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In order to hunger, you must be beloved of God and in need of humility. If you hunger, it is for the purpose of being fed. What you eat is beyond your knowledge and your father’s knowledge. The purpose of food is to sustain and increase the love of God, whatever your earthly father eats or declines to eat in front of us. I first began to be a man when I asked myself why it was that I was not a man; I first knew I was hungry when I saw food set before me and asked whose it was.

DANIEL M. LAVERY, something that may shock and discredit you

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Southern/Suburban Gothic Prompts

- The long grass waves in the fields as the sun goes down, making a sound like it’s whispering. You don’t want to know what it’s saying.

- The streetlights always flicker twice – once as you pass under them, and again just after. You wonder if they flicker every time something passes underneath them, but you don’t want to turn and find out.

- He’s the perfect southern gentleman: gelled hair, soft eyes, a gentle accent that makes you almost sleepy. The first time he kisses you, when he bites your bottom lip, you could almost ignore how his teeth feel too sharp. Almost.

- The storefronts wait empty; the wind blows the doors open and shut, open and shut. Everything looks deserted, but you know it’s not. They’re lying in wait, is all.

- You pass an alleyway and there’s something waiting – something with bright eyes and an eager smile. You pass without a second look. As long as you don’t look, you’re safe.

[baby-i-promise-we-are-fine]

You end up alone at a strange party

The room is crowded with dancers clad in expensive, jewel-toned gowns and coats, though you can’t seem to make out any of their faces.

The dining table is laden with large plates of shining heaps of meat, and delicately ornate cake platters. The whole arrangement smells of cardamom and cinnamon.

The music is smooth as silk, though you can’t tell quite what instrument it’s coming from.

You begin to feel a little dizzy, overwhelmed by the noise and chatter, when a gloved hand presents itself to you and you take it without thinking. You find yourself dancing with an attractive stranger, their eyes an uneasy sort of yellow, oddly snake like.

You dance until your feet ache, and when the stranger turns their back you fade into the crowd and wander to some secluded section of the house, your back against the cold wall, breathing heavily.

In the dark, you overhear a conversation, though you can’t make out anyone else in the room. The pair appear to be lovers discussing some sort of plot to murder one of their spouses. You panic and rush back to the crowd, but the sweet scents and sultry music quickly distract you, and very soon you have forgotten all about... well, you can’t really remember what you’ve forgotten all about.

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There are only a few rules to this game. The first is: Never. Ever. Talk about it.

There’s demons in the sewers calling out to cats and lost children, mermaids swimming in muck with song like grief and hatred, angels over but the bus stations offering peace to the ill and eating the fever warmed marrow.

There are those who can see, the young and curious and old and unlucky, those who know, but you must never talk about it.

The second rule is: There are a lot of things worse than death. Be ready to get it over with if one of those things turns it’s eyes on you.

It’s not as fancy as war spies with their false teeth- knives hidden in the folds of your jeans or a syringe of contaminate drugs in the lining of your bra will do just as well, really. It’s better. And if you’re in the know, you should be beyond fear, anyway.

The third is: that kid over on fifth street should not exist.

[baby-i-promise-we-are-fine]

can you please, if you have the time, talk about whats so dangerous abou the boredom of teenage girls?

Ages fourteen to eighteen, a girl needs something to kill all that time, that endless itchy waiting, every hour, every day for something — anything — to begin.

They have the lowest inhibitions of any age group, perhaps because they don’t really care about themselves, they just want to see what they can do. They begin by testing the waters, and once it starts, it doesn’t stop. Teenage girls often have calculated intent — they know what they want, they know how to pursue it and they’re utterly ruthless in going about this.

They can be uncomfortable in their skin because they don’t know how to fit yet. The way society treats teenage girls can manifest in them being dangerous, not because they feel little, not because they’re emotionless or without souls, but because they feel too much and because they don’t know how to make that fit along with everything else. When they get bored, that itch, that burrowing at the back of their minds comes forth, and they need to do something that will distract them from that not-belonging. And girls are scary in a different way to boys; they have the capacity for violence and aggression, but one could argue that’s not what they enjoy as much. They’re more underhand, more subtle, and they weave through people’s lives in such a way that they don’t realise what has happened until it’s too late.

And this makes them less likely to be caught in some ways, because it’s not as obvious but increases it in others. Bored teenage girls with only each other for company would be fixated on trying to outdo each other. The weaving becomes more elaborate but also more convoluted, and could lead them to getting caught. 

Once again? They don’t care. They’ve got that reckless edge of self-destruction, a devil may-care outlook on life, and so long as they’ve got something to occupy them, what does it matter if they get caught? Maybe that’s the next part of it, and that, to me, is what is so dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls.

