#we support our chronic dumbass

[ghostlyvelvetheart]

Has anyone considered that the reason why Luis is so polite and lenient is because…

He just really wants a friend. Just chronically craving friendship and nothing more than friendship.

Tone just happened to get lost over text.

He has no idea anyone's lumped him into the "boyfriend zone", and he probably won't notice unless Nessie spells it out to him. In which case he'll pull the "I only see you as a friend" card.

He thinks that Nessie's in an abusive relationship and wants to get her out of it, not because he wants to get with her, but because he can't stand seeing his BFF hurt! He doesn't want to go for a coffee because it's a date, he wants to go because he wants to get to know his new BFF better!

[harpersdragons]

New Fic!

Title: “Emergency”? FUCK

Fandom: Batman

relationships: Bruce Wayne & Jason Todd

tags: chronic pain, hurt/comfort, Jason Todd is a dumbass

Summary: my vent fic bc chronic pain sucks ass. So I gave it to Jason and his family convinces him to accept help

Gotham is trying to kill him. 

Well, in a different way than usual.

This time it’s not brightly colored villains with stupid fuckin’ themes.

Or supposedly well-meaning, but nosy as fuck family members.

Or any other physical means of actually taking his life.

Nope.

It’s the fuckin’ weather.

Stupid fucking changing seasons and rain.

And the new armor Bruce made for him, lacking the extra padding his has.

Surprise, death and resurrection doesn’t agree with him. 

The chiming of his phone interrupts his wallowing. He groans, and stiffly rolls over to grab it, although the action dislodges the heating pad spread under him. 

He coulda sworn he’d turned his phone on silent, and after checking, it shows he did. Which means the ringing was coming from his Bat phone.

/Fuck/. 

Not today, he can’t deal with them today.

He grabs the other phone, and barely refrains from tossing it across the room when he reads the message.

/Emergency. Report to the cave immediately./ 

Pain lances through him as he levers himself up to sitting position. He moves slowly, trying to minimize sharp motions that would only make the pain worse, but that only helps slightly.

At least his armor has extra support built in, made to press on certain pressure points and dull some of the pain.

He pulled on his armor painstakingly slowly, ignoring the other suit in its case. That one was why he was in the middle of one of his worst flare ups in months. Bruce had ordered it made after noticing his current one was getting worn down, but it didn’t have the extra support in it, Jason wore it 3 days in a row and now he’s suffering for it.

It’s not Bruce’s fault—for once—since Jason had never told any of them about this. Which was yet another reason he doesn’t want to go to the cave today.

He doesn’t have the capacity to hide how much pain he’s in, and their stupid nosy, detective asses will figure it out. 

But he can’t ignore an emergency call to the cave. 

Pain radiates through his legs with every step, and the goddamn stairs are his worst enemy. 

Regardless, he makes it to the cave.

…eventually and with a lot of stifling grimaces.

He promptly decides he’d like to be anywhere but here. 

Well, preferably in his bed with heating pads and soft blankets, but the point stands. 

Fuckin’ Bruce had to call him here for an ‘emergency’. 

Fuck that. 

When he walks into the cave—forcing himself not to limp, might he add—the only people he sees are Dick and Damian, and he almost turns around leaves immediately.

“Jaybird!” Dick chirps.

Jason groans, he is so not in the mood to deal with Dick. 

“Father is upstairs, he wants to speak with you.” Damian calls out from his position on the med bay cot.

“Is this not a bat emergency? Why /the fuck/ did he call me in the work line? Also, the fuck happened to you?”

Damian’s face screwed up in displeasure, and Dick jumped in to answer. “Someone thought it would be an amazing idea to take on Croc by himself.” He shoots a pointed look at Damian. “Broken ribs and possible concussion, but he’ll be fine. B texted the Batphone because you weren’t answering your regular phone.”

“Oh so he made up an emergency just because I wasn’t answering my texts? Fuck this. I’m going home.” Something clouds Dick’s face—Sadness or disappointment, maybe?—but Jason can’t be bothered with that right now.

“Wait! It is, kind of, an emergency. Just not a vigilante one. He’s dealing with something upstairs, but he’ll be down soon. Why don’t we spar in the meantime?”

Fuck, fuck, fuck. 

/No/. He can’t spar Dick, he can barely fuckin’ move without wanting to scream.

“No.” 

“C’mon, Jay! It’ll be fun! We haven’t sparred together in a while.”

“Not today, Dickhead.”

“Jayyyyyyyy.”

This isn’t gonna go well.

“Fine, one round.”

“Yes!”

They head over to the mats, and Dick gestures at Jason’s armor. “Wanna change out of that?”

“I’m good.” No way in hell is he sparring without his armor, if he tries he might collapse.

“C’mon, scared I’ll hit you too hard? Fight me on equal terms.”

“We both know it’s still not equal terms, I can beat you any day, /Boy Wonder/.”

Jason sheds his armor, gritting his teeth as he does. 

Why is he fuckin’ doing this?

Jason’s gonna regret this. His last piece of armor hits the ground, and Jason steps on the mats. 

“Weapons?”

Dick tosses him two rattan Kali sticks in response, and then grabs two for himself. 

Jason exhales slowly, preparing himself for the eventuality of exacerbating his pain.

”Ready?” Dick shoots Jason a wide grin, bouncing eagerly on his toes.

Jason nods sharply, tapping Dick’s sticks with his own. 

The second Jason is in ready position, Dick is lunging forward. Jason ducks, swinging at Dick’s knees.

Dick jumps, and the fight picks up. 

The ringing of their sticks hitting each other resounds through the cave.

Jason is gritting his teeth against the ache radiating through his body, made sharper with every clash of the Kali sticks. 

Dick lands a sharp hit on Jason’s ribs. Jason jumps back, but not fast enough. 

Jason kicks at Dick’s chest. Dick retaliates with his own, aimed at Jason’s hips. 

Jason steps forward, sticks aimed at Dick’s own ribs, and then tosses his elbow back into Dick’s face. 

They trade blows for a while.

Blocking, evading, and attacking.

The fight stretches on, a flurry of movement and the clashing of the sticks. Fatigue weighs on Jason, pain lances through him—sharper and sharper with every movement.

Dick lands a sharp kick on Jason’s hip, and Jason collapses with a stifled scream.

His hip was one of his weakest points, the crowbar had shattered it, and there was only so much the Lazarus pit could repair.

Dick hits his knees next to Jason, “Jase? What’s wrong?”

Damian comes over as well, leaving the med cot from which he’d been watching.

Jason just groans, twisting awkwardly to try and get away. Dick stops him with hands on his shoulder, “Stay still, Jaybird, we don’t know if it’s safe to move yet.” Jason rolls his eyes.

“I fuckin’ do, and if you don’t get your fuckin’ hands off me, you’re gonna lose them.” Jason ground out. It’s an empty threat and they all know it. Jason couldn’t do shit right now.

He weakly shoves at Dick’s hands until they move, and Jason shoves himself up. He vaguely hears Dick telling Damian to call Bruce, but he’s not listening. He stumbles forward, nearly smacking his head on the wall in front of him. 

“Jay!” Dick rushes over again, trying to steady him. “Settle down, ok? We can wait in the med bay.” 

“Fuck off,” Jason grits his teeth. His leg still isn’t steady—well, even less steady than it was to begin with.

”Jace, please.” 

Jason glares, and limps past him to the pile of armor just beyond the training mats. He starts putting it back on, getting ready to leave.

Just as he starts stalking (limping very slowly) to his bike, Bruce stops him with a hand on his elbow. 

“I can’t let you leave, Jason.”

He’s dimly aware of Dick guiding Damian upstairs. 

”Oh yeah? Fuckin’ watch me.”  He shoves Bruce’s hand off and makes it all 3 steps before Bruce stops him again. This time, Bruce just scoops him up in a fireman’s carry—and boy if that doesn’t make his whole body just /scream/—and carries him to the med bay.  “Fuck you, Old Man.” He growls.

Bruce sets him as gently as possible on the cot. 

“Will you just cooperate, please? We can’t help if we don’t know what’s wrong.”

”Maybe I don’t want your help.” Jason crosses his arms, then immediately regrets it when it twists his wrists in a weird way.

”Jason, please.”

”Why the fuck did you call me here.”

”I needed you to look after your siblings for a few days while I fly out on a business trip. Dick is needed in Bludhaven, Damian’s injured, and I don’t fully trust them alone together. Alfred is on a very rare vacation.”

”Fuck no. I was comfortable in bed, and you called me out here for a stupid ass reason.” Jason moves to hop off the cot. “I’m going home. You wanna stop me? You’re gonna have to fight.” Jason knows he wouldn’t win in that situation, but he’s banking on Bruce refusing to fight him while he’s ‘injured’.

Jason’s not injured. He’s just in pain.

…There’s a difference.

”I’m not fighting you, you can barely walk without limping.”

”Then I’m leaving.”

”No.”

”Fuckin’ stop me then.”

Bruce grabs him around the waist and pushes him back on the cot. Jason is powerless to stop him.

”Jason…”

”Fine! If I promise it’s not a big deal and this just happens sometimes will you let me go?”

”No.”

“What the fuck do you want?”

”Tell me what’s wrong.”

”It’s not a big deal.”

”Tell me anyway.”

Jason glares defiantly, but Bruce just waits.

”Fine. I have chronic pain, both from being a vigilante since before my bones and joints were fully developed and the whole, y’know, crowbar broke almost every bone in my body thing.” Jason is not pouting. At all. He’s not at all affected by the fact his family knows how much he struggles now, which is exactly what he didn’t want to happen.

Bruce’s brow furrows, and he opens his mouth to speak.

Before he does, Jason rushes to speak first. “C’mon, you can’t tell me none of you experience chronic pain. You and Dickhead have been vigilantes longer than I have.” 

“Of course we do, but this seems incapacitating for you.”

Jason shrugs, “Only during flare ups. Usually it’s manageable.”

“Do you know what caused it?”

Jason nods but doesn’t elaborate.

”Are you going to tell me?”

”Are you gonna let me leave?”

”Jason…”

Jason stubbornly crosses his arms again and leans against the wall. The position makes his back spike with pain, but the only way to fix that is to lay down on the hard cot, and like hell is he putting himself in a more vulnerable position. 

Besides, he’s not entirely sure he could sit back up if he does. He used most of his energy getting up after he collapsed during sparring.

That was embarrassing.

Bruce is clearly thinking over what’s happened in the last couple days, trying to figure out what Jason’s not telling him. 

