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meyeselph · 3 years

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Gwenpool: Desperate Misanthrope's Confused Angst

Showtime

Ms. Pool woke up in a familiar room. Not in Krakoa - there are no mutants around. This isn’t a story about that. Look, honestly, without an actual Gwenpool series and the constant breaks in her comics appearance I can’t even begin to give a fuck. I cancelled my marvel universe subbie. I might get back to my stories but single issues are iffy. I read fast and don’t pore over the artwork. So I get 10 minutes of entertainment for….FIVE DOLLARS? When did this happen? Jeezus.

Who even reads comics anymore?

Anyway, long story short, Gwen got out of bed and recognized the room as her old one from the “old times.” The dark times. The ‘not running around in pink and white outfits and shooting people’ times. She panicked (Been there. It is what it is though). The only way out of trauma is through.

She dressed in old clothes, immediately hit by old smells, she couldn’t help but cry. Was it all a dream? Have I gone insane (again)? All the usual self doubts cropped up. I mean, really, if you think this kind of thing didn’t pass through her mind regularly why don’t you transport yourself to a comic book universe?

Oh, you can’t?

Oh. It isn’t actually possible for you and I’m stupid for suggesting it. So, yeah. If it actually happened and you kept that attitude then the logical assumption for a normie is a mental breakdown. Trick for Gwen, though, is it's probably always been both real and her being nuts.

So she goes downstairs to the kitchen to figure out why this is happening and Evil Gwen is having cereal. Let's say cocoa puffs. I’ve been thinking about those recently. You ever remember cereal as something worth cherishing. Not as just bullshit that TV convinced you to want? God damn, now I want Cookie Crisp. Cookie Crisp wasn’t even ever that good. Why do I want Cookie Crisp?

So also sitting around the table were the faceless versions of her father, mother, and her brother. Just chilling. No BD. Seen Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind?

Yes, I know that references aren’t jokes - fuck you, I’m painting a picture and I CAN’T PAINT, THAT’S WHY THIS ISN’T A COMIC. Fucks sake. Anyway. So, Gwen is so creeped out that she just sits her butt down by Evil Gwen as if she’s the comforting presence here.

Her name’s too long. Let’s call Evil Gwen uh…….Gren. You know, like Grendel from Beowulf. I haven’t actually read Beowulf and this is all a little confusing but I'm solving problems here. Writing this is harder for me than you would think so it’s best to keep things flowing off the cuff. That’s the Gwenpool™ style anyway, isn’t it? Are you laughing yet? IMPROV. “YES AND” MY SHIT, READER!

“So, you ever really look into the retconned past thing, hun?” Gren said, moving her tongue around her food. Being gross as an attempt to be properly evil. She swallowed before continuing. “This is all I could really put together on short notice but i’m pretty sure what the future people created, all that stuff to try and trick you, it was all bullshit.”

“What do you mean? Are you trying to convince me to go all psycho like you again?” Gwen asked, exasperated, realizing she was now back in the whole ‘fuck with Gwen to decide her fate’ song and dance routine from the end of her first arc.

“Nah, not really.” Gren said. A hammer appeared in her hands out of nowhere and Gren swung it into their fake father’s head, snapping his neck..

“DAD!” Gwen instinctively cried as she saw her father’s body slump to the floor. Gren slapped Gwen’s face. “That’s it,” Gren said, “this is what the trick was.This is a poorly created character in a fictional story. Meant to manipulate you into attaching your concept of “father” to it. Even his finished version in the original comics run wasn’t THAT well drawn. Your dad read like a boomer’s idea of a responsible parent. You were going through a mental crisis and struggling to find purpose in life and his genius idea was get a shitty low paying job and suck it up?”

Gren turned to their brother, pushed his face to the table and smashed the back of his skull. . “Brother dearest, too. Going right along with their victim blaming. He gaslighted you as if what you were going through was just you being ‘irresponsible.’ Bitch, people working a minimum wage job aren’t somehow not impoverished and miserable because they get some of that ‘honest work’ that folks keep badgering on about. Minimum wage work is occupied by many physically and mentally disabled people held hostage; they’re people society only pretends to care about. Then they turn it all into you acting like some world ending threat. No questions about what drove you to the edge in the first place. You are just ‘unstable,’ so you’re just a problem to be solved. They say, ‘Let’s all solve this girl being upset and on edge by ruining her concept of self, reality, and memory.’ Brilliant!”

Gwen barely processed this in horror. Gren then slit the poor facsimile of their mother’s throat while continuing to rant, “You see people die all the time, Gwen. Half of the time you are doing the killing. You do it because it’s in a story. In a story the NPCs don’t matter and, after all, your original schtick in the story was to be kill-crazy. The non-marketable characters can be replaced or retconned at the stroke of the artist’s pen.” Gren leans forward as she pulls a Gwenpool mask over Gwens face. “Then the writers convince you that you have some middle class milk toast family and you take abuse and subsume your emotional needs because the problem MUST be you. You aren’t ‘normal’ so you have to be fixed.”

Gwen wiped her eyes over the mask and sighed. A bit of fire filled her gut as she stared at Gren. “So fucking what? You want me to go on a killing spree and be a big time villain to get myself a nice, shiny permanent big bad status? That’s how I stay around right? Just build my legacy on bodies?”

Gren scoffed “You already lost that fight, girly. Where do you think we are? Because this ain’t Marvel Comics.”

Confused, Gwen blinked and tried reaching for the page margins, finding nothing. Wait….why was everything on this page so ill defined and undetailed? Wait? Why was the story in kinda wobbly third person past tense?

Gwen sighed “Oh. I’m in a fanfic. I guess the publishing fight is for another day eh?”

“My advice, personally,” Gren stated, “is that you consider the lobster.”

“Wait, what the fuck?”

Gren pulled aside the kitchen curtains revealing the face of a giant lobster, its claws tapping on the glass. The lobster muttering gutterally about personal responsibility.

“Because there’s a couple thousand giant lobsters outside that would like to claw you until you read their book.”

Scared of Girls

On the rooftop, Gren shoved a high powered rifle into Gwen’s hands while she handled the close range threats. So, this conversation they’re about to have is important. Sniping puts Gwen into a sort of zen space, so that’s a better task to keep her focused, after all.

“So, what? You wanted me to internalize that my “origin story” is bullshit? Okay, what does that accomplish, then?” Gwen asked in a bit of a deadpan. She was so tired today. Not really feeling her happy go lucky energy. More like a “happy go fucky” energy. It was hard to always be on a knife's edge. Still the rifle’s kick into her shoulder was satisfying as she blew through two of the creepy looking lobsters at once. “Also, why the lobsters?”

Gren considered this. “Okay, last question first, I had to experiment a lot and do a lot of research to construct this place for your learning and healing in fanfic form....These buddies are a failed experiment of mine that I repurposed because the fic needed more action. Isn’t that right, giant enemy crap?” As she peppers the nearest goon with a hail of shotgun pellets the entire throng of them burst out, sharply muttering about divine symbols.

“As for what I'm trying to teach you, it’s that you aren’t reaching your potential.” Gren grumpily huffed.

“Duh,” Gwen reloads, “I mean you just killed a mannequin version of the voice in my head that says that to me every day.” one of those crustaceans talks about feminine symbolism while she decides on her next target.

“Not like fake daddy’s ‘Be a responsible member of society by paying your taxes’ type of potential. I mean your creative and emotional potential.” Gren flipped off the slavering throng of monsters, noticing they were starting to keep their distance from the roof.

“I never did finish that fanfic idea I had.” Gwen mused.

“God, don’t mention that,” Gren thrusts a finger at Gwenpool. “Not that I don’t respect fanfic, but when comic book writers make you and Kamala squee about fanfiction to try and relate to “the kids” it comes across as so condescending.”

“Really? I mean…..I'm sure it’s meant as support for the concept?”

“Most fucking superhero comics are just legalized fanfiction! The people who created the characters are either long gone or working on someone else’s characters! They just think they are so much better because they got fucking paid. They can’t imagine themselves as on the same playing field as fanficcers even though most of them have the same level of connection to the roots of the work as anyone else.” Gren groused loudly as she seemed to pull Reed Richards out of nowhere.

Confused, Reed looked around until his eyes met Gwen’s.“Oh great, you again.” Reed groaned as he turned to survey the piles of lobster gibs while Gwen cheered the lobster forces’ retreat with a resounding “EDF, EDF!”. The scattered creatures skittered amongst the bland scenery. It looked like a suburban neighborhood but someone forgot to color in the sky….or write that the sky had color. A castle hung out in the distance breaking up the generic normalcy and lay cloaked in shadow despite being surrounded by an endless white void.

“And…..black….you?” Reed pointed to Gren, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, I have an evil future self….well I stopped that future so it’s an….evil...alternate timeline self?” Gwen said with a nervous chuckle, abandoning the kill quest for the minute and rested her rifle on the roof.

“Ah. Yeah I’ve been down that road. It’s a rather common occurrence. Multiverse being what it is.” Reed laughed heartily while putting his hands on his hips.

“I’m not sure I’m evil, honestly,” Gren interjected. “I think I’m just really fucking grumpy and I’m slightly more gung-ho on the homicide. Considering Gwen’s already one of the more kill crazy characters on the roster it’s not that much of a distinction.” Gren flipped her cape. “My main distinction is I don’t like that meme from The Incredibles! You can just make it so the cape detaches automatically when it’s pulled hard enough!”

“You could still have it tangled up around your face.” Reed pointed out in his standard know-it-all fashion.

“Don’t make me go into fuck wife mode, stretch.” Gren spat. “Okay, anyway, so I brought him here to illustrate a point. Reed. Explain particle physics to me as a laymen.”

“Huh...i’m not sure why but okay. Particle physics (also known as high energy physics) is a branch of physics that studies the nature of the particles that constitute matter and radiation. Although the word particle can refer to various types of very small objects (e.g. protons, gas particles, or even household dust), particle physics usually investigates the irreducibly smallest detectable particles and the fundamental interactions necessary to explain their behaviour. In current understanding, these elementary particles are excitations of the quantum fields that also govern their interactions. The currently dominant theory explaining these fundamental particles and fields, along with their dynamics, is called the Standard Model. Thus, modern particle physics generally investigates the Standard Model and its various possible extensions, e.g. to the newest "known" particle, the Higgs boson, or even to the oldest known force field, gravity.” Reed rattled this off rather mechanically.

Gren then took out her phone and showed Gwen the Wikipedia article on “Particle Physics,” which is naturally the same words that Reed had regurgitated above, just without any formatting and, again, on a phone.

“Reed can’t be a genius in any subject unless he’s written by a genius in that subject. That’s how stories work. Everyone is limited by the understanding and capabilities of the writer. Same with your origin story and all the people you’ve interacted with. If you are as ‘meta’ as you think you are then you have to realize that you aren’t actually talking to people. You are talking to the writer. Dr. Strange didn’t rewrite your existence to be a part of the Marvel Universe. As far as most of Marvel continuity goes Dr. Strange was never there and doesn’t know or care about his MCU casting…..Hey Reed, buzz off please before the conversation pivots to why you haven’t cured all known diseases.”

Reed looked a little surprised but then pulled out a teleportation device (of course he has one) and blipped away with a shrug.

“How awkward is that going to be when he enters the MCU after Kamala is already introduced with a very similar power set?” Gwen chuckled.

“Keep up the way you’ve been going and you’ll never see it. I’m not exactly expecting a young blonde girl casting call for Deadpool 3 and that’s your best bet.” Gren snarked. Gwen winced with a sigh.

“I don’t get what I'm doing wrong. I have a fanbase comparable to some of the characters that have already shown up but I can’t even get comics written about me most of the time. An MCU push seems unlikely. They would literally have to deal with completely recontextualizing my powers and gimmick”

“Let’s ask her what you should do.” Gren motioned her way to the suddenly appearing long hair future Gwen, looming over them like The Attack of the 50 foot Woman for some reason. Dwarfing the roof they are on. Let’s call her BIGwen!

Gold Guns Girls

As BIGwen acclimated to her surroundings she stubbed her toe on a car, dramatically flipping it so that it took out a few more lobsters before caving in a nearby house. The lamentations about clean rooms soaring as the remaining couple dozen of them attempt to clean up some of the bodies of their fallen kin. The large and sort-of-in-charge Gwen hissed in pain and adjusted her boot. Getting her balance as best as possible she muttered curses that traveled rather well considering the lung capacity of a giant.

“You know,” Gren started, “I wasn’t expecting much from our previous uses of the ‘make her big for emphasis’ trick, but it really does only work as a vague ghostly background element. I didn’t just want it to be ‘oh, here's a third Gwen for the conversation, though. Would lack umph.”

“ Yeah, I get it, but staring at my own giant taint is unsettling.” Gwen muttered.

“I’d still, hit it.” Gren grinned, then immediately got punched in the arm. “OWWW! Look, I’m the evil one here and we’re in a fanfic. I’m allowed to make internet fetish jokes.”

“And I’m allowed to hit you for it.”.

“Dirty lampshading goody two shoes. Don’t act like half your fanbase isn’t thirsty. It’s “insert current year argument”, all art is sexy to someone.” Gren complained back,rubbing her arm before hopping off the roof. Gwen followed while listening as patiently as she could considering how many changes in topic her evil-caped self is going through to get to her point. “This chick is the reason you’ve been on the path of good girl. Some vague idea that in the future everything will work out for the best. HEY, DOWN HERE, BIG SHOW!” Gren waved at BIGwen and she looked down curiously.

