#i found their old house in my gallery and it made me nostalgic ;-;

[moonsyrups]

a long time ago a little baby named noah was born

[sparrowrye]

Demi Demon || Alastor x Reader, A3 part 16

Synopsis: Alastor disappeared for 8 years, leaving you confused, crushed, and angry. You spent those years building up your new self and protecting the haven from dangers left and right. What will happen when he returns to the new changes? Will he return anytime soon? Could you even go back to the way things were?

Previous part

Part 16: reminisce

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Reagan's wedding wasn't the only big surprise. Spencer, our first news reporter, had been planning something for awhile. He ran the printing and reporting companies but somehow had the time to work on his secret project. We were so big that we needed to have reporters on the inside to keep everyone updated. It was no surprise to everyone when I appointed him as the head of it all.

"Don't forget, I'm looking for your opinion." The sweet cartoon-looking man was practically bouncing towards the door. The building looked like any other ordinary building except the brick on the front was a bright red, unlike the cream palette for all the others.

Alastor and I followed him through the doors that had a sign nailed to them: PROJECT IN PROGRESS. DO NOT ENTER!

The foyer was a closed off room with nothing but tile under our feet. Alastor's cane tapped loudly on it as we followed Spencer into a long gallery. A sign on a pole pointed to one of the walls where a row of pictures started. The first one was a framed black and white photograph. It was a picture of our house but from a far distance. There was nothing but green grass and the steep cliff behind it. This had clearly been taken well before the haven had been built.

"Where did you get this photograph?" I asked, stepping closer to examine it.

"Husker gave it to me," he answered. "I thought the black and white gave it an older, more nostalgic touch."

Next to the frame was a sign that read:

Once upon a time, our haven started like this. Take a look —>

I followed the sign and looked out a small window. The sight matched the photograph almost perfectly. Buildings and streets stood in front where there was once only a large open field. I could remember Husker and Alastor telling me how far I was allowed to go from the house when I first arrived. I used to play fight and chase Husker through the grass or snow. It felt like yesterday, yet also a decade ago. How old was I now?

I didn't have time to think about it as Spencer lead us down the gallery. There were all kinds of photographs, all black and white, hanging on both sides. A few backless benches sat in the center.

"All these pictures came from Husker or Charlie and her group," Spencer explained. Every photo had a brief description and the photo's owner underneath it. The pictures ranged from basic construction of the first log houses, to a group of children surrounding Ms. Vivian, to the many discussions I had with Charlie's group in the library.

My throat tightened as the nostalgia creeped its way up. I felt for Alastor's emotions and found fondness and contentment. How was he not feeling any nostalgia from these photos? It felt like my life was on replay.

Alastor made a comment about sequence and Spencer was quick to make the adjustment. While they talked, a certain photo in the beginning corner caught my eye. I slithered off to examine it, finding an old photo of Alastor and I in the living room.

I was kneeling in front of the fire and Alastor was watching closely from one of the chairs. His legs were crossed, as elegant as ever, and his chin rested on the back of his hand as he leaned over the armrest to watch me.

It looked like the photo had been taken from the stairs. Why was I by the fire? What was I trying to do? Ignite it?

Husker was fixing the electricity in the dinning room while practiced lighting the fire in the sitting room. I had seen Alastor and Husker snap their fingers but when I did it, nothing happened.

"It's all about intent, dear." I jumped at Alastor's voice. He stood behind me with his hands behind his back like always. The stupid cane was like a third eye.

"I've got it." I turned my back to him and stared down at the dead logs. I heard him walk past me and sit in one of the chairs, his red eyes never leaving me. I let out a tense sigh. "What do you want?"

"Absolutely nothing."

I scoffed. "I find that hard to believe." I tried again with the fire but nothing happened. "Why are you always watching me?"

"What ever do you mean, dear?"

"Stop calling me that. And I mean every time I'm doing something you're hiding somewhere watching me."

"Is it a crime to watch my soulmate?"

"Don't call me that either." My tail whipped hard against the floor. I was getting frustrated with him and myself. I knelt down and grabbed one of the embers. I could ignite my own hand but how could I not ignite a simple stick?

"Sometimes it's all about imagination," he said, drumming his claws against his cane. "Surely that's not something you're lacking in."

My lip curled in a snarl. I looked down at the hot ember and put it in the corner of the fire place. I looked at one of the logs and closed my eyes. I remembered seeing Full mages lifting air when they wanted to move something. Maybe I could do something similar.

I turned my hand palm up and pictured small flames sticking out from under the wood. They slowly grew bigger until they were catching the neighboring logs on fire. I felt the heat on my face and snapped my eyes open to a working fire. My shock turned into a smile. I had done it.

"Nicely done," Husker said from the stairwell. I stood up and brushed off my pant leg.

The memory subsided and I blinked back to reality. How long had that been? Twelve years? Fifteen? How old was I? I had to think back to a time marker to try to figure out how many years it had been. My fingers moved as I tried to count.

"Darling?" Alastor called. I turned as he approached, leaning into him when he rested his hand on my hip. I rubbed my cheek against his chest and wrapped my tail around his ankle.

Imagine what my old self would say if she saw us now.

I would enjoy the look on your face, he returned. He placed a kiss on my head. "Come, we have more to see."

We went up a set of stairs at the end of the hallway to reach the second floor. This one was all about the haven's development from a town into a city.

These photos were ones Spencer had taken when he first arrived. There were pictures of Vivian's classes and her new assistants, pictures of Althea running to and from her many patients in her first healing hut, of Vilcin bringing out food in the grand hall when food was free for everyone during certain time frames, and so many more.

There were some that had me in the background or around the kids we brought from ring fights. Alastor wasn't in any of them, especially the ones at the end of the hallway. I noticed these photographs included the more expansive part of construction, as well as certain events that happened in Alastor's eight year disappearance.

One image was of my group sitting on Arleen's store porch. Everyone was too busy chatting to notice the camera pointed directly at them. Vivian and Althea were talking, Vilcin smiling softly at them, and me...

I didn't look happy but I didn't look sad either. The more I think back to that conversation, the more I remember. I had spent the night in one of Althea's medical beds because of a bad Alastor hallucination. This was the morning after she had managed to wrangle our group together for a cup of tea or coffee.

The third floor was a little more recent. This was entirely comprised of events that happened within the city. Things like news buildings being opened, big tournaments, and more. I was shocked to find a photo of me standing in front of Lucifer at the gala. That was the night I had presented Blackwater's soul to the King of Hell. Spencer must've gotten that from Vox who likely had cameras all around.

I praised Spencer for his hard work and creative thinking. Alastor gave his share of compliments, which he reserved only for those worthy of such a thing from him, and we left him to his new adjustments.

On the walk back, I replayed my entire life. The cages felt like a distant nightmare, the terrifying instances with Alastor like another life, and the eight year absence as painful as yesterday. I was in my thirties now. So much had happened in such little time. What was a hundred years going to feel like? What was two hundred? How did Alastor manage to even remember everything from the centuries he'd been alive?

Alastor pulled my mind back to my body. I blinked at the front porch, arm wrapped securely around his, and glanced up to meet his eyes. "Sorry."

"Not to worry, my dear." He walked up the new porch and opened the door for me. "I suspect things may grow more challenging when you near your first century."

My first. How many more can I handle?

He caught my hand as I passed and brought it up to his lips. He looked at me through his long eyelashes. "I will be there every step of the way."

****

Months passed. As things progressed rather closely between Alastor and I, things were far from perfect when it came to Nym and Thatcher. The siblings were constantly arguing with each other and it often turned into a physical fight. I was constantly yelling and fixing the burn marks they left behind. I started to worry they would burn the house down from of their Slight magic.

Alastor never said anything about the arguments, choosing to remain silent as I struggled to parent them through the start of their teenage hood. Reagan had gone through the same phase and I remember have plenty of difficult conversations about starting fights with people. This time it was more difficult because Nym and Thatcher were 1) two individuals and 2) more reactive than Reagan.

The smallest comment sent Nym exploding up the stairs and screaming her head off at me or Thatcher. The boy wasn't much better. He was quieter than his explosive sister but his comments and insults seemed to always hit right where they hurt most.

Finally, I separated the siblings into their own rooms so one occupied my old room and the other had Husker's. It was the perfect decision because they were happy to spend time in their own rooms and decorate it how they wanted.

Even so, they still refused to bring any friends over.

I managed to coax Thatcher into helping me cook dinner twice a week. He enjoyed the mindless work but always had a watchful eye on what I was doing. The more we made dinners together, the more talkative he grew. It became my one and only way to connect with him.

Nym wanted nothing to do with cooking and everything to do with physical activities or, oddly enough, a tough game of cards or chess with Alastor. Several times I had caught them playing a game in the library. I knew who the winner was by Nym's eloquent way of cursing.

Things smoothed out around the New Year's celebration. Groups and families decorated their homes or streets with lights and brightly colored decor. Charlie certainly didn't shy from the opportunity to have a big celebration. She insisted on having one with everyone who made the haven possible.

And she meant everyone.

Alastor was far from happy when he heard that Lucifer and Vox would be attending her party. He argued that Lucifer barely lifted a finger to help and that Vox had no ties. To his great disappointment, I argued that Lucifer had taught me a lot on my Angelic powers, which directly benefited the city I was protecting, and that Vox was part of my deal to spread the word about the city through his stations.

Needless to say, it was a very hot topic in the house.

I didn't help as much this time since big parties weren't my thing and the evening would go well into the night. Arleen, in all her mysterious, beautiful wonder, had put together another lovely dress for me. It was shorter than the last one to account for any dancing activities. As much as I enjoyed wearing a matching red with Alastor, I enjoyed wearing my own trademark purple. The dress was short in the front and slightly longer in the back. It had an open back and used several black straps to keep it on my shoulders.

The event was held in one of our large event buildings. Husker was managing the bar--typical--and a live band played in the corner of the of room. I enjoyed flustering my old friend whenever Angel left his proximity for a dance. I had a drink or two before the spider Demon finally convinced me to have a dance or two. Alastor remained at the bar, unamused and bored with the event. He had been brooding since dawn and I was growing tired of dealing with it.

I finished a second dance with Angel and asked Husker for water. I wasn't planning on dancing again but the second song had a beat I couldn't ignore. My taste in music had broadened since Vox had given me a phone with access to the Internet.

Speaking of whom, the electrocuted tv screen jumped in front of me. "Mind if I dance with you?" he asked over the music. The bodies jumped around us and caged me in. "After all the work we've done together?"

My good mood was influencing me. His claws were cold to the touch as I laid my hand in his, letting him pull me further into the crowd and in a slightly larger pocket of space. He moved quickly but never took his eyes off me. I was shocked when I had yet to step on his feet or vise versa. I hadn't expected him to be decent at dancing.

There was something about his smile. It wasn't an evil smile or a mischievous one, either. He just seemed...happy. So, I allowed another dance.

But I should've known by the intensity of his stare, by the green edges of my vision, by the way the little hairs on my arms stood up, and by the dark aura coming from the bar that I Alastor was very unhappy about it.

I wasn't doing anything wrong or bad but I distinctly remember my conversation with Alastor about dancing with other people. It had been a long time ago when I asked Husker and Charlie for dancing lessons. Nerves made my heart race but I reminded myself that I was allowed to enjoy a celebration, one that I didn't have to plan or monitor.

I had a feeling that dancing with Vox was like a slap to Alastor's face.

The song ended on a loud beat and Vox held me in a dip, hair brushing the floor. The shattering of a glass didn't reach everyone's ears, but it definitely reached mine. I turned my head to see Alastor wiping his hand on a rag while Husker cleaned up broken glass shards on the counter. Alastor's eyes flashed over to mine as sharp as a cat's and as quick as a snake's.

Vox brought me up and gave a low bow. "Thank you for dancing with me," he said. His tone touched a spot on my heart. If only he had been like this all along. Working with him would've been far more enjoyable.

We separated into the crowd and I noticed him pulling another girl onto the dance floor. I dragged my feet as I made my way over to my soulmate, tail waving behind me and claws clicking together nervously.

Alastor's discarded jacket was tucked somewhere behind the bar. His winter outfit was slightly different which allowed him to take off the jacket if needed. Over his long sleeve he wore a black vest that hugged his figure perfectly. There were small, red details that could only be seen if someone looked hard enough. That someone was me.

The look he was giving me was...a look.

He had his signature smile but it looked like a cross between a smile and a snarl. His eyes were sharp and had the faint outline of his radio dials in his pupils. His eyebrows were also a strange cross, not quite far up like usual but not quite a glare. He looked like he was trying to hide his annoyance behind a genuine smile. It didn't make sense but the look he was giving me sure did.

He dropped the rag and leaned down close to my face. "May I have a word, love?" he asked, each word pulling taught as he spoke.

"Of course." I wrapped my black claws around his leading arm and walked out onto the brightly lit porch. The winter air cooled my cheeks instantaneously. The rainclouds prevented me from seeing the bright stars but that wasn't where my attention was at the moment. I was too busy trying to keep my nervous hand from holding onto his arm too harshly.

He was quiet and very still for a minute. Then he gently took my hand and pulled it across his chest so I was standing in front of him, back to his chest. He pressed a fleeting kiss to my neck, then planted several more on the way down to my shoulder where the straps held up my dress. He went back up to my ear and pressed his nose to the spot right behind my ear. It was sending goosebumps up my arm.

"Have you found another man to take my place?" he asked in my ear, radio filter practically surrounding me.

"What?" I tried to turn my head but his hand snapped up to hold my jaw in place. I grabbed his wrist and flapped my ear against his nose. "Let go--"

"Have you grown tired of me, dear? Have I bored you so much that you are seeking attention from him?"

"Your jealousy is really bad, Al," I retorted, a smile edging on my lips. He wasn't as upset as I thought. He was just feeling a little ignored; a little forgotten. He was an attention-whore after all.

He let out a deep hum, one that nearly filled my chest. "I like when you use that nickname. It should be the only name that comes out of those lips." He released my jaw and traced his hand down my chest, across my stomach, and settled on my hip, pulling me flush against his front. I could feel his warmth radiating off him like the sun.

"Alastorrr," I purred, earning a wider grin and another chuckle. "If you wanted my attention you just needed to ask."

"Hmm, I'm not asking," he said in my ear, lips grazing across my skin. "I'm telling you. I will have your attention now."

He let go of my wrist and I pressed the palm of my hand to his cheek, feeling his eyelashes brush on my own cheek as he closed them. I moved my hand further up to thread my fingers through his pink hair. I gently massaged the area around his ears and antlers, drawing out heavy sighs and hums.

Then I tightly squeezed the bottom of his ear and he reared back, a pained noise escaping him. I shoved his hand off my hip and spun to face him head on. His hand had come up to hold his injured ear. "Why--"

"I'm not one to boss around, Alastor." I rolled his name off my tongue again, my lips quirking into a smirk. His shocked expression returned to the one he had before but with more intent.

"Is that so, my dear?" He took one step to be up close and personal again. My head was tilted back to meet his eyes, defiance and smugness written all over me. Now we were playing a game.

"I thought you knew me better than that, love." His smile nearly turned genuine before he recomposed himself. He lifted his red claws to touch my shoulders but I had beaten him to it, glancing down at his waist to hook two claws on his belt loops, and jerking hard to make him stumble into me.

His claws found my shoulders and the tips were dangerously close to puncturing my skin. "Careful, darling, you don't know what game you're playing."

"Oh I think I do." I kept him pulled firmly against me and rested my cheek on his chest, making him canter his head just to keep eye contact with me. His claws felt like they were shaking.

"Last warning, my dear," he moved an arm to wrap around the back of my shoulders, attempting to trap me against him instead of the other way around. "If you say yes, I will not be held responsible for what happens tonight."

I moved my footclaws so they were up against his ankles, my tail coming around to wrap around one of his knees. I lifted my head, licked my dry lips once, and let go of his belt loops to run my hands up his chest. "Yes, Alastor."

The one side of his smile flatlined. His shadows engulfed us both, sprinted up to the house, and manifested us in his room. The door was slightly open but his tentacles were quick to slam it shut, his hand coming up to my chest and shoving me away. My ankles hit the footboard of the bed and sent me to falling backwards on the thick cover. I lifted myself up on my elbows in time to see him hook a claw on his bow tie and pull it off his neck.

I licked my lips again.

He snapped his fingers to remove the black vest and began unbuttoning his long sleeve, taking long strides to the side of the bed. He had gotten half way down as I moved further up the bed. His antlers had lengthened a little more, darkness surrounding us and making it impossible to see anything other than him and the red sheets.

He put one knee on the bed and a claw near mine. I pushed myself up to a hand, all my teeth sharpening to a point to match his smile, and leaned forward to catch the aggressive kiss. Instead, his other red claw came to my chest and shoved me back down on the mattress. I let out a breathy snarl as he moved to straddle me, hand never leaving my chest.

As retaliation, I brought my tail up to wrap firmly around his deer tail. It made him visibly shudder and a tentacle came out to pin it down. My hand around his wrist was peeled off and also pinned. I smiled wide, running my long tongue across my newly sharpened teeth. His beady red eyes watched intently until my other hand found his thigh.

He grabbed that one too and came forward to plant a kiss on my slightly exposed chest. I didn't let him have access to my neck so when he attempted to grab my chin, I grabbed his ear again. Another tentacle came out to pull my wrist tight into the mattress.

"You don't get to challenge me," he growled in my ear, now able to pull my chin to the side and run his tongue along my skin. It sent a satisfying chill down my spine. "You gave the word, now you must suffer the consequences."

Despite his words, I could hear his thoughts reminding me he would stop as soon as I gave the word. The safety net shoved the bad memories down. I let his magic surround my mind as a constant reminder that he was with me. This was who I wanted to be with.

"I'm not so sure suffer is the right term, Alastor," his name came smoothly off my tongue.

"By the time I'm done with you, it will." Before I could answer him, he bit down hard on the top of my shoulder. My knees came up since my hands were pinned, quickly earning yet another set of tentacles to hold them down. He licked at the injury he caused and added, "Don't worry, I'll make sure you get your pleasure in the midst of it."

He moved his one leg to rest his knee snuggly in between my legs. His tentacles pulled my legs wider. "That's...ch-cheating," my voice wavered.

"There were no rules set in place," he said in between licking up my blood. "Perhaps you should have thought about that before agreeing."

I went into his mind and held on tight to it, making him go very stiff. A moment later his magic grabbed mine and pushed me back into my mind.

"I told you, my dear, you don't know what game you are playing." He filled my mind again, forcing me to think of nothing other than him. I could feel the burn of his touch and see the green of his magic. It was just him.

He finally let go of my mind and I found myself completely bare underneath him. I snapped his name like a curse and attempted to my pull my limbs free to cover myself. His claw came up to brush the back of his fingers across my cheek like he always did.

"You are mine, my deer. There is nothing to hide from me."

It was then I noticed he was also bare, leg still firmly in between my own. He moved to my neck again, our skin touching and sending sparks into my brain. I felt lightheaded as his mind fit perfectly with mine like two puzzle pieces. He placed light kisses everywhere from my cheeks, to my chest, to my arms, to my stomach.

I gasped when his tentacles pulled my legs up. I fought against the pressure but they pull my legs wider like it was nothing. Alastor ran his tongue between my folds in one long lick. I leaned my head back to let out a very satisfied sigh.

I yelped when his fingers slid inside and curled dangerously well. My edges burned from the width of two fingers but the pain was nothing when his lips found my sweet spot. He moved his tongue in a deliberately slow circle.

"Al please..." I begged. "Go faster."

He paused to speak. "You're playing my game, baby."

The new endearment made my chest fill with butterflies. It moved into my stomach when his fingers curled again. He withdrew his fingers then pushed back in, curling them at the end before pulling out and repeating. His tongue now made up and down movements, but as slow and torturous as before.

I pushed against the tentacles despite knowing they wouldn't budge. I grabbed the sheets and flexed my toes. I lifted my head to see his eyes closed and head moving between my legs. I dropped my head as the familiar feeling started to rise.

He paused and blew cold air. I whimpered and looked down at him. "What was that—"

"Make more noises, my love." He licked his lips with that stupidly long tongue of his. "The more you make, the faster I'll go."

To make his point, he dragged his tongue between my folds as slow as possible. I let out an irritated sigh as my head hit the covers again. My horns had disappeared so I wouldn't puncture the mattress.

I didn't want to give in but I desperately wanted him to move faster. I would get nowhere near my high unless he picked up his pace.

"I hate you," I groaned.

He sucked hard on my sweet spot. I choked on another yelp. Being unable to move my limbs only increased the amount of stuff dripping out of me. He pressed his tongue against the spot and let out a hot sigh. The warmth elicited a moan and he moved his tongue slightly faster.

