#Aidan and i made playlists and that is literally all i have been listening to

[heyimash06]

An Encouraging Pep Talk

"Please tell me you aren't actually this stupid?" an annoyed voice asked over Ashton's phone.

"I- I mean, maybe, but you don't have to be a dick about it," cie answered, slouching a bit more in his spot in the shitty metal folding chair. He'd been given the chance to buy a real desk chair several times, but never did because it felt like a waste of money. He was functioning fine with just the metal chair. "I- I called you for advice, Piers, not to get insulted for 5 minutes..."

Piers sighed, probably rolling his eyes on the other end. "Yeah, I know, but it's hard to not insult you when you're this dumb... Remind me again what base you two are on?"

They were mildly confused, unsure what he meant by that. "...like first-name basis??"

"No, not like that- Just- have you even kissed? That's first base." Oh, they knew where this was going. Piers was going to call them a loser and laugh at them for being such a failure at relationships, wasn't he?

"Um... no, but we- we've- um-" Ashton struggled to come up with an excuse for why he and Asp had remained platonic, even after both confessing that they were definitely more than platonically interested in each other. He didn't really have one, he was just scared of escalating things too fast or ruining what they already had. After all, how awkward would it be if he started dating his roommate, they had a falling out, and then had to keep living together?

Their friend sighed again. "You're... fucking hopeless, Ash. I hope you realize that." Min was very aware of how hopeless min was, but min didn't need a reminder. "Look, all I'm going to say is that it's a lot easier to bring it up in a conversation than you think it is. Hell- You could just walk up to the guy randomly and tell him you're head over heels and want to kiss his stupid face, and I am pretty sure he'd laugh and take that as a proper confession."

"I- There's no way that would work-"

"Would it work on you?"

"I- touche."

"See? I'm leaving it there since Gold might actually hunt me down if I bungle something for Asp," he joked before adding, "I have to go anyways, I'll talk to ya later when you've totally charmed your way into Mothman's pants and you're a certified chad. Seeya." And with that, he hung up, leaving Ashton to sit in silence, incredibly embarrassed.

Cie sighed, slumping back in cies chair. Piers probably had a point. He'd known Asp for 7, close to 8 years, what's the worst that could happen? Well, Asp could so thoroughly reject him that he had no choice but to pack up his stuff and move back to Texas, but being realistic, nothing too bad. So, what should chi do? Should ey just... get up and tell him? Or should they go out and get something for him first? Flowers would be too cliche... but then what else? Everything Asp really wanted was expensive games online, and as much as Ashton loved him, they also didn't have a great job, so that was also a no-go... Well, ey had the card ey'd been holding onto for a while, but would Asp really appreciate a plain Pokémon card? They supposed it was worth a shot...

Setting his phone on his desk, Ashton stood up and moved towards his shelf, pulling off a beat-up old binder and opening it up on the floor. Flipping through pages and pages of Pokémon cards, they hummed to themself, looking for a specific one. Ey found it after a few minutes, in the middle of the most recent page. Carefully pulling it out, he inspected it again to make sure his dumb ass hadn't managed to damage it before putting the binder back up and rushing out of his room to go find Asp.

He was sitting on the kitchen counter, eating Goldfish with Mitzi. The little Ragdoll kitten was absolutely vibing, happily crunching on whatever goldfish pieces Asp set out for her on the counter.

Once more, Ashton nearly hit his head into the cabinets on the way in, but he got there unscathed. Carefully hiding the card in his pocket, Ashton moved a bit closer, smiling nervously. "Hey, Mothie, I have... a thing for you!"

Looking up from the cat in his lap, Asp asked, "ooh, what kind of thing?" It was semi-common for both of them to find random objects and gift them to each other, so Ashton still had a chance to chicken out, if he needed it.

"A Pokémon card-" he realized how stupid it sounded right after it left his mouth "-but it- it's a Pokémon I think you'd- you'd like... or something- It- it reminds me of you, y'know?" they admitted, pulling the card out of their pocket. Cie held it out for cies roommate to see. It was just a plain Frosmoth card with nothing special going on, but cie hoped the thought behind it would be at least okay. He hadn't been lucky enough to get a rarer card, but even if he had, he wasn't sure if he wanted to give it away so easily.

Asp unfolded his legs, sadly forcing Mitzi to stand up and hop down, and slid off the counter, reaching up to take the card. "Oh, thank you... is- is it because fluffy white moth-"

"Yes, it is 100% because fluffy white moth-"

Despite the slightly lazy and stupid reasoning behind the gift, Asp smiled up at em. That made Ashton smile too, followed shortly by a rosy pink color across his nose and cheeks. They stood there for a second, staring at each other before Ashton remembered why he'd rushed out there.

"Um- I- I meant to ask you some-something... can- can I do that-? Sorry-" he asked. Yes, of course, remind him of your biggest flaw while in the process of asking him out, definitely won't go horribly.

Asp leaned back on the counter, holding the card still. "Yeah, go ahead."

