#cicely james

[melancholymetropolis]

“Stop pretending that you hate me,” Stack said with a smug grin.

“I’m not pretending.”

I let the words fall upon his ears like a cracked glass on the floor. His face dropped. The smile was long gone and a look of pain flashed across it. Stack looked as though I shot him in the chest. A shaky breath fell from his lips as he flicked the cigarette bud from his fingertips. He closed the distance between us in three long strides. My back was pressed against the brick wall of the shop before I could blink. The pain on his face morphed into anger so hot it made his skin burn. 

“You don’t mean that,” he spat, looking me dead in the eye.

 Stack tried to make himself bigger, more intimidating. A lackluster attempt to scare me, but it hadn’t worked. Not only were we a few inches shy of the same height, but I could see right through him. I knew Stack before he was Stack. 

When he was just Elias.

“Y/N,” his voice was a warning. Danger in his tone, but it didn’t phase me. “Tell me you don’t mean that.”

“Get out of my way, Stack,” I said, in a low tone. A desperate attempt to hide the pain in my voice. The stitches of an old wound was beginning to reopen. “I have work to do.”

His eyes poured into me just used to. Filling my head with stupid assumptions that only left me heartbroken in the end. I thought about how he set my dislocated shoulder in place; it must've meant he liked me. How he acted as my left hand for weeks until the pain went away; that must've meant he cared about me. The way he hunted down the man who did it and made him pay… must've meant he loved me. Only me.

But, that wasn't the whole truth.

“So that's why you never replied to my letters,” Stack replied, eyes still searching my face. “Still angry about Mary, huh?”

I dared to stare back at him. My gaze like cold rain to his heated gaze. I refused to slip the mask and embarrass myself in public like she did. He wasn't worth that. Not anymore. Not after seven years. 

I was better than that.

“Not really,” I said with an air of indifference. “I was a little preoccupied to hold a grudge.”

As if summoned, a squeaky little voice cut through the tension. Making Stack freeze on impact. Something he hardly does.

“Mommy?”

My sweet baby girl tilted her little head up at us to assess the situation. Her deep brown eyes searched the potentially dangerous stranger before flicking back over to me, in a caged position. A look of irritation, or disgust briefly graced her face. She narrowed her eyes at Stack and crossed her arms against her chest. Madeline was not afraid of anything. She was always the kind of child to look danger in the eye and laugh.

"Is that ugly man bothering you?" She said, staring directly at Stack. "Should I call daddy?"

An orchestra of emotion appeared on Stack's face. He seem to be both deep in thought and confused at the same time. Like he working out something profound. It took him several seconds before he came to.

"How old are you?" He asked Madeline, jumping right into the conversation.

"I don't talk to strangers," she tilted her in defiance, earning a smile from me.

Good Girl.

Stack, then, turned back to me. A desperate look in his eye; silently asking me the same question. Though he couldn't bring himself to the vocalize it. A look a true fear and hope on his face.

I used his trembling expression to my advantage and slipped from his arms. I took Maddie's hand and steered her away him.

His eyes drilled into my back, but he didn't dare move a muscle. He couldn't. He didn't to make a scene, or worse, alert everyone else of an open secret.

My baby survived, while my cousin's, Annie, didn't.

-----------------------------

a/n: watched sinners and I had to whip something up. let me know if you would like a part two! drop a comment if you would like to be on the taglist, if this becomes a series.

@lov4gor3

--------------------------

Part II

[chantssecrets]

Cicely Tyson, James Baldwin, Arthur Mitchell (dance pioneer), and Harry Belafonte at the "To Be Young, Gifted And Black Gala", January 2, 1969.

[afrotumble]

"Actress Cicely Tyson and Actor James Earl Jones."

Two Beloved Ancestors

[imaginationshow]

Which artists do you think qualifies in my stack of favorites of fantastic worlds, creatures, trolls and fairies?

[whileiamdying]

James Earl Jones, Whose Powerful Acting Resonated Onstage and Onscreen, Dies at 93

He gave life to characters like Darth Vader in “Star Wars” and Mufasa in “The Lion King,” and went on to collect Tonys, Golden Globes, Emmys and an honorary Oscar.

James Earl Jones in 1980. He climbed to Broadway and Hollywood stardom with talent, drive and remarkable vocal cords.Credit...M. Reichenthal/Associated Press

Published Sept. 9, 2024 Updated Sept. 10, 2024, 1:30 a.m. ET

James Earl Jones, a stuttering farm child who became a voice of rolling thunder as one of America’s most versatile actors in a stage, film and television career that plumbed race relations, Shakespeare’s rhapsodic tragedies and the faceless menace of Darth Vader, died on Monday at his home in Dutchess County, N.Y. He was 93.

The office of his agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed the death in a statement.

