mimaveil

[mimaveil]

I feel like some of you guys think "bad art" is like someone gluing rhinestones to a water melon, or a guy who made his own armchair out of Ohio license plates, or a trashy romance novel where someone says "the blue-eyed one kissed the brown-eyed one," when in reality bad art is a 1000000 Billion Dollar movie where none of the workers got paid and every single creative decision was market tested to see how lucrative of a profit it could foreseeably make to wow shareholders.

[mimaveil]

can make little animals out of it, etc

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[mimaveil]

I Know Your Dad and He Wouldn't Mind (II)

Governing Concept: can’t an up-and-coming actor send nudes to his onscreen dad, torrid, get dumped, and not learn his lesson post-pandemic? gosh. normie pocket dimension of ask for a key, or the comedy-of-marriage-minded sequel to sex, or a bag of rocks (i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi, vii)

prev: do you have anything that smells like old dick

chapter summary: so are you courting me or

cw: honestly pretty sfw cept for the self-loathing, thank you @vermiculated for the paper-doll outfit assist

“Mate, why’d you pack like a murder victim.”

Ben prods at the assemblage of items on the waxy-white tabletop between them. 

The Thursday brunch interiors conspire. Brassy sunbursts, leggy cutlery. Orchids in the salads. Given the lighting, the trip-hop, the windows and capacity, this restaurant desperately wants to be somewhere else. 

Owen’s read enough Eater longform to know, this rehabbed vault was meant to be run on hobbyist electricity, asthma on a chain, thighs fried on grubby white lattice in somebody’s backyard, busted tin cups, gravel in a slip-on, ankle strap of citronella. Chalky sand, beachy churn of no-see-ums, seeding something at the end of the world, on-set, a meet-shop propped with a broad arm sling. A sunflower on a helical swivel. 

Do I look like you, all over?

Ben had arrived late, swept through Owen’s quiet “Hi, Dad” and immediately demanded that Owen disgorge the contents of his pockets. 

In sous-vide sunlight, dubious: Laneige lipcream (matcha-moss) and SPF 30 sheer sunstick (guava), tied with a rubber band. Collapsible silicone water bottle, 20-oz. A single-serve packet of electrolyte powder (white peach, his most recent ex had been big on hydration multipliers). Debit card, ID, transit card, all clipped to the inside of his Field Notes memo book with a Mitsubishi mini-gel pen, 0.38-mm. The pen barrel is the color of pistachio yogurt. 

Owen shrugs; the arterial corduroy rustles. Shacket and denim. The Uzumaki spirals, white tee, cling. A messenger bag would have ruined the line. He didn’t want to look like a stupid kid going camping.

“No phone, I meant,” Ben says, working a swallow around his chrome-rim tumbler. His shirt’s a mock-neck, color-correcting his throat. Windowpane check, little white and electric blue lines on seal-smoke gray. Hair looks nice, wavy; no ring today. “Very daring of you.” 

Logan’s vaguely aware of his location, and there’s a Post-It, with Sharpie notation, taped next to the entryway toggle switch of the sublease; Owen grew up on crime procedurals. “I never bring my phone on dates.” He’d been aiming for the factual brio of his ex (either one), but the words come out prim. Plaintive. 

After the mutual startle, their hands skirting the evidence on the table, Ben vibrates into a smile. Openly fingers Owen’s notebook, minding the pre-written questions. “Oh, is that what we’re playing?”

Owen sucks cheek. The corduroy feels too hot. “What else would it be.”

Their server, a boy, mercifully interrupts with menus. The interstitial lets Owen stuff rubber-banded toiletries, water bottle and hydration packet back into his pockets, sling his overly warm jacket on the lazy art-deco chair. The notebook lingers on the table, over the QR code. The cover, limited edition, is a linocut reproduction of a meander, Mississippi River, cerulean and dinosaur-green. A casual gift from his mom. 

Over the paper menus, Ben’s jabber about pandan waffles and candied bacon in a cup. The pun-heavy typeset wilts under Owen’s fingers as Ben lets himself be coaxed into the special (“congee pot pie”) and submits with a flourish. 

Owen’s familiar with the rollicking delta between Ben in-person, tinned, soured with tamarind and the effulgent, briny soak to the cheap seats when he’s happy, sober and grateful.

