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waitineedaname · 6 years

Text

sofa smooches

me @ myself: pleas work on your other wips I’m begging you

my hell brain: hhhhhh soft davekat kisses

also on ao3

Like most days on the meteor, Dave and Karkat were spending the evening on the couch in the TV room. The shitty rom-com Karkat had picked out had long since ended; they’d watched all the way through the credits, like they always did, no matter how many times Dave told him there wasn’t going to be anything new at the end, like watching it for the seventeenth time would somehow unlock a secret ending where those background characters do end up together and go on their own cliched adventure. But. Karkat was stubborn and insistent, as always.

It was kinda cute.

It was not the first time that thought had occurred to Dave, but it had yet to be less startling.

Dave put his phone down, having beat Peggle for the twentieth time, and looked up at Karkat from where he was draped across his lap. He’d laid himself there about a third of the way through the movie, and Karkat hadn’t complained. In fact, neither of them seemed to want to be the one to disturb the little cuddle sesh, and they’d silently agreed to occupy themselves with whatever wouldn’t disturb the other. Hence, Dave’s Peggle endeavors and Karkat’s shitty romance novel. He was holding it with one hand, propping it up on Dave’s legs, because his other hand was resting on top of Dave’s free hand, only lifting away to turn a page every now and then, always returning to gently curl around Dave’s hand. Sometimes he’d absentmindedly rub his thumb along Dave’s knuckles, drawing circles and tracing the scars and freckles that littered his skin, and it. It was nice.

Dave wasn’t sure if he was in the right headspace to think about how touchstarved they both were, or how just those little comforting brushes of affection seemed to comfort an ache in his soul he’d never really paid attention to, or how Karkat’s touches when they cuddled like this were so much more gentle than he ever expected from someone who yelled himself hoarse and threatened bodily harm on the daily.

Dave didn’t think about any of that. He just thought about how nice it was to have his hand held, and how the perpetual pinch in Karkat’s brow was softer from this angle, and how he really wanted to kiss him.

Huh. That was a thought.

“Hey.”

Karkat ignored him.

“Hey.” Dave snapped his fingers in front of his face to get his attention.

Karkat smacked his hand away and turned the page.

“Hey.” Dave reached back up and flicked Karkat’s nose. Karkat, predictably, overreacted and reeled back, his whole face scrunching up.

“Ow! Fucker!” He yelled, covering his nose.

“Oh, come on. That did not hurt.”

“Fuck you! Maybe it did! You don’t know, maybe trolls have especially weak noses! For all you know, that could’ve been a built in insta-kill button! You could’ve killed me, Dave, and then how the fuck would you feel?”

“Pretty shitty, but then I’d let your ghost punch me in the face in the next dream bubble we fly through, so we’d be even.”

“What the fuck ever, you wish I’d punch your stupid face.” Karkat rolled his eyes, but he closed his book so Dave counted that as a win for Strider. “What was so important that you had to almost kill me anyway?”

“Can I kiss you?”

“What?”

“Can I kiss you?” Karkat blinked down at him blankly and well shit, that’s all Dave needed to take off on the rambling train, next stop: off the rails and straight into embarrassment territory. “Forget it, I could totally be misreading this whole cuddle thing, for all I know this might be a normal thing in troll culture, just snuggling between bros, like I could maybe expect it with your whole moirail thing except I’m pretty sure we’re not moirails? I’d probably know if that was what was happening-”

“Yeah, you can kiss me.”

“-especially since I don’t think either of us are like keeping the other from succumbing to homicidal tendencies or whatever because you can do whatever the fuck you want and I’m just chilling-” Dave paused mid-tangent, suddenly processing what Karkat had just said. “Wait. What’d you say?”

“I said you could kiss me, dumbass.”

“Oh. Cool. Great.” Dave found himself frozen for a second, realizing all that meant, and he slowly sat up, sliding off Karkat’s lap and turning to face him. This close, he could see Karkat swallow thickly, and he realized this was just as big of a deal for Karkat as it was for him.

Okay. He could do this.

Dave put his hand on Karkat’s cheek because that seemed like the right thing to do, and before he could second guess himself again, he leaned in and pressed his lips to Karkat’s.

It was really nice. It was clear they both didn’t really know what they were doing - they’d spent most of puberty on a meteor with the same tiny group of people, of course they were inexperienced - but it was still nice. The feeling of Karkat’s weirdly warm lips against his, the feeling of sharp teeth pressed up just behind them when they parted the slightest bit.

It didn’t last very long. Probably just a few seconds, but it felt like forever. Dammit, he was a god of time or whatever, he should probably have a better grasp of its passage, but Karkat seemed to knock out what little sense he had in the first place.

To be perfectly fair, Karkat seemed just as dazed as he did. When Dave finally pulled away, he curled his fingers into Dave’s sleeve to keep him from going too far and hey, when’d his hand end up on his upper arm? Not like Dave was complaining.

They both stared at each other for a second, two annoyingly talkative people on most days suddenly stunned silent.

“Thanks.” Dave finally said, and Karkat snorted, the moment broken.

“Thanks? Do you thank everyone you kiss, just to make up for having to deal with your stink breath?” There wasn’t any bite to the insult since they were definitely still close enough for Karkat to be smelling his supposedly stinky breath, and he didn’t seem to plan on moving away any time soon.

“Yep. Just a courtesy. You know how goddamn polite I am, got etiquette seeping out my damn pores. Gonna get pimples that’re sayin’ please and thank you with how clogged my pores are with all these manners.” He leaned in and bonked their foreheads together gently. Karkat looked like he was having a very hard time not snickering.

“Right. Maybe it’s your human etiquette that’s stinking the place up since you’re apparently drenched in it.”

“Oh, yeah. Good manners are notoriously noxious. They have to wear gas masks in Canada because of the permanent politeness stink.”

“You should know by now I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.” Karkat let go of his arm to tuck a piece of blond hair behind Dave’s ear and the gesture was so soft that Dave’s heart almost stopped. He definitely didn’t lean into the touch a little bit. Nope. Not at all. Shut up and mind your business.

“So. My lips as impudent as you thought?” Dave said to distract himself from how fluttery he was feeling. Karkat gave him a blank look, then grimaced as he suddenly remembered.

“Oh my fucking god. You cannot still remember that.”

“Of course I fucking remember that. You were hitting on me and John at the same damn time. You hadn’t even met us yet. Horny idiot.” Dave said, accenting his point by poking one of Karkat’s nubby horns.

“Shut up! I still think it’s offensive that humans use that phrase like that.”

“What, horny? Dude, we started using that word way before y’all ever even appeared on our radar.”

“I’m not convinced.”

“You think I’d invent an expression just to poke fun at you? Wait, don’t answer that, I definitely would.”

“Exactly. Dick.” Karkat huffed, then took Dave by surprise by leaning in to kiss him again. They shared a few more gentle kisses, a couple of them ruined by smiles from either of them and what was definitely not a giggle or two, and then Karkat lifted his head a bit to press a tiny kiss to the tip of Dave’s nose. Dave was pretty sure he was gonna explode from the tenderness. Pirouette off the fucking handle or whatever but in the best possible way. Here lies Dave Strider, he died because his alien boyfriend was too damn soft.

Wait.

“Hey, are we boyfriends?”

“You mean matesprits?”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“I dunno.” Karkat worried his lip with one of his fangs. “Do you wanna be?”

“I dunno.” Dave said, unintentionally parroting him. “Maybe? I-. I wouldn’t be opposed. To being matesprit-boyfriends. Maybe we can try it out for a while, see if we’re both down to clown- wait, bad choice of words, hopefully no clowns will be involved.”

“Yeah, that might get fucking weird.”

“Definitely. If you somehow become a clown, that ‘maybe’ will immediately turn into a no.”

“If I turn into a clown, you have my explicit permission to kill me instantly.”

“Punch the kill-button on the nose, right?” Dave said, brushing their noses together.

“Exactly. I’m trusting you with the secret to killing trolls, use it wisely.”

“I promise to only use my knowledge to put an end to my clown boyfriend’s horrible hypothetical existence.”

“You’re so dumb.” Karkat mumbled, tone full of affection, and he tucked his face into Dave’s neck.

They stayed there for a while, hours maybe, rambling and teasing each other. It really wasn’t very different from how they normally spent their time except they were a tangled mess of limbs and half on each other’s laps, cutting off particularly pointless rambles with kisses and effectively changing the subject completely.

Dave knew there were definitely things to worry about, things he’d have to deal with eventually, but with an armful of happy troll kissing him, he couldn’t be any happier.

#dave strider #karkat vantas #davekat #homestuck #my writing #okay to reblog #i wrote this in the bus station and on the ride back to college on sunday #i alternated between writing it and finishing the comic itself lmao #i hope it's decently in character!!!!!#i've never written them before (obviously bc i literally finished the comic two days ago)#but yeah we love soft boyfriends

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fadedseas · 4 years

Text

lessons.

nick amaro x fem!reader

summary: you get held hostage during a confrontation with a serial rapist - feelings ensue

tw: guns, violence, mentions of rape, cursing

(gif not mine but good lord, that expression...)

you knew there was an intrinsic reason you hated school. you knew it was a mistake to ever return to a classroom again. you knew this notion was affirmed as a serial rapist pressed his gun deeper into your skull so hard that you could feel the metal ring of the barrel.

there was something about the stuffiness of a classroom, the monotonous drone of an underpaid and overworked public school teacher (or that of an overpaid and underworked tenured professor) and the unrelenting stiffness of academia that made your skin crawl and your muscles twitch. it was probably why you had tried to get out as soon as possible. college as a scholarship kid with the four years passing quickly in a blur of all-nighters, coffee hangovers and then sweet relief during graduation. you had signed up for the police academy before the ink on your degree was even dry. and now you’re here.

“now let’s just stay calm,” you closed your eyes at nick’s voice, trying to allow the deep tenor of his voice permeate your bones and calm your trembling. you hadn’t allowed yourself to make eye contact with him ever since the perp had grabbed you right when you had walked in.

“i know you don’t want to do this.” nick moved slow, his muscles deceptively relaxed under his white button down as he moved slowly towards you and the professor.

it was supposed to be a cut and dry case. a student from hudson university had walked into a squad room on a wednesday morning reporting a rape, her arms around her middle as if she were holding herself together. you and nick had pounded the pavement, interviewing classmates, boyfriends, administration officials that seemed less than pleased to have the nypd scaring off prospective students and donors. and one name kept appearing time and time again. professor daniel hershaw. english literature. tenured for the past fifteen years.

“you really think it might be him? he’s the image of a family man. mentor. i mean the guy makes model planes for godssake - he’s a walking cliche.” you mused

“one thing you learn on this job - most of the time, we’re not pulling rapists off the street. they hunt where they’re trusted.” nick said as he handed you a coffee from the coffee cart with his lips curved into a sad smile. your heart jumped as your fingers brushed. and oh. yes. that was another thing that was happening.

liv had assigned you and nick as partners given that you were the newest recruit and he was one of the senior members of the team. it was late nights, terrible coffee, greasy chinese food and floods of case notes that turned stagnant work chatter into deeper, more revealing conversations. you learned about his tendency to dance to the cuban music station on the radio (”we can work on your moves rookie”), his secret love for musicals, his divorce that had ended a year ago with an aggressive custody battle and long negotiations for weekends and holidays with his daughter, zara. you had learned more about his family, about zara’s obsession with anything disney, about his mother and her fretting, about his father and his tendency to communicate with his fists that made nick’s rage swell whenever your team handled a case involving women with black eyes and voices weak from sobs.

and he learned of you. of your love for terrible reality tv shows and home cooking blogs that made you way too optimistic of your own cooking skills (”damn rookie, you burned water? i’ll have to teach you how to cook some ropa vieja someday - we’ll work up to it”); of your nightmares about each victim you’ve seen from your years in homicide and how their last expressions have been etched into your memory; of your parents and their incessant pushing for college and their disappointment when you joined the force.

and you learned about the strong curve of his arms as he held you in his arms the first time you had shot and killed a perp who was raising a gun at you. the smell of his cologne and old spice filling your lungs as you tried to steady your breath. the flutter of his lips against your ear as he whispered that it was going to be ok. you learned about the roughness of his voice when he called you, late at night after drinking away his sorrows of his previous marriage at the bar and you learned about how he nursed his his hangovers the subsequent day when you curled up with him on his couch, not quite touching, after you had come over the night before to make sure he had gotten home safe and didn’t choke on his own vomit. you learned about the unfamiliar pressure of your chest as you realized that somehow, somewhere down the line of cold morning rides around the city, warm coffee, inside jokes, and progressively lingering stares across the squad room - you were in love.

and now you were learning about his hostage negotiation skills.

it was a mistake to have spoken to the professor’s wife before you arrived at the classroom. she seemed entirely too calm about the matter, methodically pouring you and nick tea as she answered your question in short, snipped sentences. you made sure to note the gun cabinet as you left through the front door. you didn’t note the cell phone in her hand as she closed the door behind you.

“stay back or i swear i’ll shoot her.” professor hershaw’s hand trembled as he kept pressing the metal into your head.

“ok! ok! i’m staying back.” nick stopped his progress towards you. you could see the slight shake of his legs from the tension.

“put your weapon down!” the professor barks behind you.

nick lifts his hands and your breath caught in your throat as he slowly kneels places his gun on the floor. he wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest. you hadn’t expected a confrontation like this. he was completely open and exposed to a man with a gun.

since you had worked closely with the dead prior to this position, you had often thought about how you would die. you knew it was possible you could die in the line of duty. hundreds did every day. but you didn’t think it would be here. in front of nick. in front of the man you’ve been in love with for the past year. you didn’t think it would be before he taught you how to dance or cook or whether he would ever fix the radiator in his car. before you ever felt his lips against your and whether that would feel as slow and passionate as you had often fantasized it would. before you even had the chance to tell him how you felt. so many plot lines unfulfilled. so many questions left unanswered. but at the moment, all you could think about was how you wanted to look into his eyes once more before you died.

“you’re a good man. you got kids - good ones. i’ve met them -” nick’s tone was placating, slow.

“don’t talk about my children!” the professor jerked his gun, knocking your head a bit to the side, “i know they’re good. i raised them. better than the whores that walk through these halls. in these classrooms.”

“yea. yea i understand professor. it’s unfair - all of them just get to walk around like they own the place. like there’s no consequences for them -”

“exactly,” you could feel his spittle on the back of your head, “i showed them the lesson they deserved.”

nick’s eyes moved from the perp to meet yours. and a shudder of warmth flowed through you as you saw fear, anger, determination - and something else that as more than you could process at the moment. but you did catch his slight nod. “that’s right. you punished them. rightfully so. because - it’s like you wrote about right? ‘Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God.’“

"you - you read victor hugo?” the professor stuttered, his arm slacked slightly in shock and there it was. you immediately ripped yourself from his arms as he staggered back in surprise. you dived for the floor as you heard the professor’s shout echo on the walls of the lecture hall and a gunshot. and then silence.

you scrambled up, drawing your weapon quickly, your heart in your chest, terrified at what you might see.

“call a bus!” you felt your entire body relax as you saw nick towering over the professor with his gun drawn and a bullet wound in the professor’s shoulder.

later, much later, after you had been subject to medical exams by ems (albeit quite reluctantly) with nick hovering behind the paramedic’s shoulder like an unfriendly poltergeist that radiated anxiety, after liv had ordered you to take a few days, after you had returned to the squad room to fill out some paperwork in nick’s car as the both of you sat in heavy silence with too many things left unsaid between you two. you finally had a moment alone with your partner.

most of the team had left with liv retiring to her office to have a quick call with the babysitter and say goodnight to noah. fin had clapped you on the shoulder and amanda had stopped by with coffee and an offer to let her know if you needed anything before she left to take care of the kids. the night shift had transferred in and you were finishing up the last words of the report when you sensed a presence and looked up. nick was standing by your desk, his lips in a firm line and brow furrowed.

“can we talk?” he gestured towards the bunks. your heart flipped as you nodded, scribbling your signature onto the paperwork and shutting the file.

nick closed the door behind you. and you waited until the silence between you became unbearable.

“thank you for everything today nick. i mean - you saved my life. i could have died today and -”

“i know.” his voice seemed unnaturally loud in the quiet room. nick paced the floor, his hands gripping at his thick, dark hair. “i know you could’ve died. and i can’t stop seeing it. there’s just - i can’t describe how i felt watching him touch you. seeing how afraid you were. and how f**king helpless i was when all i wanted to do was just take your place - and when i finally got him away from you - i just wanted to -” he collapsed on a bunk and covered his eyes with his palms.

you moved towards him, placing your hands on his shoulders, feeling the crisp fabric of his shirt crinkle under the heat of your hands.

“you just wanted to what?”

nick lifted his head to meet your gaze, “you know you’re my partner. and there’s nothing i wouldn’t do to protect you. you’ve been there through everything this past year and i kept telling myself that i didn’t deserve everything you’ve been doing for me - didn’t deserve you.”

you inhaled sharply, “nick - “

“i love you. there, i said it. and that was all i could think about today. losing someone else in my life that i love.” he sighed, rubbing his hand across his face, “i’ve been in love with you since that christmas party when you walked in with discount boy george - “

“kevin,” you automatically corrected the name of your old friend from college that you had brought as a date.