Ashton nodded and ran a hand through his hair before starting to pinch at his neck. "Uh- O-okay, so, uh- I- I have no idea how to properly ask this, but um- do- do you maybe... want to.. be, like, more... than just best friends? As in, like... b-boyfriends or something-?" cie asked nervously, starting to trail off around halfway through. Asp looked up, surprised. He opened his mouth to say something when Ashton looked to the side and started rambling again. "I- it's okay if you don't, obviously, I- I just reckoned I'd ask since- since we uh- since the notebook thing, but, like, really, you- you don't have to-"

Ey were cut off by another pair of lips coming into contact with eir own. They'd been so busy overthinking the whole deal and expecting rejection that they didn't feel Asp's hand reaching up to pull them down for a kiss. Cie froze up slightly, surprised by the sudden action before practically melting. Mins arms slowly moved up and around Aspen's neck, pulling him closer in the process. Little bursts of excitement and happiness popped in cies chest and head, making the whole thing feel a bit like a dream. Chi stood up on chis tippy toes and leaned forward, making the two of them stumble slightly.

Thanks to a pesky need for oxygen, the two of them had to break apart after a short bit, but Ashton's head was still buzzing happily, making it feel like everything was shaky. Or maybe they were just shaking. It felt a little silly to be a grown man in his twenties, freaking out over his first kiss, but Ashton had also missed the dating and/or kissing part of high school due to mental health, making this a very monumental occasion.

After standing there, slightly stunned and smiling like a fucking idiot, Ashton asked, “s-so is that like… a yes, or-?” Maybe that was a little stupid to ask, but he needed to be sure before he made any labels in his head! It’d suck if cie changed the way cie thought about cies roommate and then turned out to be wrong.

Asp laughed and leaned his head on mins shoulder. “I-it is a yes… god can you imagine how awkward it would be if it wasn’t? Imagine just kissing your roommate and then pretending nothing happened… I’d die.”

“Same,” chi said before wrapping chis arms tighter around Asp and giggling like a teenage girl. “I’m sorry- I- I’m just… r-really happy… or- or something- I’m glad the whole… love thing is at least kind of mutual… I’m gonna be honest, I- I’ve like highkey been kind of pining since like- I- I don’t know, like 10th grade? A- a while-... a-and I'm sorry I'm so awkward about everything..."

Aspen stood on his tippy toes to kiss Ashton on the forehead. "It's alright... I'm pretty awkward too. It's kind of why we get along," he assured. He did have a point. The two of them met on a game all those years ago and bonded over similar struggles and experiences. Eventually, that grew into... what they had now. And that was... special. At least Ashton thought it was, which had to count for something. Even if it wasn't that special, it felt special and that's what really mattered. And if it ever stopped feeling that way... well, that was that.

All that mattered now, though, was that it was mutual and they were able to do things like hug or kiss without it being weird. Ashton gave Asp one last little squeeze before releasing him and stepping back a bit. "Well uh... that's all I really came in here to do... y-you can go back to... whatever you were doing now... sorry-"

He looked around the kitchen for a moment before saying, "Mitzi is gone, so I'm not really doing anything now- And don't- don't apologize, you didn't do anything wrong... if- if you weren't doing anything either, do you want to, like, play some Wii Party or something-?"

"What a romantic first date... but yes, 100%-"

Word Count: 1587

#oc #original characters #fluff #writing #gay #my writing #oc x oc ship #oc x oc #mlm #i have been brainrotting over these two idiots all day at school #Aidan and i made playlists and that is literally all i have been listening to #which means these two canonically sent eachother love songs and still ended up like this /hj

[dustedmagazine]

Broken bodies all the time: Ian Mathers’ year in review

Photo by Paul Husband

Since, let’s say, September, I’ve seen an increasing number of comments from people amazed at just how bloody long 2018 has been, pointing out that events that seem much further back (tide pods! an Olympics! that one political thing in the US, you know, the thing that feels like it was a decade ago!) actually happened this year. I’m no more immune to that kind of horrified, exhilarated realization than any of my friends and loved ones, but I also have a personal one that I can’t believe had fallen so far off my radar that I wasn’t originally conscious of it when I was trying to sum up my year for Dusted.

This past January I went and had surgery to remove a “grapefruit-sized” chondrosarcoma and a section of the three ribs on my left side where it had grown. Other than a noticeable lump in my chest there’d been no other symptoms, one surgery (and about 6 weeks off of work, with pay thankfully) dealt with it cleanly, at least according to the follow-up scans I’ve had and will have twice-yearly until 2022 or so. If you have to get surgery-necessitating cancer, basically, mine was just about the best-case scenario you could hope for (especially here in Canada, where I didn’t have to worry about bankruptcy as a result of medical costs). I don’t want to, and haven’t, made this entire essay about My Cancer Experience (in no small part both because I did have it relatively easy enough that I routinely feel guilty expecting any sort of accommodation for it, even when I was still very much knocked out by the surgery I’d had, and because when everyone wants to know about it you quickly realize it’s kind of boring to talk about), but it does strike that it’d be almost disingenuous to talk about my experience of 2018 without mentioning it. I did allude to it in passing in my 2017 essay here (as well as my wife’s diagnosis of a chronic autoimmune illness, something that honestly effects our day to day lives a lot more), but that was pre-surgery so I was too superstitious to give it a name in such a public forum. Now, when people who know me mention it, I almost have to remind myself that the scariest medical experience of my life to date happened not that long ago.  

