and the last long lap is the hardest.

the jason mraz gratitude cafe tour - koka booth @ cary, nc - july 29th, 2009

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 02:17:01 GMT

I don't even have a proper preface to this entry. Nothing would properly introduce how I felt on Wednesday night, so as for what I did: some of you already know this, but on the evening of the 29th I attended my first Jason Mraz concert. I've wanted to see him live for years, ever since 2005 when I really started getting into his music and who he was and how he sang. This was the first time he played near me, and I was able--finally--to snag tickets to go see him.

And I still can't believe it.

So. What follows is an account of Wednesday, July 29th, 2009.

PRE-CONCERT

Pre-concert festivities were a little hectic. I met up with Beth that day and got ready at her house, then we dropped off her little sister Kathleen and friend Nicole (they were Mraz-ing too) at their own little get-together. The sophomore (well, I guess they're juniors now, but whatever) get-together was right in Cary and SMACK next to Koka Booth at one of Kathleen's friend's houses. As soon as we got out of the car we could hear Mraz and the band warming up--drums, bass, muffled voices. And it was only 3:30.

After that was a quick lunch/dinner at Cinelli's, a nearby Italian place, with our group of Mrazites: Beth and I, Kristine and her sister Kate, and Gillian. We ate, la di da, and then Kate and Kristine went home to pick up a few things. The rest of us were going to head over to the venue to start lining up--it was 4 PM by this point, and the gates opened at 5; since we had lawn tickets we wanted to make sure we found good spots--but right when we were pulling out of the lot Gillian practically threw herself onto our car and said, "GUYS, I HAVE A FLAT TIRE."

Oh God. It wasn't just a flat tire--it was dead. The metal part was practically scraping against the asphalt and her huge truck was stuck in the middle of the driveway into Cinelli's. A couple of phone calls and expletives later ("FUCK, WHY DID THIS HAVE TO HAPPEN TODAY? FUCK THIS. FUCK THIS SHIT"), AAA was on their way over to fix the tire so that we could be on our way. And believe me, we wanted to be on our way that very second.

Gillian insisted that we go but there was no way in hell we were going to leave her behind and have her be late for that concert. AAA arrived in about 10 minutes and Gillian's mom pulled up right after that, and by then it was about 4:10. Well, the tire-changing took about fifteen minutes, but for some reason we got the chatty guy and he kept talking to Gillian and her mother about absolutely nothing. Meanwhile, Beth and I were in the car screaming NOOOOOO STOP TALKING NOOOOOOO, but since the windows were up it wasn't like they could hear our desperate pleas.

Eventually Chatty Man left and we followed Gillian and her mother to her dad's office, where they dropped off her 'fixed' car. And then--I swear to God--ONE OF HER DAD'S CO-WORKERS PULLED UP AND STARTED TO TALK TO GILLIAN. And Beth and I were sitting in our own car (with We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things blasting at top volume) banging our fists against the windows and yelling HOLY SHIT, YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS.

Gillian finally joined us at 4:35 ("Oh my God guys I am so sorry I am so so so sorry" "No, it's totally fine, Gilly, it's not like you punctured the tire yourself...NOW SHUT UP AND GET YOUR ASS IN THIS CAR") and Beth became a crazy speed demon. Of course--of course--we hit all the red lights on our way to Koka Booth, but we managed to get there before 5.

Thanks to Kathleen and her friends, who had been the first ones in line, and Kate and Kristine, we already had pretty decent spots on the lawn--near the middle and around the fourth row. The amount of placeholders for our group was a little scary: blankets, tarps, umbrellas (even one donated by a stranger; thank you!), but at least we were able to make it there in time. Dripping with sweat--damn you, North Carolina humidity!--but on time.

But it all turned out fine in the end, and we found out the next day that Gillian's tire had been punctured by what appeared to be a piece of turtle shell.

Gillian: BUT I LOVE TURTLES.
Me: You ran over a turtle and you didn't even realize it?
Gillian: I WOULD NEVER DO THAT!
Gillian's sister: Ha-ha, sis, you are a turtle killer.

THE CONCERT

The venue wasn't too crowded, but it filled up pretty nicely. The seats in front were actually not that full, but the lawn was comfortably packed. Later on, though, I noticed that all of the seats were full, so either people came late or I missed my chance to snag a free seat. But I'm betting that people just came late. :P

At 5-ish Bushwalla came out on stage and admitted that he didn't have any jokes (which was, in itself, funny). He also then told us all that G. Love & Special Sauce and K'naan were stuck in traffic and so the opening act that night was going to be totally spontaneous. At this point, Kristine, Beth, Gillian and I had to pee really badly so we made our way up the hill and were expecting Bushwalla to keep on talking, so we'd have time before anything really good happened (not that Bushwalla wasn't awesome).

BUT THEN.

Jason came out with his guitar to help Bushwalla with the improvised opening to the show, but since we were all up on the hill and couldn't see him we had no idea that he'd come out. But I heard everyone screaming, which made me curious and I started to head back. Kristine insisted that it was just G. Love, though.

"Relax, it's just G. Love," she kept saying, patting my arm. "Let's go pee."

"Uh, no," Beth said, and pointed. "I'm pretty sure that's Mraz."

Then Mraz started talking and fuck if my heart didn't explode right then and there. I don't know what I'd been expecting, but his voice--I'd only heard it on CDs and the television and the radio. But to hear it then, and know that he was really there, only some feet away from me, hit me really hard and it was all too, too much.

"HOLY SHIT, KRISTINE," I said, grabbing at her. I could barely breathe. "IT'S HIM IT'S HIM IT'S HIM."

"IT'S HIM IT'S HIM IT'S HIM," she echoed, and we practically flew down that hill together. And when I say we flew, I don't just mean we ran. We tore up that grass like no otha mothafucka.

Gillian and Beth, meanwhile, just kind of stood there. But they were only fans, and recent ones. Kristine and I were in love with him. Clearly, there is a huge difference.

We stopped running/flying near the lawn and there he was, on stage with his guitar, wearing a hot pink shirt with a rainbow that said 'Namaste' under it (though it took lots of pictures with Kristine's awesome zoom to figure that out). But we really, REALLY had to pee, so after we died a little on the inside we sprinted back up the hill and into the bathrooms. From there we proceeded to rip down one 8 x 11 Mraz ad each (it's really not much--you'll see the picture in my flickr set--but um, we were kind of...caught up in the moment). After we'd all met up again outside ("Seriously?" the other two said when we told them about our vandalizing the Koka Booth bathrooms. "Seriously, guys?"), we went back down to the lawn.

Toca was out then, so it was him, Mraz, and Bushwalla singing a song "about bugs." And hummingbirds. I swear I've heard it before but I can't remember what it's called, but it was really cute and I took about 34802938492840928 pictures...you know why. After the bug song they played Ghettoblaster, which I did not actually know was a song until I googled it two seconds ago. :) Then it was announced that G. Love was finally there, and the other three left the stage so the crew could set up for the real opening act.

I really liked G. Love & Special Sauce--I'd known about them before because my brother had a few of their songs, and I remember absolutely loving one of their live recordings but I'd lost it when Ginny, my pink iPod Mini, had a tiny crash and I couldn't find the song anymore. Our little group sat on the blanket/tarp for most of their act, taking pictures (of each other) and just enjoying the music, and then we decided to check out the merchandise.

The lines at the merchandise tent weren't that long...well, okay, the one we were in wasn't but the other two were packed. I ended up buying two shirts--one that Jason's worn before, with a man and woman whose heads make a music note (and it's made out of bamboo and SUPER soft) and a tour shirt with the dates and cities on the back. I also bought a pack of stickers and pins, which was a little expensive at $10, BUT I DIDN'T CARE. Oh, the things you do for the boys you love...Arashi goods, anyone?

After we'd all gotten shirts we went to the tent next door, which was the Gratitude Cafe tent, and checked out the self-esteem mirrors. I thought they were pretty cool--they were long, stand-up mirrors with a positive message written on top and you were made to stand in front of them, look yourself in the eye and read the words aloud. Kristine did most of them but she refused to say "I am perfect, whole, and complete" because she firmly believes that she is not perfect and that's what she likes the most about herself. Which works, so hey, why not. :)

We walked back to the lawn, sat around for a little bit more while G. Love was still on, and then Beth got thirsty so I went with her to get a lemonade. As we were coming back down the hill through a concrete walkway, I looked down for a second to see if I knew anybody sitting on the little wall in front of the lawn...............................

....................and I saw Toca.

I didn't really register that it was Toca at first because I am a general disbeliever and the glasses kind of threw me off, but I was so sure it was him all the same. He was just hanging out watching G. Love and I walked calmly past him, but as soon as we were out of his earshot I turned to Beth and said, "UM WE JUST PASSED TOCA."

She looked at me. "Who?"

So I explained to her who Toca was ("Jason's right-hand man," I said, and she just kind of nodded) and when we made it back to the tarp I had to tell Kristine and Gillian what had just happened (except, you know, nothing had really happened). Kristine, of course, was all for meeting him. She is that kind of girl. As soon as I said, "We just passed Toca sitting on the concrete," she picked up her bag and said "Let's go."

It was just the two of us because we are hardcore and perhaps crazy. First we just casually passed him because Kristine wanted to make sure it was him, and then we discussed what to do behind a tree. (I know. I know. Please stop looking at me like that.) In the end, we decided that he was 100% Toca Rivera (dot com) and that, because we were too scared to talk and also shaking, we were going to write down "Are you Toca" on an envelope and have him check the yes (or the no) box.

I didn't want to be all fangirly, honestly, because I was annoying myself with my stupid erratic heartbeat and little gasps of excitement, but IT WAS TOCA. He is like the jam in the peanut-butter Mraz sandwich. Anyway, so Kristine (armed with the "Are you Toca" envelope) and I walked back down to Toca.

We squatted down next to him. It was creepy--we were creepy.

"Hi," Kristine said, kind of breathlessly. It's a good thing she's so pretty. "So my friend and I have been wondering for the past five minutes--you're Toca, yes?"

Toca looked at us. Then he pointed to the woman next to him.

"No, she is," he said, and we laughed.

He ended up giving us an autograph, but Kristine handed him the envelope with the question on it to sign and he just kind of looked at it.

"Oh," I said, kicking in the damage control, "that was our backup plan, we were kind of nervous..."

"Where do you want me to sign it?" Toca asked, looking at the rest of the envelope like it was going to explode in his face.

"Anywhere," Kristine gushed. So he checked the 'yes' box and then signed his name underneath the question.

We babbled for a bit, and I can't remember anything we said to him except that we were so fucking nervous the entire time even though I didn't want to be. After Toca signed the envelope (which I got to keep!), Kristine pulled out her Mraz shirt and asked him to sign that. He did, with his own silver Sharpie, and Kristine has told me that she is never going to wash that shirt. Ever.

"Thanks," we gushed some more after he was finished. Fuck, fuck gushing. "Really, thank you!"

"No problem," Toca said, and waved.

Cloud nine? Oh yeah. We were practically setting up property on it.

Once we got back to the blanket and Kristine told everyone in a five-mile radius what we'd just been through, G. Love did one last song and we whooped and yelled and all that good stuff. A few sips of lemonade and complaints of why sweat is so gross later, Bushwalla came back out on stage.

He said some things. I have a really bad memory, guys. Something about his hopes for us, about the tour and that concert and joy.

Then he said something about how he hoped we love, or would come to love, Jason Mraz. And in what will be referred to from now on as my Moment of Fangirl Glory, I screamed--at the top of my lungs--"I DO!"

I ducked my head. The entire sophomore/junior group sitting next to us turned to stare at me. Beth, embarrassed, put her hand on my shoulder. Gillian, also embarrassed, told me to calm the hell down. And Kristine, who doesn't know the meaning of embarrassment, whooped with me. But you know, I couldn't help it! I really couldn't. So oh well.

There was a mention of a few girls in the seats with shirts on that said "I Love JM" and Kristine turned to me and said, "Oh hell no. That should have been us."

"We should be up there," I agreed solemnly.

Gillian looked at us. "For the love of all things good and holy," she said, "NO."

So Kristine and I pouted. But not for long, because Bushwalla told us to laugh, genuinely or not, for thirty seconds. He insisted that he was going to time us and held up his watch as proof. So we started 'laughing' and looking at each other and it got kind of funny, but mostly we were just wondering when we were going to be told to stop. My face was cramping. Hey, laughing on command is not an easy thing to do.

And then, just when I was hoping we only had a few more seconds left, Bushwalla (who was laughing with us) started stripping. Pants off, shirt thrown aside, the works.

He was wearing a yellow jumpsuit underneath his regular outfit, and the crowd was LOVING it, us included--but then he broke out the hula-hoop!

Genius, I tell you. Genius.

I can't remember what exactly Bushwalla said next, or even vaguely what he was talking about, but it was a little introduction to Jason. By then the sun was setting and it was getting a bit darker and Kristine and I were squirming. We wanted to get good, clear pictures before the venue got completely dark, because even with the lights on it was going to be hard once the sun went down completely.

But we didn't have to wait long, because the huge screen onstage flared up suddenly, and all I saw was the hot pink and the guitar and a wave but it was Jason and then Kristine screamed in my ear and I did the same. We turned to each other, speechless, and Beth and Gillian were clapping and screaming too and I couldn't believe it. He was here. I was there. It was real, and when he finally strummed his guitar and showed up on the screen, gigantic and grinning from ear to ear....oh.

I wanted to cry.

From then on I don't remember the order of things, just what happened, so here they are in list form!

1. Jason started off with The Remedy which just excited me even more (if that was possible). I'd heard that his recent set lists were mostly made up of songs from the new album, and while I love WSWDWST, I really wanted him to do old stuff too. I sang along to every single song that I knew, which was probably not a good thing in terms of the filming because you can hear me in the videos that I took, and I'm not exactly a songbird. Not even a chickadee. Still, you can hear him the best, which is all that matters.

He did a beautiful version of You and I Both with bits of Sleeping to Dream mixed in for one of his aunts. But when I say beautiful, I mean it with my whole heart. I won't even try to describe it after that because it wouldn't do much. I have a video, but again, you can hear me so I don't think I'll post it. :) The best line out of the whole medley was when he sang and with this silence brings a moral story--the entire lawn got so quiet and his voice during the word 'moral' just soared. Ahhh.

The rest of the set list (including the encore) looked like this, with some songs missing:

Make it Mine
Lucky (w/ Alysse, one of the managers from The Gratitude Cafe)
Coyotes (Kristine's favorite song--she had an attack. I know she did. And he also did the opera part, which made everyone freak out, and I was just standing there going "sdlkjfwlkjdliweufjiwh, HE DID IT, MY LIFE IS COMPLETE.")
Curbside Prophet/Gypsy MC (OH GOD SO ECSTATIC THAT HE PLAYED THIS. I knew all the words! To a rap! Oh happy day.)
Forecast (wasn't expecting this, but a nice surprise :D)
Live High
Life is Wonderful
I'm Yours (HUGE crowd involvement, everyone was singing the song and Jason was like, "Okay guys, I want you to sing SO loud that our neighbors hear us....we can only turn up the music a certain volume because of said neighbors, but you guys can sing as loud as you want to! Sing so loud they hear us in the INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION! SING!")
Life is Wonderful
A Beautiful Mess
Three Little Birds (Bob Marley cover)
All Night Long (Lionel Richie cover)
Butterfly (everyone was screaming for this song, so he saved it for last)

2. He also asked us the question of the day.

"What brings you joy?"

"You," Kristine said, and we high-fived.

3. There was a small talking part where he said that one of the reasons why he loves his job so much is because he has the best view in the world.

"You guys are like a big blanket," he said, and swept his arms out. "I just wanna pull you up over me and we can have a sleepover. You know what, the next tour is going to be called The Giant Lie-In. All the concerts will start at eleven in the morning and no one will have to go to work or go to school."

Then he asked all the short people to raise their hands and told us that we were part of the underworld.

I love this man.

4. We also had to give high-fives and hellos to the strangers around us and then burst into random bits of song to the same people. Best part was when the sophomore/junior group turned to serenade a woman sitting behind them and she just blankly stared back at them. :) The people around us were very friendly, though! But you'd expect that of a Mraz concert.

5. He started swaying to Coyotes and dancing and doing some very sexy things up onstage. I think he attempted to do some hip-shaking, but hell, it was good enough for us. *____* Also, seeing his fingers working the guitar and watching him get so into the song with his eyes shut tight? Perhaps one of the hottest things I have ever, ever seen.

6. And to top it all off--

Gillian, to me: You have the love-struck look about you.

To say that seeing Jason was magical would be insanely corny, but also true. I sang at the top of my lungs. I danced. I sang some more. I stood there while bits of my insides exploded and I slowly became a puddle of Mraz-love on that lawn. After we left I just wanted to do it over again, five times over, maybe six, seven, one hundred and five. It wasn't just him--it was the entire concert and the energy and vibe of the people there and the fact that the weather called for an absolute downpour, but it stayed starry and clear the entire night.

After the show we rolled up our enormous wet tarp (and by enormous I mean that we couldn't even fold it properly and in the end it looked like a huge body bag) and Kristine and I begged the rest of the group to wait for us while we tried to find Mraz. I'd heard and read of many successful 'I waited for Jason and he came out to greet us and stardust was in the air~' stories, pictures included, and I wanted to try and be one of them. I crossed my fingers, my toes, my imaginary split tongue.

Kristine and I waited by the side of the stage with a small crowd, but the Koka Booth people told us that we were wasting our time. Jason's family and other random backstage-pass people kept on moving forward but a chunk of us were left to crane our necks over the barely-three foot fence and say to each other, "Well, I met his drummer/bass player/Toca! Does that count?"

No. It didn't, sadly.

I sidled up behind Kristine, who was staring, wide-eyed, at the group of people already backstage.

"Are you praying?" I mumbled.

"Yes," she said. "No, I'm so fucking serious."

"Good," I replied. "Because I am too."

But we were forced to leave not even five minutes later. It was okay, though--I was still on a huge high. So I went to Gillian's on cloud nine (remember, we were setting up property there). And the next day I got a text message from Kristine that said, "Mraz was amazing!"

"Oh," I texted back, "I KNOW."

Oh, let us stay on our extremely inflated balloon of joy and happiness! We might need a pinch or seven in a few weeks' time, though, but for now we still have Mraz songs stuck in our jukebox minds. And it feels good.

THE END.

All pictures can be found here! There are no captions, though, so if you didn't read this you may wonder why there's a photo of an envelope that says 'Are you Toca? Yes, No' and also a picture of a man hula-hooping in a yellow jumpsuit. Just sayin'.

frequently asked question #286: melissa, why do you eat so much?

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 02:30:44 GMT

Emo post aside, I MADE CHERRY BUTTER TODAY! ♥

I basically removed the seeds from about fifteen cherries, squashed them up and mixed it with a ton o' butter, then added a teaspoon of sugar. I let it sit in the fridge for about fifteen minutes and then spread some over a warm brownie, mmmmm. Admittedly it wasn't as sweet as I wanted it to be. Maybe I'll add more sugar (maaaaybe). But it was good enough, especially with the bits of cherry! Or perhaps that's just because I had it on a brownie. Anyway. It was good. End of story. :)

howzit, brah.

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:30:53 GMT

I love Hawaii. Every place I go to here feels like someplace I've already been (Okinawa, the Philippines, Singapore, Korea) and I feel that if all of those countries got together and had a baby (all four of them, because that is totally possible) then that love child would be Hawaii. I am having a wonderful time doing absolutely nothing just because my brother and his wife like to keep all the screen doors in the house open and there is a constant island breeze--not too warm, just right--floating through the house. And there's so many windows, and so much sunshine, and even on the cloudy days it feels absolutely amazing.

Oahu is big. It's full of cliffs and valleys and the greenest mountains, and in between the rocky shores are bursts of heavy, sparkly city light. The sunsets here are smears of hot pink and lavender and puffy, fat clouds. So far, I've been to the North and South shores (so! many! beaches!) and eaten garlic shrimp from a truck and gone paddle surfing and eaten Matsumoto's shaved ice and bought the shortest shorts on the planet. I have gotten beat up by the fiercest of waves and it's not like the sun is any kinder, but I tan. :)

One week down. Three more to go.

Kapolei. (I think.)

Happy late America day!

we could be chillin' like ice cream fillin'.

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 04:43:53 GMT

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MRAZMAN. ♥

You are 32 now and still freaking hot, at least in my book. Don't ever stop being who you are, because you're amazing. I love every single bit of you, from the way your voice swirls like melted butter on a plate to the way you are so in love with the earth. I honestly would not be the person I am today, thinking the way I do, without the words you write and sing. And yes, Ms. Jackson. I am for real.

Here's to you, and you and I both on July 29th, okay? I don't know what I'm going to do if I get to actually meet you that night (or any other night), but I'll try to be some kind of normal. No promises, though! :)

In music, if I’m truly committed to letting go – to being completely open to the power of sound – surrendering to the love supreme of spirit – and acknowledging how (to me) success thrives in the instability of spontaneity – if I’m committed to any or all of those things, then I can transcend this world entirely, getting as close to or even being whatever God (or love, or happiness) might actually be. If the performance of a song goes absolutely well, it won’t even feel like a performance. In many cases, I won’t even remember singing the song. It becomes more like time-travel, because in that moment, I’m so not caught up in society’s game. My attention rests in a space where time and space cease to exist. That’s the state where infinity lies, and it’s the most intensely rewarding experience I’ve ever known. - Jason Mraz

eta: singability updated, this time with something original!

i have this song in my head, but i'm making up all the lyrics.

Thu, 28 May 2009 05:35:50 GMT

What I did today:

--> Go to the cupcake shop with Kristine and her sister, Kate. I bought a box of four: one red velvet with cream cheese frosting, two strawberry with strawberry buttercream frosting, and one coconut. So, so yummy.

--> Follow Kristine to "her" antique shop, which turned out to be three stories of art exhibits, random stuff from the 80's, old magazines, funky knickknacks and donated clothing. Best find ever: 7 for All Mankind jeans at 24 dollars. In my size! Oh, happy day.

--> BOUGHT A TICKET TO HAWAII. After 349948398 phone calls and a rabid search through cheaptickets.com, I'm off to Oahu in about three weeks! I can't wait. My brother keeps calling me to tell me about all the Japanese food he has eaten that day ("Dude. I went to a ramen house. And there's CURRY IN THE FOOD COURT"). Also, there will be surfing lessons. Holy shit. Well, we'll see how that goes.

--> Did this photo meme, which I've seen floating around my flist for awhile now. It looked fun, and it was. It also reminded me that I have a lot of pictures that are really horrible, and yet my friends decide that they should be put up right away on Facebook. Yeah...they love me.

1. A picture of you in your room.

Okay, so this is technically not my current room, but it was once my room. So there, it counts.

2. A picture of you when you were little.

I don't have any pictures of me as a wee girl on the computer, so this will have to do. My school made the seniors bring in baby pictures at the beginning of the year, and it was all in their SECRET PLAN to blow them up and display them at the senior luncheon. And, of course, I look exactly the same as I did when I was five.

3. A picture of you drunk/at least seeming kind of drunk.

I am not really drunk in this picture. Leena and I were actually trying to imitate The Little Mermaid. And, well, yeah.

4. A picture of you in daylight.

I really love this picture, even though I look like a creeper. This is Kristine and I on the last day of senior year. I'm pimpin'. Of course.

5. A picture of you with a former crush.

That's Chris, to my right. I know the picture quality is really bad, but I actually don't have alot of pictures with my crushes...I lost the only one that I had with Ryan. Sadness! :(

6. A picture of you in one of your favorite outfits.

Hey, here's one of me wearing clothes I like in front of a (to-be-opened) store that sells my favorite outfits!

7. A picture of you making a goofy face at the camera.

Basically.

8. A picture of you and a team or a club you're in.

Varsity tennis 2007! No, really guys, I was "athletic," once.

9. A picture of you showing off your new hairstyle.

Perfect. I do these a lot. That's definitely not a good thing.

10. A picture of you eating.

EVEN MORE PERFECT. I am doing this all the time! I'm chewing, here. And Kristine is...I don't even know.

11. A picture of you being absolutely ridiculous.

This is a reenactment of a museum exhibit. Clearly, we demonstrate horn-pulling so much better than those skeletons do.

12. A picture with your oldest friend.

She's not my oldest friend, but she comes pretty close. Jennifer and I--we're like, 10 in this picture? And we met when we were 8. I love her, but we don't talk as much as we used to.

13. A picture of you in formal attire.

Why yes, I do take pictures of myself in elevator doors. This was at last year's prom.

14. A picture of you when you were anything but happy, even if you were smiling and did your best to hide it.

:( We were both so tired and so cold and it was the last time we were going to see each other until who knew when (which turned out to be a year and three months later). But we smiled anyway, because we didn't really want to take sadfaced pictures.

15. A picture of you that you had no idea was being taken.

I-I WAS GETTING READY, OKAY. ;____;

16. A picture of you with someone you love.

The fam, the fam. :) My sister-in-law should be in it too, but she's taking the picture.

17. A picture of how you'd like the world to see you.

...Not laughing at small children. Just happy. :D

18. A picture that describes how you'd like to spend every day.

I don't know about you, but this seems pretty ideal to me.

it's my party and i can be sentimental if i want to.

Sun, 24 May 2009 23:55:00 GMT

Status:

GRADUATED.

Four years ago I made an entry for my first day of high school. I was trying to hide from Anthony Cruz, because I hadn't seen him in so many years and he had gone through puberty--it was scary. Sophomore year was the best, and also consisted of that snappy one liner "Is it porn?" Junior year was crazy and I met a boy. He has his own tag on this journal (enough said). Senior year, things were just as crazy. But calmer, kind of. And now we're done.

This morning I stuffed my head in an itchy cap, put on the hottest robe ever (and I don't mean sexy), and walked across the stage in Meymandi Concert Hall to get a high school diploma. (Somebody even yelled out my name!) I turned my tassel to the other side. I was kind of fail at throwing the cap, but that's because I was caught off guard. I sat through some boring speeches. I sat through some okay speeches. I sat through a speech wherein the speaker forgot what class we were and what year it was, so he said, "I want to congratulate you, class of two thousand and...............nine." I sat through 260-something names until they got to the T's. I almost fell asleep.

But. But, I'm done.

BYE-BYE, HIGH SCHOOL. ♥

p.s. All pictures can be found here! :)

think you're really hot hot.

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 02:59:11 GMT

Prom prom prom prom prom.

It was crazy. I had a great time, but it was really crazy.

Dinner and everything was fine, we had a big potluck at someone's house and it was cute and the food was good and we were sane, for the most part, except for the fact that I had NO IDEA that there is an equivalent to the corsage that a girl has to get for her date. So, yeah, I felt like shit, even though John is too nice and kept telling me that it was okay. Luckily we managed somehow to find one (my mom went out and bought it last minute :D) and things were fine in the end. 'Fine' meaning that I stabbed him with the pins a few times before I managed to have it stay without falling.

AND THEN THE LIMO PULLED UP, with strobe lights and everything, and we went batshit wild for no reason at all. Twelve "get crunk" songs (six of which were Britney Spears) and five attempts at honking at cars and yelling, "CALL ME!!!" later (yes, we were those obnoxious teenagers in the white Hummer limo, I'm sorry to admit), we made it to prom.

Crazy crazy crazy. Porn flickage on the dance floor, etc. Awkward dancing all around ("My hips are here"). Alexey darling drunk out of his mind and grinding on everybody, including the deejay and a random pillar. Free spray-on deodorant in the bathroom ("Okay, I'll hold my arms out and you spray--AHH COLD!"). Stashing our shoes in a secret corner. Dresses that were not actually dresses and more pathetic excuses for showgirl costumes ("She is definitely playing the 'what's under my dress?' game"). Boys boys boys ("I never want to see that look on his face again as long as I live. It was like...your face after a really good sneeze"). Gillian and I pseudo-stalking Joe the Amazing ("Sweet baby Jesus, that was some gyrating going on there." "Are you jealous of the girl he was with?" "YES.") Drama that was more hilarious than anything ("HE TRIED TO KISS ME!" "Kristine, you have sex hair.") More of the same for four hours.

The limo ride back to where it all started was much more subdued, and I fell asleep on my friend's date's shoulder, but he was pretty much everyone's date. He is just that kind of boy.

Then to Gillian's house, where the two of us had our own after party (i.e. eating Chex Mix in bed and talking until 5 AM--all of that late night reminiscing and talking about other people, you know).

All in all--I had lots of fun. Not sure that I'd do it again, but I have to say, it was eventful. :)

Yes, of course there are pictures! Once I gather the rest of them from the 19 other people that were in our limo party, I will sort the good ones out and throw them here. Maybe in some organized fashion, who knows.

takaku agete kono hoshi wo!

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:18:44 GMT

What I did today:

Sat in my car with the iPod in the speakers while my mother was buying plants and sang Arashi songs really really loudly.

With the windows cracked.

There was a lady next to me reading a magazine and her dog kept staring at me. It was really tiny, and ugly, with beady eyes, but I guess it liked Arashi? How can you not. So I sang to it. I sang, "RABU SO SWEET, PUPPY."

It liked that, I think.

In other news, I am still kind of sick, but no fever (it went away the day it came back). I don't know. I'm all fatigued and have a very teeny appetite and shit. I would go to my doctor, but she is on vacation. WAY TO GO, DR. TANG. So again, I am in bed, writing fic and refreshing the same web pages over and over again and downloading Kokuritsu. My spring break is so much fail. Hopefully I'm better by Saturday (and I should be, because I really think all of this is being caused by that little red bitch that comes by every month), because there are picnic and photoshoot plans at Pullen Park! No, I kid you not.

day by day.

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 05:49:52 GMT

HAPPY SHO DAY.

Momentous occasion because

a) Sho is 27, and it is not hard to be happy about that
and
b) I finished a fic.

Hot damn. Everyone pull out the party crackers! This is the Sho/Jun baby that I started back in...October, was it? When stat was still easy so I typed up my section 1.2 stat notes, printed them out, and started a fic underneath all the definitions. Yeah, that's why I do my homework at the last minute.

title: time to run
pairing: Sho/Jun
rating: R
notes: High School!AU. :))
summary: Sho is happiest watching Jun run. (Or, what do you get when you put Jun on the track team and give Sho a pair of well-trained eyes? Then throw in a homework session at the Aiba household. Oh yeah.)

time to run

There's something evil about the way Jun is opening and folding the map.

Anything Jun can do is evil in just the slightest way, Sho knows, but this time it's different. Jun's fingers sliding over the city landmarks, the way his palms are rubbing generously across the intertwining lines of the latitude and longitude, and even his face, the way it's so miraculously focused on this one subject—all of it makes Sho wonder.

So he says, "Jun," and when there's no answer, he tries again—"Jun."

Jun looks up but gets a mouthful of Aiba as he does: "Sorry, Jun-chan! This couch, it's just—ow. Ow! You're not supposed to be there!" Sho watches Aiba move a couple of pillows and affix his legs to a more comfortable position, which involves a couple of angles no other human could possibly emulate. His limbs are everywhere; a jumble of skin and bones and random freckly parts and giggles.

Sho watches Jun's fingers move to Aiba's elbow—a gesture of mostly help and also affectionate annoyance. "Your hip," Jun says, "Aiba, your hip—."