From destitute days working in a diner and living in a $19-a-month cold-water flat, Mr. Jones climbed to Broadway and Hollywood stardom with talent, drive and remarkable vocal cords. He was abandoned as a child by his parents, raised by a racist grandmother and mute for years in his stutterer’s shame, but he learned to speak again with a herculean will. All had much to do with his success.

So did plays by Howard Sackler and August Wilson that let a young actor explore racial hatred in the national experience; television soap operas that boldly cast a Black man as a doctor in the 1960s; and a decision by George Lucas, the creator of “Star Wars,” to put an anonymous, rumbling African American voice behind the grotesque mask of the galactic villain Vader.

Mr. Jones in 1979 as the author Alex Haley on “Roots: The Next Generation.” Credit...Warner Brothers Television, via Everett Collection

The rest was accomplished by Mr. Jones himself: a prodigious body of work that encompassed scores of plays, nearly 90 television network dramas and episodic series, and some 120 movies. They included his voice work, much of it uncredited, in the original “Star Wars” trilogy, in the credited voice-over of Mufasa in “The Lion King,” Disney’s 1994 animated musical film, and in his reprise of the role in Jon Favreau’s computer-animated remake in 2019.

Mr. Jones was no matinee idol, like Cary Grant or Denzel Washington. But his bulky Everyman suited many characters, and his range of forcefulness and subtlety was often compared to Morgan Freeman’s. Nor was he a singer; yet his voice, though not nearly as powerful, was sometimes likened to that of the great Paul Robeson. Mr. Jones collected Tonys, Golden Globes, Emmys, Kennedy Center honors and an honorary Academy Award.

Under the artistic and competitive demands of daily stage work and heavy commitments to television and Hollywood — pressures that burn out many actors — Mr. Jones was a rock. He once appeared in 18 plays in 30 months. He often made a half-dozen films a year, in addition to his television work. And he did it for a half-century, giving thousands of performances that captivated audiences, moviegoers and critics.

They were dazzled by his presence. A bear of a man — 6 feet 2 inches and 200 pounds — he dominated a stage with his barrel chest, large head and emotional fires, tromping across the boards and spitting his lines into the front rows. And audiences were mesmerized by the voice. It was Lear’s roaring crash into madness, Othello’s sweet balm for Desdemona, Oberon’s last rapture for Titania, the queen of the fairies on a midsummer night.

Mr. Jones as Othello in the Broadway revival of the play in New York in 1981. Credit...Martha Swope/The New York Public Library

He liked to portray kings and generals, garbage men and bricklayers; perform Shakespeare in Central Park and the works of August Wilson and Athol Fugard on Broadway. He could strut and court lecherously, erupt with rage or melt tenderly; play the blustering Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (2008) or an aging Norman Thayer Jr. in Ernest Thompson’s confrontation with mortality, “On Golden Pond” (2005).

Some theatergoers, aware of Mr. Jones’s childhood affliction, discerned occasional subtle hesitations in his delivery of lines. The pauses were deliberate, he said, a technique of self-restraint learned by stutterers to control involuntary repetitions. Far from detracting from his lucidity, the pauses usually added force to an emotional moment.

Mr. Jones profited from a deep analysis of meaning in his lines. “Because of my muteness,” he said in “Voices and Silences,” a 1993 memoir written with Penelope Niven, “I approached language in a different way from most actors. I came at language standing on my head, turning words inside out in search of meaning, making a mess of it sometimes, but seeing truth from a very different viewpoint.”

Mr. Jones playing the fictional former U.S. President Arthur Hockstader in Gore Vidal’s “The Best Man” on Broadway in 2012. Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Another of his theatrical techniques was to stand alone for a few minutes in a darkened wing before the curtain went up, settling himself and silently evoking the emotion he needed for the first scene. It became a nightly ritual during performances of Mr. Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Fences” (1987), in which Mr. Jones portrayed a sanitation worker brooding over broken dreams, his once promising baseball career cut short by big league racial barriers. It ran for 15 months on Broadway, and Mr. Jones won a Tony for best actor.

Voice of Vader

Mr. Jones’s technique in the first “Star Wars” trilogy — “A New Hope” (1977), “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) and “Return of the Jedi” (1983) — was another trademark. To sustain Vader’s menace — a voice to go with his black cape and a helmet that filtered his hissing breath and evil tidings — Mr. Jones spoke in a narrowly inflected range, almost a monotone, to make nearly every phrase sound threatening. (He was credited for voice work in the third film, but, at his request, he was not credited in the first two until a special edition rerelease in 1997.)

Mr. Jones was one of the first Black actors to appear regularly on the daytime soaps, playing a doctor in “The Guiding Light” and in “As the World Turns” in the 1960s. Television became a staple of his career. He appeared in the dramatic series “The Defenders,” “Dr. Kildare,” “Touched by an Angel” and “Homicide: Life on the Street,” and in mini-series, including “Roots: The Next Generation” (1979), playing the author Alex Haley.