“and you were just so beautiful. and i know that i don’t deserve you. but i just couldn’t stop wanting you. hoping for you. and it’s so selfish -”

he never got to finish his sentence. because by that point you had fully processed his words. you framed his face in your hands, bent down and pressed your lips against his.

and suddenly all you could think, feel or taste was nick and his mouth moving against yours - warm, firm, steady - just like him. you were pushed back as nick got up from the bunk, his hands gripping your waist. you separated for a moment, drawing back to look into his eyes. beautiful brown. just like you never thought you would ever see again.

and then nick pushed his body against yours, pressing you against the wall of the bunk room, his lips sweeping the corners of your mouth before exploring down your neck.

“f**k - i thought i was going to lose you.” he growled, puncturing each word with a kiss and a nip at your neck. you gasped, your fingers diving deep into his hair.

“never - you’ll never lose me nick. i never want to be apart from you.”

nick dragged his face up to your, pulling you into a ferocious kiss, dominating you as his tongue swept through your mouth. his hands, large and seemingly burning, explored your back, and you shivered his his fingers played with the hem of your shirt.

“everything about you,” his lips were everywhere, your hair, forehead, cheeks, “i cannot lose - do you understand me mi alma.” he closed his eyes, muttering in spanish as he held you close.

you nodded, feeling intoxicated in his presence, his smell, the feeling of his body against yours. your hands gripped his shirt pulling him to you, anchoring yourself in the storm of his affection, “i got you. i love you too nick. i’m ok. i’m going to be ok.” you repeated the last sentence as nick’s body slowly went lax.

he pressed his forehead to yours, and your breath caught at the vulnerability in his expression. “i know you’re going to be ok. it’ll just take a while before i get the image of you held at gunpoint out of my head every second of the day.”

you smiled, pressing your hand against his cheek, “then i’ll be right beside you. reminding you that i’m right here.” his lips twitched as he grasped one of your hands from his chest, sweeping kisses across his knuckles.

“i know quierida.”

you both stood in silence for a moment, basking in the presence of each other and the feelings you had just released. your heart felt lighter than it had in a very long time, and the butterflies in your stomach settled as nick’s body heat calmed you.

“i’m tired, and i want to go home. come with me?” your request was bold but you trusted nick more than anyone to keep you safe. and you weren’t looking forward to the nightmares you knew would be resurfacing.

“i wouldn’t be anywhere else.” nick pressed kisses across your hairline.

you both exited the bunks, and tried to suppress the red that bloomed across your faces. liv was exiting her office with her coat on and her bag slung on her shoulder. she raised an eyebrow as you both approached her.

“well i expect not you see you here for a few days,” she reiterated to you, “good night guys - try not to stay too late.” she turned and then paused, “and i expect the paperwork about your relationship on my desk by the time you get back from leave.” without another word, olivia exited to the elevators.

“oh god.” you placed your head in your hands, unable to stop the burning in your face and neck. nick strolled over to your desk, chuckling.

“well she’s captain for a reason. you really can’t get anything past liv.”

you rolled your eyes, “great, more paperwork to do then.”

nick smiled as he swooped down for another quick kiss when no one was watching, “it’s all for a good cause. c’mon, let’s grab your bag and go. it’s late.”

you laughed and nodded. grabbing your coat off the back of your chair and putting it on. as you and nick walked out of the station, hand-in-hand, a thought occurred to you -

“when did you read victor hugo?”

#nick amaro #nick amaro x reader #nick amaro imagines #law and order svu #svu #nick amaro fanfic #tw: mentions of rape #romance #fluff #hostage negotiation #guns #nick amaro is a secret nerd #i will die on that hill

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birdsandspades · 4 years

Text

I Was Never Really Good at Waiting (Sugawara X Reader) Chapter 7

- It was your last year in highschool, everything had been going smoothly until you got assigned the new teacher. Sugawara Koushi was handsome, maybe too handsome for his own good. Be he wasn't flirting with you right, teachers shouldn't do that....I guess we will see where this year goes.

Word Count - 5,311

----

“Ok, so I just pulled the cakes out of the oven, what next?” You had the phone pressed between your cheek and shoulder as you carefully flipped the cakes upside down onto the cooling rack.

“Now, did you make the cream already?” Oikawa’s voice sounded far away, somewhere amongst the rest of his teammates.

You had called him during practice, desperate for his mother's strawberry cake recipe. She had made it a long time ago, a special treat for all the times you sat with Oikawa late at practice. Even after all these years you still remembered the taste. Tart strawberries, rich crème fraîche, soft sponge cake, light whipped cream. She had a way of making it taste like so much more than just a cake. You craved it sometimes, late at night as you watched the car lights ghost over your bedroom ceiling. Craved the memories too, when your parents had been home more. When Oikawa was still in highschool, just a simple bus ride away. When boys weren't a problem, especially confusing boys who teach your homeroom class.

Yes, and I cut the strawberries…” You were now grabbing the multiple bowls of already prepped ingredients out of the fridge, kicking the door closed before setting them down on the kitchen island. “And the syrup is cooled down now as well.” You shifted the phone to your other ear as you looked through the cabinets for a cooking brush.

A loud smack sounded from the other side of the phone. “Nice kill Oikawa!” What sounded like high fives echoed, a chorus of praise for their star player.

“Ok, so once the cakes are cooled, cut them like you usually do. Brush a good amount of syrup on them before you spread the crème fraîche, and space the strawberries throughout it. Follow with the whipped cream on top and that should be it.” He had committed the recipe to memory, having made it with his mother at least a hundred times.

“Thats simple enough, but what about all the chocolate you made me buy?” You picked up the unopened bar.

“Oh that's for me, that new horror movie came out last week! Let's rent it and have a sleepover F/N-chan.” You could hear him take you off speaker phone, waiting for your answer.

“Goodbye Tooru.” You chuckled as you hung up the phone. “That jerk made me buy the expensive stuff too.”

----

It was now Monday morning, the weekend passing by at an excruciating slow pace. The cake sat atop your counter for what seemed like an eternity. You had woken up early for school, wanting to make it before Sugawara did. An hour early would have sufficed, but your body decided on two. The sky was still dark when you left your house, cake in tow. Most people would think the station would be empty this early in the morning. But it had never been busier. You thought falling asleep last night was hard, but getting the cake to school in one piece may be your most daunting task yet. But after three ‘’almost drops’’, two grubby hands, and one very pushy man. You had finally managed to get the cake to the front gates of the school, all missteps avoided.

Sneaking into his office you turned on the lights, completely empty. “ Ok so I'll leave the cake here ,and this note. He should be so overjoyed by this cake that he’ll forget about even wanting to talk to me in the first place.” It was foolproof. You set the cake on the desk, repositioning it a few times. It had to be perfect to work, and god you wanted it to work. Once pleased with the placement you turned off the light, closing the office door behind you.

You spent the extra hour before school in the library, tucked away in the political section at the back of the room. The secluded table was the perfect place to catch up on some sleep. Sending a text to Yua to wake you up when she got to school, you laid your head down on a pile of textbooks. Drifting off as the librarians set up for the morning.

You were jolted awake, looking around the partially empty rows of bookshelves. A small snicker above you turned your attention towards the ceiling, Yua stood above you on the table. She bit her lip, trying to stop the laugh that threatened to escape. Stepping down from the table, she bent over to pick up the textbook she had just dropped.

“I’m sorry F/n-chan, but it was so tempting.” Hiroto laughed, his hand on your back.

A librarian peaked their head around the corner of the geography section, scowling your way. She raised a long finger to her lips, shushing you and your friends harshly before disappearing behind the bookshelf.

“I’ll remember that next time.” You picked up your bag, swinging it at Yua as you placed it on the table.

“Really F/N-chan, you should have seen your face!” Yua’s laugh grew loud, holding her sides as she leaned against the table.

You mocked her laugh, zipping your bag closed. “Come on, let's go to class before Yua makes another librarian mad.” You gave Yua a light push, rolling your eyes at her sorry attempts at an apology.

----

The office door was ajar as you made your way to your seat, eyes locked on the light that leaked out the open space. “Any minute now, he’s gonna walk out of that office with a smile on his face, and i’ll be totally off the hook.” The bell rang and everyone quieted down for the lesson to begin. The light behind the door turned off as Sugawara walked out. He held a fresh cup of coffee in one hand, steam trailing off the brim as he made his way to the front of the room.

“Good morning class, I hope you had a good weekend.” He gave the students a gentle smile as he picked up a stack of papers. He looked your way, his grip tightening on the handle of the cup. “L/N-san, the attendance please.” His mouth twitched as he tried to hold his smile.

“Maybe he didn’t see the cake yet, yeah that's why he's giving you that look.” You made your way to his desk, reaching over to take the papers from his hand. You pulled, but they wouldn’t budge. Looking up, you tried to meet him with a smile, wavering when your eyes met his.

He tightened his grip watching you struggle to pull the papers from his hands.

You glared up at him now, tugging again. Sugawara let go suddenly, smirking as you stumbled backwards slightly. You turned your back to him, taking a step away from the desk as he loomed over your shoulder as you took the morning attendance.

You quickly set the attendance on his desk before walking to your assigned seat, not daring to look back at him again. For the rest of the class you continued this, even refusing your college counciling for the day. Before long the class ended and he packed up his things to leave.

“If I just avoid him, forever, maybe he will forget about it...”, and that was just what you planned on doing. You had packed up your bag early into your third period, hoping to make it to the door before he came into the room for the lunch period.

You watched as the minutes ticked by, edging closer to the end of your seat. When the bell rang you were up in a matter of seconds, pushing your way into the middle of the group of students walking out the door. Your foot was about to cross the threshold when something firm tugged on your bags strap, pulling you back.

You looked up at Sugawara, his hand was firmly around your strap as he waved goodbye to the students.

“Have a good lunch, i’ll see you soon!” He smiled, pulling you closer as you tried to wiggle free.

“Are you coming F/N-chan?” Hiroto smiled weakly as he looked between you and your teacher.

“I’m going to borrow L/N-san for the lunch period so we can look over some college exam prep.” His smile was gentle, sickeningly sweet.

“OK, we'll see you after lunch...” Your friends waved you a slightly confused goodbye, looked back at you as they made their way down the hallway.

Sugawara slid the classroom door close before turning to you. “It sure was weird to see a cake on my desk this morning, did you make it?” He walked you over to a desk, nodding for you to sit down. He sat down on the top, peering down at you with that same offputting smile.

“Yeah, you asked me to make you one, so I did.” You smiled innocently at him, praying for a break.

“It wouldn’t have anything to do with Saturday would it?” He tilted his head to the side with an amused look.

“Of course not!” You awkwardly chuckled as you waved off the notion.

“Because it kind of seemed like a bribe…” He stood up, boxing you into your seat.

“Why would you say that sensei?” You were looking at the ground now, burning the braided seams of his black leather shoes into your mind.

“Because it had a note that said “Sorry, sad face”, you really wrote “Sorry, sad face“.” He signed, shaking his head. He knew it was an honest attempt at an apology note, at least from you.

“I was pretty sure it was gonna work too.” You laughed at the disappointed look on his face.

He sighed, walking to his office.

You followed behind, timid steps as you peaked inside. He was already sat down on the couch, ready for the talk he had promised you.

He motioned for you to sit down next to him.

You took the seat, uncomfortably sinking into the cushion.

“I’m not going to tell anyone about Saturday L/N-san.” Sugawara leaned forward, meeting your nervous stare.

Your mouth dropped open, but before you could speak Sugawara placed a finger to your lips.

“If you let me come to your next concert to meet your band members. I don’t really feel safe knowing you're out with a bunch of older guys, playing in bars, dressed like that.” His mind trailed off as his cheeks heated up. “I just want to make sure you're safe, and if you are, I won’t say anything.” He looked at you sincerely before taking your hand in his. “I just don’t want anything to happen to you. I would hate myself if I let you continue doing this and you ended up not coming home, or worse.” He ran a hand through his hair and sighed, “Just do it for me, please.”

You looked down at your hand in his, his thumb pressing softly into your knuckle as he squeezed it. You liked the warmth, but it wasn’t enough. You leaned over, resting your forehead against his chest.

His breath hitched as he looked down at you pressed against him.

You waited a moment before reaching up, circling your arms around his frame. You pulled yourself closer, your cheek now flush against his chest.

His own hands hovering over you, retracting as he brushed over your hair. He inched forward again, letting his palms graze your sweater before wrapping his arms around you. He was reaching his limits with you.

Sugawara was warm, the white cotton button up he wore soaking up his scent. It was clean and sharp. Images of freshly washed linens, hung up to dry on a wire outside on a breezy day. Early morning hikes through the forest during a spring shower, and walking barefoot through fields of white flowers and tall green grass crossed your mind as you took it in. The warmth he emitted was comparable to a hot shower after a long day, it enveloped you, sunk into your skin. His hold was firm, molding to you as you relaxed into his chest.

He laid his head softly atop of yours, closing his eyes. You stayed like this for a while, no one wanting to be the first to let go. Running his hand down your back, he reluctantly pulled away.

You could feel tears threatening your eyes as you looked up at Sugawara. The first few cascaded down your cheeks, dropping onto your white knuckles. In each fist was a section of your sweater, your fingers kneading into the plush fabric as you chewed at your lip.

“F/N, why are you crying?” Sugawara cooed, tilting his head.

You shook your own, trying to hide your sorry state from his prying eyes.

Soft hands cupped either side of your face, tilting your gaze up to him. “What's wrong, did I say something to upset you?”

You shook your head again, “No sensei. It’s just nice hearing those words come from you.”

“That I worry about you?” He gave you an amused smile, his head tilted in confusion. You nodded as he wiped away a stray tear with his thumb. “Well, you are an absolute mess. It's hard not too.” He leaned in slightly, his sweet tone masking the teasing words.

“Sensei, you're so rude.” You shakily laughed, rubbing your eyes with your sweater sleeve.

He smiled at you before ruffling your hair, “No more tears, ok?”

You nodded, watching him stand up.

“Give me your cell phone.” He wiggled the fingers on his free hand, opening it towards you.

You looked up at him quizzically, fishing it out of your pockets. You set it in his hand, your hold on it lingering before letting it go.

“I’m going to give you my number. Once you know when your next concert is I need you to text me the details ok.” He nodded, waiting for you to follow.

You gave him the acknowledgement he wanted, watching his slender fingers glide along the screen as he imputed his number.

“This is also for emergencies, so if anything ever happens. You call me and I will come get you. Any time, any place, I'll always come.” Sugawara extended your phone to you.

You nodded again, taking the phone from his hand. “Thank you sensei.” You looked at the contact still on the screen. He had written his full name. “You have a nice first name sensei….Koushi...” You repeated his name to yourself as you ran your finger over the screen.

He bit his lip at the mention of his name, something he wasn’t used to hearing come from your own. You had said it as he was leaving on Saturday, but it felt different now. That night it was rushed, muddled by the previous attempt to call him by his proper honorifics. It was sweet now, the syllables sounding more melodic as you spoke them. He felt the blood rush to his head, leaning against the desk for stability. He grabbed the edge, fingers digging into the wood as his legs failed him.

The bell rang, turning your attention to the door, and his towards you.

“I’m going to go take my seat sensei.” You looked back to him, standing up.

“Ok, yeah go sit down. I just need to finish something.” Sugawara waved you off with a shaky hand.

“You don’t look so good, are you ok?” You took a step towards him, frantically looking over the flushed man.

“Yes, low blood sugar. Go, desk, now!” He turned you around, giving you a solid push out of his office.

You turned around, face greeted with a closing door. “Maybe he should have eaten more than just cake.” You chuckled lightly, students starting to make their way into the classroom.

----

Class wrapped up for the day as english came to an end. “I still don’t get how you're so good at english. I told the teacher I was a baked potato during our oral exam. She didn’t even laugh.” Yua looked defeated as she held her failed exam paper in her hand.

“At least you got out an actual sentence, I just said “I Hiroto soccer happy.” She definitely laughed at me...” The poor boy didn’t even score in double digits.

“I told you guys, it's because I already know English.” You laughed as you placed your books into your bag. “I was born in America, it was my first language.”

Yua scratched her head as she recalled you saying that once or twice before. “Isn’t that kinda unfair…?”

“Let's walk home together since practice was cancelled on account of the weather!” Hiroto had grabbed both you and Yua's hands as he pulled you to the door.

They had called off all after school activities after lunch, the severe weather warning coming soon after on the P.A system. The forecast had called for light showers, but the thick grey clouds hinted towards the heavier alternative.

“I can’t, Sugawara-senpai is tutoring me today.” You gave your friends a sheepish smile. You hadn’t walked home with them in weeks. Everyday a new excuse.

“I didn’t know you started those again…” Yua frowned, letting go of Hiroto’s hand.

“We talked, and decided it was best to keep going with them. I failed that last math exam.” You scratched the back of your head, laughing.

“Ok...See you later I guess.” Yua slowly nodded, pulling Hiroto’s arm as she started down the hallway. The sweet boy waving a sad goodbye as he fought to keep up with her pace.

You tried your best to ignore the pit in your stomach, walking towards the office door. You reached up to knock, the door opening as your knuckles grazed the wood.

Sugawara walked out of the now open door, stopping just shy of running you over. “L/N-san, what's up?” He smiled, squeezing past you. He held your confused stare, mentally slapping himself as he connected the drawn out dots. He had completely forgotten that you had planned on starting up your tutoring sessions again. Too consumed with his other work.

“If you're busy today I can go home senpai.” You could tell from the look lingering on his face that today may not be the best.

He shook his head and smiled.“ Let me just go get some coffee and I'll be right back.” He disappeared just as quickly as he had opened the door, practically running down the hallway.

You took a seat at your desk, waiting patiently for him to return.

----

You had been working on math problems for almost two hours, watching as the weather got progressively worse outside. Sugawara sat in front of you as he watched your work.