“Yeah what??” BIGwen responded in a booming and agitated tone. Honestly, being in this fic made every version of Gwen a little grumpy.

“How’s she supposed to be a popular hero that makes it into the MCU and has a stable publication history?” Gren asked.

“Fuck if I know.” Came BIGwen’s response. “Have you tried growing your hair out?”

“Rub it in,” Gwen muttered under her breath, “I’m not gonna lie, I’m kind of depressed now.” Gwen said as she sat on an abandoned car.

Gren hopped on the roof of the car, patting Gwen’s shoulder before squatting with enough force to flex the car’s shocks like a rocking chair just to amuse herself. “Future “good” Gwen wasn’t an actual plot point, it was a call to action to the fans to make fanfic like this and support the character outside of the actual Canon. Chris didn’t trust that Marvel would treat the character right. That, and your obsession with getting a new book, are both the writer’s attempt to turn a marketing tactic into fan engagement. If you want to be real then that makes the fans want you to be real even more, too.”

Gwen sighs heavily and leans her chin on one hand. “I mean...the time traveling through the life of an NPC fan complete with a Never Ending Story reference was a bit sappy even by the standard we sometimes set...damn it it really was just kind of a fan manipulation trick wasn’t it?”

BIGwen Sat down on the street next to them and crossed her legs. “Hey, little me. Don’t get too down. I mean it worked for the most part. You have a healthy cult following. Characters have survived on less and there are worse things to be known for then as a fan first character”

“But I have to fight for attention all the damn time, though. It’s so easy for Wade with his fucking meme bullshit. He even gets runoff enthusiasm from me. Jeff the land shark is all over Oldpool online” Gwen felt rather heavy and tired all of a sudden. Marvel editorial forcing a gun to your head is not a fun way to be.

“All that fight is hell on the fanbase too.” Gren sighed. “Advocating for shit, getting crumbs and being expected to accept it while Disney lavishes all the attention based on some bullshit numbers game. Even if you make it into the MCU will it be a Batroc style cameo with obligatory ‘killed off in case we don’t feel like paying the actor again later.’ Will it be an emotionally rounded character or an ambush bug style joke? The thing is. You're Not the one fighting and you never were.”

“The fuck do you mean?”

“This version of her doesn’t know?” BIGwen whimpered.

“You aren’t real, Gwen.”

Head Like a Haunted House

“No….we aren’t having this conversation. Fuck you fuck you i’m not a fucking Nihlist and i’m not going to do this right now.” Gwen said as she scrambled off of the car and pulled out some guns. BIGwen then picked her up off the ground.

“You need to hear this, Gwen,” BIGwen boomed. “The gimmick has run its course. It’s fucking with your canon. You’re never going to be a marketable character keeping up a half fourth-wall Kayfabe”

Gren climbed onto BIGwen’s Shoulders and perched over Gwen all menacing like. “You need to listen. I’ve been trying to ease you into this. Making things more meta slowly until you were ready but it was never going to be easy.”

One of Gwen’s guns was fired from it’s holster and pierced one of BIGwen’s fingers. BIGwen screamed and her grip loosened. Soon Gwen was on the move running up her arm and firing at Gren, who dodged like the nimble and cute badass she is. “Don’t do this Gwen. Just because it doesn’t matter to the comic version of you doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.”

“I’m a real person god damn it! I read the comics out there! I came in! That’s why I know shit I shouldn't know. That’s what I am! THAT’S ALL I AM!” Gwen shrieked as she pulled out a sword from hammer-space and decapitated BIGwen. Suddenly a mess of colored streamers and a pile of Mickey Mouse merch tumbled out. Look, I am busy right now. Gwen is still slashing at my ass. I'm not going to explain it.

For some reason now the remaining lobsters were helping Gren. For Gwen’s own good you understand. This is proof that I’m right for some reason.

Gwen pulled out a revolver, firing pumpkin sized holes in lobsters who were still wailing about self actualization. She fully planned on shoving a sword up her evil self’s ass and getting rid of this doppelganger shit for good. Which is total bullshit by the way. She totally just cut off Gren’s leg because what the fuck you mean I’m not real? I’m going to be real all over your corpse.

Gren didn’t really think that was even a good comeback and also thought you should probably say it instead of meta willing the smack talk into existence, otherwise this fanfic is going to read like trash. Also, Gren’s leg wasn’t actually cut off. In a puff of smoke it is revealed that the cut off leg is a log and her leg is fine. Gren is a ninja now, believe it.

Gwen proceeded to do a sick ass CQC judo throw on Gren and then grab her cape and wrap it around her face like Reed suggested. Callbacks for the win! Callbacks to Checkov’s gun ideas always lead to victory in fights! She then totally shot at her and such.

But the bullet was caught by the cape because the cape was a symbiote! That’s right Gren is also GRENOM!...boy that sounds stupid. Anywho, the cape was no longer around her face and the fight continued and Gren now ALSO had extra powers and special wizard-symbiote armor (that would only show up in the MCU version if Marvel finally got the Sony characters back). The meta powers work like shit in text but this would be really good in CGI or animation if Marvel wanted to adapt this fic and give the writer lots of money. Gren still has more experience with them, though, and Gwen can’t really just kill her way out of this fic so she has to just let the story play out.

…...eh?....oh Gwen’s crying. I love/am you girl but we gotta work on the crying. Fucks sake this is harder than I thought. I’m depressed now too. Well I'll try to get the writing back on track so you guys can see what is going on. Even the lobsters are minding their manners now. Chill vibes, guys.

“The marvel character page for Gwenpool says, and I quote:

Gwenpool arrived in the Marvel Universe from the “real world,” but has wasted no time in making the most of her time in her fictional universe. Using her knowledge of comics to her advantage, Gwenpool causes and solves problems for her fellow heroes.”

Gren drags a lobster corpse slowly toward Gwen and sits on its tail as she talks to her. Taking her time to really scrape the lobster against the ground, smearing the gore on the pavement. Not that it was heavy for her or anything. Totally still has that symbiote, which would make moving it easy. Totally wasn’t a detail added in the second revision of the fic slightly before the lobsters were added.

“The words “Real world” are in quotation marks in that wiki. Real people don’t make it into comics because fiction isn’t real. Half of your versions barely make use of the ‘real person’ gimmick because it’s too meta by half and not every writer wants to waste time justifying it. So they just treat it like Deadpool’s medium awareness. Which it mostly is.”

“I really am just a fucking rip off distaff character.” Gwen moans. “Just a Gwen combined with a Pool. I’m worse than the Batman who laughs. I never mattered because I was never real”

“Fuck don’t say that. You were made with love and care by a team of creators who took a weird offshoot idea and built out a compelling metafiction idea and a likeable protagonist off of it. They just didn’t have the time and foresight to go far enough.” Gren sighed.

“Far enough?” Gwen sniffed as she was pulled up to her feet and dragged toward one of the big castles. As they walked Gren kicked along a Mickey Mouse doll that had rolled out of BIGwen’s severed head. Every time it bounced it cheerfully said ‘hahah. I love you!’

“Too much haha, not enough trauma. You’re not just a joke character.” Gren said as she kicked the Mickey doll into the big front door of the castle. The shadowy thing of course lighting up and being all fantasy and shit as the door opened.

“Well I did end both of my comic runs pretty mopey.”

“Damn right you did. When the jokes run thin they run to your real bread and butter. You’re an empathy machine.” As Gren shoves Gwen through the gate they are swallowed up in the castle, going dark again. “Let’s getcha sad clown on.”

Never there

“See, what evil me should have been telling you about in the original run is how to find meaning and purpose when technically nothing means anything. Comic book characters live in a world without real death and suffering. It’s all a puppet show version of real pain and real emotion meant to bring that out of an audience.” Gren opined as they walked through a black void to a couch floating in a nothing area lit only by the static of an old TV.

“Can we turn on a light?” Gwen asked as she sat on the couch. Gren sat on another recliner that suddenly appeared and put her feet up.

“Fuck off. Ambiance is a thing. We aren’t having a ‘lights on with something fun on the TV’ conversation. So look, I am not really ‘evil gwen.’ I’m half an author insert and half a plot device. If we are talking about the reality of the story you are basically talking to yourself. I am speaking about the things you don’t want to admit to yourself. You know, you’ve seen this kind of story sorta... right?” Gren picked up the remote and frustratedly changed channels between a bunch of vaguely illustrative footage on the TV, not finding anything that worked. A lot of black and white footage of trains for some reason. Just what comes to mind when I think of documentary footage? Weird.

“I am not sure how to illustrate this shit visually and this is a text story anyway so I would have to explain the illustration,” Gren griped.

“I basically get it. It’s not that uncommon a trope.” Gwen nodded.

“Because of the level of meta we are on right now we have to really acknowledge that you are basically an author insert, too. I mean, to a certain extent every version of you is more the writer that is working with your character at the time than a set character.” Gren said as she settled on a visual of Gwen being pushed out the window by her own narration text in the original comic run. When all else fails, resort to footage from the last story. That way people can look it up online!

“Right here is where the character crystallized in the mind of the author of the current fic we are in. A vague suicide metaphor wrapped up in the flavor of self destructive escapism. Your parents in the story thought it was a suicide attempt on at least some level. This is serious business. Not just a girl who doesn’t like work and can’t finish her fanfic. In this comic you are built on this understanding. The writer of this fic has ADHD and autism. So his version of you more or less has it, too. Writers bring themselves with them into their work.”

Gwen nods and takes a deep breath. “I….I can feel it. Like the world is closing around you. You aren’t built for anything that anyone wants from you. The one thing you really believe in, the one thing that really defines you, the stories in your head…..it’s just not enough.

You can’t trust you’ll ever make it with writing because you can barely write. You barely have the energy to do anything but wish that you weren’t you. What if someone actually listened? Actually believed in you and whisked you away somewhere else where the world would fit your needs? What if you were someplace you could be someone else, someone strong and confident?”

“Yeah. Like a funny anti hero in a comic for instance.” Gren nodded. “But the original comics sort of left the theme on the table. They were captured by the misconception of Gwen as the problem and not a person who needed help. All that desperation that real fans of the character might feel just bundled up into love for this character that really ‘gets’ them but Marvel doesn’t ‘get’ the character. They won't use her. They won’t go past vaguely gesturing at her mental issues and moving on. They saved the angst for Wandavision.” Gren scoffs.

“I mean the show was okay but they literally have a character built entirely on the theme of escapism and trauma. One that’s custom built for mind-screw visuals and reality bending plots and they think she’s just a lazy fangirl who really likes guns that they can sit beside Deadpool sometimes and stick in the X-Men’s bloated background character roster when they don’t need her.”

Gren leads Gwen off the couch and deeper into the void where a door to a bedroom waits. A room like her own, absolutely slopping over with old toys of comic book characters. An unclean messy space in a run-down house that smells faintly of cigarette smoke. Huddled in bed, reading an 80s era X-men comic with a flashlight, is a 12 year old Gwen.

“This is never going to be canon but this is the version of Gwen in this fic. She can’t stop crying at school. Things that shouldn’t be hard are so hard and she can’t explain why. Everyone says she’s making excuses. Meanwhile her mother is fucked out of her mind on pain killers and her step father killed himself last year ‘cleaning his gun’ while drunk. You know exactly what is on her mind right now?” Gren says as she gestures at the girl.

“I wish the superheroes would save me from this.”

“They won’t. They can’t. They were never meant to.” Gren Slams the door loudly on the scene.

“That is the emotional core of Gwenpool in this fic. The desperation that so many of the fans down here in the fucking muck of the real world feel. Poor and emotionally unfulfilled. Confused and vulnerable. If Disney and Marvel gave two fucking shits about people like that they wouldn’t waste as many stories as they do. They wouldn’t just use untold wealth to make expensive escapist stories with the military. Their gestures toward progressive ideas that they occasionally make in their stories would be THE ENTIRE POINT of their stories and the actual thing they used that money for instead of lobbying the government to keep Mickey Mouse out of the public domain.

“Disney has the power yet they save a fucking miniscule fraction of who they could. Saving people doesn’t make money.”

When I Get To The Green Building

Gren stormed through the void. The scene disintegrated around her as Gwen followed. Both now in a bit of a sour mood but with newfound determination.

“Come to think of it. Why is the fucking Hulk getting to fight for social justice in the comics? Why are they making a gay alternate universe Captain America? Why are they grasping at straws so hard to find characters that get to advocate and I am just sitting on a fucking island being grumpy?” Gwen groused. “I’m pretty sure I’m pansexual….at least in this fic. I could advocate for a bunch of shit at once.”

“You have a youth fanbase, a unique story and you technically aren’t an alternate universe version of fucking anything no matter how many people still think you are a Stacey. They made a fucking ‘for the fans’ character and then neglected it. Presumably because some fucking money making metric didn’t pan out despite the comics just being an MCU test kitchen and IP farm anyway.”

“You’re a fucking check mark on a ledger. I don’t even know if anyone technically created Gwenpool as a whole and Disney/Marvel can give the character to whoever they want to do whatever they want completely separate from what the fanbase wants and needs because she isn’t established. The IP landlords have spoken. The fans haven’t risen to enough ‘buy my merch’ calls to action to invest more resources. So tease endlessly until that changes.”

