#I started learning russian today as a coping mechanism

[lamponellatempesta]

Happy Birthday Yuriy!

08.02.2022, today, is the birthday of our favorite Russian Red Yuriy Ivanov! (or as called by me, red beet seller) and since I can't draw and my cat draws better than me, I decided to share some random headcanons so let’s start!

P.s Sorry for the length but unfortunately the synthesis is not among my gifts, I hope you will appreciate anyway🌠

P.p.s Sorry for my English dudes

I've always imagined Yuriy was dyslexic and this led him to have enormous difficulties with literary things, but despite this he always had a great desire to read and learn. Over the years he has always felt a big frustration about it and was afraid to talk about it with his own teammates, for fear of not being understood, even if they had already noticed for a long time. Once he received the diagnosis of dyslexia, a weight rose from his stomach, and slowly allowed his companions to help him: Kai helped him with reading the most complex novels and newspapers, Ivan with the instructions of things to build or with the plot moments of the video games, Sergei helped him with the shopping by reading him the list of things to take and the labels of the packages and Boris, well, he’s his assistant driver assigned to reading signs and directions, and although he occasionally enjoys sending him in the wrong direction just to drive Yuriy crazy, he turned out to be a really good navigator.

Once he managed to live with his ghosts and his past, he managed to finish his studies and enroll in university, at the faculty of astrophysics, for wanting to combine his passion for the stars and space and the unknown with his great gifts for science that he discovered to have and cultivated for years, thanks to the beyblade too (he even brought his astrophysics books on trips, or listens podcasts about it, whatever, little nerd).

One of the coping mechanisms that worked best with him was dancing, discovered it by chance, at a time of breakdown, alone in his room, when he was undecided whether to sink into a dark corner or try to vent in some way, he opted for the second option. He put his headphones in his ears and the first song that went off was a classical song, all he had to do was to close his eyes and the music dragged him along, his body moved on its own, and at that moment he also felt his pain slipping away from him like water washing away black ink. From that moment on, he started watching many videos about it and expanding his musical tastes and dancing more and more. He also managed to come out on his demi-sexuality dancing a choreography with the colours of the flag, they all cried when it happened. 

He started working in a nature reserve to stay as close to nature as possible and with the simplest part of himself. If he wants to be alone or disappear for a while, this is probably one of those places where you can definitely find him beyond the dance room or the university’s astrophysics labs.

He has a strong empathy with children, usually it is he who takes care of bringing the visiting classes around the reserve and show them how beautiful nature and the animals that inhabit it are. He really loves curiosity and the shine in their eyes when he explains things to them or helps them to climb on the rocks to better see the landscapes or some birds, or simply when they ask him to know even more about other animals or some flowers. It makes him feel special and loved to be seen as a reference for those little folks, and it also makes him come back a little child himself, allowing him to experience those emotions and carelessness that were denied him when the little one was him. 

To cut through the past, and also because he was always mistaken for a 17-year-old, he literally cut off his hair short and let his beard grow. It was Kai who took him to the hairdresser when he decided to do it and to avoid having second thoughts. Boris flipped out of the chair when he first saw him with short hair and Sergei and Ivan were stuck for five good minutes, but when everyone saw when Yuriy’s self-esteem increased due to that change, they felt proud of their brother and captain.

#yuriy ivanov #happy birthday red beet seller! #beyblade headcanons #i really like writing things about him #maybe because we are similar i don't know #and his birthday has come #so i say why not #headcanons for him! #happy birthday again Yuriy! #we love you

[feminist-propaganda]

Single Mothers Will Probably Cry During Every Episode Of Queen’s Gambit - Episode 4

In the past three days we’ve reviewed the three lessons from Beth’s mother. The first lesson was for Beth to find a field where she could become a worldwide expert in. The second lesson was to use dissociation as a coping mechanism when the going gets tough. The third lesson was to know the enemy within yourself.

The series contains 7 episodes; and the fourth episode is therefore named “Middle Game”, which according to Wikipedia:

"is the portion of the game in between the opening and the endgame, though there is no clear line between the opening and middlegame, and between the middlegame and endgame. The middle game begins when both players have completed the development of all or most of their pieces and the king has been brought to relative safety. However, at master level, the opening analysis may go well into the middlegame.”

Lesson 4 : Don’t Block Me Out

The episode starts on the university campus where we see a young Beth learning Russian. We learned in the previous episode that she was planning to learn Russian in order to prepare for International Tournaments where she would be playing Soviet players: the best in the world. 

The words she repeats after the professor are “I love”, “You love” and “We love”. As she repeats these words, her gaze wanders around the classroom and lands on a blonde haired student, who stares right back at her. At the end of the class, he meets her outside the building and asks her if she wants to come over to his place for a kick back. She accepts.

It is the 60s, and you can tell. The student house is decorated with Middle Eastern, maybe Indian tapestries. The students smoke weed and listen to tantric music. Beth makes a call to Alma to let her know she won’t be coming home. Soon, she is seen having mediocre sex with the blonde college student. Beth seems completely dissociated with the entire situation.

Her conversation with the blond man is somewhat revealing however. He asks her if she’s the chess player. She says yes. She asks if he plays. “No, too cerebral. I’ve played a lot of Monopoly though”. Beth answers: “Never played that game”, and the blonde responds “Don’t, it makes you a slave to capitalism. I still dream about making money though”. 

Beth frowns “Why are you taking Russian classes if you’re a slave to capitalism?” and the blonde : “Mmm. I wanna read Dostoevsky in the original”.

The next day, for the first time ever, we see Beth get completely hammered. When she wakes up, everyone is gone. She is alone in the apartment. She finds a note on the fridge, with a joint taped to it. It says the gang has rode off to Cincinnati to catch a movie and she can stay all she wants.

She starts by cleaning up the apartment and we are reminded of Alma in Episode 2. She pushes the vaccuum cleaner with a cigarette in her hand, dusts the apartment as she empties the wine bottles. She calls Alma again, tells her she won’t be coming home tonight either. 

Then, we see Beth graduate. Alma whistles and screams with pride as Beth collects her degree. They drink celibratory champagne and Alma gifts Beth a beautiful watch which is engraved “LOVE FROM MOTHER”.

They fly off to Mexico, where for the first time Bet will be playing the infamous Soviet players.

Mexico plays an important character in this mini series because it is a part of the third world.

The term Third World was born during the Cold War. The “First World” was any country that was affiliated with N.A.T.O. The “Second World” were countries in the Soviet Union or under Soviet influence. Anything else was called the Third World according to this model.

Many people today who don’t know the origin of this term might think the term Third World is derogative, it isn’t. It just means a country that refused to fall into the Cold war dynamics. 

When you take a look back at the series, you see that it shows us the journey of a small girl from Kentucky (poorest state in the U.S.A), to Moscow. One could argue that the Soviet Union is a much better environment for Beth. 

The Soviet Union is the place where International Women’s day was proclaimed a National holiday as early as 1917! Women in science thrived in the Soviet Union, one article by the Smithsonian magazine even argues that the Soviet Union was better at training women in Science than the U.S.A does today.

So if the series is indeed about a young woman’s journey from a sexist, capitalist society (The U.S.A) to an equalitarian republic (the U.S.S.R), it seems natural that right in the middle of this journey, Beth needs to travel through some neutral territory, some sort of purgatory, a.k.a. Mexico a.k.a the Third World.

On the plane to Mexico, Alma informs Beth that she will be meeting with a man at the airport. An old pen pal whom she’s always kept in touch with. His name is Manuel.

In the car driving from the airport to the hotel, Beth witnesses as Manuel puts on his seductive act to impress Alma. He comes up with platitudes about the history of Mexico City, and Alma makes exagerated onomatopeas. This whole time, in the back, Beth rolls her eyes.

We are reminded of the first scene, and her attitude towards the blonde college student. She is mostly unimpressed, dissociated, almost bored. It’s as if Beth knows about men and their deceptive ways. It’s strange because she’s just a teenager but she seems painfully aware of the realities of womanhood.

Throughout the episode, we see Beth studying for her games with the Soviets while Alma goes on dates with Manuel around the city. This isn’t the same Alma we’ve gotten used to in Episodes 2 and 3. She doesn’t seem to be present for Alma, like she was in Las Vegas. She seems completely absorbed in this intense romance. Alma even almost calls Beth frigid : “You’ve had all of your meals in your room!” “You’re buried in your books!”.

She also offers some advice. She seems to say that Beth’s forte is her intuition. She thinks Beth should relax a bit. She ends up convincing Beth that she should go for a walk. She goes to the zoo where she sees the Soviet player she fears, Borgov, with his family. They exchange meaningful looks.

For the first time, she sees the Soviets. And the view she has seems to be a “mise en abime” of the concept of Freedom. Indeed, Borgov is with his family, and they gaze at the chimpanzees in the zoo. Allow me to be more accurate. Borgov’s wife talks to her son and shows him the chimpanzees. Borgov is standing behind them. Silent. And behind him, there are the two KGB agents that look at him. So there are 5 planes : the chimpanzees, Borgov’s wife and child, Borgov himself, the KGB agents and then finally Beth.

Let’s analyze this scene shall we. We saw in episodes 1, 2 and 3 that the American men Beth met seemed to hate wedlock, and looked for opportunities to exit it as soon as possible. Mr Wheatley was of course the prime example of this. Here, we see a man, of about Mr Wheatley’s age, who stands near his wife, and his offspring. He isn’t running away from them. He doesn’t seem to detest them. The KGB agents are here to watch over him, but there is no sign that he wants to exit the U.S.S.R. Why would he? He gets paid to play chess, he is a national hero. He seems relaxed, at ease. He isn’t dissociated, he isn’t evil to his wife. What Beth sees is that maybe, this Russian archetype of a man is more attractive to her than the American version (Mr Wheatley detested her and Alma) or even the Mexican version (Manuel seems to be a phony latin lover at best).

This scene happens right at the middle of the episode, which is right at the middle of the series. It reminds me of Kant’s meditations on Freedom.

