#I need to talk about Michael's college friends at some point

[connectionterminated13]

My Michael died without ever having a romantic relationship. Of course the concept of sex deeply scares him in parts because of his asexuality but The majority of his repulsion comes from his father (Like the way William described sex and The way William apparently used sex as a tool when he was in his 20s)

But even a romantic relationship Without sexual elements frightened him. Sure Michael wasn't lonely he had plenty of Bros. But he never crossed that line something that he was always waiting to just do. The plan was for him to get a good job get a girl and then like live a normal simple life.

[aemondgirlfriend]

34+35

Michael Gavey x Reader!Fem

summary: You need help with math and your best friend suggests getting help from your classmate Michael Gavey.

WARNING: smutt, a little cuteness, hanging, finger twisting, unprotected p/v sex, oral sex (f receiving), spitting, and a lot of slutty. Be happy 🫶

MINORS DO NOT INTERACT! i will block you immediately.

English is not my first language. Hope you enjoy!

The days at Oxford University weren't easy for you. The semester was about to end and you hadn't achieved the required grade in one of the subjects in your course. You spent day and night studying the content, but it never seemed to get into your head. You were a person who was easily distracted, if a fly landed on your book you would look at it and stare at it until you remembered what you were doing and went back to studying. The hours in the college library and the late nights in his room weren't working, nothing was working.

You definitely needed help.

“— Y/n, you need to ask someone for help. Math doesn’t enter your mind and you need that grade.”

You had your head down on the patio table, muttering about how useless and stupid you were.

“—Talk to Michael, he can-“

"- NO!"

You shouted with wide eyes, catching the attention of the other students around you. His cheeks turned red when he realized he was receiving attention and he laid his head back on the table.

“— I can’t ask him for help.”

"- Why not? Just because you're attracted to him doesn't mean his help isn't worth it to you.”

“—That’s exactly the problem, Riley.” You lifted your head and faced your best friend and roommate. “— He will distract me.”

Riley rolled her eyes. “— Everything distracts you, y/n. Absolutely anything. Your test is in a week and you can't study, give him a chance.”

You raised your head and leaned back in the chair, biting your lip, then huffing.

“—Okay, I'll talk to him. Well, I'll try to talk to him, since he and Oliver don't sit still.”

“— Well...you can try your luck now, the big boy is entering the courtyard alone.”

Your eyes widened and you placed your palms on the table, shaking your head at Riley.

“—Don’t even think about-“

“—Michael! Michael Gavey! Oliver's grunt! Can you come here quickly?”

Your cheeks heated up again and you wanted to choke your best friend. You heard the footsteps approaching your desk and tried to maintain your posture, trying to keep your slight attraction to Michael from ruining everything. You sighed as his soft scent entered your nostrils and looked to the side only to see him with a small smile on his thin lips.

“—What do you want from me, Riley?”

Her voice, how you liked it. Whenever he started talking in the classes you shared, you stopped what you were doing just to listen to him. The accent, the soft yet thick tone, the way he always smiled when he spoke. You would do anything to be able to hear his voice in your ear, just for you as he squeezes your-

“— Isn’t that right, y/n?”

You shook your head and frowned.

"- What?"

Riley rolled her eyes and kicked her leg under the table.

“—I was talking to Michael about helping you with the material.”

“—Oh! Yes, yes, I…I’m having trouble, some help would be nice.” You finally looked at him, noticing that his glasses were on top of his head, making him even more handsome. “— But if you can’t, there’s no problem, I can do my best and-“

“—I don’t mind helping.” he cut you off. “— I don’t have much to do until next semester, since I passed my classes. When is your test?”

“—Next week, Tuesday.”

He nodded, taking out his cell phone and handing it to you.

“— Write down your number, we can see when you will be available to study and decide on a meeting point.”

“— She’s always available, cute.” Riley winked at him and he put a smile on the corner of his lips.

“— I’m available at any time you are too. This matter is my priority.” You typed your number into your cell phone and gave it back to him.

He analyzed the number and typed something, his cell phone then beeping with a message.

“— I sent you a message to let you know it’s me. Then we’ll talk later, okay?”

You smiled and nodded. Michael got up from the table and put his cell phone in his pocket, putting his glasses on his face.

“— Save my number, I’ll message you soon.”

He pulled away and you could finally breathe normally again. You returned the kick you received from Riley, hearing a grunt in response.

“— I can’t believe you did that, what a shame.”

“— I give you a chance to finally be alone with the hot nerd and this is how you thank me? I need to start reviewing my friendships.”

His eyes rolled playfully and you got up from the table, grabbing your bag.

“— I'm going to take the books from my room and return them to the librarian before she kills me. You will stay?"

“—I’m going to meet Travis in a bit.”

“—Riley…”

“— We’re sorting things out, okay? We agreed that we would do it slowly this time.”

His eyebrows arched.

“— It’s okay, just…don’t let him make a fool of you again or I’ll finish him off.” You walked around the table and kissed your best friend's forehead. “— I’ll send you a message.”

You left the courtyard and headed to the dormitory blocks, going to yours and taking the calculus books, putting them in your bag and heading to the library. You left the books with the librarian and checked the time on your phone, seeing that it was time for your last class of the day. Before you could put it in your pocket, it beeped with a message.

“Did you save my number? I hope so! I thought we could study a little tonight, what do you think? It's good for you?"

You bit your lip and responded quickly.

"It's great! You can find me at-“

You stopped typing to think. It wouldn't be a good idea to take him to your dorm, not with your conditions, it would be too distracting to imagine the things you could do in your bed.

“Can you meet me at the library later? I’m going to my last class now and then I’ll be free.”

His response didn't take long.

“In the library at…8? The librarian doesn’t mind leaving the key with me, I’ve spent the night alone in the library.”

"Perfect. I’ll let you know when I’m leaving.”

"Anxious."

You bit back a small smile and put your phone away, realizing that you were about to be late for class and rushed to class, thinking about the night of studying with Michael.

[…]

You had sent a message to Michael to let him know that you had left class and were going to the library, he didn't respond back and you were afraid that he had forgotten and left you waiting alone in the library, but that didn't happen. When you arrived, Michael was talking to the librarian, a woman in her 60s. She caught their attention as she approached, and the lady handed Michael a key.

“— Don’t forget to lock it, if something happens here I’ll lose my job.”

“— Let’s not forget, Monica. You can watch your soap opera in peace.”

Monica patted Michael's arm and gave you a small smile, picking up her things and leaving the place, closing the door. Leaving the two of you alone and in silence.

Their eyes met and their cheeks automatically burned, and Michael noticed this as a smile appeared on the corner of his lips.

“— I picked some books before you arrived, I thought if we stopped to look it would take a while.”

"- No problem." you smiled.

"- He comes."

He placed his hands in the side pockets of his pants and began walking to one of the tables with you following him. You left your bag on the floor and picked up your materials, placing them on the table while he opened one of the books.

“— It’s going to be a long night, I hope you don’t have commitments tomorrow morning.” He said in a joking tone.

“— I had to cancel some super important commitments, but I think they can wait.” You joined in, earning a low chuckle from him.

You crossed your legs and started paying attention to what he was saying, trying not to get distracted by whatever was trying to distract you, especially him.

Hours had passed since the two of you started studying, and you were exhausted. Not only exhausted, but apprehensive, since even with Michael's explanations, mathematics didn't seem to want to enter her head.

“— …so you need to add 34+35 together with the root of 2 and…Hey, how are you? Do you want to take a break? Am I explaining too quickly? I can try to lower the-“

"- No! It's okay, I just…” you sighed “— I just don't think I'll be able to take this test. Mathematics doesn't enter my head at all. I’m wasting your time, I’m sorry.”

Michael frowned and got up from his chair, going to his side and placing his hand on your shoulder, gently caressing the area.

“— It’s okay, don’t worry. I also had a lot of difficulty when I was younger.”

You laughed nasally. "- I doubt it."

"- Do not believe me? I'm serious!" Michael laughed. “— You know…you should relax. If you stay tense like that, you won’t be able to concentrate.”

“— And how would I relax? Smoking a joint?” You let out a laugh, staring into his face.

“— A joint is good every now and then.” he wet his lips “— But I wasn’t talking about that.”

“—Hmm. And what would you suggest, Michael?”

Michael's free hand rested on your pant-clad leg, his fingers running up and down the thick fabric. You felt your breath hitch, and his eyes dropped to stare at his thin lips.

“—Michael…”

“—Ask me to stop.” he whispered while wetting his lips “— If you ask…I’ll stop and we’ll go back to studying.”

His noses brushed against each other, their breaths coming together.

"- It says…"

His chest rose and fell rapidly, his eyes moving up and down his face.

"- Screw this."

You broke the distance by pressing your lips to his, your hands cupping his face, your finger caressing his soft skin. His hand went up to his waist while the other held his neck, their tongues intertwining with each other. Michael pressed his hand on his neck, his mouth opened a little due to the lack of air and you could feel the smile on his lips. His nimble fingers went to the buttons on his pants, quickly undoing them before he entered the fabric with his fingers, touching her pussy through her panties.

“— You’ll be good to me, won’t you y/n?” his lips trailed across his jaw, biting the flesh of his neck “— So good…”

He swirled his fingers around your covered pussy, making you let out a sly moan. You could feel his smile on his skin as he kissed and nibbled on his neck. You grabbed the side of the chair and hooked your free fingers into the blonde strands of his hair, pulling them tight when he pressed his fingers there.

He pulled away and held your pants by the sides, making you lift your hips so he could lower your clothes a little, taking your panties with him. He separated his legs, leaving them wide open for him to have access to. Michael moaned in satisfaction at the sight of his pussy glistening, her fluid wetting his eager fingers.

“— Is that all for me?”

"- Shut up…"

Michael bit his lip and got up from his chair, moving the books away from the center of the table.

“—Sit on it.” you gave him a look of confusion “—Trust me.”

You did as he asked and sat on the table, letting Michael completely remove your pants. He spread her legs wide, squeezing the flesh of her thighs, then kneeling down. His chest rose and fell rapidly as he watched his every movement.

His lips trailed down each of his thighs, his eyes never leaving his. Michael ran his nose over your pussy, creating some friction, making you shudder a little from the contact. He let out a small laugh, the cold air coming into contact with his wetness.

"- You need to relax."

Michael completely engulfed her pussy, his tongue swirling around her pleasure point. He sucked and rolled his tongue all over your flesh, eliciting desperate moans from you. The sounds got louder as Michael sucked and licked you, making you cover his mouth. He pulled away and removed your hand from your face, giving you a small kiss before kneeling again and lightly slapping your pussy.

“— I want to listen to you. We are alone, don’t hide.”

Michael penetrated you with a finger, taking you by surprise, taking him to his spot inside your tight pussy, adding a second finger afterwards. His moans became loud just as he had asked, and they increased more when he used his mouth again, speaking against her pussy, bringing vibrations to her.

“—Michael…by God.”

His legs shook and trapped Michael's face between them. He ran his free hand up her stomach to one of his breasts, squeezing it hard through his t-shirt. His fingers moved in and out at an absurd speed, driving you into a frenzy. You brought your fingers to his hair and pulled hard when you felt yourself reaching his peak, closing your eyes tightly and feeling weak. You came with a scream, moaning his name loudly, echoing through the library. His legs slowly opened and he got up from the floor, running his hand over his face and wiping away the traces of fluids. He grabbed your chin and kissed you desperately, holding your face tightly.

“— The days I spent watching you. The days I spent watching you walk around in your provocative clothes.” he mumbled against your lips, his glasses fogged up, rubbing his erection against your bare pussy. “You're going to pay for every dirty night I spent jerking myself off. My y/n…my sweet girl.”

You listened in silence, shocked by his words, his confession. That made you want him even more, and you wanted him like hell.

“— I’ve wanted you for so long, Michael.” you pushed your hips towards him, wanting more contact “— Please…”

He bit his bottom lip and smiled.

"- Please what?"

You swallowed hard.

“— Please fuck me. I want to feel you. I want to feel all of you.”

Michael smiled and opened her mouth with his finger, lifting her chin and leaving it wide open, pouring some saliva onto her tongue. You swallowed without hesitation, making him proud with your attitude.

“—My good girl.”

His voice was calm and low, just so you could hear, even if you were alone in the library. He unzipped his pants and freed his fat dick, spraying the precum from the tip. Michael passed the tip between her already lubricated lips again, playing with the tip at her entrance.

“— I’m clean. I want to feel you."

He smiled and hugged your waist, pulling your body closer to the edge of the table, positioning his cock at your entrance, entering slowly. You both moaned softly when he entered completely, filling you. He left and came back again, coming in harder this time. You put your hands behind you, supporting yourself on the table as he moved slowly.

Michael lifted her black shirt, her breasts being exposed to him this time. His lips captured one of them, nibbling and sucking on the nipple as he moved inside you, his moan making your chest vibrate. With his other hand he squeezed her other breast tightly, pulling her nipple between his fingers. You caught his fingers in your blonde locks, pulling them every now and then with a certain force.

“— Such a good girl for me…so tight. Fuck, I'm going to fill you with my cum. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

His eyes closed as he gripped your waist tightly, his nails digging into your flesh. Michael moved in and out desperately, with brutal force. His body swayed, his chest rose and fell and his moans filled the library as well as the wet noise of his hips brutally colliding.

Michael stared at his body, completely entranced by the beautiful sight in front of him. Sweat running down the side of his neck, your hair sticking a little to his face. It was a sight he had imagined for a long time, but even better. He looked around and remembered that there was a shelf behind him, an idea came into his head. Gavey pulled you onto his lap and you gave him a confused look that soon became clear when you realized where he was taking you. His back hit the shelf, and before you could say anything, Michael was back fucking you, your face hidden in his neck as you screamed for him. His back hurt from the shelf, but at that moment you didn't care about the pain, but rather the pleasure. Michael caressed her pearl as he continued penetrating, her pussy clenching around his dick.

“— You’re coming, huh? Come on, baby, spill on my dick. My good, beautiful girl.”

You were losing consciousness. His eyes rolled back and you closed them tightly, screaming and cumming on his dick, becoming completely soft. Michael held you tightly, fucking you harder and harder, his mouth attached to your ear, your moans becoming more and more breathless. He gave one last thrust before his cum filled you completely, the hot, thick fluid being completely dumped inside you.

Michael laid his head on his shoulder as he tried to control his breathing, you ran your fingers along the back of his neck, caressing the hairs in the area. He lifted his face and dragged his nose down her cheek before kissing her lips slowly this time, stroking her tongue. Gavey pulled out of you, a sigh leaving both your lips at the lack of contact. He sat you down on the chair and picked up your panties and pants from the floor, helping you put them on and getting dressed afterwards. The two of you were silent, but not an uncomfortable silence. His eyes met each other's eyes and he smiled, placing his glasses on his head.

“—We made a mess.” you said and let out a laugh, being joined by Michael.

“— Yes, we did. But that’s okay, we’ll fix it.” You nodded.

Michael got up and closed the books, taking them back to the shelves while you put your materials in your bag. You bit your lip and quickly smiled.

“— Are you ready to go?”

You nodded and got up from the table, slinging your bag over your shoulder. The two of you headed to the exit of the library, where Michael locked it and kept the key in a small hiding place for Mrs. Monica to find the next day.

“— Can I take you to your dorm?” he asked, scratching the back of his head.

“— You don’t need it, it’s close by and-”

In fact, you wanted to. I wanted him to accompany you, I wanted him to stay.

“— You will go back to yours alone.”

He put his hands in his pants pocket and shrugged.

"- Yes I will. Unless you invite me to spend the night in your dorm. You know… I might get kidnapped on my way to the men's block, I don't know…”

You smiled at each other and then laughed. You approached him and cupped his face, leaving a light kiss on his lips.

“—Riley won’t be sleeping in the dorm today, if you’re interested.”

Michael hugged his waist and caressed his face with his other hand.

“— You can be sure that I am very interested. Maybe we can continue to study what the result would be like if we added 34+35 and took the root of-“

You rolled your eyes and cut him off by kissing his lips once again, laughing against them.

“—We know what the result is.”

“—We definitely know.”

[mountain-dew-tickledpink]

Reflection

hesitant to call this boyfs but it kind of his but also isn’t lol

It’s not like Michael ever truly hated Jeremy for the incident junior year with the play and the stupid computer pill. He couldn’t do that, but that didn’t meant that he didn’t need space from Jeremy for a while.