Aiba moves some more, upsetting cushions and throw pillows and the cat, which jumps lightly into Sho's lap. "Oh, sorry, Jun-chan, sorry about that, hold on, I've got it…"

There's got to be more time in the world for Aiba than there is for anyone else, Sho thinks, because he spends more of his time trying to get comfortable than anyone else does. And Jun is always right next to him, settling in and out of positions, saying, oh Aiba, your hip, and, oh Aiba, your knee, and dammit, Masaki, could you stick your fingers somewhere where they won't bother me—

Jun says, "Oh—did you want something, Sho?"

Sho looks up. Jun is looking back at him, all eyelashes and perfectly curled hair, right down to the strand (is this embarrassing? Sho wonders. No, it can't be, how could anyone else say otherwise?). His pupils are smirking, and so are the edges of his cheekbones, all lit up from the fluorescent lamp by his head; he raises the map and one side of his face is suddenly enveloped in dusty shadow. The edges of his lips are raised, bowing upwards in some unholy manner that makes something in Sho scream evil, but there's no way he could brush this feeling off with a simple mind-flick.

"Ah," Sho says, struggling to keep up, to stay sane, "can we switch maps? I'm done with mine."

Jun glances down at the map in his hands—"Oh, sure," he says, and takes several moments to fold it back up again, fingers folding like profane swans, lithe and masked with delicacy and undoubtedly malicious.

Sho can't recall when he started dreaming about Jun—or rather, when his dreams of Jun became so lucid and frenzied that during the day certain images come back to him: single flashes of skin, bones, and heat, rolled together with contrasting colors and fading notes from muted conversations.

Mostly, they're good dreams. Rarely can Sho say that he's had a nightmare involving Jun, because the outcomes of his Matsumoto-laced dreams usually involve little clothing and fuzzy smiles. They are, in fact, comparable to the kinds of movies his sister liked to watch in the living room, the kind with chocolates on the bed and red wine in mirror-like glasses and sex, lots of sex.

Sho wakes up sometimes and thinks, in hurried strands of random words, why nudity Jun Jun sex Jun kisses running wind salt sex sweat Jun racetracks wild. When he goes back to sleep, he falls right back into dreaming.

But if his dreams were always so fascinating, Sho can't remember. Perhaps, at first, they were normal dreams, defined by confusing sets of images: Jun running at a track meet, Jun raising his hand in class, Jun resting his chin on Sho's shoulder while studying for exams.

Those dreams were nice, and Sho never asked his brain to come up with something different, but it did and he never once complained. Gradually his dreams progressed into something more—the scenarios were the same, but the endings were different, and longer, and better.

There is one that Sho likes the best.

After Jun passes through the finish line (first, he is always first, and in Sho's dreams he is first by miles), Nino and Ohno and Aiba and Sho walk down to the track to do group-smirking and say, geez, Matsumoto, don't you ever get tired of winning? And then the other three wave good-by and walk off, and Sho is left with Jun.

Then Jun looks at Sho and says, Sho-kun, just wait for me, okay? We'll go home together.

But Dream-Sho takes the initiative. He will not wait in the cold by himself. He says,

Can't I just come with you?

And Jun just smiles.

Sure.

"Sho?"

Sho looks up from his new map. He was actually reading it this time—his actual reason for being over at Aiba's finally dawned on him after Aiba asked if he'd found any good places to set up camp yet. He hadn't, of course, unless Aiba was asking if he'd found any nice areas of Jun he'd like to camp in, but that was not the question even if he knows all the correct answers to it.

"Yes?"

Jun is looking at him in that same evil way he did before, only now it is more muted, like smudged ink or a vaguely phrased question. Sho knows this face, he sees it often, and he wonders every time what lies behind those inquisitive lips (and if he can somehow get behind it, visit, live there).

"Nothing," Jun replies, mouth twitching slightly, like he's got a big secret that he can't wait to tell the world about. "Just…"

Next to him Aiba moves again, swinging his legs onto Jun's lap, snuggling into the softness of the couch. He's buried under maps and is concentrating wholeheartedly, eyebrows furrowed and lips pursed, on squiggly colored lines and highway numbers and misshapen bodies of water. At this rate, nothing could disturb him unless you were willing to speak in cartographer's language, or write it out on a map.

Sho says, more to distract himself from the graveyards of Jun's eyes than anything else, "Aiba?"

Aiba makes a humming noise. "Latitude," he mumbles, and crosses something out with red ink, "goes horizontally, right?"

Jun smirks. "No, it goes the other way," he says, and just when Sho is about to correct him and scold him because they just had a test about that, Jun removes Aiba's legs from his lap (very carefully, Sho notices, each touch a deliberate message) and slowly gets up from the couch.

"Bathroom," he says casually, but it still sounds like a very important public announcement. "I'm going to the bathroom."

He looks at Sho when he says it, dark eyes showcasing some breathy secret that Sho swears goes something like, won't you come with me?

Sho's mind is blank for a few very long seconds, and then his jumpy heart kicks in, screaming sure, yes. His eyes widen with the response and his body goes hot all at the same time and he fears he might explode, and Jun—Jun just smiles.

There was a time when Jun offered to run with Sho a few weeks before their physical fitness test—to keep him motivated, he said, to make sure that he wasn't straining himself. The words hung in the air for quite some time, because Sho simply didn't know what to say, until Nino nudged him in the side and said, "Well, since Sho-chan doesn't seem very eager, I'll run with you, Jun."

Everything in Sho's head was screaming fuck you, Ninomiya but he knew it was just a ploy to get him to wake up and say yes, yes Jun, thanks, I would be glad. Nino nudged him again, this time digging his sharp elbow into Sho's gut.

"Okay," Sho managed to choke out then. "I'll do it."

So every morning Jun would stop by Sho's house at an ungodly hour of the morning (five!) and say, "Sho-kun, it's time to run," and Sho would slime down the stairs and drink a glass of milk and slime out of the house in his sneakers. Then he would somehow get to the school track with Jun prodding him along, saying things like, "You'll do fine, you just have to find a good pace and stick with it. I'll help you."

And then they ran: two times around the oval for Sho, four for Jun. During the first lap they would run together, but as they started out on the second Sho would start to lag behind and Jun would enter his Zone, where you could not pass him and if you tried he would just run faster. But this was perfectly fine, because Sho cared far more about being able to watch Jun run than passing a fitness test (which he ultimately did, though barely).

Sho is happiest watching Jun run.

The others have asked Sho countless times why he always likes to be there when Jun runs during practice—there is nothing exciting about it, they say. He is not running to win; there is no point to it. Sho has tried to explain it to them, but every single time he gets tongue-tied, flustered, red. He makes ridiculous hand gestures and says, "Well, it's like this, you see—," but he doesn't know anything on earth that it’s like, and so he can't go on.

Ohno came close, once.

"Don't you think that Jun is beautiful?" he said during a meet as the four of them followed Jun's movements around the track. "When he runs, I mean. A perfect shape."

Yes, yes, exactly! And all angles, Sho continued in his head as Nino snickered and Aiba made nonsensical comments, blurry edges melting into the scenery around him. Changes in temperature. Falling leaves. The way it feels when he runs by you, that flutter, the air swirling, everything full of motion and Jun for one hour-long second of your life—

When Sho closes his eyes he sees Jun running around the track in sweats at six in the morning, puffing tiny clouds from his mouth, his elbows bent and fists loose. And the longer Sho keeps his eyes shut, the more tired Jun gets; the more likely he is to plop down next to Sho and ask, breathlessly, "How was I?"

"Fantastic," Sho answers every time, without thought or hesitation. "Better every day."

After the eerie lines of the track have dissolved in Sho's head, after he quits thinking about Jun (for a couple of seconds, at least), he comes to a decision: move. Get up. Walk, crawl, slink—stumble—to the door of the bathroom. Knock. Wait. And see.

He folds up his map haphazardly, bending the paper where it does not want to yield, and carelessly creasing together mismatched corners. Sho thinks, well, that's how I feel! So be it! Then: What did the map ever do to you? It's a map, not your personal stress ball. Then: Wonder how you could get rid of all that stress—

Sho blushes furiously. "No," he says to himself. "No."

At this, Aiba looks up. He is already giggling, the sound traipsing gently over to Sho—a small remedy to his current illness. "What are you thinking about, Sho-chan?"

"Oh, just—," Sho starts, then looks down and begins to awkwardly fold his map again. "Nothing. I'm just kind of hungry," he continues, frantically slapping together a plausible excuse, "but since we're already in the middle of this I thought we should just finish." It all comes out in one hurried, distracted breath. "I mean, I can eat later."

For a minute, Aiba is silent. Then he says, practically bursting at the seams, "Actually, you know—we can eat now! I'm kind of hungry, too. And Jun-chan will eat if we make him." He gets up and crosses the room to the entrance of the kitchen before Sho can stop him, before Sho can protest for the sake of normalcy.

But something in the back of his mind butts in, screaming, Normalcy? May I remind you that you're reading maps of Tokyo, the other two guys that couldn't make it today are probably feeding each other strawberries in bed, and you want to get laid in a bathroom? Which part of that is normal?

Sho sighs.

Aiba squeals, "Carrots! I know we have carrots. We can make carrot soup!" He wanders into the kitchen and begins to call out ingredients; Sho can hear him rummaging around in the refrigerator, throwing things left and right. "Onions! Miso! Poul—poultry! Ne, Sho-chan, I'll make us something good, okay?" He runs back to the kitchen door and sticks only his head out, smiling widely. "Okay?"

"Okay," someone says—Sho jerks around. "Oh, are we eating?"

Jun has his hands in his pockets and looks genuinely interested in what is going on. He leans casually against the back of Sho's chair and looks at Aiba in the doorway.

"Ah, Jun-kun. Back so soon?" Aiba says, still smiling.

Jun shrugs. "Your plumbing's all weird." His eyes turn to Sho when he says this; he looks at Sho with what seems to be all the attention he has in his body.

Then he says to Aiba, "You should get it fixed. I was in there for awhile, waiting for the thing to work, but it never did."

But he is still looking at Sho.

The worst Jun-dream Sho has ever had consisted of a one-minute exchange between himself and Dream-Jun; they were on the track, the sky was cloudy, and Sho was cold. Jun had a sweater, and Jun was sweaty, he had just run, and he was asking Sho if maybe he would like to come inside and wait in the locker room while he got showered? Since he cared—since it was freezing outside, and warm, very warm, inside?

It was a perfect opportunity and it was curling round Sho's wrists, trickling warmth into his skin, seducing quietly. It had nearly solidified.

Then Sho scratched his head and said, "Today's not so good…I might be sick."

And then he left, and woke up.

At the time Sho thought maybe it was because he had been having a bad patch, and was doubtful if anything could ever happen, anything at all. But now, sitting in Aiba's armchair in Aiba's living room, he can only think of it as a warning from his brain (with every organ, each miniscule fiber, all his cells, in complete agreement):

You refuse once, and you're never going back.

From the recesses of the kitchen, Sho can hear Aiba tossing various ingredients and cooking utensils onto a table. With every thud there is some sort of explanation to go along with it. "I've decided!" (Thud.) "Since we have all the right ingredients—at least I think they're the right ones…" (Thud.) "…We're having Aiba Masaki soup." (Thud.) "And it will be delicious, because it's named after me." (Crash.)

He laughs and Sho tries to listen to what he says next, but he can't really concentrate on anything other than the fierce buzzing sound invading his mind. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to tense up too much, but the possibilities of the next minute, and the minute after that, and possibly the next five minutes, if he's lucky, just will not stop coming. And Sho has never been one to exert much endurance.

"Do you need help, Masaki?" Jun calls, and manages to sound concerned—he is, Sho knows, he always is, but he just can't imagine Jun leaving right in the middle of this practically naked (pun not intended, Sho thinks) opportunity.

"I'm fine," Aiba chirps. "You're my guests! Watch the TV or something, or keep on reading the maps, I don’t know—ow, hot!"

"Okay," Jun calls back. Sho can feel movement behind him, but he doesn't dare turn around or even try to look to the side. "We will."

The volume of the television goes up, matching perfectly the volume of Sho's heartbeat in his ears. He can feel every worry in his body seep out through the lines in his hands and wonders if Jun would mind if Sho had clammy hands, would he not like the feeling, would he turn Sho away?

Inside of him the panic rises, and the newswoman on the television begins her two o’clock news story on a train wreck in Oita prefecture. Sho tries to listen, he tries to focus on the details of the accident and not Jun’s exact place on the map, but right now there’s nothing else in his head but slippery images of Matsumoto Jun.

Behind him he can make out a flurry of motions, like someone adjusting a shirt. The noises come closer, and closer still, and Sho wishes he could move but he has all frozen up within himself—

And then he feels something soft, something wet, on the back of his ear.

“Don’t,” Jun mutters, breathing softly, “say anything.”

Sho wills his vocal cords shut and cut off from his brain. He realizes, suddenly, that he is shaking. But there’s nothing he can do about that.
He can feel Jun's lips moving but can hear no sound—only a migration of rabid butterflies in his stomach as Jun's mouth travels from the edge of Sho's ear to his temple.

“Why didn’t you come?” he whispers, and Sho can hear his hands gripping the material of the chair as he leans forward even more—so close that his eyelashes now brush Sho's cheek.

"You didn't come," Jun says again. "Tell me why."

A million things flit through Sho's mind—the meaning of 'come' (damn his hormones to hell, damn them damn them), Jun's tiny flutters of eyelashes and breath and slightly chapped lips and the way they all feel against Sho's skin, the temperature, the steadily rising temperature, explosions, Jun running.

He closes his eyes and tilts his head back into Jun's warmth and Jun shifts forward, Jun shifts forward and suddenly his hand is behind Sho's head and is probing, gently, saying with his fingertips godammit I am going to kiss you and you are going to comply.

Sho mumbles Jun's name, and Jun kisses him.

At first it's almost chaste, just skin against skin and then Sho presses harder; hands coming up to touch every available inch of Matsumoto Jun. He realizes that he hasn't answered Jun's question—why didn't you come when I waited for you?—and he figures that now would be a good time to make up for his silence. Their position is awkward; Jun leaning over the back of the sofa chair and Sho straining upwards but he doesn't care, nothing matters, everything is concentrated into the movement of his lips against Jun's and the way their mouths are moving together, sloppy and wet and wanting.

Jun makes some kind of sound and drags himself away from Sho's mouth for one second to say "I am not going to—like this," and Sho watches him stride around the chair—

—And the next moment Jun is climbing furiously, impatiently, into Sho's lap, all of those beautiful limbs falling into place around Sho and Sho smells genuine Jun-scent. He says, or tries to say, "Do you have enough room," but there is no time for that now and no time for talk because Jun resumes the kissing like it is the only thing he knows how to do.

Sho has his hands on Jun's back, digging his nails into certain areas that he feels are good digging-into places—taut and smooth underneath the t-shirt. He's afraid to do more, which is cowardly of him, he knows, but he still fears that Jun will stop if Sho does the wrong thing and so he strays round the safe edges, and strokes Jun's shoulder blades through cotton fabric, and that's fine with him.

But not fine with Jun. He growls and says, against Sho's bottom lip, "Take if off."

The command makes Sho's heartbeat expand to exponential rates; he can feel it throughout his body—in his legs and stomach and thighs and lips. He says, not to be a tease but just to make sure (and anyway, maybe it's okay if Jun thinks he's a tease), "Can I?"

"Yes," Jun says exasperatedly, "I want you to."

And because Sho can't move fast enough—"Please."

Sho's fingers are fumbling messes of excitement but he manages to rid Jun of his shirt, and when he does, he doesn't know where to start. He remembers kindergarten, when he learned directions—up, down, sideways—but feels that he must learn that all over again in order to make the most of what's happening. He touches Jun tentatively, fingertips probing, hands running down the length of his chest, and Jun gasps—lightly, but Sho hears it anyway.

So he keeps on going; he closes his eyes and concentrates on touching Jun's body and kissing Jun's lips and affixing his legs around Jun's legs. Sho thinks to himself, what next what next what next and his dreams all come to the surface screaming this is what's next, no this, wait this is, and he can't even begin to think of what could happen beyond this moment, with his hand on Jun's heart. Nothing, he honestly believes, could compare.

Until Jun pulls back (with difficulty—Sho is getting used to this) and says, breathing heavily, "We are going to die if we stay on this thing. Quick—get off—to the couch."

Confused and slightly drugged, Sho stares. "What? Why?"

And Jun just smiles.

Somehow, by the force of nature (or Jun's hands doing a good job of poking Sho in the right spots), Sho makes it to the opposite side of the room in one piece—or two pieces, if an attached Jun counts.

"But what—," Sho mumbles as Jun, scrambling over the couch, kisses him once, twice, three times. "—What if Aiba-chan—?" Jun's tongue does something marvelous and Sho has no choice but to moan the last part of the question into Jun's mouth.

"Finds us?" Jun says, still kissing Sho and at the same time (Sho thinks, how does he do it) removing pillows from beneath their bodies, "Comes in? Sees us? Asks us to taste Aiba Masaki soup?"

"Uh-huh,” Sho agrees, swallowing hard. He's not sure what he's answering to, but it could go either way. "Um—yes, that's what I meant—oh."

Jun chuckles, still continuing whatever he's doing, whatever fantastic thing he's doing, with his tongue. Sho is struggling to maintain what little composure he has left by trying to adjust his position underneath Jun's body, but he can't move at all—he's puddling, instead, into the fabric of the couch.

From the kitchen come hissing noises; from the television, a group of schoolchildren being interviewed about their annual school festival. Sho can hear only the straining sounds in his head, high-pitched whistles and clanging bells and a steady drumbeat, too fast for him to follow.

Suddenly Sho feels pressure in a lower region and gasps, trying out of instinct to squirm away from whatever’s touching him there, but Jun has a firm grip on Sho.

“Stop moving,” he says, “or this isn’t going to work.”
“What’s not going to work?” Sho asks, panicking, but Jun doesn’t answer, just keeps moving things around and putting his legs in places and making sure that one of his hands is always on Sho. It’s kind of comforting, Sho thinks, and he has to keep reminding himself that he is not dreaming, which is proving to be a harder task than he first imagined.

Except for, of course, the movement, the rhythm, that Jun is currently initiating with his hips.

“Jun,” Sho mumbles. He can feel his mind clouding over and knows that he is blushing a severe red but he doesn’t want anything to stop; he just wants to say something coherent to mask whatever else will come out of his mouth if he doesn’t. “Jun, um…”

“What?” Jun asks, and Sho realizes for the first time that Jun is breathing exceptionally hard. Despite that, though, he looks genuinely concerned about Sho. “What is it?” he asks again.
Sho just stares. “Nothing, just…” He struggles to find something to say that is relatively normal, something that is perhaps removed from this Jun-straddling-Sho situation, possibly something that is not a garbled mess of sexual tension.

Possibly, though not necessarily.

“Don’t stop,” he finally finishes, barely audible. “Please don’t stop.”

Jun grins and the word lecherous pops into Sho’s mind. “I wasn’t planning on it,” he smirks, and starts moving again, slow motions that start somewhere in Jun’s hips and end up in Sho’s stomach as balls of electricity, sending sparks throughout his body.

Sho focuses on breathing, a task which is becoming more and more difficult by the second. At the same time he has his hands, still, on Jun’s naked torso, slipping and sliding all over skin that Sho has seen countless times and has always wanted to touch like this. He thinks without actually thinking arms, stomach, wrists, nipples and touches them all, hands gliding without any real destination as Jun, on top of him, keeps up a steady, rocking speed.

He’s not sure if he wants to tell Jun yet that he’s dreamed about doing this, that these dreams come practically every night and even sometimes during class. But maybe Jun knows already, maybe he has some sort of inkling about the reasons behind Sho’s intense concentration during his track meets; Sho knows the word subtle is far from his grasp and so maybe Jun gets it. Why else, after all, would he be doing this, why would he be moving his—like—

“Oh God,” Sho gasps, and then regrets it. “Didn’t say that,” he mumbles, but the flush on his face gives him away and Jun laughs breathlessly.
“Yes you did,” he says, thrusting forward on top of Sho, trying to keep quiet and composed but failing horribly at it. He rests his forehead on Sho’s chest and maybe he moans, Sho’s not sure, then he does it again and this time Sho knows.

Sho knows other things, too, at that moment, like that if Jun doesn’t stop moaning Aiba will probably come out of the kitchen and never talk to them again because, well, this is the Aiba family couch and Jun is grinding against Sho on it. Ah, yes, grinding—Sho knows a couple of things about that right now, too—

“Sho,” Jun whispers, sliding his hand down Sho’s arm and then gripping his wrist urgently, “Sho—“

Sho moans quietly and screws his eyes shut as Jun comes in a sudden, trembling rush of heat and tiny cries that Sho savors, as he never pegged down Jun as the whimpering type. Barely two seconds later, with the help of a well-placed knee and Jun’s lips on his jaw, Sho joins Jun’s shuddering with one low groan that he muffles in the crook of his arm.

Long minutes of background noise pass before Sho finally drops his arm from his face and gathers enough courage (because suddenly it’s all hit him—oh God! Just had a—not even on my couch! With Jun, oh shit) to look up. He’s startled when he sees Jun looking back at him with flushed cheeks and hair in his eyes.

“That really happened,” Sho says, voice hoarse.

“Yes,” Jun says lightly, “and don’t you think that it was much better than just watching me run?”

Sho thinks about being shocked but finds that he is too weak to feel anything but satisfied. “Yeah,” he agrees, and then stops to think about it. “Well, actually, they’re two completely different things. You can’t compare them.”

Jun smirks and rolls off Sho’s chest to sit on the opposite end of the couch. “Two completely different things? Are you sure about that, Sakurai?”

“I’m sure, because you’d never let this happen on any track,” Sho replies.

“Well,” Jun begins, grinning in that lecherous way again, “you don’t know that—“

Aiba bounds into the living room then, wielding a wooden spoon and a chef’s hat stolen from the cooking club at school. “Aiba Masaki soup is READY!” he says, waving the spoon around wildly. “We had some problems with the mushrooms, but they’re fungi, after all, so…”

He stops then, and Sho realizes with mounting panic that he is still lying across the couch in a somewhat disheveled fashion. What with that, and a shirtless Jun sitting next to him, he can only hope that Aiba somehow drugged himself into temporary blindness from bad mushroom fumes.

But Aiba just smiles widely and goes on as if he never stopped. “…So, you know, fungi is already rotten so it can’t be poisonous, right? Anyway, I put them on the side, not in the soup.”

Jun throws a pillow in Aiba’s direction. “Are you trying to poison us?”
“We wouldn’t want that, Jun-chan,” Aiba answers smoothly. “Especially since you need all your strength for…you know, track meets and stuff.”

Sho hides under a pillow and curses his friend to hell and back, preferably more than twice.

Once Aiba has retreated back into the kitchen (but not before telling them to come eat before his soup got too cold), Sho throws aside the pillow and looks at Jun sullenly.

“What?” Jun says. “Don’t tell me you want to cuddle.”

“No,” Sho says, aghast. “I don’t want to upset this poor couch any longer.”

“So you’re saying that if we were on, oh, I don’t know, my bed…you’d want to?”

Sho splutters and resolves not to speak to Jun for the next five minutes. He stays on the sofa, however, to watch Jun pull his shirt back on (and to help with that, just a little).

That night, after two text messages from Nino which he would have preferred not to read and one from Aiba that consisted wholly of smiley faces with wiggling eyebrows, Sho gets a call from Jun.

“Hello?” he says, carefully, cautiously, when he picks up the phone.

“Hi,” Jun says, casually, like he is asking about a homework assignment, or inviting Sho to a meet. “Want to run tomorrow?”

But that is certainly not normal.

“Do I want to run tomorrow?” Sho repeats.

“Let’s put it this way,” Jun says, and Sho can practically hear the Matsumoto patience level drop. “Do you want to run with me, or do you want the bottle of leftover Aiba Masaki soup that Aiba-chan gave me today?”

Sho sits in silence for a moment, thinking. The answer should be obvious—the mushrooms in the soup were particularly past their prime—but still, he can’t help but weigh his options.

Then Jun says, “I’ll run with you, this time.”

Sho says yes. When they hang up, he makes sure to set his alarm clock to five in the morning.

tweedeleets.

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 11:07:03 GMT

21:46 rest in peace randy rivera. <3 いつもありがとうね。 #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

wild thing, you make my heart sing.

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 03:13:39 GMT

Happy birthday, my darling Junnosuke. Sometimes I wish the term 'Jun-baited' applied to my personal fandom situation, but I used to think you were A Total Girly Man, mainly because I first saw you on the reverse side of a Yamapi poster. And you were wearing sparkly eyeshadow and your hair looked like it was jealous of Shirley Temple's, and the background was lilac and you were wearing fluffy cashmere. So yeah, I didn't give you a second thought. I went back to the Pi side.

But that's all in the past (even though every time I see that poster I still laugh), and now I love you, alot, even though your hair is in a constant state of metamorphasis. I think I love you the most when you are Miss Bitch, because your eyebrows go funny and you get this look on your face that screams, "Girl, oh NO you diiiiiiiiin't!" and that makes me laugh, or I think maybe I love you the most when you're with Aiba, because it's very cute when you think he's stupid. Or your 'MAJI DE?' moments, or your giggles, or your 'I-can't-believe-I'm-doing-this' faces, or your 'Girl, I am SO HOT, I am a SEX GOD' faces, because those are hilarious. I love them all.

And, okay, sometimes you look hot. But most of the time I just wanna pinch your cheeks really hard until you throw me across the room and give you an A- for effort.

So instead of going on about how you are a special boy in my heart, I channeled it through Aiba by writing ~fic~. I know it's supposed to be porn because I initially promised (who? answer: myself) that I would write birthday porn for each of Arashi on their special days, but the PWP I was writing and planning to use today-- the Sho/Jun used-to-be-my-math-notes one--has spiraled out of my control. Instead, I wrote something else that is not sexy, but sappy. OH WELL. So you get your cake here, but you have to eat it somewhere else.

There's no title, and it's sort of Aiba/Jun, Jun/Arashi, Aiba/Arashi and Arashi/Arashi all in one, however vague each one may turn out to be in the fic. Whatever it really is, it's definitely sappy enough to melt all 32 (or if you got four pulled like I did, then 28) of your teeth. :D :D More summary: late-night voicemails, Aiba is probably crying, mention of Jun's 20th birthday, and Ohno says inappropriate things to the cheese.

--

12:25 AM

"Jun-chan, hello? Hello? Oh. I guess you're not really going to pick up the phone, then. Maybe I should just wait a few more seconds 'cos you might wake up, since I called you so late. And your ringer is kind of loud. Well, your normal one's not, but the one you have for me is 'cos I changed it so you'd know when I'm calling you! Then you can't just be all blissfully ignorant because you don't know who it is. And since I bring you great tidings of love and germs, I mean joy, you won't be able to resist picking up the phone. Unless you're otherwise occupied, like now.

"Weeeelll, it's been a few seconds and I guess you're still asleep or partying, or asleep at your party, so I just wanted to tell you happy birthday, MatsuJun! Happy twenty-fifth birthday. You are sooo old now, soon you'll be getting arthritis and osteoporosis and forgetting our dance routines and the lyrics to our singles, which you always say you'll never forget--but old age is the number one killer of seniors, you know, Jun-chan. It eats the brain. Just putting that out there. I bet you didn't know that, huh. Anyway, yeah! Happy birthday, I know I sent you a mail but I decided to call you 'cos I'm still awake even though it's kind of late. It's our day off, so I thought I would do a lot of stuff and then sleep really late! So that's why I'm still up. Um…what else, what else. Oh! Make sure you blow out all the candles on your cake. I hope your wish comes true, whatever it is, even if it involves naked women and a tub of icing. But I seriously think that for your own good you should choose a birthday wish that will carry on into the future, like maybe a wish for Arashi? Something along the lines of, we'll still be together when we're old and creaky like Leader?

"…Oh. Leader just told me very angrily that he's not old and creaky, he's perfectly healthy. We're drinking, by the way. We would have invited you--actually, we did invite you, but you said one of your drama crews was throwing you a party and it would last until really late so you didn't think you could make it to the bar. And then you said we'd hang out tomorrow. So we will, all of us, okay? We'll take you somewhere nice and we'll have a lot of time 'cos it's our day off and then we'll go drinking again and eat ramen and Leader will pay. Right, Leader? Ow! Don't throw cheese at me!

"…But back to the wish, Jun-chan--can you wish that we'll stay together for a long time? Please, MatsuJun? Except switch it around a little because if I know the wish then it won't come true. And I really want it to.

"I know you do, too. Because remember a long time ago, when you just turned twenty, and Nino wrote you that birthday song that we all sang to you--we were on tour, so that night you came to my room and you told me that you were very happy? Remember? Well, I do, and I remember telling you after that that you made me happy and Arashi made me happy. And then you said, 'Me too, Masaki,' and you fell asleep on my bed. So I tried to push you over but you were really heavy, so I slept on the couch and that's why my back hurt like hell the next day. But anyway, I just, I thought that I'd like to have that kind of moment with everyone in Arashi every time it was their birthday, except so far I've only had it with you but that's okay, too, because I know Nino and Sho-chan and Leader feel the same way, but they just don't want to climb into my bed and tell me. So I climb into their beds and tell them, and so far the only one who's kicked me out is Nino, but that's because he said I had cold feet. But I still ended up telling him about it, and he said, 'Yeah, Aiba, I know...me too.' And I think he meant it.

"But do you get it? You know what I'm saying, right, MatsuJun? Can you wish that, ten years into the future, Sho-chan will still buy all the newspapers he can get his hands on and read them, every single article, even the ones that we cut out from older newspapers and pasted into the recent news section? Except he kind of caught on when we tried to get him to read the ones in German, even though he was all for the English ones. And can you wish that Nino will always be telling us to pick a card, any card, and asking us if we feel lucky, pink--oh--sorry, Leader just told me it's punk, not pink. And I also hope, and I want you to wish, that he never stops wanting to prank us, so that when we're really old he'll try to do weird things to our wheelchairs that will probably involve lots of gum and fake animals…right, Jun? And also that he'll never get over video games, but I think that if you were sixty it would be really hard to see the screen on a DS. But maybe Nino will turn superhuman one day, just for that reason.

"And I hope Leader--yes, Leader, I mean you. Eat the cheese; don't throw it at me--hey! Hold on, Jun, I have to wipe cheese off my face. Okay. I hope Leader won't stop making things or drawing or painting even though his hands may get really shaky, and also that his--yours, yes, Lea--taste buds don't go bad so you can still say everything's delicious. Well, actually, that would mean they're already bad--I'M SORRY, I'M SORRY. Wow, MatsuJun, Leader is a very violent drunk. And he's saying that I talk a lot, but I don't think I'm any different, really. Not much, anyway. Um. What else about you, Leader? What about you do you want to keep when you're really old? Wait--hold on, you want to--no, I'm not saying that, Nino's not here and if you knew you said that he would be really mad and I would get in trouble for telling Jun. Anyway, Jun, just so I don't have to gross you out, I'm sure you know what Captain wants you to stick in that wish. It has to do with him and a certain person, which is kind of selfish, but as he has just reminded me, if they got divorced it would kill us all. And I think we all have to agree. So put it in there or else he won't pay for the group ramen dates ever again, okay?