“It sure is coming down, I hope it doesn't flood.” Sugawara was looking out the window at the heavy rainfall. A sheet of water running down the glass. A flash of lightning lit up the sky, a thunder crack rattled the desks as the lights in the school shut off. Sugawara walked over to the switch on the wall, flipping it a few times before sighing. “I guess it's a sign for us to call it a day.” He turned back to you, extending his hand for you to take. “It’s dark, let me walk you to the front.”

You took it gingerly, letting him guide you out of the classroom. The rows of windows illuminated the path before the two of you once you made it into the hallway. No more need for guidance as you let go of Sugawara's hand. You could see the hints of red tinting his skin, writing it off as the lingering sun peaking through the windows.

You walked down the dark hallway together, his hand ghosting your back as you made your way down the staircase, step by slow step. The soft chatter of a distant phone call perked your ears as you rounded the corner to the front office.

Sugawara leaned against the front desk, waiting for the woman to finish her call. He looked at you briefly, the slight squeeze on his heart turning him away. You had your hands pressed up against the glass window, watching the puddles forming in the courtyard. Your breath leaving small circles on the glass as you stood up on your tiptoes, fingers on the ledge as you balance yourself. You were smaller than the majority of your class, everything just seemed so big compared to you. Even the large window, the connecting bar placed perfectly at eye level.

“Sorry Sugawara, it looks like a falling tree hit one of our power lines. The company should be here tonight to fix it, you two should head home.” The office lady set down her phone, turning in her chair to face Sugawara.

“Ok, well good luck tonight.” Sugawara laughed, turning to you. “I guess that's the end of our tutoring session today. Let’s head home.”

You nodded, it was getting late and you still had a few train rides home.

Sugawara fished his keys out of his pocket as he walked to the front door. “Are you coming?” He questioned as he held the door open. The rainfall was deafening making it hard to pick up his voice over the static noise.

“No, I'm going to wait out the rain for a bit. I don’t have an umbrella for my walk to the station.” You waved him off as you leaned against the window.

“The train station is a twenty minute walk from here, you’ll get sick trying to walk home in that. Let me drive you home.” Sugawara unzipped his coat, pulling the sleeve off his arms. He wrapped it around you, holding it open for you to slide your arms inside.

“Really it's ok senpai, I can wait.” You smiled trying to slip out, Sugawara guiding your arms into the sleeves.

Once he got you situated in the coat, he zipped it up to your neck. “Let’s go!” He smiled, holding the door open for you.

You ran next to each other through the courtyard, his car parked in the courtyard on the far side of the school gates. Once you had made it he unlocked the car, opening your door for you to get inside. He waited for you to sit down, closing the door softly before running to the driver's side door. Crawling inside he closed the door and laughed. “Wow, it's really coming down! I'm soaked!” He ran a hand over his now opaque button up. The fabric clinging to the outlines of his body. The hours he had spent on the volleyball court were apparent, that was certain. He unbuttoned his shirt, setting it in the back seat. His white t-shirt wasn’t in much better condition, clinging to arms as he looked for something in the back seat.

You watched a drop of water drip off his hair down his cheek. Tracing the outline of his jaw, down the curves of his slender neck, and across his exposed collar bone before disappearing into his shirt.

“Here, for your hair.” Sugawara sat back in his seat, two towels in hand.

You stared at them, brain fried at the thoughts running through your mind.

He laughed before leaning over the center console, gently wiping the water off of your face before laying the towel over your head. “Put your address into my GPS.” He was now drying himself, wiping the excess water from his hair as he started the car and turned on the heated seats.

“I’m sorry it's so far senpai.” You frowned, starting the route.

“That's not far at all. I think you're maybe four blocks down the road from my own apartment.” He smiled, turning around as he pulled out of the parking lot.

“Are you warm enough?” He placed the back of his hand on your cheek. “Still kinda cold, I'll turn up the heat.” He pressed the button on the dash a few times, the air kicking on.

You stayed quiet, watching the lights pass by your window as he speeded down the freeway. The sun starting to tuck behind the skyline of the city.

He couldn’t help but watch you out of the corner of his eye. You were tracing the outlines of the sunset on the foggy window. Your fingers looked so small peeking out from his clearly too large coat. He hoped it smelled at least a little bit like you when you gave it back. Like daisies and spice. It was fitting to him, a lot like your personality.

“Do you want to play some music? We still have a half hour or so to go.” He handed you the cord as he switched the station.

“I’m not sure you’ll like my music sensei...” You blushed, but he insisted.

“I listen to just about anything.” He flashed you a sweet grin before turning his eyes back to the road. That was a lie, he was very particular about his music. But he wanted to know what you listened to.

You plugged your phone in and browsed your collection. “Well, I do have this one.” You shuffled the songs and sank into your seat, watching his reaction to the playlist you had made for him. You had made it after the day at the nurses office, and slowly added to it as time went on. Just a collection of songs that reminded you of him.

He seemed to enjoy it, tapping his finger along with the songs as he watched the road. “You have a lot of english music, do you speak it?” He looked to you as the next song started.

“Um, yeah. I was actually born in America. I moved with my parents in kindergarten. They both had job opportunities and I was already learning Japanese so it just worked out.” You were happy most of the school didn’t know of your foreign upbringing. It made passing your “second” language class all that much easier.

“What do your parents do?” Sugawara turned off the freeway, easing to a stop at the red light at the end of the exit.

“Well my dad travels a lot. He’s a wildlife photographer, and my moms a professor at Tokyo University.” You watched the timer on the crosswalk tick down, cars rushing past.

“That's a long commute.” The light turned green and Sugawara lightly pressed the gas.

“She lives in Tokyo with my grandfather. He got really sick after my grandma died, so she stays with him.” It was a commonly known fact at the school that you lived alone. Your parents had told the school when you started first year, just for safety purposes. You found out later that a lot of the older students lived alone. Their parents renting apartments for them so they could focus on their studies.

“So you're all alone at home?” Sugawara always hated the thought of students living alone, especially you.

“Well not all the time. Iwa-chan visits me alot, and Oikawa comes over when he's home.” It made your heart skip a beat when he worried about you like this.

“As long as you're safe...If you ever feel uneasy you can call me, I'm just a short drive away.” Sugawara flipped on his blinker, waiting for his turn to merge onto the next street.

“Thank you senpai, I really appreciate it.” You reached your hand out, placing it on his forearm. You gave it a soft squeeze before returning your hands to your lap.

He wished the contact lasted long, the warmth already leaving his skin. He wanted to reach for your hand, hold it in his own as he drove. He wanted to rub small circles on the back of it, feeling over the veins and tendons, commit them to memory. They were so warm, even with the brief contact. He really did live for these moments with you, where the teacher/student boundaries broke down and he could just be near you, savor the atmosphere. He couldn’t tell if it was the rain, the music, the close proximity, or just how much he missed talking to you. But he had that feeling again, the longing to reach out and touch you. He looked down to your lips, soft and plump. They were his favorite shade of rosy pink. He hated to admit it, it was cheesy, but nothing described how he felt quite the same way.

“Do you like the playlist?” You blushed, had he been aware how long he had been staring at you?

His eyes watched as your lips formed to the words you spoke. A car horn behind him finally turned his attention away from your lovely gaze. How long had he been sitting in the turning lane? He looked down both sides of the road before finally turning into the road. “Yeah, I do. Did you have a theme in mind when you made it?”

“Love…” You looked down at your phone, flicking through the tracks of the playlist.

His eyes widened slightly at your response. He knew it was a collection of love songs, he had most of these on his own playlists. But to hear you say it, it made his heart squeeze. “Can you send me it?”

You nodded, pulling up Sugawara’s contact name. You looked over his full name for a moment before pressing send on the message.

A few seconds later his own phone vibrated in his cup holder, your number popping up on the screen.

Your house was coming into view as he drove down the street.“It’s the white house, brown roof.” You pointed to the one with the porch light on, the driveway empty.

He pulled in, putting the car in park. “Well, we made it.” He smiled, reaching his arm around you to rest on the back of your seat.

“Thank you so much senpai, I'll make it up to you I promise.” You giggled, happy to have made it home relatively dry.

“You don’t need to worry about it, I don’t mind helping you.” He looked down at you, eyes softening as he met yours. The deep hazel was unreadable as he searched over your own.

You looked over his soft features, admiring the way he looked in the dim light of the sunset. You could see the soft reds and pinks reflected in his eyes, the warm hues matching the ones creeping over the bridge of your nose. Your eyes traveled down, lingering on his lips. Watching them part slightly as he shifted in his seat.

He leaned in slightly, eyes never leaving your own. Stopping just shy of your lips, his breath ghosting over the tingling skin.

Your heartbeat quickened as you took in a shaky breath. You closed your eyes ,leaning in. Your lips were cold, nothing but air brushing past them. Opening your eyes you were met with a sad smile, Sugawara sitting back in his seat.

“Good night L/N-san. Please get inside safely.” Sugawara looked down at the steering wheel, tightening his grip on the leather. The pressure in his chest grew as he avoided your looks.

Your heart dropped at the lost opportunity. You got out of the car, stripping yourself of his coat. Folding it over itself, you set in in your seat before closing the door.

Sugawara watched you walk up your front steps, waiting as you opened the door. He wanted to see you turn on at least one light, just to prove you were safely inside.

You turned off the porch light instead.

He drove home, biting back the tears that lined his eyes.

----

Previous Chapter - Next Chapter

----

*Hi, me again! I actually made a playlist for this chapter. If you want to listen to it I provided a link! *

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/35WHmMJAgINCRrYzeJ3sQo?si=YfB0nGypRh63DZgOuDgMEg

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anggecity · 4 years

Text

The Don Roman Santos Building

@ Escolta, Manila, Philippines – 17 Oct 2020

I have written an article for Renacimiento Manila's Manila Weekly last July about this Neoclassical wonder, but I believe that the write-up still lacked essential information. Upon alighting the train, a northbound rider at the LRT would be greeted by this dilapidated structure, though the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) still generally uses the building.

Electric bikes have formed lines there, waiting for prospective passengers to pay them for a ride. There are also street dwellers who use the area as a shelter, depending on the time of day. At the Escolta side, the BPI branch is still rather active.

Despite the nine-storey building's catchy color of cream yellow while boasting its Ionic columns and a detailed tympanum, it remains to be obscured, being an ubiquitous sight and lately, with the imposing blue fencing around Plaza Lacson. There is also a high-rise building that hovers from behind, unfortunately.

I had always wanted to visit the huge historical marker on marble—but due to its sheer inaccessibility and impracticality to go there, I never had the chance. But when I and my mom hailed for a bus en route to PITX, it was then for me to come closer and take snaps of this marker. The text cannot be read in one standing, thanks to weathering, dirt, and apparently lack of maintenance.

I made a mental note to transcribe the text as soon as I went home, thinking that this marker details the much-needed information that had made the article better last July.

The marker reads:

THE ROMAN R. SANTOS BUILDING

Construction of this building was first conceived in 1884 by the Council of Administration of the Monte de Piedad y Casa de Anorros that, by a decree issued by Governor General Domingo Moriones Marquis of Oroquieta, had on February 3, 1880, been created as a bank of the poor. Laying of cornerstone took place on July 24, 1887, birthday of Her Spanish Majesty, Queen Maria Cristina.

The site, formerly that that of the residence of the Corregidor of Tondo and Jail of the Corregimiento, had been coded to the Monte de Piedad by the City Council of Manila upon petition of the then Metropolitan Archbishop of Manila Don Fr. Pedro Payo. The plans were prepared by Architect Don Jose Hervas, and the foundations were laid under the supervision of a commission composed by City Councilors Don Eugenio Netter, Don Jose Zaragosa, and Don Manuel Marzano. Construction was undertaken by Don Demetrio Caro.

Initial construction funds were furnished by the aforementioned Metropolitan Archbishop of Manila which funds were later augmented by subscriptions from private individuals and by loans from the Banco Español Filipino.

The building was finished and inaugurated on July 20, 1894. A special session of the Council of Administration of the Monte de Piedad y Casa de Anorros was held for the first time that day in this building. That session was presided over by Archbishop of Manila Don Fr Bernardino Nozaleda, with the Commander of the Naval Station, the City Governor of Manila, the General of Artillery, the Reverend Rector of the University of Santo Tomas, Don Jose Garcia Lara, Don Silvino Lopez Tuñon, Don Eugenio del Saz Orozco, Don Gonzalo Tuazon, Don Rafael Perez Samanillo and Don Jose Zaragoza, attending.

In 1937 ownership of the building passed into the Consolidated Investment Corporation. The old one storey building was reconstructed into a nine-storey structure, now called the Consolidated Investments Building on plans prepared by the architect, Don Andrés Luna de San Pedro, with engineer Don Jose Cortez taking charge of the construction.

The outbreak of the war on December 8, 1941 halted the construction work at the fourth storey, upon the occupation of the City of Manila by the Japanese Forces. The latter converted this building into a warehouse. In 1944 the property passed under the control of the Magdalena Estate. Upon liberation the American Red Cross converted the building into a hospital and it remained a such until 1947.

On July 2, 1952, the Prudential Bank and Trust Company, Don Roman R. Santos, Chairman-Founder and President, took possession of the building and converted its ground floor into the head office for the bank. On January 3, 1955 the property was sold by the Magdalena Estate to Don Roman R. Santos and the Prudential Bank and Trust Company. The building was renamed the Roman R. Santos Building.

The Roman R. Santos Building administration, Don Augusto A. Santos, President, was organized to administer the property. The unfinished construction was resumed immediately, and Don Andrés Luna de San Pedro having died, architectural supervision was entrusted to Don Enrique J.J. Ruiz. The nine storey remodelling and reconstruction were completed in 1957.

On July 19, 1959, Don Roman R. Santos died and Don Augusto A. Santos was elected Chairman of the Board of the Prudential Bank and Trust Company in his stead.

In 1961, the remodelling of the basement, ground and mezzanine floors was started by an authority of the Prudential Bank Board of Directors, Don Augusto A. Santos, Chairman, Mr. George Litton Sr., Vice Chairman, Don Pio Pedrosa, President, and Don Francisco D. Garcia, Don Federico A. Santos, Don Francisco C. Delgado and Ex-Supreme Court Justic Alex Reyes, Members, to house the expanded offices of the bank. Architectural plans were prepared by the firm of Messrs. Gabriel Formoso and Associates. Construction work was entrusted to engineer Don David M. Consunji.

This marker fabricated by the Talleres de Maximo Vicente, was set up upon the fourteenth anniversary of the foundation of the Prudential Bank and Trust Company, and the seventh of the death of its founder, Don Roman R. Santos.

Meanwhile, here are excerpts I verified from the same article I wrote last July:

Where the Don Roman Santos building stands today is the former site of the Monte de Piedad y Caja de Ahorras de Manila (shortened to Monte de Piedad), the first savings bank in the Philippines. It was founded by Fr. Felix Huertas of the Franciscan Order, and thus the bank was also noted to be “the Roman Catholic church’s pawnshop”, having been inaugurated in 1882 and was located in its original location at the ground floor of Santa Isabel College, which was then at Intramuros.

The Monte de Piedad transferred to the site of the Don Roman Santos, which was erected in 1894. The neoclassical building was then single-floor, with the triangular facade (tympanum) marking the position of its original roofing. The columns are decorated in accord to the ionic order. President Manuel L. Quezon worked as a clerk there.

The original Monte de Piedad y Casa de Anorros building is the decrepit yet rather frilly building from this Street View. The historical marker can be read here.

Monte de Piedad is another story, and has another building as well, albeit smaller than the present Don Roman Santos building or the original one storey sructure. Like this Don Roman Santos building, it is also in a sorry state. An art deco theater, Cine Astor Theater, also used to stand beside it. Unfortunately the art deco building is a goner now.

I see with my little eye... after the Don Roman Santos and Santa Cruz buildings, there is an annoying hotdog high-rise structure, the well-cared-for Regina Building, and the equally adaptively-reused First United or the Perez-Samanillo Building. That is Escolta Street!

I suppose the topic would inevitably discuss an interrelationship—and eventually a matrix of historical events—and that those past events and structures shaped the places and lives we live today. After all, a structure cannot be detailed merely on its own, but by how the environment affects it and vice versa; how it affects its millieu. For now, at least, with the half-dead postwar Santa Cruz building on the other side, the Don Roman Santos building greets commuters and locals silently with more stories waiting to be known again, to Escolta in Manila and back.

Images without markings are available at Commons, but since it is released under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license, you may repost them but kindly cite "Higad Rail Fan" of Wikimedia Commons.