The space ended up being more than he expected. A week grew into a two weeks and then a month and then six months and now he and Jeremy barely talked. It made Michael feel kind of bitter at first, why wasn’t Jeremy doing more to reach out?

But he hadn’t been doing a lot either, and eventually the six months turned into a few years. College happened, new friends happened. But Michael couldn’t help but still think about Jeremy sometimes.

Whatever brought up the conversation he didn’t remember, but Michael was in one of these new friend’s living room on the couch and talking about Jeremy.

“We were best friends for twelve years,” he laughed a little, not focusing on the TV anymore as Eleanor, the friend, listened. “I actually can’t remember a time when I was younger that he wasn’t there.”

There was a pause. The curly brown haired girl squinted her eyes slightly. “Go on…?”

Michael just looked up at the ceiling and shrugged. “And it’s weird because he was kind of my whole life? But I didn’t really listen to him that well.” He took a breath. “I just always assumed we would be on the same page about everything, and we were at some points, but I guess I didn’t realize how he wanted to do things outside of me?”

“That’s what she said.” Eleanor’s eyes opened wide right after she said that. Maybe she realized that wasn’t the most appropriate time to make a ‘that’s what she said’ joke, but she stuffed some more popcorn in her mouth.

“Anyways, he eventually got a girlfriend and we had both needed some space. And then the spacing just kept… space-ing?”

Michael took off his glasses and started to clean them on his shirt as he continued. “Things were just complicated, but you know what’s funny? I think he was in some ways my first heartbreak.”

“So you liked him?” Eleanor asked, handing the popcorn bowl back to Michael once he had his glasses back on.

“I mean, yes and no.” He tried to explain. “Like, I would’ve done anything for him. We did kiss a few times in middle school out of curiosity, but I already knew I liked boys before him. We would hold hands, and he was honestly cute, yeah..”

“It kind of sounds like you’re still in love with him…?” Eleanor raised an eyebrow. Michael shook his head.

“No, we haven’t talked in maybe six years.” Technically, they had talked. They still wished each other well on holidays and texted each other for birthdays, but nothing beyond that. “But it still really hurt when we stopped talking.”

“I can imagine.” The girl nodded and then grabbed some more popcorn from the bowl. Michael did too.

It was all complicated. Michael hadn’t even been mad about the squip anymore, or for being left behind. If anything, for a while he had been more upset with the confused feelings he felt like he had been left alone to deal with.

Did he leave Jeremy alone with these feelings too, Michael would often wonder. It’s not like he meant to, he would never hurt Jeremy so badly on purpose.

“After we stopped talking, it felt like losing a limb at first. He had been pretty much everything to me and then was gone?”

Had he been in love with Jeremy or had he just been scared of the change that would’ve happened if Jeremy left?

Was it really a crush or did he just so happen to like holding and giving Jeremy kisses on the cheek and letting him rest his head on his lap?

Why was he thinking so hard about the codependent relationship he used to have? Okay, that wasn’t fair, that relationship had been one of his most important ones for most of his life.

Eventually Michael had been quiet long enough that Eleanor just focused on the movie again, and he pulled out his phone and went through his messages.

He clicked on Jeremy’s name after some scrolling and just stared at the last message. It had been one from himself, just a “you too” after Jeremy said for him to have a good birthday.

Hello

Michael typed out before pressing the backspace button and just putting his phone away.

[godspellcraft]

intro post 👋

hello! i’d prefer to stay anonymous but i wanna give a little info about what i do for anyone who may be in the same boat :)

i was raised catholic. i also have ocd which for a long time warped my catholic upbringing into scrupulosity/religious ocd (obsessively trying to always do the “right” thing lest i go to hell, compulsively keeping track of my “sins”, etc).

YEARS ago in middle/high school i had a friend who got into wicca and she invited me over for a full moon ceremony in her yard, and (despite that ocd-voice yelling at me and making me anxious the whole time about whether this was all okay) i was really struck by how beautiful and NATURAL it felt- being outside, including stones and herbal tea, making wishes on candles- and i secretly prayed throughout the whole thing, both as an ocd protective measure (still very much worried about hell), and, now i realize, as a perfectly natural addition to the ritual. i was raised to believe that God created the earth and everything on it…. why couldn’t i connect with Him THROUGH that creation? where church often made me feel anxious and LESS than, i’ve never had any problem feeling connected and distinctly “magical” when i’m outside interacting with the natural world. but at that point i was still too anxious and scrupulous about it all to really do any exploring.

flash forward to college and i started a small crystal collection, mainly for aesthetic, but also with a bit of curiosity. flash forward again and i’ve discovered Christian witchcraft is in fact A Thing, that the Bible’s been translated a million times and that whole “witch” line is pretty negligible, and Hildegarde Von Bingen was doing crystals before it was cool. in a weird way the pendulum has swung back to the other side, and i’m probably more catholic now than ever, but in the healthiest, most fun, magical way that makes so much sense to me. I talk to God & Jesus with tarot cards, i keep candles for some favorite saints (St. Beatrice Da Silva, my confirmation saint, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Michael Archangel, and of course Mother Mary), and I can name the correspondences of a long list of herbs and crystals and use them to set goals for myself and to create what i think of as “physical petitions” (spells). where i used to pray obsessively, never feeling like i “did it *quite* right”, now i can put some herbs in a bottle and truly let it go.

i still feel i have a lot to learn. i know a lot of the theory, but i just need practice really connecting. i’ve definitely had some strange coincidences that are hard to brush off, but i’m still growing and learning every day.

so welcome to whatever this is! i hope you can find some of it useful or interesting.

and im a scorpio? if that’s important lol

edit: tags

[antifainternational]

REVIEW: WE GO WHERE THEY GO: THE STORY OF ANTI-RACIST ACTION Shannon Clay, Lady, Kristin Schwartz, and Michael Staudenmaier 2023, PM Press Reviewed by K-Dog In February I read the excellent new book WE GO WHERE THEY GO - The Story of Anti-Racist Action written by Shannon Clay, Lady, Kristin Schwartz, and Michael Staudenmaier, with a cool graphic-style Forward by Gord Hill - and published by PM Press. This is the first-ever in-depth history of the influential direct-action anti-fascist youth movement - and the authors do a great job of trying to organize that story into chapters covering the defining struggles and evolutions of the network - including the turf battles between anti-racist skins and nazi boneheads, the protracted struggle against the Ku Klux Klan's organizing efforts, ARA 's innovative and effective work in Canada, and the fierce opposition to both anti-choice fascists and sexism within our movement. The book is driven by interviews with over 50 ARA veterans, fellow travelers or first-hand observers who provide quotes, reflections, and war stories - often with a biting sense of humor.

I spent a good part of my teens and twenties building ARA in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Detroit, Chicago and supporting other chapters across North America. It was my university. So it was fun and sometimes emotional to read stories of fights we were in or see quotes from friends who have put in the work and paid their dues in this movement. I always knew that what we did mattered - even if it wasn't often treated that way by the mainstream left - not to mention broader society. But I have to admit its rewarding to have the history treated as something significant, even crucial. More than giving props to the OG antifas tho - what's really meaningful is that this book will help a new generation, confronting new forms of the fascist threat, find inspiration and lessons in both our successes and failures.

A few things off the top of my head that I thought the book did well was: 1. Quantify the victories against the fash - a surprising number of fascist organizations went out of business after sustained campaigns by ARA - a material contribution to the fight against white supremacy 2. Deal openly and honestly and without hype with the question of political violence - both its efficacy and dangers 3. Emphasize the role of culture (not just the bands - but yes the bands) - the way the movement LIVED and FELT and WORKED 4. Skillfully review the disagreements and controversies within the movement without trying to score points or dismiss points of view 5. Argue for the need for movements that are both militant AND outward facing - radical AND popular 6. Letting the people speak! This isn't a book of academic citations or leftist rhetoric - its the voices of regular, mostly working-class people, mostly without college degrees sharing their thoughtful insights, compelling stories, and clever anecdotes

My criticisms of the book are really more criticisms of ARA. Did we really never articulate a thorough understanding of what fascism is? Or at least establish some solid competing positions? Did we never find a way to talk about strategy beyond the various direct action campaigns we were running? Did we never propose ways to further embed ARA within wider sections of the working-class - and especially relate to communities of color more consistently and systematically? Looking back, some of our short comings are embarrassingly obvious.

For me Anti-Racist Action was a real living example of a genuine "United Front" - the concept of different groups, tendencies, and individuals working together and having each others backs in struggle DESPITE many real and important differences. A United Front does not mean everybody is all happy with each other all the time - quite the opposite, it means we're all often annoyed, angry or arguing with each other - but we don't sulk away when we lose a vote or don't get our way or face some criticism. We do appreciate what other folks are bringing to the table tho, we give them their respect, and we recognize the common goals we are fighting for - because those goals actually fucking matter.

The other thing about ARA I'd like to highlight was the de facto method of leadership - the anarchistic "leadership by example". Instead of a top-down structure where a few intellectuals dictate strategy and tactics on the larger mass - ARA chapters made their arguments by producing real world examples of what they were talking about. Think we should all do Cop-Watch patrols? Show me what that looks like. Convinced we need to make feminism a core part of our culture? Build a crew that exudes that vibe. Want economic demands as part of the program? See how we are doing it in our town, etc. etc. etc.

I have a lot of love for the hundreds of young people who organized and fought for ARA; for the few elders from the 60s/70s generation who embraced ARA, helped build it and make it more sophisticated; and the bands that saw what we were doing and kney they could help by promoting the work on tour and on records. ARA was a militant movement - we took risks and took licks - and gave 'em back too. I remember once calculating how many arrests ARA had taken over the years and by my loose tally we were well into the many hundreds when I gave up counting. Many of us got stitches and casts, relationships got tested and burned, and two of us were murdered by nazis in the desert. Now in my 50s I'm still unsettled and angry about a lot - and I'm still active on a few fronts - will be 'til the day I die. But I have a calmness when I'm around my ARA homies with our jokes, arguments, scars, and PTSD. My people. Virtual book launch of WE GO WHERE THEY GO, hosted by Asheville, NC's Firestorm Books: Tuesday, March 28th @ 7pm. Register here.

[plumbogs]

anyway brandina time.

I've rambled before about how I love Dina Caliente and will defend her to the death etc, plus i'm a "dina was michael bachelor's young and questionable trophy wife" truther. I don't think she was ever necessarily a gold digger in a greedy manipulative sense, moreso that she valued the comfort/security found in wealth and Michael was well-off enough to provide that for her in exchange for him having a hot young wife and whatever. He came around the same time that Flamenco died, and Nighat had been dead since she was a kid, so she was entering the adult world functionally alone apart from her twin sister. I think Nina was probably jealous on some level of Dina/Michael, even if to most outsiders that relationship was questionable, because Nina just had her lameass high school boyfriend-situationship who she didn't actually want to be romantically involved with and whatever, but it still was a bit of a wedge to them for me. that's mostly irrelevant though. in turn Dina was totally jealous of Nina having Don in high school. usual sibling rivalry nonsense.

In my timeline, Michael died around the same time that Bella disappeared, so she and Mortimer ended up bonding in grief and kicked off their relationship. yknow still like, bizarre age gap but to me it's not intentionally malicious on either of their parts. BUT I do think that Mortimer as a partner did help her 'mature' in some ways, primarily because he had kids and wasn't as reckless and whatnot as Michael. She never marries Mortimer to me. She'd never be able to really replace Bella to him or his family and knows that. he has the world's angstiest verge-of-teenhood son and cassandra is literally her age. they're not about to see her as a real mom. Their relationship never really gets that deep to me, either. It gives her some time to come into her own and whatnot, be independent, etc.

Dina never went to college in my headcanon, she kinda just immediately married Michael and lived like that for a while, then lived half off his inheritance and maybe a lower-wage job of her own in the culinary industry. So sometime around her mid-to-late 20s, Mortimer also dies because he's so old. obviously that's sad for her again. With him she did have some more chances to sorta figure herself out beyond being a trophy wife, reconsider what's important to her.

MEANWHILE, Brandi was also engaged and married stupidly young. She was a teen mom to me. She and skip had a shotgun wedding, had their kids, Skip wasn't the best husband anyways before died, she went into a horrendous life-ruining grief period and alcoholism. the broke kids had it rough, the social worker breathing down her neck, etc. so she had to like, get sober eventually because Dustin had enough and had to move out and get his own life together before he lost it completely. she started doing yoga or a comparative social activity, introducing her to the Calientes, and they became friends because Brandi is so friendly and nice :) Dina's still with Mortimer, etc, but they're still getting along and Brandi's life is getting together.

Then Mortimer dies, Brandi's life is together enough and the kids are not little and in need of constant care anymore (not that she was great at that stage either but this is not a brandi broke parenting analysis post shhh). She is older than Dina to me by a bit but personal development wise they're now in the same place of "what do I do now". SO naturally they bond over that. and they start kissing about it because surprise. bisexuality.

to Brandi, Dina's nice. she can cook, she's been through grief more times than anyone can count, and is like an expert in "you need to do something fun for yourself" pep talks. to Dina, Brandi's recovery and work on herself + dedication to actually being a better parent is inspirational in a way. she doesn't really care at this point what people think of her, and Dina "professional arm candy" Caliente never really had a partner yet who had basically no expectations for how she came off to other people, giving her the most space she'd ever had to figure out her own life goals and dreams. brandi's all humble and whatever. her kids are annoying as hell but a very interesting change compared to the goth kids. dina's never a mom type to me but she does end up bonding with them all. whatever. yippee

I think after getting together, Dina would probably finally go to college or get a real career for herself otherwise. I think it can go a lot of ways. Both of them can cook. I think it'd be cute for them to open some kind of diner together :) or a similar thing. bake sale lesbians. mutual mid-life coming of age. trying to pick up the pieces of their young adulthoods not really belonging to them in a way that mattered. whatever!

[nrrrdgrrrl2002]

Haven’t had a chance to see the movie yet but I think I might bring back this “Game Abby au” idea I had a while back,

It’s nothin too crazy

Just a “what if Abby was a character in the games?” And an opportunity to slightly rewrite the fnaf games into something I find more coherent and interesting

So here’s a lil Abby timeline and some fun facts about her in my au!

1983/FNAF 4- Abby is only a few months old by the time the events of this game happens.

William and mrs Afton are currently starting to go through a divorce so mrs Afton currently has Elizabeth and Abby with her while Michael and crying child are staying with William.

Imma say Michael is 12 and Elizabeth and crying child are 8 (I’m making them twins here) at this point

So I’d probably have Elizabeth be 10-11 when she gets scooped a couple years later

(Skipping fnaf 2 since it ain’t relevant here)

1990/FNAF 1-so Abby is now 7 and Michael is 19. Mrs Afton ended up “passing away” so Mike took Abby in as soon as he turned 18 to keep her away from William,

Succeeding in doing so since William was under investigation (but never arrested unfortunately)

So he takes the pizzeria job cause it was the only place in their small town that would take him, everyone else not trusting him after everything that’s happened with the Afton family.

Just like the movie he takes Abby with her.

After five nights of trying to survive, Abby ends up developing a bond with the animatronics, so they mellow out with the whole trying to kill mike thing,

Allowing Abby and mike the opportunity to find out some odd things about these seemingly living animatronics.

They eventually figure out the animatronics are possessed by the kids who went missing years ago, causing mike to become more suspicious of his father than ever.

Abby becomes close friends with the animatronics for about 3 years. Until the pizzeria needs to be closed down for good.

Mike manages to find out that the animatronics were dismantled for some reason and now the kid’s spirits have nothing to possess but are still unable to move on.

This prompts him and Abby to start really looking into what happened to these kids to help them move on, the kids haunting Abby to keep themselves tethered to this realm until they can properly move on.

Giving mike more motive to help them so Abby won’t be haunted for the rest of her life and possibly even deemed insane by others.

1995/Sister Location- Abby is now 12 and Michael is 24.

Abby is still being haunted by the missing kids and mikes still looking into what happened.

He ends up finding an old note from his dad, who’s been missing for two years, telling him that if anything happens to him, to go to the circus babys rental bunker

Michael goes by himself this time, seeing Abby as old enough to be able to be left alone, so she doesn’t get much to do.

