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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 6 months ago

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A Curse [Chapter 2: Harbor Gateway]

A/N: Thank you for the warm welcome you have given this series!!! I am sick with bronchitis currently so this has been a big bright spot in an otherwise miserable week 😅 I can't wait to show you where this story is going, I hope you're ready for it 🥰💜

Series summary: You are an aspiring actress. Aegon is a washed-up and disenchanted agent...at least until he sees something special in you. But within paradisical seaside Los Angeles you find terrible dangers and temptations, secrets and lies. Maybe Aegon's right; maybe the City of Angels really is a curse.

Chapter warnings: Language, a tiny bit of sexual content (18+ readers only), age-gap relationship, entertainment industry misogyny, some body dissatisfaction/dysmorphia, ice cream, judgmental parents, aggressive Akitas, we're literally in Minnesota!!!

Word count: 6.1k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Tagging: @lauraneedstochill @mrs-starkgaryen @chattylurker @neithriddle @ecstaticactus, more in comments! 🥰

🏝️ Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🏝️

Afterwards, Mason pulls his clothes back on as you are absentmindedly drawing stars in the steam on the windows of his Chevy Silverado. On the other side of the glass is inky Minnesota night, a full moon dissolving away, glowing freckles of constellations. You’re staying with your parents and Mason has roommates, so the truck was the expedient choice. It was good, not that you finished; you didn’t say anything, he didn’t ask, but even if he had you would have told him not to worry about it. It can take forever, especially with an audience. You’d rather wait until you’re alone.

Mason glances down at the used condom on the floor of his Silverado, hastily discarded, viscerally slick in a way that becomes sickening in the letdown, as the endorphins and the adrenaline slip away and the blood pumps slow and unclouded. He smirks as he asks: “You sure you don’t want to get back on the pill?”

You sigh, drawing another star. You are still naked and sprawled across the back seat, glistening with sweat in the moonlight. “Well I tried three different prescriptions and had three miserable experiences, and I��m really not interested in playing side effect roulette again. And I can’t risk my skin going insane and random bleeding when I’m running around all over L.A. trying to get parts.”

“What about that little sperm assassin T-shaped thing?”

You look at him. “An IUD?”

“Yeah.”

You wince, engraving another star into the steam on the window. “I don’t think I like the idea of having a piece of metal shoved up inside me.”

He laughs. “But you’ll get silicone implants?”

You shrug; you can’t deny the irony. “I don’t need an IUD to be an actress.”

“Look, I’m not complaining about the tits thing,” Mason says, holding up his hands. “Obviously I’d enjoy them too. And you’d still have them when you move home, so it’s not a waste even if the acting thing doesn’t work out.”

You already know he feels this way, and yet still, it hurts. “When I move home?”

He smiles and crawls back on top of you, his Carleton College hoodie whispering against your belly and chest, soft royal blue cotton on damp skin. He had been a Political Science and International Relations major who took Theater Arts 195: Acting Shakespeare for an arts credit. He was beyond terrible and had no appreciation for the field whatsoever, but he was tall and strong and jolly, an earnest corn-fed Midwestern boy, and when one day after class he’d asked if he could take you to Culver’s for a burger and frozen custard, you’d said yes.

Here and now, in the back seat of his Chevy Silverado, Mason kisses your forehead. Then he ghosts his thumb over the ridge of your orbital socket and cheekbone, where your dark glittery eyeshadow has smudged like a spreading bruise: Galaxy by Anastasia Beverly Hills, Elysian by Natasha Denona. “I’m not saying you aren’t good. But how many people on this planet get to be movie stars? It’s just not realistic. And it’s about so much more than talent. It’s about who you know, and luck, and chemistry, and looks, and a bunch of other things that are mostly out of your control. You’re never going to be the type of girl who’s an influencer or winning Miss America, you’re just not. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t very, very pretty. And I loved you anyway.”

Loved, past tense. You and Mason stopped using that word a year ago; now the nostalgia is painting memories like the walls of an old house. His memories, anyway. You sit up and start yanking on your clothes: oversized yellow Santa Monica crewneck, black sweatpants with elastic cuffs at the ankles. “I think I’m going to get the gummy bear implants.”

Mason licks his lips. “Yum.”

“They’re a type of silicone, but they’re supposed to feel more natural and be less dangerous if they rupture.”

“Will you have scars?” he says as if the notion has just occurred to him, troubled, perhaps a little revolted.

“Well yeah, they have to end up under my skin somehow.”

Mason shudders, then he has another thought. “Who’s going to take care of you after surgery when you’re all sore and zonked out on opioids?”

“My roommate Baela said she would. She’s had friends who have gone through it already.”

“Okay, good. I wouldn’t want you to be alone out there.” Mason touches the back of your head, a quick fond gesture. He’s the only man you’ve ever been with, and even that took a while, months of trying to envision him undressing you before you were sure you could do it without flinching, without being afraid or shy or bewildered. But in the end it had been easy, always easy, which is why you keep coming back to him like a comet. Your elliptical orbit takes you far away and then close again, and such natural patterns are effortless to keep.

You say, the edges of your lips curling into a furtive smile: “I’m definitely not alone.”

Mason groans. “You’re going to hook up with that new agent guy, aren’t you?”

“What? No! No way, he has a fiancée.”

He rolls his eyes, but he’s more amused than annoyed. “Okay, whatever.”

“You know I don’t date anyone.” Which is why each time you’re home visiting, Mason gets a text: Want to get lunch at Culver’s? or Can you drive me to Target? or Pick me up around 9 p.m.?

Mason smirks and taunts: “I don’t know, with the way you talk about him you sound kind of obsessed.”

“I’m just grateful. Someone finally gave me a chance.” You look to the window; the steam and your hand-drawn stars have evaporated away. “And yeah, he’s interesting and he’s cute, and he’s kind of mean but then unexpectedly caring sometimes, and I think he’s one of those people who are really good at what they do but only when they’re inspired…but that doesn’t mean I’m into him romantically.” A pause. “And even if I was, there’s no harm in a super-secret, one-sided crush.”

“Okay. Have fun with all the adulterous sex.”

You chuckle. “Thanks, but that is not the plan.” You slip on your flip-flops, shimmy out of the back seat, and trot around the Silverado to the passenger’s door. Mason climbs into the driver’s seat and turns his key in the ignition. You ask: “What happened to that ballerina girl who was in your Instagram stories for a while?”

“Had to ghost her, she got super clingy and controlling. She was texting me at work all the time and got pissed off when I was putting a ton of hours into that election thing for CNN.” Mason is a political analyst. He turns to you. “You ever feel like people are the best versions of themselves before you really know them? Then you get too close and all the cracks start showing.”

“I think people are wonderful. You just have to find the ones you click with.”

“I should have figured you’d say something like that.” He steers his truck out of the otherwise empty parking lot in Lac Lavon Park. “I’m looking forward to you being home again.”

“I’m not.”

You both laugh, and then Mason drives you to your parents’ house.

At the dining room table, Mom and Clara are researching wedding venues, vast countryside estates and metropolitan historic hotels. Clara got engaged two weeks ago during a vacation to Turks and Caicos. In the living room, Dad and Tripp are watching commentary on the NBA Finals. Tripp’s name isn’t really Tripp; he is the third James in a row, named after your father and grandfather, and Tripp is short for triple. All over the house, there are Akitas lolling in plush dog beds and clicking around on Brazilian Cherry hardwood floors. They have faces like teddy bears, but their dark eyes track you mistrustfully, as if you are an intruder.

No one asks where you have been. They barely acknowledge that you are back. “Hello, dear,” your mother calls distractedly from the dining room, and that’s all. You jog upstairs to the bathroom you share with Clara before anyone can notice your smeared makeup and the unsavory post-car-sex sweat gleaming on your skin. You get into the shower, turn on water so hot it is nearly scalding, and close your eyes. With your back pressed to the jade green tiles, your hand wanders down over your belly and stops between your legs. Your mind cycles through fantasies, but nothing seems to be working.

It’s not real. It can’t hurt anybody.

