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out-of-control · 3 years ago

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MEMENTO

words: 2446

warnings: unsanitary, explicit sex, brief suicidal thought

summary: Jim thinks it’s finally time for a haircut.

"I can't fucking do this anymore," Jim growls, sweeping past Jax into the apartment.

Jax feels his stomach drop, turns around. "Do what?" he says, hackles raised.

Jim, apparently not noticing Jax's apprehension and already making his way to the couch, does a sort of clawing gesture at his own scalp. "This," he says, sounding strangled. "The hair. I can't keep looking like I'm from Seattle or whatever the fuck."

Oh. Huh. Okay.

Relief washing over him so fast it kind of makes him feel lightheaded, Jax kicks the door shut behind him. "So you want to cut it?"

Jim collapses onto the couch, one leg drawn up and the other stretched out, boots on the cushions and knuckles pressed into his cheek. "Yeah," he says, like it's something shameful. "I need to borrow your clippers."

"You going bald?" Jax says, fascinated. "The skinhead look can be hot, I guess. I think you could pull it off. Big jump, though." He grabs the folding chair that he stole from work and turns it backwards before he sits down, guidance counselor-style, chin on his crossed arms.

"I'm not going bald," Jim says, shifting.

"Soooo?" Jax prompts, burning up with curiosity. Jim's had that shaggy rocker mop the entire time he's known him. From the very first night, technically their second if he’s going to be pedantic, Jax remembers, Jim under stage lights, curled around his bass like it was a part of him, playing like he was dying, and hair flying everywhere, over his eyes and caught in his mouth. Jax can't imagine him with anything else.

Jim's eyes, narrowed, flick to Jax's face, and away. "Mohawk."

Jax grins hugely, slaps a hand to his cheek. "Really. Where'd you ever get that idea?" he says, batting his eyelashes.

"Uh huh. I'll just go get the clippers," Jim says, standing up and starting towards Jax's bathroom. Jax immediately scrambles to his feet and hurries after him, shouting, "No!"

Jim stops short without turning and Jax bumps into his back with a grunt. Jim cranes his neck around. "Yeah?"

Jax hooks his chin over Jim's shoulder and grins up at him. "You can't cut your own hair. You'll fuck it up so bad. You have to let me do it. I'm literally an expert."

Jim snorts, rolls his eyes, but he seems to consider it. After a few seconds, he says, "Fine," and Jax feels so pumped he gives Jim a quick bite on the shoulder before hustling them both into the bathroom and retrieving the clippers.

Jim's hauled himself up onto the counter, back to the mirror and legs crossed. He's kind of staring absently at Jax untangling the cord, until Jax snaps his fingers to get his attention. "Yo. I need to be able to actually reach your head, dude, sit down."

"Get a stool," Jim says helpfully.

"Kill yourself," Jax says nicely.

Regardless, Jim gets off the counter. He starts to sit down on the toilet lid, but Jax kicks lightly at his shin. "No, bitch, the ground. Then I can, like, maneuver around you."

Jim gives him a wholly exasperated look but complies, somehow managing to fold his long body onto the floor of Jax's tiny bathroom. Well, almost. His legs are sticking out the door.

"Take your shirt off," Jax recommends.

Jim gives him a funny sort of look.

Jax blushes, then rolls his eyes at the ceiling. "So you won't get hair all over it, dipshit. I'm not some pervert."

"You kind of are," Jim says mildly, before his head disappears as he pulls his t-shirt over it. And it's literally not his fault if Jax happens to give an infinitesimally too-long glance up and down Jim's pale, scarred torso, because Jim is the one who had the dirty mind in the first place. Christ.

Jax turns away and roots around under the sink for a bit, emerging with a slightly tarnished pair of shears. He kneels down next to Jim and holds them up. "Do you want anything taken off the top or just the sides?"

Jim twists his mouth. "Leave the top alone," he says, tapping his fingers on the tile. "For now," he adds.

"Cool," Jax says, snapping the shears open and shut for show. "Hold still." And he gets to work.

Snip by snip, locks of Jim's hair fall away, scattering across his bare chest and the bathroom floor. Jax could have stood to lay some tarp down or something, but it's too late now. He'll just sweep it up by hand later.

Jax doesn't bother being careful; there's no real reason to be, since it's all going to get shaved off anyway. So he sort of hacks away unevenly at Jim's head, and choppy strands of hair float down in droves until finally Jax figures it's short enough to use the clippers.

Jax puts down the shears and Jim instantly starts trying to get up. "Hey, hey, no," Jax says, putting a hand on Jim's chest and pressing down, "You look like shit right now, don't even bother with the mirror." Jim stills and looks at him, frowning. "It's supposed to look like shit," Jax adds quickly, kind of going for soothing in case Jim is secretly freaking out. "Then it'll look good." Jim just stares up at him wordlessly, not looking convinced. Hey, no second thoughts here, Jax thinks determinedly. He flicks Jim on the side of the head. "It'll look so fucking good, man," he continues firmly, "Dudes will be falling over themselves to get a piece of your action after this. Million bucks, I'm telling you."

Jim snorts at that. "Just do it already," he says, nonetheless somehow looking mollified at Jax's inane reassurance. Jax salutes him and stands up. He plugs in the clipper with appropriate panache, then returns to kneel at Jim's side. "Prepare to become so fucking hot," he says solemnly, and presses the 'on' button. Jim nods.

When the clipper first touches his scalp, Jim shudders, and Jax instantly clicks it off, dropping a hand to Jim's shoulder to hold him down. "Hey," he says. "Hold still. You'll make me fuck it up."

"I haven’t done this in a while," Jim says, but when Jax returns the clipper to his temple he doesn't flinch.

They fall into a silence, the only sound the buzzing of the clipper between them. Jax doesn't have to ask to get Jim to move his head; all he has to do is simply place his fingertips along the side of Jim's jaw and Jim tilts his head exactly where Jax needs it.

Jax sweeps the clipper across the curve of Jim's skull, then runs a thumb along the same path to check the length, make sure it's even for Jim. Can't have him running around with a choppy cut, Jax thinks. People will think no one's taking care of him.

Jax finds he needs to change his position to more easily look between the sides of Jim's head, so he extends a leg and drops into a crouch over him, face to face; now he can lean left or right and quickly check each side as he slides the clipper over in iterations. After a bit, though, his legs start to cramp, so he just gives up and sits down, kind of in Jim's lap. Jim doesn't seem to mind.

When Jax finally speaks to ask if Jim wants to keep his little sidelocks or not, his throat feels rusty and the words come out a little fried.

"No," Jim replies, and his voice is kind of low too.

Jax nods, mouth dry, and slices them off.

Jim's hair is basically done now, but Jax fusses over it a bit longer, making little flicks with the clipper to correct each tiny imperfection, getting everything absolutely right. Jim seems restless between his thighs, and says, "You're leaving some, right?"

"Hold still," Jax snaps, and essentially shaves off a single hair.

He leans back, examining Jim with a calculating eye. "Yeah. Okay. Good."

"Can I use the mirror now?" Jim asks, sounding a little testy.

Jax regards him for a few moments in silence.

"Nope," he says finally, and pounces.

(Hair clippings be damned.)

Having the element of surprise on his side, he's able to bowl Jim completely over as he kisses him, hard and messy. Jim opens his mouth on a yelp and Jax immediately takes advantage, shoving his tongue in deep enough to lick Jim's molars.

"Dudes will be falling over themselves, huh?" Jim says, having grabbed Jax by the shoulders and yanked him off to breathe, sounding sharp and bright and smug and Jax wants to fucking kill him or kiss him or worse. Instead, he bites him, hard, right at the bend between neck and shoulder, and that shuts Jim up alright.

Jim slips a hand into Jax's back pocket, so Jax slides a palm against Jim's newly shorn scalp, and they both shiver in tandem. Jim ducks his head to catch Jax's lips and Jax wants to groan with how good it is, how good it feels to have Jim's mouth against him.

Jax has just started to shift his body downwards, deciding he needs to get his mouth on Jim's chest, when a sudden arc of pain stabs through his knee. He swears, lifting himself off Jim to see what he's knelt on, and removes the shears, previously forgotten on the floor, from beneath his leg. They'd sliced clear through his jeans and into his skin. Jax presses two fingers to the cut and they come away red. He rubs them together absently, smearing the blood.

"What is it?" Jim says then, up on his elbows, craning his neck to see what Jax had been distracted by. Jax wipes his fingers on his shirt and shoves the shears away, sending them skittering across the floor. "Nothing," he replies, and hauls Jim up into a sitting position to crush their mouths together again. Jim makes a noise that sends a chill from the top of Jax's skull down to his sacrum.

He squirms as Jim's hands rove across his torso, bites down hard on Jim's lip when the other slips a hand up the front of Jax’s shirt. "Fuck," he pants against Jim's cheek, resting their temples together. Jim's other hand slides beneath Jax’s shirt up his spine and Jax arcs his back. "Fuck," he mutters again, eyes shut tight, and writhes in Jim's lap, it feels so fucking good but he needs more, "Fuck, come on, come on, baby--"

Jax suddenly wants to kill himself.

Fuck, his brain says pleasantly. You goddamned lovesick idiot. You've just fucked up what was shaping up to be a really good afternoon and now Jim is going to fuck right off.

Fuck, Jax agrees woefully, and he's already starting to weigh the pros and cons of various excuses and exit strategies when Jim grabs Jax by the skull with both hands and kisses him hard enough to bruise.

Excuses and exits are instantly driven out of his brain. Jax sighs into Jim's mouth, letting Jim push him down, rearranging them so now it's Jax with his back on cold tile and his bootheel a single twitch away from demolishing a roach motel, and Jax fists a hand in Jim's remaining long hair and pulls it hard, and Jim pushes Jax's shirt up to his chin and Jax can feel the prickles of shorn hair stabbing into his torso where they're skin to skin. He draws a knee up and hooks a leg around Jim's thigh, as if that's enough to keep Jim there, keep him pulling Jax apart on this filthy bathroom floor, surrounded by wisps of brown hair and smears of blood, even though he knows it's not, knows it's stupid to hope for and unfair to want. He wishes, feverishly, that they could be closer, somehow, that Jim could crack open his ribcage and let Jax curl up there, right between his lungs. Skull clacking against the tile, he feels a warm trickle of liquid crawl down his shin from his knee.

Abruptly he kicks at Jim, forcing him to pull back. Jim looks a little confused at first, but once Jax turns over onto his stomach, he catches on pretty quick.

–

One hand planted squarely in the small of Jax’s back, Jim leans over, says against Jax’s ear, “In the cabinet?”

Throat dry, heart pounding like a rabbit’s, Jax shakes his head. “Don’t bother,” he rasps, cheek on the tile, jerking his hips up so he has space to undo his belt buckle. “Just– fuck my legs.” Jim says nothing, but gently bites the back of Jax’s neck. Trying to ignore the way his hands are shaking, Jax gets up on his hands and knees, and Jim grabs his jeans by the waistband and shoves them down. Christ, he thinks, lightheaded from arousal, as his injured knee sends stabs of pain up his leg. Jim curls over him, slips in between, one hand shoved beneath Jax’s rucked-up shirt to knead a nipple. Jax gasps, pushing backwards, grinding onto Jim’s pelvis. He doesn’t touch himself, keeps both palms braced against the cold, dirty tile, as Jim thrusts against him. Jim slips a finger through Jax’s nipple ring and pulls; Jax swears, back arching involuntarily. Jim kisses the side of his face and Jax suddenly wants to cry, not sure why, feeling something cold in his stomach despite Jim’s skin warm against his back. It comes as a shock when Jim reaches a hand around and grabs him; he’d barely thought about getting himself off, totally focused on squeezing his thighs tight around Jim, rocking with Jim’s rhythm. He hangs his head, arms trembling, as he’s jacked off, and it’s good, but fucking Christ, he feels weird, feverish, ill. Sweat moistens his forehead; he picks up a palm to wipe it off and sees short brown hairs stuck to his skin. Jim exhales sharply behind him, pulls away and Jax feels warmth splatter on the backs of his thighs. He follows not long after, Jim’s hand tight on his skin.