#manila #philippines #don roman santos building #trivia #heritage #heritage building #neoclassical #neoclassical architecture #architecture #commons #sta cruz #carriedo #escolta #downtown manila #kasaysayan #writeup #urbanistangge

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deacied · 5 years

Note

For your song thing, alone together by fall out boy with ben please :)

summary: i wrote this mainly based upon the chorus bc fob has so many little inserts through all their songs smh anyway ben hardy + alone together

or the one where you lose everything but gain him

warnings: none

word count: 855 she smol

ben had left without a moment’s notice, frankie in tow, and a duffle bag thrown over his shoulder. he had awoken in a start at one in the morning for no apparent reason other than his heart racing and a get out! get out! voice yelping in his head. sometimes he just needed to go (he couldn’t deny that he was grateful to have the resources to do so) and off the man went with his dog. they could drive forever, in any which direction for however long they so chose.

you, on the other hand, hadn’t left home without the niceties that he had. tear tracks were stained upon your cheeks showing evidence of the horrid fight you had had with your mother over something that seemed not to matter in the slightest at the time. your backpack was packed with a month’s worth of things before you started towards the bus station. it wasn’t too far– there wasn’t much sense in paying an uber to take you the short distance only to pay the bus god knows how much for wherever you planned on going.

the clock rolled over to two am when it started raining, you cursing under your breath and tugging the hood up over your head. not like it did much, if anything, but hey, you tried. lights of passing cars briefly illuminate your figure however as one starts to slow next to you, you can’t help the surge of anxiety that presents itself deeply rooted into your bones. if i get killed, my mom is going to fucking kill me ran through your head on a loop. “d’you want a ride?” calls a masculine voice to you, and though you have half of a heart to ignore the man and dart off into the trees beside you out of fear, you spare a glance to the owner of the voice.

a beagle has its head out of the cracked window, pawing excitedly at the sight of a new person. she has your heart warming up almost instantaneously. your eyes drift to the man finally, bright green eyes still laced with tiredness, tousled blond curls going in every way it possibly could have gone. he looked strong, you gather from a glance to his biceps, but not dangerous. it takes another solid 30 seconds of the pouring rain for you to realize you haven’t said anything at all, hardly even acknowledged that the man had spoken to you let alone answering him verbally. his brows raise and you find yourself nodding, the male grabbing the dog and setting her in the backseat much to her yipping in annoyance. once in the vehicle with your bag tucked between your knees, you turn to face him slightly. “i’m y/n, and i don’t know where i’m going. but i.. i just needed to go.”

“ben,” he offers softly before the trio are off and driving once more. his heart aches for the opposite beside him for feeling the exact same thing that he had felt much more dramatically just hours ago.

the ride is long on the highway, ben and y/n taking the time to ask each other questions, sing along to the music he played and get some snacks at one point. his questions of your family “i’m in college— er, was in college so i stayed with them” and yours of his need to leave “my job, i love it, it just gets so stressful.. i feel like i’m trapped sometimes” give you assurance that he could end up being a good friend out of all of this. it makes the horrendous hours before feel like eons away. your heart can’t deny the pleasant feeling that dwells when ben’s eyes crinkle up, disappearing with his booming laughter, or his brows furrowing in concentration as he glances around the exits for gas stations or restaurants.

during one snack stop, you finally power your phone back on to see many missed calls from your parents. ben hops back in the car as you’re on the phone with your mother. “i don’t think i’m coming home.” your brows furrow with the statement, only just realizing it yourself. you instantly wince at the screamfest that she starts at the fact, hurriedly hanging up on her and turning her phone off once more. “sorry about that,” you murmur, cheeks aflame with embarrassment.

it’s nearly nine in the morning when your eyes start dropping, peeking over at ben to see the circles under his eyes have darkened. “wanna go halfsies on a motel room? you look like you’re gonna fall asleep.” ben didn’t take much convincing before you were pulling into a seedy motel 6 and asking about a double bedroom. collapsing onto the bed and ben doing the same on his, frankie makes her peace at the foot of ben’s bed.

you wake up before him feeling well rested though a twinge of pain yanks at your heart. you grab the pen and paper off of the desk, leaving your number and a little note: check in with me tomorrow, if you don’t wake up dead x

#ben hardy x reader #ben hardy #ben hardy imagine #ben hardy fanfic #reader: thinks they are funny but are not #queued

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pairodicelost · 4 years

Text

I’ve known for a few years my answer for the whole decades question, you know, the “which era do you wish you’d been born in? which decade do you want to have been in?”

I’d wanna have been 15 in Southern California in 1975, been sunshine and acid and partying on the Sunset Trip, live down the street from Zappa and his daughter like my aunt actually did back in the day, catching the rockstars all coming through LA, Iggy Pop and Bowie when they came through - basically live Almost Famous, The Runaways movie (in recklessness, not musicianship - I haven’t fantasized about being in a band for years and the point of this is what I wanna be around, not wanna be. I’m thinking of all the baby groupies I’ve read about). I’d wanna be the painter sortagirlfriend who stole blouses back and forth from the rockstars but fell for a roadie, sending endless postcards back home and listening to the guys jamming until early morning, waking up and falling asleep to acoustic fuckery and conversation in the next room. Popping pills, long hair, coke and massive heeled boots, catching a ride to the East Coast. Crying, calling my sister middle of the night from a diner in the middle of America, from a bus station phone booth, from another motel before I quietly shut myself in the bathroom to regale her with stories or confessions or invite her to join me, please, there’s room and I miss you, you’d love it they’d love you.

I need to be in NYC by 1978 to catch the punk scene, old enough to get in to bars and chainsmoke at a table in the seedy dark corner and write more letters, work on the diary, try and focus and reread passages from books of poetry, stolen library copies of the classics, writing notes all over the margins, reinventing myself - more black eyeliner, ears pierced all the way up, cut off my curls. Maybe have a proper mohawk before I buzz and bleach it. Live in a tenement, infested and cheap, get the bathroom down the hall just like I’ve wanted ever since Lou Reed sang about it in Lady Day. Make BIG ART, big old canvases leaning against each other against the wall, smoking inside, slow moving ceiling fan, oil paints and walls of books and vinyl and Edwardian-inspired psychedelic Avalon Ballroom posters (even though everyone thinks they’re tacky and lame bc the 60s were EMBARRASSING come on, thats gross hippie shit I dont GET IT) and a hot plate so I can heat soup and make eggs and coffee. ((((this is actually pretty similar to what i’m doing now, 40 odd years later and 8 years older, in a trailer in New Orleans, though I haven’t buzzed my hair yet)))) Walk around the city all night, speed eyes, rapidfire ideas, be in love with someone in that despondent young-but-newly-jaded aching way it seems like happens in NYC. Be more intellectual, a participating mind, not just hot teen groupie (though those days were more fun, better in a way bc they were easier and I didn’t have all the hangups yet - though whomever, whichever man I imprinted in back then will still haunt all the edges of my vision mind heart stomach roiling with the awful want for him, and it’ll come out sometimes when I’ve drunk enough or when coming down off amphetamine rushes gets emotional, everyone will look at each other over my head, new kid will ask if I’m talking about things that really happened and they nods, yeah she gave him her virginity and he gave her a lifetime of this. wrote her a song though.)

Getting through the 80s would be hard, everyone getting sick and dying like that, the world so quickly so different and hopeless feeling. Growing up in my 20s, maybe cleaning up? Going to college in NYC? or returning to family in Southern California? Fleeing the fear, fleeing the city? Maybe I’d escape to wherever my sister chose for college, move to her city (or she joins me in NYC) to level out and grow into adulthood. In this dream, I’ll study law but fall off the track into... I don’t know. Marriage? Do I get to live with the woman I’m in love with? Yes, and never come back to Los Angeles because my family are shitheads. God knows what I do with the 90s, where, what, etc.

The important parts, the ones I’m definitive on, are being a young teen in the mid 70s California then old enough to participate in NYC scene at the end of the decade.

Love how being traumatized by sexual relations with older men is a constant thing even in my fantasies? like isnt a detail but like a formative thing? fascinating

#drugs tw #practically a journal entry #my writing #older men tw #statutory rape tw

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the-writerly-night-owl · 5 years

Text

For the First Time

Open Heart/ Ramsey x MC

Summary: They finally took that next step in their relationship and Ethan loved every bit of it.

Authors Note: Finally wrote that follow up rated R/M!! And this is it so warning sexy times. I actually had an idea for two so that might come later. Next up some desire and decorum hopefully.

“Hey I was a happy nerd in college just to let you know,” she said. “I graduated from Johns Hopkins University for a reason you know.” Ethan remembered as it was one of the best schools in the country.

Clarissa opened the door to the ice cream place and held it open for him. Reluctantly he followed her inside and joined the line.

“I know I read your file,” said Ethan as he glanced at the board in front of them.

Clarissa grinned softly shaking her head. “Now what do you want to try? Or do you know what you want to get? I know I’m getting the double chocolate fudge.”

“That’s way too much sugar.”

“Let me guess you’re getting a low fat, no sugar, fro-yo?”

“No, I’m just saying that it’s a lot of sugar. I’m getting a hot fudge sundae.”

“Classy spring for the most expensive thing on the menu.” She giggled as she pushed her arm against his. Clarissa turned to the worker and told them what they wanted. Ethan only watched her before glancing around looking for a spot to sit.

They were on their first date together. Well one of them at least if they counted the nights that they’d stay up with doctor Banerji. This would be the first going out in public together. Ethan could only listen to her and ask questions as best as he could. They got their ice cream as Clarissa pulled out to pay for their dessert.

“I got it,” he said reaching for his own before Clarissa put a hand on his arm and lowered it.

“Seriously, I have it. You payed for dinner and now it’s my turn.”

Reluctantly he went to find a seat letting Clarissa pay for it. He found a cozy spot in the back of the ice cream parlor. Part of him wanted to be away from prying eyes. The other part of him wanted to stay away from the window in case they got caught. Never the less there was an open spot.

He staked the spot and nodded for Clarissa to sit down. She passed him the hot fudge sundae and stay down across from him. Their knees brushed up against each other.

“Oh, um, there’s something I wanted to ask you before we head back after this,” she said her green eyes bright. “Well, my 29th birthday is next week, and I wanted to invite you myself. If you want you can bring a present, but you don’t have to. I mean it’s only going to be close friends and family. No bars or anything.”

Ethan hesitated for a minute. Technically with her name still on the list they shouldn’t be parading around like a couple. She wanted to drop from the competition for a chance to be with him. He wouldn’t let her and now here they were. Then again this was her birthday… She was going to be twenty-nine.

“I’ll let you know,” he said as something in her eyes looked hopeful. It was quiet as they started to eat their ice cream. It was quiet, too quiet as he watched Clarissa with curiosity. Ever since they kissed in his office there was a change. Not in her, she was good at keeping secrets but in him. Some would call it a miracle that he thanked Doctor Trinh for her input one of the days during the in between time.

According to Clarissa it made her day. Never mind the fact that it made Doctor Sinclaire’s eyes sparkle. Being in a relationship with her was going to be easy right? It wasn’t like he never had a girlfriend before. Even if some ended on a more depressing note.

“Ethan,” said Clarissa as he snapped out of his thoughts watching him. She giggled as he felt his heart flutter just a little. Just a smidge as he found himself smiling but waited for her. A grin on his face before looking her over once again. They did have plenty in common so far. She tossed her copper curls over her shoulders.

“I had something for you by the way. I’ll bring to the hospital tomorrow.”

“Oh no Ethan, if there’s a present for me I want it tonight. How about I walk you back to your apartment?”

“Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

“And I have a gift on the line. Besides my roommates can’t exactly see you with me in public.” True they had to keep this on the downlow for a month.

“Fine you’re call.”

She squealed before finishing her ice cream. He tried to match her pace before heading to the bus station. Thankfully his apartment wasn’t too far away. If she got this excited for gifts he wondered what she would be like on her actual birthday. Thankfully he already turned 36 and his birthday wouldn’t be until next year.

The bus ride went fast with plenty of banter between them. Mostly answering questions about each other. If there was one thing Clarissa Sinclaire liked to do it was asking questions and talk. Which wasn’t a bad thing since they did have their silent moments. Very reluctantly he shared a few stories about his family answering her.

Finally, they got to his apartment and his dog leapt on her. Jenner wagged his tail as Clarissa pet him and fed him a treat. Of course, she got along with his dog. Ethan gestured for her to take a seat and then went to go get the present. She scratched Jenner behind the ears as he watched her from his home office door. Despite being six or seven years older then him they got along great. The way the soft light hit her hair and the relaxed look on her face.

Sighing he found the gift and went over to hand it to her.

“I think you’ll like this.”

Eagerly she took it from his hands and opened it. The wrapping paper falling to the floor as she grinned at the present. “A book?”

“It’s my new one, it’s not even out yet or anything. Still yet to be published and I’ll be happy to sign it for you.”

“Okay Mr. cocky, well, I will cherish this book with all my heart.” Of course she had to be sarcastic but he loved it. She pressed it up against her chest as his eyes lingered on her breast. Clarissa opened the book and reading the first page already. He waited for her reaction as part of his brain was hoping that she’d like it. The other part of him wondered what size her bra was.

“I like it so far and agree with most of it,” she said. “I could challenge you on this idea right here.” She pointed to a paragraph on the second page. “Just so you know this isn’t a birthday present, you had this before I told you.”

“I don’t think I can do better then this,” said Ethan joking a little.

“Was that a joke? The famous Doctor Ramsey is joking with me, I need a camera.” He snorted as Clarissa laughed herself. “I think you’ll find a way to make it up to me.”

She was impossibly close now as he could smell her passion fruit shampoo. Her green eyes blinked up at him. He could see the outside of her bra. Part of him appalled that she’d suggest sexual pleasure so early. The other part of him, the twitch in his pants, was begging to throw her on the couch and take her right there.

“And how can I do that?”

Clarissa grinned at him happily. “A trip to the zoo.”

Now he was confused. “Huh, a trip to the zoo?”

“What were you thinking?” His hand touched her thigh to illustrate his thoughts. Clarissa eyed him as she nodded knowing exactly where he was going. “I mean I wouldn’t oppose, I’m not going to deny that I’ve thought about it. I just thought you want to take this slow. If you want to kiss me by all means go ahead.”

Forget slow, he thought, as his pupils dilated. Glad to be alone he pressed his lips against her one hand pulling her close by the waist. The other just around the back of her neck. Clarissa kissed back her arms around him. They savored in the kiss until the whine from Jenner distracted them to pull apart. Ethan went to shut him in the spare room before turning back to Clarissa.

She was grinning at him with a hungry look in her eyes. Stepping closer to her their arms went around each other automatically. Clarissa nibbling at the bottom of his lip before he opened his mouth and granted her access. Her kisses going from his lips to the corner of his mouth, his cheek, just underneath his ear and down his neck. Thankfully his collarbone was exposed in that shirt. She tasted wonderful and he didn’t even touch her yet.

“Ethan,” she groaned as her hands went to unbutton his shirt. Her hands quick as the shirt puddled at his feet. Their shoes already kicked off from earlier. Her hands running up and down his arms. Then over to his chest, her touch making his nipples stand stiff. “We keep going.”

“Two can play at that game,” he said between kisses. His own hands went to the hem of her shirt. Inching it up slowly he felt the soft gently skin of her stomach Clarissa twitched at his touch before pulling the top over her head.

“Forget slow. Rip this shirt off me if you have to.”

What? A little stunned and that primal stirring in him, they were kissing lips again. Listening to her, the shirt nearly ripped easily from her body. Her shirt gone he took advantage of her bare skin and started to pull her to his bedroom. Clarissa’s lips everywhere as she used her teeth to nibble gently on his nipple. His penis stiffed up a bit at the action. Her mouth on his neck leaving a love mark or two. Ethan pulled her close and kissed her lips once more his hands got lost in her copper curls.

His on hands on her hips prompted him to unbutton and unzip her jeans while in the hall. She adjusted to kick the offending material to the side. With that her legs wrapped around his waist as he gripped her thighs pulling her closer. Her bra clad breast pushed up against his bare chest. She was intoxicating as they settled in his bedroom. Her lips found his belly button and a shiver ran down his spine.

“Clarissa,” he moaned as she went for his jeans, the heavy material falling, and her hands lingered on the waist band of his boxers. “Not yet.” He kicked the door shut behind them as he pushed her up against and onto the bed. Her hair was perfectly messy already. Her make up a little smudged and her breathing turned into pants.

“My turn,” he said remembering how much control she had. With that Clarissa’s bra was worked off her as he glanced down at the size 28C. She was a C cup as he found his mouth watering a little. “Do you mind this getting a little kinky?”

“Go ahead.”

Ethan found his belt and snaked it around her wrists. His lips never left hers. Their pants heavy as he went southward to her breast. Clarissa glanced up at her wrists and then down at her exposed body. The only thing she had left on her was panties.

His mouth left hers and sucked one nipple into his mouth and played with the alternate breast with talented fingers. Then his lips found her other as Clarissa bushed her breast out for him to suckle deeper. Amazing, truly amazing, he thought nuzzling his cheek against her boob. He was leaving his own love marks where she’d have to wear a turtle neck to work for a while. She was soft and warm and didn’t want to stop touching her there.

Moaning and ragged breathing filled the room. His grip iron like holding her hips down. Slowly and tantalizingly his hands rushed along soft and warm thighs pulling her panties down lost in the sheets.

“Don’t stop,” she groaned as his hands pressed against her folds. She was already warm and sticky as excitement ran through him. One finger, a gasp escaped her soft pink lips. Then two as she thrusted her hips up against his fingers. Three as she shouted out. “You’re making me so wet.”

Pleased with himself he rubbed along her slit teasing him to go deeper. She mewled into his kiss as he pressed his lips against her and then around her nipple. Hands on her hips he pulled her closes to his cock ready to take her now.

“You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to do this.”

“Do me, please.”

“Keep begging,” he growled as that seemed to turn her on even more. The pool between her legs grew faster as that tingle ran through him.

“Please take me now. Ethan,” she whined. Her hips arching for his touch. He adjusted between her and pushed. Clarissa couldn’t touch him with her hands bound above her head. She was tight as he got deeper into her folds. “Harder.”

Listening to her Ethan finally had the bed bouncing. Gasps and moans escaped her lips and wet noises from their kisses. She gripped his bed as best as she could.

Yes, baby yes, this was what he was hoping for as his heat raced. This was perfect, he wanted to sleep with her and now he was getting his wish. Her breath coming out in pants as her hands were pulled together above her head. Her whole body open to him and him alone.