Normally he would have told Bruce, just to see the guilt spiral when he realizes it was something he did, but Jason really doesn’t have the energy to deal with mopey Bruce. Or Hyperfixated Bruce who has to fix the problem and won’t sleep or eat until he does. 

Alfred’s the only one that can effectively pull Bruce from either spiral. 

“The new armor…?” Bruce trails off with a questioning glance at him. ”That’s the only thing I can think of that was different, unless something else happened that you’re not telling me. But why would that cause a flare up?”

Jason sighs heavily, “My armor has a lot of extra support in it. I designed it specifically so it would brace my joints and help manage pain.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that?”

”Because it’s my problem! You shouldn’t have to accommodate me.” 

“Jay…regardless, that’s something I should know. If not for the fact I am your father, I am also the leader of this team. I can’t make sure you're safe in the field if you don’t tell me you need accommodations.” Bruce sighs again, “Is there anything I can do that will help? I’m not comfortable with you going home alone when it’s this bad.”

Jason pouts but gives in. Truth be told, he doesn’t want to get up and go all the way back to his apartment in Crime Alley. “Heating pads are the only thing that really help.”

“Ok. You want to go upstairs or stay down here?”

“Upstairs, I need a real bed.” He pushes himself off the wall, gritting his teeth against sharp pain.

Bruce grabs his elbow and helps him off the bed and over to the elevator. He tugs Jason into his side, “You’re not alone, Jason, you don’t have to hide things like this.”

When they get upstairs—they took the elevator all the way to the second floor—Bruce leads them to his room. Jason hesitates for a second. 

“If it makes you uncomfortable I can set you up in one of the other rooms. My bed has the best mattress.”

Jason nods, and limps the rest of the way into the room. Bruce grabs several heating pads—apparently they were conveniently located in Bruce’s bathroom—and starts plugging them in and setting up. He gets Jason situated on the bed, rearranging the pillows for more support, then steps back “You good? I’m going to grab water and snacks from the kitchen and then I’ll be back.”

Jason settles against the heat pads, wanting to sigh in relief. Finally, some of the pain is dulled. His eyes close and he loses all track of time.

Soon, Bruce comes back in and Jason cracks an eye open. Ace follows Bruce in, and after the man sets the tray of snacks on the nightstand, he signals Ace to jump up. Bruce slides in next to him, holding Jason the best he can without dislodging the heating pads or pillow mountain. 

“What ‘bout your trip?” Jason murmurs. 

“It doesn’t matter, I can go another time. You’re not alone, Jaylad, I love you.” Bruce whispers against his hair, and Jason lets himself drift off.

“Love you too,” Jason’s words come out slurred and muffled, but Bruce clearly hears him and acknowledges him with a soft squeeze.

He’s floating somewhere between sleep and awake when he becomes aware of his other brothers joining them. Dick is talking quietly with Bruce above his head, but Jason can’t focus enough to decipher the words.

Everyone settles in, and Jason finally falls asleep.

He’s safe, surrounded by his family.

[queserasera7]

END OF YEAR MUTUALS APPRECIATION <333

On behalf of @archpoet77 (who’s currently in my basement gagged and tied), just wanted to mention a few amazing people she’s lucky to be moots with :

also first off I know I’m chronically offline but I love love love you idiots you've unknowingly been there for me during some terrible times <33

@demonkidpliz - my first mutual! a reminder that you are very loved and your writing is valued. don’t let anyone pressure you into not enjoying your own passion. Rukmini-Krishna is one of the most underrated and beautiful pairings, my otp<333

@groovycynicalcheesecake - my first friend here! I think we started talking because I made a dumbass birthday post and you were the first one to wish! Somehow u always manage to surprise me with just how kind and caring you are. You absolute sweetheart. Wishing you all the happiness you give to others.

@adathinks - I love and try to read almost every post of yours. Always genuine, open, thoughtful and ofc Taylor Swift!!! Stay the way you are, love.

@friend-shaped-but - dude thanks for messaging me first. Saw your blog and thought, ‘wow. definitely one of the coolest people in the hindublr/desiblr community’ and just. liked and reblogged everything. I didn’t know much about the Parshatas but I’m a little too invested now. It’s hard to find people that are chill about new interpretations of our mythology, and I’m glad to know you.

@magica124 - my darling!! adore your blog - soo relatable esp the Krishna madness :)). we should talk but I keep forgetting to message. Bitter gourd hate supremacy!

@aprameya-mahima - another one of the nicest people on this platform. Fellow Slytherin and bookworm <33 You’re literal proof our house is a good one.

@zeherili-ankhein - love your interactions with people. a comrade in the 11th grade vs me war. your art is seriously amazing. hoping life gets better<3 would love to talk more.

@kanha-ki-fangirl - Tumblr angel and fellow nerd extraordinaire. Saw your intro and knew we’re pretty much soulmates. Oscar Wilde would love you.

@syamakrishna - I know you much less than I would like to. You come across as a really sweet, kind and pure person. Krishna is life! Rlly love your blog. @lesbianpoetess - another cool mutual I snagged by being gay and autistic, probably. My very own tumblr chaos girlie<333

@piyatosenainanalaagere - your blog is WOW. very pretty username.

@stxrrynights - love you, love the theme, love your thoughts, love the incorrect quotes.

@nicholaskyleedwards - Your poetry is incredible. Black is absolutely your colour. Completely forgot to wish you during the Christmas holidays. Best of luck with everything!

@tamanna-and-her-struggles - chaotic queen! struggling together <3333

@sharngapani - don’t remember if we’re mutuals but just wanted to tell you that you’re very cool. Thanks for being supportive about my writing though I’m either too busy or too scared to post anything meaningful.

@riocasm - aiyyo I forgot you in the original post da! Another mutual too cool for me.

@howluckydoyouhavetobe, @rubyleaf, @mitraavarunaa, @coolheadofficial, @swagrunawaywinner, @dreamymagazine-blog, @cuzweyoungandcrazy, @heyyshonaa, @chaoschuckler, @diltobacchahaiji, @ditzybat, @natalimurghulia, @bigsimp69, @unadulteratedfancloud, and everyone else I’m moots with because I have inevitably forgotten someone- I love you! Hope we can get to know each other better.

[hangonimevolving]

And we're back... to 2023

BACK TO THE PRESENT. I have managed to catch my blog up with the goings-on from 2021-2022, and I now find myself in the present year. Guys. I'm proud of myself.

Top row plus bottom left: We spent the first week of January (the 2nd week of the kids' holiday break from school) on a little road trip to Legoland, and then Cape Canaveral. We hadn't been to either before, despite living in Florida for almost 9 years. Feel like this was an important achievement as Floridians.

Bottom middle: Vev turned TEN! Can you believe that insanity?!!!! Remember when he was JUST BORN, or when he was a TINY BABY?! I know, so nuts. Our big activity to celebrate Year Ten was a trip to.... an abandoned railroad track. But not just any abandoned railroad track! This was an abandoned railroad track that I scouted out and pored over the internet to find... because apparently, its the favorite spot of official Planespotters to take photos of "heavies," aka large-body jumbo jets, that land into Miami International Airport. We went planespotting! Our first of many planespotting jaunts since. Vev was freaking delighted. #winning

Bottom right: February 2023. Dr. Spouse and I ran the Publix A1A race - this time, opting for the 4-miler in support of the American Cancer Society, and channeling positive vibes to two special people in our lives who at the time, were battling aggressive cancers. Sadly, in the weeks since then, we have lost both of them :( but this highlights the importance of the ACS's work. In the weeks since this race, I've been dealing with some nagging chronic pain and arthritis.... what else is new.

***

March 2023: The kids' spring break week = family vacation to Costa Rica! Dr. Spouse and I had done a weeklong trip to CR in 2008, but this was our first time as a family unit. We spent our time in Monteverde exploring mountaintop rainforests, and then Arenal/La Fortuna exploring the forests, hot springs, and land surrounding the Arenal volcano. It was a blast. Also, our kids are REALLY good sports about hiking and outdoor adventures. They are at the most awesome, awesome ages right now, and I couldn't be more freaking delighted.

***

And now, I bring you to the last few weeks, from March-May 2023.

Top left and top right: I spent most of March and April quilting up a storm. I made two beautiful (if I do say so myself) quilts for the kids rooms with fabrics that I purchased from Etsy in December 2021 while living in the apartment, that I dropped entirely too much money on, but that were all chosen carefully to compliment the color scheme of their rooms/rugs that I just KNEW I'd be putting in there once we moved in. These quilts weren't just quilts: they were sort of a love letter to the labor and waiting that we had put into this house of ours. I enjoyed making them! Also, I chose patterns that involved me learning new skills. Can talk more about that later, but it was kind of a "thing" for me.

Middle left: American Heart Association Heart Ball. Dr. Spouse is on the board of the local chapter of the AHA, so he was sort of obligated to make an appearance. I recycled the same dress I wore to the 2016 ball, lol.

Middle right: I volunteered for several days at the kids' school's Scholastic Book Fair. I used to do this at their old school too - I really love it. Its fun to help the kids pick out new and interesting books to read! Bonus: I got to take funny pics trolling Florida governor Ron Desantis' dumbass policies on critical race theory and anti-wokeness. Eat shit, Ron Desantis! :) love ya haha jk jk.

Bottom row: May 2023 has meant some fun adult time! No, not that kind of adult time. I'm talking about a few occasions to reconnect with old friends, on our own and without kids in tow. I had a LONG awaited and much, MUCH enjoyed weekend with my college girlfriends - they all flew down to my neck of the woods, and we rented a beautiful and HUGE mansion from a homesharing site and had a blast together. Dr. Spouse did a similar thing the very next weekend with two of his medical school buddies. Here's to nurturing old friendships - the ones that have gotten us through all kinds of things in life so far.

***

And, now I'm up to date with our lives. Whee! I know this might sound dumb, but I feel like a weight is off my shoulders. I have had this blog going since sometime in 2010, I think, and although I've had long blocks of time where I haven't kept it up, its never far from my mind. I love that its a chronicle of my life over many years and many changes. I hope to keep it going. Whether you are new here or you've followed me awhile, whether you even exist or not - - thanks for reading.

