco, the times he made him laugh and now harry didn't even remember in the last one year they've been married the last time harry made his husband laugh. Harry switched off the tv, sighing, getting up from the couch and going into the storage room. He cleared the dust, blowing some away, then turning on a little lamp around the corner. Following his instincts, harry went deeper into the pit of storage and found his things back from the school days. Falling into nostalgia, harry took his school thing's, a few things after that and album's he had gotten made and went back to living room and set everything on the ground.

Memories probably never leave you yet sometimes you need to be reminded of who you are to become who you want to be and that's exactly what harry was doing, figuring out when he became the person he is Today. He went through things after things he had from school, his defense against dark arts books, the model of something science related he made for muggle studies and the albums. Pictures after pictures with people he loved, he found himself drowning into it. It had been so long since the last time he contacted any of them and it saddened him. This isn't who he is, yet somehow this is exactly who he is. As sadness started to fill into his lungs, he finally opened the last box he had retrieve and opened it to find things related to draco. They started going out late in 8 th year and going through a lot of post-war things, Harry had maintained a diary in a muggle way to vent out but most of the end of the diary was filled with how draco looked so good under the moon or how draco was mindlessly biting the top of pencils or biting his lip during class or how his dates went.

Without glancing up harry said " don't leave me "

" how did you know I came ? " Draco asked as he stepped into the living room and sat down next to harry

" you're my soulmate draco, I can sense whenever you're around me "

" you can ?" Draco frowned, not believing harry could still do it.

" just because I've became this huge asshole doesn't mean I've stopped loving you draco "

" it doesn't hurt to remind every once in a while "

Harry looked up finally to see an upset draco sitting next to him with a sad smile " I do tell you I love you "

" when was the last time you said that to me?" Draco asked smiling lightly

Harry frowned lightly, confused but immediately realised he hadn't spoken the words out in almost 5 months " fuck- I'm sorry- shit"

" yeah " draco signed looking down at the things harry was going through " what's all this ?"

" this- school stuff. And this is a box specifically about you " harry pushed the box a little box towards draco

" I own an entire separate box ?" Draco chuckled

" you own an entire different separate place in my life too and I think me becoming an asshole forgot that " harry replied sadly. Draco looked at harry sympathetically before pulling him forward towards him and wrapping his arms around Harry's torso..

" that's all I wanted to hear " draco's voice broke. Harry leaned in further, his head pressed against draco's chest, small tears escaping his eyes and wetting draco's shirt.

" I'm sorry. I never meant to be this problematic and with the whole fighting things. I'm so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you but I just, I'm such an asshole" harry rambled

" you're not an asshole harry. Hey look at me- you are a brilliant man who sometimes needs a break. I haven't been less of an ass to you myself but everyone have a rough patch in marriage and we will get past this too. We're special harry, remember. We're Always special " draco smiled holding Harry's face in his hands

" I don't want to be this person. I just want to be yours and I don't want to fight you, I don't want to yell at you or you to yell at me and i don't want you ever leaving me alone.. I can't- I don't want to be without you draco, I don't know how to be. I've been so selfish that forgot to tell you how much I love you for 5 months, I don't ever want that again. I want to tell you everyday how much I love you. I don't want all these fights, I hate it without you. It doesn't feel like home without you draco, you're my home and with you gone, nothing makes sense, not even me " harry sobbed.

Draco eyes welled up with tears " I don't want all this too harry. I want to be entirely yours and yours forever. I Always Want you to be my home. Fuck I love you- I've missed you so much "

" I missed you too. I love you draco, I love you so so so much, I love you "

" I know you do " draco smiled. He softly kissed the top of Harry's head, then his cheeks, his eyes, his forehead and finally his lips.

" don't ever leave me, ever "

" never " Draco sobbed, their foreheads touching each other, taking in deep breaths with tears running down their faces like a small river.

It was sometime later when they started going through Harry's thing's together with harry cuddled into draco.

" what's this ?" Draco asked as he picked out a small dry petal

" oh, this was from the restaurant I proposed in "

" and this ?"

" this is- I think the handkerchief you left the night we first kissed "

" oh, nice, what this ?"

" I think that's the note I wrote to you to ask you out for first date but never sent it "

" real smooth harry " draco chuckled. Harry rolled his eyes, playfully hitting draco over his chest before picking up and showing him thing's again.

" you still have that paper boat from our first date ?" Draco asked softly gazing at harry

" well- I still think it's the most perfect boat ever made " harry smiled at draco before pressing a small kiss over his lip.

It was harry who Always imagined that, that perfect little boat was the reasons for everything they have right now, but draco never needed to know that, after all he was his special man and he made him the happiest man in the whole world even if sometimes the boat drowned a bit..

Requests open

Day 36- angel | Day 38- set it up, break it up

35 notes · View notes

randomwordprompts · 3 years ago

Text

If It's Magic | Chapter 11

Summary: Let's meet some new characters!

Taglist: @wakandan-flowerz @bakarilennox @yaachtynoboat711 @wakandas-vibranium @brwnsugababe @storibambino @thadelightfulone @reaperdeldrunk

A/N: I'm trying to get back into writing regularly, so feedback is always great.

The sounds of a big band playing old standards was the background music to the idle chatter that floated around the Manhattan ballroom. With various doctors, lawyers, and city officials scattered throughout, one might think that the Lector children stood out like a sore thumb. But, thanks to Hannibal's published studies being known globally they didn't get a second thought for being there in his place. All of that aside, the siblings were on a mission. Francois met up with their information source on the inside, who took them to meet the mark in question.

"Dr. Black, there are some people that would like to meet you."

Pausing the conversation with his wife, he turned to face the group with a smile that was so practiced it was believable if you didn't know any better. Jacob Black was a handsome man that had clearly aged well, his salt and pepper hair styled to perfection.

Dr., this is Francois, Jonathan, and Amira Lector. They’re here on the behalf of their father, Dr. Hannibal Lector?”

“Ah yes, Dr. Lector! I’ve read many of his studies and am a bit of a fan of his work. It’s nice to meet you three. I trust you’re enjoying yourselves?”

Francois spoke to the doctor of how happy they were to be attending in their father’s stead and the usual spiel of small talk that came about at events such as these. As everyone was talking and getting to know each other a bit more they were joined by another person. A young man who looked to be about the same age as Jonathan, slim and blonde with Jacob’s jawline and Mrs. Black’s eyes approached. He smiled at the small group before speaking.

“Hello mother, father. Who are your new friends?”

Before Jacob could introduce them Amira spoke up, her hand extended towards him with a warm smile.

“I’m Amira Lector and these are my siblings, Francois and Jonathan. We’re here on behalf of our father, Dr. Hannibal Lector. You must be Joseph, your parents were just talking about you.”

“All good things, I hope,” he replied as he took her hand and kissed the back of it.

She smirked coyly before going, “Anything bad you can prove wrong...or right.”

Jacob and his wife exchanged a knowing look behind their son’s back, recognizing the blatant flirting he was doing. Before Joseph could go any further Jacob decided to speak once more.

“Son, this is Amira’s first time here. Why don’t you show her around?”

“I’d be more than happy to if that’s what the lady would like.”

Amira stepped closer with their hands still connected.

“The lady would love to. Let’s start with a dance?”

Joseph’s brows rose at her forwardness but happily led her to the dance floor as the band began to play Frank Sinatra’s “Witchcraft”. He pulled her into his arms with ease and a smile that has probably charmed the panties off many of the daughters in that very room, but Amira found herself amused at how open his aura was. She knew he’d be easy to get info from once she got him to drop his “just a nice rich boy” act. With that in mind, she decided to take the direct approach.

“So, I think we’re far enough for your parents not to hear us. I go to the New School and heard there was this guy selling goods that looks a lot like you. What’s up with that?”

Joseph almost stumbled while they danced but caught himself before smiling at her forwardness.

“What’s up with what exactly, doll face? I have friends that go there, but I need to know what kind of goods you think I’m peddling.”

Amira leaned in so that their lips almost touched, her front pressed tightly against his before whispering, “I heard you have access to the best coke, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t give for a taste.”

Joseph audibly swallowed as her scent invaded his nose in the most delicious way, that combined with the softness of her body and voice casting a bit of a spell over him. His body immediately reacted and she noticed, subtly stroking her thigh along his crotch as they danced. Before he lost his mind she pulled away a bit, an innocent smile on her red lips as they continued to dance.

“When you put it that way, I think I just might have something for you. Meet me in the coat check in about 10 minutes and I’ll have something sweet just for you, beautiful.”

As the song ended they parted ways and she returned to her siblings to catch them up. She found them chatting up Dr. Black and some of his colleagues, the thought of how proud Hannibal would be to see his children rubbing elbows with these prestigious people brought a genuine smile to her face as she approached.

“Excuse me, sorry to interrupt you all,” she started before turning to her siblings, “I have some writing to finish for my psych class so I’m gonna grab a drink, freshen up a bit, and my siblings can escort me back to my dorm?”

Francois and Jonathan understood what she meant and let her know they’d have the car brought around. Amira left the group to meet up with Joseph while her siblings continued to converse for a bit longer.

Once at the door of the coat check room she gave two soft knocks to the door and was quickly greeted by the young man, who invited her in with that same charming smile.

"You know, I wouldn't have expected such a beauty to be into this stuff. But how much are you looking to buy?"

Amira shrugged, "We all have our vices, Mr. Black. But I think an eighth is enough to start. How much?"

"Only 100 for an eighth, but I've got other things as well. You ever tried heroin with the coke?"

"You mean speedballing? Heard of it, never tried it."

Joseph grinned with a devilish glint in his eyes, clearly having either tried it or seen its effects before.

"It's pretty damn good from what I've been told. Since I like you, I'll give you some heroin on top for an extra 50 just so you can try it out."

Amira hummed thoughtfully before reaching into her clutch and pulling out 200 dollars without batting an eye, Joseph holding a bag he kept stashed in the room in case he got any high-end "customers". He pulled out the pre-packaged and measured drugs, handing them to her as she handed him the money. She placed the drugs into her purse and thanked him before leaving the coat check room, looking around to make sure no one saw her. A vibration from her phone alerted her to a call from Jonathan.

“Hey, you good?”

“Yeah, I just got the candy. You brought the car around?”

“Yeah, me and Fran are in the car now. We’ll see you in a few.”

“Alright, on my way.”

With that, she slipped down the stairs towards the lobby as Joseph came out of the room behind her, heading back towards the party. Once Amira reached the lobby, she gave the doorman a smile and another to the driver that opened the door of the town car in which her siblings awaited her. As she got comfy and settled, the driver began to take them to their next destination.

“So what did you get?” Francois asked, lighting up a pipe filled with weed.

Amira pulled the drugs from her clutch and handed them to Jonathan, who inspected the packaging carefully.

“Coke and heroin? What the fuck did you do to get him to give you both?”

“He offered it for an extra 50 bucks and wanted me to try a speedball.”

Francois sat up, “What is a damn speedball?”

“It’s when you inject coke and heroin together. Very dangerous since they do the opposite shit to the body, but the high is said to be unreal.”

Jonathan shook his head after hearing her explain it, “Well, either way, he put what's gotta be his burner number on here so I think that part is for you, short stack.”

Amira pulled out her phone and put the number into it, saving it while reading some texts she missed while at the party. During this time they ended up back at the dorms as the car came to a stop. Jonathan sat back and slipped the drugs into his pocket before speaking again.

“Okay, so we’re gonna take these to the lab for some testing to see how pure it really is. We’ll get back to you in like a day or two with the results, you just see what other info you can get from Joey in the meantime.”

Amira nodded, “For sure, I’ll keep y’all updated if I learn anything. I’m sure he’ll be happy to get a call from me, given that he was imagining what was under my dress the whole night.”

“Of course he did, I made the dress.” Francois snorted.

After exchanging a bit more information and some goodnights, the three Lectors parted ways. Amira got out of the car and walked into her building, a smile spreading across her face as she spotted a familiar figure waiting for her in the lobby.

“I see you got my text,” she said.

“Of course, and looking at you now I’m so glad that I did. You look good enough to eat, Mira.”

Xavier walked up to her and looped an arm around her waist, pulling her close and pressing his lips to hers in a slow kiss. Amira slipped her arms over his shoulders and returned the kiss eagerly, pressing herself even tighter against him. When they finally broke the kiss she giggled seeing traces of her lipstick on his lips.

“You look pretty edible yourself, but I’m kinda tired tonight. Let’s go up to my dorm and just chill tonight?”

“I’d love that, mon petit. Want me to order some food from Night Owls while you change?”

Amira grinned, “You know me too well. Make sure you order some drinks too.”

“I know you well enough to know not to order food without drinks. Now let’s go so you can change before I try to wake your fine ass up.”

She snorted out a laugh before turning to lead him towards the elevator, looking forward to spending some time with the towering demon.

#if it's magic #original characters #original work #characters of color #the lectors #amira & xavier #my writing

2 notes · View notes

bucks-little-hop · 5 years ago

Text

it cannot wait, I'm yours.

Day 1 of @buddiefirstkissweek

Prompt: Related to Pride

Read on AO3

Despite living there for several years, Buck had never actually attended L.A pride. He usually flew to New York City to celebrate with friends there. However, with T.K. being in Austin, they had agreed to go to each other’s Prides together. The only issue was T.K. couldn’t get off until the second day, and Buck didn’t exactly want to go alone. His first choice would have been Hen, but she got stuck working as well. He realized that he needed more friends than just his co-workers as he scrolled through his phone trying to figure out who to call. He could ask Maddie, but she would probably spend the whole time trying to find a cute guy for him to date. He loved the support, but sometimes he didn’t need to be reminded he was single when all his other friends had a significant other.

He thought about texting Michael, but they had talked last time he was over at the Grant-Nash household, and Michael was going with his new boyfriend. Buck was ecstatic that Michael finally found a boyfriend. It was about time. He deserved it. If Buck was his type, Buck for sure would have tried to date him.

Wait, Josh was single and gay. He was probably going to pride, and likely wouldn’t want to go alone either. Perfect solution. He sent a text off and got a quick response before going to get changed. Normally Buck dressed pretty conservatively, but this was the one time a year he really let himself go all out. He put on his crop top that said ‘if you play for both teams you always win.’ It was probably his favourite shirt, he loved the slogan. He basically worked out for a living, and he was glad that crop tops highlighted that. He threw on his ripped jeans that were just on the right side of too tight, and had one rip that went a little too far up his thigh. He was lacing up his pride Dr. Martens when he heard a knock on the door.

“So glad you could make it.” Buck pulled Josh into a hug. It was a bit of a surprise at first how well the two got along. They even went out on a date together before realizing they were better off friends. The teasing they would have gotten from Maddie would have been unbearable if it had actually worked out.

“I’m just happy I have someone to go with now. I brought the face paints!” Josh immediately grabbed one of Buck’s kitchen chairs and pushed him down into it. Josh was already sporting a gay flag painted under his eye, and he clearly had plans to put on on Buck as well. “I know you care about your hair, but really I think we need some glitter in it. It’s the spray kind that comes out easy I swear.”

Buck rolled his eyes but sat still while he got a bisexual pride flag painted under his right eye. “You can do the glitter, but I’m showering at your place. I’m not trying to deal with clogged pipes because of it.”

“Fair deal. We better get going, or we won’t ever be able to get an Uber downtown.”

******

L.A. Pride was somehow exactly like NYC Pride, and completely different. All the elements of pride were there. The drag queens who were performing up a storm, the baby gays who it was clear this was their first pride, and those who had been going to prides longer than Buck had been alive. There were definitely more west coast vibes to it. Either way, Buck was thrilled to be at Pride, and happy to have a friend along with him.

The two wandered through the marketplace, stopping every now and then to buy a couple of items. The two spent a couple of minutes laughing when they found the LAFD calendar, except they were able to get any face photoshopped on all the firefighters. They got one with a photo of Chim sneezing on it for Maddie’s birthday. It was even better because it actually had Chim in it. There were some advantages to Buck not having won that year. Josh saw a lesbian couple from work, and dragged Buck over there to introduce him to them. Buck was known for both being Maddie’s younger brother, but also the firefighter whose name got mentioned more than it probably should have been. His dumbass heroics got him far more recognition than they should have been.

Buck saw a familiar face in the crowd, and they made eye contact before they turned away. He let Josh know he was going to talk to them. He knew Josh would be safe with his friends for the moment.

“Now Athena, I know you’re not just going to ignore me like that.” Buck jokingly called out to her.

“I wish I could say I was ignoring you, but I owe Hen money unfortunately. You just had to get a boyfriend.” Athena sounded almost disappointed,

“What Josh? No we aren’t dating, we’re just here as friends. Actually, you’ve met him before I think. He works with Maddie.” Buck wasn’t offended about the fact she thought he and Josh were dating, he didn’t like the thought of the bet. “Any other important bets going on about my life?”

Athena had the decency to look a little ashamed. “Well there was a bet about whether or not you had a secret boyfriend. Hen said yes, I said no. Mainly because you would have told Maddie, who would have accidentally told Chim, who would have immediately texted Hen, who would have shown up at my house with a bottle of wine to gossip. We all know secrets don’t exist in the family.”

Buck knew she had a point. Secrets didn’t exist, and because of that betting run rampant. Hell, he had won $50 on the bet of when Micheal was going to announce his new boyfriend. “How much do you have on it, because I’m willing to lie to split the winnings. Hen deserves some payback after how often she keeps winning.” Buck was never above a small lie. He could just say they broke up in a week because it wasn’t working out.

“$200. Go collect your fake boyfriend over there and we’ll go find the 118. They’ve got a tent set up to hand out water.” Athena nodded her head towards Josh.

Buck didn’t think that they would actually be there. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of being bi, but he had never officially come out to the 118. Hen knew because they ran into each other at a gay bar, and Athena knew because she got called to pick them up when they were too drunk to drive. “Alright yeah, I can drop all my stuff off there too. They’re all going to be too scared to look through the bags.” Even though there was nothing bad in them, the fire fam was going to assume there was.