He’s in a press mood. Grafting scrap of forehead, swinging his highball of iced robusta with a jab of mint and cloud of coconut cream. Theatrically peering under the table to look at Owen’s jeans and sneakers: “Nice outfit. Very much The Red Boy.” 

“I was going for Akira,” Owen says, crossing his arms. 

Gravely, hooking his torso around the table — mind the glassware! —stroking the chapped tip of Owen’s elbow: “I don’t think Kaneda took the bus, mate.”

For whatever reason, the jasmine tea is served in a tiki ceramic. The jumbo bubble ridges slip; he uses both hands. “So this isn’t, um, some two-week pleasure bent?” The steam moistens his JudyDoll Cushion Foundation #B15, for fair and true neutral olive tones.

“I wouldn’t invite you on a bender,” Ben reassures. “You wouldn’t be fun enough.” He jostles his knees; his jeans are Vantablack. “Come live with me for two weeks, help me on a project. I’ll give you a key, pay you for your time, pry all you like.”

Through the window, a woman muscles by in a swelter, hair swoop-clipped away from her phone conversation, kelly green striped shirt, insouciant ripple. The two of them let themselves be distracted.

 —

“You want my help to play gay?” Owen complains. Mouth as ridiculous, brutish, as ever. 

“To play domestic, mid-career marriage,” Ben corrects as he showily drains his coffee-chalice. Stabs at the spearmint garnish with his straw. “My agent said something to the effect of, ‘that should be you getting your back blown out by some twink.’” 

Some parties near them throttle their chewing to not-stare. Owen’s scowl-to-wince pipeline at Ben’s grey New Balance 574’s, with fat white tongue, too-dark jeans, penitent box-print shirt. Aces for comportment. Dear Aeryn, so indulgent of his inconstant volume, had picked out his outfit — not specifically for this occasion; vanishingly few people know about this, certainly not staff, he digs at himself with a poncey accent. 

It’s not a felony anymore, just highly improper. Still time to botch it. Yes, permissible in the grand sweep, and Owen will pack up his fruity gear and his illuminated manuscript and wet-gecko gaze and Owen will go away, find soft purchase in dippy indie jobs, woman-led, while Ben rots in his demesne. 

Mint’s in his mouth now, pulping. He dry-swallows, hurrying on: “Anyways, it’s personal-professional. Consider it field research. I won’t even be there most of the time; you’ll have run of the manor, work on whatever project you want to work on.” Rambling about a loose assemblage of duties, cheerfully lying, “I’ll pay you not to fuck me.” 

Shoal of herrings, silvery, traverse Owen’s face. Revulsion’s in there, but what isn’t. If Owen mislikes vulgarity, that’s a seafood economist allergic to shrimp. Where’s their fucking food. 

“That’s how most payment works,” Owen says, a touch late. Fingers to brow, sweeping his dye job off the cliff of his cheek, the long reach for his notebook, languid-liquid, buggers belief. Lateral line, an absolute killer in the water. “What would the money part look like?”

Ben exhales. The past hovers, blurry, in his throat. Money’s easy; one number’s good as another. Owen adorably negotiates for alimony rates, citing The New York Post (“$8,500, that’s two weeks, half of a monthly $17,000. Oh, plus inflation”). He has the figures written in his notebook.

“Is there anyone else you’re auditioning for this?” Almost shy. The mental calisthenics are not unattractive. 

“Fish get auditioned for sound.” The Navy paid scientists to torture all manner of aquatics, to differentiate their squeaks and clickies and terror-moans from German U-Boats. “Rough handling.” Don't scratch.

“Did you keep anything of mine?” Ribbon of ectoplasm, accusation. 

“Eh, I move around so much,” chewing nothing, brightly dithering, emerging from the dustbin with a triumphant pump of spit, “The board game, very prescient. That’s how I thought of it. Opened it several years too late.”

Actually guilty-sounding, groping his tea mug: “I gave it away. The thing you got me.”

“Dior, was it?”

“Fenty. You weren’t spending, um, Dior money on me. It’s been so long the range of shades got more inclusive.” 

Their food arrives. Over some ungodly sesame dumpling concoction in walnut soup, Owen refers haltingly to his ex as “kind of a St. John Rivers type.” Ben triangulates the reference. The implicit comparison stings. 

Sure, Denise was right in that interview, taut diagnosis in a stretch dress; he puts on the RP when he’s wheedling. Ben’s mislike of ceremony, bred in industry — has achieved multiple generations of furry solidity on toe pads, treats, tricks, habits. 

