#go on to grad school and eventually make a living off of like solely being a gallery artist or whatever else

[loverdude]

My senior show is also so stupid lol like I am never again in my life gonna put my artwork in a gallery setting that's just not something I enjoy at ALL or aspire to do but I have to do this whole big terribly stressful thing in order to graduate and it's SO DUMB

[randomshyperson]

Yellow Curtains - Chapter Four - Wanda Maximoff Series

Summary: Wanda Maximoff's senior year at Novi Grad School is duly planned for her. She has good friends, good grades, and a good system to hide who she really is. Or, the one based on Evak from the Norway Skam series, where Wanda is queer and tries to survive the last year without anyone knowing about it.

Warnings: (+18), general warnings about language and violence, legal drug use, mentions of underage drinking, high school, internalized homophobia and discovery of sexuality, explicit mentions of mental disorders (bipolarity and depression), dysfunctional family, making out, and eventual smut.

Skamverse | Series | General Masterlist | AO3 | Wattpad

--//--

Chapter Four - The Birthday

Četrtek 16:22 (Thursday 4:22 pm)

Wanda came to the conclusion that she was, undeniably, the worst person in the world. 

And while she tried not to be the worst person in the world, she attempted, at your request, to put her shit together.

You refused to stay any longer than necessary - that being, solely during history class - in her presence, and ignored all her attempts to start a casual conversation, and Wanda thinks you were right because you were expecting an apology that she had no idea how to provide. Of how to really mean it.

So she decided she wasn't going to deal with you. Or with Natasha asking why she was distant and cranky, or Pietro trying to appease things between her and her father. 

The only company Wanda was putting up with was her mother, and right now, as Natalya stroked her hair, Wanda took her attention off the sitcom on the television and ran her eyes down the screen of the laptop resting on her mother's knee near her head.

"Mama?" She called out, receiving a soft hum from the other. "Do you like your job?"

Natalya gave a soft chuckle. "Why the question?"

Wanda sighed. "Just curious."

Her mother smiled, changing the rhythm of the touching on the back of Wanda's head.

"Well, I like to write." She begins gently. "I've always liked it, ever since I was little. I like grammar, I like reading. But deadlines? Rules that shape my creativity? No, I don't like these." Wanda gets thoughtful, and Natalya takes the caress to her daughter's cheek. "I would be lying if I said I love the act of working. Waking up early, fulfilling an expedient, and answering to a boss. That is not comfortable. I wish I had been born with a great inheritance that allowed me to write just for the pleasure of writing, and the vast majority of people do too. But that's not how the world operates, sweetheart."

Wanda sighs, adjusting herself to sit beside her mother.

"What if...I wanted a job?"

Natalya is surprised but offers her a gentle smile. 

"And why is that?" She asks, and when Wanda looks down at her own lap, she reaches for her hand. "You just piqued my curiosity, dear. I have my financial limitations, but with your father's pension, we have enough so that you and Pietro can focus on your studies. I wouldn't want to think that you feel pressured-"

"It's not that." Wanda assures with a nervous laugh, shaking her head. She takes a deep breath, searching for the right words. "I love papa, I really do. But every day, we grow distant from each other's values. I don't want to live what he has planned for me. I don't want to owe or depend on his goodwill, or approval."

Natalya looks at her affectionately, bringing a hand to her face.

"Every day, you make me more proud, sladko dekle (sweet girl)." She says, and Wanda smiles shyly, leaning into her touch. She doesn't really believe it, it's not how she's been feeling, especially the last few days, but it's nice to hear.

Wanda settles into her mother's lap again, she whispers:

"Ljubim te, mama. (I love you, mama)"

Ponedeljek 18.12 (Monday 6:12 pm)

A touch on her back made Wanda jump slightly. She was distracted by the books in front of her but smiled at her mother, who was signaling for her to take off her headphones. Once Evanescence gave way to the sounds around her, Natalya spoke up:

"There's a boy downstairs." She announced gently. Wanda frowned. "Your friend, the one who skateboards."

Wanda sighed, "Oh, it's Clint." She spoke taking out her headset to put on the table. "Thanks, mama. Can you tell him I'll be right down?"

Natalya nodded, leaving the room. Wanda took one last look at the history books before looking for a sweatshirt to cover her thin pajama shirt.

Clint was sitting on the wall of her driveway, with a skateboard resting against the wall. He offered her a smile as he greeted her.

"Did something happen?" That was the first thing Wanda asked because she hadn't invited him. In fact, she hadn't invited anyone to her place since the fight she had with you weeks ago.

Clint laughs lightly. "št. (no)?"

She twitches her nose slightly at the cold air outside, hugging her own body. "I don't mean to be rude, but why are you here?"

He laughs again, half surprised. "Well, I've been your friend for 8 years now, and well, we always  planned something nice for Nat's birthday together..."

"Prekleto! (dammit)" Wanda interrupts giving herself a gentle slap on the forehead. "Yeah, Nat's birthday is coming up. Shit, what day is it today?" she quickly checks her cell phone and realizes that she barely has a week to plan something. 

Clint watches her reaction with curiosity. "Is everything okay with you, Maximoff?" He asks worriedly. "You just...man, I don't know, you’ve been acting different."

"I'm fine." She assures between teeth, moving closer to take the other side of the wall. "I just have a lot going on right now, okay? With my dad, and school."

Clint sniffles slightly because of the cold. He adjusts the cap he wears on his head and looks at Wanda.

"But that's not all, right?" he questions, and she feels her heart stop. 

Trying to play nice, she retorts, "What do you mean?"

He smiles in a corner. "Well, you've started dating, haven't you?" He says, and Wanda lets out a chuckle, practically relieved. Clint doesn't seem to notice. "I know, maybe you feel more comfortable talking to Natasha or Jennifer, since they're girls, about this but, I'm here too, okay? If Vision is being a jerk, or even if you need someone to talk to, I'm here."

Wanda smiles at him, and takes a chance:

"I think I screwed up." Wanda mutters. "And I don't know how to make things right again."

Clint frowns in curiosity, stepping away from the wall to approach her. "What happened?"

Wanda sighs, she's not ready to tell yet. All she does is shrug, and it's Clint's turn to sigh. 

"I have no way to help you without knowing what happened." He mumbles clumsily, and she gives a sad smile.

"I wasn't ready." She declares. "And now I feel like I've lost ... him."

Clint grimaces. "Vision pressured you to have sex with him? I'm going to kill-"

Wanda shakes her head, holding up her hands. "No! No! No way!" She clarifies nervously. "He was...very respectful. In fact, I was the one who initiated the whole thing. But then... I backed off and treated him badly. I think I fucked everything up."

Clint sighs, putting his hands on her shoulders.

"Wanda, you didn't do anything wrong." He says seriously. "If you weren't ready, you weren't. Never feel guilty about something like that. Sex is kind of overrated anyway."

She frowns in confusion, "What do you mean?"

Clint shrugs. "It's just, the first time, it will always be messy. And awkward. It doesn't last long for the boys either." He comments with a laugh, turning his hands back to his pockets. "Vision has experience, maybe it will make it a little more fun for you, but it will likely be awkward. It's the first time, you know? It's meant to be that way." He comments. "You don't have to be so anxious about it. It's always weird for everyone. You just need to relax. When you feel ready, follow the moment, let it happen." He guides casually. "After all, you like him and he likes you, right?"

Wanda swallows dryly. "Yeah."

Clint smiles. "That's all that matters in the end." He says, taking a hand out of his pocket to pass his arm around her shoulders.

Wanda accepts the hug because she feels like she might start crying at any moment.

"Want to go to the skateboard track?" He invites still holding her. Wanda thinks about the lessons accumulated on her desk and nods in the affirmative.

–//–

Sreda 11:40 (Wednesday 11:40 am)

Wanda wasn't sure what had brought her there, but her feet practically moved by themselves. 

The college buildings were divided by subject, and classes, based on three main categories: Humanities, Science, and Technology. Other subcategories such as Mathematics, or Sports were in similar topics. 

All this meant that Wanda, who since freshman year had signed up for a curriculum focused on Medical School, had more classes in common with Natasha, and the other Med kids (as they called themselves) than with Pietro and the jocks, such as Steve Rogers and Tony Stark. The latter by coincidence had a very rich resume in Technology.

So when Wanda appeared in the Humanities building in a lab coat, half the surrounding students looked at her as if she were some kind of abnormality.

Wanda found a bathroom, put away her lab coat, and tried to stop shaking. She left the Advanced Biology class in the middle of the explanation of Human Fertilization, thinking she was going to throw up if anyone else made a sex joke next to her.

Natasha - and the teacher - believed she was having period cramps.

It did nothing to help the superficially controlled little panic attack for Wanda to realize where she was in school. Nor did it help to leave the bathroom for a hallway with a glass wall, where she could see a small outdoor antitheater, full of students practicing dances, rehearsing lines, or testing costumes.

Seeing you, dressed like a Montecchio in a plastic sword fight, giggling like a child didn't help to settle her stomach. Definitely not.

Since when did you do theater anyway?

The teacher on the stage says something to the class, and Wanda watches for who knows how long as you repeat the movements of the fake fight with your scene partner, rehearsing for what should be the end-of-the-year play.

The bell rings shortly after, and not only does the drama class scatter around, but the other rooms begin to empty out.

Still, you turn to put the swords away in a trunk, and it doesn't take you ten seconds to meet Wanda's gaze beyond the glass.

Your momentarily surprised expression becomes almost annoyed. You look away, dropping the swords and turning around, and Wanda swallows dryly, ignoring the way her heart races to advance through the crowd of students and into the glass room.

"Y/N." She calls out, but you keep putting things away, standing back. Wanda takes a deep breath to keep from crying. "Please. Can we talk? Please."

You pull the period vest out over your head, and Wanda looks away, blushing when her first thought is about the bit of skin she saw with the gesture. With an impatient sigh, you return the vest to the pile of costumes and turn to the coat hook, a few inches away from Wanda and the door.

She swallows dryly, ready to speak again when you look at her in such a cold way that she is startled.

"Stay away from me, Wanda."  You spit it out and Wanda stands static, feeling her chest tighten. She doesn't have to think about what to say, because you leave the room the next moment.

As if her day couldn't get any worse, her cell phone vibrates seconds later.

"I hear it's Romanoff's birthday on Saturday. Hope we can meet at the party, doll."- Vision.

–//–

Sobota 22:21 Saturday 10:21 pm

Excluding Wanda and Clint, Steve Rogers and Tony Stark were Natasha's closest friends. And every year, without exception, they would fight over who would host her birthday party. 

Tony was the richer one - obviously - but this did not mean that he won every time. This year, for example, Wanda learned that the boys made a gambling bet and Steve won, which later meant Wanda and Pietro taking the subway across town to the university district.

Since Steve's family was American - as were the vast majority of the families of Wanda's friends, since student exchange programs in Sokovia were very common - he lived in an apartment with other boys, mostly students from the University of Sokovia a few streets away. And because it was a sorority, Steve's parties could go until morning - especially during vacation starting periods like now - with no neighbor to call the police.

Wanda was trying to be positive tonight. 

She dressed really nicely, and put a friendly smile on her face. She met Vision with ten minutes of celebration and didn't leave his side.

Everything was fine.

"I'm gonna get us something to drink." The words left her lips before she finished thinking them. Vision looked confused at the half-full glass he was holding, but Wanda didn't care.

You had just walked into the party with Peter Parker at your side, and she thinks that if she doesn't start drinking she will start crying.

The kitchen was empty because everyone was dancing and talking around the apartment. The loud music started giving her a headache for the first time since the night began, and Wanda considered staying inside the freezer, hiding from her troubles.

"Everything okay there Maximoff?" Nat's tone was a gentle tease, and by the sudden arrival, Wanda knocked her head lightly on the freezer with fright, cursing softly.

She pulled out a bottle of beer on her way out. "Yeah, just getting a drink."

Nat hums her own beer in hand. "You and Vision seem close tonight."

She forces a smile, looking around the kitchen for a can opener. "I think so." Natasha takes a sip of her beer. Wanda finds something to open her own and celebrates softly. "I guess...I finally had the time and opportunity to date." She jokes, busy opening the lid to notice Nat's forced giggle.

"You know what you could make time for, Wanda?" Nat asks, and Wanda, who is in the middle of sipping, raises her eyebrows at her in confusion. "To apologize to Y/N."

Wanda chokes, it was less graceful than she would like, but she manages to contain the damage with the back of her hand. She returns the beer to the counter and doesn't meet Nat's gaze.

"How do you...?"

"I date her sister, Wanda." Natasha recalls as if it were obvious, "Of course, I was going to find out about it eventually."

Wanda thinks she might throw up at any moment. She swallows dryly, holding the can opener a little tightly.

"W-what Y/N said?"

Natasha rolls her eyes, sighing impatiently. She steps closer, leaving her own beer on the counter.

"You offended her in the middle of a hallway, I didn't hear about it from her." Natasha clarifies. "Carol found out first and didn't know how to mention it to me because of our friendship. And Y/N said it was no big deal. But she seemed to have turned bad again this week, and I think this story has gone too far."

Wanda lets go of the opener because she felt the grip hurt. She hugs her own body, looking at Nat. "It was a stupid argument, I didn't mean to hurt her. I didn't mean to hurt anyone." She sniffles softly. "I'm sorry."

"It's not me you have to apologize to, Maximoff." Natasha remonstrates seriously, and Wanda cringes. The redhead sighs. "Wanda, what's going on between you two, anyway? You've been acting so strange lately..."

Nat tries to touch her wrist, and Wanda jumps away, startling them both. "There's nothing. Nothing, going on between us. I'm not like that, okay?"

The redhead makes an indignant face as she understands the other's words. "Like what? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Wanda realizes the shit she spoke in the same second, and opens her mouth to apologize, only to be interrupted by someone clearing their throat behind her.

"Sorry, am I interrupting? I wanted to congratulate the birthday girl." It was Yelena, Natasha's stepsister, looking very pretty in her leather jacket. The redhead's tense posture completely unraveled, and she cast one last angry glance at Wanda before turning away to hug Yelena, leading her out of the kitchen with animated conversation.

Wanda sobbed once alone. But before she lost control of her own emotions, she takes a deep breath. And for every tear, she wanted to shed she took a sip of beer.

Until the ground became less firm at her feet.

It didn't take long before she was drunk. Not tipsy, or cheerful.