"Oh, Leader is calling Nino. He's getting permission, I think, to say the other thing, except I don’t think he's coherent enough to do that because he's having trouble opening his phone up right now and it's not even a flip phone. And even if he does reach Nino he won't be able to say anything because he's half-asleep in the cheese. Actually…I think he's fully asleep in the cheese. So back to your birthday wish, okay?

"Who's next? Oh, you, Jun, right? Well, I really really really hope that when we're old and sickly and can only remember the refrain from A.Ra.Shi and nothing else, that you'll still be DoS and weak in the morning and really bitchy when people ask you to do things. And I hope your nails will still be painted and also that your hair will still be impossibly soft and perfect, because I, I think that would be really good. And even if none of that stays the same, because we can't force our bodies to comply with our wishes, I still wish that you'll come into my room and want to sleep in my bed, and before that tell me that you love Arashi and Sho and Nino and Captain and me. I wish that you will say it the same way you said it five years ago, when I was brushing my teeth so you thought I couldn't see your face. But I could, because you were looking in the mirror, and you were crying a little bit and hugging the pillow really tightly and your hair was all messed up because Nino put frosting in it--

"--Aahh, this is kind of embarrassing for you to hear, isn't it? And it's embarrassing for me to say it, too, because this happened a long time ago yet I still remember all of it. But I guess that's just what happens when you love someone a lot, right? Yeah, I think so. The embarrassing stuff just comes out and you can't help saying it even if you'd rather die than admit it all. That's what's happening now, I think, because this started out as me just planning out your birthday wish, and it's still that--it just has all this extra good stuff in it, like a panda that's eaten too much bamboo, which is good because pandas have to eat a lot, but it has to wait for awhile so everything can digest.

"Or it's like you with a hangover, MatsuJun, because you don't want to go to work but it's work so you have to go. But you won't do anything unless I tell you funny stories to get you out of bed, and then I get to pick out your clothes and wash your back in the shower and make you breakfast. And even if I make your kitchen really messy and use all the shampoo or use that instead of soap on your body, even so, you still tell me you love me, and that's the extra, really good stuff, right? Right, Jun?

"Ah, and lastly, wish that I'll keep on letting you sleep with me. Because, Jun-chan, you hog the blankets, and even though snuggling is okay, you do violent snuggling and it's hard to sleep like that. Even after the sex. Yeah, even after that.

"Well, I hope that you remember all of that, because I said a lot and I didn't write it down or anything. I couldn't have, I don't carry around pens and I know Captain probably does but he's asleep on the cheese. Your phone is doing a beepy thing, and I think that means I'm running out of time, since it's already been a long time since I started this message, so I'll just stop here, Jun. We're going to have fun tomorrow anyway so I can see you then and tell you all about this, just in case you forget or didn't get a chance to hear it. So, um, happy birthday again, Matsumoto Jun-chan, may you have many more to come, auld lang syne…wait, that's not--wait--oh, good night, okay? Sorry I can't be there tomorrow morning to make you breakfast, but I'll do it the day after tomorrow if I can. Oh, Captain is awake now, he says--he says 'canary pants,' I'm not sure why. Okay, your phone is really beeping now, so I'll go--BYE, JUUUUN!"

beeeep.

6:27 AM

"Aiba, you--you are an idiot. Just so you know, I hope you never get any smarter, because that means you'll just sound stupider and your voicemails will get longer and make less sense than they do now. And I don't think that's even possible.

"I didn't have an official birthday cake yet--they put the wrong number of candles on the cake yesterday, which was…kind of insulting. Do I look like I've just turned thirty? I didn't mind that much, I mean, I was grateful for the cake and everything, truly, but--thirty candles. That's older than Leader!

"Oh, and I just wanted to let you know that if I did wish for everything you told me to wish for on your voicemail, I would probably have to sit in front of that cake for hours before I finished. And by the end of my wish Captain would have inhaled the cake, candles and all, and told me it was 'seriously delicious.' So I'll just come up with my own, much shorter, wish, so I can actually have a piece of my own cake.

"…But thank you for all the ideas. They were great. Um. Yeah, really.

"And I know you're not awake yet, but if you want, when you wake up, you can come over and I'll make you breakfast. Just so you don't mess up my kitchen. And then we can meet everyone later, and have ramen and go drinking.

"…And then you can come over, and…yeah. Sound good?

"Well--call me back, okay? I'll talk to you later. See you."

6:30 AM

"By the way, I don't hog the covers--your blankets just aren't big enough for the both of us."

--

Tomorrow I'll be in Charlotte until Sunday night, so when I get back maybe I'll have recuperated enough to talk about school and life and the horrible college application process--and my new friend who is a sweetie, and also Jack McFarland. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not.

niji ga kirei da yo!

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:29:23 GMT

Firstly, I thought this wasn't happening until Wednesday, but no, it's the 17th, not the 18th, and as my computer clock tells me it is Tuesday in Japan already. (Yeah, my computer is still on Japan time.) So, because I am a complete dork and have no shame, here we go:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the now 25-year-old Kazunari "I Like Hamburger--Gyoza, What's That?" Ninomiya, EVEN THOUGH HE STILL LOOKS NOT A DAY OVER SIXTEEN. But I love ~~love love love LOVE~~ him anyway--let no one deny that I like my boys just a little on the skinny side. (Say it with me: tall and lanky, TALL AND LANKY. Or at least fairly tall and lanky.)

And just in case you're feeling a little like a pedophile, have some medicinal Ohmiya to counterbalance: one, two, three, four.

MORE LOVE: this is what I like waking up to, shake it!; not only did he write this song, he also committed a mass burglary of hearts at the end; OKOGE NO SUUU-PUUU, supu de okoge! and manly Nino kissin' boys and frocliking on a pretend beach.

I am not good at finding links. My stamina level is very low, even for my favorite JE boy. Oh, life.

BUT ACTUALLY, there is more than just self-gratuitous picspam--there is fic. To be more precise, there is porn. Oh my. I was really intending to finish the monstrous Ohmiya fic by--well, by the time Nino's birthday rolled around, but obviously so much for that. So, to fix this situation, I wrote porn instead. No, really, it was that easy!

This is unbeta'd, even though I read it through once or twice (whilst blushing all the while) for grammar and spelling errors, and also things that make me cringe, although there still may be alot of those.

title: clockwork (or, the untitled nino birthday fic PWP)
pairing: Ohmiya
summary: There's a clock on Ohno's wall, right across from his bed. (Also in this one, Ohno is a machine, Nino doesn't know the limits of his own body, and there are puppies and Aiba/Jun. Who's on crack, now?)
rating: R

Clockwork

Over Ohno's shoulder Nino can see the clock--fat, gigantic, one of those rustic European ones that somehow found its way into Ohno's room. It looks out of place amongst all the sketches and reference materials Ohno has tacked to the wall, but there's an aura of space around it, as if it repels everything within an inch of its frame simply because it's just different.

Above him, Nino can hear Ohno muttering, the sound dropping to nothing and then rising up again as Ohno shifts. He does this a lot in the middle of sex, and Nino finds it endearingly and hopelessly cute, if a little strange (but when isn't Oh-chan strange). Usually Nino tries to pay attention to what Ohno's saying, but he's come to find it's really just a lot of random gibberish punctuated with tiny, breathless Ninos.

"Ah," Ohno's breathing hitches as he's on the downtake, forehead resting above Nino's chest, shifting forward. "Nino…"
Nino smiles, stupidly, boyishly, knocking noses with his boyfriend on purpose. "That wasn't my fault," he snickers.

Every time they do it, it's a game to Nino. It's not that he's trying to belittle the act, or mock it--on the contrary he is, in his own words, 'making it more enjoyable as the days go on.'

Ohno says, that sounds like there's not too many days of this left, and Nino looks at him, pretend-hurt all over his face, and says, no, I am a very creative man, Satoshi. And Ohno agrees.

First it was a pattern of real games, starting with shiritori (it went on for awhile until Ohno, lost in concentration, kept forgetting the previous word), tic-tac-toe (with chocolate syrup--but even Nino won't divulge much about that story), and janken (which had resulted in Ohno naughtily scissoring his fingers together over Nino's fisted rock). Then, when they got bored of that, it became more of a mind, a physiological, thing--on a certain Wednesday, Ohno proposed to Nino a certain situation:

"You pretend you're MatsuJun," he'd said, whispering in their empty room, centimeters away from Nino's mouth, as if his thoughts were much too filthy to be said in a real voice, "and I'll be Aiba-kun."
Nino snorted, already tugging on his shirt. "Only if I can be Sho-kun next."

(He was, and Ohno became Nino.)

"That was kinda dirty," Ohno had said afterwards, panting hard, watching as Nino threw his tie to the corner of the room.
Nino grinned. "No, it was really dirty."

Then, "And you weren't bitchy enough as Jun-kun. I guess we'll have to work on that."

They don't speak of that in public, not even when drunk, and especially not around Sho (but Nino once slipped to a completely wasted MatsuJun and Aiba, who were both, while completely disgusted by the idea, still eerily fascinated (one against his will)).

And after that, it's a free-for-all, a carnival of sorts--Nino has recalled saying, let's pretend we're on camera, while Ohno once expressed a desire to be completely and utterly silent (which was nice, Nino remembers; he likes Ohno's eyes, and will take any chance he can to really look into them, even when they're shut).

Today, as Nino was huddled over the stove, making their dinner, Ohno had come up behind him, smelling like dry sweat (they still hadn't showered, and practice was rough) and laundry detergent, and said, "So, today--."

Nino did not bother to look up. "Let's see," he said, fiddling with the knobs on the stove, "how long you can last, Oh-chan, without going too fast."
Ohno laughed, hands coming up to Nino's shoulders, squeezing playfully. "Whose definition of 'fast' are we going by?"

"Fast, like," Nino answered, finally getting the stove to fire properly, "that one time we did location with the granny cheerleaders, and how fast it took you then to learn that dance--"
Ohno moved away to sulk (magnificently, as only Ohno can). Nino heard him slink off and said cheerfully, "Yes, well, it'll be fun!"

So they're here, now, tangled in some complicated pretzel, and seven minutes have since passed. Nino is watching the clock move in its slow, doomed way, each second ticking off another small burst in Nino's stomach, a tiny firework of sorts that makes his belly spasm and his insides jerk--

"How long--?" Ohno gasps, dripping sweat from the ends of his hair. Nino tears his eyes away from the clock on the wall for a second to watch the tendons in Ohno's neck move, the subtle variance in skin tone as he swallows, hard.
"Ten minutes," Nino answers, voice still relatively calm. He doesn't add how this is as long as he can take it, because that would ruin everything and he would hate himself--he also simply can't find the energy to say anything more. All the thoughts in his head have become purely concentrated into one tight ball of sex, into don't you dare come, motherfucker, don't you dare--

Nino should have anticipated this. No matter how much stronger he is than Sho he's still weaker than Ohno, especially when it comes to stamina and endurance, and the build-up of pleasure he had hoped would lead Ohno to snap is instead tearing him apart. He's hysterical; every cell in his body is screaming Ohno's name to the tempo of the secondhand.

"Ah, long time, ne," says Ohno like he's talking about the weather, the fucking weather.
Nino says, "Yeah, a fucking long time," and it comes out more like a cross between a hiss and a growl--but Ohno likes that, and makes a tiny sound in the back of his throat, barely noticeable (but Nino always notices).
"Do you like the way I say that?" Nino says now, running a shaky hand through his drenched hair and then moving to Ohno's neck, "do you like the way it's not just fucking, it's fucking--yeah, you do, Satoshi, don't you, you like that first bite, you like the cck sound, it makes you feel good inside, doesn't it--"

He splays his fingers, then curls them in as Ohno starts to mutter again, this time more urgently, with less breath. Nino thinks, maybe I can win this--

His eyes flick from the hellish clock to Ohno's face, one to the other, faster and faster until eventually they blur into one thing and Ohno is the one who's ticking, like a bomb yet to go off. Fifteen minutes, Nino whines in his head. Just not twenty--God not twenty--

"Say it again," Ohno grunts suddenly, body slick, moving just a bit quicker, "say that again--"
"What, Oh-chan?" Nino smirks, despite his inner hysteria, "fuh--no, wait, why don't you make me say it."

Ohno's knees knock into Nino's legs and he can feel it, through their connection, he can feel the way the coil is slowly loosening, bit by bit. "Come on, Kazu," Ohno moans--it's the first one of the entire evening, even though he's completely soaked in his and Nino's sweat. "Just say it--just--"
"You're making this harder on yourself," Nino whispers, if only because he's afraid that if he raises his voice he'll scream. "You've gone longer, I know, come on, Satoshi--"

Inside his head, though, it's a different story altogether. Just let go, just come, come on--

Ohno moans again. Nino feels a surge in his stomach, different from the already-present ache--it says something like, you damn stubborn bastard. But he ignores it; channels it out through his lips instead--

"You damn stubborn bastard," Nino growls, "you want to win, don't you."
"No," Ohno replies, without hesitation, and there's a change in his tone. "I know I can win," he says, like he's known it all along.

In his present state Nino is not so alert, and gasps when Ohno leans down to lick a solid trail from Nino's collarbone up to the corner of his lips and then kisses the spot. "You're the stubborn one," Ohno says, giggling slightly. "You'll lose."
"Wh--?" Nino begins to say, then cries out, completely surprised, when Ohno changes his angle just an inch to the left. The smile on his face is brilliant and victorious and Nino wants to scream and kick and throw a tantrum but he's too busy trying to blink away the stars behind his eyelids--he's too busy trying to keep in control when clearly, he's out of it.

"Hm, Ohno mumbles, glancing quickly behind his shoulder, "Twenty-three minutes--this is a record, for you."

"You fu--," Nino groans, hips arching, eyes screwed shut, willing every part of his body to just hold on for one more second, "you fucking--"
"Sorry, Kazu-chan," Ohno laughs, reaching up to stroke Nino's cheek--and the gesture seems so out of place, but it makes Nino moan anyway--, "you lose."

He thrusts against Nino one more time, knocking their hipbones together and grinding--it reminds Nino of how they dance backstage, it reminds him of--oh God, if only he could think right now, but Nino loses it completely right then. He doesn't even care about the damn clock anymore, doesn't care about how he'll never beat Ohno's record time of twenty-six minutes with his right hand--he just goes, and as he starts to come hears the chime of the hour play--ding…ding...ding...six...o'...clock.

Nino attempts to hold some sense of balance and thinks, ah, wait, keep up! as his brain and body go wild, he tries to control the waves that come over him but really, he was never a great swimmer. Vaguely he feels Ohno's nose poking around in the hollow of Nino's throat, like a puppy seeking comfort or play--Nino's still shaking, and trying to catch his breath, and is a little annoyed at the puppy squirming around on top of him but he can't ignore it even if he tried.

"Ahh," he breathes, finally settling down, but he still feels electric, like if he rubbed his hands together they would burn. "I hate you," he tells Ohno, throwing a hand over his face just for the effect. "Hate you."
Ohno laughs loudly, only it comes out slightly muffled; he's still nosing around Nino's neck. "Didn't you say this would be fun?"
"Oh yes," replies Nino dryly. "It was loads of fun, I bet, for you--"

But Ohno is up, now, and turning them both around so that he's the one lying on his back. He says, "It'll be fun for you, don't worry," and moves them around a little so that Nino is curled up on Ohno's torso, completely strung-out--but still, of course, up for anything.

"What," Nino says, confused. Then he notices where he is. "--oh."
"Yeah," Ohno says, smiling. "Sorry, you were the only one."

Nino, who is still miffed at the reverse victory, sits up on Ohno's stomach and folds his arms over his chest. "What was your record again?" he asks.
Ohno pretends to think. "Twenty-six minutes, but with--." He holds up his right hand. "You weren't there. Well, you were, but on the phone--."

"Mmm," hums Nino, and slowly begins to slide down Ohno until his chin bumps against something hard--yes, hipbones, he thinks, and feels around with his lips just to make sure he's going in the right direction. "Why don't we go for thirty-six right now?" he proposes, wiggling his fingers on Ohno's stomach and scratching a little with just the tips of his nails. "--If you can, that is…"

He hears Ohno whimper; at the same time his thighs go taut. As Nino opens his mouth, he steals a quick glance at the clock and marks the time in his head --start time, six oh-two, he thinks, end time--six-ten on the dot.

-fin

notes: According to my guy friends (and educational Internet resources), twenty-six minutes is a really long time, but it is possible if you really have that much endurance. They don't know about thirty-six, but then again, neither does Ohmiya. Also, if you haven't seen the granny episode of Mago Mago, you must. Basically Ohno and Nino had to learn this cheer dance and it took Nino about two seconds to learn, whereas Ohno took half of the episode. Poor boy. XD

And that concludes my spastic birthday post for Nino--if you never come back to my journal, I completely understand. :D REAL POST TOMORROW.

eta: OH MY GOD I HATE RICH TEXT SO MUCH

bambina~

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 01:41:15 GMT

I seem to have written fic.

It's been a LOONG time, folks, but I suppose now that it's summer my writing gland wants to partay it up. Not only do I have two fics in the making (one in planning stages (a collab) and the other, an Ohmiya, a whopping 13 pages already), but I'm writing a short story that's not even close to being done at 20 pages. This is all Word, folks, 12 pt Times. And it's not like I started them in March and am picking them up again--I started the Ohmiya yesterday and the short story a few weeks ago. I never write thirteen pages in two days. I usually don't even write things that are thirteen pages, let alone twenty, single-spaced.

I have officially exploded.

Anyhow, I know you all came here for the fic, but since you're going to read that anyway I decided to ramble a bit. :)

title: Charmed (NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH THE TV SHOW. I wanted to name it 'Third Time's the Charm,' but whyjennifer already has a fic named that, and I know it doesn't really matter but IT DOES TO ME. D:)
pairing: Koyato, a touch of RyoPi
genre: Y'all are mature. PG.
summary: It might have begun with a game of spin the bottle mixed with truth or dare--Shige doesn't really remember.
notes: This is, first and foremost, REALLY LATE ~*~*BIRTHDAY FIC*~*~ fic for saturnial , who had requested, on her birthday spam post, comment spam and/or comment fic. But I was super duper late so I decided to make up for it by writing her this monstrous thing (that includes, on her vague request, 'Koyato fluff, awkward and inefficient, with Pi and Ryo on the side') that may merge on badfic (not kidding). However it is love- and fun-filled, I assure you of that. <333

ENJOY THE RIDE.

Charmed

Shige doesn't know how it started--it might have, perhaps, begun with a simple game of drunken spin-the-bottle combined with truth or dare (Pi likes those games, and Shige can't comprehend exactly why). Someone might have spun the bottle around to Ryo for the tenth time, gotten tired of asking questions of an explicit sexual nature, and instead nudged the bottlemouth over to Shige.

"Sooo, Shige," this someone had slurred. "When's the last time you got some?"
Shige had turned red. (Maybe.) "I HAVEN'T EVEN PICKED TRUTH OR DARE YET! And that's not even a truth or a dare! Truths are yes or no questions! Dares are--"
"Can someone shut him the fuck up?" Ryo had perhaps screamed. "Why does Shige have to be the only one who talks his ass off when we drink?"

The certain someone (Shige's memory is a little blurry, and can't really match the antics to the face, if of course this happened at all) had clapped Shige on the back and brought their foreheads close together. "Now now, Shige. This is a matter of utmost importance. You have to tell us--I mean me. Just me. Focus on me, Shige."

Shige could feel four other breaths sneaking into the neck of his shirt. To calm down, he started reciting multiplication tables under his breath. "Fourtimesthreeistwelve," he'd breathed, or he would have, if this had happened at all, "Fivetimesisxisthirty…"
"Oh godammit," Ryo sneered, pressing his nose against Shige's neck and causing him to forget what seven times ten was. "Obviously the man hasn't gotten any since his first."

There was a pause.

"That is, if you had a first at all," Ryo finished, laughing maniacally.

Ten times ten is a hundred, Shige thought, but the equation stuck in his throat. Drinking wasn't exactly his forte, and he, when fully intoxicated, spouted the truth like nobody's business. He'd decided to keep his mouth shut. (Or he would have kept his mouth shut in a circumstance like that, anyway. Shige just knows.)

After that nobody was around Shige anymore, and legs and arms had scrambled over him to form a huddle around the bottle. So Shige had sat pouting in the corner, thinking about girls he'd almost had but never did and maybe that one time when he was drunk, with that boy, but--

"'Kay," Koyama says, raising his arm and waving it around. "I got one."
"Ooh," Tegoshi giggled. "It's not gonna be better than mine, though."

Shige was a little lost. He tried to crawl towards the rest of the group, but the somebody accidentally on purpose kicked him in the shins and he collapsed onto the futons.

"So my plan," Koyama had said, with a thumbs up, "is that we are gonna set Shiggy up with the woman of his dreams."
"Ohmigod! That was my idea," Tegoshi giggled again.

Shige still didn't really know what was going on, but by the way Massu had put a reassuring hand on his back and handed him a carton of chocolate donuts, he should have known.

"Mmmkay, so I hereby declare," announced Pi, if Shige remembers correctly, "the initiation of Operation Get Shige Laid. Whoever sets him up correctly and with good favor wins my good lovin.'"

Koyama had raised his glass to the middle and whooped, with the rest of them following suit (except for Shige, who was, by that time, out cold).

And maybe that's how it started. Shige can't really focus on the moment--drinking's not his strong suit, after all.

But the next day at work, while Koyama was feeding him hangover pills, Pi came over and pressed his forehead right against Shige's.

"Operation Kill Shige's Virginity begins now," he bellowed, and stood back.

(And Jin had wandered in right after that. "Virginity?" he said, very excited. "You're betting on Shige's virginity?"

"I am not--," Shige began, before settling into a sulk.
Koyama nodded. "Whoever wins gets Pi's good lovin', apparently."

Jin clapped his hands. "Fun! Can I join?"
"No!" Shige screamed, horrified. "I don't want Akanishi betting on my--I mean--if I am at all, that is!"
Pi looked up. "You're in that de-nile thing, aren't you? The river in Egypt?"

Ryo couldn't stop laughing all through practice.)

I.

In accordance with the plan, Tegoshi sets him up.

By the matchmaker alone Shige should have deducted that the entire thing would never work. Most likely whoever he was going on a blind date with would be a hairdresser, or be one of those scary girls with too much makeup that he tried to stay away from on the streets. Tegoshi would, undoubtedly, give Shige not a date, but hell. He could feel it already.

So he tried to back out. "Tegoshi, you know, maybe it's not such a good idea if…I mean, you don't have to do this."
And Tegoshi had giggled. "Nonsense, Shige! Maria-chan is a nice girl. Plus she's very experienced. She'll give you a good time." Wiggly eyebrows ensued.

Shige, afraid he would be covered in strawberry syrup and hung to the wall with ropes of taffy, made Koyama come with him.

He'd agreed, but reluctantly. "This is supposed to be your blind date," Koyama had said as they walked along the route Tegoshi had given Shige. "I don't want to be a third wheel. Or the third--ew. Nevermind."
"But," Shige started, choosing to ignore the last comment, "I mean. What if she. What if I don't come out alive."

"Don't be dumb," Koyama said, turning Shige into a narrow alleyway. "I'm sure she's nice. Tegoshi can't have a ton of crazy friends, there's got to be one that's--"

Suddenly, in the awning beside them, a girl materialized (that's what happened, Shige swears up and down) out of thin air ("Maybe she did," Koyama had said, wide-eyed, "I didn't see her before that. HOLY CRAP").

She had braids pinned up in buns on the side of her head, and her hair was a vibrant shade of pink. And she was wearing a dominatrix uniform.

"Hi, I'm Maria!" she said, sweetly. Then, noticing Shige's look (he'd just noticed that she had a whip tucked into one of her thigh-high boots), she crossed her legs and blushed.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, I couldn’t change after work, but Tego-chan said that was okay with you…"

Koyama, who was inching backwards, tugged instinctively on Shige's arm.

Shige, nearly frozen, bowed stiffly and took a few steps in the direction he came. "Um, no, that’s actually, I have--I have this thing to do, I'll let Tegoshi know we couldn't work out today bye!"

They ran all the way back to the station. On the train ride home, Koyama wouldn't stop making bondage jokes, and Shige had to keep apologizing to the old ladies sitting next to them.

II.

After Tegoshi has a serious pouting session in Ryo's lap (Koyama explains the whole thing the next day at work, complete with a vivid description of the cones on her bra that Shige had tried not to look at too much), Pi takes Shige out for coffee.

"Well," he says, pursing his lips, "I guess we all know what Tego's into now."
"SHUT UP," Shige had yelled, right in the middle of Starbucks. "SHUT UP I DON'T WANT TO THINK ABOUT IT."

They order. Shige gets one for himself and Koyama, who always complains that Shige is a selfish coffee-drinking bitch and ends up drinking out of whatever Shige bought, and Pi fills up a venti with shots of espresso for Ryo ("He needs his perkiness").

While waiting at the counter, Pi taps his finger against his chin and hums. "You know, I've been thinking," he says, looking intently at Shige through his sunglasses, "if Koyama were a girl, you guys would be perfect for each other."

Shige explodes. "Huh?" he says, knocking over the sugar with a spasm of his elbow. "What the hell are you talking about?"

A disgruntled store clerk comes over to wipe up the spill, and both of them bow politely before slinking off to the side. "I mean," says Pi, "that you guys are best friends, right?"
"Well, yeah, but I don't see--"
"And I've seen you two drunk. It's like softcore porn, you know that?"

The barista handing them their coffee shoots them a look, and Shige dies a little inside.

"No, I don't know that. I didn't want to know that," he grumbles. "But that aside, it's still weird, you know, to think of your best friend as your--your--anything other than that."
Pi shrugs. "I got used to it."

Shige watches him pour a ton of sugar into Ryo's huge cup of coffee, and tries to let the words sink in. "What?" he finally says, except it comes out more like, "Is that why you and Ryo are always late to morning meetings?"
Pi shrugs again and turns to hand Shige his drinks. "Boys are fun. Did you know that there's a number on your coffee sleeve thing?"

Not knowing which statement to address first, Shige just looks down at his own coffee. There is, indeed, a cell phone number written in bold, green ink on the outside sleeve, neatly placed aside the Starbucks logo.

This is a first for Shige. It's also a first for Pi, apparently, because after the realization that there is a phone number on Shige's coffee cup sinks in, he goes wild.
"Let's go," he says, pulling Shige earnestly out of the café, "we have to tell everyone."

Shige's mind flits to Ryo, then, inevitably, to Koyama. "W-why?"
"Because this is epic, Shige. Do you know how this is gonna work out? We're gonna steal your cell and call that number. Then you're gonna get laid."

He gets them a taxi and they pile in. Shige is still confused. He checks Koyama's cup, just to make sure there's not a number on there, but there is--the same one, in the same exact place.

"Whoever it was tried twice," he tells Pi, who is sucking down his own coffee like it's water. "I mean--look." He shows Pi the other cup, and Pi gives a thumbs up.

"Bow chicka wow wow, Shige," he says, licking off his foam mustache suggestively. "That's a good sign. You're gonna get lucky tonight, boy."

Boy? Shige thinks. Like, 'boys are fun?'

He looks at the number again. As each second in the car passes, the situation becomes intriguing, and almost, as it plays out in Shige's head, illicit.

III.

Pi drags Shige across the hallways of the jimusho with such force that some coffee spills out onto the floor, and Shige prays that no sempai will notice and come running after them.

Once they bust through the doors of NewS' break room, though, he's praying for different things.

"Okay, everyone, listen up," says Pi, thrusting Ryo's cup of espresso into his hands and setting his own empty coffee down on the table. "Through my divine intervention, Shige is going to get laid tonight."

Tegoshi cries what he probably imagines to be some encouraging war cry, even though it sounds more like it could break a mirror. Shige cringes.
"But wait," Koyama says to Pi, "if you win this thing, who gets the good lovin'?"

Ryo and Pi both point at each other. The whole room nods in understanding, but Shige cringes again and thinks, are boys really that fun?

"Anyway," Pi says, grabbing both coffees from Shige's hands, "lo and behold, people, there are phone numbers etched onto Shige's coffee cups. What's more, they're in green--which everyone here knows is associated with erotica."
"Is that one mine? Can I have it?" Koyama says, reaching for one, but Pi snatches it out of the way.
"No. This is an important specimen that must be preserved and tested for good lovin' purposes. Quick, someone! Get me Shige's cell phone."

The whole room rises in an uproar. Shige is startled as he feels something digging into his pocket and looks down to see Koyama's hands on his pants. He screams.

"I buy you coffee, and this is how you repay me? By getting on your knees and--"

Across the room Shige hears Ryo approve in an illicit manner.

"--HEY--and helping the enemy?"

Koyama grins. "You can't say you're not interested in who wants to get in your pants, Shige."
"Why are you?" Shige inquires, just as Koyama finds his phone.
"Because the number was written on my coffee cup as well, so I have the right to know," Koyama answers, and tosses the phone to Pi. "Dial!"

Everyone gathers around the table. It's reminiscent of the night this whole thing started, except Shige is now placed in the middle of the circle, smack in between Pi and Ryo.

Ryo dials, and Pi giggles loudly behind his hands. Shige feels like he is once again in middle school, at some kind of lewd sleepover, but then he realizes the first time he had a lewd sleepover was when he joined NewS. This knowledge is not comforting.

"Ssssh, it's ringing!" Pi stage whispers to silence. Tegoshi muffles a squeal.

After a few rings and dirty comments from Ryo, someone picks up. The entire table shakes, and Shige drops his head in his hands (but keeps his mouth uncovered).

"Hello?" someone says. It's a male voice, and everyone leans into the table.
"H-hello?" Shige chokes out, after Ryo elbows him in the gut. "Did you…leave your phone number on my coffee cup?"

There's a long, long silence, and then the man laughs shortly. "Oh. Um, wow. Well, I guess, yeah."

Ryo falls off his chair. Pi, on the other hand, is shaking the table uncontrollably.

Before Shige can say anything else, though, the man goes on. "Look, this is going to sound weird, but--"
"--I have the gay hots for you," Koyama whispers, nearly inaudibly, and Pi kicks the table hysterically.
"--You're not the woman in the red dress, are you?" finishes the man.

Suddenly, Ryo and Pi stop making so much noise and Koyama's mouth drops open. Shige himself is at a loss for words.

"N-no," he says, clearing his throat. "Wait, did you mean…"

Pi starts shaking the table again, but this time in a more panicked way.

"Yeah, I meant to leave it on hers," the man says, then coughs. "Um. Yeah. Sorry, I must have done your order on accident. Wow."
"Yeah, wow. I'm gonna kill that sonofabitch," Ryo snarls, and Tegoshi slaps him on the arm.

Shige, surprisingly, feels a tad murderous himself. "Uh, well, okay. Bye," he says, and hangs up.

After that everyone sits around for awhile, unmoving. Shige is bewildered by how shocking the whole thing was, and even more so at how everyone is so let down.

"God, this is so depressing," Pi pouts, and stands up. "I'm gonna get another coffee."
Ryo stands up with him. "I'm coming," he says. His voice has dropped, it seems, an octave or two. "Tego, come with."

They leave, with Massu trailing behind, and Koyama slumps forward on the table. "That was crazy," he mumbles.
Shige sighs. "Yeah." Then he drops his voice to a mumble. "You know, I'm kind of disappointed."

Koyama laughs quietly. "I thought you'd be. But that's okay. So you wanna have dinner later?" he says, stretching his arms so that Shige is trapped in between them. "You pay, since it's your misfortune."