You imagine that Aegon is the one touching you, and in under a minute it’s over.

~~~~~~~~~~

“I want there to be horses,” Clara says, scrolling through her phone and ignoring the food on her plate: roast chicken, homemade mashed potatoes, green beans sauteed in garlic and olive oil, panzanella salad. Mom prepared it all herself, not because there was no help available—your parents have a housekeeper named Angela who comes by several days per week—but to prove she could. In the living room are shelves heavy with books by Martha Stewart, Ina Garten, Cat Cora, Julia Child, Nigella Lawson. You hear echoes of ambient clicking, Akitas meandering down hallways and staircases.

“Horses?!” Tripp replies with a mouthful of mashed potatoes, gesturing to the sliding glass door. “Don’t you get enough horses in your everyday life? Don’t you have like five right out there?” Your parents’ house sits on ten acres of land, including a barn and several paddocks for Clara’s rescued Thoroughbreds.

“I want beautiful horses,” Clara insists. “Unusual, photogenic, so they can be in the background of all the photos. Maybe Friesians or Haflingers?”

“I’m not sure we can sort the venues by types of horses available, dear,” Mom says. All that’s on her own plate is a heap of green beans and a few pieces of skinless white meat chicken.

Clara moans and drops her face into her hands. “It’s so overwhelming!”

“You’ll find a place you like, Clara Bear,” Dad says mildly, painstakingly slicing meat off a drumstick with his fork and knife.

“And Owen is no help at all. Every time I ask for his opinion he just tells me to do whatever I think is best, but I don’t know what’s best, that’s why I’m asking him!”

Your mother pats Clara’s shoulder reassuringly. “Guys don’t care about weddings,” Tripp says, twisting around in his chair to see the television in the living room. On a rerun of E! News, the hosts are discussing Chris Hemsworth’s rigorous fitness regime and Meghan Trainor’s “mommy makeover.” You peek under the tablecloth. One of the Akitas, Yuki, is glaring as she waits for you to drop something for her to eat.

“You could do something like that,” Mom says to you, and you realize you haven’t been listening to the conversation.

“Sorry, do what?”

“You could be a wedding planner or a real estate agent. Those are actual careers, but there’s more creativity involved, isn’t there? And didn’t you take a design class in college? That would certainly come in handy.”

“Hm,” your father says with a frown, still dissecting his chicken. He would rather you go to law school like Tripp. You would rather lie down in traffic.

“I took a set design class, Mom. Because I was studying how to be an actress. And that’s what I’m doing right now in Los Angeles, trying to be an actress.”

“You could become an architect!” Mom bursts out with sudden enthusiasm. “Wouldn’t that be fun?”

You titter evasively. “I can’t draw, Mom. Or use the modeling software, or do math.”

“You know, you don’t need any specific degree to get into law school,” Tripp says, and your father gives him a nod of approval. “You could have majored in dance or bagpiping or Egyptology, it doesn’t matter. All they want is a high undergrad GPA and a 168+ LSAT score, and I bet you could get that if you studied. You can even retake the test a few times if you need to.”

“Why do you do that?” Clara snaps at him. You eat your panzanella salad and pretend not to be listening. Beneath the tablecloth, Yuki growls. You toss her a few cubes of Italian bread so she won’t bite you.

Tripp shovels mashed potatoes into his mouth. “Do what?”

“Why are you always wasting your time trying to convince her to grow up and get a real job? If she wants to embarrass herself, let her. I have problems that I’m trying to solve, so how about applying yourself to those instead?”

“Are you serious? You think I should be calling around to wedding venues asking about their selection of exotic draft horses?”

Clara aggressively stabs at her green beans with her fork. “Fuck off, Tripp.”

“Hey, hey, kids, no swearing,” your mother says. “It’s Father’s Day. Be respectful.”

Dad turns to you. “You could be an entertainment lawyer, how about that? You could work in intellectual property or negotiating contracts.”

You smile warily. “I’ll think about it, Dad.”

Clara says to your parents: “Well I hope all the money you’re throwing out the window to support her in California isn’t coming out of my wedding fund.”

You close your eyes and think: I can’t spend my life in a cubical. I can’t spend every minute of every day trying to forget who I am.

“Shh, shh,” your mother pleads, rubbing the back of Clara’s clenched hand. “You will get exactly what we promised you, that amount is still set aside for your wedding. Nothing she does affects you.”

“And it’s only until the end of the year,” your father adds. “Then the vacation is over.” Then the meager allowance they are funneling to you will stop and you will be ordered to return home to pursue an honorable course of existence. You have six months to succeed in Hollywood, or the dream dies.

Your father is now asking Tripp about his summer associate position at Latham & Watkins in Chicago. Your mother is advising Clara to get a wedding dress with a corset back so it can be adjusted in the event she gains or loses weight at the last minute. Underneath the table, Yuki is growling again; she noses your knees threateningly.

“I got an agent,” you say, and everyone looks at you.

“Really?” Mom asks, sounding a little perplexed.

“Who is it?” Dad says.

“Aegon Targaryen. He has a small office in Elysian Park.”

“Oh, I think I recognize the last name.”

“His family is in the industry.” You are beaming; you can feel the heat rising in your face. “But Aegon kind of does his own thing and tries to stay out of the limelight. He was an actor when he was my age. And I guess he thinks I can get roles, so that’s really exciting.”

Your mother seems concerned as she nibbles at a shred of white meat. “Is he an older man?”

“Not that much older. He’s thirty-five.”

“Well, be careful, darling,” your father says gravely. “Who knows what his intentions are.”

Clara evidently agrees. “Men can be so creepy. I had this one professor in pharmacy school who cheated on his wife with one student, then cheated on her six months later with a different student. And then he retired to Boca Raton and was never heard from again.”

“Oh, that reminds me!” Tripp says to your father. “We read about Clinton v. Jones in torts class, it was wild, I didn’t know he was such a freak even before the Monica Lewinsky thing…”

After dinner, while your father and Tripp are flipping through television channels in the living room and Clara is upstairs on the phone with Owen, you go to the kitchen where your mother is washing dishes in a bubble-filled sink. Again, she doesn’t have to do this; Angela will be here to clean the house tomorrow. But it’s part of being a perfect homemaker, and if she’s not good at this then she’s not good at anything.

She glances over when she hears you come in. “Did you get an appointment with one of the doctors your father recommended?”

“I did, yeah. I have a consultation on Friday.” You lean against the marble countertop and cross your arms so you don’t fidget nervously. From a dog bed on the floor, Mochi glowers at you. “Do you think I should get the surgery?”

She shrugs; you’re not certain if she is more indecisive or apathetic. “Your cousin Madison had a nose job the summer before college. Your old classmate Emma got a blepharoplasty and then met her husband three months later. Practically all of my friends have had breast augmentations, and I’ve certainly never regretted mine. I think if you’re going to get anything fixed, it makes sense to pick that.”

You try again to elicit a strong opinion, whether an endorsement or objection. “I don’t think I’d want to do it if I didn’t feel like it was necessary to be an actress.”

“Well, regardless of whatever you have going on in California, you’ll either have to get them done now or after you have children,” Mom says. “I love you and Clara and Tripp, but you destroyed my body. At least doctors can repair breasts. My bladder is still useless.”

You stare at Mochi distractedly. The dog huffs, unwelcoming. “What was the recovery like?”

“Oh, hell,” your mother says. “But once you heal up it’s worth it. I can wear square necklines and strapless dresses again.”

“Technically, you could have worn whatever you wanted.”

She gives you an impatient look, a you’re too old for that sort of frustration. “No one wants to see some sad flabby woman.” She is including your father in this statement. You remember being home for Thanksgiving Break during your freshman year at Carleton and inadvertently stumbling upon emails from one of the hospital interns when you used his laptop to buy movie tickets: indecent inuendoes, flirtatious photos, no smoking gun but certainly more than was appropriate between colleagues. You had tried to tell your mother, and she had deflected over and over again until you realized that she didn’t want to know; it was easier to be carried by the currents of momentum than to rock the boat until it sank. “This agent of yours…is he celebrating Father’s Day with his family?”

“No, Aegon lost his dad when he was in college.”

“That must have been difficult,” she says vaguely as she scrubs a pot with a green Scotch-Brite dish wand. Your parents are now at the age when their friends have begun to succumb to strokes and heart disease and cancers, and the lurking specter of mortality both horrifies and fascinates them. “What did he die of?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Mom?!” Clara shouts from upstairs. “Osaka is puking in the hallway!”

Your mother sighs and dries her hands on a dish towel, then leaves you alone in the kitchen. You linger there for a while, listening to the faint drone of CNN from the living room television, then leave the house through the sliding glass door in the dining room. Outside the sun is setting, and you gaze westward as the aging daylight turns the tall green grass and silhouettes of horses to gold like the mines that first brought settlers to California. You slide your phone out of the pocket of your denim shorts and take a photo, then post it to your Instagram story with the caption Home and a smiley face emoji.

A minute later, you receive a DM. Aegon has typed: This explains the big horse girl energy

You laugh and respond: They belong to my sister, I am personally very anti-horse

You hope he’ll continue the conversation. You don’t have to wait long. How’s Minnesota? Aegon asks.

You stop and consider how to answer, then decide not to overshare. Devoid of palm trees…but good!

There is a pause—perhaps thirty seconds—and then Aegon types: How’s the ex-boyfriend?

Is he curious or jealous? You smile. Still not standing in the way of anything :)

Aegon reacts with a heart emoji, then immediately switches it to a thumbs-up. You cannot ignore the wave of warmth and fondness and exhilaration that overwhelms you. Logically, you know he’s engaged to another woman. Emotionally, it doesn’t seem relevant.

You think: It’s just a crush. It can’t hurt anybody.

Then you remember what your mother asked, and as you stand outside in the fading dusk light you Google Aegon’s father Viserys Targaryen. He has his own Wikipedia page. You scroll to the bottom, where it reads in nondescript black letters: On October 27, 2009, Targaryen passed away at his Malibu residence after a long illness.

~~~~~~~~~~

You have just finished ringing up a Like It-sized Apple Pie A La Cold Stone when Josh says: “Hey, there’s an old guy asking for you.”

“What?” You look towards the ice cream freezer and there he is, dark jeans, green Nike Killshots, a yellow Hawaiian shirt that’s too big for him. “It’s my agent!” you shout as you rush over to meet him, loud enough that everyone in the shop turns to stare.

“Shh,” Aegon says, but he’s laughing.

“What are you doing here?” you ask from behind the counter.

“I got some good news, and I wanted to tell you in person.”

“Cool! Should I make you ice cream first?”

“Um, sure.” Aegon surveys the menu of Signature Creations. He seems overwhelmed; he actually looks a little panicked.

“Are you usually a chocolate or vanilla person? Or peanut butter, or coffee? Or mint?”

“Strawberry,” Aegon says.

“Strawberry,” you echo, surprised. “Okay, I think you’ll like Our Strawberry Blonde.”

“Neat.”

“Because, you know, it has strawberries and you’re blonde.”

“Sounds literally perfect for me,” Aegon says, smiling.

“What size?”

“Uh…” He reads the labels on the cups in the display case. “The big one.”

“No, you have to say the real name.”

He chuckles. His cheeks are pink, his turbulent blue eyes sparkling. “I’m not saying that.”

“Then I’m not making you ice cream!”

He groans. “I want an Our Strawberry Blonde in the size Gotta Have It.”

“Cup, cone, or waffle cone bowl?”

“Stop asking me questions or you’re fired.”

“Waffle cone bowl,” you decide. Aegon studies you as you work, his head tilted thoughtfully to the side: scraping a mound of strawberry ice cream out of the freezer with your metal spatulas, taking it to the cold countertop, and smashing in graham cracker pie crust, caramel, fluffy whipped topping, and fresh strawberries. You use one of the spatulas to expertly scoop the mixture into a waffle cone bowl, not spilling a drop. Then you hand Aegon his ice cream and ring him up at the cash register. He pays in cash.

You ask Josh, the manager on duty, if you can take your fifteen-minute break now. He frowns. “I thought you were going to refill the yellow cake and Oreo cookie mix-ins first.”

“Hey,” Aegon says. He waves a ten-dollar bill in the air to show it to Josh and then dunks it in the tip jar. “Do it yourself.”

“Fine,” Josh mutters to you. “But you don’t get a second over fifteen minutes.”

There’s no time to waste. You hurry to a small table by the window. It’s 8:30 p.m., and outside the world is indigo-dark and threaded with inorganic sparks of headlights, streetlights, kaleidoscopic neon signs. Your eyeshadow is vibrant and pink, because no one cares about that when you work at an ice cream shop: Push by Natasha Denona, Coax by Urban Decay.

Aegon takes his first taste of his ice cream as he sits down in the chair across from you. “You were right, this is delicious. A bop, not a flop.” Then he notices the bruise on your right wrist. “What the hell happened to your hand?”

“Oh. One of the Akitas bit me. Don’t worry, I can cover it up with concealer.”

Aegon is irritated. “Why is your mother letting her Akitas bite you?”

“It was my fault. I forgot that Oni doesn’t like when people pet his feet.”

Aegon sighs, stirring his Our Strawberry Blonde. “You want some of this?”

“I can’t,” you say reluctantly.

He raises an eyebrow. “What do you mean you can’t?”

“I already had a little cup when I got here this afternoon so I have regrettably hit my ice cream quota for the day.” And then, when Aegon clearly does not approve: “I try not to restrict too much but obviously staying the same size takes effort. That’s not a disorder, it’s just reality.”

Aegon seems to debate arguing, then instead scoops up a heaping spoonful of ice cream and holds it out across the table. “Come on. It doesn’t count if it’s on my spoon.”

You smile sheepishly and open your mouth for him. Your lips close around the plastic spoon: coldness, sweetness, the grit of pulverized graham cracker pie crust, the infinitesimal black seeds of strawberries that catch between your teeth. When Aegon begins to pull it away, you grab his hand and don’t let go until you’ve licked the spoon clean. He laughs hysterically as he watches you. “I haven’t had strawberry ice cream in forever,” you say.

“Don’t tell me you’re a vanilla girl.”

“I am,” you confess. “I know the joke. But I really do always get the vanilla-adjacent flavors. Cookie dough, French vanilla, sweet cream, cheesecake…”

Aegon smirks playfully. “Pathetic.”

“So you’re an enlightened being because you eat strawberry ice cream.”

“Boring people like vanilla. Kids like chocolate. Interesting adults like strawberry.”

“Do you actually have good news for me or did you just come here to be a ghoul?”

“I got you a part.”

“What?!” you squeal, and people are gawking again. This time, Aegon doesn’t tell you to be quiet. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” he replies, grinning like he can’t help it.

“A part in what?”

“It’s small,” Aegon warns. “It’s an episode of Grey’s Anatomy.”

You scream; Josh scowls at you from behind the counter. “Oh my God, no way, no way!”

“You’re going to be the wife of a guy the doctors kill with negligence. Three scenes, two are pretty short and unremarkable but then you get to yell at the surgeon in the last one. Gives you the opportunity to show some range and make an impression.”

You can’t believe this is happening. “They aren’t going to make me audition first?”

“Well…it’s very last-minute,” Aegon says. “The actress who was supposed to do it has a drug problem or something, I guess, so she ghosted and they were scrambling for a replacement. And I completely fabricated your credentials.”

“What? Really?”

“Yeah, I typed up a resume and sent it over and they loved it. So try not to talk about your actual experience because none of it will match.”

You shake your head, stunned, amazed. “What if they try to contact one of my alleged former employers?”