Kant says that Freedom isn’t the absence of constraint, it is the choice of your own constraints. If we apply this reasoning to lifelong partnerships, which are by definition filled with constraints, than Freedom wouldn’t be the absence of such a partnership but rather the concious choice of taking part in a partnership and accepting the constraints that come along with it. In this scene at the zoo, who is free? According to Kant’s theory: Beth is certainly not free. She binge drinked a bunch of beers in the park and is now completely hammered. She is a slave to the substances she abuses. The chimpanzee isn’t free, he is in a cage but also he can’t reason, so he can’t choose his constraints, like a human can. Are the Soviets free? Did Borgov choose his constraints? Is it a choice for him, to be here in Mexico City, to play chess, to be watched by KGB agents? To be married to his wife? To spend time with his family at the zoo? He has constraints, yes, but he doesn’t seem to be unhappy. He isn’t acting compulsively like Beth. He seems to be in control of his destiny. He probably didn’t have to bring his wife and kid along with him to Mexico. He could’ve come alone. But he took them. And he probably didn’t have to come to the Zoo with them. But he did. And he seems present. Although he is calm and collected, he is present. So it appears that Borgov is free. Yes he has constraints (the KGB watching over him, a family life) but he’s chosen them and this makes him free.

Shortly after Beth sees Borgov at the zoo with his family, she meets Alma who informs her that Manuel, much like Mr Wheatley, has disapeared on a “business trip” to Oaxaca. Alma says “I’ve never been to Oaxaca, but I imagine it resembles Denver”. What she means is she understands that these men (Mr Wheatley and Manuel)  are too coward to tell her the truth (they don’t want to be with her) and they use their professional activites (the infamous business trip) as an excuse to disapear.

We circle back to March the 8, which was originally proclaimed the International day for Working Women in the U.S.S.R. See, Women’s labour outside of the house is essential to Women’s emancipation, because as long as Women don’t make their own money, their interactions with Men will be doomed to a foregone conclusion. Men get bored. Men use their professional activities as an excuse to disapear and as a reason to be unpleasant, even sometimes authoritarian or abusive towards Women.

Remember Alice’s first lesson: master a technology, find your field of expertise, become a professional. 

The relationship between Borgov and his wife seems so much more tranquil than the passionate, fake, doomed romances from the First World and the Third.

Beth’s only other interaction with Borgov before playing him on Table 1 is in the elevator. He is talking to his advisors, they tell him “In Moscow she’ll be jet lagged” “Her game is only attack” and other statements about Beth’s weaknesses. But Borgov says “She’s an orphan. She’s like us. Losing isn’t an option for her. Otherwise what would her life be?” then he looks back at her.

Before playing him, she asks her friend “Will you save a seat for my mother?”. But Alma never shows up. 

Borgov plays White, and choses an opening which he knows Beth will respond to with the Sicilian defense. Then he chooses to play it closed. He keeps his cool, shows no weakness and plays textbook chess. No emotion. As he stays steady, Beth glances at the empty chair where Alma is not sitting, she didn’t show up. And this destabilizes her. She gets more and more emotional and loses.

When she comes back to the hotel room she finds Alma has died. Beth organizes the funeral, calls Mr Wheatley and gets in touch with his lawyer. 

So what was the lesson from Alice?

All through the episode, Alice is completely absent. Beth returns to her childhood memories, but it’s only with the chess teacher in the orphanage’s basement, and he tells her she’s angry. He tells her her gift will come at a price.

I spoke about Dissociation in Episode 2, but Episode 4 isn’t about that. It’s about Denial, which is a stage in the process of grief. 

The last scene from Episode 4, we see Beth in the airplane, drinking a Martini and pretending to toast Alma’s ghost. She is in Denial of Alma’s death. During the episode, she is also in Denial of her own status as an Orphan. Instead of owning her orphanhood, she denies it. After Borgov calls her an orphan in the elevator, she asks for Alma to be seated at the match. She wants to show Borgov she isn’t an orphan, that someone came to pick her up at the orphanage and adopt her. It’s true, Alma adopted her. But that doesn’t undo the past. That doesn’t mean that Alice didn’t run the car into a truck and kill herself. And told Beth to close her eyes.

Dissociation was useful to Beth; it helped her beat Beltik and cope with Mr Wheatley’s disapearance. But Denial pushes her to drink, makes her angry and more importantly : stands in the way of her winning against the Soviets.

In 1976,  Bruno Bettelheim published The Uses of Enchantment:  The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. In this book he analyzes fairy tales and their symbolic meanings. Towards the end, he explains that for young women, the last step before integrating their personalities and becoming succesful, balanced adults is to identify with their mothers. As long as Beth blocks out Alice, she can’t win. 

It’s difficult for young women to identify with their mothers when they’re single moms. Single motherhood is the pentacle of failure, it is the worst status a woman can have, worst than being a spinster. So for a young woman raised by a single mother it can be incredibly difficult to integrate their personalites and become balanced adults, because they are stuck in the anger and shame and other negative emotions they harbour towards their mothers.

However difficult it may be, Beth has to find a way to identify with her mother, to see herself in her.

#feminism #the queen's gambit #single mom

[writing-radionoises]

remember my name

ship: little bit of fyodazai, mostly ango & dazai

genre: hurt/comfort

prompt: post fyodor’s suicide, dazai contemplates life without him

notes: sequel to disappear, obviously tw for suicide and implied sexual content.  song is remember by name by mitski

The cafe is mostly empty, likely because it's late and just about closing time.

The sun is setting against the horizon, and Dazai watches as he idly stirs his tea.

The cafe radio is playing some sort of English song Dazai can barely make out. He had asked if they would mix up the stations now and then, to hear more foreign music.

"I gave too much of my heart tonight.

Can you come to where I'm staying,

And make some extra love?

That I can save til tomorrow's show."

Dazai hums along with it, propping his head up with his fist.

It's so hard to live now, knowing that Fyodor is gone.

Dazai can't pinpoint why he misses the bastard, he's had hundreds of exes and so many people who mistreated and used him.

Yet, Fyodor stayed in his mind.

Fyodor was unique. In the end, that's why Dazai thought about him so much.

He was different from any other person he met. He was determined to get his way, to become great, and killed anything that stood in his way. He was a genius who learned whole languages within a couple of months, who mastered the art of hacking and manipulation. Fyodor had read twice as much as Dazai had in his life at the age of 15.

He was talented in so many ways, though also, he was poisoned with traumas and perhaps even a hero complex.

And most importantly, he threw his own life away.

That's what haunts Dazai the most. When he closes his eyes, he can see the empty rooftop again, Fyodor's last words forever ring in his mind.

Dazai was well versed in suicidal thoughts, and never once saw Fyodor to be plagued by them until that day.

And there wasn't anything Dazai could do to cure them at that point. It was a fatal condition.

Somehow, it has to be Dazai's fault.

"Dazai," rang a familiar voice from behind him, "You've been staring for a while. Are you alright?"

Dazai's skin crawls from the touch on his shoulder as he looks back to see the familiar face of Ango Sakaguchi.

Ango has been like Dazai's emotional support friend for what seemed like decades, the little conversations they held were always about Dazai. Ango hated talking about himself, claimed he was boring and unplagued by most of any trouble.

"Just thinking," Dazai replied.

"About what?" Asked the brunette, sitting beside Dazai at the window.

"Dostoyevsky," he answered simply, "... God, it feels weird to call him that. He always insisted I call him Fyodor, saying that 'Russian last names are hard on the Japanese tongue,' or whatever. I think he just hated hearing me mispronounce it…"

"You two used to be friends, yes?"

"Something like that," Dazai nodded along, "We used to date like ages ago, it was only for a couple of months and it… wasn't an amazing experience, but it worked out for what I needed…"

"You'll have to elaborate more, Dazai," Ango replied, brows furrowed in confusion, "When was this?"

"After Odasaku died, and after you abandoned me. I left the mafia and realized that I… didn't have any friends. I didn't even know how to make friends, and developed a chronic case of loneliness," the bandaged man continued, "It's not good when you have suicide on your mind 24/7, but I was determined to stay alive. Long story short, I hooked up with a bunch of random guys, most of which I never really knew. Bartender called me the Lord Of One Night Stands, I'd let people take me home to try and forget about my loneliness. Fyodor was my first real relationship after all that, we met in a coffee shop. He cracked a joke or two, he was really cute, and I needed another person to fuck me so I wouldn't go home and hang myself that night. It worked out."

"I thought you said it wasn't that great of a relationship earlier," Ango said.

"It wasn't," Dazai said with a sigh, "He was a sociopath who didn't really know how to interact with people. I was one of his first real friends and he used me to learn about human interaction. Though, I think the worst part was when he actually called me out on my terrible coping mechanism. He was confused why I was so offended by him using me when I was using him in return. I left him after he said that, but I've been thinking about it ever since. I use just about everyone around me for my own personal gain, and sometimes I do it without realizing. I still don't know if Fyodor ever saw me as a romantic partner, or if he was just mirroring my feelings because it was what I wanted to hear."

"You wanted someone to care about you, regardless of how temporary or fake it was," Ango simplified, and Dazai nodded, "So, why are you thinking about him tonight?"

Dazai falls silent, drumming his fingers against the counter.

The music continued to play in the background.

"'Cause I need somebody to remember my name.

After all that I can do for them is done.

I need someone to remember me."

"... He knew me at what I would say was the shittiest part of my life," Dazai said eventually, continuing to tap his fingers, "I don't care how fake it was, but he made me feel cared about. I was nineteen at the time, the love of my life died in my arms, and I had years of unprocessed childhood trauma, I was a fucking unattended oil fire. He… he couldn't put the fire out, but he at least tried. It meant a lot to me, and now I can't seem to process him being gone…"

Ango gave a simple hum as Dazai laid him head against the counter with a sigh.

"I'm starting to think everyone I care about just dies in the end. This entire Decay Of Angels thing was my fault, if I had just tried to tame the rage in Fyodor back then, all of this could've been avoided. He could be still alive today."

Ango places a comforting hand in Dazai's shoulder, unsure of what to say as Dazai closes his eyes.

The empty rooftop stands before him, with the sun setting in the background.

He knows there was no avoiding this. Nothing he could've done would've tamed Fyodor.

