#we buy houses in baltimore

[cashhomebuyersbaltimore]

We Buy Houses Cash Baltimore

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[webuyhouses451]

We buy houses Baltimore

Buying a home in Baltimore doesn't have to be scary if (you) take some simple steps beforehand like knowing exactly what (you're) looking for and researching potential neighborhoods beforehand. Also utilizing experienced professionals such as real estate agents who are familiar with local laws doing extensive research on each property are key components for getting the most out of your experience! With these tips and tricks under your belt, (you'll) soon find yourself settled into a new home and ready for adventure in Charm City!

[sellhousefastusa]

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[hannibals-favourite-meal]

30k follower celebration for Hannibal Lecter please prompt 3 “I never thought I would see you again.”

.⋆｡Won’t Let Go Again｡⋆.

Hannibal Lecter x plus size reader

implied Hannigram x plus size reader

Moving to Baltimore was supposed to be a fresh start, to escape the ghosts of your past but a budding new friendship with an FBI profiler leads you back to the man who left you behind

Warnings: european!reader, DARK, usual Hannibal warnings (implied cannibalism, kidnapping, drugging, manipulation), childhood lovers, needles

WC: 1.2k

Minors DNI

Library- @hannibals-favourite-meal-library

Halloween Celebration

America confused you, everything was big and moved so quickly, you considered it a miracle that you didn’t constantly get lost. But it was such a beautiful place, especially Baltimore. The mixture of old and new architecture that lined the bay was so reminiscent of your old home but also gave you a whole new world to explore.

With a paper map in your hands, you wandered down a mostly empty street, your small heels clacking softly against the pavement. You were determined in your search for a new coffee shop to try out on your day off but so far, you have been unsuccessful. Head down and concentrated, you didn’t notice an equally distracted man walking straight in your direction.

You bowled into each other and you both fell down. You winced and the man yelped as you crashed onto the cold sidewalk. “Oh god! I am so sorry, I should’ve seen where I was going.” You apologised quickly, ignoring the way the skin of your knees burned with pain.

The man shook his head at you, causing his brown curls to tumble over his forehead. “No it’s my fault, sometimes I just wander and forget my surroundings.” He pulled himself to his feet and offered you a hand, although he would not meet your eyes.

“I suppose we are both at fault then.” You chuckled and allowed him to help you to your feet. Your long skirt fell back over your legs, concealing the small cuts on your knees. You took note of the way he made sure that you were all right before he appraised his own body for any injuries. 

He suddenly ducked down and grabbed something from a puddle on the side of the street, and when he popped back up with your now destroyed and waterlogged map, he smiled sheepishly at you. “How about I get us some coffee as a sorry for ruining your map?”

He finally met your gaze with the most beautiful pair of blue eyes you had ever seen. Then his stomach growled loudly and he looked away, pink dusting over his high cheekbones. “Then let me buy some sandwiches for us both.” You offered.

——————

Your friendship with Will Graham was like how you viewed the states, both nostalgic and brand new, filled with mystery and comfort. You learned quickly that he was not a very reliable friend given that he frequently disappeared into cases and his own mind but he was also an incredible friend when he was around.

He showed you all of Baltimore and taught you some tricks to navigating any city so you wouldn’t get lost. And now, he was inviting you to dinner- at his therapist’s house. 

“I would hardly call this romantic, Will.” His eyes flicked to you as he reached to ring the doorbell of the townhouse in front of you.

“I never said this was going to be romantic.” He snipped but he still squeezed your hand tightly.

You rolled your eyes playfully. “You said that you were taking me to dinner somewhere nice, I assumed it was a date.”

“You’re teasing me, I don’t like when you tease me.” He muttered but you could clearly see the way the corner of his lips turned upwards in a soft smile. 

Before you could retort that he did in fact love your teasing, the door opened and the breath was sucked from your lungs. “Hannibal.”

Amber eyes widened and the careful composure he possessed, fell away. “Mylimasis.” (Beloved) Your hand went limp in Will’s hold and suddenly your vision was blurry with tears.

“I-I have to go.” But your companion held tight, his own blue eyes staring at you with an apt fascination. You could see the way his brain was ticking over, analysing each and every part of you but you refused to give anything away. “Let me leave.” 

You tried to pull from his hold and instead you were pushed into another one. Hannibal was much stronger than you remembered and he easily pulled you into his home. Will followed close behind, shutting the door with a firm slam. You would later question why he so blindly obeyed Hannibal but in the moment, you were only focused on the way your heart was breaking all over again. 

His chest was firm beneath your touch as he tugged you fully into his arms. He was older, there was no doubt about that, but the longer you looked into those golden eyes you used to know so well, the more you saw of that boy who had stolen your very soul. “My mylimasis, I never thought I would see you again.” 

Your anger flared once more, setting your veins alight with a fire you thought you had extinguished long ago. “That tends to happen when you abandon someone.” He did not even flinch at your fight.

A large, warm hand cupped your full cheek as he gazed at you just the same as he had so many years ago- you wanted to punch that look off of his face. “Even more beautiful than I remember.”

Your eyes burned with unshed tears, memories unearthing from the deep graves in your mind you had buried them in.

The first time you saw him, you didn’t think he was real. He was so beautiful he had to have been some sort of fae. His regal features practically glowed in the spring sunlight as he smiled at you. You could never clearly remember what he said to you that day in the flower fields by your small home but you did remember the feeling of his words- love, comfort, warmth.

But the day he left, his touch only brought you pain. You could still feel the way that the gravel sliced into your palms as you fell at his feet, begging him not to leave. He promised you the world yet he took the world from you. His eyes were dark, his lips turned down in a vicious sneer.

No matter how hard you tried, you could not forget the expression of pure hatred and disgust he held on that day. 

“You know her?” Will finally spoke from behind you. Hannibal finally looked away from you and to his patient who still stood awkwardly right in front of the door. 

“She is my first love.” He answered simply as you scoffed under your breath. “It seems fate brought my two loves to each other and then to me.” 

Your eyes went wide. “Let me go!” You thrashed violently but his grip never faltered. “You’re fucking crazy!” Hannibal never even acknowledged your struggle, instead nodding over your head towards his lover.

So caught up in your struggle, you didn’t hear the opening and subsequent shutting of a drawer before the heat of Will’s body drew closer and his breath tickled the back of your neck. “Don’t fight it, it will only make this worse.” His voice sounded cold and so unlike the man who would call you in the middle of the night to talk about a new stray dog he rescued.

You tried to turn your head but Hannibal firmly gripped your jaw, keeping you still. There was a pinch in your neck then warmth suddenly flooded through you. “Fuck you.” Even as your words slurred, the malice in your tone didn’t escape either man.

“Just close your eyes mylimasis, we will never let you go ever again.” The darkness swallowed you whole.

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[pfctipper]

Dear Mamma, Daddy & Kids, Well, I hope this finds you all well and keeping warm around the big stove. Hope Kenny is feeling much better. I am also glad that canning is all over. I know that is much too hard for you to do now especially with all the house work you have to do. I can hardly wait to get home and for you and Daddy and I to go to Baltimore shopping. We should take all the children along to help carry the packages. I would rather wait until I get home to buy clothes for the kids, as I know nothing about sizes, etc., yet I get a lot of enjoyment from buying for them. I'll draw a check and send you so you can buy all the Christmas presents. I wish I could send it to you now, but that is impossible as we have no paymaster here. Lots of love to all, Edward Letter dated 9 October 1944 from Edward Allison ‘Hillbilly’ Jones (1 April 1917 - 10 October 1944) to his family, quoted in Bill Sloan, Brotherhood of Heroes: The Marines at Peleliu (2005)

[jenjen4280]

It’s lesbian visibility week. In general, I haven’t been very visible lately on this blog because my Dad died (fuck cancer).

Warning: Long post. TLDR - my Dad was a great Dad and a good man.

Prior to that, I was spending a lot of time with him and Mom, helping as best I could. And afterwards, spending time with Mom getting everything done that needs done.

The Hot Wife has been at home, keeping everything going there and providing a lot of love and support.

My Dad was from the Silent Generation (the one before the Boomers). Unlike most people his age, he never stopped learning, growing, and adapting to the changing times. He believed in equity and justice not because he was “woke,” but because it is the right thing to do and he participated in civil rights protests in the 60s.

He taught me how to throw a ball and was always up for a game of catch.

He shared his love of folk music, classical music, science fiction, existentialism, art, and weird cult/art house/foreign films with me.

When I came out, he apologized for the times when he and Mom told me to act more like a girl, while encouraging me to be myself and grow up as a tomboy. He would buy fireworks for me and martial art supplies so my bff and I could terrorize the neighborhood in our ninja suits every summer night and a few other nights too.

He always bought boxes of candy for Mom, Seester, me, and my girlfriend on Valentine’s Day.

He randomly showed up at the Baltimore Gay Pride Festival one year (the year I wore my fav t-shirt that said “let go of my ears, I know what I’m doing”), and for many years after we went to Pride together.

We gossiped about our celebrity crushes together.

He refused to take my Mom shopping at Hobby Lobby and refused to eat at Chick-Fil-A.

He was so happy when I married the Hot Wife and he loved her too.

I didn’t know this until I cleaned out his desk - he had been donating to the Human Rights Campaign Fund for years and he had a few different clippings from magazines and downloads from the internet about how to challenge transphobes.

I didn’t just lose my Dad, we all lost an LGBTQ+ ally, a voting Democrat, and an example of non-toxic masculinity.

Good-by, Dad. Easter pizza dinner won’t be the same without you.

[erik-even-wordier]

I really don’t owe my Trump-supporting friends an apology. I’ve been critical of Trump these last several years, and am still exhausted from the experience.

But to be fair, Trump wasn’t that bad…………..other than when:

1. he incited an insurrection against the government,

2. mismanaged a pandemic that killed a million Americans,

3. separated children from their families, lost those children in the bureaucracy,

4. tear-gassed peaceful protesters on Lafayette Square so he could hold a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church,

5. tried to block all Muslims from entering the country,

6. got impeached,

7. got impeached again,

8. had the worst jobs record of any president in modern history,

9. pressured Ukraine to dig dirt on Joe Biden,

10. fired the FBI director for investigating his ties to Russia,

11. bragged about firing the FBI director on TV,

12. took Vladimir Putin’s word over the US intelligence community,

13. diverted military funding to build his wall,

14. caused the longest government shutdown in US history,

15. called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate,”

16. lied nearly 30,000 times,

17. banned transgender people from serving in the military,

18. ejected reporters from the White House briefing room who asked tough questions,

19. vetoed the defense funding bill because it renamed military bases named for Confederate soldiers,

20. refused to release his tax returns,

21. increased the national debt by nearly $8 trillion,

22. had three of the highest annual trade deficits in U.S. history,

23. called veterans and soldiers who died in combat losers and suckers,

24. coddled the leader of Saudi Arabia after he ordered the execution and dismembering of a US-based journalist,

25. refused to concede the 2020 election,

26. hired his unqualified daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House,

27. walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl,

28. called neo-Nazis “very fine people,”

29. suggested that people should inject bleach into their bodies to fight COVID,

30. abandoned our allies the Kurds to Turkey,

31. pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest but balked at helping working Americans,

32. incited anti-lockdown protestors in several states at the height of the pandemic,

33. withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords,

34. withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal,

35. withdrew the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership which was designed to block China’s advances,

36. insulted his own Cabinet members on Twitter,

37. pushed the leader of Montenegro out of the way during a photo op,

38. failed to reiterate US commitment to defending NATO allies,

39. called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries,

40. called the city of Baltimore the “worst in the nation,”