Shige hits him on the head.

IV.

After dinner that night, Koyama makes Shige come over.

"It's so lonely at my place," he says, "and it's raining, it might thunder. Come and keep me company."
Shige rolls his eyes. "This is the first time I've heard you complain about thunder."

But he comes over anyway. They run through the rain like they ran through the alleyway away from Maria-chan the dominatrix, and Shige asks Koyama if he remembers that night as they toe off their shoes in the doorway, dripping and soaked through.

"Of course, it was only a week ago," Koyama says, wiping his wet forehead with his wet sleeve. "And you can't really forget someone with pink hair and cone boobs."
Shige laughs. "And thigh-high boots."
"And a can of strawberry syrup in her belt loop," Koyama says, opening the hall closet and tossing Shige a towel. "No, I'm just making that one up."

Koyama says something about tea, and Shige drops onto the couch in the living room. He marvels at how the apartment is large enough to have a living room, and notices how the place is warm. From the kitchen comes tinkling sounds from the cups, and the hiss of the stove, and everything's so inviting, but at the same time so…

"Kei," Shige says, still dripping, "why don't you have a girlfriend?"

The tinkling noises stop, and Koyama turns around. "What?"
"I mean--you have such a nice apartment, you really should have someone else to share it with," Shige says matter-of-factly.
"I won't have such a nice apartment if you keep watering my couch. That's why I gave you a towel, dumbass," Koyama says, smiling.

Shige knows he's avoiding the question, but the questions in his head keep on coming. It was the saké--too much of it and he'll never shut up. "But why don't you, Kei?" he tries again, this time muffled through the towel.

"I don't know," Koyama replies, as the kettle starts to whistle. "I did. You know that."
"I remember her, yeah. Did she not like it here or something?" Shige asks. He realizes he's slurring his words, but he's not sober enough to attempt to stop.

Koyama shakes his head, but doesn't go on. He pours the tea and brings it over the couch, which is by now entirely damp. Shige takes a cup, brings it to his lips, and sets it down again.

"Do you think I'll ever get a girlfriend?" he whispers.
Koyama turns to stare at him. "You really do talk too much when you're drunk, you know that?" he says. "Why do you keep thinking about it, anyway? I thought you never wanted to do this Operation Shige Rabu-Rabu plan anyway."
"That's not the name of it," Shige says indignantly, and, seeking something to lean on, settles against Koyama, who is stove-heated and comfortable. "But I don't know. It's already failed twice. Maybe I'm just not lovable."

It's silent. Shige takes a sip of tea, and closes his eyes.

"Can I stay here?" he asks, resting his head on the nearest solid surface.
"Not on my shoulder," Koyama says, without conviction. He laughs. "I guess. I can't send you home like this, your mom would kill me."

Shige makes some noise of agreement. Moments later he feels fingers on his hands, soft and seeking, and then the teacup is gone.

He dreams about that--fingers giving him teacups, and warmth, lots of it. It makes no sense, but he's satisfied.

V.

A day later, after practice for their upcoming tour, Pi pulls Shige aside.

"I heard you fell asleep on Kei," Pi says in a dramatic voice, his hands on Shige's shoulders. "I'm telling you, Shige, just go out with him."
Shige, who is hungover, pretends he didn't hear that. "What? Speak up. I have a headache."
"Screw Koyama's brains out," someone else whispers, and Shige turns slowly to find Ryo glaring at him. "You are such an idiot. I'm even starting to feel sorry for Koyama, which is impossible, so I'm not. But I am."
Shige blinks. "What?"

Ryo sighs exasperatedly. "Why am I wasting my time? I hate prudes. And picky eaters."
Pi cuts in. "What Ryo means, Shige, is that Operation Shige Rabu-Rabu (we changed the name, by the way, when you were in the bathroom that one day) was designed for you to find a good person to take care of you and kiss you goodnight. Obviously since you've failed twice, the third time's the charm, right?"

He doesn't really get it, but Shige nods anyway.

"So for the third time, go for Kei. It'll work," Pi says, taking his hands off Shige's shoulders and pinching his cheeks instead, "because it already is."
"Except for Mr. I-Have-To-Protect-My-Virtue, here," Ryo sneers. "Do you wash yourself with vinegar every night?"

VI.

On the train home, Shige contemplates Ryo and Pi's words. He thinks about it through every stop, and even when he's going through the ticket barrier, so he almost goes through the ticket-in booth instead of the ticket-out one. Shige keeps on thinking, thinking, thinking; eventually he winds up with a killer headache. He wonders why Aogaku never taught him anything about this.

He thinks about it when he's walking along the dark streets, completely alone, so that he sometimes curses aloud and stops in the middle of the road just to go over something in his head.

So for the third time, go for Koyama. It'll work. Because it already is.

It doesn't really hit him until he's home, having tea at the table with his mother.

"Mom," Shige says, bringing the mug to his lips, "how do you know when someone's good for you?"
His mother blinks, a little taken aback at her son's sudden interest in romance. She can't say she's not grateful, though, and chooses her words carefully.

"Well," she begins, "when you know that you're safe with that person. And you know that, no matter what, that person will take you into their home and let you stay there."

Shige nods and looks into his teacup. "Okay," he says quietly. "Thanks."

Then, just in case, he asks his mom if she's ever heard of Operation Shige Rabu-Rabu. His mother, who once picked up the phone when her son was asleep and accidentally had a (very polite) conversation with Yamashita-kun and Nishikido-kun, lies and says of course not.

VII.

So the next day, after work, Shige asks Koyama if he can come with him.

"You mean, to my house?" Koyama asks, a little confused. "Sure, but--"
"Let's talk," Shige says, swallowing down every other irrelevant thing in his mind. "I want to talk to you."

Koyama's mouth opens, then closes. He has one hand on the table and the other in mid-air, as if he wants to reach out and grasp something (Shige half-hopes it's him). "Okay…"

They walk through the city in a silence far from relaxed. Shige tries to talk about how Ryo offered him, this morning, to give him a couple of phone numbers for his 'ladyfriends that don't mind someone inexperienced,' and Koyama responds and laughs in all the right places, but the conversation dies down after that. It's awkward, and Shige is wondering if he has decided to do the right thing.

He probably hasn't, he thinks to himself, and bites his nails off as they near Koyama's apartment.

"What are you doing?" Koyama snorts when he turns to see Shige gnawing at his nail. "That’s gross."
"I'm nervous," Shige says, then immediately tries to cover up, "for, um, our upcoming concerts."

Koyama looks at him strangely. "This is like, the fourth tour we've done. You can't be nervous."
Shige shrugs and looks away. "You know I get nervous every time."

Except he doesn't, and that's the problem. As they reach the apartment building and Koyama pulls his keys out of his pocket, Shige wonders if he could get used to seeing that, if indeed Koyama is the charm that will make this third try work.

In the elevator, though, he realizes that he's already used to seeing the keys, and riding up to the fifth floor, and stopping at 507, and watching Koyama jiggle the lock until it gives. Thinking about this makes it easier.

When they walk into the apartment, it's still warm, just like last time. Shige, whose hands are shaking, exhales loudly.

Koyama looks at him again. "You're weird," he says. "And that's what you usually say to me."
"Kei--," Shige starts, then clears his throat. "I--um--Ryo and Pi, they--in the--it was scary, Kei, like you wouldn't believe, so I--." He's a nervous wreck, and stops before he says anything even more stupid.

Koyama turns away, in the direction of the kitchen. "I'll make tea."

VIII.

Shige wonders if this is what girls feel like when they're on the verge of confessing to someone they just realized is Mr. Right, and then wonders if it's okay that he's referring to Koyama as Mr. Right. It confuses him, so he accepts the teacup that Koyama passes to him and talks to it instead.

"So a couple of weeks ago," Shige starts, "when Pi and I went to Starbucks, he told me that boys are fun."
Koyama splutters, and when Shige turns to look at him, he's got tea running down his neck. "What the hell? What kind of come-on is that, Shige?"

Shige's mouth drops open. "Oh my God. I didn't mean it like that. Shit, shit, shit, I am such a bad person, shit," he says, and buries his face in the throw pillow next to him. "SHIT."

He hears Koyama giggle, and then try to disguise it as a cough. "It's okay. Start over."

Starting over is harder, because Shige's entire plan (that he devised at his kitchen table) is now worthless and he has to start from scratch. "It's kind of weird how you're reassuring me," he grumbles, and takes a gulp of his scalding hot tea.
"Yeah, it is," Koyama says, and Shige can hear the grin in his voice. He refuses to look, though.
"Well," Shige continues, "yesterday I asked my mom how you would know if someone was right for you, and she said if they kept you safe and let you come home with them or something. And that's what you--I mean, it made sense." He wonders how much he's blushing. "Oh, and before that, Ryo and Pi accosted me in the hallway and shook me around and told me you'd be my third try. And third time's the charm--"

He's cut short when Koyama suddenly leans over close, very close, and rests his chin on Shige's shoulder. "Go on," he says.
"--Third time's the charm," Shige repeats, this time with a squeak at the end. "In Operation Shige Rabu-Rabu."

Koyama laughs, softly, into his ear. "So is it working? Am I charming you?"

Shige shrugs (on the shoulder Koyama is not on). "I guess," he mumbles.
Koyama comes closer so that his lips are brushing against Shige's neck--though not quite fully there. "How about now?"

The correct answer, Shige knows, is that Koyama has been doing his awful charming thing for the past two or so years, and Shige has been stupid enough not to notice until now. But he's too embarrassed to say this, and just, very slowly, turns his head so that his face is now in Koyama's hair.

"Yeah," Shige says, quietly, daring to snuggle just the tiniest bit. "Yeah, okay, now."

EPILOGUE:

Pi strides into the break room with a venti cup from Starbucks. Ryo follows soon after and even Jin tries to wiggle his way into the Very Important Meeting about Shige that was called.

"You're in KAT-TUN," Ryo roars as he slams the door on Jin's foot. "GO DO SLUTTY THINGS."
"You guys are being slutty right now!" Jin whines, trying to squeeze in the tiny crack. "Let me in!"

After putting his coffee down carefully on the table, Pi turns around and whispers something to the door; not unlike in the way one would speak to a puppy. Jin's eyes and mouth both open wide and then he nods and turns. All of NewS, seated at the center table, can hear him running down the hallway.

"What did you tell him?" Tegoshi asks.
"That he can have the winning prize later," Pi says.

Ryo says something very nasty about the size of Jin's--

"Not that prize!" Pi yells, indignantly. "The one I found in my bag of chips today. Anyway, I hereby call this meeting of the Operation Shige Rabu-Rabu Forces together."

He sits down and adjusts his glasses, which Shige bets he wore especially for today.

"So this meeting has been called to announce that Koyama Keiichiro has successfully completed this operation as of--," Pi squints down at his notes, "--twenty-three hundred hours last night."
"Don't you mean zero?" Shige says. "Wasn't it midnight?" he asks, turning to Koyama.
"No," Koyama says, "that was the--"

Pi slams his coffee on the table. "Okay, nobody needs to know about that, as ecstatic as we all are that Shige finally got some, which means that Operation Get Shige Laid was also a success. However, after certain pieces of evidence were presented to me about a week ago, Operation Kill Shige's Virginity was not a valid task due to the fact that Shige, one time in high school, did the thing. With--well, you guys know."
Shige pales. "Who told you that?"

Pi, trying to keep a straight face, snorts. "Ryo-chan and I called your mom," he says, and gets up and runs out of the room as Shige howls defiantly.

EPILOGUE TWO:

Shige is beginning to appreciate Koyama's couch more and more.

They're on it again (though not at it, Shige thinks, yet), stretched out lazily, Koyama all intertwined within Shige so that the latter can't move at all.

"Oh, so I was thinking," Shige says, in his immobile state, "who started this whole thing? You know, Operation Thing?"
Koyama, his head buried in Shige's arm, says something unintelligible, but Shige can make out the words 'drunk' and 'Pi.'

"But," Shige mutters, thinking to himself, "weren't you the one that said, your plan was to set me up with the woman of my dreams?"
He can feel Koyama blush.
"Are you a woman?" Shige says, trying not to giggle.

Silence. Then:

"I like to consider myself feminine at heart," Koyama says, muffled in Shige's arm.
"Uh-huh," Shige snorts. "Why do you have a skirt in your closet, then?"
"Look, the plan was to set you up with someone, it didn't really matter what gender--THAT WAS LEFTOVER FROM A DRAMA, OKAY."

-end

Note: Green isn't really associated with erotica, at least from what I could find online. It came from a conversation my friends had about M&M's that went something like, HAY GUIZ, GREEN M&MS R APHRODISIACS! It turned out not to be true, though. Even when we tested it with a real bag of M&M's. :3

on the real idol finale!

Thu, 22 May 2008 02:12:37 GMT

YAY DAVID COOK!

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

i've run out of clever subject titles

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 10:31:28 GMT

LAST ONE. This baby is actually slowing down my computer. Oi.

XII
“I’m a Filthy Whore”

Years after my secluded and fiery affair with Purchase and everything that resulted from it—which is a lot, mind you—I live in a Princeton dormitory, attending the college that my father and mother forbade me to go to simply because ‘it wasn’t Yale’. But here I am, majoring in anthropology and psychology (both pertaining to people—ironic for me, isn’t it), finally living a normal life that does not include broken pieces of anything, thumping heartbeats, or redheads.
Actually, I still keep in touch with Samson. He is a backpacker—a tourist, he keeps on telling me to call him, but I insist on backpacker, for the word tourist brings up images of Hawaiian shirts and large cameras and that is not Samson. But at the moment, he is in Thailand, and I am in New Jersey, and we are practically worlds apart. He tells me to keep in contact with him because, as he puts it, being away from me feels like that first car ride.
“What?” I was truly bewildered by this confession the first time he told me so—the night before his trip to New Zealand. “What do you mean, being away from me feels like—”
And he kissed me, to shut me up, which he soon found out was the only way that worked. “It’s not hard. Figure it out.”
The next day while he was on the plane, I thought about it. It was not easy, because my memory disposes of certain details that may be important after a period of time, but I managed to figure it out. For documentation and novel purposes, I repeat the memory as it stands here, for others to sift through, to figure out what in the world Samson was going on about. I promise that it makes sense.
On that day, Samson drove carefully and ideally, as if he had gone through driver’s education a million times just to get everything right. I couldn’t understand why he had put so much blame on driving, as I saw his skills fairly better than mine—he’d never come in close contact with a passing pedestrian, for instance, whereas I had almost run over a man in a wheelchair on my way to school once. This is why I take the school bus now.
But on the corner of 23rd and Pierriot, we came to a red light—and passed it, going steady with our speed limit, but passing it cleanly all the same. The very first thing I did after we ambled across the no-go zone was check for police or angry drivers. Upon finding none, I turned to Samson, making sure I had a very confused look on my face, like the kind that actors and actresses must perfect for the obligatory scene in which one kills another for no reason at all. Why the big deal, you may ask? Taking my personality into account, it really may not seem so, but I am very in tune to driving rules, and am always absolutely apalled when anyone breaks them.
I had thought of Samson taking a dagger out of nowhere (just like the whistle) and stabbing Purchase many times. Apparently this image worked well with my facial features, for when Samson caught sight of me he turned pale instantly.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair to shake it off, “why are you looking at me like that?”
“You just ran a red light,” I screeched, pointing back to the offending corner. “It switched to red seconds before we’d gotten to the light and then you just passed it. Did you even see it? Did you?”
Still pale, I watched him swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing in the passing shade of the side-road trees. “Oh, yeah.”
“Yeah, what? You saw it and you passed it? On purpose? What?”
“See, um, that’s why I hate driving so much,” he mumbled, avoiding eye contact with me—so different than before, but then again, I guessed he wasn’t expecting me to exhibit such an outburst. “I miss red lights a lot. It’s a habit of mine.”
My jaw dropped. “A habit?”
“I mean,” he quickly said, to cover up his mistake, “it’s not a good habit. It’s just, I look more at the road than at the sky, because that’s what I was told to do, years ago in Driver’s Ed, so sometimes I miss lights and I pass the red ones, just because I don’t catch them fast enough.”
That’s so stupid, was the first thing that ran through my mind, but I knew saying so wouldn’t be such a good idea. It was, after all, our first meeting, even though I’d forgotten that long past already. “You could get killed,” I stated firmly, turning away from him and crossing my arms across my chest, “all because your reactions aren’t fast enough. This is why you take the bus, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “Well, yeah. I don’t have to worry about it, then.”
We sat in silence from then on, me still angry at how little a thing could potentially damage someone’s life so easily, and he trying to concentrate on the traffic a little more (for my sake only, he confessed later). As we neared Vermont, he asked me where I wanted to be dropped off.
“St. Abernathy’s, if you know where that is,” I replied, understanding fully how one could miss the fact that the poppy-drowned mound was a school and not a sanitarium. “It’s down the road, that big…”
“I know,” he said, and I noticed his tone was a little subdued—in fact, he sounded almost shocked. “Can I ask why?”
“No,” I said, a little scared. He looked a little wary now, as if offering me his hand and a ride was a mistake, and he would now have to suffer awful consequences. (Oh, how little I knew of him then!) “I mean—why are you asking?”
He shook his head, shifting uncomfortably in the driver’s seat. I noticed his grip on the steering wheel had become tighter. “It’s nothing. Weird place, that’s all.”
“I know what you mean.” Really, do I know, I finished silently.
551 Vermont came faster than I expected—and when it was time for me to leave, it was harder than I expected. Here I was, sitting in a nice car with a nice guy who I’d never even met before. What could I have said? Thanks for the ride, and then never see him again, like I was using him? But he was the one who offered! I was still frustrated as we pulled into the miniscule parking lot littered with poppy petals, and when he turned off the ignition and turned to me, I look up at him angrily.
“Um,” he said, retreating back into his own seat. I realized he had been reaching over me to unlock my door. “Sorry.”
“Oh,” was my feeble reply. I could feel my face getting warm, and I knew it was another one of those times that I hated being a soft thinking and delicately made woman. Curse the lesser sex, indeed. “No, it’s not your fault.”
Taking this as approval, he leaned over me once again to unlock my door. For a split second, I smelled eau de businessman: slick oily smoke from bars, a hint of alcohol from too-late nightclubs and expensive cologne to try and cover it all up. But he pulled back quickly, the lock only having been a latch and Samson having been the politest guy ever, and I lost that feeling of infatuation, the feeling of being in the dark.
“Do you need a ride back? I don’t live far from here,” he said, looking out onto the not-really-there grounds of St. Abernathy’s Non-Correctional School for Girls. “Since the bus station is closed, and all.”
“No, I’ll be fine. I have a ride back,” I lied.
He turned to me, looking a little apprehensive. “Then I’ll be seeing you.”
There was no other word for the situation than awkward. Quickly I got out of the car, trying not to kill myself by doing so, as that is how I usually ended up with car doors. “Try not to die,” I called by way of farewell. “You’re a pretty nice guy. It’d be a shame.”
And I shut the door, leaving his words unsaid. I heard them muffled through the window, but that was all. As far as I was concerned—which was really not a lot—that was the last time Samson and I would be in such close quarters. I forgot about him soon enough.
It was the tingly realization that I was finally in the same place as Purchase, breathing her air, stepping on gravel that she herself had walked on, that allowed me the same adrenaline I’d lost minutes before to shoot through my body once more. I went from relaxed and even listless to hyper and jumpy in mere nanoseconds. With amazing speed, I ran from the parking lot to the backfields of St. Abernathy’s—a short run, but it took me a long time to catch my breath.
When I reached the green—not really green, but I am going on the brochures here—I stopped and panted, ashamed at my total lack of physical endurance. My hands on my knees and my head light, I looked around and saw nobody. The dry, yellow fields full of weeds were completely empty. Catching my breath in my throat, I began to panic: was I too late? It was only half past noon, surely Purchase would have waited, or if she had left, I would have seen her in the empty distance. But I saw no one; no matter in which direction I turned to look.
I bit my lip. Was it over already? Had I lost my first and very possibly last chance? The organs within me oozed defeat and rejection; and I slid down to the spiky earth, the cold fence behind me my only support.
Just as I was thinking how much the emo-kid scene became me, I felt something probing the back of my neck. It was cold and sticky, and…it was giggling. I immediately jumped up from my dejected position and looked around frantically, ready to kill (in figurative terms) whatever thing had crept up on me.
“You’re early,” said the attacker. I instantly ruled out insects and mute serial killers, and then turned around, trying to make sight of whoever it was.
“Who’s…?” I mumbled, turning back to the fence.
And in the middle of that little square of dead wildlife, wearing bright colors as if to rub in my face how completely oblivious I could be—there stood Purchase, hands behind her back, (fake red) bangs swinging flirtatiously in her eyes. Once again every inch of my fragile anatomy imploded, and as we stood there looking at each other, I wondered if she could sense that I was hyperventilating on the inside.
With one finger, she beckoned me towards her, a smile spreading slowly across her soft features. She looked almost devilish, almost as if she was calling me over to devour me with her brightly painted lips. But I didn’t care. Let her have her way with me, I thought, and with a burst of pride that was almost rancor I threw open the fence gate.
And just like in the movies, things slowed to a complete stop and the heroine is allowed time to dig deep into her skull, pulling questions out of nowhere, coming to conclusions that no one else can see. What was I expecting on that day? Life, liberty, and/or the pursuit of happiness? A girlfriend, or a lover? Hell, or heaven? Thinking about it now, I know that I wasn’t expecting anything. All I knew was that I wanted Purchase. Where, I don’t know or don’t remember—perhaps in my arms, or standing behind me, breathing down my neck, or in my bed, or in my mind (and she succeeded in that). I opened that gate not because I wanted something I could deal with in my spare time, but because I wanted someone who would tell me what to do when I didn’t know—something that had the potential to break me, because I was tired of being the one who broke things.
(The allowance of thinking time is over, and my movie returns to normal speed. I am waking, it seems…and now I am walking…)
“As I said,” Purchase purred, taking my hand in her cool, bony fingers as I neared her, “you are early, my dear.”
(It did not take me long to learn that Purchase could sensualize anything, if she so put her mind to it. I don’t even think she needed to concentrate—it was an involuntary reaction, second only to breathing. “Darling, pass me that cake,” she would think she was saying, only it would come out in a low, deliberate hiss so that everyone within five feet of her felt the same chills along their spine that everyone else was. As it was then, the word early came out eaaaarly, like the vernacular of a witch, and I wanted to die…just die.)
But her accusation made me dizzy nonetheless. “What do you mean, I’m early?” I asked her, looking at her watch. It was quarter ‘til one. “You said noon, didn’t you?”
She laughed. “Heavens, no.” Squeezing my fingers in her hands, she pulled me towards the back door of the art room. “I specifically wrote down one o’clock. I remember exactly. Maybe it smudged.”
It hadn’t smudged—the handwriting was as clear as day, the ink precise and thin. But I decided to play along. Common sense was outdated, according to my subconscious standards.
“Yeah, maybe,” I said meekly. “So where are we going?”
“In here,” Purchase said smoothly, unlocking the metal door and then pushing it open. “You’ve been in it before. My room.”
Never actually having gone on a real date before, I had no idea how to act. I had a general idea—you don’t get to be seventeen without knowing the basic facts of ‘going together’—but actually living it was a different matter entirely. As soon as we were both in the art room (well, now I had my doubts as to what the room actually was), and the door was securely locked behind us, we stood together, saying nothing, showing everything. I was nervous. She was complacent. I was sweaty. She was perfectly composed.
“Soah,” I mumbled, and then swore. I’d meant to say so, uh, but it came out soah. Like the ebonics version of ‘soar’. It seems as if that day, I’d lost my ability to put together words properly.
Purchase giggled.
I tried once again to speak correctly. “So, um…” That started out well, so I went on, pronouncing every word like I’d learned it yesterday. “Why is this your room?”
“I live here,” she answered, not batting an eyelash.
“Oh yeah?” I didn’t believe her. She was cracking her knuckles now, and averting my eyes. My people skills were at it again.
“Yes, really. I was disowned as a teenager,” Purchase told me, loud and with better diction than I could have ever mustered. “St. Abernathy’s took me in when I was fifteen. Ever since, this has been my home, and I’ve been trying to reform…”
It was like watching a bad documentary. The ligthing was mediocre, the script mild, and the story bland. It was because of my own insensitivity that I refused to believe Purchase’s story; my own ignorance that created this very first rift in our relationship. I just thought she was high, but she was completely and utterly sober. I’d thought she was merely telling a story, but she had chosen to expose her life to me. In short, I am a horrible person. Do not let anyone deny it to you.
“Okay, wait,” I finally cut in, tired of hearing what I thought was complete bullshit. “You’re telling me that you were disowned by your family, so you came crawling to this place, and they took you in, and now you live here? In this room? I thought this was an art room. At least, that’s what they told me…and are you high?”
She smiled, only this time, it was sad. Seeing such a change in Purchase-atmosphere immediately made me feel like a bitch: had I done this? Was I the reason for that sad smile? It hurt me, it really did.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, truly apologetic. I shuffled around to her side, pulled out a stationary metal stool from underneath one of the tables and tugged on her sleeve. When she turned to me, her face was so doe-like—eyes so wide against her frame of red—that the urge to kiss her was nearly overpowering.
But as most things go, I had to resist. “Sit down,” I said to her instead, offering the chair in place of my lips. Thankfully, she accepted this choice and straddled the metal circle, while I went and sat on the one across from it. It wasn’t much of an improvement to our simple little date (my pathetic first, and probably her more experienced zillionth), but at least we were at eye level.
“So keep on going.” I was ashamed for my earlier disbelief. Surely if she had dragged me all the way down here she wouldn’t be telling me lies, was my more thought-out reaction. Surely if the story had been purely mythical, she would be laughing by now.
Before speaking, she reached across the empty space that stretched between our chairs and took my hands—still warm—in hers, still cold. “I have this thing about contact,” she explained to me, running her fingertips over my palm lines. “It drives me crazy if I don’t have any physical connection with the person I’m talking to.”
It explained future mishaps of Purchase grabbing the people she was talking to in public, causing bouts of molestation accusations, but I could not find any prior evidence. I didn’t care, though. Her hands were soft. “Okay.”
So then she continued her story. Abandoned—no, not abandoned, just ‘dropped off’—at the age of fifteen, St. Abernathy’s took her in as a student and an art teacher. She went to school on weekends, with the adults, learned the same things that everyone else her age did but all she was to them was a more advanced delinquent, one who had done something so horrible that she had to be removed from the other masses and put into the congregation of the grown-ups. The reason that Deidre and Sandy (DG #s 1 and 2, she told me, quite amused at my made-up labels for them) knew her was because they smoked together on the weekdays. Or, as Purchase put it—‘sometimes we smoke, and sometimes we do…other things.”
“Do the teachers know about this?” I asked, my voice foreign to my own ears. It had been awhile since I’d spoken.
“Of course they do, but they won’t say anything as long as we don’t cause scenes.” Her face contorted into that same melancholy state and I wanted again to kiss it away. “Last time you came—I caused a scene.” And she laughed.
“Did you get in trouble?”
“Oh, no. I’m not a regular student, so they don’t treat me like one. They just took away my cigarettes.”
And she gestured to her empty cardigan pocket—where she kept her smokes, I guessed.
“They call it a non-correctional facility, but anyone who really steps in this place isn’t fooled,” she breathed, her little girl’s voice sounding like a hush-hush secret. “We’re all different, just like in a normal school, only we’re all out and about, like in a real correctional institute.” Her fingernails began to wander around the inside of my wrist. I imagined my veins popping, blood pouring out everywhere. “Deidre’s in here for drugs. So is Sandy. NyQuil—” That one didn’t have a real name, apparently. “—Is in here for stealing. I’m the worst one of all, though.”
I tried to swallow, but my throat was dry. I tried to look her in the eyes, but I was too scared. So I focused on our intertwined fingers, instead. “Oh yeah?” I murmured, like I already knew that it must have been something dreadful. And in a way, that’s how I felt. But I tried to cover it up, tried in vain to remove my foreshadowing thoughts. “Tell me.”
With deliberate slowness, as if all the frames in our movie for two had been poisoned, she leaned towards me and put her smoking gun, hush-hush lips to my ear. “I’m a filthy whore,” she whispered, and all blood immediately rushed to my head.

XIII
The Naming of Olive

I felt as if I had been obliterated to pieces and no one had bothered to tell me. Here I was, sitting on a stool in what might as well have been state prison, my knuckles white with fear, my pores exploding with sweat, my mind running fast, like a freight train on crack. And I owed it all to this beautiful, poisonous, whore of a woman—who was leaning over me, her pined-after red hair spilling over my face and shoulders, her bombshell lips sliding themselves (on their own volition, yes) across my jawbone and neck, leaving gardenia-dripping promises on my skin, sewing hush-hush secrets deep into my blood vessels.
She pulled away suddenly and I bit my lip hard, biting the urge to ask her to do that again. My hands, which were cold and clammy, were now submerged in her warm ones. The roles had reversed. I now existed to be comforted, and she was there to make sure I didn’t bust into a million pieces (although I was quite sure she would paste me back together).
“You’re a…” I began, my voice hitting an octave I didn’t know was possible.
Laughing, Olive squeezed my hand securely. “You look so shocked. Yes, I am. And they’re trying to fix me here—non-correctional facility, my ass—but I just don’t see how you can fix something like that.”
Everything moved into place, like techtonic plates or a ghost directing a jigsaw puzzle, but there was still one thing I didn’t understand. “But—how were you caught? Or did you turn yourself in?”
She licked her teeth, wiping all traces of lipstick from their white surfaces. It was her way of remembering. “They caught me on the rue de Bellavance…”
The fictitious street in the French-themed nature park, in the city. Quite a pretty place by day, but a haven for who-knows-what kind of people at night. And now I knew. But she wasn’t finished talking.
“…With my main catch. A man in a suit.” She closed her eyes. “If only we’d picked a different place…”
I didn’t want her to think of him. I softly squeezed her hands, and she fixed her attention back on me. “So…”
There was a period of silence. I was trying to sort out of my thoughts: was this man in the suit the same one who I’d seen her with that fateful day against my willow tree, smearing lipstick and tugging ties? Did she love him, and do they still keep in touch? Could she ever love again…why did she start selling herself in the first place? Selling, that was the correct word, wasn’t it? They won’t arrest you in this place unless you’re parading your body for money. But within my own school of the rich, I’d heard different—not to my face, but in bathroom stalls with your feet placed on the door in front of you.
“Did you do it for the money?” I blurted out, then turned away, blushing scarlet. “I mean, I’m just…”
But she laughed, instead. I was getting used to that laugh, the same one that had bewildered me to nothing, when I had first met her. Now it was like birdsong, or a television droning in the background. “Yes, I did. I sold myself, if that’s the correct way to introduce yourself as a whore.” And she winked.
What happened next can only be described as a Corny Moment—whether it be in a movie, a book, on television, or in real life, I am sure all of you know what I mean. It’s those times in fiction, or life, when everything fits together, things make sense, and gears start turning. Wherein the sun came gliding miraculously over the hilltop, I felt…calm. I wanted to kiss her again, this redhead (and at the moment I didn’t care whether the color was fake or not) with the canary-yellow cardigan and the bright blue jeans. I watched my hand begin to slide out of our web, and then up to brush those crazy bangs out of her eyes. Yes, cue the sappy music, folks. And turn up the sun.
But none of the sliding or the brushing or the staring deeply into each other’s eyes until we turned to mush actually happened. What did happen, though, was that Olive was christened. By me.
“Sold yourself,” I repeated, in a whisper.
“Yep. For money and all,” she whispered back.
(And now, the music crescendos…)
My backup reasons for my next action were, in this order: 1) well, she’s a whore anyway, so I’m sure she gets it a lot, 2) I can’t help it, 3) it’s my first date anyway, I might as well break the rules, and 4) who else is possibly going to know?
Who else, indeed.
I asked her, “How would you like to be Purchase, instead?”
She grinned. “Why can’t we just stick with Olive?”
And I replied, in a steadily waning voice, “I hate that name…”
And then I kissed her.