Walking past all the cops, all the detectives, I raise my runner’s shirt a few inches, like I’m shaking it loose form my damp skin. I let them all see my stomach, its tautness. I let everyone see I’m not afraid, and that I’m not anything but a silly cheerleader, a feather-bodied sixteen-year-old with no more sense than a marshmellow peep. I let them see I’m not anything. least of all what I am. 

NB: This answer is not a generalisation for all or any teenage girls. This explanation focuses solely on the themes and characters explored in Megan Abbot’s novels Dare Me and The Fever.

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What is girlhood? Is it the bubblegum in our mouths or the candy on our lips? Is it our fried up hair and our burned up skin? Is it the click of our heels on a vinyl floor or the tap of our nails on bright screens? Is it the whispers in the middle of the night, the sighs in the middle of the day or the screams at daybreak? Is it your first heartbreak or your best friends’s? Is it the shared mascara or the worn out jacket you hold onto for no reason. Is it the feel of nails against one’s skin, the feel of someone else’s nails on your own skin. Someone’s breath, someone’s hair, someone’s tongue. It’s you and me- it’s us sharing a bathroom stall, us picking out each other’s clothes and each other’s boys. Tightening a strap here, fixing a wing there. It’s screenshots and group chats. It’s French fries and milkshakes. It’s holding her hair back when she pukes. It’s holding hands with your best friend, it’s holding hands with all of your best friends–and sleeping with them on the same bed– all 3,4,5 of you in one blanket with the window wide open and the ceiling fan switched on. It’s running in the rain and walking in the sun. It’s 3 a.m. phone calls, 4 a.m. texts and 5 a.m. pick ups. It’s my place or yours. It’s mean girls and lost in translation. It’s fairy lights and Polaroid photographs and phone lock screens. It’s posters on the wall and tattoos on your breasts. It’s buying 2 coffee drinks for 5 people, buying 3 pasta dishes for 2. It’s knife yielding, back stabbing fights, but it’s also people vs. the shit boyfriend. It’s kisses on the cheeks, never ending embraces, and handholding for days. It’s you, me, us. Because a girl is just a girl when she’s alone, but when she’s with her own kind she’s a monster, a goddess and most importantly, immortal.

Things I want to be addressed more often Simona Bhagat (via maimed-devotion)

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suburban gothic. something about this genre conjures up images of girls in plaid skirts, popping their slick, shiny lip-glossed mouths in front of school bathroom mirrors. these girls, who roll their eyes at not just the boys (who wear worn out chuck-taylors coiled lovingly around their feet), but at any unlucky soul to be not worthy of their time. their endless, soul-cracking time. it’s idle and weary (like a broken-hearted mother) when they’re not occupied by school, and even when they are, solving endless amounts of equations or thumbing with restless hands through vandalized textbooks. i think of music in cars, in earbuds, on vinyl records; oozing out melodies from the likes of nicki minaj, banks, marina diamandis. anybody who can be graced with the interest of teenage girls, because they’ve been through hell once too and came out with charcoal hearts, instead of the flimsy pink mush the world gives then takes away so soon. it’s no easy feat to be worthy of a teenage girl’s time, their heart, and i can hardly see it happening on dewy mornings as these girls drive bleary-eyed to school, nor on dark, hot, neon-lighted weekends; when they dance thoughtlessly (like 21st century followers of dionysus) and drink shots with fruity chasers. suburban girls, they are uncrackable, unreachable, uninterested. or so they will lead you (with soft hands and hard, candy-painted nails) to believe, as it’s best for you both, in the end.

thoughts on teen girls in suburbia (via susansarandaddy-blog1)

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SUBURBAN GOTHIC AESTHETICS

Subliminal Influence: Black hoodies, sputtering sprinkler systems, YouTube creepypastas, the smell of wet asphalt, ballpoint pen drawings of humanoid crawlers in spiral notebooks, fluorescent drug store signs reflected in parking lot puddles, angsty conversations on rooftops, a constant sense of not belonging anywhere, prophetic revelations, cold chills at the bus stop. 

Partner in Crime: Paper planes soaring over white picket fences, scheming at the waffle house, plaid scarves, long walks by the train tracks, punk rock wanderlust, the restless breezes of the first week of fall,  fearing ending up like your parents, sharp pocket knives, philosophy paperbacks,  A+ report cards, halloween masks, hubris, revenge. 

Stay Gold: Soccer fields at midnight, long drives with the windows down, laying your head in your best friend’s lap, low power lines against golden sunsets, hearts carved on park benches, first dates in the cemetery, big brown flannels, spectral orbs captured in the background of polaroids, burning newspaper, tragic love that transcends time. 

Growing Pains :Smeared sidewalk chalk, oversized striped sweaters, thunderstorms and bunk beds, church-camp tee-shirts, questions left unanswered, bloody urban legends passed around at sleepovers, friendships ending as September begins, disillusionment, bicycles, the last fireflies of summer, a single yellow window lit in somebody else’s ranch-style house. 