“Then they’ll be talking to Aemond, and he will lie and say you were an absolute pleasure to work with.”

Aemond Targaryen: Aegon’s younger brother, a screenwriter, a philanthropist, a well-respected entity in Hollywood, and you know this from the Googling that preceded your first meeting with Aegon last week. “And Aemond doesn’t mind helping you commit fraud?”

“It’s not a favor I call in very often.” Aegon finishes his ice cream, then begins breaking apart the waffle cone bowl and shoving shard-like pieces into his mouth.

“When’s the shoot?”

“Very very early on Thursday, that’s the bad news.” Thursday is two days from now. “So I’ll have to pick you up at your apartment at like 5 a.m.”

“That’s fine. I’ll be ready.”

He smiles, gnawing on a chunk of his waffle cone bowl. “I figured.”

“You’re going too?” The hope is unmistakable in your voice.

“Of course I’m going.”

“I didn’t think agents usually went to film shoots.”

“Well, fortunately for you, your agent is imminently fleeing Los Angeles and has already parted ways with most of his clients and really has nothing else going on besides hiding in his office and playing a Nintendo 64, so I figured I could make it. And also if I’m going to be enthusiastically recommending you to people, I should probably see you work at some point.”

You wiggle your eyebrows flirtatiously. “Do I get to make out with my fake husband?”

Aegon is amused. “From what I understand, you get to chastely kiss him once. They’re sending the script over to my office first thing in the morning, so you’ll only have a day to learn your lines.”

“That’s enough time. I’ll make it work.”

“Always so agreeable,” Aegon muses. So desperate is more like it.

Thursday. “Is the shoot just one day?”

“Yeah, they should be able to get everything they need from you on Thursday morning. Why?”

“I have a doctor’s appointment on Friday and I was just wondering if I’d have to reschedule it.”

Aegon is immediately vigilant. “What kind of appointment?”

“Uh…” You smirk guiltily. “It’s just a consultation. No slicing yet.”

“And you’re going to cancel that,” Aegon says flatly.

“Seriously?”

“Do you want implants because you want them or because you think other people want you to have them?”

You hesitate. “Both.” That’s probably a lie.

Aegon leans back in his chair and studies you. “Yeah, you’re cancelling that appointment.”

“Why?”

“Because when I agreed to sign you, you told me that you’d do anything I say. And I’m telling you to cancel it.”

“But why don’t you want me to get implants? Everyone gets implants.”

“Because once you begin to treat scalpels and needles as prescriptions for everything you don’t like about yourself—or everything that other people don’t like about you—it’s very difficult to stop. First it’s your tits, then it’s your eyes and your nose, then it’s your chin and your cheeks and your neck and your ass, and it’s just this revolving door of painful, dangerous, unnecessary procedures that are condemning you for being mortal, that are carving away your humanity one incision at a time. I’ve seen it happen to more people than I could count, and I don’t want it to happen to you. Because you seem very, very human, and I’d like you to stay that way. Which means you don’t cut yourself up because some agent or producer or casting director told you to.” Then he adds, perhaps as an afterthought: “And anyway, you don’t need implants.”

You smile, then reply quietly: “You’ve never seen me.”

Aegon grins. “I don’t care if you have twelve nipples under there like a fucking beagle, you don’t need plastic surgery.”

You both laugh, and the tension evaporates, and even if you don’t cancel the appointment—Aegon is one person, the entertainment industry is omnipotent and eternal—you are glad he seems to like you the way you are. Behind the counter, Josh is waving manically to get your attention and summon you to return to work. You pretend not to see him.

Aegon asks: “Why don’t you like horses?”

“They freak me out. They’re all teeth and legs and they’re huge, I’m always scared they’ll step on me.”

“Your dad’s a doctor, right? I thought all rich girls had horses.”

“Where I’m from, a lot of women ride horses to distract themselves from the fact that their husbands are riding their receptionists or interns. I’d rather have no horse and no awful cheating husband.” And Aegon stares at you and turns serious, because perhaps you’ve inadvertently addressed the elephant in the room: he has a fiancée, and neither of you are acting like she exists. You swiftly pivot. “I’ll make an exception for you, though.”

He appears startled. “What?”

“The Chinese zodiac. You’re a horse. So you’re the only horse I like.”

“Oh, yeah. Right.” Aegon chuckles uneasily and gets up to throw his trash away, then stands under the florescent lights with his hands in his pockets, his blonde hair falling out of its gel and hanging over his forehead. He gazes down at you pensively; you are still seated at the table. “When does your shift end?”

“I’m closing tonight, so I’ll be done around 10:30 or 11.”

“Okay. Can I come back to pick you up and drive you home?”

You are puzzled. “Why?”

He gestures to the inky dark window, incredulous. “Because obviously you shouldn’t be walking alone in Harbor Gateway at midnight? You know there was a shooting a block from here last week. I looked it up.”

“I walk home all the time.”

“You really need to stop doing that.”

“You are being very dramatic for a non-actor.”

“Listen, I can’t go to my house and try to fall asleep while I’m wondering if you’re getting mugged or murdered.”

You look at Aegon. He does seem genuinely worried. “You can drive me home.”

“Great. See you in two hours.” He strides away and shoves open the glass door; the little metal bells hanging there jingle.

“Aegon?”

He halts mid-step and turns around. “Yeah?”

“Does Becca know where you are right now?”

His face is some amalgamation of emotions you can’t read, and this is unusual.“Why do you think I paid in cash?”