The pressure and build up rushed them like a tidal wave as they came at the same time. Adjusting he finally lay next to her and undid the belt around her wrists.

“That was amazing,” she said turning to rest her head on his chest. “I’d give that a hundred out of ten.”

Ethan grinned as he put his arm around her and pulled her close. So, this is what it would be like to be like to sleep with her. Doctor Ethan Ramsey had to admit that he loved it. It started so quick and was glorious. They had to do again. He looked over as Clarissa was closing her eyes already. Her head resting his chest felt amazing as he took in her scent and basked in the afterglow.

His arms were around her waist pulling her close to him as Clarissa stopped him. “I have to get back to my apartment. Otherwise I’ve had some uncomfortable questions,” she said going to find her clothes. The only problem with that was that her clothes were strewn everywhere. Her panties twisted in the sheets. Bra somewhere on the floor. Jacket in the living room with her shirt and pants in the hall.

Part of him wanted to make her stay but had to agree.

“Here I’ll get your clothes,” said Ethan getting up and finding his boxers. She bit her bottom lip watching him leave.

Clarissa dove into the sheets before finding her cotton panties. If she had known that he was… they were… let’s just say she would have had pretty underwear besides the old ones. Great, just great, she slept with her boss and the month wasn’t even up yet.

“Um, Clarissa, I’m sorry,” he said handing her the shirt. She looked down at her tank realizing that it was torn.

“That was my favorite shirt,” she whimpered picking up the torn cloth.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t…”

“No, it was hot and amazing but now I don’t really have a shirt to wear back.” He shifted before going to his own closet and finding a simple white shirt. She’d be wearing one of his shirts before throwing it to her.

“Keep it.”

Clarissa threw it on over her head. At least it was a generic white shirt that had just been washed. Her roommates wouldn’t be able to know whose it was at least. She took her torn shirt and slipped it underneath his pillow when he wasn’t looking. That would be a nice surprise in the morning, she thought, before they headed out together. The rest of the month was going to be interesting.

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sroloc--elbisivni · 5 years

Text

It’s been three months since my dad died.

I think about him every day. Never in the same way twice. Sometimes it’s like last night, where I started remembering the way he grinned and the way he made salmon and how much I miss him and start crying into my pillow. Sometimes it’s like today, where I feel numb and dull and empty until I realize it’s been a quarter of a year and I’m not going to do anything for the rest of my life but get further and further away from him, and the person I was when I knew him. And then I start crying on a plywood platform thirty feet off the ground at work.

I’ve been working a lot this week. This whole semester, really. I’ve wanted to be busy. I’ve wanted to not think about things. And I hate it, because I know that thinking about him is one of the only ways he’ll get fully remembered, and I’m too afraid of getting lost in missing him, and I need to move on and be in the world and I don’t always want to.

But the further away I get, the more I lose. So let me tell you about my dad.

‘You’ being, the general world I guess. You don’t need to read this. I just need to say it. Pretend I can shout at the world “A GOOD MAN IS DEAD” and have it matter.

My dad was born in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and he had the state in his bones—one time I needed to know what city for paperwork, and I texted him to ask if it was Fargo, and he said “No, the other big eastern city.” He understood blizzards and thunderstorms and dressing for the cold, and he taught them to my brother and me even though we were growing up in coastal California, where only one of those happened, and then rarely.

He was brilliant. If you want to know anything about my dad, it was that he was brilliant, and he was kind, and he was loving. He also had several small strokes at the end of his life that meant he didn’t remember or retain things well, and that he got more irritable, and reclusive, and locked into routine. We didn’t know about the smaller strokes until a month before the one that would kill him. Just that he was getting more distant.

My dad was prickly at the oddest times, and he had a temper, and he hated telemarketers, and bad drivers. He lashed out when he got mad and got sulky when you lashed back. He could snipe, and pick at things you didn’t even realize you were sore about, and didn’t know how to listen to a problem without trying to fix it.

He was good at fixing problems. He would take apart a toaster to fish out a burnt piece of bread, and study up on the riding lawnmower engine and go at the engine over and over again, and learned like he breathed. He wanted to write a book about learning, about the way we think and how it actually works, and what thinking is and what learning is and therefore what teaching should be. He believed that learning was just patterns of action. He and my mother literally wrote a book on how to teach in a way that built things up, rather than trying to pick at people’s behavior until they did what you wanted.

My dad was a teacher. He was a wonderful teacher. He taught me how to ride a bike, and drive a car, even when I was yelling at him, and he taught me how mean, median, and mode worked for a third grade science project. He helped talk me through algebra, and fractions, and division. He tried to teach me editing, but that went badly, because I was fourteen and had decided I knew what was best, and he never knew how to let things he cared about go.

He was a teacher for all of his adult life, even though he only ended up in the teacher’s program at his college because he took the RA’s keys after the RA left them lying around and he thought that was irresponsible, and the authority in charge of his punishment was his mother’s friend and also the Dean of Education. He stayed in the education program at the University of North Dakota for the next several years, helped found the school’s first no-hazing fraternity, found a skull with some friends at an archaeological dig site and held onto it for a couple years, went nocturnal for a while, and wrote his dissertation on the way we learn and the history of education. He talked about cave paintings, as early human abstract thought, but he didn’t get to see them until last year, when we went to France. My brother and I had to make sure he didn’t fall, as we went down into the cave, because it was rough and sloping and he was unsteady on feet he couldn’t quite feel anymore.

My dad had diabetes. My dad loved food. By the end of his life, he had lost feeling almost all the way to his knees, and insulin was taking up more room in our fridge than the eggs and milk put together. He was a great believer in the power of ice cream, as a special treat or just to hide in the fridge for when you wanted a taste. His favorite food that I baked was chocolate chip cookies. I made them with his mom’s recipe. Every time i was baking, he’d walk by and try to steal a piece. He stole popcorn every time we made some, too. Called it a ‘popcorn tax’. He used food as a love language, which made it awkward every time you ended up stopping on the way home for dinner without him, on a night he was cooking. He loved going out to eat, and would always talk to the waiter. He would always talk to anyone, really. More than the rest of us would like. My brother and i would always complain that he didn’t have to tell people our whole story, that they didn’t care. But he cared, and sometimes strangers did too, and sometimes they became friends.

My dad loved having friends. He loved knowing people, and talking to them, and learning from them and teaching them. He loved people, but had the misfortune of marrying an introvert and fathering two more. He was the popular kid in high school, on the football team and the newspaper. It was a Catholic high school—he was a Catholic until college, and then he started asking a lot of questions and never really went back. But he remembered all the theory, and all the questions, and all the things they tried to answer, and he could tell you about them if you wanted to know. My mom remembers when he met her aunt for the first time, a former nun, and they spent a good hour debating the finer points of something she couldn’t understand and barely remembered about the Holy Stations. He was good at that, at making you feel in every conversation that he was looking right at you, and interested in what he saw.

He got his doctorate in education, moved to Colorado, learned to ski, learned to parallel park—at 38, something I never failed to bring up when he was trying to teach me to drive—got married, became a step-father, started a charter school, had a wonderful couple of years teaching things the way he felt people would learn them, worked a paper route to try and keep it going, closed the school, dressed his stepkids up as Jawas for Halloween, got divorced—not necessarily in that order. I wish I’d asked my dad more about this part of his life. All I have are unconnected stories. Eventually he went back to North Dakota, and met my mom, and they spent the rest of his life together as “itinerant academics,” trading off who found a job at another university when they wanted to move. They got married at a courthouse two days before Christmas, because my dad needed health insurance and Mercury was going into retrograde. They had a kid in St. Paul and another in Tacoma. They were progressive educators, at a time when that wasn’t a comfortable thing to be in the Northern Midwest, and they made the giraffe their mascot because they kept ‘sticking their necks out’. I didn’t really appreciate that my parents were rebels against a system until I found out that in his first year of teaching, my dad and his friend had adjoining classrooms, and they came in with sledgehammers one weekend and knocked down the wall so they could have a big open classroom.

I found that out at his funeral. So many people my parents know are scattered all over the country, which is great for road trips and hard for gathering. They sent stories instead.

My dad played the guitar, and he sang in his first year of college—at a Catholic school choir, before he transferred, and the Beach Boys on the bus. He loved the Grateful Dead, and Jimmy Buffet, and the Eagles, and Peter Paul and Mary, and the Kingston Trio, and Bob Dylan, and he loved singing along in the car and dancing along in the kitchen, shuffle-step bouncing to the beat. He wore a sweatshirt with the logo of the elementary school my brother and I went to for fifteen years at least, from the time I was in kindergarten to the time he died. I remember it getting covered with cat hair, after the cat followed us on a walk to school too far to turn around and take her home, so he picked her up and carried her the rest of the way. She shed in terror. He used to carry the little half size cello I started learning on to school and back, every Wednesday and Friday, on his back making jokes about being a Sherpa.

My dad liked jokes. My dad liked to laugh. He loved comic strips, and insisted that my brother and I be allowed to read as many as we wanted. Probably the reason he and I got so very good at reading. I would recite Calvin and Hobbes and Garfield and Baby Blues to him, retelling what I remembered and hoping he’d laugh at the punchline. I’d show him things I found on the Internet when I got older, still trying and trying to make him laugh. I was less and less successful over time.

He was excited about the new Star Wars movies. I remember him telling me from his computer in his office, showing me the article. I remember going to the midnight showing of Episode VII, but not VIII—he couldn’t stay up that late. We saw Rogue One with my uncle, weeks after it came out. My dad was always the one who took us to movies as a kid. He liked stories. He liked to have fun. He liked Terry Pratchett and Robert B Parker novels and books about how the universe worked that took him months to finish. He had a brother, a younger brother, and lost him months after he lost his dad, years after he lost his mom. He saved things from them—the couch he grew up with, half a dozen chairs, boxes and boxes of books and records, a flag on the wall, a breakfront with china in it, all kinds of other keepsakes. My dad liked things. liked to save things. Liked to remember people—and he had a good memory. Up until the end. I came out to him about my gender six times, because he just couldn’t retain it when I told him. and every single time, he was supportive, and careful, and kind, even when he didn’t understand.

He loved our dog so much. He would make her food just so, with kibble and wet food and bacon grease all mixed together and heated in the microwave just so she’d like it. He used to take her on walks, every single day, and took her everywhere in the car with him. They walked on the beach a lot. My dad loved the beach, probably because he lived so far away from it until he was 51. I was born when he was 52.

My dad worried a lot about math education. how people get traumatized by math, and when they become teachers and parents, they pass on that learning math is hard. He worked for UC Berkeley for years, running a program to give engineering students the skills to become teachers. He ran a summer camp in Emeryville for STEM for high schoolers. Or…middle schoolers? I don’t remember anymore. He made these math models, abaci and blocks that showed ones and twos and tens and how numbers fit together into bigger numbers, and then he painted them all the colors of the rainbow so they wouldn’t be scary. So they’d be toys, something fun and beautiful and clever.

There are so many more things, about what a full and beautiful and complicated human he was that I can’t pull to mind or don’t have the words for, but I need you to know he was more than everything I’ve managed to pour here.

He wasn’t perfect, but he was the best dad I could have had. He was smart enough to answer all the questions I asked him, and he gave wonderful hugs, and he loved with a heart as big and open as the prairie sky. And I miss him, so, so, much, and it hurts to think of how I’ve been missing him for a long time, as little pieces of him broke off and drifted away when we weren’t noticing.

His name was George W. Gagnon, Junior. People called him ’Sandy’ as a kid to keep him distinct from his dad, because he had blonde hair as a baby. When I was little, it was dark, dark brown on the sides and circling the bald top. In the beginning of July it was a snowy white.

He’s my dad, and he’s gone, and I’ve spent the past three months knowing that I’m never going to go home again, not really. And knowing that ‘family’ is too big and whole a word to fill with what we have left.

I can’t cry in front of other people anymore. And I don’t want to talk about how I’m feeling, or what the world is like now. I just want people to know.

A good man is dead. He loved, and was loved, and laughed, and learned, and ate good food and made bad jokes. And even after writing all of that—I still miss him, and he’s still gone.

#sroloc babbles #grief #Personal crap #my dad

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irishsunshine-n-l-l-h · 5 years

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Alrighty guys, I wrote this for my grad school writing sample. Be honest. Tell me what you think!

Jane Doe #2

As soon as I saw Ali Bello standing outside Harry’s Auto Parts Store as I was walking in to start the early shift, I knew her car had eaten yet another starter.

I unlocked the employee entrance on the side of the building, leaving her out there in the summer morning cold. It was more for the farmers in the area that we opened at seven a.m.—though with how many times her starter’s gone to shit on her way to work, maybe we opened early specifically for Ali Bello.

I went into the back and grabbed the starter off the shelf and set it on the counter before I unlocked the front door for her.

She was standing there with her arms wrapped around herself, pulling her loose sweater closed. She whipped around when I opened the door, making the bell chime and her dark hair wrap around her face.

She looked worried like I’d leave her out there and she’d never make it to work on time, but luckily, she only worked at the animal hospital in town.

“I need a starter,” she said and pushed past me.

I let the door fall closed and followed her up to the counter where she was already waiting and getting her wallet out of her oversized purse.

I walked behind the counter and took my damn time, not to piss her off, but because I wasn’t awake enough to embody her panic.

“Jack? Did you hear me?” she said. “I called Lucky, but he doesn’t open the repair shop until eight, but I know he’s there by seven-thirty, and I have to be at work by eight and I don’t—” She cut herself off when she saw the starter sitting there in front of her on the counter.

She looked at me and I gave her my best effort of a smile for that early in the morning.

“I’ll even install it for you, if you’d like.”

She smiled and her face lit up in a way that made me actually want to smile back.

Now, small town, plus the fact that Ali Bello and I knew each other, quite well, to say the least, from high school, I knew that she only lived about five minutes from the auto shop. It wasn’t like she had hiked twelve miles to get there.

I locked the store back up and I drove her back to her house where her car was parked in the driveway. I could hear her dog, Tony, barking at us from inside the house.

She sat in a folding chair next to the car while I worked, and she’d hand me whatever tools I asked for. She didn’t want to go sit inside like I told her she could. I think she felt bad for taking me away from work.

The whole thing only took about a half an hour, but at least it was quiet.

I hadn’t really talked to Ali since high school. She was one of the lucky ones that got to go to college, but now, with student debt, she couldn’t afford to buy a new car. She lived with her grandma, who’d gone deaf over the years and I swear she wouldn’t have let Ali keep her Jack Russell terrier, Tony, if she’d been able to hear him bark as constantly as he did.

Ali promised to pay me back in some way. She used to bake a lot when we where younger, and not like how most high schoolers bake, but she’d always have cookies or brownies to share at lunch. I’m surprised none of us weighed a hundred tons by the time we graduated.

When I came back from my lunch break just after one o’clock, Marcus Guerrero sat on the tailgate of Doug Potter’s dented and beat up ’82 Chevy pickup. And when I say beat up and dented, I mean it looked like someone took a baseball bat to it.

“Hey, Cowboy,” I said. I looked over the truck.

“Hey, Lawman.” He slid off the tailgate, his work boots hit the ground with a thud.

When I looked at Marcus, I noticed a few red scratches on his face.

“What the hell happened to you?”

“Protestors!” he threw his arms up. “I picked up the feed this morning and when I got to the farm they were everywhere. Apparently, the locals found out that good ol’ Farmer Doug supplied the wine for that town history tour the museum is putting on. The tour, which includes Doug’s farm because of the dead girl they found in the field.” Marcus rubs his face. “They took a damn shovel to the truck while I was still in it.”

I looked at the truck again then at Marcus. “Well, on the bright side, the truck runs well enough to get you here.”

“It’s not funny, Jack. The people in this town are psychotic. I was lucky the sheriff showed up before they got a chance to set the feed in the back of the truck on fire.”

Marcus had a tendency to overreact and overdramatize his stories, but I could tell just by looking at his face, looking at the truck, and knowing the general mindset of this town, he wasn’t making any of it up.

“C’mon, Cowboy, I’ll get the first aid kit.”

I let him in through the side entrance. Harry wouldn’t care if Marcus was behind the counter. Before he got his job at the farm with Doug Potter, Marcus frequented the auto parts store just to hang out with me after we graduated high school.

Marcus was smart enough to go to college, but he didn’t get a chance to save up much money when he bounced around a couple different foster homes.

Marcus’s parents left him at a church in Missouri when he was six. They were heavily religious and thought Marcus had the devil in him. He’d been placed with a few different families, but no one wanted the teenager with a record after he beat a man with a bat at age of thirteen. Marcus never talks about what happened, and it happened during the two years when he moved in with a foster family in the city. He’d been gone only a few months and I got a call from him once he was in juvey.

My first thought was that our old babysitter, Mrs. Hargrove, was right. She was a little weird and always insisted that she was psychic. She said that Marcus had the heart of a cowboy. He was polite, rough around the edges. He liked being alone—he liked the quiet. She also said that I had the truth in my blood and that if Marcus ever got in trouble, I’d be the one take him in like we were two sides of the same coin or some shit. I always wanted to be a cop when I was little so the thought excited me and terrified me at the same time. When Marcus’s hearing came up, I managed to get a ride to the train station and took a bus just so maybe I could speak on his behalf. The man he beat didn’t die, but they considered the bat a deadly weapon and Marcus was lucky that he only got eighteen months under the circumstances, which I never found out what those circumstances were, and Marcus never talked about it. When he got out early, a year later, they placed him back with his old foster family and back at school with me.

“All this over a twenty-three-year-old cold case,” Marcus muttered while I cleaned up the cuts on his face.