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Gated Suburb Gothic

~ Your lungs burn as you sprint down the street. Almost there. Almost. Your stomach drops. The gate is closed. You are trapped.

~ There are certain rules pertaining to what you can and cannot do to your yard. Your neighbor planted marigolds in her front garden. You haven’t seen her in days.

~ Never look out the windows when the streetlights go out. Lock your doors. If you hear knocking, it’s already too late.

~The guard booth has been empty for months. Flies are swarming around the window. You decide it’s best not to look.

~It’s easy to get lost in the labyrinthian streets of your neighborhood. After a while, the houses all begin to look the same. You notice that the clouds have stopped moving. All is silent.

~ You hear the slightly-off-tune jingle of an ice cream truck. The streets are empty. That night, it’s playing again, outside your window.

~ 5 P.M. The sprinklers in the yard across the street switch on, as usual. Nobody’s lived in that house for as long as you can remember.

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In a universe parallel to this one, you and I stay up some nights, holding hands in bed, worrying about all the versions of ourselves that don’t end up together. Parallel You says, “Somewhere we never even kiss.” Parallel Me says, “Somewhere we never even touch." Parallel You supposes that the universe in which we never cross paths must be a kinder one than the universe where we make the effort to love each other and fail at it so miserably that we part ways and never speak again. Parallel Me says, "That universe doesn’t exist.” Parallel You says, “That’s not how this works.”

trista mateer (via tristamateer)

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“We got real furniture. I mean, it was Salvation Army, but it was real. Our names were printed inside a heart on the dishtowel that hung on the refrigerator door handle. We got it made at Crystal Beach. It was a brave thing to do. But later we spilled loganberry juice on it, so we used it for dishes because we couldn’t bring ourselves to throw it out. And there were marigolds in amber glasses on the windowsill, daisies in a green cut-glass vase on the kitchen table, fresh mint and basil growing in a flower box on the porch. It was a home. I grew up in leaps and bounds. I learned to reduce the anxieties of life by paying bills on time, keeping receipts and promises, doing laundry before I ran out of underwear, picking up after myself. Most importantly, I learned to say I’m sorry. This relationship was too vital to let dust accumulate in its corners.”

— Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

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laetitia k.

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on that corner, he held my hand and pulled me across the street, down into the belly of the city where we ordered gin and tonics and I threw up in the bathroom. down that street, I slipped into a hole in the concrete and when I stood again, there was blood in my shoes. in that bar, I threw myself at someone who held my heart between his teeth and pretended not to notice the indents. in this bedroom, a boy brought me a glass of water and made me drink the whole thing before we fell asleep to the sun rising. in that field, we smoked until we were dizzy and I laughed into her hair. in that car, I broke his heart and turned my head away from the pieces. around this corner, we bought bread and cheese and ate it with our hands, wiping the leftovers from each other’s faces. in that house, I sat at her feet as she braided my hair away from my face. in this closet, our clothes are still hanging. in that hallway, our shoes are still scattered. in this city, the shadows are everywhere.

Fortesa Latifi – we were dizzy (via madgirlf)

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I smoke cheap cigarettes until the smell is stuck in my hair. I pull at hangnails until there is blood on my fingers. I chew gum until my teeth hurt. I call people I shouldn’t call. I unblock your number after three margaritas and then block it again after the fourth. I sit in your car with my feet on the dashboard. I look the other way. I pass someone on the highway just to get off at the same exit. I ignore calls I shouldn’t be ignoring. I take one pill to get up and another to get down again. I remember what it feels like to be down again. I pretend I don’t hear when someone calls my name from across the room. I swear it won’t happen again and then swear when it happens again. I wear lipstick three shades too dark. I forget what color the walls of my childhood bedroom were. I wonder why the doctors didn’t believe me. I stare at the scar etched across my throat. I forget every winter what summer is like. I joke with the nurses as they push needles into my arm. I assure them it’s okay to laugh – that if I wasn’t laughing, I’d be crying.

Fortesa Latifi –– american spirit (via madgirlf)

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The echoes of sirens and cicadas, and the drunk boys who howl into the trees at 2 a.m. infect my window while I sleep, and I’m pulled into a girl I once was, calling for love into a sky transected by power lines until sunset when the town tightened into itself. I prayed for a boy’s wolf life, the dream of skulking along streets with hunger and immunity. I wanted to cup the moon’s curve in my hand like it belonged to me, that was how young I was.

Carmen Giménez Smith, “Boy Crazy,” published in Lit Hub (via agooduniverse)

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Iain Thomas / I Wrote This For You

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I hide because there’s more to me than what you see and I’m not sure you’d like the rest. I know that sometimes, I don’t like the rest.

Iain Thomas (via quotemadness)