#hobo code

[thehat-taheht]

Listening to Insanity in the Center of the Universe

From the Land of Enchantment: 

Listening to Insanity in the Center of the Universe (Adapted from a speech)

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I have been telling people about how crazy living in Albuquerque was for a really long time.  Most people didn’t give my stories much thought until ‘Breaking Bad’ debuted.  It has only gotten better since then with ‘Better Call Saul’ and ‘In Plain Sight’ et cetera.  Now people put a little more faith in my stories from New Mexico. One of my favorites is about crazy people. 

In the early 2000’s I was a freshly minted high school graduate, chip on my shoulder, rucksack on my back, $2 in my pocket, and big ideas in my head.  My best friend and I had moved to New Mexico on a whim after spending 5 minutes there over the previous summer.  I wanted to study Psychology after being obsessed with the ‘X Files’ and reading “Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious” in high school.  C.G. Jung was a hero of mine, but so was the Joker, so go figure.  I wanted to be a criminal profiler, but figured that I would more likely be a family counselor. 

Having quite an extensive history of drug use already by age 18 I had few illusions about how the world works and had already experienced a significant amount of abnormal psychology first hand.  I had found an affinity with people of altered mental states and that I could understand them in a way that I felt was meaningful.  There was one guy in my old neighborhood that would always refer to himself as King Arthur and eventually he came to call me Merlin.  I felt that this bond had been positive and after a while Merlin was able to advise Arthur to get back on his meds.

Now before I get into the story I need to set the scene a little.  I was about 19 and since 1995 I had taken to wearing a black long coat of some type (even during summer), a top hat, and round sunglasses.  I had waist length brown wavy hair, and was usually covered in buttons and pins with funny or ironic phrases, like ‘Got Beans?’.  In that particular coat I carried a small bag of pinto beans that I could present to anyone that asked about the button.  Those are all other stories that you may or may not want to hear so I will avoid them for now.

It was shortly after I had enrolled at UNM that I was walking around campus, probably ignoring a math class, that I discovered a strange looking building with no doors in the middle of the quad.  After closer inspection I found that it was a large sculpture/engineering project called ‘The Center of the Universe’. The structure had an opening in every cardinal direction and 2 more for up and down.  As I walked through the Center of the Universe for the first time I looked out of the top, neck craned to look at the puffy white clouds rolling by, I was hit by the sudden urge to lay down.

Setting down my backpack I spread my coat out over the metal grating that covers the ‘down’ direction and propped up my head on my backpack.  I had recently begun meditation so I tried to empty my mind and just let the world roll around me.  My concentration was broken by a raspy ancient voice.  

“Hey Merlin, get up.” 

I still had my eyes closed and just assumed that it was a trick of the meditation or maybe a flashback to my conversations with King Arthur back home.

“You’re Merlin right?” the voice said.

I opened my eyes to see what I assumed was a homeless man of about 50 or so, dreadlocked hair, tattered clothes, and very very pungent.

“Get up.”  he says to me. I obeyed and gathered my things.

“Sir, do you know me?” I ask him using the honorific not because I was playing into his delusion, but because I was taught to respect my elders.

“Of course, you’re Merlin.”

This of course struck me as odd. My skin crawled a bit.  

“Why do you think that?” I asked with more genuine curiosity than I had ever felt before in my life.

“It’s you.  I know you.”

I want to stress to you that I had no idea who this guy was.  Never seen or smelled anyone like him.  This was at the time the singular strangest event that I had experienced, but I learned, in that moment I think, to roll with whatever the Universe throws at me and try to enjoy the ride

“Yes it’s me.”  

I don’t know what I expected to happen at that moment.  Maybe the Halls of Knowledge would burst open and Truth would flow like a river from the Doors of Perception, maybe I would become changed and realize my True self: an inner deity sleeping soundly as the world drifted by. Perhaps the very nature of the universe itself would change and I would receive an owner’s manual to reality and be able to unlock the 'Developer’s Mode'.  

Instead all he said was “Yes I know… I just told you that.”

I was lying down at the Center of the Universe starring Insanity in the face and somehow felt disappointed. 

“You are needed at Denny’s.”  Which is a sentence that no one should ever have to hear.

“What is waiting for me there?” I asked, somewhat dreading the answer.

The man said nothing and walked away, muttering to himself.  I thought about chasing after him, but didn’t want to destroy the illusion just yet.  He seemed very cogent when talking to me and then seemed to revert back to some less aware state.  This made my whole body shiver a bit.

I remember recounting my story to my roommates, this received the expected amount of laughter and head shaking.  Due to our shared drug-use history this story seemed much more likely that I had experienced some flashback or had a dream or some such.  Honestly, I hadn’t expected much, but wanted to make sure that someone else was aware of the story in case it became relevant later.  For you see, I have seen a lot of movies, and there is always a point in the film of some fantastic tale, where you feel like yelling at the main character for not sharing information and I didn’t want to be ‘that guy’.

Nothing happened for months, aside from normal life stuff.  I found my first job as a Kitchen Steward in the Albuquerque Convention Center Kitchen where I was hired for my ability to count to 100 in Spanish, English, and French.  I learned a lot in those months about life and consequently quit that job to try to make more money at Denny’s.

Big Mistake.  Not the biggest of my life, but it was up there.

I honestly had forgotten about the homeless man I met in the Center of the Universe so working at the Albuquerque Central Avenue Denny’s may have been some type of subconscious thing to indulge my curiosity.  My tenure at Denny’s was short but intense. 6 months that aged me 6 years.  During this time, I met a new roommate who would become the father of my nieces, dated a former model with a knife scar on her throat, rediscovered my love of poetry, stayed awake for 11 days, learned how to donate plasma, was on the TV show ‘Cops’ twice, faked my way into a Master’s level psychology class, saw the movie ‘Fight Club’, read ‘Food of the Gods’ by Terence McKenna, and decided I was never going to work another food service job in my life.

In my last week working at the Central Denny’s (now famous for the show Breaking Bad) I was asked to deal with a crazy person in the smoking area.  I was the only non-smoker working there, but as the only person studying psychology, management felt I was uniquely qualified to handle the situation.  More likely they probably thought I was crazy enough to be able to talk to the guy, and after having been on ‘Cops’ and telling the camera guy he had to stay outside, they knew I had no problem telling people to leave.  

I walked over to the smoking area and there was a very large man dressed completely in denim, my mother used to refer to this as a Canadian Tuxedo.  There were lots of pins on his jacket, studs on his lapels, a dark thick beard hid his face and dark sunglasses hid his eyes.  He looked a bit like a biker, but more of a nomad.  Arrayed on the table in front of him were about 20 coffee cups and 10 ashtrays all of them had coffee and cigarettes in them.  I was told by another staff member that he had been taking them from other tables whether or not the table was finished with them.  He would then sit back down and smoke and ask the waitstaff for ridiculous things like 40 eggs or to turn off the sound on the TV, which we didn’t have.  Eventually the other guests had left the smoking section and he was now alone.

Ever the consummate professional, I approached the man to determine if he was just high or actually crazy.  He didn’t seem violent yet, so there was no immediate reason to call the police.  My goal was to keep him calm and get him out of the store, so I could go on making 2.15 per hour with no tips, you know like usual.

“Hello sir, I am sorry but our waiter was called away and I have been asked to help assist you.  Is there anything I can help you with?”  

He muttered something about silverware and ashtrays and ‘where are my eggs?’, but most of it was unintelligible.  For those who know me they will tell you I have a hard time hearing, and I tend to read lips a bit to aid my comprehension.  So I leaned in closer to make out what he was saying.  

This very very large man grabbed my shoulder with a hand that belonged on a monster in a fantasy movie.  His massive mit engulfed my entire shoulder and its weight felt far too heavy to be real.  He brought my good ear close to his beard and whispered “Hello Merlin.”

My mind exploded a bit, with the memory of the homeless man and my friend in my hometown, and the message about being ‘Needed’ at Denny’s.  The world faded a bit as my attention was focused on this man’s gruff road-hardened voice wafting through his unkept, unwashed beard, into my unprepared mind.

“Merlin, I have a quest for you.  You are needed in Espanola.”

“What do I need to do?”

“You must walk into town and meet a wise man.”

“How will I know him?”

“He thinks he will know you, but he will not recognize who you truly are.  You will know what needs to be done.”

My mind reeled from this exchange.  So many questions, but they wouldn’t come.  Instead I shut my mouth as he released my shoulder.  I stood up straight and backed away.  The man stood up bumping the table a bit and causing several cups and ashtrays to spill onto the floor. The man’s face seemed to get angry although I was never sure because of the beard. He lumbered for the door making a low humming noise, knocking over a table as he ran out of the door.

This is where my story gets weird.  

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Months pass.  I quit Denny’s and found work at a Circle K, became a manager inside a few weeks when my store manager decided to steal $5000 worth of money orders and leave the state.  My district supervisor comes to the store and says ‘I guess you’re it.’  I get into a weird rhythm of working and quitting.  I don’t know if you’ve ever worked in the C-Store world but the unwritten rule in the early 2000’s was that you can always request vacation, but it wouldn’t come ever.  If you really needed time off, then you had to quit.  They would hire you back if you were a good employee, because it was cheaper than hiring and training someone new.  

So the cycle would go, work for 2 months with no breaks as there was infinite overtime available.  Save enough money for 2 months of rent and then quit.  Coast for a month, selling plasma, doing odd jobs for walking around money, do ‘other things’, and then get rehired.  Easy-peasy. On these furloughs I would focus on school, study metaphysics and other pseudosciences, and read every religious text I could find.  I devoured entire bookstores.  Searching, researching, studying, learning, theorizing, and finally feeling that I was ready to make decisions about my life.  I felt that I had learned something in the hodgepodge of religious soup that I had ingested for so long.

A certainty that every world religion has a nugget of Truth, a small piece that they got right.  It was only after trying to see it all through the lens of Science and Understanding that my personal beliefs began to take shape.  I felt that I had touched the Aether and it had changed me in the process.  The world was brighter, more deliberate.  My studies in psychology had reached a climax.  I was too poor to afford more schooling, didn’t qualify for grants or loans, so I lied.  I signed up to audit course after course using my knowledge of the subject matter to social engineer my way into higher level courses.   

I journaled during this period and continued working and coasting.  During one such coasting period, I scheduled a trip to the remote town of Espanola as I felt the time was right.  A few years had passed, I had given up all drugs including caffeine and pledged to remain this way for 6 years.  My friends could barely stand the sober version of me.  Apparently I was an insufferable ass, that would constantly deride anything that others thought or felt and was consumed with reading and learning so much that I would ignore important parts of my life, like family and relationships.  I tried sobriety and it honestly isn’t for me.

The trip was well planned and orchestrated.  I had written out several scenarios for emergencies and eventualities.  I hired a co-worker to drive me to the outskirts of the city and drop me off so I could walk into town.  I was to play a character that I had devised to hide my intentions in the town.  My name was Bill, I wore an old army jacket, tattered jeans, a wide brim military surplus outback style hat, and 10 year old chuck taylors (which were less shoes and more moccasins by this point).  The Army jacket had a lot of holes in it that didn’t go through the lining so they made good hidey spots.  I stashed about $500, an emergency phone, an extremely dented WWII canteen, 3 tin whistles of varying keys and an old battered wooden recorder.  