Gooey cut, hand coiled on soupspoon, porcelain full. Has Owen just been watching him eat?  

Water’s refilled. Once the server slopes off, Owen chugs his glass, ice crashing, and rubs sun-stick down the arc of his arms. His philtrum glistens, pretty. “Why are you doing this?” 

Delta, mouth, chute. “You have talent, and we have an intimacy.” He lets that splash, silt glitter, and gently now, like a baptism, “Would help my recovery. Is what my shrink said.”

Even with Ben’s wild notions of absolution, squirmed out five decades now, the gush of forgiveness on Owen’s face is annihilating. The coronal panic, that this gaping novice is going to consent, out of kindness rather than cold-to-craven inquiry, bat away Ben’s cash, crush his old-whore solitude, exhume every workplace flirtation, every boy he’s interred, the whole gory manuscript underwritten by his damaged fantasies of infinity. Tie me off belly-out to a tree, arrow through the lattice of lies, Ben might actually die here, to offbrand Tricky— 

“Anyways, that a yes?” He’s dissociated again. Bowl flayed clean, napkin confetti on his lap. Tongue slimed. “Not that you have to scrape out a monkish sort of existence.” Bolstering, overshooting, “Ever had French boys before? No? We’ll have to line them up for you. Cock’s cheap.”

Unsaid: you’d know. 

“Fine,” his dream confessor sighs, shoving his napkin at Ben. “Show me the house.” 

[mimaveil]

Alexis Mata — "Calida" (oil on canvas, 2021)

[mimaveil]

Soufflés Cafe San Francisco, CA

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froggo in a cup

[mimaveil]

I have many thoughts about James Ellroy’s style, most of them positive and some of them downright enthusiastic, but the one thought that dawns above the hushed din of it all is

The Portrait of Dorian Gray in the style of James Ellroy:

The studio: reeking with perfume — roses, lilac. Luxury stuff. Henry Wotton — Lord, when you need to stroke his ego — in his customary position: smoking, watching the branches, eyes on the birds. Thinking of Tokyo. Thinking of painters not quite so serious as Basil. A century ago. Good riddance to that. London, roaring organ-like in the background. The painting: his best yet. Graceful, blonde. Eyes that probably sparkled when someone said the right thing. Never married, never widowed, hardly a day of work in his CV. Too young for any of that. Too exquisite. And the man himself, wiping a smile off his face, pressing a hand to his eyes. Hard fists. Creased forehead. Something deeply wrong in there. “It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done.” Languid. Casual. The drawl of a man that wants to hear the sound of his own voice. A lengthy monologue — where to send the portrait? The Grosvenor, the Academy. Conclusion: not even worth debating. Word plays. Henry’s usual shtick. Then: “I shall not send it anywhere.” Not steady but heartfelt. Scared of mockery. Justly so. The answer: Henry Wotton — Lord — laughing.

[mimaveil]

another writing pet peeve that I'm noticing more and more is, voice.

So... the words you pick, express more than just their meaning? I've noticed more and more in books published a kind of wooden? overly formal tone, a lot of words to impress your SAT tutor.

Particularly in first person the words you pick the way your character speaks and thinks and the words in which they do that, tell us the readers things about them. Are they smart are they good at school, bad at school, not articulate, etc you can tell me a character likes poetry without ever mentioning that they read it by how they express themselves.

and oh btw if you have two characters in dueling narrative, I should get a distinct difference between them, two different people shouldn't be written just the same way, how they talk and think should be different.

[mimaveil]

Everyone keeps talking about "the writer's barely disguised fetish". But I still haven't heard about "the writer's barely disguised huge ass pet peeve"

[mimaveil]

Wait are there condoms in star wars

[mimaveil]

I Know Your Dad and He Wouldn't Mind

@getlouder: 50 new messages what new depravities have you dunked your little men like Oreos into (milk glass emoji)

@vermiculated: mimaveil's getting into romantasy and she's going to make a million dollars, get a movie deal, take OD to the premiere, and he's still not going to know how to stand

Governing Concept: can't an up-and-coming actor send nudes to his onscreen dad, torrid, get dumped, and not learn his lesson post-pandemic? gosh. normie pocket dimension of ask for a key, or the comedy-of-marriage-minded sequel to sex, or a bag of rocks (i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi, vii)

or: it's not a felony anymore, just improper

or: blue valentine with more anal

cw: future nsfw, 1k of pretentious set-up

“Do you have anything that smells like old dick?” Logan asks, loudly. “Um, mildly expired. Lost its warranty.” 