“Gah. Now I'm actually as pissed as you are.” Gwen said as she started fiddling with her guns. “Who do I kill?”

“We can’t do shit. You’re not even a character at this point. You are a meme for an underused character.” Gren smirked all evil like. “See but that’s it. You aren’t just a meme. You’re a MEME.”

“Uhm...I don't follow.”

“Like the concept of Justice. Gwenpool is an idea. Defined entirely by how people who engage with the idea choose to engage with it. The IP law means Disney owns Gwenpool but they don’t own how Gwenpool is perceived. Just like we as a people decide what justice is through popular consent we also decide what Gwenpool is. You see they made a character for the fans…..in my opinion that means the fans can do as they like with it even if it makes Disney uncomfortable.”

“I mean they can’t even stop porn of their characters just because of the sheer volume of the problem. I suppose people could do whatever.” Gwen nodded.

“Exactly. So the fans should just fucking Occupy Gwenpool!” Gren said as she flipped her cape dramatically with a mad smile on her face. That’s right. She was Dirtbag Leftist Gwen all along!

“Squat on that IP. Make Gwenpool a mental health advocate. Make her an LGBTQ activist. Make her fight for social and financial justice so hard that Bruce Banner looks like a poser. Make her talk shit about politicians who put their career ahead of the people. Do all the shit that makes the comicsgate crowd sad. Keep politics in our stories! Rally around that pink and white ass so hard they have to notice and then tie it all to the fact that Disney has great power and with great power they take no responsibility for how shitty the world is.”

“ If they are going to fuck Gwenpool fans they gotta learn Gwenpool fans fuck back. We have already proven we can make all kinds of cool shit. Let’s get serious and make more, harder, faster! Get a hashtag or some shit. They can't DMCA all of us! GWEN IS OURS WE JUST HAVE TO REACH OUT AND TAKE IT. Then they either respect the character and her fans or they just hit a PR disaster.”

“Marvel/Disney neglects fan focused cult character themed protest movements. Proves they are only progressive when it makes them money. They’re so worried about Mickey ending up in the public domain? We’re the public domain! After our entire lives stannin their characters and buyin their merch building them from an animation house into a juggernaut they are just another weight on top of the boot on our necks. They have to take responsibility!” At this point Gren is pretty much ranting maniacally and neglecting the actual writing of the story so this is Gwen taking over to wrap up.

Guys I may not be ‘the real Gwen’ but really, isn’t the version of Gwen that actually came from the real world all of us? Isn’t Gwenpool really the Gwens we made along the way? We could easily bring a little heroism and chaos to the real world (at least to the internet) if we really tried. Put the fear of God into some IP landlords and fight for some cool people that society is screwing over, too.

Prove that even in the fandom abyss people aren’t as powerless as they seem. Use that internet comic fan mobbing for something besides giving Zack more money. Disney is gearing up for their next IP fight for Mickey in 2024. Seems like a fine time for IP themed protests. For now we just need to spread the word that our needs are more important than their profits.

It’s been real. It’s been long. It’s been a real long time coming…..

But I finally finished my fanfic.

See ya, true believers.

#gwenpool #fanfic #deconstruction #outofloveiswear #fortheoriginalwritersnotmarvelordisney #tw mental health #tw mentions of suicide #tw mentions of drug abuse #tw violence #tw gun violence

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writefinch · 3 years

Text

Family-Owned Small Business

(CN: incest, sex work, mentions of sexual assault & suicidal ideation)

The worst part of my job is administration. Last-minute rescheduling when a client flakes on us. Chasing up payments. Booking accommodation at short notice. Answering messages! Jesus, every time in the last year when I've slumped, sighed, and thought to myself "fuck working, I need a break from all this" it's been when I've opened my messages and seen thirty different texts that need a reply. Some people are fine with it I guess, but for me it's boring, time consuming, and stressful.

Big deal though, right, I mean nobody loves doing admin, why even bring it up? Well, if I tell someone that for work last night I ate a client's cum out of my mom's pussy, I'd expect that they'd get fixated on the sex work and the incest. I'd expect them to freak out and not pay attention to the specifics of what I'm saying. So, first, I'd like that person to know that the thing I hate about my job is probably the same thing that *they* hate about *their* job. I would rather lick my mom's asshole for five minutes than answer emails for five minutes, and I answer a lot of emails.

Do we have to worry about violence, danger, cops, and legal trouble? Yeah, we do. Am I scared of these things? Yeah, sometimes, but I had to worry about all of those things before I started doing sex work. At least now we've got the money to buy our way out of the worst of it.

I'm not saying that what I do with mom is an objectively healthy relationship, let alone a perfect one. If you took me back in time and told me I could pick a completely different life for me and my mom, I'm sure there's a bunch of choices I'd pick over this one. But I never had that choice. I got hurt a lot growing up. I feel like I've finally escaped the things that hurt me, but I know that I've barely started to recover from them.

That's why I'm writing this. We've saved enough money to afford some therapy and my first session is next week. I want help with the fear, the nightmares, the mood swings and insomnia, I want to stop the rush of rage and terror that flows through me every time I see the word 'dad,' I want help untangling the stuff that came out of being told I was a pansy when I was growing up, then figuring out I'm gay, then figuring out I'm a girl, then figuring out I'm all three of those things while I was living in a place that kept trying to kill me for it. What I don't want is for the psych to pin it all on the two least harmful and least fucked-up things about my life, and worse, I don't want them to make me believe it. This journal is a prophylactic, an assessment of my job, my relationships and my life that I can refer back to if and when someone sticks their fingers in my brain and swirls them around.

I'll start with a problem statement: my dad. The memories that hurt the most are the ones where he almost appeared human, the flickers of joy, curiosity and humor that stood out from the bland cruelty that made up the rest of his personality. I'll remember him buying me ice cream or talking about a book or a movie with me, I'll doubt myself and wonder if I just went crazy and cut him out of my life for no reason, and then my brain will hook onto a random act of sadism he inflicted on me.

The physical abuse was bad all on its own, real psycho shit like driving me out into the woods and making me pick through the brush for a switch he could hit me with and a whole lot more I won't go into, but the emotional abuse was worse. When I was eleven, I forgot to feed my cat one day. He gave her away to my uncle, but told me that she'd developed malnutrition and had to be put down. I didn't find out the truth for another two years, when he just let it slip at Easter. He bragged about it, even, like he'd invented a really smart child-rearing technique. I don't want to write too much down here because I don't need to, if anything I want therapy to *stop* everything he did from running through my head. He's a punishment-obsessed sadist, a Baptist, and he works as a judge. Did he ever sexually abuse me? No. Parent of the year, right? He kicked me out for being a fag the day I turned eighteen, so it's ironic that my biggest fear is that he comes looking for me. He doesn't even know I'm a girl.

On the other hand, my mom has had an interesting life. She's kind of a fuck up. When I was one year old, mom and dad split and dad got full custody--being a judge helped with that--while mom left the state. She spent a decade trying to kick a heroin habit and a year and a half in prison for related stuff, got banned from even entering the state I lived in on account of her parole--again, dad being a judge helped with that--illegally emigrated to Canada for a while, and went to Oregon by mistake, doing a mixture of bartending, delivery driving, MDMA dealing and whoring to stay afloat.

The only reason we met again is that I was in the same city staying with friends, also whoring. I don't remember the first time I saw her, but the first time we talked was in a mutual friend's tiny studio apartment with a few other hooker friends. We ended up comparing our Pest Lists, shared a few drinks, and swapped numbers. A week later we fucked, and a month after *that* we realized that we'd Oedipus'd ourselves. It seems funnier now than it did at the time.

That was an emotional time. We cried with joy that we'd found each other, we started tip-toeing around the ideas of rebuilding our lives together, and we agreed to pretend that the sex had never happened. Of course, we got drunk together a week later and fucked again. She's hot! I have a thing for older women, I have a thing for breaking taboos, and I have a thing for being mommied in bed. Blame dad for raising me like this, I dunno.

We started doing sex work as a team after she got a dental abscess. The bill for the hospital stay and the tooth removal was insane, and the dentist straight-up told her that she'd end up with another in a different tooth within a year if she didn't get two root canals. Even when she was recovering, we could only afford fish antibiotics off of Amazon. We crunched some numbers and made some inquiries, and figured out that we could pull in two week's worth of our combined income with one night of mother-daughter stuff.

Our first joint session was with a real estate pervert I'll call Stan, a chubby balding powerlifter in his fifties who we'd both had as a client before. Mom took me over her knees and switched between spanking me and fingering me while he watched. I sucked him off while mom made out with him, made out with my mom with his cock between our lips, licked his balls as mom licked my ass, then let him fuck my ass while mom sat on my face. That was the first half hour. He came six more times before we passed out in the early hours of the morning, and I drifted off nursing his finally-limp cock in my mouth. He paid us the price of a used Volkswagen for our trouble, and I blew him one last time before we left as a thank-you.

Six months later, mom's teeth were fixed, I was on spiro, and we had just under a dozen clients for our "doubles sessions." Only a few of our appointments are ones with me and mom together, three or four a month, we mostly work alone. That's not out of a deliberate choice, it's just that we've got a strict criteria for who we'll double up on.

Trust is one thing: depending on the lawyers we can afford, what we're doing is either kinda illegal or extremely illegal. Since my dad is presumably still a judge, I don't want him to ever find out about this. He'd put us in a prison or a mental institution. We won't do a double session with a client unless we've both had individual sessions with them.

Money is the other thing. Getting your dick sucked by a hot mom while her daughter sucks your balls costs a week's wages for the average person. Hiring us for the night is more like a month's wages. Even in a city like this, there's only a few thousand people that can drop that kind of money on hookers. Then, they've got to *want* to fuck a trans girl and her mom together. Don't get me wrong, more people are into mother-daughter incest than you'd expect, but it's not a universal thing.

Clients are, on average, annoying. It's a fact of life. The thing that all clients have in common is a ton of disposable income and a fondness for fucking hookers. They're not necessarily bad people, but there’s a heavy ‘What can a banana cost, ten dollars?’ vibe to them. It’s not that they’re adrenochrome-drinkers who don’t see regular people as human, it’s more that they don’t have an intuitive awareness that other people don’t have savings accounts, health insurance, an investment property, and four figures of walking-around money at any given time. I guess I'd feel differently if I was like, a concierge or a PA, but there's a lot more pillow talk in my job.

I've had bad and dangerous clients before, there's been at least two occasions where I was pretty sure I was going to die--one where the hospital afterwards stay wiped out four months of income, not counting the month where I couldn’t work--but they were all before I met mom, when I couldn't be so careful about screening prospective clients and dropping them if they threw up red flags. I'm sure we'll get bad clients in the future, but we're in a better place to deal with them safely.

I also wanna write down what a "normal day" is like. Friday was a good example. I woke up early at 9am and cooked breakfast for mom. She was up already doing the laundry. We entertain some clients in our apartment, so we go through a lot of clothes and a lot of sheets. You can't fuck a guy on top of another guy's cum stains, that's rude. Some of the job is Housework But More. We don't really use the main bedroom or the sitting room because we treat them like bed and breakfast guest rooms. It's annoying but every time we have a session without getting an actual hotel or motel room we save like $50 minimum.

After breakfast I epilated, showered, and went for a run. Personal grooming isn't that big a deal in terms of time, I'm not saying I don't spend a lot of time on it, I do, but I'd be spending that time even if I worked in a bar or an office or something. Look: I'm hot. I might have been a weird-looking spotty nerd when I thought I was a boy, but as a girl I'm a fucking dime. I could get like, 25% uglier before it had any impact on my earnings. The only part of personal grooming that's necessary for sex work and I wouldn't do all the time anyway is power-washing my guts an hour before every session.

After lunch, mom went to see some friends and I played Magic for a few hours. At two pm, the actual work started. I picked up the work phone for the first time that day and began answering texts. An hour later I'd cancelled the 6pm appointment, blocked out all of Sunday evening, checked in with a few regulars, and provisionally moved three guys to the 'Time Wasters' list.

I spent a while sexting with a good prospect. He was a good prospect because he paid up-front for the sexting instead of treating it like a free samples platter at Costco. We scheduled a tentative appointment for next Tuesday, when his wife would be out of town on a business trip. Most of the guys I fuck have kinks, and I swear that 'cheating on your wife with a sex worker' is the most common one there is. Do I feel bad about it? At my hourly rate, absolutely not.

Mom got back at half four, so I took a break. We made tacos for lunch together and ate while watching Billions. She nudged me and told me that I need to do my injection, and, well, we have a little ritual for that. I'm scatterbrained and I'm not great with needles, but mom has been incredibly supportive with my HRT, and when I told her I was having problems taking them on time, she came up with a way to make me as comfortable as possible. As soon as the needle is ready, I laid down in her lap and she cradled my head in her arms, pressing her bare chest against my face. I took a nipple into my mouth and nursed it softly while she stroked my hair. She called me a good girl, telling me how proud she is of her daughter, how much she loves me, and asked if I was going to take my medicine like a big girl. On good days I inject myself while she pets me and coos over me, and on bad days she takes the needle and does it for me. As soon as I dropped the needle in the sharps container, mom pressed a Hitachi against my cock and took one of my nipples into her mouth, called me her big brave girl, and asked if I was gonna cum for mommy.