And before you can reply, he’s gone.

~~~~~~~~~~

On Thursday, June 19th, Aegon picks you up in his white Chrysler Sebring convertible while the city is still asleep. The sky is dark, the streetlights passing by overhead, infinite pinpoint supernovas. There are hardly any other cars on the road. Aegon’s hair is a mess and his eyes are bleary; he’s sipping a Starbucks coffee with one hand and holding the steering wheel with the other. He is wearing a suit, but he still manages to look unpolished, his white shirt half-untucked and his black tie too skinny. He sets his coffee down in one of the cup holders and passes you something venti-sized and iced.

“I got you a vanilla latte, vanilla girl.”

“Aw, thanks! Skim milk?”

“Nope,” he says, smiling. You smile back and take a gulp of it, cold and sweet and bracing. “What’s your hype song?”

“I can’t tell you,” you say, embarrassed.

“Why not?”

“You’re going to terrorize me.”

“Don’t Stop Believing? Don’t Stop Me Now? I Gotta Feeling?”

“Lose Yourself.”

Aegon throws back his head and cackles, his hair flying in the wind. “That’s definitely a fireable offense. I’m ditching you the second we finish this shoot.” But he taps around on his phone and plugs in the aux, and then Eminem is thudding through the speakers as the Sebring sails north and the red-gold dawn rises on the horizon, a celestial message from the East Coast, an omen from the future.

Aegon drives you to Prospect Studios in Los Feliz, just east of Hollywood. Filming will be indoors on a soundstage. You spend what feels like forever in hair and makeup, and the costume designer—who had prepared for a different actress—dresses and redresses you over and over again, frowning at your chest and waist and thighs, and you have a sudden pang of nauseating panic and dread: I don’t belong here. What the fuck was I thinking?

Then you are in the scenes under intensely radiant artificial light, and just like it did in your roles back in Minnesota, the real world vanishes and all that exists are these characters, these moments, and your body and mind become theirs, and perhaps even your soul too. Your husband is handsome and kind, and here in this liminal fictional space you love him, and when the surgeons wheel him off to the operating room you are full of blind naïve surety. Then the doctors update you on his condition and you are still hopeful, but it becomes a fragile thing, like something that shatters when it’s dropped from a height. And then he is dead, he has been taken away from you, he has been stolen, and you are eclipsed by a blood-red wrath that is animalistic and unforgiving. After each take when you are ripped back through the veil and into reality, you can’t remember exactly what you did or said, and the director doesn’t have many critiques so you aren’t sure how it’s going.

But when it’s over, while you are still standing on the soundstage with the other actors, Aegon puts on his sunglasses and smiles at you from across the room; and you remember what he said outside his office on the day you first met—you are so bright, sunshine—and you know you’ve done a good job.

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mariacallous · 2 months ago

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To understand the vagaries of power in Washington, pay attention to where the powerful congregate. When Teddy Roosevelt was ascending, he could be found at the Metropolitan Club, a blue-blood hangout where he and his fellow-members planned the Spanish-American War. The more literary-minded might prefer the Cosmos Club, which hangs up portraits of members who win the Nobel Prize. (Thirty-six, so far.) The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg enjoyed the City Tavern Club, a modest, threadbare place with monthly dues on the order of two hundred dollars. The club closed last year, for lack of funds.

When Donald Trump returned to the White House this winter, members of his circle set about creating an establishment that might suit their preferences. The President’s oldest son, Don, Jr., was among the founders of a members-only society called the Executive Branch, open by invitation to those who can pay initiation fees of as much as half a million dollars. One founding member, David Sacks, a Silicon Valley tycoon who serves as the Administration’s A.I. and crypto czar, explained, “We wanted to create something new, hipper, and Trump-aligned.” The location has yet to be announced, but Sacks promised that the club would provide like-minded members with a sanctuary, where they wouldn’t have to encounter a “fake-news reporter” or anyone else “we don’t know and we don’t trust.”

The Executive Branch, which has a coat of arms that combines a bald eagle with a monogram of the club’s initials, offers a home to those who stand astride the MAGA ledger—the people who both fund Trump’s initiatives and profit from them. A number of the co-owners are, like Don, Jr., known less for their achievements in business than for their proximity to Trump. They include the cryptocurrency entrepreneurs Zach and Alex Witkoff, whose father, Steve, is Trump’s Middle East envoy, and Omeed Malik, a founder of 1789 Capital, a venture-capital firm that named Don, Jr., as a partner. (In April, Malik was appointed to the board of the government-backed mortgage firm Fannie Mae.)

Last month, Sacks co-hosted a launch party at the Occidental, a venerable restaurant near the White House where political operatives once worked to defuse the Cuban missile crisis over crab cakes and pork chops. The place was done up in Trump’s customary mode, evoking a pricey wedding on the Jersey shore: caviar bumps for arriving guests, designated spaces for V.I.P.s and V.V.I.P.s, and seafood arrayed on a table-size ice sculpture topped with the club’s initials.

The guest list included an extraordinary range of officials from the new Administration. Lobbyists from the pharmaceutical and finance industries were pleased to find themselves in close quarters with the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the director of National Intelligence, as well as the chairs of the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. One attendee later described it as an improvement over the scene at the Trump International Hotel, which was popular during the first term. “That was open,” the guest told me. “You could find Rudy”—Giuliani—“pretty tipsy on any given night, holding court in the lobby.” The new club has higher barriers to entry. “It’s a sign of how Trump has filled his Administration with people who can actually afford that,” the guest said. “It felt like a White House party, to be honest.”

Outside Washington, the founding of the Executive Branch was greeted less warmly. The former New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu, who voted for Trump twice but occasionally criticizes him, derided the club as a “money grab.” On X, a user wrote that “those who supported MAGA now feel we have been played.” Marcy Kaptur, a Democratic representative from Ohio, invoked the excesses of Nero, and called the club a “grotesque portrait of ruling billionaires.”

Historically, ruling billionaires have tried to avoid such portraits. (A publicist for J. P. Morgan used to say that he was “paid to keep the bank out of the press.”) But the Trump Presidency has embraced an unusually open marriage of politics and profit. Official filings revealed that his Inauguration fund set a new record by collecting some two hundred and fifty million dollars from corporations, C.E.O.s, and other large donors. The biggest donation, five million dollars, came from a major poultry producer called Pilgrim’s Pride. A few months later, Trump’s Agriculture Secretary delighted the industry by agreeing not to increase salmonella testing and promising to cut “unnecessary bureaucracy.” By then, Trump had already fired the director of the Office of Government Ethics and the head of the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates whistle-blower complaints.

Even seasoned practitioners of Washington pay-to-play have been startled by the new rules for buying influence.

In December, a seat at a group dinner at Mar-a-Lago could be had for a million-dollar contribution to MAGA Inc., a super PAC that serves as a war chest for the midterms. More recently, one-on-one conversations with the President have become available for five million. The return on investment is uncertain, a government-affairs executive told me: “What if he’s in a bad mood? You have no clue where the money is eventually going.” Another lobbying veteran described the frank exchange as “outer-borough Mafia shit.”

Trump has sold influence so briskly that the political machinery cannot keep up. After he was offered a four-hundred-million-dollar gift from the government of Qatar—an airplane so opulent that it was dubbed the “palace in the sky”—Dan Pfeiffer, a former White House communications director, called it “the most brazenly corrupt move by any President in U.S. history, and it’s not close.” Less than a day later, a crypto venture owned by the Trump family auctioned off a dinner with the President at one of his golf clubs. The family profited from the crypto auction twice over: from fees, which have so far netted them and their partners three hundred and twenty million dollars, and from their own stash of Trump-branded coins, which had grown in value to $4.1 billion even before the auction was complete.

The President has received tributes from a parade of wealthy patrons. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the owner of the Washington Post, once said that he “would be humiliated to interfere” in journalistic decisions; in February, he ordered the paper’s opinion section, which had featured criticisms of Trump, to focus on promoting “personal liberties and free markets.” Amazon committed forty million dollars to a documentary on Melania Trump, who stood to gain a reported twenty-eight million dollars from the deal.

Mark Zuckerberg, the C.E.O. of Meta, dined at Mar-a-Lago, then scuttled his company’s fact-checking system and settled a lawsuit with Trump by agreeing to pay him twenty-five million dollars. Not long afterward, Zuckerberg bought a mansion near the White House; his company even paid sponsorship fees for the White House Easter Egg Roll. But nobody has blended his empire with Trump’s more than the world’s richest person, Elon Musk. After spending nearly three hundred million dollars on the election, he was given vast powers to reshape the government, as well as access to an office in the White House complex and, occasionally, an overnight berth in the Lincoln Bedroom.

In a matter of weeks, the flood of cash swirling around the White House swamped whatever bulwarks against corruption remained in American law and culture. There have always been wealthy donors, of course. But a decade ago no one on earth had more than a hundred billion dollars. Now, according to Forbes, at least fifteen people have surpassed that mark. Since Trump first took office, Musk’s net worth has grown from roughly ten billion dollars to more than four hundred billion.

The ultra-rich have captured more of America’s wealth than even the nineteenth-century tycoons of the Gilded Age. Scholars who study inequality as far back as the Neolithic period struggle to find precedents. Tim Kerig, an archeologist who directs the Museum Alzey, in Germany, told me, “The people who built the Egyptian pyramids were probably in a less unequal society.” He suggested that today’s richest people are simply accumulating too much wealth for the system to contain. “The economic and technical evolution is much faster than the social, mental, and ideological evolution,” he said. “We had no time to adapt to all those billionaires.”

Two decades ago, Jeffrey Winters, a political-science professor at Northwestern University, started teaching a course called Oligarchs and Elites. His students at the time considered this exotic terrain. One protested, “Russia has oligarchs. America has rich people.” But over the years Winters noticed a shift in his students, accelerated by the Supreme Court’s decision, in 2010, to remove limits on political contributions. “The challenge really became convincing any of them that the United States was still a democracy,” Winters said. “They argued that oligarchs dominated everything that matters.”

Many Americans today espouse two seemingly opposed sentiments toward the very rich: resentment and aspiration. In a 2024 Harris poll, fifty-nine per cent of respondents said that billionaires are making society more unfair, and a nearly identical number said that they hoped to become billionaires themselves. There is a growing sense that only those who belong to the club can thrive. New investment vehicles allow people to copy the portfolios of Congress members, on the theory that lawmakers have an edge that the rest of us do not. The rapper Kendrick Lamar secured his status as a liberal icon by using the Super Bowl halftime show to protest the unfairness of American life. He also released an ode to “more money, more power, more freedom,” which centers on the refrain “I deserve it all.”

Winters, looking across history, believes that the U.S. has reached “peak oligarchic power,” a time when “the rules of the political process make it possible for wealth to shape the outcomes and agenda.” He added, “It’s so undeniably visible now that it’s no longer possible to say we have rich people and other countries have oligarchs.”

Oligarchy, in Aristotle’s formulation, is “when men of property have the government in their hands.” It is a pattern as old as civilization. In ancient Mesopotamia, those who mastered irrigation amassed more crops and consequently more power. Later, the coin of the realm was livestock; in Old English, the word feoh meant both “cattle” and “wealth.” (You can still hear a trace of that history in the English word “feudal.”) Early oligarchs did not enjoy sedate life styles. As the anthropologist Timothy Earle writes, leaders of this type “rarely died in bed; they were killed in battles of rebellion and conquest or were assassinated by their close affiliates.”

In Winters’s book “Oligarchy,” he offers a typology. Medieval Europe was riven by violent competitions among “warring” oligarchies, in which each baron had his own castle, soldiers, and territory. These arrangements (later practiced in certain Mafia strongholds of New Jersey) were costly and stressful, so they tended to evolve toward “ruling” oligarchies, in which the participants agreed to put down their weapons and govern collectively. This was generally a more profitable state of affairs, until the members of the coalition could no longer resist fighting one another.

The nascent United States had its own share of oligarchs, as voting was reserved for white men who held property. But it was a “civil” oligarchy, in which the wealthiest citizens supported the state, because it protected their interests and because they profited more under the rule of law. If the rule of law collapses, though, a civil oligarchy can become a “sultanistic” oligarchy, in which the ultra-wealthy consent to be ruled by one of their own—an “oligarch-in-chief,” in Winters’s phrase.

A prime example of a sultanistic oligarch is Ferdinand Marcos, the President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. Marcos was a dogged kleptocrat, estimated to have stolen as much as ten billion dollars during his tenure. On an official salary of $13,500, he secured for his family at least four skyscrapers in Manhattan and a set of Old Master paintings. His wife, Imelda, was known for amassing thousands of pairs of shoes—a habit so distinctive that few people recall she also tried to buy Tiffany & Co.

