#patrick and john are also cops | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

thoughtportal · 7 months ago

Text

esquire.com

The Invisible Man

Patrick Fealey

50–63 minutes

A.D. 2024—The United States

Twenty-seven degrees in a Port-A-Jon, the seat freezing my ass. I’m in the dark with a little flashlight. Chemically treated feces and urine splash up onto my anus. The wind howls, shaking the plastic structure. My hands go numb.

3:00 a.m., parked in a public lot across the street from the town beach in Westerly, Rhode Island. Just woke up, sleep evasive. It’s my first week out here. I pour an iced coffee from my cooler. I’m walking around the front of the Toyota I’m now living in when a car pulls into the lot, comes toward me. I see only headlights illuminating my fatigue and the red plastic party cup in my hand. Must be a cop. Someone gets out and approaches. It is a cop, young. I’m not afraid, exactly, but I’m also not yet used to being homeless.

“How you doing?” he says.

“Good.”

“Just hanging out?”

“Yes.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“Do you need anything?”

“No.”

“Okay. Just checking. Have a good night.”

In the morning, I awake with back pain. Sleeping in the driver’s seat will be an acquired skill.

Sun-bleached fences wrap the perimeter of the dunes, blown over by the unrelenting winds off the cold Atlantic. I park at the beach most days and have spent all but one night here. Lovely Lady Lily, the sweet and wild angel with fur, is with me. The entire backseat is hers and she is adjusting to the car well, because I’m here and we are close. Her daily routine has improved in some ways. When we lived in the house, she snoozed on the couch, walked in the yard, and got to the beach, her favorite place, a couple times a week. Now she runs on the beach several times a day, hunting the tide line for shellfish. She crunches down crabs and tears the meat out of quahogs. And if there’s a fish? She found a single minnow on a beach two miles long.

The author was a reporter and arts critic for outlets including The Boston Globe and Reuters. Today he fills notebooks with novels, poetry, and stories. His guitar is sometimes a desk. (He props it upside down on his lap.)

My morning routine is taking gabapentin (an anti-seizure medication that also alleviates psychic and neuropathic pain and brightens my perception), lamotrigine (another anti-seizure medicine, but for me it helps my mental energy and cuts through fog, because gabapentin creates fog), fluoxetine (Prozac, an antidepressant), and Adderall (for focus and energy, because after the manic depression struck in 1997, my brain was a flat tire), walking the beach with Lily, getting coffee at the Mobil station up the road, and writing on an HP laptop I got two months ago that has already had one power-input jack fail. It sits on an upside-down acoustic guitar resting on my lap, a 12V/120V converter plugged into the lighter with the car running. I play the guitar first thing every morning, songs I’ve written. The rest of the day, I flip it over and it’s my desk.

When we’re on the beach early, we usually see John. Lily used to jump on his legs, and he didn’t like it. He’s about seventy and has the bearing and haircut of a military person. He walks the beach looking for sea glass.

I’m parked in the public lot across from the beach, sitting in the front passenger seat, working on a novel. An SUV police cruiser pulls in front of me, parks close, at an angle, as if to block me from a would-be escape. This officer is a young blond woman in a bulletproof vest with a pistol strapped to her abdomen. She says, ��We received some calls. People are concerned.”

“Yes?”

“They see you out here and are concerned.”

She doesn’t say who these “concerned” people are, but the only ones who can see me are the owners of large beachfront houses. Maybe they’re looking out their $3 million windows and seeing the consequences of their avarice.

“What are your plans for the day?” she says.

The author in his car.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

She’s trying to get me to move along, but the lot is open to the public from dawn to dusk. I have every right to be here.

“Write,” I say.

“What do you write?”

“Literary fiction. I was a reporter.”

“Anywhere I know?”

“The Boston Globe.”

Her eyes open wide and she tosses her head back in recognition. She realizes I’m not dissolute and not a threat. She asks for my license and calls it in. Dispatch lets her know I have no criminal record or outstanding warrants.

“Do you need anything?” she says.

“Do you know if the homeless shelter will let me take a shower?”

She asks dispatch to call the shelter. Dispatch comes back. She says, “Yes.”

“Good,” I say. “Thanks.”

“You can’t stay here at night,” she says. “You can stay at Walmart, in the back parking lot.”

“Okay.”

She gives me her card. She leaves. I stay. I have every right to be here.

I go to Walmart that night and will sleep there every night. But the police will continue to come as if I’m some kind of one-man crime wave. Before I’m chased out of Westerly, I will meet, stand my ground, and lose ground to a dozen different officers, often at night, banging on my window and waking me just to ask, “Are you all right?” The question begins to sound like a pretense.

The officers are civil, but every encounter causes me apprehension and stress. I’m innocent of any wrongdoing, but the interaction between a citizen and law enforcement is unbalanced by nature. They are part of an apparatus that can take away a person’s freedom. I know it, and they certainly know it. When you’re homeless, you are even more vulnerable. You have no place to go, no kitchen table to sit at while you drink your beer, invisible to them. You’re always on their turf. It’s unnerving.

The author in Rhode Island.

I rented a beach house in Westerly for a year and a half. It had a chalet roof, high ceilings. Nice. I was most often alone, my then-girlfriend working in New York. Lily and my girlfriend’s dachshund were entertaining company, chasing each other around the house at top speed or snoozing on the couch while I wrote all day—freelance art criticism, newspaper articles, and novels. I ate takeout, mostly.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Early on, I write an email to Westerly police chief Paul Gingerella to introduce myself. I inform him I am a writer and recently became homeless. I tell him I feel his officers are trying to unlawfully disperse me. I ask him to treat me as “who I am and not as what people fear I am.”

He writes back, invites me to come to his office or call to discuss the ordinances his officers are enforcing. I had also mentioned drug deals going down in the Walmart parking lot. When he took office, he stated that a priority was fighting fentanyl.

I don’t call or visit.

A sunny afternoon. I’m in the passenger seat, writing. The 2013 Corolla has been reliable since I bought it in 2019. It holds all that I need for daily life and makes for a decent workplace.

A police officer approaches the car on the driver’s side. Very short, he looks overwhelmed by his bulletproof vest and all that’s attached to it. Cops these days don’t look like they’re here for domestic law-enforcement duties. They’re equipped for martial law.

The cop asks me what I’m doing.

“Writing.”

“We got a complaint.”

“The chief knows I’m here.”

“Who’s that?” he says, a quiz.

“Gingerella.”

His face eases somewhat, but his smirk is fixed.

He’s looking at my hand. I’m rubbing my thumb and forefinger together. The involuntary motion is tardive dyskinesia, a side effect of the bipolar medication.

He says, “Do you have Parkinson’s?”

“No.”

“Do you have any health problems?”

By now I’m guessing they have investigated me enough to know I receive Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). That’s probably where this question is coming from. As far as I know, the Social Security Administration doesn’t make public one’s ailments. I say no, to avoid the potential discrimination that people with mental-health challenges face, but add that “I do have chronic renal insufficiency,” to satisfy his suspicion that something’s not right.

He doesn’t understand.

“Kidney disease.”

“How do you get your money?”

“Assistance.”

“Call us if you need anything.”

Statistics vary by source, but last year there were a record-high 650,100 homeless people in the United States, many of them suffering mental illness and substance-abuse issues. Of course, most citizens suffering mental illness and substance-abuse issues are not homeless.

One of the primary causes of homelessness, obviously, is a lack of affordable housing. Wages have not kept up with escalating real estate values and rents, especially in major cities.

Lily is a rescue dog Fealey adopted in 2020, and they have not been apart since, constant companions. She was found tied to a fence in the summer heat, homeless.

The number of homeless people has grown significantly over the past couple decades. An advocacy group in New York says that the rate there is the highest it’s been since the Great Depression. Across the country, most homeless people are male and almost half of us are white. Rates are much higher among non-white populations, with Pacific Islanders, Indigenous people, and Blacks all experiencing homelessness in disproportionate numbers. Twenty-two out of every ten thousand veterans are homeless.

In 1997, I was a twenty-nine-year-old award-winning art critic and journalist when I was stricken by a violent and disabling onset of manic depression. Bipolar I, rapid-cycling/mixed state, the most severe form of the genetic disorder and often fatal (by suicide). My psychiatrist actually said to me, “You are the worst manic depressive I have ever seen.” Together, we developed a unique cocktail of eight medications that enables me to function and has kept me alive for twenty-seven years.

The condition is a torturous gift, one imparting vision, and manic depressives historically succeed in all fields of human activity, from medicine to art. Theodore Roethke described these blessed sufferers as possessing “nobility of soul.”

The medications that save my life can be blanching. I am often tired. My kidneys are functioning at 30 percent, resulting in malaise and fatigue. It’s difficult to make it through the day without rest. Working in the high-stress, fast-paced world of newspapers was no longer possible. Before the crash, I had a lot of energy, was working on a novel and short stories while reporting for two newspapers and Reuters. (I attended the University of Rhode Island undergrad and Humboldt State University for journalism school.) I acquired the ability to remember every word spoken during an interview. Light hurt my eyes and my hearing became acute. I was jamming with a jazz band and saw the notes as animated apparitions flying before my eyes. Total breakdown struck me overnight. I went to bed feeling good and in the morning was paralyzed in darkness, staring at the white walls. Wallpaper was painful to look at. When I lit a match, it flashed as big as a blowtorch, and I could hear it burning and hissing.

I called my editors at Reuters and The Boston Globe and The Narragansett Times, where I had been the art critic, and told them, at the very least, I needed a break. I haven’t returned.

I tried to work in other settings, but I couldn’t master the computer at a retail job and was fired by a house-painting company for painting too slowly. I worked as a laborer on a vineyard, but I could work only two days a week and the longest I lasted was six hours. On one of those days in the sun, I collapsed to the ground unconscious.

I receive $960 a month from SSDI. I should have $32 a day, but my needs, and a few wants, are debiting my account. Gas is costing $10 to $15 a day, food is $5 to $8 a day, coffee $7, beer $9, ice $45 a month, nicotine patches $86 a month, and jugs of spring water $80 a month. Other incidentals like toilet paper add up. Living as minimally as I know how, I’m not making it. I’m losing weight I don’t have to lose. I quit smoking and went on the patch to save money. Alcohol is the buffer a sensitive soul needs to withstand the crimes of a race—the human race—that has proved itself ungrateful and homicidal.