[unheavenlybody]

hi i ended up writing an entire essay while trying to vent so feel free to ignore: 

its frustrating that there's no way to talk candidly about mental health problems without the looming fear of forced institutionalization, at least in my case. people trying to force medication on you. wellness obsessed fitness people recommend you start doing yoga and “clean eating” and only using certified nontoxic products and adopting a more positive mindset and ~recognizing your inner magic~ or whatever even though no one asked (literally a dig at my sister LMAO). so much of it just seems self righteous and self congratulatory and devoid of any genuine compassion or understanding for people’s unique circumstances??? recognizing that a lot of life is just hard and miserable and sometimes its ok to just sit with that??

i hate the idea of some dude with a degree from whatever ivy at my school’s counseling department keeping a record of everything i say which can potentially be used against me even tho its supposed to be confidential. treating me like a fragile baby bird but also slicing our meetings in half and arriving late and leaving me to fend for myself after asking me to dig up buried trauma and then offering no support for the next two weeks other than “i understand, that must be hard.” recommending we look into a psychotherapist during our next meeting, which i cant even afford, and then not following through. repeatedly tiptoeing around the question of whether i have suicidal thoughts and if so how severe, like, my guy, i 100% wouldnt tell you that in a million years. even if it’s true.  

i'm caught between recognizing that a healthy diet and exercise and enriching hobbies and social connection are necessary parts of getting better, but people seem to conveniently forget that these aren’t equally accessible options for everyone. and even if i maintain all of these things, will it be enough to keep me here? i just don't understand the impulse to shame people for not trying “hard enough” when it’s so easy to neglect these things if you don’t have money, adequate resources, or emotional support. not everyone was born to be entirely self sufficient (is anyone really, lol?) but grindset wellness fuckers will have you convinced you’re just an undisciplined weak-willed piece of trash and simply need to become more like them. or at the very least get medicated and stop complaining. but can you prioritize a healthy organic diet if you barely have enough money to scrape by as it is, when understandably cheap fast foods are one of the only things that still bring you comfort that you can regularly afford? how can you safely exercise in a way that's both sustainable and enjoyable if you can't afford a gym membership or exercise equipment and live somewhere that neglects public parks or is highly polluted and congested? or if you have chronic pain or fatigue and can’t get treatment for it because your dumbass country doesnt think universal healthcare is a human right? you can’t even maintain certain hobbies and especially long term relationships unless you have money for outings and some means of reliable transportation (which in the US obviously means having a car). how can you get out of an abusive or hazardous living situation when the resources that do exist are often underfunded, discriminatory, or exploitative themselves? when you have no one else to depend on? everything is increasingly designed to strip you of any opportunity at having a happy fulfilling life and maybe some people are just less equipped to deal with this reality. maybe i am weak lol. or they see through the bullshit and can’t bring themselves to care anymore. 

like yeah i know that’s not a great mindset to have, and you should still try to find joy in life, but most days i can't help but feel that I am trying to get better by exercising or eating healthy or allowing myself to love things all for nothing. like maybe ive already been robbed of a healthy, happy life by circumstance and i could try to exhaust myself further by insisting things can and will get better when maybe realistically they won't in the way i want them to. i dont know how to end this i just wish it was easier to talk about with someone lol sorry for the essay byeeee

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 05 (first part)

(Masterpost) (previous episode) (this episode, second part)

Warning: Spoilers for all 50 episodes of the Untamed

The Pride of Yunmeng 

Waterfall Date

Lan Wangji gets to experience the two extremes of Wei Wuxian’s interpersonal skills within the span of a few seconds. This is even better than his rooftop date with this horrible annoying terribly, terribly attractive boy.

Lan Wangji has come here on a mission to make Wei Wuxian do his homework, which is why he immediately tells him “let’s go to the library” gazes at him silently for several seconds...

...and then lets him adjust his sleeve for him and step allll the way into his personal space. 

Unfortunately Wei Wuxian is about to guess a Lan Clan secret, so Lan Wangji ends the conversation by saying “let’s go to the library” grabbing him by his sexy arm muscle and dragging him off. Did he hold his arm all the way to the library? Even if he didn’t, his “I don’t touch other people” later at the lake is clearly horseshit. I don’t touch other people unless they are named Wei Wuxian and our brothers aren’t watching. 

(more after the cut!)

Apology in the Library

Wei Wuxian splits his library time between actually doing his homework and trying to make friends with Lan Wangji. And he tries really, really hard, starting by sincerely complimenting LWJ’s calligraphy and offering a pretty okay apology for his prior rooftop antics. Lan Wangji tells him to put his leg down but doesn’t tell him to go sit at his own desk. 

Lan Wangji exhibits steely self-control as he resists this look, which would cause anyone else’s robes to spontaneously un-weave themselves into a pile of threads.

When Lan Wangji won’t look at him because he feels his apology was not sincere, Wei Wuxian becomes much more formally apologetic. First he says “sorry” two more times, and he starts prepping Lan Wangji’s ink.  This involves grinding an ink stick against an ink stone with water, to make a pool of ink for the calligrapher to dip their brush into.

This is not Wei Wuxian being annoying and messing with stuff on Lan Wangji’s desk, a la Zhou Yunlan (Guardian). This is an act of service; a genuinely helpful thing to do if you know how to do it properly --which all of these young scholars definitely do--and an action that casts Wei Wuxian in the role of a servant or junior. 

Then Wei Wuxian offers to kneel down (to offer a major formal apology), while giggling like an adorable dumbass. It's unclear if this is sexual innuendo, just being ridiculously unconcerned about dignity, being slightly into abasing himself for this beautiful person, or all of the above. 

After taking a long moment to consider all this, Lan Wangji slowly and deliberately gives Wei Wuxian three seconds of the eye contact he’s been begging for.

Then Lan Wangji spoils the moment by dropping a silence spell on him. 

Wen Can I Have Some Fun?

The Wen siblings hang out and talk about their secret villainy and then fret about how much it sucks to have a chronic health condition, which is pretty relatable TBH.

I know life seems boring now but just wait until you’re an itinerant zombie with nails in your head.

Wen Qing is a devoted older sister just like Jiang Yanli, although with less fainting and more scheming. 

Good kitty.

Porno in the Library

Now, since this next scene ends with Wei Wuxian being a boundary-crossing jerk, let's start by remembering that Lan Wangji has magically gagged Wei Wuxian against his will three times now, as well as hiding his vulnerable family member behind a ward while lying in wait in order to attack him. So, you know. Teenagers in lust. They are both learning what is and isn't okay.  

Lan Wangji steals a long glance at Wei Wuxian while Wei Wuxian is drawing. 

Wei Wuxian is putting the finishing touches on a gift for Lan Wangji. The gift is a portrait of Lan Wangji with flowers in his hair. This boy is SMITTEN. I think he knows it, too; he just doesn’t think it’s a big deal yet. 

Wei Wuxian, who is good at everything, is really fucking good at drawing. 

When Wei Wuxian presents the drawing to Lan Wangji he says “this is my gift for you.”  This is very good-mannered of Wei Wuxian; Lan Wangji had to supervise him for three days, so he is presenting him with a gift to thank him and say farewell.

Lan Wangji completely ignores him, which is really breathtaking, next-level rudeness.

Wei Wuxian isn’t bothered by this, however, and just embellishes the picture with an extra flower or something before offering it again. This time Lan Wangji takes in and is very very very pleased with it, as evidenced by his slightly widening his eyes and how carefully he places the drawing on the far side of his desk.  

Also he gives Wei Wuxian some prolonged eye contact, and engages in what, for him, is playful banter, calling the gift “extremely boring” when Wei Wuxian prompts him to use more words than usual. 

Then Wei Wuxian spoils the moment by pranking him.

Now - let’s look at this erotic-book situation. This is a boundary-crossing prank, yes, but it’s also an invitation to engage in some form of intimacy. For teens who have access to erotic images, looking at them together can be simple naughty fun. Or it can be a way of discovering and bonding over shared sexual identities and interest. Or it can prompt more direct engagement, up to and including having sex with each other.

Lan Wangji’s horrified reaction means that Wei Wuxian has to characterize this as a prank after the fact, but he might very well have intended it as an invitation to get horny together. 

Either way, his response to Lan Wangji’s “shameless” comment is bound to make an impression.

Wei Wuxian is from the clan of "be free" and he just doesn't see why this is a big deal. And now he’s told Lan Wangji it doesn’t have to be a big deal. And through him, the producers are breaking the fourth wall and telling every viewer that this doesn’t have to be a big deal and that they shouldn’t feel ashamed. 

Threats and rudeness and book destruction ensue, and Lan Wangji is left alone in all kinds of emotional disarray, with a bunch of torn up erotica to tape back together throw away.

Boys on the Rocks

Wei Wuxian brags about his prank to Jiang Cheng and bestie Nie Huaisang, telling them that he got Lan Wangji to cuss at him. He’s going to put a notch on his sword handle for this achievement.  

Jiang Cheng is pissed at Wei Wuxian about this, like he’s pissed at him about everything all the time. Possibly he has already started the seedlings of his lifelong jealousy of Lan Wangji.  

Jiang Cheng doesn’t realize that he’s essentially prepared Wei Wuxian to court Lan Wangji by constantly criticizing, hitting, and threatening him. After a decade of Jiang Cheng’s rough style of brotherhood, Lan Wangji’s elegant and refined hostility rolls off of Wei Wuxian like water off a duck’s back. 

Nie Huaisang wants to make sure Wei Wuxian didn't rat him out, but isn't worried about the destroyed book because he has a whole external drive full of porn. 

Several Brain Cells Trio

These guys do make some questionable choices together, but actually they are all really bright and effective in complimentary ways.

Jiang Cheng is growing into a strong future leader - authoritarian and dickish, yes, but also decisive and unflinching. Wei Wuxian is observant of things around him, always ready for combat, and thinks deeply and strategically about events.  Nie Huaisang is a bottomless font of knowledge, sourced from books and from his own observations. 

So when the Wen spy bird shows up, they spot it, drive it away, identify what it is, and understand that it’s a threat and that its presence has political implications.  

They are all goofballs at times, but highly gifted ones.

Doo Doo Doo Lookin Out My Back Ward

Lan Xichen asks Lan Wangji if he’s found out who was sneaking around his the back ward and Lan Wangji hesitates before reluctantly saying “Wei Ying.” 

Ok seriously - nobody calls him Wei Ying. Nobody refers to him in the third person as as Wei Ying. Calling him Wei Gongzi or Wei Wuxian would be totally normal. His own brother calls him Wei Wuxian. And Lan Wangji has only called him Wei Ying to his face when he was angry. 

But now--immediately after the erotica debacle in the library--he is Wei Ying when Lan Wangji is speaking of him privately with his brother. 