41. claimed that he single handedly brought back the phrase “Merry Christmas” even though it hadn’t gone anywhere,

42. forced his Cabinet members to praise him publicly like some cult leader,

43. believed he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,

44. berated and belittled his hand-picked Attorney General when he recused himself from the Russia probe,

45. suggested the US should buy Greenland,

46. colluded with Mitch McConnell to push through federal judges and two Supreme Court justices after supporting efforts to prevent his predecessor from appointing judges,

47. repeatedly called the media “enemies of the people,”

48. claimed that if we tested fewer people for COVID we’d have fewer cases,

49. violated the emoluments clause,

50. thought that Nambia was a country,

51. told Bob Woodward in private that the coronavirus was a big deal but then downplayed it in public,

52. called his exceedingly faithful vice president a “p---y” for following the Constitution,

53. nearly got us into a war with Iran after threatening them by tweet,

54. nominated a corrupt head of the EPA,

55. nominated a corrupt head of HHS,

56. nominated a corrupt head of the Interior Department,

57. nominated a corrupt head of the USDA,

58. praised dictators and authoritarians around the world while criticizing allies,

59. refused to allow the presidential transition to begin,

60. insulted war hero John McCain – even after his death,

61. spent an obscene amount of time playing golf after criticizing Barack Obama for playing (far less) golf while president,

62. falsely claimed that he won the 2016 popular vote,

63. called the Muslim mayor of London a “stone cold loser,”

64. falsely claimed that he turned down being Time’s Man of the Year,

65. considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller on several occasions,

66. mocked wearing face masks to guard against transmitting COVID,

67. locked Congress out of its constitutional duty to confirm Cabinet officials by hiring acting ones,

68. used a racist dog whistle by calling COVID the “China virus,”

69. hired and associated with numerous shady figures that were eventually convicted of federal offenses including his campaign manager and national security adviser,

70. pardoned several of his shady associates,

71. gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two congressmen who amplified his batshit crazy conspiracy theories,

72. got into telephone fight with the leader of Australia(!),

73. had a Secretary of State who called him a moron,

74. forced his press secretary to claim without merit that his was the largest inauguration crowd in history,

75. botched the COVID vaccine rollout,

76. tweeted so much dangerous propaganda that Twitter eventually banned him,

77. charged the Secret Service jacked-up rates at his properties,

78. constantly interrupted Joe Biden in their first presidential debate,

79. claimed that COVID would “magically” disappear,

80. called a U.S. Senator “Pocahontas,”

81. used his Twitter account to blast Nordstrom when it stopped selling Ivanka’s merchandise,

82. opened up millions of pristine federal lands to development and drilling,

83. got into a losing tariff war with China that forced US taxpayers to bail out farmers,

84. claimed that his losing tariff war was a win for the US,

85. ignored or didn’t even take part in daily intelligence briefings,

86. blew off honoring American war dead in France because it was raining,

87. redesigned Air Force One to look like the Trump Shuttle,

88. got played by Kim Jung Un and his “love letters,”

89. threatened to go after social media companies in clear violation of the Constitution,

90. botched the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico,

91. threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans when he finally visited them,

92. pressured the governor and secretary of state of Georgia to “find” him votes,

93. thought that the Virgin islands had a President,

94. drew on a map with a Sharpie to justify his inaccurate tweet that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane,

95. allowed White House staff to use personal email accounts for official businesses after blasting Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing,

96. rolled back regulations that protected the public from mercury and asbestos,

97. pushed regulators to waste time studying snake-oil remedies for COVID,

98. rolled back regulations that stopped coal companies from dumping waste into rivers,

99. held blatant campaign rallies at the White House,

100. tried to take away millions of Americans’ health insurance because the law was named for a Black man,

101. refused to attend his successors’ inauguration,

102. nominated the worst Education Secretary in history,

103. threatened judges who didn’t do what he wanted,

104. attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci,

105. promised that Mexico would pay for the wall (it didn’t),

106. allowed political hacks to overrule government scientists on major reports on climate change and other issues,

107. struggled navigating a ramp after claiming his opponent was feeble,

108. called an African-American Congresswoman “low IQ,”

109. threatened to withhold federal aid from states and cities with Democratic leaders,

110. went ahead with rallies filled with maskless supporters in the middle of a pandemic,

111. claimed that legitimate investigations of his wrongdoing were “witch hunts,”

112. seemed to demonstrate a belief that there were airports during the American Revolution,

113. demanded “total loyalty” from the FBI director,

114. praised a conspiracy theory that Democrats are Satanic pedophiles,

115. completely gutted the Voice of America,

116. placed a political hack in charge of the Postal Service,

117. claimed without evidence that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower,

118. suggested that the US should allow more people from places like Norway into the country,

119. suggested that COVID wasn’t that bad because he recovered with the help of top government doctors and treatments not available to the public,

120. overturned energy conservation standards that even industry supported,

121. reduced the number of refugees the US accepts,

122. insulted various members of Congress and the media with infantile nicknames,

123. gave Rush Limbaugh a Presidential medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address,

124. named as head of federal personnel a 29-year old who’d previously been fired from the White House for allegations of financial improprieties,

125. eliminated the White House office of pandemic response,

126. used soldiers as campaign props,

127. fired any advisor who made the mistake of disagreeing with him,

128. demanded the Pentagon throw him a Soviet-style military parade,

129. hired a shit ton of white nationalists,

130. politicized the civil service,

131. did absolutely nothing after Russia hacked the U.S. government,

132. falsely said the Boy Scouts called him to say his bizarre Jamboree speech was the best speech ever given to the Scouts,

133. claimed that Black people would overrun the suburbs if Biden won,

134. insulted reporters of color,

135. insulted women reporters,

136. insulted women reporters of color,

137. suggested he was fine with China’s oppression of the Uighurs,

138. attacked the Supreme Court when it ruled against him,

139. summoned Pennsylvania state legislative leaders to the White House to pressure them to overturn the election,

140. spent countless hours every day watching Fox News,

141. refused to allow his administration to comply with Congressional subpoenas,

142. hired Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer,

143. tried to punish Amazon because the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post wrote negative stories about him,

144. acted as if the Attorney General of the United States was his personal attorney,

145. attempted to get the federal government to defend him in a libel lawsuit from a prominent lady who accused him of sexual assault,

146. held private meetings with Vladimir Putin without staff present,

147. didn’t disclose his private meetings with Vladimir Putin so that the US had to find out via Russian media,

148. stopped holding press briefings for months at a time,

149. “ordered” US companies to leave China even though he has no such power,

150. led a political party that couldn’t even be bothered to draft a policy platform,

151. claimed preposterously that Article II of the Constitution gave him absolute powers,

152. tried to pressure the U.K. to hold the British Open at his golf course,

153. suggested that the government nuke hurricanes,

154. suggested that wind turbines cause cancer,

155. said that he had a special aptitude for science,

156. fired the head of election cyber security after he said that the 2020 election was secure,

157. blurted out classified information to Russian officials,

158. tried to force the G7 to hold their meeting at his failing golf resort in Florida,

159. fired the acting attorney general when she refused to go along with his unconstitutional Muslim travel ban,

160. hired notorious racist Stephen Miller,

161. openly discussed national security issues in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago where everyone could hear them,

162. interfered with plans to relocate the FBI because a new development there might compete with his hotel,

163. abandoned Iraqi refugees who’d helped the U.S. during the war,

164. tried to get Russia back into the G7,

165. held a COVID super spreader event in the Rose Garden,

166. seemed to believe that Frederick Douglass is still alive,

167. lost 60 election fraud cases in court including before judges he had nominated,

168. falsely claimed that factories were reopening when they weren’t,

169. shamelessly exploited terror attacks in Europe to justify his anti-immigrant policies,

170. still hasn’t come up with a healthcare plan,

171. still hasn’t come up with an infrastructure plan despite repeated “Infrastructure Weeks,”

172. forced Secret Service agents to drive him around Walter Reed while contagious with COVID,

173. told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,”

174. fucked up the Census,

175. withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic,

176. did so few of his duties that his press staff were forced to state on his daily schedule “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings,”

177. allowed his staff to repeatedly violate the Hatch Act,

178. seemed not to know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican,

179. stood before sacred CIA wall of heroes and bragged about his election win,

180. constantly claimed he was treated worse than any president which presumably includes four that were assassinated and his predecessor whose legitimacy and birthplace were challenged by a racist reality TV show star named Donald Trump,

181. claimed Andrew Jackson could’ve stopped the Civil War even though he died 16 years before it happened,

182. said that any opinion poll showing him behind was fake,

183. claimed that other countries laughed at us before he became president when several world leaders were literally laughing at him,

184. claimed that the military was out of ammunition before he became President,

185. created a commission to whitewash American history,

186. retweeted anti-Islam videos from one of the most racist people in Britain,

187. claimed ludicrously that the Pulse nightclub shooting wouldn’t have happened if someone there had a gun even though there was an armed security guard there,

188. hired a senior staffer who cited the non-existent Bowling Green Massacre as a reason to ban Muslims,

189. had a press secretary who claimed that Nazi Germany never used chemical weapons even though every sane human being knows they used gas to kill millions of Jews and others,

190. bilked the Secret Service for higher than market rates when they had to stay at Trump properties,

191. apparently sold pardons on his way out of the White House,

192. stripped protective status from 59,000 Haitians,

193. falsely claimed Biden wanted to defund the police,

194. said that the head of the CDC didn’t know what he was talking about,

195. tried to rescind protection from DREAMers,

196. gave himself an A+ for his handling of the pandemic,

197. tried to start a boycott of Goodyear tires due to an Internet hoax,

198. said U.S. rates of COVID would be lower if you didn’t count blue states,

199. deported U.S. veterans who served their country but were undocumented,

200. claimed he did more for African Americans than any president since Lincoln,

201. touted a “super-duper” secret “hydrosonic” missile which may or may not be a new “hypersonic” missile or may not exist at all,

202. retweeted a gif calling Biden a pedophile,

203. forced through security clearances for his family,

204. suggested that police officers should rough up suspects,

205. suggested that Biden was on performance-enhancing drugs,

206. tried to stop transgender students from being able to use school bathrooms in line with their gender,

207. suggested the US not accept COVID patients from a cruise ship because it would make US numbers look higher,

208. nominated a climate change sceptic to chair the committee advising the White House on environmental policy,

209. retweeted a video doctored to look like Biden

210. had played a song called “Fuck tha Police” at a campaign event,

211. hugged a disturbingly large number of U.S. flags,

212. accused Democrats of “treason” for not applauding his State of the Union address,

213. claimed that the FBI failed to capture the Parkland school shooter because they were “spending too much time” on Russia,

214. mocked the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault,

215. obsessed over low-flow toilets,

216. ordered the rerelease of more COVID vaccines when there weren’t any to release,

217. called for the construction of a bizarre garden of heroes with statutes of famous dead Americans as well as at least one Canadian (Alex Trebek),

218. hijacked Washington’s July 4th celebrations to give a partisan speech,

219. took advice from the MyPillow guy,

220. claimed that migrants seeking a better life in the US were dangerous caravans of drug dealers and rapists,

221. said nothing when Vladimir Putin poisoned a leading opposition figure,

222. never seemed to heed the advice of his wife’s “Be Best” campaign,

223. falsely claimed that mail-in voting is fraudulent,

224. announced a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria which not only handed Russia and ISIS a win but also prompted his defense secretary to resign in protest,

225. insulted the leader of Canada,

226. insulted the leader of France,

227. insulted the leader of Britain,

228. insulted the leader of Germany,

229. insulted the leader of Sweden (Sweden!!),

230. falsely claimed credit for getting NATO members to increase their share of dues,

231. blew off two Asia summits even though they were held virtually,

232. continued lying about spending lots of time at Ground Zero with 9/11 responders,

233. said that the Japanese would sit back and watch their “Sony televisions” if the US were ever attacked,

234. left a NATO summit early in a huff,

235. stared directly into an eclipse even though everyone over the age of 5 knows not to do that,

236. called himself a very stable genius despite significant evidence to the contrary,

237. refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and kept his promise.