–

They finally manage to wash the hair off themselves in the shower. Forehead against Jim's back, Jax watches it swirl down the drain with the shampoo suds. His knee has scabbed over.

–

Later, in an empty apartment, on his hands and knees with a dustpan, Jax picks up a remarkably intact lock of Jim's hair from underneath the sink. Sitting back on his haunches, he turns it over in his fingers a few times. Then he ties it into a knot and puts it in his pocket.

#words #literally sorry #they are desgosting

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heatherwitch · 7 years ago

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hello witch mom, tysm for your ghibli aesthetic post! but where i live it's cold and gloomy most of the year. i'm freezing even in the summer sometimes and my hands are cold most of the time so i'm really not looking forward to even more coldness... do you have any tips to romanticize fall/winter ghibli style? you feel like someone who's a pro at this :D

Oh I feel that so hard, I live in the greater Seattle area which is just dreary and gloomy and dark and has a constant drizzling, freezing rain for a majority of the year. It’s not excessively cold but it’s always perfect hypothermia weather. Cold and wet.

Here’s my other post on it, for anyone who is curious! (a couple of these are copied and pasted from there!)

Romanticize everything!!!

Fires. I have a woodstove which is our only source of heat in the cold months and I love tending it and being around it! Bonfires/outdoor fires are also nice!

Candles. You know how it goes “candles are how we keep fires as pets”. How cute is that!?

Baths. Baths are a huge part of ghibli scenes! Take a nice hot bath (or shower). Burn some candles, add some bath salts or oils, make it really enjoyable.

Hot drinks. Feel the warmth radiating from the mug into your hands. Savor the heat as you sip it and it spreads throughout your body.

When bundling up to go outside, make it feel like your preparing for a big adventure. Also wear a cute scarf or hat or something!

Make it a part of your day to open all the windows and let that little amount of light in.

Make soup. Really take the time to make it. Chop those veggies, prepare those ingredients, sprinkle those spices and add that broth with love.

Take up a project. Sketching, painting, knitting, crocheting, quilting, embroidering, felting, etc.

Clean. Clean your bedroom, do the laundry, wash the dishes, vacuum/sweep the floors. Listen to some music!

Really take the time to tend to your home (living space). This place is your escape from the weather, from the cold. You can make it how you want it to be. So take care of that!

Cuddle with a pet!

Find something that you’re excited about doing while you’re stuck inside. For me, that’s reading and knitting.

Try to look at the things the cold brings with awe this year. The puddles from the freezing rain, the way the frost glints in the sun, the way the snow covers a landscape and makes everything quieter. And relish in the wildness of dirty snow water, the streets having little rivers along the sides (or middle) from rain, the ice making everything slippery. There’s a lot of moments in Ghibli with the less desirable aspects of the world in them!

Buy/prepare herbal teas to help with the sickness that comes with the colder months.

Allot yourself a morning or evening with nothing to do. Keep it technology free and do what makes your heart happy. Read a book, cuddle with a pet, doodle, clean.

Invite your friends over, make a feast, have a movie marathon, etc.

Leave some birdseed out for the birds. Make it a ritual that forces you to go outside. Maybe leave it somewhere where you can stand with your hot drink and watch the birds for a while.

Find solace in the escape of warm places. The coffee shop, the library, the grocery store. Everyone in there survived the weather outside and made it to this little slice of heavenly warmth.

Make your life a fucking aesthetic. Make it what you want it to be. It won’t be perfect, but if it makes you happier then it’s worth it.

Watch Ghibli movies!

Do what makes your heart happy!!!

#mouse squeaks #anon #okay to reblog #pls do if it helps you

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arodalwa · 9 months ago

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profile-234 · 5 months ago

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The Ultimate Guide to Deep Cleaning Your Home in Seattle

A clean home is more than just a place to rest your head—it's a sanctuary. But we all know that regular cleaning doesn’t always cut it, especially if you want to give your home a fresh start or get rid of built-up dirt, grime, and allergens. This is where deep cleaning comes in.

Whether you're preparing for a special event, moving in or out, or just want to maintain a spotless living space, a deep clean can be the answer. If you’re in Seattle, you’re in luck—there are plenty of ways to give your home the deep clean it deserves, whether you do it yourself or call in the experts like MT Cleaning, Seattle's trusted deep cleaning service.

What is Deep Cleaning?

Deep cleaning is much more thorough than your average vacuuming and dusting. It involves tackling areas that don't usually get much attention during your routine cleaning. The goal is to remove built-up dirt, grease, and grime, as well as eliminate allergens and bacteria that can negatively impact the air quality in your home.

While routine cleaning might cover the basics (like wiping down counters, cleaning floors, and taking out the trash), deep cleaning focuses on the spaces you might overlook. It goes into every nook and cranny, from baseboards to ceiling fans, and can include specialized tasks like cleaning behind appliances, washing windows, and sanitizing bathroom grout.

Step-by-Step Guide to Deep Cleaning Your Home

If you’re ready to roll up your sleeves and take on the challenge, here's a simple guide to help you get started:

1. Gather Your Cleaning Supplies

Before you dive in, make sure you have the right tools for the job. You’ll need:

A broom, vacuum, and mop for floors

Microfiber cloths and sponges

All-purpose cleaner

Disinfectant

A bucket for soapy water

A duster with an extendable handle

Glass cleaner

Degreaser (for kitchen surfaces)

Having the right equipment will make the process smoother and more efficient.

2. Start with Decluttering

Before you begin cleaning, it’s important to declutter. Take a few minutes to tidy up your space by putting away items that don’t belong. This will give you more room to clean and ensure you don’t miss any hidden spots.

3. Dust and Sweep High to Low

Start at the top of the room with ceiling fans, light fixtures, and shelves. Use a duster with an extendable handle to reach those high spots. Then, work your way down—dusting furniture and wiping down walls. Finish by sweeping the floors to clear away any dirt or debris.

4. Clean Windows and Mirrors

Next, tackle your windows and mirrors. Clean the glass with a streak-free cleaner, and don’t forget to wipe down the window sills and tracks where dirt can accumulate.

5. Focus on Kitchen Surfaces

The kitchen is one of the most important rooms to deep clean. Begin by wiping down counters, cabinet faces, and the backsplashes. Don’t forget to clean behind and underneath appliances like your fridge, stove, and microwave. A degreaser may come in handy here for built-up grease.

6. Scrub the Bathrooms

In the bathroom, clean your sinks, tubs, and showers with a disinfecting cleaner. Pay extra attention to areas like faucets, mirrors, and grout lines, which often harbor mold or soap scum. For the toilet, use a toilet bowl cleaner, and scrub around the base and handle.

7. Floors and Carpets

Finally, mop or steam clean your floors and carpets. Vacuum carpets thoroughly, paying extra attention to high-traffic areas, and consider renting a carpet cleaner for a more intensive treatment.

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Deep cleaning your home can be a big undertaking, and sometimes, you just don’t have the time or energy to do it all yourself. That’s when it’s best to call in the professionals.

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Ready to give your home the deep clean it deserves? Contact MT Cleaning today to schedule your deep cleaning service and enjoy a sparkling home without the stress!

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rishabhcmipressreleases · 5 years ago

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RESIDENTIAL ROBOTIC VACUUM CLEANER MARKET ANALYSIS (2020-2027)

Market Overview

Residential robotic vacuum cleaners are mainly used for cleaning residential areas such as pool, lawn, gutter, and floors. Mobile base, batteries, cleaning system, and programming software are some of the major component of residential robotic vacuum cleaners. These vacuum cleaners use intelligent sensors and cameras mounted on the top for cleaning the top corners. Moreover, these robots also composed of room mapping, laser vision, and robotic self-charging to provide convenience to users. Based on the task, residential robotic vacuum cleaners are classified into in-house robot and outdoor robots, in-house robots are used for in-house cleaning activity such as floor-washing, sweeping, mopping, etc. whereas Outdoor robots are used for pool cleaning and gutter cleaning.

The global Residential Robotic Vacuum Cleaner Market is estimated to account for US$ 2099.0 Mn in 2019 in terms of value and is expected to grow at CAGR of 11.9% for the period 2019-2027

Market Dynamics- Drivers

Rising disposable income in emerging economies is expected to drive growth of the global residential robotic vacuum market during the forecast period

Increasing disposable income across emerging countries is encouraging people to buy technically advanced products that are expected to foster market growth. According to the Coherent Market Insights’ analysis, in developed regions such as North America and Europe, the disposable income of citizens is high and hence, their spending capacity is high on such technically advanced products. This factor is expected to drive the global residential robotics vacuum cleaner market growth during the forecast period

High presence of major market players in North America is expected to propel the global residential robotic vacuum market growth over the forecast period

The strong presence of players especially in North America due to the high demand for advanced technological products is fueling the market growth of residential robotic vacuum cleaners. Some of the major market players in North America's residential robotic vacuum cleaner market are iRobot Corporation, Neato Robotics, Inc., and Moneual. Apart from these, other prominent vendors include Dyson Inc., Ecovacs Robotics, Yujin Robot Inc., etc.

North America region dominated the global Residential Robotic Vacuum Cleaner Market in 2019, accounting for 43.8% share in terms of value, followed by Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East and Africa respectively

Source: Coherent Market Insights

Market Dynamics- Restraints

Consumption of high battery power is expected to hamper the global residential robotic vacuum cleaner market growth during the forecast period

Residential robotic vacuum cleaner consumes high battery power which reduced the overall operating time and this is expected to restrict the market growth of residential robotic vacuum cleaners over the forecast period. Moreover, rising awareness regarding environmental issues is creating demand for efficient and less power consuming appliances which is further expected to restrict the market growth over the forecast period.

Low acceptance of robotic vacuum cleaners as compared to conventional products is expected to restrain growth of the global residential robotic vacuum cleaner market over the forecast period

Acceptance of product is lower as compared to traditional vacuum cleaners because it is still at a nascent stage and this factor is expected to hinder the market growth. Preference of consumers towards regular vacuum cleaners high is more as compared to the robotic vacuum cleaner due to easy availability, cost, and popularity about the product. Hence, lower acceptance of residential robotic vacuum cleaner is expected to negatively impact the market growth to some extent.

Market Opportunities

High demand for small and compact devices can present major growth opportunities

Growing demand for small and compact appliances is expected to offer numerous growth opportunities to the market of the residential robotic vacuum cleaner. Residential robotic vacuum cleaners relatively are compact and lightweight which is increasing demand for small appliances and this factor is expected to affect the growth of the residential robotic vacuum cleaner market positively over the forecast timeframe.

Growing expansion of global consumer electronics market is expected to provide lucrative business opportunities

Expanding consumer electronics market is projected to offer lucrative growth opportunities over the forecast timeframe. Growth witnessed in the consumer electronics market is projected to fuel the growth of the residential robotic vacuum cleaner market over the forecast period. Moreover, countries such as China, U.S., and India are the major contributors to the global Residential robotic vacuum cleaner and this will favor the market growth in the near future.

Source: Coherent Market Insights

Market Trends/Key Takeaways

Advent of smartphone-controlled robotic vacuum cleaner

Rising trend of introducing smartphone controlled residential robotic vacuum cleaner is expected to propel the market growth. For instance, in July 2018, ILIFE introduced "A7" worldwide on Amazon and AliExpress as a premium addition to its A-series. A7 features the Gen 3 CyclonePower Cleaning System, which is applied to ILIFE's top model "A8" launched at this year's CES. This advanced solution offers practical home cleaning solutions.

Rising preference for residential robotic vacuum cleaner with room memory

Consumers across the globe are increasingly preferring residential robotic vacuum cleaner with room memory, which in turn, is expected to boost the market growth over the forecast period. For instance, in September 2018, iRobot introduced the newest Roomba i7+ that has two key changes the robot remembers the home’s floor plan and it empties itself. The auto-emptying feature is probably the most useful. Hence, rising launch of such an advanced product will support the market growth over the forecast timeframe.

Segment information:

In global Residential Robotic Vacuum Cleaner Market, by Mode of Charging, the manual charging, sub-segment dominated the global market in 2019, accounting for 67.1% share in terms of value, followed by auto battery charging.

