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ourplaceinthecosmosphff · 4 years

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Chapter 26. The Heart Wants What It Wants

'chaos is only understood when it is loved by the wild, not the weak’ - Zachry K. Douglas

I wondered, briefly, if my parents were as nervous as I was about that day. None of us had planned on me being back in England anytime soon, but there I was anyway. I suppose I should thank Adrien for continually attracting scandal and, therefore, needing me to distract the media from his wild American adventures.

In May, soon after my sister had returned to her previous insane schedule of ice skating training, there was a report from TMZ, of all places, that Prince Adrien of Savoy was now dating Sienna Lapa, a wannabe singer who’d come in second in X Factor a few years prior. This, we came to find out after asking Adrien what was happening, was the friend who had helped him find an apartment in New York when he decided to relocate there.

My parents and Adrien’s mother deemed it a ‘completely inappropriate choice’. Adrien’s sister, Natalie, seemed to be trying to keep an open mind -- she was and had always been her brother’s biggest defender, after all. Lourdes immediately pulled up all the videos from her X Factor journey to show anyone who’d listen, but that only made our family hate the girl more, as most of her performances involved her with too much energy and very few clothes.

“You can all be so close minded…” my sister complained, rolling her eyes, as Natalie watched the video over her shoulder with furrowed brows when she and our aunt came over for tea after the news broke. “We’re just looking out for him.” Our cousin told her. “So you’re on their side now?” Lourdes asked her. Natalie shrugged, defensive. “I think if Adrien likes her, she must be nice.” Her mother scoffed. “We all know your brother’s record with women is not stellar, chérie.” “He dated Faye!” “Exactly.” My father sentenced. “Maggie, what do you think?” Natalie asked.

As they all looked at me, expectantly, I took a moment to ponder how much this had been happening lately. I had been used to speaking softly before, to remarking carefully on things, in case someone would hear me. But as the Crown Princess, my opinion mattered in more ways than I had immediately realized. It wasn’t just the press that suddenly cared about me, my family, too, seemed more invested in my thoughts. As if my verdict could make or break anything within the family just because I was bound to be queen one day.

“I… I don’t think being an artist should mean she will inevitably ruin this family.” I said. My mother shook her head, and my Aunt sighed, but nobody disagreed.

After tea, my father asked me to stay behind as the others left, and sat me down to remind me, sternly, that being the heir – and, one day, the Monarch –, meant it was my duty to safeguard our family from anyone who, purposefully or not, my damage it.

“You think this girl will damage us?” I asked, suppressing an eyeroll. “Papa, she’s just a girl.” “She’s American. They don’t understand monarchies.” He replied. “Not to mention she belongs to an industry that thrives on scandal and notoriety, things that do not have a place in this family.” “We don’t even know her!” I said, smiling, amused against my better judgement. “We know she wants fame.” He replied, seriously. “That doesn’t have a place here.” “We don’t even know if it’s true.” I argued.

Unfortunately, it was. I texted Adrien after this conversation, and he was as frustrated as we were, but for other reasons. ‘Its so new’, he said, ‘we just wanted to enjoy each other before inviting the whole world into it and now here we are’.

According to him, it ‘just happened’. They’d been friends for a long time, she was really supportive after his breakup and helped him adapt to New York. He moved into the same building she lives in, and they started spending more time together; before they knew it, it was more than friendship.

He also made clear he knew perfectly well how unsuitable the relationship was: ‘she’s been trying to establish her music career for a long time, so her future lies in America’, he said. ‘She also has pink hair and a lot of tattoos… can you even imagine her in mass with the rest of the family?’

I could not.

The world couldn’t, either. Press and public alike had a lot of opinions on this relationship, which became everything anyone could talk about. It wasn’t just me that gained notoriety with Louis’ death, Adrien did, too, and, with him, any girl he could one day turn into a princess.

And that was the main reason I was sent to England. An invitation for Royal Ascot was issued every year to our family, we tended not to go simply because it was far and we had other commitments. But we needed to change the conversation, so if it took putting me under a hat and in the same picture as the British royals, so be it.

I could see my parents’ tension about this plan in the way they exchanged silent glances while we talked it through, but they didn’t voice any of it. Of course, they couldn’t. Not if they wanted me to do as I was told. So, they didn’t mention Harry, and I didn’t bring him up, either.

Regardless of this, he was very much in my thoughts essentially 100% of the time, even before the Ascot plan was born. All I had to do was just keep that to myself and, if my parents did the same, we could hopefully hold onto the lie that the issue was over.

So, on that day in mid-June, I took the train early with Cadie and Auguste and my security, headed to England, with a fancy outfit safely packed away in a weekend bag, which I changed into before we arrived.

I was wearing a salmon pink, wide-legged jumpsuit that my mother had deemed ‘too modern’, with my hair styled in vintage waves under a flowery disc fascinator.

The Royal Ascot races were a society event, with the actual races taking a backseat to… pretty much everything else: the fashion, the high profile guests, the arrival of the queen and royal family later on… honestly, it was everything but horses.

As a guest, I didn’t arrive with the other royals in a very much televised carriage ride into the main front lawn, and I was glad to be able to skip it, hoping I might be able to go straight to the viewing area, free of press. Unfortunately, that was the opposite of the goal.

So, even though I arrived privately, I was then escorted to the entry lawn for socializing before the race started. Though Cadie didn’t seem to think it was necessary – which I tended to agree with –, Auguste made sure to find me a pin with my name on it, a must-wear for every guest no matter how high ranked.

“A drink would be actually helpful.” I told them. “Not until the enclosure, I’m afraid.” Cadie replied. Auguste leaned in closer. “Though my colleague may have a different view, ma’am, I feel being seen with alcohol might not be the best course of action for what we’re here to do.” “Boss.” Cadie whispered his way, rispid. “I’m your boss, Mr. Authier. Not colleague.” “Is it appropriate to discuss that at this time, boss?”

I sighed, walking further away from them and into the crowded, sun soaked lawn. One thing I hadn’t grown used to yet was the looks. Every step taken through a public area, particularly one with such a high concentration of high class people, was the target of laser focused glances from almost anyone around. I was forced to develop the ability of confidently aiming my eyes at something abstract, so I was seen as being busy, but didn’t accidentally lock eyes with anyone. It was a perfect recipe for disaster. Which is why I should have expected it.

I didn’t bump into him, that kind of thing didn’t happen at highly planned events like this, especially when you had a large entourage of people with you whose job it was to make sure you went to the right place at the right time to meet the right people. It was more accurate to say our eyes bumped into each other.

There I was, walking slowly through the crowd, avoiding one pair of eyes after the other. First using the far away stands as a distraction point. Then using the awkwardly placed decorative flowers as a distraction point. Which led to using the one very weird hat as a distraction point, as its owner was standing right next to it. But then the hat was so weird I had to see the face of the person wearing it, but she was already looking at me, so I felt awkward and looked away as quickly as possible and, in my hurry, didn’t think too much about it, so instead of a safe distraction point, my eyes found… Harry.

“Ma’am,” Cadie leaned closer, “shall we go greet the president of the Ascot association?” “What? I–” I stuttered, barely able to take my eyes off of Harry. “Sure.”

Heaving a sigh, I allowed myself to be walked around to meet the people it was important for me to meet, doing what I had been doing every day since the last time I had seen him: smiling politely, making smart, appropriate conversation, representing an entire country. All things that were painful reminders of what kept us apart.

I woke up early, I worked hard every day to hold myself accountable to my new role, keeping busy the best I could, but every night when I closed my eyes to sleep, it was his eyes that I saw. It was his voice saying ‘don’t marry him’, the tap of his hand on mine above his heart as he told me ‘it’s yours’, and every time I thought about it my whole body shivered with joy and I wanted to cry of frustration, sadness and anger that I couldn’t just embrace something that was meant to just be a happy thing.

“Yes, my parents were so sad they couldn’t make it.” I told a trustee of the event, sustaining a neutral smile as though my entire body wasn’t shaking.

Sometimes, hypocritically, I wondered why Harry hadn’t reached out, either. I knew, rationally, that it was better that he didn’t, but he had made a point of saying he didn’t have to listen to his advisors when they told him to stay away from me, but he had. Whenever I started to feel sad about this, I reminded myself it was better this way. Safer. Healthier. Then I googled him to make sure he wasn’t dating anyone new, ‘just in case.’

But now there he was, in Ascot. Because of course of the five days of this event we would both go to the same one, believing differently was something only my parents did to help them sleep at night. On my end, I knew it was going to be this way.

It’s like I was fated to always run into him after weeks or months of absence, just to remind my heart of what it was leaving behind. Destined to try and forget him just to see him again, the man I could see, but not feel. Love, but not have. At arm's length, but worlds away.

As I turned away from the U.N. Ambassador, assuring him I would transmit his best wishes to my parents, I startled.

“Harry.” He startled, too; looked me up and down, closed his eyes in frustration, and sighed. “Damn, Mary, really?” He asked, sounding tired. “Wh-what?!” I asked, nervously, drying my sweaty palms in the pants of my jumpsuit. I’d been nervous all day they were a choice too ‘out there’. “Where do you find the audacity to look this beautiful?!” He asked, seriously.

It took me maybe two seconds to understand this flattery, and that he wasn’t actually criticizing my fashion choices, and when I did I was washed by such a deep wave of relief I was almost angry.

“Seriously?!” I slapped my handbag playfully against his arms, rolling my eyes, and turned away to walk into the building, leaving him as well as my team to catch up. “What?! It was a compliment!” He said, hurrying after me, suppressing a chuckle. I was smiling in spite of myself. “Maybe, but your tone was very misleading.” He smiled. “I apologize about my tone, Mary. May I try again?” I blinked, slowly, grinning now, and he went on. “You look beautiful.”

His second attempt was all that it shouldn’t have been: intense, yearning, full of a double meaning only we seemed to hear.

Bashfully, I gulped. “Thank you… I wish I could say the same.” “Ouch?” He laughed, taking a step back. “It’s not your fault, coats and tails is just not flattering on anyone.” “Well, that’s it.” He took off his hat and immediately started unbuttoning his vest. “What are you doing?” I asked, laughing. “I will go naked before I let you see me in something unflattering.” I took one step closer and stopped his hands with mine. “Oh, my God.” I said, looking around. “Stop!”

The main building was guests only, no press, so we were pretty safe there. But there were still guests around.

“What? You started it.” He chuckled but, at least for now, stopped undressing himself. Someone behind him cleared his throat. “Sir, you should probably button up before we go upstairs.” Harry nodded, serious. “Of course. Thank you, Edward.” He subtly buttoned his shirt while I looked around; some people had their eyes on us, but nothing too out of ordinary. “My secretary.” He explained. “Trying to keep me from trouble is literally his job, so I try to listen to him sometimes, throw him a bone, you know how it is.” “I hope you pay him enough.” I told him, teasing. “Sounds like an impossible mission.” “Touché.” Harry giggled, the sight making my stomach flutter.