Buck walked back to Josh and explained what was going on. Buck owed Josh an expensive bottle of wine for it, but he was totally down to mess with the 118. The wine was to placate him from any of the text Maddie would send him after Chim texted her. On the way over they all chatted. Buck agreed to bring May with him on the second day. Athena wanted her to go with someone who was more responsible, but also not afraid to throw a punch. May was like a little sister to him, and Buck was fully ready to square up for her. Plus, T.K. and his new boyfriend would defend her too. Actually, based on what he had heard about Carlos, he would get along with Athena. Buck made a note to introduce the two. As they got closer to the tent, Buck put his arm around Josh’s waist. With Buck being such a tactile guy, it wasn’t the first time he had held Josh like this. He allowed himself to be more touchy feely with Josh because he knew the other was okay with it.

“Hey guys, this is Josh. He’s an operator with Maddie. I’m sure you’ve heard his lovely voice on the phone a few times.” Buck spoke to the 118 with a grin on his face. He could feel the fact that all eyes were on him. Hen scowled at him and then Athena. She pulled out her wallet to pay up.

Buck leaned down to talk to Josh, and softened his voice to talk. “Why don’t you go talk to Chim about Maddie’s surprise stories. I’ll deal with all the questions.” There was zero reason for him to do that, other than to sell the idea. Buck had big plans for that $100.

Josh walked over to Chim, and pulled him aside as the rest of the 118 descended on Buck.

“Listen Buck, not that I’m not proud of you for this, but you really had to wear your best outfit the day I’m not with you?” There was no actual malice behind Hen’s voice. She had made teasing Buck into an art form.

“Hen this is a go big or go home event, and I certainly wasn’t going to go home.” Buck gave her one of his patented golden retriever smiles, before he pulled a small enamel lesbian flag pin out of his pocket and held it out to her. “I got you a present to make it up to you at least. Figured you could wear it while you work to show support.”

Hen took the pin, seeming to accept the apology gift. She walked over to Athena, the two already starting to gossip.

Bobby cleared his throat. “So Buck, you know you could have told us before. We would have supported you.” He was clearly into his dad mode, trying to approach the situation delicately.

“I mean you never came out as straight to the station. I’ve told you about people I’ve gone on dates with. If you assumed Jordan, Addison, and Kennedy were girls, that's on you.” Buck viewed Bobby as a father, but sometimes he was very much a straight cis man. They were working on changing his set views. But he supported them all and that was what mattered the most to them.

“Buck, can we talk, over there. It cannot wait.” Eddie’s voice was tense, and Buck didn’t like how it had sounded. Buck nodded and followed him, not trusting any words that would come out of his mouth. Buck was fine with Hen, he figured he would be fine with Buck being bisexual. There was a chance Eddie was one of those people who just thought bisexuals were just greedy and needed to make their mind up. He hadn’t been prepared to lose Eddie as a friend, not over something like this. Having Chim and Bobby know made him feel like a weight was lifted off his chest, but Eddie’s reaction made it all come crashing back down. The two walked behind the ambulance, where they were out of view from the public. There was just a couple of photographers hanging out in their event tent.

“You’re not actually dating Josh, are you?” Eddie crossed his arms, taking a defensive stance.

“Why does it matter to you? If you can’t accept me having a boyfriend then we are going to have bigger problems than who I’m dating.”

“You told me you were single at movie night last week.” Eddie sounded exasperated, and Buck was really confused as to why.

“Fine, Josh and I aren’t dating, but we tried at one point. We’re better friends, but that doesn’t mean I’m not still bi. I’ve dated plenty of guys since we’ve been friends, it just hasn’t worked out.” They were friends, Buck was going to be honest with Eddie. Well, mostly honest. If Eddie asked if Buck had a crush on him, Buck was going to deny it. He didn’t think Eddie would be the kind of straight guy who would get all weird about Buck’s crush, but then again he didn’t think Eddie was biphobic either.

“Good, because I can’t see you with a boyfriend...” Eddie seemed to have calmed down, and a realization had swept over him. His face looked a lot softer, it was a look Buck had seen many times but was never really sure what it meant. Buck anger was going in the opposite direction. He took a step back.

Buck didn’t bother to let Eddie finish before he cut him off. “Listen, if you’ve got such a problem with me dating another guy, then you should transfer stations. I’m not going to hide a part of me because it’s not something you like.” His words were harsh, but he kept his voice down. He didn’t want any yelling to attract the others. Buck started to walk away when he felt Eddie grab his wrist and pull him back so they were face to face.

“Evan, You didn’t let me finish. I can’t see you with a boyfriend that isn’t me. If I had known you liked guys, I would have done this sooner.” Buck was shocked by the statement, but even more shocked by what came next.

Eddie leaned up and kissed Buck.

Buck did not in a million years see Eddie returning his feelings. Buck felt Eddie start to pull back, and he knew the older man was overthinking things the same way he was. Buck brought his hands up to cup Eddie’s cheeks, and pulled him back in. He could overthink this later, for now he was going to enjoy kissing Eddie. Finally it didn’t have to be something of his dreams anymore. He felt Eddie’s hands come to rest on his waist. Buck had every intention of deepening the kiss, but when he moved to get closer, he managed to slip. Thankfully, Eddie managed to catch him before he completely fell on his back.

They had been pulled apart by the fall, but they rested their foreheads together.

“We should talk about this…” Buck started to say.

“We’ll have plenty of time to talk later, I got months of kissing to make up for.” Eddie leaned down, kissing Buck with far more passion this time. He wasn’t worried about being rejected.

Eventually Buck fully got back up to his feet, but not before a photographer had snapped a photo of the two.

******

Buck promised to drop Eddie off at the station the next morning, so he wouldn’t have to ensure the teasing alone. They didn’t have to walk far into the station before the teasing started.

Hanging from the balcony was a blown up photo of the two of them kissing. Buck had seen the photo posted all over last night. Out of context, it looked like Eddie had dipped Buck, not that Buck had just been clumsy first. He knew there were comparisons to the soldier celebrating V-J day, and the navy soldier getting his homecoming kiss. The photo was heralded as one of the defining photos of pride that year. Would Buck have liked their first kiss to be a little more private, sure, but it wouldn’t have been true to the way his life had gone so far. The teasing would be worth it, especially since he got Eddie out of the deal.

“They’re all just jealous Eds, just remember. I’m yours.”

#my fics #buddie #buddiefirstkiss #firstkiss2020 #related to pride

19 notes · View notes

prorevenge · 6 years ago

Text

Oh so you want a gamer/japanese GF? Think again

I was stationed in Japan while serving in the U.S. Marines. I was loving and enjoying it and really absorbing the culture. I was single at the time, so one of my friends suggested I used Skout as it was a popular social media app at the time over there.

Within a few days I met a Japanese girl and we began talking. Eventually she agreed to meet and everything was good. We were together for 3 years, but on a long distance relationship. I lived in Okinawa, she lived in Osaka (pretty far, and have to take an airplane to travel). We talked all the time, played Final Fantasy 14 (she was a huge gamer which I really liked) and atleast once or twice a month we would visit, either I flew there or she flew to me.

We eventually got married as I was getting out of the military, and I had a few months before she was going to move in so I rented out an apartment bought some stuff, etc. She moved in and for about the first 2 weeks is was good. And then it was bad...

I worked 2 jobs (retail store and a night club), so she didn't have to work. She bought a car though and began working. She worked for a total of 2 weeks before quitting because work was too stressful. She even took it as far to ask me for money to fly to Osaka to visit her parents because being out without them was too stressful. Often times I would return home from my 18 hour work day at around 6AM to grab a few hours of sleep before starting all over again. She began to get really agitated that I would come home so early and wake her up, so she asked me to sleep in our spare room. (Total cuck right?) Day after day she would just sit around the house and complain while I was there that I needed to buy her stuff while the house was trashed and she only played video games and spoke with friends on the phone. She had money, a car yet refused to go do anything on her own.

Due to the pinch on money, I rarely ate, maybe once a day, never went out, never seen friends as I was so concerned with the money situation. Eventually after a year of doing this I couldn't take it anymore, I walked up to her and asked if she loved me, she said I don't know. So I told her I wanted a divorce, as this is not going to work out and the only words she could muster up was 'Can you pay off the rest of my car?'. I was dumbfounded. Later that night a friend of hers contacted me asking me if there was something going on with our relationship and I told her to talk to my wife as they were always on the phone. Thats when shit got real, as her friend stated she had no idea what I was talking about and she hasn't spoken to her in months.

So I spill every detail out to her and she informs me on why her and my wife don't talk anymore, because my wife had a boyfriend in her hometown of Osaka while we were dating and thought she had left him. Apparently she had not. Her friends had spoken and they told me that she had been cheating on me this entire time, and told me the little trip she took to see her family, was indeed just to see her boyfriend.

Immediately I packed all my belongings, signed the divorce papers, took pictures of the house and paper then started to leave where she began to ask "where are you going? when are you coming back? Can you bring me sukiya?" (Sukiya is a type of rice bowl fastfood in Japan). I moved out immediately and was staying in my car (enough room, its a Funcargo, its like a Japanese box car - pretty spaceful!). Couple of weeks went by and I had moved into one of my friends apartments. She messaged me saying she is returning to Osaka to be with her family and she needed help moving. I told her fuck no, she can do it herself. She sold her car, packed her stuff and shipped it (the post office was ACROSS the street yet she was asking for help to take it there???). Finally it came down to the apartment where she asked me to pay for it, and a lightbulb went into my head - I said "sure I will pay for it don't worry about it!". Finally she asked me to take her to the airport on my day off, where I told her I am not a taxi service, but I will take her there for 5000 yen (roughly $50). She was all butt hurt and tried to play the 'Well we are still married!' card, but I wasn't budging.

Finally I took her to the airport, she paid me then tried to tell me good bye, I reached acrossed the car closed the door and in silence pulled away. Now here comes the good shit! The housing company was calling her regarding the final payment on the house ($1200 for 2 months behind, $800 for early cancelation, $400 for 2 months behind utilities, than there was like another $200 in additional fees plus another $300 in apartment damages (I was bringing in the washing machine and punched a nasty hole in the wall, scrapping from carrying the sofa in on my own, etc.) and she was asking when I could pay it all as they needed it before the end of the month. I just laughed and told her I am not paying a single cent as I was not on any of the paperwork. She hung up immediately. (When we rented the home, she signed for it and instead of putting me as a cosigner, she put her father). I was 100% scott-free from any of this.

Eventually her father e-mailed me and told me he was going to get lawyer to sue me for abandoning his poor daughter and refusing to pay the fees. Thats when I checkmated her ass, as I was unaware that her father didn't know why we split up. I told him about his daughter being a slop, cranky bitch who was taking my money and cheating on me. If he really wanted to lawyer up that was on him, as I really liked the guy, and informed him I was not on any of the lease agreements, sent him all the images I took of the house and screenshots from her friends, and informed him of his wife cheating on me gave me grounds to SUE her (Adultry is REALLY illegal in Japan and lawsuits are very common for it). After seeing it he had no idea what we were splitting for and apologized for everything, THEN OFFERED TO BUY ME A BEER ANYTIME I VISIT OSAKA.

She ended up getting fucked out of a bunch of money, her parents hate her (shes an only child and the whole 'dishonored family' thing is a real thing in Japan), and I got away completely free of it.

One month later I got a manager position, quit my other job and began using my GI bill school money, was making 3x what I was earning previously and was feeling pretty good. To this day I always look back and laugh at that situation. Be careful with those gamer girls gents, and don't assume just because a woman is Japanese that she won't be a piece of shit.

(source) story by (/u/kimset)

#prorevenge #by /u/kimset #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #pro #revenge #last10

389 notes · View notes

shui-xi · 6 years ago

Text

P.O. : The Legendary Master’s Wife

This will be lengthy. I took this novel because, firstly, I was interested and, secondly, it felt like a popular one, little did I know that popularity and the number of chapters (700+) doesn’t mean a good storytelling to such extent. If you ever decide to take a risk, read diagonally and don’t be afraid to skip, too many fillers to bother.

LMW follows the world of wuxia, meaning practitioners, magic, aim for immortality, beasts and demons. And starts with the soul transfer of your average student You XiaoMo, who dies in an accident to a new and adventurous world. He basically wants to adapt and not being caught by the fellow disciples like himself and tries to keep a secret of his own body from others, yet things take a turn when he meets Ling Xiao, someone who has secrets too.

The Story :

Basically it reminds me of Pokemon crossed with an RPG, go here, do something get a bonus/reward or meet a new beast. You might think - wow, that sounds interesting. As if! I’m currently at 200+ chapters and due to being kinda familiar with author’s style I can tell that from time to time you’ll get interesting ideas and will be rewarded with action scenes, it was like that so far, I can bet it’ll continue to be like that from now on, also it suffocates with literary style of the author. Indeed chapters are short, but they are consumed with pretty basic writing and load of filler phrases and information that doesn’t change the plot or makes a difference. Thus the number of events during those 200+ chapters is nothing impressive. So I find the writing being poor and boring.

For example, as You XiaoMo is being reborn in different body he realizes that he’s a mage (the way he finds things out is pretty lazy writing as well), mages in this world refine magic pills that help practitioners, that’s how they earn their living. The fact that there are chapters upon chapters that pay detailed and close attention to levels of pills their gradation and quality even percentage I find just too much. All this information could have been squeezed into short introduction or be given in additional world of LMW tour for example. Chapters upon chapters of a person sitting and refining pills. You might as well think - but the descritpion is detailed, it must be interesting. It’s actually not. The literary style actually lacks those sublime descriptions instead being quite basic. The text is filled with verbs and nouns, which makes it sound like a 1st grade report in English.

The World :

The world of LMW is greatly lacking so far. Indeed the author tried to fill it with people and beasts and demons, but actually the author itself contradicts themselves in descriptions and constantly shifting the importance of its inhabitants to more or less. Just a thought - demon beasts fill this world here and there, but for practiotioners and mages it seems like a rarity to even have few in their entire sect. Why? While the world is overfilled with beasts why it is a rarity? Or! The sects try to find new talents while searching for new people, yet they also have techniques to help even low-levels, yet they never do it despite the fact that the whole prestige of a sect depends on a talent and the more talented ppl you have the more powerful is your sect. Where is the logic? Damn right it got lost)))

Next part, the description of this world. Towns are described with only few streets, which makes you think of a small village not a town. There is no description of activity, law enforcements and power. Most streets have shops for mages and practitioners, yet what for? For them to develop their level? Why? The basic thing I noticed right away is that author doesn’t give practitioners and mages any jobs to make it more believable for them to even earn money. Sure thing mages refine pills for practitioners thus they earn, but how do practitioners do it? In Mo Dao Zu Shi for example, cultivators were helping people to get rid off evil forces of living dead, thus they got paid, thus the economy worked.

The economy of this world is ridiculous too, beause I can tell you how you can find it yourself, not once it was said that one family can live for a month for one gold coin. Yet you also witness in other chapters how big sects waste millions for artefacts. Where these money come from, from finding rare stuff and selling? No explanation whatsoever.

The map, from information given about the planet it is way larger than the Earth, for example, an immensely huge bird flies for a month to transport people to the other part of a continent, so you can assume how large the planet is because it’s just one continent and the bird flew for a month. Btw about that bird, who tamed it? What does it eat? Why it’s so large and no one accidentally died? No info. You see how curious I am. Because without answers it all feels ridiculous. The world of LMW same as its’ characters doesn’t show any motivation whatsoever.

The Characters :

Surprisingly, but I find the MC You XiaoMo (YXM) very unlikable. Both he and Ling Xiao (LX) are like cheat characters in a game, they were given a load fo power which they use, but that’s basically why the story is also boring, you don’t see any development as a character, not a level, he doesn’t get to face any hardships, he is always protected and gets home safe. Also he is described as petite and cute, but despite just buying and selling refined pills soon you realize his greed as a character. Basically he drools thinking of money. He’s described as an idiot, which he is, doesn’t really show any difference and also I don’t believe in his feeling for LX, because first he gave up since he was afraid for his own safety but later he’s already missing and so in love, like when did that happen.

Ling Xiao is a bit better, althoug has even more power than anyone on his way thus doesn’t face any hardships and nothing serious happens to both of them. This is why I think it’s boring, the author for 20 chapters can describe how YXM refines pills, but just in one sentence LX defeats a beast that was developing on a blood and suffering of thousands of people. To me such descriptions make these events not really deserving the attention and they also lose their weight. Many important moments come and go as something insignificant.

Both of them don’t have any motivation whatsoever. YXM had one motivation - survival, which he did. But then what? His prize - Ling Xiao - is what he now follows. Ling Xiao’s motivation was, for some reason, to find someone, and he did find YXM, that’s it, now they travel. Told you it’s like RPG and they seem to just be searching for a mission for themselves. There’s no higher aim, no secret and mysterious story to follow, just a guy who makes high-grade pills, other one is immensely strong warrior and they also have beast that follow them around.

I hope it gets anywhere from now on, but I definitely wouldn’t recommend it to anyone to start, if you haven’t already. Better search for something else.

#personal opinion #the legendary master's wife

21 notes · View notes

ashencreature · 6 years ago

Text

Important Update for partners across the board

This is long, and I’m sorry, but I just wanted everyone to know what’s going on. Honestly, I’m not expecting anyone to actually waste time reading through all this, but it’s just so I can try to ease my own anxiety in case the worst case scenario does come and I left some sort of explanation.

Ok, so, some of you know there’s been a lot going on for me at home in the last 3 or 4 years. But everything’s kind of getting worse by day and at this point, I’m not sure what to do anymore.

When I was 14, I moved in with my dad. We moved quite a few times in the first few years I was with him. Hell, that first year alone, I was in 3 different schools. All for Freshman year. And the last house we were in that year, we stayed in for maybe 2?

But when I was 16, the factory my dad worked at closed and he lost his job. That’s kind of where all this starts. Instead of getting a new job, he decided he wanted to spend all day drinking with his new friends and occasionally doing odd jobs for them or things with them. We had to move out of that house, take my dog to the shelter, and move into a trailer. It was only supposed to be for a year. But nearly 14 years later, and we’re still here.

Now the landlord here is a real prick. More like a slumlord if you ask me. He jacks the rent up for the dumbest reasons and acts like he’s god’s gift to humanity or some shit. He told us himself, and had the park manager tell us, that we couldn’t fix our roof to stop the leaking because the walls would collapse of we tried to move it. So literally the entire 14 years we’ve been here, the roof has been leaking. My dad tried everything he could think of, short of tearing it out and redoing it, to fix it. Nothing worked.