Source: Coherent Market Insights

Competitive Section:

Key players operating in the global residential robotic vacuum cleaner market are Ecovacs Robotics, Inc., Milagrow Business & Knowledge Solutions (Pvt.) Limited, iRobot Corporation, Pentair plc, Neato Robotics, Inc., Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Yujin Robot, Co., Ltd., Philips Electronics N.V, Dyson Inc., and Hayward Industries, Inc.

Key Developments

Key players in the market are focused on product development, in order to expand the product portfolio. For instance, in July 2019, iRobot Corporation launched iRobot Rooba S9+, which offers hands-free experience.

Major market companies are involved in product launches, in order to gain competitive edge in the market. For instance, in March 2018, Neato Robotics launched Neato Botvac D7 Connected that can clean large spaces efficiently.

Request sample report here:https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/market-insight/residential-robotic-vacuum-cleaner-market-3582

Download PDF brochure here:

https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-pdf/3582

About Us:

Coherent Market Insights is a global market intelligence and consulting organization focused on assisting our plethora of clients achieve transformational growth by helping them make critical business decisions.

What we provide:

Customized Market Research Services

Industry Analysis Services

Business Consulting Services

Market Intelligence Services

Long term Engagement Model

Country Specific Analysis

Mr. Shah

Coherent Market Insights Pvt. Ltd.

Address: 1001 4th ave, #3200 Seattle, WA 98154, U.S.

Phone: +1-206-701-6702

Email: [email protected]

Source: https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/market-insight/residential-robotic-vacuum-cleaner-market-3582

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pjbehindthesun · 8 years ago

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chapter 4: acoustics and interruptions

Saturday, June 23rd, 1990

“Wait, where am I going??” Lucy squints over the wheel of her Corolla.

“Straight, straight, it’s just at the end of the block…” I do my best not to laugh at her, honestly, the girl has the world’s worst sense of direction. She could get lost in a paper bag with a map and a flashlight. “Ooh, ooh, park here, park HERE!” I shout, pointing to an upcoming parallel parking spot. Honestly we could have walked here too, but Lucy thought it was too far and she was nervous about the neighborhood.

My friend somehow works her car into the space, and I somehow occupy myself with something terribly interesting outside the car window to avoid laughing at the Morse code-like taps against bumpers and curbs that ensue in the process. “Hey, we made it! Will you relax now? Why are you so worked up anyway?”

“I’m just nervous! You’re not?? God, Cora, we saw them back in February, he’s like a legitimate rock star!”

“And also a legitimate pest.”

“But seriously, he’s so intimidating-looking…”

“Nah, you’ll see, he’s like… he’s like this big, lovable older brother you never wanted.”

“Well, it’s too bad Alex couldn’t come tonight to meet your brother…” she raises an eyebrow at me as she shuts off the car.

Yeah. Too bad. She knows me too well. Chris and Alex would have gotten along like cats and dogs, which is so stupid, because there’s absolutely no reason for Alex to be jealous. Chris is married! But Alex always gives me a hard time about guy friends. It’s just easier not to have them, usually, but Chris has been pretty persistent. I smile inwardly. I’m actually kind of relieved Alex decided to go out with the guys instead, but I can’t admit that, not even to Lucy. “Yeah, too bad, he just wasn’t feeling up to it tonight, poor guy.”

We walk under the overpass and along the brick wall to the door of the Off Ramp and make our way inside, where we are instantly greeted by the loud, sludgy chords of the opening band, so heavy that I can feel the air in my lungs shaking with the beat. Tad, I think Chris said? I’m way too short to see much of anything through the crowd, but they sound amazing. My Chucks stick slightly to the floor and the air smells thickly of beer and smoke, and it makes me grin ear to ear. School hasn’t left me with a lot of spare time to explore the music scene out here yet, but I missed the hell out of divey clubs like this one. I nudge Lucy and we head over to the bar. I squeeze past a pretty English girl with long, curly dark hair who’s even shorter than me and deep in conversation with some guy about acoustics in outer space. I have to will my not-so-inner science nerd not to barge into their conversation, so instead I flag down the bartender and check on my friend. Lucy is her usual willowy, tall, beautiful, unassuming self tonight in a cute floral dress and white Keds, fidgeting nervously next to me. Meanwhile, I might get mistaken for a roadie any second in a white T-shirt and old jeans that are literally acid-washed from a lab accident last fall. In my defense, I did spend the whole day in the lab, and at least I put on a shirt that doesn’t have soil stains on it.

The band wraps up their last song just as the bartender comes back with our beers. I look around for Chris, futilely, of course… even trying to lean up on the bar edge is not exactly helping my vertically challenged vantage point…

“CORAAAAAAA!” And suddenly my field of vision is obscured by a crazy tangle of black curls as a shirtless guy sweeps me off my feet and parks me on the bar itself. “You made it!”

“Hi to you too, Chris,” I grin lazily, as if this is a totally normal human interaction, mostly because Lucy’s jaw is on the floor and it’s hilarious to see her all shaken up. The bar is tall, putting me above eye level with Chris. I rest my hands on his shoulders and squint at him through his curtain of hair with mock concern… “say, did you get shorter or something?”

“You wish, baby bear.” He turns around and gestures to a group of guys over by the stage, who descend on us. “Guys! This is Cora!” He picks me up like I weigh nothing at all and whirls me around, setting me down on my feet in front of this newly arrived wall of musicians. “And you are?” he asks Lucy, who’s looking dazed as I introduce them and Chris shakes her hand.

“Matt, Kim, Ben – Cora, these guys are my posse – guys, this is Cora, the girl I was telling you about! And this is Lucy!” Another guy, one I actually recognize, nudges his way to the front of the pack to figure out the source of Chris’s commotion. “And this is Jeff” – he points to my neighbor, and I can’t help grinning as Lucy turns bright red – “and oh hey, Stoney!” he bellows as he flags down another tall, slender guy to come join us. Fuck, is everyone in Seattle tall but me? I feel like a Hobbit.

“Stone, just Stone,” the guy corrects with an eye roll in Chris’s direction, before looking back at me. “Nice to meet you, Cora,” Stone says in a lazy voice. “Chris has been talking about you nonstop for like two weeks. Had to see if you live up to the legend he’s told us,” he smirks down at me and flips his long brown hair over his shoulder. Based on the “dude, seriously?” look he just got from Jeff, I can tell that it’s not unusual for him to try to make people uncomfortable, so I fire back.

“The legend? Oh no, Chris, you told them about the tourists we killed and ate on the trail? That was supposed to be our little secret,” I say innocently, licking my fingers and picking my teeth. Lucy’s looks like she’s about to implode from embarrassment. Jeff’s smiling at her and Chris is hanging back, watching the scene, grinning like Satan himself.

Stone sputters with laughter. “Careful, I hear those tourists will go straight to your ass, very fattening.” Jeff tears his eyes off Lucy long enough to scowl at Stone and punch him in the shoulder.

“What the fuck, man?” Jeff glances sideways at me and then back to his friend. Aww. Defending the lady. I try not to roll my eyes. Bless his heart.

“Beats all these skin-and-bones Seattle boys, like a bunch of plants that have been kept in the dark,” I poke Stone hard in his skinny chest and pull a scowl. He blinks down at me with big doe eyes, and for a split second I can see he’s stumped for words. Time to ease up, I just met the guy.

“So you’ve been hearing about me for weeks, huh? What’s this moron been telling you?” I nod in Chris’s direction and try a gentle smile, more to make Jeff and Lucy feel at ease than anything else, although it seems like they don’t need my help because they’ve already turned away from us and are chatting in an appallingly cute and wholesome manner.

Chris is the one who answers. “Just that you’re a sexy soil scientist who’s going to save the world from pollution… and forest fires.” I shoot Chris a dirty look that makes him chuckle. “Ok, ok, I know when I’m not wanted… might as well go play a show!” He winks, rounds up his band, and makes toward the stage.

With Jeff and Lucy flirting animatedly over at the bar, I’m left with Stone, who raises an insolent eyebrow.

“So, sexy soil scientist… tell me about these sexy soils…”

My eyes roll so hard I fear I’ve maybe pulled a muscle. “Chris is unreal. Honestly, I study dirt and it’s the least fucking sexy thing imaginable, he just said it to piss me off.” The snap in my voice surprises even me, and I can tell it surprises Stone too. The poor guy blinks down at me with a stunned look on his face. How could he know I spent my entire Saturday in the lab troubleshooting an ancient ion chromatograph that will be waiting for me tomorrow, just as obstinate in its refusal to give me data as it was when I first got to the lab this morning. Or that my advisor is absolutely no help and there’s no one else around in the department I can even ask. Or that the lab fridge was out of beer so I couldn’t even day-drink my way through the two hours on hold with tech support because even they didn’t know what to tell me. Okay, enough moping, time to recover before this poor guy thinks you’re a total psycho.

“Sorry. Long day. I just don’t want to talk about work. Surely you don’t like to talk shop when you’re not… uh, doing whatever it is you do?” I give him what I hope is an encouraging smile.

“I’m a musician, I play guitar,” he says laconically, looking around at nothing in particular but clearly endeavoring to seem cool.

He’s got an affected manner, which usually makes me want to run screaming, but he’s not very good at it. Just below the surface you can see he’s a dorky, awkward kid (takes one to know one), so his pretension just makes me laugh. “Oh, sorry, so I guess you’re still at the shop then. What’s the name of your band?”

“In between bands at the moment. I had this one band with Jeff for a while but that, uhm, ended in March, so I’m kind of just writing songs on my own right now, or with a friend here and there, just trying to figure things out.”

“Oh, yeah?” I was about to ask more about the kinds of songs he’s writing, or what happened with the old band, but before I can say anything else, the crowd starts screaming and I hear the first notes of Hands All Over, my favorite song from the cassette I picked up at the show at the Moore.

Stone and I are both quickly absorbed watching the show, or what I can see of it from here. Chris really is amazing. I can see what Lucy finds kind of terrifying, maybe, with his black cargo shorts and huge boots, and that brutalizing, scorched-earth voice. But it’s beautiful, too. A voice that can sing while screaming. A voice that sounds like the terror of a plane crash, but also a voice that somehow manages to put the whole thing gently back on the runway in one piece. And then there are his lyrics. These intensely heavy songs laced with frighteningly fragile thoughts. I’ve never heard another singer like him.

“I think he’s possessed,” Stone whispers in my ear, as if reading my mind. I look up at him and he widens his eyes and gasps in mock horror.

“Maybe, but you never met a nicer demon,” and we share a smile before turning back to watch the show.

Stone and I watch the rest of the set together over our beers, cracking jokes occasionally but mostly just enjoying the music. When the show’s over, he motions his head to the rear exit and produces a little glass pipe from his pocket. I grin and trail after him as he heads over.

We sit down on the curb outside the club. “So Stone’s not just a clever name, huh?”

“I don’t have to take this abuse, new girl. Do you want the pot or don’t you?” I bite my lip to tamp down the smile and nod.

“So how long have you lived here?” he asks as he packs the bowl with a furtive glance around.

I chuckle at the ground. “Is it that obvious?”

“Y’all ain’t from around here, are ya?” He smirks off into the distance, doing possibly the world’s worst imitation of a Southern accent before taking a hit and passing me the pipe.

“Ha! Something tells me you don’t get out of Seattle much. And no, I’m not from here. Asheville North Carolina, originally. I moved here a year ago.”

“For school, Chris said? Didn’t get enough book learning back in the hollers?” His words are barbed but the smile that accompanies them is welcoming, disarming, as if to say don’t listen to me, I know I’m full of shit, I’m just playing around, please play along.

“Welllll I started to have my doubts after they taught us in 3rd grade that Jefferson Davis rode a pterodactyl to victory in every major American war…” I say, stretching out what little drawl I still have as far as it’ll go before I hit the pipe.

He chuckles. “Yeah. I think you belong out here with us.” It’s an odd thing to say to someone you’ve just met, so I look up to try and catch his meaning, but he’s still looking away, scanning the street. Not big on eye contact, this guy.

“Well it beats the sticks, at least. You grew up here, I take it?”

“Born and raised.”

“Always wanted to be a musician?”

“Yeah. Always. I went to art school and I have unrepentant hippies for parents, so there was never much hope.”

