not being able to find older bf!simon around the house and while you’re looking for him, you catch something out the window-
nearly all the women in your neighbourhood gathered at the end of your driveway
you come outside to investigate only to find them with their attention glued to the front of your car, it’s not till you walk around the front you find the lower half of simon sticking out from under it
on his back, knees bent, massive boots planted into the concrete, bare arm occasionally stretching out to find another tool
“you alright, si?”
you hear him grunt before he’s calling out to you
“yeah, i’m right sweet’art- sortin’ out that bit thas’ been givin’ y’grief”
breaking your gaze from his massive thighs flexing under his jeans, you scan back over the crowd that’d formed
all of them married, all of them a good ten years older than even he was- you couldn’t really blame them really, you had eyes
you could hear him shuffling out from under the car before he suddenly straightened to full height, wiping greasy hands on the front of his old-white-singlet
he pulled up the bottom of it to swipe his forehead and you think you heard someone gasp
wrapping a firm arm around you, he gives your backside a pat before he kisses the top of your head
“got t’keep y’safe, y’know?”
“thank you, baby- now be polite and say hello to your audience”
oblivious as ever to anything other than you, simon threw a look over his shoulder before he followed you back into the house
“oh, ‘ello ladies”
(someone throws a street barbecue and you force simon to talk to the other men around the burner and multiple husbands request him to start “doing that shit” in the garage with the door shut, please)
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because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.
you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.
you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.
don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.
if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.
you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:
how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!
aren't you happy yet?
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it appears 2024 will continue the trend of art companies proudly representing themselves with the use of art theft generators [aka, AI generators]
original tweet is now deleted, but wacom used a generated image of a dragon for their 2024 lunar new year promo on twitter.
if you're shopping for art tablets, huion, artisul, and XPPen tablets do just as good a job as their wacom equivalents for less, sometimes even half the price.
when you buy a wacom you're paying almost exclusively for the Brand Name, not any actual quality.
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