238. Don’t forget that he took many classified & top secret documents with him when he left the White House, many of which have not been recovered & may have been compromised.

I’m sure there are a whole bunch of other things I can’t remember at the moment.

Plz copy and paste. Whoever wrote this deserves credit but I don't know who it is.

[leiawritesstories]

1778 (My Soldier Boy)

Rowaelin Month, Day 28: Wartime Sweethearts AU

A/N: this might just be the most American thing i've ever written lmaooooo 😂😂 so here's the context: the fic is set during the American Revolutionary War, which took place from 1776-1781. Rowan is a soldier in the Continental Army (the American side) and Aelin is the only daughter of a Loyalist (sympathetic to the British) family. and they're star-crossed lovers, yay!! posting this partially as a lil birthday treat to myself but mostly for you, hope you enjoy :))

Word count: 2.8k

Warnings: archaic language (i'm a nerd lol), mentions of war, old outdated traditions, mentions of battle, brief mild angst, flirting

enjoy!!!

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

16th July 1778

Heart of my heart,

I write this in secret, barely able to make out my letters by the faint light of this single candle. I apologize for the sloppiness of my script; my governess would have a fit if she were to see this chicken scratch. Of course, I would then retort that she ought to have taught me to read and write in near darkness, as that is the more useful skill these days. 

A few words, my love–we are leaving in three days.Yes, leaving! Mother has only said that it was what she and Father thought best, given the current…unrest. I am perfectly capable of reading the unspoken words. We are leaving because they fear what our neighbors might do while we sleep. We are leaving because the English are so hated here. We are leaving because nobody has seen or heard from my brother in months. Nobody save me, that is. I know where Aedion went, and I know what he is doing. 

If you love me, Rowan, please send word that my brother is safe, that he is well clothed and has some form of roof over his head. Please. It will calm my nightly worries at least a small bit. 

I do not know where we will go, only that we cannot make a scene of our leaving. We must pretend that we are only going into town like we typically do, except that our cart will be full of our belongings, rather than grain and butter to trade. I suspect we shall attempt to head east, towards the port at Baltimore, and from there we shall attempt to book passage on a ship. Father seems convinced that returning to England is the best course of action. 

I do not want to leave. 

They do not know that, nor do they care. It breaks my heart to admit it, but they do not. They expect me to keep quiet and obey. I have heard them discussing the possibilities of our lives once we return to Mother’s family estate in England–marriage. My marriage. To some titled landowner’s spoilt son, who gives not a whit what I want or who I am as long as I can give birth. I refuse to subject myself to such a fate. 

Rowan, my love, I write this both as news and as a warning. I will not silently accompany my parents in their hasty retreat. I cannot abandon my brother in the middle of a war, nor can I leave you, the other half of my soul. 

I will be waiting for you, my love. I swear it. 

To whatever end,

AAG

~

Heart in his throat, Captain Rowan Whitethorn marched in step with his regiment up the muddy road leading into Baltimore. The bustling port city was largely unmarred by the war that continued to rage on, continuing to serve as major sea access for traders and soldiers alike. As he and the men that called him their leader entered the city proper, Rowan breathed a short, soft sigh of relief. They had two weeks of leave, unless they were called back into battle, and he fully intended to use those two weeks to the fullest. 

“Enjoy your leave, men.” He saluted. “We shall regroup here in two weeks.” The blue-jacketed men broke ranks and ambled into town, most of them probably dispersing to the nearest pleasure house for a good strong drink and as many hours with a woman as their few remaining coins could buy. Rowan didn’t begrudge them their pleasure. 

After years of war, they all needed whatever solace they could find. As did he. 

Fingers instinctively wrapping around the small, precious bundle of letters in his jacket pocket, Rowan strolled towards the calmer part of town, the residential section not so crowded with soldiers on leave, traders, merchants, shouting vendors, and all the rest of the noise, chaos, and diverse cast of characters that populated a thriving shipping town like Baltimore. He glanced at the street markers as he walked, searching for the one with a blue stripe painted around it. 

There. 

Pulse hammering louder than gunfire, he turned down that street and walked past tidy clapboard houses interspersed with the occasional grocer, butcher, baker, and seamstress. He was certain every single one of the handful of people he passed could hear his thundering heartbeat, but none of them had said anything to the young man whose ragged blue jacket marked him an officer in the Continental Army who was walking up their quiet street like it was perfectly normal for him to do. One motherly lady had simply offered him a smile and a “thank you, son,” which had struck him right to the heart. 

He emerged into a busier street, full of shops and taverns and public houses, the businesses bustling but not crowded with soldiers and sailors like the cheaper taverns down by the wharf were. Eyes scanning the signs, Rowan walked up the side of the street. The building he was looking for appeared suddenly in front of him. A brightly painted kingsflame flower adorned the pub’s wooden sign, its carefully wrought petals the work of a singular artist. An artist Rowan knew as well as his own heartbeat. 

With his heart in his throat, Rowan walked into the pub. Immediately, a peal of soft, faintly raspy laughter caught his ear, and his attention snapped to the bar at the back of the softly-lit, cozy space. Behind the well-worn oak bartop, her golden hair tied back with a blue rag that he recognized as his own old shirt, stood the woman who owned every last shred of his heart. 

Aelin Galathynius glanced over towards the door, and the whole sky lived in her vivid eyes. 

Tin clattered against the bar. 

Surprised grunts arose from a table full of stocky, gray-haired farmers. 

And with a rush of air and a strangled gasp of his name, Aelin was in his arms, tears glittering in her eyes, warm and solid and real and clinging to him as if her life depended on it. 

~

He was here. 

Rowan was here, whole and healthy and standing on his own two legs in a much-patched blue jacket and dirt-stained trousers and battered boots, and his eyes were on her alone. 

Aelin flew across the pub floor and all but leapt into her soldier boy’s arms, clinging desperately to him as if he would vanish unless she held him tight. She buried her face in his shoulder and drew in a deep lungful of his scent, the faint trace of mountain pines clinging to him even beneath the layers of sweat and grime. Hot, salty tears of joy leaked into his shirt through a tear in his jacket’s shoulder. 

She felt his deep, familiar chuckle rumble beneath her ear. “Why are you crying, my love?” 

“I’m crying,” she sniffled, raising her head to meet his adoring gaze, “because you smell so bloody awful that my eyes are watering.” 

He tipped his head back and laughed, loud and unrestrained. “God above, I missed you.” 

“I missed you more,” she returned, tracing her thumbs along the sharp juts of his cheekbones. “Every day felt like the longest one yet.” 

“I’m here now,” he murmured in the soft voice he only used for her. 

With tears pooled in her eyes, Aelin leant an inch forward and kissed him, her soldier boy, with all the pent-up fervor of the last several months. She’d been so terrified when her parents announced that they were leaving the Colonies, afraid that she would be uprooted from the life she’d come to love and forced to marry some stuffy lord and shut away in a manor house forever. The very idea that she would be forced to leave Rowan, her love, and Aedion, her brother, without knowing whether either of them would make it back to Baltimore unharmed was enough to disrupt her sleep. She had hardly dared to hope that her desperate escape plan would work until she stood on the pier and watched her parents’ ship depart without her on it. 

Every long day of pouring pints of beer for rowdy sailors, handsy soldiers, and disruptive drunken no-goods was worth it to have her soldier boy back in her arms. 

“Where–ah, Rowan!” Breathless, Aelin poked him in the ribs, pretending to disapprove of the promising way he kissed her throat. “We’re in public.” 

“Let’s fix that, shall we?” He set her down onto her feet, caught her hand, and grinned. “I believe I need a bath, my love. Could you help me with that?” 

“You are incorrigible,” she laughed. She pecked a quick kiss on his lips and led him out of the pub and down the streets, turning into a quiet neighborhood and leading him up the front steps of a tidy little brick cottage with a blue front door. “Please be kind about the mess.” 

“I’ll show you a mess,” he whispered into her ear, far too tempting for his own good. 

She flushed, her cheeks staining bright pink. “Rowan!”

“Aelin,” he mimicked. They were safely inside the house, so he looped his arms around her waist and pulled her flush against him. “I’ve been dreaming of you for months, love.” 

“And you’re going to bathe before you act out any of those dreams, my love.” Giggling, she ducked out of his embrace and led him down the short hall to a washroom. “The tub is full, but it might be cold.” 

“I don’t care if the water is cold.” He shrugged off his jacket and stepped out of his boots. “It’s a hell of a better bath than we get in the army.” 

She sighed fondly. “I’m still going to boil some water.” He made to protest, and she placed her fingers over his mouth. “Ah-ah, soldier boy. Let me spoil you. Besides, the hot water is half for your filthy clothes.” 

“Fine,” he acquiesced. He shed the rest of his dirty, worn clothing and climbed into the tepid bathwater, groaning quietly as he sank into a proper bath for the first time in too long. “Join me, love.” 

“Soon.” She kissed his forehead and dropped a washrag and a bar of soap into the tub. “When you stink a little less.” 

His playful growl followed her all the way out to the front room. 

~

Following the bath–where she had indeed joined her soldier boy and taken his mind off the weight of war for a few moments–and a hearty dinner, Aelin exchanged her regular blouse and skirt for a soft cotton nightdress, braided her hair, and settled into bed with a lantern lit on the side table and a novel in her hands. Rowan was in the washroom; the faint splashing of water indicated that he was scrubbing out his uniform like he insisted he wanted to. So she opened her novel to the page where she had last left off and lost herself in the tender romance unfolding amidst the pages. She was so absorbed in the novel that she didn’t notice the mattress shifting as Rowan climbed into the bed and settled down beside her. 

His soft, low chuckle drew her out of the novel-world. “Good story, Ae?” 

“Wonderful,” she murmured. Reaching the end of the chapter, she placed the bookmark, closed the book, laid it aside, blew out the lantern, and tucked herself into his side, her head against his chest. 

“I missed you,” he whispered after a peacefully quiet interval, stroking one hand idly up and down her back. 

“And I you.” In the faint moonlight, her eyes met his, months of pent-up yearning and uncertainty glossing their turquoise depths. “I am sorry I didn’t write more.” 

He soothed her worry with a gentle kiss. “I would likely have found you before your letters found me. ’Tis the life of a soldier.” 

She hummed in agreement. “On that note…when did you last see Aedion?” Her older brother, whom she loved dearly but whose rashness she did not ignore, had vanished from the Galathynius home early last spring, leaving no indication of where he was going or why. Aelin alone had an idea of what he had gone to do, because he had confided his wishes to her. He had gone off to be a soldier in the Continental Army, but his unit were scouts, which meant that he could be anywhere between Philadelphia and Yorktown. 

Rowan exhaled a long, controlled breath. “The last time our paths crossed was in September, at the camp outside Newport. He mentioned going south, but no details.” 

“South.” Aelin rolled the idea over in her mind, forcing herself not to consider the harsher implications. “Was he…how was he?” 

“Healthy, as far as I could tell, and tired, but so are all of us soldiers.” Rowan ran his hands along Aelin’s tense shoulders, encouraging her to relax. “He said to give you his love and that he’ll do unspeakably horrible things to me if I hurt you.” 