They never identified the dead girl in Doug Potter’s field. She’d been out there too long by the time someone found her, and her face was eaten off by bugs and other wildlife. Artists had done renderings of what they thought she might’ve looked like, but this was back in 1994 in our tiny little town, so she remained a Jane Doe and the town buried her in the cemetery across the road from the Harry’s Auto Parts. The only things they did know about her was that she was about twenty-three and had recently given birth. No child was ever found, and they looked at the local hospitals for any abandoned children.

Marcus took off his backwards baseball cap—the one from when he was on the team in high school—and pellets of glass fell onto the cement floor. I pulled a few more pieces of glass out of his curly hair and from the collar of his shirt.

“Did Sheriff Bell take anyone in?”

Marcus bent over and fluffed up his hair to make sure there wasn’t any more glass in it before he but his hat back on. “Just the ones that destroyed the truck. And to be honest, we’re lucky that’s all they went after. It’s hard to come by parts for some of the older equipment.”

“I’ll put in a call to Tina at the junkyard, see if they have any trucks we can take parts off of for the pickup.”

Marcus shook his head.

“You sure you’re okay?”

Marcus shrugged it off. He had a tendency to do that.

Everyone that came in the rest of the day asked about the beat up, broken windowed, truck out in the parking lot, asking if it had anything to do with what happened over at Doug’s farm. News and gossip in this town always spread like wildfire.

Marcus didn’t go back to work. He sat beside me behind the counter reading car magazines until my shift was over at three. He told Doug he was getting the truck fixed and left it at that. I got the notion that he wasn’t ready to go back to the farm just yet.

Things quieted down the following week after the town tour was cancelled in light of the protestors. People complained that the tour was a good idea because it would get that artist rendering of Jane Doe out in the world and maybe someone would recognize her, and others wanted the whole thing dropped to allow her to be at peace.

I felt like shit the last couple days. Maybe it was the heat or maybe I caught something. The weather was seventy percent rain and a hundred percent sweltering heat. There were people who would just come into the store because it was cooler inside with the fans running.

Harry asked me if I wanted to go home, he said I looked like shit, but whatever it was it wasn’t something I had before. I was drained. I’m sure I was running a fever but didn’t exactly have a thermometer or money lying around to go to the doctor. The headache was the worst part of it.

I never got an order wrong, or given someone the wrong part, or given bad advice when it came to fixing cars, but I did all three of those things on Thursday.

I stayed home on Friday. Sleep was my best bet. I woke up around five in the afternoon and was thirsty as all hell. I drank two bottles of water and after I pissed it all out, I felt better. I called Harry and told him I’d be able to come in for my Saturday shift.

It was already boiling hot outside by nine a.m. and it wasn’t letting up. By the time I got to work by noon, it was damn near unbearable to be outside. Doug Potter’s pickup truck was parked outside the store again, but this time with the mismatching colored doors and hood, along with new windows and windshield that Marcus and I found at the junkyard a few towns over last weekend.

Also, sitting there was Ali Bello’s car and my first thought was that the starter went again, but when I got inside, Marcus and Ali were chatting by the watercooler in front of the counter. Ali had a plate of cookies in her hand, which made me smile. Some things never change.

Ali smiled when I came up behind the counter and Marcus just titled his head.

“Hey, Lawman.”

“Cowboy.”

Ali gave us an odd look but pushed past Marcus to deliver the plate of cookies to me. “Payment in full,” she said. “I remembered you liked the banana ones.”

Marcus tried to hide his smile and laugh, and had I been within distance, I would’ve smacked him.

He knows about me and her. He knows everything, which is funny considering how we both tried to forget about it altogether. We acted like nothing happened; that everything we went through didn’t happen.

I would’ve done it for free. I’d do anything for her for free. I promised myself that I’d never take anything from her ever again, but I also know she doesn’t like taking charity. She’s stubborn like that.

Marcus was just there to hang out and Ali stuck around for a while. It reminded me of when we were in high school. The three of us just being around each other like that.

The day was perfect. I wasn’t screwing up any orders and I didn’t fight with Kyle Franklin when he insisted his car needed 10W 30 oil when I knew it takes 5W 30. It wasn’t until Tim Ridgefield walked into Harry’s Auto Parts Store and declared, “There’s a body in the cemetery!” that the day crashed.

Harry, who was standing just beside me behind the counter, didn’t think much of the statement, replying with, “There’s a lot of bodies in the cemetery, Tim, that’s kind of their function”. He didn’t even look up from the papers he was looking at.

“No, I’m serious, Harry, the cops found a body in the cemetery across the street. Like a dead, murdered one,” Tim insisted.

I looked at Harry. “I did hear sirens earlier.” That was all I said. That’s all I could think to say. I didn’t think much of it because people were always speeding on the straightaway in front of the store. I knew what Harry was thinking though. He was thinking that it’s happening again. That girl they found in Doug’s field and now another body.

Harry stood outside the front door for a while watching the cops across the road. They were moving about just on the other side of the hill in the cemetery.

I couldn’t bring myself to look. I just stayed behind the counter. Even after Marcus and Ali left, people came in asking about what was going on across the street, but I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t tell these people that there was another body in our little town. It’s been twenty-three years since the last one and all I could do was pray that they identified this one.

The store was empty aside from me and Matt behind the counter. Matt was about to make a delivery when Sheriff Bell and one of his deputies came in. I figured that they just wanted to ask if we saw anything or if we knew about what was going on, but the way Sheriff Bell looked at me, made my stomach turn.

“Jack,” he said quietly. He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I was wondering if you know who this is?” He turned the phone so I could see the photo on the screen.

It was definitely a dead girl. She had long brown hair and her face looked…wrong. Christ, how long had she been dead for before they found her? How many days went by and none of us noticed her.

“I don’t recognize her,” I said quietly, and it was the truth. I didn’t recognize anything about her. Not her hair, her clothes, what was left of her face. I peered across the counter at Bell. “Am I supposed to know her?” It seemed like a dumb question, but I thought maybe he wanted me to implicate myself or something, before he told me that she was an old classmate or a customer.

“We found her body in the cemetery this afternoon. She was lying on your father’s grave, I just thought maybe it meant something.” Sheriff Bell put the phone back in his pocket. “You boys didn’t see or hear anything odd around here the last few days, have you?” He looked from me to Matt, who just shook his head.

“I was sick this week, so I wasn’t really paying attention. I wasn’t even in yesterday.” My mind was already going over my alibi for the last week or so, but I spent most nights home alone and the only one to confirm that would be Coach Teller. He would’ve seen my truck in the driveway and Christ, I lived in his used-to-be but now-renovated shed and I—.

I didn’t kill her, so what the hell was I so worried about?

#my writing #feedback is appreciated #not fan fic

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levihauser · 5 years

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寒くなります

20 November, 2019

Well, I have been very busy and it has been nearly a month since I last wrote a blog entry. Sorry about that!

November’s excitement started on the third, when there was a large districtwide Rotary event in Kanazawa. I had breakfast and lunch at home (both my favorite Japanese food-inarizushi!), then got in a taxi with my host dad. We were driven to the train station, then met some other Rotarians from my host club, then took a train to Kanazawa. The event began at 1:00 at a concert hall right next to Kanazawa station. All ten other inbound exchange students from the district were there, and we were seated together on a second floor balcony (probably not the best idea, since exchange students can become a little noisy when they are bored by speeches they don’t understand and surrounded by people who speak their native language for the first time in weeks). We sat there for 5 hours of speeches we couldn’t understand (with a five-minute intermission), then left the concert hall and went to a nearby hotel. We were ushered into a large banquet hall on the third floor and sent to various tables (the exchange students were still kept together). It was so crowded that few of the tables had chairs, and most people had to stand. There was a buffet of delicious food, but before we ate there was a beautiful musical performance by maybe 20 geisha. It seems pretty expensive, but it is a districtwide event and Japanese Rotary is pretty rich. The buffet foods were very good, and there were great desserts, too! At about 7:30, my Rotary club departed for another restaurant nearby for their own dinner-I was glad I hadn’t eaten too much. It was an interesting restaurant, with a mix of foods. We shared food around the entire club, but I ate pizza, omuraisu (rice covered with eggs and ketchup) with the eggs dyed black with squid ink, and their special Nyan Ice Cream Parfait (which had a cat cookie, several layers of ice cream and yogurt, grapes, and some sort of jelly). It was all delicious, and I was stuffed at the end. One of the Rotarians in the club had just reached his 45th year as a Rotarian, so everybody made speeches honoring him. As you have probably guessed, mine was not very eloquent. At about !0 we returned to the station and took a train back, then rode home with one of the other Rotarians.

The next day, despite being a Monday, I had no school, because it was Culture Day in Japan. In the morning, I got in the car with my host father and we drove to Kanazawa’s Teramachi (temple town). I had no idea what we were doing, since I had received no notice of it, as usual. We walked around to some of the many Buddhist temples for which the area gets its name, then went to an old shop. We were brought into a back tatami room with a group of other people, then given a presentation I couldn’t understand and small amounts of food to try. After that, we were brought into another room where we washed our hands and put on gloves, then were given a class on how to make kaburazushi (a kind of Japanese pickle made only in Kanazawa). We made six each, and being that they are large and both my host father and I made them, we had a lot of kaburazushi to take home. We had a filling traditional Japanese meal back in the tatami room, then returned home.

I am not entirely sure why, but on the seventh and eighth, school was only two periods long. In the first one, we took a kanji test, then in the second, we took a less serious one (on the first day it was answering as many questions as you could of general knowledge, like knowing how fast Mach 1 is or the name of the biggest lake in Japan, and on the second it was naming as many things as you could of a certain category, like spices or types of dog, with a team and trying to see who could get the most unique ones from other teams). I was given answer keys to copy from for both kanji tests, thank goodness. The sun is setting very early now, so I don’t have much free time in the daylight, and my weekends are usually busy, so I took the extra time on both days to go on train trips. On the seventh, I went to Kanazawa, in the hopes of riding a bus to the mountains, since I had been hoping to see them up close for a long time, but nobody I had asked liked them. That failed, as the bus station my host mother had directed me to ask about apparently didn’t exist, but I saw that there was apparently a tiny train station underground beneath the main Kanazawa station (which is operated by JR railways) operated by a small private railroad company named the Hokutetsu Railway. I decided to give it a try. I bought a ticket to the farthest station down the line and rode an orange, old-fashioned train to Uchinada. I had never heard of it before, so I kind of just wandered around on foot until I arrived at another Hokutetsu station and took it back. Apparently Uchinada is close to the sea, but I didn’t know that at the time. On the eighth, when the same thing happened, I checked my 34-year-old map to see if I could see any more Hokutetsu lines, and indeed there were, from Shinnishikanazawa Station to Tsurugi Station-which was on the edge of the mountains. I was elated to finally have an opportunity to see them, and immediately took a JR train to Nishikanazawa Station, which is just across the street from Hokutetsu’s Shinnishikanazawa Station. From there, I took a train to Tsurugi Station. It was great! I finally had some terrain with elevation changes to walk on. I followed my map to the largest shrine in Hakusan City (technically this area was Hakusan City, just like where I live, but the city is huge and spans from the ocean to the other side of the prefecture deep in the mountains), Shirayamahimejinja Shrine. It was very big and beautiful, and it took me about two hours to walk there, including getting lost, which I will blame on my 34-year-old map. By the time I left, it was getting to the time I should return so I would get home before dark, so I took the two trains back home. Sorry if all of the train information there was a little convoluted, I had to type it all out for it to make sense to me.

The next day, I had an average Saturday morning until I was abruptly told that I had to pack for an overnight and was picked up by the people who will become my fourth host family (Rotary Youth Exchange students switch host families several times in their exchange year), the Nishikawas. I was taken to their house, and played their nice grand piano for a while. They also have a tiny dog named Maple (Meepuru is actually her name, Maple is just the English transliteration). There was a barbecue that afternoon (it was still around 75° Fahrenheit), so I spent some time outside getting ready for it with Mr. Nishikawa. There were a lot of large and interesting mountain insects around their yard (I forgot to mention that they actually have a lawn, which albeit tiny, is very rare in Japan, since most Japanese opt for large gardens). Soon, people began to arrive for the barbecue, including three Rotarians from my club, their spouses, and the Nishikawas’ daughter, son-in-law, and two granddaughters. We had a lot of good food, then I went and played in a nearby park with the two granddaughters. They are both very energetic! It began to rain, and the barbecue moved inside the Nishikawa house. We played some games with traditional Japanese cards, called karuta cards. We fist played Bozumekuri, then Hyakunin Isshu. The first is fairly simple, and I might post its rules at some point, but the second involves memorizing 100 ancient Japanese poems (although we had a casual game, so most people didn’t have many memorized). After the games, the guests left, and the night wound down. I was told to sleep on a futon in a tatami room.

The next day I woke up in the Nishikawa house again, and was brought briefly back to my host family’s house where I changed into nice clothes for a concert of many doctors from around the area that are friends later that day. My host dad, a nurse from his pediatric clinic, and I went to an old factory in Kanazawa that had been renovated for music and rehearsed there for a while. We had lunch at a restaurant nearby, then the concert began. My host dad’s clinic was second on the program, and he and the nurse played a flute duet. I played Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C Sharp Minor, then we went back into the audience. I made far more mistakes than I should have, but that is how it always goes for me in piano concerts. We went back into the audience and watched many more performances, a few from many genres and instruments. After the concert finished, all of the performers had dinner in the same restaurant we had had lunch in. It was great! The food was delicious. There was some salty ice cream for dessert, then we returned home.

The next week in school we had several tours of various places to help us decide on potential careers. We went to the Takamaz machinery company and had a guided tour there. In a previous entry, I mentioned that I had spent some time with the Takamatsu family, and this turned out to be theirs. It is international, with several factories around the world, including two in the US. The tour was fascinating, but I unfortunately could not understand much of what was said. The day after that, my homeroom and the neighboring one went on two college tours. We took a fancy bus to Kanazawa Gakuin University and Hokuriku Gakuin University and were given tours of both. At the first one, we had lunch in the dining hall. It was pretty good. I had curry rice, and would have had ice cream, but the ice cream vending machine ate my money and didn’t give me any. Both colleges were very interesting, and the tour guides were very nice. That night, I was picked up before dinner by my third host mother, Ms. Ikemoto. She picked up her daughter and grandson. The grandson is interested in going on exchange the year after next, so we talked a little about that. We had sushi for dinner, then went to a karaoke business, a new experience for me. We were allowed entry into a small room with a sound system and a TV, as well as two microphones. The TV would play songs, and show the lyrics and music videos. We also had unlimited access to yummy snacks! There were several interesting songs. I returned home, and was told they are planning to take me out at some point to a Japanese movie theater. That should be fun!

On the 15th, I was picked up after school by my host club counsellor, Mrs. Nagase. I went to her house and spent some time with her and her husband there. She speaks very good English, having lived in the UK for four years back in the 1990s. We had a traditional Japanese dinner and talked a lot. In addition to a 30-year-old part of the house, there is an almost untouched 200-year-old portion of the house. It is gorgeous! The only signs of the modern era are electric lights. Mrs. Nagase’s father-in-law was a collector of beautiful, ornate objects that also fill the old house. I spent quite a bit of time there before going to bed in a small tatami room.

The next day, Mr. Nagase left early to practice for a golf tournament. Mrs. Nagase and I walked the dog, Tai Chan, then went to a performance of Roukyoku, or Edo Period style story writing. Few Japanese people have ever heard of it. The event was at a small temple. Before the performance began, we bought some food from the lotus vendors there-everything they had was made from lotus. It was delicious! The farmer was the performer’s brother. After a while, the performance began and we had an interesting time. There was a shamisen player who was very talented, and, of course, the storyteller himself. He told a story of which I could discern very little, but there was something about a sumo wrestler. He did many interesting things with his voice that I hadn’t realized were possible, like making two tones at once. We returned to the Nagase house for lunch, walked the dog again, then went to Kanazawa for another concert. This one was by a woodwind group, and one of the clarinetists was a friend of Mrs. Nagase’s. We returned late and I fell asleep quickly.

On the 17th, it was a Japanese holiday known as Shichigosan, but I didn’t see any signs of it anywhere. Mr. Nagase went out early to a golf tournament (my host dad was going to be there too), then Mrs. Nagase and I went to her home town, Yamanakaonsen. It is a small town nestled in a valley between two mountains, but it was very busy. It was pretty, too, because the leaves on all of the trees were beginning to change. I met Mrs. Nagase’s parents, who live there, ages 86 and 93. They are very lively and energetic. We walked in a nearby gorge for a while and crossed two interesting bridges, then went to a restaurant for lunch. It was mostly a normal meal, but there were also small pockets of fish and vegetables. I can’t remember their Japanese name, but it translates to “baby shark.” I went to the Japanese public bath and bathed there, then returned to Mrs. Nagase’s parents’ house. I had tea there and drank it out of a teacup given to Mrs. Nagase’s father by Emperor Showa, then we returned back to her house after stopping at two shrines. I spent the rest of the evening there, then was returned home.

Yesterday was a fairly normal school day (aside from the fact that one of the sliding glass doors in a neighboring classroom shattered during seventh period), and I went to a meeting of five Rotary clubs in Kanazawa after school. There was a trio of harp, koto, and shinobue, which played three beautiful songs before we had a multi-course delicious meal. It was great, and one of the other English-speaking inbound exchange students to the district was there so we spoke quite a bit in English.

This will probably be my last blog entry while I am with this host family since I switch on Saturday.

I am sorry. This week the blog still says it is having errors uploading images, so I can’t post any more.