The toughest parts of homelessness have been surviving the poverty and the marginalization, discrimination, and hostility from the non-homeless population. It’s usually subtle, this hostility. People pull in to visit the lighthouse or the beach or wherever I am, see me, and immediately park somewhere else. All day long.

They are so afraid. I know I look disheveled, but I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with me intellectually or spiritually. I know I could look better, but I just don’t see what the big deal is.

I live on Jif-and-Smucker’s-strawberry-jam sandwiches. At first, I ate bologna-and-cheese sandwiches, but the ice in the cooler melts within a day, and the bologna floated around in the water, turning pale and slippery.

I keep the food in the trunk, with my clothes. I make the sandwiches there, on top of a suitcase. I spread the peanut butter on sliced Italian bread thickly, thicker than frosting on a cake. I use so much jam, some falls out. I make it a meal.

In the Westerly town-beach lot, late afternoon, the air is getting cold. I’m standing at the trunk, bread on the suitcase, a jar of peanut butter in my hand, when a red SUV pulls in beside me. A woman climbs out, in her forties, long black hair. She sees me with the peanut butter. Most people look worried and afraid when they see me eating out of my trunk.

Fealey’s $960 a month in Social Security Disability Insurance goes primarily to food and gas—he can never park in one place for long before the police tell him to drive someplace else, plus he runs the car to power his laptop and for heat. And it goes to beer.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

“Do you want the other half of my meatball sub?” she says. “Nothing beats PB&J, but you might want something different. I just went out with a friend. It’s still hot.”

I’m surprised by her kindness. “Yes,” I say.

She retrieves a carton from the car.

“Thank you,” I say.

She walks for the beach. Does she know I’m homeless? Maybe she’s seen me here before. She will be the only person in six months to offer help.

I sit in the driver’s seat and eat. I chew carefully. Four teeth hurt too much to chew solid food. The sub comes with potato chips. I try to eat them but can’t take the pain. I’ve lost nearly half my teeth since I became disabled twenty-seven years ago. I can’t afford dental care. When a problem has arisen, such as when I needed a root canal, I’ve had the tooth pulled at a clinic that charges patients on a sliding scale. One of my essential medications, gabapentin, has been linked to tooth loss.

Shortly before I became homeless—a period of mounting worry in which my appearance suffered—a tooth on the upper right began to hurt. It was excruciating to touch with a toothbrush. Then an agonizing pain developed in my lower-left jaw. The jaw swelled. Two teeth toward the front began to ache. I couldn’t eat anything. I couldn’t touch the teeth. I developed a fever. I shook, lost control of my body. I made an emergency appointment at the clinic. I resigned myself to the idea I would lose the two teeth. An assistant took X-rays of the two lower-left teeth, the most painful place, where my jaw was swollen. At my request, she X-rayed the tooth on the upper right.

The dentist came in and sat behind me. He said nothing. I couldn’t see him. Was he going to examine me?

He finally wheeled over on his chair. He was holding the familiar sharp, metal hook. He didn’t ask what the problem was. I told him about the two teeth on the lower left. He said nothing. He didn’t make eye contact. He approached with the tool. I opened my mouth. He looked, touched one lower-left tooth very quickly and lightly. He didn’t test for a cavity. He didn’t check any other teeth.

“You have tartar buildup, but I don’t see anything,” he said.

“The pain is severe,” I said.

“I don’t know why.”

He wheeled away and turned, his back to me again, and looked at a computer. He said, “The X-ray doesn’t show anything.”

“No cavities?” I said.

“No cavities. No abscess. Look.”

I turned to see. The X-ray showed one white tooth in an ocean of black. It was an upper tooth. He barely touched it, withdrew the metal hook, and didn’t say anything. I was too deranged by excruciating pain to ask him to do more before he began to conclude the examination.

Finally, I said, “Do you see the swelling on my face?”

“No,” he said.

I raised my voice and said, “You don’t?”

“Maybe a little.”

My left jaw was twice the size of my right.

I realized the problem: He believed I was drug-seeking. He must have seen this all the time. He made his judgment immediately. He wanted the vagabond out of there. I got a cursory examination and denial of suffering. He was not going to offer pain medication.

I said, “I was a newspaper reporter. The reason I’m poor is I was stricken by severe manic depression. My teeth are bad because I can’t afford dental.”

He turned to his computer. He typed and looked for a while. Clicked the mouse. What was he doing? It occurred to me that he may have been Googling me. Was I telling the truth? Was I a reporter? He was on the computer for two minutes, reading in silence.

He wheeled his stool back to my side and looked me in the eye. Now respectful, he said, “I don’t see anything, but I can give you antibiotics.”

Gas is costing Fealey $10 to $15 a day, food is $5 to $8 a day, coffee $7, beer $9, ice $45 a month, nicotine patches $86 a month, and jugs of spring water $80 a month.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

I picked up the antibiotics at CVS. He also prescribed ibuprofen. The pain overwhelmed consciousness. I saw dancing white lights. The maximum daily dose of ibuprofen didn’t alleviate the pain. I alternated it with the maximum daily dose of Tylenol. I could tolerate the pain for the first two hours after each dose. Then it surged. I couldn’t sleep through the night.

By the third day of antibiotics, my chin had ballooned. I pressed it. It was hard. A stream of pus shot out horizontally and hit the rearview mirror. My jaw was infected. Soon after, I saw my internist and shared the story of my dental experience. He said it was an abscess.

My jaw recovered, but the two lower teeth remain too sensitive to chew on. I have not been brushing my teeth out here. I could brush some of them, but it’s difficult to avoid the ones that hurt. I rinse my mouth with antiseptic mouthwash several times a day and before going to sleep.

Three months later, I awake in the car to a sudden pain in the tooth farthest back on the upper left. I look in the mirror. It’s split in half. The pain is severe. The inside half is loose. I can’t chew on the left side. I now have three upper teeth and two lower teeth I can’t chew on.

Eating is torture.

The American flag flies over Walmart. When I was young, I was proud of and found comfort in the flag. I felt fortunate to have been born in the United States of America, where every life mattered. I still believe this.

Many men and women fought and died for what the flag represents, freedom and democracy. My father was rocketed and shot at in Southeast Asia and came home a bomb waiting to explode. His nervous system was shattered. He could go from laughing to rage instantaneously. He wasn’t like this before the war.

As the police instructed, I sleep in the car in the Walmart parking lot. I park where they said to, in back of the building near where people pick up orders and the semis come in to unload. Inside I shop for food, including the occasional tuna fish and deli chicken for Lily, and nicotine patches. I use the restroom.

I begin parking at Walmart in November. The masses flood the lot to shop for the holidays. People drive fast in the lot, as aggressively as they do on the roads, whipping in and out of empty spaces while pedestrians walk in the low fluorescent glow. They make me nervous. People are economically squeezed, the stress of everyday survival and the fear of uncertain futures turning into hostility. Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and many have no emergency savings—they are one crisis from homelessness. A job loss or an unexpected illness and they are where I am. They are on edge, driving bigger and faster and louder cars—a society speeding along as it disintegrates.

The store plays bland, agitating covers of classic Christmas songs, which are piped out to the parking lot.

It snows, a light covering, and turns cold, in the low 20s. The ground freezes solid.

I recline the driver’s seat every night and sleep on my back under a fleece blanket. I have a pillow. I begin to awaken cold and shivering, coughing. I start the car and turn on the heat. As the season progresses, I have to run the car every night and even during the day at the beach. Gas consumption surpasses what I budgeted for.

My girlfriend, Lane, gives me everything she can, sharing in the struggle.

She is the front-desk supervisor at a four-star boutique hotel by the beach in Narragansett. A night there can cost hundreds of dollars, even $1,000 with all the add-ons. She lives with her parents. She can’t afford a place of her own. Her monthly earnings are equal to the rent on a one-bedroom apartment. She is forty-nine and has been in the service industry for thirty years. Her hotel is highly ranked by some of the travel magazines and she regularly receives notes of appreciation from guests. She earns five dollars above minimum wage, the same as the dishwashers in the hotel’s failing restaurant.

I became homeless on October 16, 2023.

My devotion to literary work combined with the disabling manic depression sent me to the periphery for much of the past two decades—twenty rooms in eighteen cities coast to coast, banging out novels on a 1939 Smith Corona and fighting off insane rabble, wallowing in a stupidity they were unaware of.

I managed to avoid the street for twenty-six years after my diagnosis. The idea of homelessness was terrifying. When I faced it in 2019, I thought of which warm states I could go to and live in my car, and I had visions of which bridge I would jump off. I saw myself at the railing, looking down at the water, climbing over. Homelessness looked worse than death.

Fealey’s life is laid out in front of him, all the time. A bag of dog food, the PB&Js.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Then? A miracle. I met a wealthy entrepreneur while working on his vineyard and he liked my writing and he helped me. He said he would help me find a literary agent. I bought the Toyota and I could rent an apartment. I adopted Lily. She is my first dog. We have been together every moment since Lane and I signed the papers three and a half years ago. Lily was found tied to a fence in the August Texas heat, skeletal, with mange, flies buzzing her. Since then, she has gained twenty-eight pounds and become a most engaging, agile, and sensitive creature.

In 2023 the man ended his support “for financial reasons.” He didn’t help me find an agent.

We walk on the beach, Lily trotting ahead, nose down, looking for seafood. She chases seagulls, breaks into a sprint. The birds are wary, see how fast she is, and take flight. Running at speed, she once caught a seagull as it was taking off. She let it go but broke its wing.

Lily and I wrestle daily. She leaps in the air, going after my arm. I let her seize it in her sharp teeth and push her away with enough force to throw her off balance. She charges back, leaps for my arm. I withdraw it and she misses and falls back to the ground. She jumps in the air and grabs it. She restrains herself and doesn’t hurt me too much but has torn the sleeves of two leather jackets and a hoodie, and drawn blood. She’s smiling and I’m laughing as we battle ourselves breathless.

I drive over to the Warm Center, a shelter in Westerly. Inside, it is dark. A few resident men sit in chairs in the small front room watching TV. I ask about the shower and one tells me it’s in back. I walk through the room where they sleep. About a dozen scattered mattresses without headboards fill the small, dark room, close to each other. The beds are unmade. These people have no light and no privacy. An obese man in a wheelchair says hello. I say hi.

In the bathroom, one shower of two is functioning. A man comes into the bathroom. He seems determined about something, yet is sheepish. He doesn’t use the bathroom. He stands, glancing at me as I undress.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

I shower. I stand under water as hot as I can tolerate. Heat hits my body, nirvana. Water has never been so comforting. I emerge calm, but energized.