By the way, Lan Wangji's shoulders seem super wide in these robes, don't they? I'm not complaining.

Forgettable Disciple #1

Now we meet apparent nobody Su She, who sucks. He wants to take care of the water ghosts himself. 

He is a no-headband disciple which is like - none of the juniors in the later timeframe go without a headband. The guys who got set on fire at the gate had headbands. One of the Lan Rules is “wear a headband.” Is there anyone else who doesn't rate a headband? This is a plot point later when it comes to the ice cave but for now it just seems that he's that one perpetual intern who never gets promoted and never learned embroidery.

Doctor Qing, Medicine Woman

[OP laughed way too hard at her own joke just now.] Wen Qing is helping Jiang Yanli, and Jiang Cheng is super happy to see her. When did he develop this crush? Because it's already in full swing. 

Did Wei Wuxian just sneer when he noticed Jiang Cheng’s crush? Like macking on Lan Wangji is more appropriate than this? 

I love you and I’m going to advocate killing everyone who matters to you

I’m a nosy jerk and I’m going to be your best friend for life, quite literally

Wei Wuxian complains about Wen Qing ignoring him and she gives him the prettiest, loveliest *sigh* death glare ever.

However when she sees that he's a little brother whose sister utterly dotes on him, she starts thinking maybe he's all right. 

For the Yanli-Qing shippers, there is a tiny breadcrumb here, where Yanli says they met by the river bank.  I don't personally ship my personal girlfriend Wen Qing with Jiang Yanli, but I support your ships wherever they may sail.

Continued in Part 2, right here

[funkymbtifiction]

INTJ or ENTJ?

Hi Charity,

I'm hoping you can help me figure out my type, I’m stuck between INTJ or ENTJ. I feel like neither of them fit completely, but I know that I use Ni/Se and Te/Fi.

I relate a lot to the Ni posts you made. I have a very personalized worldview, that I find impossible to explain (I have confused a fair amount of people in attempts made). I think things through before engaging most of the time....

You give stronger evidence for INTJ than ENTJ. Most of your "tert-Se" behaviors are more likely for inferior Se (sometimes leaping in too fast, miscalculating, but being sensory-aware and enjoying pleasures and aesthetics) than a Te/Se looper (ENJs tend to lose sight more of how things will rebound on them and make short-sighted tert-Se decisions when problem-solving sometimes, just to "rush" the process to completion) and you seem emotionally mature in a tert-Fi way (ETJs have real trouble connecting to people on an emotional level and not substituting physical contact for emotional closeness).

[fishoutofcamelot]

It has come to my attention that after all these years I still have not told yall about the Cell City Incident. Well, it’s time to rectify that

Realistically i know this story isnt all that funny, but its probably the only interesting thing that will ever happen to me so let me have this dammit

So! I was 12 years old. My science class was doing the Cell City project. For those of you who don’t know, Cell City is a thing that some schools around the US do where everyone has to make a physical/visual model of a cell. We spent a full month learning about the cell, studying its components, and using class-time to design/construct our models. A full month. Logic dictates that I should have this in the bag, right? 

Well. That’s only if you use your classtime wisely. I, the dumbass I was, had the chronic inability to pay attention in class, and instead spent all my time sitting in the back and watching “Keroro Gunso the Super Movie 5” about fifty times in a row. 

So no. I didn’t work on the my Cell City Model. I hadn’t started it. I didn’t even know the first thing about cells, because I hadnt listened to a single thing my teacher had said for the last month. 

And to make it even worse than that, I didn’t realize this until the night before this very important, grade-defining project was due

So. I panicked for about ten minutes - and then, true to form, procrastinated again. Told myself I could just work on it in the morning. And then rolled over and went to bed, nary a trouble to be seen.

Come morning, the morning this big project was due. I had twenty minutes to eat breakfast, get dressed, and whip together a project that SHOULD have taken me a month to prepare, and also was about a subject i had no knowledge of.

So. I looked up ‘cell anatomy’ on Google, found an old poster-board in the closet, drew a bunch of random shapes and labeled them as various parts of the cell, and then used pink and orange highlighters to color everything in. It was TRASH, and it looked hideous, but it got the job done.

But! I was also worried that everyone else in class would be doing posters too, and if there’s one thing you should know about me its that since birth i have been afflicted with the deeply american need to be Different For The Sake Of Being Different TM. 

So on my half-hour walk to school, I contemplated ways to jazz up my mediocre poster. And you know what I came up with? You wanna know what my tiny, lazy, absolute dumbass past self came up with? 

I had the oh so brilliant idea to just. Tape the poster to my chest. Just take scotch tape and attach it to my body. And  then dance around saying, “Hi! I’m Planty, the magical plant cell that came to life!” Essentially roleplaying as a cell while i tell people about what all my body parts do. 

Yeah. I really did that. The limits of my stupidity know no bounds, but in my defense I was 12 and also an idiot and also pressed for time

So, eventually presentation time rolled around. And when my teacher strolled by my desk and asked me to present to him, I did the shtick. “Hi, I’m Planty the magical plant cell that came to life!” And proceeded to spend three minutes riffing on whatever information I could only vaguely remember learning earlier that morning - because my dumb ass had struck again and neglected to take any actual notes 

At the very end, my teacher paused, wrote down my grade on his little rubric clipboard sheet, and said, “That was very creative. I can really tell you spent a lot of time on this.”

And looking back I realize he was probably being sarcastic, but in the moment? Hearing him compliment the effort I had put into a 20-minute Hail Mary? I absolutely ascended.

I got an A. 

Now here’s where things get tricky. The moment presentations were over, I tore the poster off my body and theatrically ripped it into shreds. But little did I know, my teacher had decided to enter me in for a community outreach presentation night thing, where parents and civilians could come to the school and review everyone’s best projects. 

And he entered me in. And the project I was supposed to present? The Cell City poster. Yknow. The one I had slam-dunked into a trash can in the hopes of getting someone to pay attention to me (no one did, obviously)

But my teachers didnt know that. They just eagerly approached me like “Oh, your science teacher told us all about the Planty thing! We’re all so excited to see it!”

So I lied through my teeth. I told them that I couldn’t remember where I put the poster, but I know I left it in the storage room next to the lab. Which resulted in me being led around the school for a half hour in search of something I already knew full well had been destroyed. Because I had ripped it to shreds. With my bare hands. I even primal-screamed while I did it, too. 

In the end, my history teacher dejectedly lent me his laptop so I could showcase a Prezi I’d allegedly made about Old Growth Forests. I say ‘allegedly’ because in truth no such presentation existed, but I told him it did, and hastily whipped together a Prezi in the five minutes his back was turned. I got good reviews for that presentation too, but thats only because the people reviewing me were parents, and parents know youre supposed to be nice and supportive to kids that arent your own

(That night, my parents asked me how it went. Not wanting them to think I was a total failure, I lied and said I had made a new friend named Sebastian. There was no Sebastian. A month later, they suggested that we invite Sebastian over sometime, to which I hurriedly lied and said he was moving to Wisconsin like tomorrow and I was never gonna see him again. I know for a fact that they probably didn’t buy it, but they never brought it up so neither will I)

To this day I remember almost nothing about cells, and even in college I still pull dumb crap like this. So that’s a big fat ‘no’ on whether I learned my lesson. But my teacher already gave me the A, and I’ve already graduated, so its too late. No take-backsies. 

[btsmosphere]

Milestone Drabble Game!!

I am excited to announce I will be running a drabble game to celebrate 400 followers!! Thank you so much to everyone reading, reblogging and supporting me, it means a lot to have so many people here! 💜

At the moment I have a few bigger projects on the go, which I can hopefully start posting while I write these drabbles, but I’ve currently hit a bit of a wall and need to write something different! So, this brings us to the game:

Rules:

1. Read the whole post 2. Pick a member 3. Pick no more than two prompts 4. Send me an ask with your request!

~Only one request per person please!~

Additional:

~Please specify pronouns if you are requesting member x reader ~I am also happy to accept mxm or platonic, but please clarify this in your request ~I will also accept requests for fake texts, but these take longer than drabbles so the number will be limited - I will update this post when I cannot accept more ~I would prefer you to be following to make a request as this is a follower celebration event, but who am I to stop you if not ~If possible, please submit your request off anon so you will be notified when I post your drabble ~If there are any other details you would like, such as an au or plot details, please include this in your request too (or feel free to let me decide!) ~Lastly, if you have made a request, I would appreciate it if you reblog and/or comment on the finished product to let me know what you think!

~Members~ (in case you don’t know who they are)

1. Kim Seokjin 2. Min Yoongi 3. Jung Hoseok 4. Kim Namjoon 5. Park Jimin 6. Kim Taehyung 7. Jeon Jungkook

~Prompts~ (all of these prompts were inspired by the amazing people over at @thebtswritersclub as all of these things have been said on our (very chaotic👀) server!)

1. ‘When a big ass insect comes flying at you, you don’t ask questions, you run’ 2. ‘Sorry to break it to you, but these aren’t dms’ 3. ‘Is death that bad when he’s the face of it?’ 4. ‘Trees cannot fall softly’ 5. ‘Let’s see if I can knit in class without looking like I’m knitting in class...’ 6. ‘Send help. I’m a dumbass’ 7. ‘Your bribery does not work’ 8. ‘Some of us don’t even are humans at 11am’ 9. ‘Pimp him out’ 10. ‘You just broke into my house? Creepy’ 11. ‘Food kinda pales in comparison to a meal like that’ 12. ‘It’s tough having a harem y’all’ 13. ‘MY SAVIOUR’ 14. ‘I’m channelling my inner you’ 15. ‘Have you eaten? And had water? The normal human being things’ 16. ‘Moose are like 60% leg and 100% rage’ 17. ‘I heard bananas. I like bananas’ 18. ‘I love my wife, if she’s into gollum, who am I to deny her?’ 19. ‘DON’T MAKE ME DRAG YOU AWAY’ 20. ‘That’s your official introduction’ 21. ‘Solidly what the hell is even going on’ 22. ‘What’s happening peeps I had a 15 minute nap and am a new woman’ 23. ‘Alright, if you really want to know...’ 24. ‘This americano has 3 shots and it’s so weak it’s like drinking fruit juice’ 25. *middle finger* with love’ 26. ‘I am both terrified and intrigued’ 27. ...that... is such a bad pun. I love it’ 28. ‘I slept for 12 hours bro’ 29. ‘Beast was the original furry, prove me wrong’ 30. ‘We only move when necessary’ 31. ‘I will be unavailable on these dates because I will be screaming feral in the woods’ 32. ‘I have no sugar daddy😫’ 33. ‘Is that a compliment?’ 34. ‘I’m actually having an out of body experience’ 35. ‘Uhhh... sicked a possessed doll on the heir of a village’ 36. ‘If I had to choose between a dog or a guy, I would choose the dog’ 37. ‘Y’all are scaredy cats’ 38. ‘Omg are we alive at the same time?’ 39. ‘...maybe you’re the drunk one’ 40. ‘i’m SORRY BUT CAT’ 41. ‘Like holy fucking OUCH ‘ 42. ‘Ever since he buffed up, I’m just constantly not ok’ 43. ‘Bro $200? You’re not a sugar daddy you’re a high fructose corn syrup daddy’ 44. ‘Hush. I’m drunk give me a break’ 45. ‘The orange juice is magic’ 46. ‘I AM NO LONGER CHRONICALLY ILL OR TRAUMATISED’ 47. ‘The creature loves me!’ 48. ‘For no real reason 👀 what are all your worst fears’ 49. ‘We aren’t keeping the god damned animal unless it’s for dinner’ 50. ‘Can I just become a tree’ (Prompts with gender specific language can be changed)