And in that time, the entire back half of the house got destroyed by mold. My bedroom, being the very last room, was the first to go. I think I slept in it for a year? And ever since, I’ve had to sleep in the living room because the walls had to be torn out due to the mold. It’s right down to the studs and the scant insulation. It’s been like that for over 10 years. Well, now the mold is spreading and getting worse. The bathroom is destroyed pretty much. The back hallway is the same. The floor’s rotting away, and the toilet is falling through the floor; again.

Now, I think my dad went to the garage he was at for the first time when I was maybe 18? I don’t remember exactly. I do remember being in junior year and my friends either having to buy me lunch, share theirs with me, or pray that we actually were cooking in cooking class; which happened a lot less than you’d think. Other than that, I didn’t eat. Senior year was a little better because I at least would get money dropped off to eat. Not that the cafeteria had a lot of choices for me to pick from. I pretty much ate nothing but gross excuse for pizza and occasionally pretzels, fries, or Belgian waffles.

Anyway, so senior year rolls around and we’re all prepping for college. At the time, I wanted to go to AMDA for musical theater, and managed to get an audition there for that March. I had to force my dad to go to the meeting about FAFSA and to fill out the paperwork. Which he said he did, but I don’t believe it because he says they denied me. And I’ve never heard of FAFSA being denied. Not that it mattered anyway, because I bombed the audition and didn’t get in. So graduation rolls around and all my friends go off to college. I haven’t seen or spoken to most of them since. They never stop to visit when they come home and they never try to reach out on Facebook. Eventually, I got sick of being the one to initiate and maintain all conversations, so I just gave up.

The 2 friends I still had at that time helped me to get jobs when I was 20/21 and living with them, in 2011/2012. This was because 2 of us and their mom were in a car accident on the way to my friend’s college at the time. We all nearly died. My friend had a concussion, their mom needed surgery, and I nearly got impaled by a fake Christmas tree. I ended up going to the hospital a lot later than they did with a copy of the report in the doctor’s hand and got told I wasn’t in an accident I had the flu, go home. Anyway, so after my friend’s mom’s surgery, I moved in to help around the house and look after my friend’s youngest sister. These jobs weren’t the best; Wendy’s and the deli department of one of the local grocery stores. But it was money.

For all the good it did. Because by that time, my dad had quit working at the garage. So here I was, paying for rent, bills, gas, food, and child support for my brother. All on $200 a week. My anxiety was driving me insane. And I came to find out that my dad was going in and threatening one of the store managers, which was probably why the guy was such a scumbag to me. But I digress. So I was in the store for a month shy of 2 years. I started at maybe $7.45 or $7.50. an hour when I started. It was slightly over the minimum wage at the time. By the time I left, 2 years later mind you, I wasn’t even making $8, and I was working full time hours while only being part time. Everything that went wrong got blamed on me, even when it was my day off and I wasn’t anywhere near the store. I liked most of the people that I worked with, even if I hated the job, and the assistant department manager became a really good friend. She was 2 years older than me, and we hung out a lot. I’d spend the night at her house, I was at her wedding, I’ve been to her daughter’s birthday parties and so on.

At one point, I was supposed to get training to be an assistant specialty cheese shop lead. They sent me to one class, told me about another, but never gave me any more details about it, even when I asked. Then they said they were going to train me over there, but never did. That was just the first of a long list of grievances. The culmination of which was on a Sunday night, our busiest day of the week. There was just me and 1 other guy in the department. Then 1 lady in the hot food section, 1 lady in the beer store, and no one in the bakery. But they expected me to take care of all 4 departments and still wait on the 20+ people that were at the counter the whole night. And I had an order to make and put away for the assistant department manager. Needless to said, I had a panic attack. I told my partner, and both of the other people nearby. They told the assistant store manager, and he didn’t care. They made me work for 3 and a half hours, through a panic attack, without a break. I couldn’t breathe and was on the verge of fainting. I finally had enough and told one of the ladies that I didn’t care what the store manager said, I was going to get my inhaler in the break room and get a drink at the water fountain, or I was going to faint.

A few days later, I got called to the main office to speak to the store manager, who I usually didn’t have a problem with. And unfortunately, since my anger receptors are evidently attached to my tear ducts, I broke down in tears when I wanted to be furious. He basically told me that I was going to the bakery or I was getting fired. So the next day, I quit. There was a lot of other stuff too but that doesn’t really matter. Including being so sick that I couldn’t eat for over a week, fainting in the back room because they wouldn’t let me take a day off, and not being able to talk for over a month. The assistant department manager almost called the ambulance when I fainted, but you know, I’m clearly the problem here.

So there we were, I didn’t have a job. My dad didn’t have a job. I was 23, and feeling just as helpless as I did at 16. I spent a year filling out job applications for a bunch of different things from craft stores to fast food to jewelry stores, but never heard back from any of them. The only interview I got was for Chipotle. But they wouldn’t even hire me. Naturally, cue the anxiety and depression getting worse. And around this time, our electric got shut off. This was in May I believe because it was just before my birthday.

At that time I started thinking about going back to school. So I looked at schools and degrees you could do all online, because I knew I could never afford to go on campus. And, as most of you know, I started at CTU in July of that year. Now the program I did was an accelerated one, which meant I could finish gen ed classes faster, be done faster, and lower my tuition. I did as many as I could, but only my admission adviser was any help. My actual student adviser was never around, never responded to my emails, never called me back. But whatever.

So for 3 years I spent pretty much all day, every god damn day doing schoolwork. I’d be at my local Dunkin from 3 in the afternoon until they closed at 11. Sometimes I’d be working even later next door because I still had stuff to do. The first year and a half I was fine. It didn’t bother mine, just like working didn’t bother me at first. But then, a year and a half after I started, I got sick. I couldn’t eat anything without my stomach cramping up and getting the worst migraines. It got so bad that one day at Dunkin, I felt like I was going to puke, and got up to go to the bathroom and almost fainted. Personally, I think it’s a combination of anxiety, depression, Celiac/gluten intolerance, anemia, and asthma. But I don’t know for sure because I haven’t had a doctor since I was going to the pediatrician. And even if I did, can’t afford it.

So I’ve just been getting sicker and sicker. I was 125 pounds in January of this year. 11 months later, and I’m down to 108.5 the last time I checked. I think the lowest I hit was 107, and that was all 6 months after the weight loss started. There’s times it’ll go back up, but I can’t get past 110 or 111 tops. Neighbors who used to live down the road came to visit earlier this week, and all the lady could say was how skinny I got. I’m like yeah, malnourishment’ll do that to you.

And to make things worse, my dad at some point went back to the garage and was working again, so things were slightly better. I say slightly in the loosest way possible. But, just after Christmas last year, my dad quit again. I’ve seen him apply to 1 job and go to 1 interview in the year since. Other than that, he’s been collecting scrap and doing shit for people who refuse to pay, including the landlord. In the last 7 or 8 months, despite how many times I’ve told him that my refund checks from the school aren’t free money I can spend however I want, my dad’s made me spend it. The $5,000 I had that was supposed to set me ahead for my student loans are gone. And I’m $5,000 deeper in the hole than I should be. Which means instead of being like $45 or 50 grand in debt I’m about $55 grand.

Then, because we haven’t had electricity in almost 4 years, and with the mold problem, everything in the house is ruined. We had only cold water, and I took cold showers for as long as I could. But last winter, the shower pipes froze and burst. So even if I wanted to, I can’t do that. Plus, because we can’t use the washer and dryer, or hook up a generator thanks to the scumbag landlord, or afford a laundromat, our clothes have gone unwashed for over a year. Most of mine were sitting in the tub, which got filled with mold and bugs. I have practically no clothes left, with no way to wash them, and no way to shower unless I go to someone else’s house. And even when I do, I still don’t feel clean. Even after washing my hair 4 times or more.

We were supposed to move into the place next door and tear this one down. But the landlord and my dad made a deal that he’d give it to us for the cost of the title transfer. Then suddenly, he wanted $600, then like $800 or $1,000. But he won’t stop asking about it, no matter how many times we tell him no. Him and his wife keep trying to say we’re $5,000 behind on rent which isn’t possible because with what rent is now, you can’t even get $5,000 as a total for a whole year, and this last year is the only time we fell behind because everything else was caught up. He gave us a bill full or errors. Payments that were made aren’t marked. Payments that weren’t made are. There’s random charges after the monthly rent cycle. Which I think are from when he was bitching about us paying the taxes for a place we didn’t even own and was still in his name. He told us we can’t run the generator for power because it was too loud. Though the noise ordinance here is 11, and it was always off by then. And when one of the neighbors asked how we were supposed to live, he told them it “Wasn’t his problem”.

So when I started getting really sick, and unable to leave the house to go to Dunkin for school because I was too gross, the neighbors next door let us run an extension cord over to their place. Not a lot. Just enough for the light in the living room, the fan, a mini fridge, and to plug in my phone and computer. OH WANNA HEAR A GOOD ONE. THE LANDLORD TOLD MY DAD 3 SEPARATE TIMES IF I NEED TO PLUG IN MY COMPUTER TO GET A LANTERN. YES THE OLD FASHIONED OIL OR CANDLE TYPE LANTERN. WHICH YOU CAN TOTALLY PLUG AN ELECTRONIC COMPUTER INTO. So because of that, I was able to finish school and graduate in June.

But, because I still can’t bathe or do laundry and have no clothes, I still can’t go to interviews. If I walked in with my arms, face, neck, and legs literally black from dirt, and reeking to high heaven, I’d fucking get laughed out of the place. My dad still refuses to get a real job and insists on hauling scrap or doing shit for people who won’t pay at all, or want to pay less than it’s worth. And guess what’s due this week? You got it, my first loan payment.

I can’t figure out how much I have to pay, work on getting it lowered or delayed, or even access my account info because there’s an issue with my birthday apparently, and they can’t find it even though they have my name and social and keep emailing me. I’ve been telling him this for months, and he still won’t come with me to try and sort it out. Because what he needs has to taken care of then and there and everything else can fuck all. He blew up at me the other day about it, blaming me for going, leaving him with payments, for my mother walking out 20 years ago even though they hated each other, and pretty much for being born. Because he resents having to take care of kids he made the choice to have. Not like I asked to be born, and I’ve been wishing I was dead since I was 9, but whatever.

Anyway.

So, the neighbor’s dad was diagnosed with lung cancer over the summer. Like 2 weeks later, he was dead. And she’s struggling just as much. We’ve been trying to help her and she’s been trying to help us. But her ex was paying her rent and some of the other bills until she found a job because they have a young son. But he started refusing to do that, which I honestly wouldn’t be surprised it if was the landlord’s doing cause they were talking. And he was telling her to “pull the plug” on us. And his wife started harassing her about rent like 2 weeks after her father died. Then, she went to Domestic relations earlier this week and then like the day after she goes, her ex somehow gets an emergency custody on the little guy. They came for him yesterday.

She’s most likely going to have to move, which means that we’ll be losing power and internet unless we can figure something out to get our power back on. But even then, the bill’s supposedly at least $1300, and that won’t fix the internet problem.

So... Needless to say, if I disappear suddenly in the near future, that’s why. I don’t want to go. I’ve spent too much time here, made too many friends, and put too much work into my muses. But everything is going to shit all at once. It’s just been building and building for the last 3 years, especially the last year, but my dad refuses to see and do anything about it. Instead, he’d rather blame everything on me and expect me to fix it. As if my mental health wasn’t bad enough from childhood abuse and being sick and stressed all the time. Now I’m too fucking scared to leave the house. I haven’t been outside since the midterms when I went to vote. But I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen now. And I just wanted everyone to know that I love them. And even if I do disappear, I still plan on keeping my muses and coming back when I can. Granted Tumblr doesn’t die before then. In which case the only blog i’m worried about losing is Elizabeth’s because of all the worldbuilding, metas, and headcanons I’ve done.

#Outofbelief

17 notes · View notes

ezragold · 7 years ago

Text

With a Little Help from My Friends

A/N: Happy last-day-of-Pegoryu-week! Let’s celebrate by reading... day 2′s prompt... No one ever said I was good at preparing things, okay. AO3 link: [here]

Day 2: First Date

Title: With a Little Help from My Friends

Rating: Teen

Summary: Ryuji has successfully asked Akira out! Now if only he could figure out something special for them to do. All of his ideas just feel like their every day routine, and he’s pulling his hair out trying to come up with a way to make it special. All of the thieves seem to have their own ideas of the perfect date, 90% of which are entirely unhelpful, as Ryuji soon realizes.

[ THURSDAY, 6:50PM ]

crossbonez is online

crossbonez has entered The Dungeon of Unspeakable Acts

crossbonez: GUYS I NEED HELP

crossbonez: ALSO WTF WHO CHANGED THE CHANNEL NAME

palette-cleanser: There’s no need to yell about it.

crossbonez: YOU CAN’T HEAR ME SMARTASS

killerqueen: Futaba renamed it and I can’t figure out how to change it back. What’s wrong?

memejed: me! muahaha!!!! you’ll never figure out how to change it back!

memejed: boo makoto types too fast :(

palette-cleanser: Futaba, naturally.

palette-cleanser: Oh.

memejed: lmaooooo

crossbonez: ok ok is akira in this chat??

yougimmethecrepes: I mean technically

yougimmethecrepes: but I think he’s had this channel muted for like a month

killerqueen: Understandable.

crossbonez: o sick

crossbonez: OK SO I ASKED HIM OUT AND I NEED ADVICE

yougimmethecrepes: OMG RYUJI

memejed: GHIDNDOSKFHSKX WHAAAAT

killerqueen: !

yougimmethecrepes: DID HE SAY YES??

palette-cleanser: My most heartfelt congratulations!

crossbonez: of course he said yes wtf guys

crossbonez: why wouldn’t he, i’m a catch

memejed: so’s a big ol slimy fish

memejed: its perspective

crossbonez: can we ban her?

killerqueen: She’s the room admin.

memejed: IM ADMIN MY CITY NOW

memejed: HECK how do u type so much faster than me????

crossbonez: OH MY GOD CAN WE FOCUS ON ME PLEASE

palette-cleanser: something tells me you wouldn’t allow us the chance to do anything different.

yougimmethecrepes: go ahead Ryuji, what’s up?

crossbonez: i didn’t think about what we should do on the date so i kinda panicked when he asked and told him i had everything taken care of but i don’t

crossbonez: ive never taken care of anything in my life

crossbonez: please help yall know im not smart

yougimmethecrepes: omg THAT’S what ur worried about??? HOE ur best friend is a dating expert. I gotchu

crossbonez: lmfao ann youve never been on a date

yougimmethecrepes: maybe not

yougimmethecrepes: but i have seen so many romcoms

crossbonez: oooooo my god Kill me

crossbonez: wait holy shit have any of you even been on a date before

crossbonez: NOW YOU ALL STOP TYPING

crossbonez: this is the worst i hate my life

yougimmethecrepes: yusuke if you say anything about painting my nude as a date i’ll block you

palette-cleanser: There was that time when Ann came to the old studio in order for me to paint her portrait.

palette-cleanser: It was already half-written when you sent that.

yougimmethecrepes: OHHH MY GOD

palette-cleanser: I didn’t want to just let the reply go to waste.

yougimmethecrepes: BLOCKED

palette-cleanser: :(

killerqueen: Okay.

killerqueen: I’ll DM you, Ryuji.

crossbonez: oh thank god

[ THURSDAY, 7:04 PM ]

[ killerqueen has sent you a message! ]

killerqueen: Firstly,

killerqueen: good for you, asking out Akira! That was really brave. How did it go, if that’s not too intrusive?

crossbonez: fine I think?? morgana kept cockblocking me but he got bored of watching us watch bad movies and left so

crossbonez: i just kinda

crossbonez: asked

crossbonez: and he said yeah

crossbonez: so now im dead and going thru w the date is my hell

killerqueen: Okay, relax. Obviously he wouldn’t have said yes to the date if he wasn’t already interested, so you already have that going for you! The worst part is done.

killerqueen: All you have to do now is think of something special for the two of you to do together.

crossbonez: yeah that’s basically the part where my brain stops

killerqueen: Fair. What’s your budget?

crossbonez: uhhhhhh

crossbonez: uhhhhhhhhhhh

killerqueen: Ryuji.

crossbonez: is free an option

killerqueen: Oh, god. Okay.

killerqueen: I didn’t realize you hadn’t planned for this in… any capacity.

crossbonez: OF COURSE I HAVENT ITS LIKE YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW ME

crossbonez: I DIDNT THINK OF THE MONEY THING OK

crossbonez: I WAS SORT OF FOCUSED ON NOT THROWING UP ON HIM AS I ASKED

killerqueen: Message received.

killerqueen: I’ll see if there’s anything cheap going on in the city this weekend.

crossbonez: thank you ugh

crossbonez: was this a bad idea

killerqueen: Asking out Akira? No, of course not.

crossbonez: sigh

killerqueen: Lying to Akira about having the entire thing prepared and planned out? Yes, without a doubt.

crossbonez: COOL THANKS MOM

crossbonez: GOD

[ crossbonez left the conversation. ]

[ THURSDAY, 7:29PM ]

[ palette-cleanser sent you a message! ]

palette-cleanser: Are you still taking advice for your date?

crossbonez: the answer is technically yes but i can’t say i’ve reached the point in my life where i’m ready to take dating advice from you

palette-cleanser: I shall try and keep my advice more general, then.

crossbonez: just don’t say the word beauty

palette-cleanser: You should consider the benefit of surrounding yourselves with beautiful things. I can only imagine a relationship increasing in intensity when the couple is surrounded by overwhelming beauty.

palette-cleanser: In my defense, my reply was half-written when you posted yours.

crossbonez: what the hell would overwhelming beauty even be man

crossbonez: am i sposed to find out which flower gives him boners like what am i doing here

palette-cleanser: that is up to you! And Akira, I suppose.

palette-cleanser: I was, of course, referring to your beautiful surroundings being up to you. Akira getting an erection is less-so in your hands.

palette-cleaner: …I did not mean for that to become a double-entendre but I suppose that’s also appropriate to your situation.

crossbonez: hoo boy you are this close to my block list lemme tell ya

palette-cleanser: Please don’t, my contact list is very short as it is.