He types on an HP laptop plugged into a converter in his Toyota’s lighter with the car running.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

I dry off with the towel I brought and change into clean clothes, which I typically either take to a laundromat or Lane washes at her parents’ house. Passing through the sleeping room, a man sitting on a bed says, “Believe me, I will fuck you up.” I walk out barefoot into the cold and put my dirty clothes in a plastic bag in the trunk. I find socks.

“Can you give me a ride?” a man says from across the street.

“No.”

I first called the Warm Center a few days before I became homeless. My goal was financial assistance to help pay for food and gas. The first woman I talked to referred me to another woman. I talked to her briefly and she said she couldn’t help me until I talked to an intake coordinator. I called him and asked about the assistance for food and gas. He didn’t reply to that request but mentioned the seasonal shelter. He said he couldn’t get me in until I talked to the state. I called the state’s central intake—they put homeless people into a database. The man, who said he was pessimistic, suggested a shelter in the city. I declined.

I called back the coordinator at the Warm Center.

“I can probably get you into the seasonal shelter,” he said.

“I have a dog,” I said.

“Male or female?”

“Female.”

“How old is she?”

“Three and a half. She’s sweet and loves people.”

“That won’t be a problem. I’ll call you when the seasonal shelter opens.”

“My cheap phone has never allowed me access to my voicemail.”

“Can you receive texts?”

“I won’t see them. You can email me.”

He said skeptically, “You’re living in your vehicle?”

“Yes.”

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

He never emailed me and, to my knowledge, didn’t call.

That is okay.

The despair in the shelter is contagious, and it wouldn’t be ideal for Lily. In the car, we have autonomy and privacy. In the car, no one is gawking at my junk or wanting to fuck me up.

We sleep in the Walmart parking lot for two months. During this time, police intervene half a dozen times, always in the middle of the night, when I’m asleep.

They bang on the driver’s-side window, awakening us, and shine bright lights in my face, just to ask, “Are you okay?”

I was okay before you woke me up.

The police are the ones who told me to go the Walmart parking lot. I park where they instructed. They know I’m here and see me in the same spot every day and night. Chief Gingerella knows who I am, that I have no criminal record, am a professional and productively engaged, am not a threat and keep to myself. When I’m asleep, I’m not visible, and my car is parked among other cars. They know which car is mine and come, and come, and come, systematically robbing me of peace and a sense of well-being.

In the early-morning hours on Christmas, I am jarred out of sleep by banging on glass. I sit up and lower the window. A police officer beams a light in my face and into the car. He is a young blond in a watch cap and a ski mask. The air is bitter cold and I see his breath as he says someone called the police. He implies the caller feared I had committed suicide. The alleged caller saw the car running, and it is Christmas, which I know is a popular day to kill yourself. I assure him I want to stay alive.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

“The car is running so I can stay warm,” I say.

He says, “Okay.”

Then he says, “Can I have your phone number? I always ask. I’m not going to use it or anything.”

Half asleep and dazed, I give him my number. In the morning, I think about it. Why did he ask for my phone number? I didn’t have to give it to him. There is only one reason I can think of that he would want my phone number, which is so that the police could install some kind of stalkerware on my phone, to track me.

I look again at the flag above Walmart, a store packed with imported goods that has made its owners among the richest people on earth. People squeezed from both ends come to Walmart, where prices are lower. Their money goes into the pockets of the Waltons. But the more the Waltons take, the less people will have to spend until, eventually, they have nothing at all.

Fealey has always been a reader and a writer.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Late morning, parked in my spot, I am writing. A man and woman approach the car on the driver’s side. They look in at me, don’t come too close. They wear blue uniforms with badges sewn onto their chests. I roll down the window. They look afraid.

Walmart security.

“You have to move,” the man says. “We’ve let you stay here for a while.”

“The police told me I could be here,” I say.

“The police don’t own this property. I do.”

I give him a look.

“Okay, Walmart does,” he says.

“Okay,” I say. “Do you know of any other places?”

“You can try the old Benny’s parking lot. Nobody’s there.”

The police chased me out of the beach parking lot. Now Walmart. I’m running out of places to sleep, and to be.

The definition of homeless is we have no home, no place to go. If “I think, therefore I am” is true, we are people who are. We are, and we stand on this ground. If you deny us ground, you are denying us our “I am.” Isn’t that negation of our existence? We are here and we are you and we are yours.

Many of you could be where we are—on the street—but for some simple and not uncommon twist of fate. This is part of your rejection, this fear that it could be you. You deny that reality because it is too horrific to contemplate, therefore you must deny us. And the moneyed reject us because they know they create us, that we are a consequence of their impulse to accumulate more than they need, rooted in a fear of life and the death that comes with it. Nothing good comes of fear, only destruction, and America has become a society of fear, much of that fear cultivated to divide and control.

A few months into homelessness, my feet begin hurting and the bottoms and sides turn red. It’s a deep pain and I don’t know what it is, but it hurts too much to walk normally. Maybe it’s circulation. The pain awakens me in the morning. I buy Neosporin and coat the affected areas every night. Neosporin cures a lot of things! After a week, the redness and pain subside. I stop the Neosporin. A month later, the pain returns. I’ll have to see my internist, who I already owe for unpaid co-pays. I also owe money to the psychiatrist who saved my life and I receive letters at Lane’s parents’ house, where I get my mail, from his office manager. I’ve known my doctor since 1997. If I lose him, I will be in a bad spot, because he is the only one who understands how my unorthodox medication regimen works.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

I move on.

I drive eighteen miles north on Route 1 to South Kingstown. This part of the state is where I grew up and went to college. My parents moved us here from New York City in 1968. It’s pricey now and I struggled to be here when I was supported, but it’s home

My childhood must have looked normal from the outside. I grew up on an island off Newport, a nice place to grow up. Ocean, beach, fishing, woods. Good for an adventurous kid. My mother was a nurse and my father was an engineer and an inventor. He could be abusive. He was abused by his mother when he was a child. I think he resented how my sister and I changed his life, and while he was mechanically brilliant—one of his inventions was advertised during the Super Bowl—he only had empathy for frogs and lizards.

My parents never gave us money, not even when we were kids. The unspoken rule was “Don’t ask.” I began cutting lawns and working on boats very young. Today my mother, and my sister and her family, live in northern Rhode Island. My sister drives a Lexus SUV and owns a house, but she has her own set of challenges. She and I have just begun to see each other for the occasional lunch after years of distance. I don’t want to ask her for anything.

The first night in South Kingstown, we sleep in the town-beach parking lot. It’s an isolated area of Matunuck, a quiet hamlet on the sea. The gravel lot is enveloped in tall hedges and trees. There are no houses in sight, and in all the years I have come here, I have never seen police in the lot.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

It is very dark.

Nobody else is here and the night passes calmly. In the morning, Lily and I spend time on the beach. The day is uneventful, a relief.

That night, I park in the same lot, but farther in, out of sight of anyone who might pull in.

9:00 p.m. I’m writing when a bright light shines from behind and on the left side of my car. I turn and see the searchlight on a police cruiser. An officer walks toward my car. Closing in, he puts his hand on his gun.

I roll down the window. He looks in.

“You can’t be here,” he says.

“Okay,” I say. “I will leave.”

“Can I have your phone number?” he says.

“No.”

“It’s just in case if we need to call you.”

“Why would you need to call me? I know it’s legal for you to install tracker software.”

“Okay.”

A second officer appears, leaning toward the window. He’s big and has a shaved head.

He says, “We can cite you for parking here at night. The ordinance allows parking dawn to dusk. You’ll have to go to court and pay a fine. Or you can give us your phone number. That’s a small price to pay, a fair trade.”

Statistics vary by source, but last year there were a record-high 650,100 homeless people in the United States.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

When I was a kid, police officers were our friends. When I was a reporter, they were men who surfed and played in bands when they were younger. They were not out to ruin your day, or your life. They enforced the law with a sound sense of context.

We have never seen police in this lot. Many people stay after dark, in no hurry to leave. Two weeks ago, I was here until 2:00 a.m. talking to Lane. Common sense and courtesy says that if police found people parking after dark, they would simply ask them to leave.

I look at the cop with the shaved head. He actually believes he’s right. How do people get this far apart? We are arguably of the same class and live in the same town. He has no idea my empathy is with him.

I believe they will cite me. I can’t afford to go to court and pay a fine. I give them my phone number.

How did they know I was here?

Lane sometimes gets us a room for a night or two at a chain hotel on Route 1. The last time we did this, I arrived first with Lily on a leash. The looks on the faces of the women behind the desk reminded me I was rough around the edges. I needed a shave and shower. My hair was disheveled. I had been wearing the same clothes for days, living in a car. Every day, dirt and sweat made my clothes baggier. I was wearing a blue hoodie that needed to be washed.

A few nights later, I sleep at the park-and-ride on the highway. At night, coyotes howl in the nearby woods. Semis roar past. Raccoons emerge from the darkness to rifle through the garbage. Lily growls. In the morning, I go to the Mobil across the highway, get coffee, and use the restroom. Finding bathrooms is a never-ending quest.

The park-and-ride can be a despairing place. It sits next to a stoplight, and cars accelerate at unnecessary rates when the light turns green, blasting aggression out dual exhaust pipes. I witnessed an opiate overdose, a man sprawled on his back unresponsive who was saved by two doses of Narcan. The ground is littered with trash, beer cans and cups, discarded food, and full garbage bags that have been dumped. It pains me to walk a dignified dog here.

The woods adjacent to the park-and-ride are nice. There are paths back there that Lily likes to walk, sniffing out the rabbits and deer, raccoons and coyotes. Sometimes she tracks down a rabbit and it bolts. Once I went back there to relieve myself and was startled by a flock of turkeys that I surprised. They yelled at me and stood their ground, a giant tom staring with his beautiful tail feathers fanned open.

In the morning, the panhandlers arrive in a green dual-cab pickup. It has a Connecticut license plate. They work during the day, standing on a median, showing cardboard signs to drivers stopped at the traffic light on the road that connects to the highway.

“Homeless. Anything helps. Thank you.”

Their clothes are worn and dirty, and so are their faces. They do not smile. Their speech is profane. They walk between stopped cars staring at people with menacing eyes, as if they’re trying to scare them out of their money. They must have some success, because they always come back.

Sometimes they spend the night and sleep sitting upright in their truck, which runs poorly and is loud. The driver is the leader of the operation. He’s an older man with long blondish-white hair who never looks anyone in the eye. He never panhandles. He rarely gets out of the truck. They defer to him. Lane and I joke that they are the panhandler mafia.