XIV
In Love with an Asylum

After that, everything seemed to fall into place, as if whoever was Up There had taken pity on me and then decided to send me everything I needed to make the rest of my first date non-disastrous. And for the most part, it worked. I could speak in full sentences without slurring words together to form phrases from other dialects, I did not act rude and shameless (or I might have, but being seventeen, I did not consider it rude and shameless), and I kept my urges under control (thank the Lord).
But I had kissed her once, and she had not resisted in any way, shape, or form, so I took this as a good sign. Urges were caged, yes, but that does not mean I let them go once in awhile. Through fields that we made real, because we wished so (dry, yellow grass turned lush green in the blink of an eye), I reenacted scenes from old films, mostly ones in which heroines were kissed.
“Frankly, my dear,” said Purchase cheerfully, watching me strut in the sunset, “I don’t give a…”
And I hated that line, so I kissed her again.
We frolicked. That is the only word to describe what we did. She responded when I called her Purchase, and she called me out with lines of poetry. No flower was left trampled, no careless little bunny rabbit left uncaptured (and, of course, there really were no flowers or bunnies. Imagination does do wonders, and don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise). Little was spoken between us, except for a few outbursts of thankful clarity, but we spoke. I found it magical. I’d never been high before, but I was willing to bet that it felt like being with Purchase, as cliché as it sounds, because all the tingling, all the buzzing, all the worlds imploding within my head…it sounded about right, if the druglords at my own school were correct in their advertisements.
Dusk fell and we with it, on a mound of raised, soft dirt. I was exhausted, from running and jumping and screaming and blowing dandelions to dust and, above all, Purchase.
She was a nuthouse, an asylum. A book of mental diseases stored into one person, she personified the word crazy with simple gestures and words. But it wasn’t scary crazy, like when you walked into a hospital and you tried not to make eye contact with anybody or like in horror films where the crazy people are always at fault. She was good crazy, in my opinion; her unorthodox formality and brightness making me hum with excitement. Of course she had her bouts of normality, but I knew in the back of my mind that if she had acted like my best friends or any other normal person I knew back then, I would have kept away from her like the plague.
“The end,” sighed Purchase, her hand reaching for mine. She’d let go a few times within the past few hours, and yet it already felt odd and chilly without her fingers intertwined with mine. I felt, strangely enough, like a child that had finally let go of her mother’s hand in a crowded street.
“Already?” I murmured into dark sky. There were no stars that night, which is the detail that sticks out the most in my mind. We were staring at our bottomless galaxy, our endlessly soaring abyss. “So soon?”
“I’m afraid,” said Purchase gravely, her hand turning cold in mine, “that all good things must come to an end.”
And yet we lay there still. Either we were too caught up in the day or each other or the night sky to get up, or we were just really, really tired. Myself, I was aiming for both. Purchase, I think, was falling asleep at even intervals of five minutes, which explained the fact that she would remain silent every time I asked her a question, and then five minutes later she would answer it.
I thought it was one of those intervals, and that she was asleep, when suddenly I turned to see that she propped herself up on her elbows and was blinking sleepily at me.
“Do you have a ride back home?” she asked conversationally, as if she had just woken up and found me lying next to her, not having the faintest idea how I had gotten there.
“Ah, um, yes,” I lied again, cheeks flaring. Thank goodness it was pitch black.
“Mmm, really,” she said. She obviously didn’t believe me. So much for thanking the dark. “I’ll call you a taxi, shall I?”
I watched as she pulled out a sleek pink cell phone (the colour clashed horribly with her hair, and I savored it) from her cardigan pocket and speed-dialed a number. The line rang a couple of times, and when it clicked she asked for a taxicab in front of St. Abernathy’s.
“Oh and,” she said, winking to nobody, “it’s me, Olive.”
That could have meant a few things, and me, being seventeen and in denial of my sexual ignorance, chose to think that she was talking to some guy she’d had an affair with, or a group of guys that she had been hired for. (For all I really knew, it could have been a relative or something. But then why the wink? There were so many catches.) I sunk lower into the dead grass, sighing to myself. Was she mistaking me for a payer? Did she expect money at the end of this date? I hoped not, for various reasons, one being that I wanted a relationship and not a one-night stand, and the other being that I had no money whatsoever.
But when the taxi pulled up and the door opened for me, the only thing Purchase bothered to do was blow me a good-bye kiss (I liked the familiarity, but I did not enjoy the loss of intimacy we had shared over the past several hours). When I was halfway in the cab, though, she came towards me, leaned in close to my ear and said, “I’ll write ya, cutie. Write me back. We’ll talk that way.”
To be honest, I didn’t think she’d write. Or even more truthfully, I didn’t want her to write—what if it caused another scene like the last one, and Christal or my father (not my mother, because she is usually not in touch with such things until they hit her smack in the face) found out the whole story? But she kept her word, and wrote it down, even. In her first letter, written this time on beautiful, gardenia-scented stationary, she gave me two addresses: one for 551 Vermont, and the other for a 263 Ophelia Avenue, which was the street right off of Vermont.
“That,” she wrote in curly script underneath, “is my home address. I go there often, just to make sure that my brother’s doing okay without me. You can send letters to this address, too—nobody will know. I swear on it.”

And, from November 1st - 30th, 2006, this is what I made of National Novel Writing Month.

TO BE CONTINUED?

....

Yes. Promise. :)))

gomen ne, juliet

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 10:28:21 GMT

WHAT. There is actually a word limit to LJ entries? Oh, the things I don't know!

VII
Cheeky

On our drive back home, my mother hummed entire musicals and made me hold the jar of poppies that the desk admin had allowed her to take home. Fifteen minutes into the drive, and three songs into Evita: The Musical, we took a left instead of a right and pulled into the parking lot of the stables where my sister took her weekly equestrian classes. The call that had used so much of my mother’s monthly plan was from my sister, who commanded that we come pick her up so that she didn’t have to sit in a stinky taxi.
This is what my sister is like. In fact, this is what my entire family is like (unless my mother is high). I didn’t understand what had happened to me and why I was the way I was, but I reveled in being different. I liked the way my father listed me last in all family introductions, and the way my mother never asked me if I wanted to take a class she had signed up my sister for. Oh, I was smart. I got high test scores and had a good memory. I just didn’t apply myself, as my teachers, who were all weeping on the inside, told my parents.
We sat in the parking lot for several minutes. My mother was busy fiddling with her powder puff, which she often does at even intervals, and was taking deep, calming breaths in between verses of Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.
“Did you like that school, baby?” my mother asked, a little nervously. “I thought it was pretty cute.”
I amused myself with the contents of the glove compartment. “Yeah. I guess.”
Apparently, my mother was designed not to Take A Hint. She plowed on relentlessly, still smearing face powder all over her nose. “Yeah, you guess, what? You guess you like it? Or you guess it’s cute? Do you want to go back?” When she had finished dunking her face in extract of snow white, she pulled out a tube of what was meant to be ‘natural’-looking lipstick, but when you caked it on the way she did, it looked just like any other gaudy makeup device. “You made friends, didn’t you?”
“Ngrk,” I replied. “I see you made some friends, too.”
She pretended to look innocent. It was a pretty good job of a look, too. “Well, the desk admin was very nice. And I met a few of the teachers while we were walking. They’re all very unique.” Then she set her makeup items down and looked at me a bit funny. “You’re not thinking of attending, are you?”
Surprised at her sudden burst of clarity, I replied straightforwardly. “Oh. No, mom. I like my school…” …because overcrowded private schools are great for my general well being and self-confidence, I finished silently.
   But my mother was still looking at me worriedly. “If you want to change schools, honey, Mrs. Lipschitz told me about this famous prep school downtown, it’s not too much, Daddy and I were thinking of sending Christal there—”
Christal was my little sister, and I had no intention of ever going to the same school as her.
“I’ve only got one school year left to go,” I reminded my mother. Not much time had passed since my revival of obsession. I was still seventeen.
“Oh, that’s right.” Puckering up in the mirror, my mother took another swipe at her lips. “Still, if you want to…”
And she winked at me, like she was back in high school and talking once again to my father about skipping school on Wednesdays. (I found this out through the yearbook, too.)
Silence fell over our expensive car again. I propped my chin on my elbow, yawned, and then squinted out over the—extremely real and not just Photoshopped into my mind—quaint green fields scattered with chocolate-brown horses and perfect little girls in riding gear. Without even knowing their names or fathers or where they lived, it was obvious that they were all rich and spoiled, my sister very much invluded. I could just make her out, the tall, blonde one on the outermost fringe of the group, leading around her pony with her chin thrust into the air.
If she were my age, I would have hated her with a passion. As it stands, I had to love her. But it still felt more like a duty, rather than something that came naturally.
For a moment I wondered if Purchase had any siblings. Were they brother or sister, younger or older, shorter or taller? What colour was their hair, and did they dye it every month like I had heard Purchase did? What school did they attend, if any? And were they potentially hazardous, as Purchase definitely was? I made up my mind to ask her the next time I saw her. In fact, I made up my mind to have a stable conversation with her, one in which she was not high and I was not worrying about how my guts looked when they exploded.
Then there came a frustrated tapping at my window. I turned, my chin still resting on my palm, to meet the red, blotchy face of my little sister.
Christal was twelve and, to put it in very simple, very un-vulgar terms, a brat. Little sisters in movies did not even live up to her. They were her prototype, and she was the put-together version. It was as if, in the uterus, devoid of anything else to do but listen to my mother read Salinger novels to her unborn child, she secretly listened to all the movies I was watching on our brand-new widescreen television. Movies that taught an amateur serial killer where to hide and what to say, that revealed the stereotype mean chick with the short skirts and boots, that depicted evil little sisters who yelled too much and stole your cookies. She was blonde and was blonde. She got straight A’s and didn’t even try for them. She ironed all of her clothes and wore makeup and had weekly manicures and pedicures.
She looked down at me, and I looked down at her. It was a fair trade.
“Jesus Christ, open the door,” she roared.
Next to me, my mother giggled. Not because she was high: she highly disapproved of my saying God’s name in vain, but whenever Christal decided to drop profanity within earshot, she merely laughed it off. When asked why, she would grin and say it was cute.
“Christal, dear, are we taking anybody around today?” asked my mother sweetly. Instinct told her that she was most definitely programmed to enjoy driving to completely opposite ends of town, just to drop around her daughter’s kidlet friends. I thought it was a shitty job.
“No,” growled my dear sister. “They all found someone new to tag along with.”
My eyes automatically rolled, with every bit of sarcasm that I saved especially for occasions like these. “Jesus, Christal.”
“Shut the hell up!”
For a twelve-year-old, my little sister was awfully verbose.
Still, my mother’s instincts kicked in, and she remembered that her program forced her to care about inane, egotistical things, like my sister’s life. “What are you going on about, dear? You need to explain, please. Mommy doesn’t understand.”
I was pretty sure that my mother didn’t even care to understand, she just had to. Duty over desire, once again. But she did look genuinely concerned, her twig-on-a-stick neck craned tightly over the leather seat to stare down at my pouting, pudgy blonde sister.
The pout and pudge just gave a highly exaggerated sigh in response. “It’s nothing, mother. Just drive.”
“But Chrissie—”
“Mother, I command that you—”
“For Chrissakes, Chrissie, you are so—”
“Hey, I told you to shut up. Nobody asked you!”
(This was the usual sort of spat between us females. I often told Christal that she had a superiority complex; that she thought everyone was either stupid or insane and therefore she was the only person on earth capable of giving directions. Age to her did not mean wiser, it just meant they’d been born earlier and so what? Even though I was five years older than she was, she insisted on being the desk admin, the ruling empress, and the nagging fly of my life. For instance:
“Why don’t you take extracurriculur courses like I am? They’re good on your college application. And resumes.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Oh, my God. You are so lazy! You’ll never get anywhere in life. I demand you take at least a ballet class, or something.”
She also thought that by giving direct orders, she could fix anyone and anything. The words ‘I think’ never came out of her mouth, instead, it was ‘I demand’ or ‘I command’. My parents chuckled and told me to get over it; that it was a just phase. But I knew better. I’d been twelve once, and still remembered the feelings.)
“Christal, darling,” began my mother again as she drove, a bit awkwardly, past more expensive fields and grand houses. “Please don’t make all that racket. And you,” she said, turning to me (I was always the afterthought), “should not be saying words like ‘chrissakes’.”
“Oh, I see,” I replied bitterly, “so it’s okay for your twelve-year-old to open her mouth and be profane, but I’m seventeen, and it’s just plain wrong?”
“Christal will grow out of it. She is a fine young woman, aimed at putting herself high in the market, posed at putting herself on the most glorious shelf of them all. I don’t worry about her.”
My mother, although she had no real place in the jungle of economy, liked to think that she had a thorough and extensive knowledge of human psychology. She also liked to talk about my sister like she wasn’t there, and instead was an item you found at the best department stores around, that movie stars couldn’t even buy without a layaway.
“You, on the other hand, I do worry about, and you never did grow out of obscenity.”
Oh, here we go, I thought, turning to the window, the accusatory battle of the century.
“Don’t shift when Mother is talking to you,” Christal said bitterly from the backseat, snapping in her seatbelt like she was snapping the neck off a chicken. “We can all tell you’re extremely apathetic, but you could at least try to act like you care, instead of exhibiting signs of Asperger’s and attempting to become the emotional tragedy of the century. God knows your friends are already in the line-up.”
I could have shot her right then and there. But my mother was still talking, so I instead turned my apathetic, Asperger’s-like attention back to her inane chatter.
“—Always a beautiful lady, I thought you could end up being like Christal. I always imagined you would be her role model, you know, the whole big sister, little sister thing…I had visions of this. That you would be prim and proper and since you were, Christal would be, too. When she was a baby…”
We narrowly avoided smashing a skunk straight on. As a result, we scratched the curb and the woman in the car behind us began to scream in rapid Spanish.
“Mom, I think she just said she has a pistol in her garter,” I remarked casually, my ear pressed against the thin windowpane, listening to the high-pitched yelling. “And that she intends to use it if we don’t…move.”
That was not the exact verb, but I was, after all, getting a lecture on profanity.
As my mother continued to play psychiatrist and my sister tended to her self-pity party of being abandoned for acting like a bitch, I watched the scenery outside our shaky-moving vehicle. We traveled along highways, and I counted and said good-by to yellow faded lines as they zoomed past our tires. The roads were lined with pine trees and signs for rest stops, and I noted graffiti and trash and then the blue blue sky. As we rolled onto the main roads, we slowed down in neighborhoods with fancy, almost corny names like ‘Crestwood Glen’, ‘Upper Mermaid Crest’ (there was no Lower Mermaid Crest, to my disappointment), and ‘Spingfest Ponds’. The houses contained in these neighborhoods were all different, with European motifs. One thing was the same, however: their yards were all a bright, healthy green (whether it was fake or not I couldn’t tell) and they all had at least two very shiny, very expensive cars.
It pains even now me to confess to other people that I lived in one of these houses, expensive cars, blinding lawns and all. They will ask me, “Oh, where are you from?” I’ll give the name of my rich town, which is okay, since I still have time to lie. I’ll still have time to tell whoever is asking that I lived on the outskirts of the county, where some lawns are green, some brown, and some people pray their Oldsmobile won’t die on them, instead of buying SUVs when they’re bored. But then they ask, “How interesting, I kind of know the area. Where exactly did you live?” Then I’ll have to give a vague street address, or a rickety description of what surrounded me (man-made lakes, artificial forests, and cashmered women). Things usually end there, and if it doesn’t, I’ll make up an excuse to leave, to quit talking about my house where I did not really live.
Finally there was a pause in my mother’s speech as she slowed down to the mandatory 10 miles per hour at the upper-crust elementary school that happened to be less than a mile near our home. I was happy for the diversion, for the sound of silence, but my sister—and damn her to this day—decided to vocalize her pre-teen despair.
“Mother,” she whined (and was champion at it). “I haven’t told you about what happened today, yet.”
The attention my mother was giving the young man at the crosswalk suddenly flew, sound effects and all, over to my younger sister. “Oh, I’m so sorry, honeypie. Go on then and tell Mommy what’s bothering you. She’s here to listen.”
“Okay, Mummeeee…”
I belched for emphasis, so that, later, when accused of being completely non-supportive, I could recall this obvious moment of lending a hand.
While my sister kicked my seat, screamed a few unholy words, and then began her tirade of some boy named Juan and how he was stealing all of my sister’s pretty white friends, the young man directing traffic at the crosswalk glanced at our car again, this time at me. He grinned and waved. I waved back. I noticed he was a redhead, but it didn’t really register in my mind at the time. My faith in redheads was dimming.
“…Had no right to do so Mummeeeee he was horrible I tried to be nice but he didn’t smile back Mumeeee he was horrible…”
I looked away from Young Man at Crosswalk and tried to focus on my sister’s non-usage of the comma or period, but he was waving small children over now, and smiling guilely at some of them. At least, it looked like guile to me. He would later confess to me, in bed late at night, that he’d always wanted to be a kindergarten teacher, and telling them how to cross the street safely was the next best thing, since he could never pass the test to gain his license.
Children in parkas, fuzzy hats with ears, and galoshes passed us. It was a sunny day, but I knew that ultra-suburban mothers had no trust in weathermen at all, since they had all broken their hearts at one time or another. (In fact, my own had had her share of steamy affairs, but we never talked about them, and I will spare her the embarrassment, for once in our embarrassment-fueld lives, right now.) Some held umbrellas, others dragged fleece coats over the gravelly road. It was a roaring sea of color, and, dizzy, I forced myself to look away for a moment.
“…Don’t get how they could just leave me Mother how on earth could they possibly think of thanking me this way I just don’t understand it at all at all I tell you Mother are you listening Mother!”
Commas everywhere wept for the sake of usage. Discouraged by my sister’s lack of proper grammar (something that had always irked me), I turned back to the scene in front of me—small, brightly lit children, a redhead wearing a reflective vest, and a pile-up of BMWs, SUVs and Lamborghinis (you certainly never knew) behind us. Near my side window, a little girl in pigtails and a piglet suit tripped over nothing and began to cry, and Crosswalk Guy bent down to help her up.
It was like one of those short films that always precede animated hits: a little reminder to each and every one of us that, when all is said and done, people really are good, whether you’d like to think so or not. Tear-streaked and smiling with oodles of space from missing teeth (the sort of image you’d show to people to make them relent), the little girl thanked, in a pronounced lisp, Mr. Crosswalk Man, who in turn patted her on the head and sent her along the way.
(Could I actually hear them? No. We were stopped at an intersection, my sister was yapping her pretty little head off, my mother was coming down from an extravagant high—what else was I expected to do but let my mind wander? And oh, wandering it most definitely was!)
The last of toddler, teacher’s aide and inclement weather device-toting child stepped out of our path and Crosswalk pulled a whistle out of nowhere (it really did look like nowhere. And he did this, every single time. I would ask, “O Crosswalk Man, wherefore art thou blowing device?” and he would wink because, for one, it was a secret, and secondly, I’d just made a rather dirty sexual reference) and blew into it loudly, causing my sister to wail indignantly and my mother to jump a mile out of her seat.
“Oh dear,” said my mother, a tad breathlessly. Her eyes took a moment to focus on the road in front of her. “That was quite loud, don’t you think? It’s as if he assumes no one is paying attention.”
I sighed. “No one is paying attention, Mother.”
“Mother!” In the backseat, Christal let out an almost convincing, angst-wracked sob. “You were supposed to be listening to me!”
“I was listening to you, dear,” my mother muttered as she slowly drifted the car along the school sidewalks. As we passed Cross (I had run out of clever nicknames to call him, and the sifter of claims had to eventually dwindle down to the disappointing and measly of all possible names), he gave me a quirky grin and a salute. I returned the salute, and offered my tongue instead of a smile, rolled and pointed at the end.
After all, my teachers wouldn’t have written cheeky and obnoxious on my report cards if I hadn’t amounted to anything over the years.

IX
The Incident Regarding the Letter

Before we move on, we are required a bit of history.
I am not the one in the family to fetch the mail. Neither is my father, who wakes up at five-thirty and locks himself in his office, oldies music blaring through the entire lower section of the house, or my mother, who sleeps in until whenever and walks around the house in nothing but a lavender silk kimono, or my sister, who does not usually wake up until noon on the weekends. On the whole, we are not much of a do family. We are a think and act upon it whenever you think is right family, which does not exactly work for us because they (i.e., everyone else but me) require our white-picket fenced-in house to be completely and utterly spotless and shiny.
This is why we have a maid.
Maids have already made enough ground to be covered in my rambles. I have talked of them being foreign and cleaning up after our messes, because we tend to think about whether our messes are worth cleaning up, realize they aren’t, and then call a maid to do it. Our maids are doers. We wouldn’t be able to tolerate thinkers. (Well, I would, but it would be quite irritating if I didn’t wake up to breakfast already laid out before me. That is the only thing I am stingy about.)
The maid that we had at the time was German. Marsha had cornfield-yellow hair, thick pink lips, wide, wide-set bright blue eyes and always nodded and smiled when you asked her to do something. She cleaned up efficiently and well. Her noise level was barely on the chart and she hardly ever got into our way, and her pancakes were to die for. In short, she was the perfect maid to have in our family.
She was the one who got the mail in the mornings.
When she first arrived, we didn’t even ask her to do it. The morning after we’d given her a room and a schedule she unlocked our front door at five o’clock in the morning, stepped out into the dewy air with her terrycloth robe and chinchilla slippers and tip-toed across the slick pathway to open our mailbox. How she even knew the mail came exactly at five, we were never to know. How she even knew we had mail, we were never to know. Marsha was a mystery, and we didn’t really care.
“Marsha, where are you off to?”
“Ja, I am off to der shopping.”
“Oh, okay. Don’t forget to buy eggs.”
“Ja, I hear.”
“Marsha? Have you seen my boots?”
“They are in der hallvay, madame.”
“I don’t see them.”
“By der staircase, madame.”
   “Ah! Thanks, Marsh.”
“Ja, ja.”
Convenience suited her. Hell, it suited us because she suited us. Usually we fired a maid within a week, because most of the ones we hired annoyed my mother, or didn’t do what anyone asked (even if we did so politely, and that was pretty hard on us). But Marsha was an absolute doll. She did and did and did and never complained. We loved her: my mother because she didn’t get in her way, my sister because she liked giving orders and Marsha liked (or just didn’t care) to receive them, my father because she was beautiful and quiet and I because she made killer breakfast dishes. Our mutual affection for Marsha was probably the one thing during that year that my family agreed on and it would be the only thing we ever agreed on, even after she left, for quite some time.
And then, on that one day, the morning after I’d visited St. Abernathy’s, I received a letter.
Since I hardly ever receive mail (my sister gets, on a daily basis, bunches of admiring letters from faraway friends and anticipated universities; my mother, catalogue after catalogue after catalogue, and my father, undisclosed amounts of risky business information that we are not allowed to stare at), everyone at the breakfast table was extremely surprised when Marsha slipped me the envelope under my glass of milk.
“A letter for you, miss,” she said gruffly (her voice fluctuated between sweet, doting and manly, brutal, like a badly tuned television set).
Frantically, my mother slapped her hand to her heart. I could swear she had tears in her eyes.
“Oh sweet heavens, does my wonderful daughter now have a boy admirer?” she squealed, fanning herself with the hand that was not clutching her chest. “Tell me that’s what it is! Your momsy will be so happy.”
My sister snorted loudly into her cup of coffee. “You may have to wait about ten more years, Mother.”
I spit into her cereal. While she began to hyperventilate, I calmly returned to my letter.
It came in a fancy, cream-coloured envelope, with a red wax seal on the flap that was mushed. The return address was nothing but the letters SANCSG in fancy, looping English script, with the S’s curled like vines, the N intertwining with the last three symbols and the end G curling off into nothingness. In the center of the backside was a monogrammed poppy petal, which, mingled in with the veins, contained my address and my name, as elegantly written as the rest of the words. My heart began to quicken and my eyes to burn. Who was this cloudy figure with the beautiful handwriting? And why were they writing to me—me, of all the people they could possibly write to?
“Go on,” prodded Marsha, who was standing patiently behind me. “Now open it, please.”
I found Marsha’s enthusiasm for my private matter very strange. So did my mother. “Marsha, I ask kindly that you leave the kitchen to us, please,” she said in a docile, clearly maternal manner.
“Not today, madame,” grunted our maid once again. At this remark, we were all thrown backwards in our seats. For the first time in her career at our household, Marsha was denying an order straight from her payer. “I am a part of this family, too, madame, and I want to see this letter.”
Oh, okay, I see how it is, I thought, now slightly miffed as I tugged at the wax-encrusted flap. Now I’m the circus freak, doing amazing flips and turns at the speed of light. Everyone watch me, I’m free of charge!
But my mother wasn’t having any of this. “Marsha, I ask kindly once again that you leave the kitchen to my daughters and I as we have breakfast.”
Glancing up, I saw Christal’s jaw, by now practically on the floor, and my mother’s face, which was an exact copy of the time when I had told her I wanted to live in a cardboard box when I grew up. My father was not in the room at the moment, but I bet that if he were, his face would have remained unchanged during the whole brouhaha. That is just the kind of man my father is.
“No, Madame, I…” began Marsha gruffly, but my mother, fed up with a maid that had her own opinions, stood up from her chair and pointed at the door.
“Marsha, I am extremely disappointed in you,” she said with as much authority as a teakettle. “I must ask you to leave now. We will talk of your disobedience later, once I have finished having breakfast with my daughters. You know how much we value this time as a family.”
(Mother had breakfast with us once a week. Whenever she talked about it, though, she made it seem like we all had breakfast every single morning, with even my father in tow, and we all spoke politely and made plans and laughed daintily over scones. In reality, though, my sister was a pig, my mother ate a sliver of cheese every morning and I was stuck with whatever Christal didn’t like. So, even though she talked of us valuing breakfastime, we all just wanted to get it out of our way.)
Marsha stayed put; her mouth set in a decidedly grim line. The kitchen, normally buzzing with the mating call of a hundred expensive electronics, suddenly fell silent. My mother’s hair, which had been perfectly set this morning, was now frizzling steadily from the ends up, like a rope of steadily burning ash. To say that you could have cut the tension with a knife does not even begin to explain how stiff the atmosphere was. You would have needed a sledgehammer and a few pickaxes to deal with the fury of that moment.
My letter was now lying abandoned on top of my eggs benedict, and was streaked on the bottom with bits of hollandaise sauce. To my left, my sister had her hands clamped over her mouth, shuddering violently with repressed laughter (something she had enough sense to do, because if she had laughed right then, a guillotine probably would have come swishing down on her head), and my mother and our maid were still attempting to stare the other into oblivion.
And then suddenly, dry hands smelling of disinfectant and a failed coverup of lavender thrust themselves into my hair and yanked me to one side, where I stumbled into the chair next to me and then crashed to the floor. I saw nothing of what happened next, for my face was squished into the lineoleum, but I heard it all: squeaks and screams, some in English, some in German, and some in an unintelligible gibberish that was actually my sister laughing hysterically. My plate of eggs benedict tumbled to its death, which was actually my foot, and as I swerved round to inspect the damage I tripped up Marsha, who, anticipating a speedy getaway, had accidentally grabbed the tablecloth with my letter and was now bringing it down with her.
Through tasty sauce, a hand covered in yolk and the sounds of our maid (who was tangled in my legs) grubbling into the linen tablecloth I managed to notice that my father had entered the room. He was impeccably dressed, clean-shaven, and looking deeply disturbed over the rim of his coffee mug
“My…God,” he muttered after a pause, and then turned around and went back into his office (most likely to forget the image of his eldest daughter covered in yellow sauce and his wife looking as if she had just swallowed broken glass. My father liked perfection).
Needless to say, Marsha was fired that evening, with a tearful upbraiding from my mother, complete with broken German phrases that she had attemped to learn in five minutes. Christal and I stood outside the door, she still giggling every so often and I just upset at the loss of exquisite pancakes and sausages. And my father, sad to see such a pert-bosomed woman leave, nodded in acknowledgement—the most he had ever given, despite his being fond of her—as she stepped into the taxi, dragging her forlorn suitcase along with her.
“Oh well,” sighed Christal to herself (only very loudly) in the foyer, twirling a piece of hair around her middle finger. “Whatever.”
And while it is a sad confession to make, her words did sum the entire episode up. I forgot about Marsha falling on my ankle, and I forgot about having my own breakfast dish thrown into my face, albeit on sort-of accident. My father immersed himself in caffeine and news and came out of his office the next morning more chipper than usual. And my mother calmed herself (not by way of illicit drug, I still hope today) and went to call her friends for new housekeeper recommendations.
Whenever asked about the motives behind Marsha’s outburst, my mother would laugh, high and tinkly, and wiggle her fingers in a noncommittal gesture. “Something quite odd,” she would always begin, and then go on to state the details:
Marsha, who we did not know to be as smart as she really was, according to the anecdote, was keeping a steamy and extremely potent affair with the deliveryman. Afraid of going public for a number of obvious reasons, Marsha pleaded with the UPS man to send her his love in a way no one would notice—whatever he decided to do, as long as it was secret, she would go along with. And so he began to slip her letters through the mailbox, so that she could filter out her own letters from everyone else’s. To differentiate himself from the others, he got his niece (why she went along with any of this beats me) to create fake addresses written in fancy, elegant script on the outside of the envelopes. On the morning on the incident, however, the letter that had arrived for me was also written in fancy script, and Marsha had been apprehensive as to whom it belonged to. On impulse, she decided it was for me, but when I did not open it immediately she became nervous and snatched it away—with, of course, disastrous results.
As for the actual letter, Christal delivered it to me later on that same day, sneering as she did so.
“I guess this is yours,” she snickered, tossing the envelope (smeared with sauce, tea, and coffee) onto my bed. “And you know, rejection isn’t so bad…”
I sent her out with a sneaker to the head and a swipe of the concoction that had gathered on the nonexistent return address of my letter. And although I knew in the back of my mind that I was not being sent a note of disposal, I was still not prepared for what really lay in store for me.
On the college-ruled notebook paper that I still have today, I was being offered a proposal to meet—behind the hill with the poppies, on ‘rolling green fields’, the letter seemed to croon to me, ‘that we could make real, if we wished’.
And it was from Purchase.