That is, until after everything in sister location happens.

Instead of ennard leaving of their own accord due to mikes body becoming too rotten, Abby realizes after a few days of living with possessed mike that this isn’t quite Michael.

So, with the missing kids help, she manages to force ennard out of Michael, even getting herself pretty badly hurt from this due to ennard trying to take her body next.

After some recovery time in the hospital, she manages to reunite with a corpse Michael.

Michael is not doing well at all with the whole being turned into a zombie thing. Abby accepts it and tries to help him through it, but it’s a lot for both of them and strains their relationship.

They even lose contact with each other when Abby moves out for college, Michael thinking she’ll have a better chance to live her life if he’s not in it.

This also pretty much postponed the investigation into what happened to the missing kids. The ghost kids and Abby have gotten very used to each other so they’re not pushing to find a way for the ghost kids to move on.

Mikes still worried about it since it constantly looks like Abby’s talking to herself, but he still thinks it’s better than him staying with her to help the ghost kids

2013/FNAF 3- ok so Williams only locked away for 20 years instead of 30 in this. This is when i really start f••king with the timeline.

So Abby has been trying to live her life, even with the whole ghost kids haunting thing. But she’s still looking into what happened to them to try to find their killer (who they don’t know the identity of)

Then fazbear frights opens, which the ghost kids have a strong feeling could be the solution to their problem.

So Abby takes a night guard job there and finally gets to meet her father, who she didn’t get to interact with much as a kid

She doesn’t recognize him, but he recognizes her due to her having his eyes.

So he tries to lure “his little princess” out of her office and convince her to help him, scaring the hell outta her in the process.

Abby and the ghost kids manage to figure out that this isn’t just their killer, but Abby’s father,

Leaving Abby with the difficult decision of killing her father, who she holds in high regards since she didn’t know him that well, to save her best friends of over 20 years.

The two have a pretty brutal brawl, Abby needing to be saved by the puppet, who’s been seeking out William for years.

Abby lights the place on fire and barely manages to escape in time.

The puppet takes the ghost kids to guide them to the other side, their souls now finally able to rest

Abby is sad to see her friends go, but grateful that their no longer in pain, now allowing her the chance to fully move on as well

Until…

2014/Pizzeria Sim- William managed to survive but Henry, now out of prison due to being blamed for Williams crimes, sets out to take em out once and for all.

Gaining the aid of Michael Afton, who’s been hiding away from the world for decades, but also aiding a detective and former employee of Freddy fazbears, Jeremy Fitzgerald, with strange cases relating to Freddy fazbears

Things go pretty much the same way they do as canon,

But ending with Jeremy finding Abby and trying to get her and him to the pizzeria after Jeremy discovers Henry’s plan and realizes michael is in danger,

Not knowing that Henry plans to trap michael there as well to burn away everything

But they get there too late and the place is already burning down, leaving michael dead and Abby grieving.

Abby ends up getting ownership of the fazbear brand due to literally everyone else who could get it being dead

And instead of abandoning it, she decides she wants to use the opportunity to make something good out of this brand of tragedy

Leading into

(Also skipping help wanted)

2023/Security Breach- Abby is the ceo of fazbear entertainment and trying to run the place as well as she can at 40 years old.

Still mourning her brothers loss but otherwise happy with her life

What she doesn’t know but will get to discover is that michael is still around

Now possessing a certain very friendly, very odd, orange bear robot…

Now for fun facts about Abby!

•she was a grunge kid in her tweens-teens

•she met a girl named Jessica in college who eventually became her wife

•she didn’t get to see her father much due to her mom and then her brother wanting distance from him

•her father, when he did see her, referred to her as “his little princess” after a children’s book he’d read to her called “princess quest”

•she didn’t get to know crying child (or Evan in this) until she met him at Freddy fazbears possessing golden Freddy

•she didn’t get to meet Elizabeth until her soul briefly pleaded to her for help as she was fighting ennard. To this day, she’s still unsure if Elizabeth was simply tricking her or genuinely needed her help and it still bothers her.

That’s about all I got for now folks!

[softpine]

Hi! I’ve been following you for probably 3 years? I never read your story in full because I felt like I was already so far behind when I tried reading it the first time. I know the very beginning is very gameplay-esque I was wondering where I should start so I understand the lore and story properly? I don’t want to miss anything! I am always so amazed at the way you edit your story posts and the writing! So I really want to deep dive and finally read everything 😭 sorry it took me this long!! Writing this on anon cus I’m shy and a little embarrassed tbh ><

hey!! don't be embarrassed, i'm not judging in the slightest. i'm more aware than anyone else how crazyy long my story is. but sadly there's not a great place to start reading without missing things :( but here's a summary of the main plot points that become relevant later on:

rosie camellia (right) is a college student from brindleton bay, studying archaeology abroad in selvadorada. she meets isa delavina (left), an author and the great-granddaughter of madre cosecha, the scientist who founded selvadorada. she ends up showing rosie the hidden temple, they fall in love, start dating, move in together, etc.

now stick with me. rosie has 4 younger brothers, both are pairs of twins. michael and jack were teenagers at the time, but owen and isaac were very young toddlers. anyway, so michael shows up in selvadorada and breaks the news that their moms, genevieve (left) and reece (right), were in a car accident and both of them are dying. rosie rushes back home, leaving isa behind.

gen and reece die. [you'll see them as ghosts much later on.] rosie gets custody of all 4 brothers. isa moves to brindleton bay to support rosie and they eventually get married. michael & jack go away to college. owen (right) & isaac (left) were so young that they consider rosie and isa their moms, which is how they will always view them going forward. [the only brother who is really important is owen, because he will be stevie's dad.]

using IVF, isa becomes pregnant with caroline. while she's pregnant, her old friend from selvadorada, eva vasquez, shows up with a baby of her own, beth!!! 💖

as it turns out, eva had to escape an abusive relationship with beth's father, so she turned to isa and rosie for help. she eventually moves in next door. beth (right) loves to play with owen and isaac, and when caroline (left) is born, they become the best of friends immediately.

the last thing you need to know is about caroline. she'll become the main character so she's super important. the day she's born, we get our first bit of true plot in the form of a letter from isa. it's a recounting of caroline's birth written in the future. she talks about why they named her caroline (after the song sweet caroline started playing on the radio), about how the huge storm subsided as soon as she was born, and finally, she writes: "We miss you, we love you, and we need you to come home. Please, please come home, Caroline." so caroline's entire childhood and teen years are clouded by the knowledge that at some point in the future, she will lose contact with her family, though we don't know how or why or when.

now you can start reading from around this point, although there's still plenty of cringe left before i really hit my stride 😭 i'm sorry, it's just the nature of working on the same story since 2018 and learning as i go. i hope if you decide to give it a shot, you'll be able to find some value in it :')

[tehloserprince]

I was tagged by @santacoppelia - thank you! 🥺🧡

1. were you named after anyone? Michael Jordan, ha ha. No, really, my mom's a huge fan. She's followed his career ever since his UNC days. I love telling people that's how I got my name. For the record, although I have an obligatory fondness for my hometown team and a nostalgic love for the Bulls in their Jordan Era, I'm currently a Bucks fan.

2. when was the last time you cried? It's really difficult for me to cry. It's such a relief at times, tho. I cried a few weeks ago, when I realized my special needs dog was having some epilepsy-related issues. I've mostly accepted that I'll probably never see him with a grey muzzle, but I really hope we can share more time together. There are still so many things I want to show him.

3. do you have kids? Nope. Sorta did, once, but I don't really talk about that much. It was a good experience, and I still love/think about her. But my kids are all the critter variety these days ;) I enjoy hanging out with my friends' kids, but they're all growing up too quickly :/ What even is time

4. what sports do you play/have you played? I never really played anything professionally, but I liked soccer, basketball, and running when I was younger. I got into boxing and Muay Thai when I was a little older, and also did a lot of hiking. Unfortunately I'm crippled, so I'm limited in what I can/should do. I try to go on lots of walks with my pup and swim whenever I can. Sometimes I still wrap my hands and hit the bag, which is fun.

5. do you use sarcasm? No, never. (/s obvs)

6. what's the first thing you notice about people? The way they treat other people - especially the most vulnerable - and animals. Physically, eyes and smile. I'm more impressed by people who can be genuinely kind without ulterior motivation.

7. what's your eye color? Hazel.

8. scary movies or happy endings? Depends on my mood! In terms of scary films, gore feels lazy and boring to me. I need a film to get inside my head in order to be scary. But I'm a sucker for happy endings too, which is a lot of projection on my part, ha ha.

9. any talents? Err. Uh. Writing, I guess? Remembering a lot of random info? Friends are consistently surprised that I'll remember so many little details, especially if it's like ... me surprising them with something they mentioned liking at some point. Funny enough, I'll frequently forget why I walked into a room these days, but I'm glad some parts of my memory still excel! I'm also told that I'm extremely patient, if that counts as a talent.

10. where were you born? Charlotte, NC.

11. what are your hobbies? Writing, reading, watching movies and television shows (mostly with the BFF), random crafts, DIY home improvement stuff (I painted my entire house despite my health worsening over the years and I'm very proud of that), canine behavior/training, and playing video games. I don't have as much time for games, but I still enjoy it. Started a new game of Red Dead Redemption 2 this winter, and I've been spending hours just roaming the land with my horse.

12. do you have any pets? Ha, yes! I do a lot of animal rescue and have some life goals related to that, so hopefully I'll always be surrounded by critters. My beloved dog (Skippyjon) passed away in 2022 (old age and CHF). I had a cockatiel for 21 years - a birthday present when I turned 8. We basically grew up together, and the house is still way too quiet without him. I had other dogs (Smokey and Locke), and a lot of fish. In college, I had an "illegal" hamster, Kai (Kaizoku). He was fat and wonderful. I chose him because he squeezed past his siblings, sat in their food dish, and started shoving food in his mouth. King behavior tbh. I had a rat named Stevie in my late 20s. Currently, I have a deaf special needs dog (Oscar aka Ozzy), a cat that I hand-raised because she was found abandoned shortly after birth (Swayze), and a rabbit (Shasta aka Bad Bunny). At some point, I decided that all my rabbits would be named after soda brands, ha.

13. how tall are you? About 5'10".

14. favorite subject in school? Literature, Spanish, Philosophy, sometimes History, Classical Studies, Art. Anything that wasn't math, because I always struggled with that.

15. dream job? If I could make a living off of writing and spend a lot of my time doing animal rescue, I'd be content. Even if I was wealthy, I'd ultimately pursue a simple, cozy life without a lot of fanfare. I'd love to have more money to invest in animal rescue and local community welfare (kids should always have basic necessities imo). Maybe someday ...

Tagging anyone who feels like doing this! Feel free to reblog or tag me if you wanna let me know that you did it. Thanks, this was fun :3

[somethinginscoutcounty]

Client Notes by Dr. Jenny B. Taylor

July 26, 2024

Patient notes and entries for my newest client Erik Karim-Belyaev. Coming to me for aid in managing and processing grief and potential trauma from going missing early to mid-spring in a local national park and forest on a camping trip with friends. After our evaluation and compatibility meeting last week, and seeing a match, we discussed surface-level information.

Erik explained that he has no true memory of getting lost or any of the days that he and his group were missing, however, he stated that he has occasional nightmares of being in the forest but claims that he never gets any actual information out of them. I saw a possibility that these dreams might be his brain bringing some memories and details back into his awareness but are still, possibly, repressed. I chose not to question any further and will have that be a talking point when Erik becomes more comfortable sharing things with me.

I didn't bring up many things from his synopsis or ask much of him because we were not yet familiar with each other so there was not much to talk about. Most of the session was talking about his support systems post-rescue in which he shared details about his mother, father, and best friend and college roommate, Nathan. Erik talked about how since leaving the hospital all three have been helping him recover mentally, emotionally, and physically both after hospital leave and after the funeral of lost friends. I remarked that it was good that he had such close people being a part of his healing process.

Erik made a remark that his support group was very small, I did mention that any amount of support is good and that I would technically count as a fourth, however, it was when asking if maybe there could be others that he could reach out to he seemed to be caught up in a thought that came to him for a few seconds before he shook his head and said that there weren't any that he could think of.

After a while of back and forth, our time was up and we needed to depart. I'll spend some sessions trying to make a bond with him so that we can work on his trauma more effectively.

August 10, 2024

Another meeting with Erik. We have built up quite a lot of trust over the past few sessions and have begun to talk more about how the trip has affected him since its occurrence.

Erik talked about his friends. He told me that he had known one of them, Michael, since middle school, where he later met his sister, Gracy. He later explained that Gracy would meet Frankie in their high school years and she promptly joined the friend group.

Erik noticeably was choked up when talking about them but when I asked if he wanted to leave it for now he said no, stating "Talking about it... out loud... everything.... it helps. It helps a little.". Erik then went in depth about how exactly he met Michael. "We had this one class. He sat next to me and both of us never listened half the time and I was doodling... something from a thing I liked back then and then Mikey just... he saw what I was drawing and we started talking about it, turns out he liked it too and so we just talked the whole class, then we found out that we both had the same lunch period after that, we talked through that... and then it just... happened. We were just friends. By the time summer came around we just were..." to which Erik interlaced his hands together to gesture that they were very close. I asked about Gracy to which Erik explained that they developed their friendship through her sitting at lunch with him and Michael and so that bond came with his relationship with Michael.

I could tell that talking about his friends with someone in depth helped him get some of the pain from what happened away, I wanted to leave it at that since he seemed in a positive place for now. I gave him some words of encouragement so that he would stay there and maybe be ready for the more difficult and harder conversations the next time I see him.

[my-makeshift-masquerade]

It All Comes Back to Haunt You (Part 3)

@glitchysquidd

(I am sorry, but the next chapter of Into the Breach will come next I swear… This will highlight some obvious plot-holes, include more characters, and other things… Aight let’s make shit hit the fucking fan.)

It was the first shift for her since Tim and Samantha hired her on. Rebecca was too worried to focus on work right now. Henry and Micheal had been…too okay…with the concept of her father being here. They were quiet. They were planning something, but what? Obviously the fire thing never happened, because she pointed out other innocent people were probably going to be in the building, but what else could they be thinking—

“Hey, kid, can I talk to you for a sec?”

The employee she had become fast friends with snapped her out of her thoughts.

“Sure, uh…” The teen mumbled, “Where’s Dave?”

“Uh. Fucking around somewhere, I dunno.”

“Okay…? W-what do you want to tal—“

“So… You are Rebecca Afton, right?”

She was taken aback by the question, but nodded slowly. It was a bad idea to trust this person with such information, but after keeping quiet for so long, Rebecca’s need for connection outweighed her sense of self preservation by a hair.

“I was up last night thinking, reviewing the true crime podcast… It just doesn’t line up.” Her coworker paused, “Not that I think you’re lying or anything since you look just like the kid they showed but…”

“Y-Yes…?” She was becoming more fearful with every second of silence.

“Your dad tried to kill you in like…1986… It’s 2023…” They stopped for a moment to double check their head math, “Forget calculating your actual age. You should be way older. How the hell do you look so…so…young?”

That was a very fair question, and she was honestly surprised how long it took even her father to do the fucking math here. He clearly knew what year it was, yet he didn’t comment on her supernaturally youthful appearance at all. Rebecca figured it wasn’t a detail he was analyzing right now. She realized she could only shrug in response to the inquiry…

“Yeah, I…I have no idea why I seem to be aging so…slowly…” The young looking woman admitted, “I was hoping to ask Charlie, but it is taking me a while to fix—“

“Who?”

“Oh, uh… Charlotte. She’s Henry Emily’s daughter… like the ring leader of the ghosts.” Rebecca said this far too casually, mixing flavoring into her water, “Yeah, she’s chill… Just—understandably protective of the others…”

“Sure, right… Then also… What happened to your dad? Do you even know?” Her coworker frowned, “Dave is in the springlock suit now so clearly whatever happened on the night he tried to off you didn’t like—kill him—“

Damn. They really are “balls deep in denial” as Micheal put it. Yet they seemed head over heels for her dad. She guessed pining for a serial killer grants amazing cognitive dissonance…

“Yeah…” Her voice trailed off, “Not sure on that one… Just glad it was over…”

“Sorry. Am I prying too much?”