One morning, I’m at the park-and-ride and writing. The sun is bright and it’s a warm day for February. I hang my black rain jacket in the window to block the sun from shining on the computer screen. I hear a loud voice outside the window. I turn and see a cop.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

“Roll down the window,” he says authoritatively and impatiently. He’s a muscular guy.

I throw a hat over the beer by my side. I roll down the window.

“What are you doing?” he says.

“Writing a novel.”

He’s thrown.

I say, “My name is Patrick Fealey. I’ve lived here fifty years. I was a reporter for The Narragansett Times. I am homeless.”

“You’re staying here?”

“Yes.”

“It’s my job to know who’s here and what’s going on. Can I have your license?”

I give it to him. I wait, hoping he won’t tell me to leave. This spot has been all right and I don’t know where I’d go.

The cop returns with another cop. He hands me my license.

“Are you on assistance?” says the second cop, a young balding blond with a pleasant face.

“I just applied for Medicaid.”

“Have you tried the Welcome House?”

“I take showers there.”

“Have you tried Tri-County?”

“No. What is it?”

“They can help you with food and other things.”

These officers are trying to help. They don’t tell me to leave.

The 2013 Corolla has been reliable since Fealey bought it in 2019.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

I call Tri-County to ask what assistance is available for the homeless. After navigating its extensive employee roster, I am able to leave a voicemail message. A woman calls back and says she can’t help, but will give my name to a woman who can. She calls soon after, speaks to me in an indifferent, lecturing voice. She rattles off the programs I don’t qualify for because I don’t have a dwelling before finally saying I can get food at its pantry. She mentions canned goods and other foods I can’t prepare. That’s it. I don’t go because driving there would use more gas than it’s worth.

It’s becoming clear how little help there is for the homeless. Here’s how things look from my car: Assistance doesn’t reach low enough. The social-services net is wide and catches many, but not the person living on the street. I asked the Warm Center, which specifically addresses homelessness, for ten dollars a day to help pay for the gasoline that keeps us alive and they responded with a hard silence.

We are all alone out here.

Back at the park-and-ride in South Kingstown. One night, a panhandler climbs out of the back of the truck. He zips up his fly. A woman comes out behind him. A prostitute? In the morning, she hangs around for a while.

She returns three days later.

She’s a faded beauty. Some wrinkles, a distraught expression, a great body in blue jeans. I recognize her. From where? When? I think about her. About noon, it comes to me. She lived across the hall from me in a Newport boarding house in the early 2000s. She was intelligent and soft-spoken, kept to herself, was a good neighbor until she met a woman. The two embarked on a romantic relationship. The woman moved in. Taller and weightier, the woman was an extrovert who tried to assert dominance in conversation.

Fealey can’t imagine moving away from the local beaches.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

They fought. Bad fights. One night, I heard a body slammed into the wall. Screaming, running, the body slammed into the wall again. I opened my door. There was blood on the floor outside their door. The fight went on. One was beating the hell out of the other. I called police. The police arrived and broke it up. They were evicted.

Years later, I was at a soup kitchen when a woman accosted me. It was the bigger woman.

Now my old neighbor is in this park-and-ride with the panhandlers. How did she hook up with them? Where does she live? Does she recognize me? But she is not the same. She sits in the truck all day, nodding. When she comes out, her head is down and she moves slowly. She has a habit.

It’s Monday, February 19. I have $20 to make it to the end of the month. It’s a leap year, too. An oil change, paid for in cash, wiped me out. Lane said she can help on Thursday, when she gets paid.

The minimum I need for a day is $20. I pay for coffee and food with my supplemental nutrition card—food stamps. I receive $160 a month. It was more when I wasn’t homeless and was paying rent. Lily has plenty of Blue chicken-and-rice dog food and we have a gallon of spring water. I have enough peanut butter and jam. But gas and beer are everyday expenses. I’ve needed to run the engine for heat. The $20 will go toward gas. But the gas will not last until Thursday. I will run the car as little as possible. I will go to sleep without heat, under the blanket. We will not be driving anywhere. No beach for the next two days. I will go without beer. I will withdraw, experience agitation and depression, sweat and shake.

Time for a PB&J.

I finally meet with the housing coordinator at the Warm Center. She is an older woman, her long gray hair braided on one side. She speaks softly and slowly but is alert and present. She signs me up with a state program for emergency housing. Receiving this help depends upon the availability of housing vouchers, and at the moment there are none. I heard there were no hotel vouchers for the entire winter when I called the state a couple months earlier. There are more than two thousand homeless people in this small state, a number that has more than doubled since 2020.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

She and I discuss the affordable housing I will be applying for. She asks what areas of the state interest me. I mention towns, all in southern Rhode Island. She asks if I’m willing to live in Providence. She advises I apply to as many places as possible throughout the state to enhance my chances. I don’t tell her I will not do this, will not live in an urban setting, will not walk down some streets. I’ve been attacked on the street, and I am wary. It’s a visceral response, a survival mechanism, not an idea. I never felt it before. Also, Lily and I have a life here in southern Rhode Island and the beach is integral to it.

There are more than two thousand homeless people in Rhode Island, a number that has more than doubled since 2020.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

She gives me a booklet listing the housing by city and town, with phone numbers. My job is to call and request applications. She tells me I will be waiting years, though I might be able to get into one place in Westerly in just over a year. She says the Warm Center “might” be able to help me with the first month’s rent and deposit, which would be $640.

I say, “If there is any financial assistance available for food and gas through Warm Center, I’m in a tough spot and could use the help.”

She doesn’t look up and says nothing.

There is not.

I leave the Warm Center with little more than the booklet listing the housing, something I could have gotten from the state. I’ll be calling the housing places, asking for applications, filling them out, mailing them back, and waiting years to hear back.

And can I truly afford to live in affordable housing? Based on my past experience, rent is about one third of your income. My SSDI is $960. Paying $320 a month in rent, I would be left with $640 to live on. I would have to get a job, maybe at a gas station, a job I might be able to handle. Out of every $100 I made at this job, the housing authority might take $33. If I’m paid minimum wage, $14 an hour, I might only keep about $9. To make up for the original $320 subtracted from my $960, I’d have to work about thirty-six hours. Nine hours a week doesn’t sound like much, but I know that I would struggle to perform the job well enough to retain employment. And then I’d have no more money than I have now, and I’m not making it. I’d have to work more hours for what amounts to $9 an hour. But I can’t work many more hours without jeopardizing my SSDI. How many other people are in this position, too ill and poor to afford affordable housing?

And too poor to be homeless?

It’s May 8 and pouring rain at the park-and-ride. I’m writing and the raincoat I put in the window to block the sun earlier is soaked and dripping into the car, onto my arm and mouse pad.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

I’m hit by a lower-bowel emergency.

I grab the toilet paper and hurry into the woods where the turkeys and coyotes live. I find a spot under an overhanging shrub, as out of the rain as I can get, pull down my corduroys, and go. Squatting, waiting, the primitivism comes over me with the rain. I’m saturated by the absurdity of this twenty-first-century moment.

What comes to mind?

Luciano Pavarotti.

Foxwoods, 1994. At the sublime power of his performance, my eyes welled with tears of joy. God makes his presence known in some men, and I was in wonder at the mystery of him. I saw and heard him sing from twenty feet away. The more I studied him in those moments and the more I read about him, I sensed something troubled him, that he lived in conflict between the public image his handlers chose, the happy family man who enjoyed pasta, and who he truly was. He was caught in a commercial whitewash that didn’t allow for the man. I wrote this. The general manager of the Metropolitan Opera sent the piece I wrote for the Southern Rhode Island Newspapers to Pavarotti himself, who wrote to me to say, “Great job” in Italian.

In the woods I think of the red velvet and gold in the Met in New York when I later attended Puccini’s Turandot and witnessed its moving aria “Nessun Dorma.”

I never sleep. But I am not alone.

Lane has a gallery opening in Newport tomorrow night. The Spring Bull Gallery is well established yet open to the avant-garde and exhibits many styles. This exhibition is abstract art.

Lane will cut my hair at the beach. I will shower and shave at the Welcome House and put on my best clothes, beige corduroys and a white button-down dress shirt. Lane left the hotel job. It was making her sick and she was getting nowhere financially. She has no resources at the moment, but has taken a leap of faith, has the courage to do what she was born to do. I believe in her and her work, an advancement on the abstract expressionists, employing their spontaneous subconscious methods but often fulfilling Pablo Picasso’s insistence that a painting include an image we recognize from life, however deformed or abstracted.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

And here is the weird dichotomy in our lives: A few nights after the triumphant opening, Lane downloads the DoorDash app and we set out to make some money. We work from 6:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., through dinnertime. We receive no cash tips. Everyone makes their tip on the app when they place their order. They don’t have to face us. Tips are one dollar to two dollars. Three fourths of the people ask for their food to be left by the front door. We make twenty-seven dollars. DoorDash made billions in the first six months of this year.

Our last drop is at a house near the beach. Some college kids are having a party. Their cars in the driveway are new, nice, and expensive—a Jeep, an Audi, reflecting how college tuitions have risen beyond the means of those like myself at that age. Lane is carrying an order to the door; a kid comes out and dismissively grabs the bag of Mexican food from her. It is a trigger for me. Darkness moves in. Lane and I are more than twice his age, have lived accomplished lives, and to an inexperienced kid whose parents are buying that food, we are invisible.

In the morning, I have a message from my sister. I had asked her if I could borrow money to fix the car. I wasn’t optimistic. She said money was tight, but she would see what she could do and she would ask my mother for help.

Suicidal ideations break through. I see myself on the bridge. I’m afraid. Sometimes suicide looks like the best idea. But this time, it’s not good. It’s no inspiring cure but a pathetic out. My senses are acute. I recoil at the sounds of drivers flooring the gas at the light. The aggression translated through machines kicks me into a tailspin. What the hell is wrong with these people? They’re cornered and desperate. They may not be conscious of it, but they feel it. I take extra Depakote, a mood stabilizer that will hit my brain like a sun-shower, and lie motionless in the dark. Will misdirected anger ever stop? They take it out on themselves, on each other, when the problem is the predators and the politicians who enabled them to suck most of the wealth out of the common economy.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Later that night, Lane comes to the park-and-ride after work. I rarely go to her house. Her father and I don’t get along.

Lane is exhausted.

I’m in Mobil when I see a page-one story on the homeless in The Providence Journal.