X
The Week of Electrical Fires

In my entire life, there have only been three incidents in which I truly believed my heart had stopped beating. Going backwards in chronological order: when I received my first paycheck at twenty-three, when Samson kissed me under the lemon tree and—by this, you can conclude I am not easily surprised—the time Purchase asked me on a date.
I am not one to exaggerate, lie or stretch the truth (when circumstances find it extremely necessary, though, I have been known to fib like a pro. But it is not one of those times). When I say that Purchase asked me out on a date, I mean that within the contents of that very first note she had written—and these are her exact words—‘I’d love to get to know you, babe, so I think a date is in order’. I memorized the line then and I still know it now. It was recited to myself in the bathroom mirror when I was seventeen and now is recalled to girlfriends and boyfriends alike. But even so, from what I knew of her, willow trees and ripped jeans and fake red hair and addiction to street drugs and all, I could safely conclude that she was high and what this really was was not a date, but more of an excursion. A mere outing, was what I saw it as.
Nevertheless, I failed to act casual while thinking of the subject. I remembered once during dinner that I had been bringing a potato to my mouth. It was generously topped with cheese and sour cream and chili, because I was the most earnest eater of the family. Really, it was just a normal thing. But when my mind brought up, for no reason at all, the date—no, the playdate—my hand jerked and the legume promptly plopped into my lap. While my mother threw a fit and my sister spasmed with giggles, my father took one look at me and asked if I was troubled by anything.
“No,” I lied, my face flaring up like an electrical fire. “I’m fine.”
He chewed slowly on his own au gratin and then nodded, very decidedly and deliberately, before returning to his own food.
To my extreme embarrassment, I suffered the same fate many times at school. Even though I had lost the best friend, I still had a solid camaraderie with some select few, and every single one of them asked me if I was feeling well the next school day after I had received Purchase’s request. After insisting (with the straightest face I could muster at the time) that I had never felt better, I would rush to the bathroom and realize my face had involuntarily broken out in red splotches, and that I was clammy and flushed. I died a little inside, cursing that bloody beautiful redhead to damnation, and then tried to make myself look as normal as possible. And even when I did manage to pull the Hey Guys, I’m Not Flustered At All look off, all it took was one little burst of memory and I’d once again resemble a moldy tomato.
The date that Purchase had named for our simple picnic was a week away, and it was because of this that I hated her even more. The fact that she had chosen a long, slow, and toiling seven days made me wonder if she was playing hard-to-get, or being the bitch I had thought she was outside the door of her art room. And while I tried not to ponder this; not to think it over during the agonizing torment of analyzing poems about weeping willows in my high school textbooks, and through the portrait of Venus on my mother’s wall, Purchase clawed her way into my closed-off cranium with surprising, unexpected skill.
I decided that she was a disease. No matter where I went, there she was. Whatever I did, she was with me. It didn’t matter what I ate because it all ended up tasting like olives in the end, and because of my extreme abhorrence to the vegetable; I ended up losing a pound that week. As for the thing that started it all, the now-infamous letter had lain on my bed for five days. I had opened it once and then tried to forget about it, but after I had ‘accidentally’ moved it under my bed I had a completely awful day and therefore came to the conclusion that Purchase (or her handwriting, at least) was my good luck charm. And so I began to carry it around with me, which was rather disgusting, because it was sticky and smelled like old hollaindaise sauce and eggs.
“What in the world?” asked one of my friends as she opened my bag for a pencil and, instead, came in heavy contact with the stench. “Are you hiding a dead cat in there or something?”
Yeah, the skeletons in my closet, was what I thought of telling her, just to scare her. But then I realized it was true: Purchase really was my skeleton, still living, hidden away in cherrywood cabinets. I shrugged awkwardly. “Oh, it’s nothing. Our new maid likes to pack me weird lunches.”
“Oh my God, you are so not alone…” And we launched ourselves into a tirade of foreign housekeepers who insisted on feeding us the food of their indigenous country. I actually liked bratwurst, but I was thankful for the distraction.
Seconds turned into minutes turned into hours turned into days. I was weak and fatigued, like a solider through war, and I knew it was all so pathetic because I was not a soldier in a war but a teenager falling in love but I couldn’t help it one bit. The swinging, topsy-turvy moods of a pregnant woman became me: I was snappish one minute and utterly complacent the next. The calender on my wall was full of red xs counting down the days and I had managed to become so out of it that I woke up one morning clutching not my pillow but the cat. Not only that, there was a generous wad of fur in my nose and mouth.
“Oh, Lord,” I muttered (as best as I could through a mouthful of fur).
The kitty bit my chin.
But I was not doomed to this forever (unlike the many other things that Purchase damned me to). On the seventh day—let there be light, etc.—I jolted awake, as if the electrical current running through my veins had just slapped me in the face. I am normally not a morning person, and so when Sylvia, our new housekeeper, came tiptoeing into my room and saw me sitting straight up, eyes wild, she gave a little start.
“My goodness,” she breathed in her dainty English accent. “I was frightened out of my wits. I’ve just come to wake you up, for your mother says it’s not a good idea to sleep in this late.”
As if acting on its own volition, my hand grabbed the clock on my bedside table with amazing force. “It’s eleven,” I said, my voice hoarse.
Sylvia laughed. “Yes, I know this. Quite early for you I’d say, but your mother is insisting you get out of bed. Don’t you have something exciting on your schedule today?” And, apparently not expecting an answer, she gave me a little smile, took my laundry basket and tiptoed out of the room once more.
Blinking rapidly, I took another look at the clock still held tightly in my fist. Sure enough, it was eleven o’clock in the morning and the sun was streaming through my blinds and throwing itself all over my bed, particularly near my face, as if to offer me a good morning that was definitely not needed or wanted. I’d been hoping to wake up around ten at the very least, for the time Olive had requested was noon, and rich or not I was still of the gender that required pampering in the morning, whether it was seven or eleven.
And I only had an hour.
Heart beating wildly, I rolled out of bed and did a couple of Olympic-worthy jumps, the kind only extreme amounts of adrenaline can produce, to the bathroom. While there, I almost confused my toothpaste for shampoo and the conditioner for face moisturizer. I also swallowed a more than healthy amount of mouthwash and gagged for most of my shower, so that by the time I had finished, it looked more like I had just babysat several two-year-olds rather than looking like I had just gone through my freshening-up routine (which I hate to call it, but I am trying to make a point).
After flying down the stairs (the result of more of that very handy adrenaline), I was welcomed with lunch on the kitchen table and Christal in her ballet costume, lounging on the loveseat in front of the sixty-inch television and eating a bagel, crumbs spread in every direction.
“Where’s Mom?” I asked her, taking a fork and spearing a noodle. “And why aren’t you eating lunch?”
“How should I know and it’s none of your business,” she replied cooly, swinging her leg over the arm of the seat. “What is for lunch, anyway, Sylvia?”
“Noodles,” I said, and offered her a fork. I was feeling exceptionally kind that day. “Wanna try?”
Turning slowly, she took one long, puzzled look at me and then accepted the fork. “You’re not Sylvia. Why are you here anyway? I thought you’d be long gone.”
The fact that my own little sister had not recognized my voice told me that I was obviously not wanted that day, and that just made it better than it already was. I stuffed a couple of noodles into my mouth, and without even bothering to eat more or say good-by to anyone, I skipped out the back door, ready to greet whatever came out to get me. And even though I didn’t know her well, I had a distinct feeling that with Purchase, there was no telling how I could end up.

XI
Samson

Because I was not able to find my mother (actually, I didn’t even try to look for her, I was so jumpy that I couldn’t bring myself to do something that required patience), I had to take the bus to St. Abernathy’s. I do not take the bus often, and so I was instantly plagued with the fear that I would forget where the bus stop was, or I would miss the bus, or—and this, I thought, was the worst of them all—I would take the wrong bus, end up on the other side of town completely and miss the date that would become the very first emotional milestone of my life.
You must remember, for everyone else surely does, that before I met and became obsessed with Purchase I had not been a very open or feeling-oriented person. Sure, I knew what feelings were. A person can’t pass kindergarten without pointing out what is mad, sad, or glad. But besides the intense gut reaction I felt from my word magnets and paint globs and torn pages, people to me were just that: human beings that were born on earth and eventually died. I loved my parents and my sister because I was taught to do so, but I had never loved anyone else because I just didn’t want to. Out of all the movies I had watched with the best friends, or all the books I had read, or the songs Christal blasted at midnight, I thought non-platonic love was a big burden that would ruin us all if we weren’t careful. And since I didn’t like being careful, I thought I wouldn’t like falling in love.
But here I was, heart thrumming wildly, hands sweating profusely and train of thought falling off its tracks, because my hormones had decided to wake up and smell the redhead (albeit fake). I didn’t like to think that the reason I was so obsessed with Purchase was because I was helplessly falling for her, just like the song goes, but I was.
Just as I was about to start my usual rant of Why Love is Useless, which I had concocted long ago and perfected within the past seven days yearning, hands seemed to appear out of nowhere and I was held in mid-air for a few seconds before falling backwards.
“Um?” I mumbled. I had been so lost in thought that I didn’t even know where I was. Looking up, all I saw was sun, and I began to notice the dull ache in my bottom and the contents of my bag slipping out dangerously onto grass.
“Oh God,” somebody said a tad hysterically. I wondered vaguely what all the fuss was about. “Shit, I’m so sorry—are you okay? Can you hear me?”
I could hear, but I wasn’t registering what I was listening to. I had always been prone to extremely bad falls, and after contact it usually took me awhile to understand what had happened and where I was. “Um,” I tried again, putting a hand to my head. “Yes?”
“Okay, good,” said the voice, and put a hand on my shoulder. On instinct, I flinched away, and the owner of the hand jerked backwards apologetically. “Sorry. Can you stand?”
A blurry image came into view—a hand, clearly being offered to me. I blinked a couple of times until my vision came into focus and then, seeing I had no other choice besides being rude, I took the hand and was pulled up.
“Thanks,” I muttered, able to see now. “Where am I?”
“You’re at White Oaks Elementary,” came the reply. Then a pause. “Did you hit your head? You seemed to be in a hurry…”
And then I remembered.
“Yes! I am in a hurry! Oh my God,” I gasped, shifting my bag onto my shoulder so that nothing would fall out. “I have to run. Gotta go. Bus stop. I’m late, ‘scuse me,” I babbled, walking past my helper and mingling with the bunch of waist-high (only because I was short) kidlets that had just come out of school. “Um, thanks,” I called behind me, waving frantically. In reply, there was a faint message, but I was on the other side of the street already and hardly caring.
I ran past children grasping Elmo dolls to their chests, and teacher’s aides looking as if they needed a good, strong cup of coffee to survive the rest of the day. I weaved in and out of striking yellow buses, and Mini Coopers, and more kids on bikes. And then there it was—my bus, just pulling up to the stop, with a couple of elderly pensioners lining up slowly in front of the door.
So out of shape was I that I had to catch my breath, even in so short of a run. I staggered over to join the line, accidentally running into a middle schooler who called me a rude name. But I was finally here, and didn’t care.
“Fare,” grunted the man at the wheel as I hoisted my short self onto the bus.
I realized that I didn’t know how much the fare was.
“To Vermont,” I said, sheepish but pretending not to be. “How much is that?”
The bus driver gave me an exasperated look and then pointed to the sign above him. Vermont Bus Station, it read, in big, bold letters, is being renovated until the 29th.
My heart did a spectacular flip and then broke off to fall, heavy, into the pit of my stomach. “What?” I said blankly, the word echoing in my car canals: what what what what what…
“You can read,” said the middle schooler behind me, bitterly. “Bus doesn’t go there. Get the hell off so we can get on.”
The world seemed to tip out of focus, like when you’re editing a picture and you drag it too far to the side so all you see is black. Perhaps I am overdramaticizing—no, I take that back, I am overdramaticizing—but that is how it felt and all I wanted to do was go on a complete rampage. Seven days of wholesome redheaded agony for this? Sure, I could walk, but that wasn’t the point. But really, who needs a point when everything you wanted has just gone down the drain?
I stomped off that bus like I had never stomped before. I think I even spat on the middle schooler, just to make him pissed off. I even glared at the kind old people, whom I had always liked because they were so nice to me, but at the moment I wanted to be a complete bitch. And I think I succeeded. Mothers near the elementary school, feeling my presence a mile away, hid their children behind their legs and leaned in closer with their other pearl-clad friends to talk about me. Look at that angry teenager, they said as I hurtled past them at the speed of light, we’d best keep our kids away from her. She might eat them. And I might as well have.
Instead of rose-coloured glasses, I was seeing things through the fire of hell. I could have sworn that if I stared at the grass long enough on that day, all the lawns on the sidewalk I was standing on would have spontaneously combusted. If I had grabbed a child, he or she would have begun to scream in agony. And as I came to the crosswalk, the guy directing traffic, upon seeing me, jumped a little and dropped his sign.
“You look like shit,” he said, after he had picked up his sign. “And you were okay just a few minutes ago.”
I froze in my tracks, then, and looked at him. He was the same young fellow that I’d seen in the car last week, helping the little girl when she had fallen and waving at us when we passed. And, I suppose, it was also he who had helped me when I had fallen after our collision. If he, who I assumed was the type of guy to look for the best in everyone, thought I looked like shit then, then I probably did. I was instantly humbled, and even blushed a little.
“Oh. Yeah. Got into a fix back there.” I waved my hand floppily in an obscure direction.
“That sucks,” he said, and paused to blow a whistle (that came out of nowhere) to stop incoming traffic. While waving in the other side, he continued talking. “Saw you going to the bus stop. Did you miss your bus or something?”
Whatever this guy was doing to me, it was really calming me down. My heartbeat took itself off illicit drugs and began to wheeze itself back to normal, the organ itself pulleyed its way out of my stomach, and my fuzzy brain began to clear. I sighed deeply, and then I tried to laugh it off.
“Ohm,” I said, and then cursed inwardly. I’d wanted to say Oh, um, but it came out ohm. Another fine example of my faulty people skills.
He laughed, too. “Ohm, huh? Were you meditating?”
Right then, I was pretty sure that no one else in the world could compare to how many times I had wanted to die in the past month. Here was another one of those times. “No! I just…well, no. I wasn’t meditating, ha, ha. I didn’t miss my bus, either; they’re just doing all this renovation shit downtown or something, and I needed to get to Vermont like, really soon. I’m probably late now.”
As if staged, we both glanced up at the big clock resting on top of the elementary building. It was five past noon. He looked at me, and I looked back and shrugged.
“Did you say Vermont?” he said questioningly. Holding a hand out to stop outgoing traffic, he turned to me then and looked me right in the eye, not even bothering about incoming traffic. They were just piling in, not even paying attention.
“Yes I did. Um—,” and I gestured to the cars speeding by us, “don’t you think you should…”
Another grin spread across his face, somehow accentuating the brightness of his hair. I could not help but relax a little more. “It’s okay. They all know me here.” With ease, he blew into his whistle again with amazing breath and then took off his yellow vest. “Thank God, my shift is done.”
I nodded.
“Would you like a ride?”
I stared.
He burst into laughter, a familiar scene, and then began to walk across his (I had noticed he practically owned the white strips of safety) crosswalk. “Don’t look so scared. I’m not going to rape you or anything.” He turned around and winked, and then went on before I even had time to light up. “I live pretty near Vermont, that’s all, like right by it, and I usually do take the bus but since they aren’t going to run by there for a few weeks, I have to drive here every day now. It’s really…” he smiled. “…I mean, I love my job, but driving for me is a pain in the ass. If I could take you where you need to go, at least that would make my ride home a little less tedious.”
He looked at me, not at the road, and in between mixed feelings of confusion and approval I felt concerned. “Don’t trip over anything,” I cautioned, pointing behind him. “There are trees and stuff.”
Shrugging off the warning, he slowed to my pace and fell into step with me. “I know this place well. And besides, I think it’s you that we both need to watch out for,” he snickered, referring back to my bad (and the thing is, it wasn’t even bad, I had just made it so) fall at the crosswalk. Embarrassed, I turned away.
When we reached his car—an elegant little black number, with two doors and bug-eyed, round lights—he pulled his keys out of his pocket and then, as if in afterthought, turned to me slowly.
“Since you’re still here, it means you’re coming, right,” he asked me, a trace of doubt sliding behind his words. “Because if you’re going to get into my car and scream ‘Help me, I’m being kidnapped!’ on the freeway…”
I shook my head, but I probably would have done it, just because it sounded fun. “Nah. I’m safe, I promise.” To show my honesty, I held up both of my empty hands and wiggled my fingers. “And I’m not armed, either.”
We both laughed, me out of slight uncertainty and he of genuine cheerfulness. As we piled into the car—me having no difficulty at all, since I had noticed the vehicle had been manufactured for people my height, and my chauffer scrambling in with a bit of difficulty—I realized that I did not even know this young man’s name. I had seen him many times, knew how seriously he took his job and how nice he was (on the surface, at least), but I was getting into a car with him and I didn’t even know what his name was.
He seemed to sense this, because he suddenly mumbled something to himself, took a deep breath, and turned to me.
“I’ve been an ass,” he grinned, and offered his hand to me once again. It was a gesture I would come to love. “Let me introduce myself. My name is Samson, and I will be your driver today.”

:O

On to Part III, then.

nano--

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 10:23:30 GMT

(A happy late birthday to Tegonyan. You're twenty, baby, and legal, I guess--but in my heart you'll always be a fresh nineteen. Purr!)

On NaNo 2006:

I just realized that I did promise one or two of you that I would post my NaNo novel up. And seeing that it is a year later and I still haven't done it, I suppose now would be a good time. :) I thought I'd lost it, actually--it was on my thumb drive, and I left that in school last year, never to be found again--but it just showed up in My Documents and bam. It happened to be the updated version, the one last left on my late USB.

I love life.

This beast managed to reach 24,880 words and 43 pages, 12pt font, Times New Roman. Reading back on some bits, I think I'll finish it, just for the sake of the lovely whore I have created within its pages. Purchase is a doll. I'd be her best friend.

And so, the monster sleeps under the cut.

Yeah, I did just say 'the monster sleeps under the cut.'

(All typos, grammatical errors, and weird plot devices so mine. Also, all italics have gone missing in the transition from Word to LJ. Sorry about that, but please guess where they would go. *bows*)

Prologue

Did you know that when stars die, they just explode into nothingness, way out there in the blackness of outer space? Out here, we don’t even get to see it. Twenty years should do it, maybe less, maybe more. So the stars we’re looking at now—bits of whatever the shiny is—they could be dead. They could be the remains, the ashes, of a busted star. Kinda poetic, isn’t it?

-

Stars don’t get obituaries. And I mean stars as in the planetary kind, made of gaseous shiny, that float in the sky (dead or not). Glamourous celebrities, they can get whatever they want. They can get two pages in the best newspaper in whatever country they were born in or died in or had a steaming love affair in—they can get a whole entire spreadsheet of glossy, airbrushed, inflated them, with sickening-sweet memoirs from family members that got paid to be family members, and a timeline of their most memorable scandals.
Supernovas? They happen every day. But they don’t appear in our local newspapers or our mother’s tabloids. Not even one single line of text, or grainy image of their spot of the galaxy. Absolutely nothing.
Sitting on the grass outside her house, I explain this to Purchase, pointing at stars-that-are-actually-airplanes and airplanes-that-are-actually-stars. I tell her I think it’s depressing. When I finish, her eyes close and she falls back on the wet ground, her t-shirt soaking through within seconds.
“They’re just stars,” she mumbles.
I realise then that Purchase is not the girl for me, whether I want her to be or not. Sighing, I retreat back into my own mind, thinking to myself of blasted bits of space and floating stardust. It is all very poetic, and not ‘just stars’. I could have gone on, told her off, walked away. Instead I put my hand on hers and tell her I’d written something that morning.
“Is it good?” But she isn’t really paying attention.
All my stories begin at the very last moment, start in the middle, and end at the beginning, with bits of the far future spread out in between, like the extra fillings in a sandwich. Purchase thinks that’s a stupid way to create something, but then again, all of Purchase’s poems are incredibly inane and about flowers. Every single one of them. And I think that’s a pretty stupid way to write a poem.

I
When You Were Young

I used to tear pages out of library books. In fact, I might still have them lying around my incredibly messy room, if I ever decided to go on an adventure and poke through oodles and oodles of I don’t even know what. But the point is, I would check out books from my library, take them home, read them. I did the normal. Nothing was wrong.
But then when I was finished, I wouldn’t want to give the entire book back to the library. I felt that was unecessary. My incredibly selfish thirteen- or fourteen-year-old self would think of nothing but keeping that delicious book with me (because yes! Dammit, yes! Books are delicious). Alas, however, there remained a portion of me that was good and pure (this has since dissolved by now), and so I really did return those four or five (or twenty or twenty-five) books that I had taken the week before.
Just like jigsaw puzzles, however, there were pieces missing from those books.
As a child I had received various magnet sets from my aunts that contained two hundred-odd, very small pieces. Each piece had a word on it. Just one word, no phrases. I liked to think that the people who made these little magnet pieces were Dictionary Experts—as if they, like the assembly line workers I had learned about in school, had dirty blue linen uniforms with the title embroidered on their left breast. These Dictionary Experts, taking a break from their daily memorisation of Webster’s (because of course that is what they did), would create nuggets to help them become even more smooth at the wordplay trade. The result? Magnets. Loads of millimeter-length sticky bits, with a word per slick, white surface.
With these devices, I would make sentences. Sometimes they made sence, sometimes they didn’t. ‘Lick object heinous movement’, or, ‘Strange paradise eats kitten dead’. I spent hours making nonsensical short short stories. My parents would come in the room and leave, letting me tend to my creative abilities. My proud aunties would giggle in the doorway. And the cat would swallow some, and I’d throw something at it.
But what I’m trying to get at is that the missing pieces to those infamous library books were their pages. I would open all of my checked books at random, do eenie-meenie-miney-mo, and then rip out the page that my mother liked best (according to the rhyme). Then I taped it to the wall. Oftentimes I didn’t care how well I ripped it out; it was just torn asunder, with bind weeping out for mercy at my teenage fingertips. So that is why, on my wall today, the wallpaper is completely covered by vandalised library-book pages, ripped diagonal or sometimes in half.
Why did I do it? I can’t answer this. At night, before I went to bed, I’d read my latest additions, side-by-side. And it would make no sence at all. The first new page would talk about girls in short dresses and pointy boots, the second, about Southern iced tea and sunshiny days in Georgia. I liked this jumble, though: the all-encompassing array of words that blended together, making something that I thought was beautiful, but was really a waste of time.
That was my first teenage obsession with the broken and beautiful. (Now that’s poetic.) Incidentally, there were many more to come.
After that came punctured bicycle wheels that I forced my friends to give me. With these, I tried out my experimental side (a side that is very prevalent today. It may have taken over my sensical side). For weeks on end, our garage would be filled, wall-to-wall, with loose bike tires, hanging from the rafters like suicidal balloons. And what did I do with these sad loose ends? I painted them. I droped goblets of paint on the tops of the tires and then stood still to watch the glob run down the side, only to hesitate at the end and then sl-ow-ly drip onto the cold stone floor. By this, I was amazed. I enjoyed the hesitation of the paint and then the sudden rush as it plummeted down the boomerang-shaped slope, only to find its cruel end at a turn it could not complete. Naturally, my mother was not pleased at all with the state of the garage floor, and my father went to work with multicoloured tires, and sometimes a replica of the Little Dipper on his car hood. Just as I forced used tires to be given to me, I was forced to give them up.
After this, my phases continued. I collected broken glass and strung them up all over the house. I cut intricate designs into my best jeans, and made my mother cry. I filled bottles with wildflowers and then plucked all the petals off, just to see what the flower would do. These hobbies (I called them hobbies, anyway. I vaguely recalled many of my relatives referring to them as crazy habits) began at the tender young age of thirteen and ended at a number of times in my life. In fact, I still sometimes rip little bits off library books, and teach my young cousins how to deflate bicycle tires.
But my infatuation with the corrupt seemed to spawn itself more. I did not know what it was, but I had completely fallen for things—only objects, so far—that started out beautiful and maybe ended up beautiful, but nevertheless had a twisted side to them. I liked the change, I think. Over the years I have tried to come up with reasons, but they all ended up having the same concept, which annoys me. (I do not enjoy mass production, or generalization.)
Sometimes my friends would ask, “Darling, what is the matter?”
   And I wouldn’t have anything to say. I’d just go back to my broken glass and painted tires and ripped books, looking for resolution.

II
People are so Flawed

If I failed to mention that there was a gap within my almost masochistic projects, then let me say so now: there was a gap. When I turned fifteen, I looked at the makeshift chandelier hanging in front of my window, made from some stained glass and a couple of unknown bottles, and felt very, very sleepy. I closed my eyes, and went to bed.
The next morning, I did not feel the need to go out and be wild. Wild was suddenly in me, not around me. It was not free running, but at a standstill, right where I existed. And that was enough.
This unexpected gap lasted two years, until the month before I turned seventeen. During this dry run, I studied. I began to write. I learned to play the violin and I tinkered around with the piano, but I preferred the former to the latter. I lost some best friends, gained others. The wildflowers in my bottles wilted and died, drying to a brown, earthy crisp. Library pages turned yellow and the Scotch tape fell off. I was getting older, but not much wiser, I think. Indeed, by the middle of this significant lack I felt restless, but every time I put my mind to something I would never actually go out and do it, or I would, but the project would remain unfinished. So in our yard stood half-planted lemon trees, and in my bathroom the beginnings of a fishtank.
And then one morning—the end of the gap, but I did not know this at the time—I opened my window to air out my room and caught sight of a redhead leaning against the trunk of our weeping willow. I noticed her because it was the dead of winter and she was a redhead, and also because no redheads lived on our block and no one had moved in recently. My eyesight was not the best, but I squinted until I could make out a couple of features: skinny, tall, freckled…and there was a man attached to her.
I backed away from the window. Though I was by no means unaccustomed to such a sight (this was about the time when the media was starting to do everyone in), the scene still startled me. There was this striking redhead pressed up against our tree—in fact, my tree—sucking face. It was disgusting and wonderful at the same time, and I instantly felt that same surge of inspiration I’d felt before, with the pages and the paint and the glass. A brouhaha of words flew through my mind: this redheaded girl, she was windstruck, willow-tied, heartdrenched, a dead star. I was literally all a-flutter with excitement.
Looking back down at the girl, I could see she had distangled herself from the man and was smiling at him and talking. As horrible as I was at lip-reading, I could still make out (and how ironic, that choice of phrasing) the tone of her speech: indifference. She didn’t love him. She was using him! Or maybe it was the other way around? My heart began to thump and my palms to sweat. I thought, this is pathetic. But my dry spell was ending, and so the notion was pushed to the back of my mind as soon as it had been uttered.
The man left. He did not look dismayed, which upset me. Very soon after the girl left, too, sauntering on boots (the heels caught on her tattered jeans) towards the opposite end of my sidewalk. And even though I knew neither of these people, I had an adrenaline-fueled shock: how imperfect their romance was! Who rendevoused with a lover beneath a willow tree, right under someone’s window? It was absurd. Yet I smiled for the rest of the day, as if I knew a big secret that no one else was even slightly aware of.
“People are so flawed,” I told my then-current best friend when I saw her the next day. I said it with such awe and reverence that she was swayed enough to look genuinely curious.
It became so that I was like a child who had walked in on their parents in the middle of the night, covers jostling, mattress squeaking. I simply could not get those two figures out of my head. For one, this was about the time that I had begun to develop my now-endearing passion for redheads. My best friend was a redhead. The girl against the tree was a redhead. I scanned aisles and aisles in all sorts of different stores, looking for a shade of red to dye my hair, but every time I would ask someone’s opinion on it they would pronounce me much too pale for a shade. Or even much too dark, or that it just wasn’t me. And the ragged jeans that the girl had worn captivated me because they were so dirty and her boots had caught my attention because they were so sexy and this old man, he was wearing a suit. I did not wear suits. Not even on Easter.
I thought about them, day and night. I opened my window just to see if they were out there, but they never were. Every time I went out, alone or with friends or family, I would cause myself neck strains just by looking for this elusive girl or this mysterious man. But honestly I much preferred them together, being caustic little sluts against my willow tree.
Sometimes I tried to pin down the exact reason or reasons why I was so enamored with this public couple. I was not oversexed. I did not prefer girls or even boys, much to my frantic mother’s dismay. (She was determined to raise a child with good intentions, whether hetereo- or homosexual. But I was neither.) I did not care much for romance or cliches or the fevered heart-thump that kissing gave my best friends. (Remember that I received this familiar high from dropping large amounts of paint on deflated bike tires.) So was it the artistic willow, the arch of the redhead’s back, and the general workplace-aura of the man that grabbed me? Or the death sentence of their relationship? Or the way that girl’s boots sounded on the frozen pavement, or the permanent crease of that man’s suit? I had thought I was not into order and formality, but perhaps I was. Or wasn’t I? Was the exact cause of my infatuation just because they were, as my old hobbies had been, broken and beautiful? But if that was the case, I didn’t want it to be. I wanted to be new, and have a fresh start at my game.
In essence I forgot about them, that dysfunctional pair whom I loved so very much, even though I didn’t know them or hadn’t even taken a good look at them. But they haunted me, coming into my dreams and sliding into pictures of Venus in my textbook, and materialising in my Algebra teacher’s weekday suits.