We exchanged a long look, the whisper of our smiles still holding on to our lips dreamily.

“So, how have you been?” He asked, clasping his hands behind his back. I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Good. Well. Merci.” I nodded. “You?” “Awful, thanks for asking.” He smiled, so it was tough to know if he meant it or not. “Oh?” “Nothing that we can fix, I’m afraid.” He shrugged. “Should I escort you upstairs?” “Oh. Uhm. Sure.”

He led the way to the elevators, our team right behind us. With our security, we crowded one elevator with no room for anyone else. Though this was a pretty safe environment, I didn’t feel safe enough to inquire about what he meant.

“So, how’s Lourdes?” He asked, upbeat. “Pretty good.” I said, nodding. “She’s skating again.” “Nice!” He broke into such a huge smile it was hard not to smile as well. “I want to see her skating, do you have any videos?” “More than I need.” I rolled my eyes. “I’ll–”

I was about to say I’d send him some, when I stopped myself.

“You have her number, right? You should ask her, trust me, she’ll be delighted. She loves showing her routines to people.” He nodded, “I will.”

Though it was a very big building, the elevator stopped on every floor, where both our security alerted people it was crowded before the doors closed again. We were headed to the last, highest floor, the Royal Enclosure, which was the best viewing point for the races. It was also highly exclusive and invite only, and a person could online invite someone else after attending for four years. Divorcées weren’t even allowed in until 1955.

So the elevator ride took a long minute, which may be what gave me the courage to surrender and lean in closer to him to ask:

“Truth or dare?” He smiled to the ground, biting his lower lip, but leaned in to me as well and whispered, “Dare.” Smiling in return, only slightly annoyed I’d have to wait to ask why he said he’d been ‘awful’, I went through my head for a good dare idea. “Let’s see….” “May I remind you we are in a very public, heavily press-present event?” He whispered, still close. “Sounds like something you should have thought of before choosing dare.” I shrugged, whispering back. “Okay… get someone in this elevator to slap you.” He leaned back. “What?!” “Go on.” “How?” “I don’t know.” “Mary… I–” He sighed, looking around. His eyes paused on every person present, my staff, his staff, the security… and then it paused on the tall, slender man who he had referred to as his secretary before. “Hey, Edward, I need a favor.” “Yes, sir?” The man replied, while I suppressed a giggle. “Slap me.” The whole group looked at them for a moment, before looking away, pretending not to be overhearing. “S-sir?” “It’s not a big deal, just slap me. It doesn’t need to be strong.” Harry insisted. “Sir, I–I don’t understand!” “It’s a long story,” Harry lied, “I’ll explain later, but I need you to slap me now. Go on, I promise I won’t mind.” I bit my lip strongly to stop myself from laughing. Edward looked truly concerned, and Harry sounded increasingly more desperate. “Harry, no!” Edward said, shaking his head.

The elevator stopped in place with a melodic ‘ding’, and Harry sighed as the others filed out before us – Edward leading the way.

“Any chance you’ll slap me?” He asked, making me laugh. “Ask me again later.” I said, walking out. “But then I’ll have already lost.” He lamented. “Well, then you’ll have to live with the defeat.” He groaned, following me to a table of drinks and appetizers. There were no cameras in this enclosure, and no one else I had to be formally introduced to. As I didn’t know anyone else, this left me free to grab a drink and something to eat.

Harry, however, waved a quick hello to a handful of people as soon as we walked into the room, but continued to follow me.

“Okay, rematch.” He started. “Give me another dare, I must redeem my honor.” “God, men… it must be so exhausting feeling you have to prove yourself constantly.” He grinned. “We both know you’re judging me for not doing a dare. Go on, give me another one.” I giggled, and sighed. “Alright, remember you insisted… I dare you to…” I thought about it deeply, looking around.

There was a couple of girls a few meters away looking at us – more particularly, at him – with jealousy and desire in their eyes. I smiled in spite of myself, feeling oddly powerful.

“To improvise a poem.” He looked so confused it made me smile again. “A poem? Like, like poetry?” “Yes.” I nodded. “Take your time.”

As I took a sip of my sparkling wine, he put his hands in his pockets, looking around. I could see his mouth silently moving as he talked quietly with himself. It was an amusing sight, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t notice how handsome he looked deep in thought like this.

“Okay.” He nodded, seriously, approaching.

He removed his hat, brushed his hair to the side with his hand and stood unnervingly close to me.

“You're a vision in pink, I might need a drink…” He risked a look at me, but his cheeks were reddening, so he looked away again. “And I might pass out, if you gave me a wink…” I tried to suppress a giggle, as I thought any sudden movements might dissuade him from this dare. “Every day I remember, when the leaves were ember… In blue, you breezed through… your skin, warm and tender, In all of your splendor…” he looked at me again, still pink in the cheeks, but with renowned intensity in his eyes, “Waking up with me, your legs between my knees. I woke up desperate to please, and tease, with ease…”

His eyes locked on mine, intense, he recovered his color just as I felt my cheeks heaten up. He said each word slowly now, over-enunciating double meaning into each syllable.

“And squeeze, your hills, give you chills, thrills, until… Your daisy became daffodils… Asleep and awake, three days of bliss, give and take… Slow, sweet, fast or rough. Forever wouldn't be enough.”

His eyes hovered over my face, slowly lowering towards my lips, pausing there for the longest minute as I felt breathless. To the silence, I realized it was over, and struggled to think of something teasing, light-hearted enough to say to this. How to hide the way his voice – his words – made me feel?

I bit down an embarrassed grin thinking of his words. Walking in wearing blue when the leaves were ember? That was when we met last fall. Waking up with my legs between his knees? When I ran away to his home and we slept in the same bed. ‘Squeeze your hills, give you thrills, slow, fast, or rough, forever wouldn’t be enough’? That, that was… an alternate reality that felt the more tempting the more he continued to look at me.

“I don’t want to break the moment, because I feel there’s a moment here… but that was really good, right?” He asked, sounding honestly shocked.

It made me laugh out loud.

“Oh, my God, did I… write that?” He added, looking around, seemingly astonished with himself. “Did I maybe hear this somewhere? Did I accidentally plagiarized someone?” Laughing, I held on to his arm to steady myself. “Honestly, it was very good.” I managed to say. “I know! It was incredible!” “I mean, it started just okay… but it got… really interesting in the end.” “Interesting?! I think I’m a poetry miracle!”

I laughed again; throwing my head back, I had to hold on to my hat so it stayed in place.

“I need a pen and paper to write that all down before I forget it!” he added, patting his pockets. “Oh, my God, shut up.” I begged, still laughing. “Alright, alright…” He smiled. “My turn. Truth or dare?” I sighed, “Dare.” He grinned, surprised. “Oh, wow. Okay… I dare you to…” He considered it for a few seconds, looking around the room.

Silently, he grabbed my half-drank wine glass and moved to the drinks. He picked a bottle of whisky, and poured some into my glass.

“Hey!” I protested.

He did the same with the scotch, the vodka, the mango liquor, and every other bottle in the table until my glass was almost full to the brim.

“I dare you.” He said, handing me the glass. “Are you s–? This is so unoriginal.” “Just drink it.” He grinned. I smelled the contents of the glass, which smelled oddly of citric coca cola, and took a quick sip. “Oh, my God.” I complained, trying to remind myself not to yell in disgust. “You can do better, come on.” “No, I think this is enough.” “What? You drank nothing!” “Yes, but you never said I had to drink a lot, just that I had to drink.” I shrugged. He closed his eyes, and smiled, annoyed. “Wow. Such a lawyer.” I laughed. “My turn.” “Fine. Truth.” He said, rolling his eyes. I gulped, placed the disgusting concoction in my glass back on the table, but kept the smile in my lips as I asked, “Why did you say you were awful before?” His smile faltered. “Oh. You know…” He shrugged, nonchalant. “No, Harry… I don’t.” I said, softly. He avoided my eyes, but his lips sustained a humorless, emotionless smile. He took in a long breath, and looked at me. “Do you maybe have another question?” “What? No. Harry…” I shook my head, confused. “That’s the question.” He sighed. “It’s just work.” “Work?” “Yes, Marie. Work. I have a lot to do to get Invictus ready for September…” “Okay. Is that all it is? Because your tone says differently.” Still smiling coldly, he looked around, and brushed a hand through his hair, nervously. “Speaking of work, how’s your work?” He asked. “Is royal work as an heir any different?” “Harry.” I insisted, seriously, now feeling my heart beating increasingly heavier in my chest.

Finally, something snapped. He bit his lip, avoiding my eyes, then closed his eyes, muttered ‘hallway’, and walked off without affording me a second glance.

Chilled to the bone, I waited a couple of seconds before following him out, strategically avoiding Cadie and Auguste’s worried glances from nearby.

We walked out of the enclosure to the elevator hallway. It was emptier now than when we had come in, but still had a couple of people in it. So Harry passed them towards other doors, where it was emptier.

He stopped by a window, hands in his pocket, and heaved a sigh, brows creased, eyes pained. My heart ached just to watch him.

“Look, I–” He started, avoiding my eyes still. “I…” He laughed, humorless still. “Harry,” I tried, softly, “you’re worrying me.”

He closed his eyes, painfully. After a couple of seconds he opened them and stared right into mine. When our blues connected, I felt again that old chill down my spine; that feeling of being seen for all I was, that chill of knowing there was a lot being said, even if we weren’t speaking.

“Work is hard, yes, but–” He licked his lips, pausing. “I can handle it. What makes it harder, though, is that I can’t go very long without thinking about you.” I gulped. “W-what?” He smiled, a little more honestly now. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Mary. I know that sucks to hear. I just…” He sighed, heavily, and took a step closer to me. “I can’t stop thinking about you.” Feeling my stomach do a cartwheel inside, I gulped. “I… W-what?!” His smile grew now, amused. “I look around my house, and all I can think is I miss having you there. I miss waking up with you, cooking with you, talking with you all day long...” He took another step closer, now in a way where his smell was all I could breathe; still the same citric L'Occitane smell I could never forget. “I think about you every time I open my bathroom cabinet and see the toothbrush you forgot.” He shrugged. “It’s pathetic. And even now as I say it, I know it’s pointless. I know just looking at you that it’s a lost cause. And it’s not your fault, even if sometimes I wish it were. It might be easier if I had a reason to be angry at you… But you didn’t ask for this. Neither did I. I just…” he shrugged. “I can’t stop thinking about you.” I sighed, breathless. “Harry. I…” “I know.” He nodded, staring at the ground. “I understand better than most. You have a duty. You have rules to follow and a huge number of people around ready to remind you why this would be a terrible idea, and I get it. I have the same. Lower stakes, maybe, but I do, and I hate it.” He smiled, in a sad, desperate way; eyes full of yearning as they looked at me. “The truth is I think about that kiss every day.” He whispered, gently. “The truth is I think about that date we never had every day, and about everything that could have been different… The truth…” He sighed, longingly. “The truth is I think I’m falling in love with you.”