palette-cleanser: Back to the topic at hand,

crossbonez: yeah plz

palette-cleanser: What are some things that Akira finds beautiful?

crossbonez: man i don’t know

crossbonez: uhh

crossbonez: good coffee

crossbonez: big ass cheeseburgers

crossbonez: cats probably

crossbonez: hes got a risette poster in his room but i think that’s less because shes hot and more because someone gave it to him and he was too nice to throw it out

palette-cleanser: None of that sounds particularly beautiful…

crossbonez: OH WOW DOES IT NOT

crossbonez: REALLY

palette-cleanser: There is no need to raise your typeface at me.

crossbonez: sjdjcickgmsoakfb

palette-cleanser: ?

crossbonez: nothing dont worry abt it

crossbonez: im gonna go see if i can buy something beautiful for ¥200

palette-cleanser: Many beautiful things in life are free.

crossbonez: you got an example to go with that inspirational quote?

crossbonez: duuuude?

palette-cleanser: I appear to be losing connection

crossbonez: oh my god dude

palette-cleanser: I can hardly read what you’re writing

crossbonez: thats not how that would even work

crossbonez: i cant tell if ur trolling me or not

[ palette-cleanser has left the conversation. ]

[ THURSDAY, 7:49PM ]

[ yougimmethecrepes has replied to your message! ]

crossbonez: plz tell me ur just invisible

crossbonez: ur my one last hope and god is that saying something about how my standards have fallen

yougimmethecrepes: doing homework

yougimmethecrepes: you still peeing your pants over date night?

crossbonez: you still willing to give bad advice?

yougimmethecrepes: imagine me swiping all of my school work off my desk onto my floor because if my math grade didn’t ride on this I would have done that

crossbonez: aight

yougimmethecrepes: also my advice is fantastic shut up

yougimmethecrepes: okay, lets start easy. What’s the budget?

crossbonez: im in high school and not a part time model

crossbonez: my budget is negative

yougimmethecrepes: ooooh

yougimmethecrepes: got it

yougimmethecrepes: arcade? you can just use small change and stuff

crossbonez: we go there ALL THE TIME thats not a date

crossbonez: that’s like going to the ramen shop or something

yougimmethecrepes: uh……batting cages? Movie?

crossbonez: i cant ask him on a date and then just do shit we do normally! how is that a date???

yougimmethecrepes: How is it not a date?? You guys always have fun doing that, how is it less fun on a date

yougimmethecrepes: OH WAIT NO I got it

yougimmethecrepes: bathhouse

crossbonez: shut up no

yougimmethecrepes: hey, it’s not my fault you gave this absolutely no thought whatsoever

crossbonez: UGH I KNOW

crossbonez: WHY IS THIS HARD

yougimmethecrepes: I KEEP TELLING YOU THAT IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE

yougimmethecrepes: YOU’RE MAKING THIS A PROBLEM

[ crossbonez has left the conversation. ]

[ THURSDAY, 8:25 PM ]

[ memejed sent you a message! ]

crossbonez: no

memejed: before you say anything

memejed: jdcjdjnfdkdkf

memejed: dammit how do all of you type so fast

memejed: it’s like I don’t even know myself any more

memejed: is it my tiny hands

crossbonez: i do not want dating advice from you

memejed: well then it’s a good thing I don’t have any for you then ISNT IT

memejed: I just wanted to tell you that Akira just got home and he’s smiling a lot and it’s gross and weird and most likely your fault, so

crossbonez: oh that’s

crossbonez: nice to hear thank you jhgjfyjuh

memejed: he just told sojiro about the date and sojiro offered to grab him condoms hahAHAAHAH

crossbonez: OH MY GOD

crossbonez: DONT TELL ME THAT SHIT

memejed: IM ACTUALLY GONNA CHOKE LOLLL

crossbonez: I HOPE SO

memejed: >:(

memejed: I don’t even get why youre so nervous he’s obviously out of his mind happy to go out with you

memejed: whatever you guys do he’ll be down

memejed: just don’t do any stupid shit like try and show off or act like a tool

memejed: which I realize may seem daunting for you

memejed: but I believe u may have it in you, maybe

crossbonez: I just have no idea what to do without us doing the same shit as always

memejed: whats wrong with doing the stuff you guys always do? Routine is comfy

memejed: comfort is the enemy of anxiety

memejed: well, comfy, and a good pair of sweatpants

memejed: *and valium

crossbonez: you dont think he would mind doing shit we do all the time?

memejed: oh my god are ALL boys as stupid as you??? how has the species survived for so long

memejed: just hold his hand or something and he’d let you push him in front of the subway!! Like, that probably shouldn’t be your go to option, but just

memejed: he ALREADY likes you. you don’t need to impress him or anything

memejed: consider yourself lucky, because like, idk how you swung that

crossbonez: I agree with you too much to get mad at that

crossbonez: wow

crossbonez: akira agreed to go out with me, you gave me advice that wasnt steaming dog shit

crossbonez: maybe i should buy a lottery ticket lmao

memejed: LMAO ur luck stat isn’t THAT high yet

memejed: see if sojiro comes through w the condoms first

crossbonez: okay and NOW im leaving

memejed: BE SAFE!!

[ crossbonez has left the conversation. ]

[ THURSDAY, 9:22 PM ]

[ HaruOkumura sent you a message! ]

HaruOkumura: Good, you’re still online!

crossbonez: hahaha what happened to ur screenname?

HaruOkumura: The company’s social media adviser suggested I change it for professional purposes………..

crossbonez: lame

HaruOkumura: Yes apparently “BigBangIsPeople” is not an appropriate username for the incoming CEO of Okumura Foods.

HaruOkumura: I thought it was funny :(

HaruOkumura: But anyway! I’m glad you’re still online! Makoto texted me and told me about yours and Akira’s date and I wanted to say congratulations and I’m so happy for you!

crossbonez: thanks! tell makoto to quit snitchin tho

HaruOkumura: Will do! I just wanted to talk because Makoto said you were very stressed out and seemed sort of unprepared

crossbonez: im okay now i think

crossbonez: futaba helped me out

crossbonez: weirdly

crossbonez: i mean im still sweating all over myself and the idea of actually meeting up with akira for the date in question makes me want to gag but :) im fine

HaruOkumura: oh my :o

HaruOkumura: Have you decided what the two of you will do?

crossbonez: yeeaaahhhh i got some ideas i think?

HaruOkumura: I do as well!! Would you like to hear them?

crossbonez: hey i am always up for not thinking

HaruOkumura: That’s great!! Okay, what is your budget currently?

crossbonez: gkhskdfkjlghlrihvoirhgiu

crossbonez: kjghsiuergtiughpijiuprughtuislrhgiulth

HaruOkumura: Uhm?

crossbonez: I THINK IM GOOD LMAO THX HARU

HaruOkumura: Oh youre welcome! Let us know how it goes!

crossbonez: yeah sure if i dont die first!

[ crossbonez has left the conversation. ]

[ SATURDAY, 02:41 AM ]

[ JokersWild sent you a message! ]

JokersWild: Hey

JokersWild: I know youre probably asleep because it’s like fuck o clock in the morning and why wouldn’t you be

JokersWild: But I cant sleep because I made myself some antianxiety coffee when I got home haha

JokersWild: (futaba calls it estresso but I can’t call it that because it’s so clever it makes me mad I didn’t think of it first)

JokersWild: but I had a really good time tonight

JokersWild: and you seemed kind of worried all night so I wanted you to know that

JokersWild: and idek if you were worried because of us(?) or if there was something else going on and now I just seem like kind of an asshole for assuming it was about me

JokersWild: but whether it was or it wasn’t I had fun

JokersWild: and

JokersWild: I’m really happy you asked me out

JokersWild: and just…… you don’t need advice from anyone on how to like

JokersWild: woo me yknow?

JokersWild: I had notifications turned off but the number of messages in the group chat kept ticking up so I lurked for a second

JokersWild: I don’t know what anyone ended up telling you but you didn’t need it

JokersWild: you don’t have to impress me. I ALREADY like you.

JokersWild: so, that’s that

JokersWild: this coffee is very strong and obviously my inhibitions are non existent right now so I’m going to bed before this turns into a confession

JokersWild: or more of one

JokersWild: lets, like, do this again? I want to keep doing this with you

[ JokersWild has left the conversation. ]

[ SATURDAY, 02:54 AM ]

[ JokersWild sent you a message! ]

JokersWild: also oh my god thank you for not freaking the fuck out when that condom fell out of my jacket I SWEAR TO YOU I did not put it there and when I find out who did I am going to unmake them

JokersWild: okay goodnight

[ JokersWild has left the conversation. ]

#pegoryuweek2018 #pegoryu #akiryu #fic: criminal mischief #fandom: persona 5 #fandom: persona #p5

116 notes · View notes

lookbackmachine · 6 years ago

Text

Disney Afternoon Part 2

The Disney Afternoon Pt 2

Subscribe:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-look-back-machine/id1257301677?mt=2

0:00:00 Speaker 1: The Disney Afternoon hit an unexpected hiccup a few years earlier that was finally starting to rear its ugly head. Eisner and Katzenberg would try to strong-arm their former boss Barry Diller, which would lead to unexpected new competition. In 1988, Eisner bought a television station in Los Angeles that eventually became KCAL. With his new station, he obviously wanted to air Disney product. There was a problem. They were already airing the Disney Afternoon on Fox affiliates, Barry Diller's network.

0:00:32 S1: According to DisneyWar, Eisner had Katzenberg call Diller. In Diller's recounting of the discussion, Katzenberg said, "We want to renegotiate the Disney Afternoon, and we're taking away the LA market." Diller was shocked. They had a contract. "That's not fair," he protested. "I know you bought an LA station, but give us two or three years to replace this. Let's be reasonable." Diller called Eisner, who refused. "We were there for you when you needed us," Diller reminded him, pointing out that he'd bought the original programming for Disney Afternoon. Eisner still refused. "Okay then, we're out of business," Diller said. Fox promptly dropped the Disney Afternoon from all of its wholly owned stations and encouraged its affiliates to do the same. Still, that wasn't what put Diller over the edge. Even though he felt Eisner had betrayed him, it was when Disney sued Fox on antitrust grounds claiming Fox was trying to monopolize children's programming and then complained to the FCC that Fox was a morally unfit broadcaster with programming like the Simpsons.

0:01:35 S1: When Disney lawyers approached Diller about a possible settlement, Diller said the only settlement he'd consider was an apology. Disney ended up dropping the suit in 1992, but Diller told David Geffen, "I'm never going to speak to him, Eisner, again." Fox would launch its own kids programming in 1990, which would eventually cut into Disney's ratings with the cultural phenomenon Power Rangers, not to mention Batman, the animated series, and Animaniacs. Power Rangers was a show that no one wanted. It was turned down by everyone, and then became the show everyone wanted and wanted to replicate. Premiering in August of 1993, by December it was the biggest kid show by far. According to the Baltimore Sun, it was averaging a 12.5 on weekends with kids two to 11. Fox's X-Men was doing a 10.0. And it was first on weekdays. It was doing a 7.5 rating. Second was Fox's Animaniacs with a 5.6, and the highest rated non-Fox show on weekdays was Bonkers with a 4.5. Also in 1994, Power Ranger toy sales would reach nearly a billion dollars. At their highest height, Ninja Turtles had done only $450 million in sales.

0:02:50 S1: The butterfly effect was now spreading its wings, and the Disney Afternoon would take a hit, as did the future of syndication as networks realized they should be promoting their own IPs instead of other companies. It would even happen to Fox when Warner Brothers would take its popular hits, Batman and Animaniacs, and put it on their own WB network. And it wasn't just network competitors anymore, cable had entered the market as well. Nickelodeon had popped into the world of animation and their first three cartoons, Ren and Stimpy, Doug, and Rugrats had all been big successes. The syndication window was closing in the not too distant future, but for now Disney Television Animation was about to change with the times.

[music]

0:03:43 S1: Greg Weisman, creator Gargoyles.

0:03:46 Greg Weisman: The pitch for Aladdin, that I pitched to Eisner, it was just one poster shot of Aladdin and the Genie and three words, "Aladdin the series". He's like, "Sold." That was it. And I knew that. In other words, going in, it was like I could have given this whole pitch on Aladdin, but I thought anything I say would only give him a reason to say no. Aladdin's this huge movie. Let him imagine what the show is.

0:04:11 S1: Tad Stones, creator of Darkwing Duck.

0:04:14 Tad Stones: At the end of Darkwing, I said, "Okay, now Darkwing worked much closer." I think I can get even closer with my next show, which was going to be a science fiction show. Again, a comedy. The staff loved it, but the boss did not. I never got to pitch it to Michael and Jeffrey. You know, had a meeting, I said, "Oh, I'm gonna get a chance to do it." And it was like, "No." They wanted me to do Aladdin. Now, Aladdin was done by Ron Clements, John Musker. I said, "I used to room with... In the same office as Ron Clements." I mean I was literally four feet away from him. "Let me talk to those guys." With Aladdin there was the other thing that I did the first direct to home video, Return of Jafar. And all I was trying to do was keep our budgets up. And I thought, if there's one more source of revenue that comes in from our shows, this would be the excuse to not cut budgets or give us the money we need to pull off some of this stuff. I called up Home Video and said, "Technically, when I do this four part episode pilot to set up the show, technically it's the sequel to Aladdin. Are you interested?" And the guy took it to the higher ups and they were not.

0:05:25 TS: Then they put out Aladdin on video. Again, it broke records. They made a huge amount of money, and I called the guy back and again restated what I was doing. And this time he took it to the top and they were very interested. And we had a story meeting with my boss where he gave all sorts of notes. And I said, "Well, we got... That's a lot to pull off. We have to do that by March 14th or whatever the date was." He said, "Why?" I said, "Well, Home Video was willing to put this out on literally video at that time." And he said, "That's gravy. Do these notes and if you get them done in time, that's fine." And I had to be told this later by people who were in the room 'cause I had forgotten that I had said, "Okay we have to take those notes, but it also has to be done by this date so I can get it to Home Video."

0:06:11 TS: We did. And Return of Jafar was made for $3.5 million and it made something between $180 and $200 million domestic out on video. This may be apocryphal, but I was told that it was the first quarter where the company wouldn't have grown. Well, I don't know what, ten percent or whatever the number was, and I guess a bunch of executives had bonuses tied into profit growth. Evidently that was the first quarter that there wouldn't be bonuses, and then suddenly everybody got a bonus, and it was because of Return of Jafar, that out of nowhere this thing came in and making all this money. And that started the whole direct to video thing.

0:06:53 TS: All I was trying to do was to keep our budgets up. The stories involving the bonuses, they tried to do things like Lucas had with Star Wars had given everybody involved points or some sort of bonus, so they had X amount of money and they divided it up so everybody got something. And what that led to is whoever was last in line, some of the lower level people, got a bonus, a check of $50 or $100, whatever. People who basically were in the department who didn't work on the show, and all that did was piss them off 'cause they knew how much the movie had made. I got $14,000 and I told that to Ron and John. Now I was not an idiot. I knew that the only reason why the movie made that much money is because they had done an incredible Aladdin, and I remember telling that to them and their reaction was, "You got ripped off." And I realized, yeah, in live action terms, if you do a crappy spinoff of something that made a lot of money and your crappy spinoff makes a ton of money, you get a five picture deal and a new car in your driveway as a present from the studio. In animation, I was happy to get the bonus. But get a pat on the back and then you move on, do something else for us.

0:08:09 S1: Jymn Magon, writer.

0:08:11 Jymn Magon: Disney's had a definite style there for a while, of... I think we cornered the market in the comedy adventure genre. When Disney execs felt like they needed to branch out, I felt like the formula fell by the wayside. And it's like, "Hey, look what John Kricfalusi is doing on Ren and Stimpy. Let's do something like that. Hey, look what Warner Brothers is doing with superheroes. Let's do something like that." And I felt like, "Oh, this is interesting." Obviously, we're branching out, trying new things. But it felt weird to me that where we had before had been sort of chopping our way through the jungle, creating our own path. Now we were sort of following other people's paths, copying them. And that always seemed odd to me. But anyway, department does what the department does over the years, and the changes, and the new policy, and it gets worse or it gets better. And is it Disney? Yes, because it's Disney TV Animation. They're Disney and this is the show they're doing. It becomes part of the canon, you know.

0:09:15 S1: In 1994, Variety reported that Disney was spending $50 million to boost its afternoon, which resulted in two new series, Shnookums and Meat, and Gargoyles. Gargoyles, Aladdin, and Shnookums helped cut into the lead of Fox, but there was a larger problem that television animation was about to encounter. Disney's syndication contract with networks ran only through 1997, meaning that other networks could produce their own shows and make more money. This would leave Disney Animation without a home because Disney didn't own a network. In fact, earlier in the year, they had tried to buy NBC but failed. Total viewership was also in decline during this period, which had to do with VCRs, computers, and video games offering alternatives to television. And to add to the uncertainty of 1994, Jeffrey Katzenberg left the company and he left because he was fired by Michael Eisner.

0:10:12 S1: In a walk in Aspen together, according to Katzenberg, Eisner promised him that if anything happened to Frank Wells, Katzenberg would take over Wells's role as president. Eisner would later say that Katzenberg misunderstood this conversation. Unfortunately, something did happen to Wells. He was killed in a tragic helicopter crash on April 3, 1994. But business stops for no man, and Eisner went back on his word and did not put Katzenberg in Wells's position as president, nor did he name him as his successor. To make matters worse, in a white glove slap to the face to Katzenberg, Eisner took on the role of president himself. This led to a further deterioration of their relationship and Eisner gave Katzenberg his walking papers. Eventually Eisner also refused Katzenberg part of his contract, which stated Katzenberg would get two percent of all profits from any of the projects he had worked on at Disney.

0:11:08 S1: So, like all great Hollywood love stories, they went to court. At one point it came out that Eisner had said he hated that midget, referring to Katzenberg. The case could have been settled for $90 million at one point, but instead it was eventually settled for $280 million in Katzenberg's favor. And then to further complicate matters, Katzenberg went on to form DreamWorks with Spielberg and David Geffen. In the midst of all that, Shnookums and Meat, a funny cartoon show, was being made. Bill Kopp, animator.