I pick it up and read.

A small group of homeless people have been living in tents on vacant public property. Residents in the nearby neighborhood have been complaining. They must be “concerned.” The article says that the mayor’s policy is to “break up every encampment that forms.” One of the homeless interviewed said she doesn’t know where she will go.

I awake in the dark. Check the clock. 3:18 a.m.

A car drives up on the road adjacent to the park-and-ride lot. A man gets out the passenger side. A hitchhiker? He isn’t a commuter or student. He stands on the grass between the road and the lot, the lights on the highway silhouetting a man with a shaved head holding a small bag dangling by a cord. The bag is cinched at the top and just big enough to hold a pair of pants and a shirt.

I think, Vagabond. A transient on the move.

I find my cigarettes and light one. I look out the window and the man is gone. Maybe he has walked up the road and is concealed by the trees in the middle of the lot.

I have to take a leak. I get out of the car, walk around the front, and head for the woods. I usually piss somewhere in the lot, like a lot of people, but the last time I did, at 2:00 a.m., an unmarked police SUV blasted into the lot and did a hard brake beside me just after I put my gear in my pants.

I am just about to the woods when Lily lets out a loud bark like I’ve never heard: “Woof-YEHHP!!” I am a little annoyed at what I think is her separation anxiety, so I turn and say, “Lily!” And coming straight at me, ten feet away, is the man with the shaved head. He has been behind me, silently walking toward me at a pace faster than I am walking. That chill people talk about, when the hair on the back of your neck stands up—it is real for me in that moment.

He sees me see him.

I cut for the car. He passes close on my right, agile and strong looking, and says, “Hey,” like it was just another sunny day in the city.

I say, “Hi,” like all is well. He is white, about thirty, five-foot-eight, wearing jeans, neat and clean.

I look back to see him turn right toward the watchtower.

I get in the car and lock the doors. “Good girl,” I tell Lily. “Good girl.”

The significance of what has just happened reveals itself. No one walks that close to someone in a large area and in the dark without making a sound. And how did he get so close so fast? He was not present when I got out of my car. If he was behind the trees, he had to hustle to get that close. A chilling realization: He was not holding the bag as he had been, hanging down by the cord. He was holding it at his midriff, the free cord in his hand. He was going to strangle me from behind with the cord. He didn’t want a fight. He wanted to get rid of me in a sneak attack and take my stuff.

A dog left to die in a vacant lot a thousand miles from here, the companion who’s been by my side for four years, has just saved my life.

This content is imported from OpenWeb. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

#article #esquire

7 notes · View notes

romancomicsblog · 1 year ago

Text

Who should play Hal Jordan in the DCU's Lanterns?

With the upcoming DCU's Superman introducing Guy Gardner, it was only a matter of time until we got more Green Lantern.

Variety has reported that "Lanterns" is officially moving forward at HBO, with the characters of Hal Jordan and John Stewart taking center stage in the eight episode miniseries.

The synopsis reads, "new recruit John Stewart and Lantern legend Hal Jordan are two intergalactic cops drawn into a dark, earth-based mystery as they investigate a murder in the American heartland.”

This synopsis doesn't tell us much, but does hint at a few things. It is assumed Hal will be the older, secondary character to Stewart's, playing a more mentor role as an established hero. This leads me to believe Jordan won't be the main Green Lantern in the Justice League, and instead will play more of a background character, such as Michael Douglas in Ant-Man, although maybe not that old.

Although I'm a fan of Jordan, I think this is a smart move. John being our main Lantern is something fans of JL and JLU cartoons have been itching for. Plus it can give this show some good distance from the awful film where Hal Jordan is the protagonist.

Even if he isn't the main character, the casting of Hal Jordan is an important one. This will not only be the secondary protagonist of the show, but one of the DCU's legendary staple heroes. Whether he turn to evil, stay around as a hero or die, this character needs to be casted appropriately. So let's look into it and ask the question, who should play Hal Jordan?

Before we do that, we need to answer some questions:

Characteristics: What makes a good Hal jordan?

To me, Hal Jordan has a very specific mix of asshole, confidence and charm that makes us want to route for him. He sucks, but we love him anyway. Very few actors have this charisma, which makes him a very hard character to cast right.

Even an actor with these attributes if leaning into any of these too hard can feel wrong. Case and point: Ryan Reynolds.

I often think of Chris Pine's Captain Kirk from the Star Trek films as a perfect young Hal Jordan.

However this is a Hal Jordan who has been through it, knows what the job is and has wisdom to show for it. So we're adding that new layer in, not just cocky and confident, but wise and maybe even kinder.

Fancasts worth noting:

There are a few people I wanted to bring up who have frequently been fancast as Green Lantern who I think may be good but probably shouldn't. The first big one is the biggest short guy in Hollywood, Tom Cruise.

Now do I think he has the stuff? Absolutely. I also think he's a bit too big of a name that he may overshadow the performance. Plus he's a tad older than I would like and I don't see him consistently coming back to this franchise.

Next we got the Rookie Nathan Fillion. He has been a long time first choice for Hal Jordan, even voicing him in some animated films. He's in the age range, and I love him, but he's Guy Gardner, so he can't unfortunately.

Finally, a few names that have also come up are Patrick Schwarzenegger, Glenn Powell and Jake Gyllenhaal. While I think these three are incredible actors, the first two are a bit too young now for the role, and Gyllenhaal has played a green mentor to a hero already recently, so I don't think it's very interesting.

But seriously watch out for Patrick, after the Boys spin-off Gen-V, I can definitely see him playing a great hero or villain role. He would've made a great young Hal Jordan.

Other Stipulations

We want an actor who can make the fantastical feel real and grounded. It needs to be someone fun to play off of Stewart's serious military sternness.

I'm looking for actor around 50. He needs to feel old enough to be wise and experienced but young and spry enough to be a serious threat.

This is HBO, so we need a name. Not someone who is gonna outshine our lead but someone with some star power.

Green Lantern's must be fearless, so there needs to be the energy of someone who can hold their own.

As usual I'm looking for someone not already known for being in a superhero role. So actors like Jake Gyllenhaal or Chris Evans are off the table.

3. Edward Norton

This may be the biggest name in my top 3.

Although he has had a brief stint as the Hulk, Norton I think is much better suited to play this green hero.

Norton has a great voice for an older Hal, calm and steady, with enough charm and weariness to feel like he's seen somethings. Norton is also very funny. He knows how to play heroes, villains, and anything in between. I can see his Jordan turning, or sacrificing himself heroically.

My main concerns are his name being too big, and more importantly, his tendency to take over projects creatively. If this was already an established universe, I'd let it slide. But, we need to think of team players.

2. Jason Sudeikis

If I had to go with a safe pick all around, Sudeikis is kind of made for the role.

Few people have that asshole energy like Sudeikis in his past comedy work that feels so inherently Jordan. He's funny, he can shoot the shit, but at the end of the day, he's still the protagonist that you love.

What really gives him the edge over the others is his stint as Ted Lasso. The wisdom and kindness I'm looking for in a mentor Green Lantern. Not to mention he can lead a show so popular, he'd be a big get for DC.

My main concern is, does he feel like he can hold his own? Does he feel as fearless as a Green Lantern should be?

I don't think so. I'm not saying he can't get there or he wouldn't be great, but he just misses out on this one.

1. Timothy Olyphant

I nearly made him my second pick, but when writing this, I convinced myself he was number one.

Timothy Olyphant was, fun fact, actually another choice to be 2008's Iron Man. He's got charisma to boot, charm, I mean, look at him!

Tell me that's not him in the photo!

Known for roles in Justified, Fargo, and The Mandalorian, Olyphant has the perfect presence as a Green Lantern. He looks older and wise but full of life and fight in him. He looks like the best of the Norton and Sudeikis, both fearless, wise and kind.

Olyphant also has an energy that feels right at home in a mystery and in space. He's been in crime stories like Fargo and space stories like the Mandalorian, and has been everything Hal needs: a leading man, a U.S. Marshall, a Space Cop, and a ladies man.

If we wanna start the DCU right, Olyphant is my Hal Jordan. Plain and simple.

Thank you so much for reading! Please consider following, and check out my socials and other sites here! And let me know: Who do you want to play Hal Jordan in the DCU?

11 notes · View notes

legally-brief · 9 months ago

Text

MOVIES WITH MEN IN UNDERWEAR (This is outdated- website shutdown early 2000’s)

“B”

Bachelor Flat (1961) Terry Thomas romps through most of this movie in checked patterned full-cut boxer shorts, garters and a British umbrella.

Bachelor Party (1984) Customer trying on pants in poorly constructed fitting room doesn’t realize his jockeys are in view of the whole store. Near beginning of the film.

Back in Action (1994) Muscled action hero Billy Blanks has a fight scene in his white boxer briefs.

Back to the Future (1985) Michael J. Fox in purple Calvins. Real quick peek.

Back to the Future Part II (1989) Time-travel comedy, 1989. Unaware that history has been changed, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) returns ‘home’ but finds he’s now in some girl’s bedroom. He’s chased out by the girl’s father, a big black man in his underwear, furiously swinging a baseball bat.

Back to the Future Part III (1990) Michael J. Fox in LONGJOHNS. Flap down on one side shows a quick peek of buttcheek as well.

Backdraft (1991) Jason Gedrick (guy from Murder One) in boxers - Baldwin is also in boxers.

Bad Boyz in Boxers This entire movie devoted to boxer shorts. It is distributed by the Latino Fan Club under Salsa Productions label. It is mostly hunky, uncut Latin guys wearing boxer shorts and jerking off to orgasm. One of the scenes involves one guy giving blow jobs to two others; the rest are solo. All the guys wear boxers; most are uncut. The boxers are many different varieties and patterns. It’s a GREAT movie!

Bait (2000) Action/comedy. Jamie Foxx in his underwear.

Bang (1995) A young woman is nearly raped by a LAPD motorcycle officer, but, at the crucial moment, she succeeds in grabbing his gun. At gunpoint, she forces the cop to strip down to his skivvies, ties him up to a post and then leaves the scene, on his bike and dressed in his uniform! And that's not the last you hear of the luckless fuzz. Reportedly, there a number of subsequent scenes where you see him, all tied up in his undies.

Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) Robert DeNiro, in jock in coach’s office.

Bang! Bang! You're Dead! (1966) Tony Randall spends the night with a woman. In the morning, there's a tussle for a gun, and his blanket falls off, leaving him in his boxer shorts.