My mind was both completely blank and going a thousand miles an hour. I felt my hands… shaken. My legs felt weak. I thought of Louis’ funeral again, of trying to kiss him at the worst of times, of how much it hurt when he pulled away, of when he told he didn’t want to be something I might regret.

I remembered sleeping with Chris right after, getting back together with him without even realizing it. Of the proposal and the yelling and the months of headlines about it.

If my brother was still here, Harry and I might have been just a complicated, unique love story. But he wasn’t, and because of that everything was such a mess. I was such a mess.

And yet, here he was: loving me anyway. In spite of it all. What was the universe thinking?

“Maggie?”

My fragile, already shaken up heart went cold. I looked back to find…

“Christopher?

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Royal Ascot Outfit

[A/N: I know what you’re thinking, ‘how dare you not post for 2 weeks and then leave us with a cliff hanger????’. Guys, I’m SORRY! In my defence, 2020 was a hell of a year, I had to move, the holidays were a lot, I had a guest over, and I GOT A DOG! So...........a lot has happened! But things should calm down now, so I promise to try my hardest so this doesnt happen again! Spoilers: the story is going into its next phase! Secret-relationship-angst kind of next phase. But anyway, enough about me... how have YOU been? Tell me all about it, oh and also your thoughts on the chapter? hopes for the next ones? notes? criticisms? I’ll take it all! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING AND STICKING WITH ME AND FOR YOUR PATIENCE! PS: Lola, my fur child, is a 2 years old rescue, loves munching ice and guilting me into petting her instead of writing/working. I also accidentally scard her out of going to the bathroom where shes supposed to so now I’m slowly moving a pet-mat through the apartment back there. Tips? LOVE YOU HAVE A GOOD WEEK! BYE!

PS 2: I PROMISE I’LL COMPRISE ALL THE CHAPTERS INTO A MASTERPOST LIKE ONE OF YOU ASKED ME TO, I JUST NEED TO FIND THE TIME BUT I WILL! Thanks for the suggestion <3 ]

#Princeharryff #prince harry fanfic #prince harry fanfiction #princeharryfanfiction #Princeharryfanfic #prince harry #brf #modern royalty au #modern royalty fanfic #fanfiction #OPITCphff #chapters

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nemolian · 4 years

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How Much the Oil and Gas Industry Paid Texas Republicans Who Are Lying About Wind Energy

Photo: Chip Somodevilla (AP)

As the crisis of rolling blackouts in Texas unfolds this week, some of the state’s loudest Republican politicians are falsely dragging “frozen wind turbines” as the cause. But behind every wind energy smear by a Texas politician is a dizzying amount of money contributed by the fossil fuel industry.

Earther looked at whose money is behind the loudest anti-wind voices this week. We used OpenSecrets data as well as individual political donations logged with the Federal Election Commission website to look at donations for Sen. Ted Cruz, Rep. Dan Crenshaw, and Sen. John Cornyn–three of the Texas politicians sitting in Washington, D.C., who have been most outspoken in their criticism of wind energy’s supposed “role” in the blackouts.

All three have continued to scapegoat renewables throughout the week, and looking at their donors, it’s no surprise. Federal campaign finance data shows more than 30 companies in the oil and gas industry, from multinational names like Exxon and Chevron to local power players like Texas Transeastern and Wildhorse Energy, gave tens of thousands of dollars to Cornyn, Cruz, and Crenshaw over the past year. That includes thousands from individuals employed by those companies as well as largesse from their corporate PACs.

Cornyn, who was reelected last fall, was a big recipient of industry money. Between 2019 and 2020, Cornyn raked in more than $50,000 from Marathon Petroleum’s PAC and $25,000 from natural gas infrastructure company Sempra Energy’s PAC, as well as $25,000 from utility giant NextEnergy and $40,000 from Koch Industries. He also did well with oil and gas power players individually: CEOs or other key executives of Western Refining, Hunt Oil Company, Chief Oil and Gas, Walter Oil and Gas, Magnolia Oil and Gas, Occidental Petroleum, Cox Oil, Hilcorp Ventures and Kinder Morgan all donated $50,000 or more each to PACs associated with Cornyn’s campaign in the last election cycle.

G/O Media may get a commission

Crenshaw, who ran for reelection in the House, also made out handsomely from the industry last cycle. The oil and gas industry overall donated $453,247 to Crenshaw last year ($311,947 from individuals, $141,300 total from PACs). Oil and gas was his largest industry donor by PAC money, including $10,000 each from Energy Transfer, Valero Energy, Occidental Petroleum, and Marathon Petroleum.

Cruz wasn’t up for reelection last year, but the industry didn’t forget about him. He still bagged $14,000 from Chevron’s PAC and $10,000 from Exxon’s—a little spending money, we guess—as well as tens of thousands of dollars in individual contributions from employees of 30 oil and gas companies. All told, these three Texas Republicans alone snagged more than $1.1 million from the industry in the 2020 election cycle.

Donations from corporate PACs and individuals to Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. John Cornyn, and Rep. Dan Crenshaw from oil and gas companies. Data reflects 2019-20 totals and comes from Open Secrets’ database.

But it wasn’t just these three Texans in the nation’s capital doing dirty work for fossil fuels. On Tuesday, as millions in his state suffered through the cold and without power, Gov. Greg Abbott made an appearance on Sean Hannity where he ripped into renewables. The blackout “shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America,” Abbott told Hannity. “Our wind and our solar got shut down, and they were collectively more than 10% of our power grid, and that thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis....It just shows that fossil fuel is necessary.”

And let’s not forget Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who just last week was busy preparing a bill that would blacklist businesses based on their friendliness to fossil fuels. For Texas’ two head honchos, we used individual contributions pulled from state-level data logged on the site Transparency USA, and found some real Easter eggs from the industry.

Abbott and Patrick’s PACs share a bunch of big individual fossil fuel donors. Syed Javaid Anwar, the CEO of Midland Energy, was Abbott’s top donor between 2019 and 2020, giving a total of $1,617,500 to his PAC. The CEO also gave generously to Patrick, kicking his PAC just under $250,000 over that same time period. Douglas Scharbauer, an heir to a West Texas oil, ranching, and race horse fortune, gave a total of $350,000 to the lieutenant governor’s PAC in 2019, while another oil heir, Ray Lee Hunt, also pitched in generously with donations of $500,000 to the PACs of Abbott and $250,000 to Patrick. (Hunt also gave more than $63,000 to Cornyn’s PAC.) Not to be outdone, Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, kicked $500,000 to Abbott’s PAC and $200,000 to Patrick’s in the same time period. Warren’s firm is behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, and he has said talking about the pipeline is “like talking about my son.”

What’s happening in Texas right now is a perfect storm of poor planning, crazy weather, and a widespread government failure to prepare the electric grid. Fossil fuels had a big part to play in how this disaster went down as natural gas and coal sources failed at multiple points, from energy sources themselves freezing to pipelines shutting down. The Texas grid’s terrible setup—a lack of integration with other states to ensure a consistent power supply, lagging weatherization updates, predatory pricing habits—can’t be tied to one source, but politicians like Crenshaw, Cruz, and Abbott are choosing to hammer down on renewables while blessing fossil fuels, similar to how they’ve reacted during California’s blackouts in recent years. While it’s impossible to say why, their donations tell a pretty damning story here—and research has shown donors make it rain on politicians who do their bidding.

The fossil fuel industry has also made it clear that it sees wind power in Texas as a threat to its business. A panel on Texas windpower convened at the wind industry’s key summit in 2019 addressed this issue directly. “People are spending millions of dollars to hobble the wind industry,” moderator Chris Tomlinson, a Houston Chronicle columnist, said at the panel, claiming that there are lobbyists in Austin who have been told to spend nearly half their time opposing the wind industry.

When such a large-scale screw up like this happens—when lives are lost and people suffer—we have to examine what those in control of the status quo have to lose, and what changes they are advocating. The fossil fuel industry is fighting to keep its control over a rapidly changing energy landscape, and part of their strategy is giving as much as possible to those in charge, particularly Republicans. Even though experts across the board agree that we need a clean energy grid that’s reliable and have even created a popular plan for how to get there, conservative politicians with loud platforms are blocking serious discussion, let alone action. The longer the industry keeps the political system captured and the more these people lie, the more likely it is we’ll see even more death and chaos ahead.

Dhruv Mehrotra contributed reporting to this piece.

via:Gizmodo, February 17, 2021 at 01:45PM

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mediawhorefics · 8 years

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what i’m currently writing

I was tagged by @alivingfire to list my WIPs. I’m gonna be honest here time for writing has been limited this semester so the only project I’m seriously working on is the big bang. But I guess I could list a few ideas I have/stuff that I’ve started?

1. the big bang obvs!! it’s called Through Eerie Chaos and it’s a ghost/mystery story in which Harry just finished his photography degree and stumbles upon the ghost of the heir of an Estate from 1924 while trying to take pictures of his decrepit Manor. He halfheartedly joins a paranormal society and starts investigating who this ~mysterious Louis Tomlinson was iand what happened to him with the help of ghost obsessed Niall and skeptic librarian Zayn.... I’m super excited about it, I have a great artist and I think it’s gonna be fun if I ever manage to finish it lol.

2. the chasing liberty AU ft. Harry as the son of Prime Minister Anne who wants to take a gap year before starting university and Louis as the son of one of Anne’s bodyguard hired to secretly keep an eye on him during his year-long European road trip. They meet on the train and Harry obvs has no idea he’s Louis’ job. I don’t know if I’ll ever finish it but it would be super fun.

3. the early hollywood/chaplin AU : Louis as a Chaplinesque vaudeville actor coming to the states for the first time to try and make it into films, harry as a builder/someone who works on the sets at the studio Louis gets hired at. Gemma is a famous actress who also works at the studio and who becomes best friends with Louis. Liam would be a Douglas Fairbanks type of character, makes a lot of action films ?? Idk it’s not very fleshed out....

4. the vampire aristocracy fic: I have nothing on this except that I really want to write the styles siblings as vampire aristocrats once before I die ????

5. also I really want to write that fic where Louis is an astronaut and harry is an actor who’s put in contact with him to research a role and they fall in love?? I wrote a lil’ summary of it when I received those fake fic titles a while back and that one really stayed with me so I’d love to get it done fully. I only one paragraph written but it counts!!!