In my rucksack I had several books, a change of clothes in a ziplock tucked away at the bottom, a journal and few pens, a summer sausage, a box of crackers, hank of rope, a mess kit, some dryer lint covered in candle wax inside a ziplock, utility knife and a firestriker. My hair was long and I had made sure not to shower for a few days before the trip.  

After being dropped off in the desert about 5 miles from town, I rolled around in the dirt and dust and made sure to wear my jacket as long as I could stand in the sun on the walk in to get all sweaty to complete the ambiance of Bill the wayfarer.  As I made my way down the mountain into town, I was greeted by the Welcome to Espanola sign with the message ‘LowRider Capital of the World’.  If you are from California and want to dispute that, take it up with Espanola, that is their claim not mine. 

My plan was to make a small splash when I entered town to announce myself, but not so big that it seemed planned.  Just enough to let others know I am there.  I entered town through the Santa Clara Pueblo heading toward the Rio Grande and came to the first restaurant I saw called La Cocina, which means the Kitchen if you don’t speak any Spanish.  I don’t really speak it either, I spoke New Mexican which is fundamentally English with a lot of Spanish nouns and random verbs and curse words.  Like Spanglish but with less Adam Sandler and more Carlos Mencia. 

I picked a nice spot in the shade so that cars and people walking into the restaurant could see me, but the staff could not.  I dropped my pack and used it as a seat, took off my coat and laid out all of my instruments on it. Then turned my hat upside down in front of me and started to play.  I only knew about 10-15 songs, but could improvise a bit on the whistles and the recorder.  I would alternate songs and even tried to play two whistles at once, poorly.  Did everything I could to attract attention and eventually picked up a few dollars from passersby. 

Took me about 45 minutes to make enough for 2 enchiladas with green chili and Spanish rice.  Management demanded that I get it to go as ‘there was no seating available’. Big air quotes.  I was then less politely told not to eat on the premises or continue to panhandle lest the authorities be notified. I picked up my stuff and tipped my hat to them and left.  Choosing to cross the Rio Grande and head down a street called Riverside eating my enchiladas on the walk.  

On my way down Riverside, I saw some Low Riders and some Police cars.  I tried my best to be ignored by both groups, but a long haired 20-something dirty white kid playing a flute was bound to attract someone’s attention.  When approached by police I played my flute and danced, whenever they weren’t looking I switched flutes.  I made a game out of it.  Try to make myself seem too weird or crazy to be dealt with.

When approached by anyone else, I tried to engage them as directly as possible.  Attempting to match their speech patterns as closely as I could.  If I was unable to do that then I would simply play the role that I would assume they see in me.  If they were nice I was needy. If they were mean, I was crazy.  If they were curious, I was a fountain of information and dialogue.  I tried hard not to outright lie about anything including my name.  I of course allowed them to think my name was Bill, because every time it looked like the conversation was headed toward my name, I would stare off into space and say ‘Just Bill…’ occasionally followed by a hand motion as though it was written on a Movie Theatre marquee. 

I made my way to the end of town, which at this stage of Espanola’s development was just past the brand new Walmart supercenter.  There was a bar in the parking lot in front of the Walmart and just past that on the road that stretched out into the open desert was an old 50’s style motel that I had assumed was condemned.  I noticed that in the window was an old school orange Vacancy sign with the ‘No’ part off.  After walking in I figured that it was likely less than a few days away from a health inspector walking in and shuttering the place for good.  I haggled with the manager over an hourly rate room that I wanted to stay in for several days and he finally agreed to give me the one room that isn’t regularly used for hourly entertainment. 

He almost lost his shit when I told him I would be right back once we decided on $25 per night.  I explained that I needed to go make that money by playing my flutes and I would return before sundown for the room.  He reluctantly agreed and I headed to the Walmart parking lot.  It was hot and I was tired. I played outside the Walmart Super Center for about an hour and made a few dollars, but not enough to pay for the motel room. I noticed a few other vagrants trying to sponge the Walmart patrons for a few bucks.  When a security guard in his little go-kart came around to roust them out, I felt that it was time to blend.  Picked up my sack and shuffled after them.  They all hid behind the walled dumpster area of a western bar that shared a parking lot with Walmart.  I followed them in.

One of them spotted me and looked me up and down and then pushed aside a crate that was blocking a broken utility panel and stepped aside, waving his arms to usher everyone through.  He yelled something, that I would later learn was the Hopi word for ‘inside’ or ‘indoors’ or some such, but I couldn’t pronounce it then and can’t repeat it now.  We all rushed through the small opening, I had to drag my sack behind me.  The native man that had helped everyone escape pulled the hatch closed and pulled a rope through a hole that was attached to the crate.  Once completely taught it had hidden our escape route entirely.  I heard the go-kart pull up with its sickly electric whine and heard the angry shuffling of security guard shoes grinding away at the heated asphalt in the desert sun outside. 

Looking around in the space, once my eyes adjusted to the dim light that emanated from the emergency lighting and cracks in the ceiling and walls, I seemed to be in a seldom used storage area with a lot of empty beer cans and bottles, unwashed bedding, and piles of aluminum signs and lighting for the bar.  Spiders and moths seemed to be fighting an unending battle in the rafters and there was the telltale small black lumps of chocolate that told of mice in the area.  Standing up straight the Native man towered over me, by about a foot and a half, but it felt like 12.  He looked down on me, face stern, but with a smile in his eyes.  He extended his pizza-pan sized mitt and said, “Name’s John, people call me War Machine.”

Trying my best not to be intimidated by this huge man that I now found myself in a closed area with, I allowed my seemingly tiny, feeble hands be swallowed by his, looked to where I assumed his eyes were and said with a completely straight face, “My name is Bill, people usually call me ‘dumb kid’ or ‘hey you’.”  I could hear the silence pounding in my ears, all of the oxygen ripped away from the planet and I was left falling into nothingness.  I expected War Machine to rip my arm off and beat me to death with it. I imagined my death in a thousand different ways, but I remained calm and relaxed.

His grip tightened.  He jerked suddenly, throwing his head back and a deep low rumbling like from the bowels of a volcano shook me.  As the blood rushed into my ears the roaring sound was replaced by a raucous throaty laugh that left me dumbfounded.  His enormous hand clapped me on the shoulder and he kept chuckling.  “You’re funny Bill. Welcome to Espanola, did you just get here?”  He let go of my hand and motioned for me to walk toward the back of the building. 

“Yeah got in this morning.” I found that the rest of the escaping vagrants had moved to the back of the room behind the aluminum signs.   Above the door in permanent marker was a hand-drawn symbol that I had seen before.  It looked like a block M where the middle line was facing up instead of down, or rather like a rectangle where the bottom line was removed and placed standing straight up from the middle of the top line.  I was later told by War Machine that this was a sign that meant ‘good place’ or something similar.  To this day I am not sure if it was a New Mexico, Native, or hobo thing, but I have seen the same symbol in other places.

When we got into the room and my eyes adjusted, I saw that there were makeshift beds, an old discarded couch, several crates and even a few chairs.  A familiar hissing and popping sound was emanating from a large crack in the wall that was in darkness.  The only light source in the room was some cracks in the wall from the outside and an emergency light that someone had rigged up to an electrical socket.  One of the other guys in the room picked up the emergency light box and hung it on a hook above the crack in the wall.   

Inside the crack were exposed compressed gas beverage lines each with a tourniquet of some kind around it and a label next to it on the wall.  Most were indecipherable from this distance, but I recognized one at the top that said “Miller Light”.  Almost everyone in the room produced some kind of mess kit cup or canteen or plastic bottle and passed it down the line.  I took the last swallow of water out of my canteen and passed it down the line along with War Machine’s Aquafina bottle.  Both of our receptacles came back filled to the brim with chilled Miller Light. 

Now I despise Miller Light and light beers in general, in fact I don’t even like drinking much, but when you are tired, sore, hungry, and a little sunburned that Miller Light tasted like sweet Ambrosia.  It was Manna from Heaven, sent to us hungry world-weary travelers to save us from the ravages of the waiting desert.  I don’t remember much of the rest of the night except from a few tidbits here and there.  The group of us played a game that involved some kind of nonsense words and repeated phrases that always ended in laughter.  

Pretty sure that I paid for my room. I remember getting propositioned by an older hispanic lady repeatedly.  I believe that she even snuck into my room somehow and I may have scared her away with the business end of a summer sausage that I swore to her was a knife.   That could all be some kind of alcohol delusion, but it seems dumb enough to be true.  I slept off the booze and tried to make a fresh start of it in the morning.

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The next day I continued my completely undefined quest, relatively sure that these vagabonds in the city didn’t need my help.  As far as they went they were pretty set.  They had places to be, food, and fun of a sort.  So if the universe didn’t mean for me to help them, what was I needed for?

To try to sort this out I had an idea that the answer would hit me dead center in the face if I looked hard enough.  I planned to continue to dodge cops, pretend to panhandle, and toot my flutes.  For breakfast I had what was left of the cheese, crackers, and summer sausage with some water from my canteen.  I filled up the canteen with some questionable water from the motel bathroom sink and strapped my knife to my boot.  I took all of my possessions with me and set out.  

It was hot again. The town danced in front of my eyes in the heat if I looked at it directly.  There wasn’t much to the town on the main drag, but there were some chain restaurants like McDonald’s and SubWay.  Now I know that you are thinking that going to MickeyD’s would be the right choice to try to panhandle and get some food if you were impersonating a homeless person, but I had a different take.  

After spending so much time with real homeless folk in Dallas and in Albuquerque, I felt that SubWay was the better choice.  At McDonald’s most of the folk who go there order from the dollar menu if they have to or from the regular menu if they can.  Most patrons don’t spend time there unless they have kids, and people are not likely to give change in a drive through.  McDonald’s is cheap, ergo people who eat there generally don’t have much to spare.  If they do, they have kids and they don’t want homeless folk around their kids.  Combine that with the fact that they are almost always on a separate lot and you are just asking for cops to harass you. 

This made SubWay a much better choice.  People actually spend time inside because of the lack of drive through, the culture in the restaurant promotes tipping, so money is more readily available, and people who eat there are usually sans family.  Plus they are usually in strip mall box storefronts so it is easier to avoid police. 

I popped a squat on the pavement outside the subway within earshot of the tables inside, but not in direct eyesight, as this tends to draw the ire of the employees quickly.  I took out a D penny whistle and a plastic recorder and flipped my hat upside down on the pavement.  I practiced both the rhythm and harmony parts of the theme song of Buckaroo Banzai.  The rhythm part was my left hand on the recorder and the right hand played the penny whistle on the melody.  

Once I was satisfied I knew both parts well, I tried my best to play both parts at once.  Honestly I am sure it was horrible at first and most people just ignored me.  Eventually I changed the rhythm section a bit to match the breaths of the melody and that worked better as I wasn’t running out of breath constantly.  So I wasn’t playing the real song, but some new rendition of it. To my surprise someone actually put in some money while walking by, a dark skinned fellow in a white suit and white shoes.  As his clothes reflected too much light I couldn’t tell much more about him at the time.  