“No, no… You aren’t the first. My whole upteenth highschool class found out and none of those idiots did the math… Those who did just think I’m a liar.” She laughed nervously, “I’m just… thinking about something myself…”

“Wait wait wait. How many times have you had to go through highschool?! That sounds like hell—“

“It is. Still look too young for college… But if we don’t want to be investigated I have to keep acting at the age I look…” She rolled her eyes, “Though the state aren’t competent enough to notice the same person going through their school system every other four years…”

“What if you stop faking and tell—“

“I end up in a government facility most likely…” She answered bluntly.

Her coworker snorted.

“It is a genuine fear of mine, really. It’s why Michael and I have to come back whenever a new thing related to the franchise pops up. If people knew the full truth…” She paused, “I bet even the ghosts in the suits would be in the same boat as me then…”

“…Oh.”

“Man… I’ve never told anyone this shit before… This feels…like a weight is off my shoulders…”

“You’ve been that isolated… Unable to tell the truth to anyone…For 30 years…?!”

“Yep. Just myself, Micheal, and…”

Rebecca stopped herself. Mikey was already pissed about the amount of information they had to disclose to this person due to the sheer fact “Dave” was in the equation. As much as she wanted to let it out, she’d get in trouble for mentioning another huge name for the brand.

“Sorry, I’m prone to oversharing…”

———

“Ms.Clair, I know you’re about to leave, but have you seen Mi—“

Rebecca grabbed from behind, making her panic on reflex, letting out a very childlike noise despite her biting her lips.

“Jason!” Clair scolded.

“What? I needed to get through the doorway.” Jason smirked at her, “Are you gonna come around here often or—“

“Yes… I-I work here?” Rebecca was autistic and oblivious to any sort of flirting. It seemed Jason was taking that as a bit of a challenge.

“Well, you like making it difficult, huh?”

“Making what difficult?” She was more confused than offended or creeped out, “W-was I really that much in the way? S-sorry—“

“It’s so easy to make you apologize.” Jason snickered, “It’s really cute how you get all flustered…”

The sound of inexplicable metal hitting the door made Jason jump.

“SHITSHITSHIT—“

He turned around, sighing in relief when Springtrap wasn’t standing behind him. It was just that guy with the weird skin condition holding a spare part.

“Man, don’t fucking scare me like that.” The shorter man growled, “Can’t you see we’re having a conversation?!”

“Oh? Want to try doing something about it?” Micheal asked with a threateningly casual tone that was eerily identical to Springtrap’s.

“Whatever. I’m fucking out of here.” Jason huffed, giving the younger figure one last concerned glance. “Good luck with that thing.”

“Bye…I guess?” Rebecca blinked as Jason and Clair left, before turning to her brother, “Mike, where have you been? It’s been an hour.”

“Oh, I was just on the phone.”

“For an hour?!”

“Had to deal with some things after the call.”

“What things?”

“Things.”

“Ugh! Stop being difficult—“

“No.” Her brother chuckled, messing up her hair, “You do realize that man was hitting on you, right?”

“Hold on. He was WHAT?!”

“There you two are.” Their coworker smiled, “I finally found Dave in his room, and I see you found—“

Rebecca punched her brother in the chest repeatedly, as he started horse-playing with her, leading her to giggle, “H-hey! Let go—“

“Nope… Sibling privilege.” Micheal had her in a headlock, finally letting her go as she managed to get a good hit on him, “Fuck—!”

“Ha!”

“Below the belt? Really?” He smirked.

“It’s not like you have anything valuable down there!” She snapped back, getting too caught up in playing with her brother to notice who just entered the establishment.

“Oh jeez… Would you crazy kids stop wrestling each other on the clock?”

Rebecca lost all of the color in her face hearing that voice. No. No no no. Henry was here?! But her father was here?! Oh shit… This was going to end so…so badly. What was Michael thinking?!

“Your hair’s all over the place, kiddo.” The man walked over and fixed it for her, as well as straightening her shirt, “There! Now if only your brother would stop messing it all up…”

“Heh… No promises.”

Unseen by everyone, Springtrap watched from the farthest end of the hallway Micheal had come from. He was absolutely seething. William had no idea that Rebecca ended up being taken in by Henry after his death. Seeing his former business partner fix his daughter’s hair in such a fatherly manner while she clearly seemed embarrassed by it was enough to make him want to strangle him. That bastard, that hypocrite.

Taking in his child after banishing him from his own company, stealing his work, and leaving him without a way to feed that same child and her older siblings back in the 80’s? Just who did Henry think he was?! Some savior?!

“Uh… Who is this?”

His daughter looked terrified as her coworker spoke up, but her expression turned to one of horrific dread as she noticed her father’s figure lurking at the end of the other hall.

“Oh, where are my manners?” The old man chuckled, patting Michael on the shoulder, “My name is Henry Emily. It’s a pleasure to—“

Rebecca couldn’t leave fast enough, passing her father on the way and dodging his attempt to stop her. Nope. No way. Not today. Not ever. She locked herself in the back room, prepared for all hell to break lose.

“My dad’s here isn’t he?” Charlie’s spirit asked, frowning sympathetically as the woman curled up against the wall just nodded.

“Stay in here… The others and I can try to scare him out…”

[pandoradeloeste]

The Bright Sessions fic recommendations

I haven’t seen one of these in a while, so we’re partying like it’s 2017 and making a fic rec list!

I wish this could be as comprehensive as I want it to be, but the fic writers in this fandom are on another level, and unless I want this to turn into an AO3 feed, I can’t list all the good ones. But here’s a representative sample:

Shipping

Better Forms of Communication  (T, no word count because it’s a text fic formatted as graphics) Caleb and Adam texting each other and their friends as they circle each other and (slowly!) get around to getting together. 

Light My Heart and Light My Shadow (M, 2K) An alternate version of Caleb and Adam’s laundry room scene from College Tapes #shameless self promo

Anchored And Flying (T, 3K) Adam’s radio show at Yale — featuring Twitter, medical kink jokes, “What’s New Pussycat”, and helping resolve some adorable gay pining

The Ultimate Double Dare (T, 20K, WIP but only technically, the two chapters that are written stand on their own) Caleb and Adam get secretly married before college for the financial aid. Caleb is The Absolute Worst at keeping secrets. Hijinks ensue.

Chamomile Tea (T, 3K) Some cute post-College Tapes hurt/comfort, and some Caitlin-Adam friendship (I am weak for those two)

Caleb Michaels Has A Lot Of Feelings (About Adam Hayes) And Sex (With Adam Hayes) (E, 10K) Caleb and Adam exploring empathy and sex. This has the distinction of being the first ever explicit Caleb/Adam fic. Vivacious_turpitude walked so that the rest of us could run.

an antisocial pessimist, but usually I don’t mess with this (T, 2K) Caleb’s football team gives Adam a shovel talk and tries to explain what a first down is

Nobody Said It Was Easy (Oh, Take Me Back To The Start) (T, 15K) Jewish Oliver, Mark taking a path that isn’t true to himself and then finding joy anyway, Tier 5, this one’s got it all

I’ve Got The Feeling You’re The Right Thing After All (T, 30K) Sometimes you want a fluffy getting-together fic about two clueless idiots in love, and these two are adorably clueless

Have I Ever Told You How Good It Feels To Hold You? (T, 2K) “Oh my god there was only one bed” is out, “there were two beds but we chose to sleep in one” is in

Barnacle Tales (six-work series, 17K total - the first work is M, the rest are T) Some more fluffy getting-together fic about two clueless idiots in love

perfect for you (G, 1K) A sweet little Brytz proposal

without you, I’ll never be home (T, 4K) Oliver and Mark moving in together in slow motion. In my advanced age of 38, I am a sucker for people taking their time in relationships and deciding which steps of the relationship escalator to take and when.

Something Dumb To Do (T, 7K) Mark and Oliver fake-propose to each other for the free desserts and fall in love. (This is also shameless self-promotion.)

my power was constricted in my heart (M, 137K) A royalty AU where Prince Mark Bryant and his manservant Oliver Ritz get kidnapped, then kidnapped again, then kidnapped a third time, and find home somewhere along the way. Every single TBS character, large and small, makes an appearance at some point. This is one of those fics that grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go until it’s 4 AM, your phone’s battery is at 1%, and you’ve been emotionally destroyed at least three times. (Full disclosure, this is a WIP, but I have it on good authority that it hasn’t been abandoned.)

Vienna Waits For You (G, 14K) Brightgreen coffee shop AU, cute as fuck and the found family that Joan and Owen deserve

Take Anything You Need (M, 4K) Mark/Damien, dealing with an alpha rut during the road trip. I think this might be the only (at the time of this writing) A/B/O TBS fic? And it works. It’s sweet, it’s hot, it’s a version of Damien I wish was canon.

I Like My Body When It’s With Your Body (E, 28K) Mark/Damien nonsexual D/s — also sweet, also hot, also a version of Damien that I wish was canon, one that isn’t consumed by fear of not being in control every second of every day

ain’t gonna run from the wind and the thunder, when we’re dancing under the rain (T, 4K) Mark/Javier. The other Tier 5 survivors are fascinating to me, and I love the chance to explore Javier. And we get to give Mark a cute boyfriend, that’s always fun

I haven’t touched a pretty thing in forty days (T, 5K) Joan and Beck talk about trauma, loneliness, and moving forward. In a strip club. As one does.

and the reason comes on the common tongue of your loving me (E, <1K) Ben and Frankie having some fun, and we love to see it

Gen

the flame is gone (the fire remains) (T, 4K) Alternate ending for College Tapes. The grief is visceral, the narration is nonlinear, and the ending is beautifully tragic

on being raised on fairy tales in which you are the monster (T, 2K) Villain origin stories are fascinating to me, and TBS does tragic villains like no one else

All I’ve Ever Known Is How To Hold My Own (G, 3K) Parallels between Joan/Mark as kids and Joan/Sam as adults; you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll wish you could punch Papa Bryant in his stupid face

A Secret I Never Wanted To Tell (G, 10K) Vanessa Turner sells Mark out to the AM. Joan finds out. Fireworks ensue

I’m somebody desperate, I don’t know what to do (T, 3K) Damien’s bi awakening, which of course becomes delicious angst because Damien is an angsty, touch-starved motherfucker

i want to feel all the ache I can feel (T, 5K) Canon divergence where Adam gets the Pokemon evolution, and an exploration of trauma as it affects atypical ability and expression

A Regular Decorated Emergency (G, 1K) The story of Caleb’s quidditch quadball injury, and all the brotherly Caleb-Mark interaction that we were robbed of in College Tapes

to say that I’m a rainbow and tell me that I’m bright (G, 9K) Sam, Mags, Mark, and Oliver going to Pride. It’s been over a year and the line “These are my flags. That’s me.” makes me cry to this day

You got troubles, I got ‘em too (G, 1K) Sam and Joan taking a moment to breathe and grieve at the AM

I got it all (but I don’t ever wanna grow up) (T, 5K) You know how College Tapes never actually addressed Caleb’s quarter-life crisis? Here’s a fix-it fic for that, along with more Caleb-Mark brotherly friendship

Atypical Revolutions (because if you leave TBS fans alone for five minutes, we come up with ways to make atypicals go public and get justice)

Your Enemy Whispers So You Have To Scream (T, 240K) Mark and other Tier 5 survivors go public after someone leaks evidence of the AM and Tier 5 to the general public. Oliver spends the next year failing spectacularly to avoid being drawn into the growing tension between atypicals, the government, and non-atypicals. This is the last bit of shameless self-promotion.

TPWKY Episode 222: DNA Meth(ylation) And Atypicality (G, 7K) A crossover between This Podcast Will Kill You and TBS, this assumes that atypicals have been forced to go public, and goes deep on the social and scientific ramifications. Mark ends up the public face of atypicality. This fic was a lot of the inspiration for Your Enemy Whispers.

Bryant vs. United States, Decision, Communication No. 947/2027 (M, 2K) Exactly what it sounds like — Mark goes public and sues the AM. The formatting for Your Enemy Whispers owes a lot to Bryant vs. United States (as does a certain UN resolution). I really, really hope it gets finished, because you know how you read a fic, or even just hear it described, and it keeps you up until two in the morning crying because it’s just that good and tragic? That was me when the authors dropped their plan for this fic’s endgame.

gonna do my very best and it ain’t no lie (M, 37K) Oliver accidentally-on-purpose lets his family think that he’s dating Mark, on the same weekend that files go missing from the AM. Come for the fake dating, stay for the atypical revolution. (Fair warning, it is a WIP, but it’s not abandoned)

[sorry-imma-scorpio]

hello again

Have I met my Michael?

See, the funny part about all of this, is that I know that I have this account. I haven't forgotten a password, neglected my laptop, or gone to the mountains to be a recluse from society. I have simply been busy.

Here is a handful of life updates, another schizophrenic monologue, as my former friends would have called it.

I go to college now, actually wrapping up my first semester, with a final paper. I still protcrastinate everything that I do. Even to the people I love.

Love.

Funny thing.

You see, I thought I was in love with my (now ex) girlfriend from one of my previous rants. I might have been at some point, but not in any way that truly mattered. Turned out that at the very same moment I was writing that essay of a rant, she first got the idea that she wanted to break up with me. I was broken and falling apart every moment of my waking existence, and she wanted out.

Nov - : I had a birthday-like party with a group of friends. At one of their apartments. This is the night that I realize I am not a lesbian as I start to get feelings for a man (I know! It's weird!). This is also three weeks after I tell my ex that I will not be attending her school and she blamed me for all of her future misfortune. I cried. But that night I went to sleep happy, I finally felt wanted.

Nov - : I am nineteen. The boy wishes me happy birthday before all of my other friends, I can feel my heart smile when he texts me. My ex had texted me the night before when it turned midnight in her time zone... I thought it was sweet. (I should not be listening to The View Between Villages as I write this out. This is probably going to be very damaging to my mental health.) I go home. I eat some steak. I cry.

Nov - : We are hanging out again. The group of us go to one of the Recreation centers on campus. He lays next to me on the couch and we make eye contact. I want to kiss him. I talked to my ex throughout the day. She doesn't say "I love you". I call my friend and I sit and write a letter.

Nov - : The next day. I texted the boy the night before that we needed to talk in person. We get together after class and I tell him almost everything about my relationship, and he supports me. He walks with me all across campus and even takes me to a museum. I feel wanted. We split ways, but only after he bows and says "Until Friday, Miss LastName. But we will talk every moment until that point." I call a couple friends to gush about this interaction. The moment is ruined by my ex texting me. The breakup will happen that night but none of us knew that yet.

It was over in 15 minutes

She tells me she had wanted to break up for months

She said she didn't want to lose me as a friend

We have been no contact since.

I don't miss her.

Boy said he was proud of me.

I am proud of me

Nov - : I tell more friends about the breakup, catch them up on everything. None of them know that I had mourned this relationship since mid-October. When I first told her about this. Boy hugs me. It lifted my mood so much that I participated in class.

Over Thanksgiving break we talk the entire time. He keeps checking in on me and it is such a nice conversation every time we interact.

December hits me like a fucking train and I lose my mind.

I don't remember what happened so far, all I know is that it is December 17, 2023 and I have had so many highs and lows mentally.

I do know, however, that on December 8, 2023, I wanted to not be here anymore. I went on a walk without the expectation of coming back, even telling my friends to watch my stuff. My phone dies and the last song I heard was "Call Your Mom" by Noah Kahan. I crave orange chicken. And I wonder what the boy would think and feel if he knew that I had ended my life shortly after we had just talked.

I try to tell my friends what's going on. Like an idiot. Two of them cared that I was coming out of a spiral. One of them... one of them completely disregarded it. I understand that these cyclical thoughts can be tiring to be around, so that is why I try to stifle them, so my friends don't have to deal with me. Right after I told this friend that I was done with living, she tells me that she now craved the orange chicken I told her pulled me out of my ideation, and that her boyfriend was cute on FaceTime.

How the fuck does anyone do this to someone?

I tell the boy. He asks what happened. If I am okay. And tells me that if it ever gets to that point again to call him and he will come get me from wherever I am. He tells me to stay safe and that he loves me. I know it was in the way a friend loves a friend but it was said so softly, so carefully, that I believed it. This was the first time in a while that I heard the words "I love you" and connected that, yes, someone could actually love me. That people want me around.