0:11:40 Bill Kopp: And then I got a call from Disney Television, which I had never heard of. I didn't even know they had it. And Gary Krisel and Bruce Cranston made me an offer. They said, "Hey, we need some new funny stuff and we really think your eat show is funny, and can you come and do a funny show?" And I was like, "Well, like what?" And they were like, "Whatever you want." Seriously. I didn't have to pitch anything. They were just like, "Just come over and we'll do whatever comes out of your head." It was incredible. So I had a sketchbook full of stuff, and I just came in. And they said, "Well, how about a cat and a dog?" I said, "Okay." We started with that, and that must have been 1992 or 1993, something like that. I forget. Pitching at Disney now. I'm not saying [0:12:22] ____. I mean, it's legendarily hard. It's like running a gauntlet. There's all these people in these giant buildings and you just got to carve your way through. And then once you do get into development, you're gonna be there for a year or two just trying to get it through. My experience was, we had lunch and the next week I was there with a contract.

0:12:40 BK: There was no feeling of pressure or ever like, "Oh my God, the wheels are coming off." It never was like that. And we had a saying that Disney [0:12:49] ____. It's like, "Well, if something's... If something crashes, well, I'll just throw money at it." You know. Nobody bothered us. When they said, "You can do whatever you want," they never brought it up. I remember sitting in the editor room with Gary Krisel, who was a great guy, and he'd look at some of the rough animation coming back. He'd look at me and he'd go, "Is that funny?" And we're like, "Yeah, that's funny." He just trusted us, and it was awesome. Now, Jeffie came over one day, as he frequently did, while we were kicking it around. And I said, "The cat's kind of abrasive. So let's give him the opposite kind of name," you know, Shnookum, 'cause he was kind of a dick. And then we were just like, "What the fuck are we gonna call this dog?" We had no clue. Just nothing. And Jeffie came up with the name, and I think we were actually barbecuing something, which we also frequently did. And I think he just said, "Meat." And we had the design already. And I said, "Fuck, that's it."

0:13:40 BK: Shnookums and Meat. A little confusion came when they made the SpaghettiOs though. I had a can of them around here, they finally just deteriorated. I had to get rid of it, it was gonna explode. And it said, "Shnookums and Meat." It was like SpaghettiOs. The lawyers were like, "No, no, no, man. You gotta say that it's not meat. It's not a meat product."

0:13:58 Shnookums: Hey, what happened to your head?

0:14:00 Meat: Hey, what happened to your head?

[music]

0:14:07 Shnookums: Oh my gosh, my brain's gone.

0:14:10 Meat: Oh no, mine is to. What we gonna do Shnookums, what we gonna do? We don't have any brains.

0:14:21 Shnookums: Now, let's stay calm. I don't think you have too much to worry about, but I know I do. They couldn't have gone far.

0:14:27 BK: Right after the first two shorts went on to [0:14:29] ____ said, "Okay, let's make it a whole half hour. What else do you got?" And I just pulled out the Pith Possum, and the Tex Tinstar bit was gonna be a space serial called Guy Guy and the Space Vigilantes. We were all set to go, and then I got a call from John Kricfalusi, and I had Fontanelli there, you know, all of Kricfalusi's guys, [0:14:47] ____ was there. A couple... Eddie Fitzgerald. And John called me. He goes, "Hey man, I heard you're expanding your show, but can you maybe not do a space thing?" Actually, it was like getting a call from the Godfather. He was like, "Yeah, don't do a space thing." And I was like, I go, "Why?" And he goes, "Well, 'cause I'm working on one. I've been working on it for a while." Actually, Fontanelli brought that up to me too. So I just turned it into a western, which was easy because I was happy to accommodate. But I guess he never sold his space thing.

[music]

0:15:14 Speaker 8: Pith Possum. At one time an ordinary laboratory possum. He was changed forever by an experiment gone wrong, an experiment that endowed him with ultra possum-like abilities, turning him into Pith Possum, super dynamic possum of tomorrow. Maintaining his secret identity by cleverly disguising himself as Peter Possum, copy boy for a great metropolitan tabloid. He defends truth, justice, and the forest critter way for the good citizens of Possum City.

[music]

0:15:56 Speaker 9: Let me just grab what I have in store for you. The rope that holds you up Tinstar, will soon be burned through by that candle. When you fall, you'll land head first on this trampoline, which will send you flying into the pen full of rabid badgers. As you go down the ramp inside the pen, this torch will be knocked over, igniting the trail of gunpowder burning toward that cannon. Your barrel will roll toward that cannon and your head will become stuck. The gunpowder will burn the cannon's fuse and the cannon will fire. The blast will ignite the waterproof fuses on the dynamite surrounding your head. The cannon will shoot you through the roof of the barn, and then down into this giant tank full of man-eating sharks. The sharks will eat you. Then the dynamite will explode. The whole mess will be blown skyward and your remains will fall into this envelope, which I will place on a boat bound for Tunisia. So long, Tinstar.

0:16:48 BK: Anyway, and that was Shnookums and Meat, but again, that was so busy and I was the only writer. I wrote all 39 of those because I didn't know any better. After the show was on the air and we were done, Jeffie and I sat around. I went to Hawaii for six weeks to recuperate. I came back and they were just like, "Well, we don't know about the second season." And I mean, Shnookums and Meat was not... It was amazing that they let us do it 'cause it's not Disney, really. Well, it's not out of line, but it's weird. So we were just sitting there waiting to get the word, and I mean the writing was on the wall. I was like, "Yeah okay, there goes that. What are we gonna do next?" And I was there still getting paid. I developed other stuff. Jeffie and I were like, "This is gonna crack, man. What are we gonna fucking do now?"

0:17:34 BK: We didn't have a plan. And then, what happened was they said, "Oh, sorry boys. You're through." And we were like, "Ah fuck, okay well, at least we got that out." I mean that was three in one, dude. You got Pith and Tex, and Shnookum and Meat was actually our weakest link in the thing. And that was the only part that was foisted on us. But right after they canceled it, that was when Gary Krisel and Bruce Cranston left to go to Dreamworks, and we were like, "Ah." And it was like a sad goodbye and stuff.

0:18:06 BK: A new executive moved in, and we just weren't part of their plan. Because... And rightfully... They didn't know what to do with us. We were like a weird thing that, they were like, "Huh? Now what with these guys?" But we had a good time. I think we sort of knew in the back of our heads, it was like, "Wow, this will never last here." It isn't Disney material. The real story of that time was they were trying to keep up with Margaret and Fox Kids, and they were right to try crazy things. To their credit, they really, they stuck right by it. And then they... And Gary and Bruce did the same for us at DreamWorks when we went to do Toonsylvania.

0:18:42 S1: Greg Weisman, creator Gargoyles.

0:18:44 GW: We had the Disney Afternoon, which we viewed as sort of like the dragon that you had to feed a virgin to every six months. So every six months, we'd go up in front of Michael Eisner. In those days, Michael personally chose the shows. And we would pitch him six or seven shows. And he knew he always had to pick one to put into production. He could pick more than one, but he had to always pick at least one.

0:19:10 S1: Jymn Magon.

0:19:11 JM: Yeah, what we would do is every week, we would have this writer's meeting that I think it was Wednesday mornings, and it was like any new writers out there, any new talent, any new ideas, it was always looking for what are we gonna pitch? What's the next big thing? And of course, like everything in Hollywood, it was basically, what was the most recent hit film? With Star Wars, Indiana Jones, whatever. But people would come in and they'd pitch all kinds of things. And the things that were noteworthy would get... I'm not sure we did artwork on all of it, but at least we had a list of shows that we would take to the meetings with Eisner and Katzenberg and say, "Okay, this is called Wonder Weenie. It's about a guy in a hot dog suit that gets kidnapped and taken to another planet, where they think he's a hero 'cause of his television commercials." And it was like, Gong. [chuckle] "No, next." And we would just do that. We would come up with these sort of one, two sentence pitches and they would go, "Nah, or yeah."

0:20:13 S1: Greg Weisman.

0:20:14 GW: We were all sort of keeping an eye on Batman, and sort of seeing was this going to be a success or not? It was a serious drama on cartoon, and would that work? Because the conventional wisdom is it always has to be comedy, and often it's a pendulum and that conventional wisdom swings back into the forefront all the time. But Batman was working, it was working so well they tried it in prime time, and then it didn't work in prime time. And so the desire for us to do something along those lines sort of waxed and waned, often with Batman's ratings. And we didn't have superheroes in our camp so to speak, so we didn't wanna do Batman, we didn't wanna copy that, but we wanted to try and do something different. But that's not how Gargoyles came about at all. Those are almost two separate discussions that dovetailed later.

0:21:08 GW: Gargoyles was initially developed as a comedy adventure, very much inspired by and along the lines of Gummi Bears, Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears, which was a show we were really proud of, created by a guy named Jymn Magon. We thought was great. It had this very rich backstory and we thought it didn't get enough respect, and we thought that the main reason for that was because there was brand confusion with Care Bears. Care Bears was a sort of sacchariney sweet, kinda awful show, from my point of anyway. But the brand confusion was understandable because both shows featured cute, cuddly, multi-colored bears. Gummi Bears wasn't that. It was an adventure show. It was funny. It was exciting. It had a great comedic villain in Duke Igthorn and great sidekick in [0:21:54] ____, and great characters, and just a lot of fun. So we set out very consciously to create a show in that vein with the same sort of rich backstory, but that would get more respect. So everything in the 90s, the sort of buzz word was everything had to be edgy. Instead of doing cute, cuddly, multi-colored bears, we did cute, cuddly, multi-colored gargoyles. Gargoyles having been something that fascinated me since I was in high school.

0:22:23 GW: And we thought that's edgier. And instead of setting it in medieval times, we'd have this rich medieval backstory, but we'd set it in the present. We'd have gargoyles have a spell cast on them and they'd wake up in the 20th century, and that seemed edgier too. And so we thought, we can do this kind of show and have this fun comedy adventure with Gargoyles. So we put together a pitch, and we pitched it to Michael Eisner, and he passed. But we really liked the show and my bosses, Bruce and Gary, both really liked it. And they were like, "Well, take another pass at it." So I showed it to a number of people, just the original comedy pitch, to try and get some feedback and see what else I might do with it. One of the people I showed it to was Tad Stones.

0:23:06 TS: Gargoyles had a long history of things that are in a direct line that ended up with Gargoyles. And some of them didn't involve Gargoyles at all. They were gremlins, or whatever. The last thing I'd been playing with I think was a Three Musketeers version of these gargoyles. I had just seen the rough cut of Beauty and the Beast. So again, I'm instrumental. I'm not a genius, at least not in that meeting. Greg had asked me in just to talk about things and be in the discussion with his assistants basically. Again, he was an executive. And I said, "What if he was the last of the gargoyles? This could be your Beauty and the Beast 'cause you've already got the female there." He is one of the fastest thinkers I've ever seen. While he's watching a movie, he is analyzing, dissecting it. And walking out of a movie he'll have all sorts of comments, where I'm going, "Well, I thought the colors were nice." Anyway, he was on to something, he kind of said to his assistant, "Okay, you follow up on the Three Musketeers angle. I wanna work on this."

0:24:07 GW: And that really clicked for me. And so I created the character of Goliath with the artist Greg Guler, and we took the whole show, the whole comedy development and put it through the prism of Goliath and came out the other side fundamentally with the show that made it on the air. And we were so enthusiastic about it, we came up with all these concepts for villains and adventures and stories and put together this huge long pitch and pitched it to Eisner six months after we'd pitched it the first time. And he passed, killed it. And so I thought it was done. We tried. It wasn't the first time I'd pitched a show and it had gotten killed. And the next day we had what we called a postmortem meeting. In those days, Jeffrey Katzenberg was... And Michael ran the whole company, but Jeffrey Katzenberg was head of the studio. And so Jeffrey had been in the meeting with Gary and Bruce and I, and we were having this postmortem meeting where we were discussing actually the shows that Michael had said yes to and what the next steps would be. And so after having this discussion about the yes shows, we all got up to go. And as I'm about to go, Jeffrey said to me, "Oh, and you're gonna work on Gargoyles some more, right?"

0:25:20 GW: And Bruce and I sort of looked at each other, and I was like, "Well no, Michael killed it. He killed it as a comedy. He killed it as a drama. I don't know what else we'd do with it." And Jeffrey said, "Oh, Michael didn't kill it, he just thought it needed more work." Now I had been there the day before, and I knew that he had killed it. But what this was telling me was that Michael may not have liked it, but Jeffrey liked it. And in those days Jeffrey wasn't gonna contradict what Michael had said, but he still felt it was worth pursuing. I also found out later that Gary had talked to Jeffrey about the need to diversify the Disney Afternoon from the standpoint of all we had in those days were very similar, funny animal comedy adventure cartoons, and that if we just kept doing that over and over again, eventually the audience would get bored with those kind of cartoons. No matter how good they were, they'd just get bored with them. And we had to bring other types of things in, which led to shows like Goof Troop, which was really more sitcom than comedy adventure. Shows like Shnookums and Meat, which was more sort of Tex Avery short cartoons, and Gargoyles.

0:26:36 GW: And so we went back to the drawing board for a third time to try and figure out how we were gonna pitch Gargoyles for a third time. And we looked at the show that we had, and we thought, "Nope, this is the show. We don't wanna change the show at all." So the problem isn't the show, the problem is the pitch. And what you realize is that we had just put way too much into the pitch. It had diffused it all and gotten confusing and we hadn't been crisp and clear. So we just pulled things out, things that we eventually did use in the show, but we pulled all these elements out and really narrowed it down to the key idea, which frankly, was the Beauty and the Beast idea.

0:27:16 GW: It was this relationship between Goliath, the lead gargoyle, and Elisa, the cop, who befriends him in the 20th century after he wakes up. And we very much played it like Beauty and the Beast, which actually was a movie that had done very well for Disney recently. So six months later, we pitched it to Michael a third time, and this time they bought it. We had added nothing to this pitch, we just subtracted. I'd reordered a few things. We may have redrawn a card or two just to clarify an idea, but there was nothing new, it was just shorter. Jeffrey turned to me and said, "You added a lot to that pitch didn't you?" And I said, "Yes, I did." And that was history. We went on and made the show.

0:28:03 Speaker 10: One thousand years ago superstition in the sword ruled. It was a time of darkness, it was a world of fear, it was the age of Gargoyles. Stone by day, warriors by night. We were betrayed by the humans we had sworn to protect, frozen in stone by a magic spell for a thousand years. Now, here in Manhattan, the spell is broken and we live again. We are defenders of the night. We are Gargoyles!

0:29:01 GW: And so, yes, relative to Goof Troop it's dark, but I don't think of it as dark. There's tons of humor in that show. The color palette is rich, full of blues and purples and magentas and neon. It's not a dark show either visually or thematically. It's fundamentally a show about a guy, Goliath, who's an optimist, who believes that the world can be a better place, that bad things happen but they can be fixed, that the next generation can do better or that we can make it better. And so it's got a fundamentally optimistic tone to it. In terms of supervision, the advantage there was that I'd been the executive at Disney for five years when we went into production. I often compare it to a lunatic asylum, TV animation, in that there are inmates and then there are trustees, and the trustees are actually also inmates, but they're considered by management to be less crazy.

0:30:07 GW: So they give the trustee a stick, a baton to keep the other lunatics in line. And so that's how I sort of see my role on Gargoyles. I was the lunatic most trusted. So because of what was going on, both in the larger company and at TV Animation, there were a lot of shows in crisis for various reasons. And because of that and because I was in charge of Gargoyles, which I produced with Frank Paur, we were both producers, but from an executive standpoint it was still me. I was the lunatic most trusted at Disney TV Animation, so they kinda left us alone. And I remember at one point, Frank and I had lunch with Gary during season two and Gary said, "I wanna apologize to you guys. I have not been paying attention to Gargoyles at all. We've had other things going on. How is it going? What's going on? How's it going on the show?"

0:30:54 GW: And we said, "Well, it's going pretty good. Schedule's tough, but we're managing and we're happy with how things are turning out." He's like, "Great. What kind of stories are you doing?" So we started telling him about that and at one point we told him about Xanatos and Fox getting married and having a baby. And he goes, "Whoa, whoa. I wouldn't do that. You can't have the bad guy have a baby. You can't have the bad guy raising a kid. You gonna take the kid away from him? That'll be bad. And if you don't take the kid away from him then you got a villain raising a kid. Don't do that one."

0:31:23 GW: And we were like looking at each other and then I say to him, "Well, we already did it." So there was this long pause. And Frank and I are both sort of like what's gonna happen here? Is he gonna still reject it and force us to sort of tear the whole show apart and start over? And you could sort of tell he's thinking the same thing, like he doesn't like this idea at all. But on the other hand, this was the one show that was going smoothly, and if he rips it all apart, then he's gotta get another show in crisis. So after this long pause, he says to us, "Well, don't dwell on it." I said, "Okay, we won't dwell on it." Whatever the hell that meant, but so we didn't. I mean we didn't do it, we didn't change anything, but that was the kind of thing, we had very little supervision because of where I had come from. We pretty much made the show that Frank and I wanted to make and had almost no interference whatsoever.

0:32:25 GW: Gargoyles was sort of superheroes done without flagging that they're superheroes. No tights, no capes. For all intents and purposes that was the genre we were doing. A year or so later, I was in a meeting with Eisner where he announced his desire to buy Marvel, and I watched his corporate strategic guys talk him out of it and say, "Marvel's a disaster. They've got their rights sold all over the place. So you'd buy the company and then find out you can't make a movie about Spiderman because they've tripled sold the rights to three different companies. And Fantastic Four is being held by this company. And blah, blah, blah, blah."

0:33:05 GW: Now of course, years later Bob Iger just bought it anyway, and yeah, couldn't do X-Men, couldn't do Fantastic Four, couldn't do Spiderman, at least not at first, bought it anyway. Of course, it's been a huge success for Disney. But Eisner was talked out of it that day. So he turned to us, to Gary and Bruce and myself and says, "Can we use Gargoyles to start a Disney superhero universe?" And I said, "Yeah." And we began developing spinoffs, which we would do backdoor pilots for during season two of the show. But by the time those things got on the air, Jeffrey had left the company. Rich Frank had left the company. Frank Wells had died. Bruce had left the company. All the main supporters of Gargoyles had gone, and so that notion of using Gargoyles to launch Disney's own superhero universe sort of fell away.