I switched to When the Saints Go Marching In on the recorder and dropped the penny whistle back into a hole in the lapel.  When I assumed the guy went inside, I stopped playing and I dropped some more of my own money in the hat.  To make sure that not too much attention was paid to my money, I kept playing until at least two more patrons passed by me, pretending to thank them for their generous donations.

After I felt enough time had passed I went inside the Subway after stowing my instruments and donning my hat.  I ordered completely prepared to pay for my six inch Italian and chips, but I was told that my meal had been paid for and I could get a drink as well.  Accepting a bottled water from the cashier, I was informed that the gentleman that tipped me earlier had paid for my meal.  I approached him, not sure how to handle speaking to him.  He seemed to be of Indian descent and was dressed in a nice looking white suit with no tie.  He had friendly eyes and the hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth.  

He gave off a certain confidence despite the strange situation that made me think that he had done this before.  He offered me a seat across from him at the table and I cautiously accepted and decided to stop the crazy act I had put on for the police. 

I feel it bears a reminder at this point to set the scene.  The Subway, despite being brightly lit, has heavy tint on the windows to keep out some of the heat.  I haven’t showered or changed clothes for over a week to make sure that my disguise is as accurate as possible.  I rolled around in the sand and dirt on the outskirts of the town to give my vintage moth-eaten army surplus coat a fresh coating of earth.  I have long hair that is matted and dreaded up and I am sure my breath smells terrible.  People are staring at us as we sit there talking about food and desperation.  

He offers to buy me another sandwich and I accept and tie it up and put it into my pack.  He laughs at this and then starts to talk about himself.  He indicates that he works with youths and would like to offer me a place to start over.  He knows that being homeless is hard and that I seem intelligent but desperate.  “All most people need is a place to get cleaned up and stability so they can get a job and re-enter society.”  He explained. “I work at a place of worship and the people there could help you get back on your feet.”

“I would be very grateful for any help I get sir.”  I felt that I wanted to appear very desperate and pliant.  I had never heard of a guy like this randomly picking up homeless people so I had a hunch that this is why I was here.  It was possible that he was just some kind of pervert, but I didn’t get that feeling with how he was speaking.

“That is good to hear.”

We packed up my kit and we headed out of the SubWay to his Lexus which was also white of course.  I guarded my answers and responses closely to not let out too much of my real personality.  Per my assumed identity I told him that my name was Rene Carter as a modification of my favorite philosopher René Descartes. Let’s call the man Raj, I will keep his real name to myself for this story. 

We arrived at their compound at the edge of town in the early evening and he showed me to his house on the lot.  It was a nice two story adobe filled with southwestern kitsch and Native American blankets.  After getting a short tour we ended in a room filled with hundreds of crystals and candles.  I honestly almost laughed when we walked in that room, but I stifled it.  Raj told me that he was something called a ‘Light Giver’, which he explained was a form of shamanic healer that uses light focused through crystals or that emanates from his hands to “heal the body and uncloud the mind” as he put it.

He offered to let me use the shower and he gave me some donated clothes.  Still not knowing what to expect, I briefly inspected the lavish bathroom for cameras and then showered off my finely cultivated layer of earth.  My long hair was still matted, but I soaped it and tied it back again with a length of gaffer’s cord.  The clothes fit well enough, they were plain and all tan.  I insisted on keeping my jacket, and Raj offered me some scented oils to make my hair and jacket smell better.  Honestly I just didn’t want anyone discovering the $500 I had hidden away in one of my flutes.  

   After I was a little more presentable, Raj took me outside and into the compound proper.  For our purposes we can call it ‘la Hacienda’.

Albino peacocks and white people in bright Sikh clothing everywhere.  It was kind of strange to look at like a bad episode of a scifi show where you are more worried about the actors getting heat stroke than following the plot. Not knowing they were Sikhs yet, I just assumed it was some sort of cult.  In the end I guess I was right.

Now I had studied with some Sikhs in University and my favorite Indian restaurant “Kebab’N’Kurry” in Dallas is run by the nicest Sikh and his family you may ever meet.  I knew Sikhs as a super friendly and approachable religious group that would never try to prosthelytize and despite having roots in the rougher times in India, it was all about the equality of men and women and a celebration of life and its mysteries. I knew that they rejected the Caste system of old and were all about working as a community to elevate everyone.  

Armed with this information already I was agog at what I saw on the Hacienda.  Not all men wore the Turban and few had beards, but the obviously traditionally garbed men let me know what was up.  Raj looked more like a modern reformed Sikh that had that super suave beardiness still but kept his hair short, he wore white, but not the full dress like some of the others.  Something else stood out that I didn’t quite catch at first.  

There were no adult women present outside, just men and children.  Red flags should have gone up at this point, but I was still in observation mode at this point.  After walking the grounds a bit, Raj invited me to come eat supper with him and I followed.   We ate and I tried to keep up my character, by being a bit cagey and fingering my flutes.   Mostly he just wanted to sell the lifestyle to me it seemed.  He talked about how there was always food, friendly people, stable housing, and community.  I was told I was welcome as long as I wanted to stay.   After the meal I was taken to a small single room house that had a lot of pillows and blankets with a thin plank built into the wall.  I slept there that night and didn’t want to disturb any of the cult members by asking where the bathroom was so I just pissed in the nearby brush.  

The next day I was taken to breakfast and was introduced to several random folk in the group that were doing menial chores.  It seemed to be Raj’s intent to introduce me to people that were genuinely happy doing simple chores, thereby making me more likely to want to achieve the same level of happiness.  Most of the day was spent going around la Hacienda with breaks for meals.  Eventually we came back to his house and talked to me again about ‘Light Therapy’ and being a ‘Giver of the Holy Light’.  At several points he seemed very serious and almost scientific, at others I was sure that ‘Giving someone the Holy Light’ was a euphemism for sex.

He offered me a ‘Light Healing’ session and asked me to take off my shirt and lie down on a massage table face down.  After hesitating I obliged and he lit candles and incense, then turned off the light and began chanting.  He selected a large crystal from the wall with his eyes closed and proceeded to wave it about, while chanting rhythmically.  He touched the crystal to my back and rolled it up and down my spine.  It was an interesting sensation as one side of the crystal was warm and the other cold.  He abruptly stopped chanting and produced a bottle of some kind and began to put baby oil on my back.  I instinctively leapt off the table and took out a few crystals on my way and grabbed my shirt and told him in what I thought at the time was a polite tone, that the session was over.

Raj took this in stride and announced that it was time to go out with the youth group anyways.  I followed him outside where he met with some other adult leaders as a group of 15-19 year olds walked up the hill in jeans and t-shirts.  Raj informed me that as soon as the adults changed into their ‘city clothes’ we would be heading into Santa Fe to see a new movie as a group.  The situation was very strange as I was absolutely mobbed by most of the younger kids asking me lots of questions about the outside world.  I did my best to remain in character as my new cult friends took me to go see X-Men which had only recently been released.  

Going to the movies with a lot of anglo Sikhs in Sante Fe to see X-Men was one of the most surreal non-drug related experiences.  I am sure that we looked very normal from the outside, but me knowing I was likely surrounded by a real bunch of cult members was super strange for me and hard to deal with.  Consequently I had a hard time paying attention to the movie, and honestly they were really chatty.  Rewatching the movie later, I realized how bad it was and felt less bad about missing the movie.  

Normally during a social outing like this at this age I would honestly be looking to hookup with one of the girls that were with the group, but I was way too distracted to even think about anything other than maintaining my false identity.  It didn’t even occur to me at the time that most of the girls that were with us were all sitting next to me, or that all of the boys were either trying hard not to look at me or were shooting me disapproving looks.   It also didn’t occur to me that the social interaction may have been an exercise orchestrated by Raj to find out which girls I had chemistry with.  I was so oblivious in fact that when the movie was over and we were on our way back to the compound that I didn’t pick up on the fact that Raj decided on the seating on the way back and surrounded me with girls that wanted to touch my hair and talk to me about where I was from.  

As always I did my best not to lie too much and laid out half truths with other half truths making little misunderstandable truth sandwiches that those girls ate up with gusto.  Meanwhile I tried to get some information about their little group from the talkative girls.  They were not surprisingly pretty tight-lipped about the compound, but did talk to me enough about their religion for me to understand that it wasn’t entirely a pure Sikh ethos.  There was a certain sense of misogyny in their words, a subtle hint that women weren’t being treated as equals.  I found no outward obvious signs of abuse, but there was definitely some mental conditioning.  At the time I just chalked it up to them being in a religious cult.  After all even non-cult religions have their conditioning in some ways.  

We got back to la Hacienda and the girls I had been sitting with insisted on washing my hair.  As it was done in a public place I saw no problem with it and just did my best to enjoy the pampering.  I had chest length thick brown hair, that despite my earlier shower was still pretty matted and they got all of the dirt out and I was very relaxed.  They used some kind of homemade shampoo that smelled like hibiscus and honey and was like no product I have ever used before or since.  The girls were extremely fit and very pretty and I remember letting my guard down around them a bit. They told me a bit more about the group.  I learned that their highest guru was in la Hacienda and that his 70th birthday was in a few days, there was going to be a big ceremony and he would address the entire congregation.   

===================

I think I passed out before dinner because I don’t remember much else that night and woke up to Raj telling me to get dressed so I could help with breakfast.  The group was very much a ‘nobility in work’ group and they paid people that did the job around them in high esteem.  With the pampering from last night, my hair was light and bouncy and I must’ve looked like a Penecostal white Jesus with sandals and white loose fitting white clothes and a scruffy beard, hair all flowing in the wind.  The illusion was immediately dispelled when I got to the kitchen and they gave me a hairnet.  I tucked in my hair and started cutting vegetables and fruit.  Eventually I was asked to help make something called ‘prashad’, my job was to keep stirring a pot like a madman until someone told me to stop and then pour it out into a bowl, which was then blessed with some kind of knife or dagger.  

It was actually interesting and I enjoyed helping these folks in the kitchen.  It dawned on me again that no younger women were in the kitchen area or anywhere I could see.  Breakfast was vegetarian again.  Two days in and I was already missing bacon.  I had eaten my remaining provisions on the first night and was now completely dependent on their food, which was excellent especially for vegan food.  

I finally spotted some of the younger girls that I had seen at the movies coming out of the large building toward the front of la Hacienda.  Most of them were wearing loose flowing white pants and bright cotton tops, very different from before.  They walked away from where I was and into another building that looked more like a dorm. 

The next morning I was practically pulled out of bed by a few of the younger girls who helped me dress and then pushed me into the large building I had seen them come out of before.  There were lots of small thin mats on the floor and I was confused about the room’s purpose.   The girls all helped me to go through some of the first poses in what had become my first yoga class.  I had relaxed a lot by this time and constantly being on my game about my false identity was less on my mind.  Consequently my hormones took over a bit and I started noticing exactly how fit some of these girls were.  

So much so that I had some physical manifestations of my desire for intimacy. Naturally I felt that like everything else with the group, as a natural function it shouldn’t be hidden so I didn’t leave the room or try to cover up any more and just tried to keep going with the lesson.  I tell you what though, it really did make some of the poses very difficult.  I heard a few giggles from the class about my inappropriate situation.  Between the young girls sweating and bending over into compromising positions and my head swimming with early 20’s hormones I am sure I was about to make some really dumb decisions.  