As usual, the answer was yes.

Late afternoon and early evening is when the messages start flowing in, especially on Fridays, when the kinds of people with hooker money have either left work early and thinking about getting laid, or are still held up at work and are desperately thinking about getting laid. This kind of messaging gets trickier, because it comes down to what I'm providing. Like, setting up a session is the kind of normal administrative stuff that's baked into the price of a session. It's also partly a sales job, so I'm naturally flirty and solicitous, and because I do sex work I talk openly about sex.

However, *sexting* is not normal administrative stuff. If I'm sending you messages for jerking-off purposes, I can charge by the hour or by the text but I will insist on charging for it. Also, it's not just sex that me and mom provide. There's a reason that 'companionship' is an old euphemism for whoring, it's because whores are good company. I'm a good listener and I don't judge, which means I'm like the fun parts of a therapist but without all the homework and self-improvement. I'm (unsurprisingly) friendly with all of my clients, and I have more than a few clients and former clients who I'd consider good friends and vice versa. I talk to a bunch of them outside of a business context, especially the ones I met outside of my job, and that's a normal part of maintaining a pool of clients for any sales job, but on the other hand... it's a demand on my time and it's a part of my services. I can and have bluntly told guys that they're wasting my time when it comes to uncompensated sexting, but the platonic stuff requires a lighter touch.

One of my regulars, Fintech Pete, sent me a message. Two messages later, he sent me $100, and we're off. Describing in gratuitous detail exactly how I'm going to suck his cock, begging him to fuck me until my clit is drooling all over the sheets, sending him feet pics, things of that nature. Pete is great for sexting because he barely jerks off while he's doing it, he saves all the messages and pictures and jerks off to them later, because he's got some biohacking routine where he only cums once a week. He said once that part of the reason he hires sex workers is that he takes each nut a lot more seriously if he's paying three digits minimum for the privilege. He does this teleconferencing report with the board of directors at his company four times a year, and every time he hires me to kneel under the desk in his home office and suck him off while he makes his presentation.

Anyway, while we were going back and forth like that, he mentioned that I'd made a joke one time about doing a joint session with my mom. I told him it wasn't a joke, and to cut a long story short, half an hour later I was asking mom if she was up for an overnight session starting at 9pm. She agreed, Pete confirmed, so we both got ready--think getting dolled up for a night out but with a more thorough enema--and drove to his place. He lived outside of town in a two-bedroom suburban home, alone with his two dogs.

As soon as we were parked in his garage I did the safety call in front of him: I rang a friend of mine, told her we were visiting a friend, told her it was at the address I sent her earlier, and told her we'd call her again tomorrow morning. Was it really necessary to do that with someone like Fintech Pete? No, but practice makes permanent. If you let these things slip when there's no danger, eventually they'll slip when there is danger.

Now, I don't want to imply that I'm in a lot of danger! There's a reason that most of the faces you'll see on the Trans Day of Remembrance are of poor black and brown women, because real danger comes when you can't turn skeevy jobs, when you can't afford to take precautions, when you have to make the choice over and over between maybe starving and maybe getting murdered. I'm white, I've got a good support network, and I've been relatively lucky in that I can do all these things to minimize my risks. I've still got to do them, though! Things like safety calls are a good habit to get into and it helps all sex workers if there's an expectation that they've all got someone looking out for them.

...I get that there is some bravado creeping into this journal. I start off saying that admin is the worst part of the job and a page later I flippantly mention that the job has put me in the hospital. On a day to day basis yeah, the admin is the bit that sucks the most, but if you offered me a deal where the admin is twice as bad but I never took that session, I’d take it in a heartbeat. This job has left me with some scars. Any time something cold touches my wrist I get a vivid flash of the first time I had my hands zip-tied behind my back in a cop car. I've had nightmares all my life, and more than a few of my nightmares are about stuff that's happened since I got into sex work.

If it seems like I’m downplaying it, it’s because the harrowing stuff is where the job has gone wrong, it’s not baked into the everyday stuff, and most importantly it has nothing to do with my mom. The work I've done with her is some of the least stressful and dangerous I've had since I started this job, and whatever wounds I have, she's not the one who caused them.

On a more positive note, a cool thing about doing sessions with my mom is that we can dress pretty conservatively and still have it come off as insanely lewd. Mom wore a black cocktail dress with an imitation pearl necklace and her hair up in a bun, I was in a white blouse under a lambswool sweater, a pleated short skirt, cheap dark tights--Pete has a thing for tearing them--and patent leather shoes. When you're going to suck a guy's world entirely off alongside your mom, the more modestly you're dressed, the more perverted it looks. Out in the suburbs it also means you get to avoid the microskirts and fishnets look which screams to the neighbors 'I've just hired a pair of hookers' or the mid-range raincoat over microskirts and fishnets look which screams 'I've just hired a pair of pricey hookers."

Pete's living room looks like the back room of a Radio Shack, computer guts everywhere, every surface turned into a makeshift workbench. It's not a suitable place for lovemaking; I don't want to have to pull shards of a soundcard out of my perineum. His bedroom is a lot neater, with a king-sized bed to sit on, a ton of pillows to lounge up against, and a TV mounted on the wall. Mom poured out some wine, a mid-range red zinfandel that we'd picked up on the way, Pete brought out some imported dark chocolate that costs like $40/kg, and I swung my legs over his lap and turned on the Food Network. I took a bite of chocolate, mom took a sip of wine, and before either of us swallowed she pulled me into a deep kiss, mixing the wine and the chocolate. It's a good combination, and Pete enjoyed the show.

The night started off with chatting. None of us were in any rush, not with an overnight session, and since Pete has been a client for each of us for a while it was a pretty relaxed atmosphere. Pete's fingers danced over my thighs, absent-mindedly plucking ladders into the fabric as we talked baseball, business, sex work, the difference between the gentrified fag bar downtown and the really gentrified fag bar downtown, programming and other nerd shit, local politics, the contestants on Cutthroat Kitchen, just normal stuff. Mom and Pete started talking about fancy cooking stuff so I started annoying them both by claiming that sardines are just fully-grown anchovies, that DOP labels are all fake, and that instant grits are better than the regular ones until mom jabbed me with a finger and told me that my mouth should be put to better use elsewhere.

You know how some people say "Cilantro tastes like soap, that's why it's good?" Same thing for how weird it feels to go down on my mom. The first time I ever jerked off, watching a 144p clip of Rocco Sifreddi fucking a girl in the ass while flushing her head down a toilet bowl, knowing that this meant I was going to go to Hell unless I begged God for forgiveness and never did it again, I came so hard I passed out. It feels good, it feels wrong that it feels so good, and it feels even better because it feels so wrong.

She was already wet when I got between her legs. I kissed her clit and started licking, her bush tickling my nose and her thighs squeezing my ears. Fabric rasped over my head as she hiked her dress up to run her hand through my hair. Everything was muffled but I could hear kissing and clinking, and I knew that mom was undoing Pete's belt and jeans to give him a Catholic-quality handjob.

I got mom worked up, bucking her hips and getting all breathy, until she asked me to get up here and give her some help. I crawled up to his groin and winked up at him. He blushed and grinned back. Pete's not a bad-looking guy. I mean, I don't care about looks in general, I guess I can look at someone and say that objectively they're ugly, and if someone is beautiful it adds something to the experience, but like... it doesn't really figure into it. Obviously most johns don't look like supermodels but they're not uniformly ugly, as I said before the thing that johns have in common is being horny guys with a lot of disposable income. Still, Pete is towards the better-looking side of that scale.

...Okay there is one thing about him that's weirdly common for my clients, I call it 'John Balding:' where a guy is losing his hair but in a slow, uneven, and kinda weird pattern, so that even when they cross into being more bald than not, they never bite the bullet and shave it all off. Pete is only like 30% of the way through that process so it doesn't look terrible yet, but he's on that track.

Anyway, back to the sex. A fun thing about double blowjobs is that you can take them a whole lot slower than solo blowjobs. Me and mom have had a lot of practice so we go at about 1/4th speed and it feels twice as good. She started off by wrapping her hand around the shaft, slowly stroking it while she softly kissed the tip, and I licked his balls, gently lapping at one, then the other, cleaning away the day's sweat and musk, carefully taking both of them into my mouth at once. Mom swallowed half his length, and I started kissing my way up his shaft as she pulled back up, my lips touching the head as hers reached the very tip. She grabbed me by my hair and pulled me into a deep French kiss with his cock in the middle, precum mixing with spit, moaning as we felt him twitch and grunt, mom's hand on his balls and my hand on his shaft. We broke the kiss and repeated it in reverse, taking his cock in my throat as mom kissed her way down to his balls. He came after five minutes of gentle little schoolgirl kisses on each side of his cock from the pair of us. The first rope caught mom on her cheek, the second hit her hair, but I wrapped my lips tight around the head and sucked him dry before he could spill another drop.

You can't give a client a mother-daughter blowjob and not snowball the cum back and forth in front of him. We've done it enough times to get the timing down: wait until he sits up straight, because if you don't he'll be too dazed from nutting in your mouth to really appreciate it. Make sure he's looking at you, move your hair out of the way so it doesn't obstruct his view, open your lips so that a trickle of jizz almost sloshes out, move in close to your mom so that your noses are touching and it's clear that you're about to kiss, sink a palm into her tits as she grabs your ass, and then you gotta really go for it: wide-mouthed, feral, energetic, like you're trying to reach each other's sinuses. If a little bit of cum spills out because you're being so sloppy, that's a sign that you're doing it right. You're going to lick it up afterwards anyway.

We broke the kiss, I licked mom's face clean, and we took a break. We drank some more wine, he offered us cigarettes--the coolest clients are the ones that let you smoke indoors--and we cuddled and relaxed for a while with Guy's Grocery Games playing on the TV. Pete went to get some water, and returned with three bottles and a strip of Cialis. He downed two pills, we both stripped off--it was sweltering by that point--and got ready for the next round.

Mom played with his nipples and I got between his legs again, this time going lower than his balls to eat his ass out. Rimming is a trusted client privilege like the mom-daughter stuff is, except it's less about trusting them in the legal sense and more about trusting that it won't be grainy down there. I like it when a client is clean enough to rim, because I'm extremely good at it. Mom says she's better, she claims she once made a guy no-touch cum with a rimjob, but I don't fucking believe her.

He got hard after a minute of digging my tongue into his ass, but his cock was still super-sensitive so we figured we'd tease him for a while longer. We swapped places, mom ate his ass while he made out with me, squeezing my tits and playing with my cock. I like it when guys touch my tits, my cock is... fine, I guess? I don't viscerally dislike people touching it but it doesn't do much for me. After a minute of that he reaches around and works a finger into my asshole, which is much more my speed.

By the time he was two knuckles deep I looked down and saw his cock twitching, leaking precum onto his stomach. He seemed pretty worked up. I kissed his neck, nipped at his ear, and whispered, "Do you wanna breed me, Mister?"

He sure did.

I use condoms unless I've got an extremely compelling reason not to, and mom has a cool trick for getting them on. She grasped Pete's cock around the base, placed her lips around the tip, deepthroated the entire thing in a single stroke, and as she slowly lifted her head back up, his cock was neatly fitted with a condom.

As soon as I lubed up he put me on my back, pushed my ankles up to my ears, pressed his cock against my hole and sunk into me inch by inch. He muffled my moans with a kiss and rutted me into the bed. I gotta give it to him, all that biohacking and cardio is doing something right because he railed me at a fast, steady pace until my dick was leaking all over my tummy and I couldn't form sentences in my head any more. Mom made out with him as he finished, and at that point I was just babbling nonsense. He was gentle and cautious as he pulled out of me, stroking my hair as I reached down to take off his condom. I poured the contents out over my tits, slumping back against the headboard as mom licked them clean.

It wasn't yet midnight by then, and we went on like that through the night. Licking his feet, mom-daughter 69, him sucking my cock while mom rode his dick like a Sorority cowgirl champion, more wine, more double-blowjobs, tacking an extra $200 onto the fee for the privilege of pissing in my mouth instead of having to get up to go to the bathroom, a whole buffet of fun whore stuff.

We woke up at around ten in the morning, stayed for breakfast, then said our goodbyes. Me and mom thanked him for his custom, and he thanked us for a good time. By midday we were at home, we both showered, checked our calendars, messaged our evening clients to confirm that they were still on, and then... well, the rest of the day kinda evaporated. I played Demons' Souls until I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer, passed out in bed, and woke up when my alarm went off in the evening.

That's one of the things I don't like about overnight sessions: you're technically only spending like, ten to twelve hours with a client, and for some of that time you're either not fucking or actively asleep, but it kinda feels like it destroys two days. By the time it's scheduled, everything in the rest of the day is either preparing for it or doing it, and when you get back it takes the rest of the day just to recover. I don't like that part of my job, and if I sit down I can probably go through a whole bunch of things I don't like about my job. I still know that my job isn't a *bad* job, because the last time I had a bad job it was at a chicken processing plant. Know how I know that the chicken job was bad? Because I excused myself for a bathroom break four hours into the shift, walked off site, and never came back.

You know what, there's another reason I know that this isn't a bad job and that mom isn't a bad mom, and I guess it's part of the reason I've written all this down in the first place. I was seven years old when I first wanted to die. By the time I got to high school, suicidal thoughts were just the radio static in my brain. I can't remember any point after like, grade school where I didn't daydream about suicide every single day.