From the end of Thanksgiving break to the start of Winter break, we were together every single day but one. That one day, apparently we both almost texted each other multiple times asking if the other wanted to hang out. I should have.

Going from my ex who tells me to tell my therapist when I'm depressed to someone who goes around my jokes to tell me to tell him what's going on.

I have needed this man my entire life, and he came into it at the perfect time. Even if he doesn't share the same romantic feelings that I have towards him, I know that there is something there, and that is more than my other friends could have ever given me in the last few months. He makes me not want to end it all. He makes me want to eat. He makes me want to actually live.

I have now listened to francesca.

Thank you for reading,

You are loved,

Scorpio <3

[5sosfanfictioncatalogue]

Winter Masterlist

a hug in a mug (ao3) - allsassnoclass (brightblackholes) calum/ashton T, 3k

Summary: Ashton owns a coffee shop. Calum comes in every day to order a coffee, but never drinks it.

Baby, it’s cold outside (ao3) - Unholy michael/luke G, 1k

Summary: His smile faded quickly when the cold wind went right through every layer of clothes he had on, freezing him thoroughly within mere seconds. The snowflakes fell down onto his black coat and black beanie and even stuck to the few strands of red hair peeking out from underneath the fabric. His feet were freezing - he was wearing converse, which weren’t really winterproof shoes - and he forgot gloves and it was just so cold and all he really wanted was to be cuddled up on the couch and watch a goddamn movie. He grumbled and frowned, wrapping his hands around himself in an attempt to stay warm and glancing at the door longingly, looking actually like a distraught kitten.

Or Michael doesn’t like snow but he goes outside anyway, just for Luke.

Be my baby and I'll look after you. (ao3) - dramionedarlings luke/ashton G, 1k

Summary: Ashton and Luke go out on walk in London in winter and they are both madly in love with one another

best mistake i've ever made (ao3) - Calumthoodshands (tndart) luke/calum T, 6k

Summary: Calum only agreed to the double date because Michael's his best friend. He didn't expect anything to come out of it - and he most definitely didn't expect Luke, a tall, blond guy who's as elegant on skates as Calum is trying to talk to him.

but being us feels good to us (ao3) - mukelftv (eddiethebanisheds) michael/calum T, 1k

Summary: Or, where Michael and Calum play chess at a ski lodge.

i blame it on the weather (can you make it better) (ao3) - allsassnoclass michael/calum T, 6k

Summary: Michael doesn’t remember the dorm being this cold when he left in December. He doesn’t know how the space between him and Calum got that cold, either.

lowercases and capitals (ao3) - galacticsugar luke/calum T, 10k

Summary: “Fuck, Luke, two minutes ago you were whining about Ashton not flirting with you enough, and now you’re making eyes at the barista.” Michael laughs a little as he says it, shaking his head in that special way he has that means he’s surprised at how unsurprised he is by Luke. It’s the same way he shakes his head when he catches Luke dumping powdered sugar on orange slices, or settling in to watch 10 Things I Hate About You for the hundredth time.

“I can find two different guys desirable at the same time,” Luke replies defensively. What’s the point of college, anyway, if you can’t enjoy the fact that you can bump into a different hot guy around every corner?

Meet Me Under the Mistletoe (ao3) - allsassnoclass (brightblackholes) michael/ashton T, 15k

Summary: Michael has been letting everyone at the office believe he has a boyfriend for the past few months. Things become complicated when they ask to meet his boyfriend at the company winter party.

Mistletoe (ao3) - FlowerCrowned luke/calum N/R, 696

Summary: Because who doesn’t like some Christmas fluff?

rock bottom (ao3) - w4st3d4u michael/luke, jack/michael, michael/harry E, 10k

Summary: michael needs someone and luke has a boyfriend.

Skiing for Beginners (ao3) - allsassnoclass (brightblackholes) luke/ashton G, 2k

Summary: Luke is a lifelong skier who really wants an excuse to spend time with the new ski instructor.

Snow (ao3) - pitypartyof1 calum/ashton M, 1k

Summary: Ashton and Calum go away for the holiday and bask in each other with a little bit of romance.

Snow Days (ao3) - Sydnaynay (bandable) michael/luke G, 792

Summary: Luke loves the snow, so he's going to take advantage of it whenever he can. So, when he wakes up one morning to see snow outside, he's beyond excited. He somehow convinces Michael to come outside with him. Snowball fights and hot chocolate ensues.

or

Luke loves the snow and Michael. Michael hates the snow, but loves Luke.

the best defense against the cold (ao3) - allsassnoclass (brightblackholes) luke/calum T, 1k

Summary: Luke is having a hard time handling winter in their drafty apartment. Calum wants to fix that.

[xtruss]

2023 Person Of The Year: Taylor Swift

— By Sam Lansky | Photographs By Inez And Vinoodh For TIME | Published: December 6, 2023

Taylor Swift is telling me a story, and when Taylor Swift tells you a story, you listen, because you know it’s going to be good—not only because she’s had an extraordinary life, but because she’s an extraordinary storyteller. This one is about a time she got her heart broken, although not in the way you might expect.

She was 17, she says, and she had booked the biggest opportunity of her life so far—a highly coveted slot opening for country superstar Kenny Chesney on tour. “This was going to change my career,” she remembers. “I was so excited.” But a couple weeks later, Swift arrived home to find her mother Andrea sitting on the front steps of their house. “She was weeping,” Swift says. “Her head was in her hands as if there had been a family emergency.” Through sobs, Andrea told her daughter that Chesney’s tour had been sponsored by a beer company. Taylor was too young to join. “I was devastated,” Swift says.

But some months later, at Swift’s 18th birthday party, she saw Chesney’s promoter. He handed her a card from Chesney that read, as Swift recalls, “I’m sorry that you couldn’t come on the tour, so I wanted to make it up to you.” With the note was a check. “It was for more money than I’d ever seen in my life,” Swift says. “I was able to pay my band bonuses. I was able to pay for my tour buses. I was able to fuel my dreams.”

Swift’s accomplishments as an artist—culturally, critically, and commercially—are so legion that to recount them seems almost beside the point. As a pop star, she sits in rarefied company, alongside Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, and Madonna; as a songwriter, she has been compared to Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, and Joni Mitchell. As a businesswoman, she has built an empire worth, by some estimates, over $1 billion. And as a celebrity—who by dint of being a woman is scrutinized for everything from whom she dates to what she wears—she has long commanded constant attention and knows how to use it. (“I don’t give Taylor advice about being famous,” Stevie Nicks tells me. “She doesn’t need it.”) But this year, something shifted. To discuss her movements felt like discussing politics or the weather—a language spoken so widely it needed no context. She became the main character of the world.

If you’re skeptical, consider it: How many conversations did you have about Taylor Swift this year? How many times did you see a photo of her while scrolling on your phone? Were you one of the people who made a pilgrimage to a city where she played? Did you buy a ticket to her concert film? Did you double-tap an Instagram post, or laugh at a tweet, or click on a headline about her? Did you find yourself humming “Cruel Summer” while waiting in line at the grocery store? Did a friend confess that they watched clips of the Eras Tour night after night on TikTok? Or did you?

Her epic career-retrospective tour recounting her artistic “eras,” which played 66 dates across the Americas this year, is projected to become the biggest of all time and the first to gross over a billion dollars; analysts talked about the “Taylor effect,” as politicians from Thailand, Hungary, and Chile implored her to play their countries. Cities, stadiums, and streets were renamed for her. Every time she came to a new place, a mini economic boom took place as hotels and restaurants saw a surge of visitors. In releasing her concert movie, Swift bypassed studios and streamers, instead forging an unusual pact with AMC, giving the theater chain its highest single-day ticket sales in history. There are at least 10 college classes devoted to her, including one at Harvard; the professor, Stephanie Burt, tells TIME she plans to compare Swift’s work to that of the poet William Wordsworth. Friendship bracelets traded by her fans at concerts became a hot accessory, with one line in a song causing as much as a 500% increase in sales at craft stores. When Swift started dating Travis Kelce, the Kansas City Chief and two-time Super Bowl champion, his games saw a massive increase in viewership. (Yes, she somehow made one of America’s most popular things—football—even more popular.) And then there’s her critically hailed songbook—a catalog so beloved that as she rereleases it, she’s often breaking chart records she herself set. She’s the last monoculture left in our stratified world.

It’s hard to see history when you’re in the middle of it, harder still to distinguish Swift’s impact on the culture from her celebrity, which emits so much light it can be blinding. But something unusual is happening with Swift, without a contemporary precedent. She deploys the most efficient medium of the day—the pop song—to tell her story. Yet over time, she has harnessed the power of the media, both traditional and new, to create something wholly unique—a narrative world, in which her music is just one piece in an interactive, shape-shifting story. Swift is that story’s architect and hero, protagonist and narrator.

This was the year she perfected her craft—not just with her music, but in her position as the master storyteller of the modern era. The world, in turn, watched, clicked, cried, danced, sang along, swooned, caravanned to stadiums and movie theaters, let her work soundtrack their lives. For Swift, it’s a peak. “This is the proudest and happiest I’ve ever felt, and the most creatively fulfilled and free I’ve ever been,” Swift tells me. “Ultimately, we can convolute it all we want, or try to overcomplicate it, but there’s only one question.” Here, she adopts a booming voice. “Are you not entertained?”

A few months before I sit with Swift in New York, on a summer night in Santa Clara, Calif., which has been temporarily renamed Swiftie Clara in her honor, I am in a stadium with nearly 70,000 other people having a religious experience. The crowd is rapturous and Swift beatific as she gazes out at us, all high on the same drug. Her fans are singularly passionate, not just in the venue but also online, as they analyze clues, hints, and secret messages in everything from her choreography to her costumes—some deliberately planted, others not. (“Taylor Swift fans are the modern-day equivalent of those cults who would consistently have inaccurate rapture predictions like once a month,” as one viral tweet noted.)

Standing in the arena, it’s not hard to understand why this is the biggest thing in the world. “Beatlemania and Thriller have nothing on these shows,” says Swift’s friend and collaborator Phoebe Bridgers. Fans in Argentina pitched tents outside the venue for months to get prime spots, with some quitting their jobs to commit to fandom full time. Across the U.S., others lined up for days, while those who didn’t get in “Taylor-gated” in nearby parking lots so they could pick up the sound. When tickets went on sale last year, Ticketmaster crashed. Although 4.1 million tickets were sold for the 2023 shows—including over 2 million on the first day, a new record—scalpers jacked up prices on the secondary market to more than $22,000. Multiple fans filed lawsuits. The Justice Department moved forward with an investigation. The Senate held a hearing. Given these stakes, Swift had to deliver.

Ticketmaster and Live Nation executives testified at a Senate hearing after demand for tickets overwhelmed the siteAl Drago—Bloomberg/Getty Images

“I knew this tour was harder than anything I’d ever done before by a long shot,” Swift says. Each show spans over 180 minutes, including 40-plus songs from at least nine albums; there are 16 costume changes, pyrotechnics, an optical illusion in which she appears to dive into the stage and swim, and not one but two cottagecore worlds, which feature an abundance of moss.

In the past, Swift jokes, she toured “like a frat guy.” This time, she began training six months ahead of the first show. “Every day I would run on the treadmill, singing the entire set list out loud,” she said. “Fast for fast songs, and a jog or a fast walk for slow songs.” Her gym, Dogpound, created a program for her, incorporating strength, conditioning, and weights. “Then I had three months of dance training, because I wanted to get it in my bones,” she says. “I wanted to be so over-rehearsed that I could be silly with the fans, and not lose my train of thought.” She worked with choreographer Mandy Moore—recommended by her friend Emma Stone, who worked with Moore on La La Land—since, as Swift says, “Learning choreography is not my strong suit.” With the exception of Grammy night—which was “hilarious,” she says—she also stopped drinking. “Doing that show with a hangover,” she says ominously. “I don’t want to know that world.”

Swift’s arrival in a city energized the local economy. When Eras kicked off in Glendale, Ariz., she generated more revenue for its businesses than the 2023 Super Bowl, which was held in the same stadium. Fans flew across the country, stayed in hotels, ate meals out, and splurged on everything from sweatshirts to limited-edition vinyl, with the average Eras attendee reportedly spending nearly $1,300. Swift sees the expense and effort incurred by fans as something she needs to repay: “They had to work really hard to get the tickets,” she says. “I wanted to play a show that was longer than they ever thought it would be, because that makes me feel good leaving the stadium.” The “Taylor effect” was noticed at the highest levels of government. “When the Federal Reserve mentions you as the reason economic growth is up, that’s a big deal,” says Ed Tiryakian, a finance professor at Duke University.

Carrying an economy on your back is a lot for one person. After she plays a run of shows, Swift takes a day to rest and recover. “I do not leave my bed except to get food and take it back to my bed and eat it there,” she says. “It’s a dream scenario. I can barely speak because I’ve been singing for three shows straight. Every time I take a step my feet go crunch, crunch, crunch from dancing in heels.” Maintaining her strength through workouts between shows is key. “I know I’m going on that stage whether I’m sick, injured, heartbroken, uncomfortable, or stressed,” she says. “That’s part of my identity as a human being now. If someone buys a ticket to my show, I’m going to play it unless we have some sort of force majeure.” (A heat wave in Rio de Janeiro caused chaos during Swift’s November run as one fan, Ana Clara Benevides Machado, reportedly collapsed during the show and later died; Swift wrote on Instagram that she had a “shattered heart.” She rescheduled the next show because of unsafe conditions, and spent time with Benevides Machado’s family at her final tour date in Brazil.)

Top: Swift told TIME she started training six months in advance of the Eras Tour, which kicked off in March. Courtesy TAS Rights Management Bottom: Austin, Andrea, and Scott Swift with Taylor at NYU graduation in 2022 where she received an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts. Courtesy TAS Rights Management

Swift is many things onstage—vulnerable and triumphant, playful and sad—but the intimacy of her songcraft is front and center. “Her work as a songwriter is what speaks most clearly to me,” says filmmaker Greta Gerwig, whose feminist Barbie was its own testament to the idea that women can be anything. “To write music that is from the deepest part of herself and have it directly speak into the souls of other people.” As Swift whips through the eras, she’s not trying to update her old songs, whether the earnest romance of “You Belong With Me” or the millennial ennui of “22,” so much as she is embracing them anew. She’s modeling radical self-acceptance on the world’s largest stage, giving the audience a space to revisit their own joy or pain, once dismissed or forgotten. I tell Swift that the show made me think of a meme that says, “Do not kill the part of you that is cringe—kill the part of you that cringes.” “Yes!” she exclaims. “Every part of you that you’ve ever been, every phase you’ve ever gone through, was you working it out in that moment with the information you had available to you at the time. There’s a lot that I look back at like, ‘Wow, a couple years ago I might have cringed at this.’ You should celebrate who you are now, where you’re going, and where you’ve been.”

Getting to this place of harmony with her past took work; there’s a dramatic irony, she explains, to the success of the tour. “It’s not lost on me that the two great catalysts for this happening were two horrendous things that happened to me,” Swift says, and this is where the story takes a turn. “The first was getting canceled within an inch of my life and sanity,” she says plainly. “The second was having my life’s work taken away from me by someone who hates me.”

Swift shows me some things she loves in her apartment: a Stevie Nicks Barbie that sits still boxed in her kitchen, sent to her by the artist; the framed note from Paul McCartney that hangs in her bathroom; tiles around the fireplace that Swift found shopping in Paris with her mother. Connections to her family are everywhere, including a striking photo of her grandmother Marjorie, an opera singer and the inspiration for a track on her album evermore. Swift grew up on a Christmas-tree farm in Pennsylvania, with her younger brother Austin; her father Scott was a stockbroker at Merrill Lynch, and Andrea worked in marketing. Her family still works closely with her today. “My dad, my mom, and my brother come up with some of the best ideas in my career,” Swift says. “I always joke that we’re a small family business.”