#about me #writing #projects ideas and things #what if i wrote a beauty and the beast tomlinshaw fic tbh #idk why im thinking about these things im not allowed to think about anything other than school or the big bang

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hellosaltysaladcollectionstuff · 6 years

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DONALD TRUMP SEEMS to be such an unusual figure to hold supreme executive power in a major nation-state — let alone in the world’s only superpower — that attempts to make sense of him have often involved comparisons with earlier political leaders. Nervous American liberals have (predictably) compared Trump to Hitler, while less excitable commentators have found more plausible parallels that range from Joseph Chamberlain in late 19th-century Britain to Silvio Berlusconi in early 21st-century Italy. But one parallel has been drawn considerably more frequently than any other. Comparisons of Trump with Richard Nixon have become so commonplace that it is now more or less settled conventional wisdom that the 45th president of the United States is the most Nixonian figure to hold that office since the 37th.

In some ways, the comparison may seem counterintuitive, for the clear differences between these two political personalities are numerous. Nixon (unusually for an electoral politician) was always shy and introverted, whereas Trump made a career as a tabloid and television star out of being brash and outgoing. Nixon, a shopkeeper’s son, came from the lower middle class, worked hard to rise above his origins, and maintained a steady personal enmity toward those born with great wealth (as well as toward the poor). Trump was born heir to one of the largest real estate fortunes in New York City and has never done a day’s compelled work in his life. Nixon was not only extremely bright but studious as well, a voracious reader of books about history and politics. Trump, by all accounts, is barely literate (though an avid consumer of cable-television news). He evidently does not read books at all, and those responsible for the daily written summaries of US intelligence prepared for the president’s consumption have found it necessary to make these texts very brief, filled with pictures, and liberally sprinkled with Trump’s own name in order to get him to pay any attention to them at all. At least in public, Nixon was (usually) a man of steely self-discipline. Trump’s lack of even the most basic self-control has quickly made him a national embarrassment and a global laughing-stock. For most of his career, Nixon was the ultimate Republican partisan, and by the 1960s he had come virtually to personify the Republican establishment. Trump’s capture of the 2016 Republican presidential nomination was effectively a hostile takeover by a businessman celebrity who had little previous involvement with the party whose leader he became; and, even after he became the Republican nominee and then the Republican president, Trump’s relations with the Republican establishment have been both tentative and wholly instrumental.

And yet the conventional wisdom is, in this instance, right after all: Trump’s presidency is, in certain ways, the most Nixonian since Nixon’s own. The deep affinity between the two has resonated with sufficient emphasis in the public mind to make itself widely felt despite the many evident differences between Nixon and Trump as individuals. Trump himself has seemed aware of the parallels and has done nothing to discourage comparisons with Nixon. True, Trump has never explicitly identified himself with the 37th president: sensibly enough, since, more than four decades after Nixon’s forced resignation and more than two decades after his death, his name is still generally associated with political disgrace. But Trump happily let it be known that his acceptance speech at the 2016 Republican Convention was based on Nixon’s corresponding speech in 1968; and Trump has eagerly helped himself to such prominent campaign shibboleths of Nixon’s 1968 race as “law and order” and “the silent majority.”

It seems to be no coincidence that several especially disreputable operatives who, in their youthful days, served Nixon — the late media advisor Roger Ailes, the political trickster Roger Stone — lived to serve Trump. Monica Crowley, who was Nixon’s final and perhaps most ardently devoted protégé — she was a research assistant and a kind of granddaughter figure to the former president in his last years, and after his death she published two books based on her conversations with him — became Trump’s first choice to be communications director of the National Security Council (though she was forced to withdraw after widespread reporting of her habit of plagiarism).

Exactly what were the things in Nixon’s career and political persona that have been echoed most powerfully in Trump’s? I have argued at some length in a previous book, The Age of Nixon: A Study in Cultural Power (2012), that Nixon’s political success was largely based on his ability to establish deep emotional ties with the American electorate: despite lacking the kind of sunny personal magnetism that characterized Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, or, to a lesser degree, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. Nixon’s appeal was of a darker and more downbeat sort; and yet it was, in its own way, hardly less effective. Whereas Roosevelt could inspire a nation mired in the horrors of the Great Depression by assuring voters that they had nothing to fear but fear itself — and whereas Reagan could convince a nation reeling from the economic “stagflation” and the foreign-policy humiliations of the 1970s that, under his governance, it was “morning in America” — Nixon’s message was that the dark night was fast approaching: a night from whose terrors he was particularly qualified to save us. Nixon arrived on the political scene during the Red Scare, when the United States was traumatized by the dislocations of the recent war and had yet to enter into the prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s. Fashioning himself as the echt anticommunist, the hitherto unknown small-town lawyer played so skillfully on fear that he was able, in 1946, to wrest a Congressional seat that had appeared safely Democratic from Jerry Voorhis, the popular, conventionally liberal, and also anticommunist incumbent.

Two decades later, Nixon won the presidency through an essentially similar strategy. By 1968, anticommunism had become a little passé in the United States. But there were plenty of other fears to be exploited in a nation attempting to deal with the unsettling new developments of the recent past: the political radicalism of the movement against the Vietnam War, which was fracturing the bipartisan Cold War consensus; the sexual revolution, which openly challenged behavioral mores that had been all but universally agreed to (if by no means universally practiced); the first insurgencies of second-wave feminism, which challenged the established sex-and-gender system in different though not unrelated ways; and, above all, the increasing assertiveness of African Americans, notably as expressed in the Civil Rights, Black Power, and Black Pride movements. Much more than any other individual, Nixon remade the Republican Party, which had always, since its founding, contained at least mildly anti-racist currents, into the unambiguous vehicle of white petty-bourgeois fear and resentment.

The Republican Party exists, of course, primarily to promote, protect, and defend the interests of big capital. But, as with any comparable party of the right, it is not possible for the GOP to put together a popular majority — or even that different thing, an Electoral College majority — without attracting voters far beyond those who would actually benefit from the party’s economic policies. Nixon’s political genius lay, in large part, in his acute sensitivity to the precise kinds of mobilization that were likely to be most effective in different political eras: from the Red-baiting of the 1940s and early 1950s (deployed with stunning success against Voorhis, Helen Gahagan Douglas, and Adlai Stevenson) to the muted racism that was central to his presidential victories over Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern in 1968 and 1972, respectively.

A frequently quoted saying of John Steinbeck’s about the 1930s hits off the point succinctly: “I guess the trouble was that we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.” With no feudal background of fixed cradle-to-grave identities, Americans have typically cherished the notion that this absence of formal, legally binding economic hierarchy provides the freedom to rise as high on the socio-economic ladder as one’s talents and hard work can enable. We call this “the American Dream”: beloved of so many and exploited so consequentially by politicians of many different stripes. In modern times, its most skillful exponent has surely been Reagan: “What I want to see above all,” as the 40th president said in a 1983 press conference, “is that this country remains a country where someone can always get rich.” But if one is free to rise high, one is equally “free” to fall low. What united Nixon’s base was a resentful fear that the comfort they enjoyed was threatened by the (black) poor, whom they imagined to be pampered and undeserving, yet whose ranks they were fearful of joining.

II.

The Nixonian characteristics of Trump’s success should seem evident enough. Both violated the rule that the presidency is reserved for upbeat candidates who offer voters an optimistic, cheerful outlook on their country. Even more emphatically than Nixon in 1968, Trump in 2016 described the nation he offered to lead as a dystopian cesspool of chaos, crime, and economic decline. The central slogan of the Trump campaign — “Make America great again!” — was transparently based on the assumption that, though the United States had once been a great nation, it was so no longer.

Opposition to immigration, especially Mexican immigration, was central to the whole Trump message that first succeeded in breaking through the noise of the primaries. The most notorious passage in Trump’s June 2015 speech announcing his presidential candidacy set the tone for the rest of the campaign:

When do we beat Mexico at the border? They’re laughing at us, at our stupidity. And now they are beating us economically. They are not our friend, believe me. But they’re killing us economically. […] When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. […] They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

Among the voters most enthusiastically in support of the Trump campaign, by far the most popular of his specific policy proposals was his plan to build a wall, an actual physical barrier, along the length of the US-Mexico border.

Second to the Mexican in Trump’s defamation program was the Muslim. At times the two groups were rather incoherently associated with one another, as Trump seemed to suggest that Daesh and al-Qaeda terrorists could be found, secreted as it were, among the waves of undocumented immigration across the Rio Grande. There was one striking difference — in degree of Otherness — between the two groups as Trump and his supporters constructed them. The Latino is moderately Other. After all, Spanish, a European language, has been spoken (almost entirely by Christians) in North America even longer than English has been. Many states have had an important Latino cultural presence since the 19th century. Large numbers of exploited Latino workers are familiar to white America in sectors of the US economy like agriculture, construction, and hospitality (including Trump’s own hotels). But the Muslim is seen by white racism as radically Other: non-European, non-Christian, and presumed to be at least broadly sympathetic to terrorism. Whereas the Latino in Trumpian ideology is mainly an economic threat, or at worst the perpetrator of crime, the Muslim is constructed as allied to the United States’s most dangerous foreign enemies — Trump played on the Global War on Terror in the same way that Nixon relied on the Cold War.

All this may seem somewhat removed from Nixon’s more old-fashioned anti-black racism. The bigotries aimed at Mexicans and at Muslims have their own histories and their own faux-conceptual structures. Yet, though white supremacy in the United States may have more than one target, the African American has always been in every bull’s-eye. One group that seemed always to understand what was at stake was, unsurprisingly, African Americans themselves. On the day of the general election, Trump won (according to the exit polls) a surprisingly strong 29 percent of the Latino vote, somewhat more than Mitt Romney had won with the same group in 2012, but did no better than about eight percent among black voters. During the campaign, indeed, some opinion polls showed Trump within the statistical margin of error of having zero support among African Americans. Their evident fears were well grounded since the actual policies of the Trump administration have aimed at disadvantaging blacks much more than any other group. Trump appointed a neo-Confederate attorney general who more or less openly aims to reverse, as far as possible, all the gains of the Civil Rights movement from the 1950s onward. Among the specific projects of the new administration have been preparing to suppress the black vote in future elections (initially through Trump’s “election integrity” commission); winding down the Obama administration’s attempts to challenge in court the brutality of local police forces around the nation; harsher enforcement of the drug laws that are disproportionately applied to African Americans (even though there has never been evidence that blacks consume illegal drugs at higher rates than whites); and challenging affirmative action in university admissions. We must also, of course, recall Trump’s all but explicit expressions of sympathy for neo-Confederate ideology in Charlottesville and elsewhere.