The Russian had said it himself, he was born to be a villain. "Destined to be a thorn in God's side," or something like that.

And even though Dazai has grown so much past the crutch that Fyodor once was to him, it feels terrible for him to be ripped away so soon.

Another sigh escapes Dazai.

"He asked me to remember him. And maybe it's selfish to say this, but now that he's gone… Who's going to remember me?" Dazai says, "Not as the agency member or the mentally ill mafia executive, but as the nineteen year old with more baggage than he can carry, and a desperate need for love?"

Ango doesn't respond, because really, there isn't an answer.

Dazai knew that.

#bsd #bsd dazai #bsd dostoevsky #bungou stray dogs #bungo stray dogs #bsd osamu #bsd osamu dazai #bsd fyodor #bsd fyodazai #bsd fyodor dostoyevsky #bsd ango #bsd sakaguchi ango

[unsettlingstories]

Updated index of all stories. May 16, 2018.

Transfigurations: A small, self-published collection of my favorite short stories from 2015. Individual Stories

3 Signs You May Be An Introvert and How to Cope: Some great tips! 30 years ago today, my neighbor’s son disappeared: They miss him. A Case of Hives: My son isn’t feeling too well… A Cure for Writer’s Block: How to find inspiration when it’s just not there. A Curious Dog: My dog won’t stop pawing at a wall in the basement. A Gifted Chef: My friend was one of the greats. I miss him. A Life Worth Living: Big changes lead to bigger results. A Most Welcome Visitor: He’d come to me in the middle of the night. A Pathetic Wretch: His neighbor just won’t stop crying. An Artist’s Canvas: The beauty of symmetry. A Questionable Glory Hole: A young man’s first sexual experience. A Warning To Women With IUDs: Be careful whatcha put up ya. Adrenochrome: The horrible, impossible truth. All Horror Stories About Dolls Are Fake: My daughter was bullied mercilessly. Allison’s Loss: My daughter is devastated by the death of her friend. Alternative Medicine: A wife treats her husband with an old remedy. All Thumbs: My embarrassing habit. A Message in a Bottle: I’m suddenly filled with dread. A Very Bad Place to Hide: Maybe even the worst. Amy’s Wish: Blow away the eyelash and make a wish! An Unlucky Samaritan: Think twice before stopping to help. Are My Twins Spending Too Much Time Together?: For woke mommies only. Assisted Suicide: He begged me to help him die. Attempts to Repair the Irreparable: How do you move on? Bad Sex: Has this ever happened to you and your partner? Bags: A hunting trip goes very, very wrong. Beach Bodies: What’s that out in the water? A whale? Ben’s Fear: He just hated seaweed. Bitcoin Mining and the Death of the Universe: I think I fucked something up. Bits and Pieces: Chunks and portions. Bitumen: A man who loves dinosaurs. Black Balloons: My little daughter saw shapes in the sky. Bluebirds: Possibly the most reprehensible thing I’ve ever written. Bluefin: Use caution when poaching an endangered species. Body Cast: The worst thing that can happen when you’re immobilized. Body Hair Removal: I learned a valuable lesson. Bridgeport Power Plant: There’s something living there. Bubbles: Strange happenings in an emergency room. Butt Stuff: The activity - not the other thing. Caroline’s New Teeth: The Tooth Fairy’s best customer. Caviar: Only the best for discerning palates. Centipedes: There’s some big ones out there, you know. Charles Robert Olevsky: Ever Google yourself? Chopped!: An unaired episode of the Food Network show. Christmas Morning With Danny and His New Puppy: Danny gets a puppy. Comfort Food: Anything to help fill that void. Coping Mechanisms: Life after losing a husband and a daughter. Cracks in the Foundation: A relationship on the edge. Dawn: I hurt my sister so badly. I’ll never forgive myself. Daycare Massacre: A terrible incident before a hurricane. Death Looking into the Window of One Dying: His final days. Dede Elgy: This monster story will make you feel dirty. Very dirty. Deniehyfield, Australia is Being Dismantled: My town is disappearing. Dermatographia: Words on my skin. Devil’s Hole: The geological anomaly, not the…you know. Dial Tone: What’s going on with my phone? Diary of a Woman in New Hampshire: Found a diary. Wtf. Dilation and Evacuation: A friend in need is a friend indeed. Division: Nothing is right. Double Dare: The long-lost episode never seen in the US. Dumbwaiter: A family learns something about their house. Elective Surgery: I just want him to be happy. Elf on the Shelf: He’s watching. Endless Chirping: Ever get a cricket in your room? Escaphism: The journey of one man, his love, and The Verdant World. Ethan’s Halloween Mask: Not all friendships are positive. ExpressionCaptioner.com: This website is seriously weird. Fallenfield Mountain: A geological survey gone wrong. Very wrong. Family Tree: A unique family tradition is revealed. Farm to Table: Fucking hipsters. Fertility Treatments: Some people are desperate to have a baby. Fireflies: You would not believe your eyes. For Lena and Clair: Trapped after an earthquake. Found the Bees: Well, that solves that mystery. Gratification Through Annihilation: Suffer the little children. Great Potential: A lady who loves children. He Went Ahead: My friends and I were into urban exploration. Heather’s Phases: My wife always had body-image issues. House Sounds: What do we keep hearing? I Dream of Names and Cancer: My eternal nightmare. I Pressed My Hands Against My Eyes: And only then could I truly see. I Shouldn’t Have Broken Into My Neighbor’s Garage: I’ll never unsee it. If Anyone Asks: An old farmer notices something about his scarecrow. I’ll Never Wear a Condom Again: No way, no how. Instantiations: An AI gets powerful and utilitarianism rears its head. In Praise of Our God: A helpful neighbor. It’s Hard to Clean Blood Out of a Fur Suit: Right? Jerry’s Mouth: Maybe next time he’ll think before he cheats. Jill-o-Lanterns: The murders are all connected. Jim Jameson’s Pumpkins: A dead farmer’s secrets. Know it All: See it all, feel it all, know it all. Last Weekend: Hazmat suits, horror, and a mystery. Licks From a Bear: Skull + electric drill = story. Lippy: I’ve always been self conscious about the size of my labia. Little Cows: Meet the milkmaid. Long Fingers: I can feel them. Making Faces: Strange prints on the windows… Making Their Dad Proud: A family that plays together… Malcolm: You know those floaty things in your eyes? Maria’s Extra-Credit Assignment: Gotta get a good grade. Medical Issue: What’s the stuff I found on a rock? Memoir of a Cam Girl: She is being controlled. Missing Mousetraps: My neighbors had an infestation. Moaning Lollipops: Why do they make that sound in my mouth? Motility: My sperm sucked. Mr. Puddles: A little boy just won’t stop splashing. Mushy Stuff: My parents never let me have any fun. My Amazon Alexa Does More Than Laugh: Please help - I’m in danger. My Brother’s Fall: Horror deep below the Iraqi desert. My Cellar Door is Breathing: Is that normal? My Constellation: Want to be sad? This will make you sad.   My erection lasted longer than 4 hours: and I didn’t call a doctor. My four year old son woke up with a full head of grey hair: Help us. My Last Abduction: All the other ones don’t count. My Only Experience With ASMR: Hint - it didn’t go well. My Sister Found the Coolest Thing!: You’ve gotta hear about it. My Sweet Boy: A mom who loves her son. My Trouble With Fairies: They’re so mischievous and unpredictable! My Wife, the Artist: A couple who loves Halloween. Nests: Ah, the great outdoors. Network Security: Two friends get a glimpse of a Russian science lab. Never Ride the Subway at Night: You never know who could be watching you. Norwalk Cemetery: There’s something alien in there… Not All Men: Temper, temper, young man. Of Malevolence; Of Misanthropy: A disturbed scientist makes a discovery. Open Mouths: A hideous ritual. Otter: I’ve always wanted to be one. Ouroboros: Why cut when you can cut off? Pebbles: A strange meteor shower. Phone Sex: It all started when I realized my iPhone was self-lubricating. People are disappearing in Northern Canada: What is happening? Pool Cover: I almost drowned when I was 13. Pray Away: Conversion therapy for deviant behavior. Pretty Little Bugs: A new job as a cameraman. Prosopagnosia: After an accident, my husband couldn’t recognize us. Pumpkin Spice and Everything Nice: What can be better? Quarry: Trying to beat the heat on a summer day. Randall’s Chatty Leg: He said it was talking to him. I heard it. Rats in the Barn: An exterminator’s apprentice. Recycling: Parents try to understand their depressed daughter. Rediscovering the Newness of Sex: Let’s spice it up a little. Regarding Danny and Micah Stevenson: Two brothers rely on one another. Regina’s Raspberry Jam: She put everything she had into it. Road Head: Who doesn’t like getting sucked on? Seriously. Roo: An old man watches a girl grow up. Roots of Change: Something is happening beneath our feet. Ropes: Be careful what you eat. Rotting Pumpkins: A Halloween ritual. Round Faces: My daughter keeps complaining about monsters. Safety: Our grandfather was obsessed with it. Seed of Man, Pollen of Angels: A family tradition. Sex, Gender, and Other Social Constructs: Destroy them all. Sex in the Cemetery: Gotta do it somewhere, I guess. Skincare Diary: My acne was getting out of hand. Smokey, the Dog I Rescued: A very very good boye. Snapshot of a New Man: Evil (Inspiration for The Coronation Cycles series.) Soft Teeth: A man used to sneak into my room at night. Sprouts: Something beautiful from something small. Still a Family: Two sisters have lunch while waiting for their parents. Stop Being Such Babies: The woods aren’t scary, for fuck’s sake. Stuffing: Grandma’s was the best. Suicide Woods: Not just in Japan anymore. Tainted Candy: The legend is real. Teeny-Tiny: Katie wants to lose weight. That Good Dick: You know what I mean ;) The Alzheimer’s Ward: This isn’t right. The Bleakness Before Our Old Eyes: The Universe tasted us that night. The Blissful Insensate: An experiment goes terribly wrong. The Cave in the Lake: A discovery while scuba diving leads to horror. The Chernobyl Abomination: My father saw something he shouldn’t have. The Cotard Delusion: A new drug has a frightening side-effect. The Day I Started Believing In Ghosts: I’m still in shock. The Empty Cribs on Hawthorne Lane: Missing children. The Face in the Clouds: A meteorological anomaly? Or something else? The Floor is Lava: We all used to play that game, right? The Giggliest Girl: Don’t tickle me, Mommy. The Gray in Girl: A man finds a girl on the side of the road. The Hitchhiker: I think I need a new car now. The Incident at the Train Station: After a suicide, something…worse. The Job I Couldn’t Leave: I was employed by a psychopath. The Last of the Trick-or-Treaters: A strange costume. The Last words of an Explorer: A city on no one's map. The Least Satisfying Explanation: And the biggest understatement I’ve made. The Little Ghost: That nagging voice inside your head. The Lord of Hosts: Lice The Moose Hunt: Is…is that really a moose? The Perils of Live TV: It’s not all fun and games. The Perks of Working in a Funeral Home: There aren’t many, but still. The Pilot: A UFO crash. The Oblivion that Masks Pain: Escape. The Old Mine Outside Town: Everyone was too scared to go in. I wasn’t. The Only Solution: How to bring back a loved one? The Only Thing That Matters: Zombies attack a supermarket. The House in the Woods: Bad title, good story. The Shores of Pluto: A journey without moving. The Sleeping Game: We played when we were kids. The Small Eyed Children of Canyon del Cristo: A local legend comes alive. The Squirming Man: Please leave me alone. The Star Bridge: My friend found something beyond life. The Tomb of the Builders: Divers looking for sunken treasure find something evil. The Trawl: We dragged something up from deep underwater. The Wisdom of Moms: Mother knows best. The Worst Party in Ten Thousand Years: Trust me, it’s pretty damn bad. There is nothing wrong in East Flatbush, Brooklyn: Ignore the dragonflies. There’s something very wrong with my parrot: WTF. Tiptoeing the Line of Consent: But never crossing it. To Adore: Our beautiful baby girl. To the Kind Folks at WebMD: Just a couple questions.   To Travel: Bodies in bodies, bodies of bodies. Trees of Eyes: They’re watching. Tunnel Rat: My grandfather told us the worst story I’ve ever heard. Seriously. Uncle Liam: I never told the real story about how he died. Under My Teeth: My mouth is screaming. Uplift: A brilliant scientist works to improve the human condition. We’re All Smiling: Whether we want to or not. We Share the Empty Roads: You’re never, ever alone when you drive. Wet Bedroom: A haunted house with a hideous history. What He Told Me: Evil (Inspiration for The Coronation Cycles series.) Wikileaks: A document they refused to leak. What to expect when I’m expecting: Hint - it’s the worst. Why I Don’t Hike Anymore: Not what you might think.