“Hippies, huh?”

“What, the name didn’t give it away?” He rolls his eyes and glances over with a small smile.

“I like it. Earthy. Grounded. Solid.” I can’t pun with a straight face to save my life. Or maybe the weed’s kicking in already. I stifle a giggle.

“Says the professional dirt worshipper!” he laughs.

“Unabashedly.” I hold my hands up like I’ve been caught robbing a bank, shuffling my sneakers on the pavement. “Honestly I’ve seen people worship stupider shit.”

“Well you’re not wrong there. Probably more of us could stand to find something like god out in the woods. Maybe we’d take better care of things that way.”

“Oh, a fellow tree-hugger then?” I grin.

“Afraid so.” He finally flicks his eyes up to mine with a serious expression. And his eyes are striking. Olive green, with eyelashes most girls would probably kill for.

“Yeah, well, Alex thinks I’m wasting my time in school for anything related to the environment, thinks we all just need to focus on getting the fuck to Mars so we don’t have to worry about conservation. Says the damage is already done, so why should our generation have to fix everyone else’s mistakes?”

“And who is this Alex? Some kind of Nobel laureate, clearly.”

“Oh, Alex is my boyfriend.” Hadn’t I mentioned him already?

“Huh,” is all Stone says. Evidently not. The pause that follows is uncomfortable after the steady rhythm we’d fallen into.

“He moved out with me from Asheville,” I say. Why I am answering a question Stone didn’t ask? Why did he clam up?

“So this Cletus fella, he’s not in graduate school with you?”

“Alex! And no. We met during the first week of college. He’s a programmer, and he’s brilliant.”

“I’ll bet he is. And how long have you and Jimbob been a'courtin’?” The momentary thaw seems to have vanished and he’s back to teasing me. I pull a face and elbow him in the ribs.

“ALEX. Five years now.” Stone raises his eyebrows and nods down at the curb. “So tell me about your glamorous guitarist life,” I ask, figuring it’s time for a change of subject. “You had a band?”

“Yeah. Me and Jeff did. Guitar and bass,” he points at his chest and then vaguely back at the club. “Mother Love Bone, maybe you’d heard of us?” he says, passing the pipe back without looking up.

I shake my head and take another hit. “Sorry. You forget I’m still pretty new here. What happened, why the past tense?”

“We uh, lost our singer,” he says quietly. “Couple of months back. Overdose.”

Gone is the imperviousness. The sarcasm. The insouciance. What’s left is an awkward kid sitting on a curb, boring a hole into the ground with his stare, cradling a raw wound. That I have just rubbed salt into with my blundering curiosity.

“Fuck… fuck, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. I mean, you didn’t know, it’s okay.” He recovers his bearings a little. “Not okay that it happened, obviously, but it’s okay that you asked.”

I figure silence is my best bet right now, because what can I say? After a little while, Stone goes on.

“Andy. Andy Wood. He was our singer. And a really good friend. He… Jeff and I are still promoting the stuff we did as a group before he died. We put all this work in for two years on this album, so we’re trying to show that to people now. And trying to figure out what comes next, if anything. I’ve been playing guitar with this guy Mike, and he wants the three of us to pull something together, but I don’t fucking know.” He kills the rest of the bowl and taps out the ashes on the curb before stowing the pipe back in his pocket.

“Will it still be Mother Love Bone, or something else?”

“I think we would all need it to be something else. It’s hard, we’ve had people ask us about keeping the band going, sending us tapes of weird Andy tributes… I have no idea how –”

Stone is abruptly cut off by a pair of wasted guys who stumble outside and almost trip over us. “Watch where the fuck you’re going, would you?” I grumble. One of them gapes down at me.

“Hey, girl… your hair’s so red…��

“You’re quick.” My voice is level, but Stone’s watching me carefully like he’s unsure whether he should speak up or not.

“So baby, does the carpet match the drapes?” his friend slurs.

Stone’s mouth flies open, but before he can say anything, I respond in complete deadpan, “it’s tile.”

“What the fuck… god, whatever, these fuckin’ weird chicks, dude…” the guys stumble off into the night as Stone dissolves in hysterics on the curb next to me.

“That was great! Wait a second, did he think I was a chick?” he manages to gasp out between laughs.

“And you find that more offensive than what he thought about me??” I tease.

“Hell yes, I am as macho as they fuckin’ come.”

“My mistake, Stoner.” We’re still cracking up like a couple of fucking potheads when another pair comes tumbling out of the door, but this time I’m the one gaping as I see Lucy pulling a beaming Jeff by the hand out behind the club.

“See, that’s better,” she’s giggling, “we can actually hear each other out –”

Then she and Jeff notice us and shout, “Cora!” and “Stone!” at the same time, and he and I break down laughing all over again.

“Shit, they’re fucking high,” Jeff laughs. “You save us any?”

“Didn’t know you were coming out to sample the night air, otherwise we would have,” I’m grinning so broadly at Lucy that my cheeks hurt. She bites her lip sheepishly and mumbles something about it being too loud inside to hear.

“I bet. Stone, let’s give these guys some peace and quiet,” I say as we get up from our spot on the curb. Lucy’s stammering apologetic nonsense for no good reason at all, but Jeff’s smiling like an idiot.

“Oh yeah, carry on, children,” Stone purrs before following me inside.

***

Cora grabs me by the hand and pulls me back towards the bar. “WE NEED BEER!” she hollers over the din. I’m not arguing with that.

The club hasn’t emptied at all, but for a tiny little person, she cuts through the crowd like a knife. She drops my hand to flag down the bartender and puts down $2 just as I’m trying to get my wallet out of my back pocket.

“No, let me get it –”

She cuts me off. “Your macho is showing again. Come on, let me pay you back” she mouths the last three words “for the pot.”

“If you insist.”

“You bet your ass,” she hands me a bottle and smiles at me with those big, sparkling dark brown eyes. I wish she wasn’t so pretty. And unavailable. And hilarious, and kind, and warm. And unavailable.

“So do you and Billy-Bob – OW” I clutch my shoulder where she’s just punched me “– fine, Alex, do you guys live around here?”

“Yeah, we live on the same floor as Jeff, he didn’t tell you?”

Oh hell, it’s that Alex? This poor girl. I had no idea Cora was Jeff’s neighbor, but I’ve heard a fucking earful about Alex. “No, uh, he didn’t.” No need to tell her what he has actually told me, then.

“And what do you think of our fair city?”

She finishes a swig of beer and says, “not much at all yet, I don’t get out a lot.”

“But you’ve lived here a whole year?”

“Yeah, but I work a lot, and I go to Alaska every summer, and –”

I’m just cutting her off to ask what the hell she goes to Alaska for when Mike materializes out of the crowd and slumps against my shoulder.

“Heyyy Stone,” he slurs with a big dopey grin, and Cora smiles back with a quick bite of her lip.

“Friend of yours?” she asks with raised eyebrows.

“Mike, Cora. Cora, Mike. Cora, Mike is a guitar genius and a stinky drunk. Mike, Cora is a nerdy redneck and a friend of Chris’s.”

Mike garbles something about how any friend of Chris’s is a friend of his, much to Cora’s amusement, just as Chris appears over Cora’s shoulder with his arm around Susan.

“Looks like we got a drinker,” he says with a gentle smile. “You good, Cready?”

Mike hiccups and gives a thumbs up.

“How are you guys getting home?” Susan frowns. “You all look a little south of sober.”

“I left my car at Jeff’s place, we were gonna walk back in a little bit.” Whenever Jeff’s done putting the moves on Lucy, I guess.

Cora pipes up. “Oh, we drove, Lucy and me, I bet she’s still sober. Wanna ride?”

“Thanks, friendofChris’s,” Mike mumbles drowsily, still leaning heavily on me.

“You and Lucy?”

“Yeah, she lives in our building. Keep up, Stoner,” she winks at me. “Let me go find her.” She ducks off into the crowd, leaving me to support Mike and catch up with Chris about the tour they’re about to go on.

A few minutes later, she reappears with the two lovebirds in tow, and I notice they’re holding hands.

“I found your bassist,” she says with a sly smile.

“Fuck yes,” muses the drunk on my shoulder.

“Former bassist,” I roll my eyes and Jeff uses his free hand to flip me off with a lazy smile. “Lucy,“ I go on, “would you take pity on a bunch of drunks and give us a ride, please?”

“Of course,” she says with a smile, but she’s looking at Jeff when she says it. These two are so sweet it’s nauseating.

We say our goodbyes to Chris and Susan and make our way out to Lucy’s beat-up Corolla. I unload an almost-passed out Mike into one back seat before heading around the car to get in on the other side. Jeff’s lining up behind me, but Cora cuts in front of both of us.

“You’re the tallest, Jeff, I can’t let you squish back here! You should sit up front.” She sounds sincere, but there’s something in her face that loudly broadcasts mischief. Jeff just shrugs, clearly not willing to argue with anything that puts him closer to Lucy, and Cora tucks herself into the middle and pats the vacant seat impatiently. “You’re bossy, Red,” I laugh as I climb in.

“You’re ungrateful, Stoner.”

“God, you two are like an old married couple already,” Jeff grumbles from the front seat as Lucy brings the ancient car to life.

I breathe a sigh of relief as we pull into the parking lot of their apartment building. Lucy’s a very sweet girl, but I almost feel like we would have been safer with one of the drunks at the wheel. I hate to use the fucking stereotype, but she legitimately is one of the worst drivers I’ve ever seen.

On the other hand, I spent the entire car ride crammed in next to Cora and having a fabulous time bickering with her relentlessly about the music on the radio. As we wave goodnight to Lucy on the 3rd floor and Cora on the 4th, I already miss the way her hair smells and the way she talks with her hands and the way she swats at me when she’s annoyed and the way she gets my humor and the way she makes me feel like we’re the only ones around for miles. So, it’s not all bad.

#behind the sun #chapter 4 #fanfiction #fanfic #chris cornell #kim thayil #matt cameron #ben shepherd #stone gossard #jeff ament #mike mccready #pearl jam #soundgarden

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iamtheredwitch · 6 years ago

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In December 2014, I moved to Austin, Texas from Seattle. Immediately after my move, I was sexually assaulted at an Extended Stay Hotel in Houston on December 21st, 2014. I was on tour with a metal band selling their merchandise when this happened. I was also the designated exclusive female on the tour. Technically, what happened to me was definitive rape, but I hate that word. I usually use the term “sexual assault” when speaking to others about this incident.

The word “rape” sounds extremely aggressive and victimizing. That is the reason I do not like to use it. I don’t often speak of the incident because I do not want it to affect the way I live my life more than it already does. Ever since the assault, I refuse to stay at the Extended Stay hotel chain. Boycotting this business spares me the agony of traumatic flashbacks and anxiety that spending the night there would inflict upon me. I never want to relive any emotions from that moment.

Being “sexually assaulted”, as I like to call it, had an enormous effect on my personal and professional life. I have been unable to successfully date a man since then for fear that he might find out I am a “victim” of sexual assault. I feel ashamed that I allowed myself to be in a position where a man could take advantage of me in such a violating fashion. I feel like the average, probable, romantic mate would not want to be intimate with a woman who consumed enough illicit narcotics to allow unwanted penile penetration. Of course, I’m speaking only about myself in this somewhat derogatory fashion. We, ourselves are the only ones who see our personal flaws in such a magnified sense after all.

Nobody around me was aware of how ashamed I felt about being sexually assaulted. The guilt I carried translated into paranoia. I thought all men I wanted to date knew about my plight. I felt like they could all see right fucking through me. For whatever psychological reason, I blamed myself for the incident while feeling like other victims of sexual assault did nothing to provoke their attacker. Then why did I place such an unfair standard upon myself? The single caveat of my entire life was that I remained in control and independent. Denying the loss of personal control that started my assault made me feel independent.

I sometimes feel unworthy of love because I am a sex crime survivor. I feel damaged and my self-esteem has been torn to shreds. Even more so, the music industry is so incestuous that almost everyone I associated with knows, or is friends with, my attacker because he plays in a prominent, successful rock band. Everyone knows that you have to agree with the general consensus of idiots or risk rejection.