We will ignore the details of what happened next as this is not that kind of story, but the facts you need to know are that I was beset upon by a group of girls that wanted to talk to me.  Eventually there were very few girls, nature took its course and I was instructed in my first lesson in Neo-Trantic Yoga.  

I was too inebriated on hormones to even think about what the consequences for this action would be.  So I had little control over what started to happen after this.  Luckily for me this wasn’t something that was going to get me killed or anything.  No one even appeared angry and there didn’t seem to be any immediate attachment between me and the yoga girls.  I suspected that the situation was likely intentionally manufactured to convince me to stay in the group as a sort of honeypot trap. 

The rest of the day was spent with me learning various parts about the ceremony that was to occur the next day and my duties in the kitchen.

That evening I was again accosted by a group of the young girls and we talked about life in la Hacienda.  I questioned them vigorously, completely ignoring my facade at this point. 

So it turns out one or more of the girls were spoken for by other men in the compound, but many of the girls there were either runaways or homeless and had not always been with this group.  I asked about how they were recruited and they all recounted similar stories to my own.  Found wandering, a well-dressed man bought them food and convinced them to come live at la Hacienda, where they were shown care, comfort, and kindness.  Then they were each shown the value of community and hard work, but also given rewards like going to the movies.  From their stories the place was sounding less and less ominous.  That was until of course one of the girls started crying.  

The other girls in the group hugged and patted her until she could speak again and she explained that this is what they are supposed to say.  That some of them had been required to marry against their will and that the elders in the group would sometimes touch them in intimate ways without permission.  It was explained that the elders would test them to see if they were ready to bear children and marry.  A few other girls admitted this was true and one even described some forms of sexual and emotional abuse.  I pressed for details on the identities of the elders responsible, but they were very tight-lipped about it. 

Needless to say but I was appalled and the illusion of civility that permeated this place was shattered.  I felt my burden growing.  I know this started as a lark, that it was a way to have an ‘interesting experience’ in the desert and to face the unknown, but now things were becoming serious.  As a former Boy Scout who served the community in a variety of ways, I felt compelled to right this wrong.  I had heard of this kind of thing happening in cults and other positions of authority, but this was my only experience with it directly.  If I were to simply call the police the cult would likely shut down the investigation with well rehearsed stories and solidarity. I struggled with what to do the whole next day until it was time for the ceremony.  

Turns out the ceremony was like hand-fasting.  It was a marriage of sorts, but given the nature of the cult, it was likely not a marriage in a legal sense.  Everyone walked down this low hill to a mostly dried riverbed just before dusk.  It was quite a scene with everyone wearing white and carrying wrought iron lanterns, while walking through the desert landscape and drums by the riverbed played a driving beat.  I noticed that many of the women had henna tattoos on their hands and feet while we were all walking together.

At the riverbed an ancient looking man was kneeling on a pillow that was on a raised platform.  He had a long white beard, a gray mustache, and piercing eyes that looked like they knew the secrets of the universe.   As the ceremony began, a couple knelt on some decorative pillows and the Guru started speaking about how this wasn’t just a marriage but a joining of souls to make a singular person.  He talked for what felt like a long time as the sun washed across the landscape and bathed the entire ceremony in a soft pink light.  Seriously pink.  If you have never experienced a New Mexico desert sunset, you owe it to yourself to experience it at least once.

I zoned out through part of his sermon to inspect the couple.  The bride was one of the girls I had met before who had talked about inappropriate touching.  The groom was at least 10 years older than her, but I figured that she was at least 19 so it wasn’t an illegal kind of bad, but didn’t make me any more comfortable with what I was witnessing.   In my head I was trying to figure out which of the elders they could have been referring to.  I know that Raj had made me feel super uncomfortable and wanted to put his hands on me, but I suspected that it was less innocent than that based on their stories.  

I started to listen to the sermon again and started to hear some of the most sexist, misogynistic, and outright old fashioned ways of thinking about women and their duties to their husbands.  The Guru was telling this girl of 19 that she had no control over her body as it now belonged to the groom.  He was dressing it up in flowery language and sprinkling it with spiritual mumbo jumbo, but he was still describing sexual slavery.  Anger overcame me.  

I don’t remember much of the rest of that night, but the next day was the guru’s birthday and there was to be a celebration in the temple at noon.  I screwed up all of my courage and asked Raj if I could have a word with the Yogi.  He said I would have to wait in line to give him his birthday wishes.  So I did.  Waiting in line I imagined what I would say, but couldn’t think of anything.  I knew I needed to say something.  

When I got to the front of the line I blanked out.  Mind went completely blank and the world started to move in slow motion.  I could hear my breath and feel sweat rolling slowly down my back under the white rough cloth shirt.  Something happened to my mouth, and I saw the all-knowing look of the aged Yogi suddenly turn to anger.  I realized I was speaking extremely fast and pointing at him.  Suddenly I could hear my voice again.  

“…this type of thinking went out with universal women’s suffrage.  Their bodies belong to them and not to you or any member of your so-called religion.  If you do not change your ways and teachings then you are leading all of your followers to destruction.  This will not end well.” I could feel the eyes of everyone in the room staring at me.  Inspecting me, judging and hating me.  I was being dissected by their vision.  Not knowing what else to do, I said “Happy Birthday.” and turned to leave the room.  Raj and a few other men practically tackled me on the way out of the room and I was force-marched to the front gates and handed my already packed bag with all of my possessions.  They had been cleaned and smelled like sandalwood. 

Getting my bearings I walked the few miles back into town. Getting a fresh coating of dirt and dust on the way. When I reached the edge of town I spotted a Motel 6.  I pulled my emergency cash from inside on of my flutes and rented a room.  Then I took the longest shower of my life.  I called my ride and he came to pick me up the next morning.  

I don’t know what it all meant, but while writing this piece and researching it for accuracy, I found that the Yogi I had berated in public had died the next year and it was discovered that he did indeed have sexual relations with many of the members of his sect.

I strongly feel that some external force was working through me that day.  Call it what you want, but I do feel as though I was meant to do something that day and it was done.  I struggled with writing this as I now know what happened after I left and it is a strange set of events.  Not the strangest of my life, but that is another story. 

#Espanola #lowriders #new mexico #land of enchantment #land of entrapment #albuquerque #denny's #writing #breaking bad #tantric yoga #xmen #UNM #center of the universe #schizophrenia #true story #yoga #hobo code #motel 6

[bestboyseri]

getting a tattoo by @zenpunks-blog 

hobo code for “a kind lady lives here”

#me #zenpunks-blog #tattoo #cat tattoo #hobo code #portland or

[thesovereignsring-if]

"Helios can ruin my life <3"

+10 to Sieghardt's stress counter.

#I don't care if the meme is old #coding it driving me loco #Sieghardt is out here fighting for his and the MC's lives #only for the MC to simp for the slutty hobo they meet in a dark alleyway- #I cant look at the milk emoji the same way anymore- #/jk i love you guys haha

[emichevy]

Quick experimental Noir doodle as a warm up while I work on bigger things. :3

#spiderman noir #spider noir #my art #into the spider verse #spider man: across the spider verse #my wife #art #meow #pookie #zesty ass man #he’s so Ethel Cain coded #he looks like a mix between a mob boss #and a hobo #is that good or bad #also holy shit he looks so old #my poor baby #someone get him some green tea

[burninblood]

So, the first drawing of the new year is this hobo Bucky. yeah.

#bucky barnes #bucky #marvel fanart #hobo bucky #fanart #mine #james barnes #james buchanan barnes #a really random drawing I KNOW #but I watched the hanging sun the other night and the main male characters has this sad hobo look which I like and... #...it's really fugitive!Bucky coded to me #burninbloodart

[iimaplestix]

actually OBSESSED with making SFM album covers rn please send song/merc recommendations i wanna make more of these

#tf2 #soldier tf2 #sfm #tf2 sfm #album cover #album cover redraw #barns courtney #hobo rocket is so soldier coded i had no choice

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

Inside and Outside: Wolves and Punks

Early-twentieth-century observations of sex between prisoners were shaped by a burgeoning sexological literature whose conceptual categories proved useful in understanding and mapping prison sexual culture. But heightened attention to prison sex in the 1920s and 1930s, on the part of penologists, prison administrators, and prisoners themselves, is not explained simply by the availability of a new conceptual template. While sexologists puzzled over the etiology of same-sex practices performed by apparently "normal" people, those practices would have been more easily and readily comprehended in urban working-class communities of the period.

George Chauncey has documented the visibility of queer life in early-twentieth-century New York City and its integration in working-class and immigrant communities. In that world, Chauncey writes, "the fundamental division of male sexual actors... was not between "heterosexual' and 'homosexual' men, but between conventionally masculine males, who were regarded as men, and effeminate males, known as fairies or pansies, who were regarded as virtual women, or, more precisely, as members of a 'third sex' that combined elements of the male and female.

Prisons were enclosed communities that gave rise to and perpetuated their own distinctive cultures, but they were far from hermetically sealed. The attribution of sexual deviance or "queerness" to the gender transgression of "fairies" and the possibility of conventionally masculine men having sex with them without compromising their status as "normal" found an echo in men's prison populations. Prison vernacular, especially the terms used to denote participants in prison sex, overlapped closely with working-class vernacular and the roles and expectations it delineated, no doubt reflecting its importation into prisons by a disproportionately working-class inmate population and perhaps its exportation into working-class communities as well.

Prison sexual vernacular was part of a prison argot that attracted considerable attention more generally, from both prison insiders and outsiders. Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) organizer and prisoner Hi Simons was fascinated by prison language that seemed to him "full of swagger and laughter, because of the vivid if often violent and vile poetry that streaked through it.... To use it," Simons wrote, "made us feel bold and free." Simons acknowledged that "except for a few terms from the I.W.W. vocabulary," incarcerated labor organizers "added nothing" to the specialized vocabulary of prisoners, but he worked to compile a dictionary of "prison lingo" he learned while an inmate of the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth and published it in 1933. Others in this period published glossaries of prison terms as well, testifying to the emergence of a collective consciousness and shared culture among prisoners.

Central to prison argot were the coded terms that delineated sexual types and declared expectations about sexual acts and roles, offering a vernacular analog to sexological taxonomies. Noel Ersine included eighteen terms referring to same-sex sex among the fifteen hundred entries in Underworld and Prison Slang, published in 1933. Simons imagined that "a complete prison dictionary" would constitute "an encyclopedia of all imaginable sexual deviations," rivaling the sexologists' ambitions in cata loging sexual variance."

Prison constituted a unique transfer point between expert and vernacular sexual discourses, the terms of one often inflecting the other. Those men typed by sexologists as "pseudo-homosexuals" or "semi-homosexuals" were known to male prisoners as "wolves" and "punks." Those were men whose participation in same-sex sex was presumed to spring not from their nature but from the exigencies of circumstance. Wolves, sometimes also referred to as "jockers," were typically represented as conventionally, often aggressively masculine men who preserved (and according to some accounts, enhanced) that status by assuming the "active," penetrative role in sex with other men. As Victor Nelson made clear, "The wolf (active sodomist)... is not considered by the average inmate to be 'queer' in the sense that the oral copulist... is so considered. " In contrast to many accounts by penologists and some prison officials who blamed fairies for prison seduction, those most familiar with prison life typically credited wolves with initiating sex behind bars.