After moving to Nashville as a teen, she signed with Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine Records. Swift’s songwriting ability was evident from the first lyrics of “Tim McGraw,” her debut single: “He said the way my blue eyes shined put those Georgia stars to shame that night—I said, ‘That’s a lie.’” Even for country music these lyrics are literary—conjuring a romantic fantasy, then deflating it a line later. The fairy-tale promise of love and intimacy became a runner in Swift’s work as a songwriter, something she’d repeatedly espouse, then skewer; she was self-aware about the role narrative played in her expectations. She was seen as a gifted pop-country ingenue when, in a now infamous moment, Kanye West interrupted Swift onstage at the 2009 VMAs while she was accepting an award. The incident set in motion a chain of events that would shape the next decade of both artists’ lives.

It was around that time, Swift remembers now, that she began trying to shape-shift. “I realized every record label was actively working to try to replace me,” she says. “I thought instead, I’d replace myself first with a new me. It’s harder to hit a moving target.” Swift wrote songs solo, incorporated diverse sonic influences, and placed more clues about personal relationships in her lyrics and album materials for fans to decode. Her epic ballad “All Too Well,” from 2012’s Red, epitomizes Swift’s superpower as a songwriter, deploying tossed-off details like a forgotten scarf that comes back at the song’s end to stab you in the heart—but it also had a secret message hidden in the liner notes. When an extended version of the song hit No. 1 last year upon its rerelease, it wasn’t only because the song is extraordinary, but because it has its own lore, like Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” if it came with an experiential puzzle for fans to solve. “She’s like a whole room of writers as one person, with that voice and charisma,” Bridgers says. “She’s everything at once.”

Swift knew she had to keep innovating. “By the time an artist is mature enough to psychologically deal with the job, they throw you out at 29, typically,” she says. “In the ’90s and ’00s, it seems like the music industry just said: ‘OK, let’s take a bunch of teenagers, throw them into a fire, and watch what happens. By the time they’ve accumulated enough wisdom to do their job effectively, we’ll find new teenagers.’” She went full-throttle pop for 2014’s 1989, putting her on top of the world—“an imperial phase,” she calls it. She didn’t realize it would also give her much farther to fall. Public sentiment turned—sniping about everything from her perceived overexposure to conspiracy theories about her politics. “I had all the hyenas climb on and take their shots,” she says. West wrote a song with vulgar lyrics about her, and claimed that Swift had consented to it, which Swift denied; West’s then wife, Kim Kardashian, released a video of a conversation between West and Swift that seemed to indicate that Swift had been on board with the song. The scandal was tabloid catnip; it made Swift look like a snake, which is what people called her. She felt it was “a career death,” she says. “Make no mistake—my career was taken away from me.”

It was a bleak moment. “You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar,” she says. “That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before. I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.” (Kardashian wrote, in a 2020 social media post, that the situation “forced me to defend him.”) Swift’s next album, 2017’s Reputation, featured snake imagery; the video for “Look What You Made Me Do” saw her killing off younger versions of herself. She remembers Reputation being met with uproar and skepticism. “I thought that moment of backlash was going to define me negatively for the rest of my life,” she says. She had also satisfied her record deal with Borchetta, and knew she wanted out. “The molecular chemistry of that old label was that every creative choice I wanted to make was second-guessed,” she says. “I was really overthinking these albums.”

She met with Lucian Grainge, the CEO of Universal Music Group, and Monte Lipman, who runs Universal’s top label Republic Records, to talk about signing a deal that would give her more agency. Today, Grainge is perhaps the most powerful executive in the music industry, but, as I sit with him in his office in Los Angeles, he describes himself as an “old punk” who operates on instinct more than metrics. He told Swift, he says, “We will utilize everything that we’ve got as a company for you.” Swift felt like she’d been given carte blanche: “Lucian and Monte basically said to me, ‘Whatever you turn in, we will be proud to put out. We give you 100% creative freedom and trust.’” It was exactly what she needed to hear most when the chips were down.

Yet the release of Swift’s first album with Republic, 2019’s Lover, coincided with the second big upheaval in her professional life: Borchetta had sold Big Machine—and with it, Swift’s catalog, valued then at a reported $140 million—to Ithaca Holdings, which is owned by music manager Scooter Braun, a former ally of West’s. “With the Scooter thing, my masters were being sold to someone who actively wanted them for nefarious reasons, in my opinion,” Swift says. (“It makes me sad that Taylor had that reaction to the deal,” Braun told Variety in 2021.) The sale meant that the rights to Swift’s first six albums moved to Braun, so whenever someone wanted to license one of those songs, he would be the one to profit. Swift rallied her fans against the deal, but still felt powerless. “I was so knocked on my ass by the sale of my music, and to whom it was sold,” she says. “I was like, ‘Oh, they got me beat now. This is it. I don’t know what to do.’” She went back to work, using the pandemic lockdown to pare back her sound on critically acclaimed albums folklore and evermore.

Around the same time, she started thinking about rerecording her old albums in an effort to wrest back control. “I’d run into Kelly Clarkson and she would go, ‘Just redo it,’” Swift says. “My dad kept saying it to me too. I’d look at them and go, ‘How can I possibly do that?’ Nobody wants to redo their homework if on the way to school, the wind blows your book report away.” Since Swift wrote her own songs, she retained the musical composition copyright and could rerecord them. She also negotiated to own the master rights for her material when she moved over to Republic in 2018, so she now owns her new material and the rerecorded songs. (Major labels have since made it more difficult for artists to rerecord their music.) She began rerecording subtly different versions of her old albums, tagging them “(Taylor’s Version)” and adding unreleased tracks to redirect listenership to them. She frames the strategy as a coping mechanism. “It’s all in how you deal with loss,” she says. “I respond to extreme pain with defiance.”

Top: Swift performs at Foro Sol in Mexico City on Aug. 24. Hector Vivas—TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management Bottom: After playing Kansas City in July, Swift returned in October to support her boyfriend, Chiefs star Travis Kelce. David Eulitt—Getty Images

Grainge calls the rerecording project “bizarrely brilliant and unique”—something that only an artist at her level could pull off. “It’s got such a narrative—there’s a reason for it.” He shakes his head. “Imagine Picasso painting something that he painted a few years ago, then re-creating it with the colors of today.” Part of the success story, Swift says, is the freedom she received from the label to follow her instincts. “If you look at what I’ve put out since then, it’s more albums in the last few years than I did in the first 15 years of my career,” she says. That prolific output has fueled her ascension. “She could serve two terms as President of the United States and then go to Las Vegas,” Grainge says. “Who else can do that?”

In the grand narrative of Swift’s life, as she rose this year, her foes’ fortunes also seemed to turn. Over the summer, it was reported that several of Braun’s key clients—chief among them Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande—were no longer being managed by his company, while West’s antisemitic and other offensive remarks led to his losing key endorsement deals. Swift knows firsthand that fame is a seesaw. “Nothing is permanent,” she says. “So I’m very careful to be grateful every second that I get to be doing this at this level, because I’ve had it taken away from me before. There is one thing I’ve learned: My response to anything that happens, good or bad, is to keep making things. Keep making art.” She considers. “But I’ve also learned there’s no point in actively trying to quote unquote defeat your enemies,” she says. “Trash takes itself out every single time.”

The premiere for Swift’s concert film takes place at the Grove, an outdoor mall in Los Angeles, which has been shut down for the event; Swift has packed 13 screens with thousands of fans. She goes, one by one, to each theater thanking sobbing audience members for being there. Like the tour, the film, which was released directly to theaters without a traditional partner, is an event. “We met with all the studios,” she tells me, “and we met with all the streamers, and we sized up how it was perceived and valued, and if they had high hopes and dreams for it. Ultimately I did what I tend to do more and more often these days, which is to bet on myself.” She credits her father with the idea. “He just said, why does there have to be a—for lack of a better word—middleman?”

In the theater excitement ripples through the crowd, a mix of fans and Swift’s friends, as we wait for her. To my left are two dedicated Swifties, sisters who introduce themselves as Madison, 23, and McCall, 20, and who are still reeling from taking a selfie with Swift on the red carpet. Their wrists are covered in friendship bracelets, some of which are deep cuts—such as no it’s BECKY, a reference to a beloved Tumblr meme, and BLEACHELLA STAN, for Swift’s 2016 platinum blond bob—and Madison reveals a tattoo on her forearm that says “Taylor’s Version.” Both tell me their favorite album is Reputation. They are my favorite people I have ever met, and I want to talk to only them for the rest of my life. Madison admires Swift for her vulnerability—“which is insane, when she’s under endless scrutiny”—while McCall cites her consistency, which she calls “a lost art form.” When I ask how McCall feels about Swift’s romantic life, she fields the question elegantly. “It’s a disservice to her to focus on that stuff,” she says. “She’s so good at making her personal experience relate to millions of people. When I listen to her songs, I think about what I’ve been through—not what she’s been through.”

Swift’s private life has long served as both grist for the tabloid mill and inspiration for her own work; she split from her longtime boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn, earlier this year. Most recently, she’s been dating the NFL star Travis Kelce, as has been well documented when she attends his games. “I don’t know how they know what suite I’m in,” she says. “There’s a camera, like, a half-mile away, and you don’t know where it is, and you have no idea when the camera is putting you in the broadcast, so I don’t know if I’m being shown 17 times or once.” She is sensitive to the attention that’s put on her when she shows up. “I’m just there to support Travis,” she says. “I have no awareness of if I’m being shown too much and pissing off a few dads, Brads, and Chads.”

I point out that it’s a net positive for the NFL to have a few Swifties watching. “Football is awesome, it turns out,” Swift says playfully. “I’ve been missing out my whole life.” (A game she attended in October was the most-watched Sunday show since the Super Bowl.)

Given her complex history with public interest in her dating life, I say, it seems noteworthy that her relationship with Kelce has played out so publicly. Swift gently pushes back: “This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell,” she says. “We started hanging out right after that. So we actually had a significant amount of time that no one knew, which I’m grateful for, because we got to get to know each other. By the time I went to that first game, we were a couple. I think some people think that they saw our first date at that game? We would never be psychotic enough to hard launch a first date.” The larger point, for her, is that there’s nothing to hide. “When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves, we’re showing up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care,” she says. “The opposite of that is you have to go to an extreme amount of effort to make sure no one knows that you’re seeing someone. And we’re just proud of each other.”

Swift’s openness is one part of why her fan base leans heavily, though not exclusively, female. The Eras Tour was one critical piece of what Swift calls “a three-part summer of feminine extravaganza”—the other two parts being Gerwig’s box-office bonanza Barbie and Beyoncé’s blockbuster, culture-shifting Renaissance Tour. “To make a fun, entertaining blast of a movie, with that commentary,” she says of Barbie, “I cannot imagine how hard that was, and Greta made it look so easy.” (“I’m just a sucker for a gal who is good with words, and she is the best with them,” Gerwig says about Swift, whom she calls “Bruce Springsteen meets Loretta Lynn meets Bob Dylan.”)

Swift is no less effusive in talking about Beyoncé, who brokered a similar deal with AMC and shows up to Swift’s Los Angeles premiere; the next month, Swift returns the favor by attending Beyoncé’s in London. “She’s the most precious gem of a person—warm and open and funny,” Swift says. “And she’s such a great disrupter of music-industry norms. She taught every artist how to flip the table and challenge archaic business practices.” That her tour and Beyoncé’s were frequently juxtaposed is vexing. “There were so many stadium tours this summer, but the only ones that were compared were me and Beyoncé,” she says. “Clearly it’s very lucrative for the media and stan culture to pit two women against each other, even when those two artists in question refuse to participate in that discussion.”

To Swift, the success of all three feels like an inflection point. “If we have to speak stereotypically about the feminine and the masculine,” she says, “women have been fed the message that what we naturally gravitate toward—” She has a few examples: “Girlhood, feelings, love, breakups, analyzing those feelings, talking about them nonstop, glitter, sequins! We’ve been taught that those things are more frivolous than the things that stereotypically gendered men gravitate toward, right?” Right, I say. “And what has existed since the dawn of time? A patriarchal society. What fuels a patriarchal society? Money, flow of revenue, the economy. So actually, if we’re going to look at this in the most cynical way possible, feminine ideas becoming lucrative means that more female art will get made. It’s extremely heartening.”

Beyoncé joined Swift in Los Angeles on Oct. 11 for the first screening of her Eras Tour filmJohn Shearer—Getty Images for TAS

Amid so much attention, it seems noteworthy that Swift appears more relaxed in the public eye, not less—although I wonder out loud whether it just appears that way. She nods. “Over the years, I’ve learned I don’t have the time or bandwidth to get pressed about things that don’t matter. Yes, if I go out to dinner, there’s going to be a whole chaotic situation outside the restaurant. But I still want to go to dinner with my friends.” She sounds thoughtful. “Life is short. Have adventures. Me locking myself away in my house for a lot of years—I’ll never get that time back. I’m more trusting now than I was six years ago.”

She’s also having more fun. At her premiere, Swift sits in the same row as me, Madison, and McCall, singing along and dancing in her seat; we keep craning our necks to look at her, sharing thunderstruck looks: Isn’t this surreal? There are moments in the film when the cameras capture the enormous screens behind Swift onstage, and it feels like a house of mirrors, these myriad reflections of Taylor Swift—us watching her watch herself on a screen, which is itself showing Swift’s image on so many screens, the thousands of fans onscreen in the stadium and us in this theater, with Swift in the middle of it—all of us rapt, unable to look away.

Swift and I have been talking for a while now at her apartment, long enough that our coffees have gone cold and her cat Benjamin Button has trundled into the room, then gotten bored and left. She tells me about revisiting Reputation, which is perhaps the most charged era in the tour. “It’s a goth-punk moment of female rage at being gaslit by an entire social structure,” she says, laughing. “I think a lot of people see it and they’re just like, Sick snakes and strobe lights.” The upcoming vault tracks for Reputation will be “fire,” she promises. The rerecordings project feels like a mythical quest to her. “I’m collecting horcruxes,” she says. “I’m collecting infinity stones. Gandalf’s voice is in my head every time I put out a new one. For me, it is a movie now.”

It strikes me then that for all the talk about eras, it’s also worth thinking about genres—how Swift has moved between them in the stories she’s told. At first, it was a coming-of-age story, one about a young woman finding her way in the world and honing her voice before a fickle public. Then there were romances, great ones—tales of enchantment and desire, heartbreak and disillusionment, relationships that she both excavated for her songs and that the media documented for her with either joy or schadenfreude, depending on the day. There have been dramas with stakes so high and turns so twisty they feel Shakespearean in their scope, betrayals both personal and professional that have shaped her life. Occasionally, these stories have tipped into screwball comedy—like when a crowd in Seattle cheered so loudly it registered as an earthquake, or when, on a tour stop in Brazil, the local archdiocese allowed messages celebrating her to be projected onto the 124-ft. Christ the Redeemer statue. But they have one thing in common: Swift.

She is a maestro of self-determination, of writing her own story. The multihyphenate television creator Shonda Rhimes—no stranger to a plot twist—who has known Swift since she was a teenager, puts it simply: “She controls narrative not only in her work, but in her life,” she says. “It used to feel like people were taking shots at her. Now it feels like she’s providing the narrative—so there aren’t any shots to be taken.”

Here, Swift has told me a story about redemption, about rising and falling only to rise again—a hero’s journey. I do not say to her, in our conversation, that it did not always look that way from the outside—that, for example, when Reputation’s lead single “Look What You Made Me Do” reached No. 1 on the charts, or when the album sold 1.3 million albums in the first week, second only to 1989, she did not look like someone whose career had died. She looked like a superstar who was mining her personal experience as successfully as ever. I am tempted to say this.

But then I think, Who am I to challenge it, if that’s how she felt? The point is: she felt canceled. She felt as if her career had been taken from her. Something in her had been lost, and she was grieving it. Maybe this is the real Taylor Swift effect: That she gives people, many of them women, particularly girls, who have been conditioned to accept dismissal, gaslighting, and mistreatment from a society that treats their emotions as inconsequential, permission to believe that their interior lives matter. That for your heart to break, whether it’s from being kicked off a tour or by the memory of a scarf still sitting in a drawer somewhere or because somebody else controls your life’s work, is a valid wound, and no, you’re not crazy for being upset about it, or for wanting your story to be told.