I had a difficult time escaping the events of my assault. The sound that offensively protruded from my assailant’s mouth when he ejaculated played on repeat in my head for months. Maybe the idiots were right. Maybe it was easier to sweep the whole situation under the rug and never even think about it again.

I was terrified of intimacy after this. For a long time after the assault, I avoided men altogether. My mind associated all men with rape and assumed them to be dangerous predators. I lived in fear. I ignored the whole issue by going on tour with my band, working on the road for other bands, using outrageous amounts of drugs, and drinking myself stupid every night on tour. The worst moments came, not when I was on tour, but when I was home alone in Austin. I was left to face my demons head on without a substance to gently cradle my ego.

I turned myself into a heroin addict soon after my assault in hopes of filling the part of me that my rapist, who will henceforth be referred to as “the monster”, took from me. In the three years following the assault, I was angry and filled with resentment. I was a powder keg waiting to explode. Unbeknownst to me, I was on the road to a total and complete nervous breakdown.

I was working in the rock and metal music industry at the time, I played in my own band, and when I wasn’t with my band, I was working for popular bands and going on significant tours. I had accomplished just about everything I had dreamed of, yet I was unhappy and I felt completely alone. While on tour with these bands, I kept thorough journals of my paranoid, depraved, and out of control life as a traveling musician, heroin addict and alcoholic struggling with mental illness. That, along with many significant stories and essays from this period, is what you are about to read.

October 12th, 2016 was the last time I used heroin. I woke up one morning on an unfamiliar mattress in a darkened room. I opened my eyes to see a cockroach crawling across the white tile floor that had been stained grey from not being cleaned in months. The air was thick with the sour smell of black tar heroin that I had been smoking for the last two days.

My stomach was churning with cramps and pain from an abortion I had gotten just a few days prior. This abortion was the reason I used to justify my heroin bender. As I stood up to gather my belongings, I realized that blood had been running down my legs all night and formed a small pool of my unborn child's remains on the dirty, heroin stained mattress.

I was in my friend's apartment in Houston ironically. He was more of a heroin dealer than a friend I guess you could say. While searching for my car keys and shoes so I could leave, I noticed my friend was lying on the mattress next to me completely indisposed. I had known him for a few years, but By this time, he was almost unrecognizable from the amount of heroin and illicit drugs he consumed. After yelling his name in an attempt to wake him from his heroin-induced slumber, I continued to search for my keys and purse. He was unresponsive.

I checked him for a pulse to make sure he was still alive. He had one. That was good enough for me. I grabbed my belongings and walked out the door. Junkies don't care about anyone but themselves and this afternoon was a major turning point in my career as a junkie. I still couldn't find my shoes. Fuck it, I thought and left without them. Fuck it was a rhetoric that had become all too familiar in my life.

As I opened the apartment door to leave, the sun blinded me. I barely noticed the eviction notice that had been shoved carelessly in the frame of my friend’s apartment door. For about twenty minutes I walked around the neighborhood barefoot trying to find my car and wondering how I let my life got so fucked up and out of control.

Just a year prior I had everything I had ever dreamed of and now I was the typical rock and roll cliché; I was an out of work, washed up junkie who’s only friends were the people that texted her twice per year in hopes of getting free concert tickets. I was twenty-seven years old and Knocking on death’s door.

Despite the shit show of addiction and mental illness this book will portray, not all times were bad. I had the time of my life out on the road with bands I never thought I would ever have the chance to work for or be around. I became best friends with people I never even thought I would get the chance to meet.The journals and stories I kept paint a realistic picture of addiction, mental illness, triumph, survival, and everything in between.

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arodalwa · 8 months ago

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coffeeatthekeyboard-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Story Bit: Summer Fears - 1

Story bit that came to me while I was on my way down to Seattle yesterday. Thankfully, my roommate was driving so I was able to scratch it out onto paper.

Summer was a dangerous time to be one of the hidden ones. Too small to fight against the predators of the outside world, to farm their own goods, and certainly to participate in the goods economy that the humans thrived on. They lived in the forgotten spaces and survived on unmissed scraps, relying on schedules and predictable routine to protect themselves. But summer... summer always messed that up.

And Sara hated the season, dreading its return every year before spring had even begun. It'd taken her family from her when she'd been a young teenager, in the house they'd lived in together across town. Summer meant that the human family had packed up their pets and left for the weekend like they did so often. It'd always been a nice time, when they didn't have to worry about being seen.

She'd never needed to know the term 'fumigation' before that. Nor had she needed to pay attention to the conversations of the family. Now... that had all changed.

Starting completely over was not easy for a tiny hidden one, especially when she was all on her own, but Sara couldn't risk bringing anything along that couldn't be washed any more than she could stand to stay.

The new house didn't have some of the dangers that the one one had. Fewer bugs, no rodents, and no teenagers. There were new dangers instead, or at least things that would grow up to be new dangers. There'd been a new baby born just months ago, and the husband had brought a puppy home last week. Neither were free to roam yet, and that was a true blessing. But she still took care to linger near the couple in the evenings when they were both home to talk over their plans. Talk that warned her.

Which was when she heard the other bit of news that could devastate any hidden family. Extended vacation. A whole month with no food being brought in, no faucets being left dripping, no windows left cracked open.

And they'd be leaving in two days. A surprise, delightful for wife but horrible and dreadful for Sara. How could she gather a month's worth of supplies in two days?

Those two days were spent in a mad scramble any time the pair left the house or settled down for long enough for her to dash out and grab whatever edibles she could find, or whatever water she had containers for. Her own safe schedules, built over years of habit and tradition, were all thrown out. And it was just not enough.

Sara watched them leave from the safety of an upstairs window, a sick feeling of dread settling into her gut. Could she hope to find another place if she had to leave again? It barely felt like she'd been here long enough to even start to settle down.

Tomorrow, she would think about it tomorrow. Who knew, maybe she could actually let herself sleep in for once. After barely sleeping a wink since she'd heard the news, she needed the rest. And it would help her think this thing over clearly.

When morning came, Sara took her time rising and eating the small breakfast she allowed herself as she worked through this problem in her mind. The humans wouldn't be bringing any fresh food, she knew that. But... But surely they wouldn't have thrown everything out when they'd cleaned out the kitchen. Flour, rice, sugar, baking powder, all those things they kept sealed tight in jars that were normally out of her reach because they took time and tools to get to, she had the time to pry open and collect. She could do this. And if it turned out she'd have to leave at some point, she'd have more time to get herself ready to go with food packed and supplies collected.

She'd be okay. And until then, she'd just mind her rations of the fresh items so she could keep her nutrition up.

It'd been a long time since she'd been able to spend a whole day gathering supplies without worrying about being seen or having to be gone by a certain time.

Which was precisely what Sara was doing come that afternoon, climbing up the side of the flour jar she'd pried open with a creative use of pullies and levers. Instead of just lowering a bucket this time, she was going to climb all the way in and stuff the bag she'd brought along absolutely full. Enough flour for weeks. And then she wanted to do the same with another one, and other. To actually make up that back stock her parents had always been trying to build for the family. She'd drawn up a list of all those long term ingredients she wanted to stock up on, enough to cover herself for all those times when she couldn't go out and get food. When there was company over and too many humans in the house, when she was sick, or just when she had too many other things to do in her own hidden home. One thing Sara had always envied listening in on the human conversations was the idea of days off. Days when they did things around the home, but didn't have to go out and work hard just to support themselves. Days off didn't exist when it was a choice between going and getting supplies or starving. She wanted them too. And this was her chance to earn them.

That strange optimism that'd crept on her distracted Sara from paying attention to all the other things she should have been minding. Like a key in the front door, followed by footsteps in the hall. Inside the shuttered pantry, inside the jar in the shuttered pantry, she didn't even see the human entering the kitchen. But she saw the sudden flood of light as the switch flicked on, and heard the excited barking of the family's puppy.

It was still here?! And there was a human too?!

In her panic, Sara lost her grip on the rope and fell into the flour, landing with a coughing fit as it flew into the air around her. Covering her face, she blindly grabbed for the rope again, losing her footing right as she grasped hold. It caught against something, but just for a moment before there was a soft impact in the floor beside her. As Sara groped around to find out what it was, she felt her heart sink. The pencil stub she'd wedged up top to keep the hinged lip open when she was inside. It'd fallen in with her.

Squinting against the flour coating her face and everything else, she saw exactly what she'd dreaded. The lid was done. She was trapped in here. The only thing that even kept it open enough to let air in was her rope dangling over the lip, tied to the hinge itself.

As she fought not to cry at the realization for fear of her tears gluing her eyes shut, she could hear the human outside the pantry talking to the puppy. A woman's voice, not one she recognized. Not that that mattered. The wife hadn't known she was there any more than this stranger would.

And then things got worse, because the pantry door opened.

Numbly, Sara realized that she'd never seen a human this close up before. By all the hidden gods, she was huge. And searching for something. Did she somehow know that Sara was there? Had the family known, and sent someone after her? Sara froze, feeling those huge eyes sweep right over her flour covered body. And past, to the box of dog treats next to her. The human grabbed one of them out and turned away, closing the pantry again behind her.

She hadn't been seen? Sara didn't know if that was a good or a bad thing, but she didn't have time to decide either before the shutters flew open again so suddenly that Sara automatically crouched down with a muffled yelp of fear. In the doorway, the human woman stood with wide eyes, staring right at her.

TBC

#story bit #Giant/tiny #early draft so excuse mistakes and roughness

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top40gordy · 6 years ago

Link

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/my-family-s-slave?utm_source=pocket-newtab

This article was originally published on May 16, 2017, by The Atlantic, and is republished at https://getpocket.com/explore/item/my-family-s-slave?utm_source=pocket-newtab with permission. That is where this blogger viewed it on September 14, 2019 and shared it on Tumblr.com.

Pocket Worthy·

Stories to fuel your mind.

My Family’s Slave

She lived with us for 56 years. She raised me and my siblings without pay. I was 11, a typical American kid, before I realized who she was.

The Atlantic | Alex Tizon

All photos courtesy of Alex Tizon and his family.

The ashes filled a black plastic box about the size of a toaster. It weighed three and a half pounds. I put it in a canvas tote bag and packed it in my suitcase this past July for the transpacific flight to Manila. From there I would travel by car to a rural village. When I arrived, I would hand over all that was left of the woman who had spent 56 years as a slave in my family’s household.

Her name was Eudocia Tomas Pulido. We called her Lola. She was 4 foot 11, with mocha-brown skin and almond eyes that I can still see looking into mine—my first memory. She was 18 years old when my grandfather gave her to my mother as a gift, and when my family moved to the United States, we brought her with us. No other word but slave encompassed the life she lived. Her days began before everyone else woke and ended after we went to bed. She prepared three meals a day, cleaned the house, waited on my parents, and took care of my four siblings and me. My parents never paid her, and they scolded her constantly. She wasn’t kept in leg irons, but she might as well have been. So many nights, on my way to the bathroom, I’d spot her sleeping in a corner, slumped against a mound of laundry, her fingers clutching a garment she was in the middle of folding.

To our American neighbors, we were model immigrants, a poster family. They told us so. My father had a law degree, my mother was on her way to becoming a doctor, and my siblings and I got good grades and always said “please” and “thank you.” We never talked about Lola. Our secret went to the core of who we were and, at least for us kids, who we wanted to be.

After my mother died of leukemia, in 1999, Lola came to live with me in a small town north of Seattle. I had a family, a career, a house in the suburbs—the American dream. And then I had a slave.

***

At baggage claim in Manila, I unzipped my suitcase to make sure Lola’s ashes were still there. Outside, I inhaled the familiar smell: a thick blend of exhaust and waste, of ocean and sweet fruit and sweat.

Early the next morning I found a driver, an affable middle-aged man who went by the nickname “Doods,” and we hit the road in his truck, weaving through traffic. The scene always stunned me. The sheer number of cars and motorcycles and jeepneys. The people weaving between them and moving on the sidewalks in great brown rivers. The street vendors in bare feet trotting alongside cars, hawking cigarettes and cough drops and sacks of boiled peanuts. The child beggars pressing their faces against the windows.