That initiation was often aggressive. As their name suggested, wolves were understood to be sexual predators, wooing, bribing, and sometimes forcing other men to have sex with them. Wolves were "always on the lookout for a handsome boy with a weak mind, who had nobody to send them in some food and money," sociologist Clifford Shaw wrote in his 1931 case study of a young juvenile delinquent." Berg described the process by which the wolf secured a sexual partner as "a campaign in which all the luxuries of prison - candy tobacco, sweets, and choice foods - are pressed upon the newcomer." Once the object of the wolf's affection accepted the goods offered, "he is quickly given to understand that he must repay the favor in kind." Sometimes seduction by wolves was described as a deliberate and cold-hearted maneuver of engaging a younger inmate in a relationship of indebtedness, which could be repaid only by sex. Others offered examples of more heartfelt and romantic courtship. Nelson recalled "Dreegan," the "champion "wolf" at Auburn Prison," who

outrageously flattered the objects of his lust; he gave them cigarettes, candy, money, or whatever else he possessed which might serve to break down their powers of resistance; and otherwise courted' them exactly as a normal man 'courts a woman. Once the boy had been seduced, if he proved satisfactory, Dreegan would go the whole hog, like a Wall Street broker with a Broadway chorus-girl mistress, and squander all of his possessions on the boy of the moment.

Wolves may not have been motivated by "true" homosexuality, in the understanding of contemporaries, but the relationships they forged in prison were often far from casual. Jealous rivalries and violent confrontations among inmates were credited to the passionate feelings of some wolves for their partners. Inmate-author Goat Laven described "brutal fights," some fatal, that arose from sexual jealousies: "It means a kick in the back to steal another man's kid." Louis Berg seconded Laven account. "The unwritten law of the prison forbids any 'wolf" to make approaches to another's 'boy friend' once he is wooed and won," Berg observed. "But it is not to be expected that men who break the laws for lesser urges will hesitate when they are driven by passions that rock them to the roots of their being. Fights occur between 'wolves' over some boy which are sanguinary and even end in murder."

Berg went on to recount the murder of "Mildred," an inmate at Welfare Island, by her jealous ex-lover. "From all accounts, Berg observed, "Mildred' was the victim of jealousy caused by 'her' unfaithfulness. That 'she' paid with 'her' life partner. shows the seriousness with which such prison marriages' are regarded." To some, the jealous violence that prison relationships could spark testified not only to depth of feeling but also to their similarity to heterosexual relationships. In a disturbing comparison, Berg concluded that Mildred's murder "proves how completely such relationships are identified with the normal ones between men and women." Charles Ford described jealousies among female inmates that resulted in fist fights, "hair pullings," and "every other conceivable type of trouble making activity" and that were even more real than husband-wife jealousies."

One theory explaining the existence of prison wolves, enshrined in inmate lore by the early twentieth century, proposed that "a 'wolf' is an ex-punk looking for revenge!" The object of wolves' and jocker attentions were known as "punks" and "kids," often identified as younger inmates, unfamiliar with life behind bars and unable or unwilling to defend themselves physically. A type recognized in prison argot at least the early twentieth century, punks were understood to be "normal" men, vulnerable to sexual coercion by other inmates because of the combination of small physical stature, youth, boyish attractiveness, and lack of institutional savvy. A few accounts suggested that punks were potential homosexuals whose latent desires were nurtured and realized the prison context, but most saw them simply as the unfortunate victims of wolves.

The punk's fate was often attributed to naïveté and, especially, his ignorance of the inmate code and the consequences of indebtedness. Charles Wharton wrote in his 1932 prison account of a fellow inmate, "a mere boy" who "seemed to have come direct from a farm" who had "all the bewilderment of a child thrust into strange, frightening surroundings." The youth soon became the object of "pretended interest and sympathy" from other convicts, who showered  him with presents, "silk hose, fancy underwear, food stolen from the kitchen, and best of all, cigarets [sic], the gold standard of prison barter." In the process, Wharton wrote, the boy "became a wretched victim of the most vicious circle in Leavenworth's convict population.

Punks also suffered as a result of their youthful good looks. Jim Tully, author of the many books on his experiences on the road as a hobo and time in prison, recalled Eddie, a young inmate "with yellow hair and wondering hazel eyes" who was "too beautiful to be a boy." Eddie's life in prison as a result "was made a constant hardship by sex-starved men." Berg wrote that prison populations always include "boys at that uncertain age where they have a good deal of the feminine in them." Such boys, Berg wrote, "are in most prized in jails and prisons as virgins." Berg also attributed the fate of punks to "biologic inadequacy (another name for lack of guts)."

Whether understood to be the victims of their own attractiveness, their youth and small stature, or their cowardice, punks were never depicted as wholly willing participants in sex with other men. Although there was little attention to overt sexual violence in early-twentieth-century prison writing, many acknowledged that some form of coercion was often involved in sex in prison, in men's prisons especially. Like wolves, punks were also understood under the rubric of "acquired" homosexuality - they participated in sex with other men not because of a constitutional condition but because of the unusual circumstances of prison life. "Had they never gone to prison," Berg wrote ruefully, "most of them would today be normal men."

Prison sexual vernacular and the culture it delineated overlapped particularly closely with that of itinerant laborers, tramps, and hoboes who traveled the country's highways, rural byways, and railroad arteries in the early decades of the twentieth century. The association between tramping and homosexuality was strong enough by 1939 for a textbook on prison psychiatry to warn of "the possibility of homosexuality in prisoners of the vagabond type," since "this tendency among them appears to be very widespread." In his 1923 study The Hobo, sociologist Nels Anderson characterized homosexual practices among homeless men as "widespread and described relationships between older men, known as wolves or jockers, with younger men, referred to as punks, kids, or "prushuns." In transient communities, young men partnered with older, more experienced men who promised to protect them and teach them how to survive life on the road in return for domestic and sometimes sexual favors.

Judging from many accounts, those relationships were often predatory and abusive. Jim Tully, whose experiences as a "road-kid," hobo, circus worker, prisoner, and professional prize-fighter provided the material exper for his twenty-six books, characterized the jocker as "a hobo who took a weak boy and made him a sort of slave to beg and run errands and steal for him." Punks, he reported, "were loaned, traded, and even sold to other tramps."  John Good recalled that the "criminal tramps or yeggs" who were his companions on the road in turn-of-the-century Denver "needed a boy to beg and steal for them, and to listen around for information." "These boys are degraded to unnatural uses," Good reported, "as well as trained in the arts of pickpocketing and sneak-thieving." Josiah Flynt, an early participant-observer of transient life, also described relationships between boys and their jockers, in which "abnormally masculine" men take "uncommonly feminine" boys as partners." Those attachments sometimes lasted for years, and boys remained with their jockers until they were "emancipated."

Men who lived on the road and on the economic margins were vulnerable to arrest, and incarceration in jails and prisons was a nearly inevitable experience for hobos, tramps, and transient workers. It is not surprising. then, that the vocabulary of prisoners would borrow closely from that of hobo culture, another nearly uniformly single-sex world populated by working-class men. Some prison terms revealed a direct etymology between hobo and prison terminology. When Jack London was arrested for vagrancy in Niagara Falls in 1894, he was locked up in the "Hobo." "The Hobo," he explained, "is that part of a prison where the minor offenders are confined together in a large iron cage. Since hoboes constitute the principle division of the minor offenders, the aforesaid iron cage is called the Hobo." Hi Simons defined the term "Bo" as both a "hobo" and "boy, catamite" in his dictionary of prison argot. The direction of influence was probably two-way, and some prison terms were no doubt ported into hobo and working-class vernacular as well.

The importation of sexual vernacular, customs, and assumptions about same-sex practices from transient men as well as from a larger ur-working-class world meant that some prisoners were familiar with the sexual culture they found behind bars. Fiction writer Chester Himes, who was sentenced to the Ohio State Penitentiary in 1928, claimed "that nothing happened in prison that I had not already encountered in outside life." Himes grew up in a middle-class African American neighborhood in Cleveland, but youthful desire for excitement drew him to the city's rougher side. In prison, he wrote, "all sex gratification derived sodomy, and I had encountered homosexuals galore around the Matic Hotel and the environs of Fifty-Fifth Street and Central Avenue Cleveland." The many incarcerated men with transient pasts would've been similarly familiar with wolf-punk relationships in prison, which mirrored man-kid relationships on the road.

But while prisons, then as now, were by disproportionately populated by working-class inmates, they drew prisoners from other demographic groups as well, some of whom were unfamiliar with prison sexual terminology and the roles and assumptions it described. The persecution of political radicals under the Espionage and Sedition Acts passed during the First World War and in the wake of the Palmer raids of 1919 resulted in the incarceration of activists in the 1920s, many of whom became vocal and articulate critics of the American prison system while behind bars. These spokespeople for the working class often betrayed their own distance from and naïveté about working-class sexual life in their prison writing, and many were shocked by the sexual life they witnessed behind bars.

Alexander Berkman, for example, was candid in detailing his own prison sexual education in a chapter on an encounter with another prisoner, "Red," a hobo who worked alongside Berkman. When Red announced to Berkman, "you're my kid now, see?" Berkman claimed not to understand him and asked him to explain. Bewildered by Berkman's naiveté, Red exclaimed, "You're twenty-two and don't know what a kid is! Green? Well, sir, it would be hard to find an adequate analogy to your inconsistent maturity of mind." When Red explained to him the practice he termed "moonology," which he defined as "the truly Christian science of loving your neighbor, provided he be a nice little boy," Berkman professed not to "believe in this kid love," and was deeply shocked, protesting that "the panegyrics of boy-love are deeply offensive to my instincts. The very thought of the unnatural practice revolts and disgusts me." The pedagogical question-and-answer structure of this chapter allowed Berkman to tutor his readers in "moonology" while maintaining claims to his own sexual innocence. He may also have intended to contrast Red's perverse sexuality with his own presumably platonic love for another inmate that he described later in the memoir. But Berkman was far from alone among early-twentieth-century inmate narrators in professing innocence of same-sex sexuality before life behind bars.

When attorney and former Illinois state congressman Charles S. Wharton was sentenced to two years in Leavenworth penitentiary in 1928 for conspiracy in armed mail robbery, he acknowledged his own pre-prison innocence.  Prefacing his discussion of "the worst of all phases of prison life," which he attempted to describe "as delicately as possible," Wharton wrote that, "looking back, I felt that I had been everywhere, seen everything, done about all which the average man-about-town is expected to do, and I held that impression until Leavenworth made me feel like a country yokel staring slack-jawed at his first sight of urban sin."

Socialist and anti war activist Kate Richards O'Hare was similarly shocked and appalled by the homosexuality she witnessed as an inmate of the Missouri state penitentiary in Jefferson City in 1919-20. Scoffing at O'Hare's estimate that 75 percent of her fellow inmates were "abnormal" as "entirely too high," Fishman speculated that she was "naturally led into such an exaggeration because, having no previous personal knowledge of prisons, she was swept off her feet to find that such things existed. She was utterly amazed when I told her that homo-sexuality was a real problem in every prison."