Fine, asshole.

He stopped. I mentally facepalmed.

"Language," he said. "I think I'm being rather generous with my offer."

"I think you know exa-ah-ctly what you're doing." He pushed in a third finger. I rubbed my cheek into the mattress to diffuse my frustration.

"You set the pace, love."

He kissed just above my spot before continuing his work. I pulled against the tentacles one last time before finally giving in. I let out a long sigh that turned into a moan at the end. His pace quickened.

I turned my face the other direction as I mumbled his nickname. It didn't take long to lose my mind and let out more noises. His fingers continued to curl inside, pushing just right on something, and pulling me ever closer. My fingers and toes flexed repeatedly as I started saying his full name.

His tongue was finally moving at a pace I wanted. I begged him not to slow down. I begged him to keep going and let me reach my high.

"Ah! Sensitive, Al!" I called. His free arm trapped my hips to the bed. He reached into my mind to sense for a painful or a different type of sensitive. The latter allowed him to continue.

"Push through, dear." He spoke quickly to get back to his task. It made my legs shake uncontrollably and tears fall down the side of my face. My elbows came up as I bit on the cover. My breathing turned to whines. Every muscles tensed. His tongued burned.

"Al...Alastor!" My voice pitched high as I reached my climax. He slowed his movements by half and drew it out even longer. My moan went on until I was out of breath. I pushed out as much air as I could from my lungs until stars dotted my vision.

Then the sensitivity turned sharp. My body jerked once and he stopped. I sucked in fresh air as his tentacles gradually receded. My chest heaved and my legs clamped lazily around his leg as he came back up to my face, tongue licking his lips.

"Are you alright?" he asked, genuine concern filling his voice.

"Uh huh," I nodded. He leaned down and gave a firm but gentle kiss.

"That's my girl." He kissed my cheek, then my neck, then my chest, then draped his tongue over my nipple. It sent electricity down my legs despite my exhaustion.

His other hand covered my other breast and massaged it. My free hand threaded through his hair as I watched him suck on my nipples. His teeth grazed them occasionally and sent a funny feeling through all my nerves.

"How did I get so lucky," he whispered to himself. He abandoned my breasts as he looked straight at me. "Are you ready?" I nodded my head but that wasn't enough for him. "Tell me yes, love."

"Yes, Al."

I felt something in him snap. The dominating, aggressive aura returned as quickly as it had gone. His hand moved down my side and lifted one of my legs up again. It fell over his shoulder as his other arm lifted my hips off the mattress.

The pain came first.

My head fell back against the pillow. Alastor breathed through his teeth as he tried to push himself all the way in. My hands grabbed the pillow as I whimpered from the size difference.

When he was finally in all the way, he leaned over and left soft, feathery kisses along my chest and stomach. His breaths in between kisses were hot and heavy. I opened a tear-filled eye to see his hair sticking to his face.

After what felt like forever, I had finally adjusted. He licked up the tears that had fallen on the sides of my face, quietly asking if he could move. His voice was much deeper and filled with need. With permission, he began to move and my back arched off the bed, voice whining his name.

His face was surprisingly the most attractive thing during it all. The way his brows knit together, his eyes squeezed shut, and his hair swaying with the movement, and his muscles working under his skin and fur. He was feeling this way with me. I was the one making him feel good.

His claws drew blood as we reached closer to our climax. I breathed his name through moans and practically cried when he sucked hard on one of my nipples between thrusts.

He abandoned my leg so I could wrap both around his waist. He leaned in close to my ears, moans filling my head and bringing my even closer. "Use those claws. Please."

I practically finished right there when he said please. My hands attached to his back and dug into the skin. He groaned when they finally broke skin. He begged me to say his name and I moaned it in its entirety as I came undone. He followed a moment later, hips slowing as he rode out his high.

We breathed in each others faces for several moments.

He kissed me gently. "I love you."

I held his cheeks in both hands, eyes meeting his beautiful red ones. "I love you too."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Author's Note:

Part 17 comes out same time tomorrow! All of these are pretty long so enjoy and please let me know your thoughts!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Taglist:

@wendigonamecaller @saccharine-nectarine @martinys-world @thesimpybitch @papas-ghoulette @masochist-downfall

[winchester-fantasies]

Backtrack - Borrowed Time: Chapter 1

Backtrack Masterlist

Series Summary: What if you were the one Dean came to instead of Lisa? Rewrite of “Swan Song” and some of S6.

Word Count: 1310

Warnings: angst, some swearing

Pairing: Dean x Female!Reader

A/N: I know this a really short chapter, but think of it as a kind of prologue to Part Two! Hope you enjoy. ❤❤ Chapter 1′s song: My Body by Eliza Shaddad.

Winchester Fantasies’ Masterlist

“‘Night, Mandy!” you called to your coworker as she walked down the sidewalk. She turned around, raising her hand in a quick wave, continuing to walk backwards before turning forwards once again. 

You turned your key in the lock before shaking the door gently. Satisfied that it was properly locked, you threw your keys into your backpack before hoisting it over your shoulder and heading towards home. 

The night was quiet, the only sounds being those of dogs barking in the distance, an occasional car driving past, or a plane passing overhead. It was warm, too, humidity enveloping you as sweat trickled down your back and fireflies danced in the waning light. It was a perfect summer night, you thought. Much like a certain moonlit night filled with passion on a clifftop overlooking the sea. But that had been ten years ago. 

You sighed heavily as you tried to get your mind off the past as it so easily tended to do. You were twenty-nine now. You weren’t supposed to be thinking about the boy who had captured your heart and left it broken. But it was impossible. Dean was etched into your mind like a tattoo. 

You rounded the corner, turning down the sidewalk that led you to your apartment. You walked up the stone steps leading to your front door, unlocking it and stepping into the darkness of your home. You flipped on the light, hanging your keys on the hooks by the door.

You walked to the dining room, depositing your backpack on the table before heading to the kitchen. Taking out the moscato from the fridge, you poured yourself a glass of the red liquid. You were feeling a little nostalgic and that brought all the memories of the past that you had so desperately tried to run from.

After Dean had left, you’d waited around for years until you finally accepted he wasn’t coming back. But living in the same town where you’d experienced so many firsts with him was like a slap in the face. You could barely walk out of your house without being reminded of him. 

So two days after your twenty-second birthday you packed a bag, left your house at three in the morning, and never looked back. You traveled from state to state, searching for a place you could settle down and try to piece your heart back together. But no place really felt like home - not if Dean wasn’t there.

It wasn’t until you reached Crested Butte, Colorado that you finally found a place you could settle down; a place that called to your battered heart. You got yourself a small apartment, applied for several different jobs, and finally landed one at a local art gallery. You hadn’t realized you had a passion for art until you started working there and began to dabble a little in painting.

You hadn’t really made a name for yourself. You never went to college like Leah. You’d remained a nomad, and you hated the looks your parents always sent your way. They never said anything, but you could tell they were disappointed in how you’d turned out. You weren’t Leah.

Leah had finished college and was now a big time attorney. She had married an Ivy League dude right out of college and had two kids. Now Brad was running for state representative and they had another kid on the way. Leah had always been the golden child, and she still was.

As much as you wanted to please your parents and make them proud, the need to be your own person was much stronger. That’s one of the reasons you hadn’t gone home in nearly seven years. You couldn’t stand to see the disappointment in their eyes and the lecture you knew would eventually come. 

But you felt you’d finally found your niche in art, and you were pretty good at it, too, if the amount of money you were making from selling your work was any indication. You were truly happy and for the first time in your life you felt content. Well…. Mostly content. There was still the part of your heart that yearned for a companion; someone you could come home to and share a life with. It wasn’t that you hadn’t tried, heaven knows you had. But it just never seemed to pan out. You had a long list of shitty boyfriends and failed relationships. You had only had one good guy in your life; he’d been the love of your life, and even he had left you….

You heaved a sigh, setting your glass down on the countertop with more force than you’d intended, the wine sloshing out of the glass. You needed to get your mind off the past. There wasn’t anything you could do to change it, and you were only hurting yourself further by reopening old wounds. But how could you when Dean had been woven into the very fabric of your heart?

You ran your hands through your windswept hair before making your way to the spare bedroom that you’d converted to a makeshift art studio. It was by no means perfect, but it suited your needs. 

Flipping on the light, you made your way to the far wall where a canvas sat on a large easel. You smiled and studied the painting you’d been working on for several weeks now. It didn’t usually take you long to finish an art piece, whipping it out in a matter of mere days. But this one was special. Maybe it was the reason you couldn’t forget that summer of ‘98, you thought as you stared at the cliff overlooking a cove. 

You sighed, picking up your painting supplies and starting on the low-hanging moon. It sometimes surprised you how much of that fateful night you remembered. Most people would have forgotten it long ago, but it was still so imprinted in your memory that sometimes you still felt the way he felt as he hovered over you, the way your bodies melded together, the love you felt, and the way the salty breeze caressed your sweaty skin as he gave himself over to you completely. 

You felt the awakening arousal course through your veins at the memory and you shook yourself. As much as you were addicted to revisiting the past, you had to admit just how stupid you both had been. You’d been so young and in love, but now looking back, you were shocked and thankful at just how lucky you’d gotten that night, especially since he hadn’t used protection and you sure as hell hadn’t been on the pill. You were already hurting when he left, and you couldn’t imagine what it would’ve been like if you’d also had a kid. 

You had just put the finishing touches on the sky when a loud knock sounded on your door. You frowned. It was late. None of your friends would be making a call, especially this late at night.

You set down your supplies, wiping your hands on the paint-covered cloth beside you before making your way to the front door. You cautiously approached it, another thudding knock sounding out in the silence. You glanced out the peephole. The head of a man was visible through the hole, but you couldn’t make out anything definite.

You stepped away, worrying your lip. You didn’t usually answer the door to strangers. You still weren’t an outgoing person, plus nowadays you couldn’t really trust anyone. You started to turn away from the door, but something stopped you. You didn’t know what it was, but you found yourself going back to the door and opening it.

You peeked out before swinging it open wide. You stepped back, your jaw hanging slack. “Oh, my god,” you breathed, your stomach dropping and goosebumps rolling across your skin. 

“Dean?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you for reading! If you liked what you read, let me know!! ❤❤

***Please do not share my content on any other platform without my consent.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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[altaaira-ashuratan-blog]

Welcome to “the Subconscious!”

As I promised, a sneak peak of my WIP world, totally unedited and -filtered screenshot, just a few months old picture! Here you go! C: I hope this picture encourages the others post pics about their worlds, no matter how WIP and unedited they are (more pics under the cut).

“The Subconscious” is my custom world I’ve been creating for... Over seven years, I assume. Actually, the picture below sums very well why I have been struggling with it for so long time. If the whole .world file hasn’t totally corrupted with all those ready lots, the objects, both CC and EA’s, have caused a lot of trouble like this the most recent hot routing mess which almost made me giving up with the whole project - thanks @nilxis for the help and @grandelama for fixing the water CC. Moreover, I’ve shaped it all over again too many times and am still unsure if I like it enough to let it be. :/

It’s the world created primarily for my own use: I wanted the world where to include all my favourite fandoms, architecture styles, lookalike buildings and mythologies. I’ve always enjoyed creating neighbourhoods from the scratch since TS2. Due this, it went without saying I HAD to test CAW tool once released. I vowed not to touch the gameplay itself until I had got everything ready in the Subconscious. It meant all work and no play (the Sims 3) ...does not make altaaira a dull person. Just a pitiful nerd. BD

It all began with the spiral. I remember travelling in the train in the wintertime when I got stuck with the spiral-shaped world from the Digimon Adventures (S1) on my mind. It made me to doodle the first version of the Subconscious. There were a huge mountain in the middle of the world and different areas around it: the corrupted city, the mountain of the Ancients, the hill of the test subects, Tuonela river, and so on. The first version became quite ready to be played before its literal corruption. Afterwards, I’m pleased it happened because it felt... amateurish, and it had zillion lots just for the rivers and waterfalls. It may have lagged worse than Isla Paradiso. Whoopsie.

After this huge failure, I started everything over. At this time, I got the inspiration from the world’s name itself. Once again, I placed the spiral mountain in its original position but everything around it was based on Freud’s theory about psyche. Everything “cultural” and “sophisticated” would have been on the top of the mountain and rest around it. I tried to place different cultural areas to the correct geographical locations and make each public lot to represent some of their historical roots: for example, the school would have been the mixture of cathedral and mosque. Finally, I came to the conclusion this may have been too racist - in the school’s context for example, it would have been too Euro-centrist way to understand how the education has historically developed. From this version, I just left the cultural locations and the idea of “the past” and “the afterlife” in the west and “the future” and “the birth” in the east - and the art gallery named “Freud’s Psyche”. It will be the only one similar building from the very first version. Nostalgic. 

Every picture in this post are from the newest version of the world. The colours may vary because I’ve tested different colours. It’s very hard because I feel everybody else has already used all the nice-looking colour combinations. :<

The desert in the valley is the only place which structure I haven’t changed a lot. In the current version, there’s no sand painting yet and I’ve placed a lot of city walls. The only way to access there is either go through the cave (seen in the pic) or across the mountains. I wanted a remote area for my town with traditional Arabic-Persian-Islamic architecture and Shia mosque inspired by Blue Mosque and this  (right in the pic, likely going to be more Persian styled because of already-existing Eastlands), Ancient Egypt lots (left in the pic) placed inside the mountain inspired by Petra and “Bedouin” gameplay . 

The coastal area has been expanded a lot from this. The lagoon is still there but there’s a lot space for the nature and forest in the current version. See the lot for the Moomin house next to the mountain! <3

In this pic, you may notice the city walls from Shang Simla. My intention is to build the town using elements of the traditional/ancient Chinese architecture and city planning. There will also be the fountain/water source for the rice fields in the north side of the mountain, the epic martial arts place and arena and separated monasteries for the Buddhist and Sufi monks.

My delta area next to the desert. I planned to create the tropical jungle around the river and the town inspired by Varanasi for my Hindu deities. It has also been expanded a lot from this and there’s not so many mountains anymore - I found it too restless and incoherent landscaping, and of course, no more radio towers anymore. :D

The super old sneak peak from my metropolitan city area and the view from the north. The Olympus mountain (right in the pic) has been separated as an island and the valley expanded a lot. Besides, there’s more land to be cultivated. I have no better pics from the city centre but a few city plans drawn in the tablet. If I find out out how to transfer them, I’ll post them later and tell more about my plans.

I planned to locate Yubaba’s onsen and Howl’s castle around here.

Daang, how much I hate this mountain! Olympus is the place for antique and modern Greek architecture, my Greek Deities and the University. Nothing more to say, just glad I bulldozed the whole crap.

...for the rice fields! But oh well, this has been another experiment of doom. Fortunately, it doesn’t look like this because I gave up my attempt for create these by using CC water by @grandelama. Instead, I place the fields to the hill by painting and try to create a semi-aesthetic watering system. Experiments, experiments.

Moreover, there are more diverse areas not mentioned yet. It’s easier to tell about the when I take the pics. Yes, a cliffhanger. :D 

That’s all folks. I’ll post the newer WIP pictures when I finally place the removed objects again and remove @potato-ballad-sims Boroughsburg’s CC - as I mentioned earlier, I intended primarily create the world for my personal use. At the moment, if you guys are interested in using it, I’ll release it once getting ready. I’m not going to change my plans due to the public release, however. It means I’ll use quite a lot of CC in both the world and the hypothetical lots.

[justlarried]

So @jlf23tumble asked me to provide some fun little AU captions for this post as a birthday gift, and who am I to refuse! 💛💛💛

Jen, I LOVE YOU so so much and I WISH I was in LA right now so I could tell you Happy Birthday in person and take you out for coffee and like, to a weird museum or something, but since I’m stuck in Zurich for now, have this instead:

Harry is NOT stalking his ex-boyfriend Louis, okay. He just happened to be in town for a business meeting and for some stupid, nostalgic reason decided to take a walk through their old neighbourhood. (Definitely not in the hopes of reconnecting with him because he still misses him even after two years, nope, because that would be silly!) He didn’t expect Louis to come out of his favourite bar right when Harry was walking by and, just, what was he supposed to do? He didn’t want to attract attention by turning around or running away so he just whipped out his phone and pretended to be in deep conversation and not pay attention to Louis, who - shit, is calling his name, and crossing the street to come after him, oh shit oh shit-

Harry was innocently strolling down the street when he saw his number one crush through a window of a small gallery and of course had to go in because he only ever saw Louis from afar on campus and in one of his classes and this is the perfect opportunity to finally talk to him. Except when he enters the gallery he sees that the exhibit is by none other than L. Tomlinson, which, holy shit that's impressive, but also, holy shit, Harry doesn't know a single thing about art. So he just stands there and stares at the paintings trying really hard to look interested until Louis is close enough for Harry to go up to him and be like “these paintings are amazing! So impressive and, um, such a statement.“ And Louis just nods and doesn't seem inclined to reply so Harry soldiers on and just makes up random stuff that sounds vaguely artsy and Louis seems kind of at a loss and Harry's sweating because what if Louis wanted to express something completely different with his art and Harry just totally insulted him and Louis thinks he's an idiot now and will never want to date him?? And in his panic he just blurts out I'M SORRY I DON'T ACTUALLY KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ART I JUST SAID SOME RANDOM THINGS TO IMPRESS YOU I DIDN'T MEAN TO INSULT YOUR PAINTING and Louis is just like “mate that's not my painting, my sister Lottie over there is the artist, but since we apparently both can't appreciate it how about we go get some champagne and talk about anything other than art?“

A picture found on Louis’ phone the day after he and Harry decided it would be a good idea to go to that clearing near Harry’s mom’s house and get high on shrooms.

Harry is a roadie on Louis’ first solo tour and Louis really doesn’t know which idiot-slash-genius decided to hire such a clumsy guy and give him the job to set off the fireworks during the last song, because it’s been three weeks and the fireworks went off at pretty much every part of the show except when they were meant to - during the intro, while he was trying to talk to the crowd, and, on one memorable occasion, after the show was already over and Harry and the others were packing up the equipment. But Louis outright refuses to let anyone fire Harry because he’s cute and charming and honestly, it’s become kind of a thing for fans to guess at what point the fireworks will go off during the next show and it’s a fun little thing for him to interact with fans on Twitter so really it’s all worked out well and he should take Harry on tour with him always and forever, right??

The universe is unfair. Not only did Louis have to sit through two whole hours of the school’s dance recital just for daisy and phoebe’s part right at the end, but they had invited their favourite teacher Mr. Styles, and made him sit in the front row so Louis’ eyes were constantly drawn to him, and now?? Now they were throwing rose petals at him like he was some kind of- some kind of disney prince, what the hell, what did Louis do to deserve this? Except after the performance when Louis promised to take his sisters out for dinner they ask Mr. Styles - Harry - to join them, so, you know. Maybe the universe isn’t so unfair after all.

You might think this is famous actor Harry Styles, but it’s actually his sister’s friend Louis in a wig! Harry and Louis spend the night together after meeting at a party and the next day they’re having breakfast in the kitchen with Gemma and Harry complains about having to do a pap walk and Louis jokingly suggests he’d totally be up for putting on a wig and do it for him if it means he’ll get to drive one of those gorgeous cars in the garage, and Gemma’s like “you know, I still have that wig from last Halloween actually...” So Harry gets to sleep off his hangover, Louis gets to take his car out for a spin, the paps get their photos, and Gemma can rest easy knowing she already has a good story for her speech at their wedding.

[aggresivelyfriendly]

~Who Names The Colors~

Chapter 29-Willa and the Magic Hour

Hi Lovely People! I broke my laptop yesterday(I swear I’m clumsier than Mr. Styles, yikes) so today’s chapter is late! I hope it’s worth the long wait....

I am so grateful to @dirtystyles for lots of things, the beautiful banners and this week especially the youtube playlist of a live Harry Styles by Harry Styles in HQ.

@nocontrolforlouis makes these bitches comprehensible!

And last, but never least @bleedinglove4h is today’s kween-she knows why(WHO THE FUCK IS KAREN)!

Also-thanks @gucci

"Harry!" She stage whispered. Jo needed enough volume to get him to look up, but was afraid to disturb his visitor.

He was seated on the steps of a country estate that had been converted to some sort of museum. They were both such dorks, that the thought of living out some Austen fantasy appealed to them. Must be why they worked so well. It was why they had chosen to make their way there on day three of Lake Country life.

Zoe had had different ideas. When she had zoomed through the art hall, the official gallery, like a Tasmanian devil, or at least, like a child whose mother had never taken her to a museum, Jo decided they had better try out of doors until she was a little more tuckered out; and that they should take Zoe to a museum. She was a bloody artist for fuck's sake, as was her boyfriend, and her daughter had never been into a museum, gallery, or even her studio very often. Zoe was only 3, but it still seemed a huge oversight. One to be remedied. Once they let her run wild they could try the gallery again. Hopefully she would let Harry carry her.