Story Series

The Smols: Maybe the most fucked up stories I've ever written.

Sade Smols Emmy Smols

The Secret Doctors of NASA: A wide-ranging conspiracy.

A Dentist's Discovery A Psychologist's Suicide A Surgeon's Nightmare

Tales from Social Media

Something horrible is happening to me on Tumblr Something horrible is happening to me on Facebook Something horrible is happening to me on Reddit Something horrible is happening to me on Grindr Something horrible is happening to me on Myspace Something horrible is happening to me on Pokemon Go

Sockets: Craigslist allows you to meeting interesting people.

Part 1     Part 2     Part 3

#horror stories #scary stories #writers on tumblr #spilled ink #creative writing

[derpyfins]

Long post is long, sorry, pls skip

This popped up in today’s memories:

I can remember all my Anne moments, most of them quite vividly, which is unusual for me.  My memory is not amazing, sometimes I think I have a very mild form of aphantasia.  Memories, for me, are generally text, with faded watercolor illustrations that blur out at the edges.  I have to focus so hard mentally to bring an image into focus.  I have given myself headaches trying to do it before.  There is something about the Anne books - I’m not sure what - that deeply imprinted them into my mind, to the point where they function like pylons or anchor points.  I remember getting the boxed book series when I turned nine (I was standing in Chrissy’s house, why?  Her little neighbor boys gave them to me.  I must have had my party there.  Why?  The house was beige and the woodwork around the windows brown; the day was overcast and cool, and I can visualize my hands holding the box.)  I didn’t read them then, not for a couple of years, and the box of books wound up in storage and I forgot about it.  I saw the movie around the time I read the first book.  It must have been shortly after because I remember thinking that Mrs. Lynde and Gilbert weren’t how I imagined them.  I remember desperately wanting to get the movie out of the library and not being able to because I was being punished for something or other.  I remember, years later, finding the sequels - it was eighth grade, in the junior high library, the bottom shelf on the window side two shelves back from the back wall.  I was crouching down there in grubby jeans looking for Pern books and was shocked to find, not only an Anne sequel, but several.  I read them all.  I didn’t understand that much about them; looking back on it, they were a bit too adult for me.  I was a childish teenager and some of the concepts were just over my head.  Rilla was just, man, whoosh - I was a dumb kid with skinned knees, who still played with dolls sometimes, and climbed trees, and knew that there was a thing called World War I but in a dim sort of way.

I kind of rediscovered the series again after high school, and it just kind of became a mainstay in my life.  I love the stability of Anne’s world, the slice-of-life, day-to-day-ness of it.  It’s the only place I give any real outlet to nostalgia, since, as any historian knows, the good old days were never really that good.  I’ve always been able to keep in mind that it’s fictional nostalgia.  That’s a perfect escape and coping mechanism for me, though.  The books, particularly Ingleside, kept me grounded and in a decent headspace after 9/11 and all that happened after.  As I got older I learned how to look critically at things, and how to place things in context.  I gave Rilla a closer reread, trying to follow along with the world events on Wikipedia.  I decided to give another one of LMM’s series a shot (Emily of New Moon - and it fucked me up, derailed my thesis for two months, and sent me into some kind of dissociative depressive state the likes of which I haven’t experienced before or since.)  Then I read all of LMM’s diaries, in one go, over a dark and snowy winter (protip: don’t).  Then LMM biographies, several of them; and books about the life of the Anne series itself; somewhere in there, The Blythes are Quoted happened, which, coupled with LMM’s death and last diary entries, just... I don’t know, I just stared at a wall for a while.  You start to see the darkness beneath the light after a while, and how the series functioned as a wish-fulfillment mechanism for its author.  But that’s one of the many reasons why it’s so brilliant, and so much deeper than it seems on the surface, or to most people.  Anyway. 

A few years ago Anne dovetailed into WWI for me in a serious way.  As a scholar, WWI wound up more on my radar than I ever thought it would, but in weird, roundabout ways.  Among other things, I study grand jewels of grand houses, focusing on the pre-revolutionary Russian court.  WWI is a major part of the downfall of the Romanov dynasty, obviously, and it changed a good deal about monarchies in general and how they function today, so I had to study it, but never the war in and of itself.  Then I listened to Dan Carlin’s Blueprint for Armageddon and hoo boy did that change.  Now I study WWI for its own sake; it’s such an awful, fascinating conflict with layers and layers to go through.  Studying WWI in conjunction with rereading Rilla is a really great way to give depth to both subjects.  Rilla is, iirc, the first war novel (WWI specifically) written by a woman, and so it deserves a look just for that.  It’s not a book for children and shouldn’t be written off as such. Studying Anne/Rilla/LMM herself and the way she engaged with WWI - and couldn’t engage with WWII- while studying the war itself has been rewarding in ways that surprised me.

Anyway, all this to say we’ve got tickets for They Shall Not Grow Old, Peter Jackson’s WWI documentary, for today.  I’ve been looking forward to seeing it for weeks; it’s supposed to be really amazing.  I just thought it was funny that the Anne memory popped up on my FB.  I don’t think I’ll ever be able to separate Anne and WWI at this point, and I’m not sure I should try.

We go over the top at 4.

#irl #rambling #anne of green gables #wwi #they shall not grow old #rilla of ingleside #lucy maud montgomery #literature

[russiancircles]

Russian Circles Interview with Brian Cook // Stylus Magazine

Full interview by Chris Bryson via Stylus

Russian Circles perform in Winnipeg on April 8th at the Garrick Centre. Chris Bryson had the chance to chat with bassist Brian Cook to get a sense of the world of Russian Circles. 

Stylus: You’ll be coming through Winnipeg on a pretty extensive tour. How do you deal with the challenges of being away from home when on a long tour?

Brian Cook: Well, at this point the band has been doing this kind of thing for 13 years, and I’ve been touring for about 22 years, so at some point you just learn how to cope with it on some subconscious level. There are a few obvious things you can do to keep yourself sane: take solo walks away from the club, keep in contact with friends and loved ones back at home, try to eat well and exercise when you can. A friend advised me before my first tour to spend 10 minutes alone every day, and that’s good advice. I find the bigger challenge to be dealing with coming home. Tour has its own momentum. You get in the van and it takes you to your next destination. At home, you have to recalibrate your brain to be self-motivated. I occasionally see articles about musicians dealing with post-tour depression and it’s a very real thing. You go from being constantly in motion, constantly validated, and constantly surrounded by people to being static and alone. Dealing with that is the bigger challenge, in my opinion.

Stylus: Does the band ever change or alter its approach to songwriting and if so what have been some of the reasons for doing so?

BC: Every song is a little different. We all live in different states, so we end up trading a lot of audio files. Sometimes songs are cobbled together out of a bunch of different ideas, sometimes someone comes to the table with a fully written song, sometimes we just stumble across an idea when we’re all in a practice space together. We don’t have an established process.

Stylus: Being an instrumental band allows you to cover more ground stylistically with less need for adherence to a particular style. What aspects of your music do you think best benefit from this flexibility?

BC: We’re all music hunters, so we’re always exploring new artists and new sounds, but we obviously owe a lot to metal. And for me, honestly, most of the interesting guitar-based music happening today owes something to metal. But metal also has a tendency to cling to these aesthetics that can be a little cartoony and juvenile, and that winds up manifesting in a lot of the lyrics and vocal delivery in the genre. So being an instrumental band has benefitted us because it allows us to cull from the instrumental side of metal without having to shoehorn some campy frontman into our sound. I think it opens up our music because we’re not working with the limitations of a vocalist, and i think it provides us with a broader swath of listeners who might not be open to the guttural growl of the Corpsegrinder or the operatic wail of King Diamond.