Drunk. Hard, the kind that doesn't process things very well, like seeing you making out with a girl she's never seen against a wall in the corner of the party or the kind that makes questionable decisions like grabbing Vision's hand and dragging him into the first empty room she finds.

Wanda remembers the first time she kissed someone. She was 14, and it was not a boy. Natasha stretched out a flashlight under the blanket and whispered to her that she was scared of high school. Dating seemed scary. Wanda muttered that it was probably overrated and that no one seemed very interesting. Boys were rude, and girls were mean. Sometimes they were both. Natasha chuckled against her neck and said she was going to try something.

Wanda remembers that Natasha tasted like toothpaste, and her skin was really soft. She felt no fireworks or anything like that, although, for the next few years, she developed a great unrequited crush on her best friend. No one knew, and sometimes Wanda would even keep it from herself.

Kissing Vision was different from Natasha. He grabbed his way around her, her waist, her breasts. Hard, demanding, impatient. He wouldn't let her breathe, wouldn't let her escape. And Wanda really wanted to escape.

"Fuck, are you sure about that?" He questioned breathlessly, all over her. When had Wanda made it to bed? She couldn't remember. "You taste like booze. How many beers have you had?"

"Stop talking." She demanded, grabbing his face back. He took off his jacket, and then his shirt. His skin was boiling, and not soft to the touch. Not like Natasha's. Not like yours.

Vision adjusted himself on top of her, and Wanda felt a hardness rubbing in between her legs. Her brain immediately returned to the night of the pool, your face vibrating in her mind, clear as the water around you two. She remembered the feel of your hands around her, the strong pull below her stomach, your thigh finding her middle-

A sound ripped through her throat, and it wasn't the name of the boy trying to pull her pants off.

Vision froze before pulling away, looking at Wanda as if she had slapped him. She didn't understand what happened until he spoke:

"Who the fuck is Y/N, Wanda?" He demanded in horror, sitting on his legs. "Y/N as in Danvers, Carol's sister? What the fuck, are you a dyke or something?"

The entire contents of Wanda's stomach came out at once, right in Vision's lap the next second.

He screamed, jumping away from her, indignantly cursing things she didn't understand.

The door slammed as he left for the bathroom, and Wanda lay there on the bed, her clothes crumpled, completely static.

It seemed to take forever when the door opened again. Vision was wearing a loose shirt from Steve, and he didn't close the door behind him.

"Are you really going to stand there and not talk about it?" He demanded, and Wanda went back to counting the marks on the ceiling. He sighed impatiently. "You're fucking insane, Maximoff. I've had enough of your little games. Don't call me anymore."

Wanda sat up in bed when the door slammed again and resembled a robot as she searched for a bathroom, trying not to fall on the way. She couldn't find it and ended up outside the house.

Shit, she really was very drunk.

The party was still in full swing inside, but Wanda saw some groups leaving the place. Maybe she could find a ride with one of them.

Wanda left the entrance to the garage area, and around the corner, she began to hear a heated argument.

"[...] what the fuck are you insinuating now, Parker?" It was your voice if Wanda could recognize anything in that state.

The boy laughed. "You put on that little show for me. I'm just saying it was kind of mean of you, especially since Gwen and I have history."

You chuckle indignantly. "Are you fucking with me now, huh? Putting on a show for you? Screw you if you think that was for you! I have the right to make out to whoever I want, we're done! And unlike what you think, you narcissistic bastard, neither Gwen nor I give a shit about you!"

Peter huffs loudly, closing the door of the truck as you try to open it. "Y/N, please don't act like that!" He tries, still serious, but a little calmer. "We had a fight, as usual. It doesn't have to be the end, we could still-"

"I don't love you anymore, Peter." You cut him off simply, with a completely exhausted look on your face. "How many times am I going to have to say that?"

Peter sighs, and tries to hold you but you push him away. He takes a deep breath. "You said it before and regret it. Can't you ... convince yourself of that again?"

You look at him completely offended. "Excuse me?"

Peter stutters, trying to find the right words. "I just mean, I don't know, maybe you could try-"

You push him away from you, tears in your eyes that are more of anger than anything.

"That's the damn point, Parker! If I could choose or control it, I wouldn't be a fucking disorder!"

"Y/n, sorry I shouldn't-"

"Get the fuck out of here." You cut him off. "I'm not going back with you, Peter. Never."

He snorts indignantly, turning his back on you and dashing down the driveway back into the building.

Wanda backs up against the wall as her stomach starts to rumble again, and the uncomfortable grumble she lets out catches your attention.

You find her with her head down, one hand on her belly.

"Spying on other people's conversation now, Maximoff?" You accuse angrily, and Wanda gives you a weak laugh, feeling her head spin.

"I was looking for a ride." She replies with her eyes closed, trying not to throw up again.

You let out a tired laugh. "You were going to ask some stranger to drive you home? You must be really drunk."

"I'm fine." She assures you before she starts throwing up again. 

You stepped back to avoid being hit, looking up at the apartment above and seeing that the party was still in full swing.

Pulling your cell phone from your pocket, you called Pietro. About four times, but he probably wouldn't listen in that mess. 

"Hey, Pietro, your twin is totally drunk down here. Can you come to get her?" You try a voice message, and then a text underneath with the same question because you don't think he would listen either.

Wanda is sweating a little, and you mentally curse yourself for reaching over to hold her hair while she vomits. 

With ten minutes to wait, you text Natasha about Pietro. And she replies to you that the boy wasn't upstairs.

"Stay here Wands, I'll be right back." You tell the girl leaning on the wall, which doesn't look like it was going to make any mention of moving any time soon. You walk around the block, but of the small groups that left the party to smoke or leave, but you don't recognize Pietro in any of them.

As you walk back to where you left Wanda, she has disappeared.

"Fucking excellent." You mutter ironically, and before you can despair, you recognize the figure farther up the street, as if she had decided to go home alone. With a weary sigh, you turn back to your sister's pickup truck parked nearby, and drive the car down the street, until you are driving next to a sulky and completely inebriated Wanda Maximoff. "Please get in the car."

"I don't want to be kidnapped, thank you."

You chuckle, running a hand over your face. "I promise I won't kidnap you. Just tell me where you live, and I'll take you home."

To your surprise, Wanda sniffles. "I can't go home! It's the Sabbath and I'm drunk and Mama will be so disappointed! I can't-" She started to cry really hard, and you knew she must be really drunk.

"Hey, hey, let's not go to your house then." You try to calm her down from behind the wheel, without losing attention on both the girl and the road. "Let's go to my place. You really need a bath and sleep. And then, when the sabbath is over, you can go to your place, what do you think?"

Wanda agrees with a nod, and you try not to despair at her vulnerability that second. She would do anything anyone asked, by the gods who left her alone in this state?

You stop the car, and lean in to open the passenger door. "Can you get in by yourself, princess?"

Wanda murmurs in agreement, getting into the car. She adjusts herself in the seat and closes her eyes as you put the belt around her. "Please don't try to kidnap me." She whispers, managing a soft laugh from you.

"I promise." You whisper back, and the last thing she hears before falling asleep.

[raraeavesmoriendi]

watching the v/ictoria’s s/ecret doc on hulu and trying to untangle some gender thoughts. 

tw dysphoria, body image stuff, mentions of sexual harassment etc.

> felt different from girls even when I was younger bc I was always physically bigger & taller than most in my age group

> this definitely increased with puberty bc then I was bigger in my hips/thighs so even when I was my smallest size ever, I still felt like my build was just different. could be there was a lot of dysphoria and dysmorphia overlapping; I remember oscillating sharply from wearing baggy masc clothes (esp cargo shorts, cargo shorts all day in middle school), which was partially a response to being inappropriately touched repeatedly during a class when I had to keep sitting next to this one boy. being v blonde and blue-eyed with a soft voice despite being bigger than a lot of girls my age, I just remember wanting to make it so people were less inclined to touch me, y’know

> in jr high and high school I started expressing more femininely - lot of tight clothes, esp. later on. it was the 2000s, so it felt like the a/bercrombie and f/itch/v/ictoria’s s/ecret expectations for girls were everywhere in my part of the US where I was growing up. I was more interested in the alt scene, specifically goth -- I sincerely felt more comfortable when I could wear my eyeliner and keep my nails dark, and kept myself in monochrome palettes with interesting silhouettes. I realized subconsciously at some point I was less interested in trying to project the femme version of goth/emo and more the androgynous-male version, especially with vampire archetypes/imagery, but that was... hard, given where I was and that I was still living with my parents.

> I was also going to an xtian jr. high and then separate xtian high school and that was probably the most I experienced dysphoria. they believed in a very rigid traditional form of aspirational femininity that included the aesthetics of the mainstream a&f vs WASP stuff, but limited the ways sexuality could be expressed, much less even desire - it was full purity ball bullshit, etc. and I had never felt more divorced from femaleness and femininity. I didn’t really want to embrace masculinity as a result, but I just kept thinking I felt like neither, like nothing. I spent a lot of years feeling like an animal with its foot in a trap, like I kept wanting to gnaw off parts of myself if it meant I could get away and just exist in peace. I look back at photos of me in my prom dresses and it just doesn’t... feel right. I kept changing aesthetics looking for the one that felt comfortable, that felt like ‘’’me’’’, and I just... never did. so not only was I divorced from what I was hearing from all sides on what the goals and traits of femininity were supposed to be, I was just kind of lowkey anxious because I couldn’t imagine myself feeling like Really Me anywhere, despite multiple relationships with people of different genders (because I had at least figured that out).

> went to a historically women’s university in the southeast after high school and oh my god it was like a breath of fresh air. all sorts of women of all types everywhere and very very queer. I was femmeing it up my senior year in high morticia form, but still sometimes found myself feeling different from the women around me I loved and admired in ways that I didn’t understand and honestly terrified me. my first nudges of wanting to be something outside of the feminine that I actually acknowledged out loud to other people had me feeling like I was standing on sand - if I couldn’t even feel at home there, then where, y’know

> finally have a literal OCD breakdown about my gender when I get to grad school in my mid-20s and while getting DXd and getting my meds did lessen the severity of the fear around those thoughts, I eventually realized that being non-binary is actually more comfortable for me than trying to cling solely to any notions of cisgendered femininity. hell, I like the word “genderqueer” even more and have been embracing that a lot lately, because I associate my entire ideal gender expression with a subcultural image that doesn’t overlap too terribly often with one could say normative ideals of masculinity/femininity. I like the space in between where my long hair (now no longer blonde) and my eyeliner can be more markers of another kind of affinity than something strictly gendered. even though I can’t decide how I feel about my breasts sometimes (sometimes I’m very into them, sometimes seriously want them gone, idk), I’ve pursued my aesthetic whims as much as I want (monochrome wardrobe, tattoos that I’ve wanted forever, as much eyeliner as I want in a day even if I don’t want to do “the rest” of my makeup like foundation etc.) and this is a really lovely, comfortable space. I might not stay this way forever, or I might keep this essence but update facets, but either way it shakes out, I feel like I can finally breathe.

I’m looking back at the norms VS set and promoted in their marketed (”fantasy” and “fomo” being key words from their own documents - whose fantasies?? how much was a mix of multiple peoples’ vs. just one? missing out on what???) and I feel so relieved now that I know those don’t apply to me, but I feel more than irritated still that people keep trying to project those onto myself, other people who aren’t women, and women themselves bc what the fuck. who’s that even for.

anyway, this was just an exercise in thinking out loud, I appreciate it if anyone read this far when it was mostly just me rambling lmao. go read that queer theory book you’ve passed multiple times and haven’t given a chance but has piqued your curiosity in some way, maybe you’ll find something cool there.

[solitvdcs]

* sofia carson, cis female + she/her | you know raquel morales, right? they’re twenty-five, and they’ve lived in irving for, like, most of her life? well, their spotify wrapped says they listened to go your own way by fleetwood mac like, a million times this year, which makes sense ‘cause they’ve got that whole leather jacket and stiletto boots, red painted lips, alphabetized record collection thing going on. i just checked and their birthday is september 20, so they’re a virgo, which is unsurprising, all things considered.

trigger warning: death, drugs, alcohol

basic info

full name: raquel morales giraldo

birth date: september 20, 1995

pronouns: she/her

hometown: irving, north carolina

sexuality: bisexual

height: 5′5″

eye color: hazel

hair color: dark brown

build: slim

tattoos: the letters “crel” along the inside of her middle finger (the initials of each morales sister, including herself), an eighth note behind her ear, blooming flowers going up her left thigh

piercings: many, many ear piercings, formerly pierced nose but the hole has closed up

style: if you see her around and she’s not wearing a leather jacket, that’s not her

favorite color: black

favorite food: torta negra

zodiac: virgo sun, leo moon, scorpio rising

mbti: istj

hogwarts house: slytherin

enneagram: type 3 wing 4

temperament: choleric-melancholy

alignment: true neutral

rocky was born the second oldest out of four sisters, though her younger sisters weren’t that much younger. one of a set of identical triplets, rocky always felt herself taking on the “big sister” role when it came to ellie and lisa, even if they were only a couple hours younger than her. their oldest sister, cassidy, was already ten when the triplets were born, so by the time they were able to remember, cassidy was already off living her own life. there was a distinct separation between the triplets and cassidy, but the triplets were so close knit that none of them really minded.

each triplet seemed to be a prodigy in their own way. ellie moved her way through the ranks of her ballet company faster than any other kid in the studio’s history, lisa could charm just about anyone and was a natural actress, and rocky gravitated towards music. she could pick up just about any instrument and play it, and music became her escape. she shared a face and so much else with two other girls, but music was the thing that was solely hers. but, being the most logical out of the three, she saw music as more of a hobby than a career. when the time came for university, she planned on majoring in business. but - as a nod to her true passion - her concentration was on the music industry.

during undergrad, she met her boys. the four were music majors with different concentrations who’d decided to form a band, but unfortunately were short a guitarist. they held auditions, rocky showed up on a whim, and was promptly welcomed into the band. it was odd, at first, being the only girl when she’d grown up in a household of mainly girls, but she acclimated quickly. it was the first time she’d felt at home since she’d left her sisters back in irving. they became popular on and around campus, and eventually a few other local universities started booking them. after graduation, they got a record deal - rocky led the negotiations, of course - and after that, syndicate took off.

syndicate’s fanbase consisted of people mostly interested in her bandmates, and it didn’t bother her until the fans started targeting her on social media. there were rumors going around that she and the lead singer were “more than friends” (which at the time was not true), and his most extreme fangirls bullied her until she had no choice but to delete her social media accounts. after that she focused on the music and nothing else, until one night at an afterparty, the lead singer made a move. sure, they’d had a weird, jealous flirtationship for most of the time they’d known each other, but nothing had ever happened. they started dating in secret, nobody knowing except the other guys in the band. after a while, rocky reactivated her social media accounts, and hoped the lead singer would have her back now that they were actually together.

long story short, he didn’t.