Outside, Harry had encouraged Zoe to play a game of tag with him, which had turned into hide and seek. From the smoothness of the transition, Jo suspected their outings to the park went similarly. She was behind a pillar when she heard an excited high-pitched squeal.

"Look at the tiny piggies mummy!" The noise might have been the animal, but Jo suspected it was her kid. Not the goats nearby. Zoe was beside herself and had no concept of her own volume. So the piggies in question had quickly scuttled off to their unhappy, grunting mother.

It was funny, or it seemed to be to the man accompanying them, who was bent over at the waist cracking up at Zoe chasing the piglets and then being chased by the mother pig. Zoe found it funny too, and had giggled then about faced and chased down the pig who squealed and ran away. It looked like an innocent version of Benny Hill, without all the misogyny. Jo's smile was unsinkable.

Zoe had set off to find the scuttling pig and babies and Harry had gone the other direction. Since her boyfriend was ostensibly an adult, Jo want after Zoe.

The duo had subsequently found the lambs and spent a good deal of time watching them. Jo then found out how to get Zoe to calm. Holding little ewes on her lap. She held still and whispered. It seemed to have a compounding effect. As Zoe sat with the lamb on her lap trying to be calm for it, she got calmer and calmer.

That seemed to be the effect this little escape to the Lake Country was having on all of them.

Harry certainly looked calm.

He was lounging in baggy trousers on some steps near a fountain. The day was sunny with that cool warmth of early summer, hinting at heat, but only flirting with discomfort. Harry looked like the daydream he was. His head was cast back and his eyes were closed, sun woshipping. This was probably why he didn't seem to notice the kid, the literal baby goat at his elbow. The sun on his face and the kid at his elbow was too bucolic to miss.

Jo had snapped a picture and then immediately tried to quietly get his attention. She imagined the picture would be cute, but that Harry would actually like to experience the magic moment for himself.

He needed it, he had been off since Jo got home on Sunday evening.

When she and Zoe got back from Bath almost a week ago, Jo'd texted Harry to let him know they were nearly home and safe.

He'd been in the kitchen when they got in. The kettle was bubbling and he had a piece of toast out for Zoe. Jo tried not to give her fruit this late in the evening due to the sugar and had recently had to slow down her cheese consumption. Otherwise, her Stilton bill would be ridiculous. Toast it was lately. Harry had adopted the new rule, because he used to have strawberries out for her. Zoe's favorite.

"Hey baby. Tea?" Harry had greeted her with the question. She expected him to hoist the kettle and grin, but instead he walked over to her and wrapped a hand around her and buried his face in her neck.

He breathed her in and held on. "Miss me?" was what she asked. Jo figured she'd get the actual reason for his affection soon. Once they were ready for bed, and wrapped around each other and the few fetters he kept on his tongue were loosed. He loved to whisper in the dark.

He just nodded into her neck and held her tighter. Her arms came up around him in response. Shoe would wait him out. That night though, he hadn't been chatty. The love he'd made to her had been slow, reverent and almost nostalgic, which troubled her. Harry'd insisted they lay on their side, and he'd held her hands the whole time. He'd spoke I love you's against her skin until she couldn't keep her eyes open.

The next day, Harry and Jo hurried about to get the car packed and ready for their trip. The night before, cuddles and a movie on the couch had seemed a wonderful idea, until the morning presented all the things left to do. The small tent, one of Zoe's very own, for the second half of the trip, after Jo had her fill of room service, was easy to pack. Getting the two-person she had stashed in the attic, was not the same. She'd fought the spiders and won though.

It was still one in the afternoon before they got on the road, and stopping for lunch and later, ice cream, meant they had an hour to get in their hotel room, get dressed and deliver Zoe to the in-house babysitters the inn had, to make their reservations. Jo was nervous, but Harry reminded her of all the reviews she'd read. Plus, it was her idea, a date, out in the world, for his graduation.

Harry loved to have her on his arm, and the black dress she'd surprised him with was cut lower than usual, and his eyes lingered and loved the extra inches all night. He'd been more interested in visually devouring her than the French food on his plate.

The lucky thing was that Zoe was asleep when they went to pick her up. And she'd stayed like that on Harry's shoulder up the stairs. The little girl had stirred when she was laid down, "Mummy!" had been called and feet kicked, but Jo only had to lay with her for ten minutes to get her back to dreamland.

His touches had lingered that night too, she was wondering if he should take a picture of her collarbone for all the studying of it he'd done.

"Are you going to paint it?" She'd asked when she couldn't stand his pace any more, was rubbing her thighs together and pulling his hair at the roots.

"I might, but I think I've just decided it's my favorite part of you.

Jo was still deciding her favorite parts of him when they settled in at the lake. It had taken hours to make camp and Zoe was invigorated by the air. She may as well have wings.

It was really late by the time the three year old fell asleep. The moon was full and brilliant overhead, so bright it kept her up. Zoe had been riled beyond belief. Harry had spent much of the day bear hunting with her and Jo found that she just had to sit back and laugh as they re-enacted the song several times over. Zoe delighted in the tunnels they found and that Harry would slither under fallen trees with her, no matter how dirty he got.

They were such a sight, and the facilities so far away, Jo was at a loss.

"You're such messes! How will we ever get you clean?" She picked through Zoe's ever growing hair. It was thick and growing in waves, her baby curls cut, but the texture still gorgeous and thickly wavy. The color has changed too, darkening. It would lighten with the summer sun though. Jo recalled Harry's baby picture from his senior year of college slideshow. He'd once been a blonde too. Jo sighed wistfully at the similarity and then laughed at herself for even considering such a thing.

If they found a surrogate, in a few years, what would their children look like? How long would they stay blonde? Or would genetics surprise them both. Her wandering mind was called back to Harry answering her question.

Harry laughed at her, "That's easy enough to fix!" And he shucked off his t-shirt and Zoe's dress and carried her down to the water. They splashed and Harry threw her over and over.

Zoe's giggles were fitful and loud and carried. They sailed on the air straight to Jo's heart.

Before she could help herself, She took of her own cover up and ran down to meet them.

Zoe swam back and forth between them until Harry declared her proficient in freestyle, backstroke, and improving on her breath stroke.

Then they had had foil packed potatoes and roast. The energy Zoe took out of the s'mores Harry made them had her bouncing for several hours. "Mummy dance with me!" She'd called as she flitted like a nymph around the fire and Jo had got up and ran to her.

They fire danced like lost boys.

Zoe had dropped 20 minutes ago. Talking a mile a minute then not at all. Jo was sure she was just as tired, and she was laying in the sleeping bags Harry had zipped together when she heard him calling her.

"Jo, c'mere, I want to show you something." He sounded like he was near the water, his voice echoed off and bounced like waves.

She realized why when she got outside- he was exactly as she expected him to be, his feet being lapped at by the gentle lake waves. Jo was just in hi cuts and a plaid, so she followed suit and came to him on the shore, she needed his body heat anyway.

"What did you want to show me?"

"The moon, my Eve." He circled behind her, hooking his chin over her shoulder and pointing to it. "Do you feel the pull?" He looked at her sideways.

Jo looked from the alabaster orb in the sky to the pearls of his teeth. "Yes, but not to the moon." Harry was her little bit of Eden.

"Good." He smiled and walked her to where her knees were just covered before sitting at her feet.

He mouthed over the cotton of her underpants until she squirmed before pulling them to the side. It was almost better through the fabric, almost.

"Harry," her neck was already rolling back from the licks he was giving her lingual crease, he'd switched between the two. And despite her words, her feet had widened to accommodate him and her swelling center's attraction.

"What if Zoe comes out?" She found the power to say. Protest was too big a word.

"Let's turn around. You can tell her you were bathing. But she'll sleep."

And he gripped her ass and bathed her with his tongue, and she was baptized by the moon and his love more than the water.

She still bit her palms to stem her cries, even if the woods and water would be the only ones to hear them. He dove deep into her and drew out her happiness. When he told her she gave him a taste of Eden too, she believed it. This was paradise. And it might be where she got to stay. She'd sacrifice to do so. The cost wasn't counted yet.

It was the most carefree he had been since they arrived. The weight he wore cast off into the lake like a net.

The next morning, she woke up to chirping birds and Harry awake and smoothing hair off her forehead. She'd nodded off the night long before she heard the scruff of his feet together. Jo was tired from camping and romancing. From a family vacation; the first she'd ever had like it.

Times were lean when she and Ethan had been alone against the world. They had mostly only gone to London or to the sea if she could scrimp together the funds. Then, she took him to Spain once. To Barcelona and Madrid and finally Mallorca the first summer she was at the university. His eyes liked to bug out of his head at the girls on Spanish beaches. He was in his first flush of manhood.

He was a real man now. Or so she told herself when she had moments of concern about her relationship with Harry. It scared her still that being with her was giving something up. For both of them.  We're you o my doing something right if in love if you were scared out of your wits sometimes?

He looked like he thought so too this morning. His tender brow was creased and he had weights on his tongue. But love filled his eyes.

"What's it, lover?" She scrapped together her courage and asked for the first time. She'd been hoping to stay in Nirvana, but avoiding a thing didn't make it go away. The morning light was soft, light and he was beautiful. It wasn't harsh or abrasive. That would have been more fitting.

Jo had been letting herself believe. The fall for him had been undeniable. She hadn't so much let that happened as been unable to stop it, like stemming a tide. Believing in their future though, against all of their obstacles, that she had let happen. As each dominos stacked against them had fallen away instead of on top of them and he had thrust more options into her hands, made more promises, shared more hope, she'd decided they may be able to do it. That people would accept them, even Ethan, if they saw them together. They were at their best when loving each other. Jo liked herself better with him.

Even as she opened herself up and ran into possibility, she'd always been waiting for a stone to fall the other way though, on top of them, or between them to divide.

Harry's face looked like he had the stone to drop. It was especially cruel today. After the week in the Lake District. She knew something was wrong when he had come to her after she got back from Ethan's, but she hadn't pushed and was excited about the trip she had planned for his graduation celebration. She wanted to have the escape with him.

But pretend time looked over.

He waited a long beat to answer and traced her face with his eyes.

"I got into a fight with my mum." He swallowed, "A few hours before you came home on Sunday."

"What about?" Jo asked, though she knew the answer.

He swallowed.

"About me?" She supplied and he nodded.

He sat up and pinched his lip. Jo took it as a good sign that he didn't turn completely away from her. "She asked me flat out. I'd gotten into it with Gemma and was talking about her boyfriend being a wanker when they left. I don't like him. He's not good enough for her. That is so clear to me. It's also why she missed my graduation." He swallowed.

"It hurt your feelings?" She put her hand on his arm.

"Yeah, she didn't want to come without him. So she missed my graduation. And I told her I was disappointed and she told me I was spoilt and didn't know what it was like to be in a relationship, so I couldn't know why she wanted him to come with her. And that she came later." He sighed. "I told her I did know what it was like. And that it would have meant a lot to me." Harry picked up her hand. "They left when I said I didn't like him, in front of him. My mum looked so frustrated at me."

"I'm sorry you fought with your sister, but you said you fought with your mum?" She was a little confused.

He bit his lip. "I was ranting a bit, about Gemma and Kip, stupid name, and how Gemma made horrible choices in men. And my mum said something, under her breath like, about me not having the right to criticize someone's love life." He breathed loud. "So I asked her what that meant, and she point blank asked me if I was sleeping with you."

Jo's breath caught. She knew Anne knew. The way she was, so guarded and watchful, it was clear-plus, mum's intuition.

"And I, well, I'm." He tried to get out.

"You're a terrible liar." Jo admitted.

"I tried, a bit, but she didn't believe me. I didn't want to lie anyway. And then she, well she started in on you. And how she couldn't believe that you'd be so predatory. And I...." he hung his head. "I told her it wasn't like that. That we weren't sleeping together, but in love and that I chased you and you tried really hard to leave the attraction be. Ran like the wind, but that we were like magnets, or the moon and tide or something and she scoffed."

Jo felt miserable for him and her. "How'd you leave it then?" She was wondering how long until he chose his relationship with his mum. Like he should. They were so foolish to think they had a chance if anybody knew about them.

Harry was nothing if not a surprise.

"I told her I didn't want to fight. And that she didn't know about us, but that I was serious about you." He looked at Jo then. "I kissed her head and told her I loved her and respected her but that you were my choice, and she could accept it, or not, but I'd appreciate the chance. And I left."

Jo rubbed his shoulders. He loved his mum. Was a mumma's boy. "Have you, have you spoken to her?"

"No, I wanted to talk to you." He turned to her. "I'm not sure you are ready, but can we please," he blew out a breath. "Can we please go talk to her when we get back?"

"How long have you been waiting to ask me about this?" She squeezed his shoulder. "All week? Love, we're supposed to share things that are heavy, the load is lighter across two backs."

"I, I know, I just thought." He looked down then up. "You had these plans, for us, for me." He bit his lips into his mouth like he was trying to button the truth in. "And you're always so scared, of just this, and it's like you thought. Not like I did. I thought my mum would trust me."

"She does Harry." Jo put her head on his collarbone. "She doesn't trust me."

"She will, when she sees us together. I know it." He was hurt, but always so certain. "On the way home, I'll text to ask if we can have a meal together." He rubbed his hands up and down her back to comfort them both. "Where would be best love? Our place, a restaurant? Neutral ground?"

Jo thought about it, "I want to say in public, so emotions won't get too strong. But, maybe we should give her home pitch?" Jo bit her lip. Harry must have been able to feel it, because he pulled back and looked at her and used a thumb to release the tortured flesh.

"She just needs to see that you're what makes my world spin round and round." Jo gulped. Yeah, he made her twirl madly.

"For how long?" Jo croaked. This was the part that made her heart sink to her belly and beat fast at the same time. When, where, what would be too much?

"What do you mean?" He smoothed her hair back.

"How long until people staring at us, and your mom being mad, or not having a relationship with her, or me wrinkling up, how long until I fall off your axis?" Jo, well, she'd recovered before, but wasn't sure she could this time. Just 17 days felt like torture.

"Jo!" He breathed and wrapped his thumbs around her ears, lifted her head to him. "I love my mother, but you are my choice. And she loves me, and we want a relationship, so she will have to learn to respect us, our future." He looked frustrated but cracked a grin, "and has anybody looked sideways at us this week?"

"No, I guess not." She cocked a glance at him. "Harry, I don't want to ruin your relationship with your mother." Jo shook her head. "I don't want to even change it!"

"Change is..." he rubbed his forehead against hers. "Like time, it's not going away. She and I will be ok. I will be ok if we are." He sighed. "And you act like this is temporary for me, but I've told you. Right, I want your tomorrows. Stop waiting for me to leave and be with me!" It was one of the most brutal tones he had ever taken with her. "Do you want me?"

"Yes, you know I do." Jo closed her eyes and sealed her promise with a breathy kiss.

"Then let's enjoy this day in the sun." They both looked at the muted light through the tent. "Or the mist, and go home."

"Ok. When will you talk to your mum?" Jo untangled herself from him and stood. Zoe was quiet in her tiny tent, but Jo wanted to see her face.

"When we get home. I'll call her." He sighed and then found a well of happiness she supposed. "I'd really like to spend a day with you ladies here, where it's beautiful and not worry about anything." He dimpled at Jo and she loved all of his parts, even the ones he didn't like so much, the ones that needed attention and validation frequently.

"I think that sounds lovely. How do you want to start, graduate?" She scrunched her nose at their inside joke.

"Well, Mrs. Robinson," they both laughed under their breath at the joke she'd started the day they got to the country. "Since there is no pool for me to lounge in, I think I'd like to just lay here with you and stay warm until the nymph comes to find us."

"Done." She lay down and opened her arms to him. His hair lay in curls on her chest and the color was similar enough to her own that could see herself as lady Godiva, hair to cover her revelations. That would be a funny picture, maybe she'd pitch it to Harry when he was stuck next time. The joke painting prompts usually led to something amazing.

"One more serious question?" It was easier with his face buried in her armpit. "How long will you be able to go without talking to your mum?" She wondered how Ethan would fair in this scenario.

"Not long, and she probably won't cut off communication, it's not her style. But she will be quietly disapproving and you'll be uncomfortable when we see her, maybe always." He nuzzled in. "So I'm hoping we win her over. You're charming." It tickled when he talked there. "See, I've got you giggling!" He looked at her and smoothed her hair back while she smiled at him. He just kissed her sweet and lay back on her chest and wrapped his arms around her. They stayed like that until the light brightened.

Jo looked out across the field to where Harry and Zoe were playing tag and finished setting up the drinks they'd gotten from the only grocery store seemingly for 20 miles. She was amazed that Zoe was in such a mood. She'd woken up grumpy, harrumphing into their tent complaining about being hungry and cold. Jo had pulled her into her arms and used her hands to create friction on her miniature biceps.

Then they had gotten up and around and made a store run. Zoe was not excited about hanging nearby her mother and kept taking off for the end of the aisle, the next aisle, the meat counter. Thankfully, the store was small, a collection of seven aisles and Zoe was loud, plus there were two of them to keep track of her. She was constantly afraid of the looks she and Hary may garner. In such a public place, but both here and at the restaurant the first two nights, when they'd stayed in town, there had been none. Harry's 'I told you so' smile could only be kissed off his face.

In any case, she and Harry were able to keep Zoe in eyeline, and get the picnic shopping. Jo had been sad it was their last day, well sad about reality intruding, mostly.

It felt like time though, when Zoe had a fit in the middle of the tiny grocery store because there was no Tesco brand juice. It wasn't Tesco, so of course there wasn't, but that was not a sufficient reason for Zoe. Jo loved her tenacity, but somethings were simply not possible right in the moment. When she was like this, there was no comforting her. In a few minutes, she would pick herself up, fold into Jo and in an hour she'd say sorry. But right now her emotions were too big for her little body and surely her vocabulary.

Her fits had gotten better as she got older once they had rounded the six month mark on three. That stopped Jo cold. Then so had she and Harry. Six months. That was both a tiny amount of time, and a life changing chunk.

She walked over to Harry then. He was a few feet away, and Zoe was not quite finished Jo could tell by the tenor of her cries. He rose his eyebrows at her.

"We've been together six months." Jo looked up at him, in a day old t-shirt because he hadn't packed adequately and his skinny jeans, hair scraped up in a bun.

"I know." Harry looked confused by her outburst, and she glanced round. People were probably staring, the five people in the general store. Maybe at Zoe, maybe at her, usually at Harry.

She didn't care.

Jo planted her mouth against him and kissed him for god and Cumbria to see.

His smiles for the rest of the day shone like a mega watt bulb, Like the ones the photography students used for over exposure. Made sense, that's what he wanted and what they would get, exposure, openness. It was a desire he alluded to or named often. The first dinner they went to her held her hand conspicuously and sat next to her. Mine.

The food was ready, and she was just about to call them to eat the picnic, but when Jo looked up, Harry was looking back at her. The hills around him were bright green, and his eyes were glowing kelly at her. The food would wait.

Jo got her legs under her and the feeling of the wind rushing passed her face, Zoe's fleece slipping through her fingers, and Harry catching her when she thought she'd gotten away was like freedom. Being let out of a gilded cage. One she had put herself in.

It would be alright. They'd make it, she told herself, while she watched him drive them home. Home he called it. She wasn't ready to move him in, but, "Will you keep your place while you're abroad?"

"Haven't 100% decided I'm going abroad." He glanced at her before checking Zoe in the backseat where she colored, and then back to the road.

"What percent are you at?" Jo missed him already, and they had six weeks to fill if he went. He had to go.

"Odds are 85 in favor."

What's the other 15?" She knew the answer.

"The other 15 will miss the creases on your face in the morning so much that I'll get kicked out for painting only them." He reached for her hand. "But I was going to move my stuff to mum's. Figure it out later, might as well save the money, or use it to see Canada, ya know."

"What if you moved it into my place? And we figured it out when you got back, if it and you should stay there." Jo lurched forward. "What are you doing?"

The car pulled onto the slim shoulder and he put the car in park and liked to pull her over the gear shift with his hands on her face.

"Are you asking me to move in with you?" He spoke against her mouth.

"Sort of. In 8 months time." She tried to shrug, but he kissed her again. Fill of emotion, but no tongue until Zoe laughed and a car honked.

"Then yes, I'll shack up with you." He was giddy.

"After Montreal!" She said

"Or Venice."

They were both so excited they were vibrating. The hours until Zoe went down felt long and Jo put lavender oil in the bath and on the soles of her feet to gentle her to sleep.