Mr. Jones and Diana Sands in the 1960s in the dramatic television series “East Side, West Side.” His prodigious body of work included nearly 90 television network dramas and episodic series. Credit...Everett Collection

Mr. Jones’s first Hollywood role was small but memorable, as the B-52 bombardier in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 satire on nuclear war, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”

While drama critics recorded his steady progress as an actor, Mr. Jones did not win film stardom until 1970, when he played Jack Jefferson, a character based on Jack Johnson, the first Black boxing champion, in “The Great White Hope,” reprising a role he performed on Broadway in 1968. He won a Tony for the stage work and was nominated for an Oscar for the movie.

Mr. Jones as Jack Jefferson in “The Great White Hope.” He won a Tony for his stage work in the role and was nominated for an Oscar for the movie version. Credit...George Tames/The New York Times

Although he was never active in the civil rights movement, Mr. Jones said early in his career that he admired Malcolm X and that he, too, might have been a revolutionary had he not become an actor.

He said his contributions to civil rights lay in roles that dealt with racial issues — and there were many. Notable among these was his almost overlooked casting in the 1961 play “The Blacks,” Jean Genet’s violent drama on race relations. It featured a cast that included Maya Angelou, Cicely Tyson, Louis Gossett Jr. and Billy Dee Williams, some wearing gruesome white masks, who night after night enacted in a kangaroo court the rape and murder of a white woman. Mr. Jones, the brutal and beguiling protagonist, found the role so emotionally draining that he left and then rejoined the cast several times in its three-and-a-half-year run Off Broadway.

But the experience helped clarify his feelings about race. “Through that role,” he told The Washington Post in 1967, “I came to realize that the Black man in America is the tragic hero, the Oedipus, the Hamlet, the Macbeth, even the working-class Willy Loman, the Uncle Tom and Uncle Vanya of contemporary American life.”

James Earl Jones was born in Arkabutla, Miss., on Jan. 17, 1931, to Robert Earl and Ruth (Connolly) Jones. About the time of his birth, his father left the family to chase prizefighting and acting dreams. His mother eventually obtained a divorce. But when James was 5 or 6, his frequently absent mother remarried, moved away and left him to be raised by her parents, John and Maggie Connolly, on a farm near Dublin, Mich.

Abandonment by his parents left the boy with raw wounds and psychic scars. He referred to his mother as Ruth — he said he thought of her as an aunt — and he called his grandparents Papa and Mama, although even the refuge of his surrogate home with them was a troubled place to grow up.

“I was raised by a very racist grandmother, who was part Cherokee, part Choctaw and Black,” Mr. Jones told the BBC in a 2011 interview. “She was the most racist person, bigoted person I have ever known.” She blamed all white people for slavery, and Native American and Black people “for allowing it to happen,” he said, and her ranting compounded his emotional turmoil.

Years of Silence

Traumatized, James began to stammer. By age 8 he was stuttering so badly, and was so mortified by his affliction, that he stopped talking altogether, terrified that only gibberish would come out. In the one-room rural school he attended in Manistee County, Mich., he communicated by writing notes. Friendless, lonely, self-conscious and depressed, he endured years of silence and isolation.

“No matter how old the character I play,” Mr. Jones told Newsweek in 1968, “even if I’m playing Lear, those deep childhood memories, those furies, will come out. I understand this.”

Mr. Jones playing a South African priest in “Cry, the Beloved Country” (1995). Credit...Miramax, via Alamy

In high school in nearby Brethren, an English teacher, Donald Crouch, began to help him. He found that James had a talent for poetry and encouraged him to write, and tentatively to stand before the class and read his lines. Gaining confidence, James recited a poem a day in class. The speech impediment subsided. He joined a debating team and entered oratorical contests. By graduation, in 1949, he had largely overcome his disability, although the effects lingered and never quite went away.

Years later, Mr. Jones came to believe that learning to control his stutter had led to his career as an actor.

“Just discovering the joy of communicating set it up for me, I think,” he told The New York Times in 1974. “In a very personal way, once I found out I could communicate verbally again, it became a very important thing for me, like making up for lost time, making up for the years that I didn’t speak.”

Mr. Jones as Big Daddy in a 2008 Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” With him was Terrence Howard. Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Mr. Jones enrolled at the University of Michigan on a scholarship, taking pre-med courses, and joined a drama group. With a growing interest in acting, he switched majors and focused on drama in the university’s School of Music, Theater and Dance. In a memoir, he said he left college in 1953 without a degree but resumed studies later to finish his required course work. He received a degree in drama in 1955.

In college, he had also joined the Army under an R.O.T.C. commitment, then washed out of infantry Ranger School. But he did so well in cold-weather training in the Rockies that he considered a military career. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in mid-1953, after the end of the Korean War, and was subsequently promoted to first lieutenant.