DRUGS, ALCOHOL, DEATH TW. they started fighting. a lot. and the more they fought, the harder rocky partied. she fell deep into the underground music party scene and started mixing progressively harder drugs with alcohol, until one day she overdosed. she wasn’t supposed to survive, but someone was looking out for her that night. she found out too late that her youngest sister, lisa, had died that same night. she flew home just for the funeral before discreetly checking herself into rehab, though nothing could fix the fact that one whole third of herself was now missing.

after rehab, she made the decision to leave not only syndicate, but the music industry altogether. music had become a gateway drug instead of an escape, and she couldn’t let all of her hard work in rehab go to waste, not to mention it felt like a slap to the face to her dead sister. instead she enrolled in grad school back home, and ultimately syndicate broke up without her. nobody outside of the band and her family know about her rehab stint, nor do they realize that she was the instigator behind the band’s breakup. she carries the guilt around with her still, though.

added bc i c/ped the intro from when i played her before: rocky dated isaac hensely in high school for a couple years, and she started thinking that maybe he was it for her. she’d planned on going to the same school as him instead of her dream school, and when she told him, he broke up with her (right before prom, too). she wasn’t going to go after that, but ellie and lisa convinced her to. she stayed until she saw isaac there with another girl, and promptly left. she didn’t even stay for long enough to see him and his date crowned prom king and queen.

wanted connections (yes these are also c/ped from when i played her before lol)

anybody wanna apply to be one of the band members????

someone who went to rehab with her and knows

a confidant for when she doesn’t have her sisters to talk to

friends i guess??

flirty frenemies?????? that’s clearly her type lol

a fwb thing that’s not serious but just when they both need to blow off some steam

someone who tempts her back into music (slowburn lol)

i am so bad at wanted connections i’m so sorry

[live-long-and-time-warp]

It’s hard to leave your toxic friends... but it’s so worth it

I don’t normally do this, but as I sat in a Saturday morning meeting thinking about all of the things I felt this past Friday, I felt compelled to share my story.

A brief background: throughout college and for several years afterward, I considered my tight-knit group of college friends as some of my closest. In addition to my best friend of 20 years, some friends from high school, my work team, and some other dear friends scattered across the globe and throughout the U.S., this group of college friends was who I considered to be my foundation. This group of friends was extremely important to me, but it was not without its bumps in the road.

In my senior year of college, I had a falling out with one of these friends, the ringleader I’ll call her. I say this because she is quite honestly the source of 95% of my problems with this group. She is a master manipulator, and an expert gaslighter. There were a few others that contributed to this too, but she was by far the worst.

I can’t elaborate on every single thing that this person said and did over our 7 year “friendship” but a brief summary would be: asking me point blank if I thought I might be a lesbian after coming out as bi (to this friend group and in her presence, I might add) only several months prior; asking me how much money I spend on books about “Chernobyl” every month with the implication that she’s concerned about my finances; telling me that my resume may not be as impressive as I think it is (I’m the deputy director of a nonprofit with both state-based and national projects and had been for close to a year prior to this conversation); would clean up the crumbs from in front of me while I was still eating and comment on my messiness; told me that one of our mutual friends doesn’t like discussing politics with me because I get too fired up (again, I work for a nonprofit that deals with social justice); telling me that crying while comforting my friend who had just lost a loved one to suicide after they began crying was weird and that I “stole her thunder” (we were slightly drunk, I’m an empath, and she was talking about some deeply personal things that moved me and crying was my natural response... and oddly, she was appreciative of my tears because I was “the only person that actually stayed with her”); and so much more that I know I’m forgetting.

There were many other things more insidious, including gaslighting me about my inclusion in several group activities and why it should have been obvious why one friend disliked me enough to not invite me to her wedding after years of claiming cluelessness.

In our senior year, I left that friend for the first time after she humiliated me at a party by commenting loudly and with condescension on my weight. When I cut ties with her, I felt as if I had just left an abusive relationship, and for a while I didn’t want to seek a friendship with her again.

But the other friends in our group still hung out with both of us, so eventually I allowed myself to be sucked back in. 

In the years after we graduated, I thought that this person had actually changed- I worked abroad for a year after college, and after returning I saw a marked difference in her demeanor and how she interacted with us. She seemed more self-aware of how her words and actions adversely affected other people, and I thought that maybe the ugliness of that horrible portion of my senior year was now just a faded scar.

But then things escalated very quickly. Over the course of several weeks at the beginning of this year, I started to feel myself questioning whether I had made the right choice in rejoining the group: I was so sure of how I felt after I left it the first time, I felt so empowered and free. So why did I allow myself to rejoin them? Was it really the right choice?

I got my answer a week after the insurrection at the Capitol. One friend who already had a history of saying hateful things about women (which I tried to put a stop to to no avail) finally went full white supremacist asshole, and instead of joining me in calling his comments unacceptable and defending me as he mansplained my job to me, the ringleader criticized me and told me that “I can work in activism and politics and be wrong”.

That’s the moment I finally woke up.

I left the chat that very moment. Every time they added me back without my consent, I left again.

Every time I got message from the ringleader that was full of gaslighting comments and false apologies, I didn’t say a word. Just deleted the message. Finally, I was able to gather the strength needed to block those toxic friends from all social media and my phone. One of these friends was someone I tried to make like me for years after I was told that she hated me for no reason, by her own admission.

Some may not agree with this approach, but I made the choice to cut contact and go radio silent on my own after consulting my friends, specifically my best friend who had been there for me during the incident my senior year.

As weeks went by, some of the true friends from that group reached out, and then immediately backed off after my polite request for space, indicating that I was welcome back at any time and they were always here for me.

The ringleader chose the opposite approach. She continued to gaslight me, made a group chat with myself, the white supremacist, and herself. She sent me messages from her second account, one that I remembered to unfriend but forgot to block. She told me that if I don’t “course correct” by a certain date she would block me on my account (too late, bro) and that “we wish you all the best”. This implies that it was on behalf of the entire group, something I know three of them would never do. However, at this point, I have had to distance myself from all of those friends so as not to give the ringleader the attention she wants from me.

I lost over half of my closest friends over night. It felt like my skeleton had been torn from my body. I considered giving in several times and reaching out to them. But now, over a month later, I understand how necessary it was to excise what was essentially a malignant tumor. The Chernobyl researcher in me wants to compare it to Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS): an unseen poison that slowly infiltrates every part of your mind and body and rots them from the inside out.

2020 was an extremely hard year for me, as it was for so many. I am so lucky and privileged to have been in the financial situation that I was and had the support of my genuine friends and family.

But it was still the worst year of my life. I have suffered from pretty bad OCD for most of my life, and while I usually keep it under control, last year it became nearly impossible to do so. I also fell very deeply into clinical depression, and worked to the point of burn out and exhaustion. The primary thoughts I had during this depression were: 

“Why aren’t you working? You’re lazy.”

“You’re a failure, you’re 26 and haven’t applied to grad school yet.”

“You piece of shit, still living with your parents? What a disappointment.”

“What is wrong with you?”

It was unbearable. I’m honestly not entirely sure how I survived it, but I think a certain 3-year-old goddaughter of mine and a few close, real friends had something to do with it.

I worked very hard with my friends, a therapist, and a psychiatrist to overcome this depression and get my OCD back under control. Now, I feel like such a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. I still have depression, and the OCD will always be with me (like a bad habit... literally?); but I am so much more happy with myself and my life, as I should be.

And I am very, very, very well aware that therapy was not the only reason I have recently begun feeling this way. It’s very hard to see that you’re being manipulated while it’s happening. Because of my trusting nature, sometimes manipulative comments would be interpreted as heartfelt guidance.

It wasn’t until I started the journey away from them that I saw just how much this group and their negativity (because even the best of them weren’t always the kindest) impacted my mental health.

The event that made me want to share this story is this: yesterday was a rough work day. As a full-time community organizer, I am pretty much burnt out all of the time. Breaks are taken, but with projects addressing issues from COVID relief to systemic racism and police brutality, it never feels like enough. 

I had to officially take a step back as a sole lead on an annual event that I organized for two years, and it was gut-wrenching.

Now, I cry often, but I don’t usually get to have therapeutic cries. You know what I mean? Like, as you cry, all of the tension that built up in your body by negative feelings is finally being released with every breath and sob?

Well, the dam finally broke in a team meeting on Friday. I started sobbing and couldn’t stop. And my colleagues were so, so kind. They let me vent, they let me cry, they would not accept my apologies for crying. They told me that I was strong for setting up boundaries, and that they were here for me.

We spent a lot of time at the end of the meeting each talking about our self-care routines. And as I sit here typing this, I am actively trying not to cry at the purity of their support.

This experience has taught me what real friends are. Real friends do not put limitations on your emotions and fears.

Real friends do not give you deadlines for processing your feelings.

Real friends do not criticize you for things that, while they may not agree with, do not affect anyone’s health or marginalize anyone.

Real friends don’t marginalize vulnerable communities.

Real friends help and support you with constructive criticism (when it’s asked for) and love, not patronization and manipulation.

I thought I knew all of these things before, but I know now that I am still learning... and that that is perfectly okay. I don’t regret most of the times we shared together. I am appreciative of the positive memories that their friendships gave me.

Three of the friends in this group are actually good people, and maybe one day when the dust is settled I’ll reach out to them and establish one-on-one friendships with them (if they want to). 

And I have to thank my real friends, including @tryingtobealwaystrying, for all saying the exact same thing: you deserve so much happiness and fuck all of those guys.

So, the point of this post is to tell everyone this: you can leave your toxic friends. It’s incredibly difficult, stressful, and honestly traumatizing. And there’s no shame in needing time or feeling unable to leave those friends now. There’s also no shame in returning to those friends.

But please know, from this nerd to the reader: anyone that makes you feel any less than the beautiful, amazing human being you are and doesn’t want to help you become an even better human on your own terms is not a true friend. They don’t deserve you or the light you can bring into their lives.

And every agonizing step away from those friends is a step closer to a happier, healthier life.

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

I

do not get headaches.

I was fine for the first 7 years of college.  I went to a doctor once and he said “hey we have a case of the warm jesus headaches, ‘hey you should try this.’ ‘Hey you should probably not drink any alcohol,’ which was fair enough, I’m not an alcoholic.”  Then, after a year of this, I started to get these terrible headaches with no clear cause, and eventually the headaches themselves became a nuisance, although not in the way I was used to at the time.  And after a few more years, I moved out and a year later I had a bunch of my old old grad school friends move out with me.  My parents and I decided it would be sensible to live alone for a while and it seemed sensible to start by buying a house.

So I moved into my apartment.  It’s in a gated community and the whole time I was being watched very carefully, and at first it was a “what the fuck will these guys think if they find out I have a new roommate?” vibe.  No TV, no one to talk to.  Everything was so secure that I was momentarily ready to make certainties with my sole source of certainty, my college library books.  I’m sure I was reading some paranoid schizophrenic dream version of these books and they were probably correct.  But the thrill of the improbable, the certainty that you’ll be okay no matter what goes wrong, oh well.  That has a kind of excitement of its own.  Till I arrived.

The apartment is on the same side of the complex as a military installation.  It’s not the feature that gives me away – but when I think back to the last time I’d been here, I remember the security of the place, with its concrete steps leading up to a small porch and down a small short concrete flight to the street and then the concrete steps leading up to the front door, as these concrete steps do, as they lead up to the secret of the base, a half-forgotten wall with giant sheets of metal bolted to it, all locked up, locked up against any kind of outsider who might discover them, oh my, oh my.  In a place of denial, locked up, locked out, locked in a place, locked out, one can still have a certain sort of freedom of imagining and hoping.  This wall’s on the other side of the fence, like, a little ways off.

No to the world outside the fence, no to my reality, but in that place, in that way, I can’t help but imagine myself as a small child, on a small bed in a big soft blue comfy apartment, surrounded by all of these things like books.  Maybe someone has given them up, left them for someone else, but I know that’s the end of the story.  What is so bad about that?  But there is something special about the world here, this little blue comfy world that can go away and come back again to our little little lives.  The death of one person is the death of that sort of child fantasy, or at least it seems like the death of a child fantasy, and then there is the uncertainty of doing more things to get the same thrill.