As to the specifically class element in Trump’s coalition, it has become something like settled conventional wisdom that his base is the white working class. This is simply untrue. According to the American National Election Study — widely considered the most reliable source of such data — roughly two thirds of those who voted for Trump in November 2016 came from households earning more than the national median income of about $50,000. Trump’s voters, like Nixon’s, were predominantly petty bourgeois. The widespread confusion on this point derives partly from the perverse but increasingly standard journalistic practice of ignoring the actual socio-economic markers of class — occupation and income — and instead defining class as a matter of educational level, with the possession of a college degree as the crucial dividing criterion. Even leaving aside such obvious and extreme absurdities as considering the college drop-outs and decabillionaires Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg to be working class, educational attainment is, more generally, a very poor proxy for class in the United States. Especially among younger Americans, there are many college graduates with working-class jobs and incomes; indeed, in the millennial generation particularly, many of these men and women face dim prospects of ever rising out of the working class. But there are many prosperous business owners who are in no sense working class but who never graduated from college. It is, indeed, from this quintessentially petty-bourgeois stratum that Trump’s votes disproportionately came.

Another source of the false association between Trump’s base and the proletariat is Trump’s own campaign rhetoric. Unlike most Republicans — who tend to exalt entrepreneurs (especially small ones) as “job creators” — Trump presented himself as the candidate of American productive workers, especially those displaced factory workers whose jobs had been shipped abroad in the wake of the “free trade” pacts that had been sponsored with particular enthusiasm by Bill and Hillary Clinton. Trump liked to be labeled a “blue-collar billionaire” — a ridiculous phrase that nonetheless achieved a certain emotional resonance. Despite the fact that Trump was born wealthy and, by some informed accounts, has been so incompetent a businessman that he has managed to squander most of his inheritance, his long experience in reality television and his general skills at showmanship enabled him to project an affect that many Americans were willing to credit as blue collar. The contrast was sharp with Mitt Romney, who four years earlier had been unable to avoid calling attention to his upper-crust background almost every time he opened his mouth.

Like Nixon, then, Trump played to the insecurity of the petty bourgeoisie. Unlike Nixon, he raised the issue of class with an explicitness rare in US electoral politics. Nixon had not made the economy in general the central issue in his campaign: understandably enough, since in 1968 the country was still enjoying its extraordinary postwar prosperity, with strong growth and low unemployment (though the inflation rate was slightly over four percent, high enough to make much of the middle class feel a bit nervous). The petty-bourgeois insecurities that Nixon exploited in his constituency, if ultimately due to the class situation of those who belong neither to the proletariat nor the big bourgeoisie, were generally more cultural and racial than directly economic; and sometimes the two were inextricably bound up with one another. For example, one economic worry that was fairly widespread among white American homeowners in 1968 was whether residential property values in their neighborhoods would hold up. But this fear was based less on macroeconomic housing trends than on the possibility that blacks might move into formerly all-white neighborhoods — a possibility made more likely by the “open housing” provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Of course, to worry about the value of the house one owns is an anxiety of the comparatively prosperous. If Trump played on overtly economic fears much more than Nixon did, this was because he came along at a very different moment in the history of American capitalism: something that needs to be discussed in more detail in order to understand the passage from Nixonian to Trumpian cultural power.

III.

First, however, it will be useful to conceptualize the difference between Nixon and Trump in psychoanalytic terms. My aim, needless to say, is not to attempt long-distance therapeutic diagnoses of these two politicians as private individuals, but to use the tools of the Freudian theoretical framework in order to understand the cultural significance of their public personae.

One way to understand Nixon’s self-presentation is as the anal-erotic superego: not, of course, in those express terms (it is nearly impossible to imagine Nixon uttering the word “anal” in public, or maybe even in private), but as the personality type that Freud, particularly in “Character and Anal Eroticism” (1908), suggests to be the result of the sublimation of those libidinal drives that take the anus as the primary erotogenic zone. Freud describes this type as characterized above all by three qualities: orderliness, parsimony, and obstinacy. All fit well with the superego — the authoritarian and punitive conscience — of the white American petty bourgeoisie. Orderliness was probably the most prominent anal-erotic element in Nixonian cultural power. Not only was “law and order” the most important of Nixon’s campaign slogans in 1968, but it must be remembered that the term does not mean what the two nouns literally denote. The ostensible purpose of law, after all, is not only to establish order but also to promote justice. The scrupulous administration of justice may often be in some tension, or even in open conflict, with the imposition of order as such — as in the Blackstonian principle, generally considered fundamental to the Anglo-American judicial system, that it is better for 10 guilty defendants to escape punishment than for one innocent defendant to be subjected to it. It is often necessary to choose between law and the petty-bourgeois yearning for order; and there was never the least ambiguity as to which Nixon chose. His attacks on the courts and on Ramsey Clark (the chief Nixonian villain of 1968, almost comparable to Alger Hiss as Nixon had constructed him earlier in his career), and his derision of basic Constitutional rights as “technicalities” that allowed dangerous (and implicitly black) criminals to walk free, made perfectly clear that Nixon was always ready to sacrifice law to order.

The quintessentially petty-bourgeois insecurity on which Nixon played in 1968 was in no respect fiercer than in the widespread white American horror at the disorder that had seemed to overtake American society: as typified by radically left-wing antiwar demonstrations, by young Americans’ open flouting of received sexual morality, and above all by the evident determination of black America to demand much more than the subordinated “place” that four centuries of racism had prepared for it. In no way did Nixon establish a deeper emotional bond with his followers than in his determination to clamp down on the disorderliness that seemed to be “everywhere” in American society.

Parsimony was also integral to the Nixonian superego, but parsimony not in the sense of personal or individual stinginess (something that has almost never been considered attractive), but rather in the sense of public fiscal austerity. To be sure, Nixon in the White House made little attempt actually to curtail social spending, and in some cases he even increased it; compared to his successors, Democratic as well as Republican, he almost looks, in this respect, like a lavish New Dealer. But his campaign and presidential rhetoric was antithetical to this record. In standard Republican fashion, Nixon argued that federal spending was out of control, and that it was time to hit the brakes. The popular appeal of austerity may superficially seem baffling. Since federal spending goes almost entirely to Americans in one way or another, why should Americans ever object to it? But to reason thus is to ignore the social divisions on which Nixon played.

The white petty bourgeoisie to which Nixon appealed did not, in fact, object to those programs that they felt certain benefited themselves directly: Social Security, for instance, or the mortgage-interest deduction in the federal income-tax system, which amounts to a big subsidy to homeownership. What Nixon’s supporters disliked were those programs — typified by Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, which Nixon took a particular glee in deriding — that they believed gave handouts to the undeserving poor, chiefly meaning, of course, the undeserving black poor. Parsimony in the political form of austerity had appeal precisely to the extent that it was understood as parsimony for other people. Nixon knew exactly what he was doing when he asked a reluctant Johnny Cash to sing the satiric racist song “Welfare Cadillac” at the White House.

It is obvious that anal eroticism does not describe the political personality of Donald Trump — quite the contrary. Staid, neat, disciplined, and impeccably conservative in manner, Nixon presented exactly the persona in which he could most believably promise to enforce, unyieldingly, order and austerity. Even in purely visual terms, the tidy, buttoned-down look of Nixon’s “dressedness” contrasts strikingly with the deliberately casual and disheveled look that Trump cultivates. During the 2016 campaign, there were many jibes to the effect that it was remarkable how a man who claimed to be worth billions of dollars was apparently unable to acquire a suit that fit him properly.

Yet the continuities — as well as the differences — between Nixon and Trump may be illuminated by considering the nature of the superego itself. Though the term does not appear until relatively late in the Freud oeuvre, the complex of ideas that cluster around it — law, conscience, the enforcer of the moral norms that are meant to hold a society together — is important throughout Freud’s writings; and, at least from Totem and Taboo (1913) onward, he stresses the ambivalence, the divided quality, with which morality is always experienced. For example, the lawgiving father who is loved and admired is also hated, feared, and resented. Slavoj Žižek (in The Metastases of Enjoyment: On Women and Causality, 1994) explores ambivalence in the superego, an elaboration that is particularly useful for the analysis of political culture. Following on the Lacanian reading of Freud, Žižek posits the superego as fundamentally split. In a potentially confusing but ultimately coherent terminological move, Žižek calls what we have been examining in the case of the Nixonian anal-erotic superego — that is, the superego as avowed, public enforcer of social norms — the “Law”: and Žižek reserves the term “superego” itself for “the obscene ‘nightly’ law that necessarily redoubles and accompanies, as its shadow, the ‘public’ Law.”

For Žižek, in other words, the Freudian superego presents two quite different — and in some, but only some, ways antithetical — faces. On the one hand, there is the superego as Law with a capital L, the respectable, “official,” and completely overt enforcer of a society’s binding mores. But, on the other hand, the superego has another face that is “unofficial,” the reverse of respectable, and comparatively covert; far from presenting itself with public propriety, the superego in this sense traffics in dirt, transgression, and obscenity. The superego, we might say, does the dirty jobs that the Law wants done but cannot afford to be seen doing itself.

A simple example would be what happens when the authorities who run a school desire the punishment of a nonconforming pupil (who, however, has perhaps not actually violated any official rules) and so choose to turn a blind eye to the nightly torment and bullying of the pupil by other pupils.

The superego in this Žižekian meaning is not only obscene but also — typically — obscure: that is, it tends to impose its disgusting, abominable punishments under cover of darkness, afraid to speak its name openly. The Law and the superego (in the Žižekian senses) may thus appear to be opposed, and, in certain situations, they really are, to a limited extent. But it is important to understand that, as opposite sides of the same psychic and social agency, they are, as we have seen, ultimately allied as moral enforcers within a given set of social standards. Some of the examples that Žižek chooses to illustrate the relation between Law and superego — and, in particular, the way that a society may define itself by the kind of transgressions of the Law allowed to the superego — have an astonishingly exact pertinence to Trumpian cultural power:

Let us return to those small-town white communities in the American South of the 1920s, where the reign of the official, public Law is accompanied by its shadowy double, the nightly terror of Ku Klux Klan, with its lynchings of powerless blacks: a (white) man is easily forgiven minor [or often, we should add, major] infractions of the Law, especially when they can be justified by a “code of honour”; the community still recognizes him as “one of us”. Yet he will be effectively excommunicated, perceived as “not one of us”, the moment he disowns the specific form of transgression [emphasis in original] that pertains to this community — say, the moment he refuses to partake in the ritual lynchings by the Klan, or even reports them to the Law (which, of course, does not want to hear about them, since they exemplify its own hidden underside).

As noted above, Trump’s Department of Justice has made quite clear that it does not want to hear about — for instance — extrajudicial police beatings and murders of African Americans.

If, then, Nixon can be understood as the superego in the public, “official” sense — as the Law, in Žižek’s vocabulary — Trump represents the Žižekian superego, the Law’s obscene underside. With Trump, however, the underside openly revels in its obscenity and sheds its customary obscurity. This was one extraordinary thing about the 2016 race, which again and again surprised nearly all political commentators (the present author not excepted). Part of Trump’s political genius — and, if that noun seems too strong, it ought to be remembered that he easily defeated an unusually large, well-credentialed, and apparently formidable set of Republican rivals to capture his party’s nomination, and then won what was generally supposed to be an unwinnable general election — lay in seeing that, in 2016, the kind of outrageousness that had been thought fatal in electoral politics might be not only tolerated but even, to some degree, embraced.