Harry was waiting at the foot of the stairs. "Harr-" he cut her off with a lip lock that felt like he'd thrown away the key and jumped her onto his hips. He was full of desire, but not the kind she was used to, the charge that made it nearly impossible to stay away from him, or not kiss him, or stop watching him work his hand over his cock.

This felt like a brimming, an effervescence, where champagne spills over the lip of a beautiful piece of glass because someone was too excited to pour carefully.

Her bedding wrapped around her and she sighed at the soft landing. His naked chest rolled her t-shirt against her stomach and his hands pulled it over her head. She'd quit her bra when they got home and he quit working her neck when he got her breasts free. He was moving fast and she expected him to keep at it. But then, he stopped. His hurry evaporated in the warm room and he inched up the temperature by slowing his pace to a snail's crawl. Not an inch of her bust or belly or pelvis went untouched. The soft trials of his fingertips, the touch that made her gasp every time, was enough to set her skin on edge and her pores to open. She was sweaty by the time she was begging.

He started to move lower, pulled her plaid pants from her hips and mouth descending into the v her legs made.

"No, need you inside, Harry!" She'd reached between their damp skins and clutched his velvety cock. Too ansty to please, she stroked once and collected the precum, before notching him into the seam of her body.

"Fuck!" They both gasped and her hand slicked the cum onto his bottom lip to lick off with him a moment later.

The rock and rock roll of him into her was giving her a fever. "I'm burning up, lover." She swore repeatedly.

"I'll cool you down, baby. Just hold on." Harry trailed a hand up her hip to grasp her shoulder underneath. The round roll of his hips had her reeling like a topspun ball.

Jo cast her head back, the first time she had broken eye contact with him since they began it seemed and called his name. "Har-Harry!" He groaned in response and when she opened her eyes again, his green didn't catch her focus, not like it did always, but the yellow light near her door.

There stood her son. And his body was backlit, like he was a ghost.

"Ethan!" Jo startled.

Harry must not have heard her where his head was buried in her neck.

'You're fucking my mum?' she expected Ethan to yell, but instead his voice was wet and thin, it amazed her she could hear it over Harry's groan of completion.

"Har-Harry," his voice hit a familiar hitch, "how could you do this to me?"

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

What I’ve Been Reading #2

Hey People of Earth!

I recently started a new series on this blog (titled above), where I reflect on the last few books I’ve read. I’m doing this mostly to keep myself accountable because I’m notoriously bad at committing myself to reading. So far, reading has been far greater than it’s been in the past--I’m definitely getting into the rhythm of things. I read some amaaaazing books this time around (since approx. November), and these are them:

1. The Darkest Legacy by Alexandra Bracken

This is book four in The Darkest Minds series, and was just recently released (last summer). Whilst I’ve drifted from YA in the last few years, this series was such a huge favourite of mine when I was younger, and I thought I’d give this book a go for nostalgia’s sake. Also, I truly admire Alex as an author, and wanted to support her! Here’s the summary:

Five years after the destruction of the so-called rehabilitation camps that imprisoned her and countless other Psi kids, seventeen-year-old Suzume "Zu" Kimura has assumed the role of spokesperson for the interim government, fighting for the rights of Psi kids against a growing tide of misinformation and prejudice. But when she is accused of committing a horrifying act, she is forced to go on the run once more in order to stay alive. Determined to clear her name, Zu finds herself in an uncomfortable alliance with Roman and Priyanka, two mysterious Psi who could either help her prove her innocence or betray her before she gets the chance. But as they travel in search of safety and answers, and Zu grows closer to the people she knows she shouldn't trust, they uncover even darker things roiling beneath the veneer of the country's recovery. With her future-and the future of all Psi-on the line, Zu must use her powerful voice to fight back against forces that seek to drive the Psi into the shadows and save the friends who were once her protectors.

What drew me to it: Like I mentioned, its mother series was a mega favourite of mine in grade 8, and whilst I’ve grown out of YA, I was curious to see where the story went, five years in the future. I read about 60% of it on page, and listened to the rest on and of over the course of a few months. I started it in August, and finished it on New Year’s Eve. Not the fault of the book, that’s totally me being Very Bad at commitment. I’ve really enjoyed Alex’s novels in audiobook format, and this one was no exception (I think, if I were to read it again, I’d listen to the audiobook: it’s like listening to a television show!)

My rating: 3/5

Why: This is really due to the fact that I no longer am very interested in YA. In all truths, I got into YA early, and got out of it even earlier because apparently I am a sixty year old woman?? I started my journey with YA in grade seven, and it ended around the end of grade eight. After that, I had trouble finding YA books I could enjoy/relate to, not that the books were any less, or bad because of this, but because I was just an injustice to them (I’ve always been a strange reader). This is why I don’t really read YA anymore because I feel like I rate them unfairly because I’m not super big on the category anymore. It just (rightfully) didn’t give me what I’m most currently interested in in books (horrible people; horrible relationships; morally grey protagonists), because of course the category is different to what I read now! With that said, I think, if I’d read this book in my Peak YA Moment (grade 7-8), I’d definitely have given it a 5 star rating. It was super entertaining and funny and nostalgic, and made me miss a series so pivotal in my writing journey. If you love YA, and this series, I think this book is definitely worth the read! That was a thiccccc tangent. 

2. Past Lives, Future Bodies by Kristin Chang

This is a really quick poetry collection (that I spoiler: looooved). This is the summary:

PAST LIVES, FUTURE BODIES is a knife-sharp and nimble examination of migration, motherhood, and the malignant legacies of racism. In this collection, family forms both a unit of survival and a framework for history, agency, and recovery. Chang undertakes a visceral exploration of the historical and unfolding paths of lineage and what it means to haunt body and country. These poems traverse not only the circularity of trauma but the promise of regeneration—what grows from violence and hatches from healing—as Chang embodies each of her ghosts and invites the specter to speak. 

What drew me to it: @shaelinwrites rec’d it to me on my last update, and I fell in love with the premise. I’m *cheap* so was very excited to be gifted it by my Grandma for Christmas. (I actually read it on Christmas!)

My rating: 5/5

Why: Kristin Chang is literally so skilled with her use of the line break? I was shook? This is my second collection of poetry that I’ve read, following (no shade) Rupi Kaur’s The Sun and Her Flowers, which, I felt kinda made the line break feel gimmicky? So this collection definitely reinvented it for me. Her poems are so punchy, and thoughtful, and you can truly feel the experience built into the backbone of every one of them. When I panic wrote some poetry for my writing class, I used it as comfort reference and was amazed at how deliberate she is with her words. I also found so much of its commentary on race so relatable. It’s definitely a collection I’ll keep re-reading. I’d recommend this if, like me, you’re just starting out in poetry--a perfect way to acclimate yourself to a new form!

3. God of Shadows by Lorna Crozier

*Rachel vigorously trying to diversify her reading.* The summary:

The poet Lorna Crozier has always been brilliant at fusing the ordinary with the other-worldly in strange and surprising ways. Now the Governor General's Literary Award-winning author of Inventing the Hawk returns with God of Shadows, a wryly wise book that offers a polytheistic gallery of the gods we never knew existed and didn't know we needed. To read these poems is to be ready to offer your own prayers to the god of shadows, the god of quirks, and the god of vacant houses. Sing new votive hymns to the gods of horses, birds, cats, rats, and insects. And give thanks at the altars of the gods of doubt, guilt, and forgetting. What life-affirming questions have these deities come to ask? Perhaps it is simply this: How can poems be at once so profound, original and lively, and also so much fun?

What drew me to it: At this point I’m just stalking @shaelinwrites​’ Goodreads because her reading taste is on pointttt. I’ve also been dying to read more poetry, and branch out into different forms of writing, so I can be a little *prepared* for school, so I thought I’d take a peek at this collection. 

My rating: 5/5

Why: This collection is so beautiful! I read it super quickly, and fell in love with the concept immediately. I think Crozier explored such unique ideas with super unique language, and I live for it. This collection gave me perspective on ‘gods’ I’d never even thought about. I’d definitely recommend it if you’re looking into reading some prose poetry!

4. The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

I finished this book today, and now have trust issues and feel like I’m in a constant state of wanting to cry. Here’s the summary:

If you knew the date of your death, how would you live your life?

It's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children—four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness—sneak out to hear their fortunes.

The prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in '80s San Francisco; dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy; eldest son Daniel seeks security as an army doctor post-9/11; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality.

A sweeping novel of remarkable ambition and depth, The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next. It is a deeply moving testament to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull of familial bonds.

What drew me to it: I actually don’t know?? I put it on hold at my library in October, and was loaned it in January (looooong waitlist). So I can’t remember why I wanted to read it, probably because 1969 was in the premise lmao. I actually completely forgot about placing a hold on it because it’d been two months, so by the time I got the email notification, I’d forgotten what it was about. Oftentimes, I’m Bad, and leave my loans for weeks, forgetting about them, but I was intrigued by seeing I’d received this loan because I couldn’t remember placing it/why I placed it. I quickly re-read the summary, and immediately started reading because it reminded me a lot of the Haunting of Hill House sibling dynamic, and I was on board!

My rating: 5/5 stars soaked in all my tears

Why: This book is SO good, I literally can’t think about it too much because I will cry, lol. I’m not one to get emotional over books, but this book touched me in a place I didn’t know existed?? Like I didn’t know I had emotions before reading this book?? Apparently I do?? It also left me feeling stunned with a whole bucket of life lessons, and similarly to getting emotional, I’m not a reader to really take away a whole new worldview after reading something, but this book was like NOPE, here’s some THOUGHTS. I think I might’ve loved it so much because the four siblings it follows remind me a lot of my siblings (tag yourself I’m Klara, @sarahkelsiwrites is Varya). I too am a sibling of four with a similar composition to the novel’s (two boys, two girls), so the actual heartbreak of realizing that one day, there ain’t always gonna be four of us struck me so hard I was not prepared?? The characters are BEAUTIFUL, and my heart aches so much after finishing this, I almost don’t know what to do with myself... If you liked the sibling dynamic in the Haunting of Hill House (me!!), you’ll probably dig this book. Benjamin’s writing is also gorgeous; straightforward, but so detailed and lush at the same time. I don’t often see books in third present, so this was a delight for me to read. Also: I’m no expert on any of the topics in this book, but to me, a Fool, this book felt so well researched? This isn’t something I ever notice in books, but it surprisingly really added to the reading experience. 

TL;DR: I’m literally an emotional wreck because of this book and have a whole new perspective on life, if you too want to be an emotional wreck, defs join in on the fUN.

So that’s it for this reading update! All of these books in this update were wonderful! Making me antsy to read more for sure! I’m currently attempting to read more short story collections, so if anyone has recs, hit me up! ‘Scuse me while I go sob!

--Rachel

[reddieaddict]

SOULMATES (One shot)

Pairing: Reddie

A/N: So I decided to take a break from YOU’RE GONNA LIVE FOREVER IN ME and write this soulmates fic- mostly for myself. I get sad thinking about Eddie’s death and Reddie never getting the chance to be (more than I should, honestly) so I wrote this to make myself feel better. I’m sorry if this is shit. Do not worry, the next chapter of YGLFIM will be out in a few days! Thank you all for your support and I love you. 

Empty. The two-story mansion Richie Tozier endearingly referred to as his headquarters felt . . . empty. It wasn’t though. The décor was modern minimalistic with one-of-a-kind designer furniture filling every room, marble counter tops in the kitchen and bathrooms, exposed concrete floors, floating tables and shelves mounted on the grey colored walls, and awards upon awards filling multiple display cabinets, but it all just felt cold and meaningless. It was 2 in the morning and, just as he had through most of his life, a drunken Richie roamed aimlessly though the halls and rooms of his house. This wasn’t his home. He had no home, only a big house filled with beautiful, expensive things.

He gingerly opened the glass doors of the display cabinet and randomly selected one of his many accolades and examined it as he held it in his wrinkled hands. He scoffed dryly. The culmination of six decades of ceaseless work in the entertainment industry stood before him, around him, and in his hands. He nearly worked himself to death in pursuit of these trophies, but in nights like this, it all meant nothing.

“It’s the Academy Award for fucks sake, Annie! If I win this, I think I’ll finally be satisfied with my place in the industry. It’s the fucking validation I’ve been working my ass off for and now I’m nominated!” a 42-year old Richie yelled at his agent over the phone, after she nonchalantly informed him of his nomination. He said something similar about every nomination before it and every single one after it. He convinced himself that each award or milestone was the missing piece- the thing that would finally bring him the happiness that eluded him- but each win was only a momentary high. Soon after he would realize he felt just as hollow as he did before, so he set his sights on a bigger milestone, repeating the cycle.

Unable to bare the sight of the gold plated stature any longer, he allowed his arms to fall to his sides and his grip to loosen. The award made a loud clang as it crashed on to the concrete floor, but he paid it no mind. He clumsily stumbled over to the photos hung on the gallery wall across the room. There were scores pictures of him with different celebrities, presidents, and royalty. He met so many important, influential people over the span of his prestigious career, but never formed any lasting relationships with anyone. He only had photos of himself with strangers, no friends and no family.  He would have cried, if he could still feel anything.

  He had achieved so much, traveled the world, and lived lavishly for most of his life, but he couldn’t recall the last time he felt . . . happy. It wasn’t when he won his first Oscar, or the first time one of his films became a blockbuster. It wasn’t when he was named one of the most beautiful people in Hollywood by some magazine he can’t recall the name of. It wasn’t even when he scored his first role after years of living as a lonely struggling actor in LA. He was sure he had been happy at one point in his life, but he just couldn’t remember when. Every time tried to remember, fragments of memories would come to him, but then a searing pain would chastise his mind and he would immediately forget once again. 

Richie drank himself to sleep most nights, but this was a special occasion. There was finality in the air that he could sense. This was end of the road, he was sure of it, and he was ready to walk over the edge into the abyss. He admits to himself that this was probably something he’d been subconsciously dreaming of for a long time, but never acknowledged it. 

He walked over to the desk he kept in his trophy room and sat in the swivel chair behind it. His bones ached with age and arthritis as he did so, but it was bearable in his intoxicated state. His eyes became lidded as he took in his surroundings. This was the last night he would see these frivolous things and honestly he was relieved. 

He was tired. He was tired of crying himself to sleep most nights and coasting by most days. He was tired of always searching for something he couldn’t name and never found. He was tired of the hollow feeling in his chest. He was tired of the particular loneliness he could never describe but always felt so profoundly. He was tired of living a pointless life.  He was tired.

  He leaned back into his seat, making himself as comfortable as possible as a icy feeling began to spread throughout his body. This was the end and he welcomed it with open arms. His life didn’t begin to flash before his eyes as everything faded to black, but could-have-been’s and should-have-been’s began to prance around his mind. In the whirlwind of regrets, a name began to announce it’s self in the back of his mind and slowly stepped forward becoming louder and louder. A name he hadn’t thought of in decades and hadn’t heard in even longer. A name that made his heart swell and race, his pupils dilate behind his closed hooded lids, and every hair on his body stand. The name of someone who, even now after all this time, meant more to him than all the useless shit that surrounded him. The name of someone he forgot about long ago, but never let go of. “Eds . . .”

Richie’s eyes fluttered open, and grew confused by his sudden change in surroundings. Moments ago he was sitting in his cold, dimly lit trophy room and now he found himself standing beneath bright sunlight that made his eyes squint, but felt pleasurably warm against his alabaster skin. Once his dark brown orbs adjusted to the light, he began to look around, and immediately realized he was in The Quarry. The same quarry he and his friends spend summer days playing in and nights admiring clear starry skies, but it also looked noticeably different. 

The grass that surrounded it seemed much greener, free of any brown hay-like patches and bald spots of sand. The quarry water was clear and blue, not grey and murky. The soft breeze smelled of honeysuckle and felt refreshing against his face. Birds cheerfully sang from within the branches of the towering lush trees and made Richie feel a joyfulness he hadn’t experienced since he was a child. It was like he was seeing the quarry through some nostalgic, rose-colored filter. 

If Richie had to guess by the temperature and amount of sunlight, it was probably a mid-April day, but that made no sense. It was winter when he closed his eyes and now it was spring? How was that even possible? He reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose, something he did whenever he felt stressed or overwhelmed, and was surprised to encounter the feeling of hard plastic. With both hands he began to feel around his face and scolded himself for not noticing he had been wearing glasses this whole time. He hadn’t worn glasses since he was in his early twenties, where the hell did these come from? He also took notice of his skin, which no longer felt soft or saggy, but taught and firm. Perplexed he looked down at his hands and was shocked to see them free of any sunspots or wrinkles. In an attempt to better inspect his appearance, Richie ran to the edge of the water and kneeled down to see his reflection. What he saw only further bewildered him. 

Where there was once thinning grey hair, there was now a head full of luxurious shiny ebony curls that framed his plump face. His cheeks and nose were littered with splatters of freckles; the same ones that had faded with age, long ago. His lips were now rosy and full, instead of thin, pale, and lined from years of smoking. He was also smaller and thinner than he had been when he last saw himself. He was younger. He was 14 again.

“Richie?”

A chill furiously coursed up his spine and all the blood in his body felt as it plummeted to his feet at the sound of that voice. His heart began to pound violently against his sternum and goosebumps spread across the surface of his skin. Beads of sweat collected themselves upon his brow and his fists balled tightly by his sides. He began to tremble and tears welled in his eyes, blurring his vision, as he stood, but didn’t turn around to see who was calling his name. Not yet. He couldn’t.

He recognized that voice. It was like a song he hadn’t heard in years, but still remembered every lyric, every interval, and every note to. It was unmistakable, but it was also impossible. Richie wouldn’t dare allow himself to believe, even for a second, it could be was whom he thought it was. What for? Just to have his heart ripped apart once again? No!

Slowly he turned around to face the source of that voice, dreading what he might see, but his heart rebelled with hope. Richie had been to hundreds of auditions and performed in front of millions of viewers, but has never felt as anxious or nervous as he felt at this moment. It felt as though time was going in slow motion. His feet felt like they weighted a hundred pounds each, and his body felt stricken with rigor mortis.  The tears that collected themselves on his waterline were now cascading freely down his crimson, sun-kissed cheeks. It just wasn’t possible.

“Eddie?”

There he was, the gasp of fresh air after decades of suffocating -the rising sun after forty nights of darkness. He was the spring after the brutal winter that was his life. It felt magnificent, but overwhelming all at once. Every one of his senses felt over-stimulated, but he loved every second of it. He loved him. Richie broke down, burst into tear as sobs erupted from the depths of his convulsing chest.

Looking like a scene out of a movie, a 14-year-old Eddie Kaspbrak- Eddie Spaghetti- His Eds- stood across from him with a look of amorous longing hanging on his little face. His warm rich-chocolate eyes had tears of their own that fell down his red-tinged cheeks, but the smile on his pink lips made his expression appear tender. Draped in a coral polo shirt and red short shorts, he looked exactly as Richie would have imagined him. His brown locks shined with a golden hue in the sun and danced in the breeze. “He is so beautiful,” Richie thought.

  “Hi, Rich,” Eddie said in his familiar soft, slightly high-pitched, voice breaking through the silence.

“W-w-what are,” Richie did his best to speak in between his sobs, but found it difficult to even catch his breath. “What are- what are you d-d-d-oing here?”

“Waiting for you.” Slowly, Eddie walked over to Richie and reached up on his tiptoes to wrap his tiny arms around Richie’s neck, taking him into a comforting embrace. Richie own arms snaked around Eddie’s waist and he hugged him tightly, burrowing his face into the crook of his neck. 

“You can’t- I saw you- I held you in my arms as you died! How are you here? H-how-how am I holding you? This isn’t possible! . . . A-am I going crazy?” Richie stuttered through his questions, which came off more like pleas. He placed desperate kisses on to Eddie’s neck, as his fist grabbed on to his polo, afraid that he might vanish into thin air at any moment.

“Chee, you’re not going crazy, idiot. If this life should have taught you something, it’s that anything is possible,” Eddie giggled as he places small kisses onto Richie’s temples. “I was waiting for you to cross over, so we could be together again.”

“Cross over? A-am I’m dead?” Richie asked, startled.

“Yes. I know you are probably really confused and have lots of questions, but it’s all gonna come back to you eventually. It’s just gonna take a little time.” Eddie rocked them side to side, as he tangled his fingers in Richie’s thick hair and massaged his scalp as an attempt to comfort him. 

“But I remember everything.” Richie pulled away, but kept his arms wrapped around Eddie. The distance between them was only enough for them to get a good look at each other’s cherub faces, but still close enough to keep their bodies pressed firmly against each other. “I remember the losers, the summer of ‘89, and the curse- and It- and you- loving you . . . and losing you.” Eddie smiled sweetly. “I’m glad you finally remember, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about all our other lives.” Richie’s onyx eyes widened and his mouth gaped in astonishment. 