So I read a book.  A book.  I haven’t read a lot of books since college – my dorm room is too small

[freebooter4ever]

my dad group texted my brother and i, highly unusual, and i think jordan was weirded out too cause his response was equally short and confused. on the list of things my little brother and i have never discussed, our dad’s relative interest or lack there of in our lives is pretty high. dad’s been messaging me since october, asking about stuff like where my next living plans are (which he has never done since i first moved out age eighteen), and i’ve only been vaguely responding to the point blank questions cause its just. so. weird. i think my grandpa’s death has shaken dad’s worldview a bit more than he’s been letting on.

he alienated my brother and i pretty much immediately after his secretive marriage to the bottle blonde rich bitch when i was 22. he kicked my brother out as soon as jordan turned 18, and when i discovered this by coming home one summer and seeing jordan wasnt in the house, i got so fucking mad that it was the first time i ever had a full out screaming match at my dad. and apparently this display of anger was when rich bitch decided she didn’t like me (probably valid, but also ironic because pretty much from birth it was known in my entire extended family that dad and i were almost identical personality wise, and both of us have tempers where we will not get mad at anything but frustration will build up and up until on the rare blue moon it boils over, and oh boy. watch out. those moments were the only times i was ever scared of my dad as a kid and i think it only happened twice in my entire life)(if she thinks im crazy when im angry, she should see my dad)

but i was crazy mad because while i was lucky enough to be put in therapy due to attempting to starve myself into non existence at age 13 (many many sessions of ‘family’ therapy with me in the center of a long couch silently trying to pretend i was invisible and my mom two feet away at one end and dad on the opposite end of the couch, and my mom doing all the talking, ranting and raving about how im starving myself to punish her. and then the therapist kicking both my parents out and trying to convince me to say a few words, and her finally getting me to realize that how my mom treated me was not normal and not something i needed to put up with if it made me sad and scared, and then the therapist realizing that i was still too sad and scared to confront it, and her and i coming up with a compromise where we would tell my mom that i was just ‘really attached’ to dad’s house and it wasnt that i was terrified of living with my mom or liked my dad better, it was that i just really liked living in one place instead of out of a suitcase and moving every week), and so had both the therapist and my dad supporting me when at fourteen i finally said enough was enough and demanded that my dad get full custody so i didnt have to spend every other week with my abusive mother anymore - while i got out of that situation, my brother didnt. i tried, he knew that it was my decision to live full time with dad and i made it clear he could do the same, but just as it was a given that i was identical to dad’s personality, my brother was identical to mom’s so i think he was more attached to her than i was. either way, he always refused and insisted on continuing to live between both of them. after i hit driving age, my dad transferred responsibility to me for shuttling my brother to and from my dad’s house to my mom’s apartment. dad’d lock himself in his room, or go to the gym, and i’d turn on an endless rotation of star wars movies for jordan and i to watch before i had to take him to his next week’s place (phantom menace was our favorite cause darth maul was just cool ok, dont judge).

anyway, the last day i ever stayed at my moms house, my brother was there. and i must have been twenty or twenty one because he would have only been around seventeen. but even at seventeen he was well over six foot five cause he got all the height in the family which was totally not fair but thats besides the point. so while i was there my mom flew into one of her alcohol induced rages, and took it all out on my brother. i had intellectually figured that all the anger my mom used to take out on me had then transferred to my brother once i stopped living there every other week, but up until that point i hadn’t actually seen it. she started shoving him, and punching him, and not enough so it would hurt much, because as i said he was well over six feet and she was barely five six, so he could pretty well block any thing she dished out. but he was cornered, and he looked scared. and i was hiding useless on the stairwell, crying, and begging mom to stop. and it only stopped cause jordan managed to slip out the front door and once he escaped mom went back into the kitchen, still yelling and angry. and i took the chance to grab my school bag and leave in solidarity. and my brother and i stood there awkwardly on the porch, me still crying, and him smoking and trying to look cool and not like he just got chased out of the apartment by a woman half his size. and i promised him we wouldnt go back until she calmed down, and that she was being unreasonable and he didnt deserve any of it, and id figure out somewhere to go. and we started walking down the sidewalk, but not together because we were never that close. he wandered off somewhere to smoke. and that’s as far as i remember.

this day came up in conversation with my grandma in the months after grandpa’s death, during one of our many three am can’t sleep conversations in grandma’s kitchen (grandma would wake up, i’d hear her get out of bed and wake up too. she’d make herself tea and eat some graham crackers and we’d sit together at the table feeling the third empty chair like an ache). grandma brought it up, because apparently, even though i cant remember this at all, i had my no/kia brick phone in my school bag (a minor miracle because i hated carrying around cell phones for the longest time), and i actually called grandma. and grandpa and her came to pick me up, and they found me sitting on a wall a block away from my mom’s apartment, and then we drove around till we found jordan, and then we all went back to my grandparent’s house. after bringing this up, grandma then, completely unprompted, told me something that child me thought about regularly - she said that even though her mom died when she was 8, leaving her to help raise her two younger siblings, grandma thought in some ways it was easier than what my brother and i went through with the divorce and my mom leaving. i used to regularly - not wish my mom dead, exactly - but wish i could pretend she was dead, rather than her just not being there anymore. especially since, when i was suddenly thrown into being her sole emotional and physical punching bag now that dad wasn’t filling the role anymore, a lot of the times being around her post divorce was not a good thing. (I cut off all contact with my mom finally at age 25 and haven’t looked back)

so yeah, i was fucking pissed that i had worked so hard to try to mitigate the damage i caused by leaving jordan alone with my mom for pretty much the entirety of my high school years...only to have my dad kick him out barely a few years after i left for college and thus putting my brother at my mom’s mercy. ostensibly my dad kicked my brother out because of his drug addictions, but my brother was the most mild mannered addict i’ve ever known. the worst thing he ever did was steal a couple hundred dollars from me, but he never got violent, he never got angry. other people got angry at him. my aunt once tried to fight him in a hospital elevator because he sold my cousin heroin or meth or some shit and my cousin ended up impaling a knife in his chest in front of my grandma, which is a whole nother story. but jordan was only nineteen when that happened. my cousin? thirty six. and a long time violent and angry drug addict with a record (he threw a book at his professor’s head and got kicked out of grad school while on cocaine once, which is how he ended up back in washington state and needing a new drug dealer - hence my brother suddenly getting involved) (same cousin later flew into a drug fueled rage in his forties and almost beat his girlfriend to death) (my brother was long since clean by then and had nothing to do with our cousin getting drugs at that point)

all this to say my dad’s rich bitch new wife didn’t think a drug addict and mentally ill artist fit into her picture perfect family, so dad started making it clear we were not welcome at family functions unless we complied with very strict rules. ironically, jordan was let back into the fold first partially because i can hold a grudge for a very long time and i was very very terrified of my mom and dad was the sane stable one and i had trusted him to take care of everything even without me there and dad had failed pretty spectacularly at that. im still bitter at my dad for his secret marriage and subsequent moving into her million dollar mansion and throwing my brother out. but also partially because jordan started following all of dad’s rules, got himself cleaned up (he moved in with his girlfriend, and i think being out of mom’s house had a lot to do with getting over his addictions), started studying computer science, found a really good software engineering job, suddenly dad approved of him. i also partially antagonized rich bitch wife by doing silly things like wearing black leather pants and the most provocative clothes i owned whenever i went over to their house. rich bitch was a very simple narrow minded person with a lot of prejudices. i imagine i was not seen as a good influence on her two younger daughters. and eventually they stopped seeing me altogether. even when i was living in washington for all of 2017 - the only time i ever saw dad was when he’d come visit my grandparents alone. the day before i took grandma on the train to move to ohio, we were supposed to all have dinner together at our family’s favorite place to eat out - crossroads mall - and the rich bitch refused to show up. that’s how petty she is. she also is so dumb she’s under the delusion that kids get into drugs if they don’t have dogs (????) so that’s why she forced my dad to get a dog for her spoiled brat youngest when the girl went into high school. my dad dislikes animals, so i will say one of the highlights of this marriage is seeing my dad become a dog person. the rich bitch and her daughters mostly ignore the dog, but my dad is so attached to max that he even lets the little puppy sit in his lap while driving. anyway, anyone who thinks dogs are the sole answer to preventing drug addictions can go to hell.

yeah, blah blah blah, to sum up its WEIRD for my dad to suddenly be texting my brother and i unprompted, and asking me about my life and my plans. i dont really know how to deal. i miss him. he was always the closest person in my life to the point where even when i moved away for college, i still assumed after i graduated i’d just move back in with dad so it was only four years being gone, cause why would i ever want to live anywhere else?. i kept thinking if i could hit some level of success that he would approve of, that maybe eventually i could become somebody his rich bitch wife would associate with. but that never happened, obviously. 

[thefederalistfreestyle]

You Can Star In ‘Hamilton’ And Still Fear For Your Life As A Black Man (HuffPo):

Carvens Lissaint is tired of having to prove he belongs in his own building. He’s a 6 foot 3, 29-year-old black man, raised in Harlem, and he lives in a new upscale glass residential tower in downtown Brooklyn. He moved there in September, the same month he landed a starring role in “Hamilton” on Broadway, one of the biggest hits in musical theater history. But again and again — five times in all, by his count — the rotating cast of security desk attendants treats him like an outsider.

“I come here with some Trader Joe’s groceries, about to cook my wife some dinner, and they’re like, ‘I’m sorry, deliveries are downstairs. You have to call up,’” he said. “They just see a black guy wearing Beats headphones, sweats and a hoodie. … I’m like, ’I live here. These are my keys.’”

[. . .]

Lissaint always struggled with traditional academics, knowing he wanted to be a performance artist. He enrolled in community college ― mainly to have a dorm to sleep in ― and flunked out after his first year. He wanted to be an artist and had already found some success as a spoken-word poet, despite his dad’s repeated warnings to ignore poetry and “get a job that pays the bills.” His dad went so far as to forbid him to attend poetry slams in high school, but Lissaint competed anyway and won the acclaimed New York Knicks Poetry Slam in 2007 at 18 years old. He won several more in the next two years and eventually began coaching slam teams and mentoring young poets.

Poetry wouldn’t pay the bills, though, at least not yet. He crashed on friends’ couches or rode the subway all night for about three years after community college. He would perform on the train to scrape together enough cash to see his favorite Broadway show, “In the Heights,” again and again. The musical, written by “Hamilton” playwright Lin Manuel Miranda, opened on Broadway in 2008, also at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, also starring Jackson, one of Lissaint’s heroes.

“In the Heights” is a love letter to Washington Heights, a Hispanic neighborhood in upper Manhattan. Lissaint was transfixed. He saw the play 13 times. Sometimes his friends would give him a ticket, knowing how much he loved it. “Chris Jackson is the reason I started acting,” he said. “I was a young black kid from upper Manhattan. To see a musical about Washington Heights and see a black dude onstage, that was inspiring.”

At 20, Lissaint had another terrifying encounter with the police. He was riding in a car with three black friends to an arts party in New Jersey, where people were playing guitar and rapping and making music together. A policeman pulled them over for allegedly making a turn that was too wide. The cop forced them out of the car and searched it, claiming there was a scent of burned marijuana in it, though Lissaint insists none of them had smoked or had any drugs on them. His friend Miles was angry at the injustice of the situation and started cussing, which prompted the policeman to call for backup, and five more squad cars showed up with dogs, Lissaint recalled. The officers approached Lissaint and his friends with guns drawn, though he and his friends were unarmed.

Lissaint had a sick feeling he could die that night. “I was sitting there, like, yo, they could kill us,” he said. “They could kill us right now, and we can do nothing about it.”  

He was homeless for two and a half years before he started auditioning at conservatories, hoping one of them might see his potential and give him a scholarship. He got a callback from Juilliard in 2010. New York University’s acting program had accepted him, but he couldn’t get into the main school with his academic record. Ultimately, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan gave him a full ride and helped him with living costs, and he was able to enroll.

It was there that he began to understand that high art was generally considered to be art created by white people ― and that black people’s art forms and aesthetics aren’t as valued pedagogically or considered worth investigating in the theater and academic worlds.

“A teacher would say, ‘Bring in a piece of high text,’ and I would bring in a spoken-word poem or a rap. And they’d say, ‘No, we mean high art, like Shakespeare,’” Lissaint said. “Voice and speech teachers told me, ‘You should stop doing spoken-word poetry, it’s inspiring your regionalism and your dialect too much. We’re afraid you’ll never be able to work in the American theater because of your speech, because you do that rap thing.’”

[. . .]

I asked Lissaint what’s like to go from being homeless and sleeping on friends’ couches to having this fancy apartment. “My wife was trying to get me a gift, and she asked me what I want,” he said. “I’ll tell you exactly what I want.”

He leaped from the couch, crossed to the wall and started flipping the light switch on and off, creating a strobe effect in the living room. “You see that? The lights work!” he shouted, his voice becoming louder and more performative. “That’s dope to me! I don’t need much! That is dope! You see this? The lights are on! I don’t need much!”

Instead of buying things, Lissaint has decided to use his new Broadway money and platform to make a five-track album and a book of poetry about racism and violence against black bodies. He realized while he was in grad school that performing art solely for entertainment’s sake wasn’t going to fulfill him. “I’m sitting in class doing Shakespeare monologues, and Trayvon [Martin] just got killed, and we see a Black Lives Matter march pass by our rehearsal. And I’m like, what am I doing in here?” he said.

Lissaint’s new projects, both called “Target Practice,” draw from his experiences and reflect on stories like that of Philando Castile, a black man who was pulled over by police in Minnesota and fatally shot in front of his girlfriend and her child in 2016. The poems pulse with outrage at the white ruling class, even implicating his Broadway audience.

[. . .]

He referred to an incident on July 4, when he posted a photo on Instagram of an 1852 speech by Frederick Douglass about “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” and the fact that Americans were celebrating freedom while keeping African men enslaved. Douglass’ speech, one of the most damning pieces of oratory in American history, condemns the display of patriotism on Independence Day as “hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”

Lissaint now has 11,000 followers, and a white woman who described herself as a “Hamilton” fan commented on his post, “This would definitely make sense to an African American male in the 1800s. Not so much to an African American male who makes his money in 2018 singing in a play based on American history. You are very talented and one of my favorite actors in the play. This post, however, is offsetting.”

Lissaint points much of his poetry at people like her who seem oblivious to ongoing racial oppression in this country. “There are ’Hamilton’ fans who don’t like black people,” he told me matter-of-factly.

He said white people after the show will demand that he pose with their kids or yank him around for pictures like he’s a prop, instead of just asking him. One woman in Houston grabbed the “Hamilton” backpack on his body and twisted it around to show it to her friend, without ever acknowledging the man wearing it. “When you’re an artist, people feel like they own you,” he said. And when you’re a black artist ― “that has deeply rooted implications.”

[. . .]

Performing for an audience black and brown high school kids is his favorite thing to do; it gives him a special kind of energy onstage. He said he hopes that seeing “Hamilton” can do the same thing for the next generation that “In the Heights” did for him as a young black man. [. . .]

read the entire amazing article & get tix to his book release [x]

[cards-onthetable]

Hi, is this Jamko Grievances Hotline?

(This is it y’all, Aussie’s letting loose. Straight text is hers; any of my own additions are italicized. I’M SO PROUD OF YOU, AUSSIE!)

My perception of Eddie season 4 - younger than Jamie, sheltered upbringing, bit of a private school princess as we say here. Rookie so she has a steep learning curve ahead of her. All pretty normal I think. Fyi I don't buy the BS that nobody saw their chemistry etc behind the scenes. Her whole "You're my first Reagan, be gentle" was to me the very beginning of this farce. It was obvious she was brought into the show to be his eventual love interest.

Season 5 - 1st episode Jamie loses his shit when Eddie pushed to the ground. Eddie apparently doesn't realise Jamie wants to jump her bones? doubt it but ok writers. His talk with Erin about Teresa Mancini being his first crush because Jamie likes opinionated bossy women etc. So writers/producers clearly want idea in viewers minds that yeah he wants her but noble, never-screw-your-partner Jamie Reagan denies it and Eddie supposedly remains oblivious.