Doods and I were headed to the place where Lola’s story began, up north in the central plains: Tarlac province. Rice country. The home of a cigar-chomping army lieutenant named Tomas Asuncion, my grandfather. The family stories paint Lieutenant Tom as a formidable man given to eccentricity and dark moods, who had lots of land but little money and kept mistresses in separate houses on his property. His wife died giving birth to their only child, my mother. She was raised by a series of utusans, or “people who take commands.”

Slavery has a long history on the islands. Before the Spanish came, islanders enslaved other islanders, usually war captives, criminals, or debtors. Slaves came in different varieties, from warriors who could earn their freedom through valor to household servants who were regarded as property and could be bought and sold or traded. High-status slaves could own low-status slaves, and the low could own the lowliest. Some chose to enter servitude simply to survive: In exchange for their labor, they might be given food, shelter, and protection.

When the Spanish arrived, in the 1500s, they enslaved islanders and later brought African and Indian slaves. The Spanish Crown eventually began phasing out slavery at home and in its colonies, but parts of the Philippines were so far-flung that authorities couldn’t keep a close eye. Traditions persisted under different guises, even after the U.S. took control of the islands in 1898. Today even the poor can have utusans or katulongs (“helpers”) or kasambahays (“domestics”), as long as there are people even poorer. The pool is deep.

Lieutenant Tom had as many as three families of utusans living on his property. In the spring of 1943, with the islands under Japanese occupation, he brought home a girl from a village down the road. She was a cousin from a marginal side of the family, rice farmers. The lieutenant was shrewd—he saw that this girl was penniless, unschooled, and likely to be malleable. Her parents wanted her to marry a pig farmer twice her age, and she was desperately unhappy but had nowhere to go. Tom approached her with an offer: She could have food and shelter if she would commit to taking care of his daughter, who had just turned 12.

Lola agreed, not grasping that the deal was for life.

“She is my gift to you,” Lieutenant Tom told my mother.

“I don’t want her,” my mother said, knowing she had no choice.

Lieutenant Tom went off to fight the Japanese, leaving Mom behind with Lola in his creaky house in the provinces. Lola fed, groomed, and dressed my mother. When they walked to the market, Lola held an umbrella to shield her from the sun. At night, when Lola’s other tasks were done—feeding the dogs, sweeping the floors, folding the laundry that she had washed by hand in the Camiling River—she sat at the edge of my mother’s bed and fanned her to sleep.

Lola Pulido (shown on the left at age 18) came from a poor family in a rural part of the Philippines. The author’s grandfather “gave” her to his daughter as a gift.

One day during the war Lieutenant Tom came home and caught my mother in a lie—something to do with a boy she wasn’t supposed to talk to. Tom, furious, ordered her to “stand at the table.” Mom cowered with Lola in a corner. Then, in a quivering voice, she told her father that Lola would take her punishment. Lola looked at Mom pleadingly, then without a word walked to the dining table and held on to the edge. Tom raised the belt and delivered 12 lashes, punctuating each one with a word. You. Do. Not. Lie. To. Me. You. Do. Not. Lie. To. Me. Lola made no sound.

My mother, in recounting this story late in her life, delighted in the outrageousness of it, her tone seeming to say, Can you believe I did that? When I brought it up with Lola, she asked to hear Mom’s version. She listened intently, eyes lowered, and afterward, she looked at me with sadness and said simply, “Yes. It was like that.”

Seven years later, in 1950, Mom married my father and moved to Manila, bringing Lola along. Lieutenant Tom had long been haunted by demons, and in 1951 he silenced them with a .32‑caliber slug to his temple. Mom almost never talked about it. She had his temperament—moody, imperial, secretly fragile—and she took his lessons to heart, among them the proper way to be a provincial matrona: You must embrace your role as the giver of commands. You must keep those beneath you in their place at all times, for their own good and the good of the household. They might cry and complain, but their souls will thank you. They will love you for helping them be what God intended.

Lola at age 27 with Arthur, the author’s older brother, before coming to the U.S.

My brother Arthur was born in 1951. I came next, followed by three more siblings in rapid succession. My parents expected Lola to be as devoted to us kids as she was to them. While she looked after us, my parents went to school and earned advanced degrees, joining the ranks of so many others with fancy diplomas but no jobs. Then the big break: Dad was offered a job in Foreign Affairs as a commercial analyst. The salary would be meager, but the position was in America—a place he and Mom had grown up dreaming of, where everything they hoped for could come true.

Dad was allowed to bring his family and one domestic. Figuring they would both have to work, my parents needed Lola to care for the kids and the house. My mother informed Lola, and to her great irritation, Lola didn’t immediately acquiesce. Years later Lola told me she was terrified. “It was too far,” she said. “Maybe your Mom and Dad won’t let me go home.”

In the end what convinced Lola was my father’s promise that things would be different in America. He told her that as soon as he and Mom got on their feet, they’d give her an “allowance.” Lola could send money to her parents, to all her relations in the village. Her parents lived in a hut with a dirt floor. Lola could build them a concrete house, could change their lives forever. Imagine.

We landed in Los Angeles on May 12, 1964, all our belongings in cardboard boxes tied with rope. Lola had been with my mother for 21 years by then. In many ways she was more of a parent to me than either my mother or my father. Hers was the first face I saw in the morning and the last one I saw at night. As a baby, I uttered Lola’s name (which I first pronounced “Oh-ah”) long before I learned to say “Mom” or “Dad.” As a toddler, I refused to go to sleep unless Lola was holding me, or at least nearby.

I was 4 years old when we arrived in the U.S.—too young to question Lola’s place in our family. But as my siblings and I grew up on this other shore, we came to see the world differently. The leap across the ocean brought about a leap in consciousness that Mom and Dad couldn’t, or wouldn’t, make.

***

Lola never got that allowance. She asked my parents about it in a roundabout way a couple of years into our life in America. Her mother had fallen ill (with what I would later learn was dysentery), and her family couldn’t afford the medicine she needed. “Pwede ba?” she said to my parents. Is it possible? Mom let out a sigh. “How could you even ask?,” Dad responded in Tagalog. “You see how hard up we are. Don’t you have any shame?”

My parents had borrowed money for the move to the U.S. and then borrowed more in order to stay. My father was transferred from the consulate general in L.A. to the Philippine consulate in Seattle. He was paid $5,600 a year. He took a second job cleaning trailers, and a third as a debt collector. Mom got work as a technician in a couple of medical labs. We barely saw them, and when we did they were often exhausted and snappish.

Mom would come home and upbraid Lola for not cleaning the house well enough or for forgetting to bring in the mail. “Didn’t I tell you I want the letters here when I come home?” she would say in Tagalog, her voice venomous. “It’s not hard naman! An idiot could remember.” Then my father would arrive and take his turn. When Dad raised his voice, everyone in the house shrank. Sometimes my parents would team up until Lola broke down crying, almost as though that was their goal.

It confused me: My parents were good to my siblings and me, and we loved them. But they’d be affectionate to us kids one moment and vile to Lola the next. I was 11 or 12 when I began to see Lola’s situation clearly. By then Arthur, eight years my senior, had been seething for a long time. He was the one who introduced the word slave into my understanding of what Lola was. Before he said it I’d thought of her as just an unfortunate member of the household. I hated when my parents yelled at her, but it hadn’t occurred to me that they—and the whole arrangement—could be immoral.

L: Lola raised the author (left) and his siblings and was sometimes the only adult at home for days at a time. R: The author (second from the left) with his parents, siblings, and Lola five years after they arrived in the U.S.

“Do you know anybody treated the way she’s treated?” Arthur said. “Who lives the way she lives?” He summed up Lola’s reality: Wasn’t paid. Toiled every day. Was tongue-lashed for sitting too long or falling asleep too early. Was struck for talking back. Wore hand-me-downs. Ate scraps and leftovers by herself in the kitchen. Rarely left the house. Had no friends or hobbies outside the family. Had no private quarters. (Her designated place to sleep in each house we lived in was always whatever was left—a couch or storage area or corner in my sisters’ bedroom. She often slept among piles of laundry.)

We couldn’t identify a parallel anywhere except in slave characters on TV and in the movies. I remember watching a Western called The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. John Wayne plays Tom Doniphon, a gunslinging rancher who barks orders at his servant, Pompey, whom he calls his “boy.” Pick him up, Pompey. Pompey, go find the doctor. Get on back to work, Pompey! Docile and obedient, Pompey calls his master “Mistah Tom.” They have a complex relationship. Tom forbids Pompey from attending school but opens the way for Pompey to drink in a whites-only saloon. Near the end, Pompey saves his master from a fire. It’s clear Pompey both fears and loves Tom, and he mourns when Tom dies. All of this is peripheral to the main story of Tom’s showdown with bad guy Liberty Valance, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Pompey. I remember thinking: Lola is Pompey, Pompey is Lola.

One night when Dad found out that my sister Ling, who was then 9, had missed dinner, he barked at Lola for being lazy. “I tried to feed her,” Lola said, as Dad stood over her and glared. Her feeble defense only made him angrier, and he punched her just below the shoulder. Lola ran out of the room and I could hear her wailing, an animal cry.

“Ling said she wasn’t hungry,” I said.

My parents turned to look at me. They seemed startled. I felt the twitching in my face that usually preceded tears, but I wouldn’t cry this time. In Mom’s eyes was a shadow of something I hadn’t seen before. Jealousy?

“Are you defending your Lola?,” Dad said. “Is that what you’re doing?”

“Ling said she wasn’t hungry,” I said again, almost in a whisper.

I was 13. It was my first attempt to stick up for the woman who spent her days watching over me. The woman who used to hum Tagalog melodies as she rocked me to sleep, and when I got older would dress and feed me and walk me to school in the mornings and pick me up in the afternoons. Once, when I was sick for a long time and too weak to eat, she chewed my food for me and put the small pieces in my mouth to swallow. One summer when I had plaster casts on both legs (I had problem joints), she bathed me with a washcloth, brought medicine in the middle of the night, and helped me through months of rehabilitation. I was cranky through it all. She didn’t complain or lose patience, ever.

To now hear her wailing made me crazy.

***

In the old country, my parents felt no need to hide their treatment of Lola. In America, they treated her worse but took pains to conceal it. When guests came over, my parents would either ignore her or, if questioned, lie and quickly change the subject. For five years in North Seattle, we lived across the street from the Missler's, a rambunctious family of eight who introduced us to things like mustard, salmon fishing, and mowing the lawn. Football on TV. Yelling during football. Lola would come out to serve food and drinks during games, and my parents would smile and thank her before she quickly disappeared. “Who’s that little lady you keep in the kitchen?,” Big Jim, the Missler patriarch, once asked. A relative from back home, Dad said. Very shy.

Billy Missler, my best friend, didn’t buy it. He spent enough time at our house, whole weekends sometimes, to catch glimpses of my family’s secret. He once overheard my mother yelling in the kitchen, and when he barged in to investigate found Mom red-faced and glaring at Lola, who was quaking in a corner. I came in a few seconds later. The look on Billy’s face was a mix of embarrassment and perplexity. What was that? I waved it off and told him to forget it.

I think Billy felt sorry for Lola. He’d rave about her cooking, and make her laugh like I’d never seen. During sleepovers, she’d make his favorite Filipino dish, beef tapa over white rice. Cooking was Lola’s only eloquence. I could tell by what she served whether she was merely feeding us or saying she loved us.

When I once referred to Lola as a distant aunt, Billy reminded me that when we’d first met I’d said she was my grandmother.

“Well, she’s kind of both,” I said mysteriously.

“Why is she always working?”

“She likes to work,” I said.

“Your dad and mom—why do they yell at her?”

“Her hearing isn’t so good …”

Admitting the truth would have meant exposing us all. We spent our first decade in the country learning the ways of the new land and trying to fit in. Having a slave did not fit. Having a slave gave me grave doubts about what kind of people we were, what kind of place we came from. Whether we deserved to be accepted. I was ashamed of it all, including my complicity. Didn’t I eat the food she cooked, and wear the clothes she washed and ironed and hung in the closet? But losing her would have been devastating.