Again and again in 2016 journalists proclaimed that Trump had finally “gone too far,” that his campaign was now doomed. Early in the intra-Republican competition, for instance, he violated one of the strongest taboos in American politics by mocking the military service of John McCain, who had spent several years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam: Trump (who had himself ducked the draft during the Vietnam War) said that he preferred people who managed to avoid being captured. Nearly any other politician who had said such a thing (if, indeed, one can even imagine any other politician saying such a thing) would have almost immediately apologized for it, or would have claimed to have been misquoted or quoted “out of context.” Trump stuck to his guns, mostly just ignored the firestorm of anger and indignation that he provoked, and quickly proceeded to perpetrate fresh outrages. This pattern reached its climax late in the general election campaign with the release of the Access Hollywood videotape, in which Trump was seen and heard bragging gleefully that his celebrity allowed him to sexually assault women with impunity. In the face of all but universal condemnation in the mainstream media, Trump neither apologized nor denied anything. He defended himself only to the extent of saying that he had heard Bill Clinton say worse things on the golf course (a not particularly implausible claim). Like Antaeus gaining strength from being slammed against the earth, Trump seemed to emerge with renewed power after every supposedly fatal self-inflicted blow. In the Trumpian obscenity, there was, for his followers, a kind of refreshing authenticity, an assurance that he would respect their resentments and fears that could not have been so convincingly conveyed in the mode of Nixonian formality. His remarks to the Access Hollywood correspondent Billy Bush (a cousin of the presidents Bush, curiously enough) made clear that Trump was, at any rate, no slave to feminist political correctness; and Trump’s supporters could hardly have objected to the disrespect shown to the pompous McCain, a darling of the hated mainstream media who had failed to defeat Barack Obama in 2008.

Trump’s unprecedented use of transgression in a winning presidential campaign — his successful deployment of the obscene thrills and jouissance to be derived from the violation of quasi-official moral norms — was not without its roots in recent, post-Nixonian American history, where transgression has been incorporated into the ideological apparatuses of the status quo. There are many examples of this process — the career of the comedian Andrew Dice Clay in his persona as “the Diceman” was a prominent instance in the late 20th century — but the most important, especially in the current context, is surely the informal network of right-wing radio talk-show hosts of whom Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are only the most widely known.

Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, and initially operating, for the most part, under the radar of the mainstream media and of liberal opinion in general, these (overwhelmingly white and male) performers created a new sort of popular communicative space characterized by an aggressively offensive, macho style that presented itself as “straight talk,” as the courageous willingness to say out loud what a putative post-Nixonian silent majority privately believed. Far from being subversive, the content of this straight talk was (in Michael Rogin’s convenient term) resolutely counter-subversive, consisting largely of the most banal racist platitudes. “Political correctness” — originally a term coined on the hard left to make somewhat affectionate fun of the over-earnest comrades — was redefined to mean a set of nearly dictatorial liberal speech codes that the talk-show hosts took great glee in violating.

Trump — who, in 2016, denounced political correctness obsessively, and sometimes seemed almost to be identifying it as the source of all of the United States’s ills — owes much of his style to right-wing talk radio. During the contest for the Republican nomination, the Republican political establishment and its respectable organs like National Review and The Weekly Standard responded to Trump with horror; the former magazine even published an entire special issue succinctly titled “Against Trump.” But talk radio appropriately provided Trump with a generally sympathetic hearing.

Indeed, Trump’s role as the obscene superego of the white petty bourgeoisie has some precedent even earlier than the flourishing of right-wing talk radio, in the 1968 presidential campaign itself. In that contest, there was, in addition to the Republican Nixon and the Democrat Humphrey, the independent candidacy of Nixon’s shadowy alter ego or doppelgänger, George Wallace. As governor of Alabama, Wallace had made himself into the very symbol of white racist opposition to the Civil Rights movement. He was almost as openly obscene and transgressive as Trump, who stylistically resembles Wallace more closely than either man resembles any other important presidential candidate during the intervening years. While Nixon remained restrained and respectable, Wallace, with sadistic joy, riled up giant rallies of a sort that would not be seen again until Trump’s own rallies nearly half a century later. Wallace’s signature boast was that, if protestors lay down in front of his car (as antiwar demonstrators had sometimes done in front of Lyndon Johnson’s presidential limousine), he would happily run them over — a claim one can easily imagine Trump admiring and appropriating. Nixon tacitly acknowledged his affinity with Wallace by refusing to criticize the Alabama governor, save rarely and in very mild terms. But he maintained his own quite different style, confident that the electorate would (in Žižekian terms) choose the Law over its own obscene underside.

One can describe 2016 in the terms of the 1968 race by saying that, in Trump, Wallace swallowed up Nixon. Or one can describe 2016 with Žižek’s psychoanalytic vocabulary by saying that the dark obscene superego managed to dispense with the well-lit public Law.

IV.

Psychoanalysis, then, provides a powerful conceptual problematic with which to understand the passage from Nixon to Trump. But there is a still more powerful one, which, in conclusion, I will briefly engage: namely, that of the critique of political economy.

I have already noted that overtly economic issues were a relatively minor presence in Nixon’s 1968 campaign, because the economy was a matter on which he had little to gain. The United States was still enjoying what, in retrospect, looks like the most golden age in the history of capitalism, surpassing even the prosperity of Victorian liberalism in the United Kingdom. But the end of the golden age was fast approaching. Fordism would soon be supplanted by post-Fordism, the latter marked by intensified economic competition among the advanced capitalist nations, by the decline of the trade-union movement in the United States and the concomitant stagnation of wages, by the relaxation of state regulations on business, by the partial dismantling of the United States’s paltry welfare state, and — especially from the 1980s — by the increasing regressiveness of the federal tax system and the increasing financialization of the US economy as a whole. Many important steps toward post-Fordism were, in fact, taken during Nixon’s own administration. If you wanted to name a particular date on which Fordism ended in the United States and post-Fordism began, you could perhaps do no better than to name August 15, 1971. That was the day on which Nixon announced his “New Economic Policy” (the allusion to Lenin, whom Nixon in some ways admired, was possibly deliberate), which ended the dollar’s convertibility into gold and within two years destroyed the Bretton Woods system that had been basic to the world capitalist order during the postwar period.

It is plausible that the cultural and racial anxieties fundamental to Nixonian cultural power represented (inter alia) unconscious premonitions of the economic troubles to come. Perhaps Americans, or at any rate the white American petty bourgeoisie, somehow sensed that the good times could not and would not last. The economic element in Trump’s appeal has been and is anything but unconscious. Of course, Trump, as we have seen, has also played on cultural resentments, above all on white racism. In particular, it is almost impossible to overstate Trump’s dependence on the rage in large sections of white America at having lived for eight years under the governance of an African-American president, and on the terror at the certain prospect that the United States will, within about three decades, become a majority-nonwhite nation. Yet it is not just that economic and racial fears are often combined, as in the idea, repeatedly proclaimed by Trump, that cheap Mexican labor degrades American wages.

The point is also that when, in the familiar economic metaphor, the pie is expanding, as it still was in 1968, it may seem that everyone can reasonably look forward to a bigger slice. By 2016, nobody thought the pie was getting larger — or, if it was, it was generally assumed that any extra pie (and probably then some) would be quickly gobbled up by those inhabiting the top one percent of the US economic hierarchy. In such a context of severe economic anxiety, the divide-and-rule tactics of racism naturally find their best opportunities, and the obscenities of Trump’s style come to seem most acceptable.

Yet the triumph of Trumpian obscenity is by no means the whole story of the 2016 election and its aftermath. Any account of this triumph is bound to be one-sided and misleading if we do not recognize that it was exactly contemporary with a radically different, infinitely more hopeful, and at least as extraordinary political development. To understand Trump in context, we must recall that the 2016 race featured another major candidate fully as unusual as Trump himself: the self-described democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, who threatened to deprive the “inevitable” candidate Hillary Clinton of the Democratic nomination. During the campaign, parallels between Trump and Sanders were frequently drawn, including, occasionally, by Trump himself (though never by Sanders). These parallels were often exaggerated and based on secondary or formal resemblances, like the fact that the two candidates were both “outsiders” with respect to the establishments of their respective parties. Yet there really was a deeper similarity. Alone among all the candidates in both parties, Trump and Sanders acknowledged that there was something radically wrong with the American economy. Trump, indeed, occasionally took economic positions that were unprecedented for a post-Reagan Republican, like promising to defend Social Security and Medicare. Sometimes he went even further than that and took stands that were clearly to the left of every other candidate in the 2016 race except Sanders, like promising to raise taxes on Wall Street plutocrats. (All such promises, needless to add, were quickly forgotten by Trump in the White House.)

What Trump and Sanders both recognized was that the American Dream — still upheld by Hillary Clinton and by the other Republican candidates — had finally died. The electorate could no longer be bamboozled into thinking that honest, conscientious hard work, when combined with an ordinary amount of talent and luck, would lead to economic success. During the 2016 campaign, Trump, indeed, explicitly said, “The American Dream is dead.” Nothing less extraordinary could account for the unprecedented nature of the Trump and Sanders campaigns.

On one side, a man wholly without any governmental or military experience won the White House for the first time in American history, and a man, moreover, deeply distrusted by almost the entirety of his own party’s establishment and generally portrayed in the mainstream media as buffoonish, bigoted, vulgar, and dangerous. Yet the Sanders campaign, on the other side, was in some ways even more amazing. In a country where almost the only use of the word “socialist” in mainstream electoral politics had been as a nasty accusation that politicians made against those to their left, an elderly, uncharismatic man who forthrightly claimed the designation and who openly called for a “political revolution” made a credible bid for a major-party presidential nomination. It should be added that, in the Democratic primaries, Sanders usually won an overwhelming majority of younger voters — including younger women, who were not much attracted by the prospect of Hillary Clinton as the first female president. Many Sanders supporters believe that, had he become the Democratic nominee, he would have defeated Trump in the general election and won the White House. This claim can never be proved or disproved, but it is, at least, not implausible.

So it is possible that the future in the United States belongs to the kind of politics represented by Bernie Sanders: not, really, a socialist politics in any rigorous sense, but something like a neo-New-Dealism or a radically left-Keynesian approach to the current crises of post-Fordist capitalism, with its steep decline in the opportunities for upward mobility and its stratospheric rise in economic inequality. Whether such “Sandersism” (as it might be called) will indeed prove ascendant — and what sort of success it will have if it does — remain, of course, to be seen.

For now, we are in the age — or perhaps the interval — of Trump. As he increasingly ceases even to pretend to be interested in concretely addressing the economic fears that he accurately identified in 2016, it seems reasonable to suppose that Trump will rely ever more emphatically and extensively on his ideological bedrock of white racism — an ominous prospect. His remarks after Charlottesville may be a harbinger of things to come.