In 1955, however, he resigned his commission and moved to New York, determined to be an actor. He lived briefly with his father, whom he had met a few years earlier. Robert Jones had a modest acting career and offered encouragement. James found cheap rooms on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, took odd jobs and studied at the American Theater Wing and Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio.

A Run of Shakespeare

After minor roles in small productions, including three plays in which he performed with his father, he joined Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival in 1960; over several years he appeared in “Henry V,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Richard III” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” During a long run as Othello in 1964, he fell in love with Julienne Marie, his Desdemona.

They were married in 1968, but they divorced in 1972. In 1982, he married the actress Cecilia Hart, who had also played Desdemona to one of his Othellos. She died in 2016. They had a son, Flynn Earl Jones, who survives him, along with a brother, Matthew.

In the 1970s and most of the ’80s, Mr. Jones was in constant demand for stage work in New York, films in Hollywood and television roles on both coasts. He took occasional breaks at a desert retreat near Los Angeles and at his home in Pawling, N.Y., in Dutchess County.

Mr. Jones in 2017 when he accepted a special Tony Award for lifetime achievement. Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

But his long run with “Fences” in 1987 and 1988, including a national tour, proved too taxing. He did not return to Broadway for many years, and made movies almost exclusively. His notable film roles included an oppressed coal miner in John Sayles’s “Matewan” (1987); the king of a fictional African nation in the John Landis comedy “Coming to America” (1988), a role he reprised at 90 in 2021 in “Coming 2 America”; an embittered but resilient writer in the baseball movie “Field of Dreams” (1989); and a South African priest in “Cry, the Beloved Country” (1995).

Mr. Jones received the National Medal of the Arts from President George Bush at the White House in 1992, Kennedy Center honors in 2002, an honorary Oscar in 2011 for lifetime achievement, and in 2017 a special Tony Award for lifetime achievement, as well as an honorary doctor of arts degree from Harvard University.

In 2015, Mr. Jones and Cicely Tyson appeared in a Broadway revival of D.L. Coburn’s 1976 play, “The Gin Game,” portraying residents of a retirement home making nice, and sometimes not so nice, over a card table. For the 84-year-old Mr. Jones, it was, as The Times noted, his sixth Broadway role in the past decade.

In 2022, Broadway’s 110-year-old Cort Theater was renamed the James Earl Jones Theater.

[midnights-wish]

I've gotten eight more books (I already had three) for my vacation in italy. :) I've been behind on my reading goal for this year, so I figured that since I'll have much much less to do the next two weeks, I should put an effort into getting back on track - and to maybe surpass it.

I'm currently reading 'The Mysterious Affair At Styles' by Agatha Christie, which I will be completing on my way there. The other eleven books on my list are:

'The Bullet That Missed', Richard Osman ( ♡ )

'A User's Guide To The Brain', John J. Ratey ( ♡ )

'The Devil And The Dark Water', Stuart Turton

'The Sundial', Shirley Jackson

'The Postman Always Rings Twice', James M. Cain ( ♡ )

'The Decagon House Murders', Yukito Ayatsuji ( ♡ )

'Flower Fairies Of The Summer', Cicely Mary Barker

'The Murder On The Links', Agatha Christie ( ♡ )

'Axiomatic', Greg Egan

'Lord Of The Flies', William Golding

'The Time Machine', H.G. Wells ( ♡ )

I'm not sure yet in which order I'll be reading these, but the ones with the heart behind are the ones I'm looking forward to the most. 🌙

[frankkingakingproduction]

Frank King - a King production

Male Models • Men’s Fashion • Male Celebrities • Fitness Models

Vintage Jet Magazine Covers - 1979

Aretha Franklin (January 25, 1979)

Tina Turner (February 15, 1979)

Chic (April 19, 1979)

Donna Summer (July 5, 1979)

Rick James (July 26, 1979)

Minnie Riperton (August 2, 1979)

Michael Jackson (August 16, 1979)

Lola Falana (September 20, 1979)

Redd Foxx (October 11, 1979)

Richard Pryor & Cicely Tyson (December 13, 1979)

[perfettamentechic]

26 aprile … ricordiamo … #semprevivineiricordi #nomidaricordare #personaggiimportanti #perfettamentechic

[hiphopvibe1]

Angela Bassett reflects on Oscar loss: ‘I Was Deserving’ of the Award [VIDEO]

Angela Bassett Tells All About Her Disappointment About Her Oscar Snub in 2024 Continue reading Angela Bassett reflects on Oscar loss: ‘I Was Deserving’ of the Award [VIDEO]

[weirdtvland]

Betty Davis photographed by Fin Costello, 1976.