Aelin laughed. “Now that sounds like Aedy. Too protective for his own good, he is.” Idly, her touch trailed along the slope of Rowan’s shoulders, tracing the new scar that slashed from his right shoulder down towards his pectoral muscle. “Tell him that I will return the unspeakably horrible favor if either one of you does anything stupid.” 

“Indeed I shall.” Laughing softly, Rowan pulled Aelin flush against his chest, her heartbeat atop his, and kissed her. She sighed into the kiss, threading her fingers into his overgrown hair. 

“I don’t want you to go back,” she murmured after they had separated. 

He swallowed thickly. “We both know I must.” 

“I know.” Her voice was a fragile thread. “I’m keeping you all to myself for the next two weeks, though. It’s only fair.” 

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I love you, my wildfire.” 

She smiled tenderly at him. “I love you too, my soldier boy.” 

~

Mid-November, 1778

Aelin, 

I apologize both for the shortness of this note and the fact that it took me so bloody long to write it. There is something I must tell you, and I can only hope that you hear it from Rowan rather than me and my paltry excuse for a letter. 

We are marching to Savannah. Intelligence has it that the Redcoats intend to advance upon the city, and we cannot let the stronghold go without a fight. 

I cannot promise that I will be able to write for any amount of time, and as much as I hate to do this, I leave you all my affection. I will stay as safe as possible, that I can promise. The moment I am able, I swear on my blood that I will come to you, and if possible, that I will bring Rowan. 

Stay strong for us, dear sister. 

Yours, 

Aedion

The short note had reached her in late January of 1779, after three and a half months of ever-increasing tension and worry spurred by the grim reports coming up from the South. Before he left in mid-November, the same time Aedion’s letter was dated, Rowan had revealed that his unit was headed to Savannah to reinforce the troops already there. He had been confident that, with the extra reinforcements, the Army would be able to stave off the British–if not all on their own, then at least long enough for the shipment of French troops to arrive. 

Just before the New Year, the newspapers reported Savannah’s defeat. 

Since then, all Aelin had received was silence. No letters, no notes, nothing listed in the papers, no weary soldiers showing up on her doorstep. The fact that Rowan’s and Aedion’s names remained out of the papers was but a small measure of comfort; all too often, fallen soldiers’ names never made it onto the listings. 

The cloth tying back her hair was black now, the only outward sign of suffering she would allow herself. The people who came into the pub noticed her quiet demeanor, the way her usual vivacious cheer was dampened, and passed quiet condolences to her across the worn oak bartop–a squeeze of the hand, a mourning mother’s shared tears, a word of comfort, a “thank-you” from someone who rarely spoke those words. It lifted her spirits a bit, but not much. 

Every night, she trudged home to her quiet little house, cradled a small watercolor portrait of Rowan–done a year ago, it was the only portrait she’d ever convinced him to sit for–stared down into his painted face, and refused to let her captive tears fall. Though her heart and soul ached for her soldier boy, though her sleep was disturbed by nightmarish imaginings of what could have happened or could be happening to him, she refused to let her tears fall until she knew his fate for certain. 