“Other lives? What do you mean ‘other lives?’” Eddie pulled himself out of Richie’s arms and took his hands in his. His eyes darted around searching for a way to articulate his explanation, before he confidently met Richie’s gaze with a nurturing smile. “I know this is going to be a lot for you to take in right now, but this isn’t our first life with each other. You and I have lived countless other lives . . . together. We’re soulmates, literally.”

  “Soulmates? The fuck . . . ” Richie furrowed his brows and crinkled his nose as he tilted his head, aghast. “Okay, now I know for sure I’ve gone crazy.”

“Seriously, Richie! That’s why our love for each other felt so intense. Didn’t you ever feel like you loved me long before you met me, but couldn’t explain it? Like our first encounter was just a confirmation of those feeling? Like something pulled us towards each other?” Eddie’s eyes sparkled with wonder and adoration as he looked towards Richie, hoping he could remember the unexplainable feelings he knew in his heart they both shared.

  “Yeah, but like, I didn’t wanna sound bat shit crazy, so I never said it. You sound bat shit crazy right now.” Richie joked with a cocky smirk. He had indeed reciprocated those same feeling in his youth, but could never comprehend them. They frightened him. Boys couldn’t like boys! But if that was the case, why did he feel so drawn towards the petite asthmatic? He tried so hard to fight suppress feelings, but they never wavered. He loved Eddie, beyond his years.

Eddie rolled his eyes in amusement. He was glad Richie was beginning to feel more like the Richie he knew and loved. His face was still stained with dried tear tracks, but Eddie thought he never looked more beautiful. “I’m serious Richie. You and I were destined to be together. We always have been and always will.”

The playfulness evaporated from Richie’s face. He looked away, trying to blink away the new tears that began to form. “Then why was it so hard, Eds? Why couldn’t we be together? Why were you taken from me? Why did it feel like the universe was doing everything it could to keep us apart?” Eddie’s heart broke at the sound of Richie’s words. He cupped Richie’s cheek, as a plea for him to meet his gaze and not feel ashamed.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be that way. When you and I came into this life, we had a plan. We chose this life to grow, to learn lessons, and to become better souls. IT . . . that THING . . . wasn’t supposed to be a part of any of it. I mean, think about it! We were two gay boys that grew up in a small conservative town, in the 80’s, with abusive parents. Getting through that shit was hard enough! IT just showed up and fucked everything up. It wasn’t supposed to be that hard, baby. You and I were supposed to help each other get through our abusive childhood and get out of that town, together. Our lives were supposed to play out very differently,” Eddie explained with furrowed brows and tears flooding down his face.

Richie’s face contorted in disbelief. “So then, we were supposed to end up together? You weren’t supposed to . . . to die?” Conflicting thoughts began to swirl within his head. He was elated knowing they were always destined to be together and that he wasn’t wrong in feeling the way he did his entire life. He was infuriated at the demon clown that destroyed all chances they had at happiness, fucking them over even after IT’s defeat. But he was also heartbroken over what could have been, but never was.

“We’ve always found one another in every other life, and even though we’ve died at different times, it was never by this much. We were never apart for this long. You weren’t supposed to suffer like you did, Richie. I’m so sorry it was so hard. You didn’t deserve that.” Richie collapsed onto Eddie once more and began to cry into his shoulder. The smaller boy reached up and placed his little hand on the nape of his head, while his other hand massaged circles into his back soothingly. 

“I-I-I missed you so much Eddie. I forgot you, but I never stopped missing you. I felt so empty without you!” Richie’s mumbled sobs became muffled in Eddie’s shoulder and Eddie could feel him trembling in his arms. 

“I missed you too, baby. I never stopped missing you, not even for a second. I visited you every night and watched over you. It was so hard, but I knew one day we’d be together again,” Eddie said earnestly.

“I wasn’t strong, Eddie. When I lost you, I lost myself. I focus on trivialities and lived a pointless life.” Richie kept his face pressed against Eddie’s shoulder, afraid of what his reaction might be to his confession. Eddie had always looked at him with admiration- he was terrified that he would no longer see him the same way.

Eddie tightened his embrace and placed kisses in quick succession onto Richie’s hair. He could never be disappointed in his boy, not after everything he overcame. “It wasn’t pointless, Richie. Look at all you accomplished. You lived a full life and made all your dreams come true, all by yourself.” 

“And where did it get me?! I died cold and alone; surrounded by shit that meant nothing in the end. My life meant nothing.” Richie yelled in frustration, pulling himself off of Eddie and turning to face anywhere but at him. His shoulders bounced with each sob that escaped him and he crossed his arms over his chest in an attempt to steady himself.

“Richie, look at me!” Eddie ran around the tall boy and cupped his cheeks with both hands, looking into his eyes reassuringly. “That is not true! You kept going, even when you felt you couldn’t. You moved forward and did something with your life. You persevered and overcame everything that was thrown your way and I am so proud of you. I’m so proud of you, for everything you’ve endured.” Richie’s eyes scanned over Eddie’s face, perplexed by his kindness. He felt so much guilt. Even after he failed Eddie in life, here was the small boy trying to comfort him. “I never got to tell you how much you meant to me, how much I loved you. I felt so guilty for never telling you. I should’ve- I should’ve held you more, kissed you more, told you I loved you more.” 

Eddie looked up at his him, wishing for a way to make his pain subside. He knew there were no words that could ever erase the years of heartache Richie had to brave through, so he reach up on the tips of his toes and kissed him passionately. Surprised, Richie tensed before melting into the kiss. Electricity coursed through his veins and butterflies began to pool in his stomach; this was everything he had been longing for. It was the drink of water that quenched his thirst after withstanding weeks lost in a desert. This single kiss meant more than all the one-night stands and brief flings he had throughout his life combined. It made him feel complete and ironically alive. He smiled as they kissed and Eddie pulled himself away with a smile of his own adorning his lips. “You didn’t have to do anything, Richie. I knew. I always knew. The moments with you were the happiest moments of my entire life. I love you, Trashmouth.”

“I love you too, Eddie Spaghetti.”

“Is this heaven?” It had been a couple hours since Richie’s arrival and the sun had set. The night was cool, and the wind was calm as fireflies buzzed around them. It was like a fairytale. Eddie, whose elfin features coincidentally fit the scenery quite well, sat atop a boulder at the edge of the quarry with Richie lying beside him with his head on Eddie’s lap. The small boy amorously played with the other’s curls as he looked out into the night sky, asking questions Eddie was more than happily willing to answer.

“Mmh, no,” Eddie chuckled. “I just brought you here and took this form to make it easier for you to adjust to crossing over- to ease the transition.” 

Richie’s magnified eyes shot up at Eddie wide and flabbergasted. “Wait, so you don’t really look like this?” Eddie looked back down at him, unaffected by his reaction, the gentle smile on his face never faltering. “Yes and No. You and I have been many people, men, women, and being that identified somewhere in between. The only constant was that we always were a pair.”

“Does everyone have a soul mate?” Richie looked up at Eddie with raised brows and a child-like scrunched nose. Eddie found Richie’s curiosity charming.

“No. Some souls exist singularly and are happy that way. Some exist in clusters, sort of like a family, like the losers club, but there are also soul mates like me and you.” Richie smiled up at Eddie fondly, overjoyed by his explanation. Eddie brushed the hair off Richie’s face with his hand and gave his forehead a quick peck. “I know this is a lot, but give it time. It will all come back and you’ll feel better.” 

Richie’s cheeks flushed. His eye darted away, settling down on his chest, as began to toy with the hem of his t-shirt awkwardly. “W-when you came here, were you scared, too?”

“I was more confused than afraid. I called out your name over and over. I just wanted to get back to you.” The tone of Eddie’s voice changed, becoming serious and somber- it tugged at Richie’s heartstrings.

 Richie could only imagine how Eddie felt when he crossed over. He had Eddie to soothe and pacify him, but who did Eddie have? Did he have to figure this out all by himself? “Eddie, w-who was the person that, I dunno, “welcomed” you here, I guess? Was it Stan?”

Eddie’s brows rose at the question. “No. It was . . . um . . . my dad.” 

“Oh. Okay.” Richie’s face became blank, devoid of an expression as he started fidget, twirling his thumbs. 

Eddie wasn’t telepathic, but he knew something was on Richie’s mind, but was afraid to vocalize it. “I know what you’re thinking. You can go ahead and ask me, it’s okay.” 

“You can read me like a book, Spaghetti Man.” Richie chuckled, trying to stall so he could gather himself. He was about to ask something he’s wasn’t entirely sure he really wanted to know. “Well . . . um . . . A-are our parents here, too?”

Eddie sighed; knowing what he was about to say was going to be very upsetting for Richie. “Yes. My mom, your mom, your dad, my dad . . . they’re all here too.” 

Richie shot up angrily and turned to face Eddie. His voice began to break as he spoke, “Why? After everything they did to us? They don’t deserve to!”

“Richie . . . “ Eddie’s voice had a sympathetic quality that did not go unnoticed by Richie.

“So nothing we do even matter? Everyone gets into heaven regardless of how evil or despicable they are in life!? How is that fair?” Richie’s asked with tears of frustration as his voice gradually increase it volume.

  Eddie’s face softened, supplicating for Richie to give him a chance to explain. “It’s not that simple; the universe works in a much more complicated way. There is no good or evil here, just people. They came into the world just as we did-blank, but life broke them along the way. They were trying their version of their best, but they made . . . mistakes.”

“MISTAKES!? Eds, come on!” Richie threw his hands up indignantly as he began to yell furiously. “What they did was a little more than a fucking mistake! They . . . t-the-they degraded me! They-They b-beat the shit outta me EVERY SINGLE DAY of my young life! They made me believe I was worthless- better off dead! What did I- what I do to deserve that? From the moment I was born I had to trust them! I-I lo-I loved them! There is evil Eds, and those people are it!”

Eddie’s heart shattered and his eyes swam in tears as he tried to reason with Richie. “Babe, I know it doesn’t make sense now, but it will in time,” Eddie spoke softly as he scooted closer. “They paid for their sins during their lifetime; nothing goes unpunished. When they crossed over, they realized what they did was horrible and were finally able to feel remorse. They learned from what they did.”

Richie’s eye narrowed with acrimony. “Well as long as they fucking learned! I guess everything is cool then, great!” Richie’s said sarcastically.  

“Richie, look at me.” Eddie turned himself to fully face Richie, sitting himself on his knees, becoming eye level with him. “Do you trust me?”

Richie wanted desperately to look away, but didn’t. “Mhm.”

“Give it time, wait until everything comes back to you. If by then you feel the same way, you will never have to see them again. I will make sure of that.”

“Hmm,” Richie hummed skeptically. “So, what about IT?”

“What ABOUT IT?” Eddie was surprised by the question. He could’ve gone the rest of eternity not talking about that fucking clown and been perfectly content.

“Is it here too? Was it also not actually evil?” Richie didn’t know what to believe anymore. The way he saw it, if someone as malevolent as his father could have a happy afterlife, then anyone or anything could.

   Eddie paused with fearful uncertainty. “No, IT was something else entirely, from somewhere completely different.”

Richie picked up on Eddie’s change in body language and immediately felt regret for his unintentional insensitivity. He knew this was a sensitive subject for the boy. How couldn’t it be? He had already initiated the topic and now he had to proceed cautiously, not wanting to hurt Eddie any more with his careless trashmouth. “Where is it now?”

Eddie shrugged. “I don’t know for sure. Dead, hopefully,” he said, honestly. 

Richie nodded. “Hopefully.” Eddie moved back into his seated position and tapped his lap for Richie to rest his head on it as he had been before, a plea to go back to the way they were before. Richie smiled, relieve that they didn’t have to talk about that fucking clown anymore, and lied down. Eddie began to delicately rake his fingers through Richie’s silky locks again, just as he did when they were teens. The nostalgic gesture felt pleasurable to Richie, and brought warmth to both of their hearts. “So, what happens now?”

A smile tugged at Eddie’s lips as he looked down fondly at Richie. “We go over our lives and learn from them, then we can take a break for as long as you want- enjoy ourselves before we start our next lives.”

  “What will our next lives be?” Richie asked enthusiastically. 

“I don’t know yet. I was waiting for you so we could plan them together,” Eddie responded, shrugging his narrow shoulders. 

Richie pressed and rubbed his lips together with a stoic expression on his face, before he looked up at Eddie with sad, distant eyes. “Eddie, I’m afraid to let myself believe this could actually be true. After everything I’ve been through, how can I possibly be this happy- this at peace? It doesn’t seem real. I keep waiting to wake up and find out this was all some beautiful dream.” 

Eddie looked at Richie empathetically with slightly furrowed brows. “You’ve been through so much, baby. Its daunting-I know, but give it time. We have plenty of it. I am here. I finally have you back and I am not letting go ever again.” Eddie beamed as he nuzzled his nose against Richie’s.

Richie’s cheeks flushed as he giggled. He puckered his lips pleadingly up at Eddie, his way of silently begging for a kiss. Eddie rolled his eyes in pseudo-annoyance, but then gleefully leaned down and placed a loving peck onto the other’s lips. Richie sighed blissfully then turned to his side to look out at the water, intentionally making it difficult for Eddie to see his face. “Eddie?”

“Yeah?”

“Were-were you mad about how what happened? Being forgotten?” Richie asked with timid reluctance. 

Eddie paused as he gathered his thoughts, but didn’t stop playing with Richie’s hair, relaying that no thresholds were crossed. “No, not mad- maybe hurt, but only at first. I was scared that you wouldn’t love me anymore, after you forgot.”

Richie turned over to face Eddie so fast he was surprised he didn’t give himself whiplash. His eyes were filled with dread and shame as he took Eddie’s hand in both of his and held it against his heart. “I didn’t want-I never stopped loving you. I could NEVER stop loving you. I just- I was weak and-”

“It’s okay, Richie. None of that matters now,” Eddie interrupted with a comforting, dulcet tone to his voice. He gave Richie an understanding look as he affectionately caressed his face with the back of his free hand.

Looking deep into Eddie’s amber eyes, that glimmered as they reflected the lights of the fireflies that hovered around them, he began to speak with compunction, “I just feel so guilty. You deserved better- you deserved to be remembered. I was weak. Losing you was the most painful thing I ever had to experience and I ddin’t know how else to carry on, but that was selfish. I’m so sorry.”

“Shh…None of that matter, anymore.” Eddie voice was drenched with compassion as he leaned down to gently kiss Richie on the lips, pacifying him; and as he pulled away he kept his eye fixed onto his. “We’re together and we can finally do everything we didn’t get the chance to do before.”

  “Really? Like what?” Richie asked with a smile spreading on his tingling lips. Eddie scrunched his nose, jokingly, as he smiled. “Literally anything. We can have our dream wedding, with all our friends and family. We can travel the world or whatever- anything you can think of.”

Richie’s eyes widened with amazement. “You can get married in heaven!?” 

“You can do anything. There are no rules,” Eddie replied matter-of-factly with a crooked but yet charming grin. 

Richie’s smile dropped and his eyes narrowed in disappointment. “So then it doesn’t really mean anything? We’d be doing it for fun?”

Eddie threw his head back and laughed, shoulders bouncing as he did. “Yeah, kinda, but we’re already SOULMATES. What else do you want?”

  “Oh yeah, I guess you’re right!” Richie’s smile returned, realizing the absurdity of his previous question.  There remained a comfortable silence between them as they lovingly looked into each other’s eyes, before Richie spoke again, “Can I ask you something?” 

“Anything,” Eddie responded cheerfully without skipping a beat. “Where are the others?”

Eddie’s eye’s lit up at the mention of their friends. “Everyone except Bill is waiting for you. He hasn’t crossed over yet,” Eddie gleefully explained. “When you feel ready we can go and see them, even Georgie! There is no rush though; you can take as long as you need.” 

“Oh.” Richie pondered for a few seconds and Eddie attentively waited for his decision. “Lets wait a little longer. I wanna just spend time with you looking up at the stars like we used to do when we were kids. I can’t tell you how much I missed this- how much I miss you, Eddie Spaghetti! Those assholes can wait.”

Eddie’s heart swelled with the warmth of Richie’s words. He nodded with a wide smile, and then lightly placed a soft kiss onto Richie’s tanned forehead. “Sure thing, babe. Anything you want.”

“Eddie?”

“Hmmm?”

  “I love you.” 

“I love you, too.”  

taglist: @bitchardtozier @bloggingandstruggling @11stayradstaybad11 @breakmyreddieheart @reddieformeerkat @purejaeden @julietissue @greywatertozier

[biofunmy]

The Death of Chintz – The New York Times

When Mario Buatta died in 2018, a few days shy of his 83rd birthday, he left no will. Which is not to say that he didn’t leave anything behind. “I am the original hoarder,” he would tell you.

He had a ferocious appetite for collecting that started when he was 11 and bought an 18th-century lap desk for $12 on layaway and continued until just months before his death. (There are invoices to prove it.)

It was a habit that filled every square foot of his parlor-floor townhouse apartment on East 80th Street (famously off-limits until the end), three storage units in Harlem, two in Staten Island and a Victorian gothic house in Thompson, Conn.

An avatar of the English country style, and of 1980s excess, Mr. Buatta was perhaps the only decorator to achieve fame on the East Coast, West Coast and all points between, during a time when the wealthy found their footing with their decorators, not their art advisers.

The Prince of Chintz, as a television reporter named Mr. Buatta in 1984, designed interiors for a certain kind of American royalty — for Doubledays, Forbes and Newhouses, two presidents and Mariah Carey.

He had a rigorous eye and a sharp sense of color, and he was exacting about the spaces he decorated, dizzy with pattern and swagged in fabric and trim though they were. And yet Mr. Buatta lived, as his friend Christopher Mason put it, in “exotic disarray.”

Collecting is biography (objects can be proxies for all sorts of things), and Mr. Buatta’s particular story, and the bygone age he presided over with impish humor, went on view at Sotheby’s in New York City on Jan. 16. The 950 lots, delivered in 19 trucks, will be auctioned off on Jan. 23 and Jan. 24.

Collecting is also a form of seeing, and Mr. Buatta had a hungry eye, along with a drive for perfection he said came from his father’s lack of approval.

Mr. Buatta would tell you that his father, a bandleader, could never figure out just what his son did for a living. And growing up in an all-white Art Deco house on Staten Island, with a neatnik mother who died when he was 23, Mr. Buatta developed an allergy to minimalism.

Dog Paintings and $100,000 Palms

Perhaps in compensation, he stockpiled 19th-century dog paintings (“my ancestors,” he liked to joke), lacquered furniture, Delft china, obelisks, porcelain vegetables, botanical prints and Regency furniture. Also architectural fragments, like a George III fireplace surround with matching columns carved into swoopy palm fronds that lived propped up in his bedroom, a cluttered nest with glazed purple walls, ceiling-high bookcases and a Chinese four poster bed with a canopy like an Ottoman dome.

“Are you insane?” Patricia Altschul remembered saying to him as he pursued the palms at an auction in London. She was stunned at the price he paid (over $100,000), and that he wanted them for himself, not a client. “It will make me happy,” he told her.

Ms. Altschul, a star of the reality series “Southern Charm,” was a client and shopping partner of Mr. Buatta’s for more three decades. He once let her have it for a soap dish she introduced into one of the pristine spaces he had made for her.

“He told me, ‘We haven’t worked this hard to make this beautiful showplace for you to have an ugly soap dish to ruin it all,’” she said. “It wasn’t anything hideous. I mean, I’ve got pretty good taste, but it offended him and he immediately threw it away.”

At his home, though, everything stayed.

Beyond antiques, his appetites extended to decorating and design books, which he stacked in hip-high zigzags, gag props (enormous pairs of underpants and black wigs), Turnbull & Asser shirts (why launder when you can buy more?) and newspaper and magazine clippings about himself.

Like Andy Warhol, another ravenous collector, Mr. Buatta saved everything: decades-old taxi receipts, theater programs, letters and invoices, as well as a fully decorated Christmas tree (fake) surrounded by beautifully wrapped presents, all of which was napped in dust, since Mr. Buatta’s prohibition against visitors extended to housekeepers.

“Dust is a protective coating” Mr. Buatta was fond of saying. “I like it in big balls.”

His Overstuffed ‘Protective Cocoon’

In his last years, Emily Evans Eerdmans, a design historian who was Mr. Buatta’s co-author on his 2013 monograph (Mr. Buatta called it the Buattapedia), and others urged him to winnow, and tried to help him do so.