"When I got back to New York, I went into the studio in May to complete the 'Miles in the sky' album with Herbie, Wayne, Ron, and Tony. In June, after we had finished 'Miles in the Sky', we went into the studio to began the 'Filles de Kilimanjaro' album. Then we went on tour all summer and finished the album later in September."

"Things weren't going too well with me and Cecily (Tyson), and we broke up because I met this beautiful young singer and songwriter named Betty Mabry, whose picture is on the cover of 'Filles de Kilimanjaro'. We also had a song on there named for her, 'Mademoiselle Mabry'. Man I was really in love again and fell really good about Betty. She was twenty-three when I met her and was from Pittsburgh. My divorce from Frances had come through in February of 1968, and so Betty and I were married that September while the group was playing a gig at the Plugged Nickel. We got married in Gary, Indiana, and my brother and sister stood for me."

"Betty was a big influence on my personal life as well as my musical life. She introduced me to the music of Jimi Hendrix and to Jimi Hendrix himself and other black rock music and musicians. She knew Sly Stone and all those guys, and she was great herself. If Betty were singing today, she'd be something like Madonna: Something like Prince but only as a woman. She was the beginning of all that when she was singing as Betty. She was just ahead of her time. She also helped me change the way I was dressing. The marriage only lasted about a year, but that year was full of new things and surprises and helped me point the way I was to go, both in music and in some ways, my lifestyle."

"The music I was really listening to in 1968 was James Brown, the great guitar player Jimi Hendrix, and a new group who had just come out with the hit record, "Dance to the music," Sly and The Family Stone, led by Sly Stewart from San Francisco. The shit he was doing was badder than a motherfucker, had all kinds of funky shit up in it. But it was Jimi Hendrix that I first got into when Betty Mabry turned me on to him. I first met Jimi when his manager called up and wanted me to introduce him to the way I was playing and putting music together. Jimi liked what I had done on 'Kind Of Blue' and some other stuff and wanted to add more jazz elements to what he was doing. He liked the way Coltrane played with all those sheets of sound, and he played the guitar in a similar way. Plus, he said he heard the guitar voicing that I used in the way I played the trumpet. So we started getting together. Betty really liked this music, and later, I found out she liked him physically too, and he started to come around."

"See, Betty was too young and wild for the things I expected from a woman. I was used to a cool, hip, elegant woman like Frances or Cicely. Who could handle herself in all kinds of situations. But Betty was a free spirited-talented as a motherfucker who was a rocker and street woman who was used to another kind of thing. She was raunchy and all of that kind of shit, all sex, but I didn't know that when I met her and if I did, I guess, I didn't pay attention. But that was the kind of shit she would do, and with the other stuff she was doing, I just got tired of it. "

"After we left Bill and Camille, I went to London to see Sammy Davis Jr., who was over there opening up in Golden Boy. I also saw Paul Bobeson; I tried to see him whenever I went to London until he came back to the States. I was hanging out with people who had a lot of class, but Betty wasn't comfortable around those kinds of people. She only liked rockers, and that's cool, but I always had a lot of good friends who weren't musicians, and Betty couldn't deal with those kinds of people, and we were just moving away from each other."

"Later on in New York, I ran into this beautiful Spanish girl who wanted to go to bed with me. I go over to her place, and she tells me that Betty is going with her boyfriend. When I asked her who he and she told me, "Jimi Hendrix." She was a blonde, fine motherfucker. So she takes off her clothes and she has a body that just wouldn't wait. I tell her. "If Betty wants to fuck Jimi Hendrix. That's their thing, and I ain't got nothing to do with that, and it ain't got nothing to do with me, either." She tells me if Betty was going to be fucking her man, then she was going to fuck me. I tell her, "It don't go like that, because I don't fuck anybody for reasons like that. If you're going to fuck me, then you got to want to do it because you want to do it, not because Betty is fucking Jimi." She put her clothes on and we talked. Man, that shit I told her just fucked her up. Because she was so fine that she was used to men just falling down over themselves to get her. Just because a woman is fine don't mean nothing to me and never did; I've always had fine women. For me to really get into them, they also have to have a mind and think about something other than how fine they are."

"After that, my relationship with Betty just went downhill. After I told her what I knew and her and Jimi asked her for a divorce- I told her I was getting a divorce. She said, "Naw, you ain't either, fine as I am, you know you don't want to give up this good thing!"Oh yeah? Well, bitch, I'm divorcing you, and I already got the papers made out so you'd better sign them if you know what's good for your ass!" She did, and that was the end of that." -From Miles Davis' autobiography.

[melancholymetropolis]

“I heard the twins were back in town."

My husband’s voice floated about the room as he dried his hair. Bill was only wearing his pajama bottoms and his chest was bare. Stray droplets of water dripped from head, down his pecs and along his abs. I broke my gaze once he pulled a shirt over his bare skin, disturbing my view.

"They are," I sighed, rubbing lotion between my palms. "I saw Stack near the station, while I was picking up the shipment. Along Mary and Preacher Boy."