0:34:01 GW: But for, I don't know, three or four months, it was like this is what we've got to do 'cause we can't buy Marvel, and Warner Brothers has DC. And on one level, and I don't think we even appreciated it at the time, but the great thing about Michael himself picking the shows was that everyone in every division got on board or got out of the way. In the years that followed, when Michael stopped picking the shows personally, those decisions began being made by committee. You found you had to get literally unanimous vote in order to sell a show. You needed not just one important person to say yes, or two or three, but literally you needed something like eight or nine people to say yes. And if even one said no, the others would jump off the show. And it became much harder to sell. So Michael was sort of the last of the moguls from my point of view, and we didn't appreciate it at the time 'cause there were so many shows he passed on that we thought were great, but what we didn't get was yeah, that may have been so but the shows he picked we got to just make. And that hasn't been the same in most places since then.

0:35:12 GW: I think what happened was, is that over time, there was this sort of sense within the corporation that Michael was micromanaging, not from us per se. I don't think it had anything to do with TV Animation, but just in general. And there was this sense that he had to start giving some things up. One of the things he gave up was choosing the animated series, but he didn't invest that power in another individual. Again, sort of became a decision by committee, a committee where any one person could derail something.

0:35:40 Speaker 11: Five-eights today to close at 42 and five-eights, one day after the company announced the resignation of Disney studio's chief Jeffrey Katzenberg. While rumors run rampant about where Katzenberg will end up, Disney chairman Michael Eisner said today, the company will likely produce fewer films.

0:35:57 GW: Jeffrey left. Rich Frank left. A lot of this was in the wake of Frank Wells's death, which was a tragedy in it's own right, but also destabilized the company. Roy Disney was not happy with Jeffrey. Ultimately, not happy with Michael either. So ultimately, both departed and Gary had at least a couple job offers that I know about, maybe more. I think Jeffrey wanted him at DreamWorks and had an offer out to him, and then when Bruce Cranston left to go to Dreamworks, Gary decided that DreamWorks would be a good place to sort of work with Bruce again and reform that team. So Gary also picked DreamWorks. So you had Jeffrey, Gary, and Bruce all at DreamWorks. Those were the three guys who I'd worked with. So at Disney, everyone sort of assumed that I'd be going to DreamWorks.

0:36:50 GW: When my deal was up at the end of the second season of Gargoyles, that I'd leave and go to DreamWorks. And I didn't actually want to. I wanted to stay and do a third season of Gargoyles. But it became this self-fulfilling prophesy. They were so sure I was gonna go to DreamWorks that they stopped inviting me to meetings, 'cause they thought of me as I was already spying for DreamWorks or something. It was kind of ridiculous. But they didn't make a job offer to me until a week before I was leaving, at which point, I did end up going to DreamWorks because I didn't have any other job offers. A week out they finally made an offer to me too late. So I went. And they really kind of made it clear that I wasn't welcome there anymore.

0:37:36 GW: In November of 1995, I wanna say, they came to me, and said they wanted me to do the third season of Gargoyles but they were offering me a demotion from producer to story editor. They said the show was going to be animated at Deak, but Deak had a very bad track record in those days in terms of the look of the thing, and that it would be pre-produced there as well. And they gave me a schedule in November of 1995, where the first script was due in October of 1995. And I looked at the schedule. I said, "Well, do you have a time machine? Because I don't know how I'm supposed to go back and deliver a script in October when it's already November and we haven't started." And they're like, "Well, we know that schedule's gotta be adjusted, but we wanted you to see where it had to end so you'd have to catch up. Not instantaneously, but by the end of the season you'd have to catch up." And so it felt to me like they were asking me to preside over the demise of the show. That they were reducing the budget, reducing the quality of the animation, reducing the quality of all the preproduction, giving us an impossible schedule, and then asking me on top of all that, to take it to motion.

0:38:57 GW: And we didn't even talk about money. That... We didn't even get to that. I just said, "Look, I need the weekend to think about this." And they said, "Great. Take the weekend." And then I came in Monday and they had hired my replacement already. And I said, "What the hell?" And they said, "Oh well, you can still say yes. You're a... We just figured we needed someone in case you said no." Which basically said they were trying to get me to say no. They were trying to make the deal so horrible that I'd say no. So I just said, "Fine, I'll walk away." And so I winded up going to DreamWorks, and they all sort of patted themselves on the back and said, "See, we knew he was gonna go to DreamWorks." But of course they're the reason I went to DreamWorks 'cause they basically kicked me out. Not literally, but basically.

0:39:44 GW: I ended up writing the first episode for them, which they gave to other people to add it into whatever. So the version that got on TV was, I thought, a mess, but still better than the other 12, which were done by good people, but good people who didn't know the show and didn't have time to familiarize themselves with the show. And so those last, that last season of Gargoyles, the fans and I just don't even count it as canon to the series. And we look at the comic book series that I did years later as the sort of true third season. I watched the third season. I watched every episode exactly once. That's not quite true, I watched the one that I wrote more than once, not a lot, but the other 12 I watched exactly once each and made myself do it. I don't know why, but I did. It was very painful for me on a lot of levels, not just again, not just because I didn't think they were very good, which I didn't, even though I know a lot of good people worked on them, but characters were just behaving out of character. And the stories just weren't up to our standards. And it was just a different show.

0:40:57 S1: The original Mighty Ducks movie was made because Eisner's kids liked hockey. So it got a green light. And based on the success of the movie, which the company termed market research, Eisner bought an expansion NHL team and promptly named them the Mighty Ducks. And with that purchase came an addition to the television line up. The Mighty Ducks, the Animated Series, premiered in September 1996, and Joe Barruso, and animation veteran, served as a director and supervising producer.

0:41:27 Joe Barruso: The reason I was able get a job at Disney, and went from Deak to Disney I think had more to do with the fact that the show that I had directed and produced, Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego, had won an Emmy in '95 as the best children's animated program. And it was one of the first shows that they called edutainment because it had this emphasis on providing real information, whether it was historical or science, in combination with an entertaining story. It was a detective-type story where a couple of younger kids were pursuing Carmen Sandiego. It was based on a computer game that was very popular at that time. They were looking for someone specifically for Mighty Ducks at the time. They needed a producer and director. And so yeah, I went and interviewed specifically for that project.

0:42:20 JB: In the initial meetings they showed me what they had done to that point and it wasn't a lot. It's funny, thinking back on it, it had started because Friends was very popular at that time, hugely successful at that time, so they wanted something like Friends. I remember them pitching it to me that way, and I thought, "Oh well, that's interesting." In the development that I'd seen to that point, when it was the Friend's concept, it was like we had in the show ultimately, it was human characters with duck heads, so it was sort of breaking with Disney tradition in terms of DuckTales and things that were clearly Donald Duck type characters. This was a new twist on the ducks for them. And that wasn't tremendously interesting to me, but then I can't recall at what point it shifted and became more sci-fi based, you know heroes in the image of sort of Ninja Turtles. And that's when David Wise, the editor, came on board.

0:43:22 JB: It was clear it was gonna go that direction. He had had a great deal of experience with Ninja Turtles, editing those shows, so he brought all that thinking and that expertise in terms of that particular genre, in going in that direction. He bought all that. That's when I was excited about... Sci-fi had always been a big interest for me and then anime was just getting really a lot of attention at that time. It really caught my interest, so that when we started talking that way, I was like, "Oh well, this will be great. We can use anime influences on this." But yeah, I think the old school that was there, because it was ducks, was a little uncomfortable. But our character designer, Greg Guler, he had had a longstanding relationship with Disney TV, and so he had done it all. He really knew it inside out. At the same time he had a great interest in superheroes. His background, he had originally come from comic books, so his first love was superheroes. So here he had a chance to combine Disney ducks with superheroes, so it was really a perfect opportunity for him. He was just a fantastic artist. So it all sort of came together.

0:44:32 JB: I was relieved that it was moving away from sort of a Friends sitcom to something more sci-fi and hero based. All our influences in terms of doing the art were harder edged. We never really got to go as far in that sci-fi direction as we would have liked to, but the way it's done is in terms of the development and art direction, it's sort of a consensus. So you have to put it in front of a whole bunch of people. And that included at the time, that included Michael Eisner and Michael Ovitz. We had meetings where they reviewed the artwork, and so they would have their input. I was kind of reaching for one end of the spectrum, and them pulling us back to something that was a little more comfortable. I was pleased that we were able to go as far as we did, given what they had done with ducks to that point.

0:45:24 Speaker 13: Six hockey playing ducks appear out of nowhere and suddenly six vigilantes in comic book get-up start showing up whenever there's trouble. Spill it. Where are they from? Another planet?

0:45:36 Speaker 14: Not another planet babe. A whole 'nother universe.

0:45:40 S1: And in this universe, there's a planet inhabited entirely by ducks.

0:45:45 Speaker 15: They called it Puckworld in honor of their greatest hero, the legendary hockey player, Drake DuCaine. He was the ultimate team captain. He saved Puckworld from a horde of conquering aliens, called the Saurian Overlords, hundreds of years ago.

0:46:00 JB: Michael Eisner, he was excited about it because he was excited about the hockey team. So here was just an opportunity to promote it.

0:46:07 Speaker 16: Well, this is sad news indeed for Duck fans. It looks like the Mighty Ducks season long winning streak may be coming to an end. They're tied with the Maine Quahogs with forty seconds remaining at Quahog Center. John Luke [0:46:20] ____ is aiming to score again. Oh, a spectacular save by the Mighty Ducks goalie, Wildwing. You know, not only are these ducks mighty, they're really ducks.

0:46:36 JB: Interesting thing that we did, which was sort of unconventional, was after the shows would come back animated, we would of course assemble them. It was decided that they were not funny enough. I would spend large amounts of time each day sitting with two comedy writers who would rewrite the shows. And rewrite jokes into the shows. And we would sit and we would have to make sure, because the shows were already animated, we would have to make sure that the new lines would work with the mouths that we already had. So, it was a grueling exercise of... They're trying to be funny, trying to... Coming up with jokes, but we had to make sure that they could work in the animation, as it was already completed. That was different, yeah, maybe one in ten were actually worth all the time and energy.

0:47:29 S1: So these hockey playing ducks were attacked by a dinosaur named Dragaunus. Am I hearing you right?

0:47:36 S1: You're bright, you got it babe.

0:47:38 S1: Beautiful. I could have stayed home watching sci-fi chiller theater, but this is much funnier. All right, what happened next?

0:47:48 JB: It was kind of disappointing that it went away just after 26 episodes 'cause there really was a big push behind it. The Disney marketing machine and merchandising machine was behind it entirely. And Mattel was on board entirely for the toy line. And I guess it was the second largest toy line in Canada, second only to Star Wars at that time, which makes sense 'cause it was hockey. And I know for a fact that Mattel was disappointed that it went away 'cause they had planned years of it. It never did horribly, but some weeks it would be just average, but other weeks it would be doing really well, so it was a surprise when we didn't get more episodes. I had worked my whole life towards the point of having the opportunity to do the traditional look, and a big thrill for me was to finally be at Disney, which was a personal goal. And so I was happy that I was able to do Mighty Ducks and sort of kick it up a notch in terms of duck properties.

0:48:47 S1: Jymn Magon. The last show the Disney Afternoon would produce was Quack Pack, a descendant of DuckTales, but with the nephews as teenagers and Donald as the parental figure instead of Uncle Scrooge. It should have been a perfect ending to Disney's run, but some things are not meant to be.

0:49:04 JM: I did move after the Goofy Movie into development on Duck Days, which eventually became Quack Pack. By that time, the whole mindset of the studio was changing. People that were valuable before were being sort of pushed aside and people that weren't valuable were being elevated and there was a lot more what I call baby suits showing up, middle management who were making decisions, creative decisions about things, people who had never made a single frame of film were making decisions. And it just got very strained, and it got so strained that I eventually said I need more money or I'm gonna go somewhere else, which was very, very difficult for me because I loved Disney. I thought I would retire from Disney, and it just didn't happen.

0:49:58 JM: From then on it was just like, I can't even follow what they're doing anymore. Well, it was part of the deal breaker. We were trying something new. We said, "How are we gonna do a series with Donald Duck when nobody can really understand Donald?" He's fine in a short where he goes, "Oh brother," or, "What's the big idea?" That kind of stuff. But to do dialogue is crazy. To try and hang a show on someone that you can't understand was gonna be very difficult. And we had some radical ideas and management looked down their noses at us. And I remember at one point our producer on the show, Larry Latham, was listening to management spouting about something or another. He looked over at me and he just, he did the throat cut, like cut, I'm out here.

0:50:51 JM: And shortly after that Carl Gears and I, who were the executive producers on the show, we just said, "We're happy to continue working on this, but we can't be running the show because management doesn't believe in it." And management said, "Okay fine." They never even called us and said, "What's wrong?" Accepted our statement and, which was basically a big, you know, forget you. And it was like, "Well, they don't care about us anymore." Like I said, that was sort of a turning point, for me anyway. I think it was a turning point for the department as well. But anyway, and I left shortly after that. We had a terrific run, and then just things felt... Started to get weird, that's all.

0:51:36 JM: And again, I can't put my finger on it, but to me, it had a lot to do with we stopped doing what we were good at and started following other people's leads. Every show we did was like number one in its slot, and so it wasn't like, "Oh ratings are slipping, let's do something different." To me, that genre, that style of Disney comedy adventure could still be going as far as I know. But it was like, "No, let's do Shnookums and Meat, and let's do Gargoyles. Let's do things that look like other studios." It just felt wrong to me. But again, I'm not in charge, I don't make those calls, I just, I'm a stupid ass show developer and story editor. I don't get to make the big decisions.

0:52:18 S1: Dean Stefan, writer.

0:52:20 Dean Stefan: And then of course Quack Pack was originally called Duck Days. The way I hear it, and I don't know, 'cause you know. It could be not exactly true, but I think it's true. Jymn Magon and, I think, Carl Gears were set to develop it, and much like Tad Stones was locked in his office for about six months or so when I first started, coming up with Darkwing Duck and all the artwork or whatever. Jymn and Carl were figuring out the show for Duck Days or Quack Pack. And at the time, Home Improvement was a big hit for Disney ABC, and they got the idea that Donald would be like the Tim Allen character. And he would have Huey, Louie, and Dewey, much like Tim Allen was the harried dad of the three kids. And the conceit was gonna be 'cause Donald couldn't really, he didn't have that many phrases he could say that... Disney actually had a list from the 30s they would hand to us, say, "These are the phrases that are recognizable, that Donald said." Because there just weren't that many words that you could make out, the way he talked.

0:53:26 DS: So their conceit was that he would have been a tailgunner in some kind of war and nobody could understand his instructions, so the military sent him to allocution school. And he would learn to speak clearer so that now he could do the sit-comy stuff with the kids and they can interact and stuff like that. So they had this whole thing worked out based upon the harried dad interacting with... And the way I hear it, they went to pitch to Katzenberg and the whole table of Disney suits. And they said, "Okay so, in this Donald, he went to allocution school because nobody could understand him in the military. Now he can speak a lot clearer." And that's about as far as they got.

0:54:07 DS: And Katzenberg says, "Wait, you wanna change the duck? You're gonna change the way Donald Duck talks?" And that was pretty much the end of the pitch, so that was it. So six months of work down the drain, 'cause without that they didn't really have a show. So then it became just really harried and it became Daisy Duck would be a roving reporter, and the kids would be tagalongs and Donald would almost be comic relief. You'd cut to him in the hammock doing gags and stuff like that. And it was a weird time at Disney 'cause we were between shows. And I think I wrote the Bible for Quack Pack, but I guess the show was okay. I'm not sure how it did in relation to the other ones. I don't think of it as one of the great ones.

0:54:49 S1: Jim Peterson, writer.

0:54:51 Jim Peterson: The origin of it is kind of muddled a little bit 'cause it kinda went through a whole bunch of different creative hands. So there was, I think it was originally Jymn Magon's project, and then he ended up leaving Disney. And Carl Gears took over. And then Carl got taken off the project and it was turned over to Kevin Hopps, who was our original story editor on Darkwing. And on the artistic side, Toby Shelton was running it, and they had kind of very different views of just between the two of them, how they wanted the series to run. And Toby really loved classic Donald Duck cartoons, and he kinda wanted to take it that way. And Kevin was more, it seemed, more on the sit-comy kind of stuff. We came in. There had already been a couple scripts written, but we ended up rewriting on what would become essentially the first episode, which was where Donald Duck gets drafted back into the Navy, of course, for some bizarre reason.

[music]

0:56:14 JP: The one that came out, kind of was still watchable was an episode called "The really Mighty Ducks". In it Huey, Dewey, and Louie become superheroes and Donald becomes a super villain called the Duck of Doom. And the whole battle is just about Donald trying to get the boys to clean their room, and they're doing everything humanly possible to, or duckly possible I suppose, to avoid cleaning their room.

0:56:41 Donald Duck: Clean this room or else.

0:56:47 Speaker 20: Clean our room? The nerve of some people.

0:56:50 Speaker 21: We're much too busy.

0:56:52 Speaker 22: We got a million things to do.

0:56:55 S?: We got nothing to do.

0:56:57 JP: And when Duck Days was winding up, it was an era where Disney was letting go of all of their staff writers. During the Bonkers run, they were also doing a couple other series at the time. So there were like 51 staff writers at that point, at Disney TV Animation. And when we finally left at the end of Duck Days, there were less than ten. So part of the reason was that Disney lost their market when Fox acquired the rights to the NFL. And a lot of stations that were independent and carrying the Disney Afternoon, signed up with Fox and had to drop the Disney Afternoon for the Fox cartoons. But at the time, that was our perception on the executive explanations for why the affiliates were dropping the Disney Afternoon. So that and also, at the same time, Turner acquiring Hanna-Barbara. Then he let go of all of the staff writers and decided to go freelance, and Disney kind of followed suit on that 'cause there were a bunch of writers available on the freelance market that didn't used to be available.