After all, not to be corny, haven’t we all become selective autobiographers in the digital age as we curate our lives for our own audiences of any size—cutting away from the raw fabric of our lived experience to reveal the shape of the story we most want to tell, whether it’s on our own feeds or the world’s stage? I can’t blame her for being better at it than everyone else. It’s also not like she hasn’t admitted it. She sang it herself, in her song “Mastermind,” off last year’s Midnights, in a bridge so feathery you could almost miss that it marks some of the rawest, most naked songwriting of her career: “No one wanted to play with me as a little kid/ So I’ve been scheming like a criminal ever since/ To make them love me and make it seem effortless/ This is the first time I’ve felt the need to confess/ And I swear I’m only cryptic and Machiavellian because I care.”

She tells me she wrote that song after watching the Paul Thomas Anderson film Phantom Thread, which—spoiler—culminates in the reveal of a vast, layered manipulation. “Remember that last scene?” she says. “I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to have a lyric about being calculated?” She pauses. “It’s something that’s been thrown at me like a dagger, but now I take it as a compliment.”

It is a compliment. After I leave Swift’s house, I can’t stop thinking about how perfectly she crafted this story for me—the one about redemption, how she lost it all and got it back. Storytelling is what she’s always done; that’s why, Chesney tells me, he gave her that gift all those years ago. “She was a writer who had something to say,” he says. “That isn’t something you can fake by writing clichés. You can only live it, then write it as real as possible.”

She must have known that all the references she made had hidden meanings, that I’d see all the tossed-off details for the Easter eggs they were. The way she told me that story about Chesney, she knew there was a lesson, about the power of generosity, and how a crushing defeat can give way to a great and surprising gift. The way she said, “Are you not entertained?”—surely we both knew it was a quote from Gladiator, a movie in which a hero falls from grace, is forced to perform blood sport for the pleasure of spectators, and emerges victorious, having survived humiliation and debasement to soar higher than ever. And the way before I left, she showed me the note from Paul McCartney hanging in her bathroom, which has a Beatles lyric written on it—and not just any Beatles lyric, but this one: “Take these broken wings and learn to fly.” —With reporting by Leslie Dickstein and Megan McCluskey •

Styled by Heidi Bivens at Honey Artists; hair by Holli Smith; make-up by Diane Kendal; nails by Maki Sakamoto; production by VLM Productions

On the covers: Jacket, denim shirt and turtleneck by Polo Ralph Lauren; dress by Area; bodysuit by Bardot, tights by Wolford; earrings are artist’s own

On the inside: Jacket, denim shirt and turtleneck by Polo Ralph Lauren; tuxedo jacket, tuxedo shirt, vest and pocket square by Ralph Lauren Collection, jeans by Polo Ralph Lauren; dress by Alaia; rings by Anna Sheffield and Cartier; earrings are artist’s own

[poliwat]

Nipomo

Four weeks sharing a room in San Francisco, four weeks since I decided not to go back to England. Michael wasn’t sleeping. A quarter tab of acid for his breakfast. Spliffs throughout the day, booze and blue raspberry C4 preworkout all through the night. He was recording an album, working on his set, making a website, building a 24-7 open-source radio live-stream at a free hackers’ space, and not finishing anything.

I was trying to write but spending a lot of time crying on the hot roof of the apartment building when he wasn’t around. He found me up there one afternoon at the end of one of his twelve-hour stints at the hackers’ space. Two straw hats, a beer, two cups. “I know you like to drink out of little cups!” He smiled and the inside of his mouth was blue from the raspberry preworkout. How do you hate someone as much as you love them? He said he’d been looking for me because he had a great plan. A childhood friend in the city was driving down to their hometown and we could get a ride. I could meet Michael’s parents; go to the beach; see the fields, wildflowers, and back roads. So beautiful this time of year. I wondered if it might save us. “It’s God’s country,” he said.

We arrived at his parents’ the following morning, after a four-hour drive south. A low ranch-style house on a wide road of low ranch-style houses. Michael said it was too nice a day to be stuck inside, so he took me around the side and we climbed straight up onto the roof: “I know you like roofs in California!” I did like roofs in California. The front and back yards of gravel, wood chip, and pebbles, interspersed with the occasional palm tree or redwood. At the end of the road was the main street, a couple of stores, a steak house, and a taqueria. Beyond, fields of lemon trees and mustard grass and farmland that stretched a few miles inland, up to a range of golden hills. Above us, the sun shone like the grill of a new truck.

The house was full of knickknacks and shells and crystals and string lights. A “Be Grateful” sign by the coffee maker. A “Be Grateful” mat by the front door. A canvas in the kitchen printed with a picture of three fluffy ducklings and the words “I have joy down in the bottom of my heart.” It was hard to make out how many cats there were. And then PooPoo, the overweight chihuahua, waddled in from the hallway and charged at Michael, baring his red gums and gnashing tiny, pointed teeth. Michael told me the dog was the spawn of the devil and the root cause of all the issues that existed between him and his parents. I already knew that the issues between Michael and his family had begun when Michael had gone to college in Santa Cruz five years before, found drugs, wouldn’t get a real job, and kept having to move back home when he ran out of money.

His parents were musicians who’d met in Santa Barbara in the seventies. She’d sung in one band and he’d played guitar in another. They’d both worked in the same hippie jewelry store downtown before marrying and moving to a smaller town up the coast. I met them that morning when they followed the pets into the kitchen. Gene was short and round with a kind face, freshly shaved with a peaked cap on his bald head and a smart cowboy shirt tucked into chinos. He gave me a warm hug that smelled of Irish Spring. He picked up PooPoo and fed him some bratwurst from the fridge. Mom went straight to the coffeepot. She wore a blue shirt with cropped leggings and had her blond hair put up neatly in a clip. She had the same unblinking stare as Michael.

Gene left to work his shift at a music shop in the next town over and Mom said she needed more coffee before her pain medication kicked in and she could talk properly. She had arthritis and had pain from a series of botched surgeries. The pain was the worst in the morning, but she was managing it with physical therapy, swimming, and half a pill on the bad days. She spent the next hour pacing around the house, telling me about all the things she needed to do—pay the bills, fill out paperwork, physical therapy, feed the dog, feed the cats—only to be derailed from doing any of it by the pets, or the phone ringing. She kept apologizing for being so busy, but she couldn’t seem to get anything done. The bills stayed untouched in a pile that took up most of the kitchen table, the phone rang and rang. There were Post-its all over the house: “Put coffee out,” “Tell Dad to clean sink,” “Ask Michael where he is living in SF,” “Be Grateful.”

Michael derailed her the most, as he tried to make breakfast and clean up after himself. Mother and son knocked around the place, from the coffeepot to the piano to the back door, to the front door to the coffeepot again. They both had the habit of getting lost midaction and the same strange sweetness. At one point, just after getting at him about putting the dishes away in the wrong place, she went into the living room and sang out with joy. When she came back into the kitchen she was smiling. She put her arms around her son. He rested his cheek on the top of her head and closed his eyes.

Michael and I spent the afternoon walking around town. Not a place built for walking but it had its charm, the slanting golden light making even the Vons supermarket look beautiful. We bought three beers for five dollars at the Stop and Shop and watched the sun go down as we sat against a fence by a dusty abandoned lot. He told me that the most famous thing about this town was a Dorothea Lange photograph of migrants from the thirties.

For dinner Michael made sandwiches and, to his mom’s exasperation, moved the bills off the dinner table and told everyone we were going to sit down. They were very good sandwiches, pastrami and banana peppers and mayo with a steak seasoning, on thick slices of bread. He made a sandwich each for his parents, and two types for me and him to share. “Me and Helen share everything,” he announced. “We’re in love.”

After a few bites, Mom started talking about how hard it was, living with her husband, how she loved him but needed him to leave. “I keep telling him, but he won’t go. He does nothing around the house, just eats and spends and plays his guitars.” She said that when she married him, he was already deep in debt. He’d never told her how bad it was. Then she said to me, “I love my son, but I’d understand if you wanted to leave him. Don’t make the same mistake I made.” Gene didn’t say anything in response, just happily ate his sandwich and seemed to be somewhere else. Michael went to the fridge and popped a Corona.

The next day was a Saturday. We borrowed Gene’s car and spent the day in the ice-plant dunes of Grover Beach. When the sun set, we snuck into a motel jacuzzi. Crouched in the bubbles, Michael said he’d told his dad that he’d marry me if he had a dollar. “I dunno about marriage,” I told him.

Gene was in the kitchen when we got back, enjoying a Corona Familiar in a frosted glass. He was in a good mood from playing a gig at a wedding where he’d devoured a seafood-platter buffet. “I tell you … those crabs. All that fish. Mountains of it.” We sat at the counter with him. Over more Coronas, Mom cackling along to Scrubs on the TV, he told me about his first love. At one point he made the mistake of asking Michael what his plans were. Michael said he was going to start an open-source 24-7 radio station that spread empathy across the world and freed a billion people. He already knew his mission on Earth, God had told him. His parents didn’t need to worry. Gene turned to me with a smirk. “I told Michael to experiment with LSD. I didn’t realize he’d be experimenting every day for five years.”

They drove us to the train station in San Luis Obispo the next afternoon. Another sunny day but things felt different. Now I knew that this impossible person had a mother and father and that he made some kind of sense beside them. When his parents hugged us goodbye his dad whispered something in Michael’s ear. “If I had a dollar,” Michael said.

We found a booth with a table in the train’s observation car, beside a window. Gene and Mom spotted us as they were driving out of the parking lot and circled back through three or four times, waving as the train left the station. Leaving San Luis Obispo, the train wound around and between the Pacific Coast Ranges. The slopes reached up on either side, rolling above the windows. Michael leaned on my shoulder while I read him a story I’d written about my alcoholic dad. It made him cry. I told him not to move yet—a girl in another booth was painting a picture of us. I could see it in the corner of my eye, strokes of yellow and green and gold.

***

Six months later, Gene was diagnosed with stage four cancer. A melanoma that had not been removed properly in the spring had spread to his organs by September. Michael and I were living in Chicago by the time Gene began chemo, sleeping on a futon at an event studio that my sister ran and earning a bit of money setting up and cleaning up after baby showers and photoshoots during the day and after parties and music videos at night.

The family told Michael not to come back yet. So we stayed in Chicago for September and into October. Michael’s desperate restlessness and acid-fueled benders had subsided, and the deranged passion that had brought us together had calmed to a more dependable, if rocky, companionship. We kept our clothes in a cupboard and pretended to the people who rented the space that we didn’t live there. When the studio was in use, we visited my sister and her son, or wandered around Lincoln Park, or walked along Lake Michigan, waiting for the call from his family to say that he needed to come home. Sometimes Michael brought his guitar and I brought my notebook and we’d sit playing and writing, cooling our feet in the lake. Other times we had long, agonizing arguments walking around the humid parks. He said I was unloving and spiritually dead inside. I said he was cruel and overbearing, that we were two very different people from different worlds and it would never work anyway, it was doomed. He said that only proved how godless and unloving I was. What was cruel was how little I believed in us. All that needed to happen was for me to find faith. We were twenty-seven. We could move off the grid, have lots of children, and raise chickens. I wanted to get on a plane and go home. Whenever we had an especially bad argument, he stormed off to the hot-dog place around the corner from the studio, where the staff was famous for insulting its customers. He made friends with the people who worked there. “The only real people in this city,” he said. Baby Jesus Ted Bundy was one of the names they called him. He would come back in the best of moods. He was on one of those hot-dog runs when his sister called and told him the doctor said it was a matter of days. He spent his entire savings, four hundred dollars, on a flight for the next morning. I packed up the futon and moved into my sister’s apartment. He called after two weeks at home. His dad really was dying now and he needed to see me. Please could I come? My sister found me a flight from Chicago to LA for fifty dollars for the following week.

***

The Amtrak train from Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo goes up the Pacific coast, at times along the beach and at others high in the cliffs. Michael was waiting for me on the platform, wearing a black hoodie and a black cap with a small red-and-white mushroom on the front. He called it his mourning costume. In the car he gave me a paper bag. Inside was a bar of chocolate wrapped neatly in tissue paper. As he drove out of the lot a full moon appeared over the trees.

We arrived at the house to find Gene sitting on a red La-Z-Boy, watching Blazing Saddles, PooPoo on his lap. The dog jumped off when he saw us coming and charged at Michael’s ankles. Michael picked him up, thrashing, and plopped him outside, slamming the screen door. Gene had almost halved in size, his face completely sunken, his arms and legs, bluish and pale, poking out of a baggy T-shirt and shorts. I tried to hide my shock but it must have been apparent. People had been coming over all week to say their goodbyes.

When Michael had first told me they’d put Gene on home hospice, I’d assumed it meant he would be home under regular medical care. What it really meant on his low-cost insurance was a hospital bed in their house, medication, and thirty-minute visits from a nurse twice a week. The rest of the time it was up to Michael, his mother, and his sister to look after Gene. By the time I arrived, the home hospice had been going on for two weeks and they’d stumbled into a rhythm. Gene slept in the Blue Room (blue walls and carpet), which had once been Michael’s bedroom, then the bedroom of a series of lodgers, then a room for Mom to stretch in. Now it was the room where Gene was going to die. There was the hospital bed in the center and a folding table against one wall, covered in a red paper tablecloth, pieces of hospital equipment, dozens of pill pots, and Michael’s junk. Michael and his mother took turns administering a regimen of medication every few hours: liquid morphine, vitamins, blood pressure pills, pills to help his organs deal with all the pills. There was a mattress in the corner covered with a Lion King quilt where Michael had been sleeping. Gene had a little bell by his bedside that he rang when he needed something.

I was tired from the travel, so Michael set me up a bed in the Green Room next door. It had a single bed, another folding table, and a few blankets laid out for the cats to sleep on. Michael gave me his pillow and the Lion King duvet and put on another hoodie over the hoodie he was already wearing. We sat down on the bed for a moment and he rested his head on my shoulder. From the next room the little bell rang and he shot up. I curled up and drifted off.

The next morning Michael woke me up at nine o’clock with a mug of creamy coffee. “Get up! We’re going to the store!” His dad wanted egg bagels. They’d already given Gene his medicine, taken him for a shower, and rustled up a small first breakfast of eggnog and toast. It was only a quick drive to Vons but Michael drove very slowly, all the windows open, lighting one cigarette after another.

We returned to the sound of the little bell ringing. Gene wanted to sit out on the lounger. He wanted a coffee. Michael helped his dad outside and made the bagels. I did the dishes and Mom put on another pot of coffee while telling me how much pain she was in, her arthritis, her hip —she was falling apart.

I soon discovered that the most demanding part of the home hospice was Gene’s appetite. Over the next week we went out three or four times a day to find whatever thing he craved. The bell would ring and Michael would go running. “My dad wants a steak dinner!” We’d jump into the car to go pick up a steak, then sushi, then burritos.

Mom was paying for these elaborate requests with envelopes of cash she’d saved over the years, each one labeled with a particular purpose. Every time she pulled out a new one from the back of a drawer, my heart sank: forty dollars for Michael’s birthday, a hundred dollars for a plumbing emergency, a hundred for yard work—all gone.

As the morphine doses got larger and Michael more sleep-deprived, nights and meals and dreams collapsed into hallucinations. Gene would wake up, feel hungry, and ring his bell. Michael would help him into the kitchen and cook whatever Gene instructed. I’d hear all about it in the morning. Clam chowder from a can with packet noodles. Chicken soup with pork gyoza and taquitos. Michael told me that sometimes he’d drift off in the middle of cooking, laying his double-hooded head on the kitchen counter.

I slipped by the Blue Room one morning, sheepishly hoping I could just make a coffee and bring my book out into the backyard. “The English Muffin!” Gene called out. “I want an English pot roast. Can you do that?”

I returned to the doorway. PooPoo, who was more or less living on Gene’s chest by this point, greeted me with a growl.

“Yes!” I said. “I think I can.”

Waiting for the coffee to brew, I googled English pot roast. It seemed to be something to do with potatoes and meat, a stew. I couldn’t find Michael anywhere.

“Gene …” I said, eventually going back into his room. “What do you mean by English pot roast?”

“I mean Henry VIII creamy banquet pot roast. Pig’s blood! Potatoes! Lots of meat. Don’t forget the meat!”

I called for Michael all over the house, in the front yard, the backyard, down by the shed. Finally his voice came down from the sky.

“I’m up here!” he said. I couldn’t see him, but some branches moved at the very top of the thirty-foot redwood.