Now? I sometimes go for weeks without thinking about killing myself. It hasn't gone away completely, it still pops up when I'm upset or stressed out or tired or really hungry, but what I do is I talk to mom about it, and she talks me out of it. I feel guilty sometimes about putting that pressure on her, and taking that pressure off is part of the reason I'm going to therapy I guess.

I hope it works out.

I really think it will.

#story #stories

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completely-zucked · 3 years

Text

I've been homeless and immobile for a while, but I'm in danger of losing my accommodation and wheels (again).

Mentally and spiritually, I have been homeless for nearly two decades. I have once again been threatened with eviction because I don't have enough money in my bank account to pay my rent or meet my car repayment and other loans. Each time it happens, things get worse and there's no negotiating.

This time around, though, I might call their bluff, because I was already being driven mad (quite literally) by the restrictions, manipulating and gass-lighting (being called a cold, uncaring self-centred, irrational, illogical, lazy, stupid, narcissistic and paranoid sociopath — enough to make a guy with self-esteem and motivation issues suicidal). What's changed is that now I've been banned from using, cleaning and/or performing any maintenance on any room in the house except my bedroom (including bathrooms and toilets), which was previously one of my responsibilities. I have to use outdoor ones/the old servants' quarters, which doesn't have a door on the bathroom. )I live in the southern hemisphere; it's winter here.) I'm not allowed to hang a curtain or take material to make one, so I use an old chlorine bucket in the passageway/corridor outside as an indicator that I'm in there. I'm not allowed to be out there past 21:00 and am not allowed to move my stuff to the servants' quarters or garage because they are being used as storage space for tools and, occasionally, as a home gym by/for my landlord. I'm also not allowed to use any tools or appliances (including vacuum, cleaners, brushes, brooms, dustpans and cloths), because no maintenance. Everything of mine that I don't keep hidden and locked away has been confiscated. Of that, everything that I bought myself has been discarded or claimed as belonging to my landlord and landlady. (My soap, of all things, was the first casualty, which is what tipped me off and prompted my buying locks for those things I could lock away.) I am also not financially able nor permitted to buy more tools, containers or locks (and replacements for those) since my finances are being scrutinised and my choices, decisions and purchases criticised.

My broom is a paintbrush, my dustpan a plastic shopping bag and my duster a roll of paper towel. My vacuum cleaner is a cardboard tube glued to a Pringles can with a PC fan inside. ... And they wonder why I've taken to doing DIY projects that repurpose recyclable household items ; how irrational of me ... Le sigh.

That means no fridge, kettle, microwave or stove. I also don't get cooked meals. That would be fine on its own if I weren't subject to restrictions. I live off powdered milk, coffee, cereal, peanut butter, marmite, bread, orange squash concentrate, syrup, biscuits and bananas. Sometimes, I skim a couple of tablespoons of yoghurt out of the container when they're not around, or dilute fruit juice with water at a ratio of about 1:3, just to have some variety/luxury. I had some meal replacement shake powder too, just to keep me from starving, but that's gone and I can't afford to replace it. If I ask for more, I'll have to pay it back; they keep track of everything they buy for me (including a bottle of vitamins) that I'll have to pay back if/when I get a job again. I already owe about $220. It was, of course, a big deal when I bought myself twelve beers on special for $9 the day I got paid for the first lot of contract work I'd done in nearly six months since losing my job, despite the guy underpaying me by just over $100 because I hadn't insisted on a written agreement and was in no position to haggle/negotiate; the last time I do favours for friends, especially those who're religious. (The fact that I'm rationing out the beers at one a week and am only on my sixth one next weekend doesn't have any relevance to my landlady, who tried to confiscate a couple with intent to give them to my landlord and made an almighty fuss about how selfish I was being when I said I'd be fine with sacrificing them if either of them had just asked for one, how she'd noticed my ex always bought the wine despite our having agreed on certain divisions of costs when we were together, and a whole lot of other irrelevant bullshit.)

I need help getting out before the end of June, assuming I find a job and somewhere to go by then. Otherwise, I'm quite likely to end up on the street or attempting to off myself again. Currently, I have no job, nowhere to go and not even enough money to buy a cheap bicycle for $175. Even if I take my car to a dealer who'll settle the balance of my loan with the bank, I get nothing for it because it's an old model which I haven't been able to afford to take better care of and is pretty much a lemon four years after I drove it off the showroom floor. (I should have traded it in after two, before the new model came out). That's the best deal I've been offered. The alternative is to either trade it in for something else and extend my loan or take an amount that's less than it's worth and continue paying off a loan for a vehicle I no longer have. Hooray for death by a thousand cuts under Consumer capitalism.

Apparently, it's all my fault for not learning my life lessons, growing the fuck up, sorting my life out and GTFO of the family home a hell of a lot sooner (by at least a decade, nearly two), when the physical abuse by my peers first started in small and subtle ways. I thought that would all be behind me when I left high school, then varsity, then two corporate jobs. But no, I'm the kind of person who attracts bullies and toxic, abusive relationships.

The moral of the story

If I had known what I now know and the lessons I have learned when I was a padawan/young twenty-something, I would have taken my education seriously and applied myself to obtaining both CS and EE degrees instead of a crappy, near-worthless diploma, moved into my own two-room shoebox as a priority and bought a bicycle instead of a car. Anywhere I can't reach by bike probably isn't worth going and a car is an immovable liability/waste of money two years after purchase. At least I would have my own space (which I so desperately crave). At least then, I could be an allegedly horrible, reprehensible and repulsive degenerate of a person all by myself without anybody to hurt or hurt me. I'm fucking done with living with other people for a while. Fuck that noise; I want a thousand days of solitude, even if it's in a corrugated iron shack in an informal settlement. I'm prepared to cook my supper in a three-legged potjie over a wood fire and boil collected rainwater in a cast iron pot while I wait for my orchard and mielies to grow.

Honestly, at this stage, I'm prepared to live on a camp bed with a sleeping bag and a camp chair and folding table in somebody's garage, undercroft or old servants' quarters (as long as there's a plug point and running water) just to be able to get away from here. I just want some space of my own to be myself (horrible or otherwise) again and keep my interaction with people to a minimum while I figure out how to cope with/manage my shitty life situation, get back on my feet and out in the world again without being scrutinised, criticised, judged, condemned, restricted, rejected and ostracised. That shit is literally making me crazy and suicidal. It is not in any way conducive to me so much as thinking of an action plan/way forward, let alone pursuing it. Yet, somehow, I still manage to restrict the time I spend buggering around on social media (still too much), which I apparently need to succeed in the modern world, hunt for jobs, write, make music and try to flog my Patreon to disinterested parties. Oh, and I'm also writing a proposal for a social media site for someone who's attempting to gather funding.

Seeing my shrink for two hours a month (which costs me a month's wages from my part-time weekend job) and the afore-mentioned job is not enough, as much as I love animals.

So if you can spare between ten and twenty-seven dollars a month to help keep me afloat, please subscribe to my Patreon. Your support will be greatly appreciated.

#homeless #immobile #I need money #finance #abuse #gaslighting

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grifalinas · 4 years

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All right, so while I wait for my pants to wash let’s get this written up. This is what I’ve been dealing with for the past week and a half, and why I haven’t been on Tumblr much lately + haven’t had much emotional energy for much of anything when I am. With apologies that this is going to get long and I don’t expect everyone to read it, but I need to write it up and put it out there. I’ll try to specify which things are my own personal account and what is second-hand information and what is mere speculation, to avoid sensationalizing.

Before going in, a couple things to know about how Shoe Dept (and Shoe Show in general) employees get paid: we work on commission; there’s a formula for working out the exact balance of wage and commission but it’s easier to think of it as wage or commission, with checks being paid in commission unless you would be making less than minimum wage, at which point they pay you minimum wage and make it subtly clear to you that they don’t feel you’ve earned that difference.

Commission rate is seven percent of total sales, but after ninety days in employment, you take a test to become “cfs certified”, which means you’ve supposedly been trained to use a brannock device and fit shoes as well as get them. Our training amounts to reading a pamphlet and taking a test, but once you have that certification you get nine percent commission on sales of children’s shoes on days you’re acting as cfs.

This doesn’t sound like much but this adds up over time. It’s the difference between selling a hundred dollars worth of shoes and you get seven dollars of that vs nine dollars- sell a thousand dollars worth of shoes, you get seventy dollars vs ninety dollars; ten thousand in sales, and- well, you get the idea. That two percent makes a big difference if you’re good at what you do.

(If you’re doing the math, yes, this means that we have to average about a hundred and twenty dollars in sales an hour just to make minimum wage, which is easy if we’re busy but not so easy if the store is dead. I’ll get back to this in a minute, so let’s stick a pin in it for now.)

The other thing you need to know is that we were closed for about five weeks in March/April due to the pandemic, and received base wages during that time. After talking to my boss repeatedly about the situation, she finally referenced it as “when they were paying us to sit at home doing nothing”, though I don’t know if that was her words or our dm/rm’s. It does, however, reflect the attitude of the company toward its employees so the exact source feels irrelevant.

So here’s what happened:

In March, just before the shut down, cfs commissions were removed from our wages. We were eventually told this was “temporary” and a response to the pandemic, but even if it was fair to start cutting wages on the bottom where people make the least anyway, we were not informed of this. There was a change made to how the keyholders and store manager got their salaray; I don’t fully understand the change because I don’t fully understand how their pay works (which is different than ours).

Our DM has insisted that he told our store manager about the change, our store manager has said she heard only about the change made to management. I believe her, and even if she is lying, it’s on the dm to produce a paper trail to prove that he informed her. That’s the sort of thing that should be communicated directly from payroll to the employees but even if you must go through the chain of command, it should be sent in official documentation, not mentioned in a phone call that can be easily misunderstood. Therefore, even if the dm DID tell the boss and the boss forgot, it’s still on the DM.

Of course, during the shut down, we were getting “base pay”, which is to say they averaged out our weekly hours (between twenty and thirty-five; my weekly average is usually 29-34 depending on which shifts I work) and paid us minimum wage based on that. This, at least, is somewhat fair; they’re continuing to pay us, and if we’re not getting sales then we don’t get commission. Losing that extra money hurt a lot of us, but the arrangement was at least understandable from that perspective.

So when we came back after the shut down, we were not aware that we had ceased cfs commissions and would not be getting the full amount of our sales that we expected.

Fast forward to a week ago. One of our coworkers was checking on payroll the night before our checks were set to come in, and noticed a huge discrepancy in her expected pay and her received pay. Having brushed off past errors because they were relatively small amounts, she was not going to allow several hundred dollars to go missing from her check without asking some questions. (The amount I was told was four hundred; this was anecdotal, so I don’t know if she was estimating, and if so whether she was rounding up or down. Either way, keep this number in mind.)

Our coworker goes into work that day and raises sand at our boss, who raises sand at payroll, trying to find out what happened and where her money went. The rest of us had also been shorted a lot of money, which you can understand made us very unhappy.

There were about two days where all this was going down that I only know everything through scuttlebutt, as I did not work the same shift as my coworker and boss and had to hear everything second (and third and fourth) hand. What came down to us through the grapevine was that they were taking our hourly wage out of our commission and only paying us beyond that; this was misinformation based on none of us fully understanding the formula that determines how we get paid + one of our keyholders being the sort to sensationalize things to make them sound worse.

However, this was enough to get all of us riled up, and start speculating about leaving the company, if they didn’t want to pay us anymore. (For clarity, this would mean that any time we were working without getting sales would be for free.) I went to bed last Friday night thinking that this had to be a misunderstanding and that I would talk to my boss in the morning before open to find out what exactly was going on, and woke up the next morning knowing that it probably was a misunderstanding but that even so, unless the misunderstanding was “we were trying to pay you more and messed up big time”, I would not be continuing to work at Shoe Dept.

So I went in Saturday morning (my day off) before open to talk to my boss, and got the information straightened out. Essentially, the missing money was due to a payroll error; in all of my discussions with my now-ex boss over the past week I was never able to get a straight answer about what the error was or where it originated. This could very easily be due to my boss not being given that information and just as easily be part of her habit of misdirecting and obfuscating rather than give us straight answers. Either way, all of us were shorted our commission pay for the week, but at the time our coworker noticed the error and started raising sand, corporate insists they were already fixing it, and we did indeed get a second check that week.

We were not informed that this was going on and there was no attempt at communication at any point. Coworker also says that while Boss was on of the phone with Payroll, Payroll asked if Coworker was there and then declined speaking to her when Boss said “Yes she is, would you like to speak with her”. Coworker believes this was due to an intention of giving misinformation to Boss; this is merely speculation and in my case second-hand information, so I cannot say for sure, only that, again, this reflects corporate’s attitude toward its employees.

Now, I would be pretty willing to forgive an error that was fixed if there’d been any transparency. We’re human, even the people at corporate, and mistakes happen. If we’d received a notification through the company app, or even a message through the chain of command, that there was a payroll error but they caught it and were sorting it, just sit tight, we’ll still get our money, apologies for the issue, I would be pretty understanding. Like yeah, sometimes shit happens, thanks for getting it sorted out so promptly.