The Christmas tree got the heave-ho, as did the palm fronds because he was tripping over them, but little else. As he told Ms. Eerdmans, “‘You have Andrew’” — referring to Ms. Eerdmans’s husband — “‘I have my things.’”

Of his stuff, she said: “It was his lover and his family. It was a protective cocoon.”

Yet shopping for Mr. Buatta was more than just “filling the Grand Canyon of the soul,” said Todd Romano, his friend and former assistant. It was both sport and distraction. The bidding and the badinage was “his own form of daytime cabaret,” said Angus Wilkie, an antiques dealer.

Margaret Kennedy, a former editor of House Beautiful, said: “Mario gave his clients the dream. It is the decorator’s job to create a beautiful world, a fantasy, but for him it got out of control.”

Mr. Buatta’s heir is his brother, Joseph, but it has been Ms. Eerdmans’s role to sift through the acreage of stuff that Mr. Buatta left behind, a job that began last March and is continuing, with 12-hour days and a lot of Advil Cold & Sinus.

She has given 615 ties to Housing Works. The envelope stuffed with clippings of his work and addressed to his father (but never sent) she hopes will be donated, along with 80 boxes of his papers, to an organization yet to be determined.

The Connecticut house, in a state of atmospheric decay that veered toward collapse, took six weeks to clear out. Ms. Eerdmans described rooms devoted solely to lamps, pillows, tables and 300 rolls of fabric. Mr. Buatta had enraged some of his neighbors there, having neglected the place for years, because of ill health and overwork. He was notoriously hard on assistants and mostly operated by himself, particularly as he got older.

Ms. Eerdmans has been hired by the estate to undertake what has been a grubby, exhausting and emotional ordeal that she nonetheless described as a labor of love, and an honor.

She knew what Mr. Buatta wanted: a bonanza auction, a new flurry of press. And she knew how to do it, much as she and others knew how to take care of him in those final years, wheeling him to doctor’s appointments and fending off his cantankerous explosions and menu demands, like Italian pastries from his favorite bakery chosen over the phone from texted photos.

It is no joke getting old, particularly for stubborn, vivacious personalities like Mr. Buatta, and he chafed against its indignities. He and Ms. Eerdmans had not spoken in three months when a friend called in July of 2018 and said, as she remembered, “‘Mario isn’t answering his phone, can you go over there and see if he’s O.K.?’”

Despite the exhortations of friends, Mr. Buatta was not eager to focus on the aftermath of his death, which made for an unusual arrangement with Sotheby’s.

“I’ve never done a sale of this magnitude,” said Dennis Harrington, the head of the Sotheby’s English and European furniture department in New York, describing how most collectors inventory their possessions during their lifetimes — and have less stuff. “Everything was exactly his taste, and exactly what he loved.”

A Beautiful Yellow Room

Beyond those nostalgic for Mr. Buatta’s bygone world, and the many who are missing the man himself, what is the market these days for porcelain asparagus spears, Chinese side tables and tufted chintz slipper chairs?

When “antiques” has become such a dirty word that the Winter Antiques Show, once a glittering social event of which Mr. Buatta was the chairman for more than a decade, has been rebranded as the Winter Show, who will buy the “Louie-hooey chairs,” as Mr. Buatta liked to say of that former living-room staple? (The estimates in the sale, which has the nickname Harold, for the plastic cockroaches he was fond of deploying, range from $500 to $50,000, and the auction is estimated to bring in more than $1.9 million.)

Working in Ms. Eerdmans’s wake, Mr. Harrington and his colleagues culled about half of what they found. “Like every collector, Mario was obsessive, and his obsession was that he could never stop acquiring things,” Mr. Harrington said.

“He also had a horror vacui of a plain surface,” he added, noting that he had never seen so many painted and decorated objects. Or needlepoint pillows with arch sayings on them.

Mr. Buatta was mischievous, and he liked to poke fun at the affectations of the world he inhabited, but he was serious about his work and relentless in his pursuit of perfection there.

Like the character in the John Cheever novel “Bullet Park,” Mr. Buatta had as his emotional touchstone a beautiful yellow room, in his case found in the London apartment of Nancy Lancaster, the Virginia-born decorator who helped foment the English country house style. That “buttah yellah,” as rendered in her Southern accent, was what inspired his own living room, its yellow walls sliced with fat blue satin bows and armies of dog paintings.

That room has been recreated at Sotheby’s, right down to those bows. An early black-and-white photo of Mr. Buatta, looking movie star glamorous, has been blown up to fill a wall, along with the show’s title: “Mario Buatta, Prince of Interiors.”

Other rooms designed to match those in his apartment were among the gallery spaces. In the bedroom area, the walls had been painted deep purple, and there was Mr. Buatta’s beloved canopy bed and his bookshelves, filled with (a small fraction) of his books. “A Life in Decoration,” by Keith Irvine, the New York-based English decorator who was one of Mr. Buatta’s first employers, had been inscribed by its author.

“Still in business, dear?” Mr. Irvine had written wickedly.

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The Death of Chintz – The New York Times

When Mario Buatta died in 2018, a few days shy of his 83rd birthday, he left no will. Which is not to say that he didn’t leave anything behind. “I am the original hoarder,” he would tell you.

He had a ferocious appetite for collecting that started when he was 11 and bought an 18th-century lap desk for $12 on layaway and continued until just months before his death. (There are invoices to prove it.)

It was a habit that filled every square foot of his parlor-floor townhouse apartment on East 80th Street (famously off-limits until the end), three storage units in Harlem, two in Staten Island and a Victorian gothic house in Thompson, Conn.

An avatar of the English country style, and of 1980s excess, Mr. Buatta was perhaps the only decorator to achieve fame on the East Coast, West Coast and all points between, during a time when the wealthy found their footing with their decorators, not their art advisers.

The Prince of Chintz, as a television reporter named Mr. Buatta in 1984, designed interiors for a certain kind of American royalty — for Doubledays, Forbes and Newhouses, two presidents and Mariah Carey.

He had a rigorous eye and a sharp sense of color, and he was exacting about the spaces he decorated, dizzy with pattern and swagged in fabric and trim though they were. And yet Mr. Buatta lived, as his friend Christopher Mason put it, in “exotic disarray.”

Collecting is biography (objects can be proxies for all sorts of things), and Mr. Buatta’s particular story, and the bygone age he presided over with impish humor, went on view at Sotheby’s in New York City on Jan. 16. The 950 lots, delivered in 19 trucks, will be auctioned off on Jan. 23 and Jan. 24.

Collecting is also a form of seeing, and Mr. Buatta had a hungry eye, along with a drive for perfection he said came from his father’s lack of approval.

Mr. Buatta would tell you that his father, a bandleader, could never figure out just what his son did for a living. And growing up in an all-white Art Deco house on Staten Island, with a neatnik mother who died when he was 23, Mr. Buatta developed an allergy to minimalism.

Dog Paintings and $100,000 Palms

Perhaps in compensation, he stockpiled 19th-century dog paintings (“my ancestors,” he liked to joke), lacquered furniture, Delft china, obelisks, porcelain vegetables, botanical prints and Regency furniture. Also architectural fragments, like a George III fireplace surround with matching columns carved into swoopy palm fronds that lived propped up in his bedroom, a cluttered nest with glazed purple walls, ceiling-high bookcases and a Chinese four poster bed with a canopy like an Ottoman dome.

“Are you insane?” Patricia Altschul remembered saying to him as he pursued the palms at an auction in London. She was stunned at the price he paid (over $100,000), and that he wanted them for himself, not a client. “It will make me happy,” he told her.

Ms. Altschul, a star of the reality series “Southern Charm,” was a client and shopping partner of Mr. Buatta’s for more three decades. He once let her have it for a soap dish she introduced into one of the pristine spaces he had made for her.

“He told me, ‘We haven’t worked this hard to make this beautiful showplace for you to have an ugly soap dish to ruin it all,’” she said. “It wasn’t anything hideous. I mean, I’ve got pretty good taste, but it offended him and he immediately threw it away.”

At his home, though, everything stayed.

Beyond antiques, his appetites extended to decorating and design books, which he stacked in hip-high zigzags, gag props (enormous pairs of underpants and black wigs), Turnbull & Asser shirts (why launder when you can buy more?) and newspaper and magazine clippings about himself.

Like Andy Warhol, another ravenous collector, Mr. Buatta saved everything: decades-old taxi receipts, theater programs, letters and invoices, as well as a fully decorated Christmas tree (fake) surrounded by beautifully wrapped presents, all of which was napped in dust, since Mr. Buatta’s prohibition against visitors extended to housekeepers.

“Dust is a protective coating” Mr. Buatta was fond of saying. “I like it in big balls.”

His Overstuffed ‘Protective Cocoon’

In his last years, Emily Evans Eerdmans, a design historian who was Mr. Buatta’s co-author on his 2013 monograph (Mr. Buatta called it the Buattapedia), and others urged him to winnow, and tried to help him do so.

The Christmas tree got the heave-ho, as did the palm fronds because he was tripping over them, but little else. As he told Ms. Eerdmans, “‘You have Andrew’” — referring to Ms. Eerdmans’s husband — “‘I have my things.’”

Of his stuff, she said: “It was his lover and his family. It was a protective cocoon.”

Yet shopping for Mr. Buatta was more than just “filling the Grand Canyon of the soul,” said Todd Romano, his friend and former assistant. It was both sport and distraction. The bidding and the badinage was “his own form of daytime cabaret,” said Angus Wilkie, an antiques dealer.

Margaret Kennedy, a former editor of House Beautiful, said: “Mario gave his clients the dream. It is the decorator’s job to create a beautiful world, a fantasy, but for him it got out of control.”

Mr. Buatta’s heir is his brother, Joseph, but it has been Ms. Eerdmans’s role to sift through the acreage of stuff that Mr. Buatta left behind, a job that began last March and is continuing, with 12-hour days and a lot of Advil Cold & Sinus.

She has given 615 ties to Housing Works. The envelope stuffed with clippings of his work and addressed to his father (but never sent) she hopes will be donated, along with 80 boxes of his papers, to an organization yet to be determined.

The Connecticut house, in a state of atmospheric decay that veered toward collapse, took six weeks to clear out. Ms. Eerdmans described rooms devoted solely to lamps, pillows, tables and 300 rolls of fabric. Mr. Buatta had enraged some of his neighbors there, having neglected the place for years, because of ill health and overwork. He was notoriously hard on assistants and mostly operated by himself, particularly as he got older.

Ms. Eerdmans has been hired by the estate to undertake what has been a grubby, exhausting and emotional ordeal that she nonetheless described as a labor of love, and an honor.

She knew what Mr. Buatta wanted: a bonanza auction, a new flurry of press. And she knew how to do it, much as she and others knew how to take care of him in those final years, wheeling him to doctor’s appointments and fending off his cantankerous explosions and menu demands, like Italian pastries from his favorite bakery chosen over the phone from texted photos.

It is no joke getting old, particularly for stubborn, vivacious personalities like Mr. Buatta, and he chafed against its indignities. He and Ms. Eerdmans had not spoken in three months when a friend called in July of 2018 and said, as she remembered, “‘Mario isn’t answering his phone, can you go over there and see if he’s O.K.?’”

Despite the exhortations of friends, Mr. Buatta was not eager to focus on the aftermath of his death, which made for an unusual arrangement with Sotheby’s.

“I’ve never done a sale of this magnitude,” said Dennis Harrington, the head of the Sotheby’s English and European furniture department in New York, describing how most collectors inventory their possessions during their lifetimes — and have less stuff. “Everything was exactly his taste, and exactly what he loved.”

A Beautiful Yellow Room

Beyond those nostalgic for Mr. Buatta’s bygone world, and the many who are missing the man himself, what is the market these days for porcelain asparagus spears, Chinese side tables and tufted chintz slipper chairs?

When “antiques” has become such a dirty word that the Winter Antiques Show, once a glittering social event of which Mr. Buatta was the chairman for more than a decade, has been rebranded as the Winter Show, who will buy the “Louie-hooey chairs,” as Mr. Buatta liked to say of that former living-room staple? (The estimates in the sale, which has the nickname Harold, for the plastic cockroaches he was fond of deploying, range from $500 to $50,000, and the auction is estimated to bring in more than $1.9 million.)

Working in Ms. Eerdmans’s wake, Mr. Harrington and his colleagues culled about half of what they found. “Like every collector, Mario was obsessive, and his obsession was that he could never stop acquiring things,” Mr. Harrington said.

“He also had a horror vacui of a plain surface,” he added, noting that he had never seen so many painted and decorated objects. Or needlepoint pillows with arch sayings on them.

Mr. Buatta was mischievous, and he liked to poke fun at the affectations of the world he inhabited, but he was serious about his work and relentless in his pursuit of perfection there.

Like the character in the John Cheever novel “Bullet Park,” Mr. Buatta had as his emotional touchstone a beautiful yellow room, in his case found in the London apartment of Nancy Lancaster, the Virginia-born decorator who helped foment the English country house style. That “buttah yellah,” as rendered in her Southern accent, was what inspired his own living room, its yellow walls sliced with fat blue satin bows and armies of dog paintings.

That room has been recreated at Sotheby’s, right down to those bows. An early black-and-white photo of Mr. Buatta, looking movie star glamorous, has been blown up to fill a wall, along with the show’s title: “Mario Buatta, Prince of Interiors.”

Other rooms designed to match those in his apartment were among the gallery spaces. In the bedroom area, the walls had been painted deep purple, and there was Mr. Buatta’s beloved canopy bed and his bookshelves, filled with (a small fraction) of his books. “A Life in Decoration,” by Keith Irvine, the New York-based English decorator who was one of Mr. Buatta’s first employers, had been inscribed by its author.

“Still in business, dear?” Mr. Irvine had written wickedly.

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Meet the Canadian Artist Whose Painting Ended Up On a Celine Jacket

Last week, Hedi Slimane debuted Celine’s Spring 2020 menswear collection in Paris. The show was filled with uncomfortably skinny male models clad in flared jeans and aviator sunglasses, evincing a sleazy ‘70s-plywood-basement-but-make-it-fashion vibe. One item in the collection, a sequin bomber jacket covered in a twisty botanical pattern, has a particularly interesting origin story. The jacket, worn atop a slogan t-shirt reading “My Own Worst Enemy,” was adapted from a painting by Darby Milbrath, a Canadian painter who splits her time between Toronto and Salt Spring Island, British Columbia.

Photography via Imaxtree

Milbrath grew up in Victoria, British Columbia, and began her artistic path as a dancer, studying contemporary dance and choreography with Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet before leaving due to injuries. Though she has only been painting professionally for three years, Milbrath’s work has already been exhibited in galleries across Canada, the US and Mexico.

“My work is very much to me like a diary. I paint what I know and what’s around me,” she says. “A lot of my work expresses the emotion or the sensuality or perhaps the loneliness of being a woman. I kind of try to describe what I am going through and experiencing, or I’ll pull from memories. I’m a very nostalgic person. All these fragments of places I’ve visited or people in my life, and the plants and flowers I see in different landscapes. All of these things are woven into the paintings.

Much of Milbrath’s work draws from botanical themes and contains an almost mystical quality, which she attributes to a lifelong fascination with plants and a background in herbalism. She paints with natural pigments and uses lavender essential oil instead of solvents – an Old Masters technique – which often lends the work a soft, devotional quality.

We reached Milbrath over the phone from Salt Spring Island, where she is spending the summer, to discuss her career, occult mysticism and how her painting ended up on a Celine jacket.

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A post shared by Darby Milbrath (@darbymilbrath) on Jun 7, 2019 at 6:13pm PDT

How did the collaboration with Celine come about?

First of all, I was very surprised that someone like Hedi Slimane had found the paintings, most likely through Instagram. It must have spoken to him because he wanted to use it. I got an email one day from one of Hedi Slimane’s assistants asking for permission to use Angel’s Trumpets, which is a painting I did in November 2018. He already had an idea of what he wanted to use the painting for, an all-over embroidered jacket. So we just talked back and forth a little bit and made a licensing agreement.

When you say Instagram, do you think Hedi Slimane was just scrolling through his Explore page and you came up?

I’ve been showing nationally and internationally for a few years now, so I think what must have happened is somebody working in a gallery in the art world was friends with somebody on the Celine team. I know Celine often does collaborations with artists, he’s worked with other painters before.

Tell us more about Angel’s Trumpets, and how the painting came to be.

Angel’s Trumpets was painted en plein air, which means painted from life, at the Palm House, which is a part of a Victorian botanical conservatory in Toronto called Allen Gardens. It’s a place I go often, in the winter and the fall, to soothe my spirit when I’m feeling separated from nature. Growing up in British Columbia, nature was such a big part of my life. Angel’s Trumpets were a plant I had learned about but never seen in person. When I saw them there, I immediately knew they would make a beautiful painting. I was literally kneeling on the ground with my easel in front of me, completely blocking the path. I painted it very quickly, which I think gives it this free, almost dancer-ly quality. It looks like the flowers are in motion instead of just hung there.

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Angel’s Trumpets, oil on canvas 16 x 18” Painted from life in the Palm House at Allen Gardens, Toronto

A post shared by Darby Milbrath (@darbymilbrath) on Dec 18, 2018 at 2:23pm PST

What was it that drew you to the Angel’s Trumpets flower and made you want to paint it?

I have a background in herbalism and have always been interested in mysticism and occult art. Angel’s Trumpets has a long history in occult art. It’s associated with the Judgement card in the Tarot. It’s seen as a symbol of communication with the spirit world. The flower becomes very heavily scented at dusk and will linger through nightfall. The scent is so intoxicating that it reportedly has psychoactive properties as well. It’s a night blooming flower. The term for plants and animals that become more active at night is ‘vespertine’, like bats and owls. I definitely like vespertines because I feel connected to that. I feel very powerful at night, and will stay up all night. That’s when I paint the best.

You mentioned Angel’s Trumpets is a night blooming flower, but you painted it from life during the daytime. Where did the darkness in the painting come from?

When I painted the dark background it was definitely imagined, I will often distort reality to make emotion more important. It’s funny, they’re called Angel’s Trumpets but there is something kind of devilish about them. If you look at pictures, you can see the petals almost will curl and twist up in a way that looks like a tail. Also, it has a connection to the night and all the mysteries that are there. I think it brings a new kind of energy to the painting if I know these things about the plant before I paint it.

The jacket is a lot flashier than the painting. What do you think of the final result?

I was very curious to see how Hedi would design it and take inspiration from the painting. I was just thrilled. Any artist that will use another artist’s work as a point of departure to create their own work is pretty amazing. I was very open-minded to what he did with it. I gave him complete free reign to alter the image or even change the colours. [The jacket] is all hand-embroidered, which I think is so special. I love the idea that hands were working in this way, with so much artistry and such a high level of skill to create this. When you make a painting you don’t really know what the life of it will be, so it’s pretty interesting to see his take on it.

What became of Angel’s Trumpets, the painting?

It did sell. It’s in a collector’s home now. I think it sold right after [the collection] was released, so someone must have been excited about it.

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Two Women in the Art World Reflect on the Past to Imagine the Future

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Two Women in the Art World Reflect on the Past to Imagine the Future

In partnership with GUCCI. 

M

y mom, a former historic preservationist, swears she can do what so many voyeurs wish they could: hear walls talk about all they’ve seen. She’s like a house-whisperer for old buildings, a medium of storied districts, a bridge between past and present of landmarked grounds.

My own mind is nowhere near as filled with historical research logged or information gathered, but my mom has taught me to walk through neighborhoods with an awareness of its many dimensions, its many pasts, and its varied depends-who’s-looking present.

Soho is a prime example of this kind of space with a storied past. What is now very much a shopping destination was at one time, during the 1970s and 80s especially, an artistic hub — a place where art, music, fashion and creativity in its many forms converged (if not clashed together like drum cymbals). But just because the neighborhood’s focus has shifted doesn’t mean its gaze is gone entirely. In addition to the Soho galleries that still exist, new art world stories are being made.

On May 6th, Gucci opened its first-ever presence in Soho at 63 Wooster. We partnered with Gucci to celebrate this opening and pay homage to the neighborhood’s artistic roots. To do so, I spoke with art activist Kimberly Drew and artist Sue de Beer about their own experiences South of Houston. De Beer showed her work in the area, while Drew did a residency there — both of them on different paths, linked by a Soho string. Meet these two women below. Maybe through their stories, you’ll be able to catch the whisper of another era.

Writer, Art Activist

Tell me about your involvement in the art world. How did you get started in it?

I studied art as an undergraduate, I currently work in the art world, and I work as an advocate for the arts. What that means is I have a keen interest in making the world of art — specifically visual and performing arts — more accessible to large audiences. I spend a lot of time thinking about how people feel really connected to music, or really connected to food; I’m trying to make the visual and performing arts barrier to entry a little bit lower than it’s been historically to help foster a similar connectivity.