“He wants me to make a medieval pot roast,” I told Michael when he came down.

“He’ll go back to sleep. I need to give him some more morphine now anyway. He’ll forget all about it.”

Michael was right. While PooPoo barked and tore at his fingers, he fed his father the liquid morphine, and Gene fell back to sleep. Michael took a nap. An hour later the little bell rang again.

“Blueberry pancakes!” I heard. “Can she do blueberry pancakes?”

I found a mix for blueberry muffins in the cupboard. It was the middle of the day by the time they were done. One came out with a funny face. Two freeze-dried blueberries for wonky eyes and a crease below them like a sideways smile. I thought it looked a bit like Michael. I showed his mother and she agreed. Excited, we woke Michael up with the muffin doppelgänger on a plate.

Hold it up to your face, we told him. Do your wonky eyes. Smile sideways a bit. See?

Mom brought a muffin cut up in four with a pile of butter to Gene on a little plate. He put the whole lump of butter on one quarter, had a bite, and put the plate down on his lap, exhausted. “Do you like your muffin, Dad?” Michael said. Gene didn’t respond. I felt that in some great way I had failed.

***

Michael’s sister, Bonnie, lived in the next town over. She had a two-year-old girl, Sofia, and was heavily pregnant with her second. She’d bring a meal or some shopping over every few days and spend a few hours with her dad. When she and the little girl spilled in through the front door, the whole house seemed to calm.

One afternoon, Gene and Bonnie were stretched out on the sofa, the patio doors letting in a warm breeze. Sofia was running around, looking for the cats. Mom was out in the hammock. I was sitting next to Michael on the piano bench. He started playing a peaceful, sweet song. I asked Bonnie what Sofia’s birth had been like. She said it had been an amazing experience. She said she went full wild woman. At the moment of the birth, she’d been on all fours and felt her whole heart open wide to God. There was no pain, no body, no one else, just her baby and God. Gene said that was the way he felt about death. When the moment came, he was going to go into it with arms open to God. He held his arms out wide as he said it.

Later, Bonnie’s husband, Paul, came over. They got out some guitars from the garage, brought them into the Blue Room, and sang songs around Gene’s bed. Nineties folk—The Moldy Peaches, Bright Eyes—and then an amazing rendition of “O Holy Night,” Paul on the harmonica, Michael on the guitar, and Bonnie singing. I sat on the mattress and watched them. I wanted them to keep playing—no more talking, talking, talking. “O night divine, o night …”

At the end of the song, Mom came in. She said it was late, Dad was tired, she was tired, we were all tiring him out. Michael said, “Wow Mom, you even managed to ruin this.” Bonnie snapped at Michael, “Don’t talk to her like that.” Michael said, “Yeah, yeah, it’s all my fault.” Bonnie’s husband asked no one in particular if they’d noticed that the moon’s face had changed. “They’ve done something to the moon’s face,” he said. “I swear …”

“He’s tired,” Mom said, turning to Gene. “Are you tired, sweetie? Tell them you’re tired. No one believes me. Someone’s gotta look after him. He needs his rest. Tell them for once. I know how tired you are. He’ll never say it himself …”

“All right, Mom. I’m tired.”

I followed Michael out to the backyard with a beer and a cigarette and found him up in the redwood again. I coaxed him down with my offerings and convinced him not to climb all the way up the tree in the dark.

***

Gene’s body was shutting down. His legs and arms were swelling and leaking fluid. He had to carry paper towels around with him to mop up the mess, but he never complained. We took turns massaging his legs to ease the pain. When it was my turn, I made a bit of conversation, asked him about his life. He didn’t want to go into any of that. He just smiled and told me to massage with all the strength my skin and bones could muster.

Amid all this, Michael wanted to have sex whenever he had a minute free. When his dad was sleeping he’d usher me into the Green Room or drive us out to the back-road fields and pull over on the side of the road. At night, with the hills behind us, the hum of cars in the distance, a light breeze through the grass, it was kind of spectacular. But I was never in the mood. So often we would go all the way out there for me to freeze over. “You’re removed,” he told me. “Checked out. A sandbag.”

“Well, sorry,” I said. “But I massaged your dying dad’s legs earlier. I’ve come all the way here. I’m doing what I can do. Right now all I can be is a sandbag.”

“I’m exhausted and I need love.”

“We just had sex.”

“Oh yeah. ‘We just did this, we just did that. I gave you a blowjob last week …’ ”

“I know you’re sad but you’re being a dick. How can you not see that?”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“You were the one who started the conversation. I was just lying here.”

“Exactly.”

***

The days went on and Gene held on. One evening I noticed a slice of a moon through the kitchen window and realized it had been two weeks since I’d arrived. Despite the pain, Gene still wanted to move around, take a stroll with his walker, barbecue pork, play guitar on the patio with his son. “This is not how normal hospice patients behave,” Mom said. We were standing in the kitchen, looking at family pictures. In many of them the whole family and some friends were sitting around jamming, having a good time. Not that long ago—five years, maybe.

“Most people just lie in bed. But my husband—he’s on his feet demanding fine dining! I don’t want to complain, but it makes me think—miracles can happen. And if he does get better, things would have to change around here. There’s no money. We can’t live like this. Steak-dinner takeout! We’d lose the house.”

I nodded and made to say something, but she carried on.

“Sometimes I think I might be an alien,” she said. “I’m not like other people. Like lying—people lie so easily but I can never lie. Neither can Michael. We’re both like that. I can see how hard it is for him in the world. We just don’t make sense here! He needs to get a job, get a car. Get going with his life. You’re so good for him. He listens to you. I always told him, If you wanna just do what you want, then find a groupie. You’re no groupie. You’re like an angel sent here. I mean it. I prayed to God for you and you came. But you’ve got your life ahead of you.”

Michael must have been listening because he ran out of the Blue Room at that point.

He took my hand and peeled me away. “We’re going on a walk now, Mom. She doesn’t wanna talk anymore.”

“See,” Mom said. “He’ll do anything for you.”

***

Gene was still ringing his bell on his sixty-fifth birthday, November 16, a milestone that had seemed unthinkable a month before. We arranged a small party for his family and a few of his music buddies. Michael spent the morning setting up the backyard with microphones and guitars. He even put a TV and VCR on a cart on wheels to play home videos. We drove out to the Mexican supermarket and bought carnitas and a case of mini Corona bottles. On the way out he impulse-bought a ceramic Day of the Dead guitar to give his dad. When the friends arrived at the house, Mom took the opportunity to go have some time alone and run errands at Vons and CVS.

The men barbecued pork, and I made pico de gallo, according to Bonnie’s instructions. It was a hit. The men in their cowboy getups were shocked that the English girl had prepared it. The sun was shining, people were sitting out, eating the barbecue. Michael tried his best to get people to play music but it wasn’t happening. How do you celebrate the birthday of a dying man? I couldn’t figure out what to do with myself. At one point, Michael gave his dad the ceramic guitar wrapped up in Christmas wrapping paper. “Día de los Muertos,” said his dad. He held the guitar in his palms, disgusted.

The men got it together and started playing “The Cowboy Who Started the Fight.” Gene watched on in his wheelchair. He closed his eyes as they sang “screamed through the veins of the street.” They sang a few more songs. Michael and I took a break to catch the sun go down over a field of tomato vines. In the ten minutes that we were out, Gene stood up with a guitar to play a song with them. He was just sitting back down as we came in the door. Soon after, the guys all left.

“Man plans, God laughs,” Michael said.

Mom was gone for most of the day. She returned from her errands with a gift for Michael. She was so excited about it, she wanted to give it to him straight away. Out of a green and white paper bag, Michael pulled a fluffy llama with wonky eyes. He squeezed it and the llama squeaked.

“It’s a dog toy,” he said, sounding like his father when he held the Day of the Dead guitar. Mom laughed and laughed. She said it reminded her of Michael and the blueberry muffin. I laughed too. Michael grimaced.

“Oh no … I think he’s angry,” Mom said.

“Here,” I told Michael. “Don’t be angry. Squeeze your dog toy.”

He took the llama in both hands, crossed his eyes, stuck his tongue out, and let it rip.

***

November 18 was the eighth anniversary of my own father’s death. I woke up feeling sad and drained. At this point, I thought to myself, Gene needed to die or someone else would. I spent the morning swinging in the hammock by the redwood at the bottom of the garden, hiding from everyone. I heard Michael and Mom calling for me from the house. Gene wanted a massage, they said. His legs were hurting. I couldn’t face it. Michael called my phone. I ignored it.

When I went back inside, the two of them were maneuvering Gene into the living room. Michael almost dropped him and he fell back on the sofa with a cry of pain. “You’re not helping!” Mom screamed at Michael.

“Mom. I am midhelping. You’re brain-dead from your painkillers.”

“Enough!” Gene’s voice boomed from the sofa, where he was half-collapsed, falling off the side of it. “Stop it! Both of you!”

Mom and Michael stopped, ashamed.

“Now, son.” Gene took in a quiet, pained breath. “Can you help me off this damn sofa and take me back to bed?” Michael pulled him up by the armpits.

That night Gene could only manage a spoonful of canned tomato bisque.

“I think he’s going to die today. The same day as your dad. If our dads die on the same day that’s God talking. We’ll have to get married.”

Later, Michael slept next to me in the Green Room while his mom was with Gene. I dozed while I listened to Mom talk to Gene, telling him about their life together. “We’re good people,” she told him. “Weird people.” She could have been saying anything really, the hum was so soothing. “There’s no one around here like us.” It kept sending me back to sleep.

I woke up to Gene’s voice crying out: “Help! I can’t breathe!” I pushed Michael and he bolted into the Blue Room. Mom woke up too. “I’m coming!” she called out.

I stayed in bed, listening. They were arguing about how much morphine to give Gene. Mom said Michael was giving him too much. Michael said it wasn’t enough. She ran to get the phone to call the nurse. Gene was desperately trying to get words out. He couldn’t breathe. And then a desperate gargling, drowning on thin air. Michael was saying, “It’s okay Dad. I’m right here. I’m right here,” all through the gargling until Gene was no longer making any sound.

When I walked in, Gene’s skin had already yellowed. I realized I’d seen three dead bodies now. My dad, my granddad, and Gene. They all looked the same, laid out on a hospital bed. It was five minutes to midnight. An hour later a nurse came. Another hour, and a man and a woman arrived from the mortuary. At the door, their long, gray, thinning hair obscuring half their faces, they told me they were here for the body. Never have I seen more ghoulish-looking people. They wore baggy suits with sleeves that came down over their hands, and round, shiny shoes that also seemed a few sizes too big. They moved slowly. “Was he in the military?” they asked. “No,” we said. “He was not in the military.”

“Okay, thank you.” They put a sheet over Gene’s body and wheeled him through the house, out the front door. Mom followed him out, holding PooPoo. She wanted to show the dog that Dad was leaving. Dad was being wheeled onto the van.

“See, it’s okay, PooPoo. There he goes. They’re wheeling him in now. He’s going …”

Michael didn’t want to watch his dad go into the back of a van. I found him in the backyard with a tall glass of vodka, smoking a cigarette. He joked that he’d been praying to his dad as he was dying. “Come on, five more minutes. If you make it five more minutes I won’t have to marry her.” Then he said that he was plotting to steal morphine to kill the dog.

All the lights were on. It was three in the morning. Michael pulled out a crate of home videos and Mom and I told him to put them away. I made us some tea. We had some more vodka. Mom went to bed and I put Michael in the shower. I washed his hair and cried, but he was like a stone. I could tell he was still obsessing about killing PooPoo. After the shower, I put him in a clean T-shirt and underwear, tucked him in to bed, and held him tight until he fell asleep.

I woke up in the morning to Michael sleeping soundly next to me. He looked so at peace I didn’t want to wake him up. It made me cry. His eyes opened. “Dad?” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was joking. Soon after, we heard Mom howling. Long, slow howls. One of the saddest, strangest noises I’ve ever heard. “My life!” she called out between the howls. “My life!” It was almost like singing.

After that first day Mom said she needed to mourn alone. We needed to leave so she could scream and cry and talk to God. We went to Bonnie’s for a night but then Bonnie said she was too sad and stressed to have us there, with the baby coming soon. A little desperate, we decided to go camping. For the next week we drove between beaches along the central coast, walked, wrote, drank beer. Michael wrote a list of plans for the future, plans that involved him getting paid to travel, recording his album, singing at a body of water every day, building the 24-7 radio live-stream, moving every three months. He was going to give this list to his family, to prove to them that he had a plan. “You two need to move on with your own life now,” Mom had told me before we left. I couldn’t understand how his family could abandon him at a time like this. I’d had to remind her that Michael had come home to look after Gene, that we’d been living and working in Chicago. At the same time, I got what she was saying and why they didn’t want him hanging around. Michael was a liability, and now he was my liability.

***

Gene didn’t have a funeral. They were going to take his ashes out to the ocean in the spring. After the week of camping, Mom got lonely and wanted Michael back again. I decided to leave, to stay with a friend in Brooklyn for a while. I found a flight from San Francisco and booked a train from San Luis Obispo up the coast. Before I left, I found Michael a job doing yard work for a neighbor. He would save some money and leave in January. We said we might travel around. I tried to believe it could happen but I knew that it would not.

As we left for the train station, a commode arrived for Gene, more than a month late. Mom couldn’t bear to look at it, so we said we’d give it to Goodwill on the way to the station. She gave us a trash bag of old blankets to donate, too. I said a tearful goodbye to Mom and she gave me an envelope with a hundred-dollar bill in it. She thanked me for all the help and told me to get something nice for myself.

“Michael doesn’t want you to go,” she said.

I hugged her again and got in the car. “I never say goodbye,” she said. “I only say see you later.”

We drove up to the back of Goodwill and waved down a man who seemed to be accepting donations. “Is that a commode?” he asked.

“Yep. My dad just died. He never used it.”

He shook his head and tutted. “Nah. We can’t take that. That’s nasty.”

“How about these blankets?” Michael said, pointing to the trash bag.

“This bag? Those blankets?” The man took a quick sideways look. “Nah, we can’t take that either. That’s nasty, too.”

We were in a silly mood, driving to San Luis Obispo with the commode rattling in the back. It was a fresh December day. You could feel a change in the air. We stopped off at Ben Franklin’s Deli and I ordered three Californian sandwiches from the cashier, one for me, one for Michael, and one for him to bring home to his mom.

“My dad just passed away and my girlfriend is leaving for New York!” Michael announced out of nowhere.

There was still some time before the train. At the station we ran up over the footbridge to get a good view of the tracks and the hills. I took a few pictures of Michael. He took a few of me. The train came, we said goodbye, and I found a spot with a table at the back of the second-floor observation car, the same booth we’d sat in after that first trip. My bags stowed away, I looked down and saw Michael on the platform below, dancing to get my attention. He was trying to say something, but I couldn’t understand him. He mimed and danced around a bit more. Got on his knees. Drew a picture of a house with his finger in the air.

A man sitting a few seats ahead of me watched the scene in awe. All of a sudden he began narrating it to the rest of the car.

“Marry me,” the man said. “We’ll have a house by the sea.”

Michael mimed writing in a notebook, then swimming, then playing guitar.

“You can write poetry. I’ll swim. Play music,” said the man.

By this time everyone in the observation car was watching. The narrator turned to me.

“Does he have a phone number? I want to tell him something.”

“He doesn’t have a phone,” I said. “But you can leave a message on his mother’s answering machine.”

So the man dialed Mom’s number, and Michael, feeding off the audience, mimed a phone in response. I thought of Mom at home alone, rattled by the phone ringing. The man spoke to Michael through the glass and Michael nodded along, though he definitely couldn’t hear. Neither of them broke eye contact. The man said he was a preacher. He’d married about a hundred couples by now. Each time it had been uniquely special. “Why wait?” he told the future Michael, who would be listening to his mother’s answering machine if he ever got around to it. The preacher ended his message with his number, saying to call him if we wanted to get married.

The train started moving and Michael ran along the platform. I waved until I could no longer see him. Soon I was coasting inland. A rush of green-gold on either side. Pesticide farmland, trees, bushes thick with leaves, sunlight gracing the tip of everything. I stared out the window the whole journey. No sign of December anywhere, no sign of time passing. So much talk of marriage in God’s country. No doubt He had it all planned out for me.