As Winters notes, oligarchs of this category govern through “fear and rewards.” Marcos subdued the business community by strategically deploying permits and broadcast licenses. He made a special example of Eugenio Lopez, the country’s richest man and the owner of the Manila Chronicle, by breaking up an empire estimated at four hundred million dollars. After a few years, there was little boundary between the President’s financial assets and the nation’s. Marcos gave the sugar industry to one of his former fraternity brothers, and turned over the banana business to another friend. As Marcos’s pals mismanaged their holdings, the country sank into its worst recession since the Second World War.

Oligarchs-in-chief don’t like to retire, because civilian life leaves them vulnerable to retribution from those they ejected from their club. But in 1986, after three years of public protests, the Marcoses fled into exile, with a planeload of jewels, cash, and gold bars. In time, their allies rewrote enough history that, after Ferdinand died, Imelda was able to return home and eventually got elected to Congress. In 2022, after a relentless disinformation campaign that cast the Marcos years as a “golden age,” their son became President. Their perfidy is memorialized in the English language, though. Alfred McCoy, a historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told me, “Marcos’s corruption led to the creation of the term ‘crony capitalism.’ It’s a useful term to describe the Trump era.”

As Trump’s second term took shape, he rarely missed a chance to remind Americans of the powers at his disposal, to reward and to punish. The new F.C.C. chairman, Brendan Carr, who demonstrated his loyalty by wearing a gold lapel pin shaped like Trump’s head, launched investigations of all the major broadcasting companies—except for Fox. He dismissed suggestions of partisanship by saying, “If you are a broadcast and you don’t want to serve the public interest, you are free to turn your license in, and you can go podcast.”

Soon afterward, Trump pardoned a fellow billionaire felon, Trevor Milton, an electric-truck-maker convicted of defrauding investors. (In a promotional video, Milton had showcased a speeding prototype that was, in fact, rolling downhill.) Milton and his wife had donated $1.8 million to Trump’s campaign, and hired a lawyer who happened to be the brother of Trump’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi. The pardon spared him restitution payments estimated at six hundred and eighty million dollars. Trump claimed that Milton had been targeted for his political views. Speaking of himself in the third person, the President said, “He supported Trump, he liked Trump. I didn’t know him, but he liked him.”

Trump’s executive branch—the government version—also wasted no time in aiding Musk’s businesses. The Commerce Department is considering his Starlink internet service for a forty-two-billion-dollar expansion of rural broadband; the Defense Department may enlist SpaceX to help build a missile-defense project called the Golden Dome. Musk, in turn, has found moments when his business needs aligned with Trump’s political needs. As a major recipient of Pentagon contracts, Musk took a special interest in defending the nomination of Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host, as Secretary of Defense. After Senator Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican, expressed doubts about Hegseth, a political group tied to Musk ran digital ads against her. Ernst fell in line.

But not everyone was ready to comply. On April 7th, as a cold rain fell on Washington, a couple of hundred people gathered in a hotel ballroom near Dupont Circle, in a spirit of genteel resistance. The Patriotic Millionaires, a society of prosperous Americans concerned about rising inequality, were meeting to discuss, as the conference banner put it, “How to Beat the Broligarchs.” This being Washington, the decorations featured an eagle in flight, but, unlike the eagle on the Executive Branch club’s insignia, this one clutched photos of Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg, dressed in tuxedos.

For fifteen years, the Patriotic Millionaires have waged an earnest battle to persuade wealthy people to lobby for higher taxes on themselves. This has often been a lonesome endeavor, but Trump’s assault on democracy, financed by some of America’s richest people, has fortified the group’s arguments. Scott Ellis, a member who used to run a consulting group at Hewlett-Packard, told me that even skeptical peers in Silicon Valley had become increasingly receptive. “Some friends used to humor me, but they’re listening more,” he said.

Members, and prospective recruits, had flown in from around the country. They heard from lawyers who are suing to force Musk’s team to reveal internal documents, and from political organizers facilitating protests against the slashing of government services. Onstage, Erica Payne, the group’s founder, a former Democratic strategist with a Wharton M.B.A., put up a slide of survey results suggesting that the movement might find supporters among both Democrats and Republicans. “Nobody on either side is happy!” she said. “The only people who are happy are the people at the very tippy-top.” She ticked through some tax policies, crafted by lobbyists, that patently benefit the very rich. “If you own a yacht, two Picassos, and a room full of gold coins, you pay less in property taxes than some person who owns a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar house in a small town in Ohio,” she said. Some outcomes are even more startling. In 2020, according to ProPublica, at least eighteen billionaires filed tax returns so deftly assembled that they were eligible for pandemic stimulus checks. When Bezos was worth eighteen billion dollars, back in 2011, he qualified for a child tax credit.

Just when the gathering was beginning to sound like a progressive political rally, Payne drew a distinction: “We’re not going to talk about all this stuff that everybody else wants to talk about . . . transgender, L.G.B.T.Q., guns—everything that makes everybody get mad.” She declared, “This is always about money.” In the 2004 election, according to Americans for Tax Fairness, billionaires gave thirteen million dollars in political contributions; twenty years later, the country’s richest families spent more than two hundred times that much. Payne told the crowd, “There’s a point where money is no longer money. It is power—and they’re using that power to screw life up for everybody else.”

How much is too much? The investor Warren Buffett, who has what he calls “an almost incomprehensible sum” of money, plans to leave his children enough to “do anything but not enough that they can do nothing.” Yet Buffett faces an unusual problem: his fortune, by sheer algebraic momentum, grows faster than he can give it away. Though he has donated at least sixty billion dollars, he is still worth a hundred and sixty billion. (Not an absolutist, Buffett has kept his private jet, which he named the Indefensible.)

In 1965, during Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, the government established the concept of a poverty line, to help design policies that promote human flourishing. (The line now stands at about thirty-two thousand dollars a year for a family of four.) Alan Davis, a member of the Patriotic Millionaires, maintains that we should also be concerned with the “extreme-wealth line”—a degree of affluence past which it becomes impossible to avoid societal harm.

A few days after the group’s meeting, I visited Davis at his house in Jordan Park, a San Francisco neighborhood of lush gardens and quiet streets. Davis, who is tall and patrician, with swept-back white hair, led the way to a sitting room decorated with handblown glass. He told me that his parents had built a fortune in the insurance industry, but that he had grown up uneasy about having so much money. During a cruise that stopped in Caracas, Venezuela, as the family dined at a posh club, Davis found himself preoccupied with the surrounding poverty. “I’m looking at a hill with cardboard houses, and it really got to me,” he said. “It became an issue with my parents. Like, ‘What side are we on?’ ”

During the pandemic, Davis launched an initiative called the Crisis Charitable Commitment, which urged philanthropists to accelerate their giving, but it strained to recruit members. Spurred partly by that disappointment, he went on to found the Excessive Wealth Disorder Institute, dedicated to fighting what it calls “compulsive greed.” One of its recent publications offers tips, built on focus-group data, for talking to “persuadable” voters about raising taxes on the rich. (Do suggest “simplifying the tax system and eliminating loopholes.” Don’t engage in “categorical villainization of the wealthy.”)

Davis, who has since left the institute to focus on more assertive tactics, argues that economic inequality harms not just the poor but also the rich, by inflaming divisions, stress, and status anxiety. He hears about it from friends all the time—the father priced out of tickets to the Giants “because a billionaire is paying a centimillionaire to hit a ball”; the wife who dreads her husband’s role in the Young Presidents’ Organization because, Davis said, “he has made a shitload of money but is seated next to a guy who’s made a shitload-plus.”

Patriotic Millionaires is lobbying Congress on what the group calls the Anti-Oligarch Act, which proposes ways to prevent “dynastic” levels of inheritance. Davis knows the arguments against wealth taxes—people will cheat or move; innovators will stop taking risks—but he believes that a balance between good and harm might be struck by aggressively taxing fortunes above fifty million dollars. Why fifty million? At that level, he explained, “you can’t own the Picasso, but you have enough money where you could have every museum director take you on a private tour.” He added, “We’re trying to get people to think of the American Dream differently—that you can do anything, but you can’t own everything.”

In May, Trump floated the possibility of increasing taxes on the rich, musing that it might make for “good politics.” But the “big, beautiful” bill that enshrined his Administration’s agenda left the top tax rate unchanged. Instead, it offered concessions to Trump’s wealthiest supporters, including a tech-friendly provision to prevent states from regulating A.I. and a tax cut, paid for partly with cuts to Medicaid and food stamps, that steered sixty per cent of the benefits to the top twenty per cent of Americans.

Trump and Musk had already advanced proposals to privatize more of the government by selling off public buildings, handing over weather forecasting to private operators, and dispensing federal lands to real-estate developers and fossil-fuel producers. At times, the Administration seemed to be testing how much destruction Americans would tolerate, if it was packaged as tough-minded business wisdom. After the introduction of tariffs tanked the stock market and vaporized trillions of dollars of value, the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, a former hedge-fund manager worth at least half a billion dollars, said bluffly that Americans weren’t looking at “day-to-day fluctuations” in their retirement accounts. Musk, while overseeing the firing of tens of thousands of people, called Social Security “a Ponzi scheme” and said that the “fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”

But eventually Musk found the limits of the public’s tolerance for belligerence. After he handed out million-dollar checks to voters in a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, his candidate lost by double digits. His company Tesla posted a seventy-one-per-cent drop in profits, as buyers recoiled. He also critiqued Trump’s tariff policy, referring to one of its principal authors as a “moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks.” Musk retreated from Washington, but he left behind damage that will likely be felt for decades—not only the gutting of programs dedicated to foreign aid, public health, and national service but also harm to America’s moral credibility. After Musk bragged about feeding the U.S. Agency for International Development to the “wood chipper,” the agency predicted that the cuts would lead to millions of deaths in places where its programs had provided care. Bill Gates told a reporter, “The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one.”

On April 14th, Blue Origin, Bezos’s rocket company, launched an all-female crew on a ten-minute journey into space. Bezos seemed to regard the trip—led by his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez—as an act of public service. When asked a few years ago how he planned to “do good” with his fortune, he said, “The only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel.”

His company positioned the launch as a tribute to women in science, but the message grew muddled in preflight publicity. One passenger, the pop star Katy Perry, announced that the crew intended to “put the ‘ass’ in ‘astronaut.’ ” Though the ship returned safely, the over-all reception was not positive. Press accounts described it as a gluttonous commercial stunt; in a rare point of agreement between left- and right-wing media, the conservative talk-show host Megyn Kelly mocked what she called the “Mission to Collect Selfies in ‘Space,’ ” while the Guardian decried a “perverse funeral for the America that once enabled both scientific advancement and feminist progress.”

Viewers of the launch’s live stream were reminded that seats on future flights were available for purchase. Blue Origin required a deposit of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, with an unnamed balance presumably due later. It was easy to wonder who, exactly, the potential buyers were. The country as a whole has never been wealthier; at the start of 2025, the total assets held by American households reached a historic peak. But these figures are skewed by giant fortunes at the top. Roughly half of Americans cannot afford a thousand-dollar emergency expense, and the bottom two-thirds are nearly as pessimistic about their prospects as they were during the 2008 financial crisis. Barbara F. Walter, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, who specializes in political instability, told me, “Americans don’t believe we all have to be equal in terms of wealth, but we’ve been taught that we are equal politically, and the oligarchs are seen as taking that right away. That creates a feeling of being permanently politically excluded—and that, we know from quantitative studies, motivates people to organize.”

A day after the Blue Origin spaceflight, Senator Bernie Sanders made a stop on his “Fighting Oligarchy” speaking tour, which he began in the weeks following Trump’s return to Washington. Sanders was focussed on Republican territory, and that afternoon’s appearance was at a community college in Folsom, which contains one of the rare pockets of conservative voters in Northern California. Situated where the Central Valley rises into the Sierra foothills, Folsom still houses the prison made famous in the Johnny Cash song “Folsom Prison Blues,” but these days the biggest employer is Intel. Palm-shaded neighborhoods radiate affluent calm.

When I arrived, an advertising plane was overhead, towing a banner that read, “FOLSOM IS TRUMP COUNTRY!” But, with the event several hours off, the line of attendees gathered to protest Trump’s Presidency already stretched down the road and out of sight. The organizers had moved the speech from a smaller venue to a track-and-field complex as big as three football fields. It was shaping up to be a crowd of thirty thousand, more than a third of the city’s population. Venders were selling pins tailored to the moment. One read, “F* Elon and the Felon.” Another had the word “oligarchy” in the Monopoly font, along with a cartoon plutocrat in a top hat.