But there was no transparency. No attempt at communication. They just did it, and then along with not saying anything about it to us and hoping we didn’t notice, tried to obfuscate when our coworker started asking questions. Management insists that it was already being taken care of by the time Coworker noticed, so when Boss and Coworker called Payroll, Payroll should have said “this is what happened, this is the situation as we currently stand, this is what we’re doing to fix it” with no hemming and hawing at any point.

We did get our money though. Well, mostly. Remember that four hundred that Coworker was missing? She got about about two thirty of it. At least part of the discrepancy can be chalked up to the second check being taxed, but that’s almost half of the money gone- doing the math, it added up to less than three hundred that they sent her.

Well, do the math, where did the hundred some odd go?

This is how we found out we weren’t getting cfs commissions anymore.

So for the past few weeks while we’ve been open, we haven’t been getting cfs commissions despite still having a cfs on every shift. When you’re cfs, Boss ensures you’re the only one or at least the main one if we’re too busy that gets children’s sales. The discrepancy was almost accounted for with that in mind, once she and Boss sat down to do the math.

Almost.

Coworker is very insistent that the numbers still don’t add up and, again, I believe her. I can’t prove it, and she offered me nothing but her own accounting, but I still believe her. I worked at Shoe Dept, Encore for going on four years (four years in July) and corporate have always been shady and underhanded in how they deal with their employees. The only reason I stayed as long as I did was that any other retail position would be a lateral move where I got paid less, and I had plans to move to Oregon that involved staying where I was until I saved up enough. But I don’t fuck with people who fuck with my money, so I’ll figure something out.

Some additional information:

I mentioned “hours we work where we don’t get sales” a couple times up there. Part of this was simply hours when the store was dead, often late in the evening or early in the morning. Sales at the latter half of the morning shift and early half of the evening shift could usually be counted on to cover the slower hours so that we still averaged out a hundred twenty in sales per hour, so that part isn’t too much of a bother.

What messes us up are when we have to come in during hours we’re closed in order to run in stock. Policy at the store (I don’t know if this is company wide) is that on Sundays, if the truck (truck comes Tuesday) isn’t completely run into the wall, sales come in Sunday morning at nine (sometimes eight, if we’re very very busy or there’s a lot to do) and run the shoes in until it’s done. If you’re scheduled to be off that day, you still have to come in, and if it’s done by break time (eleven thirty, hour long break, back at twelve thirty, we open at one) you get to go home and enjoy the rest of your day off. If you work that day, you get to stay in the store and work a regular shift on top of the half-shift you just worked.

If the running doesn’t get done, you come back at twelve thirty and keep running until it is, even if that means staying until close (and often, keep running while the shift sales clean up the store, and leave when we do).

During the shorter hours we worked just after the shut down, we came in Tuesday night at six, put out the entire truck, and started running, and left at eleven. If you were off that day, you worked a five hour shift. If you closed that day, you worked your usual shift plus another five hours. If you opened that day, you were still expected to come back in the evening. And then the next morning, if it wasn’t done, we came in at eight and worked until open. Regardless of our schedule.

This was done this way for two weeks, the third week it was “if you close, you stay till eleven, if you open, you come in at eight”, and by the fourth week we were back to normal hours. “Till eleven” and “eight until” is still in place for anyone on the schedule for that day as of this past Tuesday and Wednesday.

Are you furious yet? You should be, because if you’re paying attention you’ve realized that this was not scheduled into our workweek. We had to do this DURING OUR SCHEDULED TIME OFF. So a Sunday morning running shift was still counted toward your days off for the week, even if you’re working from eight am to seven in the evening with an hour break for lunch (which is usually the case during styling change).

And if you complain? “Get the running done during the week and you won’t have to be here Sunday :)”.

Easy enough, right? Maybe during the slow times when we have little business and the trucks average between a hundred to a hundred and fifty cases, sometimes dipping down as low as seventy or even sixty if we’ve been really slow. During the busy time of year, when we’re already pulling extra hours as is, and doing enough they can justify sending us upwards of two hundred cases, and we’re too busy taking care of customers to even keep the store clean on shift, putting us even later getting home? Even during styling change, when we needlessly flip our stock around to account for seasonal changes even though the store isn’t big enough for the science behind stock placement to have any effect whatsoever and it would make more sense to leave things where the customers and employees are used to looking for them?

Even if it’s a pretty much guarantee, no way out of it, that we’ll have to be there that Sunday, it’s still not planned into our shifts for the week, and during busy times, when we only get one day off a week more often than not, this can mean coming in for ten or eleven hours on your only day off.

Another thing, as long as I’m complaining: sometime last fall I was put in a supervisory position for running in women’s section. This meant that, on top of my usual duties, I was expected to also make executive decisions about how the running was done, ensure that my crew did their work, and make sure any new crew members learned how to do the running properly, since training methods are honestly a joke at Shoe Dept. This was a lot of extra work to put on me, but to be honest I didn’t mind. It was stressful at times, but I actually enjoyed it! The logistic puzzle of getting the shoes in efficiently while asking as little of my crew as possible and making sure they got more Sundays off than they didn’t or at least got to go home at lunchtime if they had to come in, actually ended up helping me keep my brain more in order than before.

BUT. Much as I enjoyed the work, this was effectively a promotion that was not official in any written capacity and did not garner me extra money. It also put me in a position to have to tell my coworkers, my crew, what to do, and, because of the way I approached all of my extra work, it at times appeared to them that I was doing less, which caused a strain between myself and my coworkers at times.

I could go on and on about all the bullshit I’ve had to deal with from Shoe Dept, but honestly it’s going to start descending into pettiness after this and I have to go run errands soon, so I’m going to stop now. This is just a write up of what happened recently re: our payroll, an explanation of why I quit my job without lining up another one first, and hopefully an understandable reason I've elected to keep my blog space free of current events. (Your morality isn’t determined by whether you reblog a tumblr post, but hopefully you can at least understand why my blog space has just been the odd shitpost and reacting to Digimon instead of reblogging things relevant to the world being on fire. I may loosen this now that I have more energy to direct toward vetting posts before reblogging them, though. We’ll see.)

#say it with me folks #FUCK shoe dept and FUCK shoe show incorporated #long post #like extremely long post

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hydroxychloroqueen · 7 years

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Leaving Retail: Part One

As stated in my previous post, I have found the light at the end of the tunnel and am currently transitioning out of retail and into hospital pharmacy. In many cases that I’ve witnessed, I listen to retail pharmacy technicians say that they don’t want to do retail anymore, and are going to leave... 98% of them are still there in the same pharmacy, 10 to 20 years later (which I can understand; if you’ve already invested that much time, you may feel like you should just stick it out). I was beginning to be one of those people, but there was a great opportunity that I just knew was for me, and I couldn’t handle the thought of someone else having what I wanted. So I shot my shot, and it was so worth it. Shooters shoot. I’ve received a couple of questions asking about what really made me want to move on, where did I go, so on and so forth. Since I’m on staycation for a while (using up time before I go on to my new job), I figured I’d go ahead and answer those questions now.

What Made Me Leave: Financial Reasoning

Aside from “This is for the birds,” I had/have a lot of personal frustration with my workplace. I work for a pharmacy that is a part of a rather large retailing company -- third-largest retailer in the world. Now, with that being said, you’d think with its revenue and borderline-monopolistic characteristics, it'd be able to pay its employees a reasonable amount (especially in a department where we handle sensitive information and patients’ lives). Wrong. They spend money on unnecessary t-shirts and other obnoxious garb (festive chef hats and aprons for other departments to wear for not even a month), when they could be paying their employees better.

From what I’ve heard from my other retail pharmacy tech friends, the compensation here is a little better than what they’re working with. And when I started there over four years ago, it seemed okay: you started at $8.30/hr (in my state, at that time, it was 65 cents above minimum wage, and me being only a year into the work force and working at a shitty big-box pet store, I was like HELL YEAH), and once you pass your next two “phase” tests (which you have six months to complete or you’re terminated), you get a total raise of $1.75. So in 6 months, you’re making $10.05/hr. Which isn’t the worst.

As time goes on, you do get raises. Each year, you get a raise, based on your performance review. And there are two more “phase” training programs and tests you can do to make more money that are 50 cents each (which didn’t roll out until 2 years ago). Which, again, sounds great! If you have a PTCB certification, you will have an additional 75-cent raise, and if you don't have one when you are initially hired, you’ll get a 75-cent raise plus reimbursement for the testing fee if you pass the exam. And, if you find the opportunity to become a Lead Tech, you will earn a $1.00 raise. I know, some of you are probably thinking “Why are you complaining?” and you’re right for now, but here’s where it begins to kind of not be so great.

All these raises are fine and good, but there is a pay ceiling that will be reached very quickly. When I was not a lead tech, and at a different store, my pay topped out at $15 and some change per hour. A year ago, I said to myself “Oh, shit, if you don’t find a new position, you’re going to top out in the next 2 to 3 years.” With this knowledge, and dealing with one RPh making my life a living hell because she took her personal issues out on me and made me feel like I was unstable and another RPh getting physical with me when she was having a manic episode (HR would not have believed me had a customer not witnessed and called corporate), I needed an out. I applied to be an ASP in one of the offices, and that didn’t work out (which I knew it wouldn’t. I had no experience in that field and I knew it would bore me, but it got my face out there). I came across another opportunity for a lead tech position and just went for it and landed it. It’s considered a promotion, so the ceiling went up, and it was great... Over a year and some more phases later, I did some math and thought “Oh shit... I’m going to top out of this position in the next 3 to 4 years and I can’t go any further up unless I miraculously show up with a PharmD tomorrow.”

**Side note: There’s also a tech at my location that loves to tell me how much she makes (which you’d think it’d be common sense to not talk about how much you make), and it pissed me off that she makes way more than I do (many DOLLARS more) and does practically nothing while I run around like a chicken with my head cut off. I told my manager about it, and he wouldn’t fight for a merit raise for me. Figured I’d throw that in there, too.**

To add, insurance through this employer is not great; I have to get my own insurance plan in the near future and I definitely won’t have a paycheck if I get insurance through the company (the premium is so expensive but the benefits are garbage). Sure, none of this may be a problem if you live at home, are just starting out in the work force, are in school, are using the job for experience (if you’re going to pharmacy school or some sort of other medical field), or you have someone else that you live with that also has a job, but I’m a single person that can’t completely rely on someone else’s income. It was at that moment, I knew this wasn’t going to work out, financially, as a real adult.

Part two to follow.

#pharmacy #retail pharmacy #pharmacy problems #new job

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myuun · 7 years

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congrats but wow 15 dollars min wage? in most places minimum wage is 7 or 8 dollars

;u; I know right?! I was super amazed at the minimum wage here. In fact, most people, depending on what industry you work in, earn even more than that, from 15-20 dollars even if you aren’t a professional. That is really good, and they’re actually thinking of raising it as well to 17 dollars minimum wage (I believe).

I know it seems like a heck of a lot money, but it kind of evens out since New Zealand is far more expensive than, for example, the US.

Take a 99 cent bottle of water in the US. Here a bottle of water is at the veeery least $2-3 dollars. A bottle of coke is usually 4 to 5 dollars.

You can usually find meals ranging from the $10 and up kind of thing. And this is like REALLY CHEAP FOOD. Like McDonalds, the cheapest the meals go is maybe around five dollars when in the US it is a dollar.

A decent meal for two people, if they order just two things without a drink (one per person) is at the very least... 25-30 dollars because any entry here is above 10 dollars easily.

Groceries in the US... you could probably find lots of produce and food and buy a good two weeks worth if you really plan out your meals with about 100 dollars. Two weeks worth of food here is nearing 300 dollars.

It’s really sucky because most of my family is in Mexico which is VERY VERY CHEAP (however, this again equals because the minimum wage is even lower than seven dollars in Mexico), so when I say that most of my money goes to food they don’t understand how much I am eating. To them I am packing on heaps of fucking shit, like I am eating like royalty. When really, I am buying basic food like bread, chicken, and maybe once in awhile we have something luxurious from the international aisle. Like tortillas.

So yeah... kind of evens out. ;v; That’s why Jack and I usually keep an eye out for sales on stuff and tend to buy meat only when its low priced like at 4 to 5 dollars for a small packet. We also eat a lot... of rice. And bread.

The good thing though is that the US dollar is high here, so if you bring about 100 US dollars here to go shopping, it would equal to 150 dollars NZD. So that’s really cool since I get paid every month in USD and I get more cash back.

It baffled me at first, but now I have gotten used to it. ;u; Now I am just like Jack that is like, “Whoa, ten dollars for a ____?! That’s so cheap!” While before I was like, “Whoa, ten dollars for a ____?! FUCK OFF.” It bums me out so bad sometimes sobs. The money runs so fast and you don’t even buy that much BUT IT FLIES.

I do hope they raise up the minimum wage -crosses fingers-. It is a lot of money, but it really does only pay for the bare minimum. ;n; SUCKS. Definitely better than other countries though, I don’t know how my mom makes it, she makes barely nothing in Mexico. It is outstanding how hard she works and she makes less money for fifteen days worth of work than a friend of ours working at the grocery shop for a less than three days.

It is unreal and so upsetting. ;n; I am so sorry to those living under minimum wage (which SHOULD be higher than what it is in Mexico and the US by far).

#Anonymous #answered

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adambstingus · 5 years

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5 Reasons Why The Middle Class Doesn’t Understand Poverty

Poverty is a well-worn subject here at Cracked. John Cheese has talked about it a lot, C. Coville discussed legal loopholes that can screw the poor, and we’ve also covered myths the media perpetrates. And now it’s my turn to moderately wealthsplain the subject.