If nothing else, she owed him--and the child just beginning to stir inside her womb--that fragile hope.

~~~

TAGS: please lmk if you want to be added/removed or if tags don't work :)

@live-the-fangirl-life

@superspiritfestival

@thegreyj

@wordsafterhours

@elentiyawhitethorn

@morganofthewildfire

@backtobl4ck

@rowanaelinn

@house-of-galathynius

@tomtenadia

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@charlizeed

@booknerdproblems

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@llyncooljones

@silentquartz

[nancypullen]

The 23rd

I haven't posted here since September 5th because, quite frankly, my life is just a yawning canyon of nothingness. Dramatic much? Seriously, Monday is just like Tuesday, which is just like Wednesday, and so on. You know I'm a big fan of creating happiness where you are, and I'm killing myself trying to do that. No one likes to read the blog of a sad sack, I know I don't, so there's just not a whole lot to write about. I miss who I used to be. Because it's nearly the end of September, and because the 22nd was officially the first day of autumn, I decided to go all in decorating the porch. I'm not finished, but it's a start. Surely if I build it, fall will come. No more red gingham and pink roses, I'm all about pumpkins now.

I bought one of those $1 pumpkin trick-or-treat buckets and covered him in ModPodge and fall napkins. SO stinkin' easy. After popping a little battery powered votive in him, he glows at night. Cute!

The front steps are a hot mess right now. They need to be power washed, but I went ahead and put a few things out. I still have to get the garland above the door and swap some of that stuff around until it looks right.

Would it have killed the builder to center the damn door? It makes my left eye twitch. Of course I threw down my "Hey there, pumpkin" door mat.

I've only purchased two small mums so far ( and you know how much I love mums) because we're leaving town in a couple of weeks and they'd likely die while we're gone. A neighbor will check on the cats, but she's not a plant person so I don't ask her to water anything. I'm sitting on my hands to keep from filling the steps with pumpkins and mums. It's hard. This is my season and I want to enjoy every minute of it. And by enjoy it, I mean buy all of the pumpkins in the county.

I need an intervention. As much as I'm channeling autumn, Mother Nature seems determined to ignore me. As I type this I'm sitting in my craft room, burning my favorite fall candle - a yummy spicy, warm patchouli fragrance.

It smells like fall in here. Maybe I should crank down the a/c and pretend. Last weekend the Edgewater gang came over and we all took the Little Miss to an alpaca festival. LIke most festivals here, it wasn't much. A dozen or so skittish alpacas in a pasture, a store selling expensive alpaca goods (not even local), an ice cream truck, a handful of vendors selling their wares, a small bouncy house that needed more air, $10 pony rides, $8 face painting, and a free train ride. This was the train.

All that matters is that the grandgirl had fun and she did enjoy most of it. It was too hot and muggy for me. I'd planned to make dinner for everyone, but we just ordered pizza instead. I call that a win. I'm lucky enough to have a sweet daughter-in-law that is an incredible cook and baker, and she brought my favorite cake. It's called Bienenstich Kuchen, or Bee Sting Cake. Honey and almonds, need I say more? It's to die for! So we had a little early birthday celebration and their thoughtful gifts brought me to tears. My sweet grandgirl made a bracelet for me with her own little hands. She chose the beads and made it herself! She's crazy about mermaids, so this is indeed an honor. How precious is this?

Anywho, that's what's been going on here. Days and days of nothing, with lovely sprinkles of sweetness now and then. Did I mention our upcoming trip? We'll leave Baltimore on the 7th and fly to Paris.

We'll grab our bags and clear customs before hopping a train to Strasbourg. That will be our base for most of the trip. From beautiful Strasbourg we'll explore the Alsace region. It's the spot where France, Germany, and Switzerland bump noses. We'll visit Colmar and Riquewihr. Riquewihr (pronounced Rik-a-veer) is the town that inspired Beauty & the Beast and supposed to be one of the most enchanting villages in France! We'll probably take a train to Basel, Switzerland as well. If time and energy permits we can also take a quick train to Heidelberg, Germany - it's just a couple of hours away. Eventually we'll make our way back to Paris for a couple of days before flying home on the 17th. It'll be a whirlwind, but a beautiful one. Since the Alsace region is considered the "wine route", they may be very disappointed in the two of us.

I know I'll sound like, "Dee loo, see voo play." I hope they appreciate the effort. Time for me to sign off. It's 5 o'clock and I've got brown butter carrots in the crock pot that need me. We grilled chicken this weekend and have leftovers, so this meal is simple and quick. The mister has a photo meeting at 6 o'clock and I'll probably sit at my desk and make a few Halloween cards. Still trying to make fall happen. That's it from me, dear friends. I hope that you are all well and happy. If not, trust that it won't last. Good or bad,nothing is forever (except for the fat on my thighs, that's apparently permanent). Sending you lots of love, hope you feel it. Stay safe, stay well. XOXO, Nancy

[shuxiii]

Everyday pt. 8

Hanni Pham x reader pt1, pt2, pt3, pt4, pt5, pt6, pt7, pt8, pt9, pt10, pt11, pt12, pt13

a/n i am dying, credits ''every day'' david levithan

TW: homophobia

a/n me messing i saw hanni in edits today and pictures I had to make chapter 8, still credits all to ''every day'' by David levithan, edit: I'm losing my sanity

Day 6006

The phone rings.

I reach for it, thinking it’s Hanni.

Even though it can’t be.

I look at the name on the screen. Austin.

My boyfriend.

“Hello?” I answer.

“Hugo! This is your nine a.m. wake-up call. I will be there in an hour. Go make yourself purdy.”

“Whatever you say,” I mumble.

There’s a lot I have to do in an hour.

First, there’s the usual getting up, getting showered, and getting dressed. In the kitchen, I can hear my parents talking loudly in a language I don’t know. It sounds like Spanish but isn’t Spanish, so I’m guessing it’s Portuguese. Foreign languages throw me—I have a beginner’s grasp of a few of them, but I can’t really access a person’s memory fast enough to pretend to be fluent in any of them. I access and find that Hugo’s parents are from Brazil. But that’s not going to help me understand them better. So I steer clear of the kitchen.

Austin is picking Hugo up to go to a gay pride parade in Annapolis. Two of their friends, William and Nicolas, will be coming along. It’s marked on Hugo’s calendar as well as his mind.

Luckily, Hugo has a laptop in his room—since it’s the weekend and a school computer isn’t an option, I am going to risk checking in. I quickly open my email and find something that Hanni sent only ten minutes ago.

Yn,

I hope it went well yesterday. I called her house just now and no one was home—do you think they’re getting help? I’m trying to take it as a good sign.

Meanwhile, here’s a link you need to see. It’s out of control.

Where are you today?

H

I click on the link beneath her initial and am taken to the home page of a big Baltimore tabloid website. The headline blares:

THE DEVIL AMONG US!

It’s Haruto’s story, but it’s not only Haruto’s story. This time there are five or six other people from the area claiming to have been possessed by the devil. Much to my relief, none of them besides Haruto are familiar to me. All of them are older than I am. Most claim to have been possessed for a time much longer than a single day.

I would think the reporter would have been more skeptical, but she buys the stories uncritically. She even links to other stories of demonic possession—death-row criminals who claimed they were under the influence of satanic forces, politicians and preachers who were caught in compromising positions and said that something very uncharacteristic had come over them. It all sounds very convenient.

I quickly run Haruto through a search engine and find more coverage. The story, it seems, is going wide.

In article after article, there is one person quoted. Essentially, he says the same thing every time:

“I have no doubt that these are cases of demonic possession,” says Rev. Anderson Poole, who has been counseling Watanabe. “These are textbook examples. The devil is nothing if not predictable.”

“These possessions should come as no surprise,” says Poole. “We as a society have been leaving the door wide open. Why wouldn’t the devil walk right in?”

People are believing this. The articles and posts in the comments sections are legion—all from people who see the devil’s work in everything.

Even though I should know better, I shoot off a quick email to Haruto.

I am not the devil.

I hit send, but I don’t feel any better.

I email Hanni, telling her how it went with Jiwon's father. I also let her know that I’m going to be in Annapolis for the day, and tell her what T-shirt I’m wearing and what I look like.

There’s a honk outside, and I see a car that must be Austin’s. I race through the kitchen and say a hurried goodbye to Hugo’s parents. Then I pile into the car—the boy in the passenger seat (William) moves into the back with the other boy (Nicolas) so I can sit next to my boyfriend. For his part, Austin takes one look at my outfit and tsk-tsks, “You’re wearing that to Pride?” But he’s joking. I think.

There is conversation around me the whole car ride, but I’m not really a part of it. My mind is completely elsewhere.

I shouldn’t have sent Haruto that email.

One simple line, but it admits too much.

From the moment we hit Annapolis, Austin is in his element.

“Isn’t this fun?” he keeps asking.

William, Nicolas, and I nod, agree. In truth, the Annapolis Pride events aren’t that elaborate—in many ways it feels like the navy has turned gay and lesbian for the day, and a ragtag assortment of people have come along to cheer it on. The weather is sunny and cool, and that seems to cheer everyone further. Austin likes to hold my hand and swing it like we’re walking down the yellow brick road. Ordinarily, I’d be charmed. He has every right to be proud, to enjoy this day. It’s not his fault I’m so distracted.

I’m looking for Hanni in the crowd. I can’t help it. Every now and then, Austin catches me.

“See someone you know?” he asks.

“No,” I say truthfully.

She’s not here. She hasn’t made it. And I feel foolish for expecting her to. She can’t just drop her life every time I’m available. Her day is no less important than mine.

We come to a corner where there are a few people protesting the festivities. I don’t understand this at all. It’s like protesting the fact that some people are red-haired.

In my experience, desire is desire, love is love. I have never fallen in love with a gender. I have fallen for individuals. I know this is hard for people to do, but I don’t understand why it’s so hard, when it’s so obvious.

One of the protestor’s signs catches my eye. HOMOSEXUALITY IS THE DEVIL’S WORK, it says. And once again I think about how people use the devil as an alias for the things they fear. The cause and effect is backward. The devil doesn’t make anyone do anything. People just do things and blame the devil after.

Predictably, Austin stops to kiss me in front of the protestors. I try to oblige. Philosophically, I am with him. But I’m not inside the kiss. I cannot manufacture the intensity.

He notices. He doesn’t say anything, but he notices.

I want to check my email on Hugo’s phone, but Austin isn’t letting me out of his sight. When William and Nicolas make a move to get some lunch, Austin says he and I are going to go our own way for a little while.

I assume we’re going to get lunch, too, but instead he pulls me into a hip clothing store and spends the next hour trying things on, with me giving my outside-the-changing-room opinion. At one point, he pulls me into the changing room to steal some kisses, and I oblige. But at the same time, I’m thinking that if we’re inside, there’s no way Hanni is going to find me.

While Austin debates whether the skinny jeans are skinny enough, I find myself wondering what Jiwon is doing at this moment. Is she unburdening herself, going along with it, or is she defiant, denying that she ever wanted help in the first place? I picture Beomgyu and Soobin in their rec room, playing video games, not having any sense that their week was disrupted. I think of Keeho later tonight, preparing his clothes for church tomorrow morning.

“What do you think?” Austin asks.

“They’re great,” I say.

“You didn’t even look.”

I can’t argue this. He’s right. I didn’t.

I look at him now. I need to pay more attention.

“I like them,” I tell him.

“Well, I don’t,” he says. Then he storms back into the changing room.

I haven’t been a good guest in Hugo’s life. I access his memories and discover that he and Austin first became boyfriends at this very celebration, a year ago this weekend. They’d been friends for a little while, but they’d never talked about how they felt. They were each afraid of ruining the friendship, and instead of making it better, their caution made everything awkward. So finally, as a pair of twentysomething men passed by holding hands, Austin said, “Hey, that could be us in ten years.”

And Hugo said, “Or ten months.”

And Austin said, “Or ten days.”

And Hugo said, “Or ten minutes.”

And Austin said, “Or ten seconds.”

Then they each counted to ten, and held hands for the rest of the day.

The start of it.

Hugo would have remembered this.

But I didn’t.

Austin senses something has changed. He comes back from the dressing room without any clothes in his arms, looks at me, and makes a decision.

“Let’s get out of here,” he says. “I don’t want to have this particular conversation in this particular store.”

He leads me down to the water, away from the celebration, away from the crowds. He finds a somewhat secluded bench and I follow him there. Once we sit down, it all comes out.

“You haven’t been with me once this whole day,” he says. “You aren’t listening to a word I say. You keep looking around for someone else. And kissing you is like kissing a block of wood. And today, of all days. I thought you said you were going to give it a chance. I thought you said you were snapping out of whatever it is that’s been afflicting you the past couple of weeks. I am sure I recall you saying there wasn’t anyone else. But maybe I’m mistaken. I was willing to bend over backward, Hugo. But I can’t bend over backward and walk around at the same time. I can’t bend over backward and have a conversation. I guess when it all comes down to it, I’m just not that damn flexible.”

“Austin, I’m sorry,” I say.

“Do you even love me?”

I have no idea if Hugo loves him or not. If I tried, I’m sure I could access moments when he loved him and moments when he didn’t. But I can’t answer the question and be sure I’m being truthful. I’m caught.

“My feelings haven’t changed,” I say. “I’m just a little off today. It has nothing to do with you.”

Austin laughs. “Our anniversary has nothing to do with me?”

“That’s not what I said. I mean my mood.”

Now Austin is shaking his head.

“I can’t do this, Hugo. You know I can’t do this.”

“Are you breaking up with me?” I ask, genuine fear in my voice. I can’t believe I’m doing this to both of them.

Austin hears the fear, looks at me and maybe sees something worth keeping.

“This isn’t the way I want today to go,” he says. “But I have to believe that it isn’t the way you want it to go, either.”

I can’t imagine that Hugo was planning to break up with Austin today. And if he was, he can always do it tomorrow.

“Come here,” I say. Austin moves in to me and I lean into his shoulder. We sit like that for a moment, looking at the ships on the bay. I take his hand. When I turn to look at him, he’s blinking back tears.

This time when I kiss him, I know there’s something in it. When he feels it, it may come across as love. It is my thanks to him for not ending it. It is my thanks to him for giving it at least one day more.