A shiver ran down my spine at the mention of her name from my lips. I had tried my best to avoid her at all costs. But, just like Stack, she wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. She sent letter after letter to my house. Begging and pleading to have a conversation. Claiming that her guilt was eating her up something fierce and she could barely sleep. 

That was right after Maddie was born. 

She even tried to come over to my house, but Bill stopped her before she could get too close to me. Practically tore her a new one for disturbing my nap after nursing the ever-hungry newborn. 

I knew right then that I wanted to marry him. 

Through the mirror on the vanity, I could see him rise from the bed. His fingers pressed tightly together and a deep frown on his lips. He took small steps toward me, hesitation oozing from his being. Several deep breaths fell from his lips before he met his gaze in the mirror.

"He spoke to you, didn't he?" The look of sadness deepened to one of sorrow. Almost like his soul was aching at the statement.

“He did,” I said, massaging the cream into my neck. “But, your daughter called him ugly and sent him away with a glare.”

The smile turned into a sad smile at the statement. “Fearless little thing. She gets it from you.”

I hummed softly as he reached for the cream and took a dollop from the top. He rubbed it between his palms just like I had moments before. With a firm grip, he kneaded the lotion into my shoulders. My eyes rolled closed as I leaned into his touch and moaned. 

“Baby, I need to ask you something,” Bill said, after a silent moment. “Promise me you won’t be upset.”

“I’ll try my best.”

“Do you still have feelings for him?”

I shot from the bench of my vanity and spun around to face him— causing him to stumble back a few steps. “William Chow, explain yourself this minute!”

He raises his hands in surrender and takes another step back. “Baby, you knew this would come up. You always said they would come back home eventually. Part of me thought that meant you wanted to see him again.”

“No,” I snapped back. “That meant that I would have to explain to your daughter why she looks damn near identical to an absolute stranger. Not that I was in love with him!”

“Y/N, we never talk about it,” Bill rebutted, his tone softer than mine. “Not since we first got married. You pretend like the man doesn’t exist and it has left me wondering a few things.”

“Like what?” I interjected. “I will take Maddie and run away with him?”

Bill flinched like I slapped him, but didn’t say a word. 

That was exactly what he thought I’d do.

A lone tear rolled down my cheek as my lip began to quiver. I turned my back to him and placed both palms on the edge of the vanity. A million thoughts swirled in my mind. Images of Stack laying his head on my chest, Mary gloating about how he did the same thing to her, Bill holding my hand during my delivery because Anne was too far away and my baby girl crying for the first time after 12 hours of labor. The vow that I made to her that I would choose a better daddy than her lying, cheating sperm donor. Someone that was kind, patient and full of love; ready to give it away at any moment. 

Someone like William Chow, Bo’s baby brother. A Malaysian immigrant turned baker, damn near identical to his kin with hair past his shoulders. His strawberry and cream donuts were all I ever craved while pregnant. I would gather as much change as I had to snag two at the end of the week, he would alway sneak me an extra one. Bill was the only one to speak to me after it became very obvious I was pregnant. The whole town knew it was Stack’s, since our relationship was hardly private. But, when he left, everyone treated me like spoiled goods. Barely made eye contact and snickered behind my back. Fearing that Stack would shoot them where they stood for looking at me funny.

But, Bill was not scared of any of that. Stack loved his strawberry donuts just as much as I did. Meaning, that Stack would rather cut off his own pinky than cross Bill or the Chow family. 

“After all this time, you still think he has a hold on me?” I whispered as another tear rolled down my cheeks. “After everything we’ve been through?”

“Honey, he can give you things I can’t,” Bill countered. 

The silent part hinted loudly: He could give you more children.

That was William’s only fatal flaw, if one could even count it as such. He was impotent. The possibility of having children together was slim to none, which was why he remained single all that time. Some women wanted a family and others needed a kind of pleasure only a certain an could give. But, that didn’t matter to me. Sex wasn’t a deal breaker for me. I had learned that sex didn’t mean love, nor affection. It was a simple pass time that felt good. It didn’t hold emotion, unless you wanted it to. And like an idiot, I held enough emotion for Stack and I both. Yet, it still wasn’t enough to make him stay. 

We had tried all kinds of herbs, old wives tales and remedies, but it hardly ever worked. His member would stiffen, but not long enough to really have fun. Still, I didn’t care. Bill more than made up for it with his mouth and fingers. He would have me screaming all the way to sunrise.

I turned to face him. I could see tears starting to form in his eyes. His tanned skin turned a faint red, as he pressed a hand to his mouth to stifle his whimpers. Bill’s shoulders shook with sadness as his chest rose and fell rapidly. The sheer thought of losing me, of losing Madeline, was tearing him apart at the seams. I had never seen him cry until that moment and it broke my heart.