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fred-frederator-studios · 6 years

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Arlen Schumer: The Frederator Interview

Arlen Schumer is the designer and illustrator of our Frederator Fredbot, the robot that’s inspired so many variations.

You read that right.

We all hear so much from fans about our “red robot” that I thought the time was right for Arlen to design something for us again, 20 some-odd years after his first.

So here it is! The 2019 Frederator New Year’s poster. (You can see some of the poster’s development work here.)

Arlen’s not only a fantastic artist/designer, but he’s a prolific pop culture historian with some great books and essays to his name, and a thriving lecture series on some of the famous (and even more unsung heroes) of comic book art.

How did Arlen Schumer come to Frederator? And how did Arlen come to art, specifically, comic book art? As you can read below, he and I have known each other and worked together for several years, even pre-Frederator.

All this and more, in the first Frederator interview of 2019.

Hi Arlen. When did you start drawing?

I grew up in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, a great place in the early-mid ‘60s, with equal parts bucolic American suburbia and small-town Rockwellian, pop culture ambiance—everything from an uber-Jewish deli like Petak’s to Plaza Toy & Stationery, which had a classic 20th Century soda fountain: it was there, after school, that I read all the comic books of my youth while drinking chocolate egg creams (with a pretzel log, natch). And because Fair Lawn, like all of New Jersey, was in the shadow of New York City, I grew up on all that pop culture through television, not just the 3 networks but the 3 local stations that showed everything from the old Universal monster movies to The Little Rascals to The Three Stooges to the George Reeves Superman TV series.

One of those local TV shows, a children’s show called Diver Dan, which was filmed in black & white to look like it took place underwater—the actor, in a deep-sea diver’s suit (with a helmet that never revealed his face, so he was like a superhero), walked slowly like he was underwater, surrounded by pop fish hanging by wires—triggered my interest in drawing, as I watched my brother draw him first, and copied him. I’ve been drawing ever since!

What was the first comic you fell in love with?

Giant Superman Annual #7 (Summer ’63): Not only is its cover the hands-down greatest of all the great multiple-panel Superman Annual covers that Superman Artist of the Baby Boom Generation (and my first favorite artist) Curt Swan drew in the ‘60s—not only does it feature perhaps the greatest single Superman figure ever rendered by Swan (in pencil; head of DC coloring Jack Adler did the hand-painted grey wash tones over it) or any Superman artist, before or since—but it is the first comic book cover I can recall ever seeing, when I was five years old, in summer camp that year. What an image to come into the wonderful world of comics by!

What was your first professional job as an artist?

My summer job between freshman and sophomore years at art school (Rhode Island School of Design), creating black & white line illustrations for a t-shirt silkscreening company in Fair Lawn.

I know that you count Neal Adams as a primary mentor? Were there any others?

Neal Adams was one of two Gods of Comic Book Art in the late-‘60s: the other was Jim Steranko, who was described as the Jimi Hendrix of comics, because Steranko’s career was as meteoric in its rise, and as short-lived. Though Steranko didn’t die in ’70 like Hendrix, that’s when he left Marvel Comics after less than 4 years of explosive and experimental works—and, like Hendrix, his impact on both the art form and its audience was in converse proportion to the relatively small amount of work he turned out. In particular, Steranko’s design sense and typographic talents were a tremendous influence on my choosing to major in Graphic Design at RISD.

It was sometime in my junior year there that I must’ve written Steranko a fanboy letter, gushing about those very things—and much to my shock and surprise, he wrote me back, inviting me to come see him in his home/studio in Reading, PA! So I took a bus from Providence, RI to Reading, and spent the day with Steranko—except I barely remember a thing about it! Why? Because I think I was having a Dr. Strange-like ectoplasmic out-of-body experience the whole time I was with him—I, a fan, spending quality time with one of the Twin Gods of Comics!!!

He wanted me to leave RISD and begin working with him as his apprentice! I couldn’t believe what he was offering me; I remember the bus ride back to Providence in a daze, feeling the utter cliché come to life of my future like the road in front of me: I could either stay on the main highway of getting my college degree, or take that exit ramp and join the circus! What do you think I did?

I stayed in school and got my diploma a year later. Had it been freshman year, maybe I would have left; but not when I was a year away from matriculating—not to mention honoring my mom’s sacrifice of putting me through school financially. But I’ve remained in touch with Steranko ever since, and feel both fortunate and unique, that I am the only fanboy who grew up to not only work for one of the Twin Gods of Comics (I ended up working for Neal Adams 3 years after I graduated from RISD), but almost worked for the other, too!

And then, Fred, there was—YOU! You were one of the first great professionals I met/interviewed with after I graduated from RISD and moved to New York City, when you were still at Warner-Amex having just created the MTV always-changing logo [actually it was Manhattan Design; I was the company creative director]. You impressed me as someone who was “real,” who didn’t hide behind a phony “professional” mask. We stayed in touch after that, and you gave me my first real breakout illustration job when I went solo as a freelancer a few years later, designing and illustrating an animated 30-second spot for a radio station, working with Colossal Pictures in LA (who later became Pixar)—and a NY metro-area billboard to go along with it!

Since then, we’ve done a bunch of great things together, up to and including this Frederator poster! And I’ve watched you wade through your own career waters as a multi-dimensional leading man, wearing so many different hats over the years—the decades—which has inspired me to cultivate my own Renaissance Man attributes. I’ve always described you to others as a mensch, the ultimate New York pro who’s got a great big beautiful heart an d soul to match his creative mind. If I could ever be described that way one day, I would consider that to be the highest compliment I could ever receive!

How about the mentors that you never met?

My father died when I was only four months old; my mother raised my older brother (by a year and a half) and I herself. Neither of my grandfathers was alive, and, though I had a handful of uncles, I would only see them a few times a year at family gatherings. So I had to find surrogate father figures elsewhere—and I found them in the American Pop Culture I grew up with in the’60s, in roughly this chronological order: Sean Connery’s James Bond, my first idealized masculine role model (the first movie I ever recall seeing, when I was around four-five years old, was Dr. No, the first Connery Bond, at a drive-in theater); Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling, a pop prophet of moral righteousness in the vast television wasteland, looking cool as all get-out in those incredibly tight TZ introductions—all of my artworks based on the series can be seen as my ways of honoring Serling’s legacy as a son would honor his father’s; and the superheroes in comic books, first and foremost Superman and Batman (the Yin-Yang of the genre), pseudo-paternally teaching me right from wrong, good from evil, and standing up and fighting for one’s beliefs. These are the things I suppose sons learn from the fathers, as well as their religious and academic authority figures. But “Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Comic Books”!

You've published a few pop culture histories, and given countless lectures on various great, neglected figures. What got you started as an historian?

I don’t know how any artist in any genre or medium, if they truly love their work, cannot also be equally-interested in the history of that art form. When Keith Richards plays any of his classic Rolling Stones licks, he knows which black bluesman he nicked it from; filmmakers like Spielberg and Scorsese know the history of film like they know their own films. And the history of comics is as rich in artistic triumphs (and personal tragedies) as the histories of the other major 20th Century art/entertainments: film, television, popular music and rock and roll.

When I was a senior at RISD, for my degree project, I toyed with designing an exhibit of comic book art, and when I went looking for a theme, the only subject that seemed both worthwhile of my passion for the material and deep enough for the demands of the assignment was one based on the comics I grew up with in the 1960s, and the artists who drew them, the twin founts from which I drew the inspiration to become an artist. Though I never did that exhibit (I ended up doing a giant autobiographical photo-comic instead), I kept the ideas and images that I gathered, in the hopes that one day I’d use them in some other form. Many of those 1979 layouts are the same ones I’ve used in my book published in 2003, The Silver Age of Comic Book Art; its introduction, in which I place the images and ideas encountered throughout the book in a socio-political, historical framework, is composed of essentially the identical concepts from my aborted exhibit idea.

The idea to do a book instead on this period of comic book history goes back even further, to 1970, when Jim Steranko, on the heels of his amazing barnstorming stint at Marvel Comics, wrote, designed and published the first of his twin-volume History of Comics, which remain the best books of their kind, and were—and continue to be—a source of inspiration. Except they were about The Golden Age of Comics (circa 1938-1950), the period Steranko grew up with and was affected by, not The Silver Age of Comics (circa 1956-1972) that I, and the entire Baby Boom Generation, was turned on to.

Steranko himself might have been inspired by the first great book about comic book history, Jules Feiffer’s 1965 The Great Comic Book Heroes, even though it’s more of a handful of wonderfully written, witty essays on specific Golden Age superheroes Feiffer followed avidly as a boy, accompanied by reprints of the origins or earliest adventures of those heroes. Feiffer may not have realized what it was like to be an 8-year old comic book fan in 1966 and hear that there was actually a book in the Fair Lawn public library about comics!

How did you come to design the Fredbot?

When you asked me to come up with my take on the classic Japanese-influenced sci-fi trope of the giant-monster-attacks-the-tiny-people back in 1997 for your first Frederator brand image—but make it a robot, and make it look like you [I don’t remember this last part], to boot—I immediately thought of the animated robot Gigantor, one of the first Japanese anime to reach American shores in the wake of the Batman TV series in 1966. Once I started drawing my version of Big G, it was a no-brainer to add the distinctive Seibert horned-rim eyeglasses, topped by the equally-distinctive Seibert eyebrows, and voila! Fredbot!

OK, I know you love Bruce Springsteen. How come?

I believe there are Four Pillars of Rock & Roll, in roughly chronological order: Elvis, Dylan, the Beatles, and Jimi Hendrix, representing the greatest voice, lyrics, band, and guitar; hence, The Four Pillars.

Like Elvis, Bruce is a singular, dynamic presence with a commanding vocal power; his lyrics and songs have stood the test of time and made him the only one of the many “new Dylans” to actually live up to the label, living a true, real rock & roll life while writing it down, The Great American Novel but on records, great American songs chronicling not only his life and career, but that of the postwar generation that has come of age with him, timeless anthems like “Born To Run,” “Thunder Road” and “Born in the USA,” just to mention three of his greatest hits; with The E Street Band, Bruce captured the sheer joy, enthusiasm and positive energy of the early Beatles; and, like Hendrix and any of the other guitar gods—Clapton, Page, Van Halen, The Edge—Bruce has played searing, soulful, melodic leads with the best of them.

But Bruce isn’t one of those rock & roll pillars—he’s the rock & roll roof built over them, the complete rock & roller, putting it all together as no one has before. Bruce Springsteen is, quite simply, the promise of rock & roll...delivered.

His uncompromising and unparalleled creativity, body of work, attitude, and performance and work ethic have been an inspiration to me since I first heard the song “Born to Run” over a tinny AM car radio when I was 17 years old in the summer of ’75. Especially when I lecture, I employ what I call the “Springsteen Performing Style,” which is to give your 110% all to your audience, whether it’s 10 people or 10,000 people.

Bruce is also a bonafide moral leader for our age, doing what a true leader should be doing: living his life by example, and using it to inspire and exhort others to do the same.

He is the true President of the United States.

Thanks for the interview Arlen. And of course, thanks for the Fredbot! Happy New Year!

#Arlen Schumer #Fredbot #frederator #poster #2019 #The Frederator Interview #posters #illustration #interview #artist #graphic design

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angelfiume · 6 years

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Mouth Like A Sailor Part 3

Last part for tonight. I will be back with more if yall like it!

The morning after our little night out, I wrote a note to Sophie and Jean and left as the were still sleeping. I woulda walked back home, but Soph's house was a while from my place. I took the trail into town and waited at the bus-station for the 7 AM. The city was real quiet at this time in the morning, either everyone was just now waking up, or had just gone to sleep. Nothing was even open yet, except for the 24/7 places at the plaza, but I wasn't in any rush to get a cup of old coffee that wasn't even hot. I saw the bus come rolling down the hill, the sun was starting to rise. I handed the driver 25 cents (you only had to pay from 10 PM till 8), and kept to myself the whole ride back to my neighborhood. It was Saturday so Darry and Soda were getting ready for work and the rest of their outfit was probably gonna get to the house soon. I accidently slammed the door on my way in- a habit Darry would probably be yelling at me for the rest of my life. Steve, Soda's best friend, was lying on the couch having an awful loud conversation with Soda, who was in the shower. We smiled at each other briefly and I went to my room at the back of the house. I used to be real close to the whole gang when we were all younger, but it started getting awkward when I turned twelve and my mom gave me this long talk about how a "young lady" shouldn't be out late with "young men" and she went off the one day she walked in my old room and saw Dally and I just hanging out all innocent like. After those lectures I started hanging out more just with girls and only really spent time with my brothers' friends when they were around. It wasn't too heartbroken about it as Dal was the one I spent the most time with and he liked me a whole lot more than I liked him. Even as a kid Dally was tough and harsh and his idea of a fun game was pulling my hair and taking play-fights way to serious. He's not too bad now, now he just teases me relentlessly about my voice and tries to tell me I'm flat chested and even my ass makes me look like a boy. Which is ridiculous because I know I'm a looker and so does the rest of Tulsa, he just thinks it's cute to hurt girls' feelings is all. I got out of yesterday's clothes and cleaned off my makeup from last night. Most of the things I owned used to be my mom's when she was in college, before she had four kids. The other twenty-five percent of what I owned were actually hand-me downs from my brothers, a whole lot of that being their shoes from junior high, shirts, and a pair of soda's old 501s. I got into my mom's old hip-huggers, a black blouse, and Pony's recently out-grown converse. On my way into the kitchen for a cup of coffee I bumped into Soda who whipped around to look at me with a nervous expression, my stomach dropped, I was either in trouble or something real bad had happened overnight, Soda was rarely ever bothered.

"What? Soda, Darry didn't check to see where I was last night, did he?" I asked shakily, Darry didn't just sound scary, but he was real smart, he knew what to take away from me that I would get upset about.

"No, no but he's gonna get suspicious, Marli, you smell like you drank all night!" He whispered back at me, "You better go brush your teeth and put some perfume on or something, hell just light a smoke."

"OK,OK, thanks Soda." I ran back to my room to grab a cancer stick, I hadn't even had much to drink last night, but Soda and Darry had this odd talent for smell, I remember last week I quickly got outta a fight with Darry with some bullshit lie when he smelled pot in my car I had smoked a month before. I walked out puffing on a cigarette, which of course Darry wasn't gonna be too happy about, but rather that than alcohol. I walked out to the porch to have it, luckily before Darry even turned around to see me walk out.

"Hey Marls, you look rough, man, what's the matter with you?" A deep voice laughed from the concrete steps, "Musta been one helluva night."

"Shut-up Dal! This door is most screen, you don't think Darry won't rip my head off if he suspects something?" I snapped in a hushed voice.

Dally raised his eyebrows and took my cigarette, taking a long drag before handing it back, "Be cool, man, he's not gonna know you went all the way to that bar just cause of some smart-ass comment I made."

"Yeah? Guess so. How the hell did you even know where I was last night? Doubt you have half the dough to leave this neighborhood anyhow."

"For some reason people around here seem to think you're a real cool broad, did ya know that?" Dallas chuckled, looking up at me from the ground, "Some socy girls were yappin at the drive-in about how that Sophie was goin' all the way to Oklahoma City to see some celebrity or something, and you weren't here last night, so where else would you be?"

"Hmm, well as long as that don't get within a miles radius of the Curtis Residence, I guess that's alright." I sighed and took one last drag before heading inside.

Darry was walking around looking as stressed-out as ever, with a piece of toast in his mouth, a cup of coffee in one hand and the other trying to tuck his shirt in. Luckily, he didn't even give me half a glance, so I was pretty much in the clear. Ponyboy was sitting on the couch next to Two-bit, looking surly as ever. He was a real smart kid, but a little on the awkward side. I could tell he wasn't too confident in his steps just yet, but I didn't judge him too hard on it, I'm still figuring my place out in the world. Darry could get pissy at him a lot, and Steve wasn't too keen on him either. I hate to think it's a girl thing, but I always held a special place in my heart for kids. He was my kid brother, so he annoyed the shit outta me, but he was alright. Soda came running through the living room, looking for his DX shirt, I just can't believe he refuses to set it out for himself the night before, as every damn morning he runs around like a scalded cat looking for the damn thing. He pushed me outta his way and started around the rest of our small house. I went in to get a coffee and saw that Dal had followed me into the kitchen. I turned around to look at him, immediately my stomach did a little flip. I had seen that look before at a lot of guys' faces and it never really made me feel all flattered at shit, just kinda uncomfortable. But for Dally I changed a little, he and I had been so close as kids and even after that he hung on to our friendship more than the rest of the gang. I didn't say anything, I just walked back to my room, what could I have said? I sure as hell wouldn't be caught trying to chat him up, I knew better than that. He wasn't necessarily a player, he's only had one girl at a time and always kept her close, but he was still a dick! He didn't have a lot of respect for girls, he always did for me and the other girls he knew, but I'd like to know the guy I date doesn't embarrass girls on the street just for kicks. Not even that, but my brothers would think I'm just the dumbest little thing to walk the earth if we ever did become anything. I remember last summer, I had a short-lived fling with this 22 year old in the Army on leave, and when I told Darry, he said "Marls, I don't wanna tell you how to live your life, but c'mon don't be just another greasy girl in our neighborhood who thinks she's hot shit for getting in with older men. You're just being trashy." Usually when my brothers say stuff like that to me I don't care, cause that's what siblings do, we are SUPPOSED to hate each other, but this time it was different. He wasn't calling me trashy as an annoying older brother, he really meant it. My brothers really care about me, Soda mostly just cause he cares about everybody. But Darry will always just judge me before he stands up for me, same with Ponyboy,he can sure say a lot of shit about Darry, but at the end of the day those two are a lot more similar than Soda and I, and we're twins. I'm probably overthinking it all anyways, maybe Dallas was just being an objective jerk, but that's not the first time, nor the mildest thing, that has happened between us.