For all the affinities between Nixonian and Trumpian cultural power, the most consequential difference may be that, despite the various kinds of social turmoil in 1968, Nixon presided over a nation of comparatively prosperous economic stability. In the absence of such stability today, the metastases of Trumpian cultural power are likely to lead to greater and greater malignancy.

Carl Freedman was born in 1951. He is the William A. Read Professor of English Literature at Louisiana State University. His best known books are Critical Theory and Science Fiction (2000) and The Age of Nixon (2012); his most recent is Art and Idea in the Novels of China Miéville (2015).

The post From Nixon to Trump: Metastases of Cultural Power appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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booklyn77 · 7 years

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B77′s “Clean My Bookshelf”

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Sword of Summer by Rick Riordan

The Hammer of Thor by Rick Riordan

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

A Writer’s Diary by Virginia Woolf

Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson

The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson

The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Maddaddam by Margaret Atwood

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

Difficult Women by Roxane Gay

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie

Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Sabriel by Garth Nix

This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett

Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

The Story of King Arthur and His Knights by Howard Pyle

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Auschwitz and After by Charlotte Delbo

The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Quite Frankly: after Petrarch’s Sonnets by Peter Hughes

Petrach Collected by Tim Atkins

Captive Prince by C.S. Pacat

The Oxford Companion to World Mythology by David Leeming

Ed Sheeran: A Visual Journal by Ed Sheeran and Phillip Butah

I Could Do Anything if I Only Knew What It Was by Barbara Sher and Barbara Smith

A Season of Splendor by Greg King

City Ash and Desert Bones by Laurel Myler

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater

Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater

The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater

Dragonhaven by Robin McKinley

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan

The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan

The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan

The Fires of Heaven by Robert Jordan

Lord of Chaos by Robert Jordan

A Crown of Swords by Robert Jordan

The Path of Daggers by Robert Jordan

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson

Keep Curious and Carry a Banana by H.A. Rey

Red Doc> by Anne Carson

Teratology by Susannah Nevison

Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

The Anthropology of Turquoise by Ellen Meloy

The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From its Ashes by Avraham Burg

Growing Up Dead in Texas by Stephen Graham Jones

The Enough Moment by Don Cheadle and John Predergast

Jane Doe January by Emily Winslow

Kick: The True Story of JFK’s sister and the Heir to Chatsworth by Paula Byrne

Stepping to a New Day by Beverly Jenkins

Defending Middle-earth by Patrick Curry

The Complete Guide to Middle-earth by Robert Foster

The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien

Mind of My Mind by Octavia Butler

A Joseph Campbell Companion edited by Diane K. Osbon

Adulting: How to Become a Grown-up in 486 Easy(ish) Steps by Kelly Williams Brown

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco

Loose Woman by Sandra Cisneros

A House of My Own by Sandra Cisneros

Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros

The Diary of Anne Frank by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich

The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor

The Hidden Oracle by Rick Riordan

The Dark Prophecy by Rick Riordan

The Wednesday Wars by Gary d. Scmidt

Blood Rose Rebellion by Rosalyn Eves

Architectures of Possibility by Lance Olsen

Left to Tell by Immaculée Ilibagiza

Sovay by Celia Rees

Ask the Past: Pertinent and Impertinent Advice from Yesteryear by Elizabeth Archibald

The Art of War by Sun Tzu

The Other Half of Happiness by Ayisha Malik

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Pun Also Rises by John Pollack

The Bhagavad Gita edited by Gavin Flood

Robert Frost Selected Poems by Robert Frost

Ansel Adams: An Autobiography by Ansel Adams

The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey by Trenton Lee Stewart

Steinbeck: A Life in Letters edited by Elaine Steinbeck and Robert Wallsten

Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

Hunted by Kristin Cast and P.C. Cast

Flin’s Destiny by Jon Erik Olsen

The Right Way to Be Crippled and Naked: The Fiction of Disability: An Anthology edited by Sheila Black, Michael Norton, and Annabelle Hayse

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente

Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey

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douglas-heirs-of-chaos-blog · 8 years

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HIDEAWAY Chapter 1!!

Here’s Chapter 1, UN-EDITED. I almost always heavily edit or completely change Chapter 1 after a book is done, because the book I start writing is different than the book I end up writing. However, feel free to enjoy this glimpse at Kai and what’s to come. Just be warned, there is a possibility it “might” change a little.

This will be the only lengthy scene I’ll release, but you will get smaller teasers as the release approaches. And of course, remember, this is a small part of a large book, so enjoy the tease, but don’t assume anything quite yet

There’s so much I can’t wait for you to read! Have a great week, everyone!

Chapter 1

Kai

Rain was like night. You could be different in the dark and under the clouds.

I’m not sure what it was. Maybe the lack of sunlight and how our other senses heightened with no longer being able to see as well, the subtle shroud hiding things from your sight… But only certain times were acceptable to do certain things. Shrug off your jacket and roll up your sleeves. Pour a drink and lean back. Laugh with your friends and scream at the basketball game on TV.

Follow a girl you’ve been eye-fucking for an hour into the pub bathroom and have your friends nod in approval when you come back out.

Try doing that during the day with the intern at the office.

Not that I’d want the freedom to indulge in anything at any time anyway. Things were more special when they were rare.

But every morning, when the sun rose, the coils in my stomach wound tighter in anticipation.

Nightfall was coming again.

Letting my mask dangle from my hand at my side, I stood at the top of the second floor landing and watched Rika sitting in her car. She kept her head down, and her face was visible by the glow of her cell phone, despite the downpour of rain hitting her windshield as she typed.

I shook my head, my jaw flexing. She doesn’t listen.

I watched as my best friend’s fiancé finished up, the light from her phone disappearing, and then she opened the car door, stepped out, and broke into a jog, dashing through the pounding rain. I darted my eyes, taking inventory of her. Head and eyes cast downward. Keys wrapped in her closed fist. Arms shielding her head from the rain hindering her line-of-sight.

Completely unaware of her surroundings. The perfect victim.

Grabbing the harness at the back of my mask, I stretched it out and slid the silver skull down over my head, the inside hugging every curve of my face for a tight fit. The world around me shrunk to that of a tunnel, and all I could see was what was right in front of me.

Heat spread down my neck, seeping deep into my chest, and I drew in a long, cool breath, feeling my heart pound and getting hungry.

All of a sudden, the rain, like a waterfall in the alley outside, filled the dojo, and the heavy metal door downstairs slammed shut.

“Hello?” she called out.

My heart dipped into my stomach, and I closed my eyes, savoring the feel. The sound of her voice echoed through the empty building, but I stayed planted on the dark landing, waiting for her to find me.

“Kai?” I heard her shout through the large space.

I reached back and pulled the hood of my black sweatshirt up, covering my head, and turned to look down over the railing.

“Hello?” she asked again, more urgent. “Kai, are you here?”

I saw her blonde hair first. It’s what you always noticed about Rika first. In her black penthouse, in this black dojo, in the black alley outside, in dark rooms and in black streets… She always stood out.

I rested my hands on the rusted steel railing, keeping my feet planted on the grates, and watched her step slowly into the main room below, flipping up the switches on the wall. But nothing happened. The lights didn’t go on.

She jerked her head left and right, looking suddenly alert, and then darted out her hand, flipping them off and then on again.

Nothing.

Her chest moved up and down quicker, and she looked around, her awareness peaking as she clutched the strap of her bag tighter.

I fought not to smile and cocked my head, watching her. I should show myself. I should play fair, let her know I’m here, and that she’s safe. She was always safe with me.

But the longer I waited, and the longer I stayed quiet and hidden, the more nervous she got. And as she walked further into the room below, I couldn’t help but want to feel this moment. She was confused. Scared. Timid. She didn’t know I was here. Right above her. She didn’t know that eyes were on her right now. She didn’t know that I could run at her, get her in a hold, and have her on the floor before she even knew what had happened.

I didn’t want to scare her, but I did. Power and control were addictive. And I didn’t want to like it, because it made me sick.

I started breathing harder and tightened my fists around the railing, growing scared myself. This wasn’t normal.

“I know you’re here,” she said, looking around, her eyebrows pinched together.

But the stubborn set to her eyes was forced, and I lifted the corner of my mouth in a smile behind my mask.

Her long gray t-shirt fell off her shoulder, and rain glistened across her chest and neck. The downpour pummeled Meridian City outside, and at this time of night—and in this neighborhood—the streets were empty. No one would hear her. No one probably even saw her enter the building.

And by the way she began backing slowly out of the dark room, it looked like she was just beginning to realize that.

I took a step.

The grate flooring creaked, and she snapped her head left, following the sound.

Her eyes locked on me, finally seeing me in the dim light coming through the window from the one streetlight outside. Keeping my gaze on her, I walked toward the stairs.

“Kai?” she asked.

Why isn’t he answering me? She probably wondered. Why is he wearing his mask? Why are the lights out? Because of the storm? What’s going on?

But I said nothing as I walked slowly toward her, her pretty, small form getting more defined the closer I got. Wet strands of hair I didn’t notice before stuck to her chest, and the diamond studs Michael gave her last Christmas sparkled on her ears.

Her blue eyes looked at me warily. “I know that’s you.”

I smirked behind my mask, her rigid body betraying her confident words. Do you?

I circled her slowly, caging her in, while she remained stubbornly still. Are you so sure it’s me? I might not be Kai, right? I could’ve just taken his mask. Or bought one just like it.

Stopping behind her, I tried to keep my breathing calm despite the way my heart was pounding. I could feel her. The energy between my chest and her back.

But she refused to turn around, not wanting to acknowledge what she believed was a game. She should’ve turned around, though. She should’ve been preparing herself for danger. Like I taught her.

“Knock it off,” she barked, turning her head just enough so I could see her lips move. “This isn’t funny.”

I brought up my hand and grazed her hair, running my fingers down the silky strands. No, it wasn’t funny. Michael was gone—out of town for the night—and Will was no doubt out getting drunk somewhere. It was just us.

And with the way my goddamn stomach was flipping right now, it wasn’t funny or good or right how much I needed to constantly push myself over the edge in order to feel anything.

I grabbed her, wrapping my arms around her and burying my nose under her ear. Her perfume made my eyelids heavy, and I heard her gasp as I tightened my hold, keeping her body against mine. “It’s just us, Little Monster,” I growled. “Just how I want it to be, and we have all night.”

“Kai!” she shouted, tugging against my arms.

“Who’s Kai?”

She twisted, fighting my hold and struggling. “I know you by now. Your height, your form, your smell…”

“Do you?” I asked. “You know how I feel, huh?”

I buried my masked face in her neck and tightened my arms around her. Possessive. Threatening. I breathed out in a whisper, “I miss you as a little high school girl,” I moaned, acting like I loved the feel of her squirming against me. “You didn’t give any lip.”