Please note I will not write any of the following:

~Smut (suggestive stuff is okay though) ~Anything with children/pregnancy ~Self harm/suicide ~Yandere/abusive bts

I reserve the right not to accept a request if I do not feel comfortable writing it, as I cannot guarantee this is an exhaustive list. If you submitted your request off anon, I will contact you if this is the case to let you know and give you a chance to submit another request, if you would like.

Once again, a huge thank you for 400 followers, I value every single one of you! I will update my bio and this post when requests are closed, so send yours in soon! 💜💜

[ghostlyvelvetheart]

Has anyone considered that the reason why Luis is so polite and lenient is because…

Luis is Nessie's confidante.

She goes to him with her problems, he helps her, mostly off of company time.

Of COURSE he's going to put in his emails that the first time they spoke was when getting coffee, as that was their first company traceable conversation. The only things he brings up are the company traceable things.

They've shared many more secrets that we don't see.

[sunsofmars-moved]

okay I really hate that I need to do this but I need some help

hello!!!! i am mars and i am a broke black nb lesbian and i need help

okay so there's no one in my household who's employed right now — my 37 year old mother is disabled and chronically ill, and my 16 year old sister and I are trying to acquire work (to no avail) and the government is playing games when it comes to that stimulus check — and there's things that we have to pay for that our current budget won't cover

also I feel like shit for letting my mom do shit by herself and I'm tired of her doing it on her own

there's important immediate things and things that aren't as important but it'd still be nice to have but y'all don't have to donate for those things if you don't want to!!!! just the important stuff tho pls

please read the stuff below the cut and donate if you can!!!! thank you!!!!! 💞

td;lr it's juneteenth and i'm broke and i got shit to do so pay me please 💞

(cashapp: $sunsofmars20) (zelle: zeethefantasyninja12@gmail.com)

IMPORTANT STUFF:

• my overdue rent due to my mom's dss case being cut for 4+ months  and my dumbass slumlord ($1800)

• i'm trying to apply to a better school in august and the background check is $45 and tuition is $45,000 a year, and financial aid won't cover all of it. I don't need a lot for this, just enough to get on my feet until i can make payments on my own

• my phone bill (it's supposed to be $225 every month but it's usually higher and with our current budget we can't make every payment and we need the phones to set up my mom's doctor's appointments and transportation) 

• extra food (my mom has a lot of gastro-related diseases and she has a new heart condition that prompt her to eat better but, like I said, our current amount of food stamps can't support her ever-changing diet. also my sisters keep eating all the damn food 😤😤😤)

• my landlord is a fucking SHITHEAD and he won't get shit done around here so we gotta do the repairs ourselves (i.e. there's a big ass hole in the fence that's been there since last summer, plus the back gate is down so anyone could sneak into our backyard and the thermostat and electrical sockets are DONE)

• the water bill (it's like $257 and change and was due like a week ago lol)

• a new backbrace (I have scoliosis, it's mild but it's still a bitch, and I am currently in the process of reapplying for Medicaid but it's not guaranteed they're gonna pay for it at all)

NOT IMPORTANT STUFF:

• I kinda need new shoes (the majority of my old ones have holes or give me blisters) and so does everyone else (they're too small for my mom, whose feet swell a lot, and one of my sisters only has one goddamn pair smh)

• my cat had kittens and she needs more litter and food so she can get the nutrients and feed her kids

• I'd like a new hydroflask to carry around when I start school/work (I have asthma and I'll most likely have a new inhaler by then, but my doctor has advised me to carry water around as well just in case, and it does soothe my throat and chest when I wheeze)

• new clothes!!!!! I'm donating or tossing like 95% of the stuff I have since it's too small/too old to keep wearing

• i.....I wanna buy my mom a switch???? she deserves a birthday present......her birthday was in April.........and I wanna replace her broken vintage nintendo ds.......

• tbh my mom needs a new phone bc hers is BUSTED so we're gonna pay the partial upgrade (it's like $70 or something)

I'll keep adding/deleting things as needed as we go along. ty for reading!!!!!! 💞

[findangoh]

I’ve got what you might call a dumbass weird brain that functions differently. NOt only does it get chronic migraines and depression but also it has focus issues and an intense need to multitask. People will often be like “man, you can do multiple things at once, I wish i could do that”. And like, it can be useful, but the downside is my brain struggles in an extreme way to only ever do one thing at once. When I am doing big brain tasks i have to have music or audiobooks or podcasts or tv shows going. If i am watching something I get intensely uncomfortable just sitting and watching it. I get angry static in my brain and have to pull out a craft or a phone or a task or something. This is a Great annoyance to my family who get distracted themselves if i do anything else when we are watching as a family. They’ve gotten better about it when i am doing tasks like making bookmarks for my shop or writing but there are times when they won’t even allow that. It is just so frustrating because i want so badly to be normal, i want to just watch a movie with a cute guy in it without having to constantly rewind for something.

It has been more difficult lately because i’ve been trying to write more for naNoWriMo. mY extroverted idiot brain loves being with people and can write while watching something. My dad has been better about it and despite the fact that my mom wants me to write, because she cannot write while watching something, it’s distracting to her because she doesn’t understand it. She doesn’t think i can write and talk and engage at once. And there are days it’s harder but most of the time, I’m good.

I end up in an awful catch 22. She is always saying i should be writing more but she can be disappointed when i go to write alone in my room instead of hanging and watching our shows with them because they want to watch the ones they watch with me. But if i say we can watch it while i write then she gets consternated and distracted.

What am i supposed to do? Yes my brain is unbelievable weird and dumb and wired differently but just believe me when i say i can write and watch. I’m just stuck and frustrated.

She’s always been supportive of my writing fanfic but also lately she’s been frustrated by that because she wants me to focus on my original book manuscript. And i have been but sometimes I want a break and to write my current fixation. So even though i’ve always been able to talk to her about everything and she has always been so supportive of my and my writing I’ve been feeling stymied and restricted and i have no idea what i’m supposed to do. What kind of compromise is left? uggghhhhhhhhhghh

[neonarboretumart]

What I don’t understand. Is that if there was a virus in the water in a town. And it worst impacted our vulnerable folks. There would be uproar to solve it. We can understand and accept and demand a fix for waterborne viruses. But this? We suggest ANY mitigations, ANY solutions, and theyre shut down. The air is unsafe for us to breathe when it contains aerosol particles of COVID-19 and it is unsafe for LITERALLY EVERYBODY. AND YET. EVERYONE THROWS A FIT WHEN THEY’RE TOLD WHAT WILL HELP BECAUSE SOME DUMBASS TWO YEARS AGO TOLD THEM MASKS DON’T WORK (which, shock horror, they do)

Now in the uk there are zero mitigations, most hospitals are unsafe, and our government is both reducing and refusing to purchase antivirals and vaccine alternatives for those of us that can’t make antibodies. Only a TINY NUMBER of the population classed as CV or CEV can even ACCESS ANTIVIRALS. Yeah, the antivirals that reduce hospital rates and deaths and long covid cases and awful outcomes, only those in a very specific bracket can access those AT ALL. We no longer have non-hospital PCR tests at all.

Those of us forced to decide between strict shielding and risking HUGE, VERY LIKELY consequences have no support at all, financially or from work and education. At risk kids, or kids with at risk family members, are forced into school on the threat of being fined or taken away from their family.

There is SO MUCH MISINFORMATION EVERYWHERE. We that were chronically ill before were already aware of how much the medical community will literally make shit up about illnesses like ME/CFS and the like to put the blame on patients, get them incarcerated in mental health facilities or take part in abusive practices. This is just the same thing. Long covid patients are being pushed into the same ‘treatments’ we JUST HAD SUCCESSFULLY REMOVED FROM THE GUIDELINES BECAUSE IT WAS MAKING PEOPLES LIVES INTO A LIVING HELL. AND THEY’RE DOING IT TO THEM.

None of this is even remotely okay. None of it, none of us, are okay.

'they were medically vulnerable' doesn't mean they were already dead or dying

'they were medically vulnerable' doesn't mean it was inevitable they would get the virus

'they were medically vulnerable' doesn't mean their life didn't matter

'they were medically vulnerable' doesn't mean their death isn't sad

they were medically vulnerable' is not an explanation for how or why they got COVID, because existing disabilities and conditions are not COVID and do not cause COVID

'they were medically vulnerable' doesn't mean that there was nothing that could have been done on others' part to prevent them from getting it

'they were medically vulnerable' doesn't mean they deserved to die or should have died

'they were medically vulnerable' is not there so you can feel relieved you aren't like them while doing nothing to protect people like them

'they were medically vulnerable' didn't make it any less important for people to try to protect them from infection than it is to protect you, your life is not worth more or less than theirs was

'they were medically vulnerable' does not mean they were fucking expendable

(seriously some of you sound downright genocidal about this topic and it makes me want to lie down on the floor and sob)

[ambitchousrobot]

Vent post because I’m currently alternating between having panic attacks, screaming into my pillow, and ugly sobbing and I’m not sure how to channel that energy into something constructive so I might as well try venting.

I have chronic depression and generalized anxiety. It sucks, but for the most part it’s old news. Except for the last 10 months or so, everything’s just slowly escalated until it’s at the point where I don’t know how to handle it.