We stay out until late, and I am a good boyfriend the whole time. Eventually I lose myself a little in his life, dancing along with Austin, William, Nicolas, and a few hundred other gays and lesbians when the parade organizers blast the Village People’s “In the Navy.”

&n

bsp; I keep looking for Hanni, but only when Austin is distracted. And, at a certain point, I give up.

When I get home, there’s an email from her:

Yn,

Sorry I couldn’t make it to Annapolis—there were some things I had to do.

Maybe tomorrow?

H

I wonder what the “things I had to do” were. I have to assume they involve Minji, because otherwise, wouldn’t she have told me what they were?

I’m pondering this when Austin texts me to say he ended up having a great day. I text him back and say I had a great day, too. I can only hope that’s the way Hugo remembers it, because now Austin has proof if he denies it.

Hugo’s mother comes in and says something to me in Portuguese. I only get about half of it.

“I’m tired,” I tell her in English. “I think it’s time for bed.”

I don’t think I’ve addressed her questions, but she just shakes her head—I am a typical, unforthcoming teenager—and heads back to her room.

Before I go to sleep, I decide to see if Haruto has written me back.

He has.

Two words.

Prove it.

[cashhomebuyersbaltimore]

We Buy Houses Baltimore

We Buy Houses Baltimore. Visit: https://www.pandaprohomebuyers.com/

[3rdeyeblaque]

On November 8th we venerate Elevated Ancestor & Catholic Saint Father Charles Randolph Uncles on his 164th birthday 🎉

Father Charles Randolph Uncles shattered the color barrier in Baltimore’s St. Mary’s Seminary, at a time when segregation within & outside the Catholic Church was the norm, and prominent Black faces in the faith were few & far between. Charles Randolph Uncles was born in East Baltimore, MD to a B & O Railroad worker & a dressmaker.

Due to the heavy socioeconomic influence of segregation in the U.S., he was relegated to mere teaching in St. Mary’s Seminary - barred from pastoral work & limited in his efforts, aa American Bishops wouldn't appoint him to position in their dioceses. Though the seminary housed both Blacks & White who took classes together, they lived in segregated quarters.

To become a priest, Charles left to study at the Josephine Seminary in Quebec, Canada. This birthed Father Charles' ultimate achievement; his ordination in Dec 189, which made headlines nationwide.

Later, Father Uncles became one of the founding members of the St. Joseph Society of the Sacred Heat (aka the Josephites) whose mission was to evangelize African Americans in the U.S. and assist the Black church community in the Baltimore, MD. From 1891 onward until his death, Father Uncles taught Latin, Greek, and English at Epiphany College in Walbrook, West Baltimore, and in New Windsor, New York.

The Druid Heights Development Co. Would later buy-out the St. Mary's Seminary building, converting it into low-income housing that was named after Father Charles. Today the building still stands, having maintained some of the original ceiling architecture.

Though the debate over who the first Black American priest of the Catholic Church has continued for many years, it is undeniable that Father Charles Randolph Uncles place is cemented in the city of Baltimore's Black Catholic legacy & journey toward achieving racial equality in the history of the Catholic Church as the first Bosch ordained priest in the Mid-Atlantic region.

We pour libations & give him💐 today as we celebrate him for his resilient faith & leadership at a time when he tested in both - within and beyond the walls that framed his religious faith, and that of many others who would one day follow him.

Offering suggestions: Roman Catholic bible/prayers, red wine, sacred heart symbol.

‼️Note: offering suggestions are just that & strictly for veneration purposes only. Never attempt to conjure up any spirit or entity without proper divination/Mediumship counsel.‼️

[rustbeltjessie]

7 Snippets 7 People

Thanks to @blind-the-winds for tagging me!

The idea for this is to share seven out-of-context snippets of your own writing, and tag seven other people to do the same. Unfortunately, my brain is fried right now, and I can't even think of seven writer-mutuals (even though I'm positive I have many, many more than seven) to tag. So just know that if you're seeing this, and you're a writer and want to share, please consider yourself tagged; and tag me when you share, because I'd love to read it!

Since I'm not supposed to give context, I won't. All I'll say is there's some poetry and some prose (and some prose poetry!), some fiction and some non.

I ask if I can flip through the 45s and pick the next tune. "Sure," she says, and I do, slow and casual, like I don't know what I'm looking for, until I find it. Tobi Legend—"Time Will Pass You By." I want to tell you everything about this song and where I first heard it. About Wigan Casino in the early '70s, the "3 before 8," those songs they played every morning after we'd danced all night. How it was my inside joke with myself, doing the soul glide—slide one foot, swivel the other, I wish I could show you those moves right now—to those songs about time passing. Tobi's was my favorite. The passion rending her voice. The jumping beat paired with the swell of the strings. The lyrics—those bleary mornings, I always wondered if they meant as much to anyone else in the club as they did to me. But I can't tell you any of that.

—

You are a fried egg sandwich. On a winter day in Philadelphia when I'm down to my last three dollars & I'm hungry & cold. I mean you are, specifically, the sandwich I ate that day, just before Christmas, when I'd been wandering the wet streets of Philadelphia for hours, that day I watched the lights sparkle off tinsel & wrapping in store windows, displays of presents & mistletoe,

—

Lento, I say now. Lento, though the music of those years was fast and harsh. Slow it down. Keep us here, just a while longer.

Here, this pause between everything which came before and everything that would come after. Here, saying our last goodbyes to the star-doomed lovers; here, in a blood-red car, on a Baltimore-bound highway. My rock’n’roll sister and I in that burning room, where we slammed like boys, then batted girl-lashes to tempt the boys into buying us beer. The gold foam of it, the distorted fuzz of amplifiers. The night’s black eye.

—

It was weird, right. The five of us had been friends since we were babies, practically; we were inseparable as sisters and hung around at each other's houses so much you could hardly say who lived where. But I guess even sisters have their quarrels. I guess we've all got some ugly shit in us and we're most likely to take it out on the people we're closest to. And of course, it was summer, and the sticky heat made us mean. It was summer, and we were 12, and we were bored, and there was fuck-all to do in Mound City, Illinois.

—

Q: What do you call it when dead girls fuck? A: Two coffins bangin' together.

—

Blue as the churchbells ringing six times in the blue hour. Blue as an hour’s three twilights: civil, nautical, astronomical. Blue as sex, as sin. Blue, also, as the astronomical heavenblue of the Virgin’s robes. Blue as Mater Dolorosa; her punctured, burning heart, her seven sacred sorrows. Blue as a claddagh ring worn on a right hand with the heart’s point facing out towards the fingertips; blue as a claddagh that will never be turned in. Blue as a pigeon, dead in the gutter. Blue as the gutter we lay in, drunk, and the nightblue heaven of stars we wished on. Blue as a wish that can’t come true.

—

And thank you hum of nighttime, my sleepless lullaby—the air filter in the hallway, the nearby airport's machinations, and the trains (always the trains). And (thank you) the voice of a favorite singer, the whiskeyed gravel, the Midwest desperation, the loneliness, the smoke. And thank you the rain bringing toadstools to my garden, and the autumn.

[deluxewhump]

Erik's Journals pt 8 (2023)

16. Cetus

Cw: self harm mentions, scars, and NSFW - this chapter contains explicit sexual material I would not at face value call dubcon, but the nature of this story makes it something that deserves a word of warning anyway.

April, 2023

It was a blue spring day when Carlo tossed a duffel bag into my car and ducked quickly inside like a fugitive. Always unexpectedly tall and dressed like an Ivy League student, on spring break of his senior year at MVU. He glanced at me like the boy who once accompanied me to Germany, back when he was still my pet. He's something different now, something that is both Max’s and his own. Does he feel his own? I asked him.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” I said, and pulled away from the gray curb, still dirty from winter’s salt and gravel trucks. He looked unsettled by my strange question. “You’re fine, Lo,” I added, smiling at him. He smiled back and his shoulder blades relaxed into my leather seat.

I took him to my lake house in Virginia. It was only an hour's drive, and we listened to an NPR broadcast on Japanese cuisine and the concept of umami to fill the silence that always seemed uncomfortable at first until we settled into some old routine, of which we have only momentarily forgotten the first steps.

The highway took us west out of the bleak steel and concrete of Baltimore, a city that always seemed to me precariously perched between north and south, having qualities of both but belonging to neither. It is a precocious weed, struggling from the crack of the sidewalk, trodden and thirsty for light. 

“So…where are we going?” he asked when we pulled off pavement and continued more slowly down a narrow gravel road, the trees that overhang in summer like a jungle canopy still bare and skeletal in the slow spring we were having. I slowed and swerved to straddle a washed out section of road. Sparrows flitted in front of us, one side to another like brown arrows shot from a thrumming bowstring.

I hadn’t told him where I was taking him this weekend. He probably assumed DC, or New York. Was he nervous? Did he think I was taking him to some secluded patch of woods, some gravel pit to do him harm? If I wished him harm I could inflict it from the convenience of my living room.

“I have a new piece of property out here,” I told him. “It’s pretty, and quiet. I think you’ll like it.”

He watched the choked eastern woods crawl by from the passenger window. “Hey. There was a doe. Maybe twenty feet in,” he said with a quiet sense of appreciation, almost a tinge of wonder.

“Max’s property must be crawling with them, up there in the hills?”

He avoided talk of Max with a dismissive “mm” of general agreement. He checked his phone. No bars. He set it facedown in his lap.

“I know,” I said. “No service. You can connect to my Wi-Fi when we get there.”

The road arched its back over rolling wooded hills. I hugged right in case another car crested suddenly in our path, though I’d never yet run into another soul in this blissfully underdeveloped Virginian hinterland. Finally the road forked and I pulled right onto a second, smaller stretch of dirt. We curved a copse of saplings and before us appeared the two story house. It was glass from floor to ceiling, like a lantern box. We could see inside the bones of my living room furniture, the light fixtures hanging in the kitchen right through to the lake beyond, reflecting the trees that flank it like a glass bowl.

“Wow. Is this new?”

“Built last year. I closed on it in August.”

“Why?” he asked innocently, looking at me. I parked, the sleek engine idling silently as a snake in grass.

“It’s what old men do. They buy property in the middle of nowhere and sit and watch the water.”

“It’s your Walden Pond.”

On impulse, I reached over the center console and touched his hair. He let me. I fingered one dark curl, velvet as a rabbit's foot.

“What are we doing here?”

“We can take the boat out. I have good food to cook. Good scotch to drink. I have a TV. I’m sure you’re sick of books by this point in your semester.”

“Little bit.”

I remembered a time when he was young, maybe sixteen. He had come to me complaining about his tutors putting too much work on him in too short a timespan. It was winter, and he was doing a shift every day in the warehouse as well as his schooling and practicing piano. I'd been distracted, irritated, and snapped at him to learn some better time management. Surprised at my tone with him, his eyes had immediately welled with tears and he'd gotten angry. He tried to storm off and I said after him, "Go to my office. Now, please." I wondered if he would, or if he’d ignore my request. 

Sure enough, I found him there a few minutes later and shut the door behind me. He was sitting at the swivel chair in front of my desk like he was an inmate sent to the warden, picking his cuticles with his head hung low. Gently, apologetically, I asked him to explain again. He'd done so, reluctantly, and I took the next six shifts in the warehouse off his schedule for him. Focus on your studies, I’d said. The warehouse has its lessons, but it is not your main concern. 

I'd felt badly for yelling at him, when he'd come to me overwhelmed and looking for help. I couldn’t treat him like a whining manager at O&H, or a warehouse employee who’s no-showed to a shift. He was too sensitive to my moods, my criticism. I knew I oscillated between strict and soft with him, but he never took advantage of my lenience. 

“You’re not afraid to be way out here in the woods with me, are you?," I asked now, only partly teasing. 

His neck colored, and I resisted the urge to touch it to feel its heat. A curious thing, my attraction to him. It is not explicitly sexual, but it is a cousin to it now. Possessive. Hungry.

“No. I’m not.”

“Good. You shouldn’t be.”

He huffed through his nose, perhaps just to dispel the tension between us with any sort of levity. “Thanks for the reassurance.”

“Of course,” I said, and opened the driver's side door. We collected our things and went inside. It smelled of newly laid flooring still, a delicate cedar scent that reminded me of my childhood home, of winter and my father gathering split wood for the stove, how the cold gust of air from the back door would make the fire shiver in the yawning hearth.

I took his coat, told him where he could put his things. He wandered around for a bit, looking at the features and design of the house. He touched the leaf of a Christmas cactus, still flowering in provocative pink buds, between his long fingers, his neck bent so the weak April light played over the knob of his spine from a skylight above him.

“The architect was Swedish,” I said. “His fixation, for all architects have one, is light. I had my reservations about all the glass but out here, it works.”

“It’s like we’re outside but inside. A greenhouse.”

“The stars are incredible out here at night. No light pollution. It’s like being in the Alps.”

He eyed the copper espresso machine on a marbled countertop.

“Would you like a coffee?”

“Yes, Sir. Please.”

Sir. It was his way of calling back the old days. Our old dynamic, Master and Pet. Innocent enough to be a common honorific, addressing someone far his senior with a title of respect. Something a waiter might say to a guest. A student to a professor. A salesman on a phone call. But it was not just that. Not for him. Not to me.

I made us each a short black cup of espresso, and put a piece of vanilla biscotti on the saucer of his cup like a fat golden finger.

“Is this East?” he asked, facing the lake.

“Yes. Great sunrises.”

He sipped his coffee.

“Does Max know where you are?” I asked casually.

“Nope,” he answered, making the p sound pop like chewing gum on his lips. A confident, casual sound. He is young still, twenty three and still possessing the quality of a boy underneath the part of him that is a man.

“What did you tell him?”

“That I was with Jude. But Jude’s in Michigan. I’ll message him with the Wi-Fi at some point. He won’t call.”

“No?”

“No. My leash, as you called it, is very long now. I’ve proven to him that I can take care of myself, or whatever.”