I joined Sanders backstage, in a windowless office near the locker rooms. He was slumped in a desk chair—wisps of white hair, the familiar rumpled blue Oxford shirt—and looked exhausted after a day of events across the state. But when he started talking about the crowds his eyes widened, and his finger poked the air for emphasis. The first sign that his tour might excite the public came on the opening day, in Omaha, where the organizers switched venues to accommodate a rush of attendees and still had to turn hundreds more away. In Iowa, he said, “I had to do two separate speeches, because it was an overflow crowd.” On a stop in Salt Lake City, twenty thousand people showed up. “In Nampa, Idaho, we had twelve thousand, in the most conservative state in America,” he said. “It’s just a stunning sight.”

Very little of what Sanders said onstage was new material. Thirty-five years ago, shortly after leaving office as the mayor of Burlington, he warned a reporter against the perils of oligarchy and insisted, “The rich and the powerful cannot continue to get everything!” But back then he wasn’t drawing crowds of thirty thousand people. “It’s one thing for me to talk about oligarchy as an abstraction,” he told me. “Trump has made it clear. He has said it loudly and clearly: we are a government of billionaires.”

Senator Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, had urged her party to stop using the term “oligarchy,” saying that it would not resonate beyond the coasts. Sanders, citing the scale of his crowds, responded that “the American people are not quite as dumb as Ms. Slotkin thinks they are.” During my visit, he did not hide his satisfaction that the largest political rallies in America were for an eighty-three-year-old socialist who had twice lost his bid for the Presidential nomination. “What bothers me most about the failure of the Democratic Party,” he said, was a reluctance “to acknowledge reality.” Democrats, in his view, congratulated the Biden Administration for having lowered the price of insulin, then wondered why people voted for Trump. “You want to know why people are angry?” he said. “They are hurting! They can’t go to the grocery store and buy food for the kids that they want, they can’t pay their rent, they can’t afford health care.”

At the heart of Sanders’s tour was his long-held hope to build a “class-based effort” that crossed party lines. In the eighteenth century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote that, during times of extreme inequality, the wealthy distract those who might resent them by fostering a “mutual hatred and distrust, by setting the rights and interests of one against those of another.” It was the essence of Trump’s politics—the knowledge that desperate people feel powerful when they can “look more below than above them,” and so “domination becomes dearer to them than independence.”

Outside, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the congresswoman from New York, was warming up the crowd. She mocked the banner overhead that declared this was Trump country. “It sure don’t look like it today,” she said. “I think this is our country.” As the crowd cheered, it wasn’t hard to see why some Democrats have taken to asking whether Ocasio-Cortez could be the next leader of a party groping for direction. For the moment, though, her support did not reach far beyond progressives. Republicans had spent years framing her as the avatar of identity politics and language policing. A poll published a day later by YouGov gave her a favorability rating that placed her eighteen points behind Sanders—even with Trump, but trailing J. D. Vance.

Sanders took the stage to the strains of “Power to the People,” offered gruff thanks, and set to work. After decades of broad systemic critiques, he now had the advantage of a target with a face and a name. “Elon owns more wealth than the bottom fifty per cent of households in America,” Sanders shouted. “That, brothers and sisters, is insane!” I was reminded of the tips from the Excessive Wealth Disorder Institute, about avoiding “categorical villainization of the wealthy.” Subtlety is probably never going to be Sanders’s style, but it didn’t seem to matter. As he spoke, the line of attendees was still winding out the entrance to the stadium. Others were peering through fences and watching from neighboring hillsides.

When I talked to people in the crowd, I was struck by how many were at their first Sanders rally. One of them, Stephen Jackson, a retired home builder, told me, “I know a lot of Republicans that are really sorry that they voted the way they did. They were hoping it would just be better for business, less government. They’re seeing the total opposite.” He went on, “Musk is not there because he’s trying to lower the government’s spending. And everybody can see it.” In a country where the two dominant parties agree on scarcely anything, the collective exasperation with Musk generated unusual consensus. “Republicans and Democrats are on the same roller coaster,” Jackson said, “and everybody’s thinking, Where’s the seat belts? Well, we got rid of the seat belts, because it saves money.”

Half a century after Trump started selling the illusion of exclusivity—through casinos, mail-order steaks, and a bogus university—his family has finally discovered what people will pay for most exorbitantly: access to the top of the U.S. government. The open practice of crony capitalism is pushing America toward a reckoning between two paths, one in which oligarchy comes to be seen as normal and one in which it does not. McCoy, the historian, sketched the first scenario. “The standards for propriety of those holding office will be diminished,” he said. “It will lower the bar on what we expect from our public servants.” If the current economic trend continues, the effect will be severe. In the next four decades, according to the tax expert Bob Lord, the top .00001 per cent of Americans (about nineteen people, at current population) will increase their share of the nation’s wealth tenfold, from 1.8 per cent to eighteen per cent. In other words, if Washington pretends that Trump’s corruption is not connected to a deeper imbalance of power, the oligarchs win.

Even for those who benefit from the current arrangement, it is not without risk. In the short run, using money to buy power and power to make money may shield them from Trump’s rages. But they are also investing their sultan with immense power. “What happens to business élites who align with autocrats?” Barbara Walter said. “It doesn’t end well.” After Russian tycoons helped Vladimir Putin cement his rule, he grew worried about empowering competitors, so he jailed some and exiled others, giving their empires to new loyalists. “The party is great while it’s happening, but there’s a really terrible hangover at the end, and they don’t seem to consider this, even as Russian oligarchs are being thrown out of windows,” Walter went on. “That’s all I want to say to these tech entrepreneurs. The data shows that autocracies don’t do well economically, so the dictator needs resources to survive, and eventually the pots of money that these oligarchs are sitting on become quite attractive.”

Sultanistic oligarchies have inherent fragilities. The élites must submit to a version of what scholars call the “authoritarian bargain”: the leader agrees to defend their wealth against legal challenges and calls for redistribution, in return for payoffs and political fealty. Élites who do not adequately submit are often destroyed—but leaders who fail to protect the élite are also prone to be overthrown.

Oligarchs can also be vulnerable to civil society. Popular movements in South Africa, Ukraine, and the Philippines demonstrate a pattern: sustained pressure—cross-class protests, labor strikes, investigative reporting—can chip away at self-enriching, inept regimes. When a crack appears, in the form of a recession, a botched show of force, or an élite split, the ruling order must reform, bargain, or collapse. But in places like Egypt and Russia, where civic forces are demoralized or divided, oligarchs can hang on with daunting endurance.

If politics can help solve America’s inequities, it will not happen quickly. Seventeen years passed between when Mark Twain coined the phrase “the gilded age” and when the country enshrined its first law against monopolies, in 1890. Even that was only a limited success. A few years later, the United States tried to establish an income tax, but it was derided as part of a “communist march,” and the Supreme Court struck it down. Eventually, the ultra-rich brought trouble on themselves by ignoring public anger. (At a notable party of the time, held in a Manhattan ballroom, a host brought in dozens of horses with champagne in the saddlebags, so that his guests could dine on horseback.) The income tax was finally implemented in 1913—after nearly two decades of concerted activism.

Benjamin Page, a Northwestern political scientist who has studied attitudes on inequality, told me, “It’s a mistake to say nothing can be done.” The social movement of the eighteen-nineties revealed how to “dilute and equalize oligarchy power with citizen power.” He went on, “If enough people are angry enough, it becomes feasible to think about what institutions, rules, and arrangements could be changed that would actually make a big difference.”

In politics and business, leaders become so insulated from unflattering truths that they blunder into igniting public outrage, a pattern sometimes called “autocratic backfire.” When oligarchs start to see their winnings as evidence of all-encompassing brilliance—rather than a combination of specific acumen, timing, government contracts, and luck—they can get grandiose. Richard White, a Stanford historian who specializes in the Gilded Age, said, “They cannot manage things as complex as they try to manage. I think Elon Musk’s implosion is an example that things just slip out of their control very, very quickly.”

In April, protests around the country surprised even the organizers with their scale; in Washington, there were a hundred thousand demonstrators, quintuple the projections. Trump, who was golfing that day, did not comment on the protesters, and Musk dismissed them as “puppets.” But their presence, like the crowds lining up to hear Sanders speak, raises the prospect that an angry public may unite, even if some of them are ultimately less interested in eating the rich than in joining them at the table. During the Gilded Age, White said, “the oligarchs allowed people to have a set of common targets. There was no common solution then, and I don’t think there will be a common solution now. But when you can agree that this is not working, this is not fair, this is not right—then you can get a movement.”

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pathshalah31777 · 1 month ago

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CMAT low fees College Delhi NCR/SNAP low fees College Bangalore

Affordable MBA Dreams: CMAT Low Fees College Delhi NCR & SNAP Low Fees College Bangalore

Pursuing an MBA doesn't always have to drain your savings. For many aspiring management students, the cost is a significant factor in choosing the right college. If you're aiming to crack CMAT or SNAP and are worried about tuition expenses, you're in the right place. Let’s explore some top low-fee MBA colleges in Delhi NCR and Bangalore that accept CMAT and SNAP scores.

Why Focus on Low Fees MBA Colleges?

Many private and semi-government institutions in India offer quality MBA/PGDM programs at affordable tuition rates. These colleges are especially attractive to students who:

Want good ROI (Return on Investment)

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Are targeting start-ups, SMEs, or PSU roles post-MBA

Let’s take a city-wise look at budget-friendly colleges.

CMAT Low Fees College Delhi NCR

Delhi NCR is home to several AICTE-approved MBA colleges offering quality education at a fraction of the cost of Tier-1 institutes. Here are some popular options:

Jagan Institute of Management Studies (JIMS), Rohini

Fees: Approx. ₹7.5 Lakhs for 2 years

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Highlights: NAAC ‘A’ grade, good placement record, strong industry interface.

Institute of Management Studies (IMS), Ghaziabad

Fees: Approx. ₹7.95 Lakhs

CMAT Accepted: Yes

Affiliation: AICTE Approved, NBA Accredited

Highlights: Consistent placement with average packages around ₹6 LPA.

Jaipuria Institute of Management, Noida

Fees: ₹8.5–9 Lakhs (Scholarships available)

CMAT Accepted: Yes

Highlights: Recognized among top B-schools, excellent corporate tie-ups.

For more information on MBA options, check out our article on Top MBA Colleges Accepting CMAT in India on Blasting News.

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Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India, is not only a tech hub but also a prime destination for management studies. While Symbiosis University institutes dominate SNAP admission, some come with relatively affordable fees.

Symbiosis Institute of Business Management (SIBM), Bangalore

Fees: Around ₹10.5 Lakhs for 2 years

SNAP Accepted: Yes

Highlights: One of the best campuses under Symbiosis; strong placements in IT, consulting, and finance.

Symbiosis School of Media and Communication (SSMC), Bangalore

Fees: Approx. ₹9.2 Lakhs

SNAP Accepted: Yes

Specialization: Media, Marketing, Branding

Highlights: Great for students looking to enter the digital, advertising, and PR industries.

Symbiosis Institute of Business Management (SIBM), Hyderabad

Though technically not in Bangalore, it offers lower fees than other Symbiosis branches and is worth considering for SNAP takers.

Final Thoughts

If you’re preparing for CMAT or SNAP 2025, start exploring affordable MBA colleges in advance. Institutions in Delhi NCR and Bangalore offer excellent learning environments without the financial burden of IIMs or global MBA programs.

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justsome-di · 8 months ago

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NEUD Bonus: Christmas

This was originally posted on Patreon last year. This year, it's available for free for all members and cross-posted to AO3 and Tumblr.

Summary: Alex and Damián's first Christmas together as their little patchwork family.

Read it on AO3 and check out my Patreon when it opens back up in the new year! If you enjoy my work, consider reblogging this post, leaving an anonymous message in my inbox, or support me on ko-fi!

Damián had not yet been to bed.

He had left late the night before after quickly wrapping up a Christmas Eve dinner of pancakes (box mix being the only thing that was stocked in the apartment after a disastrously busy week of last-minute shopping and appointments). He told Leo, Eve, and Alex to behave or else Santa wouldn’t show up and, ignoring two eye rolls and returning a single loving smile, left for work.

Preferably, he wouldn’t have taken an appointment on Christmas Eve, but the offer was too good to pass up. Charles Everett was wealthy, and he didn’t want to go to a holiday party all alone. His friends and family always asked when he was going to find a partner. Even worse, they all had suggestions for who he should date. There was always some guy or some girl that someone knew who “would be so perfect for you, Charlie!”

The month leading up to his family’s annual Christmas party had been nerve-wracking. He struggled to sleep with the weight of the impending questions on his mind. No amount of hot yoga or rebalancing his chakras helped relieve his stress. He even tried Reiki, he told Damián who nodded along like he understood the solutions eccentric rich people came up.

Fortunately, though, Damián understood the problems. And fortunately, Charles knew Diego, who was a frequent client of Damián’s, and one thing led to another.

Damián was paid a disgusting amount of money to be Charles’ date and pretend like they had known each other for a while. It was fun! Damián did his homework on Charles’ favorite foods and obscure rich people hobbies. He learned his aspirations in life and was quite touched to hear that Charles wanted to retire young to spend his time volunteering and donating to food banks.