Basketball Diaries, The (1995) Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Walhberg (Marky Mark), Patrick McGaw, and James Madio in several scenes wearing just boxer shorts.

Beastmaster 1 or 2 Marc Singer ... always in his leather loincloth?

Bedtime Story (1964) Marlon Brando strips down to his boxer shorts, and finds himself in an embarrassing moment.

Beefcake (1999) Cheerful documentary about the history of 'muscle' magazines from the 1950s, featuring lots of posing pouches and nudes.

Being John Malkovich (1999) Surreal comedy. Near the end, Malkovich takes off his pants, showing his pink paisley boxer shorts.

Being There (1979) A slow-witted Peter Sellers in full-cut boxer shorts.

Belly (1998) Crime drama. When an argument breaks out among a gang, they attack one guy and force him to strip. He takes off his jacket, shirt and undershirt, pulls his pants and underwear down to his ankles, and hobbles across the room to sit on the couch. Clear but discreet nude shot, but no good view of the underwear.

Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, The (1982) Locker scene after football game (studs in jockstraps in locker room). And don’t forget the scene with all the cowboys running around in their underwear after the reporters come. MEOW!

Best Man, The (1999/I) Drama. Handsome young guy in his white boxers is talking on the phone, when he suddenly realises a woman is watching him. She comments, "Nice boxers! I thought you were strictly a briefs man".

Best Men (1997) Dean Cain in his black bikini briefs in a very short scene.

Bewegte Mann, Der (Maybe, Maybe Not) (Most Desired Man) (1994) Comedy. The desired man of the title comes back from a party to his gay friend’s flat, gets his trousers half off and falls asleep like that on the sofa in his gray boxer briefs.

Better Off Dead... (1985) John Cusack. Wearing red plaid boxers at beginning of movie.

Beyond the Mat (1999) Documentary. Terry Funk, a 53-year-old former WWF star, getting out of bed in his underwear.

Bhaji on the Beach (1993) Near the end of the movie three guys do a strip routine for a women only audience: down to black thongs.

Big (1988) Tom Hanks in Underoos at the beginning.

Big Easy, The (1987) Dennis Quaid getting dressed, goes from nothing to black bikini briefs. Fairly short scene.

Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss (1998) Gay-themed romantic comedy. It has Brad Rowe in it (Brad Pitt lookalike). Scence where he is modeling underwear and is trying to squeeze into a black pair - another guy opens the door to where he is changing and catches him showing his butt. Later at the end there is a picture shown of Brad modeling white cotton briefs.

Biloxi Blues (1988) Matthew Broderick, et al - in army barracks - wearing army issue boxers - discussing what they want to do on their last three days on earth.

Bird (1988) Jazz biopic. Gloomy opening scene of marital argument and attempted suicide begins with Charlie "Bird" Parker (Forest Whitaker) coming home drunk and slowly stripping to white singlet and striped boxers.

Bird on a Wire (1990) Mel Gibson with Goldie Hawn. Long scene with Mel in bed or running around in briefs.

Birdcage, The (1996) Lots of scenes of houseboy in tight 501 cutoffs. One point he is cleaning the pool and he is wearing a thong.

Birdy (1984) Matthew Modine and Nicholas Cage in several scenes wearing full-cut printed boxer shorts.

Black Belt Jones (1974) Blaxploitation kung-fu. Hero battles villains in white collared shirt and briefs in one scene.

Black Joy (1977) Norman Beaton in his briefs; another guy in long underwear.

Black Magic Woman (1991) Mark Hamill

Blame It on Rio (1984) Michael Caine and Joe Bologna wrestle in bed in their underwear. It’s a comic scene that leaves the audience wondering.

Bless the Beasts and Children (1971) Billy Mumy (Lost in Space fame) and other kids in Hanes - some great scenes, including some JO shots.

Bliss (1997) Drama/romance. Long scene midway through film with Craig Sheffer in a pair of blue boxers and Terrence Stamp in a pair of shorts (apparently not underwear, though). Stamp plays a sex expert who is attmepting to help Sheffer through marital difficulties with his wife. Both characters are straight, but there is an undeniable homosexual undercurrent in this scene.

Blood Ties (1991) (TV) One of the London twins (Jeremy or Jason) getting out of bed in black tee shirt, white jockeys, another scene in white jockeys, a scene with male vampires in underwear.

Bloodbrothers (1978) Tony Lo Bianco - white A-shirt, white briefs; Richard Gere - white briefs.

Bloodsport (1988) Jean Claude Van Damme getting into some nice maroon bikini briefs.

Blown Away (1994) Action thriller. Bomb squad officer Forest Whitaker, relaxing in his underwear at home, finds himself trapped by a booby-trap bomb while colleagues work to disarm it. I think he was wearing a black T-shirt and pale blue boxers. Reminiscent of Danny Glover's pants-down-on-the-john predicament in Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) but not played for laughs.

Blue Collar (1978) Drama. Two scenes with Harvey Keitel - both in white jockey shorts, one with A-shirt too.

Blue Lagoon, The (1980) Christopher Atkins in loincloth for entire movie (several nude scenes - the first by a male in a mainstream movie).

Blue Streak (1999) Action comedy. Martin Lawrence plans to pretend to be a cop. Watching cops on TV at home, he practices his arrest technique - in his underwear. He wears a white undershirt, dark socks and green plaid boxer shorts.

Blue Velvet (1986) Dorothy forces Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) to undress in front of her, all the way down to his underwear and socks. Even a butt naked scene too.

Blues Brothers 2000 (1998) Some drunk Russian mafia members are stripped down to their underwear and T-shirts, tied up with duct tape and left in an alley.

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) Long scene of Robert Culp in briefs in bedroom with Natalie Wood.

Body Shots (1999) Drama. Some underwear as boy and girl strip each other in a bedroom scene

Boogie Nights (1997) Drama. "We see Eddie (Mark Wahlberg) in his underwear and he feels his scrotum".

Book of Love (1990) Keith Coogan and others in white briefs measuring themselves.

Boston Blackie In Chinatown Chester Morris. Gets knocked out by gangsters who steal his clothes, leaving him in his boxers and A-shirt, shoes, socks and garters.

Bounce (2000) Ben Affleck in his boxers, in bed with a woman.

Bowfinger (1999) Comedy. Four actors auditioning as Eddie Murphy body doubles are seen from behind, lined up with their pants down, in various underwear - white, patterned and coloured briefs, and plaid boxers.

Boys, The (1997/I) Drama. Guy casually around the house in his sweatshirt and red briefs.

Boys and Girls (2000) Comedy/romance. Hunter (Jason Biggs) in his boxers after an implied sex scene, and during the closing credits, modeling some cheetah print boxers.

Boys in Company C, The (1978) AN ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC SCENE has David Morse, Andrew Stevens and other hot actors who are new recruits they are all wearing white T-shirts and white briefs. A MUST SEE.

Boys Next Door, The (1986) (Big Shots) Exploitation flick, directed by Penelope Spheeris and starring Maxwell Caulfield and Charlie Sheen as teenage psychos. In one scene, they're in a motel room, watching TV in their underwear and white socks.

Boys of Cellblock Q, The (1992) Out & About Productions, comedy, shot on video. Georgeous hunks in white briefs in much of the movie. Very hot.

Boyz N the Hood (1991) Drama. Momentary glimpses of Laurence Fishburne in his undershirt and boxer shorts, getting out of bed to scare off a burgler, and Cuba Gooding, Jr, running away, pants falling down, before his girlfriend's grandmother catches them together.

Break, The (1995) Ben Jorgenson in white briefs and tied to the bed posts.

Breaking the Rules (1992) C. Thomas Howell - gets the covers pulled off the bed while he’s sleeping to reveal him only wearing white briefs. Shot from overhead - it’s a hot scene.

Brewster’s Millions (1945) Dennis O’Keefe in white boxers, A-shirt and garters, is kept from putting his clothes on while aboard his personal yacht.

Brewster's Millions (1985) Comedy. Creditors arrive to repossess everything Richard Pryor has - including the clothes he's wearing. He takes his pants off, revealing his pale blue monogrammed boxer shorts.

Bride of Chucky (1998) Comedy/horror. "Tiffany handcuffs a friend -- who's down to his black underwear -- to her bed."

Brief Exchange, HIS-Video, XXX Tanner Reeves, and others, the ‘plot’ is a rather shallow one, one of the guys is collecting and showing underwear and swimwear, which gives rise to a couple of really hot scenes. The amazing thing with this video is that underwear always plays an important part in these heavy sexual episodes.

Broadway Melody, The (1929) Charles King, in full-cut polka dot boxer shorts, has a heated confrontation with Bessie Love and Anita Page in this early Academy Award winner.

Brothers McMullen, The (1995) Comedy. Ed Burns in white tee shirt and full cut patterned boxers; his brother in white athletic undershirt and full cut patterned boxers as well.

Brown's Requiem (1998) Thriller. At the very start of the movie, a black guy in white boxer shorts and undershirt runs out to a parking garage to try and stop his car being taken. Quickly beaten in a fight, there's a very clear shot of him on the ground, and his underwear looks like it might have been altered with scissors. Also, lead character Fritz Brown (Michael Rooker) in a scene near the end, emerging from the ocean in his white briefs and socks.

Buck Privates (1941) Abbott and Costello and a group of other young men are drafted - and line up for their army physical exam in boxers of all types.

Bull Durham (1988) Kevin Costner is ironing his pants, wearing white trim-cut boxers with a side slit, when in barges Susan Sarandon for a confrontation. Also, Tim Robbins in white briefs and blue and white striped bikinis.

Bulldog Breed, The (1960) Comedy. Norman Wisdom for some reason running around a battleship in his underwear, pushing everyone overboard.

Bulldog Drummond in Africa (1938) John Howard starred as Bulldog Drummond, British Detective, in a number of serialized shorts. Humor often played a part. Never more so than when his bride to be took all the trousers out of his estate to assure he'd not be distracted into taking another case. Bulldog Drummond in Africa opens with Howard stuck at home in his suit jacket, shirt and tie, boxers, gartered socks and shoes. His butler (in long drawers) is also without pants, as is the best friend Bulldog calls on the phone. (This is the excellent silent film star Reginald Denny, who lost his pants in such silents as "Skinner's Dress Suit" among others).

Bullets Over Broadway (1994) Comedy. Middle-aged stage actor (Jim Broadbent) has an interrupted tryst with the leading lady and has to flee down the fire escape in his voluminous boxer shorts. On the street, he runs into theatergoers who engage him in a discussion of the play.

Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell (1968) Comedy. Gina Lollobrigida's boyfriend jumps out of bed in his white boxers.

Buster and Billy ?

Bustin' Loose (1981) Comedy/drama. Richard Pryor, beaten at strip poker by some kids, ends up a little embarrassed in his long, red underwear. Later, awakened in the middle of the night, he gets out of bed in a white V-neck T-shirt and high-cut red briefs, and walks about a little dazed for a bit.

Butterflies Are Free (1972) Edward Albert in trim-cut boxers.

5 notes · View notes

ulkaralakbarova · 11 months ago

Text

The adventures of two amiably aimless metal-head friends, Wayne and Garth. From Wayne’s basement, the pair broadcast a talk-show called “Wayne’s World” on local public access television. The show comes to the attention of a sleazy network executive who wants to produce a big-budget version of “Wayne’s World”—and he also wants Wayne’s girlfriend, a rock singer named Cassandra. Wayne and Garth have to battle the executive not only to save their show, but also Cassandra. Credits: TheMovieDb. Film Cast: Wayne Campbell: Mike Myers Garth Algar: Dana Carvey Benjamin Kane: Rob Lowe Cassandra: Tia Carrere Stacy: Lara Flynn Boyle Dreamwoman: Donna Dixon Security Guard: Chris Farley Noah Vanderhoff: Brian Doyle-Murray Alan: Michael DeLuise Tiny: Meat Loaf Bad Cop / T-1000: Robert Patrick Alice Cooper: Alice Cooper Glen: Ed O’Neill Mrs. Vanderhoff: Colleen Camp Terry: Lee Tergesen Russell Finley: Kurt Fuller Davy: Mike Hagerty Ron Paxton: Charles Noland Elyse: Ione Skye Frankie Sharp: Frank DiLeo Waitress: Robin Ruzan Officer Koharski: Frederick Coffin Old Man Withers: Carmen Filpi Film Crew: Original Music Composer: J. Peter Robinson Screenplay: Mike Myers Executive Producer: Hawk Koch Director of Photography: Theo van de Sande Director: Penelope Spheeris Producer: Lorne Michaels Editor: Malcolm Campbell Stunts: Hannah Kozak Stunts: Alisa Christensen Associate Producer: Dinah Minot Associate Producer: Barnaby Thompson Screenplay: Bonnie Turner Screenplay: Terry Turner Casting: Glenn Daniels Production Design: Gregg Fonseca Second Unit Director: Allan Graf First Assistant Director: John Hockridge Second Assistant Director: Joseph J. Kontra Set Decoration: Jay Hart Camera Operator: Martin Schaer “B” Camera Operator: David Hennings First Assistant Camera: Henry Tirl First Assistant “B” Camera: Peter Mercurio Steadicam Operator: Elizabeth Ziegler Script Supervisor: Adell Aldrich Sound Mixer: Tom Nelson Boom Operator: Jerome R. Vitucci Additional Editor: Earl Ghaffari Assistant Editor: Ralph O. Sepulveda Jr. Assistant Editor: Ann Trulove Assistant Editor: Brion McIntosh Supervising Sound Editor: John Benson Sound Effects Editor: Beth Sterner Sound Effects Editor: Joseph A. Ippolito Sound Effects Editor: Frank Howard Dialogue Editor: Michael Magill Dialogue Editor: Simon Coke Dialogue Editor: Bob Newlan Supervising ADR Editor: Allen Hartz Foley Supervisor: Pamela Bentkowski Assistant Sound Editor: Carolina Beroza Assistant Sound Editor: Thomas W. Small Foley Artist: Ken Dufva Foley Artist: David Lee Fein Foley Mixer: Greg Curda ADR Mixer: Bob Baron ADR Voice Casting: Barbara Harris Sound Re-Recording Mixer: Andy Nelson Sound Re-Recording Mixer: Steve Pederson Sound Re-Recording Mixer: Tom Perry Music Supervisor: Maureen Crowe Supervising Music Editor: Steve Mccroskey Set Designer: Lisette Thomas Set Designer: Gae S. Buckley Special Effects Makeup Artist: Thomas R. Burman Special Effects Makeup Artist: Bari Dreiband-Burman Makeup Artist: Courtney Carell Makeup Artist: Mel Berns Jr. Hairstylist: Kathrine Gordon Hairstylist: Barbara Lorenz Hairstylist: Carol Meikle Costume Supervisor: Pat Tonnema Costumer: Janet Sobel Costumer: Kimberly Guenther Durkin Location Manager: Ned R. Shapiro Assistant Location Manager: Serena Baker Second Second Assistant Director: John G. Scotti Property Master: Kirk Corwin Assistant Property Master: Peter A. Tullo Assistant Property Master: Jim Stubblefield Leadman: Robert Lucas Special Effects Coordinator: Tony Vandenecker Chief Lighting Technician: Jono Kouzouyan Production Office Coordinator: Lynne White Unit Publicist: Tony Angelotti Still Photographer: Suzanne Tenner Craft Service: Vartan Chakarian Transportation Coordinator: James Thornsberry Color Timer: David Bryden Negative Cutter: Theresa Repola Mohammed Title Designer: Dan Curry Second Unit Director of Photography: Robert M. Stevens Stunts: Tony Brubaker Stunt Double: Steve Kelso Movie Reviews: tmdb15435519: I wish I could dress the exact same every day and still be cool.

#aftercreditsstinger #best friends #breaking the fourth wall #buddy #duringcreditsstinger #heavy metal #multiple endings #parody #romantic rivalry #singer #television producer #Top Rated Movies #woman director

3 notes · View notes

mulders-too-large-shirt · 8 days ago

Text

s8 episode 9 “salvage” thoughts

last episode was a flop. let us think about it no more, and instead move on.

scully and doggett are working together today, it seems. to track a metallic man. can they get a really big magnet? it might make the job simpler.

i jest, as i don’t know what “a metallic man” even means. but i suppose we will find out!

hmm… next episode seems like it could get problematic. i shall also push this thought from my mind and try to enjoy the now.

(post-episode thoughts: i would rate this episode not as a flop, but instead as mid. it’s not really memorable, but it isn’t offensive or creepy in the way other episodes are, and how i found the last one to be.

highlights: scully has a blue turtleneck to match the green one she loves so much. i appreciate that she, like me, buys multiple colors of the same beloved item of clothing. and doggett has a fascinating way of speaking. it enchants me more and more each day)

we open on someone holding a picture of someone in a military uniform and a women i presume to be his wife. one of them says it’s senseless, a man as young as ray. nora tells curt to not blame god. they know who killed him.

they say he just “withered away and died” hmm…. like cancer??

“ray got sick because he fought in the gulf” <- OHHHH okay, i see what is going on here. they’ve mentioned this a few times in the show, and each time it catches my generational blind spots, because i hadn’t heard much about the gulf war as a whole, let alone the illness it sparked, before watching this show.

anyway. disclaimer aside. let us resume.

oh, nora (grieving woman) is the wife of now-dead ray (military guy in the photo). she’s angry, naturally. she says whoever is responsible will pay for his death. and some of these scenes are in pretty normal quality, while others are very, very blurry.

curt is comforting nora, but something is watching from outside the window. it hides in the bushes. it watches curt put his jacket on and leave. he gets out a cigarette, gets in his car, with quiet creepy music playing. reaches for a lighter.

AND THERE IS A MAN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD!!! JUST STANDING THERE LIKE THIS🧍‍♂️

curt SLAMS on the breaks. but not quick enough, because they collide. but i see what they mean about him being made of metal now, because curt’s car shatters around HIM, mystery road guy, ray!! he cuts the whole thing in half!!!! curt is bleeding, gasping, groaning. did he make ray all metal somehow?? ray reaches into the window and grabs curt as he screams!!!

girl…. what!

he wanted curt DEAD, that is for sure.

intro time……..

just learned today that robert patrick voiced piandao in avatar the last airbender, and that was a big discovery for someone like me!!!

baby… moon… falling…. eyeball…. truth is out there. yeahhhh!!!

wondering what is going on with ray and his wife who will probably lose it when she learns that he is not dead, but in fact, metal

scully inspects the scene of the car crash, her red hair in contast with the blue of cracked glass and deep crimson of the blood. she walked right into the split in the car!! it is perfectly human sized, after all.

and doggett is yelling that the car was registered to one curtis delario, but his fascinating accent is just making me smile

“so far, he’s been unreachable” “well, it’s highly unlikely that wherever he is, he feels like picking up the phone this morning” <- lmao, she’s such a smartass…

if curt was going 40 miles per hour, he must have hit something 4,300 TIMES the density of steel!! scully seems like she would know something of that density off the top of her head with her science powers.

and when the car gets hauled away, they find footprints

they’re arguing!!!! not a lot of venom to their words today, though. yeah, maybe a steel guy stood in the road and someone hit ‘em. why not?

nora comes running onto the scene, crying and yelling, while cops try to hold her back. “john doggett with the FBI. you know about this?”

curtis was a friend of her husband’s, who came to her house after the funeral. she is panicking, when scully opens a trash can and summons doggett.

“meet curtis delario” <- she has suffered too much. pregnant. in heels. mulder gone. dead guy in the trash can. we need to start a vacation fund for her ass.

AUGH, THAT PROP HEAD WAS SOOOOO NASTY????? WHAT WAS WITH THE HOLES IN HIS FOREHEAD???

she goes into autopsy mode despite all the nasty holes in his forehead (you think it’s hard to film an autopsy scene if it looks realistic?), when doggett bursts in with some answers. scully says she has some of her own, too: the crash didn’t kill curt. he was hurt, but still alive, when he was pulled through the windshield. the puncture marks match those of fingers on a hand. “you mean, someone just reached right in and…” “like a bowling ball” LMAOOOO, terrible visual right there!!

and doggett got a fingerprint from the glass- a print from raymond aloysius pearce. and now, i finally know how to pronounce aloysius. al-oh-ish-iss. see, i have been reading it like “uh-loy-see-us” in my head every time i come across that word (which is frankly not very often), but now i know. thank you, special agent doggett.

and he may have been dead, but the blood on the windshield definitely belonged to mr. ray pearce!

at a halfway house, ray pearce is laying in a bed, his hand with wounds on it, his cheek and pillow covered in blood.