I took several strides over to him, leaving a foot of space between us. “Can I hold you, baby?”

“Please,” he sobbed, lifting his head.

I took a final step and pressed my body against his. My head resting on his shoulder and my arms hugging his upper back. Bill gripped my waist with a pressure that was almost painful, but it didn’t bother me. I knew he needed me close.

“I don’t know what I’d do if I’d lose you two,” he whimpered into my hair. “I don’t  think I would survive, Y/N. I truly do not.”

“I would’ve been maggot food if it weren’t for your generosity all those years ago,” I said, rubbing his back. “No man was willing to marry an already pregnant woman. Let alone the broken possession of the Moore twins. Only you would talk to me. Not only talk, but smile. God, your smile would be like sunshine on a rainy day. It kept me warm for hours.”

Bill’s whimpering stopped, but his hold was still firm. “You don’t have to lie, Y/N.”

“I’ve never lied to you, Bill. Not once since we’ve met,” I said, drawing circles on his back. “I’m not about to start now. I love you far too much to let a criminal come between us.”

He pulled back gently and faced me. Tears streaming down his face, he looked at me like I was his entire world and it broke my heart. I brought a hand to his face and placed it on his damp cheek. He leaned into the palm and placed a hand atop mine. His eyes fluttered closed as a shaky breath fell from his lips. Bill's entire body relaxed at my unwavering presence. The floodgates were completely lowered as the tears continued to fall from his eyes. But I knew they weren't for sadness or desperation, like before. These were tears of relief and compassion.

“I love you, William Chow,” I said once our eyes finally met. “More than you'll ever know. More than I can put in words.”

“You are my world,” he replied, pressing his forehead to mine. “And Madeline is my sun. I would be dark and lonely without you both.”

A tear spilled from my eye, which he caught with his thumb and swiped away. His lips were on mine before I could blink. Our bodies pressed together so tightly we could crack an egg. He held me in his arms if I would disappear at any given moment. Kissed me like I would be stolen away from him. The action made the tears pour faster. Our hands gripped each other's clothes before the desire to tear them off struck. 

My hands slithered up his pajama top slowly. Fingers brushing his toned abdomen and structured hips. My touch moved from front to back— I dragged my nails against his lower spine. Bill shivered at my touch and moved his kisses from my lips to my neck. A gasp escaped my mouth as his tongue licked a sensitive part of my neck. A moan followed shortly after as teeth found that vein and dragged it across it. A lovely nip earned him another moan. His hand kneaded my soft rear as he sucked the delicate skin of my neck. His hips ground into mine and I felt his member between us. Stiff and ready to use. 

“Tell me how you want me, suga,” he purred in my ear. “My head between your legs.” Bill’s hot tongue ran across my ear. “You sitting that pretty pussy on my face.” He gave it a little nip. “Or, we see if the new herbs are really up for the challenge.” He ground his hips into me once more and I moaned loudly. 

“Yes,” I replied, breathlessly. “All of the above.”

------------------------

a/n: where did all of y'all come from?! i did not expect this but hey! i'm happy you're here! once again, let me know if you wanna be in the taglist. Smut will be in the next chapter.

also, bear with me. i might not be able to post regularly, but i will try my best to post often.

Part III

----------------------

Taglist

@lov4gor3 @marley1773 @thegreatlibraryofalex @beverly-991 @depressedandhornyfl @rollingraypurrr @mea-bby @heyyimmisunderstood @harleycativy @childishgambinaax @mskirara @bishhhitsaurion @daughterofapollo-7 @thickianaaaa @capswife @hrlzy @melodyofmbaku @skywalker0809 @asterizee @nooooonooooonooooo @jackierose902109 @wabi-sabi1090 @rolemodelshit @naebae14 @christinabae @thedondada05 @simpingfor-wakasa @lovesickbwnny @brattyfics @saintsir4n @abriefnirvana @tforpresz @sinflowersugar

[chantssecrets]

Cicely Tyson, James Baldwin, Arthur Mitchell (dance pioneer), and Harry Belafonte at the "To Be Young, Gifted And Black Gala", 2 January 1969.

[northernexposuregifs]

Maggie, thank you for sharing in the destruction of your house so that today we can have something to fling. I think Kierkegaard said it oh-so well…

"The self is only that which it is in the process of becoming."

Art, same thing. James Joyce had something to say about it, too.

"Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race."

We're here today to fling something that bubbled up from the collective unconsciousness of our community. The thing I learned, folks, this is absolutely key… it's not the thing you fling, it's the fling itself.

Let's fling something, Cicely!