Charles was a quiet, intelligent man. He had more money than he knew what to do with. He was handsome enough but a touch awkward. Quickly, Damián picked up on his habit of needing to fill silences with some fact about some niche interest. Even when Damián was trying to quietly work out the payment, Charles told him that the best guided meditation he had ever attended was in a small town in Japan.

Damián thought it was pretty endearing.

They had started Christmas Eve in a boring ballroom at sunset. Damián shook Charles’ parents’ hands and talked to his older brother about the state of Silicone Valley. Or rather, Damián nodded along and agreed to most of what he said as 80% of it went way over his head. He sipped champagne and ate fish eggs that felt bad on his tongue. The company was decent but everyone seemed to lack a personality. It was as if everyone had read about how to good conversationalists and was just putting it in practice for the first time that night.

It didn’t take long before Charles saw an out and they ran off with some of his old school friends to a high-end bar. Damián passed the night going in and out of a state of tipsy, drinking wine that cost the same as a month of rent and trying the high shelf liquors he had only heard about in music and movies. Really good whiskey, apparently, burned badly all the way down and long after. If you asked for specific drinks, bartenders would shave the ice with a Japanese knife in front of you. And it turned out the filthy rich could be just as messy of drunks as everyone else.

Every moment, Damián thought about how he was going to tell Alex all about it.

It felt like Damián had walked into another world. He stared down at the city with his head buzzing and his heart light. It was the same pavement that stretched into his neighborhood where he budgeted his grocery money and stretched income to support two. It was the same grid system that he had built a little home in. Where his brother lived, where his parents had disowned him, where his boyfriend now slept.

But there was something so much more romantic about it. Like he was living in a book and he was going to get a beautifully-wrapped ending at the end of the night.

Charles proved himself to be a perfect gentleman. He escorted Damián here and there. He held open doors, took his coat, poured him modest glasses of wine that Damián—with his trauma still only two months old—felt safe accepting. Discreet text messages sent under the table from Charles asked Damián through the night how he was doing, if he wanted to leave, if he needed anything. As they settled into something comfortable, Charles’ awkward demeanor melted away.

He grew comfortable with lapses of silence where Damián admired the view while a friend left for the bathroom or a smoking break. He talked about those same niche interests but now at length where he passionately spoke about how meditation had helped ease what anxiety medications couldn’t. A long weekend learning to make five different types of chutney had brought an old friend and him back on speaking terms.

Charles was well-rounded and kind, and there was a touch of confidence coming out by the end of the night. If it were a real date, Damián would have been wooed. And once Charles found someone who was kind like him, he was sure to woo that person.

The more Charles was chivalrous to Damián, the more Damián missed Alex. It was a good kind of missing. One that made him excited for morning to come. One that made Damián taste good coffee on the back of his tongue and feel soft hair under his fingertips.

No one went home until three in the morning. By four, Damián and Charles were still chatting and looking down on the city.

They said goodbye at 5:30. Damián cupped Charles’ face and told him, “You have a soft heart. Keep it safe.”

At six, Damián was back in his apartment, sneaking past Eve and Leo asleep on the pull-out couch together and checking in on Alex, passed out in his bed. The small Christmas tree pushed in the corner lit up the apartment in a soft, multi-colored glow. The few presents sitting under it were tempting. It felt like a Christmas morning from when Damián was young, when he was still naive.

Cars and action figures would have been waiting for him. Pretend doctor’s kits. A nice pair of sweaters for school so that all the other parents could see how well-dressed he was.

A little older, there would be fantasy books and CDs. Little Leo had chunky trains and fire engines galore.

Reality came back to Damián in small steps, in small sips. When he saw Leo’s beaten down Converse by the door. When he saw dirty dishes still laying by the sink rather than the dishwasher. When he listened to Alex’s steady, deep breathing and a little pool of drool by his open mouth.

The romance was washed away. He was no longer in a high-end bar that he would probably never visit again. He was no longer a child. An adult, in his 30s, with a patchwork family. It was all peaceful and beautiful and messy, and Damián didn’t want it any other way.

A burst of energy filled him.

Still a little tired but too excited to lay back down, he was ready to get things started.

It was 6:20 when Damián, freshly showered and convinced he didn’t need any sleep, connected his phone to the Bluetooth speaker in the middle of the living room.

6:21, Leo and Eve bolted up as the the first verse of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” played through the apartment at near-full volume. Damián raised his arms above his head and shook his hips in a way that he thought was sexy.

Alex rushed out of the bedroom, wide awake but clearly very confused. He found the speaker and turned it off right as Mariah was belting. Damián stopped his dance at the beep of the Bluetooth disconnecting, his arms falling to his side in disappointment.

“That was a gay bop,” Damián said. Then, he accused, “Homophobia.”

“What the fuck?” Alex whispered.

Leo held one hand to his chest. Eve pressed her hands over her eyes and groaned loudly.

“Merry Christmas!” Damián cried, throwing his arms up.

“It’s six in the morning,” Leo said.

“The perfect time for Christmas!”

“Did you just get home?” Alex asked.

“I got home right in time for Christmas.” Damián pulled the blankets off Leo and Eve. “Come on, get up.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Eve sighed.

Alex calmly walked to Damián’s side. He laid his hand on Damián’s arm, steady, firm.

“Why don’t we sleep for a little bit?” he asked. “And we can start Christmas later?”

Damián took his hand and kissed his fingers. Alex’s hands were delightfully soft and were warm from his cozy bed. Next to them, Leo made a sound of disgust. Damián ignored it for the time. In the spirit of Christmas, he wouldn’t be doing any scolding.

“So,” he said to Alex, “I think I’m so tired that I’m passed the point of being tired. You know?”

“Yes.” Alex nodded. “But I think if you just lay down and close your eyes for a few minutes, you’ll probably start to fall asleep.”

“I’m not wasting this energy. I’m riding out this high.”

“Damián—“

“Who wants to play Santa!”

The thing about Damián was that it was very hard to stay mad at him. Alex had to smile at his childish glee and as it was their first holiday together, he let it go and started his complex coffee-making rituals.

Leo and Eve folded up their bed knowing full well that they weren’t going to be allowed to go back to sleep. Damián plopped himself down in front of all the presents and took in everyone around him. Leo yawned. Eve picked gunk from her eyes. From the kitchen, Alex was grinding beans that were starting to fill the apartment with with their nutty, coffee smell.

He had cherished what he could of his small, brief Christmases with Leo from the recent years if only because they were reminders of what he had left. Leo usually attended Christmas Mass on Christmas Eve with their parents, and he was freed to go back to the apartment for Christmas morning. When Damián finally rolled out of bed, they swapped meager gifts. They did what they could to make Christmas seem like a real holiday.

But Leo was still expected to see his parents for dinner, and waiting for him to leave again always filled Damián with a choking feeling of impending doom. There was always a fear that he wouldn’t return. It was as if it was some sick custody agreement.

It was hard on Leo. The holidays were always exhausting for him when he had to run between his parents and sibling. And he would never admit to until years later, but he had to fight to see Damián at all during the holidays rather than stay at his parents’ house as they wanted. It took begging and empty promises to get even a few hours with Damián.

There were always pockets of loneliness during the holidays. Damián went to bed in an empty apartment on Christmas Eve and spent the night of Christmas day eating alone with a movie.

The years before Leo moved in, when his parents had already disowned him, were too excruciating to think back on.

This year, however, Leo hadn’t been contacted by his parents at all. There was no phone call announcing they expected him at Mass or any questions for what he wanted as a gift. It seemed that both brothers had been cut off and while Leo said it stung, he couldn’t help but feel a tremendous weight lifted from his shoulders.

Knowing that he had Leo all day had already put Damián over the moon. And having Eve and Alex, who had already traveled home two weeks before to see their mother’s family for Hanukkah, made up for every Christmas he sat alone watching bad movies and eating Chinese takeout.

Alex passed out coffee and took a seat next to Damián. He took a sip from Damián’s mug first before handing it over, making sure that it was the perfect temperature and had just enough peppermint syrup.

“The youngest goes first.” Damián pulled out a large box for Eve. “Here you go. This is from Leo.”

“Hell yeah. Thanks, dude.”

Eve tore off the red and white striped paper with no intentions of preserving any of it. Underneath it was a cardboard box. She tore into it and gasped.

“Thank you! This is dope!” She pulled out a bag of limited edition hot chips and a Korean candy bar, carefully selected from an international market. Inside the box were layers of other snacks, all of some level of obscurity whether it was a gimmick for the holidays or an overseas specialty. “Dude, you got me set for, like, a month.”

“You’re welcome,” Leo said, surprised and sheepish at her reaction.

The girl loved her snacks.

Damián grabbed a present for Leo. “This one is from me.”

Leo unwrapped the present with a little more concern about leaving shreds of paper around the room than Eve did. The green paper revealed a shoe box. Leo slowly opened it and quickly closed it again with an embarrassed smile.

“You got me new boots?” he asked.

Damián nodded. “Yeah! You need something warmer. And waterproof.”

“This feels like a dig at my Converse.”

“It is. Yeah.”

Leo inspected his boots as Damián moved on. He handed his present to Alex who opened it slowly, peeling the tape off and sliding the paper off. Leo groaned that he was moving as slow as a 1990s computer processor. As retaliation, Alex took a break for a long sip of coffee before returning to opening the box.

Damián giggled and patted his knees.

“Is it a knitting kit?” Alex asked, pulling out a plastic pouch with knitting needles and a book.

“It’s a knitting kit for beginners,” Damián said. “You said you wanted to pick up a new hobby next year.”

“I did.” Alex smiled at Damián. “Thank you. This is really nice. I love it.”

If they had been together longer, Damián would have taken the opportunity to kiss Alex. But as their relationship was still new, he left it at a hand squeeze.

Damián distributed the rest of the gifts. He opened gourmet coffee for himself. He pretended to be surprised when he pulled paper off a half-wrapped house plant that had been sat by the window. Eve got a new video game she had been talking about for months and a new book that had gotten rave reviews from various gay blogs. Leo made out well with a new coat from Damián and a nice sweater to wear as a TA next fall from Eve and Alex.

Damián screamed as he unwrapped Alex’s gift to him. Eve flinched. He tore into the packaging immediately. Inside was an ugly, large hooded sweatshirt that wasn’t even a sweatshirt. It was made of some sort of fluffy polyester and had the feel of a blanket. But it had a hood attached and large sleeves. It was an abomination that would swallow Damián whole once he put it on.

“Is this a blanket I can wear?” Damián asked.

“You’re always cold,” Alex said.

“Thank god. We can finally turn down the thermostat,” Leo said.

“I’m going to wear it every day.”

Damián pulled it on over his pajamas. It was very soft and very warm, and he felt so wonderful in it.

“I feel like a little turtle!” Damián shouted. “If turtles had soft, fluffy shells with pockets. Thank you!”

“You’re welcome,” Alex said with a soft smile.

“Okay, last one.” Damián grabbed a small box messily wrapped in red paper. “Here we go. To Leo from Eve.”

“Aw, you didn’t have to get me two things,” Leo said, taking it.

“Well, the sweater was from me and Alex. And really, it was Alex who paid for it. He was just too scared to give it to you alone,” Eve said. “And I saw these online, and I had to get them for you.”

Leo’s and Eve’s friendship had blossomed. They were near inseparable and had inside jokes and running gags that Damián and Alex didn’t understand.

Leo pulled the paper off and took the lid off the little box that was inside. He gasped.

“Pins?” he asked.

“For your bag. Or teaching lanyard next year. Whatever.” Eve’s cheeks were red.

Leo pulled the first one out. It was a rectangle with the pride flag as the background and an A-shaped black and white triangle over top of it. “What’s this one?”

“It’s the ally flag.”

“So people know I’m an ally!”

Eve nodded. “Yup.”

Leo pulled out the next pin. It was a simple circle with HE HIM printed on it. “A pronoun pin! Oh my god!”

Damián pulled his hands to chest, over his heart. “Now people will know they’re safe to give you their own pronouns.”

“I’m gonna look like the best ally ever next year,” Leo said. “No other TA is going to be so supportive.”

“It’s not really a competition,” Eve said, “but yeah. You’re gonna look accepting as fuck.”

“All your students will know your class is a safe space,” Alex said.

“If I cried more, I would be crying right now.”

Leo pulled Eve into a tight hug. She almost entirely disappeared into his arms. When she emerged, her face was bright red.

“It was just something I came across,” she said with a shrug.

“Think of how many gay babies I’ll have in my class next year,” Leo said.

Alex choked on his coffee. “Okay.” He wiped his mouth with his sleeve. Damián put a hand on his arm with a sympathetic look. “How about we make breakfast?”

“Breakfast!” Eve cheered.

Damián remembered the lack of food in his cupboards and wondered if Alex had plans on making pancakes for the second meal in a row. Damián wouldn’t mind it. Alex was very good at making pancakes even if all he did was add water to boxed powder. Damián felt warm eating them.

“I’ll start cleaning in here,” Damián said.

His body was starting to feel a little heavy, the excitement of the morning wearing off.

“Next year, we should all get matching pajamas,” he said, picking up the wrapping paper from his own gifts. “All four of us.”

“I have to put my vote against that,” Leo said.

“Hey.” Damián pointed a bow at him. “I just got you back, I’m going to put you through so much misery to make sure we remember that we’re a happy family.”

He realized, his brain clouding over with fatigue, that it wasn’t the best thing to say. It wasn’t the right time to bring up past trauma. Leo looked startled. Eve left the room to avoid the awkward, sad tension.

But then Leo crossed his arms. “Then take me to sit on a mall Santa’s lap or something. Don’t make me match with Alex.”

“I’m still here,” Alex deadpanned. “I haven’t moved.”