III
Olive or Gardenias I

This is about the time I met Purchase.
I was out with a best friend on the tennis courts that our ultra-rich suburban neighborhood offered to the very specific community. It was below zero and we were huddling together near the nets, acting like angsty teenagers on a winter’s afternoon. Which, of course, we were.
“I hate my life,” she sighed into my blood-fused neck.
“Tell me about it,” I mumbled back to her.
And she moaned on and on. Woe is me, I shall never become who I want to be, where is the purpose in life, etc. In short, we were taking Broadway angst to a whole other level, simply because we thought—no, we knew—that we were a whole other level, just because we were seventeen and full of ourselves. Why did our parents suddenly turn on us, from loving figures to strangers who told us to get the fuck off their phone? Because they did not understand us. Why did teachers grow beards and begin to smoke? Because we weren’t enough for them, even though we were. Why was winter so cold? Because Mother Earth hated us.
My little sister wore jumpers and striped stockings with Mary Janes. My parents loved her, her teachers gave her gold stars and she always seemed to be warm and cosy, no matter where she went. I didn’t hate her, but my friends did.
Back on the tennis courts, a light breeze made us both shiver. I pulled the oversized tweed tighter around me, and buried my nose into two rounds of fleece scarf. My best friend, however, had jumped up.
“We should exercise!”
I was about to inform her that we didn’t need exercise.
“Not that we’re, you know, fat.”
I closed my mouth.
“It’s just that I read somewhere that if you run around and stuff when it’s cold, you’ll get warm. ‘Cos you sweat and stuff, you get it?”
The idea did not sound too enthralling to me. For one, I was the type of person who did not play, but watched people play. I did not cheerlead, I cheered on the sidelines (albeit very quietly). I relied on my high metabolism to keep my weight in check, not my own duties of getting up and ‘going’. I was fine in my tweed coat and stolen fleece scarf and three pairs of leggings.
“No,” I answered. “What?”
“Get up,” she insisted, and began advancing towards me.
“No,” I answered again. “What?”
She came over and pulled me up. For a seventeen-year-old, I was very short. Maybe around five-feet-two or three. And as she’d said, neither of us was fat. In fact, if anything, we were both underweight. We were the girls our nurse looked pityingly at, as if she wanted to come over and tell us anorexia wasn’t cool, but knew we weren’t anorexic, we just couldn’t put on weight.
“So what,” I grumbled once I was steady on my feet, “do you want me to do?”
Her fragile little hands set me on the baseline. “Don’t move.”
I watched her through squinted eyes as she ambled over to the other side of the court. She was wearing one of her father’s overcoats, and had about two bulky sweaters underneath it. I vaguely remember thinking of her as a penguin, waddling over to an ice floe.
Finally she had stopped on the opposite baseline, so that we were facing each other at a diagonal angle. She took a moment to adjust her penguin outfit, tugging at bumps and straightening out creeases. I wanted to tell her she looked fat.
“You look fat,” I called, and she glared at me.
“Shut up. There’s no talking in tennis!”
I thought my ears had frozen over. Tennis? Was she kidding?
No, I realised, she wasn’t. In her obese clothing, she titled back, pretended to throw a ball in the air, and then sent it over with a silent whack.
“Hit it!” she screamed frantically, indicating the invisible ball that was careening (I thought) towards me.
Without thinking I positioned myself into a forehand swing and, as I’m sure it went, sent that ball soaring over the net at a pace fit for Wimbledon.
And so we played air tennis. Back and forth we ran, aiming at balls that weren’t really there, sweating profusely out of freezing pores. I leaped to the right side of the court for one of her lucky shots, she aced me once or twice, and I raced to the net for a lightning round of volleys. My leggings were beginning to dampen, and I could see she was short of breath.
We were playing a pro set, eight games. On the sixth, it was my serve. I got into ready position—feet and ball and hand on the side of the handle, not the top—and then promptly froze on the spot.
There was a redhead standing at the corner, behind the fence. My breath caught. She was wearing broken-in jeans and boots.
“What are you doing?” called my best friend, impatient to win the game even though she was losing. “Serve!”
But I couldn’t.
“Hello?” she called again.
I didn’t answer. Behind the trees that lined the sides of the tennis court I saw a flash of red behind the evergreens; a bright spot underneath the monotonous green and grey. Even with my breath held I couldn’t hear her running: it was if the crunchy grass beneath her feet was holding their breaths, too, afraid that if they made even the slightest sound Purchase would bend down with her killer-red lips and eat them out of their safe haven.
Only I didn’t know she was Purchase then. She was just my redhead (all mine), in her sixties’ jeans and secondhand fuck-me boots, running without a sweater on what I believed to be the coldest day in winter so far. I dropped my figurative racket, poised for a serve, and let my nonexistant ball roll into the far reaches of the court.
“What are you looking at?” called the best friend.
We met at the net. I ran fast because I wanted to do something about the adrenaline smoking up my veins and the crazy thrumming of my heart.
“Look at her.” I gestured in the general direction of Purchase, who was now hidden behind the bright branches of the last evergreen in the row. “Do you know her?”
Best friend craned her neck over my tiny frame to check out the redhead. “Oh. Yeah, sure.”
I wanted to slap her in the face for not ever telling me this bit of information, but then had to remind myself that I hadn’t told anyone about the affair. So it wasn’t her fault, it was mine. Dammit! My teeth scraped the inside of my cheeks murderously.
“So, uh,” was my attempt at casual conversation. “What’s her name, then?”
“Olive.”
Her name was Olive.
“Come again?”
“What? I said it’s Olive. Do you not believe me, or something?”
Yeah, actually, I wanted to shout. I don’t believe you. How could such a wonderful creature have the dullest name in the history of the universe? Olive. Like the vegetable, or fruit, or spice—I didn’t even care what it was. I just wanted it to be something other than Olive.
“You mean like, Olive with the pits?”
Best friend looked at me like I’d just eaten my non-corporeal racket. “I don’t know. What should I say? No, it’s Olive like the branch that the dove brought back to Noah’s ark? Or, no, it’s the Olive that makes oil?”
My mouth straightened into a very thin line, and I seemed to sag. “That’s kind of disappointing.”
The thing about my best friend that made her my best friend was that she never, ever questioned anything that I didn’t tell her about beforehand. So when I said I was disappointed about the lack of zing in Purchase’s real name, she didn’t ask me why. She didn’t even give off any hints that she wanted to know. (Later I realised it was because she just didn’t care enough to ask, or because she didn’t want to know any more about my disturbing exploits. She was the girl whom I forced to give me bicycle tires, and whom I made break pretty-coloured bottles with me. I think she might be in therapy now. We lost touch a long time ago.)
She shrugged. “Can’t help you there. Hey, she’s coming this way.”
I swear I wet my pants. “What?”
“Jesus, don’t have a fit or anything. She’s just saying hi.” Best friend waved to an obscure area.
My mind did a couple of backflips, and in two seconds’ time I thought of the following: redheads and dye and weeping willows and arching backs, fuck-me boots, cut and ripped jeans, old men in grey suits, ties with ducks on them, broken glass, stars, and a diagram my psychology teacher had showed me about the levels of love. Infatuation was one of them.
And then, very suddenly, I smelled gardenias.

IV
One is the Lonelist Number that You’ll Ever Do or Gardenias II

   On the night before I told Purchase/Olive about stars, I was crashing at her house. Her parents were out—and always were out, as I never met the mother she talked so earnestly about or the father who painted orange blossoms for a living, or the cat with the bobtail—and the house was quiet and dim. No lightbulbs existed in their house, only Japanese paper lanterns with gardenia-scented candles placed carefully inside. Every time I passed one I was afraid that I would bump into it and set it on fire, and this flame would start a chain reaction, so that by the time I realised what I had done the whole house would be up in flames. But it wouldn’t matter, because the smoke would smell of burning flowers.
   Much to my unthinkable dismay, Purchase’s house never spontaneously combusted, and even though the paper lanterns were lit all day long, no aromatic candle ever spilt too much wax or precariously tipped over. If I ever asked Purchase about it, she just laughed. It was one of her usual responses to my inquiries.
But to the point: Purchase smelled like gardenias because her house smelled like gardenias. It was an all-year-round, not-ever-stopping kind of thing. I fell in love with that smell like I had tried to fall in love with Purchase. It succeeded where Purchase herself had failed. Today, this comforts me.
I am getting too far ahead.
When I smelled the gardenias my head automatically flipped around. I was so numb from cold and surprise that I didn’t even believe I could move anymore, but I’ve noticed my body has a habit of deceiving me. When I think I want one thing, my body goes just kidding and then asks for another. I thought I was just obsessed with Purchase. But turning around, and getting a look at her, I think now that I may have felt a little differently.
She was tall—about four inches above my head. Her nose was small and button-like, and she had bright brown eyes, like the colour of a cookie just come out of the oven. She had high cheekbones and a small forehead, and bangs that went every-which-way. Her eyebrows were the same shade as her hair and I was thankful for that. Her mouth was tiny, her ears were tiny, but her eyes were large. She could have been pretty if her face was properly proportioned, but as it was, she was decent.
I was disappointed once again.
As soon as I saw her I wanted to blurt out my fateful secret: you were making out in front of my bedroom window! or I’ve been dreaming about you forever, sweetheart, or let me take you home. But of course I couldn’t. I didn’t know her. It would have been ten times more awkward than it already was.
When she noticed I was looking at her (the correct word is staring, but I am choosing to be vague), she turned to me. In fact, she placed her entire back to my best friend. I thought it was the rudest thing anyone could have done.
And I loved her even more for it.
“Hi,” she said. Her voice was very girly, like a little girl’s. It frightened me, but I knew somehow that I would have to get used to it. “I’m Olive.”
   “Yeah,” I replied, even though I did not know what I was agreeing with. That her name was Olive, certainly not, because I hated that name, and would continue to, for a very very long time.
I told her my name.
“Nice t’meet you,” she said. She mentioned my best friend, and said that it was so crazy that we knew each other, because they’d been preschool friends, and their mothers still knew each other, and this was such a rare chance. And wasn’t I cold?
   “No, but aren’t you?” I indicated the holes in her jeans and her thin cotton sweater. But she wasn’t even shivering.
And then she did the weirdest thing: she threw her head back and laughed. Like me asking if she was cold was the funniest thing she had ever heard in her life. She laughed like it was comedy week and she had been holding it all in til Sunday night. It was the first time I would hear her crack up this way. There was one more incident, but I’ll leave that for later.
When she was finished, she had a wide grin on her face. “I could never be cold. I’m cold-blooded.”
She was beginning to freak the shit out of me.
The best friend tried to recapture Purchase’s attention, but her back stayed firm. I was beginning to feel like this redhead was a spotlight and not a person: a standing pin of brightness that focused her attention on whomever deserved it. She was a cold metal watchtower, and was designed to examine my every move. By imagining this then, I proved myself to be very intuitive, because this is eventually what she became.
“I think I should be going,” Purchase said abruptly. In fact it was so abrupt I could have sworn she interuppted herself, mid-sentence. “I feel as if I am interrupting.”
Darling, I wanted to say, you have been the best interruption I’ve ever had. Don’t feel as if you have to stop now.
She blew me a kiss. (I felt like I had to fall over from the sheer force of it, just to make a point.) The most that she did to my best friend was give a parting glance. Then, as shortly as she had come, she was out of sight like a leaf in a tornado.
Best friend and I walked off the tennis courts without a word, and out of each other’s lives the same way. It wasn’t planned: our calls dissipated, our visits became less routine and more businesslike, and suddenly our connection just lost its electricity. She was the last best friend I would ever have, just because after I had met Olive, I knew somehow that I did not need anyone else.

V
St. Abernathy’s Non-Correctional School for Girls

Since my ex-best friend was virtually the only real connection I had with Purchase, I had to devise my own ways of learning more about her. Just as I had been obsessed with the movement of paint on tires and the shine of light on broken glass and fragile bits of paper that told confusing stories, I immersed myself in the Olive Project. Now, I found myself falling for the movement of five-feet-five-inch redheads, the shine of light on the colour red and fragile bits of information that told confusing stories. By choosing unorthodox hobbies for myself, I was unconsciously building my own foundation for a turning point in my life.
Not much different, I liked to tell myself. You’re just moving onto bigger and better things.
And Purchase was definitely bigger and better.
Before my best friend and I broke things off, I asked her if she knew where Olive went to school. In a slightly vague, slightly hurt tone, she told me that the object of my affections (my nicknames for her got mushier and mushier over time, which annoyed both of us, but I couldn’t stop) went to St. Abernathy’s School for Girls.
My first thought: a correctional institute. Doubt filled my stomach and I had to hold onto a tree. The ex left me there, and did not even notice when I ran to catch up with her and ask for directions.
“Oh come on,” she said, throwing her hands up and walking faster. “How do you think I should know?”
What a let down, I thought then, pulling my hood down over my eyes. There goes my reliability.
But I soon found out that I did not need reliability. St. Abernathy’s Non-Correctional School for Girls (and that really was the title) lay three miles north of me. The website boasted of its superiority and creative intellectuality, and showed lush green fields and girls smiling Colgate-white next to all the pretty horses. I was shocked as to how I had never heard it mentioned or seen it in passing.
My mother, pleased at seeing me interested in something normal, offered to drive me there for a tour. In my head I pictured an unfriendly grey building, perhaps brick, with tall fence in front and a thick jumble of pine trees. The headmistress (or matron, I couldn’t decide which one I liked better) was fat and jiggly and had skin flowing out of her too-small pumps. All the girls rolled up their red plaid skirts, did not care to fasten their top two shirt buttons, and smoked in the bathroom. And the teachers were in their fifties or above, had salt-and-pepper buns, wore sixties’ cardigans and had rulers in their garters instead of daggers.
In our dark blue BMW (I have not mentioned my father. But based on our choice of vehicle, I will leave it up to you to decide what kind of job he had, what sort of pay he received and whether or not I saw him often enough to have had a healthy and happy childhood), I rolled the windows down and sunk lower into my already-sunken sports car seat. In the event that I saw Purchase out on those fertile green grounds behind the looming fence, I did not want her to see me. I wanted to blend into the scenery as much as possible. For that reason alone, I was wearing top-to-bottom green. As a result, I looked like a shrub. But I was willing to go through great lengths (for someone I didn’t know. Yes, I understood that. I have heard it too many times; it has nearly become my mantra).
I was still fantasizing about dormitories with bunk beds and recreational hour when we slowed down in front of a gigantic hill covered with poppies.
“Traffic sucks,” I said absentmindedly.
“We’re not in traffic, honey,” my mother answered, a tad worriedly.
I became worried as well, but my euphoria quelled it successfully. “What do you mean? Do we have a flat? Did we run someone over?”
“No, baby. We’re, um…we’re here.”
I swear I almost laughed. “What?”
“The address. 551 Vermont. This is 551 Vermont.”
To my right, the hill looked more like a mental hospital than a school. It seemed as if it had been designed to look like an inviting abode, but the architect went overboard in that aspect. It was bright green, nearly neon. And when I said it was covered in poppies, I mean it was smothered in the flowers. Purple and pink dots covered the mound like an infectious disease. I wondered how many passerbies a day got high off the fumes.
“Mom…” my mouth was dry. Who went to a school where everybody tested positive for opium? More importantly, who went to school inside a volcano made out of grass? “…This can’t be it.”
But my mother had already parked in the grass next to the hill and was turning off the ignition. Panicked, I turned to her as she pulled the key out of the slot and proceeded to open the door.
“Mom, you’re going to have to just say no. I’m sure you were really hip in the old days, but nobody gets high off opium anymore. Anyway, Dad wouldn’t like it if you had to enroll in rehab.”
She looked at me quizically, her suburban bob grinning fiendishly at me through her pearl studs. “Honey, I drove to this school to go into it, not to drive by it. Didn’t you really want to go, too?”
I had. There was no denying it. And while I had said that there was nothing in the way of Purchase and I meeting once more (the original sentence was ‘being together forever’, but I felt ‘meeting once more’ was much more plausible), a hollowed-out hill covered with poppies kind of overpassed the boundary.
Grudgingly I stepped out of our expensive car and into the road. My mother was already ahead of me, humming the oldies to herself as she waltzed to the door (it might have been a rock. But it looked like a door, at any rate). She was really quite pleased that I wanted to tour this school, because

a) She did not know that I was stalking a student enrolled in it,
b) It was normal,
c) I was taking an interest in girls,
d) It was normal.

So I felt I had to at least look interested in the school, even though I would never in my life actually go to it, for numerous technical and emotional reasons. Catching up with my mother, I began to gush about the poppies, when just minutes before I had been repulsed by them. I marveled out loud about the wonderful symmetry of the mound, when in truth I thought it was a stupid thing to inhabit. And, as we opened the door (it really did turn out to be one), I squealed as best that I could at the carved-out entrance hall.
But in reality, it was quite nice. The inside of the mediocre-sized hill was actually much larger than I’d thought, and the foyer was airy and well proportioned. A few schoolgirls were talking at the front desk, which seemed to be carved out of cherrywood, and I noted another reason why I would never attend St. Abernathy’s: I simply did not look the part.
For the several girls chatting near me did not only look like they had just broken out of a state prison, they looked proud of it. One of them had hair that looked like she had asked her dog to bite it off, and another had dyed it a brutal shade of lime green. The others just looked like they got high hourly off whatever was handy (and I found out soon enough that everything was handy on school grounds), and then stole gym socks from the freshmen and stuffed them down the toilets.
I followed my mother (who seemed extremely out of place, given the current circumstances—she was wearing argyle and red lipstick, for Chrissakes) as she walked steadily to the adjacent office. It was cherrywood, identical to the desk, with the words ‘Desk Admin’ written in fancy script on the door. As I passed Delinquent Girls #s 1 and 2, as they shall be known henceforth, they suddenly swiveled around to look down at me with their thick, eyeliner-enhanced glares.
“You’re new,” said DG #1. She had what looked like a cat’s tooth embedded in her left eyebrow. “And you don’t lookit.”
And thank the Lord, I thought to myself. Who the hell would want to look like you? “Not really. I’m not enrolled.”
“Ooh,” the one with the NyQuil-dyed hair smirked. “Thinking of joining a correctional institute, then? Have you done bad things like the rest of us?”
I cowered. Figuratively. And then told a not-so lie.
“No, er…I have a sister.”
I AM STALKING ONE OF YOUR SCHOOLMATES, my mind bellowed.
“A sister?”
I AM STALKING ONE OF YOUR SCHOOLMATES.
“Is she the bad one, then?”
I AM STALKING…
“Um. Oh, yeah. Really bad. Er. State prison. Coupl’a years. You know.”
NyQuil squinted. “Denno her, if she looks like you. Hey, give me your name, then.”
My throat instantly went dry. “Er, okay but first of all, I have a question…”
I didn’t, really.
“…The pamphlets and ads for St. Abernathy’s all show these, like, great fields. Really. Wide and rolling. English countryside, like that. Where are they?”
DG #2 looked at me as if I had gone mad.
“Photoshop,” she said bluntly and simply.
“That makes sense, then,” I began to babble, and backed away from the group of crazies. It was all becoming too much for me. I was never really good at lying. “Techonology nowadays, huh? You don’t know what’s real and what isn’t.”
NyQuil poked my chest. I threw myself against the wall behind me. “Are those?”
Needless to say, I felt like dying. They were all looking at me, expecting an answer, and they all gave off a distinct aura of hostility—meaning that if I didn’t give a reply they would all rush to pull daggers out of their garters, or throw homemade bombs at me with amazing force. Bolting off was my first thought, but another look at their not-so-slender bodies proved me otherwise. Lying my way through and saying that my breasts weren’t real, and that I knew this awesome clinic downtown, was also out because I was a horrible liar and I didn’t even have much breast to speak of. Then I wondered if my situation would have a movie-like turnout, and my dear Purchase would swing by to the theme from Pulp Fiction, her luscious red hair in braids, saving me from a ruined end.
But none of these things happened. (The loss of the movie ending prompted me to sag a little bit.) Instead, my mother, cashmere sweater humming calmly and pearl earrings smiling daintily, suddenly appeared between NyQuil and DG #2, holding a plaid folder and grinning stark-white. Looking at her and then at the delinquents, I felt like I was standing in the middle of a find-the-difference cartoon. I honestly had never been more embarassed to see her in my life.
“Making friends?” she trilled, looking a little flushed. I could have sworn she was glowing, and I wondered what the Desk Admin had decided to give her in place of the usual mint or lollipop often offered in such events. “The lady at the desk said we could take a tour. Pop in anywhere. Quite nice, I’d say. Almost reckless.”
My mother had never used the word reckless before.
“Shall we go?” she asked.
NyQuil chose this time to pull a packet of Marlboros out of her skirt pocket, and a green-apple shaped lighter out of one of her socks. Casually, she pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and blew out smoke rings with general ease. Months later, when Purchase offered me a cigarette, I would remember these rings and be insanely jealous that all I could do with smoke was inhale it too deeply.
I watched the smoke rings dissipate into the air, one by one. It was almost tragic.
“We shall,” breathed NyQuil after two more rings. It took me a moment to stop watching them float away, and to realise that the three girls who had just been surrounding me threateningly were now choosing to follow around my mother and I. Panicking, I tried in vain to intervene.
“But…but…don’t you have…”
“Class?” DG #2 smiled crudely. “Don’t be silly.”
If only I was being silly, and not just freaking the fuck out. It would have been a much easier thing to handle.

VI
Implosions

As we began to walk our way down the cobblestoned hall, I wondered if we looked as funny a quartret as it seemed to me.
Leading the pack was my mother—a typical suburban housewife, with a college degree in interior design and English literature, decked out in pearls and cashmere and sensible stockings. Next were Delinquent Girls #s 1 and 2, with their animal-tooth earrings that I had no doubt were 100% real and their boys’ shirts and too-shirt skirts. And then, lagging a few steps behind, was NyQuil, with her green hair and lighter-infested socks. And then me: short and tiny, with too-long hair and an expensive, product-of-a-rich-father wool coat. I did not know whether to laugh at the situation or cry because I was being followed around by a bunch of druggies, and also because Purchase was nowhere to be seen.
During the whole tour, I never once thought of asking anyone if they knew an Olive with red hair. The school, though compact looking, seemed to be filled with more students than my own overcrowded education institute. And even if I’d had the perfect oppurtunity, I wouldn’t have asked any of the trio that had tagged along on my school tour. Aside from being upfront, they had the undesirable look of someone who could look right through you and tell exactly what you were up to.
So I had to depend on my eyes alone. Every doorless classroom that we passed, I peered into. The bathrooms were not ignored—not even the men’s (because I knew full well what girls did in the boys’ restroom, as well as the autoshop room, and the teacher’s lounges, and the dark room). I scoured the cafeteria and the gym, and even the small backyard (to get in a mile during physical education, you had to run around it twenty-three times). By the end of the tour, which lasted forty-five minutes, I could safely say that it was, by far, the crappiest school I had ever been to, and that whoever had done the website and the brochures was a Photoshop guru.
We were stopped at a classroom—the art room, NyQuil said between her fifth cigarette. I would have never guessed. It was certainly the cleanest art room I had ever been in, with what looked like sterilized white walls and shining desks and a spotless tiled floor. Plasma-screen computers sat in a quintet in the corner, smoothly wiped and humming away. There was nothing on the walls, and the whiteboard was free of word or picture. The only thing that gave off the slightest notion that we were in an art room was the fact that the tiles we were now walking on were rainbow-coloured.
“I’ve never been in here before,” remarked DG #1. She was tugging on her tooth (the one not attached to her gums).
“Yeah, me neither,” said DG #2. “Cr-azy.”
I didn’t see what was so crazy about it. The whitewashed atmosphere, however, was making me squint. “Why is it so clean?”
“Damned if I know,” grunted NyQuil before she flicked open her apple lighter. “I hear someone’s always in here. And damned if I know why about that, too.” Two smoke rings floated lazily near my ear.
I yawned. “Always in here? Like lives here?”
“I don’t know. I hear about her, though.” The smoke rings vanished into a ceiling vent. “I hear—”
She was cut short by my mother’s cell phone, a very loud regular tingtone that annoyed everybody within a ten-foot radius. Sure enough, DG #1 bared her teeth and NyQuil almost dropped her smoke.
“Sorry, sorry,” quipped my mother, still under the influence of whatever the desk admin had given her (I was sticking to my drug theory, even though my mother would later insist that it was just a peppermint). “I have to get this.” It was probably my father, sitting behind his polished oak desk, or my little sister, coming back from her ballet lessons or flute lessons or horse stables. I myself did not own a cell phone, no matter how much my parents pressured me to.
As soon as she left the classroom and shut the sliding door behind her, I turned back to NyQuil. She was just stubbing out her cigarette on the whiteboard, and some ash crumbled sadly down the surface.
“What were you saying?”
It took her a minute to remember. “Oh. I don’t know. Something like, she’s obsessed with clean.”
My pampered upbringing recognized the feeling. I recalled days when we had maids who spoke no English (“Eva, please clean the table when we’ve finished.” “Que?”), but could wipe away a food disaster in seconds (“Godammit, mother! I did not mean to make the fucking quiche explode!” “Oh, don’t be so angry, dear, Fifi will take care of it. Ne ce’st pas, Fifi?”). I remembered when my mother had breakdowns if I did not clean up my fingerpaint, and my little sister screaming if I had forgotten to close the shower curtain during my bath. And it all drove me wild. I understood clean, but I couldn’t understand why anyone would be so obsessed with it.
DG #2 jumped over a desk, making it slide on the smooth floor. She stumbled a bit and then laughed at her mistake. “Oopsie,” she smirked, righting the table. “Olive might kill me.”
I positively imploded—I felt every single one of my organs as they burst into a gory, permanent mess. “Olive?”
NyQuil began to laugh, too, and quickly wiped the ash off the whiteboard, rubbing it white again. “Yeah, that’s her. I can’t believe I forgot.”
Head spinning, I tried to break in the conversation. “Redhead?”
DG #1 plunged her hand into NyQuil’s skirt, causing a short uproar, and then retreated with the crumpled pack of Marlboros. “I think so. Isn’t it like, different every month?”
This was certainly news to me, and I tried to digest all that I had learned within the past ten minutes: the art room was not really an art room, but a personal area for Olive, who was not really a redhead and was either stupid or had obsessive compulsive disorder. My anatomy shocked to pieces, I slumped down to the shocking floor in slight defeat.
DG #1 looked at me. “Where’s your mom?”
I pointed to the door. My vocal cords had burned out.
“Oh, goodie. Then it that case...” Through not-so-focused eyes I watched her totter on pointed stilleto heels to the back of the classroom, her hands held out in front of her in case she fell. I remembered her complaining about tiles being tricky to walk on when we were walking in the locker room.
“What are you doing?” demanded DG #2, giggling profusely.
I didn’t see what was so funny.
“Where do you think she is?” DG #1 wondered out loud, the cigarette poised carefully between her fore and middle finger, acting as bait. “I know she wants this. Plus I want to show her off.”
NyQuil burst into laughter. “For chrissakes, she isn’t an animal.”
I heard scratching from the opposite end of the room, then howling. I thought it was a dog, and was about to ask why the fuck there was a dog in an art room that wasn’t stuffed, when I realised that it was just someone laughing and yelling at the same time.
“Who isn’t an animal?” the voice called, in between large gasps of air. “I can’t open the fucking door! Someone open the fucking door.”
All around me, people were laughing. I was almost disgusted, just because I didn’t know what the hell was going on and someone was acting like a dog. DG #1 pressed her ear to the rear door, grinning widely, as if she was in on a joke that no one else understood.
“Whassat?” she said, snickering behind her fuschia-painted fingernails. “Something about the door?”
Whoever was on the other side seemed to be having a jolly good time. It took a moment for them to stop guffawing and to reply to the question. “Yeah! I can’t open the door.” Then came more insane laughter. “Oh my God, this is pathetic. Who’s that anyway? What are you doing in my room?”
It was about now that I began to recognize the voice. The significance started at my toes, which started to twitch at the hollering, and moved up to my stomach, which felt like I had just inhaled a jar of olives, juice and all. And olives had always, ever since I was two, made me feel sick.
NyQuil threw her now-empty package of smokes across the room, so that they skittered across the tiled floor before stopping abruptly. The bellower screamed again, and I watched stars sparkle behind my irises.
“God, she is so loud,” shrieked one of the delinquent girls—I had my eyes closed, intent on watching a tangible feeling spread through my body before it hit my mind and it all went away. “Just let her in already!”
But DG #1—I knew it was she because she sounded faint, she was at the other end of the room—cackled fiendishly in response. “It’s me, Olive.”
The stars and olives and tingling all fused into my cranium, and every single nerve in my body screamed I told you so! I sucked in my breath, feeling the chill on my teeth, making it hurt.
I listened intently as Olive screamed in response. “You fucker! Open the door. And give me a fucking smoke! I need it.”
They all began to do manic laughing again, and I managed a weak smile. I was beginning to wonder where my mother was, just in case she happened to walk into a room full of crackups talking through a door, while on the other side a stoned schoolgirl was screaming obscenities, and there I was, off to the corner, pleasantly obscure for the moment.
“You’re high enough, Olive! Now tell me the combination for this lock,” replied DG #1, sticking the cigarette behind her left ear for safekeeping.
“You fucking well know it,” Olive shouted back, her voice a bit dimmer. I wondered why. “Retard.”
Apparently, DG #1 did not know the lock number, because she flipped off the door angrily and then yelled something unintelligible to me. (It sounded very hostile, however.) Then she began to turn the disc to each number that Olive yelled out in a slightly crazed tone, her voice growing softer and softer still in pitch. Beside me, NyQuil and DG #2 were stifling their giggles into each other’s hands, and once again I felt like vomiting.
I was determined not to look up when I heard the door open and a couple of girls yelling shrilly. Instead, I wondered concernedly where my mother was, as it had been at least twenty minutes since she’d left and she made it a rule not to talk on her phone for more than ten. Had the desk admin found her again, and offered her a hit off the hookah? Or had she been cajoled into buying pot from God-knows-whom? My mother was not the most strong-willed person when it came to drugs—I had found this out one night when looking through the autographs in her high school yearbook. ‘Hey Linda, your acid trips totally beat mine’ and ‘It sucked you stopped dealing and went clean, you fucking pansy’ stuck in my mind the most.
But my eyes had to open eventually. When they did, I was faced with a shock of bright red hair. At the colour my stomach immediately twisted. It’s all fake, fake, fake, dammit!
“Hey, I know you,” smiled Olive, and pushed the tip of my nose like a button. She smelled like herbs. “Cutie.”
NyQuil, who was still howling with laughter, doubled up after she heard this.
“What the fuck is so funny?” I snapped, just as my mother stepped into the room, emanataing the same herb-y smell that Olive was.
“Dear! Don’t say things like that.” Her eyes were out of focus. She was obviously high, and yet she still had enough virtue to scold me for saying the word ‘fuck’. “It’s very crude.”
Words instantly formed in my mind: Don’t call me crude! You’re stoned! But I didn’t dare say it, just in case she was just buzzed and could still understand me. Instead I looked back at Olive, who was still bent forward to look me straight in the eye. I noticed that hers were bright green, with specks of blue. I found this to be, for some reason, comforting.
“Yeah, we’ve met,” I whispered. My larynx was burnt out again “On the tennis courts.”
She was still smiling, and not saying anything. I could count six freckles on her nose and two each on her cheek. Then, very quickly, she bounced backwards and snatched the cigarette away from DG #1’s hands.
“Hey!” she growled, reaching back for it. “You called me a retard! You don’t deserve that.”
“Shut up. I need this.” Then she scrambled down to NyQuil’s socks and, after rummaging through the right one for a couple of seconds, pulled out a banana-yellow lighter.
“Ooh, how very nifty,” squealed my mother.
“Mom, don’t say nifty,” I pleaded.
But Olive laughed, girly and deliberate. “Nifty. How cool. My mom doesn’t say nifty.” She lit her cigarette and then tossed the lighter to me. “Where’s yours?”
I was about to answer that I didn’t smoke, and honestly didn’t plan to, when my mother bothered to reply on my behalf. “I’m afraid she doesn’t smoke, and won’t ever.”
My face burned, but Olive just laughed again. “That’s fine. I kind of wish I didn’t smoke, either.”
Liar glowed on each and every one of the other girls’ faces, their eyes menacing and their looks definitely accusatory, but Olive just blew it away, literally. Watching her smoke became entertainment for me, starting on that day. Her cheeks would puff and decline to a tempo which never altered, and she not only blew smoke rings, they were all different sizes. Big to small, small to big. I was mesmerized.
But, being a mother, she was designed to snap me out of my reveries. “My, my. Look at the time.” She waved around her 100% real Rolex. I bet at least two of the girls wanted to jump her for it, since that was what they had been doing since the sixth grade, according to their spoken history. “We must be going. I do feel a little faint, anyway.”
I wonder why, I thought darkly.
As I stood up to leave on shaky legs, Olive asked if I would be back.
“I didn’t get to see enough of you,” she admitted, slapping away NyQuil’s hands as they tried to reach for her coat pockets. “Your tour probably sucked. I, on the other hand, know where everything is.”
My smile was agreeable as well as shaky. “Oh yeah? Did you make the brochures or something?”
She just winked, and then blew me a good-bye kiss, just like she had at the end of our last meeting. As I walked out the door after my unsteady mother, I made sure to catch it between my palms and rub them all over my face.

this little light of mine

Sat, 07 Jul 2007 03:18:12 GMT

In the Smithsonian sculpture garden there is a tree. It's a wish tree, put there by Yoko Ono, and with the pencils and paper provided you can write as many wishes as you want and hang them on the tree. When the tree gets full, all the wishes are taken off and sent to Yoko Ono so she can use them (in what way I don't know) for the peace park that she is making.