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the-record-newspaper · 6 years

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My first love and the truest of all true love stories

Carmel Schmidt Toliver

By JERRY LANKFORD

Record Editor

Sweet Home Alabama was playing in my head in the summer of 1982, as I left Birmingham, Ala., in the window seat of a Greyhound bus on my journey back to North Carolina.

I was 18 and was a troubled young man. I was leaving my sweetheart and first love, Carmel (pronounced Kar male), behind. We had been nearly inseparable since we began our relationship the previous summer in Upward Bound – a college prep club in which we spent six weeks each summer on the campus of Appalachian State University.

Carmel was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. We were partnered in a canoe during a week-long trip on Lake Watauga in Tennessee and really hit it off. We started dating and quickly fell in love. Our first kiss was on a rooftop in lower Manhattan on a field trip with that club. We were looking across the river into New Jersey and were happy.

A year later I’d wound up in Alabama.

I had ridden to Atlanta with my late brother, Mike, who went there to finalize a divorce. The Lankford brothers slept that night in Mike’s old sky-blue Ford Maverick in the parking lot of an apartment complex in the rough side of town with pistols under our legs. Mike drove me to the train station at daylight, walked me in so I could buy my ticket to Birmingham and waited until I was safely on the train. I still remember his smile as he waved goodbye.

Carmel had been living in Boone with her father and stepmother, Sigurd and Leah Schmidt. She had left by train from Greensboro in the middle of the night to go visit members of her late mother, Eva Slaughter’s, family. My buddy, Mark Brooks, and his girlfriend drove us to the train station because I’d blown up my Chevrolet Vega, and after several wrong turns, we finally found the depot. I walked with Carmel as far as I could before she boarded an Alabama-bound train.

We were happily in love — as much as we could possibly be. It was the kind of love that glows red in your belly and typically consumes all rational thought. It made me sick to see her go.

After a couple weeks, and hours of long-distance telephone conversations, Carmel convinced me I should come to Alabama and that I might want to stay. I knew that would be a hard sell – trying to convince me to move there - but I wanted to see her badly.

It just so happened that at that same time Mike needed to make his trip to Georgia. He said if I was really serious about running to Carmel, I could save train fare money if I left from Atlanta instead of Greensboro.

If you’ve ever ridden on a train, you likely noticed that they mostly travel through the more industrialized sides of towns, leaving the scenery a little less than pristine. Along my way there was some lush greenness to savor, although there remained an unpleasantness due to very frequent stops, the unceasing bumpy-bump rhythm of the tracks, and the obnoxious porter who flirted continuously with an unwilling lady passenger.

Finally in Birmingham, Carmel met me at the station. One of her family members (I can’t recall which one) drove us to her Grandmother Lorene Slaughter’s home on the outskirts of the city. It was hot and mosquitoes were fearsome.

Lorene Slaughter

Mrs. Slaughter’s home was an oasis – with a “Welcome Home” feel and filled with love from room to room, and from corner to corner. As for Mrs. Slaughter, she was a pure pleasure to know. She had sparkling eyes and a great head of beautiful white hair. Her food was incredible – especially her homemade pimento cheese that rivaled my Granny Lankford’s. And her soul was huge – speaking in a Deep South dialect I’d only heard in movies.

She took me into her home as part of the family.

Carmel and I each had our own separate bedroom and very generous amounts of cool air blasting from the vents.

There was a little store around the corner where Carmel and I would walk. I'd buy her M&M's and we’d play the big quarter-fed Space Invaders video game machine. There was also a nearby park with a large pond where we would go exploring in the waning hours of those lazy afternoons.

Finally it came time for me to leave. I was missing home and by that time - much to her family’s chagrin – Carmel had agreed to return to North Carolina a couple of weeks later.

We had learned from the Schmidts that some of their friends – Joe and Cindy Pacileo – at that time, were in Gadsden, Ala. That’s about an hour or so by bus from Birmingham. The Pacileos were there visiting Joe’s relatives. They’d offered me a ride in their van from there as far as Boone. My momma, Willa Mae Lankford, said she’d pick me up there. And thus my return home was arranged.

Again, I was parting from my love. I watched her wave goodbye to me until the bus turned the corner and I could no longer see her.

I was heartbroken when the Pacileos retrieved me from the bus station in Gadsden. They are wonderful people. I remember Joe as being a collector of many great paperback Westerns and a great cook who puts raisins in his meatballs. Cindy - whose sweet smile would warm the coldest of hearts - is a well known artist, having created many forests of little sculptured critters over the years. My sister, Ellen, still has one of her tiny frogs.

As we started out for the Blue Ridge Mountains, I remember Cindy handing me their copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull to read on the way back. It was as if she knew exactly what I needed. I didn’t just read it, I devoured it. I never realized how much that little book would come to mean to me.

It wasn’t long before Carmel returned to Wilkes. We were married in August of that year in Momma’s living room in her home in Millers Creek with a few close relatives and friends there as witnesses. A year later, our first daughter, Jennifer, was born – on Aug. 22, 1983. Anna came on Dec. 22, 1988.

Carmel and I divorced, found other loves and married them. But as years passed, we again became good friends.

My Momma and Carmel truly loved each other. She and my sister, Ellen, also maintained a strong bond. I always loved Carmel, too, somewhere deep down inside — if nothing else but for the fact that she was the mother of two of my three wonderful daughters — the third being Gabriella, who is now 16. Carmel had four more daughters, Diana Pless, and Destiny, Cassidy, Samantha and, stepdaughter, Leslie Toliver.

Carmel’s girls: back, left to right, Leslie, Jennifer, Destiny, middle row: Samantha, Cassidy and Anna. My daughter Gabriella is in front. This photo was taken in 2012. Inset is a photo of Carmel’s daughter, Diana.

Carmel was born on Oct. 9, 1963. She died of pancreatic cancer on Sept. 6, 2014. Hospice had brought her home to Wilkes from Forsyth Hospital in Winston-Salem on a Friday afternoon to spend her final hours with her family. She was surrounded by daughters along with our little grandsons, Sammie and Charlie. Throughout the night, her husband, Ken Toliver – who has become one of my dearest friends – held her hand until she took her last breath the next morning.

That is certainly the truest of true love stories.

Carmel and her husband, Ken Toliver

Before Carmel died, she told her husband, Ken, that she wanted to be buried near my mother in the cemetery of Arbor Grove United Methodist Church in Purlear. He made sure that she was.

I know it sounds strange – or maybe I’d just never noticed a particular occurrence around here in September — but right after Carmel died, I saw dragonflies nearly everywhere I went. This past September (when I wrote the first draft of this column) I saw the reflection of one hovering in the glass of the front doors of The Record offices as I came into work. I thought it was going to follow me inside.

It is likely that dragonfly that brought Carmel and that period of time of our teenage years back to mind — the memories of my first love, that journey, and a little book entitled Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

I guess at that stage of our youths we are all trying to learn about life and flight.

Carmel, thank you for the two daughters you gave me and the entire beautiful family you helped create. May you always be carried on dragonfly wings.

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meganruiz1819 · 2 years

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I remember

Kent

Our minds fill up with amazing memories you’re able to reminisce on for the rest of your life. It’s all amazing to look back on and feel the youth be brought back to you. Although I’m not that old and can say I’ve made as many memories as the average person has, I can say I value the memories I’ve created in this short amount of time. Anytime I think back to my childhood I always find myself being brought back to a city in Kent located in Washington state, for about 5 years I was able to make so many wonderful memories that I still think about to this day. From pizza parties with the neighborhood kids, to riding bikes all around the apartment complex playing cops and robbers, there was never a dull moment when it came to playing outside or knocking on your friends door asking their parents for permission to come out and play. No matter how bad the weather was from cold windy mornings, snowy days, or rainy afternoons it would never stop us from wanting to play at the green fenced park that created most of these memories. As we got older more memories were created. I remember after a certain point I was able to get out of the green fenced park and explore more of what Kent had to offer. My favorite spot to be with my friends was in Kent station. It was near a community college that had a sort of outlet outside. We’d spend hours there either watching a movie in the AMC, window shopping, or just eating wings stop or Johnny rocket. Most of the time we’d take the public bus to get there or back home, if that wasn’t an option we would have to walk which was something we never cared how long it would take us to walk to and from somewhere as long as we were able to have a fun time but sometimes those walks were the fun part of the day. Although everyday was an adventure with my friends and I loved all the fun memories I got to make, they’d never compare to the ones I got to make with my family, especially my father. From playing ‘Just Dance’ every night with my siblings to my mom making Friday night pizza parties for us and the kids in the neighborhood. My parents always tried their best to have everyday be exciting and memorable for us. My father was always the one that took us out camping, hiking, kayaking, swimming, or just on road trips to see new amazing places. I’ve always thanked him for taking us out of our comfort zone,my mothers especially thankful, she loves talking about everything we got to do and how memorable those moments were. I’ve always loved how spontaneous my father was. I thank him for everything he taught me and my family, the love he showed us everyday he was the glue that held us together. Now anytime I think about Washington he’s the first person that pops in my mind. I remember how much he’d baby me and tell me I reminded him of his mother. I loved how he compared me to his mother because I knew how much he loved her. I remember him always falling asleep on the couch watching soccer, or his weekly talks with his father outside all the laughing he’d do and when he’d sing to him. We never had enough money to take me and my sisters to get our nails done so my father always gave us at home pedicures. They were my favorite days. Those little moments are always the one we should cherish the most. I know I'll remember and cherish them for the rest of my life.

Rationale- The purpose of this assignment was to write about memories that are dearest to you. Memories you remember and are able to talk about in a written poem. Some new things I learned from this assignment was how dear these memories truly were to me. I never realized how important and meaningful memories could be until I wrote this piece. Some challenges I faced was trying to pick some memories out of the hundreds I remember. Another challenge was trying to write every memory in a form that people could picture and understand how everything played out.

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venikamenon · 6 years

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Boundaries & The Men Who Did Not Respect Mine

In light of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, the #metoo movement, the accusations against powerful people in the entertainment industry in India, discussions around sexual assault have been inescapable. Here are a few instances that impacted my life profoundly.

This is going to be a little long and a little all over the place but strap in, because it’s an emotionally exhausting ride.

This story begins in 6th grade.

My maa and I were vacationing in Shimla, a north Indian mountain-covered city. On our last night there, we were waiting in a crowded bus station for our Volvo to depart.

I was wearing a white puffy jacket, given to me as a present by my American aunt and uncle, which automatically made it more special than all of my other jackets. I don’t remember anything about this vacation apart from what was about to happen, but I remember being happy. I remember smiling at all the other families that waited along with us. My mother, the sole provider for my family of five, was first and foremost a bad ass professional (a word I would not have been allowed to use back then), so when she was able to tear herself away from her work, it was a reason to celebrate.

I remember smiling at this man who was looking at me.

Me, I was 10-11 at the time.

I did not think anything of it in the moment. But pretty quickly, I realized this man was following my maa and I around. Every time I looked up – and I did have to look up as I was a short chubby child –, he was a few feet away. His face holding a smile and his eyes staring right at me, unwavering, unblinking, focused.

I remember feeling uncomfortable, not being able to breathe, and looking at my maa for help, but not being able to say anything.

Every time, I would turn my back to him, he would circle around us to be in my field of vision. Over and over again. No matter where I looked and how hard I tried to look away. I was frozen, stuck in a nightmare, unable to vocalize.

After what felt like an eternity, we finally boarded the bus. As I looked back one last time to check if I was safe, I was horrified to see him walk on after us. That was it. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t be trapped on this bus with this man for hours. I remember beginning to tear up, and whisper to my maa some incoherent words about this man following me and smiling at me.

She immediately stood up and screamed in the bus “THIS MAN IS HARASSING ME”. She didn’t ask me if I was sure, she didn’t ask me why I didn’t say something sooner, she didn’t ask if I had proof. She stood up and screamed “THIS MAN IS HARASSING ME” and in that moment, protected me and took the public burden off of me.

This man immediately ran out. No one on the bus said anything.

I don’t remember anything else from this whole trip, but I will never forget this man’s face and how this man made me feel. He made me feel dirty and ashamed, as if I had done something wrong. He made me want to rip my soul out of my body and put in in another new and unseen one.

Two things happened as a result of this. First, to the confusion of my mother, I refused to wear that white jacket again, even though it was the warmest, the fanciest and the favoritest jacket that I owned. I couldn’t separate that memory from the clothes I wore that night, no matter how irrational the connection. And if I couldn’t get rid of my body, this was the closest thing I could throw out.

Second, I stopped smiling at strangers.

All this and I’d never even been touched. I would not be able to prove anything in a court of law.

This was the first time the ether had whispered to me, beware of strange men – a recurring theme in every woman’s life, but particularly in India where the danger is “out there” (a notion with heavy classist connotations but that is for another time).

At 17, I moved to New York to pursue my education at a liberal progressive school with 70% women-identifying folk. A safe place.

At the end of my first week of school, a safe place, I called my maa and told her that one of my friends, in the room opposite of mine, had been raped by another student. Both of them were women. Anyone can be an abuser, but what was most shocking was that the abuser just dropped out the very next day of the case being filed with the school, so this person faced no consequences. However, this is not my story to tell.

I know this story does not fit neatly into the man-assualts-woman narrative, but the truth is messy and full of nuance. The other truths are that statistically, men are the primary perpetrators of interpersonal and sexual violence, and that almost all women know someone or have themselves been victims of sexual violence or harassment. It was the first time I witnessed an institution be unable to hold an abuser accountable.

My second year at college, I took an intermediary French class with Man Trash. Man Trash and I were friends, the way you are friends with someone in your class when you need to know when the next test is and what the homework is. We would often be in the same spaces because Man Trash was a good friend of one of the men in my Sophomore year crew. Man Trash was always funny, good at French and nice to me. But, when Man Trash expressed interest in one of my other friends, I became a little concerned. You see, I had heard through the grape vine that Man Trash had been accused of non-consensual touching. I looked into it a little further and found out that two women on separate occasions had brought up the fact that Man Trash had not respected their boundaries. So, when my friend expressed reciprocal interest in Man Trash, I had to confront him before things got any further.

Man Trash proceeded to tell me that it was all a misunderstanding, that alcohol was involved and that the school had already looked into it and they didn’t find anything. And I believed him.

I had been on the school’s Sexual Assault Task Force for a year at this point and had thorough insight into how flawed the investigative procedure could be. I had mocked these pathetic excuses of “alcohol” and “misunderstanding” for vile behaviour from men I didn’t know, mainly online, before.

And yet, I believed him because we had partied together, and he was always nice to me. He was my man friend’s good friend. He helped me with my French homework. I never tried to find out more details or to corroborate if what he told me was true.

A year later, while I studied in Paris my junior year, he raped another friend of mine. However, this is not my story to tell.

This was the first time I was complicit and was unable to hold an abuser accountable. I am so sorry to the women I failed by associating with this despicable human being and giving others the impression that he was safe to be around.

That year when I was in Paris, I used Tinder for the first time. The first Tinder date I went on was at a bar, and it went well. He offered to drop me home. Once we were in his car, he insisted that we go back to his place, even though I repeatedly said no. In a very calm voice, he kept insisting “let’s go to my place.” He did not shout. He did not act violent. But he kept driving away from my house. I was terrified. I finally said I was going to call my friends if he didn’t stop immediately. That’s when he reluctantly turned the car around. When I typically tell this story, it’s for a laugh: ha ha the one time I was almost kidnapped ha ha.

One of my closest NY friends – a man – has recently been encouraging me to get back on Tinder. I haven’t been able to explain to him why it’s just not for me. I can’t explain to him how trapped I felt in that car in Paris that one time. How suffocating it was to say no repeatedly and be talked over and ignored. I can’t separate that memory from that app, no matter how irrational the connection.

There isn’t even time for the story about the man who asked if he should send me a picture of his penis in the middle of our conversation about skateboarding, or the man who grabbed my butt on the train, the man who followed me on to campus one night when I got home too late etc.

As women, we are encouraged to either bear our souls and recount our most horrific experiences for the benefit of some men maybe perhaps kind of understanding our frustration and distrust of men a tiny bit, or move the fuck on with our lives because god forbid our emotions inconvenience you.

Here, I would like to clarify that in no way I’m saying what has happened to me is the same as sexual assault. Too many women I know have experienced way worse. My point being: women experience gross and blatant, sometimes traumatic, disregard for their boundaries all the time.

When my mother was first starting off her career, her boss gave her a few x-rated magazines to file. She quit shortly after.

When my high school friend was on the way to a birthday party with this boy we had both known for many years, he tried to grab her on the way there. He apologized to her years later and she may have forgiven him, but I never will.

A fellow college alum who graduated many years before me, recently wrote about how her abuser was trying to re-invent himself in the age of #metoo as a changed man, having never apologized to her or shown any repentance.

My favorite statistician, Mona Chalabi, finally reported someone she used to work with who regularly send her inappropriate messages.

I know there are other stories out there, but none of them are mine to tell. But in each of these cases, the perpetrators faced no lasting consequences.

I am using this to process and to collect my own thoughts. If you made it through to this part, I don’t have a neatly packaged message for you.

Sometimes, I want to scream till my lungs give out. Sometimes, I want to write till my laptop dies. Silence is no longer an option for many of us.

#brett kavanope #brett kavanaugh #dr blasey ford #believe women #me too #no means no #me too india

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