“We’re going to do both!” Damián said. “Mall Santa in the morning. Matching pajamas on the Christmas card in the evening! And you’re gonna like it!”

Leo threw his head back in a feigned tantrum and escaped to the kitchen. Damián turned to Alex.

“I’ll do breakfast if you clean,” Alex said. He stroked Damián’s hair. “And then maybe we can take a nap?”

“I was thinking we could take the kids on a walk and maybe watch some movies—“

“Okay.” Alex nodded. “We can make plans over breakfast.”

Damián, very happy to be given what he wanted, began picking up discarded wrapping paper and ribbons. As he folded crumpled paper and set presents aside, he couldn’t help but smile. He was going to have a wonderful day. He was going to have the Christmas he had dreamed of for years.

He took a minute to sit while he folded Leo’s and Eve’s blankets. It would be perfect. They could all go on a nice walk and warm up at home with mulled wine—Alex had bought the supplies and tucked them away in the liquor cabinet to surprise Leo and Eve (who was still too young to drink but would be given an exception for the night). They would spend the night playing games and watching movies, and Damián would take his chance to cuddle Leo.

Finally, he wouldn’t be alone.

Damián closed his eyes, his head leaning back on the couch. He would just close his eyes for a second. He just needed a little boost of energy to wake him up enough for the rest of the day.

He could feel a blanket being pulled from his arms and then draped over him.

“I’m just resting my eyes,” he said.

“Sure,” Alex whispered. He kissed Damián on the top of the head. “We’ll keep breakfast warm for you.”

“No,” Damián mumbled. “I’m getting up in a second.”

But he didn’t. Alex left his side with a soft touch to his cheek. All of the plans still dancing around in his head and warmness all around him, Damián fell asleep.

#nobody ends up dead #writeblr #writblr #original writing #neud #writing community #queer fiction #writing #original work

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careermantradotorg · 9 months ago

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Alliance University Bangalore: A Premier Institution for Higher Learning

Alliance University, located in the vibrant city of Bangalore, is one of India's leading private universities. Established with a vision to provide world-class education and foster academic excellence, Alliance University Bangalore has quickly become a hub for students aspiring to pursue a career in various fields, including management, engineering, law, and more. The university is recognized for its commitment to high academic standards, global exposure, and a strong emphasis on research.

Why Choose Alliance University Bangalore?

1. Top-Notch Academic Programs

Alliance University offers a diverse range of undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral programs across its faculties of Management, Engineering, Law, and Liberal Arts. Some of the flagship courses include:

MBA at Alliance School of Business, which is among the top B-Schools in India.

B.Tech and M.Tech programs at the Alliance College of Engineering and Design.

BA LLB (Hons.) and LLM programs at Alliance School of Law, known for their strong legal curriculum.

2. Highly Qualified Faculty

One of the distinguishing factors of Alliance University Bangalore is its team of distinguished faculty members, who bring a wealth of academic and industry experience. Many of the professors are alumni of prestigious institutions such as IITs, IIMs, and top global universities, offering students the opportunity to learn from the best.

3. State-of-the-Art Campus

The campus of Alliance University in Bangalore is an architectural marvel that provides an ideal learning environment. Spanning over 55 acres, the campus is equipped with modern facilities including:

Smart classrooms with advanced learning aids.

Well-stocked libraries with vast collections of books, journals, and digital resources.

Laboratories with the latest equipment for engineering and science students.

Dedicated moot courts and simulation centers for law students.

In addition, the university has a vibrant campus life with clubs, events, and sports facilities that allow students to maintain a well-balanced lifestyle.

4. Global Collaborations

Alliance University Bangalore has established collaborations with over 45 reputed international universities across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. These partnerships enable students to participate in exchange programs, internships, and research projects with global exposure. Some partner institutions include:

Berlin School of Economics and Law, Germany.

Royal Roads University, Canada.

Nanjing University, China.

Through these collaborations, students can gain international exposure, preparing them to thrive in a globalized world.

5. Impressive Placement Record

Alliance University Bangalore takes pride in its excellent placement record. The Career Advancement and Networking (CAN) Cell works tirelessly to ensure students are well-prepared to enter the job market. The university has strong industry ties, attracting some of the best recruiters from India and abroad. Top companies like Amazon, Google, KPMG, Deloitte, and Infosys have recruited from Alliance University. The placement process includes:

Pre-placement talks.

Internship opportunities.

Grooming sessions to enhance soft skills.

With an average salary package on the rise and top-tier firms participating in the recruitment process, Alliance University is an attractive option for students seeking a promising career.

6. Bangalore: The Ideal Study Location

Bangalore, often referred to as the Silicon Valley of India, provides the perfect backdrop for higher education. The city's thriving economy, home to numerous startups, multinational corporations, and a vibrant tech industry, makes it a great place for internships and networking opportunities. Additionally, the pleasant climate, cosmopolitan culture, and diverse social scene make it an ideal location for students from across the globe.

Conclusion

Alliance University Bangalore is a prestigious institution that stands out for its academic excellence, global collaborations, and strong placement opportunities. Whether you're looking to pursue business, engineering, law, or liberal arts, Alliance University offers a world-class education that will equip you with the skills needed to succeed in today's competitive world.

#Alliance University Bangalore #education #higher education #news #universities #colleges #mba #students #Career Advancement and Networking (CAN)#B.Tech #Silicon Valley of India

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ciiftcharans · 1 year ago

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Unlocking Your Potential: Diploma in Makeup Artistry in Bangalore at Charan’s International Institute of Fashion Technology

Why Choose a Career in Makeup Artistry?

Who doesn't love a good makeover? But there's more to makeup artistry than just transforming faces. It's an art, a form of expression, and a ticket to a glamorous career. Whether you're dreaming of working on film sets, fashion runways, or bridal beauty, a diploma in makeup artistry can open those doors for you.

Have you ever wondered how celebrities always look so flawless? Or how brides look stunning on their big day? That’s the magic of makeup artistry. And guess what? You can be the one creating that magic.

The Allure of Makeup Artistry

Makeup artistry is a rapidly growing field with endless possibilities. The beauty industry is booming, and skilled makeup artists are in high demand. From high-end fashion shows to editorial shoots, from the movie industry to personal makeovers, the opportunities are vast and varied.

But let's get real for a moment. Makeup artistry is not just about applying makeup. It's about understanding skin types, colors, and textures. It's about creativity, precision, and having a keen eye for detail. And, most importantly, it’s about making people feel beautiful and confident.

Why Bangalore?

Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India, is not just about tech. It’s a melting pot of cultures, styles, and, yes, fashion. The city is buzzing with opportunities for aspiring makeup artists. With its vibrant fashion scene, numerous events, and a growing entertainment industry, Bangalore is the perfect place to kickstart your career in makeup artistry.

Introducing Charan’s International Institute of Fashion Technology

Now that we've piqued your interest in makeup artistry, let’s talk about where you can get the best training – Charan’s International Institute of Fashion Technology in Bangalore.

A Legacy of Excellence

Charan’s International Institute of Fashion Technology is a name synonymous with excellence in fashion education. With years of experience and a team of industry experts, Charan’s Institute has been a pioneer in grooming aspiring fashion professionals. Their makeup artistry diploma is no exception.

What Makes Charan’s Stand Out?

Expert Faculty: Learn from the best in the industry. Charan’s faculty members are seasoned professionals who bring a wealth of experience and knowledge.

Comprehensive Curriculum: The course covers everything from basic to advanced makeup techniques, ensuring you're well-prepared for any challenge.

Hands-On Training: Get real-world experience with practical sessions, workshops, and live projects.

State-of-the-Art Facilities: Train with the latest tools and products in a professional setting.

Placement Assistance: Kickstart your career with the help of Charan’s extensive industry network and placement support.

The Curriculum: What You’ll Learn

So, what exactly will you be learning in the diploma course at Charan’s International Institute of Fashion Technology? Let’s break it down.

Foundations of Makeup Artistry

Every masterpiece starts with a solid foundation, and makeup is no different. In this module, you’ll learn:

Skin Analysis: Understanding different skin types and conditions.

Color Theory: The science of colors and how to use them effectively.

Tools of the Trade: Getting familiar with brushes, sponges, and other essential tools.

Hygiene and Safety: Best practices to ensure safety and hygiene in your work.

Basic Makeup Techniques

Before you can run, you need to learn to walk. This module covers the basics:

Day Makeup: Techniques for a natural, everyday look.

Evening Makeup: Creating glamorous looks for night outs.

Bridal Makeup: The art of making brides look their best on their special day.

Special Occasion Makeup: Tailoring looks for different events and occasions.

Advanced Makeup Techniques

Once you’ve mastered the basics, it’s time to take things up a notch:

High Fashion Makeup: Bold and creative looks for fashion shows and photoshoots.

Film and TV Makeup: Techniques for creating camera-ready looks.

Special Effects Makeup: Creating stunning effects for movies and theater.

Airbrush Makeup: The latest in flawless makeup application.

Building Your Portfolio

A strong portfolio is your ticket to landing gigs and impressing clients. This module helps you:

Photography Basics: Tips for capturing your work in the best light.

Portfolio Development: Creating a professional portfolio that showcases your skills.

Social Media Presence: Leveraging social media to build your brand and attract clients.

The Student Experience at Charan’s

What’s it like to be a student at Charan’s International Institute of Fashion Technology? Let’s dive into the student experience.

A Day in the Life

Picture this: You walk into a state-of-the-art classroom, greeted by your enthusiastic peers and a mentor who’s a pro in the industry. You start your day with a theory session, learning the science behind makeup. Then, it’s time for a hands-on workshop where you practice what you’ve learned. By the end of the day, you’ve not only mastered a new technique but also had fun doing it.

Networking Opportunities

One of the biggest advantages of studying at Charan’s is the networking opportunities. You’ll be rubbing shoulders with industry professionals, attending fashion events, and even getting a chance to work on live projects. These connections can be invaluable as you start your career.

Student Support

Charan’s is committed to your success. They offer extensive student support, from one-on-one mentoring to career counseling. Whether you need help with a tricky technique or advice on your career path, Charan’s faculty is always there to guide you.

Success Stories: From Classroom to Career

What better way to understand the impact of Charan’s International Institute of Fashion Technology than through the success stories of its alumni?

Meet Priya, Celebrity Makeup Artist

Priya always had a passion for makeup, but it wasn’t until she joined Charan’s that she realized her potential. After completing her diploma, Priya started working with top celebrities and fashion brands. Today, she’s a renowned makeup artist, thanks to the skills and connections she gained at Charan’s.

Raj’s Journey to Hollywood

Raj’s dream was to work in the film industry. With the advanced techniques he learned at Charan’s, he landed his first job on a Bollywood set. His talent and training quickly caught the eye of international directors, and now Raj is making his mark in Hollywood.

Anjali’s Bridal Beauty Business

Anjali wanted to start her own bridal makeup business. The comprehensive training and business tips she received at Charan’s gave her the confidence to launch her venture. Today, Anjali’s bridal beauty business is thriving, and she’s booked months in advance.

The Future of Makeup Artistry: Trends to Watch

The beauty industry is constantly evolving, and staying ahead of the trends is crucial for any makeup artist. Here are some trends to watch:

Sustainable Beauty

Eco-friendly and sustainable beauty products are on the rise. Consumers are becoming more conscious of the environmental impact of their choices, and makeup artists need to adapt by using sustainable products and practices.

Technology in Makeup

Technology is making its way into the beauty industry. From virtual try-ons to AI-powered skincare analysis, the future of makeup artistry is tech-savvy.

Inclusivity and Diversity

The push for inclusivity and diversity is stronger than ever. Makeup artists are embracing a wider range of skin tones, types, and gender expressions, ensuring that everyone feels represented and beautiful.

How to Enroll at Charan’s International Institute of Fashion Technology

Ready to take the plunge? Here’s how you can enroll in the diploma course at Charan’s International Institute of Fashion Technology.

Admission Requirements

Eligibility: Open to all aspiring makeup artists with a passion for beauty and creativity.

Application Process: Submit an online application with your details and a brief statement of purpose.

Interview: Selected candidates will be invited for an interview to assess their suitability for the course.

Course Fees and Financing

Course Fees: Detailed information about course fees is available on the institute’s website.

Financing Options: Charan’s offers various financing options and scholarships to help you manage the cost of your education.

Start Dates

The diploma course is offered multiple times a year. Check the institute’s website for the latest start dates and application deadlines.

Conclusion: Your Path to a Glamorous Career

Embarking on a career in makeup artistry is a thrilling journey filled with creativity, passion, and endless possibilities. With a diploma from Charan’s International Institute of Fashion Technology in Bangalore, you’ll have the skills, knowledge, and confidence to succeed in this dynamic field.

So, are you ready to turn your passion for makeup into a rewarding career? Enroll at Charan’s International Institute of Fashion Technology and start your journey today. The world of beauty awaits you!

#Diploma in Makeup Artistry

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