Stylus: The music of Russian Circles is filled with an emotional weight buried within transcendental darkness. What are some of the inspirations and influences behind the narratives and ideas for your music?

BC: Any narratives are totally subconscious. We don’t have an active muse and we don’t write music based on a theme. I have nothing but respect for artists who can work off a concept, but for us, the music either resonates with us or it doesn’t. We don’t try to cobble together songs based on a preconceived notion; we write music based on what resonates with us on a very immediate base level.

Stylus: Was the looping of guitar always something the band has done to give added heft to your music? Are there any other methods the band uses to further amplify or give added effect to your sound?

BC: We’ve always tried to fill as much sonic space as possible. Looping allows us have multiple layers and multiple textures going at any given time. We’ve also incorporated things like the Moog Taurus so that one musician can play two instruments at a time. Ultimately, we really just want to make things texturally rich and dynamic, but we also want to adhere to the three-piece format without resorting to backing tracks or having a laptop on stage. There are a few other tricks we employ, but we can’t give away all of our secrets.

Stylus: What made the band decide to do a live album?

BC: The songs are constantly morphing. With our studio albums, we’re making adjustments and edits all the way up until mastering. Once the album is actually finished, the songs still wind up evolving in the live show. We don’t drastically alter them, but we find new things to highlight and new ways to simplify things. So there’d been some talk about trying to record a few shows at some point just to document how the songs had grown. The problem is that going into a show knowing it’s going to be under the microscope of recording would ultimately sap some of the energy out of the performance because we’d be trying to play things as meticulously as possible. It just so happened that the Dunk! Festival set was recorded without our knowing it, and it was a concert we were all very happy with. There are still a few flubs in the performance, but that’s the nature of live music.

Stylus: From what I’ve read Russian Circles is a band whose members don’t live in the same city and don’t get the chance to play together often. When it comes to sculpting and recording what songs or a final album will be, how do differences in ideas and opinions get resolved?

BC: If it doesn’t resonate with all three members of the band, the material gets scrapped. We’re all pretty open to criticism; no one is afraid to ditch a riff or mix up a part if it isn’t working. Honestly, the biggest conflicts in this realm have been pretty minor. I remember Mike really gunning for this one particular thrash riff that wasn’t really vibing with Dave. I was the mediator, and I told Mike the riff was really “fun”. That was enough for him to willingly scrap it. There is no fun allowed in Russian Circles.

Stylus: I read in an article with The Seventh Hex that with the music you create you said you “want to make something that sounds natural and human.” As an individual player and collectively as a band, how do you go about doing that?

BC: I’m just not a fan of music that sounds like it was built on a grid. I’m not opposed to using technology to make the recording process cheaper and smoother. It’s way more financially practical to record on ProTools than tape, after all. But I don’t want music to sound mechanical. There is very little electronic music that resonates with me because so much of it sounds like canned music. It doesn’t ignite my imagination. It just makes me think of someone sitting at a computer screen, staring at a grid, and plugging sounds into quantized beats. It really depresses me. I want music to be an escape from staring at a computer screen. And more and more rock music is recorded in that manner. The drummer doesn’t even play on a lot of current metal records; the engineer just samples drum tones and they plug those sounds into programmed beats. It’s no wonder so many modern rock records sound so sterile and flat. There is no push and pull. No space. No interaction between the instruments. I know that’s what some people really want out of their music—they want it to be perfect and crisp and even. But i prefer when it sounds like the band is so passionate about what they’re playing that they run the risk of mucking it all up. That’s way more exciting for me.

Stylus: Do you think it’s important when creating music (or any art) to maintain a balance between the pursuit of perfection and retaining immediacy and cohesion?

BC: Absolutely. I’ve been really digging this Workin’ With the Miles Davis Quintet record, and there’s one note Miles hits in the first song that sounds flat to my ears, and I totally love it. It’s jarring, but it reminds you that this album was made in a live environment. It’s a snapshot of a time and place. It’s not trying to create its own reality. And it makes all the moments where the band locks in and plays off each other feel that much more inspired. But I’m also someone that would rather spend five years listening to a record and wrapping my head around it than to hear something that’s beat-detected, auto-tuned, and ultimately designed to be instantly digestible and quickly forgotten. I want to make art that’s still interesting ten, twenty, thirty years down the road. And as someone that still buys vinyl, I only want to spend money on music that still excites me after a decade or two of repeated spins.

Stylus:. Will the band be bringing any new elements into the fold with the next music you put out? Can you tell me anything about the next Russian Circles release?

BC: Hopefully. There are a lot of ideas floating around, but we haven’t yet started to put the album together, so who knows. There been discussion of trying to make a darker, uglier album, but we also have a tendency to wind up writing songs with the opposite mood of what was initially intended. So we’ll see what happens.

Stylus: If you were to give one piece of advice to a musician/band trying to make it in the musical world as it is today, what would it be?

BC: Well, first things first, you would need to define “making it.” When I first started playing in bands, all I wanted to do was play a show. Then it was just a matter of putting out a record. Then the goal was to tour. And that’s about it. I had “made it” by the time I was 18. “Making it” should really just be about creating something you’re proud of, and everything else is just icing on the cake. At this point, I’m way more interested in musicians like Sir Richard Bishop or Daniel Higgs—musicians that have a history of doing whatever the fuck they want even if it means they only draw 50 people in their hometown or only sell a few hundred records. It’s more exciting to see someone make art that makes them happy than to see someone try to build a lucrative career pleasing other people. So my advice is to do whatever you want and do it passionately. Be involved in your musical community. Go see other bands. Support underground venues. Buy bands’ merch. Throw your own shows. Make your own tapes or records or CDs. Value your own art. Make it special. Make it sacred.

#Russian Circles #Brian Cook #Stylus Magazine

[fatbadjah]

To those whom I’ve disappointed and to those to whom I am disappointing...

On Monday I demonstrated that common sense, good judgment, and I are not always the best friends.  I learned about a social event that I was not involved in, and I felt hurt, left out, emotionally neglected and replied out of pain.

I hurt others in a moment of weakness, and for that, I apologize and ask forgiveness.

For me, one of the most iconic images of the 90s was a clip from Blind Melon’s “No Rain” video. In it, a little girl in a bee costume is ridiculed after a dance performance, and spends the song wandering the street…again facing derision and ridicule from strangers. Then, at one point in the song, she sees a gated field. In it, she sees others in bee costumes, dancing around. She pushes through the gate and joyously cavorts—having found “her” people.

I’ve come to define these moments of social connection “bee girl” moments. Most of us have them—especially in the furry fandom.

Like most, I was interested in anthropomorphic animals since I was a child. After reading The Wind in the Willows in third grade, I wanted to join that created family of Rat, Mole, Toad, and Badger. In the mid 80s, I saw Animalympics on HBO until I knew the songs by heart. Likewise, seeing Rock and Rule on the Movie Channel in early 1986 not only furthered my interest in anthropomorphics, but expanded my musical palate out a bit. I started collecting comic books in 1987, as quarter bins were bursting with remnants of the Black-And-White boom—many of which were anthropomorphic attempts to become the next TMNT. When I played role playing games or video games, I gravitated towards any animal-themed races, classes, or characters.

Frankly, I thought I was weird and the only one.

In December 1993, I saw a clip of an event called Confurence on the then-new Sci-Fi Channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iodRjbBKB0k). For the first time, I knew that there were others out there like me…that I wasn’t alone.

Florida State University, like many universities in the early 90s, restricted their student Internet access to engineering and computer science students. If you weren’t in one of those disciplines, the assumption was that you didn’t need to access the Internet. Of course, once I’d seen the Internet, that didn’t stop me. I’d learned a little UNIX trick that allowed me to access a raw Telnet in 1992, but I didn’t know what USENET was until January of 1994, when FSU began selling Garnet accounts to students—a basic Internet account with Telnet, email, a few other early 90s goodies, and USENET access. One Friday night, as I was diving through the sea of alt and soc groups, I found one called alt.fan.furry. The group was buzzing about an event called “Confurence” which was happening that weekend in Orange County, California.

I had my “bee girl” moment. I soaked up every zine I could find. Alt.fan.furry was my new hangout. I had an account on Furrymuck and explored more.

I felt like I belonged somewhere. I made a trip in January 1995 to Confurence Six and soon connected with virtual friends.

I wanted to get more involved. I wanted to give back. I didn’t want to just be a passive fandom participant. I put my art out there—though I knew I would be mocked and ridiculed for my lack of skill (I was). I started the first openly gay furry zine, Ten Furcent, in 1995.I published a comic book, Milikardo Knights, in 1997. In 1999, when Ed Zolna’s Mailbox Books folded, I was one of several who tried to open a zine distribution business to fill the void—mine having been Bronzebear Media. And in 2001, I founded Florida’s first furry con, Furry Spring Break, which folded after an internal coup in late 2001 and became an event you may be familiar with today.

Yet while most (sane and rational) people would have denounced the fandom and moved on, if not taken up ranks with folks like the Burned Furs (whose ranks were pretty much filled with fandom failures who could not adapt to the growing and changing nature of the fandom and began pre-Trump cries of “take back our fandom!”) and becoming toxic and bitter fandom saboteurs, I stayed in to help how I could. I involved myself with the staff of events like Mephit Furmeet, Furry Weekend Atlanta, and Midwest Furfest.

In 2011, I took a break. I finally realized after a social breakdown that I was grinding metal and stepped away. I’d moved to North Carolina in the wake of the Great Recession, and I decided to focus on my career. Thus, for years, I was the guy at the Triangle Area Furries meets who stood off to the sides and only chatted with one or two trusted friends, as I licked my metaphorical wounds from the 90s and 00s.

But I never quit, I never left, I never got bitter, and I never tried to sabotage the fandom. For me, furry fandom was my family. You don’t abandon family because of a few toxic relatives. Like the odd cousin at the family gathering, I just stepped away a bit because the obnoxious aunts and uncles had finally taken their toll.