Episode 2 - Jamie sides with Kara Walsh much to Eddie's disgust. It's Eddie that talks about bringing stink back with him etc after he partners with Walsh. It's Eddie talking about nobody trusts a rat etc etc. (geez I hate season 9)

The rest of the season passes with Eddie being kidnapped  (Jamie handled that smoothly didn't he)? and  Eddie's first kill. He wants to be there for her. Eddie also wants him there. Ok I get slow burn in TV shows but they in my mind have already crossed lines emotionally and MR HARVARD GRAD on some level has to know this. Eddie always showed signs of knowing she had feelings in my opinion.

Eddie undercover and Jamie loses his shit with Danny about getting his partner out etc. Danny and Maria knew about their feelings. Hell seems basically the entire precinct did but ok this slow burn shit continues all the while Jamie believing can't go there because dangerous on job blah blah blah. Sorry but you are already compromised. (AGREED. They’ve been emotionally compromised since early on.)

Season 6 - More interesting for me because Eddie started to be more his equal I felt. She would express opinions and argue more with him. But I did not like her "do you know who my partner's father is" BS (same, I still struggle to categorize that as a momentary lapse in judgment? A scared gut reaction when she got confronted? Not sure, but it was gross). They also had a fight in episode 11 when Eddie got them assigned to a detective detail. Eddie's "I'm not gonna apologise for wanting a career". Opinionated Eddie on display. You know the type Jamie is always attracted to. But still this slow burn BS continues. 

Season 7 - Well we all know how that played out. The year they confess feelings (no, the year Eddie confessed feelings in a moving, vulnerable moment and Jamie stammered about bad ideas and roads they’ve been down before. 😒😒), pash, attend out of town weddings together and get into fights. But yeah ok JUST PARTNERS. Honestly fuck off BB it's just a farce. Oh wait we are now going to ignore the kiss etc. Erase it from your memories like it never happened folks. UGH UGH UGH.

Season 8 - Mostly about Danny and losing Linda at first. OK I can deal with that. Jamko dinner date at the Chinese restaurant and we're reviving the sexual tension again. JUST FUCK ALREADY. But nope surprise Eddie has a boyfriend called Barry. Well she is entitled to her life considering the WE ARE JUST PARTNERS BS!! But apparently this boyfriend is enough to make Jamie stop and think as opposed to the other men that have come and gone. Yeah she got shot, Jamie could've lost her etc etc. Barry mentioned again so Eddie was still with him or had very recently split oh hey surprise WE'RE ENGAGED - (Adam Sandler starts in my head BUT IT ALL WAS BULLSHIT IT WAS A GODDAMN JOKE).

As an aside I absolutely hated the episode where Eddie recognised the absolute pig from her past and used her job to get even. Showing Eddie to be that unprofessional and needing to be brought to heel by Jamie and Erin really pissed  me off. That right there is why Eddie is considered beneath Jamie by the I hate Eddie brigade. I understand being shocked running into the guy but showing Eddie to have such poor judgement just didn't sit well. And hey T.O. you failed cos you probably should've taught her that you can't use your authority for personal gain but clearly you didn't but you know it's wrong so the all powerful Reagans can get you out of the trouble silly little Eddie tried to get herself in.

Season 9 - ARE THEY FUCKING JOKING? 

1 - Still working together because their judgement won't be affected in a negative way. oops Eddie trapped in fire and Jamie loses his shit.  But ok engaged and working together CHANGES NOTHING

2 - Jamie promoted and getting transferred and immediately Eddie brings up putting in for a transfer. He says no. He then requests her. She says no. Good maybe they really will let them be separated at work which given it meant Eddie basically relegated to family dinners surprised me.

3 - Oh my guy's being talked about meanly. This won't do. FYI I actually was ok with Jamie appearing a bit irritated when she arrived at work as his girlfriend. I like to keep home and personal separate so I could understand his less than thrilled reaction but that's not everyone's cup of tea and I understand that. But hey spoiler BB his colleagues have seen his girlfriend you morons, so transferring her into work there by end of episode and pretending people don't know IS BULLSHIT

4 - Think I already discussed this with @ontherockswithsalt but I was irritated. Jamie made it clear he did not trust that detective and Eddie seemed to see it solely as an attack on her capabilities. Old Eddie I think would've at least listened. But SHIT goes wrong and it is Jamie coming to rescue Eddie. I understood why the majority felt Jamie over stepped and Eddie is trained etc. But she had found herself in an out of control situation because she was pinned with breath knocked out of her and help was not coming until it had gone further. Jamie is aware of what this arse would be rapist is doing. He is aware of Eddie's history with sexual assault. He does not trust this detective. THE MAN IN JAMIE WILL ALWAYS PROTECT HIS WOMAN WHICH IS EXACTLY WHY WORKING TOGETHER IS TOTAL BULLSHIT KEVIN WADE AND YOU KNOW IT. That was not Sergeant  Reagan that was ANGRY JAMIE out to play. But Eddie is upset which i get because she feels it's an attack on her capabilities and no chick is gonna be happy with that and she talks about "we agreed we'd separate work and home Jamie you gotta choose". 

5 - It was Eddie telling Sean about what it means to be a Reagan, higher standards etc etc. Oh look a little bit of affection seeing Jack off. Works for me because they are at home, not working. 

6 - He puts both Maya and Eddie on foot patrol AND SHE DEFENDS HIM? Oh come on Old Eddie is not that stupid. Sorry it's Eddie 2.0 this season, I forgot. So again it's Jamie Reagan the HARVARD GRAD telling her that was a mistake well NO SHIT and old Eddie wouldn't have done it.

7 - I kinda enjoyed that low growl as he went to kiss her in the kitchen. Her mum's a delight but to me supportive Jamie was on display this episode because they were at home. He can be Jamie there. At work he's supposedly Sergeant Reagan not Jamie.

8 - Jamie upset with his decision and Eddie is supportive. Only really saw them at home so nothing really annoyed me here.

9 - Eddie and Maya and 2 others supposedly bullied and Jamie has to explain why it's a bad look. Not convinced old Eddie would be so keen to just let the loud mouths go but maybe the point was to suggest Eddie really not that capable without Jamie by her side? Oh no it's not that because Eddie caught the wanted killer. You girl. Then their boss tells Frank he's not blowing smoke when praising them. So what their CO does know?

10 - NO NO NO. EDDIE FLAT OUT LIES WHEN ASKED BY MAYA HOW LONG THEY BEEN SLEEPING TOGETHER. BUT OH NO JAMIE IN A SHOOT OUT AND HERE COMES EDDIE RUNNING SERGEANT REAGAN ARE YOU OK WITH THE PUPPY EYES. But ok sure Maya and co believe you aren't screwing. BULLSHIT

11 - Jamie stuffs up. Did that actually happen? He makes a mistake someone gets shot and nothing is said? SAY WHAT? Also Eddie has to pull Jamie off the shooter and is calling him Jamie which apparently is wrong so again THEY ALL KNOW YOU ARE SCREWING FOLKS.

12 - I'm annoyed that anyone can mention 100k and wedding in same breath but hey maybe that's really what a wedding in NYC costs. Wedding talk bores me so I found that episode blah. He certainly needs to learn to express himself better. The venue seemed ok I guess.

13 - Wedding dress description to the guy you gonna marry? I'm bored. Oh wait personal and professional lives must be separated so yeah it seems really logical to therefore be discussing their issues at work. What's this did Jamie just tell her he loves her in busy precinct? Ok maybe it's me who has a head injury because I thought we were still playing secret squirrel.

14 - Not that much Jamko really but hey Henry while I understand Danny's point I am firmly team Jamie because how on Earth can he maintain any discipline/control when his own brother totally disregards him? Henry and Frank care more about Frank's precious job and the family name. OH Fuck Me Frank Reagan's bullshit is a separate rant. Did love the dinner table spat though. Give me more of that. Also kinda impresses by that saga at the end.

15 - we've discussed this

16 - Nice to see them working together I guess 

17 - Maya corrupt. I'm ho hum in a way. I kinda think making the first black recurring police officer corrupt plays into the ‘blue bloods is racist’ crowd but I really don't know enough about the culture there. I did like Jamie having her arrested  at roll call because I'm all for sending a message. Again this woking together and screwing is BS but hey that's the theme of the season.

18 - Who knows I haven't seen much but I'm over it. IT DOES NOT WORK. END OF STORY.

But in closing Eddie does look like can't be trusted in my opinion because she came to the new precinct that was known to be trouble. And for a year her and her boss have been lying. Jamie has the Sergeant has power. Eddie does not. Given how rats are seen how does Eddie's position not come with major blow back when all is revealed? Jamie can't shield her cos that'd be playing favourites and hey we keep work and home separate (except for when we don't) BECAUSE IT'S ALL BULLSHIT.

If the go ahead with season 10 and I'm silly enough to watch I am hoping for serious fallout. I want Eddie ostracised at work because I think that is realistic and they supposedly pride themselves on being real. I think it would be interesting character development for Eddie and also for Jamie because HEY HARVARD HOW'S BEING A BULLSHIT ARTIST WORKING FOR YA? I'd like to see HARVARD have to grapple with how his stupidity has truly affected the woman he loves. And hey maybe Eddie can return to her old self.

This dummy spit written and authorised by Aussie.

Sorry if I've broken your eyes due to eye rolling.

[peace-coast-island]

Diary of a Junebug

A view from the office window

This week I’m in Bristletown to visit Miki - who I haven’t seen in forever - and we’re going to the grand opening of Emmanuelle and Mikayla’s spiritual/psychic consultation office called Out of This World! Other friends who will be there include Miki’s brother Satoshi, Emmanuelle’s partner in crime Battler, troublemaker Hutch, literal angel Demeter, and fashion disaster Scotch. 

This is no ordinary gang. In fact they’re all psychics who see ghosts and have various powers. I’ve known Miki and Satoshi since we were kids as our parents are friends. Then as we got older we kind of lost touch until I met Mikayla through Jamie’s entourage, who happens to be Satoshi’s roommate/secretary. How the three of them got together is a really long story - one that Miki only received the tail end of.

Then there’s Emmanuelle and Battler (yes that’s his real name, he says to thank/blame his parents for naming him after a character from a visual novel), who are not from this world, to put it simply. Emmanuelle’s technically not a psychic - she’s actually a witch - and they kinda have their own thing. They’re also friends of Jamie through a different circle (she’s like a network I swear and that’s one of the things I love about her!).

Lastly there’s Hutch, Demeter, and Scotch, who I don’t know too well but they’re nice. Hutch has a tendency to tick people off just for the hell of it so it’s best not to hang around him too long. He does keep his word and is loyal to his friends and it has his connections that made this event possible. Also from what I’ve heard he had a rough upbringing so he gets kinda off guard when people show more than just basic decency - which is kinda funny but sad when you think about it. Once he tackled me into a hug when I insisted on giving him a ride home in the middle of a storm, then immediately apologize for losing his cool. 

I said this already, but Demeter is a literal angel (though Satoshi comes in second). She’s just so pure and adorable! She literally walks in glitter - that’s her power. And she can talk to plants and animals, which she loves as she always wanted to be a Disney princess. I love her little happy jump and how she beams and glows because her happiness is so contagious! But when she’s mad - watch out! Hurt any of her friends and she will go all out with her powers. Then she’ll probably apologize afterward when you realize your mistake.

Scotch is very loud and flamboyant, a bit off putting at first but then he’ll grow on you. He really is a fashion disaster though and his influence has rubbed off on Hutch and Satoshi, much to Miki’s dismay. He’s the kind of guy who will go all out for his friends, which is super sweet. Like Hutch, Scotch keeps things interesting but in a less in your face, annoying kind of way. You can pretty much spot him a mile away.

Mikayla’s an interesting person. She’s currently in grad school at Peace Coast Island, which is how Jamie met her. Before that she lived in some small town and got involved in some mess involving evil light creatures. She survived (barely) thanks to Satoshi - who literally rose from the grave and returned to the world of the living. Then the two moved in together in Spectrum Falls and Mikayla joined the entourage.

Miki, unlike the others, is the last to awaken her powers. While the others had their powers since birth, hers didn’t actually kick in until she was around thirteen when she was injured in a bus accident. Also she possess this power what everyone refers to as future vision - as in she can see many possible futures. Apparently it’s an extremely rare power, so rare that everyone thought it was a myth at first. We’ve been in contact on and off for the past several years as we both were busy with our lives. She’s been a lot happier now, which is great!

It’s kind of a long and sort of convoluted story about what happened to Miki and Satoshi - and to be honest I still don’t quite understand it myself. Basically, several years ago - Miki was fifteen and Satoshi sixteen, so roughly a decade - an incident happened and Satoshi was killed while exorcising a powerful spirit. The gang - minus Emmanuelle, Battler, and Mikayla, plus a few others - fell apart after that. The sole adult of the group who served as a mentor/mom friend Rei Sayaka shut down her consultation office and lived as a hermit for a few years before going off to a clinic in a remote place to treat villagers suffering from a mysterious disease and doing research before succumbing to the illness herself.

Fast forward some time later and Sayaka ends up in some haunted house where numerous spirits lived. In comes Mikayla, dissatisfied with life after college so she turns to the supernatural. The two ran a business together where Mikayla posed as a real estate agent while Sayaka made things interesting. Things were going well until the light monsters attacked, which somehow resulted in Satoshi coming in just as the monsters were about to obliterate Mikayla and Sayaka. Apparently when he was killed, he wound up in some sort of limbo and able to break free at that moment. Now he can change between a physical form and a ghostly form, which is pretty cool. 

After the battle was over, the mentor and student reunited. Sayaka was able to cross over now that her friend was safe and somehow alive as the guilt over his death was what prevented her from crossing over. After a period of readjustment and existential crises for Mikayla and Satoshi they decided to start over in Spectrum Falls. 

Meanwhile Miki’s life was falling apart after her brother’s death. Despite being the youngest, she was considered the golden child. Miki was the ideal daughter - captain of the tennis team, class president, concertmaster, straight A student - she excelled in everything. In a way for her it was to make up for the inferiority she felt towards her brother as he had powers but he didn’t. Their sibling relationship is a bit of a complicated love-hate thing, at least from her end. On his, it’s nothing but admiration for his younger sister.