0:58:01 S1: In 1997 Disney purchased ABC, which was the final nail in the coffin for what had been known as the Disney Afternoon. Not only was that over, syndication was basically over as well. With their new network, Disney went full Nickelodeon, even bringing in Geraldine Laybourne who headed the Nickelodeon network. And Disney Television Animation changed quickly in response.

0:58:24 S1: In an attempt that the press called The Nickelodeonization of Disney, they bought Doug out from under Viacom and brought in Joe Ansolabehere who helped develop Hey Arnold! And Paul Germain who co-created Rugrats, to launch Recess, which became the flagship show of Disney's One Saturday Morning. With One Saturday Morning, Disney would retake the title of the number one kids block. The shows were far different than what had been done in the past, and the familiar faces that had transformed television animation like Gary Krisel, Greg Weisman, Mark Zaslove, and Jymn Magon, no longer wandered the halls. But a few were still there. Tad Stones.

0:59:02 TS: They had a luncheon at the rotunda restaurant where they invited the key people in the department, key creative people in the department were all there for the executives to introduce themselves. And Jerry Laborne, [0:59:17] ____ that she's talking about her direction. And she says, and obviously they had worked this out before. Says, "Dean, I hate ducks." And then that was Dean Valentine, and he replied. "I hate ducks too." Which was basically crapping on 80 percent of the people in the room, to say nothing of you would not have been offered a job because there would be no job to be had if it wasn't for those shows that you're currently crapping on. I was luckily on vacation during that luncheon. I don't know how I would have reacted. I wouldn't have said anything, but I might have walked out, which would've had the same effect. But it was totally disrespectful.

1:00:00 TS: You can certainly say, "You guys have done a fantastic job. And now the market's changing, we want to do something entirely different and we're looking for new ideas, and here's the ideas we're starting with." It's like, "Why do you have to piss on something to move forward?" So that was, again, this... They had a pitch, they had a strategy. Upper upper managment had signed off on it. So it's just basically, here's our show runners and some of you are gonna be working on these shows and some of you are not. So it's just a management thing. It's not like a slow evolution. It is just, "Hey, this is what we're doing now." And it's like, "Okay, are we doing any more of that?" "No, we're not gonna do any more of that, but we're still gonna do those feature spin-offs 'cause they're still doing well."

1:00:45 TS: That's that, you know.

[music]

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-look-back-machine/id1257301677?mt=2

#disneylandparis art disneypic spongebob disneyresort disneyaddict disneystore movies lgbt instagood disneymagic dc tvshows xboxone nintendos #disneyland disney disneygram disneyworld disneylife instadisney waltdisney disneyparks disneyphoto mickeymouse love waltdisneyworld disneypr

4 notes · View notes

confessionsofaheaux · 6 years ago

Text

Chapter 2. The Trainwreck

I am extremely grateful for sex work having given me the financial freedom to live a very comfortable life and put myself through school. However, i will say that the lifestyle is difficult to break free from. Once I was in it, it became a slippery slope. I ended up doing many things for money that left me feeling disgusted with myself. Cash addiction is real. I certainly still have it. And although my life is so different than it was when all this began, I’m still very allured to the making massive amounts of cash in short periods of time. Whether or not i need it. At this point in life, I really don’t need to continue doing sex work. I choose to, because I’m addicted to the money. I hoard cash.

I stripped for a couple more weeks after I graduated from high school, and decided that i would quit stripping in favor of webcamming from home. My white whale, the client who paid for my boob job, and gave me close to if not more than $50,000 in the few months that i knew him, pretty much dropped out of my life once I left the club. His fantasy is strictly about strippers, not sugar babies. There were actually only a few times that I ever saw him outside of the club. Wherever he is now, i hope he’s still out there making some young girl very happy!

I got my own place, and no longer had to worry about keeping my story straight with my parents. They still hadn’t a clue, but things were much easier for me once I moved out. Mainly i just needed a place to cam. I had enough money for a luxury 1 bedroom, but i opted for a modest studio instead. I didn’t like spending money, i just liked collecting it. A male friend from one of the many high schools I had attended introduced me to webcamming. I was skeptical, but i quickly began making more than i was at the strip club. In just a few short hours! And on top of that, guys would buy me stuff off my amazon wishlist. It was awesome. I didnt have to go anywhere, deal with guys trying to touch me, be on a schedule, deal with jealous strippers being mean to me, etc. I just had to look cute and get naked on camera.

I had zero pause. I couldn’t even take a guess on how many guys had seen my naked asshole, so putting it on the internet made no difference to me whatsoever. I tried seeing how much i could make without masturbating on cam, but quickly learned that if i was going to do this, i had to go all the way. I bought myself a bucket full of sex toys, that i would use during private shows (where guys pay by the minute) or when i reached my tip goal to do it in public (the whole world watching). I did custom videos, photos, mailed my panties. One guy even bought a lock of my hair for $200. Another got a private show just to watch me eat a cheesesteak.

Because i missed having the cash in hand, i signed up with a private party stripping company. My first show, I was picked up by the stripper I’d be dancing with and our bouncer. Her name was Mandy, and she was chubby and tan, late 20s, with some of the largest fake breasts i’ve ever seen. They were hard as rocks! She was really nice to me, and I was happy to work with her even though she was clearly drunk. Anyway, we got to the frat house, got paid for the hour, and the guys went nuts. I felt like i was being attacked by a pack of wild dogs! But they were all hot and i was actually getting a bit turned on by the situation. Somehow I ended up on the floor and one guy did a body shot off me, another played with my boobs, while someone else started lifting up my miniskirt. Mandy announced we would do a ping pong show. The guys roared. What the hell is a ping pong show?? She didn’t tell me this before we got here. She goes over to the table and shoves all the cups off onto the floor. “Go grab me the balls”. I do as I’m told. Then she jumps up onto the table, spread eagle, and inserts a ping pong ball into her vagina. My jaw dropped. The guys clamor around her and she instructs them to stand back, she’ll put an eye out. She was right! She shot that ping pong ball out of her pussy like a BB gun! Some of the guys were trying to catch it in their mouths! I think we both ended up going home with around $500 that night.

I did a couple more parties after this, but they weren’t too memorable compared to that. Except for that last one. That was the one where i decided this was all just too much for me, and i didnt want to do it anymore. It was a retirement party for someone who a guy from a construction company. We arrived at a construction site. They had us do a strip tease on a makeshift stage, with a pole in the center. We played some games, one of which was having the drunkest guy put on work goggles that had been duct taped over so he couldnt see out of it, and a massive dildo glued in the center. The rules were we all had to stay on all fours. He chased us around the stage, trying to fuck us with the dildo goggles. I played along, but of course i wasn’t actually going to let him! Mandy, however, had no problem with it. The guys started getting too rowdy, and it didn’t help that Mandy was egging them on. I was extremely uncomfortable, but i didn’t feel like i could tell them to tone it down, or that our scrawny bouncer would do anything. Again, i felt like I was being attacked by wild dogs, but this time I wasn’t enjoying it at all. Then they brought out the double ended dildo. I don’t really like talking about this part, because i still remember how disgusted i felt after doing this. We went ass to ass on that dildo, as the guy encircled us cheering and yelling at us to cum. When it was finally over, we made about $400 each. Mandy said she would be a while, and i was annoyed because i wanted to leave. I figured she was probably just going to blow one of the dudes for a couple hundred bucks. A couple of the younger guys offered me some weed, so i smoked with them while i waited for Mandy to finish. After about 20 minutes, I got sick of waiting and went to find her so we could leave. Our bouncer was nowhere to be found. I heard moans coming from one of the construction trailers, and there were a bunch of guys standing outside it. “Whats going on?” I asked. They just kinda laughed. I peeked inside. I couldnt really see her with all the guys crowded around, but she wasn’t just fucking one guy. There were at least 10 of them all crowded around her, waiting for their turn. “Get off her!! Mandy!! What the fuck!! ” I screamed, trying to shove them out of my way. “I’m fine!” she yelled, sounding irritated “Go wait for me in the car!”, I ran back to the car and cried. I was just too overwhelmed by everything that night. I wanted to go home and forget this ever happened. I would certainly never do it again.

4 notes · View notes

thirstygirlclub · 7 years ago

Text

Duchess - 6

Chapter 6 – no, I’m a vegetarian

Work was really hard. I never actually realised how hard it was before my trial shift at The Velvet Lounge. It wasn’t like, mentally hard but my whole body hurt after about 2 hours and my feet were killing me. I was told that all I had to do was take drinks from the bar to the table which was easy enough but I couldn’t sit down until I had been there for 4 hours. It was horrible but literally everyone else that worked there was so nice! I met a few people from town and they were really friendly and funny. I had been partnered with a girl called Katherine (with a K) which had made me laugh. She said that people called her Kathy though.

At 7pm I was told that Theo wanted to see me. I dropped my last tray of drinks down to table 5 and skipped over to the bar where he had been working all afternoon, making drinks and greeting people. On my way up I saw about 4 girls walking passed me with what looked like dance bags. Weird but I didn’t think too much about it.

“You wanted to see me?” I asked Theo as I approached.

“Hey Catherine,” he greeted easily, “how are you doing?”

“Oh my feet are in so much pain!”

Theo laughed and nodded, telling me that it was bound to happen after 5 hours on my feet without a sit down. I had nodded as more girls with bags walked by. I looked at them confused and they smiled and waved at me as they walked by. I waved back then turned back to Theo

“So,” Theo continued, “how would you feel about coming back the same time tomorrow? I’ve spoken to the other girls and some of the guests and everyone seems to really like you.”

“Really?” I asked in disbelief, “me?”

Theo laughed and nodded, “yes, you.”

“Oh gosh! I mean, yeah. Yeah I’d love too!”

“Great! You can get going now if you want, rest up a bit before tomorrow.”

“Thanks! Thank you so much Theo! See you tomorrow.”

I smiled then turned to make my way to the staffroom to grab my stuff. On my way through I saw Kathy talking to some of the girls with the bags. I told her I was going but going back the next day and it turns out she was as well. I was kind of grateful that she would be in so she could show me how to do everything again; I know it wasn’t hard but still…

I waved to them all then to Theo as I walked out the front door. It was Friday. I had been invited by Mrs Chibs to a party with that motorcycle club. I can’t believe I had forgotten about it but I guess I had been so busy with learning how to work that I wasn’t even thinking about it. As I hurried home I called Jack to tell him to get dressed because we had been invited to a party. When he asked whose I told him Jax and I could almost hear his heart beat speed up at the mention of the older man’s name. It didn’t matter how much I told him that Jax would never go for him because Jack was way too young for him and Jax wasn’t gay or even bi (we think), my brother still kept hoping he would be noticed. It was kinda cute though to be honest.

“You think I should wear my leather jacket?” Jack asked, “would it be too much? Like, try hard?”

“Uh, yeah,” I scoffed, “just wear a cute shirt and jeans. If you wear a leather jacket you would look stupid. I’m just gonna wear shorts and a cute top. You think I should wear boots or wedges?”

“I dunno. You think I know anything about girl clothes? Just wear whatever is quick to put on. What are we gonna tell Dad?”

“That we’re going to a party with Jax and his sister?”

“Uh no. You really think he’s gonna be happy about us going to a party with the people that are making him lose money? Nah. I’ll tell him I’ve been invited to a high school party and you’re coming because… I dunno, you’re worried about me drinking alcohol. I’ll tell him now, just be quick. Bye.”

“Bye.”

I hung up and put my phone in my handbag as I almost ran back to the house. I had no idea what time this party started but I guessed these guys were big drinkers and would start early. As long as we were there between 7 and 9 we should be fine.

Finally, I got home and Jack literally pounced on me. He was already dressed and ready to go. I wasn’t even through the door and he was already pulling me up the stairs to get showered and stuff. I told him that I needed to feed Romeo and talk to Greta about my day but he didn’t want to listen to me. I just gave up with a sigh and dragged my feet towards my shower. Jack told me he was going to feed Romeo for me while I got ready. I made sure to lock my bedroom door then the bathroom door, just in case you know?

I washed away all the alcohol smell out of my hair and off of my skin. I was just thinking random things like, about how I basically had a job and Katherine with a K, Kathy. She was nice, I liked her. She showed me how to do everything and introduced me to everyone. I still wondered what those ladies with the dance bags were doing though. I loved dancing; I wanted to dance with them if that was even what they were doing.

“Come on Catherine!” Jack shouted through the door, “you’ve been in there for an hour! I want to get there early and talk to Jax.”

I laughed to myself, finished washing the conditioner out of my hair and wrapped the towel around my body only to see Jack sat on my bed and my bedroom door wide open. My heart thumped in my chest and I shouted at my brother for leaving it open and even coming in in the first place.

“Jack,” I scolded, “how did you even get in?”

“Dad gave Uncle Jerry the key,” Jack shrugged and looked up at me, “I just got it off him if I promised to bring it back.”

Why does Uncle Jerry have a key to my room? Why did Daddy have a key? Only I should have a key to my room. Maybe Greta, but not Daddy or Uncle Jerry. Especially Uncle Jerry. I looked at my door unsurely and held the towel closer to my body and shifted uncomfortably.

“Come on Catherine,” Jack sighed again, “it’s gonna take you forever to get ready if you just stand there.”

“Can you get out?” I asked, trying to hide the shake in my voice, “I can’t get changed if you’re here.”

Jack rolled his eyes and stood up, leaving the room. I heard the lock click as he locked it again. What was the point in even having a lock if everyone else but you had a key. I tried to forget about it and concentrate on getting a cute outfit together. I had literally no clue what the dress code was going to be but Jack looked kind of smart-casual. I wanted to look pretty though. I was deciding between a cute dress or a crop top and skirt combination. The second one made me look more grown up though. It was a dark red silk top and skirt, you know like matching. It was kind of slutty but I knew that Daddy and Mom wouldn’t mind that the skirt was kind of short and the top was really low cut if I wore some like, short black bicycle shorts underneath to hide my underwear. I looked kind of good once my hair and makeup was done. I added on a pretty diamond choker and some black high heels and I was good to go.

I was ready just in time for Jack to tell me that the cab was outside. I sneaked out of my room, looking around for Uncle Jerry or Daddy but they must have been in the office though because there was no one downstairs except for Jack. I made sure to collect my clutch bag with my money and phone, how was I supposed to buy myself and Jack cokes if I had no money, you know?

“Come on,” Jack stressed and pulled me outside.

((I want to split up the story but FFN will literally not let me do anything that I usually do so here))

Happy/3rd Person POV

Viv had been hassling him all day about the party that evening and Happy was getting reasonably annoyed but wasn’t brave enough to argue with her about it; he knew she would only tell him off for shouting at her.

“Are you nervous?” She asked him in a moment of seriousness, “I know you like her.”

“I don’t get nervous,” he told her with a shrug, and it was true, “and I don’t like her.”

Viv snorted with quiet laughter and he just glared at her. She shot him a sympathetic smile and put her hand on his arm, rubbing it gently. He knew that she knew that he was lying but didn’t want to say anything. Viv knew him too well, it seemed.

“She’s a vegetarian,” he told her quietly, “that doesn’t believe in killing things. That’s what I do for a job.”

The young woman was obviously speechless; she didn’t know what to say to make him feel better about that. Happy knew it was bad when Vivania, who was one of his best friends and was almost like his club mother, didn’t have any advice for him. She settled for giving him another gentle pat on the arm and a small, sympathetic nod as Chibs approached to kiss her cheek.

Happy looked away, back to his beer and sighed softly. He liked Catherine; he thought she was pretty and adorable when she got confused. Happy knew though that on the small chance that she did like him back as much as he liked her, she would run a mile when she found out what he did for a living; he was probably not even the kind of guy she would go for. She would probably go for a guy like Jax if any of them, he thought, since he was blonde with blue eyes but also charming. All the things that Happy knew he wasn’t. He didn’t know how to flirt with women, he never needed too; they just seemed drawn to him.

“Come on Hap,” Chibs chuckled, slapping him on the shoulder light heartedly, “cheer up. I’ve got a lot of money on you tonight, don’t forget.”

Happy had forgotten. One of the hangarounds had been out talking shit a couple of weeks before saying that he would be able to beat Happy in a fight but when Chibs had called him out on it, he was getting even more aggressive. Happy hadn’t even said he would do it, Chibs had just bet the guy $200 that he would be able to beat him. He hadn’t cared; he was gonna win the fight easily, even if the guy was a pro-wrestler, but now he knew that Catherine was going to be there to see it he wasn’t so sure about it anymore. Catherine didn’t seem like the kind of girl that would appreciate violence, especially when it was bare knuckle fighting with little to no rules. He just had to make sure he won by a landslide.

He tried not to wonder whether she would look after him when he inevitably took a few hits to the face. It didn’t work though. Happy was imagining her pretty eyes looking at him in the rabbit in headlights kind of way and that she always did, he thought about how she would probably be so gentle with him, she would be too gentle for a guy like him. He found himself smiling at the thought.

Suddenly, something shiny caught his eye from across the room and his mouth fell open when he saw her walking into the bar wearing clothes that actually made her look like an adult instead of a kid. She looked beautiful, he thought, he had never thought anyone was beautiful before but Catherine was. She looked expensive. Her entire outfit and jewellery probably cost more than his rent for the month.

“Hey Cat!” Jax shouted, waving and beckoning her over to where he was sat with Tig and Clay.

Clay stood up and moved to the bar when Jax had shouted the two Duke-Dillinger’s over. That left three seats. Viv grabbed Happy’s arm and pulled him over with her, pushing him towards the chair beside Catherine while her and Chibs cuddled up in the corner of the booth. Jax rolled his eyes with a smile and Chibs winked at him. Happy averted his gaze from the happy couple and looked down at Catherine. She was smiling and talking to Jax and Viv, unaware of Happy’s gaze and the looks that other partygoers were giving her. Happy wasn’t nervous like Viv thought; he just didn’t know what to say to make her talk to him. She seemed happy enough to talk to Viv, Jax and Chibs.

“Oh my gosh!” She gasped suddenly, looking down at her phone screen then back up to her brother, “Jack! Maddi Christie just commented on my new picture! What do I do?”

“Who?” Jack asked with a frown.

“Maddi Christie! You know, tall, blonde, getting married to a like, famous footballer or whatever. She was like, so popular in school. She came to my 21st birthday? We were, like, friends and stuff until she slept with Hannah’s boyfriend and there was just… all this drama. You don’t remember?”