There was another reason for secrecy: Lola’s travel papers had expired in 1969, five years after we arrived in the U.S. She’d come on a special passport linked to my father’s job. After a series of fallings-out with his superiors, Dad quit the consulate and declared his intent to stay in the United States. He arranged for permanent-resident status for his family, but Lola wasn’t eligible. He was supposed to send her back.

Lola at age 51, in 1976. Her mother died a few years before this picture was taken; her father a few years after. Both times, she wanted desperately to go home.

Lola’s mother, Fermina, died in 1973; her father, Hilario, in 1979. Both times she wanted desperately to go home. Both times my parents said “Sorry.” No money, no time. The kids needed her. My parents also feared for themselves, they admitted to me later. If the authorities had found out about Lola, as they surely would have if she’d tried to leave, my parents could have gotten into trouble, possibly even been deported. They couldn’t risk it. Lola’s legal status became what Filipinos call tago nang tago, or TNT—“on the run.” She stayed TNT for almost 20 years.

After each of her parents died, Lola was sullen and silent for months. She barely responded when my parents badgered her. But the badgering never let up. Lola kept her head down and did her work.

***

My father’s resignation started a turbulent period. Money got tighter, and my parents turned on each other. They uprooted the family again and again—Seattle to Honolulu back to Seattle to the southeast Bronx and finally to the truck-stop town of Umatilla, Oregon, population 750. During all this moving around, Mom often worked 24-hour shifts, first as a medical intern and then as a resident, and Dad would disappear for days, working odd jobs but also (we’d later learn) womanizing and who knows what else. Once, he came home and told us that he’d lost our new station wagon playing blackjack.

For days in a row, Lola would be the only adult in the house. She got to know the details of our lives in a way that my parents never had the mental space for. We brought friends home, and she’d listen to us talk about school and girls and boys and whatever else was on our minds. Just from conversations she overheard, she could list the first name of every girl I had a crush on from sixth grade through high school.

When I was 15, Dad left the family for good. I didn’t want to believe it at the time, but the fact was that he deserted us kids and abandoned Mom after 25 years of marriage. She wouldn’t become a licensed physician for another year, and her specialty—internal medicine—wasn’t especially lucrative. Dad didn’t pay child support, so money was always a struggle.

My mom kept herself together enough to go to work, but at night she’d crumble in self-pity and despair. Her main source of comfort during this time: Lola. As Mom snapped at her over small things, Lola attended to her even more—cooking Mom’s favorite meals, cleaning her bedroom with extra care. I’d find the two of them late at night at the kitchen counter, griping and telling stories about Dad, sometimes laughing wickedly, other times working themselves into a fury over his transgressions. They barely noticed us kids flitting in and out.

One night I heard Mom weeping and ran into the living room to find her slumped in Lola’s arms. Lola was talking softly to her, the way she used to with my siblings and me when we were young. I lingered, then went back to my room, scared for my mom and awed by Lola.

***

Doods was humming. I’d dozed for what felt like a minute and awoke to his happy melody. “Two hours more,” he said. I checked the plastic box in the tote bag by my side—still there—and looked up to see open road. The MacArthur Highway. I glanced at the time. “Hey, you said ‘two hours’ two hours ago,” I said. Doods just hummed.

His not knowing anything about the purpose of my journey was a relief. I had enough interior dialogue going on. I was no better than my parents. I could have done more to free Lola. To make her life better. Why didn’t I? I could have turned in my parents, I suppose. It would have blown up my family in an instant. Instead, my siblings and I kept everything to ourselves, and rather than blowing up in an instant, my family broke apart slowly.

Doods and I passed through beautiful country. Not travel-brochure beautiful but real and alive and, compared with the city, elegantly spare. Mountains ran parallel to the highway on each side, the Zambales Mountains to the west, the Sierra Madre Range to the east. From ridge to ridge, west to east, I could see every shade of green all the way to almost black.

Doods pointed to a shadowy outline in the distance. Mount Pinatubo. I’d come here in 1991 to report on the aftermath of its eruption, the second-largest of the 20th century. Volcanic mudflows called lahars continued for more than a decade, burying ancient villages, filling in rivers and valleys, and wiping out entire ecosystems. The lahars reached deep into the foothills of Tarlac province, where Lola’s parents had spent their entire lives, and where she and my mother had once lived together. So much of our family record had been lost in wars and floods, and now parts were buried under 20 feet of mud.

Life here is routinely visited by cataclysm. Killer typhoons that strike several times a year. Bandit insurgencies that never end. Somnolent mountains that one day decide to wake up. The Philippines isn’t like China or Brazil, whose mass might absorb the trauma. This is a nation of scattered rocks in the sea. When disaster hits, the place goes under for a while. Then it resurfaces and life proceeds, and you can behold a scene like the one Doods and I were driving through, and the simple fact that it’s still there makes it beautiful.

Rice fields in Mayantoc, near where Lola was born.

***

A couple of years after my parents split, my mother remarried and demanded Lola’s fealty to her new husband, a Croatian immigrant named Ivan, whom she had met through a friend. Ivan had never finished high school. He’d been married four times and was an inveterate gambler who enjoyed being supported by my mother and attended to by Lola.

Ivan brought out a side of Lola I’d never seen. His marriage to my mother was volatile from the start, and money—especially his use of her money—was the main issue. Once, during an argument in which Mom was crying and Ivan was yelling, Lola walked over and stood between them. She turned to Ivan and firmly said his name. He looked at Lola, blinked, and sat down.

My sister Inday and I were floored. Ivan was about 250 pounds, and his baritone could shake the walls. Lola put him in his place with a single word. I saw this happen a few other times, but for the most part, Lola served Ivan unquestioningly, just as Mom wanted her to. I had a hard time watching Lola vassalize herself to another person, especially someone like Ivan. But what set the stage for my blowup with Mom was something more mundane.

She used to get angry whenever Lola felt ill. She didn’t want to deal with the disruption and the expense and would accuse Lola of faking or failing to take care of herself. Mom chose the second tack when, in the late 1970s, Lola’s teeth started falling out. She’d been saying for months that her mouth hurt.

“That’s what happens when you don’t brush properly,” Mom told her.

I said that Lola needed to see a dentist. She was in her 50s and had never been to one. I was attending college an hour away, and I brought it up again and again on my frequent trips home. A year went by, then two. Lola took aspirin every day for the pain, and her teeth looked like a crumbling Stonehenge. One night, after watching her chew bread on the side of her mouth that still had a few good molars, I lost it.

Mom and I argued into the night, each of us sobbing at different points. She said she was tired of working her fingers to the bone supporting everybody, and sick of her children always taking Lola’s side, and why didn’t we just take our goddamn Lola, she’d never wanted her in the first place, and she wished to God she hadn’t given birth to an arrogant, sanctimonious phony like me.

I let her words sink in. Then I came back at her, saying she would know all about being a phony, her whole life was a masquerade, and if she stopped feeling sorry for herself for one minute she’d see that Lola could barely eat because her goddamn teeth were rotting out of her goddamn head, and couldn’t she think of her just this once as a real person instead of a slave kept alive to serve her?

“A slave,” Mom said, weighing the word. “A slave?”

The night ended when she declared that I would never understand her relationship with Lola. Never. Her voice was so guttural and pained that thinking of it even now, so many years later, feels like a punch to the stomach. It’s a terrible thing to hate your own mother, and that night I did. The look in her eyes made clear that she felt the same way about me.

The fight only fed Mom’s fear that Lola had stolen the kids from her, and she made Lola pay for it. Mom drove her harder. Tormented her by saying, “I hope you’re happy now that your kids hate me.” When we helped Lola with housework, Mom would fume. “You’d better go to sleep now, Lola,” she’d say sarcastically. “You’ve been working too hard. Your kids are worried about you.” Later she’d take Lola into a bedroom for a talk, and Lola would walk out with puffy eyes.

Lola finally begged us to stop trying to help her.

Why do you stay? we asked.

“Who will cook?” she said, which I took to mean, Who would do everything? Who would take care of us? Of Mom? Another time she said, “Where will I go?” This struck me as closer to a real answer. Coming to America had been a mad dash, and before we caught a breath a decade had gone by. We turned around, and a second decade was closing out. Lola’s hair had turned gray. She’d heard that relatives back home who hadn’t received the promised support were wondering what had happened to her. She was ashamed to return.

She had no contacts in America and no facility for getting around. Phones puzzled her. Mechanical things—ATMs, intercoms, vending machines, anything with a keyboard—made her panic. Fast-talking people left her speechless, and her own broken English did the same to them. She couldn’t make an appointment, arrange a trip, fill out a form, or order a meal without help.

I got Lola an ATM card linked to my bank account and taught her how to use it. She succeeded once, but the second time she got flustered, and she never tried again. She kept the card because she considered it a gift from me.

I also tried to teach her to drive. She dismissed the idea with a wave of her hand, but I picked her up and carried her to the car and planted her in the driver’s seat, both of us laughing. I spent 20 minutes going over the controls and gauges. Her eyes went from mirthful to terrified. When I turned on the ignition and the dashboard lit up, she was out of the car and in the house before I could say another word. I tried a couple more times.

I thought driving could change her life. She could go places. And if things ever got unbearable with Mom, she could drive away forever.

***

Four lanes became two, pavement turned to gravel. Tricycle drivers wove between cars and water buffalo pulling loads of bamboo. An occasional dog or goat sprinted across the road in front of our truck, almost grazing the bumper. Doods never eased up. Whatever didn’t make it across would be stew today instead of tomorrow—the rule of the road in the provinces.

I took out a map and traced the route to the village of Mayantoc, our destination. Out the window, in the distance, tiny figures folded at the waist like so many bent nails. People harvesting rice, the same way they had for thousands of years. We were getting close.

I tapped the cheap plastic box and regretted not buying a real urn, made of porcelain or rosewood. What would Lola’s people think? Not that many were left. Only one sibling remained in the area, Gregoria, 98 years old, and I was told her memory was failing. Relatives said that whenever she heard Lola’s name, she’d burst out crying and then quickly forget why.

L: Lola and the author in 2008. R: The author with Lola’s sister Gregoria.

I’d been in touch with one of Lola’s nieces. She had the day planned: When I arrived, a low-key memorial, then a prayer, followed by the lowering of the ashes into a plot at the Mayantoc Eternal Bliss Memorial Park. It had been five years since Lola died, but I hadn’t yet said the final goodbye that I knew was about to happen. All day I had been feeling intense grief and resisting the urge to let it out, not wanting to wail in front of Doods. More than the shame I felt for the way my family had treated Lola, more than my anxiety about how her relatives in Mayantoc would treat me, I felt the terrible heaviness of losing her, as if she had died only the day before.

Doods veered northwest on the Romulo Highway, then took a sharp left at Camiling, the town Mom and Lieutenant Tom came from. Two lanes became one, then gravel turned to dirt. The path ran along the Camiling River, clusters of bamboo houses off to the side, green hills ahead. The homestretch.

***

I gave the eulogy at Mom’s funeral, and everything I said was true. That she was brave and spirited. That she’d drawn some short straws but had done the best she could. That she was radiant when she was happy. That she adored her children and gave us a real home—in Salem, Oregon—that through the ’80s and ’90s became the permanent base we’d never had before. That I wished we could thank her one more time. That we all loved her.

I didn’t talk about Lola. Just as I had selectively blocked Lola out of my mind when I was with Mom during her last years. Loving my mother required that kind of mental surgery. It was the only way we could be mother and son—which I wanted, especially after her health started to decline, in the mid‑’90s. Diabetes. Breast cancer. Acute myelogenous leukemia, a fast-growing cancer of the blood and bone marrow. She went from robust to frail seemingly overnight.

After the big fight, I mostly avoided going home, and at age 23 I moved to Seattle. When I did visit I saw a change. Mom was still Mom, but not as relentlessly. She got Lola a fine set of dentures and let her have her own bedroom. She cooperated when my siblings and I set out to change Lola’s TNT status. Ronald Reagan’s landmark immigration bill of 1986 made millions of illegal immigrants eligible for amnesty. It was a long process, but Lola became a citizen in October 1998, four months after my mother was diagnosed with leukemia. Mom lived another year.