My first introduction to the art world was during an internship at the Studio Museum in Harlem, which really provided my framework for how to engage with a general public, and my framework around how stories of art history, specifically, can be really restrictive. I studied art history in college, then spent the summer at the Studio Museum where I learned about artists who might never be in the curriculum that I was studying in school. Of course, there are schools with programs all over the world that exist to focus on specific genres of art, but it took me going to a really culturally-specific institution to realize there was a lot that I was missing.

What did you learn about public engagement?

I learned that people need an invitation to engage. This also happened simultaneously through my blogging efforts. I realized it’s one thing to say, “Here’s this really amazing artist,” and another thing to say, “Will you go see this work with me?”

In 2016, I did a residency at Recess, which, up until very recently, was housed in Soho, on Grand Street. The project was called “The Black Art Incubator” and I worked with Taylor Renee Aldridge, Jessica Bell Brown, and Jessica Lynne to make it happen. The idea was born during a drink date with Jessica Lynne. As we sat, we both expressed our frustrations about the art world. We thought, “There are so many creative ways we could bring people together. Why do people who work in galleries feel really separate from people who work in museums? Why do people who work in philanthropy feel really separate from these people who are working in other parts of the art world? What would happen if we brought all of these people together through a black cultural lens to have a more integrated dialogue about the way that different things happen and operate in the art world?” We broke our inquiries into four categories: thinking about finance, archiving, professional development, and criticism and developed workshops that would focus on each topic. Over the course of five weeks, we hosted about thirty free programs in the Soho community.

Given that Soho is so rooted in the art world’s history, what was it like to work in an art-centric space in Soho?

Because Recess is a public art organization, and “The Black Art Incubator” was open to the public Tuesday through Saturday, there was healthy mix of people who wanted to come to the space, or people who happened to just be walking through the neighborhood. I normally work primarily in digital spaces and in direct relationship to an archive rather than with the general public, so it was amazing to see what a holding space for this kind of thing looked like, especially in Soho. Soho is such a heartbeat in the way that New York operates.

When I think about Soho, specifically in the arts, and spaces that were super important, I think about Franklin Furnace, The Drawing Center, Sur Rodney (Sur)’s Gracie Mansion Gallery, and even over to spaces on the Lower East Side. These spaces were all critical hubs for art experimentation in the 70s and 80s. As lifelong student of art history, these spaces and the Soho lofts stick out to me as a radical sites that I hope to learn more and more about with every chance I get.

Whenever I think about the 80’s Soho art scene, I think about a real merging of art, music and fashion. Do you think we have that today in the same way?

I think there has always been a really clear wedding between art and fashion. Human beings have long used both art and fashion to communicate who they are. I don’t think that’s ever going to stop happening.

What’s interesting is that I couldn’t imagine an art world without fashion, or a fashion world without art. Even wearing something that’s super muted is a very particular aesthetic choice. My big hope and takeaway is that the way these things are historicized is done in a more vibrant way. I think there’s a lot more to be done in the way that history remembers fashion, or fashion is communicated. There’s a really strong arm around fashion journalism, but there isn’t the same kind of strong arm around fashion history, or how history is told through fashion — whereas art history is like, ironclad. I hope that marriage continues to happen so that stories are properly told, that things are interrogated, and that we continue to learn from how people have created things and how we’ve used those creations to tell who we are and where we are in a moment.

Since you did your residency in Soho, what areas feel super nostalgic to you?

41 Grand Street, which is where Recess used to be located. Going to The Drawing Center always feels significant and it’s in the same area. When I think of Soho, I really think about the intersection of Grand and Wooster. Deitch Projects is right there. Housing Works falls into my own Soho outline as a really important space, too, since it’s an organization that is as much about art as it is serving New York’s homeless community. Some of the great poets have performed there, there are so many book events there; it’s such a birthing place for culture. Of course, this is a contemporary read, but when I think of this triangulation between Housing Works, Angelika Film Center (at the very tip of Soho) and the Drawing Center, it reminds me why I love living in New York City, and part of why I remain committed to the creative community here.

What are your personal hopes for the future of the art world?

I think we’re in a moment of particular demand on our attention and literacy, so I hope that people really take a slower look at what’s going on in this particular cultural moment and think about the ways in which we can support it. It’s not just being a huge donor and buying a piece of work, it’s going to openings, it’s engaging with your friends who are thinking about creative outlets. Investigate the areas of art that peak your interest — and don’t stop just because you’ve hit a dead end in your research. My hope is that as citizens of our respective communities, we take time to remain curious.

Artist

Can you tell me about the moment or series of events that put you on the path to becoming an artist?

I had decided to become an artist when I was quite young. I was still in high school. I think a key moment for me was being expelled from high school [laughs]. Before that I was on a kind of academic trajectory, and no one in my family had ever become an artist or done anything creative. I think the idea of becoming an artist was confusing to them. My family also didn’t have a lot of connection to contemporary art or the contemporary art world. So as a young person, when I was expelled from school, because people’s expectations of me changed, I suddenly had this radical freedom.

I started looking at art. I was curious about it — it was unfamiliar to me, and I found it to be really challenging. I was living in a small town in Massachusetts, and I would take a bus into Boston to visit museums. I took some art classes and fell in love with it.

I also was looking to music for information about art (which doesn’t really make any sense). I was into the Velvet Underground at the time, so I discovered Andy Warhol through Lou Reed. Because of his music, I had this idea that New York was a place where artists lived. His music made me think, “I should be in New York.” So I applied to art schools there, got in, and moved. It was a lucky set of poorly-made decisions.

What was your first day in New York like — or your first day of art school, your first realization of, “I am actually in New York…for art school?” Did it live up to your expectations?

I didn’t really have realistic expectations. I didn’t quite know what or who artists were. I was going off this self-taught, feeling-in-the-dark drive that brought me here in the first place. But I do remember, in the first week, just feeling like New York was the place I really belonged, and art school felt really natural. It felt like home.

I had always felt like I didn’t really make sense in my small town — I was a bit different — so it was nice to be in a place that was so big and so much. There’s so much going on this city, so many different kinds of people; it felt electrifying, and it opened my mind and broadened my thinking.

Can you recall one instance when you were like, “Oh, this is an artist”?

There were so many. I was interested in Johanna Fateman, who was self-publishing ‘zines about contemporary art. I was friends with Dennis Cooper and he introduced me to West Coast artists and the scene out there.

A few exhibitions really made an impression on me as a young artist. One of them was this Nari Ward show at Deitch Projects [Happy Smilers] — it was a big installation piece with fire hoses and a fire escape in the middle, and he had painted the walls yellow, which I thought was a crazy color to choose. It felt shocking to me. The whole installation was immersive and beautiful.

1993 was the first time I saw the Whitney Biennial. It was my first encounter with a broad array of contemporary artists, and it became a touchstone that I compared other exhibitions to. I remember much later, comparing the ‘91 Biennial catalog to the ’93 Biennial catalog, and realizing that a dramatic shift had just happened in the art world right when I arrived in New York. Many artists of color were included, a lot of female artists were included in the show. To me it was a baseline, what was “normal.” It continues to be what feels “normal” to me.

The early 90s in New York was a brilliant time to begin to participate in the art world because of the energy at that time. Later, I think the art world boomeranged back and narrowed down again, and that was an awful shock to me: like the only male “group” shows, or only female “‘group” shows. But the art world goes in waves.

What part of the wave do you feel like the art world is in now?

Well, I think this is an exciting moment. Things seem to be opening back up. There’s all kinds of energy going on right now that I really love, that I haven’t felt in years. It makes my heart beat faster.

When the art world swung back into its conservative mode, all of these voices went missing. It was so depressing. So boring.

How do you think social media effects the art world today?

I like how social media changes who the gatekeepers are for content and ideas. It’s added an additional venue, or an additional access point that has nothing to do with the market or capital. Social media is about an image or an idea, like Kimberly Drew talking about power, history, and representation through what she posts. I also like to follow Liz Renstrom, who is one of the few female photo editors of Vice.

Your work was shown in galleries in Soho in the 90s — what was that whole experience like?

Oh. The art world was much smaller back then — or it felt that way as a young person in the space. Some of my friends who later became artists or gallery directors worked in the fashion boutiques in Soho to pay their rent.

There was this row between Grand Street and Wooster where there were some fantastic galleries and some great shows happening. I had some work with Stefano Basilico for a while. He had a small gallery space next to Friedrich Petzel. I did a show with Jeffrey Deitch at Deitch Projects.

I was briefly represented by Jack Tilton Gallery. I remember he had just taken on the artist Xu Bing, who did a show for Jack [A Case Study of Transference] that involved live pigs…

You must have so many great stories from this time…

So many. I remember I had a woman helping me sew these stuffed animals for my installation for the 2004 Whitney Biennial. She had a studio on Canal Street on the fifth floor of the building (places were accessible then that aren’t today because of New York City real estate), and we produced work there.

We didn’t realize how big the animals were until they were actually stuffed. We couldn’t get them into the elevator because they wouldn’t fit. I tried to squeeze them in the stairwell and they barely moved. The animals were two or three feet taller than me. It was like a five-story birth canal with this circular staircase, and there were three of those animals to get downstairs.

You couldn’t have a studio space on Canal Street today unless you owned it, but at the time, it all seemed very reasonable and very funny to be squeezing this giant purple lion thing five floors down.

You’ve been showing your work for 20 years now. What projects are you currently most excited about?

I’m getting ready for my show that opens on June 21st at Marianne Boesky Gallery. It’s my werewolf film, The White Wolf, that I’ve been working on for two-and-a-half years. I asked Yuka Honda, from the band Cibo Matto, to star in it because I’ve always been a fan of hers. She’s just magentic on camera.

I’ve also been thinking about the past recently, so I asked Marianne if we could show the first body of work I produced when I was a young artist in my twenties, which are these horror photographs I made between 1998 and 2000. So the werewolf film is the major installation, and then in a project room, we’re going to show these horror photos. I’m excited about it. I think the works will be in beautiful dialogue together. [Horror, as a genre] has a specific type of beauty. It has a sort of gracefulness to it. My work has always asked about the way that people are, or what people love, or what they fantasize about. It plays around with form and changes it, and pulls it apart, and puts it back together again in the wrong way. It asks a lot of questions about the nature of people.

10 PHOTOS click for more

Photos by Edith Young; Styled by Amelia Diamond; Makeup by Teddy Wilson; Hair by Sergio Estrada and Regard Tang. 

[tnaypi3]

PHILIPPINES 2018

OTON, ILOILO

Our first ever stop upon arriving in Iloilo -  Anhawan beach resort where my cousins and I frequented on weekends. About a 10min drive from our house.

Iloilo City - how we Filipinos celebrate when an OFW (Overseas Filipino Worker - hahaha!) comes home. Participating humans consist of dearest family, highschool and college friends.

Alex was so mindblown how the bill only came out Php3500. Roughly $70.

GUIMARAS

Day 2, we visited family from my mom’s side. It took about 15mins via pumpboat. Naturally the whole gang came along.  

It’s more provincial than Iloilo. Air is fresher and life is simpler and much slower. 

Alex falling in love with my cousin’s Shih Tzu pups

We spent the whole day being toured around Guimaras island via car by my cousins, popping in and out of different beaches and views

My lovely maternal cousins and cousins in law

Met my first niece!

OTON, ILOILO - Nes & Tat’s beach resort

About a 10min walk away from our house. Spent way too much weekends here with cousins and friends as well. So nostalgic!

Happy that pretty much everything still looks the same.

We didn’t ask what exactly was going on but it really seemed like goats have taken over the resort haha!

Guimbal church - further south, one of the oldest churches in Iloilo. About a 25min drive from home.

And some more goats.

One was VERY friendly

Family from my mother’s side. Silver haired woman on the left is my mom’s fraternal twin sister and woman not looking is my grandmother.

College friends and I showing Alex how kareoke is just another favorite islander activity. Also our last day night in Iloilo.

We had to relocate to the building’s garage cause they had to close

My bestfriends, my cousins that I grew up with. We lived together under one roof since I had to move to the states in 2011. Tall guy behind is my cousin Monica’s suitor. So traditional, so cute. And Josh who’s beside Alex is same age as Ryan

BACOLOD - a neighboring island, a city about 2hrs via ferry from Iloilo

L-R: Moses & Fergie, my highschool bestfriends, cousin Monica & Tita (aunt) May.

Without my grandma in Iloilo, Tita May spoiled us with the best lutong bahay,  literally meaning cooked at home. She made the usually pork/chicken-based  Filipino dishes vegan. It was the best treat, Alex said it was like waking up to a hotel with the heartiest meal every morning. On top of that were the sweetest tropical fruits and native pastries. ( I have to find those pictures to add them here!!!)

LAKAWON BEACH RESORT, BACOLOD

Quiet little paradise. I wish my whole Iloilo fam were there but my uncle had to a major construction project going on, cousin Clarisa had a concert booked many months ago in Manila and my youngest cousin Josh had his prom the night before and couldn’t make it to our early call time.

Testing our outdoor/underwater camera. One of my fave pics on this trip. Philippine sun looks good on Alex!

Sharing some yoga fun and bliss with loved ones.

So happy my highschool bestfriends took off from work to spend the weekend with us though!

We did a 20min sunrise yoga and meditation led by Alex and myself. They loved it.

Twisty unpside down tripod

We woke up early for this view! Nothing like sunrise watching with special people by your side.

Next eldest cousin, Monica

My little sunshine 

CEBU CITY - 45min plane ride away from Iloilo

My uncle conviced us to spend the night at his mother and sister’s place instead of a hotel. 

They had a framing business and an art gallery.

Hearty Filipino dinner spread over catching up and exchanging of stories. How spoiled are we!

They had a mattress brought out and placed in the middle of the gallery for us. It was so dreamy.

Next day was Valentine’s day, thus the all red ensemble. Saying goodbye after another hearty meal before we headed down south to Badian, Cebu.

BADIAN CEBU - rainforest, canyoneering, waterfalls 

This was supposed to be our canyoneering day but it got canceled due to a typhoon. We explored the area instead and found ourselves the infamous Kawasan Waterfalls. 

After  4 hours of canyoneering the next day, little did we know we were gonna be invited to jump this waterfall by our tour guides. The last and grandest jump of many.

all about that provincial life

“exploring the neighborhood”, Philippines style

After being told that canyoneering might still be held off the next day due to the typhoon (though it was already on it’s way to another part of the country), we woke up to a go signal, woohoo!

Only best shared with this human.

It’s as dreamy as it looks. Just a bitty chilly.

Bedroom view

SANTANDER, CEBU

Two days later, further south, we woke up to this beautiful farm. At this point, I really felt ever so embraced, pampered by nature. 

Listening to a schirping oundbath from the farm’s resident birds

Three hours later, we were in a ferry on our way to Siquijor. Known as the mystic island where most mountain-dwelling shamans, healers witch doctors are from, I actually grew up fearing even just the name of the place. 

Over the years though, this reputation has been dispelled, thanks to social media maybe? Travel-thirsty explorers made the island more and more famous each year through word of mouth and of course, blogs, instagram and facebook. 

It was more beautiful than I’d ever imagined.

I can’t believe we actually stayed in this beautiful paradise.

Plus a yoga studio???

Breakfast of champs!

Breakfast with a view is an understatement on this one

And playful island pups????

400year old Balete tree

Ancient church in Siquijor

Cambugahay falls. What a sight. What a feeling.

We had the sweetest tricycle driver who took us around. Apparently Siquijor is the third smallest province in the country. Like Guimaras, you can also drive through the whole island in one day.

Thankfully, Alex doesn’t have to tild his head sideways or crouch because the roof is tall enough. The other ones, including jeepneys (our mode of public transportation in Iloilo) he had to because he was too tall for it. Way too tall, haha! 

Golden hour at Salagdoong beach. There was another ledge with a 35ft drop in the water but we were too spent, literally from jumping waterfalls and from one place to another. We opted for sunset watching & cold beer, mmmm!

Day2 at Siquijor, unveiling the beauty of Lugnason Falls. This one is so underhyped which is a good thing. It was quiet and there was just a couple when we got in.

These sunkissed boys are tour guides that’ll meet you by the road before descending your way to the falls. It’s not allowed to go to the waterfalls without them. Beside Alex is our guide, Ricky. He’s a wild one and I love it. I thought I was done jumping for the day, still feeling the effects of the previous days’ jumps. Alex and I were swimming and hanging out when from above, I heard Ricky calling me and pointing the giby his side “She’s gonna do it! Come on up Christine, jump!!!!” And I was like “Say no more!!!!!” It was a 35ft drop and felt like heaven. I bade Siquijor, my favorite one goodbye by jumping 3 (or 4???) times.

Siquijor forever in my heart

PUERTO PRINCESA, PALAWAN

Our new home for two nights!!

Place is not by the beach but they had pools and we were not complaining!!!

Squeezed in a quick but intense hike at Mt. Magarwak. For roughly 2 hrs back and forth, we climbed up the steep mountain for that extra toasty look, haha!

Alex’s breakfast buds and good morning committee. The next morning there were four.

EL NIDO, PALAWAN

Currently one of the most hyped places in the country. But rightfully so. People are sweet and the beaches are like no other. Though I might have said or felt it for every destination we have been to :)

Another super sweet tricycle driver who made our afternoon trip to Nacpan Beach such a magical one. He insisted on us going all the way, further in to the beach so we can have a more private beach to ourselves. AND BOY, WE DID. 

Countless coconut trees welcoming us to Nacpan Beach 

We were joined by my highschool friend, Kitz. She also doubles as secondary tour manager and customer service whenever we need to do some sorting over the phone.

Unforgettable afternoon with these lovelies

Golden bliss

Moon rise cheshire smile

EL NIDO Day2- island tour 

This boat was almost made for us

We saw roughly 9 or 10 islands all day

Stalking Alex stalking fishes

Hidden Beach

Best snorkeling experience ever

Paddling to the lagoons. I have better footage here but in video form. I will have to edit and compile them soon!

MANILA

National Museum

300 yr old (???) St. Agustine Church

Last hurrah with friends based in Manila

Happy puppy

Bye PH, you are perfect.

[vdbstore-blog]

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New Post has been published on http://vintagedesignerhandbagsonline.com/come-together-how-rave-returned-to-the-cultural-mix-society/

Come together! How rave returned to the cultural mix | Society

Before the May bank holiday in 1992, Castlemorton Common in the Malvern Hills was chiefly known only to walkers keen to hike through its 600 acres of unspoilt, unenclosed land. After that bank holiday, however, it became known as the site of Britain’s biggest-ever illegal rave.

Partygoers arrived in such numbers that Castlemorton featured on TV and in the newspapers – which brought more revellers. In the end, an estimated 20,000 people flocked to the site. By the Tuesday, it had induced moral panic in the Daily Mail: “A walk through the hippy encampment was like walking into a scene from the Mad Max movies. Zombie-like youngsters on drugs walked aimlessly through the mobile shanty town or danced to the pounding beat,” it reported. By 1994, the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act was passed, with the now infamous ruling against parties playing music “characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats”.

Twenty-five years after Castlemorton, rave is back in the pop culture mix. The aesthetic, culture and sound has trickled down to everything from the growth of the festival to the concept of chill-out, to your DayGlo wallet, clubbing scenes in Girls, a weekend in Ibiza and the Kirakira app’s sparkles. Most people might not be regularly indulging in four-day parties but, in 2017, rave’s cultural legacy extends far and wide.

Castlemorton 1992 … the Malvern Hills beauty spot became the site of Britain’s bigest illegal rave. Photograph: Murray Sanders/ANL/Rex/Shutterstock

“Artists see it as a halcyon age,” says Seb Wheeler, head of digital at dance and clubbing magazine Mixmag. “I’m 29 and acid house started in the late 80s, so that’s my whole lifetime of dance music to explore … There are dance music legends that you will hear from your older brother or your parents and you’re like: ‘I’m going to check that out,’ and head down a wormhole on YouTube or a specialised playlist on Spotify.” Wheeler points to Bicep, the dance music duo, as the act most influenced by the rave sound, which itself developed from acid house roots in Chicago. Since 2008, the duo’s Feel My Bicep blog has brought their favourite tracks from the genre to other fans. These fans will soon also be able to watch the story unfold: Irvine Welsh, the author of Trainspotting, is working on a TV series, Ibiza87, about the roots of the movement. Matthew Collin’s upcoming Rave On, meanwhile, is a follow-up to his acid house book Altered State, telling the story of how rave went from underground to ubiquity.