Jack looked as confused as Happy felt. Did it matter who had commented on a new picture?

“Oh Mr Lowman,” Catherine sighed, looking at him for the first time, “what should I write? Here, look.”

Happy lent over to look at her phone to see a picture of her on some social media site or other. She looked like a model, he thought. She wasn’t smiling, looking almost seductive and sexy as she posed underneath a light that he recognised as one that was on the wall outside the club house. Underneath someone had typed “you look beautiful babe, meet up soon? xxxxxxxx” with a bunch of weird picture things and hearts. Happy looked at her and shook his head. He had absolutely no idea what any of that meant.

“What if,” she had turned back to Viv and Chibs, “I just put like, thank you and some kissy faces? You think that would be ok?”

“Yeah sure,” Chibs shrugged and smiled at her, “go for it.”

“Ugh, what if she wants to meet up though? Like, I don’t mind her coming here but I don’t know if I want to deal with all that drama, you know? Shall I just put, ‘thanks babe, lets arrange something for when I get back to la’ with kisses and hearts?”

Happy didn’t know why it was such a big deal but it seemed like it mattered to her so he decided he would take it seriously, her brother, Viv and Chibs didn’t look like they were taking her seriously. He reached over for her phone. Surprisingly, she let him take it and lent closer to him as she watched what he was doing. Mostly he was just looking through the cute little smiley faces on the bottom of the screen.

“Mr Lowman?”

“Hang on,” Happy said, concentrating on the social media.

He typed out a simple, “thanks, will let you know when I’m in LA” and put some X’s afterwards, eight like the other girl had put and showed her the screen. She looked over it and smiled with a nod before taking her phone back and showing him the things that she called “emoji’s” and told him what they were for. Happy was genuinely interested and listened intently as she talked to him as she chose the correct ones that fit the mood of the message.

When he had glanced up, he saw Viv looking at him with a pleased smile and gave him a thumbs up while Chibs and Jax talked to the teenager. Happy sent a small smile and a nod before turning back to look at Catherine’s phone.

“Hey,” an unfamiliar voice said, “you a croweater?”

Happy looked up at the same time the Catherine did to see a kind of drunk man stood behind Jax and Jack. Catherine frowned slightly, clearly not knowing what that meant and Happy felt his blood boil at the thought of her becoming a croweater.

“Oh, no thank you,” Catherine said with a smile, “I’m vegetarian.”

She thought he was talking about an actual person that eats crows. Happy thought it was cute. There was a moment of quiet as her comment sunk in then everyone burst into laughter, everyone except for Happy. He saw that she was looking around at the people around the table with a blush on her cheeks and a small frown on her face and she swallowed, clasping her hands in her lap then looked shyly over to Happy and she looked a bit happier to see that he hadn’t laughed at her.

“Mr Lowman?” She asked quietly, “have I just been really dumb again?”

Happy scowled and waved the guy away angrily before turning in his chair to face her fully. She straightened up and looked at him hopefully.

“No Catherine,” he reassured her with a small shake of his head.

She smiled. She seemed to love it when he had said she wasn’t dumb just like a few days ago. He wanted to make sure that she never felt dumb because she wasn’t. Just because her dad and brother told her she was and treated her like a little kid, it didn’t mean she was stupid. She just didn’t really get some things as quickly as other people did. He gently patted her on the head, careful not to mess up her hair this time and she laughed but didn’t pull away. Her eyes were sparkling now and she looked happy. Maybe she did like him.

Eventually, Jax had taken Jack to show him around the clubhouse since the teenager was looking bored with just talking but his face had lit up when the concept of spending time alone with Jax was mentioned. Catherine had seemed to perk up after Chibs had told her what a croweater was.

“So they’re like your own personal prostitutes? But like, free?” She asked him, nodding when he did to make sure she had got it right.

“Not for me Lass,” Chibs laughed, “I’ve got my girl here. She would kill me if I went with anyone else.”

“Uh huh,” Viv agreed, “the other girl too.”

“What about you Mr Lowman?” She asked, turning to him, “do you sleep with them?”

Happy didn’t know what to say, just gulped and blinked at her.

“I’m not gonna judge you Mr Lowman,” she clarified, putting her hand on his arm just as gently as he imagined she would be.

Happy looked up, panicked, at Viv and Chibs who were smirking at him.

“Yeah,” Happy admitted, “sometimes.”

“Cool. Hey Mr and Mrs Chibs? How long have you been married? You’re like super cute together and I am so jealous.”

They laughed and Happy felt a small sense of relief when she turned back to the couple. She was looking at them with a kind and warm expression that Happy couldn’t stop looking at. Chibs and Viv laughed. They loved her.

“We’re not actually married sweetheart,” Chibs told her, then lent forwards when Catherine looked embarrassed, “but we might as well be right Sweet Girl?”

Viv smiled with a nod, “yeah. We’ve been together for a couple of years now.”

They started telling her about how they met and Catherine was on the edge of her seat with her hands covering her heart and smiling the entire time they talked through their memories together, leaving out all of the illegal and potentially scary details of course. A couple of times she would wipe tears away from her eyes.

What is happening? Happy thought, why was he so captivated by her?

“That’s so cute! I can’t believe how cute you are! I’m literally crying!”

The couple laughed with her and Happy couldn’t help but feel jealous how easily they were talking to her. He was content just listening to her though.

((I want to split up the story but FFN will literally not let me do anything that I usually do so here))

Catherine POV

I was literally in love with Mr and Mrs Chibs. Mr Chibs was such a dad and Mrs Chibs was so obviously such a mom kind of person. I wanted them to be my parents. They didn’t get angry when I was being stupid; they were just really nice and patient and I think I could trust them a lot. I think Mr Chibs looked like he would be really clever.

“Hey, Mr Chibs?” I asked him, interrupting his conversation with Mrs Chibs, “do you know lots of stuff?”

“Uh, that depends sweetheart. What do you need?” Mr Chibs asked, looking at me with a raised eyebrow while I shuffled in my seat.

“Well,” I looked around and saw that Jack was still talking to some people at the other side of the room, “I- ok. Do you know anything about like… locks and stuff?”

“What kind of things about them?”

“Like, changing them. I have a lock on my bedroom door but Daddy and Uncle Jerry have a key so when I go to bed and stuff, I lock the door but then I found out that they had a key so there was kind of no point in it, you know?”

I looked between Mr and Mrs Chibs to Mr Lowman. Mr Lowman was looking at me kind of angrily and I shrunk away from him, not wanting to be looked at like that.

“Why are you locking your door sweetheart?” Mrs Chibs asked me, “has something happened? We’re not gonna tell your dad or brother, don’t worry.”

I swallowed and looked away. I didn’t want to tell them about how I was scared of how Uncle Jerry had grabbed my leg and how I was scared of what else he might do or be doing if he ever came into my room at night. Mr Lowman said my name and I looked up at him. He was looking at me kind of concerned and I found myself spilling out all my worries to him and Mr and Mrs Chibs; telling them all about it and even pulling up my skirt to show Mr Lowman the darkish bruise on my upper thigh. I tried not to cry but I couldn’t really hide it.

“Oh sweetheart,” Mrs Chibs said gently and put her hand on mine, “we’re gonna see what we can do ok?”

I nodded and thanked her a lot, like way too much and she smiled at me with Mr Chibs nodding thoughtfully and when I looked over to Mr Lowman he was still looking at my leg and frowning. I went to recover my thigh with my skirt but he put his hand on my leg to stop me. he tugged it back up and held my knee, moving it so that I was facing him and he could take a closer look at it.

“Mr Lowman…” I mumbled, “it’s not that bad, right?”

“He grabbed you here?” he asked, putting his hand over the obvious finger marks on my leg.

I swallowed and looked at him in shock. I had been scared when Uncle Jerry had grabbed me but when Mr Lowman had, I wasn’t. It was kind of weird but I think I knew that Mr Lowman was a good man, you know? I mean, he saved a dog’s life. I mean, I thought that Uncle Jerry was a good man too though. When I realised I hadn’t actually replied to him, I nodded silently.

“It’s ok though Mr Lowman, don’t worry. Uncle Jerry hasn’t ever done it before and I’ve basically known him since I was born. He sees me like a daughter, I think anyway,” I said quickly, “and he’s always been really kind to me. It was once though, you know? I probably should have just done as I was told and not have tried to leave, ok?”

Mr Lowman shook his head angrily and I looked back down to where his hand was still on my leg but Mr Lowman put his hand on my cheek. I jumped slightly and felt my face go red and I think I stopped breathing when he forced me to look up at him. His face was kind of hard to read but I think he was angry. I don’t think he was angry with me though.

“No one is allowed to do that to you,” he said quietly, “you’re an adult. You do what you want. No one controls what you do.”

I felt tears in my eyes and running down my cheeks. No one had ever said that to me before. Daddy always told me what to do and I did as I was told. That’s just how it was. I lent forwards slowly and put my arms around his neck; pulling him so that I was hugging him tightly. The only other person that I had ever hugged (other than Daddy and Uncle Jerry) was Jax that one time after that meeting. I was nervous but just kind of buried my face in his shoulder and sighed.

“Thank you Mr Lowman,” I whispered to him, “but Daddy said that when I get married-”

“You don’t belong to anyone,” he said to me, reading my mind, “you belong to you.”

I was about to pull away from him when his arms went around my waist and one of his hands stroked my hair and patted the back of my head gently. I think he was maybe nervous about hugging me too? I don’t know but he was kind of hesitating when he was doing it. I liked it though. He was strong feeling, you know? I felt… safe. I don’t know what I felt safe from.

“Hey Hap- oh shit, sorry. You ok? The ring is all set up for you…” it was Jax.

I pulled away from Mr Lowman and looked away embarrassed and red faced. I don’t know what they were talking about but when Mr Lowman took my hand in his I looked up. He wasn’t looking at me though; he was looking at Jax. I blinked, shocked when he stood up and gently pulled me up with him. I followed him wordlessly as he dragged/led me through the crowd and smiled when he noticed me almost running to keep up with him so he slowed down.

“Mr Lowman?” I asked him quietly, “where are we going?”

“The ring,” he said with a shrug, “I’m fighting tonight.”

“Really? Are you gonna win?”

He looked down at me with a small smile and nodded. I grinned up at him and let go of his hand to link my arm through his as we walked outside. He led me to the boxing ring that I hadn’t noticed before. I had worried that maybe it was too cold but I the small cool breeze was kind of nice on my skin. I watched as he climbed up the small steps to the platform, about to step back into the crowd when he started speaking.

“Come on,” he said with a smirk, “you’re gonna be my cheerleader.”

“I was head cheerleader in high school!” I told him, laughing and trying to hide my blushing cheeks with my hair.

I followed him up the steps, grateful of my safety shorts, and blushed even deeper when he took his white t-shirt off and threw it to me. I gasped when I saw his body. He wasn’t like, over muscly like the guys I had seen on Venice Beach but he looked… strong. I tried literally so hard not to stare at him but I couldn’t help it. He was just covered in muscle and tattoos and I couldn’t take my eyes off of him; he was beautiful

“Ready Hap?” Mr Chibs asked from beside me.

I jumped. I hadn’t even seen him come up with me. Mr Lowman nodded and jumped over the ropes into the ring and Mr Chibs followed him; I guess he was being the referee.

“This way Cat,” Mrs Chibs said, took me to one corner where we stood for the whole fight.

Mrs Chibs was shouting and cheering for Mr Lowman and telling her husband (or not husband I don’t know) to be careful. I couldn’t look away from the fight no matter how many times Mr Lowman got hit in the face, stomach and chest. It was violent, way more violent than the fights that Daddy watched on the TV. It was so scary but the way Mr Lowman moved around the other guy, in the same way I had seen tigers on documentaries do, made me feel kind of… warm I guess. I swallowed and flinched as Mr Lowman hit the other man so hard in the mouth that he spun around and fell to the floor in a heap. The roar from the watching crowd was deafening and I had literally forgotten that they were even there.

I joined in, clapping politely as Mr Lowman lifted his arms in the air in victory. He was covered in sweat and blood which I would have usually found disgusting but I was mostly worried about him. He looked bad even though he didn’t look like he was that concerned about it. When he walked over, leaning against the ropes in front of me and breathing heavily, I looked down at his bloody knuckles then back up to his face.

“Mr Lowman,” I whispered, looking up at him with wide eyes, “you’re… you’re beautiful.”

He looked surprised then let out a small sigh.

“Mrs Chibs?” I asked her, “do you have a first aid kit? I think Mr Lowman needs medical attention.”

“Yeah of course. Come on Hap.”

((I want to split up the story but FFN will literally not let me do anything that I usually do so here))

Happy/3rd Person POV

It was everything Happy had wanted it to be. Catherine hadn’t shied away from him after the fight and she didn’t look too scared. She actually looked impressed and she had called him beautiful and now she was tending to his many wounds gently and carefully.

“You’re doing pretty good there Lass,” Chibs said, sipping his whiskey.

“Thanks Mr Chibs,” Catherine said with a smile but didn’t take her eyes off of the cut on Happy’s temple, “I was trained as a paramedic, you know? Surprised? I volunteered with an ambulance crew for like, 2 years after high school but it was so stressful. I hated it. It was useful though you know? Jack used to get beaten up a lot.”

Happy and Chibs exchanged looks; thinking the same thing. That it would be extremely useful to the club and its members when they were ever in trouble and couldn’t get to a hospital/if Tara wasn’t available. Chibs nodded, signalling that he would speak to Clay about it.

“No way, how are you so innocent?” Viv asked her from where she was sat on Chibs’ knee, “you’re a vegetarian; you’ve never dated and you volunteered to help sick and injured people.”

Catherine shrugged like it was nothing but Happy had been thinking very similar thoughts. He felt kind of panicked when Chibs and Viv stood up and left to sit with Jax and Jack; letting him have some time with the girl they suspected he liked.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Mr Lowman, but you’re kinda scary. Not really scary, but kind of scary. I’ve not offended you right?”

Happy shook his head, wanting her to explain.

“Ok cool because that’s not what I mean, I don’t know what I want to say. I just- I don’t know.”

“I’m different,” Happy nodded in understanding.

“Yeah! Yeah no totally! You’re literally so different to everyone we knew in LA, you know? Like they were so… empty.”

“Empty?” Happy chuckled and she nodded with a small laugh herself as she sat down in the chair across from him.

She reached out and hesitantly put her hand in his arm to trace his tattoos gently. If she noticed him tense at her touch she didn’t show it; instead she gently turned his palm upwards and followed the lines with her finger.

“Plain,” she murmured with a nod and looked back up at him, “no tattoos, you know? No personality and stuff. I didn’t realise until we came here that they were so boring. Everyone here is so... interesting.”

“I’m interesting?” Happy asked with a laugh.

“Yeah totally! You don’t think you’re interesting?”

Happy shook his head. She was still holding his arm in her hand with her fingers on his palm but she didn’t look like she noticed and he wasn’t going to pull away; she was so soft and warm. She looked at him with... sympathy, almost like she felt sorry for him.

“That’s ok,” she giggled, “I’m not very interesting either. We’re just two boring people sat at a table.”

Then, despite everything, he found himself laughing with her. He could see Viv and Chibs cuddled up in their booth smiling over at him. Viv gave him another thumbs up and Happy rolled his eyes but smiled down at Catherine.

“I don’t think you’re boring,” he told her with a nod.

“You don’t?”

He shook his head at her; he found her very intriguing and wanted to know everything about her. She was still looking at him with a smile but then it fell away from her face when she looked behind him towards the door. When Happy turned to look where she was, he stood up immediately in defence of her as Mr Duke-Dillinger and who he assumed was Jerry stalked into the room towards her.

“Catherine Duke-Dillinger,” Jerry bellowed across the room, “what the fuck do you think you’re doing?!”

Happy saw her flinch out the corner of his eye and felt himself bristle up; ready for another fight. Before Jerry could reach her, Chibs and Clay had stepped forwards, stopping him and talking in low, threatening voices.

“Thanks for a nice evening Mr Lowman,” she said quietly and ducked around him to go to her dad who was now roughly dragging Jack away from the pool table towards the door.

“Catherine stop,” Happy said quietly, “do you wanna stay?”

She looked conflicted between him, Viv and her dad. Viv had come to stand beside her and put her arm around her while she watched her own dad and her man arguing with the two business men.

“I need to go, Mrs Chibs,” Catherine said softly and pulled herself away, “I can’t make a scene. I’m sorry. Tonight had been fun though. I’ll probably see you around.”

As soon as she got close to Jerry, he grabbed her by the arm so hard that she yelped and tried to move away in pain. Happy stepped forwards but Viv grabbed onto his arm, looking up at him and shook her head. He could tell that she was heartbroken about Catherine being in pain, especially since Viv’s own childhood was full of that kind of thing.

“You’ll get her in more trouble. We’ll see her soon though, ok? We need to fix the lock on her door. I don’t want her in that house without a safe place.”

Happy watched as the two Duke-Dillinger kids got marched out of the clubhouse. It looked like Catherine was crying.

“I’m gonna kill him,” Happy growled and let himself get pulled back into the chair while Viv patted his shoulder gently.

Clay ordered all non-members out of the clubhouse, excluding his daughter, and told the members to get into the chapel for an emergency meeting. Happy stood up and rubbed his face, ignoring the stinging on his skin.

I’m sorry!!! – I didn’t desert you I promise! To make up for the lack of activity on here, I made this chapter extra extra long! How interesting that she has some medical training huh? How convenient. She isn’t as dumb as we may think she is!

Also apologies because this is gonna be a slow burn romance story! I think it’s the best option since Catherine is so innocent and nervous and Happy doesn’t know how to express his feelings for her even though he is so in love already, lets be honest!

I kind of love the part where she was showing him emojis and how he took her interests seriously! I think it was really cute!

Anyway, the writers block has gone! I love the way this story is going and it’s inspiring me to write more and more!

Thanks for being so patient. See you on the flip side

Lots of love from Doe xxxxx

#happy lowman #happy lowman x oc #happy lowman fanfiction #happy lowman headcanon #happy lowman imagine #sons of anarchy #sons of anarchy fanfiction #sons of anarchy imagine #sons of anarchy headcanon #sons of anarchy prompts

34 notes · View notes