I'm a sucker for things like this. I used about 5 pieces to write down things that may seem silly but in all honesty are what I really want, in this little heart of mine.

:)

lubricant

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 14:48:42 GMT

HAPPY BIRTHDAY gun_powder_tea !
Well I didn't think I'd be able to call you today, and I knew you'd get on LJ sometime so HERE IT IS. I DID NOT FORGET YOUR BIRTHDAY! (Incidentally it coincides with my friend's boyfriend's birthday, as well.) We can watch Ratasd;lfkds;lk if you want but we have to figure out when. AND THEN WE CAN WATCH HARRY POTTER EEEEEEEE!! But that is not until...well seven days from now. A WEEK FROM NOW OH GOD!

I have a pressie for you! But you won't be able to get it until we see each other. (The suspense!)

I'LL CALL BABY. WE'LL GO TO BORDERS.

KLATER.

the winnin one

Sun, 13 May 2007 12:31:01 GMT

Finally. God, I hate electronics.

title: Variations on Violet
rating: PG
summary: In a single month, Violetta counts sixteen variations on a common theme (Violetta).

This is what's bringing me to New York. Bareback and all. Er. Maybe I'm not quite using the right phrase. Whatever, I just slept for five hours, I's good.

Variations on Violet

Prelude.

    In a single month, Violetta counts sixteen variations on a common theme (Violetta). Such affectionate and clever nicknames could flatter any other person, but by the time the 31st rolls around she feels naked and horribly misused.

I.

    Violetta likes to think that they named Opaline Lake after the opals her mother used to wear every single day, those little purple stones pulling at soft and swingy earlobes. Anna Strynes, after all, was a pretty prominent person back in the day, using her poems as an excuse to cut to the front of lines and stop for photographs on the street. Her short lines of nothing much, as Violet has always thought of them, use phrases like wish it were summer again/wish your ice cream melted in my hands and threw my heart from your fourth-story window/it bruised. They weren't a smash phenomenon but they were still a small success, and on her walls Viola has cutouts of her mother from old newspapers. In these splotchy remnants Anna is wrapped in tweed, usually, and never failing to wear the earrings--so small but they shone, even in the dull flash of the early camera.
    It wasn't until a few months ago, right around the time that Violetta's mother passed away, that the park caretakers began to grow violets around the edges of the lake. Now Viola doesn't like coincidences, and she refuses to believe it was a sign from God that Violet would soon be joining her mother in the park grounds, disguised as a city artifact.

II.

    Her name is officially Violetta L. Strynes; the L standing for Leticia and the Strynes being her mother's name, since her father died early on and Bubblinkith was not, according to Mrs. Strynes, a good name for publicity.
    Nobody calls her that, though. She is Viola, commonly, and Violet, professionally. To her numerous ex-lovers she is Vio and to her relatives she is Letta. A half-sister calls her La, which Viola hates, and a half-brother does not refer to her as anything special.
    "Hey," he calls her, speaking in melodic alto tunes. "You."
    Viola likes him the best.

III.

    Even though she is a paid violinist, she is virtually unknown. After all, who ever learns the names of the quartets playing at an uncle's wedding, or the saxophonist belting out lover's words in a favorite cafe? Viola knows she is in an obscure profession, in the analytical and literal sense of the word. She steps into wedding halls, plays several sonatas, and then has a piece of cake and leaves. She straps on her high-heels and performs a ditty for a club, is offered a drink and leaves. You could say that Viola plays for the food, which is half-true, since by the time she has finished all of her appointments she no longer needs to buy dinner for herself.
    But it is comforting, at the end of the day, for Viola to know that no matter how many people call her by an increasing number of aliases, there are a thousand more who do not even know one variation.

IV.

    Despite her mother being very good with the opposite sex (if her poems are any judge of her love life), Viola's fear is that she will not be able to carry on the Strynes name. Over the years she has found a few good men to share her conversation and toothpaste and sheets with, but none of them have ever been good enough.
    They have all found out the many twists and turns of Violetta's name, for instance. She had two boyfriends call her Vita in the same month, and one who only wanted to call her Leticia, which was completely unheard of. Or they cannot cook, which is a trait Viola dearly hates. Or they can cook, but they talk incessantly while doing so. Viola hates them the most. Where is the space in cooking for talking, she wonders? Is their relationship so intimate that he can call her Sweet Ola and talk about getting a puppy while flipping pancakes?
    The answer is no.

V.

    Roberta Strynes, Anna's youngest sister and Viola's sort-of guardian made her business card. It is thin cardboard and cream-colored, with violets snaking round Viola's boldfaced name in the center of the card. When the draft was shown to Viola, her initial reaction was repulsion: there are the stinking violets again, she thought furiously, biting the inside of her cheeks, intent on drawing blood. Why even stop there? Where is the wretched Viola?
   "I was thinking of putting a viola by your address," said Roberta, avoiding Viola's eyes. "But I couldn't fit it."
    "Surely it would just confuse people," replied Viola, her tone surprisingly cold. Shocked at her sudden anger, she withdrew quickly. "I mean...it's nice."
    Smiling sadly, Roberta put the card back on her desk. "I will make copies, then."
    They had tea and lemon cookies (Viola's favorite) and when it was time for Roberta's psychology class and Violet stood up to leave, it was Roberta who hugged her niece, instead of the other way around as it normally was.
    "Someday," she whispered into Viola's orange cardigan, "someone will call you by all the names in the world, and you will not mind."
    Violet left. The next week when the order of cards arrived at her apartment, she was surprised to see that small violas now accompanied the violets.

VI.

    It is 8:15 PM when Violet packs away her violin to leave the wedding reception. She is insanely tired: the bride and groom were so fascinated by her skill that they asked her to play at the wedding and then at the reception, the latter not been planned beforehand. Having nothing else to do, Viola accepted, but now she is exhausted and cannot even bring herself to wrap a piece of cake in foil, as her customers urged her to do.
    When she does muster up enough energy to hoist her violin onto her shoulder and leave, the bride waves good-by enthusiastically and the groom bows deeply, his suit laps brushing the floor. Numb, Viola can only nod in response.
    I am so unused to having actual fans, she thinks in the taxicab, and then blushes when she realizes she is actually well liked in some circles.

VII.

    Violet does not play for the public on Sunday. It is a rule enforced by her mother, and the daughter is adamant to keep it. On Sundays, she is inclined to wake up late, make her own breakfast and do nothing but rest.
    Today, however, a letter is stuffed int he mail slot of her front door. Knowing full well that mail is not delivered via business on Sundays, she is automatically intrigued and frightened at the same time, and hesitates, fingers poised, before snatching the envelope free.
    She looks at the address. It is unfamiliar and far away, and she thinks of this distance in trains and taxis, her daily transportation.
    But what if it is not a customer?
    Heart beating fast, Viola pinches the skin inside her arm, twisting it with a vengeance and ignoring the shooting pain. Don't be silly, she thinks harshly, shoving a butter knife under the envelope flap. It's not like you want anybody anyway, you shut-in--you snail.

VIII.

    The letter, it turns out (but Viola always knew) is nothing but a simple request for a private party sixteen blocks from her apartment (which is the 6:12 F train and then a slightly expensive taxi). While Viola worries about the expenses that she will be making on account of such a seemingly affluent client, she realizes that tomorrow is Monday, and it is five o'clock.
    From the tiny kitchen, the kettle screeches angrily.

IX.

    On Sundays, from five to seven, Viola practices the violin. It is during these times that she remembers, despite all the travel and stress accumulated from her profession, her love for the instrument.
    While her mother played with words and took them to bed at night, mumbling them in her sleep and cherishing the way they made her heart beat and her palms sweat, Viola encourages the swift high she receives from playing the violin strictly for pleasure, and not business. On Sunday, she is not playing for money, and this is what makes her forget the curses she bestowed on her job just the night before. On Sunday, it is suddenly so simple to her, so instantly clear, why she still keeps her blasted occupation--because it is her drug of choice and her lover all in one.
    Viola's violin is not so old but is German, and so makes a deep, clean vibration that she is afraid will collapse her apartment. The E string makes her chair wobble and she is amused to find that all her cats run to hide under the bed when she starts on scales. it is like when she was seven and her mother used to say, Violet, Violet, would you please not break the windows? Mommy likes them, you know.

X.

    It is not until later, fingertips dented with lines (her favorite disease) and clothes reeking of rosin (a wonderful cologne), that Viola realizes her letter is riddled with--well--names. The exclamations of relatives (Letta), the interjections of close friends (Vi) and the whine of small children (Ola) are scattered through the dry paragraphs, as if the sender was experimenting with different kinds of dye, wondering how each color would glorify the work.
    The handwriting, too, is loopy and flowery, as if extending a hand of invitation.

X and a half.

    Viola hates subtlety.

X and three-quarters.

    Before work the next day, Viola knocks the letter off the counter with her teacup (not so accidentally) and into her bag (on purpose).

XI.

    On her way uptown, Violet peers inside her purse just to catch a glimpse of the standard white envelope, which is now worn away at one edge from her frantic stroking. It disgusts her, how such a menial object can hold her attention so easily and so well, and forces herself to look away.
    Her eyes focus on the advertisement in front of her, and when she gets bored of cell phone rates and cheesy taglines, concentrates instead on the woman underneath it. Viola ignores her overrated, obviously fake looks, and instead focuses on what her name could be.
    Lisa? She doesn't look like it. Perhaps Maria. Or Janice, or Anne-Marie.
    She wonders if anyone does this to her--tries to guess her name by the way she moves her lips, wiggles her eyebrows, licks her teeth.
    Whatever they come up with about her, though, can't possibly be any worse than it already is.

XII.

    The small club is nestled in a bitterly dark alleyway, and the taxicab drops her off two feet away from the turnoff. Feet slipping on nervous heels, Viola knocks on the wooden door, distinguishable as a club only by the single neon circle in the corner of the doorframe.
    From the inside, a man coughs loudly, and then slides the door open with a purring creak.
    "Welcome," he says, smiling toothily. "Your name?"
    Viola tries not to cringe in defeat (why defeat, she doesn't know). It's only his job. He can't be blamed for what Violet detests.
    "...Violetta," she admits grudgingly, a sour taste on her tongue. "Strynes."

XIII.

    Adam (the man's name) smells of peppermint and spice--of Christmas, essentially. Violet is annoyed by his impressionable scent, since it is the middle of summer, and scents, like names, should stay the way they are, and not be hacked into a million little pieces and sent every which way, doing whatever they please...!
    She takes a deep breath to calm herself.
    "You can get ready in here," says Adam, gesturing to a small room (also lined with wood and neon) backstage.
    Viola smells cloves, but won't let her nose twitch. "Thank you," she says stiffly, and walks the same way into her makeshift dressing room.

XIII and a sentence.

    Overstuffed with scores, pencils, water bottles, and coins, Viola's bag tips over the counter and the only thing that manages to unstick itself falls right into a very astonished lap.

XIV.

    Five minutes before she is due to go on, Violetta re-reads her letter.
    'I hope, Viola,' starts the second paragraph, 'that you will be able to make it. I have heard only good things about your playing and would be honored to have you perform at my private gathering.'
    Two sentences on: 'You are quite the star, Ola...or so I have collected, from all the reviews in the Star and your too-short appearances on the radio, and of course from conversation on the street.'
    Three: 'Once I dreamed about you, and when I awoke I was not surprised to find that, even fabricated by my extensive imagination, you still amaze me.'
    And the last: 'Violetta Leticia, please accept my heartfelt request. Perhaps there will be someone in the audience, maybe, if all my guests arrive, that will want to speak with you, Vivi...and call you by every name, in every language, including the one that does not need words, or even eyesight.'
    There's a knock at her door, and Viola tries to stop trembling, but can't.

XV.

    She begs sickness to Adam, who cannot hide his disappointment at her leave.
    "Are you sure you're not feeling well?" he asks, biting his lip. "Maybe I could help..."
    Viola wonders fleetingly if he is really worried about her, if it is that thing she sees in movies and on television, where kinship brings two people together by chemical boundary alone--but no, of course not. He likes her reputation, her sound. That's all.
    "I'm sorry," she sighs, and really is. "Maybe I'll come back."
    She needs to go, just for a little bit.

XVI.

    When she was little, and had a mother, and still no father, and tiny fingers, Letta always ran like someone was chasing her.
    Not that she was the one who noticed--everyone else did, and made sure to tease her about it. You would shoot out of some place, her mother used to tell her, scissoring her fore- and middle- fingers, and just keep on running, as if you had a stuck motor in your feet. And you wouldn't stop, even when I tried to catch you or called you back. (Violet always listened to her mother, back then.) Sometimes you screamed, and I was worried, as were your aunties and uncles, that maybe you thought someone was chasing you--or something, at the very least.
    Did I scare you? Viola would giggle, proud of her wild side.
    You scared us all, my darling, replied Anna, a smile crinkling her face ,just like her poems did as they burned in the household oven.

XVII.

    Violet runs to Opaline Lake as if someone is after her with a burning love confession and a steak knife. When she gets there she throws herself down into the tall grass; letter still clutched tightly in hand. From there she watches the stars dance over her mother's opal lake, the soft waves gently swaying the violets on the shore.
    She falls asleep next to her childhood and her namesake, and almost misses her secret watcher in the audience.

XVIII.

    "It's too bad you missed your concert, my darling," whispers Viola's aunt, shaking her niece awake under a doughy-looking full moon. "As it is, Adam would still like to have you play. I think I've gushed about you enough--he wants to see the real deal."
    "He smells like Christmas," mumbles Violet sleepily, eyes still shut. "He isn't right."
    "You're not right, Ola," chuckles Roberta, lying down next to her sister's daughter, whose pale skin reflects lavender next to the glow of the lake. "But I told you already--someday, little girl. Someday."

Vi-O-Letta.

    Adam looks relieved at the news of her fast recovery, and calls her Viola, Letta, and La, all in that order, all in the same sentence, and Violetta notices she doesn't half-care. Her mother had earrings, and now a lake. She, on the other hand, has a world, a menagerie, of the very same name.

end

Firefox says there are no spelling errors but there may be placement/wording errors, since I typed this out from the manuscript. If there are, do your best at guessing. MWAH! OKAY NIGHT.

JAPAN IS A WONDERFUL COUNTRY/random post #whee

Sat, 12 May 2007 08:57:02 GMT

I went to my friend's band concert today. It was part of the American-Japanese Friends Festival or summat like that, and we'd all gone to crowd round our clarinet-flinging and trumpet-bashing friends. Well it was all fun and games and Japanese kids kicking our ass, naturally, but the best part is that

AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PLAYED 'SEISHUN AMIGO'

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I WAS LIKE PHWAOR OMG MUST MARRY ALL OF THEM NOW. And it was the only school with a bass player and he was so cute and rockin' all out to all the songs and SEISHUN AMIGO EEEEEEE. I sang along, and would have danced, too, if I'd known the entire thing.

BUT THAT'S WHY JAPAN IS GREAT.

Video later.

ETA: AND NOW. West Ainoura Elementary School kickin' buttaaa by playing Seishun Amigo, which the announcer described as 'famous from television' (and in my head I went, 'FAMOUS!? *XPLODES*'). I'm also talking with Joe in the background (about nothing), so if you're the sort of person that detests people who talk during filming, I DARE YOU TO HATE ME. Nah, actually, I'm not really fond of them either. But oh well.

LINK, google doesn't embed: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6857161171978569625

ETA 2: I haven't even finished the first episode yet but I already know that 1 Litre of Tears will successfully kill me dead sixteen different ways and back again. CRAP WHYYYY AM I SUCH A HOPELESS ROMANTIC ASDKJALJ

angry! =D

Mon, 07 May 2007 14:54:36 GMT

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHH

title: What Didn't Happen/augustfai's Self-Introduction to RyoDa
pairing: AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHHHHHH
rating: asdkj not pron
summary: "None of that happened, though," is what Ueda recalls telling the rest of KAT-TUN later. YA RIGHT UEBO! (11:17 PM and I'm sticking to my summary, folks.)
notes: Come on, now. In my mind Ueda has always been a little minx.

i.

Ueda likes to think that he was the right one the first time, and that he could have prevented everything that happened, if he'd been more sober (because no matter what Taguchi had said the day before in the bathroom at the bar he was not a fucking lightweight, okay, thanks very much, and could hold more than Kame's skinny ass ever could) and had, maybe, a girlfriend.

He'd even told Nishikido that he had a girlfriend. It wasn't true, of course.

"Nishikido," he'd mumbled, eyes slightly out of focus and getting even dizzier off the traffic lights and the motorcycles and the neon signs, "you're um, in my way."

And Ryo had looked at him.

"Ueda," Ryo said, sounding rather pleased. "Are you drunk?"
"Nnn-mm," Ueda had sighed. And after that, he can't really remember anything.

ii.

"Hey, fatty," calls Ryo the next day. "Can you tell Princess that I still have her belt at my house, and she owes me for the hangover pills? I've run out."

The staff room goes eerily quiet, and then Jin knocks over his can of coffee with both hands.

iii.

"None of that happened, though," is what Ueda recalls telling the rest of KAT-TUN later, when they are supposed to be discussing costumes for the next performance and solo choices (but of course, like any group of teenage girls, their talk reverts almost automatically to who did who drunk yesterday).

"Stop lying," Jin wails, bug-eyed (which isn't exactly logical, but Ueda doesn't doubt the extent of what Jin can do with his face). "That's not what Ryo-who-told-Yamapi said!"
"Wait, so, Yamapi told you, or Ryo told you?" Junno questions squintily.
Koki kicks him. "Shut up! We're trying to have a serious conversation."

Ueda sighs loudly and rubs his forehead. "I don't remember what happened, actually."
"You were drunk, though," Kame says, calmly and professionally. "So it probably did happen."

"YEAH!" Jin cries, banging his energy drink on the table (Yamapi bought him a new one after he'd wasted the coffee). "You see! UEDA, YOU DID HAVE SEX WITH--"

iv.

This time, Ueda's completely sober, but a little angry.

"Ooh, someone's having a bad hair day," Ryo smirks. He does not seem to realize he is being driven into the corner of a wall--or he does know it, and is enjoying it immensely. "Do you want me to fix it for you, Princess? We can go to my house, and you can take your belt back. It smells kind of funny."

Leather smells like leather, Ueda wants to say, but instead he finds himself leaning forward roughly and biting Ryo's lips, making the other cringe. This little reaction sends a little thrill through Ueda, who takes a hold of Ryo's belt loops to bring their hips together.

"I don't," he mutters, sucking the small injury gently, "want my belt back." He works both of Ryo's legs in between his own so that he's pinned there, underneath Ueda, who feels triumphant and actually kind of turned on, which is odd since he's not drunk. "And you can't do hair for shit."
"I fucking hate you, Princess, and your little--" begins Ryo, but Ueda bites his neck, and neither of them have anything to say anymore.

v.

Yamapi gets a text in the middle of practice.

RAN INTO DOORKNOB APPLYING FIRST AID IF YOU ASK ME IF I'M LYING YOU CAN GO DIE - Ryo

("I used that doorknob excuse in the ninth grade! You'd think, for Ryo-chan, he'd be a little more up to par," Jin sniffs later. "I'm a little disappointed in him."
"You can't be, though. He scored. That's an oxymoron," Yamapi says, poking Jin in the stomach. "Fat Jin."
Grinning, Jin rubs his stomach. "What do you think Ryo-chan calls Uebo?")

...OH, NO.

title: Five Names Ryo Calls Ueda (While They're Having Sex)
pairing: oh gawd
rating: pron, shit
summary: "You're on the bottom because I don't want to see any fucking fairies."
notes: *whimpers* Un-beta'd, and it's 11:53 and I'm tired so. Errors, yay!

1.

"If you want your fucking belt back, you're going to have to take this, Princess," growls Ryo, yanking something long and shiny off the top of his pile of clothes. "Yeah--good girl," he smirks, taking the object in one hand and going straight for his zipper with the other.

"Princess--is--not--!" Ueda gasps, taking a corner of the pillow in his teeth and biting hard, "It's not--I swear, Nishikido, if you do that again--and I'm not a girl--"

"Yes, you are--and if I do what again, Princess?" Ryo asks silkily, coming up behind Ueda all slowly and hot and holding a leather belt, "Tell me what, Princess...do you mean this?"

If he hadn't been gritting his teeth against a pillowcase, Ueda is sure he wouldn't have a tongue anymore.

2.

Ueda asks time and time again why he has to bottom, because maybe if he just had a chance to try he'd be pretty good at topping.

"You're on the bottom," Ryo says, sighing and rolling his eyes, "because I don't want to see any fucking fairies while we're--you know. I can only imagine how distracting that would be."
"I don't see fairies while--! Ow!"
"Moorchild. Changeling. Yes, you do."
"Ow! No, I don--fuck you," Ueda spits out. "Do that again."

3.

"I'm kinda tired today, and your face is pissing me off. You wanna take my place, Tatchan?"
"No." Ueda blinks. "Wait, what?"

4.

One night, Ueda's on top when Ryo suddenly brings him down, pulling gently on the sides of his hair, and kisses him. That's never happened before, and it makes a shocked Ueda stop doing what he's doing, if only for a few minutes until Ryo says he's not doing much of a good job, and really, Ueda was never one to look uncool in any situation.

"Next time, we're reverting back to how it used to be," Ryo huffs afterwards. "You suck."
"I like it, though," Ueda mumbles, trying to sound angry and failing. "You don't do much on the bottom, and it hurts less."

Ryo doesn't answer, only says, "You're such a pussy, go sleep on the couch," and turns away.

5.

It's the next time and just like the promise was they're back to their original positions, only there's no biting and growling and hissing, which is strange. And when Ryo is there, right there, and Ueda is too caught up in it to say anything, he only hears Ryo call his name very quietly and then there's shaking and Ueda, poor Ueda doesn't really know what to do, so he kisses Ryo, just like last time, until there's nothing more from the both of them.

"That was my name," says Ueda later, very sleepy and warm.
"I know it is, stupid, what else did you want me to call you--Princess, again?" Ryo yawns. "I should have known you like to be called that sort of thing."
"I don't."
"Liar."
"Do you want me to sleep on the couch?"
"No."
"Okay."

RAAAAAAAAAAAH

THE PHOTOBLOG

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 12:19:34 GMT

Saturday, March 3rd, 2007
Oita City, Oita Prefecture, Japan
Beppu, Oita Prefecture, Japan

So I ended up going to both cities, not just Beppu. Oita is pretty much the city and Beppu is the country, although both have their fair share of foreigners. To prove my point, I met four Filipina women married to Japanese men--one of them is my auntie's cousin, who showed us around with her husband, and another teaches high schoolers English with her husband and has two girls, one 13, one 5, both of whom can only speak Japanese and who are SO PRETTY AND I AM JEALOUS OF THEM. Yeah, that's right. D: But this is not a ranty blog, it is a recollection blog. And so. Under the cut.

OITA

First, THERE WAS FOOD. The restaurant that we went to was so nice and very traditional, though still modern. I didn't even think it was a restaurant at first, I was about to walk past it. XD It looked like a temple, actually.

These are the views from the middle of the temple/restaurant right when you walk in. It's all behind glass, and you can't go out to actually see it, but it's so pretty. The eating area also is surrounded by glass, and it looks out into the middle as well, so you can enjoy the landscape while you eat. (I sound like a brochure.)

Same view.

NOW FOR THE BEST PART. =D

From top L to bottom R: sashimi (with flower petals--I was a bit confused when they first brought it out), tempura and fish, rice, miso soup, vegetables, pears, and, er, me, being a pig. Which is per the norm.

After we ate, we went to a MALL, which FREAKED ME OUT because malls in Japan are very scarce unless you live in a big city. Otherwise, you get department stores and lots of outdoor shops. But malls? They are a rarity. I think I had a fit when we pulled into the parking lot.

These kinds of malls, I'm told, are very common in Oita--they're part of the same shopping district project, or something like that. I didn't take any pictures of the inside because we were in a hurry and there was a bookstore and cake (both of which occupy me very much) and cute boys (which occupy me a whole lot more than I'd like them to), so I was thoroughly distracted. XD

We didn't take so long at the mall. We bought cake and I bought a book (vol. 1 of Nodame Cantabile, WHICH I LOVE), then we went onto a two-story thrift store. My aunties, uncles and mother had fun, let me tell you. I, on the other hand, did my otaku thing and went to check out the CDs and the anime goods. Was the place dusty? Oh yes. But interesting.

There was one wall of Jrock/pop CDs and then three of American music artists, which I found rather amusing. I didn't buy anything, but I did look around for an hour or so.

There is only one picture because every time I took out my camera, the clerks gave me funny looks. Heh.

While we were in the thrift store, my uncle (not related to me, but I have to call him that) came over to the DVD sales and pulled out a porno.

Him: LOOK AT THE HORRIBLE GRAMMAR ON THIS THING. *shoves porno in face*
Me: *turns, looks, and twitches* Oh, yeah?
Him: Yeah. Look at this. *flips to the scantily-clad side* 'Your funny smile stays long into years of tomorrow.'
Me: Ah, yeah.
Him: *flips to the nearly-naked side* I can't believe they get away with this shit.
Me: You mean the...

But he chose not to listen after that.

BEPPU

Once we were finished there (meaning, after my tripmates had cleaned out the entire second floor of antique goods) we went to Beppu and to the Jigoku Springs (Hell Hot Springs). I don't remember why they're called that exactly, except maybe for the fact that they are encased in a thick layer of steam and one of them is blue and one of them is red. You're not allowed to swim in them, in fact they are roped off and there is a sign that explicitly states you can't touch or drink the water, but they are very pretty.

There was an indoor garden, too.

Me: *taking pictures of the water lilies* So what if you just, looked into this water, and saw a dead body?
Mom: I'd say hi.
Me: ...ah.

(NO, IT WAS NOT A LEG IN A HOT SPRING. XD It was a hot spring wading-pool type thing.)

(L: white mud. That's all I know, my mom took this picture and I went to buy eggs that tasted like sulfur. They're cooked right in the steam of the blue pool, and they were delicious.)

Next we drove to this little place on the hill, sort of like a cafe, with mountain scenery.

(R: sign explaining the origins of the natural bath salt, which was being harvested right below the cafe.)

(The salt. You could buy some, my dad did when he went a few months ago.)

(The moon and mountains.)

We went to a natural hot spring afterwards (v. relaxing), and then to a electronics store (where I bought the Daite Senorita single :P) and then to a sushi bar. I couldn't take the camera into the onsen (hot spring), and the sushi bar wasn't that interesting, so the photos end here. Which is good, because I was tired of copying and pasting. Mwaha.

Once again, I apologise for the lack of sex shops/museum, since I know we are all pervs. But I didn't see it and my auntie didn't take us there. ~~(I was a bit disappointed, actually.)~~

All photos can be found here.

By the way, silverrangel, THIS ONE'S FOR YOU.

My uncle was looking through the camera, came across this picture, and gave me the weirdest look. Like, how the hell do I know you. XDDDD

ETA: dflksd;lfka;sdl have to buy the kattun calendar before i esplode ;lolz

"omg, lissa, get your mind out of the gutter for a second. SRSLY." - leena

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 12:32:08 GMT

Tomorrow I am going to Beppu. There are hot springs, and cautionary tales of a sex museum and numerous, blatant sex shops. Personally, I find it a little odd that these are the two main 'attractions' (the hot springs I am sure are lovely, but as for the latter...).

AND THERE IS FIC. Nobuta. Nobuta/Akira, Akira/Shuuji (one-sided). You are warned. It is angsty and stream-of-consciousness-y and there is really no plot, as these things go, and little dialogue, which I'm not fond of, and it's vague. As you can see I don't like it so much. It is a product of stress, which may be saying something. (Did I mention Akira's not exactly Akira and it's angsty?) But I thought, well, I looked over it and wintersjuly already knows about it and it's eating at my soul a bit, so why not.

title: fresh sheets
rating: PG
summary: Akira finds alot of things disgusting lately.

He likes to hold her when they're finished, likes to wrap his arms around her butterfly-fragile frame as she perspires on his sheets. Sometimes he doesn't even change the white cotton that they sleep on, just because he wants to remember everything that happened, until he remembers such things are unsanitary. Then he makes Shuuji do it, makes Shuuji touch his bed where Akira and Nobuta have done it and Shuuji doesn't even know.

Shuuji doesn't know because he doesn't ask but Akira has been wondering lately if that means that he does know, that perhaps Shuuji is more of a pervert than he lets on and he enjoys doing such things--but no, that's kind of disgusting. In fact, a lot of things are disgusting lately. He loves Nobuta and wants nothing from her, except what they do in bed so he takes what she gives him (which is not much, and could Shuuji offer more?).

For all this, Akira is rather sick of himself during the night, when he is naked, because he doesn't like himself naked--doesn't like Nobuta naked. He doesn't like those sheets he rolls around in, because Shuuji has touched them and he can't have Shuuji because he is having Nobuta. And isn't that enough? He can't even remember anymore.

This is why he hugs her afterwards, sticky and hot and breathless; this is why he sings to her. Sings her that song, I like where you walk. The sidewalk you walk. The roof you are on. Except the words have been changed so it's, I like the pillow you rest on. I like the window you touch. (But I don't like how you look at me after dark.)

Akira doesn't know how Nobuta feels, though he knows he should--but even if she loves him it won't make a difference. Maybe if he could erase everything that happened before other things happened it would be better, but Akira is not God, Akira is not omniscient. He is in one place at one time, grudgingly accepting each day as it comes, and that is nothing. There's a lover at eleven and someone he loves at six but they aren't the same person, and he isn't two different people.

The clock reads 3 AM and Akira is sighing into his fresh pillow, watching the secondhand tick away, thinking that the clock looks strange; cleaner. Did Shuuji clean it? He is always at home when Shuuji is, but Shuuji likes to wash and wipe alone and Akira lets him have his way because he can't bear to stand in the same room if he's not going to be able to say, change these sheets and I'll have you on them. Because what I have right now, it's not nearly enough, or close to what I want.

(So he stands in the doorway, watches the fresh sheets rid themselves of folds and wrinkles, watches Shuuji pat away the imperfections…)

"I like," Akira whispers into the crook of his arm, "your fingers on my bedspread."

Nobuta puts her hand on his wrist. It is dark, as he likes it to be during these times, but he can still see her ghostly fingertips brushing his skin.

(She knows everything, of course.)

I like, I like that boy who changes my sheets, Akira wants to say, but he has Nobuta whom he loves, who maybe loves him, and he's going to marry her because he has every reason to. And for now Shuuji just tucks his corners in and rearranges the pillows and wipes the clock and says, you are stupid, I will come back next week, with a small grin and a key to the door and hands smelling of laundry detergent.

In fact, all three of them have come to inherit the scent. Akira finds it disgusting.

+

This week has been absolutely crap. There's no other way to put it. I apologise for every comment I haven't replied to and every post I should have said something on but didn't. Hopefully next week will be better. ~~And there are 18 days 'til the Hoshi wo Mezashite single ZOMG CANT WAIT~~

the TBAT (to-be-added-to) post

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 04:10:16 GMT

So that guy who jumped on the subway tracks in NY to save a fallen teenager--Wesley Autrey?--used to work with my dad. On a ship, back when they were in the Navy. And he was like, ZOMG WOW! and I was all, finding old friends on Myspace is nothing, if you can find them on CBS news. ;)