Eugene Debs, who was convicted of violating the Espionage Law in 1918 and sentenced to ten years in prison, lamented that "every prison of which I have any knowledge... reeks with sodomy" and wrote with dismay about "this abominable vice to which many young men fall victims soon after they enter the prison." "I shrink from the loathesome [sic] and repellant task of bringing this hidden horror to light," Debs wrote. "It is a subject so incredibly shocking to me that, but for the charge of recreance that might be brought against me were I to omit it, I would prefer to make no reference to it at all."  Debs wrote in near-apocalyptic language about the fate of the boy "schooled in nameless forms of perversions of mind and soul" and prison sexual practices that "wreck the lives of countless thousands and send their wretched victims to premature and dishonored graves."

Whether shocked or inured, prisoners of all stripes acknowledged sex in both men's and women's prison as nearly ubiquitous and its roles and customs elaborated to the point that it constituted a culture unto itself. That culture occupied a curious status in early-twentieth-century prisons. Officially, sex between prisoners was unequivocally forbidden. Prisoners who were found engaging in sex were punished, often by placement in solitary confinement and extension of their sentences. Some prisons took harsh and sometimes draconian measures to distinguish homosexual prisoners from the general population in order to humiliate them and punish their behavior. In the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, inmates were reportedly forced to wear a large yellow letter D (designating them as "degenerate") if they were discovered having sex. 

The superintendent of the Ohio prison at Chillicothe boasted to the director of the Bureau of Prisons, in response to a question about how he handled the problem of "sex perversion" at the institution, that he had found a way to deter such practices through the use of humiliation. "By this I mean that all known perpetrators or anyone anyway connected with sexual perversions be been compelled to sit at a certain table at the mess hall."  A report from Kentucky noted that inmates convicted of sexual offenses had one side of their heads shaved to identify them. These practices of marking prisoners as homosexual were forms of punishment for sexual transgression; they also suggested the need for the production of a legible marker of homosexuality that ran counter to the notion that homosexuals, inside and out, were easily identifiable by their gender transgression.

Homosexual prisoners were also dealt physical punishments. A photograph from a Colorado prison depicted two African American prisoners wearing loose dresses, perhaps as another form of stigmatizing market of sexual deviance, and pushing wheelbarrows filled with heavy rocks as a form of punishment for same-sex sex. Kentucky physician F. E. Wylie proposed sterilization and "emasculation" that would "make it impossible for degenerates to commit sex crimes," adding that "surgery might even be used as a punishment" for homosexuality. The authors of an investigation of the Oregon state penitentiary in 1917 moved further to argue that "in cases of congenital homo-sexuality in the penitentiary," the more radical surgery of castration was necessary, to deprive offenders not only of the ability to procreate but of their libido as well. By the 1920s, more than half of the United States had adopted sterilization laws and some targeted "moral degenerates and perverts" specifically. Those laws were most easily and readily applied to people in prisons, mental asylums, and other carceral institutions.

Sex in prison was officially prohibited and sometimes harshly punished. But because of the difficulty of detection and the belief in its inevitability, prison officers often seemed to take it in stride. Joseph Wilson and Michael Pescor criticized prison officers who "regard homosexual practices as only another kind of dirty joke" and wrote that it was "essential that "this question shall always be considered gravely-never with smiles smirks, and a shrug of the shoulder" in their 1939 text on prison psychiatry, suggesting that this was often precisely how it was treated. Berg confirmed that to officials at Welfare Island, "the 'fairies' were, for the most part, simply the butt for lewd jokes. When they spoke of perverts it was with the kind of indulgence that one uses toward children whose peccadillos are amusing rather than serious." He added that "sex indiscretions" were "rarely detected and still less frequently punished." 

If prison guards could not be relied on to maintain a properly vigilant and condemnatory attitude regarding prison homosexuality, the some hoped, prisoners themselves would rise to this role. "Only the co-operation of the decent element will ultimately weed them out," Sing Sing warden Lewis Lawes speculated in 1938. Wilson and Pescor went so far as to suggest that if homosexuals "received a reasonable dose of violence" at the hands of prisoners "known to be aggressively heterosexual," it would "help build up a correct prison community attitude towards this question."

But the community attitude in men's prisons, to the extent that it is possible to generalize, seemed often to be characterized by a rough tolerance, even by those who presumably did not participate in same-sex sex. Samuel Roth, who spent several years in prison for publishing what was considered obscene material, noted that "one thing happened immediately," on his incarceration; "I lost my horrors of [homosexuality] as a vice." He was far from alone. Recalling his experience on a Georgia chain gang in the 1930s, George Harsh had "too many other things to think about to care what two consenting adults do between them." "Under the conditions," Harsh wrote, "I think such a situation was inevitable, and I could understand it and condone it." Indeed, the institutional culture of some prisons recognized the established place of prison fairies. Though fairies were segregated in Welfare Island's South Annex, they were allowed to stage a bawdy Christmas show called the "Fag Follies." In later decades, prisons would sponsor football and baseball games that pitted queens against jockers.

- Regina Kunzel, Criminal Intimacy: Prison and the Uneven History of Modern American Sexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. p. 61-73

#prison slang #convict code #wolves and punks #history of homosexuality #history of heteronormativity #sex in prison #life inside #research quote #reading 2021 #hobos #tramps #working class culture #history of crime and punishment #american prison system #victor nelson #chester himes #samuel roth #hi simons #penology #prison administration #queer history

[duckapus]

Do Plumbers Dream of Electric Spaghetti?

Mr. L is modifying Domain's simulator headset for some mysterious purpose, and when he tests it out it allows him to access the Dream World. This is apparently a failure, but he decides to make the most of the opportunity by messing with everyone's dreams. 'Cause Fuck 'em. The Mario Bros figure out what he's doing and chase him through the Dream World to exact vengeance, recruiting their friends along the way.

Highlights include:

A Zorro parody with Tari as the protagonist, Bob as the antagonist, and Saiko as a love interest. She begs the Bros not to tell the real Saiko about this.

SMG4 having the classic "doing a school presentation in your underwear" dream despite having very little school experience.

Lily, SMG3 and Old Man Hobo each having very similar "Rule the World with an Iron Fist" dreams.

Saiko fighting a zombie apocalypse with the Power of Rock.

Saiko getting very distracted by Zorro!Tari's outfit and sword skills throughout the episode.

Melony and Lil Coding having a shared dream...about taking a nap.

Karen's dream literally just being her playing with a ball of yarn like a normal cat.

Bowser being the only one with a standard "all logic goes out the window" dream.

Meanwhile, Bob is helping Meggy recover from a nightmare about her time in Western Spaghetti, which is why they're not asleep and joining in on the fun with everyone else.

#smg4 #smg4 ocs #episode idea #dreams #mr l #mario #luigi #tari smg4 #zorro #lily #smg3 #old man hobo #saiko bichitaru #melony smg4 #lil coding #smg4 karen #bowser #bob bobowski #meggy spletzer #western spaghetti #this one's got everything #gay ships #wacky hijinks #plot relevance #two normally at-odds characters bonding #did i mention the gay shipping? #don't ask what mr l was originally trying to do because i don't know yet either #hey look i finally figured out how to naturally insert tari x saiko into the main au #meggy spent over a month getting killed every few minutes you CANNOT tell me she isn't messed up from that #sometimes she thinks she's still in there and the fact that she lives in a video game that's prone to glitching does NOT help

[hotgirlstiles]

derek is so italian countryside

#txt #i know hes canonically a homeless hobo in a dirty alley coded but please let me have this

[vander-affectionate]

don't tempt me you magical unicorn @conretewings you have no idea how close i am to writing some warwick. im exhuasted and i still wanna kick out some words like im not working on dilf vander

#you guys dont know #the littlest affection tends my little writer heart #also i saw this tag bc i was gonna put in the littlest unicorn #the littlest hobo #<- that shit came up and it was funny asf #but seriously #conisder warwick #idek what to tag this #is this a threat? #is this code? #idk whats happening but look out monster romancers #i am here

[shikkuaustralia]

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#rose hobo bag #rose hobo bags #hobo bags discount code #rose hobo #rose gold hobo bag

[graphicpolicy]

Unboxing: Scout Comics Subscription Box - May 2022

Unboxing: Scout Comics Subscription Box - May 2022. WHat's in the box!? #comics #comicbooks

Scout Comics has its own subscription box where you can get up to 12 Scout Comics including sought-after variants! You can buy one box for $39.99 plus shipping or subscribe for $33.99 plus shipping. The box ships once a month! In this box: Agents of W.O.R.L.D.E. AshcanAzza the Barbed AshcanBroken Eye #2By the Horns: Dark Earth #1Code 45 #1Cult of Ikarus #3Headless #3Misfitz Clubhouse…

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#agents of worlde #azza the barbed #broken eye #by the horns: dark earth #code 45 #comic books #Comics #cult of ikarus #featured #headless #misfitz clubhouse #murder hobo: chaotic neutral #scout comics #the recount: preamble #third wave 99 #triskele #video

[writingoddess1125]

Young Love pt. 2

Older!Mihawk x Older!FemReader

Fluff - Romance - Spicy Themes - Teaspoon of Angst

Part 1 <<<

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You opened an eye, lifting the hat you'd been using to cover your eyes from the blazing sun to glance at him, pointing a finger at the two in warning.

Usopp had been on the ship for a few days, however one question seemed to burn into his mind while there with the odd band of pirates he had found himself with-

Who was the hobo women that was drinking the place dry and sleeping the the deck all the time!?

"Who is she?.. some homeless person you guys are helping?" Usopp asked, noticing you laid against the railings of the ship half asleep once again. Zoro leaned against the rails and glancing at your resting form-

"A veteran- Shes been pirating longer then we've been alive Luffy managed to convince her to come along till we were ready... Despite being a lazy bum" Zoro explained, You hearing every word he said and had to suppress the urge to throw something at him.. Veteran- Like you were some old soilder.

"As well as the Second best Swordsman-"

"Watch it Moss Head- Or do I need to beat your little ass again?" You chimed, the teen wrinkling his nose at you before huffing.

"Then train me-" He argued, you smiling at this and roll up to your feet and grab your sword.

"Fine- Get ready"

As Kids- You couldn't lie you liked this bunch. When you had been approached by the lengthy teen Luffy while seated at a bar, you'd dismissed him at first that was till a brawl come out and you helped of course- Can't let Marines outshine you.

The defeat of Axe-Hand Morgan and seeing the promise of these younglings you joined them. Teaching them ways of old pirates, Instilling the morals and codes of them- Luffy adored you, Nami was indifferent and Zoro only wanted you to show him tricks from your years as a swordwomen.

"Sloppy footwork!" You yelled, Slashing Zoro to his left as he struggled to keep up with your speed and agility. With ease you smack him on the leg with the back of the sword making him fall to his knee in pain side stepping him as you point your blade at his back.

"One mean ass teacher-" He grumbled, You laughed at this, helping the boy back to his feet.