AUGH, he plucks out a piece of metal from his skin. IS HIS STUBBLE ALL METAL???? at first i thought he was just getting metal from the accident out of his skin, but it actually seems like he is just shaving 😭which is much less disgusting!

doggett goes over to see nora pearce, and harry odell who runs the salvage yard where ray and curt worked is there, too. hmm. perhaps this is suspicious. or perhaps he is trying to be supportive.

she does not want to talk about the relationship between her husband and curt because they are both dead, but she does tell him she aims to prove ray died from gulf war syndrome.

she signed a form to have his body cremated, but doggett says it never happened. which is news to her! they gave her ashes! whose ashes has she been hanging onto?!

odell tries to jump in, but no one wants to hear this. doggett asks if ray could still be alive… which doesn’t go over well. but he drops the bombshell that his blood and fingerprints were on curt’s car. ooooo…. i wonder what they’ll say.

she says she watched him die, nursing him when he was sick. he couldn’t walk or lift his head. odell says he wouldn’t have hurt anyone.

meanwhile, ray is at the halfway house getting some food, when a woman saunters up to him, trying to talk. she points out he is eating the foil on this sandwich, and introduces herself as larina who helps out around here. he isn’t saying anything. she just wants to tell him he isn’t alone!!! and sometimes it’s good to just talk. she seems so genuine, but he isn’t saying anything.

oh. he tells her to leave her alone. she does that. LARINA TRIED!!! LARINA, I APPRECIATE THAT YOU TRIED!!!

bro is fuming as he holds his sandwich.

odell is back at the salvage shop. spraying something. okay. then he goes to walk among the cars. what does he know….. did he and curt make ray metal somehow??? he takes out a file and puts it in a shredder. then another. looks up. RAY IS HERE!

he laughs. ray doesn’t. odell tries to get a gun out. “this time, you stay dead”. blasts him…. his hand falls off. but it is still twitching!!! it’s growing back!!!? he grows back??? AND THEN PALMS ODELL'S HEAD LIKE A BOWLING BALLLLLL. NASTYYYYYY

what did curt and odell do to this man at the salvage shop 😭😭 or did the government experiment on him and turn him into a living robot somehow??? nothing is being answered here.

doggett is on the scene in the morning, examining the body, and the weird marks on the fingertips. he calls scully. did you find blue paint on curt? she says no.

odell was shredding papers… and there is massive blood loss. but doggett says he saw guys in the war who fought “holding their insides in their hands” <- and that is gross!!!

“but to do this to a man’s head after being hit by two barrels of buckshot…” i’m just obsessed with his voice. the boston/southern hybrid thing he has going on. everything he says is fascinating. narrate an audiobook, man.

scully reframes the question, away from “how did this happen” to “why did this happen”. and you know i LOVE when she reframes the question!! why would ray kill these people? doggett doesn’t know, but he knows where to start looking. and he’s in odell’s office. trying to read the shredded papers. it’s an invoice…..

ray runs one hand, pouring blood, under a sink, and the other hand looks like… aluminum or something?? all torn to shreds. and it is on his face, too.

larina knocks, looking for ray. no one answers. but she finds the horribly bloody clothes in his room!!! he comes out and she asks if he is okay!!! he isn’t saying anything. she says she won’t get the cops involved- she’ll get a doctor. but he just tells her to get out.

he turns and looks at her. she sees the metal on his face.

larina is just trying to HELP YOU, MAN!!!! come ON!!!!!!!!

he’s pissing me off.

the invoice was from chamber technologies, which is where we are heading next. to learn about smart metals to build things that are indestructible- because they can rebuild themselves. doggett stands with a scowl and his hands crossed over his chest. but this is all in theory, says the scientist. we haven't figured out how to actually do it yet.

well……. what about this file doggett found? that listed a dr. clifton? nope, insists dr. puvogel; he doesn't work here anymore. doggett walks away and calls scully before he’s even out the door. “everything’s done on computahs”

and scully has news, too! ray didn’t have gulf war syndrome, he was exposed to some non-identifiable contaminant- a metal!

“what are you saying? ray pearce has become some kind of metal man?” <- well, yes!

he is metal, so shock him!!!

while reading the newspaper back at the halfway home, larina sees ray pearce’s obituary! she is very confused. and sees the news about odell’s death…. she calls a number for “raymond pearce”

doggett is picking scully up. he apologizes for being late!!! and she is in a blue turtleneck today. she has expanded beyond the green one! happy for her. she got the blood test back. it was ray’s blood, and it was filled with enough metal alloy “to poison an elephant” <- yuck!!

doggett says he is still a man, and he will still think and act like one, and scully wants to know why he would kill his friends. and why didn’t he go to his wife? that is why doggett was late! he was learning about ray, who had some substance abuse problems, met his wife, went to rehab, got straight…

LMAO, i saw that post about doggett saying things like “dollars to doughnuts” and he did, in fact, just say that, as he insists ray pearce does not fit the profile of a murderer. but scully points out he survived a car crash and two short range shotgun blasts! how will they even stop him?

electricity!!!! ⚡️

back at chamber technologies, dr. puvogel from before is looking at his computer. when in comes who i assume to be ray. and yup, it is him, hunting for puvogel. he walks into this sort of back room area…. where puvogel is hiding. puvogel reaches, presses some keys, switches a light to red. presses another key… locks ray in a container. when in bust our agents!!! are you sure he can’t open this chamber thingy from the inside?

he starts pounding on it… it’s not gonna hold. well, you better hope it does, says doggett, 'cause he is coming after you, dr. puvogel, and idk if we can stop him. pounding, pounding. and then it stops. silence. doggett says to open it up. scully yells GET IT OPEN!!

there’s a rupture in the chamber… augh! he broke out through the back wall!!!

well, dr. puvogel is probs toast.

scully looks out the hole where he punched through. look at this? you see this? blood… turning itself into metal! dr. scully is fascinated….

doggett yells to get puvogel out of the building, who insists he didn’t do anything. “you wanna argue about that, or let us get you someplace safe?” “where’s that? where’s safe?” “it’s not in here” <- doggett gets mad and will grab you by the tie and yell in your face!!!

the barrels… that must be what odell was spraying at the start of the episode.

back at the halfway house, ray comes “home”, huge gash on his back. to nora in his room!!!!! she is shocked. he tells her she shouldn’t have come. “that’s what you say to me? i’m your wife!” he says he didn’t come because he isn’t him. takes his hoodie off. she sees his metal.

she says she doesn’t care what happened- whatever it is, it’s a miracle. and when he walks away, she tries to grab his hand, but cuts herself in the process. “there’s your miracle” he replies. she begs to help him. he says they have to pay for this. they all do. and she nods.

doggett is at the salvage shop. just a man and his flashlight against the world. he finds the barrels that were sprayed over, and sure enough, they do have the chamber technologies logo on their side!!! he finds creepy handprints in some metal!! kicks it over… liquid spills everywhere…. a whole metal dude is in there???? is he alive??? or dead?? what is going on!!!

scully is staring as dr. puvogel is brought in, yelling about how he is being treated as a criminal. “you know this man?” “we’re assumin’ you don’t know too many guys in this particular condition” <- guyssss, i just cannot get over his syntax

who is this metal man in the box? is this dr. clifton? he sighs. and says yes. puvogel says it was CLIFTON'S idea, he was against it, but doggett says MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME WHEN I FIRST CAME AND CHATTED WITH YOU? and he does have a point there!

clifton was dying, and he was afraid it would halt their work. doggett lets him know it’s definitely over now. he got sick from an alloy with a genetic algorithm built into it that converted electrical energy into mechanical. (and idk what any of that means, tbh)

okay. maybe it is good that they didn’t take my suggestion of using an electricity attack against him, then. might have only made him stronger.

he claims they shut down the project right away, but it was too late. he wanted the work to continue going on. and so he shipped the body to the salvage yard, where it infected someone else. puvogel swears he doesn’t know how that happened- it was supposed to go to a different location.

scully whispers to doggett, and they shall confer outside of where puvogel can hear them.

but as they get started discussing, nora pearce arrives! she’s looking for some specific files. calling a number. she isn’t answering their questions…..

police are raiding the halfway house, NO!!! leave my girl larina alone!!!! ray has his hand over her mouth…. she drops to the floor. did he poison her with his metal fumes????

doggett tells nora that her husband eluded 12 cops and jumped through a second story wall at a halfway house. she smiles. does it PLEASE her to know he killed a young volunteer named larina? NOOOO!

she’s looking for someone to blame… claims curt and odell knew. doggett yells to get her out of here; put her on 24/7 watch.

ahhh!!! ray is in there with nora!!! she asks why he killed larina!!! she cared about you!!

he’s almost all metal in the face now. says he needs a name. grabs her arm. she’s bleeding. she runs out, telling the cops who are watching everything that he is in the house. they run in after. and she says she gave him the name “owen harris”. that is who he will kill next.

ahhh!!! he’s in the road!!! punches through the glass and grabs this owen fellow!!! starts to choke him. he says he’s just an accountant at southside salvage. owen's son is screaming for him. is ray going to stop???

the police and an ambulance and the agents arrive, finding owen harris hurt, but alive. there are hand prints in his car. ray got up and ran away. harris was the accountant who authorized the shipment.

the agents argue about if a flicker of humanity left in ray is what killed those people and let him save harris. and at the end, we see him being squished in a car.

the end.

bro. that was fucked up.

another episode that didn’t inspire great thoughts in me, but hey, it doesn’t always need to. sometimes you ask yourself “wouldn’t it be fucked up if a guy was also metal?” and the answer is yes. it WOULD be fucked up. and there wouldn’t even be anyone to blame for it. so you’d have to try and find the blame yourself and tear apart the innocent in the process. that would, in fact, be pretty fucked up.

not much else to say, beyond that i grow more enchanted by doggett’s use of the english language each day. scully got to have autopsy time, which i’m sure was healing for her.

how am i feeling about this season so far? i suppose it is a mixed bag, as it always tends to be. this episode, surekill, and invocation have all been mid- even if mulder had been present for those episodes, they would have been considered pretty weak contenders in the overall x files world. redrum had a good plot, but almost no agent time, so that made it less compelling to me, because i am here for agent time. roadrunners, via negativa, within, and without were all really strong, and patience has grown on me. so who knows where we can go from here? i will keep my expectations open!

#hoping i can watch the next episode tonight... but idk because i have a lot of work to do! :(#overall i would say that s7 so far has about the same ratio of bangers to mid eps to flops as every other season #i think people are just far more negative about it because they miss mulder (which is understandable)#from my perspective though the writing seems canon typically inconsistent #just my humble thoughts on the matter!#8x09 #juni's x files liveblog

0 notes