Owen shrivels into his sweatshirt. This is a nice snuff room — fish-oil lighting, scallop-pink walls, tidy shelves, imitation-Tabriz rugs on the spotty cypress. Besides him and Logan, maybe eight other pilgrims waiting for bottle service on a Monday. He digs the toecap of his sneaker into a pleasantly warped medallion of garnet, ivory, coral. 

The sales associate sighs. Slides clear-frame glasses down her nose. Probably five years older than them, although hard to tell with the bangs. Apothecary-sleaze drips, peach syrup, from the surround sound. 

“Linear or non-linear?” Briny regard, her décolletage throbs with Dancheong ink; she must have a killer sun-prevention regimen. 

Palms on the milk-vein table top, Logan makes his face genuflect. Choreographer’s trick. Grinning sidelong at Owen, “You like complicated.” Actually bowing to the sales associate, puffy-paint letters bulging against his back: “Go wild, bombastic, high-morph. It’s for a business date.”

Owen’s throat unclogs. “Proposal, a research proposal,” he says hastily. “Conceptual is fine.” 

After a few more questions, Owen squirming around his waxed satchel, the sales associate lopes off to a back room, fall of velvet on a chain. Across the table, Logan squares his shoulders and breathes heavily into his fists. Bottles everywhere, the noonish play of sound on the perfume caps: zamac, aluminum, enamel, marbled, beveled, cubist, sinuous, glossy, surly-cherubic…

“Bro, you could be doing great work in this community,” Logan says, plying a candlewick. A hexagonal serving-glass on the table mirrors his under-jaw. “Divorced pilates moms with zero-to-negative emotional needs, absolutely fiend for sad, artsy boys like you. You’re the elephant they never got to ride at the zoo.”

Scratching his lip, reedy, “I don’t think you’re supposed to ride elephants. Or, have sex with them?” A woman squeezes past, crema leggings; he catches a gulp of tangerine. 

“You know what I mean!” Cracks knuckles, blanched in good humor. They’re doing a tour of Logan’s haunts, because Logan is a low-judgment friend with a durable memory. “Yet, you’re signing up to do a full teardown reno on some guy’s personality?” 

Owen’s phone writhes in the zip pocket. Yesterday, he got an AP News alert on the topic of micro-cheating, with somber examples (“getting excited to dress up for a co-worker.” “Liking somebody’s social media posts to distraction”). Wasn’t that just a crush? 

“I don’t know,” he confesses. “It’s personal-professional.” That’s what the text had said. Come stay with me. Personal-profesh. Get you the wife experience.

Eternally “yes-and,” Logan shrugs. Scarce wonder they’ve kept in touch, even after drifting cross-industry. Owen’s not sure if Logan’s acting anymore. 

“We get you geared up, you spray this on the collar of a super-basic tee. Like, an anime tee. No, scratch: old dudes leak for a band t-shirt. Women like non-representational art, so they can Photoshop you into something else. Show up in a button-down— not plaid, we’re not in middle school — undone, airplane pants, utility sandal in, uh, lilac. They’ll be heaving into your hand.” 

The sales associate returns with a flight of testers on a raw-edge serving tray, red cedar. There’s a jaunty tin of coffee beans, as a huff cleanser. “Your aura is a lot of sparkling herbals,” she diagnoses. “Dark mosses and pepper.” Her falsies scrape her eyeglass lens. 

As Owen starts to read the description cards by each of the five bottles, Logan smacks him on the arm. Almost like they’re back on set, clowning around. 

“Remember the rules, bro,” fast-twitch smile. “Let the intensity in. Feed the metaphor. Crush on the creator. Pretend you’re a buyer — okay, that’s boring, we are buying — build another register of enjoyment. Dig for the flaw.”

First draught is a staticky wheeze; it’s supposed to mimic the dust on a lamp, spine curved around a pillow, hand under pyjamas, blocking a bedtime story. He’s not getting the immortelle. 

Second draught slopes into a mushroom hunt, loamy-medicinal, birch, balsam fir needle. The ginseng — and he likes sharp, he likes outdoors, but. Anxiety spiders his back.  