Back in September I left the Barnes and Noble I had worked at for two years. So far it is the only job I’ve ever had that I loved. The work itself was pretty great, I was a kids lead and so I got to shelve books, set up promotions, organize the section, and do story time and help with events. I greatly enjoyed it for over a year. But thanks to a shit ass general manager and the fact that the corporate side of Barnes and Noble has made it exceedingly clear that the care about nothing but appeasing shareholders for as long as possible before they have to declare bankruptcy, the job turned into a living hell for me. After weeks of having panic attacks nearly every day, I turned in my two weeks after realizing that if I didn’t quit the job that I would kill myself. I didn’t finish out my two weeks because after my last shift there I went home and made a suicide attempt. I decided my life was worth more than my obligation to finish out my two weeks.

After that I went back to my previous job as a dog groomer at Petco. This decision was based solely on the fact that I knew I could get hired there in less than two weeks. I applied the day I put in my two weeks at Barnes and had the job two days later. I knew I would hate it, because I hated it the first time. But I needed money. My coworkers were racist pieces of shit. My salon manager straight up used the slur towel head on my first day there. There was no one there that I liked working with. I worked my ass off because it was a commission based job and I wanted the paycheck to be worth the misery of working there. I developed carpal tunnel in my wrists. The last month I worked there, I was in severe pain. When I would clean up at the end of the day, I would have to use both hands to grip the spray bottle to sanitize stuff because I literally did not have the grip strength to lift it with one hand. I had to put in my two weeks in March because I was literally destroying my body. And of course being in an environment I hated wasn’t good for my mental health either.

I was unemployed for a couple of months after that. First because my wrists were too bad and then because no one was hiring after the start of the new fiscal year. My partner and I had money saved up, but we were worried about how long it would last. My depression and anxiety were at an all time worst. So when my partner asked me to consider moving in with his brother, sister-in-law, and niece, I agreed. Because I felt like a worthless piece of shit burden and I didn’t want him to work himself to death supporting us.

I asked my parents to help us move because they have a trailer. They told me their was only day in the entire month of May that they could help us move. They told me his at fucking noon on the day before the only day they could help us move. So I furiously cleaned off all the big furniture and packed what a could, only caring about what we had to have a trailer to move because it was all I had time to do. I was up for 24 hours straight. We got the big furniture moved but there was still a bunch of small shit left because I had to pack in one day.

I also started a part time job at Lowe’s literally the day before my parents called me. (So two days before the move) and so right after moving I immediately had to work a week scheduled at full-time even though I was only hired as a part time worker. But I needed the money so I didn’t say shit. I spent the next week or so going back and forth to pack and unpack shit after my shift each day.

Lowe’s fucking sucked. I had a position that was relatively new within the store and no one was really sure what my job entailed, which meant it was a whole lot of “pretend to be busy so you don’t get your ass chewed, but there’s literally nothing to do.” Unoccupied time is horrific for me when my anxiety is high. I need work to keep my brain in check. So this job was torture. When I did have this to do, it involved asking people to do things because my job involved a fair amount of delegation. Which I hated doing, because anxiety. And since the position was new, there was a lot of resentment and refusal to cooperate from the other employees. Meaning I didn’t just have to ask people to do things, but I also had to ask multiple people to do things dozens of times just to get one task accomplished. And that often included me getting yelled at for bothering them because they were too busy to help me do my job. Which was fucking horrible for anxiety. I hated every minute but the pay was good so I was going to try to tough it out. But the last straw came during my second week on the job. One of my coworkers at my area had been transferred from head cashier to the online order desk where I worked. So she had worked at the company longer than me, but literally didn’t know anything more than I did about our area as she didn’t get promoted until the day after I started. She cussed me out and chewed my ass out, forcing me to stay thirty fucking minutes late because she was yelling at me, all over a single mistake that took literally 5 minutes to fix. And this was after she made a much harder to fix mistake twice early in the day. She made me cry and I was fucking furious because 1) she didn’t have the authority to reprimand me like that 2) it was my first mistake during my first week out on the floor, second week with the company and 3) it wasn’t even a big deal I could have fixed it myself 5 times over during the time she wasted treating me like a fucking dumbass. So the next shift after that, I broke down and harmed myself during my break and then unceremoniously walked out in the middle of a panic attack and never came back.

So now I’m unemployed again. My mental health is in shambles. I’m massively suicidal. And I haven’t even gotten to how much of a nightmare moving in with my in laws has been. But that’s for another post so sorry for the long ass line of text.

[emoselenas]

summer tour days 10 + 11, post-tour thoughts

wow it literally took me over a month to get this entry up, sorry haha. santino roasted me for this several weeks ago and it still took me this long. i’ve been chronically bummed out for what seems like a month now, so it was hard to muster up the will to write. period, actually. it’s been really hard for me to write music lately i literally have to push myself and i find no joy in the things i love anymore!

anyways, here’s the last 2-3 days of our tour! 

day 10 - philadelphia

sunlight peered in through the glass sliding door behind me as i woke up around 8:00 am in a living room with 8 other people, packed tightly across deflated sleeping bags and worn-in couches. i felt tired, but i was up already. i knew that if i didn’t get up and shower now, i was going to be waiting for five other people to shower before me. 

everyone took a few hours to get ready before we decided to head out to breakfast together, including jorge. we had a lovely lil family breakfast at this nice cafe about 10 minutes from jorge’s house. it was a small spot overlooking the valley that had an expansive coffee and espresso drink menu. i got a cappuccino that had some FUN art in it and a Very Disappointing Eggs Benedict. I was a dumbass and asked for the florentine benedict with lox added, instead of asking for the lox benedict with spinach added, which would have cost me significantly less hahaha. 

look at how small this bullshit is

sitting at a table with my bandmates and julie, we agreed that despite how long we had been on the road that we felt like we could keep going. i could tell everyone felt drained, but content. it’s like we all knew we were enjoying the last moments of freedom away from our boring lives back home and were cherishing each other’s company. 

after paying our checks we said our goodbyes to jorge and piled into the van. we had a much shorter drive due to staying in state college, but still hit some traffic approaching philly. not a surprise. it was also weird arriving philly from the west and not coming over the ben franklin bridge, haha. as we drove towards south street we admired the sight of the chinese lantern festival, which we sadly wouldn’t have time for. as opposed to missing DGD’s tour, i was sure i’d live vicariously through photos of it from my friend’s back home and didn’t feel too bad.

i completely forgot that south street is one of the busiest streets in philly and is mere minutes away from TLA. i realized i had been here before and felt my blood pressure rise realizing parking would be impossible. however, behind the venue we found a shoddy dirt parking lot. skeptical of whether or not this was a good idea, we approached the lot attendant and asked if it was okay to park, explaining that we needed a clear space behind us for opening the trunk to get gear out. the attendant obliged to our request, or so we thought.

i’m not gonna lie, i had NEVER heard of the tusk before we played there and it was actually a cool spot. the staff were cool and it was much more spacious than the pictures led me to believe. loading in up a couple flights of stairs was just the worst part. we played with our friends in copley woods which was great, and played with another philly local old city revival. another touring band also hopped on last minute. our set was purely okay??? we all agreed it wasn’t my best set but whatever i had fun and people still dug us so that was fine. jaime and santino had to be like lined up behind one another with their amps and then joe got one whole side to himself hahaha. 

photo credit: julie yi photography

i’m going a little out of order; i’m pretty positive this actually happened before our set. but out of nowhere i’m in the upper level of the venue by the stage and merch when julie texts the tour group chat BUGGING saying “HELP COME DOWNSTAIRS WE’RE GETTING KICKED OUT OF THE LOT”. so both bands run downstairs to scope out the situation, anticipating hell in the form of trying to find a new parking spot by south street in philly. what happened was, the lot attendant parked a vehicle behind ours, and when confronted about his promise that he made, he threatened to kick us out of the lot. however, jaime somehow magically de-escalated the situation somehow so the attendant agreed to move the car and everything was fine hahaha. 

the night was wonderful because santino’s dad came out and we hung out with some real cool people, the only downer was we had to stay later than anticipated because the promoter added that fifth band/touring band on the end, AND, the touring band were the only people who listened to the promoter and played a long set. yeah, the promoter wanted us all to play for 45 minutes but all of us were like, fuck that. but this band ACTUALLY had that much material so they played FOR AN HOUR. ALL of us stayed and we watched them, but we were so fucking tired and we just wanted to go home. we stayed because we understood the importance of supporting other bands, and these people were out here all the way from denver, colorado. but we were so done. and on this night we were staying at my house in brick so we were only an hour and forty five minutes away from a comfortable sleep. AND, my boyfriend was going to be coming over late too so i was just dying to get home. 

after loading out, a taco bell trip and a relatively short drive, we made it to my house around 1:00 am. and jeremiah still waited up and drove over for me uuugh :’)

day 11 - wallingford, ct

god, waking up to my boyfriend and fresh homemade breakfast by my parents was so, so good after being away for so long. it felt pretty strange to be home, and so briefly, but it was so good.  we sadly couldn’t stick around for long after eating breakfast, as we had our van drop-off scheduled for 1:00 PM before our last show of tour in connecticut.

we have shindle drive us up to jaime’s house for one last drive in the van. it’s always sad when you’re in the van for the last day and you know your grand adventure is soon coming to an end. it rained as we drove up parkway north and shindle weaved in and out of shitty new jersey traffic. i definitely did not miss the parkway while i was gone.

shindle wanted to run home quickly to shower and change at home (understandably), so not soon after we unload all of his belongings he takes off. it sucked so badly unloading the van in the rain but what could you do. we started plotting where we were going to get a bite to eat after jaime, julie and i dropped off the van. 

i look around at my bandmates and i go, “okay, who has the key?”

everyone stares blankly at each other.

joe goes, “uhhh, i think shindle gave it back to santino?”

santino looks back at us and goes “... i don’t have it.”

we tear apart our bags and turn our pockets inside out. search the interior of the van hoping it was left in the dash or on the floor by accident.

the drop off time for the van is 1:00 PM. it’s 12:15 PM. 

and we realize that, shindle still has the key. 

shindle’s phone died from the fifteen times i called him. he had left his phone on silent and didn’t look at it while he was driving back to little falls (who would). i had to call bandago and add another day to our rental. it sucked so badly. i was so frustrated that i started crying and jaime’s mom had to console me hahaha. i had to come to terms with the fact that there was literally nothing i could do. we weren’t going to get the key back until we saw shindle later. so i took a deep breath, put myself back together and we just left for the show anyways. 