During that time, she and Ivan took trips to Lincoln City, on the Oregon coast, and sometimes brought Lola along. Lola loved the ocean. On the other side were the islands she dreamed of returning to. And Lola was never happier than when Mom relaxed around her. An afternoon at the coast or just 15 minutes in the kitchen reminiscing about the old days in the province, and Lola would seem to forget years of torment.

I couldn’t forget so easily. But I did come to see Mom in a different light. Before she died, she gave me her journals, two steamer trunks’ full. Leafing through them as she slept a few feet away, I glimpsed slices of her life that I’d refused to see for years. She’d gone to medical school when not many women did. She’d come to America and fought for respect as both a woman and an immigrant physician. She’d worked for two decades at Fairview Training Center, in Salem, a state institution for the developmentally disabled. The irony: She tended to underdogs most of her professional life. They worshipped her. Female colleagues became close friends. They did silly, girly things together—shoe shopping, throwing dress-up parties at one another’s homes, exchanging gag gifts like penis-shaped soaps and calendars of half-naked men, all while laughing hysterically. Looking through their party pictures reminded me that Mom had a life and an identity apart from the family and Lola. Of course.

Mom wrote in great detail about each of her kids, and how she felt about us on a given day—proud or loving or resentful. And she devoted volumes to her husbands, trying to grasp them as complex characters in her story. We were all persons of consequence. Lola was incidental. When she was mentioned at all, she was a bit character in someone else’s story. “Lola walked my beloved Alex to his new school this morning. I hope he makes new friends quickly so he doesn’t feel so sad about moving again …” There might be two more pages about me, and no other mention of Lola.

The day before Mom died, a Catholic priest came to the house to perform last rites. Lola sat next to my mother’s bed, holding a cup with a straw, poised to raise it to Mom’s mouth. She had become extra attentive to my mother, and extra kind. She could have taken advantage of Mom in her feebleness, even exacted revenge, but she did the opposite.

The priest asked Mom whether there was anything she wanted to forgive or be forgiven for. She scanned the room with heavy-lidded eyes, said nothing. Then, without looking at Lola, she reached over and placed an open hand on her head. She didn’t say a word.

***

Lola was 75 when she came to stay with me. I was married with two young daughters, living in a cozy house on a wooded lot. From the second story, we could see Puget Sound. We gave Lola a bedroom and license to do whatever she wanted: sleep in, watch soaps, do nothing all day. She could relax—and be free—for the first time in her life. I should have known it wouldn’t be that simple.

I’d forgotten about all the things Lola did that drove me a little crazy. She was always telling me to put on a sweater so I wouldn’t catch a cold (I was in my 40s). She groused incessantly about Dad and Ivan: My father was lazy, Ivan was a leech. I learned to tune her out. Harder to ignore was her fanatical thriftiness. She threw nothing out. And she used to go through the trash to make sure that the rest of us hadn’t thrown out anything useful. She washed and reused paper towels again and again until they disintegrated in her hands. (No one else would go near them.) The kitchen became glutted with grocery bags, yogurt containers, and pickle jars, and parts of our house turned into storage for—there’s no other word for it—garbage.

She cooked breakfast even though none of us ate more than a banana or a granola bar in the morning, usually while we were running out the door. She made our beds and did our laundry. She cleaned the house. I found myself saying to her, nicely at first, “Lola, you don’t have to do that.” “Lola, we’ll do it ourselves.” “Lola, that’s the girls’ job.” Okay, she’d say, but keep right on doing it.

It irritated me to catch her eating meals standing in the kitchen, or see her tense up and start cleaning when I walked into the room. One day, after several months, I sat her down.

“I’m not Dad. You’re not a slave here,” I said, and went through a long list of slave-like things she’d been doing. When I realized she was startled, I took a deep breath and cupped her face, that elfin face now looking at me searchingly. I kissed her forehead. “This is your house now,” I said. “You’re not here to serve us. You can relax, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. And went back to cleaning.

She didn’t know any other way to be. I realized I had to take my own advice and relax. If she wanted to make dinner, let her. Thank her and do the dishes. I had to remind myself constantly: Let her be.

One night I came home to find her sitting on the couch doing a word puzzle, her feet up, the TV on. Next to her, a cup of tea. She glanced at me, smiled sheepishly with those perfect white dentures, and went back to the puzzle. Progress, I thought.

She planted a garden in the backyard—roses and tulips and every kind of orchid—and spent whole afternoons tending it. She took walks around the neighborhood. At about 80, her arthritis got bad and she began walking with a cane. In the kitchen, she went from being a fry cook to a kind of artisanal chef who created only when the spirit moved her. She made lavish meals and grinned with pleasure as we devoured them.

Passing the door of Lola’s bedroom, I’d often hear her listening to a cassette of Filipino folk songs. The same tape over and over. I knew she’d been sending almost all her money—my wife and I gave her $200 a week—to relatives back home. One afternoon, I found her sitting on the back deck gazing at a snapshot someone had sent of her village.

“You want to go home, Lola?”

She turned the photograph over and traced her finger across the inscription, then flipped it back and seemed to study a single detail.

“Yes,” she said.

Just after her 83rd birthday, I paid her airfare to go home. I’d follow a month later to bring her back to the U.S.—if she wanted to return. The unspoken purpose of her trip was to see whether the place she had spent so many years longing for could still feel like home.

She found her answer.

“Everything was not the same,” she told me as we walked around Mayantoc. The old farms were gone. Her house was gone. Her parents and most of her siblings were gone. Childhood friends, the ones still alive, were like strangers. It was nice to see them, but … everything was not the same. She’d still like to spend her last years here, she said, but she wasn’t ready yet.

“You’re ready to go back to your garden,” I said.

“Yes. Let’s go home.”

L: Lola returned to the Philippines for an extended visit after her 83rd birthday. R: Lola with her sister Juliana, reunited after 65 years.

***

Lola was as devoted to my daughters as she’d been to my siblings and me when we were young. After school, she’d listen to their stories and make them something to eat. And unlike my wife and me (especially me), Lola enjoyed every minute of every school event and performance. She couldn’t get enough of them. She sat up front, kept the programs as mementos.

It was so easy to make Lola happy. We took her on family vacations, but she was as excited to go to the farmer’s market down the hill. She became a wide-eyed kid on a field trip: “Look at those zucchinis!” The first thing she did every morning was open all the blinds in the house, and at each window, she’d pause to look outside.

And she taught herself to read. It was remarkable. Over the years, she’d somehow learned to sound out letters. She did those puzzles where you find and circle words within a block of letters. Her room had stacks of word-puzzle booklets, thousands of words circled in pencil. Every day she watched the news and listened for words she recognized. She triangulated them with words in the newspaper and figured out the meanings. She came to read the paper every day, front to back. Dad used to say she was simple. I wondered what she could have been if, instead of working the rice fields at age 8, she had learned to read and write.

Lola at age 82.

During the 12 years she lived in our house, I asked her questions about herself, trying to piece together her life story, a habit she found curious. To my inquiries, she would often respond first with “Why?” Why did I want to know about her childhood? About how she met Lieutenant Tom?

I tried to get my sister Ling to ask Lola about her love life, thinking Lola would be more comfortable with her. Ling cackled, which was her way of saying I was on my own. One day, while Lola and I were putting away groceries, I just blurted it out: “Lola, have you ever been romantic with anyone?” She smiled, and then she told me the story of the only time she’d come close. She was about 15, and there was a handsome boy named Pedro from a nearby farm. For several months they harvested rice together side by side. One time, she dropped her bolo—a cutting implement—and he quickly picked it up and handed it back to her. “I liked him,” she said.

Silence.

“And?”

“Then he moved away,” she said.

“And?”

“That’s all.”

“Lola, have you ever had sex?,” I heard myself saying.

“No,” she said.

She wasn’t accustomed to being asked personal questions. “Katulong lang ako,” she’d say. I’m only a servant. She often gave one- or two-word answers, and teasing out even the simplest story was a game of 20 questions that could last days or weeks.

Some of what I learned: She was mad at Mom for being so cruel all those years, but she nevertheless missed her. Sometimes, when Lola was young, she’d felt so lonely that all she could do was cry. I knew there were years when she’d dreamed of being with a man. I saw it in the way she wrapped herself around one large pillow at night. But what she told me in her old age was that living with Mom’s husbands made her think being alone wasn’t so bad. She didn’t miss those two at all. Maybe her life would have been better if she’d stayed in Mayantoc, gotten married, and had a family like her siblings. But maybe it would have been worse. Two younger sisters, Francisca and Zepriana, got sick and died. A brother, Claudio, was killed. What’s the point of wondering about it now? she asked. Bahala na was her guiding principle. Come what may. What came her way was another kind of family. In that family, she had eight children: Mom, my four siblings and me, and now my two daughters. The eight of us, she said, made her life worth living.

None of us was prepared for her to die so suddenly.

Her heart attack started in the kitchen while she was making dinner and I was running an errand. When I returned she was in the middle of it. A couple of hours later at the hospital, before I could grasp what was happening, she was gone—10:56 p.m. All the kids and grandkids noted but were unsure how to take, that she died on November 7, the same day as Mom. Twelve years apart.

Lola made it to 86. I can still see her on the gurney. I remember looking at the medics standing above this brown woman no bigger than a child and thinking that they had no idea of the life she had lived. She’d had none of the self-serving ambition that drives most of us, and her willingness to give up everything for the people around her won her our love and utter loyalty. She’s become a hallowed figure in my extended family.

Going through her boxes in the attic took me months. I found recipes she had cut out of magazines in the 1970s for when she would someday learn to read. Photo albums with pictures of my mom. Awards my siblings and I had won from grade school on, most of which we had thrown away and she had “saved.” I almost lost it one night when at the bottom of a box I found a stack of yellowed newspaper articles I’d written and long ago forgotten about. She couldn’t read back then, but she’d kept them anyway.

The site of Lola’s childhood home.

***

Doods’s truck pulled up to a small concrete house in the middle of a cluster of homes mostly made of bamboo and plank wood. Surrounding the pod of houses: rice fields, green and seemingly endless. Before I even got out of the truck, people started coming outside.

Doods reclined his seat to take a nap. I hung my tote bag on my shoulder, took a breath, and opened the door.

“This way,” a soft voice said, and I was led up a short walkway to the concrete house. Following close behind was a line of about 20 people, young and old, but mostly old. Once we were all inside, they sat down on chairs and benches arranged along the walls, leaving the middle of the room empty except for me. I remained standing, waiting to meet my host. It was a small room, and dark. People glanced at me expectantly.

“Where is Lola?” A voice from another room. The next moment, a middle-aged woman in a housedress sauntered in with a smile. Ebia, Lola’s niece. This was her house. She gave me a hug and said again, “Where is Lola?”

Lola’s gravesite.

I slid the tote bag from my shoulder and handed it to her. She looked into my face, still smiling, gently grasped the bag, and walked over to a wooden bench and sat down. She reached inside and pulled out the box and looked at every side. “Where is Lola?” she said softly. People in these parts don’t often get their loved ones cremated. I don’t think she knew what to expect. She set the box on her lap and bent over so her forehead rested on top of it, and at first I thought she was laughing (out of joy) but I quickly realized she was crying. Her shoulders began to heave, and then she was wailing—a deep, mournful, animal howl, like I once heard coming from Lola.

I hadn’t come sooner to deliver Lola’s ashes in part because I wasn’t sure anyone here cared that much about her. I hadn’t expected this kind of grief. Before I could comfort Ebia, a woman walked in from the kitchen and wrapped her arms around her, and then she began wailing. The next thing I knew, the room erupted with sound. The old people—one of them blind, several with no teeth—were all crying and not holding anything back. It lasted about 10 minutes. I was so fascinated that I barely noticed the tears running down my own face. The sobs died down, and then it was quiet again.

Ebia sniffled and said it was time to eat. Everybody started filing into the kitchen, puffy-eyed but suddenly lighter and ready to tell stories. I glanced at the empty tote bag on the bench and knew it was right to bring Lola back to the place where she’d been born.

Alex Tizon passed away in March. He was a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and the author of Big Little Man: In Search of My Asian Self. For more about Alex, please see this editor’s note from The Atlantic. (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/a-reporters-story/524538/)

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