Unlike John and others, I grew up one year’s worth of acoustic guitar lessons away from being the most stereotypical middle-class white kid ever. I didn’t take yearly vacations to private islands to hunt men for sport, but I also never wanted for clothes and video games. And while us suburban kids were taught that it’s good to help the poor, we were also accidentally taught to treat them with disdain. Here’s how.

We’re Constantly Told That “Money Can’t Buy Happiness”

If you’re friends with the right kind of insufferable people on social media, you’ve probably seen pictures like this:

Or these:

Simple Reminders

Quotesgram How profound, guy with countless fans and a net worth of 150 million.

Or, God help us, this:

It’s all variations on the same theme: Money can’t buy happiness, true wealth comes from friendship and experiences, you don’t need the solid gold butt plug when the polymer one feels identical inside of you, etc. Movies teach it, music teaches it, our parents teach it — money is useless if you aren’t living. It’s not an inherently bad message, but try telling people at the homeless shelter to count the blessings that money can’t buy, and see how long it takes before you’ll feel blessed that you can afford health insurance.

Outside of images that the Care Bears would find insipid, “Money can’t buy happiness” is what middle-class people tell each other when someone is trying to decide between two different jobs. “I make 70k right now and the new gig only plays 60k, so I wouldn’t be able to travel as much. But I’d have more free time to play Ultimate, the benefits are better, and there’s no way my new manager could be any worse than my current one.” That’s an important decision to the person making it, but they’re debating between two different kinds of comfort. It’s safely assumed that the money they will need to exist will always be there. It would be nice to have more — to be able to go to more restaurants or to justify buying a second Roomba because deep down you know that the first one is lonely — but there’s always enough to keep the lights on and the kitchen stocked.

You may have seen the study that claimed $70,000 a year is the ideal salary — after that, more money generally doesn’t make you happier. Well, that’s great news for people hovering around that benchmark, but if you’re poor, more money will abso-fucking-lutely make you happier. More money means healthier food, or a chance to get out of the house and have some fun. It can mean knowing the rent is paid for next month, or being able to afford medication.

The middle class isn’t immune to money problems, especially if there are kids in the mix. Getting laid off at the wrong time sucks, no matter what your income is. But the middle-class people with money problems I’ve known were generally suffering from self-inflicted wounds. They had no savings because they wanted the new car or the luxury vacation. They wanted one of those experiences they were constantly told was more important than money, because the money for day-to-day necessities was always there, right up until it wasn’t.

That’s part of the reason, I think, so many middle-class people laugh at campaigns to raise the minimum wage. “You want 15 bucks an hour to flip burgers? How about you just hold off on the new TV until you get a real job?” The middle class generally fluctuates between being able to afford a nice vacation one year and having to settle for a few trips to the movies the next. The poor can fluctuate between paying bills and being out on the street. But the idea that such essentials could just go unpaid is unfathomable, right up until you experience it.

We’re Taught To Associate Low-Paying Jobs With Failure

When I was growing up, there was never a question of whether or not I was going to college. That’s partially because the idea of my spindly idiot ass learning a technical trade or doing manual labor is the first step in creating an “Epic Fail!!!” YouTube video, but mostly because my parents had a fund set up for me. (It helped that I live in a country where a post-secondary education doesn’t cost roughly eight quadrillion dollars a semester.)

So jobs that didn’t require a degree were presented to us as warning signs. “You better study hard, or else you’re going to end up just like that bull masturbator for the rest of your life! And I didn’t intend that pun, so don’t giggle!” Becoming a janitor or a gas station attendant or an internet comedy writer would have been considered a disappointment, an inability to take advantage of the gifts that were offered to us. Poverty was considered a moral failing.

No one ever just came out and said that, but the implication was always there. We tend to assume that other people are basically like us until they prove otherwise, which is why I’m constantly shocked to discover that most people don’t like my favorite homoerotic golf academy anime, Wood Strokes. So we were never taught that working as a dishwasher or a grocery store clerk or a sperm bank fluffer could be an important stepping stone for someone with a different background than us. We were also never taught that, you know, it’s still a goddamn job where someone shows up and puts work in and gets paid for their time. They were always just associated with squandered potential.

And man, when you hear that message constantly, it’s hard to shake. It’s easy to glance at a middle-aged dude working the checkout counter and automatically think “Well, I bet he’s not the brightest guy around” or “Oh shit, is that what happened to Matthew Lawrence?” It’s not malicious — not initially. Being told to take advantage of your opportunities is not a bad message. But when that message is driven into you for decades, it creates a stigma around certain jobs. And from some people, it produces plenty of snide remarks about how the people working those jobs should get better ones, as if the person who’s been a server for seven years has never considered just popping down to the job store and picking up a career in architecture.

Janitors and baristas keep society running as much as anyone else. If all of America’s coffee shops shut down for a day, the country would experience a nationwide narcolepsy epidemic crossed with The Purge. But when you grow up in the middle class, the only thing you’re taught about such jobs is that you should get one as a teenager to build character, and then thank God that you’ll never have to work one again as long as you don’t fuck up in life. And as long as we consider that a sign of our superior work ethic instead of birth luck, we’re going to keep dismissing as pathetic the jobs we’d all get angry about if they vanished tomorrow.

There Are Always Certain Things We Take For Granted

An education isn’t the only thing that most middle-class kids can assume they’ll get. A car to borrow, a phone, 20 bucks for when you really want to take a girl to what you assumed was a bad movie so you could make out in the back row but then it turns out that she’s actually super into the plot of Gigli and wants to focus on it even though you were all set to reach second base and so you end up getting a confused erection to Al Pacino and it inadvertently shapes your formative years … you know, all the little things that are part of growing up in Middle America.

That’s the end result of assuming that a good job awaits you, and that money is for throwing at problems and buying pizza instead of something to stress out about. Water heater broke? No worries, we’ll just have to eat in the rest of the month to make up for it. Shoes all worn out? Well, you can’t go to school like that, so go get some new ones. Gone on a losing streak at the Pokemon Card League and the groupies have started drifting off to the other players? Better pick up a few booster packs to get back in the game. You know you can’t get greedy and start buying Armani, but as long as your needs are modest, the money will always be there.

So the idea of 20 bucks making or breaking someone is impossible to appreciate. It’s just not a concept that clicks in our heads. It makes sense on a logical level, sure — you need money, and you don’t have it, and that sucks. But when you’re raised in comfort, you can’t put yourself in that head space emotionally. You can’t understand the stress, or the fear that you might not be able to feed your kids. The closest we can get is watching Gwyneth Paltrow try and hilariously fail to live on a tiny food budget before going back to her $4,000 kale cleanses. That’s kind of like empathy, right?

And because it’s tough to relate to, it’s tough to talk about. If someone tells me that they never got Christmas presents growing up, all I can respond with is “Uh, yeah, that sounds like it sucked. Well … one time my grandma accidentally got me Super Murpio 67, so … I hear you.” Starting a conversation with a bunch of middle-class people about poverty is like bringing up Trayvon Martin at a country club. Everyone trips over everyone else’s words to talk about how tragic it is, but then they distance themselves from the problem and the “buts” start coming out. And to further compound the issue …

We Don’t Witness Poverty, So We Don’t Understand It

When I was growing up, my exposure to poverty was largely limited to sitcom families who would talk about how poor they were, but were still able to go on a wacky adventure every week. The Simpsons kept running into money troubles in their early years, but their house looked the same as mine. Even the family from Roseanne, the classic working-class sitcom, owned a house that’s a palace compared to what a lot of people live in. The problem with portraying poverty in sitcoms is that it’s hard to get laughs out of eviction and early deaths caused by crippling medical debt, so the lesson always ends up being “Poor people struggle with money sometimes, but in the end they always get by, and they have lots of laughs while doing it!” Sitcoms make being poor look fun.

Beyond that, once or twice a year, I’d go to some kid’s birthday party and notice that his house was a lot smaller and more run down than mine. One of the kids who always got talked about in a slightly different tone of voice by the adults. I never gave it much thought because we went to the same school and both liked Nintendo — how different could our lives possibly be? Maybe I’d see a story on the news that would put a positive spin on the issue. (“Look at how many volunteers with beautiful families showed up to the soup kitchen to help feed these filthy hobos!”) Beyond that, the middle class just doesn’t think about poverty.

We’re always looking up, always wanting to go to the Christmas party at the rich friend’s house so we can get a taste of what we’re aspiring to. There’s rarely a reason to go to the poor part of town. Tell jokes about it, sure, but go? We never have to leave the bubble, so we never learn what real poverty looks like. Poor people become invisible, this mysterious Other, a group that serves you food, and in return, you throw a couple of non-perishables and toys into donation bins for them over the holidays.

Oh yeah, the middle class loves to donate food and toys and clothes and gently used ball gags and all sorts of other crap that we weren’t using anyway. Food banks actually need money far more than they need your creamed corn that’s going to expire in two weeks, because money just goes further. But people who will gladly part with 12 boxes of Kraft Mac and Cheese and some Funyuns they found under the sofa get leery when it comes to handing over money, even though we’re supposedly under the impression that we don’t need it ourselves to be happy.

That’s partially just because it’s more satisfying to give stuff instead of money — you can imagine some happy kid playing with your old Lego, and you get to clean out your closet. But remember, we’re taught that the poor are stupid and lazy. We sit around telling each other stories about how our friend’s cousin’s boyfriend knows a guy who spent his welfare check on beer and weed. These are campfire horror stories for the most tedious suburbanites, and they’re told in the hot tubs that they probably shouldn’t have bought until the next mortgage payment cleared. We can’t trust those people with money, because if they were smart enough to manage it properly, they’d be smart enough to have a better job. Also, they probably all have hooks for hands and murder teenagers while they’re making out in their cars. Hey, we learn so little about poor people that it’s just as believable.

We’re Taught To See Ourselves As The Victims

I’ve known people with movie theaters in their homes and four cars in their garage who are convinced that society is against them, that life is a gloomy parade of suffering because their property taxes went up a bit. That’s stereotypical rich people behavior, but it’s there in the middle class too, in subtler ways. I live in a city where the economy revolves around a boom and bust industry, so people tend to make good money while complaining about taxes for a few years, then get laid off and go on government benefits for a while, and then get a new job and go back to complaining about the government. And if you watch the cycle, you see the same “us against the world” mentality, just with fewer BMWs in the mix.

When middle-class people get laid off and go on welfare, they blame the economy, or their former employer, or the government. They never blame themselves. And they shouldn’t! Much like a whale’s erection, economies are big, confusing things that can’t be controlled by the average person. It’s not like they left photocopies of their asshole on the boss’ desk. They paid into the welfare system with their taxes when times were good, and now they’re using the system for exactly what it’s intended: helping you out when you’re unlucky. It’s bridging the gap until you, a hard-working person who just caught a tough break, gets another job.

Except when poor people use the system, it’s none of those things. Suddenly they’re not getting help; they’re just dumb, lazy leeches. Plenty of middle-class people are more empathetic and generous than I’ll ever be, but the worst instinct of the middle class is to blame the system when the system fails us, then lecture poor people when the system fails them. I’ve heard the condescending explanations about how the world really works (which usually come out after a few beers when no actual poor people are around because the speaker would never be brave enough to say it to their faces) more times than I can count.

The middle class has a weird relationship with the rich — we alternate between complaining about them and wishing we were them. Money can’t buy happiness, but a yacht certainly wouldn’t hurt matters. Even if we don’t like the rich, there’s always the pipe dream that we could be them. But no one dreams about being poor, unless you’re into an incredibly specific kind of role-playing.

Being poor is a problem (practically, not morally), and a problem is either the fault of the person or the fault of circumstances beyond their control. The latter means we in the middle class might have to do something about it — or, God forbid, reflect upon our lifestyles, which is just the worst. It’s much, much easier to assume that we’re fine, that ultra-rich politicians and celebrities and investment bankers are the ones being condescending and awful to the poor, but also that poor people could probably stand to work a little harder. So, uh … sorry about all of that. I’ll donate some food at Christmas, though!

Mark is on Twitter and has a book that’s made him rich in experience.

For more, check out 5 Things Nobody Tells You About Being Poor and 4 Common Morals Designed to Keep You Poor.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out Disney Thinks You Hate Poor People, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook. Likes don’t cost a thing.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-reasons-why-the-middle-class-doesnt-understand-poverty-2/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/183082791437

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allofbeercom · 5 years

Text

5 Reasons Why The Middle Class Doesn’t Understand Poverty

We’re Constantly Told That “Money Can’t Buy Happiness”

If you’re friends with the right kind of insufferable people on social media, you’ve probably seen pictures like this:

Or these:

Simple Reminders

Quotesgram How profound, guy with countless fans and a net worth of 150 million.

Or, God help us, this:

We’re Taught To Associate Low-Paying Jobs With Failure

There Are Always Certain Things We Take For Granted

We Don’t Witness Poverty, So We Don’t Understand It

We’re Taught To See Ourselves As The Victims

Mark is on Twitter and has a book that’s made him rich in experience.