"Remeber Zoro, Wounds on the back are swordmans greated shame" You say and pat his shoulder, telling him training was over that day. You went back to your spot to rest.. your shoulder was hurting-

By the time you had woken up you were informed you'd arrived at the Baratie- letting them all go ahead as you decided the bar was more up your speed anyway. Taking a seat you ordered a few rounds for yourself, taking the eventing to drink and relax. Eventually the crew coming back to the bar to meet up with you, Having fun as they should as you sat by yourself.

"I see-" He said calmly, his eyes never leaving you and you felt warmth hit your cheeks. He looked to Zoro still high from inflated ego and staring hard at Mihawk-

"(Y/N)?..." A voice called, even in your hazy state it brought you to your youth. Looking back you saw a looming figure over you, the large brim hat blocking the flashing lights from the dance floor as the smell of sea water and bergamot filled your nose. At first confusion painted your features till you saw those yellow eyes- And the large cross that you once called your own over 20 years ago.

"Mihawk?-" You say in surprise, a swirl of confusion in your gaze as you stared at the man. He could only smirk at this.

"(Y/N) why are- Why must we always meet were the alcohol flows the heaviest?" He mused, you couldn't deny he was charming.. even with all the time that had passed. A chuckle breaking through you as he leaned against the bar counter.

"Call it luck Mihawk- Now what brings my old conquest here? Trying for a part two?" The male looking away and you were sure under the right lighting their would be blushing.

"Looking for a young pirate, tasked with bringing him back- Alive" He said calmly, your eyes narrowing st his words.

"That's right... I heard through the grape vines you were a Warlord now- seems it's true" You say carefully taking another sip of your drink.

"And you? What are you now?" Mihawk asked, you smile into your drink as you look at the crew outside drinking.

"A teacher of sorts-" You say with a smile, Mihawk following your gaze he nodded at this. There was a few moments of silence, in truth your heart was beating out of control and you couldn't exactly tell why...

"Must be lucky students- especially to have you around" He said softly, You could hear the flirting in his voice and you winked at him.

"I tend to think so- Besides I showed you a couple of things didn't I?" You reach over and straighten out the cross on his naked chest- it felt like electricity went through your arm when you touched him and clearly he felt the same..

"So you did- maybe it's time I returned the favor" He practically purred and you clearly blushed- The Warlord smiling at the small victory it seemed.

"Charmer as always, I'll be back Mr. Warlord- wait here" You said quickly as you walked away to the washroom. Sighing as you breathed heard in there, the smell of piss burning your nose but that wasn't what hurt- No... You had to recollect yourself- a one night stand from when you were 18 shouldn't have you coming up at the seams like this.. it was illogical.

Getting a grip you march back out, only to see Zoro standing up a fierce look on his face and Mihawk before him. You quickly walking over and looking at the two-

"What is going on? Zoro stand down now-" You bark but he ignores you, Instead you turn to Mihawk.

"Mihawk what is the meaning of this?

You can feel the eyes of the crew now following you in surprise of knowing a Warlord of the Sea so well- enough to call him by his name so casually.

"I'm here for the Captian of this ship it seemes.."

"Luffy? What can you possibly want with that child?" You demand, his eyes finally meetings yours.

"Well it seems your pupil here wishes for us to battle for him-" Mihawk said and you snap your gaze to Zoro in anger, hissing a curse as you knew what this was about.

"Ignore him- Ignore this crew Mihawk.. They are children" You try but the man makes a huff. You standing infront of him more-

"We meet in the morning" Zoro pushed his ideas in and you glared at him-

"You and I both know the world needs a few more wild cards- And Zoro I told you to back down" You try once again to force Zoro to stop this.

"We will meet tomorrow"

Pulling your blade from around his neck your eyes widened.

He said and marched away, Anger boiling in your chest as you grabbed the closest thing and chucked it were Zoro had been standing. The Fool!

The argument that night would have rivaled a hurricane- Zoro too stubborn and too proud to back down and heed your words, you couldn't allow this- But like a mother dealing with a teenager he didn't fucking listen..

By morning you were standing at the pier arms crossed as you waited for Mihawk to arrive. Head lowered as you knew this wouldn't be good- of course right on time the Warlord made his appearance and stood there calmly, Zoro pulling his blades.

That son of a bitch-

It was clear this wasn't a test of Zoro's strength but of your teachings...

Zoros comment lost on you as Mihawk stood there calmly holding the tiny blade.

"I don't hunt rabbits with a canon-"

Kneeling down next to your fallen pupil you placed a hand on him, Proud at his work and courage he had-

The fight was swift, quick in Zoros defeat as your pupil was thoroughly beaten- Stepping forward with your hand drifting to the blade on your hip but Zoro held a hand for you to stop. Pulling his swords away as he held his arms out, your eyes widening as fear made your stomach churn.

"You are defeated, why do you still persist?" Mihawk said, almost amused by his resilience.

"Wounds on the back are a Swordmans greatest shame-" Your words hitting you back like a damn brick-

Mihawk eyes widening at this as he readied his blade.

"Magnificent-" He mused before striking Zoro across the chest, You wince but know it was a lesson.. not to kill.

"You did well my student...I am proud" You say softly, Zoro wincing in pain at hearing this. Luffy rushing to his wide as you rise from your position next to him and Zoro claimed his loyalty to his Captian and vow to improve.

You glance at Mihawk, Rage in your eyes as he stared at you. Placing the blade back around his neck-

Watching him walk towards the pier once more prepared to leave, You quickly following him as your hand went to your blade.

"How dare you!" You hissed in rage, Staring on Mihawk as you both stood at the pier. Pulling the blade from your hip ready for face your former conquest.

"You did all this to humiliate him and me- I will not take this lying down Mihawk" You said angrily, deep down knowing there was some joke to be had in the comment.

"I will not fight you (Y/N)-" He said calmly not even bothering to touch his blade, Anger rising in your blood as you grabbed his coat with a single hand quickly in rage.

"Why the Hell Not!?" You yelled, Mihawks eyes softening at you as his fingers went to your shoulder were the thick scars of a shattered shoulder were hidden under your shirt and have a gentle squeeze, gasping as pain rushed through your system and you dropped your sword.

"I will not-" He explained, tears welling in your eyes as the heavy feeling of pain pulled your chest. You grabbing his hand that was placed on your shoulder.

"...I could tell the moment I saw you... your shoulder-"

"Shut up-" You hissed, Tears rolling down your cheeks as you force his hand away from your shoulder but Mihawk grabs you quickly so you couldn't run- Seeing his eyes like a sworm of emotions.

"What happened?-" He demanded, Clearly he wanted to know what had kept you from reaching the full potential from being his match.. Sorrow now gripping your throat as you looked down ashamed-

"It was an accident- My ship was taken up by a hurricane... I survived by my arm was crushed" You admit, Mihawk wincing as he heard this all. Pulling his hand away from your shoulder, watching the crushing sorrow overcome your form.

"I-" You heard a sudden crash, Turning to see Arlongs ships coming towards the resturant. Ready to rush forward Mihawk grabbed you-

"What are you doing!?" You growled in anger, But Mihawks eyes were gentle.

"Stopping you- Your chicks are ready to spread their wings.. These are hard lessons for them ones they need in order to be pirates... understand?" You wanted to argue, you wanted to fight... But deep down you knew he was right..

"Then what?" You say, Mihawk taking a step back.

"We go drink... and wait" He said truthfully.. and in this moment that sounded all right-

When you returned, you had heard of Arlong and Nami, the betral and pain it had caused the crew. You wanted to break in the little ginger bitch teeth however kept your opinion back.

"Luffy- It's best to cut your losses-" You start but Luffy Looked at you, His face twisted up like a storm in a way you hadn't seen before.

"You said I needed to make Captian decisions (Y/N)- This is it. We are going to bring Nami Back" He said firmly, You staring at the firm faced teen and smiling proudly.

"I see there is nothing left to teach you... May the tides be kind to you Luffy" You said with a smile, Luffy smiling as he hugged you suddenly, knowing that you would also not be joining him on his mission- Your teachings were done and you were proud. Pulling away you pat his shoulders with a smile, he walks onto his ship you see a wave of a Captian finally settling on his shoulders.

You watching Usopp and The newest face Sanji also board, You hanging back and instead going back to the resturant to get a meal from Zeff as well as a chat from the old Pirate to help patch up your Pupil back on the ship which he agreed to.

By evening you stand there on the pier next to Zeff as the crew set sail. A tear tears going down your cheek as they do-

You stand on the pier watching the Going Merry sail away from the small refuge. You knew your role wouldn't be permanent on the ship, it just wasn't who you were- But it did make you sad to see them sailing off to their next adventure without your guidance. Like a mother bird watching their chicks leave the nest-

"They will be fine.. you taught them well"

You heard a low voice next to you, not even having to look to know it was Mihawk who now occupied the space next to you.

"...Still sad to see them go" You admit, finally looking to Mihawk who had such a gentle look on his stoic face. His gaze soft as he seemed to admire you- Warmth developing your face.

"What? Youre staring at me hard-"

"Want to go to the bar nearby?" He said softly, a knowing twinkle in his yellow eyes. There was a pause before both of you cracked wide smile and chuckled a bit together.

"You know what, That sounds like a wonderful idea~" You finally say with a playful wink.

His fingers lacing around your own, a hint of a smile playing on his face- You giving his hand a gentle squeeze in reassurance.

"Oh and please don't rob me in the inn this time" Mihawk jest, remembering having to sleep outside the days afterwards. A laugh slipping past your lips as you shake your head and promise not too, the two of you walked back hand in hand.

Tag List-

@who-the-hockeysticks @jennieyeager @lebanese-afg-ya @vancehopper1987

#x reader #one peice x reader #one piece #one peice live action #hawkeye mihawk #mihawk x reader #one piece mihawk

[inbarfink]

I mean, the thing about Zim is that despite what he might say, he is absolutely capable of love and affection. It’s just that he only expresses it to a very select assortment of people.

First and most obvious one is probably his relationship with the Tallests. Which tends to be a lot less just a ‘loyal soldier duty bound to serve his leaders” and is coded a lot more like…. “Child overeager to please his neglectful parents”. I mean, the entire emotional crux of ‘Enter the Florpus’ is built on this. 

Zim isn’t just motivated by a pure ideological belief in the Irken Empire’s conquest, or by the desire for the fame and accolades that come with being a successful Invader. I mean, those ARE factors. Zim is both a true believer in Irk’s imperialist ideology and very interested in feeding his ego. But he’s also looking for a more personal sort of emotional validation specifically from the Tallests. One that he’s desperate for, but we know that he’s never gonna get.

(And that’s not just because Zim sucks. Even if he could somehow stop being a walking disaster area and a giant millstone around the Empire’s neck, that desire for the Tallests’ love would still be a fool’s errand. We’ve all seen how they treat poor Skoodge.)

In addition to that doomed attempt at an emotional connection, Zim can sometimes be kinda affectionate with his various robotic minions, which obviously goes back to the whole…

Yeah, that.

And that same episode ends with him having a very similar sort of response to Robo-Dad and Robo-Mom picking him up.

And then there’s, of course, his M-Lab Robot Minions in 'Enter the Florpus'. All named - and all grieved by him. 