[godzilla-reads]

🌸May Reading Wrap-Up🌸

In May I managed to finish 15 books, bringing my yearly total to 53 books read! My Top Three were for sure “Tooth and Claw” by Jo Walton; “A Prayer for the Crown-Shy” by Becky Chambers; and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin” by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. Here’s the list, too:

🍱 Delicious in Dungeon Vol. 1 by Ryoko Kui

🐰 The Picnic by Ruth Brown

😱 More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz

😈 Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz

🤖 A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers

🐢 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird

💐 Spring: A Folio Anthology edited by Sue Bradbury

👿 Into the Goblin Market by Vikki Vansickle and Jensine Eckwall

🍄 Guest: A Changeling Tale by Mary Downinh Hanh

🪶 Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach

💚 Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

🌷 Flower Fairies of Spring by Mary Cicely Barker

🖋️ Collected Poems by James Joyce

⭕️ District and Circle by Seamus Heaney

🐲 Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton

What did you read in May?

[mybeingthere]

A blue and yellow block print robe designed by a legendary African-American fashion designer Arthur McGee (main picture).

The robe is made of yellow cotton fabric block printed with black in a pattern of diamonds that alternate between filled and void. Inside each diamond is an oval, some are filled with lines. Large diamonds with a white and black striped border have yellow insides with black lines running through. Three blue hair combs are inside each triangle. The robe opens in the center front and has three-quarter length kimono sleeves. A self-fabric two-inch band is sewn to each side of the center front opening. The bands transition into a back collar and have a center back seam. Inseam pockets are sewn along each side seam. A center back seam is sewn on the robe, it is machine sewn and the interior seams are finished with machine overcast stitching. A woven fabric label is placed vertically and sewn along the center back seam. The label reads [me and mcgee / by arthur mcgee].

New York City, New York, United States, North and Central America

Black Fashion Museum Collection

Arthur L. McGee was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1933. At the age of 18, he entered a contest to win a scholarship to attend Traphagen School of Design in New York and won after submitting the winning design. His inspiration came from his mother, who created her own fashions.

Arthur went on to study millinery and apparel design at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). While attending FIT he began working for the American couturier Charles James. He later produced his own designs while pursuing employment in New York’s apparel manufacturing industry.

In 1957, Arthur became the first African-American to run the design room of an established Seventh Avenue apparel company, Bobby Brooks. His remarkable talent and the broad appeal of his work transcended racial barriers, selling to such stores as Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale’s, Henri Bendel, Bonwit Teller, Bergdorf Goodman, and Lord & Taylor. He went on to open his first store in the early 1960s on St. Mark’ s Place in New York City. He became the designer of choice for many celebrities, including Lena Horne, Cicely Tyson, and Stevie Wonder.

Arthur McGee was known as the dean of African-American designers, he mentored many young talents, including Aziza Braithwaite Bey (Elena Braith) and the late Willi Smith, paving the way for designers of color.

[helslastangel]

Scorpio Venus Celebrities

Some of these surprised me, I must say.

Aimee Garcia

Aisha Tyler (Lana Kane)

Alexis Bledel (Rory Gilmore)

Alfie Allen (Theon Greyjoy)

Alfred Enoch (Wes Gibbins)

Andrew Lincoln (Rick Grimes)

Anne-Marie Duff (Fiona Gallagher)

Anthony Mackie (The Falcon, Marvel)

Brie Larson (Carol Danvers)

Bruce Lee

Carly Rae Jepsen

Charles Dance (Tywin Lannister)

Chrissy Teigen

Christina Milian

Cicely Tyson

Dakota Johnson

Damon Wayans Jr.

Danielle Brooks

David Schwimmer (Ross Geller)

Denzel Washington

Diplo

Drake

Eden Sher (Sue Heck)

Ella Mai

Ellie Goulding

Ellen Pompeo (Meredith Grey)

Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen)

Eugene Levy

Frank Ocean

Gerard Butler (Clyde Shelton)

Gordon Ramsey

Gwendoline Christie (Brienne of Tarth)

Halsey

Hugh Jackman (Wolverine)

Ian Somerhalder (Damon Salvatore)

Jamie Foxx

Janelle Monáe

Jason Derulo

Jeffree Star

Jim Caviezel

John Krasinski

John Legend

John Sanford (Sanford and Son)

Jonah Hill

Kaley Cuoco (Penny, Big Bang Theory)

Katherine Heigl (Izzie Stevens)

Kirk Douglas

Kit Harrington (Jon Snow)

Kris Jenner

Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister)

Louis Tomlinson

Luke Goss

Tyrese Gibson (Roman Pearce)

Matt Damon

Mayim Bialik (Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler)

Milla Jovovich

Nia Long

Ne-Yo

Penn Badgley (Dan Humphrey; Joe Goldberg)

Regina Hall

Russell Peters

Sia

Stefanie Scott (Lexi Reed)

Steven Yeun (Glenn Rhee)

Taraji P. Henson

Tyler James Williams (Everybody Hates Chris)

Tyson Beckford

Usher

Winona Ryder

Zac Efron

Zoë Kravitz