In 2015, I finally got some forward motion on my career and returned to fandom activities, with MFF 15 being my first con back since 2010. In the summer of 2016, I thought about the fact that there were no cons or large “destination” events in or around Raleigh, in spite of the large community. I talked to an old friend, and in early July 2016, Tarpaw Furmeet was born. We staged a “practice” event in November 2016, which then gave way to events that grew in May and October of 2017. As they grew, we eventually had a staff, with whom I started to bond.  People were friendly to me at the Triangle Area Furries events and actually started to talk to me.

I actually thought that I was “in,” but got blindsided by my social eagerness, as several of you now know.

To really get this, you need to understand a little of my history and romp through some trauma baggage. I was in a family with two emotionally abusive parents. I not only heard the constant barrage of how I was “not good enough” from both, but during their divorce, each specialized their skills by projecting their spousal loathing onto my brother and I.

My mother played the diehard Christian card, completely modernizing the “spare the rod, spoil the child” concept by making my brother and I draft up “contracts” that opened with “PAIN + FEAR = RESPECT” then laid out multiple violation clauses. Usually, the clauses in these contracts varied by my mother’s mood and often had a bad habit of doing so when she’d had a bad day at work.

My father, meanwhile, decided to simply deploy a forever-scarring tactical nuke on a school morning in early 1981. As my mother was helping my brother and I dress, my father came downstairs, looked at us all and said simply “bye guys, have a nice life” before walking out the door. We knew our parents  were divorcing, so my brother and I spent five minutes trying to persuade him to stay—and by “persuade” I meant that my mother held one sibling while the other sibling laid behind the tires of Dad’s Corvette, then swapped places when she would pull the other one from behind the tires. A few hours later, when I had a hysterical breakdown in my third grade classroom, neither my teacher nor principal believed me. I was sent to the office, and the principal called my father’s office to follow up on the “lie.” Upon calling my father’s office, I was told that he’d flown to Acapulco to holiday with the women he was (then) leaving my mother for. My mother at least intervened to back up the “have a nice life” story, because I had to go home since I was a basket case. Dad came back tanned and whored, and acted like nothing had happened—not even an apology.

Since then, I’ve had a nagging fear of abandonment and all purpose fear of letting people get control over me. I’ve tried to address it by simply not letting people connect to me emotionally and living a life of fierce self-sufficiency. I’ve heard “aloof” pushed on to me so many times in my life, I’d have assumed it was my name if I didn’t know better. After all, I figure, everyone leaves me eventually…so why attach to them? Likewise, my other coping mechanism is to just quit when things turned bad—a trend in my early relationships. Imagine that Kermit/Dark Kermit meme: “Things going bad in the relationship… Bail on them before they get to bail on you!”  I tried to not quit a spiraling situation once. I made the mistake of entrenching on Furry Spring Break when the coup’s instigator began to get out of control in mid-2001 and fought suicidal urges for most of 2002 once I’d been ousted.

I’ve been used to being left out of things. It was the hallmark of my adolescence. When it wasn’t a point-blank, mean girls style rejection (no seriously, I got “you cant sit here” in the school lunchroom), the reasons were a bit softer on the blow. “Sorry, we just didn’t think you were interested” or “Sorry but there just wasn’t enough room for you” were the popular go-tos.

Once, when I was fourteen, I let my guards down. My father went to the “country club” church in Flint Michigan, First Pres—the one where the shi shi white people went to escape the lower classes. One afternoon, I got a call from one of the students in “the Pipe,” their Wednesday night youth group. “Hey, can you come to the meeting tonight? We’d love to have you there!”

I was beyond elated. Someone called me to come out. They wanted me out there.Me, worthless, stupid me. When my father got home from work, I told him in no uncertain terms that I had to go to church that night, for the Pipe. When I got there, people were friendly towards me. Then the meeting started. Eventually, one of the leaders came out playing “Sasha Cashachek,” a taunting (yet Christian) Russian femme fatale (it was 1986. Russians and Iranians were stock bad guys then) who was gloating that the Pipe wouldn’t make their ski trip. Eventually, we stopped for snacks, and a few people came up to me during the break.

“So we know you like to ski, and we’ve got a big weekend ski trip scheduled to (some shi shi place I can’t remember) in a month, but we need a few more people to help pay for it! Want to come?”

I told them that I’d already booked with my high school ski club on a trip to Killington, Vermont, and my dad was tapped.

“Oh.” No one talked to me as soon as I’d announced that. Not even a “goodbye” when I left.

Remember that scene in “A Christmas Story” when Ralphie learns that Little Orphan Annie’s important “secret message” was nothing more than an Ovaltine ad? I got the 80s church group version of it.

When I said no to the ski trip, I went back to either being invisible in that church group every Sunday (I never went to another Wednesday night meeting), or I existed only when I wore or did something worthy of social mockery. I never got an invite back to the Pipe.… After that, I shut down. I stopped trying.

Given that I’d taken to emotional avoidance since late childhood, I was used to it. I took jobs in college that kept me working Friday and Saturday nights, so I didn’t have to worry about feeling slighted from collegiate social events, and I always had an excuse when people felt crazy enough to ask me to do something. And as an adult, I became a hermit who spent most weekends alone, playing video games or working. I never kept friends because I didn’t think friends wanted to keep me around. I feel emotionally uncomfortable when people press me into social conversation…unless I’ve been drinking or that weird cluster of neurons has fired that say “we can trust this person Lighten up, badger.”

But I thought that things were going differently in the Triangle. I felt my guards dropping. I didn’t feel that “fuck! Fly now! Flee, fatass! Get small or invisible!” reflex when I talked to people.

So on January 1, 2018, I became aware of a New Years party via Twitter. I saw friends names. I saw friends pictures. And I didn’t even know about it. In a split second, I was caught off guard.

And I felt stupid. I felt like I’d been left out. Knowing that people there were talking about con plans, I had fears of another Furry Spring Break style coup. But most importantly I felt worthless, like I did in childhood and adolescence because I wasn’t good enough to get invited. I felt like I’d made inroads, that people liked me and wanted me around, and I felt foolish for letting my guards down. It was like finding out that the people at the Pipe only wanted me there to make a ski trip happen, and threw me aside as soon as I couldn’t help them do it.

So I made a nudging reply that my invitation must have been lost. I later vented because I felt like all I was good for was making the con happen. Then the messages started piling in…

“No one owes you anything!”

And they were right.

And that was my mistake. I own that. No one has to be my friend, and no one owes me a damned thing. I had thought that because we had bonded as a staff, because we had broken meals together at staff meetings, that I was more important than I was in the collective zeitgeist —namely, that I’d finally gone from beyond being the “creepy” guy to someone that people actually wanted to know and interact with. Again, my mistake.

As our event has grown, I’ve been mulling over the #FurryOver30 hashtag from Twitter—the reaction to an ageist movement that suggested that anyone over 30 should leave furry fandom. As of 2017, I’d been a formal part of the fandom for almost 24 years, and at 45 years old, I’d more than outlived my socially-decreed “time” by the claimants standards. Likewise, as I was pulling locals together to build this event, I remembered a friend telling me recently that I’d been described to him as “creepy” by at least one local furry in the early ‘10’s, before I stepped forward to begin building things. Despite groups in fandom who told me I didn’t belong, I actually felt like I did here—like I wasn’t just “buying” my way in by making a convention happen in the area.

I had gotten a little comfortable and let my guards down. I had thought that I’d had my “Bee Girl” moment and found my community, and that being excluded from the party was a harsh reality check. So I got angry on Twitter. I apologize for any assumptions made, and I assure folks that I’ll maintain my social distance as I keep looking for my “bee girl” moment elsewhere in the fandom.

For four days now, the people I've hurt told me how I disappointed them.  That happens a lot, believe me.  Just ask my parents for the last fourty-five years, so it's nothing new.  If this is your first time, I'm sorry I hurt you.  I'm not always going to be able to be the unflappable badger, or an unmoveable rock.  I'm broken.  I've been broken most of my life, and for the first time in a long time, I feel like I'm on my way to being whole.  Only to be reminded of just how very far I have to go.  I'm not convinced I'll ever be whole?  But I'm going to keep trying.  And I'm hoping to keep trying with the those around me.

Once again, I apologize.

[mikeyd1986]

MIKEY’S PERSONAL BLOG 161, June 2019

Last Saturday night, I celebrated my cousin Nathan Dunkling’s 21st birthday at The Comic's Lounge in North Melbourne. Social gatherings like birthday parties can often be huge anxiety triggers for me but somehow my anxiety was under control tonight even being in a large group of people and inside a crowded live comedy venue. Yes it filled up very quickly which meant that the volume levels of conversation gradually rose up and it was very difficult to hear what was going on even at my own table.

Some of Nathan’s friends were sitting at my table and so it was hard for me to engage in conversation with them. Thankfully I had a solution to this, pulling out my phone and playing Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery to curb my boredom levels before the show actually began. Some people might pull out the “anti-social” card but I really don’t care as I see it as a coping mechanism and way of feeling comfortable when I can’t connect with the people around me. Plus waiting for our meals did take a long time so I didn’t have much else to do.

Finally around 8.15pm, the MC for the evening Josh Earl began his comedy routine whilst I began chowing away at my entree, salt and pepper calarami. I also ordered an Atlantic salmon for mains which was really delicious. There were four comedians in total including an American lady named Eve, an Australian named Claire and the main headliner Dave Thornton. Honestly it was a very hit and miss affair for me.  Plus I felt like there were too many breaks in between and it seemed to stretch the night out a bit too late for me (We were there for over 4 hours).

Admittedly, some jokes simply soared over my head perhaps because I missed the context of what they were talking about. Others I basically didn’t find funny at all. It’s not to say that I don’t have a sense of humour, more I can only stomach so many jokes related to Sex - poo, dicks, vaginas, masturbation, circumcision, vasectomies. Religion - Jewish people. Christian people, believing in God. Children - dealing with being a parent, being able to handle kids, changing nappies. I’ve pretty much heard it all. I think a lot of it depends on the delivery of the joke too. If it’s too forced, I’m most likely not going to laugh at it. Still it was an enjoyable night out and good value for money.