photo credit: julie yi photography

we arrived to wallingford, CT around like, 5:30, maybe 5:50 PM. i felt my throat acting up again. in fact, it started to feel shitty a day prior but i was praying that i could still pull off a good set later that night. julie walked with me from the venue to get throat coat from CVS and hot water from mcdonalds. i couldn’t really go on voice rest; i had to just drink a lot of fluids, warm up as well as i could and hope for the best. cherry street is a small venue/dive kinda place, but i actually really liked it. anthony told me a lot of people have complained about the sound there but we actually had a really easy time. but there were two people doing sound, one was scotty the venue’s regular and then there was a guy named will who ran the board for our set. will was great. scotty was just really nice too haha. 

our friends migrant played the show as well as the band visitations. it was really great to see the guys in migrant again; we’ve been playing shows with them since 2016. we both played our first-ever studio at webster show together opening for sianvar before AEG shut all of webster down. because it was such a memorable night and they’re such a great band, we’ve kept in touch since then. visitations were also really awesome; i tried to watch as much as i could in between warm ups. i feel bad that i have to disappear to warm up while bands i’ve never gigged with before play, but i have to. 

well it turns out, it was pointless anyways!

yeah, wasn’t fond of the set i played at all. and the sound wasn’t bad either. it was just me. i was really upset. this was our chance to win over people in a state we could easily travel up to and play whenever, and it felt so embarrassing to be up on stage and watch these people hear me blow it haha. its like nails on a chalkboard for me when i hear my mistakes. even if i know what i’m doing sometimes i just blow it anyways. chris knew i was upset too because he just patted me on the shoulder as i slumped off stage like “it’s okay just go do your cool-downs” HAHAHA. but apparently i did something right because scott, *the* sound guy everyone knows at cherry street, bought me a shot LMAO. and some other people from CT chatted us up too, and they bought our merch (and also bought me more drinks). maybe we did do something right for these people to still approach us and have nice things to say. but i still felt like they were being way too nice to me. i still feel like people lie to me. all of the time. 

it was so awesome to watch destination dimension play to their hometown, as we were all surrounded by friends of theirs who were shouting the words to future cougar with us. it was so much fun to watch them play. and it was really nice of them to wear our t-shirts on stage haha. i didn’t wear mine but i bought the gray one which i loveee and is so comfy. we didn’t get to hang long after the show ended with them which sucked sooo badly because almost everyone had work the next day. i had the next day off but not everyone was so lucky. we loved touring with destination dimension so so much. it was nice to tour with a band in the same genre. we had such a happy time and we couldn’t wait for the next time we’d all get to see each other. 

photo credit: julie yi photography

it’s always so weird, the last day of tour. in the middle of tour, it feels like you’re living in this dreamscape where calendar days barely exist and your only job is to show up, play and then do it all over again the next day. that night, it felt like it all barely even happened. all of tour was already becoming a faint memory. i’d look back at photos and only barely remember what it was like to feel that joy again. and i dreaded how distant every adventure we shared together was about to become. 

epilogue

my alarm went off at 9:00 am. i hear sounds of jaime’s dad walking around the kitchen and in minutes time julie wakes up next to me. i lay there for a bit before texting jaime, “you up?” he comes downstairs, i throw my shoes on and my hair up in a ponytail and we go drop off the van. 

it feels like tour is over but i’m still with my friends so i feel okay. julie and i grab our belongings from jaime’s house, say goodbye and return for our drive home together. we talk about tour and how fast it flew by. i’m sort of in a rush to get home in time for E3, so julie is kind to oblige and we get her stuff out of my car expediently when we pull up to her house. 

i say goodbye to julie and joel, get back into my car and instantly feel my face muscles sink. the rest of the day just sucked. 

i’m driving myself home feeling sleepy and don’t even realize it. i run a stop sign and nearly get t-boned by some poor person who didn’t just spend 11 days on 4-5 hours of sleep. 

i finally arrive at jeremiah’s apartment in asbury and go to pick up the coffee i bought for my boyfriend, only to realize the ENTIRE cup spilled out everywhere all over the seat. 

jeremiah meets me downstairs to help me bring my bags up. there’s just so, so much shit. a heavy bag of clothes, souvenirs, non-perishable food i never ate. i’m happy to see him; i’m happy for a little bit. we place an order for delivery at our favorite taco place, and i’m joking about post-tour depression as i walk out the door to go buy beer downtown real quick. already drinking at 1:30 pm! post-tour depression, is it a thing? probably not. there’s probably nothing wrong with me. 

i check my work email and the dread floods in, full force. i did promise that i’d work from home, and i did, but there weren’t a lot of time sensitive matters. i took care of some youtube community engagement, checked stats on videos uploaded while i was gone, checked the socials throughout the day. 

i’m home in time for the next E3 conference but i’m not even paying attention. my work laptop sits in front of me, screen glaring back at me as i’m not even using it. i’m on the couch looking out the window and seconds later tears are pouring down my face. seemingly, with no rhyme or reason. 

well the crying thing happens like every 3-5 days lmao

but it just, didn’t stop. at one point i turn to jeremiah sobbing hysterically and he just holds me. like a broken record all i could say was “i hate that i have to go back to work tomorrow, i loathe that tour is over and this is just it, no more for the year. i have to wait until next year to go out again.” 

and to be transparent, this is sort of the melancholy that has sat with me ever since that day. i wake up five days a week and drive the longest hour and five minutes of my life to work, and back home again in an hour and twenty, sometimes thirty, sometimes forty. 

for my entire adulthood (let’s say like going back to age 18), i’ve dreaded my mid-20s. because my parents would warn me “you need a full-time job by the time you turn 26. you’re going to have to worry about health insurance. we’re going to turn over your bills to you.” so since then, my entire experience of living has been haunted by this death clock ticking down to year 26 of my life. so at 18, i said that by age 22 i needed to be somewhere with my music or i needed to give it up. completely. 

hah.

the first few years of my 20′s i coasted. my band broke up so there went my shot at playing shows until i found something new. without delving into too much detail- for three years i dated someone and because i wasn’t happy i lost a lot of time. i finally recorded music again towards the end of that relationship. when i left that person at age 22 it felt like an entire world opened up to me. an enormous weight was lifted off my shoulders and i was free. i was starting over, in the best way possible. and then mere weeks after, something serendipitous happened- a friend i met because of that relationship approached me, offering to fill-in for drums for me so that i could play shows. 

i was now 23. we were way past the cut-off date for me to be pursuing music seriously. but i couldn’t say no. and now here we are. 

i stayed at my dead-end, incredibly far-from-home job for too long and now i’m finding difficulty finding something closer to home. i almost had a job a few times but i got scared of losing the ability to tour due to the nature of each company, so i idiotically turned those opportunities down. it seems like, to get signed to a label, you have to be both churning out digital content AND actively touring. if we could get a booking agent and/or signed to a great label i would quit my job immediately and work at a coffee shop. i just can’t swing an intense touring schedule if i get a serious full-time job in marketing. i just want to see how far i can take this band. yet, i may be screwing my future after the band if i don’t settle for a better job than just starbucks. but i don’t want to settle, at all. i’ve been panicking about this for a year now and recently my stress has become paramount, ruining every other day for me. when i sit down to practice and feel like i’ve barely accomplished anything in that practice session, i break down. because i feel like i’m running out of time. always. i have a finite amount of time and i’m running out. 

so if you haven’t seen me lately, that’s probably why. i feel guilty for going out and spending time with friends because i feel like it’s time i could be spending on music. and i work day in and day out on my singing, guitar playing, writing, learning new tools for my craft, maybe i’ll go to kickboxing or the gym so that i stay in shape... and that’s it. and it’s crushing me. managing the band takes the fun out of everything too. i’ve become such an irritable person. i hate it. i feel like i’m not myself anymore. but i don’t think the problem is music. i don’t hate music- i hate this pressure to have every facet of my life fit perfectly together. i hate not having the freedom to only worry about music. being in a serious/active band is time-consuming. i realize i can’t have it all- the stable job with money and benefits and the life of a musician- but the pressures i’ve faced my entire life to settle for security have been making me lose my mind. 

i hope that something good happens next year. i hope that something good happens sooner than that. i’m pretty sure this is how i wrapped the last tour journal too. but this has been my entire life- praying that things will just work out and that something good will happen. a year from now when i look back, i hope that i can regret any worry i’ve ever had. but if i find myself looking back in regret, no longer able to tour/pursue music seriously, i’m just grateful it all happened. 

[killingthebuddha]

It was the summer of 1990, when I was stuck in Albany because I needed two more courses to graduate. I found a sublet and I signed up for a history course on the Gilded Age, of which I remember nothing, and an English course, The Bible as Literature. The professor was rangy man with a gray beard. On the first day he explained that we would be examining Bible stories as texts like any other, which made my heart rate accelerate with intellectual excitement. The pear-shaped Christian woman who sat next to me had a different view. Whenever she made one of her frequent declarations of faith the instructor looked ready to chew his own arm off. Frankly I liked how she proclaimed her beliefs without embarrassment, and for being the only student in the class who had bothered to ask my name. That is, until she learned that I was Jewish, and she started handing me pamphlets about the upcoming Billy Graham revival meeting.

That summer I went to class, and I must have done the reading, because my transcript indicates that I earned a B in the Bible course and a C in history. (It is typical of my academic career that I earned a B in a course that I found deeply interesting.) I also had a part-time job on campus. I referred to myself as the chairman of the library, because my job was fixing the chairs.

In the evening I’d get high and play guitar. I’d taken a music theory course that had opened up some things for me and I was writing songs. They weren’t necessarily good songs, but there were a lot of them, maybe three or four a week. I was into Paul Simon that summer, especially Hearts and Bones and Graceland. My own songs sounded nothing like his, first because he was Paul Simon and I was some schmuck with a guitar in Albany, and second because I was simultaneously getting into rootsier stuff like the Band and Ry Cooder. I was chasing some combination of lyrical cleverness and rhythm. I wanted Paul Simon’s wit and Levon Helm’s feel. Let’s face it: I never got there. But I like myself for thinking about that stuff at twenty-one. I like myself for trying.