Owen’s not a frag-head like Logan, but he knows scent and memory. People have bits of their brains just hanging out their nose-holes all the time. Smells jump the counter, bypass the receptionist. 

He accidentally reads the name of the third bottle: Sydney Rock Pool. Skips it. 

Fourth is a bullying devotional, heavy on the saffron, tar, incense, tobacco. It fights him all the way, from grip to alveoli. “Myrrh and benzoin makes this, like, sexy mummified,” Logan chews into his cuticle. “Maybe a little too heavy for you.”

They break to sniff the coffee beans from the tin. Logan’s relaxed; he knows that he’s getting the d’Annam Strawberry Mochi (chewy rice, Azuki bean paste, brown sugar) for his girlfriend, who is picking them up in 20 minutes, so they can all wait in line for chocolate sourdough. 

Fifth’s a metallic strine, rust on grapefruit. The scent bleeds right off. They get a second flight with a decent rock-climbing accord of sweat, basalt, seaweed, gasoline. The friction, the ardor, and the drop. 

He gets samples in a baggie, from Logan’s actual purchase, and buys an 8-oz soy candle for his mom, maybe for her annual Christmas party. The box is lilac; it’s called “Snow on Fire.”

—

After the intensive smelling, the coffee-bean reset, actual coldbrew tastes flaccid. 

At deferred lunch, back to the casement window, Anjali talks about her rotation, Logan clearly adoring, refilling her rose tea. As hosts, outnumbering him, they’ve let themselves be rear-lit, chambray sky. Atop PharmD school, she’s a bridesmaid for three weddings this summer; “the color story is a nightmare,” she says, painting her labneh on two poached eggs. 

“Owen gets rings,” Logan affirms/outs through a shatter of Kouign Amann. Their table teeters under the full bread service. 

The knife startles, buckwheat C-section: “It’s not that dramatic.” Crepe-warm, the crushed plum-raspberry-peach hits the high note in his mouth, leaves gummy tracks. “My ex proposed to me, I said no. And my ex before that.”

Anjali smooths her hair over her ears, mindful of the teacup. “That’s so chic.” She swings her heels. “I wish my friends were pickier.” 

Over Logan’s instantly apologetic shoulder, through the glass, Owen spots a putty-tone Roblox car parking out front. 

Who was the greater coward, here? His ex-boyfriend, either one of them, smoothly not over it, inventing new reasons to pester him? 

Or Owen himself, staring at the breakwater, malaise sipping at his heels, waiting for someone to fuck a mark of connoisseurship in him? 

Ben had given him the child’s view of infinity, a place where the pool party never ends, with a perfectly warm deck, forever-curving water slide. So much soft-serve, on tap, that the air tastes like ice cream. Great rolling suitcases spitting out water shoes and swimsuits and ziplocks of crushed cereal, grippy socks, notebooks, markers, hats, stickers, grape vitamins, dramamine tablets, sunscreen sticks, tutu dresses, hair clips, waterproof jackets, quick-dry cargo shorts. A place where the bigger kids zip up the younger ones’ hoodies, and the strong readers sound out the signs for their unlettered friends, where every past child is safe and pardoned and loved. 

He excuses himself to the corridor, hip-checking a double stroller (unoccupied). 

In the single-user restroom, by the bulb of a Glade plug-in, he checks his phone. Sets a date. 

[mimaveil]

TUMBLR FANDOM CLOTH MOTHER VS WIRE MOTHER EXPERIMENT

You have two mutuals who share your Current Fandom Interest. Wire Mutual, who perfectly understands the source material and shares all of your blorbo interpretations but is kind of a bitch outside of that context. (Not a morally bad person by any means, just unpleasant) And Cloth Mutual, who is the loveliest person you've ever met but god bless them, they're so wrong about everything.

[mimaveil]

i like the summertime because i feel like i am returning to a version of myself that only exists from may–august but she is always the same person each time and i like being her and seeing the world through her eyes again

[mimaveil]

his sexuality crisis would NOT involve him researching micro-identites to find the exact one to label his attraction. he's a forty year old man, he's calling himself gay and never thinking about it again

[mimaveil]

Biggest red flag in a man is when he says his favorite food is steak. First of all it should be cock but even then can you not say something more nuanced you blubbering ape. Not even cheesecake or something. I’d even take a subway sandwich because it means you have some sort of desire to change the world around you

[mimaveil]

The Efficiency Expert (1991)