I’ve been thinking about it a bit more since reading on Bandcamp Daily that, while Low didn’t really make this part of the narrative around Double Negative when it was being released, about eight months of that album’s gestation happened after Alan Sparhawk had a ski injury involving broken ribs and punctured lungs, and that the recovery process was arduous and involved a lot of prolonged pain. And that got me thinking about context. There are positive and welcomed uses of context, of course; personally, to take a few examples from this year, I think both Leverage Models’ Whites and Zeal & Ardor’s Stranger Fruit are great albums that only gain from some of the context around their creations. But, crucially, it seems the creators involved agree with me, which is why that context is presented up-front in the material around those albums. It’s different when it’s something that, while you might acknowledge its real effects (as Alan does above), you suspect people will blow out of proportion to make the only important fact surrounding what you’ve made. It got me thinking about my own resistance to people - people who love and care about me! - ascribing aspects of my behaviour or actions to the cancer and/or the surgery (and it definitely did have some effects… to take a pretty surface-level one I listened to a lot more records in 2018 than I did in 2017, but didn’t write quite as much). It got me thinking about David Bowie not wanting his last record to be received, at least initially, as his last record.  

And while Alan doesn’t make a big deal of it in that piece, I can see why he might want people to absorb the startling, abrasively gorgeous Double Negative (along with Whites, which I could describe in very similar terms, my favourite/most important record of 2018) on its own terms rather than our narrative-seeking minds possibly turning it into being just ‘about’ his injury (and, not incidentally, wiping out the contributions of the others who worked on the album). Those listeners who did find themselves responding to the record probably wouldn’t be changed that much by the extra information, but goodness knows that every piece of art that gets released has to deal with some dumb, reductive takes, and how would it feel to have those responses taking on (and inflating the importance of) something so personal and literally painful?  

2018 also potentially sees a bigger and less personal loss of context in the music/music criticism world, though. As much as I will maintain all day every day that the more consensus you get when it comes to things like records of the year the more boring you intrinsically have to get, I still felt an absence knowing that the Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll was going to vanish with the Voice itself. The interesting thing about every year’s poll was almost never the top ten most acclaimed albums and singles (not necessarily a shot at the quality of that music, just that we’d all been talking about them all year; inevitably, they were all very known quantities), it was seeing what had placed in the lower reaches of the standings, digging around in the votes of friends and colleagues, tracing odd connections and seeing how your own lesser-known favourites were regarded, if at all, by the larger group. And even more than that, I’d argue, what was fascinating and valuable about Pazz & Jop was the way it functioned as a kind of historical record, so that you could look back at a year from decades past and see, not what were the best or even longest-lasting records from that year but what the people who were engaged in listening to and thinking and writing about music thought was important and engaging. I say “potentially,” though, because I had just enough time to realize I was mourning an institution I’d kind of taken for granted (and to be fair, again, each year’s findings at the top seem kind of ploddingly obvious at the time) when I got a new ballot. It looks like some sort of continuation is happening, although only time will tell if this is a genuine resurrection or a last gasp.  

Either way, I haven’t yet tried to narrow things down to lists of 10 (and given that there’s still over 10 hours of music left in my playlist of 2018 releases I haven’t gotten to yet), so here is 25 of the records I’ll be thinking about as I try to figure that ballot out, strictly in order of when I added them to my list, with links to the ones I’ve written about on Dusted. (I didn’t have as much time to go over reissues as I’d like, but probably my favourite was the gorgeous one of the overlooked late Bark Psychosis album ///Codename: Dustsucker, which I reviewed here.) 

Xylouris White - Mother

Mesarthim - The Density Parameter

V/A - Black Panther: The Album

Well Yells - Skunk

Tangents - New Bodies

Tracyanne & Danny - s/t

Tove Styrke - Sway

Wand - Perfume

The Armed - Only Love

Low - Double Negative

Let’s Eat Grandma - I’m All Ears

Obnox - Templo Del Sonido

Nadja - Sonnborner

Pusha T - DAYTONA

No Age - Snares Like a Haircut

Zeal & Ardor - Stranger Fruit

Chelsea Jade - Personal Best

Leverage Models - Whites

Aidan Baker - Deer Park

Robyn - Honey

Efrim Menuck - Pissing Stars

U.S. Girls - In a Poem Unlimited

Andrew Bayer - In My Last Life

Abul Mogard - Above All Dreams

DenMother - Past Life

And I can’t manage one of these every year, but this was an awfully good year for the EP, so here’s a top five: 

EMA - Outtakes From Exile EP

Underworld & Iggy Pop - Teatime Dub Encounters EP

IN / VIA - Treading Water EP

Protomartyr - Consolation EP

Hatchie - Sugar & Spice EP

#dusted magazine #yearend 2018 #ian mathers #low #leverage models #david bowie #zeal and ardor #pazz and jop #context #personal