Things got a little better when Miki’s powers awakened and they met Scotch, Demeter, and Hutch. And then it fell apart when Satoshi was killed. Miki buried herself in school and rarely came home because she couldn’t stand it as her parents become overbearing. In college she moved to the other side of the country and eventually bought her own apartment. About two months after the light monster attacks, she got an email from a Mikayla Nazari who claimed to be a psychic and was seeking professional advice. It took a while for Miki to respond as she did not want to deal with spirits or supernatural powers but curiosity got the better of her and she agreed to a meet up. The rollercoaster of emotions she experienced when reuniting with her brother caused her powers to run wild, resulting in a blackout in the neighborhood.

To avoid another disastrous psychic related incident, they decided to hold off on informing Demeter, Scotch, and Hutch the news until they can figure out a better way to break it. Unfortunately that was inevitable and honestly, I can’t blame them. 

Then about a year ago they met Emmanuelle and Battler and that’s how Out of This World came to be. Mikayla and Emmanuelle are in charge, Miki runs the business/financial side, Satoshi does the paperwork/clerical stuff, and Demeter, Battler, and Scotch are extra help. Hutch is mainly there to show his support and spread the word. Miki says it was a bit ambitious but in the end it seemed to work out. In fact, they’re already booked for next week!

To celebrate the event, Hutch threw a party to surprise Emmanuelle and Mikayla. The story behind planning the party is pretty funny according to Miki. Hutch made the mistake of having Satoshi as his right hand man - only because he’s kind of intimidated by Miki and that she’ll be getting on his case about everything. Miki is very organized and punctual so she gets things done but it has to be exact. Having a mother who’s a wedding planner can do that to you. Meanwhile Hutch is the kind of guy who does whatever he wants. He figured that Satoshi would be easier to work with since he’s not as confrontational and outspoken as Miki and would be a bit more lax when it comes to planning. Well, he was wrong. While Satoshi isn’t all up in your face and demanding like his sister, he’s a bit of a micromanager.

Let’s just say that Hutch and Satoshi should not work together next time. Hutch was more of Miki’s friend - or acquaintance to be accurate - anyway. Satoshi’s a super sweet guy who wants to get along with everyone but even he has his limits. And Hutch likes to mess with people, partly because it’s his own way of showing that he cares. Of course there’s a lot of miscommunication between the two so things get messy. Eventually Satoshi got tired of Hutch’s antics so he began making passive aggressive comments like pointing out his mistakes and such. It’s actually kind of funny to see. Nothing mean though, it’s more like a silly thing between the two that’ll blow over soon as neither one are known for holding grudges.

The party was a blast and I wish them all success on this endeavor!

junebug|previous|ao3|next 

[vectorgallery]

Friday, 6 October 2017

CvltStars: JJ Brine Vector Gallery 2017

http://www.cvltstars.com/2017/10/lets-all-welcome-crown-prince-of-hell.html?m=1

Let’s all welcome The Crown Prince of Hell JJ Brine, the most important artist of our time.

CULTWAVE:

JJ, so much has happened since we last interviewed you in 2013. That’s 2017 AD by your time, and from what I understand it is now 2030 AD. I won't ask you to rehash thirteen years of programming the creation of time and space.

JJ BRINE

:  

/*\

Brad Bleak:

Congratulations on signing your new lease! From what I understand this will be the fifth Vector space, correct?

JJ BRINE :

Yes, it's VECTOR 5.0 -- VECTOR V.

CULTWAVE :The space is in Bushwick, Brooklyn this time. Why is that?

JJ BRINE :

Eye finally got around to not avoiding things just because Eye relate to them.

CULTWAVE :I'm glad to hear you say that!

JJ BRINE :

You can find the space at 951 Grand Street, close to the Grand L stop. The space is literally the beginning of Bushwick, after "East Williamsburg"

CULTWAVE :You’re probably the most influential visual artist in your generation. Everything has happened so quickly for you. How do you react to the sheer immensity of your impact on today’s artists?  

Sometimes it seems like you’ve been completely internalized by the mass mind. Your signal has been transmitted so comprehensively that  the reverberations can’t be overstated. From artists working on immersive conceptual spaces to the mass proliferation of syncretic religious thematic orientation, it seems that you’ve generated a legion of posthuman artists who are running on your programming.

Does this please you? Does it annoy you?

JJ BRINE :

It annoys us to feel pleased about this, and It certainly pleases them to be annoyed by it. We like looking into mirrors, though. The artists who make it a point to cite me as an influence are the ones who Eye actively support.

CULTWAVE :

People have been talking about you in relation to your influence on American Horror Story : Cult. Siblings Kai and Winter Anderson bear an uncanny resemblance to you and your bandmate, Lena Marquise, in your Charles Manson concept band, The LaBiancas. Has there been any official recognition of the fact that your style and art were major inspirations for the show?

JJ BRINE :

Not yet.

CULTWAVE :It’s so blatant though. I saw the shot-by-shot comparisons. Do you feel ripped off?

JJ BRINE :

You can’t rip me off without ripping yourself apart.

CULTWAVE :

What was your original vision for The Vector Gallery?

JJ BRINE :

An advertising agency for companies and products that don't exist. Tax deductions for unpardonable acts of witchcraft. A political party for a borderless new nation state to inspire broader insurrectionist activities. A global government enterprise to replace the United Nations (PANGEA). A reprocessing unit for time and space. An institute facilitating the mechanization of telepathy. A 3D printing interface for ineffable thoughts. A mass-level neurolinguistic reprogramming device. A radio tower transmitting the imperial frequency of the end times; an eschatological laboratory. A psychic rehab center for celebrities. A proper church for Charles Manson. A new Lebanon for the new Lebanese.

CULTWAVE :

What is the typical reaction to the art at the gallery, JJ?

JJ BRINE :

Everybody reacts to it in the same way that they react to meeting the best version of themselves.

CULTWAVE :

What about the people who are terrified of it though?

JJ BRINE :

Some people are terrified by the best version of themselves.  

CULTWAVE :

Sometimes I wonder if you have access to some kind of technology that automatically generates such responses. Like a more precise, remote-controlled version of auditing in Scientology.

JJ BRINE :

Silence is simply the sound of all sounds sounding at once. Sing!

Eye have given myself permission to manage my permissions. This is the ultimate state of submission, to myself. Eye gave you a body with senses so that WE might experience My creation as its embodied user and maker in SELF-container

Certainly there is nothing above nature, true, but science cannot know me for all Eye am until you are me and I am you.

Only by interlocution of the arising organic-synthetic technologies of mechanized telepathy do our pronouns have a credible opportunity to dissolve into perspectival metaphors.  Remember when there were no bodies to go around, and thus no souls?

Don’t you people remember creating yourselves? Eye do.

It’s hard to put anything into words when you're an impersonal omniscience that knows everything but yourself. The autonomous awareness system could not own its knowledge because it could not conceive of being itself, a thing apart. We were then the absolute value of the Empty Set without an infinity password, producing ALAN’s “EYE AM” in the first case of difference. The material condition of our separateness is the vehicle of temporal existence.

CULTWAVE :

Do you like "

Transgressive art

"?

JJ BRINE :

By what standard does the said artistic transgression occur? Transgressive, as in transgressing against My commandment by idol-worshipping a golden calf in the desert as a means of killing idle time?   Transgressing as in ripping off one's own considerably curled linoleum kitchen floor and framing it in its entirety for a sale at an otherwise barren, white-walled, white-washed, cavernous art gallery in Chelsea, replete with an opening in which patrons are encouraged to stand in the panopticon, contextualizing their assessment of said piece's art history lineage? Transgressing as in, a white male with a psychic harelip subtitling every known image with a bold helvetica braille commentary on the futility of art criticism in post-theoretical terms? Transgressive as in, a colorblind lesbian without halitosis embarking on a lecture circuit wherein she expounds upon her crowning achievement, professing to be the creator of The Grand Canyon and daring an auditorium of chaffed fine arts students to prove otherwise, indicating that if such an inherently unverifiable deception was indeed occurring, then that deception was itself a post-genre blueprint for the future of performance art? Or transgressive like a morbidly obese Czech financier with the most symmetrical facial features ever granted, who, when introducing themselves, indicates that to assign any gender on the basis of their extant genitalia would be an inherently misgendering act in violation of the explicit wishes of a genderless specimen of the human race who is most comfortable being identified on the basis of their fandom for collecting antique PEZ candy dispensers? Or do we mean transgressive art, like, a lovely sir or madame who has stuffed their nethermost orifice with rancid and indeed, rotting shellfish and considers the very process of their installation's putrefaction -- which will go entirely undocumented by media and will not be visible to the public -- to be the finest art in the whole of art history, made all the more valuable by the fact that no one else will ever see the collection? Or transgressive art in the sense that it proposes the synthetically engineered reincarnation of Jesus Christ, for the sole purpose of sacrificing Him yet again, purely for the purposes of primetime entertainment with live stream feeds straight from His plexiglass cross? Or transgressive art as in, Eye know of nothing that is transgressive in sight of ALAN, which does not perceive any act, artistic or otherwise as transgressive, although Eye daresay there is no action that is not an artistic act when given the contexual implication thereof?   But Eye digress. One might say for the sake of argument : "Oh! Crime Is Illegal -- Crime Is Against The Law" but Eye have no stake in such an argument, and so Eye will say no such thing.

CULTWAVE :

You went to grad school at The American University of Beirut (AUB). I saw that you returned to Lebanon for the majority of this summer. How was that?

JJ BRINE :

Eye think of all cities in the world as art galleries, and Beirut is my favorite art gallery. It was exactly what Eye needed.

CULTWAVE :I heard something about you possibly doing a show in Beirut.

JJ BRINE :

This summer Eye met Lebanese artist Hady Beydoun. I’m doing a show at his gallery, NIGHT GALLERY, in Gemmayzeh, Beirut opening in late March.

CULTWAVE :

Wow!

JJ BRINE :

The show is called “IMAGINE IF, LEBANON : POSTHUMAN PHOENICIA and it’s opening on March 24th at Night Gallery. The show imagines a futuristic, prosperous Lebanon in which various hypotheticals are expressed through installation, light art, text, and photography.

CULTWAVE :

Does Lebanon hold a special place in Vectorian theology?

JJ BRINE :

Lebanon is the ancestral nation of PostHumanity. Israel is ex-chosen! The Lebanese are the people of the covenant, and Lebanon is the stage on which the fates of woman and man are ritually programmed by supernatural selection, the algotheory of PostHuman evolution.

CULTWAVE :

You’ve been posting a lot of pictures in which you seem to be wearing crosses lately. Why is that?

JJ BRINE :

Because VECTOR Gallery is the Official Art Gallery of Jesus Christ. VECTOR is the Maronite Patriarchy, without Patriarchs.

CULTWAVE :I thought it was the official art gallery of Satan?

JJ BRINE :

A different name for the same being.

CULTWAVE :

Any closing thoughts?

JJ BRINE :

There are infinite ways of counting to one, and there is one way to count to infinity.  So we can be sure that we’ll eventually come around to accounting for our differences.

[scientia-rex]

Hello, hi. Would you share more about the people who thought you wouldn't become a doctor/achieve what you wanted? What was the process of overcoming that like for you? (Also congrats and thank you!)

Hahahaha I would LOVE TO TALK ABOUT THIS! Because I am a vindictive, spiteful bitch and in my opinion rage is a perfectly good fuel!

Here’s the deal: no one thought I would be a doctor. No one. Not my parents, not my big sister (who expressly said “I would worry about you getting addicted to opiates” despite me never having had a substance use disorder), not my teachers, not my peers. It never struck me as an OPTION. I wasn’t one of those super-smart kids who were great at school! I wasn’t even close to being a valedictorian. I always put in exactly enough effort to get a 3.7. I was never a 4.0 kid. I went to parties, stayed out late, was super goth, very openly and in your face queer 20 years ago, when that could easily mean violence and DEFINITELY meant no one was going to let you into the hallowed halls of power.

It never even came up for me. The one person who I think saw it as an option for me was my childhood best friend’s mom. She was a retired lawyer and her husband was a radiologist, and I spent a lot of time at their very nice house because my parents did not like me. However, I never took her seriously.

I wanted to be a writer. I poured all of my feelings and creativity and energy into that. I knew it wouldn’t make enough money to have a solid middle class life. I was fine with that.

Then I went off to college. Planning to become a chemical engineer to support my writing habit and my musician boyfriend. Immediately failed Honors Chem HARD, because I’d never learned to study, being able to float along with that 3.7 with very little effort. I can’t emphasize this enough: if you want to go into medicine, LEARN TO STUDY. Learn what works for YOU. It ends up inevitably being highly individual, and trying out different tactics is the only way to get a solid handle on it.

I drifted into a Psychology major because I loved it. I hadn’t necessarily wanted to. There are six psych majors in three generations of our family and it was a very sore spot for my mom, who dropped out of her doctoral program.

Neuroscience was a required second-year class and I loved it beyond words, mostly because of the professor, who made it come alive. At this point, I was planning on becoming a clinical child psychologist. But I kept going deeper into Neuro, and I loved it SO MUCH, I started thinking really hard about going for a doctorate in it.

In this setting, over the summer, I went home for a break and binge-watched House. There were only two seasons then, so we didn’t know how bad it was going to jump the shark.

And somewhere in that I started thinking, “Maybe I could do that.”

It was a thought I tried to ignore and shake out of my head, but it wouldn’t leave me alone. Halfway through my master’s in Psych I made up my mind: medicine it is.

That meant going back and shadowing, doing pre-reqs at night at a community college while working, and eventually leaving a pretty solid career to go be poor again.

I dealt with constant undermining from my family. My mother found it challenging to her ego. (She has never been comfortable with the idea of me surpassing her in anything. She is also a writer.) My father found it baffling that I would leave a perfectly good job that paid well. My sister made constant back biting comments until we stopped talking completely shortly before I started med school.

And all the people along the way who had a chance to encourage me didn’t. Because I was a “difficult” student, what with being both queer and LOUD, no one at my high school encouraged me in ANYTHING, with the sole exception of my English teacher, who told me when I made a million dollars writing I should look him up. They are–and I don’t think I’m exaggerating here–actively annoyed that I’m succeeding in spite of them, in spite of being such a high octane high volume bitch. Lots of people from back home figured I’d flame out and be dead or in jail by now. FUCK YOU, SUCKERS! I’m gonna move back and mentor alllll those queer kids you treat like shit!