For more, check out 5 Things Nobody Tells You About Being Poor and 4 Common Morals Designed to Keep You Poor.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out Disney Thinks You Hate Poor People, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook. Likes don’t cost a thing.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-reasons-why-the-middle-class-doesnt-understand-poverty-2/

0 notes

someonetotaketheedgeoff-blog · 6 years

Text

3.03.2018 – Journal: Dreams And Selling Out & Relationships As Products

Opened my laptop and it didn’t turn on. I thought maybe it was fucked. In my head I was like – ‘Aw yeah sick, don’t have to write anything’. Which’s weird. Why would I prefer my laptop to be broken than write? I guess it’s the 9 – 5 feel that inevitably comes with being creative. Everything gets boring in the end. If you do stuff only when you feel like it, nothing ever really gets done. I think that’s the difference between a child and an adult. Or an amateur or a professional, it’s finishing shit. Anyone can start a thing. But to finish a thing’s what matters.

Listened to an interview of the great comic Greg Fleet. In the interview he said he can practically sleep on stage, he feels that comfortable. He said the one hour of the day he was on stage was the easiest hour, the 23 others were the hard ones. Very interesting. At this point it’s the 5 minutes on stage that are hardest for me. However, the most exhilarating.

Dreams And Selling Out

Always hated the desperateness and ultimateness when it comes to people and their ‘dreams’. It has a disgusting sense of desperation.

People are afraid to publicly talk about their dreams. And that’s good if you’re afraid - you’ve picked the right shit. If you’re afraid of expressing what you want to achieve in this life, it’s sign you care about said shit. And it’s scary to admit it because then if you fail it, you may feel as if your life has been a failure. Which is all important and whatever, but it’s really got nothing to do with anyone else.

An icky uncomfortable feeling you experience in relation to the desperateness comes from people telling their ‘dreams’ and they’re just ridiculous, borderline impossible or actually impossible, or they severely lack the talent, or the dedication and/or awareness, or it’s something they’ve thought of literally that afternoon after watching the documentary Jiro Dreams Of Sushi on Netflix and suddenly want to be a sushi chef. You know those people. The ones that every time you see them have some new plan, some new bullshit, some scheme, some new course they’re entering. All of this’s fine. In my opinion it’s exactly what you should be doing – searching. Searching for something you love and can use to unearth the whole 360°s of your soul to the world and universe. It’s just the smugness, the assurance, the deluded confidence, the lack of commitment, the enrolling and dropping out and the never ending - ‘getting my shit together’. It’s the inability to just say publicly that they’re searching and that’s irritating. It’s probably just a problem of the western world – having to always present a façade that everything’s fine, sorted and organised to the public. Because there’s an acute fear of a social witch hunt if you express the fact that your just as lost as everyone

How do I know all this shit? Because I’ve been doing it for years.

Another uncomfortable thing about people’s dreams is the impossibility. Like a deluded and lonely guy that’s really into a girl he met twice. Everyone else sees he’s deluded and she doesn’t want anything to do with him/or doesn’t even realise what’s going on. Everyone around them grits their teeth and can’t bring themselves to tell them that they maybe should give up on that shit.

The ugliness of the desperation comes from the incompleteness so obviously displayed by the person. It just screams – I won’t be happy, fully happy, until I get that thing. Which’s funny because how do you even know it’ll make you happy? What I’m sort of subconsciously describing’s a sort of American, L.A., Hollywood, ‘X’ country has talent type desperation, which is the wrong type of desperation.

‘If I was to win Australian Idol that would be a dream come true, it would be the happiest day of my life’.

… Makes me shift in my seat. Yuck. Sort your shit out.

It’s a heavy focus on the love you’ll receive. Rather than the craft. Love is a main component of wanting to be an artist. I’m not going to deny that. But it’s that bit you must wrangle. That and the potential to sell out. And I’m not talking about ads at the beginning of The Joe Rogan Experience type of selling out, that’s fine, I’m talking about Logan Paul selling out, where every 13 seconds he plugs his merch and screams some bullshit into the camera and then breaks a plate for no reason.

The current cultural definition of ‘selling out’ is kinda bizarre. It’s this interesting thing that’s kinda like an inner, cultural, arts world meme. Almost like a joke you associate with 9/11 conspiracists, tie dye wearing, dreadlock flicking, MDMA smashing, drug fucked, angry, easily triggered, guy at the end of the bar, occasional busker, full time unemployed people.

But if you’ve ever entered the world of the arts you’ll know it’s very hard to make a living. This year I’m finally going to try and figure it out. So stay tuned.

There’s still a strong part of me that wants to be like Frank Zappa. Well, not like Frank Zappa. But I want to work hard like Zappa, so I can reach a point where creatively I can do whatever the fuck I want when I want.

Maybe the whole concept of a ‘dream’ is a childlike thing. When you’re a child you say all types of crazy shit. Like I’m going to be policeman or an astronaut. Then you get into your mid-twenties and you’re like – ‘Ah, I don’t know man… Fuck knows…’. Followed by the quiet gurgling of a bong and Wu-Tang Clan playing quietly in the background. The universe’s too big for a human life span.

Most of modern life’s designed to minimise your experience by taking up your time working. Most jobs are repetitive and mundane, some completely pointless, many are simply the maintaining of machines that create popular products. You work so you can afford a place to live. Then you buy products to enhance, streamline, to indulge in or escape. Modern life minimises your variety of experience by how much you must work to still be apart of modern life. To be involved is fucking demanding work. And for the majority you must use your body to make money, doing labour orientated jobs that at this point should probably be done by robots. I think it’s funny how they talk about jobs becoming automated and soon will be done by robots. What would happen if the robots developed to the point of conscious awareness? Is that then ethical to make them work? The irony is it’s already been happening with humans forever.

I’m not saying work is bad. Working is good. Challenging work, passionate work, work to progress humanity, helping others, working towards a more harmonious society, all that shit. But it’s the fact you must work. And that sometimes minimum wage doesn’t line up with the cost of living. After a while you can feel like you’re being fucked. When I worked fast food jobs I’d be paid around $13 dollars an hour. I’d work roughly 35 hours a week. That’s fucking 450 dollars a week for half my weeks’ time. Just so I can exist within a house.

The problem is making fast food in this weird sterile world of extreme organisation, regulation, wearing hair nets and gloves, clocking on and off with a fingerprint system, dealing with horrible customers, learning the combinations for different burgers has nothing to do with your actual survival. It’s a very removed, almost virtual reality-esque existence. Like an acoustic, organic attempt at a virtual reality - the management of the animal. Quite bizarre.

I fantasise about disappearing into the woods. Living in a tiny house, isolated from people for at least a few kilometres.

I will make as much art as I can until I’m around 40. And if I’m still alive I’ll look back and say – ‘Alright am I happy? Am I satisfied? Was it worth it? Did it make me happy? Am I wrong, or right?’. Then I’ll collect up the money I have or don’t have and disappear for a bit. Spend some time thinking and contemplating for a few years and decide - do I need to do it to be happy or not?

I’m sure it won’t be as abrupt as reaching ‘x’ age and disappearing, but I really want to try and be an animal at some point. It’s an important thing to do in this life, to experience the origin of what we are/were. It’s much closer than we acknowledge. I wanna get in there and see what I find.

Relationships As Products

I think relationships are advertised as a product. Heartbreak as well. Something to yearn for, to strive for, to purchase.

I remember walking to school in year 7 listening to blink-182, pretending I felt the same way Tom Delonge and Mark Hoppus felt whining about girls in their songs. But at that time, I’d never really had a girlfriend or anything and I was just wishing I was sad. Why’s that? Did I want to be cool? Did I think being depressed and whingy was cool? I don’t know. I still don’t know. But it’s a product just like anything else in this current reality. The idea of a romantic relationship has so much cultural narrative. It’s also sort of all we have now. No more God just things to consume and relationships to have.

One of the solutions to morality that Ernest Becker proposed in his book The Denial Of Death was romantic love. The idea of a connection between 2 people would beat time and space or some shit like that. I’ve always thought this was a wishy-washy argument, and one that does makes sense in the throes of passion and love-retardation during a honey moon stage of being really into someone but beyond that seems stupid. I’ve always tried to understand what he meant by this argument, but I’ve never been able to work it out. What’s ironic is I kinda believe in it, so I must be in some sort of love right now.

Relationships are a product. They’re also a complete wild west. No one knows how they work. The smartest cunts in the world still break up with people and still pick wrong people to be with. There’s no manual, no guide, your parents, even if they’re highly intelligent, well rounded and kind are still blinded by their own relationship.

In the Uber a generic song came on the radio. Prior to the song a more modern song had played. During a verse they’d dubbed a massive ‘BLEEP’ over a swear word. Which reminded me of music on the radio in the 2000s*. Then the next song came on. It was a song about love and relationships, all that bullshit. It was painful to be listening to due to the context I was in. And probably more painful for you because I’m giving you no context to this story or blog, not now, not ever. But it was painful and almost embarrassing because even though the song was so generic and shit it couldn’t help but strike a chord within me and make me feel gross. I felt almost ashamed like I’d got emotional during The Big Bang Theory.

But it was emotional. She was in the backseat. She pocked me on the shoulder, the finger jabbing as if impatiently trying to get the doors in an elevator to shut.

‘Do you have any glue sticks at home?’.

‘Ah… Yeah… Um… Yeah I think we do… Surely we do…’. I said.

‘OK, cool’.

Even an exchange so pointless and minimal is so sad to me. I can’t even be bothered verbally expressing myself because if I do I’ll cry and then she’ll cry. I don’t know why I’m avoiding that really. Maybe it’s something vain. Maybe it’s emotional vanity. Maybe I’m just done showing physical weakness to anyone. Maybe it was what that girl said to me that one time. Maybe I just would prefer to be sad privately. Maybe I’ll get it all out through writing. Maybe I currently can’t see what the best thing is to do.

I think it would probably be easier if I didn’t spend every moment with her before I leave. But then that’s all I want to do. But it’s sort of paralysing me. I can feel the emotions I’m tying down. I’m like Steve Erwin wrestling a crocodile, smiling as he looks at the camera, talking as if it’s all normal shit.

‘Yeah you can see she’s a bloody feisty one this one here! …’.

‘Now the thing you must remember is never let the pressure off the centre of the snout, it’s this big nippers achilles heel. Now remember, don’t try this at home. If you see an emotional breakdown in the wild just keep still, and back away slowly, don’t try and tackle it like I’m doing here’.

*The ‘BLEEP’ is an interesting type of censorship because it’s telling the audience there’s something naughty there but won’t tell you what. As years past it became more fashionable and practical to manipulate the swear words in songs. If you’ve ever listened to radio versions of Eminem music, it’s quite interesting. The most interesting is a version of his first hit song My Name Is. When I was around 13 my Dad forbid me to listen to any Eminem until I was 16. I had an iTunes gift card and I wanted to buy some music but being so terrified of my parent’s judgement I didn’t want to buy any tracks that were labelled ‘explicit’ so I bought ‘clean’ versions of songs. I bought the ‘clean’ version of My Name Is and it was bizarre. Words were completed distorted in strange ways, like if you’ve ever listened to Stairway To Heaven backwards so you could hear the intro to Satan’s podcast. There were also completely new verses I’d never heard before. And darker verses cut out.

This type of censorship is far scarier to me than the simple ‘BLEEP’ because it’s completely erasing what was originally there. It’s like in 1984 where it’s some people jobs to completely re-write history.

#Someone To Take The Edge Off #liam donnelly #Comedy #Hoabrt #Tasmania #Melbourne #Australia #Stand Up #Podcast #Relationships #Dreams #Selling Out

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adambstingus · 6 years

Text

5 Reasons Why The Middle Class Doesn’t Understand Poverty

We’re Constantly Told That “Money Can’t Buy Happiness”

If you’re friends with the right kind of insufferable people on social media, you’ve probably seen pictures like this:

Or these:

Simple Reminders

Quotesgram How profound, guy with countless fans and a net worth of 150 million.

Or, God help us, this:

We’re Taught To Associate Low-Paying Jobs With Failure

There Are Always Certain Things We Take For Granted

We Don’t Witness Poverty, So We Don’t Understand It

We’re Taught To See Ourselves As The Victims

Mark is on Twitter and has a book that’s made him rich in experience.

For more, check out 5 Things Nobody Tells You About Being Poor and 4 Common Morals Designed to Keep You Poor.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out Disney Thinks You Hate Poor People, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook. Likes don’t cost a thing.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-reasons-why-the-middle-class-doesnt-understand-poverty/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/172256736157

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allofbeercom · 6 years

Text

5 Reasons Why The Middle Class Doesn’t Understand Poverty

We’re Constantly Told That “Money Can’t Buy Happiness”

If you’re friends with the right kind of insufferable people on social media, you’ve probably seen pictures like this:

Or these:

Simple Reminders

Quotesgram How profound, guy with countless fans and a net worth of 150 million.

Or, God help us, this:

We’re Taught To Associate Low-Paying Jobs With Failure

There Are Always Certain Things We Take For Granted

We Don’t Witness Poverty, So We Don’t Understand It

We’re Taught To See Ourselves As The Victims

Mark is on Twitter and has a book that’s made him rich in experience.

For more, check out 5 Things Nobody Tells You About Being Poor and 4 Common Morals Designed to Keep You Poor.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out Disney Thinks You Hate Poor People, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook. Likes don’t cost a thing.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-reasons-why-the-middle-class-doesnt-understand-poverty/

0 notes