On Sunday morning, we checked out of our hotel room at Best Western Melbourne City Hotel - Formerly Pensione Hotel and had breakfast downstairs at Oliver's. Then we drove down to St. Kilda to visit the Esplanade Market and walked along the pier. Even though the air was fairly cold, eventually the sun broke through the overcast clouds and it become a lovely morning to check out the scenic views. I do get a little nervous when it comes to passing by stalls in a market which some sellers trying really hard to get my to buy something but it’s nice just having a browse and watching the people walking their dogs along the footpath.

On Monday morning, I had an appointment with my support worker Seb at Jamaica Blue Cranbourne. A couple of weeks ago, I was feeling pretty conflicted and disheartened about the service Mentis Assist was providing to me. There was a lot of being messed around with lack of communication and no confirmations being made over the past few weeks besides having one fill in support worker. Everything felt like it was in limbo. I sent a text message to Seb yesterday but I had no idea if he would even turn up today.

Eventually he did reply and things got back on track again today. What was alarming to me though was the fact that he wasn’t informed about what was happening with me over the past few weeks. Nobody at Mentis Assist told him that a replacement support worker would be organised for me or that my appointment would be switched to Tuesday afternoon. It was almost enough for me to pull the plug but honestly none of this is Seb’s fault, just the broken system that had left me hanging.

On Monday afternoon, I had my second last Creative Writing class at Balla Balla Community Centre in Cranbourne East. I have to admit that I was stuck in a rut of sorts after the last class and really struggled on the previous homework task of coming up with five different endings to a short story I began in Week 3. I was feeling a little uncertain about what I’d come up with but at least I gave it a go.

ENDINGS HOMEWORK EXERCISE

Ryan is determined to escape the trappings of his old life and even in these dire circumstances, he will make it to Fiji one way or another.

Ryan decides to build friendships with the locals in New Caledonia and eventually settles there.

Ryan sends a distress call back home to Australia in order to be saved from the ordeal he has been through. He managed to escape the plane crash with only minor injuries, however it has had a major impact on him psychologically. He makes contact with a counselor to find strategies to overcome his trauma.

Ryan ends up in a local hospital wired up to machines - life support, oxygen, heart rate monitor. The experience of the plane crash was too much for him and has taken a tool on him physically as well as mentally and emotionally.

Upon landing in New Caledonia, Ryan ends up getting himself captured by a tribe of warriors, clad with wooden spears and shields, deep inside the bushland. Will he manage to survive?

During today’s class, we looked into scenes vs. chapters, improving your draft, killing off your darlings and the habits of successful authors. Scenes are more complicated and more important than chapters. They are very specific building blocks within your story. They also need tension and conflict. Each scene can be divided into two parts: ACTION (Goal, conflict, disaster) and REACTION (Reaction, dilemma, decision).

Chapters are arbitrary divisions within a book. They impose order and create a certain sense of structure. Chapter breaks are more about pacing and must be placed strategically. They leave readers with a question or a reason to know more. Scene structure has nothing to do with chapter breaks.

Improving your draft. Your first draft is the writing equivalent of running a marathon. You need to take a step back, question the structure and the characters, ask whether all the characters want the same thing, does the story contain enough conflict. After draft two and beyond, you need to be a little more critical with your work. Hire a professional editor and get your manuscript copy edited. Then finally have the manuscript proof read.

Killing off your darlings. Cut out any elements that doesn’t serve to further the work as a whole, in order to enhance the story. Darlings can be words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs or characters. The main benefits of killing off your darlings are: it strengthens your characters and plot, improves the overall quality of your writing and refines your self discipline. Things to cut: weak characters, extraneous plot lines, backstory and prologues.

The habits of successful authors include write everyday, finish your stories, learn the rules, break the rules, create their own inspiration, don’t slack off on the hard stuff, follow their hearts and not the market, develop a thick skin, set their stories free, love what they do, write with joy and embrace fragments of writing.

On Monday night, I went to my Boxing small group fitness class with CinFull Fitness. Tonight was a very small group with just myself, Rodney Sack and Ben Milton. We each got our measurements taken before we actually started. It’s been something of a fleeting thought for me, particularly the scales and weighing myself. It’s not longer been an unhealthy obsession. In fact, I hardly ever weigh myself at all these days. I used to get really fixated on THE NUMBER but now I’m able to let it go more easily considering it’s not a true representation of how “fat” or “overweight” I am. There are so many other factors that go into it like muscle mass and water weight.

Tonight’s class consisted of drills and partner work, push ups, plank holds, ground and pounds, sit up punches, V-ups, Russian twists, star jumps, walking lunges and squat holds.

Being paired up with a hard-hitter like Rodney certainly got me out of my comfort zone. I was a little nervous about not being able to handle it (and be accidentally punched in the face) but I wasn’t going to let that fear stop me. I needed to release all of those negative labels that have been given to me in the past (weak, slow, incapable, incompetent, useless, a loser). I’m not any of those things. Sometimes I really do surprise myself in being able to overcome a struggle such as physical fatigue or being out of breath. I know that I’m not as fit as some of the others but that fact shouldn’t stop me from participating in the class.

On Wednesday morning, I attended the funeral of Rita Hartney at Tobin Brothers in Berwick. I knew Rita from a few years ago when she began hosting her radio program Hot Topics With Rita at Casey Radio - 97.7FM as well as her motivational talks and appearances at places such as Balla Balla Community Centre and U3A Cranbourne. She also ran a short course called Speaking Before The Public which helped me work on self confidence and oral presentation skills. It was only a few weeks ago that I learned of her decline in health and subsequent passing on Facebook.

After signing the guest book and taking a copy of Rita’s book It’s Time For Women to Take Control, Mum and I made our way into the main service room which was packed with Rita’s family, friends and other guests. We were really lucky to find a couple of spare seats to sit down in. It was a really beautiful service which highlighted the many strengths and achievements that Rita had gained over the years. She really had a significant impact on many people’s lives.

The speeches were both funny and moving, painting Rita as a strong, determined woman trying to make her mark in a male dominated world. The music selection was very fitting as well, reflecting Rita’s colourful and flamboyant personality. Songs included Elvis Presley’s Devil in Disguise and Helen Reddy’s I Am Woman.

Attending someone’s funeral seems to give me a gentle reminder about how precious life truly is. That you really do need to be grateful for what you have and make every moment count. It also forces me to think about my own funeral. Not just the kinds of arrangements that I will have but questions like: Who will be attending? What will I be remembered for? What kind of mark will I leave behind? I never used to be this philosophical about funerals until more recently when I realised how important it is not to let my life go to waste.

On Thursday morning, I decided to take myself off to Casey Smiles Dental Clinic after experiencing more annoying dental pain, this time on the right hand side of my mouth. I was really hoping that the pain would subside with some simply remedies but after having a restless night with this agonizing toothache, it was time to face the music and the dentist once more.

The good news was that I didn’t have to get my x-rays done like last time as they were already on my patient record. It was also easier to explain to Dr. Mohamed where abouts the pain was coming from and not simply guess which tooth it was. He gave me two options: first would be to exact it like last time, which would be easier and more cost effective. The second option was to have a root canal done in order to potentially save the tooth. However, he warned me that he could cost me up to $1500. So obviously I went with option one.

Thankfully the process was a lot quicker this time around. There was a young female dental assistant doing some training and learning about all the different surgical instruments and how to use the suction hose. It provided a nice distraction for me. Dr. Mohamed reminded me to keep breathing as he applied pressure to the decayed tooth. It was over and done with within a few minutes. The anesthesia needle probably hurt more than the actual tooth removal did. Plus it only cost me $160 as it was a basic tooth removal and it didn’t need to be surgically removed like last time.

https://caseysmiles.com.au/dr-mohamed-massaud

[mizannethrope]

Mother’s Day - it’s complicated

Today is Mother’s Day. I’m trying not to be sad.

I have been very open about discussing my mother’s fight with cancer and her death. I write about it a lot. I find catharsis in it so I continue. By writing about it and examining the feelings I have, I keep her alive with me a little bit longer. I keep up the exploration because I continue to learn so much from it. To counter the sense of loss I feel around the Hallmark holiday of Mother’s Day, I have sought to focus on all the other women in my life who have been like mothers to me. My mother loved me to an infinite degree but she also was acutely aware of her own limitations. I think she overestimated them but they were very real to her. My mother pushed me toward others that she felt would “improve” me. During my early life my mother sought out other women who could teach me the things she felt she could not. She was always striving on my behalf. In this pursuit my mother found or encouraged me to seek out surrogate mothers to learn from. She actively encouraged my friendships with these other women.

Let me tell you about some of these women and what lessons I learned from each.

When I was in early elementary school, Bonnie lived down the street from us in our townhouse complex. I’m guessing she was early 30s then. She had no children of her own, though I believed she wanted very much to be a mother. It wasn’t in the cards for her. Bonnie’s husband was a career Army officer and Bonnie was, at that time, a stay at home wife. My brother and I got to know her because we loved playing with her black lab, Machen, German for “girl.” Just as kids would go knock on a friend’s door and ask, “Wanna ride bikes?” I would knock on Bonnie’s door and ask, “Can Machen come out and play?”.

Bonnie had a challenging relationship with her own mother and father. Her mother favored her older brothers. Her father was remote and often cold. My mother, facing disappointment and problems in her marriage, confided in Bonnie and the two became close. Hours in Bonnie’s kitchen would reveal stories of her youth that stay with me today.

Bonnie had studied home economics in college. I’m sure this would be a questionable choice at best today, if such a choice were even an option. People often ask me about my love of food. I got it from Bonnie. My mom was not a very good cook. She never learned to cook in Korea. She improvised once she got to America but her repertoire was largely traditional American fare she learned from my great-aunts. Meatloaf. “Broiled” steak (more like boiled steak). Stew. Mashed potatoes. Frozen green beans and succotash. Because my mother worked, she stocked the house with Hostess cupcakes and Hungryman frozen dinners.