She stopped, every part of her body freezing except her breathing. Her chest caved and then began to shake under my arms.

I got to her.

Someone close to us said those exact words once, someone that scared her, and now she was doubting whether or not I just might not be him. Damon had disappeared last year, and he could be anywhere, right, Rika?

“I’ve waited a long time for this,” I said, hearing the thunder crack outside. “Get this shit off.” I yanked down her shirt, exposing her in her tank top, and she let out a scream. “I wanna fuckin’ see you.”

She gasped, pulling away and throwing her arms at me. She immediately stepped back—the first counter-move I showed her when someone grabs her from behind—but I pushed off my back foot, knowing what she was going to do.

Come on, Rika.

And then, all of a sudden, she dropped, the full weight of her body slipping through my arms straight to the floor.

I nearly laughed. She was thinking quickly. Good.

But I kept up my assault. She scrambled to her hands and knees, getting ready to scurry away, and I lunged out, grabbing her by the ankle.

“Where do you think you’re going?” I growled, rearing back when she flipped over and kicked my mask.

I laughed, keeping up the taunting. “Oh, God, you’re going to be fun. I can’t fucking wait.”

A whimper escaped as she scurried backward and pushed herself to her feet again. She twisted around, fear etched on her face, and broke into a run toward the locker rooms. No doubt to the exit at the rear of the building.

I raced after her, grabbing hold of her shirt, my whole body on fire.

Fuck. I felt a trickle of sweat glide down the back of my neck.

It’s just a game. I won’t hurt her. It was like tag or hide-and-seek as a kid. We knew nothing bad would happen when we got caught and we’d bring no harm when we chased, but the irrational fear excited us anyway. That was what I liked. That’s all it was. This wasn’t real.

Twisting her around, I wrapped one arm around her and lifted her knee up with my other hand, picking her up off the ground. She threw up the other knee, but I twisted my hips before her jab landed between my legs. Flipping her back, I threw both of us to the ground, coming down on top of her.

“No,” she cried. Her body thrashed under me, and I forced myself between her legs, bringing her wrists up over her head and pinning them there.

She fought against my hold, but the steel in her arms began to shake, and her strength started to weaken.

I stilled and stared down. Damon and I both had dark hair and eyes, although his eyes were almost black. She wouldn’t be able to tell the difference under the shroud of darkness around us. But she could feel me. Handling her, forcing her, threatening her…just like him.

I slowly dropped my head to her breast, hovering an inch above her skin, and she’d stopped fighting. Her chest heaved so hard it sounded like she was having an asthma attack.

Looking up at her, her body molding easily to mine and her hands bound helplessly above her, her frightened eyes filled with tears and she knew this was it. No one to stop me, no one to hear her scream, a madman in a mask who could hurt her, kill her, and take all night doing it…

Her face suddenly cracked, and she broke, crying out as her fight was swallowed in the horror of what was happening to her.

Goddammit. I yanked back my hood and threw off my mask, furious. “You’re a fucking kitten!” I bellowed, slamming my hand down on the floor at the side of her head. “Be a lion. Get me off you!” I got in her face. “Now!”

She growled, her face turning red, and she launched up and wrapped her arm over the back of my neck. Squeezing me into a headlock, she reached her other hand under her arm and dug her finger and thumb into my eyes.

It wasn’t much, but it got me to loosen my hold long enough for her slam me in the side of the face, and when I reared back, she scrambled upright and grabbed her bag, swinging it at my head.

“Ugh!” I grunted, yanking it out of her hands.

But quickly, she scurried to her feet and ran to the wall, grabbing one of the Kendo swords and assuming her stance, bamboo shanai raised and ready.

I sat back on my heels and pulled my hand away from my face, checking for blood. Nothing. I let out a sigh and raised my eyes to her, my body growing cold as the fear left her eyes and was replaced with anger.

The adrenaline still coursed through my limbs, and I took a deep breath, all of a sudden my body ten times heavier as I pulled myself to my feet.

“I don’t like being ambushed like that!” she gritted out. “This is supposed to be a safe space.”

I blinked, fixing her with a scolding look. “Nowhere is safe.”

I walked toward the stairs, pulling off my sweatshirt as I climbed. “You’re not alert.” I picked up the water bottle I’d left by the window earlier. “I watch you. Your face was in your phone out on the street. And you could barely budge me. You waste too much time panicking.”

I gulped down the water, so thirsty from more than just the exertion. Too much thinking and worrying and plotting… I’d needed this.

I missed all those nights, years ago, when I had a release. When I had friends to get lost with.

Her footsteps fell on the stairs, and I stared out the window, the bright lights of Meridian City on the other side of the river glowing bright, a sharp contrast to the darkness of this side.

“I’ve absorbed everything you’ve taught me,” she said. “I trusted you, and I wasn’t taking it seriously. In the moment, if it ever happens again, I’ll handle it.”

“You should’ve handled it this time. What if it wasn’t me? What would’ve happened to you?”

I glanced down at her, seeing her pained eyes staring off out the window, and regret curled its way through my stomach. I hated seeing that look. Rika had been through enough, and I’d just shaken her again.

“I think you liked that,” she said quietly, still staring out the window. “I think you enjoyed it.”

My heart skipped a beat, and I turned away from her, following her gaze out the window.

“If I did, I wouldn’t have stopped.”

She looked up at me, and I heard a car passing by below, its tires sloshing through the rain.

“You know, I watch you, too,” she said. “You’re quiet, and no one gets to see where you eat or sleep. Do you even eat and sleep?”

I twisted the cap to the water bottle, the plastic container crackling in my fist. I knew what she was talking about. I knew I was distant. But I…

I had to keep everything inside or risk the wrong things slipping out. It was better like this.

And it was worse lately. Everything felt fucked. She and Michael were so consumed with each other, and Will was only sober a few hours a day anymore. I’d been on my own more than ever.

“You’re like a machine.” She drew in a long breath. “Not like Damon. You’re unreadable.” She paused. “Except just now. Except when you’re wearing your mask. You liked it, didn’t you? It’s the only time I see a crack in the stone.”

I turned my head, softening my eyes. “Not the only time.”

I held her eyes for a moment, both us knowing exactly what I was talking about.

I cleared my throat, moving on. “You need to work on your counter-attacks,” I told her. “And your speed. If you stop, you give the attacker a chance to get a good hold on you.”

“I knew I was safe with you.”

“You aren’t,” I replied sternly. “Always assume danger. If anyone other than Michael grabs you, they get what they deserve anyway.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, and I could feel her aggravation. I understood it. She didn’t want to live her life always on guard. But she was barely taking basic safety precautions, and there was no limit to how sorry she was going to be taking the wrong chances. Michael wasn’t always around.

But when he was, at least he was with her. It had been weeks since I’d really talked to him.

“How is he?” I asked her.

She rolled her eyes, and I could tell the mood was shifting to something lighter. “He wants to fly off to Rio or somewhere and get married.”

“I thought you both decided to wait until after you were done with college.”

She nodded, sighing. “Yeah, I thought so, too.”

I narrowed my eyes on her. So what was going on then?

Michael and Rika’s parents expected a wedding in Thunder Bay, and as far as I knew, the couple was fine with that. In fact, Michael had been very adamant about making a big deal out it. He wanted to see her in a dress, walking down the aisle toward him. He grew up thinking she would marry his brother, after all. He intended to give her a dream wedding.

And then it hit me.

Damon.

“He’s afraid a fanfare wedding will entice Damon to return,” I guessed.

Rika nodded again solemnly, still staring out the window. “He thinks if he marries me nothing bad will happen to me. The sooner, the better.”

“He’s right,” I told her. “A wedding—hundreds of people and Will and me at his side—Damon’s ego couldn’t take it. He wouldn’t stay away.”

“No one’s seen or heard from him in a year.”

I flexed my jaw, anticipation curling its way through my gut. “Yeah, that’s what scares me.”

A year ago, Damon wanted Rika to suffer unimaginably. We all did, actually, but Damon went a little further. He attacked her, hurt her, and helped Michael’s brother, Trevor, try to kill her. Michael was smart to assume that Damon’s anger probably hadn’t dissipated. If we knew where he was, that would be one thing, but the detectives we hired to find him and keep tabs on his whereabouts hadn’t been able to locate him.

Which explained why Michael wanted to take measures to keep Rika out of the limelight, as such a grand wedding in our rich, seaside hometown would put her.

“You don’t care about a large wedding,” I reminded her. “You just want Michael. Why not go off and just do it like he wants?”

She was silent for a few moments and then spoke quietly, her eyes in a far off place. “No.” She shook her head. “Just behind St. Killian’s, where the forest ends and the cliffs give way to the sea. Under the midnight sky…” She nodded, a beautiful, wistful smile touching her lips. “That’s where I’ll marry Michael.”

I studied her, wondering about this dream she had. As if she’d always known she would marry Michael Crist and had been seeing it in her head all her life.

“What is that building?” Rika asked, jerking her chin, gesturing out the window.

I followed her gaze, but I didn’t have to look to know which building she spoke of. I’d chosen this location for our dojo for a reason.

Gazing out of the glass, I stared at the building on the other side of the street, about thirty stories higher than ours, the gray stone darkened by the rain and the broken street lights.

“The Pope,” I answered. “It was quite a hotel back in its day.”

The Pope had been abandoned for over fifteen years and had been built when there was talk of a football stadium being constructed over here as a way to bring more tourism to Meridian City. And a way to revitalize Blackchurch, the rundown, urban district in which we now stood.

Unfortunately, the stadium never happened, and the Pope went under after only a few years in business.

I scanned the darkened windows, the shadows of drapes just barely visible inside a hundred rooms that now sat quiet and empty. It was hard to think of such a large place not having an ounce of life in it. Impossible, in fact. My leery eyes watched each dark void, my sight only taking me a few inches into the room before darkness consumed the rest.

“It feels like someone’s watching us.”

“I know,” I agreed, surveying each window, one after another.

I saw her shiver out of the corner of my eye and picked up my sweatshirt, handing it to her.

She took it, giving me a smile as she turned to go back down the stairs. “It’s getting cold. I can’t believe October is here already. Devil’s Night will be here soon,” she sing-songed, sounding excited.

I nodded, following her.

But as I cast one more glance behind me, chills spread down my body thinking about the hundred haunting, vacant rooms at the abandoned hotel across the street.

And a Devil’s Night, so long ago, when a boy who used be me hunted a girl who might be like Rika in a place that just may be that very same dark hotel out the window right now.

But unlike tonight, he didn’t stop.

I walked down the stairs, inches behind Rika and matching her steps in perfect time as I gazed at the back of her hair.

She didn’t realize just how close danger was to her.

I will announce a release date by the end of the month. Check back. Thank you for reading! ...

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