“You’ve always been able to take care of yourself.”

He widened his eyes over the rim of his cup briefly. “Sort of. I had a rough start because of… separation anxiety, I guess.

“By choice, I bet. I seem to remember you navigating Berlin all by your lonesome just fine. I never worried you wouldn’t come back.”

“I was always coming back,” he said in a low register that suggested he wasn’t just talking about Berlin. “I’m here, aren’t I? Of my own free will, if there’s such a thing?”

“There is. For our intents and purposes, anyway.”

He sat on my sofa and I leaned on the counter, sipping espresso.

“What is your major again?”

“I don’t know that I ever told you. English. Minor in psych.”

“What will you do with it?”

“Everyone asks me that. Strangers ask me that. I haven’t gotten that far. Max just wanted me to go.”

“So you went.”

“Yep. But I like it. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. I probably should’ve done something more practical. I think Max thinks that too. But he’s just happy I’m going. I graduate this December.”

It was more than he usually spoke of Max. I was always so curious, but it didn’t really matter, my curiosity. Just a morbid interest I’d taken up in the man who’d bought my Carlo and set him free, and yet kept him all the same like a little brother. Or a child.

“Practicality is in the eye of the beholder.”

He snorted.

“It is. The purpose of higher education was never and should not be now to produce a brainless army of workers. A certificated proletariat.”

“What is it then?”

“To produce a well informed, well rounded citizen. It’s not a product to be bought. You are a student, not a customer.”

He regarded me slowly, in his catlike way. “So you think English is a good choice? Chaucer and poetry and the history of rhetoric?” He enunciated harshly, belittling his own field.

“If you have an affinity for it. Which I have no doubt you do, knowing you like I do.”

He seemed pleased with that, but like he was trying to hide it from me. Did he still crave my approval? Of course. I pressed on.

“What else would you do? Weld? Go into sales? Middle management at a credit reporting bureau? No. You’re right where you belong . Leave the key turning and penny pinching to the rest of them.”

He gave me a wry look. Max is middle management at a credit reporting bureau. And does well for himself by the looks of Carlo’s clothes and leather bag and car. But I had told him what he wanted to hear, so he forgave me the backhanded slight to his younger former keeper.

“Can we go out on your boat today?”

“Of course. Sooner rather than later, while we still have the light. It’s chilly. Bring your coat, and I’ll get you a hat and gloves.”

That night I fed him tender steak with mushrooms and onion, crispy skinned, pillowy potatoes with rosemary, and tiramisu from a bakery downtown. After the brisk fresh air of the lake and having drunk half a bottle of red wine, he fell asleep under a blanket on my cream leather sofa with the fireplace crackling in the hearth.

I was glad I’d chosen a real fireplace for this house of glass and wrought iron, though mine at home were all gas and remote controlled now. Outside, our woodsmoke smudged the perfect white stars.

He woke at midnight with bleary eyes and let me take him to his room, a brand new queen bed, never slept in. He let himself be guided under crisp virgin covers, and I sat on the side of the bed. He didn’t question that, or my hand in his hair, petting him back to sleep.

-

Saturday morning, Carlo had gone for a swim in the lake before sunrise. He was at the kitchen table with his breakfast when I came downstairs and discovered what he’d done. He was in fresh clothes, but his hair was only partially toweled off, lips still pale from the freezing water. 

“In April, Carlo? ” I chided him, heating water for the French press. “The coldest April in twenty years?”

“It wasn’t so bad.”

“It’s hardly forty-three degrees out. And the sun wasn’t even up. I can’t begin to guess what the water temperature is. That lake is deep. It drops off to thirty feet almost immediately. I told you that yesterday on the boat. What if you got a muscle cramp?”

“I like the cold.”

“Since when?”

His spoon paused halfway to his mouth— almond granola and a handful of sugared raspberries in whole milk. 

He knew he had me. 

“Since you taught me to like it.”

The cold shower rule, from that distant winter, back to haunt me. 

I thought mildly of slapping his perfect face. I’d done it before. It would be out of line now. It almost was then. I imagined his wounded, startled look and an upside down bowl of granola on the floor, raspberries rolling toward the cracks in the black tiles.

”Oh you liked it, now? Is that your story?” I asked calmly. 

“Eventually,” he said quietly, matter-of-fact. “If you just submit to the cold it is more bearable. It hurts at first, and then your brain gives you endorphins to combat the discomfort. If you start associating the source of discomfort with the endorphins…” he shrugged. “Masochism 101.” 

His spoon was still paused patiently in the air, elbow on my table. Talking to me about masochism. 

“Is that your psych minor talking?”

“Was that not what I was supposed to learn from it?” he asked with a mimicry of sincerity. 

I turned from the stovetop and poured hot water into the press. “Willful little brat.”

He frowned. “Are you really mad at me? I didn’t do it to upset you, I swear. It was an impulse.”

I waved in a dismissive gesture. 

He dropped his spoon back into the bowl, unsatisfied. 

“I’m not mad at you, Lo. Don’t be so sensitive. You surprised me. Worried me.”

He lifted his eyes to me and I thought of the doe he’d seen in the woods. What a foolish dance this was. And yet here I was, on my mark. 

He rubbed his chin. “You sound mad.”

I came closer and he straightened, unsure of me. I picked a raspberry out of his bowl and placed it close to his lips. He pulled back an inch to glance down at it, then back up at me. 

Another reminder of his old games. 

“Please,” I said in a tender tone that went almost completely unused now, reserved for Carlo. He opened his mouth and let me place the berry on his tongue, wet magenta on wet pink.

“So am I allowed to swim?” He dropped his voice on the word allowed, almost to a whisper. 

“You can do whatever you want. But it is a deep, cold lake. And we are in the middle of nowhere. Please just tell me when you’re going. Hm?”

“Yes, Sir. I’m sorry.”

”Don’t be sorry. You’re young, and apparently fearless. Someone needs to keep you safe.”

I don’t believe the irony of those statements was lost on either of us. 

- 

Saturday night he cleaned the kitchen after a long and unhurried dinner until it gleamed and climbed up next to me when I put a movie on. I had my laptop on my lap at first, but finished an email and set it aside, pulling him closer. He came, soft and pliant, and laid against me as the temperature dropped outside and the wind made the thin, long limbs of barely budding trees scrape the gutters of the house. 

A few minutes later he surprised me by undoing the button of my pants and looking up at me, asking, wondering. 

I tilted my head at him. “Now, what is it you think you want?”

He shrugged. “I could… if you want.”

I admit the boldness and the shape of his mouth around the word want stirred me. It would be pleasant, I had no doubt. I imagined my fingers tightening in his hair and the sweethot slickness of his tongue.

I wouldn’t even fuck his mouth like I did sometimes to Tatiana, when I called on her. Carlo was of course more sensitive than even my favorite whore, more tuned in to my every move. More emotionally delicate, as I’d explained to Martin Olson half a dozen times. I’d let him go at his own pace, let him have his head, figuratively and literally, and see what he’d do. 

“A tempting offer,” I murmured, slipping my thumb over his bottom lip, over the scrape of his bottom teeth. He let his mouth hang partially open. Eyes lifted. I was already half hard. 

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. 

“I don’t know,” he said around my thumb. I placed my other hand on his chest and felt the tumbled thudding of his heart against his ribs. 

“It feels to me like a point of no return, Lo,” I said carefully, running my hand up his gray t-shirt to settle at the base of his throat. I thought of licking the little hollow there, sucking the taste of his skin and sweat and holding it in my mouth like a Biblically ancient pour of wine. 

Possession. That's what was rising in me. Like holding in my hands a delicate paper crane I could crush and something in me wanted to— but something else wanted to keep close to me, away from other influence and all harm. Even my own. 

He squirmed, rocking his hips into nothing. “I want to… I don’t know. Serve you.”

“You do. More than you realize.”

“Like this,” he said, and sucked the length of my thumb delicately. 

”I never would have asked you for this. Do you know that? Never.” 

”Yes,” he answered. “I know.”

“You’re hard to say no to. Are you nervous?”

“Yeah. But it doesn’t matter.”

I took my thumb from his mouth. Nodded at my unbuttoned lap. “Well.”

His chest rose and fell faster, and he turned to better position himself, undoing my fly and awkwardly, gingerly pulling me free from all constraints. There is something more lewd about having your cock out while fully dressed than being naked. I was hopelessly hard now, had been since he rocked his hips against the air at my words. 

He took my swollen length in his hand, his broad palm and long fingers so unlike the jeweled and acrylic-nailed hands of the girls I often chose. I put my arms behind my head, resting my laced palms on the back of my neck. I could see us in the reflection of the east wall of the living room, bathed in buttery lamp glow against the backdrop of the frigid black lake. He put his mouth on the tip of me and I watched him, turning from the reflection on the glass to see him directly. 

Sweethot, yes. Slick and wet and perfect. A debauched and ever wicked ex-pet back at his master’s feet, toying with his own free will and riding up to the gate with it like a banner. With one perfect fist closed at the base he took me in his mouth, slow and unsure at first. With my murmured encouragement he took me a little deeper, a little more surely. 

He’d done this before, I guessed. That was for the best. 

As he bobbed his head he rocked his hand in motion with himself, not shy of the way his saliva ran down my shaft and onto his knuckles, not shy of the wet sucking noises he made as he served me in the only new way he could think of now. I fumbled for the remote and muted the TV. I wanted to hear this. 

“Just like that,” I told him by way of encouragement. “Good boy.”

I lowered a hand to snake it in his hair and he slowed, faltering to see what I wanted. I guided him back down, at the same pace he’d been doing before. He continued, glancing up at me in a moment that almost made me lose my composure. I moaned, handful of dark curls, catching our glimpse in the reflection every so often like watching pornography, committing the scene to memory.  

I warned him I was close, giving him the chance to back off and finish with his hand. He didn’t. I came in his eager mouth, a perfect moment of whiteout pleasure, a bloody steak thrown to a creature I’d kept starved and tame in the back of my mind these last half dozen times I’d seen him. He came up for air only when I let go of his hair, lips pink and swollen, eyes wet. 

I held his face in my palms. “You’re really something.”

He smiled, pleased. 

I tucked myself back into my pants and convinced him to take off his clothes. He lay on his back naked, clutching a soft throw I kept on the back of the sofa over his hips modestly. I noticed a lattice of white, raised scars on his upper thighs. He saw my eyes on them and winced almost imperceptibly, miserably resigned to the likelihood that I’d mention it. 

They were minor cuts, had probably been done with a razor and bled for only a few minutes. They were nowhere near any vital veins, and I had no intention of making it a bigger deal than it was, even though it was an act I considered both girlish and juvenile. I ignored them and looked at his face instead, his eyes watching me closely. 

He let me kiss him everywhere else— the quivering well at the center of his ribcage, his silky thighs, the inner softness of his ankle. When his answering shivers and panting breaths quieted, I looked up to find him crying without a sound. 

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I feel good. I’m sorry.”

I opened my arms to him, offering. He came into them, tucking his head under my chin. I petted his hair, the base of his neck. He was still hard. I touched him there, silky and beautiful and leaking from the tip. He moved to better let me. I stroked him slowly, until he was done with tears and let his head fall back on my shoulder, whimpering like a pup and grasping the fabric of my pants at my knee. 

“It’s alright,” I whispered low in his ear. “Let me make you feel good. I’ve got you.” 

It was the talking that did it for him, I noticed. It was my words that made him writhe and tense in my hand. I kept talking to him as he gasped and came, slowing my hand until he was done and I was just holding him, sensitive as a beating heart turned inside out. 

I wondered— what cards had I just played? What cards did I let him believe he held? And whyever the tears? He still wanted things from me, things he couldn’t get from Max or that Max, in all his decent simplicity, would not give him.

Perhaps it was decency that stayed Max’s hand where it moved mine. Perhaps he was only interested in women. Could be it was a little of both. In any case. Here Carlo was. 

I leaned down to fish Carlo’s cotton shirt from the floor and cleaned him, then my hand. I always hated the mess, afterward. It throws cold water on the thrumming nectar of any moment, turning what was only moments before the tilting zenith of a symphony into something animal and mundane. I tossed the soiled shirt to the floor and pulled the forgotten blanket over his bare skin, kissed his warm forehead. 

“I don’t feel like that was a point of no return,” he said drowsily, leaning against me. “I don’t know why it’s any different.”

“Hush,” I told him gently, and turned the television back on. I’d hold him if he wished, but I wasn’t going to pillow talk to him about it like a woman, or a virgin, of which he was neither. “Then it isn’t.” 

Next

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“But if the architects of the Prison Labor Authority (PLA) expected huzzahs, they were quickly and bitterly disappointed. From the beginning, it was clear that the ultimate success of the code hinged on its ability to separate the free economy from the prison economy and to prevent prison-made goods from undercutting free-market goods. Prevailing thinking held that this would best be accomplished in a state-use system. But, as with Hawes-Cooper, the code had no power to actively promote a state-use system. Nor did it have the authority to ban convict leasing. In fact, by allowing states that continued to rely on contracting to participate in the compact, the code effectively shielded those states and, arguably, perpetuated a despised system that had little momentum outside the world of the code. Moreover, the code allowed signatories to continue the practice of interstate trade in prison-made goods. To critics, the code was effectively an end-run around Hawes-Cooper.