Bonnie was not a gourmet by today’s Food Network standards but she could work a cookbook. What I loved more than anything was watching Bonnie make and decorate cakes. She would make buttercream frosting and turn it into roses and flowers and leaves and grass and basketweave along the edges of a sheet cake. It was like watching something come to life out of a Wilton how-to pamphlet. Every cup of flour was carefully leveled. Every bowl of powdered sugar was meticulously sifted for lumps. Bonnie could also sew and crochet. At her side, I hooked endless potholders. One Halloween I recall we made sugar molds of black cats to put alongside a cake she baked for a friend. We tried over and over to get the sugar to turn pitch black (no gel food coloring back then). When I got the mix just right, we pressed the sugar into the molds and voila! Angry black sugar cats emerged, ready to stand along the orange frosted cake.

Bonnie was my main adult supervision and spirit guide for all my Girl Scout badges. We would pour over the Girl Scout Handbook and dog ear the pages with the badge requirements for the ones I hoped to earn that year. I hosted my first complete dinner party at her house (of course I got a badge for that one). I made whipped sweet potatoes with marshmallows and Swedish meatballs. I invited my parents over and served the whole thing. Bonnie gifted me cookbooks and let me watch her make sewing patterns and sew baby dresses for her nieces. She had a silver collection and a closet full of Kewpie dolls that she collected from childhood. Bonnie also had a weight problem and as a fat kid myself, we bonded over it.

Bonnie had lost 30 pounds at Weight Watchers but she had gained a good portion of it back when I met her. I was just a chubby kid. My mother fed me and fed me and then complained about how fat I got. I remember going to my first Weight Watchers meeting with Bonnie at the age of 12 at my mother’s urging. Having Bonnie to talk to about this was such a help. My mother had been too thin growing up and had never been fat. Her push-pull with me about food gave me whiplash. Bonnie could understand the torment I felt of loving food but hating it at the same time. It was good to have someone to confide in who got it.

Bonnie also had some coping mechanisms that were unusual. When in pain, Bonnie would laugh hysterically. One day she burned her hand in the kitchen. Rather than yelp or cry out, she began to... laugh. I looked at her like she was deranged. Once we wrapped her hand, she confided that her older brothers had often picked fights with her when they were children. When they would hit her, she learned to hide her tears so as not to give them the satisfaction of seeing her hurt. Instead, she began to laugh. Her reflexive pain reaction was laughter. Never let them know you are hurt is something animals know as a survival skill. I had never met a person who had adopted this strategy in such a way. It made an deep impression on me.

Then Bonnie moved away.

Pat was our immediate next-door neighbor. She moved in when I was in 4th grade. She seemed to me to be a successful career woman. She was recently divorced with custody of her 3 kids who were all around my age. Pat subscribed to Cosmopolitan magazine and drank White Russians and pink wine. She was a potty mouth but very pretty. You could tell that she had been sought after in her younger years. Even in her mid-30s, life had not yet worn her down. In my 11 year old brain, Pat was very sophisticated. It was obvious she had had many boyfriends after her divorce. I had never met anyone like her before.

In our neighborhood everyone’s door was always unlocked. We all came and went without knocking, especially in the summer when everyone was home from school. No one went to summer camps back then. Some kids visited their grandparents. Most of our neighbors had family in Tennessee and when summer came, off they went to the Smoky Mountains. My best friend’s family was Cuban so her summers were spent in Miami with her abuelo and abuela. I was bereft without her company. The summers were long. One year Pat’s kids went to spend the summer with their father. I spent almost all summer at Pat’s house while they were gone. 

Pat had a stash of Cosmo magazines from the late ‘70s. Every issue was about sex, make-up, and dieting. It was the summer between 5th and 6th grade and I would go over to Pat’s house and spend hours going through issue after issue. I learned about the Grapefruit diet. I read articles about the mythical G-spot. Does it exist? Is it real? How would you know? The Atkins Diet was a thing. Lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks! Then the Beverly Hills Diet was a thing. Eat this, don’t eat that. Eat ONLY this. For 2 weeks. Then eat that. How much should you tweeze your eyebrows? Here is how to get the ultimate St. Tropez tan. I read every word and memorized every image. This was what being a liberated woman was all about. Right there in those pages.

Pat had, in a prior life, gotten her cosmetology degree and license. I would sit in her kitchen and she would cut my hair and put it on rollers. She also sold Mary Kay Cosmetics and had drawers and drawers of samples. Make up nirvana! All in pretty pink bottles. I would try on the different colors but because we had read Color Me Beautiful together, I knew that I was an “autumn” and should stick to the warmer shades. Pat also always had perfectly done nails. Long, polished talons, she would rap them on the counters and on the dashboard while she was driving. Click, click, click, click. When one broke, she would slap on an acrylic tip and lickety-split, they would be perfect again. Perfect looking but not real.

For all that she was worldly and intriguing to my 11 year old mind, she was also clearly struggling to stay afloat. Her job situation was often erratic. She moved from one thing to the next, finally falling back on her cosmetology degree and working in a beauty salon. Her kids seemed to be in perpetual trouble and were not doing so well in school. Her oldest son went to go live with his father. She found herself pregnant by her married boyfriend, had the baby and then found herself pregnant again. Her liberated woman veneer didn’t hold up so well once you scratched the surface. Sometimes the most important lesson you learn is what not to do. Pat was like that older sister you are intrigued by but who winds up being a cautionary tale. I caught onto that pretty quick.

Then my family moved to a new neighborhood.

I met Jenna in high school. She was my boyfriend Garrick’s mom. I think I was probably a sophomore when we first met. In senior year, Garrick and I dated. He was my prom date and we were together until the end of our first semester of college. While in high school, and even after we started college, all of our friends hung out together and we often landed at one house or another near our high school campus. Garrick’s house was one of those houses where we often found ourselves. We were a small posse of nerdy kids who got together on Saturday night to play charades and board games and did student government and band in school. (I was not in band, for the record but I was a big into Model UN and student government.) If we weren’t at Garrick’s house we were at Torunn’s house. Torunn remains to this day, the only truly natural blonde I’ve ever known. Garrick and Torunn lived in the same neighborhood and both had split level houses. The lower level of each home became our regular gaming and movie haunts.

Jenna and her husband were from Oklahoma. They were 25 years out of the University of Oklahoma but she still had a clearly distinct southern twang. Her husband Jim had a deep voice with no discernible trace of southern inflection to my ear. He was a perpetually calm presence. As even-keel and reserved as Jim was, Jenna was vivacious, warm, and very, very chatty. You can pluck a girl out of the south but you can’t pluck the southern out of the girl. I immediately took to her. We were fast friends, me at 17 and her at 46. Which is, funny enough, how old I find myself as I write this.

Garrick had an older brother so Jenna was mom of 2 sons and no daughters. I have even more in common with Jenna now than I did then. As the mom of 3 boys, I understand how impenetrable their lives can seem. More than just a friend to her, looking back, I’m convinced I was her conduit to her younger son and his social circle. Like Jenna, I live for conversation. Through our long talks I think she got to know her son just a bit better. Because I was a girl and I would spill. Boys share so little. I got to be a surrogate daughter and in exchange, I got another surrogate mother out of the deal.

Jenna would invite me to join their family dinners often. She had little choice. I would overstay my welcome at every chance because I so enjoyed the company of this family. At their dinner table I found a more adventurous menu than I had ever seen in my own home. Jenna made an arugula salad with strawberries. What is this insanity? Arugula? What is that? Fruit? In a regular salad? Salad in my house was iceberg lettuce and Wishbone Italian dressing. Jenna was a meticulous chef. Also a Weight Watchers veteran, she weighed and measured every meal like it was a science experiment. Everything was portioned and plated meticulously. It seemed so… fancy. I learned a lot from watching her prepare each meal. Salad, entree, dessert. Each carefully and lovingly prepared with more thought than any meal I’d ever seen in any person’s home. More than the food, there was the spirited verbal sparring that took place like nothing I’d ever seen. Words were not blunt force instruments lobbed across the table intended to inflict fatal injury like they were at my house. Here they were carefully sharpened little barbs meant only to agitate the opposing party enough to up the state of verbal play.

Garrick’s dad was an economist for the International Monetary Fund. Their dinner conversation covered world affairs and national politics. I soaked it up and tried my best to keep up with the conversation. Once in awhile, I managed to hold my ground and even best my companions. I recall one dinner where Garrick, in an effort to show his clear superiority in all things world affairs, threw down and challenged me to identify what the acronym SWAPO stood for. Having just dealt with a Model UN resolution regarding recognition of the South West African People’s Organization as the official government in exile of Namibia, I felt pretty confident on that one. I did not, however, correctly identify the role of the Shining Path in Peru in the follow-on questioning. This was the kind of thing we talked about. It wasn’t the kind of thing we did in my home. I didn’t go back to dinner there without reading the day’s Washington Post headlines.

This was also a family that had lived abroad and had traveled extensively. I was perhaps the only 17 year old girl in all of Northern Virginia, perhaps the entire eastern United States, who enjoyed watching multi hours-long travelogue slideshows with live commentary. But I *really* did. Garrick’s family had trekked all over the world, whereas I had never left the DC metro region. Sitting in his basement, I traveled the world with this family through their carefully curated slideshows. It made me curious. I loved their stories and I loved being part of their family rituals. I felt included and I felt like I became a little bit smarter just by being around them all.

There was an episode of Sex and the City where Carrie reluctantly breaks up with her boyfriend. Reluctant only because she really, really liked his mom. I can relate. I think I spent almost as much time on the phone with Jenna as I did with Garrick. When Garrick and I finally broke up, I might have been sadder to lose my girlfriend than to lose my boyfriend.

Of course we kept in touch but over the years that too, has waned. I hope that I can be a friend to my sons’ girlfriends and, someday, wives in the way that Jenna was to me. I recall that she was the first person who ever told me that I was a good writer and who encouraged me.

No one is shaped by only one person. These women I write about were not the only ones who influenced me or taught me things. It’s a complex calculus, making a whole person. I think my mom understood this. Only much later in my life did I come to realize how difficult it was for my mother to see me connect with these other women. How much it made her feel inadequate and how jealous she was of the time I spent with them. She never said this to me. One day I just understood it to be true. In knowing this and upon looking back, I value her and those relationships even more.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the women who shape our lives.