His extreme reaction to Lawrence specifically dying shows he did apparently see them as individuals.

But as far as we can tell both the Roboparents and the Robot Army are not, like, sapient? I mean, AIs like GIR or the Computer are characterized as basically Machine People - but these robots barely seem more sapient than my laptop. And as much as I love my laptop it’s not gonna, like, love me back.

Speaking of GIR, he’s another example of someone Zim shows genuine care for. I mean… he can absolutely be pretty mean to him at times…

But any sort of kindness from Zim has to be graded on a Curve because he’s so terrible. ‘Hobo 13’ demonstrated to us very well just how horrible Zim can be to his subordinates - rude, inconsiderate, pretty much deliberately sacrificing them not just for his personal gain but also just for his own petty amusement. 

And it’s notable that’s not how he treats GIR. Who he expresses actual concern for…

And he pretty easily acquiesces to GIR’s capricious desires even when he clearly sees them as Stupid and frivolous. 

This scene is especially notable. I mean, this is Zim actually feeling bad about the fact that he made someone cry and trying to de-escalate the situation. Maybe for other characters a moment like that would be no big deal, but this basically the softest Zim has been through… all official IZ media. And it was a scene with GIR.

 And meanwhile GIR himself… didn’t really register any of this - either Zim’s frustration or his attempts at sort-of comforting him, because he was only sad about having eaten his cupcake and not being able to eat it more. 

Because that’s the thing, while GIR does have some level of affection towards Zim at times…

He doesn’t really show that same level of care. I mean, in pretty much all of these examples, GIR puts his own desire to give Zim physical affection over Zim’s clear discomfort and disgust. And in general, while GIR vaguely acknowledges that Zim is his master - he often disregards or ignores Zim’s orders and requests. And not just when it comes to being ordered around in yet another evil scheme -

But also when the situation is just clearly basically hazardous to Zim’s very life. 

(Which is very much in contrast to Zim, who, again, is actually emotionally invested in GIR’s safety)

While some of GIR’s inability to fulfill Zim’s commands can be attributed to his lack of mental focus and general stupidity - his absolute lack of care and regret about these situations seem to imply that, like, GIR might follow some of Zim’s orders when they seem fun, and he might like Zim in the sense that GIR is generally incapable of genuine malice. But GIR is never going to care about Zim, as a ‘Master’ or as a friend, as much as he cares about his own hedonism.

And of course, we all know that if GIR was capable of actually focusing on anything and remaining grounded in reality - he would very quickly realize that he actually hates Zim quite a bit. 

And that’s, like, the whole Tragedy of Zim. He is a being capable of kindness and friendship - but he always ends up only caring about beings who will never care about him back.

Due to Irken indoctrination and also self-inflicted due to his own ego (like, it is no coincidence that the People Zim Actually Cares About are the two beings Irken ideology obliges him to acknowledge as his superiors and then a bunch of robotic minions who are supposed to be 100% obedient to him.) Zim only loves those who will not love him back.

Except for Minimoose. That relationship is 100% wholesome.

#invader zim #zim #zim iz #iz zim #iz #the tallest #almighty tallest #invader zim tallest #the almighty tallest #GIR #iz gir #gir iz #gir invader zim #minimoose

[emeraldspiral]

A venn diagram of the queer/neurodiverse content depicted in Invader Zim. I've already talked about the inherent queerness of Zim and mentioned a few times that there’s a big overlap with autism/neurodiversity but I thought this would make a handy reference. Note that “neurodiversity” isn’t just autism/ADD/ADHD but also includes mental illness, personality disorders, mood disorders, learning disabilities, and anything else that isn’t “neurotypical”.

On the queer side there is actual canon queer rep in the show and comics:

Irkens are canonically aroace and intersex.

Groyna from the comics was confirmed by Eric Trueheart to be a lesbian.

Commander Poki from the comics may be trans, as she has eyelashes normally only seen on female Irkens, but lacks the curled antenna every other female Irken is shown to possess.

Recap Kid's gender is deliberately ambiguous.

There are also many instances of queer-coding that can be seen throughout the show such as:

The homoerotic rivalry between Zim and Dib.

Red and Purple basically being Zim's two gay dads.

Zim and several other characters having campy and dramatic mannerisms.

Zim using Keef and Tak as beards.

Zim and GIR wearing make-up/cross-dressing and generally not concerning themselves with or even being aware of gender conformity.

That time Dib's personality was copied into the body of a female ship which became very distressed at being told it wasn't really a boy and changed its physical appearance to match its brain.

Other queer elements featured in the show include:

Female characters who aren't love interests/show no interest in romance.

Most characters showing a general lack of visible interest in the opposite sex or romance.

The Membranes being a non-traditional family (single dad with no mom, later acquiring two more dads in the form of Foodio and Clembrane). Irken society not being structured around family units at all.

Satirical depictions of nuclear family units (Zim’s roboparents).

Transhumanism.

Kink/Fetish content including tentacles, bondage, domination, tongues, sadism, mind-control, body morphing, gore, food/eating, bodily fluids/fluids in general, Giger-esque designs, etc…

On the Neurodiverse side we have:

Zim’s food sensitivity.

Zim’s germophobia.

Zim’s dislike of being touched or hugged.

Zim seeming to suffer from sensory issues in general.

Zim getting overstimulated on the bus in Walk of Doom.

Zim and Dib infodumping.

Zim’s idiosyncratic speech mannerisms.

Characters having high intellect paired with poor social skills/low emotional intelligence.

Hyperfixations and special interests.

Zim’s struggles with multi-tasking and keeping his priorities straight.

GIR being easily distracted and unable to focus on anything that doesn’t immediately interest him.

Characters having poor volume control.

Characters having mood swings or trouble regulating their emotions.

Zim’s issues with memory.

Dib hyperfocusing to the point of neglecting hygiene.

Zim’s “problem with listening”.

And in the middle where they overlap there’s:

Zim and Dib being outcasts, misunderstood by everyone around them, and only able to connect with other misfits like Gaz, GIR, Keef, each other, and random hobos.

Zim masking his otherness and putting on performative displays of “normalcy” and having a well-founded fear of the consequences of being discovered.

Dib being open about his otherness and looking for respect and acceptance in the face of overwhelming ridicule and contempt.

Dib being pressured by his father to conform in order to please him.

Dib finding that the social benefits of conformity aren’t enough to outweigh the pain of not being his authentic self in Mopiness of Doom.

Dib’s experiences and perspectives being trivialized, dismissed and medicalized as indicators of mental illness.

Dib actually being mentally ill, but only as a result of not being accepted or supported for being different.

The eugenicist dystopia of the Irken Empire, where Zim is labeled “defective” and sentenced to death rather than treated for the mental health issues caused by the society that created him.

Daddy issues/familial rejection/non-acceptance.

Zim and Dib’s struggles with depression.

Zim and Dib’s need to prove themselves to gain validation and acceptance.

Zim and Dib being victims of bullying and in turn bullying others to feel a sense of power.

Dib’s self-loathing.

Zim’s default state being paranoia and anxiety.

Zim and Dib’s self-image issues.

And of course the one thing that binds us all: alternative fashion.

#invader zim #zadr #zadf #zim #dib #dib membrane #gaz #gaz membrane #tak #invader tak #professor membrane #keef #almighty tallest

[renthony]

Mickey Mouse is Gay

I'm working on research notes for my Hays Code video essay, and I'm reading The Celluloid Closet by Vito Russo. While reading, I came across this image:

[Image description: A screenshot from the ebook of The Celluloid Closet. It shows an old poster of Mickey Mouse playing a harp, with text that reads "always gay!" in large capital letters. Smaller text at the bottom reads "(C) Walt Disney Enterprises." The image is captioned with, "When the word gay meant happy and nothing else." End description.]

There was no immediate information about when or in what context this poster was produced, but since I live in Florida, where Disney was involved in the recent "Don't Say Gay" chaos, I felt compelled to go dig up more info.

That digging led me to a copy of Tinker Belles and Evil Queens, by Sean Griffin, which opens chapter 2 ("Mickey Mouse--Always Gay!") with the following:

In the midst of The Celluloid Closet, Vito Russo’s groundbreaking work on representations of homosexuals in American film, there appears a poster advertising Mickey Mouse cartoons. As a joyous Mickey plucks out a tune on a harp, the poster proclaims, “Always Gay!” Underneath this picture, Russo writes the caption “When the word ‘gay’ meant happy and nothing else.” Although Russo separates Mickey’s personality from the modern connotations of the word “gay,” linking the word “gay” with “homosexual” had begun in various homosexual communities during the 1930s. The word “gay” was used in these circles as a method of code to let others know that someone was “a member of the community” without declaring it to those who would physically or legally threaten them. Furthermore, although Walt and most (if not all) of his employees probably would not have known this new meaning to the word when they created the aforementioned poster in the 1930s, it seems that certain audience members were watching and enjoying Mickey’s “gaiety” in all its connotations.

This dynamic becomes more apparent when certain historical evidence suggests that the phrase “Mickey Mouse” itself was bandied about by some homosexuals as a code phrase. Gay and lesbian historian Allan Berube found a photograph of a gay bar in Berlin during the 1930s called “Mickey Mouse.” A lesbian hobo of the 1930s who went by the name Box-Car Bertha related to Dr. Ben L. Reitman in 1937 that a group of wealthy Chicago lesbians threw soirees called “Mickey Mouse’s party.” Bertha maintained contact with these women in order to borrow money, introducing herself by saying “I met you at Mickey Mouse’s party.”

With this evidence of the use of “Mickey Mouse” as a code phrase for homosexuality, seemingly benign uses of the name by homosexual figure take on heightened meaning. When openly gay songwriter Cole Porter wrote the lyrics for “You’re the Top” in the early 1930s, he included the line “You’re Mickey Mouse.” In The Gay Divorcee (1934), Betty Grable approaches Edward Everett Horton, who made a career out of playing the bumbling sissy in Hollywood films during the ’30s, and sings to him “You make me feel so Mickey Mousey.” Although what Grable’s character means by this is left open to interpretation, in context she seems to mean that Horton stirs some emotion within her. Yet, “Mickey Mousey” might have had a sly double meaning—especially when a flustered Horton responds to Grable’s assertion, “Well, no wonder!”

I've said before that completely writing off Disney media is a bad take, because Disney media has been very important in queer history. The corporation is evil, but the art has the talent and soul of countless skilled artists, many of whom are/were queer. Painting Disney media as across-the-board soulless and terrible erases the contributions of countless artists who were themselves exploited by the company.

There is such a long tradition of queer people slipping queerness under Disney's radar and into their classic films. I typically use Howard Ashman's work on The Little Mermaid as my go-to example of this, because The Little Mermaid is a very queer movie based on a very queer story by a very queer author.

So it's pretty wild to learn Mickey Mouse himself has been used as queer flagging!

For more info about Disney Queerness, I recommend the video essay "What Makes Disney Villains So Gay?" by Matt Baume, as well as the YouTube channel Dreamsounds.

(Also, if you want to support the production of my video essay about the Hays Code, you can pledge to my Patreon. I still have some texts to track down for research and might have to shell out to buy them.)

#original post #disney #mickey mouse #queer history #queer media