Fashion brands including Charles Jeffrey, Molly Goddard, Christopher Shannon and Comme des Garçons – more known for conceptual experimentation than clothes for the dance floor – have all brought rave to the catwalk. The latter’s menswear show was a highlight of the SS18 season, with young men dancing, coloured lights and clothes made of neon glittery fabric last seen on Camden Lock market stalls in the 90s. Meanwhile, Russian designer Gosha Rubchinskiy, currently fashion’s golden boy, staged his spring collection in St Petersburg’s first-ever rave venue. He also published a zine with 90s images of teenagers on the rave scene in Russia, at clubs such as Tunnel.

Elrow party, Glastonbury 2017. Photograph: Alicia Canter for the Guardian

For these designers, rave is inspiring as an authentic youth culture. Goddard says she was influenced to turn her SS17 show into a rave from watching videos of raves at Lewisham library and thinking about her own youth going out to “parties in Hackney Wick and posh clubs in Mayfair”. Shannon’s sportswear aesthetic is influenced by the Joe Bloggs and Naf Naf clothes he saw his older brothers wear going out dancing. “I can remember wearing an acid house T-shirt on a school trip and getting told off,” he says. “Even if I didn’t understand it, [rave] taught me about clothes’ ability to antagonise things.”

Artists are also exploring rave. Jeremy Deller uses rave’s smiley face repeatedly in his work, and his Bless This Acid House posters are almost as popular as the Strong and Stable My Arse versions in households prone to making arty liberal statements. As part of Frieze art fair in October, Jarvis Cocker staged his Dancefloor Meditations, a kind of lecture-meets-disco with lasers, 808s and total darkness.

Nav Haq, the curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, staged an exhibition on the impact of rave, Energy Flash, last year. He says the period is relevant now because it shows what we are lacking: rave is typically seen as the last genuine subculture. “It’s hard to see something emerging in the same way now. People talk about the digital realm but that’s difficult because it gets corporatised very quickly. Youth movements emerge through things that happen in the world – the riots in 1968, the recession in the late 80s and early 90s. We’re in a similar period of time, but we have not been able to create that movement somehow.”

Jeremy Deller’s Joy in People at the Hayward Gallery, London. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

As with any subculture, rave has become mythologised. It is remembered as a scene where community was key and money was insignificant, but that was not the case for long. The popularity of ecstasy had repercussions beyond breaking down barriers on the dancefloor – it brought with it organised crime. By the 90s, drug dealers with baseball bats were found at rave mecca The Haçienda and rising security bills contributed to the club’s closure. Rave going mainstream spawned opportunists ready to cash in, too. Wheeler points to Tony Colston-Hayter, the Sunrise rave promoter – and later fraudster. “This is a weekend youth culture,” he told an interviewer at the time. “A city banker can shed his suit, put on his dungarees, dance all Saturday night away.” Parties such as his – that do not fit the narrative of rave as cultural disrupter – have their own legacy in clubs as business: see the phenomenon of Elrow, a party organiser from Barcelona that will host 132 events globally this year, reaching an audience of 1.7 million people. In a recent article, Resident Advisor called it “the world’s most popular clubbing brand”.

The Facebook page Humans of the Sesh was started in 2015 by two friends calling themselves Brown Sauce and Grand Feen. It is dedicated to detailing the bantz around the house party, the after party and impromptu bender, all under the umbrella of the “sesh”. Brown Sauce, though, is convinced his fun will never live up to what he sees calcified in grainy images of ravers. “There is a massive feeling that everyone went to a great party but we were too late,” he says. “Our idea of a good party – the huge speakers, the warehouse space – is based on the idea of a rave, even if you don’t know what a rave is. There’s a nostalgia to that era even if you weren’t around then.”

There are some trying to make their own versions on the free party scene, working against how corporate the mainstream nightlife scene has become by going back to the ideology of rave. Scum Tek, the collective that organised the “Scumoween” party in 2015 that ended in confrontation with the police, has members from the original scene, and an anti-establishment feel. A Vice documentary last year, Locked Off, told the story of various collectives that aim to put on illegal parties around the country in disused warehouses and squats, a cat-and-mouse game between organisers and the police. Footage shows teenagers dancing to a backdrop of lasers, jumpers tied around their naked torsos, dummies in the mouths – convincing facsimiles of the ones in the original rave pictures but for the balloons of Nitrous Oxide. “It’s not simply a bunch of guys with a bunch of speakers in a field,” says a partygoer at one point. “It’s bringing people together in a way that nothing else really does.”

The political backdrop of rave will feel familiar to the young people of today. It’s one of a less-than-stable Conservative prime minister (John Major then, now Theresa May) who reached power through a resignation; a crash in recent memory (1987 then, 2008 now); high levels of youth unemployment (800,000 18-to-24-year-olds in the early 90s, around 850,000 16-to-24-year-olds in 2016), and general unrest expressed through riots and demonstrations (the 1990 poll tax riots; the Brexit and Grenfell Tower protests). “People will always create music to escape when they’re skint and there’s a Tory government inflicting spending cuts,” says Wheeler. “It’s a form of rebellion.”

Clubbers at Raindance, 1991. Photograph: UniversalImagesGroup/UIG via Getty Images

Will Stronge is trying to fuse the anger of disenfranchised young people with the desire to dance. The theorist found himself in the spotlight in September when the concept of Acid Corbynism – coined by Jeremy Gilbert and fleshed out by Matt Phull and Stronge – went viral. While the Acid Corbynism event at the Labour Party conference looked closer to Peep Show’s Rainbow Rhythms than a Spiral Tribe rave, the theory is interesting. Taking acid house as one of its bases – a scene where the collective ruled and everyone was welcome on the dancefloor – Stronge and Phull argue that encouraging similar values now could upset the establishment in a joyful way. “The ecstatic moments on the dancefloor tie into what it is to be a person, a person [who is] part of a community,” Stronge says. “Dance music as a collective experience means it’s already political, but it’s whether or not you can maintain that political experience as part of a larger cultural project.”

Stronge, 27, who is off to a six hour Erol Alkan DJ gig after I speak to him, is far from nostalgic. In an article for Red Pepper magazine, he namechecks contemporary musicians including Jam City and the Circadian Rhythms record label as signs that something is happening. Circadian Rhythms even apparently pepper their radio show with shout-outs to Diane Abbott. Stronge believes a genuine subculture could emerge from this scene – one that could outsmart the corporate world’s tendency to jump on anything young people flock to. “This is a call to say, ‘Let’s find ways that youth culture can become counterculture.’ How do we not make the mistakes so our revolutions aren’t sold back to us?” he says. “At its core, dance culture is where we can have individual pleasure through collectivity.” Or, in the words of Jarvis Cocker at Dancefloor Meditations, “Having fun is the most profound form of protest there is.”

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[molovesvintage]

4 May 2017

It’s rare that I sleep well in hostels, so despite the comfy beds of Hostel bedgasm and the bleariness of 3 cocktails at New York Bar the previous night, I was dressed and out the door before 10 am, ready for my second day in Tokyo.

When I travel, I strive to make my excursions well-rounded, a good balance of famous sites and local haunts. Tokyo has countless museums, documenting anything you could imagine, and so I wanted to go to at least one during my brief stay. For this first visit I picked the Tokyo National Museum, which turned out to be a great choice. It’s a huge museum, and the main collection is filled with every cultural Japanese artifact you could imagine: samurai swords, tea and sake containers, Buddhist art, textiles and kimonos. It’s a great jumping-off point to Japanese culture, and although I’ve been in Japan now for 6 months I found it really valuable to see some history of this place I’ve been calling home. I especially enjoyed the kimonos, a garment I find endlessly fascinating, and the intricate, delicate gold leaf work on lacquer boxes and cabinets. Plus, the museum is cheap at only ¥600 (¥400 with student discount) and is located in leafy Ueno park, which was crowded with families for the Golden Week holiday period when I visited.

Grand staircases in the Tokyo National Museum

Leafy Ueno Park

From the museum I walked through the park and over to Yanaka, an older area of Tokyo that is less metropolitan and has a more nostalgic, old town atmosphere. Yanaka is filled with cafes and shops from the 1930’s and 40’s, new art galleries and workshops, and old temples. Needless to say I loved exploring this neighborhood, but I was sad that the line for a vintage coffee shop I wanted to stop at was just too long for me and that a lot of galleries were closed for the holiday period. I did however, enjoy a peek inside Yanaka Cemetery, a vast necropolis where a lot of notable Tokyo residents have been laid to rest and which boasts some impressive carved tombstones! But the most famous part of Yanaka is Yanaka Ginza, a narrow shopping street crammed with stalls and shops and brimming with shitamachi, “old town” ambiance. That day, it was crowded with tourists, but still fun to see, and there were still lots of local characters about, eating yakitori and drinking beer on milk crates next to the stalls.

Old-time Japanese snack shop in Yanaka

Looking down on Yanaka Ginza

By this time, it was mid afternoon, and I was actually pretty tired from walking nonstop in the sun for the past several hours, so I went back to my hostel for a rest. My hostel in Tokyo, Hostel bedgasm, was amazing, and a new favorite of mine. The beds were comfy, the location was good, and the price was reasonable, but what really makes a hostel for me is the staff, and the three hostel owners, a Japanese guy, a Korean guy, and a Thai girl, are all amazing good people. You can see the love they have put into this place and how dedicated they are to their business. The best hostels usually have a good common place to hang out and meet folks, so after my rest I went down to the hostel bar/lounge, and spent the next few hours drinking and making friends with the owners and other travelers. Luckily, I found a few other folks, an Australian guy and a German guy, who were just as keen for exploration as me, and around 22:00 we headed out into the night to see what kind of trouble we could get ourselves into.

High on my list of things to see was Golden Gai, aka Piss Alley, a uniquely Japanese nightlife spot. Golden Gai consists of a network of tiny alleys with tiny bars, all with a different theme or vibe going on. Some are locals-only, and most charge a cover fee, but we managed to stumble upon Asyl, an amazing whiskey bar located up a narrow flight of stairs with no cover. Abe-Chan, the eccentric proprietor, is passionate about whiskey and music, and his bar is low-key and funky, with graffiti covering the walls. We each described to him what kind of whiskey we liked, fruity for the German, smoky for the Australian, and bourbon for me, and from the array of bottles on the bar he picked a different local, small label for us to try. His taste was spot-on; that whiskey was some of the best I’ve ever had! The bar sat 6 people at most, and besides us there were also 2 other Americans gents that we chatted with.

Possibly the best whiskey of my life

Abe-Chan doing his thing at Asyl whiskey bar

In Tokyo, the last train is at midnight, so if you have a Cinderella moment and miss it you have two options: take an expensive cab home or stay out all night. It was 1:30 when we left Golden Gai, so clearly our choice had been made for us, and we talked the Americans into going clubbing with us. We went to Womb, a famous Tokyo nightclub, which probably is amazing on a weekend but on a Thursday night in Golden Week was a bit strange. While there were Japanese folks there, clearly the locals were staying away that week, and the crowd was mostly foreigner, with a lot of people standing around, not dancing. I really don’t go to clubs that often (I can probably count the total amount on one hand), but the only reason I would go is to dance, and miraculously I found myself with 4 straight Western guys who felt the same. Fuck it, your fun is what you make yourself, so even if everyone else was going to be lame, our crew danced up a storm and took over the basement dance floor where an amazing girl Japanese DJ was spinning some house and electronic music. When we stumbled out at closing time, 4:30, we were amazed to see the sky growing light over the city. We had some ramen, as you do after staying out all night, and took the first train back to the hostel, where I threw myself into my bunk for a glorified nap before checkout in 5 hours.

Next time, Day 3: Vintage stores and cafes, the madness of Harajuku, and the elegance of Omotesando.

Happy Travels,

Mo

Tokyo at 6:00 am.

    3 Days in Tokyo, Day 2 4 May 2017 It's rare that I sleep well in hostels, so despite the comfy beds of Hostel bedgasm and the bleariness of 3 cocktails at New York Bar the…

[nofomoartworld]

Artist Laura Amphlett Hides the Desert's Magic in Collaged Boxes | #50StatesofArt

Through slivers of shattered light, a mirage forms in the desert; less an oasis than one's own mirror image, the works of Arizona artist Laura Amphlett present the possibility of paradise, but only on the other side of the looking-glass. The Arizona State University sculpture major works across a number of mediums, her primary roster including laser-cut acrylic, found objects, and neon. Although her works are deeply enigmatic, their allure is less in their solutions than in their precise compositions and constructions; they're beautiful puzzle-boxes, in the most literal sense. 

Long-exalted as a source of spiritual energy, the desert has historically been an inspiration for American artists seeking a point of connection with the ethereal. It finds a home in Amphlett's small-scale objects. They're a little Duchamp, and some Flavin and Turrell, with a dash of the earnestness of Mendieta (to taste). Creators reached out to Amphlett to talk divination, inspiration, and the magic hiding in plain sight in Arizona. 

Self Portrait. Found suitcase, neon, laser etched acrylic, mirror film. 25"x40". 2017

Creators: Your use of reflective surfaces, whether physically reflective or implied, suggests that a certain bit of scrying is required on the part of the viewer.

Laura Amphlett: Yes, I'm glad you picked up on that correlation in my work. I believe in the philosophy that art reflects reality, especially when using the intuitive approach that I employ. My work is complex, there are numerous facets to it, and not necessarily a linear story being told—but a story nonetheless. To me, it's really up to the observer to decide and play with that narrative, that is the most satisfying part for me as an assembler. I would implore any viewer to spend more time with a piece than is normal for them. The small revelations that one can discover in the details are so important to any artist, as this sums up the whole (especially in my more layered pieces).

21 (Detail). Laser cut/etched acrylic, found image, cacti, astroturf. 24"x32"x5". 2014

How did you get to the work you're doing now?

There are so many paths that led me to the materials and ideas I'm using in my work presently, but I will attempt to sum it up in a digestible way. I actually went to an art-focused charter high school in downtown Phoenix called Metropolitan Arts Institute, which gave me the best foundation I could've asked for as a young artist. One of my teachers from Metro and mentors in my life is an incredible artist and painter, Sue Chenoweth. She was incredible at getting us students to let go of preconceived ideas about what an end result of a piece should be, that there is something magical that happens when you let go of the image you're holding onto in your head. Her prompts for projects would be very open-ended and elusive, I remember one prompt that I especially loved, was using a book of a collection of poems by the philosopher Rumi. Everyone in the class took turns opening the book to a random page and pointed without looking and used that passage as their starting point. I still have my quote:

"Inside me a hundred beings are putting their fingers to their lips and saying, 'That's enough for now. Shhhh.' Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river."

The piece I made from this was a self portrait:

Shhhh. Inkjet print, found text, found paper, ink, thread, stickers, cardstock. 8.5"x11"

I also got comfortable using mixed media at that time, the classrooms at Metro Arts had collections of materials from any and everywhere, with unique items like yearbooks from the 30s, yarn, just an endless amount of weird little trinkets and such, things you'd find at thrift stores. I was always interested what happens when using a translucent material, like tracing paper on top of an image, to give an image more dimensionality. By slightly removing or altering the original, the original takes on separate meanings and this has always fascinated me. Since I was a child I've been an avid drawer, so it's naturally a big part of my work. In more recent works, I've been using small sketchbook thoughts, collages, drawings etc. to create more significant pieces that can exist in the real world, which has been the inevitable progression for me, where the dimensionality can be real and implied. I do this by appropriating those little works via a laser engraver, vinyl cutter, printer, etc.

I prefer for art to be true, and for that to happen for me, it has to start from an uninhibited place—that magical space when you don't have to think, you just "do." This idea always reminds me of the point in the sleep cycle where you're just about asleep but not quite, when your mind wanders and starts to take you under.

Cherchez La Femme. Inkjet print, laser etching, cut vinyl on stonehenge. 10"x10". Edition of 15. 2016

Do you spend time in the desert? If not, why not? Can you tell me how your surrounding environment plays into your process?

I used to spend more time in the desert camping with my father, and is something I look forward to when I don't have as much on my plate. When you have two jobs and go to school full time it can be hard. Also a lot of people don't realize that up north we have so many beautiful and lush places, like Sedona and Flagstaff, so it's a nice mini-escape when the heat takes over.

Like many people that live in Arizona, I wasn't born here. I was born in Northern California and moved here when I was 10. Due to the fact that I was moved from a place with nearly perfect weather, I've always had a love–hate relationship with AZ. When it gets to be 125 degrees in the dead of the summer you can feel trapped, like you need to escape, and this feeling lasts a few months. Then monsoon season rolls around and it's the most beautiful sight—the storms here are incredible and you fall in love with it again; it's this never ending cycle.

The desert is a really special place, it holds a kind of double meaning. It seems really desolate on the surface but is filled with so much vibrance when up close, when you're paying attention. I still have never seen another place with sunsets as good as what we have here, and those warm color palettes have managed to seep into my work. Another reoccurring theme that is definitely from the AZ landscape are pools (90% of homes here have them), I am always returning to a simple image of a pool, or some form of representation of it. I love the symbolism of a pool, it's reflection from the water can create an illusion that it's a flat surface, but when you get up close you realize the depth below.

Grapes. Found image, pencil. 5"x7". 2015

Can you tell me about a particularly formative moment you've had in Arizona, and how it contributed to a piece of work or a line of thinking?

Community is such an important factor for artists and without the support of peers we all diminish. When I was around 17 or 18, I was living with some friends in Central Phoenix and was introduced to people that were connected to the underground music scene here. I remember going to a house way out in Southern Phoenix and seeing one of Marshstepper's first shows, which featured a ritualistic performance involving masks, cauldrons, mass amounts of fog, low red lights, and of course loud distorted sound backed up by indistinguishable vocals. I remember being pretty blown away and excited that there was this whole other dimension to Arizona that I wasn't aware of.

That event opened to the door to many other shows, people, and art that was incredibly inspiring. Although at the time I wasn't aware that I was in such an essential moment for underground art in AZ, I am so glad I was around and got to experience that. It was then I that I realized there were actually so many other like-minded people who could relate to how I was feeling in this weird little place we were all residing in. There was something magical about that time that we shared together, and I know those who were a part of it cherish it as well. There is still some of this happening today, and it happens in cycles, but many of the key players have since moved away to places like LA and NY.

Loose Lips. Laser etched acrylic, neon. 13"x12". 2017

Do you find the people around you to be receptive to your work? And where, if at all, does your work fit in?

AZ has cycles of creativity, and I can get really nostalgic for the old days when it was in that thriving moment. People feel that they outgrow AZ and tend to move away, and this creates a dynamic that can be hard to keep up with, since it's constantly changing. To make a good city like NY, LA, or SF successful, it takes roots, people who want to create that type of community, and doing the work to make it happen. It's definitely harder to get the kind of exposure you would get if you lived in one of the major coastal cities, so I don't blame anyone who seeks that out. The good thing is I've been seeing a recent upswing in art, music, and community that I'm pretty excited about. I've had more opportunity for art shows than ever, and I've seen more galleries opening, which is extremely important.

Daggers. Cardstock, acetate, ink, acrylic paint. 5"x7". 2014

I get the impression that your process involves spending a lot of time purely looking at your work. Can you describe the feeling of looking, and the one that comes when you've found something to be finished?

There's lots of time spent looking and experimenting, and when something works out, the feeling is truly euphoric. The final moments of finishing a piece can be very tricky; when assembling, it's like a balancing act to know when to stop and to know when to walk away. You have to go with your gut and not compromise on this. I can get stuck in the studio so easily for hours because I feel an overwhelming need to complete a work, but most of the time it's actually more beneficial to get some separation from it and get out of my own head for a bit. It's almost like I have an obsessive quality to creating these things. They're my way of sorting everything out that I'm taking in, a way of visually communicating the inner workings of the mind. I suppose the true answer comes in when I receive feedback from the viewer, their observations, the validation that the ideas I'm trying to get across are coming through, this is when a work is truly complete to me.

Untitled. Pencil. 5"x7". 2016 24"X32"x5"

What are you reading right now?

Virginia Woolf's The Waves is on my bedroom nightstand. Her use of soliloquies from different characters is very intriguing to me, and it's written in such a poetic way. I am a big fan of poetry and try to write a poem every week. It can be hard to follow along with this style of writing, but I'm very interested in the non-linear narrative she uses in this particular book. The way she interprets the human condition and its many layers is inspiring.

Click here to visit Laura Amphlett's website. 

All year, we're highlighting 50 States of Art projects around the United States. This month, we're covering Arizona, Mississippi, Nebraska, Maine, and Virginia. To learn more, click here.

Related:

A Mirrored House By Doug Aitken Reflects California's Desert Beauty and Solitude

A Desert Museum's Ode to Black Assemblage Art

 [NSFW] A New Erotic Art Book Tells the Tale of a Nude Female Desert Cult

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