My roommate was my friend Jen. She was a bright, perky brunette who smoked menthol cigarettes and drove a stick shift, which I thought was hot. We had an uncomplicated friendship that was a relief from the tense, neurotic undercurrents flowing between me and my girlfriend, who, in all fairness, was a tall, green-eyed blonde who drove a pickup, which was also hot. But I felt pulled along against my will. Perhaps because I was pulled along against my will. My girlfriend and I had been on and off since high school, and I longed to get away—from her, from Albany, from my overbearing parents, who were, if not physically nearby, never far from my thoughts, judging me, finding me wanting.

When I was a young man, my self-hatred was like an undiagnosed illness: chronic inflammation of the shame organ. I could never understand what my girlfriend saw in me, but she was smart and pretty, so I kept limping back to her. I didn’t know that I was allowed to look for someone more suitable, that her ambition and looks did not, for me, outweigh her overdeveloped sense of injustice and her own crippling insecurities. That I would have been better off with someone like Jen, who by the way liked my songs, or at least pretended to like them, as opposed to my girlfriend, who was threatened by my playing, because it was a space I had created wherein she didn’t exist.

Not that I was any prize. I was always short of cash and I stank of cigarettes, and, as you will soon learn, I could be a dick.

One night Jen brought home a six-pack and we sat on the crappy carpet and I played her some songs. After a few beers the good kind of tension was so obvious that even a timid kid like me couldn’t deny it, and I kissed her. We went to bed and had drunken college sex. It was delicious. After she fell asleep, I lay awake considering that apparently I was the cheating type.

Unless I was supposed to, you know, be with Jen.

But in the morning Jen said that she valued our friendship and she felt really bad, and I said that I valued our friendship and I felt really bad (even though I felt fine), and although it seemed possible that Jen was waiting for me to say I’d rather be with her, and I liked that idea, I wasn’t equipped to ask for what I wanted.

Aside from my self-doubt, another irritant in the summer of 1990 was the Grateful Dead, which was unavoidable. Their fan base had exploded. Maybe the Deadhead subculture, with its meandering nostalgic drugginess, appealed to early Gen-Xers as an antidote to the constrictions of the 80s. Maybe it was more fun to wear a tie-dye than giant shoulder pads. Who knows. I was mostly neutral to their music. My upstairs neighbors, however, absolutely fucking loved the Dead—Ronnie, and Dan, both nice Jewish boys grooving out to “Sugar Magnolia” as they played Nintendo and passed the bong.

Actually Dan wasn’t such a nice boy. A short, swarthy kid, he was already a kind of low-level grifter. For example, one evening Ronnie came home to find that Dan had treated him to takeout Chinese. Ronnie was touched until a few weeks later he saw that the food had been paid for with his own credit card. Finally we got wise to him and started locking our doors. There wasn’t much else to do, as we’d seen the last of him: Dan had disappeared, of course without paying the rent.

One day when I came home from class there was a Fed Ex package waiting for me.

“Dan called,” Jen said. “He asked if we got a Fed Ex package for him in your name. I told him I hadn’t seen it.”

“Good thinking.”

I looked at the Fed Ex. It was the first one I had ever received and it carried with it an air of great mystery and import, as if inside were the manual to adulthood. Instead there were four tickets to a Dead show in Buffalo. I called my bank and sure enough the tickets had been charged to my credit card. Since I hadn’t ordered them, the bank erased the charges.

“What should I do with the tickets?” I asked the operator.

“You, could, you know, use them,” he said.

I invited Ronnie to go with me. We made the four-hour drive in his mother’s Oldsmobile. A big, voluble blond kid, Ronnie was good company. We shot the shit and smoked Camel Lights and listened to his Dead bootlegs until I begged him to put on something else. As usual, when you are young and on a driving trip, there was sense of expectation and freedom. Traffic was light and the sky was big over the New York State heartland.

But inwardly I was anxious. We’d planned to sell the extra tickets for food and gas, and I kept thinking about when my enterprising brother had almost been arrested for scalping Rangers tickets in front of Madison Square Garden. I imagined spending the night in some Western New York jail cell and, God help me, having to call my father for bail. There was no guarantee that he’d help. Freshman year I had taken the bus to Boston to visit a friend; I’d gotten lost, and in those days before cell phones I couldn’t get in touch with my buddy and I didn’t have a credit card. I called home collect and asked my dad for help.

“You’re not getting a fucking dime,” he yelled and hung up.

But the tickets sold easily. Just after we got off the highway, there was a scraggly young dude on the verge, an expression of grit on his bearded face as he held up two fingers, the universal gesture of a Deadhead in need of tickets. Ronnie pulled over, and the Deadhead slapped fifty bucks in my hand. As we hunted for parking at Rich Stadium, I was feeling better. I had cash and a full pack of smokes. I had my own credit card now for emergencies. Most importantly, I had weed.

Ronnie and I set a time to meet back at his car in case we got separated, which, because we immediately got very high, happened within minutes. I wandered the parking lot alone, looking at the Deadheads, wondering if their evident joy grew out of their shared values or if it were merely the drugs. Either way I remember wishing that I could be a part of it. I didn’t want to be a Deadhead. I did however want to submerge myself for a while, to find some relief from the relentless pulsing of the shame organ.

I ran into Jill, a slim, tall, sloe-eyed girl with straight shining brown hair. We had made out twice freshman year. The first time we had been interrupted by my dumbass roommate. The second time ended when she puked. Now she and her boyfriend were following the Dead around the Northeast, supporting themselves by selling homemade granola bars. I was so impressed by their initiative. They had a VW bus and everything. More importantly they had found a way to be in the world. I tucked that knowledge away for later usage—that it was indeed possible to create your own independence while doing something fun.

At some collectively acknowledged moment the deadheads moved together toward the stadium. I had a general admission ticket so I made my way to the open area before the stage. Crosby, Stills and Nash was the opening band and I was looking forward to seeing Steven Stills play guitar. It was a lovely day, and it wasn’t too crowded, and I found a spot maybe 100 feet from Stills, and CSN was singing “Southern Cross,” a song that I loved for its drippy earnestness and killer harmonies.

And yet a pilot light of anger had flicked on in my gut. I had forgotten how Graham Nash gets on my nerves. His leftover sixties things seemed like a pose. I should add that Ronnie and I had dropped acid in the parking lot. I have the impression that Dan the Grifter had given it to us, but that seems impossible. Nevertheless, I had put a tab on my tongue, and it was coming on pretty strong. I watched CSN, and after Graham Nash said something incredibly annoying as the band played the intro to Woodstock, something like, “show us you deserve to wear those tie-dyes and get into it,” the pilot light flared, and I did something that I would forever regret.

“You suck, Graham Nash,” I shouted. “Go back to England.”

“Dude,” said some guy.

I swear to God that I saw Graham Nash look at me, baffled, before returning his focus to the song.

“Graham Nash. You’re a stupid limey.”

A circle had formed around me, dozens of heads backing away from this white-hot center of hostility. I think that was what snapped me out of it, that I was surrounded by people gaping at a crazy person, and the crazy person was me. in the shame organ pulsated with mortification.

So I left. I shouldered my way through the crowds and returned to the parking lot, where a wizened hippy sat on a cooler, chanting, mantra-like, “Groovy, groovy soda. Get your orange soda.” He repeated this line with unflagging enthusiasm, even though it was only me and him and the cars.

I was thirsty.

I bought a soda.

“You look like Bob,” he said.

“Bob Weir?”

“That’s what I said man, Bob. You look just like him.”

“No I don’t.”

“Dude, it’s good. Girls love Bob. Hey,” he shouted, open-mouthed, revealing blackened stumps of teeth. “It’s Bob.”

“I’m not Bob,” I said, feeling close to tears. “I’m Gordon.”

“It’s Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaab,” he shouted.

I ran away from the dentally challenged hippie and kept going until I found a shaded picnic bench on a grassy strip between the parking lot and a chain-link fence. I took out a cigarette. To my surprise, I was also holding a Zippo. I had no idea how I had acquired it.

It was nearing dusk and the air was cooling. I hadn’t been aware of the heat but now I felt the sweat drying on my back. I remembered my orange soda; it was a little warm but the sugar made me more alert. I could hear the roar of the crowd as The Dead took the stage. (The Internet tells me that the first song of the show was an eight-minute “Hell in a Bucket,” which indeed sounds like hell.) I smoked and I played with my Zippo until I felt ready to be around other people.

But when I tried to get back into the stadium, the security guards wouldn’t let me. I tried another gate with the same result. I shuffled back to my picnic bench in defeat. Mostly I was disturbed by my outburst against Graham Nash, who probably never hurt anybody, except maybe Joni Mitchell. I mean, what the fuck? I had just heckled Graham Nash! Was it the acid? Did it have some speed or mescaline or (God forbid) PCP in it?

Anyway, I was calmer now. I could hear Jerry’s guitar chiming away in the mixolydian mode, as it had done for decades to an audience of Caucasians that never seemed to tire of it. And I had to admit that I wasn’t disappointed about missing the show. In fact, I was relieved. There was a kind of clarity in the aftermath of my acid trip that allowed me to assimilate that I wasn’t merely indifferent to the Dead. I actively disliked their music. They were excellent musicians, but it didn’t cohere into anything. It was a sonic mess. They didn’t leave room for one another. At any given moment, an instrumentalist chooses between playing and not playing. Jerry, Bob, Brent, Phil, the drummers whose names I forgot, they were always playing. Every beat of every song, they were playing. Whereas the musicians that I admired—Ry Cooder, Taj Mahal, Levon Helm—they all knew when not to play.

And by the way did anybody really think that Jerry was a good vocalist? Did anyone really believe that Bob was as soulful as he believed himself to be? Could anyone honestly state under oath that they actually enjoyed the tedious, apercussive wankfest of “Drums” and “Space?”

Okay, the Dead had some good songs.

But the Grateful Dead was not a good band.

There is always the temptation when writing about this kind of experience to force a neat little lesson out of the narrative. But that too would be dishonest. It would be years until I put it all together, until I finally understood that I was free to like Stephen Stills, just as I was free to dislike the Grateful Dead and Graham Nash. I was not, however, free to heckle Graham Nash. In other words, it didn’t matter what I liked or disliked, so long as I wasn’t a dick about it.

It took me even longer to grasp that I was allowed to go after what I wanted.

It was fully night now and the lights above the parking lot were painfully bright. The Deadheads flowed through the gates, mobile clumps of hair and swirling tie-dye bearing the scent of sweat and patchouli. The acid had just about run its course; all that was left were wisps or tendrils of color in my peripheral vision. It was time to go home. Or at least back to Albany. Now if I could just remember where Ronnie had parked his mother’s car.