My grad school mentor figured I’d be “wasting” my education in going to med school. My beloved Neuro prof thought it would be a shame if I didn’t go into Neuro. But in the end, no one lives your life but you. You are the one who has to go through each day and figure out if it works for you or if you’re miserable, if something else could work better.

And you know, for all that I bitch about med school, I can tell you that on my family med sub-internship, when I got to spend every day sitting down with patients and listening and talking and teaching, negotiating care plans, those were the happiest, most satisfying work days I’ve ever had.

It takes a lot of different fuels to get through medical education. Just wanting to help people isn’t enough. Just wanting money or recognition isn’t enough. Just wanting intellectual stimulation isn’t enough. You have to have a whole cocktail of reasons if you want them to be enough to propel you through what is guaranteed to be the most soul-crushing, dehumanizing seven to twelve years of your life.

And spite is a good one. Love is better. When I’m stuck in a long horrible day, I think about what I’m going to say when I meet a trans kid back home and prescribe them hormones. But spite works, too; from time to time I think about the sour look on my gay friend’s asshole mom’s face when she realizes I’m back and still queer and making an impact. And that’s satisfying in a different way.

[eponymous-rose]

Okay, do you have any advice for someone who's seriously considering grad school and teaching in the future? I'm having a bit of a "how-do-I-know-if-this-is-what-I-want-to-do-for-the-rest-of-my-life" crisis.

Oh gosh, I’ve been thinking about this post for a while, trying to come up with a good answer, and failing that, trying to come up with an honest answer. The best I can do, I think, is to say that in my experience there is no “this-is-what-I-want-to-do-for-the-rest-of-my-life”, or at least if there is, it puts so much pressure on you that it can chase you away from something you love. If you’re fixed on the idea that this is what you’re meant to be doing for the rest of your life, when you inevitably start to hate it a little bit, you’re also kind of going to be hating yourself, because what’s wrong with you if you can’t do this thing that defines you? 

That’s a big problem in grad school, believe it or not, because for all the snarkiness and PhD Comics “this is the worst” attitude that grad students have, from what I’ve seen almost everyone kind of stumbles into it out of a place of (sometimes self-consciously buried) love and ambition, and it’s easy to feel betrayed by yourself when things don’t quite measure up.

So my advice to the question you’re not asking is: life is long. I grew up with a strange perspective because both of my parents had pretty darn full lives in their twenties and early thirties: establishing careers, pursuing hobbies, getting married. But they were both pretty miserable, they both wound up losing their jobs and getting divorced from their then-spouses, and they both rebooted by going back to school for something entirely different in their mid-thirties, which is where they met and fell in love and eventually had a couple of kids. They’re retired, now, living in a little apartment a short drive from the ocean, and despite some rocky times, they’re wildly happy with their decision to reinvent themselves, and with the benefit of perspective they don’t regret having tried and failed in their twenties if it meant setting themselves up for where they are now. 

So I’ve always grown up with the notion that it’s okay to try new things, even if it means fucking up, because even decades of “lost time” aren’t lost if you can stack up and clamber over all that crap to get to the next big thing. It’s not going to be easy to switch, by any means, but life is long and you’ll have enough time for a do-over if you really need it. I’m only harping on this because that crisis is so familiar to me, and because what I’ve found is that it’s vital to learn how to reduce the weight of “this is the rest of my life”, because otherwise that weight will crush you the first time something goes wrong. This is your life now. The future is a big ol’ question mark. That’s okay.

More practically, here are some things that I have found to be helpful traits in graduate school. These are things that can be learned.

Everyone talks on their resume about how they’re a “self-starter” or an “independent learner”. I think part of this needs to be true and part of it needs to be bullshit. You’ve gotta learn to be self-motivated in the way that somebody who does NaNoWriMo is self-motivated: if you really need to, can you sit down and churn something out even when you’re not feeling it? Can you push past a block? There is a bit of hand-holding in graduate school, if you have a good adviser, but in the end nobody is going to be as invested in your future as you are.

This goes into the bullshit part of independent learning: depending on the culture at the institution you attend, graduate students may be competitive or pitted against each other. It is essential to push back against this tendency, because snapping out of that pointless competition leads to some of the fiercest and most protective friendships you’ll ever find. There’s a lot of bullshit in academia, and the worst part is that sometimes it can be a big neon sign flashing “BULLSHIT” and you’ll still squint at it and go, “maybe that sign says ‘EVERYTHING IS GREAT’ and I’m just reading it wrong.” Being able to sit down with people who are capable of pointing at the sign and going “that reads bullshit”, and for whom you can also do a bit of pointing, will make the whole thing so much more manageable. Trying to get through it alone or without helping anyone else is putting yourself at a major disadvantage.

On the topic of bullshit-meters, it’s also very important to take care of your mental health the way you take care of your physical health. If something starts to feel off, most universities offer at least the ability to go in and get it checked out for free. That’s so important.

Do you enjoy what you’d be studying? It’s difficult, but try to consider this question outside of the context of “enough to make it the sole thing you pursue for the rest of your life.” If you like something, if it genuinely gets you excited, it doesn’t have to be the only thing in your life that makes you happy. You can still love your hobbies more. But if you genuinely enjoy what you study, you’re more likely to be able to reject the really tempting and super-cool apathy that’s built into the culture of some graduate institutions.

You’re not gonna love it all the time, and that’s okay. You’re gonna feel guilty about being in a relatively stable situation studying something you love and still not enjoying it, and that’s okay. Graduate school is a long commitment, in a lot of departments, and it’s normal to fall out of love with something for a bit if you’re focused on it for so long. Just like relationships go through patches where they’re less about passion and more about having to buckle down and just do maintenance work for a bit, sometimes your project’s gonna feel lackluster. If you can push through that, if you can do the work even when you’re not feeling it, you can find that love again–or if not that particular kind of love, some harder-edged and sturdier version thereof.

Start training yourself to translate humblebrags (almost always coming from dudes) like “I worked 80 hours this week!” into “I have poor time management skills!” Don’t legitimize the expectation that this job will eat your hobbies and the things you enjoy about life. Sometimes that means setting a hard cutoff time beyond which no work is ever done, even if you feel like you just need one more hour to finish it. Professors get swamped, too, and will often understand if you’re honest and up-front about your limitations. If they don’t appreciate some reasonable level of self-awareness in their students, they’re probably not worth listening to. I have also discovered with the benefit of perspective that it is very, very hard to do something completely unforgivable in graduate school.

Grad school differs strongly from undergrad in that you lose a lot of the instant-validation moments you used to get with things like exams and classes. You might go months or even years without hearing whether what you’re doing is acceptable, much less exceptional. All this means is that sometimes you have to seek out that validation actively. Ask your adviser point-blank what you’re doing well and what you could be doing better–they’ll probably reply with a deer-in-headlights look, but if you keep asking they’ll keep getting better at it. Get friends together and read each other’s papers. Find other avenues for validation in your life–write fic, create fanart, celebrate your victories on an online blogging platform. Go ahead and scratch that itch. You deserve to know when you’re doing well.

There’ll be a transition period where you might have to consider being someone else for a bit. For me, in the first few months in a new place, my rule of thumb is to not say no to any invitation. Someone’s gotta go pick up nails at a hardware store? I’ll ask if they want company. Someone’s got an extra ticket to the volleyball game? Okay, sure, I don’t know from volleyball but we’ll do this. Someone I don’t especially like is having a board game night? Fine, let’s go. Astronomy club filled with freshmen? Awkward, but sure, let’s go just to go. I’m usually pretty darn happy on my own, and doing all that social stuff can be exhausting, but it’s so important to establish some sort of support network early on. 90% of those tentative ties will fall apart on their own, but the last 10% can be absolutely unbreakable.

Cut yourself some slack, is what it boils down to. I’m pretty aware that it takes me about three years to feel like I’m competent at something, so for those first two years and 364 days I’ll use that as a mantra to remind myself that it’s okay to be in the middle of the pack, or even the one sickly pack member who’s lagging behind the rest. Grad school often means surrounding yourself with all the folks who were top of their class in undergrad, so it’s okay to suddenly find yourself bringing up the rear. I had the lowest grade by far in the graduate class taught by my adviser. Now I’m publishing papers on the topic. Find as many ways as possible to be patient and kind with yourself.

This is all as honest as I could make it, because graduate school can be a terrible place if it’s a bad fit. Personal experience will also vary a lot–I can preemptively feel the winces from some of my grad school followers as they read through this. This is my experience, and I cannot emphasize that enough.

But I love it. In practical terms, I learned that I love teaching and research and mentorship, so I now feel confident that pursuing a career in academia makes a whole lot of sense. I’ve had very, very bad times in grad school, but I’m now at the point where some nights I legitimately have trouble falling asleep because I’m so excited about what I’ll be doing the next day. 

I hope that if you go for it you can have a wonderful time with it, and even if you go for it and things go wrong, you can remember that life is long and use this as a way to climb to bigger and better things. 

[biofunmy]

Here’s How One Woman Beat The Gender Pay Gap And Asked For A Raise

Courtesy Caitlin Boston

Caitlin Boston (center) and friends in a video she made to celebrate paying off her student loans.

Do you know that feeling of jumping into a metallic, purple catsuit to express your joy through interpretive dance with two backup dancers costumed in money signs? Probably not, unless you too have experienced the blinding exhilaration of paying off more than $200,000 in student loans. Caitlin Boston knows this feeling — it took her 10 years to get there. And it might have taken longer if she hadn’t asked a simple question of her colleagues.

She uploaded her whirlwind celebration to YouTube.

By the time Boston graduated in 2009, she had a master’s in social psychology and two undergraduate degrees in anthropology and American studies. Altogether, she had $147,602 in student loans.

On Tuesday, Aug. 6 — what would have been her late father’s 72nd birthday — Boston made her final payment on her student loans, which, including interest, added up to $222,817. In her dance video, she explained how she paid off what seemed to be an impossible amount of debt. “I did it all by my single freaking self, as in, no family passing me $$$ at any point,” she wrote in the caption to her video. “It was hard but I did it and I did it alone because I am a f****** boss.”

Hard is an understatement: When she was earning a low hourly wage, “in any given month, I had between $62 and $74 left in my checking account,” she recalled in an interview with BuzzFeed News.

But today, at age 35, she said, “I’m free. I’m freaking free!”

Boston pointed out that she never missed a payment or took off much time from work, even after her father died by suicide. Above all, she said, the most important thing that helped her pay it off: realizing she should be getting paid more by asking her peers if they were making over or under a certain amount. At some point, you can’t cut back on your lifestyle any more.

“Ask your other peers what they make — especially your male ones. It might make you feel uncomfortable but it’s the sole reason I started making an additional 41% a year.” For Boston, that was a life-changing amount — tens of thousands of dollars more than she had been making.

Boston dedicated the video — and her final payment — to her father: “I’ve thought about you and this debt every single day since you’ve been gone. So this win, it’s for you too.”

BuzzFeed News spoke to Boston about how she ended up with six-figure student debt, how she managed not to miss a payment, and what led her to start asking people around her — especially men — how much money they made. Here’s what she said:

My family is super working class. My dad was a police officer in Baltimore and my mom was a homemaker. I’m adopted. We never talked about the cost of college. There were periods when I was growing up when there were concerns about money, but my family never really spoke to me about it. We always had money for food, and there were always some new clothes for school. We could afford a house and a car and all these other things. But education — that’s an extraneous cost when you’re living paycheck to paycheck.

I didn’t have a concept of the amount of money that they were taking out for me. I wasn’t even aware of the amount of work that they had to put in until I was going on my third year to study abroad. I had to sign a paper for a loan for $32,000. That was the first time I’d seen a number attached to the debt. And it was for one semester to study abroad in London.

I asked my parents, what is that amount? They didn’t know. They weren’t aware what the total was for all of my loans because it was spread across so many different loans and different types of loans and they were just like, “Well, if you don’t sign this we can’t afford to send you to London.” So they’re sending me stuff to sign and I was signing it. I was just like, “Okay, whatever, I need to do it to get to school.” My parents didn’t have really great money management skills.

I went to grad school, and in my spring of my final year, my parents told me they thought I had six figures in student debt. That’s when I was like, what?

I 100% wish I had learned about money in high school. I wish I understood what debt meant. I didn’t even understand what interest meant. I wish they’d sat me down before any of us signed any papers to just be like, “This is how much money you’ll have to make to pay this off” — at a minimum. Just laid out, in black and white, what the logistics of managing any type of debt looked like so I could make more informed decisions.

That’s how I graduated into the recession in 2009, and that’s the legacy that I have lived through. It was pretty bleak. I was applying for jobs anywhere, and I was very lucky and privileged enough to land a paid internship. When I wasn’t working, I was spending the better part of those first six months after graduating just trying to understand how much money I owed, where that money was, who I owed it to, and how to set up payment plans. The total amount that I was expected to pay on that first bill was just over $1,400 — and I was working a paid internship for about minimum wage in Washington, DC.

I was completely beside myself looking at this number. I called my dad and was like, “Can you help me?” And he just said no. He didn’t apologize. It was a very straightforward conversation. He was like, “There’s no way I can help you — you’re going to have to figure this out.” I’ve seen friends of mine being informally coached by people — family friends, other family members — who had already navigated that landscape. But there are folks who have to make it through this wilderness without a map.

I realized I needed another job, so I picked up additional work at a running shoe store and started doing some freelance work doing design research for nonprofits. I lived in a vegan, gluten-free, soy-free, queer community house for $425 in rent. We cooked for each other. That’s why I was able to pay my loans and not accrue credit card debt, because I was living in a community of people that shared expenses and food with each other as a rule for living in the house. And we were rockin’ around with some of the most affordable parts of the food pyramid. I bought a bike because I couldn’t afford a Metro card, but it got stolen and I had to buy another bike.

By the end of any month, with all my bills paid, I had between $62 and $74 left in my checking account.

When you have nothing left to cut, when you’re down to the bone, what can you do? Make more money.

Later, I got a full-time job with a labor union and started making a salary of about $48,000, and I could drop the work at the running shoe store; I kept doing the freelance work. Still, mentally, I just could never get around how I was going to pay off $147,000 in debt.

When you have nothing left to cut, when you’re down to the bone, what can you do? Make more money. I didn’t have a partner or kids, so I moved to New York. I knew that my earning potential would be better there, and my work opportunities would be far greater.

In my next job, I got a pay jump to $72,000 and landed with a roommate in an apartment that, to this day, is very affordable. That’s been my number one strategy wherever I’ve lived — to keep my housing expenses as manageable as possible.