Given these two serious flaws, charges of the code’s failure were certain and emerged almost immediately. In Louisiana, tomato canners complained that the Angola prison farm artificially depressed the market; where free-market canned tomatoes sold at $0.60 per pound, prison tomatoes sold at only $0.40. Worse, the quality of prison-made cans was so “sorry” that the state Charity Hospital would not even buy the prison-packed tomatoes; the produce was dumped on the open market, where it undercut the fruits of free labor. In Virginia, the operator of a rock company that ground gravel for state roads saw his orders drop by almost 80 percent after the state required that all contracts go to the lowest bidder; his company was undercut by the state penitentiary. “We do not believe you fully understand the situation,” the president of the Belmont Trap Rock Company wrote to the PLA: competing with prison labor meant the end of his business and unemployment for his twenty-two workers. Likewise, in Illinois, strong evidence suggested that the state prison had put the Columbia Quarry Company out of business by selling lime dust at $0.60 per pound, when the minimum cost to even produce that amount was $0.80. Throughout the state, a local field agent found, small quarries “complained to me bitterly” about competition from prison labor.

Problems emerged not only within states, but between them, as well. A Chicago saddle maker realized that sales of his whips were being undercut by the Bardall Company from West Virginia, which utilized convict labor. When the Chicagoan (named Schmidt) traveled to West Virginia to induce his competitor to raise prices to reasonable levels, Bardall did not repent his strategy but instead suggested collusion in producing illegal convict-produced goods — a prospect that would mean the end of Schmidt’s shop and unemployment for his workers. In this case, the PLA was able to sanction the Bardall Company, but it also discovered frustrating loopholes that surely struck some businesses as Kafkaesque. The Trojan Wire Specialty Company, for instance, had operated for years in Troy, New York, but suddenly discovered that it could not match the prices of the Gatch Brush and Wire Goods Company, which operated out of the Baltimore city jail. This seemed to be a clear violation of the terms of the PLC, to which both New York and Maryland were signatories. But, as Linton Collins of the PLA responded, the code only policed labor at state institutions. The seventeen workers at the Trojan Wire Company who faced unemployment apparently had no recourse when confronted by convict labor at a municipal house of correction.

More was at stake than just individual businesses, important though they might have been to the individuals involved. The efforts of reformers to develop a more nationalized approach to prison labor also touched on fundamental philosophical approaches to political economy. And, if the NRA seemed hopeful to progressives and liberals, it struck others as a dangerous, even tyrannical, example of the centralization of power and enlargement of the executive branch. Henry Hanson, a representative of the marking devices industry, acidly made this point to PLA officials. His industry, Hanson observed, had pioneered the production of license plates, “only to see the sentimentalities of pseudo-criminologists combine with the distorted economics of self-serving individuals” who shifted license-plate production to prisons, thus forcing states to duplicate an industry that already existed. This inefficiency hurt both industry and taxpayers, Hanson claimed, and also led to substandard quality. Over 200,000 Illinois motorists were forced to return their prison-produced 1935 license plates after the plates rusted out in a matter of months. The disaster of Illinois’s license plate production was more than an isolated instance of prematurely rusty metal. To Hanson, it also portrayed “one more example of the inevitable economic waste inherent in the attempt of government to exercise the proper function of private industry.” The struggle over the fate of the PLA was therefore also a conflict over the proper function of government and the relationship between the state and the economy.

No dispute illustrated this political conict in starker terms than the virulent opposition the PLA attracted from the cotton garment industry. Federal officials responsible for the PLA felt that the hostility of garment makers to prison labor was vastly overblown and hypocritical; in 1931, only 604 prisoners were counted at work on 15,000 spindles, as compared to the nearly 29 million spindles employing about 330,000 free workers. Still, the textile industry had a potent political voice, and it carried deep historical reverberations. The emergence of the textile industry in the 1810s marked the dawn of America’s industrial age; for nearly one hundred years, the spread of mills from bucolic New England to the resplendent New South propelled the nation’s economic growth and spurred a wave of factory building that quickly outstripped most of Europe. Textile factories had served as the cradle of the American working class, revolutionizing both the experience of labor and the social identity of laborers.

But by the early 1930s, America’s textile industry faced a pivotal moment. The cotton garment trade had been mired in its own depression for nearly a decade before the stock market crash of 1929. Tariffs prevented American manufacturers from selling surplus goods overseas. Shifts in fashion and taste increasingly favored newer products like rayon and nylon. Decentralization led to cutthroat competition and ruinous overproduction, which in turn forced wages ever downward. Technological and market changes were not the only challenges facing textile companies. In the spring of 1934, just as the PLA was being signed into law, over 300,000 textile workers across the country staged a massive general strike — the largest labor conflict ever to rock the industry.

Faced with these challenges, the garment industry responded furiously to the PLA. The opposition from the Cotton Garment Code Authority (or CGCA, the trade group organized under the NRA to regulate textile production) and private manufacturers flamed up just weeks after Roosevelt authorized the PLA. Ideological and material interests quickly coalesced on both sides of the matter. In May, the CGCA filed a formal complaint with Hugh Johnson, Roosevelt’s choice to head the NRA, protesting the fact that prison-made goods would be entitled to their own NRA “blue eagle” badge. The “blue eagle” logo signified compliance with the NRA and was meant to unify business, labor, and the public around the early New Deal; for many, it symbolized the entirety of the first New Deal program. The blue eagle’s “We Do Our Part” motto inspired a patriotic sense of togetherness and collective commitment in the face of the Depression, and signaled to the public that whatever item bore a blue eagle had pledged itself to the wage and price guarantees of the New Deal. 

Granting prison-made goods a blue eagle, in fact, represented a total reversal of nineteenth-century reformers’ efforts to have a “prison made” label stamped like a scarlet letter on all prison-made products. The opposition of the CGCA, then, was both practical and ideological: practical because, without the badge, prison-made goods would be effectively barred from a code-governed marketplace; and ideological because removing the blue eagle would symbolically strip prison labor from the sociopolitical legitimacy that a code would otherwise confer.

....

Assessing this situation, Sanford Bates noted, “We have infinitely more opposition from the manufacturers, who are interested in profits, than from the unions, who are interested in humanity.” But the controversy over the blue eagle threatened a revolt from labor, too. When the PLA met in April of 1934, both Thomas Rickerts of the United Garment Workers and Sidney Hillman of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers agreed that prisons could not possibly meet the standards of the cotton garment code, and therefore prison products could never be given a blue eagle that reflected this code. When the PLA started affixing blue eagles under the Prison Labor Compact code in 1935, the United Garment Workers local in St. Louis erupted in protest. Petitions to remove the blue eagle from prison-made goods flooded in, accompanied by cartoons featuring unemployed workers staring wistfully into a prison; the caption read, “They Have Our Jobs!” Seeking organized labor’s help in resolving this controversy, Linton Collins reached out to Joseph Briegel of the Chicago Federation of Labor. Briegel responded that, in learning of the conflict, he was more committed than ever to end prison competition with free labor. However, recognizing that taxpayers seem to want something for supporting the prisons, he puckishly suggested a solution: “That every article manufactured in prison that would in any manner compete with Free Labor . . . be piled up in a safe spot in the prison yards and burned as a funeral pyre. (The date set for these fires to be on Labor Day, as a reminder to the world that Prison Competition with Free Labor is a sacrilege to humanity).”  

- Matthew Pehl, “Between the Market and the State: The Problem of Prison Labor in the New Deal.” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History, Volume 16, Issue 2 (2019): p. 86-89, 90.

[boricuacherry-blog]

"Much of what we think we know about Holiday, however, is questionable, and over time accounts of her life have been bent to serve some other purpose than telling her story," John Szwed wrote in his 2015 book Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth.

At least a half a dozen biographies have set about separating the fact from fiction (even her FBI file was thin, Szwed notes), leading authors to wonder why more pages weren't devoted to her songs. Pretty much all studies of Holiday have agreed that her musicianship, as revered as she remains as a singer and entertainer, was woefully underrated in her day and for decades afterward.

But however unreliable a narrator Holiday may have been [for example, her parents were never married but she claimed they were in her autobiography], all the later work bloomed from the seed she planted with Lady Sings the Blues, for which she received a $3,500 advance and 65 percent of the proceeds, to her co-author and friend William Dufty's 35 percent. The book later inspired the 1972 film of the same name, starring Diana Ross. Andra Day starred in the film The United States vs. Billie Holiday, another film about Billie.

In 1939 she was introduced to Buddy Tate, the tall elegant saxophonist from Count Basie's band, and the two became an item. But when he realized the role alcohol and marijuana played in her life he told her, "Lady, you can't get high all the time, not every day."

In 1941, with her affair behind her, Billie married a small-time drug dealer named Jimmy Monroe and subsequently gravitated to opium for her highs. That all changed when heroin began to fill a void caused by the wartime shortage of opium. For awhile she used intermittently, but then succumbed to addiction, spending vast sums of money indulging herself and her former drugs runner Joe Guy - now her new boyfriend - in monumental highs.

She would go on to have a sordid relationship of violence with John Levy, a small-time nightclub owner, followed by marriage to Louis McKay. He had convinced her to marry him so he wouldn't be forced to testify in court. He'd already been buying property with her money, and putting it in his own name. This was all interspersed with brushes with the law. Yolande Bavan, a friend of Billie's, said that McKay had once spit at her. "She seemed to always be attracted to assholes." Holiday was also open about bisexuality, and dalliances with fellow women prisoners. Two women she was rumored to have had relations with were wealthy heiress Louise Crane and Tallulah Bankhead.

At 10 she was raped by a neighbor, who ended up only serving three months in jail for the crime. But Billie was oddly enough, punished too. She was sent to the House of the Good Shepherd for Colored Girls, a reform school. Her street-smart ways, from being on the streets of Baltimore at a young age, was not appreciated by the nuns. One nun, Billie claimed forced her to spend the night with the body of a dead girl to teach her a lesson.

In 1928 Billie and her mother moved to Harlem, where the jazz age was flourishing at that time. Billie and her mother Sadie earned income working in a brothel. The two of them were arrested for prostitution. Billie, who was only 14, claimed to be 21. She was sent to Welfare Island just off Manhattan, and here she spent 100 days in a workhouse for vagrant adults.

In Harlem there were a group of dancers, singers and comedians who would go performing from club to club for free, performing all night long. Billie would go from table to table singing the same song, but singing the chorus differently each time, teaching herself to improvise. One night while singing at a club, a young record producer, John Hammond, walked in. He'd never heard an improvising singer like Billie. Hammond teamed her up with Benny Goodman, and an 18-year-old cut her first record. People who encountered her described her as having a "don't care" attitude and speech casually laced with profanity.

"She had enough courage to play with the music," said Maya Angelou. "The beat is insistent - it says, 'follow me' - but she managed just to hang right behind it."

It was said she was a master at using pitch intonation as an interpretive element.

"She completely flattens out the melody - maybe the wrong word - more like, distills the melody to its essential line. Really underscoring the swinging rhythm and also, the language contour, so the punchline becomes highlighted, and it becomes like a little trumpet rhythmic riff she sings it on," said one listener. "Life is lived in that space between the notes, and that's what you hear."

The late Gunther Schuller, prolific on the subject of Billie Holiday, liked to say that her voice had "the reedy timber of an English horn." She modeled her phrasing after horn players. Others say they hear her sing like a sax.

Billie's mother borrowed large amounts of money from her daughter to fund a restaurant. But her mother wouldn't return a cent. This caused a rift.

Maya Angelou was performing one day, and she started by introducing the crowd to Billie, who was in the audience. They all popped up and applauded, but Billie didn't seem to notice their applause. This was also during a time when she was deep in her addiction. "Then I began to sing," said Angelou. "I sang an old blues song - 'Baby please don't go, baby please don't go, baby please don't go...back to New Orleans, they'll feed you rice and beans, worst you ever seen, baby pleeease don't go" - I sang one verse and she screamed, 'Shut that b**ch up! Shut up! You remind me of my mother! Shut up!' And she got up and ran into the toilet. So I left the stage and went in. She said, 'You know why all those people stood up when you mentioned my name? They wanted to see a black woman who'd been in trouble for drugs. That's the only reason they look at me.'"

A month later, completely emaciated, she collapsed. One hospital wouldn't take her, but they eventually found a hospital that would and found she was having liver failure. She eventually got better, but then was arrested again for possession, but she was hospitalized until she was stabilized enough to appear in court.

In the meantime, her husband Louis McKay, visited. "I saw Louis in her room," a friend said. "He had a Bible open in his hands, and she seemed to be moribund. He was doing the Protestant ritual - 'the lord is my Shephard, I shall not want and he maketh me lie down in green pastures' - so it scared me to death, because I thought, 'oh my god, it's too late,' and eventually he slammed the Bible shut, tiptoed down the hall and left. So I waited for a minute, tiptoed into the room, and at that point Billie opened one eye... and said, 'is he gone?' And I said, 'I think so.' And she sat up in bed and said, 'You know, I always been a religious b**ch, but if that dirty motherf**cker believes in God, I'm thinking it over.'"

Another friend recounted how she refused to eat mustard, that she couldn't stand the smell. When pressed, she revealed that she had used mustard to abort her pregnancy when she was younger, saying, "And that baby was all I ever wanted." Raised as a Catholic, Billie, according to at least one biography, may have seen her inability to conceive when she was married as divine retribution for having aborted a teenage pregnancy by sitting in a bathtub full of hot water and mustard.