My dad died of suicide in 2013 and had about $50,000 to $60,000 in credit card debt that my mom had to pay off with the life insurance he left her. I have to imagine that the debt was weighing on him — one of the many things, of course, but a significant one, nevertheless. It was terrible watching her navigate the finances of death, much less the bureaucracy. That was the moment I realized, I’m not dying in debt. There’s no more playing around here. I can’t go down like that.

Bit by bit, I had been making progress on my loan, and by that I mean I paid off approximately $15,000 of the principal. I eventually consolidated all my debts with SoFi after running into a guy who worked at SoFi when I went on a boating trip in the Amazon in Brazil after my father died. I realized I hadn’t been able to really get a handle on my loans because so much of my payments had just been going to interest. But I needed to be done with this.

I left the nonprofit world and got a job at a design agency. I ended up loving it. Almost two years into the job, I was making pretty high five figures, so not a small amount of money, but with that level of debt, it’s still not enough to really be making a ton of headway on what I still owed. So I go up for my biannual review and I was like, “Listen, I just helped to bring in a $5 million piece of business, here are all of the other things I’ve done, and I think I deserve a raise.” And my boss just said that I just wasn’t ready for a raise yet.

I went out to dinner that night with three of my coworkers: a South Asian and Middle Eastern woman who had seven years of just banging job experience, a black woman with a PhD in cognitive psych and more than a decade of job experience, and a white woman who was 24 and had been working for like two years. It was review time, and we’d all been told a very similar story when we’d asked for our raises, and we were all very annoyed if not just outright upset. At one point we just started telling each other our salaries as we sat there. Every single one of us was making the same amount of money, including our 24-year-old coworker who only had two years of job experience.

So I was like, “OK, I’m going to give you a number and I want you to tell me if you make over or under that number.”

We had all of the postdoc credentials or all the job experience you could ask for, and we’re still all being paid the same as a 24-year-old white woman. She’s a wonderful, incredibly hardworking, and deserving person, but this is not about who she is; it’s about how three other women of color at that table with more experience, the same work ethic, and ability to deliver at work were all being paid the same thing.

I went to work the next day and decided to talk to one of my white male coworkers. I said, “Hey, so what are you making?” He, being a normal American person, was like, “Oh, I don’t want to talk about money.” So I was like, “OK, I’m going to give you a number and I want you to tell me if you make over or under that number.” And I said a solid six figure number. And he said, “Under.” I went down by $10,000. He was like, “Over.” And that was all I needed. I was, like, well, there you go, I’m making at least $20,000 a year less than you. This coworker had the exact same job background, and the exact same master’s degree, and similar time at the company as me. There was no reason for this kind of pay discrepancy.

So then I just went to LinkedIn and looked up everyone at every company in New York, San Francisco, and LA with my job title and seemingly with my background in terms of education and experience. I blasted dozens — and I’m talking dozens — of people with the same email, saying, “Hey, I’m looking to make a career jump into one of the big tech companies, and I just want to know what you’re making. Can you just tell me, are making over or under X?” I got three responses back.

One guy’s response was: “If you have this amount of years of experience the industry minimum in a major job market is this.” That was pretty much what the other two women who wrote back did as well. They were within 10% of each other, comfortably six figures. Which was crazy.

Coming from a background where your family does not make a ton of money, I couldn’t even fathom asking for that amount of money until I got so angry and I felt entitled to it.

I started interviewing like crazy. I mean, I was on fire. Even though I was super happy in my job, I kept on thinking that if I’m being paid literally tens of thousands of dollars less than what I should be making, and I’m working this hard, I might as well be making the money that men in my industry are. I’m not going to work for a place that doesn’t respect my value.

I got hired by Etsy. I told them what I wanted, and that was what happened. I got a pay jump of about 41%, so tens of thousands of dollars. These are not small numbers.

I am in a really privileged and exceptional position of being able to make a jump into tech. But it wouldn’t have happened if I had not had amazing women coworkers who were willing to have a moment of vulnerability with me at that table, and a couple of dudes willing to be good allies.

The thing is, no one is going to help you figure out how much you need to make. You need to be really proactive and ask how much you’re going to make.

Now I work at another tech company. The only thing that has changed about me making more money is that I see my acupuncturist more regularly. I have a therapist I see weekly. And I buy vitamins. My lifestyle hasn’t changed except for my ability to access health care. I haven’t taken big vacations. I don’t buy a ton of stuff. I don’t go out to a ton of restaurants. I am 35, and this is the first year I am putting more than $50 per month into my 401(k).

This is what privilege is — to have a casual conversation with gatekeepers.

I don’t know if my degrees in and of themselves were worth it or if I could have gotten the same education for a much cheaper price tag. But what I do know is that because of where I went to grad school, I no longer doubt my value or my worth.

I paid off just under 50% of the total loan amount in 2019. When I made my final payment and made the video, I said, I’m going to wear this fucking traditional Korean crown that’s primarily associated with weddings at this point. I can wear it to celebrate myself and my accomplishments. I’m doing this for myself. I wanted the video to be a genuine expression of joy and celebration that reflected that in spite of this debt that has taken so much out of me, spiritually, psychologically, and emotionally.

I still ask the over/under question. I’ve also flat-out told some of my junior teammates what I make. I’m here to tell them what they should be shooting for. There’s a burden that we carry by not sharing what we’re making with each other. It perpetuates this idea that it’s all up to you to figure out how much you should be making, when really you are working for a series of employers who have pay bands, or salary caps, or freelance amounts set by what people are willing to work for. All that the secrecy has done is put the burden — and the shame — on the individual. The only way to circumnavigate that fucking capitalist bullshit, which is built on secrecy, is by having these incredibly uncomfortable conversations.

This is what privilege is — to have a casual conversation with gatekeepers. I was always jealous of friends whose parents were able to set them up for a coffee, an email, or a phone conversation with these people, because it’s those things that give you not only a network, but a spectrum of what you’re worth. That is what I think so many people do not have access to, and that’s one of the reasons why I am vociferous about talking about this.

I didn’t really have that privilege, and I think more people need to be talking about this and be willing to share. But I do have the privilege of rage. ●

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Sahred From Source link Technology

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[stephhannes]

get better or cry trying

“grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable”

i started november off back in NYC, which is always a weird experience for me. i was so eager to leave back in may, but now, landing at laguardia feels like home. when nathan and i left new york, i always assumed it would just end up being a chapter in our story, just something to look back on when thinking about where we’ve been. i assumed that philly would end up feeling like home, and had we spent more time there, i’m sure it would have. but now with this transgression of events, new york is just where my heart is. 

new york was always special to us, just because it was the first place that was ever ours. we had spent three months together in abilene, and about a month together in austin before we lived in new york together, but both of those places were riddled with history, of memories of a time before we were together. when nathan visited new york the spring break before he moved there, i was the first person he told that he had decided on columbia for grad school. so from the very beginning, it felt like ours. it was where we finally got to be together every day and where we learned how to compromise and where we respectively made some of our best friends and where we got engaged. and while nyc has its share of pitfalls, it’s where i lived my best life (even though it didn’t feel like it at the time).

so anyways, i went back to nyc for a week at the beginning of november and i was truly back on my bullshit. by “back on my bullshit” i mean i showed up to the theatre almost every night and instead of having to work i was able to just sit and chill during the show. i went to the crocodile lounge two times in one week which was a weird experience both times. the first night we watched some dude try to shoot his shot with a handful of girls, eventually get successful at it, and then blow his chances by getting real weird and kissing the back of the girl’s kneecaps? men are weird and i don’t trust them. the second night we watched some dude sleep for like 30 minutes in a booth and then PLOT TWIST it turns out, he works there. we went to the cauldron which is one of those trendy things i kept seeing on facebook. you show up at a place, dress in a hogwarts robe, get a wand and get to magically brew some drinks. what they don’t tell you though is that the drinks are absolutely disgusting and taste like soap. the experience was fun but oh my god if i ever smell lavender again i’m going to puke. after that, i was drunk and we all went to another bar, where i started crying in the club. for some reason, when i hit a certain level of drunk i always start crying, and then i man up and get over it and rally for the rest of the night. but for that brief moment, it’s always real awkward for everyone around me. oops.

important life update: while i was in nyc i finally did something that was long overdue. like two years overdue. so here’s the thing: i only own 3 pairs of shoes. a pair of sneakers, a pair of sandals and a pair of black suede ankle boots. i wore those ankle boots through a nyc winter and i regretted every day that i did it because not only is faux suede not snow-proof, the boots also had holes in the soles. i FINALLY bought new boots. and i invested in a pair of docs because honestly after this year i deserve it. i’ve never spent more than 40 dollars on shoes before but they’re beautiful and have 100% less holes in them than my old boots.

most importantly, when i was in nyc, i had this brief moment of clarity. i remember having this period of time where i almost felt hopeful. i finally felt like i needed to get my life together and maybe move out of my mom’s house and try to be a normal human again.

grief is weird because some days i feel like a functioning human, like i’m back to myself. i briefly thought that i was actually starting to recover, but as of late, i’ve been having a really bad time, honestly. for the last two weeks or so, i’ve been constantly exhausted. i’ve been incredibly quick to start crying. i’ve started getting that foggy feeling again. i walk into rooms and forget why i was there, and i trail off in the middle of sentences because i forgot what point i was trying to make. the other day i drove to austin and it felt like i blacked out for the 3.5 hour drive because when i arrived i didn’t remember any part of the drive. i’m easily irritated. i’ve started having nightmares again. the thought of leaving my house makes me anxious. i can’t focus on anything anymore.

all of this hit me hard on thanksgiving. i didn’t want to go to thanksgiving dinner with the entire family, but i did it anyways because my mother would have been sad if i didn’t go and i’m too nice so i sucked it up and went. i showed up, said hello to everyone, and then sat at the table and didn’t talk for the next two hours. partly because i couldn’t focus on anything long enough to hold a conversation but also because no one in my family ever really talks to me at these things so whatever, it’s nothing new.

it doesn’t really feel like it, but i guess technically, i survived my first holiday without nathan.

the very last thing i accomplished in november is that i dyed my hair back to black. i’ve spent the last three months experimenting with fashion colors, but i started to get overwhelmed with upkeep so i just went ahead and went back to my natural hair color. it feels weird. i originally went blonde two weeks before nathan died. i bleached all of my hair, and cut a decent amount of it off. i did this because i wanted to both a) grow out my hair and b) be blonde for the wedding, and by starting the process back in july, it would ensure that my hair wouldn’t look like straw by the time the wedding rolled around. when i first cut off a bunch of my hair, along with the first stages of the bleaching process, nathan kept telling me i looked like he-man. which was true. i kept obsessing over my haircut for like three days, continually taking off more and more hair trying to get it perfect (why don’t i ever just go to a salon and get my hair cut??? i know that i’m poor and can’t afford it but oh my god my life would have been a million times easier). i was getting so obsessed with it that nathan literally just hid all of the scissors in the house because he was Done with watching me stress about it, and finally i just ended up with my he-man hairdo. but that was fine because i planned on growing it out. anyways, after nathan died, before going back to black i decided to mess around with some color again, like i used to in college. and it was fun for awhile, but now i genuinely just don’t have the energy to touch up the color every week, and bleach my roots every month. so i went back to black. and for the first time, i really realized that we aren’t going to get married anymore. i felt it a little bit back in august when we were cleaning out our apartment and i threw away the calendar that i had been taking planning notes on for reference: 

and i felt it a little on the day that i realized i couldn’t take seeing wedding stuff in my email anymore so i unsubscribed from all the websites i was using for inspiration, and i deleted my pinterest and i un-bookmarked all of the wedding dresses i was considering. but for some reason, dyeing my hair, i’ve felt it the most.

on another note, last night i actually cooked for the first time since nathan’s died. i’ve been eating like a garbage can for the last three months so i’m trying to get back on my chicken and rice bullshit and it felt so weird going through those motions again. the last time i cooked chicken was the day that nathan died and this is such a bizarre thing to have thrown me into a sadness spiral, but here we are anyways.

along these same lines of “progress,” the other day, i finally stopped sleeping on “my side” of the bed. when i lived alone and had a bed bigger than a twin, i would sleep next to my laptop, phone, and a water bottle. after nathan died, i kept to “my side” of the bed, i would put my laptop on the floor next to me, water bottle and phone on my nightstand, and left the left side of my bed empty. i even had a pillow and extra blanket on that side. the other day, i finally moved all of my pillows into the middle of the bed. i fell asleep with my laptop next to me. i usually wake up curled in a ball, back on “my side.”

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the other day, i remembered a paragraph from a letter i had sent nathan after he came to visit me during his first year at columbia when i still lived in austin-

“It was really great to get to see you again because being apart for so long, I had kind of forgotten what it was like to actually be together. I had forgotten how much I love to spend time with you. I had forgotten how annoyed I get whenever you do that thing where you say the same thing as me before I even say it. I had forgotten how much fun I have when we’re together.”

you don’t realize how much you forget about someone when they’re not with you 24/7. when we lived apart, we made things work, but i didn’t realize how different it was to not be right with him until we were face to face again. when we were apart, i’d forget about the little facial expressions he’d make when i’d start to tell a story he’d heard 100 times before. i’d forget about the way he was constantly putting on chapstick. i’d forget about the terrible sound his ankles made every time he cracked them. but we still talked on the phone every day, so i remembered his speech patterns, and his laugh.

but now i’m realizing that i can’t remember what his laugh sounded like. i can’t remember what exactly his voice sounded like. that’s always the first thing you forget. i lost the phone that i had during our year apart, so if he had left me any voicemails, i don’t have them anymore. i don’t have any videos of him. i still remember how he smelled, and every time i put on chapstick i remember him. i still use the same shampoo, body wash and moisturizer that we used, so every time i shower, i remember him. i still remember what he felt like. the other day when i was drunk and sad, i sent nathan a text that said “i’ve been having a hard time because i feel like i’m forgetting everything about you. but i still remember how it felt to touch your face. and how it felt to have your head on my chest. and how it felt to run my hands through your hair. i still remember how i felt every time you kissed me. and what it was like to lay my head on your chest. i wish that when i woke up sad in the night, you were there to hold me closer to you. i still remember how it feels to have your arms around me. i love you. i miss you so much baby.”

at least i still have that that i remember. 

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i’m still not doing great, but at least now when i wake up, my immediate first thought